The Essential Faulkner (63 page)

“Yes, Jesus!”

“I tells you, breddren, en I tells you, sistuhn, dey’ll
come a time. Po’ sinner saying Let me lay down wid de Lawd, lemme lay down my load. Den whut Jesus gwine say, O breddren? O sistuhn? Is you got de ricklickshun en de blood of de Lamb? Case I ain’t gwine load down heaven!”

He fumbled in his coat and took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. A low, concerted sound rose from the congregation: Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! The woman’s voice said, “Yes, Jesus! Jesus!”

“Breddren! Look at dem little chillen settin dar. Jesus wus like dat once. He mammy suffered de glory en de pangs. Sometime maybe she helt him at de nightfall, whilst de angels singin’ him to sleep; maybe she look out de do’ en see de Roman po-lice passin’.” He tramped back and forth, mopping his face. “Listen breddren! I sees de day. Ma’y settin in de do’ wid Jesus on her lap, de little Jesus. Like dem chillen dar, de little Jesus. I hears de angels singin’ de peaceful songs en de glory; I sees de closin’ eyes; sees Mary jump up, sees de sojer face: We gwine to kill! We gwine to kill! We gwine to kill yo little Jesus! I hears de weepin’ en de lamentation of de po’ mammy widout de salvation en de word of God!”

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Jesus! Little Jesus!” and another voice, rising:

“I sees, O Jesus! Oh I sees!” and still another, without words, like bubbles rising in water.

“I sees hit, breddren! I sees hit! Sees de blastin’, blindin’ sight! I sees Calvary, wid de sacred trees, sees de thief en de murderer en de least of dese; I hears de boastin’ en de braggin’: Ef you be Jesus, lif up yo’ tree en walk! I hears de wailin’ of women en de evenin’ lamentations; I hears de weepin’ en de cryin’ en de turnt-away face of God: dey done kilt Jesus; dey done kilt my Son!”

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Jesus! I sees, O Jesus!”

“O blind sinner! Breddren, I tells you; sistuhn, I says to you, when de Lawd did turn His mighty face, say, Ain’t gwine overload heaven! I can see de widowed God
shet His do’; I sees de whelmin’ flood roll between; I sees de darkness en de death everlastin’ upon de generations. Den, lo! Breddren! Yes, breddren! Whut I see? Whut I see, O sinner? I sees de resurrection en de light; sees de meek Jesus sayin’ Dey kilt Me dat ye shall live again; I died dat dem whut sees en believes shall never die. Breddren, O breddren! I sees de doom crack en hears de golden horns shoutin’ down de glory, en de arisen dead whut got de blood en de ricklickshun of de Lamb!”

In the midst of the voices and the hands Ben sat, rapt in his sweet blue gaze. Dilsey sat bolt upright beside, crying rigidly and quietly in the annealment and the blood of the remembered Lamb.

As they walked through the bright noon, up the sandy road with the dispersing congregation talking, easily again, group to group, she continued to weep, unmindful of the talk.

“He sho a preacher, mon! He didn’t look like much at first, but hush!”

“He seed de power en de glory.”

“Yes, suh. He seed hit. Face to face he seed hit.”

Dilsey made no sound, her face did not quiver as the tears took their sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no effort to dry them away even.

“Whyn’t you quit dat, mammy?” Frony said. “Wid all dese people lookin’. We be passin’ white folks soon.”

“I’ve seed de first en de last,” Dilsey said. “Never you mind me.”

“First en last whut?” Frony said.

“Never you mind,” Dilsey said. “I seed de beginnin’, en now I sees de endin’.”

Before they reached the street, though, she stopped and lifted her skirt and dried her eyes on the hem of her topmost underskirt. Then they went on. Ben shambled along beside Dilsey, watching Luster who anticked along ahead, the umbrella in his hand and his new straw hat
slanted viciously in the sunlight, like a big foolish dog watching a small clever one. They reached the gate and entered. Immediately Ben began to whimper again, and for a while all of them looked up the drive at the square, paintless house with its rotting portico.

“Whut’s gwine on up dar today?” Frony said. “Somethin’ is.”

“Nothin’,” Dilsey said. “You tend to yo business en let de white folks tend to deir’n.”

“Somethin’ is,” Frony said. “I heard him first thing dis mawnin. ‘Taint none of my busines, dough.”

“En I knows whut, too,” Luster said.

“You knows mo dan you got any use fer,” Dilsey said. “Ain’t you jes heard Frony say hit ain’t 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 won’t start fer a while yit. By dat time T.P. be here to tak 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 upstairs. 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 half-light, 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 a while, without moving her head at all, she said: “Where’s Jason?”

“He ain’t 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. “Don’t 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 don’t know which would be worse. I don’t seem to care.”

“Whut you keep on talkin’ that way fur?” Dilsey said. “Whut she want to do anything like that fur?”

“I don’t know. What reason did Quentin have? Under God’s heaven what reason did he have? It can’t 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 doorknob.

“Well,” Mrs. Compson said. “What do you want? Are
you going to fix some dinner for Jason and Benjamin, or not?”

“Jason ain’t come yit,” Dilsey said. “I gwine fix somethin.’ You sho you don’t 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. “Don’t 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 can’t 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 o’clock,” she said aloud. “Jason ain’t comin’ home. Ise seed de first en de last,” she said, looking at the cold stove. “I seed de first en de last.”

