'Come on,' Jason said. 'Where are they?'
'I'll tell you where they are,' the man shrieked. 'Lemme find my butcher knife.'
'Here,' Jason said, trying to hold the other. 'I'm just asking you a question.'
'You bastard,' the other shrieked, scrabbling at the table. Jason tried to grasp him in both arms, trying to prison the puny fury of him. The man's body felt so old, so frail, yet so fatally single-purposed that for the first time Jason saw clear and unshadowed the disaster toward which he rushed.
'Quit it!' he said. 'Here. Here! I'll get out. Give me time, and I'll get out.'
'Call me a liar,' the other wailed. 'Lemme go. Lemme go just one minute. I'll show you.'
Jason glared wildly about, holding the other. Outside it was now bright and sunny, swift and bright and empty, and he thought of the people soon to be going quietly home to Sunday dinner, decorously festive, and of himself trying to hold the fatal, furious little old man whom he dared not release long enough to turn his back and run.
'Will you quit long enough for me to get out?' he said. 'Will you?' But the other still struggled, and Jason freed one hand and struck him on the head. A clumsy, hurried blow, and not hard, but the other slumped immediately and slid clattering among pans and buckets to the floor. Jason stood above him, panting, listening. Then he turned and ran from the car. At the door he restrained himself and descended more slowly and stood there again. His breath made a hah hah hah sound and he stood there trying to repress it, darting his gaze this way and that, when at a scuffling sound behind him he turned in time to see the little old man leaping awkwardly and furiously from the vestibule, a rusty hatchet high in his hand.
He grasped at the hatchet, feeling no shock but knowing that he was falling, thinking So this is how it'll end, and he believed that he was about to die and when something crashed against the back of his head he thought How did he hit me there? Only maybe he hit me a long time ago, he thought, And I just now felt it, and he thought Hurry. Hurry. Get it over with, and then a furious desire not to die seized him and he struggled, hearing the old man wailing and cursing in his cracked voice.
He still struggled when they hauled him to his feet, but they held him and he ceased.
'Am I bleeding much?' he said. 'The back of my head. Am I bleeding?' He was still saying that while he felt himself being propelled rapidly away, heard the old man's thin furious voice dying away behind him. 'Look at my head,' he said. 'Wait, I'--'
'Wait, hell,' the man who held him said. 'That damn little wasp'll kill you. Keep going. You aint hurt.'
'He hit me,' Jason said. 'Am I bleeding?'
'Keep going,' the other said. He led Jason on around the corner of the station, to the empty platform where an express truck stood, where grass grew rigidly in a plot bordered with rigid flowers and a sign in electric lights: Keep your on Mottson, the gap filled by a human eye with an electric pupil. The man released him.
'Now,' he said. 'You get on out of here and stay out. What were you trying to do? commit suicide?'
'I was looking for two people,' Jason said. 'I just asked him where they were.'
'Who you looking for?'
'It's a girl,' Jason said. 'And a man. He had on a red tie in Jefferson yesterday. With this show. They robbed me.'
'Oh,' the man said. 'You're the one, are you. Well, they aint here.'
'I reckon so,' Jason said. He leaned against the wall and put his hand to the back of his head and looked at his palm. 'I thought I was bleeding,' he said. 'I thought he hit me with that hatchet.'
'You hit your head on the rail,' the man said. 'You better go on. They aint here.'
'Yes. He said they were not here. I thought he was lying.'
'Do you think I'm lying?' the man said.
'No,' Jason said. 'I know they're not here.'
'I told him to get the hell out of there, both of them,' the man said. 'I wont have nothing like that in my show. I run a respectable show, with a respectable troupe.'
'Yes,' Jason said. 'You dont know where they went?'
'No. And I dont want to know. No member of my show can pull a stunt like that. You her … brother?'
'No,' Jason said. 'It dont matter. I just wanted to see them. You sure he didn't hit me? No blood, I mean.'
'There would have been blood if I hadn't got there when I did. You stay away from here, now. That little bastard'll kill you. That your car yonder?'
'Yes.'
'Well, you get in it and go back to Jefferson. If you find them, it wont be in my show. I run a respectable show. You say they robbed you?'
'No,' Jason said. 'It dont make any difference.' He went to the car and got in. What is it I must do? he thought. Then he remembered. He started the engine and drove slowly up the street until he found a drugstore. The door was locked. He stood for a while with his hand on the knob and his head bent a little. Then he turned away and when a man came along after a while he asked if there was a drugstore open anywhere, but there was not. Then he asked when the northbound train ran, and the man told him at two thirty. He crossed the pavement and got in the car again and sat there. After a while two negro lads passed. He called to them.
'Can either of you boys drive a car?'
'Yes, suh.'
'What'll you charge to drive me to Jefferson right away?'
They looked at one another, murmuring.
'I'll pay a dollar,' Jason said.
They murmured again. 'Couldn't go fer dat,' one said. 'What will you go for?'
'Kin you go?' one said.
'I cant git off,' the other said. 'Whyn't you drive him up dar? You aint got nothin to do.'
'Yes I is.'
'Whut you got to do?'
They murmured again, laughing.
'I'll give you two dollars,' Jason said. 'Either of you.' 'I cant git away neither,' the first said.
'All right,' Jason said. 'Go on.'
He sat there for some time. He heard a clock strike the half hour, then people began to pass, in Sunday and easter clothes. Some looked at him as they passed, at the man sitting quietly behind the wheel of a small car, with his invisible life ravelled out about him like a wornout sock, and went on. After a while a negro in overalls came up.
'Is you de one wants to go to Jefferson?' he said.
'Yes,' Jason said. 'What'll you charge me?'
'Fo dollars.'
'Give you two.'
'Cant go fer no less'n fo.' The man in the car sat quietly. He wasn't even looking at him. The negro said, 'You want me er not?'
'All right,' Jason said. 'Get in.
He moved over and the negro took the wheel. Jason closed his eyes. I can get something for it at Jefferson, he told himself, easing himself to the jolting, I can get something there. They drove on, along the streets where people were turning peacefully into houses and Sunday dinners, and on out of town. He thought that. He wasn't thinking of home, where Ben and Luster were eating cold dinner at the kitchen table. Something--the absence of disaster, threat, in any constant evil--permitted him to forget Jefferson as any place which he had ever seen before, where his life must resume itself.
When Ben and Luster were done Dilsey sent them outdoors. 'And see kin you let him alone swell fo oclock. T. P. be here den.'
'Yessum,' Luster said. They went out. Dilsey ate her dinner and cleared up the kitchen. Then she went to the foot of the stairs and listened, but there was no sound. She returned through the kitchen and out the outer door and stopped on the steps. Ben and Luster were not in sight, but while she stood there she heard another sluggish twang from the direction of the cellar door and she went to the door and looked down upon a repetition of the morning's scene.
