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re: Midnight sleepy time reading, an ode to Auburn.
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:01 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:01 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
5
minimum not to be dwarfed by anything - the flat, wide, black hat, the formal coat of broadcloth which had
once been black but which had now the friction-glazed greenish cast of the bodies of old house flies, the
lifted sleeve which was too large, the lifted hand like a curled claw. The door opened so promptly that the
boy knew the Negro must have been watching them all the time, an old man with neat grizzled hair, in a
linen jacket, who stood barring the door with his body, saying, "Wipe yo foots, white man, fo you come in
here. Major ain't home nohow."
"Get out of my way, ****," his father said, without heat too, flinging the door back and the Negro also
and entering, his hat still on his head. And now the boy saw the prints of the stiff foot on the doorjamb and
saw them appear on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the foot which seemed to bear
(or transmit) twice the weight which the body compassed. The Negro was shouting "Miss Lula! Miss Lula!"
somewhere behind them, then the boy, deluged as though by a warm wave by a suave turn of carpeted
stair and a pendant glitter of chandeliers and a mute gleam of gold frames, heard the swift feet and saw
her too, a lady - perhaps he had never seen her like before either - in a gray, smooth gown with lace at
the throat and an apron tied at the waist and the sleeves turned back, wiping cake or biscuit dough from
her hands with a towel as she came up the hall, looking not at his father at all but at the tracks on the
blond rug with an expression of incredulous amazement.
"I tried," the Negro cried. "I tole him to…"
"Will you please go away?" she said in a shaking voice. "Major de Spain is not at home. Will you please
go away?"
His father had not spoken again. He did not speak again. He did not even look at her. He just stood stiff in
the center of the rug, in his hat, the shaggy iron-gray brows twitching slightly above the pebble-colored
eyes as he appeared to examine the house with brief deliberation. Then with the same deliberation he
turned; the boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning,
leaving a final long and fading smear. His father never looked at it, he never once looked down at the rug.
The Negro held the door. It closed behind them, upon the hysteric and indistinguishable woman-wail. His
father stopped at the top of the steps and scraped his boot clean on the edge of it. At the gate he stopped
again. He stood for a moment, planted stiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at the house. "Pretty and white,
ain't it?" he said. "That's sweat. **** sweat. Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he
wants to mix some white sweat with it."
Two hours later the boy was chopping wood behind the house within which his mother and aunt and the
two sisters (the mother and aunt, not the two girls, he knew that; even at this distance and muffled by
walls the flat loud voices of the two girls emanated an incorrigible idle inertia) were setting up the stove to
prepare a meal, when he heard the hooves and saw the linen-clad man on a fine sorrel mare, whom he
recognized even before he saw the rolled rug in front of the Negro youth following on a fat bay carriage
horse - a suffused, angry face vanishing, still at full gallop, beyond the corner of the house where his
father and brother were sitting in the two tilted chairs; and a moment later, almost before he could have
put the axe down, he heard the hooves again and watched the sorrel mare go back out of the yard,
already galloping again.
Then his father began to shout one of the sisters' names, who presently emerged backward from the
kitchen door dragging the rolled rug along the ground by one end while the other sister walked behind it.
"If you ain't going to tote, go on and set up the wash pot," the first said.
"You, Sarty!" the second shouted, "Set up the wash pot!" His father appeared at the door, framed against
that shabbiness, as he had been against that other bland perfection, impervious to either, the mother's
anxious face at his shoulder.
minimum not to be dwarfed by anything - the flat, wide, black hat, the formal coat of broadcloth which had
once been black but which had now the friction-glazed greenish cast of the bodies of old house flies, the
lifted sleeve which was too large, the lifted hand like a curled claw. The door opened so promptly that the
boy knew the Negro must have been watching them all the time, an old man with neat grizzled hair, in a
linen jacket, who stood barring the door with his body, saying, "Wipe yo foots, white man, fo you come in
here. Major ain't home nohow."
"Get out of my way, ****," his father said, without heat too, flinging the door back and the Negro also
and entering, his hat still on his head. And now the boy saw the prints of the stiff foot on the doorjamb and
saw them appear on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the foot which seemed to bear
(or transmit) twice the weight which the body compassed. The Negro was shouting "Miss Lula! Miss Lula!"
somewhere behind them, then the boy, deluged as though by a warm wave by a suave turn of carpeted
stair and a pendant glitter of chandeliers and a mute gleam of gold frames, heard the swift feet and saw
her too, a lady - perhaps he had never seen her like before either - in a gray, smooth gown with lace at
the throat and an apron tied at the waist and the sleeves turned back, wiping cake or biscuit dough from
her hands with a towel as she came up the hall, looking not at his father at all but at the tracks on the
blond rug with an expression of incredulous amazement.
