The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner.mobi [116]
From the doors negroes spoke to them as they passed, to Dilsey usually:
“Sis’ Gibson! How you dis mawnin?”
“I’m well. Is you well?”
“I’m right well, I thank you.”
They emerged from the cabins and struggled up the shaling levee to the road—men in staid, hard brown or black, with gold watch chains and now and then a stick; young men in cheap violent blues or stripes and swaggering hats; women a little stiffly sibilant, and children in garments bought second hand of white people, who looked at Ben with the covertness of nocturnal animals:
“I bet you wont go up en tech him.”
“How come I wont?”
“I bet you wont. I bet you skeered to.”
“He wont hurt folks. He des a looney.”
“How come a looney wont hurt folks?”
“Dat un wont. I teched him.”
“I bet you wont now.”
“Case Miss Dilsey lookin.”
“You wont no ways.”
“He dont hurt folks. He des a looney.”
And steadily the older people speaking to Dilsey, though, unless they were quite old, Dilsey permitted Frony to respond.
“Mammy aint feelin well dis mawnin.”
“Dat’s too bad. But Rev’un Shegog’ll kyo dat. He’ll give her de comfort en de unburdenin.”
The road rose again, to a scene like a painted backdrop. Notched into a cut of red clay crowned with oaks the road appeared to stop short off, like a cut ribbon. Beside it a weathered church lifted its crazy steeple like a painted church, and the whole scene was as flat and without perspective as a painted cardboard set upon the ultimate edge of the flat earth, against the windy sunlight of space and April and a midmorning filled with bells. Toward the church they thronged with slow sabbath deliberation, the women and children went on in, the men stopped outside and talked in quiet groups until the bell ceased ringing. Then they too entered.
The church had been decorated, with sparse flowers from kitchen gardens and hedgerows, and with streamers of colored crepe paper. Above the pulpit hung a battered Christmas bell, the accordion sort that collapses. The pulpit was empty, though the choir was already in place, fanning themselves although it was not warm.
Most of the women were gathered on one side of the room. They were talking. Then the bell struck one time and they dispersed to their seats and the congregation sat for an instant, expectant. The bell struck again one time. The choir rose and began to sing and the congregation turned its head as one as six small children—four girls with tight pigtails bound with small scraps of cloth like butterflies, and two boys with close napped heads—entered and marched up the aisle, strung together in a harness of white ribbons and flowers, and followed by two men in single file. The second man was huge, of a light coffee color, imposing in a frock coat and white tie. His head was magisterial and profound, his neck rolled above his collar in rich folds. But he was familiar to them, and so the heads were still reverted when he had passed, and it was not until the choir ceased singing that they realised that the visiting clergyman had already entered, and when they saw the man who had preceded their minister enter the pulpit still ahead of him an indescribable sound went up, a sigh, a sound of astonishment and disappointment.
The visitor was undersized, in a shabby alpaca coat. He had a wizened black face like a small, aged monkey. And all the while that the choir sang again and while the six children rose and sang in thin, frightened, tuneless whispers, they watched the insignificant looking man sitting dwarfed and countrified by the minister’s imposing bulk, with something like consternation. They were still looking at him with consternation and unbelief when the minister rose and introduced him in rich, rolling tones whose very unction served to increase the visitor’s insignificance.
“En dey brung dat all de way fum Saint Looey,” Frony whispered.
“I’ve knowed de Lawd to use cuiser tools dan dat,” Dilsey said. “Hush, now,