The Sound and the Fury
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They came toward the flag, and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back, and they went to the table, and he hit, and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree, and we went along the fence, and they stopped, and we stopped, and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.
"Here, caddie." He hit. They went away across the pasture. I held to the fence and watched them going away.
"Listen at you, now." Luster said. "Aint you something, thirty-three years old, going on that way. I bet you won't go down to the branch with me and find that quarter. Coming on dark, folks going to be coming along soon. Then you'll be hollering."
Caddy smelled like trees. That was the thing I remembered when the shadows got long and the light went slanting through the window onto the floor. She smelled like trees, and she would hold me, and I would hold her, and the world would be quiet. Then she went away. They said she ran off, that she was bad, that she had a child and no husband. But I only knew that the trees stopped smelling like her. The branch was cold, and the water ran fast, and Luster was looking for his lost quarter, and I was looking for Caddy.
The golf players came again. "Here, caddie," one shouted. I began to bellow. The sound came up from somewhere deep, from before words, from the place where time folds in on itself and all the losses live. Luster hit me. "Hush up," he said. But I could not hush. The word was not her, but it was all I had. Caddie. Caddie. The dusk took the name and scattered it like ash.