Light in August (12 page)

Byron ceases and looks, glances once, at the man beyond the desk. Hightower has not moved. His face about the twin blank glares of the spectacles is sweating quietly and steadily. “And the sheriff come out, and the fire department come too. But there wasn’t nothing it could do because there wasn’t any water for the hose. And that old house burned all evening and I could see the smoke from the mill and I showed it to her when she come up, because I didn’t know then. And they brought Miss Burden to town, and there was a paper at the bank that she had told them would tell what to do with her when she died. It said how she had a nephew in the North where she come from, her folks come from. And they telegraphed the nephew and in two hours they got the answer
that the nephew would pay a thousand dollars’ reward for who done it.

“And Christmas and Brown were both gone. The sheriff found out how somebody had been living in that cabin, and then right off everybody begun to tell about Christmas and Brown, that had kept it a secret long enough for one of them or maybe both of them to murder that lady. But nobody could find either one of them until last night. The countryman didn’t know it was Brown that he found drunk in the house. Folks thought that him and Christmas had both run, maybe. And then last night Brown showed up. He was sober then, and he come onto the square about eight oclock, wild, yelling about how it was Christmas that killed her and making his claim on that thousand dollars. They got the officers and took him to the sheriff’s office and they told him the reward would be his all right soon as he caught Christmas and proved he done it. And so Brown told. He told about how Christmas had been living with Miss Burden like man and wife for three years, until Brown and him teamed up. At first, when he moved out to live in the cabin with Christmas, Brown said that Christmas told him he had been sleeping in the cabin all the time. Then he said how one night he hadn’t gone to sleep and he told how he heard Christmas get up out of bed and come and stand over Brown’s cot for a while, like he was listening, and then he tiptoed to the door and opened it quiet and went out. And Brown said how he got up and followed Christmas and saw him go up to the big house and go in the back door, like either it was left open for him or he had a key to it. Then Brown come on back to the cabin and got into bed. But he said how he couldn’t
go to sleep for laughing, thinking about how smart Christmas thought he was. And he was laying there when Christmas come back in about a hour. Then he said how he couldn’t keep from laughing no longer, and he says to Christmas ‘You old son of a gun’. Then he said how Christmas got right still in the dark, and how he laid there laughing, telling Christmas how he wasn’t such a slick one after all and joking Christmas about gray hair and about how if Christmas wanted him to, he would take it week about with him paying the house rent.

“Then he told how he found out that night that sooner or later Christmas was going to kill her or somebody. He said he was laying there, laughing, thinking that Christmas would just maybe get back in bed again, when Christmas struck a match. Then Brown said he quit laughing and he laid there and watched Christmas light the lantern and set it on the box by Brown’s cot. Then Brown said how he wasn’t laughing and he laid there and Christmas standing there by the cot, looking down at him. ‘Now you got a good joke’ Christmas says. ‘You can get a good laugh, telling them in the barbershop tomorrow night’. And Brown said he didn’t know that Christmas was mad and that he kind of said something back to Christmas, not meaning to make him mad, and Christmas said, in that still way of his: ‘You dont get enough sleep. You stay awake too much. Maybe you ought to sleep more’ and Brown said ‘How much more?’   and Christmas said ‘Maybe from now on’. And Brown said how he realised then that Christmas was mad and that it wasn’t no time to joke him, and he said ‘Aint we buddies? What would I want to tell something that aint none of my business? Cant you trust me?’ and Christmas said ‘I dont know. I dont care, neither.
But you can trust me.’ And he looked at Brown. ‘Cant you trust me?’ and Brown said he said ‘Yes’.

“And he told then about how he was afraid that Christmas would kill Miss Burden some night, and the sheriff asked him how come he never reported his fear and Brown said he thought how maybe by not saying nothing he could stay out there and prevent it, without having to bother the officers with it; and the sheriff kind of grunted and said that was thoughtful of Brown and that Miss Burden would sholy appreciate it if she knowed. And then I reckon it begun to dawn on Brown that he had a kind of rat smell too. Because he started in telling about how it was Miss Burden that bought Christmas that auto and how he would try to persuade Christmas to quit selling whiskey before he got them both into trouble; and the officers watching him and him talking faster and faster and more and more; about how he had been awake early Saturday morning and saw Christmas get up about dawn and go out. And Brown knew where Christmas was going, and about seven oclock Christmas come back into the cabin and stood there, looking at Brown. ‘I’ve done it,’ Christmas says. ‘Done what?’ Brown says. ‘Go up to the house and see,’ Christmas says. And Brown said how he was afraid then, but that he never suspected the truth. He just said that at the outside all he expected was that maybe Christmas just beat her some. And he said how Christmas went out again and then he got up and dressed and he was making a fire to cook his breakfast when he happened to look out the door and he said how all the kitchen was afire up at the big house.

