Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner Page B

and corduroy breeches, while the carnival man explained the rip-cord and the parachute to him; stoodthere feeling her breath going out faster than she could draw it in again and watched the thing lurch into the air with John sitting on a frail trapeze bar swinging beneath it, with eyes she could not close, saw the balloon and people and all swirl slowly upward and then found herself clinging to Horace behind the shelter of a wagon, trying to get her breath.
    He landed three miles away in a brier thicket and disengaged the parachute and regained the road and hailed a passing negro in a wagon. A mile from town they met old Bayard driving furiously in the carriage and the two vehicles stopped side to side in the road while old Bayard in the one exhausted the accumulate fury of his rage and in the other his grandson sat in his shredded clothes and on his scratched face that look of one who has gained for an instant a desire so fine that its escape was a purifaction, not a loss.
    The next day, as she was passing a store, he emerged with that abrupt violence which he had in common with his brother, pulling short up to avoid a collision with her.
    “Oh, ex——Why, hello,” he said. Beneath the crisscrosses of tape his face was merry and bold and wild, and he wore no hat. For a moment she gazed at him with wide, hopeless eyes, then she clapped her hand to her mouth and went swiftly on, almost running.
    Then he was gone, with his brother, shut away by the war as two noisy dogs are penned in a kennel far away. Miss Jenny gave her news of them, of the dull, dutiful letters they sent home at sparse intervals; then he was dead. But away beyond seas, and there was no body to be returned clumsily to earth, and so to her he seemed still to be laughing at that word as he had laughed at all the other mouthsounds that stood for repose, who had not waited for Time and its furniture to teach him that the end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
    Aunt Sally rocked steadily in her chair.
    “Well, it dont matter which one it was. One’s bad as the other. But I reckon it aint their fault, raised like they were. Rotten spoiled, both of ’em. Lucy Sartoris wouldn’t let anybody control ’em while she lived. If they’d been mine, now.…” She rocked on. “Beat it out of ’em, I would. Raising two wild Indians like that. But those folks, thinking there wasn’t anybody quite as good as a Sartoris. Even Lucy Cranston, come from as good people as there are in the state, acting like it was divine providence that let her marry one Sartoris and be the mother of two more. Pride, false pride.”
    She rocked steadily in her chair. Beneath Narcissa’s hand the cat purred with lazy arrogance.
    “It was a judgment on ’em, taking John instead of that other one. John at least tipped his hat to a lady on the street, but that other boy.……” She rocked monotonously, clapping her feet flatly against the floor. “You better stay away from that boy. He’ll be killing you same as he did that poor little wife of his.”
    “At least, give me benefit of clergy first, Aunt Sally,” Narcissa said. Beneath her hand, beneath the cat’s sleek hide, muscles flowed suddenly into tight knots, like wire, and the animal’s body seemed to elongate like rubber as it whipped from beneath her hand and flashed out of sight across the veranda.
    “Oh,” Narcissa cried. Then she whirled and caught up Aunt Sally’s stick and ran from the room.
    “What—” Aunt Sally said. “You bring my stick back here,” she said. She sat staring at the door, hearing the swift clatter of the other’s heels in the hall and then on the veranda. She rose and leaned in the window. “You bring my stick back here,” she shouted.
    Narcissa sped on across the porch and to the ground. Inthe canna bed beside the veranda the cat, crouching, jerked its head around and its yellow unwinking eyes. Narcissa rushed at it, the stick raised.
    “Put