"Metcalf told her there was a right smart of other folks that wanted to do that, and that he knew she didn"t aim to help him escape, but that he was just the jailer and he couldn"t let anybody in without he had permission from the sheriff. And her standing there, in that purple dress and the plume not even nodding and bending, she was that still. "Where is the sheriff?" she said.
" "He might be in his office," Metcalf said. "You find him and get permission from him. Then you can see the n.i.g.g.e.r." Metcalf thought that that would finish it. So he watched her turn and go out and walk through the crowd in front of the jail and go back up the street toward the square. The plume was nodding now. He could see it nodding along above the fence. And then he saw her go across the square and in to the courthouse. The folks didn"t know what she was doing, because Metcalf hadn"t had time to tell them what happened at the jail. They just watched her go on into the courthouse, and then Russell said how he was in the office and he happened to look up and there that hat was with the plume on it just beyond the window across the counter. He didn"t know how long she had been standing there, waiting for him to look up. He said she was just tall enough to see over the counter, so that she didn"t look like she had any body at all. It just looked like somebody had sneaked up and set a toy balloon with a face painted on it and a comic hat set on top of it, like the Katzenjammer kids in the funny paper. "I want to see the sheriff," she says.
" "He ain"t here," Russell says. "I"m his deputy. What can I do for you?"
"He said she didn"t answer for a while, standing there. Then she said, "Where can I find him?"
" "He might be at home," Russell says. "He"s been right busy, this week. Up at night some, helping those Jefferson officers. He might be home taking a nap. But maybe I can-" But he said that she was already gone. He said he looked out the window and watched her go on across the square and turn the corner toward where the sheriff lived. He said he was still trying to place her, to think who she was.
"She never found the sheriff. But it was too late then, anyway. Because the sheriff was already at the jail, only Metcalf hadn"t told her, and besides she hadn"t got good away from the jail before the Jefferson officers came up in two cars and went into the jail. They came up quick and went in quick. But the word had already got around that they were there, and there must have been two hundred men and boys and women too in front of the jail when the two sheriffs come out onto the porch and our sheriff made a speech, asking the folks to respect the law and that him and the Jefferson sheriff both promised that the n.i.g.g.e.r would get a quick and fair trial; and then somebody in the crowd says, "Fair, h.e.l.l. Did he give that white woman a fair trial?" And they hollered then, crowding up, like they were hollering for one another to the dead woman and not to the sheriffs. But the sheriff kept on talking quiet to them, about how it was his sworn word given to them on the day they elected him that he was trying to keep. "I have no more sympathy with n.i.g.g.e.r murderers than any other white man here," he says. "But it is my sworn oath, and by G.o.d I aim to keep it. I don"t want no trouble, but I ain"t going to dodge it. You better smoke that for awhile." And Halliday was there too, with the sheriffs. He was the foremost one about reason and not making trouble. "Yaaah," somebody hollers; "we reckon you don"t want him lynched. But he ain"t worth any thousand dollars to us. He ain"t worth a thousand dead matches to us." And then the sheriff says quick: "What if Halliday don"t want him killed? Don"t we all want the same thing? Here it"s a local citizen that will get the reward: the money will be spent right here in Mottstown. Just suppose it was a Jefferson man was going to get it. Ain"t that right, men? Ain"t that sensible?" His voice sounded little, like a doll"s voice, like even a big man"s voice will sound when he is talking not against folks" listening but against their already half-made-up minds.
"Anyway, that seemed to convince them, even if folks did know that Mottstown or nowhere else was going to see enough of that thousand dollars to fat a calf, if Halliday was the one that had the spending of it. But that did it. Folks are funny. They can"t stick to one way of thinking or doing anything unless they get a new reason for doing it ever so often. And then when they do get a new reason, they are liable to change anyhow. So they didn"t give back exactly; it was like when before that the crowd had kind of milled from the inside out, now it begun to mill from the outside in. And the sheriffs knew it, the same as they knew that it might not last very long, because they went back into the jail quick and then came out again, almost before they had time to turn around, with the n.i.g.g.e.r between them and five or six deputies following. They must have had him ready just inside the jail door all the time, because they come out almost at once, with the n.i.g.g.e.r between them with his face sulled up and his wrists handcuffed to the Jefferson sheriff; and the crowd kind of says, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh."
"They made a kind of lane down to the street, where the first Jefferson car was waiting with the engine running and a man behind the wheel, and the sheriffs were coming along without wasting any time, when she come up again, the woman, Mrs. Hines. She was shoving up through the crowd. She was so lowbuilt that all the folks could see was that plume kind of b.u.mping along slow, like something that could not have moved very fast even if there wasn"t anything in the way, and that couldn"t anything stop, like a tractor. She shoved right on through and out into the lane the folks had made, right out in front of the two sheriffs with the n.i.g.g.e.r between them, so that they had to stop to keep from running over her. Her face looked like a big hunk of putty and her hat had got knocked sideways so the plume hung down in front of her face and she had to push it back to see. But she didn"t do anything. She just stopped them dead for a minute while she stood there and looked at the n.i.g.g.e.r. She never said a word, like that was all she had wanted and had been worrying folks for, like that was the reason she had dressed up and come to town: just to look that n.i.g.g.e.r in the face once. Because she turned and begun to burrow back into the crowd again, and when the cars drove off with the n.i.g.g.e.r and the Jefferson law and the folks looked around, she was gone. And they went back to the square then, and Uncle Doc was gone too from the chair where she had set him and told him to wait. But all of the folks didn"t go straight back to the square. A lot of them stayed there, looking at the jail like it might have been just the n.i.g.g.e.r"s shadow that had come out.
"They thought that she had taken Uncle Doc home. It was in front of Dollar"s store and Dollar told about how he saw her come back up the street ahead of the crowd. He said that Uncle Doc had not moved, that he was still sitting in the chair where she had left him like he was hypnotised, until she come up and touched his shoulder and he got up and they went on together with Dollar watching him. And Dollar said that from the look on Uncle Doc"s face, home was where he ought to be.
"Only she never took him home. After a while folks saw that she wasn"t having to take him anywhere. It was like they both wanted to do the same thing. The same thing but for different reasons, and each one knew that the other"s reason was different and that whichever of them got his way, it would be serious for the other one. Like they both knew it without saying it and that each was watching the other, and that they both knew that she would have the most sense about getting them started.
"They went straight to the garage where Salmon keeps his rent car. She did all the talking. She said they wanted to go to Jefferson. Maybe they never dreamed that Salmon would charge them more than a quarter apiece, because when he said three dollars she asked him again, like maybe she could not believe her ears. "Three dollars," Salmon says. "I couldn"t do it for no less. And them standing there and Uncle Doc not taking any part, like he was waiting, like it wasn"t any concern of his, like he knew that he wouldn"t need to bother: that she would get them there.
" "I can"t pay that," she says.
" "You won"t get it done no cheaper," Salmon says. "Unless by the railroad. They"ll take you for fifty-two cents apiece." But she was already going away, with Uncle Doc following her like a dog would.
"That was about four o"clock. Until six o"clock the folks saw them sitting on a bench in the courthouse yard. They were not talking: it was like each one never even knew the other one was there. They just sat there side by side, with her all dressed up in her Sunday clothes. Maybe she was enjoying herself, all dressed up and downtown all Sat.u.r.day evening. Maybe it was to her what being in Memphis all day would be to other folks.
"They set there until the clock struck six. Then they got up. Folks that saw it said she never said a word to him; that they just got up at the same time like two birds do from a limb and a man can"t tell which one of them give the signal. When they walked, Uncle Doc walked a little behind her. They crossed the square this way and turned into the street toward the depot. And the folks knew that there wasn"t any train due for three hours and they wondered if they actually were going somewhere on the train, before they found out that they were going to do something that surprised the folks more than that, even. They went to that little caf down by the depot and ate supper, that" hadn"t even been seen together on the street before, let alone eating in a caf, since they come to Jefferson. But that"s where she took him; maybe they were afraid they would miss the train if they ate downtown. Because they were there before half past six o"clock, sitting on two of them little stools at the counter, eating what. she had ordered without asking Uncle Doc about it at all. She asked the caf man about the train to Jefferson and he told her it went at two A.M. "Lots of excitement in Jefferson tonight," he says. "You can get a car downtown and be in Jefferson in forty-five minutes. You don"t need to wait until two o"clock on that train." He thought they were strangers maybe; he told her which way town was.
"But she didn"t say anything and they finished eating and she paid him, a nickel and a dime at a time out of a tied up rag that she took out of the umbrella, with Uncle Doc setting there and waiting with that dazed look on his face like he was walking in his sleep. Then they left, and the caf man thought they were going to take his advice and go to town and get that car when he looked out and saw them going on across the switch tracks, toward the depot. Once he started to call, but he didn"t. "I reckon I misunderstood her," he says he thought. "Maybe it"s the nine o"clock southbound they want."
"They were sitting on the bench in the waiting room when the folks, the drummers and loafers and such, begun to come in and buy tickets for the southbound. The agent said how he noticed there was some folks in the waitingroom when he come in after supper at half past seven, but that he never noticed particular until she come to the ticket window and asked what time the train left for Jefferson. He said he was busy at the time and that he just glanced up and says, "Tomorrow," without stopping what he was doing. Then he said that after a while something made him look up, and there was that round face watching him and that plume still in the window, and she says, " "I want two tickets on it."
" "That train is not due until two o"clock in the morning," the agent says. He didn"t recognise her either. "If you want to get to Jefferson anytime soon, you"d better go to town and hire a car. Do you know which way town is?" But he said she just stood there, counting nickels and dimes out of that knotted rag, and he came and gave her the two tickets and then he looked past her through the window and saw Uncle Doc and he knew who she was. And he said how they sat there and the folks for the southbound come in and the train come and left and they still set there. He said how Uncle Doc still looked like he was asleep, or doped or something. And then the train went, but some of the folks didn"t go back to town. They stayed there, looking in the window, and now and then they would come in and look at Uncle Doc and his wife setting on the bench, until the agent turned off the lights in the waitingroom.
"Some of the folks stayed, even after that. They could look in the window and see them setting there in the dark. Maybe they could see the plume, and the white of Uncle Doc"s head. And then Uncle Doc begun to wake up. It wasn"t like he was surprised to find where he was, nor that he was where he didn"t want to be. He just roused up, like he had been coasting for a long time now, and now was the time to put on the power again. They could hear her saying "Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhh," to him, and then his voice would break out. They were still setting there when the agent turned on the lights and told them that the two o"clock train was coming, with her saying "Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhh" like to a baby, and Uncle Doc hollering, "b.i.t.c.hery and abomination! Abomination and b.i.t.c.hery!" "
Chapter 16.
When his knock gets no response, Byron leaves the porch and goes around the house and enters the small, enclosed back yard. He sees the chair at once beneath the mulberry tree. It is a canvas deck chair, mended and faded and sagged so long to the shape of Hightower"s body that even when empty it seems to hold still in ghostly embrace the owner"s obese shapelessness; approaching, Byron thinks how the mute chair evocative of disuse and supineness and shabby remoteness from the world, is somehow the symbol and the being too of the man himself. That I am going to disturb again," he thinks, with that faint lift of lip, thinking Again? The disturbing I have done him, even he will see that that disturbing is nothing now. And on Sunday again.. But then I reckon Sunday would want to take revenge on him too, being as Sunday was invented by folks.
He comes up behind the chair and looks down into it. Hightower is asleep. Upon the swell of his paunch, where the white shirt (it is a clean and fresh one now) balloons out of the worn black trousers, an open book lies face down. Upon the book Hightower"s hands are folded, peaceful, benignant, almost pontifical. The shirt is made after an old fashion, with a pleated though carelessly ironed bosom, and he wears no collar. His mouth is open, the loose and flabby flesh sagging away from the round orifice in which the stained lower teeth show, and from the still fine nose which alone age, the defeat of sheer years, has not changed. Looking down at the unconscious face, it seems to Byron as though the whole man were fleeing away from the nose which holds invincibly to something yet of pride and courage above the s.l.u.ttishness of vanquishment like a forgotten flag above a ruined fortress. Again light, the reflection of sky beyond the mulberry leaves, glints and glares upon the spectacle lenses, so that Byron cannot tell just when Hightower"s eyes open. He sees only the mouth shut, and a movement of the folded hands as Hightower sits up. "Yes," he says; "yes? Who is Oh, Byron."
Byron looks down at him, his face quite grave. But it is not compa.s.sionate now. It is not anything: it is just quite sober and quite determined. He says, without any inflection at all: "They caught him yesterday. I don"t reckon you have heard that any more than you heard about the killing."
"Caught him?"
"Christmas. In Mottstown. He came to town, and near as I can learn, he stood around on the street until somebody recognised him."
"Caught him." Hightower is sitting up in the chair now. "And you have come to tell me that he is-that they have ..."
"No. Ain"t anybody done anything to him yet. He ain"t dead yet. He"s in the jail. He"s all right."
"All right. You say that he is all right. Byron says that he is all right-Byron Bunch has helped the woman"s paramour sell his friend for a thousand dollars, and Byron says that it is all right. Has kept the woman hidden from the father of her child, while that-Shall I say, other paramour, Byron? Shall I say that? Shall I refrain from the truth because Byron Bunch hides it?"
