The Wild Palms: [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] by William Faulkner
“And you haven’t told them?”
“Told them how? I cant talk to them; the interpreter was one of the wops. Besides, he’s got to keep his mine looking like it’s running and that’s what I am supposed to do. So he can keep on selling the stock. That’s why you are here—a doctor. When he told you there wouldn’t be any medical inspectors out here to worry you about a license, he told you the truth. But there are mining inspectors out here, laws and regulations for running mines that say there must be a doctor. That’s why he paid you and your wife’s fare out here. Besides, the money might come in. When I saw you this morning I thought you had brought it too. Well? Seen enough?”
“Yes,” Wilbourne said. They returned toward the entrance; once more they stepped quickly aside to let a filled ore tram pass, pushed at a run by another grimed and frantic Pole. They emerged into the living cold of the immaculate snow, the fading day. “I dont believe it,” Wilbourne said.
“You saw, didn’t you?”
“I mean the reason you are still here. You were not expecting any money.”
“Maybe I’m waiting for a chance to slip away. And these bastards wont even go to sleep at night and give me one.—Hell,” he said. “That’s a lie too. I waited here because it’s winter and I might as well be here as any where else, long as there is enough grub in the commissary and we can keep warm. And because I knew he would have to send another doctor soon or come here himself and tell me and them wild bastards in there the mine is closed.”
“Well, here I am,” Wilbourne said. “He sent another doctor. What is it you want of a doctor?”
For a long moment Buckner looked at him—the hard little eyes which would have had to be good at measuring and commanding men of a sort, a class, a type, or he would not be where he now was; the hard eyes which perhaps never before, Wilbourne told himself, had been faced with the need of measuring a man who merely claimed to be a doctor. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got a good job, only I haven’t had any pay since September. We’ve saved about three hundred bucks, to get out of here with when this does blow, and to live on until I can find something else. And now Bill turns up a month gone with a kid and we cant afford a kid. And you claim to be a doctor and I believe you are. How about it?”
“No,” Wilbourne said.
“It’s my risk. I’ll see you are clear.”
“No,” Wilbourne said.
“You mean you dont know how?”
“I know how. It’s simple enough. One of the men in the hospital did it once—emergency patient—maybe to show us what never to do. He didn’t need to show me.”
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”
“I’ve got a hundred bucks,” Wilbourne said.
“A hundred and fifty bucks. That’s half of it. You see I cant do more.”
“I’ve got a hundred and fifty bucks too. I’ve got a hundred and eighty-five bucks. And even if I didn’t have but ten bucks—”
Buckner turned away. “You’re lucky. Let’s go eat.”
He told Charlotte about it. Not in bed, as they had used to talk, because they all slept in the same room—the cabin had but one, with a lean-to for what privacy was absolutely required—but outside the cabin where, knee-deep in snow, in the galoshes now, they could see the opposite canyon wall and the serrated cloud-ravelled peaks beyond, where Charlotte said again, indomitable: “It will be beautiful in the spring.”
“And you said no,” she said. “Why? Was it the hundred dollars?”
“You know better than that. It was a hundred and fifty, incidentally.”
“Low I may be, but not that low?”
“No. It was because I——”
“You are afraid?”
“No. It’s nothing. Simple enough. A touch with the blade to let the air in. It’s because I—”
“Women do die of it though.”
“Because the operator was no good. Maybe one in ten thousand. Of course there are no records. It’s because I—”
“It’s all right. It’s not because the price was too low, nor because you are afraid. That’s all I wanted to know. You dont have to. Nobody can make you. Kiss me. We cant even kiss inside, let alone——”
The four of them (Charlotte now slept in the woollen underwear like the others) slept in the one room, not in beds but on mattresses on the floor (“It’s warmer that way,” Buckner explained. “Cold comes from underneath.”) and the gasoline stove burned constantly. They had opposite corners but even at that the two mattresses were not fifteen feet apart, so Wilbourne and Charlotte could not even talk, whisper. It meant less to the Buckners though, even though they seemed to have little enough of preliminary talking and whispering to do; at times and with the lamp not five minutes dark Wilbourne and Charlotte would hear the abrupt stallion-like surge from the other bed, the violent blanket-muffled motion ceasing into the woman’s panting moans and at times a series of pure screams tumbling over one another, though such was not for them. Then one day the thermometer reversed itself from fourteen below to forty-one below and they moved the two mattresses together and slept as a unit, the two women in the middle, and still sometimes before the light was scarcely out (or perhaps they would be wakened by it) there would come the ruthless stallion crash with no word spoken, as if they had been drawn violently and savagely to one another out of pure slumber like steel and magnet, the fierce breathing, the panting and shuddering woman-moans, and Charlotte saying, “Cant you all do that without pulling the covers loose?” and still it was not for them.
