His head was now no more than a sort of taut discomfort; at times it seemed to float away from his shoulders and hang against the green wall like a transparent balloon, within which or beyond which that lace that would neither emerge completely nor yet fade completely away, lingered with shadowy exasperation—two eyes round with grave, shocked astonishment, two lifted hands flashing behind little white shirt and blue pants swerving into a lilting rush plunging clatter crash blackness. . . .
Suratt’s slow, plausible voice went on steadily, but without any irritant quality. It seemed to fit easily into the still scene, speaking of earthy things. “Way I learnt to chop cotton,” he was saying, “my oldest brother taken and put me in the row ahead of him. Started me oft, and soon’s I taken a lick or two, here he come behind me. And ever’ time my hoe chopped once, I could hear hisn chop twice.
I never had no shoes in them days, neither,” he added drily. “So I had to learn to chop last, with that ’ere hoe of hisn curtin’ at my bare heels. But I swo’ then, come what mought. I wouldn’t never plant nothin’ in the ground, soon’s I could he’p myself.
It’s all right fer folks that owns the land, but folks like my folks was don’t never own no land, and ever’ time we made a furrow, we was scratchin’ dirt fer somebody else.” The gnats danced and whirled more madly yet in the sun, above the secret places of the stream, and the sun’s light was taking on a rich copper tinge. Suratt rose. “Well, boys, I got to git on back to’rds town, myself.” He looked at Bayard again with his shrewd, kind face. “I reckon Mr. Bayard’s clean fergot about that knock he taken, ain’t he?”
“Dammit,” Bayard said, “quit calling me Mr. Bayard.”
Suratt picked up the jug. “I knowed he was all right, when you got to know him,” he told Hub. “I been knowin’ him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, but me and him jest ain’t been throwed together like this. I was raised a pore boy, fellers, while Mr. Bayard’s folks has lived on that ’ere big place with plenty of money in the bank and niggers to wait on ’ern. But he’s all right,” he repeated. “He ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ about who give him this here whiskey.”
“Let him tell if he wants to,” Hub answered. “I don’t give a damn.”
They drank again. The sun was almost gone, and from the secret marshy places of the stream carne a fairylike piping of young frogs. The gaunt invisible cow lowed barnward, and Hub replaced the corn cob in the jug and drove it home with a blow of his palm, and they mounted the hill and crawled through the fence. The cow stood in the barn door and watched them approach and lowed again, moody and mournful. The geese had left the pond and’ they now paraded sedately across the barnyard towards the house, in the door of which, framed by two crape myrtle bushes, a woman stood.
“Hub,” she said in a flat, country voice.
“Goin’ to town,” Hub answered shortly. “Sue’ll have to milk.”
The woman stood quietly in the door. Hub carried the jug into the barn and the cow followed him, and he heard her and turned and gave her a resounding kick in her gaunt ribs and cursed her without heat. Presently he reappeared and went on to the gate and opened it, and Suratt drove through. Then he closed it and wired it to again and swung on to the fender. Bayard moved over and prevailed on Hub to get inside. The woman stood yet in the door, watching them quietly. About the doorstep the geese surged erratically with discordant cries, their necks undulant and suave as formal gestures in a pantomime.
The shadow of the fruit trees fell long across the untidy fields, and the car pushed its elongated shadow before it like the shadow of a huge, hump-shouldered bird. They mounted the sandy hill in the last of the sun and dropped downward out of the sunlight and into violet dusk. The road was soundless with sand, and the car lurched in the worn and shifting ruts and on to the highroad again.
The waxing moon stood overhead. As yet it gave off no night, though, and they drove on toward town, passing an occasional country wagon homeward bound. These Suratt who knew nearly every soul in the county, greeted with a grave gesture of his brown hand, and presently where the road crossed a wooden bridge among more willows and elder and where dusk was denser and more palpable, Suratt stopped the car and climbed out over the door.
