Flags in the Dust (44 page)

The others were of medium height or under, ranging from Jackson’s faded, vaguely ineffectual lankness, through Henry’s placid rotundity and Rafe’s (
Raphael Semmes he was) and Stuart’s poised and stocky muscularity, to Lee’s thin and fiery unrepose; but Buddy with his sapling-like leanness stood eye to eye with that father who wore his seventy-seven years as though they were a thin coat. “Long, spindlin’ scoundrel,” the old man would say, with bluff derogation. “Keeps hisself wore to a shadder totin’ around all that ’ere grub he eats.” And they would sit in silence, looking at Buddy’s jack-knifed length with the same
identical thought, a thought which each believed peculiar to himself and which none ever divulged—that someday Buddy would marry and perpetuate the name.

Buddy also bore his father’s name, though it is doubtful if anyone outside the family and the War Department knew it. He had run away at seventeen and enlisted; at the infantry concentration camp in Arkansas to which he had been sent, a fellow recruit called him Virge and Buddy had fought him steadily and without anger for seven minutes; at the New Jersey embarkation depot another man had done the same thing, and Buddy had fought him, again steadily and thoroughly and without anger. In Europe, still following the deep but uncomplex compulsions of his nature, he had contrived, unwittingly perhaps, to perpetrate something which was later ascertained by authority to have severely annoyed the enemy, for which Buddy had received his charm, as he called it. What it was he did, he could never be brought to say, and the gaud not only failing to placate his father’s rage over the fact that a son of his had joined the Federal army, but on the contrary adding fuel to it, the bauble languished among Buddy’s sparse effects and his military career was never mentioned in the family circle; and now as usual Buddy squatted among them, his back to the fire and his arms around his knees, while they sat about the hearth with their bed-time toddies, talking of Christmas.

“Turkey,” the old man was saying, with fine and rumbling disgust. “With a pen full of ’possums, and a river bottom full of squir’ls and ducks, and a smoke-house full of hawg meat, you damn boys have got to go clean to town and buy a turkey fer Christmas dinner.”

“Christmas aint Christmas lessen a feller has a little some-thin’ different from ever’ day,” Jackson pointed out mildly.

“You boys jest wants a excuse to git to town and loaf around
all day and spend money,” the old man retorted. “I’ve seen a sight mo’ Christmases than you have, boy, and ef hit’s got to be sto’-bought, hit aint Christmas.”

“How ’bout town folks?” Rafe asked. “You aint allowin’ them no Christmas a-tall.”

“Dont deserve none,” the old man snapped. “Livin’ on a little two-by-fo’ lot, jam right up in the next feller’s back do’, eatin’ outen tin cans.”

“ ‘Sposin’ they all broke up in town,” Stuart said, “and moved out here and took up land; you’d hear pappy cussin’ town then. You couldn’t git along without town to keep folks bottled up in, pappy, and you knows it.”

“Buyin’ turkeys,” Mr MacCallum repeated with savage disgust. “Buyin’ ’em. I mind the time when I could take a gun and step out that ’ere do’ and git a gobbler in thutty minutes. And a ven’son ham in a hour mo’. Why, you fellers dont know nothin’ about Christmas. All you knows is a sto’ winder full of cocoanuts and Yankee-made popguns and sich.”

“Yes, suh,” Rafe said, and he winked at Bayard. “That was the biggest mistake the world ever made, when Lee surrendered. The country aint never got over it.”

The old man snorted. “I be damned ef I aint raised the damdest smartest set of boys in the world. Cant tell ’em nothin’, cant learn ’em nothin’; cant even set in front of my own fire fer the whole passel of ’em tellin’ me how to run the whole damn country. Hyer, you boys, git on to bed.”

Next morning Jackson and Rafe and Stuart and Lee left for town at sunup in the wagon. Still none of them had made any sign, expressed any curiosity as to whether they would find him there when they returned that night, or whether it would be another three years before they saw him again. And Bayard stood on the frost-whitened porch, smoking a cigarette in the
chill, vivid sunrise, and looked after the wagon with its four muffled figures and wondered if it would be three years again, or ever. The hounds came and nuzzled about him and he dropped his hand among their icy noses and the warm flicking of their tongues, gazing at the trees from beyond which the dry rattling of the wagon came unimpeded upon the clear and soundless morning.

“Ready to go?” Buddy said behind him, and he turned and picked up his shotgun where it leaned against the wall. The hounds surged about them with eager whimperings and frosty breaths and Buddy led them across to their pen and huddled them inside and fastened the door upon their astonished protests. From another kennel he unleashed the young pointer, Dan. Behind them the hounds continued to lift their baffled and mellow expostulations.

