Unfinished Cathedral

192–93.

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN the Reverend Jerry Catlin and Professor J. Adlee Petrie fell into conversation on the southbound train going into Florence, Alabama, it began for them their disturbed, uncomfortable, and mutually disparaging acquaintance which lasted for the rest of their lives.

At the moment, however, these two widely diverse gentlemen had common grounds for friendly approach. They were the only passengers on the long crowded train who had no financial interest in the real estate boom which was then ballooning prices of everything in and around Florence.

All up and down their day coach, for both men found it expedient to travel as cheaply as possible, above the rattle of the train and the clacking of wheels on rails, these two seat mates could catch snatches of the excited and anticipatory conversation of their fellow passengers:

Building a big four-story apartment house on the lot next to mine . . . Robert E. Lee Boulevard will pass right by . . . Mine's only two blocks from the Tri-City golf course they're going to build. . . . 

But these remarks were mere grace notes tinkling forth details of personal property already purchased, sight unseen, by these Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece. Behind these expectations, upholding and sustaining the same, sounded the leitmotif of their collective hope:

Big power dam at Wilson Lake, two hundred and sixty-five thousand horse power . . . I thought it was two million six hundred and fifty thousand horse power . . . Well now, maybe . . . maybe you're right about that. . . . 

When the whole Tennessee Valley is electrified, bound to be the biggest industrial concentration south of the Mason and . . . 

I tell ’em, they got to do something with it . . . got to use it somehow . . . can't just let it go to waste!

Listen . . . take it from me, friend, one of these days they're going to deepen a ship's canal from Florence to the Gulf . . . they'll haff to do it . . . trade'll force ’em . . . load our exports at the docks of Florence and ship ’em straight to Eurp . . . 

It was at this point that Professor Petrie glanced at the Reverend Mr. Catlin and observed in a serious tone:

These gentlemen seem not going to build these great things themselves?

Not from what I gather, agreed Jerry.

It seems they are expecting another set of men to come after them and perform all these wonderful works.

That's the idea.

And their plan is to sell out their holdings to this second set of supermen who are coming later, make their private fortunes, and . . . go away?

The faces of both travelers took on the quizzical look of persons inwardly amused.

I take it you haven't bought any town lots in Florence . . . so far, said Jerry.

I perhaps won't, returned Petrie; I'm a school teacher.

Don't let that discourage you. I am sure they have partial payment plans to take care of school teachers . . . and ministers.

The younger man came to some sort of interior pause in his badinage.

Are you a minister?

I am.

Well, I wouldn't have taken you for one . . . still, I don't know now that you tell me you are one . . . no, no, I really wouldn't. . . .  He sat appraising the older man.

I wouldn't have guessed you were a school teacher either, said Jerry; and the feeling between the two travelers was that each of them had definitely complimented the other.

The two men rode on in silence with a faint subconscious gratefulness that they did not appear to be what they were. With Petrie this was like poulticing, accidentally, an old and painful wound. Presently, out of his thoughts came apparently a quite disconnected observation:

Do you notice the hammering of that left front car wheel?

I hadn't observed it.

It's flattened just a little. It'll crack eventually . . . start with a microscopic fissure that will look like a rabbit's hair lying in the steel. . . . 

Rabbit's hair?

That's the finest hair I know.

How came you to think of that . . . I mean the car wheel cracking?

I've looked at steel from a lot of railroad wrecks. I was always interested in the strain and stresses of metals. I majored in metallurgy.

You are not coming to Florence as a metallurgist?

Oh no, I teach in the Florence High School. I got off half a day to run up to Iron City for a sample out of an old-time charcoal furnace.

The science teacher who did not look his profession leaned forward and drew from under his seat a lump of iron covered with dull red rust.

An enthusiasm in Petrie's voice which suggested that the lump held something precious caused Catlin to give it another glance.

Petrie divined that he had pressed his private hobby beyond its normal interest for a stranger. He tried to make amends by encouraging his fellow passenger to talk about himself.

You are not coming to Florence as a minister, not at this time?

Why not at this time?

Well . . . the boom in full blast . . . everybody in such a stir and rush. I shouldn't think the people would have time for . . . for . . . 

Petrie paused, unable to find words with a rational and at the same time a respectful significance wherewith to end his sentence.

You mean they wouldn't have time to consider death and eternity in the midst of their stir? supplied Catlin.

Y-yes, agreed Petrie with the usual lay feeling of the emptiness of such a consideration.

