Weddel did not move; his expression arrogant, quizzical, and weary, did not change. “He did not mean to do that,” he said.
“When I do,” Vatch said, “it will not look like an accident.”
Weddel was looking at Vatch. “I think I told you once,” he said. “My name is Saucier Weddel. I am a Mississippian. I live at a place named Contalmaison. My father built it and named it. He was a Choctaw chief named Francis Weddel, of whom you have probably not heard. He was the son of a Choctaw woman and a French émigré of New Orleans, a general of Napoleon’s and a knight of the Legion of Honor. His name was François Vidal.
My father drove to Washington once in his carriage to remonstrate with President Jackson about the Government’s treatment of his people, sending on ahead a wagon of provender and gifts and also fresh horses for the carriage, in charge of the man, the native overseer, who was a full blood Choctaw and my father’s cousin.
In the old days The Man was the hereditary title of the head of our clan; but after we became Europeanised like the white people, we lost the title to the branch which refused to become polluted, though we kept the slaves and the land. The Man now lives in a house a little larger than the cabins of the Negroes — an upper servant. It was in Washington that my father met and married my mother. He was killed in the Mexican War.
My mother died two years ago, in ‘63, of a complication of pneumonia acquired while superintending the burying of some silver on a wet night when Federal troops entered the county, and of unsuitable food; though my boy refuses to believe that she is dead. He refuses to believe that the country would have permitted the North to deprive her of the imported Martinique coffee and the beaten biscuit which she had each Sunday noon and Wednesday night.
He believes that the country would have risen in arms first. But then, he is only a Negro, member of an oppressed race burdened with freedom. He has a daily list of my misdoings which he is going to tell her on me when we reach home. I went to school in France, but not very hard. Until two weeks ago I was a major of Mississippi infantry in the corps of a man named Longstreet, of whom you may have heard.”
“So you were a major,” Vatch said.
“That appears to be my indictment; yes.”
“I have seen a rebel major before,” Vatch said. “Do you want me to tell you where I saw him?”
“Tell me,” Weddel said.
“He was lying by a tree. We had to stop there and lie down, and he was lying by the tree, asking for water. ‘Have you any water, friend?’ he said. ‘Yes. I have water,’ I said. ‘I have plenty of water.’ I had to crawl; I couldn’t stand up. I crawled over to him and I lifted him so that his head would be propped against the tree. I fixed his face to the front.”
“Didn’t you have a bayonet?” Weddel said. “But I forgot; you couldn’t stand up.”
“Then I crawled back. I had to crawl back a hundred yards, where—”
“Back?”
“It was too close. Who can do decent shooting that close? I had to crawl back, and then the damned musket—”
“Damn musket?” Weddel sat a little sideways in his chair, his hand on the table, his face quizzical and sardonic, contained.
“I missed, the first shot. I had his face propped up and turned, and his eyes open watching me, and then I missed. I hit him in the throat and I had to shoot again because of the damned musket.”
“Vatch,” the father said.
Vatch’s hands were on the table. His head, his face, were like his father’s, though without the father’s deliberation. His face was furious, still, unpredictable. “It was that damn musket. I had to shoot three times. Then he had three eyes, in a row across his face propped against the tree, all three of them open, like he was watching me with three eyes. I gave him another eye, to see better with. But I had to shoot twice because of the damn musket.”
“You, Vatch,” the father said. He stood now, his hands on the table, propping his gaunt body. “Dont you mind Vatch, stranger. The war is over now.”
“I dont mind him,” Weddel said. His hands went to his bosom, disappearing into the foam of linen while he watched Vatch steadily with his alert, quizzical, sardonic gaze. “I have seen too many of him for too long a time to mind one of him any more.”
“Take some whiskey,” Vatch said.
“Are you just making a point?”
“Damn the pistol,” Vatch said. “Take some whiskey.”
Weddel laid his hand again on the table. But instead of pouring, Vatch held the jug poised over the tumbler. He was looking past Weddel’s shoulder. Weddel turned. The girl was in the room, standing in the doorway with her mother just behind her. The mother said as if she were speaking to the floor under her feet: “I tried to keep her back, like you said. I tried to. But she is strong as a man; hardheaded like a man.”
“You go back,” the father said.
“Me to go back?” the mother said to the floor.
The father spoke a name; Weddel did not catch it; he did not even know that he had missed it. “You go back.”
The girl moved. She was not looking at any of them. She came to the chair on which lay Weddel’s worn and mended cloak and opened it, revealing the four ragged slashes where the sable lining had been cut out as though with a knife. She was looking at the cloak when Vatch grasped her by the shoulder, but it was at Weddel that she looked. “You cut hit out and gave hit to that nigra to wrap his feet in,” she said.
Then the father grasped Vatch in turn. Weddel had not stirred, his face turned over his shoulder; beside him the boy was upraised out of his chair by his arms, his young, slacked face leaned forward into the lamp. But save for the breathing of Vatch and the father there was no sound in the room.
“I am stronger than you are, still,” the father said. “I am a better man still, or as good.”
“You wont be always,” Vatch said.
The father looked back over his shoulder at the girl. “Go back,” he said. She turned and went back toward the hall, her feet silent as rubber feet. Again the father called that name which Weddel had not caught; again he did not catch it and was not aware again that he had not. She went out the door.
The father looked at Weddel. Weddel’s attitude was unchanged, save that once more his hand was hidden inside his bosom. They looked at one another — the cold, Nordic face and the half Gallic half Mongol face thin and worn like a bronze casting, with eyes like those of the dead, in which only vision has ceased and not sight. “Take your horses, and go,” the father said.
VI
It was dark in the hall, and cold, with the black chill of the mountain April coming up through the floor about her bare legs and her body in the single coarse garment. “He cut the lining outen his cloak to wrap that nigra’s feet in,” she said. “He done hit for a nigra.”
The door behind her opened. Against the lamplight a man loomed, then the door shut behind him. “Is it Vatch or paw?” she said. Then something struck her across the back — a leather strap. “I was afeared it would be Vatch,” she said. The blow fell again.
“Go to bed,” the father said.
“You can whip me, but you cant whip him,” she said.
The blow fell again: a thick, flat, soft sound upon her immediate flesh beneath the coarse sacking.
VII
In the deserted kitchen the Negro sat for a moment longer on the upturned block beside the stove, looking at the door. Then he rose carefully, one hand on the wall.
“Whuf!” he said. “Wish us had a spring on de Domain whut run dat. Stock would git trompled to death, sho mon.” He blinked at the door, listening, then he moved, letting himself carefully along the wall, stopping now and then to look toward-the door and listen, his air cunning, unsteady, and alert.
He reached the corner and lifted the loose plank, stooping carefully, bracing himself against the wall. He lifted the jug out, whereupon he lost his balance and sprawled on his face, his face ludicrous and earnest with astonishment. He got up and sat flat on the floor, carefully, the jug between his knees, and lifted the jug and drank. He drank a long time.
“Whuf!” he said. “On de Domain we’d give disyer stuff to de hawgs. But deseyer ign’unt mountain trash—” He drank again; then with the jug poised there came into his face an expression of concern and then consternation. He set the jug down and tried to get up, sprawling above the jug, gaining his feet at last, stooped, swaying, drooling, with that expression of outraged consternation on his face. Then he fell headlong to the floor, overturning the jug.
VIII
They stooped above the Negro, talking quietly to one another — Weddel in his frothed shirt, the father and the boy.
“We’ll have to tote him,” the father said.
They lifted the Negro. With his single hand Weddel jerked the Negro’s head up, shaking him. “Jubal,” he said.
The Negro
