II
UNCOLLECTED
STORIES
Nympholepsy
Soon the sharp line of the hill-crest had cut off his shadow’s head; and pushing it like a snake before him, he saw it gradually become nothing. And at last he had no shadow at all. His heavy shapeless shoes were gray in the dusty road, his overalls were gray with dust: dust was like a benediction upon him and upon the day of labor behind him. He did not recall the falling of slain wheat and his muscles had forgotten the heave and thrust of fork and grain, his hands had forgotten the feel of a wooden handle worn smooth and sweet as silk to the touch; he had forgotten a yawning loft and spinning chaff in the sunlight like an immortal dance.
Behind him a day of labor, before him cloddish eating, and dull sleep in a casual rooming house. And tomorrow labor again and his sinister circling shadow marking another day away. The hill broke briefly and sharply, soon, on its crest it was no more sharp. Here was the valley in shadow, and the opposite hill in two dimensions and gold with sun. Within the valley the town lay among lilac shadows. Among lilac shadows was the food he would eat and the sleep that waited him; perhaps a girl like defunctive music, moist with heat, in blue gingham, would cross his path fatefully; and he too would be as other young men sweating the wheat to gold, along the moony land.
Here was town anyway. Above gray walls were branches of apple once sweet with bloom and yet green, barn and house were hives from which the bees of sunlight had flown away. From here the court-house was a dream dreamed by Thucydides: you could not see that pale Ionic columns were stained with casual tobacco. And from the blacksmith’s there came the measured ring of hammer and anvil like a call to vespers.
Reft of motion, his body felt his cooling blood, felt the evening drawing away like water; his eyes saw the shadow of the church spire like a portent across the land. He watched the trickling dust from his inverted shoes. His feet were grained and grimy with dust; and cooled, took the pleasantly warm moistness of his shoes gratefully.
The sun was a red descending furnace mouth, his shadow he had thought lost crouched like a skulking dog at his feet. The sun was in the trees, dripping from leaf to leaf, the sun was like a little silver flame moving among the trees. Why, its something alive, he thought, watching a golden light among dark pines, a little flame that had somehow lost its candle and was seeking for it.
How he knew it was a woman or a girl at that distance he could not have told, but know he did; and for a time he watched the aimless movements of the figure with vacuous curiosity. The figure, pausing, took the last of the red sun in a slim golden plane that, breaking again into movement, disappeared.
For a clear moment there was an old sharp beauty behind his eyes. Then his once-clean instincts become swinish got him lurching into motion. He climbed a fence under the contemplative stare of cattle and ran awkwardly across a harvested corn field toward the woods. Old soft furrows shifted beneath his stride, causing his pounding knees to knock together and brittle corn stalks hindered his speed with wanton and static unconcern.
He gained the woods by climbing another fence and stopped for a moment while the west alchemized the leaden dust upon him, gilding the tips of his unshaven beard. Hardwood,—maple and beech trunks, were twin strips of red gold and lavender upright in earth, and stretched branches sloped the sunset to unwordable colors;—they were like the hands of misers reluctantly dripping golden coins of sunset. Pines were half iron and half bronze, sculptured into a symbol of eternal quiet, dripping gold also which the sparse grass took from tree to tree like a running fire, quenching it at last in the shadow of pines. A bird on a swinging branch regarded him briefly, sung, and flew away.
Before this green cathedral of trees he stood for a while, empty as a sheep, feeling the dying day draining from the world as a bath-tub drains, or a cracked bowl; and he could hear the day repeating slow orisons in a green nave. Then he moved forward again, slowly, as though he expected a priest to stop forth, halting him and reading his soul.
Nothing happened though. The day slowly died without a sound about him, and gravity directed him down hill along peaceful avenues of trees. Soon the violet shadow of the hill itself took him. There was no sun here, though the tips of trees were still as gold-dipped brushes and the trunks of trees upon the summit were like a barred grate beyond which the evening burned slowly away. He stopped again, knowing fear.
