"Louvinia," Granny said, "conduct the gentleman to the dining room and serve him with what we have."
He was out of the room now, because Granny began to tremble now, trembling and trembling, but not relaxing, yet; we could hear her panting now. And we breathed, too, now, looking at each other. "We never killed him!" I whispered. "We haven't killed anybody at all!" So it was Granny's body that told us again; only this time I could almost feel him looking at Granny's spread skirt where we crouched while he thanked her for the milk and told her his name and regiment.
"Perhaps it is just as well that you have no grandchildren," he said. "Since, doubtless, you wish to live in peace. I have three boys myself, you see. And I have not even had time to become a grandparent." And now there wasn't any laughing behind his voice, and Louvinia said he was standing there in the door, with the brass bright on his dark blue and his hat in his hand and his bright beard and hair, looking at Granny without the laughing now: "I won't apologise; fools cry out at wind or fire. But permit me to say and hope that
AMBUSCADE 35
you will never have anything worse than this to remember us by." Then he was gone. We heard his spurs in the hall and on the porch, then the horse, dying away, ceasing, and then Granny let go. She went back into the chair with her hand at her breast and her eyes closed and the sweat on her face in big drops; all of a sudden I began to holler, "Louvinia! Louvinia!" But she opened her eyes then and looked at me; they were looking at me when they opened. Then she looked at Ringo for a moment, but she looked back at me, panting.
"Bayard," she said, "what was that word you used?"
"Word?" I said. "When, Granny?" Then I remembered; I didn't look at her, and she lying back in the chair, looking at me and panting.
"Don't repeat it. You cursed. You used obscene language, Bayard."
I didn't look at her. I could see Ringo's feet too. "Ringo did too," I said. She didn't answer, but I could feel her looking at me; I said suddenly: "And you told a lie. You said we were not here."
"I know it," she said. She moved. "Help me up." She got out of the chair, holding to us. We didn't know what she was trying to do. We just stood there while she held to us and to the chair and let herself down to her knees beside it. It was Ringo that knelt first. Then I knelt, too, while she asked the Lord to forgive her for telling the lie. Then she rose; we didn't have tune to help her. "Go to the kitchen and get a pan of water and the soap," she said. "Get the new soap."
it was late, as if time had slipped up on us while we were still caught, enmeshed by the sound of the musket and were too busy to notice it; the sun shone almost level into our faces while we stood at the edge of the back gallery, spitting, rinsing the soap from our mouths turn and turn about from the gourd dipper, spitting straight into the sun. For a while, just by breathing we could blow soap bubbles, but soon it was just the taste of the spitting. Then even that began to go away although the impulse to spit did not, while away to the
36
F
THE UNVANQUISHED
north we could see the cloud bank, fault and blue and faraway at the base and touched with copper sun along the crest. When Father came home in the spring, we tried to understand about mountains. At last he pointed out the cloud bank to tell us what mountains looked like. So ever since then Ringo believed that the cloud-bank was Tennessee.
"Yonder they," he said, spitting. "Yonder hit. Tennessee, where Marse John use to fight um at. Looking mighty far, too."
"Too far to go just to fight Yankees," I said, spitting too. But it was gone now—the suds, the glassy weightless iridescent bubbles; even the taste of it.
RETREAT
mn the afternoon Loosh drove the wagon up beside the back gallery and took the mules out; by supper-time we had everything loaded into the wagon but the bedclothes we would sleep under that night. Then Granny went up stairs and when she came back down she had on her Sunday black silk and her hat, and there was color in her face now and her eyes were bright.
"Is we gonter leave tonight?" Ringo said. "I thought we wasn't going to start until in the morning."
"We're not," Granny said. "But it's been three years now since I have started anywhere; I reckon the Lord will forgive me for getting ready one day ahead of time." She turned (we were in the dining-room then, the table set with supper) to Louvinia. "Tell Joby and Loosh to be ready with the lantern and the shovels as soon as they have finished eating."
Louvinia had set the cornbread on the table and was going out when she stopped and looked at Granny. "You mean you gonter take that heavy trunk all the way to Memphis with you? You gonter dig hit up from where hit been hid safe since last summer, and take hit all the way to Memphis?"
