Faulkner Reader

by William Faulkner

  “I knew that without asking him,” Jason said. “Where’s Quentin?” he said.

  “Where she is ev’y Sunday mawnin,” Dilsey said. “Whut got into you de last few days, anyhow?”

  “Well, we’re going to change all that,” Jason said. “Go up and tell her breakfast is ready.”

  “You leave her alone now, Jason,” Dilsey said. “She gits up fer breakfast ev’y week mawnin, en Cahline lets her stay in bed ev’y Sunday. You knows dat.”

  “I cant keep a kitchen full of niggers to wait on her pleasure, much as I’d like to,” Jason said. “Go and tell her to come down to breakfast.”

  “Aint nobody have to wait on her,” Dilsey said. “I puts her breakfast in de warmer en she—”

  “Did you hear me?” Jason said.

  “I hears you,” Dilsey said. “All I been hearin, when you in de house. Ef hit aint Quentin er yo maw, hit’s Luster en Benjy. Whut you let him go on dat way fer, Miss Cahline?”

  “You’d better do as he says,” Mrs Compson said, “He’s head of the house now. It’s his right to require us to respect his wishes. I try to do it, and if I can, you can too.”

  “Taint no sense in him bein so bad tempered he got to make Quentin git up jes to suit him,” Dilsey said. “Maybe you think she broke dat window.”

  “She would, if she happened to think of it,” Jason said. “You go and do what I told you.”

  “En I wouldn’t blame her none ef she did,” Dilsey said, going toward the stairs. “Wid you naggin at her all de blessed time yo in de house.”

  “Hush, Dilsey,” Mrs Compson said, “It’s neither your place nor mine to tell Jason what to do. Sometimes I think he is wrong, but I try to obey his wishes for you alls’ sakes. If I’m strong enough to come to the table, Quentin can too.”

  Dilsey went out. They heard her mounting the stairs. They heard her a long while on the stairs.

  “You’ve got a prize set of servants,” Jason said. He helped his mother and himself to food. “Did you ever have one that was worth killing? You must have had some before I was big enough to remember.”

  “I have to humour them,” Mrs Compson said. “I have to depend on them so completely. It’s not as if I were strong. I wish I were. I wish I could do all the house work myself. I could at least take that much off your shoulders.”

  “And a fine pigsty we’d live in, too,” Jason said. “Hurry up, Dilsey,” he shouted.

  “I know you blame me,” Mrs Compson said, “for letting them off to go to church today.”

  “Go where?” Jason said. “Hasn’t that damn show left yet?”

  “To church,” Mrs Compson said. “The darkies are having a special Easter service. I promised Dilsey two weeks ago that they could get off.”

  “Which means we’ll eat cold dinner,” Jason said, “or none at all.”

  “I know it’s my fault,” Mrs Compson said. “I know you blame me.”

  “For what?” Jason said. “You never resurrected Christ, did you?”

  They heard Dilsey mount the final stair, then her slow feet overhead.

  “Quentin,” she said. When she called the first time Jason laid his knife and fork down and he and his mother appeared to wait across the table from one another, in identical attitudes; the one cold and shrewd, with close-thatched brown hair curled into two stubborn hooks, one on either side of his forehead like a bartender in caricature, and hazel eyes with black-ringed irises like marbles, the other cold and querulous, with perfectly white hair and eyes pouched and baffled and so dark as to appear to be all pupil or all iris.

  “Quentin,” Dilsey said, “Git up, honey. Dey waitin breakfast on you.”

  “I cant understand how that window got broken,” Mrs Compson said. “Are you sure it was done yesterday? It could have been like that a long time, with the warm weather. The upper sash, behind the shade like that.”

  “I’ve told you for the last time that it happened yesterday,” Jason said. “Dont you reckon I know the room I live in? Do you reckon I could have lived in it a week with a hole in the window you could stick your hand—” his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse. As they sat so Dilsey said,

  “Quentin. Dont play wid me, honey. Come on to breakfast, honey. Dey waitin fer you.”

