Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (2 page)

The texts of the published stories have been taken from the magazines or monographs in which they appeared, with errors and omissions corrected. Typescripts of these stories which still exist have been collated with the published versions. Manuscript stages of the works are discussed where they throw light on Faulkner’s intentions. When variants between typescripts and published versions go beyond changes in capitalization, indentation, paragraphing, punctuation, and non-substantive changes in words or phrases, the nature of these variants has been described in the Notes. In almost every instance the published story is not only fuller than the typescript version but also more effective, so that though Faulkner may have acceded, sometimes no doubt unwillingly, to mechanical changes required by magazine house style, changes which went beyond these considerations seem to have been dictated mainly by
his own characteristic meticulousness in revision. In the cases of stories which were further revised to become parts of books, I have tried to outline the process of growth from inception to completion. The stories are printed here in the order in which they appeared in the magazines, not the order in which they were written or the order in which Faulkner rearranged them in the books. Although some of these stories in their magazine versions are virtually identical with the versions of them in books, others are very different in the two forms, reflecting the quite different aesthetic demands of the short story and the novel.

Joseph Blotner      

Behind the smokehouse we had a kind of map. Vicksburg was a handful of chips from the woodpile and the river was a trench we had scraped in the packed ground with a hoe, that drank water almost faster than we could fetch it from the well. This afternoon it looked like we would never get it filled, because it hadn’t rained in three weeks. But at last it was damp-colored enough at least, and we were just about to begin, when all of a sudden Loosh was standing there watching us. And then I saw Philadelphy over at the woodpile, watching Loosh.

“What’s that?” Loosh said.

“Vicksburg,” I said.

Then Loosh laughed. He stood there laughing, not loud, not looking at me.

“Come on here, Loosh,” Philadelphy said. There was something queer about her voice too. “If you wants any supper, you better tote me some wood.” But Loosh just stood there laughing, looking down at Vicksburg. Then he stooped, and with his hand he swept the chips flat.

“There’s your Vicksburg,” he said.

“Loosh!” Philadelphy said. But Loosh squatted there, looking at me with that look on his face. I was twelve then; I didn’t know triumph; I didn’t even know the word.

“And I tell you nuther un you ain’t know,” Loosh said. “Corinth.”

“Corinth?” I said. Philadelphy had dropped the wood which she held and she was coming fast toward us. “That’s in Mississippi too. That’s not far.”

“Far don’t matter,” Loosh said. He sounded like he was singing. “Case it’s on the way!”

“On the way? On the way to what?”

“Ask your paw,” Loosh said. “Ask Marse John.”

“He’s at Tennessee. I can’t ask him.”

“You think he at Tennessee?” Loosh said. “Ain’t no need for him at Tennessee.” Then Philadelphy grabbed him by the arm.

“Hush your mouth, nigger!” she said. “Come on here and get me some wood.”

Then they were gone, and Ringo and I standing there looking at each other. “What?” Ringo said. “What he mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. I set Vicksburg up again. “There it is.”

“Loosh laughed,” Ringo said. “He say Corinth too. He laughed at Corinth too. What you reckon he know?”

“Nothing!” I said. “Do you reckon Loosh knows anything that father don’t know?”

“Marse John at Tennessee,” Ringo said. “Maybe he ain’t know either.”

“Do you reckon he’d be away off at Tennessee if there were Yankees at Corinth? Do you reckon that if there were Yankees at Corinth, father and General Pemberton both wouldn’t be here?” I stooped and caught up the dust. But Ringo didn’t move; he just looked at me.

I threw the dust at him. “I’m General Pemberton!” I said. “Yaaay! Yaaay!” Then we both began and so we didn’t see Louvinia at all. We were throwing the dust fast then and yelling, “Kill the bastuds! Kill them! Kill them!” when all of a sudden she was yelling louder than we were:

“You, Bayard! You, Ringo!” We stopped. The dust went away and she was standing there with her mouth still open to shout, and I noticed that she did not have on the old hat of father’s that she wore on top of her head rag even when she just stepped out of the kitchen for wood. “What was that word?” she said. “What did I hear you say?” Only she didn’t wait to be answered, and then I saw that she had been running too. “Look who coming up the big road!” she said.

