The sound and the fury
“It’s goin to rain,” he said, “Get me half way there, and rain like
hell.” And he drove on out of the bells and out of town, thinking of
himself slogging through the mud, hunting a team. “And every damn one of
them will be at church.” He thought of how he’d find a church at last
and take a team and of the owner coming out, shouting at him and of
himself striking the man down. “I’m Jason Compson. See if you can stop
me. See if you can elect a man to office that can stop me,” he said,
thinking of himself entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers and
dragging the sheriff out. “Thinks he can sit with his hands folded and
see me lose my job. I’ll show him about jobs.” Of his niece he did not
think at all, nor of the arbitrary valuation of the money. Neither of
them had had entity or individuality for him for ten years; together
they merely symbolized the job in the bank of which he had been deprived
before he ever got it.
The air brightened, the running shadow patches were not the obverse, and
it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another
cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he
was carrying ancient wounds. From time to time he passed churches,
unpainted frame buildings with sheet iron steeples, surrounded by
tethered teams and shabby motorcars, and it seemed to him that each of
them was a picket-post where the rear guards of Circumstance peeped
fleetingly back at him. “And damn You, too,” he said, “See if You can
stop me,” thinking of himself, his file of soldiers with the manacled
sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from His throne, if
necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through
which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.
The wind was out of the southeast. It blew steadily upon his cheek. It
seemed that he could feel the prolonged blow of it sinking through his
skull, and suddenly with an old premonition he clapped the brakes on and
stopped and sat perfectly still. Then he lifted his hand to his neck and
began to curse, and sat there, cursing in a harsh whisper. When it was
necessary for him to drive for any length of time he fortified himself
with a handkerchief soaked in camphor, which he would tie about his
throat when clear of town, thus inhaling the fumes, and he got out and
lifted the seat cushion on the chance that there might be a forgotten
one there. He looked beneath both seats and stood again for a while,
cursing, seeing himself mocked by his own triumphing. He closed his
eyes, leaning on the door. He could return and get the forgotten
camphor, or he could go on. In either case, his head would be splitting,
but at home he could be sure of finding camphor on Sunday, while if he
went on he could not be sure. But if he went back, he would be an hour
and a half later in reaching Mottson. “Maybe I can drive slow,” he said.
“Maybe I can drive slow, thinking of something else—”
He got in and started. “I’ll think of something else,” he said, so he
thought about Lorraine. He imagined himself in bed with her, only he was
just lying beside her, pleading with her to help him, then he thought of
the money again, and that he had been outwitted by a woman, a girl. If
he could just believe it was the man who had robbed him. But to have
been robbed of that which was to have compensated him for the lost job,
which he had acquired through so much effort and risk, by the very
symbol of the lost job itself, and worst of all, by a bitch of a girl.
He drove on, shielding his face from the steady wind with the corner of
his coat.
He could see the opposed forces of his destiny and his will drawing
swiftly together now, toward a junction that would be irrevocable; he
became cunning. I cant make a blunder, he told himself. There would be
just one right thing, without alternatives: he must do that. He believed
that both of them would know him on sight, while he’d have to trust to
seeing her first, unless the man still wore the red tie. And the fact
that he must depend on that red tie seemed to be the sum of the
impending disaster; he could almost smell it, feel it above the
throbbing of his head.
He crested the final hill. Smoke lay in the valley, and roofs, a spire
or two above trees. He drove down the hill and into the town, slowing,
telling himself again of the need for caution, to find where the tent
was located first. He could not see very well now, and he knew that it
was the disaster which kept telling him to go directly and get something
for his head. At a filling station they told him that the tent was not
up yet, but that the show cars were on a siding at the station. He drove
there.
Two gaudily painted pullman cars stood on the track. He reconnoitred
them before he got out. He was trying to breathe shallowly, so that the
blood would not beat so in his skull. He got out and went along the
station wall, watching the cars. A few garments hung out of the windows,
limp and crinkled, as though they had been recently laundered. On the
earth beside the steps of one sat three canvas chairs. But he saw no
sign of life at all until a man in a dirty apron came to the door and
emptied a pan of dishwater with a broad gesture, the sunlight glinting
on the metal belly of the pan, then entered the car again.
Now I’ll have to take him by surprise, before he can warn them, he
thought. It never occurred to him that they might not be there, in the
car. That they should not be there, that the whole result should not
hinge on whether he saw them first or they saw him first, would be
opposed to all nature and contrary to the whole rhythm of events. And
more than that: he must see them first, get the money back, then what
they did would be of no importance to him, while otherwise the whole
world would know that he, Jason Compson, had been robbed by Quentin, his
niece, a bitch.
He reconnoitred again. Then he went to the car and mounted the steps,
swiftly and quietly, and paused at the door. The galley was dark, rank
with stale food. The man was a white blur, singing in a cracked, shaky
tenor. An old man, he thought, and not as big as I am. He entered the
car as the man looked up.
“Hey?” the man said, stopping his song.
“Where are they?” Jason said. “Quick, now. In the sleeping car?”