The man of cloth rode for a space conscious of the gap that had opened up in their brief talk. He said in a different voice:

Well, some of these hustling high-powered business men are very likely to take time off to die before the boom's over . . . and laborers, there'll be scores of laborers killed in building and digging and blasting . . . but you probably were not considering labor as men I would be interested in?

This perfectly serious irony of his seat mate amused Petrie, and he thought to himself, Well, now, I'll bet you are not at that. And he wondered if the Reverend Mr. Catlin even suspected the quiet setting aside of all his tenets concerning death and eternity by the more cultivated members of society. Petrie suspected he did not. The clergy were like children before whom men and women avoided mentioning certain facts of belief. Aloud he said with a touch of hidden retaliation:

Of course, your services are just as necessary during a boom as at any other time. I hope you find a place in Florence.

I already have one.

You mean you have one somewhere else and are just visiting Florence?

No, in Florence itself. I have just been appointed assistant minister to Dr. Blankenship of the Pine Street Methodist Church.

Petrie was really surprised.

Calling in an outside man?

I obtained the appointment through an uncle of mine who has some influence.

May I ask the name of your uncle? . . . I probably know him.

Vaiden . . . Miltiades Vaiden.

Petrie made a slight movement of surprise. His face changed at some rearrangement of his thought.

Why, of course I know Colonel Vaiden perfectly well. I do a little business at his bank . . . and he had Dr. Blankenship make a place for you?

I rather imagine that he did as I told you, but I had no hint from him. I simply received a letter from Dr. Blankenship inviting me to come.

Petrie watched his companion with a ghost of odd amusement in his eyes. He did know Colonel Miltiades Vaiden very well indeed. Everybody in Florence, except the rawest newcomers, knew him. He was extremely wealthy; the only man in Florence reputed to be a millionaire, whatever that means in a small town. But the thing that titivated Professor Petrie was to learn that Colonel Miltiades Vaiden had chosen who should be the assistant minister to Dr. Blankenship of the Pine Street Methodist Church when Petrie knew that Colonel Vaiden had come by his great fortune through theft.

CHAPTER TWO

THE ODD and rather ironic recollection which flitted through the thoughts of Professor Petrie formed, for a few minutes, a kind of puzzle for his seat mate. The Reverend Catlin saw that Petrie was amused and wondered why. He felt his tie to see if it were straight, then glanced down at himself. A moment later, however, the possibility of some personal dishevelment was driven from his thoughts by the train slowing up for the Florence station.

The passengers in the crowded day coach began gathering up their belongings and peering out of the car windows for their first glimpse of this promised land on whose future their fortunes were staked.

A crowd had collected at the station to meet the train. Two hotel buses were backed up in the parking space north of the depot. A red-capped and a blue-capped porter were yodeling the attractions of their respective hostelries.

Rat dis way gemmun fo’ yo’ ol’ stan'by, de Flaunts Hotel! Evah room gotta bath; evah bath got soap, tow'ls, hot'n’ col’ wattah. All you need is a toothbresh. Rooms twenty-fi’ dollahs a day wid meals an’ co'spondin’ reductions widout! Come to de Flaunts Hotel!

The red-capped porter, who had nothing especial to offer, was hallooing:

Step heah gemmun fuh de Plantahs’ Res’ Hotel! Dis bus take you-all to de Plantahs’ Res’ Hotel! Beds fuh de sleepy; chai's fuh de tiahed; meals fuh de hongry; cheap prices fuh evahbody wid de brains to lop onto ’em! Clam in dis bus fuh de Plantah's Res’ Hotel. Fi'teen dollahs a day wid all ixpenses paid!

The porters need not have exerted their lungs, as both buses would have been filled anyway. Each negro, however, enjoyed using his talent. As the fortune hunters swarmed out of the train, they followed their national habit of patronizing the funniest. So the red-capped porter filled his bus a few minutes before his rival and triumphantly clattered away.

While the rest of the Argonauts bespoke taxicabs or started afoot from the depot to old Florence, Jerry Catlin lingered on the railway platform expecting either Dr. Blankenship or his uncle Miltiades Vaiden to send a motorcar for him. Not only was a car probable, but there was a vaguely discomforting possibility that if the Vaiden car came it would be driven by his uncle's pretty wife, Sydna Vaiden. This particular combination Mr. Catlin distinctly did not want to happen. His reluctance to meeting Sydna again amounted almost to aversion. It had been, in fact, a vague emotional objection to his acceptance of Dr. Blankenship's offer of the post of assistant minister. Why he had such a feeling he did not analyze. He had tried to throw it off as irrational, but now, as he stood waiting on the platform, he glanced apprehensively up the road toward Florence and hoped that if a car did come for him it would not be driven by Sydna Vaiden.

