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The End 16 ñòîð³íêà

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"Yes sir," and he said,

"Bow your head," and we did so and he said grace, briefly, courteously but with dignity, without abasement or cringing: one man of decency and intelligence to another: notifying Heaven that we were about to eat and thanking It for the privilege , but at the same time reminding It that It had had some help too; that if someone named Hood or Briggins (so that was Lycurgus's and his mother's name) had not sweated some, the acknowledgment would have graced mainly empty dishes, and said Amen and unfolded his napkin and stack the corner in his collar exactly as Grandfather did , and we ate: the dishes of cold vegetables which should have been eaten hot at the country hour of eleven oclock, but there were hot biscuits and three kinds of preserves, and buttermilk. And still it was not even sundown: the long twilight and even after that, still the long evening, the long night and I did not even know where I was going to sleep nor even on what, Uncle Parsham sitting there picking his teeth with a gold toothpick just like Grandfather's and reading my mind like it was a magic-lantern slide: "Do you like to go fishing?" I did not really like it. I could not seem to learn to want - or maybe want to learn - to be still that long. I said quickly:

"Yes sir."

"Come on then. By that time Lycurgus will be back." There were three cane poles, with lines floats sinkers hooks and all, on two nails in the wall of the back gallery. He took down two of them. "Come on," he said. In the tool shed there was a tin bucket with nail holes punched through the lid. "Lycurgus's cricket bucket," he said. "I like worms myself." They were in a shallow earth-filled wooden tray; he - no: I; I said,

"Lemme do it," and took the broken fork from him and dug the long frantic worms out of the dirt, into a tin can.

"Come on," he said, shouldering his pole, passing the stable but turning sharp away and down toward the creek bottom, not far; there was a good worn path among the blackberry thickets and then the willows, then the creek, the water seeming to gather gently the fading light and then as gently return it; there was even a log to sit on. "This is where my daughter fishes," he said, "We call it Mary's hole. But you can use it now. I'll be on down the bank."

Then he was gone. The light was going fast now; it would be night before long. I sat on the log, in a gentle whine of mosquitoes. It would not be too difficult; all I would have to do would just be to say I wont think whenever it was necessary. After a while I thought about putting the hook into the water, then I could watch how long it would take the float to disappear into darkness when night finally came. Then I even thought about putting one of Lycurgus's crickets on the hook, but crickets were not always easy to catch and Lycurgus lived by a creek and would have more time to fish and would need them. So I just thought I wont think; I could see the float plainer than ever, now that it was on the water; it would probably be the last of all to vanish into the darkness, since the water itself 'would be next to last; I could not see or hear Uncle Parsham at all, I did not know how much further he called on down the bank and now was the perfect time, chance to act like a baby, only what's the good of acting like a baby, of wasting it with nobody there to know it or offer sympathy - if anybody ever wants sympathy or even in fact really to be back home because what you really want is just a familiar soft bed to sleep in for a change again, to go to sleep hi; there were whippoorwills now and back somewhere beyond the creek an owl too, a big one by his voice; maybe there were big woods there and if Lycurgus's (or maybe they were Uncle Parsham's) hounds were all that good on Otis last night, they sure ought to be able to handle rabbits or coons or possums. So I asked him. It was full night now for some tune. He said quietly behind me; I had not even heard him until then:

"Had a bite yet?"

"I aint much of a fisherman," I said. "How do your hounds hunt?"

"Good," he said. He did not even raise his voice: "Pappy." Uncle Parsham's white shirt held light too, up to us where Lycurgus took the two poles and we followed, up the path again where the two hounds met us, on into the house again, into the lamplight, a plate of supper with a cloth over it ready for Lycurgus.

"Sit down," Uncle Parsham said. "You can talk while you eat." Lycurgus sat down.

"They're still there," he said.

"They aint took them to Hardwick yet?" Uncle Parsham said. "Possum has not got a jail," he told me. "They lock them in the woodshed behind the schoolhouse until they can take them to the jail at Hardwick. Men, that is. They aint had women before."

