But that was all in the long ago, before he had grown too old and tired to love. Also, she had married and gone away, and his mind had gone to sleep. Yet it had been a wonderful experience, and he used often to look back upon it as other men and women look back upon the time they believed in fairies. He had never believed in fairies nor Santa Claus; but he had believed implicitly in the smiling future his imagination had wrought into the steaming cloth stream.
He had become a man very early in life. At seven, when he drew his first wages, began his adolescence. A certain feeling of independence crept up in him, and the relationship between him and his mother changed. Somehow, as an earner and breadwinner, doing his own work in the world, he was more like an equal with her. Manhood, full-blown manhood, had come when he was eleven, at which time he had gone to work on the night shift for six months. No child works on the night shift and remains a child.
There had been several great events in his life. One of these had been when his mother bought some California prunes. Two others had been the two times when she cooked custard. Those had been events. He remembered them kindly. And at that time his mother had told him of a blissful dish she would sometime make floating island, she had called it, better than custard. For years he had looked forward to the day when he would sit down to the table with floating island before him, until at last he had relegated the idea of it to the limbo of unattainable ideals.
Once he found a silver quarter lying on the sidewalk. That, also, was a great event in his life, withal a tragic one. He knew his duty on the instant the silver flashed on his eyes, before even he had picked it up. At home, as usual, there was not enough to eat, and home he should have taken it as he did his wages every Saturday night. Right conduct in this case was obvious; but he never had any spending of his money, and he was suffering from candy hunger. He was ravenous for the sweets that only on red-letter days he had ever tasted in his life.
He did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew it was sin, and deliberately he sinned when he went on a fifteen-cent candy debauch. Ten cents he saved for a future orgy; but not being accustomed to the carrying of money, he lost the ten cents. This occurred at the time when he was suffering all the torments of conscience, and it was to him an act of divine retribution. He had a frightened sense of the closeness of an awful and wrathful God. God had seen, and God had been swift to punish, denying him even the full wages of sin.
In memory he always looked back upon that as the one great criminal deed of his life, and at the recollection his conscience always awoke and gave him another twinge. It was the one skeleton in his closet. Also, being so made, and circumstanced, he looked back upon the deed with regret. He was dissatisfied with the manner in which he had spent the quarter. He could have invested it better, and, out of his later knowledge of the quickness of God, he would have beaten God out by spending the whole quarter at one fell swoop. In retrospect he spent the quarter a thousand times, and each time to better advantage.
There was one other memory of the past, dim and faded, but stamped into his soul everlasting by the savage feet of his father. It was more like a nightmare than a remembered vision of a concrete thing more like the race-memory of man that makes him fall in his sleep and that goes back to his arboreal ancestry.
This particular memory never came to Johnny in broad daylight when he was wide awake. It came at night, in bed, at the moment that his consciousness was sinking down and losing itself in sleep. It always aroused him to frightened wakefulness, and for the moment, in the first sickening start, it seemed to him that he lay crosswise on the foot of the bed. In the bed were the vague forms of his father and mother. He never saw what his father looked like. He had but one impression of his father, and that was that he had savage and pitiless feet.
His earlier memories lingered with him, but he had no late memories. All days were alike. Yesterday or last year were the same as a thousand years or a minute. Nothing ever happened. There were no events to mark the march of time. Time did not march. It stood always still. It was only the whirling machines that moved, and they moved nowhere in spite of the fact that they moved faster.
When he was fourteen, he went to work on the starcher. It was a colossal event. Something had at last happened that could be remembered beyond a nights sleep or a weeks pay-day. It marked an era. It was a machine Olympiad, a thing to date from. When I went to work on the starcher, or, after, or before I went to work on the starcher, were sentences often on his lips.
He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom room and taking a loom. Here was an incentive again, for it was piece-work. And he excelled, because the clay of him had been moulded by the mills into the perfect machine. At the end of three months he was running two looms, and, later, three and four.
At the end of his second year at the looms he was turning out more yards than any other weaver, and more than twice as much as some of the less skilful ones. And at home things began to prosper as he approached the full stature of his earning power. Not, however, that his increased earnings were in excess of need. The children were growing up. They ate more. And they were going to school, and school-books cost money. And somehow, the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things. Even the rent went up, though the house had fallen from bad to worse disrepair.
He had grown taller; but with his increased height he seemed leaner than ever. Also, he was more nervous. With the nervousness increased his peevishness and irritability. The children had learned by many bitter lessons to fight shy of him. His mother respected him for his earning power, but somehow her respect was tinctured with fear.
There was no joyousness in life for him. The procession of the days he never saw. The nights he slept away in twitching unconsciousness. The rest of the time he worked, and his consciousness was machine consciousness. Outside this his mind was a blank. He had no ideals, and but one illusion; namely, that he drank excellent coffee. He was a work-beast. He had no mental life whatever; yet deep down in the crypts of his mind, unknown to him, were being weighed and sifted every hour of his toil, every movement of his hands, every twitch of his muscles, and preparations were making for a future course of action that would amaze him and all his little world.
It was in the late spring that he came home from work one night aware of unusual tiredness. There was a keen expectancy in the air as he sat down to the table, but he did not notice. He went through the meal in moody silence, mechanically eating what was before him. The children umd and ahd and made smacking noises with their mouths. But he was deaf to them.
Dye know what youre eatin? his mother demanded at last, desperately.
He looked vacantly at the dish before him, and vacantly at her.
Floatin island, she announced triumphantly.
Oh, he said.
Floating island! the children chorussed loudly.
Oh, he said. And after two or three mouthfuls, he added, I guess I aint hungry to-night.
He dropped the spoon, shoved back his chair, and arose wearily from the table.
An I guess Ill go to bed.
