'I thought you said we'll have trouble there.'
'You damn right we will,' Boon said. 'It'll take that axe and shovel and bob wire and block and tackle and all the fence rails and me and you and Ned all three. That's who I'm laughing at: Ned. By the time we are through Hell Creek tomorrow, he's going to wish he hadn't busted what he calls his manners nor et nor done nothing else under that tarpollyon until he felt Memphis itself under them wheels.'
Then he waked me early. And everybody else within a half mile, though it still took some time to get Ned up from where he had slept in Ephum's house, to the kitchen to eat his breakfast (and even longer than that to get him out of the kitchen again with a woman in it). We ate breakfast—and after that breakfast if I had been a hunter or a fisherman I wouldn't have felt like walking anywhere for a while—and Boon gave Miss Ballenbaugh another ride in the automobile, but without Alice and Ephum this time, though Ephum was on hand. Then we—Boon—filled the gasoline tank and the radiator, not because they needed it but I think because Miss Ballenbaugh and Ephum were there watching, and started. The sun was just rising as we crossed the Iron Bridge over the river (and the ghost of that steamboat too; I had forgot that last night) into foreign country, another county; by night it would even be another state, and Memphis.
'Providing we get through Hell Creek,' Boon said. 'Maybe if you'd just stop talking about it,' I said. 'Sure,' Boon said. 'Hell Creek bottom dont care whether you talk about it or not. It dont have to give a durn. You'll see.' Then he said, 'Well, there it is.' It was only a little after ten; we had made excellent time following the ridges, the roads dry and dusty between the sprouting fields, the land vacant and peaceful with Sunday, the people already in their Sunday clothes idle on the front galleries, the children and dogs already running toward the fence or road to watch us pass; then in the surreys and buggies and wagons and horse-and mule-back, anywhere from one to three on the horse but not on the mule (a little after nine we passed another automobile; Boon said it was a Ford; he had an eye for automobiles like Miss Ballenbaugh's), on the way to the small white churches in the spring groves.
A wide valley lay before us, the road descending from the plateau toward a band of willow and cypress which marked the creek. It didn't look very bad to me, nowhere near as wide as the river bottom we had already crossed, and we could even see the dusty gash of the road mounting to the opposite plateau beyond it. But Boon had already started to curse, driving even faster down the hill almost as if he were eager, anxious to reach and join battle with it, as if it were something sentient, not merely inimical but unredeemable, like a human enemy, another man. 'Look at it,' he said. 'Innocent as a new-laid egg. You can even see the road beyond it like it was laughing at us, like it was saying If you could just get here you could durn near see Memphis; except just see if you can get here.'
'If it's all that bad, why don't we go around it?' Ned said. 'That's what I would do if it was me setting there where you is.'
'Because Hell Creek bottom aint got no around,' Boon said violently. 'Go one way and you'd wind up in Alabama; go the other way and you'll fall off in the Missippi River.'
'I seen the Missippi River at Memphis once,' Ned said. 'Now you mention it, I done already seen Memphis too.
But I aint never seen Alabama. Maybe I'd like a trip there.'
'You aint never visited Hell Creek bottom before neither,' Boon said. 'Providing what you hid under that tar- pollyon for yesterday is education. Why do you reckon the only two automobiles we have seen between now and Jefferson was this one and that Ford? Because there aint no other automobiles in Missippi below Hell Creek, that's why.'
'Miss Ballenbaugh counted thirteen passed her house in the last two years,' I said.
'Two of them was this one,' Boon said. 'And even them other eleven she never counted crossing Hell Creek, did she?'
'Maybe it depends on who's doing the driving,' Ned said. 'Hee hee hee.'
Boon stopped the car, quickly. He turned his head. 'All right. Jump out. You want to visit Alabama. You done already made yourself fifteen minutes late running your mouth.'
'Why you got to snatch a man up just for passing the day with you?' Ned said. But Boon wasn't listening to him. I dont think he was really speaking to Ned. He was already out of the car; he opened the toolbox Grandfather had had made on the running board to hold the block and tackle and axe and spade and the lantern, taking everything out but the lantern and tumbling them into the back seat with Ned.
'So we wont waste any time,' he said, speaking rapidly, but quite composed, calm, without hysteria or even urgency, closing the box and getting back under the wheel. 'Let's hit it. What're we waiting for?'
Still it didn't look bad to me—just another country road crossing another swampy creek, the road no longer dry but not really wet yet, the holes and boggy places already filled for our convenience by previous pioneers with brush tops and limbs, and sections of it even corduroyed with poles laid crossways in the mud (oh yes, I realised suddenly that the road—for lack of any closer term—had stopped being not really wet yet too) so perhaps Boon himself was responsible; he himself had populated the stagnant cypress- and willow-arched mosquito-whined gloom with the wraiths of stuck automobiles and sweating and cursing people. Then I thought we had struck it, except for that fact that I not only couldn't see any rise of drier ground which would indicate we were reaching, approaching the other side of the swamp, I couldn't even see the creek itself ahead yet, let alone a bridge. Again the automobile lurched, canted, and hung as it did yesterday at Hurricane Creek; again Boon was already removing his shoes and socks and rolling up his pants. 'All right,' he said to Ned over his shoulder, 'get out.'
'I dont know how,' Ned said, not moving. 'I aint learned about automobiles yet. I'll just be in your way. I'll set here with Lucius so you can have plenty of room.'
'Hee hee hee,' Boon said in savage and vicious mimicry. 'You wanted a trip. Now you got one. Get out.'
'I got my Sunday clothes on,' Ned said. 'So have I,' Boon said. 'If I aint scared of a pair of britches, you needn't be.'
'You can talk,' Ned said. 'You got Mr Maury. I has to work for my money. When my clothes gets mint or wore out, I has to buy new ones myself.'
'You never bought a garment of clothes or shoes or a hat neither in your life,' Boon said. 'You got one pigeon- tailed coat I know of that old Lucius McCaslin himself wore, let alone General Compson's and Major de Spain's and Boss's too. You can roll your britches up and take off your shoes or not, that's your business. But you're going to get out of this automobile.'
'Let Lucius get out,' Ned said. 'He's younger than me and stouter too for his size.'
'He's got to steer it,' Boon said.
