The Essential Faulkner

  They heard Dilsey mount the final stair, then her slow feet overhead.

  “Quentin,” she said. When she called the first time Jason laid his knife and fork down and he and his mother appeared to wait across the table from one another, in identical attitudes; the one cold and shrewd, with close-thatched brown hair curled into two stubborn hooks, one on either side of his forehead like a bartender in caricature, and hazel eyes with black-ringed irises like marbles, the other cold and querulous, with perfectly white hair and eyes pouched and baffled and so dark as to appear to be all pupil or all iris.

  “Quentin,” Dilsey said, “get up, honey. Dey waitin breakfast on you.”

  “I can’t understand how that window got broken,” Mrs. Compson said. “Are you sure it was done yesterday? It could have been like that a long time, with the warm weather. The upper sash, behind the shade like that.”

  “I’ve told you for the last time that it happened yesterday,” Jason said. “Don’t you reckon I know the room I live in? Do you reckon I could have lived in it a week with a hole in the window you could stick your hand—” his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse. As they sat so Dilsey said,

  “Quentin. Don’t play wid me, honey. Come on to breakfast, honey. Dey waitin’ fer you.”

  “I can’t understand it,” Mrs. Compson said. “It’s just as if somebody had tried to break into the house—” Jason sprang up. His chair crashed over backward. “What—” Mrs. Compson said, staring at him as he ran past her and went jumping up the stairs, where he met Dilsey. His face was now in shadow, and Dilsey said,

  “She sullin. Yo ma ain’t unlocked—” But Jason ran on past her and along the corridor to a door. He didn’t call. He grasped the knob and tried it, then he stood with the knob in his hand and his head bent a little, as if he were listening to something much further away than the dimensioned room beyond the door, and which he already heard. His attitude was that of one who goes through the motions of listening in order to deceive himself as to what he already hears. Behind him Mrs. Compson mounted the stairs, calling his name. Then she saw Dilsey and she quit calling him and began to call Dilsey instead.

  “I told you she ain’t unlocked dat do’ yit,” Dilsey said.

  When she spoke he turned and ran toward her, but his voice was quiet, matter of fact. “She carry the key with her?” he said. “Has she got it now, I mean, or will she have—”

  “Dilsey,” Mrs. Compson said on the stairs.

  “Is which?” Dilsey said. “Whyn’t you let—”

  “The key,” Jason said, “to that room. Does she carry it with her all the time. Mother.” Then he saw Mrs. Compson and he went down the stairs and met her. “Give me the key,” he said. He fell to pawing at the pockets of the rusty black dressing sacque she wore. She resisted.

  “Jason,” she said, “Jason! Are you and Dilsey trying to put me to bed again?” she said, trying to fend him off. “Can’t you even let me have Sunday in peace?”

  “The key,” Jason said, pawing at her. “Give it here.” He looked back at the door, as if he expected it to fly open before he could get back to it with the key he did not yet have.

  “You, Dilsey!” Mrs. Compson said, clutching her sacque about her.

  “Give me the key, you old fool!” Jason cried suddenly. From her pocket he tugged a huge bunch of rusted keys on an iron ring like a medieval jailer’s and ran back up the hall with the two women behind him.

  “You, Jason!” Mrs. Compson said. “He will never find the right one,” she said. “You know I never let anyone take my keys, Dilsey,” she said. She began to wail.

  “Hush,” Dilsey said. “He ain’t gwine do nothin’ to her. I ain’t gwine let him.”

  “But on Sunday morning, in my own house,” Mrs. Compson said. “When I’ve tried so hard to raise them Christians. Let me find the right key, Jason,” she said. She put her hand on his arm. Then she began to struggle with him, but he flung her aside with a motion of his elbow and looked around at her for a moment, his eyes cold and harried, then he turned to the door again and the unwieldy keys.

  “Hush,” Dilsey said. “You, Jason!”

  “Something terrible has happened,” Mrs. Compson said, wailing again. “I know it has. You, Jason,” she said, grasping at him again. “He won’t even let me find the key to a room in my own house!”

