Every Day by the Sun Page 7

  That fall, a turning point came for William when Estelle was divorced from Cornell Franklin and moved back to Oxford. Their courtship began again in earnest, and in June 1929 they were married at College Hill and moved into an upstairs apartment in an antebellum home along with Cho Cho and Malcolm. They were only two blocks from the Big Place.

  Estelle was a very different woman from the carefree social butterfly she had been at the time of her first marriage. Her life in the Far East had been one of elegance and indulgence—or overindulgence—and with this came a sense of desperation and despair that the life she wanted would somehow always be just beyond her grasp. Franklin could give her financial security, but not the happiness she thought she deserved, and in all probability neither could William Faulkner. Her children, Cho Cho and Malcolm, would always be financially well cared for, thanks to their father’s secure position, but she faced a lifetime, she thought, of eating with borrowed silver on borrowed dining room tables and chairs. “One could endure being broke,” she said, “but never poor.”

  For most of her life Estelle was the victim of her own addictions: drugs and alcohol. She was a fragile woman, graceful but very thin with a tiny waist accented by her tightly belted, full-skirted dresses. Her legs looked barely strong enough to support her; she tottered on her high heels; her arms seemed too weak to raise a cup of her beloved chicory coffee to her lips. She was a heavy smoker with nervous fingers and glittery eyes—pretty eyes distorted by the thick lens of her eyeglasses. Photographs of her remind me of Wallis Simpson: a woman very well turned out, chic, a little sad. Her credo was much like Simpson’s “You can never be too rich or too thin.” Over the years she sometimes drank so heavily that on occasion she, like Pappy, had to be hospitalized; but in the summer of 1955 she became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and gave up alcohol for the rest of her life.

  In an earlier period she had been more gypsy moth than butterfly, and she flew too close to the flame. She and William had spent their honeymoon in Pascagoula on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rumors persist about Estelle’s suicide attempts. The most frequently cited occurred after a dinner party during their honeymoon, when wine and whiskey flowed. Late in the evening, Estelle, dressed in an elegant silk dinner gown, walked to the beach alone while William watched from the gallery. “She’s going to drown herself,” he shouted. One of the dinner guests sprinted across the lawn into the shallow water, grabbed her just before she waded into the channel, and dragged her, struggling against him, onto the sand. Why didn’t her husband try to rescue her?

  Her favorite novel, she often said, was Anna Karenina.

  In October 1929, The Sound and the Fury was published by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. In the novel, William drew from memory as he often did in his fiction. The idiot Benjy was based on a child he had known when he was growing up. The boy lived with his parents in a white two-story home surrounded by ancient magnolia trees, only a few blocks from the Big Place, an easy walk for Maud and her eldest son. Maud and the boy’s mother were friends, both avid readers, and their sons were close to each other in age, if nothing else. During their frequent visits, while the two women chatted, William, with infinite patience, entertained the severely retarded boy by helping him tear stacks of newspapers into long strips. Intent on their work, they sat cross-legged on the parlor rug, side by side, for hours.

  On pretty days they might play in the yard, which was guarded by a six-foot wrought-iron fence to ensure that the child could not wander off and to protect him from intruders. The gate was always locked. A servant used a key to admit callers.

  In spite of the family’s precautions, one day when the boy was in his teens, he brought matches into the shed where stacks of his beloved newspapers were stored. A fire raged up and “Benjy” burned to death.*

  William’s publishers printed 1,729 copies of The Sound and the Fury priced at $2.50 apiece. Although many reviews were positive, the first edition did not sell out for almost a year and a half. The New York Herald Tribune reviewer wrote, “I believe simply and sincerely that this is a great book.” The New York Times was equally emphatic in its praise, and the Saturday Review of Literature noted Faulkner’s “power and tenderness,” adding, “This is a man to watch.” Unfortunately, good reviews did not translate into quick sales. William earned 10 percent, or twenty-five cents per book, less his agent’s 10 percent commission.

  In the fall of 1929, in order to support his family, William was forced to go to work as night foreman at the university power plant. He began his twelve-hour shift at 6 p.m., carrying a large supply of “Fidelity onion-skin, legal-size blank white sheets” rolled up in a rubber band.

