didn’t see the placard on the front. It was full, mostly prosperous
looking people reading newspapers. The only vacant seat was beside a
nigger. He wore a derby and shined shoes and he was holding a dead cigar
stub. I used to think that a Southerner had to be always conscious of
niggers. I thought that Northerners would expect him to. When I first
came East I kept thinking You’ve got to remember to think of them as
coloured people not niggers, and if it hadn’t happened that I wasn’t
thrown with many of them, I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble
before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white,
is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.
That was when I realised that a nigger is not a person so much as a form
of behaviour; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives
among. But I thought at first that I ought to miss having a lot of them
around me because I thought that Northerners thought I did, but I didn’t
know that I really had missed Roskus and Dilsey and them until that
morning in Virginia. The train was stopped when I waked and I raised the
shade and looked out. The car was blocking a road crossing, where two
white fences came down a hill and then sprayed outward and downward like
part of the skeleton of a horn, and there was a nigger on a mule in the
middle of the stiff ruts, waiting for the train to move. How long he had
been there I didn’t know, but he sat straddle of the mule, his head
wrapped in a piece of blanket, as if they had been built there with the
fence and the road, or with the hill, carved out of the hill itself,
like a sign put there saying You are home again. He didn’t have a saddle
and his feet dangled almost to the ground. The mule looked like a
rabbit. I raised the window.
“Hey, Uncle,” I said, “Is this the way?”
“Suh?” He looked at me, then he loosened the blanket and lifted it away
from his ear.
“Christmas gift!” I said.
“Sho comin, boss. You done caught me, aint you?”
“I’ll let you off this time.” I dragged my pants out of the little
hammock and got a quarter out. “But look out next time. I’ll be coming
back through here two days after New Year, and look out then.” I threw
the quarter out the window. “Buy yourself some Santy Claus.”
“Yes, suh,” he said. He got down and picked up the quarter and rubbed it
on his leg. “Thanky, young marster. Thanky.” Then the train began to
move. I leaned out the window, into the cold air, looking back. He stood
there beside the gaunt rabbit of a mule, the two of them shabby and
motionless and unimpatient. The train swung around the curve, the engine
puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight
that way, with that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience,
of static serenity: that blending of childlike and ready incompetence
and paradoxical reliability that tends and protects them it loves out of
all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and
obligations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is
taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous
admiration for the victor which a gentleman feels for anyone who beats
him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for
whitefolks’ vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and
troublesome children, which I had forgotten. And all that day, while the
train wound through rushing gaps and along ledges where movement was
only a labouring sound of the exhaust and groaning wheels and the
eternal mountains stood fading into the thick sky, I thought of home, of
the bleak station and the mud and the niggers and country folks
thronging slowly about the square, with toy monkeys and wagons and candy
in sacks and roman candles sticking out, and my insides would move like
they used to do in school when the bell rang.
I wouldn’t begin counting until the clock struck three. Then I would
begin, counting to sixty and folding down one finger and thinking of the
other fourteen fingers waiting to be folded down, or thirteen or twelve
or eight or seven, until all of a sudden I’d realise silence and the
unwinking minds, and I’d say “Ma’am?” “Your name is Quentin, isn’t it?”
Miss Laura said. Then more silence and the cruel unwinking minds and
hands jerking into the silence. “Tell Quentin who discovered the
Mississippi River, Henry.” “DeSoto.” Then the minds would go away, and
after a while I’d be afraid I had gotten behind and I’d count fast and
fold down another finger, then I’d be afraid I was going too fast and
I’d slow up, then I’d get afraid and count fast again. So I never could
come out even with the bell, and the released surging of feet moving
already, feeling earth in the scuffed floor, and the day like a pane of
glass struck a light, sharp blow, and my insides would move, sitting
still. _Moving sitting still. One minute she was standing in the door.
Benjy. Bellowing. Benjamin the child of mine old age bellowing. Caddy!
Caddy!_
_I’m going to run away. He began to cry she went and touched him. Hush.
