The Reivers

ambidextrous harridan who could cope with him by at least recording into his face each one of his countermarital victories. Because probably half the pleasure he got out of fornication was having it known who the victim was. But I wronged him. He was a bachelor.

But Otis was not inside either: only the single temporary clerk in the half-shrouded lobby and the single temporary waiter flapping his napkin in the door of the completely shrouded dining room save for a single table set out for such anonymous passers-by as we were—so far were, that is. But Otis had not been seen. 'I aint wondering so much where he's at,' Boon said, 'as I am about what the hell he has done this time that we aint found out about yet.'

'Nothing!' Everbe said. 'He's just a child!'

'Sure,' Boon said. 'Just a little armed child. When he gets big enough to steal—'

'Stop!' Everbe said. 'I wont—'

'All right, all right,' Boon said. 'Find, then. Find enough money to buy a knife with a six-inch blade in place of that two-inch pocketknife, anybody that turns his back on him had sho enough better be wearing one of them old- time iron union suits like you see in museums. I got to talk to you,' he told her. 'Supper'll be soon, and then we got to meet the train. And that tin-badge stallion will be neighing and prancing back here any time now.' He took her arm. 'Come on.'

That was when I had to begin to listen to Boon. I mean, I had to. Everbe compelled it. She wouldn't even go with him unless I came too. We—they—went to the ladies' parlor; there wasn't much time now; we would have to eat supper and then go to the depot to meet Miss Reba. In those days females didn't run in and out of gentlemen's rooms in hotels as, I am told, they do now, even wearing, I am told, what the advertisements call the shorts or scan-ties capable of giving women the freedom they need in their fight for freedom; in fact, I had never seen a woman alone in a hotel before (Mother would not have been here without Father) and I remember how I wondered how Everbe without a wedding ring even could have got in. They—the hotels—had what were known as ladies' parlors, like this one where we now were—a smaller though still more elegant room, most of it likewise shrouded in holland bags. But I was still on Boon's side; I didn't pass the doorway but stopped outside, where Everbe could know where I was, within call, even if she couldn't actually see me. So I heard. Oh yes, listened. I would have listened anyway; I had gone too far by now in sophistication and the facts of life to stop now, just as I had gone too far in stealing automobiles and race horses to quit now. So I could hear them: Everbe; and almost at once she was crying again:

'No! I wont! Let me alone!' Then Boon:

'But why? You said you loved me. Was that just lying too?' Then Everbe:

'I do love you. That's why. Let me alone! Turn me loose! Lucius! Lucius!' Then Boon:

'Shut up. Stop now.' Then nothing for a minute. I didn't look, peep, I just listened. No: just heard: 'If I thought you were just two-timing me with that God damned tin-badged—' Then Everbe:

'No! No! I'm not!' Then something I couldn't hear, until Boon said:

'What? Quit? What do you mean, quit?' Then Everbe:

'Yes! I've quit! Not any more. Never!' Then Boon:

'How're you going to live? What will you eat? Where you going to sleep?' And Everbe:

'I'm going to get a job. I can work.'

'What can you do? You aint got no more education than me. What can you do to make a living?'

'I can wash dishes. I can wash and iron. I can learn to cook. I can do something, I can even hoe and pick cotton. Let me go, Boon. Please. Please. I've got to. Cant you see I've got to?' Then her feet running, even on the thick carpet; she was gone. So Boon caught me this time. His face was pretty bad now. Ned was lucky; all he had to frazzle over was just a horse race.

'Look at me,' Boon said. 'Look at me good. What's wrong with me? What the hell's wrong with me? It used to be that I ...' His face looked like it was going to burst. He started again: 'And why me? Why the hell me? Why the hell has she got to pick out me to reform on? God damn it, she's a whore, cant she understand that? She's in the paid business of belonging to me exclusive the minute she sets her foot where I'm at like I'm in the paid business of belonging to Boss and Mr Maury exclusive the minute I set my foot where they're at. But now she's done quit. For private reasons. She cant no more. She aint got no more private rights to quit without my say-so too than I got to quit without Boss's and Mr Maury's say-so too—' He stopped, furious and baffled, raging and helpless; and more: terrified. It was the Negro waiter, flapping his napkin in this doorway now. Boon made a tremendous effort; Ned with nothing but a horse race to win didn't even know what trouble was. 'Go tell her to come on to supper. We got to meet that train. Her room is Number Five.'

But she wouldn't come out. So Boon and I ate alone. His face still didn't look much better. He ate like you put meat into a grinder: not like he either wanted it or didn't want it, but it was just time to eat. After a while I said, 'Maybe he started walking back to Arkansas. He said two or three times this afternoon that that's where he would have been by now if folks hadn't kept on interfering with him.'

'Sure,' Boon said. 'Maybe he just went on ahead to locate that dish-washing job for her. Or maybe he reformed too and they're both going right straight to heaven without stopping off at Arkansas or nowhere else, and he just went ahead to find out how to pass Memphis without nobody seeing them.' Then it was time to go. I had been watching the edge of her dress beyond the dining-room door for about two minutes, but now the waiter himself came.

'Two-O-Eight, sir,' he said. 'Just blowed for One Mile Crossing.' So we went across to the depot, not far, the three of us walking together, mutual overnight hotel guests. I mean we—they—were not fighting now; we— they— could even have talked, conversed, equable and inconsequential. Everbe would have, only Boon would need to speak first. Not far: merely to cross the tracks to reach the platform, the train already in sight now, the two of them (Boon and Everbe) shackled yet estranged, alien yet indissoluble, confounded yet untwainable by no more than what Boon thought was a whim: who (Boon) for all his years was barely older than me and didn't even know that women no more have whims than they have doubts or illusions or prostate troubles; the train, the engine passing us in hissing thunder, sparks flying from the brake shoes; it was the long one, the big one, the cannonball, the Special: the baggage cars, the half Jim Crow smoker, then the day coaches and the endless pullmans, the dining car at the end, slowing; it was Sam Caldwell's train and if Everbe and Otis had travelled to Parsham in the caboose of a scheduled through freight, Miss Reba would be in a drawing room, if indeed she was not in the president's private car; the train stopping at last though still no vestibule opened, no white-jacketed porter nor conductor, though certainly Sam would have been watching for us; until Boon said, 'Hell. The smoker,' and began to run. Then we all saw them, far ahead: Sam Caldwell in his uniform on the cinders helping Miss Reba down, someone—another woman—following her, and not from the smoking car at all but from the Jim Crow half of it where Negroes travelled;