Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner Page B

I—that we—” Then Louvinia moved. Her hand came out quicker than Drusilla could jerk back and lay flat on the belly of Drusilla’s overalls, then Louvinia was holding Drusilla in her arms like she used to hold me and Drusilla was crying hard. “That John and I—that we—And Gavin dead at Shiloh and John’s home burned and his plantation ruined, that he and I—We went to the war to hurt Yankees, not hunting women!”
    “I knows you ain’t,” Louvinia said. “Hush now. Hush.”
    And that’s about all. It didn’t take them long. I don’t know whether Mrs. Habersham made Mrs. Compson send for Aunt Louisa or whether Aunt Louisa just gave them a deadline and then came herself. Because we were busy, Drusilla and Joby and Ringo and me at the mill, and Father in town; we wouldn’t see him from the time he would ride away in the morning until when he would get back, sometimes late, at night. Because they were strange times then. For four years we had lived for just one thing, even the women and children who could not fight: to get Yankee troops out of the country; we thought that when that happened, it would be all over. And now that had happened, and then before the summer began I heard Father say to Drusilla, “We were promised Federal troops; Lincoln himself promised to send us troops. Then things will be all right.” That, from a man who had commanded a regiment for four years with the avowed purpose of driving Federal troops from the country. Now it was as though we had not surrendered at all, we had joined forces with the men who had been ourenemies against a new foe whose aim we could not always fathom but whose means we could always dread. So he was busy in town all day long. They were building Jefferson back, the courthouse and the stores, but it was more than that which Father and the other men were doing; it was something which he would not let Drusilla or me or Ringo go into town to see. Then one day Ringo slipped off and went to town and came back and he looked at me with his eyes rolling a little.
    “Do you know what I ain’t?” he said.
    “What?” I said.
    “I ain’t a nigger any more. I done been abolished.” Then I asked him what he was, if he wasn’t a nigger any more and he showed me what he had in his hand. It was a new scrip dollar; it was drawn on the United States Resident Treasurer, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and signed “Cassius Q. Benbow, Acting Marshal” in a neat clerk’s hand, with a big sprawling X under it.
    “Cassius Q. Benbow?” I said.
    “Co-rect,” Ringo said. “Uncle Cash that druv the Benbow carriage twell he run off with the Yankees two years ago. He back now and he gonter be elected Marshal of Jefferson. That’s what Marse John and the other white folks is so busy about.”
    “A nigger?” I said. “A nigger?”
    “No,” Ringo said. “They ain’t no more niggers, in Jefferson nor nowhere else.” Then he told me about the two Burdens from Missouri, with a patent from Washington to organize the niggers into Republicans, and how Father and the other men were trying to prevent it. “Naw, suh,” he said. “This war ain’t over. Hit just started good. Used to be when you seed a Yankee you knowed him because he never had nothing but a gun or a mule halter or a handful of hen feathers. Now you don’t even know him and stid of the gun he got a clutch of this stuff in one hand and a clutch of nigger voting tickets in the yuther.” So we were busy; we just saw Father at night and sometimes then Ringo and I and even Drusilla would take one look at him and we wouldn’t ask him any questions. So it didn’t take them long, because Drusilla was already beaten; she was just marking time without knowing it from that afternoon when the fourteen ladies got into the surreys and buggies and went back to town until one afternoon about two months later when we heard Denny hollering even before the wagon came in thegates, and Aunt Louisa sitting on one of the