“There is little of refreshment I can offer you, sir. But if a glass of cool milk after your ride—”
Only, for a long time he didn’t answer at all; Louvinia said how he just looked at Granny with his hard bright eyes and that hard bright silence full of laughing. “No, no,” he said. “I thank you. You are taxing yourself beyond mere politeness and into sheer bravado.”
“Louvinia,” Granny said, “conduct the gentleman to the dining room and serve him with what we have.”
He was out of the room now, because Granny began to tremble now, trembling and trembling, but not relaxing yet; we could hear her panting now. And we breathed, too, now, looking at each other. “We never killed him!” I whispered. “We haven’t killed anybody at all!” So it was Granny’s body that told us again; only this time I could almost feel him looking at Granny’s spread skirt where we crouched while he thanked her for the milk and told her his name and regiment.
“Perhaps it is just as well that you have no grandchildren,” he said. “Since, doubtless, you wish to live in peace. I have three boys myself, you see. And I have not even had time to become a grandparent.” And now there wasn’t any laughing behind his voice, and Louvinia said he was standing there in the door, with the brass bright on his dark blue and his hat in his hand and his bright beard and hair, looking at Granny without the laughing now: “I won’t apologize; fools cry out at wind or fire. But permit me to say and hope that you will never have anything worse than this to remember us by.” Then he was gone. We heard his spurs in the hall and on the porch, then the horse, dying away, ceasing, and then Granny let go. She went back into the chair with her hand at her breast and her eyes closed and the sweat on her face in big drops; all of a sudden I began to holler, “Louvinia! Louvinia!” But she opened her eyes then and looked at me; they were looking at me when they opened. Then she looked at Ringo for a moment, but she looked back at me, panting.
“Bayard,” she said, “what was that word you used?”
“Word?” I said. “When, Granny?” Then I remembered; I didn’t look at her, and she lying back in the chair, looking at me and panting.
“Don’t repeat it. You cursed. You used obscene language, Bayard.”
I didn’t look at her. I could see Ringo’s feet too. “Ringo did too,” I said. She didn’t answer, but I could feel her looking at me; I said suddenly: “And you told a lie. You said we were not here.”
“I know it,” she said. She moved. “Help me up.” She got out of the chair, holding to us. We didn’t know what she was trying to do. We just stood there while she held to us and to the chair and let herself down to her knees beside it. It was Ringo that knelt first. Then I knelt, too, while she asked the Lord to forgive her for telling the lie. Then she rose; we didn’t have time to help her. “Go to the kitchen and get a pan of water and the soap,” she said. “Get the new soap.”
It was late, like time had slipped up on us while we were still caught in the noise of the musket and were too busy to notice; the sun shone almost level into our faces when we stood on the edge of the back porch, and when we spit, we spit straight into it. At first, just by breathing we could blow soap bubbles, but soon it was just the taste of the spitting. Then even that began to go away, though the impulse to spit didn’t, and then away to the north we saw the cloud bank, faint and blue and far-away at the base and touched with copper sun on the top. When father came home back in the spring, we tried to understand about mountains. At last he pointed out the cloud bank and said how it looked like mountains, and so, ever since then, Ringo believed that that was Tennessee, where father was, just like now.
“There they,” he said, spitting. “There hit. Tennessee, where your pappy use to fight um at. Looking mighty far too.”
“Too far to go just to fight Yankees,” I said, spitting too. But it was gone now, even the taste of it.
Retreat
By suppertime we had everything loaded into the wagon but the bedclothes we would sleep under that night. Then Granny went upstairs, and when she came back down she had on her Sunday dress and her hat, and there was color in her face now and her eyes were bright.
“Is we gonter leave tonight?” Ringo said. “I thought we wasn’t going to start until tomorrow.”
“No,” Granny said. “But it’s been three years now since I have started anywhere; I reckon the Lord will forgive me for getting ready one day ahead of time.” She turned to Louvinia. “Tell Joby and Loosh to be ready with the lantern and the shovels right after supper.”
Louvinia had put the corn bread on the table and was going out. But she stopped and looked at Granny. “You mean you gonter take that heavy trunk all the way to Memphis with you?”
“Yes,” Granny said. She was eating; she didn’t even look at Louvinia. Louvinia stood there looking at the back of Granny’s head.
“Whyn’t you leave hit here where hit hid good and I can take care of hit? Who gonter find hit, even if they was to come here again? Hit’s Marse John they done called the reward on; hit ain’t no trunk full of—”
“I have my reasons,” Granny said. “You do what I told you.”
“All right. But how come you wanter dig hit up tonight when you ain’t leaving until tomor—”
“You do what I said,” Granny said.
“Yessum,” Louvinia said. She went out. I looked at Granny eating, with her hat sitting on the exact top of her head, and Ringo looking at me across the back of Granny’s chair with his eyes rolling a little.
“Why not leave it hid?” I said. “It’ll be just that much more load on the wagon. Joby says that trunk will weigh a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand fiddlesticks!” Granny said. “I don’t care if it weighed ten thousand—” Louvinia came in.
“They be ready,” she said. “I wish you’d tell me why you got to dig hit up tonight.”
