A Child

In my junior year in undergrad, before I'd ever been to Mississippi, I took a Civil War and Reconstruction class.  We were assigned three texts; two were typical history books (over four hundred pages each) and the third was 'The Unvanquished' by William Faulkner.  It was the first Faulkner I'd ever read.  I'd had no understanding of him and I'd had no understanding of Mississippi.  

Four years later, during a summer spent in Spanish Harlem, up on 116th Street between First and Second, without a phone or email or air conditioning, I re-read 'The Unvanquished.'  Then I read as much Faulkner as I could.  'Intruder in the Dust.'  'Absalom, Absalom!'  'Light in August.'  'As I Lay Dying.'  And 'The Sound and the Fury,' which I read twice.  

By that point, I'd been to Mississippi, from Natchez to Oxford, including Yazoo City and Greenwood and Tupelo.  I understood.

Now I'm reading his Collected Stories.  There is a beautiful passage in 'Shall Not Perish,' which I read last night:

"...since nobody can tell us exactly where he was when he stopped being 'is,' instead of just becoming 'was' at some single spot on the earth where the people who loved him could weight him down with a stone, Pete still 'is' everywhere about the earth, one among all the fighters forever, 'was' or 'is' either."

It made me think of our last night in Sao Paulo.  We'd gone to Bar Brahma to hear Samba.  Dona Duda Ribeiro was singing that night.  When we left the bar, five of us walked to the car, which was locked in a secure lot.  I noticed a lot of people sort of wandering through the downtown streets, some definitely looking high and others in the process of becoming that.  In the middle of the sidewalk there was a very small body with a filthy blanket draped over it.  The top of a very small head stuck out from the top of the blanket, and the face rested on the ground.  

'A child!' I said to one of the girls who traveled to Brasil with me.  She answered me, 'I was hoping I wouldn't see that.'

But we did.  And it was.