I’m not going to. Hush. He hushed. Dilsey._
_He smell what you tell him when he want to. Dont have to listen nor
talk._
_Can he smell that new name they give him? Can he smell bad luck?_
_What he want to worry about luck for? Luck cant do him no hurt._
_What they change his name for then if aint trying to help his luck?_
The street car stopped, started, stopped again. Below the window I
watched the crowns of people’s heads passing beneath new straw hats not
yet unbleached. There were women in the car now, with market baskets,
and men in work-clothes were beginning to outnumber the shined shoes and
collars.
The nigger touched my knee. “Pardon me,” he said. I swung my legs out
and let him pass. We were going beside a blank wall, the sound
clattering back into the car, at the women with market baskets on their
knees and a man in a stained hat with a pipe stuck in the band. I could
smell water, and in a break in the wall I saw a glint of water and two
masts, and a gull motionless in midair, like on an invisible wire
between the masts, and I raised my hand and through my coat touched the
letters I had written. When the car stopped I got off.
The bridge was open to let a schooner through. She was in tow, the tug
nudging along under her quarter, trailing smoke, but the ship herself
was like she was moving without visible means. A man naked to the waist
was coiling down a line on the fo’c’s’le head. His body was burned the
colour of leaf tobacco. Another man in a straw hat without any crown was
at the wheel. The ship went through the bridge, moving under bare poles
like a ghost in broad day, with three gulls hovering above the stern
like toys on invisible wires.
When it closed I crossed to the other side and leaned on the rail above
the boathouses. The float was empty and the doors were closed. The crew
just pulled in the late afternoon now, resting up before. The shadow of
the bridge, the tiers of railing, my shadow leaning flat upon the water,
so easily had I tricked it that would not quit me. At least fifty feet
it was, and if I only had something to blot it into the water, holding
it until it was drowned, the shadow of the package like two shoes
wrapped up lying on the water. Niggers say a drowned man’s shadow was
watching for him in the water all the time. It twinkled and glinted,
like breathing, the float slow like breathing too, and debris half
submerged, healing out to the sea and the caverns and the grottoes of
the sea. The displacement of water is equal to the something of
something. Reducto absurdum of all human experience, and two six-pound
flat-irons weigh more than one tailor’s goose. What a sinful waste
Dilsey would say. Benjy knew it when Damuddy died. He cried. _He smell
hit. He smell hit._
The tug came back downstream, the water shearing in long rolling
cylinders, rocking the float at last with the echo of passage, the float
lurching onto the rolling cylinder with a plopping sound and a long
jarring noise as the door rolled back and two men emerged, carrying a
shell. They set it in the water and a moment later Bland came out, with
the sculls. He wore flannels, a grey jacket and a stiff straw hat.
Either he or his mother had read somewhere that Oxford students pulled
in flannels and stiff hats, so early one March they bought Gerald a one
pair shell and in his flannels and stiff hat he went on the river. The
folks at the boathouses threatened to call a policeman, but he went
anyway. His mother came down in a hired auto, in a fur suit like an
arctic explorer’s, and saw him off in a twenty-five mile wind and a
steady drove of ice floes like dirty sheep. Ever since then I have
believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; He is a
Kentuckian too. When he sailed away she made a detour and came down to
the river again and drove along parallel with him, the car in low gear.
They said you couldn’t have told they’d ever seen one another before,
like a King and Queen, not even looking at one another, just moving side
by side across Massachusetts on parallel courses like a couple of
planets.
He got in and pulled away. He pulled pretty well now. He ought to. They
said his mother tried to make him give rowing up and do something else
the rest of his class couldn’t or wouldn’t do, but for once he was
stubborn. If you could call it stubbornness, sitting in his attitudes of
princely boredom, with his curly yellow hair and his violet eyes and his
eyelashes and his New York clothes, while his mamma was telling us about
Gerald’s horses and Gerald’s niggers and Gerald’s women. Husbands and
fathers in Kentucky must have been awful glad when she carried Gerald
off to Cambridge. She had an apartment over in town, and Gerald had one
there too, besides his rooms in college. She approved of Gerald
associating with me because I at least revealed a blundering sense of
noblesse oblige by getting myself born below Mason and Dixon, and a few
others whose geography met the requirements (minimum) Forgave, at least.
