Fable, A - William Faulkner [210]
'Sure you can have brandy,' the stranger said. Picklock closed his hand over the watch and let the hand drop.
'How much?' he said.
'Fifty francs,' the stranger said.
Two hundred,' Picklock said.
'A hundred francs,'
Two hundred,' Picklock said.
'Where's the watch?' the stranger said.
Where's the cart?' Picklock said.
It took them a little over four hours ('you'd have to wait any-how until they finish nailing up that black cloth and get away from the carriage,' the stranger said) and there were four of them (Two more will be enough,' the stranger said. We can drive right up to it,')--himself and the stranger on the seat, Morache and another behind them in the cart, north and eastward out of the town into the country darkness, the horse itself taking the right road without guidance, knowing that it was going home, in the darkness the steady jounce of jogging horse and the thump and rattle of the cart a sound and a vibration instead of a progress, so that it was the roadside trees which seemed to move, wheeling up out of the darkness to rush slowly backward past them against the sky. But they were moving, even though it did seem (to Picklock) forever, the roadside trees ravelling suddenly into a straggle of posts, the horse, still without guidance, swinging sharply to the left.
'Sector, huh?' Picklock said.
'Yeah,' the stranger said. 'The Americans broke it in September. Vienne-la-pucelle yonder,' he said, pointing. 'It caught it. It was right up in the tip. Not long now,' But it was a little longer than that, though at last they were there---a farm and its farmyard, lightless. The stranger stopped the horse and handed Picklock the lines. Til get a shovel. I'm going to throw in a ground-sheet too,' He was not long, passing the shovel and the folded ground-sheet to the two in the back and mounting the seat again and took the lines, the horse lurching forward and making a determined effort to turn in the farmyard gate until the stranger reined it sharply away. Then a gate in a hedgerow; Morache got down and opened it for the cart to pass. 'Leave it open,' the stranger said. 'We'll close it when we come out,' Which Morache did and swung up and into the cart as it passed him; they were in a field now, soft from plowing, the unguided horse still choosing its own unerring way, no longer a straight course now but weaving, at times almost doubling on itself though Picklock could still see nothing. 'Dud shells,' the stranger explained. 'Fenced off with flags until they finish getting them out. We just plow circles around them. According to the women and the old men who were here then, the whole war started up again after that recess they took last May, right in that field yonder. It belongs to some people named De-mont. The man died that same summer; I guess two wars on his land only a week apart was too much for him. His widow works it now with a hired man. Not that she needs him; she can run a plow as good as he can. There's another one, her sister. She does the cooking. She has flies up here,' He was standing now, peering ahead; in silhouette against the sky he tapped the side of his head. Suddenly he swung the horse sharply away and presently stopped it. 'Here we are,' he said. 'About fifty metres yonder on that bank dividing us, there used to be the finest beech tree in this country. My grandfather said that even his grandfather couldn't remember when it was a sapling. It probably went that same day too. All right,' he said. 'Let's get him up. You dont want to waste any time here either,'
He showed them where his plow had first exposed the corpse and he had covered it again and marked the place. It was not deep and they could see nothing and after this length of time or perhaps because it was only one, there was little odor either, the long inextricable mass of light bones and cloth soon up and out and on and then into the folds of the ground-sheet and then in the cart itself, the horse thinking that this time surely it was destined for its stall, trying even in the soft earth of the plowing