The sound and the fury (14 page)

     "Ah, shut up," the second said. "Look. Here he comes again." They leaned on the rail, motionless, identical, their poles slanting slenderly in the sunlight, also identical. The trout rose without haste, a shadow in faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly downstream. "Gee," the first one murmured. 
     "We dont try to catch him anymore," he said. "We just watch Boston folks that come out and try." 
     "Is he the only fish in this pool?" 
     "Yes. He ran all the others out. The best place to fish around here is down at the Eddy." 
     "No it aint," the second said. "It's better at Bigelow's Mill two to one." Then they argued for a while about which was the best fishing and then left off all of a sudden to watch the trout rise again and the broken swirl of water suck down a little of the sky. I asked how far it was to the nearest town. They told me. 
     "But the closest car line is that way," the second said, pointing back down the road. "Where are you going?" 
     "Nowhere. Just walking." 
     "You from the college?" 
     "Yes. Are there any factories in that town?" 
     "Factories?" They looked at me. 
     "No," the second said. "Not there." They looked at my clothes. "You looking for work?" 
     "How about Bigelow's Mill?" the third said. "That's a factory." 
     "Factory my eye. He means a sure enough factory." 
     "One with a whistle," I said. "I haven't heard any one oclock whistles yet." 
     "Oh," the second said. "There's a clock in the unitarial steeple. You can find out the time from that. Haven't you got a watch on that chain?" 
     "I broke it this morning." I showed them my watch. They examined it gravely. 
     "It's still running," the second said. "What does a watch like that cost?" 
     "It was a present," I said. "My father gave it to me when I graduated from high school." 
     "Are you a Canadian?" the third said. He had red hair. 
     "Canadian?" 
     "He dont talk like them," the second said. "I've heard them talk. He talks like they do in minstrel shows." 
     "Say," the third said. "Aint you afraid he'll hit you?" 
     "Hit me?" 
     "You said he talks like a colored man." 
     "Ah, dry up," the second said. "You can see the steeple when you get over that hill there." 
     I thanked them. "I hope you have good luck. Only dont catch that old fellow down there. He deserves to be let alone." 
     "Cant anybody catch that fish," the first said. They leaned on the rail, looking down into the water, the three poles like three slanting threads of yellow fire in the sun. I walked upon my shadow, tramping it into the dappled shade of trees again. The road curved, mounting away from the water. It crossed the hill, then descended winding, carrying the eye, the mind on ahead beneath a still green tunnel, and the square cupola above the trees and the round eye of the clock but far enough. I sat down at the roadside. The grass was ankle deep, myriad. The shadows on the road were as still as if they had been put there with a stencil, with slanting pencils of sunlight. But it was only a train, and after a while it died away beyond the trees, the long sound, and then I could hear my watch and the train dying away, as though it were running through another month or another summer somewhere, rushing away under the poised gull and all things rushing. Except Gerald. He would be sort of grand too, pulling in lonely state across the noon, rowing himself right out of noon, up the long bright air like an apotheosis, mounting into a drowsing infinity where only he and the gull, the one terrifically motionless, the other in a steady and measured pull and recover that partook of inertia itself, the world punily beneath their shadows on the sun.
Caddy that blackguard that blackguard Caddy
     Their voices came over the hill, and the three slender poles like balanced threads of running fire. They looked at me passing, not slowing. 
     "Well," I said. "I dont see him." 
     "We didn't try to catch him," the first said. "You cant catch that fish." 
     "There's the clock," the second said, pointing. "You can tell the time when you get a little closer." 
     "Yes," I said. "All right." I got up. "You all going to town?" 
     "We're going to the Eddy for chub," the first said. 
     "You cant catch anything at the Eddy," the second said. 
     "I guess you want to go to the mill, with a lot of fellows splashing and scaring all the fish away." 
     "You cant catch any fish at the Eddy." 
     "We wont catch none nowhere if we dont go on," the third said. 
     "I dont see why you keep on talking about the Eddy," the second said. "You cant catch anything there." 
     "You dont have to go," the first said. "You're not tied to me." 
     "Let's go to the mill and go swimming," the third said. 
     "I'm going to the Eddy and fish," the first said. "You can do as you please." 
     "Say, how long has it been since you heard of anybody catching a fish at the Eddy?" the second said to the third. 
     "Let's go to the mill and go swimming," the third said. The cupola sank slowly beyond the trees, with the round face of the clock far enough yet. We went on in the dappled shade. We came to an orchard, pink and white. It was full of bees; already we could hear them. 
     "Let's go to the mill and go swimming," the third said. A lane turned off beside the orchard. The third boy slowed and halted. The first went on, flecks of sunlight slipping along the pole across his shoulder and down the back of his shirt. "Come on," the third said. The second boy stopped too.
Why must you marry somebody Caddy
    
Do you want me to say it do you think that if I say it it wont be
     "Let's go up to the mill," he said. "Come on." 
     The first boy went on. His bare feet made no sound, falling softer than leaves in the thin dust. In the orchard the bees sounded like a wind getting up, a sound caught by a spell just under crescendo and sustained. The lane went along the wall, arched over, shattered with bloom, dissolving into trees. Sunlight slanted into it, sparse and eager. Yellow butterflies flickered along the shade like flecks of sun. 
     "What do you want to go to the Eddy for?" the second boy said. "You can fish at the mill if you want to." 
     "Ah, let him go," the third said. They looked after the first boy. Sunlight slid patchily across his walking shoulders, glinting along the pole like yellow ants. 
     "Kenny," the second said.
Say it to Father will you I will am my fathers Progenitive I invented him created I him Say it to him it will not be for he will say I was not and then you and I since philoprogenitive
     "Ah, come on," the third boy said. "They're already in." They looked after the first boy. "Yah," they said suddenly, "go on then, mamma's boy. If he goes swimming he'll get his head wet and then he'll get a licking." They turned into the lane and went on, the yellow butterflies slanting about them along the shade. 
    
