Some were in overalls, all but one were tieless: people like us except that they lived here, with the same passions and hopes and dialect, enjoying — Butch too — our inalienable constitutional right of free will and private enterprise which has made our country what it is, by holding a private horse race between two local horses; if anyone, committee or individual, from no further away than the next county, had come to interfere or alter or stop it or even participate beyond betting on the horse of his choice, all of us, partisans of either horse, would have risen as one man and repulsed him). And besides the waiter, I saw the back of a maid in uniform just going through the swing door to the pantry or kitchen, and there were two men (one of them had the necktie) at our table talking to Boon and Miss Reba.
But Everbe wasn’t there, and for an instant, second, I had a horrified vision of Butch finally waylaying and capturing her by force, ambushing her in the corridor perhaps while she was carrying the chair to mine and Boon’s door with my laundered clothes on it. But only for a second, and too fantastical; if she had washed for me last night, she had probably, doubtless been up quite late washing for herself and maybe Miss Reba too, and was still asleep. So I went on to the table, where one of the men said,
“This the boy going to ride him? Looks more like you got him taped up for a fist fight.”
“Yes,” Boon said, shoving the dish of ham toward me as I sat down; Miss Reba passed the eggs and grits across. “He cut himself eating peas last night.”
“Haw haw,” the man said. “Anyway, he’ll be carrying less weight this time.”
“Sure,” Boon said. “Unless he eats the knives and forks and spoons while we aint watching him and maybe takes along one of the fire dogs for a snack.”
“Haw haw,” the man said. “From the way he run here last winter, he’s going to need a good deal more than just less weight. But then, that’s the secret, huh?”
“Sure,” Boon said; he was eating again now. “Even if we never had no secret, we would have to act like we did.”
“Haw haw,” the man said again; they got up. “Well, good luck, anyway. That might be as good for that horse as less weight.” The maid came, bringing me a glass of milk and carrying a plate of hot biscuits. It was Minnie, in a fresh apron and cap where Miss Reba had either loaned or hired her to the hotel to help out, with her ravished and unforgiving face, but calm and quiet now; evidently she had rested, even slept some even if she hadn’t forgiven anybody yet. The two strangers went away.
“You see?” Miss Reba said to nobody. “All we need is the right horse and a million dollars to bet.”
“You heard Ned Sunday night,” Boon said. “You were the one that believed him. I mean, decided to believe him. I was different. After that God damned automobile vanished and all we had was the horse, I had to believe him.”
“All right,” Miss Reba said. “Keep your shirt on.”
“And you can stop worrying too,” Boon said to me. “She just went to the depot in case them dogs caught him again last night and Ned brought him in to the train. Or so she said—”
“Did Ned find him?” I said.
“Naw,” Boon said. “Ned’s in the kitchen now. You can ask him — or so she said. Yes. So maybe you had better worry some, after all. Miss Reba got shut of that tin badge for you, but that other one — what’s his name: Caldwell — as on that train this morning.”
“What are you talking about now?” Miss Reba said.
“Nothing,” Boon said. “I aint got nothing to talk about now. I’ve quit. Lucius is the one that’s got tin badge and pullman cap rivals now.” But I was already getting up because I knew now where she was.
“Is that all the breakfast you want?” Miss Reba said.
“Let him alone,” Boon said. “He’s in love.” I crossed the lobby. Maybe Ned was right, and all it took for a horse race was two horses with the time to run a race, within ten miles of each other, and the air itself spread the news of it. Though not as far as the ladies’ parlor yet.
So maybe what I meant by crying looking well on Everbe was that she was big enough to cry as much as she seemed to have to do, and still have room for that many tears to dry off without streaking. She was sitting by herself in the ladies’ parlor and crying again, the third time — no: four, counting two Sunday night. Until you wondered why.
I mean, nobody made her come with us and she could have gone back to Memphis on any train that passed. Yet here she was, so she must be where she wanted to be. Yet this was the second time she had cried since we reached Parsham. I mean, anybody with as many extra tears as she had, still didn’t have enough to waste that many on Otis. So I said,
“He’s all right. Ned will find him today. Much obliged for washing my clothes. Where’s Mr Sam? I thought he was going to be on that train.”
“He had to take the train on to Memphis and take his uniform off,” she said. “He cant go to a horse race in it. He’ll be back on the noon freight. I cant find my handkerchief.”
I found it for her. “Maybe you ought to wash your face,” I said. “When Ned finds him, he will get the tooth back.”
“It aint the tooth,” she said. “I’m going to buy Minnie another tooth. It’s that . . . He never had no chance. He . . . Did you promise your mother you wouldn’t never take things too?”
“You dont have to promise anybody that,” I said. “You dont take things.”
“But you would have promised, if she had asked you?”
“She wouldn’t ask me,” I said. “You dont take things.”
“Yes,” she said. She said: “I aint going to stay in Memphis. I talked to Sam at the depot this morning and he says that’s a good idea too. He can find me a job in Chattanooga or somewhere. But you’ll still be in Jefferson, so maybe I could write you a post card where I’m at and then if you took a notion—”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll write to you. Come on. They’re still eating breakfast.”
“There’s something about me you dont know. You couldn’t even guess it.”
“I know it,” I said. “It’s Everbe Corinthia. I been calling you that two or three days now. That’s right. It was Otis. But I wont tell anybody. But I dont see why.”
“Why? A old-timey countrified name like that? Can you imagine anybody in Reba’s saying, Send up Everbe Corinthia? They would be ashamed. They would die laughing. So I thought of changing it to Yvonne or Billie or Ken. But Reba said Corrie would do.”
“Shucks,” I said.
“You mean, it’s all right? You say it.” I said it. She listened. Then she kept on listening, exactly as you wait for an echo. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what it can be now.”
“Then come on and eat breakfast,” I said. “Ned’s waiting for me and I got to go.” But Boon came in first.
“There are too many people out there,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t a told that damn fellow you were going to ride him today.” He looked at me. “Maybe I shouldn’t a never let you leave Jefferson.” There was a small door behind a curtain at the back of the room. “Come on,” he said. It was another corridor. Then we were in the kitchen. The vast cook was at the sink again. Ned was sitting at a table finishing his breakfast, but mainly saying,
“When I sugars up a woman, it aint just empty talk. They can buy something with it too—” and stopped and rose at once; he said to me: “You ready?
Time you and me was getting back to the country. They’s too many folks around here. If they all had money and would bet it, and the horse they bet on would just be the wrong horse, and we just had the money to cover it and knowed the right horse to cover it with, we wouldn’t just take no automobile back to Jefferson tonight: we’d take all Possum too, to maybe sugar back Boss Priest’s nature. He aint never owned a town before, and he might like it.”
“Wait,” Boon said. “Aint we got to make some plans?”
“The onliest one that needs any plan is Lightning,” Ned said. “And the only plan he needs is to plan to get out in front and stay there until somebody tells him to stop. But I know what
