William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

He went on, then in a mounting swoop like a niggard zoom the cemetery with his great-grandfather in pompous effigy gazing out across the valley and his railroad, flashed past, and he thought of old Simon trudging along the dusty road toward home, clutching his rabbit’s foot, and again he felt savage and ashamed.

Then town among its trees, its shady streets like green tunnels along which tight lives accomplished their peaceful tragedies, an£ he closed the muffler and at a sedate pace he approached the square. The clock on the courthouse raised its four faces above the bowering elms, in glimpses seen between arching vistas of bordering oaks. Ten minutes to twelve. At twelve exactly his grandfather would repair to his office in the rear of the bank and there he would drink the pint of buttermilk which he brought inwith him every morning in a vacuum bottle, then for an hour he would sleep on the sofa in a dark corner of the room. As Bayard turned onto the square the tilted chair in the bank door was already vacant, and he slowed his car and eased it into the curb before a propped sandwich board. Fresh Catfish Today the board stated in letters of liquefied chalk, and through the screen doors behind it came a smell of refrigerated food—cheese and pickle, with a faint overtone of fried grease.

He stood for a moment on the sidewalk while the noon throng parted and flowed about him. Negroes slow and aimless as figures of a dark placid dream, with an animal odor, murmuring and laughing among themselves. There was in their consonantless murmuring something ready with mirth, in their laughter something grave and sad; country people— men in overalls or corduroy or khaki and without neckties, women in shapeless calico and sunbonnets and snuff-sticks; groups of young girls in stiff mail-order finery, the young heritage of their bodies’ grace dulled already by self-consciousness and labor and unaccustomed high heels and soon to be obscured forever by child-bearing; youths and young men in cheap tasteless suits and shirts and caps, weather-tanned and clean-limbed as race horses and a little belligerently blatant. Against the wall squatting a blind negro beggar with a guitar and a wire frame holding a mouthorgan to his lips, patterned the background of smells and sounds with a plaintive reiteration of rich monotonous chords, rhythmic as a mathematical formula but without music. He was a man of at least forty and his was that patient resignation of many sightless years, yet he too wore filthy khaki with a corporal’s stripes on one sleeve and a crookedly sewn Boy Scout emblem on the other, andon his breast a button commemorating the fourthLiberty Loan and a small metal brooch bearing two gold stars, obviously intended for female adornment. His weathered derby was encircled by an officer’s hat cord, and on the pavement between his feet sat a tin cup containing a dime and three pennies.

Bayard sought a coin in his pocket, and the beggar sensed his approach and his tune became a single repeated chord but without a break in the rhythm until the coin clinked into the cup, and still without a break in the monotony of his strumming and the meaningless strains’ of his mouthorgan, his left hand dropped groping a little to the cup and read the coin in a single motion, then once more the guitar and mouthorgan resumed their blended pattern. As Bayard turned away someone spoke at his side—a broad squat man with a keen weathered face and gray temples. He wore corduroys and boots, and his body was the supple body of a horseman and his brown still hands were the hands that horses love. MacCallum his name, one of a family of six brothers who lived eighteen miles away in the hills, and with whom Bayard and John hunted foxes and ‘coons during their vacations.

“Been hearing about that car of yours,” MacCallum said. “That’s her, is it?” He stepped down from the curb and moved easily about the car, examining it, his hands on his hips. “Too much barrel,”he said, “and she looks heavy in the withers. Quinsy. Have to use a curb on her, I reckon?”

“I don’t,” Bayard answered “Jump in and I’ll show you what she’ll do.”

“No, much obliged,” the other answered. He stepped onto the pavement again, among the negroes gathered to stare at the car. Along the street there came now in small groups children going home fromschool during the noon recess—little girls with colored boxes and books and skipping-ropes and talking sibilantly among themselves of intense feminine affairs, and boys in various stages of déshabille shouting and scuffling and jostling the little girls, who shrank together and gave the boys cold reverted glares. “Going to eat a snack,” he explained. He crossed the pavement and opened the screen door. “You ate yet?” he asked, looking back. “Come on in a minute, anyway.” And he patted his hip significantly.

The store was half grocery and confectionery and half restaurant. A number of customers stood about the cluttered but clean front section, with sandwiches and bottles of soda water, and the proprietor bobbed his head with flurried, slightly distrait affability above the counter to them. The rear half of the room was filled with tables at which a number of men and a woman or so, mostly country people, sat eating with awkward and solemn decorum. Next to this was the kitchen, filled with frying odors and the brittle hissing of it, where two negroes moved about like wraiths in a blue floating lethargy of smoke. They crossed this room also and MacCallum opened a door set in an outthrust angle of the wall and they entered a smaller room, or rather a large disused closet. There was a small window high in the wall, and a bare table and three or four chairs, and presently the younger of the two negroes followed them.

“Yes, suh, Mr. MacCallum and Mr. Sartoris.” He set two freshly rinsed glasses, to which water yet adhered in sliding drops, on the table and stood drying his hands on his apron. He had a broad untroubled black face, a reliable sort of face.

“Lemons and sugar and ice,” MacCallum said.

“You don’t want none of that soda pop, do you?” heasked Bayard. The negro bowed and was turning away when MacCallnm addressed Bayard, whereupon he paused with his hand on the door.

“No,” Bayard answered.“Rather have a toddy myself.”

“Yes, suh,” the negro agreed. “Y’all wants a toddy.” Someway he contrived to imply a grave approval, a vindication, and he bowed again with a sort of suave sense of the fine moment and turned door-ward again. Then he stepped aside as the proprietor: in a fresh apron entered at his customary distracted trot and stood rubbing his hands on his thighs.

“Morning, morning,” he said. “How’re you, Rafe? Bayard, I saw Miss Jenny and the old Colonel going up to Dr. Alford’s office the other day. Ain’t nothing wrong, is there?” His head was like an inverted egg; his hair curled meticulously away from the part in the center into two careful reddish-brown wings, like a toupee, and his eyes were a melting passionate brown.

“Come in here and shut that door,” MacCallum ordered, drawing the other into the room. He produced from beneath his coat a bottle of astonishing proportions and set it on the table. It contained a delicate amber liquid and the proprietor rubbed his hands on his thighs and his hot mild gaze gloated upon it.

“Great Savior,” he said, “where’d you have that demijohn hid? In your pants leg?” MacCallum uncorked the bottle and extended it and the proprietor leaned forward and smelled it, his eyes closed. He sighed.

“Henry’s” MacCallumsaid; “Best run he’s made yet. Reckon you’d take a drink if Bayard and me was to hold you?” The other cackled loudly, unctuously.

“Ain’t he a comical feller, now?” he asked Bayard. “Some joker, ain’t he?” He glanced at the table. “You ain’t got but two glasses. Wait till I—” Someone tapped at the door; the proprietor leaned his conical head to it and waggled his hand at them. MacCallum concealed the bottle without haste as the proprietor opened the door. It was the negro, with another glass, and lemons and sugar and a cracked bowl of ice. The proprietor admitted him.