WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.370 --> 00:00:10.470 align:middle line:90% Oh, my goodness. 00:00:10.470 --> 00:00:12.450 align:middle line:90% You're ready, but I wasn't. 00:00:12.450 --> 00:00:15.820 align:middle line:84% Our next reading will be Wednesday night, March 9. 00:00:15.820 --> 00:00:18.060 align:middle line:84% We'll have a visiting poet, Stephen Dobyns. 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:20.760 align:middle line:84% And we'll be back in our regular place in the Modern Languages 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:23.250 align:middle line:90% Auditorium for that reading. 00:00:23.250 --> 00:00:28.140 align:middle line:84% Next Thursday at 4:30 is the deadline for submissions 00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:30.750 align:middle line:90% to this year's poetry contest. 00:00:30.750 --> 00:00:34.525 align:middle line:84% And I brought some rules and entry blanks with me. 00:00:34.525 --> 00:00:36.150 align:middle line:84% I'll have them on the refreshment table 00:00:36.150 --> 00:00:38.398 align:middle line:90% after Mr. Marius' reading. 00:00:38.398 --> 00:00:40.440 align:middle line:84% And we'll have our refreshments right in the back 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:41.523 align:middle line:90% of the auditorium tonight. 00:00:41.523 --> 00:00:46.670 align:middle line:90% 00:00:46.670 --> 00:00:50.570 align:middle line:84% Richard Marius comes to us from Harvard University. 00:00:50.570 --> 00:00:55.250 align:middle line:84% He'll be speaking in the morning, the university's 00:00:55.250 --> 00:00:58.280 align:middle line:84% Conference on Articulation, which is sponsored 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:00.320 align:middle line:90% by the composition program. 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:04.040 align:middle line:84% And his address, I believe, is open to everyone. 00:01:04.040 --> 00:01:07.980 align:middle line:84% That will be at 9 o'clock in the Union Club of the Student 00:01:07.980 --> 00:01:08.480 align:middle line:90% Union. 00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:11.160 align:middle line:90% 00:01:11.160 --> 00:01:15.600 align:middle line:84% Richard Marius has published two novels, The Coming of Rain 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:19.440 align:middle line:84% and Bound for the Promised Land, and a biographical study 00:01:19.440 --> 00:01:22.920 align:middle line:90% of Martin Luther called Luther. 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:25.080 align:middle line:84% And his next book will be a biographical study 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:27.405 align:middle line:90% of Sir Thomas More. 00:01:27.405 --> 00:01:31.184 align:middle line:84% I'm very happy to have him with us tonight, Richard Marius. 00:01:31.184 --> 00:01:34.593 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:34.593 --> 00:01:37.398 align:middle line:90% 00:01:37.398 --> 00:01:38.690 align:middle line:90% I really appreciate being here. 00:01:38.690 --> 00:01:40.160 align:middle line:90% I've had a wonderful time. 00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:41.550 align:middle line:90% It's been raining up in Boston. 00:01:41.550 --> 00:01:43.010 align:middle line:90% It's so nice to come to Arizona. 00:01:43.010 --> 00:01:45.850 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:45.850 --> 00:01:46.350 align:middle line:90% 00:01:46.350 --> 00:01:47.720 align:middle line:90% I have had a wonderful time. 00:01:47.720 --> 00:01:53.270 align:middle line:84% I am not going to try to explain very much about what 00:01:53.270 --> 00:01:55.400 align:middle line:90% I'm going to read to you-- 00:01:55.400 --> 00:01:57.448 align:middle line:90% a novel that I've worked on. 00:01:57.448 --> 00:01:59.240 align:middle line:84% I actually put it up a couple of years ago, 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:02.840 align:middle line:84% after getting about 700 pages into the first draft. 00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:05.570 align:middle line:84% And I finished my biography of Thomas Moore, which I just 00:02:05.570 --> 00:02:08.630 align:middle line:90% got done in the autumn. 00:02:08.630 --> 00:02:10.789 align:middle line:84% And I started back through this, doing something 00:02:10.789 --> 00:02:12.193 align:middle line:84% for the first time that I've ever 00:02:12.193 --> 00:02:13.610 align:middle line:84% tried to do it in writing fiction, 00:02:13.610 --> 00:02:17.240 align:middle line:84% to write in the first person, which I find very difficult. 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:22.160 align:middle line:84% But it also has become a very different experience for me 00:02:22.160 --> 00:02:25.280 align:middle line:84% in that as I write in the first person 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:27.870 align:middle line:84% it seems sometimes almost as these things really, 00:02:27.870 --> 00:02:32.960 align:middle line:90% really happened to me. 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:35.030 align:middle line:84% The conceit of the book, if you can call it that, 00:02:35.030 --> 00:02:40.820 align:middle line:84% is a man sitting in the kitchen of a farmhouse in Tennessee, 00:02:40.820 --> 00:02:44.930 align:middle line:84% night after night in the summer of 1941, 00:02:44.930 --> 00:02:48.050 align:middle line:84% recalling night after night his life 00:02:48.050 --> 00:02:52.250 align:middle line:84% since he arrived in East Tennessee. 00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:55.400 align:middle line:84% The genesis of the book comes from an afternoon almost 00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:59.600 align:middle line:84% exactly 10 years ago, when I'm sitting out 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:03.230 align:middle line:84% in our front yard with my father shortly after-- 00:03:03.230 --> 00:03:05.630 align:middle line:84% a few months after the death of my mother. 00:03:05.630 --> 00:03:10.790 align:middle line:84% And my father was born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor. 00:03:10.790 --> 00:03:15.170 align:middle line:84% But for reasons that are too complicated, I suppose, 00:03:15.170 --> 00:03:18.950 align:middle line:84% to explain here, I grew up in Belgium, 00:03:18.950 --> 00:03:23.600 align:middle line:84% and in the summer of 1914 joined the Belgian army, 00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:25.880 align:middle line:84% and was severely wounded by shell bursts 00:03:25.880 --> 00:03:32.360 align:middle line:84% before Antwerp was pulled out by a British Yorkshire rifle 00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:35.750 align:middle line:84% stretcher bearer group and taken to London, 00:03:35.750 --> 00:03:38.300 align:middle line:84% where I spent three years in the hospital, 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:45.290 align:middle line:84% and came to America in 1917 to work for Southern Railway 00:03:45.290 --> 00:03:49.340 align:middle line:84% because he met a man in London when he was convalescing 00:03:49.340 --> 00:03:51.770 align:middle line:84% before he was discharged in the Belgian army, who gave him 00:03:51.770 --> 00:03:54.530 align:middle line:84% a job, first of all, in Birmingham, Alabama. 00:03:54.530 --> 00:03:59.000 align:middle line:84% And then later, he moved up to the little town 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:01.370 align:middle line:84% near where I grew up, called Lenoir, Tennessee, 00:04:01.370 --> 00:04:04.895 align:middle line:84% which is the Bourbonville of my books. 00:04:04.895 --> 00:04:06.770 align:middle line:84% I was sitting out in the yard with my father, 00:04:06.770 --> 00:04:08.330 align:middle line:90% and something came up. 00:04:08.330 --> 00:04:09.770 align:middle line:90% I don't remember what. 00:04:09.770 --> 00:04:13.070 align:middle line:84% And he said something about something 00:04:13.070 --> 00:04:16.610 align:middle line:84% being the color of German feel gray. 00:04:16.610 --> 00:04:17.910 align:middle line:90% And I was struck by that. 00:04:17.910 --> 00:04:21.394 align:middle line:90% And I said to him, suddenly I-- 00:04:21.394 --> 00:04:23.210 align:middle line:84% it's funny-- we never talk much about this. 00:04:23.210 --> 00:04:25.400 align:middle line:84% He never has talked about the war. 00:04:25.400 --> 00:04:29.420 align:middle line:84% But I said to him, how close were you 00:04:29.420 --> 00:04:31.490 align:middle line:90% to the Germans at any one point? 00:04:31.490 --> 00:04:33.770 align:middle line:84% And he said, oh, about from here to the vineyard, 00:04:33.770 --> 00:04:37.050 align:middle line:84% which was about as far as from here to the back of this room. 00:04:37.050 --> 00:04:39.073 align:middle line:90% And I suddenly began-- 00:04:39.073 --> 00:04:41.240 align:middle line:84% I don't know why I was so late in realizing all this 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:42.980 align:middle line:90% because I did grow up with him-- 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:47.510 align:middle line:84% but I said, do you know that you ever killed a man? 00:04:47.510 --> 00:04:53.040 align:middle line:84% And he burst into tears and said, 00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:56.000 align:middle line:90% God has forgiven me for that. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.880 align:middle line:84% We sat and talked that afternoon, 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:02.060 align:middle line:84% one of the relatively few times we talked about his experience 00:05:02.060 --> 00:05:03.470 align:middle line:90% in the war. 00:05:03.470 --> 00:05:06.170 align:middle line:90% And so I thought about that. 00:05:06.170 --> 00:05:08.930 align:middle line:84% I published Bound for the Promised Land. 00:05:08.930 --> 00:05:13.260 align:middle line:84% I was working on that at the time we had that conversation. 00:05:13.260 --> 00:05:14.750 align:middle line:84% But in some sense, this is a kind 00:05:14.750 --> 00:05:16.640 align:middle line:84% of fictional telling of his story. 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:17.660 align:middle line:90% And it is fictional. 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:19.040 align:middle line:90% It's not quite the same. 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:22.400 align:middle line:84% He did tell me at one time, sometime 00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:25.250 align:middle line:84% after that, that he had dreamed for 20 years of being 00:05:25.250 --> 00:05:27.560 align:middle line:84% under shell fire and that he would 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:30.740 align:middle line:84% have terrible headaches for days at a time after these dreams. 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:34.760 align:middle line:84% And I remember, of course, as I was a child, that he 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:36.080 align:middle line:90% would have terrible headaches. 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:39.482 align:middle line:84% And we had a little place out in the woods behind our place, 00:05:39.482 --> 00:05:40.190 align:middle line:90% which we called-- 00:05:40.190 --> 00:05:41.780 align:middle line:90% still called the playhouse. 00:05:41.780 --> 00:05:44.210 align:middle line:84% And when my father was knocked down 00:05:44.210 --> 00:05:46.760 align:middle line:84% with one of these headaches, we would 00:05:46.760 --> 00:05:48.890 align:middle line:84% have to go out there and play because he 00:05:48.890 --> 00:05:52.970 align:middle line:84% couldn't stand for any of us to be around the house. 00:05:52.970 --> 00:05:58.430 align:middle line:84% So this is a fictional telling of that story. 00:05:58.430 --> 00:06:07.040 align:middle line:84% And I guess that's all of it I need to explain because-- 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:08.960 align:middle line:90% I won't get anything read. 00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:12.930 align:middle line:90% 00:06:12.930 --> 00:06:15.618 align:middle line:90% But anyway, it goes-- 00:06:15.618 --> 00:06:17.660 align:middle line:84% I'm going to just take you through the first part 00:06:17.660 --> 00:06:20.960 align:middle line:84% of the story, which is the Pinkerton part of the story. 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:23.000 align:middle line:90% And I did work for a while. 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:24.380 align:middle line:84% My father worked in this foundry, 00:06:24.380 --> 00:06:26.840 align:middle line:90% and I worked in it for a while. 00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:32.930 align:middle line:84% And it was a very important experience in my life. 00:06:32.930 --> 00:06:36.080 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to try to skip through here 00:06:36.080 --> 00:06:38.960 align:middle line:84% and just read you the part of the Pinkerton story. 00:06:38.960 --> 00:06:42.860 align:middle line:84% And the part of Mr. Pinkerton is that he 00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:45.740 align:middle line:84% comes to believe that he is cursed by God for bringing 00:06:45.740 --> 00:06:48.740 align:middle line:90% Black people to Bourbonville. 00:06:48.740 --> 00:06:51.110 align:middle line:84% I apologize for using, from time to time, the word 00:06:51.110 --> 00:06:53.780 align:middle line:90% "nigger" in this manuscript. 00:06:53.780 --> 00:06:57.380 align:middle line:84% And I don't apologize because of the necessity 00:06:57.380 --> 00:07:01.040 align:middle line:84% of trying to recapture speech, as people in the South 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.740 align:middle line:90% did, indeed, speak at this time. 00:07:03.740 --> 00:07:06.530 align:middle line:84% But I apologize for that part of American history 00:07:06.530 --> 00:07:11.948 align:middle line:84% that has given us that it is now necessary for writers 00:07:11.948 --> 00:07:13.490 align:middle line:84% who are trying to write realistically 00:07:13.490 --> 00:07:18.170 align:middle line:90% about their own times, to use. 00:07:18.170 --> 00:07:21.830 align:middle line:84% "I am not sure why I sat writing these lines in a sleeping 00:07:21.830 --> 00:07:23.390 align:middle line:90% house. 00:07:23.390 --> 00:07:26.510 align:middle line:84% Partly, I beguile the night hours waiting for sleep. 00:07:26.510 --> 00:07:29.780 align:middle line:84% I have been an insomniac since that last war, 00:07:29.780 --> 00:07:33.050 align:middle line:84% and my wife goes to bed promptly at 9:00. 00:07:33.050 --> 00:07:35.480 align:middle line:84% My sons go to bed early, too, for they are young, 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:37.160 align:middle line:90% and they need their sleep. 