"No sir," Lycurgus said. "The ladies is still in the hotel, with a guard at the door. Just Mr Hogganbeck is in the woodshed. Mr Caldwell went back to Memphis on Number Thirty-one. He taken that boy with him."

"Otis?" I said. "Did they get the tooth back?"

"They never said," Lycurgus said, eating; he glanced briefly at me. "And the horse is all right too. I went and seen him. He's in the hotel stable. Before he left, Mr Caldwell made a bond for Mr McCaslin so he can watch the horse." He ate. "A train leaves for Jefferson at nine-forty. We could make it all right if we hurry." Uncle Parsham took a vast silver watch from his pocket and looked at it. "We could make it," Lycurgus said.

"I cant," I said. "I got to wait." Uncle Parsham put the watch back. He rose. He said, not loud:

"Mary." She was in the front room; I had not heard a sound. She came to the door.

"I already did it," she said. She said to Lycurgus: "Your pallet's ready in the hall."

Then to me: "You sleep in Lycurgus's bed where you was yestiddy."

"I dont need to take Lycurgus's bed," I said. "I can sleep with Uncle Parsham. I wont mind." They looked at me, quite still, quite identical. "I sleep with Boss a lot of times," I said.

"He snores too. I do not mind."

"Boss?" Uncle Parsham said.

"That's what we call Grandfather," I said. "He snores too. I wont mind."

"Let him," Uncle Parsham said. We went to his room. His lamp had flowers painted on the china shade and there was a big gold-framed portrait on a gold easel in one corner: a woman, not very old but in old-timey clothes; the bed had a bright patchwork quilt on it like Lycurgus's and even in May there was a smolder of fire on the hearth. There was a chair, a rocking chair too, but I did not sit down. I just stood there. Then he came in again. He wore a nightshirt now and was winding the silver watch. "Undress," he said. I did so. "Does your mother let you sleep like that at home?"

"No sir," I said.

"You aint got anything with you, have you?"

"No sir," I said. He put the watch on the mantel and went to the door and said,

"Mary." She answered. "Bring one of Lycurgus's clean shirts." After a while her hand held the shirt through the door crack. He took it. "Here," he said. I came and put it on. "Do you say your Now I lay me in bed or kneeling down?"

"Kneeling down," I said.

"Say them," he said. I knelt beside the bed and said my prayers. The bed was already turned back. I got into it and he blew out the lamp and I heard the bed again and then - the moon would be late before it was very high tonight but there was already enough light - I could see him, all black and white against the white pillow and the white moustache and imperial, lying on his back, his hands folded on his breast. "Tomorrow morning I'll take you to town and we'll see Mr Hogganbeck. If he says you have done all you can do here and for you to go home, will you go then?"

"Yes sir," I said.

"Now go to sleep," he said. Because even before he said it, I knew that that was exactly what I wanted, what I had been wanting probably ever since yesterday: to go home. I mean, nobody likes to be licked, but maybe there are times when nobody can help being; that all you can da about it is not quit. And Boon and Ned had not quit, or they would not be where they were right now. And maybe they would not say that I had quit either, when it was them who told me to go home. Maybe I was just too little, too young; maybe I just was not able to tote whatever my share was, and if they had had somebody else bigger or older or maybe just smarter, we would not have been licked. You see? like that: all specious and rational; unimpugnable even, when the simple truth was, I wanted to go home and just was not brave enough to say so, let alone do it. So now, having admitted at last that I was not only a failure but a coward too, my mind should be peaceful and easy and I should go on to sleep like a baby: where Uncle Parsham already was, just barely snoring (who should hear Grandfather once). Not that that mattered either, since I would be home tomorrow with nothing - no stolen horses nor chastity-stricken prostitutes and errant pullman conductors and Ned and Boon Hogganbeck in his normal condition once he had slipped Father's leash - to interfere with sleep, hearing the voice, the bawling two or three times before I struggled up and out, into daylight, sunlight; Uncle Parsham's side of the bed was empty and now I could hear the bawling from outside the house:

"Hellaw. Hellaw. Lycurgus. Lycurgus," and leapt, sprang from the bed, already running, across to the window where I could look out into the front yard. It was Ned. He had the horse.


