Flags in the Dust (36 page)

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Miss Jenny repeated. “We’ll name him John. You, Isom!”

The gin had been running steadily for a month, now, what with the Sartoris cotton and that of other planters further up
the valley, and of smaller croppers with their tilted fields among the hills. The Sartoris place was farmed on shares. Most of the tenants had picked their cotton, and gathered the late corn; and of late afternoons, with Indian summer upon the land and an ancient sadness sharp as woodsmoke on the windless air, Bayard and Narcissa would drive out to where, beside a spring on the edge of the woods, the negroes brought their cane and made their communal winter sorghum molasses. One of the negroes, a sort of patriarch among the tenants, owned the mill and the mule that furnished the motive power. He did the grinding and superintended the cooking of the sap for a tithe, and when Bayard and Narcissa arrived the mule would be plodding in a monotonous and patient circle, its feet rustling in the dried cane-pith, while one of the patriarch’s grandsons fed the cane into the crusher.

Round and round the mule went, setting its narrow, deerlike feet delicately down in the hissing cane-pith, its neck bobbing limber as a section of rubber hose in the collar, with its trace-galled flanks and flopping, lifeless ears, and its half-closed eyes drowsing venomously behind pale lids, apparently asleep with the monotony of its own motion. Some Homer of the cotton fields should sing the saga of the mule and of his place in the South. He it was, more than any other one creature or thing, who, steadfast to the land when all else faltered before the hopeless juggernaut of circumstance, impervious to conditions that broke men’s hearts because of his venomous and patient preoccupation with the immediate present, won the prone South from beneath the iron heel of Reconstruction and taught it pride again through humility and courage through adversity overcome; who accomplished the well-nigh impossible despite hopeless odds, by sheer and vindictive patience. Father and mother he does not resemble, sons and daughters he will never have; vindictive and patient (it is a
known fact that he will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once); solitary but without pride, self-sufficient but without vanity; his voice is his own derision. Outcast and pariah, he has neither friend, wife, mistress nor sweetheart; celibate, he is unscarred, possesses neither pillar nor desert cave, he is not assaulted by temptations nor flagellated by dreams nor assuaged by visions; faith, hope and charity are not his. Misanthropic, he labors six days without reward for one creature whom he hates, bound with chains to another whom he despises, and spends the seventh day kicking or being kicked by his fellows. Misunderstood even by that creature (the nigger who drives him) whose impulses and mental processes most closely resemble his, he performs alien actions among alien surroundings; he finds bread not only for a race, but for an entire form of behavior; meek, his inheritance is cooked away from him along with his soul in a glue factory. Ugly, untiring and perverse, he can be moved neither by reason, flattery, nor promise of reward; he performs his humble monotonous duties without complaint, and his meed is blows. Alive, he is haled through the world, an object of general derision; unwept, unhonored and unsung, he bleaches his awkward, accusing bones among rusting cans and broken crockery and worn-out automobile tires on lonely hillsides, while his flesh soars unawares against the blue in the craws of buzzards.

As they approached, the groaning and creaking of the mill would be the first intimation, unless the wind happened to blow toward them. Then it would be the sharp, subtly exciting odor of fermentation and of boiling molasses. Bayard liked the smell of it, and they would drive up and stop for a time while the boy rolled his eyes covertly at them as he fed cane into the mill, while they watched the patient mule and the old man stooped above the simmering pot. Sometimes Bayard got out
and went over and talked to him, leaving Narcissa in the car, lapped in the ripe odors of the failing year and all its rich, vague sadness, her gaze brooding upon Bayard and the old negro—the one lean and tall and fatally young and the other stooped with time, and her spirit went out in serene and steady waves, surrounding him unawares.

Then he would return and get in beside her, and she would touch his rough clothing but so lightly that he was not conscious of it, and they would drive back along the faint uneven road, beside the flaunting woods, and soon, above turning locusts and oaks, the white house simple and huge and steadfast, and the orange disc of the harvest moon getting above the ultimate hills, ripe as cheese.

Sometimes they went back after dark. The mill was still then, its long arm motionless across the firelit scene. The mule was munching in stable, or stamping and nuzzling its empty manger, or asleep standing, boding not of tomorrow; and against the firelight many shadows moved. The negroes had gathered now: old men and women sitting on crackling cushions of cane about the blaze which one of their number fed with pressed stalks until its incense-laden fury swirled licking at the boughs overhead, making more golden still the twinkling golden leaves; and young men and girls, and children squatting and still as animals, staring into the fire. Sometimes they sang—quavering, wordless chords in which plaintive minors blent with mellow bass in immemorial and sad suspense, their grave dark faces bent to the flames and with no motion of lips. But when the white folks arrived the singing ceased, and they sat or lay about the fire on which the blackened pot simmered, talking in broken murmurous overtones ready with sorrowful mirth, while in shadowy beds among the dry whispering canestalks youths and girls murmured and giggled.

