第 15 页

“That’s right,” Ned said.

“Can you make him run while he’s standing up?”

“That’s right,” Ned said.

“How do you know you can?”

“I made that mule run,” Ned said.

“What mule?” Miss Reba said. Miss Corrie came in, shutting the door behind her. “Shut it good,” Miss Reba said. She said to Ned: “All right. Tell me about that race.” Now Ned looked at her, for a full quarter of a minute; the spoiled immune privileged-retainer impudence of his relations with Boon and the avuncular bossiness of those with me, were completely gone.

“You sounds like you want to talk sense for a while,” he said.

“Try me,” Miss Reba said.

“All right,” Ned said. “A man, another rich white man, I dont call his name but I can find him; aint but one horse like that in twenty miles of Possum, let alone ten—owns a blood horse too that has already run twice against this horse last winter and beat him twice. That Possum horse beat this horse just enough bad the first time, for the other rich white man that owned this horse to bet twice as much the second time. And got beat just enough more bad that second time, that when this horse turns up in Possum day after tomorrow, wanting to run him another race, that Possum rich white man wont be just willing to run his horse again, he’ll likely be proud and ashamed both to take the money.”

“All right,” Miss Reba said. “Go on.”

“That’s all,” Ned said. “I can make this horse run. Only dont nobody but me know it yet. So just in case you ladies would like to make up a little jackpot, me and Lucius and Mr Hogganbeck can take that along with us too.”

“That includes the one that’s got that automobile now too?” Miss Reba said. “I mean, among the ones that dont know you can make it run?”

“That’s right,” Ned said.

“Then why didn’t he save everybody trouble and send you and the horse both to Parsham, since he believes all he’s got to do to have the horse and the automobile both, is to run that race?” Now there was no sound; they just looked at each other. “Come on,” Miss Reba said. “You got to say something. What’s your name?”

“Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi,” Ned said.

“Well?” Miss Reba said.

“Maybe he couldn’t afford it,” Ned said.

“Hell,” Boon said. “Neither have we—”

“Shut up,” Miss Reba said to Boon. She said to Ned: “I thought you said he was rich.”

“I’m talking about the one I swapped with,” Ned said.

“Did he buy the horse from the rich one?”

“He had the horse,” Ned said.

“Did he give you a paper of any kind when you swapped?”

“I got the horse,” Ned said.

“You cant read,” Miss Reba said. “Can you?”

“I got the horse,” Ned said. Miss Reba stared at him.

“You’ve got the horse. You’ve got him to Parsham. You say you got a system that will make him run. Will the same system get that automobile to Parsham too?”

“Use your sense,” Ned said. “You got plenty of it. You done already seen more and seen it quicker than anybody else here. Just look a little harder and see that them folks I swapped that horse from—”

“Them?” Miss Reba said. “You said a man.” But Ned hadn’t even stopped:

“—is in exactly the same fix we is: they got to go back home sometime too sooner or later.”

“Whether his name is Ned William McCaslin or Boon Hogganbeck or whether it’s them folks I swapped the horse from, to go back home with just the horse or just the automobile aint going to be enough: he’s got to have both of them. Is that it?” Miss Reba said.

“Not near enough,” Ned said. “Aint that what I been trying to tell you for two hours now?” Miss Reba stared at Ned. She breathed quietly, once.

“So now you’re going to walk him to Parsham, with every cop in west Tennessee snuffing every road out of Memphis for horse—”

“Reba!” Miss Corrie said.

“—by daylight tomorrow morning.”

“That’s right,” Ned said. “It’s long past too late for nobody to get caught now. But you doing all right. You doing fine. You tell me.” She was looking at him; she breathed twice this time; she didn’t even move her eyes when she spoke to Miss Corrie:

“That brakeman—”

“What brakeman?” Miss Corrie said.

“You know the one I mean. That his mother’s uncle or cousin or something—”

“He’s not a brakeman,” Miss Corrie said. “He’s a flagman. On the Memphis Special, to New York. He wears a uniform too, just like the conductor—”

“All right,” Miss Reba said. “Flagman.” Now she was talking to Boon: “One of Corrie’s …” She looked at Ned a moment. “Connections. Maybe I like that word of yours, after all. —His mother’s uncle or something is vice president or something of the railroad that goes through Parsham—”

“His uncle is division superintendent,” Miss Corrie said.

“Division superintendent,” Miss Reba said. “That is, between the times when he’s out at the driving park here or in any of the other towns his trains go through where he can watch horse races while his nephew is working his way up from the bottom with the silver spoon already in his mouth as long as he dont bite down on it hard enough to draw too much notice. See what I mean?”

