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re: Midnight sleepy time reading, an ode to Auburn.
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:02 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:02 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
8
wagons and saddle animals below the gallery. He mounted the gnawed steps behind his father and
brother, and there again was the lane of quiet, watching faces for the three of them to walk through. He
saw the man in spectacles sitting at the plank table and he did not need to be told this was a Justice of
the Peace; he sent one glare of fierce, exultant, partisan defiance at the man in collar and cravat now,
whom he had seen but twice before in his life, and that on a galloping horse, who now wore on his face
an expression not of rage but of amazed unbelief which the boy could not have known was at the
incredible circumstance of being sued by one of his own tenants, and came and stood against his father
and cried at the justice: "He ain't done it! He ain't burnt…"
"Go back to the wagon," his father said.
"Burnt?" the Justice said. "Do I understand this rug was burned too?"
"Does anybody here claim it was?" his father said. "Go back to the wagon." But he did not, he merely
retreated to the rear of the room, crowded as that other had been, but not to sit down this time, instead, to
stand pressing among the motionless bodies, listening to the voices:
"And you claim twenty bushels of corn is too high for the damage you did to the rug?"
"He brought the rug to me and said he wanted the tracks washed out of it. I washed the tracks out and
took the rug back to him."
"But you didn't carry the rug back to him in the same condition it was in before you made the tracks on it."
His father did not answer, and now for perhaps half a minute there was no sound at all save that of
breathing, the faint, steady suspiration of complete and intent listening.
"You decline to answer that, Mr. Snopes?" Again his father did not answer. "I'm going to find against you,
Mr. Snopes, I'm going to find that you were responsible for the injury to Major de Spain's rug and hold you
liable for it. But twenty bushels of corn seems a little high for a man in your circumstances to have to pay.
Major de Spain claims it cost a hundred dollars. October corn will be worth about fifty cents. I figure that if
Major de Spain can stand a ninety-five dollar loss on something he paid cash for, you can stand a fivedollar
loss you haven't earned yet. I hold you in damages to Major de Spain to the amount of ten bushels
of corn over and above your contract with him, to be paid to him out of your crop at gathering time. Court
adjourned."
It had taken no time hardly, the morning was but half begun. He thought they would return home and
perhaps back to the field, since they were late, far behind all other farmers. But instead his father passed
on behind the wagon, merely indicating with his hand for the older brother to follow with it, and he crossed
the road toward the blacksmith shop opposite, pressing on after his father, overtaking him, speaking,
whispering up at the harsh, calm face beneath the weathered hat: "He won't git no ten bushels neither. He
won't git one. We'll…" until his father glanced for an instant down at him, the face absolutely calm, the
grizzled eyebrows tangled above the cold eyes, the voice almost pleasant, almost gentle:
"You think so? Well, we'll wait till October anyway."
The matter of the wagon - the setting of a spoke or two and the tightening of the tires - did not take long
either, the business of the tires accomplished by driving the wagon into the spring branch behind the shop
and letting it stand there, the mules nuzzling into the water from time to time, and the boy on the seat with
the idle reins, looking up the slope and through the sooty tunnel of the shed where the slow hammer rang
and where his father sat on an upended cypress bolt, easily, either talking or listening, still sitting there
when the boy brought the dripping wagon up out of the branch and halted it before the door.
wagons and saddle animals below the gallery. He mounted the gnawed steps behind his father and
brother, and there again was the lane of quiet, watching faces for the three of them to walk through. He
saw the man in spectacles sitting at the plank table and he did not need to be told this was a Justice of
the Peace; he sent one glare of fierce, exultant, partisan defiance at the man in collar and cravat now,
whom he had seen but twice before in his life, and that on a galloping horse, who now wore on his face
an expression not of rage but of amazed unbelief which the boy could not have known was at the
incredible circumstance of being sued by one of his own tenants, and came and stood against his father
and cried at the justice: "He ain't done it! He ain't burnt…"
"Go back to the wagon," his father said.
"Burnt?" the Justice said. "Do I understand this rug was burned too?"
"Does anybody here claim it was?" his father said. "Go back to the wagon." But he did not, he merely
retreated to the rear of the room, crowded as that other had been, but not to sit down this time, instead, to
stand pressing among the motionless bodies, listening to the voices:
"And you claim twenty bushels of corn is too high for the damage you did to the rug?"
"He brought the rug to me and said he wanted the tracks washed out of it. I washed the tracks out and
took the rug back to him."
