What was it he aimed to do? the wife says.
You wait till I come to that part. Maybe I’ll show you, too He continues: “So we stopped in front of the store. He was already jumping out before the truck had stopped. Like he was afraid I would beat him to it, with his face all shined up like a kid trying to do something for you before you change your mind about something you promised to do for him. He went into the store on a trot and came back with so many bags and sacks he couldn’t see over them, so that I says to myself, ‘Look a here, fellow. If you are aiming to settle down permanent in this truck and set up housekeeping.’ Then we drove on and came pretty soon to a likely place where I could drive the truck off the road, into some trees, and he jumps down and runs up and helps her down like she and the kid were made out of glass or eggs. And he still had that look on his face like he pretty near had his mind made up to do whatever it was he was desperated up to do, if only nothing I did or she did beforehand would prevent it, and if she only didn’t notice in his face that he was desperated up to something. But even then I didn’t know what it was.”
What was it? the wife says
I just showed you once. You aint ready to be showed again, are you?
I reckon I dont mind if you dont. But I still dont see anything funny in that. How come it took him all that time and trouble, anyway?
It was because they were not married the husband says. It wasn’t even his child. I didn’t know it then, though. I didn’t find that out until I heard them talking that night by the fire, when they didn’t know I heard, I reckon. Before he had done got himself desperated up all the way. But I reckon he was desperate enough, all right. I reckon he was just giving her one more chance He continues: “So there he was skirmishing around, getting camp ready, until he got me right nervous: him trying to do everything and not knowing just where to begin or something. So I told him to go rustle up some firewood, and I took my blankets and spread them out in the truck. I was a little mad, then, at myself about how I had got into it now and I would have to sleep on the ground with my feet to the fire and nothing under me. So I reckon I was short and grumpy maybe, moving around, getting things fixed, and her sitting with her back to a tree, giving the kid his supper under a shawl and saying ever so often how she was ashamed to inconvenience me and that she aimed to sit up by the fire because she wasn’t tired noway, just riding all day long and not doing anything. Then he came back, with enough wood to barbecue a steer, and she began to tell him and he went to the truck and taken out that suitcase and opened it and taken out a blanket. Then we had it, sho enough. It was like those two fellows that used to be in the funny papers, those two Frenchmen that were always bowing and scraping at the other one to go first, making out like we had all come away from home just for the privilege of sleeping on the ground, each one trying to lie faster and bigger than the next. For a while I was a mind to say, ‘All right. If you want to sleep on the ground, do it. Because be durned if I want to.’ But I reckon you might say that I won. Or that me and him won. Because it wound up by him fixing their blanket in the truck, like we all might have known all the time it would be, and me and him spreading mine out before the fire. I reckon he knew that would be the way of it, anyhow. If they had come all the way from south Alabama like she claimed. I reckon that was why he brought in all that firewood just to make a pot of coffee with and heat up some tin cans. Then we ate, and then I found out.”
Found out what? What it was he wanted to do?
Not right then. I reckon she had a little more patience than you He continues: “So we had eaten and I was lying down on the blanket. I was tired, and getting stretched out felt good. I wasn’t aiming to listen, anymore than I was aiming to look like I was asleep when I wasn’t. But they had asked me to give them a ride; it wasn’t me that insisted on them getting in my truck. And if they seen fit to go on and talk without making sho nobody could hear them, it wasn’t any of my business. And that’s how I found out that they were hunting for somebody, following him, or trying to. Or she was, that is. And so all of a sudden I says to myself, ‘Ah-ah. Here’s another gal that thought she could learn on Saturday night what her mammy waited until Sunday to ask the minister.’ They never called his name. And they didn’t know just which way he had run. And I knew that if they had known where he went, it wouldn’t be by any fault of the fellow that was doing the running. I learned that quick. And so I heard him talking to her, about how they might travel on like this from one truck to another and one state to another for the rest of their lives and not find any trace of him, and her sitting there on the log, holding the chap and listening quiet as a stone and pleasant as a stone and just about as nigh to being moved or persuaded. And I says to myself, ‘Well, old fellow, I reckon it aint only since she has been riding on the seat of my truck while you rode with your feet hanging out the back end of it that she has travelled out in front on this trip.’ But I never said anything. I just lay there and them talking, or him talking, not loud. He hadn’t even mentioned marriage, neither. But that’s what he was talking about, and her listening placid and calm, like she had heard it before and she knew that she never even had to bother to say either yes or no to him. Smiling a little she was. But he couldn’t see that.