He recalled fragments of the day—of sucking cool water from a jug with another waiting his turn, of the wheat breaking to the reaper’s blade as the thrusting horses surged to the collar, of horses dreaming of oats in a barn sweet with ammonia and the smell of sweaty harness, of blackbirds like scraps of burned paper slanting above the wheat. He thought of the run of muscles beneath a blue shirt wet with sweat, and of someone to listen or talk to. Always someone, some other member of his race, of his kind. Man can counterfeit everything except silence. And in this silence he knew fear.
For here was something that even the desire for a woman’s body took no account of. Or, using that instinct for the purpose of seducing him from the avenues of safety, of security where others of his kind ate and slept, it had betrayed him. If I find her, I am safe he thought, not knowing whether it was copulation or companionship that he wanted. There was nothing here for him: hills, sloping down on either side, approaching yet forever severed by a small stream. The water ran brown under alders and willow, and without light, seemed dark and forbidding. Like the hand of the world, like a line on the palm of the world’s hand—a wrinkle of no account. Yet he could drown here! he thought with terror, watching the spinning gnats above it and the trees calm and uncaring as gods, and the remote sky like a silken pall to hide his unsightly dissolution.
He had thought of trees as being so much timber but these silent ones were more than that. Timber had made houses to shelter him, timber had fed his fire for warmth, had given him heat to cook his food; timber had made him boats to go upon the waters of the earth. But not these trees. These trees gazed on him impersonally, taking a slow revenge. The sunset was a fire no fuel had ever fed, the water murmured in a dark and sinister dream. No boat would swim on this water. And above all brooded some god to whose compulsions he must answer long after the more comfortable beliefs had become out-worn as a garment used everyday.
And this god neither recognized him nor ignored him: this god seemed to be unconscious of his entity, save as a trespasser where he had no business being. Crouching, he felt the sharp warm earth against his knees and his palms; and kneeling, he awaited abrupt and dreadful annihilation.
Nothing happened, and he opened his eyes. Above the hill-crest, among tree trunks, he saw a single star. It was as though he had seen a man there. Here was a familiar thing, something too remote to care what he did. So he rose and with the star at his back, he began walking swiftly in the direction of town. Here was the stream to cross. The delay of looking for a crossing place engendered again his fear. But he suppressed it by his will, thinking of food and of a woman he hoped to find.
That sensation of an imminent displeasure and anger, of a Being whom he had offended, he held away from himself. But it still hung like poised wings about and above him. His first fear was gone, but soon he found himself running. He would have slowed to a walk if only to prove to himself the soundness of his integral integrity, but his legs would not stop running. Here, in the noncommittal dusk, was a log bridging the stream. Walk it! walk it! his good sense told him; but his thrusting legs took it at a run.
The rotten bark slipped under his feet, scaling off and falling upon the dark whispering stream. It was as though he stood upon the bank and cursed his blundering body as it slipped and fought for balance. You are going to die, he told his body, feeling that imminent Presence again about him, now that his mental concentration had been vanquished by gravity. For an arrested fragment of time he felt, through vision without intellect, the waiting dark water, the treacherous log, the tree trunks pulsing and breathing and the branches like an
invocation to a dark and unseen god; then trees and the star-flown sky slowly arced across his eyes. In his fall was death, and a bleak derisive laughter. He died time and again, but his body refused to die. Then the water took him.
Then the water took him. But here was something more than water. The water ran darkly between his body and his overalls and shirt, he felt his hair lap backward wetly. But here beneath his hand a startled thigh slid like a snake, among dark bubbles he felt a swift leg; and, sinking, the point of a breast scraped his back. Amid a slow commotion of disturbed water he saw death like a woman shining and drowned and waiting, saw a flashing body tortured by water; and his lungs spewing water gulped wet air.
Churned water lapped at his mouth, trying to enter, and the light of day prisoned beneath the stream broke again upon the surface, shaped to ripples. Gleaming planes of light angled and broke the surface, moving away from him; and treading water, feeling his sodden shoes and his heavy overalls, feeling his wet hair plastered upon his face, he saw her swing herself, dripping, up the bank.
