He could have posted his and George’s appearance bonds without altering the first figure of his bank balance. When Edmonds had drawn his own cheque to cover them, they returned to Edmonds’s car. This time George drove it, with Nat in front with him.
It was seventeen miles back home. For those seventeen miles he sat beside the grim and seething white man in the back seat, with nothing to look at but those two heads — that of his daughter where she shrank as far as possible from George, into her corner, never once looking back; that of George, the ruined panama hat raked above his right ear, who still seemed to swagger even sitting down. Leastways his face aint all full of teeth now like it used to be whenever it found anybody looking at it, he thought viciously.
But never mind that either, right now. So he sat in the car when it stopped at the carriage gate and watched Nat spring out and run like a frightened deer up the lane toward his house, still without looking back, never once looking at him. Then they drove on to the mule lot, the stable, and he and George got out and again he could hear George breathing behind him while Edmonds, behind the wheel now, leaned his elbow in the window and glanced at them both.
“Get your mules!” Edmonds said. “What in hell are you waiting for?”
“I thought you were fixing to say something,” Lucas said. “So a man’s kinfolks cant tell on him in court.”
“Never you mind about that!” Edmonds said. “George can tell plenty, and he aint any kin to you. And if he should begin to forget, Nat aint any kin to George and she can tell plenty. I know what you are thinking about.
But you have waited too late. If George and Nat tried to buy a wedding licence now, they would probably hang you and George both. Besides, damn that. I’m going to take you both to the penitentiary myself as soon as you are laid by.
Now you get on down to your south creek piece. By God, this is one time you will take advice from me. And here it is: don’t come out until you have finished it. If dark catches you, dont let it worry you. I’ll send somebody down there with a lantern.”
He was done with the south creek piece before dark; he had intended to finish it today anyhow. He was back at the stable, his mules watered and rubbed down and stalled and fed while George was still unharnessing.
Then he entered the lane and in the beginning of twilight walked toward his house above whose chimney the windless supper smoke stood. He didn’t walk fast, neither did he look back when he spoke. “George Wilkins,” he said.
“Sir,” George said behind him. They walked on in single file and almost step for step, about five feet apart.
“Just what was your idea?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir,” George said. “It uz mostly Nat’s. We never aimed to get you into no trouble. She say maybe ifn we took and fotch that kettle from whar you and Mister Roth told them shurfs it was and you would find it settin on yo back porch, maybe when we offered to help you git shet of it fo they got here, yo mind might change about loandin us the money to — I mean to leffen us get married.”
“Hah,” Lucas said. They walked on. Now he could smell the cooking meat. He reached the gate and turned. George stopped too, lean, wasp-waisted, foppish even in faded overalls below the swaggering rake of the hat. “There’s more folks than just me in that trouble.”
“Yes sir,” George said. “Hit look like it is. I hope it gonter be a lesson to me.”
“I hope so too,” Lucas said. “When they get done sending you to Parchman you’ll have plenty of time between working cotton and corn you aint going to get no third and fourth of even, to study it.” They looked at one another.
“Yes sir,” George said. “Especially wid you there to help me worry hit out.”
“Hah,” Lucas said. He didn’t move; he hardly raised his voice even: “Nat.” He didn’t even look toward the house then as the girl came down the path, barefoot, in a clean, faded calico dress and a bright headrag. Her face was swollen from crying, but her voice was defiant, not hysterical.
“It wasn’t me that told Mister Roth to telefoam them shurfs!” she cried. He looked at her for the first time. He looked at her until even the defiance began to fade, to be replaced by something alert and speculative. He saw her glance flick past his shoulder to where George stood and return.
“My mind done changed,” he said. “I’m going to let you and George get married.” She stared at him. Again he watched her glance flick to George and return.
“It changed quick,” she said. She stared at him. Her hand, the long, limber, narrow, light-palmed hand of her race, rose and touched for an instant the bright cotton which bound her head. Her inflexion, the very tone and pitch of her voice had changed. “Me, marry George Wilkins and go to live in a house whar the whole back porch is done already fell off and whar I got to walk a half a mile and back from the spring to fetch water? He aint even got no stove!”
“My chimbley cooks good,” George said. “And I can prop up the porch.”
“And I can get used to walking a mile for two lard buckets full of water,” she said. “I dont wants no propped-up porch. I wants a new porch on George’s house and a cook-stove and a well.
And how you gonter get um? What you gonter pay for no stove with, and a new porch, and somebody to help you dig a well?” Yet it was still Lucas she stared at, ceasing with no dying fall of her high, clear soprano voice, watching her father’s face as if they were engaged with foils.
His face was not grim and neither cold nor angry. It was absolutely expressionless, impenetrable. He might have been asleep standing, as a horse sleeps. When he spoke, he might have been speaking to himself.
“A cook-stove,” he said. “The back porch fixed. A well.”
“A new back porch,” she said. He might not have even heard her. She might not have spoken even.
“The back porch fixed,” he said. Then she was not looking at him. Again the hand rose, slender and delicate and markless of any labour, and touched the back of her headkerchief. Lucas moved. “George Wilkins,” he said.
“Sir,” George said.
“Come into the house,” Lucas said.
And so, in its own good time, the other day came at last. In their Sunday clothes he and Nat and George stood beside the carriage gate while the car came up and stopped. “Morning, Nat,” Edmonds said. “When did you get home?”
“I got home yistiddy, Mister Roth.”
“You stayed in Vicksburg a good while. I didn’t know you were going until Aunt Molly told me you were already gone.”
“Yassuh,” she said. “I lef the next day after them shurfs was here. — I didn’t know it neither,” she said. “I never much wanted to go. It was pappy’s idea for me to go and see my aunt — —”
“Hush, and get in the car,” Lucas said. “If I’m going to finish my crop in this county or finish somebody else’s crop in Parchman county, I would like to know it soon as I can.”
“Yes,” Edmonds said. He spoke to Nat again. “You and George go on a minute. I want to talk to Lucas.” Nat and George went on. Lucas stood beside the car while Edmonds looked at him. It was the first time Edmonds had spoken to him since that morning three weeks ago, as though it had required those three weeks for his rage to consume itself, or die down at least.
Now the white man leaned in the window, looking at the impenetrable face with its definite strain of white blood, the same blood which ran in his own veins, which had not only come to the negro through male descent while it had come to him from a woman, but had reached the negro a generation sooner — a face composed, inscrutable, even a little haughty, shaped even in expression in the pattern of his great-grandfather McCaslin’s face. “I reckon you know what’s going to happen to you,” he said.
“When that federal lawyer gets through with Nat, and Nat gets through with George, and George gets through with you and Judge Gowan gets through with all of you. You have been on this place all your life, almost twice as long as I have. You knew all the McCaslins and Edmonds both that ever lived here, except old Carothers. Was that still and that whisky in your back yard yours?”
“You know it wasn’t,” Lucas said.
“All right,” Edmonds said. “Was that still they found in the creek bottom yours?”
They looked at each other. “I aint being tried for that one,” Lucas said.
“Was that still yours, Lucas?” Edmonds said. They looked at one another. Yet still the face which Edmonds saw was absolutely blank, impenetrable. Even the eyes appeared to have nothing behind them.
