The Reivers

'I calls him Mister in plenty of time for him to earn it,' Ned said. 'Let alone deserve it.' He said, 'Hee hee hee.' You see? I was doing the best I could. My trouble was, the tools I had to use. The innocence and the ignorance: I not only didn't have strength and knowledge, I didn't even have time enough. When the fates, gods—all right, Non- virtue—give you opportunities, the least they can do is give you room. But at least Cousin Ike was easy to find on Saturday. 'You bet,' he said. 'Come and stay with me tonight. Maybe we'll go fishing tomorrow—just dont tell your father.'

'No sir,' I said. 'Not stay with you tonight. I'm going to stay with Ned and Delphine, like I always do. I just wanted you to know, since Mother's not here where I can tell her. I mean, ask her.' You see: doing the best I could with what I had, knew. Not that I was losing faith in ultimate success: it simply seemed to me that Non-virtue was wasting in merely testing me that time which was urgent and even desperate for greater ends. I went back home, not running: Jefferson must not see me running; but as fast as I could without it. You see, I did not dare trust Boon unbacked in Aunt Callie's hands.

I was in time. In fact, it was Boon and the automobile who were late. Aunt Callie even had Maury and Alexander re-dressed again; if they had had naps since dinner, it was the shortest fastest sleep on record in our house. Also, Ned was there, where he had no business being. No, that's not right. I mean, his being there was completely wrong: not being at our house, he was often there, but being anywhere where he could be doing something useful with Grandfather and Grandmother out of town. Because he was carrying the baggage out— the wicker basket of Alexander's diapers and other personal odds and ends, the grips containing mine and Lessep's and Maury's clothes for four days, and Aunt Callie's cloth-wrapped bundle, lumping them without order at the gate and telling Aunt Callie: 'You might just as well set down and rest your feet. Boon Hogganbeck's done broke that thing and is somewhere trying to fix it. If you really wants to get out to McCaslin before suppertime, telefoam Mr Ballott at the stable to send Son Thomas with the carriage and I'll drive you out there like folks ought to travel.'

And after a while it began to look like Ned was right. Half past one came (which time Alexander and Maury could have spent sleeping) and no Boon; then Maury and Alexander could have slept another half an hour on top of that; Ned had said 'I tole you so' so many times by now that Aunt Callie had quit yelling about Boon and yelled at Ned himself until he went and sat in the scuppernong arbor; she was just about to send me to look for Boon and the automobile when he drove up. When I saw him, I was terrified. He had changed his clothes. I mean, he had shaved and he had on not merely a white shirt but a clean one, with a collar and necktie; without doubt when he got out of the car to load us in he would have a coat over his arm and the first thing Aunt Callie would see when she reached the car would be his grip on the floor. Horror, but rage too (not at Boon: I discovered, realised that at once) at myself, who should have known, anticipated this, having known (I realised this too now) all my life that who dealt with Boon dealt with a child and had not merely to cope with but even anticipate its unpredictable vagaries; not the folly of Boon's lack of the simplest rudiments of common sense, but the shame of my failure to anticipate, assume he would lack them, saying, crying to Whoever it is you indict in such crises Dont You realise I aint but eleven years old? How do You expect me to do all this at just eleven years old? Dont You see You are putting on me more than I can handle? But in the next second, rage at Boon too: not that his stupidity had now wrecked for good our motor trip to Memphis (that's right, Memphis as our destination has never been mentioned, either to you or between Boon and me. Why should it have been? Where else did we have to go? Indeed, where else could anyone in north Mississippi want to go? Some aged and finished creature on his or her deathbed might contemplate or fear a more distant destination, but they were not Boon and me). In fact, at this moment I wished I had never heard of Memphis or Boon or automobiles either; I was on Colonel Sartoris's side now, to have abolished Mr Buffaloe and his dream both from the face of the earth at the instant of its inception. My rage at Boon was for having destroyed, cast down with that one childish blow like the blind kick of an infant's foot, the precarious and frantic ramshackle of my lies and false promises and false swearing; revealing the clay-footed sham for which I had bartered—nay, damned —my soul; that, or maybe the exposing of the true shoddy worthlessness of the soul I had been vain enough to assume the devil would pay anything for: like losing your maidenhead through some shabby inattentive mischance, such as not watching where you were going, innocent even of pleasure, let alone of sin. Then even the rage was gone. Nothing remained, nothing. I didn't want to go anywhere, be anywhere. I mean, I didn't want to be is anywhere. If I had to be something, I wanted it to be was. I said, and I believed it (I know I believed it because I have said it a thousand times since and I still believe it and I hope to say it a thousand times more in my h'fe and I defy anyone to say I will not believe it) / will never lie again. It's too much trouble. It's too much like trying to prop a feather upright in a saucer of sand. There's never any end to it. You never get any rest. You're never finished. You never even use up the sand so that you can quit trying.

Only, nothing happened. Boon got out, without any coat. Ned was already loading our grips and baskets and bundles into the car. He said grimly: 'Hee hee hee.' He said, 'Come on, get started so you can break down and still have time to fix it and get back to town before dark.' So he was talking to Boon now. He said, 'Are you coming back to town before you leaves?'

Then Boon said: 'Leave for where?'

'Leave to eat supper,' Ned said. 'Where does anybody with good sense leave to do at sundown?'

'Oh,' Boon said. 'You worry about your supper. That's the only supper you got to worry about eating.'

We got in and started, me in front with Boon and the rest of them in the back. We crossed the Square crowded with Saturday afternoon, and then we were out of town. But there we were, I mean, we were no forrader. We would come presently to the fork of the road which led to Cousin Zack's, and we would even be going in the wrong direction. And even if it had been the right direction, we still would not be free; as long as we still had Aunt Callie and Lessep and Maury and Alexander in the back seat, we were only free of Ned 1>eing where nobody in the world had expected him to be, saying Hee hee hee and Are you coming back to town before. Boon had never once looked at me, not I at him. Nor had he spoken to me either; possibly he sensed that he had frightened me with his clean shirt and collar and necktie and the shave in the middle of the day and all the rest of the give-away aura of travel, departure, separation, severance; sensed that I was not only frightened but angry that I had been vulnerable to fright; going on, the sunny early afternoon road stretching on ahead for the seventeen miles during which something would have to be decided, agreed upon; on across the bright May land, our dust spurting and coiling behind us unless we had to slow down for a bridge or a sandy stretch which required the low gears; the seventeen miles which would not last forever even though there were seventeen of them, the mileposts diminishing much too rapidly while something had to be done, decided sooner and sooner and nearer and nearer and I didn't know what yet; or maybe just something said, a voice, noise, a human sound, since no matter what bitter forfeit Non-virtue may afterward wrench and wring from you, loneliness, solitude, silence should not be part of it. But at least Boon tried. Or maybe with him it was just the silence too and any un-silence were better, no matter how foolish nor long-ago pre-doomed. No, it was more than that; we had less than half the distance left now and something had to be done, started, fused-off:

'The roads are sure fine now, everywhere, even further than Yoknapatawpha County. A man couldn't want better roads for a long trip like a automobile funeral or something than they are now. How far do you reckon this car could go between now and sundown?' You see? addressed to nobody, like the drowning man thrusting one desperate hand above the surface hoping there might be a straw there. He found none:

'I dont know,' Aunt Callie said from the back seat, holding Alexander, who had been asleep since we left town and didn't deserve a car ride of one mile, let alone seventeen. 'And you aint gonter know neither, unlessen you studies it out setting in that front seat locked up in that shed in Boss's back yard tonight.'