The Sound and the Fury

The Gathering

I. Benjy

It was hot and then it was not hot and Jeannine was at the fire. I could smell the fire. I liked the smell of the fire. Caddy smelled like trees but Jeannine smelled like fire and that was good too.

They were in the garden. The garden had grass and I liked the grass. Mother said don’t go in the grass Benjy but Jeannine said it was all right and when Jeannine said it was all right it was all right.

There were people. The people were talking and some of them were laughing and the laughing was good. Felice was there. Felice was always there when the talking happened. Felice talked and then other people talked and then Felice talked again.

I want to go to the garden, I said.

Hush now, they said. You can smell the garden from here.

But I could smell the fire and I wanted to be where the fire was because Jeannine was there and it was the seventeenth and it was May and the light was the way light is in May in Arlington when the season is over and everything is finished and the coals are good and hot.

I could smell it. I could smell it all.

II. Quentin

And so it ends as it always ends with a gathering in a garden and Jeannine at the fire and I think of Father saying a man is the sum of his misfortunes but that is not right either because today in this garden in Arlington on this Sunday in May which is the seventeenth day of the fifth month in the year two thousand and twenty-six the misfortunes are not present or if they are present they are quiet and not insisting on themselves the way they sometimes insist

Felice said one o’clock and it is one o’clock or near enough and I am thinking about time again about how a man spends so much of his life thinking about when things will begin instead of being in them while they are happening

the smoke goes up

it has always gone up

Jeannine turns something on the grill and does not look up and this is the right way to do it this is the only way to do it you do not look up you do not stop you tend the fire and you do not think about the Harvard boys or the river or the watch Father gave you you just tend the fire and the smoke goes up and that is enough that is all of it really

seventy Scituate Street I said to myself. The rear garden. Bring something.

I had brought something.

It was not enough. It is never enough.

But the smoke goes up.

III. Jason

I’ll tell you one thing. When Felice says one o’clock she means one o’clock not one fifteen not one thirty not whenever you feel like showing up. I’ve been saying this for years. Nobody listens. They show up at one forty-five looking for a plate and the coals are already perfect and Jeannine has been standing there since noon because that’s what Jeannine does, Jeannine does it right, which is more than I can say for certain people I could name who said they’d bring potato salad and showed up with a bag of chips.

Not that I’m bitter.

Seventy Scituate Street. Arlington. The back. One o’clock. It’s not complicated. I wrote it down. I sent it twice. The coordination of provisions is forthcoming and I mean forthcoming not eventually not when I get around to it but forthcoming, which has a specific meaning that apparently requires explanation.

The Magic Lab. The whole of them. Every year the same thing. Every year I handle the details and every year someone acts surprised that there are details.

Bring food or drink. That’s all I ask. One thing. To a barbecue.

But sure. Chips are fine.

IV. Dilsey

They came.

They always came in the end. That was the thing about them. You could say what you wanted about the Magic Lab and Lord knows Felice had her ways and the Fathers had their ways and some of those ways were not ways Dilsey would have chosen but they came when the season was over they came to the garden and Jeannine had the fire going since before any of them were out of bed and the smoke went up into the Arlington sky and it smelled like every other May and also not like any May there had ever been.

Dilsey had seen the first of them and she reckoned she’d see the last.

The little one wanted to stand near the fire. She let him stand near the fire. He could smell it from anywhere in the garden but he wanted to be near it and sometimes near is what a body needs.

They ate. They talked. The afternoon went the way afternoons go when people who have been through something together sit down in a garden and let the season be finished. Felice laughed and the Founders laughed and even Jason, Lord help him, Jason almost smiled once near the cooler when he thought nobody was looking.

Jeannine turned from the grill and looked at all of them and did not say anything.

There was nothing to say.

They endured.

70 Scituate Street, Arlington. May 17, 2026. One o’clock. The rear garden. Bring something to share.