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OUP— 391—  29-4-72— 10,000. 

OSMANIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

Call  No.^\  J,  *£***  Accession  No. 

Author 

Title     ( 

This  book  should  be  returned  on  or  before  the  date  last   marked  bclov 


Collected  Stories  of 
WILLIAM  FAULKNER 


BOOKS  BY  WILLIAM  FAULKNER 

Soldiers  Pay 

Sartor  Is 
Mosqiritoes 

The  Sound  and  the  Fury 
As  I  Lay  Dying 

Sanctuary 

These  Thirteen 

Light  hi  August 

A  Green  Bough  (Poems) 

Doctor  Mart  mo 

Pylon 

Absalom ,  Absalom! 

The  Uircanqiiished 

The  Wild  Palms 

The  Hamlet 

Go  Down,  Moses 

Intruder  hi  the  Dust 

Knight* s  Gambit 


Collected  Stories  of 


WILLIAM  FAULKNER 


RANDOM  HOUSE 

New  York 


Acknowledgment  is  here  made  to  the  following  magazines,  in  \vhich 
some  of  the  stories  included  in  this  volume  first  appeared:  The  American 
Mercury,  Voriun,  liar  per*  s  Magazine,  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  Scrib- 
ticfs  Magazine  and  The  Sewanee  Review. 

Copyright,  1934,  1950,  by  Random  House,  Inc.  Copyright,  1930,  1931, 
1932,  1933,  1934,  !935»  I939'  [94^  J94^i  by  William  Faulkner.  Copyright, 
1930,  by  For  inn.  Copyright,  1930,  1932,  1934,  !94r  !942i  *943»  UY  Curtis 
Publishing  Company. 


All  rights  reserved  under  International  and  Pan-American  Copyright  Con- 
ventions. Published  in  New  York  by  Random  House,  Inc.,  and  simul- 
taneously in  Toronto,  Canada,  by  Random  House  of  Canada,  Limited. 
Manufactured  in  the  United  States  of  America,  by  The  Haddon  Craftsmen, 
Inc.,  Scranton.  Pa. 


Contents 


I.  THE  COUNTRY  PAGE 

Earn  Burning  3 

Shingles  for  the  Lord  27 

The  Tall  Men  45 

A  Bear  Hunt  63 

Tivo  Soldiers  81 

Shall  Not  Perish  101 

II.  THE  VILLAGE 

A  Rose  for  Entity  1 19 

Hair  1 3  i 

Centaur  in  Brass  149 

Dry  September  169 

Death  Drag  185 

Elly  207 

Uncle  Willy  225 

Mule  in  the  Yard                    .  "  249 

That  Will  Be  Fine  265 

That  Evening  Sun  289 

III.  THE  WILDERNESS 

Red  Leaves  313 

A  Justice  343 

A  Courtship  361 

381 


Contents 

IV.  THE  WASTELAND  PAGE 

Ad  Astra  407 

Victory  431 

Crevasse  465 

Turnabout  475 

All  the  Dead  Pilots  5 1 1 

V.  THE  MIDDLE  GROUND 

Wash  535 

Honor  551 

Dr.  Mar  tin  o  565 

Fox  Hunt  587 

Pennsylvania  Station  609 

Artist  at  Home  627 

T£e  Brooch  647 

Af  y  Grandmother  Millard  667 

Golden  Land  701 

There  Was  a  Queen  727 

Mountain  Victory  745 

VI.  BEYOND 

Beyond  781 

Black  Music  799 

Tfce  Leg  823 

Mistral  843 

Divorce  in  Naples  877 

Carcassonne  895 


I  •  THE  COUNTRY 


Barn  Burning 

Shingles  for  the  Lord 

The  Tall  Men 

A  Bear  Hunt 

Two  Soldiers 

Shall  Not  Perish 


Barn  Burning 


THE  STORE  in  which  the  Justice  of  the  Peace's  court  was  sit- 
ting smelled  of  cheese.  The  boy,  crouched  on  his  nail  keg  at 
the  back  of  the  crowded  room,  knew  he  smelled  cheese,  and 
more:  from  where  he  sat  he  could  see  the  ranked  shelves 
close-packed  with  the  solid,  squat,  dynamic  shapes  of  tin 
cans  whose  labels  his  stomach  read,  not  from  the  lettering 
which  meant  nothing  to  his  mind  but  from  the  scarlet  devils 
arid  the  silver  curve  of  fish — this,  the  cheese  which  he  knew 
he  smelied  and  the  hermetic  meat  which  his  intestines  be- 
lieved he  smelled  coming  in  intermittent  gusts  momentary 
and  brief  between  the  other  constant  one,  the  smell  and  sense 
just  a  little  of  fear  because  mostly  of  despair  and  grief,  the 
old  fierce  pull  of  blood.  He  could  not  see  the  table  where  the 
Justice  sat  and  before  which  his  father  and  his  father's  enemy 
(our  enemy  he  thought  in  that  despair;  ourn!  mine  and  hisn 
both!  He's  my  father!}  stood,  but  he  could  hear  them,  the 
two  of  them  that  is,  because  his  father  had  said  no  word  yet: 

"But  what  proof  have  you,  Mr.  Harris?" 

"I  told  you.  The  hog  got  into  my  corn.  I  caught  it  up  and 
sent  it  back  to  him.  He  had  no  fence  that  would  hold  it.  I  told 
him  so,  warned  him.  The  next  time  I  put  the  hog  in  my  pen. 
When  he  came  to  get  it  I  gave  him  enough  wire  to  patch 
up  his  pen.  The  next  time  I  put  the  hog  up  and  kept  it.  I  rode 
down  to  his  house  and  saw  the  wire  I  gave  him  still  rolled  on 


4  The  Country 

to  the  spool  in  his  yard.  I  told  him  he  could  have  the  hog 
when  he  paid  me  a  dollar  pound  fee.  That  evening  a  nigger 
came  with  the  dollar  and  got  the  hog.  He  was  a  strange 
nigger.  He  said,  'He  say  to  tell  you  wood  and  hay  kin  burn.' 
I  said,  'What?'  'That  whut  he  say  to  tell  you,'  the  nigger 
said.  'Wood  and  hay  kin  burn.'  That  night  my  barn  burned. 
I  got  the  stock  out  but  I  lost  the  barn." 

"Where  is  the  nigger?  Have  you  got  him?" 

"He  was  a  strange  nigger,  I  tell  you.  I  don't  know  what 
became  of  him." 

"But  that's  not  proof.  Don't  you  see  that's  not  proof?" 

"Get  that  boy  up  here.  He  knows."  For  a  moment  the  boy 
thought  too  that  the  man  meant  his  older  brother  until 
Harris  said,  "Not  him.  The  little  one.  The  boy,"  and, 
crouching,  small  for  his  age,  small  and  wiry  like  his  father, 
in  patched  and  faded  jeans  even  too  small  for  him,  with 
straight,  uncombed,  brown  hair  and  eyes  gray  and  wild  as 
storm  scud,  he  saw  the  men  between  himself  and  the  table 
part  and  become  a  lane  of  grim  faces,  at  the  end  of  which 
he  saw  the  Justice,  a  shabby,  collarless,  graying  man  in 
spectacles,  beckoning  him.  He  felt  no  floor  under  his  bare 
feet;  he  seemed  to  walk  beneath  the  palpable  weight  of  the 
grim  turning  faces.  His  father,  stiff  in  his  black  Sunday  coat 
donned  not  for  the  trial  but  for  the  moving,  did  not  even 
look  at  him.  He  aims  for  me  to  lie,  he  thought,  again  with 
that  frantic  grief  and  despair.  And  I  'will  have  to  do  hit. 

"What's  your  name,  boy?"  the  Justice  said. 

"Colonel  Sartoris  Snopes,"  the  boy  whispered. 

"Hey?"  the  Justice  said.  "Talk  louder.  Colonel  Sartoris? 
I  reckon  anybody  named  for  Colonel  Sartoris  in  this  country 
can't  help  but  tell  the  truth,  can  they?"  The  boy  said  noth- 
ing. Enemy!  Enemy/  he  thought;  for  a  moment  he  could  not 
even  see,  could  not  see  that  the  Justice's  face  was  kindly  nor 
discern  that  his  voice  was  troubled  when  he  spoke  to  the  man 


Barn  Burning  5 

named  Harris:  "Do  you  want  me  to  question  this  boy?"  But 
he  could  hear,  and  during  those  subsequent  long  seconds 
while  there  was  absolutely  no  sound  in  the  crowded  little 
room  save  that  of  quiet  and  intent  breathing  it  was  as  if  he 
had  swung  outward  at  the  end  of  a  grape  vine,  over  a  ravine, 
and  at  the  top  of  the  swing  had  been  caught  in  a  prolonged 
instant  of  mesmerized  gravity,  weightless  in  time. 

"No!"  Harris  said  violently,  explosively.  "Damnation! 
Send  him  out  of  here!"  Now  time,  the  fluid  world,  rushed 
beneath  him  again,  the  voices  coming  to  him  again  through 
the  smell  of  cheese  and  sealed  meat,  the  fear  and  despair  and 
the  old  grief  of  blood: 

"This  case  is  closed.  I  can't  find  against  you,  Snopes,  but 
I  can  give  you  advice.  Leave  this  country  and  don't  come 
back  to  it." 

His  father  spoke  for  the  first  time,  his  voice  cold  and 
hai;sh,  level,  without  emphasis:  "I  aim  to.  I  don't  figure  to 
stay  in  a  country  among  people  who  .  .  ."  he  said  something 
unprintable  and  vile,  addressed  to  no  one. 

"That'll  do,"  the  Justice  said.  "Take  your  wagon  and  get 
out  of  this  country  before  dark.  Case  dismissed." 

His  father  turned,  and  he  followed  the  stiff  black  coat,  the 
wiry  figure  walking  a  little  stiffly  from  where  a  Confederate 
provost's  man's  musket  ball  had  taken  him  in  the  heel  on  a 
stolen  horse  thirty  years  ago,  followed  the  two  backs  now, 
since  his  older  brother  had  appeared  from  somewhere  in  the 
crowd,  no  taller  than  the  father  but  thicker,  chewing  tobacco 
steadily,  between  the  two  lines  of  grim-faced  men  and  out 
of  the  store  and  across  the  worn  gallery  and  down  the  sag- 
ging steps  and  among  the  dogs  and  half-grown  boys  in  the 
mild  May  dust,  where  as  he  passed  a  voice  hissed: 

"Barnburner!" 

Again  he  could  not  see,  whirling;  there  was  a  face  in  a  red 
haze,  moonlike,  bigger  than  the  full  moon,  the  owner  of  it 


6  The  Country 

half  again  his  size,  he  leaping  in  the  red  haze  toward  the  face, 
feeling  no  blow,  feeling  no  shock  when  his  head  struck  the 
earth,  scrabbling  up  and  leaping  again,  feeling  no  blow  this 
time  either  and  tasting  no  blood,  scrabbling  up  to  see  the 
other  boy  in  full  flight  and  himself  already  leaping  into  pur- 
suit as  his  father's  hand  jerked  him  back,  the  harsh,  cold 
voice  speaking  above  him:  "Go  get  in  the  wagon." 

It  stood  in  a  grove  of  locusts  and  mulberries  across  the 
road.  His  two  hulking  sisters  in  their  Sunday  dresses  and  his 
mother  and  her  sister  in  calico  and  sunbonnets  were  already 
in  it,  sitting  on  and  among  the  sorry  residue  of  the  dozen  and 
more  movings  which  even  the  boy  could  remember — the 
battered  stove,  the  broken  beds  and  chairs,  the  clock  inlaid 
with  mother-of-pearl,  which  would  not  run,  stopped  at 
some  fourteen  minutes  past  two  o'clock  of  a  dead  and  for- 
gotten day  and  time,  which  had  been  his  mother's  dowry. 
She  was  crying,  though  when  she  saw  him  she  drew  her 
sleeve  across  her  face  and  began  to  descend  from  the  wagon. 
"Get  back,"  the  father  said. 

"He's  hurt.  I  got  to  get  some  water  and  wash  his  .  .  ." 

"Get  back  in  the  wagon,"  his  father  said.  He  got  in  too, 
over  the  tail-gate.  His  father  mounted  to  the  seat  where  the 
older  brother  already  sat  and  struck  the  gaunt  mules  two 
savage  blows  with  the  peeled  willow,  but  without  heat.  It 
was  not  even  sadistic;  it  was  exactly  that  same  quality  which 
in  later  years  would  cause  his  descendants  to  over-run  the 
engine  before  putting  a  motor  car  into  motion,  striking  and 
reining  back  in  the  same  movement.  The  wagon  went  on, 
the  store  with  its  quiet  crowd  of  grimly  watching  men 
dropped  behind;  a  curve  in  the  road  hid  it.  Forever  he 
thought.  Maybe  he's  done  satisfied  now,  now  that  he  has  .  .  . 
stopping  himself,  not  to  say  it  aloud  even  to  himself.  His 
mother's  hand  touched  his  shoulder. 

"Does  hit  hurt?"  she  said. 


Barn  Burning  7 

"Naw,"  he  said.  "Hit  don't  hurt.  Lemme  be." 
"Can't  you  wipe  some  of  the  blood  off  before  hit  dries?" 
"I'll  wash  to-night,"  he  said.  "Lemme  be,  I  tell  you." 
The  Wagon  went  on.  He  did  not  know  where  they  were 
going.  None  of  them  ever  did  or  ever  asked,  because  it  was 
always  somewhere,  always  a  house  of  sorts  waiting  for  them 
a  day  or  two  days  or  even  three  days  away.  Likely  his  father 
had  already  arranged  to  make  a  crop  on  another  farm  before 
he  ...  Again  he  had  to  stop  himself.  He  (the  father)  always 
did.  There  was  something  about  his  wolflike  independence 
and  even  courage  when  the  advantage  was  at  least  neutral 
which  impressed  strangers,  as  if  they  got  from  his  latent 
ravening  ferocity  not  so  much  a  sense  of  dependability  as  a 
feeling  that  his  ferocious  conviction  in  the  rightness  of  his 
own  actions  would  be  of  advantage  to  all  whose  interest 
lay  with  his. 

That  night  they  camped,  in  a  grove  of  oaks  and  beeches 
where  a  spring  ran.  The  nights  were  still  cool  and  they  had 
a  fire  against  it,  of  a  rail  lifted  from  a  nearby  fence  and  cut 
into  lengths — a  small  fire,  neat,  niggard  almost,  a  shrewd 
fire;  such  fires  were  his  father's  habit  and  custom  always, 
even  in  freezing  weather.  Older,  the  boy  might  have  re- 
marked this  and  wondered  why  not  a  big  one;  why  should 
not  a  man  who  had  not  only  seen  the  waste  and  extravagance 
of  war,  but  who  had  in  his  blood  an  inherent  voracious 
prodigality  with  material  not  his  own,  have  burned  every- 
thing in  sight?  Then  he  might  have  gone  a  step  farther  and 
thought  that  that  was  the  reason:  that  niggard  blaze  was  the 
living  fruit  of  nights  passed  during  those  four  years  in  the 
woods  hiding  from  all  men,  blue  or  gray,  with  his  strings  of 
horses  (captured  horses,  he  called  them).  And  older  still,  he 
might  have  divined  the  true  reason:  that  the  element  of  fire 
spoke  to  some  deep  mainspring  of  his  father's  being,  as  the 
element  of  steel  or  of  powder  spoke  to  other  men,  as  the  one 


8  The  Country 

weapon  for  the  preservation  of  integrity,  else  breath  were 
not  worth  the  breathing,  and  hence  to  be  regarded  with 
respect  and  used  with  discretion. 

But  he  did  not  think  this  now  and  he  had  seen  those  same 
niggard  blazes  all  his  life.  He  merely  ate  his  supper  beside  it 
and  was  already  half  asleep  over  his  iron  plate  when  his 
father  called  him,  and  once  more  he  followed  the  stiff  back, 
the  stiff  and  ruthless  limp,  up  the  slope  and  on  to  the  starlit 
road  where,  turning,  he  could  see  his  father  against  the  stars 
but  without  face  or  depth — a  shape  black,  flat,  and  bloodless 
as  though  cut  from  tin  in  the  iron  folds  of  the  frockcoat 
which  had  not  been  made  for  him,  the  voice  harsh  like  tin 
and  without  heat  like  tin: 

"You  were  fixing  to  tell  them.  You  would  have  told  him." 
He  didn't  answer.  His  father  struck  him  with  the  flat  of  his 
hand  on  the  side  of  the  head,  hard  but  without  heat,  exactly 
as  he  had  struck  the  two  mules  at  the  store,  exactly  as  he 
would  strike  either  of  them  with  any  stick  in  order  to  kill 
a  horse  fly,  his  voice  still  without  heat  or  anger:  "You're 
getting  to  be  a  man.  You  got  to  learn.  You  got  to  learn  to 
stick  to  your  own  blood  or  you  ain't  going  to  have  any 
blood  to  stick  to  you.  Do  you  think  either  of  them,  any  man 
there  this  morning,  would?  Don't  you  know  all  they  wanted 
was  a  chance  to  get  at  me  because  they  knew  I  had  them 
beat?  Eh?"  Later,  twenty  years  later,  he  was  to  tell  himself, 
"If  I  had  said  they  wanted  only  truth,  justice,  he  would  have 
hit  me  again."  But  now  he  said  nothing.  He  was  not  crying. 
He  just  stood  there.  "Answer  me,"  his  father  said. 

"Yes,"  he  whispered.  His  father  turned. 

"Get  on  to  bed.  We'll  be  there  tomorrow." 

To-morrow  they  were  there.  In  the  early  afternoon  the 
wagon  stopped  before  a  paintless  two-room  house  identical 
almost  with  the  dozen  others  it  had  stopped  before  even  in 
the  boy's  ten  years,  and  again,  as  on  the  other  dozen  occa- 


Barn  Burning  9 

sions,  his  mother  and  aunt  got  down  and  began  to  unload  the 
wagon,  although  his  two  sisters  and  his  father  and  brother 
had  not  moved. 

"Likely  hit  ain't  fitten  for  hawgs,"  one  of  the  sisters  said. 

"Nevertheless,  fit  it  will  and  you'll  hog  it  and  like  it,"  his 
father  said.  "Get  out  of  them  chairs  and  help  your  Ma  un- 
load." 

The  two  sisters  got  down,  big,  bovine,  in  a  flutter  of 
cheap  ribbons;  one  of  them  drew  from  the  jumbled  wagon 
bed  a  battered  lantern,  the  other  a  worn  broom.  His  father 
handed  the  reins  to  the  older  son  and  began  to  climb  stiffly 
over  the  wheel.  "When  they  get  unloaded,  take  the  team  to 
the  barn  and  feed  them."  Then  he  said,  and  at  first  the  boy 
thought  he  was  still  speaking  to  his  brother:  "Come  with 


me." 


"Me?"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  his  father  said.  "You." 

'"Abner,"  his  mother  said.  His  father  paused  and  looked 
back — the  harsh  level  stare  beneath  the  shaggy,  graying, 
irascible  brows. 

"I  reckon  I'll  have  a  word  with  the  man  that  aims  to  begin 
to-morrow  owning  me  body  and  soul  for  the  next  eight 
months." 

They  went  back  up  the  road.  A  week  ago — or  before  last 
night,  that  is — he  would  have  asked  where  they  were  going, 
but  not  now.  His  father  had  struck  him  before  last  night 
but  never  before  had  he  paused  afterward  to  explain  why; 
it  was  as  if  the  blow  and  the  following  calm,  outrageous 
voice  still  rang,  repercussed,  divulging  nothing  to  him  save 
the  terrible  handicap  of  being  young,  the  light  weight  of  his 
few  years,  just  heavy  enough  to  prevent  his  soaring  free  of 
the  world  as  it  seemed  to  be  ordered  but  not  heavy  enough 
to  keep  him  footed  solid  in  it,  to  resist  it  and  try  to  change 
the  course  of  its  events. 


io  The  Country 

Presently  he  could  see  the  grove  of  oaks  and  cedars  and 
the  other  flowering  trees  and  shrubs  where  the  house  would 
be,  though  not  the  house  yet.  They  walked  beside  a  fence 
massed  with  honeysuckle  and  Cherokee  roses  and  came  to  a 
gate  swinging  open  between  two  brick  pillars,  and  now, 
beyond  a  sweep  of  drive,  he  saw  the  house  for  the  first  time 
and  at  that  instant  he  forgot  his  father  and  the  terror  and 
despair  both,  and  even  when  he  remembered  his  father  again 
(who  had  not  stopped)  the  terror  and  despair  did  not  re- 
turn. Because,  for  all  the  twelve  movings,  they  had  sojourned 
until  now  in  a  poor  country,  a  land  of  small  farms  and  fields 
and  houses,  and  he  had  never  seen  a  house  like  this  before. 
Hit's  big  as  a  courthouse  he  thought  quietly,  with  a  surge 
of  peace  and  joy  whose  reason  he  could  not  have  thought 
into  words,  being  too  young  for  that:  They  are  safe  from 
him.  People  'whose  lives  are  a  part  of  this  peace  and  dignity 
are  beyond  his  touch,  he  no  more  to  them  than  a  buzzing 
wasp:  capable  of  stinging  for  a  little  moment  but  that's  all; 
the  spell  of  this  peace  and  dignity  rendering  even  the  barns 
and  stable  and  cribs  which  belong  to  it  impervious  to  the 
puny  flames  he  might  contrive  .  .  .  this,  the  peace  and  joy, 
ebbing  for  an  instant  as  he  looked  again  at  the  stiff  black 
back,  the  stiff  and  implacable  limp  of  the  figure  which  was 
not  dwarfed  by  the  house,  for  the  reason  that  it  had  never 
looked  big  anywhere  and  which  now,  against  the  serene 
columned  backdrop,  had  more  than  ever  that  impervious 
quality  of  something  cut  ruthlessly  from  tin,  depthless,  as 
though,  sidewise  to  the  sun,  it  would  cast  no  shadow.  Watch- 
ing him,  the  boy  remarked  the  absolutely  undeviating  course 
which  his  father  held  and  saw  the  stiff  foot  come  squarely 
down  in  a  pile  of  fresh  droppings  where  a  horse  had  stood 
in  the  drive  and  which  his  father  could  have  avoided  by  a 
simple  change  of  stride.  But  it  ebbed  only  for  a  moment, 
though  he  could  not  have  thought  this  into  words  either, 


Barn  Burning  L  i 

walking  on  in  the  spell  of  the  house,  which  he  could  even 
want  but  without  envy,  without  sorrow,  certainly  never 
with  that  ravening  and  jealous  rage  which  unknown  to  him 
walked  in  the  ironlike  black  coat  before  him:  Maybe  be  will 
feel  it  too.  Maybe  it  'will  even  change  him  now  from  'what 
maybe  he  couldn't  help  but  be. 

They  crossed  the  portico.  Now  he  could  hear  his  father's 
stiff  foot  as  it  came  down  on  the  boards  with  clocklike  final- 
ity, a  sound  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  displacement  of  the 
body  it  bore  and  which  was  not  dwarfed  either  by  the  white 
door  before  it,  as  though  it  had  attained  to  a  sort  of  vicious 
and  ravening  minimum  not  to  be  dwarfed  by  anything — the 
fiat,  wide,  black  hat,  the  formal  coat  of  broadcloth  which  had 
once  been  black  but  which  had  now  that  friction-glazed 
greenish  cast  of  the  bodies  of  old  house  flies,  the  lifted  sleeve 
which  was  too  large,  the  lifted  hand  like  a  curled  claw.  The 
door  opened  so  promptly  that  the  boy  knew  the  Negro  must 
have  been  watching  them  all  the  time,  an  old  man  with  neat 
grizzled  hair,  in  a  linen  jacket,  who  stood  barring  the  door 
with  his  body,  saying,  "Wipe  yo  foots,  white  man,  fo  you 
come  in  here.  Major  ain't  home  nohow." 

"Get  out  of  my  way,  nigger,"  his  father  said,  without 
heat  too,  flinging  the  door  back  and  the  Negro  also  and 
entering,  his  hat  still  on  his  head.  And  now  the  boy  saw  the 
prints  of  the  stiff  foot  on  the  door  jamb  and  saw  them  appear 
on  the  pale  rug  behind  the  machinelike  deliberation  of  the 
foot  which  seemed  to  bear  (or  transmit)  twice  the  weight 
which  the  body  compassed.  The  Negro  was  shouting  "Miss 
Lula!  Miss  Lula!"  somewhere  behind  them,  then  the  boy, 
deluged  as  though  by  a  warm  wave  by  a  suave  turn  of 
carpeted  stair  and  a  pendant  glitter  of  chandeliers  and  a  mute 
gleam  of  gold  frames,  heard  the  swift  feet  and  saw  her  too, 
a  lady — perhaps  he  had  never  seen  her  like  before  either — 
in  a  gray,  smooth  gown  with  lace  at  the  throat  and  an  apron 


12  The  Country 

tied  at  the  waist  and  the  sleeves  turned  back,  wiping  cake  or 
biscuit  dough  from  her  hands  with  a  towel  as  she  came  up 
the  hall,  looking  not  at  his  father  at  all  but  at  the  tracks  on 
the  blond  rug  with  an  expression  of  incredulous  amazement. 

"I  tried,"  the  Negro  cried.  "I  tole  him  to  .  .  ." 

"Will  you  please  go  away?"  she  said  in  a  shaking  voice. 
"Major  de  Spain  is  not  at  home.  Will  you  please  go  away?" 

His  father  had  not  spoken  again.  He  did  not  speak  again. 
He  did  not  even  look  at  her.  He  just  stood  stiff  in  the  center 
of  the  rug,  in  his  hat,  the  shaggy  iron-gray  brows  twitching 
slightly  above  the  pebble-colored  eyes  as  he  appeared  to 
examine  the  house  with  brief  deliberation.  Then  with  the 
same  deliberation  he  turned;  the  boy  watched  him  pivot  on 
the  good  leg  and  saw  the  stiff  foot  drag  round  the  arc  of 
the  turning,  leaving  a  final  long  and  fading  smear.  His  father 
never  looked  at  it,  he  never  once  looked  down  at  the  rug. 
The  Negro  held  the  door.  It  closed  behind  them,  upon  the 
hysteric  and  indistinguishable  woman-wail.  His  father 
stopped  at  the  top  of  the  steps  and  scraped  his  boot  clean  on 
the  edge  of  it.  At  the  gate  he  stopped  again.  He  stood  for 
a  moment,  planted  stiffly  on  the  stiff  foot,  looking  back  at 
the  house.  "Pretty  and  white,  ain't  it?"  he  said.  "That's 
sweat.  Nigger  sweat.  Maybe  it  ain't  white  enough  yet  to 
suit  him.  Maybe  he  wants  to  mix  some  white  sweat  with  it." 

Two  hours  later  the  boy  was  chopping  wood  behind  the 
house  within  which  his  mother  and  aunt  and  the  two  sisters 
(the  mother  and  aunt,  not  the  two  girls,  he  knew  that;  even 
at  this  distance  and  muffled  by  walls  the  flat  loud  voices  of 
the  two  girls  emanated  an  incorrigible  idle  inertia)  were 
setting  up  the  stove  to  prepare  a  meal,  when  he  heard  the 
hooves  and  saw  the  linen-clad  man  on  a  fine  sorrel  mare, 
whom  he  recognized  even  before  he  saw  the  rolled  rug  in 
front  of  the  Negro  youth  following  on  a  fat  bay  carriage 
horse — a  suffused,  angry  face  vanishing,  still  at  full  gallop, 


Barn  Burning  13 

beyond  the  corner  of  the  house  where  his  father  and  brother 
were  sitting  in  the  two  tilted  chairs;  and  a  moment  later, 
almost  before  he  could  have  put  the  axe  down,  he  heard  the 
hooves  again  and  watched  the  sorrel  mare  go  back  out  of 
the  yard,  already  galloping  again.  Then  his  father  began  to 
shout  one  of  the  sisters'  names,  who  presently  emerged  back- 
ward from  the  kitchen  door  dragging  the  rolled  rug  along 
the  ground  by  one  end  while  the  other  sister  walked  behind 
it. 

"If  you  ain't  going  to  tote,  go  on  and  set  up  the  wash 
pot,"  the  first  said. 

"You,  Sarty!"  the  second  shouted.  "Set  up  the  wash  pot!" 
His  father  appeared  at  the  door,  framed  against  that  shabbi- 
ness,  as  he  had  been  against  that  other  bland  perfection,  im- 
pervious to  either,  the  mother's  anxious  face  at  his  shoulder. 

"Go  on,"  the  father  said.  "Pick  it  up."  The  two  sisters 
stooped,  broad,  lethargic;  stooping,  they  presented  an  in- 
credible expanse  of  pale  cloth  and  a  flutter  of  tawdry  rib- 
bons. 

"If  I  thought  enough  of  a  rug  to  have  to  git  hit  all  the 
way  from  France  I  wouldn't  keep  hit  where  folks  coming  in 
would  have  to  tromp  on  hit,"  the  first  said.  They  raised  the 
rug. 

"Abner,"  the  mother  said.  "Let  me  do  it." 

"You  go  back  and  git  dinner,"  his  father  said.  "I'll  tend  to 
this." 

From  the  woodpile  through  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  the 
boy  watched  them,  the  rug  spread  flat  in  the  dust  beside  the 
bubbling  wash-pot,  the  two  sisters  stooping  over  it  with  that 
profound  and  lethargic  reluctance,  while  the  father  stood 
over  them  in  turn,  implacable  and  grim,  driving  them 
though  never  raising  his  voice  again.  He  could  smell  the 
harsh  homemade  lye  they  were  using;  he  saw  his  mother 
come  to  the  door  once  and  look  toward  them  with  an  ex- 


14  The  Country 

pression  not  anxious  now  but  very  like  despair;  he  saw  his 
father  turn,  and  he  fell  to  with  the  axe  and  .saw  from  the 
corner  of  his  eye  his  father  raise  from  the  ground  a  flattish 
fragment  of  field  stone  and  examine  it  and  return  to  the  pot, 
and  this  time  his  mother  actually  spoke:  "Abner.  Abner. 
Please  don't.  Please,  Abner." 

Then  he  was  done  too.  It  was  dusk;  the  whippoorwills  had 
already  begun.  He  could  smell  coffee  from  the  room  where 
they  would  presently  eat  the  cold  food  remaining  from  the 
mid-afternoon  meal,  though  when  he  entered  the  house  he 
realized  they  were  having  coffee  again  probably  because 
there  was  a  fire  on  the  hearth,  before  which  the  rug  now  lay 
spread  over  the  backs  of  the  two  chairs.  The  tracks  of  his 
father's  foot  were  gone.  Where  they  had  been  were  now 
long,  water-cloudy  scoriations  resembling  the  sporadic 
course  of  a  lilliputian  mowing  machine. 

It  still  hung  there  while  they  ate  the  cold  food  and  then 
went  to  bed,  scattered  without  order  or  claim  up  and  down 
the  two  rooms,  his  mother  in  one  bed,  where  his  father 
would  later  lie,  the  older  brother  in  the  other,  himself,  the 
aunt,  and  the  two  sisters  on  pallets  on  the  floor.  But  his 
father  was  not  in  bed  yet.  The  last  thing  the  boy  remem- 
bered was  the  depthless,  harsh  silhouette  of  the  hat  and  coat 
bending  over  the  rug  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  not 
even  closed  his  eyes  when  the  silhouette  was  standing  over 
him,  the  fire  almost  dead  behind  it,  the  stiff  foot  prodding 
him  awake.  "Catch  up  the  mule,"  his  father  said. 

When  he  returned  with  the  mule  his  father  was  standing 
in  the  black  door,  the  rolled  rug  over  his  shoulder.  " Ain't 
you  going  to  ride?"  he  said. 

"No.  Give  me  your  foot." 

He  bent  his  knee  into  his  father's  hand,  the  wiry,  surpris- 
ing power  flowed  smoothly,  rising,  he  rising  with  it,  on  to  the 
mule's  bare  back  (they  had  owned  a  saddle  once;  the  boy 


Barn  Burning  15 

could  remember  it  though  not  when  or  where)  and  with  the 
same  effortlessness  his  father  swung  the  rug  up  in  front  of 
him.  Now  in  the  starlight  they  retraced  the  afternoon's  path, 
up  the  dusty  road  rife  with  honeysuckle,  through  the  gate 
and  up  the  black  tunnel  of  the  drive  to  the  lightless  house, 
where  he  sat  on  the  mule  and  felt  the  rough  warp  of  the  rug 
drag  across  his  thighs  and  vanish. 

"Don't  you  'want  me  to  help?"  he  whispered.  His  father 
did  not  answer  and  now  he  heard  again  that  stiff  foot  strik- 
ing the  hollow  portico  with  that  wooden  and  clocklike  de- 
liberation, that  outrageous  overstatement  of  the  weight  it 
carried.  The  rug,  hunched,  not  flung  (the  boy  could  tell 
that  even  in  the  darkness)  from  his  father's  shoulder  struck 
the  angle  of  wall  and  floor  with  a  sound  unbelievably  loud, 
thunderous,  then  the  foot  again,  unhurried  and  enormous;  a 
light  came  on  in  the  house  and  the  boy  sat,  tense,  breathing 
steadily  and  quietly  and  just  a  little  fast,  though  the  foot 
itself  did  not  increase  its  beat  at  all,  descending  the  steps 
now;  now  the  boy  could  see  him. 

"Don't  you  want  to  ride  now?"  he  whispered.  "We  kin 
both  ride  now,"  the  light  within  the  house  altering  now, 
flaring  up  and  sinking.  He's  coming  down  the  stairs  no<w, 
he  thought.  He  had  already  ridden  the  mule  up  beside  the 
horse  block;  presently  his  father  was  up  behind  him  and  he 
doubled  the  reins  over  and  slashed  the  mule  across  the  neck, 
but  before  the  animal  could  begin  to  trot  the  hard,  thin  arm 
came  round  him,  the  hard,  knotted  hand  jerking  the  mule 
back  to  a  walk. 

In  the  first  red  rays  of  the  sun  they  were  in  the  lot,  putting 
plow  gear  on  the  mules.  This  time  the  sorrel  mare  was  in  the 
lot  before  he  heard  it  at  all,  the  rider  collarless  and  even 
bareheaded,  trembling,  speaking  in  a  shaking  voice  as  the 
woman  in  the  house  had  done,  his  father  merely  looking  up 


1 6  The  Country 

once  before  stooping  again  to  the  hame  he  was  buckling,  so 
that  the  man  on  the  mare  spoke  to  his  stooping  back: 

"You  must  realize  you  have  ruined  that  rug.  Wasn't  there 
anybody  here,  any  of  your  women  .  .  ."  he  ceased,  shaking, 
the  boy  watching  him,  the  older  brother  leaning  now  in  the 
stable  door,  chewing,  blinking  slowly  and  steadily  at  nothing 
apparently.  "It  cost  a  hundred  dollars.  But  you  never  had  a 
hundred  dollars.  You  never  will.  So  I'm  going  to  charge  you 
twenty  bushels  of  corn  against  your  crop.  I'll  add  it  in  your 
contract  and  when  you  come  to  the  commissary  you  can 
sign  it.  That  won't  keep  Mrs.  de  Spain  quiet  but  maybe  it 
will  teach  you  to  wipe  your  feet  off  before  you  enter  her 
house  again." 

Then  he  was  gone.  The  boy  looked  at  his  father,  who  still 
had  not  spoken  or  even  looked  up  again,  who  was  now  ad- 
justing the  logger-head  in  the  hame. 

"Pap,"  he  said.  His  father  looked  at  him — the  inscrutable 
face,  the  shaggy  brows  beneath  which  the  gray  eyes  glinted 
coldly.  Suddenly  the  boy  went  toward  him,  fast,  stopping 
as  suddenly.  "You  done  the  best  you  could!"  he  cried.  "If 
he  wanted  hit  done  different  why  didn't  he  wait  and  tell 
you  how?  He  won't  git  no  twenty  bushels!  He  won't  git 
none!  We'll  gether  hit  and  hide  hit!  I  kin  watch  .  .  ." 

"Did  you  put  the  cutter  back  in  that  straight  stock  like 
I  told  you?" 

"No,  sir,"  he  said. 

"Then  go  do  it." 

That  was  Wednesday.  During  the  rest  of  that  week  he 
\vorked  steadily,  at  what  was  within  his  scope  and  some 
\vhich  was  beyond  it,  with  an  industry  that  did  not  need  to 
be  driven  nor  even  commanded  twice;  he  had  this  from  his 
mother,  with  the  difference  that  some  at  least  of  what  he 
did  he  liked  to  do,  such  as  splitting  wood  with  the  half-size 
axe  which  his  mother  and  aunt  had  earned,  or  saved  money 


Barn  Burning  \j 

somehow,  to  present  him  with  at  Christmas.  In  company 
with  the  two  older  women  (and  on  one  afternoon,  even  one 
of  the  sisters) ,  he  built  pens  for  the  shoat  and  the  cow  which 
were  a  part  of  his  father's  contract  with  the  landlord,  and 
one  afternoon,  his  father  being  absent,  gone  somewhere  on 
one  of  the  mules,  he  went  to  the  field. 

They  were  running  a  middle  buster  now,  his  brother 
holding  the  plow  straight  while  he  handled  the  reins,  and 
walking  beside  the  straining  mule,  the  rich  black  soil  shear- 
ing cool  and  damp  against  his  bare  ankles,  he  thought  Maybe 
this  is  the  end  of  it.  Maybe  even  that  twenty  bushels  that 
seems  hard  to  have  to  pay  for  just  a  rug  'will  be  a  cheap  price 
for  him  to  stop  forever  and  always  from  being  what  he  used 
to  be;  thinking,  dreaming  now,  so  that  his  brother  had  to 
speak  sharply  to  him  to  mind  the  mule:  Maybe  he  even 
won't  collect  the  twenty  bushels.  Maybe  it  will  all  add  up 
and  balance  and  vanish — corn,  rug,  fire;  the  terror  and  grief, 
the  being  pulled  two  ways  like  between  two  teams  of  horses 
— gone,  done  with  for  ever  and  ever. 

Then  it  was  Saturday;  he  looked  up  from  beneath  the 
mule  he  was  harnessing  and  saw  his  father  in  the  black  coat 
and  hat.  "Not  that,"  his  father  said.  "The  wagon  gear." 
And  then,  two  hours  later,  sitting  in  the  wagon  bed  behind 
his  father  and  brother  on  the  seat,  the  wagon  accomplished 
a  final  curve,  and  he  saw  the  weathered  paintless  store  with 
its  tattered  tobacco-  and  patent-medicine  posters  and  the 
tethered  wagons  and  saddle  animals  below  the  gallery.  He 
mounted  the  gnawed  steps  behind  his  father  and  brother, 
and  there  again  was  the  lane  of  quiet,  watching  faces  for  the 
three  of  them  to  walk  through.  He  saw  the  man  in  spec- 
tacles sitting  at  the  plank  table  and  he  did  not  need  to  be 
told  this  was  a  Justice  of  the  Peace;  he  sent  one  glare  of 
fierce,  exultant,  partisan  defiance  at  the  man  in  collar  and 
cravat  now,  whom  he  had  seen  but  twice  before  in  his  life, 


1 8  The  Country 

and  that  on  a  galloping  horse,  who  now  wore  on  his  face 
an  expression  not  of  rage  but  of  amazed  unbelief  which  the 
boy  could  not  have  known  was  at  the  incredible  circum- 
stance of  being  sued  by  one  of  his  own  tenants,  and  came 
and  stood  against  his  father  and  cried  at  the  Justice:  "He 
ain't  done  it!  He  ain't  burnt  .  .  ." 

"Go  back  to  the  wagon,"  his  father  said. 

''Burnt?"  the  Justice  said.  "Do  I  understand  this  rug  was 
burned  too?" 

"Does  anybody  here  claim  it  was?"  his  father  said.  "Go 
back  to  the  wagon."  But  he  did  not,  he  merely  retreated  to 
the  rear  of  the  room,  crowded  as  that  other  had  been,  but 
not  to  sit  down  this  time,  instead,  to  stand  pressing  among 
the  motionless  bodies,  listening  to  the  voices: 

"And  you  claim  twenty  bushels  of  corn  is  too  high  for 
the  damage  you  did  to  the  rug?" 

"He  brought  the  rug  to  me  and  said  he  wanted  the  tracks 
washed  out  of  it.  I  washed  the  tracks  out  and  took  the  rug 
back  to  him." 

"But  you  didn't  carry  the  rug  back  to  him  in  the  same 
condition  it  was  in  before  you  made  the  tracks  on  it." 

His  father  did  not  answer,  and  now  for  perhaps  half  a 
minute  there  was  no  sound  at  all  save  that  of  breathing,  the 
faint,  steady  suspiration  of  complete  and  intent  listening. 

"You  decline  to  answer  that,  Mr.  Snopes?"  Again  his 
father  did  not  answer.  "I'm  going  to  find  against  you,  Mr. 
Snopes.  I'm  going  to  find  that  you  were  responsible  for  the 
injury  to  Major  de  Spain's  rug  and  hold  you  liable  for  it. 
But  twenty  bushels  of  corn  seems  a  little  high  for  a  man  in 
your  circumstances  to  have  to  pay.  Major  de  Spain  claims  it 
cost  a  hundred  dollars.  October  corn  will  be  worth  about 
fifty  cents.  I  figure  that  if  Major  de  Spain  can  stand  a  ninety- 
five  dollar  loss  on  something  he  paid  cash  for,  you  can  stand 
a  five-dollar  loss  you  haven't  earned  yet.  I  hold  you  in  dam- 


Barn  Burning  19 

ages  to  Major  de  Spain  to  the  amount  of  ten  bushels  of  corn 
over  and  above  your  contract  with  him,  to  be  paid  to  him 
out  of  your  crop  at  gathering  time.  Court  adjourned." 

It  had  taken  no  time  hardly,  the  morning  was  but  half 
begun.  He  thought  they  would  return  home  and  perhaps 
back  to  the  field,  since  they  were  late,  far  behind  all  other 
farmers.  But  instead  his  father  passed  on  behind  the  wagon, 
merely  indicating  with  his  hand  for  the  older  brother  to 
follow  with  it,  and  crossed  the  road  toward  the  blacksmith 
shop  opposite,  pressing  on  after  his  father,  overtaking  him, 
speaking,  whispering  up  at  the  harsh,  calm  face  beneath  the 
weathered  hat:  "He  won't  git  no  ten  bushels  neither.  He 
won't  git  one.  We'll  .  .  ."  until  his  father  glanced  for  an 
instant  down  at  him,  the  face  absolutely  calm,  the  grizzled 
eyebrows  tangled  above  the  cold  eyes,  the  voice  almost 
pleasant,  almost  gentle: 

"You  think  so?  Well,  we'll  wait  till  October  anyway." 

The  matter  of  the  wagon — the  setting  of  a  spoke  or  two 
and  the  tightening  of  the  tires — did  not  take  long  either,  the 
business  of  the  tires  accomplished  by  driving  the  wagon  into 
the  spring  branch  behind  the  shop  and  letting  it  stand  there, 
the  mules  nuzzling  into  the  water  from  time  to  time,  and  the 
boy  on  the  seat  with  the  idle  reins,  looking  up  the  slope  and 
through  the  sooty  tunnel  of  the  shed  where  the  slow  ham- 
mer rang  and  where  his  father  sat  on  an  upended  cypress 
bolt,  easily,  either  talking  or  listening,  still  sitting  there  when 
the  boy  brought  the  dripping  wagon  up  out  of  the  branch 
and  halted  it  before  the  door. 

"Take  them  on  to  the  shade  and  hitch,"  his  father  said. 
He  did  so  and  returned.  His  father  and  the  smith  and  a  third 
man  squatting  on  his  heels  inside  the  door  were  talking, 
about  crops  and  animals;  the  boy,  squatting  too  in  the  am- 
moniac dust  and  hoof-parings  and  scales  of  rust,  heard  his 
father  tell  a  long  and  unhurried  story  out  of  the  time  before 


20  The  Country 

the  birth  of  the  older  brother  even  when  he  had  been  a  pro- 
fessional horsetrader.  And  then  his  father  came  up  beside 
him  where  he  stood  before  a  tattered  last  year's  circus  poster 
on  the  other  side  of  the  store,  gazing  rapt  and  quiet  at  the 
scarlet  horses,  the  incredible  poisings  and  convolutions  of 
tulle  and  tights  and  the  painted  leers  of  comedians,  and  said, 
"It's  time  to  eat." 

But  not  at  home.  Squatting  beside  his  brother  against  the 
front  wall,  he  watched  his  father  emerge  from  the  store  and 
produce  from  a  paper  sack  a  segment  of  cheese  and  divide  it 
carefully  and  deliberately  into  three  with  his  pocket  knife 
and  produce  crackers  from  the  same  sack.  They  all  three 
squatted  on  the  gallery  and  ate,  slowly,  without  talking; 
then  in  the  store  again,  they  drank  from  a  tin  dipper  tepid 
water  smelling  of  the  cedar  bucket  and  of  living  beech  trees. 
And  still  they  did  not  go  home.  It  was  a  horse  lot  this  time, 
a  tall  rail  fence  upon  and  along  which  men  stood  and  sat 
and  out  of  which  one  by  one  horses  were  led,  to  be  walked 
and  trotted  and  then  cantered  back  and  forth  along  the  road 
while  the  slow  swapping  and  buying  went  on  and  the  sun 
began  to  slant  westward,  they — the  three  of  them — watch- 
ing and  listening,  the  older  brother  with  his  muddy  eyes  and 
his  steady,  inevitable  tobacco,  the  father  commenting  now 
and  then  on  certain  of  the  animals,  to  no  one  in  particular. 

It  was  after  sundown  when  they  reached  home.  They  ate 
supper  by  lamplight,  then,  sitting  on  the  doorstep,  the  boy 
watched  the  night  fully  accomplish,  listening  to  the  whip- 
poorwills  and  the  frogs,  when  he  heard  his  mother's  voice: 
"Abner!  No!  No!  Oh,  God.  Oh,  God.  Abner!"  and  he  rose, 
whirled,  and  saw  the  altered  light  through  the  door  where 
a  candle  stub  now  burned  in  a  bottle  neck  on  the  table  and 
his  father,  still  in  the  hat  and  coat,  at  once  formal  and  bur- 
lesque as  though  dressed  carefully  for  some  shabby  and 
ceremonial  violence,  emptying  the  reservoir  of  the  lamp 


Barn  Burning  2 1 

back  into  the  five-gallon  kerosene  can  from  which  it  had 
been  filled,  while  the  mother  tugged  at  his  arm  until  he 
shifted  the  lamp  to  the  other  hand  and  flung  her  back,  not 
savagely  or  viciously,  just  hard,  into  the  wall,  her  hands 
flung  out  against  the  wall  for  balance,  her  mouth  open  and 
in  her  face  the  same  quality  of  hopeless  despair  as  had  been 
in. her  voice.  Then  his  father  saw  him  standing  in  the  door. 

"Go  to  the  barn  and  get  that  can  of  oil  we  were  oiling 
the  wagon  with,"  he  said.  The  boy  did  not  move.  Then  he 
could  speak. 

"What  .  .  ."  he  cried.  "What  are  you  .  .  ." 

"Go  get  that  oil,"  his  father  said.  "Go." 

Then  he  was  moving,  running,  outside  the  house,  toward 
the  stable:  this  the  old  habit,  the  old  blood  which  he  had  not 
been  permitted  to  choose  for  himself,  which  had  been  be- 
queathed him  willy  nilly  and  which  had  run  for  so  long 
(and  who  knew  where,  battening  on  what  of  outrage  and 
savagery  and  lust)  before  it  came  to  him.  /  could  keep  on, 
he  thought.  /  could  run  on  and  on  and  never  look  back, 
never  need  to  see  his  face  again.  Only  I  carft.  I  can't,  the 
rusted  can  in  his  hand  now,  the  liquid  sploshing  in  it  as  he 
ran  back  to  the  house  and  into  it,  into  the  sound  of  his 
mother's  weeping  in  the  next  room,  and  handed  the  can  to 
his  father. 

"Ain't  you  going  to  even  send  a  nigger?"  he  cried.  "At 
least  you  sent  a  nigger  before!" 

This  time  his  father  didn't  strike  him.  The  hand  came 
even  faster  than  the  blow  had,  the  same  hand  which  had  set 
the  can  on  the  table  with  almost  excruciating  care  flashing 
from  the  can  toward  him  too  quick  for  him  to  follow  it, 
gripping  him  by  the  back  of  his  shirt  and  on  to  tiptoe  before 
he  had  seen  it  quit  the  can,  the  face  stooping  at  him  in 
breathless  and  frozen  ferocity,  the  cold,  dead  voice  speaking 
over  him  to  the  older  brother  who  leaned  against  the  table. 


22  The  Country 

chewing  with  that  steady,  curious,  sidewise  motion  of  cows: 

"Empty  the  can  into  the  big  one  and  go  on.  I'll  catch  up 
with  you/' 

"Better  tie  him  up  to  the  bedpost,"  the  brother  said. 

"Do  like  I  told  you,"  the  father  said.  Then  the  boy  was 
moving,  his  bunched  shirt  and  the  hard,  bony  hand  between 
his  shoulder-blades,  his  toes  just  touching  the  floor,  across 
the  room  and  into  the  other  one,  past  the  sisters  sitting  with 
spread  heavy  thighs  in  the  two  chairs  over  the  cold  hearth, 
and  to  where  his  mother  and  aunt  sat  side  by  side  on  the 
bed,  the  aunt's  arms  about  his  mother's  shoulders. 

"Hold  him,"  the  father  said.  The  aunt  made  a  startled 
movement.  "Not  you,"  the  father  said.  "Lennie.  Take  hold 
of  him.  I  want  to  see  you  do  it."  His  mother  took  him  by  the 
wrist.  "You'll  hold  him  better  than  that.  If  he  gets  loose 
don't  you  know  what  he  is  going  to  do?  He  will  go  up 
yonder."  He  jerked  his  head  toward  the  road.  "Maybe  I'd 
better  tie  him." 

"I'll  hold  him,"  his  mother  whispered. 

"See  you  do  then."  Then  his  father  was  gone,  the  stiff 
foot  heavy  and  measured  upon  the  boards,  ceasing  at  last. 

Then  he  began  to  struggle.  His  mother  caught  him  in 
both  arms,  he  jerking  and  wrenching  at  them.  He  would  be 
stronger  in  the  end,  he  knew  that.  But  he  had  no  time  to  wait 
for  it.  "Lemme  go!"  he  cried.  "I  don't  want  to  have  to  hit 
you!" 

"Let  him  go!"  the  aunt  said.  "If  he  don't  go,  before  God, 
I  am  going  up  there  myself! " 

"Don't  you  see  I  can't?"  his  mother  cried.  "Sarty!  Sarty! 
No!  No!  Help  me,  Lizzie!" 

Then  he  was  free.  His  aunt  grasped  at  him  but  it  was  too 
late.  He  whirled,  running,  his  mother  stumbled  forward  on 
to  her  knees  behind  him,  crying  to  the  nearer  sister:  "Catch 
him,  Net!  Catch  him!"  But  that  was  too  late  too,  the  sister 


Barn  Burning  23 

(the  sisters  were  twins,  born  at  the  same  time,  yet  either  of 
them  now  gave  the  impression  of  being,  encompassing  as 
much  living  meat  and  volume  and  weight  as  any  other  two 
of  the  family)  not  yet  having  begun  to  rise  from  the  chair, 
her  head,  face,  alone  merely  turned,  presenting  to  him  in 
the  flying  instant  an  astonishing  expanse  of  young  female 
features  untroubled  by  any  surprise  even,  wearing  only  an 
expression  of  bovine  interest.  Then  he  was  out  of  the  room, 
out  of  the  house,  in  the  mild  dust  of  the  starlit  road  and  the 
heavy  rifeness  of  honeysuckle,  the  pale  ribbon  unspooling 
with  terrific  slowness  under  his  running  feet,  reaching  the 
gate  at  last  and  turning  in,  running,  his  heart  and  lungs 
drumming,  on  up  the  drive  toward  the  lighted  house,  the 
lighted  door.  He  did  not  knock,  he  burst  in,  sobbing  for 
breath,  incapable  for  the  moment  of  speech;  he  saw  the 
astonished  face  of  the  Negro  in  the  linen  jacket  without 
knowing  when  the  Negro  had  appeared. 

"De  Spain!"  he  cried,  panted.  "Where's  .  .  ."  then  he  saw 
the  white  man  too  emerging  from  a  white  door  down  the 
hall.  "Barn!"  he  cried.  "Barn!" 

"What?"  the  white  man  said.  "Barn?" 

"Yes!"  the  boy  cried.  "Barn!" 

"Catch  him!"  the  white  man  shouted. 

But  it  was  too  late  this  time  too.  The  Negro  grasped  his 
shirt,  but  the  entire  sleeve,  rotten  with  washing,  carried 
away,  and  he  was  out  that  door  too  and  in  the  drive  again, 
and  had  actually  never  ceased  to  run  even  while  he  was 
screaming  into  the  white  man's  face. 

Behind  him  the  white  man  was  shouting,  "My  horse! 
Fetch  my  horse!"  and  he  thought  for  an  instant  of  cutting 
across  the  park  and  climbing  the  fence  into  the  road,  but  he 
did  not  know  the  park  nor  how  high  the  vine-massed  fence 
might  be  and  he  dared  not  risk  it.  So  he  n»n  on  down  the 
drive,  blood  and  breath  roaring;  presently  he  was  in  the 


24  The  Country 

road  again  though  he  could  not  see  it.  He  could  not  hear 
either:  the  galloping  mare  was  almost  upon  him  before  he 
heard  her,  and  even  then  he  held  his  course,  as  if  the  very 
urgency  of  his  wild  grief  and  need  must  in  a  moment  more 
find  him  wings,  waiting  until  the  ultimate  instant  to  hurl 
himself  aside  and  into  the  weed-choked  roadside  ditch  as  the 
horse  thundered  past  and  on,  for  an  instant  in  furious  sil- 
houette against  the  stars,  the  tranquil  early  summer  night  sky 
which,  even  before  the  shape  of  the  horse  and  rider  vanished, 
stained  abruptly  and  violently  upward:  a  long,  swirling  roar 
incredible  and  soundless,  blotting  the  stars,  and  he  springing 
up  and  into  the  road  again,  running  again,  knowing  it  was 
too  late  yet  still  running  even  after  he  heard  the  shot  and, 
an  instant  later,  two  shots,  pausing  now  without  knowing  he 
had  ceased  to  run,  crying  "Pap!  Pap!",  running  again  before 
he  knew  he  had  begun  to  run,  stumbling,  tripping  over  some- 
thing and  scrabbling  up  again  without  ceasing  to  run,  look- 
ing backward  over  his  shoulder  at  the  glare  as  he  got  up, 
running  on  among  the  invisible  trees,  panting,  sobbing, 
"Father!  Father!" 

At  midnight  he  was  sitting  on  the  crest  of  a  hill.  He  did 
not  know  it  was  midnight  and  he  did  not  know  how  far  he 
had  come.  But  there  was  no  glare  behind  him  now  and  he 
sat  now,  his  back  toward  what  he  had  called  home  for  four 
days  anyhow,  his  face  toward  the  dark  woods  which  he 
would  enter  when  breath  was  strong  again,  small,  shaking 
steadily  in  the  chill  darkness,  hugging  himself  into  the  re- 
mainder of  his  thin,  rotten  shirt,  the  grief  and  despair  now  no 
longer  terror  and  fear  but  just  grief  and  despair.  Father. 
My  father,  he  thought.  "He  was  brave!"  he  cried  suddenly, 
aloud  but  not  loud,  no  more  than  a  whisper:  "He  was!  He 
was  in  the  war!  He  was  in  Colonel  Sartoris'  cav'ry!"  not 
knowing  that  his  father  had  gone  to  that  war  a  private  in 
the  fine  old  European  sense,  wearing  no  uniform,  admitting 


Barn  Burning  25 

the  authority  of  and  giving  fidelity  to  no  man  or  army  or 
flag,  going  to  war  as  Malbrouck  himself  did:  for  booty — it 
meant  nothing  and  less  than  nothing  to  him  if  it  were  enemy 
booty  or  his  own. 

The  slow  constellations  wheeled  on.  It  would  be  dawn 
and  then  sun-up  after  a  while  and  he  would  be  hungry.  But 
that  would  be  to-morrow  and  now  he  was  only  cold,  and 
walking  would  cure  that.  His  breathing  was  easier  now  and 
he  decided  to  get  up  and  go  on,  and  then  he  found  that  he 
had  been  asleep  because  he  knew  it  was  almost  dawn,  the 
night  almost  over.  He  could  tell  that  from  the  whippoor- 
wills.  They  were  everywhere  now  among  the  dark  trees 
below  him,  constant  and  inflectioned  and  ceaseless,  so  that, 
as  the  instant  for  giving  over  to  the  day  birds  drew  nearer 
and  nearer,  there  was  no  interval  at  all  between  them.  He 
got  up.  He  was  a  little  stiff,  but  walking  would  cure  that 
too  as  it  would  the  cold,  and  soon  there  would  be  the  sun. 
He  went  on  down  the  hill,  toward  the  dark  woods  within 
which  the  liquid  silver  voices  of  the  birds  called  unceasing 
— the  rapid  and  urgent  beating  of  the  urgent  and  quiring 
heart  of  the  late  spring  night.  He  did  not  look  back. 


Shingles  for  the  Lord 


PAP  GOT  UP  a  good  hour  before  daylight  and  caught  the 
mule  and  rid  down  to  Killegrews'  to  borrow  the  froe  and 
maul.  He  ought  to  been  back  with  it  in  forty  minutes.  But 
the  sun  had  rose  and  I  had  done  milked  and  fed  and  was  eat- 
ing my  breakfast  when  he  got  back,  with  the  mule  not  only 
in  a  lather  but  right  on  the  edge  of  the  thumps  too. 

"Fox  hunting,"  he  said.  "Fox  hunting.  A  seventy-year-old 
man,  with  both  feet  and  one  knee,  too,  already  in  the  grave, 
squatting  all  night  on  a  hill  and  calling  himself  listening  to  a 
fox  race  that  he  couldn't  even  hear  unless  they  had  come 
right  up  onto  the  same  log  he  was  setting  on  and  bayed  into 
his  ear  trumpet.  Give  me  my  breakfast,"  he  told  maw. 
"Whitfield  is  standing  there  right  this  minute,  straddle  of  that 
board  tree  with  his  watch  in  his  hand." 

And  he  was.  We  rid  on  past  the  church,  and  there  was  not 
only  Solon  Quick's  school-bus  truck  but  Reverend  Whit- 
field's  old  mare  too.  We  tied  the  mule  to  a  sapling  and  hung 
our  dinner  bucket  on  a  limb,  and  with  pap  toting  Killegrew's 
froe  and  maul  and  the  wedges  and  me  toting  our  ax,  we  went 
on  to  the  board  tree  where  Solon  and  Homer  Bookwright, 
with  their  froes  and  mauls  and  axes  and  wedges,  was  setting 
on  two  upended  cuts,  and  Whitfield  was  standing  jest  like 
pap  said,  in  his  boiled  shirt  and  his  black  hat  and  pants  and 
necktie,  holding  his  watch  in  his  hand.  It  was  gold  and  in 


28  The  Country 

the  morning  sunlight  it  looked  big  as  a  full-growed  squash. 

"You're  late/'  he  said. 

So  pap  told  again  about  how  Old  Man  Killegrew  had  been 
off  fox  hunting  all  night,  and  nobody  at  home  to  lend  him  the 
froe  but  Mrs.  Killegrew  and  the  cook.  And  naturally,  the 
cook  wasn't  going  to  lend  none  of  Killegrew's  tools  out,  and 
Mrs.  Killegrew  was  worser  deaf  than  even  Killegrew.  If  you 
was  to  run  in  and  tell  her  the  house  was  afire,  she  would  jest 
keep  on  rocking  and  say  she  thought  so,  too,  unless  she  began 
to  holler  back  to  the  cook  to  turn  the  dogs  loose  before  you 
could  even  open  your  mouth. 

"You  could  have  gone  yesterday  and  borrowed  the  froe," 
Whitfield  said.  "You  have  known  for  a  month  now  that  you 
had  promised  this  one  day  out  of  a  whole  summer  toward 
putting  a  roof  on  the  house  of  God." 

"We  ain't  but  two  hours  late,"  pap  said.  "I  reckon  the 
Lord  will  forgive  it.  He  ain't  interested  in  time,  nohow.  He's 
interested  in  salvation." 

Whitfield  never  even  waited  for  pap  to  finish.  It  looked  to 
me  like  he  even  got  taller,  thundering  down  at  pap  like  a 
cloudburst.  "He  ain't  interested  in  neither!  Why  should  He 
be,  when  He  owns  them  both?  And  why  He  should  turn 
around  for  the  poor,  mizzling  souls  of  men  that  can't  even 
borrow  tools  in  time  to  replace  the  shingles  on  His  church,  I 
don't  know  either.  Maybe  it's  just  because  He  made  them. 
Maybe  He  just  said  to  Himself:  'I  made  them;  I  don't  know 
why.  But  since  I  did,  I  Godfrey,  I'll  roll  My  sleeves  up  and 
drag  them  into  glory  whether  they  will  or  no!'  " 

But  that  wasn't  here  nor  there  either  now,  and  I  reckon 
he  knowed  it,  jest  like  he  knowed  there  wasn't  going  to 
be  nothing  atall  here  as  long  as  he  stayed.  So  he  put  the 
watch  back  into  his  pocket  and  motioned  Solon  and  Homei 
up,  and  we  all  taken  off  our  hats  except  him  while  he  stood 
there  with  his  face  raised  into  the  sun  and  his  eyes  shut  and 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  29 

his  eyebrows  looking  like  a  big  iron-gray  caterpillar  lying 
along  the  edge  of  a  cliff.  "Lord,"  he  said,  "make  them  good 
straight  shingles  to  lay  smooth,  and  let  them  split  out  easy; 
they're  for  You,"  and  opened  his  eyes  and  looked  at  us  again, 
mostly  at  pap,  and  went  and  untied  his  mare  and  dumb  up 
slow  and  stiff,  like  old  men  do,  and  rid  away. 

Pap  put  down  the  froe  and  maul  and  laid  the  three  wedges 
in  a  neat  row  on  the  ground  and  taken  up  the  ax. 

"Well,  men,"  he  said,  "let's  get  started.  We're  already 
late." 

"Me  and  Homer  ain't,"  Solon  said.  "We  was  here."  This 
time  him  and  Homer  didn't  set  on  the  cuts.  They  squatted 
on  their  heels.  Then  I  seen  that  Homer  was  whittling  on  a 
stick.  I  hadn't  noticed  it  before.  "I  make  it  two  hours  and  a 
little  over,"  Solon  said.  "More  or  less." 

Pap  was  still  about  half  stooped  over,  holding  the  ax.  "It's 
nigher  one,"  he  said.  "But  call  it  two  for  the  sake  of  the  argu- 
ment. What  about  it?" 

"What  argument?"  Homer  said. 

"All  right,"  pap  said.  "Two  hours  then.  What  about  it?" 

"Which  is  three  man-hour  units  a  hour,  multiplied  by  two 
hours,"  Solon  said.  "Or  a  total  of  six  work  units."  When  the 
WPA  first  come  to  Yoknapatawpha  County  and  started  to 
giving  out  jobs  and  grub  and  mattresses,  Solon  went  in  to 
Jefferson  to  get  on  it.  He  would  drive  his  school-bus  truck 
the  twenty-two  miles  in  to  town  every  morning  and  come 
back  that  night.  He  done  that  for  almost  a  week  before  he 
found  out  he  would  not  only  have  to  sign  his  farm  off  into 
somebody  else's  name,  he  couldn't  even  own  and  run  the 
school  bus  that  he  had  built  himself.  So  he  come  back  that 
night  and  never  went  back  no  more,  and  since  then  hadn't 
nobody  better  mention  WPA  to  him  unless  they  aimed  to 
fight,  too,  though  every  now  and  then  he  would  turn  up 
with  something  all  figured  down  into  work  units  like  he  done 
now.  "Six  units  short." 


30  The  Country 

"Four  of  which  you  and  Homer  could  have  already 
worked  out  while  you  was  setting  here  waiting  on  me,"  pap 
said. 

"Except  that  we  didn't/'  Solon  said.  "We  promised  Whit- 
field  two  units  of  twelve  three-unit  hours  toward  getting 
some  new  shingles  on  the  church  roof.  We  been  here  ever 
since  sunup,  waiting  for  the  third  unit  to  show  up,  so  we 
could  start.  You  don't  seem  to  kept  up  with  these  modern 
ideas  about  work  that's  been  flooding  and  uplifting  the  coun- 
try in  the  last  few  years." 

"What  modren  ideas?"  pap  said.  "I  didn't  know  there  was 
but  one  idea  about  work — until  it  is  done,  it  ain't  done,  and 
when  it  is  done,  it  is." 

Homer  made  another  long,  steady  whittle  on  the  stick.  His 
knife  was  sharp  as  a  razor. 

Solon  taken  out  his  snuffbox  and  filled  the  top  and  tilted 
the  snuff  into  his  lip  and  offered  the  box  to  Homer,  and 
Homer  shaken  his  head,  and  Solon  put  the  top  back  on  the 
box  and  put  the  box  back  into  his  pocket. 

"So,"  pap  said,  "jest  because  I  had  to  wait  two  hours  for  a 
old  seventy-year  man  to  get  back  from  fox  hunting  that 
never  had  no  more  business  setting  out  in  the  woods  all  night 
than  he  would  'a'  had  setting  all  night  in  a  highway  juke 
joint,  we  all  three  have  got  to  come  back  here  tomorrow  to 
finish  them  two  hours  that  you  and  Homer " 

"I  ain't,"  Solon  said.  "I  don't  know  about  Homer.  I  prom- 
ised Whitfield  one  day.  I  was  here  at  sunup  to  start  it.  When 
the  sun  goes  down,  I  will  consider  I  have  done  finished  it." 

"I  see,"  pap  said.  "I  see.  It's  me  that's  got  to  come  back.  By 
myself.  I  got  to  break  into  a  full  morning  to  make  up  them 
two  hours  that  you  and  Homer  spent  resting.  I  got  to  spend 
two  hours  of  the  next  day  making  up  for  the  two  hours  of  the 
day  before  that  you  and  Homer  never  even  worked." 

"It's  going  to  more  than  jest  break  into  a  morning,"  Solon 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  3 1 

said.  "It's  going  to  wreck  it.  There's  six  units  left  over.  Six 
one-man-hour  units.  Maybe  you  can  work  twice  as  fast  as 
me  and  Homer  put  together  and  finish  them  in  four  hours, 
but  I  don't  believe  you  can  work  three  times  as  fast  and  finish 
in  two." 

Pap  was  standing  up  now.  He  was  breathing  hard.  We 
could  hear  him.  "So,"  he  said.  "So."  He  swung  the  ax  and 
druv  the  blade  into  one  of  the  cuts  and  snatched  it  up  onto 
its  flat  end,  ready  to  split.  "So  I'm  to  be  penalized  a  half  a 
day  of  my  own  time,  from  my  own  work  that's  waiting  for 
me  at  home  right  this  minute,  to  do  six  hours  more  work  than 
the  work  you  fellers  lacked  two  hours  of  even  doing  atall, 
purely  and  simply  because  I  am  jest  a  average  hard-working 
farmer  trying  to  do  the  best  he  can,  instead  of  a  durn  froe- 
owning  millionaire  named  Quick  or  Bookwright." 

They  went  to  work  then,  splitting  the  cuts  into  bolts  and 
riving  the  bolts  into  shingles  for  Tull  and  Snopes  and  the 
others  that  had  promised  for  tomorrow  to  start  nailing  onto 
the  church  roof  when  they  finished  pulling  the  old  shingles 
off.  They  set  flat  on  the  ground  in  a  kind  of  circle,  with 
their  legs  spraddled  out  on  either  side  of  the  propped-up  bolt, 
Solon  and  Homer  working  light  and  easy  and  steady  as  two 
clocks  ticking,  but  pap  making  every  lick  of  hisn  like  he  was 
killing  a  moccasin.  If  he  had  jest  swung  the  maul  half  as  fast 
as  he  swung  it  hard,  he  would  have  rove  as  many  shingles  as 
Solon  and  Homer  together,  swinging  the  maul  up  over  his 
head  and  holding  it  there  for  what  looked  like  a  whole  min- 
ute sometimes  and  then  swinging  it  down  onto  the  blade  of 
the  froe,  and  not  only  a  shingle  flying  off  every  lick  but  the 
froe  going  on  into  the  ground  clean  up  to  the  helve  eye,  and 
pap  setting  there  wrenching  at  it  slow  and  steady  and  hard, 
like  he  jest  wished  it  would  try  to  hang  on  a  root  or  a  rock 
and  stay  there. 

"Here,  here,"  Solon  said.  "If  you  don't  watch  out  you 


32  The  Country 

won't  have  nothing  to  do  neither  during  them  six  extra  units 
tomorrow  morning  but  rest." 

Pap  never  even  looked  up.  "Get  out  of  the  way,"  he  said. 
And  Solon  done  it.  If  he  hadn't  moved  the  water  bucket,  pap 
would  have  split  it,  too,  right  on  top  of  the  bolt,  and  this 
time  the  whole  shingle  went  whirling  past  Solon's  shin  jest 
like  a  scythe  blade. 

"What  you  ought  to  do  is  to  hire  somebody  to  work  out 
them  extra  overtime  units,"  Solon  said. 

"With  what?"  Pap  said.  "I  ain't  had  no  WPA  experience 
in  dickering  over  labor.  Get  out  of  the  way." 

But  Solon  had  already  moved  this  time.  Pap  would  have 
had  to  change  his  whole  position  or  else  made  this  one  curve. 
So  this  one  missed  Solon,  too,  and  pap  set  there  wrenching 
the  froe,  slow  and  hard  and  steady,  back  out  of  the  ground. 

"Maybe  there's  something  else  besides  cash  you  might  be 
able  to  trade  with,"  Solon  said.  "You  might  use  that  dog." 

That  was  when  pap  actually  stopped.  I  didn't  know  it  my- 
self then  either,  but  I  found  it  out  a  good  long  time  before 
Solon  did.  Pap  set  there  with  the  maul  up  over  his  head  and 
the  blade  of  the  froe  set  against  the  block  for  the  next  lick, 
looking  up  at  Solon.  "The  dog?"  he  said. 

It  was  a  kind  of  mixed  hound,  with  a  little  bird  dog  and 
some  collie  and  maybe  a  considerable  of  almost  anything 
else,  but  it  would  ease  through  the  woods  without  no  more 
noise  than  a  hant  and  pick  up  a  squirrel's  trail  on  the  ground 
and  bark  jest  once,  unless  it  knowed  you  was  where  you 
could  see  it,  and  then  tiptoe  that  trail  out  jest  like  a  man  and 
never  make  another  sound  until  it  treed,  and  only  then  when 
it  knowed  you  hadn't  kept  in  sight  of  it.  It  belonged  to  pap 
and  Vernon  Tull  together.  Will  Varner  give  it  to  Tull  as  a 
puppy,  and  pap  raised  it  for  a  half  interest;  me  and  him 
trained  it  and  it  slept  in  my  bed  with  me  until  it  got  so  big 
maw  finally  run  it  out  of  the  house,  and  for  the  last  six  months 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  33 

Solon  had  been  trying  to  buy  it.  Him  and  Tull  had  agreed  on 
two  dollars  for  Tull's  half  of  it,  but  Solon  and  pap  was  still 
six  dollars  apart  on  ourn,  because  pap  said  it  was  worth  ten 
dollars  of  anybody's  money  and  if  Tull  wasn't  going  to  col- 
lect his  full  half  of  that,  he  was  going  to  collect  it  for  him. 

"So  that's  it,"  pap  said.  "Them  things  wasn't  work  units 
atall.  They  was  dog  units." 

"Jest  a  suggestion,"  Solon  said.  "Jest  a  friendly  offer  to 
keep  them  runaway  shingles  from  breaking  up  your  private 
business  for  six  hours  tomorrow  morning.  You  sell  me  your 
half  of  that  trick  overgrown  fyce  and  I'll  finish  these  shingles 
for  you." 

"Naturally  including  them  six  extra  units  of  one  dollars," 
pap  said. 

"No,  no,"  Solon  said.  "I'll  pay  you  the  same  two  dollars 
for  your  half  of  that  dog  that  me  and  Tull  agreed  on  for  his 
half  of  it.  You  meet  me  here  tomorrow  morning  with  the 
dog  and  you  can  go  on  back  home  or  wherever  them  urgent 
private  affairs  are  located,  and  forget  about  that  church 
roof." 

For  about  ten  seconds  more,  pap  set  there  with  the  maul 
up  over  his  head,  looking  at  Solon.  Then  for  about  three  sec- 
onds he  wasn't  looking  at  Solon  or  at  nothing  else.  Then  he 
was  looking  at  Solon  again.  It  was  jest  exactly  like  after  about 
two  and  nine-tenths  seconds  he  found  out  he  wasn't  looking 
at  Solon,  so  he  looked  back  at  him  as  quick  as  he  could. 
"Hah,"  he  said.  Then  he  began  to  laugh.  It  was  laughing  all 
right,  because  his  mouth  was  open  and  that's  what  it  sounded 
like.  But  it  never  went  no  further  back  than  his  teeth  and  it 
never  come  nowhere  near  reaching  as  high  up  as  his  eyes. 
And  he  never  said  "Look  out"  this  time  neither.  He  jest 
shifted  fast  on  his  hips  and  swung  the  maul  down,  the  froe 
done  already  druv  through  the  bolt  and  into  the  ground 


34  The  Country 

while  the  shingle  was  still  whirling  off  to  slap  Solon  across 
the  shki. 

Then  they  went  back  at  it  again.  Up  to  this  time  I  could 
tell  pap's  licks  from  Solon's  and  Homer's,  even  with  my  back 
turned,  not  because  they  was  louder  or  steadier,  because 
Solon  and  Homer  worked  steady,  too,  and  the  froe  never 
made  no  especial  noise  jest  going  into  the  ground,  but  because 
they  was  so  infrequent;  you  would  hear  five  or  six  of  Solon's 
and  Homer's  little  polite  chipping  licks  before  you  would 
hear  pap's  froe  go  "chug!"  and  know  that  another  shingle 
had  went  whirling  off  somewhere.  But  from  now  on  pap's 
sounded  jest  as  light  and  quick  and  polite  as  Solon's  or 
Homer's  either,  and,  if  anything,  even  a  little  faster,  with  the 
shingles  piling  up  steadier  than  I  could  stack  them,  almost; 
until  now  there  was  going  to  be  more  than  a  plenty  of  them 
for  Tull  and  the  others  to  shingle  with  tomorrow,  right  on 
up  to  noon,  when  we  heard  Armstid's  farm  bell,  and  Solon 
laid  his  froe  and  maul  down  and  looked  at  his  watch  too.  And 
I  wasn't  so  far  away  neither,  but  by  the  time  I  caught  up  with 
pap  he  had  untied  the  mule  from  the  sapling  and  was  already 
on  it.  And  maybe  Solon  and  Homer  thought  they  had  pap, 
and  maybe  for  a  minute  I  did,  too,  but  I  jest  wish  they  could 
have  seen  his  face  then.  He  reached  our  dinner  bucket  down 
from  the  limb  and  handed  it  to  me. 

"Go  on  and  eat,"  he  said.  "Don't  wait  for  me.  Him  and 
his  work  units.  If  he  wants  to  know  where  I  went,  tell  him 
I  forgot  something  and  went  home  to  get  it.  Tell  him  I  had 
to  go  back  home  to  get  two  spoons  for  us  to  eat  our  dinner 
with.  No,  don't  tell  him  that.  If  he  hears  I  went  somewhere 
to  get  something  I  needed  to  use,  even  if  it's  jest  a  tool  to  eat 
with,  he  will  refuse  to  believe  I  jest  went  home,  for  the  reason 
that  I  don't  own  anything  there  that  even  I  would  borrow." 
He  hauled  the  mule  around  and  heeled  him  in  the  flank. 
Then  he  pulled  up  again.  "And  when  I  come  back,  no  matter 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  35 

what  I  say,  don't  pay  no  attention  to  it.  No  matter  what  hap- 
pens, don't  you  say  nothing.  Don't  open  your  mouth  a-tall, 
you  hear?" 

Then  he  went  on,  and  I  went  back  to  where  Solon  and 
Homer  was  setting  on  the  running  board  of  Solon's  school- 
bus  truck,  eating,  and  sho  enough  Solon  said  jest  exactly 
what  pap  said  he  was  going  to. 

"I  admire  his  optimism,  but  he's  mistaken.  If  it's  something 
he  needs  that  he  can't  use  his  natural  hands  and  feet  for,  he's 
going  somewhere  else  than  jest  his  own  house." 

We  had  jest  went  back  to  the  shingles  when  pap  rid  up 
and  got  down  and  tied  the  mule  back  to  the  sapling  and  come 
and  taken  up  the  ax  and  snicked  the  blade  into  the  next  cut. 

"Well,  men,"  he  said,  "I  been  thinking  about  it.  I  still  don't 
think  it's  right,  but  I  still  ain't  thought  of  anything  to  do 
about  it.  But  somebody's  got  to  make  up  for  them  two  hours 
nobody  worked  this  morning,  and  since  you  fellers  are  two 
to  one  against  me,  it  looks  like  it's  going  to  be  me  that  makes 
them  up.  But  I  got  work  waiting  at  home  for  me  tomorrow. 
I  got  corn  that's  crying  out  loud  for  me  right  now.  Or  maybe 
that's  jest  a  lie  too.  Maybe  the  whole  thing  is,  I  don't  mind 
admitting  here  in  private  that  I  been  outfigured,  but  I  be  dog 
if  I'm  going  to  set  here  by  myself  tomorrow  morning  admit- 
ting it  in  public.  Anyway,  I  ain't.  So  I'm  going  to  trade  with 
you,  Solon.  You  can  have  the  dog." 

Solon  looked  at  pap.  "I  don't  know  as  I  want  to  trade 
now,"  he  said. 

"I  see,"  pap  said.  The  ax  was  still  stuck  in  the  cut.  He 
began  to  pump  it  up  and  down  to  back  it  out. 

"Wait,"  Solon  said.  "Put  that  durn  ax  down."  But  pap 
held  the  ax  raised  for  the  lick,  looking  at  Solon  and  waiting. 
"You're  swapping  me  half  a  dog  for  a  half  a  day's  work," 
Solon  said 


36  The  Country 

"Your  half  of  the  dog  for  that  half  a  day's  work  you  still 
owe  on  these  shingles." 

uAnd  the  two  dollars/'  pap  said.  "That  you  and  Tull 
agreed  on.  I  sell  you  half  the  dog  for  two  dollars,  and  you 
come  back  here  tomorrow  and  finish  the  shingles.  You  give 
me  the  two  dollars  now,  and  I'll  meet  you  here  in  the  morn- 
ing with  the  dog,  and  you  can  show  me  the  receipt  from  Tull 
for  his  half  then." 

"Me  and  Tull  have  already  agreed,"  Solon  said. 

"All  right,"  pap  said.  "Then  you  can  pay  Tull  his  two 
dollars  and  bring  his  receipt  with  you  without  no  trouble." 

"Tull  will  be  at  the  church  tomorrow  morning,  pulling 
off  them  old  shingles,"  Solon  said. 

"All  right,"  pap  said.  "Then  it  won't  be  no  trouble  at  all 
for  you  to  get  a  receipt  from  him.  You  can  stop  at  the  church 
when  you  pass.  Tull  ain't  named  Grier.  He  won't  need  to  be 
off  somewhere  borrowing  a  crowbar." 

So  Solon  taken  out  his  purse  and  paid  pap  the  two  dollars 
and  they  went  back  to  work.  And  now  it  looked  like  they 
really  was  trying  to  finish  that  afternoon,  not  jest  Solon,  but 
even  Homer,  that  didn't  seem  to  be  concerned  in  it  nohow, 
and  pap,  that  had  already  swapped  a  half  a  dog  to  get  rid  of 
whatever  work  Solon  claimed  would  be  left  over.  I  quit  try- 
ing to  stay  up  with  them;  I  jest  stacked  shingles. 

Then  Solon  laid  his  froe  and  maul  down.  "Well,  men,"  he 
said,  "I  don't  know  what  you  fellers  think,  but  I  consider 
this  a  day." 

"All  right,"  pap  said.  "You  are  the  one  to  decide  when  to 
quit,  since  whatever  elbow  units  you  consider  are  going  to  be 
shy  tomorrow  will  be  yourn." 

"That's  a  fact,"  Solon  said.  "And  since  I  am  giving  a  day 
and  a  half  to  the  church  instead  of  jest  a  day,  like  I  started 
out  doing,  I  reckon  I  better  get  on  home  and  tend  to  a  little 
of  my  own  work."  He  picked  up  his  froe  and  maul  and  ax, 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  37 

and  went  to  his  truck  and  stood  waiting  for  Homer  to  come 
and  get  in. 

'Til  be  here  in  the  morning  with  the  dog,"  pap  said. 

"Sholy,"  Solon  said.  It  sounded  like  he  had  forgot  about 
the  dog,  or  that  it  wasn't  no  longer  any  importance.  But  he 
stood  there  again  and  looked  hard  and  quiet  at  pap  for  about 
a  second.  "And  a  bill  of  sale  from  Tull  for  his  half  of  it.  As 
you  say,  it  won't  be  no  trouble  a-tall  to  get  that  from  him." 
Him  and  Homer  got  into  the  truck  and  he  started  the  engine. 
You  couldn't  say  jest  what  it  was.  It  was  almost  like  Solon 
was  hurrying  himself,  so  pap  wouldn't  have  to  make  any  ex- 
cuse or  pretense  toward  doing  or  not  doing  anything.  "I 
have  always  understood  the  fact  that  lightning  don't  have  to 
hit  twice  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  they  named  it  lightning. 
So  getting  lightning-struck  is  a  mistake  that  might  happen  to 
any  man.  The  mistake  I  seem  to  made  is,  I  never  realized  in 
time  that  what  I  was  looking  at  was  a  cloud.  I'll  see  you  in 
the  morning." 

"With  the  dog,"  pap  said. 

"Certainly,"  Solon  said,  again  like  it  had  slipped  his  mind 
completely.  "With  the  dog." 

Then  him  and  Homer  drove  off.  Then  pap  got  up. 

"What?"  I  said.  "What?  You  swapped  him  your  half  of 
Tull's  dog  for  that  half  a  day's  work  tomorrow.  Now  what?" 

"Yes,"  pap  said.  "Only  before  that  I  had  already  swapped 
Tull  a  half  a  day's  work  pulling  off  them  old  shingles  tomor- 
row, for  Tull's  half  of  that  dog.  Only  we  ain't  going  to  wait 
until  tomorrow.  We're  going  to  pull  them  shingles  off  to- 
night, and  without  no  more  racket  about  it  than  is  necessary. 
I  don't  aim  to  have  nothing  on  my  mind  tomorrow  but 
watching  Mr.  Solon  Work-Unit  Quick  trying  to  get  a  bill 
of  sale  for  two  dollars  or  ten  dollars  either  on  the  other  half 
of  that  dog.  And  we'll  do  it  tonight.  I  don't  want  him  jest  to 
find  out  at  sunup  tomorrow  that  he  is  too  late.  I  want  him  to 


38  The  Country 

find  out  then  that  even  when  he  laid  down  to  sleep  he  was 
already  too  late." 

So  we  went  back  home  and  I  fed  and  milked  while  pap 
went  down  to  Killegrews'  to  carry  the  froe  and  maul  back 
and  to  borrow  a  crowbar.  But  of  all  places  in  the  world  and 
doing  what  under  the  sun  with  it,  Old  Man  Killegrew  had 
went  and  lost  his  crowbar  out  of  a  boat  into  forty  feet  of 
water.  And  pap  said  how  he  come  within  a  inch  of  going  to 
Solon's  and  borrowing  his  crowbar  out  of  pure  poetic  jus- 
tice, only  Solon  might  have  smelled  the  rat  jest  from  the  idea 
of  the  crowbar.  So  pap  went  to  Armstid's  and  borrowed  hisn 
and  come  back  and  we  et  supper  and  cleaned  and  filled  the 
lantern  while  maw  still  tried  to  find  out  what  we  was  up  to 
that  couldn't  wait  till  morning. 

We  left  her  still  talking,  even  as  far  as  the  front  gate,  and 
come  on  back  to  the  church,  walking  this  time,  with  the  rope 
and  crowbar  and  a  hammer  for  me,  and  the  lantern  still  dark. 
Whitfield  and  Snopes  was  unloading  a  ladder  from  Snopes' 
wagon  when  we  passed  the  church  on  the  way  home  before 
dark,  so  all  we  had  to  do  was  to  set  the  ladder  up  against  the 
church.  Then  pap  clumb  up  onto  the  roof  with  the  lantern 
and  pulled  off  shingles  until  he  could  hang  the  lantern  inside 
behind  the  decking,  where  it  could  shine  out  through  the 
cracks  in  the  planks,  but  you  couldn't  see  it  unless  you  was 
passing  in  the  road,  and  by  that  time  anybody  would  'a'  al- 
ready heard  us.  Then  I  clumb  up  with  the  rope,  and  pap 
reached  it  through  the  decking  and  around  a  rafter  and  back 
and  tied  the  ends  around  our  waists,  and  we  started.  And  we 
went  at  it.  We  had  them  old  shingles  jest  raining  down,  me 
using  the  claw  hammer  and  pap  using  the  crowbar,  working 
the  bar  under  a  whole  patch  of  shingles  at  one  time  and  then 
laying  back  on  the  bar  like  in  one  more  lick  or  if  the  crowbar 
ever  happened  for  one  second  to  get  a  solid  holt,  he  would 
tilt  up  that  whole  roof  at  one  time  like  a  hinged  box  lid. 


Shingles  f0r  the  Lord  39 

That's  exactly  what  he  finally  done.  He  laid  back  on  the 
bar  and  this  time  it  got  a  holt.  It  wasn't  jest  a  patch  of  shin- 
gles, it  was  a  whole  section  of  decking,  so  that  when  he 
lunged  back  he  snatched  that  whole  section  of  roof  from 
around  the  lantern  like  you  would  shuck  a  corn  nubbin.  The 
lantern  was  hanging  on  a  nail.  He  never  even  moved  the  nail, 
he  jest  pulled  the  board  off  of  it,  so  that  it  looked  like  for  a 
whole  minute  I  watched  the  lantern,  and  the  crowbar,  too, 
setting  there  in  the  empty  air  in  a  little  mess  of  floating  shin- 
gles, with  the  empty  nail  still  sticking  through  the  bail  of  the 
lantern,  before  the  whole  thing  started  down  into  the  church. 
It  hit  the  floor  and  bounced  once.  Then  it  hit  the  floor  again, 
and  this  time  the  whole  church  jest  blowed  up  into  a  pit  of 
yellow  jumping  fire,  with  me  and  pap  hanging  over  the  edge 
of  it  on  two  ropes. 

I  don't  know  what  become  of  the  rope  nor  how  we  got 
out  of  it.  I  don't  remember  climbing  down.  Jest  pap  yelling 
behind  me  and  pushing  me  about  halfway  down  the  ladder 
and  then  throwing  me  the  rest  of  the  way  by  a  handful  of  my 
overhalls,  and  then  we  was  both  on  the  ground,  running  for 
the  water  barrel.  It  set  under  the  gutter  spout  at  the  side,  and 
Armstid  was  there  then;  he  had  happened  to  go  out  to  his  lot 
about  a  hour  back  and  seen  the  lantern  on  the  church  roof, 
and  it  stayed  on  his  mind  until  finally  he  come  up  to  see 
what  was  going  on,  and  got  there  jest  in  time  to  stand  yelling 
back  and  forth  with  pap  across  the  water  barrel.  And  I  be- 
lieve we  still  would  have  put  it  out.  Pap  turned  and  squatted 
against  the  barrel  and  got  a  holt  of  it  over  his  shoulder  and 
stood  up  with  that  barrel  that  was  almost  full  and  run  around 
the  corner  and  up  the  steps  of  the  church  and  hooked  his 
toe  on  the  top  step  and  come  down  with  the  barrel  busting 
on  top  of  him  and  knocking  him  cold  out  as  a  wedge. 

So  we  had  to  drag  him  back  first,  and  maw  was  there  then, 
and  Mrs.  Armstid  about  the  same  time,  and  me  and  Armstid 


40  The  Country 

run  with  the  two  fire  buckets  to  the  spring,  and  when  we  got 
back  there  was  a  plenty  there,  Whitfield,  too,  with  more 
buckets,  and  we  done  what  we  could,  but  the  spring  was  two 
hundred  yards  away  and  ten  buckets  emptied  it  and  it  taken 
five  minutes  to  fill  again,  and  so  finally  we  all  jest  stood 
around  where  pap  had  come  to  again  with  a  big  cut  on  his 
head  and  watched  it  go.  It  was  a  old  church,  long  dried  out, 
and  full  of  old  colored-picture  charts  that  Whitfield  had  ac- 
cumulated for  more  than  fifty  years,  that  the  lantern  had  lit 
right  in  the  middle  of  when  it  finally  exploded.  There  was  a 
special  nail  where  he  would  keep  a  old  long  nightshirt  he 
would  wear  to  baptize  in.  I  would  use  to  watch  it  all  the  time 
during  church  and  Sunday  school,  and  me  and  the  other  boys 
would  go  past  the  church  sometimes  jest  to  peep  in  at  it, 
because  to  a  boy  of  ten  it  wasn't  jest  a  cloth  garment  or  even 
a  iron  armor;  it  was  the  old  strong  Archangel  Michael  his 
self,  that  had  fit  and  strove  and  conquered  sin  for  so  long 
that  it  finally  had  the  same  contempt  for  the  human  beings 
that  returned  always  to  sin  as  hogs  and  dogs  done  that  the  old 
strong  archangel  his  self  must  have  had. 

For  a  long  time  it  never  burned,  even  after  everything  else 
inside  had.  We  could  watch  it,  hanging  there  among  the  fire, 
not  like  it  had  knowed  in  its  time  too  much  water  to  burn 
easy,  but  like  it  had  strove  and  fit  with  the  devil  and  all  the 
hosts  of  hell  too  long  to  burn  in  jest  a  fire  that  Res  Griet 
started,  trying  to  beat  Solon  Quick  out  of  half  a  dog.  But  at 
last  it  went,  too,  not  in  a  hurry  still,  but  jest  all  at  once,  kind 
of  roaring  right  on  up  and  out  against  the  stars  and  the  far 
dark  spaces.  And  then  there  wasn't  nothing  but  jest  pap, 
drenched  and  groggy-looking,  on  the  ground,  with  the  rest 
of  us  around  him,  and  Whitfield  like  always  in  his  boiled  shirt 
and  his  black  hat  and  pants,  standing  there  with  his  hat  on, 
too,  like  he  had  strove  too  long  to  save  what  hadn't  ought  to 
been  created  in  the  first  place,  from  the  damnation  it  didn't 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  41 

even  want  to  escape,  to  bother  to  need  to  take  his  hat  off  in 
any  presence.  He  looked  around  at  us  from  under  it;  we  was 
all  there  now,  all  that  belonged  to  that  church  and  used  it  to 
be  born  and  marry  and  die  from — us  and  the  Armstids  and 
Tulls,  and  Bookwright  and  Quick  and  Snopes. 

"I  was  wrong,"  Whitfield  said.  "I  told  you  we  would  meet 
here  tomorrow  to  roof  a  church.  We'll  meet  here  in  the 
morning  to  raise  one." 

"Of  course  we  got  to  have  a  church,"  pap  said.  "We're 
going  to  have  one.  And  we're  going  to  have  it  soon.  But 
there's  some  of  us  done  already  give  a  day  or  so  this  week, 
at  the  cost  of  our  own  work.  Which  is  right  and  just,  and 
we're  going  to  give  more,  and  glad  to.  But  I  don't  believe 
that  the  Lord " 

Whitfield  let  him  finish.  He  never  moved.  He  jest  stood 
there  until  pap  finally  run  down  of  his  own  accord  and 
hushed  and  set  there  on  the  ground  mostly  not  looking  at 
maw,  before  Whitfield  opened  his  mouth. 

"Not  you,"  Whitfield  said.  "Arsonist." 

"Arsonist?"  pap  said. 

"Yes,"  Whitfield  said.  "If  there  is  any  pursuit  in  which 
you  can  engage  without  carrying  flood  and  fire  and  destruc- 
tion and  death  behind  you,  do  it.  But  not  one  hand  shall  you 
lay  to  this  new  house  until  you  have  proved  to  us  that  you 
are  to  be  trusted  again  with  the  powers  and  capacities  of  a 
man."  He  looked  about  at  us  again.  "Tull  and  Snopes  and 
Armstid  have  already  promised  for  tomorrow.  I  understand 
that  Quick  had  another  half  day  he  intended " 

"I  can  give  another  day,"  Solon  said. 

"I  can  give  the  rest  of  the  week,"  Homer  said. 

"I  ain't  rushed  neither,"  Snopes  said. 

"That  will  be  enough  to  start  with,  then,"  Whitfield  said. 
"It's  late  now.  Let  us  all  go  home." 

He  went  first.  He  didn't  look  back  once,  at  the  church  or 


42  The  Country 

at  us.  He  went  to  the  old  mare  and  clumb  up  slow  and  stiff 
and  powerful,  and  was  gone,  and  we  went  too,  scattering. 
But  I  looked  back  at  it.  It  was  jest  a  shell  now,  with  a  red 
and  fading  core,  and  I  had  hated  it  at  times  and  feared  it  at 
others,  and  I  should  have  been  glad.  But  there  was  something 
that  even  that  fire  hadn't  even  touched.  Maybe  that's  all  it 
was — jest  indestructibility,  endurability — that  old  man  that 
could  plan  to  build  it  back  while  its  walls  was  still  fire-fierce 
and  then  calmly  turn  his  back  and  go  away  because  he 
knowed  that  the  men  that  never  had  nothing  to  give  toward 
the  new  one  but  their  work  would  be  there  at  sunup  tomor- 
row, and  the  day  after  that,  and  the  day  after  that,  too,  as 
long  as  it  was  needed,  to  give  that  work  to  build  it  back 
again.  So  it  hadn't  gone  a-tall;  it  didn't  no  more  care  for  that 
little  fire  and  flood  than  Whitfield's  old  baptizing  gown  had 
done.  Then  we  was  home.  Maw  had  left  so  fast  the  lamp  was 
still  lit,  and  we  could  see  pap  now,  still  leaving  a  puddle 
where  he  stood,  with  a  cut  across  the  back  of  his  head  where 
the  barrel  had  busted  and  the  blood-streaked  water  soaking 
him  to  the  waist. 

"Get  them  wet  clothes  off,"  maw  said. 

"I  don't  know  as  I  will  or  not,"  pap  said.  "I  been  publicly 
notified  that  I  ain't  fitten  to  associate  with  white  folks,  so  1 
publicly  notify  them  same  white  folks  and  Methodists,  too, 
not  to  try  to  associate  with  me,  or  the  devil  can  have  the 
hindmost." 

But  maw  hadn't  even  listened.  When  she  come  back  with  a 
pan  of  water  and  a  towel  and  the  liniment  bottle,  pap  was 
already  in  his  nightshirt. 

"I  don't  want  none  of  that  neither,"  he  said.  "If  my  head 
wasn't  worth  busting,  it  ain't  worth  patching."  But  she  never 
paid  no  mind  to  that  neither.  She  washed  his  head  off  and 
dried  it  and  put  the  bandage  on  and  went  out  again,  and  pap 
went  and  got  into  bed. 


Shingles  for  the  Lord  43: 

"Hand  me  my  snuff;  then  you  get  out  of  here  and  stay  out 
too/'  he  said. 

But  before  I  could  do  that  maw  come  back.  She  had  a  glass 
of  hot  toddy,  and  she  went  to  the  bed  and  stood  there  with 
it,  and  pap  turned  his  head  and  looked  at  it. 

"What's  that?"  he  said. 

But  maw  never  answered,  and  then  he  set  up  in  bed  and 
drawed  a  long,  shuddering  breath — we  could  hear  it — and 
after  a  minute  he  put  out  his  hand  for  the  toddy  and  set  there 
holding  it  and  drawing  his  breath,  and  then  he  taken  a  sip 
of  it. 

"I  Godfrey,  if  him  and  all  of  them  put  together  think  they 
can  keep  me  from  working  on  my  own  church  like  ary  other 
man,  he  better  be  a  good  man  to  try  it."  He  taken  another 
sip  of  the  toddy.  Then  he  taken  a  long  one.  "Arsonist,"  he 
said.  "Work  units.  Dog  units.  And  now  arsonist.  I  Godfrey,, 
what  a  day!" 


The  Tall  Men 


THEY  PASSED  THE  DARK  bulk  of  the  cotton  gin.  Then  they 
saw  the  lamplit  house  and  the  other  car,  the  doctor's  coupe, 
just  stopping  at  the  gate,  and  they  could  hear  the  hound 
baying. 

"Here  we  are/'  the  old  deputy  marshal  said. 

"What's  that  other  car?"  the  younger  man  said,  the  stran- 
ger, the  state  draft  investigator. 

"Doctor  Schofield's,"  the  marshal  said.  "Lee  McCallum 
asked  me  to  send  him  out  when  I  telephoned  we  were  com- 
ing." 

"You  mean  you  warned  them?"  the  investigator  said. 
"You  telephoned  ahead  that  I  was  coming  out  with  a  war- 
rant for  these  two  evaders?  Is  this  how  you  carry  out  the 
orders  of  the  United  States  Government?" 

The  marshal  was  a  lean,  clean  old  man  who  chewed  to- 
bacco, who  had  been  born  and  lived  in  the  county  all  his  life. 

"I  understood  all  you  wanted  was  to  arrest  these  two 
McCallum  boys  and  bring  them  back  to  town,"  he  said. 

"It  was!"  the  investigator  said.  "And  now  you  have 
warned  them,  given  them  a  chance  to  run.  Possibly  put  the 
Government  to  the  expense  of  hunting  them  down  with 
troops.  Have  you  forgotten  that  you  are  under  a  bond  your- 
self?" 

"I  ain't  forgot  it,"  the  marshal  said.  "And  ever  since  we 


46  The  Country 

left  Jefferson  I  been  trying  to  tell  you  something  for  you 
not  to  forget.  But  I  reckon  it  will  take  these  McCallums  to 
impress  that  on  you.  .  .  .  Pull  in  behind  the  other  car.  We'll 
try  to  find  out  first  just  how  sick  whoever  it  is  that  is  sick 


is." 


The  investigator  drew  up  behind  the  other  car  and 
switched  off  and  blacked  out  his  lights.  "These  people,"  he 
said.  Then  he  thought,  But  this  doddering,  tobacco-chewing 
old  man  is  one  of  them,  too,  despite  the  honor  and  pride  of 
his  office,  which  should  have  made  him  different.  So  he 
didn't  speak  it  aloud,  removing  the  keys  and  getting  out  of 
the  car,  and  then  locking  the  car  itself,  rolling  the  windows 
up  first,  thinking,  These  people  who  lie  about  and  conceal 
the  ownership  of  land  and  property  in  order  to  hold  relief 
jobs  which  they  have  no  intention  of  performing,  standing 
on  their  constitutional  rights  against  having  to  work,  who 
jeopardize  the  very  job  itself  through  petty  and  transparent 
subterfuge  to  acquire  a  free  mattress  which  they  intend  to 
attempt  to  sell;  who  would  relinquish  even  the  job,  if  by  so 
doing  they  could  receive  free  food  and  a  place,  any  rathole, 
in  town  to  sleep  in;  who,  as  farmers,  make  false  statements 
to  get  seed  loans  which  they  will  later  misuse,  and  then  react 
in  loud  vituperative  outrage  and  astonishment  when  caught 
at  it.  And  then,  when  at  long  last  a  suffering  and  threatened 
Government  asks  one  thing  of  them  in  return,  one  thing 
simply,  which  is  to  put  their  names  down  on  a  selective- 
service  list,  they  refuse  to  do  it. 

The  old  marshal  had  gone  on.  The  investigator  followed, 
through  a  stout  paintless  gate  in  a  picket  fence,  up  a  broad 
brick  walk  between  two  rows  of  old  shabby  cedars,  toward 
the  rambling  and  likewise  paintless  sprawl  of  the  two-story 
house  in  the  open  hall  of  which  the  soft  lamplight  glowed 
and  the  lower  story  of  which,  as  the  investigator  now  per- 
ceived, was  of  logs. 


The  Tall  Men  47 

He  saw  a  hall  full  of  soft  lamplight  beyond  a  stout  paint- 
less  gallery  running  across  the  log  front,  from  beneath  which 
the  same  dog  which  they  had  heard,  a  big  hound,  came 
booming  again,  to  stand  foursquare  facing  them  in  the  walk, 
bellowing,  until  a  man's  voice  spoke  to  it  from  the  house. 
He  followed  the  marshal  up  the  steps  onto  the  gallery.  Then 
he  saw  the  man  standing  in  the  door,  waiting  for  them  to 
approach — a  man  of  about  forty-five,  not  tall,  but  blocky, 
with  a  brown,  still  face  and  horseman's  hands,  who  looked 
at  him  once,  brief  and  hard,  and  then  no  more,  speaking  to 
the  marshal,  "Howdy,  Mr.  Gombault.  Come  in." 

"Howdy,  Rafe,"  the  marshal  said.  "Who's  sick?" 

"Buddy,"  the  other  said.  "Slipped  and  caught  his  leg  in 
the  hammer  mill  this  afternoon." 

"Is  it  bad?"  the  marshal  said. 

"It  looks  bad  to  me,"  the  other  said.  "That's  why  we  sent 
for  the  doctor  instead  of  bringing  him  in  to  town.  We 
couldn't  get  the  bleeding  stopped." 

"I'm  sorry  to  hear  that,"  the  marshal  said.  "This  is  Mr. 
Pearson."  Once  more  the  investigator  found  the  other  look- 
ing at  him,  the  brown  eyes  still,  courteous  enough  in  the 
brown  face,  the  hand  he  offered  hard  enough,  but  the  clasp 
quite  limp,  quite  cold.  The  marshal  was  still  speaking.  "From 
Jackson.  From  the  draft  board."  Then  he  said,  and  the  in- 
vestigator could  discern  no  change  whatever  in  his  tone: 
"He's  got  a  warrant  for  the  boys." 

The  investigator  could  discern  no  change  whatever  any- 
where. The  limp  hard  hand  merely  withdrew  from  his,  the 
still  face  now  looking  at  the  marshal.  "You  mean  we  have 
declared  war?" 

"No,"  the  marshal  said. 

"That's  not  the  question,  Mr.  McCallum,"  the  investi- 
gator said.  "All  required  of  them  was  to  register.  Their  num- 
bers might  not  even  be  drawn  this  time;  under  the  law  of 


48  The  Country 

averages,  they  probably  would  not  be.  But  they  refused — 
failed,  anyway — to  register." 

"I  see,"  the  other  said.  He  was  not  looking  at  the  investi- 
gator. The  investigator  couldn't  tell  certainly  if  he  was  even 
looking  at  the  marshal,  although  he  spoke  to  him,  "You 
want  to  see  Buddy?  The  doctor's  with  him  now." 

"Wait,"  the  investigator  said.  "I'm  sorry  about  your 

brother's  accident,  but  I "  The  marshal  glanced  back 

at  him  for  a  moment,  his  shaggy  gray  brows  beetling,  with 
something  at  once  courteous  yet  a  little  impatient  about  the 
glance,  so  that  during  the  instant  the  investigator  sensed 
from  the  old  marshal  the  same  quality  which  had  been  in 
the  other's  brief  look.  The  investigator  was  a  man  of  better 
than  average  intelligence;  he  was  already  becoming  aware 
of  something  a  little  different  here  from  what  he  had  ex- 
pected. But  he  had  been  in  relief  work  in  the  state  several 
years,  dealing  almost  exclusively  with  country  people,  so  he 
still  believed  he  knew  them.  So  he  looked  at  the  old  marshal, 
thinking,  Yes.  The  same  sort  of  people,  despite  the  office, 
the  authority  and  responsibility  ivhich  should  have  changed 
him.  Thinking  again,  These  people.  These  people.  "I  in- 
tend to  take  the  night  train  back  to  Jackson,"  he  said.  "My 
reservation  is  already  made.  Serve  the  warrant  and  we 
will " 

"Come  along,"  the  old  marshal  said.  "We  are  going  to 
have  plenty  of  time." 

So  he  followed — there  was  nothing  else  to  do — fuming 
and  seething,  attempting  in  the  short  length  of  the  hall  to 
regain  control  of  himself  in  order  to  control  the  situation, 
because  he  realized  now  that  if  the  situation  were  controlled, 
it  would  devolve  upon  him  to  control  it;  that  if  their  de- 
parture with  their  prisoners  were  expedited,  it  must  be  him- 
self and  not  the  old  marshal  who  would  expedite  it.  He  had 
been  right.  The  doddering  old  officer  was  not  only  at  bot- 


The  Tall  Men  49 

torn  one  of  these  people,  he  had  apparently  been  corrupted 
anew  to  his  old,  inherent,  shiftless  sloth  and  unreliability 
merely  by  entering  the  house.  So  he  followed  in  turn,  down 
the  hall  and  into  a  bedroom;  whereupon  he  looked  about 
him  not  only  with  amazement  but  with  something  very  like 
terror.  The  room  was  a  big  room,  with  a  bare  unpainted 
floor,  and  besides  the  bed,  it  contained  only  a  chair  or  two 
and  one  other  piece  of  old-fashioned  furniture.  Yet  to  the 
investigator  it  seemed  so  filled  with  tremendous  men  cast 
in  the  same  mold  as  the  man  who  had  met  them  that  the 
very  walls  themselves  must  bulge.  Yet  they  were  not  big, 
not  tall,  and  it  was  not  vitality,  exuberance,  because  they 
made  no  sound,  merely  looking  quietly  at  him  where  he 
stood  in  the  door,  with  faces  bearing  an  almost  identical 
stamp  of  kinship — a  thin,  almost  frail  old  man  of  about 
seventy,  slightly  taller  than  the  others;  a  second  one,  white- 
haired,  too,  but  otherwise  identical  with  the  man  who  had 
met  them  at  the  door;  a  third  one  about  the  same  age  as 
the  man  who  had  met  them,  but  with  something  delicate  in 
his  face  and  something  tragic  and  dark  and  wild  in  the  same 
dark  eyes;  the  two  absolutely  identical  blue-eyed  youths; 
and  lastly  the  blue-eyed  man  on  the  bed  over  which  the 
doctor,  who  might  have  been  any  city  doctor,  in  his  neat 
city  suit,  leaned — all  of  them  turning  to  look  quietly  at  him 
and  the  marshal  as  they  entered.  And  he  saw,  past  the  doctor, 
the  slit  trousers  of  the  man  on  the  bed  and  the  exposed, 
bloody,  mangled  leg,  and  he  turned  sick,  stopping  just  in- 
side the  door  under  that  quiet,  steady  regard  while  the 
marshal  went  up  to  the  man  who  lay  on  the  bed,  smoking 
a  cob  pipe,  a  big,  old-fashioned,  wicker-covered  demijohn, 
such  as  the  investigator's  grandfather  had  kept  his  whisky 
in,  on  the  table  beside  him. 

"Well,  Buddy,"  the  marshal  said,  "this  is  bad." 

"Ah,  it  was  my  own  damn  fault,"  the  man  on  the  bed 


50  The  Country 

said.  "Stuart  kept  warning  me  about  that  frame  I  was  using." 

"That's  correct,"  the  second  old  one  said. 

Still  the  others  said  nothing.  They  just  looked  steadily  and 
quietly  at  the  investigator  until  the  marshal  turned  slightly 
and  said,  "This  is  Mr.  Pearson.  From  Jackson.  He's  got  a 
warrant  for  the  boys." 

Then  the  man  on  the  bed  said,  "What  for?" 

"That  draft  business,  Buddy,"  the  marshal  said. 

"We're  not  at  war  now,"  the  man  on  the  bed  said. 

"No,"  the  marshal  said.  "It's  that  new  law.  They  didn't 
register." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  them?" 

"It's  a  warrant,  Buddy.  Swore  out." 

"That  means  jail." 

"It's  a  warrant,"  the  old  marshal  said.  Then  the  investi- 
gator saw  that  the  man  on  the  bed  was  watching  him,  puff- 
ing steadily  at  the  pipe. 

"Pour  me  some  whisky,  Jackson,"  he  said. 

"No,"  the  doctor  said.  "He's  had  too  much  already." 

"Pour  me  some  whisky,  Jackson,"  the  man  on  the  bed 
said.  He  puffed  steadily  at  the  pipe,  looking  at  the  investi- 
gator. "You  come  from  the  Government?"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  the  investigator  said.  "They  should  have  registered. 

That's  all  required  of  them  yet.  They  did  not "  His 

voice  ceased,  while  the  seven  pairs  of  eyes  contemplated  him, 
and  the  man  on  the  bed  puffed  steadily. 

"We  would  have  still  been  here,"  the  man  on  the  bed 
said.  "We  wasn't  going  to  run."  He  turned  his  head.  The 
two  youths  were  standing  side  by  side  at  the  foot  of  the  bed. 
"Anse,  Lucius,"  he  said. 

To  the  investigator  it  sounded  as  if  they  answered  as  one, 
"Yes,  father." 

"This  gentleman  has  come  all  the  way  from  Jackson  to 


The  Tall  Men  51 

say  the  Government  is  ready  for  you.  I  reckon  the  quickest 
place  to  enlist  will  be  Memphis.  Go  upstairs  and  pack." 

The  investigator  started,  moved  forward.  "Wait!"  he 
cried. 

But  Jackson,  the  eldest,  had  forestalled  him.  He  said, 
"Wait,"  also,  and  now  they  were  not  looking  at  the  investi- 
gator. They  were  looking  at  the  doctor. 

"What  about  his  leg?"  Jackson  said. 

"Look  at  it,"  the  doctor  said.  "He  almost  amputated  it 
himself.  It  won't  wait.  And  he  can't  be  moved  now.  I'll 
need  my  nurse  to  help  me,  and  some  ether,  provided  he 
hasn't  had  too  much  whisky  to  stand  the  anesthetic  too. 
One  of  you  can  drive  to  town  in  my  car.  I'll  telephone " 

"Ether?"  the  man  on  the  bed  said.  "What  for?  You  just 
said  yourself  it's  pretty  near  off  now.  I  could  whet  up  one 
of  Jackson's  butcher  knives  and  finish  it  myself,  with  another 
drink  or  two.  Go  on.  Finish  it." 

"You  couldn't  stand  any  more  shock,"  the  doctor  said. 
"This  is  whisky  talking  now." 

"Shucks,"  the  other  said.  "One  day  in  France  we  was 
running  through  a  wheat  field  and  I  saw  the  machine  gun, 
coming  across  the  wheat,  and  I  tried  to  jump  it  like  you 
would  jump  a  fence  rail  somebody  was  swinging  at  your 
middle,  only  I  never  made  it.  And  I  was  on  the  ground  then, 
and  along  toward  dark  that  begun  to  hurt,  only  about  that 
time  something  went  whang  on  the  back  of  my  helmet,  like 
when  you  hit  a  anvil,  so  I  never  knowed  nothing  else  until 
I  woke  up.  There  was  a  heap  of  us  racked  up  along  a  bank 
outside  a  field  dressing  station,  only  it  took  a  long  time  for 
the  doctor  to  get  around  to  all  of  us,  and  by  that  time  it 
was  hurting  bad.  This  here  ain't  hurt  none  to  speak  of  since 
I  got  a-holt  of  this  johnny-jug.  You  go  on  and  finish  it.  If 
it's  help  you  need,  Stuart  and  Rafe  will  help  you.  .  .  .  Pour 
me  a  drink,  Jackson." 


52  The  Country 

This  time  the  doctor  raised  the  demijohn  and  examined 
the  level  of  the  liquor.  "There's  a  good  quart  gone,"  he  said. 
"If  you've  drunk  a  quart  of  whisky  since  four  o'clock,  I 
doubt  if  you  could  stand  the  anesthetic.  Do  you  think  you 
could  stand  it  if  I  finished  it  now?" 

"Yes,  finish  it.  I've  ruined  it;  I  want  to  get  shut  of  it." 

The  doctor  looked  about  at  the  others,  at  the  still,  identical 
faces  watching  him.  "If  I  had  him  in  town,  in  the  hospital, 
with  a  nurse  to  watch  him,  I'd  probably  wait  until  he  got 
over  this  first  shock  and  got  the  whisky  out  of  his  system. 
But  he  can't  be  moved  now,  and  I  can't  stop  the  bleeding 
like  this,  and  even  if  I  had  ether  or  a  local  anesthetic " 

"Shucks,"  the  man  on  the  bed  said.  "God  never  made  no 
better  local  nor  general  comfort  or  anesthetic  neither  than 
what's  in  this  johnny-jug.  And  this  ain't  Jackson's  leg  nor 
Stuart's  nor  Rafe's  nor  Lee's.  It's  mine.  I  done  started  it;  I 
reckon  I  can  finish  cutting  it  off  any  way  I  want  to." 

But  the  doctor  was  still  looking  at  Jackson.  "Well,  Mr. 
McCallum?"  he  said.  "You're  the  oldest." 

But  it  was  Stuart  who  answered.  "Yes,"  he  said.  "Finish 
it.  What  do  you  want?  Hot  water,  I  reckon." 

"Yes,"  the  doctor  said.  "Some  clean  sheets.  Have  you  got 
a  big  table  you  can  move  in  here?" 

"The  kitchen  table,"  the  man  who  had  met  them  at  the 
door  said.  "Me  and  the  boys " 

"Wait,"  the  man  on  the  bed  said.  "The  boys  won't  have 
time  to  help  you."  He  looked  at  them  again.  "Anse,  Lucius," 
he  said. 

Again  it  seemed  to  the  investigator  that  they  answered  as 
one,  "Yes,  father." 

"This  gentleman  yonder  is  beginning  to  look  impatient. 
You  better  start.  Come  to  think  of  it,  you  won't  need  to 
pack.  You  will  have  uniforms  in  a  day  or  two.  Take  the 
truck.  There  won't  be  nobody  to  drive  you  to  Memphis  and 


The  Tall  Men  53 

bring  the  truck  back,  so  you  can  leave  it  at  the  Gayoso 
Feed  Company  until  we  can  send  for  it.  I'd  like  for  you  to 
enlist  into  the  old  Sixth  Infantry,  where  I  used  to  be.  But  I 
reckon  that's  too  much  to  hope,  and  you'll  just  have  to 
chance  where  they  send  you.  But  it  likely  won't  matter, 
once  you  are  in.  The  Government  done  right  by  me  in  my 
day,  and  it  will  do  right  by  you.  You  just  enlist  wherever 
they  want  to  send  you,  need  you,  and  obey  your  sergeants 
and  officers  until  you  find  out  how  to  be  soldiers.  Obey 
them,  but  remember  your  name  and  don't  take  nothing  from 
no  man.  You  can  go  now." 

"Wait!"  the  investigator  cried  again;  again  he  started, 
moved  forward  into  the  center  of  the  room.  "I  protest  this! 
I'm  sorry  about  Mr.  McCallum's  accident.  I'm  sorry  about 
the  whole  business.  But  it's  out  of  my  hands  and  out  of  his 
hands  now.  This  charge,  failure  to  register  according  to  law, 
has  been  made  and  the  warrant  issued.  It  cannot  be  evaded 
this  way.  The  course  of  the  action  must  be  completed  before 
any  other  step  can  be  taken.  They  should  have  thought  of 
this  when  these  boys  failed  to  register.  If  Mr.  Gombault 
refuses  to  serve  this  warrant,  I  will  serve  it  myself  and  take 
these  men  back  to  Jefferson  with  me  to  answer  this  charge 
as  made.  And  I  must  warn  Mr.  Gombault  that  he  will  be 
cited  for  contempt!" 

The  old  marshal  turned,  his  shaggy  eyebrows  beetling 
again,  speaking  down  to  the  investigator  as  if  he  were  a 
child,  "Ain't  you  found  out  yet  that  me  or  you  neither  ain't 
going  nowhere  for  a  while?" 

"What?"  the  investigator  cried.  He  looked  about  at  the 
grave  faces  once  more  contemplating  him  with  that  remote 
and  speculative  regard.  "Am  I  being  threatened?"  he  cried. 

"Ain't  anybody  paying  any  attention  to  you  at  all,"  the 
marshal  said.  "Now  you  just  be  quiet  for  a  while,  and  you 
will  be  all  right,  and  after  a  while  we  can  go  back  to  town." 


54  The  Country 

So  he  stopped  again  and  stood  while  the  grave,  contem- 
plative faces  freed  him  once  more  of  that  impersonal  and 
unbearable  regard,  and  saw  the  two  youths  approach  the 
bed  and  bend  down  in  turn  and  kiss  their  father  on  the 
mouth,  and  then  turn  as  one  and  leave  the  room,  passing 
him  without  even  looking  at  him.  And  sitting  in  the  lamplit 
hall  beside  the  old  marshal,  the  bedroom  door  closed  now, 
he  heard  the  truck  start  up  and  back  and  turn  and  go  down 
the  road,  the  sound  of  it  dying  away,  ceasing,  leaving  the 
Still,  hot  night — the  Mississippi  Indian  summer,  which  had 
already  outlasted  half  of  November — filled  with  the  loud 
last  shrilling  of  the  summer's  cicadas,  as  though  they,  too, 
were  aware  of  the  imminent  season  of  cold  weather  and  of 
death. 

"I  remember  old  Anse,"  the  marshal  said  pleasantly,  chat- 
tily, in  that  tone  in  which  an  adult  addresses  a  strange  child. 
"He's  been  dead  fifteen-sixteen  years  now.  He  was  about 
sixteen  when  the  old  war  broke  out,  and  he  walked  all  the 
way  to  Virginia  to  get  into  it.  He  could  have  enlisted  and 
fought  right  here  at  home,  but  his  ma  was  a  Carter,  so 
wouldn't  nothing  do  him  but  to  go  all  the  way  back  to 
Virginia  to  do  his  fighting,  even  though  he  hadn't  never  seen 
Virginia  before  himself;  walked  all  the  way  back  to  a  land 
he  hadn't  never  even  seen  before  and  enlisted  in  Stonewall 
Jackson's  army  and  stayed  in  it  all  through  the  Valley,  and 
right  up  to  Chancellorsville,  where  them  Carolina  boys  shot 
Jackson  by  mistake,  and  right  on  up  to  that  morning  in 
'Sixty-five  when  Sheridan's  cavalry  blocked  the  road  from 
Appomattox  to  the  Valley,  where  they  might  have  got  away 
again.  And  he  walked  back  to  Mississippi  with  just  about 
what  he  had  carried  away  with  him  when  he  left,  and  he 
got  married  and  built  the  first  story  of  this  house — this  here 
log  story  we're  in  right  now — and  started  getting  them  boys 
• — Jackson  and  Stuart  and  Raphael  and  Lee  and  Buddy. 


The  Tall  Men  55 

"Buddy  come  along  late,  late  enough  to  be  in  the  other 
war,  in  France  in  it.  You  heard  him  in  there.  He  brought 
back  two  medals,  an  American  medal  and  a  French  one,  and 
no  man  knows  till  yet  how  he  got  them,  just  what  he  done. 
I  don't  believe  he  even  told  Jackson  and  Stuart  and  them. 
He  hadn't  hardly  got  back  home,  with  them  numbers  on 
his  uniform  and  the  wound  stripes  and  them  two  medals, 
before  he  had  found  him  a  girl,  found  her  right  off,  and  a  year 
later  them  twin  boys  was  born,  the  livin',  spittin'  image  of 
old  Anse  McCallum.  If  old  Anse  had  just  been  about  seventy- 
five  years  younger,  the  three  of  them  might  have  been 
thriblets.  I  remember  them — two  little  critters  exactly  alike, 
and  wild  as  spikehorn  bucks,  running  around  here  day  and 
night  both  with  a  pack  of  coon  dogs  until  they  got  big 
enough  to  help  Buddy  and  Stuart  and  Lee  with  the  farm 
and  the  gin,  and  Rafe  with  the  horses  and  mules,  when  he 
would  breed  and  raise  and  train  them  and  take  them  to 
Memphis  to  sell,  right  on  up  to  three,  four  years  back,  when 
they  went  to  the  agricultural  college  for  a  year  to  learn 
more  about  whiteface  cattle. 

"That  was  after  Buddy  and  them  had  quit  raising  cotton. 
I  remember  that  too.  It  was  when  the  Government  first 
begun  to  interfere  with  how  a  man  farmed  his  own  land, 
raised  his  cotton.  Stabilizing  the  price,  using  up  the  surplus, 
they  called  it,  giving  a  man  advice  and  help,  whether  he 
wanted  it  or  not.  You  may  have  noticed  them  boys  in  yon- 
der tonight;  curious  folks  almost,  you  might  call  them.  That 
first  year,  when  county  agents  was  trying  to  explain  the 
new  system  to  farmers,  the  agent  come  out  here  and  tried 
to  explain  it  to  Buddy  and  Lee  and  Stuart,  explaining  how 
they  would  cut  down  the  crop,  but  that  the  Government 
would  pay  farmers  the  difference,  and  so  they  would  ac- 
tually be  better  off  than  trying  to  farm  by  themselves. 

"  'Why,  we're  much  obliged,'  Buddy  says.  'But  we  don't 


56  The  Country 

need  no  help.  We'll  just  make  the  cotton  like  we  always 
done;  if  we  can't  make  a  crop  of  it,  that  will  just  be  our  look- 
out and  our  loss,  and  we'll  try  again.' 

"So  they  wouldn't  sign  no  papers  nor  no  cards  nor  noth- 
ing. They  just  went  on  and  made  the  cotton  like  old  Anse 
had  taught  them  to;  it  was  like  they  just  couldn't  believe 
that  the  Government  aimed  to  help  a  man  whether  he 
wanted  help  or  not,  aimed  to  interfere  with  how  much  of 
anything  he  could  make  by  hard  work  on  his  own  land, 
making  the  crop  and  ginning  it  right  here  in  their  own  gin, 
like  they  had  always  done,  and  hauling  it  to  town  to  sell, 
hauling  it  all  the  way  into  Jefferson  before  they  found  out 
they  couldn't  sell  it  because,  in  the  first  place,  they  had 
made  too  much  of  it  and,  in  the  second  place,  they  never 
had  no  card  to  sell  what  they  would  have  been  allowed.  So 
they  hauled  it  back.  The  gin  wouldn't  hold  all  of  it,  so  they 
put  some  of  it  under  Raf  e's  mule  shed  and  they  put  the  rest 
of  it  right  here  in  the  hall  where  we  are  setting  now,  where 
they  would  have  to  walk  around  it  all  winter  and  keep  them- 
selves reminded  to  be  sho  and  fill  out  that  card  next  time. 

"Only  next  year  they  didn't  fill  out  no  papers  neither.  It 
was  like  they  still  couldn't  believe  it,  still  believed  in  the 
freedom  and  liberty  to  make  or  break  according  to  a  man's 
fitness  and  will  to  work,  guaranteed  by  the  Government 
that  old  Anse  had  tried  to  tear  in  two  once  and  failed,  and 
admitted  in  good  faith  he  had  failed  and  taken  the  conse- 
quences, and  that  had  give  Buddy  a  medal  and  taken  care 
of  him  when  he  was  far  away  from  home  in  a  strange  land 
and  hurt. 

"So  they  made  that  second  crop.  And  they  couldn't  sell  it 
to  nobody  neither  because  they  never  had  no  cards.  This 
time  they  built  a  special  shed  to  put  it  under,  and  I  remember 
how  in  that  second  winter  Buddy  come  to  town  one  day  to 
see  Lawyer  Gavin  Stevens.  Not  for  legal  advice  how  to  sue 


The  Tall  Men  57 

the  Government  or  somebody  into  buying  the  cotton,  even 
if  they  never  had  no  card  for  it,  but  just  to  find  out  why.  'I 
was  for  going  ahead  and  signing  up  for  it,'  Buddy  says.  'If 
that's  going  to  be  the  new  rule.  But  we  talked  it  over,  and 
Jackson  ain't  no  farmer,  but  he  knowed  father  longer  than 
the  rest  of  us,  and  he  said  father  would  have  said  no,  and  I 
reckon  now  he  would  have  been  right.' 

"So  they  didn't  raise  any  more  cotton;  they  had  a  plenty 
of  it  to  last  a  while — twenty-two  bales,  I  think  it  was.  That 
was  when  they  went  into  whitef ace  cattle,  putting  old  Anse's 
cotton  land  into  pasture,  because  that's  what  he  would  have 
wanted  them  to  do  if  the  only  way  they  could  raise  cotton 
was  by  the  Government  telling  them  how  much  they  could 
raise  and  how  much  they  could  sell  it  for,  and  where,  and 
when,  and  then  pay  them  for  not  doing  the  work  they  didn't 
do.  Only  even  when  they  didn't  raise  cotton,  every  year  the 
county  agent's  young  fellow  would  come  out  to  measure 
the  pasture  crops  they  planted  so  he  could  pay  them  for  that, 
even  if  they  never  had  no  not-cotton  to  be  paid  for.  Except 
that  he  never  measured  no  crop  on  this  place.  i You're  wel- 
come to  look  at  what  we  are  doing,'  Buddy  says.  'But  don't 
draw  it  down  on  your  map.' 

"  'But  you  can  get  money  for  this,'  the  young  fellow  says. 
'The  Government  wants  to  pay  you  for  planting  all  this.' 

"  'We  are  aiming  to  get  money  for  it,'  Buddy  says.  'When 
we  can't,  we  will  try  something  else.  But  not  from  the  Gov- 
ernment. Give  that  to  them  that  want  to  take  it.  We  can 
make  out.' 

"And  that's  about  all.  Them  twenty-two  bales  of  orphan 
cotton  are  down  yonder  in  the  gin  right  now,  because 
there's  room  for  it  in  the  gin  now  because  they  ain't  using 
the  gin  no  more.  And  them  boys  grew  up  and  went  off  a  year 
to  the  agricultural  college  to  learn  right  about  whiteface 
cattle,  and  then  come  back  to  the  rest  of  them — these  here 


58  The  Country 

curious  folks  living  off  here  to  themselves,  with  the  rest  of 
the  world  all  full  of  pretty  neon  lights  burning  night  and 
day  both,  and  easy,  quick  money  scattering  itself  around 
everywhere  for  any  man  to  grab  a  little,  and  every  man  with 
a  shiny  new  automobile  already  wore  out  and  throwed  away 
and  the  new  one  delivered  before  the  first  one  was  even  paid 
for,  and  everywhere  a  fine  loud  grabble  and  snatch  of  AAA 
and  WPA  and  a  dozen  other  three-letter  reasons  for  a  man 
not  to  work.  Then  this  here  draft  comes  along,  and  these 
curious  folks  ain't  got  around  to  signing  that  neither,  and 
you  come  all  the  way  up  from  Jackson  with  your  paper  all 
signed  and  regular,  and  we  come  out  here,  and  after  a  while 
we  can  go  back  to  town.  A  man  gets  around,  don't  he?" 

"Yes,"  the  investigator  said.  "Do  you  suppose  we  can  go 
back  to  town  now?" 

"No,"  the  marshal  told  him  in  that  same  kindly  tone,  "not 
just  yet.  But  we  can  leave  after  a  while.  Of  course  you  will 
miss  your  train.  But  there  will  be  another  one  tomorrow." 

He  rose,  though  the  investigator  had  heard  nothing.  The 
investigator  watched  him  go  down  the  hall  and  open  the  bed- 
room door  and  enter  and  close  it  behind  him.  The  investiga- 
tor sat  quietly,  listening  to  the  night  sounds  and  looking  at 
the  closed  door  until  it  opened  presently  and  the  marshal 
came  back,  carrying  something  in  a  bloody  sheet,  carrying  it 
gingerly. 

"Here,"  he  said.  "Hold  it  a  mihute." 

"It's  bloody,"  the  investigator  said. 

"That's  all  right,"  the  marshal  said.  "We  can  wash  when 
we  get  through."  So  the  investigator  took  the  bundle  and 
stood  holding  it  while  he  watched  the  old  marshal  go  back 
down  the  hall  and  on  through  it  and  vanish  and  return  pres- 
ently with  a  lighted  lantern  and  a  shovel.  "Come  along,"  he 
said.  "We're  pretty  near  through  now." 

The  investigator  followed  him  out  of  the  house  and  across 


The  Tall  Men  59 

the  yard,  carrying  gingerly  the  bloody,  shattered,  heavy 
bundle  in  which  it  still  seemed  to  him  he  could  feel  some 
warmth  of  life,  the  marshal  striding  on  ahead,  the  lantern 
swinging  against  his  leg,  the  shadow  of  his  striding  scissoring 
and  enormous  along  the  earth,  his  voice  still  coming  back 
over  his  shoulder,  chatty  and  cheerful,  "Yes,  sir.  A  man  gets 
around  and  he  sees  a  heap;  a  heap  of  folks  in  a  heap  of  situa- 
tions. The  trouble  is,  we  done  got  into  the  habit  of  confus- 
ing the  situations  with  the  folks.  Take  yourself,  now,"  he 
said  in  that  same  kindly  tone,  chatty  and  easy;  "you  mean 
all  right.  You  just  went  and  got  yourself  all  fogged  up  with 
rules  and  regulations.  That's  our  trouble.  We  done  invented 
ourselves  so  many  alphabets  and  rules  and  recipes  that  we 
can't  see  anything  else;  if  what  we  see  can't  be  fitted  to  an 
alphabet  or  a  rule,  we  are  lost.  We  have  come  to  be  like 
critters  doctor  folks  might  have  created  in  laboratories,  that 
have  learned  how  to  slip  off  their  bones  and  guts  and  still 
live,  still  be  kept  alive  indefinite  and  forever  maybe  even 
without  even  knowing  the  bones  and  the  guts  are  gone.  We 
have  slipped  our  backbone;  we  have  about  decided  a  man 
don't  need  a  backbone  any  more;  to  have  one  is  old-fashioned. 
But  the  groove  where  the  backbone  used  to  be  is  still  there, 
and  the  backbone  has  been  kept  alive,  too,  and  someday 
we're  going  to  slip  back  onto  it.  I  don't  know  just  when  nor 
just  how  much  of  a  wrench  it  will  take  to  teach  us,  but 
someday." 

They  had  left  the  yard  now.  They  were  mounting  a  slope; 
ahead  of  them  the  investigator  could  see  another  clump  of 
cedars,  a  small  clump,  somehow  shaggily  formal  against  the 
starred  sky.  The  marshal  entered  it  and  stopped  and  set  the 
lantern  down  and,  following  with  the  bundle,  the  investiga- 
tor saw  a  small  rectangle  of  earth  enclosed  by  a  low  brick 
coping.  Then  he  saw  the  two  graves,  or  the  headstones — 
two  plain  granite  slabs  set  upright  in  the  earth. 


60  The  Country 

"Old  Anse  and  Mrs.  Anse,"  the  marshal  said.  "Buddy's 
wife  wanted  to  be  buried  with  her  folks.  I  reckon  she  would 
have  been  right  lonesome  up  here  with  just  McCallums.  Now, 
let's  see."  He  stood  for  a  moment,  his  chin  in  his  hand;  to  the 
investigator  he  looked  exactly  like  an  old  lady  trying  to  de- 
cide where  to  set  out  a  shrub.  "They  was  to  run  from  left  to 
right,  beginning  with  Jackson.  But  after  the  boys  was  born^ 
Jackson  and  Stuart  was  to  come  up  here  by  their  pa  and  mat 
so  Buddy  could  move  up  some  and  make  room.  So  he  will  be 
about  here."  He  moved  the  lantern  nearer  and  took  up  the 
shovel.  Then  he  saw  the  investigator  still  holding  the  bundle. 
"Set  it  down,"  he  said.  "I  got  to  dig  first." 

"I'll  hold  it,"  the  investigator  said. 

"Nonsense,  put  it  down."  the  marshal  said.  "Buddy  won't 
mind." 

So  the  investigator  put  the  bundle  down  on  the  brick  cop- 
ing and  the  marshal  began  to  dig,  skillfully  and  rapidly,  still 
talking  in  that  cheerful,  interminable  voice,  "Yes,  sir.  We 
done  forgot  about  folks.  Life  has  done  got  cheap,  and  life 
ain't  cheap.  Life's  a  pretty  durn  valuable  thing.  I  don't  mean 
just  getting  along  from  one  WPA  relief  check  to  the  next 
one,  but  honor  and  pride  and  discipline  that  make  a  man 
worth  preserving,  make  him  of  any  value.  That's  what  we 
got  to  learn  again.  Maybe  it  takes  trouble,  bad  trouble,  to 
teach  it  back  to  us;  maybe  it  was  the  walking  to  Virginia 
because  that's  where  his  ma  come  from,  and  losing  a  war  and 
then  walking  back,  that  taught  it  to  old  Anse.  Anyway,  he 
seems  to  learned  it,  and  to  learned  it  good  enough  to  bequeath 
it  to  his  boys.  Did  you  notice  how  all  Buddy  had  to  do  was 
to  tell  them  boys  of  his  it  was  time  to  go,  because  the  Gov- 
ernment had  sent  them  word?  And  how  they  told  him 
good-by?  Crowned  men  kissing  one  another  without  hiding 
and  without  shame.  Maybe  that's  what  I  am  trying  to  say. 
,  .  .  There."  he  said.  "That's  big  enough." 


The  Tall  Men  61 

He  moved  quickly,  easily;  before  the  investigator  could 
stir,  he  had  lifted  the  bundle  into  the  narrow  trench  and  was 
covering  it,  covering  it  as  rapidly  as  he  had  dug,  smoothing 
the  earth  over  it  with  the  shovel.  Then  he  stood  up  and  raised 
the  lantern — a  tall,  lean  old  man,  breathing  easily  and  lightly. 

"I  reckon  we  can  go  back  to  town  now,"  he  said. 


A  Bear  Hunt 


RATLIFF  is  TELLING  THIS.  He  is  a  sewing-machine  agent;  time 
was  when  he  traveled  about  our  county  in  a  light,  strong 
buckboard  drawn  by  a  sturdy,  wiry,  mismatched  team  of 
horses;  now  he  uses  a  model  T  Ford,  which  also  carries  his 
demonstrator  machine  in  a  tin  box  on  the  rear,  shaped  like  a 
dog  kennel  and  painted  to  resemble  a  house. 

Ratliff  may  be  seen  anywhere  without  surprise — the  only 
man  present  at  the  bazaars  and  sewing  bees  of  farmers'  wives; 
moving  among  both  men  and  women  at  all-day  singings  at 
country  churches,  and  singing,  too,  in  a  pleasant  barytone. 
He  was  even  at  this  bear  hunt  of  which  he  speaks,  at  the 
annual  hunting  camp  of  Major  de  Spain  in  the  river  bottom 
twenty  miles  from  town,  even  though  there  was  no  one 
there  to  whom  he  might  possibly  have  sold  a  machine,  since 
Mrs.  de  Spain  doubtless  already  owned  one,  unless  she  had 
given  it  to  one  of  her  married  daughters,  and  the  other  man — 
the  man  called  Lucius  Provine — with  whom  he  became  in- 
volved, to  the  violent  detriment  of  his  face  and  other  mem- 
bers, could  not  have  bought  one  for  his  wife  even  if  he 
would,  without  Ratliff  sold  it  to  him  on  indefinite  credit. 

Provine  is  also  a  native  of  the  county.  But  he  is  forty  now 
and  most  of  his  teeth  are  gone,  and  it  is  years  now  since  he 
and  his  dead  brother  and  another  dead  and  forgotten  con- 
temporary named  Jack  Bonds  were  known  as  the  Provine 


64  The  Country 

gang  and  terrorized  our  quiet  town  after  the  unimaginative 
fashion  of  wild  youth  by  letting  off  pistols  on  the  square  late 
Saturday  nights  or  galloping  their  horses  down  scurrying 
and  screaming  lanes  of  churchgoing  ladies  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing. Younger  citizens  of  the  town  do  not  know  him  at  all 
save  as  a  tall,  apparently  strong  and  healthy  man  who  loafs 
in  a  brooding,  saturnine  fashion  wherever  he  will  be  allowed, 
never  exactly  accepted  by  any  group,  and  who  makes  no 
effort  whatever  to  support  his  wife  and  three  children. 

There  are  other  men  among  us  now  whose  families  are  in 
want;  men  who,  perhaps,  would  not  work  anyway,  but  who 
now,  since  the  last  few  years,  cannot  find  work.  These  all 
attain  and  hold  to  a  certain  respectability  by  acting  as  agents 
for  the  manufacturers  of  minor  articles  like  soap  and  men's 
toilet  accessories  and  kitchen  objects,  being  seen  constantly 
about  the  square  and  the  streets  carrying  small  black  sample 
cases.  One  day,  to  our  surprise,  Provine  also  appeared  with 
such  a  case,  though  within  less  than  a  week  the  town  officers 
discovered  that  it  contained  whisky  in  pint  bottles.  Major 
de  Spain  extricated  him  somehow,  as  it  was  Major  de  Spain 
who  supported  his  family  by  eking  out  the  money  which 
Mrs.  Provine  earned  by  sewing  and  such — perhaps  as  a 
Roman  gesture  of  salute  and  farewell  to  the  bright  figure 
which  Provine  had  been  before  time  whipped  him. 

For  there  are  older  men  who  remember  the  Butch — he  has 
even  lost  somewhere  in  his  shabby  past  the  lusty  dare-devil- 
try of  the  nickname — Provine  of  twenty  years  ago;  that 
youth  without  humor,  yet  with  some  driving,  inarticulate 
zest  for  breathing  which  has  long  since  burned  out  of  him, 
who  performed  in  a  fine  frenzy,  which  was,  perhaps,  mostly 
alcohol,  certain  outrageous  and  spontaneous  deeds,  one  of 
which  was  the  Negro-picnic  business.  The  picnic  was  at  a 
Negro  church  a  few  miles  from  town.  In  the  midst  of  it,  the 
two  Provines  and  Jack  Bonds,  returning  from  a  dance  in  the 


A  Bear  Hunt  65 

country,  rode  up  with  drawn  pistols  and  freshly  lit  cigars; 
and  taking  the  Negro  men  one  by  one,  held  the  burning  cigar 
ends  to  the  popular  celluloid  collars  of  the  day,  leaving  each 
victim's  neck  ringed  with  an  abrupt  and  faint  and  painless 
ling  of  carbon.  This  is  he  of  whom  Ratliff  is  talking. 

But  there  is  one  thing  more  which  must  be  told  here  in 
order  to  set  the  stage  for  Ratliff.  Five  miles  farther  down  the 
river  from  Major  de  Spain's  camp,  and  in  an  even  wilder  part 
of  the  river's  jungle  of  cane  and  gum  and  pin  oak,  there  is  an 
Indian  mound.  Aboriginal,  it  rises  profoundly  and  darkly 
enigmatic,  the  only  elevation  of  any  kind  in  the  wild,  flat 
jungle  of  river  bottom.  Even  to  some  of  us — children  though 
we  were,  yet  we  were  descended  of  literate,  town-bred  peo- 
ple— it  possessed  inferences  of  secret  and  violent  blood,  of 
savage  and  sudden  destruction,  as  though  the  yells  and  hatch- 
ets which  we  associated  with  Indians  through  the  hidden  and 
secret  dime  novels  which  we  passed  among  ourselves  were 
but  trivial  and  momentary  manifestations  of  what  dark 
power  still  dwelled  or  lurked  there,  sinister,  a  little  sar- 
donic, like  a  dark  and  nameless  beast  lightly  and  lazily  slum- 
bering with  bloody  jaws — this,  perhaps,  due  to  the  fact  that 
a  remnant  of  a  once  powerful  clan  of  the  Chickasaw  tribe 
still  lived  beside  it  under  Government  protection.  They  now 
had  American  names  and  they  lived  as  the  sparse  white  peo- 
ple who  surrounded  them  in  turn  lived. 

Yet  we  never  saw  them,  since  they  never  came  to  town, 
having  their  own  settlement  and  store.  When  we  grew  older 
we  realized  that  they  were  no  wilder  or  more  illiterate  than 
the  white  people,  and  that  probably  their  greatest  deviation 
from  the  norm — and  this,  in  our  country,  no  especial  devia- 
tion— was  the  fact  that  they  were  a  little  better  than  suspect 
to  manufacture  moonshine  whisky  back  in  the  swamps.  Yet 
to  us,  as  children,  they  were  a  little  fabulous,  their  swamp- 
hidden  lives  inextricable  from  the  life  of  the  dark  mound, 


66  The  Country 

which  some  of  us  had  never  seen,  yet  of  which  we  had  all 
heard,  as  though  they  had  been  set  by  the  dark  powers  to  be. 
guardians  of  it. 

As  I  said,  some  of  us  had  never  seen  the  mound,  yet  all  of 
us  had  heard  of  it,  talked  of  it  as  boys  will.  It  was  as  much  a 
part  of  our  lives  and  background  as  the  land  itself,  as  the  lost 
Civil  War  and  Sherman's  march,  or  that  there  were  Negroes 
among  us  living  in  economic  competition  who  bore  our 
family  names;  only  more  immediate,  more  potential  and  alive. 
When  I  was  fifteen,  a  companion  and  I,  on  a  dare,  went  into 
the  mound  one  day  just  at  sunset.  We  saw  some  of  those  In- 
dians for  the  first  time;  we  got  directions  from  them  and 
reached  the  top  of  the  mound  just  as  the  sun  set.  We  had 
camping  equipment  with  us,  but  we  made  no  fire.  We  didn't 
even  make  down  our  beds.  We  just  sat  side  by  side  on  that 
mound  until  it  became  light  enough  to  find  our  way  back  to 
the  road.  We  didn't  talk.  When  we  looked  at  each  other  in 
the  gray  dawn,  our  faces  were  gray,  too,  quiet,  very  grave. 
When  we  reached  town  again,  we  didn't  talk  either.  We  just 
parted  and  went  home  and  went  to  bed.  That's  what  we 
thought,  felt,  about  the  mound.  We  were  children,  it  is  true, 
yet  we  were  descendants  of  people  who  read  books  and  who 
were — or  should  have  been — beyond  superstition  and  im- 
pervious to  mindless  fear. 

Now  Ratliff  tells  about  Lucius  Provine  and  his  hiccup. 

When  I  got  back  to  town,  the  first  fellow  I  met  says, 
"What  happened  to  your  face,  Ratliff?  Was  De  Spain  using 
you  in  place  of  his  bear  hounds?" 

"No,  boys,"  I  says.  "Hit  was  a  cattymount." 

"What  was  you  trying  to  do  to  hit,  Ratliff?"  a  fellow  says. 

"Boys,"  I  says,  "be  dog  if  I  know." 

And  that  was  the  truth.  Hit  was  a  good  while  after  they 
had  done  hauled  Luke  Provine  offen  me  that  I  found  that 


A  Bear  Hunt  67 

out.  Because  I  never  knowed  who  Old  Man  Ash  was,  no 
more  than  Luke  did.  I  just  knowed  that  he  was  Major's  nig- 
ger, a-helping  around  camp.  All  I  knowed,  when  the  whole 
thing  started,  was  what  I  thought  I  was  aiming  to  do — to 
maybe  help  Luke  sho  enough,  or  maybe  at  the  outside  to  just 
have  a  little  fun  with  him  without  hurting  him,  or  even 
maybe  to  do  Major  a  little  favor  by  getting  Luke  outen  camp 
for  a  while.  And  then  hyer  hit  is  about  midnight  and  that 
durn  fellow  comes  swurging  outen  the  woods  wild  as  a 
skeered  deer,  and  runs  in  where  they  are  setting  at  the  poker 
game,  and  I  says,  "Well,  you  ought  to  be  satisfied.  You  done 
run  clean  out  from  under  them."  And  he  stopped  dead  still 
and  give  me  a  kind  of  glare  of  wild  astonishment;  he  didn't 
even  know  that  they  had  quit;  and  then  he  swurged  all  over 
me  like  a  barn  falling  down. 

Hit  sho  stopped  that  poker  game.  Hit  taken  three  or  four 
of  them  to  drag  him  off  en  me,  with  Major  turned  in  his  chair 
with  a  set  of  threes  in  his  hand,  a-hammering  on  the  table 
and  hollering  cusses.  Only  a  right  smart  of  the  helping  they 
done  was  stepping  on  my  face  and  hands  and  feet.  Hit  was 
like  a  fahr — the  fellows  with  the  water  hose  done  the  most 
part  of  the  damage. 

"What  the  tarnation  hell  does  this  mean?"  Major  hollers, 
with  three  or  four  fellows  holding  Luke,  and  him  crying  like 
a  baby. 

"He  set  them  on  me!"  Luke  says.  "He  was  the  one  sent  me 
up  there,  and  I'm  a-going  to  kill  him!" 

"Set  who  on  you?"  Major  says. 

"Them  Indians!"  Luke  says,  crying.  Then  he  tried  to  get 
at  me  again,  flinging  them  fellows  holding  his  arms  around 
like  they  was  rag  dolls,  until  Major  pure  cussed  him  quiet. 
He's  a  man  yet.  Don't  let  hit  fool  you  none  because  he  claims 
he  ain't  strong  enough  to  work.  Maybe  hit's  because  he  ain't 
never  wore  his  strength  down  toting  around  one  of  them 


68  The  Country 

little  black  satchels  full  of  pink  galluses  and  shaving  soap. 
Then  Major  asked  me  what  hit  was  all  about,  and  I  told  him 
how  I  had  just  been  trying  to  help  Luke  get  shed  of  them 
hiccups. 

Be  dog  if  I  didn't  feel  right  sorry  for  him.  I  happened  to 
be  passing  out  that  way,  and  so  I  just  thought  I  would  drop 
in  on  them  and  see  what  luck  they  was  having,  and  I  druv  up 
about  sundown,  and  the  first  fellow  I  see  was  Luke.  I  wasn't 
surprised,  since  this  here  would  be  the  biggest  present  gather- 
ing of  men  in  the  county,  let  alone  the  free  eating  and 
whisky,  so  I  says,  "Well,  this  is  a  surprise."  And  he  says: 

"Hic-uh!  Hic-ow!  Hic-oh!  Hie— oh,  God!"  He  had  done 
already  had  them  since  nine  o'clock  the  night  before;  he  had 
been  teching  the  jug  ever'  time  Major  offered  him  one  and 
ever'  time  he  could  get  to  hit  when  Old  Man  Ash  wasn't 
looking;  and  two  days  before  Major  had  killed  a  bear,  and  I 
reckon  Luke  had  already  et  more  possum-rich  bear  pork — 
let  alone  the  venison  they  had,  with  maybe  a  few  coons  and 
squirls  throwed  in  for  seasoning — than  he  could  have  hauled 
off  in  a  waggin.  So  here  he  was,  going  three  times  to  the  min- 
ute, like  one  of  these  here  clock  bombs;  only  hit  was  bear 
meat  and  whisky  instead  of  dynamite,  and  so  he  couldn't  ex- 
plode and  put  himself  outen  his  misery. 

They  told  me  how  he  had  done  already  kept  ever'body 
awake  most  of  the  night  before,  and  how  Major  got  up  mad 
anyway,  and  went  off  with  his  gun  and  Ash  to  handle  them 
two  bear  hounds,  and  Luke  following — outen  pure  misery,  I 
reckon,  since  he  hadn't  slept  no  more  than  nobody  else — 
walking  along  behind  Major,  saying,  "Hic-ah!  Hic-ow!  Hic- 
oh!  Hie — oh,  Lord! "  until  Major  turns  on  him  and  says: 

"Get  to  hell  over  yonder  with  them  shotgun  fellows  on 
the  deer  stands.  How  do  you  expect  me  to  walk  up  on  a  bear 
or  even  hear  the  dogs  when  they  strike?  I  might  as  well  be 
riding  a  motorcycle." 


A  Bear  Hunt  69 

So  Luke  went  on  back  to  where  the  deer  standers  was 
along  the  log-line  levee.  I  reckon  he  never  so  much  went 
away  as  he  kind  of  died  away  in  the  distance  like  that  ere  mo- 
torcycle Major  mentioned.  He  never  tried  to  be  quiet.  I 
reckon  he  knowed  hit  wouldn't  be  no  use.  He  never  tried  to 
keep  to  the  open,  neither.  I  reckon  he  thought  that  any  fool 
would  know  from  his  sound  that  he  wasn't  no  deer.  No.  I 
reckon  he  was  so  mizzable  by  then  that  he  hoped  somebody 
would  shoot  him.  But  nobody  never,  and  he  come  to  the  first 
stand,  where  Uncle  Ike  McCaslin  was,  and  set  down  on  a  log 
behind  Uncle  Ike  with  his  elbows  on  his  knees  and  his  face 
in  his  hands,  going,  "Hic-uh!  Hic-uh!  Hic-uh!  Hic-uh!" 
until  Uncle  Ike  turns  and  says: 

"Confound  you,  boy;  get  away  from  here.  Do  you  reckon 
any  varmint  in  the  world  is  going  to  walk  up  to  a  hay  baler? 
Go  drink  some  water." 

"I  done  already  done  that,"  Luke  says,  without  moving. 
"I  been  drinking  water  since  nine  o'clock  last  night.  I  done 
already  drunk  so  much  water  that  if  I  was  to  fall  down  I 
would  gush  like  a  artesian  well." 

"Well,  go  away  anyhow,"  Uncle  Ike  says.  "Get  away 
from  here." 

So  Luke  gets  up  and  kind  of  staggers  away  again,  kind  of 
dying  away  again  like  he  was  run  by  one  of  these  hyer  one- 
cylinder  gasoline  engines,  only  a  durn  sight  more  often  and 
regular.  He  went  on  down  the  levee  to  where  the  next  stand 
was,  and  they  druv  him  way  from  there,  and  he  went  on 
toward  the  next  one.  I  reckon  he  was  still  hoping  that  some- 
body would  take  pity  on  him  and  shoot  him,  because  now  he 
kind  of  seemed  to  give  up.  Now,  when  he  come  to  the  "oh, 
God"  part  of  hit,  they  said  you  could  hyear  him  clean  back 
to  camp.  They  said  he  would  echo  back  from  the  canebrake 
across  the  river  like  one  of  these  hyer  loud-speakers  down  in 
a  well.  They  said  that  even  the  dogs  on  the  trail  quit  baying, 


70  The  Country 

and  so  they  all  come  up  and  made  him  come  back  to  camp. 
That's  where  he  was  when  I  come  in.  And  Old  Man  Ash  was 
there,  too,  where  him  and  Major  had  done  come  in  so  Major 
could  take  a  nap,  and  neither  me  nor  Luke  noticing  him 
except  as  just  another  nigger  around. 

That  was  hit.  Neither  one  of  us  knowed  or  even  thought 
about  him.  I  be  dog  if  hit  don't  look  like  sometimes  that  when 
a  fellow  sets  out  to  play  a  joke,  hit  ain't  another  fellow  he's 
playing  that  joke  on;  hit's  a  kind  of  big  power  laying  still 
somewhere  in  the  dark  that  he  sets  out  to  prank  with  without 
knowing  hit,  and  hit  all  depends  on  whether  that  ere  power  is 
in  the  notion  to  take  a  joke  or  not,  whether  or  not  hit  blows 
up  right  in  his  face  like  this  one  did  in  mine.  Because  I  says, 
"You  done  had  them  since  nine  o'clock  yesterday?  That's 
nigh  twenty-four  hours.  Seems  like  to  me  you'd  'a'  done 
something  to  try  to  stop  them."  And  him  looldng  at  me  like 
he  couldn't  make  up  his  mind  whether  to  jump  up  and  bite 
my  head  off  or  just  to  try  and  bite  hisn  off,  saying  "Hic-uh! 
Hic-uh!"  slow  and  regular.  Then  he  says, 

"I  don't  want  to  get  shed  of  them.  I  like  them.  But  if  you 
had  them,  I  would  get  shed  of  them  for  you.  You  want  to 
know  how?" 

"How?  "I  says. 

"I'd  just  tear  your  head  off.  Then  you  wouldn't  have 
nothing  to  hiccup  with.  They  wouldn't  worry  you  then. 
I'd  be  glad  to  do  hit  for  you." 

"Sho  now,"  I  says,  looking  at  him  setting  there  on  the 
kitchen  steps — hit  was  after  supper,  but  he  hadn't  et  none, 
being  as  his  throat  had  done  turned  into  a  one-way  street  on 
him,  you  might  say — going  "Hic-uh!  Hic-oh!  Hic-oh!  Hic- 
uh!"  because  I  reckon  Major  had  done  told  him  what  would 
happen  to  him  if  he  taken  to  hollering  again.  I  never  meant  no 
harm.  Besides,  they  had  done  already  told  me  how  he  had 
kept  everybody  awake  all  night  the  night  before  and  had 


A  Bear  Hunt  yj 

done  skeered  all  the  game  outen  that  part  of  the  bottom,  and 
besides,  the  walk  might  help  him  to  pass  his  own  time.  So 
I  says,  "I  believe  I  know  how  you  might  get  shed  of  them. 
But,  of  course,  if  you  don't  want  to  get  shed  of  them " 

And  he  says,  "I  just  wish  somebody  would  tell  me  how. 
I'd  pay  ten  dollars  just  to  set  here  for  one  minute  without 

saying  'hie' "  Well,  that  set  him  off  sho  enough.  Hit 

was  like  up  to  that  time  his  insides  had  been  satisfied  with 
going  uhic-uh"  steady,  but  quiet,  but  now,  when  he  re- 
minded himself,  hit  was  like  he  had  done  opened  a  cut-out, 
because  right  away  he  begun  hollering,  "Hie — oh,  God!"  like 
when  them  fellows  on  the  deer  stands  had  made  him  come 
back  to  camp,  and  I  heard  Major's  feet  coming  bup-bup-bup 
across  the  floor.  Even  his  feet  sounded  mad,  and  I  says  quick, 

"Sh-h-h-h!  You  don't  want  to  get  Major  mad  again,  now." 

So  he  quieted  some,  setting  there  on  the  kitchen  steps, 
with  Old  Man  Ash  and  the  other  niggers  moving  around 
inside  the  kitchen,  and  he  says,  "I  will  try  anything  you  can 
sujest.  I  done  tried  ever' thing  I  knowed  and  ever'thing  any- 
body else  told  me  to.  I  done  held  my  breath  and  drunk  water 
until  I  feel  just  like  one  of  these  hyer  big  automobile  tahrs 
they  use  to  advertise  with,  and  I  hung  by  my  knees  offen 
that  limb  yonder  for  fifteen  minutes  and  drunk  a  pint  bottle 
full  of  water  upside  down,  and  somebody  said  to  swallow  a 
buckshot  and  I  done  that.  And  still  I  got  them.  What  do  you 
know  that  I  can  do?" 

"Well,"  I  says,  "I  don't  know  what  you  would  do.  But  if 
hit  was  me  that  had  them,  I'd  go  up  to  the  mound  and  get 
old  John  Basket  to  cure  me." 

Then  he  set  right  still,  and  then  he  turned  slow  and  looked 
at  me;  I  be  dog  if  for  a  minute  he  didn't  even  hiccup.  "John 
Basket?"  he  says. 

"Sho,"  I  says.  "Them  Indians  knows  all  sorts  of  dodges  that 
white  doctors  ain't  hyeard  about  yet.  He'd  be  glad  to  do 


j2  The  Country 

that  much  for  a  white  man,  too,  them  pore  aboriginees 
would,  because  the  white  folks  have  been  so  good  to  them — 
not  only  letting  them  keep  that  ere  hump  of  dirt  that  don't 
nobody  want  noways,  but  letting  them  use  names  like  ourn 
and  selling  them  flour  and  sugar  and  farm  tools  at  not  no 
more  than  a  fair  profit  above  what  they  would  cost  a  white 
man.  I  hyear  tell  how  pretty  soon  they  are  even  going  to  start 
letting  them  come  to  town  once  a  week.  Old  Basket  would 
be  glad  to  cure  them  hiccups  for  you." 

"John  Basket,"  he  says;  "them  Indians,"  he  says,  hiccuping 
slow  and  quiet  and  steady.  Then  he  says  right  sudden,  "I  be 
dog  if  I  will!"  Then  I  be  dog  if  hit  didn't  sound  like  he  was 
crying.  He  jumped  up  and  stood  there  cussing,  sounding  like 
he  was  crying.  "Hit  ain't  a  man  hyer  has  got  any  mercy  on 
me,  white  or  black.  Hyer  I  done  suffered  and  suffered  more 
than  twenty-four  hours  without  food  or  sleep,  and  not  a 
sonabitch  of  them  has  any  mercy  or  pity  on  me!" 

"Well,  I  was  trying  to,"  I  says.  "Hit  ain't  me  that's  got 
them.  I  just  thought,  seeing  as  how  you  had  done  seemed  to 
got  to  the  place  where  couldn't  no  white  man  help  you.  But 
hit  ain't  no  law  making  you  go  up  there  and  get  shed  of 
them."  So  I  made  like  I  was  going  away.  I  went  back  around 
the  corner  of  the  kitchen  and  watched  him  set  down  on  the 
steps  again,  going  "Hic-uh!  Hic-uh!"  slow  and  quiet  again; 
and  then  I  seen,  through  the  kitchen  window,  Old  Man  Ash 
standing  just  inside  the  kitchen  door,  right  still,  with  his  head 
bent  like  he  was  listening.  But  still  I  never  suspected  nothing. 
Not  even  did  I  suspect  nothing  when,  after  a  while,  I  watched 
Luke  get  up  again,  sudden  but  quiet,  and  stand  for  a  minute 
looking  at  the  window  where  the  poker  game  and  the  folks 
was,  and  then  look  off  into  the  dark  towards  the  road  that 
went  down  the  bottom.  Then  he  went  into  the  house,  quiet, 
and  come  out  a  minute  later  with  a  lighted  lantrun  and  a 
shotgun.  I  don't  know  whose  gun  hit  was  and  I  don't  reckon 


A  Bear  Hunt  73 

he  did,  nor  cared  neither.  He  just  come  out  kind  of  quiet 
and  determined,  and  went  on  down  the  road.  I  could  see  the 
lantrun,  but  I  could  hyear  him  a  long  time  after  the  lantrun 
had  done  disappeared.  I  had  come  back  around  the  kitchen 
then  and  I  was  listening  to  him  dying  away  down  the  bot- 
tom, when  old  Ash  says  behind  me: 

"He  gwine  up  dar?" 

"Up  where?  "I  says. 

"Up  to  de  mound,"  he  says. 

"Why,  I  be  dog  if  I  know,"  I  says.  "The  last  time  I  talked 
to  him  he  never  sounded  like  he  was  fixing  to  go  nowhere. 
Maybe  he  just  decided  to  take  a  walk.  Hit  might  do  him  some 
good;  make  him  sleep  tonight  and  help  him  get  up  a  appetite 
for  breakfast  maybe.  What  do  you  think?" 

But  Ash  never  said  nothing.  He  just  went  on  back  into  the 
kitchen.  And  still  I  never  suspected  nothing.  How  could  I? 
I  hadn't  never  even  seen  Jefferson  in  them  days.  I  hadn't 
never  even  seen  a  pair  of  shoes,  let  alone  two  stores  in  a  row 
or  a  arc  light. 

So  I  went  on  in  where  the  poker  game  was,  and  I  says, 
"Well,  gentlemen,  I  reckon  we  might  get  some  sleep  to- 
night." And  I  told  them  what  had  happened,  because  more 
than  like  he  would  stay  up  there  until  daylight  rather  than 
walk  them  five  miles  back  in  the  dark,  because  maybe  them 
Indians  wouldn't  mind  a  little  thing  like  a  fellow  with  hic- 
cups, like  white  folks  would.  And  I  be  dog  if  Major  didn't 
rear  up  about  hit. 

"Dammit,  Ratliff,"  he  says,  "you  ought  not  to  done  that." 

"Why,  I  just  sujested  hit  to  him,  Major,  for  a  joke,"  I  says. 
"I  just  told  him  about  how  old  Basket  was  a  kind  of  doctor. 
I  never  expected  him  to  take  hit  serious.  Maybe  he  ain't  even 
going  up  there.  Maybe's  he's  just  went  out  after  a  coon." 

But  most  of  them  felt  about  hit  like  I  did.  "Let  him  go," 
Mr.  Fraser  says.  "I  hope  he  walks  around  all  night.  Damn  if, 


74  The  Country 

I  slept  a  wink  for  him  all  night  long.  .  .  .  Deal  the  cards. 
Uncle  Ike." 

"Can't  stop  him  now,  noways,"  Uncle  Ike  says,  dealing 
the  cards.  "And  maybe  John  Basket  can  do  something  for 
his  hiccups.  Durn  young  fool,  eating  and  drinking  himself  to 
where  he  can't  talk  nor  swallow  neither.  He  set  behind  me 
on  a  log  this  morning,  sounding  just  like  a  hay  baler.  I  thought 
once  I'd  have  to  shoot  him  to  get  rid  of  him.  .  .  .  Queen  bets 
a  quarter,  gentlemen." 

So  I  set  there  watching  them,  thinking  now  and  then  about 
that  durn  fellow  with  his  shotgun  and  his  lantrun  stumbling 
and  blundering  along  through  the  woods,  walking  five  miles 
in  the  dark  to  get  shed  of  his  hiccups,  with  the  varmints  all 
watching  him  and  wondering  just  what  kind  of  a  hunt  this 
was  and  just  what  kind  of  a  two-leg  varmint  hit  was  that 
made  a  noise  like  that,  and  about  them  Indians  up  at  the 
mound  when  he  would  come  walking  in,  and  I  would  have 
•to  laugh  until  Major  says,  "What  in  hell  are  you  mumbling 
an J  giggling  at?" 

"iNbthing,"  I  says.  "I  was  just  thinking  about  a  fellow 
I  kncow." 

"A-nd  damn  if  you  hadn't  ought  to  be  out  there  with  him," 
Majc->r  says.  Then  he  decided  hit  was  about  drink  time  and  he 
beg^m  to  holler  for  Ash.  Finally  I  went  to  the  door  and  hol~ 
lere^d  for  Ash  towards  the  kitchen,  but  hit  was  another  one 
of  i  the  niggers  that  answered.  When  he  come  in  with  the 
deniijohn  and  fixings,  Major  looks  up  and  says  "Where's 
Ash?" 

"He  done  gone,"  the  nigger  says. 
"Gone?"  Major  says.  "Gone  where?" 
"He  say  he  gwine  up  to'ds  de  mound,"  the  nigger  says. 
And  still  I  never  knowed,  never  suspected.  I  just  thought  to 
myself,  "That  old  nigger  has  turned  powerful  tender-hearted 
all  of  a  sudden,  being  skeered  for  Luke  Provine  to  walk 


A  Bear  Hunt  75 

around  by  himself  in  the  dark.  Or  maybe  Ash  likes  to  listen 
to  them  hiccups,"  I  thought  to  myself. 

"Up  to  the  mound?"  Major  says.  "By  dad,  if  he  comes 
back  here  full  of  John  Basket's  bust-skull  whisky  I'll  skin 
him  alive." 

"He  ain't  say  what  he  gwine  fer,"  the  nigger  says.  "All  he 
tell  me  when  he  left,  he  gwine  up  to'ds  de  mound  and  he  be 
back  by  daylight." 

"He  better  be,"  Major  says.  "He  better  be  sober  too." 

So  we  set  there  and  they  went  on  playing  and  me  watching 
them  like  a  durn  fool,  not  suspecting  nothing,  just  thinking 
how  hit  was  a  shame  that  that  durned  old  nigger  would  have 
to  come  in  and  spoil  Luke's  trip,  and  hit  come  along  towards 
eleven  o'clock  and  they  begun  to  talk  about  going  to  bed, 
being  as  they  was  all  going  out  on  stand  tomorrow,  when  we 
hyeard  the  sound.  Hit  sounded  like  a  drove  of  wild  horses 
coming  up  that  road,  and  we  hadn't  no  more  than  turned 
towards  the  door,  a-asking  one  another  what  in  tarnation  hit 
could  be,  with  Major  just  saying,  "What  in  the  name 

of "  when  hit  come  across  the  porch  like  a  harrycane 

and  down  the  hall,  and  the  door  busted  open  and  there  Luke 
was.  He  never  had  no  gun  and  lantrun  then,  and  his  clothes 
was  nigh  tore  clean  offen  him,  and  his  face  looked  wild  as 
ere  a  man  in  the  Jackson  a-sylum.  But  the  main  thing  1 
noticed  was  that  he  wasn't  hiccuping  now.  And  this  time, 
too,  he  was  nigh  crying. 

"They  was  fixing  to  kill  me! "  he  says.  "They  was  going  to 
burn  me  to  death!  They  had  done  tried  me  and  tied  me  onto 
the  pile  of  wood,  and  one  of  them  was  coming  with  the  fahr 
when  I  managed  to  bust  loose  and  run! " 

"Who  was?"  Major  says.  "What  in  the  tarnation  hell  are 
you  talking  about?" 

"Them  Indians!"  Luke  says.  "They  was  fixing  to " 

"What?"  Major  hollers.  "Damn  to  blue  blazes,  what?" 


j6  The  Country 

And  that  was  where  I  had  to  put  my  foot  in  hit.  He  hadn't 
never  seen  me  until  then.  "At  least  they  cured  your  hiccups," 
I  says. 

Hit  was  then  that  he  stopped  right  still.  He  hadn't  never 
even  seen  me,  but  he  seen  me  now.  He  stopped  right  still  and 
looked  at  me  with  that  ere  wild  face  that  looked  like  hit  had 
just  escaped  from  Jackson  and  had  ought  to  be  took  back 
there  quick. 

"What?  "he  says. 

"Anyway,  you  done  run  out  from  under  them  hiccups," 
I  says. 

Well,  sir,  he  stood  there  for  a  full  minute.  His  eyes  had 
done  gone  blank,  and  he  stood  there  with  his  head  cocked  a 
little,  listening  to  his  own  insides.  I  reckon  hit  was  the  first 
time  he  had  took  time  to  find  out  that  they  was  gone.  He 
stood  there  right  still  for  a  full  minute  while  that  ere  kind  of 
shocked  astonishment  come  onto  his  face.  Then  he  jumped 
on  me.  I  was  still  setting  in  my  chair,  and  I  be  dog  if  for  a 
minute  I  didn't  think  the  roof  had  done  fell  in. 

Well,  they  got  him  offen  me  at  last  and  got  him  quieted 
down,  and  then  they  washed  me  off  and  give  me  a  drink,  and 
I  felt  better.  But  even  with  that  drink  I  never  felt  so  good 
but  what  I  felt  hit  was  my  duty  to  my  honor  to  call  him 
outen  the  back  yard,  as  the  fellow  says.  No,  sir.  I  know  when 
I  done  made  a  mistake  and  guessed  wrong;  Major  de  Spain 
wasn't  the  only  man  that  caught  a  bear  on  that  hunt;  no,  sir. 
I  be  dog,  if  it  had  been  daylight,  I'd  a  hitched  up  my  Ford 
and  taken  out  of  there.  But  hit  was  midnight,  and  besides, 
that  nigger,  Ash,  was  on  my  mind  then.  I  had  just  begun  to 
suspect  that  hit  was  more  to  this  business  than  met  the  nekkid 
eye.  And  hit  wasn't  no  good  time  then  to  go  back  to  the 
kitchen  then  and  ask  him  about  hit,  because  Luke  was  using 
the  kitchen.  Major  had  give  him  a  drink,  too,  and  he  was 
back  there,  making  up  for  them  two  days  he  hadn't  et,  talk- 


A  Bear  Hunt  77 

ing  a  right  smart  about  what  he  aimed  to  do  to  such  and  such 
a  sonabitch  that  would  try  to  play  his  durn  jokes  on  him,  not 
mentioning  no  names;  but  mostly  laying  himself  in  a  new  set 
of  hiccups,  though  I  ain't  going  back  to  see. 

So  I  waited  until  daylight,  until  I  hyeard  the  niggers  stir- 
ring around  in  the  kitchen;  then  I  went  back  there.  And 
there  was  old  Ash,  looking  like  he  always  did,  oiling  Major's 
Jboots  and  setting  them  behind  the  stove  and  then  taking  up 
Major's  rifle  and  beginning  to  load  the  magazine.  He  just 
looked  once  at  my  face  when  I  come  in,  and  went  on  shoving 
ca'tridges  into  the  gun. 

"So  you  went  up  to  the  mound  last  night,"  I  says.  He 
looked  up  at  me  again,  quick,  and  then  down  again.  But  he 
never  said  nothing,  looking  like  a  durned  old  frizzle-headed 
ape.  "You  must  know  some  of  them  folks  up  there,"  I  says. 

"I  knows  some  of  um,"  he  says,  shoving  ca'tridges  into 
the  gun. 

"You  know  old  John  Basket?"  I  says. 

"I  knows  some  of  um,"  he  says,  not  looking  at  me. 

"Did  you  see  him  last  night?"  I  says.  He  never  said  noth- 
ing at  all.  So  then  I  changed  my  tone,  like  a  fellow  has  to  do 
to  get  anything  outen  a  nigger.  "Look  here,"  I  says.  "Look 
at  me."  He  looked  at  me.  "Just  what  did  you  do  up  there 
last  night?" 

"Who,  me?  "he  says. 

"Come  on,"  I  says.  "Hit's  all  over  now.  Mr.  Provine  has 
done  got  over  his  hiccups  and  we  done  both  forgot  about 
anything  that  might  have  happened  when  he  got  back  last 
night.  You  never  went  up  there  just  for  fun  last  night.  Or 
maybe  hit  was  something  you  told  them  up  there,  told  old 
man  Basket.  Was  that  hit?"  He  had  done  quit  looking  at  me, 
but  he  never  stopped  shoving  ca'tridges  into  that  gun.  He 
looked  quick  to  both  sides.  "Come  on,"  I  says.  "Do  you  want 
to  tell  me  what  happened  up  there,  or  do  you  want  me  to 


78  The  Country 

mention  to  Mr.  Provine  that  you  was  mixed  up  in  hit  some 
way?"  He  never  stopped  loading  the  rifle  and  he  never 
looked  at  me,  but  I  be  dog  if  I  couldn't  almost  see  his  mind 
working.  "Come  on,"  I  says.  "Just  what  was  you  doing  up 
there  last  night?" 

Then  he  told  me.  I  reckon  he  knowed  hit  wasn't  no  use 
to  try  to  hide  hit  then;  that  if  I  never  told  Luke,  I  could  still 
tell  Major.  "I  jest  dodged  him  and  got  dar  first  en  told  um 
he  was  a  new  revenue  agent  coming  up  dar  tonight,  but  dat 
he  warn't  much  en  dat  all  dey  had  to  do  was  to  give  um  a 
good  skeer  en  likely  he  would  go  away.  En  dey  did  en  he 
did." 

"Well!"  I  says.  "Well!  I  always  thought  I  was  pretty 
good  at  joking  folks,"  I  says,  "but  I  take  a  back  seat  for  you. 
What  happened?"  I  says.  "Did  you  see  hit?" 

"Never  much  happened,"  he  says.  "Dey  jest  went  down 
cle  road  a  piece  en  atter  a  while  hyer  he  come  a-hickin'  en 
a-blumpin'  up  de  road  wid  de  lant'un  en  de  gun.  They  took 
de  lant'un  en  de  gun  away  frum  him  en  took  him  up  pon 
topper  de  mound  en  talked  de  Injun  language  at  him  fer  a 
while.  Den  dey  piled  up  some  wood  en  fixed  him  on  hit  so 
he  could  git  loose  in  a  minute,  en  den  one  of  dem  come  up 
de  hill  wid  de  fire,  en  he  done  de  rest." 

"Well!"  I  says.  "Well,  I'll  be  eternally  durned!"  And  then 
all  on  a  sudden  hit  struck  me.  I  had  done  turned  and  was 
going  out  when  hit  struck  me,  and  I  stopped  and  I  says, 
"There's  one  more  thing  I  want  to  know.  Why  did  you  do 
hit?" 

Now  he  set  there  on  the  wood  box,  rubbing  the  gun  with 
his  hand,  not  looking  at  me  again.  "I  wuz  jest  helping  you 
kyo  him  of  dem  hiccups." 

"Come  on,"  I  says.  "That  wasn't  your  reason.  What  was 
hit?  Remember,  I  got  a  right  smart  I  can  tell  Mr.  Provine 
and  Major  both  now.  I  don't  know  what  Major  will  do,  but 
I  know  what  Mr.  Provine  will  do  if  I  was  to  tell  him." 


A  Bear  Hunt  79 

And  he  set  there,  rubbing  that  ere  rifle  with  his  hand.  He 
was  kind  of  looking  down,  like  he  was  thinking.  Not  like  he 
was  trying  to  decide  whether  to  tell  me  or  not,  but  like  he 
was  remembering  something  from  a  long  time  back.  And 
that's  exactly  what  he  was  doing,  because  he  says: 

"I  ain't  skeered  for  him  to  know.  One  time  dey  was  a 
picnic.  Hit  was  a  long  time  back,  nigh  twenty  years  ago. 
He  was  a  young  man  den,  en  in  de  middle  of  de  picnic,  him 
en  he  brother  en  nudder  white  man — I  fergit  he  name — dey 
rid  up  wid  dey  pistols  out  en  cotch  us  niggers  one  at  a  time 
en  burned  our  collars  off.  Hit  was  him  dat  burnt  mine." 

"And  you  waited  all  this  time  and  went  to  all  this  trouble, 
just  to  get  even  with  him?"  I  says. 

"Hit  warn't  dat,"  he  says,  rubbing  the  rifle  with  his  hand. 
"Hit  wuz  de  collar.  Back  in  dem  days  a  top  nigger  hand 
made  two  dollars  a  week.  I  paid  fo'  bits  fer  dat  collar.  Hit 
wuz  blue,  wid  a  red  picture  of  de  race  betwixt  de  Natchez 
en  de  Robert  E.  Lee  running  around  hit.  He  burnt  hit  up. 
I  makes  ten  dollars  a  week  now.  En  I  jest  wish  I  knowed 
where  I  could  buy  another  collar  like  dat  un  fer  half  of  hit. 
I  wish  I  did." 


Tvuo  Soldiers 


ME  AND  PETE  would  go  down  to  Old  Man  Killegrew's  and 
listen  to  his  radio.  We  would  wait  until  after  supper,  after 
dark,  and  we  would  stand  outside  Old  Man  Killegrew's  par- 
lor window,  and  we  could  hear  it  because  Old  Man  Kille- 
grew's wife  was  deaf,  and  so  he  run  the  radio  as  loud  as  it 
would  run,  and  so  me  and  Pete  could  hear  it  plain  as  Old 
Man  Killegrew's  wife  could,  I  reckon,  even  standing  outside 
with  the  window  closed. 

And  that  night  I  said,  "What?  Japanese?  What's  a  pearl 
harbor?"  and  Pete  said,  "Hush." 

And  so  we  stood  there,  it  was  cold,  listening  to  the  fellow 
in  the  radio  talking,  only  I  couldn't  make  no  heads  nor  tails 
neither  out  of  it.  Then  the  fellow  said  that  would  be  all  for 
a  while,  and  me  and  Pete  walked  back  up  the  road  to  home, 
and  Pete  told  me  what  it  was.  Because  he  was  nigh  twenty 
and  he  had  done  finished  the  Consolidated  last  June  and  he 
knowed  a  heap:  about  them  Japanese  dropping  bombs  on 
Pearl  Harbor  and  that  Pearl  Harbor  was  across  the  water. 

"Across  what  water?"  I  said.  "Across  that  Government 
reservoy  up  at  Oxford?" 

"Naw,"  Pete  said.  "Across  the  big  water.  The  Pacific 
Ocean." 

We  went  home.  Maw  and  pap  was  already  asleep,  and  me 

Ki 


82  The  Country 

and  Pete  laid  in  the  bed,  and  I  still  couldn't  understand  where 
it  was,  and  Pete  told  me  again — the  Pacific  Ocean. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  Pete  said.  "You're  going 
on  nine  years  old.  You  been  in  school  now  ever  since  Sep- 
tember. Ain't  you  learned  nothing  yet?" 

"I  reckon  we  ain't  got  as  fer  as  the  Pacific  Ocean  yet," 
I  said. 

We  was  still  sowing  the  vetch  then  that  ought  to  been  all 
finished  by  the  fifteenth  of  November,  because  pap  was  still 
behind,  just  like  he  had  been  ever  since  me  and  Pete  had 
knowed  him.  And  we  had  firewood  to  git  in,  too,  but  every 
night  me  and  Pete  would  go  down  to  Old  Man  Killegrew's 
and  stand  outside  his  parlor  window  in  the  cold  and  listen  to 
his  radio;  then  we  would  come  back  home  and  lay  in  the 
bed  and  Pete  would  tell  me  what  it  was.  That  is,  he  would 
tell  me  for  a  while.  Then  he  wouldn't  tell  me.  It  was  like  he 
didn't  want  to  talk  about  it  no  more.  He  would  tell  me  to 
shut  up  because  he  wanted  to  go  to  sleep,  but  he  never 
wanted  to  go  to  sleep. 

He  would  lay  there,  a  heap  stiller  than  if  he  was  asleep, 
and  it  would  be  something,  I  could  feel  it  coming  out  of  him, 
like  he  was  mad  at  me  even,  only  I  knowed  he  wasn't  think- 
ing about  me,  or  like  he  was  worried  about  something,  and  it 
wasn't  that  neither,  because  he  never  had  nothing  to  worry 
about.  He  never  got  behind  like  pap,  let  alone  stayed  behind. 
Pap  give  him  ten  acres  when  he  graduated  from  the  Con- 
solidated, and  me  and  Pete  both  reckoned  pap  was  durn  glad 
to  get  shut  of  at  least  ten  acres,  less  to  have  to  worry  with 
himself;  and  Pete  had  them  ten  acres  all  sowed  to  vetch  and 
busted  out  and  bedded  for  the  winter,  and  so  it  wasn't  that. 
But  it  was  something.  And  still  we  would  go  down  to  Old 
Man  Killegrew's  every  night  and  listen  to  his  radio,  and  they 
was  at  it  in  the  Philippines  now,  but  General  MacArthur 
was  holding  um.  Then  we  would  come  back  home  and  lay  in 


TIVO  Soldiers  83 

the  bed,  and  Pete  wouldn't  tell  me  nothing  or  talk  at  all.  He 
would  just  lay  there  still  as  a  ambush  and  when  I  would 
touch  him,  his  side  or  his  leg  would  feel  hard  and  still  as  iron, 
until  after  a  while  I  would  go  to  sleep. 

Then  one  night — it  was  the  first  time  he  had  said  nothing 
to  me  except  to  jump  on  me  about  not  chopping  enough 
wood  at  the  wood  tree  where  we  was  cutting — he  said,  "I 
got  to  go." 

"Go  where?  "I  said. 

"To  that  war,"  Pete  said. 

"Before  we  even  finish  gettin'  in  the  firewood?" 

"Firewood,  hell,"  Pete  said. 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "When  we  going  to  start?" 

But  he  wasn't  even  listening.  He  laid  there,  hard  and  still 
as  iron  in  the  dark.  "I  got  to  go,"  he  said.  "I  jest  ain't  going 
to  put  up  with  no  folks  treating  the  Unity  States  that  way." 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "Firewood  or  no  firewood,  I  reckon  we  got 
to  go." 

This  time  he  heard  me.  He  laid  still  again,  but  it  was  a 
different  kind  of  still. 

"You?  "he  said.  "To  a  war?" 

"You'll  whup  the  big  uns  and  I'll  whup  the  little  uns," 
I  said. 

Then  he  told  me  I  couldn't  go.  At  first  I  thought  he  just 
never  wanted  me  tagging  after  him,  like  he  wouldn't  leave  me 
go  with  him  when  he  went  sparking  them  girls  of  Tull's. 
Then  he  told  me  the  Army  wouldn't  leave  me  go  because 
I  was  too  little,  and  then  I  knowed  he  really  meant  it  and 
that  I  couldn't  go  nohow  noways.  And  somehow  I  hadn't 
believed  until  then  that  he  was  going  himself,  but  now  I 
knowed  he  was  and  that  he  wasn't  going  to  leave  me  go  with 
him  a-tall. 

"I'll  chop  the  wood  and  tote  the  water  for  you-all  then!" 
I  said.  "You  got  to  have  wood  and  water!" 


84  The  Country 

Anyway,  he  was  listening  to  me  now.  He  wasn't  like  iron 
now. 

He  turned  onto  his  side  and  put  his  hand  on  my  chest 
because  it  was  me  that  was  laying  straight  and  hard  on  my 
back  now. 

"No,"  he  said.  "You  got  to  stay  here  and  help  pap." 

"Help  him  what?"  I  said.  "He  ain't  never  caught  up  no- 
how. He  can't  get  no  further  behind.  He  can  sholy  take  care 
of  this  little  shirttail  of  a  farm  while  me  and  you  are  whup- 
ping  them  Japanese.  I  got  to  go  too.  If  you  got  to  go,  then 
so  have  I." 

"No,"  Pete  said.  "Hush  now.  Hush."  And  he  meant  it, 
and  I  knowed  he  did.  Only  I  made  sho  from  his  own  mouth. 
I  quit. 

"So  I  just  can't  go  then,"  I  said. 

"No,"  Pete  said.  "You  just  can't  go.  You're  too  little,  in 
the  first  place,  and  in  the  second  place " 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "Then  shut  up  and  leave  me  go  to 
sleep." 

So  he  hushed  then  and  laid  back.  And  I  laid  there  like  I 
was  already  asleep,  and  pretty  soon  he  was  asleep  and  I 
knowed  it  was  the  wanting  to  go  to  the  war  that  had  worried 
him  and  kept  him  awake,  and  now  that  he  had  decided  to  go, 
he  wasn't  worried  any  more. 

The  next  morning  he  told  maw  and  pap.  Maw  was  all 
right.  She  cried. 

"No,"  she  said,  crying,  "I  don't  want  him  to  go.  I  would 
rather  go  myself  in  his  place,  if  I  could.  I  don't  want  to  save 
the  country.  Them  Japanese  could  take  it  and  keep  it,  so  long 
as  they  left  me  and  my  family  and  my  children  alone.  But  I 
remember  my  brother  Marsh  in  that  other  war.  He  had  to  go 
to  that  one  when  he  wasn't  but  nineteen,  and  our  mother 
couldn't  understand  it  then  any  more  than  I  can  now.  But 
she  told  Marsh  if  he  had  to  go,  he  had  to  go.  And  so,  if  Pete's 


T*wo  Soldiers  85 

got  to  go  to  this  one,  he's  got  to  go  to  it.  Jest  don't  ask  me 
to  understand  why." 

But  pap  was  the  one.  He  was  the  feller.  "To  the  war?"  he 
said.  "Why,  I  just  don't  see  a  bit  of  use  in  that.  You  ain't  old 
enough  for  the  draft,  and  the  country  ain't  being  invaded. 
Our  President  in  Washington,  D.  C,  is  watching  the  condi- 
tions and  he  will  notify  us.  Besides,  in  that  other  war  your  ma 
just  mentioned,  I  was  drafted  and  sent  clean  to  Texas  and  was 
held  there  nigh  eight  months  until  they  finally  quit  fighting. 
It  seems  to  me  that  that,  along  with  your  Uncle  Marsh  who 
received  a  actual  wound  on  the  battlefields  of  France,  is 
enough  for  me  and  mine  to  have  to  do  to  protect  the  coun- 
try, at  least  in  my  lifetime.  Besides,  what'll  I  do  for  help  on 
the  farm  with  you  gone?  It  seems  to  me  I'll  get  mighty  far 
behind." 

"You  been  behind  as  long  as  I  can  remember,"  Pete  said. 
"Anyway,  I'm  going.  I  got  to." 

"Of  course  he's  got  to  go,"  I  said.  "Them  Japanese " 

"You  hush  your  mouth!"  maw  said,  crying.  "Nobody's 
talking  to  you!  Go  and  get  me  a  armful  of  wood!  That's 
what  you  can  do!" 

So  I  got  the  wood.  And  all  the  next  day,  while  me  and 
Pete  and  pap  was  getting  in  as  much  wood  as  we  could  in 
that  time  because  Pete  said  how  pap's  idea  of  plenty  of  wood 
was  one  more  stick  laying  against  the  wall  that  maw  ain't  put 
on  the  fire  yet,  Maw  was  getting  Pete  ready  to  go.  She 
washed  and  mended  his  clothes  and  cooked  him  a  shoe  box 
of  vittles.  And  that  night  me  and  Pete  laid  in  the  bed  and 
listened  to  her  packing  his  grip  and  crying,  until  after  a 
while  Pete  got  up  in  his  nightshirt  and  went  back  there,  and 
I  could  hear  them  talking,  until  at  last  maw  said,  "You  got 
to  go,  and  so  I  want  you  to  go.  But  I  don't  understand  it, 
and  I  won't  never,  and  so  don't  expect  me  to."  And  Pete 
come  back  and  got  into  the  bed  again  and  laid  again  still  and 


86  The  Country 

hard  as  iron  on  his  back,  and  then  tie  said,  and  he  wasn't 
talking  to  me,  he  wasn't  talking  to  nobody:  "I  got  to  go. 
I  just  got  to." 

"Sho  you  got  to,"  I  said.  "Them  Japanese "  He  turned 

over  hard,  he  kind  of  surged  over  onto  his  side,  looking  at 
me  in  the  dark. 

"Anyway,  you're  all  right,"  he  said.  "I  expected  to  have 
more  trouble  with  you  than  with  all  the  rest  of  them  put 
together." 

"I  reckon  I  can't  help  it  neither,"  I  said.  "But  maybe  it  will 
run  a  few  years  longer  and  I  can  get  there.  Maybe  someday 
I  will  jest  walk  in  on  you." 

"I  hope  not,"  Pete  said.  "Folks  don't  go  to  wars  for  fun. 
A  man  don't  leave  his  maw  crying  just  for  fun." 

"Then  why  are  you  going?"  I  said. 

"I  got  to,"  he  said.  "I  just  got  to.  Now  you  go  on  to  sleep. 
I  got  to  ketch  that  early  bus  in  the  morning." 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "I  hear  tell  Memphis  is  a  big  place.  How 
will  you  find  where  the  Army's  at?" 

"I'll  ask  somebody  where  to  go  to  join  it,"  Pete  said.  "Go 
on  to  sleep  now." 

"Is  that  what  you'll  ask  for?  Where  to  join  the  Army?" 
I  said. 

"Yes,"  Pete  said.  He  turned  onto  his  back  again.  "Shut  up 
and  go  to  sleep." 

We  went  to  sleep.  The  next  morning  we  et  breakfast  by 
lamplight  because  the  bus  would  pass  at  six  o'clock.  Maw 
wasn't  crying  now.  She  jest  looked  grim  and  busy,  putting 
breakfast  on  the  table  while  we  et  it.  Then  she  finished  pack- 
ing Pete's  grip,  except  he  never  wanted  to  take  no  grip  to 
the  war,  but  maw  said  decent  folks  never  went  nowhere,  not 
even  to  a  war,  without  a  change  of  clothes  and  something  to 
tote  them  in.  She  put  in  the  shoe  box  of  fried  chicken  and 
biscuits  and  she  put  the  Bible  in,  too,  and  then  it  was  time  to 


Two  Soldiers  87 

go.  We  didn't  know  until  then  that  maw  wasn't  going  to  the 
bus.  She  jest  brought  Pete's  cap  and  overcoat,  and  still  she 
didn't  cry  no  more,  she  jest  stood  with  her  hands  on  Pete's 
shoulders  and  she  didn't  move,  but  somehow,  and  just  hold- 
ing Pete's  shoulders,  she  looked  as  hard  and  fierce  as  when 
Pete  had  turned  toward  me  in  the  bed  last  night  and  tole  me 
that  anyway  I  was  all  right. 

"They  could  take  the  country  and  keep  the  country,  so 
long  as  they  never  bothered  me  and  mine,"  she  said.  Then 
she  said,  "Don't  never  forget  who  you  are.  You  ain't  rich 
and  the  rest  of  the  world  outside  of  Frenchman's  Bend  never 
heard  of  you.  But  your  blood  is  good  as  any  blood  anywhere, 
and  don't  you  never  forget  it." 

Then  she  kissed  him,  and  then  we  was  out  of  the  house, 
with  pap  toting  Pete's  grip  whether  Pete  wanted  him  to  or 
not.  There  wasn't  no  dawn  even  yet,  not  even  after  we  had 
stood  on  the  highway  by  the  mailbox,  a  while.  Then  we  seen 
the  lights  of  the  bus  coming  and  I  was  watching  the  bus  until 
it  come  up  and  Pete  flagged  it,  and  then,  sho  enough,  there 
was  daylight — it  had  started  while  I  wasn't  watching.  And 
now  me  and  Pete  expected  pap  to  say  something  else  foolish, 
like  he  done  before,  about  how  Uncle  Marsh  getting 
wounded  in  France  and  that  trip  to  Texas  pap  taken  in  1918 
ought  to  be  enough  to  save  the  Unity  States  in  1942,  but  he 
never.  He  done  all  right  too.  He  jest  said,  "Good-by,  son. 
Always  remember  what  your  ma  told  you  and  write  her 
whenever  you  find  the  time."  Then  he  shaken  Pete's  hand, 
and  Pete  looked  at  me  a  minute  and  put  his  hand  on  my  head 
and  rubbed  my  head  durn  nigh  hard  enough  to  wring  my 
neck  off  and  jumped  into  the  bus,  and  the  feller  wound  the 
door  shut  and  the  bus  began  to  hum;  then  it  was  moving, 
humming  and  grinding  and  whining  louder  and  louder;  it 
was  going  fast,  with  two  little  red  lights  behind  it  that  never 
seemed  to  get  no  littler,  but  just  seemed  to  be  running  to- 


88  The  Country 

gether  until  pretty  soon  they  would  touch  and  jest  be  one 
light.  But  they  never  did,  and  then  the  bus  was  gone,  and 
even  like  it  was,  I  could  have  pretty  nigh  busted  out  crying, 
nigh  to  nine  years  old  and  all. 

Me  and  pap  went  back  to  the  house.  All  that  day  we 
worked  at  the  wood  tree,  and  so  I  never  had  no  good  chance 
until  about  middle  of  the  afternoon.  Then  I  taken  my  sling- 
shot and  I  would  have  liked  to  took  all  my  bird  eggs,  too, 
because  Pete  had  give  me  his  collection  and  he  holp  me  with 
mine,  and  he  would  like  to  git  the  box  out  and  look  at  them 
as  good  as  I  would,  even  if  he  was  nigh  twenty  years  old. 
But  the  box  was  too  big  to  tote  a  long  ways  and  have  to 
worry  with,  so  I  just  taken  the  shikepoke  egg,  because  it  was 
the  best  un,  and  wropped  it  up  good  into  a  matchbox  and  hid 
it  and  the  slingshot  under  the  corner  of  the  barn.  Then  we  et 
supper  and  went  to  bed,  and  I  thought  then  how  if  I  would 
'a'  had  to  stayed  in  that  room  and  that  bed  like  that  even  for 
one  more  night,  I  jest  couldn't  'a'  stood  it.  Then  I  could  hear 
pap  snoring,  but  I  never  heard  no  sound  from  maw,  whether 
she  was  asleep  or  not,  and  I  don't  reckon  she  was.  So  I  taken 
my  shoes  and  drapped  them  out  the  window,  and  then  I 
clumb  out  like  I  used  to  watch  Pete  do  when  he  was  still  jest 
seventeen  and  pap  held  that  he  was  too  young  yet  to  be  tom- 
catting  around  at  night,  and  wouldn't  leave  him  out,  and  I 
put  on  my  shoes  and  went  to  the  barn  and  got  the  slingshot 
and  the  shikepoke  egg  and  went  to  the  highway. 

It  wasn't  cold,  it  was  jest  durn  confounded  dark,  and  that 
highway  stretched  on  in  front  of  me  like,  without  nobody 
using  it,  it  had  stretched  out  half  again  as  fer  just  like  a  man 
does  when  he  lays  down,  so  that  for  a  time  it  looked  like  full 
sun  was  going  to  ketch  me  before  I  had  finished  them  twenty- 
two  miles  to  Jefferson.  But  it  didn't.  Daybreak  was  jest  start- 
ing when  I  walked  up  the  hill  into  town.  I  could  smell  break- 
fast cooking  in  the  cabins  and  I  wished  I  had  thought  to 


Tivo  Soldiers  89 

brought  me  a  cold  biscuit,  but  that  was  too  late  now.  And 
Pete  had  told  me  Memphis  was  a  piece  beyond  Jefferson,  but 
I  never  knowed  it  was  no  eighty  miles.  So  I  stood  there  on 
that  empty  square,  with  daylight  coming  and  coming  and 
the  street  lights  still  burning  and  that  Law  looking  down  at 
me,  and  me  still  eighty  miles  from  Memphis,  and  it  had  took 
me  all  night  to  walk  jest  twenty-two  miles,  and  so,  by  the 
time  I  got  to  Memphis  at  that  rate,  Pete  would  'a7  done 
already  started  for  Pearl  Harbor. 

"Where  do  you  come  from?"  the  Law  said. 

And  I  told  him  again.  "I  got  to  get  to  Memphis.  My 
brother's  there." 

"You  mean  you  ain't  got  any  folks  around  here?"  the  Law 
said.  "Nobody  but  that  brother?  What  are  you  doing  way 
off  down  here  and  your  brother  in  Memphis?" 

And  I  told  him  again,  "I  got  to  get  to  Memphis.  I  ain't  got 
no  time  to  waste  talking  about  it  and  I  ain't  got  time  to  walk 
it.  I  got  to  git  there  today." 

"Come  on  here,"  the  Law  said. 

We  went  down  another  street.  And  there  was  the  bus, 
just  like  when  Pete  got  into  it  yestiddy  morning,  except  there 
wasn't  no  lights  on  it  now  and  it  was  empty.  There  was  a 
regular  bus  dee-po  like  a  railroad  dee-po,  with  a  ticket 
counter  and  a  feller  behind  it,  and  the  Law  said,  "Set  down 
over  there,"  and  I  set  down  on  the  bench,  and  the  Law  said, 
"I  want  to  use  your  telephone,"  and  he  talked  in  the  tele- 
phone a  minute  and  put  it  down  and  said  to  the  feller  behind 
the  ticket  counter,  "Keep  your  eye  on  him.  I'll  be  back  as 
soon  as  Mrs.  Habersham  can  arrange  to  get  herself  up  and 
dressed."  He  went  out.  I  got  up  and  went  to  the  ticket 
counter. 

"I  want  to  go  to  Memphis,"  I  said. 

"You  bet,"  the  feller  said.  "You  set  down  on  the  bench 
now.  Mr.  Foote  will  be  back  in  a  minute." 


90  The  Country 

"I  don't  know  no  Mr.  Foote,"  I  said.  "I  want  to  ride  that 
bus  to  Memphis." 

"You  got  some  money?"  he  said.  "It'll  cost  you  seventy- 
two  cents." 

I  taken  out  the  matchbox  and  unwropped  the  shikepoke 
egg.  "I'll  swap  you  this  for  a  ticket  to  Memphis,"  I  said. 

"What's  that?  "he  said. 

"It's  a  shikepoke  egg,"  I  said.  "You  never  seen  one  before. 
It's  worth  a  dollar.  I'll  take  seventy-two  cents  fer  it." 

"No,"  he  said,  "the  fellers  that  own  that  bus  insist  on  a 
cash  basis.  If  I  started  swapping  tickets  for  bird  eggs  and 
livestock  and  such,  they  would  fire  me.  You  go  and  set  down 
on  the  bench  now,  like  Mr.  Foote " 

I  started  for  the  door,  but  he  caught  me,  he  put  one  hand 
on  the  ticket  counter  and  jumped  over  it  and  caught  up  with 
me  and  reached  his  hand  out  to  ketch  my  shirt.  I  whupped 
out  my  pocketknife  and  snapped  it  open. 

"You  put  a  hand  on  me  and  I'll  cut  it  off,"  I  said. 

I  tried  to  dodge  him  and  run  at  the  door,  but  he  could 
move  quicker  than  any  grown  man  I  ever  see,  quick  as 
Pete  almost.  He  cut  me  off  and  stood  with  his  back  against 
the  door  and  one  foot  raised  a  little,  and  there  wasn't  no 
other  way  to  get  out.  "Get  back  on  that  bench  and  stay 
there,"  he  said. 

And  there  wasn't  no  other  way  out.  And  he  stood  there 
with  his  back  against  the  door.  So  I  went  back  to  the  bench. 
And  then  it  seemed  like  to  me  that  dee-po  was  full  of  folks. 
There  was  that  Law  again,  and  there  was  two  ladies  in  fur 
coats  and  their  faces  already  painted.  But  they  still  looked 
like  they  had  got  up  in  a  hurry  and  they  still  never  liked  it, 
a  old  one  and  a  young  one,  looking  down  at  me. 

"He  hasn't  got  a  overcoat!"  the  old  one  said.  "How  in 
the  world  did  he  ever  get  down  here  by  himself?" 

"I  ask  you,"  the  Law  said.  "I  couldn't  get  nothing  out  of 


TIVO  Soldiers  91 

him  except  his  brother  is  in  Memphis  and  he  wants  to  get 
back  up  there." 

"That's  right,"  I  said.  "I  got  to  git  to  Memphis  today." 

"Of  course  you  must,"  the  old  one  said.  "Are  you  sure 
you  can  find  your  brother  when  you  get  to  Memphis?" 

"I  reckon  I  can,"  I  said.  "I  ain't  got  but  one  and  I  have 
knowed  him  all  my  life.  I  reckon  I  will  know  him  again  when 
I  see  him." 

The  old  one  looked  at  me.  "Somehow  he  doesn't  look  like 
he  lives  in  Memphis,"  she  said. 

"He  probably  don't,"  the  Law  said.  "You  can't  tell 
though.  He  might  live  anywhere,  overhalls  or  not.  This  day 

and  time  they  get  scattered  overnight  from  he hope  to 

breakfast;  boys  and  girls,  too,  almost  before  they  can  walk 
good.  He  might  have  been  in  Missouri  or  Texas  either  yes- 
tiddy,  for  all  we  know.  But  he  don't  seem  to  have  any  doubt 
his  brother  is  in  Memphis.  All  I  know  to  do  is  send  him  up 
there  and  leave  him  look." 

"Yes,"  the  old  one  said. 

The  young  one  set  down  on  the  bench  by  me  and  opened 
a  hand  satchel  and  taken  out  a  artermatic  writing  pen  and 
some  papers. 

"Now,  honey,"  the  old  one  said,  "we're  going  to  see  that 
you  find  your  brother,  but  we  must  have  a  case  history  for 
our  files  first.  We  want  to  know  your  name  and  your  broth- 
er's name  and  where  you  were  born  and  when  your  parents 
died." 

"I  don't  need  no  case  history  neither,"  I  said.  "All  I  want 
is  to  get  to  Memphis.  I  got  to  get  there  today." 

"You  see?"  the  Law  said.  He  said  it  almost  like  he  enjoyed 
it.  "That's  what  I  told  you." 

"You're  lucky,  at  that,  Mrs.  Habersham,"  the  bus  feller 
said.  "I  don't  think  he's  got  a  gun  on  him,  but  he  can  open 
that  knife  da 1  mean,  fast  enough  to  suit  any  man." 


92  The  Country 

But  the  old  one  just  stood  there  looking  at  me. 

"Well,"  she  said.  "Well.  I  really  don't  know  what  to  do." 

"I  do,"  the  bus  feller  said.  "I'm  going  to  give  him  a  ticket 
out  of  my  own  pocket,  as  a  measure  of  protecting  the  com- 
pany against  riot  and  bloodshed.  And  when  Mr.  Foote  tells 
the  city  board  about  it,  it  will  be  a  civic  matter  and  they  will 
not  only  reimburse  me,  they  will  give  me  a  medal  too.  Hey, 
Mr.  Foote?" 

But  never  nobody  paid  him  no  mind.  The  old  one  still 
stood  looking  down  at  me.  She  said  "Well,"  again.  Then  she 
taken  a  dollar  from  her  purse  and  give  it  to  the  bus  feller. 
"I  suppose  he  will  travel  on  a  child's  ticket,  won't  he?" 

"Wellum,"  the  bus  feller  said,  "I  just  don't  know  what 
the  regulations  would  be.  Likely  I  will  be  fired  for  not  crat- 
ing him  and  marking  the  crate  Poison.  But  I'll  risk  it." 

Then  they  were  gone.  Then  the  Law  come  back  with  a 
sandwich  and  give  it  to  me. 

"You're  sure  you  can  find  that  brother?"  he  said. 

"I  ain't  yet  convinced  why  not,"  I  said.  "If  I  don't  see  Pete 
first,  he'll  see  me.  He  knows  me  too." 

Then  the  Law  went  out  for  good,  too,  and  I  et  the  sand- 
wich. Then  more  folks  come  in  and  bought  tickets,  and  then 
the  bus  feller  said  it  was  time  to  go,  and  I  got  into  the  bus 
just  like  Pete  done,  and  we  was  gone. 

I  seen  all  the  towns.  I  seen  all  of  them.  When  the  bus  got  to 
going  good,  I  found  out  I  was  jest  about  wore  out  for  sleep. 
But  there  was  too  much  I  hadn't  never  saw  before.  We  run 
out  of  Jefferson  and  run  past  fields  and  woods,  then  we 
would  run  into  another  town  and  out  of  that  un  and  past 
fields  and  woods  again,  and  then  into  another  town  with 
stores  and  gins  and  water  tanks,  and  we  run  along  by  the 
railroad  for  a  spell  and  I  seen  the  signal  arm  move,  and  then 
I  seen  the  train  and  then  some  more  towns,  and  I  was  jest 
about  plumb  wore  out  for  sleep,  but  I  couldn't  resk  it.  Then 


Two  Soldiers  93 

Memphis  begun.  It  seemed  like,  to  me,  it  went  on  for  miles. 
We  would  pass  a  patch  of  stores  and  I  would  think  that  was 
sholy  it  and  the  bus  would  even  stop.  But  it  wouldn't  be 
Memphis  yet  and  we  would  go  on  again  past  water  tanks  and 
smokestacks  on  top  of  the  mills,  and  if  they  was  gins  and 
sawmills,  I  never  knowed  there  was  that  many  and  I  never 
seen  any  that  big,  and  where  they  got  enough  cotton  and 
logs  to  run  um  I  don't  know. 

Then  I  see  Memphis.  I  knowed  I  was  right  this  time.  It 
was  standing  up  into  the  air.  It  looked  like  about  a  dozen 
whole  towns  bigger  than  Jefferson  was  set  up  on  one  edge 
in  a  field,  standing  up  into  the  air  higher  than  ara  hill  in  all 
Yoknapatawpha  County.  Then  we  was  in  it,  with  the  bus 
stopping  ever'  few  feet,  it  seemed  like  to  me,  and  cars  rushing 
past  on  both  sides  of  it  and  the  street  crowded  with  folks 
from  ever'where  in  town  that  day,  until  I  didn't  see  how 
there  could  'a'  been  nobody  left  in  Mis'sippi  a-tall  to  even 
sell  me  a  bus  ticket,  let  alone  write  out  no  case  histories. 
Then  the  bus  stopped.  It  was  another  bus  dee-po,  a  heap 
bigger  than  the  one  in  Jefferson.  And  I  said,  "All  right. 
Where  do  folks  join  the  Army?" 

"What?"  the  bus  feller  said. 

And  I  said  it  again,  "Where  do  folks  join  the  Army?" 

"Oh,"  he  said.  Then  he  told  me  how  to  get  there.  I  was 
afraid  at  first  I  wouldn't  ketch  on  how  to  do  in  a  town  big 
as  Memphis.  But  I  caught  on  all  right.  I  never  had  to  ask  but 
twice  more.  Then  I  was  there,  and  I  was  durn  glad  to  git  out 
of  all  them  rushing  cars  and  shoving  folks  and  all  that  racket 
for  a  spell,  and  I  thought,  It  won't  be  long  now,  and  I  thought 
how  if  there  was  any  kind  of  a  crowd  there  that  had  done 
already  joined  the  Army,  too,  Pete  would  likely  see  me 
before  I  seen  him.  And  so  I  walked  into  the  room.  And  Pete 
wasn't  there. 

He  wasn't  even  there.  There  was  a  soldier  with  a  big  arrer- 


94  The  Country 

head  on  his  sleeve,  writing,  and  two  fellers  standing  in  front 
of  him,  and  there  was  some  more  folks  there,  I  reckon.  It 
seems  to  me  I  remember  some  more  folks  there. 

I  went  to  the  table  where  the  soldier  was  writing,  and  I 
said,  "Where's  Pete?"  and  he  looked  up  and  I  said,  "My 
brother.  Pete  Grier.  Where  is  he?" 

"What?"  the  soldier  said.  "Who?" 

And  I  told  him  again.  "He  joined  the  Army  yestiddy. 
He's  going  to  Pearl  Harbor.  So  am  I.  I  want  to  ketch  him. 
Where  you  all  got  him? "  Now  they  were  all  looking  at  me, 
but  I  never  paid  them  no  mind.  "Come  on,"  I  said.  "Where 
is  he?" 

The  soldier  had  quit  writing.  He  had  both  hands  spraddled 
out  on  the  table.  "Oh,"  he  said.  "You're  going,  too,  hah?" 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "They  got  to  have  wood  and  water.  I  can 
chop  it  and  tote  it.  Come  on.  Where's  Pete?" 

The  soldier  stood  up.  "Who  let  you  in  here?"  he  said.  "Go 
on.  Beat  it." 

"Durn  that,"  I  said.  "You  tell  me  where  Pete " 

I  be  dog  if  he  couldn't  move  faster  than  the  bus  feller 
even.  He  never  come  over  the  table,  he  come  around  it,  he 
was  on  me  almost  before  I  knowed  it,  so  that  I  jest  had  time 
to  jump  back  and  whup  out  my  pocket-knife  and  snap  it 
open  and  hit  one  lick,  and  he  hollered  and  jumped  back  and 
grabbed  one  hand  with  the  other  and  stood  there  cussing 
and  hollering. 

One  of  the  other  fellers  grabbed  me  from  behind,  and  I 
hit  at  him  with  the  knife,  but  I  couldn't  reach  him. 

Then  both  of  the  fellers  had  me  from  behind,  and  then 
another  soldier  come  out  of  a  door  at  the  back.  He  had  on  a 
belt  with  a  britching  strop  over  one  shoulder. 

"What  the  hell  is  this?"  he  said. 

"That  little  son  cut  me  with  a  knife!"  the  first  sol 
dier  hollered.  When  he  said  that  I  tried  to  get  at  him  again. 


Two  Soldiers  95 

but  both  them  fellers  was  holding  me,  two  against  one,  and 
the  soldier  with  the  backing  strop  said,  "Here,  here.  Put  your 
knife  up,  feller.  None  of  us  are  armed.  A  man  don't  knife- 
fight  folks  that  are  barehanded."  I  could  begin  to  hear  him 
then.  He  sounded  jest  like  Pete  talked  to  me.  "Let  him  go," 
he  said.  They  let  me  go.  "Now  what's  all  the  trouble  about?" 
And  I  told  him.  "I  see,"  he  said.  "And  you  come  up  to  see 
if  he  was  all  right  before  he  left."  • 

"No,"  I  said.  "I  came  to " 

But  he  had  already  turned  to  where  the  first  soldier  was 
wropping  a  handkerchief  around  his  hand. 

"Have  you  got  him?"  he  said.  The  first  soldier  went  back 
to  the  table  and  looked  at  some  papers. 

"Here  he  is,"  he  said.  "He  enlisted  yestiddy.  He's  in  a 
detachment  leaving  this  morning  for  Little  Rock."  He  had  a 
watch  stropped  on  his  arm.  He  looked  at  it.  "The  train  leaves 
in  about  fifty  minutes.  If  I  know  country  boys,  they're  prob- 
ably all  down  there  at  the  station  right  now." 

"Get  him  up  here,"  the  one  with  the  backing  strop  said. 
"Phone  the  station.  Tell  the  porter  to  get  him  a  cab.  And  you 
come  with  me,"  he  said. 

It  was  another  office  behind  that  un,  with  jest  a  table  and 
some  chairs.  We  set  there  while  the  soldier  smoked,  and  it 
wasn't  long;  I  knowed  Pete's  feet  soon  as  I  heard  them.  Then 
the  first  soldier  opened  the  door  and  Pete  come  in.  He  never 
had  no  soldier  clothes  on.  He  looked  jest  like  he  did  when 
he  got  on  the  bus  yestiddy  morning,  except  it  seemed  to  me 
like  it  was  at  least  a  week,  so  much  had  happened,  and  I  had 
done  had  to  do  so  much  traveling.  He  come  in  and  there  he 
was,  looking  at  me  like  he  hadn't  never  left  home,  except  that 
here  we  was  in  Memphis,  on  the  way  to  Pearl  Harbor. 

"What  in  durnation  are  you  doing  here?"  he  said. 

And  I  told  him,  "You  got  to  have  wood  and  water  to 
cook  with.  I  can  chop  it  and  tote  it  for  you-all." 


96  The  Country 

"No,"  Pete  said.  "You're  going  back  home." 

"No,  Pete,"  I  said.  "I  got  to  go  too.  I  got  to.  It  hurts  my 
heart,  Pete." 

"No,"  Pete  said.  He  looked  at  the  soldier.  "I  jest  don't 
know  what  could  have  happened  to  him,  lootenant,"  he  said. 
"He  never  drawed  a  knife  on  anybody  before  in  his  life." 
He  looked  at  me.  "What  did  you  do  it  for? " 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "I  jest  had  to.  I  jest  had  to  git  here* 
I  jest  had  to  find  you." 

"Well,  don't  you  never  do  it  again,  you  hear?"  Pete  said. 
"You  put  that  knife  in  your  pocket  and  you  keep  it  there. 
If  I  ever  again  hear  of  you  drawing  it  on  anybody,  I'm  com- 
ing back  from  wherever  I  am  at  and  whup  the  fire  out  of 
you.  You  hear  me?" 

"I  would  pure  cut  a  throat  if  it  would  bring  you  back  to 
stay,"  I  said.  "Pete,"  I  said.  "Pete." 

"No,"  Pete  said.  Now  his  voice  wasn't  hard  and  quick  no 
more,  it  was  almost  quiet,  and  I  knowed  now  I  wouldn't 
never  change  him.  "You  must  go  home.  You  must  look  after 
maw,  and  I  am  depending  on  you  to  look  after  my  ten  acres. 
I  want  you  to  go  back  home.  Today.  Do  you  hear?" 

"I  hear,"  I  said. 

"Can  he  get  back  home  by  himself?"  the  soldier  said. 

"He  come  up  here  by  himself,"  Pete  said. 

"I  can  get  back,  I  reckon,"  I  said.  "I  don't  live  in  but  one 
place.  I  don't  reckon  it's  moved." 

Pete  taken  a  dollar  out  of  his  pocket  and  give  it  to  me. 
"That'll  buy  your  bus  ticket  right  to  our  mailbox,"  he  said. 
"I  want  you  to  mind  the  lootenant.  He'll  send  you  to  the 
bus.  And  you  go  back  home  and  you  take  care  of  maw  and 
look  after  my  ten  acres  and  keep  that  durn  knife  in  your 
pocket.  You  hear  me?" 

"Yes,  Pete,"  I  said. 

"All  right,"  Pete  said.  "Now  I  got  to  go."  He  put  his  hand 


Two  Soldiers  97 

on  my  head  again.  But  this  time  he  never  wrung  my  neck. 
He  just  laid  his  hand  on  my  head  a  minute.  And  then  I  be 
dog  if  he  didn't  lean  down  and  kiss  me,  and  I  heard  his  feet 
and  then  the  door,  and  I  never  looked  up  and  that  was  all, 
me  setting  there,  rubbing  the  place  where  Pete  kissed  me 
and  the  soldier  throwed  back  in  his  chair,  looking  out  the 
window  and  coughing.  He  reached  into  his  pocket  and 
handed  something  to  me  without  looking  around.  It  was  a 
piece  of  chewing  gum. 

"Much  obliged,"  I  said.  "Well,  I  reckon  I  might  as  well 
start  back.  I  got  a  right  fer  piece  to  go." 

"Wait,"  the  soldier  said.  Then  he  telephoned  again  and  I 
said  again  I  better  start  back,  and  he  said  again,  "Wait.  Re- 
member what  Pete  told  you." 

So  we  waited,  and  then  another  lady  come  in,  old,  too,  in 
a  fur  coat,  too,  but  she  smelled  all  right,  she  never  had  no 
artermatic  writing  pen  nor  no  case  history  neither.  She  come 
in  and  the  soldier  got  up,  and  she  looked  around  quick  until 
she  saw  me,  and  come  and  put  her  hand  on  my  shoulder  light 
and  quick  and  easy  as  maw  herself  might  'a'  done  it. 

"Come  on,"  she  said.  "Let's  go  home  to  dinner." 

"Nome,"  I  said.  "I  got  to  ketch  the  bus  to  Jefferson." 

"I  know.  There's  plenty  of  time.  We'll  go  home  and  eat 
dinner  first." 

She  had  a  car.  And  now  we  was  right  down  in  the  middle 
of  all  them  other  cars.  We  was  almost  under  the  busses,  and 
all  them  crowds  of  people  on  the  street  close  enough  to 
where  I  could  have  talked  to  them  if  I  had  knowed  who 
they  was.  After  a  while  she  stopped  the  car.  "Here  we  are," 
she  said,  and  I  looked  at  it,  and  if  all  that  was  her  house,  she 
sho  had  a  big  family.  But  all  of  it  wasn't.  We  crossed  a  hall 
with  trees  growing  in  it  and  went  into  a  little  room  without 
nothing  in  it  but  a  nigger  dressed  up  in  a  uniform  a  heap 
shinier  than  them  soldiers  had,  and  the  nigger  shut  the  door, 


98  The  Country 

and  then  I  hollered,  "Look  out!"  and  grabbed,  but  it  was  all 
right;  that  whole  little  room  jest  went  right  on  up  and 
stopped  and  the  door  opened  and  we  was  in  another  hall, 
and  the  lady  unlocked  a  door  and  we  went  in,  and  there  was 
another  soldier,  a  old  feller,  with  a  britching  strop,  too,  and 
a  silver-colored  bird  on  each  shoulder. 

"Here  we  are,"  the  lady  said.  "This  is  Colonel  McKellogg. 
Now,  what  would  you  like  for  dinner? " 

"I  reckon  I'll  jest  have  some  ham  and  eggs  and  coffee," 
I  said. 

She  had  done  started  to  pick  up  the  telephone.  She  stopped, 
"Coffee?"  she  said.  "When  did  you  start  drinking  coffee?" 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "I  reckon  it  was  before  I  could 
remember." 

"You're  about  eight,  aren't  you?"  she  said. 

"Nome,"  I  said.  "I'm  eight  and  ten  months.  Going  on 
eleven  months." 

She  telephoned  then.  Then  we  set  there  and  I  told  them 
how  Pete  had  jest  left  that  morning  for  Pearl  Harbor  and  I 
had  aimed  to  go  with  him,  but  I  would  have  to  go  back 
home  to  take  care  of  maw  and  look  after  Pete's  ten  acres, 
and  she  said  how  they  had  a  little  boy  about  my  size,  too,  in 
a  school  in  the  East.  Then  a  nigger,  another  one,  in  a  short 
kind  of  shirttail  coat,  rolled  a  kind  of  wheelbarrer  in.  It  had 
my  ham  and  eggs  and  a  glass  of  milk  and  a  piece  of  pie,  too, 
and  I  thought  I  was  hungry.  But  when  I  taken  the  first  bite 
I  found  out  I  couldn't  swallow  it,  and  I  got  up  quick. 

"I  got  to  go,"  I  said. 

"Wait,"  she  said. 

"I  got  to  go,"  I  said. 

"Just  a  minute,"  she  said.  "I've  already  telephoned  for  the 
car.  It  won't  be  but  a  minute  now.  Can't  you  drink  the  milk 
even?  Or  maybe  some  of  your  coffee?" 


Two  Soldiers  99 

"Nome,"  I  said.  "I  ain't  hungry.  Til  eat  when  I  git  home." 
Then  the  telephone  rung.  She  never  even  answered  it. 

"There,"  she  said.  "There's  the  car."  And  we  went  back 
down  in  that  'ere  little  moving  room  with  the  dressed-up 
nigger.  This  time  it  was  a  big  car  with  a  soldier  driving  it. 
I  got  into  the  front  with  him.  She  give  the  soldier  a  dollar. 
"He  might  get  hungry,"  she  said.  "Try  to  find  a  decent 
place  for  him." 

"O.K.,  Mrs.  McKellogg,"  the  soldier  said. 

Then  we  was  gone  again.  And  now  I  could  see  Memphis 
good,  bright  in  the  sunshine,  while  we  was  swinging  around 
it.  And  first  thing  I  knowed,  we  was  back  on  the  same  high- 
way the  bus  run  on  this  morning — the  patches  of  stores  and 
them  big  gins  and  sawmills,  and  Memphis  running  on  for 
miles,  it  seemed  like  to  me,  before  it  begun  to  give  out.  Then 
we  was  running  again  between  the  fields  and  woods,  run- 
ning fast  now,  and  except  for  that  soldier,  it  was  like  I 
hadn't  never  been  to  Memphis  a-tall.  We  was  going  fast  now. 
At  this  rate,  before  I  knowed  it  we  would  be  home  again,  and 
I  thought  about  me  riding  up  to  Frenchman's  Bend  in  this 
big  car  with  a  soldier  running  it,  and  all  of  a  sudden  I  begun 
to  cry.  I  never  knowed  I  was  fixing  to,  and  I  couldn't  stop 
it.  I  set  there  by  that  soldier,  crying.  We  was  going  fast. 


Shall  Not  Perish 


WHEN  THE  MESSAGE  came  about  Pete,  Father  and  I  had 
already  gone  to  the  field.  Mother  got  it  out  of  the  mailbox 
after  we  left  and  brought  it  down  to  the  fence,  and  she 
already  knew  beforehand  what  it  was  because  she  didn't 
even  have  on  her  sunbonnet,  so  she  must  have  been  watching 
from  the  kitchen  window  when  the  carrier  drove  up.  And 
I  already  knew  what  was  in  it  too.  Because  she  didn't  speak. 
She  just  stood  at  the  fence  with  the  little  pale  envelope  that 
didn't  even  need  a  stamp  on  it  in  her  hand,  and  it  was  me 
that  hollered  at  Father,  from  further  away  across  the  field 
than  he  was,  so  that  he  reached  the  fence  first  where  Mother 
waited  even  though  I  was  already  running.  "I  know  what 
it  is,"  Mother  said.  "But  can't  open  it.  Open  it." 

"No  it  ain't!"  I  hollered,  running.  "No  it  ain't!"  Then  I 
was  hollering,  "No,  Pete!  No,  Pete!"  Then  I  was  hollering, 
"God  damn  them  Japs!  God  damn  them  Japs!"  and  then  I 
was  the  one  Father  had  to  grab  and  hold,  trying  to  hold  me, 
having  to  wrastle  with  me  like  I  was  another  man  instead  of 
just  nine. 

And  that  was  all.  One  day  there  was  Pearl  Harbor.  And 
the  next  week  Pete  went  to  Memphis,  to  join  the  army  and 
go  there  and  help  them;  and  one  morning  Mother  stood  at  the 
field  fence  with  ^  little  scrap  of  paper  not  even  big  enough  to 
start  a  fire  with,  that  didn't  even  need  a  stamp  on  the  enve- 

10! 


io2  The  Country 

lope,  saying,  A  ship  'was.  NOIV  it  is  not.  Your  son  'was  one  of 
them.  And  we  allowed  ourselves  one  day  to  grieve,  and  that 
was  all.  Because  it  was  April,  the  hardest  middle  push  of 
planting  time,  and  there  was  the  land,  the  seventy  acres  which 
were  our  bread  and  fire  and  keep,  which  had  outlasted  the 
Griers  before  us  because  they  had  done  right  by  it,  and  had 
outlasted  Pete  because  while  he  was  here  he  had  done  his  part 
to  help  and  would  outlast  Mother  and  Father  and  me  if  we 
did  ours. 

Then  it  happened  again.  Maybe  we  had  forgotten  that  it 
could  and  was  going  to,  again  and  again,  to  people  who  loved 
sons  and  brothers  as  we  loved  Pete,  until  the  day  finally  came 
when  there  would  be  an  end  to  it.  After  that  day  when  we 
saw  Pete's  name  and  picture  in  the  Memphis  paper,  Father 
would  bring  one  home  with  him  each  time  he  went  to  town. 
And  we  would  see  the  pictures  and  names  of  soldiers  and 
sailors  from  other  counties  and  towns  in  Mississippi  and  Ar- 
kansas and  Tennessee,  but  there  wasn't  another  from  ours, 
and  so  after  a  while  it  did  look  like  Pete  was  going  to  be  all. 

Then  it  happened  again.  It  was  late  July,  a  Friday.  Father 
had  gone  to  town  early  on  Homer  Bookwright's  cattletruck 
and  now  it  was  sundown.  I  had  just  come  up  from  the  field 
with  the  light  sweep  and  I  had  just  finished  stalling  the  mule 
and  come  out  of  the  barn  when  Homer's  truck  stopped  at  the 
mailbox  and  Father  got  down  and  came  up  the  lane,  with  a 
sack  of  flour  balanced  on  his  shoulder  and  a  package  under 
his  arm  and  the  folded  newspaper  in  his  hand.  And  I  took  one 
look  at  the  folded  paper  and  then  no  more.  Because  I  knew  it 
too,  even  if  he  always  did  have  one  when  he  came  back  from 
town.  Because  it  was  bound  to  happen  sooner  or  later;  it 
would  not  be  just  us  out  of  all  Yoknapatawpha  County  who 
had  loved  enough  to  have  sole  right  to  grief.  So  I  just  met 
him  and  took  part  of  the  load  and  turned  beside  him,  and  we 
entered  the  kitchen  together  where  our  cold  supper  waited 


Shall  Not  Perish  103 

on  the  table  and  Mother  sat  in  the  last  of  sunset  in  the  open 
door,  her  hand  and  arm  strong  and  steady  on  the  dasher  of 
the  churn. 

When  the  message  came  about  Pete,  Father  never  touched 
her.  He  didn't  touch  her  now.  He  just  lowered  the  flour  onto 
the  table  and  went  to  the  chair  and  held  out  the  folded  paper. 
"It's  Major  de  Spain's  boy,"  he  said.  "In  town.  The  av-aytor. 
That  was  home  last  fall  in  his  officer  uniform.  He  run  his 
airplane  into  a  Japanese  battleship  and  blowed  it  up.  So  they 
knowed  where  he  was  at."  And  Mother  didn't  stop  the  churn 
for  a  minute  either,  because  even  I  could  tell  that  the  butter 
had  almost  come.  Then  she  got  up  and  went  to  the  sink  and 
washed  her  hands  and  came  back  and  sat  down  again. 

"Read  it,"  she  said. 

So  Father  and  I  found  out  that  Mother  not  only  knew  all 
the  time  it  was  going  to  happen  again,  but  that  she  already 
knew  what  she  was  going  to  do  when  it  did,  not  only  this 
time  but  the  next  one  too,  and  the  one  after  that  and  the  one 
after  that,  until  the  day  finally  came  when  all  the  grieving 
about  the  earth,  the  rich  and  the  poor  too,  whether  they  lived 
with  ten  nigger  servants  in  the  fine  big  painted  houses  in 
town  or  whether  they  lived  on  and  by  seventy  acres  of  not 
extra  good  land  like  us  or  whether  all  they  owned  was  the 
right  to  sweat  today  for  what  they  would  eat  tonight,  could 
say,  At  least  this  there  'was  some  point  to  'why  *we  grieved. 

We  fed  and  milked  and  came  back  and  ate  the  cold  sup- 
per, and  I  built  a  fire  in  the  stove  and  Mother  put  on  the 
kettle  and  whatever  else  would  heat  enough  water  for  two, 
and  I  fetched  in  the  washtub  from  the  back  porch,  and  while 
Mother  washed  the  dishes  and  cleaned  up  the  kitchen,  Father 
and  I  sat  on  the  front  steps.  This  was  about  the  time  of  day 
that  Pete  and  I  would  walk  the  two  miles  down  to  Old  Man 
Killegrew's  house  last  December,  to  listen  to  the  radio  teli 
about  Pearl  Harbor  and  Manila.  But  more  than  Pearl  Harbor 


104  The  Country 

and  Manila  has  happened  since  then,  and  Pete  don't  make  one 
to  listen  to  it.  Nor  do  I:  it's  like,  since  nobody  can  tell  us 
exactly  where  he  was  when  he  stopped  being  is,  instead  of 
just  becoming  *was  at  some  single  spot  on  the  earth  where 
the  people  who  loved  him  could  weight  him  down  with  a 
stone,  Pete  still  is  everywhere  about  the  earth,  one  among  all 
the  fighters  forever,  <was  or  is  either.  So  Mother  and  Father 
and  I  don't  need  a  little  wooden  box  to  catch  the  voices  of 
them  that  saw  the  courage  and  the  sacrifice.  Then  Mother 
called  me  back  to  the  kitchen.  The  water  smoked  a  little  in 
the  washtub,  beside  the  soap  dish  and  my  clean  nightshirt  and 
the  towel  Mother  made  out  of  our  worn-out  cotton  sacks, 
and  I  bathe  and  empty  the  tub  and  leave  it  ready  for  her,  and 
we  lie  down. 

Then  morning,  and  we  rose.  Mother  was  up  first,  as  al- 
ways. My  clean  white  Sunday  shirt  and  pants  were  waiting, 
along  with  the  shoes  and  stockings  I  hadn't  even  seen  since 
frost  was  out  of  the  ground.  But  in  yesterday's  overalls  still 
I  carried  the  shoes  back  to  the  kitchen  where  Mother  stood 
in  yesterday's  dress  at  the  stove  where  not  only  our  breakfast 
was  cooking  but  Father's  dinner  too,  and  set  the  shoes  beside 
her  Sunday  ones  against  the  wall  and  went  to  the  barn,  and 
Father  and  I  fed  and  milked  and  came  back  and  sat  down  and 
ate  while  Mother  moved  back  and  forth  between  the  table 
and  the  stove  till  we  were  done,  and  she  herself  sat  down. 
Then  I  got  out  the  blacking-box,  until  Father  came  and  took 
it  away  from  me — the  polish  and  rag  and  brush  and  the  four 
shoes  in  succession.  "De  Spain  is  rich,"  he  said.  "With  a 
monkey  nigger  in  a  white  coat  to  hold  the  jar  up  each  time 
he  wants  to  spit.  You  shine  all  shoes  like  you  aimed  yourself 
to  wear  them:  just  the  parts  that  you  can  see  yourself  by 
looking  down." 

Then  we  dressed.  I  put  on  my  Sunday  shirt  and  the  pants 
so  stiff  with  starch  that  they  would  stand  alone,  and  carried 


Shall  Not  Perish  105 

my  stockings  back  to  the  kitchen  just  as  Mother  entered,  car- 
rying hers,  and  dressed  too,  even  her  hat,  and  took  my  stock- 
ings from  me  and  put  them  with  hers  on  the  table  beside  the 
shined  shoes,  and  lifted  the  satchel  down  from  the  cupboard 
shelf.  It  was  still  in  the  cardboard  box  it  came  in,  with  the 
colored  label  of  the  San  Francisco  drugstore  where  Pete 
bought  it — a  round,  square-ended,  water-proof  satchel  with 
a  handle  for  carrying,  so  that  as  soon  as  Pete  saw  it  in  the 
store  he  must  have  known  too  that  it  had  been  almost  exactly 
made  for  exactly  what  we  would  use  it  for,  with  a  zipper 
opening  that  Mother  had  never  seen  before  nor  Father  either. 
That  is,  we  had  all  three  been  in  the  drugstore  and  the  ten- 
cent-store  in  Jefferson  but  I  was  the  only  one  who  had  been 
curious  enough  to  find  out  how  one  worked,  even  though 
even  I  never  dreamed  we  would  ever  own  one.  So  it  was  me 
that  zipped  it  open,  with  a  pipe  and  a  can  of  tobacco  in  it  for 
Father  and  a  hunting  cap  with  a  carbide  headlight  for  me 
and  for  Mother  the  satchel  itself,  and  she  zipped  it  shut  and 
then  open  and  then  Father  tried  it,  running  the  slide  up  and 
down  the  little  clicking  track  until  Mother  made  him  stop 
before  he  wore  it  out;  and  she  put  the  satchel,  still  open,  back 
into  the  box  and  I  fetched  in  from  the  barn  the  empty  quart 
bottle  of  cattle-dip  and  she  scalded  the  bottle  and  cork  and 
put  them  and  the  clean  folded  towel  into  the  satchel  and  set 
the  box  onto  the  cupboard  shelf,  the  zipper  still  open  because 
when  we  came  to  need  it  we  would  have  to  open  it  first  and 
so  we  would  save  that  much  wear  on  the  zipper  too.  She 
took  the  satchel  from  the  box  and  the  bottle  from  the  satchel 
and  filled  the  bottle  with  clean  water  and  corked  it  and  put  it 
back  into  the  satchel  with  the  clean  towel  and  put  our  shoes 
and  stockings  in  and  zipped  the  satchel  shut,  and  we  walked 
to  the  road  and  stood  in  the  bright  hot  morning  beside  the 
mailbox  until  the  bus  came  up  and  stopped. 

It  was  the  school  bus,  the  one  I  rode  back  and  forth  to 


io6  The  Country 

Frenchman's  Bend  to  school  in  last  winter,  and  that  Pete  rode 
in  every  morning  and  evening  until  he  graduated,  but  going 
in  the  opposite  direction  now,  in  to  Jefferson,  and  only  on 
Saturday,  seen  for  a  long  time  down  the  long  straight  stretch 
of  Valley  road  while  other  people  waiting  beside  other  mail- 
boxes got  into  it.  Then  it  was  our  turn.  Mother  handed  the 
two  quarters  to  Solon  Quick,  who  built  it  and  owned  it  and 
drove  it,  and  we  got  in  too  and  it  went  on,  and  soon  there  was 
no  more  room  for  the  ones  that  stood  beside  the  mailboxes 
and  signalled  and  then  it  went  fast,  twenty  miles  then  ten 
then  five  then  one,  and  up  the  last  hill  to  where  the  concrete 
streets  began,  and  we  got  out  and  sat  on  the  curb  and  Mother 
opened  the  satchel  and  took  our  shoes  and  the  bottle  of  water 
and  the  towel  and  we  washed  our  feet  and  put  on  our  shoes 
and  stockings  and  Mother  put  the  bottle  and  towel  back  and 
shut  the  bag. 

And  we  walked  beside  the  iron  picket  fence  long  enough 
to  front  a  cotton  patch;  we  turned  into  the  yard  which  was 
bigger  than  farms  I  had  seen  and  followed  the  gravel  drive 
wider  and  smoother  than  roads  in  Frenchman's  Bend,  on  to 
the  house  that  to  me  anyway  looked  bigger  than  the  court- 
house, and  mounted  the  steps  between  the  stone  columns 
and  crossed  the  portico  that  would  have  held  our  whole 
house,  galleries  and  all,  and  knocked  at  the  door.  And  then 
it  never  mattered  whether  our  shoes  were  shined  at  all  or 
not:  the  whites  of  the  monkey  nigger's  eyes  for  just  a  second 
when  he  opened  the  door  for  us,  the  white  of  his  coat  for 
just  a  second  at  the  end  of  the  hall  before  it  was  gone  too, 
his  feet  not  making  any  more  noise  than  a  cat's  leaving  us 
to  find  the  right  door  by  ourselves,  if  we  could.  And  we 
did — the  rich  man's  parlor  that  any  woman  in  Frenchman's 
Bend  and  I  reckon  in  the  rest  of  the  county  too  could  have 
described  to  the  inch  but  which  not  even  the  men  who  would 
come  to  Major  de  Spain  after  bank-hours  or  on  Sunday  to 


Shall  Not  Perish  107 

ask  to  have  a  note  extended,  had  ever  seen,  with  a  light 
hanging  in  the  middle  of  the  ceiling  the  size  of  our  whole 
washtub  full  of  chopped-up  ice  and  a  gold-colored  harp 
that  would  have  blocked  our  barn  door  and  a  mirror  that 
a  man  on  a  mule  could  have  seen  himself  and  the  mule  both 
in,  and  a  table  shaped  like  a  coffin  in  the  middle  of  the  floor 
with  the  Confederate  flag  spread  over  it  and  the  photograph 
of  Major  de  Spain's  son  and  the  open  box  with  the  medal  in 
it  and  a  big  blue  automatic  pistol  weighting  down  the  flag, 
and  Major  de  Spain  standing  at  the  end  of  the  table  with  his 
hat  on  until  after  a  while  he  seemed  to  hear  and  recognize 
the  name  which  Mother  spoke; — not  a  real  major  but  just 
called  that  because  his  father  had  been  a  real  one  in  the  old 
Confederate  war,  but  a  banker  powerful  in  money  and 
politics  both,  that  Father  said  had  made  governors  and  sen- 
ators too  in  Mississippi; — an  old  man,  too  old  you  would  have 
said  to  have  had  a  son  just  twenty- three;  too  old  anyway 
to  have  had  that  look  on  his  face. 

"Ha,"  he  said.  "I  remember  now.  You  too  were  advised 
that  your  son  poured  out  his  blood  on  the  altar  of  unpre- 
paredness  and  inefficiency.  What  do  you  want?" 

"Nothing,"  Mother  said.  She  didn't  even  pause  at  the 
door.  She  went  on  toward  the  table.  "We  had  nothing  to 
bring  you.  And  I  don't  think  I  see  anything  here  we  would 
want  to  take  away." 

"You're  wrong,"  he  said.  "You  have  a  son  left.  Take  what 
they  have  been  advising  to  me:  go  back  home  and  pray. 
Not  for  the  dead  one:  for  the  one  they  have  so  far  left  you, 
that  something  somewhere,  somehow  will  save  him!"  She 
wasn't  even  looking  at  him.  She  never  had  looked  at  him 
again.  She  just  went  on  across  that  barn-sized  room  exactly 
as  I  have  watched  her  set  mine  and  Father's  lunch  pail  into 
the  fence  corner  when  there  wasn't  time  to  stop  the  plows 
to  eat,  and  turn  back  toward  the  house. 


io8  The  Country 

"I  can  tell  you  something  simpler  than  that,"  she  said. 
"Weep."  Then  she  reached  the  table.  But  it  was  only  her 
body  that  stopped,  her  hand  going  out  so  smooth  and  quick 
that  his  hand  only  caught  her  wrist,  the  two  hands  locked 
together  on  the  big  blue  pistol,  between  the  photograph  and 
the  little  hunk  of  iron  medal  on  its  colored  ribbon,  against 
that  old  flag  that  a  heap  of  people  I  knew  had  never  seen  and 
a  heap  more  of  them  wouldn't  recognize  if  they  did,  and  over 
all  of  it  the  old  man's  voice  that  ought  not  to  have  sounded 
like  that  either. 

"For  his  country!  He  had  no  country:  this  one  I  too  re- 
pudiate. His  country  and  mine  both  was  ravaged  and  polluted 
and  destroyed  eighty  years  ago,  before  even  I  was  born.  His 
forefathers  fought  and  died  for  it  then,  even  though  what 
they  fought  and  lost  for  was  a  dream.  He  didn't  even  have 
a  dream.  He  died  for  an  illusion.  In  the  interests  of  usury, 
by  the  folly  and  rapacity  of  politicians,  for  the  glory  and 
aggrandisement  of  organized  labor!" 

"Yes,"  Mother  said.  "Weep." 

"The  fear  of  elective  servants  for  their  incumbencies!  The 
subservience  of  misled  workingmen  for  the  demagogues  who 
misled  them!  Shame?  Grief?  How  can  poltroonery  and 
rapacity  and  voluntary  thralldom  know  shame  or  grief?" 

"All  men  are  capable  of  shame,"  Mother  said.  "Just  as  all 
men  are  capable  of  courage  and  honor  and  sacrifice.  And 
grief  too.  It  will  take  time,  but  they  will  learn  it.  It  will  take 
more  grief  than  yours  and  mine,  and  there  will  be  more.  But 
it  will  be  enough." 

"When?  When  all  the  young  men  are  dead?  What  will 
there  be  left  then  worth  the  saving?" 

"I  know,"  Mother  said.  "I  know.  Our  Pete  was  too  young 
too  to  have  to  die."  Then  I  realized  that  their  hands  were  no 
longer  locked,  that  he  was  erect  again  and  that  the  pistol 
was  hanging  slack  in  Mother's  hand  against  her  side,  and  for 


Shall  Not  Perish  109 

a  minute  I  thought  she  was  going  to  unzip  the  satchel  and 
take  the  towel  out  of  it.  But  she  just  laid  the  pistol  back  on 
the  table  and  stepped  up  to  him  and  took  the  handkerchief 
from  his  breast  pocket  and  put  it  into  his  hand  and  stepped 
back.  "That's  right,"  she  said.  "Weep.  Not  for  him:  for  us, 
the  old,  who  don't  know  why.  What  is  your  Negro's  name?" 

But  he  didn't  answer.  He  didn't  even  raise  the  handkerchief 
to  his  face.  He  just  stood  there  holding  it,  like  he  hadn't 
discovered  yet  that  it  was  in  his  hand,  or  perhaps  even  what 
it  was  Mother  had  put  there.  "For  us,  the  old,"  he  said.  "You 
believe.  You  have  had  three  months  to  learn  again,  to  find 
out  why;  mine  happened  yesterday.  Tell  me." 

"I  don't  know,"  Mother  said.  "Maybe  women  are  not 
supposed  to  know  why  their  sons  must  die  in  battle;  maybe 
all  they  are  supposed  to  do  is  just  to  grieve  for  them.  But  my 
son  knew  why  And  my  brother  went  to  the  war  when  I  was 
a  girl,  and  our  mother  didn't  know  why  either,  but  he  did. 
And  my  grandfather  was  in  that  old  one  there  too,  and  I 
reckon  his  mother  didn't  know  why  either,  but  I  reckon 
he  did.  And  my  son  knew  why  he  had  to  go  to  this  one,  and 
he  knew  I  knew  he  did  even  though  I  didn't,  just  as  he  knew 
that  this  child  here  and  I  both  knew  he  would  not  come  back. 
But  he  knew  why,  even  if  I  didn't,  couldn't,  never  can.  So  it 
must  be  all  right,  even  if  I  couldn't  understand  it.  Because 
there  is  nothing  in  him  that  I  or  his  father  didn't  put  there. 
What  is  your  Negro's  name?" 

He  called  the  name  then.  And  the  nigger  wasn't  so  far 
away  after  all,  though  when  he  entered  Major  de  Spain 
had  already  turned  so  that  his  back  was  toward  the  door. 
He  didn't  look  around.  He  just  pointed  toward  the  table  with 
the  hand  Mother  had  put  the  handkerchief  into,  and  the 
nigger  went  to  the  table  without  looking  at  anybody  and 
without  making  any  more  noise  on  the  floor  than  a  cat  and 
he  didn't  stop  at  all;  it  looked  to  me  like  he  had  already 


no  The  Country 

turned  and  started  back  before  he  even  reached  the  table: 
one  flick  of  the  black  hand  and  the  white  sleeve  and  the 
pistol  vanished  without  me  even  seeing  him  touch  it  and 
when  he  passed  me  again  going  out,  I  couldn't  see  what  he 
had  done  with  it.  So  Mother  had  to  speak  twice  before  I 
knew  she  was  talking  to  me. 
"Come,"  she  said. 

"Wait,"  said  Major  de  Spain.  He  had  turned  again,  facing 
us.  "What  you  and  his  father  gave  him.  You  must  know 
what  that  was." 

"I  know  it  came  a  long  way,"  Mother  said.  "So  it  must 
have  been  strong  to  have  lasted  through  all  of  us.  It  must 
have  been  all  right  for  him  to  be  willing  to  die  for  it  after 
that  long  time  and  coming  that  far.  Come,"  she  said  again. 
"Wait,"  he  said.  "Wait.  Where  did  you  come  from?" 
Mother  stopped.  "I  told  you:  Frenchman's  Bend." 
"I  know.  How?  By  wagon?  You  have  no  car." 
"Oh,"  Mother  said.  "We  came  in  Mr.  Quick's  bus.  He 
comes  in  every  Saturday." 

"And  waits  until  night  to  go  back.  I'll  send  you  back  in  my 
car."  He  called  the  nigger's  name  again.  But  Mother  stopped 
him.  "Thank  you,"  she  said.  "We  have  already  paid  Mr. 
Quick.  He  owes  us  the  ride  back  home." 

There  was  an  old  lady  born  and  raised  in  Jefferson  who 
died  rich  somewhere  in  the  North  and  left  some  money  to 
the  town  to  build  a  museum  with.  It  was  a  house  like  a 
church,  built  for  nothing  else  except  to  hold  the  pictures 
she  picked  out  to  put  in  it — pictures  from  all  over  the  United 
States,  painted  by  people  who  loved  what  they  had  seen  or 
where  they  had  been  born  or  lived  enough  to  want  to  paint 
pictures  of  it  so  that  other  people  could  see  it  too;  pictures 
of  men  and  women  and  children,  and  the  houses  and  streets 
and  cities  and  the  woods  and  fields  and  streams  where  they 
Worked  or  lived  or  pleasured,  so  that  all  the  people  who 


Shall  Not  Perish  1 1 1 

wanted  to,  people  like  us  from  Frenchman's  Bend  or  from 
littler  places  even  than  Frenchman's  Bend  in  our  county  or 
beyond  our  state  too,  could  come  without  charge  into  the 
cool  and  the  quiet  and  look  without  let  at  the  pictures  of 
men  and  women  and  children  who  were  the  same  people 
that  we  were  even  if  their  houses  and  barns  were  different 
and  their  fields  worked  different,  with  different  things  grow- 
ing in  them.  So  it  was  already  late  when  we  left  the  museum, 
and  later  still  when  we  got  back  to  where  the  bus  waited, 
and  later  still  more  before  we  got  started,  although  at  least 
we  could  get  into  the  bus  and  take  our  shoes  and  stockings 
back  off.  Because  Mrs.  Quick  hadn't  come  yet  and  so  Solon 
had  to  wait  for  her,  not  because  she  was  his  wife  but  because 
he  made  her  pay  a  quarter  out  of  her  egg-money  to  ride  to 
town  and  back  on  Saturday,  and  he  wouldn't  go  off  and 
leave  anybody  who  had  paid  him.  And  so,  even  though  the 
bus  ran  fast  again,  when  the  road  finally  straightened  out  into 
the  long  Valley  stretch,  there  was  only  the  last  sunset  spok- 
ing out  across  the  sky,  stretching  all  the  way  across  America 
from  the  Pacific  ocean,  touching  all  the  places  that  the  men 
and  women  in  the  museum  whose  names  we  didn't  even 
know  had  loved  enough  to  paint  pictures  of  them,  like  a 
big  soft  fading  wheel. 