They had been there a month, it was almost March now and the spring for which Charlotte waited that much nearer, when one afternoon Wilbourne returned from the mine where the dirty and unsleeping Poles still labored in that fierce deluded frenzy and the blind birdlike incomprehensible voices still flew back and forth among the dusty extravagant electric bulbs, and found Charlotte and Mrs Buckner watching the cabin door as he entered. And he knew what was coming and perhaps even that he was already done for. “Listen, Harry,” she said. “They are going to leave. They’ve got to. It’s all up here and they have only three hundred dollars, to get where they are going and to live on until he can find work. So they’ve got to do something before it’s too late.”
“So have we,” he said. “And we haven’t got three hundred dollars.”
“We haven’t got a baby either. We haven’t had bad luck. You said it’s simple, that only one in ten thousand die, that you know how to do it, that you are not afraid. And they want to take the risk.”
“Do you want a hundred dollars that bad?”
“Have I ever? ever talked about money, except the hundred and twenty-five of mine you wouldn’t take? You know that. Just as I know you wouldn’t take their money.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s because I—”
“It’s because they are in trouble. Suppose it was us. I know you will have to throw away something. But we have thrown away a lot, threw it away for love and we’re not sorry.”
“No,” he said. “Not sorry. Never.”
“This is for love too. Not ours maybe. But love.” She went to the shelf on which they kept their personal effects and took down the meagre case of instruments with which he had been equipped before he left Chicago, along with the two railroad tickets. “This would be good for him to know, if he could know it: that the only time you ever used them was to amputate his manager from the mine. What else do you need?”
Buckner came up beside Wilbourne. “All right?” he said. “I’m not afraid and she aint. Because you’re all right. I aint watched you for a month for nothing. Maybe if you had agreed quick, right off, that first day, I wouldn’t let you, I’d be afraid. But not now. I’ll take all the risk and I’ll remember my promise: I’ll see you are clear. And it aint a hundred, it’s still a hundred and fifty.”
He tried to say No, he tried hard. Yes he thought quietly I have thrown away lots, but apparently not this. Honesty about money, security, degree and then for a terribl
Three days later they who had not been met walked with the Buckners across the canyon to the waiting ore train. Wilbourne had steadily refused even the hundred dollars, accepting at last and instead of it a hundred dollar assignment on Buckner’s back pay which they both knew would never be paid, this to be expended against its equivalent in food from the commissary, whose key Buckner had surrendered to him. “It sounds damn foolish to me,” Buckner said. “The commissary is yours anyway.”
“It will keep the books balanced,” Wilbourne said. They followed the path which was no path, to the train, the engine with neither head nor tail, the three ore cars, the toy caboose. Buckner looked up at the mine, the gaping orifice, the refuse dump scarring the pristine snow. It was clear now, the sun low and thin above the serrated rosy peaks in a sky of incredible blue. “What will they think when they find you are gone?”
“Maybe they will think I have gone after the money myself. I hope they do, for your sake.” Then he said, “They are better off here. No worries about rent and such and getting drunk and then getting sober again, enough food to keep you all until spring. And they have something to do, keep the days filled, and nights to lie in bed and count up that overtime. A man can go a long way on what he thinks he’s going to get. And he may send some money yet.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” Buckner said. “Dont you believe it either.”
“I dont think I ever have,” Wilbourne said. “Not even that day in his office. Maybe even less then than at any time.” They were standing a little aside from the two women. “Look, when you get out and find a chance, have her see a doctor. A good one. Tell him the truth.”
“What for?” Buckner said.
“I’d rather you would. I’d feel easier.”
“Nah,” the other said. “She’s all right. Because you’re all right. If I hadn’t known that, do you think I’d a let you do it?” Now it was time, the locomotive blew a shrill peanut-whistle blast, the Buckners got into the caboose and it began to move. Charlotte and Wilbourne looked after it for only a moment, then Charlotte turned, already running. The sun was almost down, the peaks ineffable and tender, the sky amber and azure; for an instant Wilbourne heard the voices from the mine, wild faint and incomprehensible.
“Oh God,” Charlotte said. “Let’s dont even eat tonight. Hurry. Run.” She ran on, then she stopped and turned, the broad blunt face rosy in the reflected pink, the eyes now green with it above the shapeless sheep collar of the shapeless coat. “No,” she said. “You run in front, so I can be undressing us both in the snow. But run.” But he did not go ahead, he did not even run, he walked so he could watch her diminishing ahead of him along the path which was no path, then mounting the other wall toward the cabin, who, save for the fact that she wore them with the same abrupt obliviousness with which she wore dresses, should never have worn pants at all, and entered the cabin and found her now stripping off even the woollen underwear. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry. Six weeks. I have almost forgotten how. No,” she said, “I’ll never forget that. You never forget that, thank you sweet God.” Then she said, holding him, the hard arms and thighs: “I guess I am a sissy about love. I never could, even with just one other people in the bed with us.”
