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EDM Faulkner

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The Sound and the Fury

By Harvey Manfrenjensenden

It was supper time and the birds was tilting. The plastic plate and the small table and the two boxes on the big table make them go. Caddy scared up and Quentin was hitting. He was hitting the small table with the plastic plate and the birds was tilting. They was tilting, and Quentin yells “33 and one third Caddy” and Caddy scares up again and she’s got the wet face again. “It don’t sound like nuthin at 45” says Jason but Caddy nods yes, yes, it sounds like that anyway she says. She says it sounds the same no matter what speed  and says “EE DEE EMM they call this” says Caddy and Jason nods. They nods and their feet dance but they’re not smiling, and the birds are tilting. They’re not smiling cause something’s wrong with the sounds cause they ain’t no singing or nothing just BOOM SQUICK they call it. They’re tilting and Caddy shouts up Quentin “I could make molasses pie with this on” and Quentin nods yes, yes he says.  I like molasses pie and I’m wondering what kind of plastic plate is good for hearing when you’s doing another thing. Just then Old Tom comes on the outside door and hits the door. “Old Tom” shouts Quentin, who’s in the kitchen getting the brown water. The brown water makes Quentin red and then he yells and sometimes the birds stop tilting and he puts on the plastic plate and sings “the Gorden Lied Foot” and he’s red when he does that and sometimes Caddy’s face goes wet. But there’s no Gorden Lied Foot on the plastic plate and Quentin’s getting the brown water and yells cause Old Tom is at the outside door, and he’s asking about some of the plastic plates he left last week. And I’m thinking about Jason and his Craft Work, and it’s clear snow from the sky, what I call it when Chrissmas and God makes it wet and I’m thinking about beats, not the beats like when I was 10 and broke the mirror, but the other kind, when sometimes the birds tilt and you want to move your Poor Body. “The beat is too-tonic says Jason” and I’m thinking he means like when Quentin is red and yelling but he ain’t had but the clear strong water instead of the brown which he calls “burrbun” but it’s not that, Quentin tells me about some men across the Adlanic who made “EE DEE EMM”- “they made the first EE DEE EMM, they did, and Walter Wendy and Terry Raleigh or Rye Leaves” I think he says and how it makes his face turn up good not like this and he uses a bad cuss and Jason’s yelling about “lap dog” or “lab top” but I don’t know which and the blacks music and the old whites music the EE DEE EMM is humming, thumping and it’s SQUICKIN and I’m sad because the humming and thumping makes me sad and Caddy strokes my hair and yes yes, yes it’s nice, I’m calm. Quentin and Jason fall asleep in they chairs. Caddy says they “pass doubt” and I’m thinking they sleeping because the Lord come to them and they believed, but Caddy looks sad of it. Caddy takes the small plastic plate off while it’s spinning and puts on that one I like, “Sheer Elves” she calls it, she taught me how to mark down the letters S-H-I-R-E-L-L-E-S, that’s what I know how to spell besides forty-five, and the Sheer Elves or what it is singing about what Mama said, and I’m thinking about Gramma’s coffin and the August wind and it’s spinning and the birds was tilting, and it was right and good and her face weren’t wet any more and I’m Benjy. Yes, yes.

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