Until noon they hunted the ragged, fallow fields and woods-edges in the warming air. The frost was soon gone, and the air warmed to a windless languor; and twice in brier thickets they saw redbirds darting like arrows of scarlet flame. At last Bayard lifted his eyes unwinking into the sun.

“I’ve got to go back, Buddy,” he said. “I’m going home this afternoon.”

“All right,” Buddy agreed without protest, and he called the dog in. “You come back next month.”

Mandy got them some cold food and they ate, and while Buddy was saddling Perry, Bayard went into the house where he found Henry laboriously soling a pair of boots and the old man reading a week-old newspaper through steel-bowed spectacles.

“I reckon yo’ folks will be lookin’ fer you,” Mr MacCallum agreed, removing his spectacles. “We’ll be expectin’ you back next month, though, to git that ’ere fox. Ef we dont git ’im soon, Gen’ral wont be able to hold up his haid befo’ them puppies.”

“Yes, sir,” Bayard answered. “I will.”

“And try to git yo’ gran’pappy to come out with you. He kin lay around hyer and eat his haid off well as he kin in town thar.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

Buddy led the pony up, and the old man extended his hand without rising, and Henry put aside his cobbling and followed him onto the porch. “Come out again,” he said diffidently, giving Bayard’s hand a single pump-handle shake; and from a slobbering inquisitive surging of half grown hounds Buddy reached up his hand.

“Be lookin’ fer you,” he said briefly, and Bayard wheeled away, and when he looked back they lifted their hands gravely. Then Buddy shouted after him and he reined Perry about and returned. Henry had vanished, and he reappeared with a weighted towsack.

“I nigh fergot it,” he said. “Jug of cawn pappy’s sendin’ in to yo’ granddaddy. You wont git no better ’n this in Looeyvul ner nowhar else, neither,” he added with quiet pride. Bayard thanked him, and Buddy fastened the sack to the pommel, where it lay solidly against his leg.

“There. That’ll ride.”

“Yes, that’ll ride. Much obliged.”

“So long.”

“So long.”

Perry moved on, and he looked back. They still stood there, quiet and grave and steadfast. Beside the kitchen door the fox, Ethel, sat, watching him covertly; near her the half-grown puppies rolled and played in the sunlight. The sun was an hour high above the western hills; the road wound on into the trees. He looked back again. The house sprawled its rambling length in the wintry afternoon, its smoke like a balanced plume on the windless sky. The door was empty and he shook
Perry into his easy, tireless foxtrot, the jug of whisky jouncing a little against his knee.

Where the dim, infrequent road to MacCallum’s left the main road, rising, he halted Perry and sat for a while in the sunset. Jefferson, 14 miles. Rafe and the other boys would not be along for some time, yet, what with Christmas eve in town and the slow festive gathering of the county. Still, they may have left town early, so as to get home by dark; might not be an hour away. The sun’s rays, slanting, released the chill they had held prisoned in the ground during the perpendicular hours, and it rose slowly about him as he sat Perry in the middle of the road, and slowly his blood cooled with the cessation of Perry’s motion. He turned the pony’s head away from town and shook him into his foxtrot again.

Darkness overtook him soon, but he rode on beneath the leafless trees, along the pale road in the gathering starlight. Already Perry was thinking of stable and supper and he went on with tentative, inquiring tossings of his head, but obediently and without slackening his gait, knowing not where they were going nor why, save that it was away from home, and a little dubious, though trustfully. The chill grew in the silence and the loneliness and the monotony. Bayard reined Perry to a halt and untied the jug and drank, and fastened it to the saddle again.

The hills rose wild and black about him; no sign of any habitation, no trace of man’s hand did they encounter. On all sides the hills rolled blackly away in the starlight, or when the road dipped into valleys where the ruts were already stiffening into iron-like shards that clattered beneath Perry’s hooves, they
stood darkly towering and sinister overhead, lifting their leafless trees against the spangled sky. Where a stream of winter seepage trickled across the road Perry’s feet crackled brittlely in thin ice, and Bayard slacked the reins while the pony snuffed at the water, and drank again from the jug.

He fumbled a match clumsily in his numb fingers and lit a cigarette, and pushed his sleeve back from his wrist. Eleven-thirty. “Well, Perry,” his voice sounded loud and sudden in the stillness and the darkness and the cold. “I reckon we better look for a place to hole up till morning.” Perry raised his head and snorted, as though he understood the words, as though he would enter the bleak loneliness in which his rider moved, if he could. They went on, mounting again.