  “I cant understand it,” Mrs Compson said, “It’s just as if somebody had tried to break into the house—” Jason sprang up. His chair crashed over backward. “What—” Mrs Compson said, staring at him as he ran past her and went jumping up the stairs, where he met Dilsey. His face was now in shadow, and Dilsey said,

  “She sullin. Yo ma aint unlocked—” But Jason ran on past her and along the corridor to a door. He didn’t call. He grasped the knob and tried it, then he stood with the knob in his hand and his head bent a little, as if he were listening to something much further away than the dimensioned room beyond the door, and which he already heard. His attitude was that of one who goes through the motions of listening in order to deceive himself as to what he already hears. Behind him Mrs Compson mounted the stairs, calling his name. Then she saw Dilsey and she quit calling him and began to call Dilsey instead.

  “I told you she aint unlocked dat do’ yit,” Dilsey said.

  When she spoke he turned and ran toward her, but his voice was quiet, matter of fact. “She carry the key with her?” he said. “Has she got it now, I mean, or will she have—”

  “Dilsey,” Mrs Compson said on the stairs.

  “Is which?” Dilsey said. “Whyn’t you let—”

  “The key,” Jason said, “To that room. Does she carry it with her all the time. Mother.” Then he saw Mrs Compson and he went down the stairs and met her. “Give me the key,” he said. He fell to pawing at the pockets of the rusty black dressing sacque she wore. She resisted.

  “Jason,” she said, “Jason! Are you and Dilsey trying to put me to bed again?” she said, trying to fend him off, “Cant you even let me have Sunday in peace?”

  “The key,” Jason said, pawing at her, “Give it here.” He looked back at the door, as if he expected it to fly open before he could get back to it with the key he did not have.

  “You, Dilsey!” Mrs Compson said, clutching her sacque about her.

  “Give me the key, you old fool!” Jason cried suddenly. From her pocket he tugged a huge bunch of rusted keys on an iron ring like a mediaeval jailer’s and ran back up the hall with the two women behind him.

  “You, Jason!” Mrs Compson said. “He will never find the right one.” she said, “You know I never let anyone take my keys, Dilsey,” she said. She began to wail.

  “Hush,” Dilsey said, “He aint gwine do nothin to her. I aint gwine let him.”

  “But on Sunday morning, in my own house,” Mrs Compson said, “When I’ve tried so hard to raise them Christians. Let me find the right key, Jason,” she said. She put her hand on his arm. Then she began to struggle with him, but he flung her aside with a motion of his elbow and looked around at her for a moment, his eyes cold and harried, then he turned to the door again and the unwieldy keys.

  “Hush,” Dilsey said, “You, Jason!”

  “Something terrible has happened,” Mrs Compson said, wailing again, “I know it has. You, Jason,” she said, grasping at him again. “He wont even let me find the key to a room in my own house!”

  “Now, now,” Dilsey said, “Whut kin happen? I right here. I aint gwine let him hurt her. Quentin,” she said, raising her voice, “Dont you be skeered, honey, I’se right here.”

  The door opened, swung inward. He stood in it for a moment, hiding the room, then he stepped aside. “Go in,” he said in a thick, light voice. They went in. It was not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts
to feminize it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses. The bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink; from a half open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking. The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house. It was in bloom and the branches scraped and rasped against the house and the myriad air, driving in the window, brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.

  “Dar now,” Dilsey said, “Didn’t I told you she all right?”

  “All right?” Mrs Compson said. Dilsey followed her into the room and touched her.

  “You come on and lay down, now,” she said. “I find her in ten minutes.”

  Mrs Compson shook her off. “Find the note,” she said. “Quentin left a note when he did it.”

  “All right,” Dilsey said, “I’ll find hit. You come on to yo room, now.”

  “I knew the minute they named her Quentin this would happen,” Mrs Compson said. She went to the bureau and began to turn over the scattered objects there—scent bottles, a box of powder, a chewed pencil, a pair of scissors with one broken blade lying upon a darned scarf dusted with powder and stained with rouge. “Find the note,” she said.

  “I is,” Dilsey said. “You come on, now. Me and Jason’ll find hit. You come on to yo room.”