Granny looked at her. “I had a dream about it last night.”
“Oh,” Louvinia said. She and Ringo looked exactly alike, except that Louvinia’s eyes were not rolling so much as his.
“I dreamed I was looking out my window, and a man walked into the orchard and went to where it is and stood there pointing at it,” Granny said. She looked at Louvinia. “A black man.”
“A nigger?” Louvinia said.
“Yes.”
For a while Louvinia didn’t say anything. Then she said, “Did you know him?”
“Yes,” Granny said.
“Is you going to tell who hit was?”
“No,” Granny said.
Louvinia turned to Ringo. “Gawn tell your pappy and Loosh to get the lantern and the shovels and come on up here.”
Joby and Loosh were in the kitchen. Joby was sitting behind the stove with a plate on his knees, eating. Loosh was sitting on the wood box, still, with the two shovels between his knees, but I didn’t see him at first because of Ringo’s shadow. The lamp was on the table, and I could see the shadow of Ringo’s head bent over and his arm working back and forth, and Louvinia standing between us and the lamp, her hands on her hips and her elbows spread and her shadow filling the room. “Clean that chimney good,” she said.
Joby carried the lantern, with Granny behind him, and then Loosh; I could see her bonnet and Loosh’s head and the two shovel blades over his shoulder. Ringo was breathing behind me. “Which un you reckon she dremp about?” he said.
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said. We were in the orchard now.
“Hoo,” Ringo said. “Me ask her? I bet if she stayed here wouldn’t no Yankee nor nothing else bother that trunk, nor Marse John neither, if he knowed hit.” Joby set the lantern down and he and Loosh dug up the trunk where we buried it last summer. Granny carried the lantern, and it took Ringo and me both to help carry the trunk back to the house, but I don’t believe it weighed a thousand pounds. Joby began to bear away toward the wagon.
“Take it into the house,” Granny said.
“We better load hit now and save having to handle hit again tomorrow,
” Joby said.
“Take it into the house,” Granny said. So, after a while, Joby moved on toward the house. We could hear him breathing now, saying “Hah!” every few steps. Inside the kitchen he let his end down, hard.
“Hah!” he said. “That’s done, thank God.”
“Take it upstairs,” Granny said.
Joby turned and looked at her. He hadn’t straightened up yet; he turned, half stooping, and looked at her. “Which?” he said.
“Take it upstairs,” Granny said. “I want it in my room.”
“You mean you gonter tote this thing all the way upstairs and then tote it back down tomorrow?”
“Somebody is,” Granny said. “Are you going to help or are me and Bayard going to do it alone?”
Then Louvinia came in. She had already undressed. She looked tall as a ghost; she came and shoved Joby away and took hold of the trunk. “Git away, nigger,” she said. Joby groaned, then he shoved Louvinia away.
“Git away, woman,” he said. He lifted his end of the trunk, then he looked back at Loosh, who had never let his end down. “If you gonter ride on hit, pick up your feet,” he said. We carried the trunk up to Granny’s room, and Joby was setting it down again, until Granny made him and Loosh pull the bed out from the wall and slide the trunk in behind it; Ringo and I helped again. I don’t believe it lacked much of weighing a thousand pounds.
“Now I want everybody to go right to bed, so we can get an early start tomorrow,” Granny said.
“That’s you,” Joby said. “Git everybody up at crack of day and it be noon ’fore we get started.”
“Nummine about that,” Louvinia said. “You do like Miss Rosa tell you.” We went out. And then Ringo and I looked at each other, because we heard the key turn in Granny’s lock.
“I didn’t even know she had a key, let alone hit would turn,” Ringo said.
“And that’s some more of yawl’s and Joby’s business,” Louvinia said. She was already in her cot; when we looked at her she was already covering her head up with the quilt. “Yawl get on to bed.”
We went to our room and undressed. “Which un you reckon she dremp about?” Ringo said.
We ate breakfast by lamplight; Ringo and I had on our Sunday clothes. When Granny came out to the wagon, she was carrying the musket. “Here,” she said to Joby. Joby looked at the musket.
“We won’t need hit,” he said.
“Put it in the wagon,” Granny said.
“Nome, we won’t need nothing like that,” Joby said. “We be in Memphis so quick won’t even nobody have time to hear we on the road. I speck Marse John got the Yankees pretty well cleant out twixt here and Memphis anyway.”
This time Granny didn’t say anything at all. She just held the musket out, and Joby put it into the wagon and we drove away, with Louvinia standing on the porch with father’s old hat on top of her head rag. Granny sat on the seat by Joby, with her hat on the top of her head and her umbrella already raised before the dew began to fall. Then I didn’t look back, but I could feel Ringo turning every few feet, even after we were outside the gates and in the road to town. Then we began to go around the curve. “Hit gone now,” Ringo said. “Good-by, Sartoris; Memphis, how-de-do!”
