Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (69 page)

His eyes were startling in his dark face, the color of wood ashes. He closed them quickly, crooking his arm above. “Aw, gosh, what you worryin’ about when we grow up for? I dont want to grow up: I rather stay like this—swimmin’ and huntin’ and fishin’. Aint this better’n bein’ a man and havin’ to plow and chop cotton and corn?”

“But you cant stay like this always: you got to grow up and work some day.”

“Well, les wait till we’re growed up ’fore we start worryin’ about it.”

She lay back again and closed her eyes. Bright sun spots danced before and behind her lids, madly and redly. But she was not satisfied: her feminine insistence was not to be placated so easily. As she was vaguely troubled and sad, like the changing year, with
an intimation of mortality and mutability, learning that nothing is changeless save change. They were voluptuously silent in the strong refulgence of sunlight until a sound caused Juliet to open her eyes.

Ludicrously inverted above her stood her grandmother, a shapeless hunched figure against the bland ineffable blue of the sky. The old woman and the girl stared at each other for a space, then Juliet closed her eyes again.

“Git up,” said the old woman.

Juliet opened her eyes and half rose, pushing back her shock of hair with the bend of a bare arm. Lee, motionless on his back, gazed up at the figure standing over them shaking with the palsy of extreme age.

“So this is what’s been goin’ on behind my back, is it? This is how come you never have time to half do your work, hey? This is how come we got to have a nigger to cook and clean up?” She mumbled and chuckled, “Git up, I tell ye.”

They did not move. It had all happened so quickly that their sleep-clogged brains refused to function. So they lay and stared at her while she wagged her mask of a face above them. She raised her stick and shook it.

“Git up, ye slut!” she quavered in sudden anger.

They rose and stood side by side in the implacable sunlight like two bronze carvings. The toothless mouthing face and its bleared dim eyes wavered before them.

“Stark nekked, both of ye. Your paw told me you was wild, but I never thought to find you a layin’ up with some body I never see before. And this aint the first one neither, I bound you! You with your innocent ways, likin’ to fish and roam the country by yerselfl Do you know what you’ve done? Spiled yer chances for gittin’ a decent, well-to-do husband, that’s what you’ve done.”

They gazed at her in speechless amazement and incomprehension.

“Ye needn’t look at me in that know nothin’ way: do you think to fool me after I ketched ye? Aint you a pretty pair, now?” She turned suddenly to Lee. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Lee,” he told her equably.

“Lee who?”

“Lee Hollowell.”

“Lafe Hollowell’s boy, huh?” She turned back to Juliet. “Now aint you a pretty thing, takin’ up with a Hollowell? Lazy, good-for-nothin’, never done a honest lick of work in his life, Lafe never; and now you aint got no better sense than to lay up with one! What you goin’ to do if he gits you with child? Set down on me and let me slave for you, I reckon. If you got to have a man, you better pick one that can support you: no Hollowell never will.”

Juliet sprang like a taut wire. “You—you old bitch,” she screamed from the wreckage of their bright companionship. “Lee, Lee,” she cried in a dull misery of despair.

The other raised her stick in a shaking hand and struck Juliet across the shoulders. “Git your clothes on and go home. Now I’ll ’tend to you,” as Lee sprang forward, trying to grasp the stick. It fell again, across Lee’s back, and again. He leaped beyond her reach. “You git away from here,” she shrilled, “git away, God damn ye! dont never let me see hide nor hair of ye, or I’ll shoot you like a dog.”

They stared at each other, the cautious puzzled boy and the implacable old woman terrible in her rage. Then Lee turned and donned his clothes with swift ease and was gone, whooping through the woods; leaving her, gnome-like and trembling, in the strong quiet sunlight and a slow drifting of scarlet leaves.

In the fierce pride of her reserve she smoldered. Outwardly, however, her demeanor was unchanged. Her life with her grandmother, she discovered, had been very pleasant; the other had controlled her to an extent, but now, having blundered once, her authority was gone forever. Meanwhile they lived together in a strained armistice, the elder impersonally querulous, and Juliet in a state resembling a corked champagne bottle.

Her grandmother was getting old, and by imperceptible degrees more and more work devolved upon Juliet. At last, in her fifteenth year, it occurred to her that she was doing nearly all the house work, as well as caring for the stock, though the older woman drove her wasted rheumatic body ineffectually at lesser tasks by the sheer dull rigidity of her will. She must have a fire now, summer and winter; and most of her time was spent sitting in the chimney
corner: a toothless obscene mask and a clay pipe in a withered hand, spitting into the flames.