  According to Blotner, “On October 25, 1929 … [at the powerhouse] he took one of these sheets, unscrewed the cap from his fountain pen, and wrote at the top in blue ink, ‘As I Lay Dying.’ Then he underlined it twice and wrote the date in the upper right-hand corner.”

  William claimed he “shoveled coal from the bunker into a wheelbarrow and wheeled it and dumped it where the fireman could put it into the boiler. About eleven o’clock the people would be going to bed, and so it did not take much steam. And so we could rest, the fireman and I.” While the fireman nodded off in his chair, William wrote on the back of a wheelbarrow he had turned upside down, listening to “the deep, constant humming noise” of the dynamo. By 4 a.m., he had finished a chapter in time “to clean the fires and get up steam again.” But evidently William’s main job was just to be there, to oversee the two African Americans who did the work, and sometimes an Ole Miss football player who used the shoveling to get in shape. Estelle observed, “He would go to work after dinner immaculate, and return before breakfast, still immaculate.”

  On the last page of the completed manuscript he wrote, “page 107, Oxford, Miss./11 December, 1929.” Forty-seven days had elapsed since he had started.

  As I Lay Dying was published by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith on October 6, 1930. William dedicated it to Harrison Smith. The first print run was 2,522.

  The early New York critics were hardly sympathetic. The Herald Tribune claimed that some passages “were absolutely unhinged from the point of view of the character whose mind they expose.” Other reviewers found “the Bundrens … almost as strange as Martians.” Southern reviewers, however, were far more generous, but unfortunately this did not translate into sales.

  His family remained loyal. When Maud’s friends asked “what Bill meant” in such-and-such book, or whether he was “really earning a living by doing nothing but writing,” she would tighten her mouth, as only she could, and stonewall. She did not have to defend “her Billy” for the ups and downs of a precarious career any more than she had to defend Dean for his bad grades.

  Dean, however, was outspoken in his brother’s defense. When his friends claimed they could not understand The Sound and the Fury, or As I Lay Dying, he would smile and say, with utter confidence, “One of them may be the great American novel.” The fact that he made this pronouncement while racing turtles at the SAE house did nothing to lessen his sincerity. He was his brother’s number one fan, and nothing would change that.

  WHEN WILLIAM PURCHASED the “old Bailey place” on Garfield Avenue (now Old Taylor Road), he named the antebellum house and its thirteen acres “Rowan Oak.” It was his way of declaring This is my private place. To keep up payments and buy materials for repairs, he churned out short stories at a furious pace, submitting thirty-seven in one year, but selling only six.

  In midsummer of 1930, the Saturday Evening Post accepted “Red Leaves,” a short story whose subject differed from his other Yoknapatawpha sagas. It dealt with the Chickasaw Indians’ tribal custom of burying their chiefs with their dogs, horses, and a slave—in this case a body servant not ready to die. The Post paid him $750. Rowan Oak could now have electricity and Estelle a new stove.

  Times were not easy for the newlyweds. William could not afford to hire carpenters to repair Rowan Oak, so Dean regularly brought fraternity brothers
to help work on the house. They put on a new roof, rewired and expanded electrical circuits, and, thanks to “Red Leaves,” put in new fixtures, ceiling lamps, pipes, and plumbing.

  In spite of their financial difficulties, Estelle and William were eagerly looking forward to the birth of their first child in March 1931. So were Cho Cho and Malcolm.

  Estelle’s doctor, John Culley, was an excellent physician but a man with whom William did not get along. His wife, Nina, was Estelle’s best friend. Dr. Culley was extremely concerned about Estelle because of the difficult deliveries of both of her children. In addition, she was weakened by anemia and weighed less than one hundred pounds. He warned her to be careful and prescribed iron and calcium pills for her.