"I tried," the Negro cried. "I tole him to…"
"Will you please go away?" she said in a shaking voice. "Major de Spain is not at home. Will you please
go away?"
His father had not spoken again. He did not speak again. He did not even look at her. He just stood stiff in
the center of the rug, in his hat, the shaggy iron-gray brows twitching slightly above the pebble-colored
eyes as he appeared to examine the house with brief deliberation. Then with the same deliberation he
turned; the boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning,
leaving a final long and fading smear. His father never looked at it, he never once looked down at the rug.
The Negro held the door. It closed behind them, upon the hysteric and indistinguishable woman-wail. His
father stopped at the top of the steps and scraped his boot clean on the edge of it. At the gate he stopped
again. He stood for a moment, planted stiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at the house. "Pretty and white,
ain't it?" he said. "That's sweat. **** sweat. Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he
wants to mix some white sweat with it."
Two hours later the boy was chopping wood behind the house within which his mother and aunt and the
two sisters (the mother and aunt, not the two girls, he knew that; even at this distance and muffled by
walls the flat loud voices of the two girls emanated an incorrigible idle inertia) were setting up the stove to
prepare a meal, when he heard the hooves and saw the linen-clad man on a fine sorrel mare, whom he
recognized even before he saw the rolled rug in front of the Negro youth following on a fat bay carriage
horse - a suffused, angry face vanishing, still at full gallop, beyond the corner of the house where his
father and brother were sitting in the two tilted chairs; and a moment later, almost before he could have
put the axe down, he heard the hooves again and watched the sorrel mare go back out of the yard,
already galloping again.
Then his father began to shout one of the sisters' names, who presently emerged backward from the
kitchen door dragging the rolled rug along the ground by one end while the other sister walked behind it.
"If you ain't going to tote, go on and set up the wash pot," the first said.
"You, Sarty!" the second shouted, "Set up the wash pot!" His father appeared at the door, framed against
that shabbiness, as he had been against that other bland perfection, impervious to either, the mother's
anxious face at his shoulder.
1
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:01 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
6
"Go on," the father said. "Pick it up." The two sisters stooped, broad, lethargic; stooping, they presented
an incredible expanse of pale cloth and a flutter of tawdry ribbons.
"If I thought enough of a rug to have to git hit all the way from France I wouldn't keep hit where folks
coming in would have to tromp on hit," the first said. They raised the rug.
"Abner," the mother said. "Let me do it."
"You go back and git dinner," his father said. "I'll tend to this."
From the woodpile through the rest of the afternoon the boy watched them, the rug spread flat in the dust
beside the bubbling wash-pot, the two sisters stooping over it with that profound and lethargic reluctance,
while the father stood over them in turn, implacable and grim, driving them though never raising his voice
again. He could smell the harsh homemade lye they were using; he saw his mother come to the door
once and look toward them with an expression not anxious now but very like despair; he saw his father
turn, and he fell to with the axe and saw from the corner of his eye his father raise from the ground a
flattish fragment of field stone and examine it and return to the pot, and this time his mother actually
spoke: "Abner. Abner. Please don't. Please, Abner."
Then he was done too. It was dusk; the whippoorwills had already begun. He could smell coffee from the
room where they would presently eat the cold food remaining from the mid-afternoon meal, though when
he entered the house he realized they were having coffee again probably because there was a fire on the
hearth, before which the rug now lay spread over the backs of the two chairs. The tracks of his father's
foot were gone. Where they had been were now long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling the sporadic
course of a lilliputian mowing machine.
It still hung there while they ate the cold food and then went to bed, scattered without order or claim up
and down the two rooms, his mother in one bed, where his father would later lie, the older brother in the
other, himself, the aunt, and the two sisters on pallets on the floor. But his father was not in bed yet. The
last thing the boy remembered was the depthless, harsh silhouette of the hat and coat bending over the
rug and it seemed to him that he had not even closed his eyes when the silhouette was standing over
him, the fire almost dead behind it, the stiff foot prodding him awake. "Catch up the mule," his father said.
