The sound and the fury
none of my business, dough.”
“En I knows whut, too,” Luster said.
“You knows mo dan you got any use fer,” Dilsey said. “Aint you jes heard
Frony say hit aint none of yo business? You take Benjy on to de back and
keep him quiet twell I put dinner on.”
“I knows whar Miss Quentin is,” Luster said.
“Den jes keep hit,” Dilsey said. “Soon es Quentin need any of yo egvice,
I’ll let you know. Y’all g’awn en play in de back, now.”
“You know whut gwine happen soon es dey start playin dat ball over
yonder,” Luster said.
“Dey wont start fer awhile yit. By dat time T.P. be here to take him
ridin. Here, you gimme dat new hat.”
Luster gave her the hat and he and Ben went on across the back yard. Ben
was still whimpering, though not loud. Dilsey and Frony went to the
cabin. After a while Dilsey emerged, again in the faded calico dress,
and went to the kitchen. The fire had died down. There was no sound in
the house. She put on the apron and went up stairs. There was no sound
anywhere. Quentin’s room was as they had left it. She entered and picked
up the undergarment and put the stocking back in the drawer and closed
it. Mrs Compson’s door was closed. Dilsey stood beside it for a moment,
listening. Then she opened it and entered, entered a pervading reek of
camphor. The shades were drawn, the room in halflight, and the bed, so
that at first she thought Mrs Compson was asleep and was about to close
the door when the other spoke.
“Well?” she said, “What is it?”
“Hit’s me,” Dilsey said. “You want anything?”
Mrs Compson didn’t answer. After awhile, without moving her head at all,
she said: “Where’s Jason?”
“He aint come back yit,” Dilsey said. “Whut you want?”
Mrs Compson said nothing. Like so many cold, weak people, when faced at
last by the incontrovertible disaster she exhumed from somewhere a sort
of fortitude, strength. In her case it was an unshakable conviction
regarding the yet unplumbed event. “Well,” she said presently, “Did you
find it?”
“Find whut? Whut you talkin about?”
“The note. At least she would have enough consideration to leave a note.
Even Quentin did that.”
“Whut you talkin about?” Dilsey said, “Dont you know she all right? I
bet she be walkin right in dis do’ befo dark.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Mrs Compson said, “It’s in the blood. Like uncle, like
niece. Or mother. I dont know which would be worse. I dont seem to
care.”
“Whut you keep on talkin that way fur?” Dilsey said. “Whut she want to
do anything like that fur?”
“I dont know. What reason did Quentin have? Under God’s heaven what
reason did he have? It cant be simply to flout and hurt me. Whoever God
is, He would not permit that. I’m a lady. You might not believe that
from my offspring, but I am.”
“You des wait en see,” Dilsey said. “She be here by night, right dar in
her bed.” Mrs Compson said nothing. The camphor-soaked cloth lay upon
her brow. The black robe lay across the foot of the bed. Dilsey stood
with her hand on the door knob.
“Well,” Mrs Compson said. “What do you want? Are you going to fix some
dinner for Jason and Benjamin, or not?”
“Jason aint come yit,” Dilsey said. “I gwine fix somethin. You sho you
dont want nothin? Yo bottle still hot enough?”
“You might hand me my Bible.”
“I give hit to you dis mawnin, befo I left.”
“You laid it on the edge of the bed. How long did you expect it to stay
there?”
Dilsey crossed to the bed and groped among the shadows beneath the edge
of it and found the Bible, face down. She smoothed the bent pages and
laid the book on the bed again. Mrs Compson didn’t open her eyes. Her
hair and the pillow were the same color, beneath the wimple of the
medicated cloth she looked like an old nun praying. “Dont put it there
again,” she said, without opening her eyes. “That’s where you put it
before. Do you want me to have to get out of bed to pick it up?”
Dilsey reached the book across her and laid it on the broad side of the
bed. “You cant see to read, noways,” she said. “You want me to raise de
shade a little?”
“No. Let them alone. Go on and fix Jason something to eat.”
Dilsey went out. She closed the door and returned to the kitchen. The
stove was almost cold. While she stood there the clock above the
cupboard struck ten times. “One oclock,” she said aloud, “Jason aint
comin home. Ise seed de first en de last,” she said, looking at the cold
stove, “I seed de first en de last.” She set out some cold food on a
table. As she moved back and forth she sang a hymn. She sang the first
two lines over and over to the complete tune. She arranged the meal and
went to the door and called Luster, and after a time Luster and Ben
entered. Ben was still moaning a little, as to himself.
“He aint never quit,” Luster said.
“Y’all come on en eat,” Dilsey said. “Jason aint coming to dinner.” They
sat down at the table. Ben could manage solid food pretty well for
himself, though even now, with cold food before him, Dilsey tied a cloth
about his neck. He and Luster ate. Dilsey moved about the kitchen,
singing the two lines of the hymn which she remembered. “Yo’ll kin g’awn
en eat,” she said, “Jason aint comin home.”
He was twenty miles away at that time. When he left the house he drove
rapidly to town, overreaching the slow sabbath groups and the peremptory
bells along the broken air. He crossed the empty square and turned into
a narrow street that was abruptly quieter even yet, and stopped before a
frame house and went up the flower-bordered walk to the porch.
Beyond the screen door people were talking. As he lifted his hand to
knock he heard steps, so he withheld his hand until a big man in black
broadcloth trousers and a stiff-bosomed white shirt without collar
opened the door. He had vigorous untidy iron-grey hair and his grey eyes
were round and shiny like a little boy’s. He took Jason’s hand and drew
him into the house, still shaking it.