“Then he give up. He got up from the log and walked away. But I saw his face when he turned and I knew that he hadn’t give up. He knew that he had just give her one more chance and that now he had got himself desperated up to risking all. I could have told him that he was just deciding now to do what he should have done in the first place. But I reckon he had his own reasons. Anyway he walked off into the dark and left her sitting there, with her face kind of bent down a little and that smile still on it. She never looked after him, neither. Maybe she knew he had just gone off by himself to get himself worked up good to what she might have been advising him to do all the time, herself, without saying it in out and out words, which a lady naturally couldn’t do; not even a lady with a Saturday night family.
“Only I dont reckon that was it either. Or maybe the time and place didn’t suit her, let alone a audience. After a while she got up and looked at me, but I never moved, and then she went and climbed into the truck and after a while I heard her quit moving around and I knew that she had done got fixed to sleep. And I lay there — I had done got kind of waked up myself, now — and it was a right smart while. But I knew that he was somewhere close, waiting maybe for the fire to die down or for me to get good to sleep. Because, sho enough, just about the time the fire had died down good, I heard him come up, quiet as a cat, and stand over me, looking down at me, listening. I never made a sound; I dont know but I might have fetched a snore or two for him. Anyway, he goes on toward the truck, walking like he had eggs under his feet, and I lay there and watched him and I says to myself, ‘Old boy, if you’d a just done this last night, you’d a been sixty miles further south than you are now, to my knowledge. And if you’d a done it two nights ago, I reckon I wouldn’t ever have laid eyes on either one of you.’ Then I got a little worried. I wasn’t worried about him doing her any harm she didn’t want done to her. In fact, I was pulling for the little cuss. That was it. I couldn’t decide what I had better do when she would begin to holler. I knew that she would holler, and if I jumped up and run to the truck, it would scare him off, and if I didn’t come running, he would know that I was awake and watching him all the time, and he’d be scared off faster than ever. But I ought not to worried. I ought to have known that from the first look I’d taken at her and at him.”
I reckon the reason you knew you never had to worry was that you had already found out just what she would do in a case like that the wife says.
Sho the husband says. I didn’t aim for you to find that out. Yes, sir. I thought I had covered my tracks this time
Well, go on. What happened?
What do you reckon happened, with a big strong gal like that, without any warning that it was just him, and a durn little cuss that already looked like he had reached the point
where he could bust out crying like another baby? He continues: “There wasn’t any hollering or anything. I just watched him climb slow and easy into the truck and disappear and then didn’t anything happen for about while you could count maybe fifteen slow, and then I heard one kind of astonished sound she made when she woke up, like she was just surprised and then a little put out without being scared at all, and she says, not loud neither: ‘Why, Mr Bunch. Aint you ashamed. You might have woke the baby, too.’ Then he come out the back door of the truck. Not fast, and not climbing down on his own legs at all. I be dog if I dont believe she picked him up and set him back outside on the ground like she would that baby if it had been about six years old, say, and she says, ‘You go and lay down now, and get some sleep. We got another fur piece to go tomorrow.’
“Well, I was downright ashamed to look at him, to let him know that any human man had seen and heard what happened. I be dog if I didn’t want to find the hole and crawl into it with him. I did for a fact. And him standing there where she had set him down. The fire had burned down good now and I couldn’t hardly see him at all. But I knew about how I would have been standing and feeling if I was him. And that would have been with my head bowed, waiting for the Judge to say, ‘Take him out of here and hang him quick.’ And I didn’t make a sound, and after a while I heard him go on off. I could hear the bushes popping, like he had just struck off blind through the woods. And when daylight came he hadn’t got back.
