Light In August Part 3

Then he sees a man approaching along the street. On a week night he would have recognised the figure, the shape, the carriage and gait. But on Sunday evening, and with the echo of the phantom hooves still crashing soundlessly in the duskfilled study, he watches quietly the puny, unhorsed figure moving with that precarious and meretricious cleverness of animals balanced on their hinder legs; that cleverness of which the man animal is so fatuously proud and which constantly betrays him by means of natural laws like gravity and ice, and by the very extraneous objects which he has himself invented, like motor cars and furniture in the dark, and the very refuse of his own eating left upon floor or pavement; and he thinks quietly how right the ancients were in making the horse an attribute and symbol of warriors and kings, when he sees the man in the street pa.s.s the low sign and turn into his gate and approach the house. He sits forward then, watching the man come up the dark walk toward the dark door; he hears the man stumble heavily at the dark bottom step. "Byron Bunch," he says. "In town on Sunday night. Byron Bunch in town on Sunday."

Chapter 4.

They sit facing one another across the desk. The study is lighted now, by a greenshaded reading lamp sitting upon the desk. Hightower sits behind it, in an ancient swivel chair, Byron in a straight chair opposite. Both their faces are just without the direct downward pool of light from the shaded lamp. Through the open window the sound of singing from the distant church comes. Byron talks in a flat, level voice.

"It was a strange thing. I thought that if there ever was a place where a man would be where the chance to do harm could not have found him, it would have been out there at the mill on a Sat.u.r.day evening. And with the house burning too, right in my face, you might say. It was like all the time I was eating dinner and I would look up now and then and see that smoke and I would think, 'Well, I won't see a soul out here this evening, anyway. I ain't going to be interrupted this evening, at least.' And then I looked up and there she was, with her face all fixed for smiling and with her mouth all fixed to say his name, when she saw that I wasn't him. And I never knowed any better than to blab the whole thing." He grimaces faintly. It is not a smile. His upper lip just lifts momentarily, the movement, even the surface wrinkling, travelling no further and vanishing almost at once. "I never even suspicioned then that what I didn't know was not the worst of it."

"It must have been a strange thing that could keep Byron Bunch in Jefferson over Sunday," Hightower says. "But she was looking for him. And you helped her to find him. Wasn't what you did what she wanted, what she had come all the way from Alabama to find?"

"I reckon I told her, all right. I reckon it ain't any question about that. With her watching me, sitting there, swolebellied, watching me with them eyes that a man could not have lied to if he had wanted. And me blabbing on, with that smoke right yonder in plain sight like it was put there to warn me, to make me watch my mouth only I never had the sense to see it."

"Oh," Hightower says. "The house that burned yesterday. But I don't see any connection between-Whose house was it? I saw the smoke, myself, and I asked a pa.s.sing negro, but he didn't know."

"That old Burden house," Byron says. He looks at the other. They look at one another. Hightower is a tall man, and he was thin once. But he is not thin now. His skin is the color of flour sacking and his upper body in shape is like a loosely filled sack falling from his gaunt shoulders of its own weight, upon his lap. Then Byron says, "You ain't heard yet." The other watches him. He says in a musing tone: "That would be for me to do too. To tell on two days to two folks something they ain't going to want to hear and that they hadn't ought to have to hear at all."

"What is this that you think I will not want to hear? What is it that I have not heard?"

"Not the fire," Byron says. "They got out of the fire all right."

"They? I understood that Miss Burden lived there alone."

Again Byron looks at the other for a moment. But Hightower's face is merely grave and interested. "Brown and Christmas," Byron says. Still Hightower's face does not change in expression. "You ain't heard that, even," Byron says. "They lived out there."

"Lived out there? They boarded in the house?"

"No. In a old n.i.g.g.e.r cabin in the back. Christmas fixed it up three years ago. He's been living in it ever since, with folks wondering where he slept at night. Then when him and Brown set up together, he took Brown in with him."

