right. I aint heard none o dem complainin. Hush, now. Dar he. Whooey.
Hum awn, dawg.” And we’d sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little
with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of
the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern
fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis’
voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard
it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like
the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer,
mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence,
coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo.
WhoOooooooooooooooo. _Got to marry somebody_
_Have there been very many Caddy_
_I dont know too many will you look after Benjy and Father_
_You dont know whose it is then does he know_
_Dont touch me will you look after Benjy and Father_
I began to feel the water before I came to the bridge. The bridge was of
grey stone, lichened, dappled with slow moisture where the fungus crept.
Beneath it the water was clear and still in the shadow, whispering and
clucking about the stone in fading swirls of spinning sky. _Caddy that_
_I’ve got to marry somebody_ Versh told me about a man mutilated
himself. He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a
ditch. A broken razor flinging them backward over his shoulder the same
motion complete the jerked skein of blood backward not looping. But
that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them
then I could say O That That’s Chinese I dont know Chinese. And Father
said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see? Women are never
virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he
said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said
Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.
Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but
not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time
after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow
as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how
knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the
bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too,
out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory. And after awhile
the flat irons would come floating up. I hid them under the end of the
bridge and went back and leaned on the rail.
I could not see the bottom, but I could see a long way into the motion
of the water before the eye gave out, and then I saw a shadow hanging
like a fat arrow stemming into the current. Mayflies skimmed in and out
of the shadow of the bridge just above the surface. _If it could just be
a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then
you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing
and the horror beyond the clean flame_ The arrow increased without
motion, then in a quick swirl the trout lipped a fly beneath the surface
with that sort of gigantic delicacy of an elephant picking up a peanut.
The fading vortex drifted away down stream and then I saw the arrow
again, nose into the current, wavering delicately to the motion of the
water above which the May flies slanted and poised. _Only you and me
then amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame_
The trout hung, delicate and motionless among the wavering shadows.
Three boys with fishing poles came onto the bridge and we leaned on the
rail and looked down at the trout. They knew the fish. He was a
neighbourhood character.
“They’ve been trying to catch that trout for twenty-five years. There’s
a store in Boston offers a twenty-five dollar fishing rod to anybody
that can catch him.”
“Why dont you all catch him, then? Wouldnt you like to have a
twenty-five dollar fishing rod?”
“Yes,” they said. They leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout. “I
sure would,” one said.
“I wouldnt take the rod,” the second said. “I’d take the money instead.”
“Maybe they wouldnt do that,” the first said. “I bet he’d make you take
the rod.”
“Then I’d sell it.”
“You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for it.”
“I’d take what I could get, then. I can catch just as many fish with
this pole as I could with a twenty-five dollar one.” Then they talked
about what they would do with twenty-five dollars. They all talked at
once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of
unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible
fact, as people will when their desires become words.
“I’d buy a horse and wagon,” the second said.
“Yes you would,” the others said.
“I would. I know where I can buy one for twenty-five dollars. I know the
man.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s all right who it is. I can buy it for twenty-five dollars.”
“Yah,” the others said, “He dont know any such thing. He’s just
talking.”
“Do you think so?” the boy said. They continued to jeer at him, but he
said nothing more. He leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout
which he had already spent, and suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was
gone from their voices, as if to them too it was as though he had
captured the fish and bought his horse and wagon, they too partaking of
that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of
silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each
other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to
a still tongue, and for a while I could feel the other two seeking
swiftly for some means by which to cope with him, to rob him of his
horse and wagon.
“You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for that pole,” the first said. “I
bet anything you couldnt.”
“He hasnt caught that trout yet,” the third said suddenly, then they
both cried:
“Yah, wha’d I tell you? What’s the man’s name? I dare you to tell. There
aint any such man.”
“Ah, shut up,” the second said. “Look, Here he comes again.” They leaned
on the rail, motionless, identical, their poles slanting slenderly in
the sunlight, also identical. The trout rose without haste, a shadow in
faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly
downstream. “Gee,” the first one murmured.
