Free William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice by William Styron

spring sky where dumpy clouds drifted past, melting at their edges like smoke. The bay was very still, exuding a pleasant odor of salt. Past Peyton, with studied gravity, he gazed at the garden—his wife’s—a turmoil of nameless color, roses, pansies, whatyoum’callits—he never knew. A mockingbird somewhere made a facetious chatter, crickets chirped in the flower beds, the scent of grass was hot, filling his nostrils with a coarse sweet odor—a spring day in Virginia. He yawned again, looking upward.
    “Chances are it’ll rain,” he said abstractedly.
    “Yes,” said Peyton. “Chances are. Gimme the funnies.”
    “Don’t say ‘gimme’.”
    “Let me, then.”
    “That’s better, baby,” he said. “I’ll give you the funnies on one condition. See that rosebush over there? Go and pick a rose and bring it to me. Careful, don’t get stuck on the thorns.”
    Peyton ran off obediently and in a moment came back with a big red rose, trembling with dew. “Thank you, baby,” he said. There was something mildly debonair, he thought pleasantly, in presenting your wife with a rose on a sunny morning.
    “Let me have the funnies,” Peyton said. She took the funnies without a word and sprawled out on the lawn beside him, reading Jiggs, plucking grass with her toes. In a lazy voice, as if in afterthought, she said, “Thank you very much.”
    He looked down at her. “Children,” he murmured, “should respect their parents.”
    Peyton said nothing, with infinite languor turning the pages, while Loftis, legs outspread, leaned back and read the news—mayor admits, woman denies, something about the NRA; Roosevelt, he thought—well, he’d voted for him, but Christ knows what he’d end up doing. The blue eagle fluttering everywhere. A good man, most likely, a Democrat, but watch him. Paradox: youngish, well-to-do barrister Milton Stuart Loftis plans maybe legislative career, could be maybe junior senator (D-Va.), President (Nation Hails First Southern Chief Since Wilson). Question: Senator, what is your attitude toward the Common Man? Answer: Ah, since I’m a Democrat—— Question: Thank you. What is your attitude, Mr. President, toward the Common Negro? Answer: Ah, since I’m a Southerner—— Question: Thank you. Social Security? Answer: Ah, well … Thank you, thank you. ( My son, paradoxically enough … being a Southerner and a Virginian and of course a Democrat you will find yourself in the unique position of choosing between (a) those ideals implanted as right and proper in every man since Jesus Christ and no doubt before and especially in Virginians and (b) ideals inherent in you through a socio-economic culture over which you have no power to prevail; consequently I strongly urge you my son always to be a good Democrat but to be a good man too if you possibly can. …)
    Paradox … but that was a long time ago and besides—well, the hell with it. He felt a curious desire for whisky—pleasant, way down deep. Now that was funny, he really shouldn’t; he wasn’t a morning drinker. … Just then, turning a bit, he saw Helen coming down across the broad upslanting sweep of lawn, leading Maudie by the hand. He hid the rose underneath the newspaper. They approached slowly together, mother and daughter, Helen guiding Maudie patiently, cautiously across the undulating, decorous space of sunlit grass until, at the flagstone steps slanting down a small embankment, Helen descended first; turning then, she reached up and with great care and tenderness held Maudie’s arm as she limped down the steps, and so together again, twin red ribbons which they wore fluttering on a sudden ripple of breeze, they approached across the lawn, Maudie limping, looking from this distance very small and frail, and Helen gazing down with patient, tender eyes.
    “Daddy,” asked Peyton idly, “what does ‘contraband’ mean?”
    “That means——” he began, but Helen and Maudie were in the little circle of lawn chairs and