William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

But the room facing him remained dark after the first hour had passed. In the meantime a car entered the drive (he recognized it; he knew every car in town) and a man entered the house. The second hour passed and the room was still dark and still the car stood in the drive. Then the man emerged again and drove away, and a moment later the window facing him glowed suddenly and beyond the sheer curtains her figure moved across his vision. He watched her move about the room beyond the gauzy veil of the curtains, watched the shadowy motions of her disrobing. Then she passed out of his vision- But the light still burned and he lay with a still and infinite patience, lay so while another hour passed and another car stopped in the street and three men carrying an awkwardly shaped burden came up the drive and stepped into the moonlight beneath her window and stopped there; lay so until they played their music and went away again. When they had gone she came to the window and parted the curtains and stood for a while in the dark fallen wings of her hair, looking directly into his hidden eyes.

Then the curtains fell again, and once more she was a shadowy movement beyond them. Then the light went off, and he lay face down on the steep pitch of the garage roof, utterly motionless for a long time, darting from beneath his hidden face covert ceaseless glances, quick and darting and all-embracing as those of an animal.

To Narcissa’s house they came finally. They had visited the dark homes of all the other unmarried girls one by one and sat in the car while the negroes stood on the lawn with their blended instruments. Heads had appeared at darkened windows, sometimes lights went up; once they were invited in, but Hub and Mitch hung diffidently back, once refreshment was sent out to them, once they were heartily cursed by a young man who happened to be sitting with the young lady on the dark veranda. In the meantime they had lost the breather cap, and as they moved from house to house all six of them drank fraternally from the jug, turn and turn about. At last theyreached the Benbows’ and the negroes crossed the lawn and played beneath the cedars. There was a light yet in one window, but none came to it.

The moon stood far down the sky. Its light was now a sourceless silver upon things, spent and a little coldly-wearied, and the world was empty for them as they rolled without lights along a street lifeless and fixed in black-and-silver as any street in the moon itself. Beneath stippled intermittent shadows they passed, crossed quiet intersections of streets dissolving away, occasionally a car motionless at the curb before a house. A dog crossed the street ahead of them trotting, and went on across a lawn and so from sight, intently but without haste, but saving this there was no movement anywhere. The square opened spaciously about the absinthe-cloudy mass of elms that framed the courthouse. Among them the round spaced globes were more like huge pallid grapes than ever. Above the exposed vault in each of the banks burned a single bulb; inside the hotel lobby, before which a few cars were aligned with their rears outward, another burned with a hushed glow. Other lights there were none.

They circled the courthouse, and a shadow moved near the hotel door and detached itself from shadow and came to the curb and stood there, its white shirt glinting dully between the lax wings of dark coat, and as the slow car swung away toward another street, the man hailed them* Bayard slowed and stopped and the man came through the blanched dust and laid his hand on the door.

“Hi, Buck,” Mitch said. “You’re up pretty late, ain’tyou?”

The man had a sober, good-natured horse’s face and he wore a metal star on his unbuttoned waistcoat. His coat humped slightly on his hip.

“What you boys doin’?” he asked “Been to a dance?”

“Havinga little party,” Bayard answered “Want a drink, Buck?”

“No, much obliged.”He stood with his hand on the door, gravely and good-naturedly serious. “Ain’t you fellers out kind of late, yourselves?”

“It is getting’ on,” Mitch agreed. The marshal lifted his foot to the running board. Beneath his hat his eyeswere in shadow. “We’re going in now” Mitch said. The other mused quietly, and Bayard added:

“Sure; we’re on our way home now.”

The officer stood quietly for a moment Then he moved his head slightly and spoke to the negroes.

“ Ireckon you boys are about ready to turn in, ain’t you?”

“Yes, suh,” the negroes answered in chorus, and they got out and lifted the bass viol out Bayard gave Reno a bill and they thanked him: and picked up the viol and departed quietly down a side street. The officer paid them no further heed.

“Ain’t that yo’ car in front of Rogers’café, Mitch?” he asked.

“I reckon so. That’s where I left it.”

“Well, suppose you run Hub out home, lessen he’s goin’ to stay in town tonight. Bayard better come withme.”

“Aw, hell, Buck,” Mitch protested.

“What for?” Bayarddemanded.

“His folks are worried about him,” the other said, addressing Mitch and Hub. “They ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since that stallion fell with him. Where’s yo’bandage, Bayard?”

“Took it off,” he answered shortly. “See here, Buck, we’re going to put Mitch out and then Hub and me are going straight home.”

“You been on yo’ way home ever since fo’o’clock, Bayard,” the officer replied soberly, “but you don’t seem to git no nearer there. I reckon you better come with me tonight, like yo’ aunt said.”

“Did Aunt Jenny tell you to arrest me?”

“They was worried about you, son. Miss Jenny just ‘phoned and asked me to kind of see if you was all right until mawnin’. So I reckon we better. You ought to went on home this evenin’.”

“Aw, have a heart, Buck,” Mitch repeated.

“I rather make Bayard mad than Miss Jenny,” the other answered patiently. “You boys go on, and Bayard better come with me.”

Mitch and Hub got out and Hub lifted out his jug and they said goodnight and crossed the square to where Mitch’s Ford stood before the restaurant The marshal got in beside Bayard, and he drove on. The jail was not far. It loomed presently above its walled court, square and implacable, its slitted upper windows brutal as sabre blows. They turned into an alley and the marshal got out and opened a gate. Bayard drove into the grassless littered court and stopped while the other crossed the yard to a small garage in which stood a Ford car. He backed this out and motioned Bayard forward. The garage was built to the Ford’s dimensions, and when the nose of Bayard’s long car touched the back wall, a good quarter of it was still out of doors.

“Better’n nothing though,” the marshal said.“Come on.” They entered through the kitchen, into the jailkeeper’s living quarters, and Bayard stood in a dark passage while the other fumbled with hushed sounds ahead of him. Then a light came on, and they entered a bleak neat room, with spare conglomerate furniture and a few articles of masculine apparel about.

“Say,” Bayard objected, “aren’t you giving me your bed?”

“Won’t need it befo’ mawnin’,” the other answered.“You’ll be gone, then. Want me to he’p you off with yo’dothes?”

“No. I’m all right.” Then, more graciously“Goodnight, Buck, and much obliged.”

“Goodnight,” the marshal answered. He closed the door behind him and Bayard removed his coat and shoes and his tie and snapped the light off and lay on the bed. Moonlight seeped into the room impalpably, refracted and sourceless the night was without any sound. Beyond the window a cornice rose in successive shallow steps; beyond that the sky was opaline and dimensionless. His head was dear and col A The whisky he had drunk was completely dead. Or rather, it was as though his head were one Bayard who watched curiously and impersonally that other Bayard who lay in a strange bed and whose alcohol-dulled nerves radiated like threads of ice through that body which he must drag forever about a bleak and barren world with him. “Hell,” he said, lying on his back, staring out the window where nothing was to be seen, waiting for sleep, not knowing if it would come or not, not caring a particular damn either way. Nothing to be seen, and the long long span of a man’s natural life. Three score and ten years, to drag a stubborn body about the world and cozen its insistent demands. Three score and ten, the Bible said. Seventy years. And hie was only twenty-six. Not much more than a third through it. Hell.