afternoon, but Quentin takes it back and says he will get it fixed later.
Walking back out into the street, he buys two six-pound flat-irons; he
chooses them because they are "heavy enough" but will look like a pair of
shoes when they are wrapped up and he is carrying them around the Square
(85).
He takes a fruitless cable car ride, then gets off the car on a bridge,
where he watches one of his friends rowing on the river. He walks back to
the Square as the bell chimes the quarter hour (11:15), and he meets up
with the Deacon and gives him the letter he has written to Shreve, asking
him to deliver it tomorrow. He tells the Deacon that when he delivers the
letter tomorrow Shreve will have a present for him. As the bell chimes the
half-hour, he runs into Shreve, who tells him a letter arrived for him this
morning. Then he gets on another car as the bells chime 11:45.
When he gets off the car he is near a run-down town on the Charles River,
and he walks along the river until he comes across three boys fishing on a
bridge over the river; he hides the flat irons under the edge of the bridge
before striking up a conversation with the boys. They notice that he has a
strange accent and ask if he is from Canada; he asks them if there are any
factories in town (factories would have hourly whistles). He walks on
toward the town, although he is anxious to keep far enough away from the
church steeple's clock to render its face unreadable. Finally he arrives in
town and walks into a bakery; there is nobody behind the counter, but there
is a little Italian immigrant girl standing before it. A woman enters
behind the counter and Quentin buys two buns. He tells the proprietress
that the little girl would like something too; the proprietress eyes the
girl suspiciously and accuses her of stealing something.
Quentin defends her and she extends her hand to reveal a nickel. The woman
wraps up a five-cent loaf of bread for the girl, and Quentin puts some
money on the counter and buys another bun as well. The woman asks him if he
is going to give the bun to the girl, and he says he is. Still acting
exasperated, she goes into a back room and comes out with a misshapen cake;
she gives it to the girl, telling her it won't taste any different than a
good cake. The girl follows Quentin out of the store, and he takes her to a
drugstore and buys her some ice cream. They leave the drugstore and he
gives her one of the buns and says goodbye, but she continues to follow
him. Not knowing exactly what to do, he walks with her toward the immigrant
neighborhood across the train tracks where he assumes she lives. She will
not talk to him or indicate where she lives. He asks some men in front of a
store if they know her, and they do, but they don't know where she lives
either. They tell him to take her to the town marshal's office, but when he
does the marshal isn't there.
Quentin decides to take her down to her neighborhood and hopefully someone
will claim her. At one point she seems to tell him that a certain house is
hers, but the woman inside doesn't know her. They continue to walk through
the neighborhood until they come out on the other side, by the river.
Quentin gives a coin to the girl, then runs away from her along the river.
He walks along the river for a while, then suddenly meets up with the
little girl again. They walk along together for a while, still looking for
her house; eventually they turn back and walk toward town again. They come
across some boys swimming, and the boys throw water at them. The hurry
toward town, but the girl still won't tell him where she lives.
Suddenly a man flies at them and attacks Quentin; he is the little girl's
brother. He has the town marshal with him, and they take him into town to
talk to the police because they think he was trying to kidnap the girl. In
town they meet up with Shreve, Spoade and Gerald, Quentin's friends, who
have come into town in Gerald's mother's car. Eventually after discussing
everything at length, the marshal lets Quentin go, and he gets into the car
with his friends and drives away.
As they drive Quentin slides into a kind of trance wherein he remembers
various events from his past, mostly to do with her precocious sexuality
(to be discussed later). While his is lost in this reverie the boys and
Gerald's mother have gotten out of the car and set up a picnic. Suddenly he
comes to, bleeding, and the boys tell him that he just suddenly began
punching Gerald and Gerald beat him up. They tell him that he began
shouting "did you ever have a sister? Did you?" then attacked Gerald out of
the blue. Quentin is more concerned about the state of his clothes than
anything else. His friends want to take the cable car back to Boston
without Gerald, but Quentin tells them he doesn't want to go back. They ask
him what he plans to do (perhaps they suspect something about his suicidal
plans). They go back to the party, and Quentin walks slowly toward the city
as the twilight descends.
