But he still waked at times in the peaceful darkness of his room and without previous warning, tense and sweating with old terror. Then, momentarily, the world was laid away and he was a trapped beast in the high blue, mad for life, trapped in the very cunning fabric that had betrayed him who had dared chance too much, and he thought again if, when the bullet found you, you could only crash upward, burst; anything but earth. Not death, no: It was the crash you had to live through so many times before you struck that filled your throat with vomit.
But his days were filled, at least, and he discovered pride again. Nowadays he drove the car into town to fetch his grandfather from habit alone, and though he still considered forty-five miles an hour merely cruising speed, he no longer took cold and fiendish pleasure in turning curves on two wheels or detaching mules from wagons by striking the whiffletrees with his bumper in passing.
Old Bayard still insisted on riding with him when he must ride, but with freer breath, and once he aired to Miss Jenny his growing belief that at last young Bayard had outworn his seeking for violent destruction.
Miss Jenny, being a true optimist—that is, expecting the worst at all times and so being daily agreeably surprised—promptly disillusioned him. Meanwhile she made young Bayard drink plenty of milk and otherwise superintended his diet and hours in her martinetish way, and at times she entered his room at night and sat for a while beside the bed where he slept.
Nevertheless young Bayard improved in his ways. Without being aware of the progress of it he had become submerged in a monotony of days, had been snared by a rhythm of activities repeated and repeated until his muscles grew so familiar with them as to get his body through the days without assistance from him at all.
He had been so neatly tricked by earth, that ancient Delilah, that he was not aware that his locks were shorn, was not aware that Miss Jenny and old Bayard were wondering how long it would be before they grew out again. “He needs a wife,” was Miss Jenny’s thought; “then maybe he’ll stay sheared. A young person to worry with him,” she said to herself; “Bayard’s too old, and I’ve got too much to do to worry with the long devil.”
He saw Narcissa about the house now and then, sometimes at the table these days, and he still felt her shrinking and her distaste, and at times Miss Jenny sat watching the two of them with a sort of speculation and an exasperation with their seeming obliviousness of one another. “He treats her like a dog would treat a cut-glass pitcher, and she looks at him like a cut-glass pitcher would look at a dog,” she told herself.
Then sowing-time was over and it was summer, and he found himself with nothing to do. It was like coming dazed out of sleep, out of the warm, sunny valleys where people lived into a region where cold peaks of savage despair stood bleakly above the lost valleys, among black and savage stars.
The road descended in a quiet red curve between pines through which the hot July winds swelled with a long sound like a far-away passing of trains, descended to a mass of lighter green of willows, where a creek ran beneath a stone bridge. At the top of the grade the scrubby, rabbitlike mules stopped, and the younger negro got down and lifted a gnawed white-oak sapling from the wagon and locked the off rear wheel by wedging the pole between the warped, wire-bound spokes of it and across the axle tree. Then he climbed back into the crazy wagon, where the other negro sat motionless with the rope-spliced reins in his hand and his head tilted creekward. “Whut ’uz dat?” he said.
“Whut wus whut?” the other asked. His father sat in his attitude of arrested attention, and the young negro listened also. But there was no further sound save the long sough of the wind among the sober pines and the liquid whistling of a quail somewhere among the green fastnesses of them. “Whut you hear, pappy?” he repeated.
“Somethin’ busted down dar. Tree fell, maybe.” He jerked the reins. “Hwup, mules.” The mules flapped their jack-rabbit ears and lurched the wagon into motion and they descended among cool, dappled shadows, on the jarring scrape of the locked wheel that left behind it a glazed bluish ribbon in the soft red dust.
At the foot of the hill the road crossed the bridge and went on mounting again; beneath the bridge the creek rippled and flashed brownly among willows, and beside the bridge and bottom up in the water, a motorcar lay. Its front wheels were still spinning and the engine ran at idling speed, trailing a faint shimmer of exhaust. The older negro drove on to the bridge and stopped, and the two of them sat and stared statically down upon the car’s long belly. The young negro spoke suddenly.
