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  To hell with your money

  No no come on I belong to the family now see I know how it is with a young fellow he has lots of private affairs it’s always pretty hard to get the old man to stump up for I know havent I been there and not so long ago either but now I’m getting married and all specially up there come on dont be a fool listen when we get a chance for a real talk I want to tell you about a little widow over in town

  I’ve heard that too keep your damned money

  Call it a loan then just shut your eyes a minute and you’ll be fifty

  Keep your hands off of me you’d better get that cigar off the mantel

  Tell and be damned then see what it gets you if you were not a damned fool you’d have seen that I’ve got them too tight for any half-baked Galahad of a brother your mother’s told me about your sort with your head swelled up come in oh come in dear Quentin and I were just getting acquainted talking about Harvard did you want me cant stay away from the old man can she

  Go out a minute Herbert I want to talk to Quentin

  Come in come in let’s all have a gabfest and get acquainted I was just telling Quentin

  Go on Herbert go out a while

  Well all right then I suppose you and bubber do want to see one another once more eh

  You’d better take that cigar off the mantel

  Right as usual my boy then I’ll toddle along let them order you around while they can Quentin after day after tomorrow it’ll be pretty please to the old man wont it dear give us a kiss honey

  Oh stop that save that for day after tomorrow

  I’ll want interest then dont let Quentin do anything he cant finish oh by the way did I tell Quentin the story about the man’s parrot and what happened to it a sad story remind me of that think of it yourself ta-ta see you in the funnypaper

  Well

  Well

  What are you up to now

  Nothing

  You’re meddling in my business again didn’t you get enough of that last summer

  Caddy you’ve got fever You’re sick how are you sick

  I’m just sick. I cant ask.

  Shot his voice through the

  Not that blackguard Caddy

  Now and then the river glinted beyond things in sort of swooping glints, across noon and after. Well after now, though we had passed where he was still pulling upstream majestical in the face of god gods. Better. Gods. God would be canaille too in Boston Massachusetts. Or maybe just not a husband. The wet oars winking him along in bright winks and female palms. Adulant. Adulant if not a husband he’d ignore God. That blackguard, Caddy The river glinted away beyond a swooping curve.

  I’m sick you’ll have to promise

  Sick how are you sick

  I’m just sick I cant ask anybody yet promise you will

  If they need any looking after it’s because of you how are you sick Under the window we could hear the car leaving for the station, the 8:10 train. To bring back cousins. Heads. Increasing himself head by head but not barbers. Manicure girls. We had a blood horse once. In the stable yes, but under leather a cur. Quentin has shot all of their voices through the floor of Caddy’s room

  The car stopped. I got off, into the middle of my shadow. A road crossed the track. There was a wooden marquee with an old man eating something out of a paper bag, and then the car was out of hearing too. The road went into the trees, where it would be shady, but June foliage in New England not much thicker than April at home in Mississippi. I could see a smoke stack. I turned my back to it, tramping my shadow into the dust. There was something terrible in me sometimes at night I could see it grinning at me I could see it through them grinning at me through their faces it’s gone now and I’m sick

  Caddy

  Dont touch me just promise

  If you’re sick you cant

  Yes I can after that it’ll be all right it wont matter dont let them send him to Jackson promise

  I promise Caddy Caddy

  Dont touch me dont touch me

  What does it look like Caddy

  What

  That that grins at you that thing through them

  I could still see the smoke stack. That’s where the water would be, heading out to the sea and the peaceful grottoes. Tumbling peacefully they would, and when He said Rise only the flatirons. When Versh and I hunted all day we wouldn’t take any lunch, and at twelve oclock I’d get hungry. I’d stay hungry until about one, then all of a sudden I’d even forget that I wasn’t hungry anymore. The street lamps go down the hill then heard the car go down the hill. The chair-arm fiat cool smooth under my forehead shaping the chair the apple tree leaning on my hair above the eden clothes by the nose seen You’ve got fever I felt it yesterday it’s like being near a stove.

  Dont touch me.

  Caddy you cant do it if you are sick. That blackguard.

