“Are they ready with the cannon?” he whispered. “Are you sure they can see my arm from the door? And suppose those damned guns explode: they have not been fired since Washington shot them last at Cornwallis: will they impeach me?”
“Yes,” the Secretary hissed.
“Then God help us. Give me the book.” The Secretary passed it to him: it was Petrarch’s Sonnets, which the Secretary had snatched from his table in passing. “Let us hope that I remember enough law Latin to keep it from sounding like either English or Chickasaw,” the President said. He opened the book, and then again the President, the conqueror of men, the winner of battles diplomatic, legal and martial, drew himself erect and looked down upon the dark, still, intent, waiting faces; when he spoke his voice was the voice which before this had caused men to pause and attend and then obey: “Francis Weddel, chief in the Chickasaw Nation, and you, nephew of Francis Weddel and some day to be a chief, hear my words.”
Then he began to read. His voice was full, sonorous, above the dark faces, echoing about the august dome in profound and solemn syllables. He read ten sonnets. Then, with his arm lifted, he perorated; his voice died profoundly away and he dropped his arm. A moment later, from outside the building, came a ragged crash of artillery.
And now for the first time the dark throng stirred; from among them came a sound, a murmur, of pleased astonishment. The President spoke again: “Nephew of Francis Weddel, you are free. Return to your home.”
And now the uncle spoke; again his finger waggled from out its froth of lace. “Heedless boy,” he said. “Consider the trouble which you have caused these busy men.” He turned to the Secretary, almost briskly; again his voice was bland, pleasant, almost mirthful: “And now, about the little matter of this cursed ford. . . .”
With the autumn sun falling warmly and pleasantly across his shoulders, the President said, “That is all,” quietly and turned to his desk as the secretary departed. While he took up the letter and opened it the sun fell upon his hands and upon the page, with its inference of the splendid dying of the year, of approaching harvests and of columns of quiet wood smoke — serene pennons of peace — above peaceful chimneys about the land.
Suddenly the President started; he sprang up, the letter in his hand, glaring at it in shocked and alarmed consternation while the bland words seemed to explode one by one in his comprehension like musketry:
Dear sir and friend:
This is really amusing. Again this hot-headed nephew — he must have taken his character from his father’s people, since it is none of mine — has come to trouble you and me. It is this cursed ford again.
Another white man came among us, to hunt in peace we thought, since God’s forest and the deer which He put in it belong to all. But he too became obsessed with the idea of owning this ford, having heard tales of his own kind who, after the curious and restless fashion of white men, find one side of a stream of water superior enough to the other to pay coins of money for the privilege of reaching it.
So the affair was arranged as this white man desired it. Perhaps I did wrong, you will say. But — do I need to tell you? — I am a simple man and some day I shall be old, I trust, and the continuous interruption of these white men who wish to cross and the collecting and care of the coins of money is only a nuisance.
For what can money be to me, whose destiny it apparently is to spend my declining years beneath the shade of familiar trees from whose peaceful shade my great white friend and chief has removed the face of every enemy save death? That was my thought, but when you read further you will see that it was not to be.
Once more it is this rash and heedless boy. It seems that he challenged this new white man of ours (or the white man challenged him: the truth I will leave to your unerring wisdom to unravel) to a swimming race in the river, the stakes to be this cursed ford against a few miles of land, which (this will amuse you) this wild nephew of mine did not even own.
The race took place, but unfortunately our white man failed to emerge from the river until after he was dead.
And now your agent has arrived, and he seems to feel that perhaps this swimming race should not have taken place at all. And so now there is nothing for me to do save to bestir old bones and bring this rash boy to you for you to reprimand him. We will arrive in about . . .
The President sprang to the bell and pulled it violently. When his secretary entered, he grasped the man by the shoulders and whirled him toward the door again. “Get me the Secretary of War, and maps of all the country between here and New Orleans!” he cried. “Hurry.”
And so again we see him; the President is absent now and it is the Soldier alone who sits with the Secretary of War behind the map-strewn table, while there face them the officers of a regiment of cavalry. At the table his secretary is writing furiously while the President looks over his shoulder. “Write it big,” he says, “so that even an Indian cannot mistake it. Know all men by these presents,” he quotes.
“Francis Weddel his heirs, descendants and assigns from now on in perpetuity . . . provided — Have you got provided? Good — provided that neither he nor his do ever again cross to the eastern side of the above described River. . . . And now to that damned agent,” he said.
“The sign must be in duplicate, at both ends of the ford: The United States accepts no responsibility for any man, woman or child, black, white, yellow or red, who crosses this ford, and no white man shall buy, lease or accept it as a gift save under the severest penalty of the law. Can I do that?”
“I’m afraid not, Your Excellency,” the Secretary said.
The President mused swiftly. “Damn,” he said. “Strike out The United States, then.” The Secretary did so. The President folded the two papers and handed them to the cavalry colonel.
“Ride,” he said. “Your orders are, Stop them.”
“Suppose they refuse to stop,” the colonel said. “Shall I fire then?”
“Yes,” the President said. “Shoot every horse, mule, and ox. I know they won’t walk. Off with you, now.” The officers withdrew. The President turned back to the maps — the Soldier still: eager, happy, as though he rode himself with the regiment, or as if in spirit already he deployed it with that shrewd cunning which could discern and choose the place most disadvantageous to the enemy, and get there first.
“It will be here,” he said. He put his finger on the map. “A horse, General, that I may meet him here and turn his flank and drive him.”
“Done, General,” the Secretary said.
The End
IV. THE WASTELAND
Ad Astra, William Faulkner
Ad Astra
I DONT KNOW what we were. With the exception of Comyn, we had started out Americans, but after three years, in our British tunics and British wings and here and there a ribbon, I dont suppose we had even bothered in three years to wonder what we were, to think or to remember.
And on that day, that evening, we were even less than that, or more than that: either beneath or beyond the knowledge that we had not even wondered in three years. The subadar — after a while he was there, in his turban and his trick major’s pips — said that we were like men trying to move in water.
“But soon it will clear away,” he said. “The effluvium of hatred and of words. We are like men trying to move in water, with held breath watching our terrific and infinitesimal limbs, watching one another’s terrific stasis without touch, without contact, robbed of all save the impotence and the need.”
We were in the car then, going to Amiens, Sartoris driving and Comyn sitting half a head above him in the front seat like a tackling dummy, the subadar, Bland and I in back, each with a bottle or two in his pockets. Except the subadar, that is. He was squat, small and thick, yet his sobriety was colossal.
In that maelstrom of alcohol where the rest of us had fled our inescapable selves he was like a rock, talking quietly in a grave bass four sizes too big for him: “In my country I was prince. But all men are brothers.”
But after twelve years I think of us as bugs in the surface of the water, isolant and aimless and unflagging. Not on the surface; in it, within that line of demarcation not air and not water, sometimes submerged, sometimes not.
You have watched an unbreaking groundswell in a cove, the water shallow, the cove quiet, a little sinister with satiate familiarity, while beyond the darkling horizon the dying storm has raged on. That was the water, we the flotsam. Even after twelve years it is
