William Faulkner - Unvanquished

"Granny!" I said. "Granny!" But it seemed like none of us could move at all; we just had to stand there looking at Granny with her hand at her breast and her face looking like she had died and her voice like she had died too:

"Louvinia! What is this? What are they trying to tell me?" That's how it happened—like when once the musket decided to go off, all that was to occur after­ward tried to rush into the sound of it all at once. I could still hear it, my ears were still ringing, so that Granny and Ringo and I all seemed to be talking far away. Then she said, "Quick! Here!" and then Ringo and I were squatting with our knees under our chins, on either side of her against her legs, with the hard points of the chair rockers jammed into our backs and her skirts spread over us like a tent, and the heavy feet

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coming in and—Lpuvinia told us afterward—the Yan kee sergeant shaking the musket at Granny and saying "Come on, grandma! Where are they! We saw ther run in here!"

We couldn't see; we just squatted in a kind of fain gray light and that smell of Granny that her clothe and bed and room all had, and Ringo's eyes lookin like two plates of chocolate pudding and maybe both c us thinking how Granny had never whipped us for anj thing in our lives except lying, and that even when i wasn't even a told lie, but just keeping quiet, how sh would whip us first and then make us kneel down an kneel down with us herself to ask the Lord to forgrv us.

"You are mistaken," she said. "There are no childre in this house nor on this place. There is no one here i all except my servant and myself and the people i the quarters."

"You mean you deny ever having seen this gun tx fore?"

"I do." It was that quiet; she didn't move at all, si ting bolt upright and right on the edge of the chair, t keep her skirts spread over us. "If you doubt me, yo may search the house."

"Don't you worry about that; I'm going to. ... Sen some of the boys upstairs," he said. "If you find ar locked doors, you know what to do. And tell them fe lows out back to comb the barn and the cabins too."

"You won't find any locked doors," Granny said. 'V least, let me ask you------"

"Don't you ask anything, grandma. You set still. Be ter for you if you had done a little asking before yc sent them little devils out with this gun."

"Was there------" We could hear her voice die aw£

and then speak again, like she was behind it with switch, making it talk. "Is he—it—the one who------"

"Dead? Hell, yes! Broke his back and we had to sho< him!"

"Had to—you had—shoot------" I didn't know hon

fied astonishment either, but Ringo and Granny and were all three it.

"Yes, by God! Had to shoot him! The best horse in tl

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whole army! The whole regiment betting on him for

next Sunday------" He said some more, but we were not

listening. We were not breathing either, glaring at each other in the gray gloom, and I was almost shouting, too, until Granny said it:

"Didn't—they didn't------ Oh, thank God! Thank

God!"

"We didn't------" Ringo said.

"Hush!" I said. Because we didn't have to say it, it was like we had had to hold our breaths for a long time without knowing it, and that now we could let go and breathe again. Maybe that was why we never heard the other man, when he came in, at all; it was Louvinia that saw that, too—a colonel, with a bright short beard and hard bright gray eyes, who looked at Granny sitting in the chair with her hand at her breast, and took off his hat. Only he was talking to the sergeant.

"What's this?" he said. "What's going on here, Harri­son?"

"This is where they run to," the sergeant said. "I'm searching the house."

"Ah," the colonel said. He didn't sound mad at all. He just sounded cold and short and pleasant. "By whose authority?"

"Well, somebody here fired on United States troops. I gyess this is authority enough." We could just hear the sound; it was Louvinia that told us how he shook the musket and banged the butt on the floor.

"And killed one horse," the colonel said.

"It was a United States horse. I heard the general say myself that if he had enough horses, he wouldn't al­ways care whether there was anybody to ride them or not. And so here we are, riding peaceful along the road, not bothering nobody yet, and these two little dev­ils------ The best horse in the army; the whole regi­ment betting------"

"Ah," the colonel said. "I see. Well? Have you found them?"

"We ain't yet. But these rebels are like rats when it comes to hiding. She says that there ain't even any chil­dren here."

"Ah," said the colonel. And Louvinia said how he

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looked at Granny now for the first tune. She said how she could see his eyes going from Granny's face down to where her skirt was spread, and looking at her skirt for a whole minute and then going back to her face. And that Granny gave him look for look while she lied. "Do I understand, madam, that there are no children in or about this house?"

"There are none, sir," Granny said.

Louvinia said he looked back at the sergeant. "There are no children here, sergeant. Evidently the shot came from somewhere else. You may call the men in and mount them."

"But, colonel, we saw them two kids run hi here! All of us saw them!"

"Didn't you just hear this lady say there are no chil­dren here? Where are your ears, sergeant? Or do you really want the artillery to overtake us, with a creek bottom not five miles away to be got over?"

"Well, sir, you're colonel. But if it was me was colo-

"Then, doubtless, I should be Sergeant Harrison. In which case, I think I should be more concerned about getting another horse to protect my wager next Sunday than over a grandchildless old lady"—Louvinia said his eyes just kind of touched Granny now and flicked away —"alone in a house which, in all probability—and for her pleasure and satisfaction, I am ashamed to say, I hope—I shall never see again. Mount your men and get along."

We squatted there, not breathing, and heard them leave the house; we heard the sergeant calling the men up from the barn and we heard them ride away. But we did not move yet, because Granny's body had not relaxed at all, and so we knew that the colonel was still there, even before he spoke—the voice short, brisk, hard, with that something of laughing behind it: "So you have no grandchildren. What a pity in a place like this which two boys would enjoy—sports, fishing, game to shoot at, perhaps the most exciting game of all, and none the less so for being, possibly, a little rare this near the house. And with a gun—a very dependable weapon, I see." Louvinia said how the sergeant had set

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THE UNVANQUISHED

the musket hi the corner and how the colonel looked at it now, and now we didn't breathe. "Though I under­stand that this weapon does not belong to you. Which is just as well. Because if it were your weapon—which it is not—and you had two grandsons, or say a grandson and a Negro playfellow—which you have not—and if this were the first tune—which it is not—someone next time might be seriously hurt. But what am I doing? Trying your patience by keeping you in that uncom­fortable chair while I waste my time delivering a homily suitable only for a lady with grandchildren—or one grandchild and a Negro companion." Now he was about to go, too; we could tell it even beneath the skirt; this time it was Granny herself:

"There is little of refreshment I can offer you, sir. But if a glass of cool milk after your ride------"

Only, for a long time he didn't answer at all; Lou-vinia said how he just looked at Granny with his hard bright eyes and that hard bright silence full of laughing. "No, no," he said. "I thank you. You are taxing your­self beyond mere politeness and into sheer bravado."