“Nonsense,” Hightower says. He looks across the desk at the other’s still, stubborn, ascetic face: the face of a hermit who has lived for a long time in an empty place where sand blows. “The thing, the only thing, for her to do is to go back to Alabama. To her people.”
“I reckon not,” Byron says. He says it immediately, with immediate finality, as if he has been waiting all the while for this to be said. “She won’t need to do that. I reckon she won’t need to do that.” But he does not look up. He can feel the other looking at him.
“Does Bu—Brown know that she is in Jefferson?”
For an instant Byron almost smiles. His lip lifts: a thin movement almost à shadow, without mirth. “He’s been too busy. After that thousand dollars. It’s right funny to watch him. Like a man that can’t play a tune, blowing a horn right loud, hoping that in a minute it will begin to make music. Being drug across the square on a handcuff every twelve or fifteen hours, when likely they couldn’t run him away if they was to sick them bloodhounds on him. He spent Saturday night in jail, still talking about how they were trying to beat him out of his thousand dollars by trying to make out that he helped Christmas do the killing, until at last Buck Conner went up to his cell and told him he would put a gag in his mouth if he didn’t shut up and let the other prisoners sleep. And he shut up, and Sunday night they went out with the dogs and he raised so much racket that they had to take him out of jail and let him go too. But the dogs never got started. And him hollering and cussing the dogs and wanting to beat them because they never struck a trail, telling everybody again how it was him that reported Christmas first and that all he wanted was fair justice, until the sheriff took him aside and talked to him. They didn’t know what the sheriff said to him. Maybe he threatened to lock him back up in jail and not let him go with them next time. Anyway, he calmed down some, and they went on. They never got back to town until late Monday night. He was still quiet. Maybe he was wore out. He hadn’t slept none in some time, and they said how he was trying to outrun the dogs so that the sheriff finally threatened to handcuff him to a deputy to keep him back so the dogs could smell something beside him. He needed a shave already when they locked him up Saturday night, and he needed one bad by now. I reckon he must have looked more like a murderer than even Christmas. And he was cussing Christmas now, like Christmas had done hid out just for meanness, to spite him and keep him from getting that thousand dollars. And they brought him back to jail and locked him up that night. And this morning they went and took him out again and they all went off with the dogs, on a new scent. Folks said they could hear him hollering and talking until they were clean out of town.”
“And she doesn’t know that, you say. You say you have kept that from her. You had rather that she knew him to be a scoundrel than a fool: is that it?”
Byron’s face is still again, not smiling now; it is quite sober. “I don’t know. It was last Sunday night, after I came out to talk to you and went back home. I thought she would be asleep in bed, but she was still sitting up in the parlor, and she said, ‘What is it? What has happened here?’ And I didn’t look at her and I could feel her looking at me. I told her it was a nigger killed a white woman. I didn’t lie then. I reckon I was so glad I never had to lie then. Because before I thought, I had done said ‘and set the house afire.’ And then it was too late. I had pointed out the smoke, and I had told her about the two fellows named Brown and Christmas that lived out there. And I could feel her watching me the same as I can you now, and she said, ‘What was the nigger’s name?’ It’s like God sees that they find out what they need to know out of men’s lying, without needing to ask. And that they don’t find out what they don’t need to know, without even knowing they have not found it out. And so I don’t know for sure what she knows and what she don’t know. Except that I have kept it from her that it was the man she is hunting for that told on the murderer and that he is in jail now except when he is out running with dogs the man that took him up and befriended him. I have kept that from her.”
“And what are you going to do now? Where does she want to move?”
“She wants to go out there and wait for him. I told her that he is away on business for the sheriff. So I didn’t lie altogether. She had already asked me where he lived and I had already told her. And she said that was the place where she belonged until he came back, because that is his house. She said that’s what he would want her to do. And I couldn’t tell her different, that that cabin is the last place in the world he would want her to ever see. She wanted to go out there, as soon as I got home from the mill this evening. She had her bundle all tied up and her bonnet on, waiting for me to get home. ‘I started once to go on by myself,’ she said. ‘But I wasn’t sho I knowed the way.’ And I said ‘Yes; only it was too late today and we would go out there tomorrow,’ and she said, ‘It’s a hour till dark yet. It ain’t but two miles, is it?’ and I said to let’s wait because I would have to ask first, and she said, ‘Ask who? Ain’t it Lucas’s house?’ and I could feel her watching me and she said, ‘I thought you said that that was where Lucas lived,’ and she was watching me and she said, ‘Who is this preacher you keep on going to talk to about me?’ ”
“And you are going to let her go out there to live?”
“It might be best. She would be private out there, and she would be away from all the talking until this business is over.”
“You mean, she has got her mind set on it, and you won’t stop her. You don’t want to stop her.,”
Byron does not look up. “In a way, it is his house. The nighest thing to a home of his own he will ever own, I reckon. And he is her …”
“Out there alone, with a child coming. The nearest house a few negro cabins a half mile away.” He watches Byron’s face.
