Faulkner Reader

by William Faulkner

  She had dodged out of sight somewhere. Saw me coming and dodged into another alley, running up and down the alleys with a damn show man in a red tie that everybody would look at and think what kind of a damn man would wear a red tie. Well, the boy kept speaking to me and so I took the telegram without knowing I had taken it. I didn’t realise what it was until I was signing for it, and I tore it open without even caring much what it was. I knew all the time what it would be, I reckon. That was the only thing else that could happen, especially holding it up until I had already had the check entered on the pass book.

  I don’t see how a city no bigger than New York can hold enough people to take the money away from us country suckers. Work like hell all day every day, send them your money and get a little piece of paper back, Your account closed at 20.62. Teasing you along, letting you pile up a little paper profit, then bang! Your account closed at 20.62. And if that wasn’t enough, paying ten dollars a month to somebody to tell you how to lose it fast, that either dont know anything about it or is in cahoots with the telegraph company. Well, I’m done with them. They’ve sucked me in for the last time. Any fool except a fellow that hasn’t got any more sense than to take a Jew’s word for anything could tell the market was going up all the time, with the whole damn delta about to be flooded again and the cotton washed right out of the ground like it was last year. Let it wash a man’s crop out of the ground year after year, and them up there in Washington spending fifty thousand dollars a day keeping an army in Nicaragua or some place. Of course it’ll overflow again, and then cotton’ll be worth thirty cents a pound. Well, I just want to hit them one time and get my money back. I don’t want a killing; only these small town gamblers are out for that, I just want my money back that these damn jews have gotten with all their guaranteed inside dope. Then I’m through; they can kiss my foot for every other red cent of mine they get.

  I went back to the store. It was half past three almost. Damn little time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to Harvard to learn that. The band had quit playing. Got them all inside now, and they wouldn’t have to waste any more wind. Earl says,

  “He found you, did he? He was in here with it a while ago. I thought you were out back somewhere.”

  “Yes,” I says, “I got it. They couldn’t keep it away from me all afternoon. The town’s too small. I’ve got to go out home a minute,” I says. “You can dock me if it’ll make you feel any better.”

  “Go ahead,” he says, “I can handle it now. No bad news, I hope.”

  “You’ll have to go to the telegraph office and find that out,” I says. “They’ll have time to tell you. I haven’t.”

  “I just asked,” he says. “Your mother knows she can depend on me.”

  “She’ll appreciate it,” I says. “I wont be gone any longer than I have to.”

  “Take your time,” he says. “I can handle it now. You go ahead.”

  I got the car and went home. Once this morning, twice at noon, and now again, with her and having to chase all over town and having to beg them to let me eat a little of the food I am paying for. Sometimes I think what’s the use of anything. With the precedent I’ve been set I must be crazy to keep on. And now I reckon I’ll get home just in time to take a nice long drive after a basket of tomatoes or something and then have to go back to town smelling like a camphor factory so my head wont explode right on my shoulders. I keep telling her there’s not a damn thing in that aspirin except flour and water for imaginary invalids. I says you dont know what a headache is. I says you think I’d fool with that damn car at all if it depended on me. I says I can get along without one I’ve learned to get along without lots of things but if you want to risk yourself in that old wornout surrey with a halfgrown nigger boy all right because I says God looks after Ben’s kind, God knows He ought to do something for him but if you think I’m going to trust a thousand dollars’ worth of delicate machinery to a halfgrown nigger or a grown one either, you’d better buy him one yourself because I says you like to ride in the car and you know you do.

  Dilsey said Mother was in the house. I went on into the hall and listened, but I didn’t hear anything. I went up stairs, but just as I passed her door she called me.

  “I just wanted to know who it was,” she says. “I’m here alone so much that I hear every sound.”

  “You dont have to stay here,” I says. “You could spend the whole day visiting like other women, if you wanted to.” She came to the door.

  “I thought maybe you were sick,” she says. “Having to hurry through your dinner like you did.”

  “Better luck next time,” I says. “What do you want?”

  “Is anything wrong?” she says.

  “What could be?” I says. “Cant I come home in the middle of the afternoon without upsetting the whole house?”

  “Have you seen Quentin?” she says.

  “She’s in school,” I says.

  “It’s after three,” she says. “I heard the clock strike at least a half an hour ago. She ought to be home by now.”

  “Ought she?” I says. “When have you ever seen her before dark?”

  “She ought to be home,” she says. “When I was a girl …”

  “You had somebody to make you behave yourself,” I says. “She hasn’t.”

  “I can’t do anything with her,” she says. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried.”

  “And you wont let me, for some reason,” I says, “So you ought to be satisfied.” I went on to my room. I turned the key easy and stood there until the knob turned. Then she says,

  “Jason.”