“Where’s who?” the man said.
“Dont lie to me,” Jason said. He blundered on in the cluttered
obscurity.
“What’s that?” the other said, “Who you calling a liar?” And when Jason
grasped his shoulder he exclaimed, “Look out, fellow!”
“Dont lie,” Jason said, “Where are they?”
“Why, you bastard,” the man said. His arm was frail and thin in Jason’s
grasp. He tried to wrench free, then he turned and fell to scrabbling on
the littered table behind him.
“Come on,” Jason said, “Where are they?”
“I’ll tell you where they are,” the man shrieked, “Lemme find my butcher
knife.”
“Here,” Jason said, trying to hold the other, “I’m just asking you a
question.”
“You bastard,” the other shrieked, scrabbling at the table. Jason tried
to grasp him in both arms, trying to prison the puny fury of him. The
man’s body felt so old, so frail, yet so fatally single-purposed that
for the first time Jason saw clear and unshadowed the disaster toward
which he rushed.
“Quit it!” he said, “Here! Here! I’ll get out. Give me time, and I’ll
get out.”
“Call me a liar,” the other wailed, “Lemme go. Lemme go just one minute.
I’ll show you.”
Jason glared wildly about, holding the other. Outside it was now bright
and sunny, swift and bright and empty, and he thought of the people soon
to be going quietly home to Sunday dinner, decorously festive, and of
himself trying to hold the fatal, furious little old man whom he dared
not release long enough to turn his back and run.
“Will you quit long enough for me to get out?” he said, “Will you?” But
the other still struggled, and Jason freed one hand and struck him on
the head. A clumsy, hurried blow, and not hard, but the other slumped
immediately and slid clattering among pans and buckets to the floor.
Jason stood above him, panting, listening. Then he turned and ran from
the car. At the door he restrained himself and descended more slowly and
stood there again. His breath made a hah hah hah sound and he stood
there trying to repress it, darting his gaze this way and that, when at
a scuffling sound behind him he turned in time to see the little old man
leaping awkwardly and furiously from the vestibule, a rusty hatchet high
in his hand.
He grasped at the hatchet, feeling no shock but knowing that he was
falling, thinking So this is how it’ll end, and he believed that he was
about to die and when something crashed against the back of his head he
thought How did he hit me there? Only maybe he hit me a long time ago,
he thought, And I just now felt it, and he thought Hurry. Hurry. Get it
over with, and then a furious desire not to die seized him and he
struggled, hearing the old man wailing and cursing in his cracked voice.
He still struggled when they hauled him to his feet, but they held him
and he ceased.
“Am I bleeding much?” he said, “The back of my head. Am I bleeding?” He
was still saying that while he felt himself being propelled rapidly
away, heard the old man’s thin furious voice dying away behind him.
“Look at my head,” he said, “Wait, I—”
“Wait, hell,” the man who held him said, “That damn little wasp’ll kill
you. Keep going. You aint hurt.”
“He hit me,” Jason said. “Am I bleeding?”
“Keep going,” the other said. He led Jason on around the corner of the
station, to the empty platform where an express truck stood, where grass
grew rigidly in a plot bordered with rigid flowers and a sign in
electric lights: Keep your [Illustration: Eye] on Mottson, the gap
filled by a human eye with an electric pupil. The man released him.
“Now,” he said, “You get on out of here and stay out. What were you
trying to do? Commit suicide?”
“I was looking for two people,” Jason said. “I just asked him where they
were.”
“Who you looking for?”
“It’s a girl,” Jason said. “And a man. He had on a red tie in Jefferson
yesterday. With this show. They robbed me.”
“Oh,” the man said. “You’re the one, are you. Well, they aint here.”
“I reckon so,” Jason said. He leaned against the wall and put his hand
to the back of his head and looked at his palm. “I thought I was
bleeding,” he said. “I thought he hit me with that hatchet.”
“You hit your head on the rail,” the man said. “You better go on. They
aint here.”
“Yes. He said they were not here. I thought he was lying.”
“Do you think I’m lying?” the man said.
“No,” Jason said. “I know they’re not here.”
“I told him to get the hell out of there, both of them,” the man said.
“I wont have nothing like that in my show. I run a respectable show,
with a respectable troupe.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “You dont know where they went?”
“No. And I dont want to know. No member of my show can pull a stunt like
that. You her—brother?”
“No,” Jason said. “It dont matter. I just wanted to see them. You sure
he didn’t hit me? No blood, I mean.”
“There would have been blood if I hadn’t got there when I did. You stay
away from here, now. That little bastard’ll kill you. That your car
yonder?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you get in it and go back to Jefferson. If you find them, it wont
be in my show. I run a respectable show. You say they robbed you?”
“No,” Jason said, “It dont make any difference.” He went to the car and
got in. What is it I must do? he thought. Then he remembered. He started
the engine and drove slowly up the street until he found a drugstore.
The door was locked. He stood for a while with his hand on the knob and
his head bent a little. Then he turned away and when a man came along