Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner Page A

note, and got the hat and the parasol and the hand mirror, and walked back home. That afternoon we greased the wagon, and that night after supper Granny got the pokeberry juice again and wrote on a scrap of paper, “Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick,—th Ohio Cavalry,” and folded it and pinned it inside her dress. “Now I won’t forget it,” she said.
    “If you was to, I reckon these hellion boys can remind you,” Louvinia said. “I reckon they ain’t forgot him. Walking in that door just in time to keep them others from snatching them out from under your dress and nailing them to the barn door like two coon hides.”
    “Yes,” Granny said. “Now we’ll go to bed.”
    We lived in Joby’s cabin then, with a red quilt nailed by one edgeto a rafter and hanging down to make two rooms. Joby was waiting with the wagon when Granny came out with Mrs. Compson’s hat on, and got into the wagon and told Ringo to open the parasol and took up the reins. Then we all stopped and watched Joby stick something into the wagon beneath the quilts; it was the barrel and the iron parts of the musket that Ringo and I found in the ashes of the house.
    “What’s that?” Granny said. Joby didn’t look at her.
    “Maybe if they just seed the end of hit they mought think hit was the whole gun,” he said.
    “Then what?” Granny said. Joby didn’t look at anybody now.
    “I was just doing what I could to help git the silver and the mules back,” he said.
    Louvinia didn’t say anything either. She and Granny just looked at Joby. After a while he took the musket barrel out of the wagon. Granny gathered up the reins.
    “Take him with you,” Louvinia said. “Leastways he can tend the horses.”
    “No,” Granny said. “Don’t you see I have got about all I can look after now?”
    “Then you stay here and lemme go,” Louvinia said. “I’ll git um back.”
    “No,” Granny said. “I’ll be all right. I shall inquire until I find Colonel Dick, and then we will load the chest in the wagon and Loosh can lead the mules and we will come back home.”
    Then Louvinia began to act just like Uncle Buck McCaslin did the morning we started to Memphis. She stood there holding to the wagon wheel and looked at Granny from under father’s old hat, and began to holler. “Don’t you waste no time on colonels or nothing!” she hollered. “You tell them niggers to send Loosh to you, and you tell him to get that chest and them mules, and then you whup him!” The wagon was moving now; she had turned loose the wheel, and she walked along beside it, hollering at Granny: “Take that pairsawl and wear hit out on him!”
    “All right,” Granny said. The wagon went on; we passed the ash pile and the chimneys standing up out of it; Ringo and I found the insides of the big clock too. The sun was just coming up, shining back on the chimneys; I could still see Louvinia between them, standing in front of the cabin, shading her eyes with her hand towatch us. Joby was still standing behind her, holding the musket barrel. They had broken the gates clean off; and then we were in the road.
    “Don’t you want me to drive?” I said.
    “I’ll drive,” Granny said. “These are borrowed horses.”
    “Case even Yankee could look at um and tell they couldn’t keep up with even a walking army,” Ringo said. “And I like to know how anybody can hurt this team lessen he ain’t got strength enough to keep um from laying down in the road and getting run over with they own wagon.”
    We drove until dark, and camped. By sunup we were on the road again. “You better let me drive a while,” I said.
    “I’ll drive,” Granny said. “I was the one who borrowed them.”
    “You can tote this pairsawl a while, if you want something to do,” Ringo said. “And give my arm a rest.” I took the parasol and he laid down in the wagon and put his hat over his eyes. “Call me when we gitting nigh to Hawkhurst,” he said, “so I can commence to look out for that