XII

So once again, at two oclock in the afternoon, McWillie and I sat our (his was anyway) skittering mounts --- we had scared Mr Clapp enough yesterday to where we had drawn for pole position this time and McWillie won it - poised for the steward-starter's (the bird-dog trainer-market hunter-homicidist's) Go!

A few things came before that though. One of them was Ned. He looked bad. He looked terrible. It was not just lack of sleep; we all had that lack. But Boon and I had at least spent the four nights in bed since we left Jefferson, where Ned had spent maybe two, one of the others in a boxcar with a horse and the other in a stable with him, both on hay if on anything . It was his clothes too. His shirt was filthy and his black pants were not much better.

At least Everbe had washed some of mine night before last, but Ned had not even had his off until now: sitting now in a clean faded suit of Uncle Parsham's overalls and jumper while Mary was washing his shirt and doing what she could with his pants, at the kitchen table now, he and I eating our breakfast while Uncle Parsham sat and listened.

He said that a little before daylight one of the white men - it was not Mr Poleymus, the constable - woke him where he was asleep on some bales of hay and told him to take the horse and get out of town with it -

"Just you and Lightning, and not Boon and the others?" I said. "Where are they?"

"Where them white folks put um," Ned said. "So I said, Much oblige, Whitefolks, and took Lightning in my hand and--"

"Why?" I said.

"What do you care why? All we need to do now is be up behind that starting wire at two oclock this afternoon and win them two heats and get a holt of Boss's automobile and get on back to Jefferson that we had not ought to never left nohow-- "

"We cant go back without Boon," I said. "If they let you and Lightning go, why did not they let him go?"

"Look," Ned said. "Me and you got enough to do just running that horse race. Why dont you finish your breakfast and then go back and lay down and rest until I calls you in time--"

"Stop lying to him," Uncle Parsham said. Ned ate, his head bent over his plate, eating fast. He was tired; his eye-whites were not even just pink any more: they were red.

"Mr Boon Hogganbeck aint going anywhere for a while. He's in jail good this time.

They gonter take him to Hard-wick this morning where they can lock him up sho enough. But forget that. What you and me have got to do is-- "

"Tell him," Uncle Parsham said. "He's stood everything else you folks got him into since you brought him here; what makes you think he cant stand the rest of it too, until you manage somehow to come out on the other side and can take him back home? Did not he have to watch it too, right here in my yard and my house, and down yonder in my pasture both, not to mention what he might have seen in town since - that man horsing and studding at that gal, and her trying to get away from him, and not nobody but this eleven-year-old boy to run to?

not Boon Hogganbeck and not the Law and not the grown white folks to count on and hope for, but just him? Tell him. "And already the thing inside me saying No No Dont ask Leave it Leave it. I said,

"What did Boon do?" Ned chewed over his plate, blinking his reddened eyes like when you have sand in them.

"He whupped that Law. That Butch. He nigh ruint him. They let him out before they done me and Lightning. He never even stopped. He went straight to that gal--"

"It was Miss Reba," I said. "It was Miss Reba."

"No," Ned said. "It was that other one. That big one. They never called her name to me .-- and whupped her and turned around--"

"He hit her?" I said. "Boon hit Ever - Miss Corrie?"

"Is that her name? Yes .-- and turned around and went straight back until he found that Law and whupped him, pistol and all, before they could pull him off--"

"Boon hit her," I said. "He hit her."

"That's right," Ned said. "She is the reason me and Lightning are free right now. That Butch found out he could not get to her no other way, and when he found out that me and you and Boon had to win that race today before we could dare to go back home, and all we had to win it with was Lightning, he took Lightning and locked him up. That's what happened. That's all it was; Uncle Possum just told you how he watched it coming Monday, and maybe I ought to seen it too and maybe I would if I had not been so busy with Lightning, or maybe if I had been a little better acquainted with that Butch-- "

"I dont believe it," I said.