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:40.130 align:middle line:84% I seem to be blessed or cursed with less need for sleep 00:07:40.130 --> 00:07:41.810 align:middle line:90% than most people feel. 00:07:41.810 --> 00:07:44.180 align:middle line:84% So I sit here at a kitchen table looking down 00:07:44.180 --> 00:07:46.490 align:middle line:84% over the darkened hillside pasture, 00:07:46.490 --> 00:07:50.210 align:middle line:84% and across the lower field where the hay grows in this hot July, 00:07:50.210 --> 00:07:53.190 align:middle line:84% and beyond it to the highway to Nashville, 00:07:53.190 --> 00:07:56.510 align:middle line:84% where the lights of cars blaze occasionally through the dark 00:07:56.510 --> 00:07:59.780 align:middle line:84% and where the large trucks pass to mysterious journeys, 00:07:59.780 --> 00:08:03.200 align:middle line:84% I think, at this late hour when the world should be fast 00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:04.520 align:middle line:90% asleep. 00:08:04.520 --> 00:08:08.000 align:middle line:84% But then I suppose my solitary light, gleaming here 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.700 align:middle line:84% on the side of this low ridge, must seem mysterious 00:08:10.700 --> 00:08:12.140 align:middle line:90% to them too. 00:08:12.140 --> 00:08:16.940 align:middle line:84% And I reach out without touching across this dark land. 00:08:16.940 --> 00:08:20.030 align:middle line:84% I have decided to write about my ghosts. 00:08:20.030 --> 00:08:22.130 align:middle line:90% I do not know for whom-- 00:08:22.130 --> 00:08:25.040 align:middle line:84% perhaps for my younger sons, who may come on these pages 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:27.230 align:middle line:84% when they are older and when I'm dead and waiting 00:08:27.230 --> 00:08:30.080 align:middle line:84% for the Resurrection in the churchyard on the hill, 00:08:30.080 --> 00:08:32.210 align:middle line:84% so far from where I once supposed 00:08:32.210 --> 00:08:35.270 align:middle line:84% I would wait that improbable event. 00:08:35.270 --> 00:08:38.659 align:middle line:84% I wish they could understand some things. 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:41.159 align:middle line:84% The oldest will never understand anything, 00:08:41.159 --> 00:08:44.000 align:middle line:84% but it seems that if a father has three sons, at least two 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.175 align:middle line:84% of them should know something about him, something of a life 00:08:47.175 --> 00:08:49.550 align:middle line:84% that he can never tell them because they would interrupt, 00:08:49.550 --> 00:08:50.967 align:middle line:84% or they would not believe, or they 00:08:50.967 --> 00:08:53.420 align:middle line:84% might look on me with that pained embarrassment 00:08:53.420 --> 00:08:57.050 align:middle line:84% and incredulity that I can scarcely bear to imagine. 00:08:57.050 --> 00:08:59.870 align:middle line:84% And I could not make myself see it. 00:08:59.870 --> 00:09:01.790 align:middle line:84% So I explained myself to them here, 00:09:01.790 --> 00:09:04.670 align:middle line:84% speaking in a quiet world where I am master of the page, 00:09:04.670 --> 00:09:07.190 align:middle line:84% and the page accepts what I say, the world 00:09:07.190 --> 00:09:09.710 align:middle line:84% in my little kitchen with the windows open on two hours 00:09:09.710 --> 00:09:13.730 align:middle line:84% before midnight on a hot summer evening. 00:09:13.730 --> 00:09:17.000 align:middle line:84% But I suppose, too, that [AUDIO OUT] for Bernal. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.220 align:middle line:84% They have been gone now for years. 00:09:19.220 --> 00:09:21.830 align:middle line:84% For a very long time after they disappeared, 00:09:21.830 --> 00:09:24.350 align:middle line:90% I expected them to return. 00:09:24.350 --> 00:09:26.473 align:middle line:84% I would be standing in the doorway to the barn 00:09:26.473 --> 00:09:27.890 align:middle line:84% when the men had finished throwing 00:09:27.890 --> 00:09:29.480 align:middle line:90% the new hay into the loft. 00:09:29.480 --> 00:09:32.090 align:middle line:84% The barn fragrant with the sweet, strong smell, 00:09:32.090 --> 00:09:35.540 align:middle line:84% the myriad fireflies splitting in the soft, white mist, 00:09:35.540 --> 00:09:39.140 align:middle line:84% rising from the freshly-mown meadow, the Moon high 00:09:39.140 --> 00:09:41.570 align:middle line:84% and turning white with the deepening night. 00:09:41.570 --> 00:09:44.240 align:middle line:84% And I would expect Guy's soft laughter behind me 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:46.190 align:middle line:84% and Bernal's murmur, a friendly reproach 00:09:46.190 --> 00:09:47.810 align:middle line:84% at him, for Bernal always thought 00:09:47.810 --> 00:09:50.060 align:middle line:84% that Guy's laughter had a mock in it, 00:09:50.060 --> 00:09:52.610 align:middle line:84% and he thought the Guy patronized me. 00:09:52.610 --> 00:09:55.640 align:middle line:84% Guy did patronize me, but I loved him anyway. 00:09:55.640 --> 00:09:58.250 align:middle line:84% So I imagined that I would turn and look back 00:09:58.250 --> 00:10:00.560 align:middle line:84% into the gloom of the barn's interior 00:10:00.560 --> 00:10:03.560 align:middle line:84% and see Guy standing there in a luminescent green velvet 00:10:03.560 --> 00:10:07.100 align:middle line:84% waistcoat, with this black tails and the bright red cravat 00:10:07.100 --> 00:10:08.690 align:middle line:84% that he wore to mass on the morning 00:10:08.690 --> 00:10:11.120 align:middle line:90% after he had danced all night. 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:13.730 align:middle line:84% That was 1912, and we were about to graduate 00:10:13.730 --> 00:10:15.590 align:middle line:84% from the [INAUDIBLE] in Ghent and to enroll 00:10:15.590 --> 00:10:16.777 align:middle line:90% in the University. 00:10:16.777 --> 00:10:18.860 align:middle line:84% So when the [AUDIO OUT] would laugh in his delight 00:10:18.860 --> 00:10:21.710 align:middle line:84% at my surprise, and Bernal would advance, smiling with him, 00:10:21.710 --> 00:10:25.250 align:middle line:84% and the three of us would stand, talking with our old animation 00:10:25.250 --> 00:10:28.880 align:middle line:84% and delight, I suppose that if they came to me anywhere, 00:10:28.880 --> 00:10:30.440 align:middle line:90% it would be in the barn. 00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.170 align:middle line:84% It was a fine private place in the evening, 00:10:33.170 --> 00:10:35.270 align:middle line:84% and they had both been there when I built it, 00:10:35.270 --> 00:10:38.570 align:middle line:84% the two of them lounging in the shade, Guy grinning in what 00:10:38.570 --> 00:10:41.930 align:middle line:84% was almost a smirk, while Jim, Ed, and I sweated and grunted, 00:10:41.930 --> 00:10:43.970 align:middle line:84% and old Mr. Munford hammered nails 00:10:43.970 --> 00:10:46.070 align:middle line:90% with other nails in his mouth. 00:10:46.070 --> 00:10:49.460 align:middle line:84% But after they left me that last time, they never came again. 00:10:49.460 --> 00:10:52.700 align:middle line:84% And now I know that they are gone from me forever. 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:54.440 align:middle line:84% So I write to keep something of them 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:56.630 align:middle line:90% here in the world of the living. 00:10:56.630 --> 00:10:58.850 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, too, I write to prove to myself 00:10:58.850 --> 00:11:04.560 align:middle line:84% that I was not insane, as if it did not matter. 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:07.340 align:middle line:84% I heard on the news tonight that Hitler's amazing advance 00:11:07.340 --> 00:11:09.350 align:middle line:90% into Russia goes on. 00:11:09.350 --> 00:11:11.420 align:middle line:84% His generals are predicting that the Red Army 00:11:11.420 --> 00:11:13.910 align:middle line:90% will dissolve in six weeks. 00:11:13.910 --> 00:11:15.860 align:middle line:84% Just tell me I have a son in that army 00:11:15.860 --> 00:11:20.030 align:middle line:84% that now plunges across those vast steps I shall never know. 00:11:20.030 --> 00:11:22.850 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] if, we had married, I would not be here, 00:11:22.850 --> 00:11:25.130 align:middle line:84% and my sons would not be safely asleep 00:11:25.130 --> 00:11:26.870 align:middle line:90% upstairs in their little rooms. 00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:28.820 align:middle line:84% And in truth, they would never have been born. 00:11:28.820 --> 00:11:30.410 align:middle line:84% Jimbo would never have been born. 00:11:30.410 --> 00:11:33.100 align:middle line:90% How very strange it all seems. 00:11:33.100 --> 00:11:37.720 align:middle line:84% God protect [INAUDIBLE] even in that terrible cause. 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:41.650 align:middle line:84% But, of course, I do not believe in God. 00:11:41.650 --> 00:11:45.160 align:middle line:84% I also do not believe in the ghosts. 00:11:45.160 --> 00:11:48.670 align:middle line:84% Now almost three decades after I began speaking with them, 00:11:48.670 --> 00:11:51.850 align:middle line:84% I can understand well enough how it all came about, 00:11:51.850 --> 00:11:53.920 align:middle line:84% just as we can understand sometimes 00:11:53.920 --> 00:11:56.560 align:middle line:90% how we had a certain dream. 00:11:56.560 --> 00:12:01.630 align:middle line:84% I knew they were dead and I was alive, barely alive but alive 00:12:01.630 --> 00:12:05.500 align:middle line:84% in London, Chelsea, the Royal Hospital and a long ward, 00:12:05.500 --> 00:12:08.350 align:middle line:84% where the critically wounded lie close together in narrow beds 00:12:08.350 --> 00:12:11.740 align:middle line:84% beneath the high, old windows designed by Sir Christopher 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:13.330 align:middle line:90% Wren. 00:12:13.330 --> 00:12:16.720 align:middle line:84% I did not know how they had died. 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:19.090 align:middle line:84% I had witnessed the death of each of them, 00:12:19.090 --> 00:12:21.790 align:middle line:84% but when my mind tried to call up the scenes again, 00:12:21.790 --> 00:12:24.740 align:middle line:84% it stopped and could not produce the [AUDIO OUT].. 00:12:24.740 --> 00:12:27.460 align:middle line:84% It was very much the same as my more recent difficulty 00:12:27.460 --> 00:12:28.450 align:middle line:90% with some names. 00:12:28.450 --> 00:12:31.870 align:middle line:84% I find that if I have not thought of someone in a long 00:12:31.870 --> 00:12:35.410 align:middle line:84% while, I often cannot produce his name when some chance 00:12:35.410 --> 00:12:37.180 align:middle line:90% brings him to mind. 00:12:37.180 --> 00:12:40.270 align:middle line:84% I can remember his face and dozens of things about him, 00:12:40.270 --> 00:12:42.160 align:middle line:84% and should he be present, I can enquire 00:12:42.160 --> 00:12:44.650 align:middle line:84% about his mother, or his wretched back, 00:12:44.650 --> 00:12:47.080 align:middle line:84% or his liking for the city where he now resides, 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:49.430 align:middle line:90% which I can flawlessly name. 00:12:49.430 --> 00:12:52.180 align:middle line:90% But I cannot name him. 00:12:52.180 --> 00:12:55.150 align:middle line:84% My difficulties with the deaths of Guy and Bernal 00:12:55.150 --> 00:12:58.330 align:middle line:84% were much more serious than the inability to recall a name. 00:12:58.330 --> 00:13:01.450 align:middle line:84% I remembered them alive, so wonderfully 00:13:01.450 --> 00:13:03.490 align:middle line:90% and exuberantly alive. 00:13:03.490 --> 00:13:05.620 align:middle line:84% And I can recall 1,000 or perhaps 00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:10.120 align:middle line:84% 10,000 things about them and about our happiness together. 00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:12.370 align:middle line:84% I can also recall waking in the hospital 00:13:12.370 --> 00:13:15.155 align:middle line:84% train in its long, slow way up to London, 00:13:15.155 --> 00:13:16.780 align:middle line:84% feeling the weight of the headache that 00:13:16.780 --> 00:13:21.250 align:middle line:84% was unlike any pain I had ever endured in my life, a pain that 00:13:21.250 --> 00:13:24.310 align:middle line:84% made my bones shriek for the consolation of death 00:13:24.310 --> 00:13:28.120 align:middle line:84% and knowing beyond that pain or beneath it, Bernal were dead. 00:13:28.120 --> 00:13:30.940 align:middle line:84% But I could not recall how they died. 00:13:30.940 --> 00:13:34.510 align:middle line:84% My mind stalled before an opaque wall just higher than what I 00:13:34.510 --> 00:13:38.050 align:middle line:84% could see over, and I cannot penetrate the wall to recall 00:13:38.050 --> 00:13:42.250 align:middle line:84% the horror, not then, not even when I came to Bourbonville. 00:13:42.250 --> 00:13:45.910 align:middle line:84% So I lay in my bed in London, my head, my chest, and my legs 00:13:45.910 --> 00:13:48.520 align:middle line:84% wrapped in bandages that covered the wounds left 00:13:48.520 --> 00:13:52.090 align:middle line:84% by the exploding German shell before Antwerp. 00:13:52.090 --> 00:13:54.430 align:middle line:84% My head hurt in a way that I can never describe, 00:13:54.430 --> 00:13:57.790 align:middle line:84% for there is no metaphor that can convey a pain to those 00:13:57.790 --> 00:13:59.530 align:middle line:90% who have not had it. 00:13:59.530 --> 00:14:04.300 align:middle line:84% Underneath the pain was guilt. I was alive, and they were dead. 00:14:04.300 --> 00:14:08.380 align:middle line:84% The guilt was as bad to my soul as the headache was to my body. 00:14:08.380 --> 00:14:10.060 align:middle line:84% It was a pain beyond the telling, 00:14:10.060 --> 00:14:11.350 align:middle line:90% a weight beyond the bearing. 00:14:11.350 --> 00:14:14.680 align:middle line:84% I wanted to die, but I was too sunk in apathy 00:14:14.680 --> 00:14:18.310 align:middle line:84% to make any contribution towards my fervent desire. 00:14:18.310 --> 00:14:20.350 align:middle line:84% I could only lie there and wait for something. 00:14:20.350 --> 00:14:22.450 align:middle line:90% I knew not what. 00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:25.270 align:middle line:84% The nights were worse than the days. 00:14:25.270 --> 00:14:27.460 align:middle line:84% One eye was left outside the bandages, 00:14:27.460 --> 00:14:29.350 align:middle line:84% and I could see the tiny electric light 00:14:29.350 --> 00:14:32.980 align:middle line:84% gleaming at the nurse's station at the end of the long room. 00:14:32.980 --> 00:14:34.720 align:middle line:90% It was a funereal light. 