William Faulkner - Unvanquished

Father said it was fine, that there were people there who had never seen anything like it for cold and ruthless artistry. They played three hands of draw poker, the first two hands dealt in turn, the winner of the second hand to deal the third; they sat there (somebody had

RETREAT

47

spread a blanket and the whole regiment watched) fac­ing each other with the two old faces that did not look exactly alike so much as they looked exactly like some­thing which after a while you remembered—the portrait of someone who had been dead a long time and that you knew just by looking at him he had been a preacher in some place like Massachusetts a hundred years ago; they sat there and called those face-down cards cor­rectly without even looking at the backs of them ap­parently, so that it took sometimes eight and ten deals before the referees could be certain that neither of them knew exactly what was in the other's hand. And Uncle Buck lost: so that now Uncle Buddy was a sergeant in Tennant's brigade in Virginia and Uncle Buck was hob­bling across the square, shaking his stick at me and hollering:

"By Godfrey, there he is! There's John Sartoris' boy!"

The captain came up and looked at me. "I've heard of your father," he said.

"Heard of him?" Uncle Buck shouted. By now people had begun to stop along the walk and listen to him, like they always did, not smiling so he could see it. "Who ain't heard about him in this country? Get the Yankees to tell you about him sometime. By Godfrey, he raised the first damn regiment in Mississippi out of his own pocket, and took 'em to Ferginny and whipped Yankees right and left with 'em before he found out that what he had bought and paid for wasn't a regiment of soldiers but a congress of politicians and fools. Fools I say!" he shouted, shaking the stick at me and glaring with his watery fierce eyes like the eyes of an old hawk, with the people along the street listening to him and smiling where he couldn't see it and the strange captain looking at him a little funny because he hadn't heard Uncle Buck before; and I kept on thinking about Louvinia standing there on the porch with Father's old hat on, and wishing that Uncle Buck would get through or hush so we could go on.

"Fools, I say!" he shouted. "I don't care if some of you folks here do still claim kin with men that elected him colonel and followed him and Stonewall Jackson right up to spitting distance of Washington without

48

THE UNVANQUISHED

hardly losing a man, and then next year turned around and voted him down to major and elected in his stead a damn feller that never even knowed which end of a gun done the shooting until John Sartoris showed him." He quit shouting just as easy as he started but the shouting was right there, waiting to start again as soon as he found something else to shout about. "I won't say God take care of you and your grandma on the road, boy, be­cause by Godfrey you don't need God's nor nobody else's help; all you got to say is 'I'm John Sartoris' boy; rabbits, hunt the canebrake' and then watch the blue-bellied sons of bitches fly."

"Are they leaving, going away?" the captain said.

Then Uncle Buck begun to shout again, going into the shouting easy, without even having to draw a breath: "Leaving? Hell's skillet, who's going to take care of them around here? John Sartoris is a damn fool; they voted him out of his own private regiment in kindness, so he could come home and take care of his family, knowing that if he didn't wouldn't nobody around here be likely to. But that don't suit John Sartoris because John Sar­toris is a damned confounded selfish coward, askeered to stay at home where the Yankees might get him. Yes, sir. So skeered that he has to raise him up another batch of men to protect him every time he gets within a hundred foot of a Yankee brigade. Scouring all up and down the country, finding Yankees to dodge; only if it had been me I would have took back to Ferginny and I'd have showed that new colonel what fighting looked like. But not John Sartoris. He's a coward and a fool. The best he can do is dodge and run away from Yankees until they have to put a priqe on his head, and now he's got to send his family out of the country; to Memphis where maybe the Union Army will take care of them, since it don't look like his own government and fellow citizens are going to." He ran out of breath then, or out of words anyway, standing there with his tobacco-stained beard trembling and more tobacco running onto it out of his mouth, and shaking his stick at me. So I lifted the reins; only the captain spoke; he was still watching me.

RETREAT 49

"How many men has your father got in his regiment?" he said.

"It's not a regiment, sir," I said. "He's got about fifty, I reckon."

"Fifty?" the captain said. "Fifty? We had a prisoner last week who said he had more than a thousand. He said that Colonel Sartoris didn't fight; he just stole horses."

Uncle Buck had enough wind to laugh though. He sounded just like a hen, slapping his leg and holding to the wagon wheel like he was about to fall. "That's it! That's John Sartoris! He gets the horses; any fool can step out and get a Yankee. These two damn boys here did that last summer—stepped down to the gate and brought back a whole regiment, and them just— How old are you, boy?" "Fourteen," I said.

"We ain't fourteen yit," Ringo said. "But we will be in September, if we live and nothing happens. ... I reckon Granny waiting on us, Bayard."

Uncle Buck quit laughing. He stepped back. "Git on," he said. "You got a long road." I turned the wagon. "You take care of your grandma, boy, or John Sartoris will skin you alive. And if he don't, I will!" When the wagon straightened out, he began to hobble along be­side it. "And when you see him, tell him I said to leave the horses go for a while and kill the blue-bellied sons of bitches. Kill them!"

"Yes, sir," I said. We went on.

"Good thing for his mouth Granny ain't here," Ringo said. She and Joby were waiting for us at the Comp-sons' gate. Joby had another basket with a napkin over it and a bottle neck sticking out and some rose cut­tings. Then Ringo and I sat behind again, and Ringo turning to look back every few feet and saying, "Good­bye, Jefferson. Memphis, how-de-do!" And then we came to the top of the first hill and he looked back, quiet this time, and said, "Suppose they don't never get done fighting."

"All right," I said. "Suppose it." I didn't look back. At noon we stopped by a spring and Granny opened

50 THE UN VANQUISHED

the basket, and she took out the rose cuttings and handed them to Ringo.

"Dip the roots into the spring after you drink," she said. They had earth still on the roots, in a cloth; when Ringo stooped down to the water, I watched him pinch off a little of the dirt and start to put it into his pocket. Then he looked up and saw me watching him, and he made like he was going to throw it away. But he didn't.

"I reckon I can save dirt if I want to," he said. "It's not Sartoris dirt though," I said. "I know hit," he said. "Hit's closer than Memphis dirt though. Closer than what you got."

"What'll you bet?" I said. He looked at me. "What'U you swap?" I said. He looked at me. "What you swap?" he said.

"You know," I said. He reached into his pocket and brought out the buckle we had shot off the Yankee saddle when we shot the horse last summer. "Gimmit here," he said. So I took the snuff box from my pocket and emptied half the soil (it was more than Sartoris earth; it was Vicksburg too: the yelling was in it, the embattled, the iron-worn, the supremely invincible) into his hand. "I know hit," he said. "Hit come from 'hind the smokehouse. You brung a lot of hit." ^ "Yes," I said. "I brought enough to last." *-We soaked the cuttings every time we stopped and opened the basket, and there was some of the food left on the fourth day because at least once a day we stopped at houses on the road and ate with them, and on the second night we had supper and breakfast at the same house. But even then Granny would not come in­side to sleep. She made her bed down in the wagon by the chest and Joby slept under the wagon with the gun beside him like when we camped on the road. Only it would not be exactly on the road but back in the woods a way; on the third night Granny was in the wagon and Joby and Ringo and I were under the wagon and some cavalry rode up and Granny said, "Joby! the gun!" and somebody got down and took the gun away from Joby and they lit a pine knot and we saw the gray.