"Yes," he said. "That's what it was. It was just bad luck, the kind of bad luck you cant count against beforehand. He likely just happened to be wherever he was just by chance when he seen her Monday and figgered right off that that badge and pistol would be all he would need, being likely used to having them be enough around here. Only this time they wasnt and so he had to look again, and sho enough, there was Lightning that we had to depend on to win that race so we could get back Boss's automobile and maybe go back home-- "

"No!" I said. "No! It was not her! She's not even here! She went back to Memphis with Sam yesterday evening! They just did not tell you! It was somebody else! It was another one!"

"No," Ned said. "It was her. You seen it Monday out here." Oh yes; and on the way back in the surrey that afternoon, and at the doctor's, and at the hotel that night until Miss Reba frightened him away, we - I anyway - thought for good. Because Miss Reba was only a woman too, I said: "Why did not somebody else help her? A man to help her - that man, that man that took you and Lightning, that told Sam and Butch both they could be whatever they wanted in Memphis or Nashville or Hardwick either, but that here in Possum he was the one--

"I said, cried:" I dont believe it! "

"Yes," Ned said. "It was her that bought Lightning loose to run again today. I aint talking about me and Boon and r: them others; Butch never cared nothing about us, except to maybe keep Boon outen the way until this morning. All he needed was Lightning , only he had to throw in me and Boon and the rest to make Mr Poleymus believe him. Because Butch tricked him too, used him too, until whatever it was that happened this morning - whether that Butch, having done been paid off now , said it was all a mistake or it was the wrong horse, or maybe by that time Mr Poleymus his-self had added one to one and smelled a mouse and turned everybody loose and before he could turn around, Boon went and whupped that gal and then come straight back without even stopping and tried to tear that Butch's head off, pistol and all, with his bare hands, and Mr Poleymus smelled a whole rat. And Mr. Poleymus may be little, and he may be old; but he's a man, mon. They told me how last year his wife had one of them strokes and cant even move her hand now, and all the chillen are married and gone, so he has to wash her and feed her and lift her in and outen the bed day and night both, besides cooking and keeping house too unlessen some neighbor woman comes in to help. But you dont know it to look at him and watch him act. He come in there - I never seen none of it; they just told me: two or three holding Boon and another one trying to keep that Butch from whupping him with the pistol whilst they was holding him - and walked up to Butch and snatched that pistol outen his hand and reached up and ripped that badge and half his shirt off too and telefoamed to Hardwick to send a automobile to bring them all back to jail, the women too. When it's women, they calls it fragrancy. "

"Vagrancy," Uncle Parsham said.

"That's what I said," Ned said. "You call it whatever you want. I calls it jail."

"I dont believe it," I said. "She quit."

"Then we sho better say much obliged that she started again," Ned said. "Else me and you and Lightning--"

"She's quit," I said. "She promised me."

"Aint we got Lightning back?" Ned said. "Aint all we got to do now is just run him?

Did not Mr Sam say he will be back today and will know what to do, and then me and you and Boon will be just the same as already back home?

I sat there. It was still early. I mean, even now it was still only eight oclock. It was going to be hot today, the first hot day, precursor of summer. You see, just to keep on saying I dont believe it served only for the moment; as soon as the words, the noise, died, there it still was - anguish, rage, outrage, grief, whatever it was - unchanged. "I have to go to town right away," I said to Uncle Parsham. "If I can use one of the mules, I'll send you the money as soon as I get home." He rose at once.

"Come on," he said.

"Hold on," Ned said. "It's too late now, Mr Poleymus sent for a automobile. They've already left before now."

"He can cut them off," Uncle Parsham said. "It aint a half a mile from here to the road they'll be on."

"I got to get some sleep," Ned said.

"I know it," Uncle Parsham said. "I'm going with him. I told him last night I would."

"I'm not going home yet," I said. "I'm just going to town for a minute. Then I'll come back here."

