He scrabbled up too, on to the shorter pony, before Jonas could boost him up, clapping the pony with his heels into its own stiff, short-coupled canter, out the gate after Uncle Buck, when Uncle Buddy (he hadn’t even noticed him) stepped out from the gate and caught the bit. “Watch him,” Uncle Buddy said. “Watch Theophilus.
The minute anything begins to look wrong, you ride to hell back here and get me. You hear?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Lemme go now. I wont even ketch Uncle Buck, let alone Tomey’s Turl — —”
Uncle Buck was riding Black John, because if they could just catch sight of Tomey’s Turl at least one mile from Mr Hubert’s gate, Black John would ride him down in two minutes. So when they came out on the long flat about three miles from Mr Hubert’s, sure enough, there was Tomey’s Turl on the Jake mule about a mile ahead.
Uncle Buck flung his arm out and back, reining in, crouched on the big horse, his little round head and his gnarled neck thrust forward like a cooter’s. “Stole away!” he whispered. “You stay back where he wont see you and flush. I’ll circle him through the woods and we will bay him at the creek ford.”
He waited until Uncle Buck had vanished into the woods. Then he went on. But Tomey’s Turl saw him. He closed in too fast; maybe he was afraid he wouldn’t be there in time to see him when he treed. It was the best race he had ever seen. He had never seen old Jake go that fast, and nobody had ever known Tomey’s Turl to go faster than his natural walk, even riding a mule.
Uncle Buck whooped once from the woods, running on sight, then Black John came out of the trees, driving, soupled out flat and level as a hawk, with Uncle Buck right up behind his ears now and yelling so that they looked exactly like a big black hawk with a sparrow riding it, across the field and over the ditch and across the next field, and he was running too; the mare went out before he even knew she was ready, and he was yelling too.
Because, being a nigger, Tomey’s Turl should have jumped down and run for it afoot as soon as he saw them. But he didn’t; maybe Tomey’s Turl had been running off from Uncle Buck for so long that he had even got used to running away like a white man would do it. And it was like he and old Jake had added Tomey’s Turl’s natural walking speed to the best that old Jake had ever done in his life, and it was just exactly enough to beat Uncle Buck to the ford.
Because when he and the pony arrived, Black John was blown and lathered and Uncle Buck was down, leading him around in a circle to slow him down, and they could already hear Mr Hubert’s dinner horn a mile away.
Only, for a while Tomey’s Turl didn’t seem to be at Mr Hubert’s either. The boy was still sitting on the gate-post, blowing the horn — there was no gate there; just two posts and a nigger boy about his size sitting on one of them, blowing a fox-horn; this was what Miss Sophonsiba was still reminding people was named Warwick even when they had already known for a long time that’s what she aimed to have it called, until when they wouldn’t call it Warwick she wouldn’t even seem to know what they were talking about and it would sound as if she and Mr Hubert owned two separate plantations covering the same area of ground, one on top of the other. Mr Hubert was sitting in the spring-house with his boots off and his feet in the water, drinking a toddy.
But nobody there had seen Tomey’s Turl; for a time it looked like Mr Hubert couldn’t even place who Uncle Buck was talking about. “Oh, that nigger,” he said at last. “We’ll find him after dinner.”
Only it didn’t seem as if they were going to eat either. Mr Hubert and Uncle Buck had a toddy, then Mr Hubert finally sent to tell the boy on the gate-post he could quit blowing, and he and Uncle Buck had another toddy and Uncle Buck still saying, “I just want my nigger. Then we got to get on back toward home.”
“After dinner,” Mr Hubert said. “If we dont start him somewhere around the kitchen, we’ll put the dogs on him. They’ll find him if it’s in the power of mortal Walker dogs to do it.”
But at last a hand began waving a handkerchief or something white through the broken place in an upstairs shutter.
They went to the house, crossing the back gallery, Mr Hubert warning them again, as he always did, to watch out for the rotted floor-board he hadn’t got around to having fixed yet. Then they stood in the hall, until presently there was a jangling and swishing noise and they began to smell the perfume, and Miss Sophonsiba came down the stairs.
Her hair was roached under a lace cap; she had on her Sunday dress and beads and a red ribbon around her throat and a little nigger girl carrying her fan and he stood quietly a little behind Uncle Buck, watching her lips until they opened and he could see the roan tooth.
He had never known anyone before with a roan tooth and he remembered how one time his grandmother and his father were talking about Uncle Buddy and Uncle Buck and his grandmother said that Miss Sophonsiba had matured into a fine-looking woman once. Maybe she had. He didn’t know. He wasn’t but nine.
“Why, Mister Theophilus,” she said. “And McCaslin,” she said. She had never looked at him and she wasn’t talking to him and he knew it, although he was prepared and balanced to drag his foot when Uncle Buck did. “Welcome to Warwick.”
He and Uncle Buck dragged their foot. “I just come to get my nigger,” Uncle Buck said. “Then we got to get on back home.”
Then Miss Sophonsiba said something about a bumble-bee, but he couldn’t remember that. It was too fast and there was too much of it, the earrings and beads clashing and jingling like little trace chains on a toy mule trotting and the perfume stronger too, like the earrings and beads sprayed it out each time they moved and he watched the roan-coloured tooth flick and glint between her lips; something about Uncle Buck was a bee sipping from flower to flower and not staying long anywhere and all that stored sweetness to be wasted on Uncle Buddy’s desert air, calling Uncle Buddy Mister Amodeus like she called Uncle Buck Mister Theophilus, or maybe the honey was being stored up against the advent of a queen and who was the lucky queen and when? “Ma’am?” Uncle Buck said.
Then Mr Hubert said:
“Hah. A buck bee. I reckon that nigger’s going to think he’s a buck hornet, once he lays hands on him. But I reckon what Buck’s thinking about sipping right now is some meat gravy and biscuit and a cup of coffee. And so am I.”
They went into the dining-room and ate and Miss Sophonsiba said how seriously now neighbours just a half day’s ride apart ought not to go so long as Uncle Buck did, and Uncle Buck said Yessum, and Miss Sophonsiba said Uncle Buck was just a confirmed roving bachelor from the cradle born and this time Uncle Buck even quit chewing and looked and said, Yes, ma’am, he sure was, and born too late at it to ever change now but at least he could thank God no lady would ever have to suffer the misery of living with him and Uncle Buddy, and Miss Sophonsiba said ah, that maybe Uncle Buck just aint met the woman yet who would not only accept what Uncle Buck was pleased to call misery, but who would make Uncle Buck consider even his freedom a small price to pay, and Uncle Buck said, “Nome. Not yet.”
Then he and Mr Hubert and Uncle Buck went out to the front gallery and sat down. Mr Hubert hadn’t even got done taking his shoes off again and inviting Uncle Buck to take his off, when Miss Sophonsiba came out the door carrying a tray with another toddy on it. “Damnit, Sibbey,” Mr Hubert said. “He’s just et. He dont want to drink that now.” But Miss Sophonsiba didn’t seem to hear him at all.
She stood there, the roan tooth not flicking now but fixed because she wasn’t talking now, handing the toddy to Uncle Buck until after a while she said how her papa always said nothing sweetened a Missippi toddy like the hand of a Missippi lady and would Uncle Buck like to see how she use to sweeten her papa’s toddy for him?
She lifted the toddy and took a sip of it and handed it again to Uncle Buck and this time Uncle Buck took it. He dragged his foot again and drank the toddy and said if Mr Hubert was going to lay down, he would
