Soldiers’ Pay - William Faulkner (people reading books TXT) 📗

it?” Emmy made no reply. “I think clothes of this sort suit people of your and my type, don’t you?”

“I dunno. I never thought about it,” splashing water in the sink.

“I tell you what,” said Mrs. Powers, watching Emmy’s firm, sturdy back, “I have a new dress up in my trunk that doesn’t suit me, for some reason. When we get through, suppose you come up with me and we’ll try it on you. I can sew a little, and we can make it fit you exactly. What about it?”

Emmy thawed imperceptibly. “What use would I have for it? I don’t go anywhere, and I got clothes good enough to wash and sweep and cook in.”

“I know, but it’s always well to have some dress-up things. I will lend you stockings and things to go with it, and a hat, too.”

Emmy slid dishes into hot water and steam rose about her reddened arms. “Where’s your husband?” she asked irrelevantly.

“He was killed in the war, Emmy.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, after a while: “And you so young, too.” She gave Mrs. Powers a quick, kind glance: sisters in sorrow. (My Donald was killed, too.)

Mrs. Powers rose quickly. “Where’s a cup towel? Let’s get done so we can try that dress.”

Emmy drew her hands from the water and dried them on her apron. “Wait, lemme get an apron for you, too.”

A bedraggled sparrow eyed her from the limp, glistening morning-glory vine, and Emmy dropped the apron over her head and knotted the cords at the back. Steam rose again about Emmy’s forearms, wreathing her head, and the china was warm and smooth and sensuous to the touch; glass gleamed under Mrs. Powers’ toweling and a dull parade of silver took the light mutely, hushing it as like two priestesses they repeated the orisons of Clothes.

As they passed the study door they saw the rector and his son gazing quietly into a rain-perplexed tree, and Gilligan sprawled on his back upon a battered divan, smoking and reading.

VIII

Emmy, outfitted from head to heel, thanked her awkwardly.

“How good the rain smells!” Mrs. Powers interrupted her. “Sit down a while, won’t you?”

Emmy, admiring her finery, came suddenly from out her Cinderella dream. “I can’t. I got some mending to do. I nearly clean forgot it.”

“Bring your mending in here, then, so we can talk. I haven’t had a woman to talk to in months, it seems like. Bring it in here and let me help you.”

Emmy said, flattered: “Why do you want to do my work?”

“I told you if I don’t have something to do I’ll be a crazy woman in two days. Please, Emmy, as a favor. Won’t you?”

“All right. Lemme get it.” She gathered up her garments and leaving the room she returned with a heaped basket. They sat on either side of it.

“His poor huge socks,” Mrs. Powers raised her encased hand. “Like chair covers, aren’t they?”

Emmy laughed happily above her needle, and beneath swooning gusts of rain across the roof the pile of neatly folded and mended garments grew steadily.

“Emmy,” Mrs. Powers said after a time, “what was Donald like before? You knew him a long time, didn’t you?”

Emmy’s needle continued its mute, tiny flashing, and after a while Mrs. Powers leaned across the basket and putting her hand under Emmy’s chin, raised her bent face. Emmy twisted her head aside and bent again over her needle. Mrs. Powers rose and drew the shades, darkening the room against the rain-combed afternoon. Emmy continued to peer blindly at her darning until the other woman took it from her hand, then she raised her head and stared at her new friend with beast-like, unresisting hopelessness.

Mrs. Powers took Emmy’s arms and drew her erect. “Come, Emmy,” she said, feeling the bones in Emmy’s hard, muscular arms. Mrs. Powers knew that lacking a bed any reclining intimacy was conducive to confidence, so she drew Emmy down beside her in an ancient obese armchair. And with heedless rain filling the room with hushed monotonous sound, Emmy told her brief story.

“We was in school together⁠—when he was there at all. He never came, mostly. They couldn’t make him. He’d just go off into the country by himself, and not come back for two or three days. And nights, too. It was one night when he⁠—when he⁠—”

Her voice died away and Mrs. Powers said: “When he what, Emmy? Aren’t you going too fast?”

“Sometimes he used to walk home from school with me. He wouldn’t never have a hat or a coat, and his face was like⁠—it was like he ought to live in the woods. You know: not like he ought to went to school or had to dress up. And so you never did know when you’d see him. He’d come in school at almost any time and folks would see him way out in the country at night. Sometimes he’d sleep in folks’ houses in the country and sometimes niggers would find him asleep in sand ditches. Everybody knew him. And then one night⁠—”

“How old were you then?”

“I was sixteen and he was nineteen. And then one night⁠—”

“But you are going too fast. Tell me about you and him before that. Did you like him?”

“I liked him better than anybody. When we was both younger we dammed up a place in a creek and built a swimming hole and we used to go in every day. And then we’d lie in a old blanket we had and sleep until time to get up and go home. And in summer we was together nearly all the time. Then one day he’d just disappear and nobody wouldn’t know where he was. And then he’d be outside our house some morning, calling me.

“The trouble was that I always lied to pappy where I had been and I hated that. Donald always told his father: he never lied about nothing he ever did. But he was braver than me, I reckon.

“And then when I was fourteen pappy found out about how I like Donald, and so he took me out