Eventually Quentin gets on a cable car. Although it is dark by now, he can
smell the water of the river as they pass by it. As they pass the Harvard
Square post office again, he hears the clock chiming but has no idea what
time it is. He plans to return to the bridge where he left his flatirons,
but he has to wash his clothes first in order to carry out his plans
correctly. He returns to his dorm room and takes off his clothes,
meticulously washing the blood off his vest with gasoline. The bell chimes
the half-hour as he does so. Back in his darkened room, he looks out the
window for a while, then as the last chime of the three-quarters hour
sounds, he puts his clothes and vest back on. He walks into Shreve's room
and puts a letter and his watch in the desk drawer. He remembers that he
hasn't brushed his teeth, so he goes back into his room and takes the
toothbrush out of his bag. He brushes his teeth and returns the brush to
the bag, then goes to the door. He returns for his hat, then leaves the
room.
Quentin's memories:
Quentin's memories are not as clearly defined or as chronologically
discernible as Benjy's. There are three important memories that obsess him.
Benjy's name change, 1900: Dilsey claims that Benjy can "smell what you
tell him;" Roskus asks if he can smell bad luck, sure that the only reason
they changed his name is to try to help his luck.
Quentin kisses Natalie, undated: Natalie, a neighbor girl, and Quentin are
in the barn and it is raining outside. Natalie is hurt; Caddy pushed her
down the ladder and ran off. Quentin asks her where it hurts and says that
he bets he can lift her up. [a skip in time] Natalie tells him that
something [probably kissing] is "like dancing sitting down" (135); Quentin
asks her how he should hold her to dance, placing his arms around her, and
she moans. Quentin looks up to see Caddy in the door watching them. Quentin
tells her that he and Natalie were just dancing sitting down; she ignores
him.
She and Natalie fight about the events that led to Natalie being pushed off
the ladder and whose fault it was; Caddy claims that she was "just brushing
the trash off the back of your dress" (136). Natalie leaves and Quentin
jumps into the mud of the pigpen, muddying himself up to his waist. Caddy
ignores him and stands with her back to him. He comes around in front of
her and tells her that he was just hugging Natalie. She turns her back and
continues to ignore him, saying she doesn't give a damn what he was doing.
Shouting "I'll make you give a damn," he smears mud on her dress as she
slaps him. They tumble, fighting, on the grass, then sit up and realize how
dirty they are. They head to the branch to wash the mud off themselves.
Caddy kisses a boy (1906): Quentin slaps Caddy and demands to know why she
let the boy kiss her. With the red print of his hand rising on her cheek,
she replies that she didn't let him, she made him. Quentin tells her that
it is not for kissing that he slapped her, but for kissing a "darn town
squirt" (134). He rubs her face in the grass until she says "calf rope."
She shouts that at least she didn't kiss a "dirty girl like Natalie anyway"
(134).
Caddy has sex with Dalton Ames, 1909: Caddy stands in the doorway, and
someone [Quentin?] asks her why she won't bring Dalton Ames into the house.
Mother replies that she "must do things for women's reasons" (92). Caddy
will not look at Quentin. Benjy bellows and pulls at her dress and she
shrinks against the wall, and he pushes her out of the room. Sitting on the
porch, Quentin hears her door slamming and Benjy still howling. She runs
out of the house and Quentin follows her; he finds her lying in the branch.
He threatens to tell Father that he committed incest with her; she replies
with pity. He tells her that he is stronger than she is, he will make her
tell him. He adds that he fooled her; all the time she thought it was her
boyfriends and it was Quentin instead. The smell of honeysuckle is all
around them.
She asks him if Benjy is still crying. He asks her if she loves Dalton
Ames; she places his hand on her chest and he feels her heart beating
there. He asks her if he made her do it, saying "Ill kill him I swear I
will father neednt know until afterward and then you and I nobody need ever
know we can take my school money we can cancel my matriculation Caddy you
hate him dont you" (151). She moves his hand to her throat, where the blood
is "hammering," and says "poor Quentin" (151). A moment later she says "yes
I hate him I would die for him Ive already died for him I die for him over
and over again" (151). She looks at him and then says "you've never done
that have you," to which Quentin responds "yes yes lots of times with lots
of girls," but he is lying, and Caddy knows it; he cries on her shirt and
they lie together in the branch (151). He holds a knife to her throat,
telling her that he can kill her quickly and painlessly and then kill
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