00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:38.470 align:middle line:84% And around it, awful beings hung in the air. 00:14:38.470 --> 00:14:41.560 align:middle line:84% When I shut my eyes, the outside world still came in. 00:14:41.560 --> 00:14:43.810 align:middle line:84% I could hear the low blast from the horns 00:14:43.810 --> 00:14:45.370 align:middle line:90% of boats in the Thames. 00:14:45.370 --> 00:14:47.230 align:middle line:84% And from somewhere far in the distance, 00:14:47.230 --> 00:14:50.500 align:middle line:84% perhaps from Victoria Station, came the rumble of trains 00:14:50.500 --> 00:14:53.560 align:middle line:84% and the high-pitched shriek of their whistles, sound of a city 00:14:53.560 --> 00:14:56.380 align:middle line:90% at night working at war. 00:14:56.380 --> 00:14:57.850 align:middle line:84% At this null moment, there is not 00:14:57.850 --> 00:15:00.160 align:middle line:84% a sound in all the world except the insects 00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:02.350 align:middle line:84% and the trees that fill the woods not 50 00:15:02.350 --> 00:15:05.230 align:middle line:84% feet from my kitchen window to the West. 00:15:05.230 --> 00:15:07.810 align:middle line:84% Still, when I shut my eyes in London, most of the world 00:15:07.810 --> 00:15:08.740 align:middle line:90% was closed out. 00:15:08.740 --> 00:15:11.590 align:middle line:84% And at some moment when the air was crisp with Autumn, 00:15:11.590 --> 00:15:14.650 align:middle line:84% I began talking to Guy and Bernal. 00:15:14.650 --> 00:15:17.410 align:middle line:84% Bernal was devout, so devout that he always 00:15:17.410 --> 00:15:20.650 align:middle line:84% made me uncomfortable and amused Guy. 00:15:20.650 --> 00:15:22.480 align:middle line:84% At least Guy pretended to be amused, 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:25.210 align:middle line:84% but I thought that he, too, was uncomfortable. 00:15:25.210 --> 00:15:27.040 align:middle line:84% Bernal prayed in the cathedral of St. Bavo 00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:30.212 align:middle line:84% in Ghent, where we all were before the war. 00:15:30.212 --> 00:15:32.170 align:middle line:84% He kneeled in the chapel before the [AUDIO OUT] 00:15:32.170 --> 00:15:34.840 align:middle line:84% of the adoration of the mystic lamb, 00:15:34.840 --> 00:15:37.037 align:middle line:84% looking up at the green field, and the prophets, 00:15:37.037 --> 00:15:38.620 align:middle line:84% and the saints, and of the white lamb. 00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:41.290 align:middle line:84% And he moved his lips in prayer, and the tears 00:15:41.290 --> 00:15:43.000 align:middle line:90% ran down his cheeks. 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:45.490 align:middle line:84% I came upon him there once, and I was as embarrassed 00:15:45.490 --> 00:15:47.470 align:middle line:84% as I might have been as if I had seen 00:15:47.470 --> 00:15:52.000 align:middle line:84% him copulating with a whore or defecating in the WC. 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:53.380 align:middle line:90% Guy was an atheist. 00:15:53.380 --> 00:15:55.120 align:middle line:84% At least, Guy said he was an atheist. 00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:57.020 align:middle line:90% He also said he was a socialist. 00:15:57.020 --> 00:15:59.920 align:middle line:84% He wondered how anyone could prove the existence of God 00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:01.510 align:middle line:84% or that anyone should take the trouble 00:16:01.510 --> 00:16:04.130 align:middle line:84% to go to the embarrassment of prayer. 00:16:04.130 --> 00:16:07.750 align:middle line:84% Bernal said you do not prove that God is before you pray. 00:16:07.750 --> 00:16:10.510 align:middle line:90% You pray, and God is there. 00:16:10.510 --> 00:16:13.720 align:middle line:84% That is how I felt about talking to Bernal and Guy. 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:16.180 align:middle line:90% If I spoke, they must be there. 00:16:16.180 --> 00:16:18.010 align:middle line:90% It was entirely a fantasy. 00:16:18.010 --> 00:16:20.660 align:middle line:84% I knew it was a fantasy while I was doing it. 00:16:20.660 --> 00:16:22.120 align:middle line:90% But it was a comfort. 00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:24.280 align:middle line:84% While he was dying, poor fat, miserable, 00:16:24.280 --> 00:16:25.990 align:middle line:84% Dale farmer confessed to me that he 00:16:25.990 --> 00:16:28.690 align:middle line:84% had had fantasies about baseball playing long, 00:16:28.690 --> 00:16:31.120 align:middle line:84% long after he had passed the age when he could possibly 00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:32.310 align:middle line:90% have played. 00:16:32.310 --> 00:16:34.140 align:middle line:84% He was almost out of his mind from the fear 00:16:34.140 --> 00:16:36.098 align:middle line:84% of death and [AUDIO OUT] that I was his friend, 00:16:36.098 --> 00:16:39.180 align:middle line:84% though I did not like him very much, so he confided in me. 00:16:39.180 --> 00:16:41.430 align:middle line:84% He told me that he imagined himself 00:16:41.430 --> 00:16:44.340 align:middle line:84% pitching in the World Series against the New York Yankees. 00:16:44.340 --> 00:16:47.400 align:middle line:84% And one by one, the great men came to bat against him-- 00:16:47.400 --> 00:16:50.610 align:middle line:84% Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and all the rest. 00:16:50.610 --> 00:16:53.250 align:middle line:84% And he struck him all out again and again. 00:16:53.250 --> 00:16:56.610 align:middle line:84% In his fantasies, he told me, he pitched the first perfect game 00:16:56.610 --> 00:16:58.170 align:middle line:90% in the World Series history. 00:16:58.170 --> 00:17:01.050 align:middle line:84% And in the seventh game, he won the series with a home run 00:17:01.050 --> 00:17:02.863 align:middle line:90% in the last half of the nine. 00:17:02.863 --> 00:17:05.280 align:middle line:84% He said that sometimes when he was depressed and could not 00:17:05.280 --> 00:17:07.650 align:middle line:84% sleep, he stood out there on the diamond in this fantasy 00:17:07.650 --> 00:17:10.380 align:middle line:84% world of his and pitched the baseball. 00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:11.760 align:middle line:90% He could feel himself doing it. 00:17:11.760 --> 00:17:15.240 align:middle line:84% And as thousands and thousands applauded, he thrilled inside, 00:17:15.240 --> 00:17:18.599 align:middle line:84% and it helped him forget that he had lost all his money. 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:20.609 align:middle line:84% So it was with me and with Guy and Bernal. 00:17:20.609 --> 00:17:23.099 align:middle line:84% We had been together every day for almost three years. 00:17:23.099 --> 00:17:25.553 align:middle line:84% I knew every intonation of their voices. 00:17:25.553 --> 00:17:26.970 align:middle line:84% I knew their minds, how they would 00:17:26.970 --> 00:17:28.830 align:middle line:90% respond to whatever I said. 00:17:28.830 --> 00:17:31.415 align:middle line:84% What was wrong with talking about them, with them? 00:17:31.415 --> 00:17:33.370 align:middle line:84% Bernal did not believe in such things, 00:17:33.370 --> 00:17:35.460 align:middle line:84% not because they were impossible but because they 00:17:35.460 --> 00:17:37.050 align:middle line:90% were immoral and ungodly. 00:17:37.050 --> 00:17:40.325 align:middle line:84% In the retreat of 1914, when we came on the palm reader 00:17:40.325 --> 00:17:41.700 align:middle line:84% in the village, where every house 00:17:41.700 --> 00:17:44.093 align:middle line:84% had been leveled by shell fire, and she was there, 00:17:44.093 --> 00:17:46.260 align:middle line:84% sitting in the midst of the ruins, a little polished 00:17:46.260 --> 00:17:48.900 align:middle line:84% wooden table, as though she had been seated in an office. 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:51.360 align:middle line:84% And out of the same madness that afflicted her, 00:17:51.360 --> 00:17:53.220 align:middle line:84% afflicted our world, Guy and I insisted 00:17:53.220 --> 00:17:54.990 align:middle line:90% that we have our fortunes told. 00:17:54.990 --> 00:17:57.240 align:middle line:84% You cannot do this, Bernal said, horrified. 00:17:57.240 --> 00:17:59.430 align:middle line:84% You cannot meddle with the secrets of God. 00:17:59.430 --> 00:18:01.380 align:middle line:90% You cannot practice necromancy. 00:18:01.380 --> 00:18:03.560 align:middle line:90% Remember the witch of Endor. 00:18:03.560 --> 00:18:04.760 align:middle line:90% Again, I laughed at him. 00:18:04.760 --> 00:18:06.510 align:middle line:84% Bernal thought that if we knew the future, 00:18:06.510 --> 00:18:09.360 align:middle line:84% it was because the spirits of the dead spoke to us. 00:18:09.360 --> 00:18:11.860 align:middle line:84% And he thought that God had cursed witchcraft. 00:18:11.860 --> 00:18:13.920 align:middle line:84% So Guy and I had our fortunes told. 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:16.290 align:middle line:84% And she told me that I would journey across the sea 00:18:16.290 --> 00:18:18.098 align:middle line:90% and marry a blonde woman. 00:18:18.098 --> 00:18:19.890 align:middle line:84% Bernal said that we were cursed after that, 00:18:19.890 --> 00:18:21.570 align:middle line:90% and perhaps we were. 00:18:21.570 --> 00:18:24.460 align:middle line:90% But I wander from my point. 00:18:24.460 --> 00:18:26.460 align:middle line:84% My point is that I did not believe in truth. 00:18:26.460 --> 00:18:27.720 align:middle line:90% I spoke to Guy and Bernal. 00:18:27.720 --> 00:18:30.660 align:middle line:84% Something solid and unyielding in the back of my mind 00:18:30.660 --> 00:18:33.720 align:middle line:84% always told me that our conversations were entirely 00:18:33.720 --> 00:18:35.580 align:middle line:84% made up and that my talking to them 00:18:35.580 --> 00:18:38.490 align:middle line:84% was no different from a foolish desire that made Petrarch write 00:18:38.490 --> 00:18:40.410 align:middle line:90% letters to Cicero or to Livy. 00:18:40.410 --> 00:18:42.450 align:middle line:84% Talk to them in those deep-night hours when 00:18:42.450 --> 00:18:44.250 align:middle line:84% the shoes of the nurses switched along 00:18:44.250 --> 00:18:46.860 align:middle line:84% the smooth floors between the narrow white beds, 00:18:46.860 --> 00:18:49.350 align:middle line:84% where the wounded slept and often died. 00:18:49.350 --> 00:18:52.350 align:middle line:84% I whispered to them so softly that no one could hear me. 00:18:52.350 --> 00:18:54.360 align:middle line:84% They whispered back with equal softness 00:18:54.360 --> 00:18:56.490 align:middle line:84% so that their voices were like distant sounds 00:18:56.490 --> 00:18:58.050 align:middle line:90% and a gentle wind. 00:18:58.050 --> 00:19:00.450 align:middle line:84% One night when it rained-- it rained often in London-- 00:19:00.450 --> 00:19:02.610 align:middle line:84% I was whispering to them, and I pretended 00:19:02.610 --> 00:19:05.918 align:middle line:84% that I could hear their voices in the rain falling high above, 00:19:05.918 --> 00:19:07.710 align:middle line:84% and running into the guttering, and passing 00:19:07.710 --> 00:19:09.510 align:middle line:90% down somewhere to the ground. 00:19:09.510 --> 00:19:11.430 align:middle line:84% It was like an optical illusion, only 00:19:11.430 --> 00:19:14.550 align:middle line:84% this was an illusion of the ears, an auditory illusion. 00:19:14.550 --> 00:19:16.710 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I could hear their voices, 00:19:16.710 --> 00:19:19.080 align:middle line:84% and sometimes the deep sound was the distant running 00:19:19.080 --> 00:19:21.270 align:middle line:84% of water in the copper gutters-- their voices, 00:19:21.270 --> 00:19:25.440 align:middle line:84% water, their voices, water, first one, then the other. 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:27.240 align:middle line:84% I amuse myself talking to them when 00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:29.790 align:middle line:84% the sound was the curious mingling of their voices, 00:19:29.790 --> 00:19:31.470 align:middle line:84% as though they were very far away, 00:19:31.470 --> 00:19:34.680 align:middle line:84% perhaps calling to me from some deep [INAUDIBLE] cleft 00:19:34.680 --> 00:19:35.670 align:middle line:90% and granite. 00:19:35.670 --> 00:19:37.770 align:middle line:84% And when the sound became water again, 00:19:37.770 --> 00:19:40.590 align:middle line:84% I ceased and waited serenely, knowing the voices would 00:19:40.590 --> 00:19:42.360 align:middle line:90% come back, as they did. 00:19:42.360 --> 00:19:45.870 align:middle line:84% And then that night, I heard the voices and the water together. 00:19:45.870 --> 00:19:49.170 align:middle line:84% I mean, I heard the clear, distinct sound of the words, 00:19:49.170 --> 00:19:52.500 align:middle line:84% the voices, and the clear distinct sound of the water 00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:54.330 align:middle line:90% running in the background. 00:19:54.330 --> 00:19:56.790 align:middle line:84% At first, I did not quite understand what I was hearing, 00:19:56.790 --> 00:20:00.150 align:middle line:84% but it came to me-- voices and water together. 00:20:00.150 --> 00:20:03.390 align:middle line:84% Far off, I heard clocks striking 2:00 in the morning, solemn, 00:20:03.390 --> 00:20:06.360 align:middle line:84% heavy ringing of two notes repeated again and again 00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:07.590 align:middle line:90% across the city. 00:20:07.590 --> 00:20:09.660 align:middle line:84% And then the voices were much nearer. 00:20:09.660 --> 00:20:14.340 align:middle line:84% And I heard Guy's voice and his laugh, his unmistakable laugh. 00:20:14.340 --> 00:20:16.320 align:middle line:84% I opened my eyes, and they were there 00:20:16.320 --> 00:20:18.840 align:middle line:84% in the deep gloom of the hospital ward. 00:20:18.840 --> 00:20:20.430 align:middle line:90% Bernal was wearing his uniform. 00:20:20.430 --> 00:20:23.730 align:middle line:84% He was always irritated by it because it fit him so poorly, 00:20:23.730 --> 00:20:26.130 align:middle line:84% and he was vain about his clothes. 00:20:26.130 --> 00:20:28.170 align:middle line:84% The collar of his shirt was too large for him, 00:20:28.170 --> 00:20:30.210 align:middle line:90% and his tunic was far too tight. 00:20:30.210 --> 00:20:33.780 align:middle line:84% But Guy was in his green velvet waistcoat and his black tails, 00:20:33.780 --> 00:20:36.270 align:middle line:84% and from one hand, he dangled a cigarette. 