Mosquitoes

by William Faulkner

  “You’re smart, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve got to be,” Mark Frost answered equably, “or I’d—”

  “—have to work, huh? It takes a smart man to sponge off of Aunt Pat, don’t it?”

  “Patricia!” her aunt exclaimed.

  “Well, we have got to get back. We’ve got to get ready to go up to New Haven next month.”

  Her brother came again out of his dream. “We have?” he repeated heavily.

  “I’m going, too,” she answered quickly. “Hank said I could.”

  “Look here,” her brother said, “are you going to follow me around all your life?”

  “I’m going to Yale,” she repeated stubbornly. “Hank said I could go.”

  “Hank?” Fairchild repeated, watching the niece with interest.

  “It’s what she calls her father,” her aunt explained. “Patricia—”

  “Well, you can’t go,” her brother answered violently. “Dam’f I’m going to have you tagging around behind me forever. I can’t move, for you. You ought to be a bill collector.”

  “I don’t care: I’m going,” she repeated stubbornly. Her aunt said vainly:

  “Theodore!”

  “Well, I can’t do anything, for her,” he complained bitterly. “I can’t move, for her. And now she’s talking about going—She worried Hank until he had to say she could go. God knows, I’d ’a’ said that too: I wouldn’t want her around me all the time.”

  “Shut your goddam mouth,” his sister told him. Mrs. Maurier chanted, “Patricia, Patricia.” “I’m going, I’m going, I’m going!”

  “What’ll you do up there?” Fairchild asked. The niece whirled, viciously belligerent. Then she said:

  “What’d you say?”

  “I mean, what’ll you do to pass the time while he’s at classes and things? Are you going to take some work, too?”

  “Oh, I’ll just go around with balloon pants. To nightclubs and things. I won’t bother him: I won’t hardly see him, he’s such a damn crum.”

  “Like hell you will,” her brother interrupted, “you’re not going, I tell you.”

  “Yes, I am. Hank said I could go. He said I could. I—”

  “Well, you won’t ever see me: I’m not going to have you tagging around after me up there.”

  “Are you the only one in the world that’s going up there next year? Are you the only one that’ll be there? I’m not going up there to waste my time hanging around the entrance to Dwight or Osborne hall just to see you. You won’t catch me sitting on the rail of the Green with freshmen. I’ll be going’ to places that maybe you’ll get into in three years, if you don’t bust out or something. Don’t you worry about me. Who was it,” she rushed on, “got invited up for Prom Week last year, only Hank wouldn’t let me go? Who was it saw the game last fall, while you were perched up on the top row with a bunch of newspaper reporters, in the rain?”

  “You didn’t go up for Prom Week.”

  “Because Hank wouldn’t let me. But I’ll be there next year, and you can haul out the family sock on it.”

  “Oh, shut up for a while,” her brother said wearily. “Maybe some of these ladies want to talk some.”

  TWO O’CLOCK

  And there was the tug, squatting at her cables, breaking the southern horizon with an effect of abrupt magic, like a stereopticon slide flashed on the screen while you had turned your head for a moment.

  “Look at that boat,” said Mark Frost, broaching. Mrs. Maurier directly behind him, shrieked:

  “It’s the tug!” She turned and screamed down the companionway, “It’s the tug: the tug has come!” The others all chanted, “The tug! The tug!” Major Ayers exclaimed dramatically and opportunely:

  “Ha, gone away!”

  “It has come at last,” Mrs. Maurier shrieked. “It came while we were at lunch. Has anyone—” She roved her eyes about. “The captain—Has he been notified? Mr. Talliaferro—?”

  “Surely,” Mr. Talliaferro agreed with polite alacrity, mounting the stairs and distintegrating his members with expedition. “I’ll summon the captain.”

  So he rushed forward and the others came on deck and stared at the tug, and a gentle breeze blew offshore and they slapped intermittently at their exposed surfaces. Mr. Talliaferro shouted, “Captain! oh, Captain!” about the deck: he screamed it into the empty wheelhouse and returned. “He must be asleep,” he told them.

  “We are off at last,” Mrs. Maurier intoned, “we can get off at last. The tug has come: I sent for it days and days ago. But we can get off, now. But the captain. . . . Where is the captain? He shouldn’t be asleep, at this time. Of all times for the captain to be asleep—Mr. Talliaferro—”

  “But Gordon,” Mark Frost said, “how about—”

  Miss Jameson clutched his arm. “Let’s get off, first,” she said.

  “I called him,” Mr. Talliaferro reminded them. “He must be asleep in his room.”

  “He must be asleep,” Mrs. Maurier repeated. “Will some gentleman—”

  Mr. Talliaferro took his cue. “I’ll go,” he said.

  “If you will be so kind,” Mrs. Maurier screamed after him. She stared again at the tug. “He should have been here, so we could be all ready to start,” she said fretfully. She waved her handkerchief at the tug: it ignored her.

