moved and breathed in, were not only unalien but in fact curiously appropriate, being themselves biological dead ends and hence already obsolete before they were born; the automobile: the expensive useless mechanical toy rated in power and strength by the dozens of horses, yet held helpless and impotent in the almost infantile clutch of a few inches of the temporary confederation of two mild and pacific elements—earth and water—which the frailest integers and units of motion as produced by the ancient unmechanical methods, had coped with for countless generations without really having noticed it; the three of us, three forked identical and now unrecognisable mud- colored creatures engaged in a life-and-death struggle with it, the progress—if any—of which had to be computed in dreadful and glacier-like inches. And all the while, the man sat in his tilted chair on the gallery watching us while Ned and I strained for every inch we could get on the rope which by now was too slippery with mud to grip with the hands, and at the rear of the car Boon strove like a demon, titanic, ramming his pole beneath the automobile and lifting and heaving it forward; at one time he dropped, flung away the pole and, stooping, grasped the car with his hands and actually ran it forward for a foot or two as though it were a wheelbarrow. No man could stand it. No man should ever have to. I said so at last. I stopped pulling, I said, panted: 'No. We cant do it. We just cant.' And Boon, in an expiring voice as faint and gentle as the whisper of love: 'Then get out of the way or I'll run it over you.'
'No,' I said. I stumbled, slipping and plunging, back to him. 'No,' I said. 'You'll kill yourself.'
'I aint tired,' Boon said in that light dry voice. 'I'm just getting started good. But you and Ned can take a rest. While you're getting your breath, suppose you drag up some more of that brush—'
'No,' I said, 'no! Here he comes! Do you want him to see it?' Because we could see him as well as hear—the suck and plop of the mules' feet as they picked their delicate way along the edge of the mudhole, the almost musical jangle of the looped chains, the man riding one and leading the other, his shoes tied together by the laces looped over one of the hames, the doubletree balanced in front of him as the old buffalo hunters in the pictures carried their guns—a gaunt man, older than we—I anyway —had assumed.
'Morning, boys,' he said. 'Looks like you're about ready for me now. Howdy, Jefferson,' he said to Boon. 'Looks like you did get through last summer, after all.'
'Looks like it,' Boon said. He had changed, instantaneous and complete, like a turned page: the poker player who has just seen the second deuce fall to a hand across the table. 'We might a got through this time too if you folks didn't raise such heavy mud up here.'
'Dont hold that against us,' the man said. 'Mud's one of our best crops up thisaway.'
'At two dollars a mudhole, it ought to be your best,' Ned said. The man blinked at Ned a moment.
'I dont know but what you're right,' he said. 'Here. You take this doubletree; you look like a boy that knows which end of a mule to hook to.'
'Get down and do it yourself,' Boon said. 'Why else are we paying you two dollars to be the hired expert? You done it last year.'
'That was last year,' the man said. 'Dabbling around in this water hooking log chains to them things undermined my system to where I come down with rheumatism if I so much as spit on myself.' So he didn't stir. He just brought the mules up and turned them side by side while Boon and Ned hooked the trace chains to the singletrees and then Boon squatted in the mud to make the log chain fast to the car.
'What do you want me to hook it to?' he said. 'I dont care myself,' the man said. 'Hook up to any part of it you want out of this mudhole. If you want all of it to come out at the same time, I'd say hook to the axle. But first I'd put all them spades and ropes back in the automobile. You wont need them no more, at least here.' So Ned and I did that, and Boon hooked up and we all three stood clear and watched. He was an expert of course, but by now the mules were experts too, breaking the automobile free of the mud, keeping the strain balanced on the doubletree as delicately as wire walkers, getting the automobile into motion and keeping it there with no more guidance than a word now and then from the man who rode the near mule, and an occasional touch from the peeled switch he carried; on. to where the ground was more earth than water.
'All right, Ned,' Boon said. 'Unhook him.'
'Not yet,' the man said. 'There's another hole just this side of the bridge that I'm throwing in free. You aint been acquainted here for a year now.' He said to Ned: 'What we call the reserve patch up thisaway.'
'You means the Christmas middle,' Ned said. 'Maybe I do,' the man said. 'What is it?' Ned told him. 'It's how we done at McCaslin back before the Surrender when old L.Q.C. was alive, and how the Edmonds boy still does. Every spring a middle is streaked off in the best ground on the place, and every stalk of cotton betwixt that middle and the edge of the field belongs to the Christmas fund, not for the boss but for every McCaslin nigger to have a Christmas share of it. That's what a Christmas middle is. Likely you mud-farming folks up here never heard of it.' The man looked at Ned awhile. After a while Ned said, 'Hee hee hee.'
'That's better,' the man said. 'I thought for a minute me and you was about to misunderstand one another.' He said to Boon: 'Maybe somebody better guide it.'
'Yes,' Boon said. 'All right,' he told me. So I got under the wheel, mud and all. But we didn't move yet. The man said, 'I forgot to mention it, so maybe I better. Prices have doubled around here since last year.'
'Why?' Boon said. 'It's the same car, the same mud-hole; be damned if I dont believe it's even the same mud.'
'That was last year. There's more business now. So much more that I cant afford not to go up.'
'All right, goddammit,' Boon said. 'Go on.' So we moved, ignominious, at the pace of the mules, on, into the next mudhole without stopping, on and out again. The bridge was just ahead now; beyond it, we could see the road all the way to the edge of the bottom and safety.
'You're all right now,' the man said. 'Until you come back.' Boon was unhooking the log chain while Ned freed the traces and handed the doubletree back up to the man on the mule.
'We aint coming back this way,' Boon said.
'I wouldn't neither,' the man said. Boon went back to the last puddle and washed some of the mud from his hands and came back and took four dollars from his wallet. The man didn't move.
'It's six dollars,' he said.
'Last year it was two dollars,' Boon said. 'You said it's double now. Double two is four. All right. Here's four dollars.'
'I charge a dollar a passenger,' the man said. 'There was two of you last year. That was two dollars. The price is doubled now. There's three of you. That's six dollars. Maybe you'd rather walk back to Jefferson than pay two
