William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

But during Bayard’s time it was less and less in use, and slowly and imperceptibly it lost its jovial but stately masculinity, becoming by mutual and unspoken agreement a place for his wife and his son John’s wife and Miss Jenny to clean thoroughly twice a year and in which, preceded by a ritualistic unswaddling of brown holland, they entertained their more formal callers. This was its status up to the birth of his grandsons and the death of their parents, and it continued thus until his wife died. After that Miss Jenny bothered with formal callers but little and with the parlor not at all She said it gave her the creeps.

And so it stayed closed nearly all the time and slowly acquired an atmosphere of solemn and macabre fustiness and was referred to as the Parlor with a capital P. Occasionally young Bayard or John would open the door and peer into solemn obscurity in which the shrouded furniture loomed with a sort of ghostly benignance, like albino mastodons. But they did not enter; already in their minds the room was associated with death, an idea which even the hollyand tinsel of Christmas tide could not completely obscure. They were away at school by the time they reached party age, but even during vacations, though they had filled the house with the polite bedlam of their contemporaries, the room would be opened only on Christmas eve. And after they had gone to England in ‘16 it was opened twice a year to be cleaned after the ancient ritual that even Simon had inherited from his forefathers, and to have the piano tuned or when Miss Jenny and Narcissa Benbow spent a forenoon or afternoon there, and formally not at all.

The furniture loomed shapelessly in its dun shrouds; the piano alone was uncovered, and the younger woman drew the bench up and removed her hat and let it slip to the floor beside her. Miss Jenny set her basket down and from the gloom beside the piano she drew a straight, hard chair, uncovered also, and sat down and removed her felt hat from her trim white head. Light came through the open door, and faintly through the heavy maroon-and-lace curtains, but it only served to enhance the obscurity and render more shapeless the hooded anonymous furniture.

But behind these dun bulks and in all the corners of the room there waited, as actors stand within the wings beside the waiting stage, figures in crinoline and hooped muslin and silk; in stocks and flowing coats; in grey too, with crimson sashes and sabres in gallant sheathed repose—Jeb Stuart himself perhaps, on his glittering garlanded bay or with his sunny hair falling upon fine broadcloth beneath the mistletoe and holly boughs of Baltimore in ‘58. Miss Jenny sat with her uncompromising grenadier’s back and held her hat upon her knees and fixed herself to look on.Narcissa’s white dress was pliant as light against the gloom and as serene, and her hands touched chords from the keyboard and drew them together and rolled the curtain back upon the scene.

In the kitchen Caspey was having breakfast while Simon his father, and Elnora his sister, and Isom his nephew (still wearing the uniform) watched him. He had been Simon’s: understudy in the stables and general handy-man about the place, doing all the work Simon managed, through the specious excuse of decrepitude, to slough off onto his shoulders and that Miss Jenny could devise for him and which he could not evade. Bayard Sartoris also employed him in the fields occasionally. Then the draft had got him and bore him to France and the St. Sulpice docks as one of a labor battalion, where he did what work corporals and sergeants managed to slough off onto his unmilitary shoulders and that white officers could devise for him and which he could not evade.

Thus all the labor about the place devolved upon Simon and Isom, but Miss Jenny kept Isom piddling about the garden so much of the time that Simon was soon as bitter- against- the. War Lords as any professional Democrat. Meanwhile Caspey was working a little and trifling with continental life in its martial mutations rather to his future detriment, for at last the tumult died and the captains departed and left a vacuum filled with the usual bitter bickering of Armageddon’s heirs-at-law; and Caspey returned to his native land a total loss, sociologically speaking, with a definite disinclination toward labor, honest or otherwise, and two honorable wounds incurred in a razor-hedged crap game. But return he did, to his father’s querulous satisfaction and Elnora’s and Isom’s admiration, and he now sat in the kitchen, telling them about the war.

“I don’t take nothin’ fum no white folks no mo’,” he was saying. “War done changed all dat. If us colored folks is good enough to save France fum de Germans, den us is good enough to have de same rights de Germans has. French folks thinks so, anyhow, and if America don’t, dey’s ways of learnin’‘um. Yes, suh, it wuz de colored soldier saved France and America bofe. Black regiments kilt mo’ Germans dan all de white armies put together, let ‘lone un-loadin’steamboats all day long fer a dollar a day.”

“War ain’t hurt dat big mouf o’ yo’n, anyhow,” Simon said.

“War unloosed de black man’s mouf,”Caspey corrected. “Give him de right to talk. Kill Germans, den do yo’ oratin’, dey tole us. Well, us done it.”

“How many you kilt, Unc’Caspey?” Isom asked deferentially.

“I ain’t never bothered to count ‘um up. Been times I kilt mo’ in one mawnin’ dan dey’s folks on dis whole place. One time we wuz down in de cellar of a steamboat tied up to de bank, and one of dese sub-mareems sailed up and stopped by de boat, and all de white officers run up on de bank and hid. Us boys didn’t know dey wuz anything wrong ‘twell folks started clambin’ down de ladder. We never had no guns wid us at de time, so when we seed dem green legs comin’ down de ladder we crope up to de een of de ladder, and as dey come down one of de boys would hit ‘um over de haid wid a stick of wood an another would drag ‘um outen de way and cut dey th’oat wid a razor. Dey wuz about thirty of ‘um…Elnora, is dey any mo’ of dat coffee lef’ ?”

“Sho,” Simon murmured. Isom’s eyes popped quietly and Elnora removed the coffee pot from the stove and refilled Caspey’s cup.

Caspey drank coffee for a moment. “And another time me and a boy wuz gwine along a road. We got tired unloadin’ steamboats all day long, so one day de Captain’s dog-robber foun’ whar he kep’ dese here unloaded passes and he took a hanful of ‘um, and me and him wuz on de road to town when a truck come along and de boy axed us did us want a lif. He wuz a school boy, so he writ on three of de passes whenever we come to a place dat mought be M.P. invested, and we got along fine, ridin’ about de country oil dat private truck, ‘twell one mawnin’ we looked out whar de truck wuz and dey wuz a M.P. settin’ on de seat whilst de truck boy wuz tryin’ to explain to him. So we turned de other way and lit out walkin’. After dat we had to dodge de M.P. towns, ‘case me and de other boy couldn’t write on de passes.

“One day we wuz gwine along a road. It wuz a busted-up road and it didn’t look much like M.P. country, but dey wuz some of ‘um in de las’ town us dodged, so we didn’t know us wuz so close to whar de fightin’ wuz gwine on ‘twell we turned a corner onto a bridge and come right onto a whole regiment of Germans, swimmin’ in de river. Dey seed us about de same time we seed dem and dived under de water, and me and de other boy grabbed up two machine guns settin’ dar and we sot on de bridge rail, and ev’y time a German stuck his haid up to take a new breaf, us shot him. It wuz jes’ like shoorin’ turkles in a slough. I reckon dey wuz clost to a hundred us kilt befo’ de machine guns run dry. Dat’s whut de Captain give me dis fer.” He drew from his pocket aflorid plated medal of Porto Rican origin, and Isom came quietly up to see it.