The sound and the fury
“Ah, come on,” the boy said, “They’re already in.” They looked after the
first boy. “Yah,” they said suddenly, “go on then, mamma’s boy. If he
goes swimming he’ll get his head wet and then he’ll get a licking.” They
turned into the lane and went on, the yellow butterflies slanting about
them along the shade.
_it is because there is nothing else I believe there is something else
but there may not be and then I You will find that even injustice is
scarcely worthy of what you believe yourself to be_ He paid me no
attention, his jaw set in profile, his face turned a little away beneath
his broken hat.
“Why dont you go swimming with them?” I said. _that blackguard Caddy_
_Were you trying to pick a fight with him were you_
_A liar and a scoundrel Caddy was dropped from his club for cheating at
cards got sent to Coventry caught cheating at midterm exams and
expelled_
_Well what about it I’m not going to play cards with_
“Do you like fishing better than swimming?” I said. The sound of the
bees diminished, sustained yet, as though instead of sinking into
silence, silence merely increased between us, as water rises. The road
curved again and became a street between shady lawns with white houses.
_Caddy that blackguard can you think of Benjy and Father and do it not
of me_
_What else can I think about what else have I thought about_ The boy
turned from the street. He climbed a picket fence without looking back
and crossed the lawn to a tree and laid the pole down and climbed into
the fork of the tree and sat there, his back to the road and the dappled
sun motionless at last upon his white shirt. _Else have I thought about
I cant even cry I died last year I told you I had but I didnt know then
what I meant I didnt know what I was saying_ Some days in late August at
home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in
it sad and nostalgic and familiar. Man the sum of his climatic
experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in
impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of
dust and desire. _But now I know I’m dead I tell you_
_Then why must you listen we can go away you and Benjy and me where
nobody knows us where_ The buggy was drawn by a white horse, his feet
clopping in the thin dust; spidery wheels chattering thin and dry,
moving uphill beneath a rippling shawl of leaves. Elm. No: ellum. Ellum.
_On what on your school money the money they sold the pasture for so you
could go to Harvard dont you see you’ve got to finish now if you dont
finish he’ll have nothing_
_Sold the pasture_ His white shirt was motionless in the fork, in the
flickering shade. The wheels were spidery. Beneath the sag of the buggy
the hooves neatly rapid like the motions of a lady doing embroidery,
diminishing without progress like a figure on a treadmill being drawn
rapidly offstage. The street turned again. I could see the white cupola,
the round stupid assertion of the clock. _Sold the pasture_
_Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesnt stop drinking and
he wont stop he cant stop since I since last summer and then they’ll
send Benjy to Jackson I cant cry I cant even cry one minute she was
standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and
bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves
and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her
white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of
the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum
would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence
bellowing_
When you opened the door a bell tinkled, but just once, high and clear
and small in the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged
and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the
bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring
it when the door opened upon the recent warm scent of baking; a little
dirty child with eyes like a toy bear’s and two patent-leather
pig-tails.
“Hello, sister.” Her face was like a cup of milk dashed with coffee in
the sweet warm emptiness. “Anybody here?”
But she merely watched me until a door opened and the lady came. Above
the counter where the ranks of crisp shapes behind the glass her neat
grey face her hair tight and sparse from her neat grey skull, spectacles
in neat grey rims riding approaching like something on a wire, like a
cash box in a store. She looked like a librarian. Something among dusty
shelves of ordered certitudes long divorced from reality, desiccating
peacefully, as if a breath of that air which sees injustice done
“Two of these, please, ma’am.”
From under the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper and
laid it on the counter and lifted the two buns out. The little girl
watched them with still and unwinking eyes like two currants floating
motionless in a cup of weak coffee Land of the kike home of the wop.
Watching the bread, the neat grey hands, a broad gold band on the left
forefinger, knuckled there by a blue knuckle.
“Do you do your own baking, ma’am?”
“Sir?” she said. Like that. Sir? Like on the stage. Sir? “Five cents.
Was there anything else?”
“No, ma’am. Not for me. This lady wants something.” She was not tall
enough to see over the case, so she went to the end of the counter and
looked at the little girl.
“Did you bring her in here?”
“No, ma’am. She was here when I came.”
“You little wretch,” she said. She came out around the counter, but she
didnt touch the little girl. “Have you got anything in your pockets?”
“She hasnt got any pockets,” I said. “She wasnt doing anything. She was
just standing here, waiting for you.”
“Why didnt the bell ring, then?” She glared at me. She just needed a
bunch of switches, a blackboard behind her 2 X 2 e 5. “She’ll hide it
under her dress and a body’d never know it. You, child. How’d you get in
here?”
