“Well, they found that nigger’s trail at last,” the proprietor said.
“Negro?” Hightower said. He became utterly still, in the act of putting into his pocket the change from his purchases.
“That bah — fellow; the murderer. I said all the time that he wasn’t right. Wasn’t a white man. That there was something funny about him. But you cant tell folks nothing until—”
“Found him?” Hightower said.
“You durn right they did. Why, the fool never even had sense enough to get out of the county. Here the sheriff has been telephoning all over the country for him, and the black son — uh was right here under his durn nose all the time.”
“And they have . . .” He leaned forward against the counter, above his laden basket. He could feel the counter edge against his stomach. It felt solid, stable enough; it was more like the earth itself were rocking faintly, preparing to move. Then it seemed to move, like something released slowly and without haste, in an augmenting swoop, and cleverly, since the eye was tricked into believing that the dingy shelves ranked with flyspecked tins, and the merchant himself behind the counter, had not moved; outraging, tricking sense. And he thinking, ‘I wont! I wont! I have bought immunity. I have paid. I have paid.’
“They aint caught him yet,” the proprietor said. “But they will. The sheriff taken the dogs out to the church before daylight this morning. They aint six hours behind him. To think that the durn fool never had no better sense . . . show he is a nigger, even if nothing else. . . .” Then the proprietor was saying, “Was that all today?”
“What?” Hightower said. “What?”
“Was that all you wanted?”
“Yes. Yes. That was . . .” He began to fumble in his pocket, the proprietor watching him. His hand came forth, still fumbling. It blundered upon the counter, shedding coins. The proprietor stopped two or three of them as they were about to roll off the counter.
“What’s this for?” the proprietor said.
“For the . . .” Hightower’s hand fumbled at the laden basket. “For—”
“You already paid.” The proprietor was watching him, curious. “That’s your change here, that I just gave you. For the dollar bill.”
“Oh,” Hightower said. “Yes. I . . . I just—” The merchant was gathering up the coins. He handed them back. When the customer’s hand touched his it felt like ice.
“It’s this hot weather,” the proprietor said. “It does wear a man out. Do you want to set down a spell before you start home?” But Hightower apparently did not hear him. He was moving now, toward the door, while the merchant watched him. He passed through the door and into the street, the basket on his arm, walking stiffly and carefully, like a man on ice. It was hot; heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality, a quality of living and palpitant chiaroscuro. Someone spoke to him in passing; he did not even know it. He went on, thinking And him too. And him too walking fast now, so that when he turned the corner at last and entered that dead and empty little street where his dead and empty small house waited, he was almost panting. ‘It’s the heat,’ the top of his mind was saying to him, reiterant, explanatory. But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: ‘I wont. I wont. I have bought immunity.’ It is like words spoken aloud now: reiterative, patient, justificative: ‘I paid for it. I didn’t quibble about the price. No man can say that. I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling.’ The street shimmers and swims; he has been sweating, but now even the air of noon feels cool upon him. Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rushes fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I will not! I will not!
When, sitting in the study window in the first dark, he saw Byron pass into and then out of the street lamp, he sat suddenly forward in his chair. It was not that he was surprised to see Byron there, at that hour. At first, when he first recognised the figure, he thought Ah. I had an idea he would come tonight. It is not in him to support even the semblance of evil It was while he was thinking that that he started, sat forward: for an instant after recognising the approaching figure in the full glare of the light he believed that he was mistaken, knowing all the while that he could not be, that it could be no one except Byron, since he was already turning into the gate.
Tonight Byron is completely changed. It shows in his walk, his carriage; leaning forward Hightower says to himself As though he has learned pride, or defiance Byron’s head is erect, he walks fast and erect; suddenly Hightower says, almost aloud: ‘He has done something. He has taken a step.’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, leaning in the dark window, watching the figure pass swiftly from sight beyond the window and in the direction of the porch, the entrance, and where in the next moment Hightower hears his feet and then his knock. ‘And he didn’t offer to tell me,’ he thinks. ‘I would have listened, let him think aloud to me.’ He is already crossing the room, pausing at the desk to turn on the light. He goes to the front door.
