The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner.mobi [31]
“There now. Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger.”
“Yes,” I said. “Now he can spend day after day marching in parades. If it hadn’t been for my grandfather, he’d have to work like whitefolks.”
I didn’t see him anywhere. But I never knew even a working nigger that you could find when you wanted him, let alone one that lived off the fat of the land. A car came along. I went over to town and went to Parker’s and had a good breakfast. While I was eating I heard a clock strike the hour. But then I suppose it takes at least one hour to lose time in, who has been longer than history getting into the mechanical progression of it.
When I finished breakfast I bought a cigar. The girl said a fifty cent one was the best, so I took one and lit it and went out to the street. I stood there and took a couple of puffs, then I held it in my hand and went on toward the corner. I passed a jeweller’s window, but I looked away in time. At the corner two bootblacks caught me, one on either side, shrill and raucous, like blackbirds. I gave the cigar to one of them, and the other one a nickel. Then they let me alone. The one with the cigar was trying to sell it to the other for the nickel.
There was a clock, high up in the sun, and I thought about how, when you dont want to do a thing, your body will try to trick you into doing it, sort of unawares. I could feel the muscles in the back of my neck, and then I could hear my watch ticking away in my pocket and after a while I had all the other sounds shut away, leaving only the watch in my pocket. I turned back up the street, to the window. He was working at the table behind the window. He was going bald. There was a glass in his eye—a metal tube screwed into his face. I went in.
The place was full of ticking, like crickets in September grass, and I could hear a big clock on the wall above his head. He looked up, his eye big and blurred and rushing beyond the glass. I took mine out and handed it to him.
“I broke my watch.”
He flipped it over in his hand. “I should say you have. You must have stepped on it.”
“Yes, sir. I knocked it off the dresser and stepped on it in the dark. It’s still running though.”
He pried the back open and squinted into it. “Seems to be all right. I cant tell until I go over it, though. I’ll go into it this afternoon.”
“I’ll bring it back later,” I said. “Would you mind telling me if any of those watches in the window are right?”
He held my watch on his palm and looked up at me with his blurred rushing eye.
“I made a bet with a fellow,” I said. “And I forgot my glasses this morning.”
“Why, all right,” he said. He laid the watch down and half rose on his stool and looked over the barrier. Then he glanced up at the wall. “It’s twen——”
“Dont tell me,” I said, “please sir. Just tell me if any of them are right.”
He looked at me again. He sat back on the stool and pushed the glass up onto his forehead. It left a red circle around his eye and when it was gone his whole face looked naked. “What’re you celebrating today?” he said. “That boat race aint until next week, is it?”
“No, sir. This is just a private celebration. Birthday. Are any of them right?”
“No. But they haven’t been regulated and set yet. If you’re thinking of buying one of them——”
“No, sir. I dont need a watch. We have a clock in our sitting room. I’ll have this one fixed when I do.” I reached