Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner

  WILLIAM FAULKNER’S WORKS

  THE MARBLE FAUN (1924)

  SOLDIER’S PAY (1926)

  MOSQUITOES (1927)

  SARTORIS (1929) [FLAGS IN THE DUST (1973)]

  THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1929)

  As I LAY DYING (1930)

  SANCTUARY (1931)

  THESE 13 (1931)

  LIGHT IN AUGUST (1932)

  A GREEN BOUGH (1933)

  DOCTOR MARTINO AND OTHER STORIES (1934)

  PYLON (1935)

  ABSALOM, ABSALOM! (1936)

  THE UNVANQUISHED (1938)

  THE WILD PALMS [IF I FORGET THEE JERUSALEM] (1939)

  THE HAMLET (1940)

  GO DOWN, MOSES AND OTHER STORIES (1942)

  INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1948)

  KNIGHT’S GAMBIT (1949)

  COLLECTED STORIES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER (1950)

  NOTES ON A HORSETHIEF (1951)

  REQUIEM FOR A NUN (1954)

  A FABLE (1954)

  BIG WOODS (1955)

  THE TOWN (1957)

  THE MANSION (1959)

  THE REIVERS (1962)

  UNCOLLECTED STORIES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER (1979, POSTHUMOUS)

  About the Editor

  Joseph Blotner grew up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, but lived and taught in the South for fifteen years. Educated at Drew, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania, he interrupted his schooling to fly with the 8th Air Force in England during World War II. He then taught at the Universities of Idaho, Virginia, and North Carolina (Chapel Hill). At Virginia he was a member, and later chairman, of the Balch Committee, under whose auspices William Faulkner became Writer-in-Residence there. His writings on Faulkner include Faulkner: A Biography, Selected Letters of William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University (with Frederick L. Gwynn), and The Modern American Political Novel: 1900–1960.

  Twice a Guggenheim Fellow and twice Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Copenhagen, Professor Blotner has lectured extensively in the United States and Europe on American Literature and particularly the work of Faulkner. During 1977 he served as the first William Faulkner Lecturer at the University of Mississippi. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan.

  VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1997

  Copyright © 1979 by Random House, Inc.

  Copyright © 1973, 1976, 1979 by Jill Faulkner Summers

  Copyright 1931, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1947, 1955 by William Faulkner

  Copyright renewed 1959, 1960, 1962 by William Faulkner

  Copyright renewed © 1965 by Jill Faulkner Summers and Estelle Faulkner

  Copyright renewed 1963, 1964, 1968, 1969, 1970 by Estelle Faulkner and Jill Faulkner Summers

  Copyright renewed 1975 by Jill Faulkner Summers

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in

  Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by

  Random House, Inc., New York, in 1979.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Faulkner, William, 1897–1962.

  Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner.

  Bibliography: p.

  I. Blotner, Joseph Leo, 1923–. II. Title.

  PS3511.A86A6 1981 813′.52 80-6120

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79164-1

  Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1_r1

  To Albert Erskine,

  his editor—

  and mine

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want first to thank Jill Summers for her help over the years. I am particularly grateful also to Professor James W. Webb of the University of Mississippi for the extraordinary kindnesses and scholarly assistance I have received from him, to the staff of the University of Mississippi Library, to Joan St.C. Crane, Edmund Berkeley, Jr., and their colleagues at the University of Virginia Library, and to Mrs. Lola L. Szladits of the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. I shall always be grateful to the University of Mississippi for the gracious hospitality extended to me during the semester I taught there and to Marilyn Majors Monroe for her accurate, cheerful, and untiring labors as a research assistant which aided me so much in my work. My special thanks go to my daughter, Nancy Wright Blotner, and my wife, Yvonne Wright Blotner, for their careful and patient labor during many hours spent sitting with me and taking turns reading aloud manuscripts and typescripts of William Faulkner’s stories against magazine versions and then for reading the setting copy against the proofs. Once again it gives me particular pleasure to express my gratitude to the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan for the research grant which helped me to complete this book.

  Contents

  Cover

  William Faulkner’s Works

  About the Editor

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  I

  STORIES REVISED FOR

  LATER BOOKS

  The Unvanquished

  Ambuscade

  Retreat

  Raid

  Skirmish at Sartoris

  The Unvanquished

  Vendée

  The Hamlet

  Fool About a Horse

  Lizards in Jamshyd’s Courtyard

  The Hound

  Spotted Horses

  Go Down, Moses

  Lion

  The Old People

  A Point of Law

  Gold Is Not Always

  Pantaloon in Black

  Go Down, Moses

  Delta Autumn

  The Bear

  Big Woods

  Race at Morning

  The Mansion

  Hog Pawn

  II

  UNCOLLECTED STORIES

  Nympholepsy

  Frankie and Johnny

  The Priest

  Once Aboard the Lugger (I)

  Once Aboard the Lugger (II)

  Miss Zilphia Gant

  Thrift

  Idyll in the Desert

  Two Dollar Wife

  Afternoon of a Cow

  Mr. Acarius

  Sepulture South: Gaslight

  III

  UNPUBLISHED STORIES

  Adolescence

  Al Jackson

  Don Giovanni

  Peter

  Moonlight

  The Big Shot

  Dull Tale

  A Return

  A Dangerous Man

  Evangeline

  A Portrait of Elmer

  With Caution and Dispatch

  Snow

  NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Notes

  Bibliography

  William Faulkner (1867–1962)

  Also by William Faulkner

  Academic Resources for Educators

  Vintage International

  INTRODUCTION

  This book consists of three kinds of stories: those which William Faulkner published but never reprinted in any of his short-story collections, those which he later revised to become parts of later books, and those which have remained until now unpublished.* Some of the third group are clearly apprentice work, but some of all three groups display qualities to be found in his best fiction. A number in each group were refused, some more than once, by various magazines, but so were a number of his most brilliant stories, and these rejections were usually a reflection
upon the nature of the literary marketplace or editorial taste rather than the artistry of the author. Taken together, these stories present a view of Faulkner’s developing art over a span of more than thirty years. They embody a wide variety of styles and subject matter. His attitude toward them quite naturally varied too. Some he wrote because he was a craftsman who depended exclusively on his pen for his livelihood and very often had to write what he thought would sell rather than what he wanted to write. Some he wrote for personal pleasure. Others he wrote because they engaged his deepest interests as an artist and led in at least one instance to some of his greatest work.

  Because of William Faulkner’s stature and the importance of his contribution to literature, it is fitting that all of his completed work should be made available in convenient and easily accessible printed form. Some of these stories will be of particular interest to scholars and critics, who hitherto have been able to consult them only by traveling long distances to the libraries which house them. Most of them, it seems to me, will appeal to readers who love fiction. All of them, I think, will be of interest to admirers of his work.

  Excluded here are stories previously collected in Collected Stories of William Faulkner and Knight’s Gambit, incomplete stories such as “Love” and “And Now What’s to Do?,” and excerpts from novels printed in magazines without change, such as “The Waifs” and “Hell Creek Crossing.” Also excluded are The Wishing Tree and Mayday, which, like the one-act play The Marionettes, Faulkner produced and bound himself as presentations and which are readily available in separate editions.

  Where two treatments of the same short-story material exist, as in “Rose of Lebanon” and “A Return,” the one that seemed the better of the two has been used.

  The texts of the unpublished stories have been taken from scripts typed by Faulkner. Editorial alterations of these texts have been kept to a minimum. Idiosyncratic punctuation and certain inconsistencies have been retained but typographical errors and misspellings have been corrected. Problematical material has been printed in brackets.

  The texts of the published stories have been taken from the magazines or monographs in which they appeared, with errors and omissions corrected. Typescripts of these stories which still exist have been collated with the published versions. Manuscript stages of the works are discussed where they throw light on Faulkner’s intentions. When variants between typescripts and published versions go beyond changes in capitalization, indentation, paragraphing, punctuation, and non-substantive changes in words or phrases, the nature of these variants has been described in the Notes. In almost every instance the published story is not only fuller than the typescript version but also more effective, so that though Faulkner may have acceded, sometimes no doubt unwillingly, to mechanical changes required by magazine house style, changes which went beyond these considerations seem to have been dictated mainly by his own characteristic meticulousness in revision. In the cases of stories which were further revised to become parts of books, I have tried to outline the process of growth from inception to completion. The stories are printed here in the order in which they appeared in the magazines, not the order in which they were written or the order in which Faulkner rearranged them in the books. Although some of these stories in their magazine versions are virtually identical with the versions of them in books, others are very different in the two forms, reflecting the quite different aesthetic demands of the short story and the novel.

  Joseph Blotner

  * The stories designated as unpublished had not been published at the time this book went into production. Two among the uncollected stories are called by the same title: “Once Aboard the Lugger.” The second of these has not heretofore been published, but it is printed among the uncollected stories because of its organic connection with its predecessor of the same name.

  I

  STORIES REVISED FOR

  LATER BOOKS

  Ambuscade

  Behind the smokehouse we had a kind of map. Vicksburg was a handful of chips from the woodpile and the river was a trench we had scraped in the packed ground with a hoe, that drank water almost faster than we could fetch it from the well. This afternoon it looked like we would never get it filled, because it hadn’t rained in three weeks. But at last it was damp-colored enough at least, and we were just about to begin, when all of a sudden Loosh was standing there watching us. And then I saw Philadelphy over at the woodpile, watching Loosh.

  “What’s that?” Loosh said.

  “Vicksburg,” I said.

  Then Loosh laughed. He stood there laughing, not loud, not looking at me.

  “Come on here, Loosh,” Philadelphy said. There was something queer about her voice too. “If you wants any supper, you better tote me some wood.” But Loosh just stood there laughing, looking down at Vicksburg. Then he stooped, and with his hand he swept the chips flat.