  “Jason,” Mrs Compson said, “Where is he?” She went to the door. Dilsey followed her on down the hall, to another door. It was closed. “Jason,” she called through the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob, then she called him again. But there was still no answer, for he was hurling things backward out of the closet: garments, shoes, a suitcase. Then he emerged carrying a sawn section of tongue-and-groove planking and laid it down and entered the closet again and emerged with a metal box. He set it on the bed and stood looking at the broken lock while he dug a key ring from his pocket and selected a key, and for a time longer he stood with the selected key in his hand, looking at the broken lock, then he put the keys back in his pocket and carefully tilted the contents of the box out upon the bed. Still carefully he sorted the papers, taking them up one at a time and shaking them. Then he upended the box and shook it too and slowly replaced the papers and stood again, looking at the broken lock, with the box in his hands and his head bent. Outside the window he heard some jaybirds swirl shrieking past, and away, their cries whipping away along the wind, and an automobile passed somewhere and died away also. His mother spoke his name again beyond the door, but he didn’t move. He heard Dilsey lead her away up the hall, and then a door closed. Then he replaced the box in the closet and flung the garments back into it and went down stairs to the telephone. While he stood there with the receiver to his ear, waiting, Dilsey came down the stairs. She looked at him, without stopping, and went on.

  The wire opened. “This is Jason Compson,” he said, his voice so harsh and thick that he had to repeat himself. “Jason Compson,” he said, controlling his voice. “Have a car ready, with a deputy, if you cant go, in ten minutes. Ill be there—What?—Robbery. My house. I know who it—Robbery, I say. Have a car ready—What? Aren’t you a paid law enforcement—Yes, I’ll be there in five minutes. Have that car ready to leave at once. If you dont, I’ll report it to the governor.”

  He clapped the receiver back and crossed the diningroom, where the scarce-broken meal now lay cold on the table, and entered the kitchen. Dilsey was filling the hot water bottle. Ben sat, tranquil and empty. Beside him Luster looked like a fice dog, brightly watchful. He was eating something. Jason went on across the kitchen.

  “Aint you going to eat no breakfast?” Dilsey said. He paid her no attention. “Go and eat yo breakfast, Jason.” He went on. The outer door banged behind him. Luster rose and went to the window and looked out.

  “Whoo,” he said, “What happenin up dar? He been beatin’ Miss Quentin?”

  “You hush yo mouf,” Dilsey said. “You git Benjy started now en I beat yo head off. You keep him quiet es you kin twell I get back, now.” She screwed the cap on the bottle and went out. They heard her go up the stairs, then they heard Jason pass the house in his car. Then there was no sound in the kitchen save the simmering murmur of the kettle and the clock.

  “You know whut I bet?” Luster said. “I bet he beat her. I bet he knock her in de head en now he gone fer de doctor. Dat’s whut I bet.” The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself; after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times. Ben looked up at it, then he looked at the bullet-like silhouette of Luster’s head in the window and he begun to bob his head again, drooling. He whimpered.

  “Hush up, loony,” Luster said without turning. “Look like we aint gwine git to go to no church today.” But Ben sat in the chair, his big soft hands dangling between his knees, moaning faintly. Suddenly he wept, a slow bellowing sound, meaningless and sustained. “Hush,” Luster said. He turned and lifted his hand. “You want me to whup you?” But Ben looked at him, bellowing slowly with each expiration. Luster came and shook him. “You hush dis minute!” he shouted. “Here,” he said. He hauled Ben out of the chair and dragged the chair around facing the stove and opened the door to the firebox and shoved Ben into the chair. They looked like a tug nudging at a clumsy tanker in a narrow dock. Ben sat down again facing the rosy door. He hushed. Then they heard the clock again, and Dilsey slow on the stairs. When she entered he began to whimper again. Then he lifted his voice.

  “Whut you done to him?” Dilsey said. “Why cant you let him lone dis mawnin, of all times?”

  “I aint doin nothin to him,” Luster said. “Mr Jason skeered him, dat’s whut hit is. He aint kilt Miss Quentin, is he?”

  “Hush, Benjy,” Dilsey said. He hushed. She went to the window and looked out. “Is it quit rainin?” she said.

