第 18 页

“The jack that’s here,” he said. “You can even smell it. It aint fair that it’s just women can make money pugnuckling 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 Fittie’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—”

“Who was Aunt Fittie?” I said.

“I dont know,” he said. “Folks just called her Aunt Fittie. She might have been kin to some of us, but I dont know. Lived by herself in a house on the edge of town until she taken Bee in after Bee’s maw died and soon as Bee got big enough, which never taken long because Bee was already a big girl even before she got to be ten or eleven or twelve or whenever it was and got started—”

“Started at what?” I said. You see? I had to. I had gone too far to stop now, like in Jefferson yesterday—or was it yesterday? last year: another time: another life: another Lucius Priest. “What is pugnuckling?”

He told me, with some of contempt but mostly a sort of incredulous, almost awed, almost respectful amazement. “That’s where I had the peephole—a knothole in the back wall with a tin slide over it that never nobody but me knowed how to work, while Aunt Fittie was out in front collecting the money and watching out. Folks your size would have to stand on a box and I would charge a nickel until Aunt Fittie found out I was letting grown men watch for a dime that otherwise might have went inside for fifty cents, and started hollering like a wildcat—”

Standing now, I was hitting him, so much to his surprise (mine too) that I had had to stoop and take hold of him and jerk him up within reach. I knew nothing about boxing and not too much about fighting. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do: not just hurt him but destroy him; I remember a second perhaps during which I regretted (from what ancient playing-fields-of-Eton avatar) that he was not nearer my size. But not longer than a second; I was hitting, clawing, kicking not at one wizened ten-year-old boy, but at Otis and the procuress both: the demon child who debased her privacy and the witch who debauched her innocence—one flesh to bruise and burst, one set of nerves to wrench and anguish; more: not just those two, but all who had participated in her debasement: not only the two panders, but the insensitive blackguard children and the brutal and shameless men who paid their pennies to watch her defenseless and undefended and unavenged degradation. He had plunged sprawling across the mattress, on his hands and knees now, scrabbling at his discarded trousers; I didn’t know why (nor care), not even when his hand came out and up. Only then did I see the blade of the pocketknife in his fist, nor did I care about that either; that made us in a way the same size; that was my carte blanche. I took the knife away from him. I dont know how; I never felt the blade at all; when I flung the knife away and hit him again, the blood I saw on his face I thought was his.

Then Boon was holding me clear of the floor, struggling and crying now. He was barefoot, wearing only his pants. Miss Corrie was there too, in a kimono, with her hair down; it reached further than her waist. Otis was scrunched back against the wall, not crying but cursing like he had cursed at Ned. “What the damned hell,” Boon said.

“His hand,” Miss Corrie said. She paused long enough to look back at Otis. “Go to my room,” she said. “Go on.” He went out. Boon put me down. “Let me see it,” she said. That was the first I knew where the blood came from—a neat cut across the cushions of all four fingers; I must have grasped the blade just as Otis tried to snatch it away. It was still bleeding. That is, it bled again when Miss Corrie opened my hand.

“What the hell were you fighting about?” Boon said.

“Nothing,” I said. I drew my hand back.

“Keep it closed till I get back,” Miss Corrie said. She went out and came back with a basin of water and a towel and a bottle of something and what looked like a scrap of a man’s shirt. She washed the blood off and uncorked the bottle. “It’s going to sting,” she said. It did. She tore a strip from the shirt and bound my hand.

“He still wont tell what they were fighting about,” Boon said. “At least I hope he started it: not half your size even if he is a year older. No wonder he pulled a knife—”

“He aint even as old,” I said. “He’s ten.”

“He told me he was twelve,” Boon said. Then I found out what was wrong about Otis.

“Twelve?” Miss Corrie said. “He’ll be fifteen years old next Monday.” She was looking at me. “Do you want—”

“Just keep him out of here,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.”

“Don’t worry about Otis,” she said. “He’s going back home this morning. There’s a train that leaves at nine oclock. I’m going to send Minnie to the depot with him and tell her to watch him get on it and stand where she can see his face through the window until the train moves.”

“Sure,” Boon said. “And he can have my grip to carry the refinement and culture back in. Bringing him over here to spend a week in a Memphis—”

“You hush,” Miss Corrie said.

“—house hunting refinement and culture. Maybe he found it; he might a hunted for years through Arkansas cat-cribs and still not found nobody near enough his size to draw that pocketknife on—”

“Stop it! Stop it!” Miss Corrie said.

“Sure sure,” Boon said. “But after all, Lucius has got to know the name of where he’s at in order to brag about where he’s been.” Then they turned the light out and were gone. Or so I thought. It was Boon this time, turning the light on again. “Maybe you better tell me what it was,” he said.

“Nothing,” I said. He looked down at me, huge, naked to the waist, his hand on the light to turn it out again.

“Eleven years old,” he said, “and already knife-cut in a whorehouse brawl.” He looked at me. “I wish I had knowed you thirty years ago. With you to learn me when I was eleven years old, maybe by this time I’d a had some sense too. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said. He turned off the light. Then I had been asleep, it was Miss Corrie this time, kneeling beside the mattress; I could see the shape of her face and the moon through her hair. She was the one crying this time—a big girl, too big to know how to cry daintily: only quietly.

