William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

Then a final hill, and the road emerged from the trees and crossed the flat valley and joined the highway, and here they stopped while the sun blazed down on Bayard’s naked shoulders and bare head while he and the old negro wrangled as to whether they should drive him home or not, and Bayard swore and raged and suffered. At last he took the reins from the elder negro’s hands and swung the mules about himself . The negro continued to protest, querulously, until Bayard dug a banknote from his trousers and gave it to him and surrendered the lines, and they went on.

This last mile was the worst of all On all sides of them cultivated fields spread away to the shimmering hills: earth was saturated with heat and broken and turned and saturated again and drunken with it, exuding heat like an alcoholic’s breath. The trees along the road were sparse and but half grown, and the mules moved at a maddening walk in their own dust. His nerves had become inured to pain and had surrendered to it; he was conscious only of dreadful thirst and he knew that he was becoming light headed. The negroes too realized that he was goingout of his head, and the younger one crawled precariously forward and offered him his frayed straw hat. Bayard accepted it and put it on.

The moles with their comical, overlarge ears assumed fantastic shapes, merged into other shapes without significance or meaning; shifted and changed again. At times it seemed to him that they were travelling backward, that they would crawl terrifically past the same tree or telephone post time after time; and it seemed to him that the three of them and the rattling wagon and the two beasts were caught in a ceaseless and senseless treadmill, a motion without progress, forever and to no escape.

But at last and without his being aware of it, the wagon turned in between the iron gates, and shadow fell gratefully upon his naked shoulders, and he opened his eyes and his home swam and floated in a pale mirage like a huge serene shape submerged in water. The jolting stopped and the two negroes helped him down. He mounted the steps and crossed the veranda; in the hallway, after the outer glare, he could see nothing at all for a moment and he stood, a little dizzy and nauseated, blinking. Then Simon’s eyeballs rolled out of the obscurity.

“Whut in de Lawd’s name,” said Simon, “is you been into now?”

“Simon?” he said. He swayed a little; to keep on his feet he strode on again and blundered into something. “Simon?”

Simon moved swiftly and touched him. “I kep’ tellin’ you dat car ‘uz gwine to kill you; I kep’ tellin’ you!” Simon slid his arm about Bayard and they went on. At the stairs he tried to turn Bayard, but Bayard wouldn’t be turned. He continued on down the hall and entered his grandfather’s study and stopped, leaning against a chair-back.

“Keys,” he said thickly. “Aunt Jenny. Got to have drink.”

“Miss Jenny done gone to town wid Miss Benbow,” Simon answered. “Dey ain’t nobody here, ain’t nobody here a-tall ‘cep’ de niggers. I kep’ a-tellin’ you!” he moaned again, pawing at Bayard. “Dey ain’t no blood, dough. Come to de sofa and lay down, Mist’ Bayard.”

Bayard moved again, and Simon supported him, and Bayard lurched around the chair and slumped into it, clutching his chest “Dey ain’t no blood,” Simon babbled.

“Keys,” Bayard said again. “Get the keys.”

“Yessuh, I’ll git ‘um.” Simon flapped his distracted hands about Bayard. Bayard swore at him, and still moaning Dey ain’t no blood, he turned and scuttled from the room. Bayard sat forward, clutching his chest, and heard Simon mount the stairs, heard him on the floor overhead. Then he was back, and Bayard watched him open the desk and extract the silver-stoppered decanter and scuttle out again and return with a glass, to find Bayard leaning against the desk, drinking from the decanter. Simon helped him back to the chair and poured him a drink into the glass. Then he fetched him a cigarette and hovered futilely and distractedly about him. “Lemme git de doctuh, Mist’ Bayard.”

“No. Gimme another drink.”

Simon obeyed. “That’s three, already. Lemme go git Miss Jenny en de doctuh, Mist’ Bayard, please, suh.”

“No. Leave me alone. Get out of here.”

He drank that one. The nausea, the mirage shapes,were gone, and he felt better. At every breath hisside stabbed him with hot needles, so he was carefulto breathe shallowly. If he could only rememberthat...Yes, he felt much better, so he rose carefully and went to the desk and had another drink. Yes, that was the stuff for a wound, like Suratt had said. Like that time last year when he got that tracer in his belly and nothing would stay on his stomach except gin-and-milk. And this, this wasn’t anything: just a few caved slats. Patch his fuselage with a little piano wire in ten minutes. Not like Johnny. They were all going right into his thighs. Damn butcher wouldn’t even raise his sights a little. He’d have to remember to breathe shallowly.

He crossed the room slowly but steadily enough. Simon flitted in the dim hall before him, and he mounted the stairs slowly, holding to the rail while Simon watched him with strained distraction. He entered his room, the room that had been his and John’s, and stood for a while until he could breathe shallowly again. Then he crossed to the closet and opened it, and kneeling carefully, with his hand to his side, he opened the chest which was there. There was not much in it: a garment; a small leather-bound book; a shotgun shell to which was attached by a piece of wire a withered bear’s paw. It was John’s first bear, and the shell with which he had killed it in the river bottom near MacCallum’s when he was twelve years old. The book was a New Testament; on the flyleaf in faded brown: To my son, John, on his seventh birthday, March 16, 1900, from his Mother.’ He had one exactly like it; that was the year grandfather had Arranged for the morning local freight to stop and pick them up and carry them to town to start to school The garment was a canvas hunting coat, stained and splotched with what had once been blood and scuffed and torn with briers and smelling yet faintly of saltpeter.

Still kneeling, he lifted the objects out one by oneand laid them on the floor. He picked the coat up again, and its fading stale acridity drifted in his nostril?“Johnny,” he whispered, “Johnny.” Suddenly he raised the garment toward his face but halted it as sharply, and with the coat half raised he looked swiftly over his shoulder. But immediately he recovered himself and turned his head and lifted the garment and laid his face against it, defiantly and deliberately, and knelt so for a time.

Then he rose and gathered up the book and the trophy and the coat and crossed to his chest of drawers and took from the top of it a photograph. It was a picture of John’s Princeton eating club group, and he gathered this also tinder his arm and descended the stairs and passed put the back door. As be emerged Simon was just crossing the yard with the carriage, and as he passed the kitchen Elnora was crooning one of her mellow endless songs.

Behind the smoke-house squatted the black pot and the wooden tubs where Elnora did her washing in fair weather. She had been washing today; the clothes line swung with limp damp garments, and beneath the pot smoke yet curled from the soft wood ashes. He thrust the pot over with his foot and rolled it aside, and from the woodshed he fetched an armful of rich pine kindling and laid it on the ashes. Soon a blaze, pale in the sunny air; and when the wood was burning strongly he lid the coat and the Bible and the trophy and the photograph on the flames and prodded them and turned them until they were consumed. In the kitchen Elnora crooned mellowly as she labored; her voice came rich and plaintful and sad along the sunny reaches of the air. He must remember to breathe shallowly.