She stops again and turns farther as Nancy enters from the rear alcove, followed by the Jailor, who passes Nancy and comes on, carrying the ring of keys once more like a farmer’s lantern.
JAILOR
(to Stevens)
Okay, Lawyer. How much time you want? Thirty minutes? an hour?
STEVENS
Ten minutes should be enough.
JAILOR
(still moving toward the exit, left)
Okay.
(to Temple)
You sure you don’t want that coffee or a Coca-Cola? I could bring you up a rocking chair ——
TEMPLE
Thank you just the same, Mr. Tubbs.
JAILOR
Okay.
(at the exit door, unlocking it)
Ten minutes, then.
He unlocks the door, opens it, exits, closes and locks it behind him; the lock clashes, his footsteps die away. Nancy has slowed and stopped where the Jailor passed her; she now stands about six feet to the rear of Temple and Stevens. Her face is calm, unchanged. She is dressed exactly as before, except for the apron; she still wears the hat.
NANCY
(to Temple)
You been to California, they tell me. I used to think maybe I would get there too, some day. But I waited too late to get around to it.
TEMPLE
So did I. Too late and too long. Too late when I went to California, and too late when I came back. That’s it: too late and too long, not only for you, but for me too; already too late when both of us should have got around to running, like from death itself, from the very air anybody breathed named Drake or Mannigoe.
NANCY
Only, we didn’t. And you come back, yesterday evening. I heard that too. And I know where you were last night, you and him both.
(indicating Stevens)
You went to see the Mayor.
TEMPLE
Oh, God, the mayor. No: the Governor, the Big Man himself, in Jackson. Of course; you knew that as soon as you realised that Mr. Gavin wouldn’t be here last night to help you sing, didn’t you? In fact, the only thing you can’t know about it is what the Governor told us. You can’t know that yet, no matter how clairvoyant you are, because we — the Governor and Mr. Gavin and I — were not even talking about you; the reason I — we had to go and see him was not to beg or plead or bind or loose, but because it would be my right, my duty, my privilege —— Don’t look at me, Nancy.
NANCY
I’m not looking at you. Besides, it’s all right. I know what the Governor told you. Maybe I could have told you last night what he would say, and saved you the trip. Maybe I ought to have — sent you the word as soon as I heard you were back home, and knowed what you and him ——
(again she indicates Stevens with that barely discernible movement of her head, her hands still folded across her middle as though she still wore the absent apron)
— both would probably be up to. Only, I didn’t. But it’s all right ——
TEMPLE
Why didn’t you? Yes, look at me. This is worse, but the other is terrible.
NANCY
What?
TEMPLE
Why didn’t you send me the word?
NANCY
Because that would have been hoping: the hardest thing of all to break, get rid of, let go of, the last thing of all poor sinning man will turn aloose. Maybe it’s because that’s all he’s got. Leastways, he holds onto it, hangs onto it. Even with salvation laying right in his hand, and all he’s got to do is, choose between it; even with salvation already in his hand and all he needs is just to shut his fingers, old sin is still too strong for him, and sometimes before he even knows it, he has throwed salvation away just grabbling back at hoping. But it’s all right ——
STEVENS
You mean, when you have salvation, you don’t have hope?
NANCY
You don’t even need it. All you need, all you have to do, is just believe. So maybe ——
STEVENS
Believe what?
NANCY
Just believe. — So maybe it’s just as well that all I did last night, was just to guess where you all went. But I know now, and I know what the Big Man told you. And it’s all right. I finished all that a long time back, that same day in the judge’s court. No: before that even: in the nursery that night, before I even lifted my hand ——
TEMPLE
(convulsively)
Hush. Hush.
NANCY
All right. I’ve hushed. Because it’s all right. I can get low for Jesus too. I can get low for Him too.
TEMPLE
Hush! Hush! At least, don’t blaspheme. But who am I to challenge the language you talk about Him in, when He Himself certainly can’t challenge it, since that’s the only language He arranged for you to learn?
NANCY
What’s wrong with what I said? Jesus is a man too. He’s got to be. Menfolks listens to somebody because of what he says. Women don’t. They don’t care what he said. They listens because of what he is.
TEMPLE
Then let Him talk to me. I can get low for Him too, if that’s all He wants, demands, asks. I’ll do anything He wants if He’ll just tell me what to do. No: how to do it. I know what to do, what I must do, what I’ve got to do. But how? We — I thought that all I would have to do would be to come back and go to the Big Man and tell him that it wasn’t you who killed my baby, but I did it five years ago that day when I slipped out the back door of that train, and that would be all. But we were wrong.
Then I — we thought that all it would be was, for me just to come back here and tell you you had to die; to come all the way two thousand miles from California, to sit up all night driving to Jackson and talking for an hour or two and then driving back, to tell you you had to die; not just to bring you the news that you had to die, because any messenger could do that, but just so it could be me that would have to sit up all night and talk for the hour or two hours and then bring you the news back.
You know: not to save you, that wasn’t really concerned in it: but just for me, just for the suffering and the paying: a little more suffering simply because there was a little more time left for a little more of it, and we might as well use it since we were already paying for it; and that would be all; it would be finished then. But we were wrong again. That was all, only for you. You wouldn’t be any worse off if I had never come back from California. You wouldn’t even be any worse off.
And this time tomorrow, you won’t be anything at all. But not me. Because there’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. All you’ve got to do is, just to die. But let Him tell me what to do. No: that’s wrong; I know what to do, what I’m going to do; I found that out that same night in the nursery too. But let Him tell me how. How? Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and still tomorrow. How?
NANCY
Trust in Him.
TEMPLE
Trust in Him. Look what He has already done to me. Which is all right; maybe I deserved it; at least I’m not the one to criticise or dictate to Him. But look what He did to you. Yet you can still say that. Why? Why? Is it because there isn’t anything else?
NANCY
I don’t know. But you got to trust Him. Maybe that’s your pay for the suffering.
STEVENS
Whose suffering, and whose pay? Just each one’s for his own?
NANCY
Everybody’s. All suffering. All poor sinning man’s.
STEVENS
The salvation of the world is in man’s suffering. Is that it?
NANCY
Yes, sir.
STEVENS
How?
NANCY
I don’t know. Maybe when folks are suffering, they will be too busy to get into devilment, won’t have time to worry and meddle one another.
TEMPLE
But why must it be suffering? He’s omnipotent, or so they tell us. Why couldn’t He have invented something else? Or, if it’s got to be suffering, why can’t it be just your own? why can’t you buy back your own sins with your own agony? Why do you and my little baby both have to suffer just because I decided to go to a baseball game five years ago? Do you have to suffer everybody else’s anguish just to believe in God? What kind of God is it that has to blackmail His customers with the whole world’s grief and ruin?
NANCY
He don’t want you to suffer. He don’t like suffering neither. But He can’t help Himself. He’s like a man that’s got too many mules. All of a sudden one morning, he looks around and sees more mules than he can count at one time even, let alone find work for, and all he knows is that they are his, because at least don’t nobody else want to claim them, and that the pasture fence was still holding them last night where they can’t harm themselves nor nobody else the least possible.
And that when Monday morning comes, he can walk in there and hem some of them up and even catch them if he’s careful about not never turning his back on the ones he ain’t hemmed up. And that,