Early in April 1927, the big river overflowed its banks, and the entire population of the state prison farm at Parchman, Mississippi, was set to work on a threatened levee. One tall convict was ordered out in a rowboat to look for a woman in a cypress snag and a man on the ridgepole of a cottonhouse. The water continued to rise. It was the worst flood in the history of the river: for six weeks more than 20,000 square miles were under water, including the whole of the rich Delta, and 600,000 persons were driven from their homes. Several hundreds were drowned, in addition to 25,000 horses, 50,000 cattle, 148,000 hogs, 1300 sheep, and 1,300,000 chickens; 400,000 acres of crops were destroyed and hundreds of miles of levees. A few weeks after the river had returned to its bed, the tall convict rowed back to the state prison farm. “Yonder’s your boat,” he said, “and here’s the woman. But I never did find that bastard on the cotton-house.”

The tall convict was born in the pine hills southeast of Frenchman’s Bend, but otherwise “Old Man”—of course the title refers to the River—stands apart from the Yoknapatawpha County saga. It is, as it were, a connection between Yoknapatawpha and the rest of the South: our horizons widen as the convict drifts down the Mississippi. Originally the story formed half of a novel published in
1939. The other half was a completely separate story called “The Wild Palms,” which is also the title of the novel as a whole. Faulkner had made an experiment with the aim of keeping the work at a high pitch of intensity.

When I reached the end of what is now the first section of
The Wild Palms
[he told Jean Stein when she interviewed him for
Paris Review
], I realized suddenly that something was missing, it needed emphasis, something to lift it like counterpoint in music. So I wrote on the “Old Man” story until “The Wild Palms” story rose back to pitch. Then I stopped the “Old Man” story at what is now its first section, and took up “The Wild Palms” story until it began again to sag. Then I raised it to pitch again with another section of its antithesis.…

Besides keeping his pitch, Faulkner also gained an effect of contrast or counterpoint: in “The Wild Palms,” a man sacrifices everything for freedom and love, and loses them both; in “Old Man,” the convict sacrifices everything to escape from freedom and love and to regain the womanless security of the state prison farm. The second story, however, is more effective than the first, and I think it gains by standing alone, as in the present volume. It isn’t as good as
Huckleberry Finn
, by some distance, but it is the only other story of the Mississippi that can be set beside
Huckleberry Finn
without shriveling under the comparison; it is the only other story in American literature that gives the same impression of the power and legendary sweep of the River.

Once (it was in Mississippi, in May, in the flood year 1927) there were two convicts. One of them was about twenty-five, tall, lean, flat-stomached, with a sunburned face and Indian-black hair and pale, china-colored, outraged eyes—an outrage directed not at the men who had foiled his crime, not even at the lawyers and judges who had sent him here, but at the writers, the uncorporeal names attached to the stories, the paper novels—the Diamond Dicks and Jesse Jameses and such—whom he believed had led him into his present predicament through their own ignorance and gullibility regarding the medium in which they dealt and took money for, in accepting information on which they placed the stamp of verisimilitude and authenticity (this so much the more criminal since there was no sworn notarized statement attached and hence so much the quicker would the information be accepted by one who expected the same unspoken good faith, demanding, asking, expecting no certification, which he extended along with the dime or fifteen cents to pay for it) and retailed for money and which, on actual application, proved to be impractical and (to the convict) criminally false; there would be times when he would halt his mule and plow in midfurrow (there is no walled penitentiary in Mississippi; it is a cotton plantation which the convicts work under the rifles and shotguns of guards
and trusties) and muse with a kind of enraged impotence, fumbling among the rubbish left him by his one and only experience with courts and law, fumbling until the meaningless and verbose shibboleth took form at last (himself seeking justice at the same blind font where he had met justice and been hurled back and down): Using the mails to defraud: who felt that he had been defrauded by the third-class mail system not of crass and stupid money which he did not particularly want anyway, but of liberty and honor and pride.

He was in for fifteen years (he had arrived shortly after his nineteenth birthday) for attempted train robbery. He had laid his plans in advance, he had followed his printed (and false) authority to the letter; he had saved the paper-backs for two years, reading and rereading them, memorizing them, comparing and weighing story and method against story and method, taking the good from each and discarding the dross as his workable plan emerged, keeping his mind open to make the subtle last-minute changes, without haste and without impatience, as the newer pamphlets appeared on their appointed days, as a conscientious dressmaker makes the subtle alterations in a court presentation costume as the newer bulletins appear. And then when the day came, he did not even have a chance to go through the coaches and collect the watches and the rings, the brooches and the hidden money-belts, because he had been captured as soon as he entered the express car where the safe and the gold would be. He had shot no one because the pistol which they took away from him was not that kind of a pistol although it was loaded; later he admitted to the District Attorney that he had got it, as well as the dark lantern in which a candle burned and the black handkerchief to wear over the face, by peddling among his pinehill neighbors subscriptions to the
Detectives’ Gazette
. So now from time to time (he had ample leisure for it) he mused with that raging impotence, because there was something
else he could not tell them at the trial, did not know how to tell them. It was not the money he had wanted. It was not riches, not the crass loot; that would have been merely a bangle to wear upon the breast of his pride like the Olympic runner’s amateur medal—a symbol, a badge to show that he too was the best at his chosen gambit in the living and fluid world of his time. So that at times as he trod the richly shearing black earth behind his plow or with a hoe thinned the sprouting cotton and corn or lay on his sullen back in his bunk after supper, he cursed in a harsh steady unrepetitive stream, not at the living men who had put him where he was but at what he did not even know were pen-names, did not even know were not actual men but merely the designations of shades who had written about shades.