Or condoned. But since she met Spoade coming out of chapel one He said
she couldn’t be a lady no lady would be out at that hour of the night
she never had been able to forgive him for having five names, including
that of a present English ducal house. I’m sure she solaced herself by
being convinced that some misfit Maingault or Mortemar had got mixed up
with the lodge-keeper’s daughter. Which was quite probable, whether she
invented it or not. Spoade was the world’s champion sitter-around, no
holds barred and gouging discretionary.
The shell was a speck now, the oars catching the sun in spaced glints,
as if the hull were winking itself along. _Did you ever have a sister?
No but they’re all bitches. Did you ever have a sister? One minute she
was. Bitches. Not bitch one minute she stood in the door_ Dalton Ames.
Dalton Ames. Dalton Shirts. I thought all the time they were khaki, army
issue khaki, until I saw they were of heavy Chinese silk or finest
flannel because they made his face so brown his eyes so blue. Dalton
Ames. It just missed gentility. Theatrical fixture. Just papier-mache,
then touch. Oh. Asbestos. Not quite bronze. _But wont see him at the
house._
_Caddy’s a woman too, remember. She must do things for women’s reasons,
too._
_Why wont you bring him to the house, Caddy? Why must you do like nigger
women do in the pasture the ditches the dark woods hot hidden furious in
the dark woods._
And after a while I had been hearing my watch for some time and I could
feel the letters crackle through my coat, against the railing, and I
leaned on the railing, watching my shadow, how I had tricked it. I moved
along the rail, but my suit was dark too and I could wipe my hands,
watching my shadow, how I had tricked it. I walked it into the shadow of
the quai. Then I went east.
_Harvard my Harvard boy Harvard harvard_ That pimple-faced infant she
met at the field-meet with coloured ribbons. Skulking along the fence
trying to whistle her out like a puppy. Because they couldn’t cajole him
into the diningroom Mother believed he had some sort of spell he was
going to cast on her when he got her alone. Yet any blackguard _He was
lying beside the box under the window bellowing_ that could drive up in
a limousine with a flower in his buttonhole. _Harvard. Quentin this is
Herbert. My Harvard boy. Herbert will be a big brother has already
promised Jason a position in the bank._
Hearty, celluloid like a drummer. Face full of teeth white but not
smiling. _I’ve heard of him up there._ All teeth but not smiling. _You
going to drive?_
_Get in Quentin._
_You going to drive._
_It’s her car aren’t you proud of your little sister owns first auto in
town Herbert his present. Louis has been giving her lessons every
morning didn’t you get my letter_ Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson
announce the marriage of their daughter Candace to Mr Sydney Herbert
Head on the twenty-fifth of April one thousand nine hundred and ten at
Jefferson Mississippi. At home after the first of August number
Something Something Avenue South Bend Indiana. Shreve said Aren’t you
even going to open it? _Three days. Times. Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond
Compson_ Young Lochinvar rode out of the west a little too soon, didn’t
he?
I’m from the south. You’re funny, aren’t you.
O yes I knew it was somewhere in the country.
You’re funny, aren’t you. You ought to join the circus.
I did. That’s how I ruined my eyes watering the elephant’s fleas. _Three
times_ These country girls. You cant even tell about them, can you.
Well, anyway Byron never had his wish, thank God. _But not hit a man in
glasses._ Aren’t you even going to open it? _It lay on the table a
candle burning at each corner upon the envelope tied in a soiled pink
garter two artificial flowers. Not hit a man in glasses._
Country people poor things they never saw an auto before lots of them
honk the horn Candace so _She wouldn’t look at me_ they’ll get out of
the way _wouldn’t look at me_ your father wouldn’t like it if you were
to injure one of them I’ll declare your father will simply have to get
an auto now I’m almost sorry you brought it down Herbert I’ve enjoyed it
so much of course there’s the carriage but so often when I’d like to go
out Mr Compson has the darkies doing something it would be worth my head
to interrupt he insists that Roskus is at my call all the time but I
know what that means I know how often people make promises just to
satisfy their consciences are you going to treat my little baby girl
that way Herbert but I know you wont Herbert has spoiled us all to death
Quentin did I write you that he is going to take Jason into his bank
when Jason finishes high school Jason will make a splendid banker he is
the only one of my children with any practical sense you can thank me
for that he takes after my people the others are all Compson _Jason
furnished the flour. They made kites on the back porch and sold them for
a nickle a piece, he and the Patterson boy. Jason was treasurer._
There was no nigger in this street car, and the hats unbleached as yet
flowing past under the window. Going to Harvard. We have sold Benjy’s
_He lay on the ground under the window, bellowing. We have sold Benjy’s
pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard_ a brother to you. Your little
brother.
