Flags in the Dust (16 page)

“It’ll be the best thing they ever done, if they was to recall him and elect a man like Debs or Senator Vardaman president,” the proprietor agreed sagely. “Well, that sure was fine. Henry’s sure a wonder, aint he?” He set his glass down and turned to the door. “Well, you boys make yourselves at home. If you want anything, just call Houston.” And he bustled out at his distracted trot.

“Sit down,” MacCallum said. He drew up a chair, and Bayard drew another up opposite across the table. “Deacon sure ought to know good whisky. He’s drunk enough of it to float his counters right on out the front door.” He filled his glass and pushed the bottle across to Bayard, and they drank again, quietly.

“You look bad, son,” MacCallum said suddenly, and Bayard raised his head and found the other examining him with his keen steady eyes. “Overtrained,” he added, and Bayard made an abrupt gesture of negation and raised his glass again, but he could still feel the other watching him steadily. “Well, you haven’t forgot how to drink good whisky, anyhow.… Why dont you come out and take a hunt with us? Got an old red we been saving for you. Been running him off and on for two years, now, with the young dogs. Aint put old General on him yet, because the old feller’ll nose him out, and we wanted to save him for you boys. John would have enjoyed that fox. You remember that night Johnny cut across down to Samson’s bridge ahead of the dogs, and when we got there, here come him and the fox floating down the river on that drift log, the fox on one end and Johnny on the other, singing that fool song as
loud as he could yell? John would have enjoyed this here fox. He outsmarts them young dogs every time. But old General’ll get him.”

Bayard sat turning his glass in his hand. He reached a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and shook a few of them onto the table at his hand and flipped the packet across to the other. MacCallum drank his toddy steadily and refilled his glass. Bayard lit a cigarette and emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. “You look like hell, boy,” MacCallum repeated.

“Dry, I reckon,” Bayard answered in a voice as level as the other’s. He made himself another toddy, his cigarette smoking on the table edge. He raised the glass, but instead of drinking he held it for a moment to his nose while the muscles at the base of his nostrils tautened whitely, then he swung the glass from him and with a steady hand he emptied it onto the floor. The other watched him quietly while he poured his glass half full of raw liquor and sloshed a little water into it and tilted it down his throat. “I’ve been good too damn long,” he said aloud, and he fell to talking of the war. Not of combat, but rather of a life peopled by young men like fallen angels, and of a meteoric violence like that of fallen angels, beyond heaven or hell and partaking of both: doomed immortality and immortal doom.

MacCallum sat and listened quietly, drinking his whisky steadily and slowly and without appreciable effect, as though it were milk he drank; and Bayard talked on and presently found himself without surprise eating food. The bottle was now less than half full. The negro Houston had brought the food in and had his drink, taking it neat and without batting an eye. “Ef I had a cow dat give dat, de calf wouldn’t git no milk a-tall,” he said, “and I wouldn’t never churn. Thanky, Mr MacCallum, suh.”

Then he was out, and Bayard’s voice went on, filling the
cubby-hole of a room, surmounting the odor of cheap food too quickly cooked and of sharp spilt whisky, with ghosts of a thing high-pitched as a hysteria, like a glare of fallen meteors on the dark retina of the world. Again a light tap at the door, and the proprietor’s egg-shaped head and his hot diffident eyes.

“You gentlemen got everything you want?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his thighs.

“Come and get it,” MacCallum said, jerking his head toward the bottle, and the other made himself a toddy in his stale glass and drank it while Bayard finished his tale of himself and an Australian major and two ladies in the Leicester lounge one evening (the Leicester lounge being out of bounds, and the Anzac lost two teeth and his girl, and Bayard himself got a black eye), watching the narrator with round melting astonishment.

“Great Savior,” he said, “them av’aytors was sure some hellraisers, wadn’t they? Well, I reckon they’re wanting me up front again. You got to keep on the jump to make a living, these days.” And he scuttled out again.

“I’ve been good too goddam long,” Bayard repeated harshly, watching MacCallum fill the two glasses. “That’s the only thing Johnny was ever good for. Kept me from getting in a rut. Bloody rut, with a couple of old women nagging at me, and nothing to do except scare niggers.” He drank his whisky and set the glass down, still clutching it. “Damn ham-handed hun,” he said. “He never could fly anyway. I kept trying to keep him from going up there on that goddam popgun,” and he cursed his dead brother savagely. Then he raised his glass again, but halted it halfway to his mouth. “Where in hell did my drink go?”

