第 24 页

“Then you’ll do,” Miss Reba said to Butch. “Let’s me and you go out front, or anywhere else that’s private, too. I got a word for you.”

“About what?” Butch said. She didn’t answer, already walking toward the door. “Private, you say?” Butch said. “Why, sure; any time I cant accommodate a good-looking gal private, I’ll give Sugar Boy full lief to step in.” They went out. And now, from the lobby, we couldn’t see them beyond the door of the ladies’ parlor, for almost a minute in fact, maybe even a little more, before Miss Reba came back out, still walking steadily, hard and handsome and composed; then Butch a second later, saying, “Is that so, huh? We’ll just see about that,” Miss Reba coming steadily on to where we waited, watching Butch go on across the lobby without even looking at us.

“All right?” Everbe said.

“Yes,” Miss Reba said. “And that goes for you too,” she told Boon. She looked at me. “Jesus,” she said.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Boon said.

“Nothing,” she said over her shoulder, because she was looking at me. “—thought I had seen all the cat-house problems possible. Until I had one with children in it. You brought one in”—she was talking to Everbe now—“that run the landlord off and robbed all the loose teeth and fourteen dollars’ worth of beer; and if that wasn’t enough, Boon Hogganbeck brings one that’s driving my damned girls into poverty and respectability. I’m going to bed and you—”

“Come on,” Boon said. “What did you tell him?”

“What’s that town of yours?” Miss Reba said.

“Jefferson,” Boon said.

“You big-town folks from places like Jefferson and Memphis, with your big-city ideas, you don’t know much about Law. You got to come to little places, like this. I know, because I was raised in one. He’s the constable. He could spend a week in Jefferson or Memphis, and you wouldn’t even see him. But here among the folks that elected him (the majority of twelve or thirteen that voted for him, and the minority of nine or ten or eleven that didn’t and are already sorry for it or damned soon will be) he dont give a damn about the sheriff of the county nor the governor of the state nor the president of the United States all three rolled into one. Because he’s a Baptist. I mean, he’s a Baptist first, and then he’s the Law. When he can be a Baptist and the Law both at the same time, he will. But any time the law comes conflicting up where nobody invited it, the law knows what it can do and where to do it. They tell how that old Pharaoh was pretty good at kinging, and another old one back in the Bible times named Caesar, that did the best he knew how. They should have visited down here and watched a Arkansas or Missippi or Tennessee constable once.”

“But how do you know who he is?” Everbe said. “How do you even know there’s one here?”

“There’s one everywhere,” Miss Reba said. “Didn’t I just tell you I grew up in a place like this—as long as I could stand it? I dont need to know who he is. All I needed was to let that bastard know I knew there was one here too. I’m going—”

“But what did you tell him?” Boon said. “Come on. I may want to remember it.”

“Nothing, I told you,” Miss Reba said. “If I hadn’t learned by now how to handle these damned stud horses with his badge in one hand and his fly in the other, I’d been in the poorhouse years ago. I told him if I saw his mug around here again tonight, I would send that sheep-faced clerk to wake the constable up and tell him a deputy sheriff from Hardwick has just registered a couple of Memphis whores at the Parsham Hotel. I’m going to bed, and you better too. Come on, Corrie. I put your outraged virtue on record with that clerk and now you got to back it up, at least where he can see you.” They went on. Then Boon was gone too; possibly he had followed Butch to the front door just to make sure the surrey was gone. Then suddenly Everbe swooped down at me, that big: a big girl, muttering rapidly:

“You didn’t bring anything at all, did you? I mean, clothes. You been wearing the same ones ever since you left home.”

“What’s wrong with them?” I said.

“I’m going to wash them,” she said. “Your underthings and stockings, your blouse. And the sock you ride with too. Come on and take them off.”

“But I aint got any more,” I said.

“That’s all right. You can go to bed. I’ll have these all ready again when you get up. Come on.” So she stood outside the door while I undressed and shoved my blouse and underwear and stockings and the riding-sock through the crack in the door to her and she said Good night and I closed the door and got into bed; and still there was something unfinished, that we hadn’t done, attended to yet: the secret pre-race conference; the close, grim, fierce murmurous plotting of tomorrow’s strategy. Until I realised that, strictly speaking, we had no strategy; we had nothing to plan for nor even with: a horse whose very ownership was dubious and even (unless Ned himself really knew) unknown, of whose past we knew only that he had consistently run just exactly fast enough to finish second to the other horse in the race; to be raced tomorrow, exactly where I anyway didn’t know, against a horse none of us had ever seen and whose very existence (as far as we were concerned) had to be taken on trust. Until I realised that, of all human occupations, the racing of horses, and all concerned or involved in it, were the most certainly in God’s hands. Then Boon came in; I was already in bed, already half asleep.

