William Faulkner - Mosquitoes

“I don’t care: I’m going,” she repeated stubbornly. Her aunt said vainly:

“Theodore!”

“Well, I can’t do anything, for her,” he complained bitterly. “I can’t move, for her. And now she’s talking about going — She worried Hank until he had to say she could go. God knows, I’d ’a’ said that too: I wouldn’t want her around me all the time.”

“Shut your goddam mouth,” his sister told him. Mrs. Maurier chanted, “Patricia, Patricia.” “I’m going, I’m going, I’m going!”

“What’ll you do up there?” Fairchild asked. The niece whirled, viciously belligerent. Then she said:

“What’d you say?”

“I mean, what’ll you do to pass the time while he’s at classes and things? Are you going to take some work, too?”

“Oh, I’ll just go around with balloon pants. To nightclubs and things. I won’t bother him: I won’t hardly see him, he’s such a damn crum.”

“Like hell you will,” her brother interrupted, “you’re not going, I tell you.”

“Yes, I am. Hank said I could go. He said I could. I—”

“Well, you won’t ever see me: I’m not going to have you tagging around after me up there.”

“Are you the only one in the world that’s going up there next year? Are you the only one that’ll be there? I’m not going up there to waste my time hanging around the entrance to Dwight or Osborne hall just to see you. You won’t catch me sitting on the rail of the Green with freshmen. I’ll be going’ to places that maybe you’ll get into in three years, if you don’t bust out or something. Don’t you worry about me. Who was it,” she rushed on, “got invited up for Prom Week last year, only Hank wouldn’t let me go? Who was it saw the game last fall, while you were perched up on the top row with a bunch of newspaper reporters, in the rain?”

“You didn’t go up for Prom Week.”

“Because Hank wouldn’t let me. But I’ll be there next year, and you can haul out the family sock on it.”

“Oh, shut up for a while,” her brother said wearily. “Maybe some of these ladies want to talk some.”

TWO O’CLOCK

And there was the tug, squatting at her cables, breaking the southern horizon with an effect of abrupt magic, like a stereopticon slide flashed on the screen while you had turned your head for a moment.

“Look at that boat,” said Mark Frost, broaching. Mrs. Maurier directly behind him, shrieked:

“It’s the tug!” She turned and screamed down the companionway, “It’s the tug: the tug has come!” The others all chanted, “The tug! The tug!” Major Ayers exclaimed dramatically and opportunely:

“Ha, gone away!”

“It has come at last,” Mrs. Maurier shrieked. “It came while we were at lunch. Has anyone—” She roved her eyes about. “The captain — Has he been notified? Mr. Talliaferro—?”

“Surely,” Mr. Talliaferro agreed with polite alacrity, mounting the stairs and distintegrating his members with expedition. “I’ll summon the captain.”

So he rushed forward and the others came on deck and stared at the tug, and a gentle breeze blew offshore and they slapped intermittently at their exposed surfaces. Mr. Talliaferro shouted, “Captain! oh, Captain!” about the deck: he screamed it into the empty wheelhouse and returned. “He must be asleep,” he told them.

“We are off at last,” Mrs. Maurier intoned, “we can get off at last. The tug has come: I sent for it days and days ago. But we can get off, now. But the captain. . Where is the captain? He shouldn’t be asleep, at this time. Of all times for the captain to be asleep — Mr. Talliaferro—”

“But Gordon,” Mark Frost said, “how about—”

Miss Jameson clutched his arm. “Let’s get off, first,” she said.

“I called him,” Mr. Talliaferro reminded them. “He must be asleep in his room.”

“He must be asleep,” Mrs. Maurier repeated. “Will some gentleman—”

Mr. Talliaferro took his cue. “I’ll go,” he said.

“If you will be so kind,” Mrs. Maurier screamed after him. She stared again at the tug. “He should have been here, so we could be all ready to start,” she said fretfully. She waved her handkerchief at the tug: it ignored her.

“We might be getting everything ready, though,” Fairchild suggested. “We ought to have everything ready when they pull us off.”

“That’s so,” Mark Frost agreed. “We’d better run down and pack, hadn’t we?”

“Ah, we ain’t going back home yet. We’ve just started the cruise. Are we, folks?”

They all looked at the hostess. She roved her stricken eyes, but she said at last, bravely, “Why, no. No, of course not, if you don’t want to. . But the captain: we ought to be ready,” she repeated.

“Well, let’s get ready,” Mrs. Wiseman said.

“Nobody knows anything about boats except Fairchild,” Mark Frost said. Mr. Talliaferro returned, barren.

“Me?” Fairchild repeated. “Talliaferro’s been across the whole ocean. And there’s Major Ayers. All Britishers cut their teeth on anchor chains and marlinspikes.”

“And draw their toys with lubbers’ lines,” Mrs. Wiseman chanted. “It’s almost a poem. Finish it, someone.”

Mr. Talliaferro made a sound of alarm. “No: really, I—” Mrs. Maurier turned to Fairchild.

“Will you assume charge until the captain appears, Mr. Fairchild?”

“Mr. Fairchild,” Mr. Talliaferro parroted. “Mr. Fairchild is temporary captain, people. The captain doesn’t seem to be on board,” he whispered to Mrs. Maurier.

Fairchild glanced about with a sort of ludicrous helplessness. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Jump overboard with a shovel and shovel the sand away?”

“A man who has reiterated his superiority as much as you have for the last week should never be at a loss for what to do,” Mrs. Wiseman told him. “We ladies have already thought of that. You are the one to think of something else.”

“Well, I’ve already thought of not jumping overboard and shoveling her off,” Fairchild answered, “but that don’t seem to help much, does it?”

“You ought to coil ropes or something like that,” Miss Jameson suggested. “That’s what they were always doing on all the ships I ever read about.”

“All right,” Fairchild agreed equably. “We’ll coil ropes, then. Where are the ropes?”

“That’s your trouble,” Mrs. Wiseman said. “You’re captain now.”

“Well, we’ll find some ropes and coil ’em.” He addressed Mrs. Maurier. “We have your permission to coil ropes?”

“No: really,” said Mrs. Maurier in her helpless astonished voice. “Isn’t there something we can do? Can’t we signal to them with a sheet? They may not know that this is the right boat.”

“Oh, they know, I guess. Anyway, we’ll coil ropes and be ready for them. Come on here, you men.” He named over his depleted watch and herded it forward. He herded it down to his cabin and nourished it with stimulants.

“We may coil the right rope, at that,” the Semitic man suggested. “Major Ayers ought to know something about boats: it should be in his British blood.”

Major Ayers didn’t think so. American boats have amphibious traits that are lacking in ours,” he explained. “Half the voyage on land, you know,” he explained tediously.

“Sure,” Fairchild agreed. He brought his watch above again and forward, where instinct told him the ropes should be. “I wonder where the captain is. Surely he ain’t drowned, do you reckon?”

“I guess not,” the Semitic man answered. “He gets paid for this. . There comes a boat.”

The boat came from the tug, and soon it came alongside and the captain came over the rail. A stranger followed him and they went below without haste, leaving Mrs. Maurier’s words like vain unmated birds in the air. “Let’s get ready, then,” Fairchild ordered his crew. “Let’s tie a rope to something.”