He had done quit looking at me, but he never stopped shoving ca’tridges into that gun. He looked quick to both sides. “Come on,” I says. “Do you want to tell me what happened up there, or do you want me to mention to Mr. Provine that you was mixed up in hit some way?” He never stopped loading the rifle and he never looked at me, but I be dog if I couldn’t almost see his mind working. “Come on,” I says. “Just what was you doing up there last night?”
Then he told me. I reckon he knowed hit wasn’t no use to try to hide hit then; that if I never told Luke, I could still tell Major. “I jest dodged him and got dar first en told um he was a new revenue agent coming up dar tonight, but dat he warn’t much en dat all dey had to do was to give um a good skeer en likely he would go away. En dey did en he did.”
“Well!” I says. “Well! I always thought I was pretty good at joking folks,” I says, “but I take a back seat for you. What happened?” I says. “Did you see hit?”
“Never much happened,” he says. “Dey jest went down de road a piece en atter a while hyer he come a-hickin’ en a-blumpin’ up de road wid de lant’un en de gun. They took de lant’un en de gun away frum him en took him up pon topper de mound en talked de Injun language at him fer a while. Den dey piled up some wood en fixed him on hit so he could git loose in a minute, en den one of dem come up de hill wid de fire, en he done de rest.”
“Well!” I says. “Well, I’ll be eternally durned!” And then all on a sudden hit struck me. I had done turned and was going out when hit struck me, and I stopped and I says, “There’s one more thing I want to know. Why did you do hit?”
Now he set there on the wood box, rubbing the gun with his hand, not looking at me again. “I wuz jest helping you kyo him of dem hiccups.”
“Come on,” I says. “That wasn’t your reason. What was hit? Remember, I got a right smart I can tell Mr. Provine and Major both now. I don’t know what Major will do, but I know what Mr. Provine will do if I was to tell him.”
And he set there, rubbing that ere rifle with his hand. He was kind of looking down, like he was thinking. Not like he was trying to decide whether to tell me or not, but like he was remembering something from a long time back. And that’s exactly what he was doing, because he says:
“I ain’t skeered for him to know. One time dey was a picnic. Hit was a long time back, nigh twenty years ago. He was a young man den, en in de middle of de picnic, him en he brother en nudder white man — I fergit he name — dey rid up wid dey pistols out en cotch us niggers one at a time en burned our collars off. Hit was him dat burnt mine.”
“And you waited all this time and went to all this trouble, just to get even with him?” I says.
“Hit warn’t dat,” he says, rubbing the rifle with his hand. “Hit wuz de collar. Back in dem days a top nigger hand made two dollars a week. I paid fo’ bits fer dat collar. Hit wuz blue, wid a red picture of de race betwixt de Natchez en de Robert E. Lee running around hit.
He burnt hit up. I makes ten dollars a week now. En I jest wish I knowed where I could buy another collar like dat un fer half of hit. I wish I did.”
The End
Two Soldiers, William Faulkner
Two Soldiers
ME AND PETE would go down to Old Man Killegrew’s and listen to his radio. We would wait until after supper, after dark, and we would stand outside Old Man Killegrew’s parlor window, and we could hear it because Old Man Killegrew’s wife was deaf, and so he run the radio as loud as it would run, and so me and Pete could hear it plain as Old Man Killegrew’s wife could, I reckon, even standing outside with the window closed.
And that night I said, “What? Japanese? What’s a pearl harbor?” and Pete said, “Hush.”
And so we stood there, it was cold, listening to the fellow in the radio talking, only I couldn’t make no heads nor tails neither out of it. Then the fellow said that would be all for a while, and me and Pete walked back up the road to home, and Pete told me what it was. Because he was nigh twenty and he had done finished the Consolidated last June and he knowed a heap: about them Japanese dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor and that Pearl Harbor was across the water.
“Across what water?” I said. “Across that Government reservoy up at Oxford?”
“Naw,” Pete said. “Across the big water. The Pacific Ocean.”
We went home. Maw and pap was already asleep, and me and Pete laid in the bed, and I still couldn’t understand where it was, and Pete told me again — the Pacific Ocean.
“What’s the matter with you?” Pete said. “You’re going on nine years old. You been in school now ever since September. Ain’t you learned nothing yet?”
“I reckon we ain’t got as fer as the Pacific Ocean yet,” I said.
We was still sowing the vetch then that ought to been all finished by the fifteenth of November, because pap was still behind, just like he had been ever since me and Pete had knowed him. And we had firewood to git in, too, but every night me and Pete would go down to Old Man Killegrew’s and stand outside his parlor window in the cold and listen to his radio; then we would come back home and lay in the bed and Pete would tell me what it was. That is, he would tell me for a while. Then he wouldn’t tell me. It was like he didn’t want to talk about it no more.
He would tell me to shut up because he wanted to go to sleep, but he never wanted to go to sleep.
He would lay there, a heap stiller than if he was asleep, and it would be something, I could feel it coming out of him, like he was mad at me even, only I knowed he wasn’t thinking about me, or like he was worried about something, and it wasn’t that neither, because he never had nothing to worry about.
He never got behind like pap, let alone stayed behind. Pap give him ten acres when he graduated from the Consolidated, and me and Pete both reckoned pap was durn glad to get shut of at least ten acres, less to have to worry with himself; and Pete had them ten acres all sowed to vetch and busted out and bedded for the winter, and so it wasn’t that.
But it was something. And still we would go down to Old Man Killegrew’s every night and listen to his radio, and they was at it in the Philippines now, but General MacArthur was holding um. Then we would come back home and lay in the bed, and Pete wouldn’t tell me nothing or talk at all.
He would just lay there still as a ambush and when I would touch him, his side or his leg would feel hard and still as iron, until after a while I would go to sleep.
Then one night — it was the first time he had said nothing to me except to jump on me about not chopping enough wood at the wood tree where we was cutting — he said, “I got to go.”
“Go where?” I said.
“To that war,” Pete said.
“Before we even finish gittin’ in the firewood?”
“Firewood, hell,” Pete said.
“All right,” I said. “When we going to start?”
But he wasn’t even listening. He laid there, hard and still as iron in the dark. “I got to go,” he said. “I jest ain’t going to put up with no folks treating the Unity States that way.”
“Yes,” I said. “Firewood or no firewood, I reckon we got to go.”
This time he heard me. He laid still again, but it was a different kind of still.
“You?” he said. “To a war?”
“You’ll whup the big uns and I’ll whup the little uns,” I said.
Then he told me I couldn’t go. At first I thought he just never wanted me tagging after him, like he wouldn’t leave me go with him when he went sparking them girls of Tull’s. Then he told me the Army wouldn’t leave me go because I was too little, and then I knowed he really meant it and that I couldn’t go nohow noways. And somehow I hadn’t believed until then that he was going himself, but now I knowed he was and that he wasn’t going to leave me go with him a-tall.
“I’ll chop the wood and tote the water for you-all then!” I said. “You got to have wood and water!”
Anyway, he was listening to me now. He wasn’t like iron now.
He turned onto his side and put his hand on my chest because it was me that was laying straight and hard on my back now.
“No,” he said. “You got to stay here and