“I made him tell me,” she said. “You fought because of me. I’ve had people—drunks—fighting over me, but you’re the first one ever fought for me. I aint used to it, you see. That’s why I dont know what to do about it. Except one thing. I can do that. I want to make you a promise. Back there in Arkansas it was my fault. But it wont be my fault any more.” You see? You have to learn too fast; you have to leap in the dark and hope that Something—It—They—will place your foot right. So maybe there are after all other things besides just Poverty and Non-virtue who look after their own.

“It wasn’t your fault then,” I said.

“Yes it was. You can choose. You can decide. You can say No. You can find a job and work. But it wont be my fault any more. That’s the promise I want to make you. For me to keep like you kept that one you told Mr Binford about before supper tonight. You’ll have to take it. Will you take it?”

“All right,” I said.

“But you’ll have to say you’ll take it. You’ll have to say it out loud.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

“Now try to get back to sleep,” she said. “I’ve brought a chair and I’m going to sit here where I’ll be ready to wake you in time to go to the depot.”

“You go back to bed too,” I said.

“I aint sleepy,” she said. “I’ll just sit here. You go on back to sleep.” And this time, Boon again. The moon-shaped square of window had shifted, so I had slept this time, his voice trying at least for whisper or anyway monotone, looming still naked from the waist up over the kitchen chair where Everbe (I mean Miss Corrie) sat, his hand grasping the backward-straining of her arm:

“Come on now. We aint got but a hour left.”

“Let me go.” She whispered too. “It’s too late now. Let me go, Boon.” Then his rasping murmur, still trying for, calling itself whisper:

“What the hell do you think I came all the way for, waited all this long for, all this working and saving up and waiting for—” Then the shape of the mooned window had moved still more and I could hear a rooster somewhere and my cut hand was partly under me and hurting, which was maybe what waked me. So I couldn’t tell if this was the same time or he had gone and then come back: only the voices, still trying for whisper and if a rooster was crowing, it was time to get up. And oh yes, she was crying again.

“I wont! I wont! Let me alone!”

“All right, all right. But tonight is just tonight; tomorrow night, when we’re settled down in Possum—”

“No! Not tomorrow either! I cant! I cant! Let me alone! Please, Boon. Please!”

8

We—Everbe and Boon and I—were at the depot in plenty of time—or so we thought. The first person we saw was Ned, waiting for us in front of it. He had on a clean white shirt—either a new one, or he had managed somehow to get the other one washed. But almost at once things began to go too fast for anyone to learn yet that the new shirt was one of Sam’s. Ned didn’t even give Boon time to open his mouth. “Calm yourself,” he said. “Mr Sam is keeping Lightning whilst I finishes the outside arrangements. The boxcar has done already been picked up and switched onto the train waiting behind the depot right now for you all to get on. When Mr Sam Caldwell runs a railroad, it’s run, mon. We done already named him too—Forkid Lightning.” Then he saw my bandage. He almost pounced. “What you done to it?”

“I cut it,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“How bad?” he said.

“Yes,” Everbe said. “It’s cut across all four fingers. He ought not to move it even.” Nor did Ned waste any more time there either. He looked quickly about us.

“Where’s that other one?” he said.

“That other what?” Boon said.

“Whistle-britches,” Ned said. “That money-mouthed runt boy that was with us last night. I may need two hands on that horse. Who do you think is gonter ride that race? me and you that’s even twice as heavy as me? Lucius was going to, but being as we already got that other one, we dont need to risk it. He’s even less weight than Lucius and even if he aint got as much sense as Lucius, he’s at least old enough in meanness to ride a horse race, and wropped up enough in money to want to win it, and likely too much of a coward to turn loose and fall off. Which is all we needs. Where is he?”

“Gone back to Arkansas,” Boon said. “How old do you think he is?”

“What he looks like,” Ned said. “About fifteen, aint he? Gone to Arkansaw? Then somebody better go get him quick.”

“Yes,” Everbe said. “I’ll bring him. There wont be time to go back and get him now. So I’ll stay and bring him on the next train this afternoon.”

“Now you talking,” Ned said. “That’s Mr Sam’s train. Just turn Whistle-britches over to Mr Sam; he’ll handle him.”

“Sure,” Boon said to Everbe. “That’ll give you a whole hour free to practise that No on Sam. Maybe he’s a better man than me and wont take it.” But she just looked at him.

“Then why dont you wait and bring Otis on and we’ll meet you in Parsham tonight,” I said. Now Boon looked at me.

“Well well,” he said. “What’s that Mr Binford said last night? If here aint still another fresh hog in this wallow. Except that this one’s still just a shoat yet. That is, I thought it was.”

“Please, Boon,” Everbe said. Like that: “Please, Boon.”

“Take him too and the both of you get to hell back to that slaughterhouse that maybe you ought not to left in the first place,” Boon said. She didn’t say anything this time. She just stood there, looking down a little: a big girl that stillness suited too. Then she turned, already walking.