“What’s the matter?” Stamper says. “Don’t tell me these are too lively for you, too. They don’t look it.”
“All right,” Pap said. “All right. I jest want my team back. I’ll give you four dollars to trade back. That’s all I got. And I got to have them. Make your four dollars, and give me my team.”
“I ain’t got your team,” Stamper says. “I didn’t want that horse either. I told you that. So I got shet of it right away.”
Pap set there for a while. It was all clouded over now, and cooler; you could even smell the rain. “All right,” Pap said. “But you still got the mule. All right. I’ll take it.”
“For what?” Stamper says. “You want to swap that team for your mule?” Sho. Pap wasn’t trading. He was desperate, setting there like he couldn’t even see, with Stamper leaning easy against the gate and looking at him for a minute. “No,” he says. “I don’t want them mules. Yours is the best. I wouldn’t trade that way, even.” He spit, easy and careful, before he looked at Pap again. “Besides, I done included your mule into another team, with another horse. You want to look at it?”
“All right,” Pap said. “How much?”
“Don’t you even want to see it first?” Stamper says.
“All right,” Pap said. So the nigger led out the horse, a little dark brown horse; I remember how even with it clouded up to rain and no sun, how the horse shined; a horse a little bigger than the one we traded Stamper, and hog fat. Yes, sir. That’s jest exactly how it was fat: not like a horse is fat but like a hog: fat right up to its ears and looking tight as a drum; it was so fat it couldn’t hardly walk, putting its feet down like they didn’t have no weight nor feeling in them. “It’s too fat to last,” Pap said. “It won’t even git me home.”
“That’s what I think myself,” Stamper said. “That’s why I am willing to git shet of it.”
“All right,” Pap said. “But I got to try it.”
“Try it?” Stamper said. Pap didn’t answer. He jest got down from the wagon careful and went to the horse. It had a hackamore on and Pap taken the rein outen the nigger’s hand and started to git on the horse. “Wait,” Stamper says. “What you fixing to do?”
“Going to try it,” Pap said. “I done traded a horse with you once today.” Stamper looked at Pap again for a minute. Then he spit again and kind of stepped back.
“All right,” he said. “Help him up, Jim.” So the nigger holp Pap onto the horse, only the nigger never had time to jump back because as soon as Pap’s weight come onto the horse’s back it was like Pap had a live wire in his britches. It throwed Pap hard and Pap got up without no change on his face a-tall and went back to the horse and taken the hackamore again and the nigger holp him up again, with Stamper standing there with his hands hooked into his pants tops, watching. And the horse slammed Pap off again and Pap got up again with his face jest the same and went back and taken the hackamore from the nigger again when Stamper stopped him. That was exactly how Pap did it, like he wanted the horse to throw him and hard, not to try to hurt hisself, but like the ability of his bones and meat to feel that ’ere hard ground was all he had left to pay for a horse with life enough in it to git us home. “Here, here,” Stamper says. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“All right,” Pap says. “How much?”
“Come on into the tent and have a drink,” Stamper says.
So I waited in the wagon. It was beginning to blow a little now, and we hadn’t brought no coats with us. But there was some croker sacks in the wagon that Mammy made us bring to wrap her separator in and so I was wrapping the separator up in them when the nigger led out a horse and buggy and then Pap and Stamper come outen the tent and Pap come to the wagon. He never looked at me. He jest reached in and taken the separator outen the sacks and put it into the buggy and then him and Stamper got in and druv away. They went back toward town and then they went out of sight and I seen the nigger watching me. “You fixing to git wet fo you git home,” he said.
“I reckon so,” I said.
“You want to eat a snack of dinner until they git back?” the nigger said.
“I ain’t hungry,” I said. So he went on into the tent and I waited in the wagon. Yes, sir, it was most sholy going to rain; I mind how I thought that anyway now we could use the croker sacks to try to keep dry in. Then Pap and Stamper come back and Pap never looked at me neither. He went into the tent and I could see him drinking outen a bottle and then putting the bottle back into his shirt. I reckon Stamper give him that bottle. Pap never said so, but I reckon Stamper did. So then the nigger put our mule and the new horse in the wagon and Pap come outen the tent and got in. Stamper and the nigger both holp him now.
“Don’t you reckon you better let the boy drive?” Stamper says.
“I’ll drive,” Pap said. “By Godfrey, maybe I can’t swap a horse with you, but I can still drive it.”
“Sho now,” Stamper said. “That horse will surprise you.”
III
It did. Yes, sir. It surprised us, jest like Stamper said. It happened jest before dark. The rain, the storm, come up before we had gone a mile and we rode in it for two hours before we found a old barn to shelter under, setting hunched under them croker sacks (I mind how I thought how in a way I almost wished Mammy knew we never had the separator because she had wanted it for so long that maybe she would rather for Uncle Ike to own it and it safe and dry, than for her to own it five miles from home in a wagon in the rain) and watching our new horse that was so fat it even put its feet down like they never had no feeling nor weight, that ever now and then, even in the rain, would take a kind of flinching jerk like when Pap’s weight came down onto its back at Stamper’s camp. But we didn’t catch on then, because I was driving now, sho enough, because Pap was laying flat in the wagon bed with the rain popping him in the face and him not even knowing it, and me setting on the seat and watching our new horse change from a black horse into a bay. Because I was jest twelve and me and Pap had always done our horse trading along that country road that run past our lot. So I jest druv into the first shelter I come to and shaken Pap awake. The rain had cooled him off some, but even without that he would have sobered quick. “What?” he says. “What is it?”
