Flags in the Dust

  “I didn’t know you were there,” Bayard answered weakly, with mild astonishment.

  But this was gone soon; nor did it return. Every few days, by Miss Jenny’s request, she came out and sat beside his bed and read to him, bringing into the room her outward untroubled serenity. He cared nothing at all about books; it is doubtful if he had ever read a book on his own initiative; but he would lie motionless in his cast while her grave contralto voice went on and on in the drowsy room. Sometimes he tried to talk to her, but she ignored his attempts and read on; if he persisted, she went away and left him. So he soon learned to lie, usually with his eyes closed, voyaging alone in the bleak and barren regions of his despair, while her voice flowed and ebbed above the remoter sounds that surrounded them—Miss Jenny scolding Simon or Isom downstairs or in the garden; the twittering of birds in the tree just beyond the window; the ceaseless rhythmic monotone of the water pump below the barn. At times she would cease and look at him and find that he was peacefully sleeping.

  6

  Old man Falls came through the lush green of early June, came into town through the yet horizontal sunlight of morning, and in his dusty neat overalls he now sat opposite old Bayard in immaculate linen and a geranium like a merry wound. The room was cool and still, reposeful with dingy light and the casual dust of a negro janitor’s casual and infrequent disturbing. Now that old Bayard was aging, and what with the deaf tenor of his stiffening ways, he was showing more and more a desire to surround himself with things of a like undeference; showing an incredible aptitude for choosing servants who circled about him in a sort of pottering and bland futility. The janitor, who dubbed old Bayard General and whom old Bayard and the other clients for whom he performed seemingly interminable duties of a slovenly and minor nature, addressed as Dr. Jones, was one of these. He was black and stooped with querulousness and age, and he took advantage of everyone who would permit him, and old Bayard swore at him’ constantly and permitted him to steal his tobacco and the bank’s winter supply of coal and peddle it to other negroes. The windows behind which old Bayard and his caller sat gave upon a vacant lot of rubbish and dusty weeds. It was bounded by the weathered rears of sundry one-story board buildings within which small businesses—repair and junk shops and such—had their lowly and ofttimes anonymous being. The lot itself was used by day by country people as a depot for their wagons and teams; already some of these were tethered somnolent and ruminant there, and about the stale ammoniac droppings of their patient generations sparrows swirled in garrulous clouds, or pigeons slanted with sounds like rusty shutters, or strode and preened in burnished and predatory pomposity, crooning among themselves with guttural un-emphasis.

  Old man Falls sat on the opposite side of the trash-filled fireplace, mopping his face with a blue-figured bandana.

  ‘It’s my damned old legs,” he explained, faintly apologetic. “Use to be I’d walk twelve-fifteen mile to a picnic or a singin’ with less study than that ‘ere little old three mile into town gives me now.” He mopped the handkerchief about that face of his, browned and cheerful these many years with the ample and abounding earth. “Looks like they’re fixin’ to give out on me, and I ain’t but ninety-three, neither.” He held his parcel in his other hand, but he continued to mop his face, making no motion to open it nor to ascertain its contents.

  “Why didn’t you wait on the roadside until a wagon came along?” old Bayard demanded in that overloud tone of the deaf. “Always some damn feller with a field full of weeds coming to town.”

  “I reckon I mought,” the other agreed. “But gittin’ here so quick would spile my holiday. I ain’t like you town-folks. I ain’t got so much time I kin hurry it.” He stowed the handkerchief away and rose and laid his parcel carefully on the mantel, and from his shirt he produced a small object wrapped in a clean frayed rag. Beneath his tedious and unhurried fingers there emerged a tin snuff-box polished long since to the dull soft sheen of satin or silver by handling and age. Old Bayard sat in his white linen and watched, watched him quietly as he removed the cap of the box and laid this, too, carefully aside.

  “Now, turn yo’ face to the light,” old man Falls directed.

  “Loosh Peabody says that stuff will give me blood poisoning, Will.”

  The other continued his slow preparations, his blue innocent eyes steadily following the movement of his hands. “Loosh Peabody never said that,” he corrected quietly. “One of them young doctors told you that, Bayard. Lean yo’ face to the light.” But old Bayard sat yet well back in his chair, his hands on the arms of it, watching the other with his piercing old eyes soberly, a little wistful; eyes filled with un-nameable things like the eyes of old lions, and intent.

