Read "Soldiers' Pay" by William Faulkner online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
She missed Mrs. Worthington. She saw the old woman drive smoothly away from Price's in her car, alone in the back seat. The negro driver's head was round as a cannonball and Mrs. Burney watched it draw away, smelling gasoline. The shadow of the courthouse was like thinned tobacco smoke filling one side of the square, and standing in the door of a store she saw an acquaintance, a friend of her son's. He had been in Dewey's company, an officer or something, but he hadn't got killed, not him! Trust them generals and things.
(No, no! I won't feel like this! He done the best he could. It ain't his fault if he wasn't brave enough to get killed, like Dewey was. They are all jealous of Dewey anyway: won't talk about him except that he done what was right. Done what was right! Didn't I know he would? Dewey, Dewey. So young he was, so big and brave. Until that Green man took him off and got him killed.)