William Faulkner - Flags in the Dust

opened the throttle full and the machine lurched for ward and when he passed the shabby man in midfielddie tail was high and the plane rushed on in longbounds, and he had a fleeting glimpse of the man’sopen mouth and his wild arms as the boundingceased.

There was not enough tension on the wires, he decided at once, watching them from the V strut out as they tipped and swayed, and he jockeyed the thing carefully on, gaining height. Also he realized that there was a certain point beyond which his own speed would rob him of lifting surface. He had about two thousand feet now, and he turned, and in doing so he found that aileron pressure utterly negatived the inner plane’s dihedral and doubled the outer one, and he found himself in the wildest skid he had seen since his Hun days. The machine not only skidded: it flung its tail up like a diving whale and the air speed indicator leaped thirty miles past the dead line the inventor had given him. He was headed back toward the field now, in a shallow dive,and he pulled the stick back.

But only the wingtips responded by tipping sharply upward; he flung the stick forward before they ripped completely off, and he knew that only the speed of the dive kept him from falling like an inside out umbrella. And the speed was increasing: itseemed an eternity before the wingtips recovered, and already he had overshot the field, under a thousand feet high. He pulled the stick back again; again the wingtips buckled and he slapped the stick, over and kicked again into that skid, trying to, check his speed. Again the machine swung its tail in a soaring arc, but this time the wings came off and he ducked his head automatically as one of them slapped viciously past it and crashed into the tail, shearing it too away.

3

That day Narcissa’s child was born, and the following day Simon drove Miss Jenny in to town and set her down before the telegraph office and held the horses leashed and champing with gallant restiveness by a slight and surreptitious tightening of the reins, while beneath the tilted tophat and the voluminous duster, he swaggered, sitting down. Though he was sitting and you would not have thought it possible, Simon contrived by some means to actually strut. So Dr. Peabody found him when he came along the street in the June sunlight, in his slovenly alpaca coat, carrying a newspaper.

“You look like a frog, Simon,” he said, ‘Where’s Miss Jenny?”

“Yessuh,” Simon agreed. “Yessuh. Dey’s swellin’ en rejoicin’ now. De little marster done’arrive. Yessuh, de little marster done arrive’ and de ole times comin’ back.”

“Where’s Miss Jenny?”Dr. Peabody repeated impatiently.

“She in dar, tellygraftin’ dat boy ter come on back byer whar he belong at.”Dr. Peabody turned awayand Simon watched him, a little fretted at his apathy in the face of the event. “Takes it jes’ like trash,” Simon mused aloud, with annoyed disparagement. “Nummine; we gwine wake ‘um all up, now; Yessuh, de olden times comin’ back again, sho’. Like in Marse John’s time, when de Cunnel wuz de young marster en de niggers fum de quawtuhs gethered on de front lawn, wishin’ Mistis en de little marster well.” And he watched Dr. Feabody enter the door and through the plate glass window he saw him approach Miss Jenny as she stood at the counter with her message.

“Come home you fool and see your family or I will have you arrested” the message read in her firm, lucid script. “It’s more than ten words,” she told the operator, “but that don’t matter this time. He’ll come now: you watch. Or I’ll send the sheriff after him, sure as his name’s Sartoris.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the operator said. He was apparently having trouble reading it, and he looked up after a time and was about to speak when Miss Jenny remarked his distraction and repeated the message briskly.

“And make it stronger than that if you want to,” she added.

“Yes, ma’am,” the operator said again, and he ducked down behind his desk, and presently and with a little mounting curiosity and impatience Miss Jenny leaned across the counter with a silver dollar in her fingers and watched him count the words three times in a sort of painful flurry;

“What’s the matter, young man?” she demanded. “The government don’t forbid the mentioning of a day-old child in a telegram, does it?”

The operator looked up. “Yes, ma’am, it’s all right,” he said at last, and she gave him the dollar, and as he sat holding it and Miss Jenny watched himwith yet more impatience.Dr. Peabody came in and touched her arm.

“Come away, Jenny,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said, taming at his voice. ‘Well, ifs about time you took notice. This is the first Sartoris you’ve been a day late on in how many years, Loosh? And soon’sI get that fool boy home, it’ll be like old times again, as Simon says.”

“Yes. Simon told me. Come away.”

“Let me get my change.” She turned to the operator, who stood with the yellow sheet in one hand and the coin in the other. “Well, young man? Ain’t a dollar enough?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated, turning upon Dr. Peabody his dumb, distracted eyes. Dr. Peabody reached fatly andtook the message and the coin from him.

“Come away, Jenny,” he said again.

Miss Jenny stood motionless for a moment, in her black silk dress and her black bonnet set squarely on her head, staring at him with her piercing old eyes that saw so much and so truly. Thensheturned and walked steadily to the door and stepped into the street and waited until he joined her, and her hand was steady too as she took the folded paper he offered. Mississippi boy it said in discreet capitals, and she returned it to him immediately and from her waist she took a small sheer handkerchief and wiped her fingers lightly.

“I don’t have to read it,” she said. “They never get into the papers but one way. And I know that he was somewhere he had no business being, doing something that wasn’t any affair of his.”

“Yes,”Dr. Peabody said. He followed her to the carriage and put his hands clumsily upon her as she mounted.

“Don’t paw me, Loosh,” she snapped. “I’m not acripple.” But he supported her elbow with his huge, gentle hand until she was seated, then he stood with his hat off while Simon laid the linen robe across her knees.

“Here,” he said, and extended her the silver dollar and she returned it to her bag and clicked it shut and wiped her fingers again on her handkerchief.

“Well,” she said, “thank God that’s the last one. For a while, anyway. Home, Simon.”

Simon sat with leashed magnificence, but under the occasion he unbent a little. “When you gwine come out en see de young marster, Doctuh?”

“Soon, Simon,” he answered; and Simon clucked to the horses and wheeled away with a flourish, his hat tilted and the whip caught smartly back. Dr. Peabody stood in the street, a shapeless hogshead of a man in a shabby alpaca coat, his hat in one hand and the folded newspaper and the yellow unsent message in the other, until Miss Jenny’s straight slender back and the squarely indomitable angle of her bonnet had passed from sight.

But that was not the last one. One morning a week later, Simon was found in a negro cabin in town, with his grizzled head crushed ir^ by a blunt instrument anonymously wielded.

“In whose house?” Miss Jenny demanded into the telephone. In that of a woman named Meloney Harris, the voice told her. Meloney...Mel...Belle Mitchell’s face flashed before her, and she remembered: the mulatto girl whose smart apron and cap and lean shining shanks had lent such an air to Belle’s parties, and who had quit Belle in order to set up a beauty parlor. Miss Jenny thanked the voice and hung up the receiver.