Reivers, The - William Faulkner [16]
"Take me home."
"Now, Sarah," Grandfather said. "Now, Sarah." He threw the chew away and took out 'the clean handkerchief from bis other pocket, but Grandmother wouldn't even take it. Boon had already started to get out and go to a house we could see and get a pan of water and soap and a towel, but Grandmother wouldn't have that either.
"Dont touch me," she said. "Drive on." So we went on, Grandmother with the long drying brown splash across one of her goggles and down her cheek even though Mother kept on offering to spit on her handkerchief and wipe it off. "Let me alone, Alison," Grandmother said.
But not Mother. She didn't mind tobacco, not in the car. Maybe that was why. But more and more that summer it would be just Mother and us and Aunt Callie and one or two neighbor children in the back seat, Mother's face flushed and bright and eager, like a girl's. Because she had invented a kind of shield on a handle like a big fan, light enough for her to raise in front of us almost as fast as Grandfather could turn his head. So he could chew now, Mother always alert and ready with the screen; all of us were quick now in fact, so that almost before the instant when Grandfather knew he was going to turn his head to the left to spit, the screen had already come up and all of us in the back seat had leaned to the right like we were on the same wire, actually doing twenty and twenty-five miles an hour now because there were already two more automobiles in Jefierson that summer; it was as though the automobiles themselves were beating the roads smooth long before the money they represented would begin to compel smoother roads.
"Twenty-five years from now there wont be a road in the county you cant drive an automobile on in any weather," Grandfather said.
"Wont that cost a lot of money, Papa?" Mother said. . "It will cost a great deal of money," Grandfather said. "The road builders will issue bonds. The bank will buy them."
"Our bank?" Mother said. "Buy bonds for automobiles?"
"Yes," Grandfather said. "We will buy them."
"But what about us?—I mean, Maury."
"He will still be in the livery business," Grandfather said. "He will just have a new name for it. Priest's Garage maybe, or the Priest Motor Company. People will pay any -price for motion. They will even work for it. Look at bicycles. Look at Boon. We dont know why."
Then the next May came and my other grandfather, Mother's father, died in Bay St Louis.
Chapter 3
It was Saturday again. The next one in fact; Ludus was going to start getting paid again every Saturday night; maybe he had even stopped borrowing mules. It was barely eight oclock; I wasn't even halfway around the Square with the freight bills and my canvas sack to carry the money in, just finishing in the Farmers Supply when Boon came hi, fast, too quick for him. I should have suspected at once. No, I should have known at once, having known Boon all my life, let alone having watched him for a year now with that automobile. He was already reaching for the money sack, taking it right out of my hand before I could even close my fist "Leave it," he said. "Come on."
"Here," I said. "I've barely started."
"I said leave it. Shake it up. Hurry. They've got to make Twenty-three," he said, already turning. He had completely ignored the unpaid freight bills themselves. They were just paper; the railroad company had plenty more of them. But the sack contained money.
"Who's got to make Twenty-three?" I said. Number Twenty-three was the southbound morning train. Oh yes, Jefferson had passenger trains then, enough of them so they had to number them to keep them separate.
"Goddammit," Boon said, "how can I break it gentle to you when you wont even listen? Your grandpa died last night. We got to hurry."
"He didn't!" I said, cried. "He was on the front gallery