“The horse, Pap!” I hollered. “It’s done changed color!”
Yes, sir. It sobered him quick. We was both outen the wagon then and Pap’s eyes popping sho enough now and a bay horse standing there where he had went to sleep looking at a black one. Because I was jest twelve; it happened too fast for me; I jest mind seeing Pap tech the horse’s back at a spot where ever now and then the backband must have teched it (I tell you, that nigger was a artist) and then the next I knowed that horse was plunging and swurging; I remember dodging jest as it slammed into the wall and then me and Pap heard a sound like when a automobile tire picks up a nail: a sound like Whoosh! and then the rest of that shiny fat black horse we had got from Pat Stamper vanished. I don’t mean that me and Pap was standing there with jest our mule left. We had a horse too. Only it was the same one we had left home with that morning and that we had swapped Beasley Kemp the sorghum mill and the bob-wire and the straight stock for two weeks ago. We even got our fish hook back, with the barb still bent where Pap had bent it and the nigger had jest moved it a little. But it wasn’t until we was home the next day at daylight that we found the hand pump valve behind its off fore leg.
And that’s about all. Because Mammy was up and seen us pass, and so after a while we had to go to the house, because me and Pap hadn’t et since twenty-four hours ago. So we went to the house, with Mammy standing in the door saying, “Where’s my separator?” and Pap saying how he always had been a fool about a horse and he couldn’t help it and Mammy couldn’t neither and that to jest give him time, and Mammy standing there looking at him and then she begun to cry and it was the first time I ever seen her cry. She cried hard, standing there in her old wrapper, not even hiding her face, saying, “Fool about a horse! Yes, but why the horse? why
the horse?”
“Now, Vynie; now, Vynie,” Pap said. Then she turned and went back into the house. We didn’t go in. We could hear her, but she wasn’t in the kitchen, and Pap told me to go around to the kitchen and see if she was fixing breakfast and then come down to the lot and tell him, and I did but she wasn’t in the kitchen. So we set on the lot fence, and then we seen her coming down the hill from the house; she was dressed and had on her shawl and sunbonnet and her gloves, and she went into the stable without looking at us and we could hear her saddling the mule and Pap told me to go and ask her if she wanted him to help her and I did and she didn’t answer and I saw her face that time and so I come back and set on the fence with Pap and we saw her ride out of the barn on the mule. She was leading Beasley Kemp’s horse. It was still black in places where the rain had streaked it. “If it hadn’t been for that durn rain, we might could have got shet of it,” Pap said.
So we went to the house then, and I cooked breakfast and me and Pap et and then Pap taken a nap. He told me to watch for her from the gallery, but me and him neither never much thought to see her soon. We never seen her until next morning. We was cooking breakfast when we heard the wagon and I looked out and it was Odum Tull’s wagon and Mammy was getting outen it and I come back to the kitchen jest before Pap left for the stable. “She’s got the separator,” I told Pap.
“I reckon it didn’t happen to be our team in Odum’s wagon,” Pap said.
“No, sir,” I says. So we saw her go into the house with the separator.
“I reckon likely she will wait to put on her old wrapper first,” Pap said. “We ought to started breakfast sooner.” It did take about that long. And then we could hear it. It made a good strong sound, like it would separate milk good and fast. Then it stopped. “It’s too bad she ain’t got but the one gallon,” Pap said. “You go and look in the kitchen.” So I went, and sho enough, she was cooking breakfast. But she wouldn’t let us eat it in the kitchen. She handed it out the door to us.
“I am going to be busy in here and I don’t aim to have you all in the way,” she said. It was all right now. Her face was quiet now; it was jest busy. So me and Pap went out to the well and et, and then we heard the separator again.
“I didn’t know it would go through but one time,” Pap said.
“Maybe Uncle Ike showed her how to do it,” I said.
“I reckon she is capable of running it right,” Pap said. “Like she wants it to run, anyhow.” Then it stopped, and me and Pap started down to the barn but she called us and made us bring the dishes to the kitchen door. Then we went down to the lot and set on the fence, only, like Pap said, without no stock to look at, it wasn’t no comfort in it. “I reckon she jest rode up to that durn feller’s tent and said, ‘Here’s your team. Now you git me my separator and git it quick; I got to ketch a ride back home,’ “ Pap said. And then after a while we heard it again, and that afternoon we walked up to Old Man Anse’s to borrow a mule to finish the lower piece with, but he never had none to spare now. So he jest cussed around a while and then we come on back and set on the fence. And sure enough, pretty soon we could hear Mammy starting it up and it running strong and steady, like it would make the milk fly. “She is separating it again,” Pap said. “It looks like she is fixing to get a heap of pleasure and comfort outen it.”