"Oh," Hightower said. "But I don't see ... If they were comfortable, and Miss Burden didn't-"

"I reckon they got along. They were selling whiskey, using that old place for a headquarters, a blind. I don't reckon she knew that, about the whiskey. Leastways, folks don't know if she ever knew or not. They say that Christmas started it by himself three years ago, just selling to a few regular customers that didn't even know one another. But when he took Brown in with him, I reckon Brown wanted to spread out. Selling it by the half a pint out of his shirt bosom in any alley and to anybody. Selling what he never drunk, that is. And I reckon the way they got the whiskey they sold would not have stood much looking into. Because about two weeks after Brown quit out at the mill and taken to riding around in that new car for his steady work, he was down town drunk one Sat.u.r.day night and bragging to a crowd in the barbershop something about him and Christmas in Memphis one night, or on a road close to Memphis. Something about them and that new car hid in the bushes and Christmas with a pistol, and a lot more about a truck and a hundred gallons of something, until Christmas come in quick and walked up to him and jerked him out of the chair. And Christmas saying in that quiet voice of his, that ain't pleasant and ain't mad either: 'You ought to be careful about drinking so much of this Jefferson hair tonic. It's gone to your head. First thing you know you'll have a hairlip.' Holding Brown up he was with one hand and slapping his face with the other. They didn't look like hard licks. But the folks could see the red even through Brown's whiskers when Christmas' hand would come away between licks. 'You come out and get some fresh air,' Christmas says. 'You're keeping these folks from working.' " He muses. He speaks again: "And there she was, sitting there on them staves, watching me and me blabbing the whole thing to her, and her watching me. And then she says, 'Did he have a little white scar right here by his mouth?' "

"And Brown is the man," Hightower says. He sits motionless, watching Byron with a sort of quiet astonishment. There is nothing militant in it, nothing of outraged morality. It is as though he were listening to the doings of people of a different race. "Her husband a bootlegger. Well, well, well." Yet Byron can see in the other's face something latent, about to wake, of which Hightower himself is unaware, as if something inside the man were trying to warn or prepare him. But Byron thinks that this is just the reflection of what he himself already knows and is about to tell.

"And so I had already told her before I knew it. And I could have bit my tongue in two, even then, even when I thought that that was all." He is not looking at the other now. Through the window, faint yet clear, the blended organ and voices come from the distant church, across the still evening. I wonder if he hears it too, Byron thinks. Or maybe he has listened to it so much and so long that he don't even hear it anymore. Don't even need to not listen. "And she set there all the evening while I worked, and the smoke dying away at last, and me trying to think what to tell her and what to do. She wanted to go right on out there, for me to tell her the way. When I told her it was two miles she just kind of smiled, like I was a child or something. 'I done come all the way from Alabama,' she said. 'I reckon I ain't going to worry about two miles more.' And then I told her ..." His voice ceases. He appears to contemplate the floor at his feet. He looks up. "I lied, I reckon. Only in a way it was not a lie. It was because I knowed there would be folks out there watching the fire, and her coming up, trying to find him. I didn't know myself, then, the other. The rest of it. The worst of it. So I told her that he was busy at a job he had, and that the best time to find him would be down town after six o'clock. And that was the truth. Because I reckon he does call it work, carrying all them cold little bottles nekkid against his chest, and if he ever was away from the square it was just because he was a little behind in getting back or had just stepped into a alley for a minute. So I persuaded her to wait and she set there and I went on working, trying to decide what to do. When I think now how worried I was on what little I knowed, now when I know the rest of it, it don't seem like I had anything then to worry me at all. All day I have been thinking how easy it would be if I could just turn back to yesterday and not have any more to worry me than I had then."