"If public talking makes truth, then I reckon that is truth. Especially when they find out that I have got both of them locked up in jail."
"Both of them?"
"Brown too. Though I reckon most folks have about decided that Brown wasn"t anymore capable of doing that killing or helping in it than he was in catching the man that did do it or helping in that. But they can all say that Byron Bunch has now got him locked up safe in jail."
"Ah, yes." Hightower"s voice shakes a little, high and thin. "Byron Bunch, the guardian of public weal and morality. The gainer, the inheritor of rewards, since it will now descend upon the morganatic wife of Shall I say that too? Shall I read Byron there too?" Then he begins to cry, sitting huge and lax in the sagging chair. "I don"t mean that. You know I don"t. But it is not right to bother me, to worry me, when I have-when I have taught myself to stay-have been taught by them to stay That this should come to me, taking me after I am old, and reconciled to what they deemed-" Once before Byron saw him sit while sweat ran down his face like tears; now he sees the tears themselves run down the flabby cheeks like sweat.
"I know. It"s a poor thing. A poor thing to worry you. I didn"t know. I didn"t know, when I first got into it. Or I would have ... But you are a man of G.o.d. You can"t dodge that."
"I am not a man of G.o.d. And not through my own desire. Remember that. Not of my own choice that I am no longer a man of G.o.d. It was by the will, the more than behest, of them like you and like her and like him in the jail yonder and like them who put him there to do their will upon, as they did upon me, with insult and violence upon those who like them were created by the same G.o.d and were driven by them to do that which they now turn and rend them for having done it. It was not my choice. Remember that."
"I know that. Because a man ain"t given that many choices. You made your choice before that." Hightower looks at him. "You were given your choice before I was born, and you took it before I or her or him either was born. That was your choice. And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad. The same as her, and him, and me. And the same as them others, that other woman."
"That other woman? Another woman? Must my life after fifty years be violated and my peace destroyed by two lost women, Byron?"
"This other one ain"t lost now. She has been lost for thirty years. But she is found now. She"s his grandmother."
"Whose grandmother?"
"Christmas"," Byron says.
Waiting, watching the street and the gate from the dark study window, Hightower hears the distant music when it first begins. He does not know that he expects it, that on each Wednesday and Sunday night, sitting in the dark window, he waits for it to begin. He knows almost to the second when he should begin to hear it, without recourse to watch or clock. He uses neither, has needed neither for twenty-five years now. He lives dissociated from mechanical time. Yet for that reason he has never lost it. It is as though out of his subconscious he produces without volition the few crystallizations of stated instances by which his dead life in the actual world had been governed and ordered once. Without recourse to clock he could know immediately upon the thought just where, in his old life, he would be and what doing between the two fixed moments which marked the beginning and the end of Sunday morning service and Sunday evening service and prayer service on Wednesday night; just when he would have been entering the church, just when he would have been bringing to a calculated close prayer or sermon. So before twilight has completely faded he is saying to himself Now they are gathering, approaching along streets slowly and turning in, greeting one another: the groups, the couples, the single ones. There is a little informal talking in the church itself, lowtoned, the ladies constant and a link sibilant with fans, nodding to arriving friends as they pa.s.s in the aisle. Miss Carruthers (she was his organist and she has been dead almost twenty years) is among them; soon she will rise and enter the organloft Sunday evening prayer meeting. It has seemed to him always that at that hour man approaches nearest of all to G.o.d, nearer than at any other hour of all the seven days. Then alone, of all church gatherings, is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the Church. The mind and the heart purged then, if it is ever to be; the week and its whatever disasters finished and summed and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service; the next week and its whatever disasters not yet born, the heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope.
Sitting in the dark window he seems to see them Now they are gathering, entering the door. They are nearly all there now And then he begins to say, "Now. Now," leaning a little forward; and then, as though it had waited for his signal, the music begins. The organ strains come rich and resonant through the summer night, blended, sonorous, with that quality of abjectness and sublimation, as if the freed voices themselves were a.s.suming the shapes and att.i.tudes of crucifixions, ecstatic, solemn, and profound in gathering volume. Yet even then the music has still a quality stern and implacable, deliberate and without pa.s.sion so much as immolation, pleading, asking, for not love, not life, forbidding it to others, demanding in sonorous tones death as though death were the boon, like all Protestant music. It was as though they who accepted it and raised voices to praise it within praise, having been made what they were by that which the music praised and symbolised, they took revenge upon that which made them so by means of the praise itself. Listening, he seems to hear within it the apotheosis of his own history, his own land, his own environed blood: that people from which he sprang and among whom he lives who can never take either pleasure or catastrophe or escape from either, without brawling over it. Pleasure, ecstasy, they cannot seem to bear: their escape from it is in violence, in drinking and fighting and praying; catastrophe too, the violence identical and apparently inescapable And so why should not their religion drive them to crucifixion of themselves and one another? he thinks. It seems to him that he can hear within the music the declaration and dedication of that which they know that on the morrow they will have to do. It seems to him that the past week has rushed like a torrent and that the week to come, which will begin tomorrow, is the abyss, and that now on the brink of cataract the stream has raised a single blended and sonorous and austere cry, not for justification but as a dying salute before its own plunge, and not to any G.o.d but to the doomed man in the barred cell within hearing of them and of the two other churches, and in whose crucifixion they too will raise a cross. "And they will do it gladly," he says, in the dark window. He feels his mouth and jaw muscles tauten with something premonitory, something more terrible than laughing even. "Since to pity him would be to admit selfdoubt and to hope for and need pity themselves. They will do it gladly, gladly. That"s why it is so terrible, terrible, terrible." Then, leaning forward, he sees three people approach and turn into the gate, in silhouette now against the street lamp, among the shadows. He has already recognised Byron and he looks at the two who follow him. A woman and a man he knows them to be, yet save for the skirt which one of them wears they are almost interchangeable: of a height, and of a width which is twice that of ordinary man or woman, like two bears. He begins to laugh before he can prepare to stop it. "If Byron just had a handkerchief about his head, and earrings," he thinks, laughing and laughing, making no sound, trying to prepare to stop it in order to go to the door when Byron will knock.
Byron leads them into the study-a dumpy woman in a purple dress and a plume and carrying an umbrella, with a perfectly immobile face, and a man incredibly dirty and apparently incredibly old, with a tobaccostained goat"s beard and mad eyes. They enter not with diffidence, but with something puppetlike about them, as if they were operated by clumsy springwork. The woman appears to be the more a.s.sured, or at least the more conscious, of the two of them. It is as though, for all her frozen and mechanically moved inertia, she had come for some definite purpose or at least with some vague hope. But he sees at once that the man is in something like coma, as though oblivious and utterly indifferent to his whereabouts, and yet withal a quality latent and explosive, paradoxically rapt and alert at the same time.