  “What,” I says.

  “I just thought something was wrong.”

  “Not in here,” I says. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “I dont mean to worry you,” she says.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I says. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might have been mistaken. Do you want anything?”

  After awhile she says, “No. Not anything.” Then she went away. I took the box down and counted out the money and hid the box again and unlocked the door and went out. I thought about the camphor, but it would be too late now, anyway. And I’d just have one more round trip. She was at her door, waiting.

  “You want anything from town?” I says.

  “No,” she says. “I dont mean to meddle in your affairs. But I dont know what I’d do if anything happened to you, Jason.”

  “I’m all right,” I says. “Just a headache.”

  “I wish you’d take some aspirin,” she says. “I know you’re not going to stop using the car.”

  “What’s the car got to do with it?” I says. “How can a car give a man a headache?”

  “You know gasoline always made you sick,” she says. “Ever since you were a child. I wish you’d take some aspirin.”

  “Keep on wishing it,” I says. “It wont hurt you.”

  I got in the car and started back to town. I had just turned onto the street when I saw a ford coming helling toward me. All of a sudden it stopped. I could hear the wheels sliding and it slewed around and backed and whirled and just as I was thinking what the hell they were up to, I saw that red tie. Then I recognised her face looking back through the window. It whirled into the alley. I saw it turn again, but when I got to the back street it was just disappearing, running like hell.

  I saw red. When I recognised that red tie, after all I had told her, I forgot about everything. I never thought about my head even until I came to the first forks and had to stop. Yet we spend money and spend money on roads and damn if it isn’t like trying to drive over a sheet of corrugated iron roofing. I’d like to know how a man could be expected to keep up with even a wheelbarrow. I think too much of my car; I’m not going to hammer it to pieces like it was a ford. Chances were they had stolen it, anyway, so why should they give a damn. Like I say blood always tells. If you’ve got blood like that in you, you’ll do anything. I says whatever claim you believe she has on you has
already been discharged; I says from now on you have only yourself to blame because you know what any sensible person would do. I says if I’ve got to spend half my time being a damn detective, at least I’ll go where I can get paid for it.

  So I had to stop there at the forks. Then I remembered it. It felt like somebody was inside with a hammer, beating on it. I says I’ve tried to keep you from being worried by her; I says far as I’m concerned, let her go to hell as fast as she pleases and the sooner the better. I says what else do you expect except every drummer and cheap show that comes to town because even these town jellybeans give her the go-by now. You dont know what goes on I says, you dont hear the talk that I hear and you can just bet I shut them up too. I says my people owned slaves here when you all were running little shirt tail country stores and farming land no nigger would look at on shares.

  If they ever farmed it. It’s a good thing the Lord did something for this country; the folks that live on it never have. Friday afternoon, and from right here I could see three miles of land that hadn’t even been broken, and every able bodied man in the county in town at that show. I might have been a stranger starving to death, and there wasn’t a soul in sight to ask which way to town even. And she trying to get me to take aspirin. I says when I eat bread I’ll do it at the table. I says you always talking about how much you give up for us when you could buy ten new dresses a year on the money you spend for those damn patent medicines. It’s not something to cure it I need it’s just an even break not to have to have them but as long as I have to work ten hours a day to support a kitchen full of niggers in the style they’re accustomed to and send them to the show with every other nigger in the county, only he was late already. By the time he got there it would be over.

  After awhile he got up to the car and when I finally got it through his head if two people in a ford had passed him, he said yes. So I went on, and when I came to where the wagon road turned off I could see the tire tracks. Ab Russell was in his lot, but I didn’t bother to ask him and I hadn’t got out of sight of his barn hardly when I saw the ford. They had tried to hide it. Done about as well at it as she did at everything else she did. Like I say it’s not that I object to so much; maybe she cant help that, it’s because she hasn’t even got enough consideration for her own family to have any discretion. I’m afraid all the time I’ll run into them right in the middle of the street or under a wagon on the square, like a couple of dogs.

  I parked and got out. And now I’d have to go way around and cross a plowed field, the only one I had seen since I left town, with every step like somebody was walking along behind me, hitting me on the head with a club. I kept thinking that when I got across the field at least I’d have something level to walk on, that wouldn’t jolt me every step, but when I got into the woods it was full of underbrush and I had to twist around through it, and then I came to a ditch full of briers. I went along it for awhile, but it got thicker and thicker, and all the time Earl probably telephoning home about where I was and getting Mother all upset again.