“We dont try to catch him anymore,” he said. “We just watch Boston folks
that come out and try.”
“Is he the only fish in this pool?”
“Yes. He ran all the others out. The best place to fish around here is
down at the Eddy.”
“No it aint,” the second said. “It’s better at Bigelow’s Mill two to
one.” Then they argued for a while about which was the best fishing and
then left off all of a sudden to watch the trout rise again and the
broken swirl of water suck down a little of the sky. I asked how far it
was to the nearest town. They told me.
“But the closest car line is that way,” the second said, pointing back
down the road. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Just walking.”
“You from the college?”
“Yes. Are there any factories in that town?”
“Factories?” They looked at me.
“No,” the second said. “Not there.” They looked at my clothes. “You
looking for work?”
“How about Bigelow’s Mill?” the third said. “That’s a factory.”
“Factory my eye. He means a sure enough factory.”
“One with a whistle,” I said. “I havent heard any one oclock whistles
yet.”
“Oh,” the second said. “There’s a clock in the Unitarian steeple. You
can find out the time from that. Havent you got a watch on that chain?”
“I broke it this morning.” I showed them my watch. They examined it
gravely.
“It’s still running,” the second said. “What does a watch like that
cost?”
“It was a present,” I said. “My father gave it to me when I graduated
from high school.”
“Are you a Canadian?” the third said. He had red hair.
“Canadian?”
“He dont talk like them,” the second said. “I’ve heard them talk. He
talks like they do in minstrel shows.”
“Say,” the third said, “Aint you afraid he’ll hit you?”
“Hit me?”
“You said he talks like a coloured man.”
“Ah, dry up,” the second said. “You can see the steeple when you get
over that hill there.”
I thanked them. “I hope you have good luck. Only dont catch that old
fellow down there. He deserves to be let alone.”
“Cant anybody catch that fish,” the first said. They leaned on the rail,
looking down into the water, the three poles like three slanting threads
of yellow fire in the sun. I walked upon my shadow, tramping it into the
dappled shade of trees again. The road curved, mounting away from the
water. It crossed the hill, then descended winding, carrying the eye,
the mind on ahead beneath a still green tunnel, and the square cupola
above the trees and the round eye of the clock but far enough. I sat
down at the roadside. The grass was ankle deep, myriad. The shadows on
the road were as still as if they had been put there with a stencil,
with slanting pencils of sunlight. But it was only a train, and after a
while it died away beyond the trees, the long sound, and then I could
hear my watch and the train dying away, as though it were running
through another month or another summer somewhere, rushing away under
the poised gull and all things rushing. Except Gerald. He would be sort
of grand too, pulling in lonely state across the noon, rowing himself
right out of noon, up the long bright air like an apotheosis, mounting
into a drowsing infinity where only he and the gull, the one
terrifically motionless, the other in a steady and measured pull and
recover that partook of inertia itself, the world punily beneath their
shadows on the sun. Caddy that blackguard that blackguard Caddy
Their voices came over the hill, and the three slender poles like
balanced threads of running fire. They looked at me passing, not
slowing.
“Well,” I said, “I dont see him.”
“We didnt try to catch him,” the first said. “You cant catch that fish.”
“There’s the clock,” the second said, pointing. “You can tell the time
when you get a little closer.”
“Yes,” I said, “All right.” I got up. “You all going to town?”
“We’re going to the Eddy for chub,” the first said.
“You cant catch anything at the Eddy,” the second said.
“I guess you want to go to the mill, with a lot of fellows splashing and
scaring all the fish away.”
“You cant catch any fish at the Eddy.”
“We wont catch none nowhere if we dont go on,” the third said.
“I dont see why you keep on talking about the Eddy,” the second said.
“You cant catch anything there.”
“You dont have to go,” the first said. “You’re not tied to me.”
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said.