  Old man Falls poised a dark gob of his ointment on one finger and raised his head. Then he set the box carefully on his vacated chair and he put his hand on old Bayard’s face, put old Bayard still resisted, though passively, watching him with his unutterable things; and the other drew him firmly but gently nearer the light.

  “Come on, here. I’m too old to waste any time hurtin’ folks. Hold still, now, so’ I won’t spot yo’ face. My hand ain’t steady enough to lift a rifle ball offen a hot stove no mo’.”

  He submitted then, and old man Falls patted the salve onto the wen with small deft touches. Then he took up the bit of cloth and removed the surplus from the wen and wiped his fingers and dropped the rag onto the hearth and knelt stiffly and touched a match to it. “We allus do that,” he explained. “My granny got that ‘ere from a Choctaw woman nigh a hundred year ago. Ain’t none of us never told what hit air nor left no after trace.” He rose stiffly again and dusted his knees. He recapped the box with the same unhurried laborious care and put it away and raised his parcel from the mantel and resumed his chair.

  “Hit’ll turn black, and long’s hit’s black, hit’s workin’. Don’t put no water on yo’ face befo’ mawnin’, and I’ll come in again in ten days and dose hit again, and on the—” He brooded a moment, computing slowly on his gnarled fingers; his lips moved but with no sound. “—ninth day of July, hit’ll drop off. And don’t you let Miss Jenny nor none of them doctors worry you about it.”

  He sat with his over ailed knees close together. The package lay on his knees and he now opened it after the ancient laborious ritual, picking with a sort of patient indomitability at the pink knot of the cord until a younger person would have screamed Old Bayard merely lit a cigar and propped his feet on the fireplace, and in good time old man Falls solved the knot and removed the string and laid it across his chair-arm. It fell to the floor and lie bent and fumbled it into his blunt fingers and laid it again across the chair-arm and watched it a while lest it fall again, then he opened the parcel First was his carton of tobacco, and he removed a plug and sniffed it, turned it about in his hand and sniffed it again. But without biting into it he laid it and its fellows aside and delved further yet lie spread open the throat of the resulting paper bag, and his innocent boy’s eyes gloated soberly into it.

  “I’ll declare,” he said. “Sometimes I’m right ashamed for havin’ sech a consarned sweet tooth. Hit don’t give me no rest a-tall.” Still carefully guarding the other objects on his close knees he tilted the sack and shook two or three of the striped, shrimp-like things into his palm, returned all but one, which he put into his mouth. “I’m afeard now I’ll be loosin’ my teeth someday and I’ll have to start gummin’ ‘em or eatin’ soft ones. I never did relish soft candy.” His leathery cheek bulged slightly, with slow regularity like a respiration as he chewed against the hard substance. He peered into the sack again, and he sat weighing it in his hand.

  “They was times back in sixty-three and -fo’ when a feller could a bought a section of land and a nigger with this yere bag of candy. Lots of times I mind, with everything goin’ agin us like, and sugar and cawfee gone and food scace, eatin’ stole cawn when they was any to steal and ditch weeds ef they wa’nt; bivouacin’ at night in the rain, more’n like...” His voice trailed away a
mong ancient phantoms of the soul’s and the body’s tribulations, into those regions of glamqrous and useless endeavor where such ghosts abide. Then he chuckled and chewed his peppermint again.

  “I mind that day we was a-dodgin’ around Grant’s army, headin’ nawth. Grant was at Grenada then, and Colonel had rousted us boys out and we taken hoss and jined Van Dorn’s cavalry down that-a-way. That was when Colonel had that ‘ere silver stallion. Grant was still at Grenada, but Van Dora lit out one day, headin’ nawth; why, us boys didn’t know. Colonel mought have knowed, but he never told us. Not that we keered much, long’s we was headin’ to’ds home.

  “So our comp’ny was ridin’ along to ourselves, goin’ to jine up with the balance of ‘em later. Leastways the rest of ‘em thought we was goin’ to jine ‘em. But Colonel never had no idea of doin’ that; his cawn hadn’t been laid by yit, and he was goin’ home fer a spell. We wasn’t runnin’ away,” he explained. “We knowed Van Dorn could handle ‘em all right fer a week or two. He usually done it. He was a putty good man,” old man Falls said. “A putty good man.’’

