The American: A Middle Western Legend by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

TWO

    The Statement
    The act of awakening is, in a small way, a rebirth; as, for example, the way primitive people speak of sleep as the little death, and of death as the long sleep. At night, the brain relaxes; all the thousand currents of thought, which tugged with such remorseless contention, loosen; somewhere, there is a washing and a cleansing. Even the dreams which come with morning belong to another world, and this morning, when the Judge awakened, his dreams flurried for only an instant and then sank back into the pits of memory. For just a short while he clung to remnants, as people do, a face out of the past, a long road he had walked, a terrible thing happening; but the wonder of dreams is to prove to people that nothing is changeless; horror is washed away in an instant, and sunlight is a testimony to the goodness of life. And there are other testimonies upon waking, the softness of a warm bed, embracing, the way a mother folds a child into her gentle bosom, clean white sheets, a feather pillow, and downy blankets to keep out the nip of the autumn air. It is true that same may wake differently, on the hard, cold earth, on the wooden board of a prison cell, on a crunching cornshuck bag, on a vermin-ridden floor—and some into a horror of life from which sleep is the only surcease—yet the Judge was not prone to dwell on the copybook maxim: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” He could too clearly trace back the steps by which he had gone, and although occasionally one or another had lent a helping hand, it was, to his way of thinking, his own strong hands which had pulled on the bootstraps hardest, and credit should be given where credit was due.
    So to him, in the moments after awakening, this was the little rebirth after the little death, and the broad slab of sunshine intersecting the window and the room was the new compact life made with him. Unhurriedly, for it was still very early in the morning, he returned to the business of living, turned first from side to side, opened his eyes and then closed them, stretched with the warm and comfortable ease of an animal, sighed, sensually relaxed with the enfolding grasp of the bed, and experienced that wonderful sensation we know only upon awakening or in times of great weakness—that drift in and out of consciousness which enables the ego to float like a disembodied spirit. Starting to live again, he was not wholly in either the present or the past, and in quick succession he became many things, Pete Altgeld the farm boy, Pete Altgeld the soldier, Pete Altgeld the tramp, Pete Altgeld the wanderer who sought hope where there was no hope, Pete Altgeld dying, living, defeated, triumphant—he remembered the beginning of the change, when at the lowest point of sickness and despair, he found people who were good to him, helping him, feeding him; that was a nice point to come to life, to full consciousness, wondering only what there was back of his mind that disturbed him.

II
    He heard voices through the door:
    â€œBe quiet! You’ll wake the Judge!”
    â€œWho’s shouting—you’re shouting, yelling all the time, yelling be quiet”
    â€œQuiet.”
    â€œQuiet yourself.”
    â€œI don’t want none of your lip.”
    â€œWell, I should say! I don’t want none of yours.”
    â€œI never seen a parlormaid who wasn’t a hussy. You’re a hussy.”
    â€œI’m not. You don’t call me that, lording it high and mighty. You think you own this house?”
    â€œI’ll turn you out.”
    â€œWill you? I could tell a thing or two.”
    â€œJust remember I’m housekeeper here. Now go down to the kitchen. You hear me? Down to the kitchen.”
    Then the Judge heard the door of his wife’s dressing room open, and she stepped outside and said, “Both of you go downstairs and stop this horrible racket.”
    The Judge sat up in bed. Life was complex and even the