‘It’s gone,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ his uncle said. ‘They’re probably all in bed asleep by now. They got home to milk and even have time before dark to chop wood for tomorrow’s breakfast too.’
Which made once though still he didn’t move. ‘They ran,’ he said.
‘No,’ his uncle said. ‘It was more than that.’
‘They ran,’ he said. ‘They reached the point where there was nothing left for them to do but admit that they were wrong. So they ran home.’
‘At least they were moving,’ his uncle said: which made twice: who hadn’t even needed the first cue since not only the urgency the need the necessity to move again or rather not really to have stopped moving at all at that moment four or five or six hours or whatever it had been ago when he really believed he was going to lie down for only fifteen minutes (and which incidentally knew fifteen minutes whether he apparently did or not) hadn’t come back, it had never been anywhere to come back from because it was still there, had been there all the time, never for one second even vacated even from behind the bizarre phantasmagoriae whose ragtag and bobends still befogged him, with or among which he had wasted nearer fifteen hours than fifteen minutes; it was still there or at least his unfinished part in it which was not even a minuscule but rather a minutecule of his uncle’s and the sheriff’s in the unfinishability of Lucas Beauchamp and Crawford Gowrie since as far as they knew before he lost track this morning neither of them knew what they were going to do next even before Hampton had disposed of what little of evidence they had by giving it back to old one-armed pistol Gowrie where even two children and an old woman couldn’t get it back this time; the need not to finish anything but just to keep moving not even to remain where they were but just desperately to keep up with it like having to run on a treadmill not because you wanted to be where the treadmill was but simply not to be flung pell mell still running frantically backward off the whole stage out of sight, and not waiting static for the moment to flow back into him again and explode him up into motion but rather already in endless motion like the treadmill’s endless band less than an inch’s fraction above the ultimate point of his nose and chest where the first full breath would bring him into its snatching orbit, himself lying beneath it like a hobo trapped between the rails under a speeding train, safe only so long as he did not move.
So he moved; he said ‘Time:’ swinging his legs over: ‘What time is it? I said fifteen minutes. You promised——’
‘It’s only nine-thirty,’ his uncle said. ‘Plenty of time for a shower and your supper too. They wont leave before we get there.’
‘They?’ he said: up onto his bare feet (he had not undressed except his shoes and sox) already reaching for his slippers. ‘You’ve been back to town. Before we get there? We’re not going with them?’
‘No,’ his uncle said. ‘It’ll take both of us to hold Miss Habersham back. She’s going to meet us at the office. So move along now; she’s probably already waiting for us.’
‘Yes,’ he said. But he was already unfastening his shirt and his belt and trousers too with the other hand, all ready to step in one motion out of both. And this time it was laughing. It was all right. You couldn’t even hear it. ‘So that was why,’ he said. ‘So their women wouldn’t have to chop wood in the dark with half-awake children holding lanterns.’
‘No,’ his uncle said. ‘They were not running from Lucas. They had forgotten about him——’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ he said. ‘They didn’t even wait to send him a can of tobacco and say It’s all right, old man, everybody makes mistakes and we wont hold this one against you.’
‘Was that what you wanted?’ his uncle said. ‘The can of tobacco? That would have been enough?—Of course it wouldn’t. Which is one reason why Lucas will ultimately get his can of tobacco; they will insist on it, they will have to. He will receive installments on it for the rest of his life in this country whether he wants them or not and not just Lucas but Lucas: Sambo since what sets a man writhing sleepless in bed at night is not having injured his fellow so much as having been wrong; the mere injury (if he cannot justify it with what he calls logic) he can efface by destroying the victim and the witnesses but the mistake is his and that is one of his cats which he always prefers to choke to death with butter. So Lucas will get his tobacco. He wont want it of course and he’ll try to resist it. But he’ll get it and so we shall watch right here in Yoknapatawpha County the ancient oriental relationship between the savior and the life he saved turned upside down: Lucas Beauchamp once the slave of any white man within range of whose notice he happened to come, now tyrant over the whole county’s white conscience. And they—Beat One and Two and Three and Five—knew that too so why take time now to send him a ten-cent can of tobacco when they have got to spend the balance of their lives doing it? So they had dismissed him for the time. They were not running from him, they were running from Crawford Gowrie; they simply repudiated not even in horror but in absolute unanimity a shall-not and should-not which without any warning whatever turned into a must-not. Thou shalt not kill you see—no accusative, heatless: a simple moral precept; we have accepted it in the distant anonymity of our forefathers, had it so long, cherished it, fed it, kept the sound of it alive and the very words themselves unchanged, handled it so long that all the corners are now worn smoothly off; we can sleep right in the bed with it; we have even distilled our own antidotes for it as the foresighted housewife keeps a solution of mustard or handy eggwhites on the same shelf with the ratpoison; as familiar as grandpa’s face, as unrecognisable as grandpa’s face beneath the turban of an Indian prince, as abstract as grandpa’s flatulence at the family supper-table; even when it breaks down and the spilled blood stands sharp and glaring in our faces we still have the precept, still intact, still true: we shall not kill and maybe next time we even wont. But thou shall not kill thy mother’s child. It came right down into the street that time to walk in broad daylight at your elbow, didn’t it?’
‘So for a lot of Gowries and Workitts to burn Lucas Beauchamp to death with gasoline for something he didn’t even do is one thing but for a Gowrie to murder his brother is another.’
‘Yes,’ his uncle said.
‘You cant say that,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ his uncle said. ‘Thou shalt not kill in precept and even when you do, precept still remains unblemished and scarless: Thou shalt not kill and who knows, perhaps next time maybe you wont. But Gowrie must not kill Gowrie’s brother: no maybe about it, no next time to maybe not Gowrie kill Gowrie because there must be no first time. And not just for Gowrie but
