The Reivers (18 page)

"To not let him back off the ramp, you mean," Sam said. "We need one of the crowbars. Go get it, Charley."

"That's right," Ned said. "We gonter need that crowbar in a minute. But all we needs right now is that switch. You's too little;" he told me. "Let Mr Boon and Mr Boxcar have it. Loop it behind his hocks like britching." They did so, one at each end of the Umber switch. "Now, walk him right on up. When I say pop this time, pop loud, so he will think the lick gonter be loud too." But I didn't need to pop at all again. Ned said to the horse: "Come on, son. Let's go to Possum," and the horse moved, Boon and Sam moving with it, the switch like a loop of string pressing it on, its forefeet on the solid platform now, then one final scuffling scrabbling surge, the platform resounding once as if it had leaped onto a wooden bridge.

"It's going to take more than this switch or that boy popping his tongue either, to get him into that car," Sam said.

"What gonter get him into that boxcar is that crowbar," Ned said. "Aint it come yet?" It was here now. "Prize that-ere chicken walk loose," Ned said.

"Wait," Sam said. "What for?"

"So he can walk on it into that boxcar," Ned said. "He's used to it now. He's done already found out aint nothing at the other end gonter hurt or skeer him."

"He aint smelled the inside of an empty boxcar yet though," Sam said. "That's what I'm thinking about." But Ned's idea did make sense. Besides, we had gone much too far now to boggle even if Ned had commanded us to throw down both walls of the warehouse so the horse wouldn't have to turn corners. So Boon and the railroad man prized the ramp away from the platform.

"God damn it," Sam said. "Do it quiet, cant you?"

"Aint you right here with us?" Ned said. "Sholy you can get a little more benefit outen them brass buttons than just walking around in them." Though it took all of us, including Miss Corrie, to lift the ramp onto the platform and carry it across and lay it like a bridge from the platform into the black yawn of the open car door. Then Ned led the horse up and at once I understood what Sam had meant. The horse had not only never smelled an empty boxcar before, but unlike mere humans it could see inside too; I remember thinking
Now that we've torn up the ramp, we cant even get it down off the platform again before daylight catches us.
But nothing like that happened. I mean, nothing happened. I mean, I dont know what happened; none of us did. Ned led the horse, its hooves ringing loud and hollow on the planks, up to the end of the ramp which now was a bridge, Ned standing on the bridge just inside the door, talking to the horse, pulling lightly on the halter until the horse put one foot forward onto the bridge and I dont know what I was thinking; a moment ago I had believed that not in all Memphis were there enough people to get that horse into that black orifice, then the next instant I was expecting that same surge and leap which would have taken the horse inside the boxcar as it had up the ramp; when the horse lifted the foot and drew it back to the platform, it and Ned facing each other like a tableau. I heard Ned breathe once. "You folks just step back to the wall," he said. We did so. I didn't know then what he did. I just saw him, one hand holding the lead rope, the other stroking, touching the horse's muzzle. Then he stepped back into the car and vanished; the lead rope tightened but only his voice came out: "Come on, son. I got it."

"I'll be God damned," Sam said. Because that was all. The loose bridge clattered a little, the cavernous blackness inside the car boomed to the hooves, but no more. We carried the lantern in; the horse's eyes glowed coldly and vanished where Ned stood with it in the corner.

"Where's them planks and nails you talked about?" he asked Sam. "Bring that chicken walk on in; that's already one whole wall."

"Hell," Sam said. "Hold on now."

"Folks coming in here tomorrow morning already missing a whole boxcar," Ned said, "aint gonter have time to be little-minded over a homemade ladder outen somebody's henhouse." So all of us again except Ned—including Miss Corrie—carried the ravished ramp into the car and set it up and held it in place while Boon and Sam and the railroad man (Sam had the planks and nails ready too) built a stall around the horse in the corner of the car; before Ned could even complain, Sam had a bucket for water and a box for grain and even a bundle of hay too; we all stood back now in the aura of the horse's contented munching. "He just the same as in Possum right this minute," Ned said.

