‘No, he hasn’t. When you are married you are either lucky or unlucky, but when you are dead you aren’t either: you aren’t anything.’
‘That’s right. He don’t have to bother about his luck any more. . . . The padre’s lucky, though.’
‘How?’
‘Well, if you have hard luck and your hard luck passes away, ain’t you lucky?’
‘I don’t know. You are too much for me now, Joe.’
‘And how about that girl? Fellow’s got money, I hear, and no particular brains. She’s lucky.’
‘Do you think she’s satisfied?’ Gilligan gazed at her attentively, not replying. ‘Think how much fun she could have got out of being so romantically widowed, and so young. I’ll bet she’s cursing her luck this minute.’
He regarded her with admiration. ‘I always thought I’d like to be a buzzard,’ he remarked, ‘but now I think I’d like to be a woman.’
‘Good gracious, Joe. Why in the world?’
‘Now, long as you’re being one of them sybils, tell me about this bird Jones. He’s lucky.’
‘How lucky?’
‘Well, he gets what he wants, don’t he?’
‘Not the women he wants.’
‘Not exactly. Certainly he don’t get all the women he wants. He has failed twice to my knowledge. But failure don’t seem to worry him. That’s what I mean by lucky.’ Their cigarettes arced together into the stream, hissing. ‘I guess brass gets along about as well as anything else with women.’
‘You mean stupidity.’
‘No, I don’t. Stupidity. That’s the reason I can’t get the one I want.’
She put her hand on his arm. ‘You aren’t stupid, Joe. And you aren’t bold, either.’
‘Yes, I am. Can you imagine me considering anybody else’s feelings when they’s something I want?’
‘I can’t imagine you doing anything without considering someone else’s feelings.’
Offended, he became impersonal. ‘ ’Course you are entitled to your own opinion. I know I ain’t bold like the man in that story. You remember? accosted a woman on the street and her husband was with her and knocked him down. When he got up, brushing himself off, a man says: “For heaven’s sake, friend, do you do that often?” and the bird says: “Sure. Of course I get knocked down occasionally, but you’d be surprised.” I guess he just charged the beating to overhead,’ he finished with his old sardonic humour.
She laughed out. Then she said: ‘Why don’t you try that, Joe?’
He looked at her quietly for a time. She met his gaze unwavering and he slipped to his feet facing her, putting his arm around her. ‘What does that mean, Margaret?’
She made no reply and he lifted her down. She put her arms over his shoulders. ‘You don’t mean anything by it,’ he told her quietly, touching her mouth with his. His clasp became lax.
‘Not like that, Joe.’
‘Not like what?’ he asked stupidly. For answer she drew his face down to hers and kissed him with slow fire. Then they knew that after all they were strangers to each other. He hastened to fill an uncomfortable interval. ‘Does that mean you will?’
‘I can’t, Joe,’ she answered, standing easily in his arms.
‘But why not, Margaret? You never give me any reason.’
She was silent in profile against sunshot green. ‘If I didn’t like you so much, I wouldn’t tell you. But it’s your name, Joe, Gilligan. I couldn’t marry a man named Gilligan.’
He was really hurt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said dully. She laid her cheek against his. On the crest of the hill tree trunks were a barred grate beyond which the fires of evening were dying away. ‘I could change it,’ he suggested.
Across the evening came a long sound. ‘There’s your train,’ he said.
She thrust herself slightly from him, to see his face. ‘Joe, forgive me. I didn’t mean that—’
‘That’s all right,’ he interrupted, patting her back with awkward gentleness. ‘Come on, let’s get back.’
The locomotive appeared blackly at the curve, plumed with steam like a sinister squat knight and grew larger without seeming to progress. But it was moving and it roared past the station in its own good time, bearing the puny controller of its destiny like a goggled greasy excrescence in its cab. The train jarred to a stop and an eruption of white-jacketed porters.
She put her arms about him again to the edification of the by-standers. ‘Joe, I didn’t mean that. But don’t you see, I have been married twice already, with damn little luck either time, and I just haven’t the courage to risk it again. But if I could marry anyone, don’t you know it would be you? Kiss me, Joe.’ He complied. ‘Bless your heart, darling. If I married you you’d be dead in a year, Joe. All the men that marry me die, you know.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ he told her.
