"Now, now," the other ex-soldier said. "Hawkshaw's all right. Come on, Hawk; jump in."
"Will Mayes never done it, boys," the barber said. "If anybody done it. Why, you all know well as I do there aint any town where they got better niggers than us. And you know how a lady will kind of think things about men when there aint any reason to, and Miss Minnie anyway-"
"Sure, sure," the soldier said. "We're just going to talk to him a little; that's all."
"Talk hell!" Butch said. "When we're through with the-"
"Shut up, for God's sake!" the soldier said. "Do you want everybody in town-"
"Tell them, by God!" McLendon said. "Tell every one of the sons that'll let a white woman-"
"Let's go; let's go: here's the other car." The second car slid squealing out of a cloud of dust at the alley mouth. McLendon started his car and took the lead. Dust lay like fog in the street. The street lights hung nimbused as in water. They drove on out of town.
A rutted lane turned at right angles. Dust hung above it too, and above all the land. The dark bulk of the ice plant, where the Negro Mayes was night watchman, rose against the sky. "Better stop here, hadn't we?" the soldier said. McLendon did not reply. He hurled the car up and slammed to a stop, the headlights glaring on the blank wall.
"Listen here, boys," the barber said; "if he's here, dont that prove he never done it? Dont it? If it was him, he would run. Dont you see he would?" The second car came up and stopped. McLendon got down; Butch sprang down beside him. "Listen, boys," the barber said.
In this passage, Faulkner evokes the “bloody twilight” before the nightmarish night. Description is limited, as through the entire story, but we can still make out the dusty fog in the street and the air. Dialogue is cut off and brief, leaving us snatching at phrases to figure out what’s happening. The hurried, panicked interruptions make it clear that nothing logical and reasoned will be able to be said or heard. The barber makes an effort, but his continual “listen here”’s and don’t its and don’t you’s show that no one is listening to him and he is trying to get something through their heads.
In fact, from all quarters, not just from the barber, the repeated phrases add to the anxious, tense tone. The air lays still and the lights hang suspended. Their whole environment holds its breath, but verbs used for the gang are violent and active. The car squeals, McLendon takes the lead, hurls and slams his car around, Butch springs from the running board, people are incited to jump in. We can see these movements in the fading light, later on all we hear are voices in the dark. Most of the story feels blindfolded like this, the exceptions are the scenes with Minnie Cooper and the last scene when McLendon proves us wrong in thinking he couldn’t be a bigger asshole. These three scenes are written cinematically. We view the remembered action, which is presented without rank or judgement.
The choral repetitions that stuck out the most to me where the bright, fevered, glittering eyes, the dead air, and the air as absorbent or enveloping, feeling like “molten lead”. The last example clues us in to Will’s fate, since with our blindfolds on it goes unsaid and unseen. The descriptions of dead air and the fevered quality of the townspeople’s eyes makes us feel the lack of control, sanity, and reason in the town.
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