“Well, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I kept on believing that he would show up, would come walking up out of the bushes, face or no face. So I built up the fire and got breakfast started, and after a while I heard her climbing out of the truck. I never looked around. But I could hear her standing there like she was looking around, like maybe she was trying to tell by the way the fire or my blanket looked if he was there or not. But I never said anything and she never said anything. I wanted to pack up and get started. And I knew I couldn’t leave her in the middle of the road. And that if my wife was to hear about me travelling the country with a goodlooking country gal and a three weeks’ old baby, even if she did claim she was hunting for her husband. Or both husbands now. So we ate and then I said, ‘Well, I got a long road and I reckon I better get started.’ And she never said nothing at all. And when I looked at her I saw that her face was just as quiet and calm as it had ever been. I be dog if she was even surprised or anything. And there I was, not knowing what to do with her, and she done already packed up her things and even swept the truck out with a gum branch before she put in that paper suitcase and made a kind of cushion with the folded blanket at the back end of the truck; and I says to myself, ‘It aint any wonder you get along. When they up and run away on you, you just pick up whatever they left and go on.’ —— , ‘I reckon I’ll ride back here,’ she says.
“ ’It’ll be kind of rough on the baby,’ I says.
“ ’I reckon I can hold him up,’ she says.
“Suit yourself,’ I says. And we drove off, with me hanging out the seat to look back, hoping that he would show up before we got around the curve. But he never. Talk about a fellow being caught in the depot with a strange baby on his hands. Here I was with a strange woman and a baby too, expecting every car that come up from behind and passed us to be full of husbands and wives too, let alone sheriffs. We were getting close to the Tennessee line then and I had my mind all fixed how I would either burn that new truck up or get to a town big enough to have one of these ladies’ welfare societies in it that I could turn her over to. And now and then I would look back, hoping that maybe he had struck out afoot after us, and I would see her sitting there with her face as calm as church, holding that baby up so it could eat and ride the bumps at the same time. You cant beat them.” He lies in the bed, laughing. “Yes, sir. I be dog if you can beat them.”
Then what? What did she do then?
Nothing. Just sitting there, riding, looking out like she hadn’t ever seen country — roads and trees and fields and telephone poles — before in her life. She never saw him at all until he come around to the back door of the truck. She never had to. All she needed to do was wait. And she knew that
Him?
Sho. He was standing at the side of the road when we come around the curve. Standing there, face and no face, hangdog and determined and calm too, like he had done desperated himself up for the last time, to take the last chance, and that now he knew he wouldn’t ever have to desperate himself again He continues: “He never looked at me at all. I just stopped the truck and him already running back to go around to the door where she was sitting. And he come around the back of it and he stood there, and her not even surprised. ‘I done come too far now,’ he says. ‘I be dog if I’m going to quit now.’ And her looking at him like she had known all the time what he was going to do before he even knew himself that he was going to, and that whatever he done, he wasn’t going to mean it.