00:20:36.270 --> 00:20:39.600 align:middle line:84% I could not smell the smoke, but I could see it. 00:20:39.600 --> 00:20:42.660 align:middle line:84% I want to affirm here and now that I did not believe 00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:44.500 align:middle line:90% the two of them were real. 00:20:44.500 --> 00:20:46.950 align:middle line:90% I never truly believed. 00:20:46.950 --> 00:20:50.145 align:middle line:84% I saw them, but I did not believe they were ghosts." 00:20:50.145 --> 00:20:53.410 align:middle line:90% 00:20:53.410 --> 00:21:08.130 align:middle line:84% I'm going to skip now to the third night, when my narrator 00:21:08.130 --> 00:21:11.490 align:middle line:90% comes to Bourbonville. 00:21:11.490 --> 00:21:14.760 align:middle line:84% "The third night, I have my own [INAUDIBLE],, 00:21:14.760 --> 00:21:17.730 align:middle line:84% saving my life from myself, or perhaps from the dark powers 00:21:17.730 --> 00:21:20.160 align:middle line:90% by telling a tale each evening. 00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:21.900 align:middle line:84% I slept well the last two nights, 00:21:21.900 --> 00:21:23.910 align:middle line:84% awakening with astonishment in my little room 00:21:23.910 --> 00:21:26.760 align:middle line:84% each morning to see the dawn lying in the green grass, 00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:29.610 align:middle line:84% slipping itself under the maple trees that are large now, 00:21:29.610 --> 00:21:31.470 align:middle line:84% so large that I scarcely can believe 00:21:31.470 --> 00:21:34.410 align:middle line:84% they were little chutes of trees when Jim, Ed, and I planted 00:21:34.410 --> 00:21:35.400 align:middle line:90% them. 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:37.860 align:middle line:84% I have been astonished because I slept the night through, 00:21:37.860 --> 00:21:41.190 align:middle line:84% not waking as I usually do to listen to the silence. 00:21:41.190 --> 00:21:43.140 align:middle line:84% I have never accomplished very much. 00:21:43.140 --> 00:21:47.247 align:middle line:84% With these pages, I feel that I am creating a monument, yet, 00:21:47.247 --> 00:21:48.705 align:middle line:84% the pages are more difficult than I 00:21:48.705 --> 00:21:49.980 align:middle line:90% say would be when I started. 00:21:49.980 --> 00:21:52.590 align:middle line:84% There are so many connections that I cannot possibly record 00:21:52.590 --> 00:21:53.580 align:middle line:90% them all. 00:21:53.580 --> 00:21:55.140 align:middle line:84% And in failing to mention them, I 00:21:55.140 --> 00:21:58.080 align:middle line:84% feel the incompleteness of my design. 00:21:58.080 --> 00:22:00.870 align:middle line:84% I cannot, for example, sort out everything I know about that 00:22:00.870 --> 00:22:03.450 align:middle line:84% first meeting with Moreland Pinkerton and separate 00:22:03.450 --> 00:22:05.070 align:middle line:84% the meeting itself with everything Mr. 00:22:05.070 --> 00:22:08.580 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton told me about it and about himself afterwards. 00:22:08.580 --> 00:22:11.580 align:middle line:84% Mr. Pinkerton believed that he had a destiny, a calling 00:22:11.580 --> 00:22:15.060 align:middle line:84% to be something that the world would hear about and revered. 00:22:15.060 --> 00:22:18.150 align:middle line:84% Afterwards, I supposed, he did have a destiny, a fate. 00:22:18.150 --> 00:22:19.650 align:middle line:84% It was important enough, although it 00:22:19.650 --> 00:22:22.590 align:middle line:84% was different from anything he expected. 00:22:22.590 --> 00:22:26.250 align:middle line:84% He wanted to tell his story to anyone who would listen. 00:22:26.250 --> 00:22:29.550 align:middle line:84% I believe he supposed that when greatness did come to him, 00:22:29.550 --> 00:22:32.760 align:middle line:84% the world would rapaciously devour any details it might 00:22:32.760 --> 00:22:35.670 align:middle line:84% obtain about him, and he wanted to leave his story 00:22:35.670 --> 00:22:38.520 align:middle line:84% with as many people as possible so that they might testify 00:22:38.520 --> 00:22:40.590 align:middle line:90% about it and get it right. 00:22:40.590 --> 00:22:44.010 align:middle line:84% I was silent in those days, as I still am silent. 00:22:44.010 --> 00:22:47.190 align:middle line:84% And people spoke to me because I did not interrupt them. 00:22:47.190 --> 00:22:49.890 align:middle line:84% Mr. Pinkerton used to come by the laboratory in the mornings 00:22:49.890 --> 00:22:54.210 align:middle line:84% and watch me with my bottles, [AUDIO OUT] my kins, my scales, 00:22:54.210 --> 00:22:55.590 align:middle line:90% and he would talk. 00:22:55.590 --> 00:22:57.900 align:middle line:84% He did not require me to answer him. 00:22:57.900 --> 00:22:59.940 align:middle line:84% He assumed that my silence meant that I was 00:22:59.940 --> 00:23:02.220 align:middle line:90% absorbed in what he told me. 00:23:02.220 --> 00:23:04.680 align:middle line:84% He told me the same stories over and over, 00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:06.780 align:middle line:84% taking a delight in them, I suppose, 00:23:06.780 --> 00:23:09.090 align:middle line:84% because in the telling, he seemed to purge himself 00:23:09.090 --> 00:23:11.880 align:middle line:84% of some horror that merely thinking about them 00:23:11.880 --> 00:23:14.460 align:middle line:90% cause to grow inside him. 00:23:14.460 --> 00:23:17.550 align:middle line:84% I put the story together as from a mosaic of all his stories, 00:23:17.550 --> 00:23:20.070 align:middle line:84% and I offer it now as his monument. 00:23:20.070 --> 00:23:22.950 align:middle line:84% People in Bourbon County still execrate him. 00:23:22.950 --> 00:23:28.060 align:middle line:84% I sometimes execrate him myself, but he is worthy of a monument. 00:23:28.060 --> 00:23:30.240 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton served the Dixie Railroad 00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:33.360 align:middle line:84% as general manager for the Bourbonville car shops. 00:23:33.360 --> 00:23:35.820 align:middle line:84% 'One of the colonial officers, he told me, 00:23:35.820 --> 00:23:38.340 align:middle line:84% with affable bitterness, comparing himself 00:23:38.340 --> 00:23:42.660 align:middle line:84% to his superiors on the line, urbane men who strutted about, 00:23:42.660 --> 00:23:46.920 align:middle line:84% an unbearable self-satisfaction, dressed in black-vested suits 00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:50.190 align:middle line:84% with gold watch chains stretched across their prosperous 00:23:50.190 --> 00:23:53.190 align:middle line:84% bellies, men who rolled down from Washington 00:23:53.190 --> 00:23:56.520 align:middle line:84% and their palace cars to inspect his operation so they could 00:23:56.520 --> 00:23:59.220 align:middle line:84% write reports on creamy paper and fill 00:23:59.220 --> 00:24:00.960 align:middle line:84% those reports in copperplate hand 00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:03.180 align:middle line:84% with their own superiors, the moguls who 00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:06.210 align:middle line:84% ruled the empire of speed from their headquarters 00:24:06.210 --> 00:24:08.340 align:middle line:90% in Washington City. 00:24:08.340 --> 00:24:11.580 align:middle line:84% These inspectors had their magnificent mahogany-paneled 00:24:11.580 --> 00:24:15.000 align:middle line:84% railroad cars backed onto a siding within the grounds 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:16.260 align:middle line:90% of the car shops. 00:24:16.260 --> 00:24:18.540 align:middle line:84% They trooped down to the main office, 00:24:18.540 --> 00:24:20.460 align:middle line:84% the square-framed building painted 00:24:20.460 --> 00:24:22.980 align:middle line:84% bright yellow, and located in the great oval 00:24:22.980 --> 00:24:25.380 align:middle line:84% between the wheel foundry and the brass foundry. 00:24:25.380 --> 00:24:27.450 align:middle line:84% And they consulted the blue-lined ledgers 00:24:27.450 --> 00:24:29.700 align:middle line:84% with the officious care of sorcerers 00:24:29.700 --> 00:24:33.720 align:middle line:84% checking up on the enchantments practiced by their apprentices. 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:35.760 align:middle line:84% They received as their due the twittering 00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:38.040 align:middle line:84% deference paid them by their underlings, 00:24:38.040 --> 00:24:40.620 align:middle line:84% and they smiled with cold sunniness 00:24:40.620 --> 00:24:44.460 align:middle line:84% on Moreland Pinkerton, who was not one of their kind. 00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:47.370 align:middle line:84% They murmured to each other, taking no one else 00:24:47.370 --> 00:24:49.890 align:middle line:84% into their confidence, certainly not divulging 00:24:49.890 --> 00:24:52.380 align:middle line:84% their collective wisdom to Moreland Pinkerton. 00:24:52.380 --> 00:24:55.260 align:middle line:84% They marched in lockstep like a squad of Marines 00:24:55.260 --> 00:24:57.180 align:middle line:84% out into the shops to look at things. 00:24:57.180 --> 00:24:59.850 align:middle line:84% Here, amid the roar and the den of the foundry, watched 00:24:59.850 --> 00:25:02.610 align:middle line:84% by every eye, they drew conspicuously apart 00:25:02.610 --> 00:25:04.720 align:middle line:90% and consulted with one another. 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:06.960 align:middle line:84% Sometimes they drew black leather notebooks, 00:25:06.960 --> 00:25:09.720 align:middle line:84% expensively small and stamped in gold, 00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:11.400 align:middle line:84% from inside pockets of their coats, 00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:13.260 align:middle line:90% and they wrote things down. 00:25:13.260 --> 00:25:16.320 align:middle line:84% On occasion, they stood in a row to watch some process, 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:18.360 align:middle line:84% giving to uneasy workmen an impression 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:20.940 align:middle line:84% of buzzards lying on a fence and studying 00:25:20.940 --> 00:25:23.640 align:middle line:90% something appetizing dead. 00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:26.550 align:middle line:84% They marched through the steel foundry, the brass foundry, 00:25:26.550 --> 00:25:28.590 align:middle line:84% the pattern shop, the machine shop, 00:25:28.590 --> 00:25:30.450 align:middle line:84% and they stood savoring almost in spite 00:25:30.450 --> 00:25:33.570 align:middle line:84% of themselves the wood-sweet smell of the long shed 00:25:33.570 --> 00:25:35.760 align:middle line:84% where carpenters hammered boxcars together 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:37.740 align:middle line:90% from oak and pine. 00:25:37.740 --> 00:25:39.600 align:middle line:90% The carpenters were a caste. 00:25:39.600 --> 00:25:40.770 align:middle line:90% They look much alike-- 00:25:40.770 --> 00:25:43.470 align:middle line:84% long, narrow faces, high cheekbones, 00:25:43.470 --> 00:25:47.310 align:middle line:84% big hands, sharp eyes, almost invariably blue. 00:25:47.310 --> 00:25:50.160 align:middle line:84% They were quietly diffident because they felt superior 00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:52.110 align:middle line:84% to other men and could afford to be 00:25:52.110 --> 00:25:54.990 align:middle line:84% unassuming in the presence of their inferiors. 00:25:54.990 --> 00:25:59.220 align:middle line:84% They smelled of tobacco, and sweat, and clean wood dust. 00:25:59.220 --> 00:26:00.900 align:middle line:84% Some of them had [INAUDIBLE] the foundry 00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:03.310 align:middle line:84% rose out of what had been a swamp. 00:26:03.310 --> 00:26:05.780 align:middle line:84% A very young Moreland Pinkerton had cooked 00:26:05.780 --> 00:26:08.180 align:middle line:84% took them out of the country, out 00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:10.490 align:middle line:84% of doing first one job and then another, 00:26:10.490 --> 00:26:12.080 align:middle line:90% out of penurious independence. 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:14.690 align:middle line:84% And he put them to work for dependable cash money, 00:26:14.690 --> 00:26:16.640 align:middle line:84% paid every other Saturday morning 00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:20.630 align:middle line:84% in small, sealed brown envelopes, stamped with a DR, 00:26:20.630 --> 00:26:22.730 align:middle line:90% the Dixie Railroad itself. 00:26:22.730 --> 00:26:25.310 align:middle line:84% Look at them, he said sometimes to me 00:26:25.310 --> 00:26:27.050 align:middle line:84% when they lined up at the pay windows. 00:26:27.050 --> 00:26:28.220 align:middle line:90% They're mine. 00:26:28.220 --> 00:26:30.920 align:middle line:84% If it wasn't for me, they'd be dirt. 00:26:30.920 --> 00:26:34.760 align:middle line:84% They'd have themselves a dime every other week. 00:26:34.760 --> 00:26:37.880 align:middle line:84% He believed that he had brought progress to the county, 00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:41.150 align:middle line:84% and the people did not appreciate what he had done. 00:26:41.150 --> 00:26:44.540 align:middle line:84% And I'm dead, they'll understand, he said grimly. 00:26:44.540 --> 00:26:48.140 align:middle line:84% Nobody appreciated Abe Lincoln until that actor son of a bitch 00:26:48.140 --> 00:26:49.730 align:middle line:90% shot him. 00:26:49.730 --> 00:26:52.550 align:middle line:84% A confident man who came down on their mysterious inspector-- 00:26:52.550 --> 00:26:54.500 align:middle line:84% inspection tours believe themselves 00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:58.310 align:middle line:84% to be superior beings, required, like medieval lords, 00:26:58.310 --> 00:27:01.028 align:middle line:84% to make a grand show among the peasants. 00:27:01.028 --> 00:27:02.570 align:middle line:84% They were condescending in the belief 00:27:02.570 --> 00:27:04.760 align:middle line:84% that [INAUDIBLE] was so clearly recognized 00:27:04.760 --> 00:27:07.340 align:middle line:84% that their visits would be received as a great benefit 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:11.090 align:middle line:84% to be spoken out reverently around humble supper tables. 00:27:11.090 --> 00:27:12.890 align:middle line:84% They spoke with too much admiration 00:27:12.890 --> 00:27:15.650 align:middle line:84% to the carpenters who held them in silent contempt 00:27:15.650 --> 00:27:18.290 align:middle line:84% because these nobles had soft hands. 00:27:18.290 --> 00:27:19.940 align:middle line:84% On Broadway, in Bourbonville, when 00:27:19.940 --> 00:27:22.580 align:middle line:84% they walked through the square to exercise their legs, 00:27:22.580 --> 00:27:25.670 align:middle line:84% they tipped their hats to the ladies. 