Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner Read Online Free Page A

Granny’s body that told us again; only this time I could almost feel him looking at Granny’s spread skirt where we crouched while he thanked her for the milk and told her his name and regiment.
    “Perhaps it is just as well that you have no grandchildren,” he said. “Since, doubtless, you wish to live in peace. I have three boys myself, you see. And I have not even had time to become a grandparent.” And now there wasn’t any laughing behind his voice, and Louvinia said he was standing there in the door, with the brass bright on his dark blue and his hat in his hand and his bright beard and hair, looking at Granny without the laughing now: “I won’t apologize; fools cry out at wind or fire. But permit me to say and hope that you will never have anything worse than this to remember us by.” Then he was gone. We heard his spurs in the hall and on the porch, then the horse, dying away, ceasing, and then Granny let go. She went back into the chair with her hand at her breast and her eyes closed and the sweat on her face in big drops; all of a sudden I began to holler, “Louvinia! Louvinia!” But she opened her eyes then and looked at me; they were looking at me when they opened. Then she looked at Ringo for a moment, but she looked back at me, panting.
    “Bayard,” she said, “what was that word you used?”
    “Word?” I said. “When, Granny?” Then I remembered; I didn’t look at her, and she lying back in the chair, looking at me and panting.
    “Don’t repeat it. You cursed. You used obscene language, Bayard.”
    I didn’t look at her. I could see Ringo’s feet too. “Ringo did too,”I said. She didn’t answer, but I could feel her looking at me; I said suddenly: “And you told a lie. You said we were not here.”
    “I know it,” she said. She moved. “Help me up.” She got out of the chair, holding to us. We didn’t know what she was trying to do. We just stood there while she held to us and to the chair and let herself down to her knees beside it. It was Ringo that knelt first. Then I knelt, too, while she asked the Lord to forgive her for telling the lie. Then she rose; we didn’t have time to help her. “Go to the kitchen and get a pan of water and the soap,” she said. “Get the new soap.”
    It was late, like time had slipped up on us while we were still caught in the noise of the musket and were too busy to notice; the sun shone almost level into our faces when we stood on the edge of the back porch, and when we spit, we spit straight into it. At first, just by breathing we could blow soap bubbles, but soon it was just the taste of the spitting. Then even that began to go away, though the impulse to spit didn’t, and then away to the north we saw the cloud bank, faint and blue and far-away at the base and touched with copper sun on the top. When father came home back in the spring, we tried to understand about mountains. At last he pointed out the cloud bank and said how it looked like mountains, and so, ever since then, Ringo believed that that was Tennessee, where father was, just like now.
    “There they,” he said, spitting. “There hit. Tennessee, where your pappy use to fight um at. Looking mighty far too.”
    “Too far to go just to fight Yankees,” I said, spitting too. But it was gone now, even the taste of it.

Retreat
    By suppertime we had everything loaded into the wagon but the bedclothes we would sleep under that night. Then Granny went upstairs, and when she came back down she had on her Sunday dress and her hat, and there was color in her face now and her eyes were bright.
    “Is we gonter leave tonight?” Ringo said. “I thought we wasn’t going to start until tomorrow.”
    “No,” Granny said. “But it’s been three years now since I have started anywhere; I reckon the Lord will forgive me for getting ready one day ahead of time.” She turned to Louvinia. “Tell Joby and Loosh to be ready with the lantern and the shovels right after