Always one of them, and sometimes both, stopped in the office where old Bayard and Miss Jenny were. There was a fire of logs on the hearth now, and they would sit in the glow of it—Miss Jenny beneath the light with her lurid daily paper; old Bayard with his slippered feet propped against the fireplace, his head wreathed in smoke and the old setter dreaming fitfully beside his chair, reliving proud and ancient stands perhaps, or further back still, the lean, gawky days of his young doghood, when the world was full of scents that maddened the blood in him and pride had not taught him self-restraint; Narcissa and Bayard between them—Narcissa dreaming too in the firelight, grave and tranquil, and young Bayard smoking his cigarettes in his leashed and moody repose.

At last old Bayard would throw his cigar into the fire and drop his feet to the floor, and the dog would wake and raise its head and blink and yawn with such gaping deliberation that Narcissa, watching him, invariably yawned also. “Well, Jenny?”

Miss Jenny would lay her paper aside and rise. “Let me,” Narcissa would say. “Let me go.” But Miss Jenny never would, and presently she would return with a tray and three glasses, and old Bayard would unlock his desk and fetch the silver-stoppered decanter and compound three toddies with ritualistic care.

Once Bayard persuaded her into khaki and boots and carried her ’possum hunting. Caspey with a streaked lantern and a cow’s horn slung over his shoulder, and Isom with a gunny sack and an axe, and four shadowy, restless hounds waited for them at the lot gate and they set off among ghostly shocks of corn, where every day Bayard kicked up a covey of quail, toward the woods.

“Where we going to start tonight, Caspey?” Bayard asked.

“Back of Unc’ Henry’s. Dey’s one in dat grape vine behine de cotton house. Blue treed ’im down dar las’ night.”

“How do you know he’s there tonight, Caspey?” Narcissa asked.

“He be back,” Caspey answered confidently. “He right dar now, watchin’ dis lantern wid his eyes scrooched up, listenin’ to hear ef de dawgs wid us.”

They climbed through a fence and Caspey stooped and set the lantern down. The dogs moiled and tugged about his legs with sniffings and throaty growls at one another as he unleashed them. “You, Ruby! Stan’ still, dar. Hole up here, you potlickin’ fool.” They whimpered and surged, their eyes melting in fluid brief gleams, then they faded soundlessly and swiftly into the darkness. “Give ’um a little time,” Caspey said. “Let ’um see ef he dar yit.” From the darkness ahead a dog yapped three times on a high note. “Dat’s dat young dog,” Caspey said. “Jes’ showin’ off. He aint smelt nothin’.” Overhead the stars swam vaguely in the hazy sky; the air was not yet chill, the earth still warm to the touch. They stood in a steady oasis of lantern light in a world of but one dimension, a vague cistern of darkness filled with meagre light and topped with an edgeless canopy of ragged stars. The lantern was smoking and emanating a faint odor of heat. Caspey raised it and turned the wick down and set it at his feet again. Then from the darkness there came a single note, resonant and low and grave.

“Dar he,” Isom said.

“Hit’s Ruby,” Caspey agreed, picking up the lantern. “She got ’im.” The young dog yapped again, with fierce hysteria, then the single low cry chimed. Narcissa slid her arm through Bayard’s. “ ’Taint no rush,” Caspey told her. “Dey aint treed yit. Whooy. H’mawn, dawg.” The young dog had ceased its yapping, but still at intervals the other one bayed her single timbrous note, and they followed it. “H’mawn, dawg.”

They stumbled a little over fading plow-scars, after Caspey’s bobbing lantern, and the darkness went suddenly
crescendic with short steady cries in four keys. “Dey got ’im,” Isom said.

“Dat’s right,” Caspey replied. “Le’s go. Hold ’im, dawg!” They trotted now, Narcissa clinging to Bayard’s arm, and plunged through rank grass and over another fence and so among trees. Eyes gleamed fleetingly from the darkness ahead, and another gust of barking interspersed with tense and eager whimperings, and among stumbling half-lit shadows dogs surged about them. “He up dar,” Caspey said. “Ole Blue sees

’im.”