And  I  remembered  how  Father  used  to  always  prove  any 
point  he  wanted  to  make  to  Pete  and  me,  by  Grandfather. 
It  didn't  matter  whether  it  was  something  he  thought  we 
ought  to  have  done  and  hadn't,  or  something  he  would  have 
stopped  us  from  doing  if  he  had  just  known  about  it  in 
time.  "Now,  take  your  Grandpap,"  he  would  say.  I  could 
remember  him  too:  Father's  grandfather  even,  old,  so  old 
you  just  wouldn't  believe  it,  so  old  that  it  would  seem  to 
me  he  must  have  gone  clean  back  to  the  old  fathers  in 
Genesis  and  Exodus  that  talked  face  to  face  with  God,  and 
Grandpap  outlived  them  all  except  him.  It  seemed  to  me  he 


ii2  The  Country 

must  have  been  too  old  even  to  have  actually  fought  in  the 
old  Confederate  war,  although  that  was  about  all  he  talked 
about,  not  only  when  we  thought  that  maybe  he  was  awake 
but  even  when  we  knew  he  must  be  asleep,  until  after  a 
while  we  had  to  admit  that  we  never  knew  which  one  he 
really  was.  He  would  sit  in  his  chair  under  the  mulberry  in 
the  yard  or  on  the  sunny  end  of  the  front  gallery  or  in  his 
corner  by  the  hearth;  he  would  start  up  out  of  the  chair  and 
we  still  wouldn't  know  which  one  he  was,  whether  he  never 
had  been  asleep  or  whether  he  hadn't  ever  waked  even  when 
he  jumped  up,  hollering,  "Look  out!  Look  out!  Here  they 
come!"  He  wouldn't  even  always  holler  the  same  name; 
they  wouldn't  even  always  be  on  the  same  side  or  even 
soldiers:  Forrest,  or  Morgan,  or  Abe  Lincoln,  or  Van  Dorn, 
or  Grant  or  Colonel  Sartoris  himself,  whose  people  still 
lived  in  our  county,  or  Mrs.  Rosa  Millard,  Colonel  Sartoris's 
mother-in-law  who  stood  off  the  Yankees  and  carpetbaggers 
too  for  the  whole  four  years  of  the  war  until  Colonel  Sartoris 
could  get  back  home.  Pete  thought  it  was  just  funny.  Father 
and  I  were  ashamed.  We  didn't  know  what  Mother  thought 
nor  even  what  it  was,  until  the  afternoon  at  the  picture  show. 
It  was  a  continued  picture,  a  Western;  it  seemed  to  me 
that  it  had  been  running  every  Saturday  afternoon  for  years. 
Pete  and  Father  and  I  would  go  in  to  town  every  Saturday 
to  see  it,  and  sometimes  Mother  would  go  too,  to  sit  there 
in  the  dark  while  the  pistols  popped  and  snapped  and  the 
horses  galloped  and  each  time  it  would  look  like  they  were 
going  to  catch  him  but  you  knew  they  wouldn't  quite,  that 
there  would  be  some  more  of  it  next  Saturday  and  the  one 
after  that  and  the  one  after  that,  and  always  the  week  in 
between  for  me  and  Pete  to  talk  about  the  villain's  pearl- 
handled  pistol  that  Pete  wished  was  his  and  the  hero's  spotted 
horse  that  I  wished  was  mine.  Then  one  Saturday  Mother 
decided  to  take  Grandpap.  He  sat  between  her  and  me, 


Shall  Not  Perish  113 

already  asleep  again,  so  old  now  that  he  didn't  even  have 
to  snore,  until  the  time  came  that  you  could  have  set  a  watch 
by  every  Saturday  afternoon:  when  the  horses  all  came 
plunging  down  the  cliff  and  whirled  around  and  came  boil- 
ing up  the  gully  until  in  just  one  more  jump  they  would 
come  clean  out  of  the  screen  and  go  galloping  among  the 
little  faces  turned  up  to  them  like  corn  shucks  scattered 
across  a  lot.  Then  Grandpap  waked  up.  For  about  five 
seconds  he  sat  perfectly  still.  I  could  even  feel  him  sitting 
still,  he  sat  so  still  so  hard.  Then  he  said,  "Cavalry!"  Then 
he  was  on  his  feet.  "Forrest!"  he  said.  "Bedford  Forrest!  Get 
out  of  here!  Get  out  of  the  way!"  clawing  and  scrabbling 
from  one  seat  to  the  next  one  whether  there  was  anybody 
in  them  or  not,  into  the  aisle  with  us  trying  to  follow  and 
catch  him,  and  up  the  aisle  toward  the  door  still  hollering, 
"Forrest!  Forrest!  Here  he  comes!  Get  out  of  the  way!" 
and  outside  at  last,  with  half  the  show  behind  us  and  Grand- 
pap  blinking  and  trembling  at  the  light  and  Pete  propped 
against  the  wall  by  his  arms  like  he  was  being  sick,  laughing, 
and  father  shaking  Grandpap's  arm  and  saying,  "You  old 
fool!  You  old  fool!"  until  Mother  made  him  stop.  And  we 
half  carried  him  around  to  the  alley  where  the  wagon  was 
hitched  and  helped  him  in  and  Mother  got  in  and  sat  by  hims 
holding  his  hand  until  he  could  begin  to  stop  shaking.  "Go 
get  him  a  bottle  of  beer,"  she  said. 

"He  don't  deserve  any  beer,"  Father  said.  "The  old  fool, 
having  the  whole  town  laughing.  .  .  ." 

"Go  get  him  some  beer!"  Mother  said.  "He's  going  to  sit 
right  here  in  his  own  wagon  and  drink  it.  Go  on!"  And 
Father  did,  and  Mother  held  the  bottle  until  Grandpap  got 
a  good  hold  on  it,  and  she  sat  holding  his  hand  until  he  got 
a  good  swallow  down  him.  Then  he  begun  to  stop  shaking. 
He  said,  "Ah-h-h,"  and  took  another  swallow  and  said, 


ii4  The  Country 

"Ah-h-h,"  again  and  then  he  even  drew  his  other  hand  out 
of  Mother's  and  he  wasn't  trembling  now  but  just  a  little, 
taking  little  darting  sips  at  the  bottle  and  saying  "Hah! "  and 
taking  another  sip  and  saying  "Hah!"  again,  and  not  just 
looking  at  the  bottle  now  but  looking  all  around,  and  his 
eyes  snapping  a  little  when  he  blinked.  "Fools  yourselves! " 
Mother  cried  at  Father  and  Pete  and  me.  "He  wasn't  running 
from  anybody!  He  was  running  in  front  of  them,  hollering 
at  all  clods  to  look  out  because  better  men  than  they  were 
coming,  even  seventy-five  years  afterwards,  still  powerful, 
still  dangerous,  still  coming!" 

And  I  knew  them  too.  I  had  seen  them  too,  who  had 
never  been  further  from  Frenchman's  Bend  than  I  could 
return  by  night  to  sleep.  It  was  like  the  wheel,  like  the  sun- 
set itself,  hubbed  at  that  little  place  that  don't  even  show 
on  a  map,  that  not  two  hundred  people  out  of  all  the  earth 
know  is  named  Frenchman's  Bend  or  has  any  name  at  all, 
and  spoking  out  in  all  the  directions  and  touching  them  all, 
never  a  one  too  big  for  it  to  touch,  never  a  one  too  little  to 
be  remembered: — the  places  that  men  and  women  have 
lived  in  and  loved  whether  they  had  anything  to  paint  pic- 
tures of  them  with  or  not,  all  the  little  places  quiet  enough 
to  be  lived  in  and  loved  and  the  names  of  them  before  they 
were  quiet  enough,  and  the  names  of  the  deeds  that  made 
them  quiet  enough  and  the  names  of  the  men  and  the  women 
who  did  the  deeds,  who  lasted  and  endured  and  fought  the 
battles  and  lost  them  and  fought  again  because  they  didn't 
even  know  they  had  been  whipped,  and  tamed  the  wilder- 
ness and  overpassed  the  mountains  and  deserts  and  died  and 
still  went  on  as  the  shape  of  the  United  States  grew  and 
went  on.  I  knew  them  too:  the  men  and  women  still  power- 
ful seventy-five  years  and  twice  that  and  twice  that  again 
afterward,  still  powerful  and  still  dangerous  and  still  com- 


Shall  Not  Perish  1 1 5 

ing,  North  and  South  and  East  and  West,  until  the  name  of 
what  they  did  and  what  they  died  for  became  just  one  single 
word,  louder  than  any  thunder.  It  was  America,  and  it 
covered  all  the  western  earth. 


II  •  THE  VILLAGE 


A  Rose  for  Emily 
Hair 

Centaur  in  Brass 

Dry  September 

Death  Drag 

Elly 

Uncle  Willy 

Mule  in  the  Yard 

That  Will  Be  Fine 

That  Evening  Sun 


A  Rose  for  Emily 


i 

WHEN  Miss  Emily  Grierson  died,  our  whole  town  went  to 
her  funeral:  the  men  through  a  sort  of  respectful  affection 
for  a  fallen  monument,  the  women  mostly  out  of  curiosity 
to  see  the  inside  of  her  house,  which  no  one  save  an  old  man- 
servant— a  combined  gardener  and  cook — had  seen  in  at 
least  ten  years. 

It  was  a  big,  squarish  frame  house  that  had  once  been 
white,  decorated  with  cupolas  and  spires  and  scrolled  bal* 
conies  in  the  heavily  lightsome  style  of  the  seventies,  set  on 
what  had  once  been  our  most  select  street.  But  garages  and 
cotton  gins  had  encroached  and  obliterated  even  the  august 
names  of  that  neighborhood;  only  Miss  Emily's  house  was 
left,  lifting  its  stubborn  and  coquettish  decay  above  the 
cotton  wagons  and  the  gasoline  pumps — an  eyesore  among 
eyesores.  And  now  Miss  Emily  had  gone  to  join  the  repre- 
sentatives of  those  august  names  where  they  lay  in  the  cedar- 
bemused  cemetery  among  the  ranked  and  anonymous 
graves  of  Union  and  Confederate  soldiers  who  fell  at  the 
battle  of  Jefferson. 

Alive,  Miss  Emily  had  been  a  tradition,  a  duty,  and  a  care; 
a  sort  of  hereditary  obligation  upon  the  town,  dating  from 
that  day  in  1 894  when  Colonel  Sartoris,  the  mayor — he  who 
fathered  the  edict  that  no  Negro  woman  should  appear  on 

119 


120  The  Village 

the  streets  without  an  apron — remitted  her  taxes,  the  dis- 
pensation dating  from  the  death  of  her  father  on  into 
perpetuity.  Not  that  Miss  Emily  would  have  accepted 
charity.  Colonel  Sartoris  invented  an  involved  tale  to  the 
effect  that  Miss  Emily's  father  had  loaned  money  to  the 
town,  which  the  town,  as  a  matter  of  business,  preferred 
this  way  of  repaying.  Only  a  man  of  Colonel  Sartoris'  gen- 
eration and  thought  could  have  invented  it,  and  only  a 
woman  could  have  believed  it. 

When  the  next  generation,  with  its  more  modern  ideas, 
became  mayors  and  aldermen,  this  arrangement  created 
some  little  dissatisfaction.  On  the  first  of  the  year  they  mailed 
her  a  tax  notice.  February  came,  and  there  was  no  reply. 
They  wrote  her  a  formal  letter,  asking  her  to  call  at  the 
sheriff's  office  at  her  convenience.  A  week  later  the  mayor 
wrote  her  himself,  offering  to  call  or  to  send  his  car  for  her, 
and  received  in  reply  a  note  on  paper  of  an  archaic  shape, 
in  a  thin,  flowing  calligraphy  in  faded  ink,  to  the  effect  that 
she  no  longer  went  out  at  all.  The  tax  notice  was  also  en- 
closed, without  comment. 

They  called  a  special  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Aldermen. 
A  deputation  waited  upon  her,  knocked  at  the  door  through 
which  no  visitor  had  passed  since  she  ceased  giving  china- 
painting  lessons  eight  or  ten  years  earlier.  They  were  ad- 
mitted by  the  old  Negro  into  a  dim  hall  from  which  a 
stairway  mounted  into  still  more  shadow.  It  smelled  of  dust 
and  disuse — a  close,  dank  smell.  The  Negro  led  them  into 
the  parlor.  It  was  furnished  in  heavy,  leather-covered  furni- 
ture. When  the  Negro  opened  the  blinds  of  one  window, 
they  could  see  that  the  leather  was  cracked;  and  when  they 
sat  down,  a  faint  dust  rose  sluggishly  about  their  thighs, 
spinning  with  slow  motes  in  the  single  sun-ray.  On  a  tar- 
nished gilt  easel  before  the  fireplace  stood  a  crayon  portrait 
of  Miss  Emily's  father. 


A  Rose  for  Emily  i  z  i 

They  rose  when  she  entered — a  small,  fat  woman  in 
black,  with  a  thin  gold  chain  descending  to  her  waist  and 
vanishing  into  her  belt,  leaning  on  an  ebony  cane  with  a 
tarnished  gold  head.  Her  skeleton  was  small  and  spare;  per- 
haps that  was  why  what  would  have  been  merely  plumpness 
in  another  was  obesity  in  her.  She  looked  bloated,  like  a  body 
long  submerged  in  motionless  water,  and  of  that  pallid  hue. 
Her  eyes,  lost  in  the  fatty  ridges  of  her  face,  looked  like 
two  small  pieces  of  coal  pressed  into  a  lump  of  dough  as  they 
moved  from  one  face  to  another  while  the  visitors  stated 
their  errand. 

She  did  not  ask  them  to  sit.  She  just  stood  in  the  door  and 
listened  quietly  until  the  spokesman  came  to  a  stumbling 
halt.  Then  they  could  hear  the  invisible  watch  ticking  at 
the  end  of  the  gold  chain. 

Her  voice  was  dry  and  cold.  "I  have  no  taxes  in  Jefferson. 
Colonel  Sartoris  explained  it  to  me.  Perhaps  one  of  you  can 
gain  access  to  the  city  records  and  satisfy  yourselves." 

"But  we  have.  We  are  the  city  authorities,  Miss  Emily. 
Didn't  you  get  a  notice  from  the  sheriff,  signed  by  him?" 

"I  received  a  paper,  yes,"  Miss  Emily  said.  "Perhaps  he 
considers  himself  the  sheriff  ...  I  have  no  taxes  in  Jefferson." 

"But  there  is  nothing  on  the  books  to  show  that,  you  see. 
We  must  go  by  the — " 

"See  Colonel  Sartoris.  I  have  no  taxes  in  Jefferson." 

"But,  Miss  Emily—" 

"See  Colonel  Sartoris."  (Colonel  Sartoris  had  been  dead 
almost  ten  years.)  "I  have  no  taxes  in  Jefferson.  Tobe!"  The 
Negro  appeared.  "Show  these  gentlemen  out." 

II 

So  SHE  vanquished  them,  horse  and  foot,  just  as  she  had 
vanquished  their  fathers  thirty  years  before  about  the  smelL 


122  The  Village 

That  was  two  years  after  her  father's  death  and  a  short  rime 
after  her  sweetheart — the  one  we  believed  would  marry  her 
— had  deserted  her.  After  her  father's  death  she  went  out 
very  little;  after  her  sweetheart  went  away,  people  hardly 
saw  her  at  all.  A  few  of  the  ladies  had  the  temerity  to  call, 
but  were  not  received,  and  the  only  sign  of  life  about  the 
place  was  the  Negro  man — a  young  man  then — going  in 
and  out  with  a  market  basket. 

"Just  as  if  a  man — any  man — could  keep  a  kitchen  prop- 
erly," the  ladies  said;  so  they  were  not  surprised  when  the 
smell  developed.  It  was  another  link  between  the  gross, 
teeming  world  and  the  high  and  mighty  Griersons. 

A  neighbor,  a  woman,  complained  to  the  mayor,  Judge 
Stevens,  eighty  years  old. 

"But  what  will  you  have  me  do  about  it,  madam?"  he  said. 

"Why,  send  her  word  to  stop  it,"  the  woman  said.  "Isn't 
there  a  law?" 

"I'm  sure  that  won't  be  necessary,"  Judge  Stevens  said. 
"It's  probably  just  a  snake  or  a  rat  that  nigger  of  hers  killed 
in  the  yard.  I'll  speak  to  him  about  it." 

The  next  day  he  received  two  more  complaints,  one  from 
a  man  who  came  in  diffident  deprecation.  "We  really  must 
do  something  about  it,  Judge.  I'd  be  the  last  one  in  the  world 
to  bother  Miss  Emily,  but  we've  got  to  do  something."  That 
night  the  Board  of  Aldermen  met — three  graybeards  and 
one  younger  man,  a  member  of  the  rising  generation. 

"It's  simple  enough,"  he  said.  "Send  her  word  to  have  her 
place  cleaned  up.  Give  her  a  certain  time  to  do  it  in,  and  if 
she  don't .  .  ." 

"Dammit,  sir,"  Judge  Stevens  said,  "will  you  accuse  a 
lady  to  her  face  of  smelling  bad?" 

So  the  next  night,  after  midnight,  four  men  crossed  Miss 
Emily's  lawn  and  slunk  about  the  house  like  burglars,  sniffing 
along  the  base  of  the  brickwork  and  at  the  cellar  openings 


A  Rose  for  Emily  1 2  3 

while  one  of  them  performed  a  regular  sowing  motion  with 
his  hand  out  of  a  sack  slung  from  his  shoulder.  They  broke 
open  the  cellar  door  and  sprinkled  lime  there,  and  in  all  the 
outbuildings.  As  they  recrossed  the  lawn,  a  window  that 
had  been  dark  was  lighted  and  Miss  Emily  sat  in  it,  the  light 
behind  her,  and  her  upright  torso  motionless  as  that  of  an 
idol.  They  crept  quietly  across  the  lawn  and  into  the  shadow 
of  the  locusts  that  lined  the  street.  After  a  week  or  two  the 
smell  went  away. 

That  was  when  people  had  begun  to  feel  really  sorry  for 
her.  People  in  our  town,  remembering  how  old  lady  Wyatt, 
her  great-aunt,  had  gone  completely  crazy  at  last,  believed 
that  the  Griersons  held  themselves  a  little  too  high  for  what 
they  really  were.  None  of  the  young  men  were  quite  good 
enough  for  Miss  Emily  and  such.  We  had  long  thought  of 
them  as  a  tableau,  Miss  Emily  a  slender  figure  in  white  in 
the  background,  her  father  a  spraddled  silhouette  in  the 
foreground,  his  back  to  her  and  clutching  a  horsewhip,  the 
two  of  them  framed  by  the  back-flung  front  door.  So  when 
she  got  to  be  thirty  and  was  still  single,  we  were  not  pleased 
exactly,  but  vindicated;  even  with  insanity  in  the  family 
she  wouldn't  have  turned  down  all  of  her  chances  if  they 
had  really  materialized. 

When  her  father  died,  it  got  about  that  the  house  was 
all  that  was  left  to  her;  and  in  a  way,  people  were  glad.  At 
last  they  could  pity  Miss  Emily.  Being  left  alone,  and  a 
pauper,  she  had  become  humanized.  Now  she  too  would 
know  the  old  thrill  and  the  old  despair  of  a  penny  more  or 
less. 

The  day  after  his  death  all  the  ladies  prepared  to  call  at 
the  house  and  offer  condolence  and  aid,  as  is  our  custom. 
Miss  Emily  met  them  at  the  door,  dressed  as  usual  and  with 
no  trace  of  grief  on  her  face.  She  told  them  that  her  father 
was  not  dead.  She  did  that  for  three  days,  with  the  ministers 


124  The  Village 

calling  on  her,  and  the  doctors,  trying  to  persuade  her  to 
let  them  dispose  of  the  body.  Just  as  they  were  about  to 
resort  to  law  and  force,  she  broke  down,  and  they  buried 
her  father  quickly. 

We  did  not  say  she  was  crazy  then.  We  believed  she  had 
to  do  that.  We  remembered  all  the  young  men  her  father 
had  driven  away,  and  we  knew  that  with  nothing  left,  she 
would  have  to  cling  to  that  which  had  robbed  her,  as  people 
will. 


Ill 

SHE  WAS  SICK  for  a  long  time.  When  we  saw  her  again,  her 
hair  was  cut  short,  making  her  look  like  a  girl,  with  a  vague 
resemblance  to  those  angels  in  colored  church  windows — 
sort  of  tragic  and  serene. 

The  town  had  just  let  the  contracts  for  paving  the  side- 
walks, and  in  the  summer  after  her  father's  death  they  began 
the  work.  The  construction  company  came  with  niggers  and 
mules  and  machinery,  and  a  foreman  named  Homer  Barron, 
a  Yankee — a  big,  dark,  ready  man,  with  a  big  voice  and  eyes 
lighter  than  his  face.  The  little  boys  would  follow  in  groups 
to  hear  him  cuss  the  niggers,  and  the  niggers  singing  in  time 
to  the  rise  and  fall  of  picks.  Pretty  soon  he  knew  every- 
body in  town.  Whenever  you  heard  a  lot  of  laughing  any- 
where about  the  square,  Homer  Barron  would  be  in  the 
center  of  the  group.  Presently  we  began  to  see  him  and  Miss 
Emily  on  Sunday  afternoons  driving  in  the  yellow-wheeled 
buggy  and  the  matched  team  of  bays  from  the  livery  stable. 

At  first  we  were  glad  that  Miss  Emily  would  have  an 
interest,  because  the  ladies  all  said,  "Of  course  a  Grierson 
would  not  think  seriously  of  a  Northerner,  a  day  laborer.'* 
But  there  were  still  others,  older  people,  who  said  that  even 
grief  could  not  cause  a  real  lady  to  forget  noblesse  oblige — • 


A  Rose  for  Emily  125 

without  calling  it  noblesse  oblige.  They  just  said,  "Poor 
Emily.  Her  kinsfolk  should  come  to  her."  She  had  some  kin 
in  Alabama;  but  years  ago  her  father  had  fallen  out  with 
them  over  the  estate  of  old  lady  Wyatt,  the  crazy  woman, 
and  there  was  no  communication  between  the  two  families. 
They  had  not  even  been  represented  at  the  funeral. 

And  as  soon  as  the  old  people  said,  "Poor  Emily,"  the 
whispering  began.  "Do  you  suppose  it's  really  so?"  they  said 
to  one  another.  "Of  course  it  is.  What  else  could  .  .  ."  This 
behind  their  hands;  rustling  of  craned  silk  and  satin  behind 
jalousies  closed  upon  the  sun  of  Sunday  afternoon  as  the 
thin,  swift  clop-clop-clop  of  the  matched  team  passed:  "Poor 
Emily." 

She  carried  her  head  high  enough — even  when  we  believed 
that  she  was  fallen.  It  was  as  if  she  demanded  more  than  ever 
the  recognition  of  her  dignity  as  the  last  Grierson;  as  if  it 
had  wanted  that  touch  of  earthiness  to  reaffirm  her  imper- 
viousness.  Like  when  she  bought  the  rat  poison,  the  arsenic. 
That  was  over  a  year  after  they  had  begun  to  say  "Poor 
Emily,"  and  while  the  two  female  cousins  were  visiting  her. 

"I  want  some  poison,"  she  said  to  the  druggist.  She  was 
over  thirty  then,  still  a  slight  woman,  though  thinner  than 
usual,  with  cold,  haughty  black  eyes  in  a  face  the  flesh  of 
which  was  strained  across  the  temples  and  about  the  eye- 
sockets  as  you  imagine  a  lighthouse-keeper's  face  ought  to 
look.  "I  want  some  poison,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  Miss  Emily.  What  kind?  For  rats  and  such?  I'd 
recom — " 

"I  want  the  best  you  have.  I  don't  care  what  kind." 

The  druggist  named  several.  "They'll  kill  anything  up 
to  an  elephant.  But  what  you  want  is — " 

"Arsenic,"  Miss  Emily  said.  "Is  that  a  good  one?" 

"Is  .  .  .  arsenic?  Yes,  ma'am.  But  what  you  want — " 

"I  want  arsenic." 


The  Village 

The  druggist  looked  down  at  her.  She  looked  back  at  him, 
erect,  her  face  like  a  strained  flag.  "Why,  of  course,"  the 
druggist  said.  "If  that's  what  you  want.  But  the  law  requires 
you  to  tell  what  you  are  going  to  use  it  for." 

Miss  Emily  just  stared  at  him,  her  head  tilted  back  in 
order  to  look  him  eye  for  eye,  until  he  looked  away  and 
went  and  got  the  arsenic  and  wrapped  it  up.  The  Negro 
delivery  boy  brought  her  the  package;  the  druggist  didn't 
come  back.  When  she  opened  the  package  at  home  there 
was  written  on  the  box,  under  the  skull  and  bones:  "For 
rats." 


IV 

So  THE  NEXT  day  we  all  said,  "She  will  kill  herself";  and  we 
said  it  would  be  the  best  thing.  When  she  had  first  begun 
to  be  seen  with  Homer  Barron,  we  had  said,  "She  will  marry 
him."  Then  we  said,  "She  will  persuade  him  yet,"  because 
Homer  himself  had  remarked — he  liked  men,  and  it  was 
known  that  he  drank  with  the  younger  men  in  the  Elks' 
Club — that  he  was  not  a  marrying  man.  Later  we  said, 
"Poor  Emily"  behind  the  jalousies  as  they  passed  on  Sunday 
afternoon  in  the  glittering  buggy,  Miss  Emily  with  her  head 
high  and  Homer  Barron  with  his  hat  cocked  and  a  cigar  in 
his  teeth,  reins  and  whip  in  a  yellow  glove. 

Then  some  of  the  ladies  began  to  say  that  it  was  a  disgrace 
to  the  town  and  a  bad  example  to  the  young  people.  The 
men  did  not  want  to  interfere,  but  at  last  the  ladies  forced 
the  Baptist  minister — Miss  Emily's  people  were  Episcopal — 
to  call  upon  her.  He  would  never  divulge  what  happened 
during  that  interview,  but  he  refused  to  go  back  again.  The 
next  Sunday  they  again  drove  about  the  streets,  and  the 
following  day  the  minister's  wife  wrote  to  Miss  Emily's 
relations  in  Alabama. 


A  Rose  for  Emily  127 

So  she  had  blood-kin  under  her  roof  again  and  we  sat 
back  to  watch  developments.  At  first  nothing  happened. 
Then  we  were  sure  that  they  were  to  be  married.  We  learned 
that  Miss  Emily  had  been  to  the  jeweler's  and  ordered  a 
man's  toilet  set  in  silver,  with  the  letters  H.  B.  on  each  piece. 
Two  days  later  we  learned  that  she  had  bought  a  complete 
outfit  of  men's  clothing,  including  a  nightshirt,  and  we  said, 
"They  are  married."  We  were  really  glad.  We  were  glad 
because  the  two  female  cousins  were  even  more  Grierson 
than  Miss  Emily  had  ever  been. 

So  we  were  not  surprised  when  Homer  Barron — the 
streets  had  been  finished  some  time  since — was  gone.  We 
were  a  little  disappointed  that  there  was  not  a  public  blow- 
ing-off ,  bur  we  believed  that  he  had  gone  on  to  prepare  for 
Miss  Emily's  coming,  or  to  give  her  a  chance  to  get  rid  of 
the  cousins.  (By  that  time  it  was  a  cabal,  and  we  were  all 
Miss  Emily's  allies  to  help  circumvent  the  cousins.)  Sure 
enough,  after  another  week  they  departed.  And,  as  we  had 
expected  all  along,  within  three  days  Homer  Barron  was 
back  in  town.  A  neighbor  saw  the  Negro  man  admit  him  at 
the  kitchen  door  at  dusk  one  evening. 

And  that  was  the  last  we  saw  of  Homer  Barron.  And  of 
Miss  Emily  for  some  time.  The  Negro  man  went  in  and  out 
with  the  market  basket,  but  the  front  door  remained  closed. 
Now  and  then  we  would  see  her  at  a  window  for  a  moment, 
as  the  men  did  that  night  when  they  sprinkled  the  lime,  but 
for  almost  six  months  she  did  not  appear  on  the  streets.  Then 
we  knew  that  this  was  to  be  expected  too;  as  if  that  quality 
of  her  father  which  had  thwarted  her  woman's  life  so  many 
times  had  been  too  virulent  and  too  furious  to  die. 

When  we  next  saw  Miss  Emily,  she  had  grown  fat  and 
her  hair  was  turning  gray.  During  the  next  few  years  it 
grew  grayer  and  grayer  until  it  attained  an  even  pepper-and- 
salt  iron-gray,  when  it  ceased  turning.  Up  to  the  dav  of  her 


ii8  The  Village 

death  at  seventy-four  it  was  still  that  vigorous  iron-gray, 
like  the  hair  of  an  active  man. 

From  that  time  on  her  front  door  remained  closed,  save 
for  a  period  of  six  or  seven  years,  when  she  was  about  forty, 
during  which  she  gave  lessons  in  china-painting.  She  fitted 
up  a  studio  in  one  of  the  downstairs  rooms,  where  the 
daughters  and  granddaughters  of  Colonel  Sartoris'  contem- 
poraries were  sent  to  her  with  the  same  regularity  and  in  the 
same  spirit  that  they  were  sent  to  church  on  Sundays  with 
a  twenty-five-cent  piece  for  the  collection  plate.  Meanwhile 
her  taxes  had  been  remitted. 

Then  the  newer  generation  became  the  backbone  and 
the  spirit  of  the  town,  and  the  painting  pupils  grew  up  and 
fell  away  and  did  not  send  their  children  to  her  with  boxes 
of  color  and  tedious  brushes  and  pictures  cut  from  the 
ladies'  magazines.  The  front  door  closed  upon  the  last  one 
and  remained  closed  for  good.  When  the  town  got  free 
postal  delivery,  Miss  Emily  alone  refused  to  let  them  fasten 
the  metal  numbers  above  her  door  and  attach  a  mailbox  to 
it.  She  would  not  listen  to  them. 

Daily,  monthly,  yearly  we  watched  the  Negro  grow  grayer 
and  more  stooped,  going  in  and  out  with  the  market  basket 
Each  December  we  sent  her  a  tax  notice,  which  would  be 
returned  by  the  post  office  a  week  later,  unclaimed.  Now  and 
then  we  would  see  her  in  one  of  the  downstairs  windows — 
she  had  evidently  shut  up  the  top  floor  of  the  house — like 
the  carven  torso  of  an  idol  in  a  niche,  looking  or  not  looking 
at  us,  we  could  never  tell  which.  Thus  she  passed  from  gen- 
eration to  generation — dear,  inescapable,  impervious,  tran- 
quil, and  perverse. 

And  so  she  died.  Fell  ill  in  the  house  filled  with  dust  and 
shadows,  with  only  a  doddering  Negro  man  to  wait  on  her. 
We  did  not  even  know  she  was  sick;  we  had  long  since 
given  up  trying  to  get  any  information  from  the  Negro 


A  Rose  for  Emily  129 

He  talked  to  no  one,  probably  not  even  to  her,  for  his  voice 
had  grown  harsh  and  rusty,  as  if  from  disuse. 

She  died  in  one  of  the  downstairs  rooms,  in  a  heavy 
walnut  bed  with  a  curtain,  her  gray  head  propped  on  a  pillow 
yellow  and  moldy  with  age  and  lack  of  sunlight. 

V 

THE  NEGRO  met  the  first  of  the  ladies  at  the  front  door  and 
let  them  in,  with  their  hushed,  sibilant  voices  and  their  quick, 
curious  glances,  and  then  he  disappeared.  He  walked  right 
through  the  house  and  out  the  back  and  was  not  seen  again. 

The  two  female  cousins  came  at  once.  They  held  the 
funeral  on  the  second  day,  with  the  town  coming  to  look 
at  Miss  Emily  beneath  a  mass  of  bought  flowers,  with  the 
crayon  face  of  her  father  musing  profoundly  above  the  bier 
and  the  ladies  sibilant  and  macabre;  and  the  very  old  men 
— some  in  their  brushed  Confederate  uniforms — on  the  porch 
and  the  lawn,  talking  of  Miss  Emily  as  if  she  had  been  a  con- 
temporary of  theirs,  believing  that  they  had  danced  with 
her  and  courted  her  perhaps,  confusing  time  with  its  math- 
ematical progression,  as  the  old  do,  to  whom  all  the  past  is 
not  a  diminishing  road  but,  instead,  a  huge  meadow  which 
no  winter  ever  quite  touches,  divided  from  them  now  by  the 
narrow  bottle-neck  of  the  most  recent  decade  of  years. 

Already  we  knew  that  there  was  one  room  in  that  region 
above  stairs  which  no  one  had  seen  in  forty  years,  and  which 
would  have  to  be  forced.  They  waited  until  Miss  Emily 
was  decently  in  the  ground  before  they  opened  it. 

The  violence  of  breaking  down  the  door  seemed  to  fill 
this  room  with  pervading  dust.  A  thin,  acrid  pall  as  of  the 
tomb  seemed  to  lie  everywhere  upon  this  room  decked  and 
furnished  as  for  a  bridal:  upon  the  valance  curtains  of  faded 
rose  color,  upon  the  rose-shaded  lights,  upon  the  dressing 


130  The  Village 

table,  upon  the  delicate  array  of  crystal  and  the  man's  toilet 
things  backed  with  tarnished  silver,  silver  so  tarnished  that 
the  monogram  was  obscured.  Among  them  lay  a  collar  and 
tie,  as  if  they  had  just  been  removed,  which,  lifted,  left  upon 
the  surface  a  pale  crescent  in  the  dust.  Upon  a  chair  hung 
the  suit,  carefully  folded;  beneath  it  the  two  mute  shoes 
and  the  discarded  socks. 

The  man  himself  lay  in  the  bed. 

For  a  long  while  we  just  stood  there,  looking  down  at  the 
profound  and  fleshless  grin.  The  body  had  apparently  once 
lain  in  the  attitude  of  an  embrace,  but  now  the  long  sleep 
that  outlasts  love,  that  conquers  even  the  grimace  of  love, 
had  cuckolded  him.  What  was  left  of  him,  rotted  beneath 
what  was  left  of  the  nightshirt,  had  become  inextricable 
from  the  bed  in  which  he  lay;  and  upon  him  and  upon  the 
pillow  beside  him  lay  that  even  coating  of  the  patient  and 
biding  dust. 

Then  we  noticed  that  in  the  second  pillow  was  the  inden- 
tation of  a  head.  One  of  us  lifted  something  from  it,  and 
leaning  forward,  that  faint  and  invisible  dust  dry  and  acrid 
in  the  nostrils,  we  saw  a  long  strand  of  iron-gray  hair. 


Hair 


THIS  GIRL,  this  Susan  Reed,  was  an  orphan.  She  lived  with 
a  family  named  Burchett,  that  had  some  more  children,  two 
or  three  more.  Some  said  that  Susan  was  a  niece  or  a  cousin 
or  something;  others  cast  the  usual  aspersions  on  the  char- 
acter of  Burchett  and  even  of  Mrs.  Burchett:  you  know. 
Women  mostly,  these  were. 

She  was  about  five  when  Hawkshaw  first  came  to  town. 
It  was  his  first  summer  behind  that  chair  in  Maxey's  barber 
shop  that  Mrs  Burchett  brought  Susan  in  for  the  first  time. 
Maxey  told  me  about  how  him  and  the  other  barbers  watched 
Mrs  Burchett  trying  for  three  days  to  get  Susan  (she  was 
a  thin  little  girl  then,  with  big  scared  eyes  and  this  straight, 
soft  hair  not  blonde  and  not  brunette)  into  the  shop.  And 
Maxey  told  how  at  last  it  was  Hawkshaw  that  went  out 
into  the  street  and  worked  with  the  girl  for  about  fifteen 
minutes  until  he  got  her  into  the  shop  and  into  his  chair — 
him  that  hadn't  never  said  more  than  Yes  or  No  to  any  man 
or  woman  in  the  town  that  anybody  ever  saw.  "Be  durn  if 
it  didn't  look  like  Hawkshaw  had  been  waiting  for  her  to 
come  along,"  Maxey  told  me. 

That  was  her  first  haircut.  Hawkshaw  gave  it  to  her,  and 
her  sitting  there  under  the  cloth  like  a  little  scared  rabbit. 
But  six  months  after  that  she  was  coming  to  the  shop  by 


132  The  Village 

herself  and  letting  Hawkshaw  cut  her  hair,  still  looking  like 
a  little  old  rabbit,  with  her  scared  face  and  those  big  eyes 
and  that  hair  without  any  special  name  showing  above  the 
cloth.  If  Hawkshaw  was  busy,  Maxey  said  she  would  come 
in  and  sit  on  the  waiting  bench  close  to  his  chair  with  her 
legs  sticking  straight  out  in  front  of  her  until  Hawkshaw 
got  done.  Maxey  says  they  considered  her  Hawkshaw's  client 
the  same  as  if  she  had  been  a  Saturday  night  shaving  cus- 
tomer. He  says  that  one  time  the  other  barber,  Matt  Fox, 
offered  to  wait  on  her,  Hawkshaw  being  busy,  and  that 
Hawkshaw  looked  up  like  a  flash.  "I'll  be  done  in  a  minute," 
he  says.  "Pll  tend  to  her."  Maxey  told  me  that  Hawkshaw 
had  been  working  for  him  for  almost  a  year  then,  but  that 
was  the  first  time  he  ever  heard  him  speak  positive  about 
anything. 

That  fall  the  girl  started  to  school.  She  would  pass  the 
barber  shop  each  morning  and  afternoon.  She  was  still  shy, 
walking  fast  like  little  girls  do,  with  that  yellow-brown  head 
of  hers  passing  the  window  level  and  fast  like  she  was  on 
skates.  She  was  always  by  herself  at  first,  but  pretty  soon 
her  head  would  be  one  of  a  clump  of  other  heads,  all  talking, 
not  looking  toward  the  window  at  all,  and  Hawkshaw  stand- 
ing there  in  the  window,  looking  out.  Maxey  said  him  and 
Matt  would  not  have  to  look  at  the  clock  at  all  to  tell  when 
five  minutes  to  eight  and  to  three  o'clock  came,  because  they 
could  tell  by  Hawkshaw.  It  was  like  he  would  kind  of  drift 
up  to  the  window  without  watching  himself  do  it,  and  be 
looking  out  about  the  time  for  the  school  children  to  begin 
to  pass.  When  she  would  come  to  the  shop  for  a  haircut, 
Hawkshaw  would  give  her  two  or  three  of  those  pepper- 
mints where  he  would  give  the  other  children  just  one, 
Maxey  told  me. 

No;  it  was  Matt  Fox,  the  other  barber,  told  me  that.  He 
was  the  one  who  told  me  about  the  doll  Hawkshaw  gave  her 


Hair  1 3  3 

on  Christmas.  I  don't  know  how  he  found  it  out.  Hawkshaw 
never  told  him.  But  he  knew  some  way;  he  knew  more  about 
Hawkshaw  than  Maxey  did.  He  was  a  married  man  himself, 
Matt  was.  A  kind  of  fat,  flabby  fellow,  with  a  pasty  face 
and  eyes  that  looked  tired  or  sad — something.  A  funny 
fellow,  and  almost  as  good  a  barber  as  Hawkshaw.  He  never 
talked  much  either,  and  I  don't  know  how  he  could  have 
known  so  much  about  Hawkshaw  when  a  talking  man 
couldn't  get  much  out  of  him.  I  guess  maybe  a  talking  man 
hasn't  got  the  time  to  ever  learn  much  about  anything  except 
words. 

Anyway,  Matt  told  me  about  how  Hawkshaw  gave  her 
a  present  every  Christmas,  even  after  she  got  to  be  a  big  girl. 
She  still  came  to  him,  to  his  chair,  and  him  watching  her 
every  morning  and  afternoon  when  she  passed  to  and  from 
school.  A  big  girl,  and  she  wasn't  shy  any  more. 

You  wouldn't  have  thought  she  was  the  same  girl.  She 
got  grown  fast.  Too  fast.  That  was  the  trouble.  Some  said  it 
was  being  an  orphan  and  all.  But  it  wasn't  that.  Girls  are 
different  from  boys.  Girls  are  born  weaned  and  boys  don't 
ever  get  weaned.  You  see  one  sixty  years  old,  and  be  damned 
if  he  won't  go  back  to  the  perambulator  at  the  bat  of  an  eye. 

It's  not  that  she  was  bad.  There's  not  any  such  thing  as  a 
woman  born  bad,  because  they  are  all  born  bad,  born  with 
the  badness  in  them.  The  thing  is,  to  get  them  married  before 
the  badness  comes  to  a  natural  head.  But  we  try  to  make 
them  conform  to  a  system  that  says  a  woman  can't  be  mar- 
ried until  she  reaches  a  certain  age.  And  nature  don't  pay 
any  attention  to  systems,  let  alone  women  paying  any  atten- 
tion to  them,  or  to  anything.  She  just  grew  up  too  fast.  She 
reached  the  point  where  the  badness  came  to  a  head  before 
the  system  said  it  was  time  for  her  to.  I  think  they  can't  help 
it.  I  have  a  daughter  of  my  own,  and  I  say  that. 

So  there  she  was.  Matt  told  me  they  figured  up  and  she 


134  The  Village 

couldn't  have  been  more  than  thirteen  when  Mrs  Burchett 
whipped  her  one  day  for  using  rouge  and  paint,  and  during 
that  year,  he  said,  they  would  see  her  with  two  or  three 
other  girls  giggling  and  laughing  on  the  street  at  all  hours 
when  they  should  have  been  in  school;  still  thin,  with  that 
hair  still  not  blonde  and  not  brunette,  with  her  face  caked 
with  paint  until  you  would  have  thought  it  would  crack 
like  dried  mud  when  she  laughed,  with  the  regular  simple 
gingham  and  such  dresses  that  a  thirteen-year-old  child 
ought  to  wear  pulled  and  dragged  to  show  off  what  she 
never  had  yet  to  show  off,  like  the  older  girls  did  with  their 
silk  and  crepe  and  such. 

Matt  said  he  watched  her  pass  one  day,  when  all  of  a 
sudden  he  realized  she  never  had  any  stockings  on.  He  said 
he  thought  about  it  and  he  said  he  could  not  remember  that 
she  ever  did  wear  stockings  in  the  summer,  until  he  realized 
that  what  he  had  noticed  was  not  the  lack  of  stockings,  but 
that  her  legs  were  like  a  woman's  legs:  female.  And  her  only 
thirteen. 

I  say  she  couldn't  help  herself.  It  wasn't  her  fault.  And 
it  wasn't  Burchett's  fault,  either.  Why,  nobody  can  be  as 
gentle  with  them,  the  bad  ones,  the  ones  that  are  unlucky 
enough  to  come  to  a  head  too  soon,  as  men.  Look  at  the 
way  they — all  the  men  in  town — treated  Hawkshaw.  Even 
after  folks  knew,  after  all  the  talk  began,  there  wasn't  a  man 
of  them  talked  before  Hawkshaw.  I  reckon  they  thought 
he  knew  too,  had  heard  some  of  the  talk,  but  whenever  they 
talked  about  her  in  the  shop,  it  was  while  Hawkshaw  was 
not  there.  And  I  reckon  the  other  men  were  the  same,  be- 
cause there  was  not  a  one  of  them  that  hadn't  seen  Hawk- 
shaw at  the  window,  looking  at  her  when  she  passed,  or 
looking  at  her  on  the  street;  happening  to  kind  of  be  passing 
the  picture  show  when  it  let  out  and  she  would  come  out 
with  some  fellow,  having  begun  to  go  with  them  before  she 


Hair  135 

was  fourteen.  Folks  said  how  she  would  have  to  slip  out  and 
meet  them  and  slip  back  into  the  house  again  with  Mrs 
Burchett  thinking  she  was  at  the  home  of  a  girl  friend. 

They  never  talked  about  her  before  Hawkshaw.  They 
would  wait  until  he  was  gone,  to  dinner,  or  on  one  of  those 
two- weeks'  vacations  of  his  in  April  that  never  anybody 
could  find  out  about;  where  he  went  or  anything.  But  he 
would  be  gone,  and  they  would  watch  the  girl  slipping 
around,  skirting  trouble,  bound  to  get  into  it  sooner  or  later, 
even  if  Burchett  didn't  hear  something  first.  She  had  quit 
school  a  year  ago.  For  a  year  Burchett  and  Mrs  Burchett 
thought  that  she  was  going  to  school  every  day,  when  she 
hadn't  been  inside  the  building  even.  Somebody — one  of  the 
high-school  boys  maybe,  but  she  never  drew  any  lines: 
schoolboys,  married  men,  anybody — would  get  her  a  report 
card  every  month  and  she  would  fill  it  out  herself  and  take 
it  home  for  Mrs  Burchett  to  sign.  It  beats  the  devil  how  the 
folks  that  love  a  woman  will  let  her  fool  them. 

So  she  quit  school  and  went  to  work  in  the  ten-cent  store. 
She  would  come  to  the  shop  for  a  haircut,  all  painted  up, 
in  some  kind  of  little  flimsy  off-color  clothes  that  showed 
her  off,  with  her  face  watchful  and  bold  and  discreet  all  at 
once,  and  her  hair  gummed  and  twisted  about  her  face.  But 
even  the  stuff  she  put  on  it  couldn't  change  that  brown- 
yellow  color.  Her  hair  hadn't  changed  at  all.  She  wouldn't 
always  go  to  Hawkshaw's  chair.  Even  when  his  chair  was 
empty,  she  would  sometimes  take  one  of  the  others,  talking 
to  the  barbers,  filling  the  whole  shop  with  noise  and  perfume 
and  her  legs  sticking  out  from  under  the  cloth.  Hawkshaw 
wouldn't  look  at  her  then.  Even  when  he  wasn't  busy,  he 
had  a  way  of  looking  the  same:  intent  and  down-looking 
like  he  was  making  out  to  be  busy,  hiding  behind  the  mak- 
ing-out. 

That  was  how  it  was  when  he  left  two  weeks  ago  on  that 


136  The  Village 

April  vacation  of  his,  that  secret  trip  that  folks  had  given  up 
trying  to  find  where  he  went  ten  years  ago.  I  made  Jefferson 
a  couple  of  days  after  he  left,  and  I  was  in  the  shop.  They 
were  talking  about  him  and  her. 

"Is  he  still  giving  her  Christmas  presents?"  I  said. 

"He  bought  her  a  wrist  watch  two  years  ago,"  Matt  Fox 
said.  "Paid  sixty  dollars  for  it." 

Maxey  was  shaving  a  customer.  He  stopped,  the  razor  in 
his  hand,  the  blade  loaded  with  lather.  "Well,  I'll  be  durned," 
he  said.  "Then  he  must —  You  reckon  he  was  the  first  one, 
the  one  that — " 

Matt  hadn't  looked  around.  "He  aint  give  it  to  her  yet," 
he  said. 

"Well,  durn  his  tight-fisted  time,"  Maxey  said.  "Any  old 
man  that  will  fool  with  a  young  girl,  he's  pretty  bad.  But  a 
fellow  that  will  trick  one  and  then  not  even  pay  her  noth- 
ing-" 

Matt  looked  around  now;  he  was  shaving  a  customer  too. 
"What  would  you  say  if  you  heard  that  the  reason  he  aint 
give  it  to  her  is  that  he  thinks  she  is  too  young  to  receive 
jewelry  from  anybody  that  aint  kin  to  her?" 

"You  mean,  he  dont  know?  He  dont  know  what  every- 
body else  in  this  town  except  maybe  Mr  and  Mrs  Burchett 
has  knowed  for  three  years?" 

Matt  went  back  to  work  again,  his  elbow  moving  steady, 
the  razor  moving  in  little  jerks.  "How  would  he  know? 
Aint  anybody  but  a  woman  going  to  tell  him.  And  he  dont 
know  any  women  except  Mrs  Cowan.  And  I  reckon  she 
thinks  he's  done  heard." 

"That's  a  fact,"  Maxey  says. 

That  was  how  things  were  when  he  went  off  on  his  vaca- 
tion two  weeks  ago.  I  worked  Jefferson  in  a  day  and  a  half, 
and  went  on.  In  the  middle  of  the  next  week  I  reached 


Hair  137 

Division.  I  didn't  hurry.  I  wanted  to  give  him  time.  It  was 
on  a  Wednesday  morning  I  got  there. 

II 

IF  THERE  HAD  BEEN  love  once,  a  man  would  have  said  that 
Hawkshaw  had  forgotten  her.  Meaning  love,  of  course. 
When  I  first  saw  him  thirteen  years  ago  (I  had  just  gone  on 
the  road  then,  making  North  Mississippi  and  Alabama  with 
a  line  of  work  shirts  and  overalls)  behind  a  chair  in  the 
barber  shop  in  Porterfield,  I  said,  "Here  is  a  bachelor  born. 
Here  is  a  man  who  was  born  single  and  forty  years  old." 

A  little,  sandy-complected  man  with  a  face  you  would 
not  remember  and  would  not  recognize  again  ten  minutes 
later,  in  a  blue  serge  suit  and  a  black  bow  tie,  the  kind  that 
snaps  together  in  the  back,  that  you  buy  already  tied  in  the 
store.  Maxey  told  me  he  was  still  wearing  that  serge  suit  and 
tie  when  he  got  off  the  south-bound  train  in  Jefferson  a 
year  later,  carrying  one  of  these  imitation  leather  suitcases. 
And  when  I  saw  him  again  in  Jefferson  in  the  next  year, 
behind  a  chair  in  Maxey 's  shop,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
chair  I  wouldn't  have  recognized  him  at  all.  Same  face,  same 
tie;  be  damned  if  it  wasn't  like  they  had  picked  him  up, 
chair,  customer  and  all,  and  set  him  down  sixty  miles  away 
without  him  missing  a  lick.  I  had  to  look  back  out  the  win- 
dow at  the  square  to  be  sure  I  wasn't  in  Porterfield  myself 
any  time  a  year  ago.  And  that  was  the  first  time  I  realized 
that  when  I  had  made  Porterfield  about  six  weeks  back,  he 
had  not  been  there. 

It  was  three  years  after  that  before  I  found  out  about  him. 
I  would  make  Division  about  five  times  a  year — a  store  and 
four  or  five  houses  and  a  sawmill  on  the  State  line  between 
Mississippi  and  Alabama.  I  had  noticed  a  house  there.  It  was 
a  good  house,  one  of  the  best  there,  and  it  was  always  closed. 


138  The  Village 

When  I  would  make  Division  in  the  late  spring  or  the  early 
summer  there  would  always  be  signs  of  work  around  the 
house.  The  yard  would  be  cleaned  up  of  weeds,  and  the 
flower  beds  tended  to  and  the  fences  and  roof  fixed.  Then 
when  I  would  get  back  to  Division  along  in  the  fall  or  the 
winter,  the  yard  would  be  grown  up  in  weeds  again,  and 
maybe  some  of  the  pickets  gone  off  the  fence  where  folks 
had  pulled  them  off  to  mend  their  own  fences  or  maybe  for 
firewood;  I  dont  know.  And  the  house  would  be  always 
closed;  never  any  smoke  at  the  kitchen  chimney.  So  one  day 
I  asked  the  storekeeper  about  it  and  he  told  me. 

It  had  belonged  to  a  man  named  Starnes,  but  the  family 
was  all  dead.  They  were  considered  the  best  folks,  because 
they  owned  some  land,  mortgaged.  Starnes  was  one  of  these 
lazy  men  that  was  satisfied  to  be  a  landowner  as  long  as  he 
had  enough  to  eat  and  a  little  tobacco.  They  had  one  daugh- 
ter that  went  and  got  herself  engaged  to  a  young  fellow, 
son  of  a  tenant  farmer.  The  mother  didn't  like  the  idea,  but 
Starnes  didn't  seem  to  object.  Maybe  because  the  young 
fellow  (his  name  was  Stribling)  was  a  hard  worker;  maybe 
because  Starnes  was  just  too  lazy  to  object.  Anyway,  they 
were  engaged  and  Stribling  saved  his  money  and  went  to 
Birmingham  to  learn  barbering.  Rode  part  of  the  way  in 
wagons  and  walked  the  rest,  coming  back  each  summer  to 
see  the  girl. 

Then  one  day  Starnes  died,  sitting  in  his  chair  on  the 
porch;  they  said  that  he  was  too  lazy  to  keep  on  breathing, 
and  they  sent  for  Stribling.  I  heard  he  had  built  up  a  good 
trade  of  his  own  in  the  Birmingham  shop,  saving  his  money; 
they  told  me  he  had  done  picked  out  the  apartment  and 
paid  down  on  the  furniture  and  all,  and  that  they  were  to  be 
married  that  summer.  He  came  back.  All  Starnes  had  ever 
raised  was  a  mortgage,  so  Stribling  paid  for  the  burial.  It 
cost  a  right  smart,  more  than  Starnes  was  worth,  but  Mrs 


Hair  139 

Starnes  had  to  be  suited.  So  Stribling  had  to  start  saving 
again. 

But  he  had  already  leased  the  apartment  and  paid  down 
on  the  furniture  and  the  ring  and  he  had  bought  the  wedding 
license  when  they  sent  for  him  again  in  a  hurry.  It  was  the 
girl  this  time.  She  had  some  kind  of  fever.  These  backwoods 
folks:  you  know  how  it  is.  No  doctors,  or  veterinaries,  if 
they  are.  Cut  them  and  shoot  them:  that's  all  right.  But  let 
them  get  a  bad  cold  and  maybe  they'll  get  well  or  maybe 
they'll  die  two  days  later  of  cholera.  She  was  delirious  when 
Stribling  got  there.  They  had  to  cut  all  her  hair  off.  Strib- 
ling did  that,  being  an  expert  you  might  say;  a  professional 
in  the  family.  They  told  me  she  was  one  of  these  thin,  un- 
healthy girls  anyway,  with  a  lot  of  straight  hair  not  brown 
and  not  yellow. 

She  never  knew  him,  never  knew  who  cut  off  her  hair. 
She  died  so,  without  knowing  anything  about  it,  without 
knowing  even  that  she  died,  maybe.  She  just  kept  on  saying, 
"Take  care  of  maw.  The  mortgage.  Paw  wont  like  it  to  be 
left  so.  Send  for  Henry  (That  was  him:  Henry  Stribling; 
Hawkshaw:  I  saw  him  the  next  year  in  Jefferson.  "So  you're 
Henry  Stribling,"  I  said).  The  mortgage.  Take  care  of  maw. 
Send  for  Henry.  The  mortgage.  Send  for  Henry."  Then 
she  died.  There  was  a  picture  of  her,  the  only  one  they  had. 
Hawkshaw  sent  it,  with  a  lock  of  the  hair  he  had  cut  off,  to 
an  address  in  a  farm  magazine,  to  have  the  hair  made  into 
a  frame  for  the  picture.  But  they  both  got  lost,  the  hair  and 
the  picture,  in  the  mail  somehow.  Anyway  he  never  got 
either  of  them  back. 

He  buried  the  girl  too,  and  the  next  year  (he  had  to  go 
back  to  Birmingham  and  get  shut  of  the  apartment  which  he 
had  engaged  and  let  the  furniture  go  so  he  could  save  again) 
he  put  a  headstone  over  her  grave.  Then  he  went  away 
again  and  they  heard  how  he  had  quit  the  Birmingham  shop. 


140  The  Village 

He  just  quit  and  disappeared,  and  they  all  saying  how  in 
time  he  would  have  owned  the  shop.  But  he  quit,  and  next 
April,  just  before  the  anniversary  of  the  girl's  death,  he 
showed  up  again.  He  came  to  see  Mrs  Starnes  and  went 
away  again  in  two  weeks. 

After  he  was  gone  they  found  out  how  he  had  stopped 
at  the  bank  at  the  county  seat  and  paid  the  interest  on  the 
mortgage.  He  did  that  every  year  until  Mrs  Starnes  died. 
She  happened  to  die  while  he  was  there.  He  would  spend 
about  two  weeks  cleaning  up  the  place  and  fixing  it  so  she 
would  be  comfortable  for  another  year,  and  she  letting  him, 
being  as  she  was  better  born  than  him;  being  as  he  was  one 
of  these  parveynoos.  Then  she  died  too.  "You  know  what 
Sophie  said  to  do,"  she  says.  "That  mortgage.  Mr  Starnes 
will  be  worried  when  I  see  him." 

So  he  buried  her  too.  He  bought  another  headstone,  to 
suit  her.  Then  he  begun  to  pay  the  principal  on  the  mort- 
gage. Starnes  had  some  kin  in  Alabama.  The  folks  in  Divi- 
sion expected  the  kin  to  come  and  claim  the  place.  But  maybe 
the  kin  were  waiting  until  Hawkshaw  had  got  the  mortgage 
cleared.  He  made  the  payment  each  year,  coming  back  and 
cleaning  up  the  place.  They  said  he  would  clean  up  that 
house  inside  like  a  woman,  washing  and  scrubbing  it.  It 
would  take  him  two  weeks  each  April.  Then  he  would  go 
away  again,  nobody  knew  where,  returning  each  April  to 
make  the  payment  at  the  bank  and  clean  up  that  empty 
house  that  never  belonged  to  him. 

He  had  been  doing  that  for  about  five  years  when  I  saw 
him  in  Maxey's  shop  in  Jefferson,  the  year  after  I  saw  him 
in  a  shop  in  Porterfield,  in  that  serge  suit  and  that  black 
bow  tie.  Maxey  said  he  had  them  on  when  he  got  off  the 
south-bound  train  that  day  in  Jefferson,  carrying  that  paper 
suitcase.  Maxey  said  they  watched  him  for  two  days  about 
the  square,  him  not  seeming  to  know  anybody  or  to  have 


Hair  141 

any  business  or  to  be  in  any  hurry;  just  walking  about  the 
square  like  he  was  just  looking  around. 

It  was  the  young  fellows,  the  loafers  that  pitch  dollars  all 
day  long  in  the  clubhouse  yard,  waiting  for  the  young  girls 
to  come  giggling  down  to  the  post  office  and  the  soda  foun- 
tain in  the  late  afternoon,  working  their  hips  under  their 
dresses,  leaving  the  smell  of  perfume  when  they  pass,  that 
gave  him  his  name.  They  said  he  was  a  detective,  maybe 
because  that  was  the  last  thing  in  the  world  anybody  would 
suspect  him  to  be.  So  they  named  him  Hawkshaw,  and 
Hawkshaw  he  remained  for  the  twelve  years  he  stayed  in 
Jefferson,  behind  that  chair  in  Maxey's  shop.  He  told  Maxey 
he  was  from  Alabama. 

"What  part?"  Maxey  said.  "Alabama's  a  big  place. 
Birmingham?"  Maxey  said,  because  Hawkshaw  looked  like 
he  might  have  come  from  almost  anywhere  in  Alabama 
except  Birmingham. 

"Yes,"  Hawkshaw  said.  "Birmingham." 

And  that  was  all  they  ever  got  out  of  him  until  I  hap- 
pened to  notice  him  behind  the  chair  and  to  remember  him 
back  in  Porterfield. 

"Porterfield?"  Maxey  said.  "My  brother-in-law  owns  that 
shop.  You  mean  you  worked  in  Porterfield  last  year?" 

"Yes,"  Hawkshaw  said.  "I  was  there." 

Maxey  told  me  about  the  vacation  business.  How  Hawk- 
shaw wouldn't  take  his  summer  vacation;  said  he  wanted 
two  weeks  in  April  instead.  He  wouldn't  tell  why.  Maxey 
said  April  was  too  busy  for  vacations,  and  Hawkshaw 
offered  to  work  until  then,  and  quit.  "Do  you  want  to  quit 
then?"  Maxey  said  that  was  in  the  summer,  after  Mrs 
Burchett  had  brought  Susan  Reed  to  the  shop  for  the  first 
time. 

"No,"  Hawkshaw  said.  "I  like  it  here.  I  just  want  two 
weeks  off  in  April." 


142  The  Village 

"On  business?"  Maxey  said. 

"On  business,"  Hawkshaw  said. 

When  Maxey  took  his  vacation,  he  went  to  Porterfield  to 
visit  his  brother-in-law;  maybe  shaving  his  brother-in-law's 
customers,  like  a  sailor  will  spend  his  vacation  in  a  rowboat 
on  an  artificial  lake.  The  brother-in-law  told  him  Hawkshaw 
had  worked  in  his  shop,  would  not  take  a  vacation  until 
April,  went  off  and  never  came  back.  "He'll  quit  you  the 
same  way,"  the  brother-in-law  said.  "He  worked  in  a  shop 
in  Bolivar,  Tennessee,  and  in  one  in  Florence,  Alabama,  for 
a  year  and  quit  the  same  way.  He  wont  come  back.  You 
watch  and  see." 

Maxey  said  he  came  back  home  and  he  finally  got  it  out 
of  Hawkshaw  how  he  had  worked  for  a  year  each  in  six  or 
eight  different  towns  in  Alabama  and  Tennessee  and  Missis- 
sippi. "Why  did  you  quit  them?"  Maxey  said.  "You  are  a 
good  barber;  one  of  the  best  children's  barbers  I  ever  saw. 
Why  did  you  quit?" 

"I  was  just  looking  around,"  Hawkshaw  said. 

Then  April  came,  and  he  took  his  two  weeks.  He  shaved 
himself  and  packed  up  that  paper  suitcase  and  took  the 
north-bound  train. 

"Going  on  a  visit,  I  reckon,"  Maxey  said. 

"Up  the  road  a  piece,"  Hawkshaw  said. 

So  he  went  away,  in  that  serge  suit  and  black  bow  tie. 
Maxey  told  me  how,  two  days  later,  it  got  out  how  Hawk- 
shaw had  drawn  from  the  bank  his  year's  savings.  He 
boarded  at  Mrs  Cowan's  and  he  had  joined  the  church  and 
he  spent  no  money  at  all.  He  didn't  even  smoke.  So  Maxey 
and  Matt  and  I  reckon  everybody  else  in  Jefferson  thought 
that  he  had  saved  up  steam  for  a  year  and  was  now  bound 
on  one  of  these  private  sabbaticals  among  the  fleshpots  of 
Memphis.  Mitch  Ewing,  the  depot  freight  agent,  lived  at 
Mrs  Cowan's  too.  He  told  how  Hawkshaw  had  bought  his 


Hair  143 

ticket  only  to  the  junction-point.  "From  there  he  can  go  to 
either  Memphis  or  Birmingham  or  New  Orleans,"  Mitch 
said. 

"Well,  he's  gone,  anyway,"  Maxey  said.  "And  mark  my 
words,  that's  the  last  you'll  see  of  that  fellow  in  this  town." 

And  that's  what  everybody  thought  until  two  weeks  later. 
On  the  fifteenth  day  Hawkshaw  came  walking  into  the  shop 
at  his  regular  time,  like  he  hadn't  even  been  out  of  town, 
and  took  off  his  coat  and  begun  to  hone  his  razors.  He  never 
told  anybody  where  he  had  been.  Just  up  the  road  a  piece. 

Sometimes  I  thought  I  would  tell  them.  I  would  make 
Jefferson  and  find  him  there  behind  that  chair.  He  didn't 
change,  grow  any  older  in  the  face,  any  more  than  that  Reed 
girl's  hair  changed,  for  all  the  gum  and  dye  she  put  on  it. 
But  there  he  would  be,  back  from  his  vacation  "up  the  road 
a  piece,"  saving  his  money  for  another  year,  going  to  church 
on  Sunday,  keeping  that  sack  of  peppermints  for  the  children 
that  came  to  him  to  be  barbered,  until  it  was  time  to  take 
that  paper  suitcase  and  his  year's  savings  and  go  back  to 
Division  to  pay  on  the  mortgage  and  clean  up  the  house. 

Sometimes  he  would  be  gone  when  I  got  to  Jefferson,  and 
Maxey  would  tell  me  about  him  cutting  that  Reed  girl's 
hair,  snipping  and  snipping  it  and  holding  the  mirror  up  for 
her  to  see  like  she  was  an  actress.  "He  dont  charge  her," 
Matt  Fox  said.  "He  pays  the  quarter  into  the  register  out  of 
his  own  pocket." 

"Well,  that's  his  business,"  Maxey  said.  "All  I  want  is  the 
quarter.  I  dont  care  where  it  comes  from." 

Five  years  later  maybe  I  would  have  said,  "Maybe  that's 
her  price."  Because  she  got  in  trouble  at  last.  Or  so  they 
said.  I  dont  know,  except  that  most  of  the  talk  about  girls, 
women,  is  envy  or  retaliation  by  the  ones  that  dont  dare  to 
and  the  ones  that  failed  to.  But  while  he  was  gone  one  April 


144  The  Village 

they  were  whispering  how  she  had  got  in  trouble  at  last 
and  had  tried  to  doctor  herself  with  turpentine  and  was  bad 
sick. 

Anyhow,  she  was  off  the  streets  for  about  three  months; 
some  said  in  a  hospital  in  Memphis,  and  when  she  came  into 
the  shop  again  she  took  Matt's  chair,  though  Hawkshaw's 
was  empty  at  the  time,  like  she  had  already  done  before  to 
devil  him,  maybe.  Maxey  said  she  looked  like  a  painted 
ghost,  gaunt  and  hard,  for  all  her  bright  dress  and  such, 
sitting  there  in  Matt's  chair,  filling  the  whole  shop  with  her 
talking  and  her  laughing  and  her  perfume  and  her  long, 
naked-looking  legs,  and  Hawkshaw  making  out  he  was  busy 
at  his  empty  chair. 

Sometimes  I  thought  I  would  tell  them.  But  I  never  told 
anybody  except  Gavin  Stevens.  He  is  the  district  attorney, 
a  smart  man:  not  like  the  usual  pedagogue  lawyer  and  office 
holder.  He  went  to  Harvard,  and  when  my  health  broke 
down  (I  used  to  be  a  bookkeeper  in  a  Gordonville  bank  and 
my  health  broke  down  and  I  met  Stevens  on  a  Memphis 
train  when  I  was  coming  home  from  the  hospital)  it  was 
him  that  suggested  I  try  the  road  and  got  me  my  position 
with  this  company.  I  told  him  about  it  two  years  ago.  "And 
now  the  girl  has  gone  bad  on  him,  and  he's  too  old  to  hunt 
up  another  one  and  raise  her,"  I  said.  "And  some  day  he'll 
have  the  place  paid  out  and  those  Alabama  Starnes  can  come 
and  take  it,  and  he'll  be  through.  Then  what  do  you  think 
he  will  do?" 

"I  dont  know,"  Stevens  said. 

"Maybe  he'll  just  go  off  and  die,"  I  said. 

"Maybe  he  will,"  Stevens  said. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "he  wont  be  the  first  man  to  tilt  at  wind- 
mills." 

"He  wont  be  the  first  man  to  die,  either,"  Stevens  said. 


Hair  145 

III 

So  LAST  WEEK  I  went  on  to  Division.  I  got  there  on  a 
Wednesday.  When  I  saw  the  house,  it  had  just  been  painted. 
The  storekeeper  told  me  that  the  payment  Hawkshaw  had 
made  was  the  last  one;  that  Starnes'  mortgage  was  clear. 
"Them  Alabama  Starnes  can  come  and  take  it  now,"  he  said. 

"Anyway,  Hawkshaw  did  what  he  promised  her,  prom- 
ised  Mrs  Starnes,"  I  said. 

"Hawkshaw?"  he  said.  "Is  that  what  they  call  him?  Well, 
I'll  be  durned.  Hawkshaw.  Well,  I'll  be  durned." 

It  was  three  months  before  I  made  Jefferson  again.  When 
I  passed  the  barber  shop  I  looked  in  without  stopping.  And 
there  was  another  fellow  behind  Hawkshaw's  chair,  a  young 
fellow.  "I  wonder  if  Hawk  left  his  sack  of  peppermints,"  I 
said  to  myself.  But  I  didn't  stop.  I  just  thought,  'Well,  he's 
gone  at  last/  wondering  just  where  he  would  be  when  old 
age  got  him  and  he  couldn't  move  again;  if  he  would  prob- 
ably die  behind  a  chair  somewhere  in  a  little  three-chair 
country  shop,  in  his  shirt  sleeves  and  that  black  tie  and  those 
serge  pants. 

I  went  on  and  saw  my  customers  and  had  dinner,  and  in 
the  afternoon  I  went  to  Stevens'  office.  "I  see  you've  got  a 
new  barber  in  town,"  I  said. 

"Yes,"  Stevens  said.  He  looked  at  me  a  while,  then  he  said, 
"You  haven't  heard?" 

"Heard  what?"  I  said.  Then  he  quit  looking  at  me. 

"I  got  your  letter,"  he  said,  "that  Hawkshaw  had  paid  off 
the  mortgage  and  painted  the  house.  Tell  me  about  it." 

So  I  told  him  how  I  got  to  Division  the  day  after  Hawk- 
shaw had  left.  They  were  talking  about  him  on  the  porch 
of  the  store,  wondering  just  when  those  Alabama  Starnes 
would  come  in.  He  had  painted  the  house  himself,  and  he 
had  cleaned  up  the  two  graves;  I  dont  reckon  he  wanted  to 


146  The  Village 

disturb  Starnes  by  cleaning  his.  I  went  up  to  see  them.  He 
had  even  scrubbed  the  headstones,  and  he  had  set  out  an 
apple  shoot  over  the  girl's  grave.  It  was  in  bloom,  and  what 
with  the  folks  all  talking  about  him,  I  got  curious  too,  to 
see  the  inside  of  that  house.  The  storekeeper  had  the  key, 
and  he  said  he  reckoned  it  would  be  all  right  with  Hawk- 
shaw. 

It  was  clean  inside  as  a  hospital.  The  stove  was  polished 
and  the  woodbox  filled.  The  storekeeper  told  me  Hawkshaw 
did  that  every  year,  filled  the  woodbox  before  he  left. 
"Those  Alabama  kinsfolk  will  appreciate  that,"  I  said.  We 
went  on  back  to  the  parlor.  There  was  a  melodeon  in  the 
corner,  and  a  lamp  and  a  Bible  on  the  table.  The  lamp  was 
clean,  the  bowl  empty  and  clean  too;  you  couldn't  even 
smell  oil  on  it.  That  wedding  license  was  framed,  hanging 
above  the  mantel  like  a  picture.  It  was  dated  April  4,  1905. 

"Here's  where  he  keeps  that  mortgage  record,"  the  store- 
keeper (his  name  is  Bidwell)  said.  He  went  to  the  table  and 
opened  the  Bible.  The  front  page  was  the  births  and  deaths, 
two  columns.  The  girl's  name  was  Sophie.  I  found  her  name 
in  the  birth  column,  and  on  the  death  side  it  was  next  to  the 
last  one.  Mrs  Starnes  had  written  it.  It  looked  like  it  might 
have  taken  her  ten  minutes  to  write  it  down.  It  looked  like 
this: 

Sofy  starnes  Dide  april  16  th  1905 

Hawkshaw  wrote  the  last  one  himself;  it  was  neat  and 
well  written,  like  a  bookkeeper's  hand: 

Mrs  Will  Starnes.  April  23,  1916. 

"The  record  will  be  in  the  back,"  Bidwell  said. 

We  turned  to  the  back.  It  was  there,  in  a  neat  column,  in 
Hawkshaw's  hand.  It  began  with  April  16,  1917,  $200.00. 
The  next  one  was  when  he  made  the  next  payment  at  the 


Hair  147 

bank:  April  16,  1918,  $200.00;  and  April  16,  1919,  $200.00; 
and  April  16,  1920,  $200.00;  and  on  to  the  last  one:  April 
1 6,  1930,  $200.00.  Then  he  had  totaled  the  column  and 
written  under  it: 

"Paid  in  full.  April  16,  1930." 

It  looked  like  a  sentence  written  in  a  copy  book  in  the  old- 
time  business  colleges,  like  it  had  flourished,  the  pen  had,  in 
spite  of  him.  It  didn't  look  like  it  was  written  boastful;  it 
just  flourished  somehow,  the  end  of  it,  like  it  had  run  out 
of  the  pen  somehow  before  he  could  stop  it. 

"So  he  did  what  he  promised  her  he  would,"  Stevens  said. 

"That's  what  I  told  Bidwell,"  I  said. 

Stevens  went  on  like  he  wasn't  listening  to  me  much. 

"So  the  old  lady  could  rest  quiet.  I  guess  that's  what  the 
pen  was  trying  to  say  when  it  ran  away  from  him:  that 
now  she  could  lie  quiet.  And  he's  not  much  over  forty-five. 
Not  so  much  anyway.  Not  so  much  but  what,  when  he  wrote 
'Paid  in  full'  under  that  column,  time  and  despair  rushed  as 
slow  and  dark  under  him  as  under  any  garlanded  boy  or 
crownless  and  crestless  girl." 

"Only  the  girl  went  bad  on  him,"  I  said.  "Forty-five's 
pretty  late  to  set  out  to  find  another.  He'll  be  fifty-five  at 
least  by  then." 

Stevens  looked  at  me  then.  "I  didn't  think  you  had  heard," 
he  said. 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "That  is,  I  looked  in  the  barber  shop  when 
I  passed.  But  I  knew  he  would  be  gone.  I  knew  all  the  time 
he  would  move  on,  once  he  had  that  mortgage  cleared. 
Maybe  he  never  knew  about  the  girl,  anyway.  Or  likely  he 
knew  and  didn't  care." 

"You  think  he  didn't  know  about  her?" 

"I  dont  see  how  he  could  have  helped  it.  But  I  dont  know. 
What  do  you  think?" 


148  The  Village 

"I  dont  know.  I  dont  think  I  want  to  know.  I  know  some- 
thing so  much  better  than  that." 

"What's  that?"  I  said.  He  was  looking  at  me.  "You  keep 
on  telling  me  I  haven't  heard  the  news.  What  is  it  I  haven't 
heard?" 

"About  the  girl,"  Stevens  said.  He  looked  at  me. 

"On  the  night  Hawkshaw  came  back  from  his  last  vaca- 
tion, they  were  married.  He  took  her  with  him  this  time." 


Centaur  in  Brass 


IN  OUR  TOWN  Flem  Snopes  now  has  a  monument  to  himselfv 
a  monument  of  brass,  none  the  less  enduring  for  the  fact  that, 
though  it  is  constantly  in  sight  of  the  whole  town  and  visible 
from  three  or  four  points  miles  out  in  the  country,  only  four 
people,  two  white  men  and  two  Negroes,  know  that  it  is  his 
monument,  or  that  it  is  a  monument  at  all. 

He  came  to  Jefferson  from  the  country,  accompanied  by 
his  wife  and  infant  daughter  and  preceded  by  a  reputation  for 
shrewd  and  secret  dealing.  There  lives  in  our  county  a  sew- 
ing-machine agent  riamed  Suratt,  who  used  to  own  a  half 
interest  in  a  small  back-street  restaurant  in  town — himself 
no  mean  hand  at  that  technically  unassailable  opportunism 
which  passes  with  country  folks — and  town  folks,  too — for 
honest  shrewdness. 

He  travels  about  the  county  steadily  and  constantly,  and 
it  was  through  him  that  Snope's  doings  first  came  to  our  ears: 
how  first,  a  clerk  in  a  country  store,  Snopes  one  day  and  to 
everyone's  astonishment  was  married  to  the  store  owner's 
daughter,  a  young  girl  who  was  the  belle  of  the  countryside. 
They  were  married  suddenly,  on  the  same  day  upon  which 
three  of  the  girl's  erstwhile  suitors  left  the  county  and  were 
seen  no  more. 

Soon  after  the  wedding  Snopes  and  his  wife  moved  to 
Texas,  from  where  the  wif e  returned  a  year  later  with  a  well- 

149 


150  The  Village 

grown  baby.  A  month  later  Snopes  himself  returned,  ac- 
companied by  a  broad-hatted  stranger  and  a  herd  of  half- 
wild  mustang  ponies,  which  the  stranger  auctioned  off, 
collected  the  money,  and  departed.  Then  the  purchasers  dis- 
covered that  none  of  the  ponies  had  ever  had  a  bridle  on.  But 
they  never  learned  if  Snopes  had  had  any  part  in  the  business, 
or  had  received  any  part  of  the  money. 

The  next  we  heard  of  him  was  when  he  appeared  one  day 
in  a  wagon  laden  with  his  family  and  household  goods,  and 
with  a  bill-of-sale  for  Suratt's  half  of  the  restaurant.  How  he 
got  the  bill-of-sale,  Suratt  never  told,  and  we  never  learned 
more  than  that  there  was  somehow  involved  in  the  affair  a 
worthless  piece  of  land  which  had  been  a  portion  of  Mrs. 
Snopes's  dowry.  But  what  the  business  was  even  Suratt,  a 
humorous,  talkative  man  who  was  as  ready  to  laugh  at  a  joke 
on  himself  as  at  one  on  anyone  else,  never  told.  But  when  he 
mentioned  Snopes's  name  after  that,  it  was  in  a  tone  of  sav- 
age and  sardonic  and  ungrudging  admiration. 

"Yes,  sir,"  he  said,  "Flem  Snopes  outsmarted  me.  And  the 
man  that  can  do  that,  I  just  wish  I  was  Jiim,  with  this  whole 
State  of  Mississippi  to  graze  on." 

In  the  restaurant  business  Snopes  appeared  to  prosper. 
That  is,  he  soon  eliminated  his  partner,  and  presently  he  was 
out  of  the  restaurant  himself,  with  a  hired  manager  to  run  it, 
and  we  began  to  believe  in  the  town  that  we  knew  what  was 
the  mainspring  of  his  rise  and  luck.  We  believed  that  it  was 
his  wife;  we  accepted  without  demur  the  evil  which  such 
little  lost  towns  like  ours  seem  to  foist  even  upon  men  who 
are  of  good  thinking  despite  them.  She  helped  in  the  restau- 
rant at  first.  We  could  see  her  there  behind  the  wooden 
counter  worn  glass-smooth  by  elbows  in  their  eating  genera- 
tions: young,  with  the  rich  coloring  of  a  calendar;  a  face 
smooth,  unblemished  by  any  thought  or  by  anything  else: 
an  appeal  immediate  and  profound  and  without  calculation 


Centaur  in  Brass  1 5 1 

or  shame,  with  (because  of  its  unblemishment  and  not  its 
size)  something  of  that  vast,  serene,  impervious  beauty  of  a 
snowclad  virgin  mountain  flank,  listening  and  not  smiling 
while  Major  Hoxey,  the  town's  lone  rich  middle-aged  bach- 
elor, graduate  of  Yale  and  soon  to  be  mayor  of  the  town,  in- 
congruous there  among  the  collarless  shirts  and  the  overalls 
and  the  grave,  country-eating  faces,  sipped  his  coffee  and 
talked  to  her. 

Not  impregnable:  impervious.  That  was  why  it  did  not 
need  gossip  when  we  watched  Snopes's  career  mount  beyond 
the  restaurant  and  become  complement  with  Major  Hoxey 's 
in  city  affairs,  until  less  than  six  months  after  Hoxey's  inau- 
guration Snopes,  who  had  probably  never  been  close  to  any 
piece  of  machinery  save  a  grindstone  until  he  moved  to  town, 
was  made  superintendent  of  the  municipal  power  plant.  Mrs. 
Snopes  was  born  one  of  those  women  the  deeds  and  fortunes 
of  whose  husbands  alone  are  the  barometers  of  their  good 
name;  for  to  do  her  justice,  there  was  no  other  handle  for 
gossip  save  her  husband's  rise  in  Hoxey's  administration. 

But  there  was  still  that  intangible  thing:  partly  something 
in  her  air,  her  face;  partly  what  we  had  already  heard  about 
Flem  Snopes's  methods.  Or  perhaps  what  we  knew  or  be- 
lieved about  Snopes  was  all;  perhaps  what  we  thought  to  be 
her  shadow  was  merely  his  shadow  falling  upon  her.  But 
anyway,  when  we  saw  Snopes  and  Hoxey  together  we  would 
think  of  them  and  of  adultery  in  the  same  instant,  and  we 
would  think  of  the  two  of  them  walking  and  talking  in  ami- 
cable cuckoldry.  Perhaps,  as  I  said,  this  was  the  fault  of  the 
town.  Certainly  it  was  the  fault  of  the  town  that  the  idea  of 
their  being  on  amicable  terms  outraged  us  more  than  the  idea 
of  the  adultery  itself.  It  seemed  foreign,  decadent,  perverted: 
we  could  have  accepted,  if  not  condoned,  the  adultery  had 
they  only  been  natural  and  logical  and  enemies. 

But  they  were  not.  Yet  neither  could  they  have  been  called 


152  The  Village 

friends.  Snopes  had  no  friends;  there  was  no  man  nor  woman 
among  us,  not  even  Hoxey  or  Mrs.  Snopes,  who  we  believed 
could  say,  "I  know  his  thought" — least  of  all,  those  among 
whom  we  saw  him  now  and  then,  sitting  about  the  stove  in 
the  rear  of  a  certain  smelly,  third-rate  grocery,  listening  and 
not  talking,  for  an  hour  or  so  two  or  three  nights  a  week. 
And  so  we  believed  that,  whatever  his  wife  was,  she  was  not 
fooling  him.  It  was  another  woman  who  did  that:  a  Negro 
woman,  the  new  young  wife  of  Tom-Tom,  the  day  fireman 
in  the  power  plant. 

Tom-Tom  was  black:  a  big  bull  of  a  man  weighing  two 
hundred  pounds  and  sixty  years  old  and  looking  about  forty. 
He  had  been  married  about  a  year  to  his  third  wife,  a  young 
woman  whom  he  kept  with  the  strictness  of  a  Turk  in  a 
cabin  two  miles  from  town  and  from  the  power  plant  where 
he  spent  twelve  hours  a  day  with  shovel  and  bar. 

One  afternoon  he  had  just  finished  cleaning  the  fires  and 
he  was  sitting  in  the  coal-bunker,  resting  and  smoking  his 
pipe,  when  Snopes,  his  superintendent,  employer  and  boss, 
came  in.  The  fires  were  clean  and  the  steam  was  up  again, 
and  the  safety  valve  on  the  middle  boiler  was  blowing  off. 

Snopes  entered:  a  potty  man  of  no  particular  age,  broad 
and  squat,  in  a  clean  though  collarless  white  shirt  and  a  plaid 
cap.  His  face  was  round  and  smooth,  either  absolutely  impen- 
etrable or  absolutely  empty.  His  eyes  were  the  color  of  stag- 
nant water;  his  mouth  was  a  tight,  lipless  seam.  Chewing 
steadily,  he  looked  up  at  the  whistling  safety  valve. 

"How  much  does  that  whistle  weigh?"  he  said  after  a  time. 

"Must  weight  ten  pound,  anyway,"  Tom-Tom  said. 

"Is  it  solid  brass?" 

"If  it  ain't,  I  ain't  never  seed  no  brass  what  is  solid,"  Tom- 
Tom  said. 

Snopes  had  not  once  looked  at  Tom-Tom.  He  continued 
to  look  upward  toward  the  thin,  shrill,  excruciating  sound  of 
the  valve.  Then  he  spat,  and  turned  and  left  the  boiler-room. 


Centaur  in  Brass  153 

II 

HE  BUILT  HIS  monument  slowly.  But  then,  it  is  always  strange 
to  what  involved  and  complex  methods  a  man  will  resort  in 
order  to  steal  something.  It's  as  though  there  were  some  in- 
tangible and  invisible  social  force  that  mitigates  against  him, 
confounding  his  own  shrewdness  with  his  own  cunning,  dis- 
torting in  his  judgment  the  very  value  of  the  object  of  his 
greed,  which  in  all  probability,  had  he  but  picked  it  up  and 
carried  it  openly  away,  nobody  would  have  remarked  or 
cared.  But  then,  that  would  not  have  suited  Snopes,  since  he 
apparently  had  neither  the  high  vision  of  a  confidence  man 
nor  the  unrecking  courage  of  a  brigand. 

His  vision  at  first,  his  aim,  was  not  even  that  high;  it  was 
no  higher  than  that  of  a  casual  rramp  who  pauses  in  passing 
to  steal  three  eggs  from  beneath  a  setting  hen.  Or  perhaps  he 
was  merely  not  certain  yet  that  there  really  was  a  market  for 
brass.  Because  his  next  move  was  five  months  after  Harker, 
the  night  engineer,  came  on  duty  one  evening  and  found  the 
three  safety  whistles  gone  and  the  vents  stopped  with  one- 
inch  steel  screw  plugs  capable  of  a  pressure  of  a  thousand 
pounds. 

"And  them  three  boiler  heads  you  could  poke  a  hole 
through  with  a  soda  straw!"  Harker  said.  "And  that  damn 
black  night  fireman,  Turl,  that  couldn't  even  read  a  clock 
face,  still  throwing  coal  into  them!  When  I  looked  at  the 
gauge  on  the  first  boiler,  I  never  believed  I  would  get  to  the 
last  boiler  in  time  to  even  reach  the  injector. 

"So  when  I  finally  got  it  into  Turl's  head  that  that  100  on 
that  dial  meant  where  Turl  would  not  only  lose  his  job,  he 
would  lose  it  so  good  they  wouldn't  even  be  able  to  find  the 
job  to  give  it  to  the  next  misbegotten  that  believed  that  live 
steam  was  something  you  blowed  on  a  window  pane  in  cold 
weather,  I  got  settled  down  enough  to  ask  him  where  them 
safety  valves  had  gone  to. 


The 

"  'Mr.  Snopes  took  urn  off,'  Turl  says. 

"'What  in  the  hell  for?' 

"  'I  don't  know.  I  just  telling  you  what  Tom-Tom  told  me. 
He  say  Mr.  Snopes  say  the  shut-off  float  in  the  water  tank 
ain't  heavy  enough.  Say  that  tank  start  leaking  some  day,  and 
so  he  going  to  fasten  them  three  safety  valves  on  the  float 
and  make  it  heavier.' 

"  'You  mean — '  I  says.  That's  as  far  as  I  could  get:  'You 
mean ' 

"  'That  what  Tom-Tom  say.  I  don't  know  nothing  about 
it.' 

"But  they  were  gone.  Up  to  that  night,  me  and  Turl  had 
been  catching  forty  winks  or  so  now  and  then  when  we  got 
caught  up  and  things  was  quiet.  But  you  can  bet  we  never 
slept  none  that  night.  Me  and  him  spent  that  whole  night, 
time  about,  on  that  coal  pile,  where  we  could  watch  them 
three  gauges.  And  from  midnight  on,  after  the  load  went  oflf , 
we  never  had  enough  steam  in  all  three  of  them  boilers  put 
together  to  run  a  peanut  parcher.  And  even  when  I  was  in 
bed,  at  home,  I  couldn't  sleep.  Time  I  shut  my  eyes  I  would 
begin  to  see  a  steam  gauge  about  the  size  of  a  washtub,  with 
a  red  needle  big  as  a  shovel  moving  up  toward  a  hundred 
pounds,  and  I  would  wake  myself  up  hollering  and 
sweating." 

But  even  that  wore  away  after  a  while,  and  then  Turl  and 
Harker  were  catching  their  forty  winks  or  so  again.  Perhaps 
they  decided  that  Snopes  had  stolen  his  three  eggs  and  was 
done.  Perhaps  they  decided  that  he  had  frightened  himself 
with  the  ease  with  which  he  had  got  the  eggs.  Because  it  was 
five  months  before  the  next  act  took  place. 

Then  one  afternoon,  with  his  fires  cleaned  and  steam  up 
again,  Tom-Tom,  smoking  his  pipe  on  the  coal  pile,  saw 
Snopes  enter,  carrying  in  his  hand  an  object  which  Tom- 
Tom  said  later  he  thought  was  a  mule  shoe.  He  watched 


Centaur  in  Brass  155 

Snopes  retire  into  a  dim  corner  behind  the  boilers,  where 
there  had  accumulated  a  miscellaneous  pile  of  metal  junk,  all 
covered  with  dirt:  fittings,  valves,  rods  and  bolts  and  such, 
and,  kneeling  there,  begin  to  sort  the  pieces,  touching  them 
one  by  one  with  the  mule  shoe  and  from  time  to  time  remov- 
ing one  piece  and  tossing  it  behind  him,  into  the  runway. 
Tom-Tom  watched  him  try  with  the  magnet  every  loose 
piece  of  metal  in  the  boiler-room,  sorting  out  the  iron  from 
the  brass:  then  Snopes  ordered  Tom-Tom  to  gather  up  the 
segregated  pieces  of  brass  and  bring  them  in  to  his  office. 

Tom-Tom  gathered  the  pieces  into  a  box.  Snopes  was 
waiting  in  the  office.  He  glanced  once  into  the  box,  then  he 
spat.  "How  do  you  and  Turl  get  along?"  he  said.  Turl,  I  had 
better  repeat,  was  the  night  fireman;  a  Negro  too,  though  he 
was  saddle-colored  where  Tom-Tom  was  black,  and  in  place 
of  Tom-Tom's  two  hundred  pounds  Turl,  even  with  his 
laden  shovel,  would  hardly  have  tipped  a  hundred  and  fifty. 

"I  tends  to  my  business,"  Tom-Tom  said.  "What  Turl 
does  wid  hisn  ain't  no  trouble  of  mine." 

"That  ain't  what  Turl  thinks,"  Snopes  said,  chewing, 
watching  Tom-Tom,  who  looked  at  Snopes  as  steadily  in 
turn;  looked  down  at  him.  "Turl  wants  me  to  give  him  your 
day  shift.  He  says  he's  tired  firing  at  night." 

"Let  him  fire  here  long  as  I  is,  and  he  can  have  it,"  Tom- 
Torn  said. 

"Turl  don't  want  to  wait  that  long,"  Snopes  said,  chewing, 
watching  Tom-Tom's  face.  Then  he  told  Tom-Tom  how 
Turl  was  planning  to  steal  some  iron  from  the  plant  and  lay 
it  at  Tom-Tom's  door  and  so  get  Tom-Tom  fired.  And 
Tom-Tom  stood  there,  huge,  hulking,  with  his  hard  round 
little  head.  "That's  what  he's  up  to,"  Snopes  said.  "So  I  want 
you  to  take  this  stuff  out  to  your  house  and  hide  it  where 
Turl  can't  find  it.  And  as  soon  as  I  get  enough  evidence  on 
Turl,  I'm  going  to  fire  him." 


1 56  The  Village 

Tom-Tom  waited  until  Snopes  had  finished,  blinking  his 
eyes  slowly.  Then  he  said  immediately:  "I  knows  a  better 
way  than  that/' 

"What  way?"  Snopes  said.  Tom-Tom  didn't  answer.  He 
stood,  big,  humorless,  a  little  surly;  quiet;  more  than  a  little 
implacable  though  heatless.  "No,  no,"  Snopes  said.  "That 
won't  do.  You  have  any  trouble  with  Turl,  and  I'll  fire  you 
both.  You  do  like  I  say,  unless  you  are  tired  of  your  job  and 
want  Turl  to  have  it.  Are  you  tired  of  it?" 

"Ain't  no  man  complained  about  my  pressure  yet,"  Tom- 
Tom  said  sullenly. 

"Then  you  do  like  I  say.  Yovi  take  that  stuff  out  home  with 
you  tonight.  Don't  let  nobody  see  you;  not  even  your  wife. 
And  if  you  don't  want  to  do  it,  just  say  so.  I  reckon  I  can  get 
somebody  that  will  do  it." 

And  that's  what  Tom-Tom  did.  And  he  kept  his  own 
counsel  too,  even  when  afterward,  as  discarded  fittings  and 
such  accumulated  again,  he  would  watch  Snopes  test  them 
one  by  one  with  the  magnet  and  sort  him  out  another  batch 
to  take  out  home  and  hide.  Because  he  had  been  firing  those 
boilers  for  forty  years,  ever  since  he  was  a  man.  At  that  time 
there  was  but  one  boiler,  and  he  had  got  twelve  dollars  a 
month  for  firing  it,  but  now  there  were  three,  and  he  got 
sixty  dollars  a  month;  and  now  he  was  sixty,  and  he  owned 
his  little  cabin  and  a  little  piece  of  corn,  and  a  mule  and  a 
wagon  in  which  he  rode  into  town  to  church  twice  each  Sun- 
day, with  his  new  young  wife  beside  him  and  a  gold  watch 
and  chain. 

And  Marker  didn't  know  then,  either,  even  though  he 
would  watch  the  junked  metal  accumulate  in  the  corner  and 
then  disappear  over  night  until  it  came  to  be  his  nightly  joke 
to  enter  with  his  busy,  bustling  air  and  say  to  Turl:  "Well, 
Turl,  I  notice  that  little  engine  is  still  running.  There's  a  right 
smart  of  brass  in  them  bushings  and  wrist  pins,  but  I  reckon 


Centaur  in  Brass  157 

it's  moving  too  fast  to  hold  that  magnet  against  it."  Then 
more  soberly;  quite  soberly,  in  fact,  without  humor  or  irony 
at  all,  since  there  was  some  of  Suratt  in  Harker  too:  "That 
durn  fellow!  I  reckon  he'd  sell  the  boilers  too,  if  he  knowed 
of  any  way  you  and  Tom-Tom  could  keep  steam  up  without 
them." 

And  Turl  didn't  answer.  Because  by  that  time  Turl  had 
his  own  private  temptations  and  worries,  the  same  as  Tom- 
Tom,  of  which  Harker  was  also  unaware. 

In  the  meantime,  the  first  of  the  year  came  and  the  city 
was  audited. 

"They  come  down  here,"  Harker  said,  "two  of  them,  in 
glasses.  They  went  over  the  books  and  they  poked  around 
everywhere,  counting  everything  in  sight  and  writing  it 
down.  Then  they  went  back  to  the  office  and  they  was  still 
there  at  six  o'clock  when  I  come  on.  It  seems  that  there  was 
something  wrong;  it  seems  like  there  was  some  old  brass  parts 
wrote  down  in  the  books,  only  the  brass  seemed  to  be  miss- 
ing or  something.  It  was  on  the  books  all  right,  and  the  new 
valves  and  things  it  had  been  replaced  with  was  there.  But  be 
durn  if  they  could  find  a  one  of  them  old  pieces  except  one 
busted  bib  that  had  got  mislaid  under  the  work-bench  some- 
way or  other.  It  was  right  strange.  So  I  went  back  with  them 
and  held  the  light  while  they  looked  again  in  all  the  corners, 
getting  a  right  smart  of  soot  and  grease  on  them,  but  that 
brass  just  naturally  seemed  to  be  plumb  missing.  So  they 
went  away. 

"And  the  next  morning  early  they  come  back.  They  had 
the  city  clerk  with  them  this  time  and  they  beat  Mr.  Snopes 
down  here  and  so  they  had  to  wait  till  he  come  in  in  his  check 
cap  and  his  chew,  chewing  and  looking  at  them  while  they 
told  him.  They  was  right  sorry;  they  hemmed  and  hawed  a 
right  smart,  being  sorry.  But  it  wasn't  nothing  else  they  could 
do  except  to  come  back  on  him,  long  as  he  was  the  superin- 


158  The  Village 

tendent;  and  did  he  want  me  and  Turl  and  Tom-Tom 
arrested  right  now,  or  would  tomorrow  do?  And  him  stand- 
ing there,  chewing,  with  them  eyes  like  two  gobs  of  cup 
grease  on  a  hunk  of  raw  dough,  and  them  still  telling  him 
how  sorry  they  was. 

"  'How  much  does  it  come  to?'  he  says. 

"  'Three  hundred  and  four  dollars  and  fifty-two  cents,  Mr. 
Snopes.' 

"  'Is  that  the  full  amount?' 

"  'We  checked  our  figures  twice,  Mr.  Snopes.' 

"  'All  right,'  he  says.  And  he  reaches  down  and  hauls  out 
the  money  and  pays  them  the  three  hundred  and  four  dollars 
and  fifty-two  cents  in  cash,  and  asks  for  a  receipt." 

Ill 

THEN  THE  NEXT  Summer  came,  with  Harker  still  laughing  at 
and  enjoying  what  he  saw,  and  seeing  so  little,  thinking  how 
they  were  all  fooling  one  another  while  he  looked  on,  when 
it  was  him  who  was  being  fooled.  For  in  that  Summer  the 
thing  ripened,  came  to  a  head.  Or  maybe  Snopes  just  decided 
to  cut  his  first  hay  crop;  clean  the  meadow  for  reseeding.  Be- 
cause he  could  never  have  believed  that  on  the  day  when  he 
sent  for  Turl,  he  had  set  the  capital  on  his  monument  and 
had  started  to  tear  the  scaffolding  down. 

It  was  in  the  evening;  he  returned  to  the  plant  after  supper 
and  sent  for  Turl;  again  two  of  them,  white  man  and  Negro, 
faced  one  another  in  the  office. 

"What's  this  about  you  and  Tom-Tom?"  Snopes  said. 

"  'Bout  me  and  which?"  Turl  said.  "If  Tom-Tom  depend- 
ing on  me  for  his  trouble,  he  sho'  done  quit  being  a  fireman 
and  turned  waiter.  It  take  two  folks  to  have  trouble,  and 
Tom-Tom  ain't  but  one,  I  don't  care  how  big  he  is." 


Centaur  in  Brass  159 

Snopes  watched  Turl.  "Tom-Tom  thinks  you  want  to  fire 
the  day  shift." 

Turl  looked  down.  He  looked  briefly  at  Snopes's  face;  at 
the  still  eyes,  the  slow  unceasing  jaw,  and  down  again.  "I 
can  handle  as  much  coal  as  Tom-Tom,"  he  said. 

Snopes  watched  him:  the  smooth,  brown,  aside-looking 
face.  "Tom-Tom  knows  that,  too.  He  knows  he's  getting 
old.  But  he  knows  there  ain't  nobody  else  can  crowd  him  but 
you."  Then,  watching  Turl's  face,  Snopes  told  him  how  for 
two  years  Tom-Tom  had  been  stealing  brass  from  the  plant, 
in  order  to  lay  it  on  Turl  and  get  him  fired;  how  only  that 
day  Tom-Tom  had  told  him  that  Turl  was  the  thief. 

Turl  looked  up.  "That's  a  lie,"  he  said.  "Can't  no  nigger 
accuse  me  of  stealing  when  I  ain't,  I  don't  care  how  big  he 
is." 

"Sho',"  Snopes  said.  "So  the  thing  to  do  is  to  get  that  brass 
back." 

"If  Tom-Tom  got  it,  I  reckon  Mr.  Buck  Conner  the  man 
to  get  it  back,"  Turl  said.  Buck  Conner  was  the  city  marshal. 

"Then  you'll  go  to  jail,  sure  enough.  Tom-Tom'll  say  he 
didn't  know  it  was  there.  You'll  be  the  only  one  that  knew 
it  was  there.  So  what  you  reckon  Buck  Conner'll  think? 
You'll  be  the  one  that  knew  where  it  was  hid  at,  and  Buck 
Conner'll  know  that  even  a  fool  has  got  more  sense  than  to 
steal  something  and  hide  it  in  his  corn-crib.  The  only  thing 
you  can  do  is  to  get  that  brass  back.  Go  out  there  in  the 
daytime,  while  Tom-Tom  is  at  work,  and  get  it  and  bring  it 
to  me  and  I'll  put  it  away  somewhere  to  use  as  evidence  on 
Tom-Tom.  Unless  maybe  you  don't  want  that  day  shift.  Just 
say  so,  if  you  don't.  I  reckon  I  can  find  somebody  else  that 
does." 

And  Turl  agreed  to  do  that.  He  hadn't  fired  any  boilers 
for  forty  years.  He  hadn't  done  anything  at  all  for  as  long  as 
forty  years,  since  he  was  just  past  thirty.  But  even  if  he  v/ere 


160  The  Village 

a  hundred,  no  man  could  ever  accuse  him  of  having  done 
anything  that  would  aggregate  forty  years  net.  "Unless 
Turl's  night  prowling  might  add  up  that  much,"  Harker  said. 
"If  Turl  ever  gets  married,  he  wan't  need  no  front  door 
a-tall;  he  wouldn't  know  what  it  was  for.  If  he  couldn't  come 
tom-catting  in  through  the  back  window,  he  wouldn't  know 
what  he  come  after.  Would  you,  Turl?" 

So  from  here  on  it  is  simple  enough,  since  a  man's  mistakes, 
like  his  successes,  usually  are  simple.  Particularly  the  success. 
Perhaps  that's  why  it  is  so  often  missed:  it  was  just  over- 
looked. 

"His  mistake  was  in  picking  out  Turl  to  pull  his  chestnuts," 
Harker  said.  "But  even  Turl  wasn't  as  bad  as  the  second  mis- 
take he  made  at  the  same  time  without  knowing  it.  And  that 
was,  when  he  forgot  about  that  high  yellow  wife  of  Tom- 
Tom's.  When  I  found  out  how  he  had  picked  out  Turl,  out 
of  all  the  niggers  in  Jefferson,  that's  prowled  at  least  once 
(or  tried  to)  every  gal  within  ten  miles  of  town,  to  go  out  to 
Tom-Tom's  house  knowing  all  the  time  how  Tom-Tom 
would  be  down  here  wrastling  coal  until  seven  o'clock  and 
then  have  two  miles  to  walk  home,  and  expect  Turl  to  spend 
his  time  out  there  hunting  for  anything  that  ain't  hid  in  Tom- 
Tom's  bed,  and  when  I  would  think  about  Tom-Tom  down 
here,  wrastling  them  boilers  with  this  same  amical  cuckoldry 
like  the  fellow  said  about  Mr.  Snopes  and  Colonel  Hoxey> 
stealing  brass  so  he  can  keep  Turl  from  getting  his  job  away 
from  him,  and  Turl  out  yonder  tending  to  Tom-Tom's  home 
business  at  the  same  time,  sometimes  I  think  I  will  die. 

"It  was  bound  to  not  last.  The  question  was,  which  would 
happen  first:  if  Tom-Tom  would  catch  Turl,  or  if  Mr. 
Snopes  would  catch  Turl,  or  if  I  would  bust  a  blood  vessel 
laughing  some  night.  Well,  it  was  Turl.  He  seemed  to  be 
having  too  much  trouble  locating  that  brass;  he  had  been 
hunting  it  for  three  weeks  alreadv,  coming  in  a  little  late 


Centaur  in  Brass  161 

almost  every  night  now,  with  Tom-Tom  having  to  wait 
until  Turl  come  before  he  could  start  home.  Maybe  that  was 
it.  Or  maybe  Mr.  Snopes  was  out  there  himself  one  day,  hid 
in  the  bushes  too,  waiting  for  it  to  get  along  toward  dark  (it 
was  already  April  then);  him  on  one  side  of  Tom-Tom's 
house  and  Turl  creeping  up  through  the  corn  patch  on  the 
other.  Anyway,  he  come  back  down  here  one  night  and  he 
was  waiting  when  Turl  come  in  about  a  half  hour  late,  as 
usual,  and  Tom-Tom  all  ready  to  go  home  soon  as  Turl  got 
here.  Mr.  Snopes  sent  for  Turl  and  asked  him  if  he  had  found 
it. 

"  'Find  it  when?'  Turl  says. 

"  'While  you  was  out  there  hunting  for  it  about  dusk  to- 
night,' Mr.  Snopes  says.  And  there's  Turl,  wondering  just 
how  much  Mr.  Snopes  knows,  and  if  he  can  risk  saying  how 
he  has  been  at  home  in  bed  since  six-thirty  this  morning,  or 
maybe  up  to  Mottstown  on  business.  'Maybe  you  are  still 
looking  for  it  in  the  wrong  place,'  Mr.  Snopes  says,  watching 
Turl,  and  Turl  not  looking  at  Mr.  Snopes  except  maybe  now 
and  then.  'If  Tom-Tom  had  hid  that  iron  in  his  bed,  you 
ought  to  done  found  it  three  weeks  ago,'  Mr.  Snopes  says. 
'So  suppose  you  look  in  that  corn-crib  where  I  told  you  to 
look.' 

"So  Turl  went  out  to  look  one  more  time.  But  he  couldn't 
seem  to  find  it  in  the  corn-crib  neither.  Leastways,  that's 
what  he  told  Mr.  Snopes  when  Mr.  Snopes  finally  run  him 
down  back  here  about  nine  o'clock  one  night.  Turl  was  on  a 
kind  of  a  spot,  you  might  say.  He  would  have  to  wait  until 
along  toward  dark  to  go  up  to  the  house,  and  already  Tom- 
Tom  had  been  grumbling  some  about  how  Turl  was  getting 
later  and  later  about  coming  to  work  every  night.  And  once 
he  found  that  brass,  he  would  have  to  begin  getting  back  to 
the  plant  at  seven  o'clock,  and  the  days  getting  longer  all 
the  time. 


1 62  The  Village 

"So  Turl  goes  back  to  give  one  more  go-round  for  that 
brass  evidence.  But  still  he  can't  find  it.  He  must  have  looked 
under  every  shuck  and  thread  in  Tom-Tom's  bed  tick,  but 
without  no  more  success  than  them  two  audits  had.  He  just 
couldn't  seem  to  find  that  evidence  nohow.  So  then  Mr. 
Snopes  says  he  will  give  Turl  one  more  chance,  and  if  he 
don't  find  that  evidence  this  time,  Mr.  Snopes  is  going  to  tell 
Tom-Tom  how  there  is  a  strange  tom-cat  on  his  back  fence. 
And  whenever  a  nigger  husband  in  Jefferson  hears  that,  he 
finds  out  where  Turl  is  at  before  he  even  sharpens  his  razor: 
ain't  that  so,  Turl? 

"So  the  next  evening  Turl  goes  out  to  look  again.  To  do 
or  die  this  time.  He  comes  creeping  up  out  of  the  woods 
about  sundown,  the  best  time  of  day  for  brass  hunting,  spe- 
cially as  there  is  a  moon  that  night.  So  here  he  comes,  creep- 
ing up  through  the  corn  patch  to  the  back  porch,  where  the 
cot  is,  and  pretty  soon  he  can  make  out  somebody  in  a  white 
nightgown  laying  on  the  cot.  But  Turl  don't  rise  up  and  walk 
even  then;  that  ain't  Turl's  way.  Turl  plays  by  the  rules.  He 
creeps  up — it's  dust-dark  by  then,  and  the  moon  beginning 
to  shine  a  little — all  careful  and  quiet,  and  tom-cats  up  on  to 
the  back  porch  and  stoops  over  the  cot  and  puts  his  hand  on 
nekkid  meat  and  says,  'Honeybunch,  papa's  done  arrived.'  " 

IV 

IN  THE  VERY  QUIET  hearing  of  it  I  seemed  to  partake  for  the 
instant  of  Turl's  horrid  surprise.  Because  it  was  Tom-Tom 
on  the  cot;  Tom-Tom,  whom  Turl  believed  to  be  at  the  mo- 
ment two  miles  away,  waiting  for  Turl  to  come  and  take 
over  from  him  at  the  power  plant. 

The  night  before,  on  his  return  home  Tom-Tom  had 
brought  with  him  a  last  year's  watermelon  which  the  local 
butcher  had  kept  all  Winter  in  cold  storage  and  which  he 


Centaur  in  Brass  163 

had  given  to  Tom-Tom,  being  himself  afraid  to  eat  it,  and  a 
pint  of  whiskey.  Tom-Tom  and  his  wife  consumed  them  and 
went  to  bed,  where  an  hour  later  she  waked  Tom-Tom  by 
her  screaming.  She  was  violently  ill,  and  she  was  afraid  that 
she  was  dying.  She  was  too  frightened  to  let  Tom-Tom  go 
for  help,  and  while  he  dosed  her  as  he  could,  she  confessed  to 
him  about  herself  and  Turl.  As  soon  as  she  told  it  she  became 
easier  and  went  off  to  sleep,  either  before  she  had  time  to 
realize  the  enormity  of  what  she  had  done,  or  while  she  was 
still  too  occupied  in  being  alive  to  care. 

But  Tom-Tom  wasn't.  The  next  morning,  after  he  con- 
vinced himself  that  she  was  all  right,  he  reminded  her  of  it. 
She  wept  some,  and  tried  to  retract;  she  ran  the  gamut  of 
tears  to  anger,  through  denial  and  cajolery  back  to  tears 
again.  But  she  had  Tom-Tom's  face  to  look  at  all  the  while, 
and  so  after  a  time  she  hushed  and  she  just  lay  there,  watching 
him  as  he  went  methodically  about  cooking  breakfast,  her 
own  and  his,  saying  no  word,  apparently  oblivious  of  even 
her  presence.  Then  he  fed  her,  made  her  eat,  with  the  same 
detachment,  implacable  and  without  heat.  She  was  waiting 
for  him  to  leave  for  work;  she  was  doubtless  then  and  had 
been  all  the  while  inventing  and  discarding  practical  expe- 
dients; so  busy  that  it  was  mid-morning  before  she  realized 
that  he  had  no  intention  of  going  to  town,  though  she  did  not 
know  that  he  had  arranged  to  get  word  to  the  plant  by  seven 
that  morning  that  he  would  take  the  day  off. 

So  she  lay  there  in  the  bed,  quite  quiet,  her  eyes  a  little 
wide,  still  as  an  animal,  while  he  cooked  their  dinner  and  fed 
her  again  with  that  clumsy  and  implacable  care.  And  just 
before  sundown  he  locked  her  in  the  bedroom,  she  still  saying 
no  word,  not  asking  him  what  he  was  about,  just  watching 
with  her  quiet,  still  eyes  the  door  until  it  closed  and  the  key 
clicked.  Then  Tom-Tom  put  on  one  of  her  nightgowns  and 
with  a  naked  butcher  knife  beside  him,  he  lay  down  on  the 


1 64  The  Village 

cot  on  the  back  porch.  And  there  he  was,  without  having 
moved  for  almost  an  hour,  when  Turl  crept  on  to  the  porch 
and  touched  him. 

In  the  purely  reflex  action  of  Turl's  turning  to  flee,  Tom- 
Tom  rose,  clutching  the  knife,  and  sprang  at  Turl.  He  leaped 
astride  of  TurPs  neck  and  shoulders;  his  weight  was  the  impe- 
tus which  sent  Turl  off  the  porch,  already  running  when 
his  feet  touched  earth,  carrying  with  him  on  the  retina  of  his 
fear  a  single  dreadful  glint  of  moonlight  on  the  blade  of  the 
lifted  knife,  as  he  crossed  the  back  lot  and,  with  Tom-Tom 
on  his  back,  entered  the  trees — the  two  of  them  a  strange 
and  furious  beast  with  two  heads  and  a  single  pair  of  legs  like 
an  inverted  centaur  speeding  phantomlike  just  ahead  of  the 
boardlike  streaming  of  Tom-Tom's  shirt-tail  and  just  beneath 
the  silver  glint  of  the  lifted  knife,  through  the  moony  April 
woods. 

"Tom-Tom  big  buck  man,"  Turl  said.  "Make  three  of  me. 
But  I  sho'  toted  him.  And  whenever  I  would  see  the  moon 
glint  that  butcher  knife,  I  could  a  picked  up  two  more  like 
him  without  even  stopping."  He  said  that  at  first  he  just  ran; 
it  was  only  when  he  found  himself  among  the  trees  that  it 
occurred  to  him  that  his  only  hope  was  to  rake  Tom-Tom  off 
against  a  tree  trunk.  "But  he  helt  on  so  tight  with  that  one 
arm  that  whenever  I  busted  him  into  a  tree,  I  had  to  bust  into 
the  tree  too.  And  then  we'd  bounce  off  and  I'd  catch  that 
moonglint  in  that  nekkid  knife,  and  I  could  a  picked  up  two 
more  Tom-Toms. 

"  'Bout  that  time  was  when  Tom-Tom  started  squalling. 
He  was  holding  on  with  both  hands  then,  so  I  knowed  that  I 
had  done  outrun  that  butcher  knife  anyhow.  But  I  was  good 
started  then;  my  feets  never  paid  Tom-Tom  no  more  mind 
when  he  started  squalling  to  stop  and  let  him  off  than  they 
did  me.  Then  Tom-Tom  grabbed  my  head  with  both  hands 
and  begun  to  haul  it  around  like  I  was  a  runaway  bareback 


Centaur  in  Brass  165 

mule,  and  then  I  seed  the  ditch.  It  was  about  forty  foot  deep 
and  it  looked  a  solid  mile  across,  but  it  was  too  late  then.  My 
feets  never  even  slowed  up.  They  run  far  as  from  here  to  that 
door  yonder  out  into  nekkid  air  before  us  even  begun  to  fall. 
And  they  was  still  clawing  that  moonlight  when  me  and 
Tom-Tom  hit  the  bottom." 

The  first  thing  I  wanted  to  know  was,  what  Tom-Tom 
used  in  lieu  of  the  butcher  knife  which  he  had  dropped.  He 
didn't  use  anything.  He  and  Turl  just  sat  there  in  the  ditch 
and  talked.  Because  there  is  a  sanctuary  beyond  despair  for 
any  beast  which  has  dared  all,  which  even  its  mortal  enemy 
respects.  Or  maybe  it  was  just  nigger  nature.  Anyway,  it  was 
perfectly  plain  to  both  of  them  as  they  sat  there,  perhaps 
panting  a  little  while  they  talked,  that  Tom-Tom's  home  had 
been  outraged,  not  by  Turl,  but  by  Flem  Snopes;  that  Turl's 
life  and  limbs  had  been  endangered,  not  by  Tom-Tom,  but 
by  Flem  Snopes. 

That  was  so  plain  to  them  that  they  sat  there  quietly  in  the 
ditch,  getting  their  wind  back,  talking  a  little  without  heat 
like  two  acquaintances  meeting  in  the  street;  so  plain  that 
they  made  their  concerted  plan  without  recourse  to  definite 
words  on  the  subject.  They  merely  compared  notes;  perhaps 
they  laughed  a  little  at  themselves.  Then  they  climbed  out  of 
the  ditch  and  returned  to  Tom-Tom's  cabin,  where  Tom- 
Tom  unlocked  his  wife,  and  he  and  Turl  sat  before  the  hearth 
while  the  woman  prepared  a  meal  for  them,  which  they  ate 
as  quietly  but  without  loss  of  time:  the  two  grave,  scratched 
faces  leaned  to  the  same  lamp,  above  the  same  dishes,  while 
in  the  background  the  woman  watched  them,  shadowy  and 
covert  and  unspeaking. 

Tom-Tom  took  her  to  the  barn  with  them  to  help  load  the 
brass  into  the  wagon,  where  Turl  spoke  for  the  first  time 
since  they  climbed  together  out  of  the  ditch  in  Harker's 


1 66  The  Village 

"amical"  cuckoldry:  "Great  God,  man,  how  long  did  it  take 
you  to  tote  all  this  stuff  out  here?" 

"Not  long,"  Tom-Tom  said.  "Been  working  at  it  'bout 
two  years." 

It  required  four  trips  in  the  wagon;  it  was  daybreak  when 
the  last  load  was  disposed  of,  and  the  sun  was  rising  when 
Turl  entered  the  power  plant,  eleven  hours  late. 

"Where  in  hell  you  been?"  Harker  said. 

Turl  glanced  up  at  the  three  gauges,  his  scratched  face 
wearing  an  expression  of  monkeylike  gravity. "Been  helping 
a  friend  of  mine." 

"Helping  what  friend  of  yours?" 

"Boy  named  Turl,"  Turl  said,  squinting  at  the  gauges. 

V 

"AND  THAT  WAS  all  he  said,"  Harker  said.  "And  me  looking  at 
that  scratched  face  of  hisn,  and  at  the  mate  of  it  that  Tom- 
Tom  brought  in  at  six  o'clock.  But  Turl  didn't  tell  me  then. 
And  I  ain't  the  only  one  he  never  told  nothing  that  morning. 
Because  Mr.  Snopes  got  there  before  six  o'clock,  before  Turl 
had  got  away.  He  sent  for  Turl  and  asked  him  if  he  had 
found  that  brass  and  Turl  told  him  no. 

"  'Why  didn't  you  find  it?'  Mr.  Snopes  said. 

"Turl  didn't  look  away,  this  time.  'Because  it  ain't  no  brass 
there.  That's  the  main  reason.' 

"  'How  do  you  know  there  ain't?'  Mr.  Snopes  says. 

"And  Turl  looked  him  straight  in  them  eyes.  'Because 
Tom-Tom  say  it  ain't,'  Turl  says. 

"Maybe  he  ought  to  knew  then.  But  a  man  will  go  to  any 
length  to  fool  himself;  he  will  tell  himself  stuff  and  believe  it 
that  he  would  be  downright  mad  with  a  fellow  he  had  done 
trimmed  for  believing  it.  So  now  he  sends  for  Tom-Tom. 

"  'I  ain't  got  no  brass,'  Tom-Tom  says. 


Centaur  in  Brass  167 

"Where  is  it,  then?' 

"  'It's  where  you  said  you  wanted  it.' 

"  'Where  I  said  I  wanted  it  when?' 

"  'When  you  took  them  whistle  valves  off  the  boilers,' 
Tom-Tom  says. 

"That's  what  whipped  him.  He  didn't  dare  to  fire  neither 
one  of  them,  you  see.  And  so  he'd  have  to  see  one  of  them 
there  all  day  long  every  day,  and  know  that  the  other  one 
was  there  all  night  long  every  night;  he  would  have  to  know 
that  during  every  twenty-four  hours  that  passed,  one  or  the 
other  of  them  was  there,  getting  paid — paid,  mind  you,  by 
the  hour — for  living  half  their  lives  right  there  under  that 
tank  with  them  four  loads  of  brass  in  it  that  now  belonged  to 
him  by  right  of  purchase  and  which  he  couldn't  claim  now 
because  now  he  had  done  waited  too  late. 

"It  sure  was  too  late.  But  next  New  Year  it  got  later.  Come 
New  Year's  and  the  town  got  audited  again;  again  them  two 
spectacled  fellows  come  down  here  and  checked  the  books 
and  went  away  and  come  back  with  not  only  the  city  clerk, 
but  with  Buck  Conner  too,  with  a  warrant  for  Turl  and 
Tom-Tom.  And  there  they  were,  hemming  and  hawing, 
being  sorry  again,  pushing  one  another  in  front  to  talk.  It 
seems  how  they  had  made  a  mistake  two  years  ago,  and 
instead  of  three-hundred-and-four-fifty-two  of  this  here 
evaporating  brass,  there  was  five-hundred-and-twenty-five 
dollars  worth,  leaving  a  net  of  over  two-hundred-and-twenty 
dollars.  And  there  was  Buck  Conner  with  the  warrant,  all 
ready  to  arrest  Turl  and  Tom-Tom  when  he  give  the  word, 
and  it  so  happening  that  Turl  and  Tom-Tom  was  both  in  the 
boiler-room  at  that  moment,  changing  shifts. 

"So  Snopes  paid  them.  Dug  down  and  hauled  out  the 
money  and  paid  them  the  two-hundred-and-twenty  and  got 
his  receipt.  And  about  two  hours  later  I  happened  to  pass 
through  the  office.  At  first  I  didn't  see  nobody^  because  the 


1 68  The  Village 

light  was  off.  So  I  thought  maybe  the  bulb  was  burned  out, 
seeing  as  that  light  burned  all  the  time.  But  it  wasn't  burned 
out;  it  was  just  turned  out.  Only  before  I  turned  it  on  I  saw 
him,  setting  there.  So  I  didn't  turn  the  light  on.  I  just  went 
on  out  and  left  him  setting  there,  setting  right  still." 

VI 

IN  THOSE  DAYS  Snopes  lived  in  a  new  little  bungalow  on  the 
edge  of  town,  and,  when  shortly  after  that  New  Year  he 
resigned  from  the  power  plant,  as  the  weather  warmed  into 
Spring  they  would  see  him  quite  often  in  his  tiny  grassless 
and  treeless  side  yard.  It  was  a  locality  of  such  other  hopeless 
little  houses  inhabited  half  by  Negroes,  and  washed  clay  gul- 
lies and  ditches  filled  with  scrapped  automobiles  and  tin  cans, 
and  the  prospect  was  not  pleasing.  Yet  he  spent  quite  a  lot 
of  his  time  there,  sitting  on  the  steps,  not  doing  anything. 
And  so  they  wondered  what  he  could  be  looking  at  there, 
since  there  was  nothing  to  see  above  the  massed  trees  which 
shaded  the  town  itself  except  the  low  smudge  of  the  power 
plant,  and  the  water  tank.  And  it  too  was  condemned  now, 
for  the  water  had  suddenly  gone  bad  two  years  ago  and  the 
town  now  had  a  new  reservoir  underground.  But  the  tank 
was  a  stout  one  and  the  water  was  still  good  to  wash  the 
streets  with,  and  so  the  town  let  it  stand,  refusing  at  one  time 
a  quite  liberal  though  anonymous  offer  to  purchase  and  re- 
move it. 

So  they  wondered  what  Snopes  was  looking  at.  They 
didn't  know  that  he  was  contemplating  his  monument:  that 
shaft  taller  than  anything  in  sight  and  filled  with  transient  and 
symbolical  liquid  that  was  not  even  fit  to  drink,  but  which, 
for  the  very  reason  of  its  impermanence,  was  more  enduring 
through  its  fluidity  and  blind  renewal  than  the  brass  which 
poisoned  it,  than  columns  of  basalt  or  of  lead. 


Dry  September 


i 

THROUGH  THE  BLOODY  September  twilight,  aftermath  of 
sixty-two  rainless  days,  it  had  gone  like  a  fire  in  dry  grass — 
the  rumor,  the  story,  whatever  it  was.  Something  about  Miss 
Minnie  Cooper  and  a  Negro.  Attacked,  insulted,  frightened: 
none  of  them,  gathered  in  the  barber  shop  on  that  Saturday 
evening  where  the  ceiling  fan  stirred,  without  freshening  it, 
the  vitiated  air,  sending  back  upon  them,  in  recurrent  surges 
of  stale  pomade  and  lotion,  their  own  stale  breath  and  odors, 
knew  exactly  what  had  happened. 

"Except  it  wasn't  Will  Mayes,"  a  barber  said.  He  was  a 
man  of  middle  age;  a  thin,  sand-colored  man  with  a  mild 
face,  who  was  shaving  a  client.  "I  know  Will  Mayes.  He's 
a  good  nigger.  And  I  know  Miss  Minnie  Cooper,  too." 

"What  do  you  know  about  her?"  a  second  barber  said. 

"Who  is  she?"  the  client  said.  "A  young  girl?" 

"No,"  the  barber  said.  'rShe's  about  forty,  I  reckon.  She 
aint  married.  That's  why  I  dont  believe — " 

"Believe,  hell!"  a  hulking  youth  in  a  sweat-stained  silk 
shirt  said.  "Wont  you  take  a  white  woman's  word  before  a 
nigger's?" 

"I  dont  believe  Will  Mayes  did  it,"  the  barber  said.  "I 
know  Will  Mayes." 

169 


170  The  Village 

"Maybe  you  know  who  did  it,  then.  Maybe  you  already 
got  him  out  of  town,  you  damn  niggerlover." 

"I  dont  believe  anybody  did  anything.  I  dont  believe  any- 
thing happened.  I  leave  it  to  you  fellows  if  them  ladies  that 
get  old  without  getting  married  dont  have  notions  that  a 


man  cant — " 


"Then  you  are  a  hell  of  a  white  man,"  the  client  said.  He 
moved  under  the  cloth.  The  youth  had  sprung  to  his  feet. 

"You  dont?"  he  said.  "Do  you  accuse  a  white  woman  of 
lying?" 

The  barber  held  the  razor  poised  above  the  half-risen 
client.  He  did  not  look  around. 

"It's  this  durn  weather,"  another  said.  "It's  enough  to 
make  a  man  do  anything.  Even  to  her." 

Nobody  laughed.  The  barber  said  in  his  mild,  stubborn 
tone:  "I  aint  accusing  nobody  of  nothing.  I  just  know  and 
you  fellows  know  how  a  woman  that  never — " 

"You  damn  niggerlover!"  the  youth  said. 

"Shut  up,  Butch,"  another  said.  "We'll  get  the  facts  in 
plenty  of  time  to  act." 

"Who  is?  Who's  getting  them?"  the  youth  said.  "Facts, 
hell!  I—" 

"You're  a  fine  white  man,"  the  client  said.  "Aint  you?" 
In  his  frothy  beard  he  looked  like  a  desert  rat  in  the  moving 
pictures.  "You  tell  them,  Jack,"  he  said  to  the  youth.  "If 
there  aint  any  white  men  in  this  town,  you  can  count  on 
me,  even  if  I  aint  only  a  drummer  and  a  stranger." 

"That's  right,  boys,"  the  barber  said.  "Find  out  the  truth 
first.  I  know  Will  Mayes." 

"Well,  by  God!"  the  youth  shouted.  "To  think  that  a 
white  man  in  this  town — " 

"Shut  up,  Butch,"  the  second  speaker  said.  "We  got 
plenty  of  time." 

The  client  sat  up.  He  looked  at  the  speaker.  "Do  you 


Dry  September  171 

claim  that  anything  excuses  a  nigger  attacking  a  white 
woman?  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  you  are  a  white  man  and 
you'll  stand  for  it?  You  better  go  back  North  where  you 
came  from.  The  South  dont  want  your  kind  here." 

"North  what?"  the  second  said.  "I  was  born  and  raised  in 
this  town." 

"Well,  by  God!"  the  youth  said.  He  looked  about  with 
a  strained,  baffled  gaze,  as  if  he  was  trying  to  remember  what 
it  was  he  wanted  to  say  or  to  do.  He  drew  his  sleeve  across 
his  sweating  face.  "Damn  if  I'm  going  to  let  a  white 
woman — " 

"You  tell  them,  Jack,"  the  drummer  said.  "By  God,  if 
they—" 

The  screen  door  crashed  open.  A  man  stood  in  the  floor, 
his  feet  apart  and  his  heavy-set  body  poised  easily.  His  white 
shirt  was  open  at  the  throat;  he  wore  a  felt  hat.  His  hot, 
bold  glance  swept  the  group.  His  name  was  McLendon.  He 
had  commanded  troops  at  the  front  in  France  and  had  been 
decorated  for  valor. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "are  you  going  to  sit  there  and  let  a  black 
son  rape  a  white  woman  on  the  streets  of  Jefferson?" 

Butch  sprang  up  again.  The  silk  of  his  shirt  clung  flat  to 
his  heavy  shoulders.  At  each  armpit  was  a  dark  halfmoon, 
"That's  what  I  been  telling  them!  That's  what  I — " 

"Did  it  really  happen?"  a  third  said.  "This  aint  the  first 
man  scare  she  ever  had,  like  Hawkshaw  says.  Wasn't  there 
something  about  a  man  on  the  kitchen  roof,  watching  her 
undress,  about  a  year  ago?" 

"What?"  the  client  said.  "What's  that?"  The  barber  had 
been  slowly  forcing  him  back  into  the  chair;  he  arrested 
himself  reclining,  his  head  lifted,  the  barber  still  pressing  him 
down. 

McLendon  whirled  on  the  third  speaker.  "Happen?  What 


1 72  The  Village 

the  hell  difference  does  it  make?  Are  you  going  to  let  the 
black  sons  get  away  with  it  until  one  really  does  it?'* 

"That's  what  I'm  telling  them!"  Butch  shouted.  He  cursed, 
long  and  steady,  pointless. 

"Here,  here,"  a  fourth  said.  "Not  so  loud.  Dont  talk  so 
loud." 

"Sure,"  McLendon  said;  "no  talking  necessary  at  all.  I've 
done  my  talking.  Who's  with  me?"  He  poised  on  the  balls 
of  his  feet,  roving  his  gaze. 

The  barber  held  the  drummer's  face  down,  the  razor 
poised.  "Find  out  the  facts  first,  boys.  I  know  Willy  Mayes. 
It  wasn't  him.  Let's  get  the  sheriff  and  do  this  thing  right." 

McLendon  whirled  upon  him  his  furious,  rigid  face.  The 
barber  did  not  look  away.  They  looked  like  men  of  different 
races.  The  other  barbers  had  ceased  also  above  their  prone 
clients.  "You  mean  to  tell  me,"  McLendon  said,  "that  you'd 
take  a  nigger's  word  before  a  white  woman's?  Why,  you 
damn  niggerloving — " 

The  third  speaker  rose  and  grasped  McLendon's  arm;  he 
too  had  been  a  soldier.  "Now,  now.  Let's  figure  this  thing 
out.  Who  knows  anything  about  what  really  happened?" 

"Figure  out  hell!"  McLendon  jerked  his  arm  free.  "All 
that're  with  me  get  up  from  there.  The  ones  that  aint — " 
He  roved  his  gaze,  dragging  his  sleeve  across  his  face. 

Three  men  rose.  The  drummer  in  the  chair  sat  up.  "Here," 
he  said,  jerking  at  the  cloth  about  his  neck;  "get  this  rag  off 
me.  I'm  with  him.  I  dont  live  here,  but  by  God,  if  our 
mothers  and  wives  and  sisters — "  He  smeared  the  cloth  over 
his  face  and  flung  it  to  the  floor.  McLendon  stood  in  the 
floor  and  cursed  the  others.  Another  rose  and  moved  toward 
him.  The  remainder  sat  uncomfortable,  not  looking  at  one 
another,  then  one  by  one  they  rose  and  joined  him. 

The  barber  picked  the  cloth  from  the  floor.  He  began  to 


Dry  September  173 

fold  it  neatly.  "Boys,  dont  do  that.  Will  Mayes  never  done 
it.  I  know." 

"Come  on,"  McLendon  said.  He  whirled.  From  his  hip 
pocket  protruded  the  butt  of  a  heavy  automatic  pistol.  They 
went  out.  The  screen  door  crashed  behind  them  reverberant 
in  the  dead  air. 

The  barber  wiped  the  razor  carefully  and  swiftly,  and 
put  it  away,  and  ran  to  the  rear,  and  took  his  hat  from  the 
wall.  "I'll  be  back  as  soon  as  I  can,"  he  said  to  the  other 
barbers.  "I  cant  let — "  He  went  out,  running.  The  two  other 
barbers  followed  him  to  the  door  and  caught  it  on  the  re- 
bound, leaning  out  and  looking  up  the  street  after  him.  The 
air  was  flat  and  dead.  It  had  a  metallic  taste  at  the  base  of  the 
tongue. 

"What  can  he  do?"  the  first  said.  The  second  one  was 
saying  "Jees  Christ,  Jees  Christ"  under  his  breath.  "I'd  just 
as  lief  be  Will  Mayes  as  Hawk,  if  he  gets  McLendon  riled." 

"Jees  Christ,  Jees  Christ,"  the  second  whispered. 

"You  reckon  he  really  done  it  to  her?"  the  first  said. 

II 

SHE  WAS  thirty-eight  or  thirty-nine.  She  lived  in  a  small 
frame  house  with  her  invalid  mother  and  a  thin,  sallow,  un- 
flagging aunt,  where  each  morning  between  ten  and  eleven 
she  would  appear  on  the  porch  in  a  lace-trimmed  boudoir 
cap,  to  sit  swinging  in  the  porch  swing  until  noon.  After 
dinner  she  lay  down  for  a  while,  until  the  afternoon  began 
to  cool.  Then,  in  one  of  the  three  or  four  new  voile  dresses 
which  she  had  each  summer,  she  would  go  downtown  to 
spend  the  afternoon  in  the  stores  with  the  other  ladies,  where 
they  would  handle  the  goods  and  haggle  over  the  prices  in 
cold,  immediate  voices,  without  any  intention  of  buying. 
She  was  of  comfortable  people — not  the  best  in  Jefferson, 


174  The  Village 

but  good  people  enough — and  she  was  still  on  the  slender 
side  of  ordinary  looking,  with  a  bright,  faintly  haggard  man- 
ner and  dress.  When  she  was  young  she  had  had  a  slender, 
nervous  body  and  a  sort  of  hard  vivacity  which  had  enabled 
her  for  a  time  to  ride  upon  the  crest  of  the  town's  social  life 
as  exemplified  by  the  high  school  party  and  church  social 
period  of  her  contemporaries  while  still  children  enough  to 
be  unclassconscious. 

She  was  the  last  to  realize  that  she  was  losing  ground;  that 
those  among  whom  she  had  been  a  little  brighter  and  louder 
flame  than  any  other  were  beginning  to  learn  the  pleasure  of 
snobbery — male — and  retaliation — female.  That  was  when 
her  face  began  to  wear  that  bright,  haggard  look.  She  still 
carried  it  to  parties  on  shadowy  porticoes  and  summer  lawns, 
like  a  mask  or  a  flag,  with  that  bafflement  of  furious  repudia- 
tion of  truth  in  her  eyes.  One  evening  at  a  party  she  heard 
a  boy  and  two  girls,  all  schoolmates,  talking.  She  never  ac- 
cepted another  invitation. 

She  watched  the  girls  with  whom  she  had  grown  up  as 
they  married  and  got  homes  and  children,  but  no  man  ever 
called  on  her  steadily  until  the  children  of  the  other  girls 
had  been  calling  her  "aunty"  for  several  years,  the  while 
their  mothers  told  them  in  bright  voices  about  how  popular 
Aunt  Minnie  had  been  as  a  girl.  Then  the  town  began  to  see 
her  driving  on  Sunday  afternoons  with  the  cashier  in  the 
bank.  He  was  a  widower  of  about  forty — a  high-colored 
man,  smelling  always  faintly  of  the  barber  shop  or  of  whisky. 
He  owned  the  first  automobile  in  town,  a  red  runabout; 
Minnie  had  the  first  motoring  bonnet  and  veil  the  town  ever 
saw.  Then  the  town  began  to  say:  "Poor  Minnie."  "But  she 
is  old  enough  to  take  care  of  herself,"  others  said.  That  was 
when  she  began  to  ask  her  old  schoolmates  that  their  chil- 
dren call  her  "cousin"  instead  of  "aunty." 

It  was  twelve  vears  now  since  she  had  been  relegated  into 


Dry  September  175 

adultery  by  public  opinion,  and  eight  years  since  the  cashier 
had  gone  to  a  Memphis  bank,  returning  for  one  day  each 
Christmas,  which  he  spent  at  an  annual  bachelors'  party  at 
a  hunting  club  on  the  river.  From  behind  their  curtains  the 
neighbors  would  see  the  party  pass,  and  during  the  over-the- 
way  Christmas  day  visiting  they  would  tell  her  about  him, 
about  how  well  he  looked,  and  how  they  heard  that  he  was 
prospering  in  the  city,  watching  with  bright,  secret  eyes  her 
haggard,  bright  face.  Usually  by  that  hour  there  would  be 
the  scent  of  whisky  on  her  breath.  It  was  supplied  her  by  a 
youth,  a  clerk  at  the  soda  fountain:  "Sure;  I  buy  it  for  the 
old  gal.  I  reckon  she's  entitled  to  a  little  fun." 

Her  mother  kept  to  her  room  altogether  now;  the  gaunt 
aunt  ran  the  house.  Against  that  background  Minnie's  bright 
dresses,  her  idle  and  empty  days,  had  a  quality  of  furious 
unreality.  She  went  out  in  the  evenings  only  with  women 
now,  neighbors,  to  the  moving  pictures.  Each  afternoon  she 
dressed  in  one  of  the  new  dresses  and  went  downtown  alone, 
where  her  young  "cousins"  were  already  strolling  in  the  late 
afternoons  with  their  delicate,  silken  heads  and  thin,  awk- 
ward arms  and  conscious  hips,  clinging  to  one  another  or 
shrieking  and  giggling  with  paired  boys  in  the  soda  fountain 
when  she  passed  and  went  on  along  the  serried  store  fronts, 
in  the  doors  of  which  the  sitting  and  lounging  men  did  not 
even  follow  her  with  their  eyes  any  more. 

Ill 

THE  BARBER  WENT  SWIFTLY  up  the  street  where  the  sparse 
lights,  insect-swirled,  glared  in  rigid  and  violent  suspension 
in  the  lifeless  air.  The  day  had  died  in  a  pall  of  dust;  above 
the  darkened  square,  shrouded  by  the  spent  dust,  the  sky 
was  as  clear  as  the  inside  of  a  brass  bell.  Below  the  east  was 
a  rumor  of  the  twice-waxed  moon. 


176  The  Village 

When  he  overtook  them  McLendon  and  three  others  were 
getting  into  a  car  parked  in  an  alley.  McLendon  stooped  his 
thick  head,  peering  out  beneath  the  top,  "Changed  your 
mind,  did  you?"  he  said.  "Damn  good  thing;  by  God,  to- 
morrow when  this  town  hears  about  how  you  talked  to- 
night—" 

"Now,  now,"  the  other  ex-soldier  said.  "Hawkshaw's  all 
right.  Come  on,  Hawk;  jump  in." 

"Will  Mayes  never  done  it,  boys,"  the  barber  said.  "If 
anybody  done  it.  Why,  you  all  know  well  as  I  do  there  aint 
any  town  where  they  got  better  niggers  than  us.  And  you 
know  how  a  lady  will  kind  of  think  things  about  men  when 
there  aint  any  reason  to,  and  Miss  Minnie  anyway — " 

"Sure,  sure,"  the  soldier  said.  "We're  just  going  to  talk 
to  him  a  little;  that's  all." 

"Talk  hell!"  Butch  said.  "When  we're  through  with 
the—" 

"Shut  up,  for  God's  sake!"  the  soldier  said.  "Do  you  want 
everybody  in  town — " 

"Tell  them,  by  God!"  McLendon  said.  "Tell  every  one 
of  the  sons  that'll  let  a  white  woman — " 

"Let's  go;  let's  go:  here's  the  other  car."  The  second  car 
slid  squealing  out  of  a  cloud  of  dust  at  the  alley  mouth. 
McLendon  started  his  car  and  took  the  lead.  Dust  lay  like 
fog  in  the  street.  The  street  lights  hung  nimbused  as  in 
water.  They  drove  on  out  of  town. 

A  rutted  lane  turned  at  right  angles.  Dust  hung  above  it 
too,  and  above  all  the  land.  The  dark  bulk  of  the  ice  plant, 
where  the  Negro  Mayes  was  night  watchman,  rose  against 
the  sky.  "Better  stop  here,  hadn't  we?"  the  soldier  said. 
McLendon  did  not  reply.  He  hurled  the  car  up  and  slammed 
to  a  stop,  the  headlights  glaring  on  the  blank  wall. 

"Listen  here,  boys,"  the  barber  said;  "if  he's  here,  dont 
that  prove  he  never  done  it?  Dont  it?  If  it  was  him,  he 


Dry  September  177 

would  run.  Dont  you  see  he  would?"  The  second  car  came 
up  and  stopped.  McLendon  got  down;  Butch  sprang  down 
beside  him.  "Listen,  boys,"  the  barber  said. 

"Cut  the  lights  off!"  McLendon  said.  The  breathless  dark 
rushed  down.  There  was  no  sound  in  it  save  their  lungs  as 
they  sought  air  in  the  parched  dust  in  which  for  two  months 
they  had  lived;  then  the  diminishing  crunch  of  McLendon's 
and  Dutch's  feet,  and  a  moment  later  McLendon's  voice: 

"Will!  .  .  .  Will!" 

Below  the  east  the  wan  hemorrhage  of  the  moon  increased. 
It  heaved  above  the  ridge,  silvering  the  air,  the  dust,  so  that 
they  seemed  to  breathe,  live,  in  a  bowl  of  molten  lead.  There 
was  no  sound  of  nightbird  nor  insect,  no  sound  save  their 
breathing  and  a  faint  ticking  of  contracting  metal  about  the 
cars.  Where  their  bodies  touched  one  another  they  seemed 
to  sweat  dryly,  for  no  more  moisture  came.  "Christ!"  a 
voice  said;  "let's  get  out  of  here." 

But  they  didn't  move  until  vague  noises  began  to  grow 
out  of  the  darkness  ahead;  then  they  got  out  and  waited 
tensely  in  the  breathless  dark.  There  was  another  sound:  a 
blow,  a  hissing  expulsion  of  breath  and  McLendon  cursing 
in  undertone.  They  stood  a  moment  longer,  then  they  ran 
forward.  They  ran  in  a  stumbling  clump,  as  though  they 
were  fleeing  something.  "Kill  him,  kill  the  son,"  a  voice 
whispered.  McLendon  flung  them  back. 

"Not  here,"  he  said.  "Get  him  into  the  car."  "Kill  him, 
kill  the  black  son!"  the  voice  murmured.  They  dragged  the 
Negro  to  the  car.  The  barber  had  waited  beside  the  car.  He 
could  feel  himself  sweating  and  he  knew  he  was  going  to  be 
sick  at  the  stomach. 

"What  is  it,  captains?"  the  Negro  said.  "I  aint  done  noth- 
ing. Tore  God,  Mr  John."  Someone  produced  handcuffs. 
They  worked  busily  about  the  Negro  as  though  he  were  a 
post,  quiet,  intent,  getting  in  one  another's  way.  He  sub- 


178  The  Village 

mitted  to  the  handcuffs,  looking  swiftly  and  constantly  from 
dim  face  to  dim  face.  "Who's  here,  captains?"  he  said,  lean- 
ing to  peer  into  the  faces  until  they  could  feel  his  breath 
and  smell  his  sweaty  reek.  He  spoke  a  name  or  two.  "What 
you  all  say  I  done,  Mr  John?" 

McLendon  jerked  the  car  door  open.  "Get  in!"  he  said. 

The  Negro  did  not  move.  "What  you  all  going  to  do  with 
me,  Mr  John?  I  aint  done  nothing.  White  folks,  captains,  I 
aint  done  nothing:  I  swear  'fore  God."  He  called  another 
name. 

"Get  in!"  McLendon  said.  He  struck  the  Negro.  The 
others  expelled  their  breath  in  a  dry  hissing  and  struck  him 
with  random  blows  and  he  whirled  and  cursed  them,  and 
swept  his  manacled  hands  across  their  faces  and  slashed  the 
barber  upon  the  mouth,  and  the  barber  struck  him  also. 
"Get  him  in  there,"  McLendon  said.  They  pushed  at  him. 
He  ceased  struggling  and  got  in  and  sat  quietly  as  the  others 
took  their  places.  He  sat  between  the  barber  and  the  soldier, 
drawing  his  limbs  in  so  as  not  to  touch  them,  his  eyes  going 
swiftly  and  constantly  from  face  to  face.  Butch  clung  to  the 
running  board.  The  car  moved  on.  The  barber  nursed  his 
mouth  with  his  handkerchief. 

"What's  the  matter,  Hawk?"  the  soldier  said. 

"Nothing,"  the  barber  said.  They  regained  the  highroad 
and  turned  away  from  town.  The  second  car  dropped  back 
out  of  the  dust.  They  went  on,  gaining  speed;  the  final 
fringe  of  houses  dropped  behind. 

"Goddamn,  he  stinks!"  the  soldier  said. 

"We'll  fix  that,"  the  drummer  in  front  beside  McLendon 
said.  On  the  running  board  Butch  cursed  into  the  hot  rush 
of  air.  The  barber  leaned  suddenly  forward  and  touched 
McLendon's  arm. 

"Let  me  out,  John,"  he  said. 

"Jump  out,  niggerlover,"  McLendon  said  without  turning 


Dry  September  179 

his  head.  He  drove  swiftly.  Behind  them  the  sourceless  lights 
of  the  second  car  glared  in  the  dust.  Presently  McLendon 
turned  into  a  narrow  road.  It  was  rutted  with  disuse.  It  led 
back  to  an  abandoned  brick  kiln — a  series  of  reddish  mounds 
and  weed-  and  vine-choked  vats  without  bottom.  It  had  been 
used  for  pasture  once,  until  one  day  the  owner  missed  one 
of  his  mules.  Although  he  prodded  carefully  in  the  vats  with 
a  long  pole,  he  could  not  even  find  the  bottom  of  them. 

"John,"  the  barber  said. 

"Jump  out,  then,"  McLendon  said,  hurling  the  car  along 
the  ruts.  Beside  the  barber  the  Negro  spoke: 

"Mr  Henry." 

The  barber  sat  forward.  The  narrow  tunnel  of  the  road 
rushed  up  and  past.  Their  motion  was  like  an  extinct  furnace 
blast:  cooler,  but  utterly  dead.  The  car  bounded  from  rut 
to  rut. 

"Mr  Henry,"  the  Negro  said. 

The  barber  began  to  tug  furiously  at  the  door.  "Look  out, 
there!"  the  soldier  said,  but  the  barber  had  already  kicked 
the  door  open  and  swung  onto  the  running  board.  The 
soldier  leaned  across  the  Negro  and  grasped  at  him,  but  he 
had  already  jumped.  The  car  went  on  without  checking 
speed. 

The  impetus  hurled  him  crashing  through  dust-sheathed 
weeds,  into  the  ditch.  Dust  puffed  about  him,  and  in  a  thin, 
vicious  crackling  of  sapless  stems  he  lay  choking  and  retch- 
ing until  the  second  car  passed  and  died  away.  Then  he  rose 
and  limped  on  until  he  reached  the  highroad  and  turned 
toward  town,  brushing  at  his  clothes  with  his  hands.  The 
moon  was  higher,  riding  high  and  clear  of  the  dust  at  last, 
and  after  a  while  the  town  began  to  glare  beneath  the  dust. 
He  went  on,  limping.  Presently  he  heard  cars  and  the  glow 
of  them  grew  in  the  dust  behind  him  and  he  left  the  road 
and  crouched  again  in  the  weeds  until  they  passed.  Me- 


i8o  The  Village 

Lendon's  car  came  last  now.  There  were  four  people  in  it 
and  Butch  was  not  on  the  running  board. 

They  went  on;  the  dust  swallowed  them;  the  glare  and 
the  sound  died  away.  The  dust  of  them  hung  for  a  while, 
but  soon  the  eternal  dust  absorbed  it  again.  The  barber 
climbed  back  onto  the  road  and  limped  on  toward  town. 


IV 

As  SHE  DRESSED  for  supper  on  that  Saturday  evening,  her 
own  flesh  felt  like  fever.  Her  hands  trembled  among  the 
hooks  and  eyes,  and  her  eyes  had  a  feverish  look,  and  her 
hair  swirled  crisp  and  crackling  under  the  comb.  While  she 
was  still  dressing  the  friends  called  for  her  and  sat  while  she 
donned  her  sheerest  underthings  and  stockings  and  a  new 
voile  dress.  "Do  you  feel  strong  enough  to  go  out?"  they 
said,  their  eyes  bright  too,  with  a  dark  glitter.  "When  you 
have  had  time  to  get  over  the  shock,  you  must  tell  us  what 
happened.  What  he  said  and  did;  everything." 

In  the  leafed  darkness,  as  they  walked  toward  the  square, 
she  began  to  breathe  deeply,  something  like  a  swimmer  pre- 
paring to  dive,  until  she  ceased  trembling,  the  four  of  them 
walking  slowly  because  of  the  terrible  heat  and  out  of 
solicitude  for  her.  But  as  they  neared  the  square  she  began 
to  tremble  again,  walking  with  her  head  up,  her  hands 
clenched  at  her  sides,  their  voices  about  her  murmurous,  also 
with  that  feverish,  glittering  quality  of  their  eyes. 

They  entered  the  square,  she  in  the  center  of  the  group, 
fragile  in  her  fresh  dress.  She  was  trembling  worse.  She 
walked  slower  and  slower,  as  children  eat  ice  cream,  her 
head  up  and  her  eyes  bright  in  the  haggard  banner  of  her 
face,  passing  the  hotel  and  the  coatless  drummers  in  chairs 
along  the  curb  looking  around  at  her:  "That's  the  one:  see? 
The  one  in  pink  in  the  middle."  "Is  that  her?  What  did  they 


Dry  September  181 

do  with  the  nigger?  Did  they—?"  "Sure.  He's  all  right." 
"All  right,  is  he?"  "Sure.  He  went  on  a  little  trip."  Then  the 
drug  store,  where  even  the  young  men  lounging  in  the  door- 
way tipped  their  hats  and  followed  with  their  eyes  the 
motion  of  her  hips  and  legs  when  she  passed. 

They  went  on,  passing  the  lifted  hats  of  the  gentlemen, 
the  suddenly  ceased  voices,  deferent,  protective.  "Do  you 
see?"  the  friends  said.  Their  voices  sounded  like  long,  hover- 
ing sighs  of  hissing  exultation.  "There's  not  a  Negro  on  the 
square.  Not  one." 

They  reached  the  picture  show.  It  was  like  a  miniature 
fairyland  with  its  lighted  lobby  and  colored  lithographs  of 
life  caught  in  its  terrible  and  beautiful  mutations.  Her  lips 
began  to  tingle.  In  the  dark,  when  the  picture  began,  it 
would  be  all  right;  she  could  hold  back  the  laughing  so  it 
would  not  waste  away  so  fast  and  so  soon.  So  she  hurried  on 
before  the  turning  faces,  the  undertones  of  low  astonish- 
ment, and  they  took  their  accustomed  places  where  she  could 
see  the  aisle  against  the  silver  glare  and  the  young  men  and 
girls  coming  in  two  and  two  against  it. 

The  lights  flicked  away;  the  screen  glowed  silver,  and 
soon  life  began  to  unfold,  beautiful  and  passionate  and  sad, 
while  still  the  young  men  and  girls  entered,  scented  and 
sibilant  in  the  half  dark,  their  paired  backs  in- silhouette  deli- 
cate and  sleek,  their  slim,  quick  bodies  awkward,  divinely 
young,  while  beyond  them  the  silver  dream  accumulated, 
inevitably  on  and  on.  She  began  to  laugh.  In  trying  to  sup- 
press it,  it  made  more  noise  than  ever;  heads  began  to  turn. 
Still  laughing,  her  friends  raised  her  and  led  her  out,  and 
she  stood  at  the  curb,  laughing  on  a  high,  sustained  note, 
until  the  taxi  came  up  and  they  helped  her  in. 

They  removed  the  pink  voile  and  the  sheer  underthings 
and  the  stockings,  and  put  her  to  bed,  and  cracked  ice  for 
her  temples,  and  sent  for  the  doctor.  He  was  hard  to  locate, 


1 82  The  Village 

so  they  ministered  to  her  with  hushed  ejaculations,  renew- 
ing the  ice  and  fanning  her.  While  the  ice  was  fresh  and 
cold  she  stopped  laughing  and  lay  still  for  a  time,  moaning 
only  a  little.  But  soon  the  laughing  welled  again  and  her 
voice  rose  screaming. 

"Shhhhhhhhhhh!  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"  they  said,  fresh- 
ening the  icepack,  smoothing  her  hair,  examining  it  for  gray; 
"poor  girl!"  Then  to  one  another:  "Do  you  suppose  any- 
thing really  happened?"  their  eyes  darkly  aglitter,  secret  and 
passionate.  "Shhhhhhhhhh!  Poor  girl!  Poor  Minnie!" 

V 

IT  WAS  MIDNIGHT  when  McLendon  drove  up  to  his  neat  new 
house.  It  was  trim  and  fresh  as  a  birdcage  and  almost  as 
small,  with  its  clean,  green-and-white  paint.  He  locked  the 
car  and  mounted  the  porch  and  entered.  His  wife  rose  from 
a  chair  beside  the  reading  lamp.  McLendon  stopped  in  the 
floor  and  stared  at  her  until  she  looked  down. 

"Look  at  that  clock,"  he  said,  lifting  his  arm,  pointing. 
She  stood  before  him,  her  face  lowered,  a  magazine  in  her 
hands.  Her  face  was  pale,  strained,  and  weary-looking. 
"Haven't  I  told  you  about  sitting  up  like  this,  waiting  to 
see  when  I  come  in?" 

"John,"  she  said.  She  laid  the  magazine  down.  Poised  on 
the  balls  of  his  feet,  he  glared  at  her  with  his  hot  eyes,  his 
sweating  face. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?"  He  went  toward  her.  She  looked  up 
then.  He  caught  her  shoulder.  She  stood  passive,  looking  at 
him. 

"Don't,  John.  I  couldn't  sleep  .  .  .  The  heat;  something. 
Please,  John.  You're  hurting  me." 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?"  He  released  her  and  half  struck,  half 
flung  her  across  the  chair,  and  she  lay  there  and  watched 
him  quietly  as  he  left  the  room. 


Dry  September  183 

He  went  on  through  the  house,  ripping  off  his  shirt,  and 
on  the  dark,  screened  porch  at  the  rear  he  stood  and  mopped 
his  head  and  shoulders  with  the  shirt  and  flung  it  away.  He 
took  the  pistol  from  his  hip  and  laid  it  on  the  table  beside 
the  bed,  and  sat  on  the  bed  and  removed  his  shoes,  and  rose 
and  slipped  his  trousers  off.  He  was  sweating  again  already, 
and  he  stooped  and  hunted  furiously  for  the  shirt.  At  last 
he  found  it  and  wiped  his  body  again,  and,  with  his  body 
pressed  against  the  dusty  screen,  he  stood  panting.  There 
was  no  movement,  no  sound,  not  even  an  insect.  The  dark 
world  seemed  to  lie  stricken  beneath  the  cold  moon  and  the 
lidless  stars. 


Death  Drag 


THE  AIRPLANE  appeared  over  town  with  almost  the  abrupt- 
ness of  an  apparition.  It  was  travelling  fast;  almost  before  we 
knew  it  was  there  it  was  already  at  the  top  of  a  loop;  still 
over  the  square,  in  violation  of  both  city  and  government 
ordinance.  It  was  not  a  good  loop  either,  performed  viciously 
and  slovenly  and  at  top  speed,  as  though  the  pilot  were 
either  a  very  nervous  man  or  in  a  hurry,  or  (and  this  queerly: 
there  is  in  our  town  an  ex-army  aviator.  He  was  coming  out 
of  the  post  office  when  the  airplane  appeared  going  south;  he 
watched  the  hurried  and  ungraceful  loop  and  he  made  the 
comment)  as  though  the  pilot  were  trying  to  make  the  min- 
imum of  some  specified  manoeuvre  in  order  to  save  gasoline. 
The  airplane  came  over  the  loop  with  one  wing  down,  as 
though  about  to  make  an  Immelmann  turn.  Then  it  did  a  half 
roll,  the  loop  three-quarters  complete,  and  without  any  break 
in  the  whine  of  the  full-throttled  engine  and  still  at  top  speed 
and  with  that  apparition-like  suddenness,  it  disappeared  east- 
ward toward  our  airport.  When  the  first  small  boys  reached 
the  field,  the  airplane  was  on  the  ground,  drawn  up  into  a 
fence  corner  at  the  end  of  the  field.  It  was  motionless  and 
empty.  There  was  no  one  in  sight  at  all.  Resting  there,  empty 
and  dead,  patched  and  shabby  and  painted  awkwardly  with  a 
single  thin  coat  of  dead  black,  it  gave  again  that  illusion  of 
ghostliness,  as  though  it  might  have  flown  there  and  made 
rhat  loop  and  landed  by  itself. 


1 86  The  Village 

Our  field  is  still  in  an  embryonic  state.  Our  town  is  built 
upon  hills,  and  the  field,  once  a  cotton  field,  is  composed  of 
forty  acres  of  ridge  and  gully,  upon  which,  by  means  of 
grading  and  filling,  we  managed  to  build  an  X-shaped  run- 
way into  the  prevailing  winds.  The  runways  are  long  enough 
in  themselves,  but  the  field,  like  our  town,  is  controlled  by 
men  who  were  of  middle  age  when  younger  men  first  began 
to  fly,  and  so  the  clearance  is  not  always  good.  On  one  side 
is  a  grove  of  trees  which  the  owner  will  not  permit  to  be 
felled;  on  another  is  the  barnyard  of  a  farm:  sheds  and 
houses,  a  long  barn  with  a  roof  of  rotting  shingles,  a  big  hay- 
cock. The  airplane  had  come  to  rest  in  the  fence  corner  near 
the  barn.  The  small  boys  and  a  Negro  or  two  and  a  white 
man,  descended  from  a  halted  wagon  in  the  road,  were  stand- 
ing quietly  about  it  when  two  men  in  helmets  and  lifted 
goggles  emerged  suddenly  around  the  corner  of  the  barn. 
One  was  tall,  in  a  dirty  coverall.  The  other  was  quite 
short,  in  breeches  and  puttees  and  a  soiled,  brightly  patterned 
overcoat  which  looked  as  if  he  had  got  wet  in  it  and  it  had 
shrunk  on  him.  He  walked  with  a  decided  limp. 

They  had  stopped  at  the  corner  of  the  barn.  Without  ap- 
pearing to  actually  turn  their  heads,  they  seemed  to  take  in  at 
one  glance  the  entire  scene,  quickly.  The  tall  man  spoke. 
"What  town  is  this?" 

One  of  the  small  boys  told  him  the  name  of  the  town. 

"Who  lives  here?"  the  tall  man  said. 

"Who  lives  here?"  the  boy  repeated. 

"Who  runs  this  field?  Is  it  a  private  field?" 

"Oh.  It  belongs  to  the  town.  They  run  it." 

"Do  they  all  live  here?  The  ones  that  run  it?" 

The  white  man,  the  Negroes,  the  small  boys,  all  watched 
the  tall  man. 

"What  I  mean,  is  there  anybody  in  this  town  that  flies, 
that  owns  a  ship?  Any  strangers  here  that  fly?" 


Death  Drag  187 

"Yes,"  the  boy  said.  "There's  a  man  lives  here  that  flew  in 
the  war,  the  English  army." 

"Captain  Warren  was  in  the  Royal  Flying  Corps,"  a  sec- 
ond boy  said. 

"That's  what  I  said,"  the  first  boy  said. 

"You  said  the  English  army,"  the  second  boy  said. 

The  second  man,  the  short  one  with  the  limp,  spoke.  He 
spoke  to  the  tall  man,  quietly,  in  a  dead  voice,  in  the  diction 
of  Weber  and  Fields  in  vaudeville,  making  his  iv^s  into  v's 
and  his  ttfs  into  d's.  "What  does  that  mean?"  he  said. 

"It's  all  right,"  the  tall  man  said.  He  moved  forward.  "I 
think  I  know  him."  The  short  man  followed,  limping,  ter- 
rific, crablike.  The  tall  man  had  a  gaunt  face  beneath  a  two- 
days'  stubble.  His  eyeballs  looked  dirty,  too,  with  a  strained, 
glaring  expression.  He  wore  a  dirty  helmet  of  cheap,  thin 
cloth,  though  it  was  January.  His  goggles  were  worn,  but 
even  we  could  tell  that  they  were  good  ones.  But  then  every- 
body quit  looking  at  him  to  look  at  the  short  man;  later,  when 
we  older  people  saw  him,  we  said  among  ourselves  that  he 
had  the  most  tragic  face  we  had  ever  seen;  an  expression  of 
outraged  and  convinced  and  indomitable  despair,  like  that  of 
a  man  carrying  through  choice  a  bomb  which,  at  a  certain 
hour  each  day,  may  or  may  not  explode.  He  had  a  nose 
which  would  have  been  out  of  proportion  to  a  man  six  feet 
tall.  As  shaped  by  his  close  helmet,  the  entire  upper  half  of  his 
head  down  to  the  end  of  his  nose  would  have  fitted  a  six-foot 
body.  But  below  that,  below  a  lateral  line  bisecting  his  head 
from  the  end  of  his  nose  to  the  back  of  his  skull,  his  jaw,  the 
rest  of  his  face,  was  not  two  inches  deep.  His  jaw  was  a  long, 
flat  line  clapping-to  beneath  his  nose  like  the  jaw  of  a  shark,  so 
that  the  tip  of  his  nose  and  the  tip  of  his  jaw  almost  touched. 
His  goggles  were  merely  flat  pieces  of  window-glass  held  in 
felt  frames.  His  helmet  was  leather.  Down  the  back  of  it, 
from  the  top  to  the  hem,  was  a  long  savage  tear,  held  together 


1 88  The  Village 

top  and  bottom  by  strips  of  adhesive  tape  almost  black  with 
dirt  and  grease. 

From  around  the  corner  of  the  barn  there  now  appeared  a 
third  man,  again  with  that  abrupt  immobility,  as  though  he 
had  materialized  there  out  of  thin  air;  though  when  they  saw 
him  he  was  already  moving  toward  the  group.  He  wore  an 
overcoat  above  a  neat  civilian  suit;  he  wore  a  cap.  He  was  a 
little  taller  than  the  limping  man,  and  broad,  heavily  built. 
He  was  handsome  in  a  dull,  quiet  way;  from  his  face,  a  man 
of  infrequent  speech.  When  he  came  up  the  spectators  saw 
that  he,  like  the  limping  man,  was  also  a  Jew.  That  is,  they 
knew  at  once  that  two  of  the  strangers  were  of  a  different 
race  from  themselves,  without  being  able  to  say  what  the 
difference  was.  The  boy  who  had  first  spoken  probably  re- 
vealed by  his  next  speech  what  they  thought  the  difference 
was.  He,  as  well  as  the  other  boys,  was  watching  the  man 
who  limped. 

"Were  you  in  the  war?"  the  boy  said.  "In  the  air  war?" 

The  limping  man  did  not  answer.  Both  he  and  the  tall  man 
were  watching  the  gate.  The  spectators  looked  also  and  saw 
a  car  enter  the  gate  and  come  down  the  edge  of  the  field1 
toward  them.  Three  men  got  out  of  the  car  and  approached. 
Again  the  limping  man  spoke  quietly  to  the  tall  man:  "Is  that 
one?" 

"No,"  the  tall  man  said,  without  looking  at  the  other.  He 
watched  the  newcomers,  looking  from  face  to  face.  He  spoke 
to  the  oldest  of  the  three.  "Morning,"  he  said.  "You  run  this 
field?" 

"No,"  the  newcomer  said.  "You  want  the  secretary  of  the 
Fair  Association.  He's  in  town." 

"Any  charge  to  use  it?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  reckon  they'll  be  glad  to  have  you  use  it." 

"Go  on  and  pay  them,"  the  limping  man  said. 

The  three  newcomers  looked  at  the  airplane  with  that 
blank,  knowing,  respectful  air  of  groundlings.  It  reared  on  its 


Death  Drag  189 

muddy  wheels,  the  propeller  motionless,  rigid,  with  a  quality 
immobile  and  poised  and  dynamic.  The  nose  was  big  with 
engine,  the  wings  taut,  the  fuselage  streaked  with  oil  behind 
the  rusting  exhaust  pipes.  "Going  to  do  some  business  here?" 
the  oldest  one  said. 

"Put  you  on  a  show,"  the  tall  man  said. 

"What  kind  of  show?" 

"Anything  you  want.  Wing-walking;  death-drag." 

"What's  that?  Death-drag?" 

"Drop  a  man  onto  the  top  of  a  car  and  drag  him  off  again. 
Bigger  the  crowd,  the  more  you'll  get." 

"You  will  get  your  money's  worth,"  the  limping  man  said. 

The  boys  still  watched  him.  "Were  you  in  the  war?"  the 
first  boy  said. 

The  third  stranger  had  not  spoken  up  to  this  time.  He  now 
said:  "Let's  get  on  to  town." 

"Right,"  the  tall  man  said.  He  said  generally,  in  his  flat, 
dead  voice,  the  same  voice  which  the  three  strangers  all 
seemed  to  use,  as  though  it  were  their  common  language: 
"Where  can  we  get  a  taxi?  Got  one  in  town?" 

"We'll  take  you  to  town,"  the  men  who  had  come  up  in 
the  car  said. 

"We'll  pay,"  the  limping  man  said. 

"Glad  to  do  it,"  the  driver  of  the  car  said.  "I  won't  charge 
you  anything.  You  want  to  go  now?" 

"Sure,"  the  tall  man  said.  The  three  strangers  got  into  the 
back  seat,  the  other  three  in  front.  Three  of  the  boys  fol- 
lowed them  to  the  car. 

"Lemme  hang  on  to  town,  Mr.  Black?"  one  of  the  boys 
said. 

"Hang  on,"  the  driver  said.  The  boys  got  onto  the  running 
boards.  The  car  returned  to  town.  The  three  in  front  could 
hear  the  three  strangers  talking  in  the  back.  They  talked 
quietly,  in  low,  dead  voices,  somehow  quiet  and  urgent,  dis- 
cussing something  among  themselves,  the  tall  man  and  the 


I9o  The  Village 

handsome  one  doing  most  of  the  talking.  The  three  in  front 
heard  only  one  speech  from  the  limping  man:  "I  won't  take 
less .  . ." 

"Sure,"  the  tall  man  said.  He  leaned  forward  and  raised  his 
voice  a  little:  "Where '11 1  find  this  Jones,  this  secretary?" 

The  driver  told  him. 

"Is  the  newspaper  or  the  printing  shop  near  there?  I  want 
some  handbills." 

"I'll  show  you,"  the  driver  said.  "I'll  help  you  get  fixed 
up." 

"Fine,"  the  tall  man  said.  "Come  out  this  afternoon  and 
Til  give  you  a  ride,  if  I  have  time." 

The  car  stopped  at  the  newspaper  office.  "You  can  get 
your  handbills  here,"  the  driver  said. 

"Good,"  the  tall  man  said.  "Is  Jones's  office  on  this  street?" 

"I'll  take  you  there,  too,"  the  driver  said. 

"You  see  about  the  editor,"  the  tall  man  said.  "I  can  find 
Jones,  I  guess."  They  got  out  of  the  car.  "I'll  come  back 
here,"  the  tall  man  said.  He  went  on  down  the  street,  swiftly, 
in  his  dirty  coverall  and  helmet.  Two  other  men  had  joined 
the  group  before  the  newspaper  office.  They  all  entered,  the 
limping  man  leading,  followed  by  the  three  boys. 

"I  want  some  handbills,"  the  limping  man  said.  "Like  this 
one."  He  took  from  his  pocket  a  folded  sheet  of  pink  paper. 
He  opened  it;  the  editor,  the  boys,  the  five  men,  leaned  to 
see  it.  The  lettering  was  black  and  bold: 

DEMON  DUNCAN 
DAREDEVIL  OF  THE  AIR 

DEATH  DEFYING  SHOW  WILL  BE  GIVEN 

UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF 

THIS  P.M.  AT  TWO  P.M. 

COME  ONE  COME  ALL  AND  SEE  DEMON  DUNCAN 
DEFY  DEATH  IN  DEATH  DROP  &  DRAG  OF  DEATH 


Death  Drag  191 

"I  want  them  in  one  hour,"  the  limping  man  said. 

"What  you  want  in  this  blank  space?"  the  editor  said. 

"What  you  got  in  this  town?" 

"What  we  got?" 

"What  auspices?  American  Legion?  Rotary  Club?  Cham- 
ber of  Commerce?" 

"We  got  all  of  them." 

"I'll  tell  you  which  one  in  a  minute,  then,"  the  limping 
man  said.  "When  my  partner  gets  back." 

"You  have  to  have  a  guarantee  before  you  put  on  the 
show,  do  you?"  the  editor  said. 

"Why,  sure.  Do  you  think  I  should  put  on  a  daredevil 
without  auspices?  Do  you  think  I  should  for  a  nickel  maybe 
jump  off  the  airplane?" 

"Who's  going  to  jump?"  one  of  the  later  comers  said;  he 
was  a  taxi-driver. 

The  limping  man  looked  at  him.  "Don't  you  worry  about 
that,"  he  said.  "Your  business  is  just  to  pay  the  money.  We 
will  do  all  the  jumping  you  want,  if  you  pay  enough." 

"I  just  asked  which  one  of  you  all  was  the  jumper." 

"Do  I  ask  you  whether  you  pay  me  in  silver  or  in  green- 
backs?" the  limping  man  said.  "Do  I  ask  you?" 

"No,"  the  taxi-driver  said. 

"About  these  bills,"  the  editor  said.  "You  said  you  wanted 
them  in  an  hour." 

"Can't  you  begin  on  them,  and  leave  that  part  out  until 
my  partner  comes  back?" 

"Suppose  he  don't  come  before  they  are  finished?" 

"Well,  that  won't  be  my  fault,  will  it?" 

"All  right,"  the  editor  said.  "Just  so  you  pay  for  them." 

"You  mean,  I  should  pay  without  a  auspices  on  the  hand- 
bill?" 

"I  ain't  in  this  business  for  fun,"  the  editor  said. 

"We'll  wait,"  the  limping  man  said. 


192  The  Village 

They  waited. 

"Were  you  a  flyer  in  the  war,  Mister?"  the  boy  said. 

The  limping  man  turned  upon  the  boy  his  long,  misshapen, 
tragic  face.  "The  war?  Why  should  I  fly  in  a  war?" 

"I  thought  maybe  because  of  your  leg.  Captain  Warren 
limps,  and  he  flew  in  the  war.  I  reckon  you  just  do  it  for 
fun?" 

"For  fun?  What  for  fun?  Fly?  Gruss  Gott.  I  hate  it,  I  wish 
the  man  what  invented  them  was  here;  I  would  put  him  into 
that  machine  yonder  and  I  would  print  on  his  back,  Do  not 
do  it,  one  thousand  times." 

"Why  do  you  do  it,  then?"  the  man  who  had  entered  with 
the  taxi-driver  said. 

"Because  of  that  Republican  Coolidge.  I  was  in  business, 
and  that  Coolidge  ruined  business;  ruined  it.  That's  why. 
For  fun?  Gruss  Gott." 

They  looked  at  the  limping  man.  "I  suppose  you  have  a 
license?"  the  second  late-comer  said. 

The  limping  man  looked  at  him.  "A  license?" 

"Don't  you  have  to  have  a  license  to  fly?" 

"Oh;  a  license.  For  the  airplane  to  fly;  sure,  I  understand. 
Sure.  We  got  one.  You  want  to  see  it?" 

"You're  supposed  to  show  it  to  anybody  that  wants  to  see 
it,  aren't  you?" 

"Why,  sure.  You  want  to  see  it?" 

"Where  is  it?" 

"Where  should  it  be?  It's  nailed  to  the  airplane,  where  the 
government  put  it.  Did  you  thought  maybe  it  was  nailed  to 
me?  Did  you  thought  maybe  I  had  a  engine  on  me  and  maybe 
wings?  It's  on  the  airplane.  Call  a  taxi  and  go  to  the  airplane 
and  look  at  it." 

"I  run  a  taxi,"  the  driver  said. 

"Well,  run  it.  Take  this  gentleman  out  to  the  field  where 
he  can  look  at  the  license  on  the  airplane." 


Death  Drag  193 

"It'll  be  a  quarter,"  the  driver  said.  But  the  limping  man 
was  not  looking  at  the  driver.  He  was  leaning  against  the 
counter.  They  watched  him  take  a  stick  of  gum  from  his 
pocket  and  peel  it.  They  watched  him  put  the  gum  into  his 
mouth.  "I  said  it'll  be  a  quarter,  Mister,"  the  driver  said. 

"Was  you  talking  to  me?"  the  limping  man  said. 

"I  thought  you  wanted  a  taxi  out  to  the  airport." 

"Me?  What  for?  What  do  I  want  to  go  out  to  the  airport 
for?  I  just  come  from  there.  I  ain't  the  one  that  wants  to  see 
that  license.  I  have  already  seen  it.  I  was  there  when  the 
government  nailed  it  onto  the  airplane." 

II 

CAPTAIN  WARREN,  the  ex-army  flyer,  was  coming  out  of  the 
store,  where  he  met  the  tall  man  in  the  dirty  coverall.  Cap- 
tain Warren  told  about  it  in  the  barber  shop  that  night,  when 
the  airplane  was  gone. 

"I  hadn't  seen  him  in  fourteen  years,  not  since  I  left  Eng- 
land for  the  front  in  '17.  'So  it  was  you  that  rolled  out  of 
that  loop  with  two  passengers  and  a  twenty  model  Hisso 
smokepot?'  I  said. 

"  'Who  else  saw  me?'  he  said.  So  he  told  me  about  it,  stand- 
ing there,  looking  over  his  shoulder  every  now  and  then.  He 
was  sick;  a  man  stopped  behind  him  to  let  a  couple  of  ladies 
pass,  and  Jock  whirled  like  he  might  have  shot  the  man  if 
he'd  had  a  gun,  and  while  we  were  in  the  cafe  some  one 
slammed  a  door  at  the  back  and  I  thought  he  would  come 
out  of  his  monkey  suit.  It's  a  little  nervous  trouble  I've  got,' 
he  told  me.  Tm  all  right.'  I  had  tried  to  get  him  to  come  out 
home  with  me  for  dinner,  but  he  wouldn't.  He  said  that  he 
had  to  kind  of  jump  himself  and  eat  before  he  knew  it,  sort 
of.  We  had  started  down  the  street  and  we  were  passing  the 
restaurant  when  he  said:  I'm  going  to  eat,'  and  he  turned 


194  The  Village 

and  ducked  in  like  a  rabbit  and  sat  down  with  his  back  to 
the  wall  and  told  Vernon  to  bring  him  the  quickest  thing  he 
had.  He  drank  three  glasses  of  water  and  then  Vernon 
brought  him  a  milk  bottle  full  and  he  drank  most  of  that 
before  the  dinner  came  up  from  the  kitchen.  When  he  took  off 
his  helmet,  I  saw  that  his  hair  was  pretty  near  white,  and  he 
is  younger  than  I  am.  Or  he  was,  up  there  when  we  were  in 
Canada  training.  Then  he  told  me  what  the  name  of  his 
nervous  trouble  was.  It  was  named  Ginsfarb.  The  little  one; 
the  one  that  jumped  off  the  ladder." 

"What  was  the  trouble?"  we  asked.  "What  were  they 
afraid  of?" 

"They  were  afraid  of  inspectors,"  Warren  said.  "They 
had  no  licenses  at  all." 

"There  was  one  on  the  airplane." 

"Yes.  But  it  did  not  belong  to  that  airplane.  That  one  had 
been  grounded  by  an  inspector  when  Ginsfarb  bought  it. 
The  license  was  for  another  airplane  that  had  been  wrecked, 
and  some  one  had  helped  Ginsfarb  compound  another  felony 
by  selling  the  license  to  him.  Jock  had  lost  his  license  about 
two  years  ago  when  he  crashed  a  big  plane  full  of  Fourth- 
of-July  holidayers.  Two  of  the  engines  quit,  and  he  had  to 
land.  The  airplane  smashed  up  some  and  broke  a  gas  line, 
but  even  then  they  would  have  been  all  right  if  a  passenger 
hadn't  got  scared  (it  was  about  dusk)  and  struck  a  match. 
Jock  was  not  so  much  to  blame,  but  the  passengers  all  burned 
to  death,  and  the  government  is  strict.  So  he  couldn't  get  a 
license,  and  he  couldn't  make  Ginsfarb  even  pay  to  take  out 
a  parachute  rigger's  license.  So  they  had  no  license  at  all;  if 
they  were  ever  caught,  they'd  all  go  to  the  penitentiary." 

"No  wonder  his  hair  was  white,"  some  one  said. 

"That  wasn't  what  turned  it  white,"  Warren  said.  "I'll 
tell  you  about  that.  So  they'd  go  to  little  towns  like  this  one, 
fast,  find  out  if  there  was  anybody  that  might  catch  them, 


Death  Drag  195 

and  if  there  wasn't,  they'd  put  on  the  show  and  then  clear 
out  and  go  to  another  town,  staying  away  from  the  cities. 
They'd  come  in  and  get  handbills  printed  while  Jock  and 
the  other  one  would  try  to  get  underwritten  by  some  local 
organization.  They  wouldn't  let  Ginsfarb  do  this  part, 
because  he'd  stick  out  for  his  price  too  long  and  they'd  be 
afraid  to  risk  it.  So  the  other  two  would  do  this,  get  what 
they  could,  and  if  they  could  not  get  what  Ginsfarb  told 
them  to,  they'd  take  what  they  could  and  then  try  to  keep 
Ginsfarb  fooled  until  it  was  too  late.  Well,  this  time  Ginsfarb 
kicked  up.  I  guess  they  had  done  it  too  much  on  him. 

"So  I  met  Jock  on  the  street.  He  looked  bad;  I  offered 
him  a  drink,  but  he  said  he  couldn't  even  smoke  any  more. 
All  he  could  do  was  drink  water;  he  said  he  usually  drank 
about  a  gallon  during  the  night,  getting  up  for  it. 

"  'You  look  like  you  might  have  to  jump  yourself  to 
sleep,  too,'  I  said. 

"  'No,  I  sleep  fine.  The  trouble  is,  the  nights  aren't  long 
enough.  I'd  like  to  live  at  the  North  Pole  from  September 
to  April,  and  at  the  South  Pole  from  April  to  September. 
That  would  just  suit  me.' 

"  'You  aren't  going  to  last  long  enough  to  get  there,'  I 
said. 

"  'I  guess  so.  It's  a  good  engine.  I  see  to  that.' 

"  'I  mean,  you'll  be  in  jail.' 

"Then  he  said:  'Do  you  think  so?  Do  you  guess  I  could?' 

"We  went  on  to  the  cafe.  He  told  me  about  the  racket, 
and  showed  me  one  of  those  Demon  Duncan  handbills. 
'Demon  Duncan?'  I  said. 

"  'Why  not?  Who  would  pay  to  see  a  man  named  Gins- 
farb jump  from  a  ship?' 

"  'I'd  pay  to  see  that  before  I'd  pay  to  see  a  man  named 
Duncan  do  it,'  I  said. 

"He  hadn't  thought  of  that.  Then  he  began  to  drink  water, 


196  The  Village 

and  he  told  me  that  Ginsfarb  had  wanted  a  hundred  dollars 
for  the  stunt,  but  that  he  and  the  other  fellow  only  got  sixty. 

"  'What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it? '  I  said. 

"  'Try  to  keep  him  fooled  and  get  this  thing  over  and  get 
to  hell  away  from  here,'  he  said. 

"  'Which  one  is  Ginsfarb?'  I  said.  'The  little  one  that  looks 
like  a  shark?' 

"Then  he  began  to  drink  water.  He  emptied  my  glass  too 
at  one  shot  and  tapped  it  on  the  table.  Vernon  brought  him 
another  glass.  'You  must  be  thirsty,'  Vernon  said. 

"  'Have  you  got  a  pitcher  of  it?'  Jock  said. 

"  'I  could  fill  you  a  milk  bottle.' 

"  'Let's  have  it,'  Jock  said.  'And  give  me  another  glass 
while  I'm  waiting.'  Then  he  told  me  about  Ginsfarb,  why 
his  hair  had  turned  gray. 

"  'How  long  have  you  been  doing  this?'  I  said. 

"  'Ever  since  the  2 6th  of  August.' 

"  'This  is  just  January,'  I  said. 

"'What  about  it?' 

"  'The  2 6th  of  August  is  not  six  months  past.'  " 

He  looked  at  me.  Vernon  brought  the  bottle  of  water. 
Jock  poured  a  glass  and  drank  it.  He  began  to  shake,  sitting 
there,  shaking  and  sweating,  trying  to  fill  the  glass  again. 
Then  he  told  me  about  it,  talking  fast,  filling  the  glass  and 
drinking. 

"Jake  (the  other  one's  name  is  Jake  something;  the  good- 
looking  one)  drives  the  car,  the  rented  car.  Ginsfarb  swaps 
onto  the  car  from  the  ladder.  Jock  said  he  would  have  to  fly 
the  ship  into  position  over  a  Ford  or  a  Chevrolet  running  on 
three  cylinders,  trying  to  keep  Ginsfarb  from  jumping  from 
twenty  or  thirty  feet  away  in  order  to  save  gasoline  in  the 
ship  and  in  the  rented  car.  Ginsfarb  goes  out  on  the  bottom 
wing  with  his  ladder,  fastens  the  ladder  onto  a  strut,  hooks 
himself  into  the  other  end  of  the  ladder,  and  drops  off;  every- 
body on  the  ground  thinks  that  he  has  done  what  they  all 


Death  Drag  197 

came  to  see:  fallen  off  and  killed  himself.  That's  what  he 
calls  his  death-drop.  Then  he  swaps  from  the  ladder  onto  the 
top  of  the  car,  and  the  ship  comes  back  and  he  catches  the 
ladder  and  is  dragged  off  again.  That's  his  death-drag. 

"Well,  up  till  the  day  when  Jock's  hair  began  to  turn 
white,  Ginsfarb,  as  a  matter  of  economy,  would  do  it  all  at 
once;  he  would  get  into  position  above  the  car  and  drop  off 
on  his  ladder  and  then  make  contact  with  the  car,  and  some- 
times Jock  said  the  ship  would  not  be  in  the  air  three  min- 
utes. Well,  on  this  day  the  rented  car  was  a  bum  or  some- 
thing; anyway,  Jock  had  to  circle  the  field  four  or  five  times 
while  the  car  was  getting  into  position,  and  Ginsfarb,  seeing 
his  money  being  blown  out  the  exhaust  pipes,  finally  refused 
to  wait  for  Jock's  signal  and  dropped  off  anyway.  It  was  all 
right,  only  the  distance  between  the  ship  and  the  car  was  not 
as  long  as  the  rope  ladder.  So  Ginsfarb  hit  on  the  car,  and 
Jock  had  just  enough  soup  to  zoom  and  drag  Ginsfarb,  still 
on  the  ladder,  over  a  high-power  electric  line,  and  he  held 
the  ship  in  that  climb  for  twenty  minutes  while  Ginsfarb 
climbed  back  up  the  ladder  with  his  leg  broken.  He  held  the 
ship  in  a  climb  with  his  knees,  with  the  throttle  wide  open 
and  the  engine  revving  about  eleven  hundred,  while  he 
reached  back  and  opened  that  cupboard  behind  the  cockpit 
and  dragged  out  a  suitcase  and  propped  the  stick  so  he  could 
get  out  on  the  wing  and  drag  Ginsfarb  back  into  the  ship. 
He  got  Ginsfarb  in  the  ship  and  on  the  ground  again  and 
Ginsfarb  says:  'How  far  did  we  go?'  and  Jock  told  him  they 
had  flown  with  full  throttle  for  thirty  minutes  and  Ginsfarb 
says:  'Will  you  ruin  me  yet?'  " 


III 

THE  REST  of  this  is  composite.  It  is  what  we  (groundlings, 
dwellers  in  and  backbone  of  a  small  town  interchangeable 
with  and  duplicate  of  ten  thousand  little  dead  clottings  of 


198  The  Village 

human  life  about  the  land)  saw,  refined  and  clarified  by  the 
expert,  the  man  who  had  himself  seen  his  own  lonely  and 
scudding  shadow  upon  the  face  of  the  puny  and  remote 
earth. 

The  three  strangers  arrived  at  the  field,  in  the  rented  car. 
When  they  got  out  of  the  car,  they  were  arguing  in  tense, 
dead  voices,  the  pilot  and  the  handsome  man  against  the  man 
who  limped.  Captain  Warren  said  they  were  arguing  about 
the  money. 

"I  want  to  see  it,"  Ginsfarb  said.  They  stood  close;  the 
handsome  man  took  something  from  his  pocket. 

"There.  There  it  is.  See?"  he  said. 

"Let  me  count  it  myself,"  Ginsfarb  said. 

"Come  on,  come  on,"  the  pilot  hissed,  in  his  dead,  tense 
voice.  "We  tell  you  we  got  the  money!  Do  you  want  an 
inspector  to  walk  in  and  take  the  money  and  the  ship  too  and 
put  us  in  jail?  Look  at  all  these  people  waiting." 

"You  fooled  me  before,"  Ginsfarb  said. 

"All  right,"  the  pilot  said.  "Give  it  to  him.  Give  him  his 
ship  too.  And  he  can  pay  for  the  car  when  he  gets  back  to 
town.  We  can  get  a  ride  in;  there's  a  train  out  of  here  in 
fifteen  minutes." 

"You  fooled  me  once  before,"  Ginsfarb  said. 

"But  we're  not  fooling  you  now.  Come  on.  Look  at  all 
these  people." 

They  moved  toward  the  airplane,  Ginsfarb  limping  ter- 
rifically, his  back  stubborn,  his  face  tragic,  outraged,  cold. 
There  was  a  good  crowd:  country  people  in  overalls;  the 
men  a  general  dark  clump  against  which  the  bright  dresses 
of  the  women,  the  young  girls,  showed.  The  small  boys  and 
several  men  were  already  surrounding  the  airplane.  We 
watched  the  limping  man  begin  to  take  objects  from  the  body 
of  it:  a  parachute,  a  rope  ladder.  The  handsome  man  went 
to  the  propeller.  The  pilot  got  into  the  back  seat. 


Death  Drag  199 

"Off!"  he  said,  sudden  and  sharp.  "Stand  back,  folks. 
We're  going  to  wring  the  old  bird's  neck." 

They  tried  three  times  to  crank  the  engine. 

"I  got  a  mule,  Mister,"  a  countryman  said.  "How  much'll 
you  pay  for  a  tow?" 

The  three  strangers  did  not  laugh.  The  limping  man  was 
busy  attaching  the  rope  ladder  to  one  wing. 

"You  can't  tell  me,"  a  countrywoman  said.  "Even  he  ain't 
that  big  a  fool." 

The  engine  started  then.  It  seemed  to  lift  bodily  from  the 
ground  a  small  boy  who  stood  behind  it  and  blow  him  aside 
like  a  leaf.  We  watched  it  turn  and  trundle  down  the  field. 

"You  can't  tell  me  that  thing's  flying,"  the  countrywoman 
said.  "I  reckon  the  Lord  give  me  eyes.  I  can  see  it  ain't  flying. 
You  folks  have  been  fooled." 

"Wait,"  another  voice  said.  "He's  got  to  turn  into  the 
wind." 

"Ain't  there  as  much  wind  right  there  or  right  here  as 
there  is  down  yonder?"  the  woman  said.  But  it  did  fly.  It 
turned  back  toward  us;  the  noise  became  deafening.  When 
it  came  broadside  on  to  us,  it  did  not  seem  to  be  going  f  A, 
yet  we  could  see  daylight  beneath  the  wheels  and  the  earth. 
But  it  was  not  going  fast;  it  appeared  rather  to  hang  gently 
just  above  the  earth  until  we  saw  that,  beyond  and  beneath 
it,  trees  and  earth  in  panorama  were  fleeing  backward  at 
dizzy  speed,  and  then  it  tilted  and  shot  skyward  with  a  noise 
like  a  circular  saw  going  into  a  white  oak  log.  "There  ain't 
nobody  in  it!"  the  countrywoman  said.  "You  can't  tell  me!" 

The  third  man,  the  handsome  one  in  the  cap,  had  got  into 
the  rented  car.  We  all  knew  it:  a  battered  thing  which  the 
owner  would  rent  to  any  one  who  would  make  a  deposit  of 
ten  dollars.  He  drove  to  the  end  of  the  field,  faced  down  the 
runwav,  and  stopped.  We  looked  back  at  the  airplane.  It 


2oo  The  Village 

was  high,  coming  back  toward  us;  some  one  cried  suddenly, 
his  voice  puny  and  thin:  "There!  Out  on  the  wing!  See?'' 

"It  ain't!"  the  countrywoman  said.  "I  don't  believe  it!" 

"You  saw  them  get  in  it,"  some  one  said. 

"I  don't  believe  it!"  the  woman  said. 

Then  we  sighed;  we  said,  "Aaahhhhhhh";  beneath  the 
wing  of  the  airplane  there  was  a  falling  dot.  We  knew  it  was 
a  man.  Some  way  we  knew  that  that  lonely,  puny,  falling 
shape  was  that  of  a  living  man  like  ourselves.  It  fell.  It 
seemed  to  fall  for  years,  yet  when  it  checked  suddenly  up 
without  visible  rope  or  cord,  it  was  less  far  from  the  airplane 
than  was  the  end  of  the  delicate  pen-slash  of  the  profiled 
wing. 

"It  ain't  a  man!"  the  woman  shrieked. 

"You  know  better,"  the  man  said.  "You  saw  him  get  in  it." 

"I  don't  care!"  the  woman  cried.  "It  ain't  a  man!  You 
take  me  right  home  this  minute!" 

The  rest  is  hard  to  tell.  Not  because  we  saw  so  little;  we 
saw  everything  that  happened,  but  because  we  had  so  little 
in  experience  to  postulate  it  with.  We  saw  that  battered 
rented  car  moving  down  the  field,  going  faster,  jouncing  in 
the  broken  January  mud,  then  the  sound  of  the  airplane 
blotted  it,  reduced  it  to  immobility;  we  saw  the  dangling 
ladder  and  the  shark-faced  man  swinging  on  it  beneath  the 
death-colored  airplane.  The  end  of  the  ladder  raked  right 
across  the  top  of  the  car,  from  end  to  end,  with  the  limping 
man  on  the  ladder  and  the  capped  head  of  the  handsome 
man  leaning  out  of  the  car.  And  the  end  of  the  field  was 
coming  nearer,  and  the  airplane  was  travelling  faster  than  the 
car,  passing  it.  And  nothing  happened.  "Listen!"  some  one 
cried.  "They  are  talking  to  one  another!" 

Captain  Warren  told  us  what  they  were  talking  about,  the 
two  Jews  yelling  back  and  forth  at  one  another:  the  shark- 


Death  Drag  201 

faced  man  on  the  dangling  ladder  that  looked  like  a  cobweb, 
the  other  one  in  the  car;  the  fence,  the  end  of  the  field,  com- 
ing closer. 

"Come  on!"  the  man  in  the  car  shouted. 

"What  did  they  pay?" 

"Jump!" 

"If  they  didn't  pay  that  hundred,  I  won't  do  it." 

Then  the  airplane  zoomed,  roaring,  the  dangling  figure  on 
the  gossamer  ladder  swinging  beneath  it.  It  circled  the  field 
twice  while  the  man  got  the  car  into  position  again.  Again 
the  car  started  down  the  field;  again  the  airplane  came  down 
with  its  wild;  circular-saw  drone  which  died  into  a  splutter 
as  the  ladder  and  the  clinging  man  swung  up  to  the  car  from 
behind;  again  we  heard  the  two  puny  voices  shrieking  at  one 
another  with  a  quality  at  once  ludicrous  and  horrible:  the 
one  coming  out  of  the  very  air  itself,  shrieking  about  some- 
thing sweated  out  of  the  earth  and  without  value  anywhere 
else: 

"How  much  did  you  say?" 

"Jump!" 

"What?  How  much  did  they  pay?" 

"Nothing!  Jump!" 

"Nothing?"  the  man  on  the  ladder  wailed  in  a  fading,  out- 
raged shriek.  "Nothing?"  Again  the  airplane  was  dragging 
the  ladder  irrevocably  past  the  car,  approaching  the  end  of 
the  field,  the  fences,  the  long  barn  with  its  rotting  roof.  Sud- 
denly we  saw  Captain  Warren  beside  us;  he  was  using  words 
we  had  never  heard  him  use. 

"He's  got  the  stick  between  his  knees,"  Captain  Warren 
said.  "Exalted  suzerain  of  mankind;  saccharine  and  sacred 
symbol  of  eternal  rest."  We  had  forgot  about  the  pilot,  the 
man  still  in  the  airplane.  We  saw  the  airplane,  tilted  upward, 
the  pilot  standing  upright  in  the  back  seat,  leaning  over  the 
side  and  shaking  both  hands  at  the  man  on  the  ladder.  We 


202  The  Village 

could  hear  him  yelling  now  as  again  the  man  on  the  ladder 
was  dragged  over  the  car  and  past  it,  shrieking: 

"I  won't  do  it!  I  won't  do  it!"  He  was  still  shrieking  when 
the  airplane  zoomed;  we  saw  him,  a  diminishing  and  shriek- 
ing spot  against  the  sky  above  the  long  roof  of  the  barn:  "I 
won't  do  it!  I  won't  do  it!"  Before,  when  the  speck  left  the 
airplane,  falling,  to  be  snubbed  up  by  the  ladder,  we  knew 
that  it  was  a  living  man;  again,  when  the  speck  left  the  lad- 
der, falling,  we  knew  that  it  was  a  living  man,  and  we  knew 
that  there  was  no  ladder  to  snub  him  up  now.  We  saw  hin? 
falling  against  the  cold,  empty  January  sky  until  the  sil- 
houette of  the  barn  absorbed  him;  even  from  here,  his  atti- 
tude froglike,  outraged,  implacable.  From  somewhere  in  the 
crowd  a  woman  screamed,  though  the  sound  was  blotted  out 
by  the  sound  of  the  airplane.  It  reared  skyward  with  its  wild, 
tearing  noise,  the  empty  ladder  swept  backward  beneath  it. 
The  sound  of  the  engine  was  like  a  groan,  a  groan  of  relief 
and  despair. 

IV 

CAPTAIN  WARREN  told  us  in  the  barber  shop  on  that  Satur- 
day night. 

"Did  he  really  jump  off,  onto  that  barn?"  we  asked  him. 

"Yes.  He  jumped.  He  wasn't  thinking  about  being  killed, 
or  even  hurt.  That's  why  he  wasn't  hurt.  He  was  too  mad, 
too  in  a  hurry  to  receive  justice.  He  couldn't  wait  to  fly  back 
down.  Providence  knew  that  he  was  too  busy  and  that  he 
deserved  justice,  so  Providence  put  that  barn  there  with  the 
rotting  roof.  He  wasn't  even  thinking  about  hitting  the  barn; 
if  he'd  tried  to,  let  go  of  his  belief  in  a  cosmic  balance  to 
bother  about  landing,  he  would  have  missed  the  barn  and 
killed  himselfe" 

It  didr\  hurt  him  at  all,  save  for  a  long  scratch  on  his  face 


Death  Drag  205 

that  bled  a  lot,  and  his  overcoat  was  torn  completely  down 
the  back,  as  though  the  tear  down  the  back  of  the  helmet  had 
run  on  down  the  overcoat.  He  came  out  of  the  barn  running 
before  we  got  to  it.  He  hobbled  right  among  us,  with  his 
bloody  face,  his  arms  waving,  his  coat  dangling  from  either 
shoulder. 

"Where  is  that  secretary?"  he  said. 

"What  secretary?" 

"That  American  Legion  secretary."  He  went  on,  limping 
fast,  toward  where  a  crowd  stood  about  three  women  who 
had  fainted.  "You  said  you  would  pay  a  hundred  dollars  to 
see  me  swap  to  that  car.  We  pay  rent  on  the  car  and  all,  and 
now  you  would — " 

"You  got  sixty  dollars,"  some  one  said. 

The  man  looked  at  him.  "Sixty?  I  said  one  hundred.  Then 
you  would  let  me  believe  it  was  one  hundred  and  it  was 
just  sixty;  you  would  see  me  risk  my  life  for  sixty  dollars. 
.  .  ."  The  airplane  was  down;  none  of  us  were  aware  of  it 
until  the  pilot  sprang  suddenly  upon  the  man  who  limped. 
He  jerked  the  man  around  and  knocked  him  down  before 
we  could  grasp  the  pilot.  We  held  the  pilot,  struggling, 
crying,  the  tears  streaking  his  dirty,  unshaven  face.  Captain 
Warren  was  suddenly  there,  holding  the  pilot. 

"Stop  it!  "he  said.  "Stop  it!" 

The  pilot  ceased.  He  stared  at  Captain  Warren,  then  he 
slumped  and  sat  on  the  ground  in  his  thin,  dirty  garment, 
with  his  unshaven  face,  dirty,  gaunt,  with  his  sick  eyes, 
crying.  "Go  away,"  Captain  Warren  said.  "Let  him  alone 
for  a  minute." 

We  went  away,  back  to  the  other  man,  the  one  who 
limped.  They  had  lifted  him  and  he  drew  the  two  halves 
of  his  overcoat  forward  and  looked  at  them.  Then  he  said: 
"I  want  some  chewing  gum." 

Some  one  gave  him  a  stick.  Another  offered  him  a  ciga- 


204  The  Village 

rette.  "Thanks,"  he  said.  "I  don't  burn  up  no  money.  I  ain't 
got  enough  of  it  yet."  He  put  the  gum  into  his  mouth.  "You 
would  take  advantage  of  me.  If  you  thought  I  would  risk 
my  life  for  sixty  dollars,  you  fool  yourself." 

"Give  him  the  rest  of  it,"  some  one  said.  "Here's  my 
share." 

The  limping  man  did  not  look  around.  "Make  it  up  to 
a  hundred,  and  I  will  swap  to  the  car  like  on  the  handbill," 
he  said. 

Somewhere  a  woman  screamed  behind  him.  She  began 
to  laugh  and  to  cry  at  the  same  time.  "Don't  .  .  ."  she  said, 
laughing  and  crying  at  the  same  time.  "Don't  let  .  .  ."  until 
they  led  her  away.  Still  the  limping  man  had  not  moved. 
He  wiped  his  face  on  his  cuff  and  he  was  looking  at  his 
bloody  sleeve  when  Captain  Warren  came  up. 

"How  much  is  he  short?"  \Varren  said.  They  told  Warren. 
He  took  out  some  money  and  gave  it  to  the  limping  man. 

"You  want  I  should  swap  to  the  car?"  he  said. 

"No,"  Warren  said.  "You  get  that  crate  out  of  here  quick 
as  you  can." 

"Well,  that's  your  business,"  the  limping  man  said.  "I  got 
witnesses  I  offered  to  swap."  He  moved;  we  made  way  and 
watched  him,  in  his  severed  and  dangling  overcoat,  approach 
the  airplane.  It  was  on  the  runway,  the  engine  running.  The 
third  man  was  already  in  the  front  seat.  We  watched  the 
limping  man  crawl  terrifically  in  beside  him.  They  sat  there, 
looking  forward. 

The  pilot  began  to  get  up.  Warren  was  standing  beside 
him.  "Ground  it,"  Warren  said.  "You  are  coming  home 
with  me." 

"I  guess  we'd  better  get  on,"  the  pilot  said.  He  did  not 
look  at  Warren.  Then  he  put  out  his  hand.  "Well  .  .  ."  he 
said. 

Warren  did  not  take  his  hand.  "You  come  on  home  with 
me,"  he  said. 


Death  Drag  205 

"Who'd  take  care  of  that  bastard?" 

"Who  wants  to?" 

"I'll  get  him  right,  some  day.  Where  I  can  beat  hell  out 
of  him." 

"Jock,"  Warren  said. 

"No,"  the  other  said. 

"Have  you  got  an  overcoat?" 

"Sure  I  have." 

"You're  a  liar."  Warren  began  to  pull  off  his  overcoat. 

"No,"  the  other  said;  "I  don't  need  it."  He  went  on  toward 
the  machine.  "See  you  some  time,"  he  said  over  his  shoulder. 
We  watched  him  get  in,  heard  an  airplane  come  to  life,  come 
alive.  It  passed  us,  already  off  the  ground.  The  pilot  jerked 
his  hand  once,  stiffly;  the  two  heads  in  the  front  seat  did  not 
turn  nor  move.  Then  it  was  gone,  the  sound  was  gone. 

Warren  turned.  "What  about  that  car  they  rented?"  he 
said. 

"He  give  me  a  quarter  to  take  it  back  to  town,"  a  boy  said. 

"Can  you  drive  it?" 

"Yes,  sir.  I  drove  it  out  here.  I  showed  him  where  to 


rent  it." 


"The  one  that  jumped?" 

"Yes,  sir."  The  boy  looked  a  little  aside.  "Only  I'm  a  little 
scared  to  take  it  back.  I  don't  reckon  you  could  come  with 
me." 

"Why,  scared?"  Warren  said. 

"That  fellow  never  paid  nothing  down  on  it,  like  Mr. 
Harris  wanted.  He  told  Mr.  Harris  he  might  not  use  it,  but 
if  he  did  use  it  in  his  show,  he  would  pay  Mr.  Harris  twenty 
dollars  for  it  instead  of  ten  like  Mr.  Harris  wanted.  He  told 
me  to  take  it  back  and  tell  Mr.  Harris  he  never  used  the  car, 
And  I  don't  know  if  Mr.  Harris  will  like  it.  He  might  gel 
mad." 


Elly 


BORDERING  THE  SHEER  DROP  of  the  precipice,  the  wooden 
railing  looked  like  a  child's  toy.  It  followed  the  curving 
road  in  thread-like  embrace,  passing  the  car  in  a  flimsy  blur. 
Then  it  flicked  behind  and  away  like  a  taut  ribbon  cut  with 
scissors. 

Then  they  passed  the  sign,  the  first  sign,  Mills  City.  6  mi 
and  Elly  thought,  with  musing  and  irrevocable  astonishment, 
'Now  we  are  almost  there.  It  is  too  late  now';  looking  at 
Paul  beside  her,  his  hands  on  the  wheel,  his  face  in  profile 
as  he  watched  the  fleeing  road.  She  said,  *  Well.  What  can  I 
do  to  make  you  marry  me,  Paul?"  thinking  'There  was  a 
man  plowing  in  that  field,  watching  us  when  we  came  out 
of  those  woods  with  Paul  carrying  the  motor-robe,  and  got 
back  into  the  car,'  thinking  this  quietly,  with  a  certain  de- 
tachment and  inattention,  because  there  was  something  else 
about  to  obliterate  it.  'Something  dreadful  that  I  have  for- 
gotten about/  she  thought,  watching  the  swift  and  increasing 
signs  which  brought  Mills  City  nearer  and  nearer.  'Some- 
thing terrible  that  I  shall  remember  in  a  minute,'  saying 
aloud,  quietly:  "There's  nothing  else  I  can  do  now,  is  there?" 

Still  Paul  did  not  look  at  her.  "No,"  he  said.  "There's 
nothing  else  you  can  do." 

Then  she  remembered  what  it  was  she  had  forgotten.  She 
remembered  her  grandmother,  thinking  of  the  old  woman 

207 


2o8  The  Village 

with  her  dead  hearing  and  her  inescapable  cold  eyes  waiting 
at  Mills  City,  with  amazed  and  quiet  despair:  'How  could 
I  have  ever  forgot  about  her?  How  could  I  have?  How 
could  I?' 

She  was  eighteen.  She  lived  in  Jefferson,  two  hundred 
miles  away,  with  her  father  and  mother  and  grandmother, 
in  a  biggish  house.  It  had  a  deep  veranda  with  screening 
vines  and  no  lights.  In  this  shadow  she  half  lay  almost  nightly 
with  a  different  man — youths  and  young  men  of  the  town 
at  first,  but  later  with  almost  anyone,  any  transient  in  the 
small  town  whom  she  met  by  either  convention  or  by 
chance,  provided  his  appearance  was  decent.  She  would 
never  ride  in  their  cars  with  them  at  night,  and  presently 
they  all  believed  that  they  knew  why,  though  they  did  not 
always  give  up  hope  at  once — until  the  courthouse  clock 
struck  eleven.  Then  for  perhaps  five  minutes  longer  they 
(who  had  been  practically  speechless  for  an  hour  or  more) 
would  talk  in  urgent  whispers: 

"You  must  go  now." 

"No.  Not  now." 

"Yes.  Now." 

"Why?" 

"Because.  I'm  tired.  I  want  to  go  to  bed." 

"I  see.  So  far,  and  no  mother.  Is  that  it?" 

"Maybe."  In  the  shadow  now  she  would  be  alert,  cool, 
already  fled,  without  moving,  beyond  some  secret  reserve 
of  laughter.  And  he  would  leave,  and  she  would  enter  the 
dark  house  and  look  up  at  the  single  square  of  light  which 
fell  upon  the  upper  hallway,  and  change  completely.  Wearily 
now,  with  the  tread  almost  of  an  old  woman,  she  would 
mount  the  stairs  and  pass  the  open  door  of  the  lighted  room 
where  her  grandmother  sat,  erect,  an  open  book  in  her 
hands,  facing  the  hall.  Usually  she  did  not  look  into  the 
room  when  she  passed.  But  now  *nd  then  she  did.  Then 


Elly  209 

for  an  instant  they  would  look  full  at  one  another:  the  old 
woman  cold,  piercing;  the  girl  weary,  spent,  her  face,  her 
dark  dilated  eyes,  filled  with  impotent  hatred.  Then  she 
would  go  on  and  enter  her  own  room  and  lean  for  a  time 
against  the  door,  hearing  the  grandmother's  light  click  off 
presently,  sometimes  crying  silently  and  hopelessly,  whis- 
pering, "The  old  bitch.  The  old  bitch."  Then  this  would 
pass.  She  would  undress  and  look  at  her  face  in  the  mirror, 
examining  her  mouth  now  pale  of  paint  and  heavy,  flattened 
(so  she  would  believe)  and  weary  and  dulled  with  kissing, 
thinking  'My  God.  Why  do  I  do  it?  What  is  the  matter 
with  me?'  thinking  of  how  tomorrow  she  must  face  the  old 
woman  again  with  the  mark  of  last  night  upon  her  mouth 
like  bruises,  with  a  feeling  of  the  pointlessness  and  emptiness 
of  life  more  profound  than  the  rage  or  the  sense  of  perse- 
cution. 

Then  one  afternoon  at  the  home  of  a  girl  friend  she  met 
Paul  de  Montigny.  After  he  departed  the  two  girls  were 
alone.  Now  they  looked  at  one  another  quietly,  like  two 
swordsmen,  with  veiled  eyes. 

"So  you  like  him,  do  you?"  the  friend  said.  "You've  got 
queer  taste,  haven't  you?" 

"Like  who?"  Elly  said.  "I  don't  know  who  you  are  talk- 
ing about." 

"Oh  yeah?"  the  friend  said.  "You  didn't  notice  his  hair 
then.  Like  a  knitted  cap.  And  his  lips.  Blubber,  almost."  Elly 
looked  at  her. 

"What  are  you  talking  about?"  Elly  said. 

"Nothing,"  the  other  said.  She  glanced  toward  the  hall, 
then  she  took  a  cigarette  from  the  front  of  her  dress  and  lit 
it.  "I  don't  know  anything  about  it.  I  just  heard  it,  too.  How 
his  uncle  killed  a  man  once  that  accused  him  of  having  nigger 
blood." 

"You're  lying,"  Elly  said. 


210  The  Village 

The  other  expelled  smoke.  "All  right.  Ask  your  grand- 
mother about  his  family.  Didn't  she  used  to  live  in  Louisiana 
too?" 

"What  about  you?"  Elly  said.  "You  invited  him  into  your 
house." 

"I  wasn't  hid  in  the  cloak  closet,  kissing  him,  though." 

"Oh,  yeah?"  Elly  said.  "Maybe  you  couldn't." 

"Not  till  you  got  your  face  out  of  the  way,  anyhow,"  the 
other  said. 

That  night  she  and  Paul  sat  on  the  screened  and  shadowed 
veranda.  But  at  eleven  o'clock  it  was  she  who  was  urgent 
and  tense:  "No!  No!  Please.  Please." 

"Oh,  come  on.  What  are  you  afraid  of?" 

"Yes.  I'm  afraid.  Go,  please.  Please." 

"Tomorrow,  then?" 

"No.  Not  tomorrow  or  any  time." 

"Yes.  Tomorrow." 

This  time  she  did  not  look  in  when  she  passed  her  grand- 
mother's door.  Neither  did  she  lean  against  her  own  door 
to  cry.  But  she  was  panting,  saying  aloud  against  the  door 
in  thin  exultation:  "A  nigger.  A  nigger.  I  wonder  what  she 
would  say  if  she  knew  about  that." 

The  next  afternoon  Paul  walked  up  onto  the  veranda. 
Elly  was  sitting  in  the  swing,  her  grandmother  in  a  chair 
nearby.  She  rose  and  met  Paul  at  the  steps.  "Why  did  you 
come  here?"  she  said.  "Why  did  you?"  Then  she  turned 
and  seemed  to  watch  herself  walking  before  him  toward  the 
thin  old  woman  sitting  bolt  upright,  sitting  bolt  and  impla- 
cably chaste  in  that  secret  place,  peopled  with  ghosts,  very 
likely  to  Elly  at  any  given  moment  uncountable  and  un- 
namable,  who  might  well  have  owned  one  single  mouth. 
She  leaned  down,  screaming:  "This  is  Mr.  de  Montigny, 
Grandmother! " 

"What?" 


Elly  2 1 1 

"Mr.  de  Montigny!  From  Louisiana!"  she  screamed,  and 
saw  the  grandmother,  without  moving  below  the  hips,  start 
violently  backward  as  a  snake  does  to  strike.  That  was  in 
the  afternoon.  That  night  Elly  quitted  the  veranda  for  the 
first  time.  She  and  Paul  were  in  a  close  clump  of  shrubbery 
on  the  lawn;  in  the  wild  close  dark  for  that  instant  Elly 
was  lost,  her  blood  aloud  with  desperation  and  exultation 
and  vindication  too,  talking  inside  her  at  the  very  brink  of 
surrender  loud  as  a  voice:  "I  wish  she  were  here  to  see!  I 
wish  she  were  here  to  see!"  when  something — there  had 
been  no  sound — shouted  at  her  and  she  made  a  mad  awkward 
movement  of  recovery.  The  grandmother  stood  just  behind 
and  above  them.  When  she  had  arrived,  how  long  she  had 
been  there,  they  did  not  know.  But  there  she  stood,  saying 
nothing,  in  the  long  anti-climax  while  Paul  departed  without 
haste  and  Elly  stood,  thinking  stupidly,  'I  am  caught  in  sin 
without  even  having  time  to  sin.'  Then  she  was  in  her  room, 
leaning  against  the  door,  trying  to  still  her  breathing,  listen- 
ing for  the  grandmother  to  mount  the  stairs  and  go  to  her 
father's  room.  But  the  old  woman's  footsteps  ceased  at  her 
own  door.  Elly  went  to  her  bed  and  lay  upon  it  without 
undressing,  still  panting,  the  blood  still  aloud.  'So/  she 
thought,  'it  will  be  tomorrow.  She  will  tell  him  in  the  morn- 
ing.' Then  she  began  to  writhe,  to  toss  lightly  from  side  to 
side.  'I  didn't  even  have  a  chance  to  sin,'  she  thought,  with 
panting  and  amazed  regret.  'She  thinks  I  did  and  she  will  tell 
that  I  did,  yet  I  am  still  virgin.  She  drove  me  to  it,  then  pre- 
vented me  at  the  last  moment.'  Then  she  was  lying  with  the 
sun  in  her  eyes  still  fully  dressed.  'So  it  will  be  this  morning, 
today/  she  thought  dully.  'My  God.  How  could  I.  How 
could  I.  I  don't  want  any  man,  anything.' 

She  was  waiting  in  the  dining-room  when  her  father  came 
down  to  breakfast.  He  said  nothing,  apparently  knew  noth- 
ing. 'Maybe  it's  mother  she  told/  Elly  thought.  But  after  a 


zi2  The  Village 

while  her  mother,  too,  appeared  and  departed  for  town  also, 
saying  nothing.  'So  it  has  not  been  yet,'  she  thought,  mount- 
ing the  stairs.  Her  grandmother's  door  was  closed.  "When 
she  opened  it,  the  old  woman  was  sitting  up  in  bed,  reading 
a  newspaper;  she  looked  up,  cold,  still,  implacable,  while 
Elly  screamed  at  her  in  the  empty  house:  "What  else  can  I 
do,  in  this  little  dead,  hopeless  town?  I'll  work.  I  don't  want 
to  be  idle.  Just  find  me  a  job — anything,  anywhere,  so  that 
it's  so  far  away  that  I'll  never  have  to  hear  the  word  Jeffer- 
son again."  She  was  named  for  the  grandmother — Ailanthia, 
though  the  old  woman  had  not  heard  her  own  name  or  her 
granddaughter's  or  anyone  else's  in  almost  fifteen  years  save 
when  it  was  screamed  at  her  as  Elly  now  screamed:  "It 
hadn't  even  happened  last  night!  Won't  you  believe  me? 
That's  it.  It  hadn't  even  happened!  At  least,  I  would  have 
had  something,  something  .  .  ."  with  the  other  watching  her 
with  that  cold,  fixed,  immobile,  inescapable  gaze  of  the  very 
deaf.  "All  right!"  Elly  cried.  "I'll  get  married  then!  Will  you 
be  satisfied  then?" 

That  afternoon  she  met  Paul  downtown.  "Was  everything 
all  right  last  night?"  he  said.  "Why,  what  is  it?  Did  they — " 

"No.  Paul,  marry  me."  They  were  in  the  rear  of  the 
drugstore,  partially  concealed  by  the  prescription  counter, 
though  anyone  might  appear  behind  it  at  any  moment.  She 
leaned  against  him,  her  face  wan,  tense,  her  painted  mouth 
like  a  savage  scar  upon  it.  "Marry  me.  Or  it  will  be  too  late, 
Paul." 

"I  don't  marry  them,"  Paul  said.  "Here.  Pull  yourself 
together." 

She  leaned  against  him,  rife  with  promise.  Her  voice  was 
wan  and  urgent.  "We  almost  did  last  night.  If  you'll  marry 
me,  I  will" 

"You  will,  eh?  Before  or  after?" 

"Yes.  Now.  Any  time." 


Elly  2 1 3 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said. 

"Not  even  if  I  will  now?" 

"Come  on,  now.  Pull  yourself  together." 

"Oh,  I  can  hear  you.  But  I  don't  believe  you.  And  I  am 
afraid  to  try  and  find  out."  She  began  to  cry.  He  spoke  in 
thin  and  mounting  annoyance: 

"Stop  it,  I  tell  you!" 

"Yes.  All  right.  I've  stopped.  You  won't,  then?  I  tell  you, 
it  will  be  too  late." 

"Hell,  no.  I  don't  marry  them,  I  tell  you." 

"All  right.  Then  it's  good-bye.  Forever." 

"That's  O.K.  by  me,  too.  If  that's  how  you  feel.  If  I  ever 
see  you  again,  you  know  what  it  will  mean.  But  no  marry- 
ing. And  I'll  see  next  time  that  we  don't  have  any  audience," 

"There  won't  be  any  next  time,"  Elly  said. 

The  next  day  he  was  gone.  A  week  later,  her  engagement 
was  in  the  Memphis  papers.  It  was  to  a  young  man  whom 
she  had  known  from  childhood.  He  was  assistant  cashier  in 
the  bank,  who  they  said  would  be  president  of  it  some  day. 
He  was  a  grave,  sober  young  man  of  impeccable  character 
and  habits,  who  had  been  calling  on  her  for  about  a  year 
with  a  kind  of  placid  formality.  He  took  supper  with  the 
family  each  Sunday  night,  and  when  infrequent  road  shows 
came  to  town  he  always  bought  tickets  for  himself  and  Elly 
and  her  mother.  When  he  called  on  her,  even  after  the 
engagement  was  announced,  they  did  not  sit  in  the  dark 
swing.  Perhaps  he  did  not  know  that  anyone  had  ever  sat 
in  it  in  the  darkness.  No  one  sat  in  it  at  all  now,  and  Elly 
passed  the  monotonous  round  of  her  days  in  a  kind  of  dull 
peace.  Sometimes  at  night  she  cried  a  little,  though  not  often; 
now  and  then  she  examined  her  mouth  in  the  glass  and  cried 
quietly,  with  quiet  despair  and  resignation.  'Anyway  I  can 
live  quietly  now,'  she  thought.  'At  least  I  can  live  out  the 
rest  of  my  dead  life  as  quietly  as  if  I  were  already  dead.' 

Then  one  dav.  without  warning,  as  though  she,  too,  had 


214  The  Village 

accepted  the  armistice  and  the  capitulation,  the  grandmother 
departed  to  visit  her  son  in  Mills  City.  Her  going  seemed  to 
leave  the  house  bigger  and  emptier  than  it  had  ever  been, 
as  if  the  grandmother  had  been  the  only  other  actually  living 
person  in  it.  There  were  sewing  women  in  the  house  daily 
now,  making  the  trousseau,  yet  Elly  seemed  to  herself  to 
move  quietly  and  aimlessly,  in  a  hiatus  without  thought  or 
sense,  from  empty  room  to  empty  room  giving  upon  an 
identical  prospect  too  familiar  and  too  peaceful  to  be  even 
saddening  any  longer.  For  long  hours  now  she  would  stand 
at  her  mother's  bedroom  window,  watching  the  slow  and 
infinitesimal  clematis  tendrils  as  they  crept  and  overflowed 
up  the  screen  and  onto  the  veranda  roof  with  the  augment- 
ing summer.  Two  months  passed  so;  she  would  be  married 
in  three  weeks.  Then  one  day  her  mother  said,  "Your  grand- 
mother wants  to  come  home  Sunday.  Why  don't  you  and 
Philip  drive  down  to  Mills  City  and  spend  Saturday  night 
with  your  uncle,  and  bring  her  back  Sunday?"  Five  minutes 
later,  at  the  mirror,  Elly  looked  at  her  reflection  as  you  look 
at  someone  who  has  just  escaped  a  fearful  danger.  'God,' 
she  thought,  'what  was  I  about  to  do?  What  'was  I  about 
to  do? 

Within  the  hour  she  had  got  Paul  on  the  telephone,  leav- 
ing home  to  do  it,  taking  what  precautions  for  secrecy  her 
haste  would  afford  her. 

"Saturday  morning?"  he  said. 

"Yes.  I'll  tell  mother  Phi  ...  he  wants  to  leave  early,  at 
daylight.  They  won't  recognize  you  or  the  car.  I'll  be  ready 
and  we  can  get  away  quick." 

"Yes."  She  could  hear  the  wire,  distance;  she  had  a  feeling 
of  exultation,  escape.  "But  you  know  what  it  means.  If  I 
come  back.  What  I  told  you." 

"I'm  not  afraid.  I  still  don't  believe  you,  but  I  am  not 
afraid  to  try  it  now." 


Elly  215 

Again  she  could  hear  the  wire.  "I'm  not  going  to  marry 
you,  Elly." 

"All  right,  darling.  I  tell  you  I'm  not  afraid  to  try  it  any 
more.  Exactly  at  daylight.  I'll  be  waiting." 

She  went  to  the  bank.  After  a  time  Philip  was  free  and 
came  to  her  where  she  waited,  her  face  tense  and  wan 
beneath  the  paint,  her  eyes  bright  and  hard.  "There  is  some- 
thing you  must  do  for  me.  It's  hard  to  ask,  and  I  guess  it  will 
be  hard  to  do." 

"Of  course  I'll  do  it.  What  is  it?" 

"Grandmother  is  coming  home  Sunday.  Mother  wants 
you  and  me  to  drive  down  Saturday  and  bring  her  back." 

"All  right.  I  can  get  away  Saturday." 

"Yes.  You  see,  I  told  you  it  would  be  hard.  I  don't  want 
you  to  go." 

"Don't  want  me  to  .  .  ."  He  looked  at  her  bright,  almost 
haggard  face.  "You  want  to  go  alone?"  She  didn't  answer, 
watching  him.  Suddenly  she  came  and  leaned  against  him 
with  a  movement  practiced,  automatic.  She  took  one  of  his 
arms  and  drew  it  around  her.  "Oh,"  he  said.  "I  see.  You 
want  to  go  with  someone  else." 

"Yes.  I  can't  explain  now.  But  I  will  later.  But  mother  will 
never  understand.  She  won't  let  me  go  unless  she  thinks  it 
is  you." 

"I  see."  His  arm  was  without  life;  she  held  it  about  her. 
"It's  another  man  you  want  to  go  with." 

She  laughed,  not  loud,  not  long.  "Don't  be  foolish.  Yes. 
There's  another  man  in  the  party.  People  you  don't  know 
and  that  I  don't  expect  to  see  again  before  I  am  married. 
But  mother  won't  understand.  That's  why  I  must  ask  you. 
Will  you  do  it?" 

"Yes.  It's  all  right.  If  we  can't  trust  one  another,  we 
haven't  got  any  business  marrying." 

"Yes.  We  must  trust  one  another."  She  released  his  arm. 


216  The  Village 

She  looked  at  him  intently,  speculatively,  with  a  cold  and 
curious  contempt.  "And  you'll  let  mother  believe  .  .  ." 

"You  can  trust  me.  You  know  that." 

"Yes.  I'm  sure  I  can."  Suddenly  she  held  out  her  hand. 
"Good-bye." 

"Good-bye?" 

She  leaned  against  him  again.  She  kissed  him.  "Careful," 
he  said.  "Somebody  might .  .  ." 

"Yes.  Until  later,  then.  Until  I  explain."  She  moved  back, 
looked  at  him  absently,  speculatively.  "This  is  the  last 
trouble  I'll  ever  give  you,  I  expect.  Maybe  this  will  be 
worth  that  to  you.  Good-bye." 

That  was  Thursday  afternoon.  On  Saturday  morning,  at 
dawn,  when  Paul  stopped  his  car  before  the  dark  house,  she 
seemed  to  materialize  at  once,  already  running  across  the 
lawn.  She  sprang  into  the  car  before  he  could  descend  and 
open  the  door,  swirling  down  into  the  seat,  leaning  forward 
and  taut  with  urgency  and  flight  like  an  animal.  "Hurry!" 
she  said.  "Hurry!  Hurry!  Hurry!" 

But  he  held  the  car  a  moment  longer.  "Remember.  I  told 
you  what  it  meant  if  I  came  back.  O.K.?" 

"I  heard  you.  I  tell  you  I'm  not  afraid  to  risk  it  now. 
Hurry!  Hurry!" 

And  then,  ten  hours  later,  with  the  Mills  City  signs  in- 
creasing with  irrevocable  diminishment,  she  said,  "So  you 
won't  marry  me?  You  won't?" 

"I  told  you  that  all  the  time." 

"Yes.  But  I  didn't  believe  you.  I  didn't  believe  you.  I 
thought  that  when  I — after —  And  now  there  is  nothing  else 
I  can  do,  is  there?" 

"No,"  he  said. 

"No,"  she  repeated.  Then  she  began  to  laugh,  her  voice 
beginning  to  rise. 

"Elly!"  he  said.  "Stop  it,  now!" 


Elly  2 1 7 

"All  right,"  she  said.  "I  just  happened  to  think  about  my 
grandmother.  I  had  forgotten  her." 

Pausing  at  the  turn  of  the  stair,  Elly  could  hear  Paul  and 
her  uncle  and  aunt  talking  in  the  living-room  below.  She 
stood  quite  still,  in  an  attitude  almost  pensive,  nun-like, 
virginal,  as  though  posing,  as  though  she  had  escaped  for  the 
moment  into  a  place  where  she  had  forgotten  where  she  came 
from  and  where  she  intended  to  go.  Then  a  clock  in  the  hall 
struck  eleven,  and  she  moved.  She  went  on  up  the  stairs 
quietly  and  went  to  the  door  of  her  cousin's  room,  which 
she  was  to  occupy  for  the  night,  and  entered.  The  grand- 
mother sat  in  a  low  chair  beside  the  dressing  table  littered 
with  the  frivolous  impedimenta  of  a  young  girl  .  .  .  bottles, 
powder  puffs,  photographs,  a  row  of  dance  programs  stuck 
into  the  mirror  frame.  Elly  paused.  They  looked  at  one 
another  for  a  full  moment  before  the  old  woman  spoke: 
"Not  contented  with  deceiving  your  parents  and  your 
friends,  you  must  bring  a  Negro  into  my  son's  house  as  a 
guest." 

"Grandmother!"  Elly  said. 

"Having  me  sit  down  to  table  with  a  negro  man." 

"Grandmother!"  Elly  cried  in  that  thin  whisper,  her  face 
haggard  and  grimaced.  She  listened.  Feet,  voices  were  com- 
ing up  the  stairs,  her  aunt's  voice  and  Paul's.  "Hush!"  Elly 
cried.  "Hush!" 

"What?  What  did  you  say?" 

Elly  ran  to  the  chair  and  stooped  and  laid  her  fingers  on 
the  old  woman's  thin  and  bloodless  lips  and,  one  furiously 
importunate  and  the  other  furiously  implacable,  they  glared 
eye  to  eye  across  the  hand  while  the  feet  and  the  voices 
passed  the  door  and  ceased.  Elly  removed  her  hand.  From 
the  row  of  them  in  the  mirror  frame  she  jerked  one  of  the 
cards  with  its  silken  cord  and  tiny  futile  pencil.  She  wrote 


218  The  Village 

on  the  back  of  the  card.  He  is  not  a  negro  he  'went  to  Va. 
and  Harvard  and  everywhere. 

The  grandmother  read  the  card.  She  looked  up.  "I  can 
understand  Harvard,  but  not  Virginia.  Look  at  his  hair,  his 
fingernails,  if  you  need  proof.  I  don't.  I  know  the  name 
which  his  people  have  borne  for  four  generations."  She  re- 
turned the  card.  "That  man  must  not  sleep  under  this  roof." 

Elly  took  another  card  and  scrawled  swiftly.  He  shall.  He 
is  my  guest.  I  asked  him  here.  You  are  my  grandmother  you 
'would  not  have  me  treat  any  guest  that  way  not  even  a  dog. 

The  grandmother  read  it.  She  sat  with  the  card  in  her 
hand.  "He  shall  not  drive  me  to  Jefferson.  I  will  not  put  a  foot 
in  that  car,  and  you  shall  not.  We  will  go  home  on  the  train. 
No  blood  of  mine  shall  ride  with  him  again." 

Elly  snatched  another  card,  scrawled  furiously.  I  will. 
You  cannot  stop  me.  Try  and  stop  me. 

The  grandmother  read  it.  She  looked  at  Elly.  They  glared 
at  one  another.  "Then  I  will  have  to  tell  your  father." 

Already  Elly  was  writing  again.  She  thrust  the  card  at  her 
grandmother  almost  before  the  pencil  had  ceased;  then  in  the 
same  motion  she  tried  to  snatch  it  back.  But  the  grandmother 
had  already  grasped  the  corner  of  it  and  now  they  glared 
at  one  another,  the  card  joining  them  like  a  queer  umbilical 
cord.  "Let  go!"  Elly  cried.  "Let  it  go!" 

"Turn  loose,"  the  grandmother  said. 

"Wait,"  Elly  cried  thinly,  whispering,  tugging  at  the  card, 
twisting  it.  "I  made  a  mistake.  I — "  With  an  astonishing 
movement,  the  grandmother  bent  the  card  up  as  Elly  tried  to 
snatch  it  free. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  then  she  read  aloud:  Tell  him.  What  do 
you  know.  "So.  You  didn't  finish  it,  I  see.  What  do  I  know?" 

"Yes,"  Elly  said.  Then  she  began  to  speak  in  a  fierce  whis- 
per: "Tell  him!  Tell  him  we  went  into  a  clump  of  trees 
this  morning  and  stayed  there  two  hours.  Tell  him!"  The 


Elly  219 

grandmother  folded  the  card  carefully  and  quietly.  She  rose. 
"Grandmother!"  Elly  cried. 

"My  stick,"  the  grandmother  said.  "There;  against  the 
wall." 

When  she  was  gone  Elly  went  to  the  door  and  turned  the 
latch  and  recrossed  the  room.  She  moved  quietly,  getting  a 
robe  of  her  cousin's  from  the  closet,  and  undressed,  slowly, 
pausing  to  yawn  terrifically.  "God,  Pm  tired,"  she  said  aloud, 
yawning.  She  sat  down  at  the  dressing  table  and  began  to 
manicure  her  nails  with  the  cousin's  equipment.  There  was 
a  small  ivory  clock  on  the  dressing  table.  She  glanced  at  it 
now  and  then. 

Then  the  clock  below  stairs  struck  midnight.  She  sat  for 
a  moment  longer  with  her  head  above  her  glittering  nails, 
listening  to  the  final  stroke.  Then  she  looked  at  the  ivory 
one  beside  her.  I'd  hate  to  catch  a  train  by  you,'  she  thought. 
As  she  looked  at  it  her  face  began  again  to  fill  with  the  weary 
despair  of  the  afternoon.  She  went  to  the  door  and  passed 
into  the  dark  hall.  She  stood  in  the  darkness,  on  her  naked 
feet,  her  head  bent,  whimpering  quietly  to  herself  with 
bemused  and  childish  self-pity.  'Everything's  against  me,' 
she  thought.  'Everything.'  When  she  moved,  her  feet  made 
no  sound.  She  walked  with  her  arms  extended  into  the  dark- 
ness. She  seemed  to  feel  her  eyeballs  turning  completely  and 
blankly  back  into  her  skull  with  the  effort  to  see.  She  entered 
the  bathroom  and  locked  the  door.  Then  haste  and  urgency 
took  her  again.  She  ran  to  the  angle  of  the  wall  beyond 
which  the  guest  room  was  and  stooped,  cupping  her  voice 
into  the  angle  with  her  hands.  "Paul!"  she  whispered,  "Paul!" 
holding  her  breath  while  the  dying  and  urgent  whisper 
failed  against  the  cold  plaster.  She  stooped,  awkward  in  the 
borrowed  robe,  her  blind  eyes  unceasing  in  the  darkness  with 
darting  despair.  She  ran  to  the  lavatory ,  found  the  tap  in  the 
darkness  and  tempered  the  drip  of  water  to  a  minor  but 


220  The  Village 

penetrating  monotony.  Then  she  opened  the  door  and  stood 
just  within  it.  She  heard  the  clock  below  stairs  strike  the 
half  hour.  She  had  not  stirred,  shaking  slowly  as  with  cold, 
when  it  struck  one. 

She  heard  Paul  as  soon  as  he  left  the  guest  room.  She  heard 
him  come  down  the  hall;  she  heard  his  hand  seek  the  switch. 
When  it  clicked  on,  she  found  that  her  eyes  were  closed. 

"What's  this?"  Paul  said.  He  wore  a  suit  of  her  uncle's 
pajamas.  "What  the  devil — " 

"Lock  the  door,"  she  whispered. 

"Like  hell.  You  fool.  You  damned  fool." 

"Paul!"  She  held  him  as  though  she  expected  him  to  flee. 
She  shut  the  door  behind  him  and  fumbled  for  the  latch 
when  he  caught  her  wrist. 

"Let  me  out  of  here!"  he  whispered. 

She  leaned  against  him,  shaking  slowly,  holding  him.  Her 
eyes  showed  no  iris  at  all.  "She's  going  to  tell  daddy.  She's 
going  to  tell  daddy  to-morrow,  Paul!"  Between  the  whispers 
the  water  dripped  its  unhurried  minor  note. 

"Tell  what?  What  does  she  know?" 

"Put  your  arms  around  me,  Paul." 

"Hell,  no.  Let  go.  Let's  get  out  of  here." 

"Yes.  You  can  help  it.  You  can  keep  her  from  telling 
daddy." 

"How  help  it?  Damn  it,  let  me  go!" 

"She  will  tell,  but  it  won't  matter  then.  Promise.  Paul. 
Say  you  will." 

"Marry  you?  Is  that  what  you  are  talking  about?  I  told 
you  yesterday  I  wouldn't.  Let  me  go,  I  tell  you." 

"All  right.  All  right."  She  spoke  in  an  eager  whisper.  "I 
believe  you  now.  I  didn't  at  first,  but  I  do  now.  You  needn't 
marry  me,  then.  You  can  help  it  without  marrying  me."  She 
clung  to  him,  her  hair,  her  body,  rich  with  voluptuous  and 
fainting  promise.  "You  won't  have  to  marry  me.  Will  you 
do  it?" 


Elly  221 

"Do  what?" 

"Listen.  You  remember  that  curve  with  the  little  white 
fence,  where  it  is  so  far  down  to  the  bottom?  Where  if  a  car 
went  through  that  little  fence.  .  .  ." 

"Yes.  What  about  it?" 

"Listen.  You  and  she  will  be  in  the  car.  She  won't  know, 
won't  have  time  to  suspect.  And  that  little  old  fence  wouldn't 
stop  anything  and  they  will  all  say  it  was  an  accident.  She 
is  old;  it  wouldn't  take  much;  maybe  even  the  shock  and 
you  are  young  and  maybe  it  won't  even  .  .  .  Paul!  Paul!" 
With  each  word  her  voice  seemed  to  faint  and  die,  speaking 
with  a  dying  cadence  out  of  urgency  and  despair  while  he 
looked  down  at  her  blanched  face,  at  her  eyes  filled  with 
desperate  and  voluptuous  promise.  "Paul!" 

"And  where  will  you  be  all  this  time?"  She  didn't  stir, 
her  face  like  a  sleepwalker's.  "Oh.  I  see.  You'll  go  home  on 
the  train.  Is  that  it?" 

"Paul!"  she  said  in  that  prolonged  and  dying  whisper. 
"Paul!" 

In  the  instant  of  striking  her  his  hand,  as  though  refusing 
of  its  own  volition  the  office,  opened  and  touched  her  face 
in  a  long,  shuddering  motion  almost  a  caress.  Again,  gripping 
her  by  the  back  of  the  neck,  he  assayed  to  strike  her;  again 
his  hand,  something,  refused.  When  he  flung  her  away  she 
stumbled  backward  into  the  wall.  Then  his  feet  ceased  and 
then  the  water  began  to  fill  the  silence  with  its  steady  and 
unhurried  sound.  After  a  while  the  clock  below  struck  two, 
and  she  moved  wearily  and  heavily  and  closed  the  tap. 

But  that  did  not  seem  to  stop  the  sound  of  the  water.  It 
seemed  to  drip  on  into  the  silence  where  she  lay  rigid  on 
her  back  in  bed,  not  sleeping,  not  even  thinking.  It  dripped 
on  while  behind  the  frozen  grimace  of  her  aching  face  she 
got  through  the  ritual  of  breakfast  and  of  departure,  the 
grandmother  between  Paul  and  herself  in  the  single  seat.  Even 
the  sound  of  the  car  could  not  drown  it  out,  until  suddenly 


222  The  Village 

she  realized  what  it  was.  'It's  the  signboards/  she  thought, 
watching  them  as  they  diminished  in  retrograde.  *I  even 
remember  that  one;  now  it's  only  about  two  miles.  I'll  wait 
until  the  next  one;  then  I  will  .  .  .  now.  Now.'  "Paul,"  she 
said.  He  didn't  look  at  her.  "Will  you  marry  me?" 

"No."  Neither  was  she  looking  at  his  face.  She  was  watch- 
ing his  hands  as  they  jockeyed  the  wheel  slightly  and  con- 
stantly. Between  them  the  grandmother  sat,  erect,  rigid 
beneath  the  archaic  black  bonnet,  staring  straight  ahead  like 
a  profile  cut  from  parchment. 

"I'm  going  to  ask  you  just  once  more.  Then  it  will  be  too 
late.  I  tell  you  it  will  be  too  late  then,  Paul  .  .  .  Paul?" 

"No,  I  tell  you.  You  don't  love  me.  I  don't  love  you. 
We've  never  said  we  did." 

"All  right.  Not  love,  then.  Will  you  marry  me  without  it? 
Remember,  it  \vill  be  too  late." 

"No.  I  will  not." 

"But  why?  Why,  Paul?"  He  didn't  answer.  The  car  fled 
on.  Now  it  was  the  first  sign  which  she  had  noticed;  she 
thought  quietly,  'We  must  be  almost  there  now.  It  is  the 
next  curve.'  She  said  aloud,  speaking  across  the  deafness  of 
the  old  woman  between  them:  "Why  not,  Paul?  If  it's  that 
story  about  nigger  blood,  I  don't  believe  it.  I  don't  care." 
Tes,'  she  thought,  'this  is  the  curve.'  The  road  entered  the 
curve,  descending.  She  sat  back,  and  then  she  found  her 
grandmother  looking  full  at  her.  But  she  did  not  try  now 
to  veil  her  face,  her  eyes,  any  more  than  she  would  have  tried 
to  conceal  her  voice:  "Suppose  I  have  a  child?" 

"Suppose  you  do?  I  can't  help  it  now.  You  should  have 
thought  of  that.  Remember,  you  sent  for  me;  I  didn't  ask 
to  come  back." 

"No.  You  didn't  ask.  I  sent  for  you.  I  made  you.  And  this 
is  the  last  time.  Will  you?  Quick!" 

"No." 


Elly  223 

"All  right,"  she  said.  She  sat  back;  at  that  instant  the  road 
seemed  to  poise  and  pause  before  plunging  steeply  down- 
ward beside  the  precipice;  the  white  fence  began  to  flicker 
past.  As  Elly  flung  the  robe  aside  she  saw  her  grandmother 
still  watching  her;  as  she  lunged  forward  across  the  old 
woman's  knees  they  glared  eye  to  eye — the  haggard  and 
desperate  girl  and  the  old  woman  whose  hearing  had  long 
since  escaped  everything  and  whose  sight  nothing  escaped 
— for  a  profound  instant  of  despairing  ultimatum  and  im- 
placable refusal.  "Then  die!"  she  cried  into  the  old  woman's 
face;  "die!"  grasping  at  the  wheel  as  Paul  tried  to  fling  her 
back.  But  she  managed  to  get  her  elbow  into  the  wheel 
spokes  with  all  her  weight  on  it,  sprawling  across  her  grand- 
mother's body,  holding  the  wheel  hard  over  as  Paul  struck 
her  on  the  mouth  with  his  fist.  "Oh,"  she  screamed,  "you  hit 
me.  You  hit  me!"  When  the  car  struck  the  railing  it  flung 
her  free,  so  that  for  an  instant  she  lay  lightly  as  an  alighting 
bird  upon  Paul's  chest,  her  mouth  open,  her  eyes  round  with 
shocked  surprise.  "You  hit  me!"  she  wailed.  Then  she  was 
falling  free,  alone  in  a  complete  and  peaceful  silence  like  a 
vacuum.  Paul's  face,  her  grandmother,  the  car,  had  disap- 
peared, vanished  as  though  by  magic;  parallel  with  her  eyes 
the  shattered  ends  of  white  railing,  the  crumbling  edge  of  the 
precipice  where  dust  whispered  and  a  faint  gout  of  it  hung 
like  a  toy  balloon,  rushed  mutely  skyward. 

Overhead  somewhere  a  sound  passed,  dying  away — the 
snore  of  an  engine,  the  long  hissing  of  tires  in  gravel,  then 
the  wind  sighed  in  the  trees  again,  shivering  the  crests  against 
the  sky.  Against  the  bole  of  one  of  them  the  car  lay  in  an 
inextricable  and  indistinguishable  mass,  and  Elly  sat  in  a 
litter  of  broken  glass,  staring  dully  at  it.  "Something  hap- 
pened," she  whimpered.  "He  hit  me.  And  now  they  are 
dead;  it's  me  that's  hurt,  and  nobody  will  come."  She  moaned 
a  little,  whimpering.  Then  with  an  air  of  dazed  astonish- 


224  The  Village 

ment  she  raised  her  hand.  The  palm  was  red  and  wet.  She 
sat  whimpering  quietly,  digging  stupidly  at  her  palm. 
"There's  glass  all  in  it  and  I  can't  even  see  it,"  she  said,  whim- 
pered, gazing  at  her  palm  while  the  warm  blood  stained 
slowly  down  upon  her  skirt.  Again  the  sound  rushed  steadily 
past  high  overhead,  and  died  away.  She  looked  up,  following 
it.  "There  goes  another  one,"  she  whimpered.  "They  won't 
even  stop  to  see  if  I  am  hurt." 


Uncle  Willy 


I  KNOW  what  they  said.  They  said  I  didn't  run  away  from 
home  but  that  I  was  tolled  away  by  a  crazy  man  who,  if  I 
hadn't  killed  him  first,  would  have  killed  me  inside  another 
week.  But  if  they  had  said  that  the  women,  the  good  women 
in  Jefferson  had  driven  Uncle  Willy  out  of  town  and  I  fol- 
lowed him  and  did  what  I  did  because  I  knew  that  Uncle 
Willy  was  on  his  last  go-round  and  this  time  when  they  got 
him  again  it  would  be  for  good  and  forever,  they  would  have 
been  right.  Because  I  wasn't  tolled  away  and  Uncle  Willy 
wasn't  crazy,  not  even  after  all  they  had  done  to  him.  I 
didn't  have  to  go;  I  didn't  have  to  go  any  more  than  Uncle 
Willy  had  to  invite  me  instead  of  just  taking  it  for  granted 
that  I  wanted  to  come.  I  went  because  Uncle  Willy  was  the 
finest  man  I  ever  knew,  because  even  women  couldn't  beat 
him,  because  in  spite  of  them  he  wound  up  his  life  getting 
fun  out  of  being  alive  and  he  died  doing  the  thing  that  was 
the  most  fun  of  all  because  I  was  there  to  help  him.  And 
that's  something  that  most  men  and  even  most  women  too 
don't  get  to  do,  not  even  the  women  that  call  meddling  with 
other  folks'  lives  fun. 

He  wasn't  anybody's  uncle,  but  all  of  us,  and  grown  people 
too,  called  him  (or  thought  of  him)  as  Uncle  Willy.  He 
didn't  have  any  kin  at  all  except  a  sister  in  Texas  married 
to  an  oil  millionaire.  He  lived  by  himself  in  a  little  old  neat 

"5 


226  *  The  Village 

white  house  where  he  had  been  born  on  the  edge  of  town, 
he  and  an  old  nigger  named  Job  Wylie  that  was  older  than 
he  was  even,  that  cooked  and  kept  the  house  and  was  the 
porter  at  the  drugstore  which  Uncle  Willy's  father  had 
established  and  which  Uncle  Willy  ran  without  any  other 
help  than  old  Job;  and  during  the  twelve  or  fourteen  years 
(the  life  of  us  as  children  and  then  boys),  while  he  just  used 
dope,  we  saw  a  lot  of  him.  We  liked  to  go  to  his  store  because 
it  was  always  cool  and  dim  and  quiet  inside  because  he  never 
washed  the  windows;  he  said  the  reason  was  that  he  never 
had  to  bother  to  dress  them  because  nobody  could  see  in 
anyway,  and  so  the  heat  couldn't  get  in  either.  And  he  never 
had  any  customers  except  country  people  buying  patent 
medicines  that  were  already  in  bottles,  and  niggers  buying 
cards  and  dice,  because  nobody  had  let  him  fill  a  prescription 
in  forty  years  I  reckon,  and  he  never  had  any  soda  fountain 
trade  because  it  was  old  Job  who  washed  the  glasses  and 
mixed  the  syrups  and  made  the  ice  cream  ever  since  Uncle 
Willy's  father  started  the  business  in  eighteen-fifty-some- 
thing  and  so  old  Job  couldn't  see  very  well  now,  though 
papa  said  he  didn't  think  that  old  Job  took  dope  too,  it  was 
from  breathing  day  and  night  the  air  which  Uncle  Willy 
had  just  exhaled. 

But  the  ice  cream  tasted  all  right  to  us,  especially  when  we 
came  in  hot  from  the  ball  games.  We  had  a  league  of  three 
teams  in  town  and  Uncle  Willy  would  give  the  prize,  a  ball 
or  a  bat  or  a  mask,  for  each  game  though  he  would  never 
come  to  see  us  play,  so  after  the  game  both  teams  and  maybe 
all  three  would  go  to  the  store  to  watch  the  winner  get  the 
prize.  And  we  would  eat  the  ice  cream  and  then  we  would 
all  go  behind  the  prescription  case  and  watch  Uncle  Willy 
light  the  little  alcohol  stove  and  fill  the  needle  and  roll  his 
sleeve  up  over  the  little  blue  myriad  punctures  starting  at 
his  elbow  and  going  right  on  up  into  his  shirt.  And  the  next 


Uncle  Willy  227 

day  would  be  Sunday  and  we  would  wait  in  our  yards  and 
fall  in  with  him  as  he  passed  from  house  to  house  and  go  on 
to  Sunday  school,  Uncle  Willy  with  us,  in  the  same  class 
with  us,  sitting  there  while  we  recited.  Mr.  Barbour  from  the 
Sunday  school  never  called  on  him.  Then  we  would  finish 
the  lesson  and  we  would  talk  about  baseball  until  the  bell 
rang  and  Uncle  Willy  still  not  saying  anything,  just  sitting 
there  all  neat  and  clean,  with  his  clean  collar  and  no  tie  and 
weighing  about  a  hundred  and  ten  pounds  and  his  eyes 
behind  his  glasses  kind  of  all  run  together  like  broken  eggs. 
Then  we  would  all  go  to  the  store  and  eat  the  ice  cream 
that  was  left  over  from  Saturday  and  then  go  behind  the 
prescription  case  and  watch  him  again:  the  little  stove  and 
his  Sunday  shirt  rolled  up  and  the  needle  going  slow  into 
his  blue  arm  and  somebody  would  say,  "Don't  it  hurt?"  and 
he  would  say,  "No.  I  like  it." 

II 

THEN  THEY  made  him  quit  dope.  He  had  been  using  it  for 
forty  years,  he  told  us  once,  and  now  he  was  sixty  and  he 
had  about  ten  years  more  at  the  outside,  only  he  didn't  tell 
us  that  because  he  didn't  need  to  tell  even  fourteen-year-old 
boys  that.  But  they  made  him  quit.  It  didn't  take  them  long. 
It  began  one  Sunday  morning  and  it  was  finished  by  the 
next  Friday;  we  had  just  sat  down  in  our  class  and  Mr.  Bar- 
bour had  just  begun,  when  all  of  a  sudden  Reverend  Schultz, 
the  minister,  was  there,  leaning  over  Uncle  Willy  and  already 
hauling  him  out  of  his  seat  when  we  looked  around,  hauling 
him  up  and  saying  in  that  tone  in  which  preachers  speak  to 
fourteen-year-old  boys  that  I  don't  believe  even  pansy  boys 
like:  "Now,  Brother  Christian,  I  know  you  will  hate  to 
leave  Brother  Barbour's  class,  but  let's  you  and  I  go  in  and 
join  Brother  Miller  and  the  men  and  hear  what  he  can  tell 


228  The  Village 

us  on  this  beautiful  and  heartwarming  text,"  and  Uncle 
Willy  still  trying  to  hold  back  and  looking  around  at  us 
with  his  run-together  eyes  blinking  and  saying  plainer  than 
if  he  had  spoke  it:  "What's  this?  What's  this,  fellows?  What 
are  they  fixing  to  do  to  me?" 