  Christmas at Rowan Oak with both their families in attendance was happy but exhausting for Estelle. She woke William late at night on January 10 and told him the baby was coming. At first he did not believe her, but he called Dr. Culley and asked him to meet them at the hospital. She gave birth the next day to a small, perfectly formed baby girl. They named her Alabama, in honor of William’s Aunt Bama. He wanted his wife and child at home, believing that since there was no incubator at Dr. Culley’s hospital, they would be cared for just as well at Rowan Oak with a trained nurse for Alabama and a practical nurse for Estelle, who was too sick to care for the infant. Dr. Culley noticed that the baby had problems with her digestive tract. By the end of the week, this dilemma became life threatening. She was tiny and weak and could not retain any milk.

  William was frantic. He tried everything, first hiring a wet nurse, then begging Dean to find a goat. Maybe the baby could digest goat milk. Within hours Dean brought one to Rowan Oak. The brothers took turns milking it and carrying the precious milk to the house. Nothing had prepared William for this terrible, grinding fear. The practical nurse tried to feed the milk to Alabama; then William tried, then Dean. She could not keep it down.

  Dr. Culley suggested an incubator and William, desperate to get his hands on one but not trusting himself to drive, asked Dean to take him to Memphis. They drove in the middle of the road at top speed, passing every vehicle. They got an incubator and brought it back to Oxford—only to find the infant fading before their eyes. Dean sat up with William and Estelle all night. The next day, January 20, Alabama died. The Faulkners mourned as one. A private service was held at Rowan Oak and William read from the Bible. Dean drove to the cemetery while his brother cradled the tiny casket in his lap and wept. The rest of the family followed in two cars. It was bitter cold. At the gravesite, as his only granddaughter was laid to rest, Murry said a prayer that has been described as eloquent. William’s grief staggered him. Soon after Alabama’s death he donated an incubator to a second hospital in Oxford to be used free of charge by anyone in need.

  ABOUT A MONTH after Alabama’s death, Murry lost his job at the university. He had been a devout supporter of Mississippi governor Theodore Bilbo, to whom he owed the appointment. Now Bilbo had been defeated and thrown out of office in disgrace, and Murry was being replaced. The Oxford Eagle reported diplomatically: “Mr. M.C. Falkner, who has been Secretary and Business Manager of the University for the past twelve years, has announced that he will not be an applicant for the position again. His reasons are that there is too much work attached to the position, and also that he is growing too old to keep up with it. No statement has been made about his future plans.” For the remainder of that year, Murry continued to work at the university in the diminished capacity of assistant secretary. The Falkner family moved out of the Delta Psi house and into the Big Place. That summer Murry contracted for the construction of a house on the same lot as his father’s home. Maud chose the design and supervised its building and completion.

  Murry readily adapted to retirement, riding six miles every morning to and from Campground Road, a dirt road lined by tall pines, one of the few flat stretches in the red clay hills of Lafayette County. He ate dinner at noon sharp. If the meal was not on the table when he entered the dining room, he turned on his heel and left the house. Maud and Mammy were of one mind about such behavior. It was disgusting. He spent the afternoons cutting out pictures of dogs and horses and pasting them into the lined pages of old railroad ledgers, while sitting in his favorite chair and listening to “Beautiful Dreamer” played over and over on the Victrola.

  Dean’s last college baseball home game was in May 1931. Murry, who was Dean’s number one fan, was in the stands bellowing encouragement. In his usual bullheaded way, without waiting for athletic department approval, he had designed the first Ole Miss baseball letter and ordered a batch to hand out at an M-Club meeting. (Forget about The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying; his youngest son was about to become an Ole Miss letterman!) Ole Miss was playing Louisiana State University, whose Tigers were leading by three runs in the bottom of the ninth. In a storybook finish, Ole Miss had loaded the bases with two out. It was Dean’s turn at bat. Murry was so excited he came out of the stands. As Dean left the on-deck circle, Murry shouted, “Son, hit a home run and I’ll give you the car.”

  Dean stepped confidently into the batter’s box, even as his teammates in the Ole Miss dugout swooned in panic. “Your dad couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle,” his teammate Tad Smith later told me. Murry, gripping the fence, watched Dean take two strikes. Then came a slow curve and Dean connected. The hit was a high floater that just cleared the left-field fence. Amid cheers and glory, Dean rounded third base to see Murry standing on home plate, the keys to the family Buick in his hand. Mighty Casey had not struck out!

