The sound and the fury

     "Kin we go to de pastuh?" Luster said.

     "All right. Only you keep him away fum de house. I done stood all I kin."

     "Yessum," Luster said. "Whar Mr Jason gone, mammy?"

     "Dat's some mo of yo business, aint it?" Dilsey said. She began to clear the table. "Hush, Benjy. Luster gwine take you out to play."

     "Whut he done to Miss Quentin, mammy?" Luster said.

     "Aint done nothin to her. You all git on outen here."

     "I bet she aint here," Luster said.

     Dilsey looked at him. "How you know she aint here?"

     "Me and Benjy seed her clamb out de window last night. Didn't us, Benjy?"

     "You did?" Dilsey said, looking at him.

     "We sees her doin hit ev'y night," Luster said. "Clamb right down dat pear tree."

     "Dont you lie to me, nigger boy," Dilsey said.

     "I aint lyin. Ask Benjy ef I is."

     "Whyn't you say somethin about it, den?"

     "'Twarn't none o my business," Luster said. "I aint gwine git mixed up in white folks' business. Come on here, Benjy, les go out do's."

     They went out. Dilsey stood for a while at the table, then she went and cleared the breakfast things from the diningroom and ate her breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen. Then she removed her apron and hung it up and went to the foot of the stairs and listened for a moment. There was no sound. She donned the overcoat and the hat and went across to her cabin.

     The rain had stopped. The air now drove out of the southeast, broken overhead into blue patches. Upon the crest of a hill beyond the trees and roofs and spires of town sunlight lay like a pale scrap of cloth, was blotted away. Upon the air a bell came, then as if at a signal, other bells took up the sound and repeated it.

     The cabin door opened and Dilsey emerged, again in the maroon cape and the purple gown, and wearing soiled white elbow-length gloves and minus her headcloth now. She came into the yard and called Luster. She waited a while, then she went to the house and around it to the cellar door, moving close to the wall, and looked into the door. Ben sat on the steps. Before him Luster squatted on the damp floor. He held a saw in his left hand, the blade sprung a little by pressure of his hand, and he was in the act of striking the blade with the worn wooden mallet with which she had been making beaten biscuit for more than thirty years. The saw gave forth a single sluggish twang that ceased with lifeless alacrity, leaving the blade in a thin clean curve between Luster's hand and the floor. Still, inscrutable, it bellied.

     "Dat's de way he done hit," Luster said. "I jes aint foun de right thing to hit it wid."

     "Dat's whut you doin, is it?" Dilsey said. "Bring me dat mallet," she said.

     "I aint hurt hit," Luster said.

     "Bring hit here," Dilsey said. "Put dat saw whar you got hit first."

     He put the saw away and brought the mallet to her. Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

     "Listen at him," Luster said. "He been gwine on dat way ev'y since you vent us outen de house. I dont know whut got in to him dis mawnin."

     "Bring him here," Dilsey said.

     "Come on, Benjy," Luster said. He went back down the steps and took Ben's arm. He came obediently, wailing, that slow hoarse sound that ships make, that seems to begin before the sound itself has started, seems to cease before the sound itself has stopped.

     "Run and git his cap," Dilsey said. "Dont make no noise Miss Cahline kin hear. Hurry, now. We already late."

     "She gwine hear him anyhow, ef you dont stop him," Luster said.

     "He stop when we git off de place," Dilsey said. "He smellin hit. Dat's whut hit is."

     "Smell whut, mammy?" Luster said.

     "You go git dat cap," Dilsey said. Luster went on. They stood in the cellar door, Ben one step below her. The sky was broken now into scudding patches that dragged their swift shadows up out of the shabby garden, over the broken fence and across the yard. Dilsey stroked Ben's head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. "Hush," Dilsey said. "Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now." He wailed quietly and steadily.

     Luster returned, wearing a stiff new straw hat with a colored band and carrying a cloth cap. The hat seemed to isolate Luster's skull, in the beholder's eye as a spotlight would, in all its individual planes and angles. So peculiarly individual was its shape that at first glance the hat appeared to be on the head of someone standing immediately behind Luster. Dilsey looked at the hat.

     "Whyn't you wear yo old hat?" she said.

     "Couldn't find hit," Luster said.

     "I bet you couldn't. I bet you fixed hit last night so you couldn't find hit. You fixin to ruin dat un."

     "Aw, mammy," Luster said. "Hit aint gwine rain."

     "How you know? You go git dat old hat en put dat new un away."

     "Aw, mammy."

     "Den you go git de umbreller."

     "Aw, mammy."

     "Take yo choice," Dilsey said. "Git yo old hat, er de umbreller. I dont keer which."

     Luster went to the cabin. Ben wailed quietly.