  “There’s your Vicksburg,” he said.

  “Loosh!” Philadelphy said. But Loosh squatted there, looking at me with that look on his face. I was twelve then; I didn’t know triumph; I didn’t even know the word.

  “And I tell you nuther un you ain’t know,” Loosh said. “Corinth.”

  “Corinth?” I said. Philadelphy had dropped the wood which she held and she was coming fast toward us. “That’s in Mississippi too. That’s not far.”

  “Far don’t matter,” Loosh said. He sounded like he was singing. “Case it’s on the way!”

  “On the way? On the way to what?”

  “Ask your paw,” Loosh said. “Ask Marse John.”

  “He’s at Tennessee. I can’t ask him.”

  “You think he at Tennessee?” Loosh said. “Ain’t no need for him at Tennessee.” Then Philadelphy grabbed him by the arm.

  “Hush your mouth, nigger!” she said. “Come on here and get me some wood.”

  Then they were gone, and Ringo and I standing there looking at each other. “What?” Ringo said. “What he mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I set Vicksburg up again. “There it is.”

  “Loosh laughed,” Ringo said. “He say Corinth too. He laughed at Corinth too. What you reckon he know?”

  “Nothing!” I said. “Do you reckon Loosh knows anything that father don’t know?”

  “Marse John at Tennessee,” Ringo said. “Maybe he ain’t know either.”

  “Do you reckon he’d be away off at Tennessee if there were Yankees at Corinth? Do you reckon that if there were Yankees at Corinth, father and General Pemberton both wouldn’t be here?” I stooped and caught up the dust. But Ringo didn’t move; he just looked at me.

  I threw the dust at him. “I’m General Pemberton!” I said. “Yaaay! Yaaay!” Then we both began and so we didn’t see Louvinia at all. We were throwing the dust fast then and yelling, “Kill the bastuds! Kill them! Kill them!” when all of a sudden she was yelling louder than we were:

  “You, Bayard! You, Ringo!” We stopped. The dust went away and she was standing there with her mouth still open to shout, and I noticed that she did not have on the old hat of father’s that she wore on top of her head rag even when she just stepped out of the kitchen for wood. “What was that word?” she said. “What did I hear you say?” Only she didn’t wait to be answered, and then I saw that she had been running too. “Look who coming up the big road!” she said.

  It was Ringo and I who ran then, on around the house, and Granny standing at the top of the front steps and Jupiter just turning into the gate from the road. And then we stopped. Last spring when father came home we ran down the drive to meet him and I came back standing in one stirrup and Ringo holding to the other one and running. But this time we didn’t, and then I went up the steps and stood by Granny while father came up and stopped, and Jupiter stood with his head down and his chest and belly mud caked where he had crossed at the ford and the dust had dried on it, and Loosh coming around the house to take the bridle.

  “Curry him,” father said. “Give him a good feed. But don’t turn him into the p
asture. Let him stay in the lot.… Well, Miss Rosa,” he said.

  “Well, John,” Granny said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “You have?” father said. He got down stiffly. Loosh led Jupiter away.

  “You rode hard from Tennessee, father,” I said.

  Father looked at me. He put his hand on my shoulder, looking at me. Ringo was standing on the ground.

  “Tennessee sho gaunted you,” he said. “What does they eat up there, Marse John? Does they eat what folks eats?”

  Then I said it, looking at father even while he looked at me: “Loosh says you haven’t been at Tennessee.”

  “Loosh?” father said.

  Then Granny said, “Come in. Louvinia is putting your dinner on the table. You will just have time to wash.”

  That afternoon father and Joby and Loosh and Ringo and I built a pen down in the creek bottom, and just after dark Joby and Loosh and Ringo and I drove the mules and the cow and calf and the sow down there. So it was late when we got back to the house, and when Ringo and I came into the kitchen Louvinia was closing one of the trunks that stay in the attic. And when we sat down to supper, the table was set with the kitchen knives and forks and the sideboard looked bare as a pasture.

  It didn’t take us long to eat, because father had already eaten in the afternoon, and that’s what Ringo and I had been waiting for—for after supper. Back in the spring when father was home before, he sat in his chair in front of the fire and Ringo and I lying on our stomachs on the floor. Then we listened. We heard: The names—Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain—the words, names like Gap and Run that we didn’t have in this country; but mostly the cannon and the flags and the charges and the yelling. Ringo was waiting for me in the hall; we waited until father was settled. Then I said, “How can you fight in mountains, father?”

  He looked at me. “You can’t. You just have to. Now you boys run on to bed.”

  We went up the stairs. But we did not go to our room. We stopped and sat on the top step, back out of the light from the hall lamp. That was the first night I could remember that Louvinia had not followed us upstairs, to stand in the door and vow threats at us while we got into bed; after a while she crossed the hall without even looking up the stairs, and went on into the room where father and Granny were.