“Dar Unc’ Henry’s dawg, too,” Isom said.

Caspey grunted. “I knowed he’d be here. He cant keep up wid a ’possum no mo’, but jes’ let a dog tree whar he kin hear ’im.…” He set the lantern upon his head and peered up into the vine-matted sapling, and Bayard drew a flashlight from his pocket and turned its beam into the tree. The three older hounds and Uncle Henry’s ancient, moth-eaten beast sat in a tense circle about the tree, whimpering or barking in short spaced gusts, but the young one yapped steadily in mad, hysterical rushes. “Kick dat puppy still,” Caspey commanded.

“You, Ginger, hush yo’ mouf,” Isom shouted; he laid his axe and sack down and caught the puppy and held it between his knees. Caspey and Bayard moved slowly about the tree, among the eager dogs; Narcissa followed them. “Dem vines is so thick up dar.……” Caspey said.

“Here he is,” Bayard said suddenly. “I’ve got ’im.” He steadied his light and Caspey moved behind him and looked over his shoulder.

“Where?” Narcissa asked. “Can you see it?”

“Dat’s right,” Caspey agreed. “Dar he is. Ruby dont lie. When she say he dar, he dar.”

“Where is he, Bayard?” Narcissa repeated. He drew her before him and trained the light over her head, into the tree,
and presently from the massed vines two reddish points of fire not a match-breadth apart, gleamed at her, winked out, then shone again.

“He movin’,” Caspey said. “Young ’possum. Git up dar and shake ’im out, Isom.” Bayard held his light on the creature’s eyes and Caspey set his lantern down and herded the dogs together at his knees. Isom scrambled up into the tree and vanished in the mass of vine, but they could follow his progress by the shaking branches and his panting ejaculations as he threatened the animal with a mixture of cajolery and adjuration.

“Hah,” he grunted. “Aint gwine hurt you. Aint gwine do nothin’ ter you but th’ow you in de cook-pot. Look out, mister; I’se comin’ up dar.” More commotion; it ceased, they could hear him moving the branches cautiously. “Here he,” he called suddenly. “Hole dem dawgs, now.”

“Little ’un, aint he?” Caspey asked.

“Cant tell. Can’t see nothin’ but his face. Watch dem dawgs.” The upper part of the sapling burst into violent and sustained fury; Isom whooped louder and louder as he shook the branches. “Whooy, here he comes,” he shouted, and something dropped sluggishly and reluctantly from branch to invisible branch, stopped, and the dogs set up a straining clamor. The thing fell again, and Bayard’s light followed a lumpy object that plumped with a resounding thud to the ground and vanished immediately beneath a swirl of hounds. Caspey and Bayard leaped among them with shouts, and at last succeeded in dragging them clear, and Narcissa saw the creature in the pool of the flashlight, lying on its side in a grinning curve, its eyes closed and its pink, baby-like hands doubled against its breast. She looked at the motionless thing with pity and distinct loathing—such a paradox, its vulpine, skull-like grin and those tiny, human-looking hands, and the long, rat-like tail of it. Isom dropped from the tree, and Caspey turned the three
straining clamorous dogs he held over to his nephew and picked up the axe, and while Narcissa watched in shrinking curiosity, he laid the axe across the thing’s neck and put his foot on either end of the helve, and grasped the animal’s tail.…… She turned and fled, her hand to her mouth.

But the wall of darkness stopped her and she stood trembling and a little sick, watching them as they moved about the lantern. Then Caspey drove the dogs away, giving Uncle Henry’s octogenarian a hearty and resounding kick that sent him homeward with bloodcurdling and astonished wails, and Isom swung the lumpy sack to his shoulder, and Bayard turned and looked for her. “Narcissa?”

“Here,” she answered. He came to her.

“That’s one. We ought to get a dozen, tonight.”

“Oh, no,” she shuddered. “No.” He peered at her; then he snapped his flashlight full on her face. She lifted her hand and put it aside.

“What’s the matter? Not tired already, are you?”

“No.” She went on, “I just.… Come on; they’re leaving us.”

Caspey led them on into the woods. They walked now in a dry sibilance of leaves and crackling undergrowth. Trees loomed in to the lantern light; above them, among the thinning branches, stars swam in the hushed, vague sky. The dogs were on ahead, and they went on among the looming tree trunks, sliding down into ditches where sand gleamed in the lantern’s pool and where the scissoring shadow of Caspey’s legs was enormous, struggled through snatching briers and up the other bank.