The sound and the fury
without any hat, looking like I was crazy too. Like a man would
naturally think, one of them is crazy and another one drowned himself
and the other one was turned out into the street by her husband, what’s
the reason the rest of them are not crazy too. All the time I could see
them watching me like a hawk, waiting for a chance to say Well I’m not
surprised I expected it all the time the whole family’s crazy. Selling
land to send him to Harvard and paying taxes to support a state
University all the time that I never saw except twice at a baseball game
and not letting her daughter’s name be spoken on the place until after a
while Father wouldn’t even come down town anymore but just sat there all
day with the decanter I could see the bottom of his nightshirt and his
bare legs and hear the decanter clinking until finally T. P. had to pour
it for him and she says You have no respect for your Father’s memory and
I says I dont know why not it sure is preserved well enough to last only
if I’m crazy too God knows what I’ll do about it just to look at water
makes me sick and I’d just as soon swallow gasoline as a glass of
whiskey and Lorraine telling them he may not drink but if you dont
believe he’s a man I can tell you how to find out she says If I catch
you fooling with any of these whores you know what I’ll do she says I’ll
whip her grabbing at her I’ll whip her as long as I can find her she
says and I says if I dont drink that’s my business but have you ever
found me short I says I’ll buy you enough beer to take a bath in if you
want it because I’ve got every respect for a good honest whore because
with Mother’s health and the position I try to uphold to have her with
no more respect for what I try to do for her than to make her name and
my name and my Mother’s name a byword in the town.
She had dodged out of sight somewhere. Saw me coming and dodged into
another alley, running up and down the alleys with a damn show man in a
red tie that everybody would look at and think what kind of a damn man
would wear a red tie. Well, the boy kept speaking to me and so I took
the telegram without knowing I had taken it. I didn’t realise what it
was until I was signing for it, and I tore it open without even caring
much what it was. I knew all the time what it would be, I reckon. That
was the only thing else that could happen, especially holding it up
until I had already had the check entered on the pass book.
I dont see how a city no bigger than New York can hold enough people to
take the money away from us country suckers. Work like hell all day
every day, send them your money and get a little piece of paper back,
Your account closed at 20.62. Teasing you along, letting you pile up a
little paper profit, then bang! Your account closed at 20.62. And if
that wasn’t enough, paying ten dollars a month to somebody to tell you
how to lose it fast, that either dont know anything about it or is in
cahoots with the telegraph company. Well, I’m done with them. They’ve
sucked me in for the last time. Any fool except a fellow that hasn’t got
any more sense than to take a jew’s word for anything could tell the
market was going up all the time, with the whole damn delta about to be
flooded again and the cotton washed right out of the ground like it was
last year. Let it wash a man’s crop out of the ground year after year,
and them up there in Washington spending fifty thousand dollars a day
keeping an army in Nicaragua or some place. Of course it’ll overflow
again, and then cotton’ll be worth thirty cents a pound. Well, I just
want to hit them one time and get my money back. I don’t want a killing;
only these small town gamblers are out for that, I just want my money
back that these damn jews have gotten with all their guaranteed inside
dope. Then I’m through; they can kiss my foot for every other red cent
of mine they get.
I went back to the store. It was half past three almost. Damn little
time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to
Harvard to learn that. The band had quit playing. Got them all inside
now, and they wouldn’t have to waste any more wind. Earl says,
“He found you, did he? He was in here with it a while ago. I thought you
were out back somewhere.”
“Yes,” I says, “I got it. They couldn’t keep it away from me all
afternoon. The town’s too small. I’ve got to go out home a minute,” I
says. “You can dock me if it’ll make you feel any better.”
“Go ahead,” he says, “I can handle it now. No bad news, I hope.”
“You’ll have to go to the telegraph office and find that out,” I says.
“They’ll have time to tell you. I haven’t.”
“I just asked,” he says. “Your mother knows she can depend on me.”
“She’ll appreciate it,” I says. “I wont be gone any longer than I have
to.”
“Take your time,” he says. “I can handle it now. You go ahead.”
I got the car and went home. Once this morning, twice at noon, and now
again, with her and having to chase all over town and having to beg them
to let me eat a little of the food I am paying for. Sometimes I think
what’s the use of anything. With the precedent I’ve been set I must be
crazy to keep on. And now I reckon I’ll get home just in time to take a
nice long drive after a basket of tomatoes or something and then have to
go back to town smelling like a camphor factory so my head wont explode
right on my shoulders. I keep telling her there’s not a damn thing in
that aspirin except flour and water for imaginary invalids. I says you
dont know what a headache is. I says you think I’d fool with that damn
car at all if it depended on me. I says I can get along without one I’ve
learned to get along without lots of things but if you want to risk
yourself in that old wornout surrey with a halfgrown nigger boy all
right because I says God looks after Ben’s kind, God knows He ought to
do something for him but if you think I’m going to trust a thousand
dollars’ worth of delicate machinery to a halfgrown nigger or a grown
one either, you’d better buy him one yourself because I says you like to
ride in the car and you know you do.
Dilsey said Mother was in the house. I went on into the hall and
listened, but I didn’t hear anything. I went up stairs, but just as I
passed her door she called me.
“I just wanted to know who it was,” she says. “I’m here alone so much
that I hear every sound.”
“You dont have to stay here,” I says. “You could spend the whole day
visiting like other women, if you wanted to.” She came to the door.
“I thought maybe you were sick,” she says. “Having to hurry through your
dinner like you did.”
“Better luck next time,” I says. “What do you want?”
“Is anything wrong?” she says.
“What could be?” I says. “Cant I come home in the middle of the
afternoon without upsetting the whole house?”
“Have you seen Quentin?” she says.
“She’s in school,” I says.
“It’s after three,” she says. “I heard the clock strike at least a half
an hour ago. She ought to be home by now.”
“Ought she?” I says. “When have you ever seen her before dark?”
“She ought to be home,” she says. “When I was a girl . . .”
“You had somebody to make you behave yourself,” I says. “She hasn’t.”
“I can’t do anything with her,” she says. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried.”
“And you wont let me, for some reason,” I says, “So you ought to be
satisfied.” I went on to my room. I turned the key easy and stood there
until the knob turned. Then she says,
“Jason.”
“What,” I says.
“I just thought something was wrong.”
“Not in here,” I says. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I dont mean to worry you,” she says.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I says. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might have
been mistaken. Do you want anything?”
After awhile she says, “No. Not any thing.” Then she went away. I took
the box down and counted out the money and hid the box again and
unlocked the door and went out. I thought about the camphor, but it
would be too late now, anyway. And I’d just have one more round trip.
She was at her door, waiting.
“You want anything from town?” I says.
“No,” she says. “I dont mean to meddle in your affairs. But I dont know
what I’d do if anything happened to you, Jason.”
“I’m all right,” I says. “Just a headache.”
“I wish you’d take some aspirin,” she says. “I know you’re not going to
stop using the car.”
“What’s the car got to do with it?” I says. “How can a car give a man a
headache?”
“You know gasoline always made you sick,” she says. “Ever since you were
a child. I wish you’d take some aspirin.”
“Keep on wishing it,” I says. “It wont hurt you.”
I got in the car and started back to town. I had just turned onto the
street when I saw a ford coming helling toward me. All of a sudden it
stopped. I could hear the wheels sliding and it slewed around and backed
and whirled and just as I was thinking what the hell they were up to, I
saw that red tie. Then I recognised her face looking back through the
window. It whirled into the alley. I saw it turn again, but when I got
to the back street it was just disappearing, running like hell.
I saw red. When I recognised that red tie, after all I had told her, I
forgot about everything. I never thought about my head even until I came
to the first forks and had to stop. Yet we spend money and spend money
on roads and damn if it isn’t like trying to drive over a sheet of
corrugated iron roofing. I’d like to know how a man could be expected to
keep up with even a wheelbarrow. I think too much of my car; I’m not
going to hammer it to pieces like it was a ford. Chances were they had
stolen it, anyway, so why should they give a damn. Like I say blood
always tells. If you’ve got blood like that in you, you’ll do anything.
I says whatever claim you believe she has on you has already been
discharged; I says from now on you have only yourself to blame because
you know what any sensible person would do. I says if I’ve got to spend
half my time being a damn detective, at least I’ll go where I can get
paid for it.
So I had to stop there at the forks. Then I remembered it. It felt like
somebody was inside with a hammer, beating on it. I says I’ve tried to
keep you from being worried by her; I says far as I’m concerned, let her
go to hell as fast as she pleases and the sooner the better. I says what
else do you expect except every drummer and cheap show that comes to
town because even these town jellybeans give her the go-by now. You dont
know what goes on I says, you dont hear the talk that I hear and you can
just bet I shut them up too. I says my people owned slaves here when you
all were running little shirt tail country stores and farming land no
nigger would look at on shares.
If they ever farmed it. It’s a good thing the Lord did something for
this country; the folks that live on it never have. Friday afternoon,
and from right here I could see three miles of land that hadn’t even
been broken, and every able bodied man in the county in town at that
show. I might have been a stranger starving to death, and there wasn’t a
soul in sight to ask which way to town even. And she trying to get me to
take aspirin. I says when I eat bread I’ll do it at the table. I says
you always talking about how much you give up for us when you could buy
ten new dresses a year on the money you spend for those damn patent
medicines. It’s not something to cure it I need it’s just an even break
not to have to have them but as long as I have to work ten hours a day
to support a kitchen full of niggers in the style they’re accustomed to
and send them to the show with every other nigger in the county, only he
was late already. By the time he got there it would be over.
After awhile he got up to the car and when I finally got it through his
head if two people in a ford had passed him, he said yes. So I went on,