"Yes," Granny said. "I am following Colonel Sartoris' 37
38
THE UN VANQUIS HED
instructions as I believe he meant them." She was eating; she didn't even look at Louvinia. Louvinia stood there in the pantry door, looking at the back of Granny's head.
"Whyn't you leave hit here where hit hid good and I can take care of hit? Who gonter find hit, even if they was to come here again? Hit's Marse John they done called the reward on; hit ain't no trunk full of------"
"I have my reasons," Granny said. "You do what I told you."
"All right. But how come you wanter dig hit up tonight when you ain't leaving until tomor------"
"You do what I said," Granny said.
"Yessum," Louvinia said. She went out. I looked at Granny eating, with her hat sitting on the exact top of her head, and Ringo looking at me across the back of Granny's chair with his eyes rolling a little.
"Why not leave it hid?" I said. "It'll be just that much more load on the wagon. Joby says that trunk will weigh a thousand pounds."
"A thousand fiddlesticks!" Granny said. "I don't care if it weighed ten thousand------" Louvinia came in.
"They be ready," she said. "I wish you'd tell me why you got to dig hit up tonight."
Granny looked at her. "I had a dream about it last night."
"Oh," Louvinia said. She and Ringo looked exactly alike, except that Louvinia's eyes were not rolling so much as his.
"I dreamed I was looking out my window, and a man walked into the orchard and went to where it is and stood there pointing at it," Granny said. She looked at Louvinia. "A black man."
"A nigger?" Louvinia said.
"Yes."
For a while Louvinia didn't say anything. Then she said, "Did you know him?" "Yes," Granny said. "Is you going to tell who hit was?" "No," Granny said. Louvinia turned to Ringo. "Gawn tell your pappy and
RETREAT
59
Loosh to get the lantern and the shovels and come on up here."
Joby and Loosh were in the kitchen. Joby was sitting behind the stove with a plate on his knees, eating. Loosh was sitting on the wood box, still, with the two shovels between his knees, but I didn't see him at first because of Ringo's shadow. The lamp was on the table, and I could see the shadow of Ringo's head bent over and his arm working back and forth, and Louvinia standing between us and the lamp, her hands on her hips and her elbows spread and her shadow filling the room. "Clean that chimney good," she said.
Joby carried the lantern, with Granny behind him, and then Loosh; I could see her bonnet and Loosh's head and the two shovel blades over his shoulder. Ringo was breathing behind me. "Which un you reckon she drempt about?" he said.
-"Why don't you ask her?" I said. We were in the orchard now.
"Hoo," Ringo said. "Me ask her? I bet if she stayed here wouldn't no Yankee nor nothing else bother that trunk, nor Marse John neither, if he knowed hit."
Then they stopped—Joby and Granny, and while Granny held the lantern at arm's length, Joby and Loosh dug the trunk up from where they had buried it that night last summer while Father was at home, while Louvinia stood in the door of the bedroom without even lighting the lamp while Ringo and I went to bed and later I either looked out or dreamed I looked ou
t the window and saw (or dreamed I saw) the lantern. Then, with Granny in front and still carrying the lantern and with Ringo and I both helping to carry it, we returned toward the house. Before we reached the house Joby began to bear away toward where the loaded wagon stood.
"Take it into the house," Granny said.
"We'll just load hit now and save having to handle hit again in the morning," Joby said. "Come on here, nigger," he said to Loosh.
"Take it into the house," Granny said. So, after a while, Joby moved on toward the house. We could hear
40
THE UNVANQUISHED
him breathing now, saying "Hah!" every few steps. Inside the kitchen he let his end down, hard.
"Hah!" he said. "That's done, thank God."
"Take it upstairs," Granny said.
Joby turned and looked at her. He hadn't straightened up yet; he turned, half stooping, and looked at her. "Which?" he said.
"Take it upstairs," Granny said. "I want it in my room."
"You mean you gonter tote this thing all the way upstairs and then tote it back down tomorrow?"
"Somebody is," Granny said. "Are you going to help or are me and Bayard going to do it alone?"
