William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

The afternoon drew on; evening was finding itself. She sat musing and still and quiet, gazing out of the window where no wind yet stirred the leaves, as though she were waiting for someone to tell her what to do next, and she lost all account of time other than as a dark unhurrying stream into whichshe gazed until the mesmerism of water conjured the water itself away. Lost, lost; yet never to have had itstall...

He made an indescribable sound, and she turned her head quickly and saw his body straining terrifically in its cast, and his clenched hands and the snarl of his teeth beneath his lifted lip, and as she sat blanched and incapable of further movement he made the sound again. His breath hissed between his teeth and he screamed, a wordless sound that sank into a steady violence of profanity; and when she rose at last and stood over him with her hands against her mouth, his body relaxed and from beneath his sweating brow he watched her with wide intent eyes in which terror lurked, and mad, cold fury, and questioning despair.

“He damn near got me, then,” he said in a dry, light voice, still watching her from beyond the facing agony in his widely opened eyes. “There was a sort of loop of ‘em around my chest, and every time he fired, he twisted the loop a little tighter...” He fumbled at the sheet and tried to draw it up to his face. “Can you get me a handkerchief? Some in that top drawer there.”

“Yes,” she said, “ yes? and she crossed to the chest Df drawers and held her trembling body upright by clinging to it, and found a handkerchief and returned. She tried to dry his brow and face, but finally he took the handkerchief from her and did it himself. “You scared me,” she moaned. “You scared me so bad. I thought...” .

“Sorry,” he said shortly. “I don’t do that on purpose. I want a cigarette.”

She gave it to him and struck the match, and he had to grasp her hand to hold the flame steady, andstill holding her wrist he drew deeply several times, She tried to free her wrist, but he held it in his hard fingers, and her trembling body betrayed her and she sank into her chair again, staring at him with ebbing terror and dread. He consumed the cigarette in deep, troubled draughts, and still holding her wrist, he began talking of his dead brother, without preamble, brutally. It was a brutal tale, without beginning, and crassly and uselessly violent and at times profane and gross, though its Very wildness robbed it of offensiveness just as its grossness kept it from obscenity. And beneath it all, the bitter struggling of his stubborn heart; and she sitting with her arm taut in his grasp and tier other hand pressed against hei mouth, watching him with terrified fascination.

“He was zig-zagging: that was the reason I couldn’t get on the Hun. Every time I got my sights on him, John’d barge in the way again. Then he quit zig-zagging. Soon as I saw him side-slip I knew it was all over. Then I saw the flame streaming out along his wing, and he was looking back at me. The Hun stopped shooting then, and all of us just lay there for a while. I couldn’t tell What John was up to until 1 saw him swing his legs outside. Then he thumbed his nose at me like he always was doing and flipped his hand at the Hun and kicked his machine out of the way and jumped. He jumped feet first. You can’t fall farfeet first, you know, and so pretty soon he sprawled out flat. There was a bunch of cloud right under us by that time, and he smacked on it right on his belly, Eke what we used to call gut-busters; in swimming. But I never could pick him up below the cloud. I know I was below it before he could have come out, because after I was down there his machine came diving out right at me, burning good. I pulled away from it, but the damn thing did a split-turn and rushed at me again, and I had to dodge. And so I never could pick him “up when he came out of the cloud. I went down fast, until I knew I was below him, then I looked again. But I couldn’t find him, and I thought maybe I hadn’t gone low enough, so I dived again. But I couldn’t pick him up. Then they started shooting at me from the ground—”

He talked on and her hand came away from her mouth and slid down her other arm and tugged at his fingers. “Please,”she whispered. “Please!” He ceased and looked at her and his fingers shifted, and just as she thought she was free they clamped again, and now both of her wrists were prisoners. She struggled, staring at him dreadfully, but he grinned his white cruel teeth at her and pressed her crossed arms down upon the bed beside him, “Please, please,’1 she implored, struggling; she could feel the flesh of her wrists, feel the bones turn in it like a loose garment; could see his bleak eyes and the cruel derision of his teeth, and suddenly she swayed forward in her chair and her head dropped between, her prisoned arms and she wept with hopeless and dreadful hysteria.

After a while there was no sound in the room again, and he looked at the dark crown of her head, and he lifted his hand and saw the braised discolorations where his hands had gripped her. But she did not move even then, and he dropped his hand upon her wrists again and lay quietly, and after a while even her trembling had ceased. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t do it again.” He could see only the top of herdark head, and her hands lay quietly beneath his. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t do that anymore.”

“You won’t drive that car fast again?” she asked. With infinite small pains and slowly he turned himself, cast and all, by degrees onto his side, chewing his lip and swearing under his breath, and laid his other hand on her hair.

“What are you doing?” she said, but without moving. “You’ll break your ribs again.”

“Yes,” he agreed, stroking her hair awkwardly.

“That’s the trouble, right there,” she said. “That’s the way you act: doing things that—that—You do things to hurt yourself just to worry people* You don’t get any fun out of doing them.”

“No,” he agreed, and he lay with his chest full of hot needles, stroking her dark head with his hard, awkward hand. Far above him now the peak among the black and savage stars, and about him the valleys of tranquility and of peace. It was later still; already shadows were growing in the room, and beyond the window sunlight was a diffused radiance, sourceless yet palpable; from somewhere cows loved one to an-other* placidly and mournfully. At last she sat up.

“You’re all twisted. You’ll never get well, if you don’t behave yourself. Turn on your back, now.” He obeyed, slowly and painfully, his lip between his teeth and faint beads on his forehead, while she watched him with grave anxiety.“Does it hurt?”

“No,” he answered, and his hand shut again on her wrists that made no effort to withdraw. Then the sun was gone, and twilight, foster-dam of quietude and peace, filled the fading room and evening had found itself.

“And you won’t drive that car fast anymore?” she persisted from the dusk.

“No,” he answered.

9

Meanwhile she had received another letter from her anonymous correspondent. Horace when he came in one night, had brought it in to her as she lay in bed with a book; tapped at her door and opened it and stood for a moment diffidently, and for a while they looked at one another across the barrier of their estrangement and their stubborn pride.

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” he said stiffly. She lay beneath the shaded light, with the dark splash of her hair upon the pillow, and only her eyes moved as he crossed the room and stood above her where she lay with her lowered book, watching himwith sober interrogation.

“What are you reading?” he asked. For reply she shut the book on her finger, with the jacket and its colored legend upward. But he did not look at it. IBs shirt was open beneath his silk dressing gown and jus thin hand moved among the objects on the table beside the bed; picked up another book. “1never knew you to read so much.”