Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  “You can’t very well do that sitting here,” Granny said.

  “No,” he said. But I don’t think he even heard her except with his ears. He stood up. Even Ab Snopes was watching him now, his knife stopped halfway to his mouth with a wad of greens on the end of the blade. “Yes,” Cousin Philip said. His face even had the beautiful-girl look on it again. “Yes,” he said. He thanked Granny for his dinner. That is, I reckon that’s what he had told his mouth to say. It didn’t make much sense to us, but I don’t think he was paying any attention to it at all. He bowed. He wasn’t looking at Granny nor at anything else. He said “Yes” again. Then he went out. Ringo and I followed to the front door and watched him mount his horse and sit there for a minute, bareheaded, looking up at the upstairs windows. It was Granny’s room he was looking at, with mine and Ringo’s room next to it. But Cousin Melisandre couldn’t have seen him even if she had been in either one of them, since she was in bed on the other side of the house with Philadelphia probably still wringing the cloths out in cold water to lay on her head. He sat the horse well. He rode it well too: light and easy and back in the saddle and toes in and perpendicular from ankle to knee as Father had taught me. It was a good horse too.

  “It’s a damn good horse,” I said.

  “Git the soap,” Ringo said.

  But even then I looked quick back down the hall, even if I could hear Granny talking to Ab Snopes in the dining-room. “She’s still in there,” I said.

  “Hah,” Ringo said. “I done tasted soap in my mouth for a cuss I thought was a heap further off than that.”

  Then Cousin Philip spurred the horse and was gone. Or so Ringo and I thought. Two hours ago none of us had ever even heard of him; Cousin Melisandre had seen him twice and sat with her eyes shut screaming both times. But after we were older, Ringo and I realized that Cousin Philip was probably the only one in the whole lot of us that really believed even for one moment that he had said goodbye forever, that not only Granny and Louvinia knew better but Cousin Melisandre did too, no matter what his last name had the bad luck to be.

  We went back to the dining-room. Then I realized that Ab Snopes had been waiting for us to come back. Then we both knew he was going to ask Granny something because nobody wanted to be alone when they had to ask Granny something even when they didn’t know they were going to have trouble with it. We had known Ab for over a year now. I should have known what it was like Granny already did. He stood up. “Well, Miz Millard,” he said. “I figger you’ll be safe all right from now on, with Bed Forrest and his boys right there in Jefferson. But until things quiet down a mite more, I’ll just leave the horses in your lot for a day or two.”

  “What horses?” Granny said. She and Ab didn’t just look at one another. They watched one another.

  “Them fresh-captured horses from this morning,” Ab said.

  “What horses?” Granny said. Then Ab said it.

  “My horses.” Ab watched her.

  “Why?” Granny said. But Ab knew what she meant.

  “I’m the only grown man here,” he said. Then he said, “I seen them first. They were chasing me before—” Then he said, talking fast now; his eyes had gone kind of glazed for a second but now they were bright again, looking in the stubbly dirt-colored fuzz on his face like two chips of broken plate in a worn-out door-mat: “Spoils of war! I brought them here! I tolled them in here: a military and-bush! And as the only and ranking Confedrit military soldier present—”

  “You ain’t a soldier,” Granny said. “You stipulated that to Colonel Sartoris yourself while I was listening. You told him yourself you would be his independent horse-captain but nothing more.”

  “Ain’t that just exactly what I am trying to be?” he said. “Didn’t I bring all six of them horses in here in my own possession, the same as if I was leading them on a rope?”

  “Hah,” Granny said. “A spoil of war or any other kind of spoil don’t belong to a man or a woman either until they can take it home and put it down and turn their back on it. You never had time to get home with even the one you were riding. You ran in the first open gate you came to, no matter whose gate it was.”

  “Except it was the wrong one,” he said. His eyes quit looking like china. They didn’t look like anything. But I reckon his face would still look like an old door-mat even after he had turned all the way white. “So I reckon I got to even walk back to town,” he said. “The woman that would . . .” His voice stopped. He and Granny looked at one another.

  “Don’t you say it,” Granny said.

  “Nome,” he said. He didn’t say it. “. . . a man of seven horses ain’t likely to lend him a mule.”

  “No,” Granny said. “But you won’t have to walk.”

