Flags in the Dust

  “He headin’ fer dat holler tree, ain’t he?” Isom asked.

  “Soun’ like it.” They listened, motionless. “We have a job, den. Whooy.” There was a faint chill in the air now, as the day’s sunlight cooled from the ground, and Narcissa moved closer to Bayard. He took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and gave Caspey one and lit his own. Isom squatted on his heels, his eyes rolling whitely in the lantern light.

  “Gimme one, please, suh,” he said.

  “You ain’t got no business smoking, boy,” Caspey told him. But Bayard gave him one, and he squatted leanly on his heels, holding the white cylinder in his black diffident hand. The dogs bayed again, mellow and chiming and timbrous in the darkness. “Yes, suh,” Caspey repeated, “he headin’ fer dat down tree.”

  “You know this country like you do the back yard, don’t you, Caspey?” Narcissa said.

  “Yessum, I ought to. I been over it a hund’ed times since I wuz bawn. Mist’ Bayard do too. He been huntin’ it long ez I is. Him and Mist’ Johnny bofe. Miss Jenny send me wid ‘um when de had dey fust gun; me and dat ‘ere single bar’l gun I used to have to tie together wid a string. You member dat ole single bar’l, Mist’ Bayard? But hit ‘ud shoot. Many’s de fox squir’l we shot in dese woods. Rabbits, too.” Bayard was leaning against the tree. He was gazing off into the treetops and the soft sky beyond, his cigarette burning slowly in his hand. She looked at his bleak profile against the lantern glow, then she moved closer against him. But he did not respond, and she slid her hand into his. But it too was unresponsive, and again he had left her for the bleak and lonely heights of his frozen despair. Caspey was speaking again, in his slow, consonantless voice with its overtones of mellow sadness. “Mist’ Johnny, now, he sho’ could shoot. You ‘member dat time me and you and him wuz—”

  Bayard rose. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it carefully with his heel. “Let’s move on,” he said. “They ain’t going to tree.” He drew Narcissa to her feet and turned and went on ahead of them. Caspey got up and unslung his horn and put it to his lips. The sound swelled about them, grave arid clear and prolonged, then it died into echoes and so into silence again, leaving no ripple.

  It was near midnight when they left Caspey and Isom at their cabin and followed the lane toward the house. After a while the barn loomed before them, and the house among its thinning trees, against the hazy sky. He opened the gate and she passed through and he followed and closed it, and turning he found her beside him, arid stopped. “Bayard?” she whispered, leaning against him, and he put his arms around her and stood so, staring above her head into the sky. She took his face between her hands and drew it down, but his lips were cold and upon them she tasted fatality and doom, and she clung to him for a time, her head bowed against his chest.

  After that she would not go with him again. So he went alone, returning anywhere between midnight and dawn, ripping his clothing off quietly in the darkness and sliding cautiously into bed. But when he was still, she would touch him and speak his name in the darkness beside him, and turn to him warm and soft with deep. And they would lie so, holding each other in the darkness and the temporary abeyance of his despair and the isolation of that doom he could not escape.

  2

  “Well,” Miss Jenny said briskly, above the soup, “your girl’s gone and left you, and now you can find time to come out and see your kinfolks, can’t you?”

  Horace grinned a little. “To tell the truth, I came out to get something to eat. I don’t think that one woman in ten has any aptitude for keeping house, but my place is certainly not in the home.”

  “You mean,” Miss Jenny corrected, “that not one man in ten has sense enough to marry a decent cook.”

  “Maybe they have more sense and consideration for others than to spoil decent cooks,” he suggested.

  “Yes,” young Bayard said, “even a cook’ll quit work when she gets married.”.

  “Dat’s de troof,” Simon, propped in a slightly florid attitude against the sideboard, in a collarless boiled shirt and his Sunday pants (it is Thanksgiving day) and reeking a little of whisky in addition to his normal odors, agreed. “I had to find Euphrony fo’ new cookin’ places de fust two mont’ we wuz ma’ied.”

  Dr. Peabody said: “Simon must have married somebody else’s cook.”

