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

same time seemed to linger about her like a rumor of a far despair.

Tree trunks taking light from the moon, streaks of moonlight in the water⁠—she could almost imagine she saw him standing there across the pool with her beside him; leaning above the water she could almost see them darting keen and swift and naked, flashing in the moon.

She could feel earth strike through her clothes against legs and belly and elbows⁠ ⁠… the dog bayed again, hopeless and sorrowful, dying, dying away.⁠ ⁠… After a while she rose slowly, feeling her damp clothes, thinking of the long walk home. Tomorrow was washday.

V

“Damn!” said Mrs. Mahon, staring at the bulletin board. Gilligan, setting down her smart leather bags against the station wall, remarked briefly:

“Late?”

“Thirty minutes. What beastly luck!”

“Well, can’t be helped. Wanta go back to the house and wait?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t like these abortive departures. Get my ticket, please.” She gave him her purse and standing on tiptoe to see her reflection in a raised window she did a few deft things to her hat. Then she sauntered along the platform to the admiration of those casuals always to be found around small railway stations anywhere in these United States. And yet Continentals labor under the delusion that we spend all our time working!

Freedom comes with the decision: it does not wait for the act. She felt freer, more at peace with herself than she had felt for months. But I won’t think about that, she decided deliberately. It is best just to be free, not to let it into the conscious mind. To be consciously anything argues a comparison, a bond with antithesis. Live in your dream, do not attain it⁠—else comes satiety. Or sorrow, which is worse, I wonder? Dr. Mahon and his dream: reft, restored, reft again. Funny for someone, I guess. And Donald, with his scar and his stiffened hand quiet in the warm earth, in the warmth and the dark, where the one cannot hurt him and the other he will not need. No dream for him! The ones with whom he now sleeps don’t care what his face looks like. Per ardua ad astra.⁠ ⁠… And Jones, what dream is his? “Nightmare, I hope,” she said aloud, viciously, and one collarless and spitting tobacco said Ma’am? with interest.

Gilligan reappeared with her ticket.

“You’re a nice boy, Joe,” she told him, receiving her purse.

He ignored her thanks. “Come on, let’s walk a ways.”

“Will my bags be all right there, do you think?”

“Sure.” He looked about, then beckoned to a negro youth reclining miraculously on a steel cable that angled up to a telephone pole. “Here, son.”

The negro said Suh? without moving. “Git up dar, boy. Dat white man talkin’ to you,” said a companion, squatting on his heels against the wall. The lad rose and a coin spun arcing from Gilligan’s hand.

“Keep your eye on them bags till I come back, will you?”

“Awright, cap’m.” The boy slouched over to the bags and became restfully and easily static beside them, going to sleep immediately, like a horse.

“Damn ’em, they do what you say, but they make you feel so⁠—so⁠—”

“Immature, don’t they?” she suggested.

“That’s it. Like you was a kid or something and that they’d look after you even if you don’t know exactly what you want.”

“You are a funny sort, Joe. And nice. Too nice to waste.”

Her profile was sharp, pallid against a doorway darkly opened. “I’m giving you a chance not to waste me.”

“Come on, let’s walk a bit.” She took his arm and moved slowly along the track, conscious that her ankles were being examined. The two threads of steel ran narrowing and curving away beyond trees. If you could see them as far as you can see, farther than you can see.⁠ ⁠…

“Huh?” asked Gilligan, walking moodily beside her.

“Look at the spring, Joe. See, in the trees: summer is almost here, Joe.”

“Yes, summer is almost here. Funny, ain’t it? I’m always kind of surprised to find that things get on about the same, spite of us. I guess old nature does too much of a wholesale business to ever be surprised at us, let alone worrying if we ain’t quite the fellows we think we ought to of been.”

Holding his arm, walking a rail: “What kind of fellows do we think we ought to have been, Joe?”

“I don’t know what kind of a fel⁠—I mean girl you think you are and I don’t know what kind of a fellow I think I am, but I know you and I tried to help nature make a good job out of a poor one without having no luck at it.”

Flat leaves cupped each a drop of sunlight and the trees seemed coolly on fire with evening. Here was a wooden footbridge crossing a stream and a footpath mounting a hill. “Let’s sit on the rail of the bridge,” she suggested, guiding him toward it. Before he could help her she had turned her back to the rail and her straightening arms raised her easily. She hooked her heels over a lower rail and he mounted beside her. “Let’s have a cigarette.”

She produced a pack from her handbag and he accepted one, scraping a match. “Who has had any luck in this business?” she asked.

“The loot has.”

“No, he hasn’t. When you are married you are either lucky or unlucky, but when you are dead you aren’t either: you aren’t anything.”

“That’s right. He don’t have to bother about his luck any more.⁠ ⁠… The padre’s lucky, though.”

“How?”

“Well, if you have hard luck and your hard luck passes away, ain’t you lucky?”

“I don’t know. You are too much for me now, Joe.”

“And how about that girl? Fellow’s got money, I hear, and no particular brains. She’s lucky.”

“Do you think she’s satisfied?” Gilligan gazed at her attentively, not replying. “Think how much fun she could have got out of being so romantically widowed, and so young. I’ll bet she’s cursing her luck this minute.”

He regarded her with admiration.