The little girl said nothing. She looked at the woman, then she gave me
a flying black glance and looked at the woman again, “Them foreigners,”
the woman said. “How’d she get in without the bell ringing?”
“She came in when I opened the door,” I said. “It rang once for both of
us. She couldnt reach anything from here, anyway. Besides, I dont think
she would. Would you, sister?” The little girl looked at me, secretive,
contemplative. “What do you want? bread?”
She extended her fist. It uncurled upon a nickel, moist and dirty, moist
dirt ridged into her flesh. The coin was damp and warm. I could smell
it, faintly metallic.
“Have you got a five cent loaf, please, ma’am?”
From beneath the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper
sheet and laid it on the counter and wrapped a loaf into it. I laid the
coin and another one on the counter. “And another one of those buns,
please, ma’am.”
She took another bun from the case. “Give me that parcel,” she said. I
gave it to her and she unwrapped it and put the third bun in and wrapped
it and took up the coins and found two coppers in her apron and gave
them to me. I handed them to the little girl. Her fingers closed about
them, damp and hot, like worms.
“You going to give her that bun?” the woman said.
“Yessum,” I said. “I expect your cooking smells as good to her as it
does to me.”
I took up the two packages and gave the bread to the little girl, the
woman all iron-grey behind the counter, watching us with cold certitude.
“You wait a minute,” she said. She went to the rear. The door opened
again and closed. The little girl watched me, holding the bread against
her dirty dress.
“What’s your name?” I said. She quit looking at me, but she was still
motionless. She didnt even seem to breathe. The woman returned. She had
a funny looking thing in her hand. She carried it sort of like it might
have been a dead pet rat.
“Here,” she said. The child looked at her. “Take it,” the woman said,
jabbing it at the little girl. “It just looks peculiar. I calculate you
wont know the difference when you eat it. Here. I cant stand here all
day.” The child took it, still watching her. The woman rubbed her hands
on her apron. “I got to have that bell fixed,” she said. She went to the
door and jerked it open. The little bell tinkled once, faint and clear
and invisible. We moved toward the door and the woman’s peering back.
“Thank you for the cake,” I said.
“Them foreigners,” she said, staring up into the obscurity where the
bell tinkled. “Take my advice and stay clear of them, young man.”
“Yessum,” I said. “Come on, sister.” We went out. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She swung the door to, then jerked it open again, making the bell give
forth its single small note. “Foreigners,” she said, peering up at the
bell.
We went on. “Well,” I said, “How about some ice cream?” She was eating
the gnarled cake. “Do you like ice cream?” She gave me a black still
look, chewing. “Come on.”
We came to the drugstore and had some ice cream. She wouldn’t put the
loaf down. “Why not put it down so you can eat better?” I said, offering
to take it. But she held to it, chewing the ice cream like it was taffy.
The bitten cake lay on the table. She ate the ice cream steadily, then
she fell to on the cake again, looking about at the showcases. I
finished mine and we went out.
“Which way do you live?” I said.
A buggy, the one with the white horse it was. Only Doc Peabody is fat.
Three hundred pounds. You ride with him on the uphill side, holding on.
Children. Walking easier than holding uphill. _Seen the doctor yet have
you seen Caddy_
_I dont have to I cant ask now afterward it will be all right it wont
matter_
Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate
equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he
said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside
of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that
some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all
that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to.
Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber
flabbily filled getting the odour of honeysuckle all mixed up.
“You’d better take your bread on home, hadnt you?”
She looked at me. She chewed quietly and steadily; at regular intervals
a small distension passed smoothly down her throat. I opened my package
and gave her one of the buns. “Goodbye,” I said.
I went on. Then I looked back. She was behind me. “Do you live down this
way?” She said nothing. She walked beside me, under my elbow sort of,
eating. We went on. It was quiet, hardly anyone about _getting the odour
of honeysuckle all mixed She would have told me not to let me sit there
on the steps hearing her door twilight slamming hearing Benjy still
crying Supper she would have to come down then getting honeysuckle all
mixed up in it_ We reached the corner.
“Well, I’ve got to go down this way,” I said, “Goodbye.” She stopped
too. She swallowed the last of the cake, then she began on the bun,
watching me across it. “Goodbye,” I said. I turned into the street and
went on, but I went to the next corner before I stopped.
“Which way do you live?” I said. “This way?” I pointed down the street.
She just looked at me. “Do you live over that way? I bet you live close
to the station, where the trains are. Dont you?” She just looked at me,
serene and secret and chewing. The street was empty both ways, with
quiet lawns and houses neat among the trees, but no one at all except
back there. We turned and went back. Two men sat in chairs in front of a
store.
“Do you all know this little girl? She sort of took up with me and I
cant find where she lives.”
They quit looking at me and looked at her.