  “I’d rather marry somebody else’s cook than somebody else’s wife,” Miss Jenny snapped.

  “Miss Jenny!” Narcissa reproved. “You hush.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Jenny said immediately. “I wasn’t saying that to you, Horace: it just popped into my mind. I was talking to you, Loosh Peabody. You think just because you’ve been eating off of us Thanksgiving and Christmas for sixty years, that you can come into, my own house and laugh at me, don’t you?”

  “Hush, Miss Jenny!” Narcissa repeated.

  “What’s dat?” Old Bayard, his napkin tucked into his waistcoat, lowered his spoon ,and cupped his hand to his ear.

  “Nothing” young Bayard told him, “Aunt Jenny and Doc fighting again. Come alive, Simon,” Simon stirred and removed the soup plates, but laggardly, still giving his interested attention to the altercation.

  “Yes,” Miss Jenny finished on, “just because that old fool of a Will Falls put axle grease on a little bump on his face without killing him dead, you have to go around swelled up like a poisoned dog; What did you have to do with it? You certainly didn’t take it off. Maybe you conjured it on his face to begin with?”

  “Haven’t you got a piece of bread or something Miss Jenny can put in her mouth, Simon?” Dr. Peabody added mildly. Miss Jenny glared at him a moment, then flopped back in her chair.

  “You, Simon! Are you dead?” Simon removed the plates and bore them out, and the guests sat avoiding one another’s eyes a little, while Miss Jenny behind her barricade of cups and jugs and urns and things, continued to breathe fire and brimstone.

  “Will Falls,” old Bayard repeated. “Jenny, tell Simon, when he fixes that basket, to come to my office.: I’ve got something to go in it.” This something was the pint flask of whisky which he included in old man Falls’ Thanksgiving and Christmas basket and which the old man divided out in spoonsful as far as it would go among his ancient and homeless cronies on those days; and invariably old Bayard reminded her to remind Isom of what neither of them ever forgot or overlooked.

  “All right,” she answered. Simon reappeared, with a huge silver coffee urn, set it at Miss Jenny’s hand and retreated kitchenward.

  “How many of you want coffee now?” she asked generally. “Bayard will no more sit down to a meal without his coffee than he’d fly. Will you, Horace?” He declined, and without looking at Dr. Peabody she said: “I reckon you’ll have to have some, won’t you?”

  “If it’s no trouble,” he answered mildly. He winked at Narcissa, then he assumed an expression of lugubrious diffidence. Miss Jenny drew two cups, and Simon appeared with a huge platter borne gallantly and precariously aloft and set it before old Bayard with a magnificent flourish.

  “My God, Simon,” young Bayard said, “where did you get a whale this time of year?”

  “Dat’s a fish in dis worl’, mon,” Simon agreed. And it was a fish. It was three feet long and broad as a saddle blanket; it was a-jolly red color and it lay gaping on the platter with an air of dashing and rollicking joviality.

  “Dammit, Jenny,” old Bayard said pettishly, “what did you want to have this thing, for? Who wants to clutter his stomach up with fish, in November, with a kitchen full of ‘possum and turkey and squirrel?”

  “There are other people to eat here beside you,” she retorted. “If you don’t want any, don’t eat it. We always had a fish course at home,” she added. “But you can’t wean these Mississippi country folks away from bread and meat to save your life. Here, Simon.” Simon set a stack of plates before old Bayard and he now came with his tray and Miss Jenny set two coffee cups on it, and he served them to old Bayard and Dr. Peabody. Miss Jenny drew a cup for herse
lf, and Simon passed sugar and cream. Old Bayard carved the fish, still rumbling heavily.

  “I ain’t ever found anything wrong with fish at any time of year,” Dr. Peabody said.

  “You wouldn’t,” Miss Jenny snapped. Again he winked heavily at Narcissa.

  “Only,” he continued, “I like to catch my own, out of my own pond. Mine have mo’ food value.”

  “Still got your pond, Doc?” young Bayard asked.

