William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

“Yessum, I ‘speck so,” Simon agreed again. He now busied himself at the table, upon which the books they had read during the past two weeks werestacked one upon another; and as she rose swiftly and quietly he toppled the stack over and lunged clumsily at it and succeeded in knocking it to the floor with a random crash. Bayard opened eyes.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Why can’t you stay out of here?”

“Well, now!” Simon exclaimed in ready dismay. “Ef we ain’t woke ‘im up! Yes, suh, me en Miss Benbow done woke ‘im up. We wuz gwine save yo’ dinner, Mist’ Bayard, but I reckon you mought jes’ well eat it, long ez you ‘wake.”

“I reckon so,” Bayard agreed. “Bring it up, then. But damned if I wouldn’t like to know what objection you have to my sleeping. Thank God you were not born in a drove, like mosquitoes.”

“Des lissen at ‘im! Wake up quoilin’. You’ll feel better when you et some dinner,” he told the patient. Then to Narcissa: “Elnora got a nice dinner fer y’all.”

“Bring Miss Benbow’s up too” Bayard directed. “She can eat here. Unless you’d rather go down?”

In all his movements Simon was a caricature of himself, and he paused in an attitude of shocked reproof. “Dinin’ room mo’ suitable fer comp’ny,” he said.

“Yes, I’ll go down,” she decided promptly. “I won’t put Simon to that trouble.”

“’Tain’t no trouble,” Simon disclaimed. “I jes1 thought you mought like to git out fer a while, whar he can’t quoil at you. I’m gwine put it on de table right away, missy. You can walk right down.”

“Yes, I’ll come right down.” He departed, and she laid the book aside. “1tried to keep—”

“I know,” Bayard interrupted. “He won’t let anybody sleep through mealtime. And you’d better goand have yours, or he’ll carry everything back to thekitchen. And you don’t have to hurry back just onmy account,” he added .

“Don’t have to hurry back?” She paused at the door and looked back at him, “What do you mean?”

“I thought you might be tired of reading.”

“Oh,” she said, and looked away and stood fora moment clothed in her grave tranquility.

“Look here,” he said suddenly, “Are you sick or anything? Had you rather go home?”

“No,” she answered, rousing. “I’ll be back soon.”

She had her meal in lonely state in the sombre dining room while Simon, having dispatched Bayard’s tray by Isom, moved about the table and pressed dishes upon her with bland insistence or leaned against the sideboard and conducted a rambling monologue that seemed to have had no beginning and held no prospect of an end. It still flowed easily behind her as she went up the hall; as she stood in the door it was still going on, volitionless, as though entranced with its own existence and feeding on its own momentum. The salvia bed lay in an unbearable glare of white light, in clamorous splashes. Beyond it the drive shimmered with heat until, arched over with locust and oak, it descended in a cool green tunnel to the gates and the sultry ribbon of the highroad. Beyond the road fields stretched away shimmering, broken here and there by motionless clumps of trees, on to the hills dissolving bluely behind the July haze.

She leaned for a while against the door, in her white dress, her cheek against the cool, smooth plane of the jamb, in a faint draft that came steadily from somewhere, though no leaf stirred. Simon had finished in the dining room and a drowsy murmur of voices came up the hall from the kitchen, borneupon a thin stirring of air too warm to be called a breeze and upon which not even the cries of birds came.

At last she heard a movement from above stairs and she remembered Isom with Bayard’s tray, and she turned and did the parlor door ajar and entered. The shades were drawn closely, and the crack of light that followed her but deepened the gloom. She found the piano and stood beside it for a while, touching its dusty surface and thinking of Miss Jenny erect and indomitable in the gloom beside it. She heard Isom descend the stairs; soon his footsteps died away down the hall, and the drew out the bench and sat down and laid her arms along the closed lid.

Simon entered the dining room again, mumbling to himself and followed presently by Elnora, and they clashed dishes and talked again with a mellow rise and fall of consonantless and indistinguishable words. Then they went away, but still she sat with her arms along the cool wood, in the dark quiet room where even time stagnated a little.

The clock rang again, and she moved. I’ve been crying, she thought. “I’ve been crying , ” she said in a sad whisper that savored its own loneliness arid its sorrow. At the tall mirror beside the parlor door she stood and peered at her dim reflection, touching her eyeswith her fingertips. Then she went on, but paused again at the stairs, listening, then she mounted briskly and entered Miss Jenny’s room and went on to her bathroom and bathed her face.

Bayard lay as she had left him. He was smoking a cigarette now. Between puffs he dabbed it casually at a saucer on the bed beside him. “Well?” he said.

“You’re going to set the house on fire that way,” she told him, removing the saucer. “You know Miss Jenny wouldn’t let you do that.”

“I know it,” he agreed, a little sheepishly, and she dragged the table over and set the saucer on it.

“Can you reachit now?”

“Yes, thanks. Did they give you enough to eat?”

“Oh, yes. Simon’s very insistent, you know. Shall Iread some more, or had you rather sleep?”

“Read, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay awake, thistime.”

“Is that a threat?” He looked at her quickly as she seated herself and took up the book.

“Say, what happened to you?” he demanded. “You acted like you were all in before dinner. Simon give you a drink, or what?”

“No, not that bad.” And she laughed, a little wildly, and opened the book. “I forgot to mark the place,” she said, turning the pages swiftly.“Do you remember—No, you were asleep. Shall I go back to where you stopped listening?”

“No, just read anywhere. It’s all about alike, I guess. If you’ll move a little nearer, I believe I can stayawake.”

“Sleep, if you want to. I don’t mind,” she answered.

“Meaning you won’t come any nearer?” he asked, watching her with his bleak gaze. She moved her chair nearer and opened the book again and turned the pages on, slowing and scanning them.

“I think it was about here,” she said, with indecision. “Yes.” She read to herself for a line or two, then she began aloud, read to the end of the page, where her voice trailed off and she creased her brow; turned the nest page then flipped it back. “I read this once; I remember it now.” And she turned onward again, with frowning indecision. “I must have been asleep too,” she said, and she glanced at him with ludicrous and friendly bewilderment. “I seem to have read pages and pages...”

“Oh, begin anywhere,” he repeated.

“No: wait; here it is.” She read again, and he lay watching her. At times she raised her eyes swiftly and found his eyes upon her face, bleakly but quietly. After a while he was no longer watching her, and at last, finding that his eyes were closed, she thought he slept. She finished the chapter and stopped

“No,” he said drowsily. “Not yet.” Then, when she failed to resume, he opened his eyesand asked for a cigarette. She laid the book aside and struck a match for him, then picked up the book again.

So the afternoon wore away. The negroes had gone, and no sound was in the house save that of her voice, arid the clock at quarter hour intervals; outside the shadows slanted more and more, peaceful harbingers of evening. Bayard was asleep now, despite his contrary conviction, and after a while she ceased and laid the book away. The long shape of him lay stiffly in its cast beneath the sheet, and she examined his bold immobile face with a little shrinking and yet with fascination, and her own patient and hopeless sorrow overflowed (there was enough of it to anneal the world) in pity for him. He was so utterly without any affection for any place or person or thing at all; too—too...hard (no, that’s not the word—but cold eluded her; she could comprehend hardness, but not coldness) to find relief by crying, even. Better to have lost it^ than never to have had it at all, at all.