"This is her," Byron says quietly. "This is Mrs. Hines." They stand there, motionless: the woman as though she had reached the end of a long journey and now among strange faces and surroundings waits, quiet, glacierlike, like something made of stone and painted, and the calm, rapt yet latently furious and dirty old man. It is as though neither of them had so much as looked at him, with curiosity or without. He indicates chairs. Byron guides the woman, who lowers herself carefully, clutching the umbrella. The man sits at once. Hightower takes his chair beyond the desk. "What is it she wants to talk to me about?" he says.
The woman does not move. Apparently she has not heard. She is like someone who has performed an arduous journey on the strength of a promise and who now ceases completely and waits. "This is him," Byron says. "This is Reverend Hightower. Tell him. Tell him what you want him to know." She looks at Byron when he speaks, her face quite blank. If there is inarticulateness behind it, articulateness is nullified by the immobility of the face itself; if hope or yearning, neither hope nor yearning show. "Tell him," Byron says. "Tell him why you came. What you came to Jefferson for."
"It was because-" she says. Her voice is sudden and deep, almost harsh, though not loud. It is as though she had not expected to make so much noise when she spoke; she ceases in a sort of astonishment as though at the sound of her own voice, looking from one to the other of the two faces.
"Tell me," Hightower says. "Try to tell me."
"It"s because I ..." Again the voice ceases, dies harshly though still not raised, as though of its own astonishment. It is as if the three words were some automatic impediment which her voice cannot pa.s.s; they can almost watch her marshalling herself to go around them. "I ain"t never seen him when he could walk," she says. "Not for thirty years I never saw him. Never once walking on his own feet and calling his own name-"
"b.i.t.c.hery and abomination!" the man says suddenly. His voice is high, shrill, strong. "b.i.t.c.hery and abomination!" Then he ceases. Out of his immediate and dreamlike state he shouts the three words with outrageous and prophetlike suddenness, and that is all. Hightower looks at him, and then at Byron. Byron says quietly: "He is their daughter"s child. He-" with a slight movement of the head he indicates the old man, who is now watching Hightower with his bright, mad glare-"he took it right after it was born and carried it away. She didn"t know what he did with it. She never even knew if it was still alive or not until-"
The old man interrupts again, with that startling suddenness. But he does not shout this time: his voice now is as calm and logical as Byron"s own. He talks clearly, just a little jerkily: "Yes. Old Doc Hines took him. G.o.d give Old Doc Hines his chance and so Old Doc Hines give G.o.d His chance too. So out of the mouths of little children G.o.d used His will. The little children hollering n.i.g.g.e.r! n.i.g.g.e.r! at him in the hearing of G.o.d and man both, showing G.o.d"s will. And Old Doc Hines said to G.o.d, "But that ain"t enough. Them children call one another worse than n.i.g.g.e.r," and G.o.d said, "You wait and you watch, because I ain"t got the time to waste neither with this world"s s.l.u.ttishness and b.i.t.c.hery. I have put the mark on him and now I am going to put the knowledge. And I have set you there to watch and guard My will. It will be yours to tend to it and oversee." " His voice ceases; his tone does not drop at all. His voice just stops, exactly like when the needle is lifted from a phonograph record by the hand of someone who is not listening to the record. Hightower looks from him to Byron, also almost glaring.
"What"s this? What"s this?" he says.
"I wanted to fix it so she could come and talk to you without him being along," Byron says. "But there wasn"t anywhere to leave him. She says she has to watch him. He was trying down in Mottstown yesterday to get the folks worked up to lynch him, before he even knew what he had done."
"Lynch him?" Hightower says. "Lynch his own grandson?"
"That"s what she says," Byron says levelly. "She says that"s what he come up here for. And she had to come, with him to keep him from doing it."
The woman speaks again. Perhaps she has been listening. But there is no more expression on her face now than when she entered; woodenfaced, she speaks again in her dead voice, with almost the suddenness of the man. "For fifty years he has been like that. For more than fifty years, but for fifty years I have suffered it. Even before we were married, he was always fighting. On the very night that Milly was born, he was locked up in jail for fighting. That"s what I have bore and suffered. He said he had to fight because he is littler than most men and so folks would try to put on him. That was his vanity and his pride. But I told him it was because the devil was in him. And that some day the devil was going to come on him and him not know it until too late, and the devil was going to say, "Eupheus Hines, I have come to collect my toll." That"s what I told him, the next day after Milly was born and me still too weak to raise my head, and him just out of jail again. I told him so: how right then G.o.d had given him a sign and a warning: that him being locked up in a jail on the very hour and minute of his daughter"s birth was the Lord"s own token that heaven never thought him fitten to raise a daughter. A sign from G.o.d above that town (he was a brakeman then, on the railroad) was not doing him anything but harm. And he took it so himself then, because it was a sign, and we moved away from the towns then and after a while he got to be foreman at the sawmill, doing well because he hadn"t begun then to take G.o.d"s name in vain and in pride to justify and excuse the devil that was in him. So when Lem Bush"s wagon pa.s.sed that night coming home from the circus and never stopped to let Milly out and Eupheus come back into the house and flung the things out of the drawer until he come to the pistol, I said, "Eupheus, it"s the devil. It"s not Milly"s safety that"s quicking you now," and he said, "Devil or no devil. Devil or no devil," and he hit me with his hand and I laid across the bed and watched him-" She ceases. But hers is on a falling inflection, as if the machine had run down in midrecord. Again Hightower looks from her to Byron with that expression of glaring amazement.
"That"s how I heard it too," Byron says. "It was hard for me to get it straight too, at first. They were living at a sawmill that he was foreman of, over in Arkansas. The gal was about eighteen then. One night a circus pa.s.sed the mill, on the way to town. It was December and there had been a lot of rain, and one of the wagons broke through a bridge close to the mill and the men come to their house to wake him up and borrow some log tackle to get the wagon out-"
"It"s G.o.d"s abomination of womanflesh!" the old man cries suddenly. Then his voice drops, lowers; it is as though he were merely gaining attention. He talks again rapidly, his tone plausible, vague, fanatic, speaking of himself again in the third person. "He knowed. Old Doc Hines knowed. He had seen the womansign of G.o.d"s abomination already on her, under her clothes. So when he went and put on his raincoat and lit the lantern and come back, she was already at the door, with a raincoat on too and he said, "You get on back to bed," and she said, "I want to go too," and he said, "You get on back inside that room," and she went back and he went down and got the big tackle from the mill and got the wagon out. Till nigh daybreak he worked, believing she had obeyed the command of the father the Lord had given her. But he ought to knowed. He ought to knowed G.o.d"s abomination of womanflesh; he should have knowed the walking shape of b.i.t.c.hery and abomination already stinking in G.o.d"s sight. Telling Old Doc Hines, that knowed better, that he was a Mexican. When Old Doc Hines could see in his face the black curse of G.o.d Almighty. Telling him-"
"What?" Hightower says. He speaks loudly, as if he had antic.i.p.ated having to drown the other"s voice by sheer volume. "What is this?"