The darkness spread away, lessening a little presently where occasional fields lay in the vague starlight, breaking the monotony of trees; and after a time during which he rode with the reins slack on Perry’s neck and his hands in his pockets seeking warmth between leather and groin, a cotton house squatted beside the road, its roof dusted over with a frosty sheen as of hushed silver. Not long, he told himself, leaning forward and laying his hand on Perry’s neck, feeling the warm, tireless blood there. “House soon, Perry, if we look sharp.”

Again Perry whinnied a little, as though he understood, and presently he swerved from the road, and as Bayard reined him up he too saw the faint wagon trail leading away toward a low vague clump of trees. “Good boy, Perry,” he said, slackening the reins again.

The house was a cabin. It was dark, but a hound came gauntly from beneath it and bayed at him and continued its uproar while he reined Perry to the door and knocked upon it with his numb hand. From within the house at last a voice, and he shouted “Hello” again. Then he added: “I’m lost. Open the door.” The hound bellowed at him indefatigably. After a
moment the door cracked upon a dying glow of embers, emitting a rank odor of negroes, and against the crack of warmth, a head.

“You, Jule,” the head commanded, “hush yo’ mouf.” The hound ceased obediently and retired beneath the house, though still growling. “Who dar?”

“I’m lost,” Bayard repeated. “Can I stay in your barn tonight?”

“Aint got no barn,” the negro answered. “Dey’s anudder house down de road a piece.”

“I’ll pay you.” Bayard fumbled in his pocket with his numb hand. “My horse is tired out.” The negro’s head peered around the door, against the crack of firelight. “Come on, uncle,” Bayard added impatiently. “Dont keep a man standing in the cold.”

“Who is you, whitefolks?”

“Bayard Sartoris, from Jefferson. Here,” and he extended his hand. The negro made no effort to take it.

“Banker Sartorises folks?”

“Yes. Here.”

“Wait a minute.” The door closed. But Bayard tightened the reins and Perry moved readily and circled the house confidently and went on among frost-stiffened cotton stalks that clattered drily about his knees. As Bayard dismounted onto frozen rutted earth beneath a gaping doorway, a lantern appeared from the cabin, swung low among the bitten stalks and the shadowy scissoring of the man’s legs, and the negro came up with a shapeless bundle under his arm and stood with the lantern while Bayard stripped the saddle and bridle off.

“How you manage to git so fur fum home dis time o’ night, whitefolks?” he asked curiously.

“Lost,” Bayard answered briefly. “Where can I put my horse?”

The negro swung the lantern into a stall. Perry stepped carefully over the sill and turned into the lantern light, his eyes rolling in phosphorescent gleams; Bayard followed and rubbed him down with the dry side of the saddle blanket. The negro vanished and reappeared with a few ears of corn and shucked them into Perry’s manger beside the pony’s eager nuzzling. “You gwine be keerful about fire, aint you, whitefolks?” he asked.

“Sure. I wont strike any matches at all.”

“I got all my stock and tools and feed in here,” the negro explained. “I cant affo’d to git burnt out. Insu’ance dont reach dis fur.”

“Sure,” Bayard repeated. He shut Perry’s stall and while the negro watched him he drew the sack forth from where he had set it against the wall, and produced the jug. “Got a cup here?” The negro vanished again and Bayard could see the lantern through the cracks in the crib in the wall opposite, then he emerged with a rusty can, from which he blew a bursting puff of chaff. They drank. Behind them Perry crunched his corn. The negro showed him the ladder to the loft.

“You wont fergit about dat fire, whitefolks?” he repeated anxiously.

“Sure,” Bayard said. “Goodnight.” He laid his hand on the ladder, and the negro stopped him and handed him the shapeless bundle he had brought out with him.

“Aint got but one to spare, but hit’ll help some. You gwine sleep cole, tonight.” It was a quilt, ragged and filthy to the touch, and impregnated with that unmistakable odor of negroes.

“Thanks,” Bayard answered. “Much obliged to you. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, whitefolks.”

The lantern winked away, to the criss-crossing of the negro’s legs, and Bayard mounted into darkness and the dry,
pungent scent of hay. Here, in the darkness, he made himself a nest of it and crawled into it and rolled himself into the quilt, filth and odor and all, and thrust his icy hands inside his shirt, against his flinching chest. After a time and slowly his hands began to warm, tingling a little, but still his body lay shivering and jerking with weariness and with cold. Below him Perry munched steadily and peacefully in the darkness, occasionally he stamped, and gradually the jerking of his body ceased. Before he slept he uncovered his arm and looked at the luminous dial on his wrist. One oclock. It was already Christmas.