You should have a car it’s done you no end of good dont you think so
Quentin I call him Quentin at once you see I have heard so much about
him from Candace.
Why shouldn’t you I want my boys to be more than friends yes Candace and
Quentin more than friends _Father I have committed_ what a pity you had
no brother or sister _No sister no sister had no sister_ Dont ask
Quentin he and Mr Compson both feel a little insulted when I am strong
enough to come down to the table I am going on nerve now I’ll pay for it
after it’s all over and you have taken my little daughter away from me
_My little sister had no. If I could say Mother. Mother_
Unless I do what I am tempted to and take you instead I dont think Mr
Compson could overtake the car.
Ah Herbert Candace do you hear that _She wouldn’t look at me soft
stubborn jaw-angle not back-looking_ You needn’t be jealous though it’s
just an old woman he’s flattering a grown married daughter I cant
believe it.
Nonsense you look like a girl you are lots younger than Candace colour
in your cheeks like a girl _A face reproachful tearful an odour of
camphor and of tears a voice weeping steadily and softly beyond the
twilit door the twilight-coloured smell of honeysuckle. Bringing empty
trunks down the attic stairs they sounded like coffins French Lick.
Found not death at the salt lick_
Hats not unbleached and not hats. In three years I can not wear a hat. I
could not. Was. Will there be hats then since I was not and not Harvard
then. Where the best of thought Father said clings like dead ivy vines
upon old dead brick. Not Harvard then. Not to me, anyway. Again. Sadder
than was. Again. Saddest of all. Again.
Spoade had a shirt on; then it must be. When I can see my shadow again
if not careful that I tricked into the water shall tread again upon my
impervious shadow. But no sister. I wouldn’t have done it. _I wont have
my daughter spied on_ I wouldn’t have.
_How can I control any of them when you have always taught them to have
no respect for me and my wishes I know you look down on my people but is
that any reason for teaching my children my own children I suffered for
to have no respect_ Trampling my shadow’s bones into the concrete with
hard heels and then I was hearing the watch, and I touched the letters
through my coat.
_I will not have my daughter spied on by you or Quentin or anybody no
matter what you think she has done_
_At least you agree there is reason for having her watched_
I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have. _I know you wouldn’t I didn’t mean to
speak so sharply but women have no respect for each other for
themselves_
_But why did she_ The chimes began as I stepped on my shadow, but it was
the quarter hour. The Deacon wasn’t in sight anywhere. _think I would
have could have_
_She didn’t mean that that’s the way women do things its because she
loves Caddy_
_The street lamps would go down the hill then rise toward town_ I walked
upon the belly of my shadow. I could extend my hand beyond it. _feeling
Father behind me beyond the rasping darkness of summer and August the
street lamps_ Father and I protect women from one another from
themselves our women _Women are like that they dont acquire knowledge of
people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of
suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have
an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for
drawing it about them instinctively as you do bedclothing in slumber
fertilising the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose
whether it ever existed or no_ He was coming along between a couple of
freshmen. He hadn’t quite recovered from the parade, for he gave me a
salute, a very superior-officerish kind.
“I want to see you a minute,” I said, stopping.
“See me? All right. See you again, fellows,” he said, stopping and
turning back; “glad to have chatted with you.” That was the Deacon, all
over. Talk about your natural psychologists. They said he hadn’t missed
a train at the beginning of school in forty years, and that he could
pick out a Southerner with one glance. He never missed, and once he had
heard you speak, he could name your state. He had a regular uniform he
met trains in, a sort of Uncle Tom’s cabin outfit, patches and all.
“Yes, suh. Right dis way, young marster, hyer we is,” taking your bags.
“Hyer, boy, come hyer and git dese grips.” Whereupon a moving mountain
of luggage would edge up, revealing a white boy of about fifteen, and
the Deacon would hang another bag on him somehow and drive him off.
“Now, den, dont you drap hit. Yes, suh, young marster, jes give de old
nigger yo room number, and hit’ll be done got cold dar when you
arrives.”