  “Now, now,” Dilsey said, “whut kin happen? I right here. I ain’t gwine let him hurt her. Quentin,” she said, raising her voice, “don’t you be skeered, honey, I’se right here.”

  The door opened, swung inward. He stood in it for a moment, hiding the room, then he stepped aside. “Go in,” he said in a thick, light voice. They went in. It was not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminize it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses. The bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink; from a half-open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking.

  The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house. It was in bloom and the branches scraped and rasped against the house and the myriad air, driving in the window, brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.

  “Dar now,” Dilsey said, “didn’t I told you she all right?”

  “All right?” Mrs. Compson said. Dilsey followed her into the room and touched her.

  “You come on and lay down, now,” she said. “I find her in ten minutes.”

  Mrs. Compson shook her off. “Find the note,” she said. “Quentin left a note when he did it.”

  “All right,” Dilsey said, “I’ll find hit. You come on to yo room, now.”

  “I knew the minute they named her Quentin this would happen,” Mrs. Compson said. She went to the bureau and began to turn over the scattered objects there—scent bottles, a box of powder, a chewed pencil, a pair of scissors with one broken blade lying upon a darned scarf dusted with powder and stained with rouge. “Find the note,” she said.

  “I is,” Dilsey said. “You come on, now. Me and Jason’ll find hit. You come on to yo’ room.”

  “Jason,” Mrs. Compson said, “where is he?” She went to the door. Dilsey followed her on down the hall, to another door. It was closed. “Jason,” she called through the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob, then she called him again. But there was still no answer, for he was hurling things backward out of the closet: garments, shoes, a suitcase. Then he emerged carrying a sawn section of tongue-and-groove planking and laid it down and entered the closet again and emerged with a metal box. He set it on the bed and stood looking at the broken lock while he dug a key ring from his pocket and selected a key, and for a time longer he stood with the selected key, in his hand, looking at the broken lock, then he put the keys back in his pocket and carefully tilted the contents of the box out upon the bed. Still carefully he sorted the papers, taking them up one at a time and shaking them. Then he upended the box and shook it too and slowly replaced the papers and stood again, looking at the broken lock, with the box in his hands and his head bent. Outside the window he heard some jaybirds swirl shrieking past, and away, their cries whipping away along the wind, and an automobile passed somewhere and died away also. His mother spoke his name again beyond the door, but he didn’t move. He heard Dilsey lead her away up the hall, and then a door closed. Then he replaced the box in the closet and flung the garments back into it and went downstairs to the telephone. While he stood there with the receiver to his ear, waiting, Dilsey came down the stairs. She looked at him, without stopping, and went on.

  The wire opened. “This is Jason Compson,” he said, his voice so harsh and thick that he h
ad to repeat himself. “Jason Compson,” he said, controlling his voice. “Have a car ready, with a deputy, if you can’t go, in ten minutes. I’ll be there— What?—Robbery. My house. I know who it— Robbery, I say. Have a car read— What? Aren’t you a paid law enforcement— Yes, I’ll be there in five minutes. Have that car ready to leave at once. If you don’t, I’ll report it to the governor.”

  He clapped the receiver back and crossed the dining-room, where the scarce-broken meal now lay cold on the table, and entered the kitchen. Dilsey was filling the hot water bottle. Ben sat, tranquil and empty. Beside him Luster looked like a fyce dog, brightly watchful. He was eating something. Jason went on across the kitchen.

  “Ain’t you going to eat no breakfast?” Dilsey said. He paid her no attention. “Go on and eat yo breakfast, Jason.” He went on. The outer door banged behind him. Luster rose and went to the window and looked out.

  “Whoo,” he said, “whut happenin’ up dar? He been beatin’ Miss Quentin?”

  “You hush yo mouf,” Dilsey said. “You git Benjy started now en I beat yo head off. You keep him quiet es you kin twell I get back, now.” She screwed the cap on the bottle and went out. They heard her go up the stairs, then they heard Jason pass the house in his car. Then there was no sound in the kitchen save the simmering murmur of the kettle and the clock.

