The Reivers (28 page)

"Yes," I said. I put it in my hip pocket. "But what—" He didn't even let me finish.

"Soon as you can, find Uncle Possum and stay with him. Nemmine about Boon and the rest of them. If they got him, they got all the others too. Go straight to Uncle Possum and stay with him. He will know what to do."

"Yes," I said. Butch and the other man had reached the gate onto the track; part of Butch's shirt was gone too. They were looking at us.

"That it?" the man with him said.

"Yep," Butch said.

"Bring that horse here, boy," the man said to Ned. "I want it."

"Set still," Ned told me. He led the horse up to where they waited.

"Jump down, son," the man told me, quite kindly. "I dont want you." I did so. "Hand me the reins," he told Ned. Ned did so. "I'll take you bareback," the man told Ned. "You're under arrest."

Chapter 11

We were going to have all the crowd too presently. We just stood there, facing Butch and the other man, who now held Lightning. "What's it for, Whitefolks?" Ned said.

"It's for jail, son," the other man said. "That's what we call it here. I dont know what you call it where you come from."

"Yes sir," Ned said. "We has that back home too. Only they mentions why, even to niggers."

"Oh, a lawyer," Butch said. "He wants to see a paper. Show him one. —Never mind, I'll do it." He took something from his hip pocket: a letter in a soiled envelope. Ned took it. He stood there quietly, holding it in his hand. "What do you think of that," Butch said. "A man that cant even read, wanting to see a paper. Smell it then. Maybe it smells all right."

"Yes sir," Ned said. "It's all right."

"Dont say you are satisfied if you aint," Butch said. "Yes sir," Ned said. "It's all right." We had the crowd now. Butch took the envelope back from Ned and put it back in his pocket and spoke to them: "It's all right, boys; just a little legal difficulty about who owns this horse. The race aint cancelled. The first heat will still stand; the next ones are just put off until tomorrow. Can you hear me back there?"

"We likely cant, if the bets is cancelled too," a voice said. There was a guffaw, then two or three.

"I dont know," Butch said. "Anybody that seen this Memphis horse run against Akron them two heats last winter and still bet on him, has done already cancelled his money out before he even got it put up." He waited, but there was no laughter this time; then the voice—or another—said:

"Does Walter Clapp think that too? Ten foot more, and that chestnut would a beat him today."

"All right, all right," Butch said. "Settle it tomorrow. Aint nothing changed; the next two heats is just put off until tomorrow. The fifty-dollar heat bets is still up and Colonel Linscomb aint won but one of them. Come on, now; we got to get this horse and these witnesses in to town where we can get everything cleared up and be ready to run again tomorrow. Somebody holler back there to send my surrey." Then I saw Boon, a head above them. His face was quite calm now, still blood-streaked, and somebody (I had expected him to be handcuffed, but he wasn't; we were still democracy; he was still only a minority and not a heresy) had tied the sleeves of his torn shirt around his neck so that he was covered. Then I saw Sam too; he was barely marked; he was the one who pushed through first. "Now, Sam," Butch said. "We been trying for thirty minutes to step around you, but you wont let us."

"You damn right I wont," Sam said. "I'll ask you again, and let this be the last one. Are we under arrest?"

"Are who under arrest?" Butch said.

"Hogganbeck. Me. That Negro there."

"Here's another lawyer," Butch said to the other man. I learned quite quick now that he was the Law in Parsham; he was who Miss Reba had told us about last night: the elected constable of the Beat, where Butch for all his badge and pistol was just another guest like we were, being (Butch) just one more tenureless appointee from the nepotic files of the County Sheriff's office in the county seat at Hardwick thirteen miles away. "Maybe he wants to see a paper too."

"No," the other man, the constable, told Sam. "You can go whenever you want to."

"Then I'm going back to Memphis to find some law," Sam said. "I mean the kind of law a man like me can approach without having his britches and underwear both ripped off. If I aint back tonight, I'll be here early tomorrow morning." He had already seen me. He said, "Come on. You come with me."

"No," I said. "I'm going to stay here." The constable was looking at me.

"You can go with him, if you want," he said.

"No sir," I said. "I'm going to stay here."

"Who does he belong to?" the constable said. "He's with me," Ned said. The constable said, as though Ned had not spoken, there had been no sound: "Who brought him here?"

"Me," Boon said. "I work for his father."

"I work for his grandfather," Ned said. "We done already fixed to take care of him."

"Just hold on," Sam said. "I'll try to get back tonight. Then we can attend to everything."

"And when you come back," the constable said, "remember that you aint in Memphis or Nashville either. That you aint even in Hardwick County except primarily. What you're in right now, and what you'll be in every time you get off of a train at that depot yonder, is Beat Four."

"That's telling them, judge," Butch said. "The free state of Possum, Tennessee."

"I was talking to you too," the constable told Butch. "You may be the one that better try hardest to remember it." The surrey came up to where they were holding Boon. The constable gestured Ned toward it. Suddenly Boon was struggling; Ned was saying something to him. Then the constable turned back to me. "That Negro says you are going home with old Possum Hood."

"Yes sir," I said.

"I dont think I like that—a white boy staying with a family of niggers. You come home with me."

"No sir," I said.

"Yes," he said, but still really kind. "Come on. I'm busy."

"There's somewhere you stops," Ned said. The constable became completely motionless, half turned. "What did you say?" he said.