  “Yes. But the fishin’ ain’t been so good, this year. Abe had the flu last winter, and ever since he’s been goin’ to sleep on me, and I have to sit there and wait until he wakes up and takes the fish off and baits my hook again. But finally I thought about tyin’ one end of a cord to his leg and the other end to the bench, and now when I get a bite, I just give the string a yank and wake ‘im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out someday, Bayard. She ain’t never seen my pond.”

  “You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got a row of benches around it, with foot-rests, and a railing just high enough to prop your pole on, and a nigger to every fisherman to bait his hook and take the fish off. I don’t see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”

  “Well, I’ve had them around so long I don’t know how to get rid of ‘em, ‘less I drown ‘em. Feedin’ ‘em is the main trouble, though. Takes everything I can make. If it wasn’t for them, I’d a quit practicin’ long ago. That’s the reason I dine out whenever I can: every time I get a free meal, it’s the same as a half holiday.”

  “How many have you got?” Narcissa asked.

  “I don’t rightly know,” he answered. “I got six or seven registered ones, but I don’t know how many scrubs I have. I see a new yearlin’ every day or so.” Simon was watching him with rapt interest.

  “You ain’t got no extra room out dar, is you, Doctor?” he asked. “Here I slaves all day long, keepin’ ‘um in vittles en sech.”

  “Can you eat cold fish and greens every day?” Dr. Peabody asked him solemnly.

  “Well, suh,” Simon answered doubtfully, “I ain’t right sho’ erbout dat. I burnt out on de fish once, when I wuz a young man, en I ain’t had no right stomach fer it since.”

  “Well, that’s about all we eat, out home.”

  “All right, Simon,” Miss Jenny said. Simon was propped statically against the sideboard, watching Dr. Peabody with musing astonishment.

  “En you keeps yo’ size on cole fish en greens? Gentlemun, I’d be a bone-rack on dem kine o’ vittles in two weeks, I sho’ly would.”

  “Simon!” Miss Jenny raised her voice sharply. “Why won’t you let him alone, Loosh, so he can ‘tend to his business?” Simon came abruptly untranced and removed the fish.

  “Lay off of Doc, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard said. He touched his grandfather’s arm. “Can’t you make her let Doc alone?”

  “What’s he doing, Jenny?” old Bayard asked. “Won’t he eat his dinner?”

  “None of us’ll get to eat anything, if he sits there and talks to Simon about cold fish and greens,” Miss Jenny replied.

  “I think you’re mean, to treat him like you do, Miss Jenny,” Narcissa said. She sat beside Horace; beneath the cloth her hand was in his.

  “Well, it gives me something to be thankful for,” Dr. Peabody answered. “That I’m a widower. I want some mo’coffee, Jenny.”

  “Who wouldn’t be, the size of a hogshead, and living on cold fish and turnip greens?” Miss Jenny snapped. He passed his cup and she refilled it.

  “Oh, shut up, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard commanded. Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next few minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a cured ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ‘possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, and squash and pickled beets, and rice and hominy, and hot biscuit and beaten biscuit and long thin sticks of combread, and strawberry and pear preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and blackberry jam and stewed cranberries.

  Then they ceased talking for a while and really ate, glancing now and then across the table at one another in a rosy glow of amicability and steamy odors. From time to time Isom entered with hot bread, while Simon stood overlooking the field somewhat as Caesar must have stood looking down into Gaul, once he had it well in hand, or the Lord God Himself when he looked down upon His latest chemical experiment and said It is well.

  “After this, Simon,” Dr. Peabody said, and he sighed a little, “I reckon I can take you on and find you a little side meat now and then.”

  “I ‘speck you kin,” Simon agreed, watching them like an eagle-eyed general who rushes reserves to the threatened points, pressing more food upon them as they faltered But even Dr. Peabody allowed himself vanquished after a time, and then Simon brought in pies of three kinds, and a small, deadly plum pudding, and cake baked cunningly with whisky and nuts and fruit and treacherous and fatal as sin; and at last, with an air sibylline and gravely profound, a bottle of port. The sun lay hazily in the glowing west, failing levelly through the windows and upon the silver arrayed upon the sideboard, dreaming in hushed mellow gleams among its placid rotundities and upon the colored glass in the fanlight high in the western wall.

