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

“Or other people make our heaven and hell for us.”

The divine put his heavy arm across Gilligan’s shoulder. “You are suffering from disappointment. But this will pass away. The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten. How does it go? ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ No, no,” as Gilligan would have interrupted, “I know that is an unbearable belief, but all truth is unbearable. Do we not both suffer at this moment from the facts of division and death?”

Gilligan knew shame. Bothering him now, me with a fancied disappointment! The rector spoke again. “I think it would be a good idea for you to stay, after all, until you make your future plans. So let’s consider it closed, eh? Suppose we walk further⁠—unless you are tired?”

Gilligan rose in effusive negation. After a while the quiet tree-tunnelled street became a winding road, and leaving the town behind them they descended and then mounted a hill. Cresting the hill beneath the moon, seeing the world breaking away from them into dark, moon-silvered ridges above valleys where mist hung slumbrous, they passed a small house, sleeping among climbing roses. Beyond it an orchard slept the night away in symmetrical rows, squatting and pregnant. “Willard has good fruit,” the divine murmured.

The road dropped on again descending between reddish gashes, and across a level moonlit space, broken by a clump of saplings, came a pure quivering chord of music wordless and far away.

“They are holding services. Negroes,” the rector explained. They walked on in the dust, passing neat tidy houses, dark with slumber. An occasional group of negroes passed them, bearing lighted lanterns that jetted vain little flames futilely into the moonlight. “No one knows why they do that,” the divine replied to Gilligan’s question. “Perhaps it is to light their churches with.”

The singing drew nearer and nearer; at last, crouching among a clump of trees beside the road, they saw the shabby church with its canting travesty of a spire. Within it was a soft glow of kerosene serving only to make the darkness and the heat thicker, making thicker the imminence of sex after harsh labor along the mooned land; and from it welled the crooning submerged passion of the dark race. It was nothing, it was everything; then it swelled to an ecstasy, taking the white man’s words as readily as it took his remote God and made a personal Father of Him.

Feed Thy Sheep, O Jesus. All the longing of mankind for a Oneness with Something, somewhere. Feed Thy Sheep, O Jesus.⁠ ⁠… The rector and Gilligan stood side by side in the dusty road. The road went on under the moon, vaguely dissolving without perspective. Worn-out red-gutted fields were now alternate splashes of soft black and silver; trees had each a silver nimbus, save those moonward from them, which were sharp as bronze.

Feed Thy Sheep, O Jesus. The voices rose full and soft. There was no organ; no organ was needed as above the harmonic passion of bass and baritone soared a clear soprano of women’s voices like a flight of gold and heavenly birds. They stood together in the dust, the rector in his shapeless black, and Gilligan in his new hard serge, listening, seeing the shabby church become beautiful with mellow longing, passionate and sad. Then the singing died, fading away along the mooned land inevitable with tomorrow and sweat, with sex and death and damnation; and they turned townward under the moon, feeling dust in their shoes.

Soldiers’ Pay
was published in 1926 by
William Faulkner.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Matic Likar,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2018 by
Delphine Lettau, Cindy Beyer, and The Online Distributed Proofreaders Canada Team
for
Faded Page Canada
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Moonlight on Passamaquoddy Bay,
a painting completed in 1893 by
George Inness.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2022, 10:17 p.m.
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standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-faulkner/soldiers-pay.

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May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

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