“ ‘What time was this?’ the sheriff says.

“ ‘About eight oclock, I reckon,’ Brown says. ‘When a man would naturally be getting up. Unless he is rich. And God knows I aint that.’

“ ‘And that fire wasn’t reported until nigh eleven oclock,’ the sheriff says. ‘And that house was still burning at three p.m. You mean to say a old wooden house, even a big one, would need six hours to burn down in?’

“And Brown was setting there, looking this way and that, with them fellows watching him in a circle, hemming him in. ‘I’m just telling you the truth,’ Brown says. ‘That’s what you asked for.’ He was looking this way and that, jerking his head. Then he kind of hollered: ‘How do I know what time it was. Do you expect a man doing the work of a nigger slave at a sawmill to be rich enough to own a watch?’

“ ‘You aint worked at no sawmill nor at anything else in six weeks,’ the marshal says. ‘And a man that can afford to ride around all day long in a new car can afford to pass the courthouse often enough to see the clock and keep up with the time.’

“ ‘It wasn’t none of my car, I tell you!’ Brown says. ‘It was his. She bought it and give it to him; the woman he murdered give it to him.’

“ ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ the sheriff says. ‘Let him tell the rest of it.’

“And so Brown went on then, talking louder and louder and faster and faster, like he was trying to hide Joe Brown behind what he was telling on Christmas until Brown could get his chance to make a grab at that thousand dollars. It beats all how some folks think that making or getting money is a kind of game where there are not any rules at all. He told
about how even when he saw the fire, he never dreamed that she would still be in the house, let alone dead. He said how he never even thought to look into the house at all; that he was just figuring on how to put out the fire.

“ ‘And that was round eight a.m.,’ the sheriff says. ‘Or so you claim. And Hamp Waller’s wife never reported that fire until nigh eleven. It took you a right smart while to find out you couldn’t put out that fire with your bare hands.’ And Brown sitting there in the middle of them (they had locked the door, but the windows was lined with folks’ faces against the glass) with his eyes going this way and that and his lip lifted away from his teeth. ‘Hamp says that after he broke in the door, there was already a man inside that house,’ the sheriff says. ‘And that that man tried to keep him from going up the stairs.’ And him setting there in the center of them, with his eyes going and going.

“I reckon he was desperate by then. I reckon he could not only see that thousand dollars getting further and further away from him, but that he could begin to see somebody else getting it. I reckon it was like he could see himself with that thousand dollars right in his hand for somebody else to have the spending of it. Because they said it was like he had been saving what he told them next for just such a time as this. Like he had knowed that if it come to a pinch, this would save him, even if it was almost worse for a white man to admit what he would have to admit than to be accused of the murder itself. ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Go on. Accuse me. Accuse the white man that’s trying to help you with what he knows. Accuse the white man and let the nigger go free. Accuse the white and let the nigger run.’

“ ‘Nigger?’ the sheriff said. ‘Nigger?’

“It’s like he knew he had them then. Like nothing they could believe he had done would be as bad as what he could tell that somebody else had done. ‘You’re so smart,’ he says. ‘The folks in this town is so smart. Fooled for three years. Calling him a foreigner for three years, when soon as I watched him three days I knew he wasn’t no more a foreigner than I am. I knew before he even told me himself.’ And them watching him now, and looking now and then at one another.

“ ‘You better be careful what you are saying, if it is a white man you are talking about,’ the marshal says. ‘I dont care if he is a murderer or not.’

