William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

“Why didn’t you wait on the roadside until a wagon came along?” old Bayard demanded in that overloud tone of the deaf. “Always some damn feller with a field full of weeds coming to town.”

“I reckon I mought,” the other agreed. “But gittin’ here so quick would spile my holiday. I ain’t like you town-folks. I ain’t got so much time I kin hurry it.” He stowed the handkerchief away and rose and laidhis parcel carefully on the mantel, and from his shirt he produced a small object wrapped in a clean frayed rag. Beneath his tedious and unhurried fingers there emerged a tin snuff-box polished long since to the dull soft sheen of satin or silver by handling and age. Old Bayard sat in his white linen and watched, watched him quietly as he removed the cap of the box and laid this, too, carefully aside.

“Now, turn yo’ face to the light,” old man Falls directed.

“Loosh Peabody says that stuff will give me blood poisoning, Will.”

The other continued his slow preparations, his blue innocent eyes steadily following the movement of his hands. “Loosh Peabody never said that,” he corrected quietly. “One of them young doctors told you that, Bayard. Lean yo’ face to the light.” But old Bayard sat yetwell back in his chair, his hands on the arms of it, watching the other with his piercing old eyes soberly, a little wistful; eyes filled with un-nameable things like the eyes of old lions, and intent.

Old man Falls poised a dark gob of his ointment on one finger and raised his head. Then he set the box carefully on his vacated chair and he put his hand on old Bayard’s face, put old Bayard still resisted, though passively, watching him with his unutterable things; and the other drew him firmly but gently nearer the light.

“Come on, here. I’m too old to waste any time hurtin’ folks. Hold still, now, so’ I won’t spot yo’ face. My hand ain’t steady enough to lift a rifle ball offen a hot stove no mo’.”

He submitted then, and old man Falls patted the salve onto the wen with small deft touches. Then he took up the bit of cloth and removed the surplus from the wen and wiped his fingers and dropped therag onto the hearth and knelt stiffly and touched a match to it. “We allus do that,” he explained. “My granny got that ‘ere from a Choctaw woman nigh a hundred year ago. Ain’t none of us never told what hit air nor left no after trace.” He rose stiffly again and dusted his knees. He recapped the box with the same unhurried laborious care and put it away and raised his parcel from the mantel and resumed his chair.

“Hit’ll turn black, and long’s hit’s black, hit’s workin’. Don’t put no water on yo’ face befo’ mawnin’, andI’ll come in again in ten days and dose hit again, and on the—” He brooded a moment, computing slowly on his gnarled fingers; his lips movedbut with no sound. “—ninth day of July, hit’ll drop off. And don’t you let Miss Jenny nor none of them doctors worry you about it.”

He sat with his over ailed knees close together. The package lay on his knees and he now opened it after the ancient laborious ritual, picking with a sort of patient indomitability at the pink knot of the cord until a younger person would have screamed Old Bayard merely lit a cigar and propped his feet on the fireplace, and in good time old man Falls solved the knot and removed the string and laid it across his chair-arm. It fell to the floor and lie bent and fumbled it into his blunt fingers and laid it again across the chair-arm and watched it a while lest it fall again, then he opened the parcel First was his carton of tobacco, and he removed a plug and sniffed it, turned it about in his hand and sniffed it again. But without biting into it he laid it and its fellows aside and delved further yet lie spread open the throat of the resulting paper bag, and his innocent boy’s eyes gloated soberly into it.

“I’ll declare,” he said. “Sometimes I’m rightashamed for havin’ sech a consarned sweet tooth. Hit don’t give me no rest a-tall.” Still carefully guarding the other objects on his close knees he tilted the sack and shook two or three of the striped, shrimp-like things into his palm, returned all but one, which he put into his mouth. “I’m afeard now I’ll be loosin’ my teeth someday and I’ll have to start gummin’‘em or eatin’ soft ones. I never did relish soft candy.” His leathery cheek bulged slightly, with slow regularity like a respiration as he chewed against the hard substance. He peered into the sack again, and he sat weighing it in his hand.

“They was times back in sixty-three and -fo’ whena feller could a bought a section of land and a niggerwith this yere bag of candy. Lots of times I mind,with everything goin’ agin us like, and sugar andcawfee gone and food scace, eatin’ stole cawn whenthey was any to steal and ditch weeds ef they wa’nt;bivouacin’ at night in the rain, more’n like...” Hisvoice trailed away among ancient phantoms of thesoul’s and the body’s tribulations, into those regionsof glamqrous and useless endeavor where such ghostsabide. Then he chuckled and chewed his peppermintagain.

“I mind that day we was a-dodgin’ around Grant’s army, headin’ nawth. Grant was at Grenada then, and Colonel had rousted us boys out and we taken hoss and jined Van Dorn’s cavalry down that-a-way. That was when Colonel had that ‘ere silver stallion. Grant was still at Grenada, but Van Dora lit out one day, headin’ nawth; why, us boys didn’t know. Colonel mought have knowed, but he never told us. Not that we keered much, long’s we was headin’ to’ds home.

“So our comp’ny was ridin’ along to ourselves, goin’ to jine up with the balance of ‘em later. Leastways the rest of ‘em thought we was goin’ to jine ‘em. But Colonel never had no idea of doin’ that; his cawn hadn’t been laid by yit, and he was goin’ home fer a spell. We wasn’t runnin’ away,” he explained. “We knowed Van Dorn could handle ‘em all right fer a week or two. He usually done it. He was a putty good man,” old man Falls said. “A putty good man.’’

“They were all pretty good men in those days,” old Bayard agreed. “But you damn fellers quit fighting and went home too often.”

“Well,” old man Falls replied defensively, “even ef the hull country’s overrun with bears, a feller can’t hunt bears all the time. He’s got to quit once in a while, ef hit’s only to feed and rest up the dogs and hosses. But I reckon them dogs and bosses could stay on the trail long as any. ‘Course everybody couldn’tkeep up with that ‘ere mist-colored stallion. They wa’nt but one animal in the Confedrit army could tech him—that last hoss Zeb Fothergill fotch back outen one of Sherman’s cavalry pickets on his last trip into Tennessee.

“Nobody never did know what Zeb done on them trips of his’n; Colonel claimed hit was jest to steal hosses. But he never got back with lessen one. One time he come back with seven of the orneriest critters that ever walked, I reckon. He tried to swap ‘em fer meat and cawn-meal, but wouldn’t nobody have ‘em; then he tried to give ‘em to the army, but even the army wouldn’t have ‘em. So he finally turned ‘em loose and requisitioned to Joe Johnston’s haidquarters fer ten hosses sold to Forrest’s cavalry. I don’t know ef he ever got an answer. Nate, Forrest wouldn’t a had them hosses. I doubt ef they’d even a et ‘em in Vicksburg...I never did put no big reliability in Zeb Fothergill, him comin’ and goin’ by hisself likehe done. But he knowed hosses, and he usually fotch a good ‘un home ever’ time he went away to’ds the war. But he never got another’n like this befo’.”

The bulge receded from his cheek and he produced his pocket knife and cut a neat segment from his plug of tobacco and put it in his mouth. Then he rewrapped his parcel and tied the string about it again. The ash of old Bayard’s cigar trembled delicately about its glowing heart, but did not fall; his crossed elastic-sided boots gleamed against the hearth edge.