"What you folks better wish is that he has already crossed that finish line first day after tomorrow," Sam said. "What time is it?" Then he told us himself: "Just past midnight. Time for a little sleep before the train leaves at four." He was talking to Boon now. "You and Ned will want to stay here with your horse of course; that's why I brought all that extra hay. So you bed down here and I'll take Corrie and the boys on back home and we'll all meet here at—"

"You says," Boon said, not harshly so much as with a kind of cold grimness. "You do the meeting here at four oclock. If you dont oversleep, maybe we'll see you." He was already turning. "Come on, Corrie."

"You're going go leave your boss's automobile—I mean your boss's horse—I mean this horse, whoever it really belongs to—here with nobody to watch it but this colored boy?" Sam said.

"Naw," Boon said. "That horse belongs to the railroad now. I got a baggage check to prove it. Maybe you just borrowed that railroad suit to impress women and little boys in but as long as you're in it you better use it to impress that baggage check or the railroad might not like it."

"Boon!" Miss Corrie said. "I'm not going home with anybody! Come on, Lucius, you and Otis."

"It's all right," Sam said. "We keep on forgetting how Boon has to slave for five or six months in that cotton patch or whatever it is, to make one night on Catalpa Street. You all go on. I'll see you at the train."

"Cant you even say much obliged?" Miss Corrie said to Boon.

"Sure," Boon said. "Who do I owe one to? the horse?"

"Try one on Ned," Sam said. He said to Ned: "You want me to stay here with you?"

"We'll be all right," Ned said. "Maybe if you go too it might get quiet enough around here to where somebody can get some sleep. I just wish now I had thought in time *„ »

"I did," Sam said. "Where's that other bucket, Charley?" The railroad man—switchman, whatever he was— had it too; it was in the same corner of the car with the planks and nails and tools and the feed; it contained a thick crude ham sandwich and a quart bottle of water and a pint bottle of whiskey. "There you are," Sam said. "Breakfast too."

"I see it," Ned said. "What's your name, Whitefolks?"

"Sam Caldwell," Sam said.

"Sam Caldwell," Ned said. "It strikes me that Sam Caldwell is a better name for
this
kind of horse business than twice some others a man could mention around here. A little more, and I could be wishing me and you was frequent enough to be permanent. Kindly much obliged."

"You're kindly welcome," Sam said. So we said good night to Sam and Ned and Charley (all of us except Boon and Otis, that is) and went back to Miss Reba's. The streets were empty and quiet now; Memphis was using the frazzled worn-out end of the week to get at least a little sleep and rest to face Monday morning witlh; we walked quietly too from vacant light to light between the dark windows and the walls: but one faint single light dimly visible in what my new infallible roue's instinct recognised immediately as a competitor of Miss Reba; a single light similar in wanness behind Miss Reba's curtains because even here throe must by this time have spent itself; even Minnie herself gone to bed or home or wherever she retired to at her and Miss Reba's trade's evensong. Because Miss Reba herself unlocked the front door to us, smelling strongly of gin and, in her hard handsome competent way, even beginning to look like it. She had changed her dress too. This one didn't have hardly any top to it at all, and in those days ladies—women—didn't really paint their faces, so that was the first time I ever saw that too. And she had on still more diamonds, as big and yellowish as the first two. No: five. But Minnie hadn't gone to bed either. She was standing in the door to Miss Reba's room, looking just about worn out.

"All fixed?" Miss Reba said, locking the door behind us. "Yes," Miss Corrie said. "Why dont you go to bed? Minnie, make her go to bed."

"You could a asked me that a hour back from now," Minnie said. "I just wish wouldn't nobody still be asking it two hours ahead from now. But you wasn't here that other time two years ago."

"Come on to bed," Miss Corrie said. "When we get back from Possum Wednesday—"

"God damn it, Parsham," Miss Reba said. "All right," Miss Corrie said. "—Wednesday, Minnie will have found out where he is and we can go and get him."

"Sure," Miss Reba said. "And bury him right there in the same ditch this time, pick and shovel and all, if I had any sense. You want a drink?" she said to Boon. "Minnie's a damn Christian scientist or republican or something and wont take one."

"Somebody around here has got to not take one," Minnie said. "It dont need no republican for that. All it needs is just to be wore out and want to go to bed."