  “We might be getting everything ready, though,” Fairchild suggested. “We ought to have everything ready when they pull us off.”

  “That’s so,” Mark Frost agreed. “We’d better run down and pack, hadn’t we?”

  “Ah, we ain’t going back home yet. We’ve just started the cruise. Are we, folks?”

  They all looked at the hostess. She roved her stricken eyes, but she said at last, bravely, “Why, no. No, of course not, if you don’t want to. . . . But the captain: we ought to be ready,” she repeated.

  “Well, let’s get ready,” Mrs. Wiseman said.

  “Nobody knows anything about boats except Fairchild,” Mark Frost said. Mr. Talliaferro returned, barren.

  “Me?” Fairchild repeated. “Talliaferro’s been across the whole ocean. And there’s Major Ayers. All Britishers cut their teeth on anchor chains and marlinspikes.”

  “And draw their toys with lubbers’ lines,” Mrs. Wiseman chanted. “It’s almost a poem. Finish it, someone.”

  Mr. Talliaferro made a sound of alarm. “No: really, I—” Mrs. Maurier turned to Fairchild.

  “Will you assume charge until the captain appears, Mr. Fairchild?”

  “Mr. Fairchild,” Mr. Talliaferro parroted. “Mr. Fairchild is temporary captain, people. The captain doesn’t seem to be on board,” he whispered to Mrs. Maurier.

  Fairchild glanced about with a sort of ludicrous helplessness. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Jump overboard with a shovel and shovel the sand away?”

  “A man who has reiterated his superiority as much as you have for the last week should never be at a loss for what to do,” Mrs. Wiseman told him. “We ladies have already thought of that. You are the one to think of something else.”

  “Well, I’ve already thought of not jumping overboard and shoveling her off,” Fairchild answered, “but that don’t seem to help much, does it?”

  “You ought to coil ropes or something like that,” Miss Jameson suggested. “That’s what they were always doing on all the ships I ever read about.”

  “All right,” Fairchild agreed equably. “We’ll coil ropes, then. Where are the ropes?”

  “That’s your trouble,” Mrs. Wiseman said. “You’re captain now.”

  “Well, we’ll find some ropes and coil ’em.” He addressed Mrs. Maurier. “We have your permission to coil ropes?”

  “No: really,” said Mrs. Maurier in her helpless astonished voice. “Isn’t there somet
hing we can do? Can’t we signal to them with a sheet? They may not know that this is the right boat.”

  “Oh, they know, I guess. Anyway, we’ll coil ropes and be ready for them. Come on here, you men.” He named over his depleted watch and herded it forward. He herded it down to his cabin and nourished it with stimulants.

  “We may coil the right rope, at that,” the Semitic man suggested. “Major Ayers ought to know something about boats: it should be in his British blood.”

  Major Ayers didn’t think so. American boats have amphibious traits that are lacking in ours,” he explained. “Half the voyage on land, you know,” he explained tediously.

  “Sure,” Fairchild agreed. He brought his watch above again and forward, where instinct told him the ropes should be. “I wonder where the captain is. Surely he ain’t drowned, do you reckon?”

  “I guess not,” the Semitic man answered. “He gets paid for this. . . . There comes a boat.”

  The boat came from the tug, and soon it came alongside and the captain came over the rail. A stranger followed him and they went below without haste, leaving Mrs. Maurier’s words like vain unmated birds in the air. “Let’s get ready, then,” Fairchild ordered his crew. “Let’s tie a rope to something.”

  So they tied a rope to something, knotting it intricately, then Major Ayers discovered that they had tied it to a winch handle which fitted loosely into a socket and which would probably come out quite easily, once a strain came onto the rope. So they untied it and found something attached firmly to the deck, and they tied the rope to this, and after a while the captain and the stranger, clutching a short evil pipe, came back on deck and stood and watched them. “We’ve got the right rope,” Fairchild told his watch in an undertone, and they knotted the rope intricately and straightened up.

  “How’s that, Cap?” Fairchild asked.

  “All right,” the captain answered. “Can we trouble you for a match?”

  Fairchild gave them a match. The stranger fired his pipe and they got into the tender and departed. They hadn’t got far when the one called Walter came out and called them, and they put about and returned for him. Then they went back to the tug. Fairchild’s watch had ceased work, and it gazed after the tender. After a time Fairchild said, “He said that was the right rope. So I guess we can quit.”

  So they did, and went aft to where the ladies were; and presently the tender came bobbing back across the water. It came alongside again and a Negro, sweating gently and regularly, held it steady while the one called Walter and yet anotherstranger got aboard, bringing a rope that trailed away into the water behind them.

  Everyone watched with interest while Walter and his companion made the line fast in the bows, after having removed Fairchild’s rope. Then Walter and his friend went below.

  “Say,” Fairchild said suddenly, “do you reckon they’ve found our whisky?”

