And so, when we came back with the first batch of mules and the silver and the food, and Granny sent word out for all that needed, it was like Brother Fortinbride sprang right up out of the ground with the names and histories of all the hill folks at his tongue’s end, like maybe what he claimed was true — that the Lord had both him and Granny in mind when He created the other.
So he would stand there where Doctor Worsham used to stand, and talk quiet for a little while about God, with his hair showing where he cut it himself and the bones looking like they were coming right out through his face, in a frock coat that had turned green a long time ago and with patches on it that he had sewed on himself — one of them was green horsehide and the other was a piece of tent canvas with the U. S. A. stencil still showing a little on it. He never talked long; there wasn’t much anybody could say about Confederate armies now.
I reckon there is a time when even preachers quit believing that God is going to change His plan and give victory where there is nothing left to hang victory on. He just said how victory without God is mockery and delusion, but that defeat with God is not defeat.
Then he quit talking, and he stood there with the old men and the women and children and the eleven or twelve niggers lost in freedom, in clothes made out of cotton bagging and floursacks, still watching Granny — only now it was not like the hounds used to look at Father, but like they would watch the food in Loosh’s hands when he would go in to feed them — and then he said:
“Brethren and sisters, Sister Millard wishes to bear public witness.”
Granny stood up. She would not go to the altar; she just stood there in our pew with her face straight ahead, in the shawl and Mrs. Compson’s hat and the dress that Louvinia washed and ironed every Saturday, holding the prayer book. It used to have her name on it in gold letters, but now the only way you could read them was to run your finger over them; she said quiet, too — quiet as Brother Fortinbride— “I have sinned. I want you all to pray for me.”
She knelt down in the pew; she looked littler than Cousin Denny; it was only Mrs. Compson’s hat above the pew back they had to look at now. I don’t know if she prayed herself or not. And Brother Fortinbride didn’t pray either — not aloud anyway. Ringo and I were just past fifteen then, but I could imagine what Doctor Worsham would have thought up to say — about all soldiers did not carry arms, and about they also serve, and how one child saved from hunger and cold is better in heaven’s sight than a thousand slain enemies.
But Brother Fortinbride didn’t say it. I reckon he thought of that; he always had plenty of words when he wanted to. It was like he said to himself, “Words are fine in peacetime, when everybody is comfortable and easy.
But now I think that we can be excused.” He just stood there where Doctor Worsham used to stand and where the bishop would stand, too, with his ring looking big as a pistol target.
Then Granny rose up; I didn’t have time to help her; she stood up, and then the long sound went through the church, a sound kind of like a sigh that Ringo said was the sound of the cotton bagging and the floursacking when they breathed again, and Granny turned and looked back toward the gallery; only Ringo was already moving.
“Bring the book,” she said.
It was a big blank account book; it weighed almost fifteen pounds. They opened it on the reading desk, Granny and Ringo side by side, while Granny drew the tin can out of her dress and spread the money on the book. But nobody moved until she began to call out the names. Then they came up one at a time, while Ringo read the names off the book, and the date, and the amount they had received before.
Each time Granny would make them tell what they intended to do with the money, and now she would make them tell her how they had spent it, and she would look at the book to see whether they had lied or not. And the ones that she had loaned the brand-blotted mules that Ab Snopes was afraid to try to sell would have to tell her how the mule was getting along and how much work it had done, and now and then she would take the mule away from one man or woman and give it to another, tearing up the old receipt and making the man or the woman sign the new one, telling them on what day to go and get the mule.
So it was afternoon when Ringo closed the book and got the new receipts together, and Granny stopped putting the rest of the money back into the can and she and Brother Fortinbride did what they did each time. “I’m making out fine with the mule,” he said. “I don’t need any money.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Granny said. “You’ll never grow enough food out of the ground to feed a bird the longest day you live. You take this money.”
“No,” Brother Fortinbride said. “I’m making out fine.”
We walked back home, Ringo carrying the book. “You done receipted out four mules you ain’t hardly laid eyes on yet,” he said. “What you gonter do about that?”
“They will be here tomorrow morning, I reckon,” Granny said. They were; Ab Snopes came in while we were eating breakfast; he leaned in the door with his eyes a little red from lack of sleep and looked at Granny.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I don’t never want to be rich; I just want to be lucky. Do you know what you done?” Only nobody asked him what, so he told us anyway: “Hit was taking place all day yestiddy; I reckon by now there ain’t a Yankee regiment left in Mississippi.
You might say that this here war has turned around at last and went back North. Yes, sir. That regiment you requisitioned on Sattidy never even stayed long enough to warm the ground. You managed to requisition the last batch of Yankee livestock at the last possible moment hit could have been done by living man. You made just one mistake: You drawed them last nineteen mules just too late to have anybody to sell them back to.”
3
It was a bright warm day; we saw the guns and the bits shining a long way down the road. But this time Ringo didn’t even move. He just quit drawing and looked up from the paper and said, “So Ab Snopes was lying. Gre’t God, ain’t we gonter never get shet of them?”
It was just a lieutenant; by this time Ringo and I could tell the different officers’ ranks better than we could tell Confederate ranks, because one day we counted up and the only Confederate officers we had ever seen were Father and the captain that talked to us with Uncle Buck McCaslin that day in Jefferson before Grant burned it. And this was to be the last time we would see any uniforms at all except as the walking symbols of defeated men’s pride and indomitable unregret, but we didn’t know that now.
So it was just a lieutenant. He looked about forty, and kind of mad and gleeful, both at the same time. Ringo didn’t recognise him because he had not been in the wagon with us, but I did — from the way he sat the horse, or maybe from the way he looked mad and happy both, like he had been mad for several days, thinking about how much he was going to enjoy being mad when the right time came. And he recognised me, too; he looked at me once and said “Hah!” with his teeth showing, and pushed his horse up and looked at Ringo’s picture. There were maybe a dozen cavalry behind him; we never noticed especially. “Hah!” he said again, then he said, “What’s that?”
“A house,” Ringo said. Ringo had never even looked at him good yet; he had seen even more of them than I had. “Look at it.”
The lieutenant looked at me and said “Hah!” again behind his teeth; every now and then while he was talking to Ringo he would do that. He looked at Ringo’s picture. Then he looked up the grove to where the chimneys rose out of the pile of rubble and ashes. Grass and weeds had come up out of the ashes now, and unless you knew better, all you saw was the four chimneys. Some of the goldenrod was still in bloom. “Oh,” the officer said. “I see. You’re drawing it like it used to be.”
“Co-rect,” Ringo said. “What I wanter draw hit like hit is now? I can walk down here ten