"I still cannot see what you have to worry about," Hightower says. "It is not your fault that the man is what he is or she what she is. You did what you could. All that any stranger could be expected to do. Unless ..." His voice ceases also. Then it dies away on that inflection, as if idle thinking had become speculation and then something like concern. Opposite him Byron sits without moving, his face lowered and grave. And opposite Byron, Hightower does not yet think love. He remembers only that Byron is still young and has led a life of celibacy and hard labor, and that by Byron's telling the woman whom he has never seen possesses some disturbing quality at least, even though Byron still believes that it is only pity. So he watches Byron now with a certain narrowness neither cold nor warm, while Byron continues in that flat voice: about how at six o'clock he had still decided on nothing; that when he and Lena reached the square he was still undecided. And now there begins to come into Hightower's puzzled expression a quality of shrinking and foreboding as Byron talks quietly, telling about how he decided after they reached the square to take Lena on to Mrs. Beard's. And Byron talking quietly, thinking, remembering: It was like something gone through the air, the evening, making the familiar faces of men appear strange, and he, who had not yet heard, without having to know that something had happened which made of the former dilemma of his innocence a matter for children, so that he knew before he knew what had happened, that Lena must not hear about it. He did not even have to be told in words that he had surely found the lost Lucas Burch; it seemed to him now that only cra.s.sest fatuousness and imbecility should have kept unaware. It seemed to him that fate, circ.u.mstance, had a warning in the sky all day long in that pillar of yellow smoke, and he too stupid to read it. And so he would not let them tell-the men whom they pa.s.sed, the air that blew upon them full of it-lest she hear too. Perhaps he knew at the time that she would have to know, hear, it sooner or later; that in a way it was her right to know. It just seemed to him that if he could only get her across the square and into a house his responsibility would be discharged. Not responsibility for the evil to which he held himself for no other reason than that of having spent the afternoon with her while it was happening, having been chosen by circ.u.mstance to represent Jefferson to her who had come afoot and without money for thirty days in order to reach there. He did not hope nor intend to avoid that responsibility. It was just to give himself and her time to be shocked and surprised. He tells it quietly, fumbling, his face lowered, in his flat, inflectionless voice, while across the desk Hightower watches him with that expression of shrinking and denial.

They reached the boarding house at last and entered it. It was as though she felt foreboding too, watching him as they stood in the hall, speaking for the first time: "What is it them men were trying to tell you? What is it about that burned house?"

"It wasn't anything," he said, his voice sounding dry and light to him. "Just something about Miss Burden got hurt in the fire."

"How got hurt? How bad hurt?"

"I reckon not bad. Maybe not hurt at all. Just folks talking, like as not. Like they will." He could not look at her, meet her eyes at all. But he could feel her watching him, and he seemed to hear a myriad sounds: voices, the hushed tense voices about the town, about the square through which he had hurried her, where men met among the safe and familiar lights, telling it. The house too seemed filled with familiar sounds, but mostly with inertia, a terrible procrastination as he gazed down the dim hall, thinking Why don't she come on. Why don't she come on Then Mrs. Beard did come: a comfortable woman, with red arms and untidy grayish hair. "This here is Miz Burch," he said. His expression was almost a glare: importunate, urgent. "She just got to town from Alabama. She is looking to meet her husband here. He ain't come yet. So I brought her here, where she can rest some before she gets mixed up in the excitement of town. She ain't been in town or talked to anybody yet, and so I thought maybe you could fix her up a place to get rested some before she has to hear talking and ..." His voice ceased, died, recapitulant, urgent, importunate. Then he believed that she had got his meaning. Later he knew that it was not because of his asking that she refrained from telling what he knew that she had also heard, but because she had already noticed the pregnancy and that she would have kept the matter hidden anyway. She looked at Lena, once, completely, as strange women had been doing for four weeks now.

"How long does she aim to stay?" Mrs. Beard said.

"Just a night or two," Byron said. "Maybe just tonight. She's looking to meet her husband here. She just got in, and she ain't had time to ask or inquire-" His voice was still recapitulant, meaningful. Mrs. Beard watched him now. He thought that she was still trying to get his meaning. But what she was doing was watching him grope, believing (or about to believe) that his fumbling had a different reason and meaning. Then she looked at Lena again. Her eyes were not exactly cold. But they were not warm.