“I have thought of that. There are ways, things that can be done …”
“What things? What can you do to protect her out there?”
Byron does not answer at once; he does not look up. When he speaks his voice is dogged. “There are secret things a man can do without being evil, Reverend. No matter how they might look to folks.”
“I don’t think that you could do anything that would be very evil, Byron, no matter how it looked to folks. But are you going to undertake to say just how far evil extends into the appearance of evil? just where between doing and appearing evil stops?”
“No,” Byron says. Then he moves slightly; he speaks as if he too were waking: “I hope not. I reckon I am trying to do the right thing by my lights.”—‘And that,’ Hightower thinks, ‘is the firt lie he ever told me. Ever told anyone, man or woman, perhaps including himself.’ He looks across the desk at the stubborn, dogged, sober face that has not yet looked at him. ‘Or maybe it is not lie yet because he does not know himself that it is so.’ He says:
“Well.” He speaks now with a kind of spurious brusqueness which, flabbyjowled and darkcaverneyed, his face belies. “That is settled, then. You’ll take her out there, to his house, and you’ll see that she is comfortable and you’ll see that she is not disturbed until this is over. And then you’ll tell that man—Bunch, Brown—that she is here.”
“And he’ll run,” Byron says. He does not look up, yet through him there seems to go a wave of exultation, of triumph, before he can curb and hide it, when it is too late to try. For the moment he does not attempt to curb it; backthrust too in his hard chair, looking for the first time at the minister, with a face confident and bold and suffused. The other meets his gaze steadily.
“Is that what you want him to do?” Hightower says. They sit so in the lamplight. Through the open window comes the hot, myriad silence of the breathless night. “Think what you are doing. You are attempting to come between man and wife.”
Byron has caught himself. His face is no longer triumphant. But he looks steadily at the older man. Perhaps he tried to catch his voice too. But he cannot yet. “They aint man and wife yet,” he says.
“Does she think that? Do you believe t
hat she will say that?” They look at one another. “Ah, Byron, Byron. What are a few mumbled words before God, before the steadfastness of a woman’s nature? Before that child?”
“Well, he may not run. If he gets that reward, that money. Like enough he will be drunk enough on a thousand dollars to do anything, even marry.”
“Ah, Byron, Byron.”
“Then what do you think we—I ought to do? What do you advise?”
“Go away. Leave Jefferson.” They look at one another. “No,” Hightower says. “You don’t need my help. You are already being helped by someone stronger than I am.”
For a moment Byron does not speak. They look at one another, steadily. “Helped by who?”
“By the devil,” Hightower says.
‘And the devil is looking after him, too,’ Hightower thinks. He is in midstride, halfway home, his laden small market basket on his arm. ‘Him, too. Him, too,’ he thinks, walking. It is hot. He is in his shirt sleeves, tall, with thin blackclad legs and spare, gaunt arms and shoulders, and with that flabby and obese stomach like some monstrous pregnancy. The shirt is white, but it is not fresh; his collar is toiled, as is the white lawn cravat carelessly knotted, and he has not shaved for two or three days. His panama hat is soiled, and beneath it, between hat and skull against the heat, the edge and corners of a soiled handkerchief protrude. He has been to town to do his semiweekly marketing, where, gaunt, misshapen, with his gray stubble and his dark spectacleblurred eyes and his blackrimmed hands and the rank manodor of his sedentary and unwashed flesh, he entered the one odorous and cluttered store which he patronised and paid with cash for what he bought.
“Well, they found that nigger’s trail at last,” the proprietor said.
“Negro?” Hightower said. He became utterly still, in the act of putting into his pocket the change from his purchases.
“That bah—fellow; the murderer. I said all the time that he wasn’t right. Wasn’t a white man. That there was something funny about him. But you can’t tell folks nothing until—”
“Found him?” Hightower said.
“You durn right they did. Why, the fool never even had sense enough to get out of the county. Here the sheriff has been telephoning all over the country for him, and the black son—uh was right here under his durn nose all the time.”
“And they have …” He leaned forward against the counter, above his laden basket. He could feel the counter edge against his stomach. It felt solid, stable enough; it was more like the earth itself were rocking faintly, preparing to move. Then it seemed to move, like something released slowly and without haste, in an augmenting swoop, and cleverly, since the eye was tricked into believing that the dingy shelves ranked with flyspecked tins, and the merchant himself behind the counter, had not moved; outraging, tricking sense. And he thinking, ‘I wont! I wont! I have bought immunity. I have paid. I have paid.’
“They ain’t caught him yet,” the proprietor said. “But they will. The sheriff taken the dogs out to the church before daylight this morning. They ain’t six hours behind him. To think that the durn fool never had no better sense ... show he is a nigger, even if nothing else. …” Then the proprietor was saying, “Was that all today?”
“What?” Hightower said. “What?”
“Was that all you wanted?”
