“No,” I said. “I came to—”
But he had already turned to where the first soldier was wropping a handkerchief around his hand.
“Have you got him?” he said. The first soldier went back to the table and looked at some papers.
“Here he is,” he said. “He enlisted yestiddy. He’s in a detachment leaving this morning for Little Rock.” He had a watch stropped on his arm. He looked at it. “The train leaves in about fifty minutes. If I know country boys, they’re probably all down there at the station right now.”
“Get him up here,” the one with the backing strop said. “Phone the station. Tell the porter to get him a cab. And you come with me,” he said.
It was another office behind that un, with jest a table and some chairs. We set there while the soldier smoked, and it wasn’t long; I knowed Pete’s feet soon as I heard them. Then the first soldier opened the door and Pete come in.
He never had no soldier clothes on. He looked jest like he did when he got on the bus yestiddy morning, except it seemed to me like it was at least a week, so much had happened, and I had done had to do so much traveling. He come in and there he was, looking at me like he hadn’t never left home, except that here we was in Memphis, on the way to Pearl Harbor.
“What in durnation are you doing here?” he said.
And I told him, “You got to have wood and water to cook with. I can chop it and tote it for you-all.”
“No,” Pete said. “You’re going back home.”
“No, Pete,” I said. “I got to go too. I got to. It hurts my heart, Pete.”
“No,” Pete said. He looked at the soldier. “I jest don’t know what could have happened to him, lootenant,” he said. “He never drawed a knife on anybody before in his life.” He looked at me. “What did you do it for?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I jest had to. I jest had to git here. I jest had to find you.”
“Well, don’t you never do it again, you hear?” Pete said. “You put that knife in your pocket and you keep it there. If I ever again hear of you drawing it on anybody, I’m coming back from wherever I am at and whup the fire out of you. You hear me?”
“I would pure cut a throat if it would bring you back to stay,” I said. “Pete,” I said. “Pete.”
“No,” Pete said. Now his voice wasn’t hard and quick no more, it was almost quiet, and I knowed now I wouldn’t never change him. “You must go home. You must look after maw, and I am depending on you to look after my ten acres. I want you to go back home. Today. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” I said.
“Can he get back home by himself?” the soldier said.
“He come up here by himself,” Pete said.
“I can get back, I reckon,” I said. “I don’t live in but one place. I don’t reckon it’s moved.”
Pete taken a dollar out of his pocket and give it to me. “That’ll buy your bus ticket right to our mailbox,” he said. “I want you to mind the lootenant. He’ll send you to the bus. And you go back home and you take care of maw and look after my ten acres and keep that durn knife in your pocket. You hear me?”
“Yes, Pete,” I said.
“All right,” Pete said. “Now I got to go.” He put his hand on my head again. But this time he never wrung my neck. He just laid his hand on my head a minute. And then I be dog if he didn’t lean down and kiss me, and I heard his feet and then the door, and I never looked up and that was all, me setting there, rubbing the place where Pete kissed me and the soldier throwed back in his chair, looking out the window and coughing. He reached into his pocket and handed something to me without looking around. It was a piece of chewing gum.
“Much obliged,” I said. “Well, I reckon I might as well start back. I got a right fer piece to go.”
“Wait,” the soldier said. Then he telephoned again and I said again I better start back, and he said again, “Wait. Remember what Pete told you.”
So we waited, and then another lady come in, old, too, in a fur coat, too, but she smelled all right, she never had no artermatic writing pen nor no case history neither. She come in and the soldier got up, and she looked around quick until she saw me, and come and put her hand on my shoulder light and quick and easy as maw herself might ‘a’ done it.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home to dinner.”
“Nome,” I said. “I got to ketch the bus to Jefferson.”
“I know. There’s plenty of time. We’ll go home and eat dinner first.”
She had a car. And now we was right down in the middle of all them other cars. We was almost under the busses, and all them crowds of people on the street close enough to where I could have talked to them if I had knowed who they was. After a while she stopped the car. “Here we are,” she said, and I looked at it, and if all that was her house, she sho had a big family.
But all of it wasn’t. We crossed a hall with trees growing in it and went into a little room without nothing in it but a nigger dressed up in a uniform a heap shinier than them soldiers had, and the nigger shut the door, and then I hollered, “Look out!” and grabbed, but it was all right; that whole little room jest went right on up and stopped and the door opened and we was in another hall, and the lady unlocked a door and we went in, and there was another soldier, a old feller, with a britching strop, too, and a silver-colored bird on each shoulder.
“Here we are,” the lady said. “This is Colonel McKellogg. Now, what would you like for dinner?”
“I reckon I’ll jest have some ham and eggs and coffee,” I said.
She had done started to pick up the telephone. She stopped. “Coffee?” she said. “When did you start drinking coffee?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I reckon it was before I could remember.”
“You’re about eight, aren’t you?” she said.
“Nome,” I said. “I’m eight and ten months. Going on eleven months.”
She telephoned then. Then we set there and I told them how Pete had jest left that morning for Pearl Harbor and I had aimed to go with him, but I would have to go back home to take care of maw and look after Pete’s ten acres, and she said how they had a little boy about my size, too, in a school in the East. Then a nigger, another one, in a short kind of shirttail coat, rolled a kind of wheelbarrer in. It had my ham and eggs and a glass of milk and a piece of pie, too, and I thought I was hungry. But when I taken the first bite I found out I couldn’t swallow it, and I got up quick.
“I got to go,” I said.
“Wait,” she said.
“I got to go,” I said.
“Just a minute,” she said. “I’ve already telephoned for the car. It won’t be but a minute now. Can’t you drink the milk even? Or maybe some of your coffee?”
“Nome,” I said. “I ain’t hungry. I’ll eat when I git home.” Then the telephone rung. She never even answered it.
“There,” she said. “There’s the car.” And we went back down in that ’ere little moving room with the dressed-up nigger. This time it was a big car with a soldier driving it. I got into the front with him. She give the soldier a dollar. “He might get hungry,” she said. “Try to find a decent place for him.”
“O.K., Mrs. McKellogg,” the soldier said.
Then we was gone again. And now I could see Memphis good, bright in the sunshine, while we was swinging around it. And first thing I knowed, we was back on the same highway the bus run on this morning — the patches of stores and them big gins and sawmills, and Memphis running on for miles, it seemed like to me, before it begun to give out. Then we was running again between the fields and woods, running fast now, and except for that soldier, it was like I hadn’t never been to Memphis a-tall.
We was going fast now. At this rate, before I knowed it we would be home again, and I thought about me riding up to Frenchman’s Bend in this big car with a soldier running it, and all of a sudden I begun to cry. I never knowed I was fixing to, and I couldn’t stop it. I set there by that soldier, crying. We was going fast.
The End
