He mounted the bank and got the sapling from the wagon bed and returned and joined his father where the other stood in sober, curious disapproval above Bayard’s legs, and with the pole they lifted the car enough to drag Bayard free of it. They lifted him onto the shelving bank and he sprawled there in the sun, with his calm face and his matted hair, while water drained out of his boots, and they stood above him on alternate legs while they wrung out their overalls.
“Hist’s Cunnel Sartoris’s boy, ain’t it?” the elder said at last, and he lowered himself stiffly to the sand, groaning and grunting, and donned his shoes.
“Yessuh,” John Henry answered. “Is he daid, pappy?”;
“Co’se he is”, the other answered petulantly. “Atter that otto’bile jumped offen dat bridge wid ‘im? Whut you reckon he is, ef he ain’t daid? And whut you gwine say when de law axes how come you de onliest one dat found ‘im daid? Tell me dat.”
“Tell ‘urn you holp me.”
“Hit ain’t none of my business. I never run dat thing offen de bridge. Listen at it, dar, mumblin’ and grindin’ yit, You git on ‘fo’ hit blows up.”
‘We better git ‘im into town,” John Henry said. “Dey mought not be nobody else comin’ ‘long today.” He stooped and raised Bayard’s shoulders and tugged him to a sitting position. “He’p me git ‘im up de bank, pappy.” .
“Hit ain’t none of my business,” the other repeated, but he bent and picked up Bayard’s legs and they lifted him, and he groaned without waking.
“Dar, now,” John Henry exclaimed. “Hear dat? He ain’t daid.” But he might well have been, with his long inert body and his head wrung excruciatingly against John Henry’s shoulder. They shifted their grips and turned toward the road. “Hah,” said John Henry, “Le’s go!”
They struggled up the shaling treacherous bank with, him and onto the road, where the elder let his end of the burden slip to the ground. “Whuf,” he expelled his breath sharply. “He heavy ez a flou’ bar’l.”
“Come on, pappy,” John Henry said. “Le’s git ‘im in de waggin.” The other stooped again, with bared teeth, and they raised Bayard with dust caked redly on his wet thighs, and heaved him by panting stages into the wagon bed. “He looks lak a daid .man,” John Henry added, “and he sho’ do ack lak one. I’ll ride back here and keep his haid f’um bumpin’.”
“Git dat brakin’ pole you lef in de creek,” his father ordered, and John Henry descended and retrieved the sapling and got in the wagon again and lifted Bayard’s head onto his knees, and his father unwrapped the reins from the stanchion and mounted to the sagging seat and picked up his peeled hickory wand.
“I don’t lak dis kind o’ traffickin’,” he repeated. “Hwup, mules.” The mules lurched the wagon into motion once more, and they went on. Behind them the car lay on its back in the creek, its engine still muttered and rumbled at idling speed.
Its owner lay in the springless wagon, jolting lady and inert, oblivious of it and of John Henry’s dark compassionate face above him. Thus for some miles, while John Henry kept the sun: from Bayard’s face with the shadow of his hat, then their jolting progress penetrated into that region to which he had withdrawn arid he groaned again. “Drive slower, pappy,” John Henry said. “De joltin’ wakin’ ‘im up.”
“I caint he’p dat,” the elder replied, “I never run dat otto’bile offen dat bridge. I got to git on into town and git back home. Git on dar, mules.”
John Henry tried to ease him to the jolting, and Bayard groaned again and lifted his hand to his chest, and moved and opened his eyes. But he closed them immediately against the sun and he lay on John Henry’s knees, cursing. Then he moved again, trying to sit up. John Henry restrained htaj, firmly yet diffidently, and he opened his eyes again, struggling.
“Let go, goddam you!” he said. “I’m hurt.”
“Yessuh, captain; ef you’ll jes’ lay still—”
Bayard heaved himself violently, clutching his side; his teeth shone between his drawn, bloodless lips arid he gripped John Henry’s shoulder with a. clutch like steel hooks. “Stop,” he shouted. “Stop him; make him stop! He’s driving my damn ribs right through me!” He cursed again, trying to get onto his knees, gripping John Henry’s, shoulder, clutching his side with his other hand. The older negro turned and looked back at him. “Hit him with something,” Bayard shouted. “Make him stop. I’m hurt, goddamn it!”