It was Ringo and I who ran then, on around the house, and Granny standing at the top of the front steps and Jupiter just turning into the gate from the road. And then we stopped. Last
spring when father came home we ran down the drive to meet him and I came back standing in one stirrup and Ringo holding to the other one and running. But this time we didn’t, and then I went up the steps and stood by Granny while father came up and stopped, and Jupiter stood with his head down and his chest and belly mud caked where he had crossed at the ford and the dust had dried on it, and Loosh coming around the house to take the bridle.

“Curry him,” father said. “Give him a good feed. But don’t turn him into the pasture. Let him stay in the lot.… Well, Miss Rosa,” he said.

“Well, John,” Granny said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?” father said. He got down stiffly. Loosh led Jupiter away.

“You rode hard from Tennessee, father,” I said.

Father looked at me. He put his hand on my shoulder, looking at me. Ringo was standing on the ground.

“Tennessee sho gaunted you,” he said. “What does they eat up there, Marse John? Does they eat what folks eats?”

Then I said it, looking at father even while he looked at me: “Loosh says you haven’t been at Tennessee.”

“Loosh?” father said.

Then Granny said, “Come in. Louvinia is putting your dinner on the table. You will just have time to wash.”

That afternoon father and Joby and Loosh and Ringo and I built a pen down in the creek bottom, and just after dark Joby and Loosh and Ringo and I drove the mules and the cow and calf and the sow down there. So it was late when we got back to the house, and when Ringo and I came into the kitchen Louvinia was closing one of the trunks that stay in the attic. And when we sat down to supper, the table was set with the kitchen knives and forks and the sideboard looked bare as a pasture.

It didn’t take us long to eat, because father had already eaten in the afternoon, and that’s what Ringo and I had been waiting for—for after supper. Back in the spring when father was home before, he sat in his chair in front of the fire and Ringo and I lying on our stomachs on the floor. Then we listened. We heard: The names—Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain—the words, names like Gap and Run that we didn’t have in this country; but mostly the cannon and the flags and the charges and the yelling. Ringo was
waiting for me in the hall; we waited until father was settled. Then I said, “How can you fight in mountains, father?”

He looked at me. “You can’t. You just have to. Now you boys run on to bed.”

We went up the stairs. But we did not go to our room. We stopped and sat on the top step, back out of the light from the hall lamp. That was the first night I could remember that Louvinia had not followed us upstairs, to stand in the door and vow threats at us while we got into bed; after a while she crossed the hall without even looking up the stairs, and went on into the room where father and Granny were.

“Is the trunk ready?” father said.

“Yes, sir. Hit ready,” Louvinia said.

“Then tell Joby to get the lantern and the shovels, and wait in the kitchen for me.”

“Yes, sir,” Louvinia said. She crossed the hall again without even looking at the stairs.

“I seed in that trunk,” Ringo whispered. “Hit’s the silver. What you reckon—”

“Sh-h-h-h,” I said. We could hear father’s voice. After a while Louvinia came back. We sat on the top step, in the shadow, listening.

“Vicksburg?” Ringo whispered. I couldn’t see anything but his eyes. “Fell? Do he mean hit fell off into the river?”

“Sh-h-h-h,” I said. We sat close together in the dark, listening to them talking. Maybe it was because of the dark, the quiet, because suddenly Louvinia was standing over us, shaking us awake. She stood in the door, but she did not light the lamp and she did not even make us undress. Maybe she forgot about it; maybe she was listening to them carrying the trunk out of the kitchen, as we were. And I thought for a minute that I saw the lantern in the orchard, and then it was morning and father was gone.

He must have ridden off in the rain, because it was still raining at breakfast, and at dinner, too, until at last Granny put the sewing away and said, “Very well. Marengo, get the cookbook.” Ringo got the book and we lay on the floor beside the hearth, with the loaded musket on the pegs above the mantel. “What shall we read about today?” she said.

“Read about cake,” I said.

“Very well. What kind of cake?” Only she didn’t have to ask that, because Ringo said, almost before she finished speaking, like he did every time:

“Cokynut cake, Granny.”

