William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

Bayard rose. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it carefully with his heel. “Let’s move on,” he said. “They ain’t going to tree.” He drew Narcissa to her feet and turned and went on ahead of them. Caspey got up and unslung his horn and put it to his lips. The sound swelled about them, grave arid clear and prolonged, then it died into echoes and so into silence again, leaving no ripple.

It was near midnight when they left Caspey and Isom at their cabin and followed the lane toward the house. After a while the barn loomed before them, and the house among its thinning trees, against the hazy sky. He opened the gate and she passed through and he followed and closed it, and turning he found her beside him, arid stopped. “Bayard?” she whispered, leaning against him, and he put his arms around her and stood so, staring above her head into the sky. She took his face between her hands and drew it down, but his lips were cold and upon them she tasted fatality and doom, and she clung to him for a time, her head bowed against his chest.

After that she would not go with him again. So he went alone, returning anywhere between midnight and dawn, ripping his clothing off quietly in the darkness and sliding cautiously into bed. But when he was still, she would touch him and speak his namein the darkness beside him, and turn to him warm and soft with deep. And they would lie so, holding each other in the darkness and the temporary abeyance of his despair and the isolation of that doom he could not escape.

2

“Well,” Miss Jenny said briskly, above the soup, “your girl’s gone and left you, and now you can find time to come out and see your kinfolks, can’t you?”

Horace grinned a little. “To tell the truth, I came out to get something to eat. Idon’t think that one woman in ten has any aptitude for keeping house, but my place is certainly not inthe home.”

“You mean,” Miss Jenny corrected, “that not one man in ten has sense enough to marry a decent cook.”

“Maybe they have more sense and consideration for others than tospoil decent cooks,” he suggested.

“Yes,” young Bayard said, “even a cook’ll quit work when she gets married.”.

“Dat’s de troof,” Simon, propped in a slightly florid attitude against the sideboard, in a collarless boiled shirt and his Sunday pants (it is Thanksgiving day) and reeking a little of whisky in addition to his normal odors, agreed. “I had to find Euphrony fo’ new cookin’ places de fust two mont’ we wuz ma’ied.”

Dr. Peabody said: “Simon must have married somebody else’s cook.”

“I’d rather marry somebody else’s cook than somebody else’s wife,” Miss Jenny snapped.

“ Miss Jenny!” Narcissa reproved. “You hush.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Jenny said immediately. “Iwasn’t saying that to you, Horace: it just poppedinto my mind. I was talking to you, Loosh Peabody.You think just because you’ve been eating off of usThanksgiving and Christmas for sixty years, that youcan come into, my own house and laugh at me, don’tyou?”

“Hush, Miss Jenny!”Narcissa repeated.

“What’s dat?” Old Bayard, his napkin tucked into hiswaistcoat, lowered his spoon ,and cupped his hand to his ear.

“Nothing” young Bayard told him, “Aunt Jenny and Doc fighting again. Come alive, Simon,” Simon stirred and removed the soup plates, but laggardly, still giving his interested attention to the altercation.

“Yes,” Miss Jennyfinished on, “just because that old fool of a Will Falls put axle grease on a little bump on his face without killing him dead, you have to go around swelled up like a poisoned dog; What did you have to do with it? You certainly didn’t take it off. Maybe you conjured it on his face to begin with?”

“Haven’t you got a piece of bread or something Miss Jenny can put in her mouth, Simon?”Dr. Peabody added mildly. Miss Jenny glared at him a moment, then flopped back in her chair.

“You, Simon! Are you dead?” Simon removed theplates and bore them out, and the guests sat avoidingone another’s eyes a little, while Miss Jenny behindher barricade of cups andjugs and urns and things,continued to breathe fire and brimstone.

“Will Falls,” old Bayard repeated. “Jenny, tell Simon, when he fixes that basket, to come to my office.: I’vegotsomething to go in it.” This something was the pint flask of whisky which he included in old man Falls’ Thanksgiving and Christmas basket and which the old man divided out in spoonsful asfar as it would go among his ancient and homeless cronies on those days; and invariably old Bayard reminded her to remind Isom of what neither of them ever forgot or overlooked.

“All right,” she answered. Simon reappeared, with a huge silver coffee urn, set it at Miss Jenny’s hand and retreated kitchenward.

“How many of you want coffee now?” she asked generally. “Bayard will no more sit down to a meal without his coffee than he’d fly. Will you, Horace?” He declined, and without looking at Dr. Peabody she said: “I reckon you’ll have to have some, won’t you?”

“If it’s no trouble,” he answered mildly. He winked at Narcissa, then he assumed an expression of lugubrious diffidence. Miss Jenny drew two cups, and Simon appeared with a huge platter borne gallantly and precariously aloft and set it before old Bayard with a magnificent flourish.

“My God, Simon,” young Bayard said, “where did you get a whale this time of year?”

“Dat’s a fish in dis worl’, mon,” Simon agreed. And it was a fish. It was three feet long and broad as a saddle blanket; it was a-jolly red color and it lay gaping on the platterwith an air of dashing and rollicking joviality.

“Dammit, Jenny,” old Bayard said pettishly, “what did you want to have this thing, for? Who wants to clutter his stomach up with fish, in November, with a kitchen full of ‘possum and turkey and squirrel?”

“There are other people to eat here beside you,” she retorted. “If you don’t want any, don’t eat it. We always had a fish course athome,” she added. “But you can’t wean these Mississippi country folks away from bread and meat to save your life. Here, Simon.” Simon set a stack of plates before old Bayard and he now came with his tray and Miss Jenny set twocoffee cups on it, and he served them to old Bayard and Dr. Peabody. Miss Jenny drewa cup for herself, and Simon passed sugar and cream. Old Bayard carved the fish, still rumbling heavily.

“I ain’t ever found anything wrong with fish at any time of year,”Dr. Peabody said.

“You wouldn’t,” Miss Jenny snapped. Again he winked heavily at Narcissa.

“Only,” he continued, “I like to catch my own, out of my own pond. Mine have mo’ food value.”

“Still got your pond, Doc?” young Bayard asked.

“Yes. But the fishin’ ain’t been so good, this year. Abe had the flu last winter, and ever since he’s been goin’ to sleep on me, and I have to sit there and wait until he wakes up and takes the fish off and baits my hook again. But finally I thought about tyin’ one end of a cord to his leg and the other end to the bench, and now when I get a bite, I just give the string a yank and wake ‘im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out someday, Bayard. She ain’t never seen my pond.”

“You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got a row of benches around it, with foot-rests, and a railing just high enough to prop your pole on, and a nigger to every fisherman to bait his hook and take the fish off. I don’t see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”

“Well, I’ve had them around so long I don’t know how to get rid of ‘em, ‘less I drown ‘em. Feedin’‘em is the main trouble, though. Takes everything I can make. If it wasn’t for them, I’d a quit practicin’ long ago. That’s the reason I dine out whenever I can: every time I get a free meal, it’s the same as a half holiday.”