Race at Morning
The Saturday Evening Post, March 1955
I WAS IN the boat when I seen him. It was jest dust-dark; I had jest fed the horses and clumb back down the bank to the boat and shoved off to cross back to camp when I seen him, about half a quarter up the river, swimming; jest his head above the water, and it no more than a dot in that light. But I could see that rocking chair he toted on it and I knowed it was him, going right back to that canebrake in the fork of the bayou where he lived all year until the day before the season opened, like the game wardens had give him a calendar, when he would clear out and disappear, nobody knowed where, until the day after the season closed. But here he was, coming back a day ahead of time, like maybe he had got mixed up and was using last year’s calendar by mistake. Which was jest too bad for him, because me and Mister Ernest would be setting on the horse right over him when the sun rose tomorrow morning.
So I told Mister Ernest and we et supper and fed the dogs, and then I holp Mister Ernest in the poker game, standing behind his chair until about ten o’clock, when Roth Edmonds said, “Why don’t you go to bed, boy?”
“Or if you’re going to set up,” Willy Legate said, “why don’t you take a spelling book to set up over? … He knows every cuss word in the dictionary, every poker hand in the deck and every whisky label in the distillery, but he can’t even write his name.… Can you?” he says to me.
“I don’t need to write my name down,” I said. “I can remember in my mind who I am.”
“You’re twelve years old,” Walter Ewell said. “Man to man now, how many days in your life did you ever spend in school?”
“He ain’t got time to go to school,” Willy Legate said. “What’s the use in going to school from September to middle of November, when he’ll have to quit then to come in here and do Ernest’s hearing for him? And what’s the use in going back to school in January, when in jest eleven months it will be November fifteenth again and he’ll have to start all over telling Ernest which way the dogs went?”
“Well, stop looking into my hand, anyway,” Roth Edmonds said.
“What’s that? What’s that?” Mister Ernest said. He wore his listening button in his ear all the time, but he never brought the battery to camp with him because the cord would bound to get snagged ever time we run through a thicket.
“Willy says for me to go to bed!” I hollered.
“Don’t you never call nobody ‘mister’?” Willy said.
“I call Mister Ernest ‘mister’,” I said.
“All right,” Mister Ernest said. “Go to bed then. I don’t need you.”
“That ain’t no lie,” Willy said. “Deaf or no deaf, he can hear a fifty-dollar raise if you don’t even move your lips.”
So I went to bed, and after a while Mister Ernest come in and I wanted to tell him again how big them horns looked even half a quarter away in the river. Only I would ‘a’ had to holler, and the only time Mister Ernest agreed he couldn’t hear was when we would be setting on Dan, waiting for me to point which way the dogs was going. So we jest laid down, and it wasn’t no time Simon was beating the bottom of the dishpan with the spoon, hollering, “Raise up and get your four-o’clock coffee!” and I crossed the river in the dark this time, with the lantern, and fed Dan and Roth Edmondziz horse. It was going to be a fine day, cold and bright; even in the dark I could see the white frost on the leaves and bushes — jest exactly the kind of day that big old son of a gun laying up there in that brake would like to run.
Then we et, and set the stand-holder across for Uncle Ike McCaslin to put them on the stands where he thought they ought to be, because he was the oldest one in camp. He had been hunting deer in these woods for about a hundred years, I reckon, and if anybody would know where a buck would pass, it would be him. Maybe with a big old buck like this one, that had been running the woods for what would amount to a hundred years in a deer’s life, too, him and Uncle Ike would sholy manage to be at the same place at the same time this morning — provided, of course, he managed to git away from me and Mister Ernest on the jump. Because me and Mister Ernest was going to git him.
Then me and Mister Ernest and Roth Edmonds set the dogs over, with Simon holding Eagle and the other old dogs on leash because the young ones, the puppies, wasn’t going nowhere until Eagle let them, nohow. Then me and Mister Ernest and Roth saddled up, and Mister Ernest got up and I handed him up his pump gun and let Dan’s bridle go for him to git rid of the spell of bucking he had to git shut of ever morning until Mister Ernest hit him between the ears with the gun barrel. Then Mister Ernest loaded the gun and give me the stirrup, and I got up behind him and we taken the fire road up to
ward the bayou, the five big dogs dragging Simon along in front with his single-barrel britchloader slung on a piece of plow line across his back, and the puppies moiling along in ever’body’s way. It was light now and it was going to be jest fine; the east already yellow for the sun and our breaths smoking in the cold still bright air until the sun would come up and warm it, and a little skim of ice in the ruts, and ever leaf and twig and switch and even the frozen clods frosted over, waiting to sparkle like a rainbow when the sun finally come up and hit them. Until all my insides felt light and strong as a balloon, full of that light cold strong air, so that it seemed to me like I couldn’t even feel the horse’s back I was straddle of — jest the hot strong muscles moving under the hot strong skin, setting up there without no weight at all, so that when old Eagle struck and jumped, me and Dan and Mister Ernest would go jest like a bird, not even touching the ground. It was jest fine. When that big old buck got killed today, I knowed that even if he had put it off another ten years, he couldn’t ‘a’ picked a better one.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 684