Light in August

“Well, I was downright ashamed to look at him, to let him know that any human man had seen and heard what happened. I be dog if I didn’t want to find the hole and crawl into it with him. I did for a fact. And him standing there where she had set him down. The fire had burned down good now and I couldn’t hardly see him at all. But I knew about how I would have been standing and feeling if I was him. And that would have been with my head bowed, waiting for the Judge to say, ‘Take him out of here and hang him quick.’ And I didn’t make a sound, and after a while I heard him go on off. I could hear the bushes popping, like he had just struck off blind through the woods. And when daylight came he hadn’t got back.

“Well, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I kept on believing that he would show up, would come walking up out of the bushes, face or no face. So I built up the fire and got breakfast started, and after a while I heard her climbing out of the truck. I never looked around. But I could hear her standing there like she was looking around, like maybe she was trying to tell by the way the fire or my blanket looked if he was there or not. But I never said anything and she never said anything. I wanted to pack up and get started. And I knew I couldn’t leave her in the middle of the road. And that if my wife was to hear bout me travelling the country with a goodlooking country gal and a three weeks’ old baby, even if she did claim she was hunting for her husband. Or both husbands now. So we ate and then I said, ‘Well, I got a long road and I reckon I better get started.’ And she never said nothing at all. And when I looked at her I saw that her face was just as quiet and calm as it had ever been. I be dog if she was even surprised or anything. And there I was, not knowing what to do with her, and she done already packed up her things and even swept the truck out with a gum branch before she put in that paper suitcase and made a kind of cushion with the folded blanket at the back end of the truck; and I says to myself, ‘It ain’t any wonder you get along. When they up and run away on you, you just pick up whatever they left and go on.’—‘I reckon I’ll ride back here,’ she says.

“ ‘It’ll be kind of rough on the baby,’ I says.

“ ‘I reckon I can hold him up,’ she says.

“ ‘Suit yourself,’ I says. And we drove off, with me hanging out the seat to look back, hoping that he would show up before we got around the curve. But he never. Talk about a fellow being caught in the depot with a strange baby on his hands. Here I was with a strange woman and a baby too, expecting every car that come up from behind and passed us to be full of husbands and wives too, let alone sheriffs. We were getting close to the Te

Then what? What did she do then?

Nothing. Just sitting there, riding, looking out like she hadn’t ever seen country—roads and trees and fields and telephone poles—before in her life. She never saw him at all until he come around to the back door of the truck.’ She never had to. All she needed to do was wait. And she knew that.

Him?

Sho. He was standing at the side of the road when we come around the curve. Standing there, face and no face, hangdog and determined and calm too, like he had done desperated himself up for the last time, to take the last chance, and that now he knew he wouldn’t ever have to desperate himself again He continues: “He never looked at me at all. I just stopped the truck and him already ru

“ ‘Ain’t nobody never said for you to quit,’ she says.” He laughs, lying in the bed, laughing. “Yes, sir. You can’t beat a woman. Because do you know what I think? I think she was just travelling. I don’t think she had any idea of finding whoever it was she was following. I don’t think she had ever aimed to, only she hadn’t told him yet. I reckon this was the first time she had ever been further away from home than she could walk back before sundown in her life. And that she had got along all right this far, with folks taking good care of her. And so I think she had just made up her mind to travel a little further and see as much as she could, since I reckon she knew that when she settled down this time, it would likely be for the rest of her life. That’s what I think. Sitting back there in that truck, with him by her now and the. baby that hadn’t never stopped eating, that had been eating breakfast now for about ten miles, like one of these dining cars on the train, and her looking out and watching the telephone poles and the fences passing like it was a circus parade. Because after a while I says, ‘Here comes Saulsbury,’ and she says,

“ ‘What?’ and I says,

“ ‘Saulsbury, Te

“ ‘My, my. A body does get around. Here we ain’t been coming from Alabama but two months, and now it’s already Te

About the Author

William Faulkner, born New Albany, Mississippi, September 25, 1897—died July 6, 1962. Enlisted Royal Air Force, Canada, 1918. Attended University of Mississippi. Traveled in Europe 1925-1926. Resident of Oxford, Mississippi, where he held various jobs while trying to establish himself as a writer. First published novel, Soldiers’ Pay, 1926. Writer in Residence at the University of Virginia 1957-1958. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1950.

Light in August, Faulkner’s seventh novel, was first published October 6, 1932, by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas. The text of this edition is reproduced photographically from a copy of the first edition.