“He hit her?” I said. “Boon hit Ever — Miss Corrie?”
“Is that her name? Yes. — and turned around and went straight back until he found that Law and whupped him, pistol and all, before they could pull him off—”
“Boon hit her,” I said. “He hit her.”
“That’s right,” Ned said. “She is the reason me and Lightning are free right now. That Butch found out he couldn’t get to her no other way, and when he found out that me and you and Boon had to win that race today before we could dare to go back home, and all we had to win it with was Lightning, he took Lightning and locked him up.
That’s what happened. That’s all it was; Uncle Possum just told you how he watched it coming Monday, and maybe I ought to seen it too and maybe I would if I hadn’t been so busy with Lightning, or maybe if I had been a little better acquainted with that Butch—”
“I dont believe it,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what it was. It was just bad luck, the kind of bad luck you cant count against beforehand. He likely just happened to be wherever he was just by chance when he seen her Monday and figgered right off that that badge and pistol would be all he would need, being likely used to having them be enough around here. Only this time they wasn’t and so he had to look again, and sho enough, there was Lightning that we had to depend on to win that race so we could get back Boss’s automobile and maybe go back home—”
“No!” I said. “No! It wasn’t her! She’s not even here! She went back to Memphis with Sam yesterday evening! They just didn’t tell you! It was somebody else! It was another one!”
“No,” Ned said. “It was her. You seen it Monday out here.” Oh yes; and on the way back in the surrey that afternoon, and at the doctor’s, and at the hotel that night until Miss Reba frightened him away, we — I anyway — thought for good. Because Miss Reba was only a woman too. I said:
“Why didn’t somebody else help her? a man to help her — that man, that man that took you and Lightning, that told Sam and Butch both they could be whatever they wanted in Memphis or Nashville or Hardwick either, but that here in Possum he was the one—” I said, cried: “I dont believe it!”
“Yes,” Ned said. “It was her that bought Lightning loose to run again today. I aint talking about me and Boon and them others; Butch never cared nothing about us, except to maybe keep Boon outen the way until this morning.
All he needed was Lightning, only he had to throw in me and Boon and the rest to make Mr Poleymus believe him. Because Butch tricked him too, used him too, until whatever it was that happened this morning — whether that Butch, having done been paid off now, said it was all a mistake or it was the wrong horse, or maybe by that time Mr Poleymus his-self had added one to one and smelled a mouse and turned everybody loose and before he could turn around, Boon went and whupped that gal and then come straight back without even stopping and tried to tear that Butch’s head off, pistol and all, with his bare hands, and Mr Poleymus smelled a whole rat.
And Mr Poleymus may be little, and he may be old; but he’s a man, mon. They told me how last year his wife had one of them strokes and cant even move her hand now, and all the chillen are married and gone, so he has to wash her and feed her and lift her in and outen the bed day and night both, besides cooking and keeping house too unlessen some neighbor woman comes in to help. But you dont know it to look at him and watch him act.
He come in there — I never seen none of it; they just told me: two or three holding Boon and another one trying to keep that Butch from whupping him with the pistol whilst they was holding him — and walked up to Butch and snatched that pistol outen his hand and reached up and ripped that badge and half his shirt off too and telefoamed to Hardwick to send a automobile to bring them all back to jail, the women too. When it’s women, they calls it fragrancy.”
“Vagrancy,” Uncle Parsham said.
“That’s what I said,” Ned said. “You call it whatever you want. I calls it jail.”
“I dont believe it,” I said. “She quit.”
“Then we sho better say much obliged that she started again,” Ned said. “Else me and you and Lightning—”
“She’s quit,” I said. “She promised me.”
“Aint we got Lightning back?” Ned said. “Aint all we got to do now is just run him? Didn’t Mr Sam say he will be back today and will know what to do, and then me and you and Boon will be just the same as already back home?”
I sat there. It was still early. I mean, even now it was still only eight oclock. It was going to be hot today, the first hot day, precursor of summer. You see, just to keep on saying I dont believe it served only for the moment; as soon as the words, the noise, died, there it still was — anguish, rage, outrage, grief, whatever it was — unchanged. “I have to go to town right away,” I said to Uncle Parsham. “If I can use one of the mules, I’ll send you the money as soon as I get home.” He rose at once.
“Come on,” he said.
“Hold on,” Ned said. “It’s too late now, Mr Poleymus sent for a automobile. They’ve already left before now.”
“He can cut them off,” Uncle Parsham said. “It aint a half a mile from here to the road they’ll be on.”
“I got to get some sleep,” Ned said.
“I know it,” Uncle Parsham said. “I’m going with him. I told him last night I would.”
“I’m not going home yet,” I said. “I’m just going to town for a minute. Then I’ll come back here.”
“All right,” Ned said. “At least lemme finish my coffee.” We didn’t wait for him. One of the mules was gone, probably to the field with Lycurgus. But the other was there. Ned came out before we had the gear on.
Uncle Parsham showed us the short cut to the Hardwick road, but I didn’t care. I mean, it didn’t matter to me now where I met him. If I hadn’t been just about worn out with race horses and women and deputy sheriffs and everybody else that wasn’t back home where they belonged, I might have preferred to hold my interview with Boon in some quick private place for both our sakes.
But it didn’t matter now; it could be in the middle of the big road or in the middle of the Square either, as far as I was concerned; there could be a whole automobile full of them. But we didn’t meet the automobile; obviously I was being protected; to have had to do it in public would have been intolerable, gratuitously intolerable for one who had served Non-virtue this faithfully for four days and asked so little in return. I mean, not to have to see any more of them than I had to.
Which was granted; the still-empty automobile had barely reached the hotel itself when we got there: a seven-passenger Stanley Steamer: enough room even for the baggage of two — no, three: Minnie too — women on a two-day trip from Memphis to Parsham, which they would all be upstairs packing now, so even horse stealing took care of its own. Ned cramped the wheel for me to get down. “You still dont want to tell me what you come for?” he said.
“No,” I said. None of the long row of chairs on the gallery were occupied, Caesar could have held his triumph there and had all the isolation Boon’s and Butch’s new status required; the lobby was empty, and Mr Poleymus could have used that. But he was a man, mon; they were in the ladies’ parlor — Mr Poleymus, the driver of the car (another deputy; anyway, in a badge), Butch and Boon fresh and marked from battle.
Though only Boon for me, who read my face (he had known it long enough) or maybe it was his own heart or anyway conscience; he said quickly:
“Look out, now, Lucius; look out!” already flinging up one arm as he rose quickly, already stepping back, retreating, I walking at him, up to him, not tall enough by more than half and nothing to stand on either (that ludicrous anticlimax of shame), having to reach, to jump even, stretch the best I could to strike at his face; oh yes, I was crying, bawling again; I couldn’t even see him now: just hitting as high as I could, having to jump at him to do so, against his Alp-hard Alp-tall crags and cliffs, Mr Poleymus saying behind me:
“Hit him again. He struck a woman, I dont care who she is,” and (or somebody) holding me until I wrenched, jerked free, turning, blind, for the door or where I thought I remembered it, the hand guiding me now.
“Wait,” Boon said. “Dont you want to see her?” You see,