"There's somewhere the Law stops and just people starts," Ned said. And still for another moment the constable didn't move—an older man than you thought at first, spare, quite hale, but older, who wore no pistol, in his pocket or anywhere else, and if he had a badge, it wasn't in sight either.

"You're right," he said. He said to me: "That's where you want to stay? with old Possum?"

"Yes sir," I said.

"All right," he said. He turned. "Get in, boys," he said. "What you going to do with the nigger?" Butch said. He had taken the lines from the man who brought the surrey up; his foot was already on the stirrup to get into the driver's seat; Boon and Sam were already in the back. "Let Mm ride your horse?"

"You're going to ride my horse," the constable said. "Jump up, son," he told Ned. "You're the horse expert around here." Ned took the lines from Butch and got up and cramped the wheel for the constable to get up beside him. Boon was still looking down at me, his face battered and bruised but quiet now under the drying blood.

"Come on with Sam," he said.

"I'm all right," I said.

"No," Boon said. "I cant—"

"I know Possum Hood," the constable said. "If I get worried about him, I'll come back tonight and get him. Drive on, son." They went on. They were gone. I was alone. I mean, if I had been left by myself like when two hunters separate in the woods or fields, to meet again later, even as late as camp that night, I would not have been so alone. As it was, I was anything but solitary. I was an island in that ring of sweated hats and tieless shirts and overalls, the alien nameless faces already turning away from me as I looked about at them, and not one word to me of Yes or No or Go or Stay: who—me—was being reabandoned who had already been abandoned once: and at only eleven you are not really big enough in size to be worth that much abandonment; you would be obliterated, effaced, dissolved, vaporised beneath it. Until one of them said:

"You looking for Possum Hood? I think he's over yonder by his buggy, waiting for you." He was. The other wagons and buggies were pulling out now; most of them and all the saddled horses and mules were already gone. I went up to the buggy and stopped. I dont know why: I just stopped. Maybe there was nowhere else to go. I mean, there was no room for the next step forward until somebody moved the buggy.

"Get in," Uncle Parsham said. "We'll go home and wait for Lycurgus."

"Lycurgus," I said as though I had never heard the name before even.

"He rode on to town on the mule. He will find out what all this is about and come back and tell us. He's going to find out what time a train goes to Jefferson tonight."

"To Jefferson?" I said.

"So you can go home." He didn't quite look at me. "If you want to."

"I cant go home yet," I said. "I got to wait for Boon."

"I said if you want to," Uncle Parsham said. "Get in." I got in. He drove across the pasture, into the road. "Close the gate," Uncle Parsham said. "It's about time somebody remembered to." I closed the gate and got back in the buggy. "You ever drive a mule to a buggy?"

"No sir," I said. He handed me the lines. "I dont know how," I said.

"Then you can learn now. A mule aint like a horse. When a horse gets a wrong notion in his head, all you got to do is swap him another one for it. Most anything will do—a whip or spur or just scare him by hollering at him. A mule is different. He can hold two notions at the same time and the way to change one of them is to act like you believe he thought of changing it first. He'll know different, because mules have got sense. But a mule is a gentleman too, and when you act courteous and respectful at him without trying to buy him or scare him, he'll act courteous and respectful back at you—as long as you dont overstep him. That's why you dont pet a mule like you do a horse: he knows you dont love him: you're just trying to fool him into doing something he already dont aim to do, and it insults him. Handle him like that. _He knows the way home, and he will know it aint me holding the lines. So all you need to do is tell him with the lines that you know the way too but he lives here and you're just a boy so you want him to go in front."

We went on, at a fair clip now, the mule neat and nimble, raising barely half as much dust as a horse would; already I could feel what Uncle Parsham meant; there came back to me through the lines not just power, but intelligence, sagacity; not just the capacity but the willingness to choose when necessary between two alternatives and to make the right decision without hesitation. "What do you do at home?" Uncle Parsham said.

"I work on Saturdays," I said.

"Then you going to save some of the money. What are you going to buy with it?" And so suddenly I was talking, telling him: about the beagles: how I wanted to be a fox hunter like Cousin Zack and how Cousin Zack said the way to learn was with a pack of beagles on rabbits; and how Father paid me ten cents each Saturday at the livery stable and Father would match whatever I saved of it until I could buy the first couple to start my pack, which would cost twelve dollars and I already had eight dollars and ten cents; and then, all of a sudden too, I was crying, bawling: I was tired, not from riding a mile race because I had ridden more than that at one time before, even though it wasn't real racing; but maybe from being up early and chasing back and forth across the country without any dinner but a piece of corn bread. Maybe that was it: I was just hungry. But anyway, there I sat, bawling like a baby, worse than Alexander and even Maury, against Uncle Parsham's shirt while he held me with one arm and took the lines from me with his other hand, not saying anything at all, until he said, "Now you can quit. We're almost home; you'll have just time to wash your face at the trough before we go in the house. You dont want womenfolks to see it like that."

Which I did. That is, we unhitched the mule first and watered him and hung the harness up and wiped him down and stalled and fed him and pushed the buggy back under its shed and then I smeared my face with water at the trough and dried it (-after a fashion) with the riding-sock and we went into the house. And the evening meal —supper—was ready although it was barely five oelock, as country people, farmers, ate; and we sat down: Uncle Parsham and his daughter and me since Lycurgus was not yet back from town, and Uncle Parsham said, "You gives thanks at your house too," and I said, "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) hadn't 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 wasn't even sundown: the long twilight and even after that, still the long evening, the long night and I didn't 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 didn't really like it. I couldn't 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.