  “You know whut I bet?” Luster said. “I bet he beat her. I bet he knock her in de head en now he gone fer de doctor. Dat’s whut I bet.” The clock ticktocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself; after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times. Ben looked up at it, then he looked at the bullet-like silhouette of Luster’s head in the window and he began to bob his head again, drooling. He whimpered.

  “Hush up, loony,” Luster said without turning. “Look like we ain’t gwine git to go to no church today.” But Ben sat in the chair, his big soft hands dangling between his knees, moaning faintly. Suddenly he wept, a slow bellowing sound, meaningless and sustained. “Hush,” Luster said. He turned and lifted his hand. “You want me to whup you?” But Ben looked at him, bellowing slowly with each expiration. Luster came and shook him. “You hush dis minute!” he shouted. “Here,” he said. He hauled Ben out of the chair and dragged the chair around facing the stove and opened the door to the firebox and shoved Ben into the chair. They looked like a tug nudging at a clumsy tanker in a narrow dock. Ben sat down again facing the rosy door. He hushed. Then they heard the clock again, and Dilsey slow on the stairs. When she entered he began to whimper again. Then he lifted his voice.

  “Whut you done to him?” Dilsey said. “Why can’t you let him ‘lone dis mawnin, of all times?”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to him,” Luster said. “Mr. Jason skeered him, dat’s whut hit is. He ain’t kilt Miss Quentin, is he?”

  “Hush, Benjy,” Dilsey said. He hushed. She went to the window and looked out. “Is it quit rainin’?” she said.

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Quit long time ago.”

  “Den y’all go out do’s awhile,” she said. “I jes got Miss Cahline quiet now.”

  “Is we gwine to church?” Luster said.

  “I let you know bout dat when de time come. You keep him away fum de house twell I calls you.”

  “Kin we go to de pastuh?” Luster said.

  “All right. Only you keep him away fum de house. I done stood all I kin.”

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Whar Mr. Jason gone, mammy?”

  “Dat’s some mo’ of yo’ business, ain’t it?” Dilsey said. She began to clear the table. “Hush, Benjy. Luster gwine take you out to play.”

  “Whut he done to Miss Quentin, mammy?” Luster said.

  “Ain’t done nothin’ to her. You all git on outen here?”

  “I bet she ain’t here,” Luster said.

  Dilsey looked at him. “How you know she ain’t here?”

  “Me and Benjy seed her clamb out de window last night. Didn’t us, Benjy?”

  “You did?” Dilsey said, looking at him.

  “We sees her doin’ hit ev’y night,” Luster said. “Clamb right down dat pear tree.”

  “Don’t you lie to me, nigger boy,” Dilsey said.

  “I ain’t lyin’. Ask Benjy ef I is.”

  “Whyn’t you say somethin’ about it, den?”

  “ ’Twarn’t none o’ my business,” Luster said. “I ain’t gwine git mixed up in white folks business. Come on here, Benjy, les go out do’s.”

  They went out. Dilsey stood for a while at the table, then she went and cleared the breakfast things from the dining-room and ate her breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen. Then she removed her apron and hung it up and went to the foot of the stairs and listened for a moment. There was no sound. She donned the overcoat and the hat and went across to her cabin.

  The rain had stopped. The air now drove out of the southeast, broken overhead into blue patches. Upon the crest of a hill beyond the trees and roofs and spires of town sunlight lay like a pale scrap of cloth, was blotted away. Upon the air a bell came, then as if at a signal, other bells took up the sound and repeated it.

  The cabin door opened and Dilsey emerged, again in the maroon cape and the purple gown, and wearing soiled white elbow-length gloves and minus her headcloth now. She came into the yard and called Luster. She waited a while, then she went to the house and around it to the cellar door, moving close to the wall, and looked into the door. Ben sat on the steps. Before him Luster squatted on the damp floor. He held a saw in his left hand, the blade sprung a little by pressure of his hand, and he was in the act of striking the blade with the worn wooden mallet with which she had been making beaten biscuit for more than thirty years. The saw gave forth a single sluggish twang that ceased with lifeless alacrity, leaving the blade in a thin clean curve between Luster’s hand and the floor. Still, inscrutable, it bellied.