  Over time I have convinced myself that William was there. He would have known that this was his brother’s moment, that the dreams of the majors really came down to this one at-bat. The victory—Ole Miss 4, LSU 3—was Dean’s immortality.

  That day in 1931 the sun shone on my father as he trotted to home plate with his teammates slapping him on the back and accepted the keys to the car—and in the long, hot summer that followed he ran the wheels off that Buick, with Tad Smith riding shotgun, touring the cotton-patch ballparks of Lafayette County. They hired themselves out as ringers at two dollars per game. (Tad Smith would become athletic director at the University of Mississippi, whose basketball coliseum is affectionately known as “the Tad Pad.”) It was his one and only tour as a semipro and the closest he got to his dream of playing professional baseball. He wore the convertible out, going as far as thirty miles to Holly Springs and forty-five to Tupelo and ninety to Corinth. Day in and day out, he drove it until the canvas top was in rags, the motor sputtered, and finally the Buick sat down in the road and died.

  I’m not sure if my father actually graduated from Ole Miss, though Maud saved a program from the 1931 graduation exercises and Dean Swift Falkner is listed among the graduates in the College of Liberal Arts. It’s quite possible that strings were pulled and he was allowed to graduate without fulfilling all of his course requirements.

  Regardless, I am sure he was pleased with his baseball team photo in the 1931 yearbook, Ole Miss. He is in batting stance, looking happy, rugged, and several years older than the rest of the players. Unlike previous dedications, such as “To the University Greys,” “To Our Mothers,” or “To Our Fathers,” accompanied by appropriately sedate pictures, the 1931 yearbook contained a pictorial “dedication”: a photograph of an airplane on its cover, and on the end sheet, a two-page pictorial history of changes in transportation, from a covered wagon to the horse and buggy, train, automobile, and airplane. Times were changing and changing fast.

  FRUSTRATED BY HIS lack of income, William was planning to write a novel “purely for money,” a detective thriller as salacious and gritty as those of best-selling authors Ellery Queen and Dashiell Hammett. He had observed the girls of Ole Miss in their short flapper dresses and heavy makeup, flirts and coquettes that he compared to “golden butterflies.” Maybe he would take such licentious behavior to its logical conclusion. Maybe a sorority girl would go too far in her flirtations and attract
the Memphis underworld. Maybe she would be kidnapped and become an altar of sex in the white slave trade. He would call her “Temple,” and he would name the novel Sanctuary. When it was published in 1931, a reviewer called him “the corncob man.”

  One day when Maud was playing bridge, a woman at the table asked what they were all dying to know. Maud, why did Bill write that book? She looked up from her cards and said, “My Billy writes what he has to.” She played out the rubber and left, never to play bridge in that foursome again.

  In February, the reviews of Sanctuary came out. The New York Times Book Review critique was entitled “Dostoyevsky’s Shadow in the Deep South.” (William wrote his agent asking who in the hell was this Dostoyevsky? If he had any of the Russian’s books, send them on to Mississippi.) Throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall, praise for Sanctuary and its author continued. From the Nation: “By this book alone Faulkner took his place in the first rank of younger American novelists.” Other periodicals called William a “prodigious genius,” and Sanctuary “a great novel,” an “extraordinary” piece of work.

  But not everyone in the literary world saw it as the best of all possible novels. Newspapers closer to home were decidedly negative. The Memphis Evening Appeal called Sanctuary “an inhuman monstrosity of a book that leaves one with the impression of having been vomited bodily from the sensual cruelty of its page.” A reviewer for the New Orleans Times Picayune wrote that “he was probably America’s best living novelist” but that he was “very likely becoming a scandal in his native state.”

  In spite of provincial naysayers, a literary lion had been born. In October 1931, William was invited by Ellen Glasgow to the University of Virginia for a southern writers’ conference. Then he went to New York, where Estelle joined him for a glittering but debilitating seven-week stay. There was too much of everything.