  We all went out to the lot. I don’t reckon that even Ab knew until then that Granny had already found where he thought he had hidden the first horse and had it brought up to the lot with the other six. But at least he already had his saddle and bridle with him. But it was too late. Six of the horses moved about loose in the lot. The seventh one was tied just inside the gate with a piece of plow-line. It wasn’t the horse Ab had come on because that horse had a blaze. Ab had known Granny long enough too. He should have known. Maybe he did. But at least he tried. He opened the gate.

  “Well,” he said, “it ain’t getting no earlier. I reckon I better—”

  “Wait,” Granny said. Then we looked at the horse which was tied to the fence. At first glance it looked the best one of the seven. You had to see it just right to tell its near leg was sprung a little, maybe from being worked too hard too young under too much weight. “Take that one,” Granny said.

  “That ain’t mine,” Ab said. “That’s one of yourn. I’ll just—”

  “Take that one,” Granny said. Ab looked at her. You could have counted at least ten.

  “Hell fire, Miz Millard,” he said.

  “I’ve told you before about cursing on this place,” Granny said.

  “Yessum,” Ab said. Then he said it again: “Hell fire.” He went into the lot and rammed the bit into the tied horse’s mouth and clapped the saddle on and snatched the piece of plow-line off and threw it over the fence and got up and Granny stood there until he had ridden out of the lot and Ringo closed the gate and that was the first time I noticed the chain and padlock from the smokehouse door and Ringo locked it and handed Granny the key and Ab sat for a minute, looking down at her. “Well, good-day,” he said. “I just hope for the sake of the Confedricy that Bed Forrest don’t never tangle with you with all the horses he’s got.” Then he said it again, maybe worse this time because now he was already on a horse pointed toward the gate: “Or you’ll damn shore leave him just one more passel of infantry before he can spit twice.”

  Then he was gone too. Except for hearing Cousin Melisandre now and then, and those six horses with U.S. branded on their hips standing in the lot, it might never have happened. At least Ringo and I thought that was all of it. Every now and then Philadelphia would come downstairs with the pitcher and draw some more cold water for Cousin Melisandre’s cloths but we thought that after a while even that would just wear out and quit. Then Philadelphia came down again and came in to where Granny was cutting down a pair of Yankee pants that Father had worn home last time so they would fit Ringo. She didn’t say anything. She just stood in the door until Granny said, “All right. What now?”

  “She want the banjo,” Philadelphia said.

  “What?” Granny said. “My dulcimer? She can’t play it. Go back upstairs.”

  But Philadelphia didn’t move. “Could I ax Mammy to come help me?”

  “No,” Granny said. “Louvinia’s resting. She’s had about as much of this as I want her to stand. Go back upstairs. Give her some more wine if you can’t think of anything else.” And she told Ringo and me to go somewhere else, anywhere else, but even in the yard you could still hear Cousin Melisandre talking to Philadelphia. And once we even heard Granny though it was still mostly Cousin Melisandre
telling Granny that she had already forgiven her, that nothing whatever had happened and that all she wanted now was peace. And after a while Louvinia came up from the cabin without even being sent for and went upstairs and then it began to look like we were going to be late for supper too. But Philadelphia finally came down and cooked it and carried Cousin Melisandre’s tray up and then we quit eating; we could hear Louvinia overhead, in Granny’s room now, and she came down and set the untasted tray on the table and stood beside Granny’s chair with the key to the trunk in her hand.

  “All right,” Granny said. “Go call Joby and Lucius.” We got the lantern and the shovels. We went to the orchard and removed the brush and dug up the trunk and got the dulcimer and buried the trunk and put the brush back and brought the key in to Granny. And Ringo and I could hear her from our room and Granny was right. We heard her for a long time and Granny was surely right; she just never said but half of it. The moon came up after a while and we could look down from our window into the garden, at Cousin Melisandre sitting on the bench with the moonlight glinting on the pearl inlay of the dulcimer, and Philadelphia squatting on the sill of the gate with her apron over her head. Maybe she was asleep. It was already late. But I don’t see how.