The wagon stopped. Bayard was now on his hands and knees, bending lower and lower on all fours, like a wounded beast. The two negroes watched him quietly, and still clutching his side he moved and essayed to climb out of the wagon. John Henry jumped down and helped him, and he got slowly out and leaned against the wheel, with his sweating, bloodless. face and the dry grinning of his teeth.
“Git back in de waggin, captain, and le’s git to town to de doctor,” John Henry said.
Bayard stared at him, moistening his lips with his tongue. Then he moved again and crossed to the roadside and sat down, fumbling at the buttons of his shirt. The two negroes watched him. “Got a knife, son? “he asked presently.
“Yessuh.” John Henry produced his knife, and by Bayard’s direction he slit the other’s shirt off. Then the two of them bound it tightly about Bayard’s body, and he got to his feet
“Got a cigarette?” he asked,
John Henry had not. “Pappy got some chewin’ terbacker,” he suggested.
“Gimme a chew, then,” They gave him a chew and helped him back into the wagon and onto the seat, and drove on again. They jingled and rattled interminably onward in the red dust, through shadow and sunlight and uphill and down, while Bayard alternately chewed and swore. On and on, and at every jolt, with every breath he took, his broken ribs stabbed and probed into his flesh.
Then a final hill, and the road emerged from the trees and crossed the flat valley and joined the highway, and here they stopped while the sun blazed down on Bayard’s naked shoulders and bare head while he and the old negro wrangled as to whether they should drive him home or not, and Bayard swore and raged and suffered. At last he took the reins from the elder negro’s hands and swung the mules about himself . The negro continued to protest, querulously, until Bayard dug a banknote from his trousers and gave it to him and surrendered the lines, and they went on.
This last mile was the worst of all On all sides of them cultivated fields spread away to the shimmering hills: earth was saturated with heat and broken and turned and saturated again and drunken with it, exuding heat like an alcoholic’s breath. The trees along the road were sparse and but half grown, and the mules moved at a maddening walk in their own dust. His nerves had become inured to pain and had surrendered to it; he was conscious only of dreadful thirst and he knew that he was becoming light headed. The negroes too realized that he was going out of his head, and the younger one crawled precariously forward and offered him his frayed straw hat. Bayard accepted it and put it on.
The moles with their comical, overlarge ears assumed fantastic shapes, merged into other shapes without significance or meaning; shifted and changed again. At times it seemed to him that they were travelling backward, that they would crawl terrifically past the same tree or telephone post time after time; and it seemed to him that the three of them and the rattling wagon and the two beasts were caught in a ceaseless and senseless treadmill, a motion without progress, forever and to no escape.
But at last and without his being aware of it, the wagon turned in between the iron gates, and shadow fell gratefully upon his naked shoulders, and he opened his eyes and his home swam and floated in a pale mirage like a huge serene shape submerged in water. The jolting stopped and the two negroes helped him down. He mounted the steps and crossed the veranda; in the hallway, after the outer glare, he could see nothing at all for a moment and he stood, a little dizzy and nauseated, blinking. Then Simon’s eyeballs rolled out of the obscurity.
“Whut in de Lawd’s name,” said Simon, “is you been into now?”
“Si
mon?” he said. He swayed a little; to keep on his feet he strode on again and blundered into something. “Simon?”
Simon moved swiftly and touched him. “I kep’ tellin’ you dat car ‘uz gwine to kill you; I kep’ tellin’ you!” Simon slid his arm about Bayard and they went on. At the stairs he tried to turn Bayard, but Bayard wouldn’t be turned. He continued on down the hall and entered his grandfather’s study and stopped, leaning against a chair-back.
“Keys,” he said thickly. “Aunt Jenny. Got to have drink.”
“Miss Jenny done gone to town wid Miss Benbow,” Simon answered. “Dey ain’t nobody here, ain’t nobody here a-tall ‘cep’ de niggers. I kep’ a-tellin’ you!” he moaned again, pawing at Bayard. “Dey ain’t no blood, dough. Come to de sofa and lay down, Mist’ Bayard.”