“Yes. Yes. That was ...” He began to fumble in his pocket, the proprietor watching him. His hand came forth, still fumbling. It blundered upon the counter, shedding coins. The proprietor stopped two or three of them as they were about to roll off the counter.
“What’s this for?” the proprietor said.
“For the ...” Hightower’s hand fumbled at the laden basket. “For—”
“You already paid.” The proprietor was watching him, curious. “That’s your change here, that I just gave you. For the dollar bill.”
“Oh,” Hightower said. “Yes. I ... I just—” The merchant was gathering up the coins. He handed them back. When the customer’s hand touched his it felt like ice.
“It’s this hot weather,” the proprietor said. “It does wear a man out. Do you want to set down a spell before you start home?” But Hightower apparently did not hear him. He was moving now, toward the door, while the merchant watched him. He passed through the door and into the street, the basket on his arm, walking stiffly and carefully, like a man on ice. It was hot; heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality, a quality of living and palpitant chiaroscuro. Someone spoke to him in passing; he did not even know it. He went on, thinking And him too. And him too walking fast now, so that when he turned the corner at last and entered that dead and empty little street where his dead and empty small house waited, he was almost panting. ‘It’s the heat,’ the top of his mind was saying to him, reiterant, explanatory. But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: ‘I wont. I wont. I have bought immunity. It is like words spoken aloud now: reiterative, patient, justificative: ‘I paid for it. I didn’t quibble about the price. No man can say that. I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling.’ The street shimmers and swims; he has been sweating, but now even the air of noon feels cool upon him. Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rushes fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I will not! I will not!
When, sitting in the study window in the first dark, he saw Byron pass into and then out of the street lamp, he sat suddenly forward in his chair. It was not that he was surprised to see Byron there, at that hour. At first, when he first recognised the figure, he thought Ah. I had an idea he would come tonight. It is not in him to support even the semblance of evil It was while he was thinking that that he started, sat forward: for an instant after recognizing the approaching figure in the full glare of the light he believed that he was mistaken, knowing all the while that he could not be, that it could be no one except Byron, since he was already turning into the gate.
Tonight Byron is completely changed. It shows in his walk, his carriage; leaning forward Hightower says to himself As though he has learned pride, or defiance Byron’s head is erect, he walks fast and erect; suddenly Hightower says, almost aloud: ‘He has done something. He has taken a step.’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, leaning in the dark window, watching the figure pass swiftly from sight beyond the window and in the direction of the porch, the entrance, and where in the next moment Hightower hears his feet and then his knock. ‘And he didn’t offer to tell me,’ he thinks. ‘I would have listened, let him think aloud to me.’ He is already crossing the room, pausing at the desk to turn on the light. He goes to the front door.
“It’s me, Reverend,” Byron says.
“I recognised you,” Hightower says. “Even though you didn’t stumble on the bottom step this time. You have entered this house on Sunday night, but until tonight you have never entered it without stumbling on the bottom step, Byron.” This was the note upon which Byron’s calls usually opened: this faintly overbearing note of levity and warmth to put the other at his ease, and on the part of the caller that slow and countrybred diffidence which is courtesy. Sometimes it would seem to Hightower that he would actually hale Byron into the house by a judicious application of pure breath, as though Byron wore a sail.
But this time Byron is already entering, before Hightower has finished his sentence. He enters immediately, with that new air born somewhere between assurance and defiance. “And I reckon you are going to find that you hate it worse when I don’t stumble than when I do,” Byron says.
“Is that a hope, or is it a threat, Byron?”
“Well, I don’t mean it to be a threat,” Byron says.
“Ah,” Hightower says. “In other words, you can offer no hope. Well, I am forewarned, at least. I was forewarned as soon as I saw you in the street light.
But at least you are going to tell me about it. What you have already done, even if you didn’t see fit to talk about it beforehand.” They are moving toward the study door. Byron stops; he looks back and up at the taller face.
“Then you know,” he says. “You have already heard.” Then, though his head has not moved, he is no longer looking at the other. “Well,” he says. He says: “Well, any man has got a free tongue. Woman too. But I would like to know who told you. Not that I am ashamed. Not that I aimed to keep it from you. I come to tell you myself, when I could.”
They stand just without the door to the lighted room. Hightower sees now that Byron’s arms are laden with bundles, parcels that look like they might contain groceries. “What?” Hightower says. “What have you come to tell me?—But come in. Maybe I do know what it is already. But I want to see your face when you tell me. I forewarn you too, Byron.” They enter the lighted room. The bundles are groceries: he has bought and carried too many like them himself not to know. “Sit down,” he says.
“No,” Byron says. “I ain’t going to stay that long.” He stands, sober, contained, with that air compassionate still, but decisive without being assured, confident without being assertive: that air of a man about to do something which someone dear to him will not understand and approve, yet which he himself knows to be right just as he knows that the friend will never see it so. He says: “You ain’t going to like it. But there ain’t anything else to do. I wish you could see it so. But I reckon you can’t. And I reckon that’s all there is to it.”