  So we didn’t hear Granny until she was already in the room, her shawl over her nightgown and carrying a candle. “In a minute I’m going to have about all of this I aim to stand too,” she said. “Go wake Lucius and tell him to saddle the mule,” she told Ringo. “Bring me the pen and ink and a sheet of paper.” I fetched them. She didn’t sit down. She stood at the bureau while I held the candle, writing even and steady and not very much, and signed her name and let the paper lie open to dry until Lucius came in. “Ab Snopes said that Mr. Forrest is in Jefferson,” she told Lucius. “Find him. Tell him I will expect him here for breakfast in the morning and to bring that boy.” She used to know General Forrest in Memphis before he got to be a general. He used to trade with Grandfather Millard’s supply house and sometimes he would come out to sit with Grandfather on the front gallery and sometimes he would eat with them. “You can tell him I have six captured horses for him,” she said. “And never mind patter-rollers or soldiers either. Haven’t you got my signature on that paper?”

  “I ain’t worrying about them,” Lucius said. “But suppose them Yankees—”

  “I see,” Granny said. “Hah. I forgot. You’ve been waiting for Yankees, haven’t you? But those this morning seemed to be too busy trying to stay free to have much time to talk about it, didn’t they? — Get along,” she said. “Do you think any Yankee is going to dare ignore what a Southern soldier or even a patter-roller wouldn’t? — And you go to bed,” she said.

  We lay down, both of us on Ringo’s pallet. We heard the mule when Lucius left. Then we heard the mule and at first we didn’t know we had been asleep, the mule coming back now and the moon had started down the west and Cousin Melisandre and Philadelphia were gone from the garden, to where Philadelphia at least could sleep better than sitting on a square sill with an apron over her head, or at least where it was quieter. And we heard Lucius fumbling up the stairs but we never heard Granny at all because she was already at the top of the stairs, talking down at the noise Lucius was trying not to make. “Speak up,” she said. “I ain’t asleep but I ain’t a lip-reader either. Not in the dark.”

  “Genl Fawhrest say he respectful compliments,” Lucius said, “and he can’t come to breakfast this morning because he gonter to be whuppin Genl Smith at Tallahatchie Crossing about that time. But providin he ain’t too fur away in the wrong direction when him and Genl Smith git done, he be proud to accept your invitation next time he in the neighborhood. And he say ‘whut boy’.”

  While you could count about five, Granny didn’t say anything. Then she said, “What?”

  “He say ‘whut boy’,” Lucius said.

  Then you could have counted ten. All we could hear was Lucius breathing. Then Granny said: “Did you wipe the mule down?”

  “Yessum,” Lucius said.

  “Did you turn her back into the pasture?”

  “Yessum,” Lucius said.

  “Then go to bed,” Granny said. “And you too,” she said.

  General Forrest found out what boy. This time we didn’t know we had been asleep either, and it was no one mule now. The sun was just rising. When we heard Granny and scrambled to the window, yesterday wasn’t a patch on it. There were at least fifty of them now, in gray; the whole outdoors was full of men on horses, with Cousin Philip out in front of them, sitting his horse in almost exactly the same spot where he had been yesterday, looking up at Granny’s window and not seeing it or anything else this time either. He had a hat now. He was holding it clamped over his heart and he hadn’t shaved and yesterday he had looked younger than Ringo because Ringo always had looked about ten years older than me. But now, with the first sun-ray making a little soft fuzz in the gold-colored stubble on his face, he looked even younger than I did, and gaunt and worn in the face like he hadn’t slept any last night and something else in his face too: like he not only hadn’t slept last night but by godfrey he wasn’t going to sleep tonight either as long as he had anything to do with it. “Goodbye,” he said. “Goodbye,” and whirled his horse, spurring, and raised the new hat over his head like he had carried the sabre yesterday and the whole mass of them went piling back across flower beds and lawns and all and back down the drive toward the gate while Granny still stood at her window in her nightgown, her voice louder than any man’s anywhere, I don’t care who he is or what he would be doing: “Backhouse! Backhouse! You, Backhouse!”

  So we ate breakfast early. Granny sent Ringo in his nightshirt to wake Louvinia and Lucius both. So Lucius had the mule saddled before Louvinia even got the fire lit. This time Granny didn’t write a note. “Go to Tallahatchie Crossing,” she told Lucius. “Sit there and wait for him if necessary.”

  “Suppose they done already started the battle?” Lucius said.

  “Suppose they have?” Granny said. “What business is that of yours or mine either? You find Bedford Forrest. Tell him this is important; it won’t take long. But don’t you show your face here again without him.”

  Lucius rode away. He was gone four days. He didn’t even get back in time for the wedding, coming back up the drive about sundown on the fourth day with two soldiers in one of General Forrest’s forage wagons with the mule tied to the tailgate. He didn’t know where he had been and he never did catch up with the battle. “I never even heard it,” he told Joby and Lucius and Louvinia and Philadelphia and Ringo and me. “If wars always moves that far and that fast, I don’t see how they ever have time to fight.”

  But it was all over then. It was the second day, the day after Lucius left. It was just after dinner this time and by now we were used to soldiers. But these were different, just five of them, and we never had seen just that few of them before and we had come to think of soldiers as either jumping on and off horses in the yard or going back and forth through Granny’s flower beds at full gallop. These were all officers and I reckon maybe I hadn’t seen so many soldiers after all because I never saw this much braid before. They came up the drive at a trot, like people just taking a ride, and stopped without trompling even one flower bed and General Forrest got down and came up the walk toward where Granny waited on the front gallery — a big, dusty man with a big beard so black it looked almost blue and eyes like a sleepy owl, already taking off his hat. “Well, Miss Rosie,” he said.

  “Don’t call me Rosie,” Granny said. “Come in. Ask your gentlemen to alight and come in.”

  “They’ll wait there,” General Forrest said. “We are a little rushed. My plans have. . . .” Then we were in the library. He wouldn’t sit down. He looked tired all right, but there was something else a good deal livelier than just tired. “Well, Miss Rosie,” he said. “I—”

  “Don’t call me Rosie,” Granny said. “Can’t you even say Rosa?”

  “Yessum,” he said. But he coul
dn’t. At least, he never did. “I reckon we both have had about enough of this. That boy—”

  “Hah,” Granny said. “Night before last you were saying what boy. Where is he? I sent you word to bring him with you.”

  “Under arrest,” General Forrest said. It was a considerable more than just tired. “I spent four days getting Smith just where I wanted him. After that, this boy here could have fought the battle.” He said ‘fit’ for fought just as he said ‘druv’ for drove and ‘drug’ for dragged. But maybe when you fought battles like he did, even Granny didn’t mind how you talked. “I won’t bother you with details. He didn’t know them either. All he had to do was exactly what I told him. I did everything but draw a diagram on his coat-tail of exactly what he was to do, no more and no less, from the time he left me until he saw me again: which was to make contact and then fall back. I gave him just exactly the right number of men so that he couldn’t do anything else but that. I told him exactly how fast to fall back and how much racket to make doing it and even how to make the racket. But what do you think he did?”

  “I can tell you,” Granny said. “He sat on his horse at five o’clock yesterday morning, with my whole yard full of men behind him, yelling goodbye at my window.”

  “He divided his men and sent half of them into the bushes to make a noise and took the other half who were the nearest to complete fools and led a sabre charge on that outpost. He didn’t fire a shot. He drove it clean back with sabres onto Smith’s main body and scared Smith so that he threw out all his cavalry and pulled out behind it and now I don’t know whether I’m about to catch him or he’s about to catch me. My provost finally caught the boy last night. He had come back and got the other thirty men of his company and was twenty miles ahead again, trying to find something to lead another charge against. ‘Do you want to be killed?’ I said. ‘Not especially,’ he said. ‘That is, I don’t especially care one way or the other.’ ‘Then neither do I,’ I said. ‘But you risked a whole company of my men.’ ‘Ain’t that what they enlisted for?’ he said. ‘They enlisted into a military establishment the purpose of which is to expend each man only at a profit. Or maybe you don’t consider me a shrewd enough trader in human meat?’ ‘I can’t say,’ he said. ‘Since day before yesterday I ain’t thought very much about how you or anybody else runs this war.’ ‘And just what were you doing day before yesterday that changed your ideas and habits?’ I said. ‘Fighting some of it,’ he said. ‘Dispersing the enemy.’ ‘Where?’ I said. ‘At a lady’s house a few miles from Jefferson,’ he said. ‘One of the niggers called her Granny like the white boy did. The others called her Miss Rosie.’” This time Granny didn’t say anything. She just waited.