"But you didn't carry the rug back to him in the same condition it was in before you made the tracks on it."
His father did not answer, and now for perhaps half a minute there was no sound at all save that of
breathing, the faint, steady suspiration of complete and intent listening.
"You decline to answer that, Mr. Snopes?" Again his father did not answer. "I'm going to find against you,
Mr. Snopes, I'm going to find that you were responsible for the injury to Major de Spain's rug and hold you
liable for it. But twenty bushels of corn seems a little high for a man in your circumstances to have to pay.
Major de Spain claims it cost a hundred dollars. October corn will be worth about fifty cents. I figure that if
Major de Spain can stand a ninety-five dollar loss on something he paid cash for, you can stand a fivedollar
loss you haven't earned yet. I hold you in damages to Major de Spain to the amount of ten bushels
of corn over and above your contract with him, to be paid to him out of your crop at gathering time. Court
adjourned."
It had taken no time hardly, the morning was but half begun. He thought they would return home and
perhaps back to the field, since they were late, far behind all other farmers. But instead his father passed
on behind the wagon, merely indicating with his hand for the older brother to follow with it, and he crossed
the road toward the blacksmith shop opposite, pressing on after his father, overtaking him, speaking,
whispering up at the harsh, calm face beneath the weathered hat: "He won't git no ten bushels neither. He
won't git one. We'll…" until his father glanced for an instant down at him, the face absolutely calm, the
grizzled eyebrows tangled above the cold eyes, the voice almost pleasant, almost gentle:
"You think so? Well, we'll wait till October anyway."
The matter of the wagon - the setting of a spoke or two and the tightening of the tires - did not take long
either, the business of the tires accomplished by driving the wagon into the spring branch behind the shop
and letting it stand there, the mules nuzzling into the water from time to time, and the boy on the seat with
the idle reins, looking up the slope and through the sooty tunnel of the shed where the slow hammer rang
and where his father sat on an upended cypress bolt, easily, either talking or listening, still sitting there
when the boy brought the dripping wagon up out of the branch and halted it before the door.
3
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:03 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
9
"Take them on to the shade and hitch," his father said. He did so and returned. His father and the smith
and a third man squatting on his heels inside the door were talking, about crops and animals; the boy,
squatting too in the ammoniac dust and hoof-parings and scales of rust, heard his father tell a long and
unhurried story out of the time before the birth of the older brother even when he had been a professional
horse trader. And then his father came up beside him where he stood before a tattered last year's circus
poster on the other side of the store, gazing rapt and quiet at the scarlet horses, the incredible poisings
and convolutions of tulle and tights and the painted leer of comedians, and said, "It's time to eat."
But not at home. Squatting beside his brother against the front wall, he watched his father emerge from
the store and produce from a paper sack a segment of cheese and divide it carefully and deliberately into
three with his pocket knife and produce crackers from the same sack. They all three squatted on the
gallery and ate, slowly, without talking; then in the store again, they drank from a tin dipper tepid water
smelling of the cedar bucket and of living beech trees. And still they did not go home. It was a horse lot
this time, a tall rail fence upon and along which men stood and sat and out of which one by one horses
were led, to be walked and trotted and then cantered back and forth along the road while the slow
swapping and buying went on and the sun began to slant westward, they - the three of them - watching
and listening, the older brother with his muddy eyes and his steady, inevitable tobacco, the father
commenting now and then on certain of the animals, to no one in particular.
It was after sundown when they reached home. They ate supper by lamplight, then, sitting on the
doorstep, the boy watched the night fully accomplished, listening to the whippoorwills and the frogs, when
he heard his mother's voice: "Abner! No! No! Oh, God. Oh, God. Abner!" and he rose, whirled, and saw
the altered light through the door where a candle stub now burned in a bottle neck on the table and his
father, still in the hat and coat, at once formal and burlesque as though dressed carefully for some shabby
and ceremonial violence, emptying the reservoir of the lamp back into the five-gallon kerosene can from
which it had been filled, while the mother tugged at his arm until he shifted the lamp to the other hand and
flung her back, not savagely or viciously, just hard, into the wall, her hands flung out against the wall for
balance, her mouth open and in her face the same quality of hopeless despair as had been in her voice.
Then his father saw him standing in the door.
"Go to the barn and get that can of oil we were oiling the wagon with," he said. The boy did not move.
Then he could speak.
