The Reivers

'Lemme do it,' and took the broken fork from him and dug the long frantic worms out of the dirt, into a tin can.

'Come on,' he said, shouldering his pole, passing the stable but turning sharp away and down toward the creek bottom, not far; there was a good worn path among the blackberry thickets and then the willows, then the creek, the water seeming to gather gently the fading light and then as gently return it; there was even a log to sit on. 'This is where my daughter fishes,' he said, 'We call it Mary's hole. But you can use it now. I'll be on down the bank.' Then he was gone. The light was going fast now; it would be night before long. I sat on the log, in a gentle whine of mosquitoes. It wouldn't be too difficult; all I would have to do would just be to say / wont think whenr ever it was necessary. After a while I thought about putting the hook into the water, then I could watch how long it would take the float to disappear into darkness when night finally came. Then I even thought about putting one of Lycurgus's crickets on the hook, but crickets were not always easy to catch and Lycurgus lived by a creek and would have more time to fish and would need them. So I just thought / wont think; I could see the float plainer than ever, now that it was on the water; it would probably be the last of all to vanish into the darkness, since the water itself'would be next to last; I couldn't see or hear Uncle Parsham at all, I didn't know how much further he called on down the bank and now was the perfect time, chance to act like a baby, only what's the good of acting like a baby, of wasting it with nobody there to know it or offer sympathy—if anybody ever wants sympathy or even in fact really to be back home because what you really want is just a familiar soft bed to sleep in for a change again, to go to sleep hi; there were whippoorwills now and back somewhere beyond the creek an owl too, a big one by his voice; maybe there were big woods there and if Lycurgus's (or maybe they were Uncle Parsham's) hounds were all that good on Otis last night, they sure ought to be able to handle rabbits or coons or possums. So I asked him. It was full night now for some tune. He said quietly behind me; I hadn't even heard him until then: 'Had a bite yet?'

'I aint much of a fisherman,' I said. 'How do your hounds hunt?'

'Good,' he said. He didn't even raise his voice: 'Pappy.' Uncle Parsham's white shirt held light too, up to us where Lycurgus took the two poles and we followed, up the path again where the two hounds met us, on into the house again, into the lamplight, a plate of supper with a cloth over it ready for Lycurgus.

'Sit down,' Uncle Parsham said. 'You can talk while you eat.' Lycurgus sat down. 'They're still there,' he said.

'They aint took them to Hardwick yet?' Uncle Parsham said. 'Possum hasn't got a jail,' he told me. 'They lock them in the woodshed behind the schoolhouse until they can take them to the jail at Hardwick. Men, that is. They aint had women before.'

'No sir,' Lycurgus said. 'The ladies is still in the hotel, with a guard at the door. Just Mr Hogganbeck is in the woodshed. Mr Caldwell went back to Memphis on Number Thirty-one. He taken that boy with him.'

'Otis?' I said. 'Did they get the tooth back?'

'They never said,' Lycurgus said, eating; he glanced briefly at me. 'And the horse is all right too. I went and seen him. He's in the hotel stable. Before he left, Mr Caldwell made a bond for Mr McCaslin so he can watch the horse.' He ate. 'A train leaves for Jefferson at nine-forty. We could make it all right if we hurry.' Uncle Parsham took a vast silver watch from his pocket and looked at it. 'We could make it,' Lycurgus said.

'I cant,' I said. 'I got to wait.' Uncle Parsham put the watch back. He rose. He said, not loud:

'Mary.' She was in the front room; I hadn't heard a sound. She came to the door.

'I already did it,' she said. She said to Lycurgus: 'Your pallet's ready in the hall.' Then to me: 'You sleep in Lycurgus's bed where you was yestiddy.'

'I dont need to take Lycurgus's bed,' I said. 'I can sleep with Uncle Parsham. I wont mind.' They looked at me, quite still, quite identical. 'I sleep with Boss a lot of times,' I said. 'He snores too. I don't mind.'

'Boss?' Uncle Parsham said.

'That's what we call Grandfather,' I said. 'He snores too. I wont mind.'

'Let him,' Uncle Parsham said. We went to his room. His lamp had flowers painted on the china shade and there was a big gold-framed portrait on a gold easel in one corner: a woman, not very old but in old-timey clothes; the bed had a bright patchwork quilt on it like Lycurgus's and even in May there was a smolder of fire on the hearth. There was a chair, a rocking chair too, but I didn't sit down. I just stood there. Then he came in again. He wore a nightshirt now and was winding the silver watch. 'Undress,' he said. I did so. 'Does your mother let you sleep like that at home?'

'No sir,' I said.

'You aint got anything with you, have you?'

'No sir,' I said. He put the watch on the mantel and went to the door and said,

'Mary.' She answered. 'Bring one of Lycurgus's clean shirts.' After a while her hand held the shirt through the door crack. He took it. 'Here,' he said. I came and put it on. 'Do you say your Now I lay me in bed or kneeling down?'

'Kneeling down,' I said.

'Say them,' he said. I knelt beside the bed and said my prayers. The bed was already turned back. I got into it and he blew out the lamp and I heard the bed again and then —the moon would be late before it was very high tonight but there was already enough light—I could see him, all black and white against the white pillow and the white moustache and imperial, lying on his back, his hands folded on his breast. 'Tomorrow morning I'll take you to town and we'll see Mr Hogganbeck. If he says you have done all you can do here and for you to go home, will you go then?'

'Yes sir,' I said.

'Now go to sleep,' he said. Because even before he said it, Fknew that that was exactly what I wanted, what I had been wanting probably ever since yesterday: to go home. I mean, nobody likes to be licked, but maybe there are times when nobody can help being; that all you can da about it is not quit. And Boon and Ned hadn't quit, or they wouldn't be where they were right now. And maybe they wouldn't say that I had quit either, when it was them who told me to go home. Maybe I was just too little, too young; maybe I just wasn't able to tote whatever my share was, and if they had had somebody else bigger or older or maybe just smarter, we wouldn't have been licked. You see? like that: all specious and rational; unimpugnable even, when the simple truth was, I wanted to go home and just wasn't brave enough to say so, let alone do it. So now, having admitted at last that I was not only a failure but a coward too, my mind should be peaceful and easy and I should go on to sleep like a baby: where Uncle Parsham already was, just barely snoring (who should hear Grandfather once). Not that that mattered either, since