"I reckon she ain't got any business trying to go anywhere right now," she said.

"That's what I thought," Byron said, quickly, eagerly. "With all the talk and excitement she might have to listen to, after not hearing no talk and excitement ... If you are crowded tonight, I thought she might have my room."

"Yes," Mrs. Beard said immediately. "You'll be taking out in a few minutes, anyway. You want her to have your room until you get back Monday morning?"

"I ain't going tonight," Byron said. He did not look away. "I won't be able to go this time." He looked straight into cold, already disbelieving eyes, watching her in turn trying to read his own, believing that she read what was there instead of what she believed was there. They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

"Oh," Mrs. Beard said. She looked at Lena again. "Ain't she got any acquaintances in Jefferson?"

"She don't know n.o.body here," Byron said. "Not this side of Alabama. Likely Mr. Burch will show up in the morning-"

"Oh," Mrs. Beard said. "Where are you going to sleep?" But she did not wait for an answer. "I reckon I can fix her up a cot in my room for tonight. If she won't object to that."

"That'll be fine," Byron said. "It'll be fine."

When the supper bell rang, he was all prepared. He had found a chance to speak to Mrs. Beard. He had spent more time in inventing that lie than any yet. And then it was not necessary; that which he was trying to shield was its own protection. "Them men will be talking about it at the table," Mrs. Beard said. "I reckon a woman in her shape (and having to find a husband named Burch at the same time, she thought with dry irony) ain't got no business listening to any more of man's devilment. You bring her in later, after they have all et." Which Byron did. Lena ate heartily again, with that grave and hearty decorum, almost going to sleep in her plate before she had finished.

"It's right tiring, travelling is," she explained.

"You go set in the parlor and I'll fix your cot," Mrs. Beard said.

"I'd like to help," Lena said. But even Byron could see that she would not; that she was dead for sleep.

"You go set in the parlor," Mrs. Beard said. "I reckon Mr. Bunch won't mind keeping you company for a minute or two."

"I didn't dare leave her alone," Byron says. Beyond the desk Hightower has not moved. "And there we was setting, at the very time when it was all coming out down town at the sheriffs office, at the very time when Brown was telling it all; about him and Christmas and the whiskey and all. Only the whiskey wasn't much news to folks, not since he had took Brown for a partner. I reckon the only thing folks wondered about was why Christmas ever took up with Brown. Maybe it was because like not only finds like; it can't even escape from being found by its like. Even when it's just like in one thing, because even them two with the same like was different. Christmas dared the law to make money, and Brown dared the law because he never even had sense enough to know he was doing it. Like that night in the barbershop and him drunk and talking loud until Christmas kind of run in and dragged him out. And Mr. Maxey said, 'What do you reckon that was he pretty near told on himself and that other one?' and Captain McLendon said, 'I don't reckon about it at all,' and Mr. Maxey said, 'Do you reckon they was actually holding up somebody else's liquor truck?' and McLendon said, 'Would it surprise you to hear that that fellow Christmas hadn't done no worse than that in his life?'

"That's what Brown was telling last night. But everybody knew about that. They had been saying for a good while that somebody ought to tell Miss Burden. But I reckon there wasn't anybody that wanted to go out there and tell her, because n.o.body knowed what was going to happen then. I reckon there are folks born here that never even saw her. I don't reckon I'd wanted to go out there to that old house where n.o.body ever saw her unless maybe it was folks in a pa.s.sing wagon that would see her now and then standing in the yard in a dress and sunbonnet that some n.i.g.g.e.r women I know wouldn't have wore for its shape and how it made her look. Or maybe she already knew it. Being a Yankee and all, maybe she didn't mind. And then couldn't n.o.body have known what was going to happen.

