William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

And he sat now in his clean, faded overalls, with the small parcel on his knees, telling Bayard about the automobile that had passed him that morning on the road Everyone had seen or heard of young Bayard’s low gray car, but old man Falls was the first to tell his grandfather how he drove it. Old Bayard sat utterly still, watching the other with his fierce old eyes until he had finished.

“Are you sure who it was?” he asked.

“Hit passed me too fast for me to tell whether they was anybody in hit a-tall or not I asked when I fetched town who ‘twas. Seems like everybody knows how fast he runs hit except you.?

Old Bayard sat quietly for a time. He raised his voice:

“Byron.”

The door opened quietly and the book-keeper,Snopes, entered—a thin, youngish man with hairyhands and covert close eyes that looked always asthough he were just blinking them, though younever saw them closed.

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” he said in a slow, nasal voice without inflection.

“‘Phone out to my house and tell my grandson not to touch that car until I come home.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel” And he was gone as silently as he entered.

Old Bayard slammed around in his swivel chair again and old man Falls leaned forward, peering at his face.

“What’s that ‘ere wen you got on yo’ face, Bayard?” he asked.

“What?” Bayard demanded, then he raised his hand to a small bump which the suffusion of his face had brought into white relief. “Here? I don’t know what it is. It’s been there about a week, but I don’t reckon it’s anything.”

“Isit gittin’ bigger?” the other asked. He rose and laid his parcel down and extended his hand. Old Bayard drew his head away.

“It’s nothing,” he repeated testily. “Let it alone.” But old man Falls put the other’s hand aside and touched the place with his fingers.

“H’m,” he said. “Hard’s a rock Hit’ll git bigger, too. I’ll watch hit, and when hit’s right, I’ll take hit off. Hit ain’t ripe, yit.” The book-keeper appeared suddenly and without noise beside them.

“Yo’ cook says him and Miss Jenny is off car-ridin’ somewheres. I left yo’ message.”

“Jenny’s with him, you say?”

“That’s what yo’ cook says,” the book-keeper repeated in his inflectionless voice.

“Well, allright.”

The book-keeper withdrew and old man Falls picked up his parcel. I’ll be gittin’ on too,” he said. “I’ll come in next week and take a look at hit. you better let hit alone till I git back.” He followed the book-keeper from the room, and presently old Bayard rose and stalked through the lobby and tilted his chair in the door again.

That afternoon when he arrived home, the car was not in sight, nor did his aunt answer his call. He mounted to his room and put on his riding-boots and lit a cigar, but when he looked down from his window into the back yard, neither Isom nor the saddled mare was visible. He tramped down the stairs and on through the house and entered the kitchen, and there Caspey sat, eating and talking to Isom and Elnora.

“And one mo’ time me and another boy—” Caspey was saying. Then Isom saw Bayard, and rose from his seat in the woodbox corner and his eyesrolled whitely in his bullet head. Elnora paused also with her broom, but Caspey turned his head without rising, and still chewing steadily he blinked his eyes at Bayard in the door.

“I sent you word a week ago to come on out here at once, or not to come at all,” Bayard said. “Did you get it?” Caspey mumbled something, still chewing, and old Bayard came into the room, “Get up from there and saddle my horse.”

Caspey turned his back deliberately and raised his glass of buttermilk from the table. “Git on, Caspey,” Elnora hissed at him.

“I ain’t workin’ here,” he answered, just beneath Bayard’s deafness. He turned to Isom. “Whyn’t you go’n git his hoss fer him? Ain’t you workin’ here?”

“Caspey, fer Lawd’s sake!” Elnora implored. “Yes, suh, Cunnel; he’s gwine,” she said loudly.

“Who, me?” Caspey said. “Does I look like it?” He raised the glass steadily to his mouth, then Bayard moved again and Caspey lost his nerve and rose quickly before the other reached him, and crossed the kitchen toward the door,but with sullen insolence in the very shape of his back. As he fumbled with the door Bayard overtook him.

“Are you going to saddle that mare?” he demanded.

“Ain’t gwine skip it, big boy,” Caspey answered, just below Bayard’s deafness.

“What?”

“Oh, Lawd, Caspey!” Elnora moaned. Isom crouched into his corner. Caspey raised his eyesswiftly to Bayard’s face and opened the screen door.

“I says, I ain’t gwine skip it,” he repeated, raising his voice. Simon stood at the foot of the steps, the setter beside him, gaping his toothless mouth up at them, and old Bayard reached a stick of stove wood from the box at his hand and knocked Caspey through the door and down the steps at his father’s feet.

“Now, you go saddle that mare,” he said.

Simon helped his son to rise and led him, a little unsteadily, toward the barn and out of earshot, while the setter watched them, gravely interested. “I kep’ tellin’ you dem new-fangled war notions of yo’n wa’n’t gwine ter work on dis place,” he said angrily. “And you better thank de Lawd fer makin’ yo’ haid hard ez it is. You go’n and git dat mare, en save dat nigger freedom talk fer town-folks: dey mought stomach it. Whut us niggers want ter be free fer, anyhow? Ain’t we got ez many white folks now ez we kin suppo’t?”

That night at supper, old Bayard looked at his grandson across the roast of mutton. “Will Falls told me you passed him on the Poor House hill running forty miles an hour today.”

“Forty fiddlesticks,” Miss Jenny said promptly, “it was fifty-four. I was watching the—what do you call it, Bayard? speedometer.”

Old Bayard sat with his head bent a little, watching his hands trembling on the carving knife and fork; hearing beneath the napkin tucked into his waistcoat, his heart a little too light and a little too fast; feeling Miss Jenny’s eyes upon him.

“Bayard,” she said sharply. “What’s that on your face?” He rose so suddenly at his place that his chairtipped over backward with a crash, and Ee tramped blindly from the room with his trembling hands and the light swift thudding of his heart.

“I know what you want me to do,” Miss Jenny told old Bayard across her newspaper. “You want me to let my housekeeping go to the dogs and spend all my time in that car, that’s what you want Well, I’m not going to do it I don’t mind riding with him now and then, but I’ve got too much to do with my time to spend it keeping him from raining that car fast Neck, too,” she added. She rattled the paper crisply.

She said: “Besides, you ain’t foolish enough to believe he’ll drive slow just because there’s somebody with him, are you? If you do think so, you’d better send Simon along. Lord knows Simon can spare the time. Since you quit using the carriage, if he does anything at all, I don’t know it” She read the paper again.

Old Bayard’s cigar smoked in his fingers.

“I might send Isom,” he said.

Miss Jenny’s paper rattled sharply and she stared at her nephew for a long moment “God in heaven, man, why don’t you put a block and chain On him and have done with it?”

“Well, didn’t you suggest sending Simon with him, yourself? Simon has his work to do, but all Isom ever does is saddle my horse once a day, and I can do that myself.”

“I was trying to be ironical,” Miss Jenny said. “God knows, I should have learned better by this time. But if you’ve got to invent something new for the niggers to do, you let it be Simon. I need Isom to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.” She rattled the paper. “Why don’t you come right out and tell him not to drive fast? A man that has to spend eight hours a day sitting in a chair in that bank door ought not to have to spend the rest of the afternoon helling around the country in an automobile if he don’t want to.”