Two miles out of town, he reined in, clung to the side of the spring wagon and held his breath until there were spots in front of his eyes. First the inertia breaks, and there’s a faint sign of movement, a faint stirring of the soul. Things build slowly, then a little quicker, then quicker still. Hear that beat? It builds and builds, spurred on by some hidden, internal rhythm. There’s a hidden, internal trigger, too, its mechanism many times witnessed but not at all well understood: at some moment known only to the nuclei themselves, at this precise moment – bang! – the atomic pile goes critical all at once. ‘Jonathan’s going west,’ my grandfather cried to the open fields all around him, where the grass blew gently in the wind as it had blown for centuries before. ‘Going west – no, not Jonathan – Johnny. Johnny the brakeman. I’ll buy me a frock coat – Johnny’s frock coat – and I’ll ride and ride and never stop, go on forever, never stop. Never, never—’
For the next few weeks, while he and the family stripped, flavored, kneaded, prized and wrapped tobacco, he watched, body taut with concentration, to see just how upper teeth fit onto lower teeth. His next set was to be carved out of bone.
12
Power is gained and maintained by violence. This is as true of individuals as it is of nations. Both are born in violence, relate to others through violence, and die in violence. This is not cynicism. Nobody who has witnessed a birth can ever forget the tearing of the flesh and the screams. As to our relationships with other people, we play at manners and morals, but we only play, just as states do; the veneer is dangerously thin and what lurks beneath is murderous. As to death, it is the ultimate violation, so it’s by nature violent, no matter how it looks on the surface. People who deny such truths are foolish or dangerous or both, and yet the only thinkers who speak about such things without hypocrisy or sentimentality are the philosophers of war.
Jonathan completed this second set of teeth before George was due home from the University for the summer. Alvah sent him to the station to pick George up; he waited there, artillery well concealed for the ambush to come, and from the once-again-impregnable fortress of hatred, he watched George climb down the steps of the railroad car.
At eighteen George’s face had developed genuine attraction. Only a week ago, at the University in Lawrence, he had met Georgina Shockton, and he was not unaware of the impression he’d made on her. Her father was Shockton Beef – worth a king’s ransom. She’d gone to Italy the summer before; an English guide there had dragged her party from one lapidary museum to another. Somewhere in Tuscany, casting a bored eye over the stone statues, most without legs or arms, Georgina had seen one – ‘unidentified Roman general,’ the guide translated for her – to which she had turned her mind every night since. George’s face, caught at an angle and in just the right light, had something of that general’s force and a great deal of his rude sensuality. And George, watching Georgina watching him from across the library one afternoon, felt the decisive tide turn in him: he was going to marry her and go into politics. As he used to say in later years, ‘The future’ll spread her legs if you grab her by the tits.’