"It was a fellow with the circus," Byron says. "She told him that the man was a Mexican, the daughter told him when he caught her. Maybe that"s what the fellow told the gal. But he"-again he indicates the old man-"knew somehow that the fellow had n.i.g.g.e.r blood. Maybe the circus folks told him. I don"t know. He ain"t never said how he found out, like that never made any difference. And I reckon it didn"t, after the next night."
"The next night?"
"I reckon she slipped out that night when the circus was stuck. He says she did. Anyway, he acted like it, and what he did could not have happened if he hadn"t known and she hadn"t slipped out. Because the next day she went in to the circus with some neighbors. He let her go, because he didn"t know then that she had slipped out the night before. He didn"t suspect anything even when she came out to get into the neighbor"s wagon with her Sunday dress on. But he was waiting for the wagon when it came back that night, listening for it, when it came up the road and pa.s.sed the house. like it was not. going to stop to let her out. And he ran out and called, and the neighbor stopped the wagon and the gal wasn"t in it. The neighbor said that she had left them on the circus lot, to spend the night with another girl that lived about six miles away, and the neighbor wondered how Hines didn"t know about it, because he said that the gal had her grip with her when she got into the wagon. Hines hadn"t seen the grip. And she-" this time he indicates the stonefaced woman; she may or may not be listening to what he is saying-"she says it was the devil that guided him. She says he could not have known anymore than she did, where the gal was then, and yet he come into the house and got his pistol and knocked her down across the bed when she tried to stop him and saddled his horse and rode off. And she said he took the only short cut he could possibly have taken, choosing it in the dark, out of a half a dozen of them, that would ever have caught up with them. And yet it wasn"t any possible way that he could have known which road they had taken. But he did. He found them like he had known all the time just where they would be, like him and the man that his gal told him was a Mexican had made a date to meet there. It was like he knew. It was pitch dark, and even when he caught up with a buggy, there wasn"t any way he could have told it was the one he wanted. But he rode right up behind the buggy, the first buggy he had seen that night. He rode up on the right side of it and he leaned down, still in the pitch dark and without saying a word and without stopping his horse, and grabbed the man that might have been a stranger or a neighbor for all he could have known by sight or hearing. Grabbed him by one hand and held the pistol against him with the other and shot him dead and brought the gal back home behind him on the horse. He left the buggy and the man both there in the road. It was raining again, too."
He ceases. At once the woman begins to speak, as though she has been waiting with rigid impatience for Byron to cease. She speaks in the same dead, level tone: the two voices in monotonous strophe and antistrophe: two bodiless voices recounting dreamily something performed in a region without dimension by people without blood: "I laid across the bed and I heard him go out and then I heard the horse come up from the barn and pa.s.s the house, already galloping. And I laid there without undressing, watching the lamp. The oil was getting low and after a while I got up and took it back to the kitchen and filled it and cleaned the wick and then I undressed and laid down, with the lamp burning. It was still raining and it was cold too and after a while I heard the horse come back into the yard and stop at the porch and I got up and put on my shawl and I heard them come into the house. I could hear Eupheus" feet and then Milly"s feet, and they come on down the hall to the door and Milly stood there with the rain on her face and her hair and her new dress all muddy and her eyes shut and then Eupheus. .h.i.t her and she fell to the floor and laid there and she didn"t look any different in the face than when she was standing up. And Eupheus standing in the door wet and muddy too and he said, "You said I was at the devil"s work. Well, I have brought you back the devil"s laidby crop. Ask her what she is toting now inside her. Ask her. And I was that tired, and it was cold, and I said, "What happened?" and he said, "Go back yonder and look down in the mud and you will see. He might have fooled her that he was a Mexican. But he never fooled me. And he never fooled her. He never had to. Because you said once that someday the devil would come down on me for his toll. Well, he has. My wife has bore me a wh.o.r.e. But at least he done what he could when the time come to collect. He showed me the right road and he held the pistol steady."
"And so sometimes I would think how the devil had conquered G.o.d. Because we found out Milly was going to have a child and Eupheus started out to find a doctor that would fix it. I believed that he would find one, and sometimes I thought it would be better so, if human man and woman was to live in the world. And sometimes I hoped he would, me being that tired and all when the trial was over and the circus owner come back and said how the man really was part n.i.g.g.e.r instead of Mexican, like Eupheus said all the time he was, like the devil had told Eupheus he was a n.i.g.g.e.r. And Eupheus would take the pistol again and say he would find a doctor or kill one, and he would go away and be gone a week at a time, and all the folks knowing it and me trying to get Eupheus to lets move away because it was just that circus man that said he was a n.i.g.g.e.r and maybe he never knew for certain, and besides he was gone too and we likely wouldn"t ever see him again. But Eupheus wouldn"t move, and Milly"s time coming and Eupheus with that pistol, trying to find a doctor that would do it. And then I heard how he was in jail again; how he had been going to church and to prayer meeting at the different places where he would be trying to find a doctor, and how one night he got up during prayer meeting and went to the pulpit and begun to preach himself, yelling against n.i.g.g.e.rs, for the white folks to turn out and kill them all, and the folks in the church made him quit and come down from the pulpit and he threatened them with the pistol, there in the church, until the law came and arrested him and him like a crazy man for a while. And they found out how he had beat up a doctor in another town and run away before they could catch him. So when he got out of jail and got back home Milly"s time was about on her. And I thought then that he had give up, had seen G.o.d"s will at last, because he was quiet about the house, and one day he found the clothes me and Milly had been getting ready and kept hid from him, and he never said nothing except to ask when it would be. Every day he would ask, and we thought that he had give up, that maybe going to them churches or being in jail again had reconciled him like it had on that night when Milly was born. And so the time come and one night Milly waked me and told me it had started and I dressed and told Eupheus to go for the doctor and he dressed and went out. And I got everything ready and we waited and the time when Eupheus and the doctor should have got back come and pa.s.sed and Eupheus wasn"t back neither and I waited until the doctor would have to get there pretty soon and then I went out to the front porch to look and I saw Eupheus setting on the top step with the shotgun across his lap and he said, "Get back into that house, wh.o.r.e"s dam," and I said, "Eupheus," and he raised the shotgun and said, "Get back into that house. Let the devil gather his own crop: he was the one that laid it by." And I tried to get out the back way and he heard me and run around the house with the gun and he hit me with the barrel of it and I went back to Milly and he stood out side the hall door where he could see Milly until she died. And then he come in to the bed and looked at the baby and he picked it up and held it up, higher than the lamp, like he was waiting to see if the devil or the Lord would win. And I was that tired, setting by the bed, looking at his shadow on the wall and the shadow of his arms and the bundle high up on the wall. And then I thought that the Lord had won. But now I don"t know. Because he laid the baby back on the bed by Milly and he went out. I heard him go out the front door and then I got up and built up the fire in the stove and heated some milk." She ceases; her harsh, droning voice dies. Across the desk Hightower watches her: the still, stonefaced woman in the purple dress, who has not moved since she entered the room. Then she begins to speak again, without moving, almost without lip movement, as if she were a puppet and the voice that of a ventriloquist in the next room.
