Father Abraham by William Faulkner

Author:William Faulkner [Faulkner, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79965-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Buck had sold all but two of his beasts for prices ranging from a dollar and seventy-five cents to eight dollars, and he climbed wearily and stiffly from his fence post and stamped his feet into his boots and removed his hat and mopped his brow with his sleeve. The beasts were weary too, after the long foodless day of sunlight and voices in monotonous rise and fall and quiet constant human faces watching them always. Above, the bowl of the sky hushed itself into mysterious ineffable azures, and the apple tree where tethered horses stamped and gnawed was like a candelabra tinged faintly with pink and gold. No mockingbird, though. The bystanders stood and lounged timelessly and patiently one with the grave rythm of the earth, talking among themselves in sparse monosyllables. Except Henry, the husband. His voice alone went on in flat nasal repetition: a sort of querulous and savage impatience.

“I bought a hoss and I paid cash,” he said again, harshly belligerent, shouldering himself among passive faded blue shirts nearer the auctioneer, “And yit you expect me to stand around yere twell they’s all sold. Well you kin do all the expectin’ you wants: I’m a-goin’ to take my hoss outen there and git on home. What about it?”

“Take yo’ hoss, then,” Buck answered coldly, and their glances clashed, and it was Henry who looked away. He stood with his head slightly bowed, tasting despair and rage, swallowing it like a delicate warm salt, brooding his baffled eyes upon the drooping gaudy huddle of the beasts without seeing them.

“Aint you a-goin’ to ketch him fer me?” he asked presently in a quiet tone.

“He aint my hoss,” Buck answered softly, watching Henry’s working profile steadily, and it was as though he had gone completely away from behind his still unwinking eyes. Admiral Dewey returned at his weary unflagging trot and gave Buck the fresh box and Buck, still watching Henry with grave detachment, ripped the end from the box and shook five or six of the cakes into his hand and gave them to Admiral Dewey. “Much obliged, bud.”

A stillness had fallen upon the group, upon its easy unchanged attitudes. Henry stood again with his head bowed a little in an isolation of impotence. Then he raised his head. “Who’ll he’p me ketch my hoss?” he asked in a dry light voice. None moved. The sun hung without heat in the western sky, the lower part of the rim flattening with perspective. The level shadow of Mrs Littlejohn’s house advanced across the lot and overtook the weary huddle of the ponies, climbed the barn wall and there lost itself. Smoke rose in the still air from the kitchen, and supper sounds; and sparrows swept in a garrulous cloud across the lot to roost in the barn and sat in a row along the eaves for a while before turning in, and in the high mysterious blue swallows twittered and stooped and whirled in erratic indecision.

“Bring that there plow-line over yere.

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