"And so I didn't dare leave her alone until she was in bed. I aimed to come out and see you last night, right away. But I never dared to leave her. Them other boarders was pa.s.sing up and down the hall and I didn't know when one of them would take a notion to come in and start talking about it and tell the whole thing; I could already hear them talking about it on the porch, and her still watching me with her face all fixed to ask me again about that fire. And so I didn't dare leave her. And we was setting there in the parlor and she couldn't hardly keep her eyes open then, and me telling her how I would find him for her all right, only I wanted to come and talk to a preacher I knowed that could help her to get in touch with him. And her setting there with her eyes closed while I was telling her, not knowing that I knew that her and that fellow wasn't married yet. She thought she had fooled everybody. And she asked me what kind of a man it was that I aimed to tell about her to and I told her and her setting there with her eyes closed so that at last I said, 'You ain't heard a word I been saying' and she kind of roused up, but without opening her eyes, and said, 'Can he still marry folks?' and I said, 'What? Can he what?' and she said, 'Is he still enough of a preacher to marry folks?' "

Hightower has not moved. He sits erect behind the desk, his forearms parallel upon the armrests of the chair. He wears neither collar nor coat. His face is at once gaunt and flabby; it is as though there were two faces, one imposed upon the other, looking out from beneath the pale, bald skull surrounded by a fringe of gray hair, from behind the twin motionless glares of his spectacles. That part of his torso visible above the desk is shapeless, almost monstrous, with a soft and sedentary obesity. He sits rigid; on his face now that expression of denial and flight has become definite. "Byron," he says; "Byron. What is this you are telling me?"

Byron ceases. He looks quietly at the other, with an expression of commiseration and pity. "I knowed you had not heard yet. I knowed it would be for me to tell you."

They look at one another. "What is it I haven't heard yet?"

"About Christmas. About yesterday and Christmas. Christmas is part n.i.g.g.e.r. About him and Brown and yesterday."

"Part negro," Hightower says. His voice sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight. He does not move. For a moment longer he does not move. Then there seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial, and Byron sees that the still, flaccid, big face is suddenly slick with sweat. But his voice is light and calm. "What about Christmas and Brown and yesterday?" he says.

The sound of music from the distant church has long since ceased. Now there is no sound in the room save the steady shrilling of insects and the monotonous sound of Byron's voice. Beyond the desk Hightower sits erect. Between his parallel and downturned palms and with his lower body concealed by the desk, his att.i.tude is that of an eastern idol.

"It was yesterday morning. There was a countryman coming to town in a wagon with his family. He was the one that found the fire. No: he was the second one to get there, because he told how there was already one fellow there when he broke down the door. He told about how he come into sight of the house and he said to his wife how it was a right smart of smoke coming out of that kitchen, and about how the wagon come on and then his wife said, 'That house is afire.' And I reckon maybe he stopped the wagon and they set there in the wagon for a while, looking at the smoke, and I reckon that after a while he said, 'It looks like it is.' And I reckon it was his wife that made him get down and go and see. 'They don't know it's afire,' she said, I reckon. 'You go up there and tell them.' And he got out of the wagon and went up onto the porch and stood there, hollering 'h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo' for a while. He told how he could hear the fire then, inside the house, and then he hit the door a lick with his shoulder and went in and then he found the one that had found that fire first. It was Brown. But the countryman didn't know that. He just said it was a drunk man in the hall that looked like he had just finished falling down the stairs, and the countryman said, 'Your house is afire, mister,' before he realised how drunk the man was. And he told how the drunk man kept on saying how there wasn't n.o.body upstairs and that the upstairs was all afire anyway and there wasn't any use trying to save anything from up there.

"But the countryman knew there couldn't be that much fire upstairs because the fire was all back toward the kitchen. And besides, the man was too drunk to know, anyway. And he told how he suspected there was something wrong from the way the drunk man was trying to keep him from going upstairs. So he started upstairs, and the drunk fellow trying to hold him back, and he shoved the drunk man away and went on up the stairs. He told how the drunk man tried to follow him, still telling him how it wasn't anything upstairs, and he said that when he come back down again and thought about the drunk fellow, he was gone. But I reckon it was some time before he remembered to think about Brown again. Because he went on up the stairs and begun hollering again, opening the doors, and then he opened the right door and he found her."