"That's what we all need," Miss Corrie said. "That train leaves at four, and it's already after one. Come on, now."

"Go to bed then," Miss Reba said. "Who the hell's stopping you?" So we went upstairs. Then Otis and I went upstairs again; he knew the way: an attic, with nothing in it but some trunks and boxes and a mattress made up into a bed on the floor. Otis had a nightshirt but (the nightshirt still had the creases in it where Miss Corrie I suppose had bought it off the shelf in the store) he went to bed just like I had to: took off his pants and shoes and turned off the light and lay down too. There was one little window and now we could see the moon and then I could even see inside the room because of the moonlight; there was something wrong with him; I was tired and coming up the stairs I had thought I would be asleep almost before I finished lying down. But I could feel him lying there beside me, not just wide awake, but rather like something that never slept in its life and didn't even know it never had.

And suddenly there was something wrong with me too. It was like I didn't know what it was yet: only that there was something wrong and in a minute now I would know what and I would hate it; and suddenly I didn't want to be there at all, I didn't want to be in Memphis or ever to have heard of Memphis: I wanted to be at home. Otis said Twenty-three skiddoo again.

"The jack that's here," he said. "You can even smell it. It aint fair that it's just women can make money pugnuck-ling while all a man can do is just try to snatch onto a little of it while it's passing by—" There was that word again, that I had asked twice what it meant. But not any more, not again: lying there tense and rigid with the moon-shaped window lying across mine and Otis's legs, trying not to hear him but having to: "—one of the rooms is right under here; on a busy night like Sad-dy was you can hear them right up through the floor. But there aint no chance here. Even if I could get a auger and bore a peephole through it, that nigger and Miss Reba wouldn't let me bring nobody up here to make no money off of and even if I did they would probably take the money away from me like that son of a bitch done that pee a noler money today. But it was different back home at Aunt Fit-tie's, when Bee—" He stopped. He lay perfectly still. He said Twenty-three skiddoo again.

"Bee?" I said. But it was too late. No, it wasn't too late. Because I already knew now.

"How old are you?" he said.

"Eleven," I said.

"You got a year on me then," he said. "Too bad you aint going to be here after tonight. If you just stayed around here next week, we might figger that peephole out some way."

"What for?" I said. You see, I had to ask it. Because what I wanted was to be back home. I wanted my mother. Because you should be prepared for experience, knowledge, knowing: not bludgeoned unaware in the dark as by a highwayman or footpad. I was just eleven, remember. There are things, circumstances, conditions in the world which should not be there but are, and you cant escape them and indeed, you would not escape them even if you had the choice, since they too are a part of Motion, of participating in life, being alive. But they should arrive with grace, decency. I was having to learn too much too fast, unassisted; I had nowhere to put it, no receptacle, pigeonhole prepared yet to accept it without pain and lacerations. He was lying face up, as I was. He hadn't moved, not even his eyes. But I could feel him watching me.

"You dont know much, do you?" he said. "Where did you say you was from?"

"Missippi," I said.

"------t," he said. "No wonder you dont know nothing."

"All right," I said. "Bee is Miss Corrie."

"Here I am, throwing money away like it wasn't nothing," he said. "But maybe me and you both can make something out of it. Sure. Her name is Everbe Corinthia, named for Grandmaw. And what a hell of a name that is to have to work under. Bad enough even over there around Kiblett, where some of them already knowed it and was used to it and the others was usually in too much of a hurry to give a hoot whether she called herself nothing or not. But here in Memphis, in a house like this that they tell me every girl in Memphis is trying to get into it as soon as a room is vacant. So it never made much difference over there around Kiblett after her maw died and Aunt Fittie taken her to raise and started her out soon as she got big enough. Then when she found out how much more money there was in Memphis and come over here, never nobody knowed about the Everbe and so she could call herself Corrie. So whenever I'm over here visiting her, like last summer and now, since I know about the Everbe, she gives me five cents a day not to tell nobody. You see? Instead of telling you like I slipped up and done, if I had just went to her instead and said, At five cents a day I can try not to forget, but ten cents a day would make it twice as hard to. But never mind; I can tell her tomorrow that you know it too, and maybe we both can—"