“Dar he is! He in de water under hit. I kin see his foots stickin’ out.”
“He liable ter drown, dar,” the other said, with interest and disapproval, and they descended from the wagon. The young negro slid down the creek bank. The other wrapped the reins deliberately about one of the stakes that held the bed on the frame and thrust his peeled hickory goad beneath the seat, and went around and dragged the pole free of the locked wheel and put it in the wagon. Then he also slid gingerly down the bank to where his son squatted, peering at Bayard’s submerged legs.
“Don’t you git too clost ter dat thing, boy,” he commanded. “Hit mought blow up. Don’t you hear it still grindin’ in dar?”
“We got to git dat man out,” the young one replied. “He gwine drown.”
“Don’t you tech ’im. White folks be sayin’ we done it. We gwine wait right here ’twell some white man comes erlong.”
“He’ll drown ’fo dat,” the other said, “layin’ in dat water.” He was barefoot, and he stepped into the water and stood again with brown flashing wings of water stemming about his lean black calves.
“You, John Henry!” his father said. “You come ’way fum dat thing.”
“We got to git ’im outen dar,” the boy repeated, and the one in the water and the other on the bank, they wrangled amicably while the water rippled about Bayard’s boot toes. Then the young negro approached warily and caught Bayard’s leg and tugged at it. The body responded, shifted, stopped again, and grunting querulously, the older negro sat and removed his shoes and stepped into the water also. “He hung again,” John Henry said, squatting in the water with his arms beneath the car. “He hung under de guidin’-wheel. His haid ain’t quite under water, dough. Lemme git de pole.”
He mounted the bank and got the sapling from the wagon and returned and joined his father where the other stood in sober, curious disapproval above Bayard’s legs, and with the pole they lifted the car enough to drag Bayard out. They lifted him on to the bank and he sprawled there in the sun, with his calm, wet face and his matted hair, while water drained out of his boots, and they stood above him on alternate legs and wrung out their overalls.
“Hit’s Cunnel Sartoris’s boy, ain’t it?” the elder said at last, and he lowered himself stiffly to the sand, groaning and grunting, and donned his shoes.
“Yessuh,” the other answered. “Is he daid, pappy?”
“Co’se he is,” the elder answered pettishly. “Atter dat otto’bile jumped offen dat bridge wid ’im en den trompled ’im in de creek? Whut you reckon he is ef he ain’t daid? And whut you gwine say when de law axes you how come you de onliest one dat foun’ ’im daid? Tell me dat.”
“Tell ’um you holp me.”
“Hit ain’t none of my business. I never run dat thing offen dat bridge. Listen at it dar, mumblin’ and grindin’ yit. You git on ’fo’ hit blows up.”
“We better git ’im into town,” John Henry said. “Dey mought not nobody else be comin’ ’long today.” He stooped and lifted Bayard’s shoulders and tugged him to a sitting position. “He’p me git ’im up de bank, pappy.”
“Hit ain’t none o’ my business,” the other repeated. But he stooped and picked up Bayard’s legs and they lifted him, and he groaned without waking.
“Dar, now,” John Henry exclaimed. “Hear dat? He ain’t daid.” But he might well have been, with his long, inert body and his head wrung excruciatingly against John Henry’s shoulder. They shifted their grip and turned toward the road. “Hah!” John Henry exclaimed. “Le’s go!”
They struggled up the shaling bank with him and on to the road, where the elder let his end of the burden slip to the ground. “Whuf.” He expelled his breath sharply. “He heavy ez a flou’ bar’l.”
“Come on, pappy,” John Henry said, “le’s git ’im in de waggin.” The other stooped again, and they raised Bayard with dust caked redly on his wet thighs and heaved him by grunting stages into the wagon. “He look like a daid man,” John Henry added, “and he sho’ do ack like one. I’ll ride back here wid ’im and keep his haid fum bumpin’.”
“Git dat brakin’ pole you lef’ in de creek,” his father ordered, and John Henry descended and retrieved the sapling and got in the wagon again and lifted Bayard’s head on to his knees. His
