The Great American Novel

by William Carlos Williams

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At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place. Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.

Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again north along the bank.

The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him, he, De Soto the mighty explorer—He smiled quietly to himself with a curious satisfaction.

[CHAPTER XIII]

It was a shock to discover that she, that most well built girl, so discrete, so comely, so able a thing in appearance, should be so stupid. There are things that she cannot learn. She will never finish school. Positively stupid. Why her little brother, no bigger than Hop o' my Thumb has caught up to her and will soon outstrip her. Her older brother is the brightest boy in the High School. She will I suppose breed stupid children. Plant wizards choose the best out of lots running into the millions. Choose here there everywhere for hybrids. A ten-pound white leghorn cockerel, hens that lay eggs big enough to spoil the career of any actor. She might though have bright children. What a pity that one so likely should be so stupid. Easier to work with but I should hate a child of mine to be that way. Excuses—Try first. Argue after. Excuses. Do not dare.

There sat the seven boys—nine years old and there-abouts—planning dire tortures for any that should seduce or touch in any way their sisters. Each strove to exceed the other. Tying his antagonist to a tree Apollo took out his knife and flayed him. For sweet as the flute had been yet no man can play the flute and sing at the same time. But the God had first played his harp and then sung to his own accompaniment—a thing manifestly unfair. No doubt, his sense of being in the wrong whetted his lust for the other's hide. In any case he got what he was after. He was the winner and that was all there was about it.

Each boy would think with a secret glow of a new torture: I would dip his hands in boiling lead—they often melted old pieces of lead in a plumber's pot over a field fire to make slugs for their bean shooters—then I would tie a rope to his feet and drag him on cinders etc.... each inventing a worse torture than that pictured before. And all for their sisters' virtue. So there under the east wall of the Episcopal Church they sat in a group on the grass and talked together for an hour.