  When I finally got through I had had to wind around so much that I had to stop and figure out just where the car would be. I knew they wouldn’t be far from it, just under the closest bush, so I turned and worked back toward the road. Then I couldn’t tell just how far I was, so I’d have to stop and listen, and then with my legs not using so much blood, it all would go into my head like it would explode any minute, and the sun getting down just to where it could shine straight into my eyes and my ears ringing so I couldn’t hear anything. I went on, trying to move quiet, then I heard a dog or something and I knew that when he scented me he’d have to come helling up, then it would be all off.

  I had gotten beggar lice and twigs and stuff all over me, inside my clothes and shoes and all, and then I happened to look around and I had my hand right on a bunch of poison oak. The only thing I couldn’t understand was why it was just poison oak and not a snake or something. So I didn’t even bother to move it. I just stood there until the dog went away. Then I went on.

  I didn’t have any idea where the car was now. I couldn’t think about anything except my head, and I’d just stand in one place and sort of wonder if I had really seen a ford even, and I didn’t even care much whether I had or not. Like I say, let her lay out all day and all night with everything in town that wears pants, what do I care. I dont owe anything to anybody that has no more consideration for me, that wouldn’t be a damn bit above planting that ford there and making me spend a whole afternoon and Earl taking her back there and showing her the books just because he’s too damn virtuous for this world. I says you’ll have one hell of a time in heaven, without anybody’s business to meddle in only dont you ever let me catch you at it I says, I close my eyes to it because of your grandmother, but just you let me catch you doing it one time on this place, where my mother lives. These damn little slick haired squirts, thinking they are raising so much hell, I’ll show them something about hell I says, and you too. I’ll make him think that damn red tie is the latch string to hell, if he thinks he can run the woods with my niece.

  With the sun and all in my eyes and my blood going so I kept thinking every time my head would go on and burst and get it over with, with briers and things grabbing at me, then I came onto the sand ditch where they had been and I recognised the tree where the car was, and just as I got out of the ditch and started running I heard the car start. It went off fast, blowing the horn. They kept on blowing it, like it was saying Yah. Yah. Yaaahhhhhhhh, going out of sight. I got to the road just in time to see it go out of sight.

  By the time I got up to where my car was, they were clean out of sight, the horn still blowing. Well, I never thought anything about it except I was saying Run. Run back to town. Run homeland try to convince Mother that I never saw you in that car. Try to make her believe that I dont know who he was. Try to make her believe that I didn’t miss ten feet of catching you in that ditch. Try to make her believe you were standing up, too.

  It kept on saying Yahhhhh, Yahhhhh, Yaaahhhhhhhhh, getting fainter and fainter. Then it quit, and I could hear a cow lowing up at Russell’s barn. And still I never thought. I went up to the door and opened it and raised my foot. I kind of thought then that the car was leaning a little more than the slant of the road would be, but I never found it out until I got in and started off.

  Well, I just sat there. It was getting on toward sundown, and town was about five miles. They never even had guts enough to puncture it, to jab a hole in it. They just let the air out. I just stood there for a while, thinking about that kitchen full of niggers and not one of them had time to lift a tire onto the rack and screw up a couple of bolts. It was kind of funny because even she couldn’t have seen far enough ahead to take the pump out on purpose, unless she thought about it while he was letting out the air maybe. But what it probably was, was somebody took it out and gave it to Ben to play with for a squirt gun because they’d take the whole car to pieces if he wanted it and Dilsey says, Aint nobody teched yo car. What we want to fool with hit fer? and I says You’re a nigger. You’re lucky, do you know it? I says I’ll swap with you any day because it takes a white man not to have anymore sense than to worry about what a little slut of a girl does.

  I walked up to Russell’s. He had a pump. That was just an oversight on their part, I reckon. Only I still couldn’t believe she’d have had the nerve to. I kept thinking that. I dont know why it is I cant seem to learn that a woman’ll do anything. I kept thinking, Let’s forget for awhile how I feel toward you and how you feel toward me: I just wouldn’t do you this way. I wouldn’t do you this way no matter what you had done to me. Because like I say blood is blood and you cant get around it. It’s not playing a joke that any eight year old boy could have thought of, it’s letting your own uncle be laughed at by a man that would wear a red tie. They come into town and call us all a bunch of hicks and think it’s too small to hold them. Well he doesn’t know just how right he is. And her too. If that’s the way she feels about it, s
he’d better keep right on going and a damn good riddance.

  I stopped and returned Russell’s pump and drove on to town. I went to the drugstore and got a coca-cola and then I went to the telegraph office. It had closed at 12.21, forty points down. Forty times five dollars; buy something with that if you can, and she’ll say, I’ve got to have it I’ve just got to and I’ll say that’s too bad you’ll have to try somebody else, I haven’t got any money; I’ve been too busy to make any.

  I just looked at him.

  “I’ll tell you some news,” I says, “You’ll be astonished to learn that I am interested in the cotton market,” I says. “That never occurred to you, did it?”