“You fellers set still,” he said. “I won’t be but a minute. Got to fill that ’ere radiator.” They heard him at the rear of the car; then he reappeared with a tin bucket and let himself gingerly down the roadside bank beside the bridge. Water chuckled and murmured beneath the bridge, invisible in the twilight, its murmur burdened with the voice of cricket and frog. Above the willows that marked the course of the stream gnats still spun and whirled, for bull bats appeared from nowhere in long swoops, in mid swoop vanished, then appeared again swooping against the serene sky, silent as drops of water on a window-pane; swift and noiseless and intent as though their wings were feathered with twilight and with silence.
Suratt scrambled up the bank with his pail and removed the cap and tilted the bucket above the radiator. The moon stood without emphasis overhead; yet a faint shadow of Suratt’s head and shoulders fell upon the hood of the car, and upon the pallid planking of the bridge the leaning willow fronds were faintly and delicately penciled in shadow. The last of the water gurgled with faint rumblings into the engine’s interior and Suratt replaced the pail and climbed over the blind door. The lights were operated from a generator; he switched these on now. While the car was in low speed, the lights glared to crescendo, but when he let the clutch in they dropped to a wavering glow no more than a luminous shadow.
Night was fully come when they reached town. Across the land the lights on the courthouse clock were like yellow beads above the trees, and upon the green afterglow a column of smoke stood like a balanced plume. Suratt put them out at the restaurant and drove on, and they entered and the proprietor raised his conical head and his round, melting eyes from behind the soda-fountain.
“Great Savior, boy,” he exclaimed, “ain’t you gone home yet? Doc Peabody’s been huntin’ you ever since four o’clock, and Miss Jenny drove to town in the carriage, looking for you. You’ll kill yourself.”
“Get to hell on back yonder, Deacon,” Bayard answered, “and bring me and Hub about two dollars’ worth of ham and eggs.”
Later they returned for the jug in Bayard’s car, Bayard and Hub and a third young man, freight agent at the railway station, with three negroes and a bull fiddle in the rear seat. But they drove no farther than the edge of the field above the house and stopped there while Hub went on afoot down the sandy road toward the barn. The moon stood pale and cold overhead, and on all sides insects shrilled in the dusty undergrowth. In the rear seat the negroes murmured among themselves.
“Fine night,” Mitch, the freight agent, suggested. Bayard made no reply. He smoked moodily, his head closely helmeted in its white bandage. Moon and insects were one, audible and visible, dimensionless and without source.
After a while Hub materialized against the dissolving vagueness of the road, crowned by the silver slant of his hat, and he came up and swung the jug on to the door and removed the stopper. Mitch passed it to Bayard.
“Drink,” Bayard said, and Mitch did so. The others drank.
“We ain’t got nothin’ for the niggers to drink out of,” Hub said.
“That’s so,” Mitch agreed. He turned in his seat. “Ain’t one of you boys got a cup or something?” The negroes murmured again, questioning one another in mellow consternation.
“Wait,” Bayard said. He got out and lifted the hood and removed the cap from the breather-pipe. “It’ll taste a little like oil for a drink or two. But you boys won’t notice it after that.”
“Naw, suh,” the negroes agreed in chorus. One took the cup and wiped it out with the corner of his coat, and they too drank in turn, with smacking expulsions of breath. Bayard replaced the cap and got in the car.
“Anybody want another right now?” Hub asked, poising the corn cob.
“Give Mitch another,” Bayard directed. “He’ll have to catch up.”
Mitch drank again. Then Bayard took the jug and tilted it. The others watched him respectfully.
“Dam’f he don’t drink it,” Mitch murmured. “I’d be afraid to hit it so often, if I was you.”
“It’s my damned head.” Bayard lowered the jug and passed it to Hub. “I keep thinking another drink will ease it off some.”
“Doc put that bandage on too tight,” Hub said. “Want it loosened some?”
“I don’t know.” Bayard lit another cigarette and threw the match away. “I believe I’ll take it off. It’s been on there long enough.” He raised his hands and fumbled at the bandage.
“You better let it alone,” Mitch