00:27:25.670 --> 00:27:27.770 align:middle line:84% They admired with a little too much zest 00:27:27.770 --> 00:27:31.550 align:middle line:84% the beautiful rural surroundings of salubrious Bourbonville. 00:27:31.550 --> 00:27:34.280 align:middle line:84% They spoke too warmly of the healthful air 00:27:34.280 --> 00:27:35.480 align:middle line:90% of a country town. 00:27:35.480 --> 00:27:36.890 align:middle line:84% With a little too much sentiment, 00:27:36.890 --> 00:27:39.380 align:middle line:84% they praised the neighborliness and serenity 00:27:39.380 --> 00:27:41.330 align:middle line:90% of this beautiful place. 00:27:41.330 --> 00:27:44.210 align:middle line:84% Among themselves, they laughed loudly, boon companions who 00:27:44.210 --> 00:27:46.490 align:middle line:90% had long shared private jokes. 00:27:46.490 --> 00:27:49.610 align:middle line:84% They smoked strong cigars in the night in their gleaming palace 00:27:49.610 --> 00:27:52.490 align:middle line:84% cars, attended by silent Negro porter. 00:27:52.490 --> 00:27:55.250 align:middle line:84% In stiff-starched white, they drank bonded whiskey 00:27:55.250 --> 00:27:58.010 align:middle line:84% and ignored prohibition in Tennessee. 00:27:58.010 --> 00:28:00.560 align:middle line:84% They invited Moreland Pinkerton to these evenings, 00:28:00.560 --> 00:28:02.750 align:middle line:84% and he came with a face prepared to marvel, 00:28:02.750 --> 00:28:05.420 align:middle line:84% a soul prepared to admire and laugh at their jokes, 00:28:05.420 --> 00:28:09.500 align:middle line:84% flatter them for anything they said or did. 00:28:09.500 --> 00:28:12.890 align:middle line:84% Once they invited me, but I was bad company, 00:28:12.890 --> 00:28:15.380 align:middle line:90% and they did not ask me again. 00:28:15.380 --> 00:28:18.290 align:middle line:84% They took off their coats and flung them carelessly 00:28:18.290 --> 00:28:20.660 align:middle line:90% on fancy oak coat trees. 00:28:20.660 --> 00:28:23.180 align:middle line:90% They exposed their suspenders. 00:28:23.180 --> 00:28:26.180 align:middle line:84% They pulled the heavy velvet drapes, green and white 00:28:26.180 --> 00:28:28.790 align:middle line:84% for the colors of the railroad, and they played poker 00:28:28.790 --> 00:28:31.880 align:middle line:84% into far into the night at a quarter an ante. 00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:34.730 align:middle line:84% I'll call that bet and raise you two bits. 00:28:34.730 --> 00:28:37.370 align:middle line:84% I remember the words spoken around fat cigars 00:28:37.370 --> 00:28:40.220 align:middle line:90% in a kind of choking jocularity. 00:28:40.220 --> 00:28:42.080 align:middle line:84% They treated Moreland Pinkerton just the way 00:28:42.080 --> 00:28:43.220 align:middle line:90% they treated Bourbonville. 00:28:43.220 --> 00:28:45.500 align:middle line:84% They made a little too much of him. 00:28:45.500 --> 00:28:48.320 align:middle line:84% They praised him for qualities he did not have. 00:28:48.320 --> 00:28:50.330 align:middle line:84% They flattered him for the military precision 00:28:50.330 --> 00:28:52.490 align:middle line:90% with which he ran the foundry. 00:28:52.490 --> 00:28:56.390 align:middle line:84% And always, they left him there in Bourbonville, a remote 00:28:56.390 --> 00:29:00.470 align:middle line:84% and desolate little town that he had created and now despised. 00:29:00.470 --> 00:29:03.440 align:middle line:84% And when the train pulled off for the palace car at the back, 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:05.510 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton stood waving at them 00:29:05.510 --> 00:29:07.740 align:middle line:84% until the red light on the rear platform 00:29:07.740 --> 00:29:10.700 align:middle line:84% had disappeared around the bend by the brick cotton mill. 00:29:10.700 --> 00:29:13.280 align:middle line:84% And he hated them with a passion that, had it been fire, 00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:15.890 align:middle line:84% would have incinerated their bones. 00:29:15.890 --> 00:29:17.990 align:middle line:84% I stood by him on the side of the railroad 00:29:17.990 --> 00:29:20.540 align:middle line:84% sometimes as their train pulled away. 00:29:20.540 --> 00:29:22.310 align:middle line:84% And I saw an expression on his face 00:29:22.310 --> 00:29:24.470 align:middle line:84% that would have been fitting for a damned soul 00:29:24.470 --> 00:29:27.570 align:middle line:90% in the torments of hell. 00:29:27.570 --> 00:29:31.160 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton had built the car shops. 00:29:31.160 --> 00:29:35.750 align:middle line:84% 'If it hadn't been for me, this place would still be a swamp, 00:29:35.750 --> 00:29:38.570 align:middle line:84% and Bourbonville would still be a village snoring 00:29:38.570 --> 00:29:41.360 align:middle line:90% in the sun,' he told me. 00:29:41.360 --> 00:29:43.550 align:middle line:90% I suppose he was right. 00:29:43.550 --> 00:29:46.190 align:middle line:84% He had been young and strong then, 00:29:46.190 --> 00:29:48.860 align:middle line:84% so handsome he was almost beautiful. 00:29:48.860 --> 00:29:51.350 align:middle line:84% When he was only 17 in Virginia, one of his teachers 00:29:51.350 --> 00:29:53.900 align:middle line:84% told him in a rush of pure feeling, Moreland, 00:29:53.900 --> 00:29:56.300 align:middle line:90% I hope I live to see you famous. 00:29:56.300 --> 00:29:59.270 align:middle line:84% I want the world to know I was your teacher. 00:29:59.270 --> 00:30:01.730 align:middle line:84% He looked like a man born to be famous. 00:30:01.730 --> 00:30:04.160 align:middle line:84% He had a rugged square face that made 00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:05.840 align:middle line:84% even married women turn discreetly 00:30:05.840 --> 00:30:07.890 align:middle line:84% to look after him in the streets. 00:30:07.890 --> 00:30:10.430 align:middle line:84% He was so handsome that people always assumed 00:30:10.430 --> 00:30:12.380 align:middle line:90% that he was thinking thoughts. 00:30:12.380 --> 00:30:14.030 align:middle line:84% He could look across his desk at you 00:30:14.030 --> 00:30:17.180 align:middle line:84% without saying a word for such a long time 00:30:17.180 --> 00:30:20.270 align:middle line:84% you knew he was scouring your soul. 00:30:20.270 --> 00:30:23.330 align:middle line:84% And I believe his most profound thought, one 00:30:23.330 --> 00:30:25.880 align:middle line:84% that stayed with him until his violent death, 00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:27.500 align:middle line:84% was his conviction that he was more 00:30:27.500 --> 00:30:29.900 align:middle line:90% able than anyone else he knew. 00:30:29.900 --> 00:30:32.540 align:middle line:84% He expected success and fame in the certainty 00:30:32.540 --> 00:30:35.990 align:middle line:84% that some people expect heaven and eternal bliss. 00:30:35.990 --> 00:30:38.930 align:middle line:84% He watched the trains rolling by when he was a child, 00:30:38.930 --> 00:30:40.430 align:middle line:84% and he went to work for the railroad 00:30:40.430 --> 00:30:41.720 align:middle line:90% because he loved the trains. 00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:45.290 align:middle line:84% They went places, where there was more life than he had. 00:30:45.290 --> 00:30:47.390 align:middle line:84% And he supposed that if he had the right ticket, 00:30:47.390 --> 00:30:50.600 align:middle line:84% he could go to those places and drink up the life they offered, 00:30:50.600 --> 00:30:54.860 align:middle line:84% drink all of it, until his terrible thirst was quenched. 00:30:54.860 --> 00:30:56.390 align:middle line:90% He did well. 00:30:56.390 --> 00:30:58.340 align:middle line:84% And he came down on orders to Bourbonville 00:30:58.340 --> 00:31:01.580 align:middle line:84% when he was only 25 years old and found a swamp southeast 00:31:01.580 --> 00:31:04.730 align:middle line:84% of town, a swamp that had been acquired 00:31:04.730 --> 00:31:08.080 align:middle line:84% by modest and secret peculations of the railroad, 00:31:08.080 --> 00:31:10.330 align:middle line:90% the ever-thrifty railroad. 00:31:10.330 --> 00:31:14.170 align:middle line:84% He bought this land through the agency of a hired [AUDIO OUT] 00:31:14.170 --> 00:31:20.260 align:middle line:84% traveling evangelist named Sims, a man still remembered by some. 00:31:20.260 --> 00:31:25.090 align:middle line:84% Sims was skinny and pulsating, and he had a big voice. 00:31:25.090 --> 00:31:27.280 align:middle line:84% He told people he wanted to buy the swamp 00:31:27.280 --> 00:31:28.935 align:middle line:90% to prove the power of God. 00:31:28.935 --> 00:31:31.960 align:middle line:84% And when he prayed, God would drive the water out 00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:35.050 align:middle line:84% of the swamp, as he had parted the Red Sea to show 00:31:35.050 --> 00:31:37.720 align:middle line:90% his mind to Israel and Egypt. 00:31:37.720 --> 00:31:39.460 align:middle line:84% And when God had cleared the swamp, 00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:42.610 align:middle line:84% Sims vowed that he would build a tabernacle there. 00:31:42.610 --> 00:31:46.540 align:middle line:84% And he promised to bring Pentecostal holiness down 00:31:46.540 --> 00:31:49.990 align:middle line:84% and have all Bourbon County speaking in tongues. 00:31:49.990 --> 00:31:52.240 align:middle line:84% And he promised to heal the sick by the laying 00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:55.030 align:middle line:84% on of hands, and to open the eyes of the blind 00:31:55.030 --> 00:31:57.730 align:middle line:84% by spitting on them, and to make the lame walk 00:31:57.730 --> 00:32:00.460 align:middle line:90% by praising the Lord. 00:32:00.460 --> 00:32:04.060 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton told me the story, and he laughed heartily 00:32:04.060 --> 00:32:04.690 align:middle line:90% in the telling. 00:32:04.690 --> 00:32:07.090 align:middle line:84% People in Bourbon County who own parts of the swamp 00:32:07.090 --> 00:32:08.860 align:middle line:90% thought Sims was crazy. 00:32:08.860 --> 00:32:12.820 align:middle line:84% And they sold him title to all of it for $5 an acre. 00:32:12.820 --> 00:32:15.970 align:middle line:84% And that's known as a railroad won that swamp. 00:32:15.970 --> 00:32:18.910 align:middle line:84% They had to charge [AUDIO OUT] acre, Pinkerton said. 00:32:18.910 --> 00:32:21.850 align:middle line:84% They believe and the railroad, but they 00:32:21.850 --> 00:32:27.400 align:middle line:84% sold it to God for $5 an acre, the poor dumb bastards. 00:32:27.400 --> 00:32:30.580 align:middle line:90% They don't believe in God. 00:32:30.580 --> 00:32:32.860 align:middle line:90% They did sell the land. 00:32:32.860 --> 00:32:36.490 align:middle line:90% Sims had a cocaine habit. 00:32:36.490 --> 00:32:38.530 align:middle line:84% He did what the railroad paid him 00:32:38.530 --> 00:32:42.190 align:middle line:84% to do-- turned over the title, and got the $5 for every acre 00:32:42.190 --> 00:32:45.250 align:middle line:84% he bought, and hit the high road sniffing cocaine 00:32:45.250 --> 00:32:47.830 align:middle line:84% before preaching hellfire and damnation 00:32:47.830 --> 00:32:50.320 align:middle line:84% sermons in tattered canvas tents, where 00:32:50.320 --> 00:32:53.440 align:middle line:84% he pounded on the Bible and yowled over the book 00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:57.340 align:middle line:84% under the instant inspiration of the inspirited power. 00:32:57.340 --> 00:33:00.010 align:middle line:84% Some people in Bourbon County claim 00:33:00.010 --> 00:33:02.830 align:middle line:84% the man suffered the pangs of conscience. 00:33:02.830 --> 00:33:06.460 align:middle line:84% Over the way, he had led the railroad use him. 00:33:06.460 --> 00:33:08.320 align:middle line:84% Perhaps that was only the wishful thinking 00:33:08.320 --> 00:33:11.380 align:middle line:84% of those who, feeling themselves cheated, when they had meant 00:33:11.380 --> 00:33:15.220 align:middle line:84% to cheat instead, believed that Sims deserved to suffer 00:33:15.220 --> 00:33:18.350 align:middle line:90% for his part in deluding them. 00:33:18.350 --> 00:33:20.530 align:middle line:84% However, that may have been, he decided 00:33:20.530 --> 00:33:23.890 align:middle line:84% to prove his faith to an assembly of doubters. 00:33:23.890 --> 00:33:28.210 align:middle line:84% By faith, you can move mountains, according to Jesus. 00:33:28.210 --> 00:33:31.570 align:middle line:84% And a train was not nearly so big as a mountain. 00:33:31.570 --> 00:33:36.550 align:middle line:84% So the Reverend Mr. Sims decided to stop a speeding train 00:33:36.550 --> 00:33:38.920 align:middle line:90% with his bare hands. 00:33:38.920 --> 00:33:41.620 align:middle line:84% He believed that if only he committed himself 00:33:41.620 --> 00:33:45.130 align:middle line:84% to the tracks, God would vindicate him by giving him 00:33:45.130 --> 00:33:48.790 align:middle line:90% the miraculous power of Samson. 00:33:48.790 --> 00:33:51.550 align:middle line:90% But God nodded. 00:33:51.550 --> 00:33:54.340 align:middle line:84% And the followers of the Reverend Mr. Sims, as well as 00:33:54.340 --> 00:33:57.370 align:middle line:84% assorted curious and mocking onlookers who 00:33:57.370 --> 00:33:59.770 align:middle line:84% had gathered at a grade crossing in the countryside 00:33:59.770 --> 00:34:04.480 align:middle line:84% north of Knoxville, were treated to a daunting and utterly 00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:07.540 align:middle line:84% silencing demonstration of the authority of the material 00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:09.909 align:middle line:90% world over the spiritual. 00:34:09.909 --> 00:34:12.790 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton kept the clippings from the Knoxville newspapers 00:34:12.790 --> 00:34:14.620 align:middle line:90% that reported the event. 00:34:14.620 --> 00:34:18.639 align:middle line:84% Getting Sims to buy the swamp had been Pinkerton's idea. 00:34:18.639 --> 00:34:20.469 align:middle line:90% I know people, he told me. 00:34:20.469 --> 00:34:22.690 align:middle line:90% I sized Sims up in a minute. 00:34:22.690 --> 00:34:26.800 align:middle line:84% I sized this town up as soon as I saw the goddamn little shit 00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:28.600 align:middle line:90% hole. 00:34:28.600 --> 00:34:30.639 align:middle line:84% By the time Sims died, Pinkerton had 00:34:30.639 --> 00:34:34.420 align:middle line:84% been in Bourbonville six months building his own Tabernacle, 00:34:34.420 --> 00:34:38.530 align:middle line:84% the foundry, and car shops, the outpost of the Dixie Railroad 00:34:38.530 --> 00:34:41.260 align:middle line:90% in this remote place. 