“Grammaw,” she said, not for the first time, “let’s get a cook.”

“Dont need none.”

“But you’re gettin’ old; seems like a nigger’d take a lot of work offen your hands.”

“Sposin’ I never done a lick, aint you strong bodied enough to tend to things? I kep’ up this place twenty two year, alone.”

“ ’Taint any use us a-slavin’ to death when we dont have to, though.”

The other opened her bleared eyes and sucked her pipe to a glowing coal. “Look here, gal; dont you start a-frettin’ about me ’till you hear me complain. Wait ’till you been through what I have; wait ’till you been married and kept carryin’ steady for fourteen years, and seen four out of nine dead and the balance scattered to God knows where without liftin’ a hand for you. You reckon when all that was over and done and Alex dead and buried, that I worried about a little work and none to bother?”

“I know you had a hard time: seems like everybody in this country has a hard time. But, grammaw; seems like we could take it easy now: you done had your trouble and I aint scarcely old enough for mine yet.”

“Huh,” the old woman grunted. “ ’Taint nothin’ but Joe Bunden talkin’ in you now, rank laziness. You aint satisfied lessen you’re tearin’ through the woods: no time for housework any more. Great big gal like you, skeered of a little hard work! When I was your age I was cookin’ and carin’ for a fambly of seven, while you haint no one to do for but me. You haint got enough to do now, that’s what’s wrong with you.” She puffed and nodded in the leaping firelight.

“But, grammaw—”

The other jerked her head up. “Listen to me, gal. I’ve had about all your goin’s on I’m goin’ to stand. I sent your paw word about that Hollowell boy, and he’s comin’ over to see you: like’s not he’ll take ye home with him.”

“I dont care if he does come. I wont let him see me.”

“H’mph. You will if I tell ye, like you’ll go home with him if he wants ye to.”

“I wont go home with him. I’d kill him before I’d let him touch me.”

“Now, aint you talkin’ biggity! What you need is to have a stick took to ye, and I’m a-goin’ to see that Joe does it ’fore you leave here. I wont have nobody around me that wont pay me no mind, that sets out to cross me from natural cussedness.”

“What have I done, grammaw, that aint what you told me?”

“What aint you done? I haint no more control over you than a sperrit; you that’s eatin’ my vittles every day. After I caught ye a-layin up with that triflin’ Hollowell you aint paid me no more mind than if I was Joe, or that wife of his’n.”

“Do you still think that Lee and me—that Lee and me—I—is that the reason you been hectorin’ at me ever since?” she rushed on fiercely, “is that what you think? that me and him— Oh, God, I wisht you wasn’t so old: I’d mash that old face of yours right into the fire. I’d—I’d— I hate you!”

The other stirred in the leaping shadows, the pipe dropped from her trembling hand and she bent over the hearth, vainly searching for it. “Dont talk to me that way, you slut.” She fumbled for her stick, and rose. “Old or no old, I’m spry enough to lick ye to a fair-ye-well.” She raised the stick, and for a space the two of them glared at each other in the intermittent quiet firelight wheeling about them.

“Just touch me with that stick, just touch me,” Juliet whispered through dry lips.

“Tech you! Joe Bunden’ll do that a plenty when he comes, I promise ye. And I bound ye the husband Joe’s picked for you’ll tech ye too; when he hears what folks say about you and that no ’count Hollowell.”

“Husband?” repeated Juliet. The other croaked into laughter.

“Husband, I tell ye. But I hadn’t aimed to tell ye before every thing was ready, you’re so hard headed. But I guess Joe’ll manage ye. I sent word to Joe that I couldn’t manage you; and them folks of yourn dont want ye to home; so Joe’s went and found somebody to marry ye, though God knows where he found a feller’ll take ye. But that’s Joe’s lookout, not mine: I done what I could for ye.”

“Husband?” repeated Juliet idiotically. “Do you think that you and Joe Bunden can both make me get married? Much as I hate you, I’d rather be dead than go back home; and before I’d marry anybody I’ll kill you and Joe Bunden, too. You cant make me!”

The old woman raised the stick. “Shet your mouth!”

“Touch me! Touch me!” Juliet repeated in a taut whisper.