  I’ve got to marry somebody. Then they told me the bone would have to be broken again

  At last I couldn’t see the smoke stack. The road went beside a wall. Trees leaned over the wall, sprayed with sunlight. The stone was cool. Walking near it you could feel the coolness. Only our country was not like this country. There was something about just walking through it. A kind of still and violent fecundity that satisfied ever bread-hunger like. Flowing around you, not brooding and nursing every niggard stone. Like it were put to makeshift for enough green to go around among the trees and even the blue of distance not that rich chimaera. told me the bone would have to be broken again and inside me it began to say Ah Ah Ah and I began to sweat. What do I care I know what a broken leg is all it is it wont be anything I’ll just have to stay in the house a little longer that’s all and my jaw-muscles getting numb and my mouth saying Wait Wait just a minute through the sweat ah ah ah behind my teeth and Father damn that horse damn that horse. Wait it’s my fault. He came along the fence every morning with a basket toward the kitchen dragging a stick along the fence every morning I dragged myself to the window cast and all and laid for him with a piece of coal Dilsey said you goin to ruin yoself aint you got no mo sense than that not fo days since you bruck hit. Wait I’ll get used to it in a minute wait just a minute I’ll get

  Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long. A dog’s voice carries further than a train, in the darkness anyway. And some people’s. Niggers. Louis Hatcher never even used his horn carrying it and that old lantern. I said, “Louis, when was the last time you cleaned that lantern?”

  “I cleant hit a little while back. You member when all dat flood-watter wash dem folks away up yonder? I cleant hit dat ve’y day, Old woman and me settin fore de fire dat night and she say ‘Louis, whut you gwine do ef dat flood git out dis fur?’ and I say ‘Dat’s a fack. I reckon I had better clean dat lantun up.’ So I cleant hit dat night.”

  “That flood was way up in Pennsylvania,” I said. “It couldn’t even have got down this far.”

  “Dat’s whut you says,” Louis said. “Watter kin git des ez high en wet in Jefferson ez hit kin in Pennsylvaney, I reckon. Hit’s de folks dat says de high watter cant git dis fur dat comes floatin out on de ridge-pole, too.”

  “Did you and Martha get out that night?”

  “We done jest that. I cleant dat lantun and me and her sot de balance of de night on top o dat knoll back de graveyard. En ef I’d a knowed of aihy one higher, we’d a been on hit instead.”

  “And you haven’t cleaned that lantern since then.”

  “Whut I want to clean hit when dey aint no need?”

  “You mean, until another flood comes along?”

  “Hit kep us outen dat un.”

  “Oh, come on, Uncle Louis,” I said.

  “Yes, suh. You do you way en I do mine. Ef all I got to do ta keep outen de high watter is to clean dis yere lantun, I wont quoil wid no man.”

  “Unc’ Louis wouldn’t ketch nothin wid a light he could see by,” Versh said.

  “I wuz huntin possums in dis country when dey was
still drowndin nits in yo pappy’s head wid coal oil, boy,” Louis said. “Ketchin um, too.”

  “Dat’s de troof,” Versh said. “I reckon Unc’ Louis done caught mo possums than aihy man in dis country.”

  “Yes, suh,” Louis said, “I got plenty light fer possums to see, all right. I aint heard non o dem complainin. Hush, now. Dar he. Whooey. Hum awn, dawg.” And we’d sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis’ voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo. Got to marry somebody

  Have there been very many Caddy

  I dont know too many will you look after Benjy and Father

  You dont know whose it is then does he know

  Dont touch me will you look after Benjy and Father

  I began to feel the water before I came to the bridge. The bridge was of grey stone, lichened, dappled with slow moisture where the fungus crept. Beneath it the water was clear and still in the shadow, whispering and clucking about the stone in fading swirls of spinning sky. Caddy that

  I’ve got to marry somebody Versh told me about a man mutilated himself. He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a ditch. A broken razor, flinging them backward over his shoulder the same motion complete the jerked skein of blood backward not looping. But that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them then I could say O That That’s Chinese I dont know Chinese. And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.

  Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory. And after awhile the flatirons would come floating up. I hid them under the end of the bridge and went back and leaned on the rail.

  I could not see the bottom, but I could see a long way into the motion of the water before the eye gave out, and then I saw a shadow hanging like a fat arrow stemming into the current. Mayflies skimmed in and out of the shadow of the bridge just above the surface. If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror he-yond the clean flame The arrow increased without motion, then in a quick swirl the trout lipped a fly beneath the surface with that sort of gigantic delicacy of an elephant picking up a peanut. The fading vortex drifted away downstream and then I saw the arrow again, nose into the current, wavering delicately to the motion of the water above which the Mayflies slanted and poised. Only you and me then amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame

  The trout hung, delicate and motionless among the wavering shadows. Three boys with fishing poles came onto the bridge and we leaned on the rail and looked down at the trout. They knew the fish. He was a neighbourhood character.

  “They’ve been trying to catch that trout for twenty-five years. There’s a store in Boston offers a twenty-five dollar fishing rod to anybody that can catch him.”

  “Why dont you all catch him, then? Wouldnt you like to have a twenty-five dollar fishing rod?”