They didn’t get up to prepare or eat supper. After a time they slept; Wilbourne waked somewhere in the rigid night to find the stove had gone out and the room freezing cold. He thought of Charlotte’s undergarment where she had flung it away onto the floor; she would need it, she should have it on now. But it too would be like iron ice and he thought for a while about getting up and fetching it into the bed and thawing it, warming it beneath his body until she could put it on and at last he found will power to begin to move but at once she clutched him. “Where you going?” He told her. She clutched him, hard. “When I get cold, you can always cover me.”
Each day he would visit the mine, where the frenzied and unabated work continued. On the first visit the men looked at him not with curiosity or surprise but merely with interrogation, obviously looking for Buckner too. But nothing else happened and he realised that they did not even know probably that he was merely the mine’s official doctor, that they recognised in him only another American (he almost said white man), another representative of that remote golden unchallengeable Power in which they held blind faith and trust. He and Charlotte began to discuss the question of telling them, trying to. “Only what good would it do?” he said. “Buckner was right. Where would they go, and what would they do when they got there? There’s plenty of food for them here to last out the winter, and they probably haven’t saved any money (granted they ever got square with the commissary even when they were being paid enough wages to save) and like Buckner said, you can live pretty happy a long time on illusion. Maybe you aren’t happy any other time. I mean, if you are a hunky that never learned anything else but how to time a dynamite fuse five hundred feet underground. And another thing. We’ve still got three quarters of the hundred dollars in grub ourselves, and if everybody left here, somebody would hear about it and he might even send a man in here to pick up the other three cans of beans.”
“And something else too,” Charlotte said. “They cant go now. They cant walk out in this snow. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“That little toy train hasn’t been back since it took the Buckners out. That’s two weeks ago.”
He hadn’t noticed this, he did not know if it would come back again, so they agreed that the next time it appeared they would wait no longer, they would tell (or try to tell) the men in the mine. Then two weeks later the train did return. They crossed the canyon to where the wild filthy jabbering men were already beginning to load the cars. “Now what?” Wilbourne said. “I cant talk to them.”
“Yes you can. Someway. They believe you are the boss now and nobody yet ever failed to understand the man he believes is his boss. Try to get them over to the commissary.”
Wilbourne moved forward, over to the loading chute in which the first tram of ore was already rattling, and raised his hand. “Wait,” he said loudly. The men paused, looking at him out of the gaunt pale-eyed faces. “Commissary,” he shouted. “Store!” jerking his arm toward the opposite canyon wall; now he recalled the word which the first one, the one who drew up Charlotte’s coat for her that first day, had used. “Ron,” he said. “Ron.” They looked at him a moment longer, silently, the eyes round beneath the brute-like and terrific arching of pale brows, the expressions eager, puzzled, and wild. Then they looked at one another, they huddled, jabbering in that harsh incomprehensible tongue. Then they moved toward him in a body. “No, no,” he said. “All.” He gestured toward the mine shaft. “All of you.” Someone comprehended quickly this time, almost at once the short one whom Wilbourne had seen behind the galloping ore tram on his first visit to the mine dashed out of the group and up the snowy slope on his short strong thick piston-like legs and vanished into the orifice and reappeared, followed by the rest of the endless shift. These mingled with the first group, jabbering and gesticulating. Then they all ceased and looked at Wilbourne, obedient and subdued. “Look at their faces,” he said. “God, I hate to be the one to have to do this. Damn Buckner anyway.”
“Come on,” Charlotte said. “Let’s get it over.” They crossed the valley, the miners following, incredibly dirty against the snow—the faces of a poorly made-up and starving black-face minstrel troupe—to the commissary. Wilbourne unlocked the door. Then he saw at the rear of the group five women. He and Charlotte had never seen them before; they seemed to have sprung from the snow itself, shawled; two of them carried infants, one of which could not have been a month old.
“My God,” Wilbourne said. “They dont even know I’m a doctor. They dont even know they are supposed to h
“Wait!” Charlotte cried. “Wait!” They paused; they watched her once more as the crayon moved, and now, at the rear of the throng waiting outside the closed window Wilbourne saw his own face emerge from beneath the flying chalk; anyone would have recognised him: they did at once. The sound ceased, they looked at Wilbourne then at one another in bewilderment. Then they looked at Charlotte again as she ripped the paper from the wall and began to attach a fresh sheet; this time one of them stepped forward and helped her, Wilbourne too watching the flying crayon again. This time it was himself, indubitably himself and indubitably a doctor, anyone would have known it—the horn glasses, the hospital tunic every charity patient, every hunky gutted by flying rock or steel or premature dynamite and coming to in company emergency stations, has seen, a bottle which was indubitably medicine in one hand, a spoonful of which he was offering to a man who was compositely all of them, every man who ever labored in the bowels of earth—the same wild unshaven look, even the sheepskin collar, and behind the doctor the same huge hand with its huge diamond in the act of extracting from the doctor’s pocket a wallet thin as paper. Again the eyes turned toward Wilbourne, the reproach gone now and only the ferocity remaining and that not at him. He gestured toward the remaining laden shelves. Presently he was able to reach Charlotte in the pandemonium and take her arm.