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

a violet silence soft as milk. “I wish I could, Joe,” she added.

He made no reply and she said: “Don’t you believe me?”

He strode on and she grasped his arm, stopping. He faced her and in her firm sexless embrace he stood staring at the blur of her face almost on a level with his own, in longing and despair. (Uhuh, kissing! crowed young Robert Saunders, releasing his cramped limbs, trailing them like an Indian.)

They then turned and walked on, out of his sight. Night was almost come: only the footprint of day, only the odor of day, only a rumor, a ghost of light among the trees.

V

He burst into his sister’s room. She was fixing her hair and she saw him in the mirror, panting and regrettably soiled.

“Get out, you little beast,” she said.

Undaunted, he gave his news: “Say, she’s in love with Donald, that other one says, and I seen them kissing.”

Her arrested hands bloomed delicately in her hair.

“Who is?”

“That other lady at Donald’s house.”

“Saw her kissing Donald?”

“Naw, kissing that soldier feller that ain’t got no scar.”

“Did she say she was in love with Donald?” she turned, trying to grasp her brother’s arm.

“Naw, but that soldier said she is and she never said nothing. So I guess she is, don’t you?”

“The cat! I’ll fix her.”

“That’s right,” he commended. “That’s what I told her when she sneaked up on me nekkid. I knowed you wouldn’t let no woman beat you out of Donald.”

VI

Emmy put supper on the table. The house was quiet and dark. No lights yet. She went to the study door. Mahon and his father sat in the dusk, quietly watching the darkness come slow and soundless as a measured respiration. Donald’s head was in silhouette against a fading window and Emmy saw it and felt her heart contract as she remembered that head above her against the sky, on a night long, long ago.

But now the back of it was toward her and he no longer remembered her. She entered that room silently as the twilight itself and standing beside his chair, looking down upon his thin worn hair that had once been so wild, so soft, she drew his unresisting head against her hard little hip. His face was quiet under her slow hand, and as she gazed out into the twilight upon which they two gazed she tasted the bitter ashes of an old sorrow and she bent suddenly over his devastated head, moaning against it, making no sound.

The rector stirred heavily in the dusk. “That you, Emmy?”

“Supper’s ready,” she said quietly. Mrs. Powers and Gilligan mounted the steps on to the veranda.

VII

Doctor Gary could waltz with a level glass of water on his head, without spilling a drop. He did not care for the more modern dances, the nervous ones. “All jumping around⁠—like monkeys. Why try to do something a beast can do so much better?” he was wont to say. “But a waltz, now. Can a dog waltz, or a cow?” He was a smallish man, bald and dapper, and women liked him. Such a nice bedside manner. Doctor Gary was much in demand, both professionally and socially. He had also served in a French hospital in ’14, ’15, and ’16. “Like hell,” he described it. “Long alleys of excrement and red paint.”

Doctor Gary, followed by Gilligan, descended nattily from Donald’s room, smoothing the set of his coat, dusting his hands with a silk handkerchief. The rector appeared hugely from his study, saying: “Well, Doctor?”

Doctor Gary rolled a slender cigarette from a cloth sack, returning the sack to its lair in his cuff. When carried in his pocket it made a bulge in the cloth. He struck a match.

“Who feeds him at table?”

The rector, surprised, answered: “Emmy has been giving him his meals⁠—helping him, that is,” he qualified.

“Put it in his mouth for him?”

“No, no. She merely guides his hand. Why do you ask?”

“Who dresses and undresses him?”

“Mr. Gilligan here assists him. But why⁠—”

“Have to dress and undress him like a baby, don’t you?” he turned sharply to Gilligan.

“Kind of,” Gilligan admitted. Mrs. Powers came out of the study and Doctor Gary nodded briefly to her. The rector said:

“But why do you ask, Doctor?”

The doctor looked at him sharply. “Why? Why?” he turned to Gilligan. “Tell him,” he snapped.

The rector gazed at Gilligan. Don’t say it, his eyes seemed to plead. Gilligan’s glance fell. He stood dumbly gazing at his feet and the doctor said abruptly: “Boy’s blind. Been blind three or four days. How you didn’t know it I can’t see.” He settled his coat and took his derby hat. “Why didn’t you tell?” he asked Gilligan. “You knew, didn’t you? Well, no matter. I’ll look in again tomorrow. Good day, madam. Good day.”

Mrs. Powers took the rector’s arm. “I hate that man,” she said. “Damn little snob. But don’t you mind, Uncle Joe. Remember, that Atlanta doctor told us he would lose his sight. But doctors don’t know everything: who knows, perhaps when he gets strong and well he can have his sight restored.”

“Yes, yes,” the rector agreed, clinging to straws. “Let’s get him well and then we can see.”

He turned heavily and reentered his study. She and Gilligan looked at one another a long moment.

“I could weep for him, Joe.”

“So could I⁠—if it would do any good,” he answered sombrely. “But for God’s sake, keep people out today.”

“I intend to. But it’s hard to refuse them: they mean so well, so kind and neighborly.”

“Kind, hell. They are just like that Saunders brat: come to see his scar. Come in and mill around and ask him how he got it and if it hurt. As if he knowed or cared.”

“Yes. But they shan’t come in and stare at his poor head any more. We won’t let them in, Joe. Tell them he is not well, tell them anything.”

She entered the study. The rector sat in his desk, a pen poised above an