The Unvanquished by William Faulkner Page B

recognise only through hearsay when he saw it: “Where is it? Where?”
    “You’ll have to wait for it,” I said.
    “Seem like I been waiting on hit all my life,” he said. “I reckon you’ll tell me next the Yankees done moved hit too.”
    The sun was going down. Because suddenly I saw it shining level across the place where the house should have been and there was no house there. And I was not surprised; I remember that; I was just feeling sorry for Ringo, since (I was just fourteen then) if the house was gone, they would have taken the railroad too, since anybody would rather have a railroad than a house. We didn’t stop; we just looked quietly at the same mound of ashes, the same four chimneys standing gaunt and blackened in the sun like the chimneys at home. When we reached the gate Cousin Denny was running down the drive toward us. He was ten; he ran up to the wagon with his eyes round and his mouth already open for hollering. “Denny,” Granny said. “Do you know us?”
    “Yessum,” Cousin Denny said. He looked at me, hollering. “Great God, come——”
    “Where’s your mother?” Granny said.
    “In Jingus’ cabin,” Cousin Denny said; he didn’t even look at Granny. “They burnt the house.—Great God,” he hollered, “come see what They done to the railroad!”
    We ran, all three of us. Granny hollered something and I turned and put the parasol back into the wagon and hollered Yessum back at her and ran on and caught up with Cousin Denny and Ringo in the road and we ran on over the hill and then it came in sight. When Granny and I were here before Cousin Denny showed me the railroad but he was so little then that Jingus had to carry him. It was the straightest thing I ever saw, running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees and the ground too and full of sunlight like water in a river only straighter than any river, with the crossties cut off even and smooth and neat and the light shining on the rails like on two spider threads running straight on to where you couldn’t even see that far. It looked clean and neat, like the yard behind Louvinia’s cabin after she had swept it on Saturday morning, with those two little threads that didn’t look strong enough for anything to run on, running straight and fast and light like they were getting up speed to jump clean off the world. Jingus knew when the train would come, he held my hand and carried Cousin Denny and we stood between the rails and he showed us where it would come from, and then heshowed us where the shadow of a dead pine would come to a stob he had driven in the ground and then you would hear the whistle. And we got back and watched the shadow and then we heard it; it whistled and then it got louder and louder fast and Jingus went to the track and took his hat off and held it out with his face turned back toward us and his mouth hollering “Watch now! Watch!” even after we couldn’t hear him for the train; and then it passed. It came roaring up and went past; the river they had cut through the trees was all full of smoke and noise and sparks and jumping brass and then empty again and just Jingus’ old hat bouncing and jumping along the empty track behind it like the hat was alive. But this time what I saw was something that looked like piles of black straws heaped up every few yards and we ran into the cut and we could see where they had dug the ties up and piled them and set them on fire. But Cousin Denny was still hollering. “Come see what They done to the rails,” he said. They were back in the trees; it looked like four or five men had taken each rail and tied it around a tree like you knot a green cornstalk around a wagon stake, and Ringo was hollering too now.
    “What’s them?” he hollered. “What’s them?”
    “That’s what it runs on!” Cousin Denny hollered.
    “You mean hit have to come in here and run up and down around these here trees like a squirrel?” Ringo