“I reckon a little more won’t hurt us,” Granny said.

The rain stopped in the middle of the afternoon. We went out the back. I went on past the smokehouse. “Where we going?” Ringo said. Before we reached the barn, Joby and Loosh came into sight across the pasture, bringing in the mules from the new pen. “What we ghy do now?” Ringo said.

I didn’t look at him. “We’ve got to watch him.”

“Watch who?”

“Loosh.” Then I looked at Ringo. His eyes were white and quiet, like last night.

“Loosh? Why Loosh? Who tole you to watch him?”

“Nobody told me. I just know it.”

“Bayard, did you dream hit?”

“Yes. Last night. It was father and Louvinia. Father said, ‘Watch Loosh because he knows.’ He will know before we know. He said Louvinia must watch him too. He said Loosh is Louvinia’s son, but she will have to be white a little while longer. And Louvinia said for father not to worry about Granny and us.”

Ringo looked at me. Then he breathed deep, once. “Then hit’s so,” he said. “If somebody tole you, hit could be a lie. But if you dremp hit, hit can’t be a lie case ain’t nobody there to tole hit to you. So we got to watch him.”

We followed them when they put the mules to the wagon and went down beyond the pasture to where they had been cutting wood. We watched them for two days, hidden. We realized then what a close watch Louvinia had kept on us all the time. Sometimes while we were hidden watching Loosh and Joby load the wagon, we would hear her yelling at us, and we would have to sneak away and then run to let Louvinia find us coming from the other direction. Sometimes she would even meet us before we had time to circle, and Ringo hiding behind me then while she scolded at us: “What devilment yawl into now? Yawl up to something. What is it?” But we didn’t tell her, and we would follow her back to the kitchen while she scolded at us over her shoulder, and when she
was inside the house we would move quietly until we were out of sight again, and then run back to hide and watch Loosh.

So we were outside of his and Philadelphy’s cabin that night when he came out. We followed him down to the new pen and heard him catch the mule and ride away. We ran, but when we reached the road, too, we could only hear the mule loping, dying away. But we had come a good piece, because even Louvinia calling us sounded faint and small. We looked up the road in the starlight, after the mule. “That’s where Corinth is,” I said.

He didn’t get back until after dark the next day. We stayed close to the house and watched the road by turns, to get Louvinia calmed down in case it would be late before he got back. It was late; she had followed us up to bed and we had slipped out again, and we were passing Joby’s cabin when suddenly Loosh kind of surged out of the darkness and into the door. When we climbed up to the window, he was standing in front of the fire, with his clothes muddy from where he had been hiding in swamps and bottoms from the patter rollers, and with that look on his face again, like he had not slept in a long time and he didn’t want to sleep, and Joby and Philadelphy leaning into the firelight and looking at him, with Philadelphy’s mouth open and the look on her face too. And then I saw Louvinia standing in the door. We had not heard her pass us, but there she was, with her hand on the jamb, looking at Loosh, and again she didn’t have on father’s old hat.

“You mean they gwinter free us all?” Philadelphy said.

“Yes,” Loosh said, loud, with his head flung back; he didn’t even look at Joby when Joby said, “Hush up, Loosh!” “Yes!” Loosh said. “Gin’ral Sherman gonter sweep the earth and the race gonter all be free!”

Then Louvinia crossed the floor in two steps and hit Loosh across the head hard with her flat hand. “You black fool!” she said. “Do you think there’s enough Yankees in the whole world to whip the white folks?”

We ran to the house, we didn’t wait for Louvinia; again we didn’t know that she was behind us. We ran into the room where Granny was sitting beside the lamp with the Bible open on her lap and her neck arched to look at us across her spectacles. “They’re coming here!” I said. “They’re coming to set us free!”

“What?” she said.

“Loosh saw them! They’re just down the road. It’s General Sherman and he’s going to make us all free!” And we watching her, waiting to see who she would send for to take down the musket—whether it would be Joby, because he was the oldest, or Loosh, because he had seen them and would know what to shoot at. Then she shouted, too, and her voice was strong and loud as Louvinia’s: