“It’ll be the best thing they ever done, if they was to recall him and elect a man like Debs or Senator Vardaman president,” the proprietor agreed sagely. “Well, that sure was fine,” he added. “Henry’s sure a wonder, ain’t he?” He set his glass down and turned to the door. “Well, you boys make yourselves at home. If you want anything, just call Houston.” And he bustled out at his distracted trot.
“Sit down,” MacCallum said. He drew up a chair, and Bayard drew another up opposite him across the table. “Deacon sure ought to know good whisky. He’s drunk enough of it to float his counters right on out the front door.” He filled his glass and pushed the bottle across to Bayard, and they drank again, quietly.
“You look bad, son,” MacCallum said suddenly, and Bayard raised his head and found the other examining him with his keen steady eyes. “Over-trained,” he added, and Bayard made an abrupt gesture of negation and raised his glass again, but he could still feel the other watching him intently but without rudeness. ‘Well, you haven’t forgot how to drink good whisky, anyhow...Why don’t you come out and take a week’s hunt? Got an old red we been saving for you. Been running him off and on for two years, now, with the young dogs. Ain’t put old General on him yet, because the old feller’ll nose him out, and I wanted to save him for you boys. John would have enjoyed that fox. You remember that night John cut across down to Samson’s bridge ahead of the dogs, and when we got to the river here come him and the fox floating along on that drift log, the fox on one end and John on the other, ringing that fool song as loud as he could yell? John would have enjoyed this here fox. He outsmarts them young dogs every time. But old General’ll get him.”
Bayard sat with his head bent, taming his glass in his hand. He reached a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and shook a few of them onto the table at his hand and flipped the packet across the table to the other. But MacCallum made no move to take it. He drank his toddy steadily and refilled his glass and stirred his spoon slowly in it. Bayard lit one of his cigarettes and emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. “You look like hell, boy,” MacCallum repeated.
“Dry, I reckon,” Bayard answered in a voice as level as the other’s. He made himself another toddy, his cigarette smoking on the table edge beside him. He raised his glass, but instead of drinking he held it for a moment to his nose, and the small muscles at the base of his nostrils tautened whitely, then he swung the glass from him and with a steady hand he emptied it onto the floor. The other watched him quietly while he picked up the bottle again and poured the glass half full of raw liquor and sloshed a little water into it and tilted it down his throat. “I’ve been good too damn long,” he said aloud, and he fell to talking of the war. Not of combat, but rather of a life peopled by young men like fallen angels, and of a meteoric violence like that of fallen angels, beyond heaven or hell and partaking of both: doomed immortality and immortal doom.
MacCallum sat and listened quietly, drinking his whisky steadily and slowly and without appreciable effect, as though it were milk he drank; and Bayard talked on and presently found himself without surprise eating food. The bottle was now less than half full. The negro Houston had brought the food in and had his drink, taking it neat and without batting an eye. “Ef I had a cow dat give dat, de calf wouldn’t git no milk a-tall,” he said, “and I wouldn’t never churn. Thank’ee, Mr. MacCaHum, suh.”
Then he was out, and Bayard’s voice went on, filling the cubby-hole of a room, surmounting the odor of cheap food too quickly cooked and of sharp spilt whisky, with ghosts of a thing high-pitched as a hysteria, like a glare of fallen meteors on the dark retina of the world Again a light tap at the door, and the proprietor’s egg-shaped head and his hot diffident eyes.
“You gentlemen got everything you want?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his thighs.
“Come and get it,” MacCallum said, jerking his head toward the bottle, and the other made himself a toddy in his stale glass and drank it and stood while Bayard finished his tale of himself and an Australian major and two ladies in the Leicester lounge one evening (the Leicester lounge being out of bounds, and the Anzac lost two teeth and his girl, and Bayard himself got a black eye), watching the narrator with round melting astonishment.
“Great Savior,” he said, “the av’aytors was sure some hellraisers, wadn’t they? Well, I reckon they’re wanting me up front again. You got to keep on the jump to make a living, these days.” And he scuttled out again.
“I’ve been good too goddam long,” Bayard repeated harshly, watching MacCallum fill the two glasses. “That’s the only thing Johnny was ever good for. Kept me from getting in a rut Bloody rut, with a couple of old women hanging around me, and nothing to do except scare old niggers.” He drank his whisky and set the glass down on the table, still clutching it. “Damn ham-handed Hun,” he said. “He never could learn to fly properly. I kept trying to keep him from going up there on that goddam popgun,” and he cursed his dead brother savagely. Then he raised his glass again, but halted it half way to his mouth. “Where in hell did my drink go?”
MacCallum reached the bottle and emptied it into Bayard’s glass, and he drank and banged the thick tumbler on the table and rose and lurched back against the wall. His chair crashed backward, and he braced himself, staring at the other. “I kept on trying to keep him from going up there, on that Camel. But he gave me a burst. Right across my nose.”
MacCallum rose also. “Come on here,” he said quietly, and he offered to take Bayard’s arm, but Bayard evaded him and they passed through the kitchen and traversed the long tunnel of the store. Bayard walked steadily enough, and the proprietor bobbed his head at them across the counter.
“Call again, gentlemen,” he said. “Call again.”
“All right, Deacon,” MacCallum answered. Bayard strode on without turning his head. As they passed the soda fountain a young lawyer standing beside a stranger, addressed him.
“Captain Sartoris, shake hands with Mr. Gratton here. Gratton was up on the British front for a while last year.” The stranger turned and extended his hand, but Bayard stared at him bleakly and walked so steadily on that the other involuntarily gave back a pace in order not to be overborne.
“Why, goddam his soul,” he said to Bayard’s back. The lawyer grasped his arm.
“He’s drunk,” he whispered quickly, “he’s drunk.”
“I don’t give a damn,” the other exclaimed loudly. “Because he was a goddam shave-tail he thinks—”
“Shhhh, shhhh,” the lawyer hissed. The proprietor appeared at the corner of his candy case, peering out with hot round alarm.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!’’ he exclaimed. The stranger made another violent movement, and Bayard stopped.
“Wait a minute while I bash his face in,” he told MacCallum, turning. The stranger thrust the lawyer aside and stepped forward.
“You never saw the day—” he began. MacCallum took Bayard’s arm firmly and easily.
“Come on here, boy.”
‘I’ll bash his bloody face in,” Bayard stated equably, watching the angry stranger with his bleak eyes. The lawyer grasped his companion’s arm again.
“Get away,” the other said, flinging him off. “Just let him try it. Come on, you limey—”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” the proprietor implored.
“Come on here, boy,” MacCallum said. “I’ve got to look at a horse.”
“A horse?” Bayard repeated. He turned obediently, then as an afterthought he paused and looked back. “Can’t bash your face in now,” he told the stranger. “Sorry. Got to look at a horse. Call for you at the hotel later.” But the stranger’s back was turned, and behind it the lawyer grimaced at MacCallum and waggled his hand.
“Get him away, MacCallum, for God’s sake.”