“I’m going to the Eddy and fish,” the first said. “You can do as you
please.”
“Say, how long has it been since you heard of anybody catching a fish at
the Eddy?” the second said to the third.
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said. The cupola sank
slowly beyond the trees, with the round face of the clock far enough
yet. We went on in the dappled shade. We came to an orchard, pink and
white. It was full of bees; already we could hear them.
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said. A lane turned
off beside the orchard. The third boy slowed and halted. The first went
on, flecks of sunlight slipping along the pole across his shoulder and
down the back of his shirt. “Come on,” the third said. The second boy
stopped too. _Why must you marry somebody Caddy_
_Do you want me to say it do you think that if I say it it wont be_
“Let’s go up to the mill,” he said. “Come on.”
The first boy went on. His bare feet made no sound, falling softer than
leaves in the thin dust. In the orchard the bees sounded like a wind
getting up, a sound caught by a spell just under crescendo and
sustained. The lane went along the wall, arched over, shattered with
bloom, dissolving into trees. Sunlight slanted into it, sparse and
eager. Yellow butterflies flickered along the shade like flecks of sun.
“What do you want to go to the Eddy for?” the second boy said. “You can
fish at the mill if you want to.”
“Ah, let him go,” the third said. They looked after the first boy.
Sunlight slid patchily across his walking shoulders, glinting along the
pole like yellow ants.
“Kenny,” the second said. _Say it to Father will you I will am my
fathers Progenitive I invented him created I him Say it to him it will
not be for he will say I was not and then you and I since
philoprogenitive_
“Ah, come on,” the boy said, “They’re already in.” They looked after the
first boy. “Yah,” they said suddenly, “go on then, mamma’s boy. If he
goes swimming he’ll get his head wet and then he’ll get a licking.” They
turned into the lane and went on, the yellow butterflies slanting about
them along the shade.
_it is because there is nothing else I believe there is something else
but there may not be and then I You will find that even injustice is
scarcely worthy of what you believe yourself to be_ He paid me no
attention, his jaw set in profile, his face turned a little away beneath
his broken hat.
“Why dont you go swimming with them?” I said. _that blackguard Caddy_
_Were you trying to pick a fight with him were you_
_A liar and a scoundrel Caddy was dropped from his club for cheating at
cards got sent to Coventry caught cheating at midterm exams and
expelled_
_Well what about it I’m not going to play cards with_
“Do you like fishing better than swimming?” I said. The sound of the
bees diminished, sustained yet, as though instead of sinking into
silence, silence merely increased between us, as water rises. The road
curved again and became a street between shady lawns with white houses.
_Caddy that blackguard can you think of Benjy and Father and do it not
of me_
_What else can I think about what else have I thought about_ The boy
turned from the street. He climbed a picket fence without looking back
and crossed the lawn to a tree and laid the pole down and climbed into
the fork of the tree and sat there, his back to the road and the dappled
sun motionless at last upon his white shirt. _Else have I thought about
I cant even cry I died last year I told you I had but I didnt know then
what I meant I didnt know what I was saying_ Some days in late August at
home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in
it sad and nostalgic and familiar. Man the sum of his climatic
experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in
impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of
dust and desire. _But now I know I’m dead I tell you_
_Then why must you listen we can go away you and Benjy and me where
nobody knows us where_ The buggy was drawn by a white horse, his feet
clopping in the thin dust; spidery wheels chattering thin and dry,
moving uphill beneath a rippling shawl of leaves. Elm. No: ellum. Ellum.
