The Reivers (14 page)

"You know good as me," Ned said, "that Boss dont want no automobile. He bought that thing because he had to, because Colonel Sartoris made him. He had to buy that automobile to put Colonel Sartoris back in his place he had done upstarted from. What Bass likes
is a. horse
—and I dont mean none of these high-named harness plugs you and Mr Maury has in that livery stable: but a
horse.
And I got him one. The minute he sees this horse, he's gonter and Mr Maury has
in
that livery stable: but a
horse.
And could get a-faolt of it before somebody else done it—" It was like a dream, a nightmare; you know it is, and if you can only touch something hard, real, actual, unaltered, you can wake yourself; Boon and I had the same idea, instantaneous: I moved quicker only because there was less of me to put in motion. Ned stopped us; he read two minds: "No need to go look," he said. "He done already come and got it." Boon, frozen in midstride, glared at me, the two of us mutual in one horrified unbelief while I fumbled in my pocket. But the switch key was there. "Sho," Ned said,
"be
never needed that thing. He was a expert. He claimed he knowed how to reach his hand in behind the lock and turn it on from the back. He done it, too. I didn't believe it neither, until I seen it. It never give him no trouble a-tall. He even throwed in the halter with the horse—"

We—Boon and I—were not running, but fast enough, Miss Reba and Miss Corrie too, to the front door. The automobile was gone. That was when I realised that Miss Reba and Miss Corrie were there too, and that they had said nothing whatever themselves—no surprise, shock; watching and listening, not missing any part of it but not saying anything at all, as if they belonged to a different and separate society, kind, from Boon and me and Ned and Grandfather's automobile and the horse (whoever it belonged to) and had no concern with us and our doings but entertainment; and I remembered how that was exactly the way Mother would watch me and my brothers and whatever neighborhood boys were involved, not missing anything, quite constant and quite dependable, even warmly so, bright and kind but insulate until the moment, the need arrived to abolish the bone and (when necessary) stanch the consequent blood.

We went back to the kitchen, where we had left Ned and Minnie. We could already hear Ned: "—money you talking about, Good-looking, I got it or I can get it. Lemme get this horse put up and fed and me and you gonter step out and let that tooth do its shining amongst something good enough to match it, like a dish of catfish or maybe hog meat if it likes hog meat better—"

"All right," Boon said. "Go get that horse. Where does the man live?"

"Which man?" Ned said. "What you want with him?"

"To get Boss's automobile back. Ill decide then whether to send you to jail here or take you back to Jefferson and let Boss have the fun."

"Whyn't you stop talking a minute and listen to me?" Ned said. "In course I knows where the man lives: didn't I just trade a horse from him this evening? Let him alone. We dont want him yet. We wont need him until after the race. Because we aint just got the horse: he throwed in the horse race too. A man at Possum got a horse waiting right this minute to run against him as soon as we get there. In case you ladies dont know where Possum's at, it's where the railroad comes up from Jefferson and crosses the Memphis one where you changes cars unlessen you comes by automobile like we done—"

"All right," Boon said. "A man at Possum—"

"Oh," Miss Reba said. "Parsham."

"That's right," Ned said. "Where they has the bird-dog trials. It aint no piece. —got a horse done already challenged this un to a three-heat race, fifty dollars a heat, winner take all. But that aint nothing: just a hundred and fifty dollars. What we gonter do is win back that automobile."

"How?" Boon said. "How the hell are you going to use tiie horse to win the automobile back from the man that has already give you the horse for it?"

"Because the man dont believe the horse can run. Why you think he swapped me as cheap as a automobile? Why didn't he just keep the horse and win him a automobile of his own, if he wanted one, and have both of them—a horse and a automobile too?"

"Ill bite," Boon said. "Why?"

"I just told you. This horse done already been beat twice by that Possum horse because never nobody knowed how to make him run. So naturally the man will believe that if the horse wouldn't run them other two times, he ain't gonter run this time neither. So all we got to do is, bet him the horse against Boss's automobile. Which he will be glad to bet because naturally he wouldn't mind owning the horse back too, long as he's already got the automobile, especially when it aint no more risk than just having to wait at the finish line until the horse finally comes up to where he can catch him and tie him behind the automobile and come on back to Memphis—"

This was the first time Miss Reba spoke. She said, "Jesus."