  But that was November, the season of hazy, languorous days, when the first flush of autumn was over and winter beneath the sere horizon breathed yet a spell November, when the year like a shawled matron among her children dies peacefully, without pain and of no disease. Early in December the rains came and the year turned gray beneath the season of dissolution and of death. All night and all day it whispered upon the roof and along the eaves; the leafless trees gestured their black and sorrowful branches in it: only a lone stubborn hickory at the foot of the park kept its leaves yet, gleaming like a sodden flame against the eternal azure; beyond the valley the hills were hidden within chill veils of it.

  Almost daily, despite Miss Jenny’s strictures and commands and the grave and passive protest in Narcissa’s eyes, Bayard went out with a shotgun and the two dogs, to return just before dark, wet to the skin. And cold; his lips would be chill on hers, and his eyes bleak and haunted, and in the yellow firelight of their room she would cling to him, or lie crying quietly in the darkness beside his rigid body with a ghost between them.

  “Look here,” Miss Jenny said, coming upon her as she sat brooding before the fire in old Bayard’s den.

  “You spend too much time this way; you’re getting moony. Stop worrying about him: he’s spent half his life soaking wet, yet he never had a cold that I can remember.”

  “Hasn’t he?” the answered listlessly. Miss Jenny stood beside her chair, watching her keenly. Then she laid her hand on Narcissa’s head, quite gently, for a Sartoris.

  “Are you worrying because maybe he don’t love you like you think he ought to?”

  “It isn’t that,” she answered. “He doesn’t love anybody. He won’t even love the baby. He doesn’t seem to be glad, or sorry, or anything.”

  “No,” Miss Jenny agreed The fire crackled and leaped among the resinous logs. Beyond the window the day dissolved endlessly. “listen,’? Miss Jenny said abruptly. “Don’t you ride in that car with him any more. You hear?”

  “No. It won’t make him drive slowly. Nothing will.”

  “Of course not. Nobody believes it will, not even Bayard. He goes along for the same reason that boy himself does. Sartoris. It’s in the blood. Savages, every one of ‘em. No earthly use to anyone” Together they gazed into the leaping flames, Miss Jenny’s hand still lying on Narcissa’s head. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “You didn’t do it. Nobody got me into it. I did it myself.”

  “H’m,” Miss Jenny said. And then: “Would you do it over again?” The other didn’t answer, and she repeated the question. “Would you?”

  “Yes,” Narcissa answered. “Don’t you know I would?” Again there was silence between them, in which without words they sealed their hopeless
pact with that fine and passive courage of women throughput the world’s history. Narcissa rose. “I believe I’ll go to town and spend the day with Horace, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “All right,” Miss Jenny agreed. “I believe I would, too. Horace probably needs a little looking after, by now. He looked sort of gaunt when he was out here last week. Like he wasn’t getting proper food.”

  When she entered the kitchen door Eunice, the cook, turned from the bread board and lifted her daubed hands in a soft dark gesture. “Well, Miss Narcy,” she said, “we ain’t seed you in a month. Is you come all de way in de rain?”

  “I came in the carriage. It was too wet for the car.” She entered the kitchen. Eunice watched her with grave pleasure. “How are you all getting along?”

  “He gits enough to eat, all right,” Eunice answered. “I sees to dat. But I has to make ‘im eat it. He needs you back here.”

  “I’m here, for the day, anyhow. What have you got for dinner?” Together they lifted lids and peered into the simmering vessels on the stove and in the oven. “Oh, chocolate pie!”

  “I has to toll ‘im wid dat,” Eunice explained. “He’ll eat anything, ef I jes’ makes ‘im a chocolate pie,” she added proudly.

  “I bet he does,” Narcissa agreed. “Nobody can make chocolate pies like yours.”

  “Dis one ain’t turnt out so well,” Eunice said, deprecatory. “I ain’t so pleased wid it.”