be.” But Elmer lacked the costumed distance supplied by pastoral landscape. He moved in slow motion, tentatively, almost viscously. He was immured not in a scene of woods and seasons, but rather in a remembered setting of his desired mother’s body and his adored sister’s tenderness and anger, as well as his current lover’s soul-less seductiveness. A remarkable eight-page sequence involving the child Elmer’s entry (almost second by second) into a bed shared with his sister Jo-Addie concludes as follows:
His hand went out with quiet joy touching his sister’s side where it curved briefly and sharply into the mattress. It was like touching a dog, a bird dog eager to be off…. Jo neither accepted nor rejected his touch: it was as though she were somewhere else. Without moving or speaking she said That’s enough and Elmer withdrew his hand and lay relaxed and happy for sleep. Suddenly Jo moved: a breath of cold air about his shoulders told him that she had risen to her elbow.
“Ellie,” she said suddenly, putting her hand on his head, grasping a handful of his hair and shaking his head roughly, “when you want to do anything, you do it. Hear?”
“Yes, Jo. I will,” he promised without question.
She released his hair and warmth settled again about his shoulders. “Don’t you let nobody stop you,” she added.
“Yes,” repeated Elmer happily burrowing his round yellow head into the thin pillow, sleeping. (ELM 15-6)
The uncanny moment narrated here is modest, moving, and specific. It resonates with the vulnerability that would later mark the tormented brother-sister relationships of
The Sound and the Fury
. The vignette is at once inside and outside—a precisely rendered set of bodily moves in a believable bedroom, but also a hushed articulation of a child’s longing and neediness, and of his sister’s silent recognition of his plight. If, in
Elmer
, Faulkner began to explore his own pathos—no longer decked out as troubled faun or impotent Prufrock—he seems to have come to a pathway too emotionally demanding to continue. The most revealing dimension of
Elmer
may be Faulkner’s refusal—or incapacity—to complete his narration. At any rate, he abandoned
Elmer
on his return stateside in December 1925. Instead, he turned toward the swirling New Orleans materials that would culminate, several months later, as the completed typescript of
Mosquitoes
. There, as in
Soldiers’ Pay
, he could “do the hard-boiled” with the best of them. There was no need to reenter the charged emotional territory of a sensitive boy obsessed by his older sister.
“When Am I Going to Get Out?”:
Soldiers’ Pay
Soldiers’ Pay
opens on cadet Julian Lowe, a would-be soldier whose tragedy, like Faulkner’s, is swiftly stated: “they had stopped the war on him” (SP 3). Hurtling homeward on a fast-moving train, post-Armistice, Lowe is nicely positioned for Faulkner to explore what it felt like
not
to make it to the war. Faulkner knew this feeling only too well, but could never divulge it to others and was unwilling to explore it here. Instead, Lowe’s silence gives way to the aggressive voice of Joe Gilligan, a veteran whose abusive witticisms and alcoholic consumption set the stage for the novel. The gap between combat and noncombat emerges as absolute. Gilligan has been there but will not describe it; Lowe has not been there and can never make up the deficit. Faulkner soon looks beyond Lowe, but not before having him and Gilligan usher in Margaret Powers and Donald Mahon. These two death-shadowed figures—she war-widowed and tersely wise, he war-wounded and scarred beyond recognition—carry the emotional freight of
Soldiers’ Pay
. “When am I going to get out?” (136) Mahon asks Gilligan—when will I be able to die? The unspoken answer is: not until all the betrayals that circulate around your dying have taken place, and there is nothing more for you to lose.
Soldiers’ Pay
returns obsessively to
His hand went out with quiet joy touching his sister’s side where it curved briefly and sharply into the mattress. It was like touching a dog, a bird dog eager to be off…. Jo neither accepted nor rejected his touch: it was as though she were somewhere else. Without moving or speaking she said That’s enough and Elmer withdrew his hand and lay relaxed and happy for sleep. Suddenly Jo moved: a breath of cold air about his shoulders told him that she had risen to her elbow.
“Ellie,” she said suddenly, putting her hand on his head, grasping a handful of his hair and shaking his head roughly, “when you want to do anything, you do it. Hear?”
“Yes, Jo. I will,” he promised without question.
She released his hair and warmth settled again about his shoulders. “Don’t you let nobody stop you,” she added.
“Yes,” repeated Elmer happily burrowing his round yellow head into the thin pillow, sleeping. (ELM 15-6)
The uncanny moment narrated here is modest, moving, and specific. It resonates with the vulnerability that would later mark the tormented brother-sister relationships of
The Sound and the Fury
. The vignette is at once inside and outside—a precisely rendered set of bodily moves in a believable bedroom, but also a hushed articulation of a child’s longing and neediness, and of his sister’s silent recognition of his plight. If, in
Elmer
, Faulkner began to explore his own pathos—no longer decked out as troubled faun or impotent Prufrock—he seems to have come to a pathway too emotionally demanding to continue. The most revealing dimension of
Elmer
may be Faulkner’s refusal—or incapacity—to complete his narration. At any rate, he abandoned
Elmer
on his return stateside in December 1925. Instead, he turned toward the swirling New Orleans materials that would culminate, several months later, as the completed typescript of
Mosquitoes
. There, as in
Soldiers’ Pay
, he could “do the hard-boiled” with the best of them. There was no need to reenter the charged emotional territory of a sensitive boy obsessed by his older sister.
“When Am I Going to Get Out?”:
Soldiers’ Pay
Soldiers’ Pay
opens on cadet Julian Lowe, a would-be soldier whose tragedy, like Faulkner’s, is swiftly stated: “they had stopped the war on him” (SP 3). Hurtling homeward on a fast-moving train, post-Armistice, Lowe is nicely positioned for Faulkner to explore what it felt like
not
to make it to the war. Faulkner knew this feeling only too well, but could never divulge it to others and was unwilling to explore it here. Instead, Lowe’s silence gives way to the aggressive voice of Joe Gilligan, a veteran whose abusive witticisms and alcoholic consumption set the stage for the novel. The gap between combat and noncombat emerges as absolute. Gilligan has been there but will not describe it; Lowe has not been there and can never make up the deficit. Faulkner soon looks beyond Lowe, but not before having him and Gilligan usher in Margaret Powers and Donald Mahon. These two death-shadowed figures—she war-widowed and tersely wise, he war-wounded and scarred beyond recognition—carry the emotional freight of
Soldiers’ Pay
. “When am I going to get out?” (136) Mahon asks Gilligan—when will I be able to die? The unspoken answer is: not until all the betrayals that circulate around your dying have taken place, and there is nothing more for you to lose.
Soldiers’ Pay
returns obsessively to
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