it is because there is nothing else I believe there is something else but there may not be and then I You will find that even injustice is scarcely worthy of what you believe yourself to be
    He paid me no attention, his jaw set in profile, his face turned a little away beneath his broken hat. 
     "Why dont you go swimming with them?" I said.
that blackguard Caddy
    
Were you trying to pick a fight with him were you
    
A liar and a scoundrel Caddy was dropped from his club for cheating at cards got sent to Coventry caught cheating at midterm exams and expelled
    
Well what about it I'm not going to play cards with
     "Do you like fishing better than swimming?" I said. The sound of the bees diminished, sustained yet, as though instead of sinking into silence, silence merely increased between us, as water rises. The road curved again and became a street between shady lawns with white houses.
Caddy that blackguard can you think of Benjy and Father and do it not of me
    
What else can I think about what else have I thought about
    The boy turned from the street. He climbed a picket fence without looking back and crossed the lawn to a tree and laid the pole down and climbed into the fork of the tree and sat there, his back to the road and the dappled sun motionless at last upon his white shirt.
else have I thought about I cant even cry I died last year I told you I had but I didn't know then what I meant I didn't know what I was saying
    Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar. Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. 
but now I know I'm dead I tell you
    
Then why must you listen we can go away you and Benjy and me where nobody knows us where
    The buggy was drawn by a white horse, his feet cropping in the thin dust; spidery wheels chattering thin and dry, moving uphill beneath a rippling shawl of leaves. Elm. No: ellum. Ellum. 
    
On what on your school money the money they sold the pasture for so you could go to Harvard dont you see you've got to finish now if you dont finish he'll have nothing
    
Sold the pasture
    His white shirt was motionless in the fork, in the flickering shade. The wheels were spidery. Beneath the sag of the buggy the hooves neatly rapid like the motions of a lady doing embroidery, diminishing without progress like a figure on a treadmill being drawn rapidly offstage. The street turned again. I could see the white cupola, the round stupid assertion of the clock.
Sold the pasture
    
Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesn't stop drinking and he wont stop he cant stop since I since last summer and then they'll send Benjy to Jackson I cant cry I cant even cry one minute she was standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence bellowing
     When you opened the door a bell tinkled, but just once, high and clear and small in the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring it when the door opened upon the recent warm scent of baking; a little dirty child with eyes like a toy bear's and two patent-leather pigtails. 
     "Hello, sister." Her face was like a cup of milk dashed with coffee in the sweet warm emptiness. "Anybody here?" 
     But she merely watched me until a door opened and the lady came. Above the counter where the ranks of crisp shapes behind the glass her neat gray face her hair tight and sparse from her neat gray skull, spectacles in neat gray rims riding approaching like something on a wire, like a cash box in a store. She looked like a librarian. Something among dusty shelves of ordered certitudes long divorced from reality, desiccating peacefully, as if a breath of that air which sees injustice done 
     "Two of these, please, ma'am." 
     From under the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper and laid it on the counter and lifted the two buns out. The little girl watched them with still and unwinking eyes like two currants floating motionless in a cup of weak coffee Land of the kike home of the wop. Watching the bread, the neat gray hands, a broad gold band on the left forefinger, knuckled there by a blue knuckle. 
     "Do you do your own baking, ma'am?" 
     "Sir?" she said. Like that. Sir? Like on the stage. Sir? "Five cents. Was there anything else?" 
     "No, ma'am. Not for me. This lady wants something." She was not tall enough to see over the case, so she went to the end of the counter and looked at the little girl. 
     "Did you bring her in here?"
     "No, ma'am. She was here when I came." 
     "You little wretch," she said. She came out around the counter, but she didn't touch the little girl. "Have you got anything in your pockets?" 
     "She hasn't got any pockets," I said. "She wasn't doing anything. She was just standing here, waiting for you." 
     "Why didn't the bell ring, then?" She glared at me. She just needed a bunch of switches, a blackboard behind her 2 x 2 e 5. "She'll hide it under her dress and a body'd never know it. You, child. How'd you get in here?" 
      The little girl said nothing. She looked at the woman, then she gave me a flying black glance and looked at the woman again. "Them foreigners," the woman said. "How'd she get in without the bell ringing?" 
     "She came in when I opened the door," I said. "It rang once for both of us. She couldn't reach anything from here, anyway. Besides, I dont think she would. Would you, sister?" The little girl looked at me, secretive, contemplative. "What do you want? bread?" 
      She extended her fist. It uncurled upon a nickel, moist and dirty, moist dirt ridged into her flesh. The coin was damp and warm. I could smell it, faintly metallic. 
     "Have you got a five cent loaf, please, ma'am?" 
      From beneath the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper sheet and laid it on the counter and wrapped a loaf into it. I laid the coin and another one on the counter. "And another one of those buns, please, ma'am." 
      She took another bun from the case. "Give me that parcel," she said. I gave it to her and she unwrapped it and put the third bun in and wrapped it and took up the coins and found two coppers in her apron and gave them to me. I handed them to the little girl. Her fingers closed about them, damp and hot, like worms. 
     "You going to give her that bun?" the woman said. 
     "Yessum," I said. "I expect your cooking smells as good to her as it does to me." 
      I took up the two packages and gave the bread to the little girl, the woman all iron-gray behind the counter, watching us with cold certitude. "You wait a minute," she said. She went to the rear. The door opened again and closed. The little girl watched me, holding the bread against her dirty dress.