00:34:41.260 --> 00:34:45.159 align:middle line:84% As I write, I hear the eerie rise and fall of a wildcat 00:34:45.159 --> 00:34:47.770 align:middle line:84% freight whistle and the rumble of a train headed 00:34:47.770 --> 00:34:51.070 align:middle line:84% toward Chattanooga on the line 4 miles across the woods 00:34:51.070 --> 00:34:53.170 align:middle line:90% and fields of Martel. 00:34:53.170 --> 00:34:54.909 align:middle line:84% It is a ghostly sound, and I never 00:34:54.909 --> 00:34:57.847 align:middle line:84% hear a train passing without thinking, however fleetingly, 00:34:57.847 --> 00:34:59.680 align:middle line:84% of the train that took us to the [INAUDIBLE] 00:34:59.680 --> 00:35:03.460 align:middle line:84% almost 30 years ago, in early August, 1914. 00:35:03.460 --> 00:35:06.220 align:middle line:84% Well, Pinkerton came here and plunged out 00:35:06.220 --> 00:35:09.660 align:middle line:84% into the somnolent countryside to find men. 00:35:09.660 --> 00:35:11.670 align:middle line:84% He located men who had never worked 00:35:11.670 --> 00:35:14.020 align:middle line:90% for wages in their lives. 00:35:14.020 --> 00:35:16.740 align:middle line:84% He paid them $2 a day to break their backs 00:35:16.740 --> 00:35:20.100 align:middle line:84% with spades and shovels, with mule-powered dredges, 00:35:20.100 --> 00:35:23.460 align:middle line:84% with wheelbarrows, with axes, with logging chains. 00:35:23.460 --> 00:35:26.670 align:middle line:84% Men in Bourbon County had never [AUDIO OUT] such wages. 00:35:26.670 --> 00:35:29.580 align:middle line:84% Still, he could not drag enough of them away from plows, 00:35:29.580 --> 00:35:31.440 align:middle line:84% and barns, from the familiar realm 00:35:31.440 --> 00:35:33.750 align:middle line:90% of the land and its liturgies. 00:35:33.750 --> 00:35:37.410 align:middle line:84% He raged in frustration at the obstinacy of those who 00:35:37.410 --> 00:35:39.840 align:middle line:90% refused to heed his summons. 00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:41.700 align:middle line:84% And he looked south to Sweetwater 00:35:41.700 --> 00:35:45.060 align:middle line:84% in its broad, rich valley 18 miles away, 00:35:45.060 --> 00:35:49.210 align:middle line:84% and he found Black people left over from slavery and enduring 00:35:49.210 --> 00:35:53.280 align:middle line:84% life with patient dread, living in tiny clapboard shacks 00:35:53.280 --> 00:35:56.310 align:middle line:84% and toiling on land they had no thought of owning. 00:35:56.310 --> 00:35:59.550 align:middle line:84% He went down there and cajoled them and made promises, 00:35:59.550 --> 00:36:03.660 align:middle line:84% and he brought back to boxcars of healthy, strong Black men, 00:36:03.660 --> 00:36:06.300 align:middle line:84% picking them out of the herd, like a man buying cattle 00:36:06.300 --> 00:36:07.680 align:middle line:90% at auction. 00:36:07.680 --> 00:36:11.730 align:middle line:84% He paid them $1 a day, and they cheerfully bent their backs 00:36:11.730 --> 00:36:13.350 align:middle line:90% alongside the whites. 00:36:13.350 --> 00:36:15.720 align:middle line:84% And when the mud covered them all, as it swiftly did, 00:36:15.720 --> 00:36:18.720 align:middle line:84% God himself would have had a hard time 00:36:18.720 --> 00:36:21.930 align:middle line:84% telling the difference between those descended untainted 00:36:21.930 --> 00:36:26.370 align:middle line:84% from Noah and those afflicted with the curse of Ham. 00:36:26.370 --> 00:36:30.450 align:middle line:84% Darcy Coolidge was spoke up for Mr. Pinkerton. 00:36:30.450 --> 00:36:32.970 align:middle line:84% Part of the reason, I'm sure, was that men from the foundry 00:36:32.970 --> 00:36:36.330 align:middle line:84% stayed in her boarding house and gave her a living. 00:36:36.330 --> 00:36:39.330 align:middle line:84% But part of her talk was pure admiration. 00:36:39.330 --> 00:36:42.360 align:middle line:84% I suspected that she was more than half in love with him, 00:36:42.360 --> 00:36:45.000 align:middle line:84% but even she had her doubts about bringing Black people 00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:47.910 align:middle line:84% to Bourbonville. 'That put the curse on him,' she said. 00:36:47.910 --> 00:36:50.730 align:middle line:84% God didn't intend for the races to mix, 00:36:50.730 --> 00:36:53.370 align:middle line:90% and Mr. Pinkerton mixed them. 00:36:53.370 --> 00:36:55.830 align:middle line:84% At the time, Pinkerton was a phenomenon. 00:36:55.830 --> 00:36:58.290 align:middle line:84% And old Bourbonville stretched out for decades, 00:36:58.290 --> 00:37:01.170 align:middle line:84% asleep in the sunny torpor of its riverbank 00:37:01.170 --> 00:37:03.690 align:middle line:84% and its enormous forests and the scattered, 00:37:03.690 --> 00:37:08.670 align:middle line:84% ragged, fields stirred awake, and looked disgruntled, 00:37:08.670 --> 00:37:12.210 align:middle line:84% as the old are when they are awakened from a good sleep. 00:37:12.210 --> 00:37:15.900 align:middle line:84% And the town started up then, amazed and blinking. 00:37:15.900 --> 00:37:18.390 align:middle line:84% There they were-- white men, and Black men, 00:37:18.390 --> 00:37:21.420 align:middle line:84% and young Moreland Pinkerton, some kind of amazing 00:37:21.420 --> 00:37:25.530 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] quid, working harder than any of them, tireless, 00:37:25.530 --> 00:37:27.840 align:middle line:84% laughing, hollering, clapping them, 00:37:27.840 --> 00:37:30.990 align:middle line:84% white and black on the backs, cracking obscene [AUDIO OUT],, 00:37:30.990 --> 00:37:34.290 align:middle line:84% howling at the jokes of others, bringing out the clear strong 00:37:34.290 --> 00:37:35.970 align:middle line:84% whiskey at just the right moment, 00:37:35.970 --> 00:37:39.570 align:middle line:84% wiping his flat dirty hand over the spout of the jug, 00:37:39.570 --> 00:37:42.390 align:middle line:84% taking the first deep fiery swill and passing it 00:37:42.390 --> 00:37:46.290 align:middle line:84% on, mingling his spit with theirs when the jug came back, 00:37:46.290 --> 00:37:48.930 align:middle line:84% jumping here, jumping there, pointing, beckoning, 00:37:48.930 --> 00:37:51.810 align:middle line:84% commanding, mud in his thick blond hair, 00:37:51.810 --> 00:37:56.040 align:middle line:84% cake on his eager face, cursing, pulling, singing, cheering, 00:37:56.040 --> 00:37:59.670 align:middle line:84% omnipresent, and omnipotent as God. 00:37:59.670 --> 00:38:02.790 align:middle line:90% They dug ditches 5 feet deep. 00:38:02.790 --> 00:38:05.820 align:middle line:84% White men and Black men worked with long-handled spades 00:38:05.820 --> 00:38:09.240 align:middle line:84% and water up to their waist, and they hacked the ditches, 00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:11.070 align:middle line:84% criss-crossing s through the swamp, 00:38:11.070 --> 00:38:14.460 align:middle line:84% sometimes uncovering a terrified cottonmouth snake 00:38:14.460 --> 00:38:17.250 align:middle line:84% that streaked through the water, fleeing for its life, the men 00:38:17.250 --> 00:38:20.100 align:middle line:84% roaring in pursued and triumph, joyfully 00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:23.340 align:middle line:84% slashing the long blackboned and accursed thing in two, 00:38:23.340 --> 00:38:26.130 align:middle line:84% or three, or four, to the glory of God. 00:38:26.130 --> 00:38:28.800 align:middle line:84% And then they returned to their exuberant digging, 00:38:28.800 --> 00:38:32.190 align:middle line:84% advancing their deep ditches relentlessly to the riverbank, 00:38:32.190 --> 00:38:34.590 align:middle line:84% until, at last, the [AUDIO OUT] gushed down 00:38:34.590 --> 00:38:35.850 align:middle line:90% into the brown river. 00:38:35.850 --> 00:38:38.550 align:middle line:84% And the river swirled it away, and land 00:38:38.550 --> 00:38:41.220 align:middle line:84% that had been a swamp for 1,000 years 00:38:41.220 --> 00:38:44.130 align:middle line:90% dried slowly in the summer sun. 00:38:44.130 --> 00:38:46.830 align:middle line:84% They chopped down the oaks, and the pines, the hickory trees, 00:38:46.830 --> 00:38:49.710 align:middle line:84% the black gums, and the chestnuts, and the cypresses, 00:38:49.710 --> 00:38:51.420 align:middle line:84% pushing out of places where the water had 00:38:51.420 --> 00:38:52.860 align:middle line:90% stood above the ground. 00:38:52.860 --> 00:38:56.580 align:middle line:84% And they piled the felled wood and enormous heaps three times 00:38:56.580 --> 00:38:58.530 align:middle line:90% the size of a mansion. 00:38:58.530 --> 00:39:02.580 align:middle line:84% And they had burnings, great celebratory burnings 00:39:02.580 --> 00:39:05.700 align:middle line:84% in the night, moved by some primitive thing that 00:39:05.700 --> 00:39:07.920 align:middle line:84% stole on them as they toiled to destroy 00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:11.010 align:middle line:84% the primitive bog, some awful piety, 00:39:11.010 --> 00:39:13.800 align:middle line:84% akin to the powers of darkness, the kinship 00:39:13.800 --> 00:39:15.690 align:middle line:84% to the underworld stirred out of them 00:39:15.690 --> 00:39:18.210 align:middle line:90% by those flames in the night. 00:39:18.210 --> 00:39:24.090 align:middle line:84% You could see the glow of those fires from 10 miles away, 00:39:24.090 --> 00:39:26.280 align:middle line:90% Darcy Coolidge told me. 00:39:26.280 --> 00:39:28.680 align:middle line:84% There were people who said Mr. Pinkerton built 00:39:28.680 --> 00:39:32.850 align:middle line:84% those fires at night because he had sold his soul to the devil. 00:39:32.850 --> 00:39:35.070 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton roared with laughter what he took 00:39:35.070 --> 00:39:36.780 align:middle line:90% to be a diabolical compliment. 00:39:36.780 --> 00:39:39.600 align:middle line:84% So filthy man, sweat soaked, and weary, 00:39:39.600 --> 00:39:42.180 align:middle line:84% looking in their mud like their original fathers 00:39:42.180 --> 00:39:44.310 align:middle line:84% scooped out from the clay of Eden, 00:39:44.310 --> 00:39:47.310 align:middle line:84% stood around the great pyres and looked on the burning 00:39:47.310 --> 00:39:50.790 align:middle line:84% with a voracious delight of vandals burning a city. 00:39:50.790 --> 00:39:54.990 align:middle line:84% There was a demon leaping in the fire, dancing to strange music, 00:39:54.990 --> 00:39:57.420 align:middle line:84% and they could see the dance, though their eyes could not 00:39:57.420 --> 00:39:59.340 align:middle line:90% quite make out the demon. 00:39:59.340 --> 00:40:01.230 align:middle line:84% And the dance cast a spell on them 00:40:01.230 --> 00:40:03.870 align:middle line:84% and made them forget what they had been 00:40:03.870 --> 00:40:06.990 align:middle line:84% and remember things they did not know they knew. 00:40:06.990 --> 00:40:10.770 align:middle line:84% The Blacks danced with the fire, moving faster and faster 00:40:10.770 --> 00:40:14.130 align:middle line:84% and stamping rhythms of Africa, clapping their hands together 00:40:14.130 --> 00:40:16.500 align:middle line:84% in a slow, steady crash of power, 00:40:16.500 --> 00:40:20.220 align:middle line:84% making hypnotic reverberations over the swift motions 00:40:20.220 --> 00:40:21.990 align:middle line:90% of their dancing feet. 00:40:21.990 --> 00:40:24.690 align:middle line:84% And the white men slowly began, one by one, 00:40:24.690 --> 00:40:26.020 align:middle line:90% to dance after them. 00:40:26.020 --> 00:40:28.260 align:middle line:84% And the whiskey jugs passed from hand to hand, 00:40:28.260 --> 00:40:30.270 align:middle line:84% while the great dance went on and on. 00:40:30.270 --> 00:40:32.700 align:middle line:84% And they howled at the night, howled 00:40:32.700 --> 00:40:36.570 align:middle line:84% with the release of some terrible and glorious thing. 00:40:36.570 --> 00:40:40.740 align:middle line:84% Bourbonville lie quite awake now, forever from its slumber. 00:40:40.740 --> 00:40:43.620 align:middle line:84% And from miles around, men came in bare feet 00:40:43.620 --> 00:40:45.960 align:middle line:84% to the windows of bedrooms and stood 00:40:45.960 --> 00:40:48.450 align:middle line:84% sniffing at the smoke from the great fires. 00:40:48.450 --> 00:40:51.240 align:middle line:84% And they saw the red burning against the night 00:40:51.240 --> 00:40:53.970 align:middle line:84% and saw the endless fountains of sparks rushing up 00:40:53.970 --> 00:40:56.640 align:middle line:90% to die against the cold stars. 00:40:56.640 --> 00:41:01.110 align:middle line:84% And they saw the arrival of progress in their land. 00:41:01.110 --> 00:41:03.510 align:middle line:84% And in the faint, wild cries of shouting 00:41:03.510 --> 00:41:07.650 align:middle line:84% men carried on the night air and made inhuman by distance, 00:41:07.650 --> 00:41:11.070 align:middle line:84% they heard also something remote and savage from an age 00:41:11.070 --> 00:41:15.710 align:middle line:90% before progress began 00:41:15.710 --> 00:41:18.020 align:middle line:84% I was writing of how the foundry was built 00:41:18.020 --> 00:41:20.780 align:middle line:84% and of Moreland Pinkerton's great work. 00:41:20.780 --> 00:41:23.840 align:middle line:84% The buildings went up as the summer swelled and burst 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:26.240 align:middle line:84% and declined into a brisk autumn. 00:41:26.240 --> 00:41:29.450 align:middle line:84% It was 1890, and Moreland Pinkerton was everywhere, 00:41:29.450 --> 00:41:31.580 align:middle line:84% seeing if lines were plum, and Cornish square, 00:41:31.580 --> 00:41:33.290 align:middle line:90% and concrete firm. 00:41:33.290 --> 00:41:35.420 align:middle line:90% He inspected beams and rivets. 00:41:35.420 --> 00:41:37.700 align:middle line:84% He peered at levels and perused blueprints. 00:41:37.700 --> 00:41:40.370 align:middle line:84% And sometimes, out of simple exuberant delight, 00:41:40.370 --> 00:41:42.950 align:middle line:84% he plucked the hammer out of a hand [INAUDIBLE] speechless 00:41:42.950 --> 00:41:45.477 align:middle line:84% carpenter and drove a nail expertly home, 00:41:45.477 --> 00:41:47.060 align:middle line:84% and handed the hammer back, and strode 00:41:47.060 --> 00:41:50.090 align:middle line:84% on grinning, swaggering, his proud head cocked back, 00:41:50.090 --> 00:41:52.550 align:middle line:84% like the hammer of a revolver ready to fire, 00:41:52.550 --> 00:41:55.370 align:middle line:84% leaving the carpenter slowly smiling and looking after him 00:41:55.370 --> 00:41:57.260 align:middle line:84% and thinking that Moreland Pinkerton was 00:41:57.260 --> 00:41:59.600 align:middle line:90% a star fallen to Earth. 00:41:59.600 --> 00:42:03.230 align:middle line:84% 'We loved him,' Mr. Manfred told me years later, 00:42:03.230 --> 00:42:06.710 align:middle line:84% as the big tears came into an old man's eyes. 00:42:06.710 --> 00:42:08.270 align:middle line:90% That's the fact of it. 00:42:08.270 --> 00:42:11.450 align:middle line:84% We loved the goddamn mean son of a bitch. 