He ceases. Then there is no sound in the room save the insects. Beyond the open window the steady insects pulse and beat, drowsy and myriad. "Found her," Hightower says. "It was Miss Burden he found." He does not move. Byron does not look at him, he might be contemplating his hands upon his lap while he talks.

"She was lying on the floor. Her head had been cut pretty near off; a lady with the beginning of gray hair. The man said how he stood there and he could hear the fire and there was smoke in the room itself now, like it had done followed him in. And how he was afraid to try to pick her up and carry her out because her head might come clean off. And then he said how he run back down the stairs again and out the front without even noticing that the drunk fellow was gone, and down to the road and told his wife to whip the team on to the nearest telephone and call for the sheriff too. And how he run back around the house to the cistern and he said he was already drawing up a bucket of water before he realised how foolish that was, with the whole back end of the house afire good now. So he run back into the house and up the stairs again and into the room and jerked a cover off the bed and rolled her onto it and caught up the corners and swung it onto his back like a sack of meal and carried it out of the house and laid it down under a tree. And he said that what he was scared of happened. Because the cover fell open and she was laying on her side, facing one way, and her head was turned clean around like she was looking behind her. And he said how if she could just have done that when she was alive, she might not have been doing it now."

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 n.o.body 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 o'clock, 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. File 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 don't 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, 'Ain't we buddies? What would I want to tell something that ain't none of my business? Can't you trust me?' and Christmas said, 'I don't know. I don't care, neither. But you can trust me.' And he looked at Brown. 'Can't 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 Sat.u.r.day morning and saw Christmas get up about dawn and go out. And Brown knew where Christmas was going, and about seven o'clock 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 o'clock, I reckon,' Brown says. 'When a man would naturally be getting up. Unless he is rich. And G.o.d knows I ain't that.'

" 'And that fire wasn't reported until nigh eleven o'clock,' 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 n.i.g.g.e.r slave at a sawmill to be rich enough to own a watch?'

" 'You ain't 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 pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s) 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 n.i.g.g.e.r go free. Accuse the white and let the n.i.g.g.e.r run.'

" 'n.i.g.g.e.r?' the sheriff said. 'n.i.g.g.e.r?'

"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 don't 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.r. Maybe he was drunk when he done it: I don't 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. Don't 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 ain't going to meddle in what ain't none of my business. I ain't 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 n.o.body 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 n.i.g.g.e.r,' 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, country. bred singsong dies into silence. He is now looking at Hightower with that look compa.s.sionate 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 bloodhounds 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 don't reckon so. I reckon that setting fire to the house was about this limit. And why he done that, if he did, I reckon even he don't 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, downlooking; 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 ain't out with the dogs. He ain't 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 don't seem to mind though, except to begrudge the time while they ain't 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."

"You haven't told her yet."

"I ain't told her. Nor him. Because he might run again, reward or no reward. And maybe if he can catch Christmas and get that reward, he will marry her in time. But she don't know yet, no more than she knowed yesterday when she got down from that wagon on the square. Swolebellied, getting down slow from that strange wagon, among them strange faces, telling herself with a kind of quiet astonishment, only I don't reckon it was any astonishment in it, because she had come slow and afoot and telling never bothered her: 'My, my. Here I have come clean from Alabama, and now I am in Jefferson at last, sure enough.' "

Chapter 5.

It was after midnight. Though Christmas had been in bed for two hours, he was not yet asleep. He heard Brown before he saw him. He heard Brown approach the door and then blunder into it, in silhouette propping himself erect in the door. Brown was breathing heavily. Standing there between his propped arms, Brown began to sing in a saccharine and nasal tenor. The very longdrawn pitch of his voice seemed to smell of whiskey. "Shut it," Christmas said. He did not move and his voice was not raised. Yet Brown ceased at once. He stood for a moment longer in the door, propping himself upright. Then he let go of the door and Christmas heard him stumble into the room; a moment later he blundered into something. There was an interval filled with hard, labored breathing. Then Brown fell to the floor with a tremendous clatter, striking the cot on which Christmas lay and filling the room with loud and idiot laughter.

