“This is the road to Hawkhurst,” I said. But Ringo was not listening; he was looking at the dust, and the wagon stopped now with the horses’ heads hanging and our dust overtaking us again and the big dust cloud coming slow up in the west.
“Can’t you see um coming?” Ringo hollered. “Git on away from here!”
“They ain’t Yankees,” Granny said. “The Yankees have already been here.” Then we saw it, too — a burned house like ours, three chimneys standing above a mound of ashes, and then we saw a white woman and a child looking at us from a cabin behind them. Granny looked at the dust cloud, then she looked at the empty broad road going on into the east. “This is the way,” she said.
We went on. It seemed like we went slower than ever now, with the dust cloud behind us and the burned houses and gins and thrown-down fences on either side, and the white women and children — we never saw a nigger at all — watching us from the nigger cabins where they lived now like we lived at home; we didn’t stop. “Poor folks,” Granny said. “I wish we had enough to share with them.”
At sunset we drew off the road and camped; Ringo was looking back. “Whatever hit is, we done went off and left hit,” he said. “I don’t see no dust.” We slept in the wagon this time, all three of us. I don’t know what time it was, only that all of a sudden I was awake.
Granny was already sitting up in the wagon. I could see her head against the branches and the stars. All of a sudden all three of us were sitting up in the wagon, listening. They were coming up the road. It sounded like about fifty of them; we could hear the feet hurrying, and a kind of panting murmur.
It was not singing exactly; it was not that loud. It was just a sound, a breathing, a kind of gasping, murmuring chant and the feet whispering fast in the deep dust. I could hear women, too, and then all of a sudden I began to smell them.
“Niggers,” I whispered. “Sh-h-h-h,” I whispered.
We couldn’t see them and they did not see us; maybe they didn’t even look, just walking fast in the dark with that panting, hurrying murmuring, going on. And then the sun rose and we went on, too, along that big broad empty road between the burned houses and gins and fences.
Before, it had been like passing through a country where nobody had ever lived; now it was like passing through one where everybody had died at the same moment. That night we waked up three times and sat up in the wagon in the dark and heard niggers pass in the road. The last time it was after dawn and we had already fed the horses. It was a big crowd of them this time, and they sounded like they were running, like they had to run to keep ahead of daylight. Then they were gone.
Ringo and I had taken up the harness again when Granny said, “Wait. Hush.” It was just one, we could hear her panting and sobbing, and then we heard another sound. Granny began to get down from the wagon. “She fell,” she said. “You-all hitch up and come on.”
When we turned into the road, the woman was kind of crouched beside it, holding something in her arms, and Granny standing beside her. It was a baby, a few months old; she held it like she thought maybe Granny was going to take it away from her. “I been sick and I couldn’t keep up,” she said. “They went off and left me.”
“Is your husband with them?” Granny said.
“Yessum,” the woman said. “They’s all there.”
“Who do you belong to?” Granny said. Then she didn’t answer. She squatted there in the dust, crouched over the baby. “If I give you something to eat, will you turn around and go back home?” Granny said. Still she didn’t answer. She just squatted there. “You see you can’t keep up with them and they ain’t going to wait for you,” Granny said. “Do you want to die here in the road for buzzards to eat?” But she didn’t even look at Granny; she just squatted there.
“Hit’s Jordan we coming to,” she said. “Jesus gonter see me that far.”
“Get in the wagon,” Granny said. She got in; she squatted again just like she had in the road, holding the baby and not looking at anything — just hunkered down and swaying on her hams as the wagon rocked and jolted. The sun was up; we went down a long hill and began to cross a creek bottom.
“I’ll get out here,” she said. Granny stopped the wagon and she got out. There was nothing at all but the thick gum and cypress and thick underbrush still full of shadow.
“You go back home, girl,” Granny said. She just stood there. “Hand me the basket,” Granny said. I handed it to her and she opened it and gave the woman a piece of bread and meat. We went on; we began to mount the hill. When I looked back she was still standing there, holding the baby and the bread and meat Granny had given her. She was not looking at us. “Were the others there in that bottom?” Granny asked Ringo.
“Yessum,” Ringo said. “She done found um. Reckon she gonter lose um again tonight though.”
We went on; we mounted the hill and crossed the crest of it. When I looked back this time the road was empty. That was the morning of the sixth day.
2
Late that afternoon we were descending again; we came around a curve in the late level shadows and our own quiet dust and I saw the graveyard on the knoll and the marble shaft at Uncle Dennison’s grave; there was a dove somewhere in the cedars. Ringo was asleep again under his hat in the wagon bed but he waked as soon as I spoke, even though I didn’t speak loud and didn’t speak to him. “There’s Hawkhurst,” I said.
“Hawkhurst?” he said, sitting up. “Where’s that railroad?” on his knees now and looking for something which he would have to find in order to catch up with me and which he would have to recognise only through hearsay when he saw it: “Where is it? Where?”
“You’ll have to wait for it,” I said.
“Seem like I been waiting on hit all my life,” he said. “I reckon you’ll tell me next the Yankees done moved hit too.”
The sun was going down. Because suddenly I saw it shining level across the place where the house should have been and there was no house there. And I was not surprised; I remember that; I was just feeling sorry for Ringo, since (I was just fourteen then) if the house was gone, they would have taken the railroad too, since anybody would rather have a railroad than a house.
We didn’t stop; we just looked quietly at the same mound of ashes, the same four chimneys standing gaunt and blackened in the sun like the chimneys at home. When we reached the gate Cousin Denny was running down the drive toward us. He was ten; he ran up to the wagon with his eyes round and his mouth already open for hollering.
“Denny,” Granny said, “do you know us?”
“Yessum,” Cousin Denny said. He looked at me, hollering, “Come see—”
“Where’s your mother?” Granny said.
“In Jingus’ cabin,” Cousin Denny said; he didn’t even look at Granny. “They burnt the house!” he hollered. “Come see what they done to the railroad!”
We ran, all three of us. Granny hollered something and I turned and put the parasol back into the wagon and hollered “Yessum!” back at her, and ran on and caught up with Cousin Denny and Ringo in the road, and we ran on over the hill, and then it came in sight.
When Granny and I were here before, Cousin Denny showed me the railroad, but he was so little then that Jingus had to carry him. It was the straightest thing I ever saw, running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees, and the ground, too, and full of sunlight like water in a river, only straighter than any river, with the crossties cut off even and smooth and neat, and the light shining on the rails like on two spider threads, running straight on to where you couldn’t even see that far.
It looked clean and neat, like the yard behind Louvinia’s cabin after she had swept it on Saturday morning, with those two little threads that didn’t look strong enough for anything to run on running straight and fast and light, like they were getting up speed to jump clean off the world.
Jingus knew when the train would come; he held my hand and carried Cousin Denny, and we stood between the rails and he showed us where it would come from, and then he showed us where the shadow of a dead pine would come to a stob he had driven in the ground, and then you would hear the whistle.
And we got back and watched the shadow, and then we heard it; it whistled and then it got louder and louder fast, and Jingus went to the track and took his hat off and held it out with his face turned back toward us and his mouth hollering, “Watch now! Watch!” even after