He churned the water in pursuit. It seemed that he would never reach the other side. His heavy water-soaked clothes clung to him like importunate sirens, like women; he saw the broken water of his endeavor crested with stars. Finally he was in the shadow of willows and felt wet and slippery earth under his hand. Here was a root, and here a branch. He drew himself up, hearing the trickling water from his clothing, feeling his clothing become light and then heavy.
His shoes squashed limply and his clinging nondescript garments hampered his running, heavily. He could see her body, ghostly in the moonless dusk, mounting the hill. And he ran, cursing, with water dripping from his hair, with his coarse clothing and shoes wetly complaining, cursing his fate and his luck. He believed he could do better without the shoes, so, still watching the muted flame of her running, he removed them, then he took up the pursuit again. His wet clothes were like lead, he was panting when he crested the hill. There she was, in a wheat field under the rising harvest moon, like a ship on a silver sea.
He plunged after her. His furrow broke silver in the wheat beneath the impervious moon, rippling away from him, dying again into the dull and unravished gold of standing grain. She was far ahead, the disturbance of her passage through the wheat had died away ere he reached it. He saw, beyond the spreading ripple of her passage arcing away on either side, her body break briefly against a belt of wood, like a match flame; then he saw her no more.
Still running, he crossed the wheat slumbrous along the moony land, and into the trees he went, wearily. But she was gone, and in a recurrent surge of despair he threw himself flat upon the earth. But I touched her! he thought in a fine agony of disappointment, feeling the earth through his damp clothing, feeling twigs beneath his face and arm.
The moon swam up, the moon sailed up like a fat laden ship before an azure trade wind, staring at him in rotund complacency. He writhed, thinking of her body beneath his, of the dark wood, of the sunset and the dusty road, wishing he had never left it. But I touched her! he repeated to himself, trying to build from this an incontrovertible consummation. Yes, her swift frightened thigh and the tip of her breast; but to remember that she had fled him on impulse was worse than ever. I wouldnt have hurt you, he moaned, I wouldnt have hurt you at all.
His lax muscles, emptied, felt a rumor of past labor and of labor tomorrow, compulsions of fork and grain. The moon soothed him, prying in his wet hair, experimenting with shadows; and thinking of tomorrow he rose. That troubling Presence was gone and dark and shadows only mocked him. The moonlight ran along a wire fence and he knew that here was the road.
He felt the dust stirring to his passage and he saw silver corn in fields, and dark trees like poured ink. He thought of how like running quicksilver she had looked, how like a flipped coin she had sped from him; but soon the lights of town came into view—the courthouse clock, and a luminous suggestion of streets, like a fairy land, small though it was. Soon she was forgotten and he thought only a relaxed body in a sorry bed, and waking and hunger and work.
The long monotonous road stretched under the moon before him. Now his shadow was behind him, like a following dog, and beyond it was a day of labor and sweat. Before him was sleep and casual food and more labor; and perhaps a girl like defunctive music, in this calico against the heat. Tomorrow his sinister shadow would circle him again, but tomorrow was a long way off.
The moon swam higher and higher: soon she would slide down the hill of heaven, recalling with interest the silver she had lent to tree and wheat and hill and rolling monotonous fecund land. Below him a barn took the moon for a silver edge and a silo became a dream dreamed in Greece, apple trees broke into silver like gesturing fountains. Flat planes of moonlight the town, and the lights on the courthouse were futile in the moon.
Behind him labor, before him labor; about all the old despairs of time and breath. The stars were like shattered flowers floating on dark water, sucking down the west; and with dust clinging to his yet damp feet, he slowly descended the hill.
Frankie and Johnny
1
“We’ll name him Frank,” said her father the prize fighter, who never won a battle nor was ever licked, confidently. “No more hustling for you, old girl. We’ll get married, huh?” But, on a day, he bent his round sunny head above his mewling red child in consternation. “A girl?” he whispered in hushed amazement, “cripes, a girl! What do you know about that?” But he was a gentleman and a good sport, so he kissed the mother’s hot cheek. “Buck up, old lady, dont you fret. Better luck next time, huh?”