Then Louvinia came in. She had already undressed. She looked tall as a ghost, in one dimension like a bolster case, taller than a bolster case in her nightgown; silent as a ghost on her bare feet which were the same color as the shadow in which she stood so that she seemed to have no feet, the twin rows of her toenails lying weightless and faint and still as two rows of faintly soiled feathers on the floor about a foot below the hem of her nightgown as if they were not connected with her. She came and shoved Joby aside and stooped to lift the trunk. "Git away, nigger," she said. JOby groaned, then he shoved Louvinia aside.
"Git away, woman," he said. He lifted his end of the trunk, then he looked back at Loosh, who had never let his end down. "If you gonter ride on hit, pick up your feet," he said. We carried the trunk up to Granny's room, and Joby was setting it down again, until Granny made him and Loosh pull the bed out from the wall and slide the trunk in behind it; Ringo and I helped again. I don't believe it lacked much of weighing a thousand pounds.
"Now I want everybody to go right to bed, so we can get an early start tomorrow," Granny said.
"That's you," Joby said. "Git everybody up at crack of day and it be noon 'fore we get started."
"Nummine about that," Louvinia said. "You do like Miss Rosa tell you." We went out; we left Granny there beside her bed now well away from the wall and in such an ungainly position that anyone would have
RETREAT
41
known at once that something was concealed, even if the trunk which Ringo and I as well as Joby believed now to weigh/ at least a thousand pounds, could have been hidden. As it was, the bed merely underlined it. Then Granny shut the door behind us and then Ringo and I stopped dead in the hall and looked at one another. Since I could remember, there had never been a key to any door, inside or outside, about the house. Yet we had heard a key turn in the lock.
"I didn't know there was ere a key would fit hit," Ringo said, "let alone turn."
"And that's some more of yawls' and Joby's business," Louvinia said. She had not stopped; she was already reclining on her cot and as we looked toward her she was already in the act of drawing the quilt up over her face and head. "Yawl get on to bed."
We went on to our room and began to undress. The lamp was lighted and there was already laid out across two chairs our Sunday clothes which we too would put on tomorrow to go to Memphis in. "Which un you reckin she dremp about?" Ringo said. But I didn't answer that; I knew that Ringo knew I didn't need to.
we put on our Sunday clothes by lamplight, we ate breakfast by it and listened to Louvinia above stairs as she removed from Granny's and my beds the linen we had slept under last night and rolled up Ringo's pallet and carried them downstairs; in the first beginning of day we went out to where Loosh and Joby had already put the mules into the wagon and where Joby stood in what he called his Sunday clothes too—the old frock coat, the napless beaver hat, of Father's. When Granny came out (still in the black silk and the bonnet as if she had slept hi them, passed the night standing rigidly erect with her hand on the key which she had produced from we knew not where and locked her door for the first time Ringo and I knew of) with her shawl over her shoulders and carrying her parasol and the musket from the pegs over the mantel, She held
42
THE UNVANQUISHED
out the musket to Joby. "Here," she said. Joby looked at it.
"We won't need hit," he said.
"Put it in the wagon," Granny said.
"Nome. We won't need nothing like that. We be in Memphis so quick won't nobody even have time to hear we on the road. I speck Marse John got the Yankees pretty well cleant out between here and Memphis anyway."
This time Granny didn't say anything at all. She just stood there holding out the musket until after a while Joby took it and put it into the wagon. "Now go get the trunk," Granny said. Joby was still putting the musket into the wagon; he stopped, his head turned a little.
"Which?" he said. He turned a little more, still not looking at Granny standing on the steps and looking at him; he was not looking at any of us, not speaking to any of us in particular. "Ain't I tole you?" he said.
"If anything ever came into your mind that you didn't tell to somebody inside of ten minutes, I don't remember it," Granny said. "But just what do you refer to now?"