_On what on your school money the money they sold the pasture for so you
could go to Harvard dont you see you’ve got to finish now if you dont
finish he’ll have nothing_
_Sold the pasture_ His white shirt was motionless in the fork, in the
flickering shade. The wheels were spidery. Beneath the sag of the buggy
the hooves neatly rapid like the motions of a lady doing embroidery,
diminishing without progress like a figure on a treadmill being drawn
rapidly offstage. The street turned again. I could see the white cupola,
the round stupid assertion of the clock. _Sold the pasture_
_Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesnt stop drinking and
he wont stop he cant stop since I since last summer and then they’ll
send Benjy to Jackson I cant cry I cant even cry one minute she was
standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and
bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves
and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her
white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of
the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum
would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence
bellowing_
When you opened the door a bell tinkled, but just once, high and clear
and small in the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged
and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the
bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring
it when the door opened upon the recent warm scent of baking; a little
dirty child with eyes like a toy bear’s and two patent-leather
pig-tails.
“Hello, sister.” Her face was like a cup of milk dashed with coffee in
the sweet warm emptiness. “Anybody here?”
But she merely watched me until a door opened and the lady came. Above
the counter where the ranks of crisp shapes behind the glass her neat
grey face her hair tight and sparse from her neat grey skull, spectacles
in neat grey rims riding approaching like something on a wire, like a
cash box in a store. She looked like a librarian. Something among dusty
shelves of ordered certitudes long divorced from reality, desiccating
peacefully, as if a breath of that air which sees injustice done
“Two of these, please, ma’am.”
From under the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper and
laid it on the counter and lifted the two buns out. The little girl
watched them with still and unwinking eyes like two currants floating
motionless in a cup of weak coffee Land of the kike home of the wop.
Watching the bread, the neat grey hands, a broad gold band on the left
forefinger, knuckled there by a blue knuckle.
“Do you do your own baking, ma’am?”
“Sir?” she said. Like that. Sir? Like on the stage. Sir? “Five cents.
Was there anything else?”
“No, ma’am. Not for me. This lady wants something.” She was not tall
enough to see over the case, so she went to the end of the counter and
looked at the little girl.
“Did you bring her in here?”
“No, ma’am. She was here when I came.”
“You little wretch,” she said. She came out around the counter, but she
didnt touch the little girl. “Have you got anything in your pockets?”
“She hasnt got any pockets,” I said. “She wasnt doing anything. She was
just standing here, waiting for you.”
“Why didnt the bell ring, then?” She glared at me. She just needed a
bunch of switches, a blackboard behind her 2 X 2 e 5. “She’ll hide it
under her dress and a body’d never know it. You, child. How’d you get in
here?”
The little girl said nothing. She looked at the woman, then she gave me
a flying black glance and looked at the woman again, “Them foreigners,”
the woman said. “How’d she get in without the bell ringing?”
“She came in when I opened the door,” I said. “It rang once for both of
us. She couldnt reach anything from here, anyway. Besides, I dont think
she would. Would you, sister?” The little girl looked at me, secretive,
contemplative. “What do you want? bread?”
She extended her fist. It uncurled upon a nickel, moist and dirty, moist
dirt ridged into her flesh. The coin was damp and warm. I could smell
it, faintly metallic.
“Have you got a five cent loaf, please, ma’am?”
From beneath the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper
sheet and laid it on the counter and wrapped a loaf into it. I laid the
coin and another one on the counter. “And another one of those buns,
please, ma’am.”
She took another bun from the case. “Give me that parcel,” she said. I
gave it to her and she unwrapped it and put the third bun in and wrapped
it and took up the coins and found two coppers in her apron and gave
them to me. I handed them to the little girl. Her fingers closed about
them, damp and hot, like worms.
“You going to give her that bun?” the woman said.
“Yessum,” I said. “I expect your cooking smells as good to her as it
does to me.”
I took up the two packages and gave the bread to the little girl, the
woman all iron-grey behind the counter, watching us with cold certitude.
“You wait a minute,” she said. She went to the rear. The door opened
again and closed. The little girl watched me, holding the bread against
her dirty dress.
“What’s your name?” I said. She quit looking at me, but she was still
motionless. She didnt even seem to breathe. The woman returned. She had
a funny looking thing in her hand. She carried it sort of like it might
have been a dead pet rat.