"What…" he cried "What are you…"
"Go get that oil," his father said. "Go."
Then he was moving, running outside the house, toward the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which
he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which
had run for so long (and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it
came to him. I could keep on, he thought. I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see
his face again. Only I can't. I can't, the rusted can in his hand now, the liquid sploshing in it as he ran back
to the house and into it, into the sound of his mother's weeping in the next room, and handed the can to
his father.
"Ain't you going to even send a ****?" he cried. "At least you sent a **** before!"
This time his father didn't strike him. The hand came even faster than the blow had, the same hand which
had set the can on the table with almost excruciating care flashing from the can toward him too quick for
him to follow it, gripping him by the back of the shirt and on to tiptoe before he had seen it quit the can,
the face stooping at him in breathless and frozen ferocity, the cold, dead voice speaking over him to the
older brother who leaned against the table, chewing with that steady, curious, sidewise motion of cows:
"Empty the can into the big one and go on. I'll ketch up with you."
"Take them on to the shade and hitch," his father said. He did so and returned. His father and the smith
and a third man squatting on his heels inside the door were talking, about crops and animals; the boy,
squatting too in the ammoniac dust and hoof-parings and scales of rust, heard his father tell a long and
unhurried story out of the time before the birth of the older brother even when he had been a professional
horse trader. And then his father came up beside him where he stood before a tattered last year's circus
poster on the other side of the store, gazing rapt and quiet at the scarlet horses, the incredible poisings
and convolutions of tulle and tights and the painted leer of comedians, and said, "It's time to eat."
But not at home. Squatting beside his brother against the front wall, he watched his father emerge from
the store and produce from a paper sack a segment of cheese and divide it carefully and deliberately into
three with his pocket knife and produce crackers from the same sack. They all three squatted on the
gallery and ate, slowly, without talking; then in the store again, they drank from a tin dipper tepid water
smelling of the cedar bucket and of living beech trees. And still they did not go home. It was a horse lot
this time, a tall rail fence upon and along which men stood and sat and out of which one by one horses
were led, to be walked and trotted and then cantered back and forth along the road while the slow
swapping and buying went on and the sun began to slant westward, they - the three of them - watching
and listening, the older brother with his muddy eyes and his steady, inevitable tobacco, the father
commenting now and then on certain of the animals, to no one in particular.
It was after sundown when they reached home. They ate supper by lamplight, then, sitting on the
doorstep, the boy watched the night fully accomplished, listening to the whippoorwills and the frogs, when
he heard his mother's voice: "Abner! No! No! Oh, God. Oh, God. Abner!" and he rose, whirled, and saw
the altered light through the door where a candle stub now burned in a bottle neck on the table and his
father, still in the hat and coat, at once formal and burlesque as though dressed carefully for some shabby
and ceremonial violence, emptying the reservoir of the lamp back into the five-gallon kerosene can from
which it had been filled, while the mother tugged at his arm until he shifted the lamp to the other hand and
flung her back, not savagely or viciously, just hard, into the wall, her hands flung out against the wall for
balance, her mouth open and in her face the same quality of hopeless despair as had been in her voice.
Then his father saw him standing in the door.
"Go to the barn and get that can of oil we were oiling the wagon with," he said. The boy did not move.
Then he could speak.
"What…" he cried "What are you…"
"Go get that oil," his father said. "Go."
Then he was moving, running outside the house, toward the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which
he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which
had run for so long (and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it
came to him. I could keep on, he thought. I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see
his face again. Only I can't. I can't, the rusted can in his hand now, the liquid sploshing in it as he ran back
to the house and into it, into the sound of his mother's weeping in the next room, and handed the can to
his father.
"Ain't you going to even send a ****?" he cried. "At least you sent a **** before!"
This time his father didn't strike him. The hand came even faster than the blow had, the same hand which
had set the can on the table with almost excruciating care flashing from the can toward him too quick for
him to follow it, gripping him by the back of the shirt and on to tiptoe before he had seen it quit the can,
the face stooping at him in breathless and frozen ferocity, the cold, dead voice speaking over him to the
older brother who leaned against the table, chewing with that steady, curious, sidewise motion of cows:
"Empty the can into the big one and go on. I'll ketch up with you."
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:04 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
Holy shite. Faulkner by Installments. I could see the Big 10 doing this.
Posted on 10/21/16 at 11:04 pm to CtotheVrzrbck
STOP IT DAMNIT!!!
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