Flags in the Dust Read Online Free Page B

He says he never give a thought to yo’ aunt back thar in the house, because he says she was a full-blood Sartoris and she was a match fer any jest a dozen Yankees.
    “Then the Yank hollered at him, but Cunnel kep’ right on, not lookin’ back nor nothin’. Then the Yank hollered agin and Cunnel says he could hyear the hoss movin’ and he decided hit was time to stir his shanks. He made the corner of the barn jest as the Yank shot the fust time, and by the time the Yank got to the corner, he was in the hawg-lot, a-tearin’ through the jimson weeds to’ads the creek whar you was waitin’ with the stallion hid in the willers.
    “And thar you was a-standin’, holdin’ the hoss and that ’ere Yankee patrol yellin’ up behind, until Cunnel got his boots on. And then he tole you to tell yo’ aunt he wouldn’t be home fer supper.”
    “But what are you giving it to me for, after all this time?” he had asked, fingering the pipe, and old man Falls had said a poorhouse was no fit place for it.
    “A thing he toted in his pocket and got enjoyment outen, in them days. Hit ’ud be different, I reckon, while we was a-buildin’ the railroad. He said often enough in them days we was all goin’ to be in the po’house by Sat’d’y night. Only I beat him, thar. I got thar fo’ he did. Or the cemetary he meant, mo’ likely, him ridin’ up and down the survey with a saddlebag of money night and day, keepin’ jest one cross tie ahead of the po’house, like he said. That ’us when hit changed. When hehad to start killin’ folks. Them two cyarpet baggers stirrin’ up niggers, that he walked right into the room whar they was a-settin’ behind a table with they pistols layin’ on the table, and that robber and that other feller he kilt, all with that same dang der’nger. When a feller has to start killin’ folks, he ’most always has to keep on killin’ ’em. And when he does, he’s already dead hisself.”
    It showed on John Sartoris’ brow, the dark shadow of fatality and doom, that night when he sat beneath the candles in the dining room and turned a wine glass in his fingers while he talked to his son. The railroad was finished, and today he had been elected to the state legislature after a hard and bitter fight, and doom lay on his brow, and weariness.
    “And so,” he said, “Redlaw’ll kill me tomorrow, for I shall be unarmed. I’m tired of killing men.… Pass the wine, Bayard.”
    And the next day he was dead, whereupon, as though he had but waited for that to release him of the clumsy cluttering of bones and breath, by losing the frustration of his own flesh he could now stiffen and shape that which sprang from him into the fatal semblance of his dream; to be evoked like a genie or a deity by an illiterate old man’s tedious reminiscing or by a charred pipe from which even the rank smell of burnt tobacco had long since faded away.
    Old Bayard roused himself and went and laid the pipe on his chest of drawers. Then he quitted the room and tramped heavily down the stairs and out through the back.
    The negro lad waked easily and untethered the mare and held the stirrup. Old Bayard mounted and remembered the cigar at last and fired it. The negro opened the gate into the lot and trotted on ahead and opened the second gate and let the rider into the field beyond. Bayard rode on, trailing his pungent smoke. From somewhere a ticked setter came up and fell in at the mare’s heels.
    Elnora stood barelegged on the kitchen floor and soused her mop into the pail and thumped it on the floor again.
    “Sinner riz fum de moaner’s bench
,
Sinner jump to de penance bench;

When de preacher ax ’im whut de reason why
,
Says ‘Preacher got de women jes’ de same ez I’
.
   
Oh, Lawd, Oh Lawd!

Oat’s whut de matter wid de church today.”
2
    Simon’s destination was a huge brick house set well up onto the street. The lot had been the site of a fine old colonial house which stood among magnolias and oaks