“Look out now,” Ned said; and still to me, nothing: only the faces and the voices like a sea:
“That’s riding him, boy! That’s bringing him in!” but we not stopping, Ned leading Lightning on, saying,
“Let us through, Whitefolks; let us through, Whitefolks,” until they gave back enough to let us go on, but still moving along with us, like the wave, until we reached the gate to the infield where the judges were waiting, and Ned said again: “Look out, now”; and now I dont remember: only the stopped horse with Ned at the bit like a tableau, and me looking past Lightning’s ears at Grandfather leaning a little on his cane (the gold-headed one) and two other people whom I had known somewhere a long time ago just behind him.
“Boss,” I said.
“What did you do to your hand?” he said.
“Yes sir,” I said. “Boss.”
“You’re busy now,” he said. “So am I.” It was quite kind, quite cold. No: it wasn’t anything. “We’ll wait until we get home,” he said. Then he was gone. Now the two people were Sam and Minnie looking up at me with her calm grim inconsolable face for it seemed to me a long time while Ned was still pawing at my leg.
“Where’s that tobacco sack I give you to keep yestiddy?” he said. “You sholy aint lost it?”
“Oh yes,” I said, reaching it from my pocket.
XIII
“SHOW THEM,” MISS Reba told Minnie. They were in our — I mean Boon’s — no, I mean Grandfather’s — automobile: Everbe and Miss Reba and Minnie and Sam and Colonel Linscomb’s chauffeur; he was McWillie’s father; Colonel Linscomb had an automobile too. They — the chauffeur and Sam and Minnie — had gone up to Hardwick to get Miss Reba and Everbe and Boon and bring them all back to Parsham, where Miss Reba and Minnie and Sam could take the train for Memphis. Except that Boon didn’t come back with them. He was in jail again, the third time now, and they had stopped at Colonel Linscomb’s to tell Grandfather. Miss Reba told it, sitting in the car, with Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb and me standing around it because she wouldn’t come in; she told about Boon and Butch.
“It was bad enough in the automobile going up there. But at least we had that deputy, let alone that little old constable you folks got that dont look like much but I’d say people dont fool around with him much either. When we got to Hardwick, they at least had sense enough to lock them in separate cells.
The trouble was, they never had no way to lock up Corrie’s new friend’s mouth—” and stopped; and I didn’t want to have to look at Everbe either: a big girl, too big for little things to have to happen to like the black eye or the cut mouth, whichever one she would have, unless maybe she wouldn’t, couldn’t, be content with less than both; sitting there, having to, without anywhere to go or room to do it even, with the slow painful blood staining up the cheek I could see from here. “I’m sorry, kid; forget it,” Miss Reba said. “Where was I?”
“You were telling what Boon did this time,” Grandfather said.
“Oh yes,” Miss Reba said. “ — locked them up in separate cells across the corridor and they were taking Corrie and me — sure; they treated us fine: just like ladies — down to the jailor’s wife’s room where we were going to stay, when what’s-his-name — Butch — pipes up and says, ‘Well, there’s one thing about it: me and Sugar Boy lost some blood and skin and a couple of shirts too, but at least we got these excuse my French,” Miss Reba said, “ ’Memphis whores off the street.’
So Boon started in right away to tear that steel door down but they had remembered to already lock it, so you would think that would have calmed him: you know: having to sit there and look at it for a while. Anyhow, we thought so. Then when Sam came with the right papers or whatever they were — and much obliged to you,” she told Grandfather. “I dont know how much you had to put up, but if you’ll send the bill to me when I get home, I’ll attend to it. Boon knows the address and knows me.”
“Thank you,” Grandfather said. “If there’s any charge, I’ll let you know. What happened to Boon? You haven’t told me yet.”
“Oh yes. They unlocked What’s-his-name first; that was the mistake, because they hadn’t even got the key back out of Boon’s lock before he was out of the cell and on—”
“Butch,” I said.