Christmas rose from his cot. Invisible beneath him Brown lay on the floor, laughing, making no effort to rise. "Shut it!" Christmas said. Brown still laughed. Christmas stepped across Brown and put his hand out toward where a wooden box that served for table sat, on which the lantern and matches were kept. But he could not find the box, and then he remembered the sound of the breaking lantern when Brown fell. He stooped, astride Brown, and found his collar and hauled him out from beneath the cot and raised Brown's head and began to strike him with his flat hand, short, vicious, and hard, until Brown ceased laughing.

Brown was limp. Christmas held his head up, cursing him in a voice level as whispering. He dragged Brown over to the other cot and flung him onto it, face up. Brown began to laugh again. Christmas put his hand flat upon Brown's mouth and nose, shutting his jaw with his left hand while with the right he struck Brown again with those hard, slow, measured blows, as if he were meting them out by count. Brown had stopped laughing. He struggled. Beneath Christmas's hand he began to make a choked, gurgling noise, struggling. Christmas held him until he ceased and became still. Then Christmas slacked his hand a little. "Will you be quiet now?" he said. "Will you?"

Brown struggled again. "Take your black hand off of me, you d.a.m.n n.i.g.g.e.rblooded-" The hand shut down again. Again Christmas struck him with the other hand upon the face. Brown ceased and lay still again. Christmas slacked his hand After a moment Brown spoke, in a tone cunning, not loud: "You're a n.i.g.g.e.r, see? You said so yourself. You told me. But I'm white. I'm a wh-" The hand shut down. Again Brown struggled, making a choked whimpering sound beneath the hand, drooling upon the fingers. When he stopped struggling, the hand slacked. Then he lay still, breathing hard.

"Will you now?" Christmas said.

"Yes," Brown said. He breathed noisily. "Let me breathe. I'll be quiet. Let me breathe."

Christmas slacked his hand but he did not remove it. Beneath it Brown breathed easier, his breath came and went easier, with less noise. But Christmas did not remove the hand. He stood in the darkness above the p.r.o.ne body, with Brown's breath alternately hot and cold on his fingers, thinking quietly, Something is going to happen to me. I am going to do something. Without removing his left hand from Brown's face he could reach with his right across to his cot, to his pillow beneath which lay his razor with its five inch blade. But he did not do it. Perhaps thinking had already gone far enough and dark enough to tell him This is not the right one. Anyway he did not reach for the razor. After a time he removed his hand from Brown's face. But he did not go away. He still stood above the cot, his own breathing so quiet, so calm, as to make no sound even to himself. Invisible too, Brown breathed quieter now, and after a while Christmas returned and sat upon his cot and fumbled a cigarette and a match from his trousers hanging on the wall. In the flare of the match Brown was visible. Before taking the light, Christmas lifted the match and looked at Brown. Brown lay on his back, sprawled, one arm dangling to the floor. His mouth was open. While Christmas watched, he began to snore.

Christmas lit the cigarette and snapped the match toward the open door, watching the flame vanish in midair. Thin he was listening for the light, trivial sound which the dead match would make when it struck the floor; and then it seemed to him that he heard it. Then it seemed to him, sitting on the cot in the dark room, that he was hearing a myriad sounds of no greater volume-voices, murmurs, whispers: of trees, darkness, earth; people: his own voice; other voices evocative of names and times and places-which he had been conscious of all his life without knowing it, which were his life, thinking G.o.d perhaps and me not knowing that too He could see it like a printed sentence, fullborn and already dead, G.o.d loves me too, like the faded and weathered letters on a last year's billboard, G.o.d loves me too.