‘But I won’t. I’m too young to bury three husbands.’ People got off, passed them, other people got on. And above all like an obbligato the vocal competition of cabmen. ‘Joe, does it really hurt you for me to go?’ He looked at her dumbly, ‘Joe!’ she exclaimed, and a party passed them. It was Mr and Mrs George Farr: they saw Cecily’s stricken face as she melted graceful and fragile and weeping into her father’s arms. And here was Mr George Farr morose and thunderous behind her. Ignored.
‘What did I tell you?’ Mrs Mahon said, clutching Gilligan’s arm.
‘You’re right,’ he answered, from his own despair. ‘It’s a sweet honeymoon he’s had, poor devil.’
The party passed on around the station and she looked at Gilligan again. ‘Joe, come with me.’
‘To a minister?’ he asked with resurgent hope.
‘No, just as we are. Then when we get fed up all we need do is wish each other luck and go our ways.’ He stared at her, shocked. ‘Damn your Presbyterian soul, Joe. Now you think I’m a bad woman.’
‘No I don’t, ma’am. But I can’t do that. . . .’
‘Why not?’
‘I dunno: I just can’t.’
‘But what difference does it make?’
‘Why, none, if it was just your body I wanted. But I want — I want—’
‘What do you want, Joe?’
‘Hell. Come on, let’s get aboard.’
‘You are coming, then?’
‘You know I ain’t. You knew you were safe when you said that.’
He picked up her bags. A porter ravished them skilfully from him and he helped her into the car. She sat upon green plush and he removed his hat awkwardly, extending his hand. ‘Well, good-bye.’
Her face pallid and calm beneath her small white and black hat, above her immaculate collar. She ignored his hand.
‘Look at me, Joe. Have I ever told you a lie?’
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Then don’t you know I am not lying now? I meant what I said. Sit down.’
‘No, no. I can’t do it that way. You know I can’t.’
‘Yes. I can’t even seduce you, Joe. I’m sorry. I’d like to make you happy for a short time, if I could. But I guess it isn’t in the cards, is it?’ She raised her face and he kissed her.
‘Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, Joe.’
But why not? he thought with cinders under his feet, why not take her this way? I could persuade her in time, perhaps before we reached Atlanta. He turned and sprang back on board the train. He hadn’t much time and when he saw that her seat was empty he rushed through the car in a mounting excitement. She was not in the next car either.
Have I forgotten which car she is in? he thought. But no that was where he had left her, for there was the Negro youth, still motionless opposite the window. He hurried back to take another look at her place. Yes, there were her bags. He ran, blundering into other passengers, the whole length of the train. She was not there.
She has changed her mind and got off, looking for me, he thought, in an agony of futile endeavour. He slammed open a vestibule and leaped to the ground as the train began to move. Car
eless of how he must look to the station loungers he leaped towards the waiting-room. It was empty, a hurried glance up and down the platform did not discover her, and, he turned despairing to the moving train.
She must be on it! he thought furiously, cursing himself because he had not stayed on it until she reappeared. For now the train was moving too swiftly and all the vestibules were closed. Then the last car slid smoothly past and he saw her standing on the rear platform where she had gone in order to see him again and where he had not thought of looking for her.
‘Margaret!’ he cried after the arrogant steel thing, running vainly down the track after it, seeing it smoothly distancing him. ‘Margaret?’ he cried again, stretching his arms to her, to the vocal support of the loungers.
‘Whup up a little, mister,’ a voice advised. ‘Ten to one on the train,’ a sporting one offered. There were no takers.
He stopped at last, actually weeping with anger and despair, watching her figure, in its dark straight dress and white collar and cuffs, become smaller and smaller with the diminishing train that left behind a derisive whistle blast and a trailing fading vapour like an insult, moving along twin threads of steel out of his sight and his life.
. . . At last he left the track at right angles and climbed a wire fence into woods where spring becoming languorous with summer turned sweetly nightward, though summer had not quite come.