MacCallum emptied the bottle into Bayard’s glass, and he drank again and banged the thick tumbler on the table and rose and lurched back against the wall. His chair crashed over
backward, and he braced himself, staring at the other. “I kept on trying to keep him from going up there, with that Camel. But he gave me a burst. Right across my nose.”

MacCallum rose also. “Come on here,” he said quietly, and he offered to take Bayard’s arm, but Bayard evaded him and they passed through the kitchen and traversed the long tunnel of the store. Bayard walked steadily enough, and the proprietor bobbed his head at them across the counter.

“Call again, gentlemen,” he said. “Call again.”

“All right, Deacon,” MacCallum answered. Bayard strode on. As they passed the soda-fountain a young lawyer standing beside a stranger, addressed him.

“Captain Sartoris, shake hands with Mr Gratton here. Gratton was up on the British front last spring.” The stranger turned and extended his hand, but Bayard stared at him bleakly and strode so steadily on that the other involuntarily gave back in order not to be overborne.

“Why, God damn his soul,” he said to Bayard’s back. The lawyer grasped his arm.

“He’s drunk,” he whispered quickly, “he’s drunk.”

“I dont give a damn,” the other exclaimed loudly. “Because he was a goddam shave-tail he thinks——”

“Shhhh, shhhh,” the lawyer hissed. The proprietor came to the corner of his candy case, and peered out with hot round alarm.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. The stranger made another violent movement, and Bayard stopped.

“Wait a minute while I bash his face in,” he told MacCallum, turning. The stranger thrust the lawyer aside and stepped forward.

“You never saw the day—” he began. MacCallum took Bayard’s arm firmly and easily.

“Come on here, boy.”

“I’ll bash his bloody face in,” Bayard stated, looking bleakly at the angry stranger. The lawyer grasped his companion’s arm again.

“Get away,” the stranger said, flinging him off. “Just let him try it. Come on, you limey——”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” the proprietor wailed.

“Come on here, boy,” MacCallum said. “I’ve got to look at a horse.”

“A horse?” Bayard repeated. He turned obediently, then he stopped and looked back. “Cant bash your face in now,” he told the stranger. “Sorry. Got to look at a horse. Call for you later at the hotel.” But the stranger’s back was turned, and behind it the lawyer grimaced and waggled his hand at MacCallum.

“Get him away, MacCallum, for God’s sake.”

“Bash his face in later,” Bayard repeated. “Cant bash yours, though, Eustace,” he told the lawyer. “Taught us in ground-school never seduce a fool nor hit a cripple.”

“Come on, here,” MacCallum repeated, leading him on. At the door Bayard must stop again to light a cigarette; then they went on. It was three oclock and again they walked among school children in released surges. Bayard strode steadily enough, and a little belligerently, and soon MacCallum turned into a side street and they went on, passing negro stores, and between a busy grist mill and a silent cotton gin they turned into a lane filled with tethered horses and mules. From the end of the lane an anvil clanged. They passed the ruby glow of it and a patient horse standing on three legs in the blacksmith’s doorway and the squatting overalled men along the shady wall, and came then to a high barred gate backing a long dun-colored brick tunnel smelling of ammonia. A few men sat on the top of the gate, others leaned their crossed arms upon it, and from the paddock itself came voices, then through
the slatted gate gleamed a haughty motionless shape of burnished flame.

The stallion stood against the yawning cavern of the livery stable door like a motionless bronze flame, and along its burnished coat ran at intervals little tremors of paler flame, little tongues of nervousness and pride. But its eye was quiet and arrogant, and occasionally and with a kingly air its gaze swept along the group at the gate with a fine disdain, without seeing them as individuals at all, and again little tongues of paler flame rippled flicking along its coat. About its head was a rope hackamore; it was tethered to a door post, and in the background a white man moved about at a respectful distance with a proprietorial air: beside him, a negro hostler with a tow sack tied about his middle with a string. MacCallum and Bayard halted at the gate, and the white man circled the stallion’s haughty immobility and crossed to them. The negro hostler came forth also, with a soft dirty cloth and chanting in a mellow singsong. The stallion permitted him to approach and suffered him to erase with his rag the licking nervous little flames that ran in renewed ripples under its skin.