“It’s me, Reverend,” Byron says.
“I recognised you,” Hightower says. “Even though you didn’t stumble on the bottom step this time. You have entered this house on Sunday night, but until tonight you have never entered it without stumbling on the bottom step, Byron.” This was the note upon which Byron’s calls usually opened: this faintly overbearing note of levity and warmth to put the other at his ease, and on the part of the caller that slow and countrybred diffidence which is courtesy. Sometimes it would seem to Hightower that he would actually hale Byron into the house by a judicious application of pure breath, as though Byron wore a sail.
But this time Byron is already entering, before Hightower has finished his sentence. He enters immediately, with that new air born somewhere between assurance and defiance. “And I reckon you are going to find that you hate it worse when I dont stumble than when I do,” Byron says.
“Is that a hope, or is it a threat, Byron?”
“Well, I dont mean it to be a threat,” Byron says.
“Ah,” Hightower says. “In other words, you can offer no hope. Well, I am forewarned, at least. I was forewarned as soon as I saw you in the street light. But at least you are going to tell me about it. What you have already done, even if you didn’t see fit to talk about it beforehand.” They are moving toward the study door. Byron stops; he looks back and up at the taller face.
“Then you know,” he says. “You have already heard.” Then, though his head has not moved, he is no longer looking at the other. “Well,” he says. He says: “Well, any man has got a free tongue. Woman too. But I would like to know who told you. Not that I am ashamed. Not that I aimed to keep it from you. I come to tell you myself, when I could.”
They stand just without the door to the lighted room. Hightower sees now that Byron’s arms are laden with bundles, parcels that look like they might contain groceries. “What?” Hightower says. “What have you come to tell me? — But come in. Maybe I do know what it is already. But I want to see your face when you tell me. I forewarn you too, Byron.” They enter the lighted room. The bundles are groceries: he has bought and carried too many like them himself not to know. “Sit down,” he says.
“No,” Byron says. “I aint going to stay that long.” He stands, sober, contained, with that air compassionate still, but decisive without being assured, confident without being assertive: that air of a man about to do something which someone dear to him will not understand and approve, yet which he himself knows to be right just as he knows that the friend will never see it so. He says: “You aint going to like it. But there aint anything else to do. I wish you could see it so. But I reckon you cant. And I reckon that’s all there is to it.”
Across the desk, seated again, Hightower watches him gravely. “What have you done, Byron?”
&
nbsp; Byron speaks in that new voice: that voice brief, terse, each word definite of meaning, not fumbling. “I took her out there this evening. I had already fixed up the cabin, cleaned it good. She is settled now. She wanted it so. It was the nearest thing to a home he ever had and ever will have, so I reckon she is entitled to use it, especially as the owner aint using it now. Being detained elsewhere, you might say. I know you aint going to like it. You can name lots of reasons, good ones. You’ll say it aint his cabin to give to her. All right. Maybe it aint. But it aint any living man or woman in this country or state to say she cant use it. You’ll say that in her shape she ought to have a woman with her. All right. There is a nigger woman, one old enough to be sensible, that dont live over two hundred yards away. She can call to her without getting up from the chair or the bed. You’ll say, but that aint a white woman. And I’ll ask you what will she be getting from the white women in Jefferson about the time that baby is due, when here she aint been in Jefferson but a week and already she cant talk to a woman ten minutes before that woman knows she aint married yet, and as long as that durn scoundrel stays above ground where she can hear of him now and then, she aint going to be married. How much help will she be getting from the white ladies about that time? They’ll see that she has a bed to lay on and walls to hide her from the street all right. I dont mean that. And I reckon a man would be justified in saying she dont deserve no more than that, being as it wasn’t behind no walls that she got in the shape she is in. But that baby never done the choosing. And even if it had, I be durn if any poor little tyke, having to face what it will have to face in this world, deserves — deserves more than — better than — But I reckon you know what I mean. I reckon you can even say it.” Beyond the desk Hightower watches him while he talks in that level, restrained tone, not once at a loss for words until he came to something still too new and nebulous for him to more than feel. “And for the third reason. A white woman out there alone. You aint going to like that. You will like that least of all.”