“Darin’ me, be ye?” the other quavered. “Take that, then, damn ye!” The stick fell across Juliet’s breast and arm and an icy wind blew through her brain. She wrested the stick from her grandmother’s hand and broke it across her knee as the other recoiled in fear. She threw the pieces into the fire, and in a voice as light and dry as an eggshell she reiterated senselessly: “You made me do it, you made me do it.”

The older woman’s rage had evaporated. “Dont worry me, gal. Cant let me set in my own chimbley without a-naggin’ and a-frettin’ at me. Aint never a Bunden yet didnt set out to nag and fret me. You and your nigger! Wait ’till I’m dead: ’twont be long, thank God; then you can fill the house with folks to wait on ye.” She dragged herself across the room to the monstrous lowering shadow of her bed—curtained winter and summer— “If you dont like it here, maybe your husband’ll git ye a cook.” She chuckled evilly, and groaned, fumbling in the dark.

Outside the sky was clear, an inverted bowl of dark water floating with stars; and her damp hair stirred upon her brow as though at the touch of a hand. Deliberately she caught and saddled their one ancient horse, and mounting from the water trough, took the road toward town, leaving the gate swinging open behind her. She turned her face once backward to the dark house, repeating: “You made me do it,” then rode onward through the darkness. Soon the last spurt of dust kicked up by the horse’s feet settled, and the road was empty again.

Juliet passed through the next few days somehow. She and her grandmother, by an unspoken agreement, ignored the last scene; and outwardly life moved stagnantly onward, as dull and uneventful as ever. Juliet felt like one who has cast the dice and must wait an eternity for them to stop. And withal, she was vaguely apathetic as to what they might show: her reserve of volition had been expended. Her terror, her fear of what she had done, had flown in the quiet round of duties and dreaming alone in the twilight.

The house was dark, an angle of quietly leaping firelight marked the door of her grandmother’s room. At first she did not see the
old woman, then her glance found a withered hand nursing a pipe. “Juliet?” the other spoke from her corner; and Juliet entered, her scornful belligerence rising in her, and stood before the fire. The heat struck pleasantly through her skirt, against her legs. Her grandmother leaned forward until her face hung like a mask in the firelight, and spat.

“Your paw’s dead,” she said.

Juliet gazed at the leaping enormous shadow of the curtained bed. The measured puffs of the other’s pipe beat softly against her ears like moth wings. Joe Bunden’s dead, she thought, without emotion; it was as though her grandmother’s words still hung suspended in the room’s twilight, whispering to each other. At last she stirred.

“Paw’s dead, grammaw?” she repeated.

The old woman moved again, and groaned. “The fool, the fool! All Bundens is fools born: I never see a one yet, ’ceptin’ you, warn’t a natural ijit. I married one, but he died ’fore he done much harm, leavin’ me a run-down farm and a family of chillen. And now Joe has raised a family and left ’em improvident—lessen that woman he married has got more spunk than ever I see in her. Lafe Hollowell warn’t no better, neither. Him and Joe’ll make a pretty pair in hell tonight.”

“What happened, grammaw,” she heard herself ask, in a passionless voice.

“Happen? Joe Bunden was a fool, and Lafe Hollowell warn’t no better, after him and Joe hitched up, anyway.… Joe and him was killed by revenuers last night, at Lafe’s still. Some body rid into town late Wensday night and told Deacon Harvey, and three revenuers come down on ’em last night. Never knowed who told … or likely wouldn’t say.” The old woman nodded and smoked for a while with closed eyes. Juliet stared at the slow wheeling of shadows, quietly in a smooth blending of sadness and unutterable relief. The other’s mumbling materialized about her: “That woman Joe married, soon’s she heard, took and went back home. God knows what’ll become of them brothers o’ yourn: I aint goin’ to have ’em on my hands. And Lafe’s boy—what’s his name? Lee?— he skun out and aint been seen since. Good riddance, I call it.”

The shadows leaped up the wall, and fell; while her grandmother’s words lingered in the dusk like cobwebs. She left the
room, and sat down on the floor of the porch with her back against the wall and her legs stiffly before her. Joe Bunden she hated no longer, but Lee, Lee was different, his leaving was more tangible than the death of a hundred men: it was like dying herself. So she sat in the dark, watching her childhood leaving her. She remembered with painful clarity that spring in which she and Lee had first swum and fished and roamed, of those raw blustery days broken to cloud racks above the fallow rain-gullied earth; she could almost hear the cries of men plowing the muddy ground, and the tangled blackbirds slanting down wind like scraps of burned paper … change and death and division.