ATDTDA (3): Webb's intimacy, 87-90

[Paul Nightingale]

If the story of Webb's "trajectory" towards anarchism involves a sense of
destiny, of being 'guided' by some kind of 'higher force', then it is worth
noting that he loses Teresa (87-88) because of his failure to act. Perhaps
waiting for fate to do the job for him, he fails to "unburden his heart"
(88). Of course, the failure to act is still a choice made; so this is a
fork in the road that leads him, eventually, to the "unholy mountains [he]
grew to manhood in, and had not left since". A kind of exile from the past,
then.

No sooner has Mayva been introduced than there are children to tell stories
to. As with the stories Merle tells Dally, family = oral history. Having
established, in the exchange on 88, that the parents perform for their
children, the rest of the section implicitly includes the children, as yet
unspecified, as its audience.

Mayva remains unfazed when Webb brings Veikko home (89). She is not about to
leave him (in contrast to our first view of Erlys or Troth). Family history
is marked by the birth of children, so "[s]he kept her job at Pap Wyman's
till she was sure Reef was on the way". Family history is also marked by
circumstances and lifestyle: "They had maybe a year or two where it wasn't
too desperate." If the passage with Teresa suggests he might have avoided
the life he eventually found, the description of family life here suggests
there is no hiding place, even within the family.

Reef is introduced as being "on the way"; on the next page Lake is "helping
with chores" and Reef has a brother Frank to help him "[bring] potato sacks
from the wagon" (90). Reef and Frank go to work with their father. The
family, then, is an economic unit: all must contribute to its survival, and
at this stage there is no mention of, eg, education. The family binds Webb
to his work: he has no option, and this passage establishes the family as
the agent in question rather than Webb alone. 

Employment (wage-slavery) means survival. It also means some kind of
progress as Webb "[works] his way from hoistman through singlejacker to
assistant foreman". On the face of it, then, the model of a bourgeois
father. But progress also includes a relationship with "the deepest arcane
of dynamite": here, "intimate" is repeated from 82. Going back to that first
use of the term, it helped to establish Webb as different to those who would
enjoy July Fourth in the conventional way; it marked him as solitary. So
this is an indication that dynamite, or rather his relationship with it,
will threaten the family, as though Mayva might cite dynamite as
co-respondent: "[I]t drove Mayva just damn crazy. But nothing she ever said
had any effect".