Fable, A - William Faulkner [157]
'That makes five,' the old Negro said.
'All right, all right,' the runner answered, rapidly and harshly. 'He's not dead either. Dont you think that by this time I have learned how to do it? He said rapidly to the sentry: 'You dont need to worry either now. All we need from you now is inertia,' But the sentry was not even looking at him. He was looking at the old Negro.
'I told you to leave me alone,' he said. And it was the runner who answered him, in that same rapid and brittle voice: 'It's too late for that now. Because I am wrong; we dont want inertia from you: what we want is silence. Come along. Notice, I have the pistol. If I must, I shall use it. I've already used it six times, but only the flat of it. This time I'll use the trigger.' He said to the old Negro, in the rapid brittle and almost despairing voice: 'All right, this one will be dead. Then you suggest something.'
'You cant get away with this,' the sentry said.
'Who expects to?' the runner said. That's why we have no time to waste. Come along. You've got your inves'I'ments to protect, you know; after a breathing spell like this and the fresh start it will give them, let alone the discovery of what can happen simply by letting the same men hang around in uniforms too long, the whole battalion will probably be wiped out as soon as they can get us up in gun-range again. Which may be this afternoon. They flew a German general over yesterday; without doubt he was at Chaulnesmont by late dinner last night, with our pooh-bahs and the American ones too already waiting for him and the whole affair settled and over with by the time the port passed (if German generals drink port, though why not, since we have had four years to prove to us, even if all history had not already done it, that the biped successful enough to become a general had ceased to be a German or British or American or Italian or French one almost as soon as it never was a human one) and without doubt he is already on his way back and both sides are merely waiting until he is out of the way as you hold up a polo game while one of the visiting rajahs rides off the field-'
The sentry-in what time he had left-would remember it. He knew at once that the runner meant exactly what he said about the pistol; he had proof of that at once-of the flat side of it any-way-when he almost stumbled over the sprawled bodies of the orderly officer and his sergeant in the tunnel before he saw them. But it would seem to him that it was not the hard muzzle of the pistol in the small of his back, but the voice itself-the glib calm rapid desperate and despairing voice carrying, sweeping them into the next dugout where an entire platoon lay or sat along the earthen shelf, the faces turning as one to look at them as the runner thrust him in with the muzzle of the pistol and then thrust the old Negro forward too, saying: 'Make the sign. Go on. Make it,' The tense calm desperate voice not even stopping then, as it seemed to the sentry that it never had: That's right, of course he doesn't need to make the sign. He has enough without. He has come from outside. So have I, for that matter but you wont even need to doubt me now, you need only look at him; some of you may even recognize Horn's D. C. M, on Thursday that tunic. But dont worry; Horn isn't dead any more than Mr. Smith and Sergeant Bledsoe; I have learned to use the flat of this-' he raised the pistol for an instant into sight '-quite neatly now. Because here is our chance to have done with it, be finished with it, quit of it, not just the killing, the getting dead, because that's only a part of the nigh'I'mare, of the rot and the stinking and the waste-'
The sentry would remember it, incorrigible still, merely acquiescent, believing still that he was waiting, biding the moment when he or perhaps two or three of them at once would take the runner off guard and smother him, listening to the glib staccato voice, watching the turned faces listening to it too, believing still that he saw in them only astonishment, surprise, presently to fade into one concert