“The baggage car,” Boon said.

“Right,” Miss Reba said. “Then they’ll be in Parsham and already out of sight by daylight tomorrow.”

“Even with the baggage car, it will still cost money,” Boon said. “Then to stay hid until the race, and then we got to put up a hundred and fifty for the race itself and all I got is fifteen or twenty dollars.” He rose. “Go get that horse,” he told Ned. “Where did you say the man you gave that automobile lives?”

“Sit down,” Miss Reba said. “Jesus, the trouble you’re already in when you get back to Jefferson, and you still got time to count pennies.” She looked at Ned. “What did you say your name was?”

Ned told her again. “You wants to know about that mule. Ask Boon Hogganbeck about him.”

“Dont you ever make him call you mister?” she said to Boon.

“I always does,” Ned said. “Mister Boon Hogganbeck. Ask him about that mule.”

She turned to Miss Corrie. “Is Sam in town tonight?”

“Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

“Can you get hold of him now?”

“Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

Miss Reba turned to Boon. “You get out of here. Take a walk for a couple of hours. Or go over to Birdie Watts’s if you want. Only, for Christ’s sake dont get drunk. What the hell do you think Corrie eats and pays her rent with while you’re down there in that Missippi swamp stealing automobiles and kidnapping children? air?”

“I aint going nowhere,” Boon said. “God damn it,” he said to Ned, “go get that horse.”

“I dont need to entertain him,” Miss Corrie said. “I can use the telephone.” It was not smug nor coy: it was just serene. She was much too big a girl, there was much too much of her, for smugness or coyness. But she was exactly right for serenity.

“You sure?” Miss Reba said.

“Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

“Then get at it,” Miss Reba said.

“Come here,” Boon said. Miss Corrie stopped. “Come here, I said,” Boon said. She approached then, just outside Boon’s reach; I noticed suddenly that she wasn’t looking at Boon at all: she was looking at me. Which was perhaps why Boon, still sitting, was able to reach suddenly and catch her arm before she could evade him, drawing her toward him, she struggling belatedly, as a girl that big would have to, still watching me.

“Turn loose,” she said. “I’ve got to telephone.”

“Sure, sure,” Boon said, “plenty of time for that,” drawing her on; until, with that counterfeit composure, that desperate willing to look at once forceful and harmless, with which you toss the apple in your hand (or any other piece of momentary distraction) toward the bull you suddenly find is also on your side of the fence, she leaned briskly down and kissed him, pecked him quickly on the top of the head, already drawing back. But again too late, his hand dropping and already gripping one cheek of her bottom, in sight of us all, she straining back and looking at me again with something dark and beseeching in her eyes—shame, grief, I don’t know what—while the blood rushed slowly into her big girl’s face that was not really plain at all except at first. But only a moment; she was still going to be a lady. She even struggled like a lady. But she was simply too big, too strong for even anyone as big and strong as Boon to hold with just one hand, with no more grip than that; she was free.

“Aint you ashamed of yourself,” she said.

“Cant you save that long enough for her to make one telephone call even?” Miss Reba said to Boon. “If you’re going to run fevers over her purity, why the hell dont you set her up in a place of her own where she can keep pure and still eat?” Then to Miss Corrie: “Go on and telephone. It’s already nine oclock.”

Already late for all we had to do. The place had begun to wake up—“jumping,” as you say nowadays. But decorously: no uproar either musical or simply convivial; Mr Binford’s ghost still reigned, still adumbrated his callipygian grottoes since only two of the ladies actually knew he was gone and the customers had not missed him yet; we had heard the bell and Minnie’s voice faintly at the front door and the footsteps of the descending nymphs themselves had penetrated from the stairs; and even as Miss Corrie stood with the knob in her hand, the chink of glasses interspersed in orderly frequence the bass rumble of the entertained and the shriller pipes of their entertainers beyond the door she opened and went through and then closed again. Then Minnie came back too; it seems that the unoccupied ladies would take turnabout as receptionists during the emergency.

