I would be home tomorrow with nothing—no stolen horses nor chastity-stricken prostitutes and errant pullman conductors and Ned and Boon Hogganbeck in his normal condition once he had slipped Father's leash—to interfere with sleep, hearing the voice, the bawling two or three times before I struggled up and out, into daylight, sunlight; Uncle Parsham's side of the bed was empty and now I could hear the bawling from outside the house:
'Hellaw. Hellaw. Lycurgus. Lycurgus,' and leapt, sprang from the bed, already running, across to the window where I could look out into the front yard. It was Ned. He had the horse.
Chapter 12
So once again, at two oclock in the afternoon, McWillie and I sat our (his was anyway) skittering mounts-—we had scared Mr Clapp enough yesterday to where we had drawn for pole position this time and McWillie won it— poised for the steward-starter's (the bird-dog trainer-market hunter-homicidist's) Go!
A few things came before that though. One of them was Ned. He looked bad. He looked terrible. It wasn't just lack of sleep; we all had that lack. But Boon and I had at least spent the four nights in bed since we left Jefferson, where Ned had spent maybe two, one of the others in a boxcar with a horse and the other in a stable with him, both on hay if on anything. It was his clothes too. His shirt was filthy and his black pants were not much better. At least Everbe had washed some of mine night before last, but Ned hadn't even had his off until now: sitting now in a clean faded suit of Uncle Parsham's overalls and jumper while Mary was washing his shirt and doing what she could with his pants, at the kitchen table now, he and I eating our breakfast while Uncle Parsham sat and listened.
He said that a little before daylight one of the white men —it wasn't Mr Poleymus, the constable—woke him where he was asleep on some bales of hay and told him to take the horse and get out of town with it—
'Just you and Lightning, and not Boon and the others?' I said. 'Where are they?'
'Where them white folks put ran,' Ned said. 'So I said, Much oblige, Whitefolks, and took Lightning in my hand and—'
'Why?' I said.
'What do you care why? All we need to do now is be up behind that starting wire at two oclock this afternoon and win them two heats and get a holt of Boss's automobile and get on back to Jefferson that we hadn't ought to never left nohow—'
'We cant go back without Boon,' I said. 'If they let you and Lightning go, why didn't they let him go?'
'Look,' Ned said. 'Me and you got enough to do just running that horse race. Why dont you finish your breakfast and then go back and lay down and rest until I calls you in time—'
'Stop lying to him,' Uncle Parsham said. Ned ate, his head bent over his plate, eating fast. He was tired; his eye-whites were not even just pink any more: they were red.
'Mr Boon Hogganbeck aint going anywhere for a while. He's in jail good this time. They gonter take him to Hard-wick this morning where they can lock him up sho enough. But forget that. What you and me have got to do is—'
'Tell him,' Uncle Parsham said. 'He's stood everything else you folks got him into since you brought him here; what makes you think he cant stand the rest of it too, until you manage somehow to come out on the other side and can take him back home? Didn't he have to watch it too, right here in my yard and my house, and down yonder in my pasture both, not to mention what he might have seen in town since—that man horsing and studding at that gal, and her trying to get away from him, and not nobody but this eleven-year-old boy to run to? not Boon Hogganbeck and not the Law and not the grown white folks to count on and hope for, but just him? Tell him.' And already the thing inside me saying
'What did Boon do?' Ned chewed over his plate, blinking his reddened eyes like when you have sand in them.
'He whupped that Law. That Butch. He nigh mint him. They let him out before they done me and Lightning. He never even stopped. He went straight to that gal—'
'It was Miss Reba,' I said. 'It was Miss Reba.'
'No,' Ned said. 'It was that other one. That big one.
They never called her name to me. —and whupped her and turned around—'
'He hit her?' I said. 'Boon hit Ever— Miss Corrie?'
'Is that her name? Yes. —and turned around and went straight back until he found that Law and whupped him, pistol and all, before they could pull him off—'
'Boon hit her,' I said. 'He hit her.'
'That's right,' Ned said. 'She is the reason me and Lightning are free right now. That Butch found out he couldn't get to her no other way, and when he found out that me and you and Boon had to win that race today before we could dare to go back home, and all we had to win it with was Lightning, he took Lightning and locked him up. That's what happened. That's all it was; Uncle Possum just told you how he watched it coming Monday, and maybe I ought to seen it too and maybe I would if I hadn't been so busy with Lightning, or maybe if I had been a little better acquainted with that Butch—'
'I dont believe it,' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'That's what it was. It was just bad luck, the kind of bad luck you cant count against beforehand. He likely just happened to be wherever he was just by chance when he seen her Monday and figgered right off that that badge and pistol would be all he would need, being likely used to having them be enough around here. Only this time they wasnt and so he had to look again, and sho enough, there was Lightning that we had to depend on to win that race so we could get back Boss's automobile and maybe go back home—'
'No!' I said. 'No! It wasn't her! She's not even here! She went back to Memphis with Sam yesterday evening! They just didn't tell you! It was somebody else! It was another one!'
'No,' Ned said. 'It was her. You seen it Monday out here.' Oh yes; and on the way back in the surrey that afternoon, and at the doctor's, and at the hotel that night until Miss Reba frightened him away, we—I anyway— thought for good. Because Miss Reba was only a woman too, I said:
