Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner Page A

gittin’ bigger?” the other asked. He rose and laid his parcel down and extended his hand. Old Bayard drew his head back.
    “It’s nothing,” he said testily. “Let it alone.” But old man Falls put the other’s hand aside and touched the spot with his fingers.
    “H’m,” he said. “Hard’s a rock. Hit’ll git bigger, too. I’ll watch hit, and when hit’s right, I’ll take hit off. ’Taint ripe, yit.” The book-keeper appeared suddenly and without noise beside them.
    “Yo’ cook says him and Miss Jenny is off car-ridin’ some-wheres. I left yo’ message.”
    “Jenny’s with him, you say?” old Bayard asked.
    “That’s what yo’ cook says,” the book-keeper repeated in his inflectionless voice.
    “Well. All right.”
    The book-keeper withdrew and old man Falls picked up his parcel. “I’ll be gittin’ on too,” he said. “I’ll come in next week and take a look at hit. You better let hit alone till I git back.” He followed the book-keeper from the room, and presently old Bayard rose and stalked through the lobby and tilted his chair in the door.
    That afternoon when he arrived home, the car was not in sight, nor did his aunt answer his call. He mounted to his room and put on his riding-boots and lit a cigar, but when he looked down from his window into the back yard, neither Isom nor the saddled mare were visible. The old setter sat looking up at his window. When old Bayard’s head appeared there the dog rose and went to the kitchen door and stood there; then it looked up at his window again. Old Bayard tramped down the stairs and on through the house and entered the kitchen, where Caspey sat at the table, eating and talking to Isom and Elnora.
    “And one mo’ time me and another boy——” Caspey was saying. Then Isom saw Bayard, and rose from his seat in the woodbox corner and his eyes rolled whitely in his bullet head. Elnora paused also with her broom, but Caspey turned hishead without rising, and still chewing steadily he blinked his eyes at old Bayard in the door.
    “I sent you word a week ago to come on out here at once, or not to come at all,” Bayard said. “Did you get it?” Caspey mumbled something, still chewing, and old Bayard came into the room. “Get up from there and saddle my horse.”
    Caspey turned his back deliberately and raised his glass of buttermilk. “Git on, Caspey,” Elnora hissed at him.
    “I aint workin’ here,” he answered, just beneath Bayard’s deafness. He turned to Isom. “Whyn’t you go’n git his hoss fer him? Aint you workin’ here?”
    “Caspey, fer Lawd’s sake!” Elnora implored. “Yes, suh, Cunnel; he’s gwine,” she said loudly.
    “Who, me?” Caspey said. “Does I look like it?” He raised the glass steadily to his mouth, then Bayard moved again and Caspey lost his nerve and rose quickly before the other reached him, and crossed the kitchen toward the door, but with sullen insolence in the very shape of his back. As he fumbled with the door Bayard overtook him.
    “Are you going to saddle that mare?” he demanded.
    “Aint gwine skip it, big boy,” Caspey answered, just below Bayard’s deafness.
    “What?”
    “Oh, Lawd, Caspey!” Elnora moaned. Isom crouched into his corner. Caspey raised his eyes swiftly to Bayard’s face and opened the screen door.
    “I says, I aint gwine skip it,” he repeated, raising his voice. Simon stood at the foot of the steps beside the setter, gaping his toothless mouth up at them, and old Bayard reached a stick of stove wood from the box at his hand and knocked Caspey through the opening door and down the steps at his father’s feet.
    “Now, you go saddle that mare,” he said.
    Simon helped his son to rise and led him away toward thebarn while the setter watched them, gravely interested. “I kep’ tellin’ you dem new-fangled war notions of yo’n wa’nt gwine ter work on dis place,” he said angrily. “And you better thank de good Lawd fer makin’ yo’ haid hard ez