"And Eupheus was gone. The man that owned the mill didn"t know where he had gone to. And he got a new foreman, but he let me stay in the house a while longer because we didn"t know where Eupheus was, and it coming winter and me with the baby to take care of. And I didn"t know where Eupheus was any more than Mr. Gillman did, until the letter came. It was from Memphis and it had a post office moneypaper in it, and that was all. So I still didn"t know. And then in November another moneypaper came, without any letter or anything. And I was that tired, and then two days before Christmas I was out in the back yard, chopping wood, and I come back into the house and the baby was gone. I hadn"t been out of the house an hour, and it looked like I could have seen him when he come and went. But I didn"t. I just found the letter where Eupheus had left it on the pillow that I would put between the baby and the edge of the bed so he couldn"t roll off, and I was that tired. And I waited, and after Christmas Eupheus come home, and he wouldn"t tell me. He just said that we were going to move, and I thought that he had already took the baby there and he had come back for me. And he wouldn"t tell me where we were going to move to but it didn"t take long and I was worried nigh crazy how the baby would get along until we got there and he still wouldn"t tell me and it was like we wouldn"t ever get there. Then we got there and the baby wasn"t there and I said, "You tell me what you have done with Joey. You got to tell me," and he looked at me like he looked at Milly that night when she laid on the bed and died and he said, "It"s the Lord G.o.d"s abomination, and I am the instrument of His will." And he went away the next day. and I didn"t know where he had gone, and another moneypaper came, and the next month Eupheus come home and said he was working in Memphis. And I knew he had Joey hid somewhere in Memphis and I thought that that was something because he could be there to see to Joey even if I wasn"t. And I knew that I would have to wait on Eupheus" will to know, and each time I would think that maybe next time he will take me with him to Memphis. And so I waited. I sewed and made clothes for Joey and I would have them all ready when Eupheus would come home and I would try to get him to tell me if the clothes fit Joey and if he was all right and Eupheus wouldn"t tell me He would sit and read out of the Bible, loud, without n.o.body there to hear it but me, reading and hollering loud out of the Bible like he believed I didn"t believe what it said. But he would not tell me for five years and I never knew whether he took Joey the clothes I made or not. And I was afraid to ask, to worry at him, because it was something that he was there where Joey was, even if I wasn"t. And then after five years he came home one day and he said, "We are going to move," and I thought that now it would be, I will see him again now; if it was a sin, I reckon we have all paid it out now, and I even forgave Eupheus. Because I thought that we were going to Memphis this time, at last. But it was not to Memphis. We come to Mottstown. We had to pa.s.s through Memphis, and I begged him. It was the first time I had ever begged him. But I did then, just for a minute, a second; not to touch him or talk to him or nothing. But Eupheus wouldn"t. We never even left the depot. We got off of one train and we waited seven hours without even leaving the depot, until the other train come, and we come to Mottstown. And Eupheus never went back to Memphis to work anymore, and after a while I said, "Eupheus," and he looked at me and I said, "I done waited five years and I ain"t never bothered you. Can"t you tell me just once if he is dead or not?" and he said, "He is dead," and I said, "Dead to the living world, or just dead to me? If he is just dead to me, even. Tell me that much, because in five years I have not bothered you," and he said, "He is dead to you and to me and to G.o.d and to all G.o.d"s world forever and ever more." "
She ceases again. Beyond the desk Hightower watches her with that quiet and desperate amazement. Byron too is motionless, his head bent a little. The three of them are like three rocks above a beach, above ebbtide, save the old man. He has been listening now, almost attentively, with that ability of his to flux instantaneously between complete attention that does not seem to hear, and that comalike bemus.e.m.e.nt in which the stare of his apparently inverted eye is as uncomfortable as though he held them with his hand. He cackles, suddenly, bright, loud, mad; he speaks, incredibly old, incredibly dirty. "It was the Lord. He was there. Old Doc Hines give G.o.d His chance too. The Lord told Old Doc Hines what to do and Old Doc Hines done it. Then the Lord said to Old Doc Hines, "You watch, now. Watch My will a-working." And Old Doc Hines watched and heard the mouths of little children, of G.o.d"s own fatherless and motherless, putting His words and knowledge into their mouths even when they couldn"t know it since they were without sin yet, even the girl ones without sin and b.i.t.c.hery yet: n.i.g.g.e.r! n.i.g.g.e.r! in the innocent mouths of little children. "What did I tell you?" G.o.d said to Old Doc Hines. "And now I"ve set My will to working and now I"m gone. There ain"t enough sin here to keep Me busy because what do I care for the fornications of a s.l.u.t, since that is a part of My purpose too," and Old Doc Hines said, "How is the fornications of a s.l.u.t a part of Your purpose too?" and G.o.d said, "You wait and see. Do you think it is just chanceso that I sent that young doctor to be the one that found My abomination laying wrapped in that blanket on that doorstep that Christmas night? Do you think it was just chanceso that the Madam should have been away that night and give them young s.l.u.ts the chance and call to name him Christmas in sacrilege of My son? So I am gone now, because I have set My will a-working and I can leave you here to watch it. So Old Doc Hines he watched. and he waited. From G.o.d"s own boiler room he watched them children, and the devil"s walking seed unbeknownst among them, polluting the earth with the working of that word on him. Because he didn"t play with. the other children no more now. He stayed by himself, standing still, and then Old Doc Hines knew that he was listening to the hidden warning of G.o.d"s doom, and Old Doc Hines said to him, "Why don"t you play with them other children like you used to?" and he didn"t say nothing and Old Doc Hines said, "Is it because they call you n.i.g.g.e.r?" and he didn"t say nothing and Old Doc Hines said, "Do you think you are a n.i.g.g.e.r because G.o.d has marked your face?" and he said, "Is G.o.d a n.i.g.g.e.r too?" and Old Doc Hines said, "He is the Lord G.o.d of wrathful hosts, His will be done. Not yours and not mine, because you and me are both a part of His purpose and His vengeance." And he went away and Old Doc Hines watched him hearing and listening to the vengeful will of the Lord, until Old Doc Hines found out how he was watching the