00:42:11.450 --> 00:42:14.090 align:middle line:84% And the Blacks, the color, the Negroes, the niggers, 00:42:14.090 --> 00:42:17.210 align:middle line:84% whatever they should be called, at first, they camped in tents 00:42:17.210 --> 00:42:21.410 align:middle line:84% on the low hill South of town, squatted on eroded, red land, 00:42:21.410 --> 00:42:23.930 align:middle line:84% overgrown with brambles and piney woods, 00:42:23.930 --> 00:42:25.640 align:middle line:84% land that the Reverend Mr. Sims had 00:42:25.640 --> 00:42:28.200 align:middle line:84% bought for the railroad exceeding his commission, 00:42:28.200 --> 00:42:30.500 align:middle line:84% the railroad not carrying, and Sims making 00:42:30.500 --> 00:42:34.070 align:middle line:84% $5 more an acre for every morsel of worthless real estate he 00:42:34.070 --> 00:42:35.323 align:middle line:90% could buy. 00:42:35.323 --> 00:42:37.490 align:middle line:84% The Blacks brought up their women and their children 00:42:37.490 --> 00:42:39.680 align:middle line:84% from Sweetwater, and they sat at night 00:42:39.680 --> 00:42:41.990 align:middle line:84% in the steaming dark of summer in Eastern Tennessee, 00:42:41.990 --> 00:42:43.880 align:middle line:84% and they smoked their pipes, and they 00:42:43.880 --> 00:42:45.950 align:middle line:84% talked in their [AUDIO OUT] and offensive way, 00:42:45.950 --> 00:42:48.230 align:middle line:84% as if they feared to have careless speech 00:42:48.230 --> 00:42:51.770 align:middle line:84% drift into the white man's town where it could cause trouble. 00:42:51.770 --> 00:42:54.260 align:middle line:84% Sometimes Moreland Pinkerton came walking up among them 00:42:54.260 --> 00:42:56.120 align:middle line:90% like some spirit of the dark. 00:42:56.120 --> 00:42:57.620 align:middle line:84% He squatted by them on the ground 00:42:57.620 --> 00:42:59.360 align:middle line:84% or else sat on one of the rough benches 00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:01.790 align:middle line:84% they had hammered together from scrap. 00:43:01.790 --> 00:43:04.340 align:middle line:84% He leaned back, and smoked cigars, and told stories, 00:43:04.340 --> 00:43:06.560 align:middle line:84% and he listened to their tales, and they laughed. 00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:08.630 align:middle line:90% They all laughed. 00:43:08.630 --> 00:43:11.120 align:middle line:84% He looked down on their children when they had fever, 00:43:11.120 --> 00:43:14.030 align:middle line:84% and he complimented their women on flowery dresses sewn up 00:43:14.030 --> 00:43:16.130 align:middle line:90% from [INAUDIBLE] feed sacks. 00:43:16.130 --> 00:43:18.590 align:middle line:84% The women bent their heads, and looked at the ground, 00:43:18.590 --> 00:43:20.270 align:middle line:90% and giggled with pleasure. 00:43:20.270 --> 00:43:23.720 align:middle line:84% He ate cake baked in clay ovens with molasses to sweeten it, 00:43:23.720 --> 00:43:25.220 align:middle line:90% cake that was heavy and soggy. 00:43:25.220 --> 00:43:27.620 align:middle line:84% And he pronounced it the best cake he had ever eaten. 00:43:27.620 --> 00:43:30.590 align:middle line:84% And he wrote the recipe down in the back of a brown paper bag 00:43:30.590 --> 00:43:32.810 align:middle line:84% to send off to his mother in Virginia. 00:43:32.810 --> 00:43:35.570 align:middle line:84% Sometimes he'd slip a quarter to somebody with a bad tooth 00:43:35.570 --> 00:43:37.070 align:middle line:84% and direct him to a white farmer who 00:43:37.070 --> 00:43:39.890 align:middle line:84% would, for that silver quarter, yank a bad tooth out 00:43:39.890 --> 00:43:41.600 align:middle line:90% of a Black head. 00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:43.010 align:middle line:84% I heard again and again the story 00:43:43.010 --> 00:43:45.110 align:middle line:84% of a hot afternoon when a stupid white man named 00:43:45.110 --> 00:43:47.690 align:middle line:84% Reed, who greasy and hostile, squint-eyed, 00:43:47.690 --> 00:43:49.460 align:middle line:84% with a round, bald head and a belly that 00:43:49.460 --> 00:43:52.130 align:middle line:84% fell over his thick leather belt slapped a Black water 00:43:52.130 --> 00:43:53.960 align:middle line:84% boy who did not have water in his bucket 00:43:53.960 --> 00:43:55.370 align:middle line:90% when Reed was thirsty. 00:43:55.370 --> 00:43:57.077 align:middle line:84% Someone else had drained the last drop, 00:43:57.077 --> 00:43:59.160 align:middle line:84% and the boy was starting back to the well for more 00:43:59.160 --> 00:44:01.490 align:middle line:84% when Reed wanted a drink and not able to get it, 00:44:01.490 --> 00:44:02.270 align:middle line:90% slapped the child. 00:44:02.270 --> 00:44:03.450 align:middle line:90% And when the child cried-- 00:44:03.450 --> 00:44:04.570 align:middle line:90% he was about 13-- 00:44:04.570 --> 00:44:07.070 align:middle line:84% Reed pulled out a little blue pistol and threatened to shoot 00:44:07.070 --> 00:44:09.440 align:middle line:84% his head off just so there'd be, so Reed said, 00:44:09.440 --> 00:44:12.590 align:middle line:84% 'one last nigger in the world to fuck white girls.' 00:44:12.590 --> 00:44:15.320 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton came on the scene out of some sure instinct 00:44:15.320 --> 00:44:15.830 align:middle line:90% for danger. 00:44:15.830 --> 00:44:18.608 align:middle line:84% And he jumped on Reed like a tiger out of a tree. 00:44:18.608 --> 00:44:20.150 align:middle line:84% He slapped the pistol out of his hand 00:44:20.150 --> 00:44:21.770 align:middle line:84% and sent it flying off into the muck. 00:44:21.770 --> 00:44:23.960 align:middle line:84% And almost with the same smooth, hard motion, 00:44:23.960 --> 00:44:26.900 align:middle line:84% he slapped Reed flat across the mouth with an open hand, 00:44:26.900 --> 00:44:29.540 align:middle line:84% brought the hand back again across Reed's eyes, forward 00:44:29.540 --> 00:44:31.053 align:middle line:84% again across the mouth, repeating 00:44:31.053 --> 00:44:33.470 align:middle line:84% the motion so fast that it sounded like somebody hammering 00:44:33.470 --> 00:44:34.090 align:middle line:90% nails. 00:44:34.090 --> 00:44:36.590 align:middle line:84% And when Reed brought his hands up dumbly to cover his face, 00:44:36.590 --> 00:44:39.350 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton stepped back and delivered a hard swinging kick 00:44:39.350 --> 00:44:41.300 align:middle line:90% right up into Reed's testicles. 00:44:41.300 --> 00:44:44.000 align:middle line:84% People told me then that Reed just dropped on his hands 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:46.340 align:middle line:84% and showed a bloody face petrified in amazement, 00:44:46.340 --> 00:44:48.110 align:middle line:84% then pitched forward into the mud, 00:44:48.110 --> 00:44:49.670 align:middle line:84% holding his crotch with both hands 00:44:49.670 --> 00:44:51.812 align:middle line:84% and lay on his [INAUDIBLE] incredulous. 00:44:51.812 --> 00:44:53.270 align:middle line:84% And then Pinkerton grabbed his head 00:44:53.270 --> 00:44:54.812 align:middle line:84% and picked it up, the body following. 00:44:54.812 --> 00:44:56.810 align:middle line:84% He spat in Reed's face and told him 00:44:56.810 --> 00:44:59.210 align:middle line:84% that if he, Moreland J. Pinkerton of the Dixie Railroad 00:44:59.210 --> 00:45:02.810 align:middle line:84% should see Mr. Reed five minutes hence that he would personally 00:45:02.810 --> 00:45:06.285 align:middle line:84% twist a pen knife up Mr. Reed's prick. 00:45:06.285 --> 00:45:07.910 align:middle line:84% And with that, he hollered for a knife, 00:45:07.910 --> 00:45:09.530 align:middle line:84% and maybe two dozen were instantly 00:45:09.530 --> 00:45:11.810 align:middle line:90% produce out of denim pockets. 00:45:11.810 --> 00:45:13.700 align:middle line:84% Mr. Reed thereupon discovered an energy 00:45:13.700 --> 00:45:15.470 align:middle line:84% and a purpose he had previously supposed 00:45:15.470 --> 00:45:17.390 align:middle line:90% departed from him forever. 00:45:17.390 --> 00:45:19.640 align:middle line:84% And it is said that he removed himself with such speed 00:45:19.640 --> 00:45:21.632 align:middle line:90% that he left wake in the swamp. 00:45:21.632 --> 00:45:23.840 align:middle line:84% And Pinkerton turned fiercely around to the water boy 00:45:23.840 --> 00:45:25.590 align:middle line:84% and to the water boy's father and shouted, 00:45:25.590 --> 00:45:28.580 align:middle line:84% 'You may be niggers, but by God, you're my niggers.' 00:45:28.580 --> 00:45:30.250 align:middle line:84% As I say, I heard the story many times 00:45:30.250 --> 00:45:32.000 align:middle line:84% from both Blacks and whites, and it spread 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:33.890 align:middle line:90% at the time like a hurricane. 00:45:33.890 --> 00:45:37.220 align:middle line:84% White Bourbonvillians had one short article of social faith, 00:45:37.220 --> 00:45:40.370 align:middle line:84% and that was that Blacks should be kept in their place. 00:45:40.370 --> 00:45:42.290 align:middle line:84% Many people in the town watched a stranger 00:45:42.290 --> 00:45:47.178 align:middle line:90% changing their ways [AUDIO OUT] 00:45:47.178 --> 00:45:49.400 align:middle line:84% And Pinkerton turned fiercely around to the water boy 00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:51.150 align:middle line:84% and to the water boy's father and shouted, 00:45:51.150 --> 00:45:54.300 align:middle line:84% 'You may be niggers, but by God, you're my niggers.' 00:45:54.300 --> 00:45:55.910 align:middle line:84% As I say, I heard the story many times 00:45:55.910 --> 00:45:57.660 align:middle line:84% from both Blacks and whites, and it spread 00:45:57.660 --> 00:45:59.550 align:middle line:90% at the time like a hurricane. 00:45:59.550 --> 00:46:02.790 align:middle line:84% White Bourbonvillians had one short article of social faith, 00:46:02.790 --> 00:46:05.910 align:middle line:84% and that was that Blacks should be kept in their place. 00:46:05.910 --> 00:46:09.150 align:middle line:84% Many people in the town watched a stranger changing their ways 00:46:09.150 --> 00:46:11.400 align:middle line:84% and muttered among themselves about the mythical days 00:46:11.400 --> 00:46:15.060 align:middle line:84% when the Klan would have settled Moreland Pinkerton fast enough. 00:46:15.060 --> 00:46:17.613 align:middle line:84% Later in the muttering was Mr. Oswald Mahoney, 00:46:17.613 --> 00:46:19.530 align:middle line:84% keeper of a hardware store that was still here 00:46:19.530 --> 00:46:22.560 align:middle line:84% when I came to town, still presided over by Mr. Mahoney, 00:46:22.560 --> 00:46:24.720 align:middle line:84% although he was steadily losing business to Kinlaw. 00:46:24.720 --> 00:46:26.748 align:middle line:84% Mr. Mahoney was paunchy and prim, 00:46:26.748 --> 00:46:29.040 align:middle line:84% carrying himself with the stiffness of an elderly woman 00:46:29.040 --> 00:46:31.230 align:middle line:84% who has lived her life in fear that if she relaxes, 00:46:31.230 --> 00:46:33.870 align:middle line:84% her vigilance for an instant, obscene little boys 00:46:33.870 --> 00:46:35.340 align:middle line:90% will look up her dress. 00:46:35.340 --> 00:46:37.963 align:middle line:84% Mr. Mahoney's long English face was as white as milk 00:46:37.963 --> 00:46:39.630 align:middle line:84% because he could not go out into the sun 00:46:39.630 --> 00:46:41.640 align:middle line:84% without raising blisters on his skin. 00:46:41.640 --> 00:46:44.070 align:middle line:84% So he ventured out only at twilight and in the dark, 00:46:44.070 --> 00:46:46.573 align:middle line:84% like a vampire bat, Virgil Weaver said. 00:46:46.573 --> 00:46:48.990 align:middle line:84% Virgil's friends laughed at the aptness of the comparison. 00:46:48.990 --> 00:46:51.365 align:middle line:84% And Virgil's friends were some of the best people in town 00:46:51.365 --> 00:46:53.430 align:middle line:84% because he was well connected through his family. 00:46:53.430 --> 00:46:55.590 align:middle line:90% But I get ahead of my story. 00:46:55.590 --> 00:46:57.378 align:middle line:84% Mr. Mahoney did represent an opinion, 00:46:57.378 --> 00:46:58.920 align:middle line:84% and some people nodded when he spoke. 00:46:58.920 --> 00:47:01.050 align:middle line:84% And the town fathers of Bourbonville passed, 00:47:01.050 --> 00:47:03.540 align:middle line:84% without discussion, a law forbidding any Black person-- 00:47:03.540 --> 00:47:04.645 align:middle line:90% man, woman, or child-- 00:47:04.645 --> 00:47:06.270 align:middle line:84% to be on the streets of the little town 00:47:06.270 --> 00:47:08.280 align:middle line:90% after 6:00 in the evening. 00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:11.070 align:middle line:84% Mr. Mahoney put out the tale that Pinkerton 00:47:11.070 --> 00:47:13.140 align:middle line:90% meddled with Black women. 00:47:13.140 --> 00:47:14.970 align:middle line:84% 'Why else does he go down there at night? 00:47:14.970 --> 00:47:16.560 align:middle line:84% Hell, he gives husbands a quarter, 00:47:16.560 --> 00:47:19.650 align:middle line:84% and the husbands let him get himself a little poon time. 00:47:19.650 --> 00:47:20.670 align:middle line:90% He ain't the first. 00:47:20.670 --> 00:47:22.050 align:middle line:84% I don't reckon he'll be the last. 00:47:22.050 --> 00:47:23.167 align:middle line:90% You know niggers. 00:47:23.167 --> 00:47:25.500 align:middle line:84% A nigger would sell his own mama's kind if he didn't ask 00:47:25.500 --> 00:47:27.150 align:middle line:90% him change for $0.50.' 00:47:27.150 --> 00:47:28.770 align:middle line:84% The tale gave Mr. Mahoney something 00:47:28.770 --> 00:47:31.890 align:middle line:84% to laugh at in his spitty way in the dark of his hardware store, 00:47:31.890 --> 00:47:33.690 align:middle line:84% where he was King of steel plows, 00:47:33.690 --> 00:47:36.270 align:middle line:84% and prince of pocket knives, and lord of barrels, 00:47:36.270 --> 00:47:38.460 align:middle line:84% and nails, and saws, and leather harness, 00:47:38.460 --> 00:47:40.990 align:middle line:84% and where he was safe in his kingdom, 00:47:40.990 --> 00:47:44.820 align:middle line:84% he supposed, from invasion from without. 00:47:44.820 --> 00:47:46.470 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton got word of the slander. 00:47:46.470 --> 00:47:49.830 align:middle line:84% And so he told me much later on, he was amused by it. 00:47:49.830 --> 00:47:51.370 align:middle line:84% He chewed tobacco then, as most men 00:47:51.370 --> 00:47:52.620 align:middle line:90% did who worked with his hands. 