Bayard moved again, and Simon supported him, and Bayard lurched around the chair and slumped into it, clutching his chest “Dey ain’t no blood,” Simon babbled.
“Keys,” Bayard said again. “Get the keys.”
“Yessuh, I’ll git ‘um.” Simon flapped his distracted hands about Bayard. Bayard swore at him, and still moaning Dey ain’t no blood, he turned and scuttled from the room. Bayard sat forward, clutching his chest, and heard Simon mount the stairs, heard him on the floor overhead. Then he was back, and Bayard watched him open the desk and extract the silver-stoppered decanter and scuttle out again and return with a glass, to find Bayard leaning against the desk, drinking from the decanter. Simon helped him back to the chair and poured him a drink into the glass. Then he fetched him a cigarette and hovered futilely and distractedly about him. “Lemme git de doctuh, Mist’ Bayard.”
“No. Gimme another drink.”
Simon obeyed. “That’s three, already. Lemme go git Miss Jenny en de doctuh, Mist’ Bayard, please, suh.”
“No. Leave me alone. Get out of here.”
He drank that one. The nausea, the mirage shapes, were gone, and he felt better. At every breath his side stabbed him with hot needles, so he was careful to breathe shallowly. If he could only remember that...Yes, he felt much better, so he rose carefully and went to the desk and had another drink. Yes, that was the stuff for a wound, like Suratt had said. Like that time last year when he got that tracer in his belly and nothing would stay on his stomach except gin-and-milk. And this, this wasn’t anything: just a few caved slats. Patch his fuselage with a little piano wire in ten minutes. Not like Johnny. They were all going right into his thighs. Damn butcher wouldn’t even raise his sights a little. He’d have to remember to breathe shallowly.
He crossed the room slowly but steadily enough. Simon flitted in the dim hall before him, and he mounted the stairs slowly, holding to the rail while Simon watched him with strained distraction. He entered his room, the room that had been his and John’s, and stood for a while until he could breathe shallowly again. Then he crossed to the closet and opened it, and kneeling carefully, with his hand to his side, he opened the chest which was there. There was not much in it: a garment; a small leather-bound book; a shotgun shell to which was attached by a piece of wire a withered bear’s paw. It was John’s first bear, and the shell with which he had killed it in the river bottom near MacCallum’s when he was twelve years old. The book was a New Testament; on the flyleaf in faded brown: To my son, John, on his seventh birthday, March 16, 1900, from his Mother.’ He had one exactly like it; that was the year grandfather had Arranged for the morning local freight to stop and pick them up and carry them to town to start to school The garment was a canvas hunting coat, stained and splotched with what had once been blood and scuffed and torn with briers and smelling yet faintly of saltpeter.
Still kneeling, he lifted the objects out one by one and laid them on the floor. He picked the coat up again, and its fading stale acridity drifted in his nostril? “Johnny,” he whispered, “Johnny.” Suddenly he raised the garment toward his face but halted it as sharply, and with the coat half raised he looked swiftly over his shoulder. But immediately he recovered himself and turned his head and lifted the garment and laid his face against it, defiantly and deliberately, and knelt so for a time.
Then he rose and gathered up the book and the trophy and the coat and crossed to his chest of drawers and took from the top of it a photograph. It was a picture of John’s Princeton eating club group, and he gathered this also tinder his arm and descended the stairs and passed put the back door. As be emerged Simon was just crossing the yard with the carriage, and as he passed the kitchen Elnora was crooning one of her mellow endless songs.
Behind the smoke-house squatted the black pot and the wooden tubs where Elnora did her washing in fair weather. She had been washing today; the clothes line swung with limp damp garments, and beneath the pot smoke yet curled from the soft wood ashes. He thrust the pot over with his foot and rolled it aside, and from the woodshed he fetched an armful of rich pine kindling and laid it on the ashes. Soon a blaze, pale in the sunny air; and when the wood was burning strongly he lid the coat and the Bible and the trophy and the photograph on the flames and prodded them and turned them until they were consumed. In the kitchen Elnora crooned mellowly as she labored; her voice came rich and plaintful and sad along the sunny reaches of the air. He must remember to breathe shallowly.
