Unvanquished

'What's that?' Loosh said.

'Vicksburg,' I said.

Loosh laughed. He stood there laughing, not loud, looking at the chips.

'Come on here, Loosh,' Philadelphy said from the woodpile. There was something curious in her voice too — urgent, perhaps frightened. 'If you wants any supper, you better tote me some wood.' But I didn't know which, urgency or fright; I didn't have time to wonder or speculate, because suddenly Loosh stooped before Ringo or I could have moved, and with his hand he swept the chips flat.

'There's your Vicksburg,' he said.

'Loosh!' Philadelphy said. But Loosh squatted, look­ing at me with that expression on his face. I was just twelve then; I didn't know triumph; I didn't even know the word.

'And I tell you nother un you ain't know,' he said. 'Corinth.'

'Corinth?' I said. Philadelphy had dropped the wood and she was coming fast toward us. 'That's in Missis­sippi too. That's not far. I've been there.'

'Far don't matter,' Loosh said. Now he sounded as if he were about to chant, to sing; squatting there with the fierce dull sun on his iron skull and the flattening slant of his nose, he was not looking at me or Ringo either; it was as if his red-cornered eyes had reversed in his skull and it was the blank flat obverses of the

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balls which we saw. 'Far don't matter. Case hit's on the way!'

'On the way? On the way to what?' 'Ask your paw. Ask Marse John.' 'He's at Tennessee, fighting. I can't ask him.' 'You think he at Tennessee? Ain't no need for him at Tennessee now.' Then Philadelphy grabbed him by the arm.

'Hush your mouth, nigger!' she cried, in that tense desperate voice. 'Come on here and get me some wood!'

Then they were gone. Ringo and I didn't watch them go. We stood there above our ruined Vicksburg, our tedious hoe-scratch not even damp-colored now, looking at one another quietly. 'What?' Ringo said. 'What he mean?'

'Nothing,' I said. I stooped and set Vicksburg up again. 'There it is.'

But Ringo didn't move, he just looked at me. 'Loosh laughed. He say Corinth too. He laughed at Corinth too. What you reckon he know that we ain't?'

'Nothing!' I said. 'Do you reckon Loosh knows any­thing that Father don't know?'

'Marse John at Tennessee. Maybe he ain't know Either.'

'Do you reckon he'd be away off at Tennessee if there were Yankees at Corinth? Do you reckon that if there were Yankees at Corinth, Father and General Van Dorn and General Pemberton all three wouldn't be there too?' But I was just talking too, I knew that, be­cause niggers know, they know things; it would have to,.be something louder, much louder, than words to do any good. So I stooped and caught both hands full of dust and rose: and Ringo still standing there, not mov­ing, just looking at me even as I flung the dust. 'I'm General Pemberton!' I cried. 'Yaaay! Yaay!' stooping and catching up more dust and flinging that too. Still Ringo didn't move. 'All right!' I cried. 'I'll be Grant this time, then. You can be General Pemberton.' Be­cause it was that urgent, since Negroes knew. The ar­rangement was that I would be General Pemberton twice in succession and Ringo would be Grant, then I

16

THE UNVANQUISHED

would have to be Grant once so Ringo could be General Pemberton or he wouldn't play anymore. But now it was that urgent even though Ringo was a nigger too, be­cause Ringo and I had been born in the same month and had both fed at the same breast and had slept to­gether and eaten together for so long that Ringo called Granny 'Granny' just like I did, until maybe he wasn't a nigger anymore or maybe I wasn't a white boy any­more, the two of us neither, not even people any longer: the two supreme undefeated like two moths, two feath­ers riding above a hurricane. So we were both at it; we didn't see Louvinia, Joby's wife and Ringo's grand­mother, at all. We were facing one another at scarcely arms' length, to the other each invisible in the furious slow jerking of the flung dust, yelling 'Kill the bastuds! Kill them! Kill them!' when her voice seemed to descend upon us like an enormous hand, flattening the very dust which we had raised, leaving us now visible to one an­other, dust-colored ourselves to the eyes and still in the act of throwing:

'You, Bayard! You, Ringo!' She stood about ten feet away, her mouth still open with shouting. I noticed that she did not now have on the old hat of Father's which she wore on top of her head rag even when she just stepped out of the kitchen for wood. 'What was that word?' she said. 'What did I hear you say?' Only she didn't wait to be answered, and then I saw that she had been running too. 'Look who coming up the big road!' she said.

We—Ringo and I—ran as one, in midstride out of frozen immobility, across the back yard and around the house, where Granny was standing at the top of the front steps and where Loosh had just come around the house from the other side and stopped, looking down the drive toward the gate. In the spring, when Father came home that time, Ringo and I ran down the drive to meet him and return, I standing in one stirrup with Father's arm around me, and Ringo holding to the other stirrup and running beside the horse. But this time we didn't. I mounted the steps and stood beside Granny, and with Ringo and Loosh on the ground below the gal­lery we watched the claybank stallion enter the gate

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17

which was never closed now, and come up the drive. We watched them—the big gaunt horse almost the color of smoke, lighter in color than the dust which had gath­ered and caked on his wet hide where they had crossed at the ford three miles away, coming up the drive at a steady gait which was not a walk and not a run, as if he had held it all the way from Tennessee because there was a need to encompass earth which abrogated sleep or rest and relegated to some insulated bourne of perennial and pointless holiday so trivial a thing as gal­loping; and