Free Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner

’58. Miss Jenny sat with her uncompromising grenadier’s back and held her hat upon her knees and fixed herself to look on as her guest touched chords from the keyboard and wove them together and rolled the curtain back upon the scene.
    In the kitchen Caspey was having breakfast while Simon his father, and Elnora his sister, and Isom his nephew (in uniform) watched him. He had been Simon’s understudy in the stables and general handy-man about the place, doing all the work that Simon managed, through the specious excuse of decrepitude and filial gratitude, to slough off onto his shoulders and that Miss Jenny could devise for him and which he could not evade. Old Bayard also employed him in the fields occasionally. Then the draft had got him and bore him to France and the St Sulpice docks as one of a labor battalion, where he did what work corporals and sergeants managed to slough off onto his unmilitary shoulders and that white officers could devise for him and which he could not evade.
    Thus all the labor about the place devolved upon Simon and Isom, but Miss Jenny kept Isom piddling about the house so much of the time that Simon was soon as bitter against the War Lords as any professional Democrat. Meanwhile Caspey was working a little and trifling with continental life in its martial phases rather to his future detriment, for at last the tumult died and the captains departed and left a vacuum filled with the usual bitter bickering of Armageddon’s heirs-at-law; and Caspey returned to his native land a total loss, sociologically speaking, with a definite disinclination toward labor, honest or otherwise, and two honorable wounds incurred in a razor-hedged crap game. But return he did, to his father’s queruloussatisfaction and Elnora’s and Isom’s admiration, and he now sat in the kitchen, telling them about the war.
    “I dont take nothin’ fum no white folks no mo’,” he was saying. “War done changed all dat. If us cullud folks is good enough ter save France fum de Germans, den us is good enough ter have de same rights de Germans is. French folks thinks so, anyhow, and ef America dont, dey’s ways of learnin’ ’um. Yes, suh, it wuz de cullud soldier saved France and America bofe. Black regiments kilt mo’ Germans dan all de white armies put together, let ’lone unloadin’ steamboats all day long fer a dollar a day.”
    “War aint hurt dat big mouf o’ yo’n, anyhow,” Simon said.
    “War unloosed de black man’s mouf,” Caspey corrected. “Give him de right to talk. Kill Germans, den do yo’ oratin’, dey tole us. Well, us done it.”
    “How many you kilt, Unc’ Caspey?” Isom asked deferentially.
    “I aint never bothered to count ’um up. Been times I kilt mo in one mawnin’ dan dey’s folks on dis whole place. One time we wuz down in de cellar of a steamboat tied up to de bank, and one of dese submareems sailed up and stopped, and all de white officers run up on de bank and hid. Us boys downstairs didn’t know dey wuz anything wrong ’twell folks started clambin’ down de ladder. We never had no guns wid us at de time, so when we seed dem green legs comin’ down de ladder we crope up behin’ ’um, and ez dey come down one of de boys would hit ’um over de haid wid a piece of scantlin’ and another would drag ’um outen de way and cut dey th’oat wid a meat-plow. Dey wuz about thirty of ’um.…… Elnora, is dey any mo’ of dat coffee lef’?”
    “Sho,” Simon murmured. Isom’s eyes popped quietly and Elnora lifted the coffee-pot from the stove and refilled Caspey’s cup.
    Caspey drank coffee for a while. “And another time me and a boy wuz gwine along a road. We got tired unloadin’ dem steamboats all day long, so one day de Captain’sdog-robber foun’ whar he kep’ dese here unloaded passes and he tuck a han’ful of ’um, and me and him wuz on de road to town when a truck come along and de boy axed us did us want a lif’. He wuz a school boy, so he writ on