6
Deep in a thicket from which the evening was slowly dissolving a thrush sang four liquid notes. Like the shape of her mouth, he thought, feeling the heat of his pain become cool with the cooling of sunset. The small stream murmured busily like a faint incantation and repeated alder shoots leaned over it Narcissus-like. The thrush, disturbed, flashed a modest streak of brown deeper into the woods, and sang again. Mosquitoes spun about him, unresisted: he seemed to get ease from their sharp irritation. Something else to think about.
I could have made up to her. I would make up to her for everything that ever hurt her, so that when she remembered things that once hurt her she’d say: Was this I? If I could just have told her! Only I couldn’t seem to think of what to say. Me, that talks all the time, being stuck for words. . . . Aimlessly he followed the stream. Soon it ran among violet shadows, among willows, and he heard a louder water. Parting the willows he came upon an old mill-race and a small lake calmly repeating the calm sky and the opposite dark trees. He saw fish gleaming dully upon the earth, and the buttocks of a man.
‘Lost something?’ he asked, watching ripples spread from the man’s submerged arm. The other heaved himself to his hands and knees, looking up over his shoulder.
‘Dropped my terbaccer,’ he replied, in an unemphatic drawl. ‘Don’t happen to have none on you, do you?’
‘Got a cigarette, if that’ll do you any good.’ Gilligan offered his pack and the other, squatting back on his heels, took one.
‘Much obliged. Feller likes a little smoke once in a while, don’t he?’
‘Fellow likes a lot of little things in this world, once in a while.’
The other guffawed, not comprehending, but suspecting a reference to sex. ‘Well, I ain’t got any o’ that, but I got the next thing to it.’ He rose, lean as a hound, and from beneath a willow clump he extracted a gallon jug. With awkward formality he tendered it. ‘Allers take a mite with me when I go fishing,’ he explained. ‘Seems to make the fish bite more’n the muskeeters less.’
Gilligan took the jug awkwardly. What in hell did you do with it? ‘Here, lemme show you,’ his host said, relieving him of it. Crooking his first finger through the handle the man raised the jug with a round backhanded sweep to his horizontal upper arm, craning his neck until his mouth met the mouth of the vessel. Gilligan could see his pumping adam’s apple against the pale sky. He lowered the jug and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘That’s how she’s done,’ he said, handing the thing to Gilligan.
Gilligan tried it with inferior success, feeling the stuff chill upon his chin, sopping the front of his waistcoat. But in his throat it was like fire: it seemed to explode pleasantly as soon as it touched his stomach. He lowered the vessel, coughing.
‘Good God, what is it?’
The other laughed hoarsely, slapping his thighs. ‘Never drunk no corn before, hain’t you? But how does she feel inside? Better’n out, don’t she?’
Gilligan admitted that she did. He could feel all his nerves like electric filaments in a bulb: he was conscious of nothing else. Then it became a warmth and an exhilaration. He raised the jug again and did better.
I’ll go to Atlanta tomorrow and find her, catch her before she takes a train out of there, he promised himself. I will find her: she cannot escape me forever. The other drank again and Gilligan lit a cigarette. He too knew a sense of freedom, of being master of his destiny. I’ll go to Atlanta tomorrow, find her, make her marry me, he repeated. Why did I let her go?
But why not tonight? Sure, why not tonight? I can find her! I know I can. Even in New York. Funny I never thought of that before. His legs and arms had no sensation, his cigarette slipped from his nerveless fingers and reaching for the tiny coal he wavered, finding that he could no longer control his body. Hell, I ain’t that drunk, he thought. But he was forced to admit that he was. ‘Say, what was that stuff, anyway? I can’t hardly stand up.’
The other guffawed again, flattered. ‘Ain’t she, though? Make her myself, and she’s good. You’ll git used to it, though. Take another.’ He drank it like water, with unction.
‘Dam’f I do. I got to get to town.’
‘Take a little sup. I’ll put you on the road all right.’
If two drinks make me feel this good I’ll scream if I take another, he thought. But his friend insisted and he drank again. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, returning the jug.