From then on until he had you completely subjugated he was always in or
out of your room, ubiquitous and garrulous, though his manner gradually
moved northward as his raiment improved, until at last when he had bled
you until you began to learn better he was calling you Quentin or
whatever, and when you saw him next he’d be wearing a cast-off Brooks
suit and a hat with a Princeton club I forget which band that someone
had given him and which he was pleasantly and unshakably convinced was a
part of Abe Lincoln’s military sash. Someone spread the story years ago,
when he first appeared around college from wherever he came from, that
he was a graduate of the divinity school. And when he came to understand
what it meant he was so taken with it that he began to retail the story
himself, until at last he must come to believe he really had. Anyway he
related long pointless anecdotes of his undergraduate days, speaking
familiarly of dead and departed professors by their first names, usually
incorrect ones. But he had been guide mentor and friend to unnumbered
crops of innocent and lonely freshmen, and I suppose that with all his
petty chicanery and hypocrisy he stank no higher in heaven’s nostrils
than any other.
“Haven’t seen you in three-four days,” he said, staring at me from his
still military aura. “You been sick?”
“No. I’ve been all right. Working, I reckon. I’ve seen you, though.”
“Yes?”
“In the parade the other day.”
“Oh, that. Yes, I was there. I dont care nothing about that sort of
thing, you understand, but the boys likes to have me with them, the
vet’runs does. Ladies wants all the old vet’runs to turn out, you know.
So I has to oblige them.”
“And on that Wop holiday too,” I said. “You were obliging the W. C. T.
U. then, I reckon.”
“That? I was doing that for my son-in-law. He aims to get a job on the
city forces. Street cleaner. I tells him all he wants is a broom to
sleep on. You saw me, did you?”
“Both times. Yes.”
“I mean, in uniform. How’d I look?”
“You looked fine. You looked better than any of them. They ought to make
you a general, Deacon.”
He touched my arm, lightly, his hand that worn, gentle quality of
niggers’ hands. “Listen. This aint for outside talking. I dont mind
telling you because you and me’s the same folks, come long and short.”
He leaned a little to me, speaking rapidly, his eyes not looking at me.
“I’ve got strings out, right now. Wait till next year. Just wait. Then
see where I’m marching. I wont need to tell you how I’m fixing it; I
say, just wait and see, my boy.” He looked at me now and clapped me
lightly on the shoulder and rocked back on his heels, nodding at me.
“Yes, sir. I didnt turn Democrat three years ago for nothing. My
son-in-law on the city; me—Yes, sir. If just turning Democrat’ll make
that son of a bitch go to work. . . . And me: just you stand on that
corner yonder a year from two days ago, and see.”
“I hope so. You deserve it, Deacon. And while I think about it—” I took
the letter from my pocket. “Take this around to my room tomorrow and
give it to Shreve. He’ll have something for you. But not till tomorrow,
mind.”
He took the letter and examined it. “It’s sealed up.”
“Yes. And it’s written inside, Not good until tomorrow.”
“H’m,” he said. He looked at the envelope, his mouth pursed. “Something
for me, you say?”
“Yes. A present I’m making you.”
He was looking at me now, the envelope white in his black hand, in the
sun. His eyes were soft and irisless and brown, and suddenly I saw
Roskus watching me from behind all his white-folks’ claptrap of uniforms
and politics and Harvard manner, diffident, secret, inarticulate and
sad. “You aint playing a joke on the old nigger, is you?”
“You know I’m not. Did any Southerner ever play a joke on you?”
“You’re right. They’re fine folks. But you cant live with them.”
“Did you ever try?” I said. But Roskus was gone. Once more he was that
self he had long since taught himself to wear in the world’s eye,
pompous, spurious, not quite gross.
“I’ll confer to your wishes, my boy.”
“Not until tomorrow, remember.”
“Sure,” he said; “understood, my boy. Well—”
“I hope—” I said. He looked down at me, benignant, profound. Suddenly I
held out my hand and we shook, he gravely, from the pompous height of
his municipal and military dream. “You’re a good fellow, Deacon. I
hope. . . . You’ve helped a lot of young fellows, here and there.”
“I’ve tried to treat all folks right,” he said. “I draw no petty social
lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.”