We  didn't  know  any  more  than  he  did.  We  just  finished 
the  lesson;  we  didn't  talk  any  baseball  that  day;  and  we 
passed  the  alcove  where  Mr.  Miller's  men's  Bible  class  met, 
with  Reverend  Schultz  sitting  in  the  middle  of  them  like  he 
did  every  Sunday,  like  he  was  just  a  plain  man  like  the  rest 
of  them  yet  kind  of  bulging  out  from  among  the  others  like 
he  didn't  have  to  move  or  speak  to  keep  them  reminded  that 
he  wasn't  a  plain  man;  and  I  would  always  think  about  April 
Fool's  one  year  when  Miss  Callaghan  called  the  roll  and  then 
stepped  down  from  her  desk  and  said,  "Now  I'm  going  to 
be  a  pupil  today,"  and  took  a  vacant  seat  and  called  out  a 
name  and  made  them  go  to  her  desk  and  hold  the  lesson  and 
it  would  have  been  fun  if  you  could  have  just  quit  remem- 
bering that  tomorrow  wouldn't  be  April  Fool's  and  the  day 
after  that  wouldn't  be  either.  And  Uncle  Willy  was  sitting 
by  Reverend  Schultz  looking  littler  than  ever,  and  I  thought 
about  one  day  last  summer  when  they  took  a  country  man 
named  Bundren  to  the  asylum  at  Jackson  but  he  wasn't  too 
crazy  not  to  know  where  he  was  going,  sitting  there  in  the 
coach  window  handcuffed  to  a  fat  deputy  sheriff  that  was 
smoking  a  cigar. 

Then  Sunday  school  was  over  and  we  went  out  to  wait 
for  him,  to  go  to  the  store  and  eat  the  ice  cream.  And  he 
didn't  come  out.  He  didn't  come  out  until  church  was  over 
too,  the  first  time  that  he  had  ever  stayed  for  church  that 
any  of  us  knew  of — that  anybody  knew  of,  papa  told  me 
later — coming  out  with  Mrs.  Merridew  on  one  side  of  him 
and  Reverend  Schultz  on  the  other  still  holding  him  by  the 
arm  and  he  looking  around  at  us  again  with  his  eyes  saying 


Uncle  Willy  229 

again  only  desperate  now:  "Fellows,  what's  this?  What's 
this,  fellows?"  and  Reverend  Schultz  shoving  him  into  Mrs. 
Merridew's  car  and  Airs.  Merridew  saying,  loud,  like  she  was 
in  the  pulpit:  "Now,  Mr.  Christian,  I'm  going  to  take  you 
right  out  to  my  house  and  I'm  going  to  fix  you  a  nice  glass 
of  cool  lemonade  and  then  we  will  have  a  nice  chicken  dinner 
and  then  you  are  going  to  take  a  nice  nap  in  my  hammock 
and  then  Brother  and  Sister  Schultz  are  coming  out  and  we 
will  have  some  nice  ice  cream,"  and  Uncle  Willy  saying, 
"No.  Wait,  ma'am,  wait!  Wait!  I  got  to  go  to  the  store  and 
fill  a  prescription  I  promised  this  morning — " 

So  they  shoved  him  into  the  car  and  him  looking  back  at 
us  where  we  stood  there;  he  went  out  of  sight  like  that, 
sitting  beside  Mrs.  Merridew  in  the  car  like  Darl  Bundren 
and  the  deputy  on  the  train,  and  I  reckon  she  was  holding 
his  wrist  and  I  reckon  she  never  needed  any  handcuffs  and 
Uncle  Willy  giving  us  that  single  look  of  amazed  and  des- 
perate despair. 

Because  now  he  was  already  an  hour  past  the  time  for  his 
needle  and  that  afternoon  when  he  finally  slipped  away  from 
Mrs.  Merridew  he  was  five  hours  past  it  and  so  he  couldn't 
even  get  the  key  into  the  lock,  and  so  Mrs.  Merridew  and 
Reverend  Schultz  caught  him  and  this  time  he  wasn't  talking 
or  looking  either:  he  was  trying  to  get  away  like  a  half-wild 
cat  tries  to  get  away.  They  took  him  to  his  home  and  Mrs. 
Merridew  telegraphed  his  sister  in  Texas  and  Uncle  Willy 
didn't  come  to  town  for  three  days  because  Mrs.  Merridew 
and  Mrs.  Hovis  took  turn  about  staying  in  the  house  with 
him  day  and  night  until  his  sister  could  get  there.  That  was 
vacation  then  and  we  played  the  game  on  Monday  and  that 
afternoon  the  store  was  still  locked  and  Tuesday  it  was  still 
locked,  and  so  it  was  not  until  Wednesday  afternoon  and 
Uncle  Willy  was  running  fast. 

He  didn't  have  any  shirt  on  and  he  hadn't  shaved  and  he 


230  The  Village 

could  not  get  the  key  into  the  lock  at  all,  panting  and  whim- 
pering and  saying,  "She  went  to  sleep  at  last;  she  went  to 
sleep  at  last,"  until  one  of  us  took  the  key  and  unlocked  the 
door.  We  had  to  light  the  little  stove  too  and  fill  the  needle 
and  this  time  it  didn't  go  into  his  arm  slow,  it  looked  like 
he  was  trying  to  jab  it  clean  through  the  bone.  He  didn't  go 
back  home.  He  said  he  wouldn't  need  anything  to  sleep  on 
and  he  gave  us  the  money  and  let  us  out  the  back  door  and 
we  bought  the  sandwiches  and  the  bottle  of  coffee  from  the 
cafe  and  we  left  him  there. 

Then  the  next  day,  it  was  Mrs.  Merridew  and  Reverend 
Schultz  and  three  more  ladies;  they  had  the  marshal  break  in 
the  door  and  Mrs.  Merridew  holding  Uncle  Willy  by  the 
back  of  the  neck  and  shaking  him  and  kind  of  whispering, 
"You  little  wretch!  You  little  wretch!  Slip  off  from  me,  will 
you?"  and  Reverend  Schultz  saying,  "Now,  Sister;  now, 
Sister;  control  yourself,"  and  the  other  ladies  hollering  Mr. 
Christian  and  Uncle  Willy  and  Willy,  according  to  how  old 
they  were  or  how  long  they  had  lived  in  Jefferson.  It  didn't 
take  them  long. 

The  sister  got  there  from  Texas  that  night  and  we  would 
walk  past  the  house  and  see  the  ladies  on  the  front  porch  or 
going  in  and  out,  and  now  and  then  Reverend  Schultz  kind 
of  bulging  out  from  among  them  like  he  would  out  of  Mr. 
Miller's  Bible  class,  and  we  could  crawl  up  behind  the  hedge 
and  hear  them  through  the  window,  hear  Uncle  Willy  cry- 
ing and  cussing  and  fighting  to  get  out  of  the  bed  and  the 
ladies  saying,  "Now,  Mr.  Christian;  now,  Uncle  Willy," 
and  "Now,  Bubber,"  too,  since  his  sister  was  there;  and 
Uncle  Willy  crying  and  praying  and  cussing.  And  then  it 
was  Friday,  and  he  gave  up.  We  could  hear  them  holding 
him  in  the  bed;  I  reckon  this  was  his  last  go-round,  because 
none  of  them  had  time  to  talk  now;  and  then  we  heard  him, 
his  voice  weak  but  clear  and  his  breath  going  in  and  out. 


Uncle  Willy  231 

"Wait,"  he  said.  "Wait!  I  will  ask  it  one  more  time.  Won't 
you  please  quit?  Won't  you  please  go  away?  Won't  you 
please  go  to  hell  and  just  let  me  come  on  at  my  own  gait?" 

"No,  Mr.  Christian,"  Mrs.  Merridew  said.  "We  are  doing 
this  to  save  you." 

For  a  minute  we  didn't  hear  anything.  Then  we  heard 
Uncle  Willy  lay  back  in  the  bed,  kind  of  flop  back. 

"All  right,"  he  said.  "All  right." 

It  was  like  one  of  those  sheep  they  would  sacrifice  back 
in  the  Bible.  It  was  like  it  had  climbed  up  onto  the  altar 
itself  and  flopped  onto  its  back  with  its  throat  held  up  and 
said:  "All  right.  Come  on  and  get  it  over  with.  Cut  my 
damn  throat  and  go  away  and  let  me  lay  quiet  in  the  fire." 

Ill 

HE  WAS  SICK  for  a  long  time.  They  took  him  to  Memphis 
and  they  said  that  he  was  going  to  die.  The  store  stayed 
locked  all  the  time  now,  and  after  a  few  weeks  we  didn't 
even  keep  up  the  league.  It  wasn't  just  the  balls  and  the  bats. 
It  wasn't  that.  We  would  pass  the  store  and  look  at  the  big 
old  lock  on  it  and  at  the  windows  you  couldn't  even  see 
through,  couldn't  even  see  inside  where  we  used  to  eat  the 
ice  cream  and  tell  him  who  beat  and  who  made  the  good 
plays  and  him  sitting  there  on  his  stool  with  the  little  stove 
burning  and  the  dope  boiling  and  bubbling  and  the  needle 
waiting  in  his  hand,  looking  at  us  with  his  eyes  blinking 
and  all  run  together  behind  his  glasses  so  you  couldn't  even 
tell  where  the  pupil  was  like  you  can  in  most  eyes.  And  the 
niggers  and  the  country  folks  that  used  to  trade  with  him 
coming  up  and  looking  at  the  lock  too,  and  asking  us  how 
he  was  and  when  he  would  come  home  and  open  up  again. 
Because  even  after  the  store  opened  again,  they  would  not 
trade  with  the  clerk  that  Mrs.  Merridew  and  Reverend 


232  The  Village 

Schultz  put  in  the  store.  Uncle  Willy's  sister  said  not  to 
bother  about  the  store,  to  let  it  stay  shut  because  she  would 
take  care  of  Uncle  Willy  if  he  got  well.  But  Mrs.  Merridew 
said  no,  she  not  only  aimed  to  cure  Uncle  Willy,  she  was 
going  to  give  him  a  complete  rebirth,  not  only  into  real 
Christianity  but  into  the  practical  world  too,  with  a  place 
in  it  waiting  for  him  so  he  could  hold  up  his  head  not  only 
with  honor  but  pride  too  among  his  fellow  men;  she  said 
that  at  first  her  only  hope  had  been  to  fix  it  so  he  would  not 
have  to  face  his  Maker  slave  body  and  soul  to  morphine, 
but  now  since  his  constitution  was  stronger  than  anybody 
could  have  believed,  she  was  going  to  see  that  he  assumed 
that  position  in  the  world  which  his  family's  name  entitled 
him  to  before  he  degraded  it. 

She  and  Reverend  Schultz  found  the  clerk.  He  had 
been  in  Jefferson  about  six  months.  He  had  letters 
to  the  church,  but  nobody  except  Reverend  Schultz  and 
Mrs.  Merridew  knew  anything  about  him.  That  is,  they 
made  him  the  clerk  in  Uncle  Willy's  store;  nobody  else 
knew  anything  about  him  at  all.  But  Uncle  Willy's  old 
customers  wouldn't  trade  with  him.  And  we  didn't  either. 
Not  that  we  had  much  trade  to  give  him  and  we  certainly 
didn't  expect  him  to  give  us  any  ice  cream  and  I  don't 
reckon  we  would  have  taken  it  if  he  had  offered  it  to  us. 
Because  it  was  not  Uncle  Willy,  and  pretty  soon  it  wasn't 
even  the  same  ice  cream  because  the  first  thing  the  clerk 
did  after  he  washed  the  windows  was  to  fire  old  Job,  only 
old  Job  refused  to  quit.  He  stayed  around  the  store  any- 
how, mumbling  to  himself  and  the  clerk  would  run  him 
out  the  front  door  and  old  Job  would  go  around  to  the 
back  and  come  in  and  the  clerk  would  find  him  again  and 
cuss  him,  whispering,  cussing  old  Job  good  even  if  he  did 
have  letters  to  the  church;  he  went  and  swore  out  a  war- 
rant and  the  marshal  told  old  Job  he  would  have  to  stay  out 


Uncle  Willy  233 

of  the  store.  Then  old  Job  moved  across  the  street.  He 
would  sit  on  the  curb  all  day  where  he  could  watch  the 
door  and  every  time  the  clerk  came  in  sight  old  Job  would 
holler,  "I  ghy  tell  um!  I  ghy  do  hit!"  So  we  even  quit  pass- 
ing the  store.  We  would  cut  across  the  corner  not  to  pass 
it,  with  the  windows  clean  now  and  the  new  town  trade  the 
clerk  had  built  up — he  had  a  lot  of  trade  now — going  in 
and  out,  just  stopping  long  enough  to  ask  old  Job  about 
Uncle  Willy,  even  though  we  had  already  got  what  news 
came  from  Memphis  about  him  every  day  and  we  knew 
that  old  Job  would  riot  know,  would  not  be  able  to  get  it 
straight  even  if  someone  told  him,  since  he  never  did  believe 
that  Uncle  Willy  was  sick,  he  just  believed  that  Mrs.  Merri- 
dew  had  taken  him  away  somewhere  by  main  force  and 
was  holding  him  in  another  bed  somewhere  so  he  couldn't 
get  up  and  come  back  home;  and  old  Job  sitting  on  the 
curb  and  blinking  up  at  us  with  his  little  watery  red  eyes 
like  Uncle  Willy  would  and  saying,  UI  ghy  tell  um!  Holting 
him  up  dar  whilst  whipper-snappin'  trash  makin'  free  wid 
Marse  Hoke  Christian's  sto.  I  ghy  tell  um!" 

IV 

UNCLE  WILLY  didn't  die.  One  day  he  came  home  with  his 
skin  the  color  of  tallow  and  weighing  about  ninety  pounds 
now  and  with  his  eyes  like  broken  eggs  still  but  dead  eggs, 
eggs  that  had  been  broken  so  long  now  that  they  didn't 
even  smell  dead  any  more — until  you  looked  at  them  and 
saw  that  they  were  anything  in  the  world  except  dead.  That 
was  after  he  got  to  know  us  again.  I  don't  mean  that  he  had 
forgotten  about  us  exactly.  It  was  like  he  still  liked  us  as 
boys,  only  he  had  never  seen  us  before  and  so  he  would  have 
to  learn  our  names  and  which  faces  the  names  belonged  to. 
His  sister  had  gone  back  to  Texas  now,  because  Mrs.  Merri- 


234  The  Village 

dew  was  going  to  look  after  him  until  he  was  completely 
recovered,  completely  cured.  Yes.  Cured. 

I  remember  that  first  afternoon  when  he  came  to  town 
and  we  walked  into  the  store  and  Uncle  Willy  looked  at  the 
clean  windows  that  you  could  see  through  now  and  at  the 
town  customers  that  never  had  traded  with  him,  and  at 
the  clerk  and  said,  "You're  my  clerk,  hey?"  and  the  clerk 
begun  to  talk  about  Mrs.  Merridew  and  Reverend  Schultz 
and  Uncle  Willy  said,  "All  right,  all  right,"  and  now  he  ate 
some  ice  cream  too,  standing  at  the  counter  with  us  like  he 
was  a  customer  too  and  still  looking  around  the  store  while 
he  ate  the  ice  cream,  with  those  eyes  that  were  not  dead  at 
all  and  he  said,  "Looks  like  you  been  getting  more  work  out 
of  my  damned  old  nigger  than  I  could/'  and  the  clerk  began 
to  say  something  else  about  Mrs.  Merridew  and  Uncle  Willy 
said,  "All  right,  all  right.  Just  get  a  holt  of  Job  right  away 
and  tell  him  I  am  going  to  expect  him  to  be  here  every  day 
and  that  I  want  him  to  keep  this  store  looking  like  this  from 
now  on."  Then  we  went  on  behind  the  prescription  case, 
with  Uncle  Willy  looking  around  here  too,  at  how  the  clerk 
had  it  neated  up,  with  a  big  new  lock  on  the  cabinet  where 
the  drugs  and  such  were  kept,  with  those  eyes  that  wouldn't 
anybody  call  dead,  I  don't  care  who  he  was,  and  said,  "Step 
up  there  and  tell  that  fellow  I  want  my  keys."  But  it  wasn't 
the  stove  and  the  needle.  Mrs.  Merridew  had  busted  both 
of  them  that  day.  But  it  wasn't  that  anyway,  because  the 
clerk  came  back  and  begun  to  talk  about  Mrs.  Merridew 
and  Reverend  Schultz,  and  Uncle  Willy  listening  and  say- 
ing, "All  right,  all  right,"  and  we  never  had  seen  him  laugh 
before  and  his  face  didn't  change  now  but  we  knew  that  he 
was  laughing  behind  it.  Then  we  went  out.  He  turned  sharp 
off  the  square,  down  Nigger  Row  to  Sonny  Barger's  store 
and  I  took  the  money  and  bought  the  Jamaica  ginger  from 
Sonny  and  caught  up  with  them  and  we  went  home  with 


Uncle  Willy  235 

Uncle  Willy  and  we  sat  in  the  pasture  while  he  drank  the 
Jamaica  ginger  and  practiced  our  names  some  more. 

And  that  night  we  met  him  where  he  said.  He  had  the 
wheelbarrow  and  the  crowbar  and  we  broke  open  the  back 
door  and  then  the  cabinet  with  the  new  lock  on  it  and  got 
the  can  of  alcohol  and  carried  it  to  Uncle  Willy's  and  buried 
it  in  the  barn.  It  had  almost  three  gallons  in  it  and  he  didn't 
come  to  town  at  all  for  four  weeks  and  he  was  sick  again, 
and  Mrs.  Merridew  storming  into  the  house,  jerking  out 
drawers  and  flinging  things  out  of  closets  and  Uncle  Willy 
lying  in  the  bed  and  watching  her  with  those  eyes  that  were 
a  long  way  from  being  dead.  But  she  couldn't  find  anything 
because  it  was  all  gone  now,  and  besides  she  didn't  know 
what  it  was  she  was  looking  for  because  she  was  looking  for 
a  needle.  And  the  night  Uncle  Willy  was  up  again  we  took 
the  crowbar  and  went  back  to  the  store  and  when  we  went 
to  the  cabinet  we  found  that  it  was  already  open  and  Uncle 
Willy's  stool  sitting  in  the  door  and  a  quart  bottle  of  alcohol 
on  the  stool  in  plain  sight,  and  that  was  all.  And  then  I  knew 
that  the  clerk  knew  who  got  the  alcohol  before  but  I  didn't 
know  why  he  hadn't  told  Mrs.  Merridew  until  two  years 
later. 

I  didn't  know  that  for  two  years,  and  Uncle  Willy  a  year 
now  going  to  Memphis  every  Saturday  in  the  car  his  sister 
had  given  him.  I  wrote  the  letter  with  Uncle  Willy  looking 
over  my  shoulder  and  dictating,  about  how  his  health  was 
improving  but  not  as  fast  as  the  doctor  seemed  to  want  and 
that  the  doctor  said  he  ought  not  to  walk  back  and  forth  to 
the  store  and  so  a  car,  not  an  expensive  car,  just  a  small  car 
that  he  could  drive  himself  or  maybe  find  a  negro  boy  to 
drive  for  him  if  his  sister  thought  he  ought  not  to:  and  she 
sent  the  money  and  he  got  a  burr-headed  nigger  boy  about 
my  size  named  Secretary  to  drive  it  for  him.  That  is,  Secre- 
tary said  he  could  drive  a  car;  certainly  he  and  Uncle  Willy 


236  The  Village 

both  learned  on  the  night  trips  they  would  make  back  into 
the  hill  country  to  buy  corn  whisky  and  Secretary  learned  to 
drive  in  Memphis  pretty  quick,  too,  because  they  went  every 
Saturday,  returning  Monday  morning  with  Uncle  Willy 
insensible  on  the  back  seat,  with  his  clothes  smelling  of  that 
smell  whose  source  I  was  not  to  discover  at  first  hand  for 
some  years  yet,  and  two  or  three  half-empty  bottles  and  a 
little  notebook  full  of  telephone  numbers  and  names  like 
Lorine  and  Billie  and  Jack.  I  didn't  know  it  for  two  years, 
not  until  that  Monday  morning  when  the  sheriff  came  and 
padlocked  and  sealed  what  was  left  of  Uncle  Willy's  stock 
and  when  they  tried  to  find  the  clerk  they  couldn't  even 
find  out  what  train  he  had  left  town  on;  a  hot  morning  in 
July  and  Uncle  Willy  sprawled  out  on  the  back  seat,  and  on 
the  front  seat  with  Secretary  a  woman  twice  as  big  as  Uncle 
Willy,  in  a  red  hat  and  a  pink  dress  and  a  dirty  white  fur 
coat  over  the  back  of  the  seat  and  two  straw  suitcases  on  the 
fenders,  with  hair  the  color  of  a  brand  new  brass  hydrant 
bib  and  her  cheeks  streaked  with  mascara  and  caked  powder 
where  she  had  sweated. 

It  was  worse  than  if  he  had  started  dope  again.  You  would 
have  thought  he  had  brought  smallpox  to  town.  I  remember 
how  when  Mrs.  Merridew  telephoned  Mamma  that  after- 
noon you  could  hear  her  from  away  out  at  her  house,  over 
the  wire,  clean  out  to  the  back  door  and  the  kitchen:  "Mar- 
ried! Married!  Whore!  Whore!  Whore!"  like  the  clerk  used 
to  cuss  old  Job,  and  so  maybe  the  church  can  go  just  so 
far  and  maybe  the  folks  that  are  in  it  are  the  ones  that  know 
the  best  or  are  entitled  to  say  when  to  disconnect  religion 
for  a  minute  or  two.  And  Papa  was  cussing  too,  not  cussing 
anybody;  I  knew  he  was  not  cussing  Uncle  Willy  or  even 
Uncle  Willy's  new  wife,  just  like  I  knew  that  I  wished  Mrs. 
Merridew  could  have  been  there  to  hear  him.  Only  I  reckon 
if  she  had  been  there  she  couldn't  have  heard  anything  be- 


Uncle  Willy  237 

cause  they  said  she  still  had  on  a  house  dress  when  she  went 
and  snatched  Reverend  Schultz  into  her  car  and  went  out 
to  Uncle  Willy's,  where  he  was  still  in  bed  like  always  on 
Monday  and  Tuesday,  and  his  new  wife  run  Mrs.  Merridew 
and  Reverend  Schultz  out  of  the  house  with  the  wedding 
license  like  it  was  a  gun  or  a  knife.  And  I  remember  how  all 
that  afternoon — Uncle  Willy  lived  on  a  little  quiet  side 
street  where  the  other  houses  were  all  little  new  ones  that 
country  people  who  had  moved  to  town  within  the  last  fif- 
teen years,  like  mail  carriers  and  little  storekeepers,  lived — 
how  all  that  afternoon  mad-looking  ladies  with  sun-bonnets 
on  crooked  came  busting  out  of  that  little  quiet  street 
dragging  the  little  children  and  the  grown  girls  with  them, 
heading  for  the  mayor's  office  and  Reverend  Schultz's  house, 
and  how  the  young  men  and  the  boys  that  didn't  work  and 
some  of  the  men  that  did  would  drive  back  and  forth  past 
Uncle  Willy's  house  to  look  at  her  sitting  on  the  porch  smok- 
ing cigarettes  and  drinking  something  out  of  a  glass;  and  how 
she  came  down  town  the  next  day  to  shop,  in  a  black  hat 
now  and  a  red-and-white  striped  dress  so  that  she  looked 
like  a  great  big  stick  of  candy  and  three  times  as  big  as 
Uncle  Willy  now,  walking  along  the  street  with  men  popping 
out  of  the  stores  when  she  passed  like  she  was  stepping  on 
a  line  of  spring  triggers  and  both  sides  of  her  behind  kind 
of  pumping  up  and  down  inside  the  dress  until  somebody 
hollered,  threw  back  his  head  and  squalled:  "YIPPEEE!" 
like  that  and  she  kind  of  twitched  her  behind  without  even 
stopping  and  then  they  hollered  sure  enough. 

And  the  next  day  the  wire  came  from  his  sister,  and  Papa 
for  the  lawyer  and  Mrs.  Merridew  for  the  witness  went  out 
there  and  Uncle  Willy's  wife  showed  them  the  license  and 
told  them  to  laugh  that  off,  that  Manuel  Street  or  not  she 
was  married  as  good  and  tight  as  any  high-nosed  bitch  in 
Jefferson  or  anywhere  else  and  Papa  saying,  "Now,  Mrs. 


238  The  Village 

Merridew;  now,  Mrs.  Christian,"  and  he  told  Uncle  Willy's 
wife  how  Uncle  Willy  was  bankrupt  now  and  might  even 
lose  the  house  too,  and  his  wife  said  how  about  that  sister 
in  Texas,  was  Papa  going  to  tell  her  that  the  oil  business  was 
bankrupt  too  and  not  to  make  her  laugh.  So  they  telegraphed 
the  sister  again  and  the  thousand  dollars  came  and  they  had 
to  give  Uncle  Willy's  wife  the  car  too.  She  went  back  to 
Memphis  that  same  afternoon,  driving  across  the  square  with 
the  straw  suitcases,  in  a  black  lace  dress  now  and  already 
beginning  to  sweat  again  under  her  new  makeup  because  it 
was  still  hot,  and  stopping  where  the  men  were  waiting  at 
the  post  office  for  the  afternoon  mail  and  she  said,  "Come 
on  up  to  Manuel  Street  and  see  me  sometime  and  I  will  show 
you  hicks  what  you  and  this  town  can  do  to  yourselves  and 
one  another." 

And  that  afternoon  Mrs.  Merridew  moved  back  into 
Uncle  Willy's  house  and  Papa  said  the  letter  she  wrote 
Uncle  Willy's  sister  had  eleven  pages  to  it  because  Papa  said 
she  would  never  forgive  Uncle  Willy  for  getting  bankrupted. 
We  could  hear  her  from  behind  the  hedge:  "You're  crazy, 
Mr.  Christian;  crazy.  I  have  tried  to  save  you  and  make 
something  out  of  you  besides  a  beast  but  now  my  patience 
is  exhausted.  I  am  going  to  give  you  one  more  chance.  I  am 
going  to  take  you  to  Keeley  and  if  that  fails,  I  am  going  to 
.take  you  myself  to  your  sister  and  force  her  to  commit  you 
to  an  asylum."  And  the  sister  sent  papers  from  Texas  declar- 
ing that  Uncle  Willy  was  incompetent  and  making  Mrs. 
Merridew  his  guardian  and  trustee,  and  Mrs.  Merridew  took 
him  to  the  Keeley  in  Memphis.  And  that  was  all. 

V 

THAT  is,  I  reckon  they  thought  that  that  was  all,  that  this 
lime  Uncle  Willy  would  surely  die.  Because  even  Papa 


Uncle  Willy  239 

thought  that  he  was  crazy  now  because  even  Papa  said  that 
if  it  hadn't  been  for  Uncle  Willy  I  would  not  have  run 
away,  and  therefore  I  didn't  run  away,  I  was  tolled  away 
by  a  lunatic;  it  wasn't  Papa,  it  was  Uncle  Robert  that  said 
that  he  wasn't  crazy  because  any  man  who  could  sell  Jeffer- 
son real  estate  for  cash  while  shut  up  in  r,  Keeley  institute 
wasn't  crazy  or  even  drunk.  Because  they  didn't  even  know 
that  he  was  out  of  Keeley,  even  Mrs.  Merridew  didn't  know 
it  until  he  was  gone  two  days  and  they  couldn't  find  him. 
They  never  did  find  him  or  find  out  how  he  got  out  and 
I  didn't  either  until  I  got  the  letter  from  him  to  take  the 
Memphis  bus  on  a  certain  day  and  he  would  meet  me  at  a 
stop  on  the  edge  of  Memphis.  I  didn't  even  realize  that  I  had 
not  seen  Secretary  or  old  Job  either  in  two  weeks.  But  he 
didn't  toll  me  away.  I  went  because  I  wanted  to,  because  he 
was  the  finest  man  I  ever  knew,  because  he  had  had  fun  all 
his  life  in  spite  of  what  they  had  tried  to  do  to  him  or  with 
him,  and  I  hoped  that  maybe  if  I  could  stay  with  him  a 
while  I  could  learn  how  to,  so  I  could  still  have  fun  too  when 
I  had  to  get  old.  Or  maybe  I  knew  more  than  that,  without 
knowing  it,  like  I  knew  that  I  would  do  anything  he  asked 
me  to  do,  no  matter  what  it  was,  just  like  I  helped  him  break 
into  the  store  for  the  alcohol  when  he  took  it  for  granted 
that  I  would  without  asking  me  to  at  all  and  then  helped 
him  hide  it  from  Mrs.  Merridew.  Maybe  I  even  knew  what 
old  Job  was  going  to  do.  Not  what  he  did  do,  but  that  he 
would  do  it  if  the  occasion  arose,  and  that  this  would  have 
to  be  Uncle  Willy's  last  go-round  and  if  I  wasn't  there  it 
would  be  just  him  against  all  the  old  terrified  and  timid  cling- 
ing to  dull  and  rule-ridden  breathing  which  Jefferson  was  to 
him  and  which,  even  though  he  had  escaped  Jefferson,  old 
Job  still  represented. 

So  I  cut  some  grass  that  week  and  I  had  almost  two  dollars. 
I  took  the  bus  on  the  day  he  said  and  he  was  waiting  for  me 


240  The  Village 

at  the  edge  of  town,  in  a  Ford  now  without  any  top  on  it  and 
you  could  still  read  the  chalk  letters,  $85  cash  on  the  wind- 
shield, and  a  brand  new  tent  folded  up  in  the  back  of  it  and 
Uncle  Willy  and  old  Job  in  the  front  seat,  and  Uncle  Willy 
looked  fine  with  a  checked  cap  new  except  for  a  big  oil 
stain,  with  the  bill  turned  round  behind  and  a  pair  of  goggles 
cocked  up  on  the  front  of  it  and  his  celluloid  collar  freshly 
washed  and  no  tie  in  it  and  his  nose  peeling  with  sunburn 
and  his  eyes  bright  behind  his  glasses.  I  would  have  gone 
with  him  anywhere;  I  would  do  it  over  again  right  now, 
knowing  what  was  going  to  happen.  He  would  not  have  to 
ask  me  now  any  more  than  he  did  then.  So  I  got  on  top  of  the 
tent  and  we  didn't  go  toward  town,  we  went  the  other  way. 
I  asked  where  we  were  going  but  he  just  said  wait,  rushing 
the  little  car  along  like  he  couldn't  get  there  quick  enough 
himself,  and  I  could  tell  from  his  voice  that  this  was  fine,  this 
was  the  best  yet,  better  than  anybody  else  could  have  thought 
about  doing,  and  old  Job  hunched  down  in  the  front  seat, 
holding  on  with  both  hands  and  yelling  at  Uncle  Willy  about 
going  so  fast.  Yes.  Maybe  i  knew  from  old  Job  even  then 
that  Uncle  Willy  may  have  escaped  Jefferson  but  he  had 
just  dodged  it;  he  hadn't  gotten  away. 

Then  we  came  to  the  sign,  the  arrow  that  said  Airport,  and 
we  turned  and  I  said:  "What?  What  is  it?"  but  Uncle  Willy 
just  said:  "Wait;  just  wait,"  like  he  couldn't  hardly  wait 
himself,  hunched  over  the  wheel  with  his  white  hair  blow- 
ing under  his  cap  and  his  collar  riding  up  behind  so  you 
could  see  his  neck  between  the  collar  and  the  shirt;  and  old 
Job  saying  (Oh  yes,  I  could  tell  even  then):  "He  got  hit,  all 
right.  He  done  done  hit.  But  I  done  tole  him.  Nemmine. 
I  done  warned  him."  Then  we  came  to  the  airport  and  Uncle 
Willy  stopped  quick  and  pointed  up  without  even  getting 
out  and  said,  "Look." 

It  was  an  airplane  flying  around  and  Uncle  Willy  running 


Uncle  Willy  241 

up  and  down  the  edge  of  the  field  waving  his  handkerchief 
until  it  saw  him  and  came  down  and  landed  and  rolled  up  to 
us,  a  little  airplane  with  a  two-cylinder  engine.  It  was  Secre- 
tary, in  another  new  checked  cap  and  goggles  like  Uncle 
Willy's  and  they  told  me  how  Uncle  Willy  had  bought  one 
for  old  Job  too  but  old  Job  wouldn't  wear  it.  And  that  night 
— we  stayed  in  a  little  tourist  camp  about  two  miles  away  and 
he  had  a  cap  and  goggles  all  ready  for  me  too;  and  then  I 
knew  why  they  hadn't  been  able  to  find  him — Uncle  Willy 
told  me  how  he  had  bought  the  airplane  with  some  of  the 
money  he  had  sold  his  house  for  after  his  sister  saved  it 
because  she  had  been  born  in  it  too,  but  that  Captain  Bean 
at  the  airport  wouldn't  teach  him  to  run  it  himself  because 
he  would  need  a  permit  from  a  doctor  ("By  God,"  Uncle 
Willy  said,  "damn  if  these  Republicans  and  Democrats  and 
XYZ's  ain't  going  to  have  it  soon  where  a  man  can't  even 
flush  the  toilet  in  his  own  bathroom.")  and  he  couldn't  go 
to  the  doctor  because  the  doctor  might  want  to  send  him 
back  to  the  Keeley  or  tell  Mrs.  Merridew  where  he  was.  So 
he  just  let  Secretary  learn  to  run  it  first  and  now  Secretary 
had  been  running  it  for  two  weeks,  which  was  almost  four- 
teen days  longer  than  he  had  practiced  on  the  car  before 
they  started  out  with  it.  So  Uncle  Willy  bought  the  car  and 
tent  and  camping  outfit  yesterday  and  tomorrow  we  were 
going  to  start.  We  would  go  first  to  a  place  named  Renfro 
where  nobody  knew  us  and  where  there  was  a  big  pasture 
that  Uncle  Willy  had  found  out  about  and  we  would  stay 
there  a  week  while  Secretary  taught  Uncle  Willy  to  run  the 
airplane.  Then  we  would  head  west.  When  we  ran  out  of 
the  house  money  we  would  stop  at  a  town  and  take  up  pas- 
sengers and  make  enough  to  buy  gasoline  and  food  to  get 
to  the  next  town,  Uncle  Willy  and  Secretary  in  the  airplane 
and  me  and  old  Job  in  the  car;  and  old  Job  sitting  in  a  chair 
against  the  wall,  blinking  at  Uncle  Willy  with  his  little  weak 


242  The  Village 

red  sullen  eyes,  and  Uncle  Willy  reared  up  on  the  cot  with 
his  cap  and  goggles  still  on  and  his  collar  without  any  tie  (it 
wasn't  fastened  to  his  shirt  at  all:  just  buttoned  around  his 
neck)  sometimes  sideways  and  sometimes  even  backward 
like  an  Episcopal  minister's,  and  his  eyes  bright  behind  his 
glasses  and  his  voice  bright  and  fine.  "And  by  Christmas  we 
will  be  in  California!"  he  said.  "Think  of  that.  Calif ornia!" 


VI 

So  HOW  could  they  say  that  I  had  to  be  tolled  away?  How 
could  they?  I  suppose  I  knew  then  that  it  wouldn't  work, 
couldn't  work,  that  it  was  too  fine  to  be  true.  I  reckon  I  even 
knew  how  it  was  going  to  end  just  from  the  glum  way  Secre- 
tary acted  whenever  Uncle  Willy  talked  about  learning  to 
run  the  airplane  himself,  just  as  I  knew  from  the  way  old  Job 
looked  at  Uncle  Willy,  not  what  he  did  of  course,  but  what 
he  would  do  if  the  occasion  arose.  Because  I  was  the  other 
white  one.  I  was  white,  even  if  old  Job  and  Secretary  were 
both  older  than  me,  so  it  would  be  all  right;  I  could  do  it  all 
right.  It  was  like  I  knew  even  then  that,  no  matter  what 
might  happen  to  him,  he  wouldn't  ever  die  and  I  thought 
that  if  I  could  just  learn  to  live  like  he  lived,  no  matter  what 
might  happen  to  me  I  wouldn't  ever  die  either. 

So  we  left  the  next  morning,  just  after  daylight  because 
there  was  another  fool  rule  that  Secretary  would  have  to 
stay  in  sight  of  the  field  until  they  gave  him  a  license  to  go 
away.  We  filled  the  airplane  with  gas  and  Secretary  went 
up  in  it  just  like  he  was  going  up  to  practice.  Then  Uncle 
Willy  got  us  into  the  car  quick  because  he  said  the  airplane 
could  make  sixty  miles  an  hour  and  so  Secretary  would  be 
at  Renfro  a  long  while  before  we  got  there.  But  when  we 
got  to  Renfro  Secretary  wasn't  there  and  we  put  the  tent  up 
and  ate  dinner  and  he  still  didn't  come  and  Uncle  Willy 


Uncle  Willy  243 

beginning  to  cuss  and  we  ate  supper  and  dark  came  but  Sec- 
retary didn't  and  Uncle  Willy  was  cussing  good  now.  He 
didn't  come  until  the  next  day.  We  heard  him  and  ran  out 
and  watched  him  fly  right  over  us,  coming  from  the  opposite 
direction  of  Memphis,  going  fast  and  us  all  hollering  and 
waving.  But  he  went  on,  with  Uncle  Willy  jumping  up  and 
down  and  cussing,  and  we  were  loading  the  tent  into  the  car 
to  try  to  catch  him  when  he  came  back.  We  didn't  hear  him 
at  all  now  and  we  could  see  the  propeller  because  it  wasn't 
running  and  it  looked  like  Secretary  wasn't  even  going  to 
light  in  the  pasture  but  he  was  going  to  light  in  some  trees 
on  the  edge  of  it.  But  he  skinned  by  them  and  kind  of 
bumped  down  and  we  ran  up  and  found  him  still  sitting  in 
the  airplane  with  his  eyes  closed  and  his  face  the  color  of 
wood  ashes  and  he  said,  "Captin,  will  you  please  tell  me 

where  to  find  Ren "  before  he  even  opened  his  eyes  to 

see  who  we  were.  He  said  he  had  landed  seven  times  yester- 
day and  it  wouldn't  be  Renfro  and  they  would  tell  him  how 
to  get  to  Renfro  and  he  would  go  there  and  that  wouldn't 
be  Renfro  either  and  he  had  slept  in  the  airplane  last  night 
and  he  hadn't  eaten  since  we  left  Memphis  because  he  had 
spent  the  three  dollars  Uncle  Willy  gave  him  for  gasoline  and 
if  he  hadn't  run  out  of  gas  when  he  did  he  wouldn't  never 
have  found  us. 

Uncle  Willy  wanted  me  to  go  to  town  and  get  some  more 
gas  so  he  could  start  learning  to  run  it  right  away  but  Secre- 
tary wouldn't.  He  just  refused.  He  said  the  airplane  belonged 
to  Uncle  Willy  and  he  reckoned  he  belonged  to  Uncle  Willy 
too,  leastways  until  he  got  back  home,  but  that  he  had  flown 
all  he  could  stand  for  a  while.  So  Uncle  Willy  started  the 
next  morning. 

I  thought  for  a  while  that  I  would  have  to  throw  old  Job 
down  and  hold  him  and  him  hollering,  "Don't  you  git  in  dat 
thing!"  and  still  hollering,  "I  ghy  tell  um!  I  ghy  tell  urn!" 


244  The  Village 

while  we  watched  the  airplane  with  Secretary  and  Uncle 
Willy  in  it  kind  of  jump  into  the  air  and  then  duck  down 
like  Uncle  Willy  was  trying  to  take  the  short  cut  to  China 
and  then  duck  up  again  and  get  to  going  pretty  straight  at 
last  and  fly  around  the  pasture  and  then  turn  down  to  land, 
and  every  day  old  Job  hollering  at  Uncle  Willy  and  field 
hands  coming  up  out  of  the  fields  and  folks  in  wagons  and 
walking  stopping  in  the  road  to  watch  them  and  the  airplane 
coming  down,  passing  us  with  Uncle  Willy  and  Secretary 
side  by  side  and  looking  exactly  alike,  I  don't  mean  in  the 
face  but  exactly  alike  like  two  tines  of  a  garden  fork  look 
exactly  like  just  before  they  chop  into  the  ground;  we  could 
see  Secretary's  eyes  and  his  mouth  run  out  so  you  could 
almost  hear  him  saying,  "Hooooooooo!"  and  Uncle  Willy's 
glasses  shining  and  his  hair  blowing  from  under  his  cap  and 
his  celluloid  collar  that  he  washed  every  night  before  he 
went  to  bed  and  no  tie  in  it  and  they  would  go  by,  fast,  and 
old  Job  hollering,  "You  git  outer  dar!  You  git  outer  dat 
thing!"  and  we  could  hear  Secretary  too:  "Turn  hit  loose, 
Unker  Willy!  Turn  hit  loosel "  and  the  airplane  would  go  on, 
ducking  up  one  second  and  down  the  next  and  with  one  wing 
higher  than  the  other  one  second  and  lower  die  next  and 
then  it  would  be  traveling  sideways  and  maybe  it  would  hit 
the  ground  sideways  the  first  time,  with  a  kind  of  crashing 
sound  and  the  dust  spurting  up  and  then  bounce  off  again 
and  Secretary  hollering,  "Unker  Willy!  Turn  loose!"  and  at 
night  in  the  tent  Uncle  Willy's  eyes  would  still  be  shining 
and  he  would  be  too  excited  to  stop  talking  and  go  to  sleep 
and  I  don't  believe  he  even  remembered  that  he  had  not 
taken  a  drink  since  he  first  thought  about  buying  the  air- 
plane. 

Oh  yes,  I  know  what  they  said  about  me  after  it  was  all 
over,  what  Papa  said  when  he  and  Mrs.  Merridew  got  there 
that  morning,  about  me  being  the  white  one,  almost  a  man, 


Uncle  Willy  245 

and  Secretary  and  old  Job  just  irresponsible  niggers,  yet  it 
was  old  Job  and  Secretary  who  tried  to  prevent  him.  Because 
that  was  it;  that  was  what  they  couldn't  understand. 

I  remember  the  last  night  and  Secretary  and  old  Job  both 
working  on  him,  when  old  Job  finally  made  Secretary  tell 
Uncle  Willy  that  he  would  never  learn  to  fly,  and  Uncle 
Willy  stopped  talking  and  stood  up  and  looked  at  Secretary. 
"Didn't  you  learn  to  run  it  in  two  weeks?"  he  said.  Secretary 
said  yes.  "You,  a  damn,  trifling,  worthless,  ignorant,  burr- 
headed  nigger?"  and  Secretary  said  yes.  "And  me  that  grad- 
uated from  a  university  and  ran  a  fifteen-thousand-dollar 
business  for  forty  years,  yet  you  tell  me  I  can't  learn  to  run 
a  damn  little  fifteen-hundred-dollar  airplane?"  Then  he 
looked  at  me.  "Don't  you  believe  I  can  run  it?"  he  said.  And 
I  looked  at  him  and  I  said,  "Yes.  I  believe  you  can  do  any- 
thing." 

VII 

AND  NOW  I  can't  tell  them.  I  can't  say  it.  Papa  told  me  once 
that  somebody  said  that  if  you  know  it  you  can  say  it.  Or 
maybe  the  man  that  said  that  didn't  count  fourteen-year-old 
boys.  Because  I  must  have  known  it  was  going  to  happen. 
And  Uncle  Willy  must  have  known  it  too,  known  that  the 
moment  would  come.  It  was  like  we  both  had  known  it  and 
we  didn't  even  have  to  compare  notes,  tell  one  another  that 
we  did:  he  not  needing  to  say  that  day  in  Memphis,  "Come 
with  me  so  you  will  be  there  when  I  will  need  you,"  and  me 
not  needing  to  say,  "Let  me  come  so  I  can  be  there  when 
you  will." 

Because  old  Job  telephoned  Mrs.  Merridew.  He  waited 
until  we  were  asleep  and  slipped  out  and  walked  all  the  way 
to  town  and  telephoned  her;  he  didn't  have  any  money  and 
he  probably  never  telephoned  in  his  life  before,  yet  he  tele- 


246  The  Village 

phoned  her  and  the  next  morning  he  came  up  running  in  the 
dew  (the  town,  the  telephone,  was  five  miles  away)  just  as 
Secretary  was  getting  the  engine  started  and  I  knew  what  he 
had  done  even  before  he  got  close  enough  to  holler,  running 
and  stumbling  along  slow  across  the  pasture,  hollering,  "Holt 
um!  Holt  um!  Dey'll  be  here  any  minute!  Jest  holt  um  ten 
minutes  en  dey'll  be  here,"  and  I  knew  and  I  ran  and  met  him 
and  now  I  did  hold  him  and  him  fighting  and  hitting  at  me 
and  still  hollering  at  Uncle  Willy  in  the  airplane.  "You  tele- 
phoned?" I  said.  "Her?  Her?  Told  her  where  he  is?" 

"Yes,"  Uncle  Job  hollered.  "En  she  say  she  gonter  git  yo 
pappy  and  start  right  away  and  be  here  by  six  o'clock,"  and 
me  holding  him;  he  felt  like  a  handful  of  scrawny  dried  sticks 
and  I  could  hear  his  lungs  wheezing  and  I  could  feel  his  heart, 
and  Secretary  came  up  running  too  and  old  Job  begun  to 
holler  at  Secretary,  "Git  him  outer  dar!  Dey  comin!  Dey  be 
here  any  minute  if  you  can  jest  holt  um!"  and  Secretary 
saying,  "Which?  Which?"  and  old  Job  hollered  at  him  to 
run  and  hold  the  airplane  and  Secretary  turned  and  I  tried  to 
grab  his  leg  but  I  couldn't  and  I  could  see  Uncle  Willy  look- 
ing toward  us  and  Secretary  running  toward  the  airplane 
and  I  got  onto  my  knees  and  waved  and  I  was  hollering  too. 
I  don't  reckon  Uncle  Willy  could  hear  me  for  the  engine. 
But  I  tell  you  he  didn't  need  to,  because  we  knew,  we  both 
knew;  and  so  I  knelt  there  and  held  old  Job  on  the  ground 
and  we  saw  the  airplane  start,  with  Secretary  still  running 
after  it,  and  jump  into  the  air  and  duck  down  and  then  jump 
up  again  and  then  it  looked  like  it  had  stopped  high  in  the 
air  above  the  trees  where  we  thought  Secretary  was  fixing  to 
land  that  first  day  before  it  ducked  down  beyond  them  and 
went  out  of  sight  and  Secretary  was  already  running  and  so 
it  was  only  me  and  Uncle  Job  that  had  to  get  up  and  start. 

Oh,  yes,  I  know  what  they  said  about  me;  I  knew  it  all  that 
afternoon  while  we  were  going  home  with  the  hearse  in  front 


Uncle  Willy  247 

and  Secretary  and  old  Job  in  the  Ford  next  and  Papa  and  me 
in  our  car  coming  last  and  Jefferson  getting  nearer  and 
nearer;  and  then  all  of  a  sudden  I  began  to  cry.  Because  the 
dying  wasn't  anything,  it  just  touched  the  outside  of  you 
that  you  wore  around  with  you  for  comfort  and  convenience 
like  you  do  your  clothes:  it  was  because  the  old  garments, 
the  clothes  that  were  not  worth  anything  had  betrayed  one 
of  the  two  of  us  and  the  one  betrayed  was  me,  and  Papa  with 
his  other  arm  around  my  shoulders  now,  saying,  "Now, 
now;  I  didn't  mean  that.  You  didn't  do  it.  Nobody  blames 
you." 

You  see?  That  was  it.  I  did  help  Uncle  Willy.  He  knows 
I  did.  He  knows  he  couldn't  have  done  it  without  me.  He 
knows  I  did;  we  didn't  even  have  to  look  at  one  another 
when  he  went.  That's  it. 

And  now  they  will  never  understand,  not  even  Papa,  and 
there  is  only  me  to  try  to  tell  them  and  how  can  I  ever  tell 
them,  and  make  them  understand?  How  can  I? 


Mule  in  the  Yard 


IT  WAS  a  gray  day  in  late  January,  though  not  cold  because 
of  the  fog.  Old  Het,  just  walked  in  from  the  poorhouse,  ran 
down  the  hall  toward  the  kitchen,  shouting  in  a  strong, 
bright,  happy  voice.  She  was  about  seventy  probably,  though 
by  her  own  counting,  calculated  from  the  ages  of  various 
housewives  in  the  town  from  brides  to  grandmothers  whom 
she  claimed  to  have  nursed  in  infancy,  she  would  have  to  be 
around  a  hundred  and  at  least  triplets.  Tall,  lean,  fog-beaded, 
in  tennis  shoes  and  a  long  rat-colored  cloak  trimmed  with 
what  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  had  been  fur,  a  modish  though 
not  new  purple  toque  set  upon  her  headrag  and  carrying 
(time  was  when  she  made  her  weekly  rounds  from  kitchen 
to  kitchen  carrying  a  brocaded  carpetbag  though  since  the 
advent  of  the  ten-cent  stores  the  carpetbag  became  an  endless 
succession  of  the  convenient  paper  receptacles  with  which 
they  supply  their  customers  for  a  few  cents)  the  shopping- 
bag,  she  ran  into  the  kitchen  and  shouted  with  strong  and 
childlike  pleasure:  "Miss  Mannie!  Mule  in  de  yard!" 

Mrs.  Hait,  stooping  to  the  stove,  in  the  act  of  drawing 
from  it  a  scuttle  of  live  ashes,  jerked  upright;  clutching  the 
scuttle,  she  glared  at  old  Het,  then  she  too  spoke  at  once, 
strong  too,  immediate.  "Them  sons  of  bitches,"  she  said.  She 
left  the  kitchen,  not  running  exactly,  yet  with  a  kind  of  out- 
raged celerity,  carrying  the  scuttle — a  compact  woman  of 

249 


250  The  Village 

forty-odd,  with  an  air  of  indomitable  yet  relieved  bereave- 
ment, as  though  that  which  had  relicted  her  had  been  a 
woman  and  a  not  particularly  valuable  one  at  that.  She  wore 
a  calico  wrapper  and  a  sweater  coat,  and  a  man's  felt  hat 
which  they  in  the  town  knew  had  belonged  to  her  ten  years' 
dead  husband.  But  the  man's  shoes  had  not  belonged  to  him. 
They  were  high  shoes  which  buttoned,  with  toes  like  small 
tulip  bulbs,  and  in  the  town  they  knew  that  she  had  bought 
them  new  for  herself.  She  and  old  Het  ran  down  the  kitchen 
steps  and  into  the  fog.  That's  why  it  was  not  cold:  as  though 
there  lay  supine  and  prisoned  between  earth  and  mist  the  long 
winter  night's  suspiration  of  the  sleeping  town  in  dark,  close 
rooms — the  slumber  and  the  rousing;  the  stale  waking  ther- 
mostatic,  by  re-heating  heat-engendered:  it  lay  like  a  scum  of 
cold  grease  upon  the  steps  and  the  wooden  entrance  to  the 
basement  and  upon  the  narrow  plank  walk  which  led  to  a 
shed  building  in  the  corner  of  the  yard:  upon  these  planks, 
running  and  still  carrying  the  scuttle  of  live  ashes,  Mrs.  Hait 
skated  viciously. 

"Watch  out! "  old  Het,  footed  securely  by  her  rubber  soles, 
cried  happily.  "Dey  in  de  front!"  Mrs.  Hait  did  not  fall.  She 
did  not  even  pause.  She  took  in  the  immediate  scene  with 
one  cold  glare  and  was  running  again  when  there  appeared  at 
the  corner  of  the  house  and  apparently  having  been  born 
before  their  eyes  of  the  fog  itself,  a  mule.  It  looked  taller 
than  a  giraffe.  Longheaded,  with  a  flying  halter  about  its 
scissorlike  ears,  it  rushed  down  upon  them  with  violent  and 
apparitionlike  suddenness. 

"Dar  hit!"  old  Het  cried,  waving  the  shopping-bag. 
"Hoo!"  Mrs.  Hait  whirled.  Again  she  skidded  savagely  on 
the  greasy  planks  as  she  and  the  mule  rushed  parallel  with 
one  another  toward  the  shed  building,  from  whose  open 
doorway  there  now  projected  the  static  and  astonished  face 
of  a  cow.  To  the  cow  the  fog-born  mule  doubtless  looked 


Mule  in  the  Yard  251 

taller  and  more  incredibly  sudden  than  a  giraffe  even,  and 
apparently  bent  upon  charging  right  through  the  shed  as 
though  it  were  made  of  straw  or  were  purely  and  simply 
mirage.  The  cow's  head  likewise  had  a  quality  transient  and 
abrupt  and  unmundane.  It  vanished,  sucked  into  invisibility 
like  a  match  flame,  though  the  mind  knew  and  the  reason 
insisted  that  she  had  withdrawn  into  the  shed,  from  which, 
as  proof's  burden,  there  came  an  indescribable  sound  of 
shock  and  alarm  by  shed  and  beast  engendered,  analogous  to 
a  single  note  from  a  profoundly  struck  lyre  or  harp.  Toward 
this  sound  Mrs.  Hait  sprang,  immediately,  as  if  by  pure  reflex, 
as  though  in  invulnerable  compact  of  female  with  female 
against  a  world  of  mule  and  man.  She  and  the  mule  con- 
verged upon  the  shed  at  top  speed,  the  heavy  scuttle  poised 
lightly  in  her  hand  to  hurl.  Of  course  it  did  not  take  this 
long,  and  likewise  it  was  the  mule  which  refused  the  gambit. 
Old  Het  was  still  shouting  "Dar  hit!  Dar  hit!"  when  it 
swerved  and  rushed  at  her  where  she  stood  tall  as  a  stove 
pipe,  holding  the  shopping-bag  which  she  swung  at  the  beast 
as  it  rushed  past  her  and  vanished  beyond  the  other  corner 
of  the  house  as  though  sucked  back  into  the  fog  which  had 
produced  it,  profound  and  instantaneous  and  without  any 
sound. 

With  that  unhasteful  celerity  Mrs.  Hait  turned  and  set 
the  scuttle  down  on  the  brick  coping  of  the  cellar  entrance 
and  she  and  old  Het  turned  the  corner  of  the  house  in  time  to 
see  the  now  wraithlike  mule  at  the  moment  when  its  course 
converged  with  that  of  a  choleric-looking  rooster  and  eight 
Rhode  Island  Red  hens  emerging  from  beneath  the  house. 
Then  for  an  instant  its  progress  assumed  the  appearance  and 
trappings  of  an  apotheosis:  hell-born  and  hell-returning,  in 
the  act  of  dissolving  completely  into  the  fog,  it  seemed  to  rise 
vanishing  into  a  sunless  and  dimensionless  medium  borne 
upon  and  enclosed  by  small  winged  goblins. 


252  The  Village 

"Dey's  mo  in  de  front!"  old  Het  cried. 

"Them  sons  of  bitches,"  Mrs.  Hait  said,  again  in  that  grim, 
prescient  voice  without  rancor  or  heat.  It  was  not  the  mules 
to  which  she  referred;  it  was  not  even  the  owner  of  them.  It 
was  her  whole  town-dwelling  history  as  dated  from  that 
April  dawn  ten  years  ago  when  what  was  left  of  Hait  had 
been  gathered  from  the  mangled  remains  of  five  mules  and 
several  feet  of  new  Manila  rope  on  a  blind  curve  of  the  rail- 
road just  out  of  town;  the  geographical  hap  of  her  very 
home;  the  very  components  of  her  bereavement — the  mules, 
the  defunct  husband,  and  the  owner  of  them.  His  name  was 
Snopes;  in  the  town  they  knew  about  him  too — how  he 
bought  his  stock  at  the  Memphis  market  and  brought  it  to 
Jefferson  and  sold  it  to  farmers  and  widows  and  orphans 
black  and  white,  for  whatever  he  could  contrive — down  to  a 
certain  figure;  and  about  how  (usually  in  the  dead  season  of 
winter)  teams  and  even  small  droves  of  his  stock  would  es- 
cape from  the  fenced  pasture  where  he  kept  them  and,  tied 
one  to  another  with  sometimes  quite  new  hemp  rope  (and 
which  item  Snopes  included  in  the  subsequent  claim),  would 
be  annihilated  by  freight  trains  on  the  same  blind  curve 
which  was  to  be  the  scene  of  Halt's  exit  from  this  world; 
once  a  town  wag  sent  him  through  the  mail  a  printed  train 
schedule  for  the  division.  A  squat,  pasty  man  perennially  tie- 
less  and  with  a  strained,  harried  expression,  at  stated  intervals 
he  passed  athwart  the  peaceful  and  somnolent  life  of  the 
town  in  dust  and  uproar,  his  advent  heralded  by  shouts  and 
cries,  his  passing  marked  by  a  yellow  cloud  filled  with  toss- 
ing jug-shaped  heads  and  clattering  hooves  and  the  same  for- 
lorn and  earnest  cries  of  the  drovers;  and  last  of  all  and  well 
back  out  of  the  dust,  Snopes  himself  moving  at  a  harried  and 
panting  trot,  since  it  was  said  in  the  town  that  he  was  deathly 
afraid  of  the  very  beasts  in  which  he  cleverly  dealt. 

The  path  which  he  must  follow  from  the  railroad  station 


Mule  in  the  Yard  253 

to  his  pasture  crossed  the  edge  of  town  near  Halt's  home; 
Hait  and  Mrs.  Hait  had  not  been  in  the  house  a  week  before 
they  waked  one  morning  to  find  it  surrounded  by  galloping 
mules  and  the  air  filled  with  the  shouts  and  cries  of  the  dro- 
vers. But  it  was  not  until  that  April  dawn  some  years  later, 
when  those  who  reached  the  scene  first  found  what  might  be 
termed  foreign  matter  among  the  mangled  mules  and  the 
savage  fragments  of  new  rope,  that  the  town  suspected  that 
Hait  stood  in  any  closer  relationship  to  Snopes  and  the  mules 
than  that-  of  helping  at  periodical  intervals  to  drive  them  out 
of  his  front  yard.  After  that  they  believed  that  they  knew;  in 
a  three  days'  recess  of  interest,  surprise,  and  curiosity  they 
watched  to  see  if  Snopes  would  try  to  collect  on  Hait  also. 

But  they  learned  only  that  the  adjuster  appeared  and  called 
upon  Mrs.  Hait  and  that  a  few  days  later  she  cashed  a  check 
for  eight  thousand  five  hundred  dollars,  since  this  was  back 
in  the  old  halcyon  days  when  even  the  companies  considered 
their  southern  branches  and  divisions  the  legitimate  prey  of 
all  who  dwelt  beside  them.  She  took  the  cash:  she  stood  in 
her  sweater  coat  and  the  hat  which  Hait  had  been  wearing 
on  the  fatal  morning  a  week  ago  and  listened  in  cold,  grim 
silence  while  the  teller  counted  the  money  and  the  president 
and  the  cashier  tried  to  explain  to  her  the  virtues  of  a  bond, 
then  of  a  savings  account,  then  of  a  checking  account,  and 
departed  with  the  money  in  a  salt  sack  under  her  apron;  after 
a  time  she  painted  her  house:  that  serviceable  and  time-defy- 
ing color  which  the  railroad  station  was  painted,  as  though 
out  of  sentiment  or  (as  some  said)  gratitude. 

The  adjuster  also  summoned  Snopes  into  conference,  from 
which  he  emerged  not  only  more  harried-looking  than  ever, 
but  with  his  face  stamped  with  a  bewildered  dismay  which  it 
was  to  wear  from  then  on,  and  that  was  the  last  time  his  pas- 
ture fence  was  ever  to  give  inexplicably  away  at  dead  of 
night  upon  mules  coupled  in  threes  and  fours  by  adeauate 


254  The  Village 

rope  even  though  not  always  new.  And  then  it  seemed  as 
though  the  mules  themselves  knew  this,  as  if,  even  while  hal- 
tered at  the  Memphis  block  at  his  bid,  they  sensed  it  somehow 
as  they  sensed  that  he  was  afraid  of  them.  Now,  three  or  four 
times  a  year  and  as  though  by  fiendish  concord  and  as  soon 
as  they  were  freed  of  the  box  car,  the  entire  uproar — the  dust 
cloud  filled  with  shouts  earnest,  harried,  and  dismayed,  with 
plunging  demoniac  shapes — would  become  translated  in  a 
single  burst  of  perverse  and  uncontrollable  violence,  without 
any  intervening  contact  with  time,  space,  or  earth,  across 
the  peaceful  and  astonished  town  and  into  Mrs.  Hait's  yard, 
where,  in  a  certain  hapless  despair  which  abrogated  for  the 
moment  even  physical  fear,  Snopes  ducked  and  dodged 
among  the  thundering  shapes  about  the  house  (for  whose 
very  impervious  paint  the  town  believed  that  he  felt  he  had 
paid  and  whose  inmate  lived  within  it  a  life  of  idle  and  queen- 
like  ease  on  money  which  he  considered  at  least  partly  his 
own)  while  gradually  that  section  and  neighborhood  gath- 
ered to  look  on  from  behind  adjacent  window  curtains  and 
porches  screened  and  not,  and  from  the  sidewalks  and  even 
from  halted  wagons  and  cars  in  the  street — housewives  in  the 
wrappers  and  boudoir  caps  of  morning,  children  on  the  way 
to  school,  casual  Negroes  and  casual  whites  in  static  and  en- 
tertained repose. 

They  were  all  there  when,  followed  by  old  Het  and  carry- 
ing the  stub  of  a  worn-out  broom,  Mrs.  Hait  ran  around  the 
next  corner  and  onto  the  handkerchief-sized  plot  of  earth 
which  she  called  her  front  yard.  It  was  small;  any  creature 
with  a  running  stride  of  three  feet  could  have  spanned  it  in 
two  paces,  yet  at  the  moment,  due  perhaps  to  the  myopic 
and  distortive  quality  of  the  fog,  it  seemed  to  be  as  incredibly 
full  of  mad  life  as  a  drop  of  water  beneath  the  microscope. 
Yet  again  she  did  not  falter.  With  the  broom  clutched  in  her 
hand  and  apparently  with  a  kind  of  sublime  faith  in  her  own 


Mule  in  the  Yard  255 

invulnerability,  she  rushed  on  after  the  haltered  mule  which 
was  still  in  that  arrested  and  wraithlike  process  of  vanishing 
furiously  into  the  fog,  its  wake  indicated  by  the  tossing  and 
dispersing  shapes  of  the  nine  chickens  like  so  many  jagged 
scraps  of  paper  in  the  dying  air  blast  of  an  automobile,  and 
the  madly  dodging  figure  of  a  man.  The  man  was  Snopes; 
beaded  too  with  moisture,  his  wild  face  gaped  with  hoarse 
shouting  and  the  two  heavy  lines  of  shaven  beard  descending 
from  the  corners  of  it  as  though  in  alluvial  retrospect  of  years 
of  tobacco,  he  screamed  at  her:  "Fore  God,  Miz  Haiti  I  done 
everything  I  could!"  She  didn't  even  look  at  him. 

"Ketch  that  big  un  with  the  bridle  on,"  she  said  in  her  cold, 
panting  voice.  "Git  that  big  un  outen  here." 

"Sho!"  Snopes  shrieked.  "Jest  let  urn  take  their  time.  Jest 
don't  git  um  excited  now." 

"Watch  out!"  old  Het  shouted.  "He  headin  fer  de  back 
again!'' 

"Git  the  rope,"  Mrs.  Halt  said,  running  again.  Snopes 
glared  back  at  old  Het. 

"Fore  God,  where  is  ere  rope?"  he  shouted. 

"In  de  cellar  fo  God!"  old  Het  shouted,  also  without  paus- 
ing. "Go  roun  de  udder  way  en  head  um."  Again  she  and 
Mrs.  Halt  turned  the  corner  in  time  to  see  again  the  still-van- 
ishing mule  with  the  halter  once  more  in  the  act  of  floating 
lightly  onward  in  its  cloud  of  chickens  with  which,  they 
being  able  to  pass  under  the  house  and  so  on  the  chord  of  a 
circle  while  it  had  to  go  around  on  the  arc,  it  had  once  more 
coincided.  When  they  turned  the  next  corner  they  were  in 
the  back  yard  again. 

"Fo  God!"  old  Het  cried.  "He  fixin  to  misuse  de  cow!" 
For  they  had  gained  on  the  mule  now,  since  it  had  stopped. 
In  fact,  they  came  around  the  corner  on  a  tableau.  The  cow 
now  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  yard.  She  and  the  mule  faced 
one  another  a  few  feet  apart.  Motionless,  with  lowered  heads 


256  The  Village 

and  braced  forelegs,  they  looked  like  two  book  ends  from 
two  distinct  pairs  of  a  general  pattern  which  some  one  of 
amateurly  bucolic  leanings  might  have  purchased,  and  which 
some  child  had  salvaged,  brought  into  idle  juxtaposition  and 
then  forgotten;  and,  his  head  and  shoulders  projecting  above 
the  back-flung  slant  of  the  cellar  entrance  where  the  scuttle 
still  sat,  Snopes  standing  as  though  buried  to  the  armpits  for 
a  Spanish-Indian-American  suttee.  Only  again  it  did  not  take 
this  long.  It  was  less  than  tableau;  it  was  one  of  those  things 
which  later  even  memory  cannot  quite  affirm.  Now  and  in 
turn,  man  and  cow  and  mule  vanished  beyond  the  next  cor- 
ner, Snopes  now  in  the  lead,  carrying  the  rope,  the  cow  next 
with  her  tail  rigid  and  raked  slightly  like  the  stern  staff  of  a 
boat.  Mrs.  Hait  and  old  Het  ran  on,  passing  the  open  cellar 
gaping  upon  its  accumulation  of  human  necessities  and  wid- 
owed womanyears — boxes  for  kindling  wood,  old  papers  and 
magazines,  the  broken  and  outworn  furniture  and  utensils 
which  no  woman  ever  throws  away;  a  pile  of  coal  and  an- 
other of  pitch  pine  for  priming  fires — and  ran  on  and  turned 
the  next  corner  to  see  man  and  cow  and  mule  all  vanishing 
now  in  the  wild  cloud  of  ubiquitous  chickens  which  had  once 
more  crossed  beneath  the  house  and  emerged.  They  ran  on, 
Mrs.  Hait  in  grim  and  unflagging  silence,  old  Het  with  the 
eager  and  happy  amazement  of  a  child.  But  when  they  gained 
the  front  again  they  saw  only  Snopes.  He  lay  flat  on  his 
stomach,  his  head  and  shoulders  upreared  by  his  outstretched 
arms,  his  coat  tail  swept  forward  by  its  own  arrested  momen- 
tum about  his  head  so  that  from  beneath  it  his  slack-jawed 
face  mused  in  wild  repose  like  that  of  a  burlesqued  nun. 

"Whar'd  dey  go?"  old  Het  shouted  at  him.  He  didn't 
answer. 

uDey  tightenin'  on  de  curves!"  she  cried.  "Dey  already  in 
de  back  again!"  That's  where  they  were.  The  cow  made  a 
feint  at  running  into  her  shed,  but  deciding  perhaps  that  her 


Mule  in  the  Yard  257 

speed  was  too  great,  she  whirled  in  a  final  desperation  of 
despair-like  valor.  But  they  did  not  see  this,  nor  see  the  mule, 
swerving  to  pass  her,  crash  and  blunder  for  an  instant  at  the 
open  cellar  door  before  going  on.  When  they  arrived,  the 
mule  was  gone.  The  scuttle  was  gone  too,  but  they  did  not 
notice  it;  they  saw  only  the  cow  standing  in  the  centre  of  the 
yard  as  before,  panting,  rigid,  with  braced  forelegs  and  low- 
ered head  facing  nothing,  as  if  the  child  had  returned  and  re- 
moved one  of  the  book  ends  for  some  newer  purpose  or 
game.  They  ran  on.  Mrs.  Hait  ran  heavily  now,  her  mouth 
too  open,  her  face  putty-colored  and  one  hand  pressed  to  her 
side.  So  slow  was  their  progress  that  the  mule  in  its  third 
circuit  of  the  house  overtook  them  from  behind  and  soared 
past  with  undiminished  speed,  with  brief  demon  thunder  and 
a  keen  ammonia-sweet  reek  of  sweat  sudden  and  sharp  as  a 
jeering  cry,  and  was  gone.  Yet  they  ran  doggedly  on  around 
the  next  corner  in  time  to  see  it  succeed  at  last  in  vanishing 
into  the  fog;  they  heard  its  hoofs,  brief,  staccato,  and  derisive, 
on  the  paved  street,  dying  away. 

"Well!"  old  Het  said,  stopping.  She  panted,  happily. 
"Gentlemen,  hush!  Ain't  we  had — "  Then  she  became  stone 
still;  slowly  her  head  turned,  high-nosed,  her  nostrils  pulsing; 
perhaps  for  the  instant  she  saw  the  open  cellar  door  as  they 
had  last  passed  it,  with  no  scuttle  beside  it.  "Fo  God  I  smells 
smoke!"  she  said.  "Chile,  run,  git  yo  money." 

That  was  still  early,  not  yet  ten  o'clock.  By  noon  the 
house  had  burned  to  the  ground.  There  was  a  farmers'  sup- 
ply store  where  Snopes  could  be  usually  found;  more  than 
one  had  made  a  point  of  finding  him  there  by  that  time.  They 
told  him  about  how  when  the  fire  engine  and  the  crowd 
reached  the  scene,  Mrs.  Hait,  followed  by  old  Het  carrying 
her  shopping-bag  in  one  hand  and  a  framed  portrait  of  Mr. 
Hait  in  the  other,  emerged  with  an  umbrella  and  wearing  a 
new,  dun-colored,  mail-order  coat,  in  one  pocket  of  which 


258  The  Villag* 

lay  a  fruit  jar  filled  with  smoothly  rolled  banknotes  and  in  the 
other  a  heavy,  nickel-plated  pistol,  and  crossed  the  street  to 
the  house  opposite,  where  with  old  Het  beside  her  in  another 
rocker,  she  had  been  sitting  ever  since  on  the  veranda,  grim, 
inscrutable,  the  two  of  them  rocking  steadily,  while  hoarse 
and  tireless  men  hurled  her  dishes  and  furniture  and  bedding 
up  and  down  the  street. 

"What  are  you  telling  me  for?"  Snopes  said.  "Hit  warn't 
me  that  set  that  ere  scuttle  of  live  fire  where  the  first  thing 
that  passed  would  knock  hit  into  the  cellar." 

"It  was  you  that  opened  the  cellar  door,  though." 

"Sho.  And  for  what?  To  git  that  rope,  her  own  rope, 
where  she  told  me  to  git  it." 

"To  catch  your  mule  with,  that  was  trespassing  on  her 
property.  You  can't  get  out  of  it  this  time,  I.  O.  There  ain't 
a  jury  in  the  county  that  won't  find  for  her." 

"Yes.  I  reckon  not.  And  just  because  she  is  a  woman. 
That's  why.  Because  she  is  a  durn  woman.  All  right.  Let  her 
go  to  her  durn  jury  with  hit.  I  can  talk  too;  I  reckon  hit's  a 
few  things  I  could  tell  a  jury  myself  about — "  He  ceased. 
They  were  watching  him. 

"What?  Tell  a  jury  about  what?" 

"Nothing.  Because  hit  ain't  going  to  no  jury.  A  jury  be- 
tween her  and  me?  Me  and  Mannie  Hait?  You  boys  don't 
know  her  if  you  think  she's  going  to  make  trouble  over  a 
pure  acci-dent  couldn't  nobody  help.  Why,  there  ain't  a 
fairer,  finer  woman  in  the  county  than  Miz  Mannie  Hait.  I 
just  wisht  I  had  a  opportunity  to  tell  her  so."  The  opportu- 
nity came  at  once.  Old  Het  was  behind  her,  carrying  the 
shopping-bag.  Mrs.  Hait  looked  once,  quietly,  about  at  the 
faces,  making  no  response  to  the  murmur  of  curious  saluta- 
tion, then  not  again.  She  didn't  look  at  Snopes  long  either, 
nor  talk  to  him  long. 

"I  come  to  buy  that  mule,"  she  said. 


Mule  in  the  Yard  259 

"What  mule?"  They  looked  at  one  another.  "You'd  like 
to  own  that  mule?"  She  looked  at  him.  "Hit'll  cost  you  a 
hundred  and  fifty,  Miz  Mannie." 

"You  mean  dollars?" 

"I  don't  mean  dimes  nor  nickels  neither,  Miz  Mannie." 

"Dollars,"  she  said.  "That's  more  than  mules  was  in  Halt's 


time." 


"Lots  of  things  is  different  since  Halt's  time.  Including 
you  and  me." 

"I  reckon  so,"  she  said.  Then  she  went  away.  She  turned 
without  a  word,  old  Het  following. 

"Maybe  one  of  them  others  you  looked  at  this  morning 
would  suit  you,"  Snopes  said.  She  didn't  answer.  Then  they 
were  gone. 

"I  don't  know  as  I  would  have  said  that  last  to  her,"  one 
said. 

"What  for?"  Snopes  said.  "If  she  was  aiming  to  law  some- 
thing outen  me  about  that  fire,  you  reckon  she  would  have 
come  and  offered  to  pay  me  money  for  hit?"  That  was  about 
one  o'clock.  About  four  o'clock  he  was  shouldering  his  way 
through  a  throng  of  Negroes  before  a  cheap  grocery  store 
when  one  called  his  name.  It  was  old  Het,  the  now  bulging 
shopping-bag  on  her  arm,  eating  bananas  from  a  paper  sack. 

"Fo  God  I  wuz  jest  dis  minute  huntin  fer  you,"  she  said. 
She  handed  the  banana  to  a  woman  beside  her  and  delved  and 
fumbled  in  the  shopping-bag  and  extended  a  greenback. 
"Miz  Mannie  gimme  dis  to  give  you;  I  wuz  jest  on  de  way 
to  de  sto  whar  you  stay  at.  Here."  He  took  the  bill. 

"What's  this?  From  Miz  Hait?" 

"Fer  de  mule."  The  bill  was  for  ten  dollars.  "You  don't 
need  to  gimme  no  receipt.  I  kin  be  de  witness  I  give  hit  to 
you." 

"Ten  dollars?  For  that  mule?  I  told  her  a  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars." 


260  The  Village 

"You'll  have  to  fix  dat  up  wid  her  yo'self.  She  jest  gimme 
dis  to  give  ter  you  when  she  sot  out  to  fetch  de  mule." 

"Set  out  to  fetch —  She  went  out  there  herself  and  taken 
my  mule  outen  my  pasture?" 

"Lawd,  chile,"  old  Het  said,  "Miz  Mannie  ain't  skeered  of 
no  mule.  Ain't  you  done  foun  dat  out?" 

And  then  it  became  late,  what  with  the  yet  short  winter 
days;  when  she  came  in  sight  of  the  two  gaunt  chimneys 
against  the  sunset,  evening  was  already  finding  itself.  But  she 
could  smell  the  ham  cooking  before  she  came  in  sight  of  the 
cow  shed  even,  though  she  could  not  see  it  until  she  came 
around  in  front  where  the  fire  burned  beneath  an  iron  skillet 
set  on  bricks  and  where  nearby  Mrs.  Hait  was  milking  the 
cow.  "Well,"  old  Het  said,  "you  is  settled  down,  ain't  you?" 
She  looked  into  the  shed,  neated  and  raked  and  swept  even, 
and  floored  now  with  fresh  hay.  A  clean  new  lantern  burned 
on  a  box,  beside  it  a  pallet  bed  was  spread  neatly  on  the  straw 
and  turned  neatly  back  for  the  night.  "Why,  you  is  fixed 
up,"  she  said  with  pleased  astonishment.  Within  the  door  was 
a  kitchen  chair.  She  drew  it  out  and  sat  down  beside  the 
skillet  and  laid  the  bulging  shopping-bag  beside  her. 

"I'll  tend  dis  meat  whilst  you  milks.  I'd  offer  to  strip  dat 
cow  fer  you  ef  I  wuzn't  so  wo  out  wid  all  dis  excitement  we 
been  had."  She  looked  around  her.  "I  don't  believe  I  sees  yo 
new  mule,  dough."  Mrs.  Hait  grunted,  her  head  against  the 
cow's  flank.  After  a  moment  she  said, 

"Did  you  give  him  that  money?" 

"I  give  um  ter  him.  He  ack  surprise  at  first,  lak  maybe  he 
think  you  didn't  aim  to  trade  dat  quick.  I  tole  him  to  settle  de 
details  wid  you  later.  He  taken  de  money,  dough.  So  I  reckin 
dat's  offen  his  mine  en  yo'n  bofe."  Again  Mrs.  Hait  grunted. 
Old  Het  turned  the  ham  in  the  skillet.  Beside  it  the  coffee  pot 
bubbled  and  steamed.  "Cawfee  smell  good  too,"  she  said.  "I 
ain't  had  no  appetite  in  years  now.  A  bird  couldn't  live  on  de 
vittles  I  eats.  But  jest  lemme  git  a  whiff  er  cawfee  en  seem  lak 


Mule  in  the  Yard  261 

hit  always  whets  me  a  little.  Now,  ef  you  jest  had  nudder 
little  piece  o  dis  ham,  now —  Fo  God,  you  got  company 
aready."  But  Mrs.  Hait  did  not  even  look  up  until  she  had 
finished.  Then  she  turned  without  rising  from  the  box  on 
which  she  sat. 

"I  reckon  you  and  me  better  have  a  little  talk,"  Snopes  said. 
"I  reckon  I  got  something  that  belongs  to  you  and  I  hear  you 
got  something  that  belongs  to  me."  He  looked  about,  quickly, 
ceaselessly,  while  old  Het  watched  him.  He  turned  to  her. 
"You  go  away,  aunty.  I  don't  reckon  you  want  to  set  here 
and  listen  to  us." 

uLawd,  honey,"  old  Het  said.  "Don't  you  mind  me.  I  done 
already  had  so  much  troubles  myself  dat  I  kin  set  en  listen 
to  udder  folks'  widout  hit  worryin  me  a-tall.  You  gawn  talk 
whut  you  came  ter  talk;  I  jest  set  here  en  tend  de  ham." 
Snopes  looked  at  Mrs.  Hait. 

"Ain't  you  going  to  make  her  go  away?"  he  said. 

"What  for?"  Mrs.  Hait  said.  "I  reckon  she  ain't  the  first 
critter  that  ever  come  on  this  yard  when  hit  wanted  and 
went  or  stayed  when  hit  liked."  Snopes  made  a  gesture,  brief, 
fretted,  restrained. 

"Well,"  he  said.  "All  right.  So  you  taken  the  mule." 

"I  paid  you  for  it.  She  give  you  the  money." 

"Ten  dollars.  For  a  hundred-and-fifty-dollar  mule.  Ten 
dollars." 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  hundred-and-fifty-dollar 
mules.  All  I  know  is  what  the  railroad  paid."  Now  Snopes 
looked  at  her  for  a  full  moment. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Them  sixty  dollars  a  head  the  railroad  used  to  pay  you  for 
mules  back  when  you  and  Hait " 

"Hush,"  Snopes  said;  he  looked  about  again,  quick,  cease- 
less. "All  right.  Even  call  it  sixty  dollars.  But  you  just  sent 
me  ten." 

"Yes.  I  sent  you  the  difference."  He  looked  at  her,  per- 


262  The  Village 

fectly  still.  "Between  that  mule  and  what  you  owed  Halt." 

"What  I  owed " 

"For  getting  them  five  mules  onto  the  tr " 

"Hush!"  he  cried.  "Hush!"  Her  voice  went  on,  cold,  grim, 
level. 

"For  helping  you.  You  paid  him  fifty  dollars  each  time, 
and  the  railroad  paid  you  sixty  dollars  a  head  for  the  mules. 
Ain't  that  right?"  He  watched  her.  "The  last  time  you  never 
paid  him.  So  I  taken  that  mule  instead.  And  I  sent  you  the  ten 
dollars  difference." 

"Yes,"  he  said  in  a  tone  of  quiet,  swift,  profound  bemuse- 
ment;  then  he  cried:  "But  look!  Here's  where  I  got  you.  Hit 
was  our  agreement  that  I  wouldn't  never  owe  him  nothing 
until  after  the  mules  was " 

"I  reckon  you  better  hush  yourself,"  Mrs.  Halt  said. 

" — until  hit  was  over.  And  this  time,  when  over  had  come, 
I  never  owed  nobody  no  money  because  the  man  hit  would 
have  been  owed  to  wasn't  nobody,"  he  cried  triumphantly. 
"You  see?"  Sitting  on  the  box,  motionless,  downlooking,  Mrs, 
Hait  seemed  to  muse.  "So  you  just  take  your  ten  dollars  back 
and  tell  me  where  my  mule  is  and  we'll  just  go  back  good 
friends  to  where  we  started  at.  Fore  God,  I'm  as  sorry  as  ere 
a  living  man  about  that  fire " 

"Fo  God!"  old  Het  said,  "hit  was  a  blaze,  wuzn't  it?" 

" — but  likely  with  all  that  ere  railroad  money  you  still  got, 
you  just  been  wanting  a  chance  to  build  new,  all  along.  So 
here.  Take  hit."  He  put  the  money  into  her  hand.  "Where's 
my  mule?"  But  Mrs.  Hait  didn't  move  at  once. 

"You  want  to  give  it  back  to  me?"  she  said. 

"Sho.  We  been  friends  all  the  time;  now  we'll  just  go  back 
to  where  we  left  off  being.  I  don't  hold  no  hard  feelings  and 
don't  you  hold  none.  Where  you  got  the  mule  hid?" 

"Up  at  the  end  of  that  ravine  ditch  behind  Spilmer's," 
she  said. 


Mule  in  the  Yard  263 

"Sho.  I  know.  A  good,  sheltered  place,  since  you  ain't  got 
nere  barn.  Only  if  you'd  a  just  left  hit  in  the  pasture,  hit 
would  a  saved  us  both  trouble.  But  hit  ain't  no  hard  feelings 
though.  And  so  I'll  bid  you  goodnight.  You're  all  fixed  up, 
I  see.  I  reckon  you  could  save  some  more  money  by  not 
building  no  house  a-tall." 

"I  reckon  I  could,"  Mrs.  Hait  said.  But  he  was  gone. 

"Whut  did  you  leave  de  mule  dar  fer?"  old  Het  said. 

"I  reckon  that's  far  enough,"  Mrs.  Hait  said. 

"Fer  enough?"  But  Mrs.  Hait  came  and  looked  into  the 
skillet,  and  old  Het  said,  "Wuz  hit  me  er  you  dat  mentioned 
something  erbout  er  nudder  piece  o  dis  ham?"  So  they  were 
both  eating  when  in  the  not-quite-yet  accomplished  twilight 
Snopes  returned.  He  came  up  quietly  and  stood,  holding  his 
hands  to  the  blaze  as  if  he  were  quite  cold.  He  did  not  look 
at  any  one  now. 

"I  reckon  I'll  take  that  ere  ten  dollars,"  he  said. 

"What  ten  dollars?"  Mrs.  Hait  said.  He  seemed  to  muse 
upon  the  fire.  Mrs.  Hait  and  old  Het  chewed  quietly,  old  Het 
alone  watching  him. 

"You  ain't  going  to  give  hit  back  to  me?"  he  said. 

"You  was  the  one  that  said  to  let's  go  back  to  where  we 
started,"  Mrs.  Hait  said. 

"Fo  God  you  wuz,  en  dat's  de  fack,"  old  Het  said.  Snopes 
mused  upon  the  fire;  he  spoke  in  a  tone  of  musing  and  amazed 
despair: 

"I  go  to  the  worry  and  the  risk  and  the  agoment  for  years 
and  years  and  I  get  sixty  dollars.  And  you,  one  time,  without 
no  trouble  and  no  risk,  without  even  knowing  you  are  going 
to  git  it,  git  eighty-five  hundred  dollars.  I  never  begrudged 
hit  to  you;  can't  nere  a  man  say  I  did,  even  if  hit  did  seem  a 
little  strange  that  you  should  git  it  all  when  he  wasn't  work- 
ing for  you  and  you  never  even  knowed  where  he  was  at  and 
what  doing;  that  all  you  done  to  git  it  was  to  be  married  to 


264  The  Village 

him.  And  now,  after  all  these  ten  years  of  not  begrudging 
you  hit,  you  taken  the  best  mule  I  had  and  you  ain't  even 
going  to  pay  me  ten  dollars  for  hit.  Hit  ain't  right.  Hit  ain't 
justice." 

"You  got  de  mule  back,  en  you  ain't  satisfried  yit,"  old  Het 
said.  "Whut  does  you  want?"  Now  Snopes  looked  at  Mrs. 
Hait. 

"For  the  last  time  I  ask  hit,"  he  said.  "Will  you  or  won't 
you  give  hit  back?" 

"Give  what  back?"  Mrs.  Hait  said.  Snopes  turned.  He 
stumbled  over  something — :it  was  old  Het's  shopping-bag — 
and  recovered  and  went  on.  They  could  see  him  in  silhou- 
ette, as  though  framed  by  the  two  blackened  chimneys 
against  the  dying  west;  they  saw  him  fling  up  both  clenched 
hands  in  a  gesture  almost  Gallic,  of  resignation  and  impotent 
despair.  Then  he  was  gone.  Old  Het  was  watching  Mrs.  Hait. 

"Honey,"  she  said.  "Whut  did  you  do  wid  de  mule?"  Mrs. 
Hait  leaned  forward  to  the  fire.  On  her  plate  lay  a  stale  bis- 
cuit. She  lifted  the  skillet  and  poured  over  the  biscuit  the 
grease  in  which  the  ham  had  cooked. 

"I  shot  it,"  she  said. 

"You  which?"  old  Het  said.  Mrs.  Hait  began  to  eat  the 
biscuit.  "Well,"  old  Het  said,  happily,  "de  mule  burnt  de 
house  en  you  shot  de  mule.  Dat's  whut  I  calls  justice."  It 
was  getting  dark  fast  now,  and  before  her  was  still  the  three- 
mile  walk  to  the  poorhouse.  But  the  dark  would  last  a  long 
time  in  January,  and  the  poorhouse  too  would  not  move  at 
once.  She  sighed  with  weary  and  happy  relaxation.  "Gentle- 
men, hush!  Ain't  we  had  a  day!" 


That  Will  Be  Fine 


WE  COULD  HEAR  the  water  running  into  the  tub.  We  looked 
at  the  presents  scattered  over  the  bed  where  mamma  had 
wrapped  them  in  the  colored  paper,  with  our  names  on  them 
so  Grandpa  could  tell  who  they  belonged  to  easy  when  he 
would  take  them  off  the  tree.  There  was  a  present  for  every- 
body except  Grandpa  because  mamma  said  that  Grandpa  is 
too  old  to  get  presents  any  more. 

"This  one  is  yours,"  I  said. 

"Sho  now/'  Rosie  said.  "You  come  on  and  get  in  that 
tub  like  your  mamma  tell  you." 

"I  know  what's  in  it,"  I  said.  "I  could  tell  you  if  I  wanted 
to." 

Rosie  looked  at  her  present.  "I  reckon  I  kin  wait  twell 
hit  be  handed  to  me  at  the  right  time,"  she  said. 

"I'll  tell  you  what's  in  it  for  a  nickel,"  I  said. 

Rosie  looked  at  her  present.  "I  ain't  got  no  nickel,"  she 
said.  "But  I  will  have  Christmas  morning  when  Mr.  Rodney 
give  me  that  dime." 

"You'll  know  what's  in  it  anyway  then  and  you  won't 
pay  me,"  I  said.  "Go  and  ask  mamma  to  lend  you  a  nickel." 

Then  Rosie  grabbed  me  by  the  arm.  "You  come  on  and 
get  in  that  tub,"  she  said.  "You  and  money!  If  you  ain't 
rich  time  you  twenty-one,  hit  will  be  because  the  law  done 
abolished  money  or  done  abolished  you." 

265 


266  The  Village 

So  I  went  and  bathed  and  came  back,  with  the  presents  all 
scattered  out  across  mamma's  and  papa's  bed  and  you  could 
almost  smell  it  and  tomorrow  night  they  would  begin  to 
shoot  the  fireworks  and  then  you  could  hear  it  too.  It 
would  be  just  tonight  and  then  tomorrow  we  would  get 
on  the  train,  except  papa,  because  he  would  have  to  stay  at 
the  livery  stable  until  after  Christmas  Eve,  and  go  to 
Grandpa's,  and  then  tomorrow  night  and  then  it  would 
be  Christmas  and  Grandpa  would  take  the  presents  off  the 
tree  and  call  out  our  names,  and  the  one  from  me  to  Uncle 
Rodney  that  I  bought  with  my  own  dime  and  so  after  a 
while  Uncle  Rodney  would  prize  open  Grandpa's  desk 
and  take  a  dose  of  Grandpa's  tonic  and  maybe  he  would 
give  me  another  quarter  for  helping  him,  like  he  did  last 
Christmas,  instead  of  just  a  nickel,  like  he  would  do  last 
summer  while  he  was  visiting  mamma  and  us  and  we  were 
doing  business  with  Mrs.  Tucker  before  Uncle  Rodney 
went  home  and  began  to  work  for  the  Compress  Association, 
and  it  would  be  fine.  Or  maybe  even  a  half  a  dollar  and  it 
seemed  to  me  like  I  just  couldn't  wait. 

"Jesus,  I  can't  hardly  wait,"  I  said. 

"You  which?"  Rosie  hollered.  "Jesus?"  she  hollered. 
"Jesus?  You  let  your  mamma  hear  you  cussing  and  I  bound 
you'll  wait.  You  talk  to  me  about  a  nickel!  For  a  nickel 
I'd  tell  her  just  what  you  said." 

"If  you'll  pay  me  a  nickel  I'll  tell  her  myself,"  I  said. 

"Get  into  that  bed!"  Rosie  hollered.  "A  seven-year-old 
boy,  cussing!" 

"If  you  will  promise  not  to  tell  her,  I'll  tell  you  what's  in 
your  present  and  you  can  pay  me  the  nickel  Christmas  morn- 
ing," I  said. 

"Get  in  that  bed!"  Rosie  hollered.  "You  and  your  nickel! 
I  bound  if  I  thought  any  of  you  all  was  fixing  to  buy  even 
a  dime  present  for  your  grandpa,  I'd  put  in  a  nickel  of  hit 
myself." 


That  Will  Be  Fine  267 

"Grandpa  don't  want  presents,"  I  said.  "He's  too  old." 
"Hah,"  Rosie  said.  "Too  old,  is  he?  Suppose  everybody 
decided  you  was  too  young  to  have  nickels:  what  would  you 
think  about  that?  Hah?" 

So  Rosie  turned  out  the  light  and  went  out.  But  I 
could  still  see  the  presents  by  the  firelight:  the  ones  for  Uncle 
Rodney  and  Grandma  and  Aunt  Louisa  and  Aunt  Louisa's 
husband  Uncle  Fred,  and  Cousin  Louisa  and  Cousin  Fred 
and  the  baby  and  Grandpa's  cook  and  our  cook,  that  was 
Rosie,  and  maybe  somebody  ought  to  give  Grandpa  a  present 
only  maybe  it  ought  to  be  Aunt  Louisa  because  she  and 
Uncle  Fred  lived  with  Grandpa,  or  maybe  Uncle  Rodney 
ought  to  because  he  lived  with  Grandpa  too.  Uncle  Rodney 
always  gave  mamma  and  papa  a  present  but  maybe  it  would 
be  just  a  waste  of  his  time  and  Grandpa's  time  both  for 
Uncle  Rodney  to  give  Grandpa  a  present,  because  one  time 
I  asked  mamma  why  Grandpa  always  looked  at  the  present 
Uncle  Rodney  gave  her  and  papa  and  got  so  mad,  and  papa 
began  to  laugh  and  mamma  said  papa  ought  to  be  ashamed, 
that  it  wasn't  Uncle  Rodney's  fault  if  his  generosity  was 
longer  than  his  pocket  book,  and  papa  said  Yes,  it  certainly 
wasn't  Uncle  Rodney's  fault,  he  never  knew  a  man  to  try 
harder  to  get  money  than  Uncle  Rodney  did,  that  Uncle 
Rodney  had  tried  every  known  plan  to  get  it  except  work, 
and  that  if  mamma  would  just  think  back  about  two  years 
she  would  remember  one  time  when  Uncle  Rodney  could 
have  thanked  his  stars  that  there  was  one  man  in  the  con- 
nection whose  generosity,  or  whatever  mamma  wanted  to 
call  it,  was  at  least  five  hundred  dollars  shorter  than  his 
pocket  book,  and  mamma  said  she  defied  papa  to  say  that 
Uncle  Rodney  stole  the  money,  that  it  had  been  malicious 
persecution  and  papa  knew  it,  and  that  papa  and  most  other 
men  were  prejudiced  against  Uncle  Rodney,  why  she  didn't 
know,  and  that  if  papa  begrudged  having  lent  Uncle  Rodney 
the  five  hundred  dollars  when  the  family's  good  name  was 


268  The  Village 

at  stake  to  say  so  and  Grandpa  would  raise  it  somehow  and 
pay  papa  back,  and  then  she  began  to  cry  and  papa  said 
All  right,  all  right,  and  mamma  cried  and  said  how  Uncle 
Rodney  was  the  baby  and  that  must  be  why  papa  hated 
him  and  papa  said  All  right,  all  right;  for  God's  sake,  all 
right. 

Because  mamma  and  papa  didn't  know  that  Uncle  Rodney 
had  been  handling  his  business  all  the  time  he  was  visiting 
us  last  summer,  any  more  than  the  people  in  Mottstown 
knew  that  he  was  doing  business  last  Christmas  when  I 
worked  for  him  the  first  time  and  he  paid  me  the  quarter. 
Because  he  said  that  if  he  preferred  to  do  business  with 
ladies  instead  of  men  it  wasn't  anybody's  business  except  his, 
not  even  Mr.  Tucker's.  He  said  how  I  never  went  around 
telling  people  about  papa's  business  and  I  said  how  every- 
body knew  papa  was  in  the  livery-stable  business  and  so  I 
didn't  have  to  tell  them,  and  Uncle  Rodney  said  Well, 
that  was  what  half  of  the  nickel  was  for  and  did  I  want  to 
keep  on  making  the  nickels  or  did  I  want  him  to  hire  some- 
body else?  So  I  would  go  on  ahead  and  watch  through  Mr. 
Tucker's  fence  until  he  came  out  to  go  to  town  and  I  would 
go  along  behind  the  fence  to  the  corner  and  watch  until 
Mr.  Tucker  was  out  of  sight  and  then  I  would  put  my  hat 
on  top  of  the  fence  post  and  leave  it  there  until  I  saw  Mr. 
Tucker  coming  back.  Only  he  never  came  back  while  I 
was  there  because  Uncle  Rodney  would  always  be  through 
before  then,  and  he  would  come  up  and  we  would  walk 
back  home  and  he  would  tell  mamma  how  far  we  had 
walked  that  day  and  mamma  would  say  how  good  that  was 
for  Uncle  Rodney's  health.  So  he  just  paid  me  a  nickel  at 
home.  It  wasn't  as  much  as  the  quarter  when  he  was  in 
business  with  the  other  lady  in  Mottstown  Christmas,  but 
that  was  just  one  rime  and  he  visited  us  all  summer  and  so 
by  that  time  I  had  a  lot  more  than  a  quarter.  And  besides 


That  Will  Be  Fine  269 

the  other  time  was  Christmas  and  he  took  a  dose  of  Grandpa's 
tonic  before  he  paid  me  the  quarter  and  so  maybe  this  time 
it  might  be  even  a  half  a  dollar.  I  couldn't  hardly  wait. 

II 

BUT  IT  GOT  TO  BE  daylight  at  last  and  I  put  on  my  Sunday 
suit,  and  I  would  go  to  the  front  door  and  watch  for  the 
hack  and  then  I  would  go  to  the  kitchen  and  ask  Rosie  if  it 
wasn't  almost  time  and  she  would  tell  me  the  train  wasn't 
even  due  for  two  hours  yet.  Only  while  she  was  telling  me 
we  heard  the  hack,  and  so  I  thought  it  was  time  for  us  to 
go  and  get  on  the  train  and  it  would  be  fine,  and  then  we 
would  go  to  Grandpa's  and  then  it  would  be  tonight  and 
then  tomorrow  and  maybe  it  would  be  a  half  a  dollar  this 
cime  and  Jesus  it  would  be  fine.  Then  mamma  came  running 
out  without  even  her  hat  on  and  she  said  how  it  was  two 
hours  yet  and  she  wasn't  even  dressed  and  John  Paul  said 
Yessum  but  papa  sent  him  and  papa  said  for  John  Paul  to 
tell  mamma  that  Aunt  Louisa  was  here  and  for  mamma  to 
hurry.  So  we  put  the  basket  of  presents  into  the  hack  and 
I  rode  on  the  box  with  John  Paul  and  mamma  hollering 
from  inside  the  hack  about  Aunt  Louisa,  and  John  Paul  said 
that  Aunt  Louisa  had  come  in  a  hired  buggy  and  papa  took 
her  to  the  hotel  to  eat  breakfast  because  she  left  Mottstown 
before  daylight  even.  And  so  maybe  Aunt  Louisa  had  come 
to  Jefferson  to  help  mamma  and  papa  get  a  present  for 
Grandpa. 

"Because  we  have  one  for  everybody  else,"  I  said,  "I 
bought  one  for  Uncle  Rodney  with  my  own  money." 

Then  John  Paul  began  to  laugh  and  I  said  Why?  and  he 
said  it  was  at  the  notion  of  me  giving  Uncle  Rodney  any- 
thing that  he  would  want  to  use,  and  I  said  Why?  and 
John  Paul  said  because  I  was  shaped  like  a  man,  and  I  said 


2  yo  The  Village 

Why?  and  John  Paul  said  he  bet  papa  would  like  to  give 
Uncle  Rodney  a  present  without  even  waiting  for  Christmas, 
and  I  said  What?  and  John  Paul  said  A  job  of  work.  And  I 
told  John  Paul  how  Uncle  Rodney  had  been  working  all  the 
time  he  was  visiting  us  last  summer,  and  John  Paul  quit 
laughing  and  said  Sho,  he  reckoned  anything  a  man  kept 
at  all  the  time,  night  and  day  both,  he  would  call  it  work 
no  matter  how  much  fun  it  started  out  to  be,  and  I  said 
Anyway  Uncle  Rodney  works  now,  he  works  in  the  office 
of  the  Compress  Association,  and  John  Paul  laughed  good 
then  and  said  it  would  sholy  take  a  whole  association  to 
compress  Uncle  Rodney.  And  then  mamma  began  to  holler 
to  go  straight  to  the  hotel,  and  John  Paul  said  Nome,  papa 
said  to  come  straight  to  the  livery  stable  and  wait  for  him. 
And  so  we  went  to  the  hotel  and  Aunt  Louisa  and  papa 
came  out  and  papa  helped  Aunt  Louisa  into  the  hack  and 
Aunt  Louisa  began  to  cry  and  mamma  hollering  Louisa! 
Louisa!  What  is  it?  What  has  happened?  and  papa  saying 
Wait  now.  Wait.  Remember  the  nigger,  and  that  meant 
John  Paul,  and  so  it  must  have  been  a  present  for  Grandpa 
and  it  didn't  come. 

And  then  we  didn't  go  on  the  train  after  all.  We  went  to 
the  stable  and  they  already  had  the  light  road  hack  hitched 
up  and  waiting,  and  mamma  was  crying  now  and  saying 
how  papa  never  even  had  his  Sunday  clothes  and  papa 
cussing  now  and  saying  Damn  the  clothes;  if  we  didn't  get 
to  Uncle  Rodney  before  the  others  caught  him,  papa  would 
just  wear  the  clothes  Uncle  Rodney  had  on  now.  So  we  got 
into  the  road  hack  fast  and  papa  closed  the  curtains  and  then 
mamma  and  Aunt  Louisa  could  cry  all  right  and  papa  hol- 
lered to  John  Paul  to  go  home  and  tell  Rosie  to  pack  his 
Sunday  suit  and  take  her  to  the  train;  anyway  that  would  be 
fine  for  Rosie.  So  we  didn't  go  on  the  train  but  we  went 
fast,  with  papa  driving  and  saying  Didn't  anybody  know 


That  W ill  Ee  Fine  271 

where  he  was?  and  Aunt  Louisa  quit  crying  a  while  and 
said  how  Uncle  Rodney  didn't  come  to  supper  last  night, 
but  right  after  supper  he  came  in  and  how  Aunt  Louisa 
had  a  terrible  feeling  as  soon  as  she  heard  his  step  in  the 
hall  and  how  Uncle  Rodney  wouldn't  tell  her  until  they 
were  in  his  room  and  the  door  closed  and  then  he  said 
he  must  have  two  thousand  dollars  and  Aunt  Louisa  said 
where  in  the  world  could  she  get  two  thousand  dollars?  and 
Uncle  Rodney  said  Ask  Fred,  that  was  Aunt  Louisa's  hus- 
band, and  George,  that  was  papa;  tell  them  they  would 
have  to  dig  it  up,  and  Aunt  Louisa  said  she  had  that  terrible 
feeling  and  she  said  Rodney!  Rodney!  What — and  Uncle 
Rodney  begun  to  cuss  and  say  Dammit,  don't  start  sniveling 
and  crying  now,  and  Aunt  Louisa  said  Rodney,  what  have 
you  done  now?  and  then  they  both  heard  the  knocking  at 
the  door  and  how  Aunt  Louisa  looked  at  Uncle  Rodney  and 
she  knew  the  truth  before  she  even  laid  eyes  on  Mr.  Pruitt 
and  the  sheriff,  and  how  she  said  Don't  tell  pa!  Keep  it 
from  pa!  It  will  kill  him.  .  .  . 

"Who?"  papa  said.  "Mister  who?" 

"Mr.  Pruitt,"  Aunt  Louisa  said,  crying  again.  "The 
president  of  the  Compress  Association.  They  moved  to 
Mottstown  last  spring.  You  don't  know  him." 

So  she  went  down  to  the  door  and  it  was  Mr.  Pruitt  and 
the  sheriff.  And  how  Aunt  Louisa  begged  Mr.  Pruitt  for 
Grandpa's  sake  and  how  she  gave  Mr.  Pruitt  her  oath  that 
Uncle  Rodney  would  stay  right  there  in  the  house  until 
papa  could  get  there,  and  Mr.  Pruitt  said  how  he  hated  it 
to  happen  at  Christmas  too  and  so  for  Grandpa's  and  Aunt 
Louisa's  sake  he  would  give  them  until  the  day  after  Christ- 
mas if  Aunt  Louisa  would  promise  him  that  Uncle  Rodney 
would  not  try  to  leave  Mottstown.  And  how  Mr.  Pruitt 
showed  her  with  her  own  eyes  the  check  with  Grandpa's 
name  signed  to  it  and  how  even  Aunt  Louisa  could  see  that 


272  The  Village 

Grandpa's  name  had  been — and  then  mamma  said  Louisa! 
Louisa!  Remember  Georgie!  and  that  was  me,  and  papa 
cussed  too,  hollering  How  in  damnation  do  you  expect 
to  keep  it  from  him?  Ey  hiding  the  newspapers?  and  Aunt 
Louisa  cried  again  and  said  how  everybody  was  bound  to 
know  it,  that  she  didn't  expect  or  hope  that  any  of  us  could 
ever  hold  our  heads  up  again,  that  all  she  hoped  for  was  to 
keep  it  from  Grandpa  because  it  would  kill  him.  She  cried 
hard  then  and  papa  had  to  stop  at  a  branch  and  get  down 
and  soak  his  handkerchief  for  mamma  to  wipe  Aunt  Louisa's 
face  with  it  and  then  papa  took  the  bottle  of  tonic  out  of  the 
dash  pocket  and  put  a  few  drops  on  the  handkerchief,  and 
Aunt  Louisa  smelled  it  and  then  papa  took  a  dose  of  the 
tonic  out  of  the  bottle  and  mamma  said  George!  and  papa 
drank  some  more  of  the  tonic  and  then  made  like  he  was 
handing  the  bottle  back  for  mamma  and  Aunt  Louisa  to 
take  a  dose  too  and  said,  "I  don't  blame  you.  If  I  was  a 
woman  in  this  family  I'd  take  to  drink  too.  Now  let  me  get 
this  bond  business  straight." 

"It  was  those  road  bonds  of  ma's,"  Aunt  Louisa  said. 

We  were  going  fast  again  now  because  the  horses  had 
rested  while  papa  was  wetting  the  handkerchief  and  taking 
the  dose  of  tonic,  and  papa  was  saying  All  right,  what  about 
the  bonds?  when  all  of  a  sudden  he  jerked  around  in  the 
seat  and  said,  "Road  bonds?  Do  you  mean  he  took  that 
damn  screw  driver  and  prized  open  your  mother's  desk  too?" 

Then  mamma  said  George!  how  can  you?  only  Aunt 
Louisa  was  talking  now,  quick  now,  not  crying  now,  not 
yet,  and  papa  with  his  head  turned  over  his  shoulder  and 
saying  Did  Aunt  Louisa  mean  that  that  five  hundred  papa 
had  to  pay  out  two  years  ago  wasn't  all  of  it?  And  Aunt 
Louisa  said  it  was  twenty-five  hundred,  only  they  didn't 
v^ant  Grandpa  to  find  it  out,  and  so  Grandma  put  up  her 
road  bonds  for  security  on  the  note,  and  how  they  said  now 


That  Will  Be  Fine  273 

that  Uncle  Rodney  had  redeemed  Grandma's  note  and  the 
road  bonds  from  the  bank  with  some  of  the  Compress 
Association's  bonds  out  of  the  safe  in  the  Compress  Associa- 
tion office,  because  when  Mr.  Pruitt  found  the  Compress 
Association's  bonds  were  missing  he  looked  for  them  and 
found  them  in  the  bank  and  when  he  looked  in  the  Compress 
Association's  safe  all  he  found  was  the  check  for  two  thou- 
sand dollars  with  Grandpa's  name  signed  to  it,  and  how 
Mr.  Pruitt  hadn't  lived  in  Mottstown  but  a  year  but  even  he 
knew  that  Grandpa  never  signed  that  check  and  besides  he 
looked  in  the  bank  again  and  Grandpa  never  had  two 
thousand  dollars  in  it,  and  how  Mr.  Pruitt  said  how  he  would 
wait  until  the  day  after  Christmas  if  Aunt  Louisa  would 
give  him  her  sworn  oath  that  Uncle  Rodney  would  not  go 
away,  and  Aunt  Louisa  did  it  and  then  she  went  back  up- 
stairs to  plead  with  Uncle  Rodney  to  give  Mr.  Pruitt  the 
bonds  and  she  went  into  Uncle  Rodney's  room  where  she 
had  left  him,  and  the  window  was  open  and  Uncle  Rodney 
was  gone. 

"Damn  Rodney!"  papa  said.  "The  bonds!  You  mean,  no- 
body knows  where  the  bonds  are?" 

Now  we  were  going  fast  because  we  were  coming  down 
the  last  hill  and  into  the  valley  where  Mottstown  was.  Soon 
we  would  begin  to  smell  it  again;  it  would  be  just  today  and 
then  tonight  and  then  it  would  be  Christmas,  and  Aunt 
Louisa  sitting  there  with  her  face  white  like  a  whitewashed 
fence  that  has  been  rained  on  and  papa  said  Who  in  hell 
ever  gave  him  such  a  job  anyway,  and  Aunt  Louisa  said  Mr. 
Pruitt,  and  papa  said  how  even  if  Mr.  Pruitt  had  only  lived 
in  Mottstown  a  few  months,  and  then  Aunt  Louisa  began 
to  cry  without  even  putting  her  handkerchief  to  her  face 
this  time  and  mamma  looked  at  Aunt  Louisa  and  she  began 
to  cry  too  and  papa  took  out  the  whip  and  hit  the  team  a 
belt  with  it  even  if  they  were  going  fast  and  he  cussed. 


274  The  Village 

"Damnation  to  hell,"  papa  said.  "I  see.  Pruitt's  married." 

Then  we  could  see  it  too.  There  were  holly  wreaths  in 
the  windows  like  at  home  in  Jefferson,  and  I  said,  "They 
shoot  fireworks  in  Mottstown  too  like  they  do  in  Jefferson." 

Aunt  Louisa  and  mamma  were  crying  good  now,  and  now 
it  was  papa  saying  Here,  here;  remember  Georgie,  and  that 
was  me,  and  Aunt  Louisa  said,  "Yes,  yes!  Painted  ,common 
thing,  traipsing  up  and  down  the  streets  all  afternoon  alone 
in  a  buggy,  and  the  one  and  only  time  Mrs.  Church  called 
on  her,  and  that  was  because  of  Mr.  Pruitt's  position  alone, 
Mrs.  Church  found  her  without  corsets  on  and  Mrs.  Church 
told  me  she  smelled  liquor  on  her  breath." 

And  papa  saying  Here,  here,  and  Aunt  Louisa  crying 
good  and  saying  how  it  was  Mrs.  Pruitt  that  did  it  because 
Uncle  Rodney  was  young  and  easy  led  because  he  never 
had  had  opportunities  to  meet  a  nice  girl  and  marry  her,  and 
papa  was  driving  fast  toward  Grandpa's  house  and  he  said, 
"Marry?  Rodney  marry?  What  in  hell  pleasure  would  he 
get  out  of  slipping  out  of  his  own  house  and  waiting  until 
after  dark  and  slipping  around  to  the  back  and  climbing  up 
the  gutter  and  into  a  room  where  there  wasn't  anybody  in 
it  but  his  own  wife." 

And  so  mamma  and  Aunt  Louisa  were  crying  good  when 
we  got  to  Grandpa's. 

Ill 

AND  UNCLE  RODNEY  wasn't  there.  We  came  in,  and  Grandma 
said  how  Mandy,  that  was  Grandpa's  cook,  hadn't  come 
to  cook  breakfast  and  when  Grandma  sent  Emmeline,  that 
was  Aunt  Louisa's  baby's  nurse,  down  to  Mandy's  cabin 
in  the  back  yard,  the  door  was  locked  on  the  inside  but 
Mandy  wouldn't  answer  and  then  Grandma  went  down 
there  herself  and  Mandy  wouldn't  answer  and  so  Cousin 


That  Will  Be  Fine  275 

Fred  climbed  in  the  window  and  Mandy  was  gone  and  Uncle 
Fred  had  just  got  back  from  town  then  and  he  and  papa  both 
hollered,  "Locked?  on  the  inside?  and  nobody  in  it?" 

And  then  Uncle  Fred  told  papa  to  go  in  and  keep  Grandpa 
entertained  and  he  would  go  and  then  Aunt  Louisa  grabbed 
papa  and  Uncle  Fred  both  and  said  she  would  keep  Grandpa 
quiet  and  for  both  of  them  to  go  and  find  him,  find  him, 
and  papa  said  if  only  the  fool  hasn't  tried  to  sell  them  to  some- 
body, and  Uncle  Fred  said  Good  God,  man,  don't  you 
know  that  check  was  dated  ten  days  ago?  And  so  we  went 
in  where  Grandpa  was  reared  back  in  his  chair  and  saying 
how  he  hadn't  expected  papa  until  tomorrow  but  by  God 
he  was  glad  to  see  somebody  at  last  because  he  waked  up 
this  morning  and  his  cook  had  quit  and  Louisa  had  chased 
off  somewhere  before  daylight  and  now  he  couldn't  even 
find  Uncle  Rodney  to  go  down  and  bring  his  mail  and  a 
cigar  or  two  back,  and  so  thank  God  Christmas  never  came 
but  once  a  year  and  so  be  damned  if  he  wouldn't  be  glad 
when  it  was  over,  only  he  was  laughing  now  because  when 
he  said  that  about  Christmas  before  Christmas  he  always 
laughed,  it  wasn't  until  after  Christmas  that  he  didn't  laugh 
when  he  said  that  about  Christmas.  Then  Aunt  Louisa  got 
Grandpa's  keys  out  of  his  pocket  herself  and  opened  the 
desk  where  Uncle  Rodney  would  prize  it  open  with  a  screw 
driver,  and  took  out  Grandpa's  tonic  and  then  mamma  said 
for  me  to  go  and  find  Cousin  Fred  and  Cousin  Louisa. 

So  Uncle  Rodney  wasn't  there.  Only  at  first  I  thought 
maybe  it  wouldn't  be  a  quarter  even,  it  wouldn't  be  nothing 
this  time,  so  at  first  all  I  had  to  think  about  was  that  anyway 
it  would  be  Christmas  and  that  would  be  something  anyway. 
Because  I  went  on  around  the  house,  and  so  after  a  while 
papa  and  Uncle  Fred  came  out,  and  I  could  see  them  through 
the  bushes  knocking  at  Mandy's  door  and  calling,  "Rodney, 
Rodney,"  like  that.  Then  I  had  to  get  back  in  the  bushes 


276  The  Village 

because  Uncle  Fred  had  to  pass  right  by  me  to  go  to  the 
woodshed  to  get  the  axe  to  open  Mandy's  door.  But  they 
couldn't  fool  Uncle  Rodney.  If  Mr.  Tucker  couldn't  fool 
Uncle  Rodney  in  Mr.  Tucker's  own  house,  Uncle  Fred  and 
papa  ought  to  known  they  couldn't  fool  him  right  in  his 
own  papa's  back  yard.  So  I  didn't  even  need  to  hear  them. 
I  just  waited  until  after  a  while  Uncle  Fred  came  back  out 
the  broken  door  and  came  to  the  woodshed  and  took  the  axe 
and  pulled  the  lock  and  hasp  and  steeple  off  the  woodhouse 
door  and  went  back  and  then  papa  came  out  of  Mandy's 
house  and  they  nailed  the  woodhouse  lock  onto  Mandy's 
door  and  locked  it  and  they  went  around  behind  Mandy's 
house,  and  I  could  hear  Uncle  Fred  nailing  the  windows  up. 
Then  they  went  back  to  the  house.  But  it  didn't  matter  if 
Mandy  was  in  the  house  too  and  couldn't  get  out,  because 
the  train  came  from  Jefferson  with  Rosie  and  papa's  Sunday 
clothes  on  it  and  so  Rosie  was  there  to  cook  for  Grandpa 
and  us  and  so  that  was  all  right  too. 

But  they  couldn't  fool  Uncle  Rodney.  I  could  have  told 
them  that.  I  could  have  told  them  that  sometimes  Uncle 
Rodney  even  wanted  to  wait  until  after  dark  to  even  begin 
to  do  business.  And  so  it  was  all  right  even  if  it  was  late  in 
the  afternoon  before  I  could  get  away  from  Cousin  Fred 
and  Cousin  Louisa.  It  was  late;  soon  they  would  begin  to 
shoot  the  fireworks  downtown,  and  then  we  would  be  hear- 
ing it  too,  so  I  could  just  see  his  face  a  little  between  the 
slats  where  papa  and  Uncle  Fred  had  nailed  up  the  back 
window;  I  could  see  his  face  where  he  hadn't  shaved,  and  he 
was  asking  me  why  in  hell  it  took  me  so  long  because  he 
had  heard  the  Jefferson  train  come  before  dinner,  before 
eleven  o'clock,  and  laughing  about  how  papa  and  Uncle 
Fred  had  nailed  him  up  in  the  house  to  keep  him  when  that 
was  exactly  what  he  wanted,  and  that  I  would  have  to  slip 
out  right  after  supper  somehow  and  did  I  reckon  I  could 


That  Will  Be  Fine  277 

manage  it?  And  I  said  how  last  Christmas  it  had  been  a 
quarter,  but  I  didn't  have  to  slip  out  of  the  house  that  time, 
and  he  laughed,  saying  Quarter?  Quarter?  did  I  ever  see  ten 
quarters  all  at  once?  and  I  never  did,  and  he  said  for  me  to 
be  there  with  the  screw  driver  right  after  supper  and  I 
would  see  ten  quarters,  and  to  remember  that  even  God 
didn't  know  where  he  is  and  so  for  me  to  get  the  hell  away 
and  stay  away  until  I  came  back  after  dark  with  the  screw 
driver. 

And  they  couldn't  fool  me  either.  Because  I  had  been 
watching  the  man  all  afternoon,  even  when  he  thought  I 
was  just  playing  and  maybe  because  I  was  from  Jefferson 
instead  of  Mottstown  and  so  I  wouldn't  know  who  he  was. 
But  I  did,  because  once  when  he  was  walking  past  the  back 
fence  and  he  stopped  and  lit  his  cigar  again  and  I  saw  the 
badge  under  his  coat  when  he  struck  the  match  and  so  I 
knew  he  was  like  Mr.  Watts  at  Jefferson  that  catches  the 
niggers.  So  I  was  playing  by  the  fence  and  I  could  hear  him 
stopping  and  looking  at  me  and  I  played  and  he  said, 
"Howdy,  son.  Santy  Glaus  coming  to  see  you  tomorrow?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said. 

"You're  Miss  Sarah's  boy,  from  up  at  Jefferson,  ain't  you?" 
he  said. 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said. 

"Come  to- spend  Christmas  with  your  grandpa,  eh?"  he 
said.  "I  wonder  if  your  Uncle  Rodney's  at  home  this  after- 
noon." 

"No,  sir,"  I  said. 

"Well,  well,  that's  too  bad,"  he  said.  "I  wanted  to  see  him 
a  minute.  He's  downtown,  I  reckon?" 

"No,  sir,"  I  said. 

"Well,  well,"  he  said.  "You  mean  he's  gone  away  on  a 
visit,  maybe?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said. 


278  The  Village 

"Well,  well,"  he  said.  "That's  too  bad.  I  wanted  to  see  him 
on  a  little  business.  But  I  reckon  it  can  wait."  Then  he  looked 
at  me  and  then  he  said,  "You're  sure  he's  out  of  town, 
then?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said. 

"Well,  that  was  all  I  wanted  to  know,"  he  said.  "If  you 
happen  to  mention  this  to  your  Aunt  Louisa  or  your  Uncle 
Fred  you  can  tell  them  that  was  all  I  wanted  to  know." 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said.  So  he  went  away.  And  he  didn't  pass 
the  house  any  more.  I  watched  for  him,  but  he  didn't  come 
back.  So  he  couldn't  fool  me  either. 


IV 

THEN  IT  BEGAN  to  get  dark  and  they  started  to  shoot  the  fire- 
works downtown.  I  could  hear  them,  and  soon  we  would 
be  seeing  the  Roman  candles  and  skyrockets  and  I  would 
have  the  ten  quarters  then  and  I  thought  about  the  basket 
full  of  presents  and  I  thought  how  maybe  I  could  go  on 
downtown  when  I  got  through  working  for  Uncle  Rodney 
and  buy  a  present  for  Grandpa  with  a  dime  out  of  the  ten 
quarters  and  give  it  to  him  tomorrow  and  maybe,  because 
nobody  else  had  given  him  a  present,  Grandpa  might  give 
me  a  quarter  too  instead  of  the  dime  tomorrow,  and  that 
would  be  twenty-one  quarters,  except  for  the  dime,  and  that 
would  be  fine  sure  enough.  But  I  didn't  have  time  to  do  that. 
We  ate  supper,  and  Rosie  had  to  cook  that  too,  and  mamma 
and  Aunt  Louisa  with  powder  on  their  faces  where  they 
had  been  crying,  and  Grandpa;  it  was  papa  helping  him 
take  a  dose  of  tonic  every  now  and  then  all  afternoon  while 
Uncle  Fred  was  downtown,  and  Uncle  Fred  came  back  and 
papa  came  out  in  the  hall  and  Uncle  Fred  said  he  had 
looked  everywhere,  in  the  bank  and  in  the  Compress,  and 
how  Mr.  Pruitt  had  helped  him  but  they  couldn't  find  a  sign 
either  of  them  or  of  the  money,  because  Uncle  Fred  war 


That  Will  Be  Fine  279 

afraid  because  one  night  last  week  Uncle  Rodney  hired 
a  rig  and  went  somewhere  and  Uncle  Fred  found  out 
Uncle  Rodney  drove  over  to  the  main  line  at  Kingston  and 
caught  the  fast  train  to  Memphis,  and  papa  said  Damnation, 
and  Uncle  Fred  said  By  God  we  will  go  down  there  after 
supper  and  sweat  it  out  of  him,  because  at  least  we  have 
got  him.  I  told  Pruitt  that  and  he  said  that  if  we  hold  to 
him,  he  will  hold  off  and  give  us  a  chance. 

So  Uncle  Fred  and  papa  and  Grandpa  came  in  to  supper 
together,  with  Grandpa  between  them  saying  Christmas 
don't  come  but  once  a  year,  thank  God,  so  hooray  for 
it,  and  papa  and  Uncle  Fred  saying  Now  you  are  all 
right,  pa;  straight  ahead  now,  pa,  and  Grandpa  would  go 
straight  ahead  awhile  and  then  begin  to  holler  Where  in  hell 
is  that  damn  boy?  and  that  meant  Uncle  Rodney,  and  that 
Grandpa  was  a  good  mind  to  go  downtown  himself  and 
haul  Uncle  Rodney  out  of  that  damn  pool  hall  and  make 
him  come  home  and  see  his  kinfolks.  And  so  we  ate  supper 
and  mamma  said  she  would  take  the  children  upstairs  and 
Aunt  Louisa  said  No,  Emmeline  could  put  us  to  bed,  and 
so  we  went  up  the  back  stairs,  and  Emmeline  said  how  she 
had  done  already  had  to  cook  breakfast  extra  today  and  if 
folks  thought  she  was  going  to  waste  all  her  Christmas  doing 
extra  work  they  never  had  the  sense  she  give  them  credit  for 
and  that  this  looked  like  to  her  it  was  a  good  house  to  be 
away  from  nohow,  and  so  we  went  into  the  room  and  then 
after  a  while  I  went  back  down  the  back  stairs  and  I  re- 
membered where  to  find  the  screw  driver  too.  Then  I 
could  hear  the  firecrackers  plain  from  downtown,  and  the 
moon  was  shining  now  but  I  could  still  see  the  Roman 
candles  and  the  skyrockets  running  up  the  sky.  Then 
Uncle  Rodney's  hand  came  out  of  the  crack  in  the  shutter 
and  took  the  screw  driver.  I  couldn't  see  his  face  now  and 
it  wasn't  laughing  exactly,  it  didn't  sound  exactly  like 
laughing,  it  was  just  the  way  he  breathed  behind  the  shutter. 


i8o  The  Village 

Because  they  couldn't  fool  him.  "All  right,"  he  said.  "Now 
that's  ten  quarters.  But  wait.  Are  you  sure  nobody  knows 
where  I  am?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said.  "I  waited  by  the  fence  until  he  come 
and  asked  me." 

"Which  one?"  Uncle  Rodney  said. 

"The  one  that  wears  the  badge,"  I  said. 

Then  Uncle  Rodney  cussed.  But  it  wasn't  mad  cussing. 
It  sounded  just  like  it  sounded  when  he  was  laughing  ex- 
cept the  words. 

"He  said  if  you  were  out  of  town  on  a  visit,  and  I  said 
Yes  sir,"  I  said. 

"Good,"  Uncle  Rodney  said.  "By  God,  some  day  you  will 
be  as  good  a  business  man  as  I  am.  And  I  won't  make  you 
a  liar  much  longer,  either.  So  now  you  have  got  ten  quarters, 
haven't  you?" 

"No,"  I  said.  "I  haven't  got  them  yet." 

Then  he  cussed  again,  and  I  said,  "I  will  hold  my  cap  up 
and  you  can  drop  them  in  it  and  they  won't  spill  then." 

Then  he  cussed  hard,  only  it  wasn't  loud.  "Only  I'm 
not  going  to  give  you  ten  quarters,"  he  said,  and  I  begun 
to  say  You  said — and  Uncle  Rodney  said,  "Because  I  am 
going  to  give  you  twenty." 

And  I  said  Yes,  sir,  and  he  told  me  how  to  find  the  right 
house,  and  what  to  do  when  I  found  it.  Only  there  wasn't 
any  paper  to  carry  this  time  because  Uncle  Rodney  said  how 
this  was  a  twenty-quarter  job,  and  so  it  was  too  important 
to  put  on  paper  and  besides  I  wouldn't  need  a  paper  because 
I  would  not  know  them  anyhow,  and  his  voice  coming  hiss- 
ing down  from  behind  the  shutter  where  I  couldn't  see  him 
and  still  sounding  like  when  he  cussed  while  he  was  saying 
how  papa  and  Uncle  Fred  had  done  him  a  favor  by  nailing 
up  the  door  and  window  and  they  didn't  even  have  sense 
enough  to  know  it. 


That  Will  Be  Fine  281 

"Start  at  the  corner  of  the  house  and  count  three  windows. 
Then  throw  the  handful  of  gravel  against  the  window. 
Then  when  the  window  opens — never  mind  who  it  will  be, 
you  won't  know  anyway — just  say  who  you  are  and  then 
say  'He  will  be  at  the  corner  with  the  buggy  in  ten  minutes. 
Bring  the  jewelry.'  Now  you  say  it,"  Uncle  Rodney  said. 

"He  will  be  at  the  corner  with  the  buggy  in  ten  minutes. 
Bring  the  jewelry,"  I  said. 

"Say  'Bring  all  the  jewelry,'  "  Uncle  Rodney  said. 

"Bring  all  the  jewelry,"  I  said. 

"Good,"  Uncle  Rodney  said.  Then  he  said,  "Well?  What 
are  you  waiting  on?" 

"For  the  twenty  quarters,"  I  said. 

Uncle  Rodney  cussed  again.  "Do  you  expect  me  to  pay 
you  before  you  have  done  the  work?"  he  said. 

"You  said  about  a  buggy,"  I  said.  "Maybe  you  will  forget 
to  pay  me  before  you  go  and  you  might  not  get  back  until 
after  we  go  back  home.  And  besides,  that  day  last  summer 
when  we  couldn't  do  any  business  with  Mrs.  Tucker  be- 
cause she  was  sick  and  you  wouldn't  pay  me  the  nickel  be- 
cause you  said  it  wasn't  your  fault  Mrs.  Tucker  was  sick." 

Then  Uncle  Rodney  cussed  hard  and  quiet  behind  the 
crack  and  then  he  said,  "Listen.  I  haven't  got  the  twenty 
quarters  now.  I  haven't  even  got  one  quarter  now.  And  the 
only  way  I  can  get  any  is  to  get  out  of  here  and  finish  this 
business.  And  I  can't  finish  this  business  tonight  unless  you  do 
your  work.  See?  I'll  be  right  behind  you.  I'll  be  waiting  right 
there  at  the  corner  in  the  buggy  when  you  come  back.  Now, 
go  on.  Hurry." 


V 

So  I  WENT  ON  ACROSS  THE  YARD,  only  the  moon  was  bright 
now  and  I  walked  behind  the  fence  until  I  got  to  the  street* 


282  The  Village 

And  I  could  hear  the  firecrackers  and  I  could  see  the  Roman 
candles  and  skyrockets  sliding  up  the  sky,  but  the  fireworks 
were  all  downtown,  and  so  all  I  could  see  along  the  street  was 
the  candles  and  wreaths  in  the  windows.  So  I  came  to  the 
lane,  went  up  the  lane  to  the  stable,  and  I  could  hear  the 
horse  in  the  stable,  but  I  didn't  know  whether  it  was  the  right 
stable  or  not;  but  pretty  soon  Uncle  Rodney  kind  of  jumped 
around  the  corner  of  the  stable  and  said  Here  you  are,  and 
he  showed  me  where  to  stand  and  listen  toward  the  house  and 
he  went  back  into  the  stable.  But  I  couldn't  hear  anything 
but  Uncle  Rodney  harnessing  the  horse,  and  then  he  whistled 
and  I  went  back  and  he  had  the  horse  already  hitched  to  the 
buggy  and  I  said  Whose  horse  and  buggy  is  this;  it's  a  lot 
skinnier  than  Grandpa's  horse?  And  Uncle  Rodney  said  It's 
my  horse  now,  only  damn  this  moonlight  to  hell.  Then  I 
went  back  down  the  lane  to  the  street  and  there  wasn't  any- 
body coming  so  I  waved  my  arm  in  the  moonlight,  and  the 
buggy  came  up  and  I  got  in  and  we  went  fast.  The  side  cur- 
tains were  up  and  so  I  couldn't  see  the  skyrockets  and  Roman 
candles  from  town,  but  I  could  hear  the  firecrackers  and  I 
thought  maybe  we  were  going  through  town  and  maybe 
Uncle  Rodney  would  stop  and  give  me  some  of  the  twenty 
quarters  and  I  could  buy  Grandpa  a  present  for  tomorrow, 
but  we  didn't;  Uncle  Rodney  just  raised  the  side  curtain 
without  stopping  and  then  I  could  see  the  house,  the  two 
magnolia  trees,  but  we  didn't  stop  until  we  came  to  the 
corner. 

"Now,"  Uncle  Rodney  said,  "when  the  window  opens, 
say  'He  will  be  at  the  corner  in  ten  minutes.  Bring  all  the 
jewelry.'  Never  mind  who  it  will  be.  You  don't  want  to 
know  who  it  is.  You  want  to  even  forget  what  house  it  is. 
See?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said.  "And  then  you  will  pay  me  the " 

"Yes!"  he  said,  cussing.  "Yes!  Get  out  of  here  quick!" 


That  Will  Be  Fine  283 

So  I  got  out  and  the  buggy  went  on  and  I  went  back  up 
the  street.  And  the  house  was  dark  all  right  except  for  one 
light,  so  it  was  the  right  one,  besides  the  two  trees.  So  I  went 
across  the  yard  and  counted  the  three  windows  and  I  was 
just  about  to  throw  the  gravel  when  a  lady  ran  out  from  be- 
hind a  bush  and  grabbed  me.  She  kept  on  trying  to  say  some- 
thing, only  I  couldn't  tell  what  it  was,  and  besides  she  never 
had  time  to  say  very  much  anyhow  because  a  man  ran  out 
from  behind  another  bush  and  grabbed  us  both.  Only  he 
grabbed  her  by  the  mouth,  because  I  could  tell  that  from  the 
kind  of  slobbering  noise  she  made  while  she  was  fighting  to 
get  loose. 

"Well,  boy?"  he  said.  "What  is  it?  Are  you  the  one?" 

"I  work  for  Uncle  Rodney,"  I  said. 

"Then  you're  the  one,"  he  said.  Now  the  lady  was  fighting 
2nd  slobbering  sure  enough,  but  he  held  her  by  the  mouth. 
"All  right.  What  is  it?" 

Only  I  didn't  know  Uncle  Rodney  ever  did  business  with 
men.  But  maybe  after  he  began  to  work  in  the  Compress  As- 
sociation he  had  to.  And  then  he  had  told  me  I  would  not 
know  them  anyway,  so  maybe  that  was  what  he  meant. 

"He  says  to  be  at  the  corner  in  ten  minutes,"  I  said.  "And 
to  bring  all  the  jewelry.  He  said  for  me  to  say  that  twice. 
Bring  all  the  jewelry." 

The  lady  was  slobbering  and  fighting  worse  than  ever 
now,  so  maybe  he  had  to  turn  me  loose  so  he  could  hold  her 
with  both  hands. 

"Bring  all  the  jewelry,"  he  said,  holding  the  lady  with  both 
hands  now.  "That's  a  good  idea.  That's  fine.  I  don't  blame 
him  for  telling  you  to  say  that  twice.  All  right.  Now  you  go 
back  to  the  corner  and  wait  and  when  he  comes,  tell  him  this: 
"She  says  to  come  and  help  carry  it.'  Say  that  to  him  twice, 
too.  Understand?" 

"Then  I'll  get  my  twenty  quarters,"  I  said. 


284  The  Village 

"Twenty  quarters,  hah?"  the  man  said,  holding  the  lady. 
"That's  what  you  are  to  get,  is  it?  That's  not  enough.  You 
tell  him  this,  too:  'She  says  to  give  you  a  piece  of  the  jew- 
elry.' Understand?" 

"I  just  want  my  twenty  quarters,"  I  said. 

Then  he  and  the  lady  went  back  behind  the  bushes  again 
and  I  went  on,  too,  back  toward  the  corner,  and  I  could  see 
the  Roman  candles  and  skyrockets  again  from  toward  town 
and  I  could  hear  the  firecrackers,  and  then  the  buggy  came 
back  and  Uncle  Rodney  was  hissing  again  behind  the  curtain 
like  when  he  was  behind  the  slats  on  Mandy's  window. 

"Well?  "he  said. 

"She  said  for  you  to  come  and  help  carry  it,"  I  said. 

"What?"  Uncle  Rodney  said.  "She  said  he's  not  there?'" 

"No,  sir.  She  said  for  you  to  come  and  help  carry  it.  For 
me  to  say  that  twice."  Then  I  said,  "Where's  my  twenty 
quarters?"  because  he  had  already  jumped  out  of  the  buggy 
and  jumped  across  the  walk  into  the  shadow  of  some  bushes. 
So  I  went  into  the  bushes  too  and  said,  "You  said  you  would 
give " 

"All  right;  all  right!"  Uncle  Rodney  said.  He  was  kind  of 
squatting  along  the  bushes;  I  could  hear  him  breathing.  "I'll 
give  them  to  you  tomorrow.  I'll  give  you  thirty  quarters 
tomorrow.  Now  you  get  to  hell  on  home.  And  if  they  have 
been  down  to  Mandy's  house,  you  don't  know  anything. 
Run,  now.  Hurry." 

"I'd  rather  have  the  twenty  quarters  tonight,"  I  said. 

He  was  squatting  fast  along  in  the  shadow  of  the  bushes, 
and  I  was  right  behind  him,  because  when  he  whirled  around 
he  almost  touched  me,  but  I  jumped  back  out  of  the  bushes 
in  time  and  he  stood  there  cussing  at  me  and  then  he  stooped 
down  and  I  saw  it  was  a  stick  in  his  hand  and  I  turned  and 
ran.  Then  he  went  on,  squatting  along  in  the  shadow,  and 
then  I  went  back  to  the  buggy,  because  the  day  after  Christ- 


That  Will  Be  Fine  285 

mas  we  would  go  back  to  Jefferson,  and  so  if  Uncle  Rodney 
didn't  get  back  before  then  I  would  not  see  him  again  until 
next  summer  and  then  maybe  he  would  be  in  business  with 
another  lady  and  my  twenty  quarters  would  be  like  my 
nickel  that  time  when  Mrs.  Tucker  was  sick.  So  I  waited  by 
the  buggy  and  I  could  watch  the  skyrockets  and  the  Roman 
candles  and  I  could  hear  the  firecrackers  from  town,  only  it 
was  late  now  and  so  maybe  all  the  stores  would  be  closed  and 
so  I  couldn't  buy  Grandpa  a  present,  even  when  Uncle  Rod- 
ney came  back  and  gave  me  my  twenty  quarters.  So  I  was 
listening  to  the  firecrackers  and  thinking  about  how  maybe  I 
could  tell  Grandpa  that  I  had  wanted  to  buy  him  a  present 
and  so  maybe  he  might  give  me  fifteen  cents  instead  of  a  dime 
anyway,  when  all  of  a  sudden  they  started  shooting  fire- 
crackers back  at  the  house  where  Uncle  Rodney  had  gone. 
Only  they  just  shot  five  of  them  fast,  and  when  they  didn't 
shoot  any  more  I  thought  that  maybe  in  a  minute  they  would 
shoot  the  skyrockets  and  Roman  candles  too.  But  they  didn't. 
They  just  shot  the  five  firecrackers  right  quick  and  then 
stopped,  and  I  stood  by  the  buggy  and  then  folks  began  to 
come  out  of  the  houses  and  holler  at  one  another  and  then  I 
began  to  see  men  running  toward  the  house  where  Uncle 
Rodney  had  gone,  and  then  a  man  came  out  of  the  yard  fast 
and  went  up  the  street  toward  Grandpa's  and  I  thought  at 
first  it  was  Uncle  Rodney  and  that  he  had  forgotten  the 
buggy,  until  I  saw  that  it  wasn't. 

But  Uncle  Rodney  never  came  back  and  so  I  went  on 
toward  the  yard  to  where  the  men  were,  because  I  could  still 
watch  the  buggy  too  and  see  Uncle  Rodney  if  he  came  back 
out  of  the  bushes,  and  I  came  to  the  yard  and  I  saw  six  men 
carrying  something  long  and  then  two  other  men  ran  up  and 
stopped  me  and  one  of  them  said  Hell-fire,  it's  one  of  those 
kids,  the  one  from  Jefferson.  And  I  could  see  then  that  what 
the  men  were  carrying  was  a  window  blind  with  something 


286  The  Village 

wrapped  in  a  quilt  on  it  and  so  I  thought  at  first  that  they  had 
come  to  help  Uncle  Rodney  carry  the  jewelry,  only  I  didn't 
see  Uncle  Rodney  anywhere,  and  then  one  of  the  men  said, 
"Who?  One  of  the  kids?  Hell-fire,  somebody  take  him  on 
home." 

So  the  man  picked  me  up,  but  I  said  I  had  to  wait  on  Uncle 
Rodney,  and  the  man  said  that  Uncle  Rodney  would  be  all 
right,  and  I  said  But  I  wanted  to  wait  for  him  here,  and  then 
one  of  the  men  behind  us  said  Damn  it,  get  him  on  out  of 
here,  and  we  went  on.  I  was  riding  on  the  man's  back  and 
then  I  could  look  back  and  see  the  six  men  in  the  moonlight 
carrying  the  blind  with  the  bundle  on  it,  and  I  said  Did  it 
belong  to  Uncle  Rodney?  and  the  man  said  No,  if  it  be- 
longed to  anybody  now  it  belonged  to  Grandpa.  And  so 
then  I  knew  what  it  was. 

"It's  a  side  of  beef,"  I  said.  "You  are  going  to  take  it  to 
Grandpa."  Then  the  other  man  made  a  funny  sound  and  the 
one  I  was  riding  on  said  Yes,  you  might  call  it  a  side  of  beef, 
and  I  said,  "It's  a  Christmas  present  for  Grandpa.  Who  is  it 
going  to  be  from?  Is  it  from  Uncle  Rodney?" 

"No,"  the  man  said.  "Not  from  him.  Call  it  from  the  men 
of  Mottstown.  From  all  the  husbands  in  Mottstown." 


VI 

THEN  WE  CAME  in  sight  of  Grandpa's  house.  And  now  the 
lights  were  all  on,  even  on  the  porch,  and  I  could  see  folks 
in  the  hall,  I  could  see  ladies  with  shawls  over  their  heads,, 
and  some  more  of  them  going  up  the  walk  toward  the  porch, 
and  then  I  could  hear  somebody  in  the  house  that  sounded 
like  singing  and  then  papa  came  out  of  the  house  and  came 
down  the  walk  to  the  gate  and  we  came  up  and  the  man  put 
me  down  and  I  saw  Rosie  waiting  at  the  gate  too.  Only  it 
didn't  sound  like  singing  now  because  there  wasn't  any  music 


That  Will  Be  Fine  287 

with  it,  and  so  maybe  it  was  Aunt  Louisa  again  and  so  maybe 
she  didn't  like  Christmas  now  any  better  than  Grandpa  said 
he  didn't  like  it. 

"It's  a  present  for  Grandpa,"  I  said. 

"Yes,"  papa  said.  "You  go  on  with  Rosie  and  go  to  bed. 
Mamma  will  be  there  soon.  But  you  be  a  good  boy  until  she 
comes.  You  mind  Rosie.  All  right,  Rosie.  Take  him  on. 
Hurry." 

"You  don't  need  to  tell  me  that,"  Rosie  said.  She  took  my 
hand.  "Come  on." 

Only  we  didn't  go  back  into  the  yard,  because  Rosie  came 
out  the  gate  and  we  went  up  the  street.  And  then  I  thought 
maybe  we  were  going  around  the  back  to  dodge  the  people 
and  we  didn't  do  that,  either.  We  just  went  on  up  the  street, 
and  I  said,  "Where  are  we  going?" 

And  Rosie  said,  "We  gonter  sleep  at  a  lady's  house  name 
Mrs.  Jordon." 

So  we  went  on.  I  didn't  say  anything.  Because  papa  had 
forgotten  to  say  anything  about  my  slipping  out  of  the  house 
yet  and  so  maybe  if  I  went  on  to  bed  and  stayed  quiet  he 
would  forget  about  it  until  tomorrow  too.  And  besides,  the 
main  thing  was  to  get  a  holt  of  Uncle  Rodney  and  get  my 
twenty  quarters  before  we  went  back  home,  and  so  maybe 
that  would  be  all  right  tomorrow  too.  So  we  went  on  and 
Rosie  said  Yonder's  the  house,  and  we  went  in  the  yard  and 
then  all  of  a  sudden  Rosie  saw  the  possum.  It  was  in  a  persim- 
mon tree  in  Mrs.  Jordon's  yard  and  I  could  see  it  against  the 
moonlight  too,  and  I  hollered,  "Run!  Run  and  get  Mrs.  Jor- 
don's ladder!" 

And  Rosie  said,  "Ladder  my  foot!  You  going  to  bed!" 

But  I  didn't  wait.  I  began  to  run  toward  the  house,  with 
Rosie  running  behind  me  and  hollering  You,  Georgie!  You 
come  back  here!  But  I  didn't  stop.  We  could  get  the  ladder 
and  get  the  possum  and  give  it  to  Grandpa  along  with  the 


288  The  Village 

side  of  meat  and  it  wouldn't  cost  even  a  dime  and  then  maybe 
Grandpa  might  even  give  me  a  quarter  too,  and  then  when  I 
got  the  twenty  quarters  from  Uncle  Rodney  I  would  have 
twenty-one  quarters  and  that  will  be  fine. 


That  Evening  Sun 


i 

MONDAY  is  NO  DIFFERENT  from  any  other  weekday  in  Jeffer- 
son now.  The  streets  are  paved  now,  and  the  telephone  and 
electric  companies  are  cutting  down  more  and  more  of  the 
shade  trees — the  water  oaks,  the  maples  and  locusts  and  elms 
— to  make  room  for  iron  poles  bearing  clusters  of  bloated  and 
ghostly  and  bloodless  grapes,  and  we  have  a  city  laundry 
which  makes  the  rounds  on  Monday  morning,  gathering  the 
bundles  of  clothes  into  bright-colored,  specially-made  motor 
cars:  the  soiled  wearing  of  a  whole  week  now  flees  appari- 
tionlike  behind  alert  and  irritable  electric  horns,  with  a  long 
diminishing  noise  of  rubber  and  asphalt  like  tearing  silk,  and 
even  the  Negro  women  who  still  take  in  white  people's 
washing  after  the  old  custom,  fetch  and  deliver  it  in  auf.o- 
mobiles. 

But  fifteen  years  ago,  on  Monday  morning  the  quiet, 
dusty,  shady  streets  would  be  full  of  Negro  women  with, 
balanced  on  their  steady,  turbaned  heads,  bundles  of  clothes 
tied  up  in  sheets,  almost  as  large  as  cotton  bales,  carried  so 
without  touch  of  hand  between  the  kitchen  door  of  the  white 
house  and  the  jlackened  washpot  beside  a  cabin  door  in 
Negro  Hollow. 

Nancy  would  set  her  bundle  on  the  top  of  her  head,  then 
upon  the  bundle  in  turn  she  would  set  the  black  straw  sailor 

289 


290  The  Village 

hat  which  she  wore  winter  and  summer.  She  was  tall,  with  a 
high,  sad  face  sunken  a  little  where  her  teeth  were  missing. 
Sometimes  we  would  go  a  part  of  the  way  down  the  lane  and 
across  the  pasture  with  her,  to  watch  the  balanced  bundle 
and  the  hat  that  never  bobbed  nor  wavered,  even  when  she 
walked  down  into  the  ditch  and  up  the  other  side  and  stooped 
through  the  fence.  She  would  go  down  on  her  hands  and 
knees  and  crawl  through  the  gap,  her  head  rigid,  uptilted, 
the  bundle  steady  as  a  rock  or  a  balloon,  and  rise  to  her  feet 
again  and  go  on. 

Sometimes  the  husbands  of  the  washing  women  would 
fetch  and  deliver  the  clothes,  but  Jesus  never  did  that  for 
Nancy,  even  before  father  told  him  to  stay  away  from  our 
house,  even  when  Dilsey  was  sick  and  Nancy  would  come  to 
cook  for  us. 

And  then  about  half  the  time  we'd  have  to  go  down  the 
lane  to  Nancy's  cabin  and  tell  her  to  come  on  and  cook 
breakfast.  We  would  stop  at  the  ditch,  because  father  told 
us  to  not  have  anything  to  do  with  Jesus — he  was  a  short 
black  man,  with  a  razor  scar  down  his  face — and  we  would 
throw  rocks  at  Nancy's  house  until  she  came  to  the  door, 
leaning  her  head  around  it  without  any  clothes  on. 

"What  yawl  mean,  chunking  my  house?"  Nancy  said. 
"What  you  little  devils  mean?" 

"Father  says  for  you  to  come  on  and  get  breakfast,"  Caddy 
said.  "Father  says  it's  over  a  half  an  hour  now,  and  you've 
got  to  come  this  minute." 

"I  aint  studying  no  breakfast,"  Nancy  said.  "I  going  tc 
get  my  sleep  out." 

"I  bet  you're  drunk,"  Jason  said.  "Father  says  you're 
drunk.  Are  you  drunk,  Nancy?" 

"Who  says  I  is?"  Nancy  said.  "I  got  to  get  my  sleep  out 
1  dint  studying  no  breakfast." 


That  Evening  Sun  291 

So  after  a  while  we  quit  chunking  the  cabin  and  went  back 
home.  When  she  finally  came,  it  was  too  late  for  me  to  go  to 
school.  So  we  thought  it  was  whisky  until  that  day  they  ar- 
rested her  again  and  they  were  taking  her  to  jail  and  they 
passed  Mr  Stovall.  He  was  the  cashier  in  the  bank  and  a  dea- 
con in  the  Baptist  church,  and  Nancy  began  to  say: 

"When  you  going  to  pay  me,  white  man?  When  you  going 
to  pay  me,  white  man?  It's  been  three  times  now  since  you 
paid  me  a  cent — "  Mr  Stovall  knocked  her  down,  but  she 
kept  on  saying,  "When  you  going  to  pay  me,  white  man?  It's 
been  three  times  now  since — "  until  Mr  Stovall  kicked  her 
in  the  mouth  with  his  heel  and  the  marshal  caught  Mr  Stovall 
back,  and  Nancy  lying  in  the  street,  laughing.  She  turned 
her  head  and  spat  out  some  blood  and  teeth  and  said,  "It's 
oeen  three  times  now  since  he  paid  me  a  cent." 

That  was  how  she  lost  her  teeth,  and  all  that  day  they  told 
about  Nancy  and  Mr  Stovall,  and  all  that  night  the  ones  that 
passed  the  jail  could  hear  Nancy  singing  and  yelling.  They 
could  see  her  hands  holding  to  the  window  bars,  and  a  lot  of 
them  stopped  along  the  fence,  listening  to  her  and  to  the 
jailer  trying  to  make  her  stop.  She  didn't  shut  up  until  almost 
daylight,  when  the  jailer  began  to  hear  a  bumping  and  scrap- 
ing upstairs  and  he  went  up  there  and  found  Nancy  hanging 
from  the  window  bar.  He  said  that  it  was  cocaine  and  not 
whisky,  because  no  nigger  would  try  to  commit  suicide  un- 
less he  was  full  of  cocaine,  because  a  nigger  full  of  cocaine 
wasn't  a  nigger  any  longer. 

The  jailer  cut  her  down  and  revived  her;  then  he  beat  her, 
whipped  her.  She  had  hung  herself  with  her  dress.  She  had 
fixed  it  all  right,  but  when  they  arrested  her  she  didn't  have 
on  anything  except  a  dress  and  so  she  didn't  have  anything 
to  tie  her  hands  with  and  she  couldn't  make  her  hands  let  go 
of  the  window  ledge.  So  the  jailer  heard  the  noise  and  ran  up 
there  and  found  Nancy  hanging  from  the  window,  stark 


292  The  Village 

naked,  her  belly  already  swelling  out  a  little,  like  a  little 
balloon. 

When  Dilsey  was  sick  in  her  cabin  and  Nancy  was  cook- 
ing for  us,  we  could  see  her  apron  swelling  out;  that  was 
before  father  told  Jesus  to  stay  away  from  the  house.  Jesus 
was  in  the  kitchen,  sitting  behind  the  stove,  with  his  razor 
scar  on  his  black  face  like  a  piece  of  dirty  string.  He  said  it 
was  a  watermelon  that  Nancy  had  under  her  dress. 

"It  never  come  off  of  your  vine,  though,"  Nancy  said. 

"Off  of  what  vine?"  Caddy  said. 

"I  can  cut  down  the  vine  it  did  come  off  of,"  Jesus  said. 

"What  makes  you  want  to  talk  like  that  before  these  chil- 
len?"  Nancy  said.  "Whyn't  you  go  on  to  work?  You  done  et. 
You  want  Mr  Jason  to  catch  you  hanging  around  his  kitchen, 
talking  that  way  before  these  chillen?" 

"Talking  what  way?"  Caddy  said.  "What  vine?" 

"I  cant  hang  around  white  man's  kitchen,"  Jesus  said.  "But 
white  man  can  hang  around  mine.  White  man  can  come  in 
my  house,  but  I  cant  stop  him.  When  white  man  want  to 
come  in  my  house,  I  aint  got  no  house.  I  cant  stop  him,  but  he 
cant  kick  me  outen  it.  He  cant  do  that." 

Dilsey  was  still  sick  in  her  cabin.  Father  told  Jesus  to  stay 
off  our  place.  Dilsey  was  still  sick.  It  was  a  long  time.  We 
were  in  the  library  after  supper. 

"Isn't  Nancy  through  in  the  kitchen  yet?"  mother  said. 
"It  seems  to  me  that  she  has  had  plenty  of  time  to  have 
finished  the  dishes." 

"Let  Quentin  go  and  see,"  father  said.  "Go  and  see  if 
Nancy  is  through,  Quentin.  Tell  her  she  can  go  on  home." 

I  went  to  the  kitchen.  Nancy  was  through.  The  dishes 
were  put  away  and  the  fire  was  out.  Nancy  was  sitting  in  a 
chair,  close  to  the  cold  stove.  She  looked  at  me. 

"Mother  wants  to  know  if  you  are  through,"  I  said. 

"Yes,"  Nancy  said.  She  looked  at  me,  "I  done  finished." 
She  looked  at  me. 


Thai  Evening  Sun  293 

"What  is  it?"  I  said.  "What  is  it?" 

"I  aint  nothing  but  a  nigger,"  Nancy  said.  "It  aint  none  of 
my  fault." 

She  looked  at  me,  sitting  in  the  chair  before  the  cold  stove, 
the  sailor  hat  on  her  head.  I  went  back  to  the  library.  It  was 
the  cold  stove  and  all,  when  you  think  of  a  kitchen  being 
warm  and  busy  and  cheerful.  And  with  a  cold  stove  and  the 
dishes  all  put  away,  and  nobody  wanting  to  eat  at  that  hour. 

"Is  she  through?"  mother  said. 

"Yessum,"  I  said. 

"What  is  she  doing?"  mother  said. 

"She's  not  doing  anything.  She's  through." 

"I'll  go  and  see,"  father  said. 

"Maybe  she's  waiting  for  Jesus  to  come  and  take  her 
home,"  Caddy  said. 

"Jesus  is  gone,"  I  said.  Nrncy  told  us  how  one  morning 
she  woke  up  and  Jesus  was  gone. 

"He  quit  me,"  Nancy  said.  "Done  gone  to  Memphis,  I 
reckon.  Dodging  them  city  p<?-lice  for  a  while,  I  reckon." 

"And  a  good  riddance,"  father  said.  "I  hope  he  stays 
there." 

"Nancy's  scaired  of  the  dark,"  Jason  said. 

"So  are  you,"  Caddy  said. 

"I'm  not,"  Jason  said. 

"Scairy  cat,"  Caddy  said. 

"I'm  not,"  Jason  said. 

"You,  Candace!"  mother  said.  Father  came  back. 

"I  am  going  to  walk  down  the  lane  with  Nancy,"  he  said. 
"She  says  that  Jesus  is  back." 

"Has  she  seen  him?"  mother  said. 

"No.  Some  Negro  sent  her  word  that  he  was  back  in  town. 
I  wont  be  long." 

"You'll  leave  me  alone,  to  take  Nancy  home?"  mother  said. 
"Is  her  safety  more  precious  to  you  than  mine?" 

"I  wont  be  long,"  father  said. 


294  The  Village 

"You'll  leave  these  children  unprotected,  with  that  Negro 
about?" 

"I'm  going  too,"  Caddy  said.  "Let  me  go,  Father." 

"What  would  he  do  with  them,  if  he  were  unfortunate 
enough  to  have  them?"  father  said. 

"I  want  to  go,  too,"  Jason  said. 

"Jason!"  mother  said.  She  was  speaking  to  father.  You 
could  tell  that  by  the  way  she  said  the  name.  Like  she  be- 
lieved that  all  day  father  had  been  trying  to  think  of  doing 
the  thing  she  wouldn't  like  the  most,  and  that  she  knew  all 
the  time  that  after  a  while  he  would  think  of  it.  I  stayed  quiet, 
because  father  and  I  both  knew  that  mother  would  want 
him  to  make  me  stay  with  her  if  she  just  thought  of  it  in 
time.  So  father  didn't  look  at  me.  I  was  the  oldest.  I  was  nine 
and  Caddy  was  seven  and  Jason  was  five. 

"Nonsense,"  father  said.  "We  wont  be  long." 

Nancy  had  her  hat  on.  We  came  to  the  lane.  "Jesus  always 
been  good  to  me,"  Nancy  said.  "Whenever  he  had  two  dol- 
lars, one  of  them  was  mine."  We  walked  in  the  lane.  "If  I 
can  just  get  through  the  lane,"  Nancy  said,  "I  be  all  right 
then." 

The  lane  was  always  dark.  "This  is  where  Jason  got  scared 
on  Hallowe'en,"  Caddy  said. 

"I  didn't,"  Jason  said. 

"Cant  Aunt  Rachel  do  anything  with  him?"  father  said. 
Aunt  Rachel  was  old.  She  lived  in  a  cabin  beyond  Nancy's, 
by  herself.  She  had  white  hair  and  she  smoked  a  pipe  in  the 
door,  all  day  long;  she  didn't  work  any  more.  They  said  she 
was  Jesus'  mother.  Sometimes  she  said  she  was  and  some- 
times she  said  she  wasn't  any  kin  to  Jesus. 

"Yes,  you  did,"  Caddy  said.  "You  were  scairder  than 
Frony.  You  were  scairder  than  T.P  even.  Scairder  than 
niggers." 

"Cant  nobody  do  nothing  with  him,"  Nancy  said.  "He  say 


That  Evening  Sun  295 

I  done  woke  up  the  devil  in  him  and  aint  but  one  thing  going 
to  lay  it  down  again." 

"Well,  he's  gone  now,"  father  said.  "There's  nothing  for 
you  to  be  afraid  of  now.  And  if  you'd  just  let  white  men 
alone." 

"Let  what  white  men  alone?"  Caddy  said.  "How  let  them 
alone?" 

"He  aint  gone  nowhere,"  Nancy  said.  "I  can  feel  him.  I 
can  feel  him  now,  in  this  lane.  He  hearing  us  talk,  every 
word,  hid  somewhere,  waiting.  I  aint  seen  him,  and  I  aint 
going  to  see  him  again  but  once  more,  with  that  razor  in  his 
mouth.  That  razor  on  that  string  down  his  back,  inside  his 
shirt.  And  then  I  aint  going  to  be  even  surprised." 

"I  wasn't  scaired,"  Jason  said. 

"If  you'd  behave  yourself,  you'd  have  kept  out  of  this," 
father  said.  "But  it's  all  right  now.  He's  probably  in  St.  Louis 
now.  Probably  got  another  wife  by  now  and  forgot  all  about 
you." 

"If  he  has,  I  better  not  find  out  about  it,"  Nancy  said.  "I'd 
stand  there  right  over  them,  and  every  time  he  wropped  her, 
I'd  cut  that  arm  off.  I'd  cut  his  head  off  and  I'd  slit  her  belly 
and  I'd  shove—" 

"Hush,"  father  said. 

"Slit  whose  belly,  Nancy?"  Caddy  said. 

"I  wasn't  scaired,"  Jason  said.  "I'd  walk  right  down  this 
lane  by  myself." 

"Yah,"  Caddy  said.  "You  wouldn't  dare  to  put  your  foot 
down  in  it  if  we  were  not  here  too." 


II 

DILSEY  WAS  STILL  SICK,  so  we  took  Nancy  home  every  night 
until  mother  said,  "How  much  longer  is  this  going  on?  I  to 


296  The  Village 

be  left  alone  in  this  big  house  while  you  take  home  a  fright- 
ened Negro?" 

We  fixed  a  pallet  in  the  kitchen  for  Nancy.  One  night  we 
waked  up,  hearing  the  sound.  It  was  not  singing  and  it  waj> 
not  crying,  coming  up  the  dark  stairs.  There  was  a  light  in 
mother's  room  and  we  heard  father  going  down  the  hall, 
down  the  back  stairs,  and  Caddy  and  I  went  into  the  hall. 
The  floor  was  cold.  Our  toes  curled  away  from  it  while  we 
listened  to  the  sound.  It  was  like  singing  and  it  wasn't  like 
singing,  like  the  sounds  that  Negroes  make. 

Then  it  stopped  and  we  heard  father  going  down  the  back 
stairs,  and  we  went  to  the  head  of  the  stairs.  Then  the  sound 
began  again,  in  the  stairway,  not  loud,  and  we  could  see 
Nancy's  eyes  halfway  up  the  stairs,  against  the  wall  They 
looked  like  cat's  eyes  do,  like  a  big  cat  against  the  wall, 
watching  us.  When  we  came  down  the  steps  to  where  she 
was,  she  quit  making  the  sound  again,  and  we  stood  there 
until  father  came  back  up  from  the  kitchen,  with  his  pistol  in 
his  hand.  He  went  back  down  with  Nancy  and  they  came 
back  with  Nancy's  pallet. 

We  spread  the  pallet  in  our  room.  After  the  light  in 
mother's  room  went  off,  we  could  see  Nancy's  eyes  again. 
"Nancy,"  Caddy  whispered,  "are  you  asleep,  Nancy?" 

Nancy  whispered  something.  It  was  oh  or  no,  I  dont  know 
which.  Like  nobody  had  made  it,  like  it  came  from  nowhere 
and  went  nowhere,  until  it  was  like  Nancy  was  not  there  at 
all;  that  I  had  looked  so  hard  at  her  eyes  on  the  stairs  that 
they  had  got  printed  on  my  eyeballs,  like  the  sun  does  when 
you  have  closed  your  eyes  and  there  is  no  sun.  "Jesus," 
Nancy  whispered.  "Jesus." 

"Was  it  Jesus?"  Caddy  said.  "Did  he  try  to  come  into  the 
kitchen?" 

"Jesus,"  Nancy  said.  Like  this:  Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus,  until 
the  sound  went  out,  like  a  match  or  a  candle  does. 


That  Evening  Sun  297 

"It's  the  other  Jesus  she  means,"  I  said. 

"Can  you  see  us,  Nancy?"  Caddy  whispered.  "Can  you 
see  our  eyes  too?" 

"I  aint  nothing  but  a  nigger,"  Nancy  said.  "God  knows. 
God  knows." 

"What  did  you  see  down  there  in  the  kitchen?"  Caddy 
whispered.  "What  tried  to  get  in?" 

"God  knows,"  Nancy  said.  We  could  see  her  eyes.  "God 
knows." 

Dilsey  got  well.  She  cooked  dinner.  "You'd  better  stay  in 
bed  a  day  or  two  longer,"  father  said. 

"What  for?"  Dilsey  said.  "If  I  had  been  a  day  later,  this 
place  would  be  to  rack  and  ruin.  Get  on  out  of  here  now. 
and  let  me  get  my  kitchen  straight  again." 

Dilsey  cooked  supper  too.  And  that  night,  just  before 
dark,  Nancy  came  into  the  kitchen. 

"How  do  you  know  he's  back?"  Dilsey  said.  "You  aint 
seen  him." 

"Jesus  is  a  nigger,"  Jason  said. 

"I  can  feel  him,"  Nancy  said.  "I  can  feel  him  laying  yonder 
in  the  ditch." 

"Tonight?"  Dilsey  said.  "Is  he  there  tonight?" 

"Dilsey's  a  nigger  too,"  Jason  said. 

"You  try  to  eat  something,"  Dilsey  said. 

"I  dont  want  nothing,"  Nancy  said. 

"I  aint  a  nigger,"  Jason  said. 

"Drink  some  coffee,"  Dilsey  said.  She  poured  a  cup  of 
coffee  for  Nancy.  "Do  you  know  he's  out  there  tonight? 
How  come  you  know  it's  tonight?" 

"I  know,"  Nancy  said.  "He's  there,  waiting.  I  know.  I 
done  lived  with  him  too  long.  I  know  what  he  is  fixing  to  do 
fore  he  know  it  himself." 

"Drink  some  coffee,"  Dilsey  said.  Nancy  held  the  cup  to 
her  mouth  and  blew  into  the  cup.  Her  mouth  pursed  out 


298  The  Village 

like  a  spreading  adder's,  like  a  rubber  mouth,  like  she  had 

blown  all  the  color  out  of  her  lips  with  blowing  the  coffee. 

"I  aint  a  nigger,"  Jason  said.  "Are  you  a  nigger,  Nancy?" 

"I  hellborn,  child,"  Nancy  said.  "I  wont  be  nothing  soon. 

I  going  back  where  I  come  from  soon." 

Ill 

SHE  BEGAN  TO  DRINK  the  coffee.  While  she  was  drinking,  hold- 
ing the  cup  in  both  hands,  she  began  to  make  the  sound  again. 
She  made  the  sound  into  the  cup  and  the  coffee  sploshed  out 
onto  her  hands  and  her  dress.  Her  eyes  looked  at  us  and  she 
sat  there,  her  elbows  on  her  knees,  holding  the  cup  in  both 
hands,  looking  at  us  across  the  wet  cup,  making  the  sound. 
"Look  at  Nancy,"  Jason  said.  "Nancy  cant  cook  for  us  now. 
Dilsey's  got  well  now." 

"You  hush  up,"  Dilsey  said.  Nancy  held  the  cup  in  both 
hands,  looking  at  us,  making  the  sound,  like  there  were  two 
of  them:  one  looking  at  us  and  the  other  making  the  sound. 
"Whyn't  you  let  Mr  Jason  telefoam  the  marshal?"  Dilsey 
said.  Nancy  stopped  then,  holding  the  cup  in  her  long  brown 
hands.  She  tried  to  drink  some  coffee  again,  but  it  sploshed 
out  of  the  cup,  onto  her  hands  and  her  dress,  and  she  put  the 
cup  down.  Jason  watched  her. 

"I  cant  swallow  it,"  Nancy  said.  "I  swallows  but  it  wont 
go  down  me." 

"You  go  down  to  the  cabin,"  Dilsey  said.  "Frony  will  fix 
you  a  pallet  and  I'll  be  there  soon." 

"Wont  no  nigger  stop  him,"  Nancy  said. 

"I  aint  a  nigger,"  Jason  said.  "Am  I,  Dilsey?" 

"I  reckon  not,"  Dilsey  said.  She  looked  at  Nancy.  "I  dont 
reckon  so.  What  you  going  to  do,  then?" 

Nancy  looked  at  us.  Her  eyes  went  fast,  like  she  was  afraid 


That  Evening  Sun  299 

there  wasn't  time  to  look,  without  hardly  moving  at  all.  She 
looked  at  us,  at  all  three  of  us  at  one  time.  "You  member  that 
night  I  stayed  in  yawls'  room?"  she  said.  She  told  about  how 
we  waked  up  early  the  next  morning,  and  played.  We  had 
to  play  quiet,  on  her  pallet,  until  father  woke  up  and  it  was 
time  to  get  breakfast.  "Go  and  ask  your  maw  to  let  me  stay 
here  tonight,"  Nancy  said.  "I  wont  need  no  pallet.  We  can 
play  some  more." 

Caddy  asked  mother.  Jason  went  too.  "I  cant  have 
Negroes  sleeping  in  the  bedrooms,"  mother  said.  Jason  cried. 
He  cried  until  mother  said  he  couldn't  have  any  dessert  for 
three  days  if  he  didn't  stop.  Then  Jason  said  he  would  stop 
if  Dilsey  would  make  a  chocolate  cake.  Father  was  there. 

"Why  dont  you  do  something  about  it?"  mother  said. 
"What  do  we  have  officers  for?" 

"Why  is  Nancy  afraid  of  Jesus?"  Caddy  said.  "Are  you 
afraid  of  father,  mother?" 

"What  could  the  officers  do?"  father  said.  "If  Nancy 
hasn't  seen  him,  how  could  the  officers  find  him?" 

"Then  why  is  she  afraid?"  mother  said. 

"She  says  he  is  there.  She  says  she  knows  he  is  there 
tonight." 

"Yet  we  pay  taxes,"  mother  said.  "I  must  wait  here  alone 
in  this  big  house  while  you  take  a  Negro  woman  home." 

"You  know  that  I  am  not  lying  outside  with  a  razor," 
father  said. 

"I'll  stop  if  Dilsey  will  make  a  chocolate  cake,"  Jason 
said.  Mother  told  us  to  go  out  and  father  said  he  didn't 
know  if  Jason  would  get  a  chocolate  cake  or  not,  but  he 
knew  what  Jason  was  going  to  get  in  about  a  minute.  We 
went  back  to  the  kitchen  and  told  Nancy. 

"Father  said  for  you  to  go  home  and  lock  the  door,  and 
you'll  be  all  right,"  Caddy  said.  "All  right  from  what, 
Nancy?  Is  Jesus  mad  at  you?"  Nancy  was  holding  the  coffee 


300  The  Village 

cup  in  her  hands  again,  her  elbows  on  her  knees  and  her 
hands  holding  the  cup  between  her  knees.  She  was  looking 
into  the  cup.  "What  have  you  done  that  made  Jesus  mad?" 
Caddy  said.  Nancy  let  the  cup  go.  It  didn't  break  on  the 
floor,  but  the  coffee  spilled  out,  and  Nancy  sat  there  with 
her  hands  still  making  the  shape  of  the  cup.  She  began  to 
make  the  sound  again,  not  loud.  Not  singing  and  not  unsing- 
ing.  We  watched  her. 

"Here,"  Dilsey  said.  "You  quit  that,  now.  You  get  aholt 
of  yourself.  You  wait  here.  I  going  to  get  Versh  to  vvalk 
home  with  you."  Dilsey  went  out. 

We  looked  at  Nancy.  Her  shoulders  kept  shaking,  but 
she  quit  making  the  sound.  We  watched  her.  "What's 
Jesus  going  to  do  to  you?"  Caddy  said.  "He  went  away," 

Nancy  looked  at  us.  "We  had  fun  that  night  I  stayed 
in  yawls'  room,  didn't  we?" 

"I  didn't,"  Jason  said.  "I  didn't  have  any  fun." 

"You  were  asleep  in  mother's  room,"  Caddy  said.  "You 
were  not  there." 

"Let's  go  down  to  my  house  and  have  some  more  fun," 
Nancy  said. 

"Mother  wont  let  us,"  I  said.  "It's  too  late  now." 

"Dont  bother  her,"  Nancy  said.  "We  can  tell  her  in  the 
morning.  She  wont  mind." 

"She  wouldn't  let  us,"  I  said. 

"Dont  ask  her  now,"  Nancy  said.  "Dont  bother  her  now." 

"She  didn't  say  we  couldn't  go,"  Caddy  said. 

"We  didn't  ask,"  I  said. 

"If  you  go,  I'll  tell,"  Jason  said. 

"We'll  have  fun,"  Nancy  said.  "They  won't  mind,  just  to 
my  house.  I  been  working  for  yawl  a  long  time.  They  won't 
mind." 

"I'm  not  afraid  to  go,"  Caddy  said.  "Jason  is  the  one  that's 
afraid.  He'll  tell." 


That  Evening  Sun  301 

"I'm  not,"  Jason  said. 

"Yes,  you  are,"  Caddy  said.  "You'll  tell." 

"I  won't  tell,"  Jason  said.  "I'm  not  afraid." 

"Jason  ain't  afraid  to  go  with  me,"  Nancy  said.  "Is  you, 
Jason?" 

"Jason  is  going  to  tell,"  Caddy  said.  The  lane  was  dark. 
We  passed  the  pasture  gate.  "I  bet  if  something  was  to  jump 
out  from  behind  that  gate,  Jason  would  holler." 

"I  wouldn't,"  Jason  said.  We  walked  down  the  lane. 
Nancy  was  talking  loud. 

"What  are  you  talking  so  loud  for,  Nancy?"  Caddy  said. 

"Who;  me?"  Nancy  said.  "Listen  at  Quentin  and  Caddy 
and  Jason  saying  I'm  talking  loud." 

"You  talk  like  there  was  five  of  us  here,"  Caddy  said.  "You 
talk  like  father  was  here  too." 

"Who;  me  talking  loud,  Mr  Jason?"  Nancy  said. 

"Nancy  called  Jason  'Mister,'  "  Caddy  said. 

"Listen  how  Caddy  and  Quentin  and  Jason  talk,"  Nancy 
said. 

"We're  not  talking  loud,"  Caddy  said.  "You're  the  one 
that's  talking  like  father — " 

"Hush,"  Nancy  said;  "hush,  Mr  Jason." 

"Nancy  called  Jason  'Mister'  aguh — " 

"Hush,"  Nancy  said.  She  was  talking  loud  when  WQ 
crossed  the  ditch  and  stooped  through  the  fence  where  she 
used  to  stoop  through  with  the  clothes  on  her  head.  Then  we 
came  to  her  house.  We  were  going  fast  then.  She  opened  the 
door.  The  smell  of  the  house  was  like  the  lamp  and  the  smell 
of  Nancy  was  like  the  wick,  like  they  were  waiting  for  one 
another  to  begin  to  smell.  She  lit  the  lamp  and  closed  the 
door  and  put  the  bar  up.  Then  she  quit  talking  loud,  looking 
at  us. 

"What're  we  going  to  do? "  Caddy  said. 


302  The  Village 

"What  do  yawl  want  to  do?"  Nancy  said. 

"You  said  we  would  have  some  fun,"  Caddy  said. 

There  was  something  about  Nancy's  house;  something  you 
could  smell  besides  Nancy  and  the  house.  Jason  smelled  it, 
even.  "I  don't  want  to  stay  here,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  go 
home." 

"Go  home,  then,"  Caddy  said. 

"I  don't  want  to  go  by  myself,"  Jason  said. 

"We're  going  to  have  some  fun,"  Nancy  said. 

"How?"  Caddy  said. 

Nancy  stood  by  the  door.  She  was  looking  at  us,  only  it 
was  like  she  had  emptied  her  eyes,  like  she  had  quit  using 
them.  "What  do  you  want  to  do?"  she  said. 

"Tell  us  a  story,"  Caddy  said.  "Can  you  tell  a  story?" 

"Yes,"  Nancy  said. 

"Tell  it,"  Caddy  said.  We  looked  at  Nancy.  "You  don't 
know  any  stories." 

"Yes,"  Nancy  said.  "Yes,  I  do." 

She  came  and  sat  in  a  chair  before  the  hearth.  There  was  a 
little  fire  there.  Nancy  built  it  up,  when  it  was  already  hot 
inside.  She  built  a  good  blaze.  She  told  a  story.  She  talked 
like  her  eyes  looked,  like  her  eyes  watching  us  and  her  voice 
talking  to  us  did  not  belong  to  her.  Like  she  was  living  some- 
where else,  waiting  somewhere  else.  She  was  outside  the 
cabin.  Her  voice  was  inside  and  the  shape  of  her,  the  Nancy 
that  could  stoop  under  a  barbed  wire  fence  with  a  bundle  of 
clothes  balanced  on  her  head  as  though  without  weight,  like 
a  balloon,  was  there.  But  that  was  all.  "And  so  this  here 
queen  come  walking  up  to  the  ditch,  where  that  bad  man  was 
hiding.  She  was  walking  up  to  the  ditch,  and  she  say,  'If  I  can 
just  get  past  this  here  ditch,'  was  what  she  say  .  .  ." 

"What  ditch?"  Caddy  said.  "A  ditch  like  that  one  out 
there?  Why  did  a  queen  want  to  go  into  a  ditch?" 

"To  get  to  her  house,"  Nancy  said.  She  looked  at  us.  "She 


That  Evening  Sun  303 

had  to  cross  the  ditch  to  get  into  her  house  quick  and  bar 
the  door." 

"Why  did  she  want  to  go  home  and  bar  the  door?"  Caddy 
said. 


IV 

NANCY  LOOKED  at  us.  She  quit  talking.  She  looked  at  us. 
Jason's  legs  stuck  straight  out  of  his  pants  where  he  sat  on 
Nancy's  lap.  "I  don't  think  that's  a  good  story,"  he  said.  "I 
want  to  go  home." 

"Maybe  we  had  better,"  Caddy  said.  She  got  up  from  the 
floor.  "I  bet  they  are  looking  for  us  right  now."  She  went 
toward  the  door. 

"No,"  Nancy  said.  "Don't  open  it."  She  got  up  quick  and 
passed  Caddy.  She  didn't  touch  the  door,  the  wooden  bar. 

"Why  not?"  Caddy  said. 

"Come  back  to  the  lamp,"  Nancy  said.  "We'll  have  fun. 
You  don't  have  to  go." 

"We  ought  to  go,"  Caddy  said.  "Unless  we  have  a  lot  of 
fun."  She  and  Nancy  came  back  to  the  fire,  the  lamp. 

"I  want  to  go  home,"  Jason  said.  "I'm  going  to  tell." 

"I  know  another  story,"  Nancy  said.  She  stood  close  to 
the  lamp.  She  looked  at  Caddy,  like  when  your  eyes  look  up 
at  a  stick  balanced  on  your  nose.  She  had  to  look  down  to 
see  Caddy,  but  her  eyes  looked  like  that,  like  when  you  are 
balancing  a  stick. 

"I  won't  listen  to  it,"  Jason  said.  "I'll  bang  on  the  floor." 

"It's  a  good  one,"  Nancy  said.  "It's  better  than  the  other 
one." 

"What's  it  about?"  Caddy  said.  Nancy  was  standing  by 
the  lamp.  Her  hand  was  on  the  lamp,  against  the  light,  long 
and  brown. 

"Your  hand  is  on  that  hot  crlobe."  Caddv  said.  "Don't  it 
feel  hot  to  your  hand?" 


304  The  Village 

Nancy  looked  at  her  hand  on  the  lamp  chimney.  She  took 
her  hand  away,  slow.  She  stood  there,  looking  at  Caddy, 
wringing  her  long  hand  as  though  it  were  tied  to  her  wrist 
with  a  string. 

"Let's  do  something  else,"  Caddy  said. 

"I  want  to  go  home,"  Jason  said. 

"I  got  some  popcorn,"  Nancy  said.  She  looked  at  Caddy 
and  then  at  Jason  and  then  at  me  and  then  at  Caddy  again. 
"I  got  some  popcorn." 

"I  don't  like  popcorn,"  Jason  said.  "I'd  rather  have  candy." 

Nancy  looked  at  Jason.  "You  can  hold  the  popper."  She 
was  still  wringing  her  hand;  it  was  long  and  limp  and  brown. 

"All  right,"  Jason  said.  "I'll  stay  a  while  if  I  can  do  that. 
Caddy  can't  hold  it.  I'll  want  to  go  home  again  if  Caddy 
holds  the  popper." 

Nancy  built  up  the  fire.  "Look  at  Nancy  putting  her 
hands  in  the  fire,"  Caddy  said.  "What's  the  matter  with  you, 
Nancy?" 

"I  got  popcorn,"  Nancy  said.  "I  got  some."  She  took  the 
popper  from  under  the  bed.  It  was  broken.  Jason  began  to 
cry. 

"Now  we  can't  have  any  popcorn,"  he  said. 

"We  ought  to  go  home,  anyway,"  Caddy  said.  "Come  on, 
Quentin." 

"Wait,"  Nancy  said;  "wait.  I  can  fix  it.  Don't  you  want 
to  help  me  fix  it?" 

"I  don't  think  I  want  any,"  Caddy  said.  "It's  too  late  now." 

"You  help  me,  Jason,"  Nancy  said.  "Don't  you  want  to 
help  me?" 

"No,"  Jason  said.  "I  want  to  go  home." 

"Hush,"  Nancy  said;  "hush.  Watch.  Watch  me.  I  can  fix 
it  so  Jason  can  hold  it  and  pop  the  corn."  She  got  a  piece  of 
wire  and  fixed  the  popper. 


That  Evening  Sun  305 

"It  won't  hold  good,"  Caddy  said. 

"Yes,  it  will,"  Nancy  said.  "Yawl  watch.  Yawl  help  me 
shell  some  corn." 

The  popcorn  was  under  the  bed  too.  We  shelled  it  into  the 
popper  and  Nancy  helped  Jason  hold  the  popper  over  the 
fire. 

"It's  not  popping,"  Jason  said.  "I  want  to  go  home." 

"You  wait,"  Nancy  said.  "It'll  begin  to  pop.  We'll  have 
fun  then."  She  was  sitting  close  to  the  fire.  The  lamp  was 
turned  up  so  high  it  was  beginning  to  smoke. 

"Why  don't  you  turn  it  down  some?"  I  said. 

"It's  all  right,"  Nancy  said.  "I'll  clean  it.  Yawl  wait.  The 
popcorn  will  start  in  a  minute." 

"I  don't  believe  it's  going  to  start,"  Caddy  said.  "We  ought 
to  start  home,  anyway.  They'll  be  worried." 

"No,"  Nancy  said.  "It's  going  to  pop.  Dilsey  will  tell  um 
yawl  with  me.  I  been  working  for  yawl  long  time.  They 
won't  mind  if  yawl  at  my  house.  You  wait,  now.  It'll  start 
popping  any  minute  now." 

Then  Jason  got  some  smoke  in  his  eyes  and  he  began  to 
cry.  He  dropped  the  popper  into  the  fire.  Nancy  got  a  wet 
rag  ard  wiped  Jason's  face,  but  he  didn't  stop  crying. 

"Hush,"  she  said.  "Hush."  But  he  didn't  hush.  Caddy  took 
the  popper  out  of  the  fire. 

"It's  burned  up,"  she  said.  "You'll  have  to  get  some  more 
popcorn,  Nancy." 

"Did  you  put  all  of  it  in?"  Nancy  said. 

"Yes,"  Caddy  said.  Nancy  looked  at  Caddy.  Then  she 
took  the  popper  and  opened  it  and  poured  the  cinders  into 
her  apron  and  began  to  sort  the  grains,  her  hands  long  and 
brown,  and  we  watching  her. 

"Haven't  you  got  any  more?"  Caddy  said. 

"Yes,"  Nancy  said;  "yes.  Look.  This  here  ain't  burnt.  All 
we  need  to  do  is — " 


306  The  Village 

"I  want  to  go  home,"  Jason  said.  "I'm  going  to  tell" 

"Hush,"  Caddy  said.  We  all  listened.  Nancy's  head  was 
already  turned  toward  the  barred  door,  her  eyes  filled  with 
red  lamplight.  "Somebody  is  coming,"  Caddy  said. 

Then  Nancy  began  to  make  that  sound  again,  not  loud, 
sitting  there  above  the  fire,  her  long  hands  dangling  between 
her  knees;  all  of  a  sudden  water  began  to  come  out  on  her 
face  in  big  drops,  running  down  her  face,  carrying  in  each 
one  a  little  turning  ball  of  firelight  like  a  spark  until  it 
dropped  off  her  chin.  "She's  not  crying,"  I  said. 

"I  ain't  crying,"  Nancy  said.  Her  eyes  were  closed.  "I  ain't 
crying.  Who  is  it?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Caddy  said.  She  went  to  the  door  and 
looked  out.  "We've  got  to  go  now,"  she  said.  "Here  comes 
father." 

"I'm  going  to  tell,"  Jason  said.  "Yawl  made  me  come." 

The  water  still  ran  down  Nancy's  face.  She  turned  in  her 
chair.  "Listen.  Tell  him.  Tell  him  we  going  to  have  fun.  Tell 
him  I  take  good  care  of  yawl  until  in  the  morning.  Tell  him 
to  let  me  come  home  with  yawl  and  sleep  on  the  floor.  Tell 
him  I  won't  need  no  pallet.  We'll  have  fun.  You  member 
last  time  how  we  had  so  much  fun?" 

"I  didn't  have  fun,"  Jason  said.  "You  hurt  me.  You  put 
smoke  in  my  eyes.  I'm  going  to  tell." 

V 

FATHER  CAME  IN.  He  looked  at  us.  Nancy  did  not  get  up. 
"Tell  him,"  she  said. 
"Caddy  made  us  come  down  here,"  Jason  said.  "I  didn't 


want  to." 


Father  came  to  the  fire.  Nancy  looked  up  at  him.  "Can't 
you  go  to  Aunt  Rachel's  and  stay?"  he  said.  Nancy  looked 
up  at  father,  her  hands  between  her  knees.  "He's  not  here," 


That  Evening  Sun  307 

father  said.  "I  would  have  seen  him.  There's  not  a  soul  in 
sight." 

"He  in  the  ditch,"  Nancy  said.  "He  waiting  in  the  ditch 
yonder." 

"Nonsense,"  father  said.  He  looked  at  Nancy.  "Do  you 
know  he's  there?" 

"I  got  the  sign,"  Nancy  said. 

"What  sign?" 

"I  got  it.  It  was  on  the  table  when  I  come  in.  It  was  a  hog- 
bone,  with  blood  meat  still  on  it,  laying  by  the  lamp.  He's 
out  there.  When  yawl  walk  out  that  door,  I  gone." 

"Gone  where,  Nancy?"  Caddy  said. 

"I'm  not  a  tattletale,"  Jason  said. 

"Nonsense,"  father  said. 

"He  out  there,"  Nancy  said.  "He  looking  through  that 
window  this  minute,  waiting  for  yawl  to  go.  Then  I  gone." 

"Nonsense,"  father  said.  "Lock  up  your  house  and  we'll 
take  you  on  to  Aunt  Rachel's." 

"  'Twont  do  no  good,"  Nancy  said.  She  didn't  look  at 
father  now,  but  he  looked  down  at  her,  at  her  long,  limp, 
moving  hands.  "Putting  it  off  wont  do  no  good." 

"Then  what  do  you  want  to  do?"  father  said. 

"I  don't  know,"  Nancy  said.  "I  can't  do  nothing.  Just  put 
it  off.  And  that  don't  do  no  good.  I  reckon  it  belong  to  me. 
I  reckon  what  I  going  to  get  ain't  no  more  than  mine." 

"Get  what?"  Caddy  said.  "What's  yours?" 

"Nothing,"  father  said.  "You  all  must  get  to  bed." 

"Caddy  made  me  come,"  Jason  said. 

"Go  on  to  Aunt  Rachel's,"  father  said. 

"It  won't  do  no  good,"  Nancy  said.  She  sat  before  the 
fire,  her  elbows  on  her  knees,  her  long  hands  between  her 
knees.  "When  even  your  own  kitchen  wouldn't  do  no  good. 
When  even  if  I  was  sleeping  on  the  floor  in  the  room  with 
your  chillen,  and  the  next  morning  there  I  am,  and  blood — " 


The  Village 

"Hush,"  father  said.  "Lock  the  door  and  put  out  the  lamp 
and  go  to  bed." 

"I  scared  of  the  dark,"  Nancy  said.  "I  scared  for  it  to  hap- 
pen in  the  dark." 

"You  mean  you're  going  to  sit  right  here  with  the  lamp 
lighted?"  father  said.  Then  Nancy  began  to  make  the  sound 
again,  sitting  before  the  fire,  her  long  hands  between  her 
knees.  "Ah,  damnation,"  father  said.  "Come  along,  chillen. 
It's  past  bedtime." 

"When  yawl  go  home,  I  gone,"  Nancy  said.  She  talked 
quieter  now,  and  her  face  looked  quiet,  like  her  hands.  "Any- 
way, I  got  my  coffin  money  saved  up  with  Mr.  Lovelady." 
Mr.  Lovelady  was  a  short,  dirty  man  who  collected  the 
Negro  insurance,  coming  around  to  the  cabins  or  the 
kitchens  every  Saturday  morning,  to  collect  fifteen  cents.  He 
and  his  wife  lived  at  the  hotel.  One  morning  his  wife  com- 
mitted suicide.  They  had  a  child,  a  little  girl.  He  and  the 
child  went  away.  After  a  week  or  two  he  came  back  alone. 
We  would  see  him  going  along  the  lanes  and  the  back  streets 
on  Saturday  mornings. 

"Nonsense,"  father  said.  "You'll  be  the  first  thing  I'll  see 
in  the  kitchen  tomorrow  morning." 

"You'll  see  what  you'll  see,  I  reckon,"  Nancy  said.  "But 
it  will  take  the  Lord  to  say  what  that  will  be." 


VI 

WE  LEFT  HER  sitting  before  the  fire. 

"Come  and  put  the  bar  up,"  father  said.  But  she  didn't 
move.  She  didn't  look  at  us  again,  sitting  quietly  there  be- 
tween the  lamp  and  the  fire.  From  some  distance  down  the 
lane  we  could  look  back  and  see  her  through  the  open  door. 
"What,  Father?"  Caddy  said.  "What's  going  to  happen?" 
"Nothing,"  father  said.  Jason  was  on  father's  back,  so 


That  Evening  Sun  309 

Jason  was  the  tallest  of  all  of  us.  We  went  down  into  the 
ditch.  I  looked  at  it,  quiet.  I  couldn't  see  much  where  the 
moonlight  and  the  shadows  tangled. 

"If  Jesus  is  hid  here,  he  can  see  us,  cant  he?"  Caddy  said. 

"He's  not  there,"  father  said.  "He  went  away  a  long  time 
ago." 

"You  made  me  come,"  Jason  said,  high;  against  the  sky  it 
looked  like  father  had  two  heads,  a  little  one  and  a  big  one. 
"I  didn't  want  to." 

We  went  up  out  of  the  ditch.  We  could  still  see  Nancy's 
house  and  the  open  door,  but  we  couldn't  see  Nancy  now, 
sitting  before  the  fire  with  the  door  open,  because  she  was 
tired.  "I  just  done  got  tired,"  she  said.  "I  just  a  nigger.  It 
ain't  no  fault  of  mine." 

But  we  could  hear  her,  because  she  began  just  after  we 
came  up  out  of  the  ditch,  the  sound  that  was  not  singing  and 
not  unsinging.  "Who  will  do  our  washing  now,  Father?" 
I  said. 

"I'm  not  a  nigger,"  Jason  said,  high  and  close  above 
father's  head. 

"You're  worse,"  Caddy  said,  "you  are  a  tattletale.  If  some- 
thing was  to  jump  out,  you'd  be  scairder  than  a  nigger." 

"I  wouldn't,"  Jason  said. 

"You'd  cry,"  Caddy  said. 

"Caddy,"  father  said. 

"I  wouldn't!"  Jason  said. 

"Scairy  cat,"  Caddy  said. 

"Candace!"  father  said. 


Ill  •  THE  WILDERNESS 


Red  Leaves 

A  Justice 

A  Courtship 

Lol 


Red  Leaves 


i 

THE  TWO  INDIANS  crossed  the  plantation  toward  the  slave 
quarters.  Neat  with  whitewash,  of  baked  soft  brick,  the  two 
rows  of  houses  in  which  lived  the  slaves  belonging  to  the 
clan,  faced  one  another  across  the  mild  shade  of  the  lane 
marked  and  scored  with  naked  feet  and  with  a  few  home- 
made toys  mute  in  the  dust.  There  was  no  sign  of  life. 

"I  know  what  we  will  find,"  the  first  Indian  said. 

"What  we  will  not  find,"  the  second  said.  Although  it 
was  noon,  the  lane  was  vacant,  the  doors  of  the  cabins  empty 
and  quiet;  no  cooking  smoke  rose  from  any  of  the  chinked 
and  plastered  chimneys. 

"Yes.  It  happened  like  this  when  the  father  of  him  who  is 
now  the  Man,  died." 

"You  mean,  of  him  who  was  the  Man." 

"Yao." 

The  first  Indian's  name  was  Three  Basket.  He  was  per- 
haps sixty.  They  were  both  squat  men,  a  little  solid,  burgher- 
like;  paunchy,  with  big  heads,  big,  broad,  dust-colored  faces 
of  a  certain  blurred  serenity  like  carved  heads  on  a  ruined 
wall  in  Siam  or  Sumatra,  looming  out  of  a  mist.  The  sun  had 
done  it,  the  violent  sun,  the  violent  shade.  Their  hair  looked 
like  sedge  grass  on  burnt-over  land.  Clamped  through  one 
ear  Three  Basket  wore  an  enameled  snuffbox. 

3'3 


314  The  Wilderness 

"I  have  said  all  the  time  that  this  is  not  the  good  way.  In 
the  old  days  there  were  no  quarters,  no  Negroes.  A  man's 
time  was  his  own  then.  He  had  time.  Now  he  must  spend 
most  of  it  finding  work  for  them  who  prefer  sweating  to  do/' 

"They  are  like  horses  and  dogs." 

"They  are  like  nothing  in  this  sensible  world.  Nothing 
contents  them  save  sweat.  They  are  worse  than  the  white 
people." 

"It  is  not  as  though  the  Man  himself  had  to  find  work  for 
them  to  do." 

"You  said  it.  I  do  not  like  slavery.  It  is  not  the  good  way. 
In  the  old  days,  there  was  the  good  way.  But  not  now." 

"You  do  not  remember  the  old  way  either." 

"I  have  listened  to  them  who  do.  And  I  have  tried  this 
way.  Man  was  not  made  to  sweat." 

"That's  so.  See  what  it  has  done  to  their  flesh." 

"Yes.  Black.  It  has  a  bitter  taste,  too." 

"You  have  eaten  of  it?" 

"Once.  I  was  young  then,  and  more  hardy  in  the  appetite 
than  now.  Now  it  is  different  with  me." 

"Yes.  They  are  too  valuable  to  eat  now." 

"There  is  a  bitter  taste  to  the  flesh  which  I  do  not  like." 

"They  are  too  valuable  to  eat,  anyway,  when  the  white 
men  will  give  horses  for  them." 

They  entered  the  lane.  The  mute,  meager  toys — the 
fetish-shaped  objects  made  of  wood  and  rags  and  feathers — 
lay  in  the  dust  about  the  patinaed  doorsteps,  among  bones 
and  broken  gourd  dishes.  But  there  was  no  sound  from  any 
cabin,  no  face  in  any  door;  had  not  been  since  yesterday, 
when  Issetibbeha  died.  But  they  already  knew  what  they 
would  find. 

It  was  in  the  central  cabin,  a  house  a  little  larger  than  the 
others,  where  at  certain  phases  of  the  moon  the  Negroes 
would  gather  to  begin  their  ceremonies  before  removing 


Red  Leaves  3 1 5 

after  nightfall  to  the  creek  bottom,  where  they  kept  the 
drums.  In  this  room  they  kept  the  minor  accessories,  the 
cryptic  ornaments,  the  ceremonial  records  which  consisted 
of  sticks  daubed  with  red  clay  in  symbols.  It  had  a  hearth  in 
the  center  of  the  floor,  beneath  a  hole  in  the  roof,  with  a  few 
cold  wood  ashes  and  a  suspended  iron  pot.  The  window 
shutters  were  closed;  when  the  two  Indians  entered,  after 
the  abashless  sunlight  they  could  distinguish  nothing  with  the 
•eyes  save  a  movement,  shadow,  out  of  which  eyeballs  rolled, 
so  that  the  place  appeared  to  be  full  of  Negroes.  The  two 
Indians  stood  in  the  doorway. 

"Yao,"  Basket  said.  "I  said  this  is  not  the  good  way." 

"I  don't  think  I  want  to  be  here,"  the  second  said. 

"That  is  black  man's  fear  which  you  smell.  It  does  not 
smell  as  ours  does." 

"I  don't  think  I  want  to  be  here." 

"Your  fear  has  an  odor  too." 

"Maybe  it  is  Issetibbeha  which  we  smell." 

"Yao.  He  knows.  He  knows  what  we  will  find  here.  He 
knew  when  he  died  what  we  should  find  here  today."  Out 
of  the  rank  twilight  of  the  room  the  eyes,  the  smell,  of 
Negroes  rolled  about  them.  "I  am  Three  Basket,  whom  you 
know,"  Basket  said  into  the  room.  "We  are  come  from  the 
Man.  He  whom  we  seek  is  gone?"  The  Negroes  said  nothing. 
The  smell  of  them,  of  their  bodies,  seemed  to  ebb  and  flux  in 
the  still  hot  air.  They  seemed  to  be  musing  as  one  upon 
something  remote,  inscrutable.  They  were  like  a  single 
octopus.  They  were  like  the  roots  of  a  huge  tree  uncovered, 
the  earth  broken  momentarily  upon  the  writhen,  thick,  fetid 
tangle  of  its  lightless  and  outraged  life.  "Come,"  Basket  said. 
"You  know  our  errand.  Is  he  whom  we  seek  gone?" 

"They  are  thinking  something,"  the  second  said.  "I  do 
not  want  to  be  here." 

"They  are  knowing  something,"  Basket  said. 


316  The  Wilderness 

"They  are  hiding  him,  you  think? " 

"No.  He  is  gone.  He  has  been  gone  since  last  night.  It  hap- 
pened like  this  before,  when  the  grandfather  of  him  who  is 
now  the  Man  died.  It  took  us  three  days  to  catch  him.  For 
three  days  Doom  lay  above  the  ground,  saying  1  see  my 
horse  and  my  dog.  But  I  do  not  see  my  slave.  What  have 
you  done  with  him  that  you  will  not  permit  me  to  lie 
quiet?'" 

"They  do  not  like  to  die." 

"Yao.  They  cling.  It  makes  trouble  for  us,  always.  A 
people  without  honor  and  without  decorum.  Always  a 
trouble." 

"I  do  not  like  it  here." 

"Nor  do  I.  But  then,  they  are  savages;  they  cannot  be 
expected  to  regard  usage.  That  is  why  I  say  that  this  way 
is  a  bad  way." 

"Yao.  They  cling.  They  would  even  rather  work  in  the 
sun  than  to  enter  the  earth  with  a  chief.  But  he  is  gone." 

The  Negroes  had  said  nothing,  made  no  sound.  The 
white  eyeballs  rolled,  wild,  subdued;  the  smell  was  rank, 
violent.  "Yes,  they  fear,"  the  second  said.  "What  shall  we 
do  now?" 

"Let  us  go  and  talk  with  the  Man." 

"Will  Moketubbe  listen?" 

"What  can  he  do?  He  will  not  like  to.  But  he  is  the  Man 


now." 


"Yao.  He  is  the  Man.  He  can  wear  the  shoes  with  the  red 
heels  all  the  time  now."  They  turned  and  went  out.  There 
was  no  door  in  the  door  frame.  There  were  no  doors  in 
any  of  the  cabins. 

"He  did  that  anyway,"  Basket  said. 

"Behind  Issetibbeha's  back.  But  now  they  are  his  shoes, 
since  he  is  the  Man." 

"Yao.  Issetibbeha  did  not  like  it.  I  have  heard.  I  know  that 


Red  Leaves  317 

he  said  to  Moketubbe:  'When  you  are  the  Man,  the  shoes 
will  be  yours.  But  until  then,  they  are  my  shoes.'  But  now 
Moketubbe  is  the  Man;  he  can  wear  them." 

"Yao,"  the  second  said.  "He  is  the  Man  now.  He  used  to 
wear  the  shoes  behind  Issetibbeha's  back,  and  it  was  not 
known  if  Issetibbeha  knew  this  or  not.  And  then  Issetibbeha 
became  dead,  who  was  not  old,  and  the  shoes  are  Moketub- 
be's,  since  he  is  the  Man  now.  What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

"I  don't  think  about  it,"  Basket  said.  "Do  you?" 

"No,"  the  second  said. 

"Good,"  Basket  said.  "You  are  wise." 


II 

THE  HOUSE  sat  on  a  knoll,  surrounded  by  oak  trees.  The 
front  of  it  was  one  story  in  height,  composed  of  the  deck 
house  of  a  steamboat  which  had  gone  ashore  and  which 
Doom,  Issetibbeha's  father,  had  dismantled  with  his  slaves 
and  hauled  on  cypress  rollers  twelve  miles  home  overland.  It 
took  them  five  months.  His  house  consisted  at  the  time  of  one 
brick  wall.  He  set  the  steamboat  broadside  on  to  the  wall, 
where  now  the  chipped  and  flaked  gilding  of  the  rococo 
cornices  arched  in  faint  splendor  above  the  gilt  lettering  of 
the  stateroom  names  above  the  jalousied  doors. 

Doom  had  been  born  merely  a  subchief,  a  Mingo,  one  of 
three  children  on  the  mother's  side  of  the  family.  He  made 
a  journey — he  was  a  young  man  then  and  New  Orleans  was 
a  European  city — from  north  Mississippi  to  New  Orleans 
by  keel  boat,  where  he  met  the  Chevalier  Sceur  Blonde  de 
Vitry,  a  man  whose  social  position,  on  its  face,  was  as 
equivocal  as  Doom's  own.  In  New  Orleans,  among  the 
gamblers  and  cutthroats  of  the  river  front,  Doom,  under  the 
tutelage  of  his  patron,  passed  as  the  chief,  the  Man,  the  he- 
reditary owner  of  that  land  which  belonged  to  the  male  side 


318  The  Wilderness 

of  the  family;  it  was  the  Chevalier  de  Vitry  who  called  him 
du  homme,  and  hence  Doom. 

They  were  seen  everywhere  together — the  Indian,  the 
squat  man  with  a  bold,  inscrutable,  underbred  face,  and  the 
Parisian,  the  expatriate,  the  friend,  it  was  said,  of  Carondelet 
and  the  intimate  of  General  Wilkinson.  Then  they  disap- 
peared, the  two  of  them,  vanishing  from  their  old  equivocal 
haunts  and  leaving  behind  them  the  legend  of  the  sums 
which  Doom  was  believed  to  have  won,  and  some  tale  about 
a  young  woman,  daughter  of  a  fairly  well-to-do  West  Indian 
family,  the  son  and  brother  of  whom  sought  Doom  with  a 
pistol  about  his  old  haunts  for  some  time  after  his  disappear- 
ance. 

Six  months  later  the  young  woman  herself  disappeared, 
boarding  the  St.  Louis  packet,  which  put  in  one  night  at 
a  wood  landing  on  the  north  Mississippi  side,  where  the 
woman,  accompanied  by  a  Negro  maid,  got  off.  Four  Indians 
met  her  with  a  horse  and  wagon,  and  they  traveled  for  three 
days,  slowly,  since  she  was  already  big  with  child,  to  the 
plantation,  where  she  found  that  Doom  was  now  chief.  He 
never  told  her  how  he  accomplished  it,  save  that  his  uncle 
and  his  cousin  had  died  suddenly.  At  that  time  the  house 
consisted  of  a  brick  wall  built  by  shiftless  slaves,  against 
which  was  propped  a  thatched  lean-to  divided  into  rooms 
and  littered  with  bones  and  refuse,  set  in  the  center  of  ten 
thousand  acres  of  matchless  parklike  forest  where  deer 
grazed  like  domestic  cattle.  Doom  and  the  woman  \vere 
married  there  a  short  time  before  Issetibbeha  was  born,  by 
a  combination  itinerant  minister  and  slave  trader  who  arrived 
on  a  mule,  to  the  saddle  of  which  was  lashed  a  cotton  um- 
brella and  a  three-gallon  demijohn  of  whisky.  After  that, 
Doom  began  to  acquire  more  slaves  and  to  cultivate  some  of 
his  land,  as  the  white  people  did.  But  he  never  had  enough 
for  them  to  do.  In  utter  idleness  the  majority  of  them  led 
lives  transplanted  whole  out  of  African  jungles,  save  on  the 


Red  Leaves  319 

occasions  when,  entertaining  guests,  Doom  coursed  them 
with  dogs. 

When  Doom  died,  Issetibbeha,  his  son,  was  nineteen.  He 
became  proprietor  of  the  land  and  of  the  quintupled  herd 
of  blacks  for  which  he  had  no  use  at  all.  Though  the  title 
of  Man  rested  with  him,  there  was  a  hierarchy  of  cousins 
and  uncles  who  ruled  the  clan  and  who  finally  gathered  in 
squatting  conclave  over  the  Negro  question,  squatting  pro- 
foundly beneath  the  golden  names  above  the  doors  of  the 
steamboat. 

"We  cannot  eat  them,"  one  said. 

"Why  not?" 

"There  are  too  many  of  them." 

"That's  true,"  a  third  said.  "Once  we  started,  we  should 
have  to  eat  them  all.  And  that  much  flesh  diet  is  not  good 
for  man." 

"Perhaps  they  will  be  like  deer  flesh.  That  cannot  hurt 
you." 

"We  might  kill  a  few  of  them  and  not  eat  them,"  Issetib- 
beha said. 

They  looked  at  him  for  a  while.  "What  for?"  one  said. 

"That  is  true,"  a  second  said.  "We  cannot  do  that.  They 
are  too  valuable;  remember  all  the  bother  they  have  caused 
us,  finding  things  for  them  to  do.  We  must  do  as  the  white 
men  do." 

"How  is  that?"  Issetibbeha  said. 

"Raise  more  Negroes  by  clearing  more  land  to  make  corn 
to  feed  them,  then  sell  them.  We  will  clear  the  land  and 
plant  it  with  food  and  raise  Negroes  and  sell  them  to  the 
white  men  for  money." 

"But  what  will  we  do  with  this  money?"  a  third  said. 

They  thought  for  a  while. 

"We  will  see,"  the  first  said.  They  squatted,  profound, 
grave. 

"It  means  work,"  the  third  said. 


320  The  Wilderness 

"Let  the  Negroes  do  it,"  the  first  said. 

"Yao.  Let  them.  To  sweat  is  bad.  It  is  damp.  It  opens  the 
pores." 

"And  then  the  night  air  enters." 

"Yao.  Let  the  Negroes  do  it.  They  appear  to  like  sweat- 
ing." 

So  they  cleared  the  land  with  the  Negroes  and  planted 
it  in  grain.  Up  to  that  time  the  slaves  had  lived  in  a  huge 
pen  with  a  lean-to  roof  over  one  corner,  like  a  pen  for  pigs. 
But  now  they  began  to  build  quarters,  cabins,  putting  the 
young  Negroes  in  the  cabins  in  pairs  to  mate;  five  years 
later  Issetibbeha  sold  forty  head  to  a  Memphis  trader,  and 
he  took  the  money  and  went  abroad  upon  it,  his  maternal 
uncle  from  New  Orleans  conducting  the  trip.  At  that  time 
the  Chevalier  Soeur  Blonde  de  Vitry  was  an  old  man  in 
Paris,  in  a  toupee  and  a  corset,  with  a  careful  toothless  old 
face  fixed  in  a  grimace  quizzical  and  profoundly  tragic.  He 
borrowed  three  hundred  dollars  from  Issetibbeha  and  in 
return  he  introduced  him  into  certain  circles;  a  year  later 
Issetibbeha  returned  home  with  a  gilt  bed,  a  pair  of  girandoles 
by  whose  light  it  was  said  that  Pompadour  arranged  her 
hair  while  Louis  smirked  at  his  mirrored  face  across  her 
powdered  shoulder,  and  a  pair  of  slippers  with  red  heels. 
They  were  too  small  for  him,  since  he  had  not  worn  shoes 
at  all  until  he  reached  New  Orleans  on  his  way  abroad. 

He  brought  the  slippers  home  in  tissue  paper  and  kept  them 
in  the  remaining  pocket  of  a  pair  of  saddlebags  filled  with 
cedar  shavings,  save  when  he  took  them  out  on  occasion  for 
his  son,  Moketubbe,  to  play  with.  At  three  years  of  age 
Moketubbe  had  a  broad,  flat,  Mongolian  face  that  appeared 
to  exist  in  a  complete  and  unfathomable  lethargy,  until  con- 
fronted by  the  slippers. 

Moketubbe's  mother  was  a  comely  girl  whom  Issetibbeha 
had  seen  one  day  working  in  her  shift  in  a  melon  patch.  He 


Red  Leaves  321 

stopped  and  watched  her  for  a  while — the  broad,  solid  thighs, 
the  sound  back,  the  serene  face.  He  was  on  his  way  to  the 
creek  to  fish  that  day,  but  he  didn't  go  any  farther;  perhaps 
while  he  stood  there  watching  the  unaware  girl  he  may  have 
remembered  his  own  mother,  the  city  woman,  the  fugitive 
with  her  fans  and  laces  and  her  Negro  blood,  and  all  the 
tawdry  shabbiness  of  that  sorry  affair.  Within  the  year 
Moketubbe  was  born;  even  at  three  he  could  not  get  his  feet 
into  the  slippers.  Watching  him  in  the  still,  hot  afternoons 
as  he  struggled  with  the  slippers  with  a  certain  monstrous 
repudiation  of  fact,  Issetibbeha  laughed  quietly  to  himself. 
He  laughed  at  Moketubbe  and  the  shoes  for  several  years, 
because  Moketubbe  did  not  give  up  trying  to  put  them  on 
until  he  was  sixteen.  Then  he  quit.  Or  Issetibbeha  thought 
he  had.  But  he  had  merely  quit  trying  in  Issetibbeha's  pres- 
ence. Issetibbeha's  newest  wife  told  him  that  Moketubbe  had 
stolen  and  hidden  the  shoes.  Issetibbeha  quit  laughing  then, 
and  he  sent  the  woman  away,  so  that  he  was  alone.  "Yao," 
he  said.  "I  too  like  being  alive,  it  seems."  He  sent  for  Moke- 
tubbe. "I  give  them  to  you,"  he  said. 

Moketubbe  was  twenty-five  then,  unmarried.  Issetibbeha 
was  not  tall,  but  he  was  taller  by  six  inches  than  his  son  and 
almost  a  hundred  pounds  lighter.  Moketubbe  was  already 
diseased  with  flesh,  with  a  pale,  broad,  inert  face  and  drop- 
sical hands  and  feet.  "They  are  yours  now,"  Issetibbeha  said, 
watching  him.  Moketubbe  had  looked  at  him  once  when  he 
entered,  a  glance  brief,  discreet,  veiled. 

"Thanks,"  he  said. 

Issetibbeha  looked  at  him.  He  could  never  tell  if  Moke- 
tubbe saw  anything,  looked  at  anything.  "Why  will  it  not  be 
the  same  if  I  give  the  slippers  to  you?" 

"Thanks,"  Moketubbe  said.  Issetibbeha  was  using  snuff  at 
the  time;  a  white  man  had  shown  him  how  to  put  the  powder 


322  The  Wilderness: 

into  his  lip  and  scour  it  against  his  teeth  with  a  twig  of  gum 
or  of  alphea. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "a  man  cannot  live  forever."  He  looked 
at  his  son,  then  his  gaze  went  blank  in  turn,  unseeing,  and 
he  mused  for  an  instant.  You  could  not  tell  what  he  was 
thinking,  save  that  he  said  half  aloud:  "Yao.  But  Doom's 
uncle  had  no  shoes  with  red  heels."  He  looked  at  his  son 
again,  fat,  inert.  "Beneath  all  that,  a  man  might  think  of 
doing  anything  and  it  not  be  known  until  too  late."  He  sat 
in  a  splint  chair  hammocked  with  deer  thongs.  aHe  cannot 
even  get  them  on;  he  and  I  are  both  frustrated  by  the  same 
gross  meat  which  he  wears.  He  cannot  even  get  them  on. 
But  is  that  my  fault? " 

He  lived  for  five  years  longer,  then  he  died.  He  was  sick 
one  night,  and  though  the  doctor  came  in  a  skunk-skin  vest 
and  burned  sticks,  he  died  before  noon. 

That  was  yesterday;  the  grave  was  dug,  and  for  twelve 
hours  now  the  People  had  been  coming  in  wagons  and  car- 
riages and  on  horseback  and  afoot,  to  eat  the  baked  dog  and 
the  succotash  and  the  yams  cooked  in  ashes  and  to  attend 
the  funeral. 

Ill 

"Ix  WILL  BE  THREE  DAYS,"  Basket  said,  as  he  and  the  other 
Indian  returned  to  the  house.  "It  will  be  three  days  and  the 
food  will  not  be  enough;  I  have  seen  it  before." 

The  second  Indian's  name  was  Louis  Berry.  "He  will 
smell  too,  in  this  weather." 

"Yao.  They  are  nothing  but  a  trouble  and  a  care." 

"Maybe  it  will  not  take  three  days." 

"They  run  far.  Yao.  We  will  smell  this  Man  before  he 
enters  the  earth.  You  watch  and  see  if  I  am  not  right." 

They  approached  the  house. 


Red  Leaves  323 

"He  can  wear  the  shoes  now,"  Berry  said.  "He  can  wear 
them  now  in  man's  sight." 

"He  cannot  wear  them  for  a  while  yet,"  Basket  said.  Berry 
looked  at  him.  "He  will  lead  the  hunt." 

"Moketubbe?"  Berry  said.  "Do  you  think  he  will?  A  man 
to  whom  even  talking  is  travail?" 

"What  else  can  he  do?  It  is  his  own  father  who  will  soon 
begin  to  smell." 

"That  is  true,"  Berry  said.  "There  is  even  yet  a  price  he 
must  pay  for  the  shoes.  Yao.  He  has  truly  bought  them. 
What  do  you  think?" 

"What  do  you  think?" 

"What  do  you  think?" 

"I  think  nothing." 

"Nor  do  I.  Issetibbeha  will  not  need  the  shoes  now.  Let 
Moketubbe  have  them;  Issetibbeha  will  not  care." 

"Yao.  Man  must  die." 

"Yao.  Let  him;  there  is  still  the  Man." 

The  bark  roof  of  the  porch  was  supported  by  peeled 
cypress  poles,  high  above  the  texas  of  the  steamboat,  shad- 
ing an  unfloored  banquette  where  on  the  trodden  earth 
mules  and  horses  were  tethered  in  bad  weather.  On  the 
forward  end  of  the  steamboat's  deck  sat  an  old  man  and 
two  women.  One  of  the  women  was  dressing  a  fowl,  the 
other  was  shelling  corn.  The  old  man  was  talking.  He  was 
barefoot,  in  a  long  linen  frock  coat  and  a  beaver  hat. 

"This  world  is  going  to  the  dogs,"  he  said.  "It  is  being 
ruined  by  white  men.  We  got  along  fine  for  years  and 
years,  before  the  white  men  foisted  their  Negroes  upon 
us.  In  the  old  days  the  old  men  sat  in  the  shade  and  ate 
stewed  deer's  flesh  and  corn  and  smoked  tobacco  and  talked 
of  honor  and  grave  affairs;  now  what  do  we  do?  Even  the 
old  wear  themselves  into  the  grave  taking  care  of  them  that 
like  sweating."  When  Basket  and  Berry  crossed  the  deck 


324  The  Wilderness 

he  ceased  and  looked  up  at  them.  His  eyes  were  querulous, 
bleared;  his  face  was  myriad  with  tiny  wrinkles.  "He  is  fled 
also,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  Berry  said,  "he  is  gone." 

"I  knew  it.  I  told  them  so.  It  will  take  three  weeks,  like 
when  Doom  died.  You  watch  and  see." 

"It  was  three  days,  not  three  weeks,"  Berry  said. 

"Were  you  there?" 

"No,"  Berry  said.  "But  I  have  heard." 

"Well,  I  was  there,"  the  old  man  said.  "For  three  whole 
weeks,  through  the  swamps  and  the  briers — "  They  went 
on  and  left  him  talking. 

What  had  been  the  saloon  of  the  steamboat  was  now  a 
shell,  rotting  slowly;  the  polished  mahogany,  the  carving 
glinting  momentarily  and  fading  through  the  mold  in  figures 
cabalistic  and  profound;  the  gutted  windows  were  like 
cataracted  eyes.  It  contained  a  few  sacks  of  seed  or  grain, 
and  the  fore  part  of  the  running  gear  of  a  barouche,  to  the 
axle  of  which  two  C-springs  rusted  in  graceful  curves,  sup- 
porting nothing.  In  one  corner  a  fox  cub  ran  steadily  and 
soundlessly  up  and  down  a  willow  cage;  three  scrawny 
gamecocks  moved  in  the  dust,  and  the  place  was  pocked 
and  marked  with  their  dried  droppings. 

They  passed  through  the  brick  wall  and  entered  a  big 
room  of  chinked  logs.  It  contained  the  hinder  part  of  the 
barouche,  and  the  dismantled  body  lying  on  its  side,  the 
window  slatted  over  with  willow  withes,  through  which 
protruded  the  heads,  the  still,  beady,  outraged  eyes  and  frayed 
combs  of  still  more  game  chickens.  It  was  floored  with 
packed  clay;  in  one  corner  leaned  a  crude  plow  and  two 
hand-hewn  boat  paddles.  From  the  ceiling,  suspended  by 
four  deer  thongs,  hung  the  gilt  bed  which  Issetibbeha  had 
fetched  from  Paris.  It  had  neither  mattress  nor  springs,  the 
frame  crisscrossed  now  by  a  neat  hammocking  of  thongs. 


Red  Leaves  325 

Issetibbeha  had  tried  to  have  his  newest  wife,  the  young 
one,  sleep  in  the  bed.  He  was  congenitally  short  of  breath 
himself,  and  he  passed  the  nights  half  reclining  in  his  splint 
chair.  He  would  see  her  to  bed  and,  later,  wakeful,  sleeping 
as  he  did  but  three  or  four  hours  a  night,  he  would  sit  in  the 
darkness  and  simulate  slumber  and  listen  to  her  sneak 
infinitesimally  from  the  gilt  and  ribboned  bed,  to  lie  on  a 
quilt  pallet  on  the  floor  until  just  before  daylight.  Then  she 
would  enter  the  bed  quietly  again  and  in  turn  simulate 
slumber,  while  in  the  darkness  beside  her  Issetibbeha  quietly 
laughed  and  laughed. 

The  girandoles  were  lashed  by  thongs  to  two  sticks 
propped  in  a  corner  where  a  ten-gallon  whisky  keg  lay  also. 
There  was  a  clay  hearth;  facing  it,  in  the  splint  chair,  Moke- 
tubbe  sat.  He  was  maybe  an  inch  better  than  five  feet  tall, 
and  he  weighed  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  He  wore  a 
broadcloth  coat  and  no  shirt,  his  round,  smooth  copper 
balloon  of  belly  swelling  above  the  bottom  piece  of  a  suit 
of  linen  underwear.  On  his  feet  were  the  slippers  with  the  red 
heels.  Behind  his  chair  stood  a  stripling  with  a  punkah-like 
fan  made  of  fringed  paper.  Moketubbe  sat  motionless,  with 
his  broad,  yellow  face  with  its  closed  eyes  and  flat  nostrils, 
his  flipperlike  arms  extended.  On  his  face  was  an  expression 
profound,  tragic,  and  inert.  He  did  not  open  his  eyes  when 
Basket  and  Berry  came  in.  • 

"He  has  worn  them  since  daylight?"  Basket  said. 

"Since  daylight,"  the  stripling  said.  The  fan  did  not  cease. 
"You  can  see." 

"Yao,"  Basket  said.  "We  can  see."  Moketubbe  did  not 
move.  He  looked  like  an  effigy,  like  a  Malay  god  in  frock 
coat,  drawers,  naked  chest,  the  trivial  scarkt-heeled  shoes. 

"I  wouldn't  disturb  him,  if  I  were  you,"  the  stripling  said. 

"Not  if  I  were  you,"  Basket  said.  He  and  Berry  squatted. 
The  stripling  moved  the  fan  steadily.  "O  Man,"  Basket  said, 


326  The  Wilderness 

"listen."  Moketubbe  did  not  move.  "He  is  gone,"  Basket 
said. 

"I  told  you  so,"  the  stripling  said.  "I  knew  he  would  flee. 
I  told  you." 

"Yao,"  Basket  said.  "You  are  not  the  first  to  tell  us  after- 
ward what  we  should  have  known  before.  Why  is  it  that 
some  of  you  wise  men  took  no  steps  yesterday  to  prevent 
this?" 

"He  does  not  wish  to  die,"  Berry  said. 

"Why  should  he  not  wish  it?"  Basket  said. 

"Because  he  must  die  some  day  is  no  reason,"  the  stripling 
said.  "That  would  not  convince  me  either,  old  man." 

"Hold  your  tongue,"  Berry  said. 

"For  twenty  years,"  Basket  said,  "while  others  of  his  race 
sweat  in  the  fields,  he  served  the  Man  in  the  shade.  Why 
should  he  not  wish  to  die,  since  he  did  not  wish  to  sweat?" 

"And  it  will  be  quick,"  Berry  said.  "It  will  not  take  long.s 

"Catch  him  and  tell  him  that,"  the  stripling  said. 

"Hush,"  Berry  said.  They  squatted,  watching  Moketubbe's 
face.  He  might  have  been  dead  himself.  It  was  as  though 
he  were  cased  so  in  flesh  that  even  breathing  took  place  too 
deep  within  him  to  show. 

"Listen,  O  Man,"  Basket  said.  "Issetibbeha  is  dead.  He 
waits.  His  dog  and  his  horse  we  have.  But  his  slave  has  fled. 
The  one  who  held  the  pot  for  him,  who  ate  of  his  food, 
from  his  dish,  is  fled.  Issetibbeha  waits." 

"Yao,"  Berry  said. 

"This  is  not  the  first  time,"  Basket  said.  "This  happened 
when  Doom,  thy  grandfather,  lay  waiting  at  the  door  of  the 
earth.  He  lay  waiting  three  days,  saying,  'Where  is  my 
Negro?'  And  Issetibbeha,  thy  father,  answered,  'I  will  find 
him.  Rest;  I  will  bring  him  to  you  so  that  you  may  begin 
the  journey/  " 

"Yao,"  Berry  said. 


Red  Leaves  327 

Moketubbe  had  not  moved,  had  not  opened  his  eyes. 

"For  three  days  Issetibbeha  hunted  in  the  bottom,"  Basket 
said.  "He  did  not  even  return  home  for  food,  until  the 
Negro  was  with  him;  then  he  said  to  Doom,  his  father, 
'Here  is  thy  dog,  thy  horse,  thy  Negro;  rest.'  Issetibbeha, 
who  is  dead  since  yesterday,  said  it.  And  now  Issetibbeha's 
Negro  is  fled.  His  horse  and  his  dog  wait  with  him,  but  his 
Negro  is  fled." 

"Yao,"  Berry  said. 

Moketubbe  had  not  moved.  His  eyes  were  closed;  upon 
his  supine  monstrous  shape  there  was  a  colossal  inertia, 
something  profoundly  immobile,  beyond  and  impervious  to 
flesh.  They  watched  his  face,  squatting. 

"When  thy  father  was  newly  the  Man,  this  happened," 
Basket  said.  "And  it  was  Issetibbeha  who  brought  back  the 
slave  to  where  his  father  waited  to  enter  the  earth."  Moke- 
tubbe's  face  had  not  moved,  his  eyes  had  not  moved.  After 
a  while  Basket  said,  "Remove  the  shoes." 

The  stripling  removed  the  shoes.  Moketubbe  began  to 
pant,  his  bare  chest  moving  deep,  as  though  he  were  rising 
from  beyond  his  unfathomed  flesh  back  into  life,  like  up 
from  the  water,  the  sea.  But  his  eyes  had  not  opened  yet. 

Berry  said,  "He  will  lead  the  hunt." 

"Yao,"  Basket  said.  "He  is  the  Man.  He  will  lead  the  hunt." 


IV 

ALL  THAT  DAY  the  Negro,  Issetibbeha's  body  servant,  hidden 
in  the  barn,  watched  Issetibbeha's  dying.  He  was  forty,  a 
Guinea  man.  He  had  a  flat  nose,  a  close,  small  head;  the 
inside  corners  of  his  eyes  showed  red  a  little,  and  his  prom- 
inent gums  were  a  pale  bluish  red  above  his  square,  broad 
teeth.  He  had  been  taken  at  fourteen  by  a  trader  off  Kam- 


328  The  Wilderness 

erun,  before  his  teeth  had  been  filed.  He  had  been  Issetib- 
beha's  body  servant  for  twenty-three  years. 

On  the  day  before,  the  day  on  which  Issetibbeha  lay  sick, 
he  returned  to  the  quarters  at  dusk.  In  that  unhurried  hour 
the  smoke  of  the  cooking  fires  blew  slowly  across  the  street 
from  door  to  door,  carrying  into  the  opposite  one  the  smell 
of  the  identical  meat  and  bread.  The  women  tended  them; 
the  men  were  gathered  at  the  head  of  the  lane,  watching  him 
as  he  came  down  the  slope  from  the  house,  putting  his  naked 
feet  down  carefully  in  a  strange  dusk.  To  the  waiting  men 
his  eyeballs  were  a  little  luminous. 

"Issetibbeha  is  not  dead  yet,"  the  headman  said. 

"Not  dead,"  the  body  servant  said.  "Who  not  dead?" 

In  the  dusk  they  had  faces  like  his,  the  different  ages,  the 
thoughts  sealed  inscrutable  behind  faces  like  the  death  masks 
of  apes.  The  smell  of  the  fires,  the  cooking,  blew  sharp  and 
slow  across  the  strange  dusk,  as  from  another  world,  above 
the  lane  and  the  pickaninnies  naked  in  the  dust. 

"If  he  lives  past  sundown,  he  will  live  until  daybreak," 
one  said. 

"Who  says?" 

"Talk  says." 

"Yao.  Talk  says.  We  know  but  one  thing."  They  looked 
at  the  body  servant  as  he  stood  among  them,  his  eyeballs 
a  little  luminous.  He  was  breathing  slow  and  deep.  His  chest 
was  bare;  he  was  sweating  a  little.  "He  knows.  He  knows  it." 

"Let  us  let  the  drums  talk." 

"Yao.  Let  the  drums  tell  it." 

The  drums  began  after  dark.  They  kept  them  hidden  in 
the  creek  bottom.  They  were  made  of  hollowed  cypress 
knees,  and  the  Negroes  kept  them  hidden;  why,  none  knew. 
They  were  buried  in  the  mud  on  the  bank  of  a  slough;  a 
lad  of  fourteen  guarded  them.  He  was  undersized,  and  a 
mute;  he  squatted  in  the  mud  there  all  day,  clouded  over 


Red  Leaves  329 

with  mosquitoes,  naked  save  for  the  mud  with  which  he 
coated  himself  against  the  mosquitoes,  and  about  his  neck  a 
fiber  bag  containing  a  pig's  rib  to  which  black  shreds  of 
flesh  still  adhered,  and  two  scaly  barks  on  a  wire.  He  slob- 
bered onto  his  clutched  knees,  drooling;  now  and  then 
Indians  came  noiselessly  out  of  the  bushes  behind  him  and 
stood  there  and  contemplated  him  for  a  while  and  went 
away,  and  he  never  knew  it. 

From  the  loft  of  the  stable  where  he  lay  hidden  until 
dark  and  after,  the  Negro  could  hear  the  drums.  They  were 
three  miles  away,  but  he  could  hear  them  as  though  they 
were  in  the  barn  itself  below  him,  thudding  and  thudding. 
It  was  as  though  he  could  see  the  fire  too,  and  the  black 
limbs  turning  into  and  out  of  the  flames  in  copper  gleams. 
Only  there  would  be  no  fire.  There  would  be  no  more  light 
there  than  where  he  lay  in  the  dusty  loft,  with  the  whisper- 
ing arpeggios  of  rat  feet  along  the  warm  and  immemorial 
ax-squared  rafters.  The  only  fire  there  would  be  the  smudge 
against  mosquitoes  where  the  women  with  nursing  children 
crouched,  their  heavy  sluggish  breasts  nippled  full  and 
smooth  into  the  mouths  of  men  children;  contemplative, 
oblivious  of  the  drumming,  since  a  fire  would  signify  life. 

There  was  a  fire  in  the  steamboat,  where  Issetibbeha  lay 
dying  among  his  wives,  beneath  the  lashed  girandoles  and  the 
suspended  bed.  He  could  see  the  smoke,  and  just  before  sun- 
set he  saw  the  doctor  come  out,  in  a  waistcoat  made  of 
skunk  skins,  and  set  fire  to  two  clay-daubed  sticks  at  the 
bows  of  the  boat  deck.  "So  he  is  not  dead  yet,"  the  Negro 
said  into  the  whispering  gloom  of  the  loft,  answering  him- 
self; he  could  hear  the  two  voices,  himself  and  himself: 

"Who  not  dead?" 

"You  are  dead." 

"Yao,  I  am  dead,"  he  said  quietly.  He  wished  to  be  where 
the  drums  were.  He  imagined  himself  springing  out  of  the 


330  The  Wilderness 

bushes,  leaping  among  the  drums  on  his  bare,  lean,  greasy, 
invisible  limbs.  But  he  could  not  do  that,  because  man  leaped 
past  life,  into  where  death  was;  he  dashed  into  death  and  did 
not  die,  because  when  death  took  a  man,  it  took  him  just  this 
side  of  the  end  of  living.  It  was  when  death  overran  him 
from  behind,  still  in  life.  The  thin  whisper  of  rat  feet  died 
in  fainting  gusts  along  the  rafters.  Once  he  had  eaten  rat. 
He  was  a  boy  then,  but  just  come  to  America.  They  had 
lived  ninety  days  in  a  three-foot-high  'tween-deck  in  tropic 
latitudes,  hearing  from  topside  the  drunken  New  England 
captain  intoning  aloud  from  a  book  which  he  did  not  recog- 
nize for  ten  years  afterward  to  be  the  Bible.  Squatting  in  the 
stable  so,  he  had  watched  the  rat,  civilized,  by  association 
with  man  reft  of  its  inherent  cunning  of  limb  and  eye;  he 
had  caught  it  without  difficulty,  with  scarce  a  movement 
of  his  hand,  and  he  ate  it  slowly,  wondering  how  any  of  the 
rats  had  escaped  so  long.  At  that  time  he  was  still  wearing 
the  single  white  garment  which  the  trader,  a  deacon  in  the 
Unitarian  church,  had  given  him,  and  he  spoke  then  only  his 
native  tongue. 

He  was  naked  now,  save  for  a  pair  of  dungaree  pants 
bought  by  Indians  from  white  men,  and  an  amulet  slung  on 
a  thong  about  his  hips.  The  amulet  consisted  of  one  half  of 
a  mother-of-pearl  lorgnon  which  Issetibbeha  had  brought 
back  from  Paris,  and  the  skull  of  a  cottonmouth  moccasin. 
He  had  killed  the  snake  himself  and  eaten  it,  save  the  poison 
head.  He  lay  in  the  loft,  watching  the  house,  the  steamboat, 
listening  to  the  drums,  thinking  of  himself  among  the  drums. 

He  lay  there  all  night.  The  next  morning  he  saw  the  doctor 
come  out,  in  his  skunk  vest,  and  get  on  his  mule  and  ride 
away,  and  he  became  quite  still  and  watched  the  final  dust 
from  beneath  the  mule's  delicate  feet  die  away,  and  then  he 
found  that  he  was  still  breathing  and  it  seemed  strange  to 
him  that  he  still  breathed  air,  still  needed  air.  Then  he  lay 


Red  Leaves  331 

and  watched  quietly,  waiting  to  move,  his  eyeballs  a  little 
luminous,  but  with  a  quiet  light,  and  his  breathing  light  and 
regular,  and  saw  Louis  Berry  come  out  and  look  at  the  sky. 
It  was  good  light  then,  and  already  five  Indians  squatted  in 
their  Sunday  clothes  along  the  steamboat  deck;  by  noon 
there  were  twenty-five  there.  That  afternoon  they  dug  the 
trench  in  which  the  meat  would  be  baked,  and  the  yams; 
by  that  time  there  were  almost  a  hundred  guests — decorous, 
quiet,  patient  in  their  stiff  European  finery — and  he  watched 
Berry  lead  Issetibbeha's  mare  from  the  stable  and  tie  her  to 
a  tree,  and  then  he  watched  Berry  emerge  from  the  house 
with  the  old  hound  which  lay  beside  Issetibbeha's  chair.  He 
tied  the  hound  to  the  tree  too,  and  it  sat  there,  looking 
gravely  about  at  the  faces.  Then  it  began  to  howl.  It  was  still 
howling  at  sundown,  when  the  Negro  climbed  down  the 
back  wall  of  the  barn  and  entered  the  spring  branch,  where 
it  was  already  dusk.  He  began  to  run  then.  He  could  hear 
the  hound  howling  behind  him,  and  near  the  spring,  already 
running,  he  passed  another  Negro.  The  two  men,  the  one 
motionless  and  the  other  running,  looked  for  an  instant  at 
each  other  as  though  across  an  actual  boundary  between  twc 
different  worlds.  He  ran  on  into  full  darkness,  mouth  closed, 
fists  doubled,  his  broad  nostrils  bellowing  steadily. 

He  ran  on  in  the  darkness.  He  knew  the  country  well, 
because  he  had  hunted  it  often  with  Issetibbeha,  following  on 
his  mule  the  course  of  the  fox  or  the  cat  beside  Issetibbeha's 
mare;  he  knew  it  as  well  as  did  the  men  who  would  pursue 
him.  He  saw  them  for  the  first  time  shortly  before  sunset  of 
the  second  day.  He  had  run  thirty  miles  then,  up  the  creek 
bottom,  before  doubling  back;  lying  in  a  pawpaw  thicket 
he  saw  the  pursuit  for  the  first  time.  There  were  two  of 
them,  in  shirts  and  straw  hats,  carrying  their  neatly  rolled 
trousers  under  their  arms,  and  they  had  no  weapons.  They 
were  middle-aged,  paunchy,  and  they  could  not  have  moved 


332  The  Wilderness 

very  fast  anyway;  it  would  be  twelve  hours  before  they 
could  return  to  where  he  lay  watching  them.  "So  I  will  have 
until  midnight  to  rest,"  he  said.  He  was  near  enough  to  the 
plantation  to  smell  the  cooking  fires,  and  he  thought  how 
he  ought  to  be  hungry,  since  he  had  not  eaten  in  thirty 
hours.  "But  it  is  more  important  to  rest,"  he  told  himself. 
He  continued  to  tell  himself  that,  lying  in  the  pawpaw 
thicket,  because  the  effort  of  resting,  the  need  and  the  haste 
to  rest,  made  his  heart  thud  the  same  as  the  running  had 
done.  It  was  as  though  he  had  forgot  how  to  rest,  as  though 
the  six  hours  were  not  long  enough  to  do  it  in,  to  remember 
again  how  to  do  it. 

As  soon  as  dark  came  he  moved  again.  lie  had  thought 
to  keep  going  steadily  and  quietly  through  the  night,  since 
there  was  nowhere  for  him  to  go,  but  as  soon  as  he  moved 
he  began  to  run  at  top  speed,  breasting  his  panting  chest,  his 
broad-flaring  nostrils  through  the  choked  and  whipping  dark- 
ness. He  ran  for  an  hour,  lost  by  then,  without  direction, 
when  suddenly  he  stopped,  and  after  a  time  his  thudding 
heart  unraveled  from  the  sound  of  the  drums.  By  the  sound 
they  were  not  two  miles  away;  he  followed  the  sound  until 
he  could  smell  the  smudge  fire  and  taste  the  acrid  smoke. 
When  he  stood  among  them  the  drums  did  not  cease;  only 
the  headman  came  to  him  where  he  stood  in  the  drifting 
smudge,  panting,  his  nostrils  flaring  and  pulsing,  the  hushed 
glare  of  his  ceaseless  eyeballs  in  his  mud-daubed  face  as 
though  they  were  worked  from  lungs. 

"We  have  expected  thee,"  the  headman  said.  "Go,  now." 

"Go?" 

"Eat,  and  go.  The  dead  may  not  consort  with  the  living; 
thou  knowest  that." 

"Yao.  I  know  that."  They  did  not  look  at  one  another. 
The  drums  had  not  ceased. 

"Wilt  thou  eat?"  the  headman  said. 


Red  Leaves  333 

"I  am  not  hungry.  I  caught  a  rabbit  this  afternoon,  and 
ate  while  I  lay  hidden/' 

"Take  some  cooked  meat  with  thee,  then." 

He  accepted  the  cooked  meat,  wrapped  in  leaves,  and 
entered  the  creek  bottom  again;  after  a  while  the  sound  of 
the  drums  ceased.  He  walked  steadily  until  daybreak.  "I 
have  twelve  hours,"  he  said.  "Maybe  more,  since  the  trail 
was  followed  by  night."  He  squatted  and  ate  the  meat  and 
wiped  his  hands  on  his  thighs.  Then  he  rose  and  removed 
the  dungaree  pants  and  squatted  again  beside  a  slough  and 
coated  himself  with  mud — face,  arms,  body  and  legs — and 
squatted  again,  clasping  his  knees,  his  head  bowed.  When  it 
was  light  enough  to  see,  he  moved  back  into  the  swamp  and 
squatted  again  and  went  to  sleep  so.  He  did  not  dream  at  all. 
It  was  well  that  he  moved,  for,  waking  suddenly  in  broad 
daylight  and  the  high  sun,  he  saw  the  two  Indians.  They 
still  carried  their  neatly  rolled  trousers;  they  stood  opposite 
the  place  where  he  lay  hidden,  paunchy,  thick,  soft-looking, 
a  little  ludicrous  in  their  straw  hats  and  shirt  tails. 

"This  is  wearying  work,"  one  said. 

"I'd  rather  be  at  home  in  the  shade  myself,"  the  other  said. 
"But  there  is  the  Man  waiting  at  the  door  to  the  earth." 

"Yao."  They  looked  quietly  about;  stooping,  one  of  them 
removed  from  his  shirt  tail  a  clot  of  cockleburs.  "Damn  that 
Negro,"  he  said. 

"Yao.  When  have  they  ever  been  anything  but  a  trial  and 
a  care  to  us?" 

In  the  early  afternoon,  from  the  top  of  a  tree,  the  Negro 
looked  down  into  the  plantation.  He  could  see  Issetibbeha's 
body  in  a  hammock  between  the  two  trees  where  the  horse 
and  the  dog  were  tethered,  and  the  concourse  about  the 
steamboat  was  filled  with  wagons  and  horses  and  mules, 
with  carts  and  saddle-horses,  while  in  bright  clumps  the 
women  and  the  smaller  children  and  the  old  men  squatted 


334  The  Wilderness 

about  the  long  trench  where  the  smoke  from  the  barbecuing 
meat  blew  slow  and  thick.  The  men  and  the  big  boys  would 
all  be  down  there  in  the  creek  bottom  behind  him,  on  the 
trail,  their  Sunday  clothes  rolled  carefully  up  and  wedged 
into  tree  crotches.  There  was  a  clump  of  men  near  the  door 
to  the  house,  to  the  saloon  of  the  steamboat,  though,  and  he 
watched  them,  and  after  a  while  he  saw  them  bring  Moke- 
tubbe  out  in  a  litter  made  of  buckskin  and  persimmon  poles; 
high  hidden  in  his  leafed  nook  the  Negro,  the  quarry,  looked 
quietly  down  upon  his  irrevocable  doom  with  an  expression 
as  profound  as  Moketubbe's  own.  "Yao,"  he  said  quietly. 
"He  will  go  then.  That  man  whose  body  has  been  dead  for 
fifteen  years,  he  will  go  also." 

In  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  he  came  face  to  face  with 
an  Indian.  They  were  both  on  a  footlog  across  a  slough — 
the  Negro  gaunt,  lean,  hard,  tireless  and  desperate;  the 
Indian  thick,  soft-looking,  the  apparent  embodiment  of  the 
ultimate  and  the  supreme  reluctance  and  inertia.  The  Indian 
made  no  move,  no  sound;  he  stood  on  the  log  and  watched 
the  Negro  plunge  into  the  slough  and  swim  ashore  and  crash 
away  into  the  undergrowth. 

Just  before  sunset  he  lay  behind  a  down  log.  Up  the  log 
in  slow  procession  moved  a  line  of  ants.  He  caught  them  and 
ate  them  slowly,  with  a  kind  of  detachment,  like  that  of  a 
dinner  guest  eating  salted  nuts  from  a  dish.  They  too  had  a 
salt  taste,  engendering  a  salivary  reaction  out  of  all  propor- 
tion. He  ate  them  slowly,  watching  the  unbroken  line  move 
up  the  log  and  into  oblivious  doom  with  a  steady  and  terrific 
undeviation.  He  had  eaten  nothing  else  all  day;  in  his  caked 
mud  mask  his  eyes  rolled  in  reddened  rims.  At  sunset,  creep- 
ing along  the  creek  bank  toward  where  he  had  spotted  a 
frog,  a  cottonmouth  moccasin  slashed  him  suddenly  across 
the  forearm  with  a  thick,  sluggish  blow.  It  struck  clumsily, 
leaving  two  long  slashes  across  his  arm  like  two  razor  slashes, 


Red  Leaves  335 

and  half  sprawled  with  its  own  momentum  and  rage,  it  ap- 
peared for  the  moment  utterly  helpless  with  its  own  awk- 
wardness and  choleric  anger.  "Ole,  grandfather,"  the  Negro 
said.  He  touched  its  head  and  watched  it  slash  him  again 
across  his  arm,  and  again,  with  thick,  raking,  awkward 
blows.  "It's  that  I  do  not  wish  to  die,"  he  said.  Then  he  said 
it  again — "It's  that  I  do  not  wish  to  die" — in  a  quiet  tone, 
of  slow  and  low  amaze,  as  though  it  were  something  that, 
until  the  words  had  said  themselves,  he  found  that  he  had  not 
known,  or  had  not  known  the  depth  and  extent  of  his  desire. 


V 

MOKETUBBE  TOOK  the  slippers  with  him.  He  could  not  wear 
them  very  long  while  in  motion,  not  even  in  the  litter  where 
he  was  slung  reclining,  so  they  rested  upon  a  square  of 
fawnskin  upon  his  lap — the  cracked,  frail  slippers  a  little 
shapeless  now,  with  their  scaled  patent-leather  surfaces  and 
buckleless  tongues  and  scarlet  heels,  lying  upon  the  supine 
obese  shape  just  barely  alive,  carried  through  swamp  and 
brier  by  swinging  relays  of  men  who  bore  steadily  all  day 
long  the  crime  and  its  object,  on  the  business  of  the  slain. 
To  Moketubbe  it  must  have  been  as  though,  himself  immor- 
tal, he  were  being  carried  rapidly  through  hell  by  doomed 
spirits  which,  alive,  had  contemplated  his  disaster,  and,  dead, 
were  oblivious  partners  to  his  damnation. 

After  resting  for  a  while,  the  litter  propped  in  the  center 
of  the  squatting  circle  and  Moketubbe  motionless  in  it,  with 
closed  eyes  and  his  face  at  once  peaceful  for  the  instant  and 
filled  with  inescapable  foreknowledge,  he  could  wear  the 
slippers  for  a  while.  The  stripling  put  them  on  him,  forcing 
his  big,  tender,  dropsical  feet  into  them;  whereupon  into  his 
face  came  again  that  expression  tragic,  passive  and  pro- 
foundly attentive,  which  dyspeptics  wear.  Then  they  went 


336  The  Wilderness 

on.  He  made  no  move,  no  sound,  inert  in  the  rhythmic  litter 
out  of  some  reserve  of  inertia,  or  maybe  of  some  kingly 
virtue  such  as  courage  or  fortitude.  After  a  time  they  set  the 
litter  down  and  looked  at  him,  at  the  yellow  face  like  that 
of  an  idol,  beaded  over  with  sweat.  Then  Three  Basket  or 
Had-Two-Fathers  would  say:  "Take  them  off.  Honor  has 
been  served/'  They  would  remove  the  shoes.  Moketubbe's 
face  would  not  alter,  but  only  then  would  his  breathing  be- 
come perceptible,  going  in  and  out  of  his  pale  lips  with  a 
faint  ah-ah-ah  sound,  and  they  would  squat  again  while  the 
couriers  and  the  runners  came  up. 

"Not  yet?" 

"Not  yet.  He  is  going  east.  By  sunset  he  will  reach  Mouth 
of  Tippah.  Then  he  will  turn  back.  We  may  take  him 


tomorrow." 


"Let  us  hope  so.  It  will  not  be  too  soon." 
"Yao.  It  has  been  three  days  now." 
"When  Doom  died,  it  took  only  three  days." 
"But  that  was  an  old  man.  This  one  is  young." 
"Yao.  A  good  race.  If  he  is  taken  tomorrow,  I  will  win  a 
horse." 

"May  you  win  it." 
"Yao.  This  work  is  not  pleasant." 

That  was  the  day  on  which  the  food  gave  out  at  the  plan- 
tation. The  guests  returned  home  and  came  back  the  next 
day  with  more  food,  enough  for  a  week  longer.  On  that  day 
Issetibbeha  began  to  smell;  they  could  smell  him  for  a  long 
way  up  and  down  the  bottom  when  it  got  hot  toward  noon 
and  the  wind  blew.  But  they  didn't  capture  the  Negro  on 
that  day,  nor  on  the  next.  It  was  about  dusk  on  the  sixth 
day  when  the  couriers  came  up  to  the  litter;  they  had  found 
blood.  "He  has  injured  himself." 

"Not  bad,  I  hope,"  Basket  said.  "We  cannot  send  with 
Issetibbeha  one  who  will  be  of  no  service  to  him." 


Red  Leaves  337 

"Nor  whom  Issetibbeha  himself  will  have  to  nurse  and 
care  for/'  Berry  said. 

"We  do  not  know,"  the  courier  said.  "He  has  hidden  him- 
self. He  has  crept  back  into  the  swamp.  We  have  left 
pickets." 

They  trotted  with  the  litter  now.  The  place  where  the 
Negro  had  crept  into  the  swamp  was  an  hour  away.  In  the 
hurry  and  excitement  they  had  forgotten  that  Moketubbe 
still  wore  the  slippeis;  when  they  reached  the  place  Moke- 
tubbe had  fainted.  They  removed  the  slippers  and  brought 
him  to. 

With  dark,  they  formed  a  circle  about  the  swamp.  They 
squatted,  clouded  over  with  gnats  and  mosquitoes;  the  eve- 
ning star  burned  low  and  close  down  the  west,  and  the 
constellations  began  to  wheel  overhead.  "We  will  give  him 
time,"  they  said.  "Tomorrow  is  just  another  name  for  today." 

"Yao.  Let  him  have  time."  Then  they  ceased,  and  gazed 
as  one  into  the  darkness  where  the  swamp  lay.  After  a  while 
the  noise  ceased,  and  soon  the  courier  came  out  of  the 
darkness. 

"He  tried  to  break  out." 

"But  you  turned  him  back?" 

"He  turned  back.  We  feared  for  a  moment,  the  three  of 
us.  We  could  smell  him  creeping  in  the  darkness,  and  we 
could  smell  something  else,  which  we  did  not  know.  That 
was  why  we  feared,  until  he  told  us.  He  said  to  slay  him 
there,  since  it  would  be  dark  and  he  would  not  have  to  see 
the  face  when  it  came.  But  it  was  not  that  which  we  smelled; 
he  told  us  what  it  was.  A  snake  had  struck  him.  That  was 
two  days  ago.  The  arm  swelled,  and  it  smelled  bad.  But  it 
was  not  that  which  we  smelled  then,  because  the  swelling 
had  gone  down  and  his  arm  was  no  larger  than  that  of  a 
child.  He  showed  us.  We  felt  the  arm,  all  of  us  did;  it  was 
no  larger  than  that  of  a  child.  He  said  to  give  him  a  hatchet 


338  The  Wilderness 

so  he  could  chop  the  arm  off.  But  tomorrow  is  today  also." 

"Yao.  Tomorrow  is  today." 

"We  feared  for  a  while.  Then  he  went  back  into  the 
swamp." 

"That  is  good." 

"Yao.  We  feared.  Shall  I  tell  the  Man?" 

"I  will  see,"  Basket  said.  He  went  away.  The  courier 
squatted,  telling  again  about  the  Negro.  Basket  returned. 
"The  Man  says  that  it  is  good.  Return  to  your  post." 

The  courier  crept  away.  They  squatted  about  the  litter; 
now  and  then  they  slept.  Sometime  after  midnight  the 
Negro  waked  them.  He  began  to  shout  and  talk  to  himself, 
his  voice  coming  sharp  and  sudden  out  of  the  darkness, 
then  he  fell  silent.  Dawn  came;  a  white  crane  flapped  slowly 
across  the  jonquil  sky.  Basket  was  awake.  "Let  us  go  now," 
he  said.  "It  is  today." 