The man carrying ‘her’ circled the lake. Gilligan blundered behind him, among cypress knees, in occasional mud. After a time he regained some control over his body and they came to a break in the willows and a road slashed into the red sandy soil.
‘Here you be, friend. Jest keep right to the road. ‘Tain’t over a mile.’
‘All right. Much obliged to you. You’ve sure got a son-of-a-gun of a drink there.’
‘She’s all right, ain’t she?’ the other agreed.
‘Well, good night.’ Gilligan extended his hand and the other grasped it formally and limply and pumped it once from a rigid elbow.
‘Take keer of yourself.’
‘I’ll try to,’ Gilligan promised. The other’s gangling malaria-ridden figure faded again among the willows. The road gashed across the land, stretched silent and empty before him, and below the east was a rumorous promise of moonlight. He trod in dust between dark trees like spilled ink upon the pale clear page of the sky, and soon the moon was more than a promise. He saw the rim of it sharpening the tips of trees, saw soon the whole disc, bland as a saucer. Whippoorwills were like lost coins among the trees and one blundered awkwardly from the dust almost under his feet. The whisky died away in the loneliness, soon his temporarily mislaid despair took its place again.
After a while passing beneath crossed skeletoned arms on a pole he crossed the railroad and followed a lane between Negro cabins, smelling the intimate odour of Negroes. The cabins were dark but from them came soft meaningless laughter and slow unemphatic voices cheerful yet somehow filled with all the old despairs of time and breath.
Under the moon, quavering with the passion of spring and flesh among whitewashed walls papered inwardly with old newspapers, something pagan using the white man’s conventions as it used his clothing, hushed and powerful not knowing its own power:
‘Sweet chariot . . . comin’ fer to ca’y me home. . . .’
Three young men passed him, shuffling in the dust, aping their own mute shadows in the dusty road, sharp with the passed sweat of labour: ‘You may be fas’, but you can’t las’; cause yo’ mommer go’ slow you down.’
He trod on with the moon in his face, seeing t
he cupolaed clock squatting like a benignant god on the courthouse against the sky, staring across the town with four faces. He passed yet more cabins where sweet mellow voices called from door to door. A dog bayed the moon, clear and sorrowful, and a voice cursed it in soft syllables.
‘. . . sweet chariot, comin’ fer to ca’y me home . . . yes, Jesus, comin’ fer to ca’y me hoooooome. . . .’
The church loomed a black shadow with a silver roof and he crossed the lawn, passing beneath slumbrous ivied walls. In the garden the mocking-bird that lived in the magnolia rippled the silence, and along the moony wall of the rectory, from ledge to ledge, something crawled shapelessly. What in hell, thought Gilligan, seeing it pause at Emmy’s window.
He leaped flower beds swiftly and noiseless. Here was a convenient gutter and Jones did not hear him until he had almost reached the window to which the other clung. They regarded each other precariously, the one clinging to the window, the other to the gutter.
‘What are you trying to do?’ Gilligan asked.
‘Climb up here a little further and I’ll show you,’ Jones told him snarling his yellow teeth.
‘Come away from there, fellow.’
‘Damn my soul, if here ain’t the squire of dames again. We all hoped you had gone off with that black woman.’
‘Are you coming down, or am I coming up there and throw you down?’
‘I don’t know: am I? Or are you?’
For reply Gilligan heaved himself up, grasping the window ledge. Jones, clinging, tried to kick him in the face but Gilligan caught his foot, releasing his grasp on the gutter. For a moment they swung like a great pendulum against the side of the house, then Jones’s hold on the window was torn loose and they plunged together into a bed of tulips. Jones was first on his feet and kicking Gilligan in the side he fled. Gilligan sprang after him and overtook him smartly.
This time it was hyacinths. Jones fought like a woman, kicking, clawing, biting, but Gilligan hauled him to his feet and knocked him down. Jones rose again and was felled once more. This time he crawled and grasping Gilligan’s knees pulled him down. Jones kicked himself free and rising fled anew. Gilligan sat up contemplating pursuit, but gave it up as he watched Jones’s unwieldy body leaping away through the moonlight.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 28