“Here,” she said. The child looked at her. “Take it,” the woman said,
jabbing it at the little girl. “It just looks peculiar. I calculate you
wont know the difference when you eat it. Here. I cant stand here all
day.” The child took it, still watching her. The woman rubbed her hands
on her apron. “I got to have that bell fixed,” she said. She went to the
door and jerked it open. The little bell tinkled once, faint and clear
and invisible. We moved toward the door and the woman’s peering back.
“Thank you for the cake,” I said.
“Them foreigners,” she said, staring up into the obscurity where the
bell tinkled. “Take my advice and stay clear of them, young man.”
“Yessum,” I said. “Come on, sister.” We went out. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She swung the door to, then jerked it open again, making the bell give
forth its single small note. “Foreigners,” she said, peering up at the
bell.
We went on. “Well,” I said, “How about some ice cream?” She was eating
the gnarled cake. “Do you like ice cream?” She gave me a black still
look, chewing. “Come on.”
We came to the drugstore and had some ice cream. She wouldn’t put the
loaf down. “Why not put it down so you can eat better?” I said, offering
to take it. But she held to it, chewing the ice cream like it was taffy.
The bitten cake lay on the table. She ate the ice cream steadily, then
she fell to on the cake again, looking about at the showcases. I
finished mine and we went out.
“Which way do you live?” I said.
A buggy, the one with the white horse it was. Only Doc Peabody is fat.
Three hundred pounds. You ride with him on the uphill side, holding on.
Children. Walking easier than holding uphill. _Seen the doctor yet have
you seen Caddy_
_I dont have to I cant ask now afterward it will be all right it wont
matter_
Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate
equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he
said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside
of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that
some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all
that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to.
Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber
flabbily filled getting the odour of honeysuckle all mixed up.
“You’d better take your bread on home, hadnt you?”
She looked at me. She chewed quietly and steadily; at regular intervals
a small distension passed smoothly down her throat. I opened my package
and gave her one of the buns. “Goodbye,” I said.
I went on. Then I looked back. She was behind me. “Do you live down this
way?” She said nothing. She walked beside me, under my elbow sort of,
eating. We went on. It was quiet, hardly anyone about _getting the odour
of honeysuckle all mixed She would have told me not to let me sit there
on the steps hearing her door twilight slamming hearing Benjy still
crying Supper she would have to come down then getting honeysuckle all
mixed up in it_ We reached the corner.
“Well, I’ve got to go down this way,” I said, “Goodbye.” She stopped
too. She swallowed the last of the cake, then she began on the bun,
watching me across it. “Goodbye,” I said. I turned into the street and
went on, but I went to the next corner before I stopped.
“Which way do you live?” I said. “This way?” I pointed down the street.
She just looked at me. “Do you live over that way? I bet you live close
to the station, where the trains are. Dont you?” She just looked at me,
serene and secret and chewing. The street was empty both ways, with
quiet lawns and houses neat among the trees, but no one at all except
back there. We turned and went back. Two men sat in chairs in front of a
store.
“Do you all know this little girl? She sort of took up with me and I
cant find where she lives.”
They quit looking at me and looked at her.
“Must be one of them new Italian families,” one said. He wore a rusty
frock coat. “I’ve seen her before. What’s your name, little girl?” She
looked at them blackly for awhile, her jaws moving steadily. She
swallowed without ceasing to chew.
“Maybe she cant speak English,” the other said.
“They sent her after bread,” I said. “She must be able to speak
something.”
“What’s your pa’s name?” the first said. “Pete? Joe? name John huh?” She
took another bite from the bun.
“What must I do with her?” I said. “She just follows me. I’ve got to get
back to Boston.”
“You from the college?”
“Yes, sir. And I’ve got to get on back.”
“You might go up the street and turn her over to Anse. He’ll be up at
the livery stable. The marshall.”
“I reckon that’s what I’ll have to do,” I said. “I’ve got to do
something with her. Much obliged. Come on, sister.”