Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕

“I want to talk to you, Joe. About him,” she added quickly, feeling Gilligan’s stare. “Can you listen or had you rather go to bed and talk it over in the morning?”

Gilligan, focusing his eyes, answered:

“Why, now suits me. Always oblige a lady.”

Making her decision suddenly she said:

“Come in my room then.”

“Sure: lemme get my bottle and I’m your man.”

She returned to her room while he sought his bottle and when he joined her she was sitting on her bed clasping her knees, wrapped in a blanket. Gilligan drew up a chair.

“Joe, do you know he’s going blind?” she said abruptly.

After a time her face became a human face and holding it in his vision he said:

“I know more than that. He’s going to die.”

“Die?”

“Yes, ma’am. If I ever seen death in a man’s face, it’s in his. Goddam this world,” he burst out suddenly.

“Shhh!” she whispered.

“That’s right, I forgot,” he said swiftly.

She clasped her knees, huddled beneath the blanket, changing the position of her body as it became cramped, feeling the wooden headboard of the bed, wondering why there were not iron beds, wondering why everything was as it was⁠—iron beds, why you deliberately took certain people to break your intimacy, why these people died, why you yet took others.⁠ ⁠… Will my death be like this: fretting and exasperating? Am I cold by nature, or have I spent all my emotional coppers, that I don’t seem to feel things like others? Dick, Dick. Ugly and dead.

Gilligan sat brittlely in his chair, focusing his eyes with an effort, having those instruments of vision evade him, slimy as broken eggs. Lights completing a circle, an orbit; she with two faces sitting on two beds, clasping four arms around her knees.⁠ ⁠… Why can’t a man be very happy or very unhappy? It’s only a sort of pale mixture of the two. Like beer when you want a shot⁠—or a drink of water. Neither one nor the other.

She moved and drew the blanket closer about her. Spring in an airshaft, the rumor of spring; but in the room steam heat suggested winter, dying away.

“Let’s have a drink, Joe.”

He rose careful and brittle and walking with meticulous deliberation he fetched a carafe and glasses. She drew a small table near them and Gilligan prepared two drinks. She drank and set the glass down. He lit a cigarette for her.

“It’s a rotten old world, Joe.”

“You damn right. And dying ain’t the half of it.”

“Dying?”

“In his case, I mean. Trouble is, he probably won’t die soon enough.”

“Not die soon enough?”

Gilligan drained his glass. “I got the low down on him, see. He’s got a girl at home: folks got ’em engaged when they was young, before he went off to war. And do you know what she’s going to do when she sees his face?” he asked, staring at her. At last her two faces became one face and her hair was black. Her mouth was like a scar.

“Oh, no, Joe. She wouldn’t do that.” She sat up. The blanket slipped from her shoulders and she replaced it, watching him intently.

Gilligan breaking the orbit of visible things by an effort of will said:

“Don’t you kid yourself. I’ve seen her picture. And the last letter he had from her.”

“He didn’t show them to you!” she said quickly.

“That’s all right about that. I seen ’em.”

“Joe. You didn’t go through his things?”

“Hell, ma’am, ain’t I and you trying to help him? Suppose I did do something that ain’t exactly according to holy Hoyle: you know damn well that I can help him⁠—if I don’t let a whole lot of don’ts stop me. And if I know I’m right there ain’t any don’ts or anything else going to stop me.”

She looked at him and he hurried on:

“I mean, you and I know what to do for him, but if you are always letting a gentleman don’t do this and a gentleman don’t do that interfere, you can’t help him. Do you see?”

“But what makes you so sure she will turn him down?”

“Why, I tell you I seen that letter: all the old bunk about knights of the air and the romance of battle, that even the fat crying ones outgrow soon as the excitement is over and uniforms and being wounded ain’t only not stylish no more, but it is troublesome.”

“But aren’t you taking a lot for granted, not to have seen her, even?”

“I’ve seen that photograph: one of them flighty-looking pretty ones with lots of hair. Just the sort would have got herself engaged to him.”

“How do you know it is still on? Perhaps she has forgotten him. And he probably doesn’t remember her, you know.”

“That ain’t it. If he don’t remember her he’s all right. But if he will know his folks he will want to believe that something in his world ain’t turned upside down.”

They were silent a while, then Gilligan said: “I wish I could have knowed him before. He’s the kind of a son I would have liked to have.” He finished his drink.

“Joe, how old are you?”

“Thirty-two, ma’am.”

“How did you ever learn so much about us?” she asked with interest, watching him.

He grinned briefly. “It ain’t knowing, it’s just saying things. I think I done it through practice. By talking so much,” he replied with sardonic humor. “I talk so much I got to say the right thing sooner or later. You don’t talk much, yourself.”

“Not much,” she agreed. She moved carelessly and the blanket slipped entirely, exposing her thin nightdress; raising her arms and twisting her body to replace it her long shank was revealed and her turning ankle and her bare foot.

Gilligan without moving said: “Ma’am, let’s get married.”

She huddled quickly in the blanket again, already knowing a faint disgust with herself.

“Bless your heart, Joe. Don’t you know my name is Mrs.?”

“Sure. And I know, too, you ain’t got any husband. I dunno where he is or what you done with him, but you ain’t got a