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Quit long time ago.”

  “Den ya’ll go out do’s a while,” she said. “I jes got Miss Cahline quiet now.”

  “Is we gwine to church?” Luster said.

  “I let you know bout dat when de time come. You keep him away fum de house twell I calls you.”

  “Kin we go to de pastuh?” Luster said.

  “All right. Only you keep him away fum de house. I done stood all I kin.”

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Whar Mr Jason gone, mammy?”

  “Dat’s some mo of yo business, aint it?” Dilsey said. She began to clear the table. “Hush, Benjy. Luster gwine take you out to play.”

  “Whut he done to Miss Quentin, mammy?” Luster said.

  “Aint done nothin to her. You all git on outen here.”

  “I bet she aint here,” Luster said.

  Dilsey looked at him. “How you know she aint here?”

  “Me and Benjy seed her clamb out de window last night. Didn’t us, Benjy?”

  “You did?” Dilsey said, looking at him.

  “We sees her doin hit ev’y night,” Luster said, “Clamb right down dat pear tree.”

  “Dont you lie to me, nigger boy,” Dilsey said.

  “I aint lyin. Ask Benjy ef I is.”

  “Whyn’t you say somethin about it, den?”

  “ ’Twarn’t none o my business,” Luster said. “I aint gwine git mixed up in white folks’ business. Come on here, Benjy, les go out do’s.”

  They went out. Dilsey stood for awhile at the table, then she went and cleared the breakfast things from the diningroom and ate her breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen. Then she removed her apron and hung it up and went to the foot of the stairs and listened for a moment. There was no sound. She donned the overcoat and the hat and went across to her cabin.

  The rain had stopped. The air now drove out of the southeast, broken overhead into blue patches. Upon the crest of a hill beyond the trees and roofs and spires of town sunlight lay like a pale scrap of cloth, was blotted away. Upon the air a bell came, then as if at a signal, other bells took up the sound and repeated it.


  The cabin door opened and Dilsey emerged, again in the maroon cape and the purple gown, and wearing soiled white elbow-length gloves and minus her headcloth now. She came into the yard and called Luster. She waited awhile, then she went to the house and around it to the cellar door, moving close to the wall, and looked into the door. Ben sat on the steps. Before him Luster squatted on die damp floor. He held a saw in his left hand, the blade sprung a little by pressure of his hand, and he was in the act of striking the blade with the worn wooden mallet with which she had been making beaten biscuit for more than thirty years. The saw gave forth a single sluggish twang that ceased with lifeless alacrity, leaving the blade in a thin clean curve between Luster’s hand and the floor. Still, inscrutable, it bellied.

  “Dat’s de way he done hit,” Luster said. “I jes aint foun de right thing to hit it wid.”

  “Dat’s whut you doin, is it?” Dilsey said. “Bring me dat mallet,” she said.

  “I aint hurt hit,” Luster said.

  “Bring hit here,” Dilsey said. “Put dat saw whar you got hit first.”

  He put the saw away and brought the mallet to her. Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

  “Listen at him,” Luster said, “He been gwine on dat way ev’y since you sont us outen de house. I dont know whut got in to him dis mawnin.”

  “Bring him here,” Dilsey said.

  “Come on, Benjy,” Luster said. He went back down the steps and took Ben’s arm. He came obediently, wailing, that slow hoarse sound that ships make, that seems to begin before the sound itself has started, seems to cease before the sound itself has stopped.

  “Run and git his cap,” Dilsey said. “Dont make no noise Miss Cahline kin hear. Hurry, now. We already late.”

  “She gwine hear him anyhow, ef you dont stop him.” Luster said.

  “He stop when we git off de place,” Dilsey said. “He smellin hit. Dat’s whut hit is.”

  “Smell whut, mammy?” Luster said.

  “You go git dat cap,” Dilsey said. Luster went on. They stood in the cellar door, Ben one step below her. The sky was broken now into scudding patches that dragged their swift shadows up out of the shabby garden, over the broken fence and across the yard. Dilsey stroked Ben’s head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. “Hush,” Dilsey said, “Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now.” He wailed quietly and steadily.