You see what I mean? if the successful outcome of the race this afternoon wasn’t really the pivot; if Lightning and I were not the last desperate barrier between Boon and Ned and Grandfather’s anger, even if not his police; if without winning the race or even having to run it, Ned and Boon could go back to Jefferson (which was the only home Ned knew, and the only milieu in which Boon could have survived) as if nothing had happened, and take up again as though they had never been away, then all of us were engaged in a make-believe not too different from a boys’ game of cops and robbers. But Bobo could know where the automobile was; that would be allowable, that would be fair; and Bobo was one of us. I said so to Ned.
“I thought I told you to stop worrying about that automobile,” he said. “Aint I promised you I’d tend to it when the right time come? You got plenty other things to fret your mind over: you got a horse race. Aint that enough to keep it busy?” He said to Lycurgus: “All right?”
“I think so,” Lycurgus said. “We never looked back to see.”
“Then maybe,” Ned said. But Bobo had already gone. I neither saw nor heard him; he was just gone. “Get the bucket,” Ned told Lycurgus. “Now is a good time to eat our snack whilst we still got a little peace and quiet around here.” Lycurgus brought it — a tin lard bucket with a clean dishcloth over it, containing pieces of corn bread with fried sidemeat between; there was another bucket of buttermilk sitting in the spring.
“You et breakfast?” Uncle Parsham said to me.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Then dont eat no more,” he said. “Just nibble a piece of bread and a little water.”
“That’s right,” Ned said. “You can ride better empty.” So he gave me a single piece of corn bread and we all squatted now around Uncle Parsham’s saddle, the two buckets on the ground in the center; we heard one step or maybe two up the bank behind us, then McWillie said,
“Hidy, Uncle Possum, morning, reverend” (that was Ned), and came down the bank, already — or still — looking at Lightning. “Yep, that’s Coppermine, all right. These boys had Mr Walter skeered this morning that maybe yawl had rung in another horse on him. You running him, reverend?”
“Call him Mr McCaslin,” Uncle Parsham said.
“Yes sir,” McWillie said. “Mr McCaslin. You running him?”
“White man named Mr Hogganbeck is,” Ned said. “We waiting on him now.”
“Too bad you aint got something else besides Coppermine to wait with, that would maybe give Akron a race,” McWillie said.
“I already told Mr Hogganbeck that, myself,” Ned said. He swallowed. Without haste he lifted the bucket of buttermilk and drank, still without haste. McWillie watched him. He set the bucket down. “Set down and eat something,” he said.
“Much obliged,” McWillie said, “I done et. Maybe that’s why Mr Hogganbeck’s late, waiting to bring out that other horse.”
“There aint time now,” Ned said. “He’ll have to run this one now. The trouble is, the only one around here that knows how to rate this horse, is the very one that knows better than to let him run behind. This horse dont like to be in front. He wants to run right behind up until he can see the finish line, and have something to run at.
I aint seen him race yet, but I’d be willing to bet that the slower the horse in front of him goes, the more carefuller he is not to get out in front where he aint got no company — until he can see that finish line and find out it’s a race he’s in and run at it. All anybody got to do to beat him is to keep his mind so peaceful that when he does notice he’s in a race, it’s too late. Some day somebody gonter let him get far enough behind to scare him, then look out. But it wont be this race. The trouble is, the onliest one around here that knows that too, is the wrong one.”
“Who’s that?” McWillie said.
Ned took another bite. “Whoever’s gonter ride that other horse today.”
“That’s me,” McWillie said. “Dont tell me Uncle Possum and Lycurgus both aint already told you that.”
“Then you oughter be talking to me instead,” Ned said. “Set down and eat; Uncle Possum got plenty here.”
“Much obliged,” McWillie said again. “Well,” he said. “Mr Walter’ll be glad to know it aint nobody but Coppermine. We was afraid we would have to break in a new one. See yawl at the track.” Then he was gone. But I waited another minute.
“But why?” I said.
“I dont know,” Ned said. “We may not even need it. But if we does, we already got it there. You mind I told you this morning how the trouble with this race was, it had too many different things all mixed up in it? Well, this aint our track and country, and it aint even our horse except just in a borried manner of speaking, so we cant take none of them extra things out. So the next best we can do is, to put a few extry ones into it on our own account.
That’s what we just done. That horse up yonder is a Thoroughbred paper horse; why aint he in Memphis or Louisville or Chicago running races, instead of back here in a homemade country pasture running races against whoever can slip in the back way, like us? Because why, because I felt him last night and he’s weedy, like a horse that cant nothing catch for six furlongs, but fifty foot more and he’s done folded up right under you before you knowed it. And so far, all that boy—”
“McWillie,” I said.
“ — McWillie has had to worry about is just staying on top of him and keeping him headed in the right direction; he’s won twice now and likely he thinks if he just had the chance, he would run Earl Sande and Dan Patch both clean outen the horse business. Now we’ve put something else in his mind; he’s got two things in it now that dont quite fit one another. So we’ll just wait and see. And whilst we’re waiting, you go over behind them bushes yonder and lay down and rest. Word’s out now, and folks gonter start easing in and out of here to see what they can find out, and over there they wont worry you.”
Which I did. Though not always asleep; I heard the voices; I wouldn’t have needed to see them even if I had raised onto one elbow and opened one eye past a bush: the same overalls, tieless, the sweated hats, the chewing tobacco, squatting, unhurried, not talking very much, looking inscrutably at the horse.
Nor always awake, because Lycurgus was standing over me and time had passed; the very light looked postmeridian. “Time to go,” he said. There was nobody with Lightning now but Ned and Uncle Parsham; if they were all up at the track already, it must be even later still.
I had expected Boon and Sam and probably Everbe and Miss Reba too. (But not Butch. I hadn’t even thought of him; maybe Miss Reba had really got rid of him for good, back up to Hardwick or wherever it was the clerk said last night he really belonged. I had forgotten him; I realised now what the morning’s peace actually was.) I said so.
“Haven’t they come yet?”
“Aint nobody told them where to come yet,” Ned said. “We dont need Boon Hogganbeck now. Come on. You can walk him up and limber him on the way.” I got up: the worn perfectly cared-for McClellan saddle and the worn perfectly cared-for cavalry bridle which was the other half of Uncle Parsham’s (somebody’s) military loot from that Cause which, the longer I live the more convinced I am, your spinster aunts to the contrary, that whoever lost it, it wasn’t us.
“Maybe they’re looking for Otis,” I said.
“Maybe they are,” Ned said. “It’s a good place to hunt for him, whether they finds him or not.” We went on, Uncle Parsham and Ned walking at Lightning’s head; Lycurgus would bring the buggy and the other mule around by the road, provided he could find enough clear space to hitch them in. Because already the pasture next to the track was filled up — wagons, the teams unhitched and reversed and tied to the stanchions and tail gates; buggies, saddle-horses and -mules hitched to the fence itself; and now we — I — could see the people, black and white, the tieless shirts and the overalls, already dense along