Two  Indians  entered  the  swamp,  their  movements  noisy. 
Before  they  reached  the  Negro  they  stopped,  because  he 
began  to  sing.  They  could  see  him,  naked  and  mud-caked, 
sitting  on  a  log,  singing.  They  squatted  silently  a  short  dis- 
tance away,  until  he  finished.  He  was  chanting  something 
in  his  own  language,  his  face  lifted  to  the  rising  sun.  His 
voice  was  clear,  full,  with  a  quality  wild  and  sad.  "Let  him 
have  time,"  the  Indians  said,  squatting,  patient,  waiting.  He 
ceased  and  they  approached.  He  looked  back  and  up  at 
them  through  the  cracked  mud  mask.  His  eyes  were  blood- 
shot, his  lips  cracked  upon  his  square  short  teeth.  The  mask 
of  mud  appeared  to  be  loose  on  his  face,  as  if  he  might  have 
lost  flesh  since  he  put  it  there;  he  held  his  left  arm  close 
to  his  breast.  From  the  elbow  down  it  was  caked  and  shape- 
less with  black  mud.  They  could  smell  him,  a  rank  smell. 
He  watched  them  quietly  until  one  touched  him  on  the 
arm.  "Come,"  the  Indian  said.  "You  ran  well.  Do  not  be 
ashamed." 


Red  Leaves  339 

VI 

As  THEY  NEARED  the  plantation  in  the  tainted  bright  morn- 
ing, the  Negro's  eyes  began  to  roll  a  little,  like  those  of  a 
horse.  The  smoke  from  the  cooking  pit  blew  low  along  the 
earth  and  upon  the  squatting  and  waiting  guests  about  the 
yard  and  upon  the  steamboat  deck,  in  their  bright,  stiff, 
harsh  finery;  the  women,  the  children,  the  old  men.  They 
had  sent  couriers  along  the  bottom,  and  another  on  ahead, 
and  Issetibbeha's  body  had  already  been  removed  to  where 
the  grave  waited,  along  with  the  horse  and  the  dog,  though 
they  could  still  smell  him  in  death  about  the  house  where  he 
had  lived  in  life.  The  guests  were  beginning  to  move  toward 
the  grave  when  the  bearers  of  Moketubbe's  litter  mounted 
the  slope. 

The  Negro  was  the  tallest  there,  his  high,  close,  mud- 
caked  head  looming  above  them  all.  He  was  breathing  hard, 
as  though  the  desperate  effort  of  the  six  suspended  and 
desperate  days  had  catapulted  upon  him  at  once;  although 
they  walked  slowly,  his  naked  scarred  chest  rose  and  fell 
above  the  close-clutched  left  arm.  He  looked  this  way  and 
that  continuously,  as  if  he  were  not  seeing,  as  though  sight 
never  quite  caught  up  with  the  looking.  His  mouth  was  open 
a  little  upon  his  big  white  teeth;  he  began  to  pant.  The 
already  moving  guests  halted,  pausing,  looking  back,  some 
with  pieces  of  meat  in  their  hands,  as  the  Negro  looked 
about  at  their  faces  with  his  wild,  restrained,  unceasing  eyes. 

"Will  you  eat  first?"  Basket  said.  He  had  to  say  it  twice. 

"Yes,"  the  Negro  said.  "That's  it.  I  want  to  eat." 

The  throng  had  begun  to  press  back  toward  the  center; 
the  word  passed  to  the  outermost:  "He  will  eat  first." 

They  reached  the  steamboat.  "Sit  down,"  Basket  said. 
The  Negro  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  deck.  He  was  still  panting, 
his  chest  rising  and  falling,  his  head  ceaseless  with  its  white 


34°  Tbe  Wilderness 

eyeballs,  turning  from  side  to  side.  It  was  as  if  the  inability 
to  see  came  from  within,  from  hopelessness,  not  from 
absence  of  vision.  They  brought  food  and  watched  quietly 
as  he  tried  to  eat  it.  He  put  the  food  into  his  mouth  and 
chewed  it,  but  chewing,  the  half-masticated  matter  began 
to  emerge  from  the  corners  of  his  mouth  and  to  drool  down 
his  chin,  onto  his  chest,  and  after  a  while  he  stopped  chewing 
and  sat  there,  naked,  covered  with  dried  mud,  the  plate  on 
his  knees,  and  his  mouth  filled  with  a  mass  of  chewed  food, 
open,  his  eyes  wide  and  unceasing,  panting  and  panting. 
They  watched  him,  patient,  implacable,  waiting. 

"Come,"  Basket  said  at  last. 

"It's  water  I  want,"  the  Negro  said.  "I  want  water." 

The  well  was  a  little  way  down  the  slope  toward  the 
quarters.  The  slope  lay  dappled  with  the  shadows  of  noon, 
of  that  peaceful  hour  when,  Issetibbeha  napping  in  his  chair 
and  waiting  for  the  noon  meal  and  the  long  afternoon  to 
sleep  in,  the  Negro,  the  body  servant,  would  be  free.  He 
would  sit  in  the  kitchen  door  then,  talking  with  the  women 
who  prepared  the  food.  Beyond  the  kitchen  the  lane  between 
the  quarters  would  be  quiet,  peaceful,  with  the  women  talk- 
ing to  one  another  across  the  lane  and  the  smoke  of  the 
dinner  fires  blowing  upon  the  pickaninnies  like  ebony  toys 
in  the  dust. 

"Come,"  Basket  said. 

The  Negro  walked  among  them,  taller  than  any.  The 
guests  were  moving  on  toward  where  Issetibbeha  and  the 
horse  and  the  dog  waited.  The  Negro  walked  with  his  high 
ceaseless  head,  his  panting  chest.  "Come,"  Basket  said.  "You 
wanted  water." 

"Yes,"  the  Negro  said.  "Y£s."  He  looked  back  at  the 
house,  then  down  to  the  quarters,  where  today  no  fire 
burned,  no  face  showed  in  any  door,  no  pickaninny  in  the 
dust,  panting.  "It  struck  me  here,  raking  me  across  this  arm; 
once,  twice,  three  times.  I  said,  'Ole,  Grandfather.' " 


Red  Leaves  341 

"Come  now,"  Basket  said.  The  Negro  was  still  going 
through  the  motion  of  walking,  his  knee  action  high,  his 
head  high,  as  though  he  were  on  a  treadmill.  His  eyeballs 
had  a  wild,  restrained  glare,  like  those  of  a  horse.  uYou 
wanted  water,"  Basket  said.  "Here  it  is." 

There  was  a  gourd  in  the  well.  They  dipped  it  full  and 
gave  it  to  the  Negro,  and  they  watched  him  try  to  drink. 
His  eyes  had  not  ceased  as  he  tilted  the  gourd  slowly  against 
his  caked  face.  They  could  watch  his  throat  working  and  the 
bright  water  cascading  from  either  side  of  the  gourd,  down 
his  chin  and  breast.  Then  the  water  stopped.  "Come,"  Basket 
said. 

"Wait,"  the  Negro  said.  He  dipped  the  gourd  again  and 
tilted  it  against  his  face,  beneath  his  ceaseless  eyes.  Again 
they  watched  his  throat  working  and  the  unswallowed  water 
sheathing  broken  and  myriad  down  his  chin,  channeling  his 
caked  chest.  They  waited,  patient,  grave,  decorous,  im- 
placable; clansman  and  guest  and  kin.  Then  the  water  ceased, 
though  still  the  empty  gourd  tilted  higher  and  higher,  and 
still  his  black  throat  aped  the  vain  motion  of  his  frustrated 
swallowing.  A  piece  of  water-loosened  mud  carried  away 
from  his  chest  and  broke  at  his  muddy  feet,  and  in  the  empty 
gourd  they  could  hear  his  breath:  ah-ah-ah. 

"Come,"  Basket  said,  taking  the  gourd  from  the  Negro 
and  hanging  it  back  in  the  well. 


A  Justice 


i 

UNTIL  GRANDFATHER  DIED,  we  would  go  out  to  the  farm 
every  Saturday  afternoon.  We  would  leave  home  right  after 
dinner  in  the  surrey,  I  in  front  with  Roskus,  and  Grand- 
father and  Caddy  and  Jason  in  the  back.  Grandfather  and 
Roskus  would  talk,  with  the  horses  going  fast,  because  it  was 
the  best  team  in  the  county.  They  would  carry  the  surrey 
fast  along  the  levels  and  up  some  of  the  hills  even.  But  this 
was  in  north  Mississippi,  and  on  some  of  the  hills  Roskus 
and  I  could  smell  Grandfather's  cigar. 

The  farm  was  four  miles  away.  There  was  a  long,  low 
house  in  the  grove,  not  painted  but  kept  whole  and  sound  by 
a  clever  carpenter  from  the  quarters  named  Sam  Fathers, 
and  behind  it  the  barns  and  smokehouses,  and  further  still, 
the  quarters  themselves,  also  kept  whole  and  sound  by  Sam 
Fathers.  He  did  nothing  else,  and  they  said  he  was  almost  a 
hundred  years  old.  He  lived  with  the  Negroes  and  they — 
the  white  people;  the  Negroes  called  him  a  blue-gum — 
called  him  a  Negro.  But  he  wasn't  a  Negro.  That's  what  I'm 
going  to  tell  about. 

When  we  got  there,  Mr.  Stokes,  the  manager,  would  send 
a  Negro  boy  with  Caddy  and  Jason  to  the  creek  to  fish, 
because  Caddy  was  a  girl  and  Jason  was  too  little,  but  I 
wouldn't  go  with  them.  I  would  go  to  Sam  Fathers'  shop, 

343 


344  The  Wilderness 

where  he  would  be  making  breast-yokes  or  wagon  wheels, 
and  I  would  always  bring  him  some  tobacco.  Then  he  would 
stop  working  and  he  would  fill  his  pipe — he  made  them  him- 
self, out  of  creek  clay  with  a  reed  stem — and  he  would  tell 
me  about  the  old  days.  He  talked  like  a  nigger — that  is,  he 
said  his  words  like  niggers  do,  but  he  didn't  say  the  same 
words — and  his  hair  was  nigger  hair.  But  his  skin  wasn't 
quite  the  color  of  a  light  nigger  and  his  nose  and  his  mouth 
and  chin  were  not  nigger  nose  and  mouth  and  chin.  And  his 
shape  was  not  like  the  shape  of  a  nigger  when  he  gets  old. 
He  was  straight  in  the  back,  not  tall,  a  little  broad,  and  his 
face  was  still  all  the  time,  like  he  might  be  somewhere  else 
all  the  while  he  was  working  or  when  people,  even  white 
people,  talked  to  him,  or  while  he  talked  to  me.  It  was  just 
the  same  all  the  time,  like  he  might  be  away  up  on  a  roof 
by  himself,  driving  nails.  Sometimes  he  would  quit  work 
with  something  half-finished  on  the  bench,  and  sit  down  and 
smoke.  And  he  wouldn't  jump  up  and  go  back  to  work  when 
Mr.  Stokes  or  even  Grandfather  came  along. 

So  I  would  give  him  the  tobacco  and  he  would  stop  work 
and  sit  down  and  fill  his  pipe  and  talk  to  me. 

"These  niggers,"  he  said.  uThey  call  me  Uncle  Blue-Gum. 
And  the  white  folks,  they  call  me  Sam  Fathers." 

*  Isn't  that  your  name?"  I  said. 

"No.  Not  in  the  old  days.  I  remember.  I  remember  how  I 
never  saw  but  one  white  man  until  I  was  a  boy  big  as  you 
are;  a  whisky  trader  that  came  every  summer  to  the  Planta- 
tion. It  was  the  Man  himself  that  named  me.  He  didn't  name 
me  Sam  Fathers,  though." 

"The  Man?"  I  said. 

"He  owned  the  Plantation,  the  Negroes,  my  mammy  too, 
He  owned  all  the  land  that  I  knew  of  until  I  was  grown.  He 
was  a  Choctaw  chief.  He  sold  my  mammy  to  your  great- 
grandpappy.  He  said  I  didn't  have  to  go  unless  I  wanted  to, 


A  Justice  345 

because  I  was  a  warrior  too  then.  He  was  the  one  who 
named  me  Had-Two-Fathers." 

"Had-Two-Fathers? "  I  said.  "That's  not  a  name.  That's 
not  anything." 

"It  was  my  name  once.  Listen." 

II 

THIS  is  HOW  Herman  Basket  told  it  when  I  was  big  enough 
to  hear  talk.  He  said  that  when  Doom  came  back  from  New 
Orleans,  he  brought  this  woman  with  him.  He  brought  six 
black  people,  though  Herman  Basket  said  they  already  had 
more  black  people  in  the  Plantation  than  they  could  find  use 
for.  Sometimes  they  would  run  the  black  men  with  dogs, 
like  you  would  a  fox  or  a  cat  or  a  coon.  And  then  Doom 
brought  six  more  when  he  came  home  from  New  Orleans. 
He  said  he  won  them  on  the  steamboat,  and  so  he  had  to 
take  them.  He  got  off  the  steamboat  with  the  six  black 
people,  Herman  Basket  said,  and  a  big  box  in  which  some- 
thing was  alive,  and  the  gold  box  of  New  Orleans  salt  about 
the  size  of  a  gold  watch.  And  Herman  Basket  told  how 
Doom  took  a  puppy  out  of  the  box  in  which  something  was 
alive,  and  how  he  made  a  bullet  of  bread  and  a  pinch  of  the 
salt  in  the  gold  box,  and  put  the  bullet  into  the  puppy  and 
the  puppy  died. 

That  was  the  kind  of  a  man  that  Doom  was,  Herman 
Basket  said.  He  told  how,  when  Doom  got  off  the  steamboat 
that  night,  he  wore  a  coat  with  gold  all  over  it,  and  he  had 
three  gold  watches,  but  Herman  Basket  said  that  even  after 
seven  years,  Doom's  eyes  had  not  changed.  He  said  that 
Doom's  eyes  were  just  the  same  as  before  he  went  away, 
before  his  name  was  Doom,  and  he  and  Herman  Basket  and 
my  pappy  were  sleeping  on  the  same  pallet  and  talking  at 
night,  as  boys  will. 


346  The  Wilderness 

Doom's  name  was  Ikkemotubbe  then,  and  he  was  not  born 
to  be  the  Man,  because  Doom's  mother's  brother  was  the 
Man,  and  the  Man  had  a  son  of  his  own,  as  well  as  a  brother. 
But  even  then,  and  Doom  no  bigger  than  you  are,  Herman 
Basket  said  that  sometimes  the  Man  would  look  at  Doom  and 
he  would  say:  "O  Sister's  Son,  your  eye  is  a  bad  eye,  like 
the  eye  of  a  bad  horse." 

So  the  Man  was  not  sorry  when  Doom  got  to  be  a  young 
man  and  said  that  he  would  go  to  New  Orleans,  Herman 
Basket  said.  The  Man  was  getting  old  then.  He  used  to  like 
to  play  mumble-peg  and  to  pitch  horseshoes  both,  but  now 
he  just  liked  mumble-peg.  So  he  was  not  sorry  when  Doom 
went  away,  though  he  didn't  forget  about  Doom.  Herman 
Basket  said  that  each  summer  when  the  whisky-trader  came, 
the  Man  would  ask  him  about  Doom.  uHe  calls  himself 
David  Callicoat  now,"  the  Man  would  say.  "But  his  name 
is  Ikkemotubbe.  You  haven't  heard  maybe  of  a  David  Calli- 
coat getting  drowned  in  the  Big  River,  or  killed  in  the  white 
man's  fight  at  New  Orleans?" 

But  Herman  Basket  said  they  didn't  hear  from  Doom  at  all 
until  he  had  been  gone  seven  years.  Then  one  day  Herman 
Basket  and  my  pappy  got  a  written  stick  from  Doom  to  meet 
him  at  the  Big  River.  Because  the  steamboat  didn't  come  up 
our  river  any  more  then.  The  steamboat  was  still  in  our  river, 
but  it  didn't  go  anywhere  any  more.  Herman  Basket  told 
how  one  day  during  the  high  water,  about  three  years  after 
Doom  went  away,  the  steamboat  came  and  crawled  up  on 
a  sand-bar  and  died. 

That  was  how  Doom  got  his  second  name,  the  one  before 
Doom.  Herman  Basket  told  how  four  times  a  year  the  steam- 
boat would  come  up  our  river,  and  how  the  People  would  go 
to  the  river  and  camp  and  wait  to  see  the  steamboat  pass,  and 
he  said  that  the  white  man  who  told  the  steamboat  where  to 
swim  was  named  David  Callicoat.  So  when  Doom  told  Her- 


A  Justice  347 

man  Basket  and  pappy  that  he  was  going  to  New  Orleans, 
he  said,  "And  I'll  tell  you  something  else.  From  now  on,  my 
name  is  not  Ikkemotubbe.  It's  David  Callicoat.  And  some 
day  I'm  going  to  own  a  steamboat,  too."  That  was  the  kind 
of  man  that  Doom  was,  Herman  Basket  said. 

So  after  seven  years  he  sent  them  the  written  stick  and 
Herman  Basket  and  pappy  took  the  wagon  and  went  to  meet 
Doom  at  the  Big  River,  and  Doom  got  off  the  steamboat  with 
the  six  black  people.  "I  won  them  on  the  steamboat,"  Doom 
said.  "You  and  Craw-ford  (my  pappy's  name  was  Crawfish- 
ford,  but  usually  it  was  Craw-ford)  can  divide  them." 

"I  don't  want  them,"  Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  said. 

"Then  Herman  can  have  them  all,"  Doom  said. 

"I  don't  want  them  either,"  Herman  Basket  said. 

"All  right,"  Doom  said.  Then  Herman  Basket  said  he 
asked  Doom  if  his  name  was  still  David  Callicoat,  but  in- 
stead of  answering,  Doom  told  one  of  the  black  people  some- 
thing in  the  white  man's  talk,  and  the  black  man  lit  a  pine 
knot.  Then  Herman  Basket  said  they  were  watching  Doom 
take  the  puppy  from  the  box  and  make  the  bullet  of  bread 
and  the  New  Orleans  salt  which  Doom  had  in  the  little  gold 
box,  when  he  said  that  pappy  said: 

"I  believe  you  said  that  Herman  and  I  were  to  divide  these 
black  people." 

Then  Herman  Basket  said  he  saw  that  one  of  the  black 
people  was  a  woman. 

"You  and  Herman  don't  want  them,"  Doom  said. 

"I  wasn't  thinking  when  I  said  that,"  pappy  said.  "I  will 
take  the  lot  with  the  woman  in  it.  Herman  can  have  the 
other  three." 

"I  don't  want  them,"  Herman  Basket  said. 

"You  can  have  four,  then,"  pappy  said.  "I  will  take  the 
woman  and  one  other." 

"I  don't  want  them,"  Herman  Basket  said. 


348  The  Wilderness 

"I  will  take  only  the  woman,"  pappy  said.  "You  can  have 
the  other  five." 

"I  don't  want  them,"  Herman  Basket  said. 

"You  don't  want  them,  either/'  Doom  said  to  pappy.  "You 
said  so  yourself." 

Then  Herman  Basket  said  that  the  puppy  was  dead.  "You 
didn't  tell  us  your  new  name,"  he  said  to  Doom. 

"My  name  is  Doom  now,"  Doom  said.  "It  was  given  me  by 
a  French  chief  in  New  Orleans.  In  French  talking,  Doo-um; 
in  our  talking,  Doom." 

"What  does  it  mean?"  Herman  Basket  said. 

He  said  how  Doom  looked  at  him  for  a  while.  "It  means 
the  Man,"  Doom  said. 

Herman  Basket  told  how  they  thought  about  that.  He  said 
they  stood  there  in  the  dark,  with  the  other  puppies  in  the 
box,  the  ones  that  Doom  hadn't  used,  whimpering  and  scuf- 
fing, and  the  light  of  the  pine  knot  shining  on  the  eyeballs  of 
the  black  people  and  on  Doom's  gold  coat  and  on  the  puppy 
that  had  died. 

"You  cannot  be  the  Man,"  Herman  Basket  said.  "You  are 
only  on  the  sister's  side.  And  the  Man  has  a  brother  and  a 
son." 

"That's  right,"  Doom  said.  "But  if  I  were  the  Man,  I 
would  give  Craw-ford  those  black  people.  I  would  give 
Herman  something,  too.  For  every  black  man  I  gave  Craw- 
ford, I  would  give  Herman  a  horse,  if  I  were  the  Man." 

"Craw-ford  only  wants  this  woman,"  Herman  Basket  said. 

"I  would  give  Herman  six  horses,  anyway,"  Doom  said. 
"But  maybe  the  Man  has  already  given  Herman  a  horse." 

"No,"  Herman  Basket  said.  "My  ghost  is  still  walking." 

It  took  them  three  days  to  reach  the  Plantation.  They 
camped  on  the  road  at  night.  Herman  Basket  said  that  they 
did  not  talk. 

They  reached  the  Plantation  on  the  third  day.  He  said 


4  Justice  349 

that  the  Man  was  not  very  glad  to  see  Doom,  even  though 
Doom  brought  a  present  of  candy  for  the  Man's  son.  Doom 
had  something  for  all  his  kinsfolk,  even  for  the  Man's 
srother.  The  Man's  brother  lived  by  himself  in  a  cabin  by 
the  creek.  His  name  was  Sometimes- Wakeup.  Sometimes 
the  People  took  him  food.  The  rest  of  the  time  they  didn't 
see  him.  Herman  Basket  told  how  he  and  pappy  went  with 
Doom  to  visit  Sometimes-Wakeup  in  his  cabin.  It  was  at 
light,  and  Doom  told  Herman  Basket  to  close  the  door. 
Then  Doom  took  the  puppy  from  pappy  and  set  it  on  the 
floor  and  made  a  bullet  of  bread  and  the  New  Orleans  salt 
for  Sometimes-Wakeup  to  see  how  it  worked.  When  they 
[eft,  Herman  Basket  said  how  Sometimes-Wakeup  burned  a 
stick  and  covered  his  head  with  the  blanket. 

That  was  the  first  night  that  Doom  was  at  home.  On  the 
next  day  Herman  Basket  told  how  the  Man  began  to  act 
strange  at  his  food,  and  died  before  the  doctor  could  get  there 
and  burn  sticks.  When  the  Willow-Bearer  went  to  fetch  the 
Man's  son  to  be  the  Man,  they  found  that  he  had  acted 
strange  and  then  died  too. 

"Now  Sometimes-Wakeup  will  have  to  be  the  Man," 
pappy  said. 

So  the  Willow-Bearer  went  to  fetch  Sometimes-Wakeup 
to  come  and  be  the  Man.  The  Willow-Bearer  came  back 
soon.  "Sometimes-Wakeup  does  not  want  to  be  the  Man," 
the  Willow-Bearer  said.  "He  is  sitting  in  his  cabin  with  his 
head  in  his  blanket." 

"Then  Ikkemotubbe  will  have  to  be  the  Man,"  pappy 
said. 

So  Doom  was  the  Man.  But  Herman  Basket  said  that 
pappy's  ghost  would  not  be  easy.  Herman  Basket  said  he 
told  pappy  to  give  Doom  a  little  time.  "I  am  still  walking," 
Herman  Basket  said. 

"But  this  is  a  serious  matter  with  me,"  pappy  said. 


350  The  Wilderness 

He  said  that  at  last  pappy  went  to  Doom,  before  the  Man 
and  his  son  had  entered  the  earth,  before  the  eating  and 
the  horse-racing  were  over.  "What  woman?"  Doom  said. 

"You  said  that  when  you  were  the  Man,"  pappy  said. 
Herman  Basket  said  that  Doom  looked  at  pappy  but  that 
pappy  was  not  looking  at  Doom. 

"I  think  you  don't  trust  me,"  Doom  said.  Herman  Basket 
said  how  pappy  did  not  look  at  Doom.  "I  think  you  still 
believe  that  that  puppy  was  sick,"  Doom  said.  "Think 
about  it." 

Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  thought. 

"What  do  you  think  now?"  Doom  said. 

But  Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  still  did  not  look  at 
Doom.  "I  think  it  was  a  well  dog,"  pappy  said. 

Ill 

AT  LAST  the  eating  and  the  horse-racing  were  over  and  the 
Man  and  his  son  had  entered  the  earth.  Then  Doom  said, 
"Tomorrow  we  will  go  and  fetch  the  steamboat."  Herman 
Basket  told  how  Doom  had  been  talking  about  the  steam- 
boat ever  since  he  became  the  Man,  and  about  how  the 
House  was  not  big  enough.  So  that  evening  Doom  said,  "To- 
morrow we  will  go  and  fetch  the  steamboat  that  died  in  the 


river." 


Herman  Basket  said  how  the  steamboat  was  twelve  miles 
away,  and  that  it  could  not  even  swim  in  the  water.  So  the 
next  morning  there  was  no  one  in  the  Plantation  except 
Doom  and  the  black  people.  He  told  how  it  took  Doom  all 
that  day  to  find  the  People.  Doom  used  the  dogs,  and  he 
found  some  of  the  People  in  hollow  logs  in  the  creek  bottom. 
That  night  he  made  all  the  men  sleep  in  the  House.  He 
kept  the  dogs  in  the  House,  too. 

Herman  Basket  told  how  he  heard  Doom  and  pappy  talk- 
ing in  the  dark.  "I  don't  think  you  trust  me,"  Doom  said. 


A  Justice  351 

"I  trust  you,"  pappy  said. 

"That  is  what  I  would  advise,"  Doom  said. 

"I  wish  you  could  advise  that  to  my  ghost,"  pappy  said. 

The  next  morning  they  went  to  the  steamboat.  The 
women  and  the  black  people  walked.  The  men  rode  in  the 
wagons,  with  Doom  following  behind  with  the  dogs. 

The  steamboat  was  lying  on  its  side  on  the  sand-bar.  When 
they  came  to  it,  there  were  three  white  men  on  it.  "Now 
we  can  go  back  home,"  pappy  said. 

But  Doom  talked  to  the  white  men.  "Does  this  steamboat 
belong  to  you?"  Doom  said. 

"It  does  not  belong  to  you,"  the  white  men  said.  And 
though  they  had  guns,  Herman  Basket  said  they  did  not 
look  like  men  who  would  own  a  boat. 

"Shall  we  kill  them?"  he  said  to  Doom.  But  he  said  that 
Doom  was  still  talking  to  the  men  on  the  steamboat. 

"What  will  vou  take  for  it?"  Doom  said. 

j 

"What  will  you  give  for  it?"  the  white  men  said. 

"It  is  dead,"  Doom  said.  "It's  not  worth  much." 

"Will  you  give  ten  black  people?"  the  white  men  said. 

"All  right,"  Doom  said.  "Let  the  black  people  who  came 
with  me  from  the  Big  River  come  forward."  They  came 
forward,  the  five  men  and  the  woman.  "Let  four  more 
black  people  come  forward."  Four  more  came  forward. 
"You  are  now  to  eat  of  the  corn  of  those  white  men  yonder," 
Doom  said.  "May  it  nourish  you."  The  white  men  went 
away,  the  ten  black  people  following  them.  "Now,"  Doom 
said,  "let  us  make  the  steamboat  get  up  and  walk." 

Herman  Basket  said  that  he  and  pappy  did  not  go  into  the 
river  with  the  others,  because  pappy  said  to  go  aside  and 
talk.  They  went  aside.  Pappy  talked,  but  Herman  Basket 
said  that  he  said  he  did  not  think  it  was  right  to  kill  white 
men,  but  pappy  said  how  they  could  fill  the  white  men  with 
rocks  and  sink  them  in  the  river  and  nobody  would  find 


352  The  Wilderness 

them.  So  Herman  Basket  said  they  overtook  the  three  white 
men  and  the  ten  black  people,  then  they  turned  back  toward 
the  boat.  Just  before  they  came  to  the  steamboat,  pappy 
said  to  the  black  men:  "Go  on  to  the  Man.  Go  and  help 
make  the  steamboat  get  up  and  walk.  I  will  take  this  woman 
on  home." 

"This  woman  is  my  wife,"  one  of  the  black  men  said.  "I 
want  her  to  stay  with  me." 

"Do  you  want  to  be  arranged  in  the  river  with  rocks  in 
your  inside  too?"  pappy  said  to  the  black  man. 

"Do  you  want  to  be  arranged  in  the  river  yourself?"  the 
black  man  said  to  pappy.  "There  are  two  of  you,  and  nine 
of  us." 

Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  thought.  Then  pappy 
said,  "Let  us  go  to  the  steamboat  and  help  the  Man." 

They  went  to  the  steamboat.  But  Herman  Basket  said 
that  Doom  did  not  notice  the  ten  black  people  until  it  was 
time  to  return  to  the  Plantation.  Herman  Basket  told  how 
Doom  looked  at  the  black  people,  then  looked  at  pappy. 
"It  seems  that  the  white  men  did  not  want  these  black 
people,"  Doom  said. 

"So  it  seems,"  pappy  said. 

"The  white  men  went  away,  did  they?"  Doom  said. 

"So  it  seems,"  pappy  said. 

Herman  Basket  told  how  every  night  Doom  would  make 
all  the  men  sleep  in  the  House,  with  the  dogs  in  the  House 
too,  and  how  each  morning  they  would  return  to  the  steam- 
boat in  the  wagons.  The  wagons  would  not  hold  everybody, 
so  after  the  second  day  the  women  stayed  at  home.  But  it 
was  three  days  before  Doom  noticed  that  pappy  was  staying 
at  home  too.  Herman  Basket  said  that  the  woman's  husband 
may  have  told  Doom.  "Craw-ford  hurt  his  back  lifting  the 
steamboat/'  Herman  Basket  said  he  told  Doom.  "He  said 


A  Justice  353 

he  would  stay  at  the  Plantation  and  sit  with  his  feet  in  the 
Hot  Spring  so  that  the  sickness  in  his  back  could  return  to 
the  earth." 

"That  is  a  good  idea,"  Doom  said.  "He  has  been  doing 
this  for  three  days,  has  he?  Then  the  sickness  should  be  down 
in  his  legs  by  now." 

When  they  returned  to  the  Plantation  that  night,  Doom 
sent  for  pappy.  He  asked  pappy  if  the  sickness  had  moved. 
Pappy  said  how  the  sickness  moved  very  slow.  "You  must 
sit  in  the  Spring  more,"  Doom  said. 

"That  is  what  I  think,"  pappy  said. 

"Suppose  you  sit  in  the  Spring  at  night  too,"  Doom  said. 

"The  night  air  will  make  it  worse,"  pappy  said. 

"Not  with  a  fire  there,"  Doom  said.  "I  will  send  one  of 
the  black  people  with  you  to  keep  the  fire  burning." 

"Which  one  of  the  black  people?"  pappy  said. 

"The  husband  of  the  woman  which  I  won  on  the  steam- 
boat," Doom  said. 

"I  think  my  back  is  better,"  pappy  said. 

"Let  us  try  it,"  Doom  said. 

"I  know  my  back  is  better,"  pappy  said. 

"Let  us  try  it,  anyway,"  Doom  said.  Just  before  dark 
Doom  sent  four  of  the  People  to  fix  pappy  and  the  black 
man  at  the  Spring.  Herman  Basket  said  the  People  returned 
quickly.  He  said  that  as  they  entered  the  House,  pappy 
entered  also. 

"The  sickness  began  to  move  suddenly,"  pappy  said.  "It 
has  reached  my  feet  since  noon  today." 

"Do  you  think  it  will  be  gone  by  morning?"  Doom  said. 

"I  think  so,"  pappy  said. 

"Perhaps  you  had  better  sit  in  the  Spring  tonight  and 
make  sure,"  Doom  said. 

"I  know  it  will  be  gone  by  morning,"  pappy  said. 


354  The  Wilderness 

IV 

WHEN  IT  GOT  to  be  summer,  Herman  Basket  said  that  the 
steamboat  was  out  of  the  river  bottom.  It  had  taken  them 
five  months  to  get  it  out  of  the  bottom,  because  they  had  to 
cut  down  the  trees  to  make  a  path  for  it.  But  now  he  said 
the  steamboat  could  walk  faster  on  the  logs.  He  told  how 
pappy  helped.  Pappy  had  a  certain  place  on  one  of  the  ropes 
near  the  steamboat  that  nobody  was  allowed  to  take,  Herman 
Basket  said.  It  was  just  under  the  front  porch  of  the  steam- 
boat where  Doom  sat  in  his  chair,  with  a  boy  with  a  branch 
to  shade  him  and  another  boy  with  a  branch  to  drive  away 
the  flying  beasts.  The  dogs  rode  on  the  boat  too. 

In  the  summer,  while  the  steamboat  was  still  walking,  Her- 
man Basket  told  how  the  husband  of  the  woman  came  to 
Doom  again.  "I  have  done  what  I  could  for  you,"  Doom 
said.  "Why  don't  you  go  to  Craw-ford  and  adjust  this  matter 
yourself?" 

The  black  man  said  that  he  had  done  that.  He  said  that 
pappy  said  to  adjust  it  by  a  cock-fight,  pappy's  cock  against 
the  black  man's,  the  winner  to  have  the  woman,  the  one 
who  refused  to  fight  to  lose  by  default.  The  black  man  said 
he  told  pappy  he  did  not  have  a  cock,  and  that  pappy  said 
that  in  that  case  the  black  man  lost  by  default  and  that  the 
woman  belonged  to  pappy.  "And  what  am  I  to  do?"  the 
black  man  said. 

Doom  thought.  Then  Herman  Basket  said  that  Doom 
called  to  him  and  asked  him  which  was  pappy's  best  cock 
and  Herman  Basket  told  Doom  that  pappy  had  only  one. 
"That  black  one?"  Doom  said.  Herman  Basket  said  he  told 
Doom  that  was  the  one.  "Ah,"  Doom  said.  Herman  Basket 
told  how  Doom  sat  in  his  chair  on  the  porch  of  the  steam- 
boat while  it  walked,  looking  down  at  the  People  and 
the  black  men  pulling  the  ropes,  making  the  steamboat  walk. 


A  Justice  355 

"Go  and  tell  Craw-ford  you  have  a  cock,"  Doom  said  to 
the  black  man.  "Just  tell  him  you  will  have  a  cock  in  the 
pit.  Let  it  be  tomorrow  morning.  We  will  let  the  steamboat 
sit  down  and  rest."  The  black  man  went  away.  Then  Her- 
man Basket  said  that  Doom  was  looking  at  him,  and  that 
he  did  not  look  at  Doom.  Because  he  said  there  was  but 
one  better  cock  in  the  Plantation  than  pappy's,  and  that 
one  belonged  to  Doom.  "I  think  that  that  puppy  was  not 
sick,"  Doom  said.  "What  do  you  think?" 

Herman  Basket  said  that  he  did  not  look  at  Doom.  "That 
is  what  I  think,"  he  said. 

"That  is  what  I  would  advise,"  Doom  said. 

Herman  Basket  told  how  the  next  day  the  steamboat  sat 
and  rested.  The  pit  was  in  the  stable.  The  People  and  the 
black  people  were  there.  Pappy  had  his  cock  in  the  pit.  Then 
the  black  man  put  his  cock  into  the  pit.  Herman  Basket  said 
that  pappy  looked  at  the  black  man's  cock. 

"This  cock  belongs  to  Ikkemotubbe,"  pappy  said. 

"It  is  his,"  the  People  told  pappy.  "Ikkemotubbe  gave  it 
to  him  with  all  to  witness." 

Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  had  already  picked  up  his 
cock.  "This  is  not  right,"  pappy  said.  "We  ought  not  to  let 
him  risk  his  wife  on  a  cock-fight." 

"Then  you  withdraw?"  the  black  man  said. 

"Let  me  think,"  pappy  said.  He  thought.  The  People 
watched.  The  black  man  reminded  pappy  of  what  he  had 
said  about  defaulting.  Pappy  said  he  did  not  mean  to  say 
that  and  that  he  withdrew  it.  The  People  told  him  that  he 
could  only  withdraw  by  forfeiting  the  match.  Herman 
Basket  said  that  pappy  thought  again.  The  People  watched. 
"All  right,"  pappy  said.  "But  I  am  being  taken  advantage  of." 

The  cocks  fought.  Pappy's  cock  fell.  Pappy  took  it  up 
quickly.  Herman  Basket  said  it  was  like  pappy  had  been  wait- 
ing for  his  cock  to  fall  so  he  could  pick  it  quickly  up.  "Wait," 


356  The  Wilderness 

he  said.  He  looked  at  the  People.  "Now  they  have  fought. 
Isn't  that  true?"  The  People  said  that  it  was  true.  "So  that 
settles  what  I  said  about  forfeiting." 

Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  began  to  get  out  of  the  pit. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  fight?"  the  black  man  said. 

"I  don't  think  this  will  settle  anything,"  pappy  said.  "Do 
you?" 

Herman  Basket  told  how  the  black  man  looked  at  pappy. 
Then  he  quit  looking  at  pappy.  He  was  squatting.  Herman 
Basket  said  the  People  looked  at  the  black  man  looking  at: 
the  earth  between  his  feet.  They  watched  him  take  up  a  clod 
of  dirt,  and  then  they  watched  the  dust  come  out  between 
the  black  man's  fingers.  "Do  you  think  that  this  will  settle 
anything?"  pappy  said. 

"No,"  the  black  man  said.  Herman  Basket  said  that  the 
People  could  not  hear  him  very  good.  But  he  said  that  pappy 
could  hear  him. 

"Neither  do  I,"  pappy  said.  "It  would  not  be  right  to  risk 
your  wife  on  a  cock-fight." 

Herman  Basket  told  how  the  black  man  looked  up,  with 
the  dry  dust  about  the  fingers  of  his  hand.  He  said  the  black 
man's  eyes  looked  red  in  the  dark  pit,  like  the  eyes  of  a  fox. 
"Will  you  let  the  cocks  fight  again?"  the  black  man  said. 

"Do  you  agree  that  it  doesn't  settle  anything?"  pappy  said. 

"Yes,"  the  black  man  said. 

Pappy  put  his  cock  back  into  the  ring.  Herman  Basket 
said  that  pappy's  cock  was  dead  before  it  had  time  to  act 
strange,  even.  The  black  man's  cock  stood  upon  it  and 
started  to  crow,  but  the  black  man  struck  the  live  cock  away 
and  he  jumped  up  and  down  on  the  dead  cock  until  it  did 
not  look  like  a  cock  at  all,  Herman  Basket  said. 

Then  it  was  fall,  and  Herman  Basket  told  how  the  steam- 
boat came  to  the  Plantation  and  stopped  beside  the  House 
and  died  again.  He  said  that  for  two  months  they  had  been 


A  Justice  357 

in  sight  of  the  Plantation,  making  the  steamboat  walk  on  the 
logs,  but  now  the  steamboat  was  beside  the  House  and  the 
House  was  big  enough  to  please  Doom.  He  gave  an  eating. 
It  lasted  a  week.  When  it  was  over,  Herman  Basket  told  how 
the  black  man  came  to  Doom  a  third  time.  Herman  Basket 
said  that  the  black  man's  eyes  were  red  again,  like  those  of 
a  fox,  and  that  they  could  hear  his  breathing  in  the  room. 
"Come  to  my  cabin,"  he  said  to  Doom.  "I  have  something 
to  show  you." 

"I  thought  it  was  about  that  time,"  Doom  said.  He  looked 
about  the  room,  but  Herman  Basket  told  Doom  that  pappy 
had  just  stepped  out.  "Tell  him  to  come  also,"  Doom  said. 
When  they  came  to  the  black  man's  cabin,  Doom  sent  two 
of  the  People  to  fetch  pappy.  Then  they  entered  the  cabin. 
What  the  black  man  wanted  to  show  Doom  was  a  new  man. 

"Look,"  the  black  man  said.  "You  are  the  Man.  You  are 
to  see  justice  done." 

"What  is  wrong  with  this  man?"  Doom  said. 

"Look  at  the  color  of  him,"  the  black  man  said.  He  began 
to  look  around  the  cabin.  Herman  Basket  said  that  his  eyes 
went  red  and  then  brown  and  then  red,  like  those  of  a  fox. 
He  said  they  could  hear  the  black  man's  breathing.  "Do  I 
get  justice?"  the  black  man  said.  "You  are  the  Man." 

"You  should  be  proud  of  a  fine  yellow  man  like  this," 
Doom  said.  Fie  looked  at  the  new  man.  "I  don't  see  that 
justice  can  darken  him  any,"  Doom  said.  He  looked  about 
the  cabin  also.  "Come  forward,  Craw-ford,"  he  said.  "This 
is  a  man,  not  a  copper  snake;  he  will  not  harm  you."  But 
Herman  Basket  said  that  pappy  would  not  come  forward. 
He  said  the  black  man's  eyes  went  red  and  then  brown  and 
then  red  when  he  breathed.  "Yao,"  Doom  said,  "this  is  not 
right.  Any  man  is  entitled  to  have  his  melon  patch  protected 
from  these  wild  bucks  of  the  woods.  But  first  let  us  name  this 
man."  Doom  thought.  Herman  Basket  said  the  black  man's 


358  The  Wilderness 

eyes  went  quieter  now,  and  his  breath  went  quieter  too.  "We 
will  call  him  Had-Two-Fathers,"  Doom  said. 


V 

SAM  FATHERS  lit  his  pipe  again.  He  did  it  deliberately,  rising 
and  lifting  between  thumb  and  forefinger  from  his  forge  a 
coal  of  fire.  Then  he  came  back  and  sat  down.  It  was  getting 
late.  Caddy  and  Jason  had  come  back  from  the  creek,  and  I 
could  see  Grandfather  and  Mr.  Stokes  talking  beside  the 
carriage,  and  at  that  moment,  as  though  he  had  felt  my  gaze, 
Grandfather  turned  and  called  my  name. 

"What  did  your  pappy  do  then?"  I  said. 

"He  and  Herman  Basket  built  the  fence,"  Sam  Fathers 
said.  "Herman  Basket  told  how  Doom  made  them  set  two 
posts  into  the  ground,  with  a  sapling  across  the  top  of  them. 
The  nigger  and  pappy  wrere  there.  Doom  had  not  told  them 
about  the  fence  then.  Flerman  Basket  said  it  was  just  like 
when  he  and  pappy  and  Doom  were  boys,  sleeping  on  the 
same  pallet,  and  Doom  would  wake  them  at  night  and  make 
them  get  up  and  go  hunting  with  him,  or  when  he  would 
make  them  stand  up  with  him  and  fight  with  their  fists,  just 
for  fun,  until  Herman  Basket  and  pappy  would  hide  from 
Doom. 

"They  fixed  the  sapling  across  the  two  posts  and  Doom 
said  to  the  nigger:  'This  is  a  fence.  Can  you  climb  it? ' 

"Flerman  Basket  said  the  nigger  put  his  hand  on  the 
sapling  and  sailed  over  it  like  a  bird. 

"Then  Doom  said  to  pappy:  'Climb  this  fence.' 

"  'This  fence  is  too  high  to  climb/  pappy  said. 

"  'Climb  this  fence,  and  I  will  give  you  the  woman,' 
Doom  said. 

"Herman  Basket  said  pappy  looked  at  the  fencv0.  a  while. 
'Let  me  go  under  this  fence.'  he  said. 


A  Justice  359 

"  'No,'  Doom  said. 

"Herman  Basket  told  me  how  pappy  began  to  sit  down  on 
the  ground.  'It's  not  that  I  don't  trust  you,'  pappy  said. 

"  'We  will  build  the  fence  this  high,'  Doom  said. 

"  'What  fence?'  Herman  Basket  said. 

"  'The  fence  around  the  cabin  of  this  black  man,'  Doom 
said. 

"  'I  can't  build  a  fence  I  couldn't  climb,'  pappy  said. 

"  'Herman  will  help  you,'  Doom  said. 

"Herman  Basket  said  it  was  just  like  when  Doom  used  to 
wake  them  and  make  them  go  hunting.  He  said  the  dogs 
found  him  and  pappy  about  noon  the  next  day,  and  that  they 
began  the  fence  that  afternoon.  He  told  me  how  they  had 
to  cut  the  saplings  in  the  creek  bottom  and  drag  them  in  by 
hand,  because  Doom  would  not  let  them  use  the  wagon.  So 
sometimes  one  post  would  take  them  three  or  four  days. 
'Never  mind,'  Doom  said.  'You  have  plenty  of  time.  And 
the  exercise  will  make  Craw-ford  sleep  at  night.' 

"He  told  me  how  they  worked  on  the  fence  all  that  winter 
and  all  the  next  summer,  until  after  the  whisky  trader  had 
come  and  gone.  Then  it  was  finished.  He  said  that  on  the 
day  they  set  the  last  post,  the  nigger  came  out  of  the  cabin 
and  put  his  hand  on  the  top  of  a  post  (it  was  a  palisade  fence, 
the  posts  set  upright  in  the  ground)  and  flew  out  like  a  bird. 
'This  is  a  good  fence,'  the  nigger  said.  'Wait,'  he  said.  'I  have 
something  to  show  you.'  Herman  Basket  said  he  flew  back 
over  the  fence  again  and  went  into  the  cabin  and  came  back. 
Herman  Basket  said  that  he  was  carrying  a  new  man  and  that 
he  held  the  new  man  up  so  they  could  see  it  above  the  fence. 
'What  do  you  think  about  this  for  color?'  he  said." 

Grandfather  called  me  again.  This  time  I  got  up.  The  sun 
was  already  down  beyond  the  peach  orchard.  I  was  just 
twelve  then,  and  to  me  the  story  did  not  seem  to  have  got 
anywhere,  to  have  had  point  or  end.  Yet  I  obeyed  Grand- 


360  The  Wilderness 

father's  voice,  not  that  I  was  tired  of  Sam  Fathers'  talking, 
but  with  that  immediacy  of  children  with  which  they  flee 
temporarily  something  which  they  do  not  quite  understand; 
that,  and  the  instinctive  promptness  with  which  we  all  obeyed 
Grandfather,  not  from  concern  of  impatience  or  reprimand, 
but  because  we  all  believed  that  he  did  fine  things,  that  his 
waking  life  passed  from  one  fine  (if  faintly  grandiose)  pic- 
ture to  another. 

They  were  in  the  surrey,  waiting  for  me.  I  got  in;  the 
horses  moved  at  once,  impatient  too  for  the  stable.  Caddy 
had  one  fish,  about  the  size  of  a  chip,  and  she  was  wet  to  the 
waist.  We  drove  on,  the  team  already  trotting.  When  we 
passed  Mr.  Stokes'  kitchen  we  could  smell  ham  cooking. 
The  smell  followed  us  on  to  the  gate.  When  we  turned  onto 
the  road  home  it  was  almost  sundown.  Then  we  couldn't 
smell  the  cooking  ham  any  more.  "What  were  you  and  Sam 
talking  about?"  Grandfather  said. 

We  went  on,  in  that  strange,  faintly  sinister  suspension  of 
twilight  in  which  I  believed  that  I  could  still  see  Sam  Fathers 
back  there,  sitting  on  his  wooden  block,  definite,  immobile, 
and  complete,  like  something  looked  upon  after  a  long  time 
in  a  preservative  bath  in  a  museum.  That  was  it.  I  was  just 
twelve  then,  and  I  would  have  to  wait  until  I  had  passed  on 
and  through  and  beyond  the  suspension  of  twilight.  Then  I 
knew  that  I  would  know.  But  then  Sam  Fathers  would  be 
dead. 

"Nothing,  sir,"  I  said.  "We  were  just  talking." 


A  Courtship 


THIS  is  HOW  it  was  in  the  old  days,  when  old  Issetibbeha  was 
still  the  Man,  and  Ikkemotubbe,  Issetibbeha's  nephew,  and 
David  Hogganbeck,  the  white  man  who  told  the  steamboat 
where  to  walk,  courted  Herman  Basket's  sister. 

The  People  all  lived  in  the  Plantation  now.  Issetibbeha 
and  General  Jackson  met  and  burned  sticks  and  signed  a 
paper,  and  now  a  line  ran  through  the  woods,  although  you 
could  not  see  it.  It  ran  straight  as  a  bee's  flight  among  the 
woods,  with  the  Plantation  on  one  side  of  it,  where  Issetib- 
beha was  the  Man,  and  America  on  the  other  side,  where 
General  Jackson  was  the  Man.  So  now  when  something 
happened  on  one  side  of  the  line,  it  was  a  bad  fortune  for 
some  and  a  good  fortune  for  others,  depending  on  what  the 
white  man  happened  to  possess,  as  it  had  always  been.  But 
merely  by  occurring  on  the  other  side  of  that  line  which 
you  couldn't  even  see,  it  became  what  the  white  men  called 
a  crime  punishable  by  death  if  they  could  just  have  found 
who  did  it.  Which  seemed  foolish  to  us.  There  was  one 
uproar  which  lasted  off  and  on  for  a  week,  not  that  the 
white  man  had  disappeared,  because  he  had  been  the  sort 
of  white  man  which  even  other  white  men  did  not  regret, 
but  because  of  a  delusion  that  he  had  been  eaten.  As  if  any 
man,  no  matter  how  hungry,  would  risk  eating  the  flesh  of 
a  coward  or  thief  in  this  country  where  even  in  \yjnter  there 

361 


362  The  Wilderness 

is  always  something  to  be  found  to  eat; — this  land  for  which, 
as  Issetibbeha  used  to  say  after  he  had  become  so  old  that 
nothing  more  was  required  of  him  except  to  sit  in  the  sun 
and  criticise  the  degeneration  of  the  People  and  the  folly  and 
rapacity  of  politicians,  the  Great  Spirit  has  done  more  and 
man  less  than  for  any  land  he  ever  heard  of.  But  it  was  a 
free  country,  and  if  the  white  man  wished  to  make  a  rule 
even  that  foolish  in  their  half  of  it,  it  was  all  right  with  us. 

Then  Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hogganbeck  saw  Herman 
Basket's  sister.  As  who  did  not,  sooner  or  later,  young  men 
and  old  men  too,  bachelors  and  \vidowcrs  too,  and  some  who 
were  not  even  widowers  yet,  who  for  more  than  one  reason 
within  the  hut  had  no  business  looking  anywhere  else, 
though  who  is  to  say  what  age  a  man  must  reach  or  just 
how  unfortunate  he  must  have  been  in  his  youthful  com- 
pliance, when  he  shall  no  longer  look  at  the  Herman  Basket's 
sisters  of  this  world  and  chew  his  bitter  thumbs  too,  aihee. 
Because  she  walked  in  beauty.  Or  she  sat  in  it,  that  is,  be- 
cause she  did  not  walk  at  all  unless  she  had  to.  One  of  the 
earliest  sounds  in  the  Plantation  would  be  the  voice  of 
Herman  Basket's  aunt  crying  to  know  why  she  had  not  risen 
and  gone  to  the  spring  for  water  with  the  other  girls,  which 
she  did  not  do  sometimes  until  Herman  Basket  himself  rose 
and  made  her,  or  in  the  afternoon  crying  to  know  why  she 
did  not  go  to  the  river  with  the  other  girls  and  women  to 
wash,  which  she  did  not  do  very  often  either.  But  she  did 
not  need  to.  Anyone  who  looks  as  Herman  Basket's  sister 
did  at  seventeen  and  eighteen  and  nineteen  does  not  need 
to  wash. 

Then  one  day  Ikkemotubbe  saw  her,  who  had  known  her 
all  his  life  except  during  the  first  two  years.  He  was  Issetib- 
beha's  sister's  son.  One  night  he  got  into  the  steamboat  with 
David  Hogganbeck  and  went  away.  And  suns  passed  and 
then  moons  and  then  three  high  waters  came  and  went  and 


A  Courtship  363 

old  Issetibbeha  had  entered  the  earth  a  year  and  his  son 
Moketubbe  was  the  Man  when  Ikkemotubbe  returned, 
named  Doom  now,  with  the  white  friend  called  the  Chev- 
alier Sceur-Blonde  de  Vitry  and  the  eight  new  slaves  which 
we  did  not  need  either,  and  his  gold-laced  hat  and  cloak  and 
the  little  gold  box  of  strong  salt  and  the  wicker  wine  hamper 
containing  the  four  other  puppies  which  were  still  alive,  and 
within  two  days  Moketubbe 's  little  son  was  dead  and  within 
three  Ikkemotubbe  whose  name  was  Doom  now  was  him- 
self the  Man.  But  he  was  not  Doom  yet.  He  was  still  just 
Ikkemotubbe,  one  of  the  young  men,  the  best  one,  who  rode 
the  hardest  and  fastest  and  danced  the  longest  and  got  the 
drunkest  and  was  loved  the  best,  by  the  young  men  and  the 
girls  and  the  older  women  too  who  should  have  had  other 
things  to  think  about.  Then  one  day  he  saw  Herman  Basket's 
sister,  whom  he  had  known  all  his  life  except  for  the  first 
two  years. 

After  Ikkemotubbe  looked  at  her,  my  father  and  Owl-by- 
Night  and  Sylvester's  John  and  the  other  young  men  looked 
away.  Because  he  was  the  best  of  them  and  they  loved  him 
then  while  he  was  still  just  Ikkemotubbe.  They  would  hold 
the  other  horse  for  him  as,  stripped  to  the  waist,  his  hair 
and  body  oiled  with  bear's  grease  as  when  racing  (though 
with  honey  mixed  into  the  bear's  grease  now)  and  with  only 
a  rope  hackamore  and  no  saddle  as  when  racing,  Ikkemo- 
tubbe would  ride  on  his  new  racing  pony  past  the  gallery 
where  Herman  Basket's  sister  sat  shelling  corn  or  peas  into 
the  silver  wine  pitcher  which  her  aunt  had  inherited  from 
her  second  cousin  by  marriage's  great-aunt  who  was  old 
David  Colbert's  wife,  while  Log-in-the-Creek  (one  of  the 
young  men  too,  though  nobody  paid  any  attention  to  him. 
He  raced  no  horses  and  fought  no  cocks  and  cast  no  dice, 
and  even  when  forced  to,  he  would  not  even  dance  fast 
enough  to  keep  out  of  the  other  dancers'  way,  and  disgraced 


364  The  Wilderness 

both  himself  and  the  others  each  time  by  becoming  sick  after 
only  five  or  six  horns  of  what  was  never  even  his  whisky) 
leaned  against  one  of  the  gallery  posts  and  blew  into  his 
harmonica.  Then  one  of  the  young  men  held  the  racing 
pony,  and  on  his  gaited  mare  now  and  wearing  his  flower- 
painted  weskit  and  pigeon-tailed  coat  and  beaver  hat  in 
which  he  looked  handsomer  than  a  steamboat  gambler  and 
richer  even  than  the  whisky-trader,  Ikkemotubbe  would  ride 
past  the  gallery  where  Herman  Basket's  sister  shelled  another 
pod  of  peas  into  the  pitcher  and  Log-in-the-Creek  sat  with 
his  back  against  the  post  and  blew  into  the  harmonica.  Then 
another  of  the  young  men  would  take  the  mare  too  and 
Ikkemotubbe  would  walk  to  Herman  Basket's  and  sit  on  the 
gallery  too  in  his  fine  clothes  while  Herman  Basket's  sister 
shelled  another  pod  of  peas  perhaps  into  the  silver  pitcher 
and  Log-in-the-Creek  lay  on  his  back  on  the  floor,  blowing 
into  the  harmonica.  Then  the  whisky-trader  came  and 
Ikkemotubbe  and  the  young  men  invited  Log-in-the-Creek 
into  the  woods  until  they  became  tired  of  carrying  him.  And 
although  a  good  deal  wasted  outside,  as  usual  Log-in-the- 
Creek  became  sick  and  then  asleep  after  seven  or  eight  horns, 
and  Ikkemotubbe  returned  to  Herman  Basket's  gallery, 
where  for  a  day  or  two  at  least  he  didn't  have  to  not  listen 
to  the  harmonica. 

Finally  Owl-at-Night  made  a  suggestion.  "Send  Herman 
Basket's  aunt  a  gift."  But  the  only  thing  Ikkemotubbe 
owned  which  Herman  Basket's  aunt  didn't,  was  the  new 
racing  pony.  So  after  a  while  Ikkemotubbe  said,  "So  it  seems 
I  want  this  girl  even  worse  than  I  believed,"  and  sent  Owl- 
at-Night  to  tie  the  racing  pony's  hackamore  to  Herman 
Basket's  kitchen  door  handle.  Then  he  thought  how  Herman 
Basket's  aunt  could  not  even  always  make  Herman  Basket's 
sister  just  get  up  and  go  to  the  spring  for  water.  Besides, 
she  was  the  second  cousin  by  marriage  to  the  grand-niece 


A  Courtship  365 

of  the  wife  of  old  David  Colbert,  the  chief  Man  of  all  the 
Chickasaws  in  our  section,  and  she  looked  upon  Issetibbeha's 
whole  family  and  line  as  mushrooms. 

"But  Herman  Basket  has  been  known  to  make  her  get  up 
and  go  to  the  spring,"  my  father  said.  "And  I  never  heard 
him  claim  that  old  Dave  Colbert's  wife  or  his  wife's  niece 
or  anybody  else's  wife  or  niece  or  aunt  was  any  better  than 
anybody  else.  Give  Herman  the  horse." 

"I  can  beat  that,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  Because  there  was  no 
horse  in  the  Plantation  or  America  either  between  Natchez 
and  Nashville  whose  tail  Ikkemotubbe's  new  pony  ever 
looked  at.  "I  will  run  Herman  a  horse-race  for  his  influence," 
he  said.  "Run,"  he  told  my  father.  "Catch  Owl-at-Night 
before  he  reaches  the  house."  So  my  father  brought  the 
pony  back  in  time.  But  just  in  case  Herman  Basket's  aunt 
had  been  watching  from  the  kitchen  window  or  something, 
Ikkemotubbe  sent  Owl-at-Night  and  Sylvester's  John  home 
for  his  crate  of  gamecocks,  though  he  expected  little  from 
this  since  Herman  Basket's  aunt  already  owned  the  best 
cocks  in  the  Plantation  and  won  all  the  money  every  Sun- 
day morning  anyway.  And  then  Herman  Basket  declined 
to  commit  himself,  so  a  horse-race  would  have  been  merely 
for  pleasure  and  money.  And  Ikkemotubbe  said  how  money 
could  not  help  him,  and  with  that  damned  girl  on  his  mind 
day  and  night  his  tongue  had  forgotten  the  savor  of  pleasure. 
But  the  whisky-trader  always  came,  and  so  for  a  day  or  two 
at  least  he  wouldn't  have  to  not  listen  to  the  harmonica. 

Then  David  Hogganbeck  also  looked  at  Herman  Basket's 
sister,  whom  he  too  had  been  seeing  once  each  year  since  the 
steamboat  first  walked  to  the  Plantation.  After  a  while  even 
winter  would  be  over  and  we  would  begin  to  watch  the 
mark  which  David  Hogganbeck  had  put  on  the  landing  to 
show  us  when  the  water  would  be  tall  enough  for  the  steam- 
boat to  walk  in.  Then  the  river  would  reach  the  mark,  and 


3  66  The  Wilderness 

sure  enough  within  two  suns  the  steamboat  would  cry  in 
the  Plantation.  Then  all  the  People — men  and  women  and 
children  and  dogs,  even  Herman  Basket's  sister  because 
Ikkemotubbe  would  fetch  a  horse  for  her  to  ride  and  so 
only  Log-in-the-Creek  would  remain,  not  inside  the  house 
even  though  it  was  still  cold,  because  Herman  Basket's  aunt 
wouldn't  let  him  stay  inside  the  house  where  she  would 
have  to  step  over  him  each  time  she  passed,  but  squatting  in 
his  blanket  on  the  gallery  with  an  old  cooking-pot  of  fire 
inside  the  blanket  with  him — would  stand  on  the  landing, 
to  watch  the  upstairs  and  the  smokestack  moving  among  the 
trees  and  hear  the  puffing  of  the  smokestack  and  its  feet 
walking  fast  in  the  water  too  when  it  was  not  crying.  Then 
we  would  begin  to  hear  David  Hogganbeck's  fiddle,  and 
then  the  steamboat  would  come  walking  up  the  last  of  the 
river  like  a  race-horse,  with  the  smoke  rolling  black  and  its 
feet  flinging  the  water  aside  as  a  running  horse  flings  dirt, 
and  Captain  Studenmare  who  owned  the  steamboat  chewing 
tobacco  in  one  window  and  David  Hogganbeck  playing  his 
fiddle  in  the  other,  and  between  them  the  head  of  the  boy 
slave  who  turned  the  wheel,  who  was  not  much  more  than 
half  as  big  as  Captain  Studenmare  and  not  even  a  third  as 
big  as  David  Hogganbeck.  And  all  day  long  the  trading 
would  continue,  though  David  Hogganbeck  took  little  part 
in  this.  And  all  night  long  the  dancing  would  continue,  and 
David  Hogganbeck  took  the  biggest  part  in  this.  Because  he 
was  bigger  than  any  two  of  the  young  men  put  together 
almost,  and  although  you  would  not  have  called  him  a  man 
built  for  dancing  or  running  either,  it  was  as  if  that  very 
double  size  which  could  hold  twice  as  much  whisky  as  any 
other,  could  also  dance  twice  as  long,  until  one  by  one  the 
young  men  fell  away  and  only  he  was  left.  And  there  was 
horse-racing  and  eating,  and  although  David  Hogganbeck 
had  no  horses  and  did  not  ride  one  since  no  horse  could 


A  Courtship  367 

have  carried  him  and  run  fast  too,  he  would  eat  a  match 
each  year  for  money  against  any  two  of  the  young  men 
whom  the  People  picked,  and  David  Hogganbeck  always 
won.  Then  the  water  would  return  toward  the  mark  he  had 
made  on  the  landing,  and  it  would  be  time  for  the  steamboat 
to  leave  while  there  was  still  enough  water  in  the  river  for  it 
to  walk  in. 

And  then  it  did  not  go  away.  The  river  began  to  grow 
little,  yet  still  David  Hogganbeck  played  his  fiddle  on 
Herman  Basket's  gallery  while  Herman  Basket's  sister  stirred 
something  for  cooking  into  the  silver  wine  pitcher  and 
Ikkemotubbe  sat  against  a  post  in  his  fine  clothes  and  his 
beaver  hat  and  Log-in-the-Creek  lay  on  his  back  on  the 
floor  with  the  harmonica  cupped  in  both  hands  to  his  mouth, 
though  you  couldn't  hear  now  whether  he  was  blowing  into 
it  or  not.  Then  you  could  see  the  mark  which  David  Hog- 
ganbeck had  marked  on  the  landing  while  he  still  played  his 
fiddle  on  Herman  Basket's  gallery  where  Ikkemotubbe  had 
brought  a  rocking  chair  from  his  house  to  sit  in  until  David 
Hogganbeck  would  have  to  leave  in  order  to  show  the  steam- 
boat the  way  back  to  Natchez.  And  all  that  afternoon  the 
People  stood  along  the  landing  and  watched  the  steamboat's 
slaves  hurling  wood  into  its  stomach  for  steam  to  make  it 
walk;  and  during  most  of  that  night,  while  David  Hoggan- 
beck drank  twice  as  much  and  danced  twice  as  long  as  even 
David  Hogganbeck,  so  that  he  drank  four  times  as  much 
and  danced  four  times  as  long  as  even  Ikkemotubbe,  even 
an  Ikkemotubbe  who  at  last  had  looked  at  Herman  Basket's 
sister  or  at  least  had  looked  at  someone  else  looking  at  her, 
the  older  ones  among  the  People  stood  along  the  landing  and 
watched  the  slaves  hurling  wood  into  the  steamboat's  stom- 
ach, not  to  make  it  walk  but  to  make  its  voice  cry  while 
Captain  Studenmare  leaned  out  of  the  upstairs  with  the  end 
of  the  crying-rope  tied  to  the  door-handle.  And  the  next 


368  The  Wilderness 

day  Captain  Studenmare  himself  came  onto  the  gallery  and 
grasped  the  end  of  David  Hogganbeck's  fiddle. 

"You're  fired,"  he  said. 

"All  right,"  David  Hogganbeck  said.  Then  Captain 
Studenmare  grasped  the  end  of  David  Hogganbeck's  fiddle. 

"We  will  have  to  go  back  to  Natchez  where  I  can  get 
money  to  pay  you  off,"  he  said. 

"Leave  the  money  at  the  saloon,"  David  Hogganbeck 
said.  "I'll  bring  the  boat  back  out  next  spring." 

Then  it  was  night.  Then  Herman  Basket's  aunt  came  out 
and  said  that  if  they  were  going  to  stay  there  all  night,  at 
least  David  Hogganbeck  would  have  to  stop  playing  his 
fiddle  so  other  people  could  sleep.  Then  she  came  out  and 
said  for  Herman  Basket's  sister  to  come  in  and  go  to  bed. 
Then  Herman  Basket  came  out  and  said,  "Come  on  now, 
fellows.  Be  reasonable."  Then  Herman  Basket's  aunt  came 
out  and  said  that  the  next  time  she  was  going  to  bring  Her- 
man Basket's  dead  uncle's  shotgun.  So  Ikkemotubbe  and 
David  Hogganbeck  left  Log-in-the-Creek  lying  on  the  floor 
and  stepped  down  from  the  gallery.  "Goodnight,"  David 
Hogganbeck  said. 

"I'll  walk  home  with  you,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  So  they 
walked  across  the  Plantation  to  the  steamboat.  It  was  dark 
and  there  was  no  fire  in  its  stomach  now  because  Captain 
Studenmare  was  still  asleep  under  Issetibbeha's  back  porch. 
Then  Ikkemotubbe  said,  "Goodnight." 

"I'll  walk  home  with  you,"  David  Hogganbeck  said.  So 
they  walked  back  across  the  Plantation  to  Ikkemotubbe's 
house.  But  David  Hogganbeck  did  not  have  time  to  say 
goodnight  now  because  Ikkemotubbe  turned  as  soon  as  they 
reached  his  house  and  started  back  toward  the  steamboat. 
Then  he  began  to  run,  because  David  Hogganbeck  still  did 
not  look  like  a  man  who  could  run  fast.  But  he  had  not 
looked  like  a  man  who  could  dance  a  long  time  either,  so 


A  Courtship  369 

when  Ikkemotubbe  reached  the  steamboat  and  turned  and 
ran  again,  he  was  only  a  little  ahead  of  David  Hogganbeck. 
And  when  they  reached  Ikkemotubbe's  house  he  was  still 
only  a  little  ahead  of  David  Hogganbeck  when  he  stopped, 
breathing  fast  but  only  a  little  fast,  and  held  the  door  open 
for  David  Hogganbeck  to  enter. 

"My  house  is  not  very  much  house,"  he  said.  "But  it  is 
yours."  So  they  both  slept  in  Ikkemotubbe's  bed  in  his  house 
that  night.  And  the  next  afternoon,  although  Herman  Bas- 
ket would  still  do  no  more  than  wish  him  success,  Ikkemo- 
tubbe sent  my  father  and  Sylvester's  John  with  his  saddle 
mare  for  Herman  Basket's  aunt  to  ride  on,  and  he  and  Her- 
man Basket  ran  the  horse-race.  And  he  rode  faster  than  any- 
one had  ever  ridden  in  the  Plantation.  He  won  by  lengths  and 
lengths  and,  with  Herman  Basket's  aunt  watching,  he  made 
Herman  Basket  take  all  the  money,  as  though  Herman  Bas- 
ket had  won,  and  that  evening  he  sent  Owl-at-Night  to  tie 
the  racing  pony's  hackamore  to  the  door-handle  of  Herman 
Basket's  kitchen.  But  that  night  Herman  Basket's  aunt  did 
not  even  warn  them.  She  came  out  the  first  time  with  Her- 
man Basket's  dead  uncle's  gun,  and  hardly  a  moment  had 
elapsed  before  Ikkemotubbe  found  out  that  she  meant  him 
too.  So  he  and  David  Hogganbeck  left  Log-in-tiie-Creek 
lying  on  the  gallery  and  they  stopped  for  a  moment  at  my 
father's  house  on  the  first  trip  between  Ikkemotubbe's  house 
and  the  steamboat,  though  when  my  father  and  Owl-at- 
Night  finally  found  Ikkemotubbe  to  tell  him  that  Herman 
Basket's  aunt  must  have  sent  the  racing  pony  far  into  the 
woods  and  hidden  it  because  they  had  not  found  it  yet, 
Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hogganbeck  were  both  asleep  in 
David  Hogganbeck's  bed  in  the  steamboat. 

And  the  next  morning  the  whisky-trader  came,  and  that 
afternoon  Ikkemotubbe  and  the  young  men  invited  Log-in- 
the-Creek  into  the  woods  and  my  father  and  Sylvester's 


370  The  Wilderness 

John  returned  for  the  whisky-trader's  buckboard  and,  with 
my  father  and  Sylvester's  John  driving  the  buckboard  and 
Log-in-the-Creek  lying  on  his  face  on  top  of  the  little  house 
on  the  back  of  the  buckboard  where  the  whisky-kegs  rode 
and  Ikkemotubbe  standing  on  top  of  the  little  house,  wear- 
ing the  used  general's  coat  which  General  Jackson  gave 
Issetibbeha,  with  his  arms  folded  and  one  foot  advanced 
onto  Log-in-the-Creek 's  back,  they  rode  slow  past  the  gal- 
lery where  David  Hogganbeck  played  his  fiddle  while 
Herman  Basket's  sister  stirred  something  for  cooking  into 
the  silver  wine  pitcher.  And  when  my  father  and  Owl-at- 
Night  found  Ikkemotubbe  that  night  to  tell  him  they  still 
had  not  found  where  Herman  Basket's  aunt  had  hidden  the 
pony,  Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hogganbeck  were  at  Ikke- 
motubbe's  house.  And  the  next  afternoon  Ikkemotubbe  and 
the  young  men  invited  David  Hogganbeck  into  the  woods 
and  it  was  a  long  time  this  time  and  when  they  came  out, 
David  Hogganbeck  was  driving  the  buckboard  while  the 
legs  of  Ikkemotubbe  and  the  other  young  men  dangled  from 
the  open  door  of  the  little  whisky-house  like  so  many  strands 
of  vine  hay  and  Issetibbeha's  general's  coat  was  tied  by  its 
sleeves  about  the  neck  of  one  of  the  mules.  And  nobody 
hunted  for  the  racing  pony  that  night,  and  when  Ikkemo- 
tubbe waked  up,  he  didn't  know  at  first  even  where  he  was. 
And  he  could  already  hear  David  Hogganbeck's  fiddle  be- 
fore he  could  move  aside  enough  of  the  young  men  to  get 
out  of  the  little  whisky-house,  because  that  night  neither 
Herman  Basket's  aunt  nor  Herman  Basket  and  then  finally 
Herman  Basket's  dead  uncle's  gun  could  persuade  David 
Hogganbeck  to  leave  the  gallery  and  go  away  or  even  to 
stop  playing  the  fiddle. 

So  the  next  morning  Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hoggan- 
beck squatted  in  a  quiet  place  in  the  woods  while  the  young 
men,  except  Sylvester's  John  and  Owl-by-Night  who  were 


A  Courtship  371 

still  hunting  for  the  horse,  stood  on  guard.  "We  could  fight 
for  her  then,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

"We  could  fight  for  her,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "But  white 
men  and  the  People  fight  differently.  We  fight  with  knives, 
to  hurt  good  and  to  hurt  quickly.  That  would  be  all  right, 
if  I  were  to  lose.  Because  I  would  wish  to  be  hurt  good. 
But  if  I  am  to  win,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  be  hurt  good.  If 
I  am  to  truly  win,  it  will  be  necessary  for  you  to  be  there 
to  see  it.  On  the  day  of  the  wedding,  I  wish  you  to  be 
present,  or  at  least  present  somewhere,  not  lying  wrapped 
in  a  blanket  on  a  platform  in  the  woods,  waiting  to  enter  the 
earth."  Then  my  father  said  how  Ikkemotubbe  put  his  hand 
on  David  Hogganbeck's  shoulder  and  smiled  at  him.  "If  that 
could  satisfy  me,  we  would  not  be  squatting  here  discussing 
what  to  do.  I  think  you  see  that." 

"I  think  I  do,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

Then  my  father  said  how  Ikkemotubbe  removed  his  hand 
from  David  Hogganbeck's  shoulder.  "And  we  have  tried 
whisky,"  he  said. 

"We  have  tried  that,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

"Even  the  racing  pony  and  the  general's  coat  failed  me," 
Ikkemotubbe  said.  "I  had  been  saving  them,  like  a  man  with 
two  hole-cards." 

"I  wouldn't  say  that  the  coat  completely  failed,"  David 
Hogganbeck  said.  "You  looked  fine  in  it." 

"Aihee,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "So  did  the  mule."  Then  my 
father  said  how  he  was  not  smiling  either  as  he  squatted 
beside  David  Hogganbeck,  making  little  marks  in  the  earth 
with  a  twig.  "So  there  is  just  one  other  thing,"  he  said.  "And 
I  am  already  beaten  at  that  too  before  we  start." 

So  all  that  day  they  ate  nothing.  And  that  night  when 
they  left  Log-in-the-Creek  lying  on  Herman  Basket's  gal- 
lery, instead  of  merely  walking  for  a  while  and  then  running 
for  a  while  back  and  forth  between  Ikkemotubbe's  house 


372  The  Wilderness 

and  the  steamboat,  they  began  to  run  as  soon  as  they  left 
Herman  Basket's.  And  when  they  lay  down  in  the  woods 
to  sleep,  it  was  where  they  would  not  only  be  free  of  temp- 
tation to  eat  but  of  opportunity  too,  and  from  which  it 
would  take  another  hard  run  as  an  appetiser  to  reach  the 
Plantation  for  the  match.  Then  it  was  morning  and  they  ran 
back  to  where  my  father  and  the  young  men  waited  on 
horses  to  meet  them  and  tell  Ikkemotubbe  that  they  still 
hadn't  found  where  under  the  sun  Herman  Basket's  aunt 
could  have  hidden  the  pony  and  to  escort  them  back  across 
the  Plantation  to  the  race-course,  where  the  People  waited 
around  the  table,  with  Ikkemotubbe's  rocking  chair  from 
Herman  Basket's  gallery  for  Issetibbeha  and  a  bench  behind 
it  for  the  judges.  First  there  was  a  recess  while  a  ten-year-old 
boy  ran  once  around  the  race-track,  to  let  them  recover 
breath.  Then  Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hogganbeck  took 
their  places  on  either  side  of  the  table,  facing  each  other 
across  it,  and  Owl-at-Night  gave  the  word. 

First,  each  had  that  quantity  of  stewed  bird  chitterlings 
which  the  other  could  scoop  with  two  hands  from  the  pot. 
Then  each  had  as  many  wild  turkey  eggs  as  he  was  old, 
Ikkemotubbe  twenty-two  and  David  Hogganbeck  twenty- 
three,  though  Ikkemotubbe  refused  the  advantage  and  said 
he  would  eat  twenty-three  too.  Then  David  Hogganbeck 
said  he  was  entitled  to  one  more  than  Ikkemotubbe  so  he 
would  eat  twenty-four,  until  Issetibbeha  told  them  both  to 
hush  and  get  on,  and  Owl-at-Night  tallied  the  shells.  Then 
there  was  the  tongue,  paws  and  melt  of  a  bear,  though  for 
a  little  while  Ikkemotubbe  stood  and  looked  at  his  half  of 
it  while  David  Hogganbeck  was  already  eating.  And  at  the 
half-way  he  stopped  and  looked  at  it  again  while  David 
Hogganbeck  was  finishing.  But  it  was  all  right;  there  was  a 
faint  smile  on  his  face  such  as  the  young  men  had  seen  on 
it  at  the  end  of  a  hard  running  when  he  was  going  from 


A  Courtship  373 

now  on  not  on  the  fact  that  he  was  still  alive  but  on  the 
fact  that  he  was  Ikkemotubbe.  And  he  went  on,  and  Owl- 
at-Night  tallied  the  bones,  and  the  women  set  the  roasted 
shote  on  the  table  and  Ikkemotubbe  and  David  Hogganbeck 
moved  back  to  the  tail  of  the  shote  and  faced  one  another 
across  it  and  Owl-at-Night  had  even  given  the  word  to  start 
until  he  gave  another  word  to  stop.  "Give  me  some  water," 
Ikkemotubbe  said.  So  my  father  handed  him  the  gourd  and 
he  even  took  a  swallow.  But  the  water  returned  as  though 
it  had  merely  struck  the  back  of  his  throat  and  bounced, 
and  Ikkemotubbe  put  the  gourd  down  and  raised  the  tail  of 
his  shirt  before  his  bowed  face  and  turned  and  walked  away 
as  the  People  opened  aside  to  let  him  pass. 

And  that  afternoon  they  did  not  even  go  to  the  quiet  place 
in  the  woods.  They  stood  in  Ikkemotubbe's  house  while  my 
father  and  the  others  stood  quietly  too  in  the  background. 
My  father  said  that  Ikkemotubbe  was  not  smiling  now.  "I 
was  right  yesterday,"  he  said.  "If  I  am  to  lose  to  thee,  we 
should  have  used  the  knives.  You  see,"  he  said,  and  now  my 
father  said  he  even  smiled  again,  as  at  the  end  of  the  long 
hard  running  when  the  young  men  knew  that  he  would  go 
on,  not  because  he  was  still  alive  but  because  he  was  Ikkemo- 
tubbe; " — you  see,  although  I  have  lost,  I  still  cannot  recon- 
cile." 

"I  had  you  beat  before  we  started,"  David  Hogganbeck 
said.  "We  both  knew  that." 

"Yes,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "But  I  suggested  it." 

"Then  what  do  you  suggest  now?"  David  Hogganbeck 
said.  And  now  my  father  said  how  they  loved  David  Hog- 
ganbeck at  that  moment  'as  they  loved  Ikkemotubbe;  that 
they  loved  them  both  at  that  moment  while  Ikkemotubbe 
stood  before  David  Hogganbeck  with  the  smile  on  his  face 
and  his  right  hand  flat  on  David  Hogganbeck's  chest,  be- 
cause there  were  men  in  those  days. 


374  The  Wilderness 

"Once  more  then,  and  then  no  more,"  Ikkemotubbe  said. 
"The  Cave."  Then  he  and  David  Hogganbeck  stripped  and 
my  father  and  the  others  oiled  them,  body  and  hair  too, 
with  bear's  grease  mixed  with  mint,  not  just  for  speed  this 
time  but  for  lasting  too,  because  the  Cave  was  a  hundred 
and  thirty  miles  away,  over  in  the  country  of  old  David 
Colbert — a  black  hole  in  the  hill  which  the  spoor  of  wild 
creatures  merely  approached  and  then  turned  away  and 
which  no  dog  could  even  be  beaten  to  enter  and  where  the 
boys  from  among  all  the  People  would  go  to  lie  on  their  first 
Night-away-from-Fire  to  prove  if  they  had  the  courage  to 
become  men,  because  it  had  been  known  among  the  People 
from  a  long  time  ago  that  the  sound  of  a  whisper  or  even  the 
disturbed  air  of  a  sudden  movement  would  bring  parts  of 
the  roof  down  and  so  all  believed  that  not  even  a  very  big 
movement  or  sound  or  maybe  none  at  all  at  some  time 
would  bring  the  whole  mountain  into  the  cave.  Then  Ikke- 
motubbe took  the  two  pistols  from  the  trunk  and  drew  the 
loads  and  reloaded  them.  "Whoever  reaches  the  Cave  first 
can  enter  it  alone  and  fire  his  pistol,"  he  said.  "If  he  comes 
back  out,  he  has  won." 

"And  if  he  does  not  come  back  out?"  David  Hogganbeck 
said. 

"Then  you  have  won,"  Ikkemotubbe  said. 

"Or  you,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

And  now  my  father  said  how  Ikkemotubbe  smiled  again 
at  David  Hogganbeck.  "Or  me,"  he  said.  "Though  I  think 
I  told  you  yesterday  that  such  as  that  for  me  will  not  be 
victory."  Then  Ikkemotubbe  put  another  charge  of  powder, 
with  a  wadding  and  bullet,  into  each  of  two  small  medicine 
bags,  one  for  himself  and  one  for  David  Hogganbeck,  just 
in  case  the  one  who  entered  the  Cave  first  should  not  lose 
quick  enough,  and,  wearing  only  their  shirts  and  shoes  and 
each  with  his  pistol  and  medicine  bag  looped  on  a  cord 


A  Courtship  375 

around  his  neck,  thjey  emerged  from  Ikkemotubbe's  house 
and  began  to  run. 

It  was  evening  then.  Then  it  was  night,  and  since  David 
Hogganbeck  did  not  know  the  way,  Ikkemotubbe  continued 
to  set  the  pace.  But  after  a  time  it  was  daylight  again  and 
now  David  Hogganbeck  could  run  by  the  sun  and  the  land- 
marks which  Ikkemotubbe  described  to  him  while  they 
rested  beside  a  creek,  if  he  wished  to  go  faster.  So  some- 
times David  Hogganbeck  would  run  in  front  and  sometimes 
Ikkemotubbe,  then  David  Hogganbeck  would  pass  Ikkemo- 
tubbe as  he  sat  beside  a  spring  or  a  stream  with  his  feet  in 
the  water  and  Ikkemotubbe  would  smile  at  David  Hoggan- 
beck and  wave  his  hand.  Then  he  would  overtake  David 
Hogganbeck  and  the  country  was  open  now  and  they  would 
run  side  by  side  in  the  prairies  with  his  hand  lying  lightly 
on  David  Hogganbeck's  shoulder,  not  on  the  top  of  the 
shoulder  but  lightly  against  the  back  of  it  until  after  a  while 
he  would  smile  at  David  Hogganbeck  and  draw  ahead.  But 
then  it  was  sundown,  and  then  it  was  dark  again  so  Ikkemo- 
tubbe slowed  and  then  stopped  until  he  heard  David  Hog- 
ganbeck and  knew  that  David  Hogganbeck  could  hear  him 
and  then  he  ran  again  so  that  David  Hogganbeck  could  fol- 
low the  sound  of  his  running.  So  when  David  Hogganbeck 
fell,  Ikkemotubbe  heard  it  and  went  back  and  found  David 
Hogganbeck  in  the  dark  and  turned  him  onto  his  back  and 
found  water  in  the  dark  and  soaked  his  shirt  in  it  and  re- 
turned and  wrung  the  water  from  the  shirt  into  David  Hog- 
ganbeck's mouth.  And  then  it  was  daylight  and  Ikkemotubbe 
waked  also  and  found  a  nest  containing  five  unfledged  birds 
and  ate  and  brought  the  other  three  to  David  Hogganbeck 
and  then  he  went  on  until  he  was  just  this  side  of  where 
David  Hogganbeck  could  no  longer  see  him  and  sat  down 
again  until  David  Hogganbeck  got  up  onto  his  feet, 

And  he  gave  David  Hogganbeck  the  landmarks  for  that 


376  The  Wilderness 

day  too,  talking  back  to  David  Hogganbeck  over  his  shoul- 
der as  they  ran,  though  David  Hogganbeck  did  not  need 
them  because  he  never  overtook  Ikkemotubbe  again.  He 
never  came  closer  than  fifteen  or  twenty  paces,  although  it 
looked  at  one  time  like  he  was.  Because  this  time  it  was 
Ikkemotubbe  who  fell.  And  the  country  was  open  again  so 
Ikkemotubbe  could  lie  there  for  a  long  time  and  watch 
David  Hogganbeck  coming.  Then  it  was  sunset  again,  and 
then  it  was  dark  again,  and  he  lay  there  listening  to  David 
Hogganbeck  coming  for  a  long  time  until  it  was  time  for 
Ikkemotubbe  to  get  up  and  he  did  and  they  went  on  slowly 
in  the  dark  with  David  Hogganbeck  at  least  a  hundred 
paces  behind  him,  until  he  heard  David  Hogganbeck  fall 
and  then  he  lay  down  too.  Then  it  was  day  again  and  he 
watched  David  Hogganbeck  get  up  onto  his  feet  and  come 
slowly  toward  him  and  at  last  he  tried  to  get  up  too  but  he 
did  not  and  it  looked  like  David  Hogganbeck  was  going  to 
come  up  with  him.  But  he  got  up  at  last  while  David  Hog- 
ganbeck was  still  four  or  five  paces  away  and  they  went  on 
until  David  Hogganbeck  fell,  and  then  Ikkemotubbe  thought 
he  was  just  watching  David  Hogganbeck  fall  until  he  found 
that  he  had  fallen  too  but  he  got  up  onto  his  hands  and  knees 
and  crawled  still  another  ten  or  fifteen  paces  before  he  too 
lay  down.  And  there  in  the  sunset  before  him  was  the  hill 
in  which  the  Cave  was,  and  there  through  the  night,  and 
there  still  in  the  sunrise. 

So  Ikkemotubbe  ran  into  the  Cave  first,  with  his  pistol 
already  cocked  in  his  hand.  He  told  how  he  stopped  perhaps 
for  a  second  at  the  entrance,  perhaps  to  look  at  the  sun 
again  or  perhaps  just  to  see  where  David  Hogganbeck  had 
stopped.  But  David  Hogganbeck  was  running  too  and  he 
was  still  only  that  fifteen  or  twenty  paces  behind,  and  be- 
sides, because  of  that  damned  sister  of  Herman  Basket's, 
there  had  been  no  light  nor  heat  either  in  that  sun  for  moon? 


A  Courtship  377 

and  moons.  So  he  ran  into  the  Cave  and  turned  and  saw 
David  Hogganbeck  also  running  into  the  Cave  and  he  cried, 
"Back,  fool!"  But  David  Hogganbeck  still  ran  into  the  Cave 
even  as  Ikkemotubbe  pointed  his  pistol  at  the  roof  and  fired. 
And  there  was  a  noise,  and  a  rushing,  and  a  blackness  and  a 
dust,  and  Ikkemotubbe  told  how  he  thought,  Aihec.  It 
comes.  But  it  did  not,  and  even  before  the  blackness  he  saw 
David  Hogganbeck  cast  himself  forward  onto  his  hands  and 
knees,  and  there  was  not  a  complete  blackness  either  because 
he  could  see  the  sunlight  and  air  and  day  beyond  the  tunnel 
of  David  Hogganbeck's  arms  and  legs  as,  still  on  his  hands 
and  knees,  David  Hogganbeck  held  the  fallen  roof  upon 
his  back.  "Hurry,"  David  Hogganbeck  said.  "Between  my 
legs.  I  can't — " 

"Nay,  brother,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "Quickly  thyself, 
before  it  crushes  thee.  Crawl  back." 

"Hurry,"  David  Hogganbeck  said  behind  his  teeth. 
"Hurry,  damn  you."  And  Ikkemotubbe  did,  and  he  remem- 
bered David  Hogganbeck's  buttocks  and  legs  pink  in  the 
sunrise  and  the  slab  of  rock  which  supported  the  fallen  roof 
pink  in  the  sunrise  too  across  David  Hogganbeck's  back. 
But  he  did  not  remember  where  he  found  the  pole  nor  how 
he  carried  it  alone  into  the  Cave  and  thrust  it  into  the  hole 
beside  David  Hogganbeck  and  stooped  his  own  back  under 
it  and  lifted  until  he  knew  that  some  at  least  of  the  weight 
of  the  fallen  roof  was  on  the  pole. 

"Now,"  he  said.  "Quickly." 

"No,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

"Quickly,  brother,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "The  weight  is 
off  thee." 

"Then  I  can't  move,"  David  Hogganbeck  said.  But  Ikke- 
motubbe couldn't  move  either,  because  now  he  had  to  hold 
the  fallen  roof  up  with  his  back  and  legs.  So  he  reached  one 
hand  and  grasped  David  Hogganbeck  by  the  meat  and 


378  The  Wilderness 

jerked  him  backward  out  of  the  hole  until  he  lay  face-down 
upon  the  earth.  And  maybe  some  of  the  weight  of  the  fallen 
roof  was  on  the  pole  before,  but  now  all  of  the  weight  was 
on  it  and  Ikkemotubbe  said  how  he  thought,  This  time  surely 
aihee.  But  it  was  the  pole  and  not  his  back  which  snapped 
and  flung  him  face-down  too  across  David  Hogganbeck  like 
two  flung  sticks,  and  a  bright  gout  of  blood  jumped  out  of 
David  Hogganbeck's  mouth. 

But  by  the  second  day  David  Hogganbeck  had  quit 
vomiting  blood,  though  Ikkemotubbe  had  run  hardly  forty 
miles  back  toward  the  Plantation  when  my  father  met  him 
with  the  horse  for  David  Hogganbeck  to  ride.  Presently  my 
father  said,  "I  have  a  news  for  thee." 

"So  you  found  the  pony,"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "All  right. 
Come  on.  Let's  get  that  damned  stupid  fool  of  a  white 
man — " 

"No,  wait,  my  brother,"  my  father  said.  "I  have  a  news 
for  thee." 

And  presently  Ikkemotubbe  said,  "All  right." 

But  when  Captain  Studenmare  borrowed  Issetibbeha's 
wagon  to  go  back  to  Natchez  in,  he  took  the  steamboat 
slaves  too.  So  my  father  and  the  young  men  built  a  fire  in 
the  steamboat's  stomach  to  make  steam  for  it  to  walk,  while 
David  Hogganbeck  sat  in  the  upstairs  and  drew  the  crying- 
rope  from  time  to  time  to  see  if  the  steam  was  strong  enough 
yet,  and  at  each  cry  still  more  of  the  People  came  to  the 
landing  until  at  last  all  the  People  in  the  Plantation  except 
old  Issetibbeha  perhaps  stood  along  the  bank  to  watch  the 
young  men  hurl  wood  into  the  steamboat's  stomach: — a 
thing  never  before  seen  in  our  Plantation  at  least.  Then  the 
steam  was  strong  and  the  steamboat  began  to  walk  and  then 
the  People  began  to  walk  too  beside  the  steamboat,  watch- 
ing the  young  men  for  a  while  then  Ikkemotubbe  and  David 
Hogganbeck  for  a  while  as  the  steamboat  walked  out  of  the 
Plantation  where  hardly  seven  suns  ago  Ikkemotubbe  and 


A  Courtship  379 

David  Hogganbeck  would  sit  all  day  long  and  half  the  night 
too  until  Herman  Basket's  aunt  would  come  out  with  Her- 
man Basket's  dead  uncle's  gun,  on  the  gallery  of  Herman 
Basket's  house  while  Log-in-the-Creek  lay  on  the  floor  with 
his  harmonica  cupped  to  his  mouth  and  Log-in-the-Creek's 
wife  shelled  corn  or  peas  into  old  Dave  Colbert's  wife's 
grand-niece's  second  cousin  by  marriage's  wine  pitcher. 
Presently  Ikkemotubbe  was  gone  completely  away,  to  be 
gone  a  long  time  before  he  came  back  named  Doom,  with 
his  new  white  friend  whom  no  man  wished  to  love  either 
and  the  eight  more  slaves  which  we  had  no  use  for  either 
because  at  times  someone  would  have  to  get  up  and  walk 
somewhere  to  find  something  for  the  ones  we  already  owned 
to  do,  and  the  fine  gold- trimmed  clothes  and  the  little  gold 
box  of  salt  which  caused  the  other  four  puppies  to  become 
dead  too  one  after  another,  and  then  anything  else  which 
happened  to  stand  between  Doom  and  what  he  wanted.  But 
he  was  not  quite  gone  yet.  He  was  just  Ikkemotubbe  yet, 
one  of  the  young  men,  another  of  the  young  men  who  loved 
and  was  not  loved  in  return  and  could  hear  the  words  and 
see  the  fact,  yet  who,  like  the  young  men  who  had  been 
before  him  and  the  ones  who  would  come  after  him,  still 
could  not  understand  it. 

"But  not  for  her!"  Ikkemotubbe  said.  "And  not  even 
because  it  was  Log-in-the-Creek.  Perhaps  they  are  for  my- 
self: that  such  a  son  as  Log-in-the-Creek  could  cause  them 
to  wish  to  flow." 

"Don't  think  about  her,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 

"I  don't.  I  have  already  stopped.  See?"  Ikkemotubbe  said 
while  the  sunset  ran  down  his  face  as  if  it  had  already  been 
rain  instead  of  light  when  it  entered  the  window.  "There 
was  a  wise  man  of  ours  who  said  once  how  a  woman's  fancy 
is  like  a  butterfly  which,  hovering  from  flower  to  flower, 
pauses  at  the  last  as  like  as  not  where  a  horse  has  stood." 

"There  was  a  wise  man  of  ours  named  Solomon  who  often 


380  The  Wilderness 

said  something  of  that  nature  too,"  David  Hogganbeck  said. 
"Perhaps  there  is  just  one  wisdom  for  all  men,  no  matter 
who  speaks  it." 

"Aihee.  At  least,  for  all  men  one  same  heart-break.^ 
Ikkemotubbe  said.  Then  he  drew  the  crying-rope,  because 
the  boat  was  now  passing  the  house  where  Log-in-the-Creek 
and  his  wife  lived,  and  now  the  steamboat  sounded  like  it 
did  the  first  night  while  Captain  Studenmare  still  thought 
David  Hogganbeck  would  come  and  show  it  the  way  back 
to  Natchez,  until  David  Hogganbeck  made  Ikkemotubbe 
stop.  Because  they  would  need  the  steam  because  the  steam- 
boat did  not  always  walk.  Sometimes  it  crawled,  and  each 
time  its  feet  came  up  there  was  mud  on  them,  and  sometimes 
it  did  not  even  crawl  until  David  Hogganbeck  drew  the 
crying-rope  as  the  rider  speaks  to  the  recalcitrant  horse  to 
remind  it  with  his  voice  just  who  is  up.  Then  it  crawled 
again  and  then  it  walked  again,  until  at  last  the  People  could 
no  longer  keep  up,  and  it  cried  once  more  beyond  the  last 
bend  and  then  there  was  no  longer  either  the  black  shapes 
of  the  young  men  leaping  to  hurl  wood  into  its  red  stomach 
or  even  the  sound  of  its  voice  in  the  Plantation  or  the  night. 
That's  how  it  was  in  the  old  days. 


Lof 


THE  PRESIDENT  STOOD  motionless  at  the  door  of  the  Dressing 
Room,  fully  dressed  save  for  his  boots.  It  was  half-past  six  in 
the  morning  and  it  was  snowing;  already  he  had  stood  for  an 
hour  at  the  window,  watching  the  snow.  Now  he  stood  just 
inside  the  door  to  the  corridor,  utterly  motionless  in  his 
stockings,  stooped  a  little  from  his  lean  height  as  though  lis- 
tening, on  his  face  an  expression  of  humorless  concern,  since 
humor  had  departed  from  his  situation  and  his  view  of  it 
almost  three  weeks  before.  Hanging  from  his  hand,  low 
against  his  flank,  was  a  hand  mirror  of  elegant  French  design, 
such  as  should  have  been  lying  upon  a  lady's  dressing  table: 
certainly  at  this  hour  of  a  February  day. 

At  last  he  put  his  hand  on  the  knob  and  opened  the  door 
infinitesimally;  beneath  his  hand  the  door  crept  by  inches  and 
without  any  sound;  still  with  that  infinitesimal  silence  he  put 
his  eye  to  the  crack  and  saw,  lying  upon  the  deep,  rich  pile 
of  the  corridor  carpet,  a  bone.  It  was  a  cooked  bone,  a  rib; 
to  it  still  adhered  close  shreds  of  flesh  holding  in  mute  and 
overlapping  halfmoons  the  marks  of  human  teeth.  Now  that 
the  door  was  open  he  could  hear  the  voices  too.  Still  without 
any  sound,  with  that  infinite  care,  he  raised  and  advanced  the 
mirror.  For  an  instant  he  caught  his  own  reflection  in  it  and 
he  paused  for  a  time  and  with  a  kind  of  cold  unbelief  he 
examined  his  own  face — the  face  of  the  shrewd  and  coura- 


382  The  Wilderness 

geous  fighter,  of  that  wellnigh  infallible  expert  in  the  antici- 
pation of  and  controlling  of  man  and  his  doings,  overlaid 
now  with  the  baffled  helplessness  of  a  child.  Then  he  slanted 
the  glass  a  little  further  until  he  could  see  the  corridor  re- 
flected in  it.  Squatting  and  facing  one  another  across  the 
carpet  as  across  a  stream  of  water  were  two  men.  He  did  not 
know  the  faces,  though  he  knew  the  Face,  since  he  had 
looked  upon  it  by  day  and  dreamed  upon  it  by  night  for 
three  weeks  now.  It  was  a  squat  face,  dark,  a  little  flat,  a  little 
Mongol;  secret,  decorous,  impenetrable,  and  grave.  He  had 
seen  it  repeated  until  he  had  given  up  trying  to  count  it  or 
even  estimate  it;  even  now,  though  he  could  see  the  two  men 
squatting  before  him  and  could  hear  the  two  quiet  voices,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  in  some  idiotic  moment  out  of  attenuated 
sleeplessness  and  strain  he  looked  upon  a  single  man  facing 
himself  in  a  mirror. 

They  wore  beaver  hats  and  new  frock  coats;  save  for  the 
minor  detail  of  collars  and  waistcoats  they  were  impeccably 
dressed — though  a  little  early — for  the  forenoon  of  the  time, 
down  to  the  waist.  But  from  here  down  credulity,  all  sense 
of  fitness  and  decorum,  was  outraged.  At  a  glance  one  would 
have  said  that  they  had  come  intact  out  of  Pickwickian  Eng- 
land, save  that  the  tight,  light-colored  smallclothes  ended  not 
in  Hessian  boots  nor  in  any  boots  at  all,  but  in  dark,  naked 
feet.  On  the  floor  beside  each  one  lay  a  neatly  rolled  bundle 
of  dark  cloth;  beside  each  bundle  in  turn,  mute  toe  and  toe 
and  heel  and  heel,  as  though  occupied  by  invisible  sentries 
facing  one  another  across  the  corridor,  sat  two  pairs  of  new 
boots.  From  a  basket  woven  of  whiteoak  withes  beside  one 
of  the  squatting  men  there  shot  suddenly  the  snake-like  head 
and  neck  of  a  game  cock,  which  glared  at  the  faint  flash  of 
the  mirror  with  a  round,  yellow,  outraged  eye.  It  was  from 
these  that  the  voices  came,  pleasant,  decorous,  quiet: 

"That  rooster  hasn't  done  you  much  good  up  here." 


Lo!  383 

"That's  true.  Still,  who  knows?  Besides,  I  certainly  couldn't 
have  left  him  at  home,  with  those  damned  lazy  Indians.  I 
wouldn't  find  a  feather  left.  You  know  that.  But  it  is  a  nui- 
sance, having  to  lug  this  cage  around  with  me  day  and  night." 

"This  whole  business  is  a  nuisance,  if  you  ask  me." 

"You  said  it.  Squatting  here  outside  this  door  all  night  long, 
without  a  gun  or  anything.  Suppose  bad  men  tried  to  get  in 
during  the  night:  what  could  we  do?  If  anyone  would  want 
to  get  in.  I  don't." 

"Nobody  does.  It's  for  honor." 

"Whose  honor?  Yours?  Mine?  Frank  Weddel's?" 

"White  man's  honor.  You  don't  understand  white  people. 
They  are  like  children:  you  have  to  handle  them  careful  be- 
cause you  never  know  what  they  are  going  to  do  next.  So 
if  it's  the  rule  for  guests  to  squat  all  night  long  in  the  cold 
outside  this  man's  door,  we'll  just  have  to  do  it.  Besides, 
hadn't  you  rather  be  in  here  than  out  yonder  in  the  snow  in 
one  of  those  damn  tents?" 

"You  said  it.  What  a  climate.  What  a  country.  I  wouldn't 
have  this  town  if  they  gave  it  to  me." 

"Of  course  you  wouldn't.  But  that's  white  men:  no  ac- 
counting for  taste.  So  as  long  as  we  are  here,  we'll  have  to  try 
to  act  like  these  people  believe  that  Indians  ought  to  act.  Be- 
cause you  never  know  until  afterward  just  what  you  have 
done  to  insult  or  scare  them.  Like  this  having  to  talk  white 
talk  all  the  time.  .  .  ." 

The  President  withdrew  the  mirror  and  closed  the  door 
quietly.  Once  more  he  stood  silent  and  motionless  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  room,  his  head  bent,  musing,  baffled  yet  indom- 
itable: indomitable  since  this  was  not  the  first  time  that  he 
had  faced  odds;  baffled  since  he  faced  not  an  enemy  in  the 
open  field,  but  was  besieged  within  his  very  high  and  lonely 
office  by  them  to  whom  he  was,  by  legal  if  not  divine  appoint- 
ment, father.  In  the  iron  silence  of  the  winter  dawn  he 


384  The  Wilderness 

seemed,  clairvoyant  of  walls,  to  be  ubiquitous  and  one  with 
the  waking  of  the  stately  House.  Invisible  and  in  a  kind  of 
musing  horror  he  seemed  to  be  of  each  group  of  his  Southern 
guests — that  one  squatting  without  the  door,  that  larger  one 
like  so  many  figures  carved  of  stone  in  the  very  rotunda  it- 
self of  this  concrete  and  visible  apotheosis  of  the  youthful 
Nation's  pride — in  their  new  beavers  and  frock  coats  and 
woolen  drawers.  With  their  neatly  rolled  pantaloons  under 
their  arms  and  their  virgin  shoes  in  the  other  hand;  dark, 
timeless,  decorous  and  serene  beneath  the  astonished  faces  and 
golden  braid,  the  swords  and  ribbons  and  stars,  of  European 
diplomats. 

The  President  said  quietly,  "Damn.  Damn.  Damn."  He 
moved  and  crossed  the  room,  pausing  to  take  up  his  boots 
from  where  they  sat  beside  a  chair,  and  approached  the  op- 
posite door.  Again  he  paused  and  opened  this  door  too 
quietly  and  carefully,  out  of  the  three  weeks'  habit  of  expect- 
ant fatalism,  though  there  was  only  his  wife  beyond  it, 
sleeping  peacefully  in  bed.  He  crossed  this  room  in  turn,  car- 
rying his  boots,  pausing  to  replace  the  hand  glass  on  the 
dressing  table,  among  its  companion  pieces  of  the  set  which 
the  new  French  Republic  had  presented  to  a  predecessor, 
and  tiptoed  on  and  into  the  anteroom,  where  a  man  in  a  long 
cloak  looked  up  and  then  rose,  also  in  his  stockings.  They 
looked  at  one  another  soberly.  "All  clear?"  the  President  said 
in  a  low  tone. 

"Yes,  General." 

"Good.  Did  you  .  .  ."  The  other  produced  a  second  long, 
plain  cloak.  "Good,  good,"  the  President  said.  He  swung  the 
cloak  about  him  before  the  other  could  move.  "Now  the  . . ." 
This  time  the  other  anticipated  him;  the  President  drew  the 
hat  well  down  over  his  face.  They  left  the  room  on  tiptoe, 
carrying  their  boots  in  their  hands. 

The  back  stairway  was  cold:  their  stockinged  toes  curled 


Lo!  385 

away  from  the  treads,  their  vaporized  breath  wisped  about 
their  heads.  They  descended  quietly  and  sat  on  the  bottom 
step  and  put  on  their  boots. 

Outside  it  still  snowed;  invisible  against  snow-colored  sky 
and  snow-colored  earth,  the  flakes  seemed  to  materialize  with 
violent  and  silent  abruptness  against  the  dark  orifice  of  the 
stables.  Each  bush  and  shrub  resembled  a  white  balloon 
whose  dark  shroud  lines  descended,  light  and  immobile,  to 
the  white  earth.  Interspersed  among  these  in  turn  and  with  a 
certain  regularity  were  a  dozen  vaguely  tent-shaped  mounds, 
from  the  ridge  of  each  of  which  a  small  column  of  smoke 
rose  into  the  windless  snow,  as  if  the  snow  itself  were  in  a 
state  of  peaceful  combustion.  The  President  looked  at  these, 
once,  grimly.  "Get  along,"  he  said.  The  other,  his  head  low- 
ered and  his  cloak  held  closely  about  his  face,  scuttled  on 
and  ducked  into  the  stable.  Perish  the  day  when  these  two 
words  were  applied  to  the  soldier  chief  of  a  party  and  a  na- 
tion, yet  the  President  was  so  close  behind  him  that  their 
breaths  made  one  cloud.  And  perish  the  day  when  the  word 
flight  were  so  applied,  yet  they  had  hardly  vanished  into  the 
stable  when  they  emerged,  mounted  now  and  already  at  a 
canter,  and  so  across  the  lawn  and  past  the  snow-hidden  tents 
and  toward  the  gates  which  gave  upon  that  Avenue  in  em- 
bryo yet  but  which  in  time  would  be  the  stage  upon  which 
each  four  years  would  parade  the  proud  panoply  of  the 
young  Nation's  lusty  man's  estate  for  the  admiration  and 
envy  and  astonishment  of  the  weary  world.  At  the  moment, 
though,  the  gates  were  occupied  by  those  more  immediate 
than  splendid  augurs  of  the  future. 

"Look  out,"  the  other  man  said,  reining  back.  They  reined 
aside — the  President  drew  the  cloak  about  his  face — and  al- 
lowed the  party  to  enter:  the  squat,  broad,  dark  men  dark 
against  the  snow,  the  beaver  hats,  the  formal  coats,  the  solid 
legs  clad  from  thigh  to  ankle  in  woolen  drawers.  Among 


386  The  Wilderness 

them  moved  three  horses  on  whose  backs  were  lashed  the 
carcasses  of  six  deer.  They  passed  on,  passing  the  two  horse- 
men without  a  glance. 

"Damn,  damn,  damn,"  the  President  said;  then  aloud: 
"You  found  good  hunting." 

One  of  the  group  glanced  at  him,  briefly.  He  said  cour- 
teously, pleasantly,  without  inflection,  going  on:  "So  so." 

The  horses  moved  again.  "I  didn't  see  any  guns,"  the  other 
man  said. 

"Yes,"  the  President  said  grimly.  "I  must  look  into  this, 
too.  I  gave  strict  orders.  .  .  ."  He  said  fretfully,  "Damn. 
Damn.  Do  they  carry  their  pantaloons  when  they  go  hunting 
too,  do  you  know?" 

The  Secretary  was  at  breakfast,  though  he  was  not  eating. 
Surrounded  by  untasted  dishes  he  sat,  in  his  dressing  gown 
and  unshaven;  his  expression  too  was  harried  as  he  perused 
the  paper  which  lay  upon  his  empty  plate.  Before  the  fire 
were  two  men — one  a  horseman  with  unmelted  snow  still 
upon  his  cloak,  seated  on  a  wooden  settle,  the  other  standing, 
obviously  the  secretary  to  the  Secretary.  The  horseman  rose 
as  the  President  and  his  companion  entered.  "Sit  down,  sit 
down,"  the  President  said.  He  approached  the  table,  slipping 
off  the  cloak,  which  the  secretary  came  forward  and  took. 
"Give  us  some  breakfast,"  the  President  said.  "We  don't  dare 
go  home."  He  sat  down;  the  Secretary  served  him  in  person. 
"What  is  it  now?"  the  President  said. 

"Do  you  ask?"  the  Secretary  said.  He  took  up  the  paper 
again  and  glared  at  it.  "From  Pennsylvania,  this  time."  He 
struck  the  paper.  "Maryland,  New  York,  and  now  Pennsyl- 
vania; apparently  the  only  thing  that  can  stop  them  is  the 
temperature  of  the  water  in  the  Potomac  River."  He  spoke 
in  a  harsh,  irascible  voice.  "Complaint,  complaint,  complaint: 
here  is  a  farmer  near  Gettysburg.  His  Negro  slave  was  in  the 


Lo!  387 

barn,  milking  by  lantern  light  after  dark,  when — the  Negro 
doubtless  thought  about  two  hundred,  since  the  farmer  esti- 
mated them  at  ten  or  twelve — springing  suddenly  out  of  the 
darkness  in  plug  hats  and  carrying  knives  and  naked  from  the 
waist  down.  Result,  item:  One  barn  and  loft  of  hay  and  cow 
destroyed  when  the  lantern  was  kicked  over;  item:  one  able- 
bodied  slave  last  seen  departing  from  the  scene  at  a  high  rate 
of  speed,  headed  for  the  forest,  and  doubtless  now  dead  of 
fear  or  by  the  agency  of  wild  beasts.  Debit  the  Government 
of  the  United  States:  for  barn  and  hay,  one  hundred  dollars; 
for  cow,  fifteen  dollars;  for  Negro  slave,  two  hundred  dollars. 
He  demands  it  in  gold." 

"Is  that  so?"  the  President  said,  eating  swiftly.  "I  suppose 
the  Negro  and  the  cow  took  them  to  be  ghosts  of  Hessian 
.soldiers." 

"I  wonder  if  they  thought  the  cow  was  a  deer,"  the  horse- 
man said. 

"Yes,"  the  President  said.  "That's  something  else  I 
want.  .  . ." 

"Who  wouldn't  take  them  for  anything  on  earth  or  under 
it?"  the  Secretary  said.  "The  entire  Atlantic  seaboard  north 
of  the  Potomac  River  overrun  by  creatures  in  beaver  hats 
and  frock  coats  and  woolen  drawers,  frightening  women  and 
children,  setting  fire  to  barns  and  running  off  slaves,  killing 
deer.  .  .  ." 

"Yes,"  the  President  said.  "I  want  to  say  a  word  about  that, 
myself.  I  met  a  party  of  them  returning  as  I  came  out.  They 
had  six  deer.  I  thought  I  gave  strict  orders  that  they  were  not 
tD  be  permitted  guns." 

Again  it  was  the  horseman  who  spoke.  "They  don't  use 
guns." 

"What?"  the  President  said.  "But  I  saw  myself  .  .  ." 

"No,  sir.  They  use  knives.  They  track  the  deer  down  and 
slip  up  on  them  and  cut  their  throats." 


388  The  Wilderness 

"What?"  the  President  said. 

"All  right,  sir.  I  seen  one  of  the  deer.  It  never  had  a  mark 
on  it  except  its  throat  cut  up  to  the  neckbone  with  one  lick." 

Again  the  President  said,  "Damn.  Damn.  Damn."  Then  the 
President  ceased  and  the  Soldier  cursed  steadily  for  a  while. 
The  others  listened,  gravely,  their  faces  carefully  averted, 
save  the  Secretary,  who  had  taken  up  another  paper.  "If  you 
could  just  persuade  them  to  keep  their  pantaloons  on,"  the 
President  said.  "At  least  about  the  House. . .  ." 

The  Secretary  started  back,  his  hair  upcrested  like  an  out- 
raged, iron-gray  cockatoo.  "I,  sir?  /  persuade  them?" 

"Why  not?  Aren't  they  subject  to  your  Department?  I'm 
just  the  President.  Confound  it,  it's  got  to  where  my  wife  no 
longer  dares  leave  her  bedroom,  let  alone  receive  lady  guests. 
How  am  I  to  explain  to  the  French  Ambassador,  for  instance, 
why  his  wife  no  longer  dares  call  upon  my  wife  because  the 
corridors  and  the  very  entrance  to  the  House  are  blocked  by 
half-naked  Chickasaw  Indians  asleep  on  the  floor  or  gnawing 
at  half-raw  ribs  of  meat?  And  I,  myself,  having  to  hide  away 
from  my  own  table  and  beg  breakfast,  while  the  official  rep- 
resentative of  the  Government  has  nothing  to  do  but  .  .  ." 

". . .  but  explain  again  each  morning  to  the  Treasury,"  the 
Secretary  said  in  shrill  rage,  "why  another  Dutch  farmer  in 
Pennsylvania  or  New  York  must  have  three  hundred  dollars 
in  gold  in  payment  for  the  destruction  of  his  farm  and  live- 
stock, and  explain  to  the  State  Department  that  the  capital  is 
not  being  besieged  by  demons  from  hell  itself,  and  explain  to 
the  War  Department  why  twelve  brand-new  army  tents 
must  be  ventilated  at  the  top  with  butcher  knives.  .  . ." 

"I  noticed  that,  too,"  the  President  said  mildly.  "I  had  for- 
got it." 

"Ha.  Your  Excellency  noted  it,"  the  Secretary  said 
fiercely.  "Your  Excellency  saw  it  and  then  forgot  it.  I  have 
neither  seen  it  nor  been  permitted  to  forget  it.  And  now 


Lo!  389 

Your  Excellency  wonders  why  /  do  not  persuade  them  to 
wear  their  pantaloons." 

"It  does  seem  like  they  would,"  the  President  said  fretfully. 
"The  other  garments  seem  to  please  them  well  enough.  But 
there's  no  accounting  for  taste."  He  ate  again.  The  Secretary 
looked  at  him,  about  to  speak.  Then  he  did  not.  As  he 
watched  the  oblivious  President  a  curious,  secret  expression 
came  into  his  face;  his  gray  and  irate  crest  settled  slowly,  as 
if  it  were  deflating  itself.  When  he  spoke  now  his  tone  was 
bland,  smooth;  now  the  other  three  men  were  watching  the 
President  with  curious,  covert  expressions. 

"Yes,"  the  Secretary  said,  "there's  no  accounting  for  taste. 
Though  it  does  seem  that  when  one  has  been  presented  with 
a  costume  as  a  mark  of  both  honor  and  esteem,  let  alone 
decorum,  and  by  the  chief  of  a  well,  tribe  .  .  ." 

"That's  what  I  thought,"  the  President  said  innocently. 
Then  he  ceased  chewing  and  said  "Eh?"  sharply,  looking  up. 
The  three  lesser  men  looked  quickly  away,  but  the  Secretary 
continued  to  watch  the  President  with  that  bland,  secret  ex- 
pression. "What  the  devil  do  you  mean?"  the  President  said. 
He  knew  what  the  Secretary  meant,  just  as  the  other  three 
knew.  A  day  or  two  after  his  guest  had  arrived  without 
warning,  and  after  the  original  shock  had  somewhat  abated, 
the  President  had  decreed  the  new  clothing  for  them.  He 
commanded,  out  of  his  own  pocket,  merchants  and  hatters  as 
he  would  have  commanded  gunsmiths  and  bulletmakers  in 
war  emergency;  incidentally  he  was  thus  able  to  estimate  the 
number  of  them,  the  men  at  least,  and  within  forty-eight 
hours  he  had  transformed  his  guest's  grave  and  motley  train 
into  the  outward  aspect  of  decorum  at  least.  Then,  two  morn- 
ings after  that,  the  guest — the  half  Chickasaw,  half  French- 
man, the  squat,  obese  man  with  the  face  of  a  Gascon  brigand 
and  the  mannerisms  of  a  spoiled  eunuch  and  dingy  lace  at 
throat  and  wrist,  who  for  three  weeks  now  had  doerged  his 


390  The  Wilderness 

waking  hours  and  his  sleeping  dreams  with  bland  inescapa- 
bility — called  formally  upon  him  while  he  and  his  wife  were 
still  in  bed  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  with  two  of  his 
retainers  carrying  a  bundle  and  what  seemed  to  the  President 
at  least  a  hundred  others,  men,  women  and  children,  throng- 
ing quietly  into  the  bedroom,  apparently  to  watch  him  array 
himself  in  it.  For  it  was  a  costume — even  in  the  shocked 
horror  of  the  moment,  the  President  found  time  to  wonder 
wildly  where  in  the  capital  Weddel  (or  Vidal)  had  found  it 
— a  mass,  a  network,  of  gold  braid — frogs,  epaulets,  sash  and 
sword — held  loosely  together  by  bright  green  cloth  and  pre- 
sented to  him  in  return.  This  is  what  the  Secretary  meant, 
while  the  President  glared  at  him  and  while  behind  them  both 
the  three  other  men  stood  looking  at  the  fire  with  immobile 
gravity.  "Have  your  joke,"  the  President  said.  "Have  it 
quickly.  Are  you  done  laughing  now?" 

"I  laugh?"  the  Secretary  said.  "At  what?" 

"Good,"  the  President  said.  He  thrust  the  dishes  from  him. 
"Then  we  can  get  down  to  business.  Have  you  any  docu- 
ments you  will  need  to  refer  to?" 

The  Secretary's  secretary  approached.  "Shall  I  get  the 
other  papers,  sir?" 

"Papers?"  the  Secretary  said;  once  more  his  crest  began  to 
rise.  "What  the  devil  do  I  need  with  papers?  What  else  have 
I  thought  about  night  and  day  for  three  weeks?" 

"Good;  good,"  the  President  said.  "Suppose  you  review 
the  matter  briefly,  in  case  I  have  forgot  anything  else." 

"Your  Excellency  is  indeed  a  fortunate  man,  if  you  have 
been  able  to  forget,"  the  Secretary  said.  From  the  pocket  of 
his  dressing  gown  he  took  a  pair  of  steel-bowed  spectacles. 
But  he  used  them  merely  to  glare  again  at  the  President  in 
cockatoo-crested  outrage.  "This  man,  Weddel,  Vidal — whats 
ever  his  name  is — he  and  his  family  or  clan  or  whatever  they 
are — claim  to  own  the  entire  part  of  Mississippi  which  lies 


Lo!  391 

on  the  west  side  of  this  river  in  question.  Oh,  the  grant  is  in 
order:  that  French  father  of  his  from  New  Orleans  saw  to 
that. — Well,  it  so  happens  that  facing  his  home  or  plantation 
is  the  only  ford  in  about  three  hundred  miles." 

"I  know  all  this,"  the  President  said  impatiently.  "Nat- 
urally I  regret  now  that  there  was  any  way  of  crossing  the 
river  at  all.  But  otherwise  I  don't  see  .  .  ." 

"Neither  did  they,"  the  Secretary  said.  "Until  the  white 
man  came." 

"Ah,"  the  President  said.  "The  man  who  was  mur  . . ." 

The  Secretary  raised  his  hand.  "Wait.  He  stayed  about  a 
month  with  them,  ostensibly  hunting,  since  he  would  be  ab- 
sent all  day  long,  though  obviously  what  he  was  doing  was 
assuring  himself  that  there  was  no  other  ford  close  by.  He 
never  brought  any  game  in;  I  imagine  they  laughed  at  that  a 
good  deal,  in  their  pleasant  way." 

"Yes,"  the  President  said.  "Weddel  must  have  found  that 
very  amusing." 

".  .  .  or  Vidal — whatever  his  name  is,"  the  Secretary  said 
fretfully.  "He  don't  even  seem  to  know  or  even  to  care  what 
his  own  name  is." 

"Get  on,"  the  President  said.  "About  the  ford." 

"Yes.  Then  one  day,  after  a  month,  the  white  man  offered 
to  buy  some  of  Weddel's  land — Weddel,  Vidal — Damn, 
da  .  .  ." 

"Call  him  Weddel,"  the  President  said. 

". . .  from  Weddel.  Not  much;  a  piece  about  the  size  of  this 

room,  for  which  Weddel  or  V charged  him  about  ten 

prices.  Not  out  of  any  desire  for  usufruct,  you  understand; 
doubtless  Weddel  would  have  given  the  man  the  land  or 
anyway  wagered  it  on  a  game  of  mumble  peg,  it  not  having 
yet  occurred  to  any  of  them  apparently  that  the  small  plot 
which  the  man  wanted  contained  the  only  available  entrance 
to  or  exit  from  the  ford.  Doubtless  the  trading  protracted  it- 


392  The  Wilderness 

self  over  several  days  or  perhaps  weeks,  as  a  kind  of  game  to 
while  away  otherwise  idle  afternoons  or  evenings,  with  the 
bystanders  laughing  heartily  and  pleasantly  at  the  happy 
scene.  They  must  have  laughed  a  great  deal,  especially  when 
the  man  paid  Weddel's  price;  they  must  have  laughed  hugely 
indeed  later  when  they  watched  the  white  man  out  in  the 
sun,  building  a  fence  around  his  property,  it  doubtless  not 
even  then  occurring  to  them  that  what  the  white  man  had 
done  was  to  fence  off  the  only  entrance  to  the  ford." 

"Yes,"  the  President  said  impatiently.  "But  I  still  don't 
see  . . ." 

Again  the  Secretary  lifted  his  hand,  pontifical,  admonitory. 
"Neither  did  they;  not  until  the  first  traveler  came  along  and 
crossed  at  the  ford.  The  white  man  had  built  himself  a  toll- 
gate." 

"Oh,"  the  President  said. 

"Yes.  And  now  it  must  have  been,  indeed,  amusing  for 
them  to  watch  the  white  man  sitting  now  in  the  shade — he 
had  a  deerskin  pouch  fastened  to  a  post  for  the  travelers  to 
drop  their  coins  in,  and  the  gate  itself  arranged  so  he  could 
operate  it  by  a  rope  from  the  veranda  of  his  one-room  domi- 
cile without  having  to  even  leave  his  seat;  and  to  begin  to 
acquire  property — among  which  was  the  horse." 

"Ah,"  the  President  said.  "Now  we  are  getting  at  it." 

"Yes.  They  got  at  it  swiftly  from  then  on.  It  seems  that 
the  match  was  between  the  white  man's  horse  and  this  neph- 
ew's horse,  the  wager  the  ford  and  tollgate  against  a  thousand 
or  so  acres  of  land.  The  nephew's  horse  lost.  And  that 
night .  .  ." 

"Ah,"  the  President  said.  "I  see.  And  that  night  the  white 
man  was  mur  .  .  ." 

"Let  us  say,  died,"  the  Secretary  said  primly,  "since  it  is  so 
phrased  in  the  agent's  report.  Though  he  did  add  in  a  private 


Lo!  393 

communication  that  the  white  man's  disease  seemed  to  be  a 
split  skull.  But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there." 

"No,"  the  President  said.  "It's  up  yonder  at  the  House." 
Where  they  had  been  for  three  weeks  now,  men,  women, 
children  and  Negro  slaves,  coming  for  fifteen  hundred  miles 
in  slow  wagons  since  that  day  in  late  autumn  when  the 
Chickasaw  agent  had  appeared  to  inquire  into  the  white  man's 
death.  For  fifteen  hundred  miles,  across  winter  swamps  and 
rivers,  across  the  trackless  eastern  backbone  of  the  continent, 
led  by  the  bland,  obese  mongrel  despot  and  patriarch  in  a 
carriage,  dozing,  his  nephew  beside  him  and  one  fat,  ringed 
hand  beneath  its  fall  of  soiled  lace  lying  upon  the  nephew's 
knee  to  hold  him  in  charge.  "Why  didn't  the  agent  stop 
him?"  the  President  said. 

"Stop  him?"  the  Secretary  cried.  "He  finally  compromised 
to  the  extent  of  offering  to  allow  the  nephew  to  be  tried  on 
the  spot,  by  the  Indians  themselves,  he  reserving  only  the  in- 
tention of  abolishing  the  tollgate,  since  no  one  knew  the 
white  man  anyway.  But  no.  The  nephew  must  come  to  you, 
to  be  absolved  or  convicted  in  person." 

"But  couldn't  the  agent  stop  the  rest  of  them?  Keep  the 
rest  of  them  from  .  .  ." 

"Stop  them?"  the  Secretary  cried  again.  "Listen.  He 
moved  in  there  and  lived — Weddel,  Vi — Damn!  damn!! 
Where  was — Yes.  Weddel  told  him  that  the  house  was  his; 
soon  it  was.  Because  how  could  he  tell  there  were  fewer  faces 
present  each  morning  than  the  night  before?  Could  you  have? 
Could  you  now?" 

"I  wouldn't  try,"  the  President  said.  "I  would  just  declare 
a  national  thanksgiving.  So  they  slipped  away  at  night." 

"Yes.  Weddel  and  the  carriage  and  a  few  forage  wagons 
went  first;  they  had  been  gone  about  a  month  before  the 
agent  realized  that  each  morning  the  number  which  remained 
had  diminished  somewhat.  They  would  load  the  wagons  and 


394  The  Wilderness 

go  at  night,  by  families — grandparents,  parents,  children; 
slaves,  chattels  and  dogs — everything.  And  why  not?  Why 
should  they  deny  themselves  this  holiday  at  the  expense  of 
the  Government?  Why  should  they  miss,  at  the  mere  price 
of  a  fifteen-hundred-mile  journey  through  unknown  coun- 
try in  the  dead  of  winter,  the  privilege  and  pleasure  of  spend- 
ing a  few  weeks  or  months  in  new  beavers  and  broadcloth 
coats  and  underdrawers,  in  the  home  of  the  beneficent  White 
Fafher?" 

"Yes,"  the  President  said.  He  said:  "And  you  have  told  him 
that  there  is  no  charge  here  against  this  nephew? " 

"Yes.  And  that  if  they  will  go  back  home,  the  agent  him- 
self will  declare  the  nephew  innocent  publicly,  in  whatever 
ceremony  they  think  fit.  And  he  said — how  was  it  he  put  it?" 
The  Secretary  now  spoke  in  a  pleasant,  almost  lilting  tone,  in 
almost  exact  imitation  of  the  man  whom  he  repeated:  'All 
we  desire  is  justice.  If  this  foolish  boy  has  murdered  a  white 
man,  I  think  that  we  should  know  it." 

"Damn,  damn,  damn,"  the  President  said.  "All  right.  We'll 
hold  the  investigation.  Get  them  down  here  and  let's  have  it 
over  with." 

"Here?"  The  Secretary  started  back.  "In  my  house?" 

"Why  not?  I've  had  them  for  three  weeks;  at  least  you  can 
have  them  for  an  hour."  He  turned  to  the  companion. 
"Hurry.  Tell  them  we  are  waiting  here  to  hold  his  nephew's 
trial." 

And  now  the  President  and  the  Secretary  sat  behind  the 
cleared  table  and  looked  at  the  man  who  stood  as  though 
framed  by  the  opened  doors  through  which  he  had  entered, 
holding  his  nephew  by  the  hand  like  an  uncle  conducting  for 
the  first  time  a  youthful  provincial  kinsman  into  a  metro- 
politan museum  of  wax  figures.  Immobile,  they  contem- 
plated the  soft,  paunchy  man  facing  them  with  his  soft,  bland, 


Lo!  395 

inscrutable  face — the  long,  monk-like  nose,  the  slumbrous 
lids,  the  flabby,  cafe-au-lait-colored  jowls  above  a  froth  of 
soiled  lace  of  an  elegance  fifty  years  outmoded  and  vanished; 
the  mouth  was  full,  small,  and  very  red.  Yet  somewhere  be- 
hind the  face's  expression  of  flaccid  and  weary  disillusion,  as 
behind  the  bland  voice  and  the  almost  feminine  mannerisms, 
there  lurked  something  else:  something  willful,  shrewd,  un- 
predictable and  despotic.  Behind  him  clotted,  quiet  and 
gravely  decorous,  his  dark  retinue  in  beavers  and  broadcloth 
and  woolen  drawers,  each  with  his  neatly  rolled  pantaloons 
beneath  his  arm. 

For  a  moment  longer  he  stood,  looking  from  face  to  face 
until  he  found  the  President.  He  said,  in  a  voice  of  soft  re- 
proach: "This  is  not  your  house/' 

"No,"  the  President  said.  "This  is  the  house  of  this  chief 
whom  I  have  appointed  myself  to  be  the  holder  of  justice 
between  me  and  my  Indian  people.  He  will  deal  justice  to 
you." 

The  uncle  bowed  slightly.  "That  is  all  that  we  desire." 

"Good,"  the  President  said.  On  the  table  before  him  sat 
inkstand,  quill,  and  sandbox,  and  many  papers  with  ribbons 
and  golden  seals  much  in  evidence,  though  none  could  have 
said  if  the  heavy  gaze  had  remarked  them  or  not.  The  Presi- 
dent looked  at  the  nephew.  Young,  lean,  the  nephew  stood, 
his  right  wrist  clasped  by  his  uncle's  fat,  lace-foamed  hand, 
and  contemplated  the  President  quietly,  with  grave  and  alert 
repose.  The  President  dipped  the  quill  into  the  ink.  "Is  this 
the  man  who  .  . ." 

"Who  performed  this  murder?"  the  uncle  said  pleasantly. 
"That  is  what  we  made  this  long  winter's  journey  to  dis- 
cover. If  he  did,  if  this  white  man  really  did  not  fall  from  that 
swift  horse  of  his  perhaps  and  strike  his  head  upon  a  sharp 
stone,  then  this  nephew  of  mine  should  be  punished.  We  do 
not  think  that  it  is  right  to  slay  white  men  like  a  confounded 


396  The  Wilderness 

Cherokee  or  Creek."  Perfectly  inscrutable,  perfectly  deco- 
rous, he  looked  at  the  two  exalted  personages  playing  behind 
the  table  their  clumsy  deception  with  dummy  papers;  for  an 
instant  the  President  himself  met  the  slumbrous  eyes  and 
looked  down.  The  Secretary  though,  upthrust,  his  crest 
roached  violently  upward,  glared  at  the  uncle. 

"You  should  have  held  this  horse-race  across  the  ford  it- 
self," he  said.  "Water  wouldn't  have  left  that  gash  in  the 
white  man's  skull." 

The  President,  glancing  quickly  up,  saw  the  heavy,  secret 
face  musing  upon  the  Secretary  with  dark  speculation.  But 
almost  immediately  the  uncle  spoke.  "So  it  would.  But  this 
white  man  would  have  doubtless  required  a  coin  of  money 
from  my  nephew  for  passing  through  his  gate."  Then  he 
laughed,  mirthful,  pleasant,  decorous.  "Perhaps  it  would  have 
been  better  for  that  white  man  if  he  had  allowed  my  nephew 
to  pass  through  free.  But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there  now." 

"No,"  the  President  said,  almost  sharply,  so  that  they 
looked  at  him  again.  He  held  the  quill  above  the  paper, 
"What  is  the  correct  name?  Weddel  or  Vidal?" 

Again  the  pleasant,  inflectionless  voice  came:  "Weddel  or 
Vidal.  What  does  it  matter  by  what  name  the  White  Chief 
calls  us?  We  are  but  Indians:  remembered  yesterday  and  for- 
gotten tomorrow." 

The  President  wrote  upon  the  paper.  The  quill  scratched 
steadily  in  the  silence  in  which  there  was  but  one  other 
sound:  a  faint,  steady,  minor  sound  which  seemed  to  emerge 
from  the  dark  and  motionless  group  behind  the  uncle  and 
nephew.  He  sanded  what  he  had  written  and  folded  it  and 
rose  and  stood  for  a  moment  so  while  they  watched  him 
quietly — the  soldier  who  had  commanded  men  well  on  more 
occasions  than  this.  "Your  nephew  is  not  guilty  of  this  mur- 
der. My  chief  whom  I  have  appointed  to  hold  justice  be* 


Lo!  397 

tween  us  says  for  him  to  return  home  and  never  do  this  again, 
because  next  time  he  will  be  displeased." 

His  voice  died  into  a  shocked  silence;  even  for  that  instant 
the  heavy  lids  fluttered,  while  from  the  dark  throng  behind 
him  that  faint,  unceasing  sound  of  quiet  scratching  by  heat 
and  wool  engendered,  like  a  faint,  constant  motion  of  the 
sea,  also  ceased  for  an  instant.  The  uncle  spoke  in  a  tone  of 
shocked  unbelief:  "My  nephew  is  free?" 

"He  is  free,"  the  President  said.  The  uncle's  shocked  gaze 
traveled  about  the  room. 

"This  quick?  And  in  here?  In  this  house?  I  had  thought. 
.  .  .  But  no  matter."  They  watched  him;  again  the  face  was 
smooth,  enigmatic,  blank.  "We  are  only  Indians;  doubtless 
these  busy  white  men  have  but  little  time  for  our  small  affairs. 
Perhaps  we  have  already  incommoded  them  too  much." 

"No,  no,"  the  President  said  quickly.  "To  me,  my  Indian 
and  my  white  people  are  the  same."  But  again  the  uncle's 
gaze  was  traveling  quietly  about  the  room;  standing  side  by 
side,  the  President  and  the  Secretary  could  feel  from  one  to 
another  the  same  dawning  alarm.  After  a  while  the  President 
said:  "Where  had  you  expected  this  council  to  be  held?" 

The  uncle  looked  at  him.  "You  will  be  amused.  In  my  ig- 
norance I  had  thought  that  even  our  little  affair  would  have 
been  concluded  in  ...  But  no  matter." 

"In  what?"  the  President  said. 

The  bland,  heavy  face  mused  again  upon  him  for  a  mo- 
ment. "You  will  laugh;  nevertheless,  I  will  obey  you.  In  the 
big  white  council  house  beneath  the  golden  eagle." 

"What?"  the  Secretary  cried,  starting  again.  "In  the  .  .  ." 

The  uncle  looked  away.  "I  said  that  you  would  be  amused. 
But  no  matter.  We  will  have  to  wait,  anyway." 

"Have  to  wait?"  the  President  said.  "For  what?" 

"This  is  really  amusing,"  the  uncle  said.  He  laughed  again, 
in  his  tone  of  mirthful  detachment.  "More  of  my  people  are 


398  The  Wilderness 

about  to  arrive.  We  can  wait  for  them,  since  they  will  wish 
to  see  and  hear  also."  No  one  exclaimed  at  all  now,  not  even 
the  Secretary.  They  merely  stared  at  him  while  the  bland 
voice  went  on:  "It  seems  that  some  of  them  mistook  the 
town.  They  had  heard  the  name  of  the  White  Chief's  capital 
spoken,  but  it  so  happens  that  there  is  also  a  town  in  our  coun- 
try with  the  same  name,  so  that  when  some  of  the  People 
inquired  on  the  road,  they  became  misdirected  and  went 
there  instead,  poor  ignorant  Indians."  He  laughed,  with  fond 
and  mirthful  tolerance  behind  his  enigmatic  and  sleepy  face. 
"But  a  messenger  has  arrived;  they  will  arrive  themselves 
within  the  week.  Then  we  will  see  about  punishing  this  head- 
strong boy."  He  shook  the  nephew's  arm  lightly.  Except  for 
this  the  nephew  did  not  move,  watching  the  President  with 
his  grave  and  unwinking  regard. 

For  a  long  moment  there  was  no  sound  save  the  faint, 
steady  scratching  of  the  Indians.  Then  the  Secretary  began  to 
speak,  patiently,  as  though  addressing  a  child:  "Look.  Your 
nephew  is  free.  This  paper  says  that  he  did  not  slay  the  white 
man  and  that  no  man  shall  so  accuse  him  again,  else  both  I 
and  the  great  chief  beside  me  will  be  angered.  He  can  return 
home  now,  at  once.  Let  all  of  you  return  home  at  once.  For 
is  it  not  well  said  that  the  graves  of  a  man's  fathers  are  never 
quiet  in  his  absence?" 

Again  there  was  silence.  Then  the  President  said,  "Besides, 
the  white  council  house  beneath  the  golden  eagle  is  being 
used  now  by  a  council  of  chiefs  who  are  more  powerful  there 
than  I  am." 

The  uncle's  hand  lifted;  foamed  with  soiled  lace,  his  fore- 
finger waggled  in  reproachful  deprecation.  "Do  not  ask  even 
an  ignorant  Indian  to  believe  that,"  he  said.  Then  he  said, 
with  no  change  of  inflection  whatever;  the  Secretary  did  not 
know  until  the  President  told  him  later,  that  the  uncle  was 
now  addressing  him:  "And  these  chiefs  will  doubtless  be  oc- 


Lo!  399 

copying  the  white  council  hut  for  some  time  yet,  I  suppose." 

"Yes,"  the  Secretary  said.  "Until  the  last  snow  of  winter 
has  melted  among  the  flowers  and  the  green  grass." 

"Good,"  the  uncle  said.  "We  will  wait,  then.  Then  the 
rest  of  the  People  will  have  time  to  arrive." 

And  so  it  was  that  up  that  Avenue  with  a  high  destiny  the 
cavalcade  moved  in  the  still  falling  snow,  led  by  the  carriage 
containing  the  President  and  the  uncle  and  nephew,  the  fat, 
ringed  hand  lying  again  upon  the  nephew's  knee,  and  fol- 
lowed by  a  second  carriage  containing  the  Secretary  and  his 
secretary,  and  this  followed  in  turn  by  two  files  of  soldiers 
between  which  walked  the  dark  and  decorous  cloud  of  men, 
women  and  children  on  foot  and  in  arms;  so  it  was  that  be- 
hind the  Speaker's  desk  of  that  chamber  which  was  to  womb 
and  contemplate  the  high  dream  of  a  destiny  superior  to  the 
injustice  of  events  and  the  folly  of  mankind,  the  President 
and  the  Secretary  stood,  while  below  them,  ringed  about  by 
the  living  manipulators  of,  and  interspersed  by  the  august 
and  watching  ghosts  of  the  dreamers  of,  the  destiny,  the 
uncle  and  nephew  stood,  with  behind  them  the  dark  throng 
of  kin  and  friends  and  acquaintances  from  among  which 
came  steadily  and  unabated  that  faint  sound  of  wool  and 
flesh  in  friction.  The  President  leaned  to  the  Secretary. 

"Are  they  ready  with  the  cannon?"  he  whispered.  "Are 
you  sure  they  can  see  my  arm  from  the  door?  And  suppose 
those  damned  guns  explode:  they  have  not  been  fired  since 
Washington  shot  them  last  at  Cornwallis:  will  they  impeach 
me?" 

"Yes,"  the  Secretary  hissed. 

"Then  God  help  us.  Give  me  the  book."  The  Secretary 
passed  it  to  him:  it  was  Petrarch's  Sonnets,  which  the  Secre- 
tary had  snatched  from  his  table  in  passing.  "Let  us  hope  that 
I  remember  enough  law  Latin  to  keep  it  from  sounding  like 
either  English  or  Chickasaw,"  the  President  said.  He  opened 


400  The  Wilderness 

the  book,  and  then  again  the  President,  the  conqueror  of 
men,  the  winner  of  battles  diplomatic,  legal  and  martial,  drew 
himself  erect  and  looked  down  upon  the  dark,  still,  intent, 
waiting  faces;  when  he  spoke  his  voice  was  the  voice  which 
before  this  had  caused  men  to  pause  and  attend  and  then 
obey:  "Francis  Weddel,  chief  in  the  Chickasaw  Nation,  and 
you,  nephew  of  Francis  Weddel  and  some  day  to  be  a  chief, 
hear  my  words."  Then  he  began  to  read.  His  voice  was  full, 
sonorous,  above  the  dark  faces,  echoing  about  the  august 
dome  in  profound  and  solemn  syllables.  He  read  ten  sonnets. 
Then,  with  his  arm  lifted,  he  perorated;  his  voice  died  pro- 
foundly away  and  he  dropped  his  arm.  A  moment  later,  from 
outside  the  building,  came  a  ragged  crash  of  artillery.  And 
now  for  the  first  time  the  dark  throng  stirred;  from  among 
them  came  a  sound,  a  murmur,  of  pleased  astonishment.  The 
President  spoke  again:  "Nephew  of  Francis  Weddel,  you  are 
free.  Return  to  your  home." 

And  now  the  uncle  spoke;  again  his  finger  waggled  from 
out  its  froth  of  lace.  "Heedless  boy,"  he  said.  "Consider  the 
trouble  which  you  have  caused  these  busy  men."  He  turned 
to  the  Secretary,  almost  briskly;  again  his  voice  was  bland, 
pleasant,  almost  mirthful:  "And  now,  about  the  little  matter 
of  this  cursed  ford.  .  .  ." 

With  the  autumn  sun  falling  warmly  and  pleasantly  across 
his  shoulders,  the  President  said,  "That  is  all,"  quietly  and 
turned  to  his  desk  as  the  secretary  departed.  While  he  took 
up  the  letter  and  opened  it  the  sun  fell  upon  his  hands  and 
upon  the  page,  with  its  inference  of  the  splendid  dying  of 
the  year,  of  approaching  harvests  and  of  columns  of  quiet 
wood  smoke — serene  pennons  of  peace — above  peaceful 
chimneys  about  the  land. 

Suddenly  the  President  started;  he  sprang  up,  the  letter  in 
his  hand,  glaring  at  it  in  shocked  and  alarmed  consternation 


Lo!  401 

while  the  bland  words  seemed  to  explode  one  by  one  in  his 
comprehension  like  musketry: 

Dear  sir  and  friend: 

This  is  really  amusing.  Again  this  hot-headed  nephew — 
he  must  have  taken  his  character  from  his  father's  people, 
since  it  is  none  of  mine — has  come  to  trouble  you  and  me.  It 
is  this  cursed  ford  again.  Another  white  man  came  among  us, 
to  hunt  in  peace  we  thought,  since  God's  forest  and  the  deer 
which  He  put  in  it  belong  to  all.  But  he  too  became  obsessed 
with  the  idea  of  owning  this  ford,  having  heard  tales  of  his 
own  kind  who,  after  the  curious  and  restless  fashion  of  white 
men,  find  one  side  of  a  stream  of  water  superior  enough  to 
the  other  to  pay  coins  of  money  for  the  privilege  of  reaching 
it.  So  the  affair  was  arranged  as  this  white  man  desired  it. 
Perhaps  I  did  wrong,  you  will  say.  But — do  I  need  to  tell 
you? — /  am  a  simple  man  and  some  day  I  shall  be  old,  I  trust, 
and  the  continuous  interruption  of  these  white  men  who 
wish  to  cross  and  the  collecting  and  care  of  the  coins  of 
money  is  only  a  nuisance.  For  what  can  money  be  to  me, 
whose  destiny  it  apparently  is  to  spend  my  declining  years 
beneath  the  shade  of  familiar  trees  from  whose  peaceful 
shade  my  great  white  friend  and  chief  has  removed  the  face 
of  every  enemy  save  death?  That  was  my  thought,  but  when 
you  read  farther  you  will  see  that  it  was  not  to  be. 

Once  more  it  is  this  rash  and  heedless  boy.  It  seems  that  he 
challenged  this  new  white  man  of  ours  (or  the  white  man 
challenged  him:  the  truth  /  will  leave  to  your  unerring  wis- 
dom to  unravel)  to  a  swimming  race  in  the  river,  the  stakes 
to  be  this  cursed  ford  against  a  few  miles  of  land,  which 
(this  will  amuse  you)  this  wild  nephew  of  mine  did  not  even 
own.  The  race  took  place,  but  unfortunately  our  white  man 
failed  to  emerge  from  the  river  until  after  he  was  dead.  And 
now  your  agent  has  arrived*  and  he  seems  to  feel  that  perhaps 


402  The  Wilderness 

this  swimming  race  should  not  have  taken  place  at  all.  And 
so  now  there  is  nothing  for  me  to  do  save  to  bestir  old  bones 
and  bring  this  rash  boy  to  you  for  you  to  reprimand  him.  We 
'"  arrive  in  about  .  .  . 


The  President  sprang  to  the  bell  and  pulled  it  violently. 
When  his  secretary  entered,  he  grasped  the  man  by  the 
shoulders  and  whirled  him  toward  the  door  again.  "Get  me 
the  Secretary  of  War,  and  maps  of  all  the  country  between 
here  and  New  Orleans!"  he  cried.  "Hurry." 

And  so  again  we  see  him;  the  President  is  absent  now  and 
it  is  the  Soldier  alone  who  sits  with  the  Secretary  of  War 
behind  the  map-strewn  table,  while  there  face  them  the 
officers  of  a  regiment  of  cavalry.  At  the  table  his  secretary  is 
writing  furiously  while  the  President  looks  over  his  shoulder. 
"Write  it  big,"  he  says,  "so  that  even  an  Indian  cannot  mis- 
take it.  Know  all  men  by  these  presents"  he  quotes.  "Francis 
Weddel  his  heirs,  descendants  and  assigns  from  now  on  in 
perpetuity  .  .  .  provided — Have  you  got  provided?  Good — 
provided  that  neither  he  nor  his  do  ever  again  cross  to  the 
eastern  side  of  the  above  described  River.  .  .  .  And  now  to 
that  damned  agent,"  he  said.  "The  sign  must  be  in  duplicate, 
at  both  ends  of  the  ford:  The  United  States  accepts  no  re- 
sponsibility for  any  man,  woman  or  child,  black,  white,  yel- 
low or  red,  who  crosses  this  ford,  and  no  white  man  shall  buy, 
lease  or  accept  it  as  a  gift  save  under  the  severest  penalty  of 
the  law.  Can  I  do  that?" 

"I'm  afraid  not,  Your  Excellency,"  the  Secretary  said. 
The  President  mused  swiftly.  "Damn,"  he  said.  "Strike  out 
The  United  States,  then."  The  Secretary  did  so.  The  Presi- 
dent folded  the  two  papers  and  handed  them  to  the  cavalry 
colonel.  "Ride,"  he  said.  "Your  orders  are,  Stop  them." 

"Suppose  they  refuse  to  stop,"  the  colonel  said.  "Shall  I 
fire  then?" 


Lo!  403 

"Yes,"  the  President  said.  "Shoot  every  horse,  mule,  and 
ox.  I  know  they  won't  walk.  Off  with  you,  now."  The  offi- 
cers withdrew.  The  President  turned  back  to  the  maps — the 
Soldier  still:  eager,  happy,  as  though  he  rode  himself  with 
the  regiment,  or  as  if  in  spirit  already  he  deployed  it  with 
that  shrewd  cunning  which  could  discern  and  choose  the 
place  most  disadvantageous  to  the  enemy,  and  get  there  first. 
"It  will  be  here,"  he  said.  He  put  his  finger  on  the  map.  "A 
horse,  General,  that  I  may  meet  him  here  and  turn  his  flank 
and  drive  him." 

"Done,  General,"  the  Secretary  said. 


IV  •  THE  WASTELAND 


Ad  Astra 

Victory 

Crevasse 

Turnabout 

All  the  Dead  Pilots 


Ad  Astra 


I  DONT  KNOW  what  we  were.  With  the  exception  of  Comyn, 
we  had  started  out  Americans,  but  after  three  years,  in  our 
British  tunics  and  British  wings  and  here  and  there  a  ribbon, 
I  dont  suppose  we  had  even  bothered  in  three  years  to 
wonder  what  we  were,  to  think  or  to  remember. 

And  on  that  day,  that  evening,  we  were  even  less  than 
that,  or  more  than  that:  either  beneath  or  beyond  the  knowl- 
edge that  we  had  not  even  wondered  in  three  years.  The 
subadar — after  a  while  he  was  there,  in  his  turban  and  his 
trick  major's  pips — said  that  we  were  like  men  trying  to 
move  in  water.  "But  soon  it  will  clear  away,"  he  said.  "The 
effluvium  of  hatred  and  of  words.  We  are  like  men  trying 
to  move  in  water,  with  held  breath  watching  our  terrific 
and  infinitesimal  limbs,  watching  one  another's  terrific  stasis 
without  touch,  without  contact,  robbed  of  all  save  the  im- 
potence and  the  need." 

We  were  in  the  car  then,  going  to  Amiens,  Sartoris  driv- 
ing and  Comyn  sitting  half  a  head  above  him  in  the  front 
seat  like  a  tackling  dummy,  the  subadar,  Bland  and  I  in 
back,  each  with  a  bottle  or  two  in  his  pockets.  Except  the 
subadar,  that  is.  He  was  squat,  small  and  thick,  yet  his  so- 
briety was  colossal.  In  that  maelstrom  of  alcohol  where  the 
rest  of  us  had  fled  our  inescapable  selves  he  was  like  a  rock, 


408  The  Wasteland 

talking  quietly  in  a  grave  bass  four  sizes  too  big  for  him: 
"In  my  country  I  was  prince.  But  all  men  are  brothers." 

But  after  twelve  years  I  think  of  us  as  bugs  in  the  surface 
of  the  water,  isolant  and  aimless  and  unflagging.  Not  on  the 
surface;  in  it,  within  that  line  of  demarcation  not  air  and  not 
water,  sometimes  submerged,  sometimes  not.  You  have 
watched  an  unbreaking  groundswell  in  a  cove,  the  water 
shallow,  the  cove  quiet,  a  little  sinister  with  satiate  famili- 
arity, while  beyond  the  darkling  horizon  the  dying  storm 
has  raged  on.  That  was  the  water,  we  the  flotsam.  Even 
after  twelve  years  it  is  no  clearer  than  that.  It  had  no  begin- 
ning and  no  ending.  Out  of  nothing  we  howled,  unwitting 
the  storm  which  we  had  escaped  and  the  foreign  strand 
which  we  could  not  escape;  that  in  the  interval  between  two 
surges  of  the  swell  we  died  who  had  been  too  young  to  have 
ever  lived. 

We  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  road  to  drink  again.  The 
land  was  dark  and  empty.  And  quiet:  that  was  what  you 
noticed,  remarked.  You  could  hear  the  earth  breathe,  like 
coming  out  of  ether,  like  it  did  not  yet  know,  believe,  that 
it  was  awake.  "But  now  it  is  peace,"  the  subadar  said.  "All 
men  are  brothers." 

"You  spoke  before  the  Union  once,"  Bland  said.  He  was 
blond  and  tall.  When  he  passed  through  a  room  where 
women  were  he  left  a  sighing  wake  like  a  ferry  boat  enter- 
ing the  slip.  He  was  a  Southerner,  too,  like  Sartoris;  but 
unlike  Sartoris,  in  the  five  months  he  had  been  out,  no  one 
had  ever  found  a  bullet  hole  in  his  machine.  But  he  had  trans- 
ferred out  of  an  Oxford  battalion — he  was  a  Rhodes  scholar 
— with  a  barnacle  and  a  wound-stripe.  When  he  was  tight 
he  would  talk  about  his  wife,  though  we  all  knew  that  he 
was  not  married. 

He  took  the  bottle  from  Sartoris  and  drank.  "I've  got  the 
sweetest  little  wife,"  he  said.  "Let  me  tell  YOU  about  her." 


Ad  Astra  409 

"Dont  tell  us,"  Sartoris  said.  "Give  her  to  Comyn.  He 
wants  a  girl." 

"All  right,"  Bland  said.  "You  can  have  her,  Comyn." 

"Is  she  blonde?"  Comyn  said. 

"I  dont  know,"  Bland  said.  He  turned  back  to  the  subadar, 
"You  spoke  before  the  Union  once.  I  remember  you." 

"Ah,"  the  subadar  said.  "Oxford.  Yes." 

"He  can  attend  their  schools  among  the  gentleborn,  the 
bleach-skinned,"  Bland  said.  "But  he  cannot  hold  their  com- 
mission, because  gentility  is  a  matter  of  color  and  not  lineage 
or  behavior." 

"Fighting  is  more  important  than  truth,"  the  subadar  said. 
"So  we  must  restrict  the  prestige  and  privileges  of  it  to  the 
few  so  that  it  will  not  lose  popularity  with  the  many  who 
have  to  die." 

"Why  more  important?"  I  said.  "I  thought  this  one  was 
being  fought  to  end  war  forevermore." 

The  subadar  made  a  brief  gesture,  dark,  deprecatory, 
tranquil.  "I  was  a  white  man  also  for  that  moment.  It  is  more 
important  for  the  Caucasian  because  he  is  only  what  he  can 
do;  it  is  the  sum  of  him." 

"So  you  see  further  than  we  see?" 

"A  man  sees  further  looking  out  of  the  dark  upon  the 
light  than  a  man  does  in  the  light  and  looking  out  upon  the 
light.  That  is  the  principle  of  the  spyglass.  The  lens  is  only  to 
tease  him  with  that  which  the  sense  that  suffers  and  desires 
can  never  affirm." 

"What  do  you  see,  then?"  Bland  said. 

"I  see  girls,"  Comyn  said.  "I  see  acres  and  acres  of  the 
yellow  hair  of  them  like  wheat  and  me  among  the  wheat. 
Have  ye  ever  watched  a  hidden  dog  quartering  a  wheat  field, 
any  of  yez?" 

"Not  hunting  bitches,"  Bland  said. 

Comyn  turned  in  the  seat,  thick  and  huge.  He  was  big  as 


410  The  Wasteland 

all  outdoors.  To  watch  two  mechanics  shoehorning  him  into 
the  cockpit  of  a  Dolphin  like  two  chambermaids  putting  an 
emergency  bolster  into  a  case  too  small  for  it,  was  a  sight  to 
see.  "I  will  beat  the  head  off  ye  for  a  shilling,"  he  said. 

"So  you  believe  in  the  Tightness  of  man?"  I  said. 

"I  will  beat  the  heads  off  yez  all  for  a  shilling,"  Comyn 
said. 

"I  believe  in  the  pitiableness  of  man,"  the  subadar  said. 
"That  is  better." 

"I  will  give  yez  a  shilling,  then,v/  Comyn  said. 

"All  right,"  Sartoris  said.  "Did  you  ever  try  a  little  whisky 
for  the  night  air,  any  of  you  all?" 

Comyn  took  the  bottle  and  drank.  "Acres  and  acres  of 
them,"  he  said,  "with  their  little  round  white  woman  parts 
gleaming  among  the  moiling  wheat." 

So  we  drank  again,  on  the  lonely  road  between  two  beet 
fields,  in  the  dark  quiet,  and  the  turn  of  the  inebriation 
began  to  make.  It  came  back  from  wherever  it  had  gone, 
rolling  down  upon  us  and  upon  the  grave  sober  rock  of  the 
subadar  until  his  voice  sounded  remote  and  tranquil  and 
dreamlike,  saying  that  we  were  brothers.  Monaghan  was 
there  then,  standing  beside  our  car  in  the  full  glare  of  the 
headlights  of  his  car,  in  an  R.F.C.  cap  and  an  American  tunic 
with  both  shoulder  straps  flapping  loose,  drinking  from 
Comyn's  bottle.  Beside  him  stood  a  second  man,  also  in  a 
tunic  shorter  and  trimmer  than  ours,  with  a  bandage  about 
his  head. 

"I'll  fight  you,"  Comyn  told  Monaghan.  "I'll  give  you 
the  shilling." 

"All  right,"  Monaghan  said.  He  drank  again. 

"We  are  all  brothers,"  the  subadar  said.  "Sometimes  we 
pause  at  the  wrong  inn.  We  think  it  is  night  and  we  stop, 
when  it  is  not  night.  That  is  all." 

"I'll  give  you  a  sovereign,"  Comyn  told  Monaghan. 


Ad  Astra  411 

"All  right,"  Monaghan  said.  He  extended  the  bottle  to 
the  other  man,  the  one  with  the  bandaged  head. 

"I  thangk  you,"  the  man  said.  "I  haf  plenty  yet." 

"I'll  fight  him,"  Comyn  said. 

"It  is  because  we  can  do  only  within  the  heart,"  the 
subadar  said.  "While  we  see  beyond  the  heart." 

"I'll  be  damned  if  you  will,"  Monaghan  said.  "He's  mine." 
He  turned  to  the  man  with  the  bandaged  head.  "Aren't  you 
mine?  Here;  drink." 

"I  haf  plenty,  I  thangk  you,  gentlemen,"  the  other  said. 
But  I  dont  think  any  of  us  paid  much  attention  to  him  until 
we  were  inside  the  Cloche-Clos.  It  was  crowded,  full  of 
noise  and  smoke.  When  we  entered  all  the  noise  ceased,  like 
a  string  cut  in  two,  the  end  raveling  back  into  a  sort  of 
shocked  consternation  of  pivoting  faces,  and  the  waiter — an 
old  man  in  a  dirty  apron — falling  back  before  us,  slack- 
jawed,  with  an  expression  of  outraged  unbelief,  like  an 
atheist  confronted  with  either  Christ  or  the  devil.  We 
crossed  the  room,  the  waiter  retreating  before  us,  paced  by 
the  turning  outraged  faces,  to  a  table  adjacent  to  one  where 
three  French  officers  sat  watching  us  with  that  same  expres- 
sion of  astonishment  and  then  outrage  and  then  anger.  As 
one  they  rose;  the  whole  room,  the  silence,  became  staccato 
with  voices,  like  machine  guns.  That  was  when  I  turned  and 
looked  at  Monaghan's  companion  for  the  first  time,  in  his 
green  tunic  and  his  black  snug  breeks  and  his  black  boots 
and  his  bandage.  He  had  cut  himself  recently  shaving,  and 
with  his  bandaged  head  and  his  face  polite  and  dazed  and 
bloodless  and  sick,  he  looked  like  Monaghan  had  been  using 
him  pretty  hard.  Roundfaced,  not  old,  with  his  immaculately 
turned  bandage  which  served  only  to  emphasize  the  genera- 
tions of  difference  between  him  and  the  turbaned  subadar, 
flanked  by  Monaghan  with  his  wild  face  and  wild  tunic  and 
surrounded  by  the  French  people's  shocked  and  outraged 


412  The  Wasteland 

faces,  he  appeared  to  contemplate  with  a  polite  and  alert 
concern  his  own  struggle  against  the  inebriation  which 
Monaghan  was  forcing  upon  him.  There  was  something 
Anthony-like  about  him:  rigid,  soldierly,  with  every  button 
in  place,  with  his  unblemished  bandage  and  his  fresh  razor 
cuts,  he  appeared  to  muse  furiously  upon  a  clear  flame  of  a 
certain  conviction  of  individual  behavior  above  a  violent 
and  inexplicable  chaos.  Then  I  remarked  Monaghan's  sec- 
ond companion:  an  American  military  policeman.  He  was 
not  drinking.  He  sat  beside  the  German,  rolling  cigarettes 
from  a  cloth  sack. 

On  the  German's  other  side  Monaghan  was  filling  his 
glass.  "I  brought  him  down  this  morning,"  he  said.  "I'm 
going  to  take  him  home  with  me." 

"Why?"  Bland  said.  "What  do  you  want  with  him?" 

"Because  he  belongs  to  me,"  Monaghan  said.  He  set  the 
full  glass  before  the  German.  "Here;  drink." 

"I  once  thought  about  taking  one  home  to  my  wife," 
Bland  said.  "So  I  could  prove  to  her  that  I  have  only  been 
to  a  war.  But  I  never  could  find  a  good  one.  A  whole  one, 
I  mean." 

"Come  on,"  Monaghan  said.  uDrink." 

"I  haf  plenty,"  the  German  said.  "All  day  I  haf  plenty." 

"Do  you  want  to  go  to  America  with  him?"  Bland  said: 

"Yes.  I  would  ligk  it.  Thanks." 

"Sure  you'll  like  it,"  Monaghan  said.  "I'll  make  a  man  of 
you.  Drink," 

The  German  raised  the  glass,  but  he  merely  held  it  in  his 
hand.  His  face  was  strained,  deprecatory,  yet  with  a  kind 
of  sereneness,  like  that  of  a  man  who  has  conquered  himself. 
I  imagine  some  of  the  old  martyrs  must  have  looked  at  the 
lions  with  that  expression.  He  was  sick,  too.  Not  from  the 
liquor:  from  his  head.  "I  haf  in  Beyreuth  a  wife  and  a  little 
wohn.  Mine  son.  I  haf  not  him  yet  seen." 


Ad  Astra  413 

"Ah,"  the  subadar  said.  "Beyreuth.  I  was  there  one 
spring." 

"Ah,"  the  German  said.  He  looked  quickly  at  the  subadar. 
"So?  The  music?" 

"Yes,"  the  subadar  said.  "In  your  music  a  few  of  you  have 
felt,  tasted,  lived,  the  true  brotherhood.  The  rest  of  us  can 
only  look  beyond  the  heart.  But  we  can  follow  them  for  a 
little  while  in  the  music." 

"And  then  we  must  return,"  the  German  said.  "That  iss 
not  good.  Why  must  we  yet  return  always?" 

"It  is  not  the  time  for  that  yet,"  the  subadar  said.  "But 
soon  ...  It  is  not  as  far  as  it  once  was.  Not  now." 

"Yes,"  the  German  said.  "Defeat  will  be  good  for  us. 
Defeat  iss  good  for  art;  victory,  it  iss  not  good." 

"So  you  admit  you  were  whipped,"  Comyn  said.  He  was 
sweating  again,  and  Sartoris'  nostrils  were  quite  white,  I 
thought  of  what  the  subadar  had  said  about  men  in  water. 
Only  our  water  was  drunkenness:  that  isolation  of  alcohol- 
ism which  drives  men  to  shout  and  laugh  and  fight,  not  with 
one  another  but  with  their  unbearable  selves  which,  drunk, 
they  are  even  more  fain  and  still  less  fell  to  escape.  Loud  and 
overloud,  unwitting  the  black  thunderhead  of  outraged 
France  (steadily  the  other  tables  were  being  emptied;  the 
other  customers  were  now  clotted  about  the  high  desk 
where  the  patronne,  an  old  woman  in  steel  spectacles,  sat,  a 
wad  of  knitting  on  the  ledge  before  her)  we  shouted  at  one 
another,  speaking  in  foreign  tongues  out  of  our  inescapable 
isolations,  reiterant,  unlistened  to  by  one  another;  while  sub- 
merged by  us  and  more  foreign  still,  the  German  and  the 
subadar  talked  quietly  of  music,  art,  the  victory  born  of 
defeat.  And  outside  in  the  chill  November  darkness  was  the 
suspension,  the  not-quite-believing,  not-quite-awakened 
nightmare,  the  breathing  spell  of  the  old  verbiaged  lusts  and 
the  buntinged  and  panoplied  greeds. 


414  The  Wasteland 

"By  God,  I'm  shanty  Irish,"  Monaghan  said.  "That's  what 
I  am." 

"What  about  it?"  Sartoris  said,  his  nostrils  like  chalk 
against  his  high-colored  face.  His  twin  brother  had  been 
killed  in  July.  He  was  in  a  Camel  squadron  below  us,  and 
Sartoris  was  down  there  when  it  happened.  For  a  week 
after  that,  as  soon  as  he  came  in  from  patrol  he  would  fill 
his  tanks  and  drums  and  go  out  again,  alone.  One  day  some- 
body saw  him,  roosting  about  five  thousand  feet  above  an 
old  Ak.W.  I  suppose  the  other  guy  who  was  with  his  brother 
that  morning  had  seen  the  markings  on  the  Hun  patrol 
leader's  crate;  anyway,  that's  what  Sartoris  was  doing,  using 
the  Ak.W.  for  bait.  Where  he  got  it  and  who  he  got  to  fly 
it,  we  didn't  know.  But  he  got  three  Huns  that  week,  catch- 
ing them  dead  when  they  dived  on  the  Ak.W.,  and  on  the 
eighth  day  he  didn't  go  out  again.  "He  must  have  got  him," 
Hume  said.  But  we  didn't  know.  He  never  told  us.  But  after 
that,  he  was  all  right  again.  He  never  did  talk  much;  just 
did  his  patrols  and  maybe  once  a  week  he'd  sit  and  drink  his 
nostrils  white  in  a  quiet  sort  of  way. 

Bland  was  filling  his  glass,  a  drop  at  a  time  almost,  with 
a  catlike  indolence.  I  could  see  why  men  didn't  like  him 
and  why  women  did.  Comyn,  his  arms  crossed  on  the  table, 
his  cuff  in  a  pool  of  spilt  liquor,  was  staring  at  the  German. 
His  eyes  were  bloodshot,  a  little  protuberant.  Beneath  his 
downcrushed  monkey  cap  the  American  M.P.  smoked  his 
meager  cigarettes,  his  face  quite  blank.  The  steel  chain  of 
his  whistle  looped  into  his  breast  pocket,  his  pistol  was 
hunched  forward  onto  his  lap.  Beyond,  the  French  people, 
the  soldiers,  the  waiter,  the  patronne,  clotted  at  the  desk.  I 
could  hear  their  voices  like  from  a  distance,  like  crickets  in 
September  grass,  the  shadows  of  their  hands  jerking  up  the 
wall  and  flicking  away. 

"Fm  not  a  soldier,"  Monaghan  said.  "I'm  not  a  gentleman. 


Ad  Astra  415 

I'm  not  anything."  At  the  base  of  each  flapping  shoulder 
strap  there  was  a  small  rip;  there  were  two  longer  ones 
parallel  above  his  left  pocket  where  His  wings  and  ribbon  had 
been.  "I  dont  know  what  I  am.  I  have  been  in  this  damn  war 
for  three  years  and  all  I  know  is,  I'm  not  dead.  I — " 

"How  do  you  know  you're  not  dead?"  Bland  said. 

Monaghan  looked  at  Bland,  his  mouth  open  upon  his  un- 
completed word. 

"I'll  kill  you  for  a  shilling,"  Comyn  said.  "I  dont  like  your 
bloody  face,  Lootenant.  Bloody  lootenant." 

"I'm  shanty  Irish,"  Monaghan  said.  "That's  what  I  am. 
My  father  was  shanty  Irish,  by  God.  And  I  dont  know  what 
my  grandfather  was.  I  dont  know  if  I  had  one.  My  father 
dont  remember  one.  Likely  it  could  have  been  one  of  several. 
So  he  didn't  even  have  to  be  a  gentleman.  He  never  had  to 
be.  That's  why  he  could  make  a  million  dollars  digging 
sewers  in  the  ground.  So  he  could  look  up  at  the  tall  glitter- 
ing windows  and  say — I've  heard  him,  and  him  smoking  the 
pipe  would  gas  the  puking  guts  out  of  you  damn,  niggling, 
puny — " 

"Are  you  bragging  about  your  father's  money  or  about 
his  sewers?"  Bland  said. 

" — would  look  up  at  them  and  he'd  say  to  me,  he'd  say, 
'When  you're  with  your  fine  friends,  the  fathers  and  mothers 
and  sisters  of  them  you  met  at  Yale,  ye  might  just  remind 
them  that  every  man  is  the  slave  of  his  own  refuse  and  so 
your  old  dad  they  would  be  sending  around  to  the  forty- 
story  back  doors  of  their  kitchens  is  the  king  of  them  all — ' 
What  did  you  say?"  He  looked  at  Bland. 

"Look  here,  buddy,"  the  M.P.  said.  "This  is  about  enough 
of  this.  I've  got  to  report  this  prisoner." 

"Wait,"  Monaghan  said.  He  did  not  cease  to  look  at 
Bland.  "What  did  you  say?" 


4i 6  The  Wasteland 

"Are  you  bragging  about  your  father's  money  or  about 
his  sewers?"  Bland  said. 

"No,"  Monaghan  saW.  "Why  should  I?  Any  more  than 
I  would  brag  about  the  thirteen  Huns  I  got,  or  the  two  rib- 
bons, one  of  which  his  damned  king — "  he  jerked  his  head  at 
Comyn — "gave  me." 

"Dont  call  him  my  damned  king,"  Comyn  said,  his  cuff 
soaking  slowly  in  the  spilt  liquor. 

"Look,"  Monaghan  said.  He  jerked  his  hand  at  the  rips  on 
his  flapping  shoulder  straps,  at  the  two  parallel  rips  on  his 
breast.  "That's  what  I  think  of  it.  Of  all  your  goddamn 
twaddle  about  glory  and  gentlemen.  I  was  young;  I  thought 
you  had  to  be.  Then  I  was  in  it  and  there  wasn't  time  to 
stop  even  when  I  found  it  didn't  count.  But  now  it's  over; 
finished  now.  Now  I  can  be  what  I  am.  Shanty  Irish;  son  of 
an  immigrant  that  knew  naught  but  shovel  and  pick  until 
youth  and  the  time  for  pleasuring  was  wore  out  of  him 
before  his  time.  Out  of  a  peat  bog  he  came,  and  his  son  went 
to  their  gentlemen's  school  and  returned  across  the  water  to 
swank  it  with  any  of  them  that  owned  the  peat  bogs  and  the 
bitter  sweat  of  them  that  mired  it,  and  the  king  said  him 
well." 

"I  will  give  yez  the  shilling  and  I  will  beat  the  head  off 
yez,"  Comyn  said. 

"But  why  do  you  want  to  take  him  back  with  you?" 
Bland  said.  Monaghan  just  looked  at  Bland.  There  was  some- 
thing of  the  crucified  about  Monaghan,  too:  furious,  inar- 
ticulate not  with  stupidity  but  at  it,  like  into  him  more  than 
any  of  us  had  distilled  the  ceased  drums  of  the  old  lust  and 
greed  waking  at  last  aghast  at  their  own  impotence  and  ac- 
crued despair.  Bland  sat  on  his  spine,  legs  extended,  his  hands 
in  his  slacks,  his  handsome  face  calmly  insufferable.  "What 
stringed  pick  would  he  bow?  maybe  a  shovel  strung  with 
the  ejut  of  an  alley-cat?  he  will  create  perhaps  in  music  the 


Ad  Astra  417 

flushed  toilets  of  Manhattan  to  play  for  your  father  after 
supper  of  an  evening?"  Monaghan  just  looked  at  Bland  with 
that  wild,  rapt  expression.  Bland  turned  his  lazy  face  a  little 
to  the  German. 

"Look  here,"  the  M.P.  said. 

"You  have  a  wife,  Herr  Lcutnant?"  Bland  said. 

The  German  looked  up.  He  glanced  swiftly  from  face  to 
face.  "Yes,  thank  you,"  he  said.  He  still  had  not  touched  his 
full  glass  save  to  hold  it  in  his  hand.  But  he  was  no  nearer 
sober  than  before,  the  liquor  become  the  hurting  of  his  head, 
his  head  the  pulse  and  beat  of  alcohol  in  him.  "My  people 
are  of  Prussia  little  barons.  There  are  four  brothers:  the  sec- 
ond for  the  Army,  the  third  who  did  nothing  in  Berlin,  the 
little  one  a  cadet  of  dragoons;  I,  the  eldest,  in  the  University. 
There  I  learned.  There  wass  a  time  then.  It  was  as  though 
we,  young  from  the  quiet  land,  were  brought  together, 
chosen  and  worthy  to  witness  a  period  quick  like  a  woman 
with  a  high  destiny  of  the  earth  and  of  man.  It  iss  as  though 
the  old  trash,  the  old  litter  of  man's  blundering,  iss  to  be 
swept  away  for  a  new  race  that  will  in  the  heroic  simplicity 
of  olden  time  walk  the  new  earth.  You  knew  that  time, 
not?  When  the  eye  sparkled,  the  blut  ran  quick?"  He 
looked  about  at  our  faces.  "No?  Well,  in  America  perhaps 
not.  America  iss  new;  in  a  new  house  it  is  not  the  litter  so 
much  as  in  old."  He  looked  at  his  glass  for  a  moment,  his 
face  tranquil.  "I  return  home;  I  say  to  my  father,  in  the 
University  I  haf  learned  it  iss  not  good;  baron  I  will  not  be. 
He  cannot  believe.  He  talks  of  Germany,  the  fatherland;  I 
say  to  him,  It  iss  there;  so.  You  say  fatherland;  I,  brother- 
land,  I  say,  the  word  father  iss  that  barbarism  which 
will  be  first  swept  away;  it  iss  the  symbol  of  that  hierarchy 
which  hass  stained  the  history  of  man  with  injustice  of  arbi- 
trary instead  of  moral;  force  instead  of  love. 

"From  Berlin  they  send  for  that  one;  from  the  Army  that 


4i 8  The  Wasteland 

one  comes.  I  still  say  baron  I  will  not  be,  for  it  iss  not  good. 
We  are  in  the  little  hall  where  my  ancestors  on  the  walls 
hang;  I  stand  before  them  like  court-martial;  I  say  that 
Franz  must  be  baron,  for  I  will  not  be.  My  father  says  you 
can;  you  will;  it  iss  for  Germany.  Then  I  say,  For  Germany 
then  will  my  wife  be  baroness?  And  like  a  court-martial  I 
tell  them  I  haf  married  the  daughter  of  a  musician  who  wass 
peasant. 

"So  it  iss  that.  That  one  of  Berlin  iss  to  be  baron.  He  and 
Franz  are  twin,  but  Franz  iss  captain  already,  and  the  most 
humble  of  the  Army  may  eat  meat  with  our  kaiser;  he  does 
not  need  to  be  baron.  So  I  am  in  Beyreuth  with  my  wife 
and  my  music.  It  iss  as  though  I  am  dead.  I  do  not  get  letter 
until  to  say  my  father  iss  dead  and  I  haf  killed  him,  and  that 
one  iss  now  home  from  Berlin  to  be  baron.  But  he  does  not 
stay  at  home.  In  1912  he  iss  in  Berlin  newspaper  dead  of  a 
lady's  husband  and  so  Franz  iss  baron  after  all. 

"Then  it  iss  war.  But  I  am  in  Beyreuth  with  my  wife  and 
my  music,  because  we  think  that  it  will  not  be  long,  since 
it  was  not  long  before.  The  fatherland  in  its  pride  needed 
us  of  the  schools,  but  when  it  needed  us  it  did  not  know  it. 
And  when  it  did  realize  that  it  needed  us  it  wass  too  late  and 
any  peasant  who  would  be  hard  to  die  would  do.  And  so — " 

"Why  did  you  go,  then?"  Bland  said.  "Did  the  women 
make  you?  throw  eggs  at  you,  maybe?" 

The  German  looked  at  Bland.  "I  am  German;  that  iss 
beyond  the  I,  the  I  am.  Not  for  baron  and  kaiser."  Then  he 
quit  looking  at  Bland  without  moving  his  eyes.  "There  wass 
a  Germany  before  there  wass  barons,"  he  said.  "And  after, 
there  will  be." 

"Even  after  this?" 

"More  so.  Then  it  was  pride,  a  word  in  the  mouth.  Now 
it  is  a — how  you  call  it?  .  .  ." 


Ad  Astra  419 

"A  nation  vanquishes  its  banners,"  the  subadar  said.  "A 
man  conquers  himself." 

"Or  a  woman  a  child  bears,"  the  German  said. 

"Out  of  the  lust,  the  travail,"  the  subadar  said;  "out  of 
the  travail,  the  affirmation,  the  godhead;  truth." 

The  M.P.  was  rolling  another  cigarette.  He  watched  the 
subadar,  upon  his  face  an  expression  savage,  restrained,  and 
cold.  He  licked  the  cigarette  and  looked  at  me. 

"When  I  came  to  this  goddamn  country,"  he  said,  "I 
thought  niggers  were  niggers.  But  now  I'll  be  damned  if  I 
know  what  they  are.  What's  he?  snake-charmer?" 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "Snake-charmer." 

"Then  he  better  get  his  snake  out  and  beat  it.  I've  got  to 
report  this  prisoner.  Look  at  those  frogs  yonder."  As  I 
turned  and  looked  three  of  the  Frenchmen  were  leaving  the 
room,  insult  and  outrage  in  the  shapes  of  their  backs.  The 
German  was  talking  again. 

"I  hear  by  the  newspapers  how  Franz  is  colonel  and  then 
general,  and  how  the  cadet,  who  wass  still  the  round-headed 
boy  part  of  a  gun  always  when  I  last  saw  him,  iss  now  ace 
with  iron  cross  by  the  kaiser's  own  hand.  Then  it  iss  1916. 
I  see  by  the  paper  how  the  cadet  iss  killed  by  your  Bishop — " 
he  bowed  slightly  to  Comyn — "that  good  man.  So  now  I 
am  cadet  myself.  It  iss  as  though  I  know.  It  iss  as  though  I 
see  what  iss  to  be.  So  I  transfer  to  be  aviator,  and  yet  though 
I  know  now  that  Franz  iss  general  of  staff  and  though  to 
myself  each  night  I  say,  'You  have  again  returned,'  I  know 
that  it  iss  no  good. 

"That,  until  our  kaiser  fled.  Then  I  learn  that  Franz  iss 
now  in  Berlin;  I  believe  that  there  iss  a  truth,  that  we  haf 
not  forfeited  all  in  pride,  because  we  know  it  will  not  be 
much  longer  now,  and  Franz  in  Berlin  safe,  the  fighting 
away  from. 

"Then  it  iss  this  morning.  Then  comes  the  letter  in  my 


420  The  Wasteland 

mother's  hand  that  I  haf  not  seen  in  seven  years,  addressed 
to  me  as  baron.  Franz  iss  shot  from  his  horse  by  German 
soldier  in  Berlin  street.  It  iss  as  though  all  had  been  forgotten, 
because  women  can  forget  all  that  quick,  since  to  them 
nothing  iss  real — truth,  justice,  all — nothing  that  cannot  be 
held  in  the  hands  or  cannot  die.  So  I  burn  all  my  papers,  the 
picture  of  my  wife  and  my  son  that  I  haf  not  yet  seen, 
destroy  my  identity  disk  and  remove  all  insignia  from  my 
tunic — "  he  gestured  toward  his  collar. 

"You  mean,"  Bland  said,  "that  you  had  no  intention  of 
coming  back?  Why  didn't  you  take  a  pistol  to  yourself  and 
save  your  government  an  aeroplane?" 

"Suicide  iss  just  for  the  body,"  the  German  said.  "The 
body  settles  nothing.  It  iss  of  no  importance.  It  iss  just  to 
be  kept  clean  when  possible." 

"It  is  merely  a  room  in  the  inn,"  the  subadar  said.  "It  is 
just  where  we  hide  for  a  little  while." 

"The  lavatory,"  Bland  said;  "the  toilet." 

The  M.P.  rose.  He  tapped  the  German  on  the  shoulder. 
Comyn  was  staring  at  the  German. 

"So  you  admit  you  were  whipped,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  the  German  said.  "It  wass  our  time  first,  because 
we  were  the  sickest.  It  will  be  your  England's  next.  Then 
she  too  will  be  well." 

"Dont  say  my  England,"  Comyn  said.  "I  am  of  the  Irish 
nation."  He  turned  to  Monaghan.  "You  said,  my  damned 
king.  Dont  say  my  damned  king.  Ireland  has  had  no  king 
since  the  Ur  Neill,  God  bless  the  red-haired  stern  of  him." 

Rigid,  controlled,  the  German  made  a  faint  gesture.  "You 
see?"  he  said  to  no  one  at  all. 

"The  victorious  lose  that  ^hich  the  vanquished  gain,"  the 
subadar  said. 

"And  what  will  vou  do  now?"  Bland  said. 


Ad  Astra  42 1 

The  German  did  not  answer.  He  sat  bolt  upright  with 
his  sick  face  and  his  immaculate  bandage. 

"What  will  you  do?"  the  subadar  said  to  Bland.  "What 
will  any  of  us  do?  All  this  generation  which  fought  in  the 
war  are  dead  tonight.  But  we  do  not  yet  know  it." 

We  looked  at  the  subadar:  Comyn  with  his  bloodshot 
pig's  eyes,  Sartoris  with  his  white  nostrils,  Bland  slumped 
in  his  chair,  indolent,  insufferable,  with  his  air  of  a  spoiled 
woman.  Above  the  German  the  M.P.  stood. 

"It  seems  to  worry  you  a  hell  of  a  lot,"  Bland  said. 

"You  do  not  believe?"  the  subadar  said.  "Wait.  You  will 
see." 

"Wait?"  Bland  said.  "I  dont  think  I've  done  anything  in 
the  last  three  years  to  have  acquired  that  habit.  In  the  last 
twenty-six  years.  Before  that  I  dont  remember.  I  may  have." 

"Then  you  will  see  sooner  than  waiting,"  the  subadar  said. 
"You  will  see."  He  looked  about  at  us,  gravely  serene. 
"Those  who  have  been  four  years  rotting  out  yonder — " 
he  waved  his  short  thick  arm — "are  not  more  dead  than  we." 

Again  the  M.P.  touched  the  German's  shoulder.  "Hell," 
he  said.  "Come  along,  buddy."  Then  he  turned  his  head  and 
we  all  looked  up  at  the  two  Frenchmen,  an  officer  and  a 
sergeant,  standing  beside  the  table.  For  a  while  we  just  re- 
mained so.  It  was  like  all  the  little  bugs  had  suddenly  found 
that  their  orbits  had  coincided  and  they  wouldn't  even  have 
to  be  aimless  any  more  or  even  to  keep  on  moving.  Beneath 
the  alcohol  I  could  feel  that  hard,  hot  ball  beginning  in  my 
stomach,  like  in  combat,  like  when  you  know  something  is 
about  to  happen;  that  instant  when  you  think  Now.  Now 
I  can  dump  everything  overboard  and  just  be.  Now.  Now. 
It  is  quite  pleasant. 

"Why  is  that  here,  monsieur?"  the  officer  said.  Monaghan 
looked  up  at  him,  thrust  backward  and  sideways  in  his  chair, 
poised  on  the  balls  of  his  thighs  as  though  they  were  feet, 


422  The  Wasteland 

his  arm  lying  upon  the  table.  "Why  do  you  make  desagre- 
able  for  France,  monsieur,  eh?"  the  officer  said. 

Someone  grasped  Monaghan  as  he  rose;  it  was  the  M.P. 
behind  him,  holding  him  half  risen.  "Wa-a-a-i-daminute," 
the  M.P.  said;  "wa-a-a-i-daminute."  The  cigarette  bobbed 
on  his  lower  lip  as  he  talked,  his  hands  on  Monaghan's  shoul- 
ders, the  brassard  on  his  arm  lifted  into  bold  relief.  "What's 
it  to  you,  Frog? "  he  said.  Behind  the  officer  and  the  sergeant 
the  other  French  people  stood,  and  the  old  woman.  She  was 
trying  to  push  through  the  circle.  "This  is  my  prisoner,"  the 
M.P.  said.  "I'll  take  him  anywhere  I  please  and  keep  him 
there  as  long  as  I  like.  What  do  you  think  about  that?" 

"By  which  authority,  monsieur?"  the  officer  said.  He  was 
tall,  with  a  gaunt,  tragic  face.  I  saw  then  that  one  of  his  eyes 
was  glass.  It  was  motionless,  rigid  in  a  face  that  looked  even 
deader  than  the  spurious  eye. 

The  M.P.  glanced  toward  his  brassard,  then  instead  he 
looked  at  the  officer  again  and  tapped  the  pistol  swinging 
low  now  against  his  flank.  "I'll  take  him  all  over  your  god- 
damn lousy  country.  I'll  take  him  into  your  goddamn  senate 
and  kick  your  president  up  for  a  chair  for  him  and  you  can 
suck  your  chin  until  I  come  back  to  wipe  the  latrine  off 
your  feet  again." 

"Ah,"  the  officer  said,  "a  devil-dog,  I  see."  He  said  "dehvil- 
dahg"  between  his  teeth,  with  no  motion  of  his  dead  face, 
in  itself  insult.  Behind  him  the  patronne  began  to  shriek  in 
French: 

"Boche!  Boche!  Broken!  Broken!  Every  cup,  every  saucer, 
glass,  plate — all,  all!  I  will  show  you!  I  have  kept  them  for  this 
day.  Eight  months  since  the  obus  I  have  kept  them  in  a  box 
against  this  day:  plates,  cups,  saucers,  glasses,  all  that  I  have 
had  since  thirty  years,  all  gone,  broken  at  one  time!  And  it 
costing  me  fifty  centimes  the  glass  for  such  that  I  shame 
myself  to  have  my  patrons — " 


Ad  Astra  423 

There  is  an  unbearable  point,  a  climax,  in  weariness.  Even 
alcohol  cannot  approach  it.  Mobs  are  motivated  by  it,  by 
a  sheer  attenuation  of  sameness  become  unbearable.  As 
Monaghan  rose,  the  M.P.  flung  him  back.  Then  it  was  as 
though  we  all  flung  everything  overboard  at  once,  facing 
unbashed  and  without  shame  the  specter  which  for  four 
years  we  had  been  decking  out  in  high  words,  leaping  for- 
ward with  concerted  and  orderly  promptitude  each  time 
the  bunting  slipped.  I  saw  the  M.P.  spring  at  the  officer,  then 
Corny n  rose  and  met  him.  I  saw  the  M.P.  hit  Corny n  three 
times  on  the  point  of  the  jaw  with  his  fist  before  Corny  n 
picked  him  up  bodily  and  threw  him  clean  over  the  crowd, 
where  he  vanished,  horizontal  in  midair,  tugging  at  his  pistol. 
I  saw  three  poilus  on  Monaghan's  back  and  the  officer  trying 
to  hit  him  with  a  bottle,  and  Sartoris  leaping  upon  the  offi- 
cer from  behind.  Comyn  was  gone;  through  the  gap  which 
he  had  made  the  patronne  emerged,  shrieking.  Two  men 
caught  at  her  and  she  strove  forward,  trying  to  spit  on  the 
German.  "Boche!  Boche!"  she  shrieked,  spitting  and  slob- 
bering, her  gray  hair  broken  loose  about  her  face;  she  turned 
and  spat  full  at  me.  "Thou,  too!"  she  shrieked,  "it  was  not 
England  that  was  devastated!  Thou,  too,  come  to  pick  the 
bones  of  France.  Jackal!  Vulture!  Animal!  Broken,  broken! 
All!  All!  All!"  And  beneath  it  all,  unmoved,  unmoving,  alert, 
watchful  and  contained,  the  German  and  the  subadar  sat, 
the  German  with  his  high,  sick  face,  the  subadar  tranquil  as 
a  squat  idol,  the  both  of  them  turbaned  like  prophets  in  the 
Old  Testament. 

It  didn't  take  long.  There  was  no  time  in  it.  Or  rather,  we 
were  outside  of  time;  within,  not  on,  that  surface,  that  de- 
marcation between  the  old  where  we  knew  we  had  not  died 
and  the  new  where  the  subadar  said  that  we  were  dead. 
Beyond  the  brandished  bottles,  the  blue  sleeves  and  the 
grimed  hands,  the  faces  like  masks  grimaced  into  rigid  and 


424  The  Wasteland 

soundless  shouts  to  frighten  children,  I  saw  Comyn  again. 
He  came  plowing  up  like  a  laden  ship  in  a  chop  sea;  beneath 
his  arm  was  the  ancient  waiter,  to  his  lips  he  held  the  M.P.'s 
whistle.  Then  Sartoris  swung  a  chair  at  the  single  light. 

It  was  cold  in  the  street,  a  cold  that  penetrated  the  cloth- 
ing, the  alcohol-distended  pores,  and  murmured  to  the  skele- 
ton itself.  The  plaza  was  empty,  the  lights  infrequent  and 
remote.  So  quiet  it  was  that  I  could  hear  the  faint  water  in 
the  fountain.  From  some  distance  away  came  sound,  remote 
too  under  the  thick  low  sky — shouting,  far-heard,  on  a  thin 
female  note  like  all  shouting,  even  a  mob  of  men,  broken  now 
and  then  by  the  sound  of  a  band.  In  the  shadow  of  the  wall 
Monaghan  and  Comyn  held  the  German  on  his  feet.  He  was 
unconscious;  the  three  of  them  invisible  save  for  the  faint 
blur  of  the  bandage,  inaudible  save  for  the  steady  monotone 
of  Monaghan's  cursing. 

"There  should  never  have  been  an  alliance  between 
Frenchmen  and  Englishmen,"  the  subadar  said.  He  spoke 
without  effort;  invisible,  his  effortless  voice  had  an  organ 
quality,  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  size.  "Different  nations 
should  never  join  forces  to  fight  for  the  same  object.  Let  each 
fight  for  something  different;  ends  that  do  not  conflict,  each 
in  his  own  way."  Sartoris  passed  us,  returning  from  the  foun- 
tain, carrying  his  bulging  cap  carefully  before  him,  bottom- 
up.  We  could  hear  the  water  dripping  from  it  between  his 
footsteps.  He  became  one  of  the  blob  of  thicker  shadow 
where  the  bandage  gleamed  and  where  Monaghan  cursed 
steadily  and  quietly.  "And  each  after  his  own  tradition,"  the 
subadar  said.  "My  people.  The  English  gave  them  rifles.  They 
looked  at  them  and  came  to  me:  'This  spear  is  too  short  and 
too  heavy:  how  can  a  man  slay  a  swift  enemy  with  a  spear 
of  this  size  and  weight?'  They  gave  them  tunics  with  buttons 
to  be  kept  buttoned;  I  have  passed  a  whole  trench  of  them 
sauatting,  motionless,  buried  to  the  ears  in  blankets,  straw, 


Ad  Astra  425 

empty  sand  bags,  their  faces  gray  with  cold;  I  have  lifted  the 
blankets  away  from  patient  torsos  clad  only  in  a  shirt. 

"The  English  officers  would  say  to  them,  'Go  there  and  do 
thus';  they  would  not  stir.  Then  one  day  at  full  noon  the 
whole  battalion,  catching  movement  beyond  a  crater,  sprang 
from  the  trench,  carrying  me  and  an  officer  with  it.  We 
carried  the  trench  without  firing  a  shot;  what  was  left  of  us — 
the  officer,  I,  and  seventeen  others — lived  three  days  in  a 
traverse  of  the  enemy's  front  line;  it  required  a  whole  brigade 
to  extricate  us.  'Why  didn't  you  shoot? '  the  officer  said.  'You 
let  them  pick  you  off  like  driven  pheasant.'  They  did  not 
look  at  him.  Like  children  they  stood,  murmurous,  alert, 
without  shame.  I  said  to  the  headman,  'Were  the  rifles  loaded, 
O  Das?'  Like  children  they  stood,  diffident,  without  shame. 
'O  Son  of  many  kings,'  Das  said.  'Speak  the  truth  of  thy 
knowing  to  the  sahib,'  I  said.  'They  were  not  loaded,  sahib,' 
Das  said." 

Again  the  band  came,  remote,  thudding  in  the  thick  air. 
They  were  giving  the  German  drink  from  a  bottle.  Mon- 
aghan  said:  "Now.  Feel  better  now?" 

"It  iss  mine  head,"  the  German  said.  They  spoke  quietly, 
like  they  were  discussing  wall-paper. 

Monaghan  cursed  again.  "I'm  going  back.  By  God,  I — " 

"No,  no,"  the  German  said.  "I  will  not  permit.  You  haf 
already  obligated — " 

We  stood  in  the  shadow  beneath  the  wall  and  drank.  We 
had  one  bottle  left.  Comyn  crashed  it,  empty,  against  the 
wall. 

"Now  what?"  Bland  said. 

"Girls,"  Comyn  said.  "Would  ye  watch  Comyn  of  the 
Irish  nation  among  the  yellow  hair  of  them  like  a  dog  among 
the  wheat?" 

We  stood  there,  hearing  the  far  band,  the  far  shouting. 
"You  sure  you  feel  all  right?"  Monaghan  said. 

"Thanks,"  the  German  said.  "I  feel  goot." 


426  The  Wasteland 

"Come  on,  then,"  Comyn  said. 

"You  going  to  take  him  with  you?"  Bland  said. 

"Yes,"  Monaghan  said.  "What  of  it?" 

"Why  not  take  him  on  to  the  A.P.M.?  He's  sick." 

"Do  you  want  me  to  bash  your  bloody  face  in?"  Mon- 
aghan said. 

"All  right,"  Bland  said. 

"Come  on,"  Comyn  said.  "What  fool  would  rather  fight 
than  fush?  All  men  are  brothers,  and  all  their  wives  are  sis- 
ters. So  come  along,  yez  midnight  fusileers." 

"Look  here,"  Bland  said  to  the  German,  "do  you  want  to 
go  with  them?"  With  his  bandaged  head,  he  and  the  subadar 
alone  were  visible,  like  two  injured  men  among  five  spirits. 

"Hold  him  up  a  minute,"  Monaghan  told  Comyn.  Mona- 
ghan approached  Bland.  He  cursed  Bland.  "I  like  fighting," 
he  said,  in  that  same  monotone.  "I  even  like  being  whipped." 

"Wait,"  the  German  said.  "Again  I  will  not  permit."  Mon- 
aghan halted,  he  and  Bland  not  a  foot  apart.  "I  haf  wife  and 
son  in  Beyreuth,"  the  German  said.  He  was  speaking  to  me, 
He  gave  me  the  address,  twice,  carefully. 

"I'll  write  to  her,"  I  said.  "What  shall  I  tell  her?" 

"Tell  her  it  iss  nothing.  You  will  know." 

"Yes.  I'll  tell  her  you  are  all  right." 

"Tell  her  this  life  iss  nothing." 

Comyn  and  Monaghan  took  his  arms  again,  one  on  either 
side.  They  turned  and  went  on,  almost  carrying  him.  Comyn 
looked  back  once.  "Peace  be  with  you,"  he  said. 

"And  with  you,  peace,"  the  subadar  said.  They  went  on. 
We  watched  them  come  into  silhouette  in  the  mouth  of  an 
alley  where  a  light  was.  There  was  an  arch  there,  and  the 
faint  cold  pale  light  on  the  arch  and  on  the  walls  so  that  it 
was  like  a  gate  and  they  entering  the  gate,  holding  the  Ger- 
man up  between  them. 

"What  will  they  do  with  him?"  Bland  said.  "Prop  him  in 


Ad  Astra  427 

the  corner  and  turn  the  light  off?  Or  do  French  brothels  have 
he-beds  too?" 

"Who  the  hell's  business  is  that?"  I  said. 

The  sound  of  the  band  came,  thudding;  it  was  cold.  Each 
time  my  flesh  jerked  with  alcohol  and  cold  I  believed  that  I 
could  hear  it  rasp  on  the  bones. 

"Since  seven  years  now  I  have  been  in  this  climate,"  the 
subadar  said.  "But  still  I  do  not  like  the  cold."  His  voice  was 
deep,  quiet,  like  he  might  be  six  feet  tall.  It  was  like  when 
they  made  him  they  said  among  themselves,  "We'll  give  him 
something  to  carry  his  message  around  with."  "Why?  Who'll 
listen  to  his  message?"  "He  will.  So  we'll  give  him  something 
to  hear  it  with." 

"Why  dont  you  go  back  to  India  then?"  Bland  said. 

"Ah,"  the  subadar  said.  "I  am  like  him;  I  too  will  not  be 
baron." 

"So  you  clear  out  and  let  foreigners  who  will  treat  the 
people  like  oxen  or  rabbits  come  in  and  take  it." 

"By  removing  myself  I  undid  in  one  day  what  it  took  two 
thousand  years  to  do.  Is  not  that  something?" 

We  shook  with  the  cold.  Now  the  cold  was  the  band,  the 
shouting,  murmuring  with  cold  hands  to  the  skeleton,  not 
the  ears. 

"Well,"  Bland  said,  "I  suppose  the  English  government  is 
doing  more  to  free  your  people  than  you  could." 

The  subadar  touched  Bland  on  the  chest,  lightly.  "You  are 
wise,  my  friend.  Let  England  be  glad  that  all  Englishmen  are 
not  so  wise." 

"So  you  will  be  an  exile  for  the  rest  of  your  days,  eh?" 

The  subadar  jerked  his  short,  thick  arm  toward  the  empty 
arch  where  Comyn  and  the  German  and  Monaghan  had  dis- 
appeared. "Did  you  not  hear  what  he  said?  This  life  is 
nothing." 

"You  can  think  so,"  Bland  said.  "But,  by  God,  I'd  hate  to 


428  The  Wasteland 

think  that  what  I  saved  out  of  the  last  three  years  is  nothing." 

"You  saved  a  dead  man,"  the  subadar  said  serenely.  "You 
will  see." 

"I  saved  my  destiny,"  Bland  said.  "You  nor  nobody  else 
knows  what  that  will  be." 

"What  is  your  destiny  except  to  be  dead?  It  is  unfortunate 
that  your  generation  had  to  be  the  one.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
for  the  better  part  of  your  days  you  will  walk  the  earth  a 
spirit.  But  that  was  your  destiny."  From  far  away  came  the 
shouting,  on  that  sustained  note,  feminine  and  childlike  all  at 
once,  and  then  the  band  again,  brassy,  thudding,  like  the 
voices,  forlornly  gay,  hysteric,  but  most  of  all  forlorn.  The 
arch  in  the  cold  glow  of  the  light  yawned  empty,  profound, 
silent,  like  the  gate  to  another  city,  another  world.  Suddenly 
Sartoris  left  us.  He  walked  steadily  to  the  wall  and  leaned 
against  it  on  his  propped  arms,  vomiting. 

"Hell,"  Bland  said.  "I  want  a  drink."  He  turned  to  me. 
"Where's  your  bottle?" 

"It's  gone." 

"Gone  where?  You  had  two." 

"I  haven't  got  one  now,  though.  Drink  water." 

"Water?"  he  said.  "Who  the  hell  drinks  water?" 

Then  the  hot  hard  ball  came  into  my  stomach  again,  pleas- 
ant, unbearable,  real;  again  that  instant  when  you  say  Now. 
Now  I  can  dump  everything.  "You  will,  you  goddamn  son," 
I  said. 

Bland  was  not  looking  at  me.  "Twice,"  he  said  in  a  quiet, 
detached  tone.  "Twice  in  an  hour.  How's  that  for  high?" 
He  turned  and  went  toward  the  fountain.  Sartoris  came  back, 
walking  steadily  erect.  The  band  blent  with  the  cold  along 
the  bones. 

"What  time  is  it?"  I  said. 

Sartoris  peered  at  his  wrist.  "Twelfth." 

"It's  later  than  midnight,"  I  said.  "It  must  be." 


Ad  Astra  429 

"I  said  it  was  the  twelfth,"  Sartoris  said. 

Bland  was  stooping  at  the  fountain.  There  was  a  little  light 
there.  As  we  reached  him  he  stood  up,  mopping  at  his  face. 
The  light  was  on  his  face  and  I  thought  for  some  time  that  he 
must  have  had  his  whole  head  under  to  be  mopping  that 
high  up  his  face  before  I  saw  that  he  was  crying.  He  stood 
there,  mopping  at  his  face,  crying  hard  but  quiet. 

"My  poor  little  wife,"  he  said.  "My  poor  little  wife." 


Victory 


i 

THOSE  WHO  SAW  HIM  descend  from  the  Marseilles  express  in 
the  Gare  de  Lyon  on  that  damp  morning  saw  a  tall  man,  a 
little  stiff,  with  a  bronze  face  and  spike-ended  moustaches 
and  almost  white  hair.  "A  milord,"  they  said,  remarking  his 
sober,  correct  suit,  his  correct  stick  correctly  carried,  his 
sparse  baggage;  "a  milord  military.  But  there  is  something 
the  matter  with  his  eyes."  But  there  was  something  the  mat- 
ter with  the  eyes  of  so  many  people,  men  and  women  too, 
in  Europe  since  four  years  now.  So  they  watched  him  go  on, 
a  half  head  above  the  French  people,  with  his  gaunt,  strained 
eyes,  his  air  strained,  purposeful,  and  at  the  same  time  as- 
sured, and  vanish  into  a  cab,  thinking,  if  they  thought  about 
him  any  more  at  all:  "You  will  see  him  in  the  Legation 
offices  or  at  a  table  on  the  Boulevards,  or  in  a  carriage  with 
the  fine  English  ladies  in  the  Bois."  That  was  all. 

And  those  who  saw  him  descend  from  the  same  cab  at  the 
Gare  du  Nord,  they  thought:  "This  milord  returns  home  by 
haste";  the  porter  who  took  his  bag  wished  him  good  morn- 
ing in  fair  English  and  told  him  that  he  was  going  to  Eng- 
land, receiving  for  reply  the  English  glare  which  the  porter 
perhaps  expected,  and  put  him  into  a  first-class  carriage  of 
the  boat  train.  And  that  was  all,  too.  That  was  all  right,  too, 
even  when  he  got  down  at  Amiens.  English  milords  even  did 

43 l 


432  The  Wasteland 

that.  It  was  only  at  Rozieres  that  they  began  to  look  at  him 
and  after  him  when  he  had  passed. 

In  a  hired  car  he  jounced  through  a  gutted  street  between 
gutted  walls  rising  undoored  and  unwindowed  in  jagged 
shards  in  the  dusk.  The  street  was  partially  blocked  now  and 
then  by  toppled  walls,  with  masses  of  masonry  in  the  cracks 
of  which  a  thin  grass  sprouted,  passing  empty  and  ruined 
courtyards,  in  one  of  which  a  tank,  mute  and  tilted,  rusted 
among  rank  weeds.  This  was  Rozieres,  but  he  didn't  stop 
there  because  no  one  lived  there  and  there  was  no  place  to 
stop. 

So  the  car  jounced  and  crept  on  out  of  the  ruin.  The 
muddy  and  unpaved  street  entered  a  village  of  harsh  new 
brick  and  sheet  iron  and  tarred  paper  roofs  made  in  America, 
and  halted  before  the  tallest  house.  It  was  flush  with  the 
street:  a  brick  wall  with  a  door  and  one  window  of  Amer- 
ican glass  bearing  the  word  RESTAURANT.  "Here  you  are,  sir," 
the  driver  said. 

The  passenger  descended,  with  his  bag,  his  ulster,  his  cor- 
rect stick.  He  entered  a  biggish,  bare  room  chill  with  new 
plaster.  It  contained  a  billiard  table  at  which  three  men 
played.  One  of  the  men  looked  over  his  shoulder  and  said, 

"Bonjour,  monsieur." 

The  newcomer  did  not  reply  at  all.  He  crossed  the  room, 
passing  the  new  zinc  bar,  and  approached  an  open  door  be- 
yond which  a  woman  of  any  age  around  forty  looked  at 
him  above  the  sewing  on  her  lap. 

"Bong  jour,  madame,"  he  said.  "Dormie,  madame?" 

The  woman  gave  him  a  single  glance,  brief,  still.  "C'est  ga, 
monsieur,"  she  said,  rising. 

"Dormie,  madame?"  he  said,  raising  his  voice  a  little,  his 
spiked  moustache  beaded  a  little  with  rain,  dampness  be- 
neath his  strained  yet  assured  eyes.  "Dormie,  madame?" 

"Bon,  monsieur,"  the  woman  said.  "Bon.  Bon." 


Victory  433 

"Dor — "  the  newcomer  essayed  again.  Someone  touched 
his  arm.  It  was  the  man  who  had  spoken  from  the  billiard 
table  when  he  entered. 

"Regardez,  Monsieur  1'Anglais,"  the  man  said.  He  took 
the  bag  from  the  newcomer  and  swept  his  other  arm  toward 
the  ceiling.  "La  chambre."  He  touched  the  traveler  again; 
he  laid  his  face  upon  his  palm  and  closed  his  eyes;  he  ges- 
tured again  toward  the  ceiling  and  went  on  across  the  room 
toward  a  wooden  stair  without  balustrade.  As  he  passed  the 
bar  he  took  a  candle  stub  from  it  and  lit  the  candle  (the  big 
room  and  the  room  beyond  the  door  where  the  woman  sat 
were  lighted  by  single  bulbs  hanging  naked  on  cords  from 
the  ceiling)  at  the  foot  of  the  stair. 

They  mounted,  thrusting  their  fitful  shadows  before  them, 
into  a  corridor  narrow,  chill,  and  damp  as  a  tomb.  The  walls 
were  of  rough  plaster  not  yet  dried.  The  floor  was  of  pine, 
without  carpet  or  paint.  Cheap  metal  doorknobs  glinted  sym- 
metrically. The  sluggish  air  lay  like  a  hand  upon  the  very 
candle.  They  entered  a  room,  smelling  too  of  wet  plaster,  and 
even  colder  than  the  corridor;  a  sluggish  chill  almost  sub- 
stantial, as  though  the  atmosphere  between  the  dead  and 
recent  walls  were  congealing,  like  a  patent  three-minute 
dessert.  The  room  contained  a  bed,  a  dresser,  a  chair,  a  wash- 
stand;  the  bowl,  pitcher,  and  slop  basin  were  of  American 
enamel.  When  the  traveler  touched  the  bed  the  linen  was 
soundless  under  his  hand,  coarse  as  sacking,  clinging  damply 
to  the  hand  in  the  dead  air  in  which  their  two  breathings 
vaporized  in  the  faint  candle. 

The  host  set  the  candle  on  the  dresser.  "Diner,  monsieur?" 
he  said.  The  traveler  stared  down  at  the  host,  incongruous  in 
his  correct  clothes,  with  that  strained  air.  His  waxed  mous- 
taches gleamed  like  faint  bayonets  above  a  cravat  stripeG 
with  what  the  host  could  not  have  known  was  the  patterned 
coloring  of  a  Scottish  regiment.  "Manger?"  the  host  shouted. 


434  The  Wasteland 

He  chewed  violently  in  pantomime.  "Manger?"  he  roared, 
his  shadow  aping  his  gesture  as  he  pointed  toward  the  floor. 

"Yes,"  the  traveler  shouted  in  reply,  their  faces  not  a  yard 
apart.  "Yes.  Yes." 

The  host  nodded  violently,  pointed  toward  the  floor  and 
then  at  the  door,  nodded  again,  went  out. 

He  returned  below  stairs.  He  found  the  woman  now  in 
the  kitchen,  at  the  stove.  "He  will  eat,"  the  host  said. 

"I  knew  that,"  the  woman  said. 

"You  would  think  that  they  would  stay  at  home,"  the  host 
said.  "Fm  glad  I  was  not  born  of  a  race  doomed  to  a  place 
too  small  to  hold  all  of  us  at  one  time." 

"Perhaps  he  has  come  to  look  at  the  war,"  the  woman  said. 

"Of  course  he  has,"  the  host  said.  "But  he  should  have 
come  four  years  ago.  That  was  when  we  needed  Englishmen 
to  look  at  the  war." 

"He  was  too  old  to  come  then,"  the  woman  said.  "Didn't 
you  see  his  hair?" 

"Then  let  him  stay  at  home  now,"  the  host  said.  "He  is 
no  younger." 

"He  may  have  come  to  look  at  the  grave  of  his  son,"  the 
woman  said. 

"Him?"  the  host  said.  "That  one?  Fie  is  too  cold  to  ever 
have  had  a  son." 

"Perhaps  you  are  right,"  the  woman  said.  "After  all,  that 
is  his  affair.  It  is  our  affair  only  that  he  has  money." 

"That's  right,"  the  host  said.  "A  man  in  this  business,  he 
cannot  pick  and  choose." 

"He  can  pick,  though,"  the  woman  said. 

"Good!"  the  host  said.  "Very  good!  Pick!  That  is  worth 
telling  to  the  English  himself." 

"Why  not  let  him  find  it  out  when  he  leaves?" 

"Good!"  the  host  said.  "Better  still.  Good!  Oh,  good!" 

"Attention,"  the  woman  said.  "Here  he  comes." 


Victory  435 

They  listened  to  the  traveler's  steady  tramp,  then  he  ap- 
peared in  the  door.  Against  the  lesser  light  of  the  biggei 
room,  his  dark  face  and  his  white  hair  looked  like  a  kodak 
negative. 

The  table  was  set  for  two,  a  carafe  of  red  wine  at  each 
place.  As  the  traveller  seated  himself,  the  other  guest  en- 
tered and  took  the  other  place — a  small,  rat-faced  man  who 
appeared  at  first  glance  to  have  no  eyelashes  at  all.  He 
tucked  his  napkin  into  the  top  of  his  vest  and  took  up  the 
soup  ladle  (the  tureen  sat  between  them  in  the  center  of  the 
table)  and  offered  it  to  the  other.  "Faites-moi  Thonneur, 
monsieur,"  he  said.  The  other  bowed  stiffly,  accepting  the 
ladle.  The  small  man  lifted  the  cover  from  the  tureen.  "Vous 
venez  examiner  ce  scene  de  nos  victoires,  monsieur?"  he  said, 
helping  himself  in  turn.  The  other  looked  at  him.  "Monsieur 
1'Anglais  a  peut-etre  beaucoup  des  amis  qui  sont  tombes  en 
voisinage." 

"A  speak  no  French,"  the  other  said,  eating. 

The  little  man  did  not  eat.  He  held  his  yet  unwetted  spoon 
above  his  bowl.  "What  agreeable  for  me.  I  speak  the  Eng- 
leesh.  I  am  Suisse,  me.  I  speak  all  langue."  The  other  did  not 
reply.  He  ate  steadily,  not  fast.  "You  ave  return  to  see  the 
grave  of  your  galant  countreemans,  eh?  You  ave  son  here, 
perhaps,  eh?" 

"No,"  the  other  said.  He  did  not  cease  to  eat. 

"No?"  The  other  finished  his  soup  and  set  the  bowl  aside. 
He  drank  some  wine.  "What  deplorable,  that  man  who  ave," 
the  Swiss  said.  "But  it  is  finish  now.  Not?"  Again  the  other 
said  nothing.  He  was  not  looking  at  the  Swiss.  He  did  not 
seem  to  be  looking  at  anything,  with  his  gaunt  eyes,  his  rigid 
moustaches  upon  his  rigid  face.  "Me,  I  suffer  too.  All  suffer. 
But  I  tell  myself,  What  would  you?  It  is  war." 

Still  the  other  did  not  answer.  He  ate  steadily,  deliberately, 
and  finished  his  meal  and  rose  and  left  the  room.  He  lit  his 


43 6  The  Wasteland 

candle  at  the  bar,  where  the  host,  leaning  beside  a  second 
man  in  a  corduroy  coat,  lifted  a  glass  slightly  to  him.  "Au 
bon  dormir,  monsieur,"  the  host  said. 

The  traveler  looked  at  the  host,  his  face  gaunt  in  the 
candle,  his  waxed  moustaches  rigid,  his  eyes  in  shadow. 
"What?"  he  said.  "Yes.  Yes."  He  turned  and  went  toward 
the  stairs.  The  two  men  at  the  bar  watched  him,  his  stiff, 
deliberate  back. 

Ever  since  the  train  left  Arras,  the  two  women  had  been 
watching  the  other  occupant  of  the  carriage.  It  was  a  third- 
class  carriage  because  no  first-class  trains  ran  on  this  line,  and 
they  sat  with  their  shawled  heads  and  the  thick,  still  hands  of 
peasants  folded  upon  closed  baskets  on  their  laps,  watching 
the  man  sitting  opposite  them — the  white  distinction  of  the 
hair  against  the  bronze,  gaunt  face,  the  needles  of  the  mous- 
taches, the  foreign-made  suit  and  the  stick — on  a  worn  and 
greasy  wooden  seat,  looking  out  the  window.  At  first  they 
had  just  looked,  ready  to  avert  their  gaze,  but  as  the  man  did 
not  seem  to  be  aware  of  them,  they  began  to  whisper  quietly 
to  one  another  behind  their  hands.  But  the  man  did  not  seem 
to  notice  this,  so  they  soon  were  talking  in  undertone,  watch- 
ing with  bright,  alert,  curious  eyes  the  stiff,  incongruous 
figure  leaning  a  little  forward  on  the  stick,  looking  out  a  foul 
window  beyond  which  there  was  nothing  to  see  save  an 
occasional  shattered  road  and  man-high  stump  of  shattered 
tree  breaking  small  patches  of  tilled  land  whorled  with  ap- 
parent unreason  about  islands  of  earth  indicated  by  low 
signboards  painted  red,  the  islands  inscrutable,  desolate  above 
the  destruction  which  they  wombed.  Then  the  train,  slow- 
ing, ran  suddenly  among  tumbled  brick,  out  of  which  rose 
a  small  house  of  corrugated  iron  bearing  a  name  in  big  letters; 
they  watched  the  man  lean  forward. 

"See!"  one  of  the  women  said.  "His  mouth.  He  is  reading 


Victory  437 

the  name.  What  did  I  tell  you?  It  is  as  I  said.  His  son  fell 
here." 

"Then  he  had  lots  of  sons,"  the  other  woman  said.  "He  has 
read  the  name  each  time  since  we  left  Arras.  Eh!  Eh!  Him  a 
son?  That  cold?" 

"They  do  get  children,  though." 

"That  is  why  they  drink  whisky.  Otherwise  .  .  ." 

"That's  so.  They  think  of  nothing  save  money  and  eating, 
the  English." 

Presently  they  got  out;  the  train  went  on.  Then  others 
entered  the  carriage,  other  peasants  with  muddy  boots, 
carrying  baskets  or  live  or  dead  beasts;  they  in  turn  watched 
the  rigid,  motionless  figure  leaning  at  the  window  while  the 
train  ran  across  the  ruined  land  and  past  the  brick  or  iron 
stations  among  the  tumbled  ruins,  watching  his  lips  move  as 
he  read  the  names.  "Let  him  look  at  the  war,  about  which  he 
has  apparently  heard  at  last,"  they  told  one  another.  "Then 
he  can  go  home.  It  was  not  in  his  barnyard  that  it  was 
fought." 

"Nor  in  his  house,"  a  woman  said. 

II 

THE  BATTALION  stands  at  ease  in  the  rain.  It  has  been  in  rest 
billets  two  days,  equipment  has  been  replaced  and  cleaned, 
vacancies  have  been  filled  and  the  ranks  closed  up,  and  it  now 
stands  at  ease  with  the  stupid  docility  of  sheep  in  the  ceaseless 
rain,  facing  the  streaming  shape  of  the  sergeant-major. 

Presently  the  colonel  emerges  from  a  door  across  the 
square.  He  stands  in  the  door  a  moment,  fastening  his  trench 
coat,  then,  followed  by  two  A.D.C's,  he  steps  gingerly  into 
the  mud  in  polished  boots  and  approaches. 

"Para-a-a-de — 'Shun!"  the  sergeant-major  shouts.  The 
battalion  clashes,  a  single  muffled,  sullen  sound.  The  sergeant- 


438  The  Wasteland 

major  turns,  takes  a  pace  toward  the  officers,  and  salutes,  his 
stick  beneath  his  armpit.  The  colonel  jerks  his  stick  toward 
his  cap  peak. 

"Stand  at  ease,  men,"  he  says.  Again  the  battalion  clashes, 
a  single  sluggish,  trickling  sound.  The  officers  approach  the 
guide  file  of  the  first  platoon,  the  sergeant-major  falling  in 
behind  the  last  officer.  The  sergeant  of  the  first  platoon  takes 
a  pace  forward  and  salutes.  The  colonel  does  not  respond  at 
all.  The  sergeant  falls  in  behind  the  sergeant-major,  and  the 
five  of  them  pass  down  the  company  front,  staring  in  turn 
at  each  rigid,  forward-staring  face  as  they  pass  it.  First  Com- 
pany. 

The  sergeant  salutes  the  colonel's  back  and  returns  to  his 
original  position  and  comes  to  attention.  The  sergeant  of  the 
second  company  has  stepped  forward,  saluted,  is  ignored,  and 
falls  in  behind  the  sergeant-major,  and  they  pass  down  the 
second  company  front.  The  colonel's  trench  coat  sheathes 
water  onto  his  polished  boots.  Mud  from  the  earth  creeps  up 
his  boots  and  meets  the  water  and  is  channelled  by  the  water 
as  the  mud  creeps  up  the  polished  boots  again. 

Third  Company.  The  colonel  stops  before  a  soldier,  his 
trench  coat  hunched  about  his  shoulders  where  the  rain 
trickles  from  the  back  of  his  cap,  so  that  he  looks  somehow 
like  a  choleric  and  outraged  bird.  The  other  two  officers,  the 
sergeant-major  and  the  sergeant  halt  in  turn,  and  the  five  of 
them  glare  at  the  five  soldiers  whom  they  are  facing.  The  five 
soldiers  stare  rigid  and  unwinking  straight  before  them,  their 
faces  like  wooden  faces,  their  eyes  like  wooden  eyes. 

"Sergeant,"  the  colonel  says  in  his  pettish  voice,  "has  this 
man  shaved  today?" 

"Sir!"  the  sergeant  says  in  a  ringing  voice;  the  sergeant- 
major  says: 

"Did  this  man  shave  today,  Sergeant?"  and  all  five  of  them 
glare  now  at  the  soldier,  whose  rigid  gaze  seems  to  pass 


Victory  439 

through  and  beyond  them,  as  if  they  were  not  there.  "Take 
a  pace  forward  when  you  speak  in  ranks!"  the  sergeant- 
major  says. 

The  soldier,  who  has  not  spoken,  steps  out  of  ranks,  splash- 
ing a  jet  of  mud  yet  higher  up  the  colonel's  boots. 

"What  is  your  name?"  the  colonel  says. 

"024 1 86. Gray,"  the  soldier  raps  out  glibly.  The  company, 
the  battalion,  stares  straight  ahead. 

"Sir!"  the  sergeant-major  thunders. 

"Sir-r,"  the  soldier  says. 

"Did  you  shave  this  morning?"  the  colonel  says. 

"Nae,  sir-r." 

"Why  not?" 

"A  dinna  shave,  sir-r." 

"You  dont  shave?" 

"A  am  nae  auld  enough  tae  shave." 

"Sir!"  the  sergeant-major  thunders. 

"Sir-r,"  the  soldier  says. 

"You  are  not  .  .  ."  The  colonel's  voice  dies  somewhere 
behind  his  choleric  glare,  the  trickling  water  from  his  cap 
peak.  "Take  his  name,  Sergeant-major,"  he  says,  passing  on. 

The  battalion  stares  rigidly  ahead.  Presently  it  sees  the 
colonel,  the  two  officers  and  the  sergeant-major  reappear  in 
single  file.  At  the  proper  place  the  sergeant-major  halts  and 
salutes  the  colonel's  back.  The  colonel  jerks  his  stick  hand 
again  and  goes  on,  followed  by  the  two  officers,  at  a  trot 
toward  the  door  from  which  he  had  emerged. 

The  sergeant-major  faces  the  battalion  again.  "Para-a-a- 
de — "  he  shouts.  An  indistinguishable  movement  passes  from 
rank  to  rank,  an  indistinguishable  precursor  of  that  damp  arid 
sullen  clash  which  dies  borning.  The  sergeant-major's  stick 
has  come  down  from  his  armpit;  he  now  leans  on  it,  as  officers 
do.  For  a  time  his  eye  roves  along  the  battalion  front. 

"Sergeant  Cunninghame!"  he  says  at  last. 


440  The  Wasteland 

"Sir!" 

"Did  you  take  that  man's  name?" 

There  is  silence  for  a  moment — a  little  more  than  a  short 
moment,  a  little  less  than  a  long  one.  Then  the  sergeant  says: 
"What  man,  sir?" 

"You,  soldier!"  the  sergeant-major  says. 

The  battalion  stands  rigid.  The  rain  lances  quietly  into  the 
mud  between  it  and  the  sergeant-major  as  though  it  were 
too  spent  to  either  hurry  or  cease. 

"You  soldier  that  dont  shave!"  the  sergeant-major  says. 

"Gray,  sir! "  the  sergeant  says. 

"Gray.  Double  out  'ere." 

The  man  Gray  appears  without  haste  and  tramps  stolidly 
before  the  battalion,  his  kilts  dark  and  damp  and  heavy  as  a 
wet  horse-blanket.  He  halts,  facing  the  sergeant-major. 

"Why  didn't  you  shave  this  morning?"  the  sergeant-major 
says. 

"A  am  nae  auld  enough  tae  shave,"  Gray  says. 

"Sir!"  the  sergeant-major  says. 

Gray  stares  rigidly  beyond  the  sergeant-major's  shoulder. 

"Say  sir  when  addressing  a  first-class  warrant  officer!"  the 
sergeant-major  says.  Gray  stares  doggedly  past  his  shoulder, 
his  face  beneath  his  vizorless  bonnet  as  oblivious  of  the  cold 
lances  of  rain  as  though  it  were  granite.  The  sergeant-major 
raises  his  voice: 

"Sergeant  Cunninghame!" 

"Sir!" 

"Take  this  man's  name  for  insubordination  also." 

"Very  good,  sir! " 

The  sergeant-major  looks  at  Gray  again.  "And  I'll  see  that 
you  get  the  penal  battalion,  my  man.  Fall  in!" 

Gray  turns  without  haste  and  returns  to  his  place  in  ranks, 
the  sergeant-major  watching  him.  The  sergeant-major  raises 
his  voice  again: 


Victory  441 

"Sergeant  Cunninghame!" 

"Sir!" 

"You  did  not  take  that  man's  name  when  ordered.  Let  that 
happen  again  and  you'll  be  for  it  yourself." 

"Very  good,  sir!" 

"Carry  on!"  the  sergeant-major  says. 

"But  why  did  ye  no  shave?"  the  corporal  asked  him.  They 
were  back  in  billets:  a  stone  barn  with  leprous  walls,  where 
no  light  entered,  squatting  in  the  ammoniac  air  on  wet  straw 
about  a  reeking  brazier.  "Ye  kenned  we  were  for  inspection 
thae  mor-rn." 

"A  am  nae  auld  enough  tae  shave,"  Gray  said. 

"But  ye  kenned  thae  colonel  would  mar-rk  ye  on  parade." 

"A  am  nae  auld  enough  tae  shave,"  Gray  repeated  dog- 
gedly and  without  heat. 

Ill 

"FOR  TWO  HUNDRED  YEARS,"  Matthew  Gray  said,  "there's 
never  a  day,  except  Sunday,  has  passed  but  there  is  a  hull 
rising  on  Clyde  or  a  hull  going  out  of  Clydemouth  with  a 
Gray-driven  nail  in  it."  He  looked  at  young  Alec  across  his 
steel  spectacles,  his  neck  bowed.  "And  not  excepting  their 
godless  Sabbath  hammering  and  sawing  either.  Because  if  a 
hull  could  be  built  in  a  day,  Grays  could  build  it,"  he  added 
with  dour  pride.  "And  now,  when  you  are  big  enough  to 
go  down  to  the  yards  with  your  grandadder  and  me  and 
take  a  man's  place  among  men,  to  be  trusted  manlike  with 
hammer  and  saw  yersel." 

"Whisht,  Matthew,"  old  Alec  said.  "The  lad  can  saw  as 
straight  a  line  and  drive  as  mony  a  nail  a  day  as  yersel  or 
even  me." 

Matthew  paid  his  father  no  attention.  He  continued  to 
speak  his  slow,  considered  words,  watching  his  oldest  son 


442  The  Wasteland 

across  the  spectacles.  "And  with  John  Wesley  not  old 
enough  by  two  years,  and  wee  Matthew  by  ten,  and  your 
grandfather  an  auld  man  will  soon  be — " 

"Whisht,"  old  Alec  said.  "I'm  no  but  sixty-eight.  Will  you 
be  telling  the  lad  he'll  make  his  bit  journey  to  London  and 
come  back  to  find  me  in  the  parish  house,  mayhap?  'Twill 
be  over  by  Christmastide." 

"Christmasride  or  no,"  Matthew  said,  "a  Gray,  a  ship- 
wright, has  no  business  at  an  English  war." 

"Whisht  ye,"  old  Alec  said.  He  rose  and  went  to  the  chim- 
ney cupboard  and  returned,  carrying  a  box.  It  was  of  wood, 
dark  and  polished  with  age,  the  corners  bound  with  iron,  and 
fitted  with  an  enormous  iron  lock  which  any  child  with  a 
hairpin  could  have  solved.  From  his  pocket  he  took  an  iron 
key  almost  as  big  as  the  lock.  He  opened  the  box  and  lifted 
carefully  out  a  small  velvet-covered  jeweler's  box  and  opened 
it  in  turn.  On  the  satin  lining  lay  a  medal,  a  bit  of  bronze  on 
a  crimson  ribbon:  a  Victoria  Cross.  "I  kept  the  hulls  going  out 
of  Clydemouth  while  your  uncle  Simon  was  getting  this  bit 
of  brass  from  the  Queen,"  old  Alec  said.  "I  heard  naught  of 
complaint.  And  if  need  be,  I'll  keep  them  going  out  while 
Alec  serves  the  Queen  a  bit  himsel.  Let  the  lad  go,"  he  said. 
He  put  the  medal  back  into  the  wooden  box  and  locked  it. 
"A  bit  fighting  winna  hurt  the  lad.  If  I  were  his  age,  or  yours 
either,  for  that  matter,  I'd  gang  mysel.  Alec,  lad,  hark  ye. 
Ye'll  see  if  they'll  no  take  a  hale  lad  of  sixty-eight  and  I'll 
gang  wi  ye  and  leave  the  auld  folk  like  Matthew  to  do  the 
best  they  can.  Nay,  Matthew;  dinna  ye  thwart  the  lad;  have 
no  the  Grays  ever  served  the  Queen  in  her  need?" 

So  young  Alec  went  to  enlist,  descending  the  hill  on  a 
weekday  in  his  Sunday  clothes,  with  a  New  Testament  and 
a  loaf  of  homebaked  bread  tied  in  a  handkerchief.  And  this 
was  the  last  day's  work  which  old  Alec  ever  did,  for  soon 
after  that,  one  morning  Matthew  descended  the  hill  to  the 


Victory  443 

shipyard  alone,  leaving  old  Alec  at  home.  And  after  that,  on 
the  sunny  days  (and  sometimes  on  the  bad  days  too,  until  his 
daughter-in-law  found  him  and  drove  him  back  into  the 
house)  he  would  sit  shawled  in  a  chair  on  the  porch,  gazing 
south  and  eastward,  calling  now  and  then  to  his  son's  wife 
within  the  house:  "Hark  now.  Do  you  hear  them?  The 
guns." 

"I  hear  nothing,'7  the  daughter-in-law  would  say.  "It's  only 
the  sea  at  Kinkeadbight.  Come  into  the  house,  now.  Matthew 
will  be  displeased." 

"Whisht,  woman.  Do  you  think  there  is  a  Gray  in  the 
world  could  let  off  a  gun  and  me  not  know  the  sound  of  it?" 

They  had  a  letter  from  him  shortly  after  he  enlisted,  from 
England,  in  which  he  said  that  being  a  soldier,  England,  was 
different  from  being  a  shipwright,  Clydeside,  and  that  he 
would  write  again  later.  Which  he  did,  each  month  or  so, 
writing  that  soldiering  was  different  from  building  ships  and 
that  it  was  still  raining.  Then  they  did  not  hear  from  him  for 
seven  months.  But  his  mother  and  father  continued  to  write 
him  a  joint  letter  on  the  first  Monday  of  each  month,  letters 
almost  identical  with  the  previous  one,  the  previous  dozen: 

We  are  well.  Ships  are  going  out  of  Clyde  faster  than  they 
can  sink  them.  You  still  have  the  Book? 

This  would  be  in  his  father's  slow,  indomitable  hand.  Then, 
in  his  mother's: 

Are  you  'well?  Do  you  need  anything?  Jessie  and  I  are  knit- 
ting the  stockings  and  will  send  them.  Alec,  Alec. 

He  received  this  one  during  the  seven  months,  during  his 
term  in  the  penal  battalion,  forwarded  to  him  by  his  old 
corporal,  since  he  had  not  told  his  people  of  his  changed  life. 
He  answered  it,  huddled  among  his  fellow  felons,  squatting 


444  The  Wastelana 

in  the  mud  with  newspapers  buttoned  inside  his  tunic  and 
his  head  and  feet  wrapped  in  strips  of  torn  blanket: 

/  am  'well.  Yes  I  still  have  the  Book  (not  telling  them  that  his 
platoon  was  using  it  to  light  tobacco  with  and  that  they  were 
now  well  beyond  Lamentations).  It  still  rains.  Love  to  Gran- 
dadder  and  Jessie  and  Matthew  and  John  Wesley. 

Then  his  time  in  the  penal  battalion  was  up.  He  returned 
to  his  old  company,  his  old  platoon,  finding  some  new  faces, 
and  a  letter: 

We  are  'well.  Ships  are  going  out  of  Clyde  yet.  You  have  a 
new  sister.  Your  Mother  is  well. 

He  folded  the  letter  and  put  it  away.  "A  see  mony  new 
faces  in  thae  battalion,"  he  said  to  the  corporal.  "We  ha  a 
new  sair-rgeant-major  too,  A  doot  not?" 

"Naw,"  the  corporal  said.  "  'Tis  the  same  one."  He  was 
looking  at  Gray,  his  gaze  intent,  speculative;  his  face  cleared. 
"Ye  ha  shaved  thae  mor-rn,"  he  said. 

"Ay,"  Gray  said.  "Am  auld  enough  tae  shave  noo." 

That  was  the  night  on  which  the  battalion  was  to  go  up  to 
Arras.  It  was  to  move  at  midnight,  so  he  answered  the  letter 
at  once: 

/  am  well.  Love  to  Grandadder  and  Jessie  and  Matthew  and 
John  Wesley  and  the  baby. 

"Morning!  Morning!"  The  General,  lap-robed  and 
hooded,  leans  from  his  motor  and  waves  his  gloved  hand  and 
shouts  cheerily  to  them  as  they  slog  past  the  car  on  the 
Bapaume  road,  taking  the  ditch  to  pass. 

"A's  a  cheery  auld  card,"  a  voice  says. 

"Awfficers,"  a  second  drawls;  he  falls  to  cursing  as  he  slips 
in  the  greaselike  mud,  trying  to  cling  to  the  crest  of  the 
kneedeep  ditch. 


Victory  445 

"Aweel,"  a  third  says,  "thae  awfficers  wud  gang  tae  thae 
war-r  too,  A  doot  not." 

"Why  dinna  they  gang  then?"  a  fourth  says.  "Thae  war-r 
is  no  back  that  way." 

Platoon  by  platoon  they  slip  and  plunge  into  the  ditch  and 
drag  their  heavy  feet  out  of  the  clinging  mud  and  pass  the 
halted  car  and  crawl  terrifically  onto  the  crown  of  the  road 
again:  "A  says  tae  me,  a  says:  'Fritz  has  a  new  gun  that  will 
carry  to  Par-ris,'  a  says,  and  A  says  tae  him:  *  'Tis  nawthin: 
a  has  one  that  will  hit  our  Cor-rps  Headquar-rters.'  " 

"Morning!  Morning!"  The  General  continues  to  wave 
his  glove  and  shout  cheerily  as  the  battalion  detours  into  the 
ditch  and  heaves  itself  back  onto  the  road  again. 

They  are  in  the  trench.  Until  the  first  rifle  explodes  in  their 
faces,  not  a  shot  has  been  fired.  Gray  is  the  third  man.  Dur- 
ing all  the  while  that  they  crept  between  flares  from  shell- 
hole  to  shellhole,  he  has  been  working  himself  nearer  to  the 
sergeant-major  and  the  Officer;  in  the  glare  of  that  first  rifle 
he  can  see  the  gap  in  the  wire  toward  which  the  Officer  was 
leading  them,  the  moiled  rigid  glints  of  the  wire  where  bul- 
lets have  nicked  the  mud  and  rust  from  it,  and  against  the 
glare  the  tall,  leaping  shape  of  the  sergeant-major.  Then 
Gray,  too,  springs  bayonet  first  into  the  trench  full  of  grunt- 
ing shouts  and  thudding  blows. 

Flares  go  up  by  dozens  now,  in  the  corpse  glare  Gray  sees 
the  sergeant-major  methodically  tossing  grenades  into  the 
next  traverse.  He  runs  toward  him,  passing  the  Officer  lean- 
ing, bent  double,  against  the  fire  step.  The  sergeant-major 
has  vanished  beyond  the  traverse.  Gray  follows  and  comes 
upon  the  sergeant-major.  Holding  the  burlap  curtain  aside 
with  one  hand,  the  sergeant-major  is  in  the  act  of  tossing  a 
grenade  into  a  dugout  as  if  he  might  be  tossing  an  orange 
hull  into  a  cellar. 


446  The  Wasteland 

The  sergeant-major  turns  in  the  rocket  glare.  "  'Tis  you, 
Gray,"  he  says.  The  earth-muffled  bomb  thuds;  the  sergeant- 
major  is  in  the  act  of  catching  another  bomb  from  the  sack 
about  his  neck  as  Gray's  bayonet  goes  into  his  throat.  The 
sergeant-major  is  a  big  man.  He  falls  backward,  holding  the 
rifle  barrel  v/ith  both  hands  against  his  throat,  his  teeth  glar- 
ing, pulling  Gray  with  him.  Gray  clings  to  the  rifle.  He  tries 
to  shake  the  speared  body  on  the  bayonet  as  he  would  shake 
a  rat  on  an  umbrella  rib. 

He  frees  the  bayonet.  The  sergeant-major  falls.  Gray 
reverses  the  rifle  and  hammers  its  butt  into  the  sergeant- 
major's  face,  but  the  trench  floor  is  too  soft  to  supply  any 
resistance.  He  glares  about.  His  gaze  falls  upon  a  duckboard 
upended  in  the  mud.  He  drags  it  free  and  slips  it  beneath  the 
sergeant-major's  head  and  hammers  the  face  with  his  rifle- 
butt.  Behind  him  in  the  first  traverse  the  Officer  is  shouting: 
•'Blow  your  whistle,  Sergeant-major!" 

IV 

IN  THE  CITATION  it  told  how  Private  Gray,  on  a  night  raid, 
one  of  four  survivors,  following  the  disablement  of  the 
Officer  and  the  death  of  all  the  N.C.O.'s,  took  command  of 
the  situation  and  (the  purpose  of  the  expedition  was  a  quick 
raid  for  prisoners) ;  held  a  foothold  in  the  enemy's  front  line 
until  a  supporting  attack  arrived  and  consolidated  the  posi- 
tion. The  Officer  told  how  he  ordered  the  men  back  out, 
ordering  them  to  leave  him  and  save  themselves,  and  how 
Gray  appeared  with  a  German  machine  gun  from  somewhere 
and,  while  his  three  companions  built  a  barricade,  overcame 
the  Officer  and  took  from  him  his  Very  pistol  and  fired  the 
colored  signal  which  called  for  the  attack;  all  so  quickly  that 
support  arrived  before  the  enemy  could  counterattack  or  put 
down  a  barrage. 


Victory  447 

It  is  doubtful  if  his  people  ever  saw  the  citation  at  all.  Any- 
way, the  letters  which  he  received  from  them  during  his 
sojourn  in  hospital,  the  tenor  of  them,  were  unchanged:  "We 
are  well.  Ships  are  still  going  out." 

His  next  letter  home  was  once  more  months  late.  He  wrote 
it  when  he  was  sitting  up  again,  in  London: 

/  have  been  sick  but  I  am  better  noiv.  I  have  a  ribbon  like  in 
the  box  but  not  all  red.  The  Queen  ivas  there.  Love  to  Gran- 
dadder  and  Jessie  and  Mattheiv  and  John  Wesley  and  the 
baby. 

The  reply  was  written  on  Friday: 

Your  mother  is  glad  that  you  are  better.  Your  grandfather  is 
dead.  The  baby's  name  is  Elizabeth.  We  are  well.  Your 
mother  sends  her  love. 

His  next  letter  was  three  months  later,  in  winter  again: 

My  hurt  is  well.  1  am  going  to  a  school  for  officers.  Love  to 
Jessie  and  Matthew  and  John  Wesley  and  Elizabeth. 

Matthew  Gray  pondered  over  this  letter  for  a  long  while; 
so  long  that  the  reply  was  a  week  late,  written  on  the  second 
Monday  instead  of  the  first.  He  wrote  it  carefully,  waiting 
until  his  family  was  in  bed.  It  was  such  a  long  letter,  or  he 
had  been  at  it  so  long,  that  after  a  time  his  wife  came  into  the 
room  in  her  nightdress. 

"Go  back  to  bed,"  he  told  her.  "I'll  be  coming  soon.  'Tis 
something  to  be  said  to  the  lad." 

When  at  last  he  laid  the  pen  down  and  sat  back  to  reread 
the  letter,  it  was  a  long  one,  written  out  slowly  and  deliber- 
ately and  without  retraction  or  blot: 

. .  .  your  bit  ribbon  . . .  for  that  way  lies  vainglory  and  pride. 
The  pride  and  vainglory  of  going  for  an  officer.  Never  mis- 


448  The  Wasteland 

call  your  birth,  Alec.  You  are  not  a  gentleman.  You  are  a 
Scottish  shipwright.  If  your  grandfather  'were  here  he  would 
not  be  last  to  tell  you  so.  .  .  .  We  are  glad  your  hurt  is  well. 
Your  mother  sends  her  love. 

He  sent  home  the  medal,  and  his  photograph  in  the  new 
tunic  with  the  pips  and  ribbon  and  the  barred  cuffs.  But  he 
did  not  go  home  himself.  He  returned  to  Flanders  in  the 
spring,  with  poppies  blowing  in  the  churned  beet-  and  cab- 
bage-fields. When  his  leaves  came,  he  spent  them  in  London, 
in  the  haunts  of  officers,  not  telling  his  people  that  he  had 
any  leave. 

He  still  had  the  Book.  Occasionally  he  came  upon  it  among 
his  effects  and  opened  it  at  the  jagged  page  where  his  life 
had  changed:  .  . .  and  a  voice  said,  Peter,  raise  thyself;  kill — 

Often  his  batman  would  watch  him  as,  unawares  and  ob- 
livious, he  turned  the  Book  and  mused  upon  the  jagged  page 
— the  ranker,  the  gaunt,  lonely  man  with  a  face  that  belied 
his  years  or  lack  of  them:  a  sobriety,  a  profound  and  mature 
calm,  a  grave  and  deliberate  conviction  of  expression  and 
gesture  ("like  a  mout  be  Haig  hissel,"  the  batman  said) — 
watching  him  at  his  clean  table,  writing  steadily  and  slowly, 
his  tongue  in  his  cheek  as  a  child  writes: 

/  am  well.  It  has  not  rained  in  a  fortnight.  Love  to  Jessie  and 
Matthew  and  John  Wesley  and  Elizabeth. 

Four  days  ago  the  battalion  came  down  from  the  lines.  It 
has  lost  its  major  and  two  captains  and  most  of  the  subalterns, 
so  that  now  the  remaining  captain  is  major,  and  two  sub- 
alterns and  a  sergeant  have  the  companies.  Meanwhile,  re- 
placements have  come  up,  the  ranks  are  filled,  and  the 
battalion  is  going  in  again  tomorrow.  So  today  K  Company 
stands  with  ranks  open  for  inspection  while  the  subaltern- 
captain  (his  name  is  Gray)  moves  slowly  along  each  platoon 
front. 


Victory  449 

He  passes  from  man  to  man,  slowly,  thoroughly,  the  ser- 
geant behind  him.  He  stops. 

"Where  is  your  trenching  tool?"  he  says. 

"Blawn — "  the  soldier  begins.  Then  he  ceases,  staring 
rigidly  before  him. 

"Blawn  out  of  your  pack,  eh?"  the  captain  finishes  for 
him.  "Since  when?  What  battles  have  ye  taken  par-rt  in 
since  four  days?" 

The  soldier  stares  rigidly  across  the  drowsy  street.  The 
captain  moves  on.  "Take  his  name,  Sergeant." 

He  moves  on  to  the  second  platoon,  to  the  third.  He  halts 
again.  He  looks  the  soldier  up  and  down. 

"What  is  your  name?" 

"010801  McLan,  sir-r." 

"Replacement?" 

"Replacement,  sir-r." 

The  captain  moves  on.  "Take  his  name,  Sergeant.  Rifle's 
filthy." 

The  sun  is  setting.  The  village  rises  in  black  silhouette 
against  the  sunset;  the  river  gleams  in  mirrored  fire.  The 
bridge  across  the  river  is  a  black  arch  upon  which  slowly  and 
like  figures  cut  from  black  paper,  men  are  moving. 

The  party  crouches  in  the  roadside  ditch  while  the  captain 
and  the  sergeant  peer  cautiously  across  the  parapet  of  the 
road.  "Do  ye  make  them  out?"  the  captain  says  in  a  low 
voice. 

"Huns,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers.  "A  ken  their-r  hel- 
mets." 

Presently  the  column  has  crossed  the  bridge.  The  captain 
and  the  sergeant  crawl  back  into  the  ditch,  where  the  party 
crouches,  among  them  a  wounded  man  with  a  bandaged  head. 
"Keep  yon  man  quiet,  now,"  the  captain  says. 

He  leads  the  way  along  the  ditch  until  they  reach  the  out- 


450  The  Wasteland 

skirts  of  the  village.  Here  they  are  out  of  the  sun,  and  here 
they  sit  quietly  beneath  a  wall,  surrounding  the  wounded 
man,  while  the  captain  and  the  sergeant  again  crawl  away. 
They  return  in  five  minutes.  "Fix  bayonets,"  the  sergeant 
says  in  a  low  voice.  "Quiet,  now." 

"Wull  A  stay  wi  thae  hur-rt  lad,  Sair-rgent?"  one  whispers, 

"Nay,"  the  sergeant  says.  "A'll  tak's  chance  wi  us.  For- 
rard." 

They  steal  quietly  along  the  wall,  behind  the  captain.  The 
wall  approaches  at  right  angles  to  the  street,  the  road  which 
crosses  the  bridge.  The  captain  raises  his  hand.  They  halt 
and  watch  him  as  he  peers  around  the  corner.  They  are  op- 
posite the  bridgehead.  It  and  the  road  are  deserted;  the  village 
dreams  quietly  in  the  setting  sun.  Against  the  sky  beyond  the 
village  the  dust  of  the  retreating  column  hangs,  turning  to 
rose  and  gold. 

Then  they  hear  a  sound,  a  short,  guttural  word.  Not  ten 
yards  away  and  behind  a  ruined  wall  leveled  breast-high  and 
facing  the  bridge,  four  men  squat  about  a  machine  gun.  The 
captain  raises  his  hand  again.  They  grasp  their  rifles:  a  rush 
of  hobnails  on  cobblestones,  a  cry  of  astonishment  cut  sharply 
off;  blows,  short,  hard  breaths,  curses;  not  a  shot. 

The  man  with  the  bandaged  head  begins  to  laugh,  shrilly, 
until  someone  hushes  him  with  a  hand  that  tastes  like  brass» 
Under  the  captain's  direction  they  bash  in  the  door  of  the 
house  and  drag  the  gun  and  the  four  bodies  into  it.  They 
hoist  the  gun  upstairs  and  set  it  up  in  a  window  looking  down 
upon  the  bridgehead.  The  sun  sinks  further,  the  shadows  fall 
long  and  quiet  across  village  and  river.  The  man  with  the 
bandaged  head  babbles  to  himself. 

Another  column  swings  up  the  road,  dogged  and  orderly 
beneath  coalhod  helmets.  It  crosses  the  bridge  and  passes  on 
through  the  village.  A  party  detaches  itself  from  the  rear  of 
the  column  and  splits  into  three  squads.  Two  of  them  have 


Victory  45 1 

machine  guns,  which  they  set  up  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
street,  the  near  one  utilizing  the  barricade  behind  which  the 
other  gun  had  been  captured.  The  third  squad  returns  to  the 
bridge,  carrying  sappers'  tools  and  explosive.  The  sergeant 
tells  off  six  of  the  nineteen  men,  who  descend  the  stairs 
silently.  The  captain  remains  with  the  gun  in  the  window. 

Again  there  is  a  brief  rush,  a  scuffle,  blows.  From  the  win- 
dow the  captain  sees  the  heads  of  the  machine-gun  crew 
across  the  street  turn,  then  the  muzzle  of  the  gun  swings, 
firing.  The  captain  rakes  them  once  with  his  gun,  then  he 
sweeps  with  it  the  party  on  the  bridge,  watching  it  break 
like  a  covey  of  quail  for  the  nearest  wall.  The  captain  holds 
the  gun  on  them.  They  wilt  running  and  dot  the  white  road 
and  become  motionless.  Then  he  swings  the  gun  back  to  the 
gun  across  the  street.  It  ceases. 

He  gives  another  order.  The  remaining  men,  except  the 
man  with  the  bandage,  run  down  the  stairs.  Half  of  them 
3top  at  the  gun  beneath  the  window  and  drag  it  around.  The 
others  dash  on  across  the  street,  toward  the  second  gun. 
They  are  halfway  across  when  the  other  gun  rattles.  The 
running  men  plunge  as  one  in  midstep.  Their  kilts  whip  for- 
ward and  bare  their  pale  thighs.  The  gun  rakes  across  the 
doorway  where  the  others  are  freeing  the  first  gun  of  bodies. 
As  the  captain  sweeps  his  gun  down  again,  dust  puffs  from 
the  left  side  of  the  window,  his  gun  rings  metallically,  some- 
thing sears  along  his  arm  and  across  his  ribs,  dust  puffs  from 
the  right  side  of  the  window.  He  rakes  the  other  gun  again. 
It  ceases.  He  continues  to  fire  into  the  huddled  clump  about 
it  long  after  the  gun  has  ceased. 

The  dark  earth  bites  into  the  sun's  rim.  The  street  is  now 
all  in  shadow;  a  final  level  ray  comes  into  the  room,  and  fades. 
Behind  him  in  the  twilight  the  wounded  man  laughs,  then 
his  laughter  sinks  into  a  quiet  contented  gibberish. 

Just  before  dark  another  column  crosses  the  bridge.  There 


452  The  Wasteland 

is  still  enough  light  for  it  to  be  seen  that  these  troops  wear 
khaki  and  that  their  helmets  are  flat.  But  likely  there  is  no 
one  to  see,  because  when  a  par^y  mounted  to  the  second 
story  and  found  the  captain  propped  in  the  window  beside 
the  cold  gun,  they  thought  that  he  was  dead. 

This  time  Matthew  Gray  saw  the  citation.  Someone 
clipped  it  from  the  Gazette  and  sent  it  to  him,  and  he  sent  it 
in  turn  to  his  son  in  the  hospital,  with  a  letter: 

.  .  .  Since  you  must  go  to  a  'war  we  are  glad  that  you  are 
doing  well  in  it.  Your  mother  thinks  that  you  have  done  your 
part  and  that  you  should  come  home.  But  women  do  not 
understand  such  things.  But  I  myself  think  that  it  is  time 
they  stopped  fighting.  What  is  the  good  in  the  high  wages 
when  food  is  so  high  that  there  is  profit  -for  none  save  the 
profiteers.  When  a  war  gets  to  where  the  battles  do  not  even 
prosper  the  people  who  win  them,  it  is  time  to  stop. 