  “I guess not,” the Semitic man assured him. “I hope not,” he amended; and they all returned in a body to stare down into the tender where the Negro sat without selfconsciousness, eating of a large grayish object. While they watched the Negro Walter and his companion returned, and the stranger bawled at the tug through his hands. A reply at last, and the other end of the line which they had recently brought aboard the yacht and made fast, slid down from the deck of the tug and plopped heavily into the water; and Walter and his companion drew it aboard the yacht and coiled it down, wet and dripping. Then they elbowed themselves to the rail, cast the rope into the tender and got in themselves, and the Negro stowed his strange edible object temporarily away and rowed back to the tug.

  “You guessed wrong again,” Mark Frost said with sepulchral irony. He bent and scratched’ his ankles. “Try another rope.”

  “You wait,” Fairchild retorted, “wait ten minutes, then talk. We’ll be under full steam in ten minutes. . . . Where did that boat come from?”

  This boat was a skiff, come when and from where they knew not; and beneath the drowsy afternoon there came faintly from somewhere up the lake the fretful sound of a motorboat engine. The skiff drew alongside, manned by a malaria-ridden man wearing a woman’s dilapidated hat of black straw that lent him a vaguely bereaved air.

  “Whar’s the drownded feller?” he asked, grasping the rail.

  “We don’t know,” Fairchild answered. “We missed him somewhere between here and the shore.” He extended his arm. The newcomer followed his gesture sadly.

  “Any reward?”

  “Reward?” repeated Fairchild.

  “Reward?” Mrs. Maurier chimed in, breathlessly. “Yes, there is a reward: I offer a reward.”

  “How much?”

  “You find him first,” the Semitic man put in. “There’ll be a reward, all right.”

  The man clung yet to the rail. “Have you drug fer him yet?”

  “No, we’ve just started hunting,” Fairchild answered. “You go on and look around, and we’ll get our boat and come out and help you. There’ll be a reward.”

  The man pushed his skiff clear and engaged his oars. The sound of the motorboat grew clearer steadily; soon it came into view, with two men in it, and changed its course and bore down on the skiff. The fussy little engine ceased its racket and it slid up to the skiff, pushing a dying ripple under its stem. The two boats clung together for a time, then they parted, and at a short distance from each other they moved slowly onward while their occupants prodded at the lake bottom with their oars.

  “Look at them,” the Semitic man said, “just like buzzards. Probably be a dozen boats out there in the next hour. How do you suppose they learned about it?”

  “Lord knows,” Fairchild answered. “Let’s get our crew and go out and help look. We better get the tug’s men.”

  They shouted in turn for a while, and presently one came to the rail of the tug and gazed apathetically at them, and went away; and after a while the small boat carne away from the tug and crossed to them. A consultation, assisted by all hands, while the man from the tug moved unhurriedly about the business of making fast another and dirtier rope to the Nausikaa’s bows. Then he and Walter went back to the tug, paying out the line behind them while Mrs. Maurier’s insistence wasted itself upon the somnolent afternoon. The guests looked at one another helplessly. Then Fairchild said with determination:

  “Come on, we’ll go in our boat.” He chose his men, and they gathered all the available oars and prepared to embark.

  “Here comes the tug’s boat again,” Mark Frost said.

  “They forgot and tied one end of that rope to something.” Mrs. Wiseman said viciously. The boat came alongside without haste and it and the yacht’s tender lay rubbing noses, and Walter’s companion asked, without interest:

  “Wher’s the feller y’all drownded?”

  “I’ll go along in their boat and show ’em,” Fairchild decided. Mark Frost got back aboard the yacht with alacrity. Fairchild stopped him. “You folks come on behind us in this boat. The more to hunt, the better.”

  Mark Frost groaned and acquiesced. The others took their places, and under Fairchild’s direction the two tenders retraced the course of yesterday. The first two boats were some disstance ahead, moving slowly, and the tenders separated also and the searchers poled along, prodding with their oars at the lake floor. And such is the influence of action on the mind that soon even Fairchild’s burly optimism became hushed and uncertain before the imminence of the unknown, and he too was accepting the possible for the probable, unaware.

  The sun was hazed, as though wearied of its own implacable heat, and the water—that water which might hold, soon to be be revealed, the mute evidence of ultimate flouting of all man’s strife—lapped and plopped at the mechanical fragilities that supported them: a small sound, monotonous and without rancor—it could well wait! They poled slowly on.

  Soon the four boats, fan wise, had tr
anversed the course, and they turned and quartered back and forth again, slowly and in silence. Afternoon drew on, drowsing and somnolent. Yacht and tug lay motionless in a blinding shimmer of water and sun. . . .

  Again the course of yesterday was covered foot by foot, patiently and silently and in vain; and the four boats as without volition drew nearer each other, drifting closer together as sheep huddle, while water lapped and plopped beneath their hulls, sinister and untroubled by waiting . . . soon the motorboat drifted up and scraped lightly along the hull in which Fairchild sat, and he raised his head, blinking against the glare. After a while he said: