him discourage you,' he said. 'After all, it's just a horse race.'
'Yes sir,' Lycurgus said. 'That's what they says. Much oblige for letting us look at him.'
'Thank you, sir,' I said.
'Good-bye,' Mr. Walter said. 'Don't keep them mules waiting. See you at post time this afternoon.'
'No sir,' Lycurgus said.
'Yes, sir,' I said. We went on, past the stables and the track once more.
'Mind what Mr McCaslin told us,' Lycurgus said.
'Mr McCaslin?' I said. 'Oh yes,' I said. I didn't ask What? this time either. I think I knew now. Or maybe I didn't want to believe I knew; didn't want to believe even yet that at a mere eleven you could progress that fast in weary unillusion; maybe if I had asked What? it would have been an admission that I had. 'That horse is bad,' I said.
'He's scared,' Lycurgus said. 'That's what Mr McCaslin said last night.'
'Last night?' I said. 'I thought you all came to look at the track.'
'What do we want to look at that track for?' Lycurgus said. 'That track dont move. He come to see that horse.'
'In the dark?' I said. 'Didn't they have a watchman or wasn't the stable locked or anything?'
'When Mr McCaslin make up his mind to do something, he do it,' Lycurgus said. 'Aint you found out that about him yet?' So we—I—didn't look back. We went on to our sanctuary, where Lightning—I mean Coppermine —and the two mules stamped and swished in the dappled shade and Ned squatted beside Uncle Parsham'3 saddle and another man sat on his heels across the spring from them—another Negro; I almost knew him, had known him, seen him, something—before Ned spoke:
'It's Bobo,' he said. And then it was all right. He was a McCaslin too, Bobo Beauchamp, Lucas's cousin—Lucas Quintus Carothers McCaslin Beauchamp, that Grandmother, whose mother had described old Lucius to her, said looked (and behaved: just as arrogant, just as iron-headed, just as intolerant) exactly like him except for color. Bobo was another motherless Beauchamp child whom Aunt Tennie raised until the call of the out-world became too much for him and he went to Memphis three years ago. 'Bobo used to work for the man that used to own Lightning,' Ned said. 'He came to watch him run.' Because it was all right now: the one remaining thing which had troubled us—me: Bobo would know where the automobile was. In fact, he might even have it. But that was wrong, because in that case Boon and Ned would simply have taken it away from him—until suddenly I realised that the reason it was wrong was, I didn't want it to be; if we could get the automobile back for no more than just telling Bobo to go get it and be quick about it, what were we doing here? what had we gone to all this trouble and anxiety for? camouflaging and masquerading Lightning at midnight through the Memphis tenderloin to get him to the depot; ruthlessly using a combination of uxo-riousness and nepotism to disrupt a whole boxcar from the railroad system to get him to Parsham; not to mention the rest of it: having to cope with Butch, Minnie's tooth, invading and outraging Uncle Parsham's home and sleeplessness and (yes) homesickness and (me again) not even a change of underclothes; all that striving and struggling and finagling to run a horse race with a horse which was not ours, to recover an automobile we had never had any business with in the first place, when all we had to do to get the automobile was to send one of the family colored boys to fetch it. You see what I mean? if the successful outcome of the race this afternoon wasn't really the pivot; if Lightning and I were not the last desperate barrier between Boon and Ned and Grandfather's anger, even if not his police; if without winning the race or even having to run it, Ned and Boon could go back to Jefferson (which was the only home Ned knew, and the only milieu in which Boon could have survived) as if nothing had happened, and take up again as though they had never been away, then all of us were engaged in a make-believe not too different from a boys' game of cops and robbers. But Bobo could know where the automobile was; that would be allowable, that would be fair; and Bobo was one of us. I said so to Ned. 'I thought I told you to stop worrying about that automobile,' he said. 'Aint I promised you I'd tend to it when the right time come? You got plenty other things to fret your mind over: you got a horse race. Aint that enough to keep it busy?' He said to Lycurgus: 'all right?'
'I think so,' Lycurgus said. 'We never looked back to see.'
'Then maybe,' Ned said. But Bobo had already gone. I neither saw nor heard him; he was just gone. 'Get the bucket,' Ned told Lycurgus. 'Now is a good time to eat our snack whilst we still got a little peace and quiet around here.' Lycurgus brought it—a tin lard bucket with a clean dishcloth over it, containing pieces of corn bread with fried sidemeat between; there was another bucket of buttermilk sitting in the spring.
'You et breakfast?' Uncle Parsham said to me.
'Yes sir,' I said.
'Then dont eat no more,' he said. 'Just nibble a piece of bread and a little water.'
'That's right,' Ned said. 'You can ride better empty.' So he gave me a single piece of corn bread and we all squatted now around Uncle Parsham's saddle, the two buckets on the ground in the center; we heard one step or maybe two up the bank behind us, then McWillie said,
'Hidy, Uncle Possum, morning, reverend' (that was Ned), and came down the bank, already—or still—looking at Lightning. 'Yep, that's Coppermine, all right. These boys had Mr Walter skeered this morning that maybe yawl had rung in another horse on him. You running him, reverend?'
'Call him Mr McCaslin,' Uncle Parsham said.
'Yes sir,' McWillie said. 'Mr McCaslin. You running him?'
'White man named Mr Hogganbeck is,' Ned said. 'We waiting on him now.'
'Too bad you aint got something else besides Coppermine to wait with, that would maybe give Akron a race,' McWillie said.
'I already told Mr Hogganbeck that, myself,' Ned said. He swallowed. Without haste he lifted the bucket of buttermilk and drank, still without haste. McWillie watched him. He set the bucket down. 'Set down and eat something,' he said.
'Much obliged,' McWillie said, 'I done et. Maybe that's why Mr Hogganbeck's late, waiting to bring out that other horse.'
'There aint time now,' Ned said. 'He'll have to run this one now. The trouble is, the only one around here that knows how to rate this horse, is the very one that knows better than to let him run behind. This horse dont like to