A man's voice asking doubtfully:

Partner, ain't yore name Vaiden? brought Jerry out of his faint trepidation. He explained that his name was not Vaiden, it was Catlin, but that he was a nephew of Colonel Miltiades Vaiden.

Shore; I knowed I knowed ye, but yore connection with the Vaidens slipped my mind. Lemme see, yore mammy wuz . . . 

All this time the unknown was regarding, not Jerry, but the train. He was stooping and peering under the line of cars. Now he broke off his research into Jerry's genealogy to say quickly, My name's Northrup. I'm debbity sheriff here. There's some damned niggers ridin’ this train. He seemed wrought up over the idea and continued his search. I b'lieve they's one under there, he said sotto voce to Jerry under cover of the hiss of the air brakes. I'll git on the other side, an’ if one crawls out, you nab him.

Jerry nodded.

I made shore you was a Southern man before I ast you. A dern Yankee is jest as li'able to turn a nigger aloose as hold him.

Jerry nodded again. The officer climbed across the platform of the day coach and from the opposite side began yelling:

Come out o’ there, you black devils! I see you-all! This is the law! Come out or I'll shoot!

A half minute later Jerry did hear the hard clap of a pistol shot followed by the sound of running feet, apparently with Northrup in pursuit.

Catlin himself stood beside the car on the alert while the chase was in hearing, but as it faded away he picked up once more his rather pensive hope that he would not see Mrs. Sydna Vaiden.

It was really an irrational feeling: he knew that. In the first place, there was no way permanently to avoid meeting her. And then what had come and gone between him and Sydna Crowninshield, before she had married his old uncle, was buried under a drift of years. No doubt she had changed, and certainly so had he. He had no present valid reason to avoid her; still, the thought that at any moment Sydna might appear in a car quickened his breathing and made him nervous. He thought how absurd it was to feel so about a girl . . . a woman now . . . his old uncle's wife whom he had not seen for sixteen . . . eighteen . . . twenty . . . What a long, long time it had been!

The sun, the spring sun, became disagreeably warm and brilliant. Jerry stepped up on the first step of the coach into the shade of the overhang of the roof. The fact that he was really getting into Florence again came over the man with its ancient charm. The place looked more like itself with the fortune seekers gone. It was quiet and sleepy, and across from the depot he saw a house with a live oak and a magnolia in its yard. They grew anywhere at all, these lovely aristocratic trees. The lacquered leaves of the magnolia made him think once more of Sydna Crowninshield before she married his uncle Miltiades. From that day to this the hue, the rustle, the smell of a magnolia induced in his thoughts a kind of complementary image of . . . A movement beneath his feet broke into his reverie. A little negro boy was squirming out from under the step on which he stood. The white man stooped silently and caught the child by the neck of his coat.

The little yellow boy twisted about, startled, looked up, and asked in a hurried voice to be let go before the policeman came back.

Jerry replied with the easy philosophy of the person who is not in trouble that he should have thought of policemen before he stole a ride on the train.

The boy stammered:

I . . . I didn't weigh much, Mister, the . . . the train went just as fast with me.

Jerry was faintly amused at the argument.

Even if you weighed nothing at all, you would have to pay your fare as a service charge.

The pickaninny stood silent with a screwed-up face. After a moment the assistant minister asked:

Do you know what a service charge is?

The light brown lad moistened his lips and answered in the monotone of a child before a teacher:

It's what you pay at a restaurant to get to eat.

Catlin nodded with the humor fading out of the situation,

Yes, that's an example.

The two stood silent in the shadow of the overhang. The small captive finally asked:

Is this Florence?

Yes. Have you never been here before?

No, sir . . . but this was where I was coming. . . . Won't you let me go, Mister?

No-o . . .  denied Jerry undecidedly.

I won't steal any more rides now, I won't have to.

Where did you come from?

Chicago.

What did you come here for?

To see my folks.

The youngster's full lips twitched sidewise after the fashion of black folk in distress, and Jerry saw tears in his eyes.

The assistant minister was half minded to loose his captive. Had he been a white boy he would have done so. But in the South there rests upon white men a kind of racial obligation to correct and reform as best they can the missteps and shortcomings of the colored people, so this impulse to liberate the child was overruled in the Reverend Jerry Catlin by his wider duty to his country. And indeed, at this point Jerry's inward discourse was brought to an end by Deputy Northrup appearing from the direction of the locomotive with another boy, blacker and larger than Jerry's, hobbling in front of him. Blood on the negro's bare leg gave Jerry a