“What’ve you done with your clothes?” he said.

“Everbe’s washing them,” I said. He had taken off his pants and shoes and was already reaching to turn out the light. He stopped, dead still.

“Who did you say?” I was awake now but it was already too late. I lay there with my eyes closed, not moving. “What name did you say?”

“Miss Corrie is,” I said.

“You said something else.” I could feel him looking at me. “You called her Everbe.” I could feel him looking at me. “Is that her name?” I could feel him looking at me. “So she told you her real name.” Then he said, quite gently: “God damn,” and I saw through my eyelids the room go dark, then the bed creaked as he lay down on it, as beds always do since there is so much of him, as I have heard them ever since I can remember when I would sleep with him: once or twice at home when Father would be away and he would stay in the house so Mother wouldn’t be afraid, and at Miss Ballenbaugh’s two nights ago, and in Memphis last night, until I remembered that I hadn’t slept with him in Memphis: it was Otis. “Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” I said.

10

Then it was morning, it was tomorrow: THE day on which I would ride my first actual horse race (and by winning it, set Boon and Ned—me too of course, but then I was safe, immune; I was not only just a child, I was kin to them—free to go home again, not with honor perhaps, not even unscathed, but at least they could go back) toward which all the finagling and dodging and manipulating and scrabbling around (what other crimes subsequent to—all right, consequent to—the simple and really spontaneous and in a way innocent stealing of Grandfather’s automobile, I didn’t even know) had been leading up to; now it was here. “So she told you what her real name is,” Boon said. Because you see, it was too late now; I had been half asleep last night and off my guard.

“Yes,” I said; whereupon I realised that that was completely false: she hadn’t told me; she didn’t even know I knew it, that I had been calling her Everbe ever since Sunday night. But it was too late now. “But you’ve got to promise,” I said. “Not promise her: promise me. Never to say it out loud until she tells it first.”

“I promise,” he said. “I aint never lied to you yet. I mean, lied bad. I mean … I aint … All right,” he said. “I done promised.” Then he said again, like last night, gentle and almost amazed: “God damn.” And my clothes—blouse, stockings and underwear and the riding-sock—were neatly folded, laundered and ironed, on a chair just outside our door. Boon handed them in to me. “With all them clean clothes, you got to bathe again,” he said.

“You just made me bathe Saturday,” I said.

“We was on the road Saturday night,” he said. “We never even got to Memphis until Sunday.”

“All right. Sunday,” I said.

“This is Tuesday,” he said. “Two days.”

“Just one day,” I said. “Two nights, but just one day.”

“You been travelling since,” Boon said. “You got two sets of dirt now.”

“It’s almost seven oclock,” I said. “We’re already late for breakfast.”

“You can bathe first,” he said.

“I got to get dressed so I can thank Everbe for washing my clothes.”

“Bathe first,” Boon said.

“I’ll get my bandage wet.”

“Hold your hand on your neck,” Boon said “You aint going to wash that nohow.”

“Why dont you bathe then?” I said.

“We aint talking about me. We’re talking about you.” So I went to the bathroom and bathed and put my clothes back on and went to the dining room. And Ned was right. Last night there had been just the one table, the end of it cleared and set up for us. Now there were seven or eight people, all men (but not aliens, foreigners, mind you; in fact they were strangers only to us who didn’t live in Parsham. None of them had got down from pullmans in silk underclothes and smoking Upmann cigars; we had not opened the cosmopolitan Parsham winter sporting season here in the middle of May. Some were in overalls, all but one were tieless: people like us except that they lived here, with the same passions and hopes and dialect, enjoying—Butch too—our inalienable constitutional right of free will and private enterprise which has made our country what it is, by holding a private horse race between two local horses; if anyone, committee or individual, from no further away than the next county, had come to interfere or alter or stop it or even participate beyond betting on the horse of his choice, all of us, partisans of either horse, would have risen as one man and repulsed him). And besides the waiter, I saw the back of a maid in uniform just going through the swing door to the pantry or kitchen, and there were two men (one of them had the necktie) at our table talking to Boon and Miss Reba. But Everbe wasn’t there, and for an instant, second, I had a horrified vision of Butch finally waylaying and capturing her by force, ambushing her in the corridor perhaps while she was carrying the chair to mine and Boon’s door with my laundered clothes on it. But only for a second, and too fantastical; if she had washed for me last night, she had probably, doubtless been up quite late washing for herself and maybe Miss Reba too, and was still asleep. So I went on to the table, where one of the men said,

“This the boy going to ride him? Looks more like you got him taped up for a fist fight.”