V 

IN  THE  BED  NEXT  HIS,  and  later  in  the  chair  next  his  on  the 
long  glassed  veranda,  there  was  a  subaltern.  They  used  to 
talk.  Or  rather,  the  subaltern  talked  while  Gray  listened.  He 
talked  of  peace,  of  what  he  would  do  when  it  was  over,  talk- 
ing  as  if  it  were  about  finished,  as  if  it  would  not  last  past 
Christmas. 

"We'll  be  back  out  there  by  Christmas,"  Gray  said. 

"Gas  cases?  They  don't  send  gas  cases  out  again.  They 
have  to  be  cured." 

"We  will  be  cured." 

"But  not  in  time.  It  will  be  over  by  Christmas.  It  can't 
last  another  year.  You  don't  believe  me,  do  you?  Sometimes 
I  believe  you  want  to  go  back.  But  it  will  be.  It  will  be  fin- 
ished by  Christmas,  and  then  I'm  off,  Canada.  Nothing  at 


Victory  453 

home  for  us  now."  He  looked  at  the  other,  at  the  gaunt, 
wasted  figure  with  almost  white  hair,  lying  with  closed  eyes 
in  the  fall  sunlight.  "You'd  better  come  with  me." 

"I'll  meet  you  in  Givenchy  on  Christmas  Day,"  Gray  said. 

But  he  didn't.  He  was  in  the  hospital  on  the  eleventh  of 
November,  hearing  the  bells,  and  he  was  still  there  on  Christ- 
mas Day,  where  he  received  a  letter  from  home: 

You  can  come  on  home  now.  It  'will  not  be  too  soon  now. 
They  will  need  ships  worse  than  ever  now,  now  that  the 
pride  and  the  vainglory  have  worn  themselves  out. 

The  medical  officer  greeted  him  cheerfully.  "Dammit, 
stuck  here,  when  I  know  a  place  in  Devon  where  I  could 
hear  a  nightingale,  by  jove."  He  thumped  Gray's  chest.  "Not 
much:  just  a  bit  of  a  murmur.  Give  you  no  trouble,  if  you'll 
stop  away  from  wars  from  now  on.  Might  keep  you  from 
getting  in  again,  though."  He  waited  for  Gray  to  laugh,  but 
Gray  didn't  laugh.  "Well,  it's  all  finished  now,  damn  them. 
Sign  here,  will  you."  Gray  signed.  "Forget  it  as  quickly  as 
it  began,  I  hope.  Well — "  He  extended  his  hand,  smiling  his 
antiseptic  smile.  "Cheer-O,  Captain.  And  good  luck." 

Matthew  Gray,  descending  the  hill  at  seven  oclock  in  the 
morning,  saw  the  man,  the  tall,  hospital-colored  man  in  city 
clothing  and  carrying  a  stick,  and  stopped. 

"Alec?"  he  said.  "Alec."  They  shook  hands.  "I  could  not— 
I  did  not  .  .  ."  He  looked  at  his  son,  at  the  white  hair,  the 
waxed  moustaches.  "You  have  two  ribbons  now  for  the  box, 
you  have  written."  Then  Matthew  turned  back  up  the  hill  at 
seven  oclock  in  the  morning.  "We'll  go  to  your  mother." 

Then  Alec  Gray  reverted  for  an  instant.  Perhaps  he  had 
not  progressed  as  far  as  he  thought,  or  perhaps  he  had  been 
climbing  a  hill,  and  the  return  was  not  a  reversion  so  much 


454  The  Wasteland 

as  something  like  an  avalanche  waiting  the  pebble,  momen- 
tary though  it  was  to  be.  "The  shipyard,  Father." 

His  father  strode  firmly  on,  carrying  his  lunchpail.  "  'Twill 
wait,"  he  said.  "We'll  go  to  your  mother." 

His  mother  met  him  at  the  door.  Behind  her  he  saw  young 
Matthew,  a  man  now,  and  John  Wesley,  and  Elizabeth  whom 
he  had  never  seen.  "You  did  not  wear  your  uniform  home," 
young  Matthew  said. 

"No/  he  said.  "No,  I—" 

"Your  mother  had  wanted  to  see  you  in  your  regimentals 
and  all,"  his  father  said. 

"No,"  his  mother  said.  "No!  Never!  Never!" 

"Hush,  Annie/ '  his  father  said.  "Being  a  captain  now,  with 
two  ribbons  now  for  the  box.  This  is  false  modesty.  Ye  hae 
shown  course;  ye  should  have —  But  'tis  of  no  moment:  the 
proper  unifor  -  for  a  Gray  is  an  overall  and  a  hammer." 

"Ay,  sir,"  Alec  said,  who  had  long  since  found  out  that 
no  man  has  courage  but  that  any  man  may  blunder  blindly 
into  valor  as  one  stumbles  into  an  open  manhole  in  the  street. 

He  did  not  tell  his  father  until  that  night,  after  his  mother 
and  the  children  had  gone  to  bed.  "I  am  going  back  to  Eng- 
land. I  have  work  promised  there." 

"Ah,"  his  father  said.  "At  Bristol,  perhaps?  They  build 
ships  there." 

The  lamp  glowed,  touching  with  faint  gleams  the  black 
and  polished  surface  of  the  box  on  the  mantel-shelf.  There 
was  a  wind  getting  up,  hollowing  out  the  sky  like  a  dark 
bowl,  carving  house  and  hill  and  headland  out  of  dark  space. 
"  'Twill  be  blowing  out  yon  the  night,"  his  father  said. 

"There  are  other  things,"  Alec  said.  "I  have  made  friends, 
you  see." 

His  father  removed  the  iron-rimmed  spectacles.  "You  have 
made  friends.  Officers  and  such,  I  doubt  not?" 


Victory  455 

"Yes,  sir." 

"And  friends  are  good  to  have,  to  sit  about  the  hearth  of 
nights  and  talk  with.  But  beyond  that,  only  them  that  love 
you  will  bear  your  faults.  You  must  love  a  man  well  to  put 
up  with  all  his  trying  ways,  Alec." 

"But  they  are  not  that  sort  of  friends,  sir.  They  are  .  .  ." 
He  ceased.  He  did  not  look  at  his  father.  Matthew  sat,  slowly 
polishing  the  spectacles  with  his  thumb.  They  could  hear  the 
wind.  "If  this  fails,  I'll  come  back  to  the  shipyard." 

His  father  watched  him  gravely,  polishing  the  spectacles 
slowly.  "Ship wrights  are  not  made  like  that,  Alec.  To  fear 
God,  to  do  your  work  like  it  was  your  own  hull  you  were 
putting  the  ribs  in  . . ."  He  moved.  "We'll  see  what  the  Book 
will  say."  He  replaced  the  glasses.  On  the  table  was  a  heavy, 
brass-bound  Bible.  He  opened  it;  the  words  seemed  to  him 
to  rise  to  meet  him  from  the  page.  Yet  he  read  them,  aloud: 
".  .  .  and  the  captains  of  thousands  and  the  captains  of  ten 
thousands  ...  A  paragraph  of  pride.  He  faced  his  son,  bowing 
his  neck  to  see  across  the  glasses.  "You  will  go  to  London, 
then?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  Alec  said. 


VI 

His  POSITION  WAS  WAITING.  It  was  in  an  office.  He  had  already 
had  cards  made:  Captain  A.  Gray,  M.C.,  D.S.M.,  and  on 
his  return  to  London  he  joined  the  Officers'  Association, 
donating  to  the  support  of  the  widows  and  orphans. 

He  had  rooms  in  the  proper  quarter,  and  he  would  walk 
to  and  from  the  office,  with  his  cards  and  his  waxed  mous- 
taches, his  sober  correct  clothes  and  his  stick  carried  in  a 
manner  inimitable,  at  once  jaunty  and  unobtrusive,  giving 
his  coppers  to  blind  and  maimed  in  Piccadilly,  asking  of  them 
the  names  of  their  regiments.  Once  a  month  he  wrote  home: 


456  The  Wasteland 

I  am  'well.  Love  to  Jessie  and  Matthew  and  John  Wesley  and 
Elizabeth. 

During  that  first  year  Jessie  was  married.  He  sent  her  a 
gift  of  plate,  stinting  himself  a  little  to  do  so,  drawings  from 
his  savings.  He  was  saving,  not  against  old  age;  he  believed 
too  firmly  in  the  Empire  to  do  that,  who  had  surrendered 
completely  to  the  Empire  like  a  woman,  a  bride.  He  was 
saving  against  the  time  when  he  would  recross  the  Channel 
among  the  dead  scenes  of  his  lost  and  found  life. 

That  was  three  years  later.  He  was  already  planning  to 
ask  for  leave,  when  one  day  the  manager  broached  the  sub- 
ject himself.  With  one  correct  bag  he  went  to  France.  But 
he  did  not  bear  eastward  at  once.  He  went  to  the  Riviera; 
for  a  week  he  lived  like  a  gentleman,  spending  his  money 
like  a  gentleman,  lonely,  alone  in  that  bright  aviary  of  the 
svelte  kept  women  of  all  Europe. 

That  was  why  those  who  saw  him  descend  from  the  Medi- 
terranean Express  that  morning  in  Paris  said,  "Here  is  a 
rich  milord,"  and  why  they  continued  to  say  it  in  the  hard- 
benched  third-class  trains,  as  he  sat  leaning  forward  on  his 
stick,  lip-moving  the  names  on  sheet-iron  stations  about  the 
battered  and  waking  land  lying  now  three  years  quiet  be- 
neath the  senseless  and  unbroken  battalions  of  days. 

He  reached  London  and  found  what  he  should  have  known 
before  he  left.  His  position  was  gone.  Conditions,  the  man- 
ager told  him,  addressing  him  punctiliously  by  his  rank. 

What  savings  he  had  left  melted  slowly;  he  spent  the  last 
of  them  on  a  black  silk  dress  for  his  mother,  with  the  letter: 

/  ant  'well.  Love  to  Matthew  and  John  Wesley  and  Elizabeth. 

He  called  upon  his  friends,  upon  the  officers  whom  he  had 
known.  One,  the  man  he  knew  best,  gave  him  whisky  in  a 
comfortable  room  with  a  fire:  "You  aren't  working  now? 


Victory  457 

Rotten  luck.  By  the  way,  you  remember  Whiteby?  He  had 
a  company  in  the  — th.  Nice  chap:  no  people,  though.  He 
killed  himself  last  week.  Conditions." 

"Oh.  Did  he?  Yes.  I  remember  him.  Rotten  luck." 

"Yes.  Rotten  luck.  Nice  chap." 

He  no  longer  gave  his  pennies  to  the  blind  and  the  maimed 
in  Piccadilly.  He  needed  them  for  papers: 

Artisans  needed 

Become  stonemason 

Men  to  drive  ?no  tor  cars.  War  record  not  necessary 

Shop-assistants  (must  be  under  twenty -one) 

Shipwrights  needed 

and  at  last: 

Gentleman  ivith  social  address  and  connections  to  meet  out- 
of-toivn  clients.  Temporary 

He  got  the  place,  and  with  his  waxed  moustaches  and  his 
correct  clothes  he  revealed  the  fleshpots  of  the  West  End 
to  Birmingham  and  Leeds.  It  was  temporary. 

Artisans 
Carpenters 
House  pain  ters 

Winter  was  temporary,  too.  In  the  spring  he  took  his 
waxed  moustaches  and  his  ironed  clothes  into  Surrey,  with 
a  set  of  books,  an  encyclopedia,  on  commission.  He  sold  all 
his  things  save  what  he  stood  in,  and  gave  up  his  rooms  in 
town. 

He  still  had  his  stick,  his  waxed  moustaches,  his  cards. 
Surrey,  gentle,  green,  mild.  A  tight  little  house  in  a  tight 
little  garden.  An  oldish  man  in  a  smoking  jacket  puttering 
in  a  flower  bed:  "Good  day,  sir.  Might  I — " 

The  man  in  the  smoking  jacket  looks  up.  "Go  to  the  side, 
can't  you?  Don't  come  this  way." 


458  The  Wasteland 

He  goes  to  the  side  entrance.  A  slatted  gate,  freshly  white, 
bearing  an  enameled  plate: 

^Tx^  HAWKERS 
NO 

BEGGARS 

He  passes  through  and  knocks  at  a  tidy  door  smug  beneath 
a  vine.  "Good  day,  miss.  May  I  see  the — " 

"Go  away.  Didn't  you  see  the  sign  on  the  gate?" 

"But  I—" 

"Go  away,  or  I'll  call  the  master." 

In  the  fall  he  returned  to  London.  Perhaps  he  could  not 
have  said  why  himself.  Perhaps  it  was  beyond  any  saying, 
instinct  perhaps  bringing  him  back  to  be  present  at  the  in- 
stant out  of  all  time  of  the  manifestation,  apotheosis,  of  his 
life  which  had  died  again.  Anyway,  he  was  there,  still  with 
his  waxed  moustaches,  erect,  his  stick  clasped  beneath  his 
left  armpit,  among  the  Household  troops  in  brass  cuirasses, 
on  dappled  geldings,  and  Guards  in  scarlet  tunics,  and  the 
Church  militant  in  stole  and  surplice  and  Prince  defenders 
of  God  in  humble  mufti,  all  at  attention  for  two  minutes, 
listening  to  despair.  He  still  had  thirty  shillings,  and  he  re- 
plenished his  cards:  Captain  A.  Gray,  M.C.,  D.S.M. 

It  is  one  of  those  spurious,  pale  days  like  a  sickly  and 
premature  child  of  spring  while  spring  itself  is  still  weeks 
away.  In  the  thin  sunlight  buildings  fade  upward  into  misty 
pinks  and  golds.  Women  wear  violets  pinned  to  their  furs, 
appearing  to  bloom  themselves  like  flowers  in  the  languorous, 
treacherous  air. 

It  is  the  women  who  look  twice  at  the  man  standing  against 
the  wall  at  a  corner:  a  gaunt  man  with  white  hair,  and 
moustaches  twisted  into  frayed  points,  with  a  bleached  and 
frayed  regimental  scarf  in  a  celluloid  collar,  a  once-good 
suit  now  threadbare  yet  apparently  pressed  within  twenty- 


Victory  459 

four  hours,  standing  against  the  wall  with  closed  eyes,  a 
dilapidated  hat  held  bottom-up  before  him. 

He  stood  there  for  a  long  time,  until  someone  touched  his 
arm.  It  was  a  constable.  "Move  along,  sir.  Against  orders." 
In  his  hat  were  seven  pennies  and  three  halfpence.  He 
bought  a  cake  of  soap  and  a  little  food. 

Another  anniversary  came  and  passed;  he  stood  again,  his 
stick  at  his  armpit,  among  the  bright,  silent  uniforms,  the 
quiet  throng  in  either  frank  or  stubborn  cast-offs,  with 
patient,  bewildered  faces.  In  his  eyes  now  is  not  that  hopeful 
resignation  of  a  beggar,  but  rather  that  bitterness,  that  echo 
as  of  bitter  and  unheard  laugher  of  a  hunchback. 

A  meager  fire  burns  on  the  sloping  cobbles.  In  the  fitful 
light  the  damp,  fungus-grown  wall  of  the  embankment  and 
the  stone  arch  of  the  bridge  loom.  At  the  foot  of  the  cobbled 
slope  the  invisible  river  clucks  and  gurgles  with  the  tide. 

Five  figures  lie  about  the  fire,  some  with  heads  covered 
as  though  in  slumber,  others  smoking  and  talking.  One  man 
sits  upright,  his  back  to  the  wall,  his  hands  lying  beside  him; 
he  is  blind:  he  sleeps  that  way.  He  says  that  he  is  afraid  to 
lie  down. 

"Cant  you  tell  you  are  lying  down,  without  seeing  you 
are?"  another  says. 

"Something  might  happen,"  the  blind  man  says. 

"What?  Do  you  think  they  would  give  you  a  shell,  even 
if  it  would  bring  back  your  sight?" 

"They'd  give  him  the  shell,  all  right,"  a  third  said. 

"Ow.  Why  dont  they  line  us  all  up  and  put  down  a  bloody 
barrage  on  us?" 

"Was  that  how  he  lost  his  sight?"  a  fourth  says.  "A  shell?" 

"Ow.  He  was  at  Mons.  A  dispatch  rider,  on  a  motorbike. 
Tell  them  about  it,  mate." 

The  blind  man  lifts  his  face  a  little.  Otherwise  he  does  not 


460  The  Wasteland 

move.  He  speaks  in  a  flat  voice.  "She  had  the  bit  of  scar  on 
her  wrist.  That  was  how  I  could  tell.  It  was  me  put  the  scar 
on  her  wrist,  you  might  say.  We  was  working  in  the  shop 
one  day.  I  had  picked  up  an  old  engine  and  we  was  fitting  it 
onto  a  bike  so  we  could — " 

"What?"  the  fourth  says.  "What's  he  talking  about?" 

"Shhhh,"  the  first  says.  "Not  so  loud.  He's  talking  about 
his  girl.  He  had  a  bit  of  a  bike  shop  on  the  Brighton  Road 
and  they  were  going  to  marry."  He  speaks  in  a  low  tone,  his 
voice  just  under  the  weary,  monotonous  voice  of  the  blind 
man.  "Had  their  picture  taken  and  all  the  day  he  enlisted 
and  got  his  uniform.  He  had  it  with  hii  for  a  while,  until  one 
day  he  lost  it.  He  was  fair  wild.  So  at  last  we  got  a  bit  of  a 
card  about  the  same  size  of  the  picture.  'Here's  your  picture, 
mate/  we  says.  'Hold  onto  it  this  time.'  So  he's  still  got  the 
card.  Likely  he'll  show  it  to  you  before  he's  done.  So  dont 
you  let  on." 

"No,"  the  other  says.  "I  shant  let  on." 

The  blind  man  talks.  " — got  them  at  the  hospital  to  write 
her  a  letter,  and  sure  enough,  here  she  come.  I  could  tell  her 
by  the  bit  of  scar  on  her  wrist.  Her  voice  sounded  different, 
but  then  everything  sounded  different  since.  But  I  could  tell 
by  the  scar.  We  would  sit  and  hold  hands,  and  I  could  touch 
the  bit  of  scar  inside  her  left  wrist.  In  the  cinema  too.  I 
would  touch  the  scar  and  it  would  be  like  I — " 

"The  cinema?"  the  fourth  says.  "Him?" 

"Yes,"  the  other  says.  "She  would  take  him  to  the  cinema, 
the  comedies,  so  he  could  hear  them  laughing." 

The  blind  man  talks.  " — told  me  how  the  pictures  hurt 
her  eyes,  and  that  she  would  leave  me  at  the  cinema  and 
when  it  was  over  she  would  come  and  fetch  me.  So  I  said  it 
was  all  right.  And  the  next  night  it  was  again.  And  I  said  it 
was  all  right.  And  the  next  night  I  told  her  I  wouldn't  go 
either.  I  said  we  would  stop  at  home,  at  the  hospital.  And 


Victory  461 

then  she  didn't  say  anything  for  a  long  while.  I  could  hear 
her  breathing.  Then  she  said  it  was  all  right.  So  after  that  we 
didn't  go  to  the  cinema.  We  would  just  sit,  holding  hands, 
and  me  feeling  the  scar  now  and  then.  We  couldn't  talk  loud 
in  the  hospital,  so  we  would  whisper.  But  mostly  we  didn't 
talk.  We  just  held  hands.  And  that  was  for  eight  nights.  I 
counted.  Then  it  was  the  eighth  night.  We  were  sitting 
there,  with  the  other  hand  in  my  hand,  and  me  touching  the 
scar  now  and  then.  Then  on  a  sudden  the  hand  jerked  away. 
I  could  hear  her  standing  up.  'Listen,'  she  says.  'This  cant  go 
on  any  longer.  You  will  have  to  know  sometime,'  she  says. 
And  I  says,  'I  dont  want  to  know  but  one  thing.  What  is 
your  name?'  I  says.  She  told  me  her  name;  one  of  the  nurses. 
And  she  says — " 

"What?"  the  fourth  says.  "What  is  this?" 

"He  told  you,"  the  first  said.  "It  was  one  of  the  nurses  in 
the  hospital.  The  girl  had  been  buggering  off  with  another 
fellow  and  left  the  nurse  for  him  to  hold  her  hand,  thinking 
he  was  fooled." 

"But  how  did  he  know?"  the  fourth  says. 

"Listen,"  the  first  says. 

" — 'and  you  knew  all  the  time/  she  says,  'since  the  first 
time?'  'It  was  the  scar,'  I  says.  'You've  got  it  on  the  wrong 
wrist.  You've  got  it  on  your  right  wrist,'  I  says.  'And  two 
nights  ago,  I  lifted  up  the  edge  of  it  a  bit.  What  is  it,'  I  says. 
'Courtplaster? '  "  The  blind  man  sits  against  the  wall,  his  face 
lifted  a  little,  his  hands  motionless  beside  him.  "That's  how 
I  knew,  by  the  scar.  Thinking  they  could  fool  me,  when  it 
was  me  put  the  scar  on  her,  you  might  say — " 

The  prone  figure  farthest  from  the  fire  lifts  its  head. 
"Hup,"  he  says;  "ere  e  comes." 

The  others  turn  as  one  and  look  toward  the  entrance. 

"Here  who  comes?"  the  blind  man  says.  "Is  it  the  bob- 
bies?" 


462  The  Wasteland 

They  do  not  answer.  They  watch  the  man  who  enters: 
a  tall  man  with  a  stick.  They  cease  to  talk,  save  the  blind 
man,  watching  the  tall  man  come  among  them.  "Here  who 
comes,  mates?"  the  blind  man  says.  "Mates!" 

The  newcomer  passes  them,  and  the  fire;  he  does  not  look 
at  them.  He  goes  on.  "Watch,  now,"  the  second  says.  The 
blind  man  is  now  leaning  a  little  forward;  his  hands  fumble 
at  the  ground  beside  him  as  though  he  were  preparing  to 
rise. 

"Watch  who?"  he  says.  "What  do  you  see?" 

They  do  not  answer.  They  are  watching  the  newcomer 
covertly,  attentively,  as  he  disrobes  and  then,  a  white 
shadow,  a  ghostly  gleam  in  the  darkness,  goes  down  to  the 
water  and  washes  himself,  slapping  his  body  hard  with  icy 
and  filthy  handfuls  of  river  water.  He  returns  to  the  fire; 
they  turn  their  faces  quickly  aside,  save  the  blind  man  (he 
still  sits  forward,  his  arms  propped  beside  him  as  though  on 
the  point  of  rising,  his  wan  face  turned  toward  the  sound, 
the  movement)  and  one  other.  "Yer  stones  is  ot,  sir,"  this 
one  says.  "I've  ad  them  right  in  the  blaze." 

"Thanks,"  the  newcomer  says.  He  still  appears  to  be 
utterly  oblivious  of  them,  so  they  watch  him  again,  quietly, 
as  he  spreads  his  sorry  garments  on  one  stone  and  takes  a 
second  stone  from  the  fire  and  irons  them.  While  he  is 
dressing,  the  man  who  spoke  to  him  goes  down  to  the  water 
and  returns  with  the  cake  of  soap  which  he  had  used.  Still 
watching,  they  see  the  newcomer  rub  his  fingers  on  the  cake 
of  soap  and  twist  his  moustaches  into  points. 

"A  bit  more  on  the  left  one,  sir,"  the  man  holding  the 
soap  says.  The  newcomer  soaps  his  fingers  and  twists  his  left 
moustache  again,  the  other  man  watching  him,  his  head  bent 
and  tilted  a  little  back,  in  shape  and  attitude  and  dress  like 
a  caricatured  scarecrow. 

"Right,  now?"  the  newcomer  says. 


Victory  463 

"Right,  sir,"  the  scarecrow  says.  He  retreats  into  the  dark- 
ness and  returns  without  the  cake  of  soap,  and  carrying  in- 
stead the  hat  and  the  stick.  The  newcomer  takes  them.  From 
his  pocket  he  takes  a  coin  and  puts  it  into  the  scarecrow's 
hand.  The  scarecrow  touches  his  cap;  the  newcomer  is  gone. 
They  watch  him,  the  tall  shape,  the  erect  back,  the  stick, 
until  he  disappears. 

"What  do  you  see,  mates?"  the  blind  man  says.  "Tell  a 
man  what  you  see." 

VII 

AMONG  THE  DEMOBILIZED  officers  who  emigrated  from  Eng- 
land after  the  Armistice  was  a  subaltern  named  Walkley.  He 
went  out  to  Canada,  where  he  raised  wheat  and  prospered, 
both  in  pocket  and  in  health.  So  much  so  that,  had  he  been 
walking  out  of  the  Gare  de  Lyon  in  Paris  instead  of  in  Pic- 
cadilly Circus  on  this  first  evening  (it  is  Christmas  eve)  of 
his  first  visit  home,  they  would  have  said,  "Here  is  not  only 
a  rich  milord;  it  is  a  well  one." 

He  had  been  in  London  just  long  enough  to  outfit  himself 
with  the  beginning  of  a  wardrobe,  and  in  his  new  clothes 
(bought  of  a  tailor  which  in  the  old  days  he  could  not  have 
afforded)  he  was  enjoying  himself  too  much  to  even  go 
anywhere.  So  he  just  walked  the  streets,  among  the  cheerful 
throngs,  until  suddenly  he  stopped  dead  still,  staring  at  a  face. 
The  man  had  almost  white  hair,  moustaches  waxed  to  needle 
points.  He  wore  a  frayed  scarf  in  which  could  be  barely 
distinguished  the  colors  and  pattern  of  a  regiment.  His 
threadbare  clothes  were  freshly  ironed  and  he  carried  a  stick. 
He  was  standing  at  the  curb,  and  he  appeared  to  be  saying 
something  to  the  people  who  passed,  and  Walkley  moved 
suddenly  forward,  his  hand  extended.  But  the  other  man  only 
stared  at  him  with  eyes  that  were  perfectly  dead. 


464  The  Wasteland 

"Gray,"  Walkley  said,  "don't  you  remember  me?"  The 
Other  stared  at  him  with  that  dead  intensity.  "We  were  in 
hospital  together.  I  went  out  to  Canada.  Don't  you  remem- 
ber?" 

"Yes,"  the  other  said.  "I  remember  you.  You  are  Walk- 
ley."  Then  he  quit  looking  at  Walkley.  He  moved  a  little 
aside,  turning  to  the  crowd  again,  his  hand  extended;  it  was 
only  then  that  Walkley  saw  that  the  hand  contained  three  or 
four  boxes  of  the  matches  which  may  be  bought  from  any 
tobacconist  for  a  penny  a  box.  "Matches?  Matches,  sir?"  he 
said.  "Matches?  Matches?" 

Walkley  moved  also,  getting  again  in  front  of  the  other. 
"Gray—"  he  said. 

The  other  looked  at  Walkley  again,  this  time  with  a  kind 
of  restrained  yet  raging  impatience.  "Let  me  alone,  you  son 
of  a  bitch!"  he  said,  turning  immediately  toward  the  crowd 
again,  his  hand  extended.  "Matches!  Matches,  sir!"  he 
chanted. 

Walkley  moved  on.  He  paused  again,  half  turning,  looking 
back  at  the  gaunt  face  above  the  waxed  moustaches.  Again 
the  other  looked  him  full  in  the  face,  but  the  glance  passed 
on,  as  though  without  recognition.  Walkley  went  on.  He 
walked  swiftly.  "My  God,"  he  said.  "I  think  I  am  going 
to  vomit." 


Crevasse 


THE  PARTY  GOES  ON,  skirting  the  edge  of  the  barrage  weaving 
down  into  shell  craters  old  and  new,  crawling  out  again. 
Two  men  half  drag,  half  carry  between  them  a  third,  while 
two  others  carry  the  three  rifles.  The  third  man's  head  is 
bound  in  a  bloody  rag;  he  stumbles  his  aimless  legs  along, 
his  head  lolling,  sweat  channeling  slowly  down  his  mud- 
crusted  face. 

The  barrage  stretches  on  and  on  across  the  plain,  distant, 
impenetrable.  Occasionally  a  small  wind  comes  up  from 
nowhere  and  thins  the  dun  smoke  momentarily  upon  clumps 
of  bitten  poplars.  The  party  enters  and  crosses  a  field  which 
a  month  ago  was  sown  to  wheat  and  where  yet  wheatspears 
thrust  and  cling  stubbornly  in  the  churned  soil,  among  scraps 
of  metal  and  seething  hunks  of  cloth. 

It  crosses  the  field  and  comes  to  a  canal  bordered  with  tree 
stumps  sheared  roughly  at  a  symmetrical  five-foot  level.  The 
men  flop  and  drink  of  the  contaminated  water  and  fill  their 
water  bottles.  The  two  bearers  let  the  wounded  man  slip 
to  earth;  he  hangs  lax  on  the  canal  bank  with  both  arms  in 
the  water  and  his  head  too,  had  not  the  others  held  him  up. 
One  of  them  raises  water  in  his  helmet,  but  the  wounded 
man  cannot  swallow.  So  they  set  him  upright  and  the  other 
holds  the  helmet  brim  to  his  lips  and  refills  the  helmet  and 
pours  the  water  on  the  wounded  man's  head,  sopping  the 

465 


466  The  Wasteland 

bandage.  Then  he  takes  a  filthy  rag  from  his  pocket  and 
dries  the  wounded  man's  face  with  clumsy  gentleness. 

The  captain,  the  subaltern  and  the  sergeant,  still  standing, 
are  poring  over  a  soiled  map.  Beyond  the  canal  the  ground 
rises  gradually;  the  canal  cutting  reveals  the  chalk  formation 
of  the  land  in  pallid  strata.  The  captain  puts  the  map  away 
and  the  sergeant  speaks  the  men  to  their  feet,  not  loud.  The 
two  bearers  raise  the  wounded  man  and  they  follow  the 
canal  bank,  coming  after  a  while  to  a  bridge  formed  by  a 
water-logged  barge  hull  lashed  bow  and  stern  to  either  bank, 
and  so  pass  over.  Here  they  halt  again  while  once  more  the 
captain  and  the  subaltern  consult  the  map. 

Gunfire  comes  across  the  pale  spring  noon  like  a  prolonged 
clashing  of  hail  on  an  endless  metal  roof.  As  they  go  on  the 
chalky  soil  rises  gradually  underfoot.  The  ground  is  dryly 
rough,  shaling,  and  the  going  is  harder  still  for  the  two  who 
carry  the  wounded  man.  But  when  they  would  stop  the 
wounded  man  struggles  and  wrenches  free  and  staggers  on 
alone,  his  hands  at  his  head,  and  stumbles,  falling.  The  bearers 
catch  and  raise  him  and  hold  him  muttering  between  them 
and  wrenching  his  arms.  He  is  muttering  ".  .  .  bonnet  .  .  ." 
and  he  frees  his  hands  and  tugs  again  at  his  bandage.  The 
commotion  passes  forward.  The  captain  looks  back  and 
stops;  the  party  halts  also,  unbidden,  and  lowers  rifles. 

"A's  pickin  at's  bandage,  sir-r,"  one  of  the  bearers  tells 
the  captain.  They  let  the  man  sit  down  between  them;  the 
captain  kneels  beside  him. 

".  .  .  bonnet  .  .  .  bonnet,"  the  man  mutters.  The  captain 
loosens  the  bandage.  The  sergeant  extends  a  water  bottle 
and  the  captain  wets  the  bandage  and  lays  his  hand  on  the 
man's  brow.  The  others  stand  about,  looking  on  with  a  kind 
of  sober,  detached  interest.  The  captain  rises.  The  bearers 
raise  the  wounded  man  again.  The  sergeant  speaks  them  into 
motion. 


Crevasse  467 

They  gain  the  crest  of  the  ridge.  The  ridge  slopes  west- 
ward into  a  plateau  slightly  rolling.  Southward,  beneath  its 
dun  pall,  the  barrage  still  rages;  westward  and  northward 
about  the  shining  empty  plain  smoke  rises  lazily  here  and 
there  above  clumps  of  trees.  But  this  is  the  smoke  of  burn- 
ing things,  burning  wood  and  not  powder,  and  the  two 
officers  gaze  from  beneath  their  hands,  the  men  halting  again 
without  order  and  lowering  arms. 

"Gad,  sir,"  the  subaltern  says  suddenly  in  a  high,  thin 
voice;  "it's  houses  burning!  They're  retreating!  Beasts! 
Beasts!" 

"  'Tis  possible,"  the  captain  says,  gazing  beneath  his  hand. 
"We  can  get  around  that  barrage  now.  Should  be  a  road 
just  yonder."  He  strides  on  again. 

"For-rard,"  the  sergeant  says,  in  that  tone  not  loud.  The 
men  slope  arms  once  more  with  unquestioning  docility. 

The  ridge  is  covered  with  a  tough,  gorselike  grass.  Insects 
buzz  in  it,  zip  from  beneath  their  feet  and  fall  to  slatting 
again  beneath  the  shimmering  noon.  The  wounded  man  is 
babbling  again.  At  intervals  they  pause  and  give  him  water 
and  wet  the  bandage  again,  then  two  others  exchange  with 
the  bearers  and  they  hurry  the  man  on  and  close  up  again. 

The  head  of  the  line  stops;  the  men  jolt  prodding  into  one 
another  like  a  train  of  freight  cars  stopping.  At  the  captain's 
feet  lies  a  broad  shallow  depression  in  which  grows  a  sparse* 
dead-looking  grass  like  clumps  of  bayonets  thrust  up  out 
of  the  earth.  It  is  too  big  to  have  been  made  by  a  small  shell, 
and  too  shallow  to  have  been  made  by  a  big  one.  It  bears  no 
traces  of  having  been  made  by  anything  at  all,  and  they  look 
quietly  down  into  it.  "Queer,"  the  subaltern  says.  "What 
do  you  fancy  could  have  made  it?" 

The  captain  does  not  answer.  He  turns.  They  circle  the 
depression,  looking  down  into  it  quietly  as  they  pass  it.  But 
they  have  no  more  than  passed  it  when  they  come  upon 


468  The  Wasteland 

another  one,  perhaps  not  quite  so  large.  "I  didn't  know  they 
had  anything  that  could  make  that/'  the  subaltern  says. 
Again  the  captain  does  not  answer.  They  circle  this  one  also 
and  keep  on  along  the  crest  of  the  ridge.  On  the  other  hand 
the  ridge  sheers  sharply  downward  stratum  by  stratum  of 
pallid  eroded  chalk. 

A  shallow  ravine  gashes  its  crumbling  yawn  abruptly 
across  their  path.  The  captain  changes  direction  again,  par- 
alleling the  ravine,  until  shortly  afterward  the  ravine  turns 
at  right  angles  and  goes  on  in  the  direction  of  their  march. 
The  floor  of  the  ravine  is  in  shadow;  the  captain  leads  the 
way  down  the  shelving  wall,  into  the  shade.  They  lower  the 
wounded  man  carefully  and  go  on. 

After  a  time  the  ravine  opens.  They  find  that  they  have 
debouched  into  another  of  those  shallow  depressions.  This 
one  is  not  so  clearly  defined,  though,  and  the  opposite  wall 
of  it  is  nicked  by  what  is  apparently  another  depression, 
like  two  overlapping  disks.  They  cross  the  first  depression, 
while  more  of  the  dead-looking  grass  bayonets  saber  their 
legs  dryly,  and  pass  through  the  gap  into  the  next  depression. 

This  one  is  like  a  miniature  valley  between  miniature 
cliffs.  Overhead  they  can  see  only  the  drowsy  and  empty 
bowl  of  the  sky,  with  a  few  faint  smoke  smudges  to  the 
northwest.  The  sound  of  the  barrage  is  now  remote  and  far 
away:  a  vibration  in  earth  felt  rather  than  heard.  There  are 
no  recent  shell  craters  or  marks  here  at  all.  It  is  as  though 
they  had  strayed  suddenly  into  a  region,  a  world  where  the 
war  had  not  reached,  where  nothing  had  reached,  where  no 
life  is,  and  silence  itself  is  dead.  They  give  the  wounded  man 
water  and  go  on. 

The  valley,  the  depression,  strays  vaguely  before  them. 
They  can  see  that  it  is  a  series  of  overlapping,  vaguely  cir- 
cular basins  formed  by  no  apparent  or  deducible  agency. 
Pallid  grass  bayonets  saber  at  their  legs,  and  after  a  time  they 


Crevass?  469 

are  again  among  old  healed  scars  of  trees  to  which  there 
cling  sparse  leaves  neither  green  nor  dead,  as  if  they  too  had 
been  overtaken  and  caught  by  a  hiatus  in  time,  gossiping 
dryly  among  themselves  though  there  is  no  wind.  The  floor 
of  the  valley  is  not  level.  It  in  itself  descends  into  vague 
depressions,  rises  again  as  vaguely  between  its  shelving  walls. 
In  the  center  of  these  smaller  depressions  whitish  knobs  of 
chalk  thrust  up  through  the  thin  topsoil.  The  ground  has  a 
resilient  quality,  like  walking  on  cork;  feet  make  no  sound. 
"Jolly  walking,"  the  subaltern  says.  Though  his  voice  is  not 
raised,  it  fills  the  small  valley  with  the  abruptness  of  a  thun- 
derclap, filling  the  silence,  the  words  seeming  to  hang  about 
them  as  though  silence  here  had  been  so  long  undisturbed 
that  it  had  forgot  its  purpose;  as  one  they  look  quietly  and 
soberly  about,  at  the  shelving  walls,  the  stubborn  ghosts  of 
trees,  the  bland,  hushed  sky.  "Topping  hole-up  for  embusque 
birds  and  such,"  the  subaltern  says. 

"Ay,"  the  captain  says.  His  word  in  turn  hangs  sluggishly 
and  fades.  The  men  at  the  rear  close  up,  the  movement  pass- 
*ng  forward,  the  men  looking  quietly  and  soberly  about. 

"But  no  birds  here,"  the  subaltern  says.  "No  insects  even." 

"Ay,"  the  captain  says.  The  word  fades,  the  silence  comes 
down  again,  sunny,  profoundly  still.  The  subaltern  pauses 
and  stirs  something  with  his  foot.  The  men  halt  also,  and 
the  subaltern  and  the  captain,  without  touching  it,  examine 
the  half-buried  and  moldering  rifle.  The  wounded  man  is 
babbling  again. 

"What  is  it,  sir?"  the  subaltern  says.  "Looks  like  one  of 
those  things  the  Canadians  had.  A  Ross.  Right?" 

"French,"  the  captain  says;  "1914." 

"Oh,"  the  subaltern  says.  He  turns  the  rifle  aside  with  his 
toe.  The  bayonet  is  still  attached  to  the  barrel,  but  the  stock 
has  long  since  rotted  away.  They  go  on,  across  the  uneven 
ground,  among  the  chalky  knobs  thrusting  up  through  the 


470  The  Wasteland 

soil.  Light,  the  wan  and  drowsy  sunlight,  is  laked  in  the 
valley,  stagnant,  bodiless,  without  heat.  The  saberlike  grass 
thrusts  sparsely  and  rigidly  upward.  They  look  about  again 
at  the  shaling  walls,  then  the  ones  at  the  head  of  the  party 
watch  the  subaltern  pause  and  prod  with  his  stick  at  one  of 
the  chalky  knobs  and  turn  presently  upward  its  earth-stained 
eyesockets  and  its  unbottomed  grin. 

"Forward,"  the  captain  says  sharply.  The  party  moves; 
the  men  look  quietly  and  curiously  at  the  skull  as  they  pass. 
They  go  on,  among  the  other  whitish  knobs  like  marbles 
studded  at  random  in  the  shallow  soil. 

"All  in  the  same  position,  do  you  notice,  sir?"  the  sub- 
altern says,  his  voice  chattily  cheerful;  "all  upright.  Queer 
way  to  bury  chaps:  sitting  down.  Shallow,  too." 

"Ay,"  the  captain  says.  The  wounded  man  babbles 
steadily.  The  two  bearers  stop  with  him,  but  the  others 
crowd  on  after  the  officers,  passing  the  two  bearers  and  the 
wounded  man.  "Dinna  stop  to  gi's  sup  water,"  one  of  the 
bearers  says.  "A'll  drink  walkin."  They  take  up  the  wounded 
man  again  and  hurry  him  on  while  one  of  them  tries  to  hold 
the  neck  of  a  water  bottle  to  the  wounded  man's  mouth, 
clattering  it  against  his  teeth  and  spilling  the  water  down  the 
front  of  his  tunic.  The  captain  looks  back. 

"What's  this?"  he  says  sharply.  The  men  crowd  up.  Their 
eyes  are  wide,  sober;  he  looks  about  at  the  quiet,  intent  faces. 
"What's  the  matter  back  there,  Sergeant?" 

"Wind-up,"  the  subaltern  says.  He  looks  about  at  the 
eroded  walls,  the  whitish  knobs  thrusting  quietly  out  of  the 
earth.  "Feel  it  myself,"  he  says.  He  laughs,  his  laughter  a 
little  thin,  ceasing.  "Let's  get  out  of  here,  sir,"  he  says.  "Let's 
get  into  the  sun  again." 

"You  are  in  the  sun  here,"  the  captain  says.  "Ease  off  there, 
men.  Stop  crowding.  We'll  be  out  soon.  We'll  find  the  road 
and  get  past  the  barrage  and  make -contact  again."  He  turns 
and  goes  on.  The  party  gets  into  motion  again. 


Crevasse  47 1 

Then  they  all  stop  as  one,  in  the  attitudes  of  walking,  in 
an  utter  suspension,  and  stare  at  one  another.  Again  the 
earth  moves  under  their  feet.  A  man  screams,  high,  like  a 
woman  or  a  horse;  as  the  firm  earth  shifts  for  a  third  time 
beneath  them  the  officers  whirl  and  see  beyond  the  down- 
plunging  man  a  gaping  hole  with  dry  dust  still  crumbling 
about  the  edges  before  the  orifice  crumbles  again  beneath 
a  second  man.  Then  a  crack  springs  like  a  sword  slash  be- 
neath them  all;  the  earth  breaks  under  their  feet  and  tilts 
like  jagged  squares  of  pale  fudge,  framing  a  black  yawn  out 
of  which,  like  a  silent  explosion,  bursts  the  unmistakable 
smell  of  rotted  flesh.  While  they  scramble  and  leap  (in 
silence  now;  there  has  been  no  sound  since  the  first  man 
screamed)  from  one  cake  to  another,  the  cakes  tilt  and  slide 
until  the  whole  floor  of  the  valley  rushes  slowly  under  them 
and  plunges  them  downward  into  darkness.  A  grave  rum- 
bling rises  into  the  sunlight  on  a  blast  of  decay  and  of  faint 
dust  which  hangs  and  drifts  in  the  faint  air  about  the  black 
orifice. 

The  captain  feels  himself  plunging  down  a  sheer  and 
shifting  wall  of  moving  earth,  of  sounds  of  terror  and  of 
struggling  in  the  ink  dark.  Someone  else  screams.  The 
scream  ceases;  he  hears  the  voice  of  the  wounded  man  com- 
ing thin  and  reiterant  out  of  the  plunging  bowels  of  decay: 
"A'm  no  dead!  A'm  no  dead!"  and  ceasing  abruptly,  as  if  a 
hand  had  been  laid  on  his  mouth. 

Then  the  moving  cliff  down  which  the  captain  plunges 
slopes  gradually  off  and  shoots  him,  uninjured,  onto  a  hard 
floor,  where  he  lies  for  a  time  on  his  back  while  across  his 
face  the  lightward-  and  airward-seeking  blast  of  death  and 
dissolution  rushes.  He  has  fetched  up  against  something;  it 
tumbles  down  upon  him  lightly,  with  a  muffled  clatter  as  if 
it  had  come  to  pieces. 

Then  he  begins  to  see  the  light,  the  jagged  shape  of  the 
cavern  mouth  high  overhead,  and  then  the  sergeant  is  bend- 


472  The  Wasteland 

ing  over  him  with  a  pocket  torch.  "McKie?"  the  captain 
says.  For  reply  the  sergeant  turns  the  flash  upon  his  own 
face.  "Where's  Mr.  McKie?"  the  captain  says. 

"A's  gone,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  says  in  a  husky  whisper. 
The  captain  sits  up. 

"How  many  are  left?" 

"Fourteen,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers. 

"Fourteen.  Twelve  missing.  We'll  have  to  dig  fast."  He 
gets  to  his  feet.  The  faint  light  from  above  falls  coldly  upon 
the  heaped  avalanche,  upon  the  thirteen  helmets  and  the 
white  bandage  of  the  wounded  man  huddled  about  the  foot 
of  the  cliff.  "Where  are  we?" 

For  answer  the  sergeant  moves  the  torch.  It  streaks  later- 
ally into  the  darkness,  along  a  wall,  a  tunnel,  into  yawning 
blackness,  the  walls  faceted  with  pale  glints  of  chalk.  About 
the  tunnel,  sitting  or  leaning  upright  against  the  walls,  are 
skeletons  in  dark  tunics  and  bagging  Zouave  trousers,  their 
moldering  arms  beside  them;  the  captain  recognizes  them  as 
Senegalese  troops  of  the  May  fighting  of  1915,  surprised 
and  killed  by  gas  probably  in  the  attitudes  in  which  they 
had  taken  refuge  in  the  chalk  caverns.  He  takes  the  torch 
from  the  sergeant. 

"We'll  see  if  there's  anyone  else,"  he  says.  "Have  out  the 
trenching  tools."  He  flashes  the  light  upon  the  precipice.  It 
rises  into  gloom,  darkness,  then  into  the  faint  rumor  of  day- 
light overhead.  With  the  sergeant  behind  him  he  climbs  the 
shifting  heap,  the  earth  sighing  beneath  him  and  shaling 
downward.  The  injured  man  begins  to  wail  again,  "A'm  no 
dead!  A'm  no  dead! "  until  his  voice  goes  into  a  high  sustained 
screaming.  Someone  lays  a  hand  over  his  mouth.  His  voice 
is  muffled,  then  it  becomes  laughter  on  a  rising  note,  becomes 
screaming  again,  is  choked  again. 

The  captain  and  the  sergeant  mount  as  high  as  they  dare, 
prodding  at  the  earth  while  the  earth  shifts  beneath  them  in 


Crevasse  473 

long  hushed  sighs.  At  the  foot  of  the  precipice  the  men 
huddle,  their  faces  lifted  faint,  white,  and  patient  into  the 
light.  The  captain  sweeps  the  torch  up  and  down  the  cliff. 
There  is  nothing,  no  arm,  no  hand,  in  sight.  The  air  is  clear- 
ing slowly.  "We'll  get  on/'  the  captain  says. 

"Ay,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  says. 

In  both  directions  the  cavern  fades  into  darkness,  plumb- 
less  and  profound,  filled  with  the  quiet  skeletons  sitting  and 
leaning  against  the  walls,  their  arms  beside  them. 

"The  cave-in  threw  us  forward,"  the  captain  says. 

"Ay,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers. 

"Speak  out,"  the  captain  says.  "It's  but  a  bit  of  a  cave.  If 
men  got  into  it,  we  can  get  out." 

"Ay,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers. 

"If  it  threw  us  forward,  the  entrance  will  be  yonder." 

"Ay,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers. 

The  captain  flashes  the  torch  ahead.  The  men  rise  and 
huddle  quietly  behind  him,  the  wounded  man  among  them. 
He  whimpers.  The  cavern  goes  on,  unrolling  its  glinted  walls 
out  of  the  darkness;  the  sitting  shapes  grin  quietly  into  the 
light  as  they  pass.  The  air  grows  heavier;  soon  they  are 
trotting,  gasping,  then  the  air  grows  lighter  and  the  torch 
sweeps  up  another  slope  of  earth,  closing  the  tunnel.  The 
men  halt  and  huddle.  The  captain  mounts  the  slope.  He  snaps 
off  the  light  and  crawls  slowly  along  the  crest  of  the  slide, 
where  it  joins  the  ceiling  of  the  cavern,  sniffing.  The  light 
flashes  on  again.  "Two  men  with  trenching  tools,"  he  says. 

Two  men  mount  to  him.  He  shows  them  the  fissure 
through  which  air  seeps  in  small,  steady  breaths.  They  begin 
to  dig,  furiously,  hurling  the  dirt  back.  Presently  they  are 
relieved  by  two  others;  presently  the  fissure  becomes  a  tunnel 
and  four  men  can  work  at  once.  The  air  becomes  fresher. 
They  burrow  furiously,  with  whimpering  cries  like  dogs. 
The  wounded  man,  hearing  them  perhaps,  catching  the 


474  The  Wasteland 

excitement  perhaps,  begins  to  laugh  again,  meaningless  and 
high.  Then  the  man  at  the  head  of  the  tunnel  bursts  through. 
Light  rushes  in  around  him  like  water;  he  burrows  madly; 
in  silhouette  they  see  his  wallowing  buttocks  lunge  from 
sight  and  a  burst  of  daylight  surges  in. 

The  others  leave  the  wounded  man  and  surge  up  the  slope, 
fighting  and  snarling  at  the  opening.  The  sergeant  springs 
after  them  and  beats  them  away  from  the  opening  with  a 
trenching  spade,  cursing  in  his  hoarse  whisper. 

"Let  them  go,  Sergeant,"  the  captain  says.  The  sergeant 
desists.  He  stands  aside  and  watches  the  men  scramble  into 
the  tunnel.  Then  he  descends,  and  he  and  the  captain  help 
the  wounded  man  up  the  slope.  At  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel 
the  wounded  man  rebels. 

"A'm  no  dead!  A'm  no  dead!"  he  wails,  struggling.  By 
cajolery  and  force  they  thrust  him,  still  wailing  and  strug- 
gling, into  the  tunnel,  where  he  becomes  docile  again  and 
scuttles  through. 

"Out  with  you,  Sergeant,"  the  captain  says. 

"After  you,  sir-r,"  the  sergeant  whispers. 

"Out  wi  ye,  man!"  the  captain  says.  The  sergeant  enters 
the  tunnel.  The  captain  follows.  He  emerges  onto  the  outer 
slope  of  the  avalanche  which  had  closed  the  cave,  at  the  foot 
of  which  the  fourteen  men  are  kneeling  in  a  group.  On  his 
hands  and  knees  like  a  beast,  the  captain  breathes,  his  breath 
making  a  hoarse  sound.  "Soon  it  will  be  summer,"  he  thinks, 
dragging  the  air  into  his  lungs  faster  than  he  can  empty  them 
to  respire  again.  "Soon  it  will  be  summer,  and  the  long 
days."  At  the  foot  of  the  slope  the  fourteen  men  kneel.  The 
one  in  the  center  has  a  Bible  in  his  hand,  from  which  he  is 
intoning  monotonously.  Above  his  voice  the  wounded  man's 
gibberish  rises,  meaningless  and  unemphatic  and  sustained. 


Turnabout 


THE  AMERICAN — the  older  one — wore  no  pink  Bedfords. 
His  breeches  were  of  plain  whipcord,  like  the  tunic.  And  the 
tunic  had  no  long  London-cut  skirts,  so  that  below  the  Sam 
Browne  the  tail  of  it  stuck  straight  out  like  the  tunic  of  a 
military  policeman  beneath  his  holster  belt.  And  he  wore 
simple  puttees  and  the  easy  shoes  of  a  man  of  middle  age, 
instead  of  Savile  Row  boots,  and  the  shoes  and  the  puttees 
did  not  match  in  shade,  and  the  ordnance  belt  did  not  match 
either  of  them,  and  the  pilot's  wings  on  his  breast  were  just 
wings.  But  the  ribbon  beneath  them  was  a  good  ribbon,  and 
the  insigne  on  his  shoulders  were  the  twin  bars  of  a  captain. 
He  was  not  tall.  His  face  was  thin,  a  little  aquiline;  the  eyes 
intelligent  and  a  little  tired.  He  was  past  twenty-five;  looking 
at  him,  one  thought,  not  Phi  Beta  Kappa  exactly,  but  Skull 
and  Bones  perhaps,  or  possibly  a  Rhodes  scholarship. 

One  of  the  men  who  faced  him  probably  could  not  see 
him  at  all.  He  was  being  held  on  his  feet  by  an  American 
military  policeman.  He  was  quite  drunk,  and  in  contrast 
with  the  heavy- jawed  policeman  who  held  him  erect  on  his 
long,  slim,  boneless  legs,  he  looked  like  a  masquerading  girl. 
He  was  possibly  eighteen,  tall,  with  a  pink-and-white  face 
and  blue  eyes,  and  a  mouth  like  a  girl's  mouth.  He  wore  a 
pea-coat,  buttoned  awry  and  stained  with  recent  mud,  and 
upon  his  blond  head,  at  that  unmistakable  and  rakish  swagger 

475 


476  The  Wasteland 

which  no  other  people  can  ever  approach  or  imitate,  the  cap 
of  a  Royal  Naval  Officer. 

"What's  this,  corporal?"  the  American  captain  said. 
"What's  the  trouble?  He's  an  Englishman.  You'd  better  let 
their  M.  P.'s  take  care  of  him." 

"I  know  he  is,"  the  policeman  said.  He  spoke  heavily, 
breathing  heavily,  in  the  voice  of  a  man  under  physical 
strain;  for  all  his  girlish  delicacy  of  limb,  the  English  boy 
was  heavier — or  more  helpless — than  he  looked.  "Stand  up!" 
the  policeman  said.  "They're  officers!" 

The  English  boy  made  an  effort  then.  He  pulled  himself 
together,  focusing  his  eyes.  He  swayed,  throwing  his  arms 
about  the  policeman's  neck,  and  with  the  other  hand  he 
saluted,  his  hand  flicking,  fingers  curled  a  little,  to  his  right 
ear,  already  swaying  again  and  catching  himself  again. 
"Cheer-o,  sir,"  he  said.  "Name's  not  Beatty,  I  hope." 

"No,"  the  captain  said. 

"Ah,"  the  English  boy  said.  "Hoped  not.  My  mistake.  No 
offense,  what?" 

"No  offense,"  the  captain  said  quietly.  But  he  was  looking 
at  the  policeman.  The  second  American  spoke.  He  was  a 
lieutenant,  also  a  pilot.  But  he  was  not  twenty-five  and  he 
wore  the  pink  breeches,  the  London  boots,  and  his  tunic 
might  have  been  a  British  tunic  save  for  the  collar. 

"It's  one  of  those  navy  eggs,"  he  said.  "They  pick  them 
out  of  the  gutters  here  all  night  long.  You  don't  come  to 
town  often  enough." 

"Oh,"  the  captain  said.  "I've  heard  about  them.  I  remem- 
ber now."  He  also  remarked  now  that,  though  the  street  was 
a  busy  one — it  was  just  outside  a  popular  cafe — and  there 
were  many  passers,  soldier,  civilian,  women,  yet  none  of 
them  so  much  as  paused,  as  though  it  were  a  familiar  sight. 
He  was  looking  at  the  policeman.  "Can't  you  take  him  to  his 
ship?" 


Turnabout  477 

"I  thought  of  that  before  the  captain  did,"  the  policeman 
said.  "He  says  he  can't  go  aboard  his  ship  after  dark  because 
he  puts  the  ship  away  at  sundown." 

"Puts  it  away?" 

"Stand  up,  sailor!"  the  policeman  said  savagely,  jerking 
at  his  lax  burden.  "Maybe  the  captain  can  make  sense  out 
of  it.  Damned  if  I  can.  He  says  they  keep  the  boat  under  the 
wharf.  Run  it  under  the  wharf  at  night,  and  that  they  can't 
get  it  out  again  until  the  tide  goes  out  tomorrow." 

"Under  the  wharf?  A  boat?  What  is  this?"  He  was  now 
speaking  to  the  lieutenant.  "Do  they  operate  some  kind  of 
aquatic  motorcycles?" 

"Something  like  that,"  the  lieutenant  said.  "You've  seen 
them — the  boats.  Launches,  camouflaged  and  all.  Dashing 
up  and  down  the  harbor.  You've  seen  them.  They  do  that 
all  day  and  sleep  in  the  gutters  here  all  night." 

"Oh,"  the  captain  said.  "I  thought  those  boats  were  ship 
commanders'  launches.  You  mean  to  tell  me  they  use  officers 
just  to — " 

"I  don't  know,"  the  lieutenant  said.  "Maybe  they  use  them 
to  fetch  hot  water  from  one  ship  to  another.  Or  buns.  Or 
maybe  to  go  back  and  forth  fast  when  they  forget  napkins 
or  something." 

"Nonsense,"  the  captain  said.  He  looked  at  the  English 
boy  again. 

"That's  what  they  do,"  the  lieutenant  said.  "Town's  lousy 
with  them  all  night  long.  Gutters  full,  and  their  M.  P.'s 
carting  them  away  in  batches,  like  nursemaids  in  a  park. 
Maybe  the  French  give  them  the  launches  to  get  them  out 
of  the  gutters  during  the  day." 

"Oh,"  the  captain  said,  "I  see."  But  it  was  clear  that  he 
didn't  see,  wasn't  listening,  didn't  believe  what  he  did  hear. 
He  looked  at  the  English  boy.  "Well,  you  can't  leave  him 
here  in  that  shape,"  he  said. 


478  The  Wasteland 

Again  the  English  boy  tried  to  pull  himself  together, 
"Quite  all  right,  'sure  you,"  he  said  glassily,  his  voice  pleas- 
ant, cheerful  almost,  quite  courteous.  "Used  to  it.  Con- 
founded rough  pave,  though.  Should  force  French  do  some- 
thing about  it.  Visiting  lads  jolly  well  deserve  decent  field 
to  play  on,  what?" 

"And  he  was  jolly  well  using  all  of  it  too,"  the  policeman 
said  savagely.  "He  must  think  he's  a  one-man  team,  maybe." 

At  that  moment  a  fifth  man  came  up.  He  was  a  British 
military  policeman.  "Nah  then,"  he  said.  "What's  this? 
What's  this?"  Then  he  saw  the  Americans'  shoulder  bars. 
He  saluted.  At  the  sound  of  his  voice  the  English  boy  turned, 
swaying,  peering. 

"Oh,  hullo,  Albert,"  he  said. 

"Nah  then,  Mr.  Hope,"  the  British  policeman  said.  He 
said  to  the  American  policeman,  over  his  shoulder:  "What 
is  it  this  time?" 

"Likely  nothing,"  the  American  said.  "The  way  you  guys 
run  a  war.  But  I'm  a  stranger  here.  Here.  Take  him." 

"What  is  this,  corporal?"  the  captain  said.  "What  was  he 
doing?" 

"He  won't  call  it  nothing,"  the  American  policeman  said, 
jerking  his  head  at  the  British  policeman.  "He'll  just  call  it  a 
thrush  or  a  robin  or  something.  I  turn  into  this  street  about 
three  blocks  back  a  while  ago,  and  I  find  it  blocked  with  a 
line  of  trucks  going  up  from  the  docks,  and  the  drivers  all 
hollering  ahead  what  the  hell  the  trouble  is.  So  I  come  on> 
and  I  find  it  is  about  three  blocks  of  them,  blocking  the 
cross  streets  too;  and  I  come  on  to  the  head  of  it  where  the 
trouble  is,  and  I  find  about  a  dozen  of  the  drivers  out  in 
front,  holding  a  caucus  or  something  in  the  middle  of  the 
street,  and  I  come  up  and  I  say,  What's  going  on  here?* 
and  they  leave  me  through  and  I  find  this  egg  here  laying — " 


Turnabout  479 

"Yer  talking  about  one  of  His  Majesty's  officers,  my  man," 
the  British  policeman  said. 

"Watch  yourself,  corporal,"  the  captain  said.  "And  you 
found  this  officer — " 

"He  had  done  gone  to  bed  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  with 
an  empty  basket  for  a  pillow.  Laying  there  with  his  hands 
under  his  head  and  his  knees  crossed,  arguing  with  them  about 
whether  he  ought  to  get  up  and  move  or  not.  He  said  that  the 
trucks  could  turn  back  and  go  around  by  another  street,  but 
that  he  couldn't  use  any  other  street,  because  this  street  was 
his." 

"His  street?" 

The  English  boy  had  listened,  interested,  pleasant.  "Billet, 
you  see,"  he  said.  "Must  have  order,  even  in  war  emergency. 
Billet  by  lot.  This  street  mine;  no  poaching,  eh?  Next  street 
Jamie  Wutherspoon's.  But  trucks  can  go  by  that  street  be- 
cause Jamie  not  using  it  yet.  Not  in  bed  yet.  Insomnia. 
Knew  so.  Told  them.  Trucks  go  that  way.  See  now?" 

"Was  that  it,  corporal?"  the  captain  said. 

"He  told  you.  He  wouldn't  get  up.  He  just  laid  there, 
arguing  with  them.  He  was  telling  one  of  them  to  go  some- 
where and  bring  back  a  copy  of  their  articles  of  war — " 

"King's  Regulations;  yes,"  the  captain  said. 

" — and  see  if  the  book  said  whether  he  had  the  right  of 
way,  or  the  trucks.  And  then  I  got  him  up,  and  then  the 
captain  come  along.  And  that's  all.  And  with  the  captain's 
permission  I'll  now  hand  him  over  to  His  Majesty's  wet 


nur— " 


"That'll  do,  corporal,"  the  captain  said.  "You  can  go.  I'll 
see  to  this."  The  policeman  saluted  and  went  on.  The  British 
policeman  was  now  supporting  the  English  boy.  "Can't  you 
take  him?"  the  captain  said.  "Where  are  their  quarters?" 

"I  don't  rightly  know,  sir,  if  they  have  quarters  or  not. 


480  The  Wasteland 

We — I  usually  see  them  about  the  pubs  until  daylight.  They 
don't  seem  to  use  quarters." 

"You  mean,  they  really  aren't  off  of  ships?" 

"Well,  sir,  they  might  be  ships,  in  a  manner  of  speaking. 
But  a  man  would  have  to  be  a  bit  sleepier  than  him  to  sleep 
in  one  of  them." 

"I  see,"  the  captain  said.  He  looked  at  the  policeman. 
"What  kind  of  boats  are  they?" 

This  time  the  policeman's  voice  was  immediate,  final  and 
completely  inflectionless.  It  was  like  a  closed  door.  "I  don't 
rightly  know,  sir." 

"Oh,"  the  captain  said.  "Quite.  Well,  he's  in  no  shape  to 
stay  about  pubs  until  daylight  this  time." 

"Perhaps  I  can  find  him  a  bit  of  a  pub  with  a  back  table, 
where  he  can  sleep,"  the  policeman  said.  But  the  captain  was 
not  listening.  He  was  looking  across  the  street,  where  the 
lights  of  another  cafe  fell  across  the  pavement.  The  English 
boy  yawned  terrifically,  like  a  child  does,  his  mouth  pink 
and  frankly  gaped  as  a  child's. 

The  captain  turned  to  the  policeman: 

"Would  you  mind  stepping  across  there  and  asking  for 
Captain  Bogard's  driver?  I'll  take  care  of  Mr.  Hope." 

The  policeman  departed.  The  captain  now  supported  the 
English  boy,  his  hand  beneath  the  other's  arm.  Again  the 
boy  yawned  like  a  weary  child.  "Steady,"  the  captain  said. 
"The  car  will  be  here  in  a  minute." 

"Right,"  the  English  boy  said  through  the  yawn. 

II 

ONCE  IN  THE  CAR,  he  went  to  sleep  immediately  with  the 
peaceful  suddenness  of  babies,  sitting  between  the  two  Amer- 
icans. But  though  the  aerodrome  was  only  thirty  minutes 
away,  he  was  awake  when  they  arrived,  apparently  qu'te 


Turnabout  48 1 

fresh,  and  asking  for  whisky.  When  they  entered  the  mess 
he  appeared  quite  sober,  only  blinking  a  little  in  the  lighted 
room,  in  his  raked  cap  and  his  awry-buttoned  pea-jacket  and 
a  soiled  silk  muffler,  embroidered  with  a  club  insignia  which 
Bogard  recognized  to  have  come  from  a  famous  preparatory 
school,  twisted  about  his  throat. 

"Ah,"  he  said,  his  voice  fresh,  clear  now,  not  blurred, 
quite  cheerful,  quite  loud,  so  that  the  others  in  the  room 
turned  and  looked  at  him.  "Jolly.  Whisky,  what?"  He  went 
straight  as  a  bird  dog  to  the  bar  in  the  corner,  the  lieutenant 
following.  Bogard  had  turned  and  gone  on  to  the  other  end 
of  the  room,  where  five  men  sat  about  a  card  table. 

"What's  he  admiral  of?"  one  said. 

"Of  the  whole  Scotch  navy,  when  I  found  him,"  Bogard 
said. 

Another  looked  up.  "Oh,  I  thought  I'd  seen  him  in  town." 
He  looked  at  the  guest.  "Maybe  it's  because  he  was  on  his 
feet  that  I  didn't  recognize  him  when  he  came  in.  You 
usually  see  them  lying  down  in  the  gutter." 

"Oh,"  the  first  said.  He,  too,  looked  around.  "Is  he  one  of 
those  guys?" 

"Sure.  You've  seen  them.  Sitting  on  the  curb,  you  know, 
with  a  couple  of  limey  M.  P.'s  hauling  at  their  arms." 

"Yes.  I've  seen  them,"  the  other  said.  They  all  looked  at 
the  English  boy.  He  stood  at  the  bar,  talking,  his  voice  loud, 
cheerful.  "They  all  look  like  him  too,"  the  speaker  said. 
"About  seventeen  or  eighteen.  They  run  those  little  boats 
that  are  always  dashing  in  and  out." 

"Is  that  what  they  do?"  a  third  said.  "You  mean,  there's 
a  male  marine  auxiliary  to  the  Waacs?  Good  Lord,  I  sure 
made  a  mistake  when  I  enlisted.  But  this  war  never  was 
advertised  right." 

"I  don't  know,"  Bogard  said.  "I  guess  they  do  more  than 
just  ride  around." 


482  The  Wasteland 

But  they  were  not  listening  to  him.  They  were  looking 
at  the  guest.  "They  run  by  clock,"  the  first  said.  "You  can 
see  the  condition  of  one  of  them  after  sunset  and  almost  tell 
what  time  it  is.  But  what  I  don't  see  is,  how  a  man  that's 
in  that  shape  at  one  o'clock  every  morning  can  even  see  a 
battleship  the  next  day." 

"Maybe  when  they  have  a  message  to  send  out  to  a  ship," 
another  said,  "they  just  make  duplicates  and  line  the  launches 
up  and  point  them  toward  the  ship  and  give  each  one  a  dupli- 
cate of  the  message  and  let  them  go.  And  the  ones  that  miss 
the  ship  just  cruise  around  the  harbor  until  they  hit  a  dock 
somewhere." 

"It  must  be  more  than  that,"  Bogard  said. 

He  was  about  to  say  something  else,  but  at  that  moment 
the  guest  turned  from  the  bar  and  approached,  carrying  a 
glass.  He  walked  steadily  enough,  but  his  color  was  high 
and  his  eyes  were  bright,  and  he  was  talking,  loud,  cheerful, 
as  he  came  up. 

"I  say.  Won't  you  chaps  join — "  He  ceased.  He  seemed  to 
remark  something;  he  was  looking  at  their  breasts.  "Oh,  I  say. 
You  fly.  All  of  you.  Oh,  good  gad!  Find  it  jolly,  eh?" 

"Yes,"  somebody  said.  "Jolly." 

"But  dangerous,  what?" 

"A  little  faster  than  tennis,"  another  said.  The  guest 
looked  at  him,  bright,  affable,  intent. 

Another  said  quickly,  "Bogard  says  you  command  a  ves- 
sel." 

"Hardly  a  vessel.  Thanks,  though.  And  not  command. 
Ronnie  does  that.  Ranks  me  a  bit.  Age." 

"Ronnie?" 

"Yes.  Nice.  Good  egg.  Old,  though.  Stickler." 

"Stickler?" 

"Frightful.  You'd  not  believe  it.  Whenever  we  sight 
smoke  and  I  have  the  glass,  he  sheers  away.  Keeps  the  ship 


Turnabout  483 

hull  down  all  the  while.  No  beaver  then.  Had  me  two  down 
a  fortnight  yesterday." 

The  Americans  glanced  at  one  another.  "No  beaver?" 

"We  play  it.  With  basket  masts,  you  see.  See  a  basket 
mast.  Beaver!  One  up.  The  Ergenstrasse  doesn't  count  any 
more,  though." 

The  men  about  the  table  looked  at  one  another.  Bogard 
spoke.  "I  see.  When  you  or  Ronnie  see  a  ship  with  basket 
masts,  you  get  a  beaver  on  the  other.  I  see.  What  is  the 
Ergenstrasse?" 

"She's  German.  Interned.  Tramp  steamer.  Foremast  rigged 
so  it  looks  something  like  a  basket  mast.  Booms,  cables,  I 
dare  say.  I  didn't  think  it  looked  very  much  like  a  basket 
mast,  myself.  But  Ronnie  said  yes.  Called  it  one  day.  Then 
one  day  they  shifted  her  across  the  basin  and  I  called  her  on 
Ronnie.  So  we  decided  to  not  count  her  any  more.  See 
now,  eh?" 

"Oh,"  the  one  who  had  made  the  tennis  remark  said,  "I 
see.  You  and  Ronnie  run  about  in  the  launch,  playing  beaver. 
H'm'm.  That's  nice.  Did  you  ever  pi — " 

"Jerry,"  Bogard  said.  The  guest  had  not  moved.  He  looked 
down  at  the  speaker,  still  smiling,  his  eyes  quite  wide. 

The  speaker  still  looked  at  the  guest.  "Has  yours  and 
Ronnie's  boat  got  a  yellow  stern?" 

"A  yellow  stern?"  the  English  boy  said.  He  had  quit  smil- 
ing, but  his  face  was  still  pleasant. 

"I  thought  that  maybe  when  the  boats  had  two  captains, 
they  might  paint  the  sterns  yellow  or  something." 

"Oh,"  the  guest  said.  "Burt  and  Reeves  aren't  officers." 

"Burt  and  Reeves,"  the  other  said,  in  a  musing  tone.  "So 
they  go,  too.  Do  they  play  beaver  too?" 

"Jerry,"  Bogard  said.  The  other  looked  at  him.  Bogard 
jerked  his  head  a  little.  "Come  over  here."  The  other  rose. 
They  went  aside.  "Lay  off  of  him,"  Bogard  said.  "I  mean  it, 


484  The  Wasteland 

now.  He's  just  a  kid.  When  you  were  that  age,  how  much 
sense  did  you  have?  Just  about  enough  to  get  to  chapel  on 
time." 

"My  country  hadn't  been  at  war  going  on  four  years, 
though,"  Jerry  said.  "Here  we  are,  spending  our  money  and 
getting  shot  at  by  the  clock,  and  it's  not  even  our  fight,  and 
these  limeys  that  would  have  been  goose-stepping  twelve 
months  now  if  it  hadn't  been — " 

"Shut  it,"  Bogard  said.  "You  sound  like  a  Liberty  Loan." 

" — taking  it  like  it  was  a  fair  or  something.  'Jolly.'  "  His 
voice  was  now  falsetto,  lilting.  "  'But  dangerous,  what?'  " 

"Sh-h-h-h,"  Bogard  said. 

"I'd  like  to  catch  him  and  his  Ronnie  out  in  the  harbor, 
just  once.  Any  harbor.  London's.  I  wouldn't  want  anything 
but  a  Jenny,  either.  Jenny?  Hell,  I'd  take  a  bicycle  and  a 
pair  of  water  wings!  I'll  show  him  some  war." 

"Well,  you  lay  off  him  now.  He'll  be  gone  soon." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  him?" 

"I'm  going  to  take  him  along  this  morning.  Let  him  have 
Harper's  place  out  front.  He  says  he  can  handle  a  Lewis. 
Says  they  have  one  on  the  boat.  Something  he  was  telling 
me — about  how  he  once  shot  out  a  channel-marker  light  at 
seven  hundred  yards." 

"Well,  that's  your  business.  Maybe  he  can  beat  you." 

"Beat  me?" 

"Playing  beaver.  And  then  you  can  take  on  Ronnie." 

"I'll  show  him  some  war,  anyway,"  Bogard  said.  He  looked 
at  the  guest.  "His  people  have  been  in  it  three  years  now, 
and  he  seems  to  take  it  like  a  sophomore  in  town  for  the  big 
game."  He  looked  at  Jerry  again.  "But  you  lay  off  him  now." 

As  they  approached  the  table,  the  guest's  voice  was  loud 
and  cheerful:  ".  .  .  if  he  got  the  glasses  first,  he  would  go  in 
close  and  look,  but  when  I  got  them  first,  he'd  sheer  off 
where  I  couldn't  see  anything  but  the  smoke.  Frightful 


Turnabout  485 

stickler.  Frightful.  But  Ergenstrasse  not  counting  any  more. 
And  if  you  make  a  mistake  and  call  her,  you  lose  two  beaver 
from  your  score.  If  Ronnie  were  only  to  forget  and  call  her 
we'd  be  even." 


Ill 

AT  TWO  O'CLOCK  the  English  boy  was  still  talking,  his  voice 
bright,  innocent  and  cheerful.  He  was  telling  them  how 
Switzerland  had  been  spoiled  by  1914,  and  instead  of  the 
vacation  which  his  father  had  promised  him  for  his  sixteenth 
birthday,  when  that  birthday  came  he  and  his  tutor  had 
had  to  do  with  Wales.  But  that  he  and  the  tutor  had  got 
pretty  high  and  that  he  dared  to  say — with  all  due  respect 
to  any  present  who  might  have  had  the  advantage  of  Switzer- 
land, of  course — that  one  could  see  probably  as  far  from 
Wales  as  from  Switzerland.  "Perspire  as  much  and  breathe 
as  hard,  anyway,"  he  added.  And  about  him  the  Americans 
sat,  a  little  hard-bitten,  a  little  sober,  somewhat  older,  listen- 
ing to  him  with  a  kind  of  cold  astonishment.  They  had  been 
getting  up  for  some  time  now  and  going  out  and  returning 
in  flying  clothes,  carrying  helmets  and  goggles.  An  orderly 
entered  with  a  tray  of  coffee  cups,  and  the  guest  realized 
that  for  some  time  now  he  had  been  hearing  engines  in  the 
darkness  outside. 

At  last  Bogard  rose.  "Come  along,"  he  said.  "We'll  get 
your  togs."  When  they  emerged  from  the  mess,  the  sound 
of  the  engines  was  quite  loud — an  idling  thunder.  In  align- 
ment along  the  invisible  tarmac  was  a  vague  rank  of  short 
banks  of  flickering  blue-green  fire  suspended  apparently  in 
mid-air.  They  crossed  the  aerodrome  to  Bogard's  quarters, 
where  the  lieutenant,  McGinnis,  sat  on  a  cot  fastening  his 
flying  boots.  Bogard  reached  down  a  Sidcott  suit  and  threw 
it  across  the  cot.  "Put  this  on,"  he  said. 


486  The  Wasteland 

"Will  I  need  all  this?"  the  guest  said.  ''Shall  we  be  gone 
that  long?" 

"Probably,"  Bogard  said.  "Better  use  it.  Cold  upstairs." 

The  guest  picked  up  the  suit.  "I  say,"  he  said.  "I  say, 
Ronnie  and  I  have  a  do  ourselves,  tomor — today.  Do  you 
think  Ronnie  won't  mind  if  I  am  a  bit  late?  Might  not  wait 
for  me." 

"We'll  be  back  before  teatime,"  McGinnis  said.  He  seemed 
quite  busy  with  his  boot.  "Promise  you."  The  English  boy 
looked  at  him. 

"What  time  should  you  be  back?"  Bogard  said. 

"Oh,  well,"  the  English  boy  said,  "I  dare  say  it  will  be  all 
right.  They  let  Ronnie  say  when  to  go,  anyway.  He'll  wait 
for  me  if  I  should  be  a  bit  late." 

"He'll  wait,"  Bogard  said.  "Get  your  suit  on." 

"Right,"  the  other  said.  They  helped  him  into  the  suit. 
"Never  been  up  before,"  he  said,  chattily,  pleasantly.  "Dare 
say  you  can  see  farther  than  from  mountains,  eh?" 

"See  more,  anyway,"  McGinnis  said.  "You'll  like  it." 

"Oh,  rather.  If  Ronnie  only  waits  for  me.  Lark.  But  dan- 
gerous, isn't  it?" 

"Go  on,"  McGinnis  said.  "You're  kidding  me." 

"Shut  your  trap,  Mac,"  Bogard  said.  "Come  along.  Want 
some  more  coffee?"  He  looked  at  the  guest,  but  McGinnis 
answered: 

"No.  Got  something  better  than  coffee.  Coffee  makes  such 
a  confounded  stain  on  the  wings." 

"On  the  wings?"  the  English  boy  said.  "Why  coffee  on 
the  wings." 

"Stow  it,  I  said,  Mac,"  Bogard  said.  "Come  along." 

They  recrossed  the  aerodrome,  approaching  the  mutter- 
ing banks  of  flame.  When  they  drew  near,  the  guest  began 
to  discern  the  shape,  the  outlines,  of  the  Handley-Page.  It 
looked  like  a  Pullman  coach  run  upslanted  aground  into  the 


Turnabout  487 

skeleton  of  the  first  floor  of  an  incomplete  skyscraper.  The 
guest  looked  at  it  quietly. 

"It's  larger  than  a  cruiser,"  he  said  in  his  bright,  interested 
voice.  "I  say,  you  know.  This  doesn't  fly  in  one  lump.  You 
can't  pull  my  leg.  Seen  them  before.  It  comes  in  two  parts: 
Captain  Bogard  and  me  in  one;  Mac  and  'nother  chap  in 
other.  What?" 

"No,"  McGinnis  said.  Bogard  had  vanished.  "It  all  goes 
up  in  one  lump.  Big  lark,  eh?  Buzzard,  what?" 

"Buzzard?"  the  guest  murmured.  "Oh,  I  say.  A  cruiser. 
Flying.  I  say,  now." 

"And  listen,"  McGinnis  said.  His  hand  came  forth;  some- 
thing cold  fumbled  against  the  hand  of  the  English  boy — 
a  bottle.  "When  you  feel  yourself  getting  sick,  see?  Take 
a  pull  at  it." 

"Oh,  shall  I  get  sick?" 

"Sure.  We  all  do.  Part  of  flying.  This  will  stop  it.  But  if 
it  doesn't.  See?" 

"What?  Quite.  What?" 

"Not  overside.  Don't  spew  it  overside." 

"Not  overside?" 

"It'll  blow  back  in  Bogy's  and  my  face.  Can't  see.  Bingo. 
Finished.  See?" 

"Oh,  quite.  What  shall  I  do  with  it?"  Their  voices  were 
quiet,  brief,  grave  as  conspirators. 

"Just  duck  your  head  and  let  her  go." 

"Oh,  quite." 

Bogard  returned.  "Show  him  how  to  get  into  the  front 
pit,  will  you?"  he  said.  McGinnis  led  the  way  through  the 
trap.  Forward,  rising  to  the  slant  of  the  fuselage,  the  passage 
narrowed;  a  man  would  need  to  crawl. 

"Crawl  in  there  and  keep  going,"  McGinnis  said. 

"It  looks  like  a  dog  kennel,"  the  guest  said. 

"Doesn't  it,  though?"  McGinnis  agreed  cheerfully.  aCut 


488  The  Wasteland 

along  with  you."  Stooping,  he  could  hear  the  other  scuttling 
forward.  "You'll  find  a  Lewis  gun  up  there,  like  as  not,"  he 
said  into  the  tunnel. 

The  voice  of  the  guest  came  back:  "Found  it." 

"The  gunnery  sergeant  will  be  along  in  a  minute  and  show 
you  if  it  is  loaded." 

"It's  loaded,"  the  guest  said;  almost  on  the  heels  of  his 
words  the  gun  fired,  a  brief  staccato  burst.  There  were 
shouts,  the  loudest  from  the  ground  beneath  the  nose  of  the 
aeroplane.  "It's  quite  all  right,"  the  English  boy's  voice  said. 
"I  pointed  it  west  before  I  let  it  off.  Nothing  back  there  but 
Marine  office  and  your  brigade  headquarters.  Ronnie  and 
I  always  do  this  before  we  go  anywhere.  Sorry  if  I  was  too 
soon.  Oh,  by  the  way,"  he  added,  "my  name's  Claude.  Don't 
think  I  mentioned  it." 

On  the  ground,  Bogard  and  two  other  officers  stood.  They 
had  come  up  running.  "Fired  it  west,"  one  said.  "How  in 
hell  does  he  know  which  way  is  west? " 

"He's  a  sailor,"  the  other  said.  "You  forgot  that." 

"He  seems  to  be  a  machine  gunner  too,"  Bogard  said. 

"Let's  hope  he  doesn't  forget  that,"  the  first  said. 


IV 

NEVERTHELESS,  Bogard  kept  an  eye  on  the  silhouetted  head 
rising  from  the  round  gunpit  in  the  nose  ten  feet  ahead  of 
him.  "He  did  work  that  gun,  though,"  he  said  to  McGinnis 
beside  him.  "He  even  put  the  drum  on  himself,  didn't  he?" 

"Yes,"  McGinnis  said.  "If  he  just  doesn't  forget  and  think 
that  that  gun  is  him  and  his  tutor  looking  around  from  a 
Welsh  alp." 

"Maybe  I  should  not  have  brought  him,"  Bogard  said. 
McGinnis  didn't  answer.  Bogard  jockeyed  the  wheel  a  little. 
Ahead,  in  the  gunner's  pit,  the  guest's  head  moved  this  way 


Turnabout  489 

and  that  continuously,  looking.  "We'll  get  there  and  unload 
and  haul  air  for  home,"  Bogard  said.  "Maybe  in  the  dark — 
Confound  it,  it  would  be  a  shame  for  his  country  to  be  in 
this  mess  for  four  years  and  him  not  even  to  see  a  gun  pointed 
in  his  direction." 

"He'll  see  one  tonight  if  he  don't  keep  his  head  in," 
McGinnis  said. 

But  the  boy  did  not  do  that.  Not  even  when  they  had 
reached  the  objective  and  McGinnis  had  crawled  down  to 
the  bomb  toggles.  And  even  when  the  searchlights  found 
them  and  Bogard  signaled  to  the  other  machines  and  dived, 
the  two  engines  snarling  full  speed  into  and  through  the 
bursting  shells,  he  could  see  the  boy's  face  in  the  searchlight's 
glare,  leaned  far  overside,  coming  sharply  out  as  a  spotlighted 
face  on  a  stage,  with  an  expression  upon  it  of  child-like  in- 
terest and  delight.  "But  he's  firing  that  Lewis,"  Bogard 
thought.  "Straight  too";  nosing  the  machine  farther  down, 
watching  the  pinpoint  swing  into  the  sights,  his  right  hand 
lifted,  waiting  to  drop  into  McGinnis'  sight.  He  dropped 
his  hand;  above  the  noise  of  the  engines  he  seemed  to  hear 
the  click  and  whistle  of  the  released  bombs  as  the  machine, 
freed  of  the  weight,  shot  zooming  in  a  long  upward  bounce 
that  carried  it  for  an  instant  out  of  the  light.  Then  he  was 
pretty  busy  for  a  time,  coming  into  and  through  the  shells 
again,  shooting  athwart  another  beam  that  caught  and  held 
long  enough  for  him  to  see  the  English  boy  leaning  far  over 
the  side,  looking  back  and  down  past  the  right  wing,  the 
undercarriage.  "Maybe  he's  read  about  it  somewhere,"  Bo- 
gard thought,  turning,  looking  back  to  pick  up  the  rest  of 
the  flight. 

Then  it  was  all  over,  the  darkness  cool  and  empty  and 
peaceful  and  almost  quiet,  with  only  the  steady  sound  of  the 
engines.  McGinnis  climbed  back  into  the  office,  and  standing 
UD  in  his  seat,  he  fired  the  colored  pistol  this  time  and  stood 


490  The  Wasteland 

for  a  moment  longer,  looking  backward  toward  where  the 
searchlights  still  probed  and  sabered.  He  sat  down  again. 

"O.K.,"  he  said.  "I  counted  all  four  of  them.  Let's  haul 
air."  Then  he  looked  forward.  "What's  become  of  the 
King's  Own?  You  didn't  hang  him  onto  a  bomb  release,  did 
you?"  Bogard  looked.  The  forward  pit  was  empty.  It  was 
in  dim  silhouette  again  now,  against  the  stars,  but  there  was 
nothing  there  now  save  the  gun.  "No,"  McGinnis  said: 
"there  he  is.  See?  Leaning  overside.  Dammit,  I  told  him  not 
to  spew  it!  There  he  comes  back."  The  guest's  head  came 
into  view  again.  But  again  it  sank  out  of  sight. 

"He's  coming  back,"  Bogard  said.  "Stop  him.  Tell  him 
we're  going  to  have  every  squadron  in  the  Hun  Channel 
group  on  top  of  us  in  thirty  minutes." 

McGinnis  swung  himself  down  and  stooped  at  the  en- 
trance to  the  passage.  "Get  back!"  he  shouted.  The  other 
was  almost  out;  they  squatted  so,  face  to  face  like  two  dogs, 
shouting  at  one  another  above  the  noise  of  the  still-unthrot- 
tied  engines  on  either  side  of  the  fabric  walls.  The  English 
boy's  voice  was  thin  and  high. 

"Bomb!  "he  shrieked. 

"Yes,"  McGinnis  shouted,  "they  were  bombs!  We  gave 
them  hell!  Get  back,  I  tell  you!  Have  every  Hun  in  France 
on  us  in  ten  minutes!  Get  back  to  your  gun!" 

Again  the  boy's  voice  came,  high,  faint  above  the  noise: 
"Bomb!  All  right?" 

"Yes!  Yes!  All  right.  Back  to  your  gun,  damn  you!" 

McGinnis  climbed  back  into  the  office.  "He  went  back. 
Want  me  to  take  her  awhile?" 

"All  right,"  Bogard  said.  He  passed  McGinnis  the  wheel. 
"Ease  her  back  some.  I'd  just  as  soon  it  was  daylight  when 
they  come  down  on  us." 

"Right,"  McGinnis  said.  He  moved  the  wheel  suddenly. 
"What's  the  matter  with  that  right  wing?"  he  said.  "Watch 


Turnabout  491 

it See?  I'm  flying  on  the  right  aileron  and  a  little  rudder. 

Feel  it." 

Bogard  took  the  wheel  a  moment.  "I  didn't  notice  that. 
Wire  somewhere,  I  guess.  I  didn't  think  any  of  those  shells 
were  that  close.  Watch  her,  though." 

"Right,"  McGinnis  said.  "And  so  you  are  going  with  him 
on  his  boat  tomorrow — today." 

"Yes.  I  promised  him.  Confound  it,  you  can't  hurt  a  kid> 
you  know." 

"Why  don't  you  take  Collier  along,  with  his  mandolin? 
Then  you  could  sail  around  and  sing." 

"I  promised  him,"  Bogard  said.  "Get  that  wing  up  a  little." 

"Right,"  McGinnis  said. 

Thirty  minutes  later  it  was  beginning  to  be  dawn;  the  sky 
was  gray.  Presently  McGinnis  said:  "Well,  here  they  come* 
Look  at  them!  They  look  like  mosquitoes  in  September.  I 
hope  he  don't  get  worked  up  now  and  think  he's  playing 
beaver.  If  he  does  he'll  just  be  one  down  to  Ronnie,  provided 
the  devil  has  a  beard.  .  . .  Want  the  wheel?" 


V 

AT  EIGHT  O'CLOCK  the  beach,  the  Channel,  was  beneath  them* 
Throttled  back,  the  machine  drifted  down  as  Bogard  rud- 
dered it  gently  into  the  Channel  wind.  His  face  was  strained^ 
a  little  tired. 

McGinnis  looked  tired,  too,  and  he  needed  a  shave. 

"What  do  you  guess  he  is  looking  at  now?"  he  said.  For 
again  the  English  boy  was  leaning  over  the  right  side  of  the 
cockpit,  looking  backward  and  downward  past  the  right 
wing. 

"I  don't  know,"  Bogard  said.  "Maybe  bullet  holes."  He 
blasted  the  port  engine.  "Must  have  the  riggers — " 

"He  could  see  some  closer  than  that,"  McGinnis  said.  "I'D 


492  The  Wasteland 

swear  I  saw  tracer  going  into  his  back  at  one  time.  Or  maybe 
it's  the  ocean  he's  looking  at.  But  he  must  have  seen  that 
when  he  came  over  from  England."  Then  Bogard  leveled 
off;  the  nose  rose  sharply,  the  sand,  the  curling  tide  edge 
fled  alongside.  Yet  still  the  English  boy  hung  far  overside, 
looking  backward  and  downward  at  something  beneath  the 
right  wing,  his  face  rapt,  with  utter  and  childlike  interest. 
Until  the  machine  was  completely  stopped  he  contittued  to 
do  so.  Then  he  ducked  down,  and  in  the  abrupt  silence  of 
the  engines  they  could  hear  him  crawling  in  the  passage.  He 
emerged  just  as  the  two  pilots  climbed  stiffly  down  from  the 
office,  his  face  bright,  eager;  his  voice  high,  excited. 

"Oh,  I  say!  Oh,  good  gad!  What  a  chap.  What  a  judge 
of  distance!  If  Ronnie  could  only  have  seen!  Oh,  good  gad! 
Or  maybe  they  aren't  like  ours — don't  load  themselves  as 
soon  as  the  air  strikes  them." 

The  Americans  looked  at  him.  "What  don't  what?" 
McGinnis  said.  "The  bomb.  It  was  magnificent;  I  say,  I 
shan't  forget  it.  Oh,  I  say,  you  know!  It  was  splendid!" 

After  a  while  McGinnis  said,  "The  bomb?"  in  a  fainting 
voice.  Then  the  two  pilots  glared  at  each  other;  they  said 
in  unison:  "That  right  wing!"  Then  as  one  they  clawed 
down  through  the  trap  and,  with  the  guest  at  their  heels, 
they  ran  around  the  machine  and  looked  beneath  the  right 
wing.  The  bomb,  suspended  by  its  tail,  hung  straight  down 
like  a  plumb  bob  beside  the  right  wheel,  its  tip  just  touching 
the  sand.  And  parallel  with  the  wheel  track  was  the  long 
delicate  line  in  the  sand  where  its  ultimate  tip  had  dragged. 
Behind  them  the  English  boy's  voice  was  high,  clear,  child- 
like: 

"Frightened,  myself.  Tried  to  tell  you.  But  realized  you 
knew  your  business  better  than  I.  Skill.  Marvelous.  Oh,  I 
.say,  I  shan't  forget  it." 


Turnabout  493 

VI 

A  MARINE  with  a  bayoneted  rifle  passed  Bogard  onto  the 
wharf  and  directed  him  to  the  boat.  The  wharf  was  empty, 
and  he  didn't  even  see  the  boat  until  he  approached  the  edge 
of  the  wharf  and  looked  directly  down  into  it  and  upon 
the  backs  of  two  stooping  men  in  greasy  dungarees,  who 
rose  and  glanced  briefly  at  him  and  stooped  again. 

It  was  about  thirty  feet  long  and  about  three  feet  wide. 
It  was  painted  with  gray-green  camouflage.  It  was  quarter- 
decked  forward,  with  two  blunt,  raked  exhaust  stacks.  "Good 
Lord,"  Bogard  thought,  "if  all  that  deck  is  engine — "  Just 
aft  the  deck  was  the  control  seat;  he  saw  a  big  wheel,  an 
instrument  panel.  Rising  to  a  height  of  about  a  foot  above 
the  free-board,  and  running  from  the  stern  forward  to  where 
the  deck  began,  and  continuing  on  across  the  after  edge  of 
the  deck  and  thence  back  down  the  other  gunwale  to  the 
stern,  was  a  solid  screen,  also  camouflaged,  which  inclosed 
the  boat  save  for  the  width  of  the  stern,  which  was  open. 
Facing  the  steersman's  seat  like  an  eye  was  a  hole  in  the 
screen  about  eight  inches  in  diameter.  And  looking  down 
into  the  long,  narrow,  still,  vicious  shape,  he  saw  a  machine 
gun  swiveled  at  the  stern,  and  he  looked  at  the  low  screen 
— including  which  the  whole  vessel  did  not  sit  much  more 
than  a  yard  above  water  level — with  its  single  empty  for- 
ward-staring eye,  and  he  thought  quietly:  "It's  steel.  It's 
made  of  steel."  And  his  face  was  quite  sober,  quite  thought- 
ful, and  he  drew  his  trench  coat  about  him  and  buttoned  it, 
as  though  he  were  getting  cold. 

He  heard  steps  behind  him  and  turned.  But  it  was  only  an 
orderly  from  the  aerodrome,  accompanied  by  the  marine 
with  the  rifle.  The  orderly  was  carrying  a  largish  bundle 
trapped  in  paper. 


494  The  Wasteland 

"From  Lieutenant  McGinnis  to  the  captain,"  the  orderly 
said. 

Bogard  took  the  bundle.  The  orderly  and  the  marine 
retreated.  He  opened  the  bundle.  It  contained  some  objects 
and  a  scrawled  note.  The  objects  were  a  new  yellow  silk  sofa 
cushion  and  a  Japanese  parasol,  obviously  borrowed,  and 
a  comb  and  a  roll  of  toilet  paper.  The  note  said: 

Couldn't  find  a  camera  anywhere  and  Collier  wouldn't 
let  me  have  his  mandolin.  But  maybe  Ronnie  can  play  on 
the  comb. 

MAC. 

Bogard  looked  at  the  objects.  But  his  face  was  still  quite 
thoughtful,  quite  grave.  He  rewrapped  the  things  and  car- 
ried the  bundle  on  up  the  wharf  and  dropped  it  quietly  into 
the  water. 

As  he  returned  toward  the  invisible  boat  he  saw  two  men 
approaching.  He  recognized  the  boy  at  once — tall,  slender, 
already  talking,  voluble,  his  head  bent  a  little  toward  his 
shorter  companion,  who  plodded  along  beside  him,  hands 
in  pockets,  smoking  a  pipe.  The  boy  still  wore  the  pea-coat 
beneath  a  flapping  oilskin,  but  in  place  of  the  rakish  and 
casual  cap  he  now  wore  an  infantryman's  soiled  Balaclava 
helmet,  with,  floating  behind  him  as  though  upon  the  sound 
of  his  voice,  a  curtainlike  piece  of  cloth  almost  as  long  as 
a  burnous. 

"Hullo,  there!"  he  cried,  still  a  hundred  yards  away. 

But  it  was  the  second  man  that  Bogard  was  watching, 
thinking  to  himself  that  he  had  never  in  his  life  seen  a  more 
curious  figure.  There  was  something  stolid  about  the  very 
shape  of  his  hunched  shoulders,  his  slightly  down-looking 
face.  He  was  a  head  shorter  than  the  other.  His  face  was 
ruddy,  too,  but  its  mold  was  of  a  profound  gravity  that  was 
almost  dour.  It  was  the  face  of  a  man  of  twenty  who  has  been 


Turnabout  495 

for  a  year  trying,  even  while  asleep,  to  look  twenty-one.  He 
wore  a  high-necked  sweater  and  dungaree  slacks;  above  this 
a  leather  jacket;  and  above  this  a  soiled  naval  officer's  warmer 
that  reached  almost  to  his  heels  and  which  had  one  shoulder 
strap  missing  and  not  one  remaining  button  at  all.  On  his 
head  was  a  plaid  fore-and-aft  deer  stalker's  cap,  tied  on  by 
a  narrow  scarf  brought  across  and  down,  hiding  his  ears,  and 
then  wrapped  once  about  his  throat  and  knotted  with  a  hang- 
man's noose  beneath  his  left  ear.  It  was  unbelievably  soiled, 
and  with  his  hands  elbow-deep  in  his  pockets  and  his 
hunched  shoulders  and  his  bent  head,  he  looked  like  some- 
one's grandmother  hung,  say,  for  a  witch.  Clamped  upside 
down  between  his  teeth  was  a  short  brier  pipe. 

"Here  he  is!"  the  boy  cried.  "This  is  Ronnie.  Captain 
Bogard." 

"How  are  you?"  Bogard  said.  He  extended  his  hand.  The 
other  said  no  word,  but  his  hand  came  forth,  limp.  It  was 
quite  cold,  but  it  was  hard,  calloused.  But  he  said  no  word; 
he  just  glanced  briefly  at  Bogard  and  then  away.  But  in  that 
instant  Bogard  caught  something  in  the  look,  something 
strange — a  flicker;  a  kind  of  covert  and  curious  respect, 
something  like  a  boy  of  fifteen  looking  at  a  circus  trapezist. 

But  he  said  no  word.  He  ducked  on;  Bogard  watched  him 
drop  from  sight  over  the  wharf  edge  as  though  he  had 
jumped  feet  first  into  the  sea.  He  remarked  now  that  the 
engines  in  the  invisible  boat  were  running. 

"We  might  get  aboard  too,"  the  boy  said.  He  started 
toward  the  boat,  then  he  stopped.  He  touched  Bogard's  arm. 
"Yonder!"  he  hissed.  "See?"  His  voice  was  thin  with  excite- 
ment. 

"What?"  Bogard  also  whispered;  automatically  he  looked 
backward  and  upward,  after  old  habit.  The  other  was  grip- 
ping his  arm  and  pointing  across  the  harbor. 

"There!  Over  there.  The  Ergenstrasse.  They  have  shifted 


496  The  Wasteland 

her  again."  Across  the  harbor  lay  an  ancient,  rusting,  sway- 
backed  hulk.  It  was  small  and  nondescript,  and,  remember- 
ing, BogarJ  saw  that  the  foremast  was  a  strange  mess  of 
cables  and  booms,  resembling — allowing  for  a  great  deal  of 
license  or  looseness  of  imagery — a  basket  mast.  Beside  him 
the  boy  was  almost  chortling.  "Do  you  think  that  Ronnie 
noticed?"  he  hissed.  "Do  you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Bogard  said. 

"Oh,  good  gad!  If  he  should  glance  up  and  call  her  before 
he  notices,  we'll  be  even.  Oh,  good  gad!  But  come  along." 
He  went  on;  he  was  still  chortling.  "Careful,"  he  said. 
"Frightful  ladder." 

He  descended  first,  the  two  men  in  the  boat  rising  and 
saluting.  Ronnie  had  disappeared,  save  for  his  backside,  which 
now  filled  a  small  hatch  leading  forward  beneath  the  deck. 
Bogard  descended  gingerly. 

"Good  Lord,"  he  said.  "Do  you  have  to  climb  up  and 
down  this  every  day?" 

"Frightful,  isn't  it?"  the  other  said,  in  his  happy  voice. 
"But  you  know  yourself.  Try  to  run  a  war  with  makeshifts, 
then  wonder  why  it  takes  so  long."  The  narrow  hull  slid  and 
surged,  even  with  Bogard's  added  weight.  "Sits  right  on  top, 
you  see,"  the  boy  said.  "Would  float  on  a  lawn,  in  a  heavy 
dew.  Goes  right  over  them  like  a  bit  of  paper." 

"It  does?"  Bogard  said. 

"Oh,  absolutely.  That's  why,  you  see."  Bogard  didn't  see, 
but  he  was  too  busy  letting  himself  gingerly  down  to  a  sitting 
posture.  There  were  no  thwarts;  no  seats  save  a  long,  thick, 
cylindrical  ridge  which  ran  along  the  bottom  of  the  boat 
from  the  driver's  seat  to  the  stern.  Ronnie  had  backed  into 
sight.  He  now  sat  behind  the  wheel,  bent  over  the  instrument 
panel.  But  when  he  glanced  back  over  his  shoulder  he  did 
not  speak.  His  face  was  merely  interrogatory.  Across  his  face 
there  was  now  a  long  smudge  of  grease.  The  boy's  face  was 
empty,  too,  now. 


Turnabout  497 

"Right,"  he  said.  He  looked  forward,  where  one  of  the 
seamen  had  gone.  "Ready  forward?"  he  said. 

"Aye,  sir,"  the  seaman  said. 

The  other  seaman  was  at  the  stern  line.  "Ready  aft?" 

"Aye,  sir." 

"Cast  off."  The  boat  sheered  away,  purring,  a  boiling  of 
water  under  the  stern.  The  boy  looked  down  at  Bogard. 
"Silly  business.  Do  it  shipshape,  though.  Can't  tell  when  silly 
fourstriper — "  His  face  changed  again,  immediate,  solicitous. 
"I  say.  Will  you  be  warm?  I  never  thought  to  fetch — " 

"I'll  be  all  right,"  Bogard  said.  But  the  other  was  already 
taking  off  his  oilskin.  "No,  no,"  Bogard  said.  "I  won't  take 
it." 

"You'll  tell  me  if  you  get  cold?" 

"Yes.  Sure."  He  was  looking  down  at  the  cylinder  on 
which  he  sat.  It  was  a  half  cylinder — that  is,  like  the  hot- 
water  tank  to  some  Gargantuan  stove,  sliced  down  the  middle 
and  bolted,  open  side  down,  to  the  floor  plates.  It  was  twenty 
feet  long  and  more  than  two  feet  thick.  Its  top  rose  as  high 
as  the  gunwales  and  between  it  and  the  hull  on  either  side  was 
just  room  enough  for  a  man  to  place  his  feet  to  walk. 

"That's  Muriel,"  the  boy  said. 

"Muriel?" 

"Yes.  The  one  before  that  was  Agatha.  After  my  aunt. 
The  first  one  Ronnie  and  I  had  was  Alice  in  Wonderland. 
Ronnie  and  I  were  the  White  Rabbit.  Jolly,  eh?" 

"Oh,  you  and  Ronnie  have  had  three,  have  you?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  the  boy  said.  He  leaned  down.  "He  didn't 
notice,"  he  whispered.  His  face  was  again  bright,  gleeful. 
"When  we  come  back,"  he  said.  "You  watch." 

"Oh,"  Bogard  said.  "The  Ergenstrasse."  He  looked  astern, 
and  then  he  thought:  "Good  Lord!  We  must  be  going — 
traveling."  He  looked  out  now,  broadside,  and  saw  the  har- 
bor line  fleeing  past,  and  he  thought  to  himself  that  the  boat 
was  well-nigh  moving  at  the  speed  at  which  the  Handley- 


498  The  Wasteland 

Page  flew,  left  the  ground.  They  were  beginning  to  bound 
now,  even  in  the  sheltered  water,  from  one  wave  crest  to  the 
next  with  a  distinct  shock.  His  hand  still  rested  on  the  cylin- 
der on  which  he  sat.  He  looked  down  at  it  again,  following  it 
from  where  it  seemed  to  emerge  beneath  Ronnie's  seat,  to 
where  it  beveled  into  the  stern.  "It's  the  air  in  her,  I  suppose," 
he  said. 

"The  what?"  the  boy  said. 

"The  air.  Stored  up  in  her.  That  makes  the  boat  ride 

high." 

"Oh,  yes.  I  dare  say.  Very  likely.  I  hadn't  thought  about 
it."  He  came  forward,  his  burnous  whipping  in  the  wind, 
and  sat  down  beside  Bogard.  Their  heads  were  below  the  top 
of  the  screen. 

Astern  the  harbor  fled,  diminishing,  sinking  into  the  sea. 
The  boat  had  begun  to  lift  now,  swooping  forward  and 
down,  shocking  almost  stationary  for  a  moment,  then  lift- 
ing and  swooping  again;  a  gout  of  spray  came  aboard  over 
the  bows  like  a  flung  shovelful  of  shot.  "I  wish  you'd  take 
this  coat,"  the  boy  said. 

Bogard  didn't  answer.  He  looked  around  at  the  bright 
face.  "We're  outside,  aren't  we?"  he  said  quietly. 

"Yes.  .  .  .  Do  take  it,  won't  you?" 

"Thanks,  no.  I'll  be  all  right.  We  won't  be  long,  anyway, 
I  guess." 

"No.  We'll  turn  soon.  It  won't  be  so  bad  then." 

"Yes.  I'll  be  all  right  when  we  turn."  Then  they  did  turn. 
The  motion  became  easier.  That  is,  the  boat  didn't  bang 
head-on,  shuddering,  into  the  swells.  They  came  up  beneath 
now,  and  the  boat  fled  with  increased  speed,  with  a  long, 
sickening,  yawing  motion,  first  to  one  side  and  then  the 
other.  But  it  fled  on,  and  Bogard  looked  astern  with  that 
same  soberness  with  which  he  had  first  looked  down  into 
the  boat.  "We're  going  east  now,"  he  said. 


Turnabout  499 

"With  just  a  spot  of  north,"  the  boy  said.  "Makes  her  ride 
a  bit  better,  what?" 

"Yes,"  Bogard  said.  Astern  there  was  nothing  now  save 
empty  sea  and  the  delicate  needlelike  cant  of  the  machine 
gun  against  the  boiling  and  slewing  wake,  and  the  two  sea- 
men crouching  quietly  in  the  stern.  "Yes.  It's  easier."  Then 
he  said:  "How  far  do  we  go?" 

The  boy  leaned  closer.  He  moved  closer.  His  voice  was 
happy,  confidential,  proud,  though  lowered  a  little:  "It's 
Ronnie's  show.  He  thought  of  it.  Not  that  I  wouldn't  have, 
in  time.  Gratitude  and  all  that.  But  he's  the  older,  you  see. 
Thinks  fast.  Courtesy,  noblesse  oblige — all  that.  Thought  of 
it  soon  as  I  told  him  this  morning.  I  said,  'Oh,  I  say.  I've 
been  there.  I've  seen  it';  and  he  said,  'Not  flying';  and  I  said, 
'Strewth';  and  he  said  'How  far?  No  lying  now';  and  I  said, 
'Oh,  far.  Tremendous.  Gone  all  night';  and  he  said,  'Flying 
all  night.  That  must  have  been  to  Berlin';  and  I  said,  'I  don't 
know.  I  dare  say';  and  he  thought.  I  could  see  him  thinking. 
Because  he  is  the  older,  you  see.  More  experience  in  courtesy, 
right  thing.  And  he  said,  'Berlin.  No  fun  to  that  chap,  dash- 
ing out  and  back  with  us.'  And  he  thought  and  I  waited, 
and  I  said,  'But  we  can't  take  him  to  Berlin.  Too  far.  Don't 
know  the  way,  either';  and  he  said — fast,  like  a  shot — said, 
'But  there's  Kiel';  and  I  knew—" 

"What?"  Bogard  said.  Without  moving,  his  whole  body 
sprang.  "Kiel?  In  this?" 

"Absolutely.  Ronnie  thought  of  it.  Smart,  even  if  he  is  a 
stickler.  Said  at  once,  'Zeebrugge  no  show  at  all  for  that 
chap.  Must  do  best  we  can  for  him.  Berlin,'  Ronnie  said. 
'My  Gad!  Berlin.' " 

"Listen,"  Bogard  said.  He  had  turned  now,  facing  the 
other,  his  face  quite  grave.  "What  is  this  boat  for?" 

"For?" 

"What   does   it   do?"   Then,   knowing   beforehand   the 


500  The  Wasteland 

answer  to  his  own  question,  he  said,  putting  his  hand  on  the 
cylinder:  "What  is  this  in  here?  A  torpedo,  isn't  it?" 

"I  thought  you  knew,"  the  boy  said. 

"No,"  Bogard  said.  "I  didn't  know."  His  voice  seemed  to 
reach  him  from  a  distance,  dry,  cricketlike:  "How  do  you 
fire  it?" 

"Fire  it?" 

"How  do  you  get  it  out  of  the  boat?  When  that  hatch 
was  open  a  while  ago  I  could  see  the  engines.  They  were 
right  in  front  of  the  end  of  this  tube." 

"Oh,"  the  boy  said.  "You  pull  a  gadget  there  and  the  tor- 
pedo drops  out  astern.  As  soon  as  the  screw  touches  the 
water  it  begins  to  turn,  and  then  the  torpedo  is  ready,  loaded. 
Then  all  you  have  to  do  is  turn  the  boat  quickly  and  the 
torpedo  goes  on." 

"You  mean — "  Bogard  said.  After  a  moment  his  voice 
obeyed  him  again.  "You  mean  you  aim  the  torpedo  with 
the  boat  and  release  it  and  it  starts  moving,  and  you  turn 
the  boat  out  of  the  way  and  the  torpedo  passes  through  the 
same  water  that  the  boat  just  vacated?" 

"Knew  you'd  catch  on,"  the  boy  said.  "Told  Ronnie  so. 
Airman.  Tamer  than  yours,  though.  But  can't  be  helped. 
Best  we  can  do,  just  on  water.  But  knew  you'd  catch  on." 

"Listen,'  Bogard  said.  His  voice  sounded  to  him  quite 
calm.  The  boat  fled  on,  yawing  over  the  swells.  He  sat  quite 
motionless.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  could  hear  himself  talk- 
ing to  himself:  "Go  on.  Ask  him.  Ask  him  what?  Ask  him 
how  close  to  the  ship  do  you  have  to  be  before  you  fire.  .  .  . 
Listen,"  he  said,  in  that  calm  voice.  "Now,  you  tell  Ronnie, 
you  see.  You  just  tell  him — just  say — "  He  could  feel  his 
voice  ratting  off  on  him  again,  so  he  stopped  it.  He  sat  quite 
motionless,  waiting  for  it  to  come  back;  the  boy  leaning 
now,  looking  at  his  face.  Again  the  boy's  voice  was  solici- 
tous: 


Turnabout  501 

"I  say.  You're  not  feeling  well.  These  confounded  shallow 
boats." 

"It's  not  that,"  Bogard  said.  "I  just —  Do  your  orders  say 
Kiel?" 

"Oh,  no.  They  let  Ronnie  say.  Just  so  we  bring  the  boat 
back.  This  is  for  you.  Gratitude.  Ronnie's  idea.  Tame,  after 
flying.  But  if  you'd  rather,  eh?" 

"Yes,  some  place  closer.  You  see,  I — " 

"Quite.  I  see.  No  vacations  in  wartime.  I'll  tell  Ronnie." 
He  went  forward.  Bogard  did  not  move.  The  boat  fled  in 
long,  slewing  swoops.  Bogard  looked  quietly  astern,  at  the 
scudding  sea,  the  sky. 

"My  God!"  he  thought.  "Can  you  beat  it?  Can  you  beat 
it?" 

The  boy  came  back;  Bogard  turned  to  him  a  face  the  color 
of  dirty  paper.  "All  right  now,"  the  boy  said.  "Not  Kiel. 
Nearer  place,  hunting  probably  just  as  good.  Ronnie  says 
he  knows  you  will  understand."  He  was  tugging  at  his 
pocket.  He  brought  out  a  bottle.  "Here.  Haven't  forgot  last 
night.  Do  the  same  for  you.  Good  for  the  stomach,  eh?" 

Bogard  drank,  gulping — a  big  one.  He  extended  the  bot- 
tle, but  the  boy  refused.  "Never  touch  it  on  duty,"  he  said. 
"Not  like  you  chaps.  Tame  here." 

The  boat  fled  on.  The  sun  was  already  down  the  west. 
But  Bogard  had  lost  all  count  of  time,  of  distance.  Ahead 
he  could  see  white  seas  through  the  round  eye  opposite 
Ronnie's  face,  and  Ronnie's  hand  on  the  wheel  and  the 
granitelike  jut  of  his  profiled  jaw  and  the  dead  upside-down 
pipe.  The  boat  fled  on. 

Then  the  boy  leaned  and  touched  his  shoulder.  He  half 
rose.  The  boy  was  pointing.  The  sun  was  reddish;  against  it, 
outside  them  and  about  two  miles  away,  a  vessel — a  trawler, 
it  looked  like — at  anchor  swung  a  tall  mast. 

"Lightship!"  the  boy  shouted.  "Theirs."  Ahead  Bogard 


502  The  Wasteland 

could  see  a  low,  flat  mole — the  entrance  to  a  harbor.  "Chan- 
nel! "  the  boy  shouted.  He  swept  his  arm  in  both  directions. 
"Mines!"  His  voice  swept  back  on  the  wind.  "Place  filthy 
with  them.  All  sides.  Beneath  us  too.  Lark,  eh?" 


VII 

AGAINST  THE  MOLE  a  fair  surf  was  beating.  Running  before 
the  seas  now,  the  boat  seemed  to  leap  from  one  roller  to  the 
next;  in  the  intervals  while  the  screw  was  in  the  air  the 
engine  seemed  to  be  trying  to  tear  itself  out  by  the  roots. 
But  it  did  not  slow;  when  it  passed  the  end  of  the  mole  the 
boat  seemed  to  be  standing  almost  erect  on  its  rudder,  like 
a  sailfish.  The  mole  was  a  mile  away.  From  the  end  of  it  little 
faint  lights  began  to  flicker  like  fireflies.  The  boy  leaned. 
"Down,"  he  said.  "Machine  guns.  Might  stop  a  stray." 
"What  do  I  do?"  Bogard  shouted.  "What  can  I  do?" 
"Stout  fellow!  Give  them  hell,  what?  Knew  you'd  like  it!" 
Crouching,  Bogard  looked  up  at  the  boy,  his  face  wild. 
"I  can  handle  the  machine  gun!" 

"No  need,"  the  boy  shouted  back.  "Give  them  first 
innings.  Sporting.  Visitors,  eh?"  He  was  looking  forward. 
"There  she  is.  See?"  They  were  in  the  harbor  now,  the 
basin  opening  before  them.  Anchored  in  the  channel  was  a 
big  freighter.  Painted  midships  of  the  hull  was  a  huge  Argen- 
tine flag.  "Must  get  back  to  stations!"  the  boy  shouted  down 
to  him.  Then  at  that  moment  Ronnie  spoke  for  the  first  time. 
The  boat  was  hurtling  along  now  in  smoother  water.  Its 
speed  did  not  slacken  and  Ronnie  did  not  turn  his  head  when 
he  spoke.  He  just  swung  his  jutting  jaw  and  the  clamped 
cold  pipe  a  little,  and  said  from  the  side  of  his  mouth  a  single 
word: 
"Beaver." 
The  boy,  stooped  over  what  he  had  called  his  gadget, 


Turnabout  503 

jerked  up,  his  expression  astonished  and  outraged.  Bogard 
also  looked  forward  and  saw  Ronnie's  arm  pointing  to  star- 
board. It  was  a  light  cruiser  at  anchor  a  mile  away.  She  had 
basket  masts,  and  as  he  looked  a  gun  flashed  from  her  after 
turret.  "Oh,  damn!"  the  boy  cried.  "Oh,  you  putt!  Oh,  con- 
found you,  Ronnie!  Now  I'm  three  down!"  But  he  had  al- 
ready stooped  again  over  his  gadget,  his  face  bright  and 
empty  and  alert  again;  not  sober;  just  calm,  waiting.  Again 
Bogard  looked  forward  and  felt  the  boat  pivot  on  its  rudder 
and  head  directly  for  the  freighter  at  terrific  speed,  Ronnie 
now  with  one  hand  on  the  wheel  and  the  other  lifted  and 
extended  at  the  height  of  his  head. 

But  it  seemed  to  Bogard  that  the  hand  would  never  drop. 
He  crouched,  not  sitting,  watching  with  a  kind  of  quiet 
horror  the  painted  flag  increase  like  a  moving  picture  of  a 
locomotive  taken  from  between  the  rails.  Again  the  gun 
crashed  from  the  cruiser  behind  them,  and  the  freighter 
fired  point-blank  at  them  from  its  poop.  Bogard  heard 
neither  shot. 

"Man,  man!"  he  shouted.  "For  God's  sake!" 
Ronnie's  hand  dropped.  Again  the  boat  spun  on  its  rudder. 
Bogard  saw  the  bow  rise,  pivoting;  he  expected  the  hull  to 
slam  broadside  on  into  the  ship.  But  it  didn't.  It  shot  off  on 
a  long  tangent.  He  was  waiting  for  it  to  make  a  wide  sweep, 
heading  seaward,  putting  the  freighter  astern,  and  he  thought 
of  the  cruiser  again.  "Get  a  broadside,  this  time,  once  we 
clear  the  freighter,"  he  thought.  Then  he  remembered  the 
freighter,  the  torpedo,  and  he  looked  back  toward  the 
freighter  to  watch  the  torpedo  strike,  and  saw  to  his  horror 
that  the  boat  was  now  bearing  down  on  the  freighter  again, 
in  a  skidding  turn.  Like  a  man  in  a  dream,  he  watched  him- 
self rush  down  upon  the  ship  and  shoot  past  under  her 
counter,  still  skidding,  close  enough  to  see  the  faces  on  her 
decks.  "They  missed  and  they  are  going  to  run  down  the 


504  The  Wasteland 

torpedo  and  catch  it  and  shoot  it  again,"  he  thought  idioti- 
cally. 

So  the  boy  had  to  touch  his  shoulder  before  he  knew  he 
was  behind  him.  The  boy's  voice  was  quite  calm:  "Under 
Ronnie's  seat  there.  A  bit  of  a  crank  handle.  If  you'll  just 
hand  it  to  me — " 

He  found  the  crank.  He  passed  it  back;  he  was  thinking 
dreamily:  "Mac  would  say  they  had  a  telephone  on  board." 
But  he  didn't  look  at  once  to  see  what  the  boy  was  doing 
with  it,  for  in  that  still  and  peaceful  horror  he  was  watching 
Ronnie,  the  cold  pipe  rigid  in  his  jaw,  hurling  the  boat  at 
top  speed  round  and  round  the  freighter,  so  near  that  he 
could  see  the  rivets  in  the  plates.  Then  he  looked  aft,  his  face 
wild,  importunate,  and  he  saw  what  the  boy  was  doing  with 
the  crank.  He  had  fitted  it  into  what  was  obviously  a  small 
windlass  low  on  one  flank  of  the  tube  near  the  head.  He 
glanced  up  and  saw  Bogard's  face.  "Didn't  go  that  time!" 
he  shouted  cheerfully. 

"Go?"  Bogard  shouted.  "It  didn't—  The  torpedo—" 

The  boy  and  one  of  the  seamen  were  quite  busy,  stooping 
over  the  windlass  and  the  tube.  "No.  Clumsy.  Always  hap- 
pening. Should  think  clever  chaps  like  engineers —  Happens, 
though.  Draw  her  in  and  try  her  again." 

"But  the  nose,  the  cap!"  Bogard  shouted.  "It's  still  in  the 
tube,  isn't  it?  It's  all  right,  isn't  it?" 

"Absolutely.  But  it's  working  now.  Loaded.  Screw's 
started  turning.  Get  it  back  and  drop  it  clear.  If  we  should 
stop  or  slow  up  it  would  'overtake  us.  Drive  back  into  the 
tube.  Bingo!  What?" 

Bogard  was  on  his  feet  now,  turned,  braced  to  the  terrific 
merry-go-round  of  the  boat.  High  above  them  the  freighter 
seemed  to  be  spinning  on  her  heel  like  a  trick  picture  in  the 
movies.  "Let  me  have  that  winch!"  he  cried. 

"Steady!"  the  boy  said.  "Mustn't  draw  her  back  too  fast. 


Turnabout  505 

Jam  her  into  the  head  of  the  tube  ourselves.  Same  bingo! 
Best  let  us.  Every  cobbler  to  his  last,  what?" 

"Oh,  quite,"  Bogard  said.  "Oh,  absolutely."  It  was  like 
someone  else  was  using  his  mouth.  He  leaned,  braced,  his 
hands  on  the  cold  tube,  beside  the  others.  He  was  hot  inside, 
but  his  outside  was  cold.  He  could  feel  all  his  flesh  jerking 
with  cold  as  he  watched  the  blunt,  grained  hand  of  the  sea- 
man turning  the  windlass  in  short,  easy,  inch-long  arcs, 
while  at  the  head  of  the  tube  the  boy  bent,  tapping  the 
cylinder  with  a  spanner,  lightly,  his  head  turned  with  listen- 
ing delicate  and  deliberate  as  a  watchmaker.  The  boat 
rushed  on  in  those  furious,  slewing  turns.  Bogard  saw  a  long, 
drooping  thread  loop  down  from  somebody's  mouth,  be- 
tween his  hands,  and  he  found  that  the  thread  came  from 
his  own  mouth. 

He  didn't  hear  the  boy  speak,  nor  notice  when  he  stood 
up.  He  just  felt  the  boat  straighten  out,  flinging  him  to  his 
knees  beside  the  tube.  The  seaman  had  gone  back  to  the 
stern  and  the  boy  stooped  again  over  his  gadget.  Bogard 
knelt  now,  quite  sick.  He  did  not  feel  the  boat  when  it 
swung  again,  nor  hear  the  gun  from  the  cruiser  which  had 
not  dared  to  fire  and  the  freighter  which  had  not  been  able 
to  fire,  firing  again.  He  did  not  feel  anything  at  all  when 
he  saw  the  huge,  painted  flag  directly  ahead  and  increasing 
with  locomotive  speed,  and  Ronnie's  lifted  hand  drop.  But 
this  time  he  knew  that  the  torpedo  was  gone;  in  pivoting 
and  spinning  this  time  the  whole  boat  seemed  to  leave  the 
water;  he  saw  the  bow  of  the  boat  shoot  skyward  like  the 
nose  of  a  pursuit  ship  going  into  a  wingover.  Then  his  out- 
raged stomach  denied  him.  He  saw  neither  the  geyser  nor 
heard  the  detonation  as  he  sprawled  over  the  tube.  He  felt 
only  a  hand  grasp  him  by  the  slack  of  his  coat,  and  the  voice 
of  one  of  the  seamen:  "Steady  all,  sir.  I've  got  you." 


506  The  Wasteland 

VIII 

A  VOICE  ROUSED  HIM,  a  hand.  He  was  half  sitting  in  the 
narrow  starboard  runway,  half  lying  across  the  tube.  He  had 
been  there  for  quite  a  while;  quite  a  while  ago  he  had  felt 
someone  spread  a  garment  over  him.  But  he  had  not  raised 
his  head.  "I'm  all  right,"  he  had  said.  "You  keep  it." 

"Don't  need  it,"  the  boy  said.  "Going  home  now." 

"I'm  sorry  I — "  Bogard  said. 

"Quite.  Confounded  shallow  boats.  Turn  any  stomach 
until  you  get  used  to  them.  Ronnie  and  I  both,  at  first.  Each 
time.  You  wouldn't  believe  it.  Believe  human  stomach  hold 
so  much.  Here."  It  was  the  bottle.  "Good  drink.  Take 
enormous  one.  Good  for  stomach." 

Bogard  drank.  Soon  he  did  feel  better,  warmer.  When  the 
hand  touched  him  later,  he  found  that  he  had  been  asleep. 

It  was  the  boy  again.  The  pea-coat  was  too  small  for  him; 
shrunken,  perhaps.  Below  the  cuffs  his  long,  slender,  girl's 
wrists  were  blue  with  cold.  Then  Bogard  realized  what  the 
garment  was  that  had  been  laid  over  him.  But  before  Bogard 
could  speak,  the  boy  leaned  down,  whispering;  his  face  was 
gleeful:  "He  didn't  notice!" 

"What?" 

"Ergenstrasse!  He  didn't  notice  that  they  had  shifted  her. 
Gad,  I'd  be  just  one  down,  then."  He  watched  Bogard's  face 
with  bright,  eager  eyes.  "Beaver,  you  know.  I  say.  Feeling 
better,  eh?" 

"Yes,"  Bogard  said,  "I  am." 

"He  didn't  notice  at  all.  Oh,  gad!  Oh,  Jove!" 

Bogard  rose  and  sat  on  the  tube.  The  entrance  to  the 
harbor  was  just  ahead;  the  boat  had  slowed  a  little.  It  was 
just  dusk.  He  said  quietly:  "Does  this  often  happen?"  The 
boy  looked  at  him.  Bogard  touched  the  tube.  "This.  Failing 
to  go  out." 


Turnabout  507 

"Oh,  yes.  Why  they  put  the  windlass  on  them.  That  was 
later.  Made  first  boat;  whole  thing  blew  up  one  day.  So  put 
on  windlass." 

"But  it  happens  sometimes,  even  now?  I  mean,  sometimes 
they  blow  up,  even  with  the  windlass?" 

"Well,  can't  say,  of  course.  Boats  go  out.  Not  come  back. 
Possible.  Not  ever  know,  of  course.  Not  heard  of  one  cap- 
tured yet,  though.  Possible.  Not  to  us,  though.  Not  yet." 

"Yes,"  Bogard  said.  "Yes."  They  entered  the  harbor,  the 
boat  moving  still  fast,  but  throttled  now  and  smooth,  across 
the  dusk-filled  basin.  Again  the  boy  leaned  down,  his  voice 
gleeful. 

"Not  a  word,  now!"  he  hissed.  "Steady  all!"  He  stood  up; 
he  raised  his  voice:  "I  say,  Ronnie."  Ronnie  did  not  turn  his 
head,  but  Bogard  could  tell  that  he  was  listening.  "That 
Argentine  ship  was  amusing,  eh?  In  there.  How  do  you  sup- 
pose it  got  past  us  here?  Might  have  stopped  here  as  well. 
French  would  buy  the  wheat."  He  paused,  diabolical — 
Machiavelli  with  the  face  of  a  strayed  angel.  "I  say.  How 
long  has  it  been  since  we  had  a  strange  ship  in  here?  Been 
months,  eh?"  Again  he  leaned,  hissing.  "Watch,  now!"  But 
Bogard  could  not  see  Ronnie's  head  move  at  all.  "He's  look- 
ing, though!"  the  boy  whispered,  breathed.  And  Ronnie  was 
looking,  though  his  head  had  not  moved  at  all.  Then  there 
came  into  view,  in  silhouette  against  the  dusk-filled  sky,  the 
vague,  basket-like  shape  of  the  interned  vessel's  foremast. 
At  once  Ronnie's  arm  rose,  pointing;  again  he  spoke  without 
turning  his  head,  out  of  the  side  of  his  mouth,  past  the  cold, 
clamped  pipe,  a  single  word: 

"Beaver." 

The  boy  moved  like  a  released  spring,  like  a  heeled  dog 
freed.  "Oh,  damn  you!"  he  cried.  "Oh,  you  putt!  It's  the 
Ergenstrasse!  Oh,  confound  you!  I'm  just  one  down  now!" 
He  had  stepped  in  one  stride  completely  over  Bogard,  and 


508  The  Wasteland 

he  now  leaned  down  over  Ronnie.  "What?"  The  boat  was 
slowing  in  toward  the  wharf,  the  engine  idle.  "Aren't  I, 
Ronnie?  Just  one  down  now?" 

The  boat  drifted  in;  the  seaman  had  again  crawled  for- 
ward onto  the  deck.  Ronnie  spoke  for  the  third  and  last 
time.  "Right,"  he  said. 

IX 

"I  WANT,"  Bogard  said,  "a  case  of  Scotch.  The  best  we've 
got.  And  fix  it  up  good.  It's  to  go  to  town.  And  I  want  a 
responsible  man  to  deliver  it."  The  responsible  man  came. 
"This  is  for  a  child,"  Bogard  said,  indicating  the  package. 
"You'll  find  him  in  the  Street  of  the  Twelve  Hours,  some- 
where near  the  Cafe  Twelve  Hours.  He'll  be  in  the  gutter. 
You'll  know  him.  A  child  about  six  feet  long.  Any  English 
M.  P.  will  show  him  to  you.  If  he  is  asleep,  don't  wake  him. 
Just  sit  there  and  wait  until  he  wakes  up.  Then  give  him 
this.  Tell  him  it  is  from  Captain  Bogard." 

X 

ABOUT  A  MONTH  LATER  a  copy  of  the  English  Gazette  which 
had  strayed  onto  an  American  aerodrome  carried  the  f  ollow- 
ing  item  in  the  casualty  lists: 

MISSING:  Torpedo  Boat  XOOI.  Midshipmen  R.  Boyce 
Smith  and  L.  C.  W.  Hope,  R.  N.  R.,  Boatswain's  Mate  Burt 
and  Able  Seaman  Reeves.  Channel  Fleet,  Light  Torpedo 
Division.  Failed  to  return  from  coast  patrol  duty. 

Shortly  after  that  the  American  Air  Service  headquarters 
also  issued  a  bulletin: 

For  extraordinary  valor  over  and  beyond  the  routine  of 


Turnabout  509 

duty,  Captain  H.  S.  Bogard,  with  his  crew,  composed  of 
Second  Lieutenant  Darrel  McGinnis  and  Aviation  Gunners 
Watts  and  Harper,  on  a  daylight  raid  and  without  scout  pro- 
tection, destroyed  with  bombs  an  ammunition  depot  several 
miles  behind  the  enemy's  lines.  From  here,  beset  by  enemy 
aircraft  in  superior  numbers,  these  men  proceeded  with  what 
bombs  remained  to  the  enemy's  corps  headquarters  at  Blank 
and  partially  demolished  this  chateau,  and  then  returned 
safely  without  loss  of  a  man. 

And  regarding  which  exploit,  it  might  have  added,  had  it 
failed  and  had  Captain  Bogard  come  out  of  it  alive,  he  would 
have  been  immediately  and  thoroughly  court-martialed. 

Carrying  his  remaining  two  bombs,  he  had  dived  the 
Handley-Page  at  the  chateau  where  the  generals  sat  at 
lunch,  until  McGinnis,  at  the  toggles  below  him,  began  to 
shout  at  him,  before  he  ever  signaled.  He  didn't  signal  until 
he  could  discern  separately  the  slate  tiles  of  the  roof.  Then 
his  hand  dropped  and  he  zoomed,  and  he  held  the  aeroplane 
so,  in  its  wild  snarl,  his  lips  parted,  his  breath  hissing,  think- 
ing: "God!  God!  If  they  were  all  there — all  the  generals, 
the  admirals,  the  presidents  and  the  kings — theirs,  ours — all 
of  them.J> 


All  the  Dead  Pilots 


i 

IN  THE  PICTURES,  the  snapshots  hurriedly  made,  a  little  faded, 
a  little  dog-eared  with  the  thirteen  years,  they  swagger  a 
little.  Lean,  hard,  in  their  brass-and-leather  martial  harness, 
posed  standing  beside  or  leaning  upon  the  esoteric  shapes  of 
wire  and  wood  and  canvas  in  which  they  flew  without  para- 
chutes, they  too  have  an  esoteric  look;  a  look  not  exactly 
human,  like  that  of  some  dim  and  threatful  apotheosis  of  the 
race  seen  for  an  instant  in  the  glare  of  a  thunderclap  and  then 
forever  gone. 

Because  they  are  dead,  all  the  old  pilots,  dead  on  the  elev- 
enth of  November,  1918.  When  you  see  modern  photo- 
graphs of  them,  the  recent  pictures  made  beside  the  recent 
shapes  of  steel  and  canvas  with  the  new  cowlings  and  engines 
and  slotted  wings,  they  look  a  little  outlandish:  the  lean 
young  men  who  once  swaggered.  They  look  lost,  baffled.  In 
this  saxophone  age  of  flying  they  look  as  out  of  place  as,  a 
little  thick  about  the  waist,  in  the  sober  business  suits  of  thirty 
and  thirty-five  and  perhaps  more  than  that,  they  would  look 
among  the  saxophones  and  miniature  brass  bowlers  of  a  night 
club  orchestra.  Because  they  are  dead  too,  who  had  learned  to 
respect  that  whose  respect  in  turn  their  hardness  had  com- 
manded before  there  were  welded  center  sections  and  para- 
chutes and  ships  that  would  not  spin.  That's  why  they  watch 

5" 


512  The  Wasteland 

the  saxophone  girls  and  boys  with  slipstream-proof  lipstick 
and  aeronautical  flasks  piling  up  the  saxophone  crates  in  pri- 
vate driveways  and  on  golf  greens,  with  the  quick  sympathy 
and  the  bafflement  too.  "My  gad,"  one  of  them — ack  emma, 
warrant  officer  pilot,  captain  and  M.C.  in  turn — said  to  me 
once;  "if  you  can  treat  a  crate  that  way,  why  do  you  want  to 
fly  at  all?" 

But  they  are  all  dead  now.  They  are  thick  men  now,  a  little 
thick  about  the  waist  from  sitting  behind  desks,  and  maybe 
not  so  good  at  it,  with  wives  and  children  in  suburban  homes 
almost  paid  out,  with  gardens  in  which  they  putter  in  the 
long  evenings  after  the  5: 15  is  in,  and  perhaps  not  so  good  at 
that  either:  the  hard,  lean  men  who  swaggered  hard  and 
drank  hard  because  they  had  found  that  being  dead  was  not 
as  quiet  as  they  had  heard  it  would  be.  That's  why  this  story 
is  composite:  a  series  of  brief  glares  in  which,  instantaneous 
and  without  depth  or  perspective,  there  stood  into  sight  the 
portent  and  the  threat  of  what  the  race  could  bear  and  be- 
come, in  an  instant  between  dark  and  dark. 


II 

IN  1918  I  was  at  Wing  Headquarters,  trying  to  get  used  to  a 
mechanical  leg,  where,  among  other  things,  I  had  the  censor- 
ing of  mail  from  all  squadrons  in  the  Wing.  The  job  itself 
wasn't  bad,  since  it  gave  me  spare  time  to  experiment  with  a 
synchronized  camera  on  which  I  was  working.  But  the  open- 
ing and  reading  of  the  letters,  the  scrawled,  brief  pages  of 
transparent  and  honorable  lies  to  mothers  and  sweethearts,  in 
the  script  and  spelling  of  schoolboys.  But  a  war  is  such  a  big 
thing,  and  it  takes  so  long.  I  suppose  they  who  run  them  (I 
dont  mean  the  staffs,  but  whoever  or  whatever  it  is  that  con- 
trols events)  do  get  bored  now  and  then.  And  it's  when  you 
get  bored  that  you  turn  petty,  play  horse. 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  5 1 3 

So  now  and  then  I  would  go  up  to  a  Camel  squadron  be- 
hind Amiens  and  talk  with  the  gunnery  sergeant  about  the 
synchronization  of  the  machine  guns.  This  was  Spoomer's 
squadron.  His  uncle  was  the  corps  commander,  the  K.G.,  and 
so  Spoomer,  with  his  Guards'  Captaincy,  had  also  got  in  turn 
a  Mons  Star,  a  D.S.O.,  and  now  a  pursuit  squadron  of  single 
seaters,  though  the  third  barnacle  on  his  tunic  was  still  the 
single  wing  of  an  observer. 

In  1914  he  was  in  Sandhurst:  a  big,  ruddy-colored  chap 
with  china  eyes,  and  I  like  to  think  of  his  uncle  sending  for 
him  when  the  news  got  out,  the  good  news.  Probably  at  the 
uncle's  club  (the  uncle  was  a  brigadier  then,  just  recalled 
hurriedly  from  Indian  service)  and  the  two  of  them  opposite 
one  another  across  the  mahogany,  with  the  newsboys  crying 
in  the  street,  and  the  general  saying,  "By  gad,  it  will  be  the 
making  of  the  Army.  Pass  the  wine,  sir." 

I  daresay  the  general  was  put  out,  not  to  say  outraged, 
when  he  finally  realized  that  neither  the  Hun  nor  the  Home 
Office  intended  running  this  war  like  the  Army  wanted  it 
run.  Anyway,  Spoomer  had  already  gone  out  to  Mons  and 
come  back  with  his  Star  (though  Ffollansbye  said  that  the 
general  sent  Spoomer  out  to  get  the  Star,  since  it  was  going 
to  be  one  decoration  you  had  to  be  on  hand  to  get)  before  the 
uncle  got  him  transferred  to  his  staff,  where  Spoomer  could 
get  his  D.S.O.  Then  perhaps  the  uncle  sent  him  out  again  to 
tap  the  stream  where  it  came  to  surface.  Or  maybe  Spoomer 
went  on  his  own  this  time.  I  like  to  think  so.  I  like  to  think 
that  he  did  it  through  pro  patria,  even  though  I  know  that 
no  man  deserves  praise  for  courage  or  opprobrium  for  cow- 
ardice, since  there  are  situations  in  which  any  man  will  show 
either  of  them.  But  he  went  out,  and  came  back  a  year  later 
with  his  observer's  wing  and  a  dog  almost  as  large  as  a  calf. 

That  was  ^1917,  when  he  and  Sartoris  first  came  together, 
collided.  Sartoris  was  an  American,  from  a  plantation  at 


514  The  Wasteland 

Mississippi,  where  they  grew  grain  and  Negroes,  or  the  Ne- 
groes grew  the  grain — something.  Sartoris  had  a  working 
vocabulary  of  perhaps  two  hundred  words,  and  I  daresay  to 
tell  where  and  how  and  why  he  lived  was  beyond  him,  save 
that  he  lived  in  the  plantation  with  his  great-aunt  and  his 
grandfather.  He  came  through  Canada  in  1916,  and  he  was  at 
Pool.  Ffollansbye  told  me  about  it.  It  seems  that  Sartoris  had 
a  girl  in  London,  one  of  those  three-day  wives  and  three-year 
widows.  That's  the  bad  thing  about  war.  They — the  Sartor- 
ises  and  such — didn't  die  until  1918,  some  of  them.  But  the 
girls,  the  women,  they  died  on  the  fourth  of  August,  1914. 
So  Sartoris  had  a  girl.  Ffollansbye  said  they  called  her 
Kitchener,  "because  she  had  such  a  mob  of  soldiers."  He  said 
they  didn't  know  if  Sartoris  knew  this  or  not,  but  that  any- 
way for  a  while  Kitchener — Kit — appeared  to  have  ditched 
them  all  for  Sartoris.  They  would  be  seen  anywhere  and  any 
time  together,  then  Ffollansbye  told  me  how  he  found  Sar- 
toris alone  and  quite  drunk  one  evening  in  a  restaurant.  Ffol- 
lansbye told  how  he  had  already  heard  that  Kit  and  Spoomer 
had  gone  off  somewhere  together  about  two  days  ago.  He 
said  that  Sartoris  was  sitting  there,  drinking  himself  blind, 
waiting  for  Spoomer  to  come  in.  He  said  he  finally  got  Sar- 
toris into  a  cab  and  sent  him  to  the  aerodrome.  It  was  about 
dawn  then,  and  Sartoris  got  a  captain's  tunic  from  someone's 
kit,  and  a  woman's  garter  from  someone  else's  kit,  perhaps  his 
own,  and  pinned  the  garter  on  the  tunic  like  a  barnacle  rib- 
bon. Then  he  went  and  waked  a  corporal  who  was  an  ex-pro- 
fessional boxer  and  with  whom  Sartoris  would  put  on  the 
gloves  now  and  then,  and  made  the  corporal  put  on  the  tunic 
over  his  underclothes.  "Namesh  Spoomer,"  Sartoris  told  the 
corporal.  "Cap'm  Spoomer";  swaying  and  prodding  at  the 
garter  with  his  finger.  "Dishtinguish  Sheries  Thighs,"  Sartoris 
said.  Then  he  and  the  corporal  in  the  borrowed  tunic,  with 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  5 1 5 

his  woolen  underwear  showing  beneath,  stood  there  in  the 
dawn,  swinging  at  one  another  with  their  naked  fists. 

Ill 

YOU'D  THINK  that  when  a  war  had  got  you  into  it,  it  would 
let  you  be.  That  it  wouldn't  play  horse  with  you.  But  maybe 
it  wasn't  that.  Maybe  it  was  because  the  three  of  them, 
Spoomer  and  Sartoris  and  the  dog,  were  so  humorless  about 
it.  Maybe  a  humorless  person  is  an  unflagging  challenge  to 
them  above  the  thunder  and  the  alarms.  Anyway,  one  after- 
noon— it  was  in  the  spring,  just  before  Cambrai  fell — I  went 
up  to  the  Camel  aerodrome  to  see  the  gunnery  sergeant,  and 
I  saw  Sartoris  for  the  first  time.  They  had  given  the  squadron 
to  Spoomer  and  the  dog  the  year  before,  and  the  first  thing 
they  did  was  to  send  Sartoris  out  to  it. 

The  afternoon  patrol  was  out,  and  the  rest  of  the  people 
were  gone  too,  to  Amiens  I  suppose,  and  the  aerodrome  was 
deserted.  The  sergeant  and  I  were  sitting  on  two  empty  petrol 
tins  in  the  hangar  door  when  I  saw  a  man  thrust  his  head  out 
the  door  of  the  officers'  mess  and  look  both  ways  along  the 
line,  his  air  a  little  furtive  and  very  alert.  It  was  Sartoris,  and 
he  was  looking  for  the  dog. 

"The  dog?"  I  said.  Then  the  sergeant  told  me,  this  too 
composite,  out  of  his  own  observation  and  the  observation  of 
the  entire  enlisted  personnel  exchanged  and  compared  over 
the  mess  tables  or  over  pipes  at  night:  that  terrible  and  om- 
niscient inquisition  of  those  in  an  inferior  station. 

When  Spoomer  left  the  aerodrome,  he  would  lock  the  dog 
up  somewhere.  He  would  have  to  lock  it  up  in  a  different 
place  each  time,  because  Sartoris  would  hunt  until  he  found 
it,  and  let  it  out.  It  appeared  to  be  a  dog  of  intelligence,  be- 
cause if  Spoomer  had  only  gone  down  to  Wing  or  some- 
where on  business,  the  dog  would  stay  at  home,  spending  the 


516  The  Wasteland 

interval  grubbing  in  the  refuse  bin  behind  the  men's  mess,  to 
which  it  was  addicted  in  preference  to  that  of  the  officers. 
But  if  Spoomer  had  gone  to  Amiens,  the  dog  would  depart  up 
the  Amiens  road  immediately  on  being  freed,  to  return  later 
with  Spoomer  in  the  squadron  car. 

"Why  does  Mr.  Sartoris  let  it  out?"  I  said.  "Do  you  mean 
that  Captain  Spoomer  objects  to  the  dog  eating  kitchen 
refuse?" 

But  the  sergeant  was  not  listening.  His  head  was  craned 
around  the  door,  and  we  watched  Sartoris.  He  had  emerged 
from  the  mess  and  he  now  approached  the  hangar  at  the  end 
of  the  line,  his  air  still  alert,  still  purposeful.  He  entered  the 
hangar.  "That  seems  a  rather  childish  business  for  a  grown 
man,"  I  said. 

The  sergeant  looked  at  me.  Then  he  quit  looking  at  me. 
"He  wants  to  know  if  Captain  Spoomer  went  to  Amiens  or 
not." 

After  a  while  I  said,  "Oh.  A  young  lady.  Is  that  it?" 
He  didn't  look  at  me.  "You  might  call  her  a  young  lady.  I 
suppose  they  have  young  ladies  in  this  country." 

I  thought  about  that  for  a  while.  Sartoris  emerged  from 
the  first  hangar  and  entered  the  second  one.  "I  wonder  if 
there  are  any  young  ladies  any  more  anywhere,"  I  said. 
"Perhaps  you  are  right,  sir.  War  is  hard  on  women." 
"What  about  this  one?"  I  said.  "Who  is  she?" 
He  told  me.  They  ran  an  estaminet,  a  "bit  of  a  pub"  he 
called  it — an  old  harridan  of  a  woman,  and  the  girl.  A  little 
place  on  a  back  street,  where  officers  did  not  go.  Perhaps  that 
was  why  Sartoris  and  Spoomer  created  such  a  furore  in  that 
circle.  I  gathered  from  the  sergeant  that  the  contest  between 
the  squadron  commander  and  one  of  his  greenest  cubs  was 
the  object  of  general  interest  and  the  subject  of  the  warmest 
conversation  and  even  betting  among  the  enlisted  element  of 
the  whole  sector  of  French  and  British  troops.  "Being  officers 
and  all,"  he  said. 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  517 

"They  frightened  the  soldiers  off,  did  they?"  I  said.  "Is  that 
it?"  The  sergeant  did  not  look  at  me.  "Were  there  many 
soldiers  to  frighten  off? " 

"I  suppose  you  know  these  young  women,"  the  sergeant 
said.  "This  war  and  all." 

And  that's  who  the  girl  was.  What  the  girl  was.  The  ser- 
geant said  that  the  girl  and  the  old  woman  were  not  even 
related.  He  told  me  how  Sartoris  bought  her  things — clothes, 
and  jewelry;  the  sort  of  jewelry  you  might  buy  in  Amiens, 
probably.  Or  maybe  in  a  canteen,  because  Sartoris  was  not 
much  more  than  twenty.  I  saw  some  of  the  letters  which  he 
wrote  to  his  great-aunt  back  home,  letters  that  a  third-form 
lad  in  Harrow  could  have  written,  perhaps  bettered.  It 
seemed  that  Spoomer  did  not  make  the  girl  any  presents. 
"Maybe  because  he  is  a  captain,"  the  sergeant  said.  "Or 
maybe  because  of  them  ribbons  he  dont  have  to." 

"Maybe  so,"  I  said. 

And  that  was  the  girl,  the  girl  who,  in  the  centime  jewelry 
which  Sartoris  gave  her,  dispensed  beer  and  wine  to  British 
and  French  privates  in  an  Amiens  back  street,  and  because  of 
whom  Spoomer  used  his  rank  to  betray  Sartoris  with  her  by 
keeping  Sartoris  at  the  aerodrome  on  special  duties,  locking 
up  the  dog  to  hide  from  Sartoris  what  he  had  done.  And  Sar- 
toris taking  what  revenge  he  could  by  letting  out  the  dog  in 
order  that  it  might  grub  in  the  refuse  of  plebeian  food. 

He  entered  the  hangar  in  which  the  sergeant  and  I  were: 
a  tall  lad  with  pale  eyes  in  a  face  that  could  be  either  merry 
or  surly,  and  quite  humorless.  He  looked  at  me.  "Hello,"  he 
said. 

"Hello,"  I  said.  The  sergeant  made  to  get  up. 

"Carry  on,"  Sartoris  said.  "I  dont  want  anything."  He 
went  on  to  the  rear  of  the  hangar.  It  was  cluttered  with  petrol 
drums  and  empty  packing  cases  and  such.  He  was  utterly 
without  self-consciousness,  utterly  without  shame  of  his 
childish  business. 


518  The  Wasteland 

The  dog  was  in  one  of  the  packing  cases.  It  emerged,  huge, 
of  a  napped,  tawny  color;  Ffollansbye  had  told  me  that,  save 
for  Spoomer's  wing  and  his  Mons  Star  and  his  D.S.O.,  he 
and  the  dog  looked  alike.  It  quitted  the  hangar  without  haste, 
giving  me  a  brief,  sidelong  glance.  We  watched  it  go  on  and 
disappear  around  the  corner  of  the  men's  mess.  Then  Sartoris 
turned  and  went  back  to  the  officers'  mess  and  also  disap- 
peared. 

Shortly  afterward,  the  afternoon  patrol  came  in.  While  the 
machines  were  coming  up  to  the  line,  the  squadron  car  turned 
onto  the  aerodrome  and  stopped  at  the  officers'  mess  and 
Spoomer  got  out.  "Watch  him,"  the  sergeant  said.  "He'll  try 
to  do  it  like  he  wasn't  watching  himself,  noticing  himself." 

He  came  along  the  hangars,  big,  hulking,  in  green  golf 
stockings.  He  did  not  see  me  until  he  was  turning  into  the 
hangar.  He  paused;  it  was  almost  imperceptible,  then  he 
entered,  giving  me  a  brief,  sidelong  glance.  "How  do,"  he 
said  in  a  high,  fretful,  level  voice.  The  sergeant  had  risen.  I 
had  never  seen  Spoomer  even  glance  toward  the  rear,  toward 
the  overturned  packing  case,  yet  he  had  stopped.  "Sergeant," 
he  said. 

"Sir,"  the  sergeant  said. 

"Sergeant,"  Spoomer  said.  "Have  those  timers  come  up 
yet?" 

"Yes,  sir.  They  came  up  two  weeks  ago.  They're  all  in 
use  now,  sir." 

"Quite  so.  Quite  so."  He  turned;  again  he  gave  me  a  brief, 
sidelong  glance,  and  went  on  down  the  hangar  line,  not  fast. 
He  disappeared.  "Watch  him,  now,"  the  sergeant  said.  "He 
wont  go  over  there  until  he  thinks  we  have  quit  watching 
him." 

We  watched.  Then  he  came  into  sight  again,  crossing 
toward  the  men's  mess,  walking  briskly  now.  He  disappeared 
beyond  the  corner.  A  moment  later  he  emerged,  dragging 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  519 

the  huge,  inert  beast  by  the  scruff  of  its  neck.  "You  mustn't 
eat  that  stuff,"  he  said.  "That's  for  soldiers." 


IV 

I  DIDN'T  KNOW  at  the  time  what  happened  next.  Sartoris  didn't 
tell  me  until  later,  afterward.  Perhaps  up  to  that  time  he  had 
not  anything  more  than  instinct  and  circumstantial  evidence 
to  tell  him  that  he  was  being  betrayed:  evidence  such  as  being 
given  by  Spoomer  some  duty  not  in  his  province  at  all  and 
which  would  keep  him  on  the  aerodrome  for  the  afternoon, 
then  finding  and  freeing  the  hidden  dog  and  watching  it  van- 
ish up  the  Amiens  road  at  its  clumsy  hand  gallop. 

But  something  happened.  All  I  could  learn  at  the  time  was, 
that  one  afternoon  Sartoris  found  the  dog  and  watched  it 
depart  for  Amiens.  Then  he  violated  his  orders,  borrowed  a 
motor  bike  and  went  to  Amiens  too.  Two  hours  later  the  dog 
returned  and  repaired  to  the  kitchen  door  of  the  men's  mess, 
and  a  short  time  after  that,  Sartoris  himself  returned  on  a 
lorry  (they  were  already  evacuating  Amiens)  laden  with 
household  effects  and  driven  by  a  French  soldier  in  a  peasant's 
smock.  The  motor  bike  was  on  the  lorry  too,  pretty  well 
beyond  repair.  The  soldier  told  how  Sartoris  had  driven  the 
bike  full  speed  into  a  ditch,  trying  to  run  down  the  dog. 

But  nobody  knew  just  what  had  happened,  at  the  time. 
But  I  had  imagined  the  scene,  before  he  told  me.  I  imagined 
him  there,  in  that  bit  of  a  room  full  of  French  soldiers,  and 
the  old  woman  (she  could  read  pips,  no  doubt;  ribbons,  any- 
way) barring  him  from  the  door  to  the  living  quarters.  I  can 
imagine  him,  furious,  baffled,  inarticulate  (he  knew  no 
French)  standing  head  and  shoulders  above  the  French  peo- 
ple whom  he  could  not  understand  and  that  he  believed  were 
laughing  at  him.  "That  was  it,"  he  told  me.  "Laughing  at  me 
behind  their  faces,  about  a  woman.  Me  knowing  that  he  was 


520  The  Wasteland 

up  there,  and  them  knowing  I  knew  that  if  I  busted  in  and 
dragged  him  out  and  bashed  his  head  off,  I'd  not  only  be 
cashiered,  I'd  be  clinked  for  life  for  having  infringed  the 
articles  of  alliance  by  invading  foreign  property  without 
warrant  or  something." 

Then  he  returned  to  the  aerodrome  and  met  the  dog  on 
the  road  and  tried  to  run  it  down.  The  dog  came  on  home, 
and  Spoomer  returned,  and  he  was  just  dragging  it  by  the 
scruff  of  the  neck  from  the  refuse  bin  behind  the  men's  mess, 
when  the  afternoon  patrol  came  in.  They  had  gone  out  six 
and  come  back  five,  and  the  leader  jumped  down  from  his 
machine  before  it  had  stopped  rolling.  He  had  a  bloody  rag 
about  his  right  hand  and  he  ran  toward  Spoomer  stooped 
above  the  passive  and  stiff-legged  dog.  "By  gad,"  he  said, 
"they  have  got  Cambrai!" 

Spoomer  did  not  look  up.  "Who  have?" 

"Jerry  has,  by  gad!" 

"Well,  by  gad,"  Spoomer  said.  "Come  along,  now.  I  have 
told  you  about  that  muck." 

A  man  like  that  is  invulnerable.  When  Sartoris  and  I  talked 
for  the  first  time,  I  started  to  tell  him  that.  But  then  I  learned 
that  Sartoris  was  invincible  too.  We  talked,  that  first  time.  "I 
tried  to  get  him  to  let  me  teach  him  to  fly  a  Camel,"  Sartoris 
said.  "I  will  teach  him  for  nothing.  I  will  tear  out  the  cock- 
pit and  rig  the  duals  myself,  for  nothing." 

"Why?"  I  said.  "What  for?" 

"Or  anything.  I  will  let  him  choose  it.  He  can  take  an  S.E. 
if  he  wants  to,  and  I  will  take  an  Ak.W.  or  even  a  Fee  and  I 
will  run  him  clean  out  of  the  sky  in  four  minutes.  I  will  run 
him  so  far  into  the  ground  he  will  have  to  stand  on  his  head 
to  swallow." 

We  talked  twice:  that  first  time,  and  the  last  time.  "Well, 
you  did  better  than  that,"  I  said  the  last  time  we  talked. 

He  had  hardly  any  teeth  left  then,  and  he  couldn't  talk 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  521 

very  well,  who  had  never  been  able  to  talk  much,  who  lived 
and  died  with  maybe  two  hundred  words.  "Better  than 
what? "  he  said. 

"You  said  before  that  you  would  run  him  clean  out  of  the 
sky.  You  didn't  do  that;  you  did  better:  you  have  run  him 
clean  off  the  continent  of  Europe." 

V 

I  THINK  I  said  that  he  was  invulnerable  too.  November  n, 
1918,  couldn't  kill  him,  couldn't  leave  him  growing  a  little 
thicker  each  year  behind  an  office  desk,  with  what  had  once 
been  hard  and  lean  and  immediate  grown  a  little  dim,  a  little 
baffled,  and  betrayed,  because  by  that  day  he  had  been  dead 
almost  six  months. 

He  was  killed  in  July,  but  we  talked  that  second  time,  that 
other  time  before  that.  This  last  time  was  a  week  after  the 
patrol  had  come  in  and  told  that  Cambrai  had  fallen,  a  week 
after  we  heard  the  shells  falling  in  Amiens.  He  told  me  about 
it  himself,  through  his  missing  teeth.  The  whole  squadron 
went  out  together.  He  left  his  flight  as  soon  as  they  reached 
the  broken  front,  and  flew  back  to  Amiens  with  a  bottle  of 
brandy  in  his  overall  leg.  Amiens  was  being  evacuated,  the 
roads  full  of  lorries  and  carts  of  household  goods,  and  am- 
bulances from  the  Base  hospital,  and  the  city  and  its  im- 
mediate territory  was  now  interdict. 

He  landed  in  a  short  meadow.  He  said  there  was  an  old 
woman  working  in  a  field  beyond  the  canal  (he  said  she  was 
still  there  when  he  returned  an  hour  later,  stooping  stub- 
bornly among  the  green  rows,  beneath  the  moist  spring  air 
shaken  at  slow  and  monstrous  intervals  by  the  sound  of  shells 
falling  in  the  city)  and  a  light  ambulance  stopped  halfway  in 
the  roadside  ditch. 

He  went  to  the  ambulance.  The  engine  was  still  running. 


522  The  Wasteland 

The  driver  was  a  young  man  in  spectacles.  He  looked  like  a 
student,  and  he  was  dead  drunk,  half  sprawled  out  of  the  cab. 
Sartoris  had  a  drink  from  his  own  bottle  and  tried  to  rouse 
the  driver,  in  vain.  Then  he  had  another  drink  (I  imagine  that 
he  was  pretty  well  along  himself  by  then;  he  told  me  how 
only  that  morning,  when  Spoomer  had  gone  off  in  the  car 
and  he  had  found  the  dog  and  watched  it  take  the  Amiens 
road,  how  he  had  tried  to  get  the  operations  officer  to  let  him 
off  patrol  and  how  the  operations  officer  had  told  him  that 
La  Fayette  awaited  him  on  the  Santerre  plateau)  and  tumbled 
the  driver  back  into  the  ambulance  and  drove  on  to  Amiens 
himself. 

He  said  the  French  corporal  was  drinking  from  a  bottle 
in  a  doorway  when  he  passed  and  stopped  the  ambulance 
before  the  estaminet.  The  door  was  locked.  He  finished  his 
brandy  bottle  and  he  broke  the  estaminet  door  in  by  diving 
at  it  as  they  do  in  American  football.  Then  he  was  inside. 
The  place  was  empty,  the  benches  and  tables  overturned  and 
the  shelves  empty  of  bottles,  and  he  said  that  at  first  he  could 
not  remember  what  it  was  he  had  come  for,  so  he  thought  it 
must  be  a  drink.  He  found  a  bottle  of  wine  under  the  bar 
and  broke  the  neck  off  against  the  edge  of  the  bar,  and  he 
told  how  he  stood  there,  looking  at  himself  in  the  mirror  be- 
hind the  bar,  trying  to  think  what  it  was  he  had  come  to  do. 
"I  looked  pretty  wild,"  he  said. 

Then  the  first  shell  fell.  I  can  imagine  it:  he  standing  there 
in  that  quiet,  peaceful,  redolent,  devastated  room,  with  the 
bashed-in  door  and  the  musing  and  waiting  city  beyond  it, 
and  then  that  slow,  unhurried,  reverberant  sound  coming 
down  upon  the  thick  air  of  spring  like  a  hand  laid  without 
haste  on  the  damp  silence;  he  told  how  dust  or  sand  or  plaster, 
something,  sifted  somewhere,  whispering  down  in  a  faint  hiss, 
and  how  a  big,  lean  cat  came  up  over  the  bar  without  a  sound 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  523 

and  flowed  down  to  the  floor  and  vanished  like  dirty  quick- 
silver. 

Then  he  saw  the  closed  door  behind  the  bar  and  he  remem- 
bered what  he  had  come  for.  He  went  around  the  bar.  He 
expected  this  door  to  be  locked  too,  and  he  grasped  the  knob 
and  heaved  back  with  all  his  might.  It  wasn't  locked.  He  said 
it  came  back  into  the  shelves  with  a  sound  like  a  pistol,  jerk- 
ing him  off  his  feet.  "My  head  hit  the  bar,"  he  said.  "Maybe 
I  was  a  little  groggy  after  that." 

Anyway,  he  was  holding  himself  up  in  the  door,  looking 
down  at  the  old  woman.  She  was  sitting  on  the  bottom  stair, 
her  apron  over  her  head,  rocking  back  and  forth.  He  said  that 
the  apron  was  quite  clean,  moving  back  and  forth  like  a  pis- 
ton, and  he  standing  in  the  door,  drooling  a  little  at  the  mouth, 
"Madame,"  he  said.  The  old  woman  rocked  back  and  forth. 
He  propped  himself  carefully  and  leaned  and  touched  her 
shoulder.  "  'Toinette,"  he  said.  "Ou  est-elle,  'Toinette?"  That 
was  probably  all  the  French  he  knew;  that,  with  vin  added  to 
his  196  English  words,  composed  his  vocabulary. 

Again  the  old  woman  did  not  answer.  She  rocked  back  and 
forth  like  a  wound-up  toy.  He  stepped  carefully  over  her 
and  mounted  the  stair.  There  was  a  second  door  at  the  head 
of  the  stair.  He  stopped  before  it,  listening.  His  throat  filled 
with  a  hot,  salty  liquid.  He  spat  it,  drooling;  his  throat  filled 
again.  This  door  was  unlocked  also.  He  entered  the  room 
quietly.  It  contained  a  table,  on  which  lay  a  khaki  cap  with 
the  bronze  crest  of  the  Flying  Corps,  and  as  he  stood  drooling 
in  the  door,  the  dog  heaved  up  from  the  corner  furthest  from 
the  window,  and  while  he  and  the  dog  looked  at  one  another 
above  the  cap,  the  sound  of  the  second  shell  came  dull  and 
monstrous  into  the  room,  stirring  the  limp  curtains  before  the 
window. 

As  he  circled  the  table  the  dog  moved  too,  keeping  the 
table  between  them,  watching  him.  He  was  trying  to  move 


524  The  Wasteland 

quietly,  yet  he  struck  the  table  in  passing  (perhaps  while 
watching  the  dog)  and  he  told  how,  when  he  reached  the  op- 
posite door  and 'stood  beside  it,  holding  his  breath,  drooling, 
he  could  hear  the  silence  in  the  next  room.  Then  a  voice 
said: 

"Maman?" 

He  kicked  the  locked  door,  then  he  dived  at  it,  again  like 
the  American  football,  and  through  it,  door  and  all.  The  girl 
screamed.  But  he  said  he  never  saw  her,  never  saw  anyone. 
He  just  heard  her  scream  as  he  went  into  the  room  on  all- 
fours.  It  was  a  bedroom;  one  corner  was  filled  by  a  huge 
wardrobe  with  double  doors.  The  wardrobe  was  closed,  and 
the  room  appeared  to  be  empty.  He  didn't  go  to  the  ward- 
robe. He  said  he  just  stood  there  on  his  hands  and  knees, 
drooling,  like  a  cow,  listening  to  the  dying  reverberation  of 
the  third  shell,  watching  the  curtains  on  the  window  blow 
once  into  the  room  as  though  to  a  breath. 

He  got  up.  "I  was  still  groggy,"  he  said.  "And  I  guess  that 
brandy  and  the  wine  had  kind  of  got  joggled  up  inside  me." 
I  daresay  they  had.  There  was  a  chair.  Upon  it  lay  a  pair  of 
slacks,  neatly  folded,  a  tunic  with  an  observer's  wing  and 
two  ribbons,  an  ordnance  belt.  While  he  stood  looking  down 
at  the  chair,  the  fourth  shell  came. 

He  gathered  up  the  garments.  The  chair  toppled  over  and 
he  kicked  it  aside  and  lurched  along  the  wall  to  the  broken 
door  and  entered  the  first  room,  taking  the  cap  from  the 
table  as  he  passed.  The  dog  was  gone. 

He  entered  the  passage.  The  old  woman  still  sat  on  the 
bottom  step,  her  apron  over  her  head,  rocking  back  and  forth. 
He  stood  at  the  top  of  the  stair,  holding  himself  up,  waiting 
to  spit.  Then  beneath  him  a  voice  said:  "Que  faites-vous  en 
haut?" 

He  looked  down  upon  the  raised  moustached  face  of  the 
French  corporal  whom  he  had  passed  in  the  street  drinking 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  525 

from  the  bottle.  For  a  time  they  looked  at  one  another.  Then 
the  corporal  said,  "Descendez,"  making  a  peremptory  gesture 
with  his  arm.  Clasping  the  garments  in  one  hand,  Sartoris 
put  the  other  hand  on  the  stair  rail  and  vaulted  over  it. 

The  corporal  jumped  aside.  Sartoris  plunged  past  him  and 
into  the  wall,  banging  his  head  hollowly  again.  As  he  got  to 
his  feet  and  turned,  the  corporal  kicked  at  him,  striking  for 
his  pelvis.  The  corporal  kicked  him  again.  Sartoris  knocked 
the  corporal  down,  where  he  lay  on  his  back  in  his  clumsy 
overcoat,  tugging  at  his  pocket  and  snapping  his  boot  at  Sar- 
toris' groin.  Then  the  corporal  freed  his  hand  and  shot  point- 
blank  at  Sartoris  with  a  short-barreled  pistol. 

Sartoris  sprang  upon  him  before  he  could  shoot  again, 
trampling  the  pistol  hand.  He  said  he  could  feel  the  man's 
bones  through  his  boot,  and  that  the  corporal  began  to  scream 
like  a  woman  behind  his  brigand's  moustaches.  That  was  what 
made  it  funny,  Sartoris  said:  that  noise  coming  out  of  a  pair 
of  moustaches  like  a  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  pirate.  So  he  said 
he  stopped  it  by  holding  the  corporal  up  with  one  hand  and 
hitting  him  on  the  chin  with  the  other  until  the  noise  stopped. 
He  said  that  the  old  woman  had  not  ceased  to  rock  back  and 
forth  under  her  starched  apron.  "Like  she  might  have  dressed 
up  to  get  ready  to  be  sacked  and  ravaged,"  he  said. 

He  gathered  up  the  garments.  In  the  bar  he  had  another 
pull  at  the  bottle,  looking  at  himself  in  the  mirror.  Then  he 
saw  that  he  was  bleeding  at  the  mouth.  He  said  he  didn't 
know  if  he  had  bitten  his  tongue  when  he  jumped  over  the 
stair  rail  or  if  he  had  cut  his  mouth  with  the  broken  bottle 
neck.  He  emptied  the  bottle  and  flung  it  to  the  floor. 

He  said  he  didn't  know  then  what  he  intended  to  do.  He 
said  he  didn't  realize  it  even  when  he  had  dragged  the  uncon- 
scious driver  out  of  the  ambulance  and  was  dressing  him  in 
Captain  Spoomer's  slacks  and  cap  and  ribboned  tunic,  and 
tumbled  him  back  into  the  ambulance. 


526  The  Wasteland 

He  remembered  seeing  a  dusty  inkstand  behind  the  bar. 
He  sought  and  found  in  his  overalls  a  bit  of  paper,  a  bill  ren- 
dered him  eight  months  ago  by  a  London  tailor,  and,  leaning 
on  the  bar,  drooling  and  spitting,  he  printed  on  the  back  of 
the  bill  Captain  Spoomer's  name  and  squadron  number  and 
aerodrome,  and  put  the  paper  into  the  tunic  pocket  beneath 
the  ribbons  and  the  wing,  and  drove  back  to  where  he  had 
left  his  aeroplane. 

There  was  an  Anzac  battalion  resting  in  the  ditch  beside 
the  road.  He  left  the  ambulance  and  the  sleeping  passenger 
with  them,  and  four  of  them  helped  him  to  start  his  engine, 
and  held  the  wings  for  his  tight  take-off. 

Then  he  was  back  at  the  front.  He  said  he  did  not  remem- 
ber getting  there  at  all;  he  said  the  last  thing  he  remembered 
was  the  old  woman  in  the  field  beneath  him,  then  suddenly  he 
was  in  a  barrage,  low  enough  to  feel  the  concussed  air  be- 
tween the  ground  and  his  wings,  and  to  distinguish  the  faces 
of  troops.  He  said  he  didn't  know  what  troops  they  were, 
theirs  or  ours,  but  that  he  strafed  them  anyway.  "Because  I 
never  heard  of  a  man  on  the  ground  getting  hurt  by  an  aero- 
plane," he  said.  "Yes,  I  did;  I'll  take  that  back.  There  was  a 
farmer  back  in  Canada  plowing  in  the  middle  of  a  thousand- 
acre  field,  and  a  cadet  crashed  on  top  of  him." 

Then  he  returned  home.  They  told  at  the  aerodrome  that 
he  flew  between  two  hangars  in  a  slow  roll,  so  that  they  could 
see  the  valve  stems  in  both  wheels,  and  that  he  ran  his  wheels 
across  the  aerodrome  and  took  off  again.  The  gunnery  ser- 
geant told  me  that  he  climbed  vertically  until  he  stalled,  and 
that  he  held  the  Camel  mushing  on  its  back.  "He  was  watch- 
ing the  dog,"  the  sergeant  said.  "It  had  been  home  about  an 
hour  and  it  was  behind  the  men's  mess,  grubbing  in  the  refuse 
bin."  He  said  that  Sartoris  dived  at  the  dog  and  then  looped, 
making  two  turns  of  an  upward  spin,  coming  off  on  one  wing 
and  still  upside  down.  Then  the  sergeant  said  that  he  prob- 
ably did  not  set  back  the  air  valve,  because  at  a  hundred  feet 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  527 

the  engine  conked,  and  upside  down  Sartoris  cut  the  tops  out 
of  the  only  two  poplar  trees  they  had  left. 

The  sergeant  said  they  ran  then,  toward  the  gout  of  dust 
and  the  mess  of  wire  and  wood.  Before  they  reached  it,  he 
said  the  dog  came  trotting  out  from  behind  the  men's  mess. 
He  said  the  dog  got  there  first  and  that  they  saw  Sartoris  on 
his  hands  and  knees,  vomiting,  while  jhe  dog  watched  him. 
Then  the  dog  approached  and  sniffed  tentatively  at  the  vomit 
and  Sartoris  got  up  and  balanced  himself  and  kicked  it, 
weakly  but  with  savage  and  earnest  purpose. 

VI 

THE  AMBULANCE  DRIVER,  in  Spoomer's  uniform,  was  sent 
back  to  the  aerodrome  by  the  Anzac  major.  They  put  him  to 
bed,  where  he  was  still  sleeping  when  the  brigadier  and  the 
Wing  Commander  came  up  that  afternoon.  They  were  still 
there  when  an  ox  cart  turned  onto  the  aerodrome  and 
stopped,  with,  sitting  on  a  wire  cage  containing  chickens, 
Spoomer  in  a  woman's  skirt  and  a  knitted  shawl.  The  next 
day  Spoomer  returned  to  England.  We  learned  that  he  was 
to  be  a  temporary  colonel  at  ground  school. 

"The  dog  will  like  that,  anyway,"  I  said. 

"The  dog?"  Sartoris  said. 

"The  food  will  be  better  there,"  I  said. 

"Oh,"  Sartoris  said.  They  had  reduced  him  to  second 
lieutenant,  for  dereliction  of  duty  by  entering  a  forbidden 
zone  with  government  property  and  leaving  it  unguarded, 
and  he  had  been  transferred  to  another  squadron,  to  the  one 
which  even  the  B.E.  people  called  the  Laundry. 

This  was  the  day  before  he  left.  He  had  no  front  teeth  at 
all  now,  and  he  apologized  for  the  way  he  talked,  who  had 
never  really  talked  with  an  intact  mouth.  "The  joke  is,"  he 
said,  "it's  another  Camel  squadron.  I  have  to  laugh." 

"Laugh?"  I  said. 


528  The  Wasteland 

"Oh,  I  can  ride  them.  I  can  sit  there  with  the  gun  out  and 
keep  the  wings  level  now  and  then.  But  I  can't  fly  Camels. 
You  have  to  land  a  Camel  by  setting  the  air  valve  and  flying 
it  into  the  ground.  Then  you  count  ten,  and  if  you  have  not 
crashed,  you  level  off.  And  if  you  can  get  up  and  walk  away, 
you  have  made  a  good  landing.  And  if  they  can  use  the  crate 
again,  you  are  an  ace.^But  that's  not  the  joke." 

"What's  not?" 

"The  Camels.  The  joke  is,  this  is  a  night-flying  squadron.  I 
suppose  they  are  all  in  town  and  they  dont  get  back  until 
after  dark  to  fly  them.  They're  sending  me  to  a  night-flying 
squadron.  That's  why  I  have  to  laugh." 

"I  would  laugh,"  I  said.  "Isn't  there  something  you  can  do 
about  it?" 

"Sure.  Just  keep  that  air  valve  set  right  and  not  crash.  Not 
wash  out  and  have  those  wing  flares  explode.  I've  got  that 
beat.  I'll  just  stay  up  all  night,  pop  the  flares  and  sit  down 
after  sunrise.  That's  why  I  have  to  laugh,  see.  I  cant  fly 
Camels  in  the  daytime,  even.  And  they  dont  know  it." 

"Well,  anyway,  you  did  better  than  you  promised,"  I  said. 
"You  have  run  him  off  the  continent  of  Europe." 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "I  sure  have  to  laugh.  He's  got  to  go  back 
to  England,  where  all  the  men  are  gone.  All  those  women, 
and  not  a  man  between  fourteen  and  eighty  to  help  him.  I 
have  to  laugh." 


VII 

WHEN  JULY  CAME,  I  was  still  in  the  Wing  office,  still  trying 
to  get  used  to  my  mechanical  leg  by  sitting  at  a  table  equipped 
with  a  paper  cutter,  a  pot  of  glue  and  one  of  red  ink,  and 
laden  with  the  meager,  thin,  here  soiled  and  here  clean  en- 
velopes that  came  down  in  periodical  batches — envelopes  ad- 
dressed to  cities  and  hamlets  and  sometimes  less  than  hamlets, 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  529 

about  England — when  one  day  I  came  upon  two  addressed  to 
the  same  person  in  America:  a  letter  and  a  parcel.  I  took  the 
letter  first.  It  had  neither  location  nor  date: 

Dear  Aunt  Jenny 

Yes  I  got  the  socks  Elnora  knitted.  They  fit  all  right  be- 
cause I  gave  them  to  my  batman  he  said  they  fit  all  right.  Yes 
I  like  it  here  better  than  'where  I  was  these  are  good  guys  here 
except  these  damn  Camels.  I  am  all  right  about  going  to 
church  we  dont  always  have  church.  Sometimes  they  have  it 
for  the  ak  emmas  because  1  reckon  a  ak  emma  needs  it  but 
usually  1  am  pretty  busy  Sunday  but  I  go  enough  I  reckon. 
Tell  Elnora  much  oblige  for  the  socks  they  fit  all  right  but 
maybe  you  better  not  tell  her  I  gave  them  away.  Tell  Isom 
and  the  other  niggers  hello  and  Grandfather  tell  him  I  got  the 
money  all  right  but  war  is  expensive  as  hell. 

Johnny. 

But  then,  the  Malbroucks  dont  make  the  wars,  anyway.  I 
suppose  it  takes  too  many  words  to  make  a  war.  Maybe  that's 
why. 

The  package  was  addressed  like  the  letter,  to  Mrs  Virginia 
Sartoris,  Jefferson,  Mississippi,  U.S.A.,  and  I  thought,  What 
in  the  world  would  it  ever  occur  to  him  to  send  to  her?  I 
could  not  imagine  him  choosing  a  gift  for  a  woman  in  a 
foreign  country;  choosing  one  of  those  trifles  which  some 
men  can  choose  with  a  kind  of  infallible  tact.  His  would  be, 
if  he  thought  to  send  anything  at  all,  a  section  of  crank  shaft 
or  maybe  a  handful  of  wrist  pins  salvaged  from  a  Hun  crash. 
So  I  opened  the  package.  Then  I  sat  there,  looking  at  the 
contents. 

It  contained  an  addressed  envelope,  a  few  dog-eared  papers, 
a  wrist  watch  whose  strap  was  stiff  with  some  dark  dried 
liquid,  a  pair  of  goggles  without  any  glass  in  one  lens,  a  silver 
belt  buckle  with  a  monogram.  That  was  all. 


530  The  Wasteland 

So  I  didn't  need  to  read  the  letter.  I  didn't  have  to  look  at 
the  contents  of  the  package,  but  I  wanted  to.  I  didn't  want 
to  read  the  letter,  but  I  had  to. 

— Squadron,  R.A.P\,  France. 

$th  July,  1918. 
Dear  Madam, 

I  have  to  tell  you  that  your  son  was  killed  on  yesterday 
morning.  He  was  shot  down  while  in  pursuit  of  duty  over  the 
enemy  lines.  Not  due  to  carelessness  or  lack  of  skill.  He  was 
a  good  man.  The  E.A.  outnumbered  your  son  and  had  more 
height  and  speed  which  is  our  misfortune  but  no  fault  of  the 
Government  which  would  give  us  better  machines  if  they 
had  them  which  is  no  satisfaction  to  you.  Another  of  ours, 
Mr  R.  Kyerling  woo  feet  below  could  not  get  up  there  since 
your  son  spent  much  time  in  the  hangar  and  had  a  new  en- 
gine in  his  machine  last  week.  -Your  son  took  fire  in  ten  sec- 
onds Mr  Kyerling  said  and  jumped  from  your  son's  machine 
since  he  was  side  slipping  safely  until  the  E.A.  shot  away  his 
stabiliser  and  controls  and  he  began  to  spin.  I  am  very  sad  to 
send  you  these  sad  tidings  though  it  may  be  a  comfort  to  you 
that  he  was  buried  by  a  minister.  His  other  effects  sent  you 
later. 

I  am,  madam,  and  etc. 

C.  Kaye  Major 

He  was  buried  in  the  cemetary  just  north  of  Saint  Vaast 
since  we  hope  it  will  not  be  shelled  again  since  we  hope  it 
will  be  over  soon  by  our  padre  since  there  were  just  two 
Camels  and  seven  E.A.  and  so  it  was  on  our  side  by  that  time. 

C.  K.  Mjr. 

The  other  papers  were  letters,  from  his  great-aunt,  not 
many  and  not  long.  I  dont  know  why  he  had  kept  them.  But 
he  had.  Maybe  he  just  forgot  them,  like  he  had  the  bill  from 


All  the  Dead  Pilots  531 

the  London  tailor  he  had  found  in  his  overalls  in  Amiens  that 
day  in  the  spring. 

.  .  .  let  those  foreign  women  alone.  I  lived  through  a  'war 
mysetf  and  I  know  how  women  act  in  war,  even  with  Yan- 
kees. And  a  good-for-nothing  hellion  like  you  .  .  . 

And  this: 

.  .  .  we  think  it's  about  time  you  came  home.  Your  grand- 
father is  getting  old,  and  it  don't  look  like  they  will  ever  get 
done  fighting  over  there.  So  you  come  on  home.  The  Yan- 
kees are  in  it  now.  Let  them  fight  if  they  want  to.  It's  their 
war.  It's  not  ours. 

And  that's  all.  That's  it.  The  courage,  the  recklessness,  call 
it  what  you  will,  is  the  flash,  the  instant  of  sublimation;  then 
flick!  the  old  darkness  again.  That's  why.  It's  too  strong  for 
steady  diet.  And  if  it  were  a  steady  diet,  it  would  not  be  a 
flash,  a  glare.  And  so,  being  momentary,  it  can  be  preserved 
and  prolonged  only  on  paper:  a  picture,  a  few  written  words 
that  any  match,  a  minute  and  harmless  flame  that  any  child 
can  engender,  can  obliterate  in  an  instant.  A  one-inch  sliver 
of  sulphur-tipped  wood  is  longer  than  memory  or  grief;  a 
flame  no  larger  than  a  sixpence  is  fiercer  than  courage  or 
despair. 


V  *  THE  MIDDLE  GROUND 


Wash 

Honor 

Dr.  Martino 

Fox  Hunt 

Pennsylvania  Station 

Artist  at  Home 

The  Brooch 

My  Grandmother  Millard 

Golden  Land 

There  Was  a  Queen 

Mountain  Victory 


Wash 


SUTPEN  STOOD  ABOVE  the  pallet  bed  on  which  the  mother  and 
child  lay.  Between  the  shrunken  planking  of  the  wall  the 
early  sunlight  fell  in  long  pencil  strokes,  breaking  upon  his 
straddled  legs  and  upon  the  riding  whip  in  his  hand,  and 
lay  across  the  still  shape  of  the  mother,  who  lay  looking  up 
at  him  from  still,  inscrutable,  sullen  eyes,  the  child  at  her 
side  wrapped  in  a  piece  of  dingy  though  clean  cloth.  Be- 
hind them  an  old  Negro  woman  squatted  beside  the  rough 
hearth  where  a  meager  fire  smoldered. 

"Well,  Milly,"  Sutpen  said,  "too  bad  you're  not  a  mare. 
Then  I  could  give  you  a  decent  stall  in  the  stable." 

Still  the  girl  on  the  pallet  did  not  move.  She  merely  con- 
tinued to  look  up  at  him  without  expression,  with  a  young, 
sullen,  inscrutable  face  still  pale  from  recent  travail.  Sutpen 
moved,  bringing  into  the  splintered  pencils  of  sunlight  the 
face  of  a  man  of  sixty.  Pie  said  quietly  to  the  squatting 
Negress,  "Griselda  foaled  this  morning." 

"Horse  or  mare?"  the  Negress  said. 

"A  horse.  A  damned  fine  colt.  .  .  .  What's  this?"  He  indi- 
cated the  pallet  with  the  hand  which  held  the  whip. 

"That  un's  a  mare,  I  reckon." 

"Hah,"  Sutpen  said.  "A  damned  fine  colt.  Going  to  be 
the  spit  and  image  of  old  Rob  Roy  when  I  rode  him  North 
in  '6 1.  Do  you  remember?" 

535 


536  The  Middle  Ground 

"Yes,  Marster." 

"Hah."  He  glanced  back  towards  the  pallet.  None  could 
have  said  if  the  girl  still  watched  him  or  not.  Again  his  whip 
hand  indicated  the  pallet.  "Do  whatever  they  need  with 
whatever  we've  got  to  do  it  with."  He  went  out,  passing 
out  the  crazy  doorway  and  stepping  down  into  the  rank 
weeds  (there  yet  leaned  rusting  against  the  corner  of  the 
porch  the  scythe  which  Wash  had  borrowed  from  him  three 
months  ago  to  cut  them  with)  where  his  horse  waited,  where 
Wash  stood  holding  the  reins. 

When  Colonel  Sutpen  rode  away  to  fight  the  Yankees, 
Wash  did  not  go.  "I'm  looking  after  the  Kernel's  place  and 
niggers,"  he  would  tell  all  who  asked  him  and  some  who 
had  not  asked — a  gaunt,  malaria-ridden  man  with  pale,  ques- 
tioning eyes,  who  looked  about  thirty-five,  though  it  was 
known  that  he  had  not  only  a  daughter  but  an  eight-year- 
old  granddaughter  as  well.  This  was  a  lie,  as  most  of  them — 
the  few  remaining  men  between  eighteen  and  fifty — to 
whom  he  told  it,  knew,  though  there  were  some  who  be- 
lieved that  he  himself  really  believed  it,  though  even  these 
believed  that  he  had  better  sense  than  to  put  it  to  the  test 
with  Mrs.  Sutpen  or  the  Sutpen  slaves.  Knew  better  or  was 
just  too  lazy  and  shiftless  to  try  it,  they  said,  knowing  that  his 
sole  connection  with  the  Sutpen  plantation  lay  in  the  fact 
that  for  years  now  Colonel  Sutpen  had  allowed  him  to  squat 
in  a  crazy  shack  on  a  slough  in  the  river  bottom  on  the  Sut- 
pen place,  which  Sutpen  had  built  for  a  fishing  lodge  in  his 
bachelor  days  and  which  had  since  fallen  in  dilapidation 
from  disuse,  so  that  now  it  looked  like  an  aged  or  sick  wild 
beast  crawled  terrifically  there  to  drink  in  the  act  of  dying. 

The  Sutpen  slaves  themselves  heard  of  his  statement.  They 
laughed.  It  was  not  the  first  time  they  had  laughed  at  him, 
calling  him  white  trash  behind  his  back.  They  began  to  ask 


Wash     .'  537 

him  themselves,  in  groups,  meeting  him  in  the  faint  road 
which  led  up  from  the  slough  and  the  old  fish  camp,  "Why 
ain't  you  at  de  war,  white  man?" 

Pausing,  he  would  look  about  the  ring  of  black  faces  and 
white  eyes  and  teeth  behind  which  derision  lurked.  "Because 
I  got  a  daughter  and  family  to  keep,"  he  said.  "Git  out  of 
my  road,  niggers." 

"Niggers?"  they  repeated;  "niggers?"  laughing  now. 
"Who  him,  calling  us  niggers?" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "I  ain't  got  no  niggers  to  look  after  my 
folks  if  I  was  gone." 

"Nor  nothing  else  but  dat  shack  down  yon  dat  Gunnel 
wouldn't  let  none  of  us  live  in." 

Now  he  cursed  them;  sometimes  he  rushed  at  them, 
snatching  up  a  stick  from  the  ground  while  they  scattered 
before  him,  yet  seeming  to  surround  him  still  with  that  black 
laughing,  derisive,  evasive,  inescapable,  leaving  him  panting 
and  impotent  and  raging.  Once  it  happened  in  the  very  back 
yard  of  the  big  house  itself.  This  was  after  bitter  news  had 
come  down  from  the  Tennessee  mountains  and  from  Vicks- 
burg,  and  Sherman  had  passed  through  the  plantation,  and 
most  of  the  Negroes  had  followed  him.  Almost  everything 
else  had  gone  with  the  Federal  troops,  and  Mrs.  Sutpen  had 
sent  word  to  Wash  that  he  could  have  the  scuppernongs 
ripening  in  the  arbor  in  the  back  yard.  This  time  it  was  a 
house  servant,  one  of  the  few  Negroes  who  remained;  this 
time  the  Negress  had  to  retreat  up  the  kitchen  steps,  where 
she  turned.  "Stop  right  dar,  white  man.  Stop  right  whar  you 
is.  You  ain't  never  crossed  dese  steps  whilst  Gunnel  here, 
and  you  ain't  ghy'  do  hit  now." 

This  was  true.  But  there  was  this  of  a  kind  of  pride:  he 
had  never  tried  to  enter  the  big  house,  even  though  he  be- 
lieved that  if  he  had,  Sutpen  would  have  received  him,  per- 
mitted him.  "But  I  ain't  going  to  give  no  black  nigger  the 


538  The  Middle  Ground 

chance  to  tell  me  I  can't  go  nowhere,"  he  said  to  himself. 
"I  ain't  even  going  to  give  Kernel  the  chance  to  have  to 
cuss  a  nigger  on  my  account."  This,  though  he  and  Sutpen 
had  spent  more  than  one  afternoon  together  on  those  rare 
Sundays  when  there  would  be  no  company  in  the  house. 
Perhaps  his  mind  knew  that  it  was  because  Sutpen  had  noth- 
ing else  to  do,  being  a  man  who  could  not  bear  his  own 
company.  Yet  the  fact  remained  that  the  two  of  them  would 
spend  whole  afternoons  in  the  scuppernong  arbor,  Sutpen 
in  the  hammock  and  Wash  squatting  against  a  post,  a  pail  of 
cistern  water  between  them,  taking  drink  for  drink  from 
the  same  demijohn.  Meanwhile  on  weekdays  he  would  see 
the  fine  figure  of  the  man — they  were  the  same  age  almost 
to  a  day,  though  neither  of  them  (perhaps  because  Wash 
had  a  grandchild  while  Sutpen's  son  was  a  youth  in  school) 
ever  thought  of  himself  as  being  so — on  the  fine  figure  of 
the  black  stallion,  galloping  about  the  plantation.  For  that 
moment  his  heart  would  be  quiet  and  proud.  It  would  seem 
to  him  that  that  world  in  which  Negroes,  whom  the  Bible 
told  him  had  been  created  and  cursed  by  God  to  be  brute 
and  vassal  to  all  men  of  white  skin,  were  better  found  and 
housed  and  even  clothed  than  he  and  his;  that  world  in  which 
he  sensed  always  about  him  mocking  echoes  of  black  laugh- 
ter was  but  a  dream  and  an  illusion,  and  that  the  actual 
world  was  this  one  across  which  his  own  lonely  apotheosis 
seemed  to  gallop  on  the  black  thoroughbred,  thinking  how 
the  Book  said  also  that  all  men  were  created  in  the  image  of 
God  and  hence  all  men  made  the  same  image  in  God's  eyes 
at  least;  so  that  he  could  say,  as  though  speaking  of  himself, 
"A  fine  proud  man.  If  God  Himself  was  to  come  down  and 
ride  the  natural  earth,  that's  what  He  would  aim  to  look 
like." 

Sutpen  returned  in  1865,  on  the  black  stallion.  He  seemed 
to  have  aged  ten  years.  His  son  had  been  killed  in  action  the 


Wash  539 

same  winter  in  which  his  wife  had  died.  He  returned  with 
his  citation  for  gallantry  from  the  hand  of  General  Lee  to  a 
ruined  plantation,  where  for  a  year  now  his  daughter  had 
subsisted  partially  on  the  meager  bounty  of  the  man  to 
whom  fifteen  years  ago  he  had  granted  permission  to  live 
in  that  tumbledown  fishing  camp  whose  very  existence  he 
had  at  the  time  forgotten.  Wash  was  there  to  meet  him, 
unchanged:  still  gaunt,  still  ageless,  with  his  pale,  question- 
ing gaze,  his  air  diffident,  a  little  servile,  a  little  familiar. 
"Well,  Kernel,"  Wash  said,  "they  kilt  us  but  they  ain't 
whupped  us  yit,  air  they?" 

That  was  the  tenor  of  their  conversation  for  the  next  five 
years.  It  was  inferior  whisky  which  they  drank  now  to- 
gether from  a  stoneware  jug,  and  it  was  not  in  the  scupper- 
nong  arbor.  It  was  in  the  rear  of  the  little  store  which  Sut- 
pen  managed  to  set  up  on  the  highroad:  a  frame  shelved 
room  where,  with  Wash  for  clerk  and  porter,  he  dispensed 
kerosene  and  staple  foodstuffs  and  stale  gaudy  candy  and 
cheap  beads  and  ribbons  to  Negroes  or  poor  whites  of 
Wash's  own  kind,  who  came  afoot  or  on  gaunt  mules  to 
haggle  tediously  for  dimes  and  quarters  with  a  man  who  at 
one  time  could  gallop  (the  black  stallion  was  still  alive;  the 
stable  in  which  his  jealous  get  lived  was  in  better  repair  than 
the  house  where  the  master  himself  lived)  for  ten  miles 
across  his  own  fertile  land  and  who  had  led  troops  gallantly 
in  battle;  until  Sutpen  in  fury  would  empty  the  store,  close 
and  lock  the  doors  from  the  inside.  Then  he  and  Wash 
would  repair  to  the  rear  and  the  jug.  But  the  talk  would  not 
be  quiet  now,  as  when  Sutpen  lay  in  the  hammock,  deliver- 
ing an  arrogant  monologue  while  Wash  squatted  guffawing 
against  his  post.  They  both  sat  now,  though  Sutpen  had  the 
single  chair  while  Wash  used  whatever  box  or  keg  was 
handy,  and  even  this  for  just  a  little  while,  because  soon 
Sutpen  would  reach  that  stage  of  impotent  and  furious  un- 


540  The  Middle  Ground 

defeat  in  which  he  would  rise,  swaying  and  plunging,  and 
declare  again  that  he  would  take  his  pistol  and  the  black 
stallion  and  ride  single-handed  into  Washington  and  kill 
Lincoln,  dead  now,  and  Sherman,  now  a  private  citizen. 
"Kill  them!"  he  would  shout.  "Shoot  them  down  like  the 
dogs  they  are — " 

"Sho,  Kernel;  sho,  Kernel/'  Wash  would  say,  catching 
Sutpen  as  he  fell.  Then  he  would  commandeer  the  first 
passing  wagon  or,  lacking  that,  he  would  walk  the  mile  to 
the  nearest  neighbor  and  borrow  one  and  return  and  carry 
Sutpen  home.  He  entered  the  house  now.  He  had  been 
doing  so  for  a  long  time,  taking  Sutpen  home  in  whatever 
borrowed  wagon  might  be,  talking  him  into  locomotion 
with  cajoling  murmurs  as  though  he  were  a  horse,  a  stallion 
himself.  The  daughter  would  meet  them  and  hold  open  the 
door  without  a  word.  He  would  carry  his  burden  through 
the  once  white  formal  entrance,  surmounted  by  a  fanlight 
imported  piece  by  piece  from  Europe  and  with  a  board  now 
nailed  over  a  missing  pane,  across  a  velvet  carpet  from  which 
all  nap  was  now  gone,  and  up  a  formal  stairs,  now  but  a 
fading  ghost  of  bare  boards  between  two  strips  of  fading 
paint,  and  into  the  bedroom.  It  would  be  dusk  by  now,  and 
he  would  let  his  burden  sprawl  onto  the  bed  and  undress  it 
and  then  he  would  sit  quietly  in  a  chair  beside.  After  a  time 
the  daughter  would  come  to  the  door.  "We're  all  right 
now,"  he  would  tell  her.  "Don't  you  worry  none,  Miss 
Judith." 

Then  it  would  become  dark,  and  after  a  while  he  would 
lie  down  on  the  floor  beside  the  bed,  though  not  to  sleep, 
because  after  a  time — sometimes  before  midnight — the  man 
on  the  bed  would  stir  and  groan  and  then  speak.  "Wash?" 

"Hyer  I  am,  Kernel.  You  go  back  to  sleep.  We  ain't 
whupped  yit,  air  we?  Me  and  you  kin  do  hit." 

Even  then  he  had  already  seen  the  ribbon  about  his  grand^ 


Wash  541 

daughter's  waist.  She  was  now  fifteen,  already  mature,  after 
the  early  way  of  her  kind.  He  knew  where  the  ribbon  came 
from;  he  had  been  seeing  it.  and  its  kind  daily  for  three  years, 
even  if  she  had  lied  about  where  she  got  it,  which  she  did 
not,  at  once  bold,  sullen,  and  fearful.  "Sho  now,"  he  said. 
"Ef  Kernel  wants  to  give  hit  to  you,  I  hope  you  minded  to 
thank  him." 

His  heart  was  quiet,  even  when  he  saw  the  dress,  watching 
her  secret,  defiant,  frightened  face  when  she  told  him  that 
Miss  Judith,  the  daughter,  had  helped  her  to  make  it.  But 
he  was  quite  grave  when  he  approached  Sutpen  after  they 
closed  the  store  that  afternoon,  following  the  other  to  the 
rear. 

"Get  the  jug,"  Sutpen  directed. 

"Wait,"  Wash  said.  "Not  yit  for  a  minute." 

Neither  did  Sutpen  deny  the  dress.  "What  about  it?"  he 
said. 

But  Wash  met  his  arrogant  stare;  he  spoke  quietly.  "I've 
knowed  you  for  going  on  twenty  years.  I  ain't  never  yit 
denied  to  do  what  you  told  me  to  do.  And  I'm  a  man  nigh 
sixty.  And  she  ain't  nothing  but  a  fifteen-year-old  gal." 

"Meaning  that  I'd  harm  a  girl?  I,  a  man  as  old  as  you  are?" 

"If  you  was  ara  other  man,  I'd  say  you  was  as  old  as  me. 
And  old  or  no  old,  I  wouldn't  let  her  keep  that  dress  nor 
nothing  else  that  come  from  your  hand.  But  you  are  differ- 


ent." 


"How  different?"  But  Wash  merely  looked  at  him  with 
his  pale,  questioning,  sober  eyes.  "So  that's  why  you  are 
afraid  of  me?" 

Now  Wash's  gaze  no  longer  questioned.  It  was  tranquil, 
serene.  "I  ain't  afraid.  Because  you  air  brave.  It  ain't  that 
you  were  a  brave  man  at  one  minute  or  day  of  your  life  and 
got  a  paper  to  show  hit  from  General  Lee.  But  you  air 
brave,  the  same  as  you  air  alive  and  breathing.  That's  where 


542  The  Middle  Ground 

hit's  different.  Hit  don't  need  no  ticket  from  nobody  to  tell 
me  that.  And  I  know  that  whatever  you  handle  or  tech, 
whether  hit's  a  regiment  of  men  or  a  ignorant  gal  or  just  a 
hound  dog,  that  you  will  make  hit  right." 

Now  it  was  Sutpen  who  looked  away,  turning  suddenly, 
brusquely.  "Get  the  jug,"  he  said  sharply. 

"Sho,  Kernel,"  Wash  said. 

So  on  that  Sunday  dawn  two  years  later,  having  watched 
the  Negro  midwife,  which  he  had  walked  three  miles  to 
fetch,  enter  the  crazy  door  beyond  which  his  granddaughter 
lay  wailing,  his  heart  was  still  quiet  though  concerned.  He 
knew  what  they  had  been  saying — the  Negroes  in  cabins 
about  the  land,  the  white  men  who  loafed  all  day  long  about 
the  store,  watching  quietly  the  three  of  them:  Sutpen,  him- 
self, his  granddaughter  with  her  air  of  brazen  and  shrinking 
defiance  as  her  condition  became  daily  more  and  more  ob- 
vious, like  three  actors  that  came  and  went  upon  a  stage. 
"I  know  what  they  say  to  one  another,"  he  thought.  "I  can 
almost  hyear  them:  Wash  Jones  has  fixed  old  Sutpen  at  last. 
Hit  taken  him  twenty  years,  but  he  has  done  hit  at  last" 

It  would  be  dawn  after  a  while,  though  not  yet.  From  the 
house,  where  the  lamp  shone  dim  beyond  the  warped  door- 
frame, his  granddaughter's  voice  came  steadily  as  though 
run  by  a  clock,  while  thinking  went  slowly  and  terrifically, 
fumbling,  involved  somehow  with  a  sound  of  galloping 
hooves,  until  there  broke  suddenly  free  in  mid-gallop  the 
fine  proud  figure  of  the  man  on  the  fine  proud  stallion, 
galloping;  and  then  that  at  which  thinking  fumbled,  broke 
free  too  and  quite  clear,  not  in  justification  nor  even  expla- 
nation, but  as  the  apotheosis,  lonely,  explicable,  beyond  all 
fouling  by  human  touch:  "He  is  bigger  than  all  them 
Yankees  that  kilt  his  son  and  his  wife  and  taken  his  niggers 
and  ruined  his  land,  bigger  than  this  hyer  durn  country  that 


Wash  543 

he  fit  for  and  that  has  denied  him  into  keeping  a  little  coun- 
try store;  bigger  than  the  denial  which  hit  helt  to  his  lips 
like  the  bitter  cup  in  the  Book.  And  how  could  I  have  lived 
this  nigh  to  him  for  twenty  years  without  being  teched  and 
changed  by  him?  Maybe  I  ain't  as  big  as  him  and  maybe  I 
ain't  done  none  of  the  galloping.  But  at  least  I  done  been 
drug  along.  Me  and  him  kin  do  hit,  if  so  be  he  will  show  me 
what  he  aims  for  me  to  do." 

Then  it  was  dawn.  Suddenly  he  could  see  the  house,  and 
the  old  Negress  in  the  door  looking  at  him.  Then  he  realized 
that  his  granddaughter's  voice  had  ceased.  "It's  a  girl,"  the 
Negress  said.  "You  can  go  tell  him  if  you  want  to."  She  re- 
entered  the  house. 

"A  girl,"  he  repeated;  "a  girl";  in  astonishment,  hearing 
the  galloping  hooves,  seeing  the  proud  galloping  figure 
emerge  again.  He  seemed  to  watch  it  pass,  galloping  through 
avatars  which  marked  the  accumulation  of  years,  time,  to 
the  climax  where  it  galloped  beneath  a  brandished  saber  and 
a  shot-torn  flag  rushing  down  a  sky  in  color  like  thunderous 
sulphur,  thinking  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  perhaps 
Sutpen  was  an  old  man  like  himself.  "Gittin  a  gal,"  he 
thought  in  that  astonishment;  then  he  thought  with  the 
pleased  surprise  of  a  child:  "Yes,  sir.  Be  dawg  if  I  ain't  lived 
to  be  a  great-grandpaw  after  all." 

He  entered  the  house.  He  moved  clumsily,  on  tiptoe,  as 
if  he  no  longer  lived  there,  as  if  the  infant  which  had  just 
drawn  breath  and  cried  in  light  had  dispossessed  him,  be  it 
of  his  own  blood  too  though  it  might.  But  even  above  the 
pallet  he  could  see  little  save  the  blur  of  his  granddaughter's 
exhausted  face.  Then  the  Negress  squatting  at  the  hearth 
spoke,  "You  better  gawn  tell  him  if  you  going  to.  Hit's  day- 
light now." 

But  this  was  not  necessary.  He  had  no  more  than  turned 
the  corner  of  the  porch  where  the  scythe  leaned  which  he 


544  The  Middle  Ground 

had  borrowed  three  months  ago  to  clear  away  the  weeds 
through  which  he  walked,  when  Sutpen  himself  rode  up  on 
the  old  stallion.  He  did  not  wonder  how  Sutpen  had  got  the 
word.  He  took  it  for  granted  that  this  was  what  had  brought 
the  other  out  at  this  hour  on  Sunday  morning,  and  he  stood 
while  the  other  dismounted,  and  he  took  the  reins  from  Sut- 
pen's  hand,  an  expression  on  his  gaunt  face  almost  imbecile 
with  a  kind  of  weary  triumph,  saying,  "Hit's  a  gal,  Kernel. 
I  be  dawg  if  you  ain't  as  old  as  I  am — "  until  Sutpen  passed 
him  and  entered  the  house.  He  stood  there  with  the  reins 
in  his  hand  and  heard  Sutpen  cross  the  floor  to  the  pallet. 
He  heard  what  Sutpen  said,  and  something  seemed  to  stop 
dead  in  him  before  going  on. 

The  sun  was  now  up,  the  swift  sun  of  Mississippi  latitudes, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  stood  beneath  a  strange  sky, 
in  a  strange  scene,  familiar  only  as  things  are  familiar  in 
dreams,  like  the  dreams  of  falling  to  one  who  has  never 
climbed.  "I  kain't  have  heard  what  I  thought  I  heard,"  he 
thought  quietly.  "I  know  I  kain't."  Yet  the  voice,  the  familiar 
voice  which  had  said  the  words  was  still  speaking,  talking 
now  to  the  old  Negress  about  a  colt  foaled  that  morning. 
"That's  why  he  was  up  so  early,"  he  thought.  "That  was  hit. 
Hit  ain't  me  and  mine.  Hit  ain't  even  hisn  that  got  him  outen 
bed." 

Sutpen  emerged.  He  descended  into  the  weeds,  moving 
with  that  heavy  deliberation  which  would  have  been  haste 
when  he  was  younger.  He  had  not  yet  looked  full  at  Wash. 
He  said,  "Dicey  will  stay  and  tend  to  her.  You  better — " 
Then  he  seemed  to  see  Wash  facing  him  and  paused. 
"What?"  he  said. 

"You  said—--"  To  his  own  ears  Wash's  voice  sounded  flat 
and  ducklike,  like  a  deaf  man's.  "You  said  if  she  was  a  mare, 
you  could  give  her  a  good  stall  in  the  stable." 

"Well?"  Sutpen  said.  His  eyes  widened  and  narrowed.. 


Wash  545 

almost  like  a  man's  fists  flexing  and  shutting,  as  Wash  began 
to  advance  towards  him,  stooping  a  little.  Very  astonish- 
ment kept  Sutpen  still  for  the  moment,  watching  that  man 
whom  in  twenty  years  he  had  no  more  known  to  make  any 
motion  save  at  command  than  he  had  the  horse  which  he 
rode.  Again  his  eyes  narrowed  and  widened;  without  mov- 
ing he  seemed  to  rear  suddenly  upright.  "Stand  back,"  he 
said  suddenly  and  sharply.  "Don't  you  touch  me." 

"I'm  going  to  tech  you,  Kernel,"  Wash  said  in  that  flat, 
quiet,  almost  soft  voice,  advancing. 

Sutpen  raised  the  hand  which  held  the  riding  whip;  the 
old  Negress  peered  around  the  crazy  door  with  her  black 
gargoyle  face  of  a  worn  gnome.  "Stand  back,  Wash,"  Sut- 
pen said.  Then  he  struck.  The  old  Negress  leaped  down  into 
the  weeds  with  the  agility  of  a  goat  and  fled.  Sutpen  slashed 
Wash  again  across  the  face  with  the  whip,  striking  him  to 
his  knees.  When  Wash  rose  and  advanced  once  more  he 
held  in  his  hands  the  scythe  which  he  had  borrowed  from 
Sutpen  three  months  ago  and  which  Surpen  would  never 
need  again. 

When  he  reentered  the  house  his  granddaughter  stirred 
on  the  pallet  bed  and  called  his  name  fretfully.  "What  was 
that?"  she  said. 

"What  was  what,  honey?" 

"That  ere  racket  out  there." 

"  'Twarn't  nothing,"  he  said  gently.  He  knelt  and  touched 
her  hot  forehead  clumsily.  "Do  you  want  ara  thing?" 

"I  want  a  sup  of  water,"  she  said  querulously.  "I  been 
laying  here  wanting  a  sup  of  water  a  long  time,  but  don't 
nobody  care  enough  to  pay  me  no  mind." 

"Sho  now,"  he  said  soothingly.  He  rose  stiffly  and  fetched 
the  dipper  of  water  and  raised  her  head  to  drink  and  laid  her 
back  and  watched  her  turn  to  the  child  with  an  absolutely 
stonelike  face.  But  a  moment  later  he  saw  that  she  was  cry- 


546  The  Middle  Ground 

ing  quietly.  "Now,  now,"  he  said,  "I  wouldn't  do  that.  Old 
Dicey  says  hit's  a  right  fine  gal.  Hit's  all  right  now.  Hit's  all 
over  now.  Hit  ain't  no  need  to  cry  now." 

But  she  continued  to  cry  quietly,  almost  sullenly,  and  he 
rose  again  and  stood  uncomfortably  above  the  pallet  for  a 
time,  thinking  as  he  had  thought  when  his  own  wife  lay  so 
and  then  his  daughter  in  turn:  "Women.  Hit's  a  mystry  to 
me.  They  seem  to  want  em,  and  yit  when  they  git  em  they 
cry  about  hit.  Hit's  a  mystry  to  me.  To  ara  man."  Then  he 
moved  away  and  drew  a  chair  up  to  the  window  and  sat 
down. 

Through  all  that  long,  bright,  sunny  forenoon  he  sat  at 
the  window,  waiting.  Now  and  then  he  rose  and  tiptoed  to 
the  pallet.  But  his  granddaughter  slept  now,  her  face  sullen 
and  calm  and  weary,  the  child  in  the  crook  of  her  arm.  Then 
he  returned  to  the  chair  and  sat  again,  waiting,  wondering 
why  it  took  them  so  long,  until  he  remembered  that  it  was 
Sunday.  He  was  sitting  there  at  mid-afternoon  when  a  half- 
grown  white  boy  came  around  the  corner  of  the  house  upon 
the  body  and  gave  a  choked  cry  and  looked  up  and  glared 
for  a  mesmerized  instant  at  Wash  in  the  window  before  he 
turned  and  fled.  Then  Wash  rose  and  tiptoed  again  to  the 
pallet. 

The  granddaughter  was  awake  now,  wakened  perhaps 
by  the  boy's  cry  without  hearing  it.  "Milly,"  he  said,  "air 
you  hungry?"  She  didn't  answer,  turning  her  face  away. 
He  built  up  the  fire  on  the  hearth  and  cooked  the  food  which 
he  had  brought  home  the  day  before:  fatback  it  was,  and 
cold  corn  pone;  he  poured  water  into  the  stale  coffee  pot 
and  heated  it.  But  she  would  not  eat  when  he  carried  the 
plate  to  her,  so  he  ate  himself,  quietly,  alone,  and  left  the 
dishes  as  they  were  and  returned  to  the  window. 

Now  he  seemed  to  sense,  feel,  the  men  who  would  be 
gathering  with  horses  and  guns  and  dogs — the  curious,  and 


Wash  547 

the  vengeful:  men  of  Sutpen's  own  kind,  who  had  made 
the  company  about  Sutpen's  table  in  the  time  when  Wash 
himself  had  yet  to  approach  nearer  to  the  house  than  the 
scuppernong  arbor — men  who  had  also  shown  the  lesser 
ones  how  to  fight  in  battle,  who  maybe  also  had  signed 
papers  from  the  generals  saying  that  they  were  among  the 
first  of  the  brave;  who  had  also  galloped  in  the  old  days 
arrogant  and  proud  on  the  fine  horses  across  the  fine  planta- 
tions— symbols  also  of  admiration  and  hope;  instruments  too 
of  despair  and  grief. 

That  was  whom  they  would  expect  him  to  run  from.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  he  had  no  more  to  run  from  than  he  had 
to  run  to.  If  he  ran,  he  would  merely  be  fleeing  one  set  of 
bragging  and  evil  shadows  for  another  just  like  them,  since 
they  were  all  of  a  kind  throughout  all  the  earth  which  he 
knew,  and  he  was  old,  too  old  to  flee  far  even  if  he  were  to 
flee.  He  could  never  escape  them,  no  matter  how  much  or 
how  far  he  ran:  a  man  going  on  sixty  could  not  run  that 
far.  Not  far  enough  to  escape  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
earth  where  such  men  lived,  set  the  order  and  the  rule  of 
living.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  now  saw  for  the  first  time, 
after  five  years,  how  it  was  that  Yankees  or  any  other  living 
armies  had  managed  to  whip  them:  the  gallant,  the  proud, 
the  brave;  the  acknowledged  and  chosen  best  among  them 
all  to  carry  courage  and  honor  and  pride.  Maybe  if  he  had 
gone  to  the  war  with  them  he  would  have  discovered  them 
sooner.  But  if  he  had  discovered  them  sooner,  what  would 
he  have  done  with  his  life  since?  How  could  he  have  borne 
to  remember  for  five  years  what  his  life  had  been  before? 

Now  it  was  getting  toward  sunset.  The  child  had  been 
crying;  when  he  went  to  the  pallet  he  saw  his  granddaughter 
nursing  it,  her  face  still  bemused,  sullen,  inscrutable.  "Air 
you  hungry  yit?"  he  said. 

"I  don't  want  nothing." 


548  The  Middle  Ground 

"You  ought  to  eat." 

This  time  she  did  not  answer  at  all,  looking  down  at  the 
chi'd.  He  returned  to  his  chair  and  found  that  the  sun  had 
set.  "Hit  kain't  be  much  longer,"  he  thought.  He  could  feel 
them  quite  near  now,  the  curious  and  the  vengeful.  He  could 
even  seem  to  hear  what  they  were  saying  about  him,  the 
undercurrent  of  believing  beyond  the  immediate  fury:  Old 
Wash  Jones  he  come  a  tumble  at  last.  He  thought  he  had 
Sutpen,  but  Sutpen  pooled  him.  He  thought  he  had  Kernel 
'where  he  would  have  to  marry  the  gal  or  pay  up.  And 
Kernel  refused.  "But  I  never  expected  that,  Kernel!"  he 
cried  aloud,  catching  himself  at  the  sound  of  his  own  voice, 
glancing  quickly  back  to  find  his  granddaughter  watching 
him. 

"Who  you  talking  to  now?"  she  said. 

"Hit  ain't  nothing.  I  was  just  thinking  and  talked  out 
before  I  knowed  hit." 

Her  face  was  becoming  indistinct  again,  again  a  sullen  blur 
in  the  twilight.  "I  reckon  so.  I  reckon  you'll  have  to  holler 
louder  than  that  before  he'll  hear  you,  up  yonder  at  that 
house.  And  I  reckon  you'll  need  to  do  more  than  holler 
before  you  get  him  down  here  too." 

"Sho  now,"  he  said.  "Don't  you  worry  none."  But  already 
thinking  was  going  smoothly  on:  "You  know  I  never.  You 
know  how  I  ain't  never  expected  or  asked  nothing  from  ara 
living  man  but  what  I  expected  from  you.  And  I  never  asked 
that.  I  didn't  think  hit  would  need.  I  said,  /  don't  need  to. 
What  need  has  a  fellow  like  Wash  Jones  to  question  or 
doubt  the  man  that  General  Lee  himsetf  says  in  a  handwrote 
ticket  that  he  was  brave?  Brave,"  he  thought.  "Better  if  nara 
one  of  them  had  never  rid  back  home  in  '65";  thinking 
Better  if  his  kind  and  mine  too  had  never  drawn  the  breath 
of  life  on  this  earth.  Better  that  all  who  remain  of  us  be 
blasted  from  the  face  of  earth  than  that  another  Wash  Jones 


Wash  549 

should  see  his  'whole  life  shredded  from  him  and  shrivel 
away  like  a  dried  shuck  thrown  onto  the  fire. 

He  ceased,  became  still.  He  heard  the  horses,  suddenly 
and  plainly;  presently  he  saw  the  lantern  and  the  movement 
of  men,  the  glint  of  gun  barrels,  in  its  moving  light.  Yet 
he  did  not  stir.  It  was  quite  dark  now,  and  he  listened  to 
the  voices  and  the  sounds  of  underbrush  as  they  surrounded 
the  house.  The  lantern  itself  came  on;  its  light  fell  upon  the 
quiet  body  in  the  weeds  and  stopped,  the  horses  tall  and 
shadowy.  A  man  descended  and  stooped  in  the  lantern  light, 
above  the  body.  He  held  a  pistol;  he  rose  and  faced  the 
house.  "Jones,"  he  said. 

"I'm  here,"  Wash  said  quietly  from  the  window.  "That 
you,  Major?" 

"Come  out." 

"Sho,"  he  said  quietly.  "I  just  want  to  see  to  my  grand- 
daughter." 

"We'll  see  to  her.  Come  on  out." 

"Sho,  Major.  Just  a  minute." 

"Show  a  light.  Light  your  lamp." 

"Sho.  In  just  a  minute."  They  could  hear  his  voice  retreat 
into  the  house,  though  they  could  not  see  him  as  he  went 
swiftly  to  the  crack  in  the  chimney  where  he  kept  the 
butcher  knife:  the  one  thing  in  his  slovenly  life  and  house 
in  which  he  took  pride,  since  it  was  razor  sharp.  He  ap- 
proached the  pallet,  his  granddaughter's  voice: 

"Who  is  it?  Light  the  lamp,  grandpaw." 

"Hit  won't  need  no  light,  honey.  Hit  won't  take  but  a 
minute,"  he  said,  kneeling,  fumbling  toward  her  voice, 
whispering  now.  "Where  air  you?" 

"Right  here,"  she  said  fretfully.  "Where  would  I  be? 
What  is  .  .  ."  His  hand  touched  her  face.  "What  is  ... 
Grandpaw!  Grand.  .  .  ." 

"Jones!"  the  sheriff  said.  "Come  out  of  there!" 


550  The  Middle  Ground 

"In  just  a  minute,  Major,"  he  said.  Now  he  rose  and 
moved  swiftly.  He  knew  where  in  the  dark  the  can  of  kero- 
sene was,  just  as  he  knew  that  it  was  full,  since  it  was  not 
two  days  ago  that  he  had  filled  it  at  the  store  and  held  it 
there  until  he  got  a  ride  home  with  it,  since  the  five  gallons 
were  heavy.  There  were  still  coals  on  the  hearth;  besides, 
the  crazy  building  itself  was  like  tinder:  the  coals,  the  hearth, 
the  walls  exploding  in  a  single  blue  glare.  Against  it  the 
waiting  men  saw  him  in  a  wild  instant  springing  toward 
them  with  the  lifted  scythe  before  the  horses  reared  and 
whirled.  They  checked  the  horses  and  turned  them  back 
toward  the  glare,  yet  still  in  wild  relief  against  it  the  gaunt 
figure  ran  toward  them  with  the  lifted  scythe. 

"Jones!"  the  sheriff  shouted;  "stop!  Stop,  or  I'll  shoot. 
Jones!  Jones!"  Yet  still  the  gaunt,  furious  figure  came  on 
against  the  glare  and  roar  of  the  flames.  With  the  scythe 
lifted,  it  bore  down  upon  them,  upon  the  wild  glaring  eyes 
of  the  horses  and  the  swinging  glints  of  gun  barrels,  without 
any  cry,  any  sound. 


Honor 


I  WALKED  right  through  the  anteroom  without  stopping. 
Miss  West  says,  "He's  in  conference  now,"  but  I  didn't  stop. 
I  didn't  knock,  either.  They  were  talking  and  he  quit  and 
looked  up  across  the  desk  at  me. 

"How  much  notice  do  you  want  to  write  me  off?"  I  said. 

"Write  you  off?"  he  said. 

"I'm  quitting,"  I  said.  "Will  one  day  be  notice  enough?" 

He  looked  at  me,  frog-eyed.  "Isn't  our  car  good  enough 
for  you  to  demonstrate?"  he  said.  His  hand  lay  on  the  desk, 
holding  the  cigar.  Pie's  got  a  ruby  ring  the  size  of  a  tail-light. 
"You've  been  with  us  three  weeks,"  he  says.  "Not  long 
enough  to  learn  what  that  word  on  the  door  means." 

He  don't  know  it,  but  three  weeks  is  pretty  good;  it's 
within  two  days  of  the  record.  And  if  three  weeks  is  a  record 
with  him,  he  could  have  shaken  hands  with  the  new  champion 
without  moving. 

The  trouble  is,  I  had  never  learned  to  do  anything.  You 
know  how  it  was  in  those  days,  with  even  the  college  cam- 
puses full  of  British  and  French  uniforms,  and  us  all  scared 
to  death  it  would  be  over  before  we  could  get  in  and  swank 
a  pair  of  pilot's  wings  ourselves.  And  then  to  get  in  and  find 
something  that  suited  you  right  down  to  the  ground,  you 
see. 

So  after  the  Armistice  I  stayed  in  for  a  couple  of  years  as 


552  The  Middle  Ground 

a  test  pilot.  That  was  when  I  took  up  wing-walking,  to  re- 
lieve the  monotony.  A  fellow  named  Waldrip  and  I  used  to 
hide  out  at  about  three  thousand  on  a  Nine  while  I  muscled 
around  on  top  of  it.  Because  Army  life  is  pretty  dull  in  peace- 
time: nothing  to  do  but  lay  around  and  lie  your  head  off  all 
day  and  play  poker  all  night.  And  isolation  is  bad  for  poker. 
You  lose  on  tick,  and  on  tick  you  always  plunge. 

There  was  a  fellow  named  White  lost  a  thousand  one 
night.  He  kept  on  losing  and  I  wanted  to  quit  but  I  was 
winner  and  he  wanted  to  play  on,  plunging  and  losing  every 
pot.  He  gave  me  a  check  and  I  told  him  it  wasn't  any  rush, 
to  forget  it,  because  he  had  a  wife  out  in  California.  Then  the 
next  night  he  wanted  to  play  again.  I  tried  to  talk  him  out  of 
it,  but  he  got  mad.  Called  me  yellow.  So  he  lost  fifteen  hun- 
dred more  that  night. 

Then  I  said  I'd  cut  him,  double  or  quit,  one  time.  He  cut 
a  queen.  So  I  said,  "Well,  that  beats  me.  I  won't  even  cut." 
And  I  flipped  his  cut  over  and  riffled  them  and  we  saw  a  gob 
of  face  cards  and  three  of  the  aces.  But  he  insisted,  and  I  said, 
"What's  the  use?  The  percentage  would  be  against  me,  even 
with  a  full  deck."  But  he  insisted.  I  cut  the  case  ace.  I  would 
have  paid  to  lose.  I  offered  again  to  tear  up  the  checks,  but 
he  sat  there  and  cursed  me.  I  left  him  sitting  at  the  table,  in 
his  shirt  sleeves  and  his  collar  open,  looking  at  the  ace. 

The  next  day  we  had  the  job,  the  speed  ship.  I  had  done 
everything  I  could.  I  couldn't  offer  him  the  checks  again.  I 
will  let  a  man  who  is  worked  up  curse  me  once.  But  I  won't 
let  him  twice.  So  we  had  the  job,  the  speed  ship.  I  wouldn't 
touch  it.  He  took  it  up  five  thousand  feet  and  dived  the  wings 
off  at  two  thousand  with  a  full  gun. 

So  I  was  out  again  after  four  years,  a  civ  again.  And  while 
I  was  still  drifting  around — that  was  when  I  first  tried  selling 
automobiles — I  met  Jack,  and  he  told  me  about  a  bird  that 


Honor  553 

wanted  a  wing- walker  for  his  barn-storming  circus.  And  that 
was  how  I  met  her. 


II 

JACK — he  gave  me  a  note  to  Rogers — told  me  about  what 
a  good  pilot  Rogers  was,  and  about  her,  how  they  said  she 
was  unhappy  with  him. 

"So  is  your  old  man,"  I  said. 

"That's  what  they  say,"  Jack  said.  So  when  I  saw  Rogers 
and  handed  him  the  note — he  was  one  of  these  lean,  quiet- 
looking  birds — I  said  to  myself  he  was  just  the  kind  that 
would  marry  one  of  these  flighty,  passionate,  good-looking 
women  they  used  to  catch  during  the  war  with  a  set  of 
wings,  and  have  her  run  out  on  him  the  first  chance.  So  I  felt 
safe.  I  knew  she'd  not  have  had  to  wait  any  three  years  for 
one  like  me. 

So  I  expected  to  find  one  of  these  long,  dark,  snake-like 
women  surrounded  by  ostrich  plumes  and  Woolworth  in- 
cense, smoking  cigarettes  on  the  divan  while  Rogers  ran  out 
to  the  corner  delicatessen  for  sliced  ham  and  potato  salad  on 
paper  plates.  But  I  was  wrong.  She  came  in  with  an  apron  on 
over  one  of  these  little  pale  squashy  dresses,  with  flour  or 
something  on  her  arms,  without  apologizing  or  flurrying 
around  or  anything.  She  said  Howard — that  was  Rogers — 
had  told  her  about  me  and  I  said,  "What  did  he  tell  you?" 
But  she  just  said: 

"I  expect  you'll  find  this  pretty  dull  for  spending  the 
evening,  having  to  help  cook  your  own  dinner.  I  imagine 
you'd  rather  go  out  to  dance  with  a  couple  of  bottles  of  gin." 

"Why  do  you  think  that?"  I  said.  "Don't  I  look  like  I 
could  do  anything  else?" 

"Oh,  don't  you?  "she  said. 

We  had  washed  the  dishes  then  and  we  were  sitting  in  the 


554  The  Middle  Ground 

firelight,  with  the  lights  off,  with  her  on  a  cushion  on  the 
floor,  her  back  against  Rogers'  knees,  smoking  and  talking, 
and  she  said,  "I  know  you  had  a  dull  time.  Howard  sug- 
gested that  we  go  out  for  dinner  and  to  dance  somewhere. 
But  I  told  him  you'd  just  have  to  take  us  as  we  are,  first  as 
well  as  later.  Are  you  sorry?" 

She  could  look  about  sixteen,  especially  in  the  apron.  By 
that  time  she  had  bought  one  for  me  to  wear,  and  the  three 
of  us  would  all  go  back  to  the  kitchen  and  cook  dinner.  "We 
don't  expect  you  to  enjoy  doing  this  any  more  than  we  do," 
she  said.  "It's  because  we  are  so  poor.  We're  just  an  aviator." 

"Well,  Howard  can  fly  well  enough  for  two  people,"  I 
said.  "So  that's  all  right,  too." 

"When  he  told  me  you  were  just  a  flyer  too,  I  said,  'My 
Lord,  a  wing-walker?  When  you  were  choosing  a  family 
friend,'  I  said,  'why  didn't  you  choose  a  man  we  could  invite 
to  dinner  a  week  ahead  and  not  only  count  on  his  being  there, 
but  on  his  taking  us  out  and  spending  his  money  on  us?'  But 
he  had  to  choose  one  that  is  as  poor  as  we  are."  And  once 
she  said  to  Rogers:  "We'll  have  to  find  Buck  a  girl,  too.  He's 
going  to  get  tired  of  just  us  some  day."  You  know  how  they 
say  things  like  that:  things  that  sound  like  they  meant  some- 
thing until  you  look  at  them  and  find  their  eyes  perfectly 
blank,  until  you  wonder  if  they  were  even  thinking  about 
you,  let  alone  talking  about  you. 

Or  maybe  I'd  have  them  out  to  dinner  and  a  show.  "Only 
I  didn't  mean  that  like  it  sounded,"  she  said.  "That  wasn't  a 
hint  to  take  us  out." 

"Did  you  mean  that  about  getting  me  a  girl  too?"  I  said. 

Then  she  looked  at  me  with  that  wide,  blank,  innocent 
look.  That  was  when  I  would  take  them  by  my  place  for  a 
cocktail — Rogers  didn't  drink,  himself — and  when  I  would 
come  in  that  night  I'd  find  traces  of  powder  on  my  dresser 
or  maybe  her  handkerchief  or  something,  and  I'd  go  to  bed 


Honor  555 

with  the  room  smelling  like  she  was  still  there.  She  said:  "Do 
you  want  us  to  find  you  one?"  But  nothing  more  was  ever 
said  about  it,  and  after  a  while,  when  there  was  a  high  step 
or  any  of  those  little  things  which  men  do  for  women  that 
means  touching  them,  she'd  turn  to  me  like  it  was  me  was  her 
husband  and  not  him;  and  one  night  a  storm  caught  us  down- 
town and  we  went  to  my  place  and  she  and  Rogers  slept  in 
my  bed  and  I  slept  in  a  chair  in  the  sitting-room. 

One  evening  I  was  dressing  to  go  out  there  when  the 
'phone  rang.  It  was  Rogers.  "I  am — "  he  said,  then  something 
cut  him  off.  It  was  like  somebody  had  put  a  hand  on  his 
mouth,  and  I  could  hear  them  talking,  murmuring:  her, 
rather.  "Well,  what — "  Rogers  says.  Then  I  could  hear  her 
breathing  into  the  mouth-piece,  and  she  said  my  name. 

"Don't  forget  you're  to  come  out  to-night,"  she  said. 

"I  hadn't,"  I  said.  "Or  did  I  get  the  date  wrong?  If  this  is 
not  the  night — " 

"You  come  on  out,"  she  said.  "Goodbye." 

When  I  got  there  he  met  me.  His  face  looked  like  it  always 
did,  but  I  didn't  go  in.  "Come  on  in,"  he  said. 

"Maybe  I  got  the  date  wrong,"  I  said.  "So  if  you'll  just — " 

He  swung  the  door  back.  "Come  on  in,"  he  said. 

She  was  lying  on  the  divan,  crying.  I  don't  know  what; 
something  about  money.  "I  just  can't  stick  it,"  she  said.  "I've 
tried  and  I've  tried,  but  I  just  can't  stand  it." 

"You  know  what  my  insurance  rates  are,"  he  said.  "If 
something  happened,  where  would  you  be?" 

"Where  am  I,  anyway?  What  tenement  woman  hasn't 
got  more  than  I  have?"  She  hadn't  looked  up,  lying  there  on 
her  face,  with  the  apron  twisted  under  her.  "Why  don't  you 
quit  and  do  something  that  you  can  get  a  decent  insurance 
rate,  like  other  men?" 

"I  must  be  getting  along,"  I  said.  I  didn't  belong  there.  I 
just  got  out.  He  came  down  to  the  door  with  me,  and  then 


556  The  Middle  Ground 

we  were  both  looking  back  up  the  stairs  toward  the  door 
where  she  was  lying  on  her  face  on  the  couch. 

"I've  got  a  little  stake,"  I  said.  "I  guess  because  I've  eaten 
so  much  of  your  grub  I  haven't  had  time  to  spend  it.  So  if 
it's  anything  urgent.  .  .  ."  We  stood  there,  he  holding  the 
door  open.  "Of  course,  I  wouldn't  try  to  muscle  in  where 
I  don't . . ." 

"I  wouldn't,  if  I  were  you,"  he  said.  He  opened  the  door. 
"See  you  at  the  field  tomorrow." 

"Sure,"  I  said.  "See  you  at  the  field." 

I  didn't  see  her  for  almost  a  week,  didn't  hear  from  her. 
I  saw  him  every  day,  and  at  last  I  said,  "How's  Mildred  these 
days?" 

"She's  on  a  visit,"  he  said.  "At  her  mother's." 

For  the  next  two  weeks  I  was  with  him  every  day.  When 
I  was  out  on  top  I'd  look  back  at  his  face  behind  the  goggles. 
But  we  never  mentioned  her  name,  until  one  day  he  told  me 
she  was  home  again  and  that  I  was  invited  out  to  dinner  that 
night. 

It  was  in  the  afternoon.  He  was  busy  all  that  day  hopping 
passengers,  so  I  was  doing  nothing,  just  killing  time  waiting 
for  evening  and  thinking  about  her,  wondering  some,  but 
mostly  just  thinking  about  her  being  home  again,  breathing 
the  same  smoke  and  soot  I  was  breathing,  when  all  of  a  sud- 
den I  decided  to  go  out  there.  It  was  plain  as  a  voice  saying, 
"Go  out  there.  Now,  at  once."  So  I  went.  I  didn't  even  wait 
to  change.  She  was  alone,  reading  before  the  fire.  It  was  like 
gasoline  from  a  broken  line  blazing  up  around  you. 

Ill 

IT  WAS  FUNNY.  When  I'd  be  out  on  top  I'd  look  back  at  his 
face  behind  the  windscreen,  wondering  what  he  knew.  He 
must  have  known  almost  at  once.  Why,  say,  she  didn't  have 


Honor  557 

any  discretion  at  all.  She'd  say  and  do  things,  you  know: 
insist  on  sitting  close  to  me;  touching  me  in  that  different 
way  from  when  you  hold  an  umbrella  or  a  raincoat  over 
them,  and  such  that  any  man  can  tell  at  one  look,  when  she 
thought  he  might  not  see:  not  when  she  knew  he  couldn't, 
but  when  she  thought  maybe  he  wouldn't.  And  when  I'd 
unfasten  my  belt  and  crawl  out  I'd  look  back  at  his  face  and 
wonder  what  he  was  thinking,  how  much  he  knew  or  sus- 
pected. 

I'd  go  out  there  in  the  afternoon  when  he  was  busy.  I'd 
stall  around  until  I  saw  that  he  would  be  lined  up  for  the  rest 
of  the  day,  then  I'd  give  some  excuse  and  beat  it.  One  after- 
noon I  was  all  ready  to  go,  waiting  for  him  to  take  off,  when 
he  cut  the  gun  and  leaned  out  and  beckoned  me.  "Don't  go 
off,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  see  you." 

So  I  knew  he  knew  then,  and  I  waited  until  he  made  the 
last  hop  and  was  taking  off  his  monkey  suit  in  the  office.  He 
looked  at  me  and  I  looked  at  him.  "Come  out  to  dinner," 
he  said. 

When  I  came  in  they  were  waiting.  She  had  on  one  of 
those  little  squashy  dresses  and  she  came  and  put  her  arms 
around  me  and  kissed  me  with  him  watching. 

"I'm  going  with  you,"  she  said.  "We've  talked  it  over  and 
have  both  agreed  that  we  couldn't  love  one  another  any  more 
after  this  and  that  this  is  the  only  sensible  thing  to  do.  Then 
he  can  find  a  woman  he  can  love,  a  woman  that's  not  bad 
like  I  am." 

He  was  looking  at  me,  and  she  running  her  hands  over  my 
face  and  making  a  little  moaning  sound  against  my  neck, 
and  me  like  a  stone  or  something.  Do  you  know  what  1  was 
thinking?  I  wasn't  thinking  about  her  at  all.  I  was  thinking 
that  he  and  I  were  upstairs  and  me  out  on  top  and  I  had  just 
found  that  he  had  thrown  the  stick  away  and  was  flying  her 
on  the  rudder  alone  and  that  he  knew  that  I  knew  the  stick 


558  The  Middle  Ground 

was  gone  and  so  it  was  all  right  now,  whatever  happened. 
So  it  was  like  a  piece  of  wood  with  another  piece  of  wood 
leaning  against  it,  and  she  held  back  and  looked  at  my  face. 

"Don't  you  love  me  any  more?"  she  said,  watching  my 
face.  "If  you  love  me,  say  so.  I  have  told  him  everything." 

I  wanted  to  be  out  of  there.  I  wanted  to  run.  I  wasn't 
scared.  It  was  because  it  was  all  kind  of  hot  and  dirty.  I 
wanted  to  be  away  from  her  a  little  while,  for  Rogers  and 
me  to  be  out  where  it  was  cold  and  hard  and  quiet,  to  settle 
things. 

"What  do  you  want  to  do?"  I  said.  "Will  you  give  her  a 
divorce?" 

She  was  watching  my  face  very  closely.  Then  she  let  me 
go  and  she  ran  to  the  mantel  and  put  her  face  into  the  bend 
of  her  arm,  crying. 

"You  were  lying  to  me,"  she  said.  "You  didn't  mean  what 
you  said.  Oh  God,  what  have  I  done?" 

You  know  how  it  is.  Like  there  is  a  right  time  for  every- 
thing. Like  nobody  is  anything  in  himself:  like  a  woman, 
even  when  you  love  her,  is  a  woman  to  you  just  a  part  of  the 
time  and  the  rest  of  the  time  she  is  just  a  person  that  don't 
look  at  things  the  same  way  a  man  has  learned  to.  Don't 
have  the  same  ideas  about  what  is  decent  and  what  is  not. 
So  I  went  over  and  stood  with  my  arms  about  her,  thinking, 
"God  damn  it,  if  you'll  just  keep  out  of  this  for  a  little  while! 
We're  both  trying  our  best  to  take  care  of  you,  so  it  won't 
hurt  you." 

Because  I  loved  her,  you  see.  Nothing  can  marry  two 
people  closer  than  a  mutual  sin  in  the  world's  eyes.  And  he 
had  had  his  chance.  If  it  had  been  me  that  knew  her  first  and 
married  her  and  he  had  been  me,  I  would  have  had  my 
chance.  But  it  was  him  that  had  had  it,  so  when  she  said, 
"Then  say  what  you  tell  me  when  we  are  alone.  I  tell  you 
I  have  told  him  everything,"  I  said. 


Honor  559 

"Everything?  Have  you  told  him  everything?"  He  was 
watching  us.  "Has  she  told  you  everything?"  I  said. 

"It  doesn't  matter,"  he  said.  "Do  you  want  her?"  Then 
before  I  could  speak,  he  said:  "Do  you  love  her?  Will  you 
be  good  to  her?" 

His  face  was  gray-looking,  like  when  you  see  a  man  again 
after  a  long  time  and  you  say,  "Good  God,  is  that  Rogers?" 
When  I  finally  got  away  the  divorce  was  all  settled. 

IV 

So  THE  NEXT  MORNING  when  I  reached  the  field,  Harris,  the 
man  who  owned  the  flying  circus,  told  me  about  the  special 
job;  I  had  forgotten  it,  I  suppose.  Anyway,  he  said  he  had 
told  me  about  it.  Finally  I  said  I  wouldn't  fly  with  Rogers. 

"Why  not?  "Harris  said. 

"Ask  him,"  I  said. 

"If  he  agrees  to  fly  you,  will  you  go  up?" 

So  I  said  yes.  And  then  Rogers  came  out;  he  said  that  he 
would  fly  me.  And  so  I  believed  that  he  had  known  about  the 
job  all  the  time  and  had  laid  for  me,  sucked  me  in.  We 
waited  until  Harris  went  out.  "So  this  is  why  you  were  so 
mealy-mouthed  last  night,"  I  said.  I  cursed  him.  "You've  got 
me  now,  haven't  you?" 

"Take  the  stick  yourself,"  he  said.  "I'll  do  your  trick." 

"Have  you  ever  done  any  work  like  this  before?" 

"No.  But  I  can,  as  long  as  you  fly  her  properly." 

I  cursed  him.  "You  feel  good,"  I  said.  "You've  got  me. 
Come  on;  grin  on  the  outside  of  your  face.  Come  on!" 

He  turned  and  went  to  the  crate  and  began  to  get  into  the 
front  seat.  I  went  and  caught  his  shoulder  and  jerked  him 
back.  We  looked  at  one  another. 

"I  won't  hit  you  now,"  he  said,  "if  that's  what  you  want. 
Wait  till  we  get  down  again." 


560  The  Middle  Ground 

"No,"  I  said.  "Because  I  want  to  hit  back  once/' 

We  looked  at  one  another;  Harris  was  watching  us  from 
the  office. 

"All  right,"  Rogers  said.  "Let  me  have  your  shoes,  will 
you?  I  haven't  got  any  rubber  soles  out  here." 

"Take  your  seat,"  I  said.  "What  the  hell  does  it  matter? 
I  guess  I'd  do  the  same  thing  in  your  place." 

The  job  was  over  an  amusement  park,  a  carnival.  There 
must  have  been  twenty-five  thousand  of  them  down  there., 
like  colored  ants.  I  took  chances  that  day  that  I  had  never 
taken,  chances  you  can't  see  from  the  ground.  But  every 
time  the  ship  was  right  under  me,  balancing  me  against  side 
pressure  and  all,  like  he  and  I  were  using  the  same  mind.  I 
thought  he  was  playing  with  me,  you  see.  I'd  look  back  at 
his  face,  yelling  at  him:  "Come  on;  now  you've  got  me. 
Where  are  your  guts?" 

I  was  a  little  crazy,  I  guess.  Anyway,  when  I  think  of  the 
two  of  us  up  there,  yelling  back  and  forth  at  one  another, 
and  all  the  little  bugs  watching  and  waiting  for  the  big  show, 
the  loop.  He  could  hear  me,  but  I  couldn't  hear  him;  I  could 
just  see  his  lips  moving.  "Come  on,"  I'd  yell;  "shake  the  wing 
a  little;  I'll  go  off  easy,  see?" 

I  was  a  little  crazy.  You  know  how  it  is,  how  you  want  to 
rush  into  something  you  know  is  going  to  happen,  no  matter 
what  it  is.  I  guess  lovers  and  suicides  both  know  that  feeling. 
I'd  yell  back  at  him:  "You  want  it  to  look  all  right,  eh?  And 
to  lose  me  off  the  level  ship  wouldn't  look  so  good,  would  it? 
All  right,"  I  yelled,  "let's  go."  I  went  back  to  the  center 
section  and  cast  the  rope  loose  where  it  loops  around  the 
forward  jury  struts  and  I  got  set  against  it  and  looked  back  at 
him  and  gave  him  the  signal.  I  was  a  little  crazy.  I  was  still 
yelling  at  him;  I  don't  know  what  I  was  yelling.  I  thought 
maybe  I  had  already  fallen  off  and  was  dead  and  didn't  know 
it.  The  wires  began  to  whine  and  I  was  looking  straight  down 


Honor  561 

at  the  ground  and  the  little  colored  dots.  Then  the  wires 
were  whistling  proper  and  he  gunned  her  and  the  ground 
began  to  slide  back  under  the  nose.  I  waited  until  it  was  gone 
and  the  horizon  had  slid  back  under  too  and  I  couldn't  see 
anything  but  sky.  Then  I  let  go  one  end  of  the  rope  and 
jerked  it  out  and  threw  it  back  at  his  head  and  held  my  arms 
out  as  she  zoomed  into  the  loop. 

I  wasn't  trying  to  kill  myself.  I  wasn't  thinking  about  my- 
self. I  was  thinking  about  him.  Trying  to  show  him  up  like 
he  had  shown  me  up.  Give  him  something  he  must  fail  at 
like  he  had  given  me  something  I  failed  at.  I  was  trying  to 
break  him. 

We  were  over  the  loop  before  he  lost  me.  The  ground 
had  come  back,  with  the  little  colored  dots,  and  then  the 
pressure  went  off  my  soles  and  I  was  falling.  I  made  a  half 
somersault  and  was  just  going  into  the  first  turn  of  a  flat  spin, 
with  my  face  to  the  sky,  when  something  banged  me  in  the 
back.  It  knocked  the  wind  out  of  me,  and  for  a  second  I  must 
have  been  completely  out.  Then  I  opened  my  eyes  and  I  was 
lying  on  my  back  on  the  top  wing,  with  my  head  hanging 
over  the  back  edge. 

I  was  too  far  down  the  slope  of  the  camber  to  bend  my 
knees  over  the  leading  edge,  and  I  could  feel  the  wing  creep- 
ing under  me.  I  didn't  dare  move.  I  knew  that  if  I  tried  to  sit 
up  against  the  slip  stream,  I  would  go  off  backward.  I  could 
see  by  the  tail  and  the  horizon  that  we  were  upside  now,  in 
a  shallow  dive,  and  I  could  see  Rogers  standing  up  in  his 
cockpit,  unfastening  his  belt,  and  I  could  turn  my  head  a 
little  more  and  see  that  when  I  went  off  I  would  miss  the 
fuselage  altogether,  or  maybe  hit  it  with  my  shoulder. 

So  I  lay  there  with  the  wing  creeping  under  me,  feeling 
my  shoulders  beginning  to  hang  over  space,  counting  my 
backbones  as  they  crept  over  the  edge,  watching  Rogers 
crawl  forward  along  the  fuselage  toward  the  front  seat.  I 


562  The  Middle  Ground 

watched  him  for  a  long  time,  inching  himself  along  against 
the  pressure,  his  trouser-legs  whipping.  After  a  while  I  saw 
his  legs  slide  into  the  front  cockpit  and  then  I  felt  his  hands 
on  me. 

There  was  a  fellow  in  my  squadron.  I  didn't  like  him  and 
he  hated  my  guts.  All  right.  One  day  he  got  me  out  of  a 
tight  jam  when  I  was  caught  ten  miles  over  the  lines  with  a 
blowing  valve.  When  we  were  down  he  said,  "Don't  think 
I  was  just  digging  you  out.  I  was  getting  a  Hun,  and  I  got 
him."  He  cursed  me,  with  his  goggles  cocked  up  and  his 
hands  on  his  hips,  cursing  me  like  he  was  smiling.  But  that's 
all  right.  You're  each  on  a  Camel;  if  you  go  out,  that's  too 
bad;  if  he  goes  out,  it's  just  too  bad.  Not  like  when  you're 
on  the  center  section  and  he's  at  the  stick,  and  just  by  stall- 
ing her  for  a  second  or  ruddering  her  a  little  at  the  top  of 
the  loop. 

But  I  was  young,  then.  Good  Lord,  I  used  to  be  young! 
I  remember  Armistice  night  in  '18,  and  me  chasing  all  over 
Amiens  with  a  lousy  prisoner  we  had  brought  down  that 
morning  on  an  Albatross,  trying  to  keep  the  frog  M.P.'s 
from  getting  him.  He  was  a  good  guy,  and  those  damned 
infantrymen  wanting  to  stick  him  in  a  pen  full  of  S.  O.  S. 
and  ginned-up  cooks  and  such.  I  felt  sorry  for  the  bastard, 
being  so  far  from  home  and  licked  and  all.  I  was  sure  young. 

We  were  all  young.  I  remember  an  Indian,  a  prince,  an 
Oxford  man,  with  his  turban  and  his  trick  major's  pips,  that 
said  we  were  all  dead  that  fought  in  the  war.  "You  will  not 
know  it,"  he  said,  "but  you  are  all  dead.  With  this  difference: 
those  out  there" — jerking  his  arm  toward  where  the  front 
was — "do  not  care,  and  you  do  not  know  it."  And  something 
else  he  said,  about  breathing  for  a  long  time  yet,  some  kind 
of  walking  funerals;  catafalques  and  tombs  and  epitaphs  of 
men  that  died  on  the  fourth  of  August,  1914,  without  know- 
ing that  they  had  died,  he  said.  He  was  a  card,  queer.  A  good 
little  guy,  too. 


Honor  563 

But  I  wasn't  quite  dead  while  I  was  lying  on  the  top  wing 
of  that  Standard  and  counting  my  backbones  as  they  crawled 
over  the  edge  like  a  string  of  ants,  until  Rogers  grabbed  me. 
And  when  he  came  to  the  station  that  night  to  say  goodbye, 
he  brought  me  a  letter  from  her,  the  first  I  ever  had.  The 
handwriting  looked  exactly  like  her;  I  could  almost  smell 
the  scent  she  used  and  feel  her  hands  touching  me.  I  tore  it 
in  two  without  opening  it  and  threw  the  pieces  down.  But 
he  picked  them  up  and  gave  them  back  to  me.  "Don't  be  a 
fool,"  he  said. 

And  that's  all.  They've  got  a  kid  now,  a  boy  of  six.  Rogers 
wrote  me;  about  six  months  afterward  the  letter  caught  up 
with  me.  I'm  his  godfather.  Funny  to  have  a  godfather  that's 
never  seen  you  and  that  you'll  never  see,  isn't  it? 


So  I  SAID  TO  REINHARDT:  "Will  one  day  be  enough  notice?" 
"One  minute  will  be  enough,"  he  said.  He  pressed  the 
buzzer.  Miss  West  came  in.  She  is  a  good  kid.  Now  and  then, 
when  I'd  just  have  to  blow  off  some  steam,  she  and  I  would 
have  lunch  at  the  dairy  place  across  the  street,  and  I  could 
tell  her  about  them,  about  the  women.  They  are  the  worst. 
You  know;  you  get  a  call  for  a  demonstration,  and  there'll  be 
a  whole  car  full  of  them  waiting  on  the  porch  and  we'd  pile 
in  and  all  go  shopping.  Me  dodging  around  in  the  traffic, 
hunting  a  place  to  park,  and  her  saying,  "JMln  insisted  that 
I  try  this  car.  But  what  I  tell  him,  it's  foolish  to  buy  a  car 
that  is  as  difficult  to  find  parking  space  for  as  this  one  appears 
to  be." 

And  them  watching  the  back  of  my  head  with  that  bright, 
hard,  suspicious  way.  God  knows  what  they  thought  we 
had;  maybe  one  that  would  fold  up  like  a  deck  chair  and  lean 
against  a  fire  plug.  But  hell,  I  couldn't  sell  hair  straightener 
to  the  widow  of  a  nigger  railroad  accident. 


