the saddle and then a shuffling nameless halfrun halfwalk which he could hold for miles under both of them, Aleck Sander behind him for the first mile at the canter then trotting beside the horse holding to the off stirrup for the next one) and so get the body up in a third of the time at the risk of having Aleck Sander keeping Lucas company when the Gowries came with the gasoline: and suddenly he found himself escaped back into the confetti exactly as you put off having to step finally into the cold water, thinking seeing hearing himself trying to explain that to Lucas too:
We have to use the horse. We cant help it:
and Lucas:
You could have axed him for the car:
and he:
He would have refused. Dont you understand? He wouldn’t only have refused, he would have locked me up where I couldn’t even have walked out there, let alone had a horse:
and Lucas:
All right, all right. I aint criticising you. After all, it aint you them Gowries is fixing to set afire:
—moving down the hall to the back door: and he was wrong; not when he had said All right to Lucas through the steel bars nor when he had stepped back into the hall and closed the office door behind him, but here was the irrevocable moment after which there would be no return; he could stop here and never pass it, let the wreckage of midnight crash harmless and impotent against these walls because they were strong, they would endure; they were home, taller than wreckage, stronger than fear;—not even stopping, not even curious to ask himself if perhaps he dared not stop, letting the screen door quietly to behind him and down the steps into the vast furious vortex of the soft May night and walking fast now across the yard toward the dark cabin where Paralee and Aleck Sander were no more asleep than all the other Negroes within a mile of town would sleep tonight, not even in bed but sittingquietly in the dark behind the closed doors and shuttered windows waiting for what sound what murmur of fury and death to breathe the spring dark: and stopped and whistled the signal he and Aleck Sander had been using to one another ever since they learned to whistle, counting off the seconds until the moment should come to repeat it, thinking how if he were Aleck Sander he wouldn’t come out of the house to anybody’s whistle tonight either when suddenly with no sound and certainly no light behind to reveal him by Aleck Sander stood out from the shadows, walking, already quite near in the moonless dark, a little taller than he though there was only a few months’ difference between them: and came up, not even looking at him but past, over his head, toward the Square as if looking could make a lofting trajectory like a baseball, over the trees and the streets and the houses, to drop seeing into the Square—not the homes in the shady yards and the peaceful meals and the resting and the sleep which were the end and the reward, but the Square: the edifices created and ordained for trade and government and judgment and incarceration where strove and battled the passions of men for which the rest and the little death of sleep were the end and the escape and the reward.
‘So they aint come for old Lucas yet,’ Aleck Sander said.
‘Is that what your people think about it too?’ he said.
‘And so would you,’ Aleck Sander said. ‘It’s the ones like Lucas makes trouble for everybody.’
‘Then maybe you better go to the office and sit with Uncle Gavin instead of coming with me.’
‘Going where with you?’ Aleck Sander said. And he told him, harsh and bald, in four words:
‘Dig up Vinson Gowrie.’ Aleck Sander didn’t move,still looking past and over his head toward the Square. ‘Lucas said it wasn’t his gun that killed him.’
Still not moving Aleck Sander began to laugh, not loud and with no mirth: just laughing; he said exactly what his uncle had said hardly a minute ago: ‘So would I,’ Aleck Sander said. He said: ‘Me? Go out there and dig that dead white
We have to use the horse. We cant help it:
and Lucas:
You could have axed him for the car:
and he:
He would have refused. Dont you understand? He wouldn’t only have refused, he would have locked me up where I couldn’t even have walked out there, let alone had a horse:
and Lucas:
All right, all right. I aint criticising you. After all, it aint you them Gowries is fixing to set afire:
—moving down the hall to the back door: and he was wrong; not when he had said All right to Lucas through the steel bars nor when he had stepped back into the hall and closed the office door behind him, but here was the irrevocable moment after which there would be no return; he could stop here and never pass it, let the wreckage of midnight crash harmless and impotent against these walls because they were strong, they would endure; they were home, taller than wreckage, stronger than fear;—not even stopping, not even curious to ask himself if perhaps he dared not stop, letting the screen door quietly to behind him and down the steps into the vast furious vortex of the soft May night and walking fast now across the yard toward the dark cabin where Paralee and Aleck Sander were no more asleep than all the other Negroes within a mile of town would sleep tonight, not even in bed but sittingquietly in the dark behind the closed doors and shuttered windows waiting for what sound what murmur of fury and death to breathe the spring dark: and stopped and whistled the signal he and Aleck Sander had been using to one another ever since they learned to whistle, counting off the seconds until the moment should come to repeat it, thinking how if he were Aleck Sander he wouldn’t come out of the house to anybody’s whistle tonight either when suddenly with no sound and certainly no light behind to reveal him by Aleck Sander stood out from the shadows, walking, already quite near in the moonless dark, a little taller than he though there was only a few months’ difference between them: and came up, not even looking at him but past, over his head, toward the Square as if looking could make a lofting trajectory like a baseball, over the trees and the streets and the houses, to drop seeing into the Square—not the homes in the shady yards and the peaceful meals and the resting and the sleep which were the end and the reward, but the Square: the edifices created and ordained for trade and government and judgment and incarceration where strove and battled the passions of men for which the rest and the little death of sleep were the end and the escape and the reward.
‘So they aint come for old Lucas yet,’ Aleck Sander said.
‘Is that what your people think about it too?’ he said.
‘And so would you,’ Aleck Sander said. ‘It’s the ones like Lucas makes trouble for everybody.’
‘Then maybe you better go to the office and sit with Uncle Gavin instead of coming with me.’
‘Going where with you?’ Aleck Sander said. And he told him, harsh and bald, in four words:
‘Dig up Vinson Gowrie.’ Aleck Sander didn’t move,still looking past and over his head toward the Square. ‘Lucas said it wasn’t his gun that killed him.’
Still not moving Aleck Sander began to laugh, not loud and with no mirth: just laughing; he said exactly what his uncle had said hardly a minute ago: ‘So would I,’ Aleck Sander said. He said: ‘Me? Go out there and dig that dead white
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