William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

“It won’t hurt you,” Bayard said impatiently. “Just put your hand on it and pull it down. That little bright jigger there.”

Simon peered doubtfully at the gadgets and things, but without coming any nearer, then he craned his neck further and stared over into the car. “I don’t see nothin’ but dis here big lever stickin’ up thoo de flo’. Dat ain’t de one you mentionin’,is it?” Bayard descended in two strides and leaned across the door and cut the switch under Simon’s curious blinking regard. The purr of the engine ceased.

“Well, now,” Simon said. “Is dat de one you wuz takin’ erbout?” He stared at the switch for a time, then he straightened up and stared at the hood. “She’s quit b’ilin’ under dar, ain’t she? Is dat de way you stops her?” But Bayard had mounted the steps again and entered the house. Simon lingered a while longer, examining the gleaming long thing, dynamic as a motionless locomotive and a little awesome, touching it lightly with his hand, then rubbing his hand on his thigh. He walked all around it, slowly, and touched the tires, mumbling to himself and shaking his head, then he returned to his salvia bed, where Bayard emerged presently and found him.

“Want to take a ride, Simon?” he asked.

Simon’s hoe ceased and he straightened up. “Who, me?”

“Sure. Come on.” Simon stood with his static hoe and rubbed his head slowly. Bayard continued to cajole him. “Come on, we’ll just go down the road a piece. It won’t hurt you.”

“Naw, suh, I don’t reckon if ‘s gwine ter hurt me,” he agreed But he allowed himself to be drawn gradually toward the car, staring at its various members with slow blinking speculation, now that it was about to become an actual quantity in his life. At the doorand with one foot raised to the running board he made a final stand against the subtle powers of evil judgment. “You ain’t gwine run it thoo de bushes like you and Isom done dat day y’all passed Cunnel and me on de road, is you?”

Bayard reassured him, and he got in slowly, with mumbled sounds of anticipatory concern, and he sat forward on the seat with his feet drawn under him, clutching the door with one hand and a lump of shirt on his chest with the other as the car moved down the drive. They passed through the gates and onto the road and still he sat hunched forward on the seat, as the car gained speed, and with a sudden convulsive movement he caught his hat just as it blew off his head.

“I ‘speck dis is fur ernough, ain’t it?” he suggested, raising his voice. He putted his hat down on his head, but as he released it he had to clutch wildly at it again, and he removed it and clasped it beneath his aim, and again his hand fumbled at his breast and became motionless clamped tightly about a lump of his shirt. “I got to weed dat bed dis mawnin’,” he said, louder stUL “Please, suh, Mist? Bayard,” lie added and his wizened old body sat yet further forward on the seat and he cast quick covert glances at the steadily increasing rush of hedgerow beside the road.

Then Bayard leaned forward and Simon watched his forearm tauten, and then they shot forward on a roar of sound like blurred thunderous wings. Earth, the unbelievable ribbon of the road, crashed beneath them and away behind into dust convolvulae: a dim moiling nausea of speed, and the roadside greenery was a tunnel rigid and streaming and unbroken. But he said no other word, and when Bayard glanced the lipless cruel derision of his teeth at him presently, Simon knelt in the floor, his old disreputable hattinder his arm and his hand clutching a fold of his shirt on Ins; breast Later the white man glanced at him again, and Simon was watching him and the blurred irises of his eyes were no longer a melting pupilless brown: they were red, and in the blast of wind they were unwinking and in them was that mindless phosphorescence of an animal’s. Bayard jammed the throttle down to the floor.

The wagon was movingdrowsily and peacefully along the road. It was drawn by two mules and was filled with negro women asleep in chairs. Some of them wore drawers. The mulesthemselves didn’t wake at all, but ambled sedately on with the empty wagon and the overturned chairs, even when the car crashed into the shallow ditch and surged back onto the road again and thundered on without slowing. The thunder ceased, but the car rushed on, and still under its own momentum it began to sway from side to side as Bayard tried to drag Simon’s hands from the switch. But Simon knelt in the floor with his eyes shut tightly and the air blast toying with the grizzled remnant of his hair, holding the switch off with both Sands.

“Turn it loose!” Bayard shouted.

“Dat’s de way you stops it, Lawd! Dat’s de way you stops it, Lawd!” Simon chanted, keeping the switch covered with his hands while Bayard hammered them with his fist. And he clung to it until the car slowed and stopped. Then he fumbled the door open and descended to the ground. Bayard called to him, but he went on back along the road at a limping rapid shuffle.

“Simon!” Bayard called, but Simon’s shabby figure went on stiffly, like a man who has been deprived of the use of his legs for a long time. “Simon!” Bayard called again, but he neither slowed nor looked back,and Bayard started the car again and drove on until he could torn it about. Simon now stood in the ditch at the roadside, and his head was bent above something that engaged his hands when Bayard overtook him and stopped.

“Come on here and get in,” he commanded

“Naw, suh. I’ll walk,” Simon answered.

“Jump in, now,” Bayard said sharply. He opened the door, but Simon stood in the ditch with his hand thrust inside his shirt, and Bayard could see that he was shaking uncontrollably. “Come on, you old fool; I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’ll walk home,” Simon repeated stubbornly but without heat. “You git on wid dat thing.”

“Ah, get in, Simon. I didn’t know I’d scared you that bad. I won’t do it again.”

“You git on home,” Simon said again. “Dey’ll be worried erbout you. You kin tell ‘um whar I’m at.”

Bayard watched him a moment, but Simon was not looking at him, and presently he slammed the door and went on. Nor did Simon look up even then, even when the car burst again into the thunder of roaring wings within a swirling cloud of dust that hung sluggishly after the thunder had died. Soon the wagon emerged from the dust, the mules now at a high flop-eared trot, and jingled past him, leaving behind it upon the dusty insect-rasped air a woman’s voice in a quavering wordless hysteria, passive and quavering and sustained. This faded slowly down the shimmering flat reaches of the valley and Simon removed from the breast of his shirt an object hung on a cord about his neck. It was small, vaguely globular and desiccated and was covered with soiled napped fur: the first joint of the hind leg of a rabbit, caught supposedly in a graveyard in the dark of the moon, and Simon rubbed it through the sweat on his forehead and on the back of his neck, then he returned it to his bosom. His hands were still trembling, and he put his hat on and got back onto the road and turned toward home through the dusty noon.

He drove on down the valley toward town, passing the never-closed iron gates and the serene white house among its old trees, and went on at speed. The sound of the unmuffled engine crashed into the dust and swirled it into lethargic bursting shapes, and faded punily across the fecund valley quick with cotton and corn. Just outside of town he came upon another negro, in a wagon, and he held the car straight upon the vehicle until the mules reared, tilting the wagon for an instant Then he swerved and whipped past with not an inch to spare, so close that the yelling negro in the wagon could see the lipless and say-age derision of his teeth.