  “They were all pretty good men in those days,” old Bayard agreed. “But you damn fellers quit fighting and went home too often.”

  “Well,” old man Falls replied defensively, “even ef the hull country’s overrun with bears, a feller can’t hunt bears all the time. He’s got to quit once in a while, ef hit’s only to feed and rest up the dogs and hosses. But I reckon them dogs and bosses could stay on the trail long as any. ‘Course everybody couldn’t keep up with that ‘ere mist-colored stallion. They wa’nt but one animal in the Confedrit army could tech him—that last hoss Zeb Fothergill fotch back outen one of Sherman’s cavalry pickets on his last trip into Tennessee.

  “Nobody never did know what Zeb done on them trips of his’n; Colonel claimed hit was jest to steal hosses. But he never got back with lessen one. One time he come back with seven of the orneriest critters that ever walked, I reckon. He tried to swap ‘em fer meat and cawn-meal, but wouldn’t nobody have ‘em; then he tried to give ‘em to the army, but even the army wouldn’t have ‘em. So he finally turned ‘em loose and requisitioned to Joe Johnston’s haidquarters fer ten hosses sold to Forrest’s cavalry. I don’t know ef he ever got an answer. Nate, Forrest wouldn’t a had them hosses. I doubt ef they’d even a et ‘em in Vicksburg...I never did put no big reliability in Zeb Fothergill, him comin’ and goin’ by hisself like he done. But he knowed hosses, and he usually fotch a good ‘un home ever’ time he went away to’ds the war. But he never got another’n like this befo’.”

  The bulge receded from his cheek and he produced his pocket knife and cut a neat segment from his plug of tobacco and put it in his mouth. Then he rewrapped his parcel and tied the string about it again. The ash of old Bayard’s cigar trembled delicately about its glowing heart, but did not fall; his crossed elastic-sided boots gleamed against the hearth edge.

  Old man Falls spat neatly and brownly into the cold fireplace. “That day we was in Calhoun county,” he continued. “Hit was as putty a summer mawnin’ as you ever see; men and hosses rested and fed and feelin’ peart, trottin’ along the road through the woods and fields whar birds was a-singin’ and young rabbits lopin’ across the road. Colonel and Zeb was ridin’ along side by side on them two hosses, Colonel on Jupiter and Zeb on that sorrel two-year-old, and they was a-braggin’ as usual. We all knowed Colonel’s Jupiter, but Zeb kep’ a-contendin’ he wouldn’t take no man’s dust. The road was putty straight across the bottom to’ds the river and Zeb kep’ on aggin’ the Colonel fer a race, until Colonel said All right. He told us boys to come on and him and Zeb would wait fer us at the river bridge ‘bout fo’ mile ahead, and him and Zeb lit out.

  “Them hosses was the puttiest livin’ things I ever seen. They went off together like two birds, neck and neck. They was outen sight in no time, with dust swirlin’ behind, but we could foller ‘em fer a ways by the dust they left, watchin’ it kind of suckin’ on down the road like one of these here ottomobiles was in the middle of it. When they come to whar the road drapped down to the river Colonel had Zeb beat by about three hundred yards. Thar was a crick jest under the ridge, and when Colonel sailed over the rise and come in sight of the crick, thar was a comp’ny of Yankee cavalry with their hosses picketed and their muskets stacked, eatin’ dinner by the bridge. Colonel says they was a-settin’ thar gapin’ at the rise when he come over hit, holdin’ cups of caw-fee and hunks of bread in their hands and their muskets stacked abo’ forty foot away buggin’ their eyes and mouths at him.

  “It was too late fer him to turn back, anyhow, but I don’t reckon he would ef they’d been time. He jest spurred down the ridge and in amongst ‘em, scatterin’ cook-fires and guns and men, shoutin’ ‘Surround ‘em, boys! Ef you move, you are dead men.’ One or two of ‘em made to break away, but Colonel drawed his pistols and let ‘em off, and they come back and scrouged in amongst the others, and thar they set’ still a-holdin’ their cups and dinner, when Zeb come up. And that was the way we found ‘em when we got thar ten minutes later.” Old man Falls spat again, neatly and brownly, and he chuckled. His eyes shone like periwinkles, “That cawfee was sho’ mighty fine,” he said.