"—because he dont believe I can make that horse run neither. But unlessen I done got rusty on my trading and made a mistake I dont know about, he dont disbelieve it enough not to be at Possum day after tomorrow to find out. And if you cant scrap up enough extra boot amongst these ladies here to make him good interested in betting that automobile against it, you better hadn't never laid eyes on Boss Priest in your born life. It would have tooken a braver man than me to just took his automobile back to him. But maybe this horse will save you. Because the minute I laid my eyes on that horse, it put me in mind of—"

"Hee hee hee," Boon said, in that harsh and savage parody. "You give away Boss's automobile for a horse that cant run, and now you're fixing to give the horse back providing I can scrape up enough boot to interest him—"

"Let me finish," Ned said. Boon stopped. "You gonter let me finish?" Ned said.

"Finish then," Boon said. "And make it—"

"—put me in mind of a mule I use to own," Ned said. Now they both stopped, looking at each other; we all watched them. After a moment Ned said, gently, almost dreamily: "These ladies wasn't acquainted with that mule. Naturally, being young ladies like they is, not to mention so fur away as Yoknapatawpha County. It's too bad Boss or Mr Maury aint here now to tell them about him."

I could have done that. Because the mule was one of our family legends. It was back when Father and Ned were young men, before Grandfather moved in from McCaslin to become a Jefferson banker. One day, during Cousin McCaslin's (Cousin Zack's father's) absence, Ned bred the mare of his matched standard-bred carriage team to the farm jack. When the consequent uproar exhausted itself and the mule colt was foaled. Cousin McCaslin made Ned buy it from him at ten cents a week subtracted from Ned's wages. It took Ned three years, by which time the mule had consistently beaten every mule matched against him for fifteen or twenty miles around, and was now being challenged by mules from forty and fifty, and beating them.

You were born too late to be acquainted with mules and so comprehend the startling, the even shocking, import of this statement. A mule which will gallop for a half-mile in the single direction elected by its rider even one time becomes a neighborhood legend; one that will do it consistently time after time is an incredible phenomenon. Because, unlike a horse, a mule is far too intelligent to break its heart for glory running around the rim of a mile-long saucer. In fact, I rate mules second only to rats in intelligence, the mule followed in order by cats, dogs, and horses last—assuming of course that you accept my definition of intelligence: which is the ability to cope with environment: which means to accept environment yet still retain at least something of personal liberty.

The rat of course I rate first. He lives in your house without helping you to buy it or build it or repair it or keep the taxes paid; he eats what you eat without helping you raise it or buy it or even haul it into the house; you cannot get rid of him; were he not a cannibal, he would long since have inherited the earth. The cat is third, with some of the same qualities but a weaker, punier creature; he neither toils nor spins, he is a parasite on you but he does not love you; he would die, cease to exist, vanish from the earth (I mean, in his so-called domestic form) but so far he has not had to. (There is the fable, Chinese I think, literary I am sure: of a period on earth when the dominant creatures were cats: who after ages of trying to cope with the anguishes of mortality—famine, plague, war, injustice, folly, greed—in a word, civilised government— convened a congress of the wisest cat philosophers to see if anything could be done: who after long deliberation agreed that the dilemma, the problems themselves were insoluble and the only practical solution was to give it up, relinquish, abdicate, by selecting from among the lesser creatures a species, race optimistic enough to believe that the mortal predicament could be solved and ignorant enough never to learn better. Which is why the cat lives with you, is completely dependent on you for food and shelter but lifts no paw for you and loves you not; in a word, why your cat looks at you the way it does.)