She did not tell him there would be no next time though, but smiled wanly at him from her tumbled hair; and in the short time he knew his daughter (he was gallantly drowned trying to save a fat lady bather at Ocean Grove Park) he even became reconciled to a girl. When asked the sex of his child he was no longer sheepish about admitting it: he even took an inordinate pride in the swift sunny-headed creature. “She’s me, over and over again,” he told his casual acquaintances proudly; and his last connected thought as he fought the undertow with his mountainous struggling burden, was of her.
“Christ, the old bitch,” he gasped, watching the spinning sky between gaping rollers; and he cursed for her size the fat soft weight killing his hard youth. But he didn’t let go and swim for it, not he! Thinking of Frankie was sharper than the burning in his throat and lungs. “Poor kid, she’ll have it tough now,” he thought among green bubbles.
Frankie, therefore, was a girl of spirit. At least so thought Johnny, her fellow. You would have thought so too, watching the sensuous thrust of her walk and the angular sawing of her thin young arms as she’d take Johnny’s arm and swing the rough synchronism of her young body along the streets of a Saturday night. Johnny’s compeers thought so anyway, for when he’d take her to a dance at his Athletic club she’d put their eyes out; they followed her so thick during the music she hadn’t room to dance. She knocked them cold from that first night when, lounging on the corner laughing and kidding the girls that passed, they saw her approaching. “Cheest,” they said, and dared Johnny to brace her. Johnny, brave in his new suit, was nothing loath.
“Hello, kid,” he said, tipping his hat gracefully and falling in beside her. Frankie gave him a level grey look. “On your way, boy,” she replied, not stopping. “Aw, say—” began Johnny easily, while his pals guffawed behind them.
“Beat it, bum; or I’ll slam you for a row,” commanded Frankie. She didn’t need to call a cop, not Frankie.
Johnny retained his sang-froid admirably. “Hit me, baby, I like it,” he told her, taking her arm. Frankie did no ineffectual lady-like jerking: she took a full arm swing and her narrow palm smacked on Johnny’s face. This was in front of an ex-saloon: swinging doors erupted upon tobacco-fogged lights.
“Hit me again,” said Johnny, straight and red, and Frankie hit him again. A man staggered from the saloon. “Why, the—” spoke the newcomer, “knock hell out of her, you—”
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nbsp; Johnny’s red stinging face and Frankie’s white one hung like two young planets in the dingy street and he saw Frankie’s nose wrinkle up. She’s going to cry, thought Johnny in panic, and the man’s words penetrated his singing head. He whirled upon the newcomer.
“Say, who’re you talking to, fellow? What do you mean, talking that way before a lady?” He thrust his face into the man’s beery one. The other, with alcoholic valor, began: “Why, you—” Johnny struck, and he went cursing into the gutter.
Johnny turned, but Frankie had fled down the street, wailing. He overtook her. “Why, baby,” said Johnny. Frankie heeded him not. Cheest, what luck, and perspiring gently he led her into the mouth of a dark alleyway. He put his awkward arm about her. “Why, say, kid, it’s all right, dont cry.” Frankie turned to him suddenly and clung passionately to his coat. Cripes, what luck, he thought, patting her back as though she were a dog. “Say, dont cry, wont you? I never meant to scare you, sister. What you want I should do?” He looked about him, trapped. Cheest, what a fix! Suppose the gang should catch him now! Cheest, wouldn’t they razz him? When in trouble, you called a cop; but Johnny, for sound reasons, evaded all intimate dealing with cops—even old Ryan who had known his father, man and boy. Cripes, what’ll he do? Poor gentlemanly dull Johnny.
Then he had an inspiration. “Here, kid, brace up. You wanna go home, dont you? Tell me where you live and I’ll take you, see?” Frankie raised her blurred face. How grey her eyes were, and her bright hair beneath her cheap little hat. Johnny felt how straight and firm her body was. “What’s eating you, baby? Tell old Johnny your troubles: he’ll fix it. Say, I never meant to scare you.”
“It—it wasn’t you: it was that bum back there.”
Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner Page 40