“Ah, Byron, Byron.”
Byron’s voice is now dogged. Yet he holds his head up still. “I aint in the house with her. I got a tent. It aint close, neither. Just where I can hear her at need. And I fixed a bolt on the door. Any of them can come out, at any time, and see me in the tent.”
“Ah, Byron, Byron.”
“I know you aint thinking what most of them think. Are thinking. I know you would know better, even if she wasn’t — if it wasn’t for — I know you said that because of what you know that the others will think.”
Hightower sits again in the attitude of the eastern idol, between his parallel arms on the armrests of the chair. “Go away, Byron. Go away. Now. At once. Leave this place forever, this terrible place, this terrible, terrible place. I can read you. You will tell me that you have just learned love; I will tell you that you have just learned hope. That’s all; hope. The object does not matter, not to the hope, not even to you. There is but one end to this, to the road that you are taking: sin or marriage. And you would refuse the sin. That’s it, God forgive me. It will, must be, marriage or nothing with you. And you will insist that it be marriage. You will convince her; perhaps you already have, if she but knew it, would admit it: else, why is she content to stay here and yet make no effort to see the man whom she has come to find? I cannot say to you, Choose the sin, because you would not only hate me: you would carry that hatred straight to her. So I say, Go away. Now. At once. Turn your face now, and dont look back. But not this, Byron.”
They look at one another. “I knew you would not like it,” Byron says. “I reckon I done right not to make myself a guest by sitting down. But I did not expect this. That you too would turn against a woman wronged and betrayed—”
“No woman who has a child is ever betrayed; the husband of a mother, whether he be the father or not, is already a cuckold. Give yourself at least the one chance in ten, Byron. If you must marry, there are single women, girls, virgins. It’s not fair that you should sacrifice yourself to a woman who has chosen once and now wishes to renege that choice. It’s not right. It’s not just. God didn’t intend it so when He made marriage. Made it? Women made marriage.”
“Sacrifice? Me the sacrifice? It seems to me the sacrifice—”
“Not to her. For the Lena Groves there are always two men in the world and their number is legion: Lucas Burches and Byron Bunches. But no Lena, no woman, deserves more than one of them. No woman. There have been good women who were martyrs to brutes, in their cups and such. But what woman, good or bad, has ever suffered from any brute as men have suffered from good women? Tell me that, Byron.”
They speak quietly, without heat, giving pause to weigh one another’s words, as two men already impregnable each in his own conviction will. “I reckon you are right,” Byron says. “Anyway, it aint for me to say that you are wrong. And I dont reckon it’s for you to say that I am wrong, even if I am.”
“No,” Hightower says.
“Even if I am,” Byron says. “So I reckon I’ll say good night.” He says, quietly: “It’s a good long walk out there.”
“Yes,” Hightower says. “I used to walk it myself, now and then. It must be about three miles.”
“Two miles,” Byron says. “Well.” He turns. Hightower does not move. Byron shifts the parcels which he has not put down. “I’ll say good night,” he says, moving toward the door. “I reckon I’ll see you, sometime soon.”
“Yes,” Hightower says. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you need? bedclothes and such?”
“I’m obliged. I reckon she has a plenty. There was some already there. I’m obliged.”
“And you will let me know? If anything comes up. If the child — Have you arranged for a doctor?”
“I’ll get that attended to.”
“But have you seen one yet? Have you engaged one?”
“I aim to see to all that. And I’ll let you know.”