“ ’Aint nobody never said for you to quit,’ she says.” He laughs, lying in the bed, laughing. “Yes, sir. You cant beat a woman. Because do you know what I think? I think she was just travelling. I dont think she had any idea of finding whoever it was she was following. I dont think she had ever aimed to, only she hadn’t told him yet. I reckon this was the first time she had ever been further away from home than she could walk back before sundown in her life. And that she had got along all right this far, with folks taking good care of her. And so I think she had just made up her mind to travel a little further and see as much as she could, since I reckon she knew that when she settled down this time, it would likely be for the rest of her life. That’s what I think. Sitting back there in that truck, with him by her now and the baby that hadn’t never stopped eating, that had been eating breakfast now for about ten miles, like one of these dining cars on the train, and her looking out and watching the telephone poles and the fences passing like it was a circus parade. Because after a while I says, ‘Here comes Saulsbury,’ and she says,
“ ’What?’ and I says,
“ ’Saulsbury, Tennessee,’ and I looked back and saw her face. And it was like it was already fixed and waiting to be surprised, and that she knew that when the surprise come, she was going to enjoy it. And it did come and it did suit her. Because she said,
“ ’My, my. A body does get around. Here we aint been coming from Alabama but two months, and now it’s already Tennessee.’ ”
Pylon
First published in 1935, Faulkner’s seventh novel is set in New Valois, a fictionalised version of New Orleans. It tells the story of a group of barnstormers (pilots that performed tricks in aviation groups known as flying circuses), whose lives are thoroughly unconventional. The ‘pylon’ of the title is the tower around which a pilot must turn as he competes in a race at an air fair. Though less famous than many of his other works, Pylon is one of Faulkner’s most exciting books, set against the colourful backdrop of Mardi Gras.
The plot concerns how a flying team, comprising a pilot, a “jumper,” or parachutist, and a mechanic, accompanied by a woman and her son, are short of money and hope to win at least one of the prizes at an air show. They live only on their winnings and they often have no place to stay, little to eat and no funds for transportation within the city. Although the novel deals with the “romance” of flying, the hard physical conditions of the performers are never far from our view. The text examines Faulkner’s concept of psychological necessity — that men and women must do what they are driven to do by their most profound inner motivations. Faulkner achieves this through solid, complex characters, who differ widely from one another and are sourced from a broad variety of social strata.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Dedication of an Airport
An Evening in New Valois
Night in the Vieux Carré
To-Morrow
And To-morrow
Love-song of J. A. Prufrock
The Scavengers
The
1935 film adaptation
Dedication of an Airport
FOR A FULL minute Jiggs stood before the window in a light spatter of last night’s confetti lying against the window-base like spent dirty foam, light-poised on the balls of his grease-stained tennis shoes, looking at the boots. Slant-shimmered by the intervening plate they sat upon their wooden pedestal in unblemished and inviolate implication of horse and spur, of the posed country-life photographs in the magazine advertisements, beside the easel-wise cardboard placard with which the town had bloomed overnight as it had with the purple-and-gold tissue bunting and the trodden confetti and broken serpentine... the same lettering, the same photographs of the trim vicious fragile aeroplanes and the pilots leaning upon them in gargantuan irrelation as if the aeroplanes were a species of esoteric and fatal animals not trained or tamed but just for the instant inert, above the neat brief legend of name and accomplishment or perhaps just hope.
He entered the store, his rubber soles falling in quick hissing thuds on pavement and iron sill and then upon the tile floor of that museum of glass cases lighted suave and sourceless by an unearthly day-coloured substance in which the hats and ties and shirts, the belt-buckles and cuff-links and handkerchiefs, the pipes shaped like golf-clubs and the drinking-tools shaped like boots and barnyard fowls and the minute impedimenta for wear on ties and vest-chains shaped like bits and spurs, resembled biologic specimens put into the inviolate preservative before they had ever been breathed into. “Boots?” the clerk said. “The pair in the window?”
“Yair,” Jiggs said. “How much?” But the clerk did not even move. He leaned back on the counter, looking down at the hard tough short-chinned face, blue-shaven, with a long thread-like and recently stanched razor-cut on it and in which the hot brown eyes seemed to snap and glare like a boy’s approaching for the first time the aerial wheels and stars and serpents of a night time carnival; at the filthy raked swaggering peaked cap, the short thick muscle-bound body like the photographs of the one who two years before was light-middleweight champion of the army or Marine Corps or navy; the cheap breeches overcut to begin with and now skin-tight as if both they and their wearer had been recently and hopelessly rained on and enclosing a pair of short stocky thick fast legs like a polo pony’s, which descended into the tops of a pair of boots, footless now and secured by two riveted straps beneath the insteps of the tennis shoes.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 172