  “Dat’s de way he done hit,” Luster said. “I jes ain’t foun’ de right thing to hit it wid.”

  “Dat’s whut you doin’, is it?” Dilsey said. “Bring me dat mallet,” she said.

  “I ain’t hurt hit,” Luster said.

  “Bring hit here,” Dilsey said. “Put dat saw whar you got hit first.”

  He put the saw away and brought the mallet to her. Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

  “Listen at him,” Luster said. “He been gwine on dat way ev’y since you sont us outen de house. I don’t know whut got into him dis mawnin.”

  “Bring him here,” Dilsey said.

  “Come on, Benjy,” Luster said. He went back down the steps and took Ben’s arm. He came obediently, wailing, that slow hoarse sound that ships make, that seems to begin before the sound itself has started, seems to cease before the sound itself has stopped.

  “Run and git his cap,” Dilsey said. “Don’t make no noise Miss Cahline kin hear. Hurry, now. We already late.”

  “She gwine hear him anyhow, ef you don’t stop him,” Luster said.

  “He stop when we git off de place,” Dilsey said. “He smellin’ hit. Dat’s whut hit is.”

  “Smell whut, mammy?” Luster said.

  “You go git dat cap,” Dilsey said. Luster went on. They stood in the cellar door, Ben one step below her. The sky was broken now into scudding patches that dragged their swift shadows up out of the shabby garden, over the broken fence and across the yard. Dilsey stroked Ben’s head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. “Hush,” Dilsey said. “Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now.” He wailed quietly and steadily.

  Luster returned, wearing a stiff new straw hat with a colored band and carrying a cloth cap. The hat seemed to isolate Luster’s skull, in the beholder’s eye as a spotlight would, in all its individual planes and angles. So peculiarly individual was its shape that at first glance the
hat appeared to be on the head of someone standing immediately behind Luster. Dilsey looked at the hat.

  “Whyn’t you wear yo’ old hat?” she said.

  “Couldn’t find hit,” Luster said.

  “I bet you couldn’t. I bet you fixed hit last night so you couldn’t find hit. You fixin’ to ruin dat un.”

  “Aw, mammy,” Luster said, “hit ain’t gwine rain.”

  “How you know? You go git dat old hat en put dat new un away.”

  “Aw, mammy.”

  “Den you go git de umbreller.”

  “Aw, mammy.”

  “Take yo choice,” Dilsey said. “Git yo old hat, er de umbreller. I don’t keer which.”

  Luster went to the cabin. Ben wailed quietly.

  “Come on,” Dilsey said, “dey kin ketch up wid us. We gwine to hear de singin’.” They went around the house, toward the gate. “Hush,” Dilsey said from time to time as they went down the drive. They reached the gate. Dilsey opened it. Luster was coming down the drive behind them, carrying the umbrella. A woman was with him. “Here dey come,” Dilsey said. They passed out the gate. “Now, den,” she said. Ben ceased. Luster and his mother overtook them. Frony wore a dress of bright blue silk and a flowered hat. She was a thin woman, with a flat, pleasant face.

  “You got six weeks’ work right dar on yo back,” Dilsey said. “Whut you gwine do ef hit rain?”

  “Git wet, I reckon,” Frony said. “I ain’t never stopped no rain yit.”

  “Mammy always talkin’ bout hit gwine rain,” Luster said.

  “Ef I don’t worry bout y’all, I don’t know who is,” Dilsey said. “Come on, we already late.”

  “Rev’un Shegog gwine preach today,” Frony said.

  “Is?” Dilsey said. “Who him?”

  “He fum Saint Looey,” Frony said. “Dat big preacher.”

  “Huh,” Dilsey said. “Whut dey needs is a man kin put de fear of God into dese here triflin’ young niggers.”

  “Rev’un Shegog gwine preach today,” Frony said. “So dey tells.”

  They went on along the street. Along its quiet length white people in bright clumps moved churchward, under the windy bells, walking now and then in the random and tentative sun. The wind was gusty, out of the southeast, chill and raw after the warm days.