Granny had told us a long time ago never to let Ab Snopes go anywhere about the house unless somebody was with him. She said she would rather have Yankees in the house any day because at least Yankees would have more delicacy, even if it wasn’t anything but good sense, than to steal a spoon or candlestick and then try to sell it to one of her own neighbors, as Ab Snopes would probably do. She didn’t even answer him. She just said, “Stand over there by that door and be quiet.” So Cousin Melisandre went upstairs after all and Granny and Philadelphia went to the parlor for the candlesticks and the medallion and the dulcimer, Philadelphia not only helping this time, free or not, but Granny wasn’t even using the clock.
It just all happened at once. One second Ringo was sitting on the gate-post, looking up the road. The next second he was standing on it and waving the cup towel and then I was running and hollering, back to the dining-room, and I remember the whites of Joby’s and Lucius’s and Philadelphia’s eyes and I remembered Cousin Melisandre’s eyes where she leaned against the sideboard with the back of her hand against her mouth, and Granny and Louvinia and Ab Snopes glaring at one another across the trunk and I could hear Louvinia’s voice even louder than mine:
“Miz Cawmpson! Miz Cawmpson!”
“What?” Granny cried. “What? Mrs. Compson?” Then we all remembered. It was when the first Yankee scouting patrol entered Jefferson over a year ago. The war was new then and I suppose General Compson was the only Jefferson soldier they had heard of yet. Anyway, the officer asked someone in the Square where General Compson lived and old Doctor Holston sent his Negro boy by back alleys and across lots to warn Mrs. Compson in time, and the story was how the Yankee officer sent some of his men through the empty house and himself rode around to the back where old Aunt Roxanne was standing in front of the outhouse behind the closed door of which Mrs. Compson was sitting, fully dressed even to her hat and parasol, on the wicker hamper containing her plate and silver. “Miss in dar,” Roxanne said. “Stop where you is.” And the story told how the Yankee officer said, “Excuse me,” and raised his hat and even backed the horse a few steps before he turned and called his men and rode away. “The privy!” Granny cried.
“Hell fire, Miz Millard!” Ab Snopes said. And Granny never said anything. It wasn’t like she didn’t hear, because she was looking right at him. It was like she didn’t care; that she might have even said it herself. And that shows how things were then: we just never had time for anything. “Hell fire,” Ab Snopes said, “all north Missippi has done heard about that! There aint a white lady between here and Memphis that aint setting in the back house on a grip full of silver right this minute.”
“Then we’re already late,” Granny said. “Hurry.”
“Wait!” Ab Snopes said. “Wait! Even them Yankees have done caught onto that by now!”
“Then let’s hope these are different Yankees,” Granny said. “Hurry.”
“But Miz Millard!” Ab Snopes cried. “Wait! Wait!”
But then we could hear Ringo yelling down at the gate and I remember Joby and Lucius and Philadelphia and Louvinia and the balloon-like swaying of Cousin Melisandre’s skirts as they ran across the back yard, the trunk somewhere among them; I remember how Joby and Lucius tumbled the trunk into the little tall narrow flimsy sentry-box and Louvinia thrust Cousin Melisandre in and slammed the door and we could hear Ringo yelling good now, almost to the house, and then I was back at the front window and I saw them just as they swept around the house in a kind of straggling-clump — six men in blue, riding fast yet with something curious in the action of the horses, as if they were not only yoked together in spans but were hitched to a single wagon-tongue, then Ringo on foot running and not yelling now, and last of all the seventh rider, bareheaded and standing in his stirrups and with a sabre over his head.
Then I was on the back gallery again, standing beside Granny above that moil of horses and men in the yard, and she was wrong. It was as if these were not only the same ones who had been at Mrs. Compson’s last year, but somebody had even told them exactly where our outhouse was. The horses were yoked in pairs, but it was not a wagon-tongue, it was a pole, almost a log, twenty feet long, slung from saddle to saddle between the three span; and I remember the faces, unshaven and wan and not so much peering as frantically gleeful, glaring up at us for an instant before the men leaped down and unslung the pole and jerked the horses aside and picked up the pole, three to a side, and began to run across the yard with it as the last rider came around the house, in gray (an officer: it was Cousin Philip, though of course we didn’t know that then, and there was going to be a considerable more uproar and confusion before he finally became Cousin Philip and of course we didn’t know that either), the sabre still lifted and not only standing in the stirrups but almost lying down along the horse’s neck. The six Yankees never saw him.
And we used to watch Father drilling his troop in the pasture, changing them from column to troop front at full gallop, and you could hear his voice even above the sound of the galloping hooves but it wasn’t a bit louder than Granny’s. “There’s a lady in there!” she said. But the Yankees never heard her any more than they had seen Cousin Philip yet, the whole mass of them, the six men running with the pole and Cousin Philip on the horse, leaning out above them with a lifted sabre, rushing on across the yard until the end of the pole struck the outhouse door. It didn’t just overturn, it exploded.
One second it stood there, tall and narrow and flimsy; the next second it was gone and there was a boil of yelling men in blue coats darting and dodging around under Cousin Philip’s horse and the flashing sabre until they could find a chance to turn and run. Then there was a scatter of planks and shingles and Cousin Melisandre sitting beside the trunk in the middle of it, in the spread of her hoops, her eyes shut and her mouth open, still screaming, and after a while a feeble popping of pistol-shots from down along the creek that didn’t sound any more like war than a boy with firecrackers.
“I tried to tell you to wait!” Ab Snopes said behind us, “I tried to tell you them Yankees had done caught on!”
After Joby and Lucius and Ringo and I finished burying the trunk in the pit and hiding the shovel-marks, I found Cousin Philip in the summer house. His sabre and belt were propped against the wall but I don’t reckon even he knew what had become of his hat. He had his coat off too and was wiping it with his handkerchief and watching the house with one eye around the edge of the door. When I came in he straightened up and I thought at first he was looking at me. Then I don’t know what he was looking at. “That beautiful girl,” he said. “Fetch me a comb.”
“They’re waiting for you in the house,” I said. “Granny wants to know what’s the matter.” Cousin Melisandre was all right now. It took Louvinia and Philadelphia both and finally Granny to get her into the house but Louvinia brought the elder-flower wine before Granny had time to send her after it and now Cousin Melisandre and Granny were waiting in the parlor.
“Your sister,” Cousin Philip said. “And a hand-mirror.”
“No, Sir,” I said. “She’s just our cousin. From Memphis. Granny says—” Because he didn’t know Granny. It was pretty good for her to wait any time for anybody. But he didn’t even let me finish.
“That beautiful, tender girl,” he said. “And send a nigger with a basin of water and a towel.” I went back toward the house. This time when I looked back I couldn’t see his eye around the door-edge. “And a clothes brush,” he said.
Granny wasn’t waiting very much. She was at the front door. “Now what?” she said. I told her. “Does the man think we are giving a ball here in the middle of the day? Tell him I said to come on in and wash on the back gallery like we do. Louvinia’s putting dinner on, and we’re already late.” But Granny didn’t know Cousin Philip either. I told her again. She looked at me. “What did he say?” she said.
“He didn’t say anything,” I said.
