But still behind the bit; he had never once come into the bridle, his whole head bent around and rucked but with no weight whatever on the hand, as if the bit were a pork rind and he a Mohammedan (or a fish spine and he a Mississippi candidate for constable whose Baptist opposition had accused him of seeking the Catholic vote, or one of Mrs Roosevelt’s autographed letters and a secretary of the Citizens Council, or Senator Goldwater’s cigar butt and the youngest pledge to the A.D.A.), on until he reached Ned, and with a jerk I felt clean up to my shoulder, snatched his head free and began to nuzzle at Ned’s shirt. “U-huh,” Ned said. He had one hand behind him; I could see a peeled switch in it now.
“Head him back.” He said to the horse: “You got to learn, son, not to run back to me until I sends for you.” Then to me: “He aint gonter stop this time. But you make like he is: just one stride ahead of where, if you was him, you would think about turning to come to me, reach back with your hand and whop him hard as you can. Now set tight,” and stepped back and cut the horse quick and hard across the buttocks.
It leapt, sprang into full run: the motion (not our speed nor even our progress: just the horse’s motion) seemed terrific: graceless of course, but still terrific. Because it was simple reflex from fright, and fright does not become horses.
They are built wrong for it, being merely mass and symmetry, while fright demands fluidity and grace and bizarreness and the capacity to enchant and enthrall and even appall and aghast, like an impala or a giraffe or a snake; even as the fright faded I could feel, sense the motion become simply obedience, no more than an obedient hand gallop, on around the back turn and stretch and into what would be the home stretch, when I did as Ned ordered: one stride before the point at which he had turned to Ned before, I reached back and hit him as hard as I could with the flat of my sound hand; and again the leap, the spring, but only into willingness, obedience, alarm: not anger nor even eagerness. “That’ll do,” Ned said. “Bring him in.” We came up and stopped. He was sweating a little, but that was all. “How do he feel?” Ned said.
I tried to tell him. “The front half of him dont want to run.”
“He reached out all right when I touched him,” Ned said.
I tried again. “I dont mean his front end. His legs feel all right. His head just dont want to go anywhere.”
“U-huh,” Ned said. He said to Uncle Parsham: “You seen one of them races. What happened?”
“I saw both of them,” Uncle Parsham said. “Nothing happened. He was running good until all of a sudden he must have looked up and seen there wasn’t nothing in front of him but empty track.”
“U-huh,” Ned said. “Jump down.” I got down. He stripped off the saddle. “Hand me your foot.”
“How do you know that horse has been ridden bareback before?” Uncle Parsham said.
“I dont,” Ned said. “We gonter find out.”
“This boy aint got but one hand,” Uncle Parsham said. “Here, Lycurgus—”
But Ned already had my foot. “This boy learnt holding on riding Zack Edmonds’s colts back in Missippi. I watched him at least one time when I didn’t know what he was holding on with lessen it was his teeth.” He threw me up. The horse did nothing: it squatted, flinched a moment, trembling a little; that was all. “U-huh,” Ned said. “Let’s go eat your breakfast. Whistle-britches will be here to work him this evening, then maybe Lightning will start having some fun outen this too.”
Lycurgus’s mother, Uncle Parsham’s daughter, was cooking dinner now; the kitchen smelled of the boiling vegetables. But she had kept my breakfast warm — fried sidemeat, grits, hot biscuits and buttermilk or sweet milk or coffee; she untied my riding-glove from my hand so I could eat, a little surprised that I had never tasted coffee since Lycurgus had been having it on Sunday morning since he was two years old.
And I thought I was just hungry until I went to sleep right there in the plate until Lycurgus half dragged, half carried me to his bed in the lean-to. And, as Ned said, Mr Sam Caldwell was some Sam Caldwell; Everbe and Otis got down from the caboose of a freight train which stopped that long at Parsham a few minutes before noon.
It was a through freight, not intended to stop until it reached Florence, Alabama, or some place like that. I dont know how much extra coal it took to pump up the air brakes to stop it dead still at Parsham and then fire the boiler enough to regain speed and make up the lost time. Some Sam Caldwell. Twenty-three skiddoo, as Otis said.
So when the loud unfamiliar voice waked me and Lycurgus’s mother tied the riding-sock back on from where she had put it away when I went to sleep in my plate, and I went outside, there they all were: a surrey tied outside the gate and Uncle Parsham standing again at the top of his front steps, still wearing his hat, and Ned sitting on the next-to-bottom step and Lycurgus standing in the angle between steps and gallery as if the three of them were barricading the house; and in the yard facing them Everbe (yes, she brought it.
I mean, Ned’s grip) and Otis and Boon and the one who was doing the loud talking — a man almost as big as Boon and almost as ugly, with a red face and a badge and a bolstered pistol stuck in his hind pocket, standing between Boon and Everbe, who was still trying to pull away from the hand which was holding her arm.
“Yep,” he was saying, “I know old Possum Hood. And more than that, old Possum Hood knows me, dont you, boy?”
“We all knows you here, Mr Butch,” Uncle Parsham said with no inflection whatever.
“If any dont, it’s just a oversight and soon corrected,” Butch said. “If your womenfolks are too busy dusting and sweeping to invite us in the house, tell them to bring some chairs out here so this young lady can set down.
You, boy,” he told Lycurgus, “hand down two of them chairs on the gallery there where me and you” — he was talking at Everbe now— “can set in the cool and get acquainted while Sugar Boy” — he meant Boon. I dont know how I knew it— “takes these boys down to look at that horse. Huh?”
Still holding Everbe’s elbow, he would tilt her gently away from him until she was almost off balance; then, a little faster though still not a real jerk, pull her back again, she still trying to get loose; now she used her other hand, pushing at his wrist. And now I was watching Boon. “You sure I aint seen you somewhere? at Birdie Watts’s maybe? Where you been hiding, anyway? a good-looking gal Like you?” Now Ned got up, not fast.
“Morning, Mr Boon,” he said. “You and Mr Shurf want Lucius to bring the horse out?” Butch stopped tilting Everbe. He still held her though.
“Who’s he?” he said. “As a general rule, we dont take to strange niggers around here. We dont object though, providing they notify themselves and then keep their mouths shut.”
“Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi,” Ned said.
“You got too much name,” Butch said. “You want something quick and simple to answer to around here until you can raise a white mush-tash and goat whisker like old Possum there, and earn it. We dont care where you come from neither; all you’ll need here is just somewhere to go back to. But you’ll likely do all right; at least you got sense enough to recognise Law when you see it.”
“Yes sir,” Ned said. “I’m acquainted with Law. We got it back in Jefferson too.” He said to Boon: “You want the horse?”
“No,” Everbe said; she had managed to free her arm; she moved quickly away; she could have done it sooner by just saying Boon: which was what Butch — deputy, whatever he was — wanted her to do, and we all knew that too. She moved, quickly for a big girl, on until she had me between her and Butch, holding my arm now; I could feel her hand trembling a little as she gripped me. “Come on, Lucius. Show us the way.” She said, her voice tense: a murmur, almost passionate: “How’s your hand? Does it hurt?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“You sure? You’d tell me? Does wearing that sock on it help?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’d tell you.” We went back to the stable that way, Everbe almost dragging me to keep me between her and Butch. But it was no good; he simply walked me off; I could smell him now — sweat and whiskey — and now I saw the top of the pint bottle in his other hind pocket; he (Butch) holding her elbow again and suddenly I was afraid, because I knew I didn’t — and I wasn’t sure Boon did — know
