Read Online Captains and The Kings by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online

him denounced him now though he had not yet taken office. Many of the inhabitants had come from the stark hills of Kentucky or the Tidewater area of Virginia to "work on the railroad" or in the factories and the sawmills, and for them the natives of Winfield had adopted the Southern appellation of "white trash." These people carried with them their folkways of speaking and life and so the men and women of Winfield were titillated by a sense of superiority to the "hillbillies." To Joseph Armagh, Winfield was repulsive, alien, and lightless. Its ugliness and lack of color disgusted him. The voices he heard were strange and discordant. Its lack of human diversity and lively movement depressed him. It was a gray prison and often he felt that he was smothering. His loneliness frequently overwhelmed him with despair of so active a nature that it was like an ague. The sweltering summers made him gasp beyond endurance and the winters were a long suffering. He had lived here for three years and knew no one but the Sisters in the St. Agnes's Orphanage, and he had little conversation with his fellow workers in the sawmill. They shunned him, for he was a "foreigner" and therefore suspect. He was never seen to laugh or to engage in gossip nor heard to utter an oath. This was more than enough, with his lilting brogue, to incite enmity and ridicule. To the few who knew of Winfield it was known as a "real quiet small town," but to the people of Virginia who had to deal with it it was "that there mud hole up North." The Sabbath evening was closing in this late November day while Joseph walked towards the orphanage which he visited once a week. He hurried, for it would soon be too late for visitors. A dim and dirty drizzle began to fall and there was a dank wind from the river and the houses and streets became increasingly blank and glum and anonymous. A slimy moisture began to glisten on the stones where a dull lamppost blew down its feeble light. The few trees flung their stiff webby shadows on brown walls and gloomy little houses, and they uttered a dry and crackling roar. The last daylight showed a racing mass of black clouds against a pallid grayness. Joseph plunged his chilled hands into the pockets of his too-short greatcoat which he had bought, secondhand, nearly two years ago. Even then it had been thin and cheap and of the shabbiest material, blackish and coarse, with a grubby velvet collar. Now it barely covered his knees and hardly stretched across his broad shoulders. He wore the woolen cap with a visor that all workingmen wore, as brown as earth. He possessed no gloves, no waistcoats, no cravats. His sleazy shirts were clean if cheap. To Joseph a man did not reach total degradation until he neglected soap and water and to that degradation he would not fall. A cake of pungent soap cost three cents, the price of a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and cheese. When he had to choose between them he bought the soap. But hunger was an old familiar to him and had his young appetite ever been satisfied he would, now, not have recognized the sensation or it would have made him uncomfortable. It had been years since he had eaten his fill and the memory was becoming vague. Still, he was always haunted by a sick craving and sometimes a shaking weakness, and sometimes he would be covered by a prickling sweat, the result of weariness and semistarvation. He walked proudly and swiftly, not bowing his head before the drizzle. He could smell the wet dust of the streets, and the dead leaves in the gutter. The river wind exhaled an odor of fishy cold water, and a rancid stench of oil blew from somewhere. His pale young face was set but otherwise it expressed no emotion. He had learned that he must endure, and the Irish genius for endurance was strong in him. He passed a small livery stable in which a yellow light burned, and he saw the accustomed sign on the closed doors: No irish hired. With this, too, he was familiar. He felt himself fortunate