The dog I rate fourth. He is courageous, faithful, monogamous in his devotion; he is your parasite too: his failure (as compared to the cat) is that he will work for you—I mean, willingly, gladly, ape any trick, no matter how silly, just to please you, for a pat on the head; as sound and first-rate a parasite as any, his failure is that he is a sycophant, believing that he has to show gratitude also; he will debase and violate his own dignity for your amusement; he fawns in return for a kick, he will give his life for you in battle and grieve himself to starvation over your bones. The horse I rate last. A creature capable of but one idea at a time, his strongest quality is timidity and fear. He can be tricked and cajoled by a child into breaking his limbs or his heart too in running too far too fast or jumping things too wide or hard or high; he will eat himself to death if not guarded like a baby; if he had only one gram of the intelligence of the most backward rat, he would be the rider.

The mule I rate second. But second only because you can make him work for you. But that too only within his own rigid self-set regulations. He will not permit himself to eat too much. He will draw a wagon or a plow, but he will not run a race. He will not try to jump anything he does not indubitably know beforehand he can jump; he will not enter any place unless he knows of his own knowledge what is on the other side; he will work for you patiently for ten years for the chance to kick you once. In a word, free of the obligations of ancestry and the responsibilities of posterity, he has conquered not only life but death too and hence is immortal; were he to vanish from the earth today, the same chanceful biological combination which produced him yesterday would produce him a thousand years hence, unaltered, unchanged, incorrigible still within the limitations which he himself had proved and tested; still free, still coping. Which is why Ned's mule was unique, a phenomenon. Put a dozen mules on a track and when the word Go is given, a dozen different directions will be taken, like a scattering of disturbed bugs on the surface of a pond; the one of the twelve whose direction happens to coincide with the track, will inevitably win.

But not Ned's mule. Father said it ran like a horse, but without the horse's frantic frenzy, the starts and falterings and the frightened heartbreaking bursts of speed. It ran a race like a job: it sprang into what it had already calculated would be the exact necessary speed at Ned's touch (or voice or whatever his signal was) and that speed never altered until it crossed the finish line and Ned stopped it. And nobody, not even Father—who was Ned's, well, not groom exactly but rather his second and betting agent— knew just what Ned did to it. Naturally the legend of that grew and mounted (doing no harm to their stable either) also. I mean, of just what magic Ned had found or invented to make the mule run completely unlike any known mule. But they—we—never learned what it was, nor did anybody else ever ride as its jockey, even after Ned began to put on years and weight, until the mule died, unbeaten at twenty-two years of age; its grave (any number of Edmondses have certainly shown it to you) is out there at McCaslin now.

That's what Ned meant and Boon knew it, and Ned knew he knew it. They stared at each other. "This aint that mule," Boon said. "This is a horse."

"This horse got the same kind of sense that mule had," Ned said. "He aint got as much of it but it's the same kind." They stared at each other. Then Boon said,

"Let's go look at him." Minnie lighted a lamp. With Boon carrying it, we all went out to the back porch and into the yard, Minnie and Miss Corrie and Miss Reba too. The moon was just getting up now and we could see a little. The horse was tied beneath a locust tree in the corner. Its eyes glowed, then flashed away; it snorted and we could hear one nervous foot.

"You ladies kindly stand back a minute, please," Ned said. "He aint used to much society yet." We stopped, Boon holding the lamp high; the eyes glowed coldly and nervously again as Ned walked toward it, talking to it until he could touch its shoulder, stroking it, still talking to it until he had the halter in his hand. "Now, dont run that lamp at him," he told Boon. "Just walk up and hold the light where the ladies can see a
horse
if they wants to. And when I says horse, I means
horse.
Not them plugs they calls horses back yonder in Jefferson."

"Stop talking and bring him out where we can see him," Boon said.

"You're looking at him now," Ned said. "Hold the lamp up." Nevertheless he brought the horse out and moved him a little. Oh yes, I remember him: a 'three-year-old three-quarters-bred (at least, maybe more: I wasn't expert enough to tell) chestnut gelding, not large, not even sixteen hands, but with the long neck for balance and the laid-back shoulders for speed and the big hocks for drive (and, according to Ned, Ned McCaslin for heart and will). So that even at only eleven, I believe I was thinking exactly what Boon proved a moment later that he was. He looked at the horse. Then he looked at Ned. But when he spoke his voice was no more than a murmur: