From The Unvanquished
By William Faulkner
So Ringo and I squatted again and waited quietly while Granny sewed beside the lamp on the table and Father sat in his old chair in its old place, his muddy boots crossed and lifted into the old heel-marks beside the cold and empty fireplace, chewing the tobacco which Joby had loaned him. Joby was a good deal older than Father. He was too old to have been caught short of tobacco just by a war. He had come to Mississippi. He had come to Mississippi from Carolina with Father and he had been Father’s body servant all the time that he was raising and training Simon, Ringo’s father, to take over when he (Joby) got too old, which was to have been some years yet except for the War. So Simon went with Father; he was still in Tennessee with the army. We waited for Father to begin; we waited so long that we could tell from the sounds that Louvinia was almost through in the kitchen: so that I decided Father was waiting for Louvinia to finish and come in to hear too, so I said, “How can you fight in the mountains, Father?”
And that’s what he was waiting for, though not in the way Ringo and I thought, because he said, “You can’t. You just have to. Now you boys run on to bed.”
We went up the stairs. But not all the way; we stopped and sat on the top step, just out of the light from the hall lamp, watching the door to the Office, listening; after a while Louvinia crossed the hall without looking up and entered the Office; we could hear father and her:
“Is the trunk ready?”
“Yes sir. Hit’s ready,”
“Then tell Loosh to get the lantern and the shovels and wait in the kitchen for me.”
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