Simon drove rapidly on to town, but he had been forestalled. The two negroes had told a merchant about finding Bayard on the roadside and the news had reached Colonel Sartoris at the bank, who had sent for Dr. Peabody. But Dr. Peabody was gone fishing, so he took Dr. Alford instead, and the two of them in Dr. Alford’s car passed Simon just as he drove into town. He turned around and followed them, but by the time he arrived home they had young Bayard anaesthetized and temporarily incapable of further harm; and when Miss Jenny and Narcissa Benbow drove unsuspectingly up the drive an hour later, he was bandaged and conscious again. They had not heard of it, and Dr. Alford’s car was the first intimation. Although Miss Jenny did not recognize the car, she knew immediately what it meant. “That fool has killed himself at last,” she said, and got out and sailed into the house.
Bayard lay white and still and a little sheepish in his bed. Old Bayard and the doctor were just leaving, and Miss Jenny waited until they were out of the room, then she raged and stormed at him and stroked his face and. his hair, while Simon bobbed and mowed in the corner between bed and wall. “Dasso, Miss Jenny, dasso! I kep’ a-tellin’ ‘im!”
And so, having eased her soul, she descended to . the veranda where Dr. Alford stood in impeccable departure. Old Bayard sat in the car waiting for him, and on Miss Jenny’s appearance he became his stiff self again and completed his departure, and he and old Bayard drove away.
Miss Jenny also looked up and down the. veranda, then into the hall. “Where—” she said, then she called: “Narcissa.” A reply; and she added: “Where are you?” The reply came again and Miss Jenny reentered the house and saw Narcissa’s white dress in the gloom where she sat on the piano bench. “He’s awake,” Miss Jenny said. “You can come up and see him.” The other rose and turned into the light. “Why, what’s the matter? You look lots worse than he does. You’re white as a sheet.”
“Nothing,” Narcissa answered. “I—” She stared at Miss Jenny a moment, clenching her hands at her sides. “I must go,” she said, and she emerged from the parlor. “It’s late, and Horace…”
“You can come in and speak to him, can’t you?” Miss Jenny asked, watching the other curiously. “There’s not any blood, if that’s what you are afraid of.”
“It isn’t that,”‘ Narcissa answered. “I’m not afraid.” But she was rigid with repressed trembling; Miss Jenny could see her teeth clenched upon her lower lip.
“Why, all right,” Miss Jenny agreed kindly, “if you’d rather not. I just thought perhaps you’d like to see he is all right, as long as you are here. But don’t if you don’t feel like it.”
“Yes. Yes. I feel like it. I want to.” She passed Miss Jenny and went on down the hall. At the foot of the stairs she halted u
ntil Miss Jenny came up behind her, and they mounted together, although she kept a step ahead and with her face averted from Miss Jenny’s probing eyes.
‘What’s the matter?” Miss Jenny demanded, still watching the other. “What happened to you? Have you fallen in love with him?”
“In love...him? Bayard?” She swayed “against the rail beside her and paused, and slid her hand along the rail and drew herself onward. She began to laugh thinly, repressing hysteria. Miss Jenny mounted beside her, piercing and curious and cold; Narcissa hurried on. At the stair head she stopped again, holding to the railing, and permitted Miss Jenny to precede her; and just without the door to Bayard’s room she stopped yet again and leaned against it, throttling her laughter and her trembling. Then she entered the room, where Miss Jenny stood beside the bed with head reverted.
For a moment she could see nothing for the. swelling convolutions of laughter in her throat, and she was conscious only of her need to repress them and of a sickly-sweet lingering of ether as she approached the bed and stood blindly beside it, with her hidden writhing hands. On the pillow Bayard’s head lay as she had remembered it on that former day—pallid and calm, like a chiseled mask brushed lightly over with the shadow of his spent violence. He was watching her, and for a while she gazed at him, and Miss Jenny and the room and all, swam away.
“You beast, you beast,” she said thinly. “Why must you always do these things where I’ve got to see you?”