"All right," Ned said. "At least lemme finish my coffee." We did not wait for him. One of the mules was gone, probably to the field with Lycurgus. But the other was there. Ned came out before we had the gear on. Uncle Parsham showed us the short cut to the Hardwick road, but I did not care. I mean, it did not matter to me now where I met him. If I had not been just about worn out with race horses and women and deputy sheriffs and everybody else that was not back home where they belonged, I might have preferred to hold my interview with Boon in some quick private place for both our sakes . But it did not matter now; it could be in the middle of the big road or in the middle of the Square either, as far as I was concerned; there could be a whole automobile full of them. But we did not meet the automobile; obviously I was being protected; to have had to do it in public would have been intolerable, gratuitously intolerable for one who had served Non-virtue this faithfully for four days and asked so little in return. I mean, not to have to see any more of them than I had to. Which was granted; the still-empty automobile had barely reached the hotel itself when we got there: a seven-passenger Stanley Steamer: enough room even for the baggage of two - no, three: Minnie too - women on a two-day trip from Memphis to Parsham, which they would all be upstairs packing now, so even horse stealing took care of its own. Ned cramped the wheel for me to get down. "You still dont want to tell me what you come for?" he said.

"No," I said. None of the long row of chairs on the gallery were occupied, Caesar could have held his triumph there and had all the isolation Boon's and Butch's new status required; the lobby was empty, and Mr Poleymus could have used that. But it was a man, mon; they were in the ladies 'parlor - Mr Poleymus, the driver of the car (another deputy; anyway, in a badge), Butch and Boon fresh and marked from battle. Though only Boon for me, who read my face (he had known it long enough) or maybe it was his own heart or anyway conscience; he said quickly:

"Look out, now, Lucius; look out!" already flinging up one arm as he rose quickly, already stepping back, retreating, I walking at him, up to him, not tall enough by more than half and nothing to stand on either (that ludicrous anticlimax of shame), having to reach, to jump even, stretch the best I could to strike at his face; oh yes, I was crying, bawling again; I could not even see him now: just hitting as high as I could, having to jump at him to do so, against his Alp-hard Alp-tall crags and cliffs, Mr Poleymus saying behind me:

"Hit him again. He struck a woman, I dont care who she is," and (or somebody) holding me until I wrenched, jerked free, turning, blind, for the door or where I thought I remembered it, the hand guiding me now.

"Wait," Boon said. "Dont you want to see her?" You see, I was tired and my feet hurt.

I was about worn out, and I needed sleep too. But more: I was dirty. I wanted fresh clothes.

She had washed for me Monday night but I did not want just rewashed clothes: I wanted a change of clothes that had had time to rest for a while, like at home, smelling of rest and quiet drawers and starch and bluing; but mainly my feet; I wanted fresh stockings and my other shoes.

"I dont want to see nobody!" I said. "I want to go home!"

"All right," Boon said. "Here - anybody - will somebody put him on that train this morning? I got money - can get it--"

"Shut up," I said. "I aint going nowhere now." I went on, still blind; or that is, the hand carried me.

"Wait," Boon Said. "Wait, Lucius."

"Shut up," I said. The hand curved me around; there was a wall now.

"Wipe your face," Mr Poleymus said. He held out a bandanna handkerchief but I did not take it; my bandage would sop it up all right. Anyway, the riding-sock did. It was used to being cried into. Who knew? if it stayed with me long enough, it might even win a horse race.

I could see now; we were in the lobby. I started to turn but he held me. "Hold up a minute," he said. "If you still dont want to see anybody." It was Miss Reba and Everbe coming down the stairs carrying then- grips but Minnie was not with them. The car-driving deputy was waiting.

He took the grips and tiie ^ went on; they did not look toward us, Miss Reba with her head mad and hard and high; if the deputy had not moved quick she would have tromped right over him, grips and all. They went out. "I'll buy you a ticket home," Mr Poleymus said. "Get on that train." I did not say Shut up to him. "You've run out of folks sure enough now, I'll stay with you and tell the conductor--"

"I'm going to wait for Ned," I said. "I cant go without him. If you had not ruined everything yesterday, we'd all been gone by now."