  “Yes,” they said. They leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout. “I sure would,” one said.

  “I wouldnt take the rod,” the second said. “I’d take the money instead.”

  “Maybe they wouldnt do that,” the first said. “I bet he’d make you take the rod.”

  “Then I’d sell it.”

  “You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for it.”

  “I’d take what I could get, then. I can catch just as many fish with this pole as I could with a twenty-five dollar one.” Then they talked about what they would do with twenty-five dollars. They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

  “I’d buy a horse and wagon,” the second said.

  “Yes you would,” the others said.

  “I would. I know where I can buy one for twenty-five dollars. I know the man.”

  “Who is it?”

  “That’s all right who it is. I can buy it for twenty-five dollars.”

  “Yah,” the others said, “He dont know any such thing. He’s just talking.”

  “Do you think so?” the boy said. They continued to jeer at him, but he said nothing more. He leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout which he had already spent, and suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was gone from their voices, as if to them too it was as though he had captured the fish and bought his horse and wagon, they too partaking of that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue, and for a while I could feel the other two seeking swiftly for some means by which to cope with him, to rob him of his horse and wagon.

  “You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for that pole,” the first said. “I bet anything you couldnt.”

  “He hasnt caught that trout yet,” the third said suddenly, then they both cried:

  “Yah, wha’d I tell you? What’s the man’s name? I dare you to tell. There aint any such man.”

  “Ah, shut up,” the second said. “Look, Here he comes again.” They leaned on the rail, motionless, identical, their poles slanting slenderly in the sunlight, also identical. The trout rose without haste, a shadow in faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly downstream. “Gee,” the first one murmured.

  “We dont try to catch him anymore,” he said. “We just watch Boston folks that come out and try.”

  “Is he the only fish in this pool?”

  “Yes. He ran all the others out. The best place to fish around here is down at the Eddy.”

  “No it aint,” the second said. “It’s better at Bigelow’s Mill two to one.” Then they argued for a while about which was the best fishing and then left off all of a sudden to watch the trout rise again and the broken swirl of water suck down a little of the sky. I asked how far it was to the nearest town. They told me.

  “But the closest car line is that way,” the second said, pointing back down the road. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. Just walking.”

  “You from the college?”

  “Yes. Are there any factories in that town?”

  “Factories?” They looked at me.

  “No,” the second said. “Not there.” They looked at my clothes. “You looking for work?”

  “How about Bigelow’s Mill?” the third said. “That’s a factory.”

  “Factory my eye. He means a sure enough factory.”

  “One with a whistle,” I said. “I havent heard any one oclock whistles yet.”

  “Oh,” the second said. “There’s a clock in the Unitarian steeple. You can find out the time from that. Havent you got a watch on that chain?”

  “I broke it this morning.” I showed them my watch. They examined it gravely.


  “It’s still running,” the second said. “What does a watch like that cost?”

  “It was a present,” I said. “My father gave it to me when I graduated from high school.”

  “Are you a Canadian?” the third said. He had red hair.

  “Canadian?”

  “He dont talk like them,” the second said. “I’ve heard them talk. He talks like they do in minstrel shows.”

  “Say,” the third said, “aint you afraid he’ll hit you?”

  “Hit me?”

  “You said he talks like a coloured man.”

  “Ah, dry up,” the second said. “You can see the steeple when you get over that hill there.”

  I thanked them. “I hope you have good luck. Only dont catch that old fellow down there. He deserves to be let alone.”

  “Cant anybody catch that fish,” the first said. They leaned on the rail, looking down into the water, the three poles like three slanting threads of yellow fire in the sun. I walked upon my shadow, tramping it into the dappled shade of trees again. The road curved, mounting away from the water. It crossed the hill, then descended winding, carrying the eye, the mind on ahead beneath a still green tunnel, and the square cupola above the trees and the round eye of the clock but far enough. I sat down at the roadside. The grass was ankle deep, myriad. The shadows on the road were as still as if they had been put there with a stencil, with slanting pencils of sunlight. But it was only a train, and after a while it died away beyond the trees, the long sound, and then I could hear my watch and the train dying away, as though it were running through another month or another summer somewhere, rushing away under the poised gull and all things rushing. Except Gerald: He would be sort of grand too, pulling in lonely state across the noon, rowing himself right out of noon, up the long bright air like an apotheosis, mounting into a drowsing infinity where only he and the gull, the one terrifically motionless, the other in a steady and measured pull and recover that partook of inertia itself, the world punily beneath their shadows on the sun. Caddy that blackguard that blackguard Caddy