  “And thar we was, with a passel of prisoners we didn’t have no use fer. We held ‘em all that day and et their grub; and when night come we taken and throwed their muskets into the crick and taken their ammunition and the rest of the grub and put a guard on their hosses, then the rest of us laid down. And all that night we laid thar in them fine Yankee blankets, listenin’ to them prisoners sneakin’ away one at a time, slippin’ down the bank into the crick and wadin’ off. Time to time one would slip or make a splash er something, then they’d all git right still fer a spell. But pretty soon we’d hear ‘em at it again, crawlin’ through the bushes to’ds the crick, and us layin’ with blanket aidges held to our mouths. Hit was nigh dawn ‘fore the last one had snuck off in a way that suited him.

  “Then Colonel from whar he was a-layin’ let out a yell them pore critters could hear fer a mile.

  “ ‘Go it Yank,’ he says, ‘and look out fer moccasins!’ ”

  “Next mawnin’ we saddled up and loaded our plunder and ever’ man taken him a hoss, and lit out fer home. We’d been home two weeks and Colonel had his cawn laid by, when we heard ‘bout Van Dorn ridin’ into Holly Springs and burnin’ Grants sto’s. Seems like he never needed no help from us, noways.” He chewed his tobacco for a time, quietly retrospective, reliving in the company of men now dust with the dust for which they had, unwittingly perhaps, fought, those gallant, pinch-bellied days into which few who now trod that earth and. drew breath, could enter into with him.

  Old Bayard shook the ash from his cigar. “Will,” he said, “what the devil were you folks fighting about, anyhow?”

  “Bayard,” old man Falls answered, “damned ef I ever did know.”

  After old man Falls had departed with his small parcel and his innocently bulging cheek, old Bayard sat and smoked his cigar. He knew now a sense of finality, of peace; like that of the man who has made his final cast with the dice and from whom all initiative is lifted, leaving him no more than a vegetable until they cease rolling, let them show what they may. He had crossed the Rubicon...but had he? He raised his hand and touched the wen again, but lightly, recalling old man Falls’ parting stricture; and recalling this, the thought that it might not yet be too late, that he might yet remove the paste with water, followed.

  He rose and crossed to the lavatory in the corner of the room. Above it was fixed a small cabinet with a mirror in the door, and in it he examined the black spot on his face, touching it again with his fingers, then staring at his hand. Yes, it might still come off...But be damned if he would; be damned to a man who didn’t know his own mind. And Will Falls, too; Will Falls, hale and sane and sound as a dollar; Will Falls who, as he himself had said, was too old to have any reason for injuring anyone. He flung his cigar away and quitted the room and tramped throu
gh the lobby toward the door where his chair sat. But before he reached the door he stopped and turned and came up to the teller’s window, behind which the cashier sat in a green eyeshade.

  “Res,” he said.

  The cashier looked up. “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Who is that damn boy that hangs around here, looking through that window all the time?” old Bayard demanded, lowering his voice within a pitch or so of an ordinary conversational tone.

  “What boy, Colonel?” Old Bayard pointed, and the cashier raised himself on his stool and peered over the partition and saw without the indicated window a boy of ten or twelve watching him with an innocently casual air. “Oh. That’s Will Beard’s boy, from up at the boarding house,” he shouted. “Friend of Byron’s, I think.”

  “What’s he doing, then? Every time I walk through here, there he is looking in that window. What does he want?”

  “Maybe he’s a bank robber,” the cashier suggested.

  “What?” Old Bayard cupped his ear fiercely in his palm.

  “Maybe he’s a bank robber,” the other shouted, leaning forward on his stool. Old Bayard snorted and tramped violently away and slammed his chair back against the door. The cashier sat lumped and shapeless on his stool, rumbling deep within his gross body. He said, without turning his head: “Colonel’s let Will Falls treat that thing on his face with that salve.” The Snopes at his desk made no reply; did not raise his head. After a time the boy moved, and drifted casually and innocently away.

  Virgil Beard now possessed, besides the air rifle, a pistol that projected a stream of ammoniac water excruciatingly painful to the eyes, a small magic lantern, and an ex-candy showcase in which he kept birds’ eggs and an assortment of insects that had died slowly on pins, and a modest hoard of nickels and dimes and quarters. With a child’s innocent pleasure he divulged to his parents the source of this beneficence, and his mother took Snopes to her gray heart, fixing him special dishes and performing trifling acts to increase his creature comfort with bleak and awkward gratitude.