And these huge creatures evoked for Eugene a whole history of this earth and people, monstrous, savage, and unutterable—a congruent and unspeakable legend which he knew, and all of them knew, down to the roots, and which he could not speak about and had to speak about, somehow, or die. For in these men there was evident not only the savage and mindless energy of the earth itself, with all that was wild, sensual, fecund, cruel and good-natured—the whole weather of life—but there was also evident the fear, the shame, the horror that had crushed them beneath its ocean weight of nameless and cowering dread and broken or destroyed their souls.
The two policemen who had clambered into the back seat of the car and now sat on each side of Eugene had these mountainous and fleshy figures, heavy, yet with a kind of solid and ugly softness, meaty, and without the muscular and sinewy leanness of young men. The back seat of the car was a narrow one—the car was a new “sports model” designed only for four people—and now the huge fleshy figures of these two policemen, wedged against Eugene, gave him a feeling of disgust and revulsion.
Nevertheless, the feeling of exultant and jubilant power had not yet worn off, and although he had understood at once, when he saw the men lined up across the street, that they were under arrest and would be taken to the city jail, this sordid prospect caused him no uneasiness whatever. Rather, the feeling of drunken joy was still so powerful in him that everything on earth seemed good, and everything that happened wonderful. He hailed the experience of being arrested and taken to jail exultantly as if some fortunate and glorious experience was in store for him, and his exuberant affection for the world was so great that he even liked the policemen.
Eugene howled with laughter, smote them on their broad backs, flung his arms out and around their shoulders, saying, “By God, you’re fine fellows, both of you, and you’ve got to have a drink!”
At this Robert laughed uneasily, saying to the policemen:
“Don’t pay any attention to him! We haven’t got anything to drink—I swear we haven’t.”
One of them had been rummaging around, however, and now triumphantly produced the jug from its hiding place beneath Blake’s legs.
“Here it is, boys,” he cried, as he displayed it. “I’ve got it.”
The glass jug was almost empty, but there was still perhaps an inch of the whisky
