“No,” MacCallum answered, “he ain’t never got over Buddy being in the Yankee army. Claims he ain’t coming to town again until the Democratic party denies Woodrow Wilson.”
“It’ll be the best thing they ever done, if they was to recall him and elect a man like Debs or Senator Vardaman president,” the proprietor agreed sagely. “Well, that sure was fine.
Henry’s sure a wonder, ain’t he?” He set his glass down and turned to the door. “Well, you boys make yourselves at home. If you want anything. just call Houston.” And he bustled out at his distracted trot.
“Sit down,” MacCallum said. He drew up a chair, and Bayard drew another up opposite across the table. “Deacon sure ought to know good whisky. He’s drunk enough of it to float his counters right out the front door.” He filled his glass and pushed the bottle across to Bayard, and they drank again, quietly.
“You look bad, son,” MacCallum said suddenly, and Bayard raised his head and found the other examining him with his keen, steady eyes. “Overtrained,” he added. Bayard made an abrupt gesture of negation and raised his glass, but he could still feel the other watching him steadily. “Well, you haven’t forgot how to drink good whisky, anyhow. . . . Why don’t you come out and take a hunt with us? Got an old red we been saving for you.
Been running him off and on for two years, now, with the young dogs. Ain’t put old General on him yet, because the old feller’ll nose him out, and we wanted to save him for you boys. John would have enjoyed that fox. You remember that night Johnny cut across down to Samson’s bridge ahead of the dogs, and when we got there, here come him and the fox floating down the river on that drift log, the fox on one end and Johnny on the other, singing that fool song as loud as he could yell? John would have enjoyed this fox. He outsmarts them young dogs every time. But old General’ll get him.”
Bayard sat turning his glass in his hand. He reached a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and shook a few of them on to the table at his hand and flipped the packet across to the other. MacCallum drank his toddy steadily and refilled his glass. Bayard lit a cigarette and emptied his glass and reached for the bottle.
“You look like hell, boy,” MacCallum repeated.
“Dry, I reckon,” Bayard answered in a voice as level as the other’s. He made himself another toddy, his cigarette smoking on the table edge. He raised the glass, but instead of drinking. he held it for a moment beneath his nose while the muscles at the base of his nostrils tautened whitely, then he swung the glass from him and with a steady hand he emptied it on the floor.
The other watched him quietly while he poured his glass half full of raw liquor and sloshed a little water into it and tilted it down his throat. “I’ve been good too damn long,” he said aloud, and he fell to talking of the war. Not of combat, but rather of a life peopled by young men like fallen angels, and of a meteoric violence like that of fallen angels, beyond heaven or hell and partaking of both: doomed immortality and immortal doom.
MacCallum sat and listened quietly, drinking his whisky steadily and slowly and without appreciable effect, as though it were milk he drank, and Bayard talked on and presently found himself without surprise eating food. The bottle was now less than half full. The negro Houston had brought the food in and had his drink, taking it neat and without batting an eye. “Ef I had a cow dat give dat, de calf wouldn’t git no milk a-tall,” he said, “and I wouldn’t never churn. Thanky, Mr. MacCallum, suh.”
Then he was out, and Bayard’s voice went on, filling the cubbyhole of a room, surmounting the odor of cheap food too quickly cooked and of sharp, spilt whisky with ghosts of a thing high-pitched as a hysteria, like a glare of fallen meteors on the dark retina of the world. Again a light tap at the door, and the proprietor’s egg-shaped head and his hot, diffident eyes.
“You gentlemen got everything you want?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his thighs.
“Come and get it,” MacCallum said, jerking his head toward the bottle, and the other made himself a toddy in his stale glass and drank it, while Bayard finished his tale of himself and an Australian major and two ladies in the Leicester lounge one evening (the Leicester lounge being out of bounds, and the Anzac lost two teeth and his girl, and Bayard himself got a black eye), watching the narrator with round, melting astonishment.
“Great Savior,” he said, “them av’aytors was sure some hell-raisers, wasn’t they? Well, I reckon they’re wanting me up front aagin. You got to keep on the jump to make a living, these days.” And he scuttled out again.
“I’ve been good too goddam long,” Bayard repeated harshly, watching MacCallum fill the two glasses. “That’s the only thing Johnny was ever good for. Kept me from getting in a rut. Bloody rut, with a couple of old women nagging at me and nothing to do except scare niggers.”
He drank his whisky and set the glass down, still clutching it. “Damn ham-handed Hun,” he said. “He never could fly, anyway. I kept trying to keep him from going up there on that goddam popgun,” and he cursed his dead brother savagely. Then he raised his glass again, but halted it halfway to his mouth. “Where in hell did my drink go?”
MacCallum emptied the bottle into Bayard’s glass, and he drank again and banged the thick tumbler on the table and rose and lurched back against the wall. His chair crashed over backward, and he braced himself, staring at the other. “I kept on trying to keep him from going up there, with that Camel. But he gave me a burst. Right across my nose.”
MacCallum rose also. “Come on here,” he said quietly, and he offered to take Bayard’s arm, but Bayard evaded him and they passed through the kitchen and traversed the long tunnel of the store. Bayard walked steadily enough, and the proprietor bobbed his head at them across the counter.
“Call again, gentlemen,” he said, “call again.”
“All right, Deacon,” MacCallum answered. Bayard strode on. As they passed the soda fountain a young lawyer standing beside a stranger addressed him.
“Captain Sartoris, shake hands with Mr. Gratton here. Gratton was up on the British front last spring.” The stranger turned and extended his hand, but Bayard stared at him bleakly and strode so steadily on that the other involuntarily gave back in order not to be over-borne.
“Why, God damn his soul,” he said to Bayard’s back. The lawyer grasped his arm.
“He’s drunk,” he whispered quickly, “he’s drunk.”
“I don’t give a damn,” the other exclaimed loudly. “Because he was a goddam shave-tail he thinks—”
“Shhhhh, shhhhhh.” the lawyer hissed. The proprietor came to the corner of his candy case and peered out with hot, round alarm.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. The stranger made another violent movement, and Bayard stopped.
“Wait a minute while I bash his face in,” he told MacCallum, turning. The stranger thrust the lawyer aside and stepped forward.
“You never saw the day—” he began. MacCallum took Bayard’s arm firmly and easily.
“Come on here, boy.”
“I’ll bash his bloody face in,” Bayard stated, looking bleakly at the angry stranger. The lawyer grasped his companion’s arm again.
“Get away,” the stranger said, flinging him off. “Just let him try it. Come on, you limey—”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” the proprietor wailed.
“Come on here, boy,” MacCallum said. “I’ve got to look at a horse.”
“A horse?” Bayard repeated. He turned obediently. Then he stopped and looked back. “Can’t bash your face in now,” he told the stranger. “Sorry. Got to look at a horse. Call for you later at the hotel.” But the stranger’s back was turned, and behind it the lawyer grimaced and waggled his hand at MacCallum.
“Get him away, MacCallum, for God’s sake.”
“Bash his face in later,” Bayard repeated. “Can’t bash yours, though, Eustace,” he told the lawyer. “Taught us in ground-school never seduce a fool nor hit a cripple.”
“Come on, here,” MacCallum repeated, leading him on. At the door Bayard must stop again to light a cigarette; then they went on. It was three o’clock and again they walked among school children in released surges. Bayard strode steadily enough, and a little belligerently, and soon MacCallum turned into a side street and they went on, passing negro stores, and between a busy grist mill and a silent cotton gin they turned into a lane filled with tethered horses and mules.
From the end of the lane an anvil clanged. They passed the ruby glow of it and a patient horse standing on three legs in the blacksmith’s doorway and the squatting overalled men along the shady wall and came then to a high-barred gate backing a long, dun-colored brick tunnel smelling of ammonia. A few men sat on the top of the gate; others leaned their crossed arms upon it. From the paddock itself came voices, then through the slatted gate gleamed a haughty, motionless shape of burnished flame.
The stallion stood against the yawning cavern of the livery stable door like a motionless bronze flame, and along its burnished coat ran at intervals little tremors of paler flame, little