564  The  Middle  Ground 

So  Miss  West  comes  in;  she  is  a  good  kid,  only  somebody 
told  her  I  had  had  three  or  four  other  jobs  in  a  year  without 
sticking,  and  that  I  used  to  be  a  war  pilot,  and  she'd  keep  on 
after  me  about  why  I  quit  flying  and  why  I  didn't  go  back  to 
it,  now  that  crates  were  more  general,  since  I  wasn't  much 
good  at  selling  automobiles  or  at  anything  else,  like  women 
will.  You  know:  urgent  and  sympathetic,  and  you  can't  shut 
them  up  like  you  could  a  man;  she  came  in  and  Reinhardt 
says,  "We  are  letting  Mr.  Monaghan  go.  Send  him  to  the 
cashier." 

"Don't  bother,"  I  said.  "Keep  it  to  buy  yourself  a  hoop 
with." 


Dr.  Martino 


HUBERT  JARROD  met  Louise  King  at  a  Christmas  house  party 
in  Saint  Louis.  He  had  stopped  there  on  his  way  home  to 
Oklahoma  to  oblige,  with  his  aura  of  oil  wells  and  Yale,  the 
sister  of  a  classmate.  Or  so  he  told  himself,  or  so  he  perhaps 
believed.  He  had  planned  to  stop  off  at  Saint  Louis  two  days 
and  he  stayed  out  the  full  week,  going  on  to  Tulsa  over- 
night to  spend  Christmas  Day  with  his  mother  and  then 
returning,  "to  play  around  a  little  more  with  my  swamp 
angel,"  he  told  himself.  He  thought  about  her  quite  a  lot 
on  the  return  train — a  thin,  tense,  dark  girl.  "That  to  come 
out  of  Mississippi,"  he  thought.  "Because  she's  got  it:  a  kid 
born  and  bred  in  a  Mississippi  swamp."  He  did  not  mean 
sex  appeal.  He  could  not  have  been  fooled  by  that  alone, 
who  had  been  three  years  now  at  New  Haven,  belonging 
to  the  right  clubs  and  all  and  with  money  to  spend.  And 
besides,  Louise  was  a  little  on  the  epicene.  What  he  meant 
was  a  quality  of  which  he  was  not  yet  consciously  aware:  a 
beyond-looking,  a  passionate  sense  for  and  belief  in  imma- 
nent change  to  which  the  rhinoceroslike  sufficiency  of  his 
Yale  and  oil-well  veneer  was  a  little  impervious  at  first.  All 
he  remarked  at  first  was  the  expectation,  the  seeking,  which 
he  immediately  took  to  himself. 

Apparently  he  was  not  wrong.  He  saw  her  first  across  the 
dinner-table.  They  had  not  yet  been  introduced,  yet  ten 

565 


566  The  Middle  Ground 

minutes  after  they  left  the  table  she  had  spoken  to  him,  and 
ten  minutes  after  that  they  had  slipped  out  of  the  house  and 
were  in  a  taxi,  and  she  had  supplied  the  address. 

He  could  not  have  told  himself  how  it  happened,  for  all 
his  practice,  his  experience  in  surreptitiousness.  Perhaps  he 
was  too  busy  looking  at  her;  perhaps  he  was  just  beginning 
to  be  aware  that  the  beyond-looking,  the  tense  expectation, 
was  also  beyond  him — his  youth,  his  looks,  the  oil  wells  and 
Yale.  Because  the  address  she  had  given  was  not  toward  any 
lights  or  music  apparently,  and  she  sitting  beside  him,  furred 
and  shapeless,  her  breath  vaporizing  faster  than  if  she  had 
been  trying  to  bring  to  life  a  dead  cigarette.  He  watched  the 
dark  houses,  the  dark,  mean  streets.  "Where  are  we  going?" 
he  said. 

She  didn't  answer,  didn't  look  at  him,  sitting  a  little  for- 
ward on  the  seat.  "Mamma  didn't  want  to  come,"  she  said. 

"Your  mother?" 

"She's  with  me.  Back  there  at  the  party.  You  haven't  met 
her  yet." 

"Oh.  So  that's  what  you  are  slipping  away  from.  I  flattered 
myself.  I  thought  I  was  the  reason."  She  was  sitting  forward, 
small,  tense,  watching  the  dark  houses:  a  district  half  dwell- 
ings and  half  small  shops.  "Your  mother  won't  let  him  come 
to  call  on  you?" 

She  didn't  answer,  but  leaned  forward.  Suddenly  she 
tapped  on  the  glass.  "Here,  driver!"  she  said.  "Right  here." 
The  cab  stopped.  She  turned  to  face  Jarrod,  who  sat  back  in 
his  corner,  muffled,  his  face  cold.  "I'm  sorry.  I  know  it's  a 
rotten  trick.  But  I  had  to." 

"Not  at  all,"  Jarrod  said.  "Don't  mention  it." 

"I  know  it's  rotten.  But  I  just  had  to.  If  you  just  under- 
stood." 

"Sure,"  Jarrod  said.  "Do  you  want  me  to  come  back  and 
get  you?  I'd  better  not  go  back  to  the  party  alone." 


Dr.  Martino  567 

"You  come  in  with  me." 

"Come  in?" 

"Yes.  It'll  be  all  right.  I  know  you  can't  understand.  But 
it'll  be  all  right.  You  come  in  too." 

He  looked  at  her  face.  "I  believe  you  really  mean  it,"  he 
said.  "I  guess  not.  But  I  won't  let  you  down.  You  set  a  time, 
and  I'll  come  back." 

"Don't  you  trust  me?" 

"Why  should  I?  It's  no  business  of  mine.  I  never  saw  you 
before  to-night.  I'm  glad  to  oblige  you.  Too  bad  I  am  leav- 
ing to-morrow.  But  I  guess  you  can  find  somebody  else  to 
use.  You  go  on  in;  I'll  come  back  for  you." 

He  left  her  there  and  returned  in  two  hours.  She  must 
have  been  waiting  just  inside  the  door,  because  the  cab  had 
hardly  stopped  before  the  door  opened  and  she  ran  down 
the  steps  and  sprang  into  the  cab  before  he  could  dismount. 
"1  hank  you,"  she  said.  "Thank  you.  You  were  kind.  You 
were  so  kind." 

When  the  cab  stopped  beneath  the  porte-cochere  of  the 
house  from  which  music  now  came,  neither  of  them  moved 
at  once.  Neither  of  them  made  the  first  move  at  all,  yet  a 
moment  later  they  kissed.  Her  mouth  was  still,  cold.  "I  like 
you,"  she  said.  "I  do  like  you." 

Before  the  week  was  out  Jarrod  offered  to  serve  her  again 
so,  but  she  refused,  quietly.  "Why?"  he  said.  "Don't  you 
want  to  see  him  again?"  But  she  wouldn't  say,  and  he  had 
met  Mrs.  King  by  that  time  and  he  said  to  himself,  "The  old 
girl  is  after  me,  anyway."  He  saw  that  at  once;  he  took  that 
also  as  the  meed  due  his  oil  wells  and  his  Yale  nimbus,  since 
three  years  at  New  Haven,  leading  no  classes  and  winning 
no  football  games,  had  done  nothing  to  dispossess  him  of  the 
belief  that  he  was  the  natural  prey  of  all  mothers  of  daugh- 
ters. But  he  didn't  flee,  not  even  after  he  found,  a  few  eve- 
nings later,  Louise  again  unaccountably  absent,  and  knew 


568  The  Middle  Ground 

that  she  had  gone,  using  someone  else  for  the  stalking  horse, 
to  that  quiet  house  in  the  dingy  street.  "Well,  I'm  done,"  he 
said  to  himself.  "I'm  through  now."  But  still  he  didn't  flee, 
perhaps  because  she  had  used  someone  else  this  time.  "She 
cares  that  much,  anyway,"  he  said  to  himself. 

When  he  returned  to  New  Haven  he  had  Louise's  prom- 
ise to  come  to  the  spring  prom.  He  knew  now  that  Mrs. 
King  would  come  too.  He  didn't  mind  that;  one  day  he 
suddenly  realized  that  he  was  glad.  Then  he  knew  that  it 
was  because  he  too  knew,  believed,  that  Louise  needed  look- 
ing after;  that  he  had  already  surrendered  unconditionally  to 
one  woman  of  them,  he  who  had  never  once  mentioned  love 
to  himself,  to  any  woman.  He  remembered  that  quality  of 
beyond-looking  and  that  dark,  dingy  house  in  Saint  Louis, 
and  he  thought,  "Well,  we  have  her.  We  have  the  old 
woman."  And  one  day  he  believed  that  he  had  found  the 
reason  if  not  the  answer.  It  was  in  class,  in  psychology,  and 
he  found  himself  sitting  bolt  upright,  looking  at  the  instruc- 
tor. The  instructor  was  talking  about  women,  about  young 
girls  in  particular,  about  that  strange,  mysterious  phase  in 
which  they  live  for  a  while.  "A  blind  spot,  like  that  which 
racing  aviators  enter  when  making  a  fast  turn.  When  what 
they  see  is  neither  good  nor  evil,  and  so  what  they  do  is 
likely  to  be  either  one.  Probably  more  likely  to  be  evil,  since 
the  very  evilness  of  evil  stems  from  its  own  fact,  while  good 
is  an  absence  of  fact.  A  time,  an  hour,  in  which  they  them- 
selves are  victims  of  that  by  means  of  which  they  victimize." 

That  night  he  sat  before  his  fire  for  some  time,  not  study- 
ing, not  doing  anything.  "We've  got  to  be  married  soon," 
he  said.  "Soon." 

Mrs.  King  and  Louise  arrived  for  the  prom.  Mrs.  King 
was  a  gray  woman,  with  a  cold,  severe  face,  not  harsh,  but 
watchful,  alert.  It  was  as  though  Jarrod  saw  Louise,  too,  for 
the  first  time.  Until  then  he  had  not  been  aware  that  he  was 


Dr.  Martino  569 

conscious  of  the  beyond-looking  quality.  It  was  only  now 
that  he  saw  it  by  realizing  how  it  had  become  tenser,  as 
though  it  were  now  both  dread  and  desire;  as  though  with 
the  approach  of  summer  she  were  approaching  a  climax,  a 
crisis.  So  he  thought  that  she  was  ill. 

"Maybe  we  ought  to  be  married  right  away,"  he  said  to 
Mrs.  King.  "I  don't  want  a  degree,  anyway."  They  were 
allies  now,  not  yet  antagonists,  though  he  had  not  told  her 
of  the  two  Saint  Louis  expeditions,  the  one  he  knew  of  and 
the  one  he  suspected.  It  was  as  though  he  did  not  need  to  tell 
her.  It  was  as  though  he  knew  that  she  knew;  that  she  knew 
he  knew  she  knew. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "At  once." 

But  that  was  as  far  as  it  got,  though  when  Louise  and 
Mrs.  King  left  New  Haven,  Louise  had  his  ring.  But  it  was 
not  on  her  hand,  and  on  her  face  was  that  strained,  secret, 
beyond-looking  expression  which  he  now  knew  was  beyond 
him  too,  and  the  effigy  and  shape  which  the  oil  wells  and 
Yale  had  made.  "Till  July,  then,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I'll  write.  I'll  write  you  when  to  come." 

And  that  was  all.  He  went  back  to  his  clubs,  his  classes; 
in  psychology  especially  he  listened.  "It  seems  I'm  going  to 
need  psychology,"  he  thought,  thinking  of  the  dark,  small 
house  in  Saint  Louis,  the  blank,  dark  door  through  which, 
running,  she  had  disappeared.  That  was  it:  a  man  he  had 
never  seen,  never  heard  of,  shut  up  in  a  little  dingy  house 
on  a  back  street  on  Christmas  eve.  He  thought,  fretfully, 
"And  me  young,  with  money,  a  Yale  man.  And  I  don't  even 
know  his  name." 

Once  a  week  he  wrote  to  Louise;  perhaps  twice  a  month 
he  received  replies — brief,  cold  notes  mailed  always  at  a  dif- 
ferent place — resorts  and  hotels — until  mid- June,  within  a 
week  of  Commencement  and  his  degree.  Then  he  received 
a  wire.  It  was  from  Mrs.  King.  It  said  Come  at  once  and  the 


570  The  Middle  Ground 

location  was  Cranston's  Wells,  Mississippi.  It  was  a  town 
he  had  never  heard  of. 

That  was  Friday;  thirty  minutes  later  his  roommate  came 
in  and  found  him  packing.  "Going  to  town? "  the  roommate 
said. 

"Yes,"  Jarrod  said. 

"I'll  go  with  you.  I  need  a  little  relaxation  myself,  before 
facing  the  cheering  throngs  at  the  Dean's  altar." 

"No,"  Jarrod  said.  "This  is  business." 

"Sure,"  the  roommate  said.  "I  know  a  business  woman  in 
New  York,  myself.  There's  more  than  one  in  that  town." 

"No,"  Jarrod  said.  "Not  this  time." 

"Beano,"  the  roommate  said. 

The  place  was  a  resort  owned  by  a  neat,  small,  gray 
spinster  who  had  inherited  it,  and  some  of  the  guests  as  well, 
from  her  father  thirty  years  ago — a  rambling  frame  hotel 
and  a  housed  spring  where  old  men  with  pouched  eyes  and 
parchment  skin  and  old  women  dropsical  with  good  living 
gathered  from  the  neighboring  Alabama  and  Mississippi 
towns  to  drink  the  iron-impregnated  waters.  This  was  the 
place  where  Louise  had  been  spending  her  summers  since 
she  was  born;  and  from  the  veranda  of  the  hotel  where  the 
idle  old  women  with  their  idle  magazines  and  embroidery 
and  their  bright  shawls  had  been  watching  each  summer 
the  comedy  of  which  he  was  just  learning,  he  could  see 
the  tips  of  the  crepe  myrtle  copse  hiding  the  bench  on 
which  the  man  whom  he  had  come  to  fear,  and  whose  face 
he  had  not  even  seen,  had  been  sitting  all  day  long  for  three 
months  each  summer  for  more  than  fifteen  years. 

So  he  stood  beside  the  neat,  gray  proprietress  on  the  top 
step  in  the  early  sunlight,  while  the  old  women  went  to  and 
fro  between  house  and  spring,  watching  him  with  covert, 
secret,  bright,  curious  looks.  "Watching  Louise's  young 


Dr.  Martina  571 

man  compete  with  a  dead  man  and  a  horse,"  Jarrod  thought. 

But  his  face  did  not  show  this.  It  showed  nothing  at  all, 
not  even  a  great  deal  of  intelligence  as,  tall,  erect,  in  flannels 
and  a  tweed  jacket  in  the  Mississippi  June,  where  the  other 
men  wore  linen  when  they  wore  coats  at  all,  he  talked  with 
the  proprietress  about  the  man  whose  face  he  had  not  seen 
and  whose  name  he  had  just  learned. 

"It's  his  heart,"  the  proprietress  said  to  Jarrod.  "He  has  to 
be  careful.  He  had  to  give  up  his  practice  and  everything. 
He  hasn't  any  people  and  he  has  just  enough  money  to  come 
down  here  every  summer  and  spend  the  summer  sitting  on 
his  bench;  we  call  it  Doctor  Martino's  bench.  Each  summer 
I  think  it  will  be  the  last  time;  that  we  shan't  see  him  again. 
But  each  May  I  get  the  message  from  him,  the  reservation. 
And  do  you  know  what  I  think?  I  think  that  it  is  Louise 
King  that  keeps  him  alive.  And  that  Alvina  King  is  a  fool." 

"How  a  fool?"  Jarrod  said. 

The  proprietress  was  watching  him — this  was  the  morn- 
ing after  his  arrival;  looking  down  at  her  he  thought  at 
first,  "She  is  wondering  how  much  I  have  heard,  how  much 
they  have  told  me."  Then  he  thought,  "No.  It's  because  she 
stays  busy.  Not  like  them,  those  others  with  their  maga- 
zines. She  has  to  stay  too  busy  keeping  them  fed  to  have 
learned  who  I  am,  or  to  have  been  thinking  all  this  time 
what  the  others  have  been  thinking." 

She  was  watching  him.  "How  long  have  you  known 
Louise?" 

"Not  long.  I  met  her  at  a  dance  at  school." 

"Oh.  Well,  I  think  that  the  Lord  has  taken  pity  on  Doctor 
Martino  and  He  is  letting  him  use  Louise's  heart,  somehow. 
That's  what  I  think.  And  you  can  laugh  if  you  want  to." 

"I'm  not  laughing,"  Jarrod  said.  "Tell  me  about  him." 

She  told  him,  watching  his  face,  her  air  bright,  birdlike, 
telling  him  about  how  the  man  had  appeared  one  June,  in 


572  The  Middle  Ground 

his  crumpled  linen  and  panama  hat,  and  about  his  eyes. 
("They  looked  like  shoe-buttons.  And  when  he  moved  it 
was  as  slow  as  if  he  had  to  keep  on  telling  himself,  even 
after  he  had  started  moving,  'Go  on,  now;  keep  on  moving, 
now.'  ")  And  about  how  he  signed  the  book  in  script  almost 
too  small  to  read:  Jules  Martino,  Saint  Louis,  Missouri.  And 
how  after  that  year  he  came  back  each  June,  to  sit  all  day 
long  on  the  bench  in  the  crepe  myrtle  copse,  where  the 
old  Negro  porter  would  fetch  him  his  mail:  the  two  medical 
journals,  the  Saint  Louis  paper,  and  the  two  letters  from 
Louise  King — the  one  in  June  saying  that  she  would  arrive 
next  week,  and  the  one  in  late  August  saying  that  she  had 
reached  home.  But  the  proprietress  didn't  tell  how  she 
would  walk  a  little  way  down  the  path  three  or  four  times 
a  day  to  see  if  he  were  all  right,  and  he  not  aware  of  it; 
and  watching  her  while  she  talked,  Jarrod  thought,  "What 
rivers  has  he  made  you  swim,  I  wonder?" 

"He  had  been  coming  here  for  three  years,"  the  proprie- 
tress said,  "without  knowing  anybody,  without  seeming  to 
want  to  know  anybody,  before  even  I  found  out  about  his 
heart.  But  he  kept  on  coming  (I  forgot  to  say  that  Alvina 
King  was  already  spending  the  summer  here,  right  after 
Louise  was  born)  and  then  I  noticed  how  he  would  always 
be  sitting  where  he  could  watch  Louise  playing,  and  so  I 
thought  that  maybe  he  had  lost  his  child.  That  was  before 
he  told  me  that  he  had  never  married  and  he  didn't  have 
any  family  at  all.  I  thought  that  was  what  attracted  him  to 
Louise.  And  so  I  would  watch  him  while  he  watched  Louise 
growing  up.  I  would  see  them  talking,  and  him  watching 
her  year  after  year,  and  so  after  a  while  I  said  to  myself. 
'He  wants  to  be  married.  He's  waiting  for  Louise  to  grow 
up.'  That's  what  I  thought  then."  The  proprietress  was  not 
looking  at  Jarrod  now.  She  laughed  a  little.  "My  Lord,  I've 
thought  a  lot  of  foolishness  in  my  time." 


Dr.  Martino  573 

"I  don't  know  that  that  was  so  foolish,"  Jarrod  said. 

"Maybe  not.  Louise  would  make  anybody  a  wife  to  be 
proud  of.  And  him  being  all  alone,  without  anybody  to  look 
after  him  when  he  got  old."  The  proprietress  was  beyond 
fifty  herself.  "I  reckon  I've  passed  the  time  when  I  believe 
it's  important  whether  women  get  married  or  not.  I  reckon, 
running  this  place  single-handed  this  way,  I've  come  to 
believe  it  ain't  very  important  what  anybody  does,  as  long 
as  they  are  fed  good  and  have  a  comfortable  bed."  She 
ceased.  For  a  time  she  seemed  to  muse  upon  the  shade- 
dappled  park,  the  old  women  clotting  within  the  marquee 
above  the  spring. 

"Did  he  make  her  do  things,  then?"  Jarrod  said. 

"You've  been  listening  to  Alvina  King,"  the  proprietress 
said.  "He  never  made  her  do  anything.  How  could  he?  He 
never  left  that  bench.  He  never  leaves  it.  He  would  just  sit 
there  and  watch  her  playing,  until  she  began  to  get  too  old 
to  play  in  the  dirt.  Then  they  would  talk,  sitting  on  the 
bench  there.  How  could  he  make  her  do  things,  even  if  he 
had  wanted  to?' 

"I  think  you  are  right,"  Jarrod  said.  "Tell  me  about  when 
she  swam  the  river." 

"Oh,  yes.  She  was  always  afraid  of  water.  But  one  sum- 
mer she  learned  to  swim,  learned  by  herself,  in  the  pool.  He 
wasn't  even  there.  Nor  at  the  river  either.  He  didn't  know 
about  that  until  we  knew  it.  He  just  told  her  not  to  be  afraid, 
ever.  And  what's  the  harm  in  that,  will  you  tell  me?" 

"None,"  Jarrod  said. 

"No,"  the  proprietress  said,  as  though  she  were  not  listen- 
ing, had  not  heard  him.  "So  she  came  in  and  told  me,  and  I 
said,  'With  the  snakes  and  all,  weren't  you  afraid?'  And  she 
said: 

"  Tes.  I  was  afraid.  That's  why  I  did  it.' 

"  'Why  you  did  it?'  I  said.  And  she  said: 


574  The  Middle  Ground 

"  'When  you  are  afraid  to  do  something  you  know  that 
you  are  alive.  But  when  you  are  afraid  to  do  what  you  are 
afraid  of  you  are  dead.' 

"  'I  know  where  you  got  that,'  I  said.  I'll  be  bound  he 
didn't  swim  the  river  too.'  And  she  said: 

"  'He  didn't  have  to.  Every  time  he  wakes  up  in  the  morn- 
ing he  does  what  I  had  to  swim  the  river  to  do.  This  is  what 
I  got  for  doing  it:  see?'  And  she  took  something  on  a  string 
out  of  the  front  of  her  dress  and  showed  it  to  me.  It  was  a 
rabbit  made  out  of  metal  or  something,  about  an  inch  tall, 
like  you  buy  in  the  ten-cent  stores.  He  had  given  it  to  her. 

"  'What  does  that  mean?'  I  said. 

"  'That's  my  being  afraid,'  she  said.  'A  rabbit:  don't  you 
see?  But  it's  brass  now;  the  shape  of  being  afraid,  in  brass 
that  nothing  can  hurt.  As  long  as  I  keep  it  I  am  not  even 
afraid  of  being  afraid.' 

"  'And  if  you  are  afraid,'  I  said,  'then  what?' 

"  'Then  I'll  give  it  back  to  him,'  she  said.  And  what's  the 
harm  in  that,  pray  tell  me?  even  though  Alvina  King  always 
has  been  a  fool.  Because  Louise  came  back  in  about  an  hour. 
She  had  been  crying.  She  had  the  rabbit  in  her  hand.  'Will 
you  keep  this  for  me?'  she  said.  'Don't  let  anybody  have  it 
except  me.  Not  anybody.  Will  you  promise?' 

"And  I  promised,  and  I  put  the  rabbit  away  for  her.  She 
asked  me  for  it  just  before  they  left.  That  was  when  Alvina 
said  they  were  not  coming  back  the  next  summer.  'This 
foolishness  is  going  to  end,'  she  said.  'He  will  get  her  killed; 
he  is  a  menace.' 

"And,  sure  enough,  next  summer  they  didn't  come.  I 
heard  that  Louise  was  sick,  and  I  knew  why.  I  knew  that 
Alvina  had  driven  her  into  sickness,  into  bed.  But  Doctor 
Jules  came  in  June.  'Louise  has  been  right  sick,'  I  told  him. 

"  'Yes,'  he  said;  'I  know.'  So  I  thought  he  had  heard,  that 
she  had  written  to  him.  But  then  I  thought  how  she  must 


Dr.  Martina  575 

have  been  too  sick  to  write,  and  that  that  fool  mother  of 
hers  anyway  .  .  ."  The  proprietress  was  watching  Jarrod. 
"Because  she  wouldn't  have  to  write  him." 

"Wouldn't  have  to?" 

"He  knew  she  was  sick.  He  knew  it.  She  didn't  have  to 
write  him.  Now  you'll  laugh." 

"I'm  not  laughing.  How  did  he  know?" 

"He  knew.  Because  I  knew  he  knew;  and  so  when  he 
didn't  go  on  back  to  Saint  Louis,  I  knew  that  she  would 
come.  And  so  in  August  they  did  come.  Louise  had  grown 
a  lot  taller,  thinner,  and  that  afternoon  I  saw  them  standing 
together  for  the  first  time.  She  was  almost  as  tall  as  he  was. 
That  was  when  I  first  saw  that  Louise  was  a  woman.  And 
now  Alvina  worrying  about  that  horse  that  Louise  says  she's 
going  to  ride." 

"It's  already  killed  one  man,"  Jarrod  said. 

"Automobiles  have  killed  more  than  that.  But  you  ride 
in  an  automobile,  yourself.  You  came  in  one.  It  never  hurt 
her  when  she  swam  that  river,  did  it?" 

"But  this  is  different.  How  do  you  know  it  won't  hurt 
her?" 

"I  just  know." 

"How  know?" 

"You  go  out  there  where  you  can  see  that  bench.  Don't 
bother  him;  just  go  and  look  at  him.  Then  you'll  know  too." 

"Well,  I'd  want  a  little  more  assurance  than  that,"  Jarrod 
said. 

He  had  returned  to  Mrs.  King.  With  Louise  he  had  had 
one  interview,  brief,  violent,  bitter.  That  was  the  night 
before;  to-day  she  had  disappeared.  "Yet  he  is  still  sitting 
there  on  that  bench,"  Jarrod  thought.  "She's  not  even  with 
him.  They  don't  even  seem  to  have  to  be  together:  he  can 
tell  all  the  way  from  Mississippi  to  Saint  Louis  when  she  is 
sick.  Well,  I  know  who's  in  the  blind  spot  now/' 


576  The  Middle  Ground 

Mrs.  King  was  in  her  room.  "It  seems  that  my  worst  com- 
petitor is  that  horse,"  Jarrod  said. 

"Can't  you  see  he  is  making  her  ride  it  for  the  same  reason 
he  made  her  swim  that  snake-filled  river?  To  show  that  he 
can,  to  humiliate  me?" 

"What  can  I  do?"  Jarrod  said.  "I  tried  to  talk  to  her  last 
night.  But  you  saw  where  I  got." 

"If  I  were  a  man,  I  shouldn't  have  to  ask  what  to  do.  If 
I  saw  the  girl  I  was  engaged  to  being  ruined,  ruined  by  a 
man,  any  man,  and  a  man  I  never  saw  before  and  don't  even 
know  who  he  is — old  or  not  old;  heart  or  no  heart  ..." 

'Til  talk  to  her  again." 

"Talk?"  Mrs.  King  said.  "Talk?  Do  you  think  I  sent  you 
that  message  to  hurry  down  here  just  to  talk  to  her?" 

"You  wait,  now,"  Jarrod  said.  "It'll  be  all  right.  I'll 
attend  to  this." 

He  had  to  do  a  good  bit  of  waiting,  himself.  It  was  nearly 
noon  when  Louise  entered  the  empty  lobby  where  he  sat. 
He  rose.  "Well?" 

They  looked  at  each  other.  "Well?" 

"Are  you  still  going  to  ride  that  horse  this  afternoon?" 
Jarrod  asked. 

"I  thought  we  settled  this  last  night.  But  you're  still 
meddling.  I  didn't  send  for  you  to  come  down  here." 

"But  I'm  here.  I  never  thought,  though,  that  I  was  being 
sent  for  to  compete  with  a  horse."  She  watched  him,  her 
eyes  hard.  "With  worse  than  a  horse.  With  a  damned  dead 
man.  A  man  that's  been  dead  for  twenty  years;  he  says  so 
himself,  they  tell  me.  And  he  ought  to  know,  being  a  doctor, 
a  heart  specialist.  I  suppose  you  keep  him  alive  by  scaring 
him — like  strychnine,  Florence  Nightingale."  She  watched 
him,  her  face  quite  still,  quite  cold.  "I'm  not  jealous,"  he 
went  on.  "Not  of  that  bird.  But  when  I  see  him  making  you 
ride  that  horse  that  has  already  killed  ..."  He  looked  down 


Dr.  Martino  577 

at  her  cold  face.  "Don't  you  want  to  marry  me,  Louise?" 

She  ceased  to  look  at  him.  "It's  because  we  are  young  yet. 
We  have  so  much  time,  all  the  rest  of  time.  And  maybe  next 
year,  even,  this  very  day  next  year,  with  everything  pretty 
and  warm  and  green,  and  he  will  be  ...  You  don't  under- 
stand. I  didn't  at  first,  when  he  first  told  me  how  it  was  to 
live  day  after  day  with  a  match  box  full  of  dynamite  caps 
in  your  breast  pocket.  Then  he  told  me  one  day,  when  I  was 
big  enough  to  understand,  how  there  is  nothing  in  the  world 
but  living,  being  alive,  knowing  you  are  alive.  And  to  be 
afraid  is  to  know  you  are  alive,  but  to  do  what  you  are 
afraid  of,  then  you  live.  He  says  it's  better  even  to  be  afraid 
than  to  be  dead.  He  told  me  all  that  while  he  was  still  afraid, 
before  he  gave  up  the  being  afraid  and  he  knew  he  was  alive 
without  living.  And  now  he  has  even  given  that  up,  and  now 
he  is  just  afraid.  So  what  can  I  do?" 

"Yes.  And  I  can  wait,  because  I  haven't  got  a  match  box 
of  dynamite  caps  in  my  shirt.  Or  a  box  of  conjuring  powder, 
either." 

"I  don't  expect  you  to  see.  I  didn't  send  for  you.  I  didn't 
want  to  get  you  mixed  up  in  it." 

"You  never  thought  of  that  when  you  took  my  ring. 
Besides,  you  had  already  got  me  mixed  up  in  it,  the  first 
night  I  ever  saw  you.  You  never  minded  then.  So  now  I 
know  a  lot  I  didn't  know  before.  And  what  does  he  think 
about  that  ring,  by  the  way?"  She  didn't  answer.  She  was 
not  looking  at  him;  neither  was  her  face  averted.  After  a 
time  he  said,  "I  see.  He  doesn't  know  about  the  ring.  You 
never  showed  it  to  him."  Still  she  didn't  answer,  looking 
neither  at  him  nor  away.  "All  right,"  he  said  "I'll  give  you 
one  more  chance." 

She  looked  at  him.  "One  more  chance  for  what?"  Then 
she  said,  "Oh.  The  ring.  You  want  it  back."  He  watched 
her,  erect,  expressionless,  while  she  drew  from  inside  her 


578  The  Middle  Ground 

dress  a  slender  cord  on  which  was  suspended  the  ring  and 
a  second  object  which  he  recognized  in  the  flicking  move- 
ment which  broke  the  cord,  to  be  the  tiny  metal  rabbit  of 
which  the  proprietress  had  told  him.  Then  it  was  gone,  and 
her  hand  flicked  again,  and  something  struck  him  a  hard, 
stinging  blow  on  the  cheek.  She  was  already  running  toward 
the  stairs.  After  a  time  he  stooped  and  picked  up  the  ring 
from  the  floor.  He  looked  about  the  lobby.  "They're  all 
down  at  the  spring,"  he  thought,  holding  the  ring  on  his 
palm.  "That's  what  people  come  here  for:  to  drink  water." 

They  were  there,  clotting  in  the  marquee  above  the  well, 
with  their  bright  shawls  and  magazines.  As  he  approached, 
Mrs.  King  came  quickly  out  of  the  group,  carrying  one  of 
the  stained  tumblers  in  her  hand.  "Yes?"  she  said.  "Yes?" 
Jarrod  extended  his  hand  on  which  the  ring  lay.  Mrs.  King 
looked  down  at  the  ring,  her  face  cold,  quiet,  outraged. 
"Sometimes  I  wonder  if  she  can  be  my  daughter.  What  will 
you  do  now?" 

Jarrod,  too,  looked  down  at  the  ring,  his  face  also  cold, 
still.  "At  first  I  thought  I  just  had  to  compete  with  a  horse," 
he  said.  "But  it  seems  there  is  more  going  on  here  than  I 
knew  of,  than  I  was  told  of." 

"Fiddlesticks,"  Mrs.  King  said.  "Have  you  been  listening 
to  that  fool  Lily  Cranston,  to  these  other  old  fools  here?" 

"Not  to  learn  any  more  than  everybody  else  seems  to  have 
known  all  the  time.  But  then,  I'm  only  the  man  she  was 
engaged  to  marry."  He  looked  down  at  the  ring.  "What  do 
you  think  I  had  better  do  now?" 

"If  you're  a  man  that  has  to  stop  to  ask  advice  from  a 
woman  in  a  case  like  this,  then  you'd  better  take  the  advice 
and  take  your  ring  and  go  on  back  to  Nebraska  or  Kansas 
or  wherever  it  is." 

"Oklahoma,"  Jarrod  said  sullenly.  He  closed  his  hand  on 
the  ring.  "He'll  be  on  that  bench,"  he  said. 


Dr.  Martino  579 

"Why  shouldn't  he?"  Mrs.  King  said.  "He  has  no  one 
to  fear  here." 

But  Jarrod  was  already  moving  away.  "You  go  on  to 
Louise,"  he  said.  "I'll  attend  to  this." 

Mrs.  King  watched  him  go  on  down  the  path.  Then  she 
turned  herself  and  flung  the  stained  tumbler  into  an  oleander 
bush  and  went  to  the  hotel,  walking  fast,  and  mounted  the 
stairs.  Louise  was  in  her  room,  dressing.  "So  you  gave  Hubert 
back  his  ring,"  Mrs.  King  said.  "That  man  will  be  pleased 
now.  You  will  have  no  secret  from  him  now,  if  the  ring 
ever  was  a  secret.  Since  you  don't  seem  to  have  any  private 
affairs  where  he  is  concerned;  don't  appear  to  desire  any — " 

"Stop,"  Louise  said.  "You  can't  talk  to  me  like  that." 

"Ah.  He  would  be  proud  of  that,  too,  to  have  h^ard  that 
from  his  pupil." 

"He  wouldn't  let  me  down.  But  you  let  me  down.  He 
wouldn't  let  me  down."  She  stood  thin  and  taut,  her  hands 
clenched  at  her  sides.  Suddenly  she  began  to  cry,  her  face 
lifted,  the  tears  rolling  down  her  cheeks.  "I  worry  and  I 
worry  and  I  don't  know  what  to  do.  And  now  you  let  me 
down,  my  own  mother." 

Mrs.  King  sat  on  the  bed.  Louise  stood  in  her  underthings, 
the  garments  she  had  removed  scattered  here  and  there, 
on  the  bed  and  on  the  chairs.  On  the  table  beside  the  bed  lay 
the  little  metal  rabbit;  Mrs.  King  looked  at  it  for  a  moment. 
"Don't  you  want  to  marry  Hubert?"  she  said. 

"Didn't  I  promise  him,  you  and  him  both?  Didn't  I  take 
his  ring?  But  you  won't  let  me  alone.  He  won't  give  me 
time,  a  chance.  And  now  you  let  me  down,  too.  Everybody 
lets  me  down  except  Doctor  Jules." 

Mrs.  King  watched  her,  cold,  immobile.  "I  believe  that 
fool  Lily  Cranston  is  right.  I  believe  that  man  has  some 
criminal  power  over  you.  I  just  thank  God  he  has  not 


580  The  Middle  Ground 

it  for  anything  except  to  try  to  make  you  kill  yourself,  make 
a  fool  of  yourself.  Not  yet,  that  is — " 

"Stop,"  Louise  said;  "stop!"  She  continued  to  say  "Stop. 
Stop/'  even  when  Mrs.  King  walked  up  and  touched  her. 
"But  you  let  me  down!  And  now  Hubert  has  let  me  down. 
He  told  you  about  that  horse  after  he  had  promised  me  he 
wouldn't." 

"I  knew  that  already.  That's  why  I  sent  for  him.  I  could 
do  nothing  with  you.  Besides,  it's  anybody's  business  to  keep 
you  from  riding  it." 

"You  can't  keep  me.  You  may  keep  me  locked  up  in  this 
room  to-day,  but  you  can't  always.  Because  you  are  older 
than  I  am.  You'll  have  to  die  first,  even  if  it  takes  a  hundred 
years.  And  I'll  come  back  and  ride  that  horse  if  it  takes  a 
thousand  years." 

"Maybe  I  won't  be  here  then,"  Mrs.  King  said.  "But 
neither  will  he.  I  can  outlive  him.  And  I  can  keep  you  locked 
up  in  this  room  for  one  day,  anyway." 

Fifteen  minutes  later  the  ancient  porter  knocked  at  the 
locked  door.  Mrs.  King  went  and  opened  it.  "Mr.  Jarrod 
wants  to  see  you  downstairs,"  the  porter  said. 

She  locked  the  door  behind  her.  Jarrod  was  in  the  lobby. 
It  was  empty.  "Yes?"  Mrs.  King  said.  "Yes?" 

"He  said  that  if  Louise  would  tell  him  herself  she  wants 
to  marry  me.  Send  him  a  sign." 

"A  sign?"  They  both  spoke  quietly,  a  little  tensely,  though 
quite  calm,  quite  grave. 

"Yes.  I  showed  him  the  ring,  and  him  sitting  there  on 
that  bench,  in  that  suit  looking  like  he  had  been  sleeping 
in  it  all  summer,  and  his  eyes  watching  me  like  he  didn't 
believe  she  had  ever  seen  the  ring.  Then  he  said,  'Ah.  You 
have  the  ring.  Your  proof  seems  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
wrong  party.  If  you  and  Louise  are  engaged,  she  should 
have  the  ring.  Or  am  I  just  old  fashioned?'  And  me  standing 


Dr.  Martino  581 

there  like  a  fool  and  him  looking  at  the  ring  like  it  might 
have  come  from  Woolworth's.  He  never  even  offered  to 
touch  it." 

"You  showed  him  the  ring?  The  ring?  You  fool.  What — " 
"Yes.  I  don't  know.  It  was  just  the  way  he  sat  there,  the 
way  he  makes  her  do  things,  I  guess.  It  was  like  he  was 
laughing  at  me,  like  he  knew  all  the  time  there  was  nothing 
I  could  do,  nothing  I  could  think  of  doing  about  it  he  had 
not  already  thought  about;  that  he  knew  he  could  always 
get  between  us  before — in  time.  .  .  ." 

"Then  what?  What  kind  of  a  sign  did  he  say?" 
"He  didn't  say.  He  just  said  a  sign,  from  her  hand  to  his. 
That  he  could  believe,  since  my  having  the  ring  had  exploded 
my  proof.  And  then  I  caught  my  hand  just  before  it  hit 
him — and  him  sitting  there.  He  didn't  move;  he  just  sat 
there  with  his  eyes  closed  and  the  sweat  popping  out  on  his 
face.  And  then  he  opened  his  eyes  and  said,  'Now,  strike 


me.'  " 


"Wait,"  Mrs.  King  said.  Jarrod  had  not  moved.  Mrs.  King 
gazed  across  the  empty  lobby,  tapping  her  teeth  with  her 
fingernail.  "Proof,"  she  said.  "A  sign."  She  moved.  "You 
wait  here."  She  went  back  up  the  stairs;  a  heavy  woman, 
moving  with  that  indomitable,  locomotivelike  celerity.  She 
was  not  gone  long.  "Louise  is  asleep,"  she  said,  for  no  reason 
that  Jarrod  could  have  discerned,  even  if  he  had  been  listen- 
ing. She  held  her  closed  hand  out.  "Can  you  have  your  car 
ready  in  twenty  minutes?" 

"Yes.  But  what— ?" 

"And  your  bags  packed.  I'll  see  to  everything  else." 

"And  Louise —  You  mean — " 

"You  can  be  married  in  Meridian;  you  will  be  there  in 
an  hour." 

"Married?  Has  Louise—?" 

"I  have  a  sign  from  her  that  he  will  believe.  You  get  your 


582  The  Middle  Ground 

things  all  ready  and  don't  you  tell  anyone  where  you  are 
going,  do  you  hear?" 

"Yes.  Yes.  And  Louise  has—?" 

"Not  a  soul.  Here" — she  put  something  into  his  hand. 
"Get  your  things  ready,  then  take  this  and  give  it  to  him. 
He  may  insist  on  seeing  her.  But  I'll  attend  to  that.  You  just 
be  ready.  Maybe  he'll  just  write  a  note,  anyway.  You  do 
what  I  told  you."  She  turned  back  toward  the  stairs,  fast, 
with  that  controlled  swiftness,  and  disappeared.  Then  Jarrod 
opened  his  hand  and  looked  at  the  object  which  she  had 
given  him.  It  was  the  metal  rabbit.  It  had  been  gilded  once, 
but  that  was  years  ago,  and  it  now  lay  on  his  palm  in  mute 
and  tarnished  oxidation.  When  he  left  the  room  he  was  not 
exactly  running  either.  But  he  was  going  fast. 

But  when  he  re-entered  the  lobby  fifteen  minutes  later, 
he  was  running.  Mrs.  King  was  waiting  for  him. 

"He  wrote  the  note,"  Jarrod  said.  "One  to  Louise,  and 
one  to  leave  here  for  Miss  Cranston.  He  told  me  I  could  read 
the  one  to  Louise."  But  Mrs.  King  had  already  taken  it  from 
his  hand  and  opened  it.  "He  said  I  could  read  it,"  Jarrod 
said.  He  was  breathing  hard,  fast.  "He  watched  me  do  it, 
sitting  there  on  that  bench;  he  hadn't  moved  even  his  hands 
since  I  was  there  before,  and  then  he  said,  'Young  Mr.  Jar- 
rod,  you  have  been  conquered  by  a  woman,  as  I  have  been. 
But  with  this  difference:  it  will  be  a  long  time  yet  before 
you  will  realize  that  you  have  been  slain.'  And  I  said,  'If 
Louise  is  to  do  the  slaying,  I  intend  to  die  every  day  for  the 
rest  of  my  life  or  hers.'  And  he  said,  'Ah;  Louise.  Were  you 
speaking  of  Louise?'  And  I  said,  'Dead.'  I  said,  'Dead.'  I  said, 
'Dead.' " 

But  Mrs.  King  was  not  there.  She  was  already  half  way  up 
the  stairs.  She  entered  the  room.  Louise  turned  on  the  bed, 
her  face  swollen,  with  tears  or  with  sleep.  Mrs.  King  handed 
her  the  note.  "There,  honey.  What  did  I  tell  you?  He  was 


Dr.  Martina  583 

just  making  a  fool  of  you.  Just  using  you  to  pass  the  time 
with." 

The  car  was  going  fast  when  it  turned  into  the  highroad. 
"Hurry,"  Louise  said.  The  car  increased  speed;  she  looked 
back  once  toward  the  hotel,  the  park  massed  with  oleander 
and  crepe  myrtle,  then  she  crouched  still  lower  in  the  seat 
beside  Jarrod.  "Faster,"  she  said. 

"I  say  faster,  too,"  Jarrod  said.  He  glanced  down  at  her; 
then  he  looked  down  at  her  again.  She  was  crying.  "Are 
you  that  glad?"  he  said. 

"I've  lost  something,"  she  said,  crying  quietly.  "Something 
I've  had  a  long  time,  given  to  me  when  I  was  a  child.  And 
now  I've  lost  it.  I  had  it  just  this  morning,  and  now  I  can't 
find  it." 

"Lost  it?"  he  said.  "Given  to  you  .  .  ."  His  foot  lifted; 
the  car  began  to  slow.  "Why,  you  sent .  .  ." 

"No,  no!"  Louise  said.  "Don't  stop!  Don't  turn  back! 
Go  on!" 

The  car  was  coasting  now,  slowing,  the  brakes  not  yet  on. 
"Why,  you  .  .  .  She  said  you  were  asleep."  He  put  his  foot 
on  the  brakes. 

"No,  no!"  Louise  cried.  She  had  been  sitting  forward; 
she  did  not  seem  to  have  heard  him  at  all.  "Don't  turn  back! 
Go  on!  Go  on!" 

"And  he  knew,"  Jarrod  thought.  "Sitting  there  on  the 
bench,  he  knew.  When  he  said  what  he  said  that  I  would 
not  know  that  I  had  been  slain." 

The  car  was  almost  stopped.  "Go  on!"  Louise  cried.  "Go 
on!"  He  was  looking  down  at  her.  Her  eyes  looked  as  if 
they  were  blind;  her  face  was  pale,  white,  her  mouth  open, 
shaped  to  an  agony  of  despair  and  a  surrender  in  particular 
which,  had  he  been  older,  he  would  have  realized  that  he 
would  never  see  again  on  any  face.  Then  he  watched  his 
hand  set  the  lever  back  into  gear,  and  his  foot  come  down 


584  The  Middle  Ground 

again  on  the  throttle.  "He  said  it  himself,"  Jarrod  thought: 
"to  be  afraid,  and  yet  to  do.  He  said  it  himself:  there's 
nothing  in  the  world  but  being  alive,  knowing  you  are  alive." 

"Faster!"  Louise  cried.  "Faster!"  The  car  rushed  on;  the 
house,  the  broad  veranda  where  the  bright  shawls  were  now 
sibilant,  fell  behind. 

In  that  gathering  of  wide  summer  dresses,  of  sucked  old 
breaths  and  gabbling  females  staccato,  the  proprietress  stood 
on  the  veranda  with  the  second  note  in  her  hand.  "Married?" 
she  said.  "Married?"  As  if  she  were  someone  else,  she 
watched  herself  open  the  note  and  read  it  again.  It  did  not 
take  long: 

Lily: 

Don't  ^orry  about  me  for  a  while  longer.  Vll  sit  here  until 
supper  time.  Don't  worry  about  me. 

j.  M. 

"Don't  worry  about  me,"  she  said.  "About  me."  She  went 
into  the  lobby,  where  the  old  Negro  was  pottering  with  a 
broom.  "And  Mr.  Jarrod  gave  you  this?" 

"Yessum.  Give  it  to  me  runnin'  and  tole  me  to  git  his 
bags  into  de  cyar,  and  next  I  know,  here  Miss  Louise  and 
him  whoosh!  outen  de  drive  and  up  de  big  road  like  a 
patter-roller." 

"And  they  went  toward  Meridian?" 

"Yessum.  Right  past  de  bench  whar  Doctor  Jules  settin'." 
"Married,"  the  proprietress  said.  "Married."  Still  carrying 
the  note,  she  left  the  house  and  followed  the  path  until  she 
came  in  sight  of  the  bench  on  which  sat  a  motionless  figure 
in  white.  She  stopped  again  and  re-read  the  note;  again  she 
looked  up  the  path  toward  the  bench  which  faced  the  road. 
Then  she  returned  to  the  house.  The  women  had  now  dis- 
persed into  chairs,  though  their  voices  still  filled  the  veranda, 
sibilant,  inextricable  one  from  another;  they  ceased  suddenly 


Dr.  Martino  585 

as  the  proprietress  approached  and  entered  the  house  again. 
She  entered  the  house,  walking  fast.  That  was  about  an  hour 
to  sundown. 

Dusk  was  beginning  to  fall  when  she  entered  the  kitchen. 
The  porter  was  now  sitting  on  a  chair  beside  the  stove,  talk- 
ing to  the  cook.  The  proprietress  stopped  in  the  door. 
"Uncle  Charley,"  she  said,  "Go  and  tell  Doctor  Jules  supper 
will  be  ready  soon." 

The  porter  rose  and  left  the  kitchen  by  the  side  door. 
When  he  passed  the  veranda,  the  proprietress  stood  on  the 
top  step.  She  watched  him  go  on  and  disappear  up  the  path 
toward  the  bench.  A  woman  passed  and  spoke  to  her,  but 
she  made  no  reply;  it  was  as  though  she  had  not  heard, 
watching  the  shubbery  beyond  which  the  Negro  had  dis- 
appeared. And  when  he  reappeared,  the  guests  on  the  ve- 
randa saw  her  already  in  motion,  descending  the  steps  before 
they  were  even  aware  that  the  Negro  was  running,  and  they 
sat  suddenly  hushed  and  forward  and  watched  her  pass  the 
Negro  without  stopping,  her  skirts  lifted  from  her  trim, 
school-mistress  ankles  and  feet,  and  disappear  up  the  path 
herself,  running  too.  They  were  still  sitting  forward,  hushed, 
when  she  too  reappeared;  they  watched  her  come  through 
the  dusk  and  mount  the  porch,  with  on  her  face  also  a  look 
of  having  seen  something  which  she  knew  to  be  true  but 
which  she  was  not  quite  yet  ready  to  believe.  Perhaps  that 
was  why  her  voice  was  quite  quiet  when  she  addressed  one 
of  the  guests  by  name,  calling  her  "honey": 

"Doctor  Martino  has  just  died.  Will  you  telephone  to 
town  for  me?" 


FOJC  Hunt 


AN  HOUR  before  daylight  three  Negro  stable-boys  ap- 
proached the  stable,  carrying  a  lantern.  While  one  of  them 
unlocked  and  slid  back  the  door,  the  bearer  of  the  lantern 
lifted  it  and  turned  the  beam  into  the  darkness  where  a  clump 
of  pines  shouldered  into  the  paddock  fence.  Out  of  this  dark- 
ness three  sets  of  big,  spaced  eyes  glared  mildly  for  a  moment, 
then  vanished.  "Heyo,"  the  Negro  called.  "Yawl  cole?"  No 
reply,  no  sound  came  from  the  darkness;  the  mule-eyes  did 
not  show  again.  The  Negroes  entered  the  barn,  murmuring 
among  themselves;  a  burst  of  laughter  floated  back  out  of 
the  stable,  mellow  and  meaningless  and  idiotic. 

"How  many  of  um  you  see?"  the  second  Negro  said. 

"Just  three  mules,"  the  lantern-bearer  said.  "It's  more  than 
that,  though.  Unc  Mose  he  come  in  about  two  o'clock, 
where  he  been  up  with  that  Jup'ter  horse;  he  say  it  was 
already  two  of  um  waiting  there  then.  Clay-eaters.  Hoo." 

Inside  the  stalls  horses  began  to  whinny  and  stamp;  over 
the  white-washed  doors  the  high,  long  muzzles  moved  with 
tossing,  eager  shadows;  the  atmosphere  was  rich,  warm,  am- 
moniac, and  clean.  The  Negroes  began  to  put  feed  into  the 
patent  troughs,  moving  from  stall  to  stall  with  the  clever 
agility  of  monkeys,  with  short,  mellow,  meaningless  cries, 
"Hoo.  Stand  over  dar.  Ghy  ketch  dat  fox  to-day/' 

In  the  darkness  where  the  clump  of  pines  shouldered  the 
paddock  fence,  eleven  men  squatted,  surrounded  by  eleven 

587 


588  The  Middle  Ground 

tethered  mules.  It  was  November,  and  the  morning  was  chill, 
and  the  men  squatted  shapeless  and  motionless,  not  talking. 
From  the  stable  came  the  sound  of  the  eating  horses;  just 
before  day  broke  a  twelfth  man  came  up  on  a  mule  and  dis- 
mounted and  squatted  among  the  others  without  a  word. 
When  day  came  and  the  first  saddled  horse  was  led  out  of 
the  stable,  the  grass  was  rimed  with  frost,  and  the  roof  of 
the  stable  looked  like  silver  in  the  silver  light. 

It  could  be  seen  then  that  the  squatting  men  were  all 
white  men  and  all  in  overalls,  and  that  all  of  the  mules  save 
two  were  saddleless.  They  had  gathered  from  one-room, 
clay-floored  cabins  about  the  pine  land,  and  they  squatted, 
decorous,  grave,  and  patient  among  their  gaunt  and  mud- 
caked  and  burr-starred  mules,  watching  the  saddled  horses, 
the  fine  horses  with  pedigrees  longer  than  Harrison  Blair's, 
who  owned  them,  being  led  one  by  one  from  a  steam-heated 
stable  and  up  the  gravel  path  to  the  house,  before  which  a 
pack  of  hounds  already  moiled  and  yapped,  and  on  the 
veranda  of  which  men  and  women  in  boots  and  red  coats 
were  beginning  to  gather. 

Sloven,  unhurried,  outwardly  scarcely  attentive,  the  men 
in  overalls  watched  Harrison  Blair,  who  owned  the  house 
and  the  dogs  and  some  of  the  guests  too,  perhaps,  mount  a 
big,  vicious-looking  black  horse,  and  they  watched  another 
man  lift  Harrison  Blair's  wife  onto  a  chestnut  mare  and  then 
mount  a  bay  horse  in  his  turn. 

One  of  the  men  in  overalls  was  chewing  tobacco  slowly. 
Beside  him  stood  a  youth,  in  overalls  too,  gangling,  with  a 
soft  stubble  of  beard.  They  spoke  without  moving  their 
heads,  hardly  moving  their  lips. 

"That  the  one?"  the  youth  said. 

The  older  man  spat  deliberately,  without  moving.  "The 
one  what?" 

"His  wife's  one." 


Fox  Hunt  589 

"Whose  wife's  one?" 

"Blair's  wife's  one." 

The  other  contemplated  the  group  before  the  house.  He 
appeared  to,  that  is.  His  gaze  was  inscrutable,  blank,  without 
haste;  none  could  have  said  if  he  were  watching  the  man  and 
woman  or  not.  "Don't  believe  anything  you  hear,  and  not 
more  than  half  you  see,"  he  said. 

"What  do  you  think  about  it?"  the  youth  said. 

The  other  spat  deliberately  and  carefully.  "Nothing,"  he 
said.  "It  ain't  none  of  my  wife."  Then  he  said,  without  rais- 
ing his  voice  and  without  any  change  in  inflection,  though 
he  was  now  speaking  to  the  head  groom  who  had  come  up 
beside  him.  "That  fellow  don't  own  no  horse." 

"Which  fellow  don't?"  the  groom  said.  The  white  man 
indicated  the  man  who  was  holding  the  bay  horse  against  the 
chestnut  mare's  flank.  "Oh,"  the  groom  said.  "Mr.  Gawtrey. 
Pity  the  horse,  if  he  did." 

"Pity  the  horse  that  he  owns,  too,"  the  white  man  said. 
"Pity  anything  he  owns." 

"You  mean  Mr.  Harrison?"  the  groom  said.  "Does  these 
here  horses  look  like  they  needs  your  pity?" 

"Sho,"  the  white  man  said.  "That's  right.  I  reckon  that 
black  horse  does  like  to  be  rode  like  he  rides  it." 

"Don't  you  be  pitying  no  Blair  horses,"  the  groom  said. 

"Sho,"  the  white  man  said.  He  appeared  to  contemplate 
the  blooded  horses  that  lived  in  a  steam-heated  house,  the 
people  in  boots  and  pink  coats,  and  Blair  himself  sitting  the 
plunging  black.  "He's  been  trying  to  catch  that  vixen  for 
three  years  now,"  he  said.  "Whyn't  he  let  one  of  you  boys 
shoot  it  or  pizenit?" 

"Shoot  it  or  pizen  it?"  the  groom  said.  "Don't  you  know 
that  ain't  no  way  to  catch  a  fox?" 

"Why  ain't  it?" 

"It  ain't  spo'tin,"  the  groom  said.  "You  ought  to  been 


590  The  Middle  Ground 

hanging  around  urn  long  enough  by  now  to  know  how 
gempmuns  hunts." 

"Sho,"  the  white  man  said.  He  was  not  looking  at  the 
groom.  "Wonder  how  a  man  rich  as  folks  says  he  is" — again 
he  spat,  in  the  action  something  meager  but  without  intended 
insult,  as  if  he  might  have  been  indicating  Blair  with  a  jerked 
finger — "is  got  time  to  hate  one  little  old  fox  bitch  like  that. 
Don't  even  want  the  dogs  to  catch  it.  Trying  to  outride  the 
dogs  so  he  can  kill  it  with  a  stick  like  it  was  a  snake.  Coming 
all  the  way  down  here  every  year,  bringing  all  them  folks  and 
boarding  and  sleeping  them,  to  run  one  little  old  mangy  fox 
that  I  could  catch  in  one  night  with  a  axe  and  a  possum  dog." 

"That's  something  else  about  gempmuns  you  won't  never 
know,"  the  groom  said. 

"Sho,"  the  white  man  said. 

The  ridge  was  a  long  shoal  of  pine  and  sand,  broken  along 
one  flank  into  gaps  through  which  could  be  seen  a  fallow  rice 
field  almost  a  mile  wide  which  ended  against  a  brier-choked 
dyke.  The  two  men  in  overalls,  the  older  man  and  the  youth, 
sat  their  mules  in  one  of  these  gaps,  looking  down  into  the 
field.  Farther  on  down  the  ridge,  about  a  half  mile  away,  the 
dogs  were  at  fault;  the  yapping  cries  came  back  up  the  ridge, 
baffled,  ringing,  profoundly  urgent. 

"You'd  think  he  would  learn  in  three  years  that  he  ain't 
going  to  catch  ere  Cal-lina  fox  with  them  Yankee  city  dogs," 
the  youth  said. 

"He  knows  it,"  the  other  said.  "He  don't  want  them  dogs 
to  catch  it.  He  can't  even  bear  for  a  blooded  dog  to  go  in 
front  of  him." 

"They're  in  front  of  him  now  though." 

"You  think  so?" 

"Where  is  he,  then?" 

"I  don't  know.  But  I  know  that  he  ain't  no  closer  to  them 


Fox  Hunt  591 

fool  dogs  right  now  than  that  fox  is.  Wherever  that  fox  is 
squatting  right  now,  laughing  at  them  dogs,  that's  where  he 
is  heading  for." 

"You  mean  to  tell  me  that  ere  a  man  in  the  world  can  smell 
out  a  fox  where  even  a  city  dog  can't  untangle  it? " 

"Them  dogs  yonder  can't  smell  out  a  straight  track  be- 
cause they  don't  hate  that  fox.  A  good  fox-  or  coon-  or 
possum-dog  is  a  good  dog  because  he  hates  a  fox  or  a  coon 
or  a  possum,  not  because  he's  got  a  extra  good  nose.  It  ain't 
his  nose  that  leads  him;  it's  his  hating.  And  that's  why  when 
I  see  which-a-way  that  fellow's  riding,  I'll  tell  you  which- 
a-way  that  fox  has  run." 

The  youth  made  a  sound  in  his  throat  and  nostrils.  "A 
growed-up  man.  Hating  a  durn  little  old  mangy  fox.  I  be 
durn  if  it  don't  take  a  lot  of  trouble  to  be  rich.  I  be  durn  if  it 
don't." 

They  looked  down  into  the  field.  From  farther  on  down 
the  ridge  the  eager,  baffled  yapping  of  the  dogs  came.  The 
last  rider  in  boots  and  pink  had  ridden  up  and  passed  them 
and  gone  on,  and  the  two  men  sat  their  mules  in  the  pro- 
found and  winy  and  sunny  silence,  listening,  with  expressions 
identical  and  bleak  and  sardonic  on  their  gaunt,  yellow  faces. 
Then  the  youth  turned  on  his  mule  and  looked  back  up  the 
ridge  in  the  direction  from  which  the  race  had  come.  At  that 
moment  the  older  man  turned  also  and,  motionless,  making 
no  sound,  they  watched  two  more  riders  come  up  and  pass. 
They  were  the  woman  on  the  chestnut  mare  and  the  man  on 
the  bay  horse.  They  passed  like  one  beast,  like  a  double  or 
hermaphroditic  centaur  with  two  heads  and  eight  legs.  The 
woman  carried  her  hat  in  her  hand;  in  the  slanting  sun  the 
fine,  soft  cloud  of  her  unbobbed  hair  gleamed  like  the  chest- 
nut's flank,  like  soft  fire,  the  mass  of  it  appearing  to  be  too 
heavy  for  her  slender  neck.  She  was  sitting  the  mare  with  a 
kind  of  delicate  awkwardness,  leaning  forward  as  though  she 


592  The  Aiiddle  Ground 

were  trying  to  outpace  it,  with  a  quality  about  her  of  flight 
within  flight,  separate  and  distinct  from  the  speed  of  the 
mare. 

The  man  was  holding  the  bay  horse  against  the  mare's 
flank  at  full  gallop.  His  hand  lay  on  the  woman's  hand  which 
held  the  reins,  and  he  was  slowly  but  steadily  drawing  both 
horses  back,  slowing  them.  He  was  leaning  toward  the 
woman;  the  two  men  on  the  mules  could  see  his  profile  stoop 
past  with  a  cold  and  ruthless  quality  like  that  of  a  stooping 
hawk;  they  could  see  that  he  was  talking  to  the  woman.  They 
passed  so,  with  that  semblance  of  a  thrush  and  a  hawk  in 
terrific  immobility  in  mid-air,  with  an  apparitionlike  sudden- 
ness: a  soft  rush  of  hooves  in  the  sere  needles,  and  were  gone, 
the  man  stooping,  the  woman  leaning  forward  like  a  tableau 
of  flight  and  pursuit  on  a  lightning  bolt. 

Then  they  were  gone.  After  a  while  the  youth  said,  "That 
one  don't  seem  to  need  no  dogs  neither."  His  head  was  still 
turned  after  the  vanished  riders.  The  other  man  said  nothing. 
"Yes,  sir,"  the  youth  said.  "Just  like  a  fox.  I  be  durn  if  I  see 
how  that  skinny  neck  of  hern  .  .  .  Like  you  look  at  a  fox  and 
you  wonder  how  a  durn  little  critter  like  it  can  tote  all  that 
brush.  And  once  I  heard  him  say" — he  in  turn  indicated, 
with  less  means  than  even  spitting,  that  it  was  the  rider  of 
the  black  horse  and  not  the  bay,  of  whom  he  spoke — "some- 
thing to  her  that  a  man  don't  say  to  a  woman  in  comp'ny, 
and  her  eyes  turned  red  like  a  fox's  and  then  brown  again  like 
a  fox."  The  other  did  not  answer.  The  youth  looked  at  him. 

The  older  man  was  leaning  a  little  forward  on  his  mule, 
looking  down  into  the  field.  "What's  that  down  there?"  he 
said.  The  youth  looked  also.  From  the  edge  of  the  woods 
beneath  them  came  a  mold-muffled  rush  of  hooves  and  then 
a  crash  of  undergrowth;  then  they  saw,  emerging  from  the 
woods  at  full  gallop,  Blair  on  the  black  horse.  He  entered  the 
rice  field  at  a  dead  run  and  began  to  cross  it  with  the  unfal- 


Fox  Hunt  593 

tering  and  undeviating  speed  of  a  crow's  flight,  following  a 
course  as  straight  as  a  surveyor's  line  toward  the  dyke  which 
bounded  the  field  at  its  other  side.  "What  did  I  tell  you?" 
the  older  man  said.  "That  fox  is  hid  yonder  on  that  ditch- 
bank.  Well,  it  ain't  the  first  time  they  ever  seen  one  another 
eye  to  eye.  lie  got  close  enough  tc  it  once  two  years  ago  to 
throw  that  ere  leather  riding-switch  at  it.'7 

"Sho,"  the  youth  said.  "These  folks  don't  need  no  dogs." 

In  the  faint,  sandy  road  which  followed  the  crest  of  the 
ridge,  and  opposite  another  gap  in  the  trees  through  which 
could  be  seen  a  pie-shaped  segment  of  the  rice  field,  and 
some  distance  in  the  rear  of  the  hunt,  stood  a  Ford  car  with 
a  light  truck  body.  Beneath  the  wheel  sat  a  uniformed  chauf- 
feur; beside  him,  hunched  into  a  black  overcoat,  was  a  man 
in  a  derby  hat.  He  had  a  smooth,  flaccid,  indoors  face  and  he 
was  smoking  a  cigarette:  a  face  sardonic  and  composed,  yet 
at  the  moment  a  little  wearily  savage,  like  that  of  an  indoors- 
bred  and  -inclined  man  subject  to  and  helpless  before  some 
natural  inclemency  like  cold  or  wet.  He  was  talking. 

"Sure.  This  all  belongs  to  her,  house  and  all.  His  old  man 
owned  it  before  they  moved  to  New  York  and  got  rich,  and 
Blair  was  born  here.  He  bought  it  back  and  gave  it  to  her  for 
a  wedding  present.  All  he  kept  was  this  what-ever-it-is  he's 
trying  to  catch." 

"And  he  can't  catch  that,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Sure.  Coming  down  here  every  year  and  staying  two 
months,  without  nothing  to  see  and  nowheres  to  go  except 
these  clay-eaters  and  Nigras.  If  he  wants  to  live  in  a  herd  of 
nigras  for  two  months  every  year,  why  don't  he  go  and  spend 
a  while  on  Lenox  Avenue?  You  don't  have  to  drink  the  gin. 
But  he's  got  to  buy  this  place  and  give  it  to  her  for  a  present 
because  she  is  one  of  these  Southerns  and  she  might  get  home- 
sick or  something.  Well,  that's  all  right,  I  guess.  But  Four- 


594  The  Middle  Ground 

teenth  Street  is  far  enough  south  for  me.  But  still,  if  it  ain't 
this,  it  might  be  Europe  or  somewheres.  I  don't  know  which 
is  worse." 

"Why  did  he  marry  her,  anyways?"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"You  want  to  know  why  he  married  her?  It  wasn't  the 
jack,  even  if  they  did  have  a  pot  full  of  it,  of  this  Oklahoma 
Indian  oil.  .  .  ." 

"Indian  oil?" 

"Sure.  The  government  give  this  Oklahoma  to  the  Indians 
because  nobody  else  would  have  it,  and  when  the  first  Indian 
got  there  and  seen  it  and  dropped  dead  and  they  tried  to  bury 
him,  when  they  stuck  the  shovel  into  the  ground  the  oil 
blowed  the  shovel  out  of  the  fellow's  hand,  and  so  the  white 
folks  come.  They  would  come  up  with  a  new  Ford  with  a 
man  from  the  garage  driving  it  and  they  would  go  to  an 
Indian  and  say,  'Well,  John,  how  much  rotten-water  you 
catchum  your  front  yard?'  and  the  Indian  would  say  three 
wells  or  thirteen  wells  or  whatever  it  is  and  the  white  man 
would  say,  'That's  too  bad.  The  way  the  White  Father  put 
the  bee  on  you  boys,  it's  too  bad.  Well,  never  mind.  You  see 
this  fine  new  car  here?  Well,  I'm  going  to  give  it  to  you  so 
you  can  load  up  your  folks  and  go  on  to  where  the  water 
don't  come  out  of  the  ground  rotten  and  where  the  White 
Father  can't  put  the  bee  on  you  no  more.'  So  the  Indian 
would  load  his  family  into  the  car,  and  the  garage  man  would 
head  the  car  west,  I  guess,  and  show  the  Indian  where  the 
gasoline  lever  was  and  hop  off  and  snag  the  first  car  back  to 
town.  See?" 

"Oh,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Sure.  So  here  we  was  in  England  one  time,  minding  our 
own  business,  when  here  this  old  dame  and  her  red-headed 
gal  come  piling  over  from  Europe  or  somewheres  where  the 
gal  was  going  to  the  high  school,  and  here  it  ain't  a  week 
before  Blair  says,  'Well,  Ernie,  we're  going  to  get  married. 


Fox  Hunt  595 

What  the  hell  do  you  think  of  that?'  And  him  a  fellow  that 
hadn't  done  nothing  all  his  life  but  dodge  skirts  so  he  could 
drink  all  night  and  try  to  ride  a  horse  to  death  all  day,  getting 
married  in  less  than  a  week.  But  soon  as  I  see  this  old  dame, 
I  know  which  one  of  her  and  her  husband  it  was  that  had 
took  them  oil  wells  off  the  Indians." 

"She  must  have  been  good,  to  put  it  on  Blair  at  all,  let 
alone  that  quick,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "Tough  on  her,  though. 
I'd  hate  for  my  daughter  to  belong  to  him.  Not  saying  noth- 
ing against  him,  of  course." 

"I'd  hate  for  my  dog  to  belong  to  him.  I  see  him  kill  a  dog 
once  because  it  wouldn't  mind  him.  Killed  it  with  a  walking 
stick,  with  one  lick.  He  says,  'Here.  Send  Andrews  here  to 
haul  this  away.' " 

"I  don't  see  how  you  put  up  with  him,"  the  chauffeur  said. 
"Driving  his  cars,  that's  one  thing.  But  you,  in  the  house 
with  him  day  and  night.  .  .  ." 

"We  settled  that.  He  used  to  ride  me  when  he  was  drink- 
ing. One  day  he  put  his  hand  on  me  and  I  told  him  I  would 
kill  him.  'When?'  he  says.  When  you  get  back  from  the 
hospital?'  'Maybe  before  I  go  there,'  I  says.  I  had  my  hand 
in  my  pocket.  1  believe  you  would,'  he  says.  So  we  get  along 
now.  I  put  the  rod  away  and  he  don't  ride  me  any  more  and 
we  get  along." 

"Why  didn't  you  quit?" 

"I  don't  know.  It's  a  good  job,  even  if  we  do  stay  all  over 
the  place  all  the  time.  Jees!  half  the  time  I  don't  know  if  the 
next  train  goes  to  Ty  Juana  or  Italy;  I  don't  know  half  the 
time  where  I'm  at  or  if  I  can  read  the  newspaper  next  morn- 
ing even.  And  I  like  him  and  he  likes  me." 

"Maybe  he  quit  riding  you  because  he  had  something  else 
to  ride,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Maybe  so.  Anyways,  when  they  married,  she  hadn't 
never  been  on  a  horse  before  in  all  her  life  until  he  bought 


596  The  Middle  Ground 

this  chestnut  horse  for  her  to  match  her  hair.  We  went  all 
the  way  to  Kentucky  for  it,  and  he  come  back  in  the  same 
car  with  it.  I  wouldn't  do  it;  I  says  I  would  do  anything  in 
reason  for  him  but  I  wasn't  going  to  ride  in  no  horse  Pullman 
with  it  empty,  let  alone  with  a  horse  already  in  it.  So  I  come 
back  in  a  lower. 

"He  didn't  tell  her  about  the  horse  until  it  was  in  the 
stable.  'But  I  don't  want  to  ride,'  she  says. 

"  'My  wife  will  be  expected  to  ride,'  he  says.  'You  are 
not  in  Oklahoma  now.' 

"  'But  I  can't  ride,'  she  says. 

"  'You  can  at  least  sit  on  top  of  the  horse  so  they  will  think 
you  can  ride  on  it,'  he  says. 

"So  she  goes  to  Callaghan,  riding  them  practice  plugs  of 
his  with  the  children  and  the  chorines  that  have  took  up  horse 
riding  to  get  ready  to  get  drafted  from  the  bushes  out  in 
Brooklyn  or  New  Jersey  to  the  Drive  or  Central  Park.  And 
her  hating  a  horse  like  it  was  a  snake  ever  since  one  day  when 
she  was  a  kid  and  gets  sick  on  a  merry-go-round." 

"How  did  you  know  all  this?"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"I  was  there.  We  used  to  stop  there  now  and  then  in  the 
afternoon  to  see  how  she  was  coming  on  the  horse.  Some- 
times she  wouldn't  even  know  we  was  there,  or  maybe  she 
did.  Anyways,  here  she  would  go,  round  and  round  among 
the  children  and  one  or  two  head  of  Zigfield's  prize  stock, 
passing  us  and  not  looking  at  us,  and  Blair  standing  there 
with  that  black  face  of  his  like  a  subway  tunnel,  like  he  knew 
all  the  time  she  couldn't  ride  no  horse  even  on  a  merry-go- 
round  and  like  he  didn't  care  if  she  learned  or  not,  just  so  he 
could  watch  her  trying  and  not  doing  it.  So  at  last  even 
Callaghan  come  to  him  and  told  him  it  wasn't  no  use.  'Very 
well/  Blair  says.  'Callaghan  says  you  may  be  able  to  sit  on 
the  top  of  a  painted  horse,  so  I  will  buy  you  a  horse  out  of  a 


Fox  Hunt  597 

dump  cart  and  nail  him  to  the  front  porch,  and  you  can  at 
least  be  sitting  on  top  of  it  when  we  come  up.' 

"  Til  go  back  to  momma's,'  she  says. 

"  1  wish  you  would,'  Blair  says.  'My  old  man  tried  all  his 
life  to  make  a  banker  out  of  me,  but  your  old  woman  done 
it  in  two  months.'  " 

"I  thought  you  said  they  had  jack  of  their  own,"  the 
chauffeur  said.  "Why  didn't  she  spend  some  of  that?" 

"I  don't  know.  Maybe  there  wasn't  no  exchange  for  In- 
dian money  in  New  York.  Anyways,  you  would  have 
thought  she  was  a  conductor  on  a  Broadway  surface  car. 
Sometimes  she  wouldn't  even  wait  until  I  could  get  Blair 
under  a  shower  and  a  jolt  into  him  before  breakfast,  to  make 
the  touch.  So  the  gal  goes  to  the  old  dame  (she  lives  on  Park 
Avenue)  and  the  gal . . ." 

"Was  you  there  too?"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Cried  .  .  .  What?  Oh.  This  was  a  maid,  a  little  Irish  kid 
named  Burke;  me  and  her  used  to  go  out  now  and  then.  She 
was  the  one  told  me  about  this  fellow,  this  Yale  college  boy, 
this  Indian  sweetheart." 

"Indian  sweetheart?" 

"They  went  to  the  same  ward  school  out  at  Oklahoma  or 
something.  Swapped  Masonic  rings  or  something  before  the 
gal's  old  man  found  three  oil  wells  in  the  henhouse  and 
dropped  dead  and  the  old  dame  took  the  gal  off  to  Europe 
to  go  to  the  school  there.  So  this  boy  goes  to  Yale  College 
and  last  year  what  does  he  do  but  marry  a  gal  out  of  a  tank 
show  that  happened  to  be  in  town.  Well,  when  she  finds 
that  Callaghan  has  give  her  up,  she  goes  to  her  old  woman  in 
Park  Avenue.  She  cries.  'I  begin  to  think  that  maybe  I  won't 
look  funny  to  his  friends,  and  then  he  comes  there  and 
watches  me.  He  don't  say  nothing,'  she  says,  'he  just  stands 
there  and  watches  me.' 

"  'After  all  I've  done  for  you,'  the  old  dame  says.  'Got  you 


598  The  Middle  Ground 

a  husband  that  any  gal  in  New  York  would  have  snapped  up. 
When  all  he  asks  is  that  you  learn  to  sit  on  top  of  a  horse  and 
not  shame  him  before  his  swell  friends.  After  all  I  done  for 
you/  the  old  dame  says. 

"  'I  didn't,'  she  says.  'I  didn't  want  to  marry  him.' 

"  'Who  did  you  want  to  marry?'  the  old  dame  says. 

"  1  didn't  want  to  marry  nobody,'  the  gal  says. 

"So  now  the  old  dame  digs  up  about  this  boy,  this  Allen 
boy  that  the  gal  ..." 

"I  thought  you  said  his  name  was  Yale,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"No.  Allen.  Yale  is  where  he  went  to  this  college." 

"You  mean  Columbia." 

"No.  Yale.  It's  another  college." 

"I  thought  the  other  one  was  named  Cornell  or  some- 
thing," the  chauffeur  said. 

"No.  It's  another  one.  Where  these  college  boys  all  come 
from  when  these  hotchachacha  deadfalls  get  raided  and  they 
give  them  all  a  ride  downtown  in  the  wagon.  Don't  you 
read  no  papers? " 

"Not  often,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "I  don't  care  nothing 
about  politics." 

"All  right.  So  this  Yale  boy's  poppa  had  found  a  oil  well 
too  and  he  was  lousy  with  it  too,  and  besides  the  old  dame 
was  mad  because  Blair  wouldn't  leave  her  live  in  the  house 
with  them  and  wouldn't  take  her  nowheres  when  we  went. 
So  the  old  dame  give  them  all  three — her  and  Blair  and  this 
college  boy — the  devil  until  the  gal  jumps  up  and  says  she 
will  ride  on  a  horse  or  bust,  and  Blair  told  her  to  go  on  and 
bust  if  she  aimed  to  ride  on  this  chestnut  horse  we  brought 
all  the  way  back  from  Kentucky.  1  don't  aim  for  you  to  ruin 
this  good  horse,'  Blair  says.  'You'll  ride  on  the  horse  I  tell 
you  to  ride  on.' 

"So  then  she  would  slip  out  the  back  way  and  go  off  and 
try  to  ride  this  horse,  this  good  one,  this  Kentucky  plug,  to 


Fox  Hunt  599 

learn  how  first  and  then  surprise  him.  The  first  time  didn't 
hurt  her,  but  the  second  time  it  broke  her  collar  bone,  and 
she  was  scared  how  Blair  would  find  it  out  until  she  found 
out  how  he  had  knew  it  all  the  time  that  she  was  riding  on 
it.  So  when  we  come  down  here  for  the  first  time  that  year 
and  Blair  started  chasing  this  lyron  or  whatever  it — " 

"Fox,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"All  right.  That's  what  I  said.  So  when — " 

"You  said  lyron,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"All  right.  Leave  it  be  a  lyron.  Anyways,  she  would  ride 
on  this  chestnut  horse,  trying  to  keep  up,  and  Blair  already 
outrun  the  dogs  and  all,  like  this  time  two  years  ago  when 
he  run  off  from  the  dogs  and  got  close  enough  to  this  lyron 
to  hit  it  with  his  riding  whip — " 

"You  mean  fox,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "A  fox,  not  a  lyron. 
Say  .  .  ."  The  other  man,  the  valet,  secretary,  whatever  he 
might  have  been,  was  lighting  another  cigarette,  crouched 
into  his  upturned  collar,  the  derby  slanted  down  upon  his 
face. 

"Say  what?  "he  said. 

"I  was  wondering,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Wondering  what?" 

"If  it's  as  hard  for  him  to  ride  off  and  leave  her  as  he 
thinks  it  is.  To  not  see  her  ruining  this  good  Kentucky 
horse.  If  he  has  to  ride  as  fast  to  do  it  as  he  thinks  he  does." 

"What  about  that?" 

"Maybe  he  don't  have  to  ride  as  fast  this  year  as  he  did  last 
year,  to  run  off  from  her.  What  do  you  think  about  it?" 

"Think  about  what?" 

"I  was  wondering." 

"What  wondering?" 

"If  he  knowed  he  don't  have  to  ride  as  fast  this  year  or 
not." 

"Oh.  You  mean  Gawtrey." 


6oo  The  Middle  Ground 

"That  his  name?  Gawtrey?" 

"That's  it.  Steve  Gawtrey." 

"What  about  him?" 

"He's  all  right.  He'll  eat  your  grub  and  drink  your  liquor 
and  fool  your  women  and  let  you  say  when." 

"Well,  what  about  that?" 

"Nothing.  I  said  he  was  all  right.  He's  fine  by  me." 

"How  by  you?" 

"Just  fine,  see?  I  done  him  a  little  favor  once,  and  he  done 
me  a  little  favor,  see?" 

"Oh,"  the  chauffeur  said.  He  did  not  look  at  the  other. 
"How  long  has  she  known  him?" 

"Six  months  and  maybe  a  week.  We  was  up  in  Connecticut 
and  he  was  there.  He  hates  a  horse  about  as  much  as  she 
does,  but  me  and  Callaghan  are  all  right  too;  I  done  Callaghan 
a  little  favor  once  too,  so  about  a  week  after  we  come  back 
from  Connecticut,  I  have  Callaghan  come  in  and  tell  Blair 
about  this  other  swell  dog,  without  telling  Blair  who  owned 
it.  So  that  night  I  says  to  Blair,  'I  hear  Mr.  Van  Dyming 
wants  to  buy  this  horse  from  Mr.  Gawtrey  too.'  'Buy  what 
horse?'  Blair  says.  'I  don't  know,'  I  says.  'One  horse  looks 
just  like  another  to  me  as  long  as  it  stays  out  doors  where  it 
belongs,'  I  says.  'So  do  they  to  Gawtrey,'  Blair  says.  'What 
horse  are  you  talking  about?'  'This  horse  Callaghan  was  tell- 
ing you  about,'  I  says.  Then  he  begun  to  curse  Callaghan. 
'He  told  me  he  would  get  that  horse  for  me,'  he  says.  'It  don't 
belong  to  Callaghan,'  I  says,  'it's  Mr.  Gawtrey's  horse.'  So 
here  it's  two  nights  later  when  he  brings  Gawtrey  home  to 
dinner  with  him.  That  night  I  says,  'I  guess  you  bought  that 
horse.'  He  had  been  drinking  and  he  cursed  Gawtrey  and 
Callaghan  too.  'He  won't  sell  it,'  he  says.  'You  want  to  keep 
after  him,'  I  says.  'A  man  will  sell  anything.'  'How  keep  after 
him,  when  he  won't  listen  to  a  price?'  he  says.  'Leave  your 


Fox  Hunt  60 1 

wife  do  the  talking,'  I  says.  'He'll  listen  to  her.'  That  was 
when  he  hit  me. . . ." 

"I  thought  you  said  he  just  put  his  hand  on  you,"  the 
chauffeur  said. 

"I  mean  he  just  kind  of  flung  out  his  hand  when  he  was 
talking,  and  I  happened  to  kind  of  turn  my  face  toward  him 
at  the  same  time.  He  never  aimed  to  hit  me  because  he 
knowed  I  would  have  took  him.  I  told  him  so.  I  had  the  rod 
in  my  hand,  inside  my  coat,  all  the  while. 

"So  after  that  Gawtrey  would  come  back  maybe  once  a 
week  because  I  told  him  I  had  a  good  job  and  I  didn't  aim  to 
have  to  shoot  myself  out  of  it  for  no  man  except  myself 
maybe.  He  come  once  a  week.  The  first  time  she  wouldn't 
leave  him  in.  Then  one  day  I  am  reading  the  paper  (you 
ought  to  read  a  paper  now  and  then.  You  ought  to  keep  up 
with  the  day  of  the  week,  at  least)  and  I  read  where  this 
Yale  Allen  boy  has  run  off  with  a  show  gal  and  they  had 
fired  him  off  the  college  for  losing  his  amateur's  standing, 
I  guess.  I  guess  that  made  him  mad,  after  he  had  done  jumped 
the  college  anyways.  So  I  cut  it  out,  and  this  Burke  kid  (me 
and  her  was  all  right,  too)  she  puts  it  on  the  breakfast  tray 
that  A.M.  And  that  afternoon,  when  Gawtrey  happens  to 
come  back,  she  leaves  him  in,  and  this  Burke  kid  happens  to 
walk  into  the  room  sudden  with  something — I  don't  know 
what  it  was — and  here  is  Gawtrey  and  her  like  a  fade-out  in 
the  pitchers." 

"So  Blair  got  his  horse,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"What  horse?" 

"The  horse  Gawtrey  wouldn't  sell  him." 

"How  could  he,  when  Gawtrey  never  owned  no  horse  no 
more  than  I  do,  unless  it's  maybe  some  dog  still  finishing  last 
year's  Selling  Plate  at  Pimlico?  Besides,  Gawtrey  don't  owe 
Blair  no  horse  yet." 

"Not  yet?" 


602  The  Middle  Ground 

"She  don't  like  him,  see.  The  first  time  he  come  to  the 
house  alone  she  wouldn't  leave  him  into  the  front  door.  And 
the  next  time,  too,  if  this  Burke  kid  hadn't  happened  to  left 
that  piece  out  of  the  papers  about  this  college  boy  on  the 
breakfast  tray.  And  the  time  after  that  when  he  come,  she 
wouldn't  leave  him  in  again;  it  was  like  he  might  have  been 
a  horse  maybe,  or  even  a  dog,  because  she  hated  a  dog  worse 
than  she  did  a  horse  even,  even  if  she  didn't  have  to  try  to  ride 
on  no  dog.  If  it  had  have  been  a  dog,  Blair  wouldn't  have 
never  got  her  to  even  try  to  ride  on  it.  So  I'd  have  to  go  out 
and  steam  Callaghan  up  again  until  it  got  to  where  I  wasn't 
no  more  than  one  of  these  Russian  droshkies  or  something." 

" A  Russian  what?" 

"One  of  these  fellows  that  can't  call  their  own  soul.  Every 
time  I  would  leave  the  house  I  would  have  to  meet  Gawtrey 
in  a  dump  somewheres  and  then  go  to  see  Callaghan  and 
soap  him  down,  because  he  is  one  of  these  boys  with  ideas, 
see?" 

"What  kind  of  ideas?" 

"Just  ideas.  Out  of  the  Sunday  school  paper.  About  how 
this  wasn't  right  because  he  liked  her  and  felt  sorry  for  her 
and  so  he  wanted  to  tell  Blair  he  had  been  lying  and  that 
Gawtrey  hadn't  never  owned  no  horse.  Because  a  fellow 
that  won't  take  a  nickel  when  it's  throwed  right  in  his  face, 
he  ain't  never  as  big  a  fool  to  nobody  as  he  is  to  the  man  that 
can  have  some  sense  about  religion  and  keep  all  these  golden 
rules  in  the  Sunday  school  paper  where  they  come  from. 
If  the  Lord  didn't  want  a  man  to  cut  his  own  grass,  why  did 
He  put  Sunday  on  Sunday  like  he  did?  Tell  me  that." 

"I  guess  you're  right,"  the  chauffeur  said. 

"Sure  I'm  right.  Jees!  I  told  Callaghan  Blair  would  cut  his 
throat  and  mine  both  for  a  Rockefeller  quarter,  same  as  any 
sensible  man,  and  I  ast  him  if  he  thought  gals  had  done  all 
give  out  with  Blair's  wife;  if  she  was  going  to  be  the  last  one 
they  made." 


Fox  Hunt  603 

"So  he  don't  .  .  ."  the  chauffeur  said.  He  ceased;  then  he 
said,  "Look  there." 

The  other  man  looked.  Through  the  gap  in  the  trees,  in 
the  center  of  the  segment  of  visible  rice  field,  they  could 
see  a  tiny  pink-and-black  dot.  It  was  almost  a  mile  away;  it 
did  not  appear  to  be  moving  fast. 

"What's  that?"  the  other  said.  "The  fox?" 

"It's  Blair,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "He's  going  fast.  I  wonder 
where  the  others  are."  They  watched  the  pink-and-black  dot 
go  on  and  disappear. 

"They've  went  back  home  if  they  had  any  sense,"  the 
other  said.  "So  we  might  as  well  go  back  too." 

"I  guess  so,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "So  Gawtrey  don't  owe 
Blair  no  horse  yet." 

"Not  yet.  She  don't  like  him.  She  wouldn't  leave  him  in 
the  house  again  after  that  day,  and  this  Burke  kid  says  she 
come  back  from  a  party  one  night  because  Gawtrey  was 
there.  And  if  it  hadn't  been  for  me,  Gawtrey  wouldn't  a  got 
invited  down  here,  because  she  told  Blair  that  if  he  come,  she 
wouldn't  come.  So  I'd  have  to  work  on  Callaghan  again  so 
he  would  come  in  once  a  day  and  steam  Blair  up  again  about 
the  horse  to  get  Gawtrey  invited,  because  Blair  was  going  to 
make  her  come."  The  chauffeur  got  out  of  the  car  and  went 
around  to  the  crank.  The  other  man  lighted  a  cigarette.  "But 
Blair  ain't  got  his  horse  yet.  You  take  a  woman  with  long 
hair  like  she's  got,  long  as  she  keeps  her  hair  up,  it's  all  right. 
But  once  you  catch  her  with  her  hair  down,  it's  just  been 
too  bad." 

The  chauffeur  engaged  the  crank.  Then  he  paused, 
stooped,  his  head  turned.  "Listen,"  he  said. 

"What?" 

"That  horn."  The  silver  sound  came  again,  faint,  distant, 
prolonged. 

"What's  that?"  the  other  said.  "Do  they  have  to  keep 
soldiers  here?" 


604  The  Middle  Ground 

"It's  the  horn  they  blow,"  the  chauffeur  said.  "It  means 
they  have  caught  that  fox." 

"Jees!"  the  other  said.  "Maybe  we  will  go  back  to  town 
to-morrow." 

The  two  men  on  the  mules  recrossed  the  rice  field  and 
mounted  the  ridge  into  the  pines. 

"Well,"  the  youth  said,  "I  reckon  he's  satisfied  now." 

"You  reckon  he  is?"  the  other  said.  He  rode  a  little  in 
front  of  the  youth.  He  did  not  turn  his  head  when  he  spoke. 

"He's  run  that  fox  three  years,"  the  youth  said.  "And  now 
he's  killed  it.  How  come  he  ain't  satisfied?" 

The  older  man  did  not  look  back.  He  slouched  on  his 
gaunt,  shabby  mule,  his  overalled  legs  dangling.  He  spoke 
in  a  tone  of  lazy  and  ironical  contempt.  "I  reckon  that's 
something  about  gentle-men  you  won't  never  know." 

"Fox  is  fox,  to  me,"  the  youth  said.  "Can't  eat  it.  Might 
as  well  pizen  it  and  save  them  horses." 

"Sho,"  the  other  said.  "That's  something  else  about  them 
you  won't  never  know." 

"About  who?" 

"Gentle-men."  They  mounted  the  ridge  and  turned  into 
the  faint,  sandy  road.  "Well,"  the  older  man  said,  "gentle- 
man or  not,  I  reckon  that's  the  only  fox  in  Cal-lina  that  ever 
got  itself  killed  that-a-way.  Maybe  that's  the  way  they  kills 
a  fox  up  north." 

"Then  I  be  durn  if  I  ain't  glad  I  don't  live  up  there,"  the 
youth  said. 

"I  reckon  so,"  the  other  said.  "I  done  got  along  pretty  well 
here  for  some  time,  myself." 

"I'd  like  to  see  it  once  though,"  the  youth  said. 

"I  don't  reckon  I  would,"  the  other  said,  "if  living  there 
makes  a  man  go  to  all  this  trouble  to  kill  a  fox." 

They  were  riding  up  the  ridge,  among  the  pines,  the  holly 


Fox  Hunt  605 

bushes,  the  huckleberries  and  briers.  Suddenly  the  older  man 
checked  his  mule,  extending  his  hand  backward. 

"What?"  the  youth  said.  "What  is  it?" 

The  pause  was  hardly  a  pause;  again  the  older  man  rode 
on,  though  he  began  to  whistle,  the  tone  carrying  and  clear 
though  not  loud,  the  tune  lugubrious  and  hymnlike;  from 
beyond  the  bushes  which  bordered  the  path  just  ahead  of 
them  there  came  the  snort  of  a  horse.  "Who  is  it?"  the  youth 
said.  The  other  said  nothing.  The  two  mules  went  on  in 
single  file.  Then  the  youth  said  quietly,  "She's  got  her  hair 
down.  It  looks  like  the  sun  on  a  spring  branch."  The  mules 
paced  on  in  the  light,  whispering  soil,  their  ears  bobbing,  the 
two  men  sitting  loose,  with  dangling,  stirrupless  feet. 

The  woman  sat  the  mare,  her  hair  a  bright  cloud,  a  copper 
cascade  in  the  sun,  about  her  shoulders,  her  arms  lifted  and 
her  hands  busy  in  it.  The  man  sat  the  bay  horse  a  short  dis- 
tance away.  He  was  lighting  a  cigarette.  The  two  mules 
came  up,  tireless,  shambling,  with  drooping  heads  and  nod- 
ding ears.  The  youth  looked  at  the  woman  with  a  stare  at 
once  bold  and  covert;  the  older  man  did  not  cease  his  mellow, 
slow,  tuneless  whistling;  he  did  not  appear  to  look  at  them  at 
all.  He  appeared  to  be  about  to  ride  past  without  a  sign 
when  the  man  on  the  bay  spoke  to  him. 

"They  caught  it,  did  they?"  he  said.  "We  heard  the  horn." 

"Yaas,"  the  man  in  overalls  said,  in  a  dry,  drawling  tone. 
"Yaas.  It  got  caught.  'Twarn't  nothing  else  it  could  do  but 
get  caught." 

The  youth  watched  the  woman  looking  at  the  older  man, 
her  hands  arrested  for  an  instant  in  her  hair. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  the  man  on  the  bay  said. 

"He  rode  it  down  on  that  black  horse,"  the  man  in  over- 
alls said. 

"You  mean,  there  were  no  dogs  there?" 

"I  reckon  not,"  the  other  said.  "Them  dogs  never  had  no 


606  The  Middle  Ground 

black  horses  to  ride."  The  two  mules  had  halted;  the  older 
man  faced  the  man  on  the  bay  a  little,  his  face  hidden  be- 
neath his  shapeless  hat.  "It  crossed  the  old  field  and  dropped 
over  that  ditch-bank  and  hid,  allowing  for  him  to  jump  the 
ditch,  and  then  it  aimed  to  double  back,  I  reckon.  I  reckon 
it  wasn't  scared  of  the  dogs.  I  reckon  it  had  fooled  them  so 
much  it  wasn't  worried  about  them.  I  reckon  he  was  what 
worried  it.  1  reckon  him  and  it  knowed  one  another  after 
these  three  years  same  as  you  maybe  knowed  your  maw  or 
your  wife  maybe,  only  you  ain't  never  been  married  none 
to  speak  of.  Anyway  it  was  on  the  ditch-bank,  and  he 
knowed  it  was  there  and  he  cut  straight  across  the  field  with- 
out giving  it  no  spell  to  breathe  in.  I  reckon  maybe  yawl 
seen  him,  riding  straight  across  that  field  like  he  could  see 
like  a  hawk  and  smell  like  a  dog.  And  the  fox  was  there, 
where  it  had  done  fooled  the  dogs.  But  it  never  had  no  spell 
to  breathe  in,  and  when  it  had  to  run  again  and  dropped  over 
the  ditch-bank,  it  dropped  into  the  briers,  I  reckon,  and  it 
was  too  tired  to  get  out  and  run.  And  he  come  up  and  jumped 
that  ditch,  just  like  that  fox  aimed  for  him  to.  Only  the  fox 
was  still  in  the  briers,  and  while  he  was  going  through  the  air 
he  looked  down  and  seen  the  fox  and  he  dumb  off  the  horse 
while  it  was  jumping  and  dropped  feet  first  into  the  briers 
like  the  fox  done.  Maybe  it  dodged  some  then;  I  don't 
know.  He  says  it  just  swirled  and  jumped  at  his  face  and  he 
knocked  it  down  with  his  fist  and  trompled  it  dead  with  his 
boot-heels.  The  dogs  hadn't  got  there  then.  But  it  so  hap- 
pened he  never  needed  them."  He  ceased  talking  and  sat  for 
a  moment  longer,  sloven  and  inert  upon  the  shabby,  patient 
mule,  his  face  shadowed  beneath  his  hat.  "Well,"  he  said,  "I 
reckon  I'll  get  on.  I  ain't  had  ne'er  a  bite  of  breakfast  yet. 
I'll  bid  yawl  good  morning."  He  put  his  mule  into  motion, 
the  second  mule  following.  He  did  not  look  back. 

But  the  youth  did.  He  looked  back  at  the  man  on  the  bay 


Fox  Hunt  607 

horse,  the  cigarette  burning  in  his  hand,  the  plume  of  smoke 
faint  and  windless  in  the  sunny  silence,  and  at  the  woman 
on  the  chestnut,  her  arms  lifted  and  her  hands  busy  in  her 
bright,  cloudy  hair;  projecting,  trying  to  project,  himself, 
after  the  way  of  the  young,  toward  that  remote  and  inac- 
cessible she,  trying  to  encompass  the  vain  and  inarticulate 
instant  of  division  and  despair  which,  being  young,  was  very 
like  rage:  rage  at  the  lost  woman,  despair  of  the  man  in 
whose  shape  there  walked  the  tragic  and  inescapable  earth 
her  ruin.  "She  was  crying,"  he  said,  then  he  began  to  curse, 
savagely,  without  point  or  subject. 

"Come  on,"  the  older  man  said.  He  did  not  look  back.  "I 
reckon  them  hunt  breakfast  hoe-cakes  will  be  about  ready 
time  we  get  home." 


Pennsylvania  Station 


THEY  SEEMED  to  bring  with  them  the  smell  of  the  snow 
falling  in  Seventh  Avenue.  Or  perhaps  the  other  people  who 
had  entered  before  them  had  done  it,  bringing  it  with  them 
in  their  lungs  and  exhaling  it,  filling  the  arcade  with  a  stale 
chill  like  that  which  might  lie  unwinded  and  spent  upon  the 
cold  plains  of  infinity  itself.  In  it  the  bright  and  serried  shop- 
windows  had  a  fixed  and  insomniac  glare  like  the  eyes  of 
people  drugged  with  coffee,  sitting  up  with  a  strange  corpse. 

In  the  rotunda,  where  the  people  appeared  as  small  and 
intent  as  ants,  the  smell  and  sense  of  snow  still  lingered, 
though  high  now  among  the  steel  girders,  spent  and  vitiated 
too  and  filled  here  with  a  weary  and  ceaseless  murmuring, 
like  the  voices  of  pilgrims  upon  the  infinite  plain,  like  the 
voices  of  all  the  travelers  who  had  ever  passed  through  it 
quiring  and  ceaseless  as  lost  children. 

They  went  on  toward  the  smoking  room.  It  was  the  old 
man  who  looked  in  the  door.  "All  right,"  he  said.  He  looked 
sixty,  though  he  was  probably  some  age  like  forty-eight  or 
fifty-two  or  fifty-eight.  He  wore  a  long  overcoat  with  a  col- 
lar which  had  once  been  fur,  and  a  cap  with  earflaps  like  the 
caricature  of  an  up-State  farmer.  His  shoes  were  not  mates. 
"There  ain't  many  here  yet.  It  will  be  some  time  now." 
While  they  stood  there  three  other  men  came  and  looked 
into  the  smoking  room  with  that  same  air  not  quite  diffident 

609 


610  The  Middle  Ground 

and  not  quite  furtive,  with  faces  and  garments  that  seemed 
to  give  off  that  same  effluvium  of  soup  kitchens  and  Salvation 
Army  homes.  They  entered;  the  old  man  led  the  way  toward 
the  rear  of  the  room,  among  the  heavy,  solid  benches  on 
which  still  more  men  of  all  ages  sat  in  attitudes  of  thought 
or  repose  and  looking  as  transient  as  scarecrows  blown  by  a 
departed  wind  upon  a  series  of  rock  ledges.  The  old  man 
chose  a  bench  and  sat  down,  making  room  for  the  young 
man  beside  him.  "I  used  to  think  that  if  you  sat  somewhere 
about  the  middle,  he  might  skip  you.  But  I  found  out  that 
it  don't  make  much  difference  where  you  sit." 

"Nor  where  you  lie,  either,"  the  young  man  said.  He  wore 
an  army  overcoat,  new,  and  a  pair  of  yellow  army  brogans 
of  the  sort  that  can  be  bought  from  so-called  army  stores 
for  a  dollar  or  so.  He  had  not  shaved  in  some  time.  "And  it 
don't  make  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  difference  whether  you  are 
breathing  or  not  while  you  are  lying  there.  I  wish  I  had  a 
cigarette.  I  have  got  used  to  not  eating  but  be  damned  if 
I  don't  hate  to  get  used  to  not  smoking." 

"Sure  now,"  the  old  man  said.  "I  wish  I  had  a  cigarette 
to  give  you.  I  ain't  used  tobacco  myself  since  I  went  to 
Florida.  That  was  funny:  I  hadn't  smoked  in  ten  years,  yet 
as  soon  as  I  got  back  to  New  York,  that  was  the  first  thing 
I  thought  about.  Isn't  that  funny?" 

"Yes,"  the  young  man  said.  "Especially  if  you  never  had 
any  tobacco  when  you  thought  about  wanting  it  again." 

"Wanting  it  and  not  having  it  couldn't  have  worried  me 
then,"  the  old  man  said.  "I  was  all  right  then.  Until  I — "  He 
settled  himself.  Into  his  face  came  that  rapt  expression  of 
the  talkative  old,  without  heat  or  bewilderment  or  rancor. 
"What  confused  me  was  I  thought  all  the  time  that  the  bury- 
ing money  was  all  right.  As  soon  as  I  found  out  about 
Danny's  trouble  I  come  right  back  to  New  York " 


Pennsy  Ivania  Station  6  1  1 

II 


is  this  Danny,  anyway?"  the  young  man  said. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?  He's  Sister's  boy.  There  wasn't  any 
of  us  left  but  Sister  and  Danny  and  me.  Yet  I  was  the  weakly 
one.  The  one  they  all  thought  wouldn't  live.  I  was  give  up 
to  die  twice  before  I  was  fifteen,  yet  I  outlived  them  all. 
Outlived  all  eight  of  them  when  Sister  died  three  years  ago. 
That  was  why  I  went  to  Florida  to  live.  Because  I  thought 
I  couldn't  stand  the  winters  here.  Yet  I  have  stood  three  of 
them  now  since  Sister  died.  But  sometimes  it  looks  like  a  man 
can  stand  just  about  anything  if  he  don't  believe  he  can 
stand  it.  Don't  you  think  so?" 

"I  don't  know,"  the  young  man  said.  "Which  trouble 
was  this?" 

"Which?" 

"Which  trouble  was  Danny  in  now?" 

"Don't  get  me  wrong  about  Danny.  He  wasn't  bad;  just 
wild,  like  any  young  fellow.  But  not  bad." 

"All  right,"  the  young  man  said.  "It  wasn't  any  trouble 
then." 

"No.  He's  a  good  boy.  He's  in  Chicago  now.  Got  a  good 
job  now.  The  lawyer  in  Jacksonville  got  it  for  him  right 
after  I  come  back  to  New  York.  I  didn't  know  he  had  it 
until  I  tried  to  wire  him  that  Sister  was  dead.  Then  I  found 
that  he  was  in  Chicago,  with  a  good  job.  He  sent  Sister  a 
wreath  of  flowers  that  must  have  cost  two  hundred  dollars. 
Sent  it  by  air;  that  cost  something,  too.  He  couldn't  come 
himself  because  he  had  just  got  the  job  and  his  boss  was  out 
of  town  and  he  couldn't  get  away.  He  was  a  good  boy.  That 
was  why  when  that  trouble  come  up  about  that  woman  on 
the  floor  below  that  accused  him  of  stealing  the  clothes  off 
her  clothes-line,  that  I  told  Sister  I  would  send  him  the  rail- 
road fare  to  Jacksonville,  where  I  could  look  after  him.  Get 


6 1 2  The  Middle  Ground 

him  clean  away  from  them  low-life  boys  around  the  saloons 
and  such.  I  come  all  the  way  from  Florida  to  see  about  him. 
That  was  how  I  happened  to  go  with  Sister  to  see  Mr.  Pinck- 
ski,  before  she  ever  begun  to  pay  on  the  coffin.  She  wanted 
me  to  go  with  her.  Because  you  know  how  an  old  woman 
is.  Only  she  wasn't  old,  even  if  her  and  me  had  outlived  all 
the  other  seven.  But  you  know  how  an  old  woman  seems 
to  get  comfort  out  of  knowing  she  will  be  buried  right  in 
case  there  isn't  any  of  her  kin  there  to  'tend  to  it.  I  guess 
maybe  that  keeps  a  lot  of  them  going." 

"And  especially  with  Danny  already  too  busy  to  see  if 
she  was  buried  at  all,  himself." 

The  old  man,  his  mouth  already  shaped  for  further  speech, 
paused  and  looked  at  the  young  man.  "What?" 

"I  say,  if  getting  into  the  ground  at  last  don't  keep  some 
of  them  going,  I  don't  know  what  it  is  that  does." 

"Oh.  Maybe  so.  That  ain't  never  worried  me.  I  guess 
because  I  was  already  give  up  to  die  twice  before  I  was 
fifteen.  Like  now  every  time  a  winter  gets  through,  I  just 
say  to  myself,  'Well,  I'll  declare.  Here  I  am  again.'  That  was 
why  I  went  to  Florida:  because  of  the  winters  here.  I  hadn't 
been  back  until  I  got  Sister's  letter  about  Danny,  and  I  didn't 
stay  long  then.  And  if  I  hadn't  got  the  letter  about  Danny, 
maybe  I  wouldn't  ever  have  come  back.  But  I  come  back, 
and  that  was  when  she  took  me  with  her  to  see  Mr.  Pinckski 
before  she  begun  to  pay  on  the  coffin,  for  me  to  see  if  it  was 
all  right  like  Mr.  Pinckski  said.  He  told  her  how  the  insur- 
ance companies  would  charge  her  interest  all  the  time.  He 
showed  us  with  the  pencil  and  paper  how  if  she  paid  her 
money  to  the  insurance  companies  it  would  be  the  same  as 
if  she  worked  six  minutes  longer  every  night  and  give  the 
money  for  the  extra  six  minutes  to  the  insurance  company. 
But  Sister  said  she  wouldn't  mind  that,  just  six  minutes, 


Pennsy  Ivania  Station  6 1 3 

because  at  three  or  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  six  minutes 
wouldn't " 

"Three  or  four  o'clock  in  the  morning?" 

"She  scrubbed  in  them  tall  buildings  down  about  Wall 
Street  somewhere.  Her  and  some  other  ladies.  They  would 
help  one  another  night  about,  so  they  could  get  done  at  the 
same  time  and  come  home  on  the  subway  together.  So  Mr. 
Pinckski  showed  us  with  the  pencil  and  paper  how  if  she 
lived  fifteen  years  longer  say  for  instance  Mr.  Pinckski  said, 
it  would  be  the  same  as  if  she  worked  three  years  and  eighty- 
five  days  without  getting  any  pay  for  it.  Like  for  three  years 
and  eighty-five  days  she  would  be  working  for  the  insurance 
companies  for  nothing.  Like  instead  of  living  fifteen  years, 
she  would  actually  live  only  eleven  years  and  two  hundred 
and  eight  days.  Sister  stood  there  for  a  while,  holding  her 
purse  under  her  shawl.  Then  she  said,  'If  I  was  paying  the 
insurance  companies  to  bury  me  instead  of  you,  I  would 
have  to  live  three  years  and  eighty-five  days  more  before  I 
could  afford  to  die?' 

"  Well,'  Mr.  Pinckski  said,  like  he  didn't  know  what  to 
say.  'Why,  yes.  Put  it  that  way,  then.  You  would  work  for 
the  insurance  companies  three  years  and  eighty-five  days 
and  not  get  any  pay  for  it.' 

"  It  ain't  the  work  I  mind,'  Sister  said.  'It  ain't  the  work- 
ing.' Then  she  took  the  first  half  a  dollar  out  of  her  purse 
and  put  it  down  on  Mr.  Pinckski's  desk." 


Ill 

Now  AND  THEN,  with  a  long  and  fading  reverberation,  a 
subway  train  passed  under  their  feet.  Perhaps  they  thought 
momentarily  of  two  green  eyes  tunneling  violently  through 
the  earth  without  apparent  propulsion  or  guidance,  as 
though  of  their  own  unparalleled  violence  creating,  like 


6 14  The  Middle  Ground 

spaced  beads  on  a  string,  lighted  niches  in  whose  wan  and 
fleeting  glare  human  figures  like  corpses  set  momentarily  on 
end  in  a  violated  grave  yard  leaned  in  one  streaming  and 
rigid  direction  and  flicked  away. 

"Because  I  was  a  weak  child.  They  give  me  up  to  die 
twice  before  I  was  fifteen.  There  was  an  insurance  agent 
sold  me  a  policy  once,  worried  at  me  until  I  said  all  right, 
I  would  take  it.  Then  they  examined  me  and  the  only  policy 
they  would  give  me  was  a  thousand  dollars  at  the  rate  of 
fifty  years  old.  And  me  just  twenty-seven  then.  I  was  the 
third  one  of  eight,  yet  when  Sister  died  three  years  ago  I 
had  outlived  them  all.  So  when  we  got  that  trouble  of 
Danny's  about  the  woman  that  said  he  stole  the  clothes 
fixed  up,  Sister  could " 

"How  did  you  get  it  fixed  up?" 

"We  paid  the  money  to  the  man  that  his  job  was  to  look 
after  the  boys  that  Danny  run  with.  The  alderman  knew 
Danny  and  the  other  boys.  It  was  all  right  then.  So  Sister 
could  go  on  paying  the  fifty  cents  to  Mr.  Pinckski  every 
week.  Because  we  fixed  it  up  for  me  to  send  the  railroad 
fare  for  Danny  as  soon  as  I  could,  so  he  could  be  in  Florida 
where  I  could  look  out  for  him.  And  I  went  back  to  Jackson- 
ville and  Sister  could  pay  Mr.  Pinckski  the  fifty  cents  with- 
out worrying.  Each  Sunday  morning  when  her  and  the 
other  ladies  got  through,  they  would  go  home  by  Mr, 
Pinckski's  and  wake  him  up  and  Sister  would  give  him  the 
fifty  cents. 

"He  never  minded  what  time  it  was  because  Sister  was  a 
good  customer.  He  told  her  it  would  be  all  right,  whatever 
time  she  got  there,  to  wake  him  up  and  pay  him.  So  some- 
times it  would  be  as  late  as  four  o'clock,  especially  if  they 
had  had  a  parade  or  something  and  the  buildings  messed  up 
with  confetti  and  maybe  flags.  Maybe  four  times  a  year  the 
lady  that  lived  next  door  to  Sister  would  write  me  a  letter 


Pennsy  Ivania  Station  6 1 5 

telling  me  how  much  Sister  had  paid  to  Mr.  Pinckski  and 
that  Danny  was  getting  along  fine,  behaving  and  not  run- 
ning around  with  them  tough  boys  any  more.  So  when  I 
could  I  sent  Danny  the  railroad  fare  to  Florida.  I  never 
expected  to  hear  about  the  money. 

"That  was  what  confused  me.  Sister  could  read  some. 
She  could  read  the  church  weekly  fine  that  the  priest  gave 
her,  but  she  never  was  much  for  writing.  She  said  if  she 
could  just  happen  to  find  a  pencil  the  size  of  a  broom  handle 
that  she  could  use  both  hands  on,  that  she  could  write  fine. 
But  regular  pencils  were  too  small  for  her.  She  said  she 
couldn't  feel  like  she  had  anything  in  her  hand.  So  I  never 
expected  to  hear  about  the  money.  I  just  sent  it  and  then  I 
fixed  up  with  the  landlady  where  I  was  living  for  a  place 
for  Danny,  just  thinking  that  some  day  soon  Danny  would 
just  come  walking  in  with  his  suit-case.  The  landlady  kept 
the  room  a  week  for  me,  and  then  a  man  come  in  to  rent  it, 
so  there  wasn't  anything  she  could  do  but  give  me  the  re- 
fusal of  it. 

"That  wasn't  no  more  than  fair,  after  she  had  already 
kept  it  open  a  week  for  me.  So  I  begun  to  pay  for  the  room 
and  when  Danny  didn't  come  I  thought  maybe  something 
had  come  up,  with  the  hard  winter  and  all,  and  Sister  needed 
the  money  worse  than  to  send  Danny  to  Florida  on  it,  or 
maybe  she  thought  he  was  too  young  yet.  So  after  three 
months  I  let  the  room  go.  Every  three  or  four  months  I 
would  get  the  letter  from  the  lady  next  door  to  Sister,  about 
how  every  Sunday  morning  Sister  and  the  other  ladies 
would  go  to  Mr.  Pinckski  and  pay  him  the  fifty  cents.  After 
fifty-two  weeks,  Mr.  Pinckski  set  the  coffin  aside,  with  her 
name  cut  on  a  steel  plate  and  nailed  onto  the  coffin,  her  full 
name:  Mrs.  Margaret  Noonan  Gihon. 

"It  was  a  cheap  coffin  at  first,  just  a  wooden  box,  but 
after  she  had  paid  the  second  fifty-two  half  a  dollars  he  took 


616  The  Middle  Ground 

the  name  plate  off  of  it  and  nailed  it  onto  a  better  coffin, 
letting  her  pick  it  out  herself  in  case  she  died  that  year.  And 
after  the  third  fifty-two  half  a  dollars  he  let  her  pick  out  a 
still  finer  one,  and  the  next  year  one  with  gold  handles  on  it. 
He  would  let  her  come  in  and  look  at  it  whenever  she 
wanted  and  bring  whoever  she  wanted  with  her,  to  see  the 
coffin  and  her  name  cut  in  the  steel  plate  and  nailed  onto  it. 
Even  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  he  would  come  down 
in  his  night-shirt  and  unlock  the  door  and  turn  the  light  on 
for  Sister  and  the  other  ladies  to  go  back  and  look  at  the 
coffin. 

"Each  year  it  got  to  be  a  better  coffin,  with  Mr.  Pinckski 
showing  the  other  ladies  with  the  pencil  and  paper  how 
Sister  would  have  the  coffin  paid  out  soon  and  then  she 
would  just  be  paying  on  the  gold  handles  and  the  lining. 
He  let  her  pick  out  the  lining  too  that  she  wanted  and  when 
the  lady  next  door  wrote  me  the  next  letter,  Sister  sent  me 
a  sample  of  the  lining  and  a  picture  of  the  handles.  Sister 
drew  the  picture,  but  she  never  could  use  a  pencil  because 
she  always  said  the  handle  was  too  small  for  her  to  hold, 
though  she  could  read  the  church  weekly  the  priest  gave 
her,  because  she  said  the  Lord  illuminated  it  for  her." 

"Is  that  so?"  the  young  man  said.  "Jesus,  I  wish  I  either 
had  a  smoke  or  I  would  quit  thinking  about  it." 

"Yes.  And  a  sample  of  the  lining.  But  I  couldn't  tell  much 
about  it  except  that  it  suited  Sister  and  that  she  liked  it  how 
Mr.  Pinckski  would  let  her  bring  in  the  other  ladies  to  look 
at  the  trimmings  and  help  her  make  up  her  mind.  Because 
Mr.  Pinckski  said  he  would  trust  her  because  he  didn't 
believe  she  would  go  and  die  on  him  to  hurt  his  business  like 
some  did,  and  him  not  charging  her  a  cent  of  interest  like  the 
insurance  companies  would  charge.  All  she  had  to  do  was 
just  to  stop  there  every  Sunday  morning  and  pay  him  the 
half  a  dollar." 


Pennsylvania  Station  6 1 7 

"Is  that  so?"  the  young  man  said,  "He  must  be  in  the 
poor-house  now." 

"What?"  The  old  man  looked  at  the  young  man,  his  ex- 
pression fixed.  "Who  in  the  poor-house  now?" 

IV 

"WHERE  WAS  Danny  all  this  time?  Still  doing  his  settle- 
ment work?" 

"Yes.  He  worked  whenever  he  could  get  a  job.  But  a  high- 
spirited  young  fellow,  without  nobody  but  a  widow  woman 
mother,  without  no  father  to  learn  him  how  you  have  to 
give  and  take  in  this  world.  That  was  why  I  wanted  him 
down  in  Florida  with  me." 

Now  his  arrested  expression  faded;  he  went  easily  into 
narration  again  with  a  kind  of  physical  and  unlistening  joy, 
like  a  checked  and  long-broken  horse  slacked  off  again. 

"That  was  what  got  me  confused.  I  had  already  sent  the 
money  for  him  to  come  to  Jacksonville  on  and  when  I  never 
heard  about  it  I  just  thought  maybe  Sister  needed  it  with 
the  hard  winter  and  all  or  maybe  she  thought  Danny  was 
too  young,  like  women  will.  And  then  about  eight  months 
after  I  let  the  room  go  I  had  a  funny  letter  from  the  lady 
that  lived  next  door  to  Sister.  It  said  how  Mr.  Pinckski  had 
moved  the  plate  onto  the  next  coffin  and  it  said  how  glad 
Sister  was  that  Danny  was  doing  so  well  and  she  knew  I 
would  take  good  care  of  him  because  he  was  a  good  boy, 
besides  being  all  Sister  had.  Like  Danny  was  already  in 
Florida,  all  the  time. 

"But  I  never  knew  he  was  there  until  I  got  the  wire  from 
him.  It  come  from  Augustine,  not  any  piece  away;  I  never 
found  out  until  Sister  died  how  Mrs.  Zilich,  that's  the  lady 
next  door  to  her,  that  wrote  the  letters  for  Sister,  had  writ- 
ten me  that  Danny  was  coming  to  Florida  the  day  he  left, 


618  The  Middle  Ground 

the  day  after  the  money  come.  Mrs.  Zilich  told  how  she  had 
written  the  letter  for  Sister  and  give  it  to  Danny  himself  to 
mail  the  night  before  he  left.  I  never  got  it.  I  reckon  Danny 
never  mailed  it.  I  reckon,  being  a  young,  high-spirited  boy, 
he  decided  he  wanted  to  strike  out  himself  and  show  us 
what  he  could  do  without  any  help  from  us,  like  I  did  when 
I  come  to  Florida. 

"Mrs.  Zilich  said  she  thought  of  course  Danny  was  with 
me  and  that  she  thought  at  the  time  it  was  funny  that  when 
I  would  write  to  Sister  I  never  mentioned  Danny.  So  when 
she  would  read  the  letters  to  Sister  she  would  put  in  some- 
thing about  Danny  was  all  right  and  doing  fine.  So  when  I 
got  the  wire  from  Danny  in  Augustine  I  telephoned  Mrs. 
Zilich  in  New  York.  It  cost  eleven  dollars.  I  told  her  that 
Danny  was  in  a  little  trouble,  not  serious,  and  for  her  to  not 
tell  Sister  it  was  serious  trouble,  to  just  tell  her  that  we 
would  need  some  money.  Because  I  had  sent  money  for 
Danny  to  come  to  Florida  on  and  I  had  paid  the  three 
months  for  the  room  and  I  had  just  paid  the  premium  on  my 
insurance,  and  so  the  lawyer  looked  at  Danny  and  Danny 
sitting  there  on  the  cot  in  the  cell  without  no  collar  on  and 
Danny  said,  'Where  would  I  get  any  money/  only  it  was 
jack  he  called  it. 

"And  the  lawyer  said,  'Where  would  you  get  it?'  and 
Danny  said,  'Just  set  me  down  back  home  for  ten  minutes. 
I'll  show  you.'  'Seventy-five  bucks,'  he  says,  telling  me  that 
was  all  of  it.  Then  the  lawyer  says  that  was  neither  here  nor 
there  and  so  I  telephoned  to  Mrs.  Zilich  and  told  her  to  tell 
Sister  to  go  to  Mr.  Pinckski  and  ask  him  to  let  her  take  back 
some  of  the  coffin  money;  he  could  put  the  name  plate  back 
on  the  coffin  she  had  last  year  or  maybe  the  year  before,  and 
as  soon  as  I  could  get  some  money  on  my  insurance  policy 
I  would  pay  Mr.  Pinckski  back  and  some  interest  too.  I 
telephoned  from  the  jail,  but  I  didn't  say  where  I  was  tele- 


Pennsylvania  Station  6 1 9 

phoning  from;  I  just  said  we  would  need  some  money 
quick." 

"What  was  he  in  for  this  time?"  the  young  man  said. 

"He  wasn't  in  jail  the  other  time,  about  them  clothes  off 
that  line.  That  woman  was  lying  about  him.  After  we  paid 
the  money,  she  admitted  she  was  probably  mistaken." 

"All  right,"  the  young  man  said.  "What  was  he  in  for?" 

"They  called  it  grand  larceny  and  killing  a  policeman. 
They  framed  him,  them  others  did  that  didn't  like  him.  He 
was  just  wild.  That  was  all.  He  was  a  good  boy.  When 
Sister  died  he  couldn't  come  to  the  funeral.  But  he  sent  a 
wreath  that  must  have  cost  $200  if  it  cost  a  cent.  By  air 
mail,  with  the  high  postage  in  the  .  .  ." 

His  voice  died  away;  he  looked  at  the  young  man  with  a 
kind  of  pleased  astonishment.  "I'll  declare  I  made  a  joke. 
But  I  didn't  mean " 

"Sure.  I  know  you  didn't  mean  to  make  a  joke.  What 
about  the  jail?" 

"The  lawyer  was  already  there  when  I  got  there.  Some 
friends  had  sent  the  lawyer  to  help  him.  And  he  swore  to 
me  on  his  mother's  name  that  he  wasn't  even  there  when  the 
cop  got  shot.  He  was  in  Orlando  at  the  time.  He  showed  me 
a  ticket  from  Orlando  to  Waycross  that  he  had  bought  and 
missed  the  train;  that  was  how  he  happened  to  have  it  with 
him.  It  had  the  date  punched  in  it,  the  same  night  the  police- 
man got  killed,  showing  that  Danny  wasn't  even  there  and 
that  them  other  boys  had  framed  him.  He  was  mad.  The 
lawyer  said  how  he  would  see  the  friends  that  had  sent  him 
to  help  Danny  and  get  them  to  help.  'By  God,  they  better,' 
Danny  said.  If  they  think  I'm  going  to  take  this  laying 
down  they  better ' 

"Then  the  lawyer  got  him  quiet  again,  like  he  did  when 
Danny  was  talking  about  that  money  the  man  he  worked  for 
or  something  had  held  out  on  him  back  in  New  York.  And 


620  The  Middle  Ground 

so  I  telephoned  Mrs.  Zilich,  so  as  not  to  worry  Sister,  and 
told  her  to  go  to  Mr.  Pinckski.  Two  days  later  I  got  the 
telegram  from  Mrs.  Zilich.  I  guess  Mrs.  Zilich  hadn't  never 
sent  a  telegram  before  and  so  she  didn't  know  she  had  ten 
words  without  counting  the  address  because  it  just  said 
You  and  Danny  come  home  quick  Mrs.  Sophie  Zilich  New 
York. 

"I  couldn't  make  nothing  out  of  it  and  we  talked  it  over 
and  the  lawyer  said  I  better  go  and  see,  that  he  would  take 
care  of  Danny  till  I  got  back.  So  we  fixed  up  a  letter  from 
Danny  to  Sister,  for  Mrs.  Zilich  to  read  to  her,  about  how 
Danny  was  all  right  and  getting  along  fine " 

V 

AT  THAT  moment  there  entered  the  room  a  man  in  the  uni- 
form of  the  railway  company.  As  he  entered,  from  about 
him  somewhere — behind,  above — a  voice  came.  Though  it 
spoke  human  speech  it  did  not  sound  like  a  human  voice, 
since  it  was  too  big  to  have  emerged  from  known  man 
and  it  had  a  quality  at  once  booming,  cold,  and  forlorn,  as 
though  it  were  not  interested  in  nor  listening  to  what  it  said. 

"There,"  the  old  man  said. 

He  and  the  young  man  turned  and  looked  back  across 
the  benches,  as  most  of  the  other  heads  had  done,  as  though 
they  were  all  dummies  moved  by  a  single  wire.  The  man  in 
uniform  advanced  slowly  into  the  room,  moving  along  the 
first  bench.  As  he  did  so  the  men  on  that  bench  and  on  the 
others  began  to  rise  and  depart,  passing  the  man  in  uniform 
as  though  he  were  not  there;  he  too  moving  on  into  the 
room  as  if  it  were  empty.  "I  guess  we'll  have  to  move." 

"Hell,"  the  young  man  said.  "Let  him  come  in  and  ask 
for  them.  They  pay  him  to  do  it." 

"He  caught  me  the  other  night.  The  second  time,  too." 


Pennsylvania  Station  62 1 

"What  about  that?  This  time  won't  make  but  three.  What 
did  you  do  then?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  the  old  man  said.  "I  knew  that  was  the  only 
thing  to  do,  after  that  telegram.  Mrs.  Zilich  wouldn't  have 
spent  the  money  to  telegraph  without  good  reason.  I  didn't 
know  what  she  had  told  Sister.  I  just  knew  that  Mrs.  Zilich 
thought  there  wasn't  time  to  write  a  letter  and  that  she  was 
trying  to  save  money  on  the  telegram,  not  knowing  she  had 
ten  words  and  the  man  at  the  telegraph  office  not  telling  her 
better.  So  I  didn't  know  what  was  wrong.  I  never  suspi- 
cioned  it  at  all.  That  was  what  confused  me,  you  see." 

He  turned  and  looked  back  again  toward  the  man  in  uni- 
form moving  from  bench  to  bench  while  just  before  him 
the  men  in  mismated  garments,  with  that  identical  neatness 
of  indigence,  with  that  identical  air  of  patient  and  indomi- 
table forlornness,  rose  and  moved  toward  the  exit  in  a  mon- 
strous and  outrageous  analogy  to  flying  fish  before  the  ad- 
vancing prow  of  a  ship. 

"What  confused  you?"  the  young  man  said. 

"Mrs.  Zilich  told  me.  I  left  Danny  in  the  jail.  (Them 
friends  that  sent  him  the  lawyer  got  him  out  the  next  day. 
When  I  heard  from  him  again,  he  was  already  in  Chicago, 
with  a  good  job;  he  sent  that  wreath.  I  didn't  know  he  was 
even  gone  from  the  jail  until  I  tried  to  get  word  to  him 
about  Sister),  and  I  come  on  to  New  York.  I  had  just 
enough  money  for  that,  and  Mrs.  Zilich  met  me  at  the  sta- 
tion and  told  me.  At  this  station  right  here.  It  was  snowing 
that  night,  too.  She  was  waiting  at  the  top  of  the  steps. 

"  'Where's  Sister?'  I  said.  'She  didn't  come  with  you?' 

"  What  is  it  now?'  Mrs.  Zilich  said.  'You  don't  need  to 
tell  me  he  is  just  sick.' 

"'Did  you  tell  Sister  he  ain't  just  sick?'  I  said.  'I  didn't 
have  to,'  Mrs.  Zilich  said.  'I  didn't  have  time  to,  even  if  I 
would  have.'  She  told  about  how  it  was  cold  that  night  and 


622  The  Middle  Ground 

so  she  waited  up  for  Sister,  keeping  the  fire  going  and  a  pot 
of  coffee  ready,  and  how  she  waited  till  Sister  had  took  off 
her  coat  and  shawl  and  was  beginning  to  get  warm,  setting 
there  with  a  cup  of  coffee;  then  Mrs.  Zilich  said,  'Your 
brother  telephoned  from  Florida.'  That's  all  she  had  time  to 
say.  She  never  even  had  to  tell  Sister  how  I  said  for  her  to 
go  to  Mr.  Pinckski,  because  Sister  said  right  off,  'He  will 
want  that  money.'  Just  what  I  had  said,  you  see. 

"Mrs.  Zilich  noticed  it  too.  'Maybe  it's  because  you  are 
kin,  both  kin  to  that — '  Then  she  stopped  and  said,  'Oh,  I 
ain't  going  to  say  anything  about  him.  Don't  worry.  The 
time  to  do  that  is  past  now.'  Then  she  told  me  how  she  said 
to  Sister,  'You  can  stop  there  on  the  way  down  this  after- 
noon and  see  Mr.  Pinckski.'  But  Sister  was  already  putting 
on  her  coat  and  shawl  again  and  her  not  an  hour  home  from 
work  and  it  snowing.  She  wouldn't  wait." 

"She  had  to  take  back  the  coffin  money,  did  she?"  the 
young  man  said. 

"Yes.  Mrs.  Zilich  said  that  her  and  Sister  went  to  Mr. 
Pinckski  and  woke  him  up.  And  he  told  them  that  Sister  had 
already  taken  the  money  back." 

"What?"  the  young  man  said.  "Already?" 

"Yes.  He  said  how  Danny  had  come  to  him  about  a  year 
back,  with  a  note  from  Sister  saying  to  give  Danny  the 
money  that  she  had  paid  in  to  Mr.  Pinckski  and  that  Mr. 
Pinckski  did  it.  And  Sister  standing  there  with  her  hands 
inside  her  shawl,  not  looking  at  anything  until  Mrs.  Zilich 
said,  'A  note?  Mrs.  Gihon  never  sent  you  a  note  because  she 
can't  write,'  and  Mr.  Pinckski  said,  'Should  I  know  if  she 
can't  write  or  not  when  her  own  son  brings  me  a  note  signed 
with  her  name?'  and  Mrs.  Zilich  says,  'Let's  see  it.' 

"Sister  hadn't  said  anything  at  all,  like  she  wasn't  even 
there,  and  Mr.  Pinckski  showed  them  the  note.  I  saw  it  too. 
It  said,  'Received  of  Mr.  Pinckski  a  hundred  and  thirty 


Pennsy  hania  Station  623 

dollars  being  the  full  amount  deposited  with  him  less  inter- 
est. Mrs.  Margaret  N.  Gihon.'  And  Mrs.  Zilich  said  how  she 
thought  about  that  hundred  and  thirty  dollars  and  she 
thought  how  Sister  had  paid  twenty-six  dollars  a  year  for 
five  years  and  seven  months,  and  she  said,  'Interest?  What 
interest?'  and  Mr.  Pinckski  said,  Tor  taking  the  name  off 
the  coffin,'  because  that  made  the  coffin  second-handed.  And 
Mrs.  Zilich  said  that  Sister  turned  and  went  toward  the  door. 
'Wait,'  Mrs.  Zilich  said.  'We're  going  to  stay  right  here 
until  you  get  that  money.  There's  something  funny  about 
this  because  you  can't  write  to  sign  a  note.'  But  Sister  just 
went  on  toward  the  door  until  Mrs.  Zilich  said,  'Wait,  Mar- 
garet.' And  then  Sister  said,  'I  signed  it.'  " 

VI 

THE  VOICE  of  the  man  in  uniform  could  be  heard  now  as 
he  worked  slowly  toward  them:  "Tickets.  Tickets.  Show 
your  tickets." 

"I  guess  it's  hard  enough  to  know  what  a  single  woman 
will  do,"  the  old  man  said.  "But  a  widow  woman  with  just 
one  child.  I  didn't  know  she  could  write,  either.  I  guess  she 
picked  it  up  cleaning  up  them  offices  every  night.  Anyway, 
Mr.  Pinckski  showed  me  the  note,  how  she  admitted  she 
signed  it,  and  he  explained  to  me  how  the  difference  was; 
that  he  had  to  charge  to  protect  himself  in  case  the  coffins 
ever  were  refused  and  become  second-hand;  that  some  folks 
was  mighty  particular  about  having  a  brand  new  coffin. 

"He  had  put  the  plate  with  Sister's  name  on  it  back  onto 
the  cheap  coffin  that  she  started  off  with,  so  she  was  still  all 
right  for  a  coffin,  even  if  it  never  had  any  handles  and  lining. 
I  never  said  anything  about  that;  that  twenty-six  dollars  she 
had  paid  in  since  she  give  the  money  to  Danny  wouldn't 
have  helped  any;  I  had  already  spent  that  much  getting  back 


624  The  Middle  Ground 

to  see  about  the  money,  and  anyway,  Sister  still  had  a  cof- 
fin  " 

The  voice  of  the  man  in  uniform  was  quite  near  now, 
with  a  quality  methodical,  monotonous,  and  implacable: 
"Tickets.  Tickets.  Show  your  tickets.  All  without  railroad 
tickets." 

The  young  man  rose.  "I'll  be  seeing  you,"  he  said.  The 
old  man  rose  too.  Beyond  the  man  in  uniform  the  room  was 
almost  empty. 

"I  guess  it's  about  time,"  the  old  man  said.  He  followed 
the  young  man  into  the  rotunda.  There  was  an  airplane  in  it, 
motionless,  squatting,  with  a  still,  beetling  look  like  a  huge 
bug  preserved  in  alcohol.  There  was  a  placard  beside  it, 
about  how  it  had  flown  over  mountains  and  vast  wastes  of 
snow. 

"They  might  have  tried  it  over  New  York,"  the  young 
man  said.  "It  would  have  been  closer." 

"Yes,"  the  old  man  said.  "It  costs  more,  though.  But  I 
guess  that's  fair,  since  it  is  faster.  When  Sister  died,  Danny 
sent  a  wreath  of  flowers  by  air.  It  must  have  cost  two  hun- 
dred dollars.  The  wreath  did,  I  mean.  I  don't  know  what  it 
cost  to  send  it  by  air." 

Then  they  both  looked  up  the  ramp  and  through  the 
arcade,  toward  the  doors  on  Seventh  Avenue.  Beyond  the 
doors  lay  a  thick,  moribund  light  that  seemed  to  fill  the 
arcade  with  the  smell  of  snow  and  of  cold,  so  that  for  a 
while  longer  they  seemed  to  stand  in  the  grip  of  a  dreadful 
reluctance  and  inertia. 

"So  they  went  on  back  home,"  the  old  man  said.  "Mrs. 
Zilich  said  how  Sister  was  already  shaking  and  she  got  Sister 
to  bed.  And  that  night  Sister  had  a  fever  and  Mrs.  Zilich  sent 
for  the  doctor  and  the  doctor  looked  at  Sister  and  told  Mrs. 
Zilich  she  had  better  telegraph  if  there  was  anybody  to  tele- 
graph to.  When  I  got  home  Sister  didn't  know  me.  The 


Pennsy  Ivania  Station  625 

priest  was  already  there,  and  we  never  could  tell  if  she  knew 
anything  or  not,  not  even  when  we  read  the  letter  from 
Danny  that  we  had  fixed  up  in  the  jail,  about  how  he  was 
all  right.  The  priest  read  it  to  her,  but  we  couldn't  tell  if 
she  heard  him  or  not.  That  night  she  died." 

"Is  that  so?"  The  young  man  said,  looking  up  the  ramp. 
He  moved.  "I'm  going  to  the  Grand  Central." 

Again  the  old  man  moved,  with  that  same  unwearying 
alacrity.  "I  guess  that's  the  best  thing  to  do.  We  might  have 
a  good  while  there."  He  looked  up  at  the  clock;  he  said 
with  pleased  surprise:  "Half  past  one  already.  And  a  half 
an  hour  to  get  there.  And  if  we're  lucky,  we'll  have  two 
hours  before  he  comes  along.  Maybe  three.  That'll  be  five 
o'clock.  Then  it  will  be  only  two  hours  more  till  daylight." 


Artist  at  Home 


ROGER  HOWES  WAS  a  fattish,  mild,  nondescript  man  of  forty, 
who  came  to  New  York  from  the  Mississippi  Valley  some- 
where as  an  advertisement  writer  and  married  and  turned 
novelist  aud  sold  a  book  and  bought  a  house  in  the  Valley  of 
Virginia  and  never  went  back  to  New  York  again,  even  on 
a  visit.  For  five  years  he  had  lived  in  the  old  brick  house  with 
his  wife  Anne  and  their  two  children,  where  old  ladies  came 
to  tea  in  horsedrawn  carriages  or  sent  the  empty  carriages 
for  him  or  sent  by  Negro  servants  in  the  otherwise  empty 
carriages  shoots  and  cuttings  of  flowering  shrubs  and  jars  of 
pickle  or  preserves  and  copies  of  his  books  for  autographs. 

He  didn't  go  back  to  New  York  any  more,  but  now  and 
then  New  York  came  to  visit  him:  the  ones  he  used  to  know, 
the  artists  and  poets  and  such  he  knew  before  he  began  to 
earn  enough  food  to  need  a  cupboard  to  put  it  in.  The  paint- 
ers, the  writers,  that  hadn't  sold  a  book  or  a  picture — men 
with  beards  sometimes  in  place  of  collars,  who  came  and 
wore  his  shirts  and  socks  and  left  them  under  the  bureau 
when  they  departed,  and  women  in  smocks  but  sometimes 
not:  those  gaunt  and  eager  and  carnivorous  tymbesteres  of 
Art. 

At  first  it  had  been  just  hard  to  refuse  them,  but  now  it 
was  harder  to  tell  his  wife  that  they  were  coming.  Sometimes 
he  did  not  know  himself  they  were  coming.  They  usually 

627 


628  The  Middle  Ground 

wired  him,  on  the  day  on  which  they  would  arrive,  usually 
collect.  He  lived  four  miles  from  the  village  and  the  book 
hadn't  sold  quite  enough  to  own  a  car  too,  and  he  was  a  little 
fat,  a  little  overweight,  so  sometimes  it  would  be  two  or  three 
days  before  he  would  get  his  mail.  Maybe  he  would  just  wait 
for  the  next  batch  of  company  to  bring  the  mail  up  with 
them.  After  the  first  year  the  man  at  the  station  (he  was  the 
telegraph  agent  and  the  station  agent  and  Roger's  kind  of 
town  agent  all  in  one)  got  to  where  he  could  recognize  them 
on  sight.  They  would  be  standing  on  the  little  platform,  with 
that  blank  air,  with  nothing  to  look  at  except  a  little  yellow 
station  and  the  back  end  of  a  moving  train  and  some  moun- 
tains already  beginning  to  get  dark,  and  the  agent  would 
come  out  of  his  little  den  with  a  handful  of  mail  and  a  pack- 
age or  so,  and  the  telegram.  "He  lives  about  four  miles  up  the 
Valley.  You  can't  miss  it." 

"Who  lives  about  four  miles  up  the  valley?" 

"Howes  does.  If  you  all  are  going  up  there,  I  thought 
maybe  you  wouldn't  mind  taking  these  letters  to  him.  One 
of  them  is  a  telegram." 

"A  telegram?" 

"It  come  this  a.m.  But  he  ain't  been  to  town  in  two-three 
days.  I  thought  maybe  you'd  take  it  to  him." 

"Telegram?  Hell.  Give  it  here." 

"It's  forty-eight  cents  to  pay  on  it." 

"Keep  it,  then.  Hell." 

So  they  would  take  everything  except  the  telegram  and 
they  would  walk  the  four  miles  to  Howes',  getting  there  after 
supper.  Which  would  be  all  right,  because  the  women  would 
all  be  too  mad  to  eat  anyway,  including  Mrs.  Howes,  Anne. 
So  a  couple  of  days  later,  someone  would  send  a  carriage  for 
Roger  and  he  would  stop  at  the  village  and  pay  out  the  wire 
telling  him  how  his  guests  would  arrive  two  days  ago. 

So  when  this  poet  in  the  sky-blue  coat  gets  off  the  train, 


Artist  at  Home  629 

the  agent  comes  right  out  of  his  little  den,  with  the  telegram. 
"It's  about  four  miles  up  the  Valley/'  he  says.  "You  can't 
miss  it.  I  thought  maybe  you'd  take  this  telegram  up  to  him. 
It  come  this  a.m.,  but  he  ain't  been  to  town  for  two-three 
days.  You  can  take  it.  It's  paid." 

"I  know  it  is,"  the  poet  says.  "Hell.  You  say  it  is  four  miles 
up  there?" 

"Right  straight  up  the  road.  You  can't  miss  it." 
So  the  poet  took  the  telegram  and  the  agent  watched  him 
go  on  out  of  sight  up  the  Valley  Road,  with  a  couple  or  three 
other  folks  coming  to  the  doors  to  look  at  the  blue  coat 
maybe.  The  agent  grunted.  "Four  miles,"  he  said.  "That 
don't  mean  no  more  to  that  fellow  than  if  I  had  said  four 
switch  frogs.  But  maybe  with  that  dressing-sacque  he  can 
turn  bird  and  fly  it." 

Roger  hadn't  told  his  wife,  Anne,  about  this  poet  at  all, 
maybe  because  he  didn't  know  himself.  Anyway,  she  didn't 
know  anything  about  it  until  the  poet  came  limping  into  the 
garden  where  she  was  cutting  flowers  for  the  supper  table, 
and  told  her  she  owed  him  forty-eight  cents. 

"Forty-eight  cents?"  Anne  said. 

He  gave  her  the  telegram.  "You  don't  have  to  open  it  now, 
you  see,"  the  poet  said.  "You  can  just  pay  me  back  the  forty- 
eight  cents  and  you  won't  have  to  even  open  it."  She  stared 
at  him,  with  a  handful  of  flowers  and  the  scissors  in  the  other 
hand,  so  finally  maybe  it  occurred  to  him  to  tell  her  who  he 
was.  "I'm  John  Blair,"  he  said.  "I  sent  this  telegram  this 
morning  to  tell  you  I  was  coming.  It  cost  me  forty-eight 
cents.  But  now  I'm  here,  so  you  don't  need  the  telegram." 

So  Anne  stands  there,  holding  the  flowers  and  the  scissors, 
saying  "Damn,  Damn,  Damn"  while  the  poet  tells  her  how 
she  ought  to  get  her  mail  oftener.  "You  want  to  keep  up  with 
what's  going  on,"  he  tells  her,  and  her  saying  "Damn,.  Damiu 


630  The  Middle  Ground 

Damn,"  until  at  last  he  says  he'll  just  stay  to  supper  and  then 
walk  back  to  the  village,  if  it's  going  to  put  her  out  that  much. 

"Walk?"  she  said,  looking  him  up  and  down.  "You  walk? 
Up  here  from  the  village?  I  don't  believe  it.  Where  is  your 
baggage?" 

"I've  got  it  on.  Two  shirts,  and  I  have  an  extra  pair  of  socks 
in  my  pocket.  Your  cook  can  wash,  can't  she?" 

She  looks  at  him,  holding  the  flowers  and  the  scissors.  Then 
she  tells  him  to  come  on  into  the  house  and  live  there  forever. 
Except  she  didn't  say  exactly  that.  She  said:  "You  walk? 
Nonsense.  I  think  you're  sick.  You  come  in  and  sit  down  and 
rest."  Then  she  went  to  find  Roger  and  tell  him  to  bring 
down  the  pram  from  the  attic.  Of  course  she  didn't  say  ex- 
actly that,  either. 

Roger  hadn't  told  her  about  this  poet;  he  hadn't  got  the 
telegram  himself  yet.  Maybe  that  was  why  she  hauled  him 
over  the  coals  so  that  night:  because  he  hadn't  got  the  tele- 
gram. 

They  were  in  their  bedroom.  Anne  was  combing  out  her 
hair.  The  children  were  spending  the  summer  up  in  Connect- 
icut, with  Anne's  folks.  He  was  a  minister,  her  father  was. 
"You  told  me  that  the  last  time  would  be  the  last.  Not  a 
month  ago.  Less  than  that,  because  when  that  last  batch  left 
I  had  to  paint  the  furniture  in  the  guest  room  again  to  hide 
where  they  put  their  cigarettes  on  the  dressing  table  and  the 
window  ledges.  And  I  found  in  a  drawer  a  broken  comb  I 
would  not  have  asked  Pinkie  (Pinkie  was  the  Negro  cook) 
to  pick  up,  and  two  socks  that  were  not  even  mates  that  I 
bought  for  you  myself  last  winter,  and  a  single  stocking  that 
I  couldn't  even  recognize  any  more  as  mine.  You  tell  me  that 
Poverty  looks  after  its  own:  well,  let  it.  But  why  must  we 
be  instruments  of  Poverty? " 

"This  is  a  poet.  That  last  batch  were  not  poets.  We  haven't 


Artist  at  Home  63 1 

had  a  poet  in  the  house  in  some  time.  Place  losing  all  its  mel- 
lifluous overtones  and  subtleties." 

"How  about  that  woman  that  wouldn't  bathe  in  the  bath- 
room? who  insisted  on  going  down  to  the  creek  every  morn- 
ing without  even  a  bathing  suit,  until  Amos  Grain's  (he  was 
a  farmer  that  lived  across  the  creek  from  them)  wife  had  to 
send  me  word  that  Amos  was  afraid  to  try  to  plow  his  lower 
field?  What  do  people  like  that  think  that  out-doors,  the 
country,  is?  I  cannot  understand  it,  any  more  than  I  can  un- 
derstand why  you  feel  that  you  should  feed  and  lodge " 

"Ah,  that  was  just  a  touch  of  panic  fear  that  probably  did 
Amos  good.  Jolted  him  out  of  himself,  out  of  his  rut." 

"The  rut  where  he  made  his  wife's  and  children's  daily 
bread,  for  six  days.  And  worse  than  that.  Amos  is  young.  He 
probably  had  illusions  about  women  until  he  saw  that  crea- 
ture down  there  without  a  stitch  on." 

"Well,  you  are  in  the  majority,  you  and  Mrs.  Grain."  He 
looked  at  the  back  of  her  head,  her  hands  combing  out  her 
hair,  and  her  probably  watching  him  in  the  mirror  and  him 
not  knowing  it,  what  with  being  an  artist  and  all.  "This  is  a 
man  poet." 

"Then  I  suppose  he  will  refuse  to  leave  the  bathroom  at  all. 
I  suppose  you'll  have  to  carry  a  tray  to  him  in  the  tub  three 
times  a  day.  Why  do  you  feel  compelled  to  lodge  and  feed 
these  people?  Can't  you  see  they  consider  you  an  easy  mark? 
that  they  eat  your  food  and  wear  your  clothes  and  consider 
us  hopelessly  bourgeois  for  having  enough  food  for  other 
people  to  eat,  and  a  little  soft-brained  for  giving  it  away? 
And  now  this  one,  in  a  sky-blue  dressing-sacque." 

"There's  a  lot  of  wear  and  tear  to  just  being  a  poet.  I  don't 
think  you  realize  that." 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind.  Let  him  wear  a  lamp  shade  or  a  sauce 
pan  too.  What  does  he  want  of  you?  advice,  or  just  food  and 
lodging?" 


632  The  Middle  Ground 

"Not  advice.  You  must  have  gathered  at  supper  what  his 
opinion  of  my  mentality  is." 

"He  revealed  pretty  clearly  what  his  own  mentality  is. 
The  only  thing  in  the  house  that  really  pleased  him  was 
Pinkie's  colored  head-rag." 

"Not  advice,"  Roger  said.  "I  don't  know  why  he  shows 
me  his  stuff.  He  does  it  like  you'd  give  caviar  to  an  elephant." 

"And  of  course  you  accept  his  dictum  about  the  elephant. 
And  I  suppose  you  are  going  to  get  them  to  publish  his  book, 
too." 

"Well,  there's  some  good  stuff  in  it.  And  maybe  if  he  sees 
it  in  print,  he'll  really  get  busy.  Work.  Or  maybe  someone 
will  make  him  mad  enough  to  really  write  something.  Some- 
thing with  an  entrail  in  it.  He's  got  it  in  him.  It  may  not  be 
but  one  poem.  But  it's  there.  Maybe  if  he  can  just  stop  talk- 
ing long  enough  to  get  it  out.  And  I  thought  if  he  came  down 
here,  where  he  will  have  to  walk  four  miles  to  find  somebody 
to  talk  to,  once  Amos  comes  to  recognize  that  blue  coat." 

"Ah,"  Anne  said.  "So  you  wrote  him  to  come.  I  knew  you 
had,  but  I'm  glad  to  hear  you  admit  it  of  your  own  free  will. 
Go  on  to  bed,"  she  said.  "You  haven't  done  a  stroke  of  work 
today,  and  Lord  only  knows  now  when  you  will." 

Thus  life  went  along  in  its  old  pleasant  way.  Because  poets 
are  all  different  from  one  another,  it  seemed;  this  one,  any- 
way. Because  it  soon  developed  that  Anne  doesn't  see  this 
poet  at  all,  hardly.  It  seems  that  she  can't  even  know  he  is  in 
the  house  unless  she  hears  him  snoring  at  night.  So  it  took  her 
two  weeks  to  get  steamed  up  again.  And  this  time  she  is  not 
even  combing  her  hair.  "Is  it  two  weeks  he's  been  here,  or 
just  two  years?"  She  is  sitting  at  the  dressing  table,  but  she  is 
not  doing  anything,  which  any  husband,  even  an  artist, 
should  know  is  a  bad  sign.  When  you  see  a  woman  sitting 
half  dressed  before  a  dressing  table  with  a  mirror  and  not 


Artist  at  Home  633 

even  watching  herself  talk  in  the  mirror,  it's  time  to  smell 
smoke  in  the  wind. 

"He  has  been  here  two  weeks,  but  unless  I  happen  to  go  to 
the  kitchen,  I  never  see  him,  since  he  prefers  Pinkie's  com- 
pany to  ours.  And  when  he  was  missing  that  first  Wednes- 
day night,  on  Pinkie's  evening  off,  I  said  at  first,  'What  tact/ 
That  was  before  I  learned  that  he  had  taken  supper  with 
Pinkie's  family  at  her  house  and  had  gone  with  them  to  prayer 
meeting.  And  he  went  again  Sunday  night  and  again  last 
Wednesday  night,  and  now  tonight  (and  though  he  tells  me 
I  have  neither  intelligence  nor  imagination)  he  would  be  sur- 
prised to  know  that  I  am  imagining  right  now  that  sky-blue 
dressing-sacque  in  a  wooden  church  full  of  sweating  niggers 
without  any  incongruity  at  all." 

"Yes.  It's  quite  a  picture,  isn't  it?" 

"But  apart  from  such  minor  embarrassments  like  not 
knowing  where  our  guest  is,  and  bearing  upon  our  patient 
brows  a  certain  amount  of  reflected  ridiculousness,  he  is  a 
very  pleasant  companion.  Instructing,  edifying,  and  self- 
effacing.  I  never  know  he  is  even  in  the  house  unless  I  hear 
your  typewriter,  because  I  know  it  is  not  you  because  you 
have  not  written  a  line  in — is  it  two  weeks,  or  just  two  years? 
He  enters  the  room  which  the  children  are  absolutely  forbid- 
den and  puts  his  one  finger  on  that  typewriter  which  Pinkie  is 
not  even  permitted  to  touch  with  a  dust-cloth,  and  writes  a 
poem  about  freedom  and  flings  it  at  you  to  commend  and 
applaud.  What  is  it  he  says?" 

"You  tell.  This  is  fine." 

"He  flings  it  at  you  like — like  .  .  .  Wait;  I've  got  it:  like 
flinging  caviar  at  an  elephant,  and  he  says,  'Will  this  sell?' 
Not,  Is  this  good?  or  Do  you  like  it?  Will  this  sell?  and 
you " 

"Go  on.  I  couldn't  hope  to  even  compete." 

"You  read  it,  carefully.  Maybe  the  same  poem,  I  don't 


634  The  Middle  Ground 

know;  I've  learned  recently  on  the  best  authority  that  I  am 
not  intelligent  enough  to  get  my  poetry  at  first  hand.  You 
read  it,  carefully,  and  then  you  say,  'It  ought  to.  Stamps  in 
the  drawer  there.'  "  She  went  to  the  window.  "No,  I  haven't 
evolved  far  enough  yet  to  take  my  poetry  straight;  I  won't 
understand  it.  It  has  to  be  fed  to  me  by  hand,  when  he  has 
time,  on  the  terrace  after  supper  on  the  nights  when  there  is 
no  prayer  meeting  at  Pinkie's  church.  Freedom.  Equality.  In 
words  of  one  syllable,  because  it  seems  that,  being  a  woman, 
I  don't  want  freedom  and  don't  know  what  equality  means, 
until  you  take  him  up  and  show  him  in  professional  words 
how  he  is  not  so  wise,  except  he  is  wise  enough  to  shut  up 
then  and  let  you  show  both  of  us  how  you  are  not  so  wise 
either."  The  window  was  above  the  garden.  There  were  cur- 
tains in  it.  She  stood  between  the  curtains,  looking  out.  "So 
Young  Shelley  has  not  crashed  through  yet." 

"Not  yet.  But  it's  there.  Give  him  time." 

"I'm  glad  to  hear  that.  He's  been  here  two  weeks  now.  I'm 
glad  his  racket  is  poetry,  something  you  can  perpetrate  in 
two  lines.  Otherwise,  at  this  rate  .  .  ."  She  stood  between  the 
curtains.  They  were  blowing,  slow,  in  and  out.  "Damn. 
Damn.  Damn.  He  doesn't  eat  enough." 

So  Roger  went  and  put  another  cushion  in  the  pram.  Only 
she  didn't  say  exactly  that  and  he  didn't  do  exactly  that. 

Now  get  this.  This  is  where  it  starts.  On  the  days  when 
there  wasn't  any  prayer  meeting  at  the  nigger  church,  the 
poet  has  taken  to  doping  along  behind  her  in  the  garden  while 
she  cut  the  flowers  for  the  supper  table,  talking  to  her  about 
poetry  or  freedom  or  maybe  about  the  flowers.  Talking 
about  something,  anyway;  maybe  when  he  quit  talking  all  of 
a  sudden  that  night  when  he  and  she  were  walking  in  the 
garden  after  supper,  it  should  have  tipped  her  off.  But  it 
didn't.  Or  at  least,  when  they  came  to  the  end  of  the  path 


Artist  at  Home  635 

and  turned,  the  next  thing  she  seemed  to  know  was  his  mug 
all  set  for  the  haymaker.  Anyway,  she  didn't  move  until  the 
clinch  was  over.  Then  she  flung  back,  her  hand  lifted.  "You 
damned  idiot! "  she  says. 

He  doesn't  move  either,  like  he  is  giving  her  a  fair  shot. 
"What  satisfaction  will  it  be  to  slap  this  mug?"  he  says. 

"I  know  that,"  she  says.  She  hits  him  on  the  chest  with  her 
fist,  light,  full,  yet  restrained  all  at  the  same  time:  mad  and 
careful  too.  "Why  did  you  do  such  a  clumsy  thing?" 

But  she  doesn't  get  anything  out  of  him.  He  just  stands 
there,  offering  her  a  clean  shot;  maybe  he  is  not  even  looking 
at  her,  with  his  hair  all  over  the  place  and  this  sky-blue  coat 
that  fits  him  like  a  short  horse-blanket.  You  take  a  rooster,  an 
old  rooster.  An  old  bull  is  different.  See  him  where  the  herd 
has  run  him  out,  blind  and  spavined  or  whatever,  yet  he  still 
looks  married.  Like  he  was  saying,  "Well,  boys,  you  can  look 
at  me  now.  But  I  was  a  husband  and  father  in  my  day."  But 
an  old  rooster.  He  just  looks  unmarried,  a  born  bachelor. 
Born  a  bachelor  in  a  world  without  hens  and  he  found  it  out 
^o  long  ago  he  don't  even  remember  there  are  not  any  hens. 
"Come  along,"  she  says,  turning  fast,  stiff-backed,  and  the 
poet  doping  along  behind  her.  Maybe  that's  what  gave  him 
away.  Anyway,  she  looks  back,  slowing.  She  stops.  "So  you 
think  you  are  the  hot  shot,  do  you?"  she  says.  "You  think 
I'm  going  to  tell  Roger,  do  you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  he  says.  "I  hadn't  thought  about  it." 

"You  mean,  you  don't  care  whether  I  tell  him  or  not?" 

"Yes,"  he  says. 

"Yes  what?" 

It  seems  she  can't  tell  whether  he's  looking  at  her  or  not, 
whether  he  ever  looked  at  her.  He  just  stands  there,  doping, 
about  twice  as  tall  as  she  is.  "When  I  was  a  little  boy,  we 
would  have  sherbet  on  Sunday,"  he  says.  "Just  a  breath  of 
lemon  in  it.  Like  narcissus  smells,  I  remember.  I  think  I  re- 


636  The  Middle  Ground 

member.  I  was  . . .  four  . . .  three.  Mother  died  and  we  moved 
to  a  city.  Boarding-house.  A  brick  wall.  There  was  one  win- 
dow, like  a  one-eyed  man  with  sore  eyes.  And  a  dead  cat. 
But  before  that  we  had  lots  of  trees,  like  you  have.  I  would 
sit  on  the  kitchen  steps  in  the  late  afternoon,  watching  the 
Sunday  light  in  the  trees,  eating  sherbet." 

She  is  watching  him.  Then  she  turns,  walking  fast.  He  fol- 
lows, doping  along  a  little  behind  her,  so  that  when  she  stops 
in  the  shadow  of  a  clump  of  bushes,  with  her  face  all  fixed,  he 
stands  there  like  this  dope  until  she  touches  him.  And  even 
then  he  doesn't  get  it.  She  has  to  tell  him  to  hurry.  So  he  gets 
it,  then.  A  poet  is  human,  it  seems,  just  like  a  man. 

But  that's  not  it.  That  can  be  seen  in  any  movie.  This  is 
what  it  is,  what  is  good. 

About  this  time,  coincident  with  this  second  clinch,  Roger 
happens  to  come  out  from  behind  this  bush.  He  comes  out 
kind  of  happen-so;  pleasant  and  quiet  from  taking  a  little 
stroll  in  the  moonlight  to  settle  his  supper.  They  all  three 
stroll  back  to  the  house,  Roger  in  the  middle.  They  get  there 
so  quick  that  nobody  thinks  to  say  goodnight  when  Anne 
goes  on  in  the  house  and  up  the  stairs.  Or  maybe  it  is  because 
Roger  is  doing  all  the  talking  himself  at  that  moment,  poetry 
having  gone  into  a  slump,  you  might  say.  "Moonlight," 
Roger  is  saying,  looking  at  the  moon  like  he  owned  it  too;  "I 
can't  stand  it  any  more.  I  run  to  walls,  an  electric  light.  That 
is,  moonlight  used  to  make  me  feel  sad  and  old  and  I  would 
do  that.  But  now  I'm  afraid  it  don't  even  make  me  feel  lonely 
any  more.  So  I  guess  I  am  old." 

"That's  a  fact,"  the  poet  says.  "Where  can  we  talk?" 

"Talk?"  Roger  says.  He  looked  like  a  head- waiter,  any- 
way: a  little  bald,  flourishing,  that  comes  to  the  table  and  lifts 
off  a  cover  and  looks  at  it  like  he  is  saying,  "Well,  you  can 
eat  this  muck,  if  you  want  to  pay  to  do  it."  "Right  this  wav~" 


Artist  at  Home  637 

he  says.  They  go  to  the  office,  the  room  where  he  writes  his 
books,  where  he  doesn't  even  let  the  children  come  at  all.  He 
sits  behind  the  typewriter  and  fills  his  pipe.  Then  he  sees  that 
the  poet  hasn't  sat  down.  "Sit  down,"  he  says. 

"No,"  the  poet  says.  "Listen,"  he  says.  "Tonight  I  kissed 
your  wife.  I'm  going  to  again,  if  I  can." 

"Ah,"  Roger  says.  He  is  too  busy  filling  the  pipe  right  to 
look  at  the  poet,  it  seems.  "Sit  down." 

"No,"  the  poet  says. 

Roger  lights  the  pipe.  "Well,"  he  says,  "I'm  afraid  I  can't 
advise  you  about  that.  I  have  written  a  little  poetry,  but  I 
never  could  seduce  women."  He  looks  at  the  poet  now. 
"Look  here,"  he  says,  "you  are  not  well.  You  go  on  to  bed. 
We'll  talk  about  this  tomorrow." 

"No,"  the  poet  says,  "I  cannot  sleep  under  your  roof." 

"Anne  keeps  on  saying  you  are  not  well,"  Roger  says.  "Do 
you  know  of  anything  that's  wrong  with  you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  the  poet  says. 

Roger  sucks  at  the  pipe.  He  seems  to  be  having  a  little 
trouble  making  it  burn  right.  Maybe  that  is  why  he  slams 
the  pipe  down  on  the  desk,  or  maybe  he  is  human  too,  like  a 
poet.  Anyway,  he  slams  the  pipe  down  on  the  desk  so  that 
the  tobacco  pops  out  burning  among  the  papers.  And  there 
they  are:  the  bald  husband  with  next  week's  flour  and  meat 
actually  in  sight,  and  the  home-wrecker  that  needs  a  haircut, 
in  one  of  these  light  blue  jackets  that  ladies  used  to  wear  with 
lace  boudoir  caps  when  they  would  be  sick  and  eat  in  bed. 
"What  in  hell  do  you  mean,"  Roger  says,  "coming  in  my 
house  and  eating  my  food  and  bothering  Anne  with  your 
damned  . . ."  But  that  was  all.  But  even  that  was  pretty  good 
for  a  writer,  an  artist;  maybe  that's  all  that  should  be  expected 
from  them.  Or  maybe  it  was  because  the  poet  wasn't  even 
listening  to  him.  "He's  not  even  here,"  Roger  says  to  himself; 
like  he  had  told  the  poet,  he  used  to  write  poetry  himself, 


638  The  Middle  Ground 

and  so  he  knew  them.  "He's  up  there  at  Anne's  door  now, 
kneeling  outside  her  door."  And  outside  that  door  was  as 
close  to  Anne  as  Roger  got  too,  for  some  time.  But  that  was 
later,  and  he  and  the  poet  are  now  in  the  office,  with  him 
trying  to  make  the  poet  shut  his  yap  and  go  up  to  bed,  and 
the  poet  refusing. 

"I  cannot  lie  under  your  roof,"  the  poet  says.  "May  I  see 
Anne?" 

"You  can  see  her  in  the  morning.  Any  time.  All  day,  if 
you  want  to.  Don't  talk  drivel." 

"May  I  speak  to  Anne?"  the  poet  says,  like  he  might  have 
been  speaking  to  a  one-syllable  feeb. 

So  Roger  goes  up  and  tells  Anne  and  comes  back  and  sits 
behind  the  typewriter  again  and  then  Anne  comes  down  and 
Roger  hears  her  and  the  poet  goes  out  the  front  door.  After 
awhile  Anne  comes  back  alone.  "He's  gone,"  she  says. 

"Is  he?"  Roger  says,  like  he  is  not  listening.  Then  he 
jumps  up.  "Gone?  He  can't — this  late.  Call  him  back." 

"He  won't  come  back,"  Anne  says.  "Let  him  alone."  She 
goes  on  upstairs.  When  Roger  went  up  a  little  later,  the  door 
was  locked. 

Now  get  this.  This  is  it.  He  came  back  down  to  the  office 
and  put  some  paper  into  the  typewriter  and  began  to  write. 
He  didn't  go  very  fast  at  first,  but  by  daylight  he  was  sound- 
ing like  forty  hens  in  a  sheet-iron  corn-crib,  and  the  written 
sheets  on  the  desk  were  piling  up.  .  .  . 

He  didn't  see  or  hear  of  the  poet  for  two  days.  But  the 
poet  was  still  in  town.  Amos  Grain  saw  him  and  came  and 
told  Roger.  It  seems  that  Amos  happened  to  come  to  the 
house  for  something,  because  that  was  the  only  way  anybody 
could  have  got  to  Roger  to  tell  him  anything  for  two  days 
and  nights.  "I  heard  that  typewriter  before  I  crossed  the 
creek,"  Amos  says.  "I  see  that  blue  dressing-sacque  at  the 
hotel  yesterday,"  he  says. 


Artist  at  Home  639 

That  night,  while  Roger  was  at  work,  Anne  came  down 
the  stairs.  She  looked  in  the  office  door.  "I'm  going  to  meet 
him,"  she  said. 

"Will  you  tell  him  to  come  back?"  Roger  said.  "Will  you 
tell  him  I  sent  the  message?" 

"No,"  Anne  said. 

And  the  last  thing  she  heard  when  she  went  out  and  when 
she  came  back  an  hour  later  and  went  upstairs  and  locked  her 
door  (Roger  was  sleeping  on  the  sleeping-porch  now,  on  an 
army  cot)  was  the  typewriter. 

And  so  life  went  on  in  its  old,  pleasant,  happy  way.  They 
saw  one  another  often,  sometimes  twice  a  day  after  Anne 
quit  coming  down  to  breakfast.  Only,  a  day  or  so  after  that, 
she  missed  the  sound  of  the  typewriter;  maybe  she  missed 
being  kept  awake  by  it.  "Have  you  finished  it?"  she  said. 
"The  story?" 

"Oh.  No.  No,  it's  not  finished  yet.  Just  resting  for  a  day 
or  so."  Bull  market  in  typewriting,  you  might  say. 

It  stayed  bullish  for  several  days.  He  had  got  into  the  habit 
of  going  to  bed  early,  of  being  in  his  cot  on  the  sleeping- 
porch  when  Anne  came  back  into  the  house.  One  night  she 
came  out  onto  the  sleeping-porch,  where  he  was  reading  in 
bed.  "I'm  not  going  back  again,"  she  said.  "I'm  afraid  to." 

"Afraid  of  what?  Aren't  two  children  enough  for  you? 
Three,  counting  me." 

"I  don't  know."  It  was  a  reading  lamp  and  her  face  was  in 
the  shadow.  "I  don't  know."  He  turned  the  light,  to  shine  it 
on  her  face,  but  before  it  got  to  her  face  she  turned,  running. 
He  got  there  just  in  time  to  have  the  door  banged  in  his  face. 
"Blind!  Blind!"  she  said  beyond  the  door.  "Go  away!  Go 
away!" 

He  went  away,  but  he  couldn't  get  to  sleep.  So  after  a 
while  he  took  the  metal  shade  off  the  reading  lamp  and  jim- 


640  The  Middle  Ground 

mied  the  window  into  the  room  where  the  children  slept. 
The  door  from  here  into  Anne's  room  wasn't  locked.  Anne 
was  asleep.  The  moon  was  getting  down  then,  and  he  could 
see  her  face.  He  hadn't  made  any  noise,  but  she  waked  any- 
way, looking  up  at  him,  not  moving.  "He's  had  nothing, 
nothing.  The  only  thing  he  remembers  of  his  mother  is  the 
taste  of  sherbet  on  Sunday  afternoon.  He  says  my  mouth 
tastes  like  that.  He  says  my  mouth  is  his  mother."  She  began 
to  cry.  She  didn't  move,  face-up  on  the  pillow,  her  arms 
under  the  sheet,  crying.  Roger  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  bed 
and  touched  her  and  she  flopped  over  then,  with  her  face 
down  against  his  knee,  crying. 

They  talked  until  about  daylight.  "I  don't  know  what  to 
do.  Adultery  wouldn't  get  me — anybody — into  that  place 

where  he  lives.  Lives?  He's  never  lived.  He's "  She  was 

breathing  quiet,  her  face  turned  down,  but  still  against  his 
knee — him  stroking  her  shoulder.  "Would  you  take  me 
back?" 

"I  don't  know."  He  stroked  her  shoulder.  "Yes.  Yes.  I'd 
take  you  back." 

And  so  the  typewriting  market  picked  up  again.  It  took  a 
spurt  that  night,  as  soon  as  Anne  got  herself  cried  off  to  sleep, 
and  the  market  held  steady  for  three  or  four  days,  without 
closing  at  night,  even  after  Pinkie  told  him  how  the  telephone 
was  out  of  fix  and  he  found  where  the  wires  were  cut  and 
knows  where  he  can  find  the  scissors  that  did  it  when  he 
wants  to.  He  doesn't  go  to  the  village  at  all,  even  when  he 
had  a  free  ride.  He  would  spend  half  a  morning  sitting  by  the 
road,  waiting  for  somebody  to  pass  that  would  bring  him 
back  a  package  of  tobacco  or  sugar  or  something.  "If  I  went 
to  the  village,  he  might  have  left  town,"  he  said. 

On  the  fifth  day,  Amos  Grain  brought  him  his  mail.  That 
was  the  dav  the  rain  came  UD.  There  was  a  letter  for  Anne. 


Artist  at  Home  641 

"He  evidently  doesn't  want  my  advice  on  this,"  he  said  to 
himself.  "Maybe  he  has  already  sold  it."  He  gave  the  letter 
to  Anne.  She  read  it,  once. 

"Will  you  read  it?"  she  said. 

"I  wouldn't  care  to,"  he  said. 

But  the  typing  market  is  still  steady,  so  that  when  the  rain 
came  up  this  afternoon,  he  had  to  turn  on  the  light.  The  rain 
was  so  hard  on  the  house  that  he  could  watch  his  fingers  (he 
used  two  or  three  of  them)  hitting  the  keys  without  hearing 
a  sound.  Pinkie  didn't  come,  so  after  a  while  he  quit  and  fixed 
a  tray  and  took  it  up  and  left  it  on  a  chair  outside  Anne's 
door.  He  didn't  stop  to  eat,  himself. 

It  was  after  dark  when  she  came  down  the  first  time.  It 
was  still  raining.  He  saw  her  cross  the  door,  going  fast,  in  a 
raincoat  and  a  rubber  hat.  He  caught  her  as  she  opened  the 
front  door,  with  the  rain  blowing  in.  "Where  are  you 
going? "  he  said. 

She  tried  to  jerk  her  arm  loose.  "Let  me  alone." 

"You  can't  go  out  in  this.  What  is  it?" 

"Let  me  alone.  Please."  She  jerked  her  arm,  pulling  at  the 
door  which  he  was  holding. 

"You  can't.  What  is  it?  I'll  do  it.  What  is  it?" 

But  she  just  looked  at  him,  jerking  at  her  arm  and  at  the 
door  knob.  "I  must  go  to  the  village.  Please,  Roger." 

"You  can't  do  that.  At  night,  and  in  all  this  rain." 

"Please.  Please."  He  held  her.  "Please.  Please."  But  he  held 
her,  and  she  let  the  door  go  and  went  back  up  stairs.  And  he 
went  back  to  the  typewriter,  to  this  market  still  going  great 
guns. 

He  is  still  at  it  at  midnight.  This  time  Anne  has  on  a  bath- 
robe. She  stands  in  the  door,  holding  to  the  door.  Her  hair  is 
down.  "Roger,"  she  says.  "Roger." 

He  goes  to  her,  fast  for  a  fat  man;  maybe  he  thinks  she  is 
sick.  "What?  What  is  it?" 


642  The  Middle  Ground 

She  goes  to  the  front  door  and  opens  it;  the  rain  comes  in 
again.  "There,"  she  says.  "Out  there." 

"What?" 

"He  is.  Blair." 

He  draws  her  back.  He  makes  her  go  to  the  office,  then 
he  puts  on  his  raincoat  and  takes  the  umbrella  and  goes  out. 
"Blair!"  he  calls.  "John!"  Then  the  shade  on  the  office  win- 
dow goes  up,  where  Anne  has  raised  it  and  carried  the  desk 
lamp  to  the  window  and  turned  the  light  out-doors,  and  then 
he  sees  Blair,  standing  in  the  rain,  without  any  hat,  with  his 
blue  coat  like  it  was  put  on  him  by  a  paper-hanger,  with  his 
face  lifted  toward  Anne's  window. 

And  here  we  are  again:  the  bald  husband,  the  rural  plute, 
and  this  dashing  blade,  this  home-wrecking  poet.  Both  gen- 
tlemen, being  artists:  the  one  that  doesn't  want  the  other  to 
get  wet;  the  other  whose  conscience  won't  let  him  wreck 
the  house  from  inside.  Here  we  are,  with  Roger  trying  to 
hold  one  of  these  green  silk,  female  umbrellas  over  himself 
and  the  poet  too,  jerking  at  the  poet's  arm. 

"You  damned  fool!  Come  in  the  house!" 

"No."  His  arm  gives  a  little  as  Roger  jerks  at  it,  but  the 
poet  himself  doesn't  move. 

"Do  you  want  to  drown?  Come  on,  man!" 

"No." 

Roger  jerks  at  the  poet's  arm,  like  jerking  at  the  arm  of  a 
wet  saw-dust  doll.  Then  he  begins  to  yell  at  the  house: 
"Anne!  Anne!" 

"Did  she  say  for  me  to  come  in?"  the  poet  says. 

"I — Yes.  Yes.  Come  in  the  house.  Are  you  mad?" 

"You're  lying,"  the  poet  says.  "Let  me  alone." 

"What  are  you  trying  to  do?"  Roger  says.  "You  can't 
stand  here  like  this." 

"Yes,  I  can.  You  go  on  in.  You'll  take  cold." 

Roger  runs  back  to  the  house;  they  have  an  argument  first; 


Artist  at  Home  643 

because  Roger  wants  the  poet  to  keep  the  umbrella  and  the 
poet  won't  do  it.  So  Roger  runs  back  to  the  house.  Anne  is  at 

the  door.  "The  fool,"  Roger  says.  "I  can't " 

"Come  in!"  Anne  calls.  "John!  Please!"  But  the  poet  has 
stepped  out  of  the  light  and  vanished.  "John!"  Anne  calls. 
Then  she  began  to  laugh,  staring  at  Roger  from  between  her 
hair  brushing  at  her  hair  with  her  hands.  "He — he  looked  so 

f — funny.  He  1 — looked  so "  Then  she  was  not  laughing 

and  Roger  had  to  hold  her  up.  He  carried  her  upstairs  and  put 
her  to  bed  and  sat  with  her  until  she  could  stop  crying.  Then 
he  went  back  to  the  office.  The  lamp  was  still  at  the  window, 
and  when  he  moved  it  the  light  went  across  the  lawn  and  he 
saw  Blair  again.  He  was  sitting  on  the  ground,  with  his  back 
against  a  tree,  his  face  raised  in  the  rain  toward  Anne's  win- 
dow. Roger  rushed  out  again,  but  when  he  got  there,  Blair 
was  gone.  Roger  stood  under  the  umbrella  and  called  him  for 
a  while,  but  he  never  got  any  answer.  Maybe  he  was  going  to 
try  again  to  make  the  poet  take  the  umbrella.  So  maybe  he 
didn't  know  as  much  about  poets  as  he  thought  he  did.  Or 
maybe  he  was  thinking  about  Pope.  Pope  might  have  had  an 
umbrella. 

They  never  saw  the  poet  again.  This  one,  that  is.  Because 
this  happened  almost  six  months  ago,  and  they  still  live  there. 
But  they  never  saw  this  one.  Three  days  later,  Anne  gets  the 
second  letter,  mailed  from  the  village.  It  is  a  menu  card  from 
the  Elite  Cafe,  or  maybe  they  call  it  the  Palace.  It  was  already 
autographed  by  the  flies  that  eat  there,  and  the  poet  had  writ- 
ten on  the  back  of  it.  Anne  left  it  on  Roger's  desk  and  went 
out,  and  then  Roger  read  it. 

It  seems  that  this  was  the  shot.  The  one  that  Roger  had 
always  claimed  to  be  waiting  for.  Anyway,  the  magazines 
that  don't  have  any  pictures  took  the  poem,  stealing  it  from 
one  another  while  the  interest  or  whatever  it  was  ate  up  the 


644  The  Middle  Ground 

money  that  the  poet  never  got  for  it.  But  that  was  all  right, 
too,  because  by  that  time  Blair  was  dead. 

Amos  Grain's  wife  told  them  how  the  poet  had  left  town. 
And  a  week  later  Anne  left  too.  She  went  up  to  Connecticut 
to  spend  the  rest  of  the  summer  with  her  mother  and  father, 
where  the  children  were.  The  last  thing  she  heard  when  she 
left  the  house  was  the  typewriter. 

But  it  was  two  weeks  after  Anne  left  before  Roger  finished 
it,  wrote  the  last  word.  At  first  he  wanted  to  put  the  poem 
in  too,  this  poem  on  the  menu  card  that  wasn't  about  free- 
dom, either,  but  he  didn't.  Conscience,  maybe  he  called  it, 
put  over  the  old  haymaker,  and  Roger  took  it  standing,  like 
a  little  man,  and  sent  off  the  poem  for  the  magazines  to  jaw 
over,  and  tied  up  the  papers  he  had  written  and  sent  them 
off  too.  And  what  was  it  he  had  been  writing?  Him,  and 
Anne,  and  the  poet.  Word  for  word,  between  the  waiting 
spells  to  find  out  what  to  write  down  next,  with  a  few 
changes  here  and  there,  of  course,  because  live  people  do  not 
make  good  copy,  the  most  interesting  copy  being  gossip, 
since  it  mostly  is  not  true. 

So  he  bundled  the  pages  up  and  sent  them  off  and  they 
sent  him  the  money.  It  came  just  in  time,  because  the  winter 
was  coming  and  he  still  owed  a  balance  on  Blair's  hospital  and 
funeral.  So  he  paid  that,  and  with  the  rest  of  the  money  he 
bought  Anne  a  fur  coat  and  himself  and  the  children  some 
winter  underwear. 

Blair  died  in  September.  Anne  and  the  children  were  still 
away  when  he  got  the  wire,  three  or  four  days  late,  since  the 
next  batch  of  them  had  not  arrived  yet.  So  here  he  is,  sitting 
at  his  desk,  in  the  empty  house,  with  the  typewriting  all  fin- 
ished, holding  the  wire  in  his  hand.  "Shelley,"  he  says.  "His 
whole  life  was  a  not  very  successful  imitation  of  itself.  Even 
to  the  amount  of  water  it  took." 

He  didn't  tell  Anne  about  the  poet  until  after  the  fur  coat 
came.  "Did  vou  see  that  he  .  .  ."  Anne  said. 


Artist  at  Home  645 

"Yes.  He  had  a  nice  room,  in  the  sun.  A  good  nurse.  The 
doctor  didn't  want  him  to  have  a  special  nurse  at  first.  Damn 
butcher." 

Sometimes  when  a  man  thinks  about  them  making  poets 
and  artists  and  such  pay  these  taxes  which  they  say  indicates 
that  a  man  is  free,  twenty-one,  and  capable  of  taking  care  of 
himself  in  this  close  competition,  it  seems  like  they  are  ob- 
taining money  under  false  pretenses.  Anyway,  here's  the 
rest  of  it,  what  they  did  next. 

He  reads  the  book,  the  story,  to  her,  and  her  not  saying 
anything  until  he  had  finished.  "So  that's  what  you  were 
doing,"  she  said. 

He  doesn't  look  at  her,  either;  he  is  busy  evening  the  pages, 
getting  them  smooth  again.  "It's  your  fur  coat,"  he  said. 

"Oh,"  she  says.  "Yes.  My  fur  coat." 

So  the  fur  coat  comes.  And  what  does  she  do  then?  She 
gave  it  away.  Yes.  Gave  it  to  Mrs.  Grain.  Gave  it  to  her,  and 
her  in  the  kitchen,  churning,  with  her  hair  in  her  face,  brush- 
ing her  hair  back  with  a  wrist  that  looked  like  a  lean  ham. 
"Why,  Miz  Howes,"  she  says.  "I  caint.  I  reely  caint." 

"You'll  have  to  take  it,"  Anne  says.  "We — I  got  it  under 
false  pretenses.  I  don't  deserve  it.  You  put  bread  into  the 
ground  and  reap  it;  I  don't.  So  I  can't  wear  a  coat  like  this." 

And  they  leave  it  there  with  Mrs.  Grain  and  they  go  back 
home,  walking.  Only  they  stop  in  broad  daylight,  with  Mrs. 
Grain  watching  them  from  the  window,  and  go  into  a  clinch 
on  their  own  account.  "I  feel  better,"  Anne  says. 

"So  do  I,"  Roger  says.  "Because  Blair  wasn't  there  to  see 
Mrs.  Grain's  face  when  you  gave  her  that  coat.  No  freedom 
there,  or  equality  either." 

But  Anne  is  not  listening.  "Not  to  think,"  she  says,  "that 
he  ...  to  dress  me  in  the  skins  of  little  slain  beasts.  .  .  .  You 
put  him  in  a  book,  but  you  didn't  finish  it.  You  didn't  know 
about  that  coat,  did  you?  God  beat  you,  that  time,  Roger." 


646  The  Middle  Ground 

"Ay,"  Roger  says.  "God  beats  me  lots  of  times.  But  there's 
one  thing  about  it.  Their  children  are  bigger  than  ours,  and 
even  Mrs.  Grain  can't  wear  my  underclothes.  So  that's  all 
right." 

Sure.  That  was  all  right.  Because  it  was  Christmas  soon, 
and  then  spring;  and  then  summer,  the  long  summer,  the  long 
days. 


The  Brooch 


THE  TELEPHONE  waked  him.  He  waked  already  hurrying, 
fumbling  in  the  dark  for  robe  and  slippers,  because  he  knew 
before  waking  that  the  bed  beside  his  own  was  still  empty, 
and  the  instrument  was  downstairs  just  opposite  the  door 
beyond  which  his  mother  had  lain  propped  upright  in  bed 
for  five  years,  and  he  knew  on  waking  that  he  would  be  too 
late  because  she  would  already  have  heard  it,  just  as  she 
heard  everything  that  happened  at  any  hour  in  the  house. 

She  was  a  widow,  he  the  only  child.  When  he  went  away 
to  college  she  went  with  him;  she  kept  a  house  in  Charlottes- 
ville,  Virginia,  for  four  years  while  he  graduated.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  well-to-do  merchant.  Her  husband  had 
been  a  travelling  man  who  came  one  summer  to  the  town 
with  letters  of  introduction:  one  to  a  minister,  the  other  to 
her  father.  Three  months  later  the  travelling  man  and  the 
daughter  were  married.  His  name  was  Boyd.  He  resigned 
his  position  within  the  year  and  moved  into  his  wife's  house 
and  spent  his  days  sitting  in  front  of  the  hotel  with  the 
lawyers  and  the  cotton-planters — a  dark  man  with  a  gallant 
swaggering  way  of  removing  his  hat  to  ladies.  In  the  second 
year,  the  son  was  born.  Six  months  later,  Boyd  departed. 
He  just  went  away,  leaving  a  note  to  his  wife  in  which  he 
told  her  that  he  could  no  longer  bear  to  lie  in  bed  at  night 
and  watch  her  rolling  onto  empty  spools  the  string  saved 

647 


648  The  Middle  Ground 

from  parcels  from  the  stores.  His  wife  never  heard  of  him 
again,  though  she  refused  to  let  her  father  have  the  marriage 
annulled  and  change  the  son's  name. 

Then  the  merchant  died,  leaving  all  his  property  to  the 
daughter  and  the  grandson  who,  though  he  ,had  been  out 
of  Fauntleroy  suits  since  he  was  seven  or  eight,  at  twelve 
wore  even  on  weekdays  clothes  which  made  him  look  not 
like  a  child  but  like  a  midget;  he  probably  could  not  have 
long  associated  with  other  children  even  if  his  mother  had 
let  him.  In  due  time  the  mother  found  a  boys'  school  where 
the  boy  could  wear  a  round  jacket  and  a  man's  hard  hat 
with  impunity,  though  by  the  time  the  two  of  them  re- 
moved to  Charlottesville  for  these  next  four  years,  the  son 
did  not  look  like  a  midget.  He  looked  now  like  a  character 
out  of  Dante — a  man  a  little  slighter  than  his  father  but 
with  something  of  his  father's  dark  handsomeness,  who 
hurried  with  averted  head,  even  when  his  mother  was  not 
with  him,  past  the  young  girls  on  the  streets  not  only  of 
Charlottesville  but  of  the  little  lost  Mississippi  hamlet  to 
which  they  presently  returned,  with  an  expression  of  face 
like  the  young  monks  or  angels  in  fifteenth-century  alle- 
gories. Then  his  mother  had  her  stroke,  and  presently  the 
mother's  friends  brought  to  her  bed  reports  of  almost  exactly 
the  sort  of  girl  which  perhaps  even  the  mother  might  have 
expected  the  son  to  become  not  only  involved  with  but  to 
marry. 

Her  name  was  Amy,  daughter  of  a  railroad  conductor 
who  had  been  killed  in  a  wreck.  She  lived  now  with  an 
aunt  who  kept  a  boarding-house — a  vivid,  daring  girl  whose 
later  reputation  was  due  more  to  folly  and  the  caste  handicap 
of  the  little  Southern  town  than  to  badness  and  which  at  the 
last  was  doubtless  more  smoke  than  fire;  whose  name,  though 
she  always  had  invitations  to  the  more  public  dances,  was  a 
light  word,  especially  among  the  older  women,  daughters 


The  Brooch  649 

of  decaying  old  houses  like  this  in  which  her  future  husband 
had  been  born. 

So  presently  the  son  had  acquired  some  skill  in  entering 
the  house  and  passing  the  door  beyond  which  his  mother  lay 
propped  in  bed,  and  mounting  the  stairs  in  the  dark  to  his 
own  room.  But  one  night  he  failed  to  do  so.  When  he 
entered  the  house  the  transom  above  his  mother's  door  was 
dark,  as  usual,  and  even  if  it  had  not  been  he  could  not  have 
known  that  this  was  the  afternoon  on  which  the  mother's 
friends  had  called  and  told  her  about  Amy,  and  that  his 
mother  had  lain  for  five  hours,  propped  bolt  upright,  in  the 
darkness,  watching  the  invisible  door.  He  entered  quietly 
as  usual,  his  shoes  in  his  hand,  yet  he  had  not  even  closed 
the  front  door  when  she  called  his  name.  Her  voice  was  not 
raised.  She  called  his  name  once: 

"Howard." 

He  opened  the  door.  As  he  did  so  the  lamp  beside  her  bed 
came  on.  It  sat  on  a  table  beside  the  bed;  beside  it  sat  a  clock 
with  a  dead  face;  to  stop  it  had  been  the  first  act  of  his 
mother  when  she  could  move  her  hands  two  years  ago.  He 
approached  the  bed  from  which  she  watched  him — a  thick 
woman  with  a  face  the  color  of  tallow  and  dark  eyes  ap- 
parently both  pupil-less  and  iris-less  beneath  perfectly  white 
hair.  "What?"  he  said.  "Are  you  sick?" 

"Come  closer,"  she  said.  He  came  nearer.  They  looked  at 
one  another.  Then  he  seemed  to  know;  perhaps  he  had  been 
expecting  it. 

"I  know  who's  been  talking  to  you,"  he  said.  "Those 
damned  old  buzzards." 

"I'm  glad  to  hear  it's  carrion,"  she  said.  "Now  I  can  rest 
easy  that  you  won't  bring  it  into  our  house." 

"Go  on.  Say,  your  house." 

"Not  necessary.  Any. house  where  a  lady  lives."  They 
looked  at  one  another  in  the  steady  lamp  which  possessed 


650  The  Middle  Ground 

that  stale  glow  of  sickroom  lights.  "You  are  a  man.  I  don't 
reproach  you.  I  am  not  even  surprised.  I  just  want  to  warn 
you  before  you  make  yourself  ridiculous.  Don't  confuse  the 
house  with  the  stable." 

"With  the — Hah!"  he  said.  He  stepped  back  and  jerked 
the  door  open  with  something  of  his  father's  swaggering 
theatricalism.  "With  your  permission,"  he  said.  He  did  not 
close  the  door.  She  lay  bolt  upright  on  the  pillows  and 
looked  into  the  dark  hall  and  listened  to  him  go  to  the  tele- 
phone, call  the  girl,  and  ask  her  to  marry  him  tomorrow. 
Then  he  reappeared  at  the  door.  "With  your  permission," 
he  said  again,  with  that  swaggering  reminiscence  of  his 
father,  closing  the  door.  After  a  while  the  mother  turned 
the  light  off.  It  was  daylight  in  the  room  then. 

They  were  not  married  the  next  day,  however.  "I'm 
scared  to,"  Amy  said.  "I'm  scared  of  your  mother.  What 
does  she  say  about  me?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  never  talk  to  her  about  you." 

"You  don't  even  tell  her  you  love  me?" 

"What  does  it  matter?  Let's  get  married." 

"And  live  there  with  her?"  They  looked  at  one  another. 
"Will  you  go  to  work,  get  us  a  house  of  our  own?" 

"What  for?  I  have  enough  money.  And  it's  a  big  house." 

"Her  house.  Her  money." 

"It'll  be  mine — ours  some  day.  Please." 

"Come  on.  Let's  try  to  dance  again."  This  was  in  the 
parlor  of  the  boarding-house,  where  she  was  trying  to  teach 
him  to  dance,  but  without  success.  The  music  meant  nothing 
to  him;  the  noise  of  it  or  perhaps  the  touch  of  her  body  de- 
stroyed what  little  co-ordination  he  could  have  had.  But  he 
took  her  to  the  Country  Club  dances;  they  were  known  to 
be  engaged.  Yet  she  still  staid  out  dances  with  other  men,  in 
the  parked  cars  about  the  dark  lawn.  He  tried  to  argue  with 
her  about  it,  and  about  drinking. 


The  Brooch  65  k 

"Sit  out  and  drink  with  me,  then,"  he  said. 

"We're  engaged.  It's  no  fun  with  you." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  with  the  docility  with  which  he  accepted 
each  refusal;  then  he  stopped  suddenly  and  faced  her. 
"What's  no  fun  with  me?"  She  fell  back  a  little  as  he  gripped 
her  shoulder.  "What's  no  fun  with  me?" 

"Oh,"  she  said.  "You're  hurting  me!" 

"I  know  it.  What's  no  fun  with  me?" 

Then  another  couple  came  up  and  he  let  her  go.  Then 
an  hour  later,  during  an  intermission,  he  dragged  her,  scream- 
ing and  struggling,  out  of  a  dark  car  and  across  the  dance 
floor,  empty  now  and  lined  with  chaperones  like  a  theater 
audience,  and  drew  out  a  chair  and  took  her  across  his  lap 
and  spanked  her.  By  daylight  they  had  driven  twenty  miles 
to  another  town  and  were  married. 

That  morning  Amy  called  Mrs.  Boyd  "Mother"  for  the 
first  and  (except  one,  and  that  perhaps  shocked  out  of  her 
by  surprise  or  perhaps  by  exultation)  last  time,  though  the 
same  day  Mrs.  Boyd  formally  presented  Amy  with  the 
brooch:  an  ancient,  clumsy  thing,  yet  valuable.  Amy  carried 
it  back  to  their  room,  and  he  watched  her  stand  looking  at 
it,  perfectly  cold,  perfectly  inscrutable.  Then  she  put  it  into 
a  drawer.  She  held  it  over  the  open  drawer  with  two  fingers 
and  released  it  and  then  drew  the  two  fingers  across  her 
thigh. 

"You  will  have  to  wear  it  sometimes,"  Howard  said. 

"Oh,  I  will.  I'll  show  my  gratitude.  Don't  worry."  Pres- 
ently it  seemed  to  him  that  she  took  pleasure  in  wearing  it. 
That  is,  she  began  to  wear  it  quite  often.  Then  he  realized 
that  it  was  not  pleasure  but  vindictive  incongruity;  she  wore 
it  for  an  entire  week  once  on  the  bosom  of  a  gingham  house 
dress,  an  apron.  But  she  always  wore  it  where  Mrs.  Boyd 
would  see  it,  always  when  she  and  Howard  had  dressed  to 


652  The  Middle  Ground 

go  out  and  would  stop  in  the  mother's  room  to  say  good 
night. 

They  lived  upstairs,  where,  a  year  later,  their  child  was 
born.  They  took  the  child  down  for  Mrs.  Boyd  to  see  it. 
She  turned  her  head  on  the  pillows  and  looked  at  the  child 
once.  "Ah,"  she  said.  "I  never  saw  Amy's  father,  that  I 
know  of.  But  then,  I  never  travelled  on  a  train  a  great  deal." 

"The  old — the  old — "  Amy  cried,  shuddering  and  cling- 
ing to  Howard.  "Why  does  she  hate  me  so?  What  have  I 
ever  done  to  her?  Let's  move.  You  can  work." 

"No.  She  won't  live  always." 

"Yes,  she  will.  She'll  live  forever,  just  to  hate  me." 

"No,"  Howard  said.  In  the  next  year  the  child  died.  Again 
Amy  tried  to  get  him  to  move. 

"Anywhere.  I  won't  care  how  we  have  to  live." 

"No.  I  can't  leave  her  helpless  on  her  back.  You  will  have 
to  start  going  out  again.  Dance.  Then  it  won't  be  so  bad." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  quieter.  "I'll  have  to.  I  can't  stand  this." 

One  said  "you,"  the  other,  "I."  Neither  of  them  said 
"we."  So,  on  Saturday  nights  Amy  would  dress  and  Howard 
would  put  on  scarf  and  overcoat,  sometimes  over  his  shirt- 
sleeves, and  they  would  descend  the  stairs  and  stop  at  Mrs. 
Boyd's  door  and  then  Howard  would  put  Amy  into  the 
car  and  watch  her  drive  away.  Then  he  would  re-enter  the 
house  and  with  his  shoes  in  his  hand  return  up  the  stairs,  as  he 
had  used  to  do  before  they  married,  slipping  past  the  lighted 
transom.  Just  before  midnight,  in  the  overcoat  and  scarf 
again,  he  would  slip  back  down  the  stairs  and  past  the  still 
lighted  transom  and  be  waiting  on  the  porch  when  Amy 
drove  up.  Then  they  would  enter  the  house  and  look  into 
Mrs.  Boyd's  room  and  say  good  night. 

One  night  it  was  one  o'clock  before  she  returned.  He  had 
been  waiting  for  an  hour  in  slippers  and  pajamas  on  the 


The  Brooch  653 

porch;  it  was  November.  The  transom  above  Mrs.  Boyd's 
door  was  dark  and  they  did  not  stop. 

"Some  jelly  beans  set  the  clock  back,"  she  said.  She  did 
not  look  at  him,  dragging  her  clothes  off,  flinging  the  brooch 
along  with  her  other  jewelry  onto  the  dressing  table.  "I  had 
hoped  you  wouldn't  be  fool  enough  to  stand  out  there  and 
wait  for  me." 

"Maybe  next  time  they  set  the  clock  back  I  won't." 

She  stopped,  suddenly  and  perfectly  still,  looking  at  him 
over  her  shoulder.  "Do  you  mean  that?"  she  said.  He  was 
not  looking  at  her;  he  heard,  felt,  her  approach  and  stand 
beside  him.  Then  she  touched  his  shoulder.  "Howard?"  she 
said.  He  didn't  move.  Then  she  was  clinging  to  him,  flung 
onto  his  lap,  crying  wildly:  "What's  happening  to  us?" 
striking  herself  against  him  with  a  wild  abandon:  "What  is 
it?  What  is  it?"  He  held  her  quiet,  though  after  they  were 
each  in  their  beds  (they  already  had  two  of  them)  he  heard 
and  then  felt  her  cross  the  intervening  gap  and  fling  herself 
against  him  again  with  that  wild  terrified  abandon  not  of  a 
woman  but  of  a  child  in  the  dark,  enveloping  him,  whisper- 
ing: "You  don't  have  to  trust  me,  Howard!  You  can!  You 
can!  You  don't  have  to!" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "I  know.  It's  all  right.  It's  all  right."  So 
after  that,  just  before  twelve,  he  would  put  on  the  overcoat 
and  scarf,  creep  down  the  stairs  and  past  the  lighted  transom, 
open  and  close  the  front  door  noisily,  and  then  open  his 
mother's  door  where  the  mother  would  be  propped  high  on 
the  pillows,  the  book  open  and  face  down  on  her  knees. 

"Back  already?"  Mrs.  Boyd  would  say. 

"Yes.  Amy's  gone  on  up.  Do  you  want  anything?" 

"No.  Good  night." 

"Good  night." 

Then  he  would  go  up  and  go  to  bed,  and  after  a  time 
(sometimes)  to  sleeo.  But  before  this  sometimes,  taking  it 


654  The  Middle  Ground 

sometimes  into  sleep  with  him,  he  would  think,  tell  himself 
with  that  quiet  and  fatalistic  pessimism  of  the  impotent  in- 
telligent: But  this  cannot  go  on  forever.  Some  night  some- 
thing is  going  to  happen;  she  is  going  to  catch  Amy.  And  I 
know  what  she  is  going  to  do.  But  what  am  I  going  to  do? 
He  believed  that  he  did  know.  That  is,  the  top  of  his  mind 
assured  him  that  it  knew,  but  he  discounted  this;  the  intel- 
ligence again:  not  to  bury  it,  flee  from  it:  just  discounting  it, 
the  intelligence  speaking  out  of  the  impotence:  Because  no 
man  ever  knows  what  he  will  do  in  any  given  situation,  set 
of  circumstances:  the  wise,  others  perhaps,  drawing  conclu- 
sions, but  never  himsetf.  The  next  morning  Amy  would  be 
in  the  other  bed,  and  then,  in  the  light  of  day,  it  would  be 
gone.  But  now  and  then,  even  by  daylight,  it  returned  and 
he  from  the  detachment  of  his  cerebration  contemplating  his 
life,  that  faulty  whole  whose  third  the  two  of  them  had  pro- 
duced yet  whose  lack  the  two  of  them  could  not  fill,  telling 
himself,  Yes.  I  know  what  she  will  do  and  I  know  what 
Amy  will  ask  me  to  do  and  I  know  that  I  will  not  do  that. 
But  what  will  I  do?  but  not  for  long,  telling  himself  now 
that  it  had  not  happened  so  far,  and  that  anyway  it  was  six 
long  days  until  Saturday:  the  impotence  now,  not  even  the 
intellect. 

II 

So  IT  was  that  when  he  waked  to  the  bell's  shrilling  he 
already  knew  that  the  bed  beside  his  own  was  still  empty, 
just  as  he  knew  that,  no  matter  how  quickly  he  reached  the 
telephone,  it  would  already  be  too  late.  He  did  not  even 
wait  for  his  slippers;  he  ran  down  the  now  icy  stairs,  seeing 
the  transom  above  his  mother's  door  come  alight  as  he  passed 
it  and  went  to  the  phone  and  took  the  receiver  down:  "Oh, 
Howard,  I'm  so  sorry — this  is  Martha  Ross — so  sorry  to  dis- 


The  Brooch  655 

turb  you,  but  I  knew  that  Amy  would  be  anxious  about  it. 
I  found  it  in  the  car,  tell  her,  when  we  got  back  home." 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "In  the  car." 

"In  our  car.  After  she  lost  her  switch  key  and  we  brought 
her  home,  to  the  corner.  We  tried  to  get  her  to  come  on 
home  with  us  and  have  some  ham  and  eggs,  but  she — " 
Then  the  voice  died  away.  He  held  the  cold  receiver  to  his 
ear  and  heard  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  the  silence,  fill  with 
a  sort  of  consternation  like  an  indrawn  breath:  something 
instinctive  and  feminine  and  self-protective.  But  the  pause 
itself  was  hardly  a  pause;  almost  immediately  the  voice  went 
on,  though  completely  changed  now,  blank,  smooth,  re- 
served: "Amy's  in  bed,  I  suppose/' 

"Yes.  She's  in  bed." 

"Oh.  So  sorry  I  bothered  you,  got  you  up.  But  I  knew 
she  would  be  anxious  about  it,  since  it  was  your  mother's, 
the  family  piece.  But  of  course,  if  she  hasn't  missed  it  yet, 
you  won't  need  to  bother  her."  The  wire  hummed,  tense, 
"That  I  called  or  anything."  The  wire  hummed.  "Hello. 
Howard?" 

"No,"  he  said.  "I  won't  bother  her  tonight.  You  can  call 
her  in  the  morning." 

"Yes,  I  will.  So  sorry  I  bothered  you.  I  hope  I  didn't 
wake  your  mother." 

He  put  the  receiver  back.  He  was  cold.  He  could  feel  his 
bare  toes  curling  back  from  the  icelike  floor  as  he  stood 
looking  at  the  blank  door  beyond  which  his  mother  would 
be  sitting,  high-propped  on  the  pillows,  with  her  tallow  face 
and  dark  inscrutable  eyes  and  the  hair  which  Amy  said  re- 
sembled weathered  cotton,  beside  the  clock  whose  hands 
she  had  stopped  herself  at  ten  minutes  to  four  on  the  after- 
noon five  years  ago  when  she  first  moved  again.  When  he 
opened  the  door  his  picture  had  been  exact,  almost  to  the 
position  of  the  hands  even. 


656  The  Middle  Ground 

"She  is  not  in  this  house,"  Mrs.  Boyd  said. 

"Yes.  She's  in  bed.  You  know  when  we  came  in.  She  just 
left  one  of  her  rings  with  Martha  Ross  tonight  and  Martha 
telephoned." 

But  apparently  she  had  not  even  listened  to  him.  "So  you 
swear  she  is  in  this  house  this  minute." 

"Yes.  Of  course  she  is.  She's  asleep,  I  tell  you." 

"Then  send  her  down  here  to  say  good  night  to  me." 

"Nonsense.  Of  course  I  won't." 

They  looked  at  one  another  across  the  bed's  footboard. 

"You  refuse?" 

"Yes." 

They  looked  at  one  another  a  moment  longer.  Then  he 
began  to  turn  away;  he  could  feel  her  watching  him.  "Then 
tell  me  something  else.  It  was  the  brooch  she  lost." 

He  did  not  answer  this  either.  He  just  looked  at  her  again 
as  he  closed  the  door:  the  two  of  them  curiously  similar, 
mortal  and  implacable  foes  in  the  fierce  close  antipathy  of 
blood.  He  went  out. 

He  returned  to  the  bedroom  and  turned  on  the  light  and 
found  his  slippers  and  went  to  the  fire  and  put  some  coal  on 
the  embers  and  punched  and  prodded  it  into  flame.  The 
clock  on  the  mantel  said  twenty  minutes  to  one.  Presently 
he  had  a  fair  blaze;  he  had  quit  shivering.  He  went  back  to 
bed  and  turned  off  the  light,  leaving  only  the  firelight  puls- 
ing and  gleaming  on  the  furniture  and  among  the  phials  and 
mirrors  of  the  dressing  table,  and  in  the  smaller  mirror  above 
his  own  chest  of  drawers,  upon  which  sat  the  three  silver 
photograph  frames,  the  two  larger  ones  containing  himself 
and  Amy,  the  smaller  one  between  them  empty.  He  just 
lay.  He  was  not  thinking  at  all.  He  had  just  thought  once, 
quietly,  So  that's  that.  So  now  I  suppose  I  will  know,  find 
out  what  I  am  going  to  do  and  then  no  more,  not  even  think- 
ing that  again. 


The  Brooch  657 

The  house  seemed  still  to  be  filled  with  the  shrill  sound 
of  the  telephone  like  a  stubborn  echo.  Then  he  began  to  hear 
the  clock  on  the  mantel,  reiterant,  cold,  not  loud.  He  turned 
on  the  light  and  took  up  the  book  face  down  and  open  from 
the  table  beside  his  pillow,  but  he  found  that  he  could  not 
keep  his  mind  on  the  words  for  the  sound  which  the  clock 
made,  so  he  rose  and  went  to  the  mantel.  The  hands  were 
now  at  half  past  two.  He  stopped  the  clock  and  turned  its 
face  to  the  wall  and  brought  his  book  to  the  fire  and  found 
that  he  could  now  keep  his  mind  on  the  words,  the  sense, 
reading  on  now  untroubled  by  time.  So  he  could  not  have 
said  just  when  it  was  that  he  found  he  had  ceased  to  read, 
had  jerked  his  head  up.  He  had  heard  no  sound,  yet  he  knew 
that  Amy  was  in  the  house.  He  did  not  know  how  he  knew: 
he  just  sat  holding  his  breath,  immobile,  the  peaceful  book 
raised  and  motionless,  waiting.  Then  he  heard  Amy  say, 
"It's  me,  Mother." 

She  said  "Mother"  he  thought,  not  moving  yet.  She  called 
her  "Mother"  again.  He  moved  now,  putting  the  book  care- 
fully down,  his  place  marked,  but  as  he  crossed  the  room  he 
walked  naturally,  not  trying  to  deaden  his  footsteps,  to  the 
door  and  opened  it  and  saw  Amy  just  emerging  from  Mrs. 
Boyd's  room.  She  began  to  mount  the  stairs,  walking  natu- 
rally too,  her  hard  heels  sharp  and  unnaturally  loud  in  the 
nightbound  house.  She  must  have  stooped  when  Mother 
called  her  and  put  her  slippers  on  again,  he  thought.  She  had 
not  seen  him  yet,  mounting  steadily,  her  face  in  the  dim  hall 
light  vague  and  petal-like  against  the  collar  of  her  fur  coat, 
projecting  already  ahead  of  her  to  where  he  waited  a  sort 
of  rosy  and  crystal  fragrance  of  the  frozen  night  out  of 
which  she  had  just  emerged.  Then  she  saw  him  at  the  head 
of  the  stairs.  For  just  a  second,  an  instant,  she  stopped  dead 
still,  though  she  was  moving  again  before  it  could  have  been 
called  pause,  already  speaking  as  she  passed  him  where  he 


658  The  Middle  Ground 

stood  aside,  and  entered  the  bedroom:  "Is  it  very  late?  I  was 
with  the  Rosses.  They  just  let  me  out  at  the  corner;  I  lost 
my  car  key  out  at  the  club.  Maybe  it  was  the  car  that 
waked  her." 

"No.  She  was  already  awake.  It  was  the  telephone." 
She  went  on  to  the  fire  and  spread  her  hands  to  it,  still  in 
her  coat;  she  did  not  seem  to  have  heard  him,  her  face  rosy 
in  the  firelight,  her  presence  emanating  that  smell  of  cold, 
that  frosty  fragrance  which  had  preceded  her  up  the  stairs: 
"I  suppose  so.  Her  light  was  already  on.  I  knew  as  soon  as 
I  opened  the  front  door  that  we  were  sunk.  I  hadn't  even 
got  in  the  house  good  when  she  said  'Amy'  and  I  said  'It's 
me,  Mother'  and  she  said,  'Come  in  here,  please,'  and  there 
she  was  with  those  eyes  that  haven't  got  any  edges  to  them 
and  that  hair  that  looks  like  somebody  pulled  it  out  of  the 
middle  of  a  last  year's  cotton  bale,  and  she  said,  'Of  course 
you  understand  that  you  will  have  to  leave  this  house  at 
once.  Good  night.' " 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "She  has  been  awake  since  about  half  past 
twelve.  But  there  wasn't  anything  to  do  but  insist  that  you 
were  already  in  bed  asleep  and  trust  to  luck." 
"You  mean,  she  hasn't  been  asleep  at  all?" 
"No.  It  was  the  telephone,  like  I  told  you.  About  half 
past  twelve." 

With  her  hands  still  spread  to  the  fire  she  glanced  at  him 
over  her  furred  shoulder,  her  face  rosy,  her  eyes  at  once 
bright  and  heavy,  like  a  woman's  eyes  after  pleasure,  with 
a  kind  of  inattentive  conspiratorial  commiseration.  "Tele- 
phone? Here?  At  half  past  twelve?  What  absolutely  putrid 
— But  no  matter."  She  turned  now,  facing  him,  as  if  she 
had  only  been  waiting  until  she  became  warm,  the  rich  coat 
open  upon  the  fragile  glitter  of  her  dress;  there  was  a  quality 
actually  beautiful  about  her  now — not  of  the  face  whose 
impeccable  replica  looks  out  from  the  covers  of  a  thousand 


The  Brooch  659 

magazines  each  month,  nor  of  the  figure,  the  shape  of  de- 
liberately epicene  provocation  into  which  the  miles  of  cellu- 
loid film  have  constricted  the  female  body  of  an  entire 
race;  but  a  quality  completely  female  in  the  old  eternal 
fashion,  primitive  assured  and  ruthless  as  she  approached 
him,  already  raising  her  arms.  "Yes!  I  say  luck  too!"  she 
said,  putting  her  arms  around  him,  her  upper  body  leaned 
back  to  look  into  his  face,  her  own  face  triumphant,  the 
smell  now  warm  woman-odor  where  the  frosty  fragrance 
had  thawed.  "She  said  at  once,  now.  So  we  can  go.  You  see? 
Do  you  understand?  \Ve  can  leave  now.  Give  her  the 
money,  let  her  have  it  all.  We  won't  care.  You  can  find 
work;  I  won't  care  how  and  where  we  will  have  to  live. 
You  don't  have  to  stay  here  now,  with  her  now.  She  has — 
what  do  you  call  it?  absolved  you  herself.  Only  I  have  lost 
the  car  key.  But  no  matter:  we  can  walk.  Yes,  walk;  with 
nothing,  taking  nothing  of  hers,  like  we  came  here." 
"Now?"  he  said.  "Tonight?" 

"Yes!  She  said  at  once.  So  it  will  have  to  be  tonight." 
"No,"  he  said.  That  was  all,  no  indication  of  which  ques- 
tion he  had  answered,  which  denied.  But  then,  he  did  not 
need  to  because  she  still  held  him;  it  was  only  the  expression 
of  her  face  that  changed.  It  did  not  die  yet  nor  even  become 
terrified  yet:  it  just  became  unbelieving,  like  a  child's  in- 
credulity. "You  mean,  you  still  won't  go?  You  still  won't 
leave  her?  That  you  would  just  take  me  to  the  hotel  for 
tonight  and  that  you  will  come  back  here  tomorrow?  Or 
do  you  mean  you  won't  even  stay  at  the  hotel  with  me 
tonight?  That  you  will  take  me  there  and  leave  me  and  then 
you — "  She  held  him,  staring  at  him;  she  began  to  say, 
''Wait,  wait.  There  must  be  some  reason,  something — 
Wait,"  she  cried;  "wait!  You  said,  telephone.  At  half  past 
twelve."  She  still  stared  at  him,  her  hands  hard,  her  pupils 
like  pinpoints,  her  face  ferocious.  "That's  it.  That's  the 


660  The  Middle  Ground 

reason.  Who  was  it  that  telephoned  here  about  me?  Tell  me! 
I  defy  you  to!  I  will  explain  it.  Tell  me!" 

"It  was  Martha  Ross.  She  said  she  had  just  let  you  out  at 
the  corner/' 

"She  lied!"  she  cried  at  once,  immediately,  scarce  waiting 
to  hear  the  name.  "She  lied!  They  did  bring  me  home  then 
but  it  was  still  early  and  so  I  decided  to  go  on  with  them  to 
their  house  and  have  some  ham  and  eggs.  So  I  called  to 
Frank  before  he  got  turned  around  and  I  went  with  them. 
Frank  will  prove  it!  She  lied!  They  just  this  minute  put  me 
out  at  the  corner!" 

She  looked  at  him.  They  stared  at  one  another  for  a  full 
immobile  moment.  Then  he  said,  "Then  where  is  the 
brooch?" 

"The  brooch?"  she  said.  "What  brooch?"  But  already  he 
had  seen  her  hand  move  upward  beneath  the  coat;  besides, 
he  could  see  her  face  and  watch  it  gape  like  that  of  a  child 
which  has  lost  its  breath  before  she  began  to  cry  with  a  wild 
yet  immobile  abandon,  so  that  she  spoke  through  the  weep- 
ing in  the  choked  gasping  of  a  child,  with  complete  and 
despairing  surrender:  "Oh,  Howard!  I  wouldn't  have  done 
that  to  you!  I  wouldn't  have!  I  wouldn't  have!" 

"All  right,"  he  said.  "Hush,  now.  Hush,  Amy.  She  will 
hear  you." 

"All  right.  I'm  trying  to."  But  she  still  faced  him  with 
that  wrung  and  curiously  rigid  face  beneath  its  incredible 
flow  of  moisture,  as  though  not  the  eyes  but  all  the  pores  had 
sprung  at  once;  now  she  too  spoke  directly  out  of  thinking, 
without  mention  of  subject  or  circumstance,  nothing  more 
of  defiance  or  denial:  "Would  you  have  gone  with  me  if 
you  hadn't  found  out?" 

"No.  Not  even  then.  I  won't  leave  her.  I  will  not,  until 
she  is  dead.  Or  this  house.  I  won't.  I  can't.  I — "  They  looked 
at  one  another,  she  staring  at  him  as  if  she  saw  reflected  in 


The  Brooch  66 1 

his  pupils  not  herself  but  the  parchment-colored  face  below 
stairs — the  piled  dirty  white  hair,  the  fierce  implacable  eyes 
— her  own  image  blanked  out  by  something  beyond  mere 
blindness:  by  a  quality  determined,  invincible,  and  crucified. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  From  somewhere  she  produced  a  scrap 
of  chiffon  and  began  to  dab  at  her  eyes,  delicately,  even 
now  by  instinct  careful  of  the  streaked  mascara.  "She  beat 
us.  She  lay  there  in  that  bed  and  beat  us."  She  turned  and 
went  to  the  closet  and  drew  out  an  overnight  bag  and  put 
the  crystal  objects  from  the  dressing-table  into  it  and  opened 
a  drawer.  "I  can't  take  everything  tonight.  I  will  have 
to " 

He  moved  also;  from  the  chest  of  drawers  where  the  small 
empty  photograph  frame  sat  he  took  his  wallet  and  removed 
the  bills  from  it  and  returned  and  put  the  money  into  her 
hand.  "I  don't  think  there  is  very  much  here.  But  you  won't 
need  money  until  tomorrow." 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "You  can  send  the  rest  of  my  things  then, 
too." 

"Yes,"  he  said.  She  folded  and  smoothed  the  notes  in  her 
fingers;  she  was  not  looking  at  him.  He  did  not  know  what 
she  was  looking  at  except  it  was  not  at  the  money.  "Haven't 
you  got  a  purse  or  something  to  carry  it  in?" 

"Yes,"  she  said.  But  she  did  not  stop  folding  and  smooth- 
ing the  bills,  still  not  looking  at  them,  apparently  not  aware 
of  them,  as  if  they  had  no  value  and  she  had  merely  picked 
them  idly  up  without  being  aware  of  it.  "Yes,"  she  said. 
"She  beat  us.  She  lay  there  in  that  bed  she  will  never  move 
from  until  they  come  in  and  carry  her  out  some  day,  and 
took  that  brooch  and  beat  us  both."  Then  she  began  to  cry. 
It  was  as  quiet  now  as  the  way  she  had  spoken.  "My  little 
baby,"  she  said.  "My  dear  little  baby." 

He  didn't  even  say  Hush  now.  He  just  waited  until  she 
dried  her  eyes  again,  almost  briskly,  rousing,  looking  at  him 


662  The  Middle  Ground 

with  an  expression  almost  like  smiling,  her  face,  the  make-up, 
the  careful  evening  face  haggard  and  streaked  and  filled 
with  the  weary  and  peaceful  aftermath  of  tears.  "Well,"  she 
said.  "It's  late."  She  stooped,  but  he  anticipated  her  and  took 
the  bag;  they  descended  the  stairs  together;  they  could  see 
the  lighted  transom  above  Mrs.  Boyd's  door. 

"It's  too  bad  you  haven't  got  the  car,"  he  said. 

"Yes.  I  lost  the  key  at  the  club.  But  I  telephoned  the 
garage.  They  will  bring  it  in  in  the  morning." 

They  stopped  in  the  hall  while  he  telephoned  for  a  cab. 
Then  they  waited,  talking  quietly  now  and  then.  "You  had 
better  go  straight  to  bed." 

"Yes.  I'm  tired.  I  danced  a  good  deal." 

"What  was  the  music?  Was  it  good?" 

"Yes.  I  don't  know.  I  suppose  so.  When  you  are  dancing 
yourself,  you  don't  usually  notice  whether  the  music  is  or 
isn't." 

"Yes,  I  guess  that's  so."  Then  the  car  came.  They  went 
out  to  it,  he  in  pajamas  and  robe;  the  earth  was  frozen  and 
iron-hard,  the  sky  bitter  and  brilliant.  He  helped  her  in. 

"Now  you  run  back  into  the  house,"  she  said.  "You  didn't 
even  put  on  your  overcoat." 

"Yes.  I'll  get  your  things  to  the  hotel  early." 

"Not  too  early.  Run,  now."  She  had  already  sat  back,  the 
coat  close  about  her.  He  had  already  remarked  how  some- 
time, at  some  moment  back  in  the  bedroom,  the  warm 
woman-odor  had  congealed  again  and  that  she  now  ema- 
nated once  more  that  faint  frosty  fragrance,  fragile,  imperma- 
nent and  forlorn;  the  car  moved  away,  he  did  not  look 
back.  As  he  was  closing  the  front  door  his  mother  called  his 
name.  But  he  did  not  pause  or  even  glance  toward  the  door. 
He  just  mounted  the  stairs,  out  of  the  dead,  level,  unsleeping, 
peremptory  voice.  The  fire  had  burned  down:  a  strong  rosy 
glow,  peaceful  and  quiet  and  warmly  reflected  from  mirror 


The  Brooch  663 

and  polished  wood.  The  book  still  lay,  face  down  and  open, 
in  the  chair.  He  took  it  up  and  went  to  the  table  between 
the  two  beds  and  sought  and  found  the  cellophane  envelope 
which  had  once  contained  pipe  cleaners,  which  he  used  for 
a  bookmark,  and  marked  his  place  and  put  the  book  down. 
It  was  the  coat-pocket  size,  Modern  Library  Green  Man- 
sions. He  had  discovered  the  book  during  adolescence;  he 
had  read  it  ever  since.  During  that  period  he  read  only  the 
part  about  the  journey  of  the  three  people  in  search  of  the 
Riolama  which  did  not  exist,  seeking  this  part  out  and  read- 
ing it  in  secret  as  the  normal  boy  would  have  normal  and 
conventional  erotica  or  obscenity,  mounting  the  barren 
mountain  with  Rima  toward  the  cave,  not  knowing  then 
that  it  was  the  cave-symbol  which  he  sought,  escaping  it  at 
last  through  the  same  desire  and  need  to  flee  and  escape 
which  Rima  had,  following  her  on  past  the  cave  to  where 
she  poised,  not  even  waiting  for  him,  impermanent  as  a 
match  flame  and  as  weak,  in  the  cold  and  ungrieving  moon. 
In  his  innocence  then  he  believed,  with  a  sort  of  urgent  and 
despairing  joy,  that  the  mystery  about  her  was  not  mystery 
since  it  was  physical:  that  she  was  corporeally  impenetrable, 
incomplete;  with  peaceful  despair  justifying,  vindicating, 
what  he  was  through  (so  he  believed)  no  fault  of  his  own, 
with  what  he  read  in  books,  as  the  young  do.  But  after  his 
marriage  he  did  not  read  the  book  again  until  the  child  died 
and  the  Saturday  nights  began.  And  then  he  avoided  the 
journey  to  Riolama  as  he  had  used  to  seek  it  out.  Now  he 
read  only  where  Abel  (the  one  man  on  earth  who  knew 
that  he  was  alone)  wandered  in  the  impervious  and  interdict 
forest  filled  with  the  sound  of  birds.  Then  he  went  to  the 
chest  and  opened  again  the  drawer  where  he  kept  the  wallet 
and  stood  for  a  moment,  his  hand  still  lying  on  the  edge  of 
the  drawer.  "Yes,"  he  said  quietly,  aloud:  "it  seems  to  have 
been  right  all  the  time  about  what  I  will  do." 


664  The  Middle  Ground 

The  bathroom  was  at  the  end  of  the  hall,  built  onto  the 
house  later,  warm  too  where  he  had  left  the  electric  heater 
on  for  Amy  and  they  had  forgot  it.  It  was  here  that  he  kept 
his  whiskey  also.  He  had  begun  to  drink  after  his  mother's 
stroke,  in  the  beginning  of  what  he  had  believed  to  be  his 
freedom,  and  since  the  death  of  the  child  he  had  begun  to 
keep  a  two-gallon  keg  of  corn  whiskey  in  the  bathroom. 
Although  it  was  detached  from  the  house  proper  and  the 
whole  depth  of  it  from  his  mother's  room,  he  nevertheless 
stuffed  towels  carefully  about  and  beneath  the  door,  and 
then  removed  them  and  returned  to  the  bedroom  and  took 
the  down  coverlet  from  Amy's  bed  and  returned  and  stuffed 
the  door  again  and  then  hung  the  coverlet  before  it.  But 
even  then  he  was  not  satisfied.  He  stood  there,  thoughtful, 
musing,  a  little  pudgy  (he  had  never  taken  any  exercise  since 
he  gave  up  trying  to  learn  to  dance,  and  now  what  with  the 
steady  drinking,  there  was  little  of  the  young  Italian  novice 
about  his  figure  any  more),  the  pistol  hanging  from  his 
hand.  He  began  to  look  about.  His  glance  fell  upon  the 
bath  mat  folded  over  the  edge  of  the  tub.  He  wrapped  his 
hand,  pistol  and  all,  in  the  mat  and  pointed  it  toward  the 
rear  wall  and  fired  it,  the  report  muffled  and  jarring  though 
not  loud.  Yet  even  now  he  stood  and  listened  as  if  he  ex- 
pected to  hear  from  this  distance.  But  he  heard  nothing; 
even  when,  the  door  freed  again,  he  moved  quietly  down 
the  hall  and  then  down  the  steps  to  where  he  could  see 
clearly  the  dark  transom  above  his  mother's  door.  But  again 
he  did  not  pause.  He  returned  up  the  stairs,  quietly,  hearing 
the  cold  and  impotent  ratiocination  without  listening  to  it: 
Like  your  father,  you  cannot  seem  to  live  with  either  of 
them,  but  unlike  your  father  you  cannot  seem  to  live  'with- 
out them;  telling  himself  quietly,  "Yes,  it  seems  that  it  was 
right.  It  seems  to  have  known  us  better  than  I  did,"  and  he 
shut  the  bathroom  door  again  and  stuffed  the  towels  care- 


The  Brooch  665 

fully  about  and  beneath  it.  But  he  did  not  hang  the  coverlet 
this  time.  He  drew  it  over  himself,  squatting,  huddling  into 
it,  the  muzzle  of  the  pistol  between  his  teeth  like  a  pipe, 
wadding  the  thick  soft  coverlet  about  his  head,  hurrying, 
moving  swiftly  now  because  he  was  already  beginning  to 
suffocate. 


My  Grandmother  Millard  and 

General  Bedford  Forrest  and 

The  Battle  of  Harrykin  Creek 


i 

IT  WOULD  BE  right  after  supper,  before  we  had  left  the  table. 
At  first,  beginning  with  the  day  the  news  came  that  the 
Yankees  had  taken  Memphis,  we  did  it  three  nights  in  suc- 
cession. But  after  that,  as  we  got  better  and  better  and  faster 
and  faster,  once  a  week  suited  Granny.  Then  after  Cousin 
Melisandre  finally  got  out  of  Memphis  and  came  to  live  with 
us,  it  would  be  just  once  a  month,  and  when  the  regiment  in 
Virginia  voted  Father  out  of  the  colonelcy  and  he  came 
home  and  stayed  three  months  while  he  made  a  crop  and  got 
over  his  mad  and  organized  his  cavalry  troop  for  General 
Forrest's  command,  we  quit  doing  it  at  all.  That  is,  we  did  it 
one  time  with  Father  there  too,  watching,  and  that  night 
Ringo  and  I  heard  him  laughing  in  the  library,  the  first  time 
he  had  laughed  since  he  came  home,  until  in  about  a  half  a 
minute  Granny  came  out  already  holding  her  skirts  up  and 
went  sailing  up  the  stairs.  So  we  didn't  do  it  any  more  until 
Father  had  organized  his  troop  and  was  gone  again. 

Granny  would  fold  her  napkin  beside  her  plate.  She  would 
speak  to  Ringo  standing  behind  her  chair  without  even  turn- 
ing her  head: 

"Go  call  Joby  and  Lucius." 

And  Ringo  would  go  back  through  the  kitchen  without 
stopping.  He  would  just  say,  "All  right.  Look  out,"  at  Lou- 

667 


668  The  Middle  Ground 

vinia's  back  and  go  to  the  cabin  and  come  back  with  not  only 
Joby  and  Lucius  and  the  lighted  lantern  but  Philadelphia  too, 
even  though  Philadelphia  wasn't  going  to  do  anything  but 
stand  and  watch  and  then  follow  to  the  orchard  and  back  to 
the  house  until  Granny  said  we  were  done  for  that  time  and 
she  and  Lucius  could  go  back  home  to  bed.  And  we  would 
bring  down  from  the  attic  the  big  trunk  (we  had  done  it  so 
many  times  by  now  that  we  didn't  even  need  the  lantern  any 
more  to  go  to  the  attic  and  get  the  trunk)  whose  lock  it  was 
my  job  to  oil  every  Monday  morning  with  a  feather  dipped 
in  chicken  fat,  and  Louvinia  would  come  in  from  the  kitchen 
with  the  unwashed  silver  from  supper  in  a  dishpan  under  one 
arm  and  the  kitchen  clock  under  the  other  and  set  the  clock 
and  the  dishpan  on  the  table  and  take  from  her  apron  pocket 
a  pair  of  Granny's  rolled-up  stockings  and  hand  them  to 
Granny  and  Granny  would  unroll  the  stockings  and  take 
from  the  toe  of  one  of  them  a  wadded  rag  and  open  the  rag 
and  take  out  the  key  to  the  trunk  and  unpin  her  watch  from 
her  bosom  and  fold  it  into  the  rag  and  put  the  rag  back  into 
the  stocking  and  roll  the  stockings  back  into  a  ball  and  put 
the  ball  into  the  trunk.  Then  with  Cousin  Melisandre  and 
Philadelphia  watching,  and  Father  too  on  that  one  time  when 
he  was  there,  Granny  would  stand  facing  the  clock,  her 
hands  raised  and  about  eight  inches  apart  and  her  neck  bowed 
so  she  could  watch  the  clock-face  over  her  spectacles,  until 
the  big  hand  reached  the  nearest  hour-mark. 

The  rest  of  us  watched  her  hands.  She  wouldn't  speak 
again.  She  didn't  need  to.  There  would  be  just  the  single 
light  loud  pop  of  her  palms  when  the  hand  came  to  the  near- 
est hour-mark;  sometimes  we  would  be  already  moving,  even 
before  her  hands  came  together,  all  of  us  that  is  except  Phila- 
delphia. Granny  wouldn't  let  her  help  at  all,  because  of 
Lucius,  even  though  Lucius  had  done  nearly  all  the  digging 
of  the  pit  and  did  most  of  the  carrying  of  the  trunk  each  time. 


My  Grandmother  Millard  669 

But  Philadelphia  had  to  be  there.  Granny  didn't  have  to  tell 
her  but  once.  "I  want  the  wives  of  all  the  free  men  here  too," 
Granny  said.  "I  want  all  of  you  free  folks  to  watch  what  the 
rest  of  us  that  aint  free  have  to  do  to  keep  that  way." 

That  began  about  eight  months  ago.  One  day  even  I 
realized  that  something  had  happened  to  Lucius.  Then  I 
knew  that  Ringo  had  already  seen  it  and  that  he  knew  what 
it  was,  so  that  when  at  last  Louvinia  came  and  told  Granny, 
it  was  not  as  if  Lucius  had  dared  his  mother  to  tell  her  but  as 
if  he  had  actually  forced  somebody,  he  didn't  care  who,  to 
tell  her.  He  had  said  it  more  than  once,  in  the  cabin  one 
night  probably  for  the  first  time,  then  after  that  in  other 
places  and  to  other  people,  to  Negroes  from  other  plantations 
even.  Memphis  was  already  gone  then,  and  New  Orleans, 
and  all  we  had  left  of  the  River  was  Vicksburg  and  although 
we  didn't  believe  it  then,  we  wouldn't  have  that  long.  Then 
one  morning  Louvinia  came  in  where  Granny  was  cutting 
down  the  worn-out  uniform  pants  Father  had  worn  home 
from  Virginia  so  they  would  fit  me,  and  told  Granny  how 
Lucius  was  saying  that  soon  the  Yankees  would  have  all  of 
Mississippi  and  Yoknapatawpha  County  too  and  all  the  nig- 
gers would  be  free  and  that  when  that  happened,  he  was 
going  to  be  long  gone.  Lucius  was  working  in  the  garden 
that  morning.  Granny  went  out  to  the  back  gallery,  still 
carrying  the  pants  and  the  needle.  She  didn't  even  push  her 
spectacles  up.  She  said,  "You,  Lucius,"  just  once,  and  Lucius 
came  out  of  the  garden  with  the  hoe  and  Granny  stood  look- 
ing down  at  him  over  the  spectacles  as  she  looked  over  them 
at  everything  she  did,  from  reading  or  sewing  to  watching 
the  clock-face  until  the  instant  came  to  start  burying  the 
silver. 

"You  can  go  now,"  she  said.  "You  needn't  wait  on  the 
Yankees." 

"Go?"  Lucius  said.  "I  aint  free." 


670  The  Middle  Ground 

"You've  been  free  for  almost  three  minutes,"  Granny  said. 
"Go  on." 

Lucius  blinked  his  eyes  while  you  could  have  counted 
about  ten.  "Go  where?"  he  said. 

"I  can't  tell  you,"  Granny  said.  "I  aint  free.  I  would 
imagine  you  will  have  all  Yankeedom  to  move  around  in." 

Lucius  blinked  his  eyes.  He  didn't  look  at  Granny  now. 
"Was  that  all  you  wanted?"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  Granny  said.  So  he  went  back  to  the  garden.  And 
that  was  the  last  we  heard  about  being  free  from  him.  That 
is,  it  quit  showing  in  the  way  he  acted,  and  if  he  talked  any 
more  of  it,  even  Louvinia  never  thought  it  was  worth  both- 
ering Granny  with.  It  was  Granny  who  would  do  the  re- 
minding of  it,  especially  to  Philadelphia,  especially  on  the 
nights  when  we  would  stand  like  race-horses  at  the  barrier, 
watching  Granny's  hands  until  they  clapped  together. 

Each  one  of  us  knew  exactly  what  he  was  to  do.  I  would 
go  upstairs  for  Granny's  gold  hatpin  and  her  silver-headed 
umbrella  and  her  plumed  Sunday  hat  because  she  had  already 
sent  her  ear-rings  and  brooch  to  Richmond  a  long  time  ago, 
and  to  Father's  room  for  his  silver-backed  brushes  and  to 
Cousin  Melisandre's  room  after  she  came  to  live  with  us  for 
her  things  because  the  one  time  Granny  let  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre  try  to  help  too,  Cousin  Melisandre  brought  all  her 
dresses  down.  Ringo  would  go  to  the  parlor  for  the  candle- 
sticks and  Granny's  dulcimer  and  the  medallion  of  Father's 
mother  back  in  Carolina.  And  we  would  run  back  to  the 
dining-room  where  Louvinia  and  Lucius  would  have  the  side- 
board almost  cleared,  and  Granny  still  standing  there  and 
watching  the  clock-face  and  the  trunk  both  now  with  her 
hands  ready  to  pop  again  and  they  would  pop  and  Ringo  and 
I  would  stop  at  the  cellar  door  just  long  enough  to  snatch  up 
the  shovels  and  run  on  to  the  orchard  and  snatch  the  brush 
and  grass  and  the  criss-crossed  sticks  away  and  have  the  pit 


My  Grandmother  Millar  d  67 1 

open  and  ready  by  the  time  we  saw  them  coming:  first  Lou- 
vinia  with  the  lantern,  then  Joby  and  Lucius  with  the  trunk 
and  Granny  walking  beside  it  and  Cousin  Melisandre  and 
Philadelphia  (and  on  that  one  time  Father,  walking  along  and 
laughing)  following  behind.  And  on  that  first  night,  the 
kitchen  clock  wasn't  in  the  trunk.  Granny  was  carrying  it, 
while  Louvinia  held  the  lantern  so  that  Granny  could  watch 
the  hand,  Granny  made  us  put  the  trunk  into  the  pit  and 
shovel  the  dirt  back  and  smooth  it  off  and  lay  the  brush  and 
grass  back  over  it  again  and  then  dig  up  the  trunk  and  carry 
it  back  to  the  house.  And  one  night,  it  seemed  like  we  had 
been  bringing  the  trunk  down  from  the  attic  and  putting  the 
silver  into  it  and  carrying  it  out  to  the  pit  and  uncovering  the 
pit  and  then  covering  the  pit  again  and  turning  around  and 
carrying  the  trunk  back  to  the  house  and  taking  the  silver 
out  and  putting  it  back  where  we  got  it  from  all  winter  and 
all  summer  too; — that  night,  and  I  don't  know  who  thought 
of  it  first,  maybe  it  was  all  of  us  at  once.  But  anyway  the 
clock-hand  had  passed  four  hour-marks  before  Granny's 
hands  even  popped  for  Ringo  and  me  to  run  and  open  the 
pit.  And  they  came  with  the  trunk  and  Ringo  and  I  hadn't 
even  put  down  the  last  armful  of  brush  and  sticks,  to  save 
having  to  stoop  to  pick  it  up  again,  and  Lucius  hadn't  even 
put  down  his  end  of  the  trunk  for  the  same  reason  and  I 
reckon  Louvinia  was  the  only  one  that  knew  what  was  com- 
ing next  because  Ringo  and  I  didn't  know  that  the  kitchen 
clock  was  still  sitting  on  the  dining-room  table.  Then  Granny 
spoke.  It  was  the  first  time  we  had  ever  heard  her  speak  be- 
tween when  she  would  tell  Ringo,  "Go  call  Joby  and  Lu- 
cius," and  then  tell  us  both  about  thirty  minutes  later:  "Wash 
your  feet  and  go  to  bed."  It  was  not  loud  and  not  long,  just 
vwo  words:  "Bury  it."  And  we  lowered  the  trunk  into  the 
pit  and  Joby  and  Lucius  threw  the  dirt  back  in  and  even  then 
Ringo  and  I  didn't  move  with  the  brush  until  Grannv  spoke 


672  The  Middle  Ground 

again,  not  loud  this  time  either:  "Go  on.  Hide  the  pit."  And 
we  put  the  brush  back  and  Granny  said,  "Dig  it  up."  And  we 
dug  up  the  trunk  and  carried  it  back  into  the  house  and  put 
the  things  back  where  we  got  them  from  and  that  was  when 
I  saw  the  kitchen  clock  still  sitting  on  the  dining-room  table. 
And  we  all  stood  there  watching  Granny's  hands  until  they 
popped  together  and  that  time  we  filled  the  trunk  and  car- 
ried it  out  to  the  orchard  and  lowered  it  into  the  pit  quicker 
than  we  had  ever  done  before. 


II 

AND  THEN  when  the  time  came  to  really  bury  the  silver,  it 
was  too  late.  After  it  was  all  over  and  Cousin  Melisandre  and 
Cousin  Philip  were  finally  married  and  Father  had  got  done 
laughing,  Father  said  that  always  happened  when  a  hetero- 
geneous collection  of  people  who  were  cohered  simply  by  an 
uncomplex  will  for  freedom  engaged  with  a  tyrannous  ma- 
chine. He  said  they  would  always  lose  the  first  battles,  and  if 
they  were  outnumbered  and  outweighed  enough,  it  would 
seem  to  an  outsider  that  they  were  going  to  lose  them  all.  But 
they  would  not.  They  could  not  be  defeated;  if  they  just 
willed  that  freedom  strongly  and  completely  enough  to 
sacrifice  all  else  for  it — ease  and  comfort  and  fatness  of  spirit 
and  all,  until  whatever  it  was  they  had  left  would  be  enough, 
no  matter  how  little  it  was — that  very  freedom  itself  would 
finally  conquer  the  machine  as  a  negative  force  like  drouth 
or  flood  could  strangle  it.  And  later  still,  after  two  more  years 
and  we  knew  we  were  going  to  lose  the  war,  he  was  still 
saying  that.  He  said,  "I  won't  see  it  but  you  will.  You  will 
see  it  in  the  next  war,  and  in  all  the  wars  Americans  will  have 
to  fight  from  then  on.  There  will  be  men  from  the  South  in 
the  forefront  of  all  the  battles,  even  leading  some  of  them, 
helping  those  who  conauered  us  defend  that  same  freedom 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  673 

which  they  believed  they  had  taken  from  us."  And  that  hap- 
pened: thirty  years  later,  and  General  Wheeler,  whom 
Father  would  have  called  apostate,  commanding  in  Cuba, 
and  whom  old  General  Early  did  call  apostate  and  matricide 
too  in  the  office*  of  the  Richmond  editor  when  he  said:  "I 
would  like  to  have  lived  so  that  when  my  time  comes,  I  will 
see  Robert  Lee  again.  But  since  I  haven't,  I'm  certainly  going 
to  enjoy  watching  the  devil  burn  that  blue  coat  off  Joe 
Wheeler." 

We  didn't  have  time.  We  didn't  even  know  there  were 
any  Yankees  in  Jefferson,  let  alone  within  a  mile  of  Sartoris. 
There  never  had  been  many.  There  was  no  railroad  then  and 
no  river  big  enough  for  big  boats  and  nothing  in  Jefferson 
they  would  have  wanted  even  if  they  had  come,  since  this 
was  before  Father  had  had  time  to  worry  them  enough  for 
General  Grant  to  issue  a  general  order  with  a  reward  for  his 
capture.  So  we  had  got  used  to  the  war.  We  thought  of  it  as 
being  definitely  fixed  and  established  as  a  railroad  or  a  river 
is,  moving  east  along  the  railroad  from  Memphis  and  south 
along  the  River  toward  Vicksburg.  We  had  heard  tales  of 
Yankee  pillage  and  most  of  the  people  around  Jefferson 
stayed  ready  to  bury  their  silver  fast  too,  though  I  don't 
reckon  any  of  them  practiced  doing  it  like  we  did.  But  no- 
body we  knew  was  even  kin  to  anyone  who  had  been  pil- 
laged, and  so  I  don't  think  that  even  Lucius  really  expected 
any  Yankees  until  that  morning. 

It  was  about  eleven  o'clock.  The  table  was  already  set 
for  dinner  and  everybody  was  beginning  to  kind  of  ease  up 
so  we  would  be  sure  to  hear  when  Louvinia  went  out  to  the 
back  gallery  and  rang  the  bell,  when  Ab  Snopes  came  in  at  a 
dead  run,  on  a  strange  horse  as  usual.  He  was  a  member  of 
Father's  troop.  Not  a  fighting  member;  he  called  himself 
father's  horse-captain,  whatever  he  meant  by  it,  though  we 
had  a  pretty  good  idea,  and  none  of  us  at  least  knew  what  he 


674  The  Middle  Ground 

was  doing  in  Jefferson  when  the  troop  was  supposed  to  be 
up  in  Tennessee  with  General  Bragg,  and  probably  nobody 
anywhere  knew  the  actual  truth  about  how  he  got  the  horse, 
galloping  across  the  yard  and  right  through  one  of  Granny's 
flower  beds  because  I  reckon  he  figured  that  carrying  a  mes- 
sage he  could  risk  it,  and  on  around  to  the  back  because  he 
knew  that,  message  or  no  message,  he  better  not  come  to 
Granny's  front  door  hollering  that  way,  sitting  that  strange 
blown  horse  with  a  U.S.  army  brand  on  it  you  could  read 
three  hundred  yards  and  yelling  up  at  Granny  that  General 
Forrest  was  in  Jefferson  but  there  was  a  whole  regiment  of 
Yankee  cavalry  not  a  half  a  mile  down  the  road. 

So  we  never  had  time.  Afterward  Father  admitted  that 
Granny's  error  was  not  in  strategy  nor  tactics  either,  even 
though  she  had  copied  from  someone  else.  Because  he  said  it 
had  been  a  long  time  now  since  originality  had  been  a  com- 
ponent of  military  success.  It  just  happened  too  fast.  I  went 
for  Joby  and  Lucius  and  Philadelphia  because  Granny  had 
already  sent  Ringo  down  to  the  road  with  a  cup  towel  to 
wave  when  they  came  in  sight.  Then  she  sent  me  to  the  front 
window  where  I  could  watch  Ringo.  \Vhen  Ab  Snopes  came 
back  from  hiding  his  new  Yankee  horse,  he  offered  to  go  up- 
stairs to  get  the  things  there.  Granny  had  told  us  a  long  time 
ago  never  to  let  Ab  Snopes  go  anywhere  about  the  house 
unless  somebody  was  with  him.  She  said  she  would  rather 
have  Yankees  in  the  house  any  day  because  at  least  Yankees 
would  have  more  delicacy,  even  if  it  wasn't  anything  but 
good  sense,  than  to  steal  a  spoon  or  candlestick  and  then  try 
to  sell  it  to  one  of  her  own  neighbors,  as  Ab  Snopes  would 
probably  do.  She  didn't  even  answer  him.  She  just  said, 
"Stand  over  there  by  that  door  and  be  quiet."  So  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre  went  upstairs  after  all  and  Granny  and  Philadelphia 
went  to  the  parlor  for  the  candlesticks  and  the  medallion  and 
the  dulcimer,  Philadelphia  not  only  helping  this  time,  free  or 
not,  but  Granny  wasn't  even  using  the  clock. 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  675 

It  just  all  happened  at  once.  One  second  Ringo  was  sitting 
on  the  gate-post,  looking  up  the  road.  The  next  second  he 
was  standing  on  it  and  waving  the  cup  towel  and  then  I  was 
running  and  hollering,  back  to  the  dining-room,  and  I  re- 
member the  whites  of  Joby's  and  Lucius's  and  Philadelphia's 
eyes  and  I  remembered  Cousin  Melisandre's  eyes  where  she 
leaned  against  the  sideboard  with  the  back  of  her  hand  against 
her  mouth,  and  Granny  and  Louvinia  and  Ab  Snopes  glaring 
at  one  another  across  the  trunk  and  I  could  hear  Louvinia's 
voice  even  louder  than  mine: 

"Miz  Cawmpson!  Miz  Cawmpson!" 

"What?"  Granny  cried.  "What?  Mrs.  Compson?"  Then 
we  all  remembered.  It  was  when  the  first  Yankee  scouting 
patrol  entered  Jefferson  over  a  year  ago.  The  war  was  new 
then  and  I  suppose  General  Compson  was  the  only  Jefferson 
soldier  they  had  heard  of  yet.  Anyway,  the  officer  asked 
someone  in  the  Square  where  General  Compson  lived  and  old 
Doctor  Holston  sent  his  Negro  boy  by  back  alleys  and  across 
lots  to  warn  Mrs.  Compson  in  time,  and  the  story  was  how 
the  Yankee  officer  sent  some  of  his  men  through  the  empty 
house  and  himself  rode  around  to  the  back  where  old  Aunt 
Roxanne  was  standing  in  front  of  the  outhouse  behind  the 
closed  door  of  which  Mrs.  Compson  was  sitting,  fully  dressed 
even  to  her  hat  and  parasol,  on  the  wicker  hamper  containing 
her  plate  and  silver.  "Miss  in  dar,"  Roxanne  said.  "Stop  where 
you  is."  And  the  story  told  how  the  Yankee  officer  said,  "Ex- 
cuse me,"  and  raised  his  hat  and  even  backed  the  horse  a  few 
steps  before  he  turned  and  called  his  men  and  rode  away. 
"The  privy!"  Granny  cried. 

"Hell  fire,  Miz  Millard!"  Ab  Snopes  said.  And  Granny 
never  said  anything.  It  wasn't  like  she  didn't  hear,  because 
she  was  looking  right  at  him.  It  was  like  she  didn't  care;  that 
she  might  have  even  said  it  herself.  And  that  shows  how 
things  were  then:  we  just  never  had  time  for  anything.  "Hell 
fire,"  Ab  Snopes  said,  "all  north  Missippi  has  done  heard 


676  The  Middle  Ground 

about  that!  There  aint  a  white  lady  between  here  and  Mem- 
phis that  aint  setting  in  the  back  house  on  a  grip  full  of  silver 
right  this  minute." 

"Then  we're  already  late,"  Granny  said.  "Hurry." 
"Wait! "  Ab  Snopes  said.  "Wait!  Even  them  Yankees  have 
done  caught  onto  that  by  now!" 

"Then  let's  hope  these  are  different  Yankees,"  Granny 
said.  "Hurry." 

"But  Miz  Millard!"  Ab  Snopes  cried.  "Wait!  Wait!" 
But  then  we  could  hear  Ringo  yelling  down  at  the  gate  and 
I  remember  Joby  and  Lucius  and  Philadelphia  and  Louvinia 
and  the  balloon-like  swaying  of  Cousin  Melisandre's  skirts  as 
they  ran  across  the  back  yard,  the  trunk  somewhere  among 
them;  I  remember  how  Joby  and  Lucius  tumbled  the  trunk 
into  the  little  tall  narrow  flimsy  sentry-box  and  Louvinia 
thrust  Cousin  Melisandre  in  and  slammed  the  door  and  we 
could  hear  Ringo  yelling  good  now,  almost  to  the  house,  and 
then  I  was  back  at  the  front  window  and  I  saw  them  just  as 
they  swept  around  the  house  in  a  kind  of  straggling-clump 
— six  men  in  blue,  riding  fast  yet  with  something  curious  in 
the  action  of  the  horses,  as  if  they  were  not  only  yoked  to- 
gether in  spans  but  were  hitched  to  a  single  wagon-tongue, 
then  Ringo  on  foot  running  and  not  yelling  now,  and  last  of 
all  the  seventh  rider,  bareheaded  and  standing  in  his  stirrups 
and  with  a  sabre  over  his  head.  Then  I  was  on  the  back  gal- 
lery again,  standing  beside  Granny  above  that  moil  of  horses 
and  men  in  the  yard,  and  she  was  wrong.  It  was  as  if  these 
were  not  only  the  same  ones  who  had  been  at  Mrs.  Comp- 
son's  last  year,  but  somebody  had  even  told  them  exactly 
where  our  outhouse  was.  The  horses  were  yoked  in  pairs, 
but  it  was  not  a  wagon-tongue,  it  was  a  pole,  almost  a  log, 
twenty  feet  long,  slung  from  saddle  to  saddle  between  the 
three  span;  and  I  remember  the  faces,  unshaven  and  wan  and 
not  so  much  peering  as  frantically  gleeful,  glaring  up  at  us 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  677 

for  an  instant  before  the  men  leaped  down  and  unslung  the 
pole  and  jerked  the  horses  aside  and  picked  up  the  pole,  three 
to  a  side,  and  began  to  run  across  the  yard  with  it  as  the  last 
rider  came  around  the  house,  in  gray  (an  officer:  it  was 
Cousin  Philip,  though  of  course  we  didn't  know  that  then, 
and  there  was  going  to  be  a  considerable  more  uproar  and  con- 
fusion before  he  finally  became  Cousin  Philip  and  of  course 
we  didn't  know  that  either),  the  sabre  still  lifted  and  not 
only  standing  in  the  stirrups  but  almost  lying  down  along  the 
horse's  neck.  The  six  Yankees  never  saw  him.  And  we  used  to 
watch  Father  drilling  his  troop  in  the  pasture,  changing  them 
from  column  to  troop  front  at  full  gallop,  and  you  could  hear 
his  voice  even  above  the  sound  of  the  galloping  hooves  but 
it  wasn't  a  bit  louder  than  Granny's.  "There's  a  lady  in 
there!"  she  said.  But  the  Yankees  never  heard  her  any  more 
than  they  had  seen  Cousin  Philip  yet,  the  whole  mass  of 
them,  the  six  men  running  with  the  pole  and  Cousin  Philip 
on  the  horse,  leaning  out  above  them  with  a  lifted  sabre, 
rushing  on  across  the  yard  until  the  end  of  the  pole  struck  the 
outhouse  door.  It  didn't  just  overturn,  it  exploded.  One  sec- 
ond it  stood  there,  tall  and  narrow  and  flimsy;  the  next  sec- 
ond it  was  gone  and  there  was  a  boil  of  yelling  men  in  blue 
coats  darting  and  dodging  around  under  Cousin  Philip's 
horse  and  the  flashing  sabre  until  they  could  find  a  chance  to 
turn  and  run.  Then  there  was  a  scatter  of  planks  and  shingles 
and  Cousin  Melisandre  sitting  beside  the  trunk  in  the  middle 
of  it,  in  the  spread  of  her  hoops,  her  eyes  shut  and  her  mouth 
open,  still  screaming,  and  after  a  while  a  feeble  popping  of 
pistol-shots  from  down  along  the  creek  that  didn't  sound 
any  more  like  war  than  a  boy  with  firecrackers. 

