Flags in the Dust (37 page)

“We better head away fum de creek bottom,” Caspey suggested. “Dey mought strike a ’coon, and den dey wont git home ’fo’ day.” He bore away toward the open again; they emerged from the woods and crossed a field of sedge, odorous
of sun and dust, in which the lantern was lightly nimbused. “H’mawn, dawg.” They entered the woods again. Narcissa was beginning to tire, but Bayard strode on with a fine obliviousness of that possibility, and she followed without complaint. At last, from some distance away, came that single ringing cry. Caspey stopped. “Le’s see which way he gwine.” They stood in the darkness, in the sad, faintly chill decline of the year, among the dying trees, listening. “Whooy,” Caspey shouted mellowly. “Go git ’im.”

The dog replied, and they moved again, slowly, pausing at intervals to listen. The hound bayed; there were two voices now, and they seemed to be moving in a circle across their path. “Whooy,” Caspey called, his voice ebbing in falling echoes among the trees. They went on. Again the dogs gave tongue, half the circle away from where the first cry had come. “He ca’yin’ ’um right back whar he come fum,” Caspey said. “We better wait ’twell dey gits ’im straightened out.” He set the lantern down and squatted beside it, and Isom sloughed his burden and squatted also, and Bayard sat against a tree trunk and drew Narcissa down beside him. The dogs bayed again, nearer. Caspey stared off into the darkness toward the sound.

“I believe hit’s a ’coon dey got,” Isom said.

“Mought be. Hill ’coon.”

“Headin’ fer dat holler tree, aint he?”

“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 one for himself. Isom squatted on his heels, his eyes rolling whitely in the lantern light.

“Gimme one, please, suh,” he said.

“You aint got no business smokin’, boy,” Caspey told him. But Bayard gave him one, and he squatted leanly on his
haunches, holding the white tube in his black diffident hand. There was a scurrying noise in the leaves behind them and a tense whimpering, and the young dog came into the light and slid with squeaking whimpers, and the diffident, fleeting phosphorous of its eyes against Caspey’s leg. “Whut you want?” Caspey said, dropping his hand on its head. “Somethin’ skeer you out dar?” The puppy genuflected its gawky young body and nuzzled whimpering at Caspey’s hand. “He mus’ a foun’ a bear down yonder,” Caspey said. “Wouldn’t dem other dawgs he’p you ketch ’im?”

“Poor little fellow,” Narcissa said. “Did he really get scared, Caspey? Come here, puppy.”

“De other dawgs jes’ went off and lef ’im,” Caspey answered. The puppy moiled diffidently about Caspey’s knees; then it scrambled up and licked his face.

“Git down fum here!” Caspey exclaimed, and he flung the puppy away. It flopped awkwardly in the dry leaves and scrambled to its feet, and at that moment the hounds bayed again, mellow and chiming and timbrous in the darkness, and the puppy whirled and sped yapping shrilly toward the sound. The dogs bayed again; Isom and Caspey listened. “Yes, suh,” Caspey repeated. “He headin’ fer dat down tree.”

“You know this country like you do the back yard, dont 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, pretty near. Him and Mist’ Johnny bofe. Miss Jenny send me wid ’um when dey had dey fust gun; me and dat ’ere single bar’l gun I use ter have ter tie together wid a string. You ’member dat ole single bar’l, Mist’ Bayard? But hit would shoot. Many’s de fox squir’l we shot in dese woods. Rabbits, too.” Bayard was leaning back 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 cold, and again he had left her for the lonely heights of his 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 go,” he said. “They aint going to tree.” He drew Narcissa to her feet and turned and went on. Caspey got up and unslung his horn and put it to his lips. The sound swelled about them, grave and clear and prolonged, then it died into echoes and so into silence again, leaving no ripple in the still darkness.

It was near midnight when they left Caspey and Isom at their cabin and followed the lane toward the house. The barn loomed presently beside 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, and stopped. “Bayard?” she whispered, leaning against him, and he put his arms around her and stood so, gazing above her head into the sky. She took his face between her palms 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 dark beside him, and turn to him
warm and soft with sleep. And they would lie so, holding to one another in the darkness and the temporary abeyance of his despair and the isolation of that doom he could not escape.

“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 kin folks, cant you?”

Horace grinned a little. “To tell the truth, I came out to get something to eat. I dont 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 fin’ 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 at you, Horace: it just popped into my head. I was talking to you, Loosh Peabody. You think, just because you’ve eaten off of us Thanksgiving and Christmas for sixty years, that you can come into my own house and laugh at me, dont you?”

“Hush, Miss Jenny!” Narcissa repeated. Horace put down his spoon, and Narcissa’s hand found his beneath the table.

“What’s that?” 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 rushed 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 asked 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 urns and jugs 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 fellow 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 tell Simon of something which neither of them had overlooked.

“All right,” she returned. Simon reappeared, with a huge silver coffee-urn, set it beside Miss Jenny, and retreated to the kitchen.

“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, wont you?”

“If it’s no trouble,” he answered mildly. He winked at Narcissa and 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 a yard 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 besides you,” she retorted. “If you dont want any, dont eat it. We always had a fish course at home,” she added. “But you cant 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 put two coffee cups on it, and he served them to old Bayard and Dr Peabody. Miss Jenny drew a cup for herself, and Simon passed
sugar and cream. Old Bayard carved the fish, still rumbling heavily.

“I aint 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’ aint 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 reach around and give the string a yank and wake ’im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out, someday, Bayard. She aint never seen my pond.”

“You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got benches all around it, with footrests, 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 dont see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”

“Well, I’ve had ’em around so long I dont know how to get shut of ’em, ’less I drown ’em. Feedin’ ’em is the main trouble, though. Takes every thing 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 to a workin’ man.”

“How many have you got, Doctor?” Narcissa asked.

“I dont rightly know,” he answered. “I got six or seven registered ones, but I dont know how many scrubs I have. I see a new yearlin’ every day or so.” Simon was watching him with rapt interest.

“You aint got no extry room out dar, is you, Doctuh?” he asked. “Here I slaves all de livelong day, 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 aint so sho’ erbout dat. I burnt out on fish once, when I wuz a young man, en I aint 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 sholy would.”

“Simon!” Miss Jenny raised her voice sharply. “Why wont you let him alone, Loosh, so he can ’tend to his business?” Simon came abruptly untranced and removed the fish. Beneath the table Narcissa slipped her hand in Horace’s again.

“Lay off of Doc, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard said. He touched his grandfather’s arm. “Cant you make her let Doc alone?”

“What’s he doing, Jenny?” old Bayard asked. “Wont 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.

“Well, it gives me something to be thankful for,” Dr Peabody answered, “that you never took me when you had the chance. I went and proposed to Jenny once,” he told them.

“You old gray-headed liar,” Miss Jenny said, “you never did any such a thing!”

“Oh, yes, I did. Only I did it on John Sartoris’ account. He said he was havin’ mo’ trouble than he could stand with politics outside his home. And, do you know——”

“Loosh Peabody, you’re the biggest liar in the world!”

“——I pretty near had her persuaded for a while? It was that first spring them weeds she brought out here from Ca’lina bloomed, and there was a moon and we were in the garden and there was a mockin’bird——”