William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

“How many have you got?” Narcissa asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” he answered. “I got six orseven registered ones, but I don’t know how many scrubs I have. I seea new yearlin’ every day or so.” Simon was watching him with rapt interest.

“You ain’t got no extra room out dar, is you, Doctor?” he asked. “Here I slaves all day long, keepin’‘um in vittles en sech.”

“Can you eat cold fish and greens every day?”Dr. Peabody asked him solemnly.

“Well, suh,” Simon answered doubtfully, “I ain’t right sho’ erbout dat. I burnt out on de fish once, when I wuz a young man, en I ain’t had no right stomach fer it since.”

“Well, that’s about all we eat, out home.”

“All right, Simon,” Miss Jenny said. Simon was propped statically against the sideboard, watching Dr. Peabody with musing astonishment.

“En you keeps yo’ size on cole fish en greens? Gentlemun, I’d be a bone-rack on dem kine o’ vittles in two weeks, I sho’ly would.”

“Simon!” Miss Jenny raised her voice sharply. “Why won’t you let him alone, Loosh, so he can ‘tend to his business?” Simon came abruptly untranced and removed the fish.

“Lay off of Doc, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard said. He touched his grandfather’s arm. “Can’t you make her let Doc alone?”

“What’s he doing, Jenny?” old Bayard asked. “Won’t he eat his dinner?”

“None of us’ll get to eat anything, if he sits there and talks to Simon about cold fish and greens,” Miss Jenny replied.

“I think you’re mean, to treat him like you do, Miss Jenny,” Narcissa said. She sat beside Horace; beneaththe cloth her hand was in his.

“Well, it gives me something to be thankful for,”Dr. Peabody answered. “That I’m a widower. I want some mo’coffee, Jenny.”

“Who wouldn’t be, the size of a hogshead, and living on cold fish and turnip greens?” Miss Jenny snapped. He passed his cup and she refilled it.

“Oh, shut up, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard commanded. Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next few minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a cured ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ‘possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, and squash and pickled beets, and rice and hominy, and hot biscuit and beaten biscuit and long thin sticks of combread, and strawberry and pear preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and blackberry jam and stewed cranberries.

Then they ceased talking for a while and really ate, glancing now and then across the table at one another in a rosy glow of amicability and steamy odors. From time to time Isom entered with hot bread, while Simon stood overlooking the field somewhat as Caesar must have stood looking down into Gaul, once he had it well in hand, or the Lord God Himself when he looked down upon His latest chemical experiment and said It is well.

“After this, Simon,”Dr. Peabody said, and he sighed a little, “I reckon I can take you on and find you a little side meat now and then.”

“I ‘speck you kin,” Simon agreed, watching them like an eagle-eyed general who rushes reserves to the threatened points, pressing more food upon them as they faltered But even Dr. Peabody allowed himself vanquished after a time, and then Simon brought in pies of three kinds, and a small, deadly plum pudding, and cake baked cunningly with whisky and nuts and fruit and treacherous and fatal as sin; and at last, with an air sibylline and gravely profound, a bottle of port. The sun lay hazily in the glowing west, failing levelly through the windows and upon the silver arrayed upon the sideboard, dreaming in hushed mellow gleams among its placid rotundities and upon the colored glass in the fanlight high in the western wall.

But that was November, the season of hazy, languorous days, when the first flush of autumn was over and winter beneath the sere horizon breathed yet a spell November, when the year like a shawled matron among her children dies peacefully, without pain and of no disease. Early in December the rains came and the year turned gray beneath the season of dissolution and of death. All night and all day it whispered upon the roof and along the eaves; the leafless trees gestured their black and sorrowful branches in it: only a lone stubborn hickory at the foot of the park kept its leaves yet, gleaming like a sodden flame against the eternal azure; beyond the valley the hills were hidden within chill veils of it.

Almost daily, despite Miss Jenny’s strictures and commands and the grave and passive protest in Narcissa’s eyes, Bayard went out with a shotgun andthe two dogs, to return just before dark, wet to the skin. And cold; his lips would be chill on hers, and his eyesbleak and haunted, and in the yellow firelight of their room she would cling to him, or lie crying quietly in the darkness beside his rigid body with a ghost between them.

“Look here,” Miss Jenny said, coming upon her as she sat brooding before the fire in old Bayard’s den.

“You spend too much time this way; you’re getting moony. Stop worrying about him: he’s spent half his life soaking wet, yet he never had a cold that I can remember.”

“Hasn’t he?” the answered listlessly. Miss Jenny stood beside her chair, watching her keenly. Then she laid her hand on Narcissa’s head, quite gently, for aSartoris.

“Are you worrying because maybe he don’t love you like you think he ought to?”

“It isn’t that,” she answered. “He doesn’t love anybody. He won’t even love the baby. He doesn’t seem to be glad, or sorry, or anything.”

“No,” Miss Jenny agreed The fire crackled and leaped among the resinous logs. Beyond the window the day dissolved endlessly. “listen,’? Miss Jenny said abruptly. “Don’t you ride in that car with him any more. You hear?”

“No. It won’t make him drive slowly. Nothing will.”

“Of course not. Nobody believes it will, not even Bayard. He goes along for the same reason that boy himself does. Sartoris. It’s in the blood. Savages, every one of ‘em. No earthly use to anyone” Together they gazed into the leaping flames, Miss Jenny’s hand still lying on Narcissa’s head. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“You didn’t do it. Nobody got me into it. I did it myself.”

“H’m,” Miss Jenny said. And then: “Would you do it over again?” The other didn’t answer, and she repeated the question. “Would you?”

“Yes,” Narcissa answered. “Don’t you know I would?” Again there was silence between them, in which without words they sealed their hopeless pact with that fine and passive courage of womenthroughput the world’s history. Narcissa rose. “Ibelieve I’ll go to town and spend the day with Horace, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“All right,” Miss Jenny agreed. “I believe I would, too. Horace probably needs a little looking after, by now. He looked sort of gaunt when he was out here last week. Like he wasn’t getting proper food.”

When she entered the kitchen door Eunice, the cook, turned from the bread board and lifted her daubed hands in a soft dark gesture. “Well, Miss Narcy,” she said, “we ain’t seed you in a month. Is you come all de way in de rain?”

“I came in the carriage. It was too wet for the car.” She entered the kitchen. Eunice watched her with grave pleasure. “How are you all getting along?”

“He gits enough to eat, all right,” Eunice answered. “I sees to dat. But I has to make ‘im eat it. He needs you back here.”

“I’m here, for the day, anyhow. What have you got for dinner?” Together they lifted lids and peered into the simmering vessels on the stove and in the oven. “Oh, chocolate pie!”