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

go to Atlanta tomorrow and find her, catch her before she takes a train out of there, he promised himself. I will find her: she cannot escape me forever. The other drank again and Gilligan lit a cigarette. He too knew a sense of freedom, of being master of his destiny. I’ll go to Atlanta tomorrow, find her, make her marry me, he repeated. Why did I let her go?

But why not tonight? Sure, why not tonight? I can find her! I know I can. Even in New York. Funny I never thought of that before. His legs and arms had no sensation, his cigarette slipped from his nerveless fingers and reaching for the tiny coal he wavered, finding that he could no longer control his body. Hell, I ain’t that drunk, he thought. But he was forced to admit that he was. “Say, what was that stuff, anyway? I can’t hardly stand up.”

The other guffawed again, flattered. “Ain’t she, though? Make her myself, and she’s good. You’ll git used to it, though. Take another.” He drank it like water, with unction.

“Dam’f I do. I got to get to town.”

“Take a little sup. I’ll put you on the road all right.”

If two drinks make me feel this good I’ll scream if I take another, he thought. But his friend insisted and he drank again. “Let’s go,” he said, returning the jug.

The man carrying “her” circled the lake. Gilligan blundered behind him, among cypress knees, in occasional mud. After a time he regained some control over his body and they came to a break in the willows and a road slashed into the red sandy soil.

“Here you be, friend. Jest keep right to the road. ’Tain’t over a mile.”

“All right. Much obliged to you. You’ve sure got a son-of-a-gun of a drink there.”

“She’s all right, ain’t she?” the other agreed.

“Well, good night.” Gilligan extended his hand and the other grasped it formally and limply and pumped it once from a rigid elbow.

“Take keer of yourself.”

“I’ll try to,” Gilligan promised. The other’s gangling malaria-ridden figure faded again among the willows. The road gashed across the land, stretched silent and empty before him, and below the east was a rumorous promise of moonlight. He trod in dust between dark trees like spilled ink upon the pale clear page of the sky, and soon the moon was more than a promise. He saw the rim of it sharpening the tips of trees, saw soon the whole disc, bland as a saucer. Whippoorwills were like lost coins among the trees and one blundered awkwardly from the dust almost under his feet. The whisky died away in the loneliness, soon his temporarily mislaid despair took its place again.

After a while passing beneath crossed skeletoned arms on a pole he crossed the railroad and followed a lane between negro cabins, smelling the intimate odor of negroes. The cabins were dark but from them came soft meaningless laughter and slow unemphatic voices cheerful yet somehow filled with all the old despairs of time and breath.

Under the moon, quavering with the passion of spring and flesh among whitewashed walls papered inwardly with old newspapers, something pagan using the white man’s conventions as it used his clothing, hushed and powerful not knowing its own power:

“Sweet chariot⁠ ⁠… comin’ fer to ca’y me home.⁠ ⁠…”

Three young men passed him, shuffling in the dust, aping their own mute shadows in the dusty road, sharp with the passed sweat of labor: “You may be fas’, but you can’t las’; cause yo’ mommer go’ slow you down.”

He trod on with the moon in his face, seeing the cupolaed clock squatting like a benignant god on the courthouse against the sky, staring across the town with four faces. He passed yet more cabins where sweet mellow voices called from door to door. A dog bayed the moon, clear and sorrowful, and a voice cursed it in soft syllables.

“… sweet chariot, comin’ fer to ca’y me home⁠ ⁠… yes, Jesus, comin’ fer to ca’y me hoooooome.⁠ ⁠…”

The church loomed a black shadow with a silver roof and he crossed the lawn, passing beneath slumbrous ivied walls. In the garden the mockingbird that lived in the magnolia rippled the silence, and along the moony wall of the rectory, from ledge to ledge, something crawled shapelessly. What in hell, thought Gilligan, seeing it pause at Emmy’s window.

He leaped flower beds swiftly and noiselessly. Here was a convenient gutter and Jones did not hear him until he had almost reached the window to which the other clung. They regarded each other precariously, the one clinging to the window, the other to the gutter.

“What are you trying to do?” Gilligan asked.

“Climb up here a little further and I’ll show you,” Jones told him snarling his yellow teeth.

“Come away from there, fellow.”

“Damn my soul, if here ain’t the squire of dames again. We all hoped you had gone off with that black woman.”

“Are you coming down, or am I coming up there and throw you down?”

“I don’t know: am I? Or are you?”

For reply Gilligan heaved himself up, grasping the window ledge. Jones, clinging, tried to kick him in the face but Gilligan caught his foot, releasing his grasp on the gutter. For a moment they swung like a great pendulum against the side of the house, then Jones’ hold on the window was torn loose and they plunged together into a bed of tulips. Jones was first on his feet and kicking Gilligan in the side he fled. Gilligan sprang after him and overtook him smartly.

This time it was hyacinths. Jones fought like a woman, kicking, clawing, biting, but Gilligan hauled him to his feet and knocked him down. Jones rose again and was felled once more. This time he crawled and grasping Gilligan’s knees pulled him down. Jones kicked himself free and rising fled anew. Gilligan sat up contemplating pursuit, but gave it up as he watched Jones’ unwieldy body leaping away through the moonlight.

Jones doubled the church at a good speed and let