His feet dragged more heavily than usual as he crossed the kitchen floor. Undressing was a Titans task, a monstrous futility, and he wept weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a rising, swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his wrist, while in the ends of them was a remoteness of sensation vague and fuzzy like his brain. The small of his back ached intolerably. All his bones ached. He ached everywhere. And in his head began the shrieking, pounding, crashing, roaring of a million looms. All space was filled with flying shuttles. They darted in and out, intricately, amongst the stars. He worked a thousand looms himself, and ever they speeded up, faster and faster, and his brain unwound, faster and faster, and became the thread that fed the thousand flying shuttles.
He did not go to work next morning. He was too busy weaving colossally on the thousand looms that ran inside his head. His mother went to work, but first she sent for the doctor. It was a severe attack of la grippe, he said. Jennie served as nurse and carried out his instructions.
It was a very severe attack, and it was a week before Johnny dressed and tottered feebly across the floor. Another week, the doctor said, and he would be fit to return to work. The foreman of the loom room visited him on Sunday afternoon, the first day of his convalescence. The best weaver in the room, the foreman told his mother. His job would be held for him. He could come back to work a week from Monday.
Why dont you thank im, Johnny? his mother asked anxiously.
Hes ben that sick he aint himself yet, she explained apologetically to the visitor.
Johnny sat hunched up and gazing steadfastly at the floor. He sat in the same position long after the foreman had gone. It was warm outdoors, and he sat on the stoop in the afternoon. Sometimes his lips moved. He seemed lost in endless calculations.
Next morning, after the day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He had pencil and paper this time with which to continue his calculations, and he calculated painfully and amazingly.
What comes after millions? he asked at noon, when Will came home from school. An how dye work em?
That afternoon finished his task. Each day, but without paper and pencil, he returned to the stoop. He was greatly absorbed in the one tree that grew across the street. He studied it for hours at a time, and was unusually interested when the wind swayed its branches and fluttered its leaves. Throughout the week he seemed lost in a great communion with himself. On Sunday, sitting on the stoop, he laughed aloud, several times, to the perturbation of his mother, who had not heard him laugh for years.
Next morning, in the early darkness, she came to his bed to rouse him. He had had his fill of sleep all the week, and awoke easily. He made no struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped it from him. He lay quietly, and spoke quietly.
It aint no use, ma.
Youll be late, she said, under the impression that he was still stupid with sleep.
Im awake, ma, an I tell you it aint no use. You might as well lemme alone. I aint goin to git up.
But youll lose your job! she cried.
I aint goin to git up, he repeated in a strange, passionless voice.
She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness beyond any sickness she had ever known. Fever and delirium she could understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him and sent Jennie for the doctor.
When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he awoke and allowed his pulse to be taken.
Nothing the matter with him, the doctor reported. Badly debilitated, thats all. Not much meat on his bones.
Hes always been that way, his mother volunteered.
Now go way, ma, an let me finish my snooze.
Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.
At ten oclock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the kitchen, where he found his mother with a frightened expression on her face.
Im goin away, ma, he announced, an I jes want to say good-bye.
She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He waited patiently.
I might a-known it, she was sobbing.
Where? she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing up at him with a stricken face in which there was little curiosity.
I dont know anywhere.
As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk just under his eyelids, and he could see it whenever he wished.
An your job? she quavered.
I aint never goin to work again.
My God, Johnny! she wailed, dont say that!
What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child deny God, was Johnnys mother shocked by his words.
Whats got into you, anyway? she demanded, with a lame attempt at imperativeness.
Figures, he answered. Jes figures. Ive ben doin a lot of figurin this week, an its most surprisin.
I dont see what thats got to do with it, she sniffled.
Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability.
Ill show you, he said. Im plum tired out. What makes me tired? Moves. Ive ben movin ever since I was born. Im tired of movin, an I aint goin to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glass-house? I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten different moves to each bottle. Thats thirty-six thousan moves a day. Ten days, three hundred an sixty thousan moves. One month, one million an eighty thousan moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan he spoke with the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist chuck out the eighty thousan, that leaves a million moves a month twelve million moves a year.
At the looms Im movin twicst as much. That makes twenty-five million moves a year, an it seems to me Ive ben a movin that way most a million years.
Now this week I aint moved at all. I aint made one move in hours an hours. I tell you it was swell, jes settin there, hours an hours, an doin nothin. I aint never ben happy before. I never had any time. Ive ben movin all the time. That aint no way to be happy. An I aint going to do it any more. Im jes goin to set, an set, an rest, an rest, and then rest some more.
But whats goin to come of Will an the children? she asked despairingly.
Thats it, Will an the children, he repeated.
But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mothers ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled. Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.
I know, ma, what youve ben plannin for Will keepin him in school to make a book-keeper out of him. But it aint no use, Ive quit. Hes got to go to work.
An after I have brung you up the way I have, she wept, starting to cover her head with the apron and changing her mind.
You never brung me up, he answered with sad kindliness. I brung myself up, ma, an I brung up Will. Hes biggern me, an heavier, an taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didnt git enough to eat. When he come along an was a kid, I was workin an earnin grub for him too. But thats done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to hell, I dont care which. Im tired. Im goin now. Aint you goin to say goodbye?
She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was crying. He paused a moment in the doorway.
Im sure I done the best I knew how, she was sobbing.
He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan delight came into his face at the sight of the lone tree. Jes aint goin to do nothin, he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning tone. He glanced wistfully up at the sky, but the bright sun dazzled and blinded him.
It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took him past the jute-mill. The muffled roar of the loom room came to his ears, and he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated no one, not even the pounding, shrieking machines. There was no bitterness in him, nothing but an inordinate hunger for rest.