“Aint he a picture, now?” the white man demanded of MacCallum, leaning his elbow on the gate. A cheap nickel watch was attached to his suspender loop by a length of raw hide lace leather worn black and soft with age, and his shaven beard was heaviest from the corners of his mouth to his chin; he looked always as though he were chewing tobacco with his mouth open. He was a horse trader by profession, and he was constantly engaged in litigation with the railroad company over the violent demise of his stock by its agency. “Look at that nigger, now,” he added. “He’ll let Tobe handle him like a baby. I wouldn’t get within ten foot of him, myself. Dam’f I know how Tobe does it. Must be some kin between a nigger and a animal, I always claim.”

“I reckon he’s afraid you’ll be crossing the railroad with him some day about the time 39 is due,” MacCallum said drily.

“Yes, I reckon I have the hardest luck of any feller in this county,” the other agreed. “But they got to settle this time: I got ’em dead to rights this time.”

“Yes,” MacCallum said. “The railroad company ought to furnish that stock of yourn with time tables.” The other onlookers guffawed.

“Ah, the company’s got plenty of money,” the trader rejoined. Then he said: “You talk like I might have druv them mules in front of that train. Lemme tell you how it come about—”

“I reckon you wont never drive him in front of no train.” MacCallum jerked his head toward the stallion. The negro burnished its shimmering coat, crooning to it in a monotonous singsong. The trader laughed.

“I reckon not,” he admitted. “Not less’n Tobe goes, too. Just look at him, now. I wouldn’t no more walk up to that animal than I’d fly.”

“I’m going to ride that horse,” Bayard said suddenly.

“What hoss?” the trader demanded, and the other onlookers watched Bayard climb the gate and vault over into the lot. “You let that hoss alone, young feller,” the trader said. But Bayard paid him no heed. He went on; the stallion swept its regal regard upon him and away. “You let that hoss alone,” the trader shouted, “or I’ll have the law on you.”

“Let him be,” MacCallum said.

“And let him damage a fifteen hundred dollar stallion? That hoss’ll kill him. You, Sartoris!”

From his hip pocket MacCallum drew a wad of bills enclosed by a rubber band. “Let him be,” he repeated. “That’s what he wants.”

The trader glanced at the roll of money with quick calculation. “I take you gentlemen to witness——” he began loudly, then he ceased and they watched tensely as Bayard approached the stallion. The beast swept its haughty glowing eye upon him again and lifted its head without alarm and snorted. The negro glanced over his shoulder and crouched against the animal, and his crooning chant rose to a swifter beat. “Go back, white folks,” he said. The beast snorted again and swept its head up, snapping the rope like a gossamer thread, and the negro grasped at the flying rope-end.

“Git away, white folks,” he cried. “Git away, quick.”

But the stallion eluded his hand. It cropped its teeth in a vicious arc and the negro leaped sprawling as the animal soared like a bronze explosion. Bayard had dodged beneath the sabering hooves and as the horse swirled in a myriad flicking like fire, the spectators saw that the man had contrived to take a turn with the rope-end about its jaws, then they saw the animal rear again, dragging the man from the ground and whipping his body like a rag upon its flashing arc. Then it stopped trembling as Bayard closed its nostrils with the twisted rope, and suddenly he was upon its back while it stood with lowered head and rolling eyes, rippling its coat into quivering tongues before exploding again.

The beast burst like bronze unfolding wings: a fluid desperation; the onlookers tumbled away from the gate and hurled themselves to safety as the gate splintered to matchwood beneath its soaring volcanic thunder. Bayard crouched on its shoulders and dragged its mad head around and they swept down the lane, spreading pandemonium among the horses and mules tethered and patient about the blacksmith shop and among the wagons there. Where the lane debouched into the street a group of negroes scattered before them, and without a break in its stride the stallion soared over a small
negro child clutching a stick of striped candy directly in its path. A wagon drawn by mules was just turning into the lane: these reared madly before the wild slack-jawed face of the white man in the wagon, and again Bayard sawed his thunderbolt around and headed it away from the square. Down the lane behind him the spectators ran, shouting through the dust, the trader among them, and Rafe MacCallum still clutching his roll of money.