“ ‘I’m talking about Christmas,’ Brown says. ‘The man that killed that white woman after he had done lived with her in plain sight of this whole town, and you all letting him get further and further away while you are accusing the one fellow that can find him for you, that knows what he done. He’s got nigger blood in him. I knowed it when I first saw him. But you folks, you smart sheriffs and such. One time he even admitted it, told me he was part nigger. Maybe he was drunk when he done it: I dont know. Anyway, the next morning after he told me he come to me and he says   (Brown was talking fast now, kind of glaring his eyes and his teeth both around at them, from one to another)   he said to me “I made a mistake last night. Dont you make the same one” and I said “How do you mean a mistake?” and he said “You think a minute” and I thought about something he done one night when me and him was in Memphis and I knowed my life wouldn’t be worth nothing if I ever crossed
him and so I said “I reckon I know what you mean. I aint going to meddle in what aint none of my business. I aint never done that yet, that I know of.” And you’d have said that, too,’ Brown says, ‘way out there, alone in that cabin with him and nobody to hear you if you was to holler. You’d have been scared too, until the folks you was trying to help turned in and accused you of the killing you never done.’ And there he sat, with his eyes going and going, and them in the room watching him and the faces pressed against the window from outside.

“ ‘A nigger,’ the marshal said. ‘I always thought there was something funny about that fellow.’

“Then the sheriff talked to Brown again. ‘And that’s why you didn’t tell what was going on out there until tonight?’

“And Brown setting there in the midst of them, with his lips snarled back and that little scar by his mouth white as a popcorn. ‘You just show me the man that would a done different,’ he says. ‘That’s all I ask. Just show me the man that would a lived with him enough to know him like I done, and done different.’

“ ‘Well,’ the sheriff says, ‘I believe you are telling the truth at last. You go on with Buck, now, and get a good sleep. I’ll attend to Christmas.’

“ ‘I reckon that means the jail,’ Brown says. ‘I reckon you’ll lock me up in jail while you get the reward.’

“ ‘You shut your mouth,’ the sheriff says, not mad. ‘If that reward is yours, I’ll see that you get it. Take him on, Buck.’

“The marshal come over and touched Brown’s shoulder and he got up. When they went out the door the ones that
had been watching through the window crowded up: ‘Have you got him, Buck? Is he the one that done it?’

“ ‘No,’ Buck says. ‘You boys get on home. Get on to bed, now.’ ”

Byron’s voice ceases. Its flat, inflectionless, countrybred singsong dies into silence. He is now looking at Hightower with that look compassionate and troubled and still, watching across the desk the man who sits there with his eyes closed and the sweat running down his face like tears. Hightower speaks: “Is it certain, proved, that he has negro blood? Think, Byron; what it will mean when the people——if they catch……. Poor man. Poor mankind.”

“That’s what Brown says,” Byron says, his tone quiet, stubborn, convinced. “And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as a honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”

“Yes,” Hightower says. He sits with his eyes closed, erect. “But they have not caught him yet. They have not caught him yet, Byron.”

Neither is Byron looking at the other. “Not yet. Not the last I heard. They took some blood hounds out there today. But they hadn’t caught him when I heard last.”

“And Brown?”

“Brown,” Byron says. “Him. He went with them. He may have helped Christmas do it. But I dont reckon so. I reckon that setting fire to the house was about his limit. And why he done that, if he did, I reckon even he dont know. Unless maybe he thought that if the whole thing was just burned up, it would kind of not ever been at all, and then him and Christmas could go on riding around in that new
car. I reckon he figured that what Christmas committed was not so much a sin as a mistake.” His face is musing, down-looking; again it cracks faintly, with a kind of sardonic weariness. “I reckon he’s safe enough. I reckon she can find him now any time she wants, provided him and the sheriff aint out with the dogs. He aint trying to run—not with that thousand dollars hanging over his head, you might say. I reckon he wants to catch Christmas worse than any man of them. He goes with them. They take him out of the jail and he goes along with them, and then they all come back to town and lock Brown up again. It’s right queer. Kind of a murderer trying to catch himself to get his own reward. He dont seem to mind though, except to begrudge the time while they aint out on the trail, the time wasted setting down. Yes. I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll just tell her that he is in hock for the time being, him and them two dogs. Maybe I’ll take her to town where she can see them, all three of them hitched to the other men, a-straining and yapping.”