beneath disturbed though clear water; he looked at the familiar image with
a kind of quiet horror and despair, at a face suddenly older in sin than he
would ever be, a face more blurred than sweet, at eyes more secret than
soft. In reaching for it, he knocked it flat; whereupon once more the face
mused tenderly behind the rigid travesty of the painted mouth, contemplating
something beyond his shoulder. He lay in bed, dressed, with the light
burning, until he heard the court-house clock strike three. Then he left the
house, putting his watch and his tobacco pouch into his pocket.
The railroad station was three quarters of a mile away. The waiting roonli
was lit by a single weak bulb. It was empty save for a man in overalls
asleep on a bench, his head on his folded coat, snoring, and a woman in a
calico dress, in a dingy shawl and a new hat trimmed with rigid and
moribund flowers set square and awkward on her head. Her head was bent; she
may have been asleep; her hands crossed on a paper-wrapped parcel upon :ier
lap, a straw suit case at her feet. It was then that HoL,.ce found he had
forgot his pipe.
The train came, finding him tramping back and forth along the cinder-packed
right-of-way. The man and woman got on, the rnan carrying his rumpled
co~!t, the woman the parcel and the suit case. He followed thern into the
day coach filled with snorna, wit'.-i bodies sprawled h~df into the aisle
as though in the aftermath of a sudden and violent destruction, with
dropPed lie ds. open-mOLIL:ied, their throats turned profoundly u-)w,-i-,d
as t'iough waiting the stroke of knives.
He dozed. The train clicked on, stopped, jolted. He waked and do ied again.
Someone shook h'm out of sleep into a Primros,~ d:.iwn, zwnon- uns'iaven
puffy faces washed lightly over as thouo'l with the paling ultimate stain
of a holocaust, blinking at one another with dead eyes into which
personality retu,ned in sec-rct opaque waves. He got off, had breakfast,
and took anot'ier accommodation, entering a car where a c.,fld wailed hol~c
lessly, crunching peanut-siells under his feet as he moved up t ie car in
a stale ammoniac odor until he found a seat beside a man. A moment later
the man leaned forward and s at tob~cco juice between iis knees. Horace
rose qu*~ckly and wcnt forward into vhc s oking car. It was ful, too, the
d.)or betw-en it and the jim crow swinging ol)cn. S::,ndino ~,i the aisle
he Could !ook forward in.o a di
CC
'or of ,!-een ~Ius'i se~it b -k:!
)ed by hatted can -,on
balls swaying in unison, while ousts of talk
and lau~:hter New
i.m, ,. t in s.~,~.dy : -,o.. 71 1 c b, - acrid air in which white men
sat, spitting into the aisle.
96 WILLIAM FAULKNER
He changed again. The waiting crowd was composed half of young men in
collegiate clothes with small cryptic badges on their shirts and vests, and
two girls with painted small faces and scant bright dresses like identical
artificial flowers surrounded each by bright and restless bees. When the
train came they pushed gaily forward, talking and laughing, shouldering
aside older people with gay rudeness, clashing and slamming seats back and
settling themselves, turning their faces up out of laughter, their cold
faces stfll toothed with it, as three middle-aged women moved down the car,
looking tentatively left and right at the filled seats.
The two girls sat together, removing a fawn and a blue hat, lifting slender
hands and preening not-quite-formless fingers about their close heads seen
between the sprawled elbows and the leaning heads of two youths hanging
over the back of the seat and Surrounded by colored hat bands at various
heights where the owners sat on the seat arms or stood in the aisle; and
presently the conductor's cap as he thrust among them with plaintive,
fretful cries, like a bird.
"Tickets. Tickets, please," he chanted. For an instant they held him there,
invisible save for his cap. Then two young men slipped swiftly back and
into the seat behind Horace. He could hear them breathing. Forward the
conductor's punch clicked twice. He came on back. "Tickets," he chanted,
"Tickets." He took Horace's and stopped where the youths sat.
"You already got mine," one said. "Up there."
"Where's your check?" the conductor said.
"You never gave us any. You got your tickets, though. Mine was number-" he
repeated a number glibly, in a frank, pleasant tone. "Did you notice the
number of yours, Shack?"
The second one repeated a number in a frank, pleasant tone. "Sure you got
ours. Look and see." He began to whistle between his teeth, a broken dance
rhythm, unmusical.
"Do you eat at Gordon Hall?" the other said.
"No. I have natural halitosis." The conductor went on. The whistle reached
crescendo, clapped off by his hands on his knees, ejaculating duh-duh-duh.