"I  tried  to  tell  you  to  wait!"  Ab  Sncpes  said  behind  us,  "I 
tried  to  tell  you  them  Yankees  had  done  caught  on!" 

After  Joby  and  Lucius  and  Ringo  and  I  finished  burying 
*Jie  trunk  in  the  pit  and  hiding  the  shovel-marks,  I  found 


678  The  Middle  Ground 

Cousin  Philip  in  the  summer  house.  His  sabre  and  belt  were 
propped  against  the  wall  but  I  don't  reckon  even  he  knew 
what  had  become  of  his  hat.  He  had  his  coat  off  too  and  was 
wiping  it  with  his  handkerchief  and  watching  the  house  with 
one  eye  around  the  edge  of  the  door.  When  I  came  in  he 
straightened  up  and  I  thought  at  first  he  was  looking  at  me. 
Then  I  don't  know  what  he  was  looking  at.  "That  beautiful 
girl,"  he  said.  "Fetch  me  a  comb." 

"They're  waiting  for  you  in  the  house,"  I  said.  "Granny 
wants  to  know  what's  the  matter."  Cousin  Melisandre  was 
all  right  now.  It  took  Louvinia  and  Philadelphia  both  and 
finally  Granny  to  get  her  into  the  house  but  Louvinia 
brought  the  elder-flower  wine  before  Granny  had  time  to 
send  her  after  it  and  now  Cousin  Melisandre  and  Granny 
were  waiting  in  the  parlor. 

"Your  sister,"  Cousin  Philip  said.  "And  a  hand-mirror." 

"No,  Sir,"  I  said.  "She's  just  our  cousin.  From  Memphis. 
Granny  says — "  Because  he  didn't  know  Granny.  It  was 
pretty  good  for  her  to  wait  any  time  for  anybody.  But  he 
didn't  even  let  me  finish. 

"That  beautiful,  tender  girl,"  he  said.  "And  send  a  nigger 
with  a  basin  of  water  and  a  towel."  I  went  back  toward  the 
house.  This  time  when  I  looked  back  I  couldn't  see  his  eye 
around  the  door-edge.  "And  a  clothes  brush,"  he  said. 

Granny  wasn't  waiting  very  much.  She  was  at  the  front 
door.  "Now  what?"  she  said.  I  told  her.  "Does  the  man  think 
we  are  giving  a  ball  here  in  the  middle  of  the  day?  Tell  him 
I  said  to  come  on  in  and  wash  on  the  back  gallery  like  we  do. 
Louvinia's  putting  dinner  on,  and  we're  already  late."  But 
Granny  didn't  know  Cousin  Philip  either.  I  told  her  again. 
She  looked  at  me.  "What  did  he  say?"  she  said. 

"He  didn't  say  anything,"  I  said.  "Just  that  beautiful  girl." 

"That's  all  he  said  to  me  too,"  Ringo  said.  I  hadn't  heard 


My  Grandmother  Millard  679 

him  come  in.  "  'Sides  the  soap  and  water.  Just  that  beautiful 

girl." 

"Was  he  looking  at  you  either  when  he  said  it?"  I  said. 

"No,"  Ringo  said.  "I  just  thought  for  a  minute  he  was." 

Now  Granny  looked  at  Ringo  and  me  both.  "Hah,"  she 
said,  and  afterward  when  I  was  older  I  found  out  that 
Granny  already  knew  Cousin  Philip  too,  that  she  could  look 
at  one  of  them  and  know  all  the  other  Cousin  Melisandres 
and  Cousin  Philips  both  without  having  to  see  them.  "I  some- 
times think  that  bullets  are  just  about  the  least  fatal  things 
that  fly,  especially  in  war. — All  right,"  she  said.  "Take  him 
his  soap  and  water.  But  hurry." 

We  did.  This  time  he  didn't  say  "that  beautiful  girl."  He 
said  it  twice.  He  took  off  his  coat  and  handed  it  to  Ringo. 
"Brush  it  good,"  he  said.  "Your  sister,  I  heard  you  say." 

"No,  you  didn't,"  I  said. 

"No  matter,"  he  said.  "I  want  a  nosegay.  To  carry  in  my 
hand." 

"Those  flowers  are  Granny's,"  I  said. 

"No  matter,"  he  said.  He  rolled  up  his  sleeves  and  began 
to  wash.  "A  small  one.  About  a  dozen  blooms.  Get  something 
pink." 

I  went  and  got  the  flowers.  I  don't  know  whether  Granny 
was  still  at  the  front  door  or  not.  Maybe  she  wasn't.  At  least 
she  never  said  anything.  So  I  picked  the  ones  Ab  Snope's 
new  Yankee  horse  had  already  trampled  down  and  wiped  the 
dirt  off  of  them  and  straightened  them  out  and  went  back  to 
the  summer  house  where  Ringo  was  holding  the  hand-glass 
while  Cousin  Philip  combed  his  hair.  Then  he  put  on  his  coat 
and  buckled  on  his  sabre  again  and  held  his  feet  out  one  at  a 
time  for  Ringo  to  wipe  his  boots  off  with  the  towel,  and 
Ringo  saw  it.  I  wouldn't  have  spoken  at  all  because  we  were 
already  later  for  dinner  than  ever  now,  even  if  there  hadn't 


680  The  Middle  Ground 

never  been  a  Yankee  on  the  place.  "You  tore  your  britches 
on  them  Yankees,"  Ringo  said. 

So  I  went  back  to  the  house.  Granny  was  standing  in  the 
hall.  This  time  she  just  said,  "Yes?"  It  was  almost  quiet. 

"He  tore  his  britches,"  I  said.  And  she  knew  more  about 
Cousin  Philip  than  even  Ringo  could  find  out  by  looking  at 
him.  She  had  the  needle  already  threaded  in  the  bosom  of 
her  dress.  And  I  went  back  to  the  summer  house  and  then 
we  came  back  to  the  house  and  up  to  the  front  door  and  I 
waited  for  him  to  go  into  the  hall  but  he  didn't,  he  just  stood 
there  holding  the  nosegay  in  one  hand  and  his  hat  in  the 
other,  not  very  old,  looking  at  that  moment  anyway  not  very 
much  older  than  Ringo  and  me  for  all  his  braid  and  sash  and 
sabre  and  boots  and  spurs,  and  even  after  just  two  years  look- 
ing like  all  our  soldiers  and  most  of  the  other  people  too  did: 
as  if  it  had  been  so  long  now  since  he  had  had  all  he  wanted 
to  eat  at  one  time  that  even  his  memory  and  palate  had  for- 
gotten it  and  only  his  body  remembered,  standing  there  with 
his  nosegay  and  that  beautiful-girl  look  in  his  face  like  he 
couldn't  have  seen  anything  even  if  he  had  been  looking  at  it. 

"No,"  he  said.  "Announce  me.  It  should  be  your  nigger. 
But  no  matter."  He  said  his  full  name,  all  three  of  them, 
twice,  as  if  he  thought  I  might  forget  them  before  I  could 
reach  the  parlor. 

"Go  on  in,"  I  said.  "They're  waiting  for  you.  They  had 
already  been  waiting  for  you  even  before  you  found  your 
pants  were  torn." 

"Announce  me,"  he  said.  He  said  his  name  again.  "Of 
Tennessee.  Lieutenant,  Savage's  Battalion,  Forrest's  Com- 
mand, Provisional  Army,  Department  of  the  West." 

So  I  did.  We  crossed  the  hall  to  the  parlor,  where  Granny 
stood  between  Cousin  Melisandre's  chair  and  the  table  where 
the  decanter  of  elder-flower  wine  and  three  fresh  glasses  and 
even  a  plate  of  the  tea  cakes  Louvinia  had  learned  to  make 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  68 1 

from  cornmeal  and  molasses  were  sitting,  and  he  stopped 
again  at  that  door  too  and  I  know  he  couldn't  even  see  Cousin 
Melisandre  for  a  minute,  even  though  he  never  had  looked  at 
anything  else  but  her.  "Lieutenant  Philip  St-Just  Backhouse," 
I  said.  I  said  it  loud,  because  he  had  repeated  it  to  me  three 
times  so  I  would  be  sure  to  get  it  right  and  I  wanted  to  say  it 
to  suit  him  too  since  even  if  he  had  made  us  a  good  hour  late 
for  dinner,  at  least  he  had  saved  the  silver.  "Of  Tennessee," 
I  said.  "Savage's  Battalion,  Forrest's  Command,  Provisional 
Army,  Department  of  the  West." 

While  you  could  count  maybe  five,  there  wasn't  anything 
at  all.  Then  Cousin  Melisandre  screamed.  She  sat  bolt  upright 
on  the  chair  like  she  had  sat  beside  the  trunk  in  the  litter  of 
planks  and  shingles  in  the  back  yard  this  morning,  with  her 
eyes  shut  and  her  mouth  open  again,  screaming. 

Ill 

So  WE  were  still  another  half  an  hour  late  for  dinner.  Though 
this  time  it  never  needed  anybody  but  Cousin  Philip  to  get 
Cousin  Melisandre  upstairs.  All  he  needed  to  do  was  to  try 
to  speak  to  her  again.  Then  Granny  came  back  down  and 
said,  "Well,  if  we  don't  want  to  just  quit  and  start  calling  it 
supper,  we'd  better  walk  in  and  eat  it  within  the  next  hour 
and  a  half  at  least."  So  we  walked  in.  Ab  Snopes  was  already 
waiting  in  the  dining-room.  I  reckon  he  had  been  waiting 
longer  than  anybody,  because  after  all  Cousin  Melisandre 
wasn't  any  kin  to  him.  Ringo  drew  Granny's  chair  and  we 
sat  down.  Some  of  it  was  cold.  The  rest  of  it  had  been  on  the 
stove  so  long  now  that  when  you  ate  it  it  didn't  matter 
whether  it  was  cold  or  not.  But  Cousin  Philip  didn't  seem  to 
mind.  And  maybe  it  didn't  take  his  memory  very  long  to 
remember  again  what  it  was  like  to  have  all  he  wanted  to  eat, 
but  I  don't  think  his  palate  ever  tasted  any  of  it.  He  would 


682  The  Middle  Ground 

sit  there  eating  like  he  hadn't  seen  any  food  of  any  kind  in  at 
least  a  week,  and  like  he  was  expecting  what  was  even  al- 
ready on  his  fork  to  vanish  before  he  could  get  it  into  his 
mouth.  Then  he  would  stop  with  the  fork  halfway  to  his 
mouth  and  sit  there  looking  at  Cousin  Melisandre's  empty 
place,  laughing.  That  is,  I  don't  know  what  else  to  call  it  but 
laughing.  Until  at  last  I  said, 

"Why  don't  you  change  your  name?" 

Then  Granny  quit  eating  too.  She  looked  at  me  over  her 
spectacles.  Then  she  took  both  hands  and  lifted  the  spectacles 
up  her  nose  until  she  could  look  at  me  through  them.  Then 
she  even  pushed  the  spectacles  up  into  her  front  hair  and 
looked  at  me.  "That's  the  first  sensible  thing  I've  heard  said 
on  this  place  since  eleven  o'clock  this  morning,"  she  said. 
"It's  so  sensible  and  simple  that  I  reckon  only  a  child  could 
have  thought  of  it."  She  looked  at  him.  "Why  don't  you?'7 

He  laughed  some  more.  That  is,  his  face  did  the  same  way 
and  he  made  the  same  sound  again.  "My  grandfather  was  at 
King's  Mountain,  with  Marion  all  through  Carolina.  My 
uncle  was  defeated  for  Governor  of  Tennessee  by  a  corrupt 
and  traitorous  cabal  of  tavern-keepers  and  Republican  Aboli- 
tionists, and  my  father  died  at  Chapultepec.  After  that,  the 
name  they  bore  is  not  mine  to  change.  Even  my  life  is  not 
mine  so  long  as  my  country  lies  bleeding  and  ravished  be- 
neath an  invader's  iron  heel."  Then  he  stopped  laughing,  or 
whatever  it  was.  Then  his  face  looked  surprised.  Then  it  quit 
looking  surprised,  the  surprise  fading  out  of  it  steady  at  first 
and  gradually  faster  but  not  very  much  faster  like  the  heat 
fades  out  of  a  piece  of  iron  on  a  blacksmith's  anvil  until  his 
face  just  looked  amazed  and  quiet  and  almost  peaceful.  "Un- 
less I  lose  it  in  battle,"  he  said. 

"You  can't  very  well  do  that  sitting  here,"  Granny  said. 

"No,"  he  said.  But  I  don't  think  he  even  heard  her  except 
with  his  ears.  He  stood  up.  Even  Ab  Snopes  was  watching 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  683 

him  now,  his  knife  stopped  halfway  to  his  mouth  with  a  wad 
of  greens  on  the  end  of  the  blade.  "Yes,"  Cousin  Philip  said. 
His  face  even  had  the  beautiful-girl  look  on  it  again.  "Yes," 
he  said.  He  thanked  Granny  for  his  dinner.  That  is,  I  reckon 
that's  what  he  had  told  his  mouth  to  say.  It  didn't  make  much 
sense  to  us,  but  I  don't  think  he  was  paying  any  attention  to 
it  at  all.  He  bowed.  He  wasn't  looking  at  Granny  nor  at  any- 
thing else.  He  said  "Yes"  again.  Then  he  went  out.  Ringo  and 
I  followed  to  the  front  door  and  watched  him  mount  his 
horse  and  sit  there  for  a  minute,  bareheaded,  looking  up  at 
the  upstairs  windows.  It  was  Granny's  room  he  was  looking 
at,  with  mine  and  Ringo's  room  next  to  it.  But  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre  couldn't  have  seen  him  even  if  she  had  been  in  either 
one  of  them,  since  she  was  in  bed  on  the  other  side  of  the 
house  with  Philadelphia  probably  still  wringing  the  cloths  out 
in  cold  water  to  lay  on  her  head.  He  sat  the  horse  well.  He 
rode  it  well  too:  light  and  easy  and  back  in  the  saddle  and 
toes  in  and  perpendicular  from  ankle  to  knee  as  Father  had 
taught  me.  It  was  a  good  horse  too. 

"It's  a  damn  good  horse,"  I  said. 

"Git  the  soap,"  Ringo  said. 

But  even  then  I  looked  quick  back  down  the  hall,  even  if 
I  could  hear  Granny  talking  to  Ab  Snopes  in  the  dining- 
room.  "She's  still  in  there,"  I  said. 

"Hah,"  Ringo  said.  "I  done  tasted  soap  in  my  mouth  for  a 
cuss  I  thought  was  a  heap  further  off  than  that." 

Then  Cousin  Philip  spurred  the  horse  and  was  gone.  Or  so 
Ringo  and  I  thouglit.  Two  hours  ago  none  of  us  had  ever 
even  heard  of  him;  Cousin  Melisandre  had  seen  him  twice 
and  sat  with  her  eyes  shut  screaming  both  times.  But  after  we 
were  older,  Ringo  and  I  realized  that  Cousin  Philip  was  prob- 
ably the  only  one  in  the  whole  lot  of  us  that  really  believed 
even  for  one  moment  that  he  had  said  goodbye  forever,  that 
not  only  Granny  and  Louvinia  knew  better  but  Cousin  Meli- 


684  The  Middle  Ground 

sandre  did  too,  no  matter  what  his  last  name  had  the  bad 
luck  to  be. 

We  went  back  to  the  dining-room.  Then  I  realized  that  Ab 
Snopes  had  been  waiting  for  us  to  come  back.  Then  we  both 
knew  he  was  going  to  ask  Granny  something  because  nobody 
wanted  to  be  alone  when  they  had  to  ask  Granny  something 
even  when  they  didn't  know  they  were  going  to  have  trouble 
with  it.  We  had  known  Ab  for  over  a  year  now.  I  should 
have  known  what  it  was  like  Granny  already  did.  He  stood 
up.  "Well,  Miz  Millard,"  he  said.  "I  figger  you'll  be  safe  all 
right  from  now  on,  with  Bed  Forrest  and  his  boys  right  there 
in  Jefferson.  But  until  things  quiet  down  a  mite  more,  I'll  just 
leave  the  horses  in  your  lot  for  a  day  or  two." 

"What  horses?"  Granny  said.  She  and  Ab  didn't  just  look 
at  one  another.  They  watched  one  another. 

"Them  fresh-captured  horses  from  this  morning,"  Ab  said. 

"What  horses?"  Granny  said.  Then  Ab  said  it. 

"My  horses."  Ab  watched  her. 

"Why?"  Granny  said.  But  Ab  knew  what  she  meant. 

"I'm  the  only  grown  man  here,"  he  said.  Then  he  said,  "I 

seen  them  first.  They  were  chasing  me  before "  Then 

he  said,  talking  fast  now;  his  eyes  had  gone  kind  of  glazed  for 
a  second  but  now  they  were  bright  again,  looking  in  the  stub- 
bly dirt-colored  fuzz  on  his  face  like  two  chips  of  broken 
plate  in  a  worn-out  door-mat:  "Spoils  of  war!  I  brought  them 
here!  I  tolled  them  in  here:  a  military  and-bush!  And  as  the 
only  and  ranking  Confedrit  military  soldier  present " 

"You  ain't  a  soldier,"  Granny  said.  "You  stipulated  that  to 
Colonel  Sartoris  yourself  while  I  was  listening.  You  told  him 
yourself  you  would  be  his  independent  horse-captain  but 
nothing  more." 

"Ain't  that  just  exactly  what  I  am  trying  to  be?"  he  said. 
"Didn't  I  bring  all  six  of  them  horses  in  here  in  my  own 
possession,  the  same  as  if  I  was  leading  them  on  a  rope?" 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  685 

"Hah,"  Granny  said.  "A  spoil  of  war  or  any  other  kind  of 
spoil  don't  belong  to  a  man  or  a  woman  either  until  they  can 
take  it  home  and  put  it  down  and  turn  their  back  on  it.  You 
never  had  time  to  get  home  with  even  the  one  you  were  rid- 
ing. You  ran  in  the  first  open  gate  you  came  to,  no  matter 
whose  gate  it  was." 

"Except  it  was  the  wrong  one,"  he  said.  His  eyes  quit 
looking  like  china.  They  didn't  look  like  anything.  But  I 
reckon  his  face  would  still  look  like  an  old  door-mat  even 
after  he  had  turned  all  the  way  white.  "So  I  reckon  I  got 
to  even  walk  back  to  town,"  he  said.  "The  woman  that 
would  .  .  ."  His  voice  stopped.  He  and  Granny  looked  at 
one  another. 

"Don't  you  say  it,"  Granny  said. 

"Nome,"  he  said.  He  didn't  say  it.  "...  a  man  of  seven 
horses  ain't  likely  to  lend  him  a  mule." 

"No,"  Granny  said.  "But  you  won't  have  to  walk." 

We  all  went  out  to  the  lot.  I  don't  reckon  that  even  Ab 
knew  until  then  that  Granny  had  already  found  where  he 
thought  he  had  hidden  the  first  horse  and  had  it  brought  up 
to  the  lot  with  the  other  six.  But  at  least  he  already  had  his 
saddle  and  bridle  with  him.  But  it  was  too  late.  Six  of  the 
horses  moved  about  loose  in  the  lot.  The  seventh  one  was  tied 
just  inside  the  gate  with  a  piece  of  plow-line.  It  wasn't  the 
horse  Ab  had  come  on  because  that  horse  had  a  blaze.  Ab  had 
known  Granny  long  enough  too.  He  should  have  known. 
Maybe  he  did.  But  at  least  he  tried.  He  opened  the  gate. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "it  ain't  getting  no  earlier.  I  reckon  I 
better " 

"Wait,"  Granny  said.  Then  we  looked  at  the  horse  which 
was  tied  to  the  fence.  At  first  glance  it  looked  the  best  one  of 
the  seven.  You  had  to  see  it  just  right  to  tell  its  near  leg  was 
sprung  a  little,  maybe  from  being  worked  too  hard  too  young 
under  too  much  weight.  "Take  that  one,"  Granny  said. 


686  The  Middle  Ground 

"That  ain't  mine,"  Ab  said.  "That's  one  of  yourn.  I'll 
just " 

"Take  that  one,"  Granny  said.  Ab  looked  at  her.  You 
could  have  counted  at  least  ten. 

"Hell  fire,  Miz  Millard,"  he  said. 

"I've  told  you  before  about  cursing  on  this  place,"  Granny 
said. 

"Yessum,"  Ab  said.  Then  he  said  it  again:  "Hell  fire."  He 
went  into  the  lot  and  rammed  the  bit  into  the  tied  horse's 
mouth  and  clapped  the  saddle  on  and  snatched  the  piece  of 
plow-line  off  and  threw  it  over  the  fence  and  got  up  and 
Granny  stood  there  until  he  had  ridden  out  of  the  lot  and 
Ringo  closed  the  gate  and  that  was  the  first  time  I  noticed  the 
chain  and  padlock  from  the  smokehouse  door  and  Ringo 
locked  it  and  handed  Granny  the  key  and  Ab  sat  for  a  min- 
ute, looking  down  at  her.  "Well,  good-day,"  he  said.  "I  just 
hope  for  the  sake  of  the  Confedricy  that  Bed  Forrest  don't 
never  tangle  with  you  with  all  the  horses  he's  got."  Then  he 
said  it  again,  maybe  worse  this  time  because  now  he  was  al- 
ready on  a  horse  pointed  toward  the  gate:  uOr  you'll  damn 
shore  leave  him  just  one  more  passel  of  infantry  before  he 
can  spit  twice." 

Then  he  was  gone  too.  Except  for  hearing  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre  now  and  then,  and  those  six  horses  with  U.S.  branded 
on  their  hips  standing  in  the  lot,  it  might  never  have  hap- 
pened. At  least  Ringo  and  I  thought  that  was  all  of  it.  Every 
now  and  then  Philadelphia  would  come  downstairs  with  the 
pitcher  and  draw  some  more  cold  water  for  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre's  cloths  but  we  thought  that  after  a  while  even  that 
would  just  wear  out  and  quit.  Then  Philadelphia  came  down 
again  and  came  in  to  where  Granny  was  cutting  down  a  pair 
of  Yankee  pants  that  Father  had  worn  home  last  time  so  they 
would  fit  Ringo.  She  didn't  say  anything.  She  just  stood  in 
the  door  until  Grannv  said.  "All  right.  What  now?" 


My  Grandmother  Millard  687 

"She  want  the  banjo,"  Philadelphia  said. 

"What?"  Granny  said.  "My  dulcimer?  She  can't  play  it. 
Go  back  upstairs." 

But  Philadelphia  didn't  move.  "Could  I  ax  Mammy  to  come 
help  me?" 

"No,"  Granny  said.  "Louvinia's  resting.  She's  had  about  as 
much  of  this  as  I  want  her  to  stand.  Go  back  upstairs.  Give 
her  some  more  wine  if  you  can't  think  of  anything  else."  And 
she  told  Ringo  and  me  to  go  somewhere  else,  anywhere  else, 
but  even  in  the  yard  you  could  still  hear  Cousin  Melisandre 
talking  to  Philadelphia.  And  once  we  even  heard  Granny 
though  it  was  still  mostly  Cousin  Melisandre  telling  Granny 
that  she  had  already  forgiven  her,  that  nothing  whatever  had 
happened  and  that  all  she  wanted  now  was  peace.  And  after 
a  while  Louvinia  came  up  from  the  cabin  without  even  being 
sent  for  and  went  upstairs  and  then  it  began  to  look  like  we 
were  going  to  be  late  for  supper  too.  But  Philadelphia  finally 
came  down  and  cooked  it  and  carried  Cousin  Melisandre's 
tray  up  and  then  we  quit  eating;  we  could  hear  Louvinia 
overhead,  in  Granny's  room  now,  and  she  came  down  and 
set  the  untasted  tray  on  the  table  and  stood  beside  Granny's 
chair  with  the  key  to  the  trunk  in  her  hand. 

"All  right,"  Granny  said.  "Go  call  Joby  and  Lucius."  We 
got  the  lantern  and  the  shovels.  We  went  to  the  orchard  and 
removed  the  brush  and  dug  up  the  trunk  and  got  the  dulci- 
mer and  buried  the  trunk  and  put  the  brush  back  and  brought 
the  key  in  to  Granny.  And  Ringo  and  I  could  hear  her  from 
our  room  and  Granny  was  right.  We  heard  her  for  a  long 
time  and  Granny  was  surely  right;  she  just  never  said  but 
half  of  it.  The  moon  came  up  after  a  while  and  we  could  look 
down  from  our  window  into  the  garden,  at  Cousin  Melisan- 
dre sitting  on  the  bench  with  the  moonlight  glinting  on  the 
pearl  inlay  of  the  dulcimer,  and  Philadelphia  squatting  on  the 


688  The  Middle  Ground 

sill  of  the  gate  with  her  apron  over  her  head.  Maybe  she  was 
asleep.  It  was  already  late.  But  I  don't  see  how. 

So  we  didn't  hear  Granny  until  she  was  already  in  the 
room,  her  shawl  over  her  nightgown  and  carrying  a  candle. 
"In  a  minute  I'm  going  to  have  about  all  of  this  I  aim  to  stand 
too,"  she  said.  "Go  wake  Lucius  and  tell  him  to  saddle  the 
mule,"  she  told  Ringo.  "Bring  me  the  pen  and  ink  and  a 
sheet  of  paper."  I  fetched  them.  She  didn't  sit  down.  She 
stood  at  the  bureau  while  I  held  the  candle,  writing  even 
and  steady  and  not  very  much,  and  signed  her  name  and  let 
the  paper  lie  open  to  dry  until  Lucius  came  in.  "Ab  Snopes 
said  that  Mr.  Forrest  is  in  Jefferson,"  she  told  Lucius.  "Find 
him.  Tell  him  I  will  expect  him  here  for  breakfast  in  the 
morning  and  to  bring  that  boy."  She  used  to  know  General 
Forrest  in  Memphis  before  he  got  to  be  a  general.  He  used  to 
trade  with  Grandfather  Millard's  supply  house  and  some- 
times he  would  come  out  to  sit  with  Grandfather  on  the  front 
gallery  and  sometimes  he  would  eat  with  them.  "You  can  tell 
him  I  have  six  captured  horses  for  him,"  she  said.  "And  never 
mind  patter-rollers  or  soldiers  either.  Haven't  you  got  my 
signature  on  that  paper?" 

"I  ain't  worrying  about  them,"  Lucius  said.  "But  suppose 
them  Yankees " 

"I  see,"  Granny  said.  "Hah.  I  forgot.  You've  been  waiting 
for  Yankees,  haven't  you?  But  those  this  morning  seemed  to 
be  too  busy  trying  to  stay  free  to  have  much  time  to  talk 
about  it,  didn't  they? — Get  along,"  she  said.  "Do  you  think 
any  Yankee  is  going  to  dare  ignore  what  a  Southern  soldier 
or  even  a  patter-roller  wouldn't? — And  you  go  to  bed,"  she 
said. 

We  lay  down,  both  of  us  on  Ringo's  pallet.  We  heard  the 
mule  when  Lucius  left.  Then  we  heard  the  mule  and  at  first 
we  didn't  know  we  had  been  asleep,  the  mule  coming  back 
now  and  the  moon  had  started  down  the  west  and  Cousin 


My  Grandmother  Millard  689 

Melisandre  and  Philadelphia  were  gone  from  the  garden,  to 
where  Philadelphia  at  least  could  sleep  better  than  sitting  on 
a  square  sill  with  an  apron  over  her  head,  or  at  least  where  it 
was  quieter.  And  we  heard  Lucius  fumbling  up  the  stairs  but 
we  never  heard  Granny  at  all  because  she  was  already  at  the 
top  of  the  stairs,  talking  down  at  the  noise  Lucius  was  trying 
not  to  make.  "Speak  up,"  she  said.  "I  ain't  asleep  but  I  ain't 
a  lip-reader  either.  Not  in  the  dark." 

"Genl  Fawhrest  say  he  respectful  compliments,"  Lucius 
said,  "and  he  can't  come  to  breakfast  this  morning  because 
he  gonter  to  be  whuppin  Genl  Smith  at  Tallahatchie  Cross- 
ing about  that  time.  But  providin  he  ain't  too  1  ur  away  in  the 
wrong  direction  when  him  and  Genl  Smith  git  done,  he  be 
proud  to  accept  your  invitation  next  time  he  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. And  he  say  'whut  boy'." 

While  you  could  count  about  five,  Granny  didn't  say  any- 
thing. Then  she  said,  "What?" 

"He  say  Vhut  boy',"  Lucius  said. 

Then  you  could  have  counted  ten.  All  we  could  hear  was 
Lucius  breathing.  Then  Granny  said:  "Did  you  wipe  the 
mule  down?" 

"Yessum,"  Lucius  said. 

"Did  you  turn  her  back  into  the  pasture?" 

"Yessum,"  Lucius  said. 

"Then  go  to  bed,"  Granny  said.  "And  you  too,"  she  said. 

General  Forrest  found  out  what  boy.  This  time  we  didn't 
know  we  had  been  asleep  either,  and  it  was  no  one  mule  now. 
The  sun  was  just  rising.  When  we  heard  Granny  and  scram- 
bled to  the  window,  yesterday  wasn't  a  patch  on  it.  There 
were  at  least  fifty  of  them  now,  in  gray;  the  whole  outdoors 
was  full  of  men  on  horses,  with  Cousin  Philip  out  in  front  of 
them,  sitting  his  horse  in  almost  exactly  the  same  spot  where 
he  had  been  yesterday,  looking  up  at  Granny's  window  and 
not  seeing  it  or  anything  else  this  tJme  either.  He  had  a  hat 


690  The  Middle  Ground 

now.  He  was  holding  it  clamped  over  his  heart  and  he  hadn't 
shaved  and  yesterday  he  had  looked  younger  than  Ringo 
because  Ringo  always  had  looked  about  ten  years  older  than 
me.  But  now,  with  the  first  sun-ray  making  a  little  soft  fuzz 
in  the  gold-colored  stubble  on  his  face,  he  looked  even 
younger  than  I  did,  and  gaunt  and  worn  in  the  face  like  he 
hadn't  slept  any  last  night  and  something  else  in  his  face  too: 
like  he  not  only  hadn't  slept  last  night  but  by  godfrey  he 
wasn't  going  to  sleep  tonight  either  as  long  as  he  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  it.  "Goodbye,"  he  said.  "Goodbye,"  and 
whirled  his  horse,  spurring,  and  raised  the  new  hat  over  his 
head  like  he  had  carried  the  sabre  yesterday  and  the  whole 
mass  of  them  went  piling  back  across  flower  beds  and  lawns 
and  all  and  back  down  the  drive  toward  the  gate  while 
Granny  still  stood  at  her  window  in  her  nightgown,  her  voice 
louder  than  any  man's  anywhere,  I  don't  care  who  he  is  or 
what  he  would  be  doing:  "Backhouse!  Backhouse!  You, 
Backhouse!" 

So  we  ate  breakfast  early.  Granny  sent  Ringo  in  his  night- 
shirt to  wake  Louvinia  and  Lucius  both.  So  Lucius  had  the 
mule  saddled  before  Louvinia  even  got  the  fire  lit.  This  time 
Granny  didn't  write  a  note.  "Go  to  Tallahatchie  Crossing," 
she  told  Lucius.  "Sit  there  and  wait  for  him  if  necessary." 

"Suppose  they  done  already  started  the  battle?"  Lucius 
said. 

"Suppose  they  have?"  Granny  said.  "What  business  is  that 
of  yours  or  mine  either?  You  find  Bedford  Forrest.  Tell  him 
this  is  important;  it  won't  take  long.  But  don't  you  show 
your  face  here  again  without  him." 

Lucius  rode  away.  He  was  gone  four  days.  He  didn't  even 
get  back  in  time  for  the  wedding,  coming  back  up  the  drive 
about  sundown  on  the  fourth  day  with  two  soldiers  in  one 
of  General  Forrest's  forage  wagons  with  the  mule  tied  to  the 
tailgate.  He  didn't  know  where  he  had  been  and  he  never 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  69 1 

did  catch  up  with  the  battle.  "I  never  even  heard  it,"  he  told 
Joby  and  Lucius  and  Louvinia  and  Philadelphia  and  Ringo 
and  me.  "If  wars  always  moves  that  far  and  that  fast,  I  don't 
see  how  they  ever  have  time  to  fight." 

But  it  was  all  over  then.  It  was  the  second  day,  the  day 
after  Lucius  left.  It  was  just  after  dinner  this  time  and  by 
now  we  were  used  to  soldiers.  But  these  were  different,  just 
five  of  them,  and  we  never  had  seen  just  that  few  of  them 
before  and  we  had  come  to  think  of  soldiers  as  either  jumping 
on  and  off  horses  in  the  yard  or  going  back  and  forth  through 
Granny's  flower  beds  at  full  gallop.  These  were  all  officers 
and  I  reckon  maybe  I  hadn't  seen  so  many  soldiers  after  all 
because  I  never  saw  this  much  braid  before.  They  came  up 
the  drive  at  a  trot,  like  people  just  taking  a  ride,  and  stopped 
without  trompling  even  one  flower  bed  and  General  Forrest 
got  down  and  came  up  the  walk  toward  where  Granny 
waited  on  the  front  gallery — a  big,  dusty  man  with  a  big 
beard  so  black  it  looked  almost  blue  and  eyes  like  a  sleepy 
owl,  already  taking  off  his  hat.  "Well,  Miss  Rosie,"  he  said. 

"Don't  call  me  Rosie,"  Granny  said.  "Come  in.  Ask  your 
gentlemen  to  alight  and  come  in." 

"They'll  wait  there,"  General  Forrest  said.  "We  are  a  little 
rushed.  My  plans  have. . . ."  Then  we  were  in  the  library.  He 
wouldn't  sit  down.  He  looked  tired  all  right,  but  there  was 
something  else  a  good  deal  livelier  than  just  tired.  "Welly 
Miss  Rosie,"  he  said.  "I " 

"Don't  call  me  Rosie,"  Granny  said.  "Can't  you  even  say 
Rosa?" 

"Yessum,"  he  said.  But  he  couldn't.  At  least,  he  never  did, 
"I  reckon  we  both  have  had  about  enough  of  this.  That 
boy " 

"Hah,"  Granny  said.  "Night  before  last  you  were  saying 
what  boy.  Where  is  he?  I  sent  you  word  to  bring  him  with 
you." 


692  The  Middle  Ground 

"Under  arrest,"  General  Forrest  said.  It  was  a  considerable 
more  than  just  tired.  "I  spent  four  days  getting  Smith  just 
where  I  wanted  him.  After  that,  this  boy  here  could  have 
fought  the  battle."  He  said  'fit'  for  fought  just  as  he  said 
'druv'  for  drove  and  'drug'  for  dragged.  But  maybe  when 
you  fought  battles  like  he  did,  even  Granny  didn't  mind  how 
you  talked.  "I  won't  bother  you  with  details.  He  didn't  know 
them  either.  All  he  had  to  do  was  exactly  what  I  told  him.  I 
did  everything  but  draw  a  diagram  on  his  coat-tail  of  exactly 
what  he  was  to  do,  no  more  and  no  less,  from  the  time  he  left 
me  until  he  saw  me  again:  which  was  to  make  contact  and 
then  fall  back.  I  gave  him  just  exactly  the  right  number  of 
men  so  that  he  couldn't  do  anything  else  but  that.  I  told  him 
exactly  how  fast  to  fall  back  and  how  much  racket  to  make 
doing  it  and  even  how  to  make  the  racket.  But  what  do  you 
think  he  did?" 

"I  can  tell  you,"  Granny  said.  "He  sat  on  his  horse  at  five 
o'clock  yesterday  morning,  with  my  whole  yard  full  of  men 
behind  him,  yelling  goodbye  at  my  window." 

"He  divided  his  men  and  sent  half  of  them  into  the  bushes 
to  make  a  noise  and  took  the  other  half  who  were  the  nearest 
to  complete  fools  and  led  a  sabre  charge  on  that  outpost.  He 
didn't  fire  a  shot.  He  drove  it  clean  back  with  sabres  onto 
Smith's  main  body  and  scared  Smith  so  that  he  threw  out  all 
his  cavalry  and  pulled  out  behind  it  and  now  I  don't  know 
whether  I'm  about  to  catch  him  or  he's  about  to  catch  me. 
My  provost  finally  caught  the  boy  last  night.  He  had  come 
back  and  got  the  other  thirty  men  of  his  company  and  was 
twenty  miles  ahead  again,  trying  to  find  something  to  lead 
another  charge  against.  'Do  you  want  to  be  killed?'  I  said. 
'Not  especially,'  he  said.  'That  is,  I  don't  especially  care  one 
way  or  the  other.'  'Then  neither  do  I,'  I  said.  'But  you  risked 
a  whole  company  of  my  men.'  'Ain't  that  what  they  enlisted 
for?'  he  said.  'They  enlisted  into  a  military  establishment  the 


My  Grandmother  Millar d  693 

purpose  of  which  is  to  expend  each  man  only  at  a  profit.  Or 
maybe  you  don't  consider  me  a  shrewd  enough  trader  in 
human  meat?'  1  can't  say,'  he  said.  'Since  day  before  yester- 
day I  ain't  thought  very  much  about  how  you  or  anybody 
else  runs  this  war.'  'And  just  what  were  you  doing  day  before 
yesterday  that  changed  your  ideas  and  habits? '  I  said.  Tight- 
ing  some  of  it/  he  said.  'Dispersing  the  enemy.'  'Where?'  I 
said.  'At  a  lady's  house  a  few  miles  from  Jefferson,'  he  said. 
'One  of  the  niggers  called  her  Granny  like  the  white  boy  did. 
The  others  called  her  Miss  Rosie.'  "  This  time  Granny  didn't 
say  anything.  She  just  waited. 

"Go  on,"  she  said. 

"  Tm  still  trying  to  win  battles,  even  if  since  day  before 
yesterday  you  ain't,'  I  said.  I'll  send  you  down  to  Johnston 
at  Jackson,'  I  said.  'He'll  put  you  inside  Vicksburg,  where 
you  can  lead  private  charges  day  and  night  too  if  you  want.' 
'Like  hell  you  will,'  he  said.  And  I  said — excuse  me — 'Like 
hell  I  won't.'  "  And  Granny  didn't  say  anything.  It  was  like 
day  before  yesterday  with  Ab  Snopes:  not  like  she  hadn't 
heard  but  as  if  right  now  it  didn't  matter,  that  this  was  no 
time  either  to  bother  with  such. 

"And  did  you?"  she  said. 

"I  can't.  He  knows  it.  You  can't  punish  a  man  for  routing 
an  enemy  four  times  his  weight.  What  would  I  say  back 
there  in  Tennessee,  where  we  both  live,  let  alone  that  uncle 
of  his,  the  one  they  licked  for  Governor  six  years  ago,  on 
Bragg's  personal  staff  now,  with  his  face  over  Bragg's  shoul- 
der every  time  Bragg  opens  a  dispatch  or  picks  up  a  pen.  And 
I'm  still  trying  to  win  battles.  But  I  can't.  Because  of  a  girl, 
one  single  lone  young  female  girl  that  ain't  got  anything 
under  the  sun  against  him  except  that,  since  it  was  his  mis- 
fortune to  save  her  from  a  passel  of  raiding  enemy  in  a  situa- 
tion that  everybody  but  her  is  trying  to  forget,  she  can't  seem 
to  bear  to  hear  his  last  name.  Yet  because  of  that,  every  battle 


694  The  Middle  Ground 

I  plan  from  now  on  will  be  at  the  mercy  of  a  twenty-two- 
year-old  shavetail — excuse  me  again — who  might  decide  to 
lead  a  private  charge  any  time  he  can  holler  at  least  two  men 
in  gray  coats  into  moving  in  the  same  direction."  He  stopped. 
He  looked  at  Granny.  "Well?"  he  said. 

"So  now  youVe  got  to  it,"  Granny  said.  "Well  what,  Mr. 
Forrest?" 

"Why,  just  have  done  with  this  foolishness.  I  told  you  I've 
got  that  boy,  in  close  arrest,  with  a  guard  with  a  bayonet. 
But  there  won't  be  any  trouble  there.  I  figured  even  yester- 
day morning  that  he  had  already  lost  his  mind.  But  I  reckon 
he's  recovered  enough  of  it  since  the  Provost  took  him  last 
night  to  comprehend  that  I  still  consider  myself  his  com- 
mander even  if  he  don't.  So  all  necessary  now  is  for  you  to 
put  your  foot  down.  Put  it  down  hard.  Now.  You're  her 
grandma.  She  lives  in  your  home.  And  it  looks  like  she  is 
going  to  live  in  it  a  good  while  yet  before  she  gets  back  to 
Memphis  to  that  uncle  or  whoever  it  is  that  calls  himself  her 
guardian.  So  just  put  your  foot  down.  Make  her.  Mr.  Millard 
would  have  already  done  that  if  he  had  been  here.  And  I 
know  when.  It  would  have  been  two  days  ago  by  now." 

Granny  waited  until  he  got  done.  She  stood  with  her  arms 
crossed,  holding  each  elbow  in  the  other.  "Is  that  all  I'm  to 
do?"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  General  Forrest  said.  "If  she  don't  want  to  listen 
to  you  right  at  first,  maybe  as  his  commander " 

Granny  didn't  even  say  "Hah."  She  didn't  even  send  me. 
She  didn't  even  stop  in  the  hall  and  call.  She  went  upstairs 
herself  and  we  stood  there  and  I  thought  maybe  she  was 
going  to  bring  the  dulcimer  too  and  I  thought  how  if  I  was 
General  Forrest  I  would  go  back  and  get  Cousin  Philip  and 
make  him  sit  in  the  library  until  about  supper-time  while 
Cousin  Melisandre  played  the  dulcimer  and  sang.  Then  he 


My  Grandmother  Millard  695 

could  take  Cousin  Philip  on  back  and  then  he  could  finish 
the  war  without  worrying. 

She  didn't  have  the  dulcimer.  She  just  had  Cousin  Meh- 
sandre.  They  came  in-  and  Granny  stood  to  one  side  again 
with  her  arms  crossed,  holding  her  elbows.  "Here  she  is,"  she 
said.  "Say  it — This  is  Mr.  Bedford  Forrest,"  she  told  Cousin 
Melisandre.  "Say  it,"  she  told  General  Forrest. 

He  didn't  have  time.  When  Cousin  Melisandre  first  came, 
she  tried  to  read  aloud  to  Ringo  and  me.  It  wasn't  much.  That 
is,  what  she  insisted  on  reading  to  us  wasn't  so  bad,  even  if  it 
was  mostly  about  ladies  looking  out  windows  and  playing 
on  something  (maybe  they  were  dulcimers  too)  while  some- 
body else  was  off  somewhere  fighting.  It  was  the  way  she 
read  it.  When  Granny  said  this  is  Mister  Forrest,  Cousin 
Melisandre's  face  looked  exactly  like  her  voice  would  sound 
when  she  read  to  us.  She  took  two  steps  into  the  library  and 
curtsied,  spreading  her  hoops  back,  and  stood  up.  "General 
Forrest,"  she  said.  "I  am  acquainted  with  an  associate  of  his. 
Will  the  General  please  give  him  the  sinccrest  wishes  for 
triumph  in  war  and  success  in  love,  from  one  who  will  never 
see  him  again?"  Then  she  curtsied  again  and  spread  her  hoops 
backward  and  stood  up  and  took  two  steps  backward  and 
turned  and  went  out. 

After  a  while  Granny  said,  "Well,  Mr.  Forrest?" 

General  Forrest  began  to  cough.  He  lifted  his  coattail  with 
one  hand  and  reached  the  other  into  his  hip  pocket  like  he 
was  going  to  pull  at  least  a  musket  out  of  it  and  got  his  hand- 
kerchief and  coughed  into  it  a  while.  It  wasn't  very  clean.  It 
looked  about  like  the  one  Cousin  Philip  was  trying  to  wipe  his 
coat  off  with  in  the  summer  house  day  before  yesterday. 
Then  he  put  the  handkerchief  back.  He  didn't  say  "Hah" 
either.  "Can  I  reach  the  Holly  Branch  road  without  having 
to  go  through  Jefferson?"  he  said. 

Then  Granny  moved.  "Open  the  desk,"  she  said.  "Lay  out 


696  The  Middle  Ground 

a  sheet  of  note-paper."  I  did.  And  I  remember  how  I  stood  at 
one  side  of  the  desk  and  General  Forrest  at  the  other,  and 
watched  Granny's  hand  move  the  pen  steady  and  not  very 
slow  and  not  very  long  across  the  paper  because  it  never  did 
take  her  very  long  to  say  anything,  no  matter  what  it  was, 
whether  she  was  talking  it  or  writing  it.  Though  I  didn't  see 
it  then,  but  only  later,  when  it  hung  framed  under  glass 
above  Cousin  Melisandre's  and  Cousin  Philip's  mantel:  the 
fine  steady  slant  of  Granny's  hand  and  General  Forrest's 
sprawling  signatures  below  it  that  looked  itself  a  good  deal 
like  a  charge  of  massed  cavalry: 

Lieutenant  P.  S.  Backhouse,  Company  D,  Tennessee  Cavalry, 
ivas  this  day  raised  to  the  honorary  rank  of  Brevet  Major 
General  <&  killed  while  engaging  the  enemy.  Vice  whom 
Philip  St-Just  Backus  is  hereby  appointed  Lieutenant,  Com- 
pany Dy  Tennessee  Cavalry. 

N.  B.  Forrest  Genl 

I  didn't  see  it  then.  General  Forrest  picked  it  up.  "Now 
I've  got  to  have  a  battle,"  he  said.  "Another  sheet,  son."  I 
laid  that  one  out  on  the  desk. 

"A  battle?"  Granny  said. 

"To  give  Johnston,"  he  said.  "Confound  it,  Miss  Rosie, 
can't  you  understand  either  that  I'm  just  a  fallible  mortal  man 
trying  to  run  a  military  command  according  to  certain  fixed 
and  inviolable  rules,  no  matter  how  foolish  the  business  looks 
to  superior  outside  folks?" 

"All  right,"  Granny  said.  "You  had  one.  I  was  looking  at 
it." 

"So  I  did,"  General  Forrest  said.  "Hah,"  he  said.  "The 
battle  of  Sartoris." 

"No,"  Granny  said.  "Not  at  my  house." 

"They  did  all  the  shooting  down  at  the  creek,"  I  said. 

"What  creek?"  he  said. 


My  Grandmother  Millard  697 

So  I  told  him.  It  ran  through  the  pasture.  Its  name  was 
Hurricane  Creek  but  not  even  the  white  people  called  it  hur- 
ricane except  Granny.  General  Forrest  didn't  either  when  he 
sat  down  at  the  desk  and  wrote  the  report  to  General  John- 
ston at  Jackson: 

A  unit  of  my  command  on  detached  duty  engaged  a  body 
of  the  enemy  &  drove  him  from  the  field  &  dispersed  him 
this  day  28th  ult.  April  1862  at  Harry  kin  Creek.  With  loss  of 
one  man. 

N.  B.  Forrest  Genl 

I  saw  that.  I  watched  him  write  it.  Then  he  got  up  and 
folded  the  sheets  into  his  pocket  and  was  already  going 
toward  the  table  where  his  hat  was. 

"Wait,"  Granny  said.  "Lay  out  another  sheet,"  she  said. 
"Come  back  here." 

General  Forrest  stopped  and  turned.  "Another  one?" 

"Yes!"  Granny  said.  "A  furlough,  pass — whatever  you 
busy  military  establishments  call  them!  So  John  Sartoris  can 

come  home  long  enough  to "  and  she  said  it  herself,  she 

looked  straight  at  me  and  even  backed  up  and  said  some  of  it 
over  as  though  to  make  sure  there  wouldn't  be  any  mistake: 
" can  come  back  home  and  give  away  that  damn  bride!" 

IV 

AND  THAT  was  all.  The  day  came  and  Granny  waked  Ringo 
and  me  before  sunup  and  we  ate  what  breakfast  we  had  from 
two  plates  on  the  back  steps.  And  we  dug  up  the  trunk  and 
brought  it  into  the  house  and  polished  the  silver  and  Ringo 
and  I  brought  dogwood  and  redbud  branches  from  the  pas- 
ture and  Granny  cut  the  flowers,  all  of  them,  cutting  them 
herself  with  Cousin  Melisandre  and  Philadelphia  just  carrying 
the  baskets;  so  many  of  them  until  the  house  was  so  full  that 


698  The  Middle  Ground 

Ringo  and  I  would  believe  we  smelled  them  even  across  the 
pasture  each  time  we  came  up.  Though  of  course  we  could, 
it  was  just  the  food — the  last  ham  from  the  smokehouse  and 
the  chickens  and  the  flour  which  Granny  had  been  saving 
and  the  last  of  the  sugar  which  she  had  been  saving  along 
with  the  bottle  of  champagne  for  the  day  when  the  North 
surrendered — which  Louvinia  had  been  cooking  for  two  days 
now,  to  remind  us  each  time  we  approached  the  house  of 
what  was  going  on  and  that  the  flowers  were  there.  As  if  we 
could  have  forgotten  about  the  food.  And  they  dressed 
Cousin  Melisandre  and,  Ringo  in  his  new  blue  pants  and  I  in 
my  gray  ones  which  were  not  so  new,  we  stood  in  the  late 
afternoon  on  the  gallery — Granny  and  Cousin  Melisandre 
and  Louvinia  and  Philadelphia  and  Ringo  and  I — and  watched 
them  enter  the  gate.  General  Forrest  was  not  one.  Ringo  and 
I  had  thought  maybe  he  might  be,  if  only  to  bring  Cousin 
Philip.  Then  we  thought  that  maybe,  since  Father  was  com- 
ing anyway,  General  Forrest  would  let  Father  bring  him, 
with  Cousin  Philip  maybe  handcuffed  to  Father  and  the  sol- 
dier with  the  bayonet  following,  or  maybe  still  just  hand- 
cuffed to  the  soldier  until  he  and  Cousin  Melisandre  were 
married  and  Father  unlocked  him. 

But  General  Forrest  wasn't  one,  and  Cousin  Philip  wasn't 
handcuffed  to  anybody  and  there  was  no  bayonet  and  not 
even  a  soldier  because  these  were  all  officers  too.  And  we 
stood  in  the  parlor  while  the  home-made  candles  burnt  in  the 
last  of  sunset  in  the  bright  candlesticks  which  Philadelphia 
and  Ringo  and  I  had  polished  with  the  rest  of  the  silver  be- 
cause Granny  and  Louvinia  were  both  busy  cooking  and 
even  Cousin  Melisandre  polished  a  little  of  it  although  Lou- 
vinia could  pick  out  the  ones  she  polished  without  hardly 
looking  and  hand  them  to  Philadelphia  to  polish  again: — 
Cousin  Melisandre  in  the  dress  which  hadn't  needed  to  be 
altered  for  her  at  all  because  Mother  wasn't  much  older  than 


My  Grandmother  Millard  699 

Cousin  Melisandre  even  when  she  died,  and  which  would  still 
button  on  Granny  too  just  like  it  did  the  day  she  married  in 
it,  and  the  chaplain  and  Father  and  Cousin  Philip  and  the  four 
others  in  their  gray  and  braid  and  sabres  and  Cousin  Meli- 
sandre's  face  was  all  right  now  and  Cousin  Philip's  was  too 
because  it  just  had  the  beautiful-girl  look  on  it  and  none  of 
us  had  ever  seen  him  look  any  other  way.  Then  we  ate,  and 
Ringo  and  I  anyway  had  been  waiting  on  that  for  three  days 
and  then  we  did  it  and  then  it  was  over  too,  fading  just  a  little 
each  day  until  the  palate  no  longer  remembered  and  only  our 
mouths  would  run  a  little  water  as  we  would  name  the  dishes 
aloud  to  one  another,  until  even  the  water  would  run  less 
and  less  and  less  and  it  would  take  something  we  just  hoped 
to  eat  some  day  if  they  ever  got  done  fighting,  to  make  it  run 
at  all. 

And  that  was  all.  The  last  sound  of  wheel  and  hoof  died 
away,  Philadelphia  came  in  from  the  parlor  carrying  the 
candlesticks  and  blowing  out  the  candles  as  she  came,  and 
Louvinia  set  the  kitchen  clock  on  the  table  and  gathered  the 
last  of  soiled  silver  from  supper  into  the  dishpan  and  it  might 
never  have  even  been.  "Well,"  Granny  said.  She  didn't  move, 
leaning  her  forearms  on  the  table  a  little  and  we  had  never 
seen  that  before.  She  spoke  to  Ringo  without  turning  her 
head:  "Go  call  Joby  and  Lucius."  And  even  when  we 
brought  the  trunk  in  and  set  it  against  the  wall  and  opened 
back  the  lid,  she  didn't  move.  She  didn't  even  look  at  Lou- 
vinia either.  "Put  the  clock  in  too/'  she  said.  "I  don't  think 
we'll  bother  to  time  ourselves  tonight." 


Golden  Land 


IF  HE  had  been  thirty,  he  would  not  have  needed  the  two 
aspirin  tablets  and  the  half  glass  of  raw  gin  before  he  could 
bear  the  shower's  needling  on  his  body  and  steady  his  hands 
to  shave.  But  then  when  he  had  been  thirty  neither  could 
he  have  afforded  to  drink  as  much  each  evening  as  he  now 
drank;  certainly  he  would  not  have  done  it  in  the  company 
of  the  men  and  the  women  in  which,  at  forty-eight,  he  did 
each  evening,  even  though  knowing  during  the  very  final 
hours  filled  with  the  breaking  of  glass  and  the  shrill  cries  of 
drunken  women  above  the  drums  and  saxophones — the 
hours  during  which  he  carried  a  little  better  than  his  weight 
both  in  the  amount  of  liquor  consumed  and  in  the  number 
and  sum  of  checks  paid — that  six  or  eight  hours  later  he 
would  rouse  from  what  had  not  been  sleep  at  all  but  instead 
that  dreamless  stupefaction  of  alcohol  out  of  which  last 
night's  turgid  and  licensed  uproar  would  die,  as  though 
without  any  interval  for  rest  or  recuperation,  into  the  fa- 
miliar shape  of  his  bedroom — the  bed's  foot  silhouetted  by 
the  morning  light  which  entered  the  bougainvillaea-bound 
windows  beyond  which  his  painful  and  almost  unbearable 
eyes  could  see  the  view  which  might  be  called  the  monu- 
ment to  almost  twenty-five  years  of  industry  and  desire,  of 
shrewdness  and  luck  and  even  fortitude — the  opposite  can- 
yonflank  dotted  with  the  white  villas  half  hidden  in  imported 

701 


702  The  Middle  Ground 

olive  groves  or  friezed  by  the  sombre  spaced  columns  of 
cypress  like  the  facades  of  eastern  temples,  whose  owners1 
names  and  faces  and  even  voices  were  glib  and  familiar  in 
back  corners  of  the  United  States  and  of  America  and  of  the 
world  where  those  of  Einstein  and  Rousseau  and  Esculapius 
had  never  sounded. 

He  didn't  waken  sick.  He  never  wakened  ill  nor  became 
ill  from  drinking,  not  only  because  he  had  drunk  too  long 
and  too  steadily  for  that,  but  because  he  was  too  tough  even 
after  the  thirty  soft  years;  he  came  from  too  tough  stock 
on  that  day  thirty-four  years  ago  when  at  fourteen  he  had 
fled,  on  the  brakebeam  of  a  westbound  freight,  the  little  lost 
Nebraska  town  named  for,  permeated  with,  his  father's 
history  and  existence — a  town  to  be  sure,  but  only  in  the 
sense  that  any  shadow  is  larger  than  the  object  which  casts 
it.  It  was  still  frontier  even  as  he  remembered  it  at  five  and 
six — the  projected  and  increased  shadow  of  a  small  outpost 
of  sodroofed  dugouts  on  the  immense  desolation  of  the 
plains  where  his  father,  Ira  Ewing  too,  had  been  first  to  essay 
to  wring  wheat  during  the  six  days  between  those  when, 
outdoors  in  spring  and  summer  and  in  the  fetid  half  dark  of  a 
snowbound  dugout  in  the  winter  and  fall,  he  preached.  The 
second  Ira  Ewing  had  come  a  long  way  since  then,  from 
that  barren  and  treeless  village  which  he  had  fled  by  a  night 
freight  to  where  he  now  lay  in  a  hundred-thousand-dollar 
house,  waiting  until  he  knew  that  he  could  rise  and  go  to 
the  bath  and  put  the  two  aspirin  tablets  into  his  mouth. 
They — his  mother  and  father — had  tried  to  explain  it  to  him 
— something  about  fortitude,  the  will  to  endure.  At  fourteen 
he  could  neither  answer  them  with  logic  and  reason  nor 
explain  what  he  wanted:  he  could  only  flee.  Nor  was  he 
fleeing  his  father's  harshness  and  wrath.  He  was  fleeing  the 
scene  itself — the  treeless  immensity  in  the  lost  center  of 
which  he  seemed  to  see  the  sum  of  his  father's  and  mother's 


Golden  Land  703 

dead  youth  and  bartered  lives  as  a  tiny  forlorn  spot  which 
nature  permitted  to  green  into  brief  and  niggard  wheat  for 
a  season's  moment  before  blotting  it  all  with  the  primal  and 
invincible  snow  as  though  (not  even  promise,  not  even 
threat)  in  grim  and  almost  playful  augury  of  the  final  doom 
of  all  life.  And  it  was  not  even  this  that  he  was  fleeing  be- 
cause he  was  not  fleeing:  it  was  only  that  absence,  removal, 
was  the  only  argument  which  fourteen  knew  how  to  employ 
against  adults  with  any  hope  of  success.  He  spent  the  next 
ten  years  half  tramp  half  casual  laborer  as  he  drifted  down 
the  Pacific  Coast  to  Los  Angeles;  at  thirty  he  was  married, 
to  a  Los  Angeles  girl,  daughter  of  a  carpenter,  and  father 
of  a  son  and  a  daughter  and  with  a  foothold  in  real  estate; 
at  forty-eight  he  spent  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  owning 
a  business  which  he  had  built  up  unaided  and  preserved  in- 
tact through  nineteen-twenty-nine;  he  had  given  to  his  chil- 
dren luxuries  and  advantages  which  his  own  father  not  only 
could  not  have  conceived  in  fact  but  would  have  condemned 
completely  in  theory — as  it  proved,  as  the  paper  which  the 
Filipino  chauffeur,  who  each  morning  carried  him  into  the 
house  and  undressed  him  and  put  him  to  bed,  had  removed 
from  the  pocket  of  his  topcoat  and  laid  on  the  reading  table 
proved,  with  reason.  On  the  death  of  his  father  twenty 
years  ago  he  had  returned  to  Nebraska,  for  the  first  time, 
and  fetched  his  mother  back  with  him,  and  she  was  now 
established  in  a  home  of  her  own  only  the  less  sumptuous 
because  she  refused  (with  a  kind  of  abashed  and  thoughtful 
unshakability  which  he  did  not  remark)  anything  finer  or 
more  elaborate.  It  was  the  house  in  which  they  had  all  lived 
at  first,  though  he  and  his  wife  and  children  had  moved 
within  the  year.  Three  years  ago  they  had  moved  again, 
into  the  house  where  he  now  waked  in  a  select  residential 
section  of  Beverley  Hills,  but  not  once  in  the  nineteen  years 
had  he  failed  to  stop  (not  even  during  the  last  five,  when  to 


704  The  Middle  Ground 

move  at  all  in  the  mornings  required  a  terrific  drain  on  that 
character  or  strength  which  the  elder  Ira  had  bequeathed 
him,  which  had  enabled  the  other  Ira  to  pause  on  the  Ne- 
braska plain  and  dig  a  hole  for  his  wife  to  bear  children  in 
while  he  planted  wheat)  on  his  way  to  the  office  (twenty 
miles  out  of  his  way  to  the  office)  and  spend  ten  minutes 
with  her.  She  lived  in  as  complete  physical  ease  and  peace 
as  he  could  devise.  He  had  arranged  her  affairs  so  that  she 
did  not  even  need  to  bother  with  money,  cash,  in  order  to 
live;  he  had  arranged  credit  for  her  with  a  neighboring 
market  and  butcher  so  that  the  Japanese  gardener  who  came 
each  day  to  water  and  tend  the  flowers  could  do  her  shop- 
ping for  her;  she  never  even  saw  the  bills.  And  the  only 
reason  she  had  no  servant  was  that  even  at  seventy  she  ap- 
parently clung  stubbornly  to  the  old  habit  of  doing  her  own 
cooking  and  housework.  So  it  would  seem  that  he  had  been 
right.  Perhaps  there  were  times  when,  lying  in  bed  like  this 
and  waiting  for  the  will  to  rise  and  take  the  aspirin  and  the 
gin  (mornings  perhaps  following  evenings  when  he  had 
drunk  more  than  ordinarily  and  when  even  the  six  or  seven 
hours  of  oblivion  had  not  been  sufficient  to  enable  him  to 
distinguish  between  reality  and  illusion)  something  of  the 
old  strong  harsh  Campbellite  blood  which  the  elder  Ira  must 
have  bequeathed  him  might  have  caused  him  to  see  or  feel 
or  imagine  his  father  looking  down  from  somewhere  upon 
him,  the  prodigal,  and  what  he  had  accomplished.  If  this 
were  so,  then  surely  the  elder  Ira,  looking  down  for  the  last 
two  mornings  upon  the  two  tabloid  papers  which  the  Fili- 
pino removed  from  his  master's  topcoat  and  laid  on  the  read- 
ing table,  might  have  taken  advantage  of  that  old  blood  and 
taken  his  revenge,  not  just  for  that  afternoon  thirty-four 
years  ago  but  for  the  entire  thirty-four  years. 

When  he  gathered  himself,  his  will,  his  body,  at  last  and 
rose  from  the  bed  he  struck  the  paper  so  that  it  fell  to  the 


Golden  Land  705 

floor  and  lay  open  at  his  feet,  but  he  did  not  look  at  it.  He 
just  stood  so,  tall,  in  silk  pajamas,  thin  where  his  father  had 
been  gaunt  with  the  years  of  hard  work  and  unceasing  strug- 
gle with  the  unpredictable  and  implacable  earth  (even  now, 
despite  the  life  which  he  had  led,  he  had  very  little  paunch) 
looking  at  nothing  while  at  his  feet  the  black  headline  flared 
above  the  row  of  five  or  six  tabloid  photographs  from  which 
his  daughter  alternately  stared  back  or  flaunted  long  pale 
shins:  APRIL  LALEAR  BARES  ORGY  SECRETS.  When 
he  moved  at  last  he  stepped  on  the  paper,  walking  on  his 
bare  feet  into  the  bath;  now  it  was  his  trembling  and  jerk- 
ing hands  that  he  watched  as  he  shook  the  two  tablets  onto 
the  glass  shelf  and  set  the  tumbler  into  the  rack  and  un- 
stoppered  the  gin  bottle  and  braced  his  knuckles  against  the 
wall  in  order  to  pour  into  the  tumbler.  But  he  did  not  look 
at  the  paper,  not  even  when,  shaved,  he  re-entered  the  bed- 
room and  went  to  the  bed  beside  which  his  slippers  sat  and 
shoved  the  paper  aside  with  his  foot  in  order  to  step  into 
them.  Perhaps,  doubtless,  he  did  not  need  to.  The  trial  was 
but  entering  its  third  tabloidal  day  now,  and  so  for  two  days 
his  daughter's  face  had  sprung  out  at  him,  hard,  blonde  and 
inscrutable,  from  every  paper  he  opened;  doubtless  he  had 
never  forgot  her  while  he  slept  even,  that  he  had  waked 
into  thinking  about  remembering  her  as  he  had  waked  into 
the  dying  drunken  uproar  of  the  evening  eight  hours  behind 
him  without  any  interval  between  for  rest  or  forgetting. 

Nevertheless  as,  dressed,  in  a  burnt  orange  turtleneck 
sweater  beneath  his  gray  flannels,  he  descended  the  Spanish 
staircase,  he  was  outwardly  calm  and  possessed.  The  delicate 
iron  balustrade  and  the  marble  steps  coiled  down  to  the  tile- 
floored  and  barnlike  living  room  beyond  which  he  could 
hear  his  wife  and  son  talking  on  the  breakfast  terrace.  The 
son's  name  was  Voyd.  He  and  his  wife  had  named  the  two 
children  by  what  might  have  been  called  mutual  contemptu- 


706  The  Middle  Ground 

ous  armistice — his  wife  called  the  boy  Voyd,  for  what 
reason  he  never  knew;  he  in  his  turn  named  the  girl  (the 
child  whose  woman's  face  had  met  him  from  every  paper 
he  touched  for  two  days  now  beneath  or  above  the  name, 
April  Lalear)  Samantha,  after  his  own  mother.  He  could 
hear  them  talking — the  wife  between  whom  and  himself 
there  had  been  nothing  save  civility,  and  not  always  a  great 
deal  of  that,  for  ten  years  now;  and  the  son  who  one  after- 
noon two  years  ago  had  been  delivered  at  the  door  drunk 
and  insensible  by  a  car  whose  occupants  he  did  not  see  and, 
it  devolving  upon  him  to  undress  the  son  and  put  him  to  bed, 
whom  he  discovered  to  be  wearing,  in  place  of  underclothes, 
a  woman's  brassiere  and  step-ins.  A  few  minutes  later,  hear- 
ing the  blows  perhaps,  Voyd's  mother  ran  in  and  found  her 
husband  beating  the  still  unconscious  son  with  a  series  of 
towels  which  a  servant  was  steeping  in  rotation  in  a  basin  of 
ice-water.  He  was  beating  the  son  hard,  with  grim  and  de- 
liberate fury.  Whether  he  was  trying  to  sober  the  son  up  or 
was  merely  beating  him,  possibly  he  himself  did  not  know. 
His  wife  though  jumped  to  the  latter  conclusion.  In  his 
raging  disillusionment  he  tried  to  tell  her  about  the  woman's 
garments  but  she  refused  to  listen;  she  assailed  him  in  turn 
with  virago  fury.  Since  that  day  the  son  had  contrived  to  see 
his  father  only  in  his  mother's  presence  (which  neither  the 
son  nor  the  mother  found  very  difficult,  by  the  way)  and  at 
which  times  the  son  treated  his  father  with  a  blend  of  cring- 
ing spite  and  vindictive  insolence  half  a  cat's  and  half  a 
woman's. 

He  emerged  onto  the  terrace;  the  voices  ceased.  The  sun, 
strained  by  the  vague  high  soft  almost  nebulous  California 
haze,  fell  upon  the  terrace  with  a  kind  of  treacherous  un- 
brightness.  The  terrace,  the  sundrenched  terra  cotta  tiles, 
butted  into  a  rough  and  savage  shear  of  canyonwall  bare  yet 
without  dust,  on  or  against  which  a  solid  mat  of  flowers 


Golden  Land  707 

bloomed  in  fierce  lush  myriad-colored  paradox  as  though  in 
place  of  being  rooted  into  and  drawing  from  the  soil  they 
lived  upon  air  alone  and  had  been  merely  leaned  intact 
against  the  sustenanceless  lavawall  by  someone  who  would 
later  return  and  take  them  away.  The  son,  Voyd,  appar- 
ently naked  save  for  a  pair  of  straw-colored  shorts,  his  body 
brown  with  sun  and  scented  faintly  by  the  depilatory  which 
he  used  on  arms,  chest  and  legs,  lay  in  a  wicker  chair,  his 
feet  in  straw  beach  shoes,  an  open  newspaper  across  his 
brown  legs.  The  paper  was  the  highest  class  one  of  the  city, 
yet  there  was  a  black  headline  across  half  of  it  too,  and  even 
without  pausing,  without  even  being  aware  that  he  had 
looked,  Ira  saw  there  too  the  name  which  he  recognized. 
He  went  on  to  his  place;  the  Filipino  who  put  him  to  bed 
each  night,  in  a  white  service  jacket  now,  drew  his  chair. 
Beside  the  glass  of  orange  juice  and  the  waiting  cup  lay  a 
neat  pile  of  mail  topped  by  a  telegram.  He  sat  down  and 
took  up  the  telegram;  he  had  not  glanced  at  his  wife  until 
she  spoke: 

"Mrs.  Ewing  telephoned.  She  says  for  you  to  stop  in 
there  on  your  way  to  town." 

He  stopped;  his  hands  opening  the  telegram  stopped.  Still 
blinking  a  little  against  the  sun  he  looked  at  the  face  opposite 
him  across  the  table — the  smooth  dead  makeup,  the  thin 
lips  and  the  thin  nostrils  and  the  pale  blue  unforgiving  eyes, 
the  meticulous  platinum  hair  which  looked  as  though  it  had 
been  transferred  to  her  skull  with  a  brush  from  a  book  of 
silver  leaf  such  as  window  painters  use.  "What?"  he  said. 
"Telephoned?  Here?" 

"Why  not?  Have  I  ever  objected  to  any  of  your  women 
telephoning  you  here?" 

The  unopened  telegram  crumpled  suddenly  in  his  hand. 
"You  know  what  I  mean,"  he  said  harshly.  "She  never  tele- 
phoned me  in  her  life.  She  don't  have  to.  Not  that  message. 


708  The  Middle  Ground 

When  have  I  ever  failed  to  go  by  there  on  my  way  to 
town? " 

"How  do  I  know?"  she  said.  "Or  are  you  the  same  model 
son  you  have  been  a  husband  and  seem  to  be  a  father?"  Her 
voice  was  not  shrill  yet,  nor  even  very  loud,  and  none  could 
have  told  how  fast  her  breathing  was  because  she  sat  so  still, 
rigid  beneath  the  impeccable  and  unbelievable  hair,  looking 
at  him  with  that  pale  and  outraged  unforgiveness.  They 
both  looked  at  each  other  across  the  luxurious  table — the 
two  people  who  at  one  time  twenty  years  ago  would  have 
turned  as  immediately  and  naturally  and  unthinkingly  to 
one  another  in  trouble,  who  even  ten  years  ago  might  have 
done  so. 

"You  know  what  I  mean,"  he  said,  harshly  again,  holding 
himself  too  against  the  trembling  which  he  doubtless  be- 
lieved was  from  last  night's  drinking,  from  the  spent  alco- 
hol. "She  don't  read  papers.  She  never  even  sees  one.  Did 
you  send  it  to  her?" 

"I?  "she  said.  "Send  what?" 

"Damnation!"  he  cried.  "A  paper!  Did  you  send  it  to  her? 
Don't  lie  to  me." 

"What  if  I  did?"  she  cried.  "Who  is  she,  that  she  must 
not  know  about  it?  Who  is  she,  that  you  should  shield  her 
from  knowing  it?  Did  you  make  any  effort  to  keep  me  from 
knowing  it?  Did  you  make  any  effort  to  keep  it  from  hap- 
pening? Why  didn't  you  think  about  that  all  those  years 
while  you  were  too  drunk,  too  besotted  with  drink,  to  know 
or  notice  or  care  what  Samantha  was — " 

"Miss  April  Lalear  of  the  cinema,  if  you  please,"  Voyd 
said.  They  paid  no  attention  to  him;  they  glared  at  one 
another  across  the  table. 

"Ah,"  he  said,  quiet  and  rigid,  his  lips  scarcely  moving. 
"So  I  am  to  blame  for  this  too,  am  I?  I  made  my  daughter  a 
bitch,  did  I?  Maybe  you  will  tell  me  next  that  I  made  my 
son  a  f— " 


Golden  Land  709 

"Stop!"  she  cried.  She  was  panting  now;  they  glared  at 
one  another  across  the  suave  table,  across  the  five  feet  of 
irrevocable  division. 

"Now,  now/7  Voyd  said.  "Don't  interfere  with  the  girl's 
career.  After  all  these  years,  when  at  last  she  seems  to  have 
found  a  part  that  she  can — "  He  ceased;  his  father  had 
turned  and  was  looking  at  him.  Voyd  lay  in  his  chair,  look- 
ing at  his  father  with  that  veiled  insolence  that  was  almost 
feminine.  Suddenly  it  became  completely  feminine;  with  a 
muffled  halfscream  he  swung  his  legs  out  to  spring  up  and 
flee  but  it  was  too  late;  Ira  stood  above  him,  gripping  him 
not  by  the  throat  but  by  the  face  with  one  hand,  so  that 
Voyd's  mouth  puckered  and  slobbered  in  his  father's  hard, 
shaking  hand.  Then  the  mother  sprang  forward  and  tried  to 
break  Ira's  grip  but  he  flung  her  away  and  then  caught  and 
held  her,  struggling  too,  with  the  other  hand  when  she 
sprang  in  again. 

"Go  on,"  he  said.  "Say  it."  But  Voyd  could  say  nothing 
because  of  his  father's  hand  gripping  his  jaws  open,  or  more 
than  likely  because  of  terror.  His  body  was  free  of  the  chair 
now,  writhing  and  thrashing  while  he  made  his  slobbering, 
moaning  sound  of  terror  while  his  father  held  him  with  one 
hand  and  held  his  screaming  mother  with  the  other  one. 
Then  Ira  flung  Voyd  free,  onto  the  terrace;  Voyd  rolled 
once  and  came  onto  his  feet,  crouching,  retreating  toward 
the  French  windows  with  one  arm  flung  up  before  his  face 
while  he  cursed  his  father.  Then  he  was  gone.  Ira  faced  his 
wife,  holding  her  quiet  too  at  last,  panting  too,  the  skillful 
map  of  makeup  standing  into  relief  now  like  a  paper  mask 
trimmed  smoothly  and  pasted  onto  her  skull.  He  released 
her. 

"You  sot,"  she  said.  "You  drunken  sot.  And  yet  you 
wonder  why  your  children — " 

"Yes,"  he  said  quietly.  "All  right.  That's  not  the  question. 
That's  all  done.  The  question  is,  what  to  do  about  it.  My 


The  Middle  Ground 

father  would  have  known.  He  did  it  once."  He  spoke  in  a 
dry  light  pleasant  voice:  so  much  so  that  she  stood,  panting 
still  but  quiet,  watching  him.  "I  remember.  I  was  about  ten. 
We  had  rats  in  the  barn.  We  tried  everything.  Terriers. 
Poison.  Then  one  day  father  said,  'Come.7  We  went  to  the 
barn  and  stopped  all  the  cracks,  the  holes.  Then  we  set  fire 
to  it.  What  do  you  think  of  that?"  Then  she  was  gone  too. 
He  stood  for  a  moment,  blinking  a  little,  his  eyeballs  beating 
faintly  and  steadily  in  his  skull  with  the  impact  of  the  soft 
unchanging  sunlight,  the  fierce  innocent  mass  of  the  flowers. 
"Philip!"  he  called.  The  Filipino  appeared,  brownfaced,  im- 
passive, with  a  pot  of  hot  coffee,  and  set  it  beside  the  empty 
cup  and  the  icebedded  glass  of  orange  juice.  "Get  me  a 
drink,"  Ira  said.  The  Filipino  glanced  at  him,  then  he  be- 
came buj5y  at  the  table,  shifting  the  cup  and  setting  the  pot 
down  and  shifting  the  cup  again  while  Ira  watched  him. 
"Did  you  hear  me?"  Ira  said.  The  Filipino  stood  erect  and 
looked  at  him. 

"You  told  me  not  to  give  it  to  you  until  you  had  your 
orange  juice  and  coffee." 

"Will  you  or  won't  you  get  me  a  drink?"  Ira  shouted. 

"Very  good,  sir,"  the  Filipino  said.  He  went  out.  Ira 
looked  after  him;  this  had  happened  before:  he  knew  well 
that  the  brandy  would  not  appear  until  he  had  finished  the 
orange  juice  and  the  coffee,  though  just  where  the  Filipino 
lurked  to  watch  him  he  never  knew.  He  sat  again  and  opened 
the  crumpled  telegram  and  read  it,  the  glass  of  orange  juice 
in  the  other  hand.  It  was  from  his  secretary:  MADE  SETUP 
BEFORE  I  BROKE  STORY  LAST  NIGHT  STOP 
THIRTY  PERCENT  FRONT  PAGE  STOP  MADE 
APPOINTMENT  FOR  YOU  COURTHOUSE  THIS 
P.M.  STOP  WILL  YOU  COME  TO  OFFICE  OR  CALL 
ME.  He  read  the  telegram  again,  the  glass  of  orange  juice 
still  poised.  Then  he  put  both  down  and  rose  and  went  and 


Golden  Land  7  1 1 

lifted  the  paper  from  the  terrace  where  Voyd  had  flung  it, 
and  read  the  half  headline:  LALEAR  WOMAN  DAUGH- 
TER OF  PROMINENT  LOCAL  FAMILY.  Admits  Real 
Name  Is  Samantha  Ewing,  Daughter  of  Ira  Ewing,  Local 
Realtor.  He  read  it  quietly;  he  said  quietly,  aloud: 

"It  was  that  Jap  that  showed  her  the  paper.  It  was  that 
damned  gardener."  He  returned  to  the  table.  After  a  while 
the  Filipino  came,  with  the  brandy-and-soda,  and  wearing 
now  a  jacket  of  bright  imitation  tweed,  telling  him  that  the 
car  was  ready. 

II 

His  MOTHER  lived  in  Glendale;  it  was  the  house  which  he 
had  taken  when  he  married  and  later  bought,  in  which  his 
son  and  daughter  had  been  born — a  bungalow  in  a  cul-de- 
sac  of  pepper  trees  and  flowering  shrubs  and  vines  which  the 
Japanese  tended,  backed  into  a  barren  foothill  combed  and 
curried  into  a  cypress-and-marble  cemetery  dramatic  as  a 
stage  set  and  topped  by  an  electric  sign  in  red  bulbs  which, 
in  the  San  Fernando  valley  fog,  glared  in  broad  sourceless 
ruby  as  though  just  beyond  the  crest  lay  not  heaven  but 
hell.  The  length  of  his  sports  model  car  in  which  the  Filipino 
sat  reading  a  paper  dwarfed  it.  But  she  would  have  no  other, 
just  as  she  would  have  neither  servant,  car,  nor  telephone — 
a  gaunt  spare  slightly  stooped  woman  upon  whom  even 
California  and  ease  had  put  no  flesh,  sitting  in  one  of  the 
chairs  which  she  had  insisted  on  bringing  all  the  way  from 
Nebraska.  At  first  she  had  been  content  to  allow  the  Ne- 
braska furniture  to  remain  in  storage,  since  it  had  not  been 
needed  (when  Ira  moved  his  wife  and  family  out  of  the 
house  and  into  the  second  one,  the  intermediate  one,  they 
had  bought  new  furniture  too,  leaving  the  first  house  fur- 
nished complete  for  his  mother)  but  one  day,  he  could  not 


7 1 2  The  Middle  Ground 

recall  just  when,  he  discovered  that  she  had  taken  the  one 
chair  out  of  storage  and  was  using  it  in  the  house.  Later, 
after  he  began  to  sense  that  quality  of  unrest  in  her,  he  had 
suggested  that  she  let  him  clear  the  house  of  its  present 
furniture  and  take  all  of  hers  out  of  storage  but  she  declined, 
apparently  preferring  or  desiring  to  leave  the  Nebraska 
furniture  where  it  was.  Sitting  so,  a  knitted  shawl  about 
her  shoulders,  she  looked  less  like  she  lived  in  or  belonged 
to  the  house,  the  room,  than  the  son  with  his  beach  burn 
and  his  faintly  theatrical  gray  temples  and  his  bright  ex- 
pensive suavely  antiphonal  garments  did.  She  had  changed 
hardly  at  all  in  the  thirty-four  years;  she  and  the  older  Ira 
Ewing  too,  as  the  son  remembered  him,  who,  dead,  had 
suffered  as  little  of  alteration  as  while  he  had  been  alive.  As 
the  sod  Nebraska  outpost  had  grown  into  a  village  and  then 
into  a  town,  his  father's  aura  alone  had  increased,  growing 
into  the  proportions  of  a  giant  who  at  some  irrevocable  yet 
recent  time  had  engaged  barehanded  in  some  titanic  struggle 
with  the  pitiless  earth  and  endured  and  in  a  sense  conquered 
— it  too,  like  the  town,  a  shadow  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
gaunt  gnarled  figure  of  the  actual  man.  And  the  actual 
woman  too  as  the  son  remembered  them  back  in  that  time. 
Two  people  who  drank  air  and  who  required  to  eat  and 
sleep  as  he  did  and  who  had  brought  him  into  the  world, 
yet  were  strangers  as  though  of  another  race,  who  stood  side 
by  side  in  an  irrevocable  loneliness  as  though  strayed  from 
another  planet,  not  as  husband  and  wife  but  as  blood  brother 
and  sister,  even  twins,  of  the  same  travail  because  they  had 
gained  a  strange  peace  through  fortitude  and  the  will  and 
strength  to  endure. 

"Tell  me  again  what  it  is,"  she  said.  "I'll  try  to  under- 
stand." 

"So  it  was  Kazimura  that  showed  you  the  damned  paper," 
he  said.  She  didn't  answer  this;  she  was  not  looking  at  him. 


Golden  Land  7 1 3 

"You  tell  me  she  has  been  in  the  pictures  before,  for  two 
years.  That  that  was  why  she  had  to  change  her  name,  that 
they  all  have  to  change  their  names." 

"Yes.  They  call  them  extra  parts.  For  about  two  years, 
God  knows  why." 

"And  then  you  tell  me  that  this — that  all  this  was  so  she 
could  get  into  the  pictures — " 

He  started  to  speak,  then  he  caught  himself  back  out  of 
some  quick  impatience,  some  impatience  perhaps  of  grief  or 
despair  or  at  least  rage,  holding  his  voice,  his  tone,  quiet: 
"I  said  that  that  was  one  possible  reason.  All  I  know  is  that 
the, man  has  something  to  do  with  pictures,  giving  out  the 
parts.  And  that  the  police  caught  him  and  Samantha  and 
the  other  girl  in  an  apartment  with  the  doors  all  locked  and 
that  Samantha  and  the  other  woman  were  naked.  They  say 
that  he  was  naked  too  and  he  says  he  was  not.  He  says  in 
the  trial  that  he  was  framed — tricked;  that  they  were  trying 
to  blackmail  him  into  giving  them  parts  in  a  picture;  that 
they  fooled  him  into  coming  there  and  arranged  for  the 
police  to  break  in  just  after  they  had  taken  off  their  clothes; 
that  one  of  them  made  a  signal  from  the  window.  Maybe 
so.  Or  maybe  they  were  all  just  having  a  good  time  and 
were  innocently  caught."  Unmoving,  rigid,  his  face  broke, 
wrung  with  faint  bitter  smiling  as  though  with  indomitable 
and  impassive  suffering,  or  maybe  just  smiling,  just  rage.  Still 
his  mother  did  not  look  at  him. 

"But  you  told  me  she  was  already  in  the  pictures.  That 
that  was  why  she  had  to  change  her — " 

"I  said,  extra  parts,"  he  said.  He  had  to  catch  himself 
again,  out  of  his  jangled  and  outraged  nerves,  back  from  the 
fierce  fury  of  the  impatience.  "Can't  you  understand  that 
you  don't  get  into  the  pictures  just  by  changing  your  name? 
and  that  you  don't  even  stay  there  when  you  get  in?  that 
you  can't  even  stay  there  by  being  female?  that  they  come 


714  The  Middle  Ground 

here  in  droves  on  every  train — girls  younger  and  prettier 
than  Samantha  and  who  will  do  anything  to  get  into  the 
pictures?  So  will  she,  apparently;  but  who  know  or  are 
willing  to  learn  to  do  more  things  than  even  she  seems  to 
have  thought  of?  But  let's  don't  talk  about  it.  She  has  made 
her  bed;  all  I  can  do  is  to  help  her  up:  I  can't  wash  the 
sheets.  Nobody  can.  I  must  go,  anyway;  I'm  late."  He  rose, 
looking  down  at  her.  "They  said  you  telephoned  me  this 
morning.  Is  this  what  it  was?" 

"No,"  she  said.  Now  she  looked  up  at  him;  now  her 
gnarled  hands  began  to  pick  faintly  at  one  another.  "You 
offered  me  a  servant  once." 

"Yes.  I  thought  fifteen  years  ago  that  you  ought  to  have 
one.  Have  you  changed  your  mind?  Do  you  want  me  to — " 

Now  she  stopped  looking  at  him  again,  though  her  hands 
did  not  cease.  "That  was  fifteen  years  ago.  It  would  have 
cost  at  least  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.  That  would  be — " 

He  laughed,  short  and  harsh.  "I'd  like  to  see  the  Los 
Angeles  servant  you  could  get  for  five  hundred  dollars  a 
year.  But  what — "  He  stopped  laughing,  looking  down  at 
her. 

"That  would  be  at  least  five  thousand  dollars,"  she  said. 

He  looked  down  at  her.  After  a  while  he  said,  "Are  you 
asking  me  again  for  money?"  She  didn't  answer  nor  move, 
her  hands  picking  slowly  and  quietly  at  one  another.  "Ah," 
he  said.  "You  want  to  go  away.  You  want  to  run  from  it. 
So  do  I!"  he  cried,  before  he  could  catch  himself  this  time; 
"so  do  I!  But  you  did  not  choose  me  when  you  elected  a 
child;  neither  did  I  choose  my  two.  But  I  shall  have  to  bear 
them  and  you  will  have  to  bear  all  of  us.  There  is  no  help 
for  it."  He  caught  himself  now,  panting,  quieting  himself  by 
will  as  when  he  would  rise  from  bed,  though  his  voice  was 
still  harsh:  "Where  would  you  go?  Where  would  you  hide 
from  it?" 


Golden  Land  7 1 5 

"Home,"  she  said. 

"Home?"  he  repeated;  he  repeated  in  a  kind  of  amaze- 
ment: "home?"  before  he  understood.  "You  would  go  back 
there?  with  those  winters,  that  snow  and  all?  Why,  you 
wouldn't  live  to  see  the  first  Christmas:  don't  you  know 
that?"  She  didn't  move  nor  look  up  at  him.  "Nonsense,"  he 
said.  "This  will  blow  over.  In  a  month  there  will  be  two 
others  and  nobody  except  us  will  even  remember  it.  And 
you  don't  need  money.  You  have  been  asking  me  for  money 
for  years,  but  you  don't  need  it.  I  had  to  worry  about 
money  so  much  at  one  time  myself  that  I  swore  that  the 
least  I  could  do  was  to  arrange  your  affairs  so  you  would 
never  even  have  to  look  at  the  stuff.  I  must  go;  there  is 
something  at  the  office  today.  I'll  see  you  tomorrow." 

It  was  already  one  o'clock.  "Courthouse,"  he  told  the 
Filipino,  settling  back  into  the  car.  "My  God,  I  want  a 
drink."  He  rode  with  his  eyes  closed  against  the  sun;  the 
secretary  had  already  sprung  onto  the  runningboard  before 
he  realized  that  they  had  reached  the  courthouse.  The  secre- 
tary, bareheaded  too,  wore  a  jacket  of  authentic  tweed;  his 
turtleneck  sweater  was  dead  black,  his  hair  was  black  too, 
varnished  smooth  to  his  skull;  he  spread  before  Ira  a  dummy 
newspaper  page  laid  out  to  embrace  the  blank  space  for  the 
photograph  beneath  the  caption:  APRIL  LALEAR'S 
FATHER.  Beneath  the  space  was  the  legend:  IRA 
EWING,  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  EWING  REALTY 
CO. ,— WILSHIRE  BOULEVARD,  BEVERLY  HILLS. 

"Is  thirty  percent  all  you  could  get?"  Ira  said.  The  secre- 
tary was  young;  he  glared  at  Ira  for  an  instant  in  vague  im- 
patient fury. 

"Jesus,  thirty  percent  is  thirty  percent.  They  are  going  to 
print  a  thousand  extra  copies  and  use  our  mailing  list.  It  will 
be  spread  all  up  and  down  the  Coast  and  as  far  East  as  Reno. 
What  do  you  want?  We  can't  expect  them  to  put  under 


7 1 6  The  Middle  Ground 

your  picture,  'Turn  to  page  fourteen  for  halfpage  ad/  can 
we?"  Ira  sat  again  with  his  eyes  closed,  waiting  for  his  head 
to  stop. 

"All  right,"  he  said.  "Are  they  ready  now?" 

"All  set.  You  will  have  to  go  inside.  They  insisted  it  be 
inside,  so  everybody  that  sees  it  will  know  it  is  the  court- 
house." 

"All  right,"  Ira  said.  He  got  out;  with  his  eyes  half  closed 
and  the  secretary  at  his  elbow  he  mounted  the  steps  and 
entered  the  courthouse.  The  reporter  and  the  photographer 
were  waiting  but  he  did  not  see  them  yet;  he  was  aware 
only  of  being  enclosed  in  a  gaping  crowd  which  he  knew 
would  be  mostly  women,  hearing  the  secretary  and  a  police- 
man clearing  the  way  in  the  corridor  outside  the  courtroom 
door. 

"This  is  O.K.,"  the  secretary  said.  Ira  stopped;  the  dark- 
ness was  easier  on  his  eyes  though  he  did  not  open  them  yet; 
he  just  stood,  hearing  the  secretary  and  the  policeman  herd- 
ing the  women,  the  faces,  back;  someone  took  him  by  the 
arm  and  turned  him;  he  stood  obediently;  the  magnesium 
flashed  and  glared,  striking  against  his  painful  eyeballs  like 
blows;  he  had  a  vision  of  wan  faces  craned  to  look  at  him 
from  either  side  of  a  narrow  human  lane;  with  his  eyes  shut 
tight  now  he  turned,  blundering  until  the  reporter  in  charge 
spoke  to  him: 

"Just  a  minute,  chief.  We  better  get  another  one  just  in 
case."  This  time  his  eyes  were  tightly  closed;  the  magnesium 
flashed,  washed  over  them;  in  the  thin  acrid  smell  of  it  he 
turned  and  with  the  secretary  again  at  his  elbow  he  moved 
blindly  back  and  into  the  sunlight  and  into  his  car.  He  gave 
no  order  this  time,  he  just  said,  "Get  me  a  drink."  He  rode 
with  his  eyes  closed  again  while  the  car  cleared  the  down- 
town traffic  and  then  began  to  move  quiet,  powerful  and 
fast  under  him;  he  rode  so  for  a  long  while  before  he  felt 


Golden  Land  7 1 7 

the  car  swing  into  the  palmbordered  drive,  slowing.  It 
stopped;  the  doorman  opened  the  door  for  him,  speaking  to 
him  by  name.  The  elevator  boy  called  him  by  name  too, 
stopping  at  the  right  floor  without  direction;  he  followed 
the  corridor  and  knocked  at  a  door  and  was  fumbling  for 
the  key  when  the  door  opened  upon  a  woman  in  a  bathing 
suit  beneath  a  loose  beach  cloak — a  woman  with  treated 
hair  also  and  brown  eyes,  who  swung  the  door  back  for  him 
to  enter  and  then  to  behind  him,  looking  at  him  with  the 
quick  bright  faint  serene  smiling  which  only  a  woman  near- 
ing  forty  can  give  to  a  man  to  whom  she  is  not  married  and 
from  whom  she  has  had  no  secrets  physical  and  few  mental 
over  a  long  time  of  pleasant  and  absolute  intimacy.  She  had 
been  married  though  and  divorced;  she  had  a  child,  a  daugh- 
ter of  fourteen,  whom  he  was  now  keeping  in  boarding 
school.  He  looked  at  her,  blinking,  as  she  closed  the  door. 

"You  saw  the  papers,"  he  said.  She  kissed  him,  not  sud- 
denly, without  heat,  in  a  continuation  of  the  movement 
which  closed  the  door,  with  a  sort  of  warm  envelopment; 
suddenly  he  cried,  "I  can't  understand  it!  After  all  the  ad- 
vantages that  .  .  .  after  all  I  tried  to  do  for  them — " 

"Hush,"  she  said.  "Hush,  now.  Get  into  your  trunks;  I'll 
have  a  drink  ready  for  you  when  you  have  changed.  Will 
you  eat  some  lunch  if  I  have  it  sent  up?" 

"No.  I  don't  want  any  lunch.  — after  all  I  have  tried  to 
give-" 

"Hush,  now.  Get  into  your  trunks  while  I  fix  you  a  drink. 
It's  going  to  be  swell  at  the  beach."  In  the  bedroom  his 
bathing  trunks  and  robe  were  laid  out  on  the  bed.  He 
changed,  hanging  his  suit  in  the  closet  where  her  clothes 
hung,  where  there  hung  already  another  suit  of  his  and 
clothes  for  the  evening.  When  he  returned  to  the  sitting 
room  she  had  fixed  the  drink  for  him;  she  held  the  match 
to  his  cigarette  and  watched  him  sit  down  and  take  up  the 


7 1 8  The  Middle  Ground 

glass,  watching  him  still  with  that  serene  impersonal  smiling. 
Now  he  watched  her  slip  off  the  cape  and  kneel  at  the 
cellarette,  filling  a  silver  flask,  in  the  bathing  costume  of  the 
moment,  such  as  ten  thousand  wax  female  dummies  wore  in 
ten  thousand  shop  windows  that  summer,  such  as  a  hundred 
thousand  young  girls  wore  on  California  beaches;  he  looked 
at  her,  kneeling — back,  buttocks  and  flanks  trim  enough, 
even  firm  enough  (so  firm  in  fact  as  to  be  a  little  on  the 
muscular  side,  what  with  unremitting  and  perhaps  even 
rigorous  care)  but  still  those  of  forty.  But  I  don't  want  a 
young  girl,  he  thought.  Would  to  God  that  all  young  girls, 
all  young  female  flesh,  were  removed,  blasted  even,  from 
the  earth.  He  finished  the  drink  before  she  had  filled  the 
flask. 

"I  want  another  one,"  he  said. 

"All  right,"  she  said.  "As  soon  as  we  get  to  the  beach." 

"No.  Now." 

"Let's  go  on  to  the  beach  first.  It's  almost  three  o'clock. 
Won't  that  be  better?" 

"Just  so  you  are  not  trying  to  tell  me  I  can't  have  another 
drink  now." 

"Of  course  not,"  she  said,  slipping  the  flask  into  the  cape's 
pocket  and  looking  at  him  again  with  that  warm,  faint,  in- 
scrutable smiling.  "I  just  want  to  have  a  dip  before  the  water 
gets  too  cold."  They  went  down  to  the  car;  the  Filipino 
knew  this  too:  he  held  the  door  for  her  to  slip  under  the 
wheel,  then  he  got  himself  into  the  back.  The  car  moved 
on;  she  drove  well.  "Why  not  lean  back  and  shut  your 
eyes,"  she  told  Ira,  "and  rest  until  we  get  to  the  beach? 
Then  we  will  have  a  dip  and  a  drink." 

"I  don't  want  to  rest,"  he  said.  "I'm  all  right."  But  he  did 
close  his  eyes  again  and  again  the  car  ran  powerful,  smooth, 
and  fast  beneath  him,  performing  its  afternoon's  jaunt  over 
the  incredible  distances  of  which  the  city  was  composed; 


Golden  Land  719 

from  time  to  time,  had  he  looked,  he  could  have  seen  the 
city  in  the  bright  soft  vague  hazy  sunlight,  random,  scat- 
tered about  the  arid  earth  like  so  many  gay  scraps  of  paper 
blown  without  order,  with  its  curious  air  of  being  rootless — 
of  houses  bright  beautiful  and  gay,  without  basements  or 
foundations,  lightly  attached  to  a  few  inches  of  light  pene- 
trable earth,  lighter  even  than  dust  and  laid  lightly  in  turn 
upon  the  profound  and  primeval  lava,  which  one  good  hard 
rain  would  wash  forever  from  the  sight  and  memory  of  man 
as  a  firehose  flushes  down  a  gutter — that  city  of  almost  in- 
calculable wealth  whose  queerly  appropriate  fate  it  is  to  be 
erected  upon  a  few  spools  of  a  substance  whose  value  is 
computed  in  billions  and  which  may  be  completely  de- 
stroyed in  that  second's  instant  of  a  careless  match  between 
the  moment  of  striking  and  the  moment  when  the  striker 
might  have  sprung  and  stamped  it  out. 

"You  saw  your  mother  today,"  she  said.  "Has  she — " 
"Yes."  He  didn't  open  his  eyes.  "That  damned  Jap  gave  it 
to  her.  She  asked  me  for  money  again.  I  found  out  what 
she  wants  with  it.  She  wants  to  run,  to  go  back  to  Nebraska. 
I  told  her,  so  did  I.  ...  If  she  went  back  there,  she  would 
not  live  until  Christmas.  The  first  month  of  winter  would 
kill  her.  Maybe  it  wouldn't  even  take  winter  to  do  it." 

She  still  drove,  she  still  watched  the  road,  yet  somehow 
she  had  contrived  to  become  completely  immobile.  "So 
Jiat's  what  it  is,"  she  said. 

He  did  not  open  his  eyes.  "What  what  is?" 
"The  reason  she  has  been  after  you  all  this  time  to  give 
her  money,  cash.  Why,  even  when  you  won't  do  it,  every 
now  and  then  she  asks  you  again." 

"What  what .  .  ."  He  opened  his  eyes,  looking  at  her  pro- 
file; he  sat  up  suddenly.  "You  mean,  she's  been  wanting  to 
go  back  there  all  the  time?  That  all  these  years  she  has  been 


720  The  Middle  Ground 

asking  me  for  money,  that  that  was  what  she  wanted  with 
it?" 

She  glanced  at  him  swiftly,  then  back  to  the  road.  "What 
else  can  it  be?  What  else  could  she  use  money  for?" 

"Back  there?"  he  said.  "To  those  winters,  that  town,  that 
way  of  living,  where  she's  bound  to  know  that  the  first 
winter  would  .  .  .  You'd  almost  think  she  wanted  to  die, 
wouldn't  you?" 

"Hush,"  she  said  quickly.  "Shhhhh.  Don't  say  that.  Don't 
say  that  about  anybody."  Already  they  could  smell  the  sea; 
now  they  swung  down  toward  it;  the  bright  salt  wind  blew 
upon  them,  with  the  long-spaced  sound  of  the  rollers;  now 
they  could  see  it — the  dark  blue  of  water  creaming  into  the 
blanched  curve  of  beach  dotted  with  bathers.  "We  won't 
go  through  the  club,"  she  said.  "I'll  park  in  here  and  we  can 
go  straight  to  the  water."  They  left  the  Filipino  in  the  car 
and  descended  to  the  beach.  It  was  already  crowded,  bright 
and  gay  with  movement.  She  chose  a  vacant  space  and 
spread  her  cape. 

"Now  that  drink,"  he  said. 

"Have  your  dip  first,"  she  said.  He  looked  at  her.  Then 
he  slipped  his  robe  off  slowly;  she  took  it  and  spread  it 
beside  her  own;  he  looked  down  at  her. 

"Which  is  it?  Will  you  always  be  too  clever  for  me,  or 
is  it  that  every  time  I  will  always  believe  you  again?" 

She  looked  at  him,  bright,  warm,  fond  and  inscrutable. 
"Maybe  both.  Maybe  neither.  Have  your  dip;  I  will  have  the 
flask  and  a  cigarette  ready  when  you  come  out."  When  he 
came  back  from  the  water,  wet,  panting,  his  heart  a  little  too 
hard  and  fast,  she  had  the  towel  ready,  and  she  lit  the  ciga- 
rette and  uncapped  the  flask  as  he  lay  on  the  spread  robes. 
She  lay  too,  lifted  to  one  elbow,  smiling  down  at  him, 
smoothing  the  water  from  his  hair  with  the  towel  while  he 
panted,  waiting  for  his  heart  to  slow  and  quiet.  Steadily  be- 


Golden  Land  721 

tween  them  and  the  water,  and  as  far  up  and  down  the 
beach  as  they  could  see,  the  bathers  passed — young  people, 
young  men  in  trunks,  and  young  girls  in  little  more,  with 
bronzed,  unselfconscious  bodies.  Lying  so,  they  seemed  to 
him  to  walk  along  the  rim  of  the  world  as  though  they  and 
their  kind  alone  inhabited  it,  and  he  with  his  forty-eight 
years  were  the  forgotten  last  survivor  of  another  race  and 
kind,  and  they  in  turn  precursors  of  a  new  race  not  yet  seen 
on  the  earth:  of  men  and  women  without  age,  beautiful  as 
gods  and  goddesses,  and  with  the  minds  of  infants.  He  turned 
quickly  and  looked  at  the  woman  beside  him — at  the  quiet 
face,  the  wise,  smiling  eyes,  the  grained  skin  and  temples,  the 
hairroots  showing  where  the  dye  had  grown  out,  the  legs 
veined  faint  and  blue  and  myriad  beneath  the  skin.  "You 
look  better  than  any  of  them!"  he  cried.  "You  look  better 
to  me  than  any  of  them!" 

Ill 

THE  JAPANESE  GARDENER,  with  his  hat  on,  stood  tapping  on 
the  glass  and  beckoning  and  grimacing  until  old  Mrs.  Ewing 
went  out  to  him.  He  had  the  afternoon's  paper  with  its  black 
headline:  LALEAR  WOMAN  CREATES  SCENE  IN 
COURTROOM.  "You  take,"  the  Japanese  said.  "Read 
while  I  catch  water."  But  she  declined;  she  just  stood  in  the 
soft  halcyon  sunlight,  surrounded  by  the  myriad  and  almost 
fierce  blooming  of  flowers,  and  looked  quietly  at  the  head- 
line without  even  taking  the  paper,  and  that  was  all. 

"I  guess  I  won't  look  at  the  paper  today,"  she  said.  "Thank 
you  just  the  same."  She  returned  to  the  living  room.  Save 
for  the  chair,  it  was  exactly  as  it  had  been  when  she  first 
saw  it  that  day  when  her  son  brought  her  into  it  and  told 
her  that  it  was  now  her  home  and  that  her  daughter-in-law 
and  her  grandchildren  were  now  her  family.  It  had  changed 


722  The  Middle  Ground 

very  little,  and  that  which  had  altered  was  the  part  which 
her  son  knew  nothing  about,  and  that  too  had  changed  not 
at  all  in  so  long  that  she  could  not  even  remember  now 
when  she  had  added  the  last  coin  to  the  hoard.  This  was  in 
a  china  vase  on  the  mantel.  She  knew  what  was  in  it  to  the 
penny;  nevertheless,  she  took  it  down  and  sat  in  the  chair 
which  she  had  brought  all  the  way  from  Nebraska  and 
emptied  the  coins  and  the  worn  timetable  into  her  lap.  The 
timetable  was  folded  back  at  the  page  on  which  she  had 
folded  it  the  day  she  walked  downtown  to  the  ticket  office 
and  got  it  fifteen  years  ago,  though  that  was  so  long  ago 
now  that  the  pencil  circle  about  the  name  of  the  nearest 
junction  point  to  Ewing,  Nebraska,  had  faded  away.  But 
she  did  not  need  that  either;  she  knew  the  distance  to  the 
exact  half  mile,  just  as  she  knew  the  fare  to  the  penny,  and 
back  in  the  early  twenties  when  the  railroads  began  to  be- 
come worried  and  passenger  fares  began  to  drop,  no  broker 
ever  watched  the  grain  and  utilities  market  any  closer  than 
she  watched  the  railroad  advertisements  and  quotations. 
Then  at  last  the  fares  became  stabilized  with  the  fare  back 
to  Ewing  thirteen  dollars  more  than  she  had  been  able  to 
save,  and  at  a  time  when  her  source  of  income  had  ceased. 
This  was  the  two  grandchildren.  When  she  entered  the 
house  that  day  twenty  years  ago  and  looked  at  the  two 
babies  for  the  first  time,  it  was  with  diffidence  and  eagerness 
both.  She  would  be  dependent  for  the  rest  of  her  life,  but 
she  would  give  something  in  return  for  it.  It  was  not  that 
she  would  attempt  to  make  another  Ira  and  Samantha 
Ewing  of  them;  she  had  made  that  mistake  with  her  own 
son  and  had  driven  him  from  home.  She  was  wiser  now; 
she  saw  now  that  it  was  not  the  repetition  of  hardship:  she 
would  merely  take  what  had  been  of  value  in  hers  and  her 
husband's  hard  lives — that  which  they  had  learned  through 
hardship  and  endurance  of  honor  and  courage  and  pride — 


Golden  Land  723 

and  transmit  it  to  the  children  without  their  having  to  suffer 
the  hardship  at  all,  the  travail  and  the  despairs.  She  had  ex- 
pected that  there  would  be  some  friction  between  her  and 
the  young  daughter-in-law,  but  she  had  believed  that  her 
son,  the  actual  Ewing,  would  be  her  ally;  she  had  even 
reconciled  herself  after  a  year  to  waiting,  since  the  children 
were  still  but  babies;  she  was  not  alarmed,  since  they  were 
Ewings  too:  after  she  had  looked  that  first  searching  time  at 
the  two  puttysoft  little  faces  feature  by  feature,  she  had 
said  it  was  because  they  were  babies  yet  and  so  looked  like 
no  one.  So  she  was  content  to  bide  and  wait;  she  did  not 
even  know  that  her  son  was  planning  to  move  until  he  told 
her  that  the  other  house  was  bought  and  that  the  present 
one  was  to  be  hers  until  she  died.  She  watched  them  go;  she 
said  nothing;  it  was  not  to  begin  then.  It  did  not  begin  for 
five  years,  during  which  she  watched  her  son  making  money 
faster  and  faster  and  easier  and  easier,  gaining  with  apparent 
contemptible  and  contemptuous  ease  that  substance  for 
which  in  niggard  amounts  her  husband  had  striven  while 
still  clinging  with  undeviating  incorruptibility  to  honor  and 
dignity  and  pride,  and  spending  it,  squandering  it,  in  the 
same  way.  By  that  time  she  had  given  up  the  son  and  she 
had  long  since  learned  that  she  and  her  daughter-in-law 
were  irrevocable  and  implacable  moral  enemies.  It  was  in 
the  fifth  year.  One  day  in  her  son's  home  she  saw  the  two 
children  take  money  from  their  mother's  purse  lying  on  a 
table.  The  mother  did  not  even  know  how  much  she  had  in 
the  purse;  when  the  grandmother  told  her  about  it  she  be- 
came angry  and  dared  the  older  woman  to  put  it  to  the  test. 
The  grandmother  accused  the  children,  who  denied  the 
whole  affair  with  perfectly  straight  faces.  That  was  the 
actual  break  between  herself  and  her  son's  family;  after  that 
she  saw  the  two  children  only  when  the  son  would  bring 
them  with  him  occasionally  on  his  unfailing  daily  visits.  She 


724  The  Middle  Ground 

had  a  few  broken  dollars  which  she  had  brought  from  Ne- 
braska and  had  kept  intact  for  five  years,  since  she  had  no 
need  for  money  here;  one  day  she  planted  one  of  the  coins 
while  the  children  were  there,  and  when  she  went  back  to 
look,  it  was  gone  too.  The  next  morning  she  tried  to  talk 
to  her  son  about  the  children,  remembering  her  experience 
with  the  daughter-in-law  and  approaching  the  matter  in- 
directly, speaking  generally  of  money.  "Yes,"  the  son  said. 
"I'm  making  money.  I'm  making  it  fast  while  I  can.  I'm 
going  to  make  a  lot  of  it.  I'm  going  to  give  my  children 
luxuries  and  advantages  that  my  father  never  dreamed  a 
child  might  have." 

"That's  it,"  she  said.  "You  make  money  too  easy.  This 
whole  country  is  too  easy  for  us  Ewings.  It  may  be  all  right 
for  them  that  have  been  born  here  for  generations;  I  don't 
know  about  that.  But  not  for  us." 

"But  these  children  were  born  here." 

"Just  one  generation.  The  generation  before  that  they 
were  born  in  a  sodroofed  dugout  on  the  Nebraska  wheat 
frontier.  And  the  one  before  that  in  a  log  house  in  Missouri. 
And  the  one  before  that  in  a  Kentucky  blockhouse  with 
Indians  around  it.  This  world  has  never  been  easy  for 
Ewings.  Maybe  the  Lord  never  intended  it  to  be." 

"But  it  is  from  now  on,"  he  said;  he  spoke  with  a  kind 
of  triumph.  "For  you  and  me  too.  But  mostly  for  them." 

And  that  was  all.  When  he  was  gone  she  sat  quietly  in 
the  single  Nebraska  chair  which  she  had  taken  out  of  stor- 
age— the  first  chair  which  the  older  Ira  Ewing  had  bought 
for  her  after  he  built  a  house  and  in  which  she  had  rocked 
the  younger  Ira  to  sleep  before  he  could  walk,  while  the 
older  Ira  himself  sat  in  the  chair  which  he  had  made  out  of 
a  flour  barrel,  grim,  quiet  and  incorruptible,  taking  his 
earned  twilight  ease  between  a  day  and  a  day — telling  her- 
self quietly  that  that  was  all.  Her  next  move  was  curiously 


Golden  Land  725 

direct;  there  was  something  in  it  of  the  actual  pioneer's  op- 
portunism, of  taking  immediate  and  cold  advantage  of 
Spartan  circumstance;  it  was  as  though  for  the  first  time  in 
her  life  she  was  able  to  use  something,  anything,  which  she 
had  gained  by  bartering  her  youth  and  strong  maturity 
against  the  Nebraska  immensity,  and  this  not  in  order  to  live 
further  but  in  order  to  die;  apparently  she  saw  neither  para- 
dox in  it  nor  dishonesty.  She  began  to  make  candy  and  cake 
of  the  materials  which  her  son  bought  for  her  on  credit, 
and  to  sell  them  to  the  two  grandchildren  for  the  coins  which 
their  father  gave  them  or  which  they  perhaps  purloined  also 
from  their  mother's  purse,  hiding  the  coins  in  the  vase  with 
the  timetable,  watching  the  niggard  hoard  grow.  But  after 
a  few  years  the  children  outgrew  candy  and  cake,  and  then 
she  had  watched  railroad  fares  go  down  and  down  and  then 
stop  thirteen  dollars  away.  But  she  did  not  give  up,  even 
then.  Her  son  had  tried  to  give  her  a  servant  years  ago  and 
she  had  refused;  she  believed  that  when  the  time  came,  the 
right  moment,  he  would  not  refuse  to  give  her  at  least 
thirteen  dollars  of  the  money  which  she  had  saved  him. 
Then  this  had  failed.  "Maybe  it  wasn't  the  right  time,"  she 
thought.  "Maybe  I  tried  it  too  quick.  I  was  surprised  into 
it,"  she  told  herself,  looking  down  at  the  heap  of  small  coins 
in  her  lap.  "Or  maybe  he  was  surprised  into  saying  No. 
Maybe  when  he  has  had  time  .  .  ."  She  roused;  she  put  the 
coins  back  into  the  vase  and  set  it  on  the  mantel  again,  look- 
ing at  the  clock  as  she  did  so.  It  was  just  four,  two  hours 
yet  until  time  to  start  supper.  The  sun  was  high;  she  could 
see  the  water  from  the  sprinkler  flashing  and  glinting  in  it 
as  she  went  to  the  window.  It  was  still  high,  still  afternoon; 
the  mountains  stood  serene  and  drab  against  it;  the  city,  the 
land,  lay  sprawled  and  myriad  beneath  it — the  land,  the 
earth  which  spawned  a  thousand  new  faiths,  nostrums  and 
cures  each  year  but  no  disease  to  even  disprove  them  on — 


726  The  Middle  Ground 

beneath  the  golden  days  unmarred  by  rain  or  weather,  the 

changeless  monotonous  beautiful  days  without  end  countless 

t»ut  of  the  halcyon  past  and  endless  into  the  halcyon  future. 

"I  will  stay  here  and  live  forever,"  she  said  to  herself. 


There  Was  a  Queen 


ELNORA  entered  the  back  yard,  coming  up  from  her  cabin. 
In  the  long  afternoon  the  huge,  square  house,  the  premises, 
lay  somnolent,  peaceful,  as  they  had  lain  for  almost  a  hundred 
years,  since  John  Sartoris  had  come  from  Carolina  and  built 
it.  And  he  had  died  in  it  and  his  son  Bayard  had  died  in  it, 
and  Bayard's  son  John  and  John's  son  Bayard  in  turn  had 
been  buried  from  it  even  though  the  last  Bayard  didn't  die 
there. 

So  the  quiet  was  now  the  quiet  of  womenfolks.  As  Elnora 
crossed  the  back  yard  toward  the  kitchen  door  she  remem- 
bered how  ten  years  ago  at  this  hour  old  Bayard,  who  was 
her  half-brother  (though  possibly  but  not  probably  neither 
of  them  knew  it,  including  Bayard's  father) ,  would  be  tramp- 
ing up  and  down  the  back  porch,  shouting  stableward  for  the 
Negro  men  and  for  his  saddle  mare.  But  he  was  dead  now, 
and  his  grandson  Bayard  was  also  dead  at  twenty-six  years 
old,  and  the  Negro  men  were  gone:  Simon,  Elnora's  mother's 
husband,  in  the  graveyard  too,  and  Caspey,  Elnora's  husband, 
in  the  penitentiary  for  stealing,  and  Joby,  her  son,  gone  to 
Memphis  to  wear  fine  clothes  on  Beale  Street.  So  there  were 
left  in  the  house  only  the  first  John  Sartoris'  sister,  Virginia, 
who  was  ninety  years  old  and  who  lived  in  a  wheel  chair 
beside  a  window  above  the  flower  garden,  and  Narcissa, 
young  Bayard's  widow,  and  her  son.  Virginia  Du  Pre  had 

727 


728  The  Middle  Ground 

come  out  to  Mississippi  in  '69,  the  last  of  the  Carolina  family, 
bringing  with  her  the  clothes  in  which  she  stood  and  a  basket 
containing  a  few  panes  of  colored  glass  from  a  Carolina  win- 
dow and  a  few  flower  cuttings  and  two  bottles  of  port.  She 
had  seen  her  brother  die  and  then  her  nephew  and  then  her 
great-nephew  and  then  her  two  great-great-nephews,  and 
now  she  lived  in  the  unmanned  house  with  her  great-great- 
nephew's  wife  and  his  son,  Benbow,  whom  she  persisted  in 
calling  Johnny  after  his  uncle,  who  was  killed  in  France.  And 
for  Negroes  there  were  Elnora  who  cooked,  and  her  son  Isom 
who  tended  the  grounds,  and  her  daughter  Saddic  who  slept 
on  a  cot  beside  Virginia  Du  Pre's  bed  and  tended  her  as 
though  she  were  a  baby. 

But  that  was  all  right.  "I  can  take  care  of  her,"  Elnora 
thought,  crossing  the  back  yard.  "I  don't  need  no  help,"  she 
said  aloud,  to  no  one — a  tall,  coffee-colored  woman  with  a 
small,  high,  fine  head.  "Because  it's  a  Sartoris  job.  Gunnel 
knowed  that  when  he  died  and  tole  me  to  take  care  of  her. 
Tole  me.  Not  no  outsiders  from  town."  She  was  thinking  of 
what  had  caused  her  to  come  up  to  the  house  an  hour  before 
it  was  necessary.  This  was  that,  while  busy  in  her  cabin,  she 
had  seen  Narcissa,  young  Bayard's  wife,  and  the  ten-year-old 
boy  going  down  across  the  pasture  in  the  middle  of  the  after- 
noon. She  had  come  to  her  door  and  watched  them — the  boy 
and  the  big  young  woman  in  white  going  through  the  hot 
afternoon,  down  across  the  pasture  toward  the  creek.  She 
had  not  wondered  where  they  were  going,  nor  why,  as  a 
white  woman  would  have  wondered.  But  she  was  half  black, 
and  she  just  watched  the  white  woman  with  that  expression 
of  quiet  and  grave  contempt  with  which  she  contemplated 
or  listened  to  the  orders  of  the  wife  of  the  house's  heir  even 
while  he  was  alive.  Just  as  she  had  listened  two  days  ago  when 
Narcissa  had  informed  her  that  she  was  going  to  Memphis 
for  a  day  or  so  and  that  Elnora  would  have  to  take  care  of 


There  Was  a  Queen  729 

the  old  aunt  alone.  "Like  I  ain't  always  done  it,"  Elnora 
thought.  "It's  little  you  done  for  anybody  since  you  come 
out  here.  We  never  needed  you.  Don't  you  never  think  it." 
But  she  didn't  say  this.  She  just  thought  it,  and  she  helped 
Narcissa  prepare  for  the  trip  and  watched  the  carriage  roll 
away  toward  town  and  the  station  without  comment.  "And 
you  needn't  to  come  back,"  she  thought,  watching  the  car- 
riage disappear.  But  this  morning  Narcissa  had  returned, 
without  offering  to  explain  the  sudden  journey  or  the  sudden 
return,  and  in  the  early  afternoon  Elnora  from  her  cabin  door 
had  watched  the  woman  and  the  boy  go  down  across  the 
pasture  in  the  hot  June  sunlight. 

"Well,  it's  her  business  where  she  going,"  Elnora  said 
aloud,  mounting  the  kitchen  steps.  "Same  as  it  her  business 
how  come  she  went  off  to  Memphis,  leaving  Miss  Jenny 
setting  yonder  in  her  chair  without  nobody  but  niggers  to 
look  after  her,"  she  added,  aloud  still,  with  brooding  incon- 
sistency. "I  ain't  surprised  she  went.  I  just  surprised  she  come 
back.  No.  I  ain't  even  that.  She  ain't  going  to  leave  this  place, 
now  she  done  got  in  here."  Then  she  said  quietly,  aloud, 
without  rancor,  without  heat:  "Trash.  Town  trash." 

She  entered  the  kitchen.  Her  daughter  Saddie  sat  at  the 
table,  eating  from  a  dish  of  cold  turnip  greens  and  looking  at 
a  thumbed  and  soiled  fashion  magazine.  "What  you  doing 
back  here?"  she  said.  "Why  ain't  you  up  yonder  where  you 
can  hear  Miss  Jenny  if  she  call  you?" 

"Miss  Jenny  ain't  need  nothing,"  Saddie  said.  "She  setting 
there  by  the  window." 

"Where  did  Miss  Narcissa  go?" 

"I  don't  know'm,"  Saddie  said.  "Her  and  Bory  went  off 
somewhere.  Ain't  come  back  yet." 

Elnora  grunted.  Her  shoes  were  not  laced,  and  she  stepped 
out  of  them  in  two  motions  and  left  the  kitchen  and  went 
up  the  quiet,  high-ceiled  hall  filled  with  scent  from  the  gar- 


730  The  Middle  Ground 

den  and  with  the  drowsing  and  myriad  sounds  of  the  June 
afternoon,  to  the  open  library  door.  Beside  the  window  (the 
sash  was  raised  now,  with  its  narrow  border  of  colored  Caro- 
lina glass  which  in  the  winter  framed  her  head  and  bust  like 
a  hung  portrait)  an  old  woman  sat  in  a  wheel  chair.  She  sat 
erect;  a  thin,  upright  woman  with  a  delicate  nose  and  hair 
the  color  of  a  whitewashed  wall.  About  her  shoulders  lay  a 
shawl  of  white  wool,  no  whiter  than  her  hair  against  her 
black  dress.  She  was  looking  out  the  window;  in  profile  her 
face  was  high-arched,  motionless.  When  Elnora  entered  she 
turned  her  head  and  looked  at  the  Negress  with  an  expression 
immediate  and  interrogative. 

"They  ain't  come  in  the  back  way,  have  they?"  she  said. 

"Nome,"  Elnora  said.  She  approached  the  chair. 

The  old  woman  looked  out  the  window  again.  "I  must  say 
I  don't  understand  this  at  all.  Miss  Narcissa's  doing  a  mighty 
lot  of  traipsing  around  all  of  a  sudden.  Picking  up  and — " 

Elnora  came  to  the  chair.  "A  right  smart,"  she  said  in  her 
cold,  quiet  voice,  "for  a  woman  lazy  as  her." 

"Picking  up — "  the  old  woman  said.  She  ceased.  "You 
stop  talking  that  way  about  her." 

"I  ain't  said  nothing  but  the  truth,"  Elnora  said. 

"Then  you  keep  it  to  yourself.  She's  Bayard's  wife.  A 
Sartoris  woman,  now." 

"She  won't  never  be  a  Sartoris  woman,"  Elnora  said. 

The  other  was  looking  out  the  window.  "Picking  up  all 
of  a  sudden  two  days  ago  and  going  to  Memphis  to  spend 
two  nights,  that  hadn't  spent  a  night  away  from  that  boy 
since  he  was  born.  Leaving  him  for  two  whole  nights,  mind 
you,  without  giving  any  reason,  and  then  coming  home  and 
taking  him  off  to  walk  in  the  woods  in  the  middle  of  the  day. 
Not  that  he  missed  her.  Do  you  think  he  missed  her  at  all 
while  she  was  gone?" 

"Nome,"  Elnora  said.  "Ain't  no  Sartoris  man  never  missed 
nobody." 


There  Was  a  Queen  731 

"Of  course  he  didn't."  The  old  woman  looked  out  the 
window.  Elnora  stood  a  little  behind  the  chair.  "Did  they  go 
on  across  the  pasture?" 

"I  don't  know.  They  went  out  of  sight,  still  going. 
Toward  the  creek." 

"Toward  the  creek?  What  in  the  world  for?" 

Elnora  didn't  answer.  She  stood  a  little  behind  the  chair, 
erect,  still  as  an  Indian.  The  afternoon  was  drawing  on.  The 
sun  was  now  falling  level  across  the  garden  below  the  win- 
dow, and  soon  the  jasmine  in  the  garden  began  to  smell  with 
evening,  coming  into  the  room  in  slow  waves  almost  pal- 
pable; thick,  sweet,  oversweet.  The  two  women  were  mo- 
tionless in  the  window:  the  one  leaning  a  little  forward  in  the 
wheel  chair,  the  Negress  a  little  behind  the  chair,  motionless 
too  and  erect  as  a  caryatid. 

The  light  in  the  garden  was  beginning  to  turn  copper- 
colored  when  the  woman  and  the  boy  entered  the  garden  and 
approached  the  house.  The  old  woman  in  the  chair  leaned 
suddenly  forward.  To  Elnora  it  seemed  as  if  the  old  woman 
in  the  wheel  chair  had  in  that  motion  escaped  her  helpless 
body  like  a  bird  and  crossed  the  garden  to  meet  the  child; 
moving  forward  a  little  herself  Elnora  could  see  on  the 
other's  face  an  expression  fond,  immediate,  and  oblivious.  So 
the  two  people  had  crossed  the  garden  and  were  almost  to 
the  house  when  the  old  woman  sat  suddenly  and  sharply 
back.  "Why,  they're  wet!"  she  said.  "Look  at  their  clothes. 
They  have  been  in  the  creek  with  their  clothes  on!" 

"I  reckon  I  better  go  and  get  supper  started,"  Elnora  said. 


II 

IN  THE  kitchen  Elnora  prepared  the  lettuce  and  the  tomatoes, 
and  sliced  the  bread  (not  honest  cornbread,  not  even  biscuit) 
which  the  woman  whose  very  name  she  did  not  speak  unless 
it  was  absolutely  necessary,  had  taught  her  to  bake.  Isom  and 


732  The  Middle  Ground 

Saddle  sat  in  two  chairs  against  the  wall.  "I  got  nothing 
against  her,"  Elnora  said.  "I  nigger  and  she  white.  But  my 
black  children  got  more  blood  than  she  got.  More  behavior." 

"You  and  Miss  Jenny  both  think  ain't  nobody  been  born 
since  Miss  Jenny,"  Isom  said. 

"Who  is  been?"  Elnora  said. 

"Miss  Jenny  get  along  all  right  with  Miss  Narcissa,"  Isom 
said.  "Seem  to  me  like  she  the  one  to  say.  I  ain't  heard  her 
say  nothing  about  it." 

"Because  Miss  Jenny  quality,"  Elnora  said.  "That's  why. 
And  that's  something  you  don't  know  nothing  about,  because 
you  born  too  late  to  see  any  of  it  except  her." 

"Look  to  me  like  Miss  Narcissa  good  quality  as  anybody 
else,"  Isom  said.  "I  don't  see  no  difference." 

Elnora  moved  suddenly  from  the  table.  Isom  as  suddenly 
sprang  up  and  moved  his  chair  out  of  his  mother's  path.  But 
she  only  went  to  the  cupboard  and  took  a  platter  from  it 
and  returned  to  the  table,  to  the  tomatoes.  "Born  Sartoris  or 
born  quality  of  any  kind  ain't  is,  it's  does."  She  talked  in  a 
level,  inflectionless  voice  above  her  limber,  brown,  deft 
hands.  When  she  spoke  of  the  two  women  she  used  "she" 
indiscriminately,  putting  the  least  inflection  on  the  one  which 
referred  to  Miss  Jenny.  "Come  all  the  way  here  by  Herself, 
and  the  country  still  full  of  Yankees.  All  the  way  from  Cal- 
lina,  with  Her  folks  all  killed  and  dead  except  old  Marse 
John,  and  him  two  hundred  miles  away  in  Missippi — " 

"It's  moren  two  hundred  miles  from  here  to  Cal-lina," 
Isom  said.  "Learnt  that  in  school.  It's  nigher  two  thousand." 

Elnora's  hands  did  not  cease.  She  did  not  seem  to  have 
heard  him.  "With  the  Yankees  done  killed  Her  paw  and  Her 
husband  and  burned  the  Cal-lina  house  over  Her  and  Her 
mammy's  head,  and  She  come  all  the  way  to  Missippi  by 
Herself,  to  the  only  kin  She  had  left.  Getting  here  in  the 
dead  of  winter  without  nothing  in  this  world  of  God's  but 


There  Was  a  Queen  733 

a  basket  with  some  flower  seeds  and  two  bottles  of  wine  and 
them  colored  window  panes  old  Marse  John  put  in  the  li- 
brary window  so  She  could  look  through  it  like  it  was  Cal- 
lina.  She  got  here  at  dusk-dark  on  Christmas  Day  and  old 
Marse  John  and  the  chillen  and  my  mammy  waiting  on  the 
porch,  and  Her  setting  high-headed  in  the  wagon  for  old 
Marse  John  to  lift  Her  down.  They  never  even  kissed 
then,  out  where  folks  could  see  them.  Old  Marse  John  just 
said,  'Well,  Jenny,'  and  she  just  said,  'Well,  Johnny,'  and 
they  walked  into  the  house,  him  leading  Her  by  the  hand, 
until  they  was  inside  the  house  where  the  commonalty 
couldn't  spy  on  them.  Then  She  begun  to  cry,  and  old  Marse 
John  holding  Her,  after  all  them  four  thousand  miles — " 

"It  ain't  four  thousand  miles  from  here  to  Cal-lina,"  Isom 
said.  "Ain't  but  two  thousand.  What  the  book  say  in  school." 

Elnora  paid  no  attention  to  him  at  all;  her  hands  did  not 
cease.  "It  took  Her  hard,  the  crying  did.  'It's  because  I  ain't 
used  to  crying,'  she  said.  'I  got  out  of  the  habit  of  it.  I  never 
had  the  time.  Them  goddamn  Yankees,'  she  said.  'Them  god- 
damn Yankees.'  "  Elnora  moved  again,  to  the  cupboard.  It 
was  as  though  she  walked  out  of  the  sound  of  her  voice  on 
her  silent,  naked  feet,  leaving  it  to  fill  the  quiet  kitchen 
though  the  voice  itself  had  ceased.  She  took  another  platter 
down  and  returned  to  the  table,  her  hands  busy  again  among 
the  tomatoes  and  lettuce,  the  food  which  she  herself  could 
not  eat.  "And  that's  how  it  is  that  she"  (she  was  now  speak- 
ing of  Narcissa;  the  two  Negroes  knew  it)  "thinks  she  can 
pick  up  and  go  to  Memphis  and  frolic,  and  leave  Her  alone 
in  this  house  for  two  nights  without  nobody  but  niggers  to 
look  after  Her.  Move  out  here  under  a  Sartoris  roof  and  eat 
Sartoris  food  for  ten  years,  and  then  pick  up  and  go  to 
Memphis  same  as  a  nigger  on  a  excursion,  without  even  telling 
why  she  was  going." 

"I  thought  you  said  Miss  Jenny  never  needed  nobody  but 


734  The  Middle  Ground 

you  to  take  care  of  her,"  Isom  said.  "I  thought  you  said  yes- 
terday you  never  cared  if  she  come  back  or  not." 

Elnora  made  a  sound,  harsh,  disparaging,  not  loud.  "Her 
not  come  back?  When  she  worked  for  five  years  to  get  her- 
self married  to  Bayard?  Working  on  Miss  Jenny  all  the  time 
Bayard  was  off  to  that  war?  I  watched  her.  Coming  out  here 
two  or  three  times  a  week,  with  Miss  Jenny  thinking  she  was 
just  coming  out  to  visit  like  quality.  But  I  knowed.  I  knowed 
what  she  was  up  to  all  the  time.  Because  I  knows  trash.  I 
knows  the  way  trash  goes  about  working  in  with  quality. 
Quality  can't  see  that,  because  it  quality.  But  I  can." 

"Then  Bory  must  be  trash,  too,"  Isom  said. 

Elnora  turned  now.  But  Isom  was  already  out  of  his  chair 
before  she  spoke.  "You  shut  your  mouth  and  get  yourself 
ready  to  serve  supper."  She  watched  him  go  to  the  sink  and 
prepare  to  wash  his  hands.  Then  she  turned  back  to  the  table, 
her  long  hands  brown  and  deft  among  the  red  tomatoes  and 
the  pale  absinth-green  of  the  lettuce.  "Needings,"  she  said. 
"It  ain't  Bory's  needings  and  it  ain't  Her  needings.  It's  dead 
folks'  needings.  Old  Marse  John's  and  Gunnel's  and  Mister 
John's  and  Bayard's  that's  dead  and  can't  do  nothing  about  it. 
That's  where  the  needings  is.  That's  what  I'm  talking  about. 
And  not  nobody  to  see  to  it  except  Her  yonder  in  that  chair, 
and  me,  a  nigger,  back  here  in  this  kitchen.  I  ain't  got  noth- 
ing against  her.  I  just  say  to  let  quality  consort  with  quality, 
and  unquality  do  the  same  thing.  You  get  that  coat  on,  now. 
This  here  is  all  ready." 

Ill 

IT  WAS  the  boy  who  told  her.  She  leaned  forward  in  the 
wheel  chair  and  watched  through  the  window  as  the  woman 
and  the  child  crossed  the  garden  and  passed  out  of  sight  be- 
yond the  angle  of  the  house.  Still  leaning  forward  and  look- 


There  Was  a  Queen  735 

ing  down  into  the  garden,  she  heard  them  enter  the  house 
and  pass  the  library  door  and  mount  the  stairs.  She  did  not 
move,  nor  look  toward  the  door.  She  continued  to  look  down 
into  the  garden,  at  the  now  stout  shrubs  which  she  had 
fetched  from  Carolina  as  shoots  not  much  bigger  than 
matches.  It  was  in  the  garden  that  she  and  the  younger 
woman  who  was  to  marry  her  nephew  and  bear  a  son,  had 
become  acquainted.  That  was  back  in  1918,  and  young  Bay- 
ard and  his  brother  John  were  still  in  France.  It  was  before 
John  was  killed,  and  two  or  three  times  a  week  Narcissa 
would  come  out  from  town  to  visit  her  while  she  worked 
among  the  flowers.  "And  she  engaged  to  Bayard  all  the  time 
and  not  telling  me,"  the  old  woman  thought.  "But  it  was  little 
she  ever  told  me  about  anything,"  she  thought,  looking  down 
into  the  garden  which  was  beginning  to  fill  with  twilight 
and  which  she  had  not  entered  in  five  years.  "Little  enough 
about  anything.  Sometimes  I  wonder  how  she  ever  got  herself 
engaged  to  Bayard,  talking  so  little.  Maybe  she  did  it  by  just 
being,  filling  some  space,  like  she  got  that  letter."  That  was 
one  day  shortly  before  Bayard  returned  home.  Narcissa 
came  out  and  stayed  for  two  hours,  then  just  before  she  left 
she  showed  the  letter.  It  was  anonymous  and  obscene;  it 
sounded  mad,  and  at  the  time  she  had  tried  to  get  Narcissa 
to  let  her  show  the  letter  to  Bayard's  grandfather  and  have 
him  make  some  effort  to  find  the  man  and  punish  him,  but 
Narcissa  refused.  "I'll  just  burn  it  and  forget  about  it,"  Nar- 
cissa said.  "Well,  that's  your  business,"  the  older  woman  said. 
"But  that  should  not  be  permitted.  A  lady  should  not  be  at 
the  mercy  of  a  man  like  that,  even  by  mail.  Any  gentleman 
will  believe  that,  act  upon  it.  Besides,  if  you  don't  do  some- 
thing about  it,  he'll  write  you  again."  "Then  I'll  show  it  to 
Colonel  Sartoris,"  Narcissa  said.  She  was  an  orphan,  her 
brother  also  in  France.  "But  can't  you  see  I  just  can't  have 
any  man  know  that  anybody  thought  such  things  about  me." 


The  Middle  Ground 

"Well,  I'd  rather  have  the  whole  world  know  that  somebody 
thought  that  way  about  me  once  and  got  horsewhipped  for 
it,  than  to  have  him  keep  on  thinking  that  way  about  me,  un- 
punished. But  it's  your  affair."  "I'll  just  burn  it  and  forget 
about  it,"  Narcissa  said.  Then  Bayard  returned,  and  shortly 
afterward  he  and  Narcissa  were  married  and  Narcissa  came 
out  to  the  house  to  live.  Then  she  was  pregnant,  and  before 
the  child  was  born  Bayard  was  killed  in  an  airplane,  and  his 
grandfather,  old  Bayard,  was  dead  and  the  child  came,  and 
it  was  two  years  before  she  thought  to  ask  her  niece  if  any 
more  letters  had  come;  and  Narcissa  told  her  no. 

So  they  had  lived  quietly  then,  their  women's  life  in  the 
big  house  without  men.  Now  and  then  she  had  urged  Nar- 
cissa to  marry  again.  But  the  other  had  refused,  quietly,  and 
they  had  gone  on  so  for  years,  the  two  of  them  and  the  child 
whom  she  persisted  in  calling  after  his  dead  uncle.  Then  one 
evening  a  week  ago,  Narcissa  had  a  guest  for  supper;  when 
she  learned  that  the  guest  was  to  be  a  man,  she  sat  quite  still 
in  her  chair  for  a  time.  "Ah,"  she  thought,  quietly.  "It's  come. 
Well.  But  it  had  to;  she  is  young.  And  to  live  out  here  alone 
with  a  bedridden  old  woman.  Well.  But  I  wouldn't  have  her 
do  as  I  did.  Would  not  expect  it  of  her.  After  all,  she  is  not  a 
Sartoris.  She  is  no  kin  to  them,  to  a  lot  of  fool  proud  ghosts.'* 
The  guest  came.  She  did  not  see  him  until  she  was  wheeled 
in  to  the  supper  table.  Then  she  saw  a  bald,  youngish  man 
with  a  clever  face  and  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key  on  his  watch 
chain.  The  key  she  did  not  recognize,  but  she  knew  at  once 
that  he  was  a  Jew,  and  when  he  spoke  to  her  her  outrage  be- 
came fury  and  she  jerked  back  in  the  chair  like  a  striking 
snake,  the  motion  strong  enough  to  thrust  the  chair  back 
from  the  table.  "Narcissa,"  she  said,  "what  is  this  Yankee 
doing  here?" 

There  they  were,  about  the  candle-lit  table,  the  three  rigid 
people.  Then  the  man  spoke:  "Madam,"  he  said,  "there'd  be 


There  Was  a  Queen  737 

no  Yankees  left  if  your  sex  had  ever  taken  the  field  against 
us." 

"You  don't  have  to  tell  me  that,  young  man,"  she  said. 
"You  can  thank  your  stars  it  was  just  men  your  grandfather 
fought."  Then  she  had  called  Isom  and  had  herself  wheeled 
from  the  table,  taking  no  supper.  And  even  in  her  bedroom 
she  would  not  let  them  turn  on  the  light,  and  she  refused  the 
tray  which  Narcissa  sent  up.  She  sat  beside  her  dark  window 
until  the  stranger  was  gone. 

Then  three  days  later  Narcissa  made  her  sudden  and  mys- 
terious trip  to  Memphis  and  stayed  two  nights,  who  had 
never  before  been  separated  overnight  from  her  son  since  he 
was  born.  She  had  gone  without  explanation  and  returned 
without  explanation,  and  now  the  old  woman  had  just 
watched  her  and  the  boy  cross  the  garden,  their  garments  still 
damp  upon  them,  as  though  they  had  been  in  the  creek. 

It  was  the  boy  who  told  her.  He  came  into  the  room  in 
fresh  clothes,  his  hair  still  damp,  though  neatly  combed  now. 
She  said  no  word  as  he  entered  and  came  to  her  chair.  "We 
been  in  the  creek,"  he  said.  "Not  swimming,  though.  Just  sit- 
ting in  the  water.  She  wanted  me  to  show  her  the  swimming 
hole.  But  we  didn't  swim.  I  don't  reckon  she  can.  We  just 
sat  in  the  water  with  our  clothes  on.  All  evening.  She  wanted 
to  do  it." 

"Ah,"  the  old  woman  said.  "Oh.  Well.  That  must  have 
been  fun.  Is  she  coming  down  soon?" 

"Yessum.  When  she  gets  dressed." 

"Well.  . .  .  You'll  have  time  to  go  outdoors  a  while  before 
supper,  if  you  want  to." 

"I  just  as  soon  stay  in  here  with  you,  if  you  want  me  to." 

"No.  You  go  outdoors.  I'll  be  all  right  until  Saddie  comes." 

"All  right."  He  left  the  room. 

The  window  faded  slowly  as  the  sunset  died.  The  old 
woman's  silver  head  faded  too,  like  something  motionless  on 


738  The  Middle  Ground 

a  sideboard.  The  sparse  colored  panes  which  framed  the 
window  dreamed,  rich  and  hushed.  She  sat  there  and  pres- 
ently she  heard  her  nephew's  wife  descending  the  stairs.  She 
sat  quietly,  watching  the  door,  until  the  young  woman 
entered. 

She  wore  white:  a  large  woman  in  her  thirties,  within  the 
twilight  something  about  her  of  that  heroic  quality  of  stat- 
uary. "Do  you  want  the  light?"  she  said. 

"No,"  the  old  woman  said.  "No.  Not  yet."  She  sat  erect  in 
the  wheel  chair,  motionless,  watching  the  young  woman 
cross  the  room,  her  white  dress  flowing  slowly,  heroic,  like 
a  caryatid  from  a  temple  facade  come  to  life.  She  sat  down, 

"It  was  those  let — "  she  said. 

''Wait,"  the  old  woman  said.  "Before  you  begin.  The  jas- 
mine. Do  you  smell  it?" 

"Yes.  It  was  those — " 

"Wait.  Always  about  this  time  of  day  it  begins.  It  has 
begun  about  this  time  of  day  in  June  for  fifty-seven  years 
this  summer.  I  brought  them  from  Carolina,  in  a  basket.  I 
remember  how  that  first  March  I  sat  up  all  one  night,  burn- 
ing newspapers  about  the  roots.  Do  you  smell  it?" 

"Yes." 

"If  it's  marriage,  I  told  you.  I  told  you  five  years  ago  that 
I  wouldn't  blame  you.  A  young  woman,  a  widow.  Even 
though  you  have  a  child,  I  told  you  that  a  child  would  not  be 
enough.  I  told  you  I  would  not  blame  you  for  not  doing  as 
I  had  done.  Didn't  I?" 

"Yes.  But  it's  not  that  bad." 

"Not?  Not  how  bad?"  The  old  woman  sat  erect,  her  head 
back  a  little,  her  thin  face  fading  into  the  twilight  with  a 
profound  quality.  "I  won't  blame  you.  I  told  you  that.  You 
are  not  to  consider  me.  My  life  is  done;  I  need  little;  nothing 
the  Negroes  can't  do.  Don't  you  mind  me,  do  you  hear?" 
The  other  said  nothing,  motionless  too,  serene;  their  voices 


There  Was  a  Queen  739 

seemed  to  materialize  in  the  dusk  between  them,  unsourced 
of  either  mouth,  either  still  and  fading  face.  "You'll  have  to 
tell  me,  then,"  the  old  woman  said. 

"It  was  those  letters.  Thirteen  years  ago:  don't  you  re- 
member? Before  Bayard  came  back  from  France,  before  you 
even  knew  that  we  were  engaged.  I  showed  you  one  of  them 
and  you  wanted  to  give  it  to  Colonel  Sartoris  and  let  him  find 
out  who  sent  it  and  I  wouldn't  do  it  and  you  said  that  no 
lady  would  permit  herself  to  receive  anonymous  love  letters, 
no  matter  how  badly  she  wanted  to." 

"Yes.  I  said  it  was  better  for  the  world  to  know  that  a  lady 
had  received  a  letter  like  that,  than  to  have  one  man  in  secret 
thinking  such  things  about  her,  unpunished.  You  told  me 
you  burned  it." 

"I  lied.  I  kept  it.  And  I  got  ten  more  of  them.  I  didn't  tell 
you  because  of  what  you  said  about  a  lady." 

"Ah,"  the  old  woman  said. 

"Yes.  I  kept  them  all.  I  thought  I  had  them  hidden  where 
nobody  could  ever  find  them." 

"And  you  read  them  again.  You  would  take  them  out  now 
and  then  and  read  them  again." 

"I  thought  I  had  them  hidden.  Then  you  remember  that 
night  after  Bayard  and  I  were  married  when  somebody  broke 
into  our  house  in  town;  the  same  night  that  book-keeper  in 
Colonel  Sartoris'  bank  stole  that  money  and  ran  away?  The 
next  morning  the  letters  were  gone,  and  then  I  knew  who  had 
sent  them." 

"Yes,"  the  old  woman  said.  She  had  not  moved,  her  fading 
head  like  something  inanimate  in  silver. 

"So  they  were  out  in  the  world.  They  were  somewhere. 
I  was  crazy  for  a  while.  I  thought  of  people,  men,  reading 
them,  seeing  not  only  my  name  on  them,  but  the  marks  of 
.my  eyes  where  I  had  read  them  again  and  again.  I  was  wild. 
When  Bayard  and  I  were  on  our  honeymoon,  I  was  wild. 


740  The  Middle  Ground 

I  couldn't  even  think  about  him  alone.  It  was  like  I  was 
having  to  sleep  with  all  the  men  in  the  world  at  the  same 
time. 

"Then  it  was  almost  twelve  years  ago,  and  I  had  Bory> 
and  I  supposed  I  had  got  over  it.  Got  used  to  having  them  out 
in  the  world.  Maybe  I  had  begun  to  think  that  they  were 
gone,  destroyed,  and  I  was  safe.  Now  and  then  I  would 
remember  them,  but  it  was  like  somehow  that  Bory  was 
protecting  me,  that  they  couldn't  pass  him  to  reach  me.  As 
though  if  I  just  stayed  out  here  and  was  good  to  Bory  and 
you —  And  then,  one  afternoon,  after  twelve  years,  that  man 
came  out  to  see  me,  that  Jew.  The  one  who  stayed  to  supper 
that  night." 

"Ah,"  the  old  woman  said.  "Yes." 

"He  was  a  Federal  agent.  They  were  still  trying  to  catch 
the  man  who  had  robbed  the  bank,  and  the  agent  had  got 
hold  of  my  letters.  Found  them  where  the  book-keeper  had 
lost  them  or  thrown  them  away  that  night  while  he  was 
running  away,  and  the  agent  had  had  them  twelve  years, 
working  on  the  case.  At  last  he  came  out  to  see  me,  trying 
to  find  out  where  the  man  had  gone,  thinking  I  must  know, 
since  the  man  had  written  me  letters  like  that.  You  remem- 
ber him:  how  you  looked  at  him  and  you  said,  'Narcissa, 
who  is  this  Yankee?' " 

"Yes.  I  remember." 

"That  man  had  my  letters.  He  had  had  them  for  twelve 
years.  He—" 

"Had  had?"  the  old  woman  said.  "Had  had?" 

"Yes.  I  have  them  now.  He  hadn't  sent  them  to  Washing- 
ton yet,  so  nobody  had  read  them  except  him.  And  now 
nobody  will  ever  read  them."  She  ceased;  she  breathed 
quietly,  tranquil.  "You  don't  understand  yet,  do  you?  He 
had  all  the  information  the  letters  could  give  him,  but  he 
would  have  to  turn  them  in  to  the  Department  anyway 


There  Was  a  Queen  741 

and  I  asked  him  for  them  but  he  said  he  would  have  to  turn 
them  in  and  I  asked  him  if  he  would  make  his  final  decision 
in  Memphis  and  he  said  why  Memphis  and  I  told  him  why. 
I  knew  I  couldn't  buy  them  from  him  with  money,  you  see. 
That's  why  I  had  to  go  to  Memphis.  I  had  that  much  regard 
for  Bory  and  you,  to  go  somewhere  else.  And  that's  all.  Men 
are  all  about  the  same,  with  their  ideas  of  good  and  bad. 
Fools."  She  breathed  quietly.  Then  she  yawned,  deep,  with 
utter  relaxation.  Then  she  stopped  yawning.  She  looked 
again  at  the  rigid,  fading  silver  head  opposite  her.  "Don't 
you  understand  yet?"  she  said.  "I  had  to  do  it.  They  were 
mine;  I  had  to  get  them  back.  That  was  the  only  way  I 
could  do  it.  But  I  would  have  done  more  than  that.  So  I  got 
them.  And  now  they  are  burned  up.  Nobody  will  ever  see 
them.  Because  he  can't  tell,  you  see.  It  would  ruin  him  to 
ever  tell  that  they  even  existed.  They  might  even  put  him 
in  the  penitentiary.  And  now  they  are  burned  up." 

"Yes,"  the  old  woman  said.  "And  so  you  came  back  home 
and  you  took  Johnny  so  you  and  he  could  sit  together  in  the 
creek,  the  running  water.  In  Jordan.  Yes,  Jordan  at  the  back 
of  a  country  pasture  in  Missippi." 

"I  had  to  get  them  back.  Don't  you  see  that?" 

"Yes,"  the  old  woman  said.  "Yes."  She  sat  bolt  upright 
in  the  wheel  chair.  "Well,  my  Lord.  Us  poor,  fool  women 
— Johnny!"  Her  voice  was  sharp,  peremptory. 

"What?"  the  young  woman  said.  "Do  you  want  some- 
thing?" 

"No,"  the  other  said.  "Call  Johnny.  I  want  my  hat."  The 
young  woman  rose.  "I'll  get  it." 

"No.  I  want  Johnny  to  do  it." 

The  young  woman  stood  looking  down  at  the  other,  the 
old  woman  erect  in  the  wheel  chair  beneath  the  fading 
silver  crown  of  her  hair.  Then  she  left  the  room.  The  old 
woman  did  not  move.  She  sat  there  in  the  dusk  until  the  boy 


742  The  Middle  Ground 

entered,  carrying  a  small  black  bonnet  of  an  ancient  shape. 
Now  and  then,  when  the  old  woman  became  upset,  they 
would  fetch  her  the  hat  and  she  would  place  it  on  the  exact 
top  of  her  head  and  sit  there  by  the  window.  He  brought 
the  bonnet  to  her.  His  mother  was  with  him.  It  was  full 
dusk  now;  the  old  woman  was  invisible  save  for  her  hair. 
"Do  you  want  the  light  now?"  the  young  woman  said. 

"No,"  the  old  woman  said.  She  set  the  bonnet  on  the  top 
of  her  head.  "You  all  go  on  to  supper  and  let  me  rest  awhile. 
Go  on,  all  of  you."  They  obeyed,  leaving  her  sitting  there: 
a  slender,  erect  figure  indicated  only  by  the  single  gleam  of 
her  hair,  in  the  wheel  chair  beside  the  window  framed  by 
the  sparse  and  defunctive  Carolina  glass. 

IV 

SINCE  THE  BOY'S  eighth  birthday,  he  had  had  his  dead  grand- 
father's place  at  the  end  of  the  table.  Tonight  however  his 
mother  rearranged  things.  "With  just  the  two  of  us,"  she 
said.  "You  come  and  sit  by  me."  The  boy  hesitated.  "Please. 
Won't  you?  I  got  so  lonesome  for  you  last  night  in  Memphis. 
Weren't  you  lonesome  for  me?" 

"I  slept  with  Aunt  Jenny,"  the  boy  said.  "We  had  a  good 
time." 

"Please." 

"All  right,"  he  said.  He  took  the  chair  beside  hers. 

"Closer,"  she  said.  She  drew  the  chair  closer.  "But  we 
won't  ever  again,  ever.  Will  we?"  She  leaned  toward  him, 
taking  his  hand. 

"What?  Sit  in  the  creek?" 

"Not  ever  leave  one  another  again." 

"I  didn't  get  lonesome.  We  had  a  good  time." 

"Promise.  Promise,  Bory."  His  name  was  Benhow,  her 
family  name. 


There  Was  a  Queen  743 

"All  right." 

Isom,  in  a  duck  jacket,  served  them  and  returned  to  the 
kitchen. 

"She  ain't  coming  to  supper?"  Elnora  said. 

"Nome,"  Isom  said.  "Setting  yonder  by  the  window,  in 
the  dark.  She  say  she  don't  want  no  supper." 

Elnora  looked  at  Saddie.  "What  was  they  doing  last  time 
you  went  to  the  library?" 

"Her  and  Miss  Narcissa  talking." 

"They  was  still  talking  when  I  went  to  'nounce  supper," 
Isom  said.  "I  tole  you  that." 

"I  know,"  Elnora  said.  Her  voice  was  not  sharp.  Neither 
was  it  gentle.  It  was  just  peremptory,  soft,  cold.  "What 
were  they  talking  about?" 

"I  don't  know'm,"  Isom  said.  "You  the  one  taught  me  not 
to  listen  to  white  folks." 

"What  were  they  talking  about,  Isom?"  Elnora  said.  She 
was  looking  at  him,  grave,  intent,  commanding. 

"  'Bout  somebody  getting  married.  Miss  Jenny  say  'I  tole 
you  long  time  ago  I  ain't  blame  you.  A  young  woman  like 
you.  I  want  you  to  marry.  Not  do  like  I  done,'  what  she 
say." 

"I  bet  she  fixing  to  marry,  too,"  Saddie  said. 

"Who  marry?"  Elnora  said.  "Her  marry?  What  for?  Give 
up  what  she  got  here?  That  ain't  what  it  is.  I  wished  I 
knowed  what  been  going  on  here  this  last  week.  .  .  ."  Her 
voice  ceased;  she  turned  her  head  toward  the  door  as  though 
she  were  listening  for  something.  From  the  dining-room 
came  the  sound  of  the  young  woman's  voice.  But  Elnora 
appeared  to  listen  to  something  beyond  this.  Then  she  left 
the  room.  She  did  not  go  hurriedly,  yet  her  long  silent  stride 
carried  her  from  sight  with  an  abruptness  like  that  of  an 
inanimate  figure  drawn  on  wheels,  off  a  stage. 

She  went  quietly  up  the  dark  hall,  passing  the  dining-room 


744  The  Middle  Ground 

door  unremarked  by  the  two  people  at  the  table.  They  sat 
close.  The  woman  was  talking,  leaning  toward  the  boy. 
Elnora  went  on  without  a  sound:  a  converging  of  shadows 
upon  which  her  lighter  face  seemed  to  float  without  body, 
her  eyeballs  faintly  white.  Then  she  stopped  suddenly.  She 
had  not  reached  the  library  door,  yet  she  stopped,  invisible, 
soundless,  her  eyes  suddenly  quite  luminous  in  her  almost- 
vanished  face,  and  she  began  to  chant  in  faint  sing-song: 
"Oh,  Lawd;  oh,  Lawd,"  not  loud.  Then  she  moved,  went 
swiftly  on  to  the  library  door  and  looked  into  the  room 
where  beside  the  dead  window  the  old  woman  sat  motion- 
less, indicated  only  by  that  faint  single  gleam  of  white  hair, 
as  though  for  ninety  years  life  had  died  slowly  up  her  spare, 
erect  frame,  to  linger  for  a  twilit  instant  about  her  head  be- 
fore going  out,  though  life  itself  had  ceased.  Elnora  looked 
for  only  an  instant  into  the  room.  Then  she  turned  and 
retraced  her  swift  and  silent  steps  to  the  dining-room  door. 
The  woman  still  leaned  toward  the  boy,  talking.  They  did 
not  remark  Elnora  at  once.  She  stood  in  the  doorway,  tall, 
not  touching  the  jamb  on  either  side.  Her  face  was  blank; 
she  did  not  appear  to  be  looking  at,  speaking  to,  any  one. 

"You  better  come  quick,  I  reckon/'  she  said  in  that  soft, 
cold,  peremptory  voice. 


Mountain  Victory 


THROUGH  THE  CABIN  WINDOW  the  five  people  watched  the 
cavalcade  toil  up  the  muddy  trail  and  halt  at  the  gate.  First 
came  a  man  on  foot,  leading  a  horse.  He  wore  a  broad  hat 
low  on  his  face,  his  body  shapeless  in  a  weathered  gray 
cloak  from  which  his  left  hand  emerged,  holding  the  reins. 
The  bridle  was  silvermounted,  the  horse  a  gaunt,  mud- 
splashed,  thoroughbred  bay,  wearing  in  place  of  saddle  a 
navy  blue  army  blanket  bound  on  it  by  a  piece  of  rope.  The 
second  horse  was  a  shortbodied,  bigheaded,  scrub  sorrel,  also 
mudsplashed.  It  wore  a  bridle  contrived  of  rope  and 
wire,  and  an  army  saddle  in  which,  perched  high  above  the 
dangling  stirrups,  crouched  a  shapeless  something  larger 
than  a  child,  which  at  that  distance  appeared  to  wear  no 
garment  or  garments  known  to  man. 

One  of  the  three  men  at  the  cabin  window  left  it  quickly. 
The  others,  without  turning,  heard  him  cross  the  room 
swiftly  and  then  return,  carrying  a  long  rifle. 

"No,  you  don't,"  the  older  man  said. 

"Don't  you  see  that  cloak?"  the  younger  said.  "That  rebel 
cloak?" 

"I  wont  have  it,"  the  other  said.  "They  have  surrendered. 
They  have  said  they  are  whipped." 

Through  the  window  they  watched  the  horses  stop  at  the 
gate.  The  gate  was  of  sagging  hickory,  in  a  rock  fence 

745 


746  The  Middle  Ground 

which  straggled  down  a  gaunt  slope  sharp  in  relief  against 
the  valley  and  a  still  further  range  of  mountains  dissolving 
into  the  low,  dissolving  sky. 

They  watched  the  creature  on  the  second  horse  descend 
and  hand  his  reins  also  into  the  same  left  hand  of  the  man 
in  gray  that  held  the  reins  of  the  thoroughbred.  They 
watched  the  creature  enter  the  gate  and  mount  the  path  and 
disappear  beyond  the  angle  of  the  window.  Then  they  heard 
it  cross  the  porch  and  knock  at  the  door.  They  stood  there 
and  heard  it  knock  again. 

After  a  while  the  older  man  said,  without  turning  his 
head,  "Go  and  see." 

One  of  the  women,  the  older  one,  turned  from  the  win- 
dow, her  feet  making  no  sound  on  the  floor,  since  they  were 
bare.  She  went  to  the  front  door  and  opened  it.  The  chill, 
wet  light  of  the  dying  April  afternoon  fell  in  upon  her — 
upon  a  small  woman  with  a  gnarled  expressionless  face,  in 
a  gray  shapeless  garment.  Facing  her  across  the  sill  was  a 
creature  a  little  larger  than  a  large  monkey,  dressed  in  a 
voluminous  blue  overcoat  of  a  private  in  the  Federal  army, 
with,  tied  tentlike  over  his  head  and  falling  about  his  shoul- 
ders, a  piece  of  oilcloth  which  might  have  been  cut  square 
from  the  hood  of  a  sutler's  wagon;  within  the  orifice  the 
woman  could  see  nothing  whatever  save  the  whites  of  two 
eyes,  momentary  and  phantomlike,  as  with  a  single  glance 
the  Negro  examined  the  woman  standing  barefoot  in  her 
faded  calico  garment,  and  took  in  the  bleak  and  barren  in- 
terior of  the  cabin  hall. 

"Marster  Major  Soshay  Weddel  send  he  compliments  en 
say  he  wishful  fo  sleeping  room  fo  heself  en  boy  en  two 
hawses,"  he  said  in  a  pompous,  parrot-like  voice.  The  woman 
looked  at  him.  Her  face  was  like  a  spent  mask.  "We  been  up 
yonder  a  ways,  fighting  dem  Yankees,"  the  Negro  said. 
"Done  quit  now.  Gwine  back  home." 


Mountain  Victory  747 

The  woman  seemed  to  speak  from  somewhere  behind  her 
face,  as  though  behind  an  effigy  or  a  painted  screen:  "I'll  ask 
him." 

"We  ghy  pay  you,"  the  Negro  said. 

"Pay?"  Pausing,  she  seemed  to  muse  upon  him.  "Hit  aint 
near  a  ho-tel  on  the  mou-tin." 

The  Negro  made  a  large  gesture.  "Don't  make  no  diff unce. 
We  done  stayed  de  night  in  worse  places  den  whut  dis  is. 
You  just  tell  um  it  Marse  Soshay  Weddel."  Then  he  saw  that 
the  woman  was  looking  past  him.  He  turned  and  saw  the 
man  in  the  worn  gray  cloak  already  halfway  up  the  path 
from  the  gate.  He  came  on  and  mounted  the  porch,  remov- 
ing with  his  left  hand  the  broad  slouched  hat  bearing  the 
tarnished  wreath  of  a  Confederate  field  officer.  He  had  a  dark 
face,  with  dark  eyes  and  black  hair,  his  face  at  once  thick  yet 
gaunt,  and  arrogant.  He  was  not  tall,  yet  he  topped  the  Negro 
by  five  or  six  inches.  The  cloak  was  weathered,  faded  about 
the  shoulders  where  the  light  fell  strongest.  The  skirts  were 
bedraggled,  frayed,  mudsplashed:  the  garment  had  been 
patched  again  and  again,  and  brushed  again  and  again;  the 
nap  was  completely  gone. 

"Goodday,  madam,"  he  said.  "Have  you  stableroom  for 
my  horses  and  shelter  for  myself  and  my  boy  for  the  night?" 

The  woman  looked  at  him  with  a  static,  musing  quality,  as 
though  she  had  seen  without  alarm  an  apparition. 

"I'll  have  to  see,"  she  said. 

"I  shall  pay,"  the  man  said.  "I  know  the  times." 

"I'll  have  to  ask  him,"  the  woman  said.  She  turned,  then 
stopped.  The  older  man  entered  the  hall  behind  her.  He  was 
big,  in  jean  clothes,  with  a  shock  of  iron-gray  hair  and  pale 
eyes. 

"I  am  Saucier  Weddel,"  the  man  in  gray  said.  "I  am  on 
my  way  home  to  Mississippi  from  Virginia.  I  am  in  Ten- 
nessee now?" 


748  The  Middle  Ground 

"You  are  in  Tennessee,"  the  other  said.  "Come  in." 
Weddel  turned  to  the  Negro.  "Take  the  horses  on  to  the 
stable,"  he  said. 

The  Negro  returned  to  the  gate,  shapeless  in  the  oilcloth 
cape  and  the  big  overcoat,  with  that  swaggering  arrogance 
which  he  had  assumed  as  soon  as  he  saw  the  woman's  bare 
feet  and  the  meagre,  barren  interior  of  the  cabin.  He  took  up 
the  two  bridle  reins  and  began  to  shout  at  the  horses  with 
needless  and  officious  vociferation,  to  which  the  two  horses 
paid  no  heed,  as  though  they  were  long  accustomed  to  him. 
It  was  as  if  the  Negro  himself  paid  no  attention  to  his  cries,  as 
though  the  shouting  were  merely  concomitant  to  the  ac- 
tion of  leading  the  horses  out  of  sight  of  the  door,  like  an 
effluvium  by  both  horses  and  Negro  accepted  and  relegated 
in  the  same  instant. 


II 

THROUGH  THE  KITCHEN  WALL  the  girl  could  hear  the  voices 
of  the  men  in  the  room  from  which  her  father  had  driven  her 
when  the  stranger  approached  the  house.  She  was  about 
twenty:  a  big  girl  with  smooth,  simple  hair  and  big,  smooth 
hands,  standing  barefoot  in  a  single  garment  made  out  of 
flour  sacks.  She  stood  close  to  the  wall,  motionless,  her  head 
bent  a  little,  her  eyes  wide  and  still  and  empty  like  a  sleep- 
walker's, listening  to  her  father  and  the  guest  enter  the  room 
beyond  it. 

The  kitchen  was  a  plank  leanto  built  against  the  log  wall 
of  the  cabin  proper.  From  between  the  logs  beside  her  the 
clay  chinking,  dried  to  chalk  by  the  heat  of  the  stove,  had 
fallen  away  in  places.  Stooping,  the  movement  slow  and  lush 
and  soundless  as  the  whispering  of  her  bare  feet  on  the  floor, 
she  leaned  her  eye  to  one  of  these  cracks.  She  could  see  a  bare 
table  on  which  sat  an  earthenware  jug  and  a  box  of  musket 


Mountain  Victory  749 

cartridges  stenciled  U.  S.  Army.  At  the  table  her  two  broth- 
ers sat  in  splint  chairs,  though  it  was  only  the  younger  one, 
the  boy,  who  looked  toward  the  door,  though  she  knew, 
could  hear  now,  that  the  stranger  was  in  the  room.  The  older 
brother  was  taking  the  cartridges  one  by  one  from  the  box 
and  crimping  them  and  setting  them  upright  at  his  hand  like 
a  mimic  parade  of  troops,  his  back  to  the  door  where  she 
knew  the  stranger  was  now  standing.  She  breathed  quietly. 
"Vatch  would  have  shot  him,"  she  said,  breathed,  to  herself, 
stooping.  "I  reckon  he  will  yet." 

Then  she  heard  feet  again  and  her  mother  came  toward 
the  door  to  the  kitchen,  crossing  and  for  a  moment  blotting 
the  orifice.  Yet  she  did  not  move,  not  even  when  her  mother 
entered  the  kitchen.  She  stooped  to  the  crack,  her  breathing 
regular  and  placid,  hearing  her  mother  clattering  the  stove- 
lids  behind  her.  Then  she  saw  the  stranger  for  the  first  time 
and  then  she  was  holding  her  breath  quietly,  not  even  aware 
that  she  had  ceased  to  breathe.  She  saw  him  standing  beside 
the  table  in  his  shabby  cloak,  with  his  hat  in  his  left  hand. 
Vatch  did  not  look  up. 

"My  name  is  Saucier  Weddel,"  the  stranger  said. 

"Soshay  Weddel,"  the  girl  breathed  into  the  dry  chinking, 
the  crumbled  and  powdery  wall.  She  could  see  him  at  full 
length,  in  his  stained  and  patched  and  brushed  cloak,  with 
his  head  lifted  a  little  and  his  face  worn,  almost  gaunt, 
stamped  with  a  kind  of  indomitable  weariness  and  yet  arro- 
gant too,  like  a  creature  from  another  world  with  other  air 
to  breathe  and  another  kind  of  blood  to  warm  the  veins. 
"Soshay  Weddel,"  she  breathed. 

"Take  some  whiskey,"  Vatch  said  without  moving. 

Then  suddenly,  as  it  had  been  with  the  suspended  breath- 
ing, she  was  not  listening  to  the  words  at  all,  as  though  it 
were  no  longer  necessary  for  her  to  hear,  as  though  curiosity 
tpo  had  no  place  in  the  atmosphere  in  which  the  stranger 


750  The  Middle  Ground 

dwelled  and  in  which  she  too  dwelled  for  the  moment  as 
she  watched  the  stranger  standing  beside  the  table,  looking 
at  Vatch,  and  Vatch  now  turned  in  his  chair,  a  cartridge  in 
his  hand,  looking  up  at  the  stranger.  She  breathed  quietly 
into  the  crack  through  which  the  voices  came  now  without 
heat  or  significance  out  of  that  dark  and  smoldering  and 
violent  and  childlike  vanity  of  men: 

"I  reckon  you  know  these  when  you  see  them,  then?" 

"Why  not?  We  used  them  too.  We  never  always  had  the 
time  nor  the  powder  to  stop  and  make  our  own.  So  we  had 
to  use  yours  now  and  then.  Especially  during  the  last." 

"Maybe  you  would  know  them  better  if  one  exploded  in 
your  face." 

"Vatch."  She  now  looked  at  her  father,  because  he  had 
spoken.  Her  younger  brother  was  raised  a  little  in  his  chair, 
leaning  a  little  forward,  his  mouth  open  a  little.  He  was  sev- 
enteen. Yet  still  the  stranger  stood  looking  quietly  down  at 
Vatch,  his  hat  clutched  against  his  worn  cloak,  with  on  his 
face  that  expression  arrogant  and  weary  and  a  little  quizzical. 

"You  can  show  your  other  hand  too,"  Vatch  said.  "Don't 
be  afraid  to  leave  your  pistol  go." 

"No,"  the  stranger  said.  "I  am  not  afraid  to  show  it." 

"Take  some  whiskey,  then,"  Vatch  said,  pushing  the  jug 
forward  with  a  motion  slighting  and  contemptuous. 

"I  am  obliged  infinitely,"  the  stranger  said.  "It's  my  stom- 
ach. For  three  years  of  war  I  have  had  to  apologize  to  my 
stomach;  now,  with  peace,  I  must  apologize  for  it.  But  if  I 
might  have  a  glass  for  my  boy?  Even  after  four  years,  he 
cannot  stand  cold." 

"Soshay  Weddel,"  the  girl  breathed  into  the  crumbled 
dust  beyond  which  the  voices  came,  not  yet  raised  yet  for- 
ever irreconcilable  and  already  doomed,  the  one  blind  vic- 
tim, the  other  blind  executioner: 

"Or  maybe  behind  your  back  you  would  know  it  better." 

"You-  Vatck" 


Mountain  Victory  751 

"Stop,  sir.  If  he  was  in  the  army  for  as  long  as  one  year, 
he  has  run  too,  once.  Perhaps  oftener,  if  he  faced  the  Army 
of  Northern  Virginia." 

"Soshay  Weddel,"  the  girl  breathed,  stooping.  Now  she 
saw  Weddel,  walking  apparently  straight  toward  her,  a 
thick  tumbler  in  his  left  hand  and  his  hat  crumpled  beneath 
the  same  arm. 

"Not  that  way,"  Vatch  said.  The  stranger  paused  and 
looked  back  at  Vatch.  "Where  are  you  aiming  to  go?" 

"To  take  this  out  to  my  boy,"  the  stranger  said.  "Out  to 
the  stable.  I  thought  perhaps  this  door — "  His  face  was  in 
profile  now,  worn,  haughty,  wasted,  the  eyebrows  lifted 
with  quizzical  and  arrogant  interrogation.  Without  rising 
Vatch  jerked  his  head  back  and  aside.  "Come  away  from 
that  door."  But  the  stranger  did  not  stir.  Only  his  head 
moved  a  little,  as  though  he  had  merely  changed  the  direc- 
tion of  his  eyes. 

"He's  looking  at  paw,"  the  girl  breathed.  "He's  waiting 
for  paw  to  tell  him.  He  aint  skeered  of  Vatch.  I  knowed  it." 

"Come  away  from  that  door,"  Vatch  said.  "You  damn 
nigra." 

"So  it's  my  face  and  not  my  uniform,"  the  stranger  said. 
"And  you  fought  four  years  to  free  us,  I  understand." 

Then  she  heard  her  father  speak  again.  "Go  out  the  front 
way  and  around  the  house,  stranger,"  he  said. 

"Soshay  Weddel,"  the  girl  said.  Behind  her  her  mother 
clattered  at  the  stove.  "Soshay  Weddel,"  she  said.  She  did 
not  say  it  aloud.  She  breathed  again,  deep  and  quiet  and 
without  haste.  "It's  like  a  music.  It's  like  a  singing." 

Ill 

THE  NEGRO  was  squatting  in  the  hallway  of  the  barn,  the 
sagging  and  broken  stalls  of  which  were  empty  save  for  the 
two  horses.  Beside  him  was  a  worn  rucksack,  open.  He  was 


752  The  Middle  Ground 

engaged  in  polishing  a  pair  of  thin  dancing  slippers  with  a 
cloth  and  a  tin  of  paste,  empty  save  for  a  thin  rim  of  polish 
about  the  circumference  of  the  tin.  Beside  him  on  a  piece  of 
plank  sat  one  finished  shoe.  The  upper  was  cracked;  it  had  a 
crude  sole  nailed  recently  and  crudely  on  by  a  clumsy  hand. 

"Thank  de  Lawd  folks  cant  see  de  bottoms  of  yo  feets," 
the  Negro  said.  "Thank  de  Lawd  it's  just  dese  hyer  moun- 
tain trash.  I'd  even  hate  fo  Yankees  to  see  yo  feets  in  dese 
things."  He  rubbed  the  shoe,  squinted  at  it,  breathed  upon  it, 
rubbed  it  again  upon  his  squatting  flank. 

"Here,'1  Weddel  said,  extending  the  tumbler.  It  contained 
a  liquid  as  colorless  as  water. 

The  Negro  stopped,  the  shoe  and  the  cloth  suspended. 
"Which?"  he  said.  He  looked  at  the  glass.  "Whut's  dat?" 

"Drink  it,"  Weddei  said. 

"Dat's  water.  Whut  you  bringing  me  water  fer?" 

"Take  it,"  Weddel  said.  "It's  not  water." 

The  Negro  took  the  glass  gingerly.  He  held  it  as  if  it  con- 
tained nitroglycerin.  He  looked  at  it,  blinking,  bringing  the 
glass  slowly  under  his  nose.  He  blinked.  "Where'd  you  git 
dis  hyer?"  Weddel  didn't  answer.  He  had  taken  up  the  fin- 
ished slipper,  looking  at  it.  The  Negro  held  the  glass  under 
his  nose.  "It  smell  kind  of  like  it  ought  to,"  he  said.  "But  I  be 
dawg  ef  it  look  like  anything.  Dese  folks  fixing  to  pizen  you." 
He  tipped  the  glass  and  sipped  gingerly,  and  lowered  the 
glass,  blinking. 

"I  didn't  drink  any  of  it,"  Weddel  said.  He  set  the  slipper 
down. 

"You  better  hadn't,"  the  Negro  said.  "When  here  I  done 
been  fo  years  trying  to  take  care  of  you  en  git  you  back 
home  like  whut  Mistis  tole  me  to  do,  and  here  you  sleeping  in 
folks'  barns  at  night  like  a  tramp,  like  a  pater-roller  nigger — " 
He  put  the  glass  to  his  lips,  tilting  it  and  his  head  in  a  single 
jerk.  He  lowered  the  glass,  empty;  his  eyes  were  closed;  he 


Mountain  Victory  753 

said,  "Whuf!"  shaking  his  head  with  a  violent,  shuddering 
motion.  "It  smells  right,  and  it  act  right.  But  I  be  dawg  ef  it 
look  right.  I  reckon  you  better  let  it  alone,  like  you  started 
out.  When  dey  try  to  make  you  drink  it  you  send  um  to  me. 
I  done  already  stood  so  much  I  reckon  I  can  stand  a  little 
mo  fer  Mistis'  sake." 

He  took  up  the  shoe  and  the  cloth  again.  Weddel  stooped 
above  the  rucksack.  "I  want  my  pistol,"  he  said. 

Again  the  Negro  ceased,  the  shoe  and  the  cloth  poised. 
"Whut  fer?"  He  leaned  and  looked  up  the  muddy  slope 
toward  the  cabin.  "Is  dese  folks  Yankees?"  he  said  in  a 
whisper. 

"No,"  Weddel  said,  digging  in  the  rucksack  with  his  left 
hand.  The  Negro  did  not  seem  to  hear  him. 

"In  Tennessee?  You  tole  me  we  was  in  Tennessee,  where 
Memphis  is,  even  if  you  never  tole  me  it  was  all  disyer  up- 
and-down  land  in  de  Memphis  country.  I  know  I  never  seed 
none  of  um  when  I  went  to  Memphis  wid  yo  paw  dat  time. 
But  you  says  so.  And  now  you  telling  me  dem  Memphis  folks 
is  Yankees?" 

"Where  is  the  pistol?"  Weddel  said. 

"I  done  tole  you,"  the  Negro  said.  "Acting  like  you  does. 
Letting  dese  folks  see  you  come  walking  up  de  road,  leading 
Caesar  caze  you  think  he  tired;  making  me  ride  whilst  you 
walks  when  I  can  outwalk  you  any  day  you  ever  lived  and 
you  knows  it,  even  if  I  is  f awty  en  you  twenty-eight.  I  ghy 
tell  yo  maw.  I  ghy  tell  um." 

Weddel  rose,  in  his  hand  a  heavy  cap-and-ball  revolver. 
He  chuckled  it  in  his  single  hand,  drawing  the  hammer  back, 
letting  it  down  again.  The  Negro  watched  him,  crouched 
like  an  ape  in  the  blue  Union  army  overcoat.  "You  put  dat 
thing  back,"  he  said.  "De  war  done  wid  now.  Dey  tole  us 
back  dar  at  Ferginny  it  was  done  wid.  You  dont  need  no 
pistol  now.  You  put  it  back,  you  hear  me?" 


754  The  Middle  Ground 

"I'm  going  to  bathe,"  Weddel  said.  "Is  my  shirt — " 

"Bathe  where?  In  whut?  Dese  folks  aint  never  seed  a 
bathtub." 

"Bathe  at  the  well.  Is  my  shirt  ready?" 

"Whut  dey  is  of  it.  ...  You  put  dat  pistol  back,  Marse 
Soshay.  I  ghy  tell  yo  maw  on  you.  I  ghy  tell  um.  I  just  wish 
Marster  was  here." 

"Go  to  the  kitchen,"  Weddel  said.  "Tell  them  I  wish  to 
bathe  in  the  well  house.  Ask  them  to  draw  the  curtain  on  that 
window  there."  The  pistol  had  vanished  beneath  the  grey 
cloak.  He  went  to  the  stall  where  the  thoroughbred  was. 
The  horse  nuzzled  at  him,  its  eyes  rolling  soft  and  wild.  He 
patted  its  nose  with  his  left  hand.  It  whickered,  not  loud,  its 
breath  sweet  and  warm. 

IV 

THE  NEGRO  entered  the  kitchen  from  the  rear.  He  had  re- 
moved the  oilcloth  tent  and  he  now  wore  a  blue  forage  cap 
which,  like  the  overcoat,  was  much  too  large  for  him,  resting 
upon  the  top  of  his  head  in  such  a  way  that  the  unsupported 
brim  oscillated  faintly  when  he  moved  as  though  with  a  life 
of  its  own.  He  was  completely  invisible  save  for  his  face 
between  cap  and  collar  like  a  dried  Dyak  trophy  and  almost 
as  small  and  dusted  lightly  over  as  with  a  thin  pallor  of  wood 
ashes  by  the  cold.  The  older  woman  was  at  the  stove  on 
which  frying  food  now  hissed  and  sputtered;  she  did  not 
look  up  when  the  Negro  entered.  The  girl  was  standing  in 
the  middle  of  the  room,  doing  nothing  at  all.  She  looked  at 
the  Negro,  watching  him  with  a  slow,  grave,  secret,  unwink- 
ing gaze  as  he  crossed  the  kitchen  with  that  air  of  swaggering 
caricatured  assurance,  and  upended  a  block  of  wood  beside 
the  stove  and  sat  upon  it. 

"If  disyer  is  de  kind  of  weather  yawl  has  up  here  all  de 


Mountain  Victory  755 

time,"  he  said,  "I  dont  care  ef  de  Yankees  does  has  dis  coun- 
try." He  opened  the  overcoat,  revealing  his  legs  and  feet  as 
being  wrapped,  shapeless  and  huge,  in  some  muddy  and 
anonymous  substance  resembling  fur,  giving  them  the  ap- 
pearance of  two  muddy  beasts  the  size  of  halfgrown  dogs 
lying  on  the  floor;  moving  a  little  nearer  the  girl,  the  girl 
thought  quietly  Hifs  fur.  He  taken  and  cut  up  a  fur  coat  to 
wrap  his  feet  in  "Yes,  suh,"  the  Negro  said.  "Just  yawl  let 
me  git  home  again,  en  de  Yankees  kin  have  all  de  rest  of  it." 

"Where  do  you-uns  live?"  the  girl  said. 

The  Negro  looked  'at  her.  "In  Miss'ippi.  On  de  Domain. 
Aint  you  never  hyeard  tell  of  Countymaison?" 

"Countymaison? " 

"Dat's  it.  His  grandpappy  named  it  Countymaison  caze  it's 
bigger  den  a  county  to  ride  over.  You  cant  ride  across  it  on 
a  mule  betwixt  sunup  and  sundown.  Dat's  how  come."  He 
rubbed  his  hands  slowly  on  his  thighs.  His  face  was  now 
turned  toward  the  stove;  he  snuffed  loudly.  Already  the  ashy 
overlay  on  his  skin  had  disappeared,  leaving  his  face  dead 
black,  wizened,  his  mouth  a  little  loose,  as  though  the  muscles 
had  become  slack  with  usage,  like  rubber  bands — not  the 
eating  muscles,  the  talking  ones.  "I  reckon  we  is  gittin  nigh 
home,  after  all.  Leastways  dat  hawg  meat  smell  like  it  do 
down  whar  folks  lives." 

"Countymaison,"  the  girl  said  in  a  rapt,  bemused  tone, 
looking  at  the  Negro  with  her  grave,  unwinking  regard. 
Then  she  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  the  wall,  her  face 
perfectly  serene,  perfectly  inscrutable,  without  haste,  with  a 
profound  and  absorbed  deliberation. 

"Dat's  it,"  the  Negro  said.  "Even  Yankees  is  heard  tell  of 
WeddeFs  Countymaison  en  erbout  Marster  Francis  Weddel. 
Maybe  yawl  seed  um  pass  in  de  carriage  dat  time  he  went  to 
Washn'ton  to  tell  yawl's  president  how  he  aint  like  de  way 
yawl's  president  wuz  treating  de  people.  He  rid  all  de  way 


756  The  Middle  Ground 

to  Washn'ton  in  de  carriage,  wid  two  niggers  to  drive  en  to 
heat  de  bricks  to  kept  he  foots  warm,  en  de  man  done  gone 
on  ahead  wid  de  wagon  en  de  fresh  hawses.  He  carried  yawl's 
president  two  whole  dressed  bears  en  eight  sides  of  smoked 
deer  venison.  He  must  a  passed  right  out  dar  in  front  yawl's 
house.  I  reckon  yo  pappy  or  maybe  his  pappy  seed  um  pass." 
He  talked  on,  voluble,  in  soporific  singsong,  his  face  begin- 
ning to  glisten,  to  shine  a  little  with  the  rich  warmth,  while 
the  mother  bent  over  the  stove  and  the  girl,  motionless,  static, 
her  bare  feet  cupped  smooth  and  close  to  the  rough  pun- 
cheons, her  big,  smooth,  young  body  cupped  soft  and  richly 
mammalian  to  the  rough  garment,  watching  the  Negro 
with  her  ineffable  and  unwinking  gaze,  her  mouth  open  a 
little. 

The  Negro  talked  on,  his  eyes  closed,  his  voice  intermi- 
nable, boastful,  his  air  lazily  intolerant,  as  if  he  were  still  at 
home  and  there  had  been  no  war  and  no  harsh  rumors  of 
freedom  and  of  change,  and  he  (a  stableman,  in  the  domestic 
hierarchy  a  man  of  horses)  were  spending  the  evening  in  the 
quarters  among  field  hands,  until  the  older  woman  dished  the 
food  and  left  the  room,  closing  the  door  behind  her.  Efe 
opened  his  eyes  at  the  sound  and  looked  toward  the  door  and 
then  back  to  the  girl.  She  was  looking  at  the  wall,  at  the 
closed  door  through  which  her  mother  had  vanished.  "Dont 
dey  lets  you  eat  at  de  table  wid  um?"  he  said. 

The  girl  looked  at  the  Negro,  unwinking.  "Countymai- 
son,"  she  said.  "Vatch  says  he  is  a  nigra  too." 

"Who?  Him?  A  nigger?  Marse  Soshay  Weddel?  Which 
un  is  Vatch?"  The  girl  looked  at  him.  "It's  caze  yawl  aint 
never  been  nowhere.  Ain't  never  seed  nothing.  Living  up 
here  on  a  nekkid  hill  whar  you  cant  even  see  smoke.  Him  a 
nigger?  I  wish  his  maw  could  hear  you  say  dat."  He  looked 
about  the  kitchen,  wizened,  his  eyeballs  rolling  white,  cease- 
less, this  way  and  that.  The  girl  watched  him. 


Mountain  Victory  757 

"Do  the  girls  there  wear  shoes  all  the  time?"  she  said. 

The  Negro  looked  about  the  kitchen,  "Where  does  yawl 
keep  dat  ere  Tennessee  spring  water?  Back  here  some- 
where?" 

"Spring  water?" 

The  Negro  blinked  slowly.  "Dat  ere  light-drinking  kahy- 


sene." 


"Kahysene?" 

"Dat  ere  light  colored  lamp  oil  whut  yawl  drinks.  Aint 
you  got  a  little  of  it  hid  back  here  somewhere?" 

"Oh,"  the  girl  said.  "You  mean  corn."  She  went  to  a  corner 
and  lifted  a  loose  plank  in  the  floor,  the  Negro  watching  her, 
and  drew  forth  another  earthen  jug.  She  filled  another  thick 
tumbler  and  gave  it  to  the  Negro  and  watched  him  jerk  it 
down  his  throat,  his  eyes  closed.  Again  he  said,  "Whuf!"  and 
drew  his  back  hand  across  his  mouth. 

"Whut  wuz  dat  you  axed  me?"  he  said. 

"Do  the  girls  down  there  at  Countymaison  wear  shoes?" 

"De  ladies  does.  If  dey  didn't  have  none,  Marse  Soshay 
could  sell  a  hun'ed  niggers  en  buy  um  some  .  .  .  Which  un  is 
it  say  Marse  Soshay  a  nigger?" 

The  girl  watched  him.  "Is  he  married?" 

"Who  married?  Marse  Soshay?"  The  girl  watched  him. 
"How  he  have  time  to  git  married,  wid  us  fighting  de  Yan- 
kees for  fo  years?  Aint  been  home  in  fo  years  now  where  no 
ladies  to  marry  is."  He  looked  at  the  girl,  his  eyewhites  a 
little  bloodshot,  his  skin  shining  in  faint  and  steady  high- 
lights. Thawing,  he  seemed  to  have  increased  in  size  a  little 
too.  "Whut's  it  ter  you,  if  he  married  or  no?" 

They  looked  at  each  other.  The  Negro  could  hear  her 
breathing.  Then  she  was  not  looking  at  him  at  all,  though 
she  had  not  yet  even  blinked  nor  turned  her  head.  "I  dont 
reckon  he'd  have  any  time  for  a  girl  that  didn't  have  any 
shoes."  she  said.  She  went  to  the  wall  and  stooped  again  to  the 


758  The  Middle  Ground 

crack.  The  Negro  watched  her.  The  older  woman  entered 
and  took  another  dish  from  the  stove  and  departed  without 
having  looked  at  either  of  them. 

V 

THE  FOUR  MEN,  the  three  men  and  the  boy,  sat  about  the  sup- 
per table.  The  broken  meal  lay  on  thick  plates.  The  knives 
and  forks  were  iron.  On  the  table  the  jug  still  sat.  Weddel 
was  now  cloakless.  He  was  shaven,  his  still  damp  hair  combed 
back.  Upon  his  bosom  the  ruffles  of  the  shirt  frothed  in  the 
lamplight,  the  right  sleeve,  empty,  pinned  across  his  breast 
with  a  thin  gold  pin.  Under  the  table  the  frail  and  mended 
dancing  slippers  rested  among  the  brogans  of  the  two  men 
and  the  bare  splayed  feet  of  the  boy. 

"Vatch  says  you  are  a  nigra,"  the  father  said. 

Weddel  was  leaning  a  little  back  in  his  chair.  "So  that  ex- 
plains it,"  he  said.  "I  was  thinking  that  he  was  just  congeni- 
tally  illtempered.  And  having  to  be  a  victor,  too." 

"Are  you  a  nigra?"  the  father  said. 

"No,"  Weddel  said.  He  was  looking  at  the  boy,  his  weath- 
ered and  wasted  face  a  little  quizzical.  Across  the  back  of  his 
neck  his  hair,  long,  had  been  cut  roughly  as  though  with  a 
knife  or  perhaps  a  bayonet.  The  boy  watched  him  in  com- 
plete and  rapt  immobility.  As  if  I  might  be  an  apparition  he 
thought.  A  bant.  Maybe  1  am.  "No,"  he  said.  "I  am  not  a 
Negro." 

"Who  are  you?"  the  father  said. 

Weddel  sat  a  little  sideways  in  his  chair,  his  hand  lying  on 
the  table.  "Do  you  ask  guests  who  they  are  in  Tennessee?" 
he  said.  Vatch  was  filling  a  tumbler  from  the  jug.  His  face 
was  lowered,  his  hands  big  and  hard.  His  face  was  hard. 
Weddel  looked  at  him.  "I  think  I  know  how  you  feel,"  he 
said.  "I  expect  I  felt  that  way  once.  But  it's  hard  to  keep  on 
feeling  any  way  for  four  years.  Even  feeling  at  all." 


Mountain  Victory  759 

Vatch  said  something,  sudden  and  harsh.  He  clapped  the 
tumbler  on  to  the  table,  splashing  some  of  the  liquor  out.  It 
looked  like  water,  with  a  violent,  dynamic  odor.  It  seemed 
to  possess  an  inherent  volatility  which  carried  a  splash  of  it 
across  the  table  and  on  to  the  foam  of  frayed  yet  immaculate 
linen  on  Weddel's  breast,  striking  sudden  and  chill  through 
the  cloth  against  his  flesh. 

"Vatch!  "the  father  said. 

Weddel  did  not  move;  his  expression  arrogant,  quizzical, 
and  weary,  did  not  change.  "He  did  not  mean  to  do  that," 
he  said. 

"When  I  do,"  Vatch  said,  "it  will  not  look  like  an 
accident." 

Weddel  was  looking  at  Vatch.  "I  think  I  told  you  once," 
he  said.  "My  name  is  Saucier  Weddel.  I  am  a  Mississippian. 
I  live  at  a  place  named  Contalmaison.  My  father  built  it  and 
named  it.  He  was  a  Choctaw  chief  named  Francis  Weddel, 
of  whom  you  have  probably  not  heard.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
Choctaw  woman  and  a  French  emigre  of  New  Orleans,  a 
general  of  Napoleon's  and  a  knight  of  the  Legion  of  Honor. 
His  name  was  Francois  Vidal.  My  father  drove  to  Washing- 
ton once  in  his  carriage  to  remonstrate  with  President  Jack- 
son about  the  Government's  treatment  of  his  people,  sending 
on  ahead  a  wagon  of  provender  and  gifts  and  also  fresh  horses 
for  the  carriage,  in  charge  of  the  man,  the  native  overseer, 
who  was  a  full  blood  Choctaw  and  my  father's  cousin.  In 
the  old  days  The  Man  was  the  hereditary  title  of  the  head 
of  our  clan;  but  after  we  became  Europeanised  like  the  white 
people,  we  lost  the  title  to  the  branch  which  refused  to  be- 
come polluted,  though  we  kept  the  slaves  and  the  land.  The 
Man  now  lives  in  a  house  a  little  larger  than  the  cabins  of  the 
Negroes — an  upper  servant.  It  was  in  Washington  that  my 
father  met  and  married  my  mother.  He  was  killed  in  the 
Mexican  War.  My  mother  died  two  years  ago,  in  '63,  of  a 
complication  of  pneumonia  acquired  while  superintending 


760  The  Middle  Ground 

the  burying  of  some  silver  on  a  wet  night  when  Federal 
troops  entered  the  county,  and  of  unsuitable  food;  though 
my  boy  refuses  to  believe  that  she  is  dead.  He  refuses  to  be- 
lieve that  the  country  would  have  permitted  the  North  to 
deprive  her  of  the  imported  Martinique  coffee  and  the  beaten 
biscuit  which  she  had  each  Sunday  noon  and  Wednesday 
night.  He  believes  that  the  country  would  have  risen  in  arms 
first.  But  then,  he  is  only  a  Negro,  member  of  an  oppressed 
race  burdened  with  freedom.  He  has  a  daily  list  of  my  mis- 
doings which  he  is  going  to  tell  her  on  me  when  we  reach 
home.  I  went  to  school  in  France,  but  not  very  hard.  Until 
two  weeks  ago  I  was  a  major  of  Mississippi  infantry  in  the 
corps  of  a  man  named  Longstreet,  of  whom  you  may  have 
heard." 

"So  you  were  a  major,"  Vatch  said. 

"That  appears  to  be  my  indictment;  yes." 

"I  have  seen  a  rebel  major  before,"  Vatch  said.  "Do  you 
want  me  to  tell  you  where  I  saw  him?" 

"Tell  me,"  Weddel  said. 

"He  was  lying  by  a  tree.  We  had  to  stop  there  and  lie 
down,  and  he  was  lying  by  the  tree,  asking  for  water.  'Have 
you  any  water,  friend?'  he  said.  'Yes.  I  have  water,'  I  said.  'I 
have  plenty  of  water.'  I  had  to  crawl;  I  couldn't  stand  up. 
I  crawled  over  to  him  and  I  lifted  him  so  that  his  head  would 
be  propped  against  the  tree.  I  fixed  his  face  to  the  front." 

"Didn't  you  have  a  bayonet?"  Weddel  said.  "But  I  forgot; 
you  couldn't  stand  up." 

"Then  I  crawled  back.  I  had  to  crawl  back  a  hundred 
yards,  where — " 

"Back?" 

"It  was  too  close.  Who  can  do  decent  shooting  that  close? 
I  had  to  crawl  back,  and  then  the  damned  musket — " 

"Damn  musket?"  Weddel  sat  a  little  sideways  in  his  chair, 
his  hand  on  the  table,  his  face  quizzical  and  sardonic,  con- 
tained. 


Mountain  Victory  761 

"I  missed,  the  first  shot.  I  had  his  face  propped  up  and 
turned,  and  his  eyes  open  watching  me,  and  then  I  missed.  I 
hit  him  in  the  throat  and  I  had  to  shoot  again  because  of  the 
damned  musket." 

"Vatch,"  the  father  said. 

Vatch's  hands  were  on  the  table.  His  head,  his  face,  -were 
like  his  father's,  though  without  the  father's  deliberation.  His 
face  was  furious,  still,  unpredictable.  "It  was  that  damn  mus- 
ket. I  had  to  shoot  three  times.  Then  he  had  three  eyes,  in  a 
row  across  his  face  propped  against  the  tree,  all  three  of  them 
open,  like  he  was  watching  me  with  three  eyes.  I  gave  him 
another  eye,  to  see  better  with.  But  I  had  to  shoot  twice  be- 
cause of  the  damn  musket." 

"You,  Vatch,"  the  father  said.  He  stood  now,  his  hands  on 
the  table,  propping  his  gaunt  body.  "Dont  you  mind  Vatch, 
stranger.  The  Avar  is  over  now." 

"I  dont  mind  him,"  Weddel  said.  His  hands  went  to  his 
bosom,  disappearing  into  the  foam  of  linen  while  he  watched 
Vatch  steadily  with  his  alert,  quizzical,  sardonic  gaze.  "I 
have  seen  too  many  of  him  for  too  long  a  time  to  mind  one 
of  him  any  more." 

"Take  some  whiskey,"  Vatch  said. 

"Are  you  just  making  a  point?" 

"Damn  the  pistol,"  Vatch  said.  "Take  some  whiskey." 

Weddel  laid  his  hand  again  on  the  table.  But  instead  of 
pouring,  Vatch  held  the  jug  poised  over  the  tumbler.  He  was 
looking  past  Weddel's  shoulder.  Weddel  turned.  The  girl 
was  in  the  room,  standing  in  the  doorway  with  her  mother 
just  behind  her.  The  mother  said  as  if  she  were  speaking  to 
the  floor  under  her  feet:  "I  tried  to  keep  her  back,  like  you 
said.  I  tried  to.  But  she  is  strong  as  a  man;  hardheaded  like  a 


man." 


"You  go  back,"  the  father  said. 

"Me  to  go  back?"  the  mother  said  to  the  floor. 


762  The  Middle  Ground 

The  father  spoke  a  name;  Weddel  did  not  catch  it;  he  did 
not  even  know  that  he  had  missed  it.  "You  go  back." 

The  girl  moved.  She  was  not  looking  at  any  of  them.  She 
came  to  the  chair  on  which  lay  WeddePs  worn  and  mended 
cloak  and  opened  it,  revealing  the  four  ragged  slashes  where 
the  sable  lining  had  been  cut  out  as  though  with  a  knife.  She 
was  looking  at  the  cloak  when  Vatch  grasped  her  by  the 
shoulder,  but  it  was  at  Weddel  that  she  looked.  "You  cut  hit 
out  and  gave  hit  to  that  nigra  to  wrap  his  feet  in,"  she  said. 
Then  the  father  grasped  Vatch  in  turn.  Weddel  had  not 
stirred,  his  face  turned  over  his  shoulder;  beside  him  the  boy 
was  upraised  out  of  his  chair  by  his  arms,  his  young,  slacked 
face  leaned  forward  into  the  lamp.  But  save  for  the  breathing 
of  Vatch  and  the  father  there  was  no  sound  in  the  room. 

"I  am  stronger  than  you  are,  still,"  the  father  said.  "I  am  a 
better  man  still,  or  as  good." 

"You  wont  be  always,"  Vatch  said. 

The  father  looked  back  over  his  shoulder  at  the  girl.  "Go 
back,"  he  said.  She  turned  and  went  back  toward  the  hall, 
her  feet  silent  as  rubber  feet.  Again  the  father  called  that 
name  which  Weddel  had  not  caught;  again  he  did  not  catch 
it  and  was  not  aware  again  that  he  had  not.  She  went  out  the 
door.  The  father  looked  at  Weddel.  WeddePs  attitude  was 
unchanged,  save  that  once  more  his  hand  was  hidden  inside 
his  bosom.  They  looked  at  one  another — the  cold,  Nordic 
face  and  the  half  Gallic  half  Mongol  face  thin  and  worn  like 
a  bronze  casting,  with  eyes  like  those  of  the  dead,  in  which 
only  vision  has  ceased  and  not  sight.  "Take  your  horses,  and 
go,"  the  father  said. 

VI 

IT  WAS  dark  in  the  hall,  and  cold,  with  the  black  chill  of  the 
mountain  April  coming  up  through  the  floor  about  her  bare 


Mountain  Victory  763 

legs  and  her  body  in  the  single  coarse  garment.  "He  cut  the 
lining  outen  his  cloak  to  wrap  that  nigra's  feet  in,"  she  said. 
"He  done  hit  for  a  nigra."  The  door  behind  her  opened. 
Against  the  lamplight  a  man  loomed,  then  the  door  shut  be- 
hind him.  "Is  it  Vatch  or  paw?"  she  said.  Then  something 
struck  her  across  the  back — a  leather  strap.  "I  was  afeared  it 
would  be  Vatch,"  she  said.  The  blow  fell  again. 

"Go  to  bed,"  the  father  said. 

"You  can  whip  me,  but  you  cant  whip  him,"  she  said. 

The  blow  fell  again:  a  thick,  flat,  soft  sound  upon  her  im- 
mediate flesh  beneath  the  coarse  sacking. 

VII 

IN  THE  deserted  kitchen  the  Negro  sat  for  a  moment  longer 
on  the  upturned  block  beside  the  stove,  looking  at  the  door. 
Then  he  rose  carefully,  one  hand  on  the  wall. 

"Whuf!"  he  said.  "Wish  us  had  a  spring  on  de  Domain 
whut  run  dat.  Stock  would  git  trompled  to  death,  sho  mon." 
He  blinked  at  the  door,  listening,  then  he  moved,  letting  him- 
self carefully  along  the  wall,  stopping  now  and  then  to  look 
toward  the  door  and  listen,  his  air  cunning,  unsteady,  and 
alert.  He  reached  the  corner  and  lifted  the  loose  plank,  stoop- 
ing carefully,  bracing  himself  against  the  wall.  He  lifted  the 
jug  out,  whereupon  he  lost  his  balance  and  sprawled  on  his 
face,  his  face  ludicrous  and  earnest  with  astonishment.  He 
got  up  and  sat  flat  on  the  floor,  carefully,  the  jug  between  his 
knees,  and  lifted  the  jug  and  drank.  He  drank  a  long  time. 

"Whuf!"  he  said.  "On  de  Domain  we'd  give  disyer  stuff 
to  de  hawgs.  But  deseyer  ign'unt  mountain  trash — "  He 
drank  again;  then  with  the  jug  poised  there  came  into  his 
face  an  expression  of  concern  and  then  consternation.  He 
set  the  jug  down  and  tried  to  get  up,  sprawling  above  the 
jug,  gaining  his  feet  at  last,  stooped,  swaying,  drooling,  with 


764  The  Middle  Ground 

that  expression  of  outraged  consternation  on  his  face.  Then 
he  fell  headlong  to  the  floor,  overturning  the  jug. 

VIII 

THEY  STOOPED  above  the  Negro,  talking  quietly  to  one  an- 
other— Weddel  in  his  frothed  shirt,  the  father  and  the  boy. 

"We'll  have  to  tote  him,"  the  father  said. 

They  lifted  the  Negro.  With  his  single  hand  Weddel 
jerked  the  Negro's  head  up,  shaking  him.  "Jubal,"  he  said. 

The  Negro  struck  out,  clumsily,  with  one  arm.  "Le'm  be," 
he  muttered.  "Le'm  go." 

"Jubal!"  Weddel  said. 

The  Negro  thrashed,  sudden  and  violent.  "You  le'm  be," 
he  said.  "I  ghy  tell  de  Man.  I  ghy  tell  um."  He  ceased,  mut- 
tering: "Field  hands.  Field  niggers." 

"We'll  have  to  tote  him,"  the  father  said. 

"Yes,"  Weddel  said.  "I'm  sorry  for  this.  I  should  have 
warned  you.  But  I  didn't  think  there  was  another  jug  he 
could  have  gained  access  to."  He  stooped,  getting  his  single 
hand  under  the  Negro's  shoulders. 

"Get  away,"  the  father  said.  "Me  and  Hule  can  do  it."  He 
and  the  boy  picked  the  Negro  up.  Weddel  opened  the  door. 
They  emerged  into  the  high  black  cold.  Below  them  the 
barn  loomed.  They  carried  the  Negro  down  the  slope.  "Get 
them  horses  out,  Hule,"  the  father  said. 

"Horses?"  Weddel  said.  "He  cant  ride  now.  He  cant  stay 
on  a  horse." 

They  looked  at  one  another,  each  toward  the  other  voice, 
in  the  cold,  the  icy  silence. 

"You  wont  go  now? "  the  father  said. 

"I  am  sorry.  You  see  I  cannot  depart  now.  I  will  have  to 
stay  until  daylight,  until  he  is  sober.  We  will  go  then." 


Mountain  Victory  765 

"Leave  him  here.  Leave  him  one  horse,  and  you  ride  on. 
He  is  nothing  but  a  nigra." 

"I  am  soriy.  Not  after  four  years."  His  voice  was  quizzical, 
whimsical  almost,  yet  with  that  quality  of  indomitable  weari- 
ness. "I've  worried  with  him  this  far;  I  reckon  I  will  get  him 
on  home." 

"I  have  warned  you,"  the  father  said. 

"I  am  obliged.  We  will  move  at  daylight.  If  Hule  \vill  be 
kind  enough  to  help  me  get  him  into  the  loft." 

The  father  had  stepped  back.  "Put  that  nigra  down,  Hule," 
he  said. 

"He  will  freeze  here,"  Weddel  said.  "I  must  get  him  into 
the  loft."  He  hauled  the  Negro  up  and  propped  him  against 
the  wall  and  stooped  to  hunch  the  Negro's  lax  body  onto  his 
shoulder.  The  weight  rose  easily,  though  he  did  not  under- 
stand why  until  the  father  spoke  again: 

"Hule.  Come  away  from  there." 

"Yes;  go,"  Weddel  said  quietly.  "I  can  get  him  up  the  lad- 
der." He  could  hear  the  boy's  breathing,  fast,  young,  swift 
with  excitement  perhaps.  Weddel  did  not  pause  to  speculate, 
nor  at  the  faintly  hysterical  tone  of  the  boy's  voice: 

"I'll  help  you." 

Weddel  didn't  object  again.  He  slapped  the  Negro  awake 
ind  they  set  his  feet  on  the  ladder  rungs,  pushing  him  up- 
tvard.  Halfway  up  he  stopped;  again  he  thrashed  out  at  them. 
"I  ghy  tell  um.  I  ghy  tell  de  Man.  I  ghy  tell  Mistis.  Field 
hands.  Field  niggers." 

IX 

THEY  LAY  side  by  side  in  the  loft,  beneath  the  cloak  and  the 
two  saddle  blankets.  There  was  no  hay.  The  Negro  snored, 
his  breath  reeking  and  harsh,  thick.  Below,  in  its  stall,  the 
Thoroughbred  stamped  now  and  then.  Weddel  lay  on  his 


766  The  Middle  Ground 

back,  his  arm  across  his  chest,  the  hand  clutching  the  stub  of 
the  other  arm.  Overhead,  through  the  cracks  in  the  roof  the 
sky  showed — the  thick  chill,  black  sky  which  would  rain 
again  tomorrow  and  on  every  tomorrow  until  they  left  the 
mountains.  "If  I  leave  the  mountains,"  he  said  quietly,  mo- 
tionless on  his  back  beside  the  snoring  Negro,  staring  up- 
ward. "I  was  concerned.  I  had  thought  that  it  was  exhausted; 
that  I  had  lost  the  privilege  of  being  afraid.  But  I  have  not. 
And  so  I  am  happy.  Quite  happy."  He  lay  rigid  on  his  back 
in  the  cold  darkness,  thinking  of  home.  "Contalmaison.  Our 
lives  are  summed  up  in  sounds  and  made  significant.  Victory. 
Defeat.  Peace.  Home.  That's  why  we  must  do  so  much  to 
invent  meanings  for  the  sounds,  so  damned  much.  Especially 
if  you  are  unfortunate  enough  to  be  victorious:  so  damned 
much.  It's  nice  to  be  whipped;  quiet  to  be  whipped.  To  be 
whipped  and  to  lie  under  a  broken  roof,  thinking  of  home." 
The  Negro  snored.  "So  damned  much";  seeming  to  watch 
the  words  shape  quietly  in  the  darkness  above  his  mouth. 
"What  would  happen,  say,  a  man  in  the  lobby  of  the  Gay- 
oso,  in  Memphis,  laughing  suddenly  aloud.  But  I  am  quite 
happy — "  Then  he  heard  the  sound.  He  lay  utterly  still  then, 
his  hand  clutching  the  butt  of  the  pistol  warm  beneath  the 
stub  of  his  right  arm,  hearing  the  quiet,  almost  infinitesimal 
sound  as  it  mounted  the  ladder.  But  he  made  no  move  until 
he  saw  the  dim  orifice  of  the  trap  door  blotted  out.  "Stop 
where  you  are,"  he  said. 

"It's  me,"  the  voice  said;  the  voice  of  the  boy,  again  with 
that  swift,  breathless  quality  which  even  now  Weddel  did 
not  pause  to  designate  as  excitement  or  even  to  remark  at  all. 
The  boy  came  on  his  hands  and  knees  across  the  dry,  sibilant 
chaff  which  dusted  the  floor.  "Go  ahead  and  shoot,"  he  said. 
On  his  hands  and  knees  he  loomed  above  Weddel  with  his 
panting  breath.  "I  wish  I  was  dead.  I  so  wish  hit.  I  wish  we 
was  both  dead.  I  could  wish  like  Vatch  wishes.  Why  did  you 
uns  have  to  stop  here?" 


Mountain  Victory  767 

Weddel  had  not  moved.  "Why  does  Vatch  wish  I  was 
dead?" 

"Because  he  can  still  hear  you  uns  yelling.  I  used  to  sleep 
with  him  and  he  wakes  up  at  night  and  once  paw  had  to  keep 
him  from  choking  me  to  death  before  he  waked  up  and  him 
sweating,  hearing  you  uns  yelling  still.  Without  nothing  but 
unloaded  guns,  yelling,  Vatch  said,  like  scarecrows  across  a 
cornpatch,  running."  He  was  crying  now,  not  aloud.  "Damn 
you!  Damn  you  to  hell!" 

"Yes,"  Weddel  said.  "I  have  heard  them,  myself.  But  why 
do  you  wish  you  were  dead?" 

"Because  she  was  trying  to  come,  herself.  Only  she  had 
to—" 

"Who?  She?  Your  sister?" 

" — had  to  go  through  the  room  to  get  out.  Paw  was  awake. 
He  said,  'If  you  go  out  that  door,  dont  you  never  come  back.' 
And  she  said,  'I  dont  aim  to/  And  Vatch  was  awake  too  and 
he  said,  'Make  him  marry  you  quick  because  you  are  going 
to  be  a  widow  at  daylight.'  And  she  come  back  and  told  me. 
But  I  was  awake  too.  She  told  me  to  tell  you." 

"Tell  me  what? "  Weddel  said.  The  boy  cried  quietly,  with 
a  kind  of  patient  and  utter  despair. 

"I  told  her  if  you  was  a  nigra,  and  if  she  done  that — I  told 
her  that  I—" 

"What?  If  she  did  what?  What  does  she  want  you  to  tell 
me?" 

"About  the  window  into  the  attic  where  her  and  me  sleep. 
There  is  a  foot  ladder  I  made  to  come  back  from  hunting  at 
night  for  you  to  get  in.  But  I  told  her  if  you  was  a  nigra  and 
if  she  done  that  I  would — " 

"Now  then,"  Weddel  said  sharply;  "pull  yourself  together 
now.  Dont  you  remember?  I  never  even  saw  her  but  that  one 
time  when  she  came  in  the  room  and  your  father  sent  her 


out." 


"But  you  saw  her  then.  And  she  saw  you." 


768  The  Middle  Ground 

"No,"  Weddel  said. 

The  boy  ceased  to  cry.  He  was  quite  still  above  Weddel. 
"No  what?" 

"I  wont  do  it.  Climb  up  your  ladder." 

For  a  while  the  boy  seemed  to  muse  above  him,  motionless, 
breathing  slow  and  quiet  now;  he  spoke  now  in  a  musing, 
almost  dreamy  tone:  "I  could  kill  you  easy.  You  aint  got  but 
one  arm,  even  if  you  are  older.  .  .  ."  Suddenly  he  moved, 
with  almost  unbelievable  quickness;  Weddel's  first  intima- 
tion was  when  the  boy's  hard,  overlarge  hands  took  him  by 
the  throat.  Weddel  did  not  move.  "I  could  kill  you  easy.  And 
wouldn't  none  mind." 

"Shhhhhh,"  Weddel  said.  "Not  so  loud." 

"Wouldn't  none  care."  He  held  Weddel's  throat  with 
hard,  awkward  restraint.  Weddel  could  feel  the  choking 
and  the  shaking  expend  itself  somewhere  about  the  boy's 
forearms  before  it  reached  his  hands,  as  though  the  connec- 
tion between  brain  and  hands  was  incomplete.  "Wouldn't 
none  care.  Except  Vatch  would  be  mad." 

"I  have  a  pistol,"  Weddel  said. 

"Then  shoot  me  with  it.  Go  on." 

"No." 

"No  what?" 

"I  told  you  before." 

"You  swear  you  wont  do  it?  Do  you  swear?" 

"Listen  a  moment,"  Weddel  said;  he  spoke  now  with  a 
sort  of  soothing  patience,  as  though  he  spoke  one-syllable 
words  to  a  child:  "I  just  want  to  go  home.  That's  all.  I  have 
been  away  from  home  for  four  years.  All  I  want  is  to  go 
home.  Dont  you  see?  I  want  to  see  what  I  have  left  there, 
after  four  years." 

"What  do  you  do  there?"  The  boy's  hands  were  loose  and 
hard  about  Weddel's  throat,  his  arms  still,  rigid.  "Do  you 
hunt  all  day,  and  all  night  too  if  you  want,  with  a  horse  to 


Mountain  Victory  769 

ride  and  nigras  to  wait  on  you,  to  shine  your  boots  and  sad- 
dle the  horse,  and  you  setting  on  the  gallery,  eating,  until 
time  to  go  hunting  again?" 

"I  hope  so.  I  haven't  been  home  in  four  years,  you  see.  So 
I  dont  know  any  more." 

"Take  me  with  you." 

"I  dont  know  what's  there,  you  see.  There  may  not  be 
anything  there:  no  horses  to  ride  and  nothing  to  hunt.  The 
Yankees  were  there,  and  my  mother  died  right  afterward, 
and  I  dont  know  what  we  would  find  there,  until  I  can  go  and 


see. 

UTV 


I'll  work.  We'll  both  work.  You  can  get  married  in 
Mayesfield.  It's  not  far." 

"Married?  Oh.  Your  ...  I  see.  How  do  you  know  I  am 
not  already  married?"  Now  the  boy's  hands  shut  on  his 
throat,  shaking  him.  "Stop  it! "  he  said. 

"If  you  say  you  have  got  a  wife,  I  will  kill  you,"  the  boy 
said. 

"No,"  Weddel  said.  "I  am  not  married." 

"And  you  dont  aim  to  climb  up  that  foot  ladder?" 

"No.  I  never  saw  her  but  once.  I  might  not  even  know  her 
if  I  saw  her  again." 

"She  says  different.  I  dont  believe  you.  You  are  lying." 

"No,"  Weddel  said. 

"Is  it  because  you  are  afraid  to?" 

"Yes.  That's  it." 

"Of  Vatch?" 

"Not  Vatch.  I'm  just  afraid.  I  think  my  luck  has  given  out. 
I  know  that  it  has  lasted  too  long;  I  am  afraid  that  I  shall  find 
that  I  have  forgot  how  to  be  afraid.  So  I  cant  risk  it.  I  cant 
risk  finding  that  I  have  lost  touch  with  truth.  Not  like  Jubal 
here.  He  believes  that  I  still  belong  to  him;  he  will  not  be- 
lieve that  I  have  been  freed.  He  wont  even  let  me  tell  him  so. 
He  does  not  need  to  bother  about  truthu  vou  see." 


770  The  Middle  Ground 

"We  would  work.  She  might  not  look  like  the  Miss'ippi 
women  that  wear  shoes  all  the  time.  But  we  would  learn.  We 
would  not  shame  you  before  them." 

"No,"  Weddel  said.  "I  cannot." 

"Then  you  go  away.  Now." 

"How  can  I?  You  see  that  he  cannot  ride,  cannot  stay  on 
a  horse."  The  boy  did  not  answer  at  once;  an  instant  later 
Weddel  could  almost  feel  the  tenseness,  the  utter  immobility^ 
though  he  himself  had  heard  no  sound;  he  knew  that  the  boy,, 
crouching,  not  breathing,  was  looking  toward  the  ladder. 
"Which  one  is  it?"  Weddel  whispered. 

"It's  paw." 

"I'll  go  down.  You  stay  here.  You  keep  my  pistol  for  me.'r 

X 

THE  DARK  AIR  was  high,  chill,  cold.  In  the  vast  invisible  dark- 
ness the  valley  lay,  the  opposite  cold  and  invisible  range 
black  on  the  black  sky.  Clutching  the  stub  of  his  missing  arm 
across  his  chest,  he  shivered  slowly  and  steadily. 

"Go,"  the  father  said. 

"The  war  is  over,"  Weddel  said.  "Vatch's  victory  is  not 
my  trouble." 

"Take  your  horses  and  nigra,  and  ride  on." 

"If  you  mean  your  daughter,  I  never  saw  her  but  once  and 
I  never  expect  to  see  her  again." 

"Ride  on,"  the  father  said.  "Take  what  is  yours,  and  ride 
on." 

"I  cannot."  They  faced  one  another  in  the  darkness.  "After 
four  years  I  have  bought  immunity  from  running." 

"You  have  till  daylight." 

"I  have  had  less  than  that  in  Virginia  for  four  years.  And 
this  is  just  Tennessee."  But  the  other  had  turned;  he  dissolved 
into  the  black  slope.  Weddel  entered  the  stable  and  mounted 


Mountain  Victory  771 

the  ladder.  Motionless  above  the  snoring  Negro  the  boy 
squatted. 

"Leave  him  here,"  the  boy  said.  "He  aint  nothing  but  a 
nigra.  Leave  him,  and  go." 

"No,"  Weddel  said. 

The  boy  squatted  above  the  snoring  Negro.  He  was  not 
looking  at  Weddel,  yet  there  was  between  them,  quiet  and 
soundless,  the  copse,  the  sharp  dry  report,  the  abrupt  wild 
thunder  of  upreared  horse,  the  wisping  smoke.  "I  can  show 
you  a  short  cut  down  to  the  valley.  You  will  be  out  of  the 
mountains  in  two  hours.  By  daybreak  you  will  be  ten  miles 
away." 

"I  cant.  He  wants  to  go  home  too.  I  must  get  him  home 
too."  He  stooped;  with  his  single  hand  he  spread  the  cloak 
awkwardly,  covering  the  Negro  closer  with  it.  He  heard  the 
boy  creep  away,  but  he  did  not  look.  After  a  while  he  shook 
the  Negro.  "Jubal,"  he  said.  The  Negro  groaned;  he  turned 
heavily,  sleeping  again.  Weddel  squatted  above  him  as  the 
boy  had  done.  "I  thought  that  I  had  lost  it  for  good,"  he  said. 
" — The  peace  and  the  quiet;  the  power  to  be  afraid  again." 


XI 

THE  CABIN  was  gaunt  and  bleak  in  the  thick  cold  dawn  when 
the  two  horses  passed  out  the  sagging  gate  and  into  the 
churned  road,  the  Negro  on  the  Thoroughbred,  Weddel  on 
the  sorrel.  The  Negro  was  shivering.  He  sat  hunched  and 
high,  with  updrawn  knees,  his  face  almost  invisible  in  the 
oilcloth  hood. 

"I  tole  you  dey  wuz  fixing  to  pizen  us  wid  dat  stuff,"  he 
said.  "I  tole  you.  Hillbilly  rednecks.  En  you  not  only  let  um 
pizen  me,  you  f otch  me  de  pizen  wid  yo  own  hand.  O  Lawd, 
O  Lawd!  If  we  ever  does  git  home." 

Weddel  looked  back  at  the  cabin,  at  the  weathered,  blank 


772  The  Middle  Ground 

house  where  there  was  no  sign  of  any  life,  not  even  smoke. 
"She  has  a  young  man,  I  suppose — a  beau."  He  spoke  aloud, 
musing,  quizzical.  "And  that  boy.  Hule.  He  said  to  come 
within  sight  of  a  laurel  copse  where  the  road  disappears,  and 
take  a  path  to  the  left.  He  said  we  must  not  pass  that  copse." 

"Who  says  which?"  the  Negro  said.  "I  aint  going  no- 
where. I  going  back  to  dat  loft  en  lay  down." 

"All  right,"  Weddel  said.  "Get  down." 

"Git  down?" 

"I'll  need  both  horses.  You  can  walk  on  when  you  are 
through  sleeping." 

"I  ghy  tell  yo  maw,"  the  Negro  said.  "I  ghy  tell  um.  Ghy 
tell  how  after  four  years  you  aim  got  no  more  sense  than  to 
not  know  a  Yankee  when  you  seed  um.  To  stay  de  night  wid 
Yankees  en  let  um  pizen  one  of  Mistis'  niggers.  I  ghy  tell  um." 

"I  thought  you  were  going  to  stay  here,"  Weddel  said.  He 
was  shivering  too.  "Yet  I  am  not  cold,"  he  said.  "I  am  not 
cold." 

"Stay  here?  Me?  How  in  de  world  you  ever  git  home 
widout  me?  Whut  I  tell  Mistis  when  I  come  in  widout  you 
en  she  ax  me  whar  you  is?" 

"Come,"  Weddel  said.  He  lifted  the  sorrel  into  morion. 
He  looked  quietly  back  at  the  house,  then  rode  on.  Behind 
him  on  the  Thoroughbred  the  Negro  muttered  and  mumbled 
to  himself  in  woebegone  singsong.  The  road,  the  long  hill 
which  yesterday  they  had  toiled  up,  descended  now.  It  was 
muddy,  rockchurned,  scarred  across  the  barren  and  rocky 
land  beneath  the  dissolving  sky,  jolting  downward  to  where 
the  pines  and  laurel  began.  After  a  while  the  cabin  had  dis- 
appeared. 

"And  so  I  am  running  away,"  Weddel  said.  "When  I  get 
home  I  shall  not  be  very  proud  of  this.  Yes,  I  will.  It  means 
that  I  am  still  alive.  Still  alive,  since  I  still  know  fear  and  de- 
sire. Since  life  is  an  affirmation  of  the  past  and  a  promise  to 


Mountain  Victory  773 

the  future.  So  I  am  still  alive — Ah."  It  was  the  laurel  copse. 
About  three  hundred  yards  ahead  it  seemed  to  have  sprung 
motionless  and  darkly  secret  in  the  air  which  of  itself  was 
mostly  water.  He  drew  rein  sharply,  the  Negro,  hunched, 
moaning,  his  face  completely  hidden,  overriding  him  un- 
awares until  the  Thoroughbred  stopped  of  its  own  accord. 
"But  I  dont  see  any  path — "  Weddel  said;  then  a  figure 
emerged  from  the  copse,  running  toward  them.  Weddel 
thrust  the  reins  beneath  his  groin  and  withdrew  his  hand 
inside  his  cloak.  Then  he  saw  that  it  was  the  boy.  He  came  up 
trotting.  His  face  was  white,  strained,  his  eyes  quite  grave. 

"It's  right  yonder,"  he  said. 

"Thank  you,"  Weddel  said.  "It  was  kind  of  you  to  come 
and  show  us,  though  we  could  have  found  it,  I  imagine." 

"Yes,"  the  boy  said  as  though  he  had  not  heard.  He  had 
already  taken  the  sorrel's  bridle.  "Right  tother  of  the  brush. 
You  cant  see  hit  until  you  are  in  hit." 

"In  whut?"  the  Negro  said.  "I  ghy  tell  urn.  After  four 
years  you  aint  got  no  more  sense.  .  .  ." 

"Hush,"  Weddel  said.  He  said  to  the  boy,  "I  am  obliged 
to  you.  You'll  have  to  take  that  in  lieu  of  anything  better. 
And  now  you  get  on  back  home.  We  can  find  the  path.  We 
will  be  all  right  now." 

"They  know  the  path  too,"  the  boy  said.  He  drew  the 
sorrel  forward.  "Come  on." 

"Wait,"  Weddel  said,  drawing  the  sorrel  up.  The  boy  still 
tugged  at  the  bridle,  looking  on  ahead  toward  the  copse.  "So 
we  have  one  guess  and  they  have  one  guess.  Is  that  it?" 

"Damn  you  to  hell,  come  on!"  the  boy  said,  in  a  kind  of 
thin  frenzy.  "I  am  sick  of  hit.  Sick  of  hit." 

"Well,"  Weddel  said.  He  looked  about,  quizzical,  sardonic, 
with  his  gaunt,  weary,  wasted  face.  "But  I  must  move.  I  cant 
stay  here,  not  even  if  I  had  a  house,  a  roof  to  live  under.  So 
I  have  to  choose  between  three  things.  That's  what  throws  a 


774  The  Middle  Ground 

man  off — that  extra  alternative.  Just  when  he  has  come  to 
realize  that  living  consists  in  choosing  wrongly  between  two 
alternatives,  to  have  to  choose  among  three.  You  go  back 
home." 

The  boy  turned  and  looked  up  at  him.  "We'd  work.  We 
could  go  back  to  the  house  now,  since  paw  and  Vatch  are 
. . .  We  could  ride  down  the  mou-tin,  two  on  one  horse  and 
two  on  tother.  We  could  go  back  to  the  valley  and  get  mar- 
ried at  Mayesfield.  We  would  not  shame  you." 

"But  she  has  a  young  man,  hasn't  she?  Somebody  that 
waits  for  her  at  church  on  Sunday  and  walks  home  and  takes 
Sunday  dinner,  and  maybe  fights  the  other  young  men  be- 
cause of  her?" 

"You  wont  take  us,  then?" 

"No.  You  go  back  home." 

For  a  while  the  boy  stood,  holding  the  bridle,  his  face  low- 
ered. Then  he  turned;  he  said  quietly:  "Come  on,  then.  We 
got  to  hurry." 

"Wait,"  Weddel  said;  "what  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"I'm  going  a  piece  with  you.  Come  on."  He  dragged  the 
sorrel  forward,  toward  the  roadside. 

"Here,"  Weddel  said,  "you  go  on  back  home.  The  war  is 
over  now.  Vatch  knows  that." 

The  boy  did  not  answer.  He  led  the  sorrel  into  the  under- 
brush. The  Thoroughbred  hung  back.  "Whoa,  you  Caesar!" 
the  Negro  said.  "Wait,  Marse  Soshay.  I  aint  gwine  ride  down 
no. . . ." 

The  boy  looked  over  his  shoulder  without  stopping.  "You 
keep  back  there,"  he  said.  "You  keep  where  you  are." 

The  path  was  a  faint  scar,  doubling  and  twisting  among 
the  brush.  "I  see  it  now,"  Weddel  said.  "You  go  back." 

"I'll  go  a  piece  with  you,"  the  boy  said;  so  quietly  that 
Weddel  discovered  that  he  had  been  holding  his  breath,  in 
a  taut,  strained  alertness.  He  breathed  again,  while  the  sorrel 


Mountain  Victory  775 

jolted  stiffly  downward  beneath  him.  "Nonsense,"  he 
thought.  "He  will  have  me  playing  Indian  also  in  five  min- 
utes more.  I  had  wanted  to  recover  the  power  to  be  afraid, 
but  I  seem  to  have  outdone  myself."  The  path  widened;  the 
Thoroughbred  came  alongside,  the  boy  walking  between 
them;  again  he  looked  at  the  Negro. 

"You  keep  back,  I  tell  you,"  he  said. 

"Why  back?"  Weddel  said.  He  looked  at  the  boy's  wan, 
strained  face;  he  thought  swiftly,  "I  dont  know  whether  I 
am  playing  Indian  or  not."  He  said  aloud:  "Why  must  he 
keep  back?" 

The  boy  looked  at  Weddel;  he  stopped,  pulling  the  sorrel 
up.  "We'd  work,"  he  said.  "We  wouldn't  shame  you." 

Weddel's  face  was  now  as  sober  as  the  boy's.  They  looked 
at  one  another.  "Do  you  think  we  have  guessed  wrong?  We 
had  to  guess.  We  had  to  guess  one  out  of  three." 

Again  it  was  as  if  the  boy  had  not  heard  him.  "You  wont 
think  hit  is  me?  You  swear  hit?" 

"Yes.  I  swear  it."  He  spoke  quietly,  watching  the  boy; 
they  spoke  now  as  two  men  or  two  children.  "What  do  you 
think  we  ought  to  do?" 

"Turn  back.  They  will  be  gone  now.  We  could  .  .  ."  He 
drew  back  on  the  bridle;  again  the  Thoroughbred  came 
abreast  and  forged  ahead. 

"You  mean,  it  could  be  along  here?"  Weddel  said.  Sud- 
denly he  spurred  the  sorrel,  jerking  the  clinging  boy  for- 
ward. "Let  go,"  he  said.  The  boy  held  onto  the  bridle,  swept 
forward  until  the  two  horses  were  again  abreast.  On  the 
Thoroughbred  the  Negro  perched,  highkneed,  his  mouth 
still  talking,  flobbed  down  with  ready  speech,  easy  and  worn 
with  talk  like  an  old  shoe  with  walking. 

"I  done  tole  him  en  tole  him,"  the  Negro  said. 

"Let  go!"  Weddel  said,  spurring  the  sorrel,  forcing  its 
shoulder  into  the  boy.  "Let  go!" 


776  The  Middle  Ground 

"You  wont  turn  back?"  the  boy  said.  "You  wont?" 

"Let  go!"  Weddel  said.  His  teeth  showed  a  little  beneath 
his  mustache;  he  lifted  the  sorrel  bodily  with  the  spurs.  The 
boy  let  go  of  the  bridle  and  ducked  beneath  the  Thorough- 
bred's neck;  Weddel,  glancing  back  as  the  sorrel  leaped,  saw 
the  boy  surge  upward  and  on  to  the  Thoroughbred's  back, 
shoving  the  Negro  back  along  its  spine  until  he  vanished. 

"They  think  you  will  be  riding  the  good  horse,"  the  boy 
said  in  a  thin,  panting  voice;  "I  told  them  you  would  be 
riding  .  .  .  Down  the  mou-tin!"  he  cried  as  the  Thorough- 
bred swept  past;  "the  horse  can  make  hit!  Git  outen  the 
path!  Git  outen  the.  .  .  ."  Weddel  spurred  the  sorrel;  almost 
abreast  the  two  horses  reached  the  bend  where  the  path 
doubled  back  upon  itself  and  into  a  matted  shoulder  of  laurel 
and  rhododendron.  The  boy  looked  back  over  his  shoulder. 
"Keep  back!"  he  cried.  "Git  outen  the  path!"  Weddel 
rowelled  the  sorrel.  On  his  face  was  a  thin  grimace  of  ex- 
asperation and  anger  almost  like  smiling. 

It  was  still  on  his  dead  face  when  he  struck  the  earth,  his 
foot  still  fast  in  the  stirrup.  The  sorrel  leaped  at  the  sound 
and  dragged  Weddel  to  the  path  side  and  halted  and  whirled 
and  snorted  once,  and  began  to  graze.  The  Thoroughbred 
however  rushed  on  past  the  curve  and  whirled  and  rushed 
back,  the  blanket  twisted  under  its  belly  and  its  eyes  rolling, 
springing  over  the  boy's  body  where  it  lay  in  the  path,  the 
face  wrenched  sideways  against  a  stone,  the  arms  back- 
sprawled,  openpalmed,  like  a  woman  with  lifted  skirts  spring- 
ing across  a  puddle.  Then  it  whirled  and  stood  above  Wed- 
del's  body,  whinnying,  with  tossing  head,  watching  the 
laurel  copse  and  the  fading  gout  of  black  powder  smoke  as  it 
faded  away. 

The  Negro  was  on  his  hands  and  knees  when  the  two  men 
emerged  from  the  copse.  One  of  them  was  running.  The 
Negro  watched  him  run  forward,  crying  monotonously, 


Mountain  Victory  777 

"The  durned  fool!  The  durned  fool!  The  durned  fool!"  and 
then  stop  suddenly  and  drop  the  gun;  squatting,  the  Negro 
saw  him  become  stone  still  above  the  fallen  gun,  looking 
dawn  at  the  boy's  body  with  an  expression  of  shock  and 
amazement  like  he  was  waking  from  a  dream.  Then  the 
Negro  saw  the  other  man.  In  the  act  of  stopping,  the  second 
man  swung  the  rifle  up  and  began  to  reload  it.  The  Negro 
did  not  move.  On  his  hands  and  knees  he  watched  the  two 
white  men,  his  irises  rushing  and  wild  in  the  bloodshot 
whites.  Then  he  too  moved  and,  still  on  hands  and  knees,  he 
turned  and  scuttled  to  where  Weddel  lay  beneath  the  sorrel 
and  crouched  over  Weddel  and  looked  again  and  watched 
the  second  man  backing  slowly  away  up  the  path,  loading 
the  rifle.  He  watched  the  man  stop;  he  did  not  close  his  eyes 
nor  look  away.  He  watched  the  rifle  elongate  and  then  rise 
and  diminish  slowly  and  become  a  round  spot  against  the 
white  shape  of  Vatch's  face  like  a  period  on  a  page.  Crouch- 
ing, the  Negro's  eyes  rushed  wild  and  steady  and  red,  like 
those  of  a  cornered  animal. 


VI  •  BEYOND 


Beyond 

Black  Music 

The  Leg 

Mistral 

Divorce  in  Naples 
Carcassonne 


Beyond 


THE  HARD  ROUND  ear  of  the  stethoscope  was  cold  and  un- 
pleasant upon  his  naked  chest;  the  room,  big  and  square, 
furnished  with  clumsy  walnut — the  bed  where  he  had  first 
slept  alone,  which  had  been  his  marriage  bed,  in  which  his 
son  had  been  conceived  and  been  born  and  lain  dressed  for 
the  coffin — the  room  familiar  for  sixty-five  years,  by  ordi- 
nary peaceful  and  lonely  and  so  peculiarly  his  own  as  to 
have  the  same  odor  which  he  had,  seemed  to  be  cluttered 
with  people,  though  there  were  but  three  of  them  and  all 
of  them  he  knew:  Lucius  Peabody  who  should  have  been 
down  town  attending  to  his  medical  practice,  and  the  two 
Negroes,  the  one  who  should  be  in  the  kitchen  and  the 
other  with  the  lawn  mower  on  the  lawn,  making  some  pre- 
tence toward  earning  the  money  which  on  Saturday  night 
they  would  expect. 

But  worst  of  all  was  the  hard  cold  little  ear  of  the  stetho- 
scope, worse  even  than  the  outrage  of  his  bared  chest  with 
its  fine  delicate  matting  of  gray  hair.  In  fact,  about  the 
whole  business  there  was  just  one  alleviating  circumstance. 
"At  least,"  he  thought  with  fretted  and  sardonic  humor,  "I 
am  spared  that  uproar  of  female  connections  which  might 
have  been  my  lot,  which  is  the  ordinary  concomitant  of  oc- 
casions of  marriage  or  divorcement.  And  if  he  will  just  move 

781 


782  Beyond 

his  damned  little  toy  telephone  and  let  my  niggers  go  back 
to  work — " 

And  then,  before  he  had  finished  the  thought,  Peabody 
did  remove  the  stethoscope.  And  then,  just  as  he  was  settling 
himself  back  into  the  pillow  with  a  sigh  of  fretted  relief,  one 
of  the  Negroes,  the  woman,  set  up  such  a  pandemonium  ot 
wailing  as  to  fetch  him  bolt  upright  in  the  bed,  his  hands  to 
his  ears.  The  Negress  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  her  long 
limber  black  hands  motionless  on  the  footboard,  her  eyes 
whitely  backrolled  into  her  skull  and  her  mouth  wide  open, 
while  from  it  rolled  slow  billows  of  soprano  sound  as  mellow 
as  high-register  organ  tones  and  wall-shattering  as  a  steamer 
siren. 

"Chlory!"  he  shouted.  "Stop  that!"  She  didn't  stop.  Ap- 
parently she  could  neither  see  nor  hear.  "You,  Jake!"  he 
shouted  to  the  Negro  man  who  stood  beside  her,  his  hands 
too  on  the  footboard,  his  face  brooding  upon  the  bed  with 
an  expression  darkly  and  profoundly  enigmatic;  "get  her  out 
of  here!  At  once!"  But  Jake  too  did  not  move,  and  he  then 
turned  to  Peabody  in  angry  outrage.  "Here!  Loosh!  Get 
these  damn  niggers  out  of  here!"  But  Peabody  also  did  not 
seem  to  hear  him.  The  Judge  watched  him  methodically 
folding  the  stethoscope  into  its  case;  glared  at  him  for  a 
moment  longer  while  the  woman's  shattering  noise  billowed 
through  the  room.  Then  he  flung  the  covers  back  and  rose 
from  the  bed  and  hurried  furiously  from  the  room  and  from 
the  house. 

At  once  he  realized  that  he  was  still  in  his  pajamas,  so  he 
buttoned  his  overcoat.  It  was  of  broadcloth,  black,  brushed, 
of  an  outmoded  elegance,  with  a  sable  collar.  "At  least  they 
didn't  have  time  to  hide  this  from  me,"  he  thought  in  fretted 
rage.  "Now,  if  I  just  had  my.  .  .  ."  He  looked  down  at  his 
feet.  "Ah.  I  seem  to  have.  .  .  ."  He  looked  at  his  shoes. 
"That's  fortunate,  too."  Then  the  momentary  surprise  faded 


Beyond  783 

too,  now  that  outrage  had  space  in  which  to  disseminate 
itself.  He  touched  his  hat,  then  he  put  his  hand  to  his  lapel. 
The  jasmine  was  there.  Say  what  he  would,  curse  Jake  as  he 
often  had  to  do,  the  Negro  never  forgot  whatever  flower 
in  its  season.  Always  it  would  be  there,  fresh  and  recent  and 
unblemished,  on  the  morning  coffee  tray.  The  flower  and 
the.  .  .  .  He  clasped  his  ebony  stick  beneath  his  arm  and 
opened  the  briefcase.  The  two  fresh  handkerchiefs  were 
there,  beside  the  book.  He  thrust  one  of  them  into  his  breast 
pocket  and  went  on.  After  a  while  the  noise  of  Chlory's 
wailing  died  away. 

Then  for  a  little  while  it  was  definitely  unpleasant.  He 
detested  crowds:  the  milling  and  aimless  and  patient  stu- 
pidity; the  concussion  of  life-quick  flesh  with  his  own.  But 
presently,  if  not  soon,  he  was  free,  and  standing  so,  still  a 
little  ruffled,  a  little  annoyed,  he  looked  back  with  fading 
outrage  and  distaste  at  the  throng  as  it  clotted  quietly 
through  the  entrance.  With  fading  distaste  until  the  distaste 
was  gone,  leaving  his  face  quiet  and  quite  intelligent,  with 
a  faint  and  long  constant  overtone  of  quizzical  bemusement 
not  yet  tinctured  with  surprised  speculation,  not  yet  puz- 
zled, not  yet  wary.  That  was  to  come  later.  Hence  it  did 
not  show  in  his  voice,  which  was  now  merely  light,  quiz- 
zical, contained,  "There  seems  to  be  quite  a  crowd  of  them." 

"Yes,"  the  other  said.  The  Judge  looked  at  him  and  saw 
a  young  man  in  conventional  morning  dress  with  some 
subtle  effluvium  of  weddings,  watching  the  entrance  with  a 
strained,  patient  air. 

"You  are  expecting  someone?"  the  Judge  said. 

Now  the  other  looked  at  him.  uYes.  You  didn't  see—- 
But  you  don't  know  her." 

"Know  whom?" 

"My  wife.  That  is,  she  is  not  my  wife  yet.  But  the  wed- 
ding was  to  be  at  noon." 


784  Beyond 

"Something  happened,  did  it?" 

"I  had  to  do  it."  The  young  man  looked  at  him,  strained, 
anxious.  "I  was  late.  That's  why  I  was  driving  fast.  A  child 
ran  into  the  road.  I  was  going  too  fast  to  stop.  So  I  had  to 
turn." 

"But  you  missed  the  child?" 

"Yes."  The  other  looked  at  him.  "You  don't  know  her?" 

"And  are  you  waiting  here  to.  .  .  ."  The  judge  stared  at 
the  other.  His  eyes  were  narrowed,  his  gaze  was  piercing, 
hard.  He  said  suddenly,  sharply,  "Nonsense." 

"What?  What  did  you  say?"  the  other  asked  with  his 
vague,  strained,  almost  beseeching  air.  The  Judge  looked 
away.  His  frowning  concentration,  his  reflex  of  angry 
astonishment,  was  gone.  He  seemed  to  have  wiped  it  from 
his  face  by  a  sudden  deliberate  action.  He  was  like  a  man 
who,  not  a  swordsman,  has  practiced  with  a  blade  a  little 
against  a  certain  improbable  crisis,  and  who  suddenly  finds 
himself,  blade  in  hand,  face  to  face  with  the  event.  He 
looked  at  the  entrance,  his  face  alert,  musing  swiftly:  he 
seemed  to  muse  upon  the  entering  faces  with  a  still  and 
furious  concentration,  and  quietly;  quietly  he  looked  about, 
then  at  the  other  again.  The  young  man  still  watched  him. 

"You're  looking  for  your  wife  too,  I  suppose,"  he  said. 
"I  hope  you  find  her.  I  hope  you  do."  He  spoke  with  a  sort 
of  quiet  despair.  "I  suppose  she  is  old,  as  you  are.  It  must  be 
hell  on  the  one  who  has  to  watch  and  wait  for  the  other 
one  he  or  she  has  grown  old  in  marriage  with,  because  it  is 
so  terrible  to  wait  and  watch  like  me,  for  a  girl  who  is  a 
maiden  to  you.  Of  course  I  think  mine  is  the  most  unbear- 
able. You  see  if  it  had  only  been  the  next  day — anything. 
But  then  if  it  had,  I  guess  I  could  not  have  turned  out  for 
that  kid.  I  guess  I  just  think  mine  is  so  terrible.  It  can't  be 
as  bad  as  I  think  it  is.  It  just  can't  be.  I  hope  you  find  her." 

The  Judge's  lip  lifted.  "I  came  here  to  escape  someone; 


Beyond  785 

not  to  find  anyone."  He  looked  at  the  other.  His  face  was 
still  broken  with  that  grimace  which  might  have  been  smil- 
ing. But  his  eyes  were  not  smiling.  "If  I  were  looking  for 
anybody,  it  would  probably  be  my  son." 

"Oh.  A  son.  I  see." 

"Yes.  He  would  be  about  your  age.  He  was  ten  when  he 
died." 

"Look  for  him  here." 

Now  the  Judge  laughed  outright,  save  for  his  eyes.  The 
other  watched  him  with  that  grave  anxiety  leavened  now 
with  quiet  interested  curiosity.  "You  mean  you  don't  be- 
lieve?" The  Judge  laughed  aloud.  Still  laughing,  he  produced 
a  cloth  sack  of  tobacco  and  rolled  a  slender  cigarette.  When 
he  looked  up,  the  other  was  watching  the  entrance  again. 
The  Judge  ceased  to  laugh. 

"Have  you  a  match?"  he  said.  The  other  looked  at  him. 
The  Judge  raised  the  cigarette.  "A  match." 

The  other  sought  in  his  pockets.  "No."  He  looked  at  the 
Judge.  "Look  for  him  here,"  he  said. 

"Thank  you,"  the  Judge  answered.  "I  may  avail  myself 
of  your  advice  later."  He  turned  away.  Then  he  paused  and 
looked  back.  The  young  man  was  watching  the  entrance. 
The  Judge  watched  him,  bemused,  his  lip  lifted.  He  turned 
on,  then  he  stopped  still.  His  face  was  now  completely 
shocked,  into  complete  immobility  like  a  mask;  the  sensitive, 
worn  mouth,  the  delicate  nostrils,  the  eyes  all  pupil  or  pupil- 
less.  He  could  not  seem  to  move  at  all.  Then  Mothershed 
turned  and  saw  him.  For  an  instant  Mothershed's  pale  eyes 
flickered,  his  truncated  jaw,  collapsing  steadily  with  a  savage, 
toothless  motion,  ceased. 

"Well?"  Mothershed  said. 

"Yes,"  the  Judge  said;  "it's  me."  Now  it  was  that,  as  the 
mesmerism  left  him,  the  shadow  bewildered  and  wary  and 
complete,  touched  his  face.  Even  to  himself  his  words 


7 86  Beyond 

sounded  idiotic.  "I  thought  that  you  were  dea. .  . ."  Then  he 
made  a  supreme  and  gallant  effort,  his  voice  light,  quizzical, 
contained  again,  "Well?" 

Mothershed  looked  at  him — a  squat  man  in  a  soiled  and 
mismatched  suit  stained  with  grease  and  dirt,  his  soiled  col- 
lar innocent  of  tie — with  a  pale,  lightly  slumbering  glare 
filled  with  savage  outrage.  "So  they  got  you  here,  too,  did 
they?" 

"That  depends  on  who  you  mean  by  'they'  and  what  you 
mean  by  'here/  " 

Mothershed  made  a  savage,  sweeping  gesture  with  one 
arm.  "Here,  by  God!  The  preachers.  The  Jesus  shouters." 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said.  "Well,  if  I  am  where  I  am  begin- 
ning to  think  I  am,  I  don't  know  whether  I  am  here  or  not. 
But  you  are  not  here  at  all,  are  you?"  Mothershed  cursed 
violently.  "Yes,"  the  Judge  said,  "we  never  thought,  sitting 
in  my  office  on  those  afternoons,  discussing  Voltaire  and 
Ingersoll,  that  we  should  ever  be  brought  to  this,  did  we? 
You,  the  atheist  whom  the  mere  sight  of  a  church  spire  on 
the  sky  could  enrage;  and  I  who  have  never  been  able  to 
divorce  myself  from  reason  enough  to  accept  even  your 
pleasant  and  labor-saving  theory  of  nihilism." 

"Labor-saving!"  Mothershed  cried.  "By  God,  I "  He 

cursed  with  impotent  fury.  The  Judge  might  have  been 
smiling  save  for  his  eyes.  He  sealed  the  cigarette  again. 

"Have  you  a  match?" 

"What?"  Mothershed  said.  He  glared  at  the  Judge,  his 
mouth  open.  He  sought  through  his  clothes.  From  out  the 
savage  movement,  strapped  beneath  his  armpit,  there  peeped 
fleetly  the  butt  of  a  heavy  pistol.  "No,"  he  said.  "I  ain't." 

"Yes,"  the  Judge  said.  He  twisted  the  cigarette,  his  gaze 
light,  quizzical.  "But  you  still  haven't  told  me  what  you 
are  doing  here.  I  heard  that  you  had.  .  .  ." 

Again  Mothershed  cursed,  prompt,  outraged.  "I  ain't.  I 


Beyond  787 

just  committed  suicide."  He  glared  at  the  Judge.  "God  damn 
it,  I  remember  raising  the  pistol;  I  remember  the  little  cold 
ring  it  made  against  my  ear;  I  remember  when  I  told  my 

finger  on  the  trigger "  He  glared  at  the  Judge.  "I  thought 

that  that  would  be  one  way  I  could  escape  the  preachers, 
since  by  the  church's  own  token.  .  .  ."  He  glared  at  the 
Judge,  his  pale  gaze  apoplectic  and  outraged.  "Well,  I  know 
why  you  are  here.  You  come  here  looking  for  that  boy." 

The  Judge  looked  down,  his  lip  lifted,  the  movement 
pouched  upward  about  his  eyes.  He  said  quietly,  "No." 