“Come right in,” he said, “Come right in.”
“You ready to go now?” Jason said.
“Walk right in,” the other said, propelling him by the elbow into a room
where a man and a woman sat. “You know Myrtle’s husband, dont you? Jason
Compson, Vernon.”
“Yes,” Jason said. He did not even look at the man, and as the sheriff
drew a chair across the room the man said,
“We’ll go out so you can talk. Come on, Myrtle.”
“No, no,” the sheriff said, “You folks keep your seat. I reckon it aint
that serious, Jason? Have a seat.”
“I’ll tell you as we go along,” Jason said. “Get your hat and coat.”
“We’ll go out,” the man said, rising.
“Keep your seat,” the sheriff said. “Me and Jason will go out on the
porch.”
“You get your hat and coat,” Jason said. “They’ve already got a twelve
hour start.” The sheriff led the way back to the porch. A man and a
woman passing spoke to him. He responded with a hearty florid gesture.
Bells were still ringing, from the direction of the section known as
Nigger Hollow. “Get your hat, Sheriff,” Jason said. The sheriff drew up
two chairs.
“Have a seat and tell me what the trouble is.”
“I told you over the phone,” Jason said, standing. “I did that to save
time. Am I going to have to go to law to compel you to do your sworn
duty?”
“You sit down and tell me about it,” the sheriff said. “I’ll take care
of you all right.”
“Care, hell,” Jason said. “Is this what you call taking care of me?”
“You’re the one that’s holding us up,” the sheriff said. “You sit down
and tell me about it.”
Jason told him, his sense of injury and impotence feeding upon its own
sound, so that after a time he forgot his haste in the violent
cumulation of his self justification and his outrage. The sheriff
watched him steadily with his cold shiny eyes.
“But you dont know they done it,” he said. “You just think so.”
“Dont know?” Jason said. “When I spent two damn days chasing her through
alleys, trying to keep her away from him, after I told her what I’d do
to her if I ever caught her with him, and you say I dont know that that
little b—”
“Now, then,” the sheriff said, “That’ll do. That’s enough of that.” He
looked out across the street, his hands in his pockets.
“And when I come to you, a commissioned officer of the law,” Jason said.
“That show’s in Mottson this week,” the sheriff said.
“Yes,” Jason said, “And if I could find a law officer that gave a
solitary damn about protecting the people that elected him to office,
I’d be there too by now.” He repeated his story, harshly recapitulant,
seeming to get an actual pleasure out of his outrage and impotence. The
sheriff did not appear to be listening at all.
“Jason,” he said, “What were you doing with three thousand dollars hid
in the house?”
“What?” Jason said. “That’s my business where I keep my money. Your
business is to help me get it back.”
“Did your mother know you had that much on the place?”
“Look here,” Jason said, “My house has been robbed. I know who did it
and I know where they are. I come to you as the commissioned officer of
the law, and I ask you once more, are you going to make any effort to
recover my property, or not?”
“What do you aim to do with that girl, if you catch them?”
“Nothing,” Jason said, “Not anything. I wouldn’t lay my hand on her. The
bitch that cost me a job, the one chance I ever had to get ahead, that
killed my father and is shortening my mother’s life every day and made
my name a laughing stock in the town. I wont do anything to her,” he
said. “Not anything.”
“You drove that girl into running off, Jason,” the sheriff said.
“How I conduct my family is no business of yours,” Jason said. “Are you
going to help me or not?”
“You drove her away from home,” the sheriff said. “And I have some
suspicions about who that money belongs to that I dont reckon I’ll ever
know for certain.”
Jason stood, slowly wringing the brim of his hat in his hands. He said
quietly: “You’re not going to make any effort to catch them for me?”
“That’s not any of my business, Jason. If you had any actual proof, I’d
have to act. But without that I dont figger it’s any of my business.”
“That’s your answer, is it?” Jason said. “Think well, now.”
“That’s it, Jason.”
“All right,” Jason said. He put his hat on. “You’ll regret this. I wont
be helpless. This is not Russia, where just because he wears a little
metal badge, a man is immune to law.” He went down the steps and got in
his car and started the engine. The sheriff watched him drive away,
turn, and rush past the house toward town.
The bells were ringing again, high in the scudding sunlight in bright
disorderly tatters of sound. He stopped at a filling station and had his
tires examined and the tank filled.
“Gwine on a trip, is you?” the negro asked him. He didn’t answer. “Look
like hit gwine fair off, after all,” the negro said.
“Fair off, hell,” Jason said, “It’ll be raining like hell by twelve
oclock.” He looked at the sky, thinking about rain, about the slick clay
roads, himself stalled somewhere miles from town. He thought about it
with a sort of triumph, of the fact that he was going to miss dinner,
that by starting now and so serving his compulsion of haste, he would be
at the greatest possible distance from both towns when noon came. It
seemed to him that, in this, circumstance was giving him a break, so he
said to the negro:
“What the hell are you doing? Has somebody paid you to keep this car
standing here as long as you can?”
“Dis here ti’ aint got no air a-tall in hit,” the negro said.
“Then get the hell away from there and let me have that tube,” Jason
said.
“Hit up now,” the negro said, rising. “You kin ride now.”
Jason got in and started the engine and drove off. He went into second
gear, the engine spluttering and gasping, and he raced the engine,
jamming the throttle down and snapping the choker in and out savagely.