When he returned with the mule his father was standing in the black door, the rolled rug over his
shoulder. "Ain't you going to ride?" he said.
"No. Give me your foot."
He bent his knee into his father's hand, the wiry, surprising power flowed smoothly, rising, he rising with it,
on to the mule's bare back (they had owned a saddle once; the boy could remember it though not when
or where) and with the same effortlessness his father swung the rug up in front of him. Now in the
starlight they retraced the afternoon's path, up the dusty road rife with honeysuckle, through the gate and
up the black tunnel of the drive to the lightless house, where he sat on the mule and felt the rough warp of
the rug drag across his thighs and vanish.
"Don't you want me to help?" he whispered. His father did not answer and now he heard again that stiff
foot striking the hollow portico with that wooden and clocklike deliberation, that outrageous overstatement
of the weight it carried. The rug, hunched, not flung (the boy could tell that even in the darkness) from his
father's shoulder struck the angle of wall and floor with a sound unbelievably loud, thunderous, then the
foot again, unhurried and enormous; a light came on in the house and the boy sat, tense, breathing
steadily and quietly and just a little fast, though the foot itself did not increase its beat at all, descending
the steps now; now the boy could see him.
"Go on," the father said. "Pick it up." The two sisters stooped, broad, lethargic; stooping, they presented
an incredible expanse of pale cloth and a flutter of tawdry ribbons.
"If I thought enough of a rug to have to git hit all the way from France I wouldn't keep hit where folks
coming in would have to tromp on hit," the first said. They raised the rug.
"Abner," the mother said. "Let me do it."
"You go back and git dinner," his father said. "I'll tend to this."
From the woodpile through the rest of the afternoon the boy watched them, the rug spread flat in the dust
beside the bubbling wash-pot, the two sisters stooping over it with that profound and lethargic reluctance,
while the father stood over them in turn, implacable and grim, driving them though never raising his voice
again. He could smell the harsh homemade lye they were using; he saw his mother come to the door
once and look toward them with an expression not anxious now but very like despair; he saw his father
turn, and he fell to with the axe and saw from the corner of his eye his father raise from the ground a
flattish fragment of field stone and examine it and return to the pot, and this time his mother actually
spoke: "Abner. Abner. Please don't. Please, Abner."
Then he was done too. It was dusk; the whippoorwills had already begun. He could smell coffee from the
room where they would presently eat the cold food remaining from the mid-afternoon meal, though when
he entered the house he realized they were having coffee again probably because there was a fire on the
hearth, before which the rug now lay spread over the backs of the two chairs. The tracks of his father's
foot were gone. Where they had been were now long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling the sporadic
course of a lilliputian mowing machine.
It still hung there while they ate the cold food and then went to bed, scattered without order or claim up
and down the two rooms, his mother in one bed, where his father would later lie, the older brother in the
other, himself, the aunt, and the two sisters on pallets on the floor. But his father was not in bed yet. The
last thing the boy remembered was the depthless, harsh silhouette of the hat and coat bending over the
rug and it seemed to him that he had not even closed his eyes when the silhouette was standing over
him, the fire almost dead behind it, the stiff foot prodding him awake. "Catch up the mule," his father said.
When he returned with the mule his father was standing in the black door, the rolled rug over his
shoulder. "Ain't you going to ride?" he said.
"No. Give me your foot."
He bent his knee into his father's hand, the wiry, surprising power flowed smoothly, rising, he rising with it,
on to the mule's bare back (they had owned a saddle once; the boy could remember it though not when
or where) and with the same effortlessness his father swung the rug up in front of him. Now in the
starlight they retraced the afternoon's path, up the dusty road rife with honeysuckle, through the gate and
up the black tunnel of the drive to the lightless house, where he sat on the mule and felt the rough warp of
the rug drag across his thighs and vanish.
"Don't you want me to help?" he whispered. His father did not answer and now he heard again that stiff
foot striking the hollow portico with that wooden and clocklike deliberation, that outrageous overstatement
of the weight it carried. The rug, hunched, not flung (the boy could tell that even in the darkness) from his
father's shoulder struck the angle of wall and floor with a sound unbelievably loud, thunderous, then the
foot again, unhurried and enormous; a light came on in the house and the boy sat, tense, breathing
steadily and quietly and just a little fast, though the foot itself did not increase its beat at all, descending
the steps now; now the boy could see him.
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