The Reivers

'Morning, Mr Boon,' he said. 'You and Mr Shurf want Lucius to bring the horse out?' Butch stopped tilting Everbe. He still held her though.

'Who's he?' he said. 'As a general rule, we dont take to strange niggers around here. We don't object though, providing they notify themselves and then keep their mouths shut.'

'Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi,' Ned said. 'You got too much name,' Butch said. 'You want something quick and simple to answer to around here until you can raise a white mush-tash and goat whisker like old Possum there, and earn it. We dont care where you come from neither; all you'll need here is just somewhere to go back to. But you'll likely do all right; at least you got sense enough to recognise Law when you see it.'

'Yes sir,' Ned said. 'I'm acquainted with Law. We got it back in Jefferson too.' He said to Boon: 'You want the horse?'

'No,' Everbe said, she had managed to free her arm; she moved quickly away; she could have done it sooner by just saying Boon: which was what Butch—deputy, whatever he was—wanted her to do, and we all knew that too. She moved, quickly for a big girl, on until she had me between her and Butch, holding my arm now; I could feel her hand trembling a little as she gripped me. 'Come on, Lucius. Show us the way.' She said, her voice tense: a murmur, almost passionate: 'How's your hand? Does it hurt?'

'It's all right,' I said.

'You sure? You'd tell me? Does wearing that sock on it help?'

'It's all right.' I said. 'I'd tell you.' We went back to the stable that way, Everbe almost dragging me to keep me between her and Butch. But it was no good; he simply walked me off; I could smell him now—sweat and whiskey —and now I saw the top of the pint bottle in his other hind pocket; he (Butch) holding her elbow again and suddenly I was afraid, because I knew I didn't—and I wasn't sure Boon did—know Everbe that well yet. No: not afraid, that wasn't the word; not afraid, because we— Boon alone—would have taken the pistol away from him and then whipped him, but afraid for Everbe and Uncle Parsham and Uncle Parsham's home and family when it happened. But I was more than afraid. I was ashamed that such a reason for fearing for Uncle Parsham, who had to live here, existed; hating (not Uncle Parsham doing the hating, but me doing it) it all, hating all of us for being the poor frail victims of being alive, having to be alive— hating Everbe for being the vulnerable helpless lodestar victim; and Boon for being the vulnerable and helpless victimised; and Uncle Parsham and Lycurgus for being where they had to, couldn't help but watch white people behaving exactly as white people bragged that only Negroes behaved—just as I had hated Otis for telling me about Everbe in Arkansas and hated Everbe for being that helpless lodestar for human debasement which he had told me about and hated myself for listening, having to hear about it, learn about it, know about it; hating that such not only was, but must be, had to be if living was to continue and mankind be a part of it.

And suddenly I was anguished with homesickness, wrenched and wrung and agonised with it: to be home, not just to retrace but to retract, obliterate: made Ned take the horse back to wherever and whoever and however he had got it and get Grandfather's automobile and take it back to Jefferson, in reverse if necessary, travelling backward to unwind, ravel back into No-being, Never-being, that whole course of dirt roads, mudholes, the man and the color-blind mules, Miss Ballenbaugh and Alice and Ephum, so that, as far as I was concerned, they had never been; when sudden and quiet and plain inside me something said Why dont you? Because I could; I needed only say to Boon, 'We're going home,' and Ned would have returned the horse and my own abject confession would have the automobile located and recovered by the police at the price of merely my shame. Because I couldn't now. It was too late. Maybe yesterday, while I was still a child, but not now. I knew too much, had seen too much. I was a child no longer now; innocence and childhood were forever lost, forever gone from me. And Everbe was loose again. I had missed seeing how she did it this time: only that she was free, facing him; she said something inaudible, quick; anyway he was not even touching her now, just looking down at her, grinning.

'Sure, sure.' he said. 'Thrash around a little; maybe I like that too; makes it look a little better to old Sugar Boy too. All right, boy,' he said to Ned. 'Let's see that horse.'

'You stay here,' Ned told me. 'Me and Lycurgus will get him.' So I stood, next to Everbe at the fence; she was holding my arm again, her hand still shaking a little. Ned and Lycurgus led the horse out. Ned was already looking toward us; he said quickly: 'Where's that other one?'

'Dont tell me you got two of them,' Butch said. But I knew what Ned meant. So did Everbe. She turned quickly. 'Otis!' she said. But he was nowhere in sight. 'Run,' Ned told Lycurgus. 'If he aint got into the house yet, maybe you can cut him off. Tell him his aunt wants him. And you stay right with him.' Lycurgus didn't even wait to say Yes sir: he just gave the lead rope to Ned and departed running. The rest of us stood along the fence —Everbe trying for immobility since that was all she had to find effiacement in, but too big for it like the doe is too big for the plum thicket which is all she has available for safety; Boon furious and seething, restraining himself who never before had restrained himself from anything. Not from fear; I tell you, he was not afraid of that gun and badge: he could and would have taken them both away from Butch and, in a kind of glory, tossed the pistol on the ground halfway between them and then given Butch the first step toward it; and only half from the loyalty which would shield me —and my family (his family)— from the result of such a battle, no matter who won it. Because the other half was chivalry: to shield a woman, even a whore, from one of the predators who debase police badges by using them as immunity to prey on her helpless kind. And a little further along, dissociated though present. Uncle Parsham, the patrician (he bore in his Christian name the patronymic of the very land we stood on), the aristocrat of us all and judge of us all.

'Hell,' Butch said. 'He cant win races standing still in a halter. Go on. Trot him across the lot.'

'We just sent for his jockey,' Ned said. 'Then you can see him work.' Then he said, 'Unlessen you in a hurry to get back to yourn.'

'My what?' Butch said.

'Your law work,' Ned said. 'Back in Possum or wherever it is.'

'After coming all the way out here to see a race horse?' Butch said. 'All I see so far is a plug standing half asleep in a lot.'

'I'm sho glad you told me that,' Ned said. 'I thought maybe you wasn't interested.' He turned to Boon. 'So maybe what you and Miss Corrie better do is go on back to town now and be ready to meet the others when the train comes. You can send the surrey back for Mr Butch and Lucius and that other boy after we breezes Lightning.'

'Ha ha ha,' Butch said, without mirth, without anything. 'How's that for a idea? Huh, Sugar Boy? You and Sweet Thing bobbasheely on back to the hotel now, and me and Uncle Remus and Lord Fauntleroy will mosey along any time up to midnight, providing of course we are through here.' He moved easily along the fence to where Boon stood, watching Boon though addressing Ned: 'I cant let Sugar Boy leave without me. I got to stay right with him, or he might get everybody in trouble. They got a law now, about taking good-looking gals across state lines for what they call immortal purposes. Sugar Boy's a stranger here; he dont know exactly where that state line's at, and his foot might slip across it while his mind's on something else— something that aint a foot. At least we dont call it