"Who's Ned?" he said. I told him. "You mean you're going to run that horse today anyhow? You and Ned by yourself?" I told him. "Where's Ned now?" I told him. "Come on,"

he said. "We can go out the side door." Ned was standing at the mule's head. The back of the automobile was towards us. And Minnie still was not with them. Maybe she went back to Memphis yesterday with Sam and Otis; maybe now that she had Otis again she was not going to lift her hand off of him until it had that tooth in it. That's what I would have done, anyway.

"So Mr Poleymus finally caught you too, did he?" Ned said. "What's the matter? Aint he got no handcuffs your size?"

"Shut up," I said.

"When you going to get him back home, son?" Mr Poleymus said to Ned.

"I hope tonight," Ned said; he was not being Uncle Remus or smart or cute or anything now. "Soon as I get rid of this horse race and can do something about it."

"Have you got enough money?"

"Yes sir," Ned said. "Much oblige. We'll be aJl right after this race." He cramped the wheel and we got in. Mr Poleymus stood with his hand on the top stanchion. He said:

"So you really are going to race that Linscomb horse this afternoon."

"We gonter beat that Linscomb horse this afternoon," Ned said.

"You hope so," Mr Poleymus said.

"I know so," Ned said.

"How much do you know so?" Mr Poleymus said.

"I wish I had a hundred dollars for my own to bet on it," Ned said. They looked at each other; it was a good while. Then Mr Poleymus turned loosed the stanchion and took from his pocket a worn snap purse that when I saw it I thought I was seeing double because it was exactly like Ned's, scuffed and worn and even longer than the riding- sock, that you didn ' t even know who was paying who for what, and unsnapped it and took out two one-dollar bills and snapped the purse shut and handed the bills to Ned.

"Bet this for me," he said. "If you're right you can keep half of it." Ned took the money.

"I'll bet it for you," he said. "But much oblige. By sundown tonight I can lend you half or three or four times this much." We drove on then - I mean, Ned drove on - turning: we did not pass the automobile at all. "Been crying again," he said. "A race-horse jockey and still aint growed out of crying."

"Shut up," I said. But he was turning the buggy again, on across the tracks and on along what would have been the other side of the Square if Parsham ever got big enough to have a Square, and stopped; we were in front of a store.

"Hold him," Ned said and got out and went in the store, not long, and came back with a paper sack and got in and took the lines, back toward home - I mean Uncle Parsham's - now and with his free hand took from the big bag a small one; it was peppermint drops. "Here," he said. "I got some bananas too and soon as we get Lightning back to that private spring-branch paddock we uses, we can set down and eat um and then maybe I can get some sleep before I forget how to. And meanwhiles, stop fretting about that gal, now you done said your say to Boon Hogganbeck. Hitting a woman dont hurt her because a woman dont shove back at a lick like a man do; she just gives to it and then when your back is turned, reaches for the flatiron or the butcher knife. That's why hitting them dont break nothing; all it does is just black her eye or cut her mouf a little. And that aint nothing to a woman. Because why? Because what better sign than a black eye or a cut mouf can a woman want from a man that he got her on his mind? "

So once more, in the clutch of our respective starting grooms, McWillie and I sat our skittering and jockeying mounts behind that wire. (That's right, skittering and jockeying, Lightning too; at least he had learned - anyway remembered from yesterday - that he was supposed to be at least up with Acheron when the running started, even if he had not discovered yet that he was supposed - hoped - to be in front when it stopped.) This time Ned's final instructions were simple, explicit, and succinct: "Just remember, I knows I can make him run once, and I believes I can make him run twice. Only, we wants to save that once I knows, until we knows we needs it. So here's what I want you to do for this first heat: Just before them judges and such hollers Go! you say to yourself My name is Ned William McCaslin and then do it. "




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