"Nummine that," Joby said. "Come on here, Loosh. Bring that boy with you." They passed Granny and went on. She didn't look at them; it was as if they had walked not only out of her sight but out of her mind. Evidently Joby thought they had. He and Granny were like that; they were like a man and a mare, a blooded mare, which takes just exactly so much from the man and the man knows the mare will take just so much and the man knows that when that point is reached, just what is going to happen. Then it does happen: the mare kicks him, not viciously but just enough, and the man knows it was going to happen and so he is glad then, it is over then, or he thinks it is over, so he lies or sits on the ground and cusses the mare a little because he thinks it is over, finished, and then the mare turns her head and nips him. That's how Joby and Granny were and Granny always beat him, not bad: just exactly enough, like now; he and Loosh were just about to go in the door and Granny still not even looking after them,
RETREAT
43
when Joby said, "I done tole um. And I reckin even you can't dispute hit." Then Granny, without moving anything but her lips, still looking out beyond the waiting wagon as if we were not going anywhere and Joby didn't even exist, said,
"And put the bed back against the wall." This tune Joby didn't answer. He just stopped perfectly still, not even looking back at Granny, until Loosh said quietly,
"Gawn, pappy. Get on." They went on; Granny and I stood at the end of the gallery and heard them drag the trunk out, then shove the bed back where it had been yesterday; we heard them on the stairs with the trunk—the slow, clumsy, coffinsounding thumps. Then they came out onto the gallery.
"Go and help them," Granny said without looking back. "Remember, Joby is getting old." We put the trunk into the wagon, along with the musket and the basket of food and the bedclothing, and got in ourselves— Granny on the seat beside Joby, the bonnet on the exact top of her head and the parasol raised even before the dew had begun to fall—and we drove away. Loosh had already disappeared, but Louvinia still stood at the end of the gallery with Father's old hat on top of her head rag. Then I stopped looking back, though I could feel Ringo beside me on the trunk turning every few yards, even after we were outside the gate and in the road to town. Then we came to the curve where we had seen the Yankee sergeant on the bright horse last summer.
"Hit gone now," Ringo said. "Goodbye, Sartoris; Memphis, how-dy-do!"
The sun was just rising when we came in sight of Jefferson; we passed a comp
any of troops bivouacked in a pasture beside the road, eating breakfast. Their uniforms were not gray anymore now; they were almost the color of dead leaves and some of them didn't even have uniforms and one man waved a skillet at us and he had on a pair of blue Yankee pants with a yellow cavalry stripe like Father wore home last summer. "Hey, Miss-ippi!" he shouted. "Hooraw for Arkansaw!"
We left Granny at Mrs. Compson's, to tell Mrs. Compson goodbye and to ask her to drive out home now and then and look after the flowers. Then Ringo and
44
THE UNVANQUISHED
I drove the wagon on to the store and we were just coming out with the sack of salt when Uncle Buck McCaslin came hobbling across the square, waving his stick and hollering, and behind him the captain of the company we had passed eating breakfast in the pasture. There were two of them; I mean, there were two Mc-Caslins, Amodeus and Theophilus, twins, only everybody called them Buck and Buddy except themselves. They were bachelors, they had a big bottom-land plantation about fifteen miles from town. It had a big colonial house on it which their father had built and which people said was still one of the finest houses in the country when they inherited it. But it wasn't now, because Uncle Buck and Buddy didn't live hi it. They never had lived in it since their father died. They lived in a two-room log house with about a dozen dogs, and they kept their niggers in the manor house. It didn't have any windows now and a child with a hairpin could unlock any lock hi it, but every night when the niggers came up from the fields Uncle Buck or Uncle Buddy would drive them into the house and lock the door with a key almost as big as a horse pistol; probably they would still be locking the front door long after the last nigger had escaped out the back. And folks said that Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy knew this and that the niggers knew they knew it, only it was like a game with rules— neither one of Uncle Buck or Uncle Buddy to peep around the corner of the house while the other was locking the door, none of the niggers to escape in such a way as to be seen even by unavoidable accident, nor to escape at any other tune; they even said that the ones who couldn't get out while the door was being locked voluntarily considered themselves interdict until the next evening. Then they would hang the key on a nail beside the door and go back to their own little house full of dogs and eat supper and play head-and-head poker; and they said how no man in the state or on the River either would have dared to play with them even if they did not cheat, but that in the game as they played it between themselves, betting niggers and wagon-loads of cotton with one another on the turn of a single card, the Lord Himself might have held His own with one of
Unvanquished Page 4