You see how indeed the child is father to the man, and mother to the woman also. Back there in Jefferson I had thought that the reason corruption, Non-virtue, had met so puny a foeman in me as to be not even worthy of the name, was because of my tenderness and youth’s concomitant innocence. But that victory at least required the three hours between the moment I learned of Grandfather Lessep’s death and that one when the train began to move and I realised that Boon would be in unchallenged possession of the key to Grandfather’s automobile for at least four days. While here were Miss Reba and Miss Corrie: foemen you would say already toughened, even if not wisened, by constant daily experience to any wile or assault Non-virtue (or Virtue) might invent against them, already sacked and pillaged: who thirty minutes before didn’t even know that Ned existed, let alone the horse. Not to mention the complete stranger whom Miss Corrie had just left the room tranquilly confident to conquer with no other weapon than the telephone.

She had been gone nearly two minutes now. Minnie had taken the lamp and gone back to the back porch; I noticed that Ned was not in the room either. “Minnie,” Miss Reba said toward the back door, “was any of that chicken—”

“Yessum,” Minnie said. “I already fixed him a plate. He setting down to it now.” Ned said something. We couldn’t hear it. But we could hear Minnie: “If all you got to depend on for appetite is me, you gonter starve twice between here and morning.” We couldn’t hear Ned. Now Miss Corrie had been gone almost four minutes. Boon stood up, quick.

“God damn it—” he said.

“Are you even jealous of a telephone?” Miss Reba said. “What the hell can he do to her through that damn gutta-percha earpiece?” But we could hear Minnie: a quick sharp flat sound, then her feet. She came in. She was breathing a little quick, but not much. “What’s wrong?” Miss Reba said.

“Aint nothing wrong,” Minnie said. “He like most of them. He got plenty of appetite but he cant seem to locate where it is.”

“Give him a bottle of beer. Unless you’re afraid to go back out there.”

“I aint afraid,” Minnie said. “He just nature-minded. Maybe a little extra. I’m used to it. A heap of them are that way: so nature-minded dont nobody get no rest until they goes to sleep.”

“I bet you are,” Boon said. “It’s that tooth. That’s the hell of women: you wont let well enough alone.”

“What do you mean?” Miss Reba said.

“You know damn well what I mean,” Boon said. “You dont never quit. You aint never satisfied. You dont never have no mercy on a damn man. Look at her: aint satisfied until she has saved and scraped to put a gold tooth, a gold tooth in the middle of her face just to drive crazy a poor ignorant country nigger—”

“—or spending five minutes talking into a wooden box just to drive crazy another poor ignorant country bastard that aint done nothing in the world but steal an automobile and now a horse. I never knew anybody that needed to get married as bad as you do.”

“He sure do,” Minnie said from the door. “That would cure him. I tried it twice and I sho learned my lesson—” Miss Corrie came in.

“All right,” she said: serene, no more plain than a big porcelain lamp with the wick burning inside is plain. “He’s coming too. He’s going to help us. He—”

“Not me,” Boon said. “The son of a bitch aint going to help me.”

“Then beat it,” Miss Reba said. “Get out of here. How you going to do it? walk back to Missippi or ride the horse? Go on. Sit down. You might as well while we wait for him. Tell us,” she said to Miss Corrie.

You see? “He’s not a brakeman! He’s a flagman! He wears a uniform just the same as the conductor’s. He’s going to help us.” All the world loves a lover, quoth (I think) the Swan: who saw deeper than any into the human heart. What pity he had no acquaintance with horses, to have added, All the world apparently loves a stolen race horse also. Miss Corrie told us; and Otis was in the room now though I hadn’t seen him come in, with something still wrong about him though not noticing him until it was almost too late still wasn’t it:

“We’ll have to buy at least one ticket to Possum to have—”

“It’s Parsham,” Miss Reba said.

“All right,” Miss Corrie said, “—something to check him as baggage on, like you do a trunk; Sam will bring the ticket and the baggage check with him. But it will be all right; an empty boxcar will be on a side track—Sam will know where—and all we have to do is get the horse in it and Sam said wall him up in one corner with planks so he cant slip down; Sam will have some planks and nails ready too; he said this was the best he could do at short notice because he didn’t dare tell his uncle any more than he had to or his uncle would want to come too. So Sam says the only risk will be getting the horse from here to where the boxcar is waiting. He says it wont do for …” She stopped, looking at Ned.

“Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi,” Ned said.

“… Ned to be walking along even a back street this late at night leading a horse; the first policeman they pass will stop him. So he—Sam—is bringing a blanket and he’s going to wear his uniform and him and Boon and me will lead the horse to the depot and nobody will notice anything. Oh yes; and the passenger train will—”

“Jesus,” Miss Reba said. “A whore, a pullman conductor and a Missippi swamp rat the size of a water tank leading a race horse through Memphis at midnight Sunday night, and nobody will notice it?”