n.i.g.g.e.r working in the yard, following him around the yard while he worked, until at last the n.i.g.g.e.r said, "What you watching me for, boy?" and he said, "How come you are a n.i.g.g.e.r?" and the n.i.g.g.e.r said, "Who told you I am a n.i.g.g.e.r, you little white trash b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" and he says, "I ain"t a n.i.g.g.e.r," and the n.i.g.g.e.r says, "You are worse than that. You don"t know what you are. And more than that, you won"t never know. You"ll live and you"ll die and you won"t never know," and he says, "G.o.d ain"t no n.i.g.g.e.r," and the n.i.g.g.e.r says, "I reckon you ought to know what G.o.d is, because don"t n.o.body but G.o.d know what you is." But G.o.d wasn"t there to say, because He had set His will to working and left Old Doc Hines to watch it. From that very first night, when He had chose His own Son"s sacred anniversary to set it a-working on, He set Old Doc Hines to watch it. It was cold that night, and Old Doc Hines standing in the dark just behind the corner where he could see the doorstep and the accomplishment of the Lord"s will, and he saw that young doctor coming in lechery and fornication stop and stoop down and raise the Lord"s abomination and tote it into the house. And Old Doc Hines he followed and he seen and heard., He watched them young s.l.u.ts that was desecrating the Lord"s sacred anniversary with eggnog and whiskey in the Madam"s absence, open the blanket. And it was her, the Jezebel of the doctor, that was the Lord"s instrument, that said, "We"ll name him Christmas," and another one said, "What Christmas. Christmas what," and G.o.d said to Old Doc Hines, "Tell them," and they all looked at Old Doc Hines with the reek of pollution on them, hollering, "Why, it"s Uncle Doc. Look what Santa Claus brought us and left on the doorstep, Uncle Doc," and Old Doc Hines said, "His name is Joseph," and they quit laughing and they looked at Old Doc Hines and the Jezebel said, "How do you know?" and Old Doc Hines said, "The Lord says so," and then they laughed again, hollering, "It is so in the Book: Christmas, the son of Joe. Joe, the son of Joe. Joe Christmas," they said, "To Joe Christmas," and they tried to make Old Doc Hines drink too, to the Lord"s abomination, but he struck the cup aside. And he just had to watch and to wait, and he did and it was in the Lord"s good time, for evil to come from evil. And the doctor"s Jezebel come running from her l.u.s.tful bed, still astink with sin and fear. "He was hid behind the bed," she says, and Old Doc Hines said, "You used that perfumed soap that tempted your own undoing, for the Lord"s abomination and outrage. Suffer it," and she said, "You can talk to him. I have seen you. You could persuade him," and Old Doc Hines said, "I care no more for your fornications than G.o.d does," and she said, "He will tell and I will be fired. I will be disgraced." Stinking with her l.u.s.t and lechery she was then, standing before Old Doc Hines with the working of G.o.d"s will on her that minute, who had outraged the house where G.o.d housed His fatherless and motherless. "You ain"t nothing," Old Doc Hines said. "You and all s.l.u.ts. You are a instrument of G.o.d"s wrathful purpose that nere a sparrow can fall to earth. You are a instrument of G.o.d, the same as Joe Christmas and Old Doc Hines. And she went away and Old Doc Hines he waited and he watched and it wasn"t long before she come back and her face was like the face of a ravening beast of the desert. "I fixed him," she said, and Old Doc Hines said, "How fixed him," because it was not anything that Old Doc Hines didn"t know because the Lord did not keep His purpose hid from His chosen instrument, and Old Doc Hines said, "You have served the foreordained will of G.o.d. You can go now and abominate Him in peace until the Day," and her face looked like the ravening beast of the desert; laughing out of her rotten colored dirt at G.o.d. And they come and took him away. Old Doc Hines saw him go away in the buggy and he went back to wait for G.o.d and G.o.d come and He said to Old Doc Hines, "You can go too now. You have done My work. There is no more evil here now but womanevil, not worthy for My chosen instrument to watch." And Old Doc Hines went when G.o.d told him to go. But he kept in touch with G.o.d and at night he said, "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Lord," and G.o.d said, "He is still walking My earth," and Old Doc Hines kept in touch with G.o.d and at night he said, "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Lord," and G.o.d said, "He is still walking My earth," and Old Doc Hines kept in touch with G.o.d and one night he wrestled and he strove and he cried aloud, "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Lord! I feel! I feel the teeth and the fangs of evil!" and G.o.d said, "It"s that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Your work is not done yet. He"s a pollution and a abomination on My earth." "
The sound of music from the distant church has long since ceased. Through the open window there comes now only the peaceful and myriad sounds of the summer night. Beyond the desk Hightower sits, looking more than ever like an awkward beast tricked and befooled of the need for flight, brought now to bay by those who tricked and fooled it. The other three sit facing him; almost like a jury. Two of them are also motionless, the woman with that stonevisaged patience of a waiting rock, the old man with a spent quality like a charred wick of a candle from which the flame has been violently blown away. Byron alone seems to possess life. His face is lowered. He seems to muse upon one hand which lies upon his lap, the thumb and forefinger of which rub slowly together with a kneading motion while he appears to watch with musing absorption. When Hightower speaks, Byron knows that he is not addressing him, not addressing anyone in the room at all. "What do they want me to do?" he says. "What do they think, hope, believe, that I can do?"
Then there is no sound; neither the man nor the woman have heard, apparently. Byron does not expect the man to hear. "He don"t need any help," he thinks. "Not him. It"s hindrance he needs"; thinking remembering the comastate of dreamy yet maniacal suspension in which the old man had moved from place to place a little behind the woman since he had met them twelve hours ago. "It"s hindrance he needs. I reckon it"s a good thing for more folks than her that he is wellnigh helpless." He is watching the woman. He says quietly, almost gently: "Go on. Tell him what you want. He wants to know what you want him to do. Tell him."
"I thought maybe-" she says. She speaks without stirring. Her voice is not tentative so much as rusty, as if it were being forced to try to say something outside the province of being said aloud, of being anything save felt, known. "Mr. Bunch said that maybe-"
"What?" Hightower says. He speaks sharply, impatiently, his voice a little high; he too has not moved, sitting back in the chair, his hands upon the armrests. "What? That what?"