The sun was just coming up when we came in sight of Jefferson; we passed a company of troops bivouacked in a pasture on the edge of town, eating breakfast. Their uniforms were not gray any more now; they were almost the color of dead leaves and some of them didn’t even have uniforms, and one man waved a skillet at us and he had on a pair of Yankee pants. “Hey, Miss’ippi!” he hollered. “Hooraw for Arkansas!” We left Granny at the Compsons’ to tell them good-by and to ask Mrs. Compson to see about her flowers now and then, and Ringo and I drove the wagon to the store, and we were just coming out with the salt when Uncle Buck McCaslin came hobbling across the square, waving his stick and hollering, and behind him the captain of the company we had passed eating breakfast.
“By Godfrey, there he is!” Uncle Buck hollered, shaking his stick at me. “There’s John Sartoris’ boy!”
The captain looked at me. “I’ve heard about your father,” he said.
“Heard of him?” Uncle Buck hollered; by now they had begun to stop along the walk to listen to Uncle Buck, like they always did. “Who ain’t heard about him in this country? Git the Yankees to tell you about him sometime. By Godfrey, he raised the first damn regiment in Mississippi out of his own pocket, and took ’em to Ferginny and whipped Yankees right and left with ’em before he found out that what he had bought and paid for wasn’t a regiment of soldiers but a congress of politicians and fools. Fools, I say!” he hollered, still shaking the stick at me and glaring at everybody, and the captain looking at him funny, because he hadn’t listened to Uncle Buck before yet, and I kept on thinking about Louvinia standing there on the porch with father’s old hat on, and wishing that Uncle Buck would get through or hush, so we could go on.
“Fools, I say!” he hollered. “I don’t care if some of you folks here do still claim kin with men that elected him colonel and followed him and Stonewall Jackson right up in spitting distance of Washington without hardly losing a man, and then next year turned around and voted him down to major and elected in his stead a damn whippersnapper that never even knowed which end of a gun done the shooting until John Sartoris showed him.” He quit hollering just as easy as he started, but the hollering was right there, waiting to start again as soon as he found something else to holler about. “I won’t say God take care of you and your grandma on the road, boy, because, by Godfrey, you don’t need God’s nor nobody else’s help; all you got to say is ‘I’m John Sartoris’ boy; rabbits, hunt the canebrake,’ and then watch the blue-bellied sons fly.”
“Are they leaving, going away?” the captain said.
Then Uncle Buck began to holler again: “Leaving? Hell’s skillet, who’s going to take care of them around here? John Sartoris is a damn fool; they voted him out of his own regiment in kindness, so he could come home and take care of his family, knowing that if he didn’t, wouldn’t nobody around here be likely to. But that don’t suit John Sartoris, because John Sartoris is a damned, confounded, selfish coward, askeered to stay at home where the Yankees might get him. Yes, sir. So skeered that he has to raise him up another batch of men to protect him every time he gets up within a hundred feet of a Yankee regiment. Scouring all up and down the country, finding Yankee brigades to dodge; only, if it had been me, I would have took back to Ferginny and I’d have showed that new colonel what fighting looked like. But not John Sartoris. He’s a coward and a fool. The best he can do is dodge and run away from Yankees until they have to put a price on his head, and now he’s got to send his family out of the country; to Memphis, where maybe the Union Army will take care of them, since it don’t look like his own government and fellow citizens are going to.” He ran out of breath then, or out of words, anyway, standing there with his beard trembling and the tobacco running onto it out of his mouth, and shaking his stick at me. So I lifted the reins; only the captain spoke; he was still watching me.
“How many men has your father got in his regiment?” he said.
“It’s not a regiment, sir,” I said. “He’s got about fifty, I reckon.”
“Fifty?” the captain said. “Fifty? We had a prisoner last week who said he had more than a thousand. He said that Colonel Sartoris didn’t fight; he just stole horses.”
Uncle Buck had enough wind to laugh though. He sounded just like a hen, slapping his leg and holding to the wagon wheel like he was about to fall.
“That’s it! That’s John Sartoris! He gets the horses; any fool can step out and get a Yankee. These two damn boys here did that last summer—stepped down to the gate and brought back a whole regiment, and them just—How old are you, boy?”
“Fourteen,” I said.
“We ain’t fourteen yit,” Ringo said. “But we will be in September, if we live and nothing happens.… I reckon Granny waiting on us, Bayard.”
&n
bsp; Uncle Buck quit laughing. He stepped back. “Git on,” he said. “You got a long road.” I turned the wagon. “You take care of your grandma, boy, or John Sartoris will skin you alive. And if he don’t, I will!” When the wagon straightened out, he began to hobble along beside it. “And when you see him, tell him I said to leave the horses go for a while and kill the bluebellied sons. Kill them!”
“Yes, sir,” I said. We went on.
“Good thing for his mouth Granny ain’t here,” Ringo said. She and Joby were waiting for us at the Compsons’ gate. Joby had another basket with a napkin over it and a bottle neck sticking out and some rose cuttings. Then Ringo and I sat behind again, and Ringo turning to look back every few feet and saying, “Good-by, Jefferson. Memphis, how-de-do!” And then we came to the top of the first hill and he looked back, quiet this time, and said, “Suppose they don’t never get done fighting.”
“All right,” I said. “Suppose it.” I didn’t look back.