00:47:52.620 --> 00:47:54.540 align:middle line:84% And with his cheek packed full, he 00:47:54.540 --> 00:47:56.010 align:middle line:84% marched them to the hardware store 00:47:56.010 --> 00:47:57.990 align:middle line:84% on a hot Saturday morning afternoon, 00:47:57.990 --> 00:48:00.700 align:middle line:84% when idle farmers lounged in the cool, dark, 00:48:00.700 --> 00:48:02.580 align:middle line:84% and Mr. Mahoney stood behind his counter, 00:48:02.580 --> 00:48:05.550 align:middle line:84% grinning a superior grin, wearing his white shirt, 00:48:05.550 --> 00:48:07.890 align:middle line:84% his black suspenders, his black necktie, 00:48:07.890 --> 00:48:09.990 align:middle line:90% and his hot black coat. 00:48:09.990 --> 00:48:12.090 align:middle line:84% People heard Pinkerton's hard boots pound 00:48:12.090 --> 00:48:14.280 align:middle line:84% across the porch planking, and they looked up 00:48:14.280 --> 00:48:17.730 align:middle line:84% and they saw him, saw him move into that smooth, resolute 00:48:17.730 --> 00:48:21.000 align:middle line:84% hesitancy of his, saw him sweep to the counter, 00:48:21.000 --> 00:48:23.220 align:middle line:84% pluck Mr. Mahoney up by the lapels, 00:48:23.220 --> 00:48:25.350 align:middle line:84% yank him over the counter, saw him 00:48:25.350 --> 00:48:28.950 align:middle line:84% begin methodically and with maximum liquidity to spit 00:48:28.950 --> 00:48:31.552 align:middle line:84% brown tobacco juice in Mr. Mahoney's face. 00:48:31.552 --> 00:48:33.760 align:middle line:84% 'I seen the whole thing, old Brian Ledbetter told me. 00:48:33.760 --> 00:48:36.750 align:middle line:84% 'Mahoney was squawking like a duck held up by the neck. 00:48:36.750 --> 00:48:39.690 align:middle line:84% And Pinkerton would chew a little, and he would spit. 00:48:39.690 --> 00:48:43.140 align:middle line:84% I tell you, it sure did make a mess out of Mahoney. 00:48:43.140 --> 00:48:46.530 align:middle line:84% In the end, Mr. Mahoney began to cry.' 00:48:46.530 --> 00:48:48.600 align:middle line:84% 'We just sat there,' Brian Ledbetter said. 00:48:48.600 --> 00:48:50.620 align:middle line:84% 'Tell you the truth, I never cared for Mahoney, 00:48:50.620 --> 00:48:53.160 align:middle line:84% not that I took Pinkerton's side, you understand. 00:48:53.160 --> 00:48:54.720 align:middle line:90% But I figured fair was fair. 00:48:54.720 --> 00:48:56.520 align:middle line:90% And Mahoney had a runny mouth. 00:48:56.520 --> 00:48:59.190 align:middle line:84% He deserved what Pinkerton done to him.' 00:48:59.190 --> 00:49:02.910 align:middle line:84% When Mr. Mahoney began to cry, Pinkerton started to laugh. 00:49:02.910 --> 00:49:06.270 align:middle line:84% And he spat the whole cud of tobacco on Mr. Mahoney's face 00:49:06.270 --> 00:49:08.430 align:middle line:84% and tossed him back as if Mr Mahoney had 00:49:08.430 --> 00:49:11.310 align:middle line:84% been no more substantial than a sack of straw. 00:49:11.310 --> 00:49:13.560 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton was on his way out when Mrs. Mahoney rushed 00:49:13.560 --> 00:49:16.410 align:middle line:84% into the hardware store from the living quarters upstairs. 00:49:16.410 --> 00:49:19.110 align:middle line:84% She was a student of Bible prophecy, 00:49:19.110 --> 00:49:21.990 align:middle line:84% and she had in her hands a large black Bible. 00:49:21.990 --> 00:49:24.870 align:middle line:84% With it, she began to beat Pinkerton over the head. 00:49:24.870 --> 00:49:27.450 align:middle line:84% Pinkerton was laughing at Mr. Mahoney and Mrs. Mahoney, 00:49:27.450 --> 00:49:29.250 align:middle line:84% and her Bible made him laugh at her. 00:49:29.250 --> 00:49:31.080 align:middle line:84% And that is the way he made his exit-- 00:49:31.080 --> 00:49:33.660 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Mahoney running after him, bend to the air, 00:49:33.660 --> 00:49:36.210 align:middle line:84% bringing down that floppy limber book on his head with all 00:49:36.210 --> 00:49:38.617 align:middle line:84% her force until she fell away exhausted, and turned back 00:49:38.617 --> 00:49:40.200 align:middle line:84% to the interior of the store and began 00:49:40.200 --> 00:49:43.192 align:middle line:84% to berate her husband for being such a worthless coward. 00:49:43.192 --> 00:49:45.150 align:middle line:84% And Pinkerton walked across the square laughing 00:49:45.150 --> 00:49:46.140 align:middle line:90% and went back to work. 00:49:46.140 --> 00:49:49.930 align:middle line:90% 00:49:49.930 --> 00:49:51.580 align:middle line:84% The Blacks stayed out of the way. 00:49:51.580 --> 00:49:52.903 align:middle line:90% They worked hard all day long. 00:49:52.903 --> 00:49:54.820 align:middle line:84% And in the afternoon, when quitting time came, 00:49:54.820 --> 00:49:56.950 align:middle line:84% they walked home along the railroad tracks, 00:49:56.950 --> 00:49:59.170 align:middle line:84% keeping their eyes averted from white people, 00:49:59.170 --> 00:50:01.990 align:middle line:84% keeping their heads slightly bowed, showing every gesture 00:50:01.990 --> 00:50:04.660 align:middle line:84% that they intended to stay in their place. 00:50:04.660 --> 00:50:07.330 align:middle line:84% They thought Pinkerton was Jesus Christ, and Abraham Lincoln, 00:50:07.330 --> 00:50:09.250 align:middle line:90% Moses, and Ulysses S. Grant. 00:50:09.250 --> 00:50:11.680 align:middle line:84% And they built a Mount Zion Baptist Church 00:50:11.680 --> 00:50:13.120 align:middle line:84% on the highest of their low hills. 00:50:13.120 --> 00:50:15.430 align:middle line:84% And on Sundays in this, the first framed house, 00:50:15.430 --> 00:50:17.288 align:middle line:84% and what Bourbonville called "Bucktown," 00:50:17.288 --> 00:50:19.330 align:middle line:84% although the Blacks named in "Huntsville" for one 00:50:19.330 --> 00:50:21.790 align:middle line:84% of their preachers-- the first roof of wood shingles, 00:50:21.790 --> 00:50:24.430 align:middle line:84% that grasped and held their collective religious patience, 00:50:24.430 --> 00:50:27.080 align:middle line:84% and shook with a thumping and shouting of their frenzies. 00:50:27.080 --> 00:50:29.410 align:middle line:84% Their preachers prayed every Sunday for God's blessings 00:50:29.410 --> 00:50:31.630 align:middle line:84% to fall on the United States of America 00:50:31.630 --> 00:50:32.800 align:middle line:90% and on Moreland Pinkerton. 00:50:32.800 --> 00:50:35.080 align:middle line:84% And men and women in the throbbing congregation swayed 00:50:35.080 --> 00:50:37.310 align:middle line:90% and shouted do it, Lord, do it. 00:50:37.310 --> 00:50:39.970 align:middle line:84% And as the years passed, they named their sons after him. 00:50:39.970 --> 00:50:42.670 align:middle line:84% And at least one girl was named Morelanda. 00:50:42.670 --> 00:50:44.768 align:middle line:84% They took off their hats in his presence. 00:50:44.768 --> 00:50:46.810 align:middle line:84% He grinned at them, and slapped them on the back, 00:50:46.810 --> 00:50:48.310 align:middle line:84% and they grinned, smiled back at him 00:50:48.310 --> 00:50:50.125 align:middle line:84% and laughed with a quiet he, he, he, 00:50:50.125 --> 00:50:52.000 align:middle line:90% when he said something funny. 00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:53.750 align:middle line:84% They were the first people in Bourbonville 00:50:53.750 --> 00:50:57.280 align:middle line:84% to call him the name he loved best-- captain. 00:50:57.280 --> 00:50:59.530 align:middle line:84% So the founders for brass, and steel, and iron 00:50:59.530 --> 00:51:01.450 align:middle line:90% rose where the swamp had been. 00:51:01.450 --> 00:51:04.120 align:middle line:84% The trains heaved in to metal parts of the furnaces 00:51:04.120 --> 00:51:07.600 align:middle line:84% and pieces on flat cars and with bricks and gondolas. 00:51:07.600 --> 00:51:09.970 align:middle line:84% The Black man and the white man toiled, and groaned, 00:51:09.970 --> 00:51:11.920 align:middle line:84% and cursed, and put the furnaces together. 00:51:11.920 --> 00:51:13.900 align:middle line:84% And they built too-tall brick chimneys that 00:51:13.900 --> 00:51:15.850 align:middle line:90% pointed to the sky like spires. 00:51:15.850 --> 00:51:18.370 align:middle line:84% And a bricklayer named Hicks died when he leaned back 00:51:18.370 --> 00:51:21.040 align:middle line:84% too far, too high, and admired his creation 00:51:21.040 --> 00:51:23.290 align:middle line:84% and lost his balance on the wooden scaffold, 00:51:23.290 --> 00:51:26.290 align:middle line:84% and fell tumbling and flopping his arms like a great bird 00:51:26.290 --> 00:51:28.720 align:middle line:84% until he struck the unyielding earth. 00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:30.910 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton wept real tears, 00:51:30.910 --> 00:51:32.740 align:middle line:84% and Black and white men came to the funeral 00:51:32.740 --> 00:51:35.260 align:middle line:84% and sat around the open grave and the closed coffin 00:51:35.260 --> 00:51:37.120 align:middle line:90% and sang sad songs. 00:51:37.120 --> 00:51:40.660 align:middle line:84% He died for progress, Pinkerton said in the eulogy he spoke. 00:51:40.660 --> 00:51:42.280 align:middle line:90% Progress takes a toll. 00:51:42.280 --> 00:51:44.140 align:middle line:84% And our dear brother, Jack Hicks, 00:51:44.140 --> 00:51:46.150 align:middle line:84% has paid that price for all of us. 00:51:46.150 --> 00:51:47.920 align:middle line:84% And we must remember when we enjoy 00:51:47.920 --> 00:51:51.850 align:middle line:84% the fruits of his sacrifice and taste the goodness of progress, 00:51:51.850 --> 00:51:54.263 align:middle line:84% that Jack Hicks did not die in vain. 00:51:54.263 --> 00:51:55.930 align:middle line:84% The carpenters who put out the buildings 00:51:55.930 --> 00:51:57.880 align:middle line:90% became builders of boxcars. 00:51:57.880 --> 00:51:59.620 align:middle line:84% The brass foundry made journal bearings 00:51:59.620 --> 00:52:02.380 align:middle line:84% for the great steam locomotives and for the boxcars. 00:52:02.380 --> 00:52:04.360 align:middle line:84% And the steel foundry made the truck frames 00:52:04.360 --> 00:52:06.790 align:middle line:84% that held the wheels and the wooden cars. 00:52:06.790 --> 00:52:08.830 align:middle line:84% But the glory was the iron, the wheel foundry. 00:52:08.830 --> 00:52:11.020 align:middle line:84% Men who had never known anything more complicated 00:52:11.020 --> 00:52:13.910 align:middle line:84% than seed time and harvest, rain, and snow, and drought 00:52:13.910 --> 00:52:16.360 align:middle line:84% learned to prepare the damp sand for the molds 00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:19.180 align:middle line:84% and how to press the oak wheel patterns into the sand, 00:52:19.180 --> 00:52:21.010 align:middle line:84% and how to tap the great furnace, 00:52:21.010 --> 00:52:24.010 align:middle line:84% and how to dance away from the great gush of the molten iron 00:52:24.010 --> 00:52:26.770 align:middle line:84% into the bull ladle, and how the colors, cherry red 00:52:26.770 --> 00:52:29.290 align:middle line:84% to incandescent, told him what the Iron was 00:52:29.290 --> 00:52:30.710 align:middle line:90% and what it would be. 00:52:30.710 --> 00:52:32.200 align:middle line:84% And some of the religious men long 00:52:32.200 --> 00:52:33.760 align:middle line:84% afterwards told me that the hot iron 00:52:33.760 --> 00:52:35.980 align:middle line:90% made them think of Tubal Cain. 00:52:35.980 --> 00:52:38.410 align:middle line:84% The Black man learned to be molders' helpers and the haul 00:52:38.410 --> 00:52:40.300 align:middle line:84% coke to stoke the furnace that melted the pig 00:52:40.300 --> 00:52:41.050 align:middle line:90% iron in the scrap. 00:52:41.050 --> 00:52:43.750 align:middle line:84% And they learned how to take the 850-pound gray iron 00:52:43.750 --> 00:52:46.570 align:middle line:84% wheels with the crane, hauled out of the annealing pits, 00:52:46.570 --> 00:52:48.850 align:middle line:84% wheels so perfectly round that a nickel would not 00:52:48.850 --> 00:52:51.370 align:middle line:84% lie flat on the curved surface that rode the rails. 00:52:51.370 --> 00:52:53.110 align:middle line:84% And they could balance them on the flange 00:52:53.110 --> 00:52:55.810 align:middle line:84% and roll them like barrel hoops before the great drill. 00:52:55.810 --> 00:52:58.150 align:middle line:84% They cut a hole in the middle where the axles would fit, 00:52:58.150 --> 00:53:00.317 align:middle line:84% and then they would roll them out into the long shed 00:53:00.317 --> 00:53:02.860 align:middle line:84% where Moreland Pinkerton's carpenters-- he always called 00:53:02.860 --> 00:53:04.780 align:middle line:84% them his men-- solid, and hammered, 00:53:04.780 --> 00:53:06.910 align:middle line:84% and fitted wooden boxcars together. 00:53:06.910 --> 00:53:09.130 align:middle line:84% And they could, these Black dancers of the wheels, 00:53:09.130 --> 00:53:12.130 align:middle line:84% working in couples, and swing the wheels onto the axles, 00:53:12.130 --> 00:53:13.630 align:middle line:90% and fastened them in place-- 00:53:13.630 --> 00:53:16.595 align:middle line:84% and they knew what they could, do and they were proud. 00:53:16.595 --> 00:53:18.220 align:middle line:84% Moreland Pinkerton looked at all of it, 00:53:18.220 --> 00:53:21.340 align:middle line:84% saw the foundry turning like a great machine with human parts, 00:53:21.340 --> 00:53:24.220 align:middle line:84% and he was the engine that made it all run. 00:53:24.220 --> 00:53:27.070 align:middle line:84% And he believed that nothing was impossible. 00:53:27.070 --> 00:53:30.490 align:middle line:84% 'I knew the railroad would call me up to Washington City 00:53:30.490 --> 00:53:32.290 align:middle line:90% in time,' he told me. 00:53:32.290 --> 00:53:35.470 align:middle line:84% 'I could see myself in black tie, 00:53:35.470 --> 00:53:38.740 align:middle line:84% and tails, shaking hands with important people, 00:53:38.740 --> 00:53:41.830 align:middle line:84% shaking hands with the President of the United States. 00:53:41.830 --> 00:53:44.560 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd be president of the lines. 00:53:44.560 --> 00:53:47.290 align:middle line:84% And if things had turned out right, hell, 00:53:47.290 --> 00:53:51.700 align:middle line:84% I might have been president of the United States.' 00:53:51.700 --> 00:53:53.290 align:middle line:84% The man who spoke those words to me 00:53:53.290 --> 00:53:57.940 align:middle line:84% was soaked with whiskey, red eyed, bewildered, and angry. 00:53:57.940 --> 00:54:00.160 align:middle line:84% And he spoke them years after the Spanish War 00:54:00.160 --> 00:54:03.790 align:middle line:84% came, when he made his one great mistake that made his dreams 00:54:03.790 --> 00:54:07.780 align:middle line:84% collapse around him and trapped him in Bourbonville for life." 00:54:07.780 --> 00:54:08.890 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:54:08.890 --> 00:54:11.940 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:54:11.940 --> 00:54:28.000 align:middle line:90%