"I thought ..." The voice dies again. Beyond the window the steady insects whirr. Then the voice goes on, flat, toneless, she sitting also with her head bent a little, as if she too listened to the voice with the same quiet intentness: "He is my grandson, my girl"s little boy. I just thought that if I ... if he ..." Byron listens quietly, thinking It"s right funny. You"d think they had done got swapped somewhere. Like it was him "that had a n.i.g.g.e.r grandson waiting to be hung The voice goes on. "I know it ain"t right to bother a stranger. But you are lucky. A bachelor, a single man that could grow old without the despair of love. But I reckon you couldn"t never see it even if I could tell it right. I just thought that maybe if it could be for one day like it hadn"t happened. Like folks never knew him as a man that had killed ..." The voice ceases again. She has not stirred. It is as though she listened to it cease as she listened to it begin, with the same interest, the same quiet unastonishment.
"Go on," Hightower says, in that high impatient voice; "go on."
"I never saw him when he could walk and talk. Not for thirty years I never saw him. I am not saying he never did what they say he did. Ought not to suffer for it like he made them that loved and lost suffer. But if folks could maybe just let him for one day. Like it hadn"t happened yet. Like the world never had anything against him yet. Then it could be like he had just went on a trip and grew man grown and come back. If it could be like that for just one day. After that I would not interfere. If he done it, I would not be the one to come between him and what he must suffer. Just for one day, you see. Like he had been on a trip and come back, telling me about the trip, without any living earth against him yet."
"Oh," Hightower says, in his shrill, high voice. Though he has not moved, though the knuckles of the hands which grip the chairarms are taut and white, there begins to emerge from beneath his clothing a slow and repressed quivering. "Ah, yes," he says. "That"s all. That"s simple. Simple. Simple." Apparently he cannot stop saying it. "Simple. Simple." He has been speaking in a low tone; now his voice rises. "What is it they want me to do? What must I do now? Byron! Byron? What is it? What are they asking of me now?" Byron has risen. He now stands beside the desk, his hands on the desk, facing Hightower. Still Hightower does not move save for that steadily increasing quivering of his flabby body. "Ah, yes. I should have known. It will be Byron who will ask it. I should have known. That will be reserved for Byron and for me. Come, come. Out with it. Why do you hesitate now?"
Byron looks down at the desk, at his hands upon the desk. "It"s a poor thing. A poor thing."
"Ah. Commiseration? After this long time? Commiseration for me, or for Byron? Come; out with it. What do you want me to do? For it is you: I know that. I have known that all along. Ah, Byron, Byron. What a dramatist you would have made."
"Or maybe you mean a drummer, a agent, a salesman," Byron says. "It"s a poor thing. I know that. You don"t need to tell me."
"But I am not clairvoyant, like you. You seem to know already what I could tell you, yet you will not tell me what you intend for me to know. What is it you want me to do? Shall I go plead guilty to the murder? Is that it?"
Byron"s face cracks with that grimace faint, fleeting, sardonic, weary, without mirth. "It"s next to that, I reckon." Then his face sobers; it is quite grave. "It"s a poor thing to ask. G.o.d knows I know that." He watches his slow hand where it moves, preoccupied and trivial, upon the desk top. "I mind how I said to you once that there is a price for being good the same as for being bad; a cost to pay. And it"s the good men that can"t deny the bill when it comes around. They can"t deny it for the reason that there ain"t anyway to make them pay it, like a honest man that gambles. The bad men can deny it; that"s why don"t anybody expect them to pay on sight or any other time. But the good can"t. Maybe it takes longer to pay for being good than for being bad. And it won"t be like you haven"t done it before, haven"t already paid a bill like it once before. It oughtn"t to be so bad now as it was then."
"Go on. Go on. What is it I am to do?"
Byron watches his slow and ceaseless hand, musing. "He ain"t never admitted that he killed her. And all the evidence they got against him is Brown"s word, which is next to none. You could say he was here with you that night. Every night when Brown said he watched him go up to the big house and go in it. Folks would believe you. They would believe that, anyway. They would rather believe that about you than to believe that he lived with her like a husband and then killed her. And you are old now. They wouldn"t do anything to you about it that would hurt you now. And I reckon you are used to everything else they can do."
"Oh," Hightower says. "Ah. Yes. Yes. They would believe it. That would be very simple, very good. Good for all. Then he will be restored to them who have suffered because of him, and Brown without the reward could be scared into making her child legitimate and then into fleeing again and forever this time. And then it would be just her and Byron. Since I am just an old man who has been fortunate enough to grow old without having to learn the despair of love." He is shaking, steadily; he looks up now. In the lamplight his face looks slick, as if it had been oiled. Wrung and twisted, it gleams in the lamplight; the yellowed, oftwashed shirt which was fresh this morning is damp with sweat. "It"s not because I can"t, don"t dare to," he says; "it"s because I won"t! I won"t! do you hear?" He raises his hands from the chairarms. "It"s because I won"t do it!" Byron does not move. His hand on the desk top has ceased; he watches the other, thinking It ain"t me he is shouting at. It"s like he knows there is something nearer him than me to convince of that Because now Hightower is shouting, "I won"t do it! I won"t!" with his hands raised and clenched, his face sweating, his lip lifted upon his clenched and rotting teeth from about which the long sagging of flabby and puttycolored flesh falls away. Suddenly his voice rises higher yet. "Get out!" he screams. "Get out of my house! Get out of my house!" Then he falls forward, onto the desk, his face between his extended arms and his clenched fists. As, the two old people moving ahead of him, Byron looks back from the door, he sees that Hightower has not moved, his bald head and his extended and clenchfisted arms lying full in the pool of light from the shaded lamp. Beyond the open window the sound of insects has not ceased, not faltered.
Chapter 17.
That was Sunday night. Lena"s child was born the next morning. It was just dawn when Byron stopped his galloping mule before the house which he had quitted not six hours ago. He sprang to the ground already running, and ran up the narrow walk toward the dark porch. He seemed to stand aloof and watch himself, for all his haste, thinking with a kind of grim unsurprise: "Byron Bunch borning a baby. If I could have seen myself now two weeks ago, I would not have believed my own eyes. I would have told them that they lied."
The window was dark now beyond which six hours ago he had left the minister. Running, he thought of the bald head, the clenched hands, the p.r.o.ne flabby body sprawled across the desk. "But I reckon he has not slept much," he thought. "Even if he ain"t playing-playing-" He could not think of the word midwife, which he knew that Hightower would use. "I reckon I don"t have to think of it," he thought. "Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain"t got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice."
The door was not locked. Apparently he knew that it would not be. He felt his way into the hall, not quiet, not attempting to be. He had never been deeper into the house than the room where he had last seen the owner of it sprawled across the desk in the full downglare of the lamp. Yet he went almost as straight to the right door as if he knew, or could see, or were being led. "That"s what he"d call it," he thought, in the fumbling and hurried dark. "And she would too." He meant Lena, lying yonder in the cabin, already beginning to labor. "Only they would both have a different name for whoever did the leading." He could hear Hightower snoring now, before he entered the room. "Like he ain"t so much upset, after all," he thoug