Then he is gone. From the window again Hightower watches him pass and go on up the street, toward the edge of town and his two-mile walk, carrying his paperwrapped packages of food. He passed from sight walking erect and at a good gait; such a gait as an old man already gone to flesh and short wind, an old man who has already spent too much time sitting down, could not have kept up with. And Hightower leans there in the window, in the August heat, oblivious of the odor in which he lives — that smell of people who no longer live in life: that odor of overplump desiccation and stale linen as though a precursor of the tomb — listening to the feet which he seems to hear still long after he knows that he cannot, thinking, ‘God bless him. God help him’; thinking To be young. To be young. There is nothing else like it: there is nothing else in the world He is thinking quietly: ‘I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.’ Then he hears the feet no longer. He hears now only the myriad and interminable insects, leaning in the window, breathing the hot still rich maculate smell of the earth, thinking of how when he was young, a youth, he had loved darkness, of walking or sitting alone among trees at night. Then the ground, the bark of trees, became actual, savage, filled with, evocative of, strange and baleful half delights and half terrors. He was afraid of it. He feared; he loved in being afraid. Then one day while at the seminary he realised that he was no longer afraid. It was as though a door had shut somewhere. He was no longer afraid of darkness. He just hated it; he would flee from it, to walls, to artificial light. ‘Yes,’ he thinks. ‘I should never have let myself get out of the habit of prayer.’ He turns from the window. One wall of the study is lined with books. He pauses before them, seeking, until he finds the one which he wants. It is Tennyson. It is dogeared. He has had it ever since the seminary. He sits beneath the lamp and opens it. It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he
does not even need to not understand.
14
“THERE’S SOMEBODY OUT there in that cabin,” the deputy told the sheriff. “Not hiding: living in it.”
“Go and see,” the sheriff said.
The deputy went and returned.
“It’s a woman. A young woman. And she’s all fixed up to live there a good spell, it looks like. And Byron Bunch is camped in a tent about as far from the cabin as from here to the postoffice.”
“Byron Bunch?” the sheriff says. “Who is the woman?”
“I dont know. She is a stranger. A young woman. She told me all about it. She begun telling me almost before I got inside the cabin, like it was a speech. Like she had done got used to telling it, done got into the habit. And I reckon she has, coming here from over in Alabama somewhere, looking for her husband. He had done come on ahead of her to find work, it seems like, and after a while she started out after him and folks told her on the road that he was here. And about that time Byron come in and he said he could tell me about it. Said he aimed to tell you.”
“Byron Bunch,” the sheriff says.
“Yes,” the deputy says. He says: “She’s fixing to have a kid. It aint going to be long, neither.”
“A kid?” the sheriff says. He looks at the deputy. “And from Alabama. From anywhere. You cant tell me that about Byron Bunch.”
“No more am I trying to,” the deputy says. “I aint saying it’s Byron’s. Leastways, Byron aint saying it’s his. I’m just telling you what he told me.”
“Oh,” the sheriff says. “I see. Why she is out there. So it’s one of them fellows. It’s Christmas, is it?”
“No. This is what Byron told me. He took me outside and told me, where she couldn’t hear. He said he aimed to come and tell you. It’s Brown’s. Only his name aint Brown. It’s Lucas Burch. Byron told me. About how Brown or Burch left her over in Alabama. Told her he was just coming to find work and fix up a home and then send for her. But her time come nigh and she hadn’t heard from him, where he was at or anything, so she just decided to not wait any longer. She started out afoot, asking along the road if anybody knowed a fellow named Lucas Burch, getting a ride here and there, asking everybody she met if they knew him. And so after a while somebody told her how there was a fellow named Burch or Bunch or something working at the planing mill in Jefferson, and she come on here. She got here Saturday, on a wagon, while we were all out at the murder, and she come out to the mill and found it was Bunch instead of Burch. And Byron said he told her that her husband was in Jefferson before he knew it. And then he said she had him pinned down and he had to tell her where Brown lived. But he aint told her that Brown or Burch is mixed up with Christmas in this killing. He just told her that Brown was away on business. And I reckon you can call it business. Work, anyway. I never saw a man want a thousand dollars badder and suffer more to get it, than him. And so she said that Brown’s house was bound to be the one that Lucas Burch had promised to get ready for her to live in, and so she moved out to wait until Brown come back from this here business he is away on. Byron said he couldn’t stop her because he didn’t want to tell her the truth about Brown after he had already lied to her in a way of speaking. He said he aimed to come and tell you about it before now, only you found it out too quick, before he had got her settled down good.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 156