“Yes,” Boon said, shoving the dish of ham toward me as I sat down; Miss Reba passed the eggs and grits across. “He cut himself eating peas last night.”

“Haw haw,” the man said. “Anyway, he’ll be carrying less weight this time.”

“Sure,” Boon said. “Unless he eats the knives and forks and spoons while we aint watching him and maybe takes along one of the fire dogs for a snack.”

“Haw haw,” the man said. “From the way he run here last winter, he’s going to need a good deal more than just less weight. But then, that’s the secret, huh?”

“Sure,” Boon said; he was eating again now. “Even if we never had no secret, we would have to act like we did.”

“Haw haw,” the man said again; they got up. “Well, good luck, anyway. That might be as good for that horse as less weight.” The maid came, bringing me a glass of milk and carrying a plate of hot biscuits. It was Minnie, in a fresh apron and cap where Miss Reba had either loaned or hired her to the hotel to help out, with her ravished and unforgiving face, but calm and quiet now; evidently she had rested, even slept some even if she hadn’t forgiven anybody yet. The two strangers went away.

“You see?” Miss Reba said to nobody. “All we need is the right horse and a million dollars to bet.”

“You heard Ned Sunday night,” Boon said. “You were the one that believed him. I mean, decided to believe him. I was different. After that God damned automobile vanished and all we had was the horse, I had to believe him.”

“All right,” Miss Reba said. “Keep your shirt on.”

“And you can stop worrying too,” Boon said to me. “She just went to the depot in case them dogs caught him again last night and Ned brought him in to the train. Or so she said—”

“Did Ned find him?” I said.

“Naw,” Boon said. “Ned’s in the kitchen now. You can ask him—or so she said. Yes. So maybe you had better worry some, after all. Miss Reba got shut of that tin badge for you, but that other one—what’s his name: Caldwell—was on that train this morning.”

“What are you talking about now?” Miss Reba said.

“Nothing,” Boon said. “I aint got nothing to talk about now. I’ve quit. Lucius is the one that’s got tin badge and pullman cap rivals now.” But I was already getting up because I knew now where she was.

“Is that all the breakfast you want?” Miss Reba said.

“Let him alone,” Boon said. “He’s in love.” I crossed the lobby. Maybe Ned was right, and all it took for a horse race was two horses with the time to run a race, within ten miles of each other, and the air itself spread the news of it. Though not as far as the ladies’ parlor yet. So maybe what I meant by crying looking well on Everbe was that she was big enough to cry as much as she seemed to have to do, and still have room for that many tears to dry off without streaking. She was sitting by herself in the ladies’ parlor and crying again, the third time—no: four, counting two Sunday night. Until you wondered why. I mean, nobody made her come with us and she could have gone back to Memphis on any train that passed. Yet here she was, so she must be where she wanted to be. Yet this was the second time she had cried since we reached Parsham. I mean, anybody with as many extra tears as she had, still didn’t have enough to waste that many on Otis. So I said,

“He’s all right. Ned will find him today. Much obliged for washing my clothes. Where’s Mr Sam? I thought he was going to be on that train.”

“He had to take the train on to Memphis and take his uniform off,” she said. “He cant go to a horse race in it. He’ll be back on the noon freight. I can’t find my handkerchief.”

I found it for her. “Maybe you ought to wash your face,” I said. “When Ned finds him, he will get the tooth back.”

“It aint the tooth,” she said. “I’m going to buy Minnie another tooth. It’s that … He never had no chance. He … Did you promise your mother you wouldn’t never take things too?”

“You dont have to promise anybody that,” I said. “You dont take things.”

“But you would have promised, if she had asked you?”

“She wouldn’t ask me,” I said. “You dont take things.”

“Yes,” she said. She said: “I aint going to stay in Memphis. I talked to Sam at the depot this morning and he says that’s a good idea too. He can find me a job in Chattanooga or somewhere. But you’ll still be in Jefferson, so maybe I could write you a post card where I’m at and then if you took a notion—”