Mothershed  watched  him,  glared  at  him.  "Looking  for 
that  boy.  Agnosticism."  He  snarled  it.  "Won't  say  'Yes'  and 
won't  say  'No'  until  you  see  which  way  the  cat  will  jump. 
Ready  to  sell  out  to  the  highest  bidder.  By  God,  I'd  rather 
have  give  up  and  died  in  sanctity,  with  every  heaven-yelp- 
ing fool  in  ten  miles  around.  .  .  ." 

"No,"  the  Judge  said  quietly  behind  the  still,  dead  gleam 
of  his  teeth.  Then  his  teeth  vanished  quietly,  though  he  did 
not  look  up.  He  sealed  the  cigarette  carefully  again.  "There 
seem  to  be  a  lot  of  people  here."  Mothershed  now  began  to 
watch  him  with  speculation,  tasting  his  savage  gums,  his 
pale  furious  glare  arrested.  "You  have  seen  other  familiar 
faces  besides  my  own  here,  I  suppose.  Even  those  of  men 
whom  you  know  only  by  name,  perhaps?" 

"Oh,"  Mothershed  said.  "I  see.  I  get  you  now."  The 
Judge  seemed  to  be  engrossed  in  the  cigarette.  "You  want  to 
take  a  whirl  at  them  too,  do  you?  Go  ahead.  I  hope  you  will 
get  a  little  more  out  of  them  that  will  stick  to  your  guts 
than  I  did.  Maybe  you  will,  since  you  don't  seem  to  want  to 
know  as  much  as  you  want  something  new  to  be  uncertain 
about.  Well,  you  can  get  plenty  of  that  from  any  of  them.'v 

"You  mean  you  have.  .  .  ." 

Again  Mothershed  cursed,  harsh,  savage.  "Sure.  IngersolL 
Paine.  Every  bastard  one  of  them  that  I  used  to  waste  my 


788  Beyond 

time  reading  when  I  had  better  been  sitting  on  the  sunny- 
side  of  a  log." 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said.  "Ingersoll.  Is  he " 

"Sure.  On  a  bench  just  inside  the  park  yonder.  And 
maybe  on  the  same  bench  you'll  find  the  one  that  wrote  the 
little  women  books.  If  he  ain't  there,  he  ought  to  be." 

So  the  Judge  sat  forward,  elbows  on  knees,  the  unlighted 
cigarette  in  his  fingers.  "So  you  too  are  reconciled,"  he 
said.  The  man  who  Mothershed  said  was  Ingersoll  looked 
at  his  profile  quietly.  "To  this  place." 

"Ah,"  the  other  said.  He  made  a  brief,  short  gesture. 
"Reconciled." 

The  Judge  did  not  look  up.  "You  accept  it?  You  acqui- 
esce?" He  seemed  to  be  absorbed  in  the  cigarette.  "If  1  could 
just  see  Him,  talk  to  Him."  The  cigarette  turned  slowly  in 
his  fingers.  "Perhaps  I  was  seeking  Him.  Perhaps  I  was  seek- 
ing Him  all  the  time  I  was  reading  your  books,  and  Voltaire 
and  Montesquieu.  Perhaps  I  was."  The  cigarette  turned 
slowly.  "I  have  believed  in  you.  In  your  sincerity.  I  said,  if 
Truth  is  to  be  found  by  man,  this  man  will  be  among  those 
who  find  it.  At  one  time — I  was  in  the  throes  of  that  suffer- 
ing from  a  still  green  hurt  which  causes  even  an  intelligent 
man  to  cast  about  for  anything,  any  straw — I  had  a  foolish 
conceit:  you  will  be  the  first  to  laugh  at  it  as  I  myself  did 
later.  I  thought,  perhaps  there  is  a  hereafter,  a  way  station 
into  nothingness  perhaps,  where  for  an  instant  lesser  men 
might  speak  face  to  face  with  men  like  you  whom  they 
could  believe;  could  hear  from  such  a  man's  own  lips  the 
words:  'There  is  hope,'  or:  'There  is  nothing.'  I  said  to  my- 
self, in  such  case  it  will  not  be  Him  whom  I  shall  seek;  it  will 
be  Ingersoll  or  Paine  or  Voltaire."  He  watched  the  cigarette. 
"Give  me  your  word  now.  Say  either  of  these  to  me.  I  will 
believe." 


Beyond  789 

The  other  looked  at  the  Judge  for  a  time.  Then  he  said, 
"Why?  Believe  why?" 

The  paper  about  the  cigarette  had  come  loose.  The  Judge 
twisted  it  carefully  back,  handling  the  cigarette  carefully. 
"You  see,  I  had  a  son.  He  was  the  last  of  my  name  and  race. 
After  my  wife  died  we  lived  alone,  two  men  in  the  house. 
It  had  been  a  good  name,  you  see.  I  wanted  him  to  be  manly, 
worthy  of  it.  He  had  a  pony  which  he  rode  all  the  time. 
I  have  a  photograph  of  them  which  I  use  as  a  bookmark. 
Often,  looking  at  the  picture  or  watching  them  unbe- 
knownst as  they  passed  the  library  window,  I  would  think 
What  hopes  ride  yonder;  of  the  pony  I  would  think  What 
burden  do  you  blindly  bear,  dumb  brute.  One  day  they 
telephoned  me  at  my  office.  He  had  been  found  dragging 
from  the  stirrup.  Whether  the  pony  had  kicked  him  or  he 
had  struck  his  head  in  falling,  I  never  knew." 

He  laid  the  cigarette  carefully  on  the  bench  beside  him 
and  opened  the  briefcase.  He  took  out  a  book.  "Voltaire's 
Philosophical  Dictionary"  he  said.  "I  always  carry  a  book 
with  me.  I  am  a  great  reader.  It  happens  that  my  life  is  a 
solitary  one,  owing  to  the  fact  that  I  am  the  last  of  my  fam- 
ily, and  perhaps  to  the  fact  that  I  am  a  Republican  office- 
holder in  a  Democratic  stronghold.  I  am  a  Federal  judge, 
from  a  Mississippi  district.  My  wife's  father  was  a  Repub- 
lican." He  added  quickly,  "I  believe  the  tenets  of  the  Repub- 
lican Party  to  be  best  for  the  country.  You  will  not  believe 
it,  but  for  the  last  fifteen  years  my  one  intellectual  com- 
panion has  been  a  rabid  atheist,  almost  an  illiterate,  who  not 
only  scorns  all  logic  and  science,  but  who  has  a  distinct  body 
odor  as  well.  Sometimes  I  have  thought,  sitting  with  him  in 
my  office  on  a  summer  afternoon — a  damp  one — that  if  a 
restoration  of  faith  could  remove  his  prejudice  against  bath- 
ing, I  should  be  justified  in  going  to  that  length  myself 


790  Beyond 

even."  He  took  a  photograph  from  the  book  and  extended 
it.  "This  was  my  son." 

The  other  looked  at  the  picture  without  moving,  without 
offering  to  take  it.  From  the  brown  and  fading  cardboard  a 
boy  of  ten,  erect  upon  the  pony,  looked  back  at  them  with 
a  grave  and  tranquil  hauteur.  "He  rode  practically  all  the 
time.  Even  to  church  (I  attended  church  regularly  then.  I 
still  do,  at  times,  even  now) .  We  had  to  take  an  extra  groom 
along  in  the  carriage  to.  .  .  ."  He  looked  at  the  picture,  mus- 
ing. "After  his  mother  died  I  never  married  again.  My  own 
mother  was  sickly,  an  invalid.  I  could  cajole  her.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  my  aunts  I  could  browbeat  her  into  letting  me  go 
barefoot  in  the  garden,  with  two  house  servants  on  watch  to 
signal  the  approach  of  my  aunts.  I  would  return  to  the 
house,  my  manhood  triumphant,  vindicated,  until  I  entered 
the  room  where  she  waited  for  me.  Then  I  would  know  that 
for  every  grain  of  dust  which  pleasured  my  feet,  she  would 
pay  with  a  second  of  her  life.  And  we  would  sit  in  the  dusk 
like  two  children,  she  holding  my  hand  and  crying  quietly, 
until  my  aunts  entered  with  the  lamp.  'Now,  Sophia.  Crying 
again.  What  have  you  let  him  bulldoze  you  into  doing  this 
time?'  She  died  when  I  was  fourteen;  I  was  twenty-eight 
before  I  asserted  myself  and  took  the  wife  of  my  choice;  I 
was  thirty-seven  when  my  son  was  born."  He  looked  at  the 
photograph,  his  eyes  pouched,  netted  by  two  delicate  ham- 
mocks of  myriad  lines  as  fine  as  etching.  "He  rode  all  the 
time.  Hence  the  picture  of  the  two  of  them,  since  they  were 
inseparable.  I  have  used  this  picture  as  a  bookmark  in  the 
printed  volumes  where  his  and  my  ancestry  can  be  followed 
for  ten  generations  in  our  American  annals,  so  that  as  the 
pages  progressed  it  would  be  as  though  with  my  own  eyes 
I  watched  him  ride  in  the  flesh  down  the  long  road  which 
his  blood  and  bone  had  traveled  before  it  became  his."  He 
held  the  picture.  With  his  other  hand  he  took  up  the 


Beyond  791 

rette.  The  paper  had  come  loose:  he  held  it  raised  a  little  and 
then  arrested  so,  as  if  he  did  not  dare  raise  it  farther.  "And 
you  can  give  me  your  word.  I  will  believe." 

"Go  seek  your  son,"  the  other  said.  "Go  seek  him." 

Now  the  Judge  did  not  move  at  all.  Holding  the  picture 
and  the  dissolving  cigarette,  he  sat  in  a  complete  immobility. 
He  seemed  to  sit  in  a  kind  of  terrible  and  unbreathing  sus- 
pension. "And  find  him?  And  find  him? "  The  other  did  not 
answer.  Then  the  Judge  turned  and  looked  at  him,  and  then 
the  cigarette  dropped  quietly  into  dissolution  as  the  tobacco 
rained  down  upon  his  neat,  gleaming  shoe.  "Is  that  your 
word?  I  will  believe,  I  tell  you."  The  other  sat,  shapeless, 
gray,  sedentary,  almost  nondescript,  looking  down.  "Come. 
You  cannot  stop  with  that.  You  cannot." 

Along  the  path  before  them  people  passed  constantly.  A 
woman  passed,  carrying  a  child  and  a  basket,  a  young 
woman  in  a  plain,  worn,  brushed  cape.  She  turned  upon 
the  man  who  Mothershed  had  said  was  Ingersoll  a  plain, 
bright,  pleasant  face  and  spoke  to  him  in  a  pleasant,  tranquil 
voice.  Then  she  looked  at  the  Judge,  pleasantly,  a  full  look 
without  boldness  or  diffidence,  and  went  on.  "Come.  You 
cannot.  You  cannot."  Then  his  face  went  completely  blank. 
In  the  midst  of  speaking  his  face  emptied;  he  repeated  "can- 
not. Cannot"  in  a  tone  of  musing  consternation.  "Cannot," 
he  said.  "You  mean,  you  cannot  give  me  any  word?  That 
you  do  not  know?  That  you,  yourself,  do  not  know?  You, 
Robert  Ingersoll?  Robert  Ingersoll?"  The  other  did  not 
move.  "Is  Robert  Ingersoll  telling  me  that  for  twenty  years  I 
have  leaned  upon  a  reed  no  stronger  than  myself?" 

Still  the  other  did  not  look  up.  "You  saw  that  young 
woman  who  just  passed,  carrying  a  child.  Follow  her.  Look 
into  her  face." 

"A  young  woman.  With  a.  .  .  ."  The  Judge  looked  at  the 
other.  "Ah.  I  see.  Yes.  I  will  look  at  the  child  and  I  shall 


792  Beyond 

see  scars.  Then  I  am  to  look  into  the  woman's  face.  Is  that 
it?"  The  other  didn't  answer.  "That  is  your  answer?  your 
final  word?"  The  other  did  not  move.  The  Judge's  lip  lifted. 
The  movement  pouched  upward  about  his  eyes  as  though 
despair,  grief,  had  flared  up  for  a  final  instant  like  a  dying 
flame,  leaving  upon  his  face  its  ultimate  and  fading  gleam 
in  a  faint  grimace  of  dead  teeth.  He  rose  and  put  the  photo- 
graph back  into  the  briefcase.  "And  this  is  the  man  who 
says  that  he  was  once  Robert  Ingersoll."  Above  his  teeth  his 
face  mused  in  that  expression  which  could  have  been  smiling 
save  for  the  eyes.  "It  is  not  proof  that  I  sought.  I,  of  all  men, 
know  that  proof  is  but  a  fallacy  invented  by  man  to  justify 
to  himself  and  his  fellows  his  own  crass  lust  and  folly.  It 
was  not  proof  that  I  sought."  With  the  stick  and  the  brief- 
case clasped  beneath  his  arm  he  rolled  another  slender  ciga- 
rette. "I  don't  know  who  you  are,  but  I  don't  believe  you 
are  Robert  Ingersoll.  Perhaps  I  could  not  know  it  even  if 
you  were.  Anyway,  there  is  a  certain  integral  consistency 
which,  whether  it  be  right  or  wrong,  a  man  must  cherish 
because  it  alone  will  ever  permit  him  to  die.  So  what  I  have 
been,  I  am;  what  I  am,  I  shall  be  until  that  instant  comes 
when  I  am  not.  And  then  I  shall  have  never  been.  How  does 
it  go?  Non  fui.  Sum.  Fui.  Non  sum" 

With  the  unlighted  cigarette  in  his  fingers  he  thought  at 
first  that  he  would  pass  on.  But  instead  he  paused  and  looked 
down  at  the  child.  It  sat  in  the  path  at  the  woman's  feet, 
surrounded  by  tiny  leaden  effigies  of  men,  some  erect  and 
some  prone.  The  overturned  and  now  empty  basket  lay  at 
one  side.  Then  the  Judge  saw  that  the  effigies  were  Roman 
soldiers  in  various  stages  of  dismemberment — some  headless, 
some  armless  and  legless — scattered  about,  lying  profoundly 
on  their  faces  or  staring  up  with  martial  and  battered  in- 
scrutability from  the  mild  and  inscrutable  dust.  On  the  exact 
center  of  each  of  the  child's  insteps  was  a  small  scar.  There 


Beyond  793 

was  a  third  scar  in  the  palm  of  its  exposed  hand,  and  as  the 
Judge  looked  down  with  quiet  and  quizzical  bemusement, 
the  child  swept  flat  the  few  remaining  figures  and  he  saw  the 
fourth  scar.  The  child  began  to  cry. 

"Shhhhhhhhh,"  the  woman  said.  She  glanced  up  at  the 
Judge,  then  she  knelt  and  set  the  soldiers  up.  The  child 
cried  steadily,  with  a  streaked  and  dirty  face,  strong,  unhur- 
ried, passionless,  without  tears.  "Look!"  the  woman  said, 
"See?  Here!  Here's  Pilate  too!  Look!"  The  child  ceased. 
Tearless,  it  sat  in  the  dust,  looking  at  the  soldiers  with  an 
expression  as  inscrutable  as  theirs,  suspended,  aldermanic, 
and  reserved.  She  swept  the  soldiers  flat.  "There!"  she  cried 
in  a  fond,  bright  voice,  "see?"  For  a  moment  longer  the 
child  sat.  Then  it  began  to  cry.  She  took  it  up  and  sat  on  the 
bench,  rocking  it  back  and  forth,  glancing  up  at  the  Judge. 
"Now,  now,"  she  said.  "Now,  now." 

"Is  he  sick?"  the  Judge  said. 

"Oh,  no.  He's  just  tired  of  his  toys,  as  children  will  get." 
She  rocked  the  child  with  an  air  fond  and  unconcerned. 
"Now,  now.  The  gentleman  is  watching  you." 

The  child  cried  steadily.  "Hasn't  he  other  toys?"  the 
Judge  said. 

"Oh,  yes.  So  many  that  I  don't  dare  walk  about  the  house 
in  the  dark.  But  he  likes  his  soldiers  the  best.  An  old  gentle- 
man who  has  lived  here  a  long  time,  they  say,  and  is  quite 
wealthy,  gave  them  to  him.  An  old  gentleman  with  a  white 
mustache  and  that  kind  of  popping  eyes  that  old  people  have 
who  eat  too  much;  I  tell  him  so.  He  has  a  footman  to  carry 
his  umbrella  and  overcoat  and  steamer  rug,  and  he  sits  here 
with  us  for  more  than  an  hour,  sometimes,  talking  and 
breathing  hard.  He  always  has  candy  or  something."  She 
looked  down  at  the  child,  her  face  brooding  and  serene.  It 
cried  steadily.  Quizzical,  bemused,  the  Judge  stood,  looking 
quietly  down  at  the  child's  scarred,  dirty  feet.  The  woman 


794  Beyond 

glanced  up  and  followed  his  look.  "You  are  looking  at  his 
scars  and  wondering  how  he  got  them,  aren't  you?  The 
other  children  did  it  one  day  when  they  were  playing.  Of 
course  they  didn't  know  they  were  going  to  hurt  him.  I 
imagine  they  were  as  surprised  as  he  was.  You  know  how 
children  are  when  they  get  too  quiet." 

"Yes,"  the  Judge  said.  "I  had  a  son  too." 

"You  have?  Why  don't  you  bring  him  here?  I'm  sure  we 
would  be  glad  to  have  him  play  with  our  soldiers  too." 

The  Judge's  teeth  glinted  quietly.  "I'm  afraid  he's  a  little 
too  big  for  toys."  He  took  the  photograph  from  the  brief- 
case. "This  was  my  son." 

The  woman  took  the  picture.  The  child  cried  steady  and 
strong.  "Why,  it's  Howard.  Why,  we  see  him  every  day.  He 
rides  past  here  every  day.  Sometimes  he  stops  and  lets  us 
ride  too.  I  walk  beside  to  hold  him  on,"  she  added,  glancing 
up.  She  showed  the  picture  to  the  child.  "Look!  See  Howard 
on  his  pony?  See?"  Without  ceasing  to  cry,  the  child  con- 
templated the  picture,  its  face  streaked  with  tears  and  dirt, 
its  expression  detached,  suspended,  as  though  it  were  living 
two  distinct  and  separate  lives  at  one  time.  She  returned  the 
picture.  "I  suppose  you  are  looking  for  him." 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said  behind  his  momentary  teeth.  He 
replaced  the  picture  carefully  in  the  briefcase,  the  unlighted 
cigarette  in  his  fingers. 

The  woman  moved  on  the  bench,  gathering  her  skirts  in 
with  invitation.  "Won't  you  sit  down?  You  will  be  sure  to 
see  him  pass  here." 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said  again.  He  looked  at  her,  quizzical, 
with  the  blurred  eyes  of  the  old.  "It's  like  this,  you  see.  He 
always  rides  the  same  pony,  you  say?" 

"Why,  yes."  She  looked  at  him  with  grave  and  tranquil 
surprise. 

"And  how  old  would  you  say  the  pony  is?" 


Beyond  795 

"Why,  I. ...  It  looks  just  the  right  size  for  him." 

"A  young  pony,  you  would  say  then? " 

"Why  .  .  .  yes.  Yes."  She  watched  him,  her  eyes  wide. 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said  again  behind  his  faint  still  teeth.  He 
closed  the  briefcase  carefully.  From  his  pocket  he  took  a 
half  dollar.  "Perhaps  he  is  tired  of  the  soldiers  too.  Perhaps 
with  this.  .  .  ." 

"Thank  you,"  she  said.  She  did  not  look  again  at  the  coin. 
"Your  face  is  so  sad.  There:  when  you  think  you  are  smiling 
it  is  sadder  than  ever.  Aren't  you  well?"  She  glanced  down 
at  his  extended  hand.  She  did  not  offer  to  take  the  coin. 
"He'd  just  lose  it,  you  see.  And  it's  so  pretty  and  bright. 
When  he  is  older,  and  can  take  care  of  small  playthings.  .  .  . 
He's  so  little  now,  you  see." 

"I  see,"  the  Judge  said.  He  put  the  coin  back  into  his 
pocket.  "Well,  I  think  I  shall—" 

"You  wait  here  with  us.  He  always  passes  here.  You'll 
find  him  quicker  that  way." 

"Ah,"  the  Judge  said.  "On  the  pony,  the  same  pony.  You 
see,  by  that  token,  the  pony  would  have  to  be  thirty  years 
old.  That  pony  died  at  eighteen,  six  years  unridden,  in  my 
lot.  That  was  twelve  years  ago.  So  I  had  better  get  on." 

And  again  it  was  quite  unpleasant.  It  should  have  been 
doubly  so,  what  with  the  narrow  entrance  and  the  fact  that, 
while  the  other  time  he  was  moving  with  the  crowd,  this 
time  he  must  fight  his  way  inch  by  inch  against  it.  "But  at 
least  I  know  where  I  am  going,"  he  thought,  beneath  his 
crushed  hat,  his  stick  and  briefcase  dragging  at  his  arms; 
"which  I  did  not  seem  to  know  before."  But  he  was  free  at 
last,  and  looking  up  at  the  clock  on  the  courthouse,  as  he 
never  failed  to  do  on  descending  his  office  stairs,  he  saw  that 
he  had  a  full  hour  before  supper  would  be  ready,  before 
the  neighbors  woald  be  ready  to  mark  his  clocklike  passing. 

"I  shall  have  time  to  go  the  cemetery,"  he  thought,  and 


796  Beyond 

looking  down  at  the  raw  and  recent  excavation,  he  swore 
with  fretful  annoyance,  for  some  of  the  savage  clods  had 
fallen  or  been  thrown  upon  the  marble  slab  beside  it.  "Damn 
that  Pettigrew,"  he  said.  "He  should  have  seen  to  this.  I 
told  him  I  wanted  the  two  of  them  as  close  as  possible,  but 
at  least  I  thought  that  he.  .  .  ."  Kneeling,  he  tried  to  remove 
the  earth  which  had  fallen  upon  the  slab.  But  it  was  beyond 
his  strength  to  do  more  than  clear  away  that  which  partially 
obscured  the  lettering:  Howard  Allison  11.  April  -j,  7^05. 
August  22,  1913,  and  the  quietly  cryptic  Gothic  lettering  at 
the  foot:  Auf  Wiedersehen,  Little  Boy.  He  continued  to 
smooth,  to  stroke  the  letters  after  the  earth  was  gone,  his 
face  bemused,  quiet,  as  he  spoke  to  the  man  who  Mother- 
shed  had  said  was  Ingersoll,  "You  see,  if  I  could  believe  that 
I  shall  see  and  touch  him  again,  I  shall  not  have  lost  him. 
And  if  I  have  not  lost  him,  I  shall  never  have  had  a  son. 
Because  I  am  I  through  bereavement  and  because  of  it.  I  do 
not  know  what  I  was  nor  what  I  shall  be.  But  because  of 
death,  I  know  that  I  am.  And  that  is  all  the  immortality  of 
which  intellect  is  capable  and  flesh  should  desire.  Anything 
else  is  for  peasants,  clods,  who  could  never  have  loved  a  son 
well  enough  to  have  lost  him."  His  face  broke,  myriad, 
quizzical,  while  his  hand  moved  lightly  upon  the  quiet  letter- 
ing. "No.  I  do  not  require  that.  To  lie  beside  him  will  be 
sufficient  for  me.  There  will  be  a  wall  of  dust  between  us: 
that  is  true,  and  he  is  already  dust  these  twenty  years.  But 
some  day  I  shall  be  dust  too.  And — "  he  spoke  now  firmly, 
quietly,  with  a  kind  of  triumph:  "who  is  he  who  will  affirm 
that  there  must  be  a  web  of  flesh  and  bone  to  hold  the  shape 
of  love?" 

Now  it  was  late.  "Probably  they  are  setting  their  clocks 
back  at  this  very  moment,"  he  thought,  pacing  along  the 
street  toward  his  home.  Already  he  should  have  been  hearing 
the  lawn  mower,  and  then  in  the  instant  of  exasperation  at 


Beyond  797 

Jake,  he  remarked  the  line  of  motor  cars  before  his  gate  and 
a  sudden  haste  came  upon  him.  But  not  so  much  but  what, 
looking  at  the  vehicle  at  the  head  of  the  line,  he  cursed  again. 
"Damn  that  Pettigrew!  I  told  him,  in  the  presence  of  wit- 
nesses when  I  signed  my  will,  that  I  would  not  be  hauled 
feet  first  through  Jefferson  at  forty  miles  an  hour.  That  if  he 
couldn't  find  me  a  decent  pair  of  horses. ...  I  am  a  good  mind 
to  come  back  and  haunt  him,  as  Jake  would  have  me  do." 

But  the  haste,  the  urgency,  was  upon  him.  He  hurried 
round  to  the  back  door  (he  remarked  that  the  lawn  was 
freshly  and  neatly  trimmed,  as  though  done  that  day)  and 
entered.  Then  he  could  smell  the  flowers  faintly  and  hear  the 
voice;  he  had  just  time  to  slip  out  of  his  overcoat  and  pajamas 
and  leave  them  hanging  neatly  in  the  closet,  and  cross  the  hall 
into  the  odor  of  cut  flowers  and  the  drone  of  the  voice,  and 
slip  into  his  clothes.  They  had  been  recently  pressed,  and  his 
face  had  been  shaved  too.  Nevertheless  they  were  his  own, 
and  he  fitted  himself  to  the  olden  and  familiar  embrace 
which  no  iron  could  change,  with  the  same  lascivious  eager- 
ness with  which  he  shaped  his  limbs  to  the  bedclothes  on  a 
winter  night. 

"Ah/'  he  said  to  the  man  who  Mothershed  had  said  was 
Ingersoll,  "this  is  best,  after  all.  An  old  man  is  never  at  home 
save  in  his  own  garments:  his  own  old  thinking  and  beliefs; 
old  hands  and  feet,  elbow,  knee,  shoulder  which  he  knows 
will  fit." 

Now  the  light  vanished  with  a  mute,  faint,  decorous  hol- 
low sound  which  drove  for  a  fading  instant  down  upon  him 
the  dreadful,  macabre  smell  of  slain  flowers;  at  the  same  time 
he  became  aware  that  the  droning  voice  had  ceased.  "In  my 
own  house  too,"  he  thought,  waiting  for  the  smell  of  the 
flowers  to  fade;  "yet  I  did  not  once  think  to  notice  who  was 
speaking,  nor  when  he  ceased."  Then  he  heard  or  felt  the 
decorous  scuffing  of  feet  about  him,  and  he  lay  in  the  close 


798  Beyond 

dark,  his  hands  folded  upon  his  breast  as  he  slept,  as  the  old 
sleep,  waiting  for  the  moment.  It  came.  He  said  quietly 
aloud,  quizzical,  humorous,  peaceful,  as  he  did  each  night 
in  his  bed  in  his  lonely  and  peaceful  room  when  a  last  full 
exhalation  had  emptied  his  body  of  waking  and  he  seemecj 
for  less  than  an  instant  to  look  about  him  from  the  portal  of 
sleep,  "Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  you  may  proceed." 


Black  Music 


THIS  is  about  Wilfred  Midgleston,  fortune's  favorite,  chosen 
of  the  gods.  For  fifty-six  years,  a  clotting  of  the  old  gutful 
compulsions  and  circumscriptions  of  clocks  and  bells,  he  met 
walking  the  walking  image  of  a  small,  snuffy,  nondescript 
man  whom  neither  man  nor  woman  had  ever  turned  to  look 
at  twice,  in  the  monotonous  shopwindows  of  monotonous 
hard  streets.  Then  his  apotheosis  soared  glaring,  and  to  him 
at  least  not  brief,  across  the  unfathomed  sky  above  his  lost 
earth  like  that  of  Elijah  of  old. 

I  found  him  in  Rincon,  which  is  not  large;  less  large  even 
than  one  swaybacked  tanker  looming  above  the  steel  docks 
of  the  Universal  Oil  Company  and  longer  than  the  palm- 
and  abode-lined  street  paved  with  dust  marked  by  splayed 
naked  feet  where  the  violent  shade  lies  by  day  and  the  violent 
big  stars  by  night. 

"He  came  from  the  States,"  they  told  me.  "Been  here 
twenty-five  years.  He  hasn't  changed  at  all  since  the  day  he 
arrived,  except  that  the  clothes  he  came  in  have  wore  out 
and  he  hasn't  learned  more  than  ten  words  of  Spanish."  That 
was  the  only  way  you  could  tell  that  he  was  an  old  man,  that 
he  was  getting  along:  he  hadn't  learned  to  speak  hardly  a 
word  of  the  language  of  the  people  with  whom  he  had  lived 
twenty-five  years  and  among  whom  it  appeared  that  he 
intended  to  die  and  be  buried.  Appeared:  he  had  no  job:  a 

799 


8oo  Beyond 

mild,  hopelessly  mild  man  who  looked  like  a  book-keeper 
in  a  George  Ade  fable  dressed  as  a  tramp  for  a  Presbyterian 
social  charade  in  1890,  and  quite  happy. 

Quite  happy  and  quite  poor.  "He's  either  poor,  or  he's 
putting  up  an  awful  front.  But  they  can't  touch  him  now. 
We  told  him  that  a  long  time  ago,  when  he  first  come  here. 
We  said,  'Why  don't  you  go  on  and  spend  it,  enjoy  it? 
They've  probably  forgot  all  about  it  by  now.'  Because  if  I 
went  to  the  trouble  and  risk  of  stealing  and  then  the  hard- 
ship of  having  to  live  the  rest  of  my  life  in  a  hole  like  this, 
I'd  sure  enjoy  what  I  went  to  the  trouble  to  get." 

"Enjoy  what?"  I  said. 

"The  money.  The  money  he  stole  and  had  to  come  down 
here.  What  else  do  you  reckon  he  would  come  down  here 
and  stay  twenty-five  years  for?  just  to  look  at  the  country?" 

"He  doesn't  act  and  look  very  rich,"  I  said. 

"That's  a  fact.  But  a  fellow  like  that.  His  face.  I  don't 
guess  he'd  have  judgment  enough  to  steal  good.  And  not 
judgment  enough  to  keep  it,  after  he  got  it  stole.  I  guess 
you  are  right.  I  guess  all  he  got  out  of  it  was  the  running 
away  and  the  blame.  While  somebody  back  there  where  he 
run  from  is  spending  the  money  and  singing  loud  in  the  choir 
twice  a  week." 

"Is  that  what  happens?"  I  said. 

"You're  damned  right  it  is.  Some  damn  fellow  that's  too 
rich  to  afford  to  be  caught  stealing  sets  back  and  leaves  a 
durn  fool  that  never  saw  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  before 
in  his  life  at  one  time,  pull  his  chestnuts  for  him.  Twenty- 
five  hundred  seems  a  hell  of  a  lot  when  somebody  else  owns 
it.  But  when  you  have  got  to  pick  up  overnight  and  run  a 
thousand  miles,  paying  all  your  expenses,  how  long  do  you 
think  twenty-five  hundred  will  last?" 

"How  long  did  it  last?"  I  said. 

"Just  about  two  years*  by  God.  And  then  there  I — "  He 


Black  Music  80 1 

stopped.  He  glared  at  me,  who  had  paid  for  the  coffee  and 
the  bread  which  rested  upon  the  table  between  us.  He  glared 
at  me.  "Who  do  you  think  you  are,  anyway?  Wm.  J. 
Burns?" 

"I  don't  think  so.  I  meant  no  offense.  I  just  was  curious 
to  know  how  long  his  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  lasted 
him." 

"Who  said  he  had  twenty-five  hundred  dollars?  I  was  just 
citing  an  example.  He  never  had  nothing,  not  even  twenty- 
five  hundred  cents.  Or  if  he  did,  he  hid  it  and  it's  stayed  hid 
ever  since.  He  come  here  sponging  on  us  white  men,  and 
when  we  got  tired  of  it  he  took  to  sponging  on  these  Spigs. 
And  a  white  man  has  got  pretty  low  when  he's  got  so  stingy 
with  his  stealings  that  he  will  live  with  Spiggotties  before 
he'll  dig  up  his  own  money  and  live  like  a  white  man." 

"Maybe  he  never  stole  any  money,"  I  said. 

"What's  he  doing  down  here,  then?" 

"I'm  down  here." 

"I  don't  know  you  ain't  run,  either." 

"That's  so,"  I  said.  "You  don't  know." 

"Sure  I  don't.  Because  that's  your  business.  Every  man 
has  got  his  own  private  affairs,  and  no  man  respects  them 
quicker  than  I  do.  But  I  know  that  a  man,  a  white  man,  has 
got  to  have  durn  good  reason. . . .  Maybe  he  ain't  got  it  now. 
But  you  can't  tell  me  a  white  man  would  come  down  here  to 
live  and  die  without  no  reason." 

"And  you  consider  that  stealing  money  is  the  only 
reason?" 

He  looked  at  me,  with  disgust  and  a  little  contempt.  "Did 
you  bring  a  nurse  with  you?  Because  you  ought  to  have, 
until  you  learn  enough  about  human  nature  to  travel  alone. 
Because  human  nature,  I  don't  care  who  he  is  nor  how  loud 
he  sings  in  church,  will  steal  whenever  he  thinks  he  can  get 
away  with  it.  If  you  ain't  learned  that  yet,  you  better  go 


802  Beyond 

back  home  and  stay  there  where  your  folks  can  take  care 
of  you." 

But  I  was  watching  Midgleston  across  the  street.  He  was 
standing  beside  a  clump  of  naked  children  playing  in  the 
shady  dust:  a  small,  snuffy  man  in  a  pair  of  dirty  drill 
trousers  which  had  not  been  made  for  him.  "Whatever  it  is," 
I  said,  "it  doesn't  seem  to  worry  him." 

"Oh.  Him.  He  ain't  got  sense  enough  to  know  he  needs 
to  worry  about  nothing." 

Quite  poor  and  quite  happy.  His  turn  to  have  coffee  and 
bread  with  me  came  at  last.  No:  that's  wrong.  I  at  last 
succeeded  in  evading  his  other  down-at-heel  compatriots 
like  my  first  informant;  men  a  little  soiled  and  usually  un- 
shaven, who  were  unavoidable  in  the  cantinas  and  coffee 
shops,  loud,  violent,  maintaining  the  superiority  of  the  white 
race  and  their  own  sense  of  injustice  and  of  outrage  among 
the  grave  white  teeth,  the  dark,  courteous,  fatal,  speculative 
alien  faces,  and  had  Midgleston  to  breakfast  with  me.  I  had 
to  invite  him  and  then  insist.  He  was  on  hand  at  the  ap- 
pointed hour,  in  the  same  dirty  trousers,  but  his  shirt  was 
now  white  and  whole  and  ironed,  and  he  had  shaved.  He 
accepted  the  meal  without  servility,  without  diffidence, 
without  eagerness.  Yet  when  he  raised  the  handleless  bowl 
I  watched  his  hands  tremble  so  that  for  a  time  he  could  not 
make  junction  with  his  lips.  He  saw  me  watching  his  hands 
and  he  looked  at  my  face  for  the  first  time  and  I  saw  that  his 
eyes  were  the  eyes  of  an  old  man.  He  said,  with  just  a  trace 
of  apology  for  his  clumsiness:  "I  ain't  et  nothing  to  speak 
of  in  a  day  or  so." 

"Haven't  eaten  in  two  days?"  I  said. 

"This  hot  climate.  A  fellow  don't  need  so  much.  Feels 
better  for  not  eating  so  much.  That  was  the  hardest  trouble 
I  had  when  I  first  come  here.  I  was  always  a  right  hearty 
eater  back  home." 


Black  Music  803 

"Oh,"  I  said.  I  had  meat  brought  then,  he  protesting.  But 
he  ate  the  meat,  ate  all  of  it.  "Just  look  at  me,"  he  said.  "I 
ain't  et  this  much  breakfast  in  twenty-five  years.  But  when 
a  fellow  gets  along,  old  habits  are  hard  to  break.  No,  sir.  Not 
since  I  left  home  have  I  et  this  much  for  breakfast." 

"Do  you  plan  to  go  back  home?"  I  said. 

"I  guess  not;  no.  This  suits  me  here.  I  can  live  simple  here. 
Not  all  cluttered  up  with  things.  My  own  boss  (I  used  to  be 
an  architect's  draughtsman)  all  day  long.  No.  I  don't  guess 
I'll  go  back."  He  looked  at  me.  His  face  was  intent,  watch- 
ful, like  that  of  a  child  about  to  tell  something,  divulge 
itself.  "You  wouldn't  guess  where  I  sleep  in  a  hundred 
years." 

"No.  I  don't  expect  I  could.  Where  do  you  sleep?" 

"I  sleep  in  that  attic  over  that  cantina  yonder.  The  house 
belongs  to  the  Company,  and  Mrs.  Widrington,  Mr.  Wid- 
rington's  wife,  the  manager's  wife,  she  lets  me  sleep  in  the 
attic.  It's  high  and  quiet,  except  for  a  few  rats.  But  when  in 
Rome,  you  got  to  act  like  a  Roman,  I  say.  Only  I  wouldn't 
name  this  country  Rome;  I'd  name  it  Ratville.  But  that  ain't 
it."  He  watched  me.  "You'd  never  guess  it  in  the  world." 

"No,"  I  said.  "I'd  never  guess  it." 

He  watched  me.  "It's  my  bed." 

"Your  bed?" 

"I  told  you  you'd  never  guess  it." 

"No,"  I  said.  "I  give  up  now." 

"My  bed  is  a  roll  of  tarred  roofing  paper." 

"A  roll  of  what?" 

"Tarred  roofing  paper."  His  face  was  bright,  peaceful; 
his  voice  quiet,  full  of  gleeful  quiet.  "At  night  I  just  unroll 
it  and  go  to  bed  and  the  next  a.  m.  I  just  roll  it  back  up  and 
lean  it  in  the  corner.  And  then  my  room  is  all  cleaned  up 
for  the  day.  Ain't  that  fine?  No  sheets,  no  laundry,  no  noth- 


804  Beyond 

ing.  Just  roll  up  my  whole  bed  like  an  umbrella  and  carry 
it  under  my  arm  when  I  want  to  move." 

"Oh,"  I  said.  "You  have  no  family,  then." 

"Not  with  me.  No." 

"You  have  a  family  back  home,  then?" 

He  was  quite  quiet.  He  did  not  feign  to  be  occupied  with 
something  on  the  table.  Neither  did  his  eyes  go  blank, 
though  he  mused  peacefully  for  a  moment.  "Yes.  I  have  a 
wife  back  home.  Likely  this  climate  wouldn't  suit  her.  She 
wouldn't  like  it  here.  But  she  is  all  right.  I  always  kept  my 
insurance  paid  up;  I  carried  a  right  smart  more  than  you 
would  figure  a  architect's  draughtsman  on  a  seventy-five- 
dollar  salary  would  keep  up.  If  I  told  you  the  amount,  you 
would  be  surprised.  She  helped  me  to  save;  she  is  a  good 
woman.  So  she's  got  that.  She  earned  it.  And  besides,  I  don't 
need  money." 

"So  you  don't  plan  to  go  back  home." 

"No,"  he  said.  He  watched  me;  again  his  expression  was 
that  of  a  child  about  to  tell  on  itself.  "You  see,  I  done  some- 
thing." 

"Oh.  I  see." 

He  talked  quietly:  "It  ain't  what  you  think.  Not  what 
them  others — "  he  jerked  his  head,  a  brief  embracing  gesture 
— "think.  I  never  stole  any  money.  Like  I  always  told  Mar- 
tha— she  is  my  wife;  Mrs.  Midgleston — money  is  too  easy 
to  earn  to  risk  the  bother  of  trying  to  steal  it.  All  you  got 
to  do  is  work.  'Have  we  ever  suffered  for  it?'  I  said  to  her. 
'Of  course,  we  don't  live  like  some.  But  some  is  born  for  one 
thing  and  some  is  born  for  another  thing.  And  the  fellow 
that  is  born  a  tadpole,  when  he  tries  to  be  a  salmon  all  he  is 
going  to  be  is  a  sucker.'  That's  what  I  would  tell  her.  And 
she  done  her  part  and  we  got  along  right  well;  if  I  told  you 
how  much  life  insurance  I  carried,  you  would  be  surprised. 
No;  she  ain't  suffered  any.  Don't  you  think  that." 


Black  Music  805 

"No,"  I  said. 

"But  then  I  done  something.  Yes,  sir." 

"Did  what?  Can  you  tell?" 

"Something.  Something  that  ain't  in  the  lot  and  plan  for 
mortal  human  man  to  do." 

"What  was  it  you  did?" 

He  looked  at  me.  "I  ain't  afraid  to  tell.  I  ain't  never  been 
afraid  to  tell.  It  was  just  that  these  folks — "  again  he  jerked 
his  head  slightly — "wouldn't  have  understood.  Wouldn't 
have  knowed  what  I  was  talking  about.  But  you  will.  You'll 
know."  He  watched  my  face.  "At  one  time  in  my  life  I  was 
a  farn." 

"A  farn?" 

"Farn.  Don't  you  remember  in  the  old  books  where  they 
would  drink  the  red  grape  wine,  how  now  and  then  them 
rich  Roman  and  Greek  senators  would  up  and  decide  to  tear 
up  a  old  grape  vineyard  or  a  wood  away  off  somewheres 
the  gods  used,  and  build  a  summer  house  to  hold  their  frolics 
in  where  the  police  wouldn't  hear  them,  and  how  the  gods 
wouldn't  hear  them,  and  how  the  gods  wouldn't  like  it  about 
them  married  women  running  around  nekkid,  and  so  the 
woods  god  named — named—" 

"Pan,"  I  said. 

"That's  it.  Pan.  And  he  would  send  them  little  fellows 
that  was  half  a  goat  to  scare  them  out — " 

"Oh,"  I  said.  "A  faun." 

"That's  it.  A  farn.  That's  what  I  was  once.  I  was  raised 
religious;  I  have  never  used  tobacco  or  liquor;  and  I  don't 
think  now  that  I  am  going  to  hell.  But  the  Bible  says  that 
them  little  men  were  myths.  But  I  know  they  ain't,  and  so 
I  have  been  something  outside  the  lot  and  plan  for  mortal 
human  man  to  be.  Because  for  one  day  in  my  life  I  was  a 
farn." 


806  Beyond 

II 

IN  THE  OFFICE  where  Midgleston  was  a  draughtsman  they 
would  discuss  the  place  and  Mrs.  Van  Dyming's  unique 
designs  upon  it  while  they  were  manufacturing  the  plans, 
the  blue  prints.  The  tract  consisted  of  a  meadow,  a  southern 
hillside  where  grapes  grew,  and  a  woodland.  "Good  land, 
they  said.  But  wouldn't  anybody  live  on  it." 

"Why  not?"  I  said. 

"Because  things  happened  on  it.  They  told  how  a  long 
time  ago  a  New  England  fellow  settled  on  it  and  cleaned  up 
the  grape  vines  to  market  the  grapes.  Going  to  make  jelly 
or  something.  He  made  a  good  crop,  but  when  time  came 
to  gather  them,  he  couldn't  gather  them." 

"Why  couldn't  he  gather  them?" 

"Because  his  leg  was  broke.  He  had  some  goats,  and  a  old 
ram  that  he  couldn't  keep  out  of  the  grape  lot.  He  tried 
every  way  he  knew,  but  he  couldn't  keep  the  ram  out.  And 
when  the  man  went  in  to  gather  the  grapes  to  make  jelly, 
the  ram  ran  over  him  and  knocked  him  down  and  broke 
his  leg.  So  the  next  spring  the  New  England  fellow  moved 
away. 

"And  they  told  about  another  man,  a  I-talian  lived  the 
other  side  of  the  woods.  He  would  gather  the  grapes  and 
make  wine  out  of  them,  and  he  built  up  a  good  wine  trade. 
After  a  while  his  trade  got  so  good  that  he  had  more  trade 
than  he  did  wine.  So  he  began  to  doctor  the  wine  up  with 
water  and  alcohol,  and  he  was  getting  rich.  At  first  he  used 
a  horse  and  wagon  to  bring  the  grapes  home  on  his  private 
road  through  the  woods,  but  he  got  rich  and  he  bought  a 
truck,  and  he  doctored  the  wine  a  little  more  and  he  got 
richer  and  he  bought  a  bigger  truck.  And  one  night  a  storm 
come  up  while  he  was  away  from  home,  gathering  the 
grapes,  and  he  didn't  get  home  that  night.  The  next  a.  m. 


Black  Music  807 

his  wife  found  him.  That  big  truck  had  skidded  off  the  road 
and  turned  over  and  he  was  dead  under  it." 

"I  don't  see  how  that  reflected  on  the  place,"  I  said. 

"All  right.  I'm  just  telling  it.  The  neighbor  folks  thought 
different,  anyway.  But  maybe  that  was  because  they  were 
not  anything  but  country  folks.  Anyway,  none  of  them 
would  live  on  it,  and  so  Mr.  Van  Dyming  bought  it  cheap. 
For  Mrs.  Van  Dyming.  To  play  with.  Even  before  we  had 
the  plans  finished,  she  would  take  a  special  trainload  of  them 
down  there  to  look  at  it,  and  not  even  a  cabin  on  the  place 
then,  not  nothing  but  the  woods  and  that  meadow  growed 
up  in  grass  tall  as  a  man,  and  that  hillside  where  them  grapes 
grew  tangled.  But  she  would  stand  there,  with  them  other 
rich  Park  Avenue  folks,  showing  them  how  here  would  be 
the  community  house  built  to  look  like  the  Coliseum  and 
the  community  garage  yonder  made  to  look  like  it  was  a 
Acropolis,  and  how  the  grape  vine  would  be  grubbed  up 
entire  and  the  hillside  terraced  to  make  a  outdoors  theatre 
where  they  could  act  in  one  another's  plays;  and  how  the 
meadow  would  be  a  lake  with  one  of  them  Roman  barges 
towed  back  and  forth  on  it  by  a  gas  engine,  with  mattresses 
and  things  for  them  to  lay  down  on  while  they  et." 

"What  did  Mr.  Van  Dyming  say  about  all  this?" 

"I  don't  reckon  he  said  anything.  He  was  married  to  her, 
you  know.  He  just  says,  one  time,  'Now,  Mattie — '  and  she 
turns  on  him,  right  there  in  the  office,  before  us  all,  and 
says,  'Don't  you  call  me  Mattie.' "  He  was  quiet  for  a  time. 
Then  he  said:  "She  wasn't  born  on  Park  Avenue.  Nor  West- 
chester  neither.  She  was  born  in  Poughkeepsie.  Her  name 
was  Lumpkin. 

"But  you  wouldn't  know  it,  now.  When  her  picture 
would  be  in  the  paper  with  all  them  Van  Dyming  diamonds, 
it  wouldn't  say  how  Mrs.  Carleton  Van  Dyming  used  to  be 
Miss  Mathilda  Lumpkin  of  Poughkeepsie.  No,  sir.  Even  a 


8o8  Beyond 

newspaper  wouldn't  dared  say  that  to  her.  And  I  reckon  Mr. 
Van  Dyming  never  either,  unless  he  forgot  like  the  day  in 
the  office.  So  she  says,  'Don't  you  call  me  Mattie'  and  he 
hushed  and  he  just  stood  there — a  little  man;  he  looked  kind 
of  like  me,  they  said — tapping  one  of  them  little  highprice 
cigars  on  his  glove,  with  his  face  looking  like  he  had  thought 
about  smiling  a  little  and  then  he  decided  it  wasn't  even  any 
use  in  that. 

"They  built  the  house  first.  It  was  right  nice;  Mr.  Van 
Dyming  planned  it.  I  guess  maybe  he  said  more  than  just 
Mattie  that  time.  And  I  guess  that  maybe  Mrs.  Van  Dyming 
never  said,  'Don't  you  call  me  Mattie'  that  time.  Maybe  he 
promised  her  he  wouldn't  interfere  with  the  rest  of  it.  Any- 
way, the  house  was  right  nice.  It  was  on  the  hill,  kind  of  in 
the  edge  of  the  woods.  It  was  logs.  But  it  wasn't  too  much 
logs.  It  belonged  there,  fitted.  Logs  where  logs  ought  to  be, 
and  good  city  bricks  and  planks  where  logs  ought  not  to  be. 
It  was  there.  Belonged  there.  It  was  all  right.  Not  to  make 
anybody  mad.  Can  you  see  what  I  mean?" 

"Yes.  I  think  I  can  see  what  you  mean." 

"But  the  rest  of  it  he  never  interfered  with;  her  and  her 
Acropolises  and  all."  He  looked  at  me  quite  intently.  "Some- 
times I  thought.  .  .  ." 

"What?  Thought  what?" 

"I  told  you  him  and  me  were  the  same  size,  looked  kind 
of  alike."  He  watched  me.  "Like  we  could  have  talked,  for 
all  of  him  and  his  Park  Avenue  clothes  and  his  banks  and  his 
railroads,  and  me  a  seventy-five  a  week  draughtsman  living 
in  Brooklyn,  and  not  young  neither.  Like  I  could  have  said 
to  him  what  was  in  my  mind  at  any  time,  and  he  could  have 
said  to  me  what  was  in  his  mind  at  any  time,  and  we  would 
have  understood  one  another.  That's  why  sometimes  I 
thought. . . ."  He  looked  at  me,  intently,  not  groping  exactly. 
"Sometimes  men  have  more  sense  than  women.  They  know 


Black  Music  809 

what  to  leave  be,  and  women  don't  always  know  that.  He 
don't  need  to  be  religious  in  the  right  sense  or  religious  in 
the  wrong  sense.  Nor  religious  at  all."  He  looked  at  me, 
intently.  After  a  while  he  said,  in  a  decisive  tone,  a  tone  of 
decisive  irrevocation:  "This  will  seem  silly  to  you." 

"No.  Of  course  not.  Of  course  it  won't." 

He  looked  at  me.  Then  he  looked  away.  "No.  It  will  just 
sound  silly.  Just  take  up  your  time." 

"No.  I  swear  it  won't.  I  want  to  hear  it.  I  am  not  a  man 
who  believes  that  people  have  learned  everything."  He 
watched  me.  "It  has  taken  a  million  years  to  make  what  is, 
they  tell  us,"  I  said.  "And  a  man  can  be  made  and  worn  out 
and  buried  in  threescore  and  ten.  So  how  can  a  man  be 
expected  to  know  even  enough  to  doubt?" 

"That's  right,"  he  said.  "That's  sure  right." 

"What  was  it  you  sometimes  thought?" 

"Sometimes  I  thought  that,  if  it  hadn't  been  me,  they 
would  have  used  him.  Used  Mr.  Van  Dyming  like  they 
used  me." 

"They?"  We  looked  at  one  another,  quite  sober,  quite 
quiet. 

"Yes.  The  ones  that  used  that  ram  on  that  New  England 
fellow,  and  that  storm  on  that  I-talian." 

"Oh.  Would  have  used  Mr.  Van  Dyming  in  your  place, 
if  you  had  not  been  there  at  the  time.  How  did  they  use 
you?" 

"That's  what  I  am  going  to  tell.  How  I  was  chosen  and 
used.  I  did  not  know  that  I  had  been  chosen.  But  I  was 
chosen  to  do  something  beyond  the  lot  and  plan  for  mortal 
human  man.  It  was  the  day  that  Mr.  Carter  (he  was  the  boss, 
the  architect)  got  the  hurryup  message  from  Mrs.  Van 
Dyming.  I  think  I  told  you  the  house  was  already  built,  and 
there  was  a  big  party  of  them  down  there  where  they  could 
watch  the  workmen  building  the  Coliseums  and  the  Acropo- 


8  io  Beyond 

lises.  So  the  hurryup  call  came.  She  wanted  the  plans  for  the 
theatre,  the  one  that  was  to  be  on  the  hillside  where  the 
grapes  grew.  She  was  going  to  build  it  first,  so  the  company 
could  set  and  watch  them  building  the  Acropolises  and 
Coliseums.  She  had  already  begun  to  grub  up  the  grape  vines, 
and  Mr.  Carter  put  the  theatre  prints  in  a  portfolio  and  give 
me  the  weekend  off  to  take  them  down  there  to  her." 

"Where  was  the  place?" 

"I  don't  know.  It  was  in  the  mountains,  the  quiet  moun- 
tains where  never  many  lived.  It  was  a  kind  of  green  air, 
chilly  too,  and  a  wind.  When  it  blew  through  them  pines  it 
sounded  kind  of  like  a  organ,  only  it  didn't  sound  tame  like 
a  organ.  Not  tame;  that's  how  it  sounded.  But  I  don't  know 
where  it  was.  Mr.  Carter  had  the  ticket  all  ready  and  he  said 
it  would  be  somebody  to  meet  me  when  the  train  stopped. 

"So  I  telephoned  Martha  and  I  went  home  to  get  ready. 
When  I  got  home,  she  had  my  Sunday  suit  all  pressed  and 
my  shoes  shined.  I  didn't  see  any  use  in  that,  since  I  was  just 
going  to  take  the  plans  and  come  back.  But  Martha  said  how 
I  had  told  her  it  was  company  there.  'And  you  are  going  to 
look  as  nice  as  any  of  them,'  she  says.  Tor  all  they  are  rich 
and  get  into  the  papers.  You're  just  as  good  as  they  are.' 
That  was  the  last  thing  she  said  when  I  got  on  the  train,  in 
my  Sunday  suit,  with  the  portfolio:  'You're  just  as  good  as 
they  are,  even  if  they  do  get  into  the  papers.'  And  then  it 
started." 

"What  started?  The  train?" 

"No.  It.  The  train  had  been  running  already  a  good  while; 
we  were  out  in  the  country  now.  I  didn't  know  then  that 
I  had  been  chosen.  I  was  just  setting  there  in  the  train,  with 
the  portfolio  on  my  knees  where  I  could  take  care  of  it. 
Even  when  I  went  back  to  the  ice  water  I  didn't  know  that 
I  had  been  chosen.  I  carried  the  portfolio  with  me  and  I  was 
standing  there,  looking  out  the  window  and  drinking  out  of 


Black  Music  8 1 1 

the  little  paper  cup.  There  was  a  bank  running  along  by  the 
train  then,  with  a  white  fence  on  it,  and  I  could  see  animals 
inside  the  fence,  but  the  train  was  going  too  fast  to  tell  what 
kind  of  animals  they  were. 

"So  I  had  filled  the  cup  again  and  I  was  drinking,  looking 
out  at  the  bank  and  the  fence  and  the  animals  inside  the 
fence,  when  all  of  a  sudden  it  felt  like  I  had  been  thrown 
off  the  earth.  I  could  see  the  bank  and  the  fence  go  whirling 
away.  And  then  I  saw  it.  And  just  as  I  saw  it,  it  was  like  it 
had  kind  of  exploded  inside  my  head.  Do  you  know  what  it 
was  I  saw?" 

"What  was  it  you  saw?" 

He  watched  me.  "I  saw  a  face.  In  the  air,  looking  at  me 
across  that  white  fence  on  top  of  the  bank.  It  was  not  a 
man's  face,  because  it  had  horns,  and  it  was  not  a  goat's 
face  because  it  had  a  beard  and  it  was  looking  at  me  with 
eyes  like  a  man  and  its  mouth  was  open  like  it  was  saying 
something  to  me  when  it  exploded  inside  my  head." 

"Yes.  And  then  what?  What  did  you  do  next?" 

"You  are  saying  'He  saw  a  goat  inside  that  fence.'  I  know. 
But  I  didn't  ask  you  to  believe.  Remember  that.  Because  I 
am  twenty-five  years  past  bothering  if  folks  believe  me  or 
not.  That's  enough  for  me.  And  I  guess  that's  all  anything 
amounts  to." 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "What  did  you  do  then?" 

"Then  I  was  laying  down,  with  my  face  all  wet  and  my 
mouth  and  throat  feeling  like  it  was  on  fire.  The  man  was 
just  taking  the  bottle  away  from  my  mouth  (there  were  two 
men  there,  and  the  porter  and  the  conductor)  and  I  tried  to 
sit  up.  'That's  whiskey  in  that  bottle,'  I  said. 

"  'Why,  sure  not,  doc,'  the  man  said.  'You  know  I  wouldn't 
be  giving  whiskey  to  a  man  like  you.  Anybody  could  tell 
by  looking  at  you  that  you  never  took  a  drink  in  your  life. 
Did  you?'  I  told  him  I  hadn't.  'Sure  you  haven't,'  he  said.  'A 


8iz  Beyond 

man  could  tell  by  the  way  it  took  that  curve  to  throw  you 
down  that  you  belonged  to  the  ladies'  temperance.  You  sure 
took  a  bust  on  the  head,  though.  How  do  you  feel  now? 
Here,  take  another  little  shot  of  this  tonic.' 

"  'I  think  that's  whiskey,'  I  said. 

"And  was  it  whiskey?" 

"I  dont  know.  I  have  forgotten.  Maybe  I  knew  then. 
Maybe  I  knew  what  it  was  when  I  took  another  dose  of  it. 
But  that  didn't  matter,  because  it  had  already  started  then." 

"The  whiskey  had  already  started?" 

"No.  It.  It  was  stronger  than  whiskey.  Like  it  was  drinking 
out  of  the  bottle  and  not  me.  Because  the  men  held  the 
bottle  up  and  looked  at  it  and  said,  'You  sure  drink  it  like  it 
ain't  whiskey,  anyway.  You'll  sure  know  soon  if  it  is  or  not, 
won't  you?' 

"When  the  train  stopped  where  the  ticket  said,  it  was  all 
green,  the  light  was,  and  the  mountains.  The  wagon  was 
there,  and  the  two  men  when  they  helped  me  down  from 
the  train  and  handed  me  the  portfolio,  and  I  stood  there  and 
I  said,  'Let  her  rip.'  That's  what  I  said:  'Let  her  rip';  and  the 
two  men  looking  at  me  like  you  are  looking  at  me." 

"How  looking  at  you?" 

"Yes.  But  you  dont  have  to  believe.  And  I  told  them  to 
wait  while  I  got  the  whistle — " 

"Whistle?" 

"There  was  a  store  there,  too.  The  store  and  the  depot, 
and  then  the  mountains  and  the  green  cold  without  any  sun, 
and  the  dust  kind  of  pale  looking  where  the  wagon  was 
standing.  Then  we — " 

"But  the  whistle,"  I  said. 

"I  bought  it  in  the  store.  It  was  a  tin  one,  with  holes  in 
it.  I  couldn't  seem  to  get  the  hang  of  it.  So  I  threw  the 
portfolio  into  the  wagon  and  I  said,  'Let  her  rip.'  That  was 
what  I  said.  One  of  them  took  the  portfolio  out  of  the  wagon 


Black  Music  813 

and  gave  it  back  to  me  and  said,  'Say,  doc,  ain't  this  valuable?' 
and  I  took  it  and  threw  it  back  into  the  wagon  and  I  said, 
'Let  her  rip.' 

"We  all  rode  on  the  seat  together,  me  in  the  middle.  We 
sung.  It  was  cold,  and  we  went  along  the  river,  singing,  and 
came  to  the  mill  and  stopped.  While  one  of  them  went  inside 
the  mill  I  began  to  take  off  my  clothes — " 

"Take  off  your  clothes?" 

"Yes.  My  Sunday  suit.  Taking  them  off  and  throwing 
them  right  down  in  the  dust,  by  gummy." 

"Wasn't  it  cold?" 

"Yes  It  was  cold.  Yes.  When  I  took  off  my  clothes  I 
could  feel  the  cold  on  me.  Then  the  one  came  back  from  the 
mill  with  a  jug  and  we  drank  out  of  the  jug — " 

"What  was  in  the  jug?" 

"I  dont  know.  I  dont  remember.  It  wasn't  whiskey.  I 
could  tell  by  the  way  it  looked.  It  was  clear  like  water." 

"Couldn't  you  tell  by  the  smell?" 

"I  dont  smell,  you  see.  I  dont  know  what  they  call  it.  But 
ever  since  I  was  a  child,  I  couldn't  smell  some  things.  They 
say  that's  why  I  have  stayed  down  here  for  twenty-five 
years. 

"So  we  drank  and  I  went  to  the  bridge  rail.  And  just  as  I 
jumped  I  could  see  myself  in  the  water.  And  I  knew  that  it 
had  happened  then.  Because  my  body  was  a  human  man's 
body.  But  my  face  was  the  same  face  that  had  gone  off 
inside  my  head  back  there  on  the  train,  the  face  that  had 
horns  and  a  beard. 

"When  I  got  back  into  the  wagon  we  drank  again  out  of 
the  jug  and  we  sung,  only  after  a  while  I  put  on  my  under- 
clothes and  my  pants  like  they  wanted  me  to,  and  then  we 
went  on,  singing. 

"When  we  came  in  sight  of  the  house  I  got  out  of  the 
wagon.  'You  dont  want  to  get  out  here,'  they  said.  'We  are 


8 14  Beyond 

in  the  pasture  where  they  keep  that  bull  chained  up.'  But  I 
got  out  of  the  wagon,  with  my  Sunday  coat  and  vest  and  the 
portfolio,  and  the  tin  flute." 

Ill 

HE  CEASED.  He  looked  at  me,  quite  grave,  quite  quiet. 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "Yes.  Then  what?" 

He  watched  me.  "I  never  asked  you  to  believe  nothing,  did 
I?  I  will  have  to  say  that  for  you."  His  hand  was  inside  his 
bosom.  "Well,  you  had  some  pretty  hard  going,  so  far.  But 
now  I  will  take  the  strain  off  of  you." 

From  his  bosom  he  drew  out  a  canvas  wallet.  It  was 
roughly  sewn  by  a  clumsy  hand  and  soiled  with  much  usage. 
He  opened  it.  But  before  he  drew  out  the  contents  he  looked 
at  me  again.  "Do  you  ever  make  allowances?" 

"Allowances?" 

"For  folks.  For  what  folks  think  they  see.  Because  nothing 
ever  looks  the  same  to  two  different  people.  Never  looks  the 
same  to  one  person,  depending  on  which  side  of  it  he  looks 
at  it  from." 

"Oh,"  I  said.  "Allowances.  Yes.  Yes." 

From  the  wallet  he  drew  a  folded  sheet  of  newspaper. 
The  page  was  yellow  with  age,  the  broken  seams  glued  care- 
fully with  strips  of  soiled  cloth.  He  opened  it  carefully, 
gingerly,  and  turned  it  and  laid  it  on  the  table  before  me. 
"Dont  try  to  pick  it  up,"  he  said.  "It's  kind  of  old  now,  and 
it's  the  only  copy  I  have.  Read  it." 

I  looked  at  it:  the  fading  ink,  the  blurred  page  dated 
twenty-five  years  ago: 

MANIAC  AT  LARGE  IN  VIRGINIA 
MOUNTAINS 

PROMINENT  NEW  YORK  SOCIETY  WOMAN 
ATTACKED  IN  OWN  GARDEN 


Black  Music  815 

Mrs.  Carleton  Van  Dyming  Of  New  York  And 

Newport  Attacked  By  Half  Nude  Madman  And 

Maddened  Bull  In  Garden  Of  Her  Summer  Lodge. 

Maniac  Escapes.  Mrs.  Van  Dyming  Prostrate 

It  went  on  from  there,  with  pictures  and  diagrams,  to  tell 
how  Mrs.  Van  Dyming,  who  was  expecting  a  man  from  the 
office  of  her  New  York  architect,  was  called  from  the  dinner 
table  to  meet,  as  she  supposed,  the  architect's  man.  The  story 
continued  in  Mrs.  Van  Dyming's  own  words: 

I  went  to  the  library,  where  I  had  directed  that  the 
architect's  man  be  brought,  but  there  was  no  one  there. 
I  was  about  to  ring  for  the  footman  when  it  occurred 
to  me  to  go  to  the  front  door,  since  it  is  a  local  custom 
among  these  country  people  to  come  to  the  front  and 
refuse  to  advance  further  or  to  retreat  until  the  master 
or  the  mistress  of  the  house  appears.  I  went  to  the  door. 
There  was  no  one  there. 

I  stepped  out  onto  the  porch.  The  light  was  on,  but 
at  first  I  could  see  no  one.  I  started  to  re-enter  the 
house  but  the  footman  had  told  me  distinctly  that  the 
wagon  had  returned  from  the  village,  and  I  thought  that 
the  man  had  perhaps  gone  on  to  the  edge  of  the  lawn 
where  he  could  see  the  theatre  site,  where  the  workmen 
had  that  day  begun  to  prepare  the  ground  by  digging 
up  the  old  grape  vines.  So  I  went  in  that  direction.  I  had 
almost  reached  the  end  of  the  lawn  when  something 
caused  me  to  turn.  I  saw,  in  relief  between  me  and  the 
lighted  porch,  a  man  bent  over  and  hopping  on  one  leg, 
who  to  my  horror  I  realised  to  be  in  the  act  of  removing 
his  trousers. 

I  screamed  for  my  husband.  When  I  did  so,  the  man 
freed  his  other  leg  and  turned  and  came  toward  me  run- 
ning, clutching  a  knife  (I  could  see  the  light  from  the 
porch  gleaming  on  the  long  blade)  in  one  hand,  and  a 
flat,  square  object  in  the  other.  I  turned  then  and  ran 
screaming  toward  the  woods. 


816  Beyond 

I  had  lost  all  sense  of  direction.  I  simply  ran  for  my 
life.  I  found  that  I  was  inside  the  old  vineyard,  among 
the  grape  vines,  running  directly  away  from  the  house. 
I  could  hear  the  man  running  behind  me  and  suddenly 
I  heard  him  begin  to  make  a  strange  noise.  It  sounded 
like  a  child  trying  to  blow  upon  a  penny  whistle,  then 
I  realised  that  it  was  the  sound  of  his  breath  whistling 
past  the  knifeblade  clinched  between  his  teeth. 

Suddenly  something  overtook  and  passed  me,  making 
a  tremendous  uproar  in  the  shrubbery.  It  rushed  so 
near  me  that  I  could  see  its  glaring  eyes  and  the  shape 
of  a  huge  beast  with  horns,  which  I  recognised  a  mo- 
ment later  as  Carleton's — Mr.  Van  Dyming's — prize 
Durham  bull;  an  animal  so  dangerous  that  Mr.  Dyming 
is  forced  to  keep  it  locked  up.  It  was  now  free  and  it 
rushed  past  and  on  ahead,  cutting  off  my  advance,  while 
the  madman  with  the  knife  cut  off  my  retreat.  I  was  at 
bay;  I  stopped  with  my  back  to  a  tree,  screaming  for 
help. 

"How  did  the  bull  get  out?"  I  said. 

He  was  watching  my  face  while  I  read,  like  I  might  have 
been  a  teacher  grading  his  school  paper.  "When  I  was  a  boy, 
I  used  to  take  subscriptions  to  the  Police  Gazette,  for  pre- 
miums. One  of  the  premiums  was  a  little  machine  guaranteed 
to  open  any  lock.  I  dont  use  it  anymore,  but  I  still  carry  it  in 
my  pocket,  like  a  charm  or  something,  I  guess.  Anyway,  I 
had  it  that  night."  He  looked  down  at  the  paper  on  the  table. 
"I  guess  folks  tell  what  they  believe  they  saw.  So  you  have 
to  believe  what  they  think  they  believe.  But  that  paper  dont 
tell  how  she  kicked  off  her  slippers  (I  nigh  broke  my  neck 
over  one  of  them)  so  she  could  run  better,  and  how  I  could 
hear  her  going  wump-wump-wump  inside  like  a  dray  horse, 
and  how  when  she  would  begin  to  slow  up  a  little  I  would  let 
out  another  toot  on  the  whistle  and  off  she  would  go  again. 

"I  couldn't  even  keep  up  with  her,  carrying  that  portfolio 


Black  Music  817 

and  trying  to  blow  on  that  whistle  too;  seemed  like  I  never 
would  get  the  hang  of  it,  somehow.  But  maybe  that  was 
because  I  had  to  start  trying  so  quick,  before  I  had  time  to 
kind  of  practice  up,  and  running  all  the  time  too.  So  I  threw 
the  portfolio  away  and  then  I  caught  up  with  her  where  she 
was  standing  with  her  back  against  the  tree,  and  that  bull 
running  round  and  round  the  tree,  not  bothering  her,  just 
running  around  the  tree,  making  a  right  smart  of  fuss,  and 
her  leaning  there  whispering  'Carleton.  Carleton'  like  she 
was  afraid  she  would  wake  him  up." 
The  account  continued: 

I  stood  against  the  tree,  believing  that  each  circle  which 
the  bull  made,  it  would  discover  my  presence.  That  was 
why  I  ceased  to  scream.  Then  the  man  came  up  where 
I  could  see  him  plainly  for  the  first  time.  He  stopped 
before  me;  for  one  both  horrid  and  joyful  moment  I 
thought  he  was  Mr.  Van  Dyming.  "Carleton!"  I  said. 

He  didn't  answer.  He  was  stooped  over  again;  then  I 
saw  that  he  was  engaged  with  the  knife  in  his  hand. 
"Carleton!"  I  cried. 

"  'Dang  if  I  can  get  the  hang  of  it,  somehow,'  he  kind 
of  muttered,  busy  with  the  murderous  knife. 

"Carleton!"  I  cried.  "Are  you  mad?" 

He  looked  up  then.  I  saw  that  it  was  not  my  husband, 
that  I  was  at  the  mercy  of  a  madman,  a  maniac,  and  a 
maddened  bull.  I  saw  the  man  raise  the  knife  to  his  lips 
and  blow  again  upon  it  that  fearful  shriek.  Then  I 
fainted. 

IV 

AND  THAT  WAS  ALL.  The  account  merely  went  on  to  say  how 
the  madman  had  vanished,  leaving  no  trace,  and  that  Mrs. 
Van  Dyming  was  under  the  care  of  her  physician,  with  a 
special  train  waiting  to  transport  her  and  her  household, 


8i8  Beyond 

lock,  stock,  and  barrel,  back  to  New  York;  and  that  Mr.  Van 
Dyming  in  a  brief  interview  had  informed  the  press  that  his 
plans  about  the  improvement  of  the  place  had  been  definitely 
rescinded  and  that  the  place  was  now  for  sale. 

I  folded  the  paper  as  carefully  as  he  would  have.  "Oh,"  I 
said.  "And  so  that's  all." 

"Yes.  I  waked  up  about  daylight  the  next  morning,  in  the 
woods.  I  didn't  know  when  I  went  to  sleep  nor  where  I  was 
at  first.  I  couldn't  remember  at  first  what  I  had  done.  But 
that  aint  strange.  I  guess  a  man  couldn't  lose  a  day  out  of  his 
life  and  not  know  it.  Do  you  think  so?" 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "That's  what  I  think  too." 

"Because  I  know  I  aint  as  evil  to  God  as  I  guess  I  look  to 
a  lot  of  folks.  And  I  guess  that  demons  and  such  and  even  the 
devil  himself  aint  quite  as  evil  to  God  as  lots  of  folks  that 
claim  to  know  a  right  smart  about  His  business  would  make 
you  believe.  Dont  you  think  that's  right?"  The  wallet  lay  on 
the  table,  open.  But  he  did  not  at  once  return  the  newspaper 
to  it. 

Then  he  quit  looking  at  me;  at  once  his  face  became  diffi- 
dent, childlike  again.  He  put  his  hand  into  the  wallet;  again 
he  did  not  withdraw  it  at  once. 

"That  aint  exactly  all,"  he  said,  his  hand  inside  the  wallet, 
his  eyes  downcast,  and  his  face:  that  mild,  peaceful,  non- 
descript face  across  which  a  mild  moustache  straggled.  "I 
was  a  powerful  reader,  when  I  was  a  boy.  Do  you  read 
much?" 

"Yes.  A  good  deal." 

But  he  was  not  listening.  "I  would  read  about  pirates  and 
cowboys,  and  I  would  be  the  head  pirate  or  cowboy — me,  a 
durn  little  tyke  that  never  saw  the  ocean  except  at  Coney 
Island  or  a  tree  except  in  Washington  Square  day  in  and  out. 
But  I  read  them,  believing  like  every  boy,  that  some  day  .  .  . 
that  living  wouldn't  play  a  trick  on  him  like  getting  him 
alive  and  then.  .  .  .  When  I  went  home  that  morning  to  get 


Black  Music  819 

ready  to  take  the  train,  Martha  says,  *  You're  just  as  good  as 
any  of  them  Van  Dymings,  for  all  they  get  into  the  papers. 
If  all  the  folks  that  deserved  it  got  into  the  papers,  Park 
Avenue  wouldn't  hold  them,  or  even  Brooklyn,'  she  says." 
He  drew  his  hand  from  the  wallet.  This  time  it  was  only  a 
clipping,  one  column  wide,  which  he  handed  me,  yellow  and 
faded  too,  and  not  long: 

MYSTERIOUS  DISAPPEARANCE 

FOUL  PLAY  SUSPECTED 

Wilfred  Middleton,  New  York  Architect,  Disap- 
pears From  Millionaire's  Country  House 

POSSE  SEEKS  BODY  OF  ARCHITECT  BELIEVED  SLAIN  BY 
MADMAN  IN  VIRGINIA  MOUNTAINS 

May  Be  Coupled  With  Mysterious  Attack 
On  Mrs.  Van  Dyming 

Mountain  Neighborhood  In  State  Of  Terror 

,  Va.  April  8, Wilfred  Middleton,  56, 

architect,  of  New  York  City,  mysteriously  disappeared 
sometime  on  April  6th,  while  en  route  to  the  country 
house  of  Mr.  Carleton  Van  Dyming  near  here.  He  had 
in  his  possession  some  valuable  drawings  which  were 
found  this  morning  near  the  Van  Dyming  estate,  thus 
furnishing  the  first  clue.  Chief  of  Police  Elmer  Harris 
has  taken  charge  of  the  case,  and  is  now  awaiting  the 
arrival  of  a  squad  of  New  York  detectives,  when  he 
promises  a  speedy  solution  if  it  is  in  the  power  of  skilled 
criminologists  to  do  so. 

MOST  BAFFLING  IN  ALL  HIS  EXPERIENCE 

"When  I  solve  this  disappearance,"  Chief  Harris  is 
quoted,  "I  will  also  solve  the  attack  on  Mrs.  Van  Dym- 
ing on  the  same  date." 


82O  Beyond 

Middleton  leaves  a  wife,  Mrs.  Martha  Middleton, 
St.,  Brooklyn. 

He  was  watching  my  face.  "Only  it's  one  mistake  in  it," 
he  said. 

"Yes/'  I  said.  "They  got  your  name  wrong." 

"I  was  wondering  if  you'd  see  that.  But  that's  not  the  mis- 
take. .  .  ."  He  had  in  his  hand  a  second  clipping  which  he 
now  extended.  It  was  like  the  other  two;  yellow,  faint.  I 
looked  at  it,  the  fading,  peaceful  print  through  which,  like  a 
thin,  rotting  net,  the  old  violence  had  somehow  escaped, 
leaving  less  than  the  dead  gesture  fallen  to  quiet  dust.  "Read 
this  one.  Only  that's  not  the  mistake  I  was  thinking  about. 
But  then,  they  couldn't  have  known  at  that  time.  .  .  ." 

I  was  reading,  not  listening  to  him.  This  was  a  reprinted 
letter,  an  'agony  column'  letter: 

Neiv  Orleans,  La. 
April  10,  .... 

To  the  Editor,  New  York  Times 
New  York,  N.  Y. 
Dear  Sir 

In  your  issue  of  April  8,  this  year  you  got  the  name  of 
the  party  wrong.  The  name  is  Midgleston  not  Middle- 
ton.  Would  thank  you  to  correct  this  error  in  local  and 
metropolitan  columns  as  the  press  a  weapon  of  good  & 
evil  into  every  American  home.  And  a  power  of  that 
'weight  cannot  afford  mistakes  even  about  people  as 
good  as  any  man  or  'woman  even  if  they  dont  get  into 
the  papers  every  day. 

Thanking  you  again)  beg  to  remain 

A  Friend 

"Oh,"  I  said.  "I  see.  You  corrected  it." 

"Yes.  But  that's  not  the  mistake.  I  just  did  that  for  her. 


Black  Music  821 

You  know  how  women  are.  Like  as  not  she  would  rather  not 
see  it  in  the  papers  at  all  than  to  see  it  spelled  wrong/* 

"She?" 

"My  wife.  Martha.  The  mistake  was,  if  she  got  them  or 
not." 

"I  dont — Maybe  you'd  better  tell  me." 

"That's  what  I  am  doing.  I  got  two  of  the  first  one,  the 
one  about  the  disappearance,  but  I  waited  until  the  letter 
come  out.  Then  I  put  them  both  into  a  piece  of  paper  with 
A  Friend  on  it,  and  put  them  into  a  envelope  and  mailed 
them  to  her.  But  I  dont  know  if  she  got  them  or  not.  That 
was  the  mistake." 

"The  mistake?" 

"Yes.  She  moved.  She  moved  to  Park  Avenue  when  the 
insurance  was  paid.  I  saw  that  in  a  paper  after  I  come  down 
here.  It  told  about  how  Mrs.  Martha  Midgleston  of  Park 
Avenue  was  married  to  a  young  fellow  he  used  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  Maison  Payot  on  Fifth  Avenue.  It  didn't  say 
when  she  moved,  so  I  dont  know  if  she  got  them  or  not." 

"Oh,"  I  said.  He  was  putting  the  clippings  carefully  back 
into  the  canvas  wallet. 

"Yes,  sir.  Women  are  like  that.  It  dont  cost  a  man  much 
to  humor  them  now  and  then.  Because  they  deserve  it;  they 
have  a  hard  time.  But  it  wasn't  me.  I  didn't  mind  how  they 
spelled  it.  What's  a  name  to  a  man  that's  done  and  been  some- 
thing outside  the  lot  and  plan  for  mortal  human  man  to  do 
and  be?" 


The  Leg 


THE  BOAT — it  was  a  yawl  boat  with  a  patched  weathered 
sail — made  two  reaches  below  us  while  I  sat  with  the  sculls 
poised,  watching  her  over  my  shoulder,  and  George  clung 
to  the  pile,  spouting  Milton  at  Everbe  Corinthia.  When  it 
made  the  final  tack  I  looked  back  at  George.  But  he  was 
now  but  well  into  Comus'  second  speech,  his  crooked  face 
raised,  and  the  afternoon  bright  on  his  close  ruddy  head. 

"Give  way,  George,"  I  said.  But  he  held  us  stationary  at 
the  pile,  his  glazed  hat  lifted,  spouting  his  fine  and  cadenced 
folly  as  though  the  lock,  the  Thames,  time  and  all,  belonged 
to  him,  while  Sabrina  (or  Hebe  or  Chloe  or  whatever  name 
he  happened  to  be  calling  Corinthia  at  the  time)  with  her 
dairy-maid's  complexion  and  her  hair  like  mead  poured  in 
sunlight  stood  above  us  in  one  of  her  endless  succession  of 
neat  print  dresses,  her  hand  on  the  lever  and  one  eye  on 
George  and  the  other  on  the  yawl,  saying  "Yes,  milord" 
dutifully  whenever  George  paused  for  breath. 

The  yawl  luffed  and  stood  away;  the  helmsman  shouted 
for  the  lock. 

"Let  go,  George,"  I  said.  But  he  clung  to  the  pile  in  his 
fine  and  incongruous  oblivion.  Everbe  Corinthia  stood  above 
us,  her  hand  on  the  lever,  bridling  a  little  and  beginning  to 
reveal  a  certain  concern,  and  looking  from  her  to  the  yawl 
and  back  again  I  thought  how  much  time  she  and  I  had 

823 


824  Beyond 

both  spent  thus  since  that  day  three  years  ago  when,  cow- 
eyed  and  bridling,  she  had  opened  the  lock  for  us  for  the  first 
time,  with  George  holding  us  stationary  while  he  apostro- 
phised her  in  the  metaphor  of  Keats  and  Spenser. 

Again  the  yawl's  crew  shouted  at  us,  the  yawl  aback  and 
in  stays.  "Let  go,  you  fool!"  I  said,  digging  the  sculls.  "Lock, 
Corinthia!" 

George  looked  at  me.  Corinthia  was  now  watching  the 
yawl  with  both  eyes.  "What,  Davy?"  George  said.  "Must 
even  thou  help  Circe's  droves  into  the  sea?  Pull,  then,  O 
Super-Gadarene! " 

And  he  shoved  us  off.  I  had  not  meant  to  pull  away.  And 
even  if  I  had,  I  could  still  have  counteracted  the  movement 
if  Everbe  Corinthia  hadn't  opened  the  lock.  But  open  it  she 
did,  and  looked  once  back  to  us  and  sat  flat  on  the  earth, 
crisp  fresh  dress  and  all.  The  skiff  shot  away  under  me;  I 
had  a  fleeting  picture  of  George  still  clinging  with  one  arm 
around  the  pile,  his  knees  drawn  up  to  his  chin  and  the  hat  in 
his  lifted  hand  and  of  a  long  running  shadow  carrying  the 
shadow  of  a  boat-hook  falling  across  the  lock.  Then  I  was 
too  busy  steering.  I  shot  through  the  gates,  carrying  with  me 
that  picture  of  George,  the  glazed  hat  still  gallantly  aloft 
like  the  mastheaded  pennant  of  a  man-of-war,  vanishing 
beneath  the  surface.  Then  I  was  floating  quietly  in  slack 
water  while  the  round  eyes  of  two  men  stared  quietly  down 
at  me  from  the  yawl. 

"YerVe  lost  yer  mate,  sir,"  one  of  them  said  in  a  civil 
voice.  Then  they  had  drawn  me  alongside  with  a  boat-hook 
and  standing  up  in  the  skiff,  I  saw  George.  He  was  standing 
in  the  towpath  now,  and  Simon,  Everbe  Corinthia's  father, 
and  another  man — he  was  the  one  with  the  boat-hook, 
whose  shadow  I  had  seen  across  the  lock — were  there  too. 
But  I  saw  only  George  with  his  ugly  crooked  face  and  his 
round  head  now  dark  in  the  sunlight.  One  of  the  watermen 


The  Leg  825 

was  still  talking.  "Steady,  sir.  Lend  'im  a  'and,  Sam'l.  There. 
'E'll  do  now.  Give  'im  a  turn,  seeing  'is  mate.  .  .  ." 

"You  fool,  you  damned  fool!"  I  said.  George  stooped  be- 
side me,  wringing  his  sopping  flannels,  while  Simon  and  the 
second  man — Simon  with  his  iron-gray  face  and  his  iron-gray 
whisker  that  made  him  look  like  nothing  so  much  as  an  aged 
bull  peering  surlily  and  stupidly  across  a  winter  hedgerow, 
and  the  second  man,  younger,  with  a  ruddy  capable  face, 
in  a  hard,  boardlike,  town-made  suit — watched  us.  Corinthia 
sat  on  the  ground,  weeping  hopelessly  and  quietly.  "You 
damned  fool.  Oh,  you  damned  fool." 

"Oxford  young  gentlemen,"  Simon  said  in  a  harsh  dis- 
gusted voice.  "Oxford  young  gentlemen." 

"Eh,  well,"  George  said,  "I  daresay  I  haven't  damaged 
your  lock  over  a  farthing's  worth."  He  rose,  and  saw 
Corinthia.  "What,  Circe!"  he  said,  "tears  over  the  accom- 
plishment of  your  appointed  destiny?"  He  went  to  her, 
trailing  a  thread  of  water  across  the  packed  earth,  and  took 
her  arm.  It  moved  willing  enough,  but  she  herself  sat  flat 
on  the  ground,  looking  up  at  him  with  streaming  hopeless 
eyes.  Her  mouth  was  open  a  little  and  she  sat  in  an  attitude 
of  patient  despair,  weeping  tears  of  crystal  purity.  Simon 
watched  them,  the  boat-hook — he  had  taken  it  from  the 
second  man,  who  was  now  busy  at  the  lock  mechanism,  and 
I  knew  that  he  was  the  brother  who  worked  in  London,  of 
whom  Corinthia  had  once  told  us — clutched  in  his  big 
knotty  fist.  The  yawl  was  now  in  the  lock,  the  two  faces 
watching  us  across  the  parapet  like  two  severed  heads  in  a 
quiet  row  upon  the  footway.  "Come,  now,"  George  said. 
"You'll  soil  your  dress  sitting  there." 

"Up,  lass,"  Simon  said,  in  that  harsh  voice  of  his  which  at 
the  same  time  was  without  ill-nature,  as  though  harshness 
were  merely  the  medium  through  which  he  spoke.  Corinthia 


8 26  Beyond 

rose  obediently,  still  weeping,  and  went  on  toward  the  neat 
little  dove-cote  of  a  house  in  which  they  lived.  The  sunlight 
was  slanting  level  across  it  and  upon  George's  ridiculous 
figure.  He  was  watching  me. 

"Well,  Davy,"  he  said,  "if  I  didn't  know  better,  I'd  say 
from  your  expression  that  you  are  envying  me." 

"Am  I?"  I  said.  "You  fool.  You  ghastly  lunatic." 

Simon  had  gone  to  the  lock.  The  two  quiet  heads  rose 
slowly,  as  though  they  were  being  thrust  gradually  upward 
from  out  the  earth,  and  Simon  now  stooped  with  the  boat- 
hook  over  the  lock.  He  rose,  with  the  limp  anonymity  of 
George's  once  gallant  hat  on  the  end  of  the  boat-hook,  and 
extended  it.  George  took  it  as  gravely.  "Thanks,"  he  said. 
He  dug  into  his  pocket  and  gave  Simon  a  coin.  'Tor  wear 
and  tear  on  the  boat-hook,"  he  said.  "And  perhaps  a  bit  of 
balm  for  your  justifiable  disappointment,  eh,  Simon?" 
Simon  grunted  and  turned  back  to  the  lock.  The  brother 
was  still  watching  us.  "And  I  am  obliged  to  you,"  George 
said.  "Hope  I'll  never  have  to  return  the  favor  in  kind."  The 
brother  said  something,  short  and  grave,  in  a  slow  pleasant 
voice.  George  looked  at  me  again.  "Well,  Davy." 

"Come  on.  Let's  go." 

"Right  you  are.  Where's  the  skiff?"  Then  I  was  staring 
at  him  again,  and  for  a  moment  he  stared  at  me.  Then  he 
shouted,  a  long  ringing  laugh,  while  the  two  heads  in  the 
yawl  watched  us  from  beyond  Simon's  granite-like  and 
contemptuous  back.  I  could  almost  hear  Simon  thinking 
Oxford  young  gentlemen.  "Davy,  have  you  lost  the  skiff?" 

"She's  tied  up  below  a  bit,  sir,"  the  civil  voice  in  the  yawl 
said.  "The  gentleman  walked  out  of  'er  like  she  were  a  keb, 
without  looking  back." 

The  June  afternoon  slanted  across  my  shoulder,  full 
upon  George's  face.  He  would  not  take  my  jacket.  "I'll  pull 


The  Leg  827 

down  and  keep  warm,"  he  said.  The  once-glazed  hat  lay 
between  his  feet. 

"Why  don't  you  throw  that  thing  out?"  I  said.  He  pulled 
steadily,  looking  at  me.  The  sun  was  full  in  his  eyes,  striking 
the  yellow  flecks  in  them  into  fleeting,  mica-like  sparks. 
"That  hat,"  I  said.  "What  do  you  want  with  it?" 

"Oh;  that.  Cast  away  the  symbol  of  my  soul?"  He  un- 
shipped one  scull  and  picked  up  the  hat  and  turned  and 
cocked  it  on  the  stem,  where  it  hung  with  a  kind  of  gallant 
and  dissolute  jauntiness.  "The  symbol  of  my  soul  rescued 
from  the  deep  by — " 

"Hauled  out  of  a  place  it  had  no  business  being  whatever, 
by  a  public  servant  who  did  not  want  his  public  charge 
cluttered  up." 

"At  least  you  admit  the  symbology,"  he  said.  "And  that 
the  empire  rescued  it.  So  it  is  worth  something  to  the  empire. 
Too  much  for  me  to  throw  it  away.  That  which  you  have 
saved  from  death  or  disaster  will  be  forever  dear  to  you, 
Davy;  you  cannot  ignore  it.  Besides,  it  will  not  let  you. 
What  is  it  you  Americans  say?" 

"We  say,  bunk.  Why  not  use  the  river  for  a  while?  It's 
paid  for." 

He  looked  at  me.  "Ah.  That  is  ...  Well,  anyway,  it's 
American,  isn't  it.  That's  something." 

But  he  got  out  into  the  current  again.  A  barge  was  coming 
up,  in  tow.  We  got  outside  her  and  watched  her  pass,  empty 
of  any  sign  of  life,  with  a  solemn  implacability  like  a  huge 
barren  catafalque,  the  broad-rumped  horses,  followed  by  a 
boy  in  a  patched  coat  and  carrying  a  peeled  goad,  plodding 
stolidly  along  the  path.  We  dropped  slowly  astern.  Over  her 
freeboard  a  motionless  face  with  a  dead  pipe  in  its  teeth 
contemplated  us  with  eyes  empty  of  any  thought. 

"If  I  could  have  chosen,"  George  said,  "I'd  like  to  have 
been  pulled  out  by  that  chap  yonder.  Can't  you  see  him 


828  Beyond 

picking  up  a  boat-hook  without  haste  and  fishing  you  out 
without  even  shifting  the  pipe?" 

"You  should  have  chosen  your  place  better,  then.  But  it 
seems  to  me  you're  in  no  position  to  complain/' 

"But  Simon  showed  annoyance.  Not  surprise  nor  con- 
cern: just  annoyance.  I  don't  like  to  be  hauled  back  into 
life  by  an  annoyed  man  with  a  boat-hook." 

"You  could  have  said  so  at  the  time.  Simon  didn't  have 
to  save  you.  He  could  have  shut  the  gates  until  he  got 
another  head  of  water,  and  flushed  you  right  out  of  his 
bailiwick  without  touching  you,  and  saved  himself  trouble 
and  ingratitude.  Besides  Corinthia's  tears." 

"Ay;  tears.  Corinthia  will  at  least  cherish  a  tenderness  for 
me  from  now  on." 

"Yes;  but  if  you'd  only  not  got  out  at  all.  Or  having  not 
got  in  at  all.  Falling  into  that  filthy  lock  just  to  complete  a 
gesture.  I  think — " 

"Do  not  think,  my  good  David.  When  I  had  the  choice 
of  holding  on  to  the  skiff  and  being  haled  safely  and  meekly 
away,  or  of  giving  the  lie  to  the  stupid  small  gods  at  the 
small  price  of  being  temporarily  submerged  in  this — "  he 
let  go  one  oar  and  dipped  his  hand  in  the  water,  then  he 
flung  it  outward  in  dripping,  burlesque  magniloquence.  "O 
Thames!"  he  said.  "Thou  mighty  sewer  of  an  empire!" 

"Steer  the  boat,"  I  said.  "I  lived  in  America  long  enough  to 
have  learned  something  of  England's  pride." 

"And  so  you  consider  a  bath  in  this  filthy  old  sewer  that 
has  flushed  this  land  since  long  before  He  who  made  it  had 
any  need  to  invent  God  ...  a  rock  about  which  man  and 
all  his  bawling  clamor  seethes  away  to  sluttishness.  .  .  ." 

We  were  twenty-one  then;  we  talked  like  that,  tramping 
about  that  peaceful  land  where  in  green  petrification  the  old 
splendid  bloody  deeds,  the  spirits  of  the  blundering  coura- 
geous men,  slumbered  in  every  stone  and  tree.  For  that  was 


The  Leg  829 

1914,  and  in  the  parks  bands  played  Valse  Septembre,  and 
girls  and  young  men  drifted  in  punts  on  the  moonlit  river 
and  sang  Mister  Moon  and  There's  a  Bit  of  Heaven,  and 
George  and  I  sat  in  a  window  in  Christ  Church  while  the 
curtains  whispered  in  the  twilight,  and  talked  of  courage 
and  honor  and  Napier  and  love  and  Ben  Jonson  and  death. 
The  next  year  was  1915,  and  the  bands  played  God  Save  the 
King,  and  the  rest  of  the  young  men — and  some  not  so 
young — sang  Mademoiselle  of  Armentieres  in  the  mud,  and 
George  was  dead. 

He  had  gone  out  in  October,  a  subaltern  in  the  regiment 
of  which  his  people  were  hereditary  colonels.  Ten  months 
later  I  saw  him  sitting  with  an  orderly  behind  a  ruined 
chimney  on  the  edge  of  Givenchy.  He  had  a  telephone 
strapped  to  his  ears  and  he  was  eating  something  which  he 
waved  at  me  as  we  ran  past  and  ducked  into  the  cellar  which 
we  sought. 

II 

I  TOLD  HIM  to  wait  until  they  got  done  giving  me  the  ether; 
there  were  so  many  of  them  moving  back  and  forth  that  I 
was  afraid  someone  would  brush  against  him  and  find  him 
there.  "And  then  you'll  have  to  go  back,"  I  said. 

"I'll  be  careful,"  George  said. 

"Because  you'll  have  to  do  something  for  me,"  I  said. 
"You'll  have  to." 

"All  right.  I  will.  What  is  it?" 

"Wait  until  they  go  away,  then  I  can  tell  you.  You'll 
have  to  do  it,  because  I  can't.  Promise  you  will." 

"All  right.  I  promise."  So  we  waited  until  they  got  done 
and  had  moved  down  to  my  leg.  Then  George  came  nearer. 
"What  is  it?"  he  said. 


830  Beyond 

"It's  my  leg/'  1  said.  "I  want  you  to  be  sure  it's  dead. 
They  may  cut  it  off  in  a  hurry  and  forget  about  it." 

"All  right.  I'll  see  about  it." 

"I  couldn't  have  that,  you  know.  That  wouldn't  do  at 
all.  They  might  bury  it  and  it  couldn't  lie  quiet.  And  then 
it  would  be  lost  and  we  couldn't  find  it  to  do  anything." 

"All  right.  I'll  watch."  He  looked  at  me.  "Only  I  don't 
have  to  go  back." 

"You  don't?  You  don't  have  to  go  back  at  all?" 

"I'm  out  of  it.  You  aren't  out  of  it  yet.  You'll  have  to 
go  back." 

"I'm  not?"  I  said.  .  .  .  "Then  it  will  be  harder  to  find 
it  than  ever.  So  you  see  about  it.  ...  And  you  don't  have 
to  go  back.  You're  lucky,  aren't  you?" 

"Yes.  I'm  lucky.  I  always  was  lucky.  Give  the  lie  to  the 
stupid  small  gods  at  the  mere  price  of  being  temporarily 
submerged  in — " 

"There  were  tears,"  I  said.  "She  sat  flat  on  the  earth 
to  weep  them." 

"Ay;  tears,"  he  said.  "The  flowing  of  all  men's  tears 
under  the  sky.  Horror  and  scorn  and  hate  and  fear  and 
indignation,  and  the  world  seething  away  to  sluttishness 
while  you  look  on." 

"No;  she  sat  flat  in  a  green  afternoon  and  wept  for  the 
symbol  of  your  soul." 

"Not  for  the  symbol,  but  because  the  empire  saved  it, 
hoarded  it.  She  wept  for  wisdom." 

"But  there  were  tears.  .  .  .  And  you'll  see  to  it?  You'll 
not  go  away?" 

"Ay,"  George  said;  "tears." 

In  the  hospital  it  was  better.  It  was  a  long  room  full  of 
constant  movement,  and  I  didn't  have  to  be  afraid  all  the 
time  that  they  would  find  him  and  send  him  away,  though 


The  Leg  837 

now  and  then  it  did  happen — a  sister  or  an  orderly  coming 
into  the  middle  of  our  talk,  with  ubiquitous  hands  and 
cheerful  aseptic  voices:  "Now,  now.  He's  not  going.  Yes, 
yes;  he'll  come  back.  Lie  still,  now." 

So  I  would  have  to  lie  there,  surrounding,  enclosing  that 
gaping  sensation  below  my  thigh  where  the  nerve-  and 
muscle-ends  twitched  and  jerked,  until  he  returned. 

"Can't  you  find  it?"  I  said.  "Have  you  looked  good?" 

"Yes.  I've  looked  everywhere.  I  went  back  out  there 
and  looked,  and  I  looked  here.  It  must  be  all  right  They 
must  have  killed  it." 

"But  they  didn't.  I  told  you  they  were  going  to  forget 
it." 

"How  do  you  know  they  forgot  it?" 

"I  know.  I  can  feel  it.  It  jeers  at  me.  It's  not  dead." 

"But  if  it  just  jeers  at  you." 

"I  know.  But  that  won't  do.  Don't  you  see  that  won't  do?" 

"All  right.  I'll  look  again." 

"You  must.  You  must  find  it.  I  don't  like  this." 

So  he  looked  again.  He  came  back  and  sat  down  and  he 
looked  at  me.  His  eyes  were  bright  and  intent. 

"It's  nothing  to  feel  bad  about,"  I  said.  "You'll  find  it 
some  day.  It's  all  right;  just  a  leg.  It  hasn't  even  another  leg 
to  walk  with."  Still  he  didn't  say  anything,  just  looking 
at  me.  "Where  are  you  living  now?" 

"Up  there,"  he  said. 

I  looked  at  him  for  a  while.  "Oh,"  I  said.  "At  Oxford?" 

"Yes." 

"Oh,"  I  said "Why  didn't  you  go  home?" 

"I  don't  know." 

He  still  looked  at  me.  "Is  it  nice  there  now?  It  must  be. 
Are  there  still  punts  on  the  river?  Do  they  still  sing  in  the 
punts  like  they  did  that  summer,  the  men  and  girls,  I  mean?" 
He  looked  at  me,  wide,  intent,  a  little  soberly. 


832  Beyond 

"You  left  me  last  night,"  he  said. 

"Did  I?" 

"You  jumped  into  the  skiff  and  pulled  away.  So  I  came 
back  here." 

"Did  I?  Where  was  I  going?" 

"I  don't  know.  You  hurried  away,  up-river.  You  could 
have  told  me,  if  you  wanted  to  be  alone.  You  didn't  need 
to  run." 

"I  shan't  again."  We  looked  at  one  another.  We  spoke 
quietly  now.  "So  you  must  find  it  now." 

"Yes.  Can  you  tell  what  it  is  doing?" 

"I  don't  know.  That's  it." 

"Does  it  feel  like  it's  doing  something  you  don't  want 
it  to?" 

"I  don't  know.  So  you  find  it.  You  find  it  quick.  Find  it 
and  fix  it  so  it  can  get  dead." 

But  he  couldn't  find  it.  We  talked  about  it  quietly,  be- 
tween silences,  watching  one  another.  "Can't  you  tell  any- 
thing about  where  it  is?"  he  said.  I  was  sitting  up  now, 
practicing  accustoming  myself  to  the  wood-and-leather  one. 
The  gap  was  still  there,  but  we  had  now  established  a  sort  of 
sullen  armistice.  "Maybe  that's  what  it  was 'waiting  for,"  he 
said.  "Maybe  now  .  .  ." 

"Maybe  so.  I  hope  so.  But  they  shouldn't  have  forgot  to 
— Have  I  run  away  any  more  since  that  night?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"You  don't  know?"  He  was  watching  me  with  his  bright, 
intent,  fading  eyes.  "George,"  I  said.  "Wait,  George!"  But 
he  was  gone. 

I  didn't  see  him  again  for  a  long  time.  I  was  at  the 
Observers'  School — it  doesn't  require  two  legs  to  operate  a 
machine  gun  and  a  wireless  key  and  to  orient  maps  from  the 
gunner's  piano  stool  of  an  R.E.  or  an  F.E. — then,  and  I  had 
almost  finished  the  course.  So  my  days  were  pretty  well 


The  Leg  833 

filled,  what  with  work  and  with  that  certitude  of  the  young 
which  so  arbitrarily  distinguishes  between  verities  and  illu- 
sions, establishing  with  such  assurance  that  line  between 
truth  and  delirium  which  sages  knit  their  brows  over.  And 
[ny  nights  were  filled  too,  with  the  nerve-  and  muscle-ends 
chafed  now  by  an  immediate  cause:  the  wood-and-leather 
leg.  But  the  gap  was  still  there,  and  sometimes  at  night, 
isolated  by  invisibility,  it  would  become  filled  with  the  im- 
mensity of  darkness  and  silence  despite  me.  Then,  on  the 
poised  brink  of  sleep,  I  would  believe  that  he  had  found  it 
at  last  and  seen  that  it  was  dead,  and  that  some  day  he  would 
return  and  tell  me  about  it.  Then  I  had  the  dream. 

Suddenly  I  knew  that  I  was  about  to  come  upon  it.  I 
could  feel  in  the  darkness  the  dark  walls  of  the  corridor  and 
the  invisible  corner,  and  I  knew  that  it  was  just  around  the 
corner.  I  could  smell  a  rank,  animal  odor.  It  was  an  odor 
which  I  had  never  smelled  before,  but  I  knew  it  at  once, 
blown  suddenly  down  the  corridor  from  the  old  fetid  caves 
where  experience  began.  I  felt  dread  and  disgust  and  deter- 
mination, as  when  you  sense  suddenly  a  snake  beside  a  garden 
path.  And  then  I  was  awake,  rigid,  sweating;  the  darkness 
flowed  with  a  long  rushing  sigh.  I  lay  with  the  fading  odor 
in  my  nostrils  while  my  sweat  cooled,  staring  up  into  the 
darkness,  not  daring  to  close  my  eyes.  I  lay  on  my  back, 
curled  about  the  gaping  hole  like  a  doughnut,  while  the  odor 
faded.  At  last  it  was  gone,  and  George  was  looking  at  me. 

"What  is  it,  Davy?"  he  said.  "Can't  you  say  what  it  is?" 

"It's  nothing."  I  could  taste  sweat  on  my  lips.  "It  isn't 
anything.  I  won't  again.  I  swear  I  shan't  any  more." 

He  was  looking  at  me.  "You  said  you  had  to  come  back  to 
town.  And  then  I  saw  you  on  the  river.  You  saw  me  and  hid, 
Davy.  Pulled  up  under  the  bank,  in  the  shadow.  There  was 
a  girl  with  you."  He  watched  me,  his  eyes  bright  and  grave. 


834  Beyond 

"Was  there  a  moon?"  I  said. 

"Yes.  There  was  a  moon." 

"Oh  God,  oh  God,"  I  said.  "I  won't  again,  George!  You 
must  find  it.  You  must!" 

"Ah,  Davy,"  he  said.  His  face  began  to  fade. 

"I  won't!  I  won't  again!"  I  said.  "George!  George!" 

A  match  flared;  a  face  sprang  out  of  the  darkness  above 
me.  "Wake  up,"  it  said.  I  lay  staring  at  it,  sweating.  The 
match  burned  down,  the  face  fell  back  into  darkness,  from 
which  the  voice  came  bodiless:  "All  right  now?" 

"Yes,  thanks.  Dreaming.  Sorry  I  waked  you." 

For  the  next  few  nights  I  didn't  dare  let  go  into  sleep 
again.  But  I  was  young,  my  body  was  getting  strong  again 
and  I  was  out  of  doors  all  day;  one  night  sleep  overtook  me 
unawares,  and  I  waked  next  morning  to  find  that  I  had 
eluded  it,  whatever  it  was.  I  found  a  sort  of  peace.  The  days 
passed;  I  had  learned  the  guns  and  the  wireless  and  the  maps, 
and  most  of  all,  to  not  observe  what  should  not  be  observed. 
My  thigh  was  almost  reconciled  to  the  new  member,  and, 
freed  now  of  the  outcast's  doings,  I  could  give  all  my  time 
to  seeking  George.  But  I  did  not  find  him;  somewhere  in 
the  mazy  corridor  where  the  mother  of  dreams  dwells  I  had 
lost  them  both. 

So  I  did  not  remark  him  at  first  even  when  he  stood  beside 
me  in  the  corridor  just  beyond  the  corner  of  which  It  waited. 
The  sulphur  reek  was  all  about  me;  I  felt  horror  and  dread 
and  something  unspeakable:  delight.  I  believe  I  felt  what 
women  in  labor  feel.  And  then  George  was  there,  looking 
steadily  down  at  me.  He  had  always  sat  beside  my  head, 
so  we  could  talk,  but  now  he  stood  beyond  the  foot  of  the 
bed,  looking  down  at  me  and  I  knew  that  this  was  farewell. 

"Don't  go,  George!"  I  said.  "I  shan't  again.  I  shan't  any 
more,  George!"  But  his  steady,  grave  gaze  faded  slowly,.. 


The  Leg  835 

implacable,  sorrowful,  but  without  reproach.  "Go,  then!" 
I  said.  My  teeth  felt  dry  against  my  lip  like  sandpaper.  "Go, 
then!" 

And  that  was  the  last  of  it.  He  never  came  back,  nor  the 
dream.  I  knew  it  would  not,  as  a  sick  man  who  wakes  with 
his  body  spent  and  peaceful  and  weak  knows  that  the  illness 
will  not  return.  I  knew  it  was  gone;  I  knew  that  when  I 
realized  that  I  thought  of  it  only  with  pity.  Poor  devil,  I 
would  think.  Poor  devil. 

But  it  took  George  with  it.  Sometimes,  when  dark  and 
isolation  had  robbed  me  of  myself,  I  would  think  that  per- 
haps in  killing  it  he  had  lost  his  own  life:  the  dead  dying 
in  order  to  slay  the  dead.  I  sought  him  now  and  then  in  the 
corridors  of  sleep,  but  without  success;  I  spent  a  week  with 
his  people  in  Devon,  in  a  rambling  house  where  his  crooked 
ugly  face  and  his  round  ruddy  head  and  his  belief  that 
Marlowe  was  a  better  lyric  poet  than  Shakespeare  and 
Thomas  Campion  than  either,  and  that  breath  was  not  a 
bauble  given  a  man  for  his  own  pleasuring,  eluded  me  behind 
every  stick  and  stone.  But  I  never  saw  him  again. 

Ill 

THE  PADRE  had  driven  up  from  Poperinghe  in  the  dark,  in 
the  side  car  of  a  motorcycle.  He  sat  beyond  the  table,  talk- 
ing of  Jotham  Rust,  Everbe  Corinthia's  brother  and  Simon's 
son,  whom  I  had  seen  three  times  in  my  life.  Yesterday  I 
saw  Jotham  for  the  third  and  last  time,  arraigned  before 
a  court  martial  for  desertion:  the  scarecrow  of  that 
once  sturdy  figure  with  its  ruddy,  capable  face,  who  had 
pulled  George  out  of  the  lock  with  a  boat-hook  that  after- 
noon three  years  ago,  charged  now  for  his  life,  offering 
no  extenuation  nor  explanation,  expecting  and  asking  no 
clemency* 


836  Beyond 

"He  does  not  want  clemency,"  the  padre  said.  The  padre 
was  a  fine,  honest  man,  incumbent  of  a  modest  living  in  the 
Midlands  somewhere,  who  had  brought  the  kind  and  honest 
stupidity  of  his  convictions  into  the  last  place  on  earth  where 
there  was  room  for  them.  "He  does  not  want  to  live."  His 
face  was  musing  and  dejected,  shocked  and  bewildered. 
"There  comes  a  time  in  the  life  of  every  man  when  the 
world  turns  its  dark  side  to  him  and  every  man's  shadow  is 
his  mortal  enemy.  Then  he  must  turn  to  God,  or  perish. 
Yet  he  ...  I  cannot  seem  ..."  His  eyes  held  that  burly 
bewilderment  of  oxen;  above  his  stock  his  shaven  chin  de- 
jected, but  not  vanquished  yet.  "And  you  say  you  know  of 
no  reason  why  he  should  have  attacked  you?" 

"I  never  saw  the  man  but  twice  before,"  I  said.  "One  time 
was  night  before  last,  the  other  was  .  .  .  two — three  years 
ago,  when  I  passed  through  his  father's  lock  in  a  skiff  while 
I  was  at  Oxford.  He  was  there  when  his  sister  let  us  through. 
And  if  you  hadn't  told  me  his  sister's  name,  I  wouldn't  have 
remembered  him  then." 

He  brooded.  "The  father  is  dead,  too." 

"What?  Dead?  Old  Simon  dead?" 

"Yes.  He  died  shortly  after  the — the  other.  Rust  says  he 
left  his  father  after  the  sister's  funeral,  talking  with  the 
sexton  in  Abingdon  churchyard,  and  a  week  later  he  was 
notified  in  London  that  his  father  was  dead.  He  says  the 
sexton  told  him  his  father  had  been  giving  directions  about 
his  own  funeral.  The  sexton  said  that  every  day  Simon 
would  come  up  to  see  him  about  it,  made  all  the  arrange- 
ments, and  that  the  sexton  joked  him  a  little  about  it,  because 
he  was  such  a  hale  old  chap,  thinking  that  he  was  just  off 
balance  for  the  time  with  the  freshness  of  his  grief.  And 
then,  a  week  later,  he  was  dead." 

"Old  Simon  dead,"  I  said.  "Corinthia,  then  Simon,  and 


The  Leg  837 

now  Jotham."  The  candle  flame  stood  steady  and  unwaver- 
ing on  the  table. 

"Was  that  her  name?"  he  said.  "Everbe  Corinthia?"  He 
sat  in  the  lone  chair,  puzzlement,  bewilderment  in  the  very 
shape  of  his  shadow  on  the  wall  behind  him.  The  light  fell 
on  one  side  of  his  face,  the  major's  crown  on  that  shoulder 
glinting  dully.  I  rose  from  the  cot,  the  harness  of  the  leg 
creaking  with  explosive  loudness,  and  leaned  over  his  shoul- 
der and  took  a  cigarette  from  my  magneto  case  tobacco-box, 
and  fumbled  a  match  in  my  single  hand.  He  glanced  up. 

"Permit  me,"  he  said.  He  took  the  box  and  struck  a  match. 
"You're  fortunate  to  have  escaped  with  just  that."  He  indi- 
cated my  sling. 

"Yes,  sir.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  my  leg,  I'd  have  got  the 
knife  in  my  ribs  instead  of  my  arm." 

"Your  leg?" 

"I  keep  it  propped  on  a  chair  beside  the  bed,  so  I  can 
reach  it  easily.  He  stumbled  over  it  and  waked  me.  Other- 
wise he'd  have  stuck  me  like  a  pig." 

"Oh,"  he  said.  He  dropped  the  match  and  brooded  again 
with  his  stubborn  bewilderment.  "And  yet,  his  is  not  the 
face  of  an  assassin  in  the  dark.  There  is  a  forthrightness  in  it, 
a — a — what  shall  I  say?  a  sense  of  social  responsibility,  in- 
tegrity, that .  .  .  And  you  say  that  you — I  beg  your  pardon; 
I  do  not  doubt  your  word;  it  is  only  that — Yet  the  girl  is 
indubitably  dead;  it  was  he  who  discovered  her  and  was  with 
her  until  she  died  and  saw  her  buried.  He  heard  the  man 
laugh  once,  in  the  dark." 

"But  you  cannot  slash  a  stranger's  arm  simply  because 
you  heard  a  laugh  in  the  dark,  sir.  The  poor  devil  is  crazy 
with  his  own  misfortunes." 

"Perhaps  so,"  the  padre  said.  "He  told  me  that  he  has 
other  proof,  something  incontrovertible;  what,  he  would  not 
tell  me." 


838  Beyond 

"Then  let  him  produce  it.  If  I  were  in  his  place  now  .  .  ." 

He  brooded,  his  hands  clasped  on  the  table.  "There  is  a 
justice  in  the  natural  course  of  events.  .  .  .  My  dear  sir,  are 
you  accusing  Providence  of  a  horrible  and  meaningless  prac- 
tical joke?  No,  no;  to  him  who  has  sinned,  that  sin  will  come 
home  to  him.  Otherwise  .  .  .  God  is  at  least  a  gentleman. 
Forgive  me:  I  am  not — You  understand  how  this  comes 
home  to  me,  in  this  unfortunate  time  when  we  already  have 
so  much  to  reproach  ourselves  with.  We  are  responsible  for 
this."  He  touched  the  small  metal  cross  on  his  tunic,  then 
he  swept  his  arm  in  a  circular  gesture  that  shaped  in  the 
quiet  room  between  us  the  still  and  sinister  darkness  in  which 
the  fine  and  resounding  words  men  mouthed  so  glibly  were 
the  vampire's  teeth  with  which  the  vampire  fed.  "The  voice 
of  God  waking  His  servants  from  the  sloth  into  which  they 
have  sunk.  .  .  ." 

"What,  padre?"  I  said.  "Is  the  damn  thing  making  a  dis- 
senter of  you  too?" 

He  mused  again,  his  face  heavy  in  the  candle  light.  "That 
the  face  of  a  willful  shedder  of  blood,  of  an  assassin  in  the 
dark?  No,  no;  you  cannot  tell  me  that." 

I  didn't  try.  I  didn't  tell  him  either  my  belief  that  only 
necessity,  the  need  for  expedition  and  silence,  had  reduced 
Jotham  to  employing  a  knife,  an  instrument  of  any  kind; 
that  what  he  wanted  was  my  throat  under  his  hands. 

He  had  gone  home  on  his  leave,  to  that  neat  little  dove- 
cote beside  the  lock,  and  at  once  he  found  something 
strained  in  its  atmosphere  and  out  of  tune.  That  was  last 
summer,  about  the  time  I  was  completing  my  course  at  the 
Observers'  School. 

Simon  appeared  to  be  oblivious  of  the  undercurrent,  but 
Jotham  had  not  been  home  long  before  he  discovered  that 
every  evening  about  dusk  Corinthia  quitted  the  house  for  an 
hour  or  so,  and  something  in  her  manner,  or  maybe  in  the 


The  Leg  839 

taut  atmosphere  of  the  house  itself,  caused  him  to  question 
her.  She  was  evasive,  blazed  suddenly  out  at  him  in  anger 
which  was  completely  unlike  her  at  all,  then  became  passive 
and  docile.  Then  he  realized  that  the  passiveness  was  secre- 
tive, the  docility  dissimulation;  one  evening  he  surprised  her 
slipping  away.  He  drove  her  back  to  the  house,  where  she 
took  refuge  in  her  room  and  locked  the  door,  and  from  a 
window  he  thought  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  man  disap- 
pearing beyond  a  field.  He  pursued,  but  found  no  one.  For 
an  hour  after  dusk  he  lay  in  a  nearby  coppice,  watching  the 
house,  then  he  returned.  Corinthia's  door  was  still  locked 
and  old  Simon  filled  the  house  with  his  peaceful  snoring. 

Later  something  waked  him.  He  sat  up  in  bed,  then  sprang 
to  the  floor  and  went  to  the  window.  There  was  a  moon 
and  by  its  light  he  saw  something  white  flitting  along  the 
towpath.  He  pursued  and  overtook  Corinthia,  who  turned 
like  a  vicious  small  animal  at  the  edge  of  the  coppice  where 
he  had  lain  in  hiding.  Beyond  the  towpath  a  punt  lay  at  the 
bank.  It  was  empty.  He  grasped  Corinthia's  arm.  She  raged 
at  him;  it  could  not  have  been  very  pretty.  Then  she  col- 
lapsed as  suddenly  and  from  the  tangled  darkness  of  the 
coppice  behind  them  a  man's  laugh  came,  a  jeering  sound 
that  echoed  once  across  the  moonlit  river  and  ceased. 
Corinthia  now  crouched  on  the  ground,  watching  him,  her 
face  like  a  mask  in  the  moonlight.  He  rushed  into  the  cop- 
pice and  beat  it  thoroughly,  finding  nothing.  When  he 
emerged  the  punt  was  gone.  He  ran  down  to  the  water, 
looking  this  way  and  that.  While  he  stood  there  the  laugh 
came  again,  from  the  shadows  beneath  the  other  shore. 

He  returned  to  Corinthia.  She  sat  as  he  had  left  her,  her 
loosened  hair  about  her  face,  looking  out  across  the  river. 
He  spoke  to  her,  but  she  did  not  reply.  He  lifted  her  to  her 
feet.  She  came  docilely  and  they  returned  to  the  cottage. 
He  tried  to  talk  to  her  again,  but  she  moved  stonily  beside 


840  Beyond 

him,  her  loosened  hair  about  her  cold  face.  He  saw  her  to 
her  room  and  locked  the  door  himself  and  took  the  key 
back  to  bed  with  him.  Simon  had  not  awakened.  The  next 
morning  she  was  gone,  the  door  still  locked. 

He  told  Simon  then  and  all  that  day  they  sought  her, 
assisted  by  the  neighbors.  Neither  of  them  wished  to  notify 
the  police,  but  at  dusk  that  day  a  constable  appeared  with 
his  notebook,  and  they  dragged  the  lock,  without  finding 
anything.  The  next  morning,  just  after  dawn,  Jotham  found 
her  lying  in  the  towpath  before  the  door.  She  was  uncon- 
scious, but  showed  no  physical  injury.  They  brought  her 
into  the  house  and  applied  their  spartan,  homely  remedies, 
and  after  a  time  she  revived,  screaming.  She  screamed  all 
that  day  until  sunset.  She  lay  on  her  back  screaming,  her 
eyes  wide  open  and  perfectly  empty,  until  her  voice  left 
her  and  her  screaming  was  only  a  ghost  of  screaming,  mak- 
ing no  sound.  At  sunset  she  died. 

He  had  now  been  absent  from  his  battalion  for  a  hundred 
and  twelve  days.  God  knows  how  he  did  it;  he  must  have 
lived  like  a  beast,  hidden,  eating  when  he  could,  lurking  in 
the  shadow  with  every  man's  hand  against  him,  as  he  sought 
through  the  entire  B.E.F.  for  a  man  whose  laugh  he  had 
heard  one  time,  knowing  that  the  one  thing  he  could  surely 
count  on  finding  would  be  his  own  death,  and  to  be  foiled 
on  the  verge  of  success  by  an  artificial  leg  propped  on  a 
chair  in  the  dark. 

How  much  later  it  was  I  don't  know.  The  candle  was 
lighted  again,  but  the  man  who  had  awakened  me  was  bend- 
ing over  the  cot,  between  me  and  the  light.  But  despite  the 
light,  it  was  a  little  too  much  like  that  night  before  last;  I 
came  out  of  sleep  upstanding  this  time,  with  my  automatic. 
"As  you  were,"  I  said.  "You'll  not — "  Then  he  moved  back 
and  1  recognized  the  padre.  He  stood  beside  the  table,  the 
light  falling  on  one  side  of  his  face  and  chest.  I  sat  up  and 


The  Leg  841 

put  the  pistol  down.  "What  is  it,  padre?  Do  they  want  me 
again?" 

"He  wants  nothing,"  the  padre  said.  "Man  cannot  injure 
him  further  now."  He  stood  there,  a  portly  figure  that 
should  have  been  pacing  benignantly  in  a  shovel  hat  in  green 
lanes  between  summer  fields.  Then  he  thrust  his  hand  into 
his  tunic  and  produced  a  flat  object  and  laid  it  on  the  table. 
"I  found  this  among  Jotham  Rust's  effects  which  he  gave  me 
to  destroy,  an  hour  ago,"  he  said.  He  looked  at  me,  then  he 
turned  and  went  to  the  door,  and  turned  again  and  looked 
at  me. 

"Is  he — I  thought  it  was  to  be  at  dawn." 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "I  must  hurry  back."  He  was  either  look- 
ing at  me  or  not.  The  flame  stood  steady  above  the  candle. 
Then  he  opened  the  door.  "May  God  have  mercy  on  your 
soul,"  he  said,  and  went  out. 

I  sat  in  the  covers  and  heard  him  blunder  on  in  the  dark- 
ness, then  I  heard  the  motorcycle  splutter  into  life  and  die 
away.  I  swung  my  foot  to  the  floor  and  rose,  holding  on  to 
the  chair  on  which  the  artificial  leg  rested.  It  was  chilly;  it 
was  as  though  I  could  feel  the  toes  even  of  the  absent  leg 
curling  away  from  the  floor,  so  I  braced  my  hip  on  the  chair 
and  reached  the  flat  object  from  the  table  and  returned  to 
bed  and  drew  the  blanket  about  my  shoulders.  My  wrist 
watch  said  three  o'clock. 

It  was  a  photograph,  a  cheap  thing  such  as  itinerant  pho 
tographers  turn  out  at  fairs.  It  was  dated  at  Abingdon  in 
June  of  the  summer  just  past.  At  that  time  I  was  lying  in 
the  hospital  talking  to  George,  and  I  sat  quite  still  in  the 
blankets,  looking  at  the  photograph,  because  it  was  my  own 
face  that  looked  back  at  me.  It  had  a  quality  that  was  not 
mine:  a  quality  vicious  and  outrageous  and  unappalled,  and 
beneath  it  was  written  in  a  bold  sprawling  hand  like  that  of 
a  child:  "To  Everbe  Corinthia"  followed  by  an  unprintable 


842  Beyond 

phrase,  yet  it  was  my  own  face,  and  I  sat  holding  the  picture 
quietly  in  my  hand  while  the  candle  flame  stood  high  and 
steady  above  the  wick  and  on  the  wall  my  huddled  shadow 
held  the  motionless  photograph.  In  slow  and  gradual  dimin- 
ishment  of  cold  tears  the  candle  appeared  to  sink,  as  though 
burying  itself  in  its  own  grief.  But  even  before  this  came 
about,  it  began  to  pale  and  fade  until  only  the  tranquil  husk 
of  the  small  flame  stood  unwinded  as  a  feather  above  the 
wax,  leaving  upon  the  wall  the  motionless  husk  of  my 
shadow.  Then  I  saw  that  the  window  was  gray,  and  that  was 
all.  It  would  be  dawn  at  Pop  too,  but  it  must  have  been  some 
time,  and  the  padre  must  have  got  back  in  time. 

I  told  him  to  find  it  and  kill  it.  The  dawn  was  cold;  on 
these  mornings  the  butt  of  the  leg  felt  as  though  it  were 
made  of  ice.  I  told  him  to.  I  told  him. 


Mistral 


i 

IT  WAS  THE  LAST  of  the  Milanese  brandy.  I  drank,  and  passed 
the  bottle  to  Don,  who  lifted  the  flask  until  the  liquor 
slanted  yellowly  in  the  narrow  slot  in  the  leather  jacket, 
and  while  he  held  it  so  the  soldier  came  up  the  path,  his 
tunic  open  at  the  throat,  pushing  the  bicycle.  He  was  a 
young  man,  with  a  bold  lean  face.  He  gave  us  a  surly  good 
day  and  looked  at  the  flask  a  moment  as  he  passed.  We 
watched  him  disappear  beyond  the  crest,  mounting  the  bi- 
cycle as  he  went  out  of  sight. 

Don  took  a  mouthful,  then  he  poured  the  rest  out.  Ic 
splattered  on  the  parched  earth,  pocking  it  for  a  fading  mo- 
ment. He  shook  the  flask  to  the  ultimate  drop.  "Salut,"  he 
said,  returning  the  flask.  "Thanks,  O  gods.  My  Lord,  if  I 
thought  I'd  have  to  go  to  bed  with  any  more  of  that  in  my 
stomach." 

"It's  too  bad,  the  way  you  have  to  drink  it,"  I  said.  "Just 
have  to  drink  it."  I  stowed  the  flask  away  and  we  went  on, 
crossing  the  crest.  The  path  began  to  descend,  still  in 
shadow.  The  air  was  vivid,  filled  with  sun  which  held  a 
quality  beyond  that  of  mere  light  and  heat,  and  a  sourceless 
goat  bell  somewhere  beyond  the  next  turn  of  the  path,  dis- 
tant and  unimpeded. 

843 


844  Beyond 

"I  hate  to  see  you  lugging  the  stuff  along  day  after  day," 
Don  said.  "That's  the  reason  I  do.  You  couldn't  drink  it, 
and  you  wouldn't  throw  it  away." 

"Throw  it  away?  It  cost  ten  lire.  What  did  I  buy  it  for?" 

"God  knows,"  Don  said.  Against  the  sun-filled  valley  the 
trees  were  like  the  bars  of  a  grate,  the  path  a  gap  in  the  bars, 
the  valley  blue  and  sunny.  The  goat  bell  was  somewhere 
ahead.  A  fainter  path  turned  off  at  right  angles,  steeper  than 
the  broad  one  which  we  were  following.  "He  went  that 
way,"  Don  said. 

"Who  did?"  I  said.  Don  was  pointing  to  the  faint  mark 
of  bicycle  tires  where  they  had  turned  into  the  fainter  path. 

"See." 

"This  one  must  not  have  been  steep  enough  for  him,"  I 
said. 

"He  must  have  been  in  a  hurry." 

"He  sure  was,  after  he  made  that  turn." 

"Maybe  there's  a  haystack  at  the  bottom." 

"Or  he  could  run  on  across  the  valley  and  up  the  other 
mountain  and  then  run  back  down  that  one  and  up  this  one 
again  until  his  momentum  gave  out." 

"Or  until  he  starved  to  death,"  Don  said. 

"That's  right,"  I  said.  "Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  man  starv- 
ing to  death  on  a  bicycle?" 

"No,"  Don  said.  "Did  you?" 

"No,"  I  said.  We  descended.  The  path  turned,  and  then 
we  came  upon  the  goat  bell.  It  was  on  a  laden  mule  cropping 
with  delicate  tinkling  jerks  at  the  pathside  near  a  stone 
shrine.  Beside  the  shrine  sat  a  man  in  corduroy  and  a  woman 
in  a  bright  shawl,  a  covered  basket  beside  her.  They  watched 
us  as  we  approached. 

"Good  day,  signor,"  Don  said.  "Is  it  far?" 

"Good  day,  signori,"  the  woman  said.  The  man  looked 
at  us.  He  had  blue  eyes  with  dissolving  irises,  as  if  they  had 


Mistral  845 

been  soaked  in  water  for  a  long  time.  The  woman  touched 
his  arm,  then  she  made  swift  play  with  her  fingers  before 
his  face.  He  said,  in  a  dry  metallic  voice  like  a  cicada's: 

"Good  day,  signori." 

"He  doesn't  hear  any  more,"  the  woman  said.  "No,  it  is 
not  far.  From  yonder  you  will  see  the  roofs." 

"Good,"  Don  said.  "We  are  fatigued.  Might  one  rest  here, 
signora?" 

"Rest,  signori,"  the  woman  said.  We  slipped  our  packs 
and  sat  down.  The  sun  slanted  upon  the  shrine,  upon  the 
serene,  weathered  figure  in  the  niche  and  upon  two  bunches 
of  dried  mountain  asters  lying  there.  The  woman  was  mak- 
ing play  with  her  fingers  before  the  man's  face.  Her  other 
hand  in  repose  upon  the  basket  beside  her  was  gnarled  and 
rough.  Motionless,  it  had  that  rigid  quality  of  unaccustomed 
idleness,  not  restful  so  much  as  quite  spent,  dead.  It  looked 
like  an  artificial  hand  attached  to  the  edge  of  the  shawl,  as 
if  she  had  donned  it  with  the  shawl  for  conventional  com- 
plement. The  other  hand,  the  one  with  which  she  talked  to 
the  man,  was  swift  and  supple  as  a  prestidigitator's. 

The  man  looked  at  us.  "You  walk,  signori,"  he  said  in  his 
light,  cadenceless  voice. 

"Si,"  we  said.  Don  took  out  the  cigarettes.  The  man  lifted 
his  hand  in  a  slight,  deprecatory  gesture.  Don  insisted.  The 
man  bowed  formally,  sitting,  and  fumbled  at  the  pack.  The 
woman  took  the  cigarette  from  the  pack  and  put  it  into  his 
hand.  He  bowed  again  as  he  accepted  a  light.  "From 
Milano,"  Don  said.  "It  is  far." 

"It  is  far,"  the  woman  said.  Her  fingers  rippled  briefly. 
"He  has  been  there,"  she  said. 

"I  was  there,  signori,"  the  man  said.  He  held  the  cigarette 
carefully  between  thumb  and  forefinger.  "One  takes  care  to 
escape  the  carriages." 

"Yes."  Don  said.  "Those  without  horses." 


846  Beyond 

"Without  horses,"  the  woman  said.  "There  are  many. 
Even  here  in  the  mountains  we  hear  of  it." 

"Many,"  Don  said.  "Always  whoosh.  Whoosh.  Whoosh." 

"Si,"  the  woman  said.  "Even  here  I  have  seen  it."  Her 
hand  rippled  in  the  sunlight.  The  man  looked  at  us  quietly, 
smoking.  "It  was  not  like  that  when  he  was  there,  you  see," 
she  said. 

"I  am  there  long  time  ago,  signori,"  he  said.  "It  is  far." 
He  spoke  in  the  same  tone  she  had  used,  the  same  tone  of 
grave  and  courteous  explanation. 

"It  is  far,"  Don  said.  We  smoked.  The  mule  cropped  with 
delicate,  jerking  tinkles  of  the  bell.  "But  we  can  rest  yon- 
der," Don  said,  extending  his  hand  toward  the  valley  swim- 
ming blue  and  sunny  beyond  the  precipice  where  the  path 
turned.  "A  bowl  of  soup,  wine,  a  bed?" 

The  woman  watched  us  across  that  serene  and  topless 
rampart  of  the  deaf,  the  cigarette  smoking  close  between 
thumb  and  finger.  The  woman's  hand  flickered  before  his 
face.  "Si,"  he  said;  "si.  With  the  priest:  why  not?  The  priest 
will  take  them  in."  He  said  something  else,  too  swift  for 
me.  The  woman  removed  the  checked  cloth  which  covered 
the  basket,  and  took  out  a  wineskin.  Don  and  I  bowed  and 
drank  in  turn,  the  man  returning  the  bows. 

"Is  it  far  to  the  priest's?"  Don  said. 

The  woman's  hand  flickered  with  unbelievable  rapidity. 
Her  other  hand,  lying  upon  the  basket,  might  have  belonged 
to  another  body.  "Let  them  wait  for  him  there,  then,"  the 
man  said.  He  looked  at  us.  "There  is  a  funeral  today.  You 
will  find  him  at  the  church.  Drink,  signori." 

We  drank  in  decorous  turn,  the  three  of  us.  The  wine 
was  harsh  and  sharp  and  potent.  The  mule  cropped,  its  small 
bell  tinkling,  its  shadow  long  in  the  slanting  sun,  across  the 
path.  "Who  is  it  that's  dead,  signora?"  Don  said. 

"He  was  to  have  married  the  priest's  ward  after  this 


Mistral  847 

harvest,"  the  woman  said;  "the  banns  were  read  and  all.  A 
rich  man,  and  not  old.  But  two  days  ago,  he  died." 

The  man  watched  her  lips.  "Tchk.  He  owned  land,  a 
house:  so  do  I.  It  is  nothing." 

"He  was  rich,"  the  woman  said.  "Because  he  was  both 
young  and  fortunate,  my  man  is  jealous  of  him." 

"But  not  now,"  the  man  said.  "Eh,  signori?" 

"To  live  is  good,"  Don  said.  He  said,  e  hello. 

"It  is  good,"  the  man  said;  he  also  said,  bello. 

"He  was  to  have  married  the  priest's  niece,  you  say,"  Don 
said. 

"She  is  no  kin  to  him,"  the  woman  said.  "The  priest  just 
raised  her.  She  was  six  when  he  took  her,  without  people, 
kin,  of  any  sort.  The  mother  was  workhouse-bred.  She  lived 
in  a  hut  on  the  mountain  yonder.  It  was  not  known  who  the 
father  was,  although  the  priest  tried  for  a  long  while  to 
persuade  one  of  them  to  marry  her  for  the  child's — " 

"One  of  which?"  Don  said. 

"One  of  those  who  might  have  been  the  father,  signor. 
But  it  was  never  known  which  one  it  was,  until  in  1916. 
He  was  a  young  man,  a  laborer;  the  next  day  we  learned 
that  the  mother  had  gone  too,  to  the  war  also,  for  she  was 
never  seen  again  by  those  who  knew  her  until  one  of  our 
boys  came  home  after  Caporetto,  where  the  father  had  been 
killed,  and  told  how  the  mother  had  been  seen  in  a  house  in 
Milano  that  was  not  a  good  house.  So  the  priest  went  and 
got  the  child.  She  was  six  then,  brown  and  lean  as  a  lizard. 
She  was  hidden  on  the  mountain  when  the  priest  got  there; 
the  house  was  empty.  The  priest  pursued  her  among  the 
rocks  and  captured  her  like  a  beast:  she  was  half  naked  and 
without  shoes  and  it  winter  time." 

"So  the  priest  kept  her,"  Don  said.  "Stout  fellow." 

"She  had  no  people,  no  roof,  no  crust  to  call  hers  save 
what  the  priest  gave  her.  But  you  would  not  know  it.  Al- 


848  Beyond 

ways  with  a  red  or  a  green  dress  for  Sundays  and  feast  days, 
even  at  fourteen  and  fifteen,  when  a  girl  should  be  learning 
modesty  and  industry,  to  be  a  crown  to  her  husband.  The 
priest  had  told  that  she  would  be  for  the  church,  and  we 
wondered  when  he  would  make  her  put  such  away  for  the 
greater  glory  of  God.  But  at  fourteen  and  fifteen  she  was 
already  the  brightest  and  loudest  and  most  tireless  in  the 
dances,  and  the  young  men  already  beginning  to  look  after 
her,  even  after  it  had  been  arranged  oetween  her  and  him 
who  is  dead  yonder." 

"The  priest  changed  his  mind  about  the  church  and  got 
her  a  husband  instead,"  Don  said. 

"He  found  for  her  the  best  catch  in  this  parish,  signor. 
Young,  and  rich,  with  a  new  suit  each  year  from  the  Milano 
tailor.  Then  the  harvest  came,  and  what  do  you  think, 
signori?  she  would  not  marry  him." 

"I  thought  you  said  the  wedding  was  not  to  be  until  after 
this  harvest,"  Don  said.  "You  mean,  the  wedding  had  already 
been  put  off  a  year  before  this  harvest?" 

"It  had  been  put  off  for  three  years.  It  was  made  three 
years  ago,  to  be  after  that  harvest.  It  was  made  in  the  same 
week  that  Giulio  Farinzale  was  called  to  the  army.  I  remem- 
ber how  we  were  all  surprised,  because  none  had  thought  his 
number  would  come  up  so  soon,  even  though  he  was  a 
bachelor  and  without  ties  save  an  uncle  and  aunt." 

"Is  that  so?"  Don  said.  "Governments  surprise  everybody 
now  and  then.  How  did  he  get  out  of  it?" 

"He  did  not  get  out  of  it." 

"Oh.  That's  why  the  wedding  was  put  off,  was  it?" 

The  woman  looked  at  Don  for  a  minute.  "Giulio  was  not 
the  fiance's  name." 

"Oh,  I  see.  Who  was  Giulio?" 

The  woman  did  not  answer  at  once.  She  sat  with  her 
head  bent  a  little.  The  man  had  been  watching  their  lips 


Mistral  849 

when  they  spoke.  "Go  on,"  he  said;  "tell  them.  They  are 
men:  they  can  listen  to  women's  tittle-tattle  with  the  ears 
alone.  They  cackle,  signori;  give  them  a  breathing  spell,  and 
they  cackle  like  geese,  Drink." 

"He  was  the  one  she  used  to  meet  by  the  river  in  the 
evenings;  he  was  younger  still:  that  was  why  we  were  sur- 
prised that  his  number  should  be  called  so  soon.  Before  we 
had  thought  she  was  old  enough  for  such,  she  was  meeting 
him.  And  hiding  it  from  the  priest  as  skillfully  as  any  grown 
woman  could — "  For  an  instant  the  man's  washed  eyes 
glinted  at  us,  quizzical. 

"She  was  meeting  this  Giulio  all  the  while  she  was  engaged 
to  the  other  one?"  Don  said. 

"No.  The  engagement  was  later.  We  had  net  thought  her 
old  enough  for  such  yet.  When  we  heard  about  it,  we  said 
how  an  anonymous  child  is  like  a  letter  in  the  post  office: 
the  envelope  might  look  like  any  other  envelope,  but  when 
you  open  it . ,  .  And  the  holy  can  be  fooled  by  sin  as  quickly 
as  you  or  I,  signori.  Quicker,  because  they  are  holy." 

"Did  he  ever  find  it  out?"  Don  said. 

"Yes.  It  was  not  long  after.  She  would  slip  out  of  the 
house  at  dusk;  she  was  seen,  and  the  priest  was  seen,  hidden 
in  the  garden  to  watch  the  house:  a  servant  of  the  holy 
God  forced  to  play  watchdog  for  the  world  to  see.  It  was 
not  good,  signori." 

"And  then  the  young  man  got  called  suddenly  to  the 
army,"  Don  said.  "Is  that  right?" 

"It  was  quite  sudden;  we  were  all  surprised.  Then  we 
thought  that  it  was  the  hand  of  God,  and  that  now  the 
priest  would  send  her  to  the  convent.  Then  in  that  same 
week  we  learned  that  it  was  arranged  between  her  and  him 
who  is  dead  yonder,  to  be  after  the  harvest,  and  we  said  it 
was  the  hand  of  God  that  would  confer  upon  her  a  husband 
beyond  her  deserts  in  order  to  protect  His  servant.  For  the 


850  Beyond 

holy  are  susceptible  to  evil,  even  as  you  and  I,  signori;  they 
too  are  helpless  before  sin  without  God's  aid." 

"Tchk,  tchk,"  the  man  said.  "It  was  nothing.  The  priest 
looked  at  her,  too,"  he  said.  "For  a  man  is  a  man,  even  under 
a  cassock.  Eh,  signori?" 

"You  would  say  so,"  the  woman  said.  "You  without 
grace." 

"And  the  priest  looked  at  her,  too,"  Don  said. 

"It  was  his  trial,  his  punishment,  for  having  been  too 
lenient  with  her.  And  the  punishment  was  not  over:  the 
harvest  came,  and  we  heard  that  the  wedding  was  put  off 
for  a  year:  what  do  you  think  of  that,  signori?  that  a  girl, 
come  from  what  she  had  come  from,  to  be  given  the  chance 
which  the  priest  had  given  her  to  save  her  from  herself, 
from  her  blood  .  .  .  We  heard  how  they  quarreled,  she  and 
the  priest,  of  how  she  defied  him,  slipping  out  of  the  house 
after  dark  and  going  to  the  dances  where  her  fiance  might 
see  her  or  hear  of  it  at  any  time." 

"Was  the  priest  still  looking  at  her?"  Don  said. 

"It  was  his  punishment,  his  expiation.  So  the  next  harvest 
came,  and  it  was  put  off  again,  to  be  after  the  next  harvest; 
the  banns  were  not  even  begun.  She  defied  him  to  that  extent, 
signori,  she,  a  pauper,  and  we  all  saying,  'When  will  her 
fiance  hear  of  it,  learn  that  she  is  no  good,  when  there  are 
daughters  of  good  houses  who  had  learned  modesty  and 
seemliness?' " 

"You  have  unmarried  daughters,  signora?"  Don  said. 

"Si.  One.  Two  have  I  married,  one  still  in  my  house.  A 
good  girl,  signori,  if  I  do  say  it." 

"Tchk,  woman,"  the  man  said. 

"That  is  readily  believed,"  Don  said.  "So  the  young  man 
had  gone  to  the  army,  and  the  wedding  was  put  off  for  an- 
other year." 

"And  another  year,  signori.  And  then  a  third  year.  Then 


Mistral  851 

it  was  to  be  after  this  harvest;  within  a  month  it  was  to  have 
been.  The  banns  were  read;  the  priest  read  them  himself  in 
the  church,  the  third  time  last  Sunday,  with  him  there  in  his 
new  Milano  suit  and  she  beside  him  in  the  shawl  he  had  given 
her — it  cost  a  hundred  lire — and  a  golden  chain,  for  he  gave 
her  gifts  suitable  for  a  queen  rather  than  for  one  who  could 
not  name  her  own  father,  and  we  believed  that  at  last  the 
priest  had  served  his  expiation  out  and  that  the  evil  had  been 
lifted  from  his  house  at  last,  since  the  soldier's  time  would 
also  be  up  this  fall.  And  now  the  fiance  is  dead." 

"Was  he  very  sick?"  Don  said. 

"It  was  very  sudden.  A  hale  man;  one  you  would  have  said 
would  live  a  long  time.  One  day  he  was  well,  the  second  day 
he  was  quite  sick.  The  third  day  he  was  dead.  Perhaps  you 
can  hear  the  bell,  with  listening,  since  you  have  young  ears." 
The  opposite  mountains  were  in  shadow.  Between,  the  valley 
lay  invisible  still.  In  the  sunny  silence  the  mule's  bell  tinkled 
in  random  jerks.  "For  it  is  in  God's  hands,"  the  woman  said. 
"Who  will  say  that  his  life  is  his  own?" 

"Who  will  say?"  Don  said.  He  did  not  look  at  me.  He  said 
in  English:  "Give  me  a  cigarette." 

"You've  got  them." 

"No,  I  haven't." 

"Yes,  you  have.  In  your  pants  pocket." 

He  took  out  the  cigarettes.  He  continued  to  speak  in  Eng- 
lish. "And  he  died  suddenly.  And  he  got  engaged  suddenly. 
And  at  the  same  time,  Giulio  got  drafted  suddenly.  It  would 
have  surprised  you.  Everything  was  sudden  except  some- 
body's eagerness  for  the  wedding  to  be.  There  didn't  seem  to 
be  any  hurry  about  that,  did  there?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  no  spika." 

"In  fact,  they  seemed  to  stop  being  sudden  altogether  until 
about  time  for  Giulio  to  come  home  again.  Then  it  began  to 
be  sudden  again.  And  so  I  think  I'll  ask  if  priests  serve  on  the 


852  Beyond 

draft  boards  in  Italy."  The  old  man  watched  his  lips,  his 
washed  gaze  grave  and  intent.  "And  if  this  path  is  the  main 
path  down  the  mountain,  and  that  bicycle  turned  off  into  that 
narrow  one  back  there,  what  do  you  think  of  that,  signori?" 

"I  think  it  was  fine.  Only  a  little  sharp  to  the  throat.  Maybe 
we  can  get  something  down  there  to  take  away  the  taste." 

The  man  was  watching  our  lips;  the  woman's  head  was 
bent  again;  her  stiff  hand  smoothed  the  checked  cover  upon 
the  basket.  "You  will  find  him  at  the  church,  signori,"  the 
man  said. 

"Yes,"  Don  said.  "At  the  church." 

We  drank  again.  The  man  accepted  another  cigarette  with 
that  formal  and  unfailing  politeness,  conferring  upon  the 
action  something  finely  ceremonious  yet  not  incongruous. 
The  woman  put  the  wineskin  back  into  the  basket  and  cov- 
ered it  again.  We  rose  and  took  up  our  packs. 

"You  talk  swiftly  with  the  hand,  signora,"  Don  said. 

"He  reads  the  lips  too.  The  other  we  made  lying  in  the 
bed  in  the  dark.  The  old  do  not  sleep  so  much.  The  old  lie  in 
bed  and  talk.  It  is  not  like  that  with  you  yet." 

"It  is  so.  You  have  made  the  padrone  many  children, 
signora?" 

"Si.  Seven.  But  we  are  old  now.  We  lie  in  bed  and  talk." 


II 

BEFORE  WE  REACHED  the  village  the  bell  had  begun  to  toll. 
From  the  gaunt  steeple  of  the  church  the  measured  notes 
seemed  to  blow  free  as  from  a  winter  branch,  along  the  wind. 
The  wind  began  as  soon  as  the  sun  went  down.  We  watched 
the  sun  touch  the  mountains,  whereupon  the  sky  lost  its  pale, 
vivid  blueness  and  took  on  a  faintly  greenish  cast,  like  glass, 
against  which  the  recent  crest,  where  the  shrine  faded  with 
the  dried  handful  of  flowers  beneath  the  fading  crucifix, 
stood  black  and  sharp.  Then  the  wind  began:  a  steady  mov- 


Mistral  853 

ing  wall  of  air  full  of  invisible  particles  of  something.  Before 
it  the  branches  leaned  without  a  quiver,  as  before  the  pres- 
sure of  an  invisible  hand,  and  in  it  our  blood  began  to  cool  at 
once,  even  before  we  had  stopped  walking  where  the  path 
became  a  cobbled  street. 

The  bell  still  tolled.  "Funny  hour  for  a  funeral,"  I  said. 
"You'd  think  he  would  have  kept  a  long  time  at  this  altitude. 
No  need  to  be  hurried  into  the  ground  like  this." 

"He  got  in  with  a  fast  gang,"  Don  said.  The  church  was 
invisible  from  here,  shut  off  by  a  wall.  We  stood  before  a 
gate,  looking  into  a  court  enclosed  by  three  walls  and  roofed 
by  a  vine  on  a  raftered  trellis.  It  contained  a  wooden  table 
and  two  backless  benches.  We  stood  at  the  gate,  looking  into 
the  court,  when  Don  said.  "So  this  is  Uncle's  house." 

"Uncle?" 

"He  was  without  ties  save  an  uncle  and  aunt,"  Don  said. 
"Yonder,  by  the  door."  The  door  was  at  the  bottom  of  the 
court.  There  was  a  fire  beyond  it,  and  beside  the  door  a  bi- 
cycle leaned  against  the  wall.  "The  bicycle,  unconscious," 
Don  said. 

"Is  that  a  bicycle?" 

"Sure.  That's  a  bicycle."  It  was  an  old-style  machine,  with 
high  back-swept  handlebars  like  gazelle  horns.  We  looked 
at  it. 

"The  other  path  is  the  back  entrance,"  I  said.  "The  family 
entrance."  We  heard  the  bell,  looking  into  the  court. 

"Maybe  the  wind  doesn't  blow  in  there,"  Don  said.  "Be- 
sides, there's  no  hurry.  We  couldn't  see  him  anyway,  until 
it's  over." 

"These  places  are  hotels  sometimes."  We  entered.  Then 
we  saw  the  soldier.  When  we  approached  the  table  he  came 
to  the  door  and  stood  against  the  firelight,  looking  at  us.  He 
wore  a  white  shirt  now.  But  we  could  tell  him  by  his  legs. 
Then  he  went  back  into  the  house. 

"So  Malbrouckis  home,"  Don  said. 


854  Beyond 

"Maybe  he  came  back  for  the  funeral."  We  listened  to  the 
bell.  The  twilight  was  thicker  inside.  Overhead  the  leaves 
streamed  rigid  on  the  wind,  stippled  black  upon  the  livid 
translucent  sky.  The  strokes  of  the  bell  sounded  as  though 
they  too  were  leaves  flattening  away  upon  an  inviolable  vine 
in  the  wind. 

"How  did  he  know  there  was  going  to  be  one?"  Don  said. 

"Maybe  the  priest  wrote  him  a  letter." 

"Maybe  so,"  Don  said.  The  firelight  looked  good  beyond 
the  door.  Then  a  woman  stood  in  it,  looking  at  us.  "Good 
day,  padrona,"  Don  said.  "Might  one  have  a  mouthful  of 
wine  here?"  She  looked  at  us,  motionless  against  the  firelight. 
She  was  tall.  She  stood  tall  and  motionless  against  the  fire- 
light, not  touching  the  door.  The  bell  tolled.  "She  used  to  be 
a  soldier  too,"  Don  said.  "She  was  a  sergeant." 

"Maybe  she  was  the  colonel  who  ordered  Malbrouck  to 
go  home." 

"No.  He  wasn't  moving  fast  enough  when  he  passed  us  up 
yonder,  for  it  to  have  been  her."  Then  the  woman  spoke: 

"It  is  so,  signori.  Rest  yourselves."  She  went  back  into  the 
house.  We  slipped  our  packs  and  sat  down.  We  looked  at  the 
bicycle. 

"Cavalry,"  Don  said.  "Wonder  why  he  came  the  back 
way." 

"All  right,"  I  said. 

"All  right  what?" 

"All  right.  Wonder." 

"Is  that  a  joke?" 

"Sure.  That's  a  joke.  It's  because  we  are  old.  We  lie  in  the 
draft.  That's  a  joke  too." 

"Tell  me  something  that's  not  a  joke." 

"All  right." 

"Did  you  hear  the  same  thing  I  think  I  heard  up  there?" 

"No  spika.  I  love  Italy.  I  love  Mussolini."  The  woman 


Mistral  855 

brought  the  wine.  She  set  it  on  the  table  and  was  turning 
•away.  "Ask  her,"  I  said.  "Why  don't  you?" 

"All  right.  I  will. — You  have  military  in  the  house, 
signora?" 

The  woman  looked  at  him.  "It  is  nothing,  signor.  It  is  my 
nephew  returned." 

"Finished,  signora?" 

"Finished,  signor." 

"Accept  our  felicitations.  He  has  doubtless  many  friends 
who  will  rejoice  at  his  return."  She  was  thin,  not  old,  with 
cold  eyes,  looking  down  at  Don  with  brusque  attention,  wait- 
ing. "You  have  a  funeral  in  the  village  today."  She  said  noth- 
ing at  all.  She  just  stood  there,  waiting  for  Don  to  get  done 
talking.  "He  will  be  mourned,"  Don  said. 

"Let  us  hope  so,"  she  said.  She  made  to  go  on;  Don  asked 
her  about  lodgings.  There  were  none,  she  answered  with 
immediate  finality.  Then  we  realized  that  the  bell  had  ceased. 
We  could  hear  the  steady  whisper  of  the  wind  in  the  leaves 
overhead. 

"We  were  told  that  the  priest — "  Don  said. 

"Yes?  You  were  told  that  the  priest." 

"That  we  might  perhaps  find  lodgings  there." 

"Then  you  would  do  well  to  see  the  priest,  signor."  She 
returned  to  the  house.  She  strode  with  the  long  stride  of  a 
man  into  the  firelight,  and  disappeared.  When  I  looked  at 
Don,  he  looked  away  and  reached  for  the  wine. 

"Why  didn't  you  ask  her  some  more?"  I  said.  "Why  did 
you  quit  so  soon?" 

"She  was  in  a  hurry.  Her  nephew  is  just  home  from  the 
army,  she  said.  He  came  in  this  afternoon.  She  wants  to  be 
with  him,  since  he  is  without  ties." 

"Maybe  she's  afraid  he'll  be  drafted." 

"Is  that  a  joke  too?" 

"It  wouldn't  be  to  me."  He  filled  the  glasses.  "Call  her 


856  Beyond 

back.  Tell  her  you  heard  that  her  nephew  is  to  marry  the 
priest's  ward.  Tell  her  we  want  to  give  them  a  present.  A 
stomach  pump.  That's  not  a  joke,  either." 

"I  know  it's  not."  He  filled  his  glass  carefully.  "Which 
had  you  rather  do,  or  stay  at  the  priest's  tonight?" 

"Salut,"  I  said. 

"Salut."  We  drank.  The  leaves  made  a  dry,  wild,  con- 
tinuous sound.  "Wish  it  was  still  summer." 

"It  would  be  pretty  cold  tonight,  even  in  a  barn." 

"Yes.  Glad  we  don't  have  to  sleep  in  a  barn  tonight." 

"It  wouldn't  be  so  bad,  after  we  got  the  hay  warm  and  got 
to  sleep." 

"We  don't  have  to,  though.  We  can  get  a  good  sleep  and 
get  an  early  start  in  the  morning." 

I  filled  the  glasses.  "I  wonder  how  far  it  is  to  the  next 
village." 

"Too  far."  We  drank.  "I  wish  it  were  summer.  Don't 
you?" 

"Yes."  I  emptied  the  bottle  into  the  glasses.  "Have  some 
wine."  We  raised  our  glasses.  We  looked  at  one  another.  The 
particles  in  the  wind  seemed  to  drive  through  the  clothing, 
through  the  flesh,  against  the  bones,  penetrating  the  brick 
and  plaster  of  the  walls  to  reach  us.  "Salut." 

"We  said  that  before,"  Don  said. 

"All  right.  Salut,  then." 

"Salut." 

We  were  young:  Don,  twenty-three;  I,  twenty-two.  And 
age  is  so  much  a  part  of,  so  inextricable  from,  the  place  where 
you  were  born  or  bred.  So  that  away  from  home,  some  dis- 
tance away — space  or  time  or  experience  away — you  are  al- 
ways both  older  and  eternally  younger  than  yourself,  at  the 
same  time. 

We  stood  in  the  black  wind  and  watched  the  funeral — 
priest,  coffin,  a  meager  clump  of  mourners — pass,  their  gar- 


Mistral  857 

ments,  and  particularly  the  priest's  rusty  black,  ballooning 
ahead  of  them,  giving  an  illusion  of  unseemly  haste,  as  though 
they  were  outstripping  themselves  across  the  harsh  green  twi- 
light (the  air  was  like  having  to  drink  iced  lemonade  in  the 
winter  time)  and  into  the  church.  "We'll  be  out  of  the  wind 
too,"  Don  said. 

"There's  an  hour  of  light  yet." 

"Sure;  we  might  even  reach  the  crest  by  dark."  He  looked 
at  me.  Then  I  looked  away.  The  red  tiles  of  the  roofs  were 
black,  too,  now.  "We'll  be  out  of  the  wind."  Then  the  bell 
began  to  toll  again.  "We  don't  know  anything.  There's  prob- 
ably not  anything.  Anyway,  we  don't  know  it.  We  don't  have 
to  know  it.  Let's  get  out  of  the  wind."  It  was  one  of  those 
stark,  square,  stone  churches,  built  by  those  harsh  iron  counts 
and  bishops  of  Lombardy.  It  was  built  old;  time  had  not  even 
mellowed  it,  could  not  ever  mellow  it,  not  all  of  time  could 
have.  They  might  have  built  the  mountains  too  and  invented 
the  twilight  in  a  dungeon  underground,  in  the  black  ground. 
And  beside  the  door  the  bicycle  leaned.  We  looked  at  it 
quietly  as  we  entered  the  church  and  we  said  quietly,  at  the 
same  time: 

"Beaver." 

"He's  one  of  the  pallbearers,"  Don  said.  "That's  why  he 
came  home."  The  bell  tolled.  We  passed  through  the  chancel 
and  stopped  at  the  back  of  the  church.  We  were  out  of  the 
wind  now,  save  for  the  chill  eddies  of  it  that  licked  in  at  our 
backs.  We  could  hear  it  outside,  ripping  the  slow  strokes  of 
the  bell  half -born  out  of  the  belfry,  so  that  by  the  time  we 
heard  them,  they  seemed  to  have  come  back  as  echoes  from  a 
far  distance.  The  nave,  groined  upward  into  the  gloom, 
dwarfed  the  meager  clot  of  bowed  figures.  Beyond  them, 
above  the  steady  candles,  the  Host  rose,  soaring  into  sootlike 
shadows  like  festooned  cobwebs,  with  a  quality  sorrowful 
and  triumphant,  like  wings.  There  was  no  organ,  no  music, 


858  Beyond 

no  human  sound  at  all  at  first.  They  just  knelt  there  among 
the  dwarfing  gloom  and  the  cold,  serene,  faint  light  of  the 
candles.  They  might  have  all  been  dead.  "It'll  be  dark  long 
before  they  can  get  done,"  Don  whispered. 

"Maybe  it's  because  of  the  harvest,"  I  whispered.  "They 
probably  have  to  work  all  day.  The  living  can't  wait  on  the 
dead,  you  know." 

"But,  if  he  was  as  rich  as  they  told  us  he  was,  it  seems 
like  .  .  ." 

"Who  buries  the  rich?  Do  the  rich  do  it,  or  do  the  poor 
doit?" 

"The  poor  do  it,"  Don  whispered.  Then  the  priest  was 
there,  above  the  bowed  heads.  We  had  not  seen  him  at  first, 
but  now  he  was  there,  shapeless,  blurring  out  of  the  shadows 
below  the  candles,  his  face  like  a  smudge,  a  thumb  print, 
upon  the  gloom  where  the  Host  rose  in  a  series  of  dissolving 
gleams  like  a  waterfall;  his  voice  filled  the  church,  slow, 
steady,  like  wings  beating  against  the  cold  stone,  upon  the 
resonance  of  wind  in  which  the  windless  candles  stood  as 
though  painted.  "And  so  he  looked  at  her,"  Don  whispered. 
"He  had  to  sit  across  the  table  from  her,  say,  and  watch  her. 
Watch  her  eating  the  food  that  made  her  change  from  noth- 
ing and  become  everything,  knowing  she  had  no  food  of  her 
own  and  that  it  was  his  food  that  was  doing  it,  and  not  for 
him  changing.  You  know:  girls:  they  are  not  anything,  then 
they  are  everything.  You  watch  them  become  everything 
before  your  eyes.  No,  not  eyes:  it's  the  same  in  the  dark.  You 
know  it  before  they  do;  it's  not  their  becoming  everything 
that  you  dread:  it's  their  finding  it  out  after  you  have  long 
known  it:  you  die  too  many  times.  And  that's  not  right.  Not 
fair.  I  hope  I'll  never  have  a  daughter." 

"That's  incest,"  I  whispered. 

"I  never  said  it  wasn't.  I  said  it  was  like  fire.  Like  watching 
the  fire  lean  up  and  away  rushing." 


Mistral  859 

"You  must  either  watch  a  fire,  or  burn  up  in  it.  Or  not  be 
there  at  all.  Which  would  you  choose?" 

"I  don't  know.  If  it  was  a  girl,  I'd  rather  burn  up  in  it." 

"Than  to  not  be  there  at  all,  even?" 

"Yes."  Because  we  were  young.  And  the  young  seem  to 
be  impervious  to  anything  except  trifles.  We  can  invest  tri- 
fles with  a  tragic  profundity,  which  is  the  world.  Because, 
after  all,  there's  nothing  particularly  profound  about  reality. 
Because  when  you  reach  reality,  along  about  forty  or  fifty  or 
sixty,  you  find  it  to  be  only  six  feet  deep  and  eighteen  feet 
square. 

Then  it  was  over.  Outside  again,  the  wind  blew  steadily 
down  from  the  black  hills,  hollowing  out  the  green  glass  bowl 
of  the  sky.  We  watched  them  file  out  of  the  church  and  carry 
the  coffin  into  the  churchyard.  Four  of  them  carried  iron 
lanterns  and  in  the  dusk  they  clotted  quietly  antic  about  the 
grave  while  the  wind  leaned  steadily  upon  them  and  upon 
the  lantern  flames,  and  blew  fine  dust  into  the  grave  as 
though  all  nature  were  quick  to  hide  it.  Then  they  were  done. 
The  lanterns  bobbed  into  motion,  approaching,  and  we 
watched  the  priest.  He  crossed  the  churchyard  toward  the 
presbytery  at  a  scuttling  gait,  blown  along  in  his  gusty  black. 
The  soldier  was  in  mufti  now.  He  came  out  of  the  throng, 
striding  also  with  that  long-limbed  thrust  like  his  aunt.  He 
looked  briefly  at  us  with  his  bold  surly  face  and  got  on  the 
bike  and  rode  away.  "He  was  one  of  the  pallbearers,"  Don 
said.  "And  what  do  you  think  of  that,  signori?" 

"No  spika,"  I  said.  "I  love  Italy.  I  love  Mussolini." 

"You  said  that  before." 

"All  right.  Salut,  then." 

Don  looked  at  me.  His  face  was  quite  sober.  "Salut,"  he 
said.  Then  he  looked  toward  the  presbytery,  hitching  his 
pack  forward.  The  door  of  the  presbytery  was  closed. 

"Don,"  I  said.  He  stopped,  looking  at  me.  The  mountains 


860  Beyond 

had  lost  all  perspective;  they  appeared  to  lean  in  toward  us. 
It  was  like  being  at  the  bottom  of  a  dead  volcano  filled  with 
that  lost  savage  green  wind  dead  in  its  own  motion  and  full 
of  its  own  driving  and  unsleeping  dust.  We  looked  at  one 
another. 

"All  right,  damn  it,"  Don  said.  "You  say  what  to  do  next, 
then."  We  looked  at  one  another.  After  a  while  the  wind 
would  sound  like  sleep,  maybe.  If  you  were  warm  and  close 
between  walls,  maybe. 

"All  right,"  I  said. 

"Why  can't  you  mean,  all  right?  Damn  it,  we've  got  to  do 
something.  This  is  October;  it's  not  summer.  And  we  don't 
know  anything.  We  haven't  heard  anything.  We  don't  speak 
Italian.  We  love  Italy." 

"I  said,  all  right,"  I  said.  The  presbytery  was  of  stone  too, 
bleak  in  a  rank  garden.  We  were  halfway  up  the  flagged 
path  when  a  casement  beneath  the  eaves  opened  and  some- 
body in  white  looked  down  at  us  and  closed  the  shutter  again. 
It  was  done  all  in  one  movement.  Again  we  said  together, 
quietly: 

"Beaver."  But  it  was  too  dark  to  see  much,  and  the  case- 
ment was  closed  again.  It  had  not  taken  ten  seconds. 

"Only  we  should  have  said,  Beaverette,"  Don  said. 

"That's  right.  Is  that  a  joke?" 

"Yes.  That's  a  joke."  A  wooden-faced  peasant  woman 
opened  the  door.  She  held  a  candle,  the  flame  leaning  inward 
from  the  wind.  The  hall  behind  her  was  dark;  a  stale,  chill 
smell  came  out  of  it.  She  stood  there,  the  harsh  planes  of  her 
face  in  sharp  relief,  her  eyes  two  caverns  in  which  two  little 
flames  glittered,  looking  at  us. 

"Go  on,"  I  said.  "Tell  her  something." 

"We  were  told  that  his  reverence,  signora,"  Don  said, 
"that  we  might — "  The  candle  leaned  and  recovered.  She 
raised  the  other  hand  and  sheltered  it,  blocking  the  door  with 


Mistral  86 1 

her  body.  "We  are  travelers,  en  promenade;  we  were  told — 
supper  and  a  bed  .  .  ." 

When  we  followed  her  down  the  hall  we  carried  with  us 
in  our  ears  the  long  rush  of  the  recent  wind,  like  in  a  sea  shell. 
There  was  no  light  save  the  candle  which  she  carried.  So 
that,  behind  her,  we  walked  in  gloom  out  of  which  the  ser- 
rated shadow  of  a  stair  on  one  wall  reared  dimly  into  the 
passing  candle  and  dissolved  in  mounting  serrations,  carrying 
the  eye  with  it  up  the  wall  where  there  was  not  any  light. 
"Pretty  soon  it'll  be  too  dark  to  see  anything  from  that  win- 
dow," Don  said. 

"Maybe  she  won't  have  to,  by  then." 

"Maybe  so."  The  woman  opened  a  door;  we  entered  a 
lighted  room.  It  contained  a  table  on  which  sat  a  candle  in  an 
iron  candlestick,  a  carafe  of  wine,  a  long  loaf,  a  metal  box 
with  a  slotted  cover.  The  table  was  set  for  two.  We  slung  our 
packs  into  the  corner  and  watched  her  set  another  place  and 
fetch  another  chair  from  the  hall.  But  that  made  only  three 
places  and  we  watched  her  take  up  her  candle  and  go  out  by 
a  second  door.  Then  Don  looked  at  me.  "Maybe  we'll  see 
her,  after  all." 

"How  do  you  know  he  doesn't  eat?" 

"When?  Don't  you  know  where  he'll  be?"  I  looked  at  him. 
"He'll  have  to  stay  out  there  in  the  garden." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"The  soldier  was  at  the  church.  He  must  have  seen  him. 
Must  have  heard — "  We  looked  at  the  door,  but  it  was  the 
woman.  She  had  three  bowls.  "Soup,  signora?"  Don  said. 

"Si.  Soup." 

"Good.  We  have  come  far."  She  set  the  bowls  on  the 
table.  "From  Milano."  She  looked  briefly  over  her  shoulder 
at  Don. 

"You'd  better  have  stayed  there,"  she  said.  And  she  went 
out.  Don  and  I  looked  at  one  another.  My  ears  were  still  full 
of  wind. 


862  Beyond 

"So  he  is  in  the  garden/'  Don  said. 

"How  do  you  know  he  is?" 

After  a  while  Don  quit  looking  at  me.  "I  don't  know." 

"No.  You  don't  know.  And  I  don't  know.  We  don't  want 
to  know.  Do  we?" 

"No.  No  spika." 

"I  mean,  sure  enough." 

"That's  what  I  mean,"  Don  said.  The  whisper  in  our  ears 
seemed  to  fill  the  room  with  wind.  Then  we  realized  that  it 
was  the  wind  that  we  heard,  the  wind  itself  we  heard,  even 
though  the  single  window  was  shuttered  tight.  It  was  as 
though  the  quiet  room  were  isolated  on  the  ultimate  peak  of 
space,  hollowed  murmurous  out  of  chaos  and  the  long  dark 
fury  of  time.  It  seemed  strange  that  the  candle  flame  should 
stand  so  steady  above  the  wick. 

Ill 

So  WE  DID  NOT  see  him  until  we  were  in  the  house.  Until  then 
he  had  been  only  a  shabby  shapeless  figure,  on  the  small  size, 
scuttling  through  the  blowing  dusk  at  the  head  of  the  funeral, 
and  a  voice.  It  was  as  though  neither  of  them  was  any  part 
of  the  other:  the  figure  in  blowing  black,  and  the  voice  beat- 
ing up  the  still  air  above  the  candles,  detached  and  dispas- 
sionate, tireless  and  spent  and  forlorn. 

There  was  something  precipitate  about  the  way  he  en- 
tered, like  a  diver  taking  a  full  breath  in  the  act  of  diving.  He 
did  not  look  at  us  and  he  was  already  speaking,  greeting  us 
and  excusing  his  tardiness  in  one  breath,  in  a  low  rapid  voice. 
Still,  without  having  ceased  to  speak  or  having  looked  at  us, 
he  motioned  toward  the  other  chairs  and  seated  himself  and 
bowed  his  head  over  his  plate  and  began  a  Latin  grace  with- 
out a  break  in  his  voice;  again  his  voice  seemed  to  rush  slow 
and  effortless  just  above  the  sound  of  the  wind,  like  in  the 


Mistral  863 

church.  It  went  on  for  some  time;  so  that  after  a  while  I 
raised  my  head.  Don  was  watching  me,  his  eyebrows  arched 
a  little;  we  looked  toward  the  priest  and  saw  his  hands  writh- 
ing slowly  on  either  side  of  his  plate.  Then  the  woman  spoke 
a  sharp  word  behind  me;  I  had  not  heard  her  enter:  a  gaunt 
woman,  not  tall,  with  a  pale,  mahogany-colored  face  that 
might  have  been  any  age  between  twenty-five  and  sixty.  The 
priest  stopped.  He  looked  at  us  for  the  first  time,  out  of  weak, 
rushing  eyes.  They  were  brown  and  irisless,  like  those  of  an 
old  dog.  Looking  at  us,  it  was  as  though  he  had  driven  them 
up  with  whips  and  held  them  so,  in  cringing  and  rushing 
desperation.  "I  forget,"  he  said.  "There  come  times — " 
Again  the  woman  snapped  a  word  at  him,  setting  a  tureen  on 
the  table,  the  shadow  of  her  arm  falling  across  his  face  and 
remaining  there:  but  we  had  already  looked  away.  The  long 
wind  rushed  past  the  stone  eaves;  the  candle  flame  stood 
steady  as  a  sharpened  pencil  in  the  still  sound  of  the  wind. 
We  heard  her  filling  the  bowls,  yet  she  still  stood  for  a  time, 
the  priest's  face  in  the  shadow  of  her  arm;  she  seemed  to  be 
holding  us  all  so  until  the  moment — whatever  it  was — had 
passed.  She  went  out.  Don  and  I  began  to  eat.  We  did  not 
look  toward  him.  When  he  spoke  at  last,  it  was  in  a  tone  of 
level,  polite  uninterest.  "You  have  come  far,  signori?" 

"From  Milano,"  we  both  said. 

"Before  that,  Firenze,"  Don  said.  The  priest's  head  was 
bent  over  his  bowl.  He  ate  rapidly.  Without  looking  up  he 
gestured  toward  the  loaf.  I  pushed  it  along  to  him.  He  broke 
the  end  off  and  went  on  eating. 

"Ah,"  he  said.  "Firenze.  That  is  a  city.  More — what  do 
you  say? — spirituel  than  our  Milano."  He  ate  hurriedly, 
without  finesse.  His  robe  was  turned  back  over  a  flannel 
undershirt,  the  sleeves  were.  His  spoon  clattered;  at  once  the 
woman  entered  with  a  platter  of  broccoli.  She  removed  the 
bowls.  He  reached  his  hand.  She  handed  him  the  carafe  and 


864  Beyond 

he  filled  the  glasses  without  looking  up  and  lifted  his  with  a 
brief  phrase.  But  he  had  only  feinted  to  drink;  he  was  watch- 
ing my  face  when  I  looked  at  him.  I  looked  away;  I  heard 
him  clattering  at  the  dish  and  Don  was  looking  at  me  too. 
Then  the  woman's  shoulder  came  between  us  and  the  priest. 
"There  come  times — "  he  said.  He  clattered  at  the  dish. 
When  the  woman  spoke  to  him  in  that  shrill,  rapid  patois  he 
thrust  his  chair  back  and  for  an  instant  we  saw  his  driven  eyes 
across  her  arm.  "There  come  times — "  he  said,  raising  his 
voice.  Then  she  drowned  the  rest  of  it,  getting  completely 
between  us  and  Don  and  I  stopped  looking  and  heard  them 
leave  the  room.  The  steps  ceased.  Then  we  could  hear  only 
the  wind. 

"It  was  the  burial  service,"  Don  said.  Don  was  a  Catholic. 
"That  grace  was." 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "I  didn't  know  that." 

"Yes.  It  was  the  burial  service.  He  got  mixed  up." 

"Sure,"  I  said.  "That's  it.  What  do  we  do  now?"  Our  packs 
lay  in  the  corner.  Two  packs  can  look  as  human,  as  utterly 
human  and  spent,  as  two  shoes.  We  were  watching  the  door 
when  the  woman  entered.  But  she  wasn't  going  to  stop.  She 
didn't  look  at  us. 

"What  shall  we  do  now,  signora?"  Don  said. 

"Eat."  She  did  not  stop.  Then  we  could  hear  the  wind 
again. 

"Have  some  wine,"  Don  said.  He  raised  the  carafe,  then 
he  held  it  poised  above  my  glass,  and  we  listened.  The  voice 
was  beyond  the  wall,  maybe  two  walls,  in  a  sustained  rush  of 
indistinguishable  words.  He  was  not  talking  to  anyone  there: 
you  could  tell  that.  In  whatever  place  he  was,  he  was  alone: 
you  could  tell  that.  Or  maybe  it  was  the  wind.  Maybe  in  any 
natural  exaggerated  situation — wind,  rain,  drouth — man  is 
always  alone.  It  went  on  for  longer  than  a  minute  while  Don 
held  the  carafe  above  my  glass.  Then  he  poured.  We  began 


Mistral  865 

to  eat.  The  voice  was  muffled  and  sustained,  like  a  machine 
might  have  been  making  it. 

"If  it  were  just  summer,"  I  said. 

"Have  some  wine."  He  poured.  We  held  our  poised  glasses. 
It  sounded  just  like  a  machine.  You  could  tell  that  he  was 
alone.  Anybody  could  have.  "That's  the  trouble,"  Don  said. 
"Because  there's  not  anybody  there.  Not  anybody  in  the 
house." 

"The  woman." 

"So  are  we."  He  looked  at  me. 

"Oh,"  I  said. 

"Sure.  What  better  chance  could  she  have  wanted,  have 
asked  for?  He  was  in  here  at  least  five  minutes.  And  he  just 
back  from  the  army  after  three  years.  The  first  day  he  is 
home,  and  then  afternoon  and  then  twilight  and  then  dark- 
ness. You  saw  her  there.  Didn't  you  see  her  up  there?" 

"He  locked  the  door.  You  know  he  locked  it." 

"This  house  belongs  to  God:  you  can't  have  a  lock  on  it. 
You  didn't  know  that." 

"That's  right.  I  forgot  you're  a  Catholic.  You  know  things. 
You  know  a  lot,  don't  you?" 

"No.  I  don't  know  anything.  I  no  spika  too.  I  love  Italy 
too."  The  woman  entered.  She  didn't  bring  anything  this 
time.  She  came  to  the  table  and  stood  there,  her  gaunt  face 
above  the  candle,  looking  down  at  us. 

"Look,  then,"  she  said.  "Will  you  go  away?" 

"Go  away?"  Don  said.  "Not  stop  here  tonight?"  She 
looked  down  at  us,  her  hand  lying  on  the  table.  "Where 
could  we  stop?  Who  would  take  us  in?  One  cannot  sleep  on 
the  mountain  in  October,  signora." 

"Yes,"  she  said.  She  was  not  looking  at  us  now.  Through 
the  walls  we  listened  to  the  voice  and  to  the  wind. 

"What  is  this,  anyway?"  Don  said.  "What  goes  on  here, 
signora?" 

She  looked  at  him  gravely,  speculatively,  as  if  he  were  a 


866  Beyond 

child.  "You  are  seeing  the  hand  of  God,  signorino,"  she  said. 
"Pray  God  that  you  are  too  young  to  remember  it."  Then 
she  was  gone.  And  after  a  while  the  voice  ceased,  cut  short 
off  like  a  thread.  And  then  there  was  just  the  wind. 

"As  soon  as  we  get  out  of  the  wind,  it  won't  be  so  bad," 
I  said. 

"Have  some  wine."  Don  raised  the  carafe.  It  was  less  than 
half  full. 

"We'd  better  not  drink  any  more." 

"No."  He  filled  the  glasses.  We  drank.  Then  we  stopped. 
It  began  again,  abruptly,  in  full  stride,  as  though  silence  were 
the  thread  this  time.  We  drank.  "We  might  as  well  finish  the 
broccoli,  too." 

"I  don't  want  any  more." 

"Have  some  wine  then." 

"You've  already  had  more  than  I  have." 

"All  right."  He  filled  my  glass.  I  drank  it.  "Now,  have 


some  wine." 


"We  ought  not  to  drink  it  all." 

He  raised  the  carafe.  "Two  more  glasses  left.  No  use  in 
leaving  that." 

"There  aren't  two  glasses  left." 

"Bet  you  a  lira." 

"All  right.  But  let  me  pour." 

"All  right."  He  gave  me  the  carafe.  I  filled  my  glass  and 
reached  toward  his.  "Listen,"  he  said.  For  about  a  minute 
now  the  voice  had  been  rising  and  falling,  like  a  wheel  run- 
ning down.  This  time  it  didn't  rise  again;  there  was  only  the 
long  sound  of  the  wind  left.  "Pour  it,"  Don  said.  I  poured. 
The  wine  mounted  three  quarters.  It  began  to  dribble  away. 
"Tilt  it  up."  I  did  so.  A  single  drop  hung  for  a  moment,  then 
fell  into  the  glass.  "Owe  you  a  lira,"  Don  said. 

The  coins  rang  loud  in  the  slotted  box.  When  he  took  it 
up  from  the  table  and  shook  it,  it  made  no  sound.  He  took 


Mistral  867 

the  coins  from  his  pocket  and  dropped  them  through  the  slot. 
He  shook  it  again.  "Doesn't  sound  like  quite  enough.  Cough 
up."  I  dropped  some  coins  through  the  slot;  he  shook  the  box 
again.  "Sounds  all  right  now."  He  looked  at  me  across  the 
table,  his  empty  glass  bottom-up  before  him.  "How  about  a 
little  wine?" 

When  we  rose  I  took  my  pack  from  the  corner.  It  was  on 
the  bottom.  I  had  to  tumble  Don's  aside.  He  watched  me. 
"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  that?"  he  said.  "Take  it  out 
for  a  walk?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  Past  the  cold  invisible  eaves  the 
long  wind  steadily  sighed.  Upon  the  candle  the  flame  stood 
like  the  balanced  feather  on  the  long  white  nose  of  a  clown. 

The  hall  was  dark;  there  was  no  sound  in  it.  There  was 
nothing  in  it  save  the  cold  smell  of  sunless  plaster  and  silence 
and  the  smell  of  living,  of  where  people  have,  and  will  have, 
lived.  We  carried  our  packs  low  and  close  against  our  legs 
like  we  had  stolen  them.  We  went  on  to  the  door  and  opened 
it,  entering  the  black  wind  again.  It  had  scoured  the  sky  clear 
and  clean,  hollowing  it  out  of  the  last  of  light,  the  last  of 
twilight.  We  were  halfway  to  the  gate  when  we  saw  him. 
He  was  walking  swiftly  back  and  forth  beside  the  wall.  His 
head  was  bare,  his  robes  ballooning  about  him.  When  he  saw 
us  he  did  not  stop.  He  didn't  hurry,  either.  He  just  turned 
and  went  back  beside  the  wall  and  turned  again,  walking  fast. 
We  waited  at  the  gate.  We  thanked  him  for  the  food,  he 
motionless  in  his  whipping  robes,  his  head  bent  and  averted  a 
little,  as  a  deaf  man  listens.  When  Don  knelt  at  his  feet  he 
started  back  as  though  Don  had  offered  to  strike  him.  Then 
I  felt  like  a  Catholic  too  and  I  knelt  too  and  he  made  the  sign 
hurriedly  above  us,  upon  the  black-and-green  wind  and  dusk, 
like  he  would  have  made  it  in  water.  When  we  passed  out 
the  jrate  and  looked  back  we  could  still  see,  against  the  sky 


868  Beyond 

and  the  blank  and  lightless  house,  his  head  rushing  back  and 
forth  like  a  midget  running  along  the  top  of  the  wall. 

IV 

THE  CAFE  was  on  the  lee  side  of  the  street;  we  sat  out  of  the 
wind.  But  we  could  see  gusts  and  eddies  of  trash  swirl  along 
the  gutter,  and  an  occasional  tongue  of  it  licked  chill  across 
our  legs,  and  we  could  hear  the  steady  rushing  of  it  in  the 
high  twilight  among  the  roofs.  On  the  curb  two  musicians 
from  the  hills — a  fiddler  and  a  piper — sat,  playing  a  wild  and 
skirling  tune.  Now  and  then  they  stopped  to  drink,  then 
they  resumed  the  same  tune.  It  was  without  beginning  and 
seemingly  without  end,  the  wild  unmusic  of  it  swirling  along 
the  wind  with  a  quality  at  once  martial  and  sad.  The  waiter 
fetched  us  brandy  and  coffee,  his  dirty  apron  streaming  sud- 
denly and  revealing  beneath  it  a  second  one  of  green  baize 
and  rigid  as  oxidized  copper.  At  the  other  table  five  young 
men  sat,  drinking  and  ringing  separately  small  coins  onto  the 
waiter's  tray,  which  he  appeared  to  count  by  the  timbre  of 
the  concussion  before  tilting  them  into  his  waistcoat  in  one 
motion,  and  a  long-flanked  young  peasant  woman  stopped  to 
hear  the  music,  a  child  riding  her  hip.  She  set  the  child  down 
and  it  scuttled  under  the  table  where  the  young  men  sat, 
they  withdrawing  their  legs  to  permit  it,  while  the  woman 
was  not  looking.  She  was  looking  at  the  musicians,  her  face 
round  and  tranquil,  her  mouth  open  a  little. 

"Let's  have  some  wine,"  Don  said. 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "I  like  Italy,"  I  said.  We  had  another 
brandy.  The  woman  was  trying  to  cajole  the  child  from 
under  the  table.  One  of  the  young  men  extracted  it  and  gave 
it  back  to  her.  People  stopped  in  the  street  to  hear  the  music, 
and  a  high  two-wheeled  cart,  full  of  fagots  and  drawn  by  a 
woman  and  a  diminutive  mule,  passed  without  stopping,  and 


Mistral  869 

then  the  girl  came  up  the  street  in  her  white  dress,  and  I 
didn't  feel  like  a  Catholic  any  more.  She  was  all  in  white, 
coatless,  walking  slender  and  supple.  I  didn't  feel  like  any- 
thing any  more,  watching  her  white  dress  swift  in  the  twi- 
light, carrying  her  somewhere  or  she  carrying  it  somewhere: 
anyway,  it  was  going  too,  moving  when  she  moved  and  be- 
cause she  moved,  losing  her  when  she  would  be  lost  because 
it  moved  when  she  moved  and  went  with  her  to  the  instant 
of  loss.  I  remember  how,  when  I  learned  about  Thaw  and 
White  and  Evelyn  Nesbitt,  how  I  cried.  I  cried  because 
Evelyn,  who  was  a  word,  was  beautiful  and  lost  or  I  would 
never  have  heard  of  her.  Because  she  had  to  be  lost  for  me  to 
find  her  and  I  had  to  find  her  to  lose  her.  And  when  I  learned 
that  she  was  old  enough  to  have  a  grown  daughter  or  son  or 
something,  I  cried,  because  I  had  lost  myself  then  and  I  could 
never  again  be  hurt  by  loss.  So  I  watched  the  white  dress, 
thinking,  She'll  be  as  near  me  in  a  second  as  she'll  ever  be  and 
then  she'll  go  on  away  in  her  white  dress  forevermore,  in  the 
twilight  forevermore.  Then  I  felt  Don  watching  her  too  and 
then  we  watched  the  soldier  spring  down  from  the  bike. 
They  came  together  and  stopped  and  for  a  while  they  stood 
there  in  the  street,  among  the  people,  facing  one  another  but 
not  touching.  Maybe  they  were  not  even  talking,  and  it 
didn't  matter  how  long;  it  didn't  matter  about  time.  Then 
Don  was  nudging  me. 

"The  other  table,"  he  said.  The  five  young  men  had  all 
turned;  their  heads  were  together,  now  and  then  a  hand,  an 
arm,  secret,  gesticulant,  their  faces  all  one  way.  They  leaned 
back,  without  turning  their  faces,  and  the  waiter  stood,  tray 
on  hip — a  squat,  sardonic  figure  older  than  Grandfather  Lust 
himself — looking  also.  At  last  they  turned  and  went  on  up  the 
street  together  in  the  direction  from  which  he  had  come,  he 
leading  the  bicycle.  Just  before  they  passed  from  sight  they 
stopped  and  faced  one  another  again  among  the  people,  the 


870  Beyond 

heads,  without  touching  at  all.  Then  they  went  on.  "Let's 
have  some  wine,"  Don  said. 

The  waiter  set  the  brandies  on  the  table,  his  apron  like  a 
momentary  board  on  the  wind.  "You  have  military  in  town," 
Don  said. 

"That's  right,"  the  waiter  said.  "One." 

"Well,  one  is  enough,"  Don  said.  The  waiter  looked  up 
the  street.  But  they  were  gone  now,  with  her  white  dress 
shaping  her  stride,  her  girl-white,  not  for  us. 

"Too  many,  some  say."  He  looked  much  more  like  a  monk 
than  the  priest  did,  with  his  long  thin  nose  and  his  bald  head. 
He  looked  like  a  devastated  hawk.  "You're  stopping  at  the 
priest's,  eh? " 

"You  have  no  hotel,"  Don  said. 

The  waiter  made  change  from  his  waistcoat,  ringing  the 
coins  deliberately  upon  the  table.  "What  for?  Who  would 
stop  here,  without  he  walked?  Nobody  walks  except  you 
English." 

"We're  Americans." 

"Well."  He  raised  his  shoulders  faintly.  "That's  your  af- 
fair." He  was  not  looking  at  us  exactly;  not  at  Don,  that  is. 
"Did  you  try  Cavalcanti's?" 

"A  wineshop  at  the  edge  of  town?  The  soldier's  aunt,  isn't 
it?  Yes.  But  she  said — " 

The  waiter  was  watching  him  now.  "She  didn't  send  you 
to  the  priest?" 

"No." 

"Ah,"  the  waiter  said.  His  apron  streamed  suddenly.  He 
fought  it  down  and  scoured  the  top  of  the  table  with  it. 
"Americans,  eh?" 

"Yes,"  Don  said.  "Why  wouldn't  she  tell  us  where  to  go?" 

The  waiter  scoured  the  table.  "That  Cavalcanti.  She's  not 
of  this  parish." 

"Not?" 


Mistral  87 1 

"Not  since  three  years.  The  padrone  belongs  to  that  one 
beyond  the  mountain."  He  named  a  village  which  we  had 
passed  in  the  forenoon. 

"I  see,"  Don  said.  "They  aren't  natives." 

"Oh,  they  were  born  here.  Until  three  years  ago  they  be- 
longed to  this  parish." 

"But  three  years  ago  they  changed." 

"They  changed."  He  found  another  spot  on  the  table.  He 
removed  it  with  the  apron.  Then  he  examined  the  apron. 
"There  are  changes  and  changes;  some  further  than  others." 

"The  padrona  changed  further  than  across  the  mountain, 
did  she?" 

"The  padrona  belongs  to  no  parish  at  all."  He  looked  at  us. 
"Like  me." 

"Like  you?" 

"Did  you  try  to  talk  to  her  about  the  church?"  He 
watched  Don.  "Stop  there  tomorrow  and  mention  the  church 
to  her." 

"And  that  happened  three  years  ago,"  Don  said.  "That 
was  a  year  of  changes  for  them." 

"You  said  it.  The  nephew  to  the  army,  the  padrone  across 
the  mountain,  the  padrona  .  .  .  All  in  one  week,  too.  Stop 
there  tomorrow  and  ask  her." 

"What  do  they  think  here  about  all  these  changes?" 

"What  changes?" 

"These  recent  changes." 

"How  recent?"  He  looked  at  Don.  "There's  no  law  against 
changes." 

"No.  Not  when  they're  done  like  the  law  says.  Sometimes 
the  law  has  a  look,  just  to  see  if  they  were  changed  right. 
Isn't  that  so?" 

The  waiter  had  assumed  an  attitude  of  sloven  negligence, 
save  his  eyes,  his  long  face.  It  was  too  big  for  him,  his  face 
was.  "How  did  you  know  he  was  a  policeman?" 


872  Beyond 

"Policeman?" 

"You  said  soldier;  I  knew  you  meant  policeman  and  just 
didn't  speak  the  language  good.  But  you'll  pick  it  up  with 
practice."  He  looked  at  Don.  "So  you  made  him  too,  did 
you?  Came  in  here  this  afternoon;  said  he  was  a  shoe-drum- 
mer. But  I  made  him." 

"Here  already,"  Don  said.  "I  wonder  why  he  didn't  stop 
the  .  .  .  before  they  .  .  ." 

"How  do  you  know  he's  a  policeman?"  I  said. 

The  waiter  looked  at  me.  "I  don't  care  whether  he  is  or 
not,  buddy.  Which  had  you  rather  do?  think  a  man  is  a  cop 
and  find  he's  not,  or  think  he's  not  a  cop,  and  find  he  is?" 

"You're  right,"  Don  said.  "So  that's  what  they  say  here." 

"They  say  plenty.  Always  have  and  always  will.  Like  any 
other  town." 

"What  do  you  say?"  Don  said. 

"I  don't  say.  You  don't  either." 

"No." 

"It's  no  skin  off  of  my  back.  If  they  want  to  drink,  I  serve 
them;  if  they  want  to  talk,  I  listen.  That  keeps  me  as  busy  as 
I  want  to  be  all  day." 

"You're  right,"  Don  said.  "It  didn't  happen  to  you." 

The  waiter  looked  up  the  street;  it  was  almost  full  dark. 
He  appeared  not  to  have  heard.  "Who  sent  for  the  cop,  I 
wonder?"  Don  said. 

"When  a  man's  got  jack,  he'll  find  plenty  of  folks  to  help 
him  make  trouble  for  folks  even  after  he's  dead,"  the  waiter 
said.  Then  he  looked  at  us.  "I?"  he  said.  He  leaned;  he  slapped 
his  chest  lightly.  He  looked  quickly  at  the  other  table,  then 
he  leaned  down  and  hissed:  "I  am  atheist,  like  in  America," 
and  stood  back  and  looked  at  us.  "In  America,  all  are  atheists. 
We  know."  He  stood  there  in  his  dirty  apron,  with  his  long, 
weary,  dissolute  face  while  we  rose  in  turn  and  shook  hands 
with  him  gravely,  the  five  young  men  turning  to  look.  He 


Mistral  873 

flipped  his  other  hand  at  us,  low  against  his  flank.  "Rest,  rest," 
he  hissed.  He  looked  over  his  shoulder  at  the  young  men. 
"Sit  down,"  he  whispered.  He  jerked  his  head  toward  the 
doorway  behind  us,  where  the  padrona  sat  behind  the  bar. 
"I've  got  to  eat,  see?"  He  scuttled  away  and  returned  with 
two  more  brandies,  carrying  them  with  his  former  sloven, 
precarious  skill,  as  if  he  had  passed  no  word  with  us  save  to 
take  the  order.  "It's  on  me,"  he  said.  "Put  it  down." 

"Now,  what?"  Don  said.  The  music  had  ceased;  from 
across  the  street  we  watched  the  fiddler,  fiddle  under  arm, 
standing  before  the  table  where  the  young  men  sat,  his  other 
hand  and  the  clutched  hat  gesticulant.  The  young  woman 
was  already  going  up  the  street,  the  child  riding  her  hip  again, 
its  head  nodding  to  a  somnolent  rhythm,  like  a  man  on  an 
elephant.  "Now,  what?" 

"I  don't  care." 

"Oh,  come  on." 

"No." 

"There's  no  detective  here.  He  never  saw  one.  He 
wouldn't  know  a  detective.  There  aren't  any  detectives  in 
Italy:  can  you  imagine  an  official  Italian  in  plain  clothes  for 
a  uniform?" 

"No." 

"She'll  show  us  where  the  bed  is,  and  in  the  morning 
early—" 

"No.  You  can,  if  you  want  to.  But  I'm  not." 

He  looked  at  me.  Then  he  swung  his  pack  onto  his  shoul- 
der. "Good  night.  See  you  in  the  morning.  At  the  cafe 
yonder." 

"All  right."  He  did  not  look  back.  Then  he  turned  the 
corner.  I  stood  in  the  wind.  Anyway,  I  had  the  coat.  It  was 
a  shooting  coat  of  Harris  tweed;  we  had  paid  eleven  guineas 
for  it,  wearing  it  day  about  while  the  other  wore  the  sweater. 


874  Beyond 

In  the  Tyrol  last  summer  Don  held  us  up  three  days  while 
he  was  trying  to  make  the  girl  who  sold  beer  at  the  inn.  He 
wore  the  coat  for  three  successive  days,  swapping  me  a  week, 
to  be  paid  on  demand.  On  the  third  day  the  girl's  sweetheart 
came  back.  He  was  as  big  as  a  silo,  with  a  green  feather  in  his 
hat.  We  watched  him  pick  her  over  the  bar  with  one  hand. 
I  believe  she  could  have  done  Don  the  same  way:  all  yellow 
and  pink  and  white  she  was,  like  a  big  orchard.  Or  like  look- 
ing out  across  a  snowfield  in  the  early  sunlight.  She  could 
have  done  it  at  almost  any  hour  for  three  days  too,  by  just 
reaching  out  her  hand.  Don  gained  four  pounds  while  we 
were  there. 


V 

THEN  I  CAME  into  the  full  sweep  of  the  wind.  The  houses 
were  all  dark,  yet  there  was  still  a  little  light  low  on  the 
ground,  as  though  the  wind  held  it  there  flattened  to  the 
earth  and  it  had  been  unable  to  rise  and  escape.  The  walls 
ceased  at  the  beginning  of  the  bridge;  the  river  looked  like 
steel.  I  thought  I  had  already  come  into  the  full  sweep  of  the 
wind,  but  I  hadn't.  The  bridge  was  of  stone,  balustrades  and 
roadway  and  all,  and  I  squatted  beneath  the  lee  of  the 
weather  rail.  I  could  hear  the  wind  above  and  beneath,  com- 
ing down  the  river  in  a  long  sweeping  hum,  like  through 
wires.  I  squatted  there,  waiting.  It  wasn't  very  long. 

He  didn't  see  me  at  first,  until  I  rose.  "Did  you  think  to 
have  the  flask  filled?"  he  said. 

"I  forgot.  I  intended  to.  Damn  the  luck.  Let's  go  back — " 

"I  got  a  bottle.  Which  way  now?" 

"I  don't  care.  Out  of  the  wind.  I  don't  care."  We  crossed 
the  bridge.  Our  feet  made  no  sound  on  the  stones,  because 
the  wind  blew  it  away.  It  flattened  the  water,  scoured  it;  it 
looked  just  like  steel.  It  had  a  sheen,  holding  light  like  the 


Mistral  875 

land  between  it  and  the  wind,  reflecting  enough  to  see  by. 
But  it  swept  all  sound  away  before  it  was  made  almost,  so 
that  when  we  reached  the  other  side  and  entered  the  cut 
where  the  road  began  to  mount,  it  was  several  moments  be- 
fore we  could  hear  anything  except  our  ears;  then  we  heard. 
It  was  a  smothered  whimpering  sound  that  seemed  to  come 
out  of  the  air  overhead.  We  stopped.  "It's  a  child,"  Don  said. 
"A  baby." 

"No:  an  animal.  An  animal  of  some  sort."  We  looked  at 
one  another  in  the  pale  darkness,  listening. 

"It's  up  there,  anyway,"  Don  said.  We  climbed  up  out  of 
the  cut.  There  was  a  low  stone  wall  enclosing  a  field,  the  field 
a  little  luminous  yet,  dissolving  into  the  darkness.  Just  this 
side  of  the  darkness,  about  a  hundred  yards  away,  a  copse 
stood  black,  blobbed  shapeless  on  the  gloom.  The  wind 
rushed  up  across  the  field  and  we  leaned  on  the  wall,  listen- 
ing into  it,  looking  at  the  copse.  But  the  sound  was  nearer 
than  that,  and  after  a  moment  we  saw  the  priest.  He  was 
lying  on  his  face  just  inside  the  wall,  his  robes  over  his  head, 
the  black  blur  of  his  gown  moving  faintly  and  steadily,  either 
because  of  the  wind  or  because  he  was  moving  under  them, 
And  whatever  the  sound  meant  that  he  was  making,  it  was 
not  meant  to  be  listened  to,  for  his  voice  ceased  when  we 
made  a  noise.  But  he  didn't  look  up,  and  the  faint  shuddering 
of  his  gown  didn't  stop.  Shuddering,  writhing,  twisting  from 
side  to  side — something.  Then  Don  touched  me.  We  went 
on  beside  the  wall.  "Get  down  easier  here,"  he  said  quietly. 
The  pale  road  rose  gradually  beneath  us  as  the  hill  flattened. 
The  copse  was  a  black  blob.  "Only  I  didn't  see  the  bicycle." 

"Then  go  back  to  Cavalcanti's,"  I  said.  "Where  in  hell  do 
you  expect  to  see  it?" 

"They  would  have  hidden  it.  I  forgot.  Of  course  they 
would  have  hidden  it." 

"Go  on,"  I  said.  "Don't  talk  so  goddamn  much." 


876  Beyond 

"Unless  they  thought  he  would  be  busy  with  us  and 
wouldn't — "  he  ceased  and  stopped.  I  jolted  into  him  and 
then  I  saw  it  too,  the  handlebars  rising  from  beyond  the  wall 
like  the  horns  of  a  hidden  antelope.  Against  the  gloom  the 
blob  of  the  copse  seemed  to  pulse  and  fade,  as  though  it 
breathed,  lived.  For  we  were  young,  and  night,  darkness,  is 
terrible  to  young  people,  even  icy  driving  blackness  like  this. 
Young  people  should  be  so  constituted  that  with  sunset  they 
would  enter  a  coma  state,  by  slumber  shut  safe  from  the 
darkness,  the  secret  nostalgic  sense  of  frustration  and  of  ob- 
jectless and  unappeasable  desire. 

"Get  down,  damn  you,"  I  said.  With  his  high  hunched 
pack,  his  tight  sweater,  he  was  ludicrous;  he  looked  like  a 
clown;  he  was  terrible  and  ugly  and  sad  all  at  once,  since  he 
was  ludicrous  and,  without  the  coat,  he  would  be  so  cold. 
And  so  was  I:  ugly  and  terrible  and  sad.  "This  damn  wind. 
This  damn  wind."  We  regained  the  road.  We  were  sheltered 
for  the  moment,  and  he  took  out  the  bottle  and  we  drank.  It 
was  fiery  stuff.  "Talk  about  my  Milan  brandy,"  I  said.  "That 
damn  wind.  That  damn  wind.  That  damn  wind." 

"Give  me  a  cigarette." 

"You've  got  them." 

"I  gave  them  to  you." 

"You're  a  goddamn  liar.  You  didn't."  He  found  them  in 
his  pocket.  But  I  didn't  wait, 

"Don't  you  want  one?  Better  light  it  here,  while  we 
are  ..."  I  didn't  wait.  The  road  rose,  became  flush  with  the 
field.  After  a  while  I  heard  him  just  behind  me,  and  we 
entered  the  wind.  I  could  see  past  my  shoulder  his  cigarette 
shredding  away  in  fiery  streamers  upon  the  unimpeded  rush 
of  the  mistral,  that  black  chill  wind  full  of  dust  like  sparks 
of  ice. 


Divorce  in  Naples 


i 

WE  WERE  SITTING  at  a  table  inside:  Monckton  and  the 
bosun  and  Carl  and  George  and  me  and  the  women,  the 
three  women  of  that  abject  glittering  kind  that  seamen  know 
or  that  know  seamen.  We  were  talking  English  and  they 
were  not  talking  at  all.  By  that  means  they  could  speak 
constantly  to  us  above  and  below  the  sound  of  our  voices 
in  a  tongue  older  than  recorded  speech  and  time  too.  Older 
than  the  thirty-four  days  of  sea  time  which  we  had  but  com- 
pleted, anyway.  Now  and  then  they  spoke  to  one  another 
in  Italian.  The  women  in  Italian,  the  men  in  English,  as  if 
language  might  be  the  sex  difference,  the  functioning  of  the 
vocal  cords  the  inner  biding  until  the  dark  pairing  time. 
The  men  in  English,  the  women  in  Italian:  a  decorum  as  of 
two  parallel  streams  separated  by  a  levee  for  a  little  while. 

We  were  talking  about  Carl,  to  George. 

"Why  did  you  bring  him  here,  then?"  the  bosun  said. 

"Yes,"  Monckton  said.  "I  sure  wouldn't  bring  my  wife  to 
a  place  like  this." 

George  cursed  Monckton:  not  with  a  word  or  even  a 
sentence;  a  paragraph.  He  was  a  Greek,  big  and  black,  a  full 
head  taller  than  Carl;  his  eyebrows  looked  like  two  crows 
in  overlapping  flight.  He  cursed  us  all  with  immediate  thor- 
oughness and  in  well-nigh  faultless  classic  Anglo-Saxon,  who 

877 


878  Beyond 

at  other  times  functioned  in  the  vocabulary  of  an  eight-year- 
old  by-blow  of  a  vaudeville  comedian  and  a  horse,  say. 

"Yes,  sir,"  the  bosun  said.  He  was  smoking  an  Italian 
cigar  and  drinking  ginger  beer;  the  same  tumbler  of  which, 
incidentally,  he  had  been  engaged  with  for  about  two  hours 
and  which  now  must  have  been  about  the  temperature  of  a 
ship's  showerbath.  "I  sure  wouldn't  bring  my  girl  to  a  dive 
like  this,  even  if  he  did  wear  pants." 

Carl  meanwhile  had  not  stirred.  He  sat  serene  among  us, 
with  his  round  yellow  head  and  his  round  eyes,  looking  like 
a  sophisticated  baby  against  the  noise  and  the  glitter,  with 
his  glass  of  thin  Italian  beer  and  the  women  murmuring  to 
one  another  and  watching  us  and  then  Carl  with  that  biding 
and  inscrutable  foreknowledge  which  they  do  not  appear  to 
know  that  they  possess.  "Einnocente"  one  said;  again  they 
murmured,  contemplating  Carl  with  musing,  secret  looks. 
"He  may  have  fooled  you  already,"  the  bosun  said.  "He 
may  have  slipped  through  a  porthole  on  you  any  time  these 
three  years." 

George  glared  at  the  bosun,  his  mouth  open  for  cursing. 
But  he  didn't  curse.  Instead  he  looked  at  Carl,  his  mouth 
still  open.  His  mouth  closed  slowly.  We  all  looked  at  Carl. 
Beneath  our  eyes  he  raised  his  glass  and  drank  with  con- 
tained deliberation. 

"Are  you  still  pure?"  George  said.  "I  mean,  sho  enough." 

Beneath  our  fourteen  eyes  Carl  emptied  the  glass  of  thin, 
bitter,  three  per  cent  beer.  "I  been  to  sea  three  years,"  he 
said.  "All  over  Europe." 

George  glared  at  him,  his  face  baffled  and  outraged.  He 
had  just  shaved;  his  close  blue  jowls  lay  flat  and  hard  as  a 
prizefighter's  or  a  pirate's,  up  to  the  black  explosion  of  his 
hair.  He  was  our  second  cook.  "You  damn  lying  little 
bastard,"  he  said. 

The  bosun  raised  his  glass  of  ginger  beer  with  an  exact 


Divorce  in  Naples  879 

replica  of  Carl's  drinking.  Steadily  and  deliberately,  his  body 
thrown  a  little  back  and  his  head  tilted,  he  poured  the  ginger 
beer  over  his  right  shoulder  at  the  exact  speed  of  swallowing, 
still  with  that  air  of  Carl's,  that  grave  and  cosmopolitan 
swagger.  He  set  the  glass  down,  and  rose.  "Come  on,"  he 
said  to  Monckton  and  mej  "let's  go.  Might  as  well  be  board 
ship  if  we're  going  to  spend  the  evening  in  one  place.'' 

Monckton  and  I  rose.  He  was  smoking  a  short  pipe.  One 
of  the  women  was  his,  another  the  bosun's.  The  third  one 
had  a  lot  of  gold  teeth.  She  could  have  been  thirty,  but 
maybe  she  wasn't.  We  left  her  with  George  and  Carl.  When 
I  looked  back  from  the  door,  the  waiter  was  just  fetching 
them  some  more  beer. 


II 

THEY  CAME  into  the  ship  together  at  Galveston,  George 
carrying  a  portable  victrola  and  a  small  parcel  wrapped  in 
paper  bearing  the  imprint  of  a  well-known  ten-cent  store, 
and  Carl  carrying  two  bulging  imitation  leather  bags  that 
looked  like  they  might  weigh  forty  pounds  apiece.  George 
appropriated  two  berths,  one  above  the  other  like  a  Pullman 
section,  cursing  Carl  in  a  harsh,  concatenant  voice  a  little 
overburred  with  vjs  and  r's  and  ordering  him  about  like  a 
nigger,  while  Carl  stowed  their  effects  away  with  the  meticu- 
lousness  of  an  old  maid,  producing  from  one  of  the  bags  a 
stack  of  freshly  laundered  drill  serving  jackets  that  must 
have  numbered  a  dozen.  For  the  next  thirty-four  days  (he 
was  the  messboy)  he  wore  a  fresh  one  for  each  meal  in  the 
saloon,  and  there  were  always  two  or  three  recently  washed 
ones  drying  under  the  poop  awning.  And  for  thirty-four 
evenings,  after  the  galley  was  closed,  we  watched  the  two 
of  them  in  pants  and  undershirts,  dancing  to  the  victrola  on 
the  after  well  deck  above  a  hold  full  of  Texas  cotton  and 


88o  Beyond 

Georgia  resin.  They  had  only  one  record  for  the  machine 
and  it  had  a  crack  in  it,  and  each  time  the  needle  clucked 
George  would  stamp  on  the  deck.  I  don't  think  that  either 
one  of  them  was  aware  that  he  did  it. 

It  was  George  who  told  us  about  Carl.  Carl  was  eighteen, 
from  Philadelphia.  They  both  called  it  Philly;  George  in  a 
proprietorial  tone,  as  if  he  had  created  Philadelphia  in  order 
to  produce  Carl,  though  it  later  appeared  that  George  had 
not  discovered  Carl  until  Carl  had  been  to  sea  for  a  year 
already.  And  Carl  himself  told  some  of  it:  a  fourth  or  fifth 
child  of  a  first  generation  of  Scandinavian-American  ship- 
wrights, brought  up  in  one  of  an  identical  series  of  small 
frame  houses  a  good  trolley  ride  from  salt  water,  by  a 
mother  or  an  older  sister:  this  whom,  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
and  weighing  perhaps  a  little  less  than  a  hundred  pounds, 
some  ancestor  long  knocking  his  quiet  bones  together  at  the 
bottom  of  the  sea  (or  perhaps  havened  by  accident  in  dry 
earth  and  become  restive  with  ease  and  quiet)  had  sent 
back  to  the  old  dream  and  the  old  unrest  three  or  maybe 
four  generations  late. 

"I  was  a  kid,  then,"  Carl  told  us,  who  had  yet  to  experi- 
ence or  need  a  shave.  "I  thought  about  everything  but  going 
to  sea.  I  thought  once  I'd  be  a  ballplayer  or  maybe  a  prize 
fighter.  They  had  pictures  of  them  on  the  walls,  see,  when 
Sis  would  send  me  down  to  the  corner  after  the  old  man  on 
a  Saturday  night.  Jeez,  I'd  stand  outside  on  the  street  and 
watch  them  go  in,  and  I  could  see  their  legs  under  the  door 
and  hear  them  and  smell  the  sawdust  and  see  the  pictures  of 
them  on  the  walls  through  the  smoke.  I  was  a  kid  then,  see. 
I  hadn't  been  nowheres  then." 

We  asked  George  how  he  had  ever  got  a  berth,  even  as 
a  messman,  standing  even  now  about  four  inches  over  five 
feet  and  with  yet  a  face  that  should  have  followed  mon- 


Divorce  m  Naples  88 1 

strances  up  church  aisles,  if  not  looked  down  from  one  of 
the  colored  windows  themselves. 

"Why  shouldn't  he  have  come  to  sea?"  George  said. 
" Ain't  this  a  free  country?  Even  if  he  ain't  nothing  but  a 
damn  mess."  He  looked  at  us,  black,  serious.  "He's  a  virgin, 
see?  Do  you  know  what  that  means?"  He  told  us  what  it 
meant.  Someone  had  evidently  told  him  what  it  meant  not 
so  long  ago,  told  him  what  he  used  to  be  himself,  if  he  could 
remember  that  far  back,  and  he  thought  that  perhaps  we 
didn't  know  the  man,  or  maybe  he  thought  it  was  a  new 
word  they  had  just  invented.  So  he  told  us  what  it  meant. 
It  was  in  the  first  night  watch  and  we  were  on  the  poop 
after  supper,  two  days  out  of  Gibraltar,  listening  to  Monck- 
ton  talking  about  cauliflower.  Carl  was  taking  a  shower  (he 
always  took  a  bath  after  he  had  cleared  the  saloon  after 
supper.  George,  who  only  cooked,  never  bathed  until  we 
were  in  port  and  the  petite  cleared)  and  George  told  us  what 
it  meant. 

Then  he  began  to  curse.  He  cursed  for  a  long  time. 

"Well,  George,"  the  bosun  said,  "suppose  you  were  one, 
then?  What  would  you  do?" 

"What  would  I  do?"  George  said.  "What  wouldn't  I  do?" 
He  cursed  for  some  time,  steadily.  "It's  like  the  first  cigarette 
in  the  morning,"  he  said.  "By  noon,  when  you  remember 
how  it  tasted,  how  you  felt  when  you  was  waiting  for  the 
match  to  get  to  the  end  of  it,  and  when  that  first  drag — " 
He  cursed,  long,  impersonal,  like  a  chant. 

Monckton  watched  him:  not  listened:  watched,  nursing 
his  pipe.  "Why,  George,"  he  said,  "you're  by  way  of  being 
almost  a  poet." 

There  was  a  swipe,  some  West  India  Docks  crum;  I  for- 
get his  name.  "Call  that  lobbing  the  tongue?"  he  said.  "You 
should  hear  a  Lymus  mate  laying  into  a  fo'c'sle  of  bloody 
Portygee  ginneys." 


882  Beyond 

"Monckton  wasn't  talking  about  the  language,"  the  bosun 
said.  "Any  man  can  swear."  He  looked  at  George.  "You're 
not  the  first  man  that  ever  wished  that,  George.  That's 
something  that  has  to  be  was  because  you  don't  know  you 
are  when  you  are."  Then  he  paraphrased  unwitting  and  with 
unprintable  aptness  Byron's  epigram  about  women's  mouths. 
"But  what  are  you  saving  him  for?  What  good  will  it  do 
you  when  he  stops  being?" 

George  cursed,  looking  from  face  to  face,  baffled  and 
outraged. 

"Maybe  Carl  will  let  George  hold  his  hand  at  the  time," 
Monckton  said.  He  reached  a  match  from  his  pocket.  "Now, 
you  take  Brussels  sprouts — " 

"You  might  get  the  Old  Man  to  quarantine  him  when  we 
reach  Naples,"  the  bosun  said. 

George  cursed. 

"Now,  you  take  Brussels  sprouts,"  Monckton  said. 

Ill 

IT  TOOK  us  some  time  that  night,  to  get  either  started  or 
settled  down.  We — Monckton  and  the  bosun  and  the  two 
women  and  I — visited  four  more  cafes,  each  like  the  other 
one  and  like  the  one  where  we  had  left  George  and  Carl — 
same  people,  same  music,  same  thin,  colored  drinks.  The  two 
women  accompanied  us,  with  us  but  not  of  us,  biding  and 
acquiescent,  saying  constantly  and  patiently  and  without 
vrords  that  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed.  So  after  a  while  I  left 
them  and  went  back  to  the  ship.  George  and  Carl  were  not 
aboard. 

The  next  morning  they  were  not  there  either,  though 
Monckton  and  the  bosun  were,  and  the  cook  and  the  steward 
swearing  up  and  down  the  galley;  it  seemed  that  the  cook 
was  planning  to  spend  the  day  ashore  himself.  So  they  hacl 


Divorce  in  Naples  883 

to  stay  aboard  all  day.  Along  toward  midafternoon  there 
came  aboard  a  smallish  man  in  a  soiled  suit  who  looked  like 
one  of  those  Columbia  day  students  that  go  up  each  morning 
on  the  East  Side  subway  from  around  Chatham  Square.  He 
was  hatless,  with  an  oiled  pompadour.  He  had  not  shaved 
recently,  and  he  spoke  no  English  in  a  pleasant,  deprecatory 
way  that  was  all  teeth.  But  he  had  found  the  right  ship  and 
he  had  a  note  from  George,  written  on  the  edge  of  a  dirty 
scrap  of  newspaper,  and  we  found  where  George  was.  He 
was  in  jail. 

The  steward  hadn't  stopped  cursing  all  day,  anyhow.  He 
didn't  stop  now,  either.  He  and  the  messenger  went  off  to 
the  consul's.  The  steward  returned  a  little  after  six  o'clock, 
with  George.  George  didn't  look  so  much  like  he  had  been 
drunk;  he  looked  dazed,  quiet,  with  his  wild  hair  and  a  blue 
stubble  on  his  jaw.  He  went  straight  to  Carl's  bunk  and  he 
began  to  turn  Carl's  meticulous  covers  back  one  by  one  like 
a  traveler  examining  the  bed  in  a  third-class  European  hotel, 
as  if  he  expected  to  find  Carl  hidden  among  them.  "You 
mean,"  he  said,  uhe  ain't  been  back?  He  ain't  been  back 


"We  haven't  seen  him,"  we  told  George.  "The  steward 
hasn't  seen  him  either.  We  thought  he  was  in  jail  with  you." 

He  began  to  replace  the  covers;  that  is,  he  made  an  at- 
tempt to  draw  them  one  by  one  up  the  bed  again  in  a  kind 
of  detached  way,  as  if  he  were  not  conscious,  sentient. 
"They  run,"  he  said  in  a  dull  tone.  "They  ducked  out  on 
me.  I  never  thought  he'd  a  done  it.  I  never  thought  he'd  a 
done  me  this  way.  It  was  her.  She  was  the  one  made  him 
done  it.  She  knew  what  he  was,  and  how  I  ..."  Then  he 
began  to  cry,  quietly,  in  that  dull,  detached  way.  "He  must 
have  been  sitting  there  with  his  hand  in  her  lap  all  the  time. 
And  I  never  suspicioned.  She  kept  on  moving  her  chair 
closer  and  closer  to  his.  But  I  trusted  him.  I  never  suspi- 


884  Beyond 

cloned  nothing.  I  thought  he  wouldn't  a  done  nothing  seri- 
ous without  asking  me  first,  let  alone  ...  I  trusted  him." 

It  appeared  that  the  bottom  of  George's  glass  had  distorted 
their  shapes  enough  to  create  in  George  the  illusion  that 
Carl  and  the  woman  were  drinking  as  he  drank,  in  a  serious 
but  celibate  way.  He  left  them  at  the  table  and  went  back 
to  the  lavatory;  or  rather,  he  said  that  he  realized  suddenly 
that  he  was  in  the  lavatory  and  that  he  had  better  be  getting 
back,  concerned  not  over  what  might  transpire  while  he  was 
away,  but  over  the  lapse,  over  his  failure  to  be  present  at  his 
own  doings  which  the  getting  to  the  lavatory  inferred.  So 
he  returned  to  the  table,  not  yet  alarmed;  merely  concerned 
and  amused.  He  said  he  was  having  a  fine  time. 

So  at  first  he  believed  that  he  was  still  having  such  a  good 
time  that  he  could  not  find  his  own  table.  He  found  the  one 
which  he  believed  should  be  his,  but  it  was  vacant  save  for 
three  stacks  of  saucers,  so  he  made  one  round  of  the  room, 
still  amused,  still  enjoying  himself;  he  was  still  enjoying 
himself  when  he  repaired  to  the  center  of  the  dance  floor 
where,  a  head  above  the  dancers,  he  began  to  shout  "Porteus 
ahoy!"  in  a  loud  voice,  and  continued  to  do  so  until  a  waiter 
who  spoke  English  came  and  removed  him  and  led  him  back 
to  that  same  vacant  table  bearing  the  three  stacks  of  saucers 
and  the  three  glasses,  one  of  which  he  now  recognized  as 
his  own. 

But  he  was  still  enjoying  himself,  though  not  so  much 
now,  believing  himself  to  be  the  victim  of  a  practical  joke, 
first  on  the  part  of  the  management,  and  it  appeared  that  he 
must  have  created  some  little  disturbance,  enjoying  himself 
less  and  less  all  the  while,  the  center  of  an  augmenting  clump 
of  waiters  and  patrons. 

When  at  last  he  did  realize,  accept  the  fact,  that  they  were 
gone,  it  must  have  been  pretty  bad  for  him:  the  outrage,  the 
despair,  the  sense  of  elapsed  time,  an  unfamiliar  city  at  night 


Divorce  in  Naples  885 

in  which  Carl  must  be  found,  and  that  quickly  if  it  was  to 
do  any  good.  He  tried  to  leave,  to  break  through  the  crowd, 
without  paying  the  score.  Not  that  he  would  have  beaten 
the  bill;  he  just  didn't  have  time.  If  he  could  have  found 
Carl  within  the  next  ten  minutes,  he  would  have  returned 
and  paid  the  score  twice  over:  I  am  sure  of  that. 

And  so  they  held  him,  the  wild  American,  a  cordon  of 
waiters  and  clients — women  and  men  both — and  he  drag- 
ging a  handful  of  coins  from  his  pockets  ringing  onto  the 
tile  floor.  Then  he  said  it  was  like  having  your  legs  swarmed 
by  a  pack  of  dogs:  waiters,  clients,  men  and  women,  on 
hands  and  knees  on  the  floor,  scrabbling  after  the  rolling 
coins,  and  George  slapping  about  with  his  big  feet,  trying 
to  stamp  the  hands  away. 

Then  he  was  standing  in  the  center  of  an  abrupt  wide 
circle,  breathing  a  little  hard,  with  the  two  Napoleons  in 
their  swords  and  pallbearer  gloves  and  Knights  of  Pythias 
bonnets  on  either  side  of  him.  He  did  not  know  what  he 
had  done;  he  only  knew  that  he  was  under  arrest.  It  was 
not  until  they  reached  the  Prefecture,  where  there  was  an 
interpreter,  that  he  learned  that  he  was  a  political  prisoner, 
having  insulted  the  king's  majesty  by  placing  foot  on  the 
king's  effigy  on  a  coin.  They  put  him  in  a  forty-foot  dun- 
geon, with  seven  other  political  prisoners,  one  of  whom  was 
the  messenger. 

"They  taken  my  belt  and  my  necktie  and  the  strings  out 
of  my  shoes,"  he  told  us  dully.  "There  wasn't  nothing  in 
the  room  but  a  barrel  fastened  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  and 
a  wooden  bench  running  all  the  way  round  the  walls.  I 
knew  what  the  barrel  was  for  right  off,  because  they  had 
already  been  using  it  for  that  for  some  time.  You  was  ex- 
pected to  sleep  on  the  bench  when  you  couldn't  stay  on 
your  feet  no  longer.  When  I  stooped  over  and  looked  at  it 
close,  it  was  like  looking  down  at  Forty-second  Street  from 


886  Beyond 

a  airplane.  They  looked  just  like  Yellow  cabs.  Then  I  went 
and  used  the  barrel.  But  I  used  it  with  the  end  of  me  it 
wasn't  intended  to  be  used  with." 

Then  he  told  about  the  messenger.  Truly,  Despair,  like 
Poverty,  looks  after  its  own.  There  they  were:  the  Italian 
who  spoke  no  English,  and  George  who  scarcely  spoke  any 
language  at  all;  certainly  not  Italian.  That  was  about  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  Yet  by  daylight  George  had  found 
the  one  man  out  of  the  seven  who  could  have  served  him  or 
probably  would  have. 

"He  told  me  he  was  going  to  get  out  at  noon,  and  I  told 
him  I  would  give  him  ten  lire  as  soon  as  I  got  out,  and  he 
got  me  the  scrap  of  paper  and  the  pencil  (this,  in  a  bare 
dungeon,  from  among  seven  men  stripped  to  the  skin  of 
everything  save  the  simplest  residue  of  clothing  necessary 
for  warmth:  of  money,  knives,  shoelaces,  even  pins  and 
loose  buttons)  and  I  wrote  the  note  and  he  hid  it  and  they 
left  him  out  and  after  about  four  hours  they  come  and  got 
me  and  there  was  the  steward." 

"How  did  you  talk  to  him,  George?"  the  bosun  said. 
"Even  the  steward  couldn't  find  out  anything  until  they  got 
to  the  consul's." 

"I  don't  know,"  George  said.  "We  just  talked.  That  was 
the  only  way  I  could  tell  anybody  where  I  was  at." 

We  tried  to  get  him  to  go  to  bed,  but  he  wouldn't  do  it. 
He  didn't  even  shave.  He  got  something  to  eat  in  the  galley 
and  went  ashore.  We  watched  him  go  down  the  side. 

"Poor  bastard,"  Monckton  said. 

"Why?"  the  bosun  said.  "What  did  he  take  Carl  there 
for?  They  could  have  gone  to  the  movies." 

"I  wasn't  thinking  about  George,"  Monckton  said. 

"Oh,"  the  bosun  said.  "Well,  a  man  can't  keep  on  going 
ashore  anywhere,  let  alone  Europe,  all  his  life  without 
getting  ravaged  now  and  then." 

"Good  God,"  Monckton  said.  "I  should  hope  not." 


Divorce  in  Naples  887 

George  returned  at  six  o'clock  the  next  morning.  He  still 
looked  dazed,  though  still  quite  sober,  quite  calm.  Overnight 
his  beard  had  grown  another  quarter  inch.  "I  couldn't  find 
them,"  he  said  quietly.  "I  couldn't  find  them  nowheres." 
He  had  to  act  as  messman  now,  taking  Carl's  place  at  the 
officers'  table,  but  as  soon  as  breakfast  was  done,  he  disap- 
peared; we  heard  the  steward  cursing  him  up  and  down  the 
ship  until  noon,  trying  to  find  him.  Just  before  noon  he 
returned,  got  through  dinner,  departed  again.  He  came  back 
just  before  dark. 

"Found  him  yet?"  I  said.  He  didn't  answer.  He  stared  at 
me  for  a  while  with  that  blank  look.  Then  he  went  to  their 
bunks  and  hauled  one  of  the  imitation  leather  bags  down  and 
tumbled  all  of  Carl's  things  into  it  and  crushed  down  the 
lid  upon  the  dangling  sleeves  and  socks  and  hurled  the  bag 
out  onto  the  well  deck,  where  it  tumbled  once  and  burst 
open,  vomiting  the  white  jackets  and  the  mute  socks  and 
the  underclothes.  Then  he  went  to  bed,  fully  dressed,  and 
slept  fourteen  hours.  The  cook  tried  to  get  him  up  for  break- 
fast, but  it  was  like  trying  to  rouse  up  a  dead  man. 

When  he  waked  he  looked  better.  He  borrowed  a  ciga- 
rette of  me  and  went  and  shaved  and  came  back  and  bor- 
rowed another  cigarette.  "Hell  with  him,"  he  said.  "Leave 
the  bastard  go.  I  don't  give  a  damn." 

That  afternoon  he  put  Carl's  things  back  into  his  bunk. 
Not  carefully  and  not  uncarefully:  he  just  gathered  them 
up  and  dumped  them  into  the  berth  and  paused  for  a  mo- 
ment to  see  if  any  of  them  were  going  to  fall  out,  before 
turning  away. 

IV 

IT  WAS  JUST  before  daylight.  When  I  returned  to  the  ship 
about  midnight,  the  quarters  were  empty.  When  I  waked 


888  Beyond 

just  before  daylight,  all  the  bunks  save  my  own  were  still 
vacant.  I  was  lying  in  a  halfdoze,  when  I  heard  Carl  in  the 
passage.  He  was  coming  quietly;  I  had  scarcely  heard  him 
before  he  appeared  in  the  door.  He  stood  there  for  a  while, 
looking  no  larger  than  an  adolescent  boy  in  the  halflight, 
before  he  entered.  I  closed  my  eyes  quickly.  I  heard  him, 
still  on  tiptoe,  come  to  my  bunk  and  stand  above  me  for  a 
while.  Then  I  heard  him  turn  away.  I  opened  my  eyes  just 
enough  to  watch  him. 

He  undressed  swiftly,  ripping  his  clothes  off,  ripping  off 
a  button  that  struck  the  bulkhead  with  a  faint  click.  Naked, 
in  the  wan  light,  he  looked  smaller  and  frailer  than  ever  as  he 
dug  a  towel  from  his  bunk  where  George  had  tumbled  his 
things,  flinging  the  other  garments  aside  with  a  kind  of 
dreadful  haste.  Then  he  went  out,  his  bare  feet  whispering 
in  the  passage. 

I  could  hear  the  shower  beyond  the  bulkhead  running  for 
a  long  time;  it  would  be  cold  now,  too.  But  it  ran  for  a  long 
time,  then  it  ceased  and  I  closed  my  eyes  again  until  he  had 
entered.  Then  I  watched  him  lift  from  the  floor  the  under- 
garment which  he  had  removed  and  thrust  it  through  a  port- 
hole quickly,  with  something  of  the  air  of  a  recovered 
drunkard  putting  out  of  sight  an  empty  bottle.  He  dressed 
and  put  on  a  fresh  white  jacket  and  combed  his  hair,  leaning 
to  the  small  mirror,  looking  at  his  face  for  a  long  time. 

And  then  he  went  to  work.  He  worked  about  the  bridge 
deck  all  day  long;  what  he  could  have  found  to  do  there  we 
could  not  imagine.  But  the  crew's  quarters  never  saw  him 
until  after  dark.  All  day  long  we  watched  the  white  jacket 
flitting  back  and  forth  beyond  the  open  doors  or  kneeling 
as  he  polished  the  brightwork  about  the  companions.  He 
seemed  to  work  with  a  kind  of  fury.  And  when  he  was 
forced  by  his  duties  to  come  topside  during  the  day,  we 
noticed  that  it  was  always  on  the  port  side,  and  we  lay  with 


Divorce  in  Naples  889 

our  starboard  to  the  dock.  And  about  the  galley  or  the  after 
deck  George  worked  a  little  and  loafed  a  good  deal,  not 
looking  toward  the  bridge  at  all. 

"That's  the  reason  he  stays  up  there,  polishing  that  bright- 
work  all  day  long,"  the  bosun  said.  "He  knows  George  can't 
come  up  there." 

"It  don't  look  to  me  like  George  wants  to,"  I  said. 

"That's  right,"  Monckton  said.  "For  a  dollar  George 
would  go  up  to  the  binnacle  and  ask  the  Old  Man  for  a 
cigarette." 

"But  not  for  curiosity,"  the  bosun  said. 

"You  think  that's  all  it  is?"  Monckton  said.  "Just  curi- 
osity?" 

"Sure,"  the  bosun  said.  "Why  not?" 

"Monckton's  right,"  I  said.  "This  is  the  most  difficult 
moment  in  marriage:  the  day  after  your  wife  has  stayed  out 
all  night." 

"You  mean  the  easiest,"  the  bosun  said.  "George  can  quit 
him  now." 

"Do  you  think  so?"  Monckton  said. 

We  lay  there  five  days.  Carl  was  still  polishing  the  bright- 
work  in  the  bridge-deck  companions.  The  steward  would 
send  him  out  on  deck,  and  go  away;  he  would  return  and 
find  Carl  still  working  on  the  port  side  and  he  would  make 
him  go  to  starboard,  above  the  dock  and  the  Italian  boys 
in  bright,  soiled  jerseys  and  the  venders  of  pornographic 
postcards.  But  it  didn't  take  him  long  there,  and  then  we 
would  see  him  below  again,  sitting  quietly  in  his  white  jacket 
in  the  stale  gloom,  waiting  for  suppertime.  Usually  he  would 
be  darning  socks 

George  had  not  yet  said  one  word  to  him;  Carl  might  not 
have  been  aboard  at  all,  the  very  displacement  of  space 
which  was  his  body,  impedeless  and  breathable  air.  It  was 
now  George's  turn  to  stay  away  from  the  ship  most  of  the 


890  Beyond 

day  and  all  of  the  night,  returning  a  little  drunk  at  three 
and  four  o'clock,  to  waken  everyone  by  hand,  save  Carl,  and 
talk  in  gross  and  loud  recapitulation  of  recent  and  always 
different  women  before  climbing  into  his  bunk.  As  far  as 
we  knew,  they  did  not  even  look  at  one  another  until  we 
were  well  on  our  way  to  Gibraltar. 

Then  Carl's  fury  of  work  slacked  somewhat.  Yet  he 
worked  steadily  all  day,  then,  bathed,  his  blond  hair  wet  and 
smooth,  his  slight  body  in  a  cotton  singlet,  we  would  see  him 
leaning  alone  in  the  long  twilight  upon  the  rail  midships  or 
forward.  But  never  about  the  poop  where  we  smoked  and 
talked  and  where  George  had  begun  again  to  play  the 
single  record  on  the  victrola,  committing,  unrequested  and 
anathemaed,  cold-blooded  encore  after  encore. 

Then  one  night  we  saw  them  together.  They  were  leaning 
side  by  side  on  the  poop  rail.  That  was  the  first  time  Carl 
had  looked  astern,  looked  toward  Naples  since  that  morn- 
ing when  he  returned  to  the  ship,  and  even  now  it  was  the 
evening  on  which  the  Gates  of  Hercules  had  sunk  into  the 
waxing  twilight  and  the  River  Ocean  began  to  flow  down 
into  the  darkling  sea  and  overhead  the  crosstrees  swayed  in 
measured  and  slow  recover  against  the  tall  night  and  the 
low  new  moon. 

"He's  all  right  now,"  Monckton  said.  "The  dog's  gone 
back  to  his  vomit." 

"I  said  he  was  all  right  all  the  time,"  the  bosun  said. 
"George  didn't  give  a  damn." 

"I  wasn't  talking  about  George,"  Monckton  said.  "George 
hasn't  made  the  grade  yet." 

V 

GEORGE  TOLD  us.  "He'd  keep  on  moping  and  mooning,  see, 
and  I'd  keep  on  trying  to  talk  to  him,  to  tell  him  T  wasn't 


Divorce  in  Naples  891 

mad  no  more.  Jeez,  it  had  to  come  some  day;  a  man  can't  be 
a  angel  all  your  life.  But  he  wouldn't  even  look  back  that 
way.  Until  all  of  a  sudden  he  says  one  night: 

"  'What  do  you  do  to  them?'  I  looked  at  him.  'How  does 
a  man  treat  them?' 

u  'You  mean  to  tell  me,'  I  says,  'that  you  spent  three  days 
with  her  and  she  ain't  showed  you  that?' 

"  'I  mean,  give  them/  he  says.  'Don't  men  give — * 

"  'Jeez  Christ,'  I  says,  'you  done  already  give  her  some- 
thing they  would  have  paid  you  money  for  it  in  Siam, 
Would  have  made  you  the  prince  or  the  prime  minister  at 
the  least.  What  do  you  mean?' 

"  *I  don't  mean  money,'  he  says.  'I  mean  . .  .' 

"  'Well,'  I  says,  'if  you  was  going  to  see  her  again,  if  she 
was  going  to  be  your  girl,  you'd  give  her  something.  Bring 
it  back  to  her.  Like  something  to  wear  or  something:  they 
don't  care  much  what,  them  foreign  women,  hustling  them 
wops  all  their  life  that  wouldn't  give  them  a  full  breath  if 
they  was  a  toy  balloon;  they  don't  care  much  what  it  is.  But 
you  ain't  going  to  see  her  again,  are  you?' 

"  'No,'  he  says.  'No,'  he  says.  'No.'  And  he  looked  like  he 
was  fixing  to  jump  off  the  boat  and  swim  on  ahead  and  wait 
for  us  at  Hatteras. 

"  'So  you  don't  want  to  worry  about  that,'  I  says.  Then  I 
went  and  played  the  vie  again,  thinking  that  might  cheer 
him  up,  because  he  ain't  the  first,  for  Christ's  sake;  he  never 
invented  it.  But  it  was  the  next  night;  we  was  at  the  poop 
rail  then — the  first  time  he  had  looked  back — watching  the 
phosrus  along  the  logline,  when  he  says: 

"  'Maybe  I  got  her  into  trouble.' 

'"Doing  what?'  I  says.  'With  what?  With  the  police5 
Didn't  you  make  her  show  you  her  petite?'  Like  she  would 
have  needed  a  ticket,  with  that  face  full  of  gold;  Jeez,  she 


892  Beyond 

could  have  rode  the  train  on  her  face  alone;  maybe  that  was 
her  savings  bank  instead  of  using  her  stocking. 

"  'What  ticket?'  he  says.  So  I  told  him.  For  a  minute  I 
thought  he  was  crying,  then  I  seen  that  he  was  just  trying 
to  not  puke.  So  I  knew  what  the  trouble  was,  what  had  been 
worrying  him.  I  remember  the  first  time  it  come  as  a  surprise 
to  me.  'Oh/  I  says,  'the  smell.  It  don't  mean  nothing/  I  says; 
you  don't  want  to  let  that  worry  you.  It  ain't  that  they  smell 
bad,'  I  says,  'that's  just  the  Italian  national  air/  " 

And  then  we  thought  that  at  last  he  really  was  sick.  He 
worked  all  day  long,  coming  to  bed  only  after  the  rest  of 
us  were  asleep  and  snoring,  and  I  saw  him  in  the  night  get 
up  and  go  topside  again,  and  1  followed  and  saw  him  sitting 
on  a  windlass.  He  looked  like  a  little  boy,  still,  small,  motion- 
less in  his  underclothes.  But  he  was  young,  and  even  an  old 
man  can't  be  sick  very  long  with  nothing  but  work  to  do  and 
salt  air  to  breathe;  and  so  two  weeks  later  we  were  watching 
him  and  George  dancing  again  in  their  undershirts  after 
supper  on  the  after  well  deck  while  the  victrola  lifted  its 
fatuous  and  reiterant  ego  against  the  waxing  moon  and  the 
ship  snored  and  hissed  through  the  long  seas  off  Hatteras. 
They  didn't  talk;  they  just  danced,  gravely  and  tirelessly  as 
the  nightly  moon  stood  higher  and  higher  up  the  sky.  Then 
we  turned  south,  and  the  Gulf  Stream  ran  like  blue  ink 
alongside,  bubbled  with  fire  by  night  in  the  softening  lati- 
tudes, and  one  night  off  Tortugas  the  ship  began  to  tread 
the  moon's  silver  train  like  an  awkward  and  eager  cour- 
tier, and  Carl  spoke  for  the  first  time  after  almost  twenty 
days. 

"George/'  he  said,  "do  me  a  favor,  will  you?" 

"Sure,  bud/'  George  said,  stamping  on  the  deck  each  time 
the  needle  clucked,  his  black  head  shoulders  above  Carl's 
sleek  pale  one,  the  two  of  them  in  decorous  embrace,  their 


Divorce  in  Naples  893 

canvas  shoes  hissing  in  unison:  "Sure,"  George  said.  "Spit  it 
out." 

"When  we  get  to  Galveston,  I  want  you  to  buy  me  a  suit 
of  these  pink  silk  teddybears  that  ladies  use.  A  little  bigger 
than  I'd  wear,  see?" 


Carcassonne 


AND  ME  ON  A  BUCKSKIN  PONY  'with  eyes  like  blue  electricity 
and  a  mane  like  tangled  fire,  galloping  up  the  hill  and  right 
off  into  the  high  heaven  of  the  world 

His  skeleton  lay  still.  Perhaps  it  was  thinking  about  this. 
Anyway,  after  a  time  it  groaned.  But  it  said  nothing,  which 
is  certainly  not  like  you  he  thought  you  are  not  like  your- 
self, but  I  cajft  say  that  a  little  quiet  is  not  pleasant 

He  lay  beneath  an  unrolled  strip  of  tarred  roofing  made  of 
paper.  All  of  him  that  is,  save  that  part  which  suffered 
neither  insects  nor  temperature  and  which  galloped  unflag- 
ging on  the  destinationless  pony,  up  a  piled  silver  hill  of 
cumulae  where  no  hoof  echoed  nor  left  print,  toward  the 
blue  precipice  never  gained.  This  part  was  neither  flesh  nor 
unflesh  and  he  tingled  a  little  pleasantly  with  its  lackful 
contemplation  as  he  lay  beneath  the  tarred  paper  bedcloth- 
ing. 

So  were  the  mechanics  of  sleeping,  of  denning  up  for  the 
night,  simplified.  Each  morning  the  entire  bed  rolled  back 
into  a  spool  and  stood  erect  in  the  corner.  It  was  like  those 
glasses,  reading  glasses  which  old  ladies  used  to  wear,  at- 
tached to  a  cord  that  rolls  onto  a  spindle  in  a  neat  case  of 
unmarked  gold;  a  spindle,  a  case,  attached  to  the  deep  bosom 
of  the  mother  of  sleep. 

He  lay  still,  savoring  this.  Beneath  him  Rincon  followed 

89* 


896  Beyond 

its  fatal,  secret,  nightly  pursuits,  where  upon  the  rich  and 
inert  darkness  of  the  streets  lighted  windows  and  doors  lay 
like  oily  strokes  of  broad  and  overladen  brushes.  From  the 
docks  a  ship's  siren  unsourced  itself.  For  a  moment  it  was 
sound,  then  it  compassed  silence,  atmosphere,  bringing  upon 
the  eardrums  a  vacuum  in  which  nothing,  not  even  silence, 
was.  Then  it  ceased,  ebbed;  the  silence  breathed  again  with 
a  clashing  of  palm  fronds  like  sand  hissing  across  a  sheet  of 
metal. 

Still  his  skeleton  lay  motionless.  Perhaps  it  was  thinking 
about  this  and  he  thought  of  his  tarred  paper  bed  as  a  pair 
of  spectacles  through  which  he  nightly  perused  the  fabric 
of  dreams: 

Across  the  twin  transparencies  of  the  spectacles  the  horse 
still  gallops  with  its  tangled  welter  of  tossing  flames.  For- 
ward and  back  against  the  taut  roundness  of  its  belly  its  legs 
swing,  rhythmically  reaching  and  overreaching,  each  spurn- 
ing overreach  punctuated  by  a  flicking  limberness  of  shod 
hooves.  He  can  see  the  saddlegirth  and  the  soles  of  the  rider's 
feet  in  the  stirrups.  The  girth  cuts  the  horse  in  two  just  back 
of  the  withers,  yet  it  still  gallops  with  rhythmic  and  un- 
flagging fury  and  without  progression,  and  he  thinks  of  that 
riderless  Norman  steed  which  galloped  against  the  Saracen 
Emir,  who,  so  keen  of  eye,  so  delicate  and  strong  the  wrist 
which  swung  the  blade,  severed  the  galloping  beast  at  a 
single  blow,  the  several  halves  thundering  on  in  the  sacred 
dust  where  him  of  Bouillon  and  Tancred  too  clashed  in 
sullen  retreat;  thundering  on  through  the  assembled  foes  of 
our  meek  Lord,  wrapped  still  in  the  fury  and  the  pride  of 
the  charge,  not  knowing  that  it  was  dead. 

The  ceiling  of  the  garret  slanted  in  a  ruined  pitch  to  the 
low  eaves.  It  was  dark,  and  the  body  consciousness,  assum- 
ing the  office  of  vision,  shaped  in  his  mind's  eye  his  motion- 
less body  grown  phosphorescent  with  that  steady  decay 


Carcassonne  897 

which  had  set  up  within  his  body  on  the  day  of  his  birth. 
the  flesh  is  dead  living  on  itsetf  subsisting  consuming  itsetf 
thriftily  in  its  own  renewal  will  never  die  for  I  am  the  Resur- 
rection and  the  Life  Of  a  man,  the  worm  should  be  lusty, 
lean,  hairedover.  Of  women,  of  delicate  girls  briefly  like 
heard  music  in  tune,  it  should  be  suavely  shaped,  falling 
feeding  into  prettinesses,  feeding,  what  though  to  Me  but 
as  a  seething  of  new  milk  Who  am  the  Resurrection  and 
the  Life 

It  was  dark.  The  agony  of  wood  was  soothed  by  these 
latitudes;  empty  rooms  did  not  creak  and  crack.  Perhaps 
wood  was  like  any  other  skeleton  though,  after  a  time,  once 
reflexes  of  old  compulsions  had  spent  themselves.  Bones 
might  lie  under  seas,  in  the  caverns  of  the  sea,  knocked 
together  by  the  dying  echoes  of  waves.  Like  bones  of  horses 
cursing  the  inferior  riders  who  bestrode  them,  bragging  to 
one  another  about  what  they  would  have  done  with  a  first- 
rate  rider  up.  But  somebody  always  crucified  the  first-rate 
riders.  And  then  it's  better  to  be  bones  knocking  together 
to  the  spent  motion  of  falling  tides  in  the  caverns  and  the 
grottoes  of  the  sea. 

where  him  of  Bouillon  and  Tancred  too 

His  skeleton  groaned  again.  Across  the  twin  transparencies 
of  the  glassy  floor  the  horse  still  galloped,  unflagging  and 
without  progress,  its  destination  the  barn  where  sleep  was 
stabled.  It  was  dark.  Luis,  who  ran  the  cantina  downstairs, 
allowed  him  to  sleep  in  the  garret.  But  the  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany, who  owned  the  garret  and  the  roofing  paper,  owned 
the  darkness  too;  it  was  Mrs  Widdrington's,  the  Standard  Oil 
Company's  wife's,  darkness  he  was  using  to  sleep  in.  She'd 
make  a  poet  of  you  too,  if  you  did  not  work  anywhere.  She 
believed  that,  if  a  reason  for  breathing  were  not  acceptable 
to  her,  it  was  no  reason.  With  her,  if  you  were  white  and  did 
not  work,  you  were  either  a  tramp  or  a  poet.  Maybe  you 


898  Beyond 

were.  Women  are  so  wise.  They  have  learned  how  to  live 
unconfused  by  reality,  impervious  to  it.  It  was  dark. 

and  knock  my  bones  together  and  together  It  was  dark, 
a  darkness  filled  with  a  fairy  pattering  of  small  feet,  stealthy 
and  intent.  Sometimes  the  cold  patter  of  them  on  his  face 
waked  him  in  the  night,  and  at  his  movement  they  scurried 
invisibly  like  an  abrupt  disintegration  of  dead  leaves  in  a 
wind,  in  whispering  arpeggios  of  minute  sound,  leaving  a  thin 
but  definite  effluvium  of  furtiveness  and  voracity.  At  times, 
lying  so  while  daylight  slanted  grayly  along  the  ruined  pitch 
of  the  eaves,  he  watched  their  shadowy  flickings  from  ob- 
scurity to  obscurity,  shadowy  and  huge  as  cats,  leaving  along 
the  stagnant  silences  those  whisperings  gusts  of  fairy  feet. 

Mrs  Widdrington  owned  the  rats  too.  But  wealthy  people 
have  to  own  so  many  things.  Only  she  didn't  expect  the  rats 
to  pay  for  using  her  darkness  and  silence  by  writing  poetry. 
Not  that  they  could  not  have,  and  pretty  fair  verse  probably. 
Something  of  the  rat  about  Byron:  allocutions  of  stealthful 
voracity;  a  fairy  pattering  of  little  feet  behind  a  bloody  arras 
where  fell  where  jell  where  I  was  King  of  Kings  but  the 
woman  with  the  woman  with  the  dogs  eyes  to  knock  my 
bones  together  and  together 

"I  would  like  to  perform  something,"  he  said,  shaping  his 
lips  soundlessly  in  the  darkness,  and  the  galloping  horse  filled 
his  mind  again  with  soundless  thunder.  He  could  see  the  sad- 
dlegirth  and  the  soles  of  the  rider's  stirruped  feet,  and  he 
thought  of  that  Norman  steed,  bred  of  many  fathers  to  bear 
iron  mail  in  the  slow,  damp,  green  valleys  of  England,  mad- 
dened with  heat  and  thirst  and  hopeless  horizons  filled  with 
shimmering  nothingness,  thundering  along  in  two  halves  and 
not  knowing  it,  fused  still  in  the  rhythm  of  accrued  momen- 
tum. Its  head  was  mailed  so  that  it  could  not  see  forward  at 
all,  and  from  the  center  of  the  plates  projected  a — pro- 
jected a — 


Carcassonne  899 

"Chamfron,"  his  skeleton  said. 

"Chamfron."  He  mused  for  a  time,  while  the  beast  that 
did  not  know  that  it  was  dead  thundered  on  as  the  ranks  of 
the  Lamb's  foes  opened  in  the  sacred  dust  and  let  it  through. 
"Chamfron,"  he  repeated.  Living,  as  it  did,  a  retired  life,  his 
skeleton  could  know  next  to  nothing  of  the  world.  Yet  it  had 
an  astonishing  and  exasperating  way  of  supplying  him  with 
bits  of  trivial  information  that  had  temporarily  escaped  his 
mind.  "All  you  know  is  what  I  tell  you,"  he  said. 

"Not  always,"  the  skeleton  said.  "I  know  that  the  end  of 
life  is  lying  still.  You  haven't  learned  that  yet.  Or  you  haven't 
mentioned  it  to  me,  anyway." 

"Oh,  I've  learned  it,"  he  said.  "I've  had  it  dinned  into  me 
enough.  It  isn't  that.  It's  that  I  don't  believe  it's  true." 

The  skeleton  groaned. 

"I  don't  believe  it,  I  say,"  he  repeated. 

"All  right,  all  right,"  the  skeleton  said  testily.  "I  shan't  dis- 
pute you.  I  never  do.  I  only  give  you  advice." 

"Somebody  has  to,  I  guess,"  he  agreed  sourly.  "At  least, 
it  looks  like  it."  He  lay  still  beneath  the  tarred  paper,  in  a  si- 
lence filled  with  fairy  patterings.  Again  his  body  slanted  and 
slanted  downward  through  opaline  corridors  groined  with 
ribs  of  dying  sunlight  upward  dissolving  dimly,  and  came  to 
rest  at  last  in  the  windless  gardens  of  the  sea.  About  him  the 
sv/aying  caverns  and  the  grottoes,  and  his  body  lay  on  the 
rippled  floor,  tumbling  peacefully  to  the  wavering  echoes  of 
the  tides. 

/  'want  to  perform  something  bold  and  tragical  and  austere 
he  repeated,  shaping  the  soundless  words  in  the  pattering 
silence  me  on  a  buckskin  pony  with  eyes  like  blue  electricity 
and  a  mane  like  tangled  fire,  galloping  up  the  hill  and  right 
off  into  the  high  heaven  of  the  world  Still  galloping,  the 
horse  soars  outward;  still  galloping,  it  thunders  up  the  long 
blue  hill  of  heaven,  its  tossing  mane  in  golden  swirls  like  fire. 


900  Beyond 

Steed  and  rider  thunder  on,  thunjder  punily  diminishing:  a 
dying  star  upon  the  immensity  of  darkness  and  of  silence 
within  which,  steadfast,  fading,  deepbreasted  and  grave  of 
flank,  muses  the  dark  and  tragic  figure  of  the  Earth,  his 
mother.