enough, which even he should have the sense to do, he had all the United States to flee into and find another job. But (Ned said) even the white man abandoned this one; he would not only have a buggy- or wagon-load of horseless horse gear and daylight coming, it would have taken days to dispose of it piecemeal, even if he had had days to do it in.
So that was when they thought of a horse: to condense the wagon- or buggy-load of uncohered fragments of leather into one entity which could be sold in a lump, and —if the white man worked fast enough and didn't haggle over base dollars—without too much delay. That is, the white man, not Bobo, believed that Bobo was going to steal a horse for him. Only, Bobo knew, if he didn't steal the horse, he could see the end of everything—job, liberty, all —when next Monday morning (the crisis had reached its crux last Saturday, the same day Boon and I—and Ned — left Jefferson in the automobile) came. And the reason for the crisis at this particular moment, what made it so desperate, was that there was a horse of Mr van Tosch's so available for safe stealing that it might almost have been planted for that purpose. This of course was Lightning (I mean, Coppermine) himself, who at the moment was in a sales stable less than half a mile away, where, as Mr van Tosch's known groom (it was Bobo who had delivered the horse to the sales stable in the first place) Bobo could go and get him at any time for no more trouble than putting a halter on him and leading him away. Which by itself might have been tolerable. The trouble was, the white man knew it—a horse bred and trained for running, but which would not run, and which in consequence was in such bad repute with Mr van Tosch and Mr Clapp, the trainer, that it was at the sales stable waiting for the first to come along who would make an offer for it; in further consequence of which, Bobo could go and remove it and it would very likely not even be reported to Mr van Tosch unless he happened to inquire; in still further consequence of which, Bobo had until tomorrow morning (Monday) to do something about it, or else.
That was the situation when Ned left us in front of Miss Reba's Sunday afternoon and walked around the corner to Beale Street and entered the first blind tiger he came to and found Bobo trying to outface his doom through the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Grandfather said: 'So that's what it was. Now I'm beginning to understand. A nigger Saturday night. Bobo already drunk, and your tongue hanging out all the way from Jefferson to get to the first saloon you could reach—' and stopped and said, pounced almost: 'Wait. That's wrong. It wasn't even Saturday. You got to Memphis Sunday evening,' and Ned sitting there, quite still, the empty glass in his hand. He said,
'With my people, Saturday night runs over into Sunday.'
'And into Monday morning too,' Colonel Linscomb said. 'You wake up Monday morning, sick, with a hangover, filthy in a filthy jail, and lie there until some white man comes and pays your fine and takes you straight back to the cotton field or whatever it is and puts you back to work without even giving you time to eat breakfast. And you sweat it out there, and maybe by sundown you feel you are not really going to die; and the next day, and the day after that, and after that, until it's Saturday again and you can put down the plow or the hoe and go back as fast as you can to that stinking jail cell on Monday morning. Why do you do it? I dont know.'
'You cant know,' Ned said. 'You're the wrong color. If you could just be a nigger one Saturday night, you wouldn't never want to be a white man again as long as you live.'
'All right,' Grandfather said. 'Go on.' —So Bobo told Ned of his predicament: the horse less than half a mile away, practically asking to be stolen; and the white man who knew it and who had given Bobo an ultimatum measurable now in mere hours—'All right,' Grandfather said. 'Now get to my automobile.'
'We're already to it,' Ned said. They—he and Bobo— went to the stable to look at the horse. 'And soon as I laid eyes on him, I minded that mule I used to own.' And Bobo, like me, was too young actually to remember the mule; but, also like me, he had grown up with its legend. 'So we decided to go to that white man and tell him something had happened and Bobo couldn't get that horse outen that stable for him like Bobo thought he could, but we could get him a automobile in place of it. —Now wait,' he told Grandfather quickly. 'We knowed as good as you that that automobile would be safe at least long enough for us to finish. Maybe in thirty or forty years you can stand on a Jefferson street corner and count a dozen automobiles before sundown, but you cant yet. Maybe then you can steal a automobile and find somebody to buy it that wont worry you with a lot of how-come and who and why. But you cant now. So for a man that looked like I imagined he looked (I hadn't never seen him yet) to travel around trying to sell a automobile quick and private, would be about as hard as selling a elephant quick and private. You never had no trouble locating where it was at and getting your hand on it, once you and Mr van Tosch got started, did you?'
'Go on,' Grandfather said. Ned did.
'Then the white man would ask what automobile? and Bobo would let me tend to that; and then the white man would maybe ask what I'm doing in it nohow, and then Bobo would tell him that I want that horse because I know how to make it run; that we already got a match race waiting Tuesday, and if the white man wanted, he could come along too and win enough on the horse to pay back three or four times them hundred and thirteen dollars, and then he wouldn't even have to worry with the automobile if he didn't want to. Because he would be the kind of a white man that done already had enough experience to know what would sell easy and what would be a embarrassment to get caught with. So that's what we were gonter do until yawl come and ruint it: let that white man just watch the first heat without betting yes or no, which he would likely do, and see Lightning lose it like he always done, which the white man would a heard all about too, by now; then we would say Nemmine, just wait to the next heat, and then bet him the horse against the automobile on that one without needing to remind him that when Lightning got beat this time, he would own him too.' They—Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb and Mr van Tosch—looked at Ned. I wont try to describe their expressions. I cant. 'Then yawl come and ruint it,' Ned said.
'I see,' Mr van Tosch said. 'It was all just to save Bobo. Suppose you had failed to make Coppermine run, and lost him too. What about Bobo then?'
'I made him run,' Ned said. 'You seen it.'
'But just suppose, for the sake of the argument,' Mr van Tosch said.
'That would a been Bobo's lookout,' Ned said. 'It wasn't me advised him to give up Missippi cotton farming and take up Memphis frolicking and gambling for a living in place of it.'
'But I thought Mr Priest said he's your cousin,' Mr van. Tosch said.
'Everybody got kinfolks that aint got no more sense than Bobo,' Ned said.
'Well,' Mr van Tosch said.
'Let's all have a toddy,' Colonel Linscomb said briskly. He got up and mixed and passed them. 'You too,' he told Ned. Ned brought his glass and Colonel Linscomb poured. This time when Ned set the untasted glass on the mantel, nobody said anything.
'Yes,' Mr van Tosch said. Then he said: 'Well, Priest, you've got your automobile. And I've got my horse. And maybe I frightened that damn scoundrel enough to stay clear of my stable hands anyway.' They sat there. 'What shall I do about Bobo?' They sat there. 'I'm asking you,' Mr van Tosch said to Ned.
'Keep him,' Ned said. 'Folks—boys and young men anyhow—in my people dont convince easy—'