“Butch,” Miss Reba said. “ — one good lick anyhow, knocked him down and was right on top of him before anybody woke up. So they never even let Boon stop; all the out he got was that trip across the corridor and back, into the cell and locked up again before they even had time to take the key out of the lock. But at least you got to admire him for it.” But she stopped.
“For what?” I said.
“What did you say?” she said.
“What he did that we’re going to admire him for. You didn’t tell us that. What did he do?”
“You think that still trying to tear that—”
“Butch,” I said.
“ — Butch’s head off before they even let him out of jail, aint nothing?” Miss Reba said.
“He had to do that,” I said.
“I’ll be damned,” Miss Reba said. “Let’s get started; we got to catch that train. You wont forget to send that bill,” she told Grandfather.
“Get out and come in,” Colonel Linscomb said. “Supper’s about ready. You can catch the midnight train.”
“No much obliged,” Miss Reba said. “No matter how long your wife stays at Monteagle, she’ll come back home some day and you’ll have to explain it.”
“Nonsense,” Colonel Linscomb said. “I’m boss in my house.”
“I hope you’ll keep on being,” Miss Reba said. “Oh yes,” she said to Minnie. “Show them.” She — Minnie — didn’t smile at us: she smiled at me. It was beautiful: the even, matched and matchless unblemished porcelain march, curving outward to embrace, almost with passion, the restored gold tooth which looked bigger than any three of the natural merely white ones possibly could.
Then she closed her lips again, serene, composed, once more immune, once more invulnerable to that extent which our frail webs of bone and flesh and coincidence ever hold or claim on Invulnerability. “Well,” Miss Reba said.
McWillie’s father cranked the engine and got back in; the automobile moved on. Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb turned and went back toward the house and I had begun to move too when the automobile horn tooted, not loud, once, and I turned back. It had stopped and Sam was standing beside it, beckoning to me.
“Come here,” he said. “Miss Reba wants to see you a minute.” He watched me while I came up. “Why didn’t you and Ned tell me that horse was really going to run?” he said.
“I thought you knew,” I said. “I thought that was why we came here.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Ned told me. You told me. Everybody told me. Only, why didn’t somebody make me believe it? Oh sure, I never broke a leg. But if I’d just had Miss Reba’s nerve, maybe I could have got that boxcar covered too. Here,” he said. It was a tight roll of money, bills. “This is Ned’s.
Tell him the next time he finds a horse that wont run, not to wait to come and get me: just telegraph me.” Miss Reba was leaning out, hard and handsome. Everbe was on the other side of her, not moving but still too big not to notice. Miss Reba said:
“I didn’t expect to wind up in jail here too. But then, maybe I didn’t expect not to, neither. Anyway, Sam bet for me too. I put up fifty for Mr Binford and five for Minnie. Sam got three for two. I — I mean we — want to split fifty-fifty with you. I aint got that much cash now, what with this unexpected side trip I took this morning—”
“I dont want it,” I said.
“I thought you’d say that,” she said. “So I had Sam put up another five for you. You got seven-fifty coming. Here.” She held out her hand.
“I dont want it,” I said.
“What did I tell you?” Sam said.
“Is it because it was gambling?” she said. “Did you promise that too?” I hadn’t. Maybe Mother hadn’t thought about gambling yet. But I wouldn’t have needed to have promised anybody anyway.
Only, I didn’t know how to tell her when I didn’t know why myself: only that I wasn’t doing it for money: that money would have been the last thing of all; that once we were in it, I had to go on, finish it, Ned and me both even if everybody else had quit; it was as though only by making Lightning run and run first could we justify (not escape consequences: simply justify) any of it. Not to hope to make the beginning of it any less wrong — I mean, what Boon and I had deliberately, of our own free will, to do back there in Jefferson four days ago; but at least not to shirk, dodge — at least to finish — what we ourselves had started. But I didn’t know how to say
