off in another direction, and wept when misfortune came. She always waited. Moreover, in her deepest heart, she had an affection for her oldest son, which, if it was not greater, was at least different in kind from what she bore for the others. His glib boastfulness, his pitiable brag, pleased her: they were to her indications of his “smartness,” and she often infuriated her two studious girls by praising them. Thus, looking at a specimen of his handwriting, she would say:
“There’s one thing sure: he writes a better hand than any of the rest of you, for all your schooling.”
Steve had early tasted the joys of the bottle, stealing, during the days when he was a young attendant of his father’s debauch, a furtive swallow from the strong rank whisky in a half-filled flask: the taste nauseated him, but the experience made good boasting for his fellows.
At fifteen, he had found, while smoking cigarettes with Gus Moody, in a neighbor’s barn, a bottle wrapped in an oats sack by the worthy citizen, against the too sharp examination of his wife. When the man had come for secret potation some time later, and found his bottle half-empty, he had grimly dosed the remainder with Croton oil: the two boys were nauseously sick for several days.
One day, Steve forged a check on his father. It was some days before Gant discovered it: the amount was only three dollars, but his anger was bitter. In a pronouncement at home, delivered loudly enough to publish the boy’s offense to the neighborhood, he spoke of the penitentiary, of letting him go to jail, of being disgraced in his old age—a period of his life at which he had not yet arrived, but which he used to his advantage in times of strife.
He paid the check, of course, but another name—that of “forger”— was added to the vocabulary of his abuse. Steve sneaked in and out of the house, eating his meals alone for several days. When he met his father little was said by either: behind the hard angry glaze of their eyes, they both looked depthlessly into each other; they knew that they could withhold nothing from each other, that the same sores festered in each, the same hungers and desires, the same crawling appetites
