"Get away," Father said. He went up onto Jupiter's bare back like a bird, holding him for a moment and looking down at us. He didn't speak loud at all; he didn't even sound in a hurry. "Take care of Granny," he said. "All right, Jupe. Let's go."
Jupiter's head was pointing down the hallway toward the lattice half doors at the back; he went out again, out from between me and Ringo like he did yesterday, with Father already lifting him and I thinking, "He can't jump through that little hole." Jupiter took the doors on his chest, only they seemed to burst before he even touched them, and I saw him and Father again like they were flying in the air, with broken planks whirling and spinning around them when they went out of sight. And then the Yankee rode into the barn and saw us, and threw down with the carbine and shot at us point-blank with one hand, like it was a pistol, and said, "Where'd he go, the rebel son of a bitch?"
Louvinia kept on trying to tell us about it while we
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were running and looking back at the smoke beginning to come out of the downstairs windows: "Marse John setting on the porch and them Yankees riding through the flower beds and say, 'Brother, we wanter know where the rebel John Sartoris live,' and Marse John say, 'Hey?' with his hand to his ear and his face look like he born loony like Unc Few Mitchell, and Yankee say, 'Sartoris, John Sartoris,' and Marse John say, 'Which? Say which?' until he know Yankee stood about all he going to, and Marse John say, 'Oh, John Sartoris. Whyn't you say so in the first place?' and Yankee cussing him for idiot fool, and Marse John say, 'Hey? How's that?' and Yankee say, 'Nothing! Nothing! Show me where John Sartoris is 'fore I put rope around your neck too!' and Marse John say, 'Lemme git my shoes and I show you,' and come into house limping, and then run down the hall at me and say, 'Boots and pistols, Louvinia. Take care of Miss Rosa and the chillen,' and I go to the door, but I just a nigger. Yankee say, "That woman's lying. I believe that man was Sartoris himself. Go look in the barn quick and see if that claybank stallion there'" —until Granny stopped and began to shake her.
"Hush!" Granny said. "Hush! Can't you understand that Loosh has shown them where the silver is buried? Call Joby. Hurry!" She turned Louvinia toward the cabins and hit her exactly like Father turned my horse and hit him when we rode down the hill and into the Yankees, and then Granny turned to run back toward the house; only now it was Louvinia holding her and Granny trying to get away.
"Don't you go back there, Miss Rosa!" Louvinia said. "Bayard, hold her; help me, Bayard! They'll kill her!"
"Let me go!" Granny said. "Call Joby! Loosh has shown them where the silver is buried!" But we held her; she was strong and thin and light as a cat, but we held her. The smoke was boiling up now, and we could hear it or them—something—maybe all of them making one sound—the Yankees and the fire. And then I saw Loosh. He was coming up from his cabin with a bundle on his shoulder tied up in a bandanna and Philadelphy behind him, and his face looked like it had that night last summer when Ringo and I looked into the window
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THE UNVANQUISHED
and saw him after he came back from seeing the Yankees. Granny stopped fighting. She said, "Loosh."
He stopped and looked at her; he looked like he was asleep, like he didn't even see us or was seeing something we couldn't. But Philadelphy saw us; she cringed back behind him, looking at Granny. "I tried to stop him, Miss Rosa," she said. "Tore God I tried." "Loosh," Granny said, "are you going too?" "Yes," Loosh said, "I going. I done been freed; God's own angel proclamated me free and gonter general me to Jordan. I don't belong to John Sartoris now; 1 belongs to me and God."
"But the silver belongs to John Sartoris," Granny said. "Who are you to give it away?"
"You ax me that?" Loosh said. "Where John Sartoris? Whyn't he come and ax me that? Let God ax John Sartoris who the man name that give me to him. Let the man that buried me in the black dark ax that of the man what dug me free." He wasn't looking at us; I don't think he could even see us. He went on.
" 'Fore God, Miss Rosa," Philadelphy said, "I tried to stop him. I done tried."
"Don't go, Philadelphy," Granny said. "Don't you know- he's leading you into misery and starvation?"
Philadelphy began to cry. "I knows hit. I knows whut they tole him can't be true. But he my husband. I reckon I got to go with him."
They went on. Louvinia had come back; she and Ringo were behind us. The smoke boiled up, yellow and slow, and turning copper-colored in the sunset like dust; it was like dust from a road above the feet that made it, and then went on, boiling up slow and hanging and waiting to die away.
"The bastuds, Granny!" I said. "The bastuds!" Then we were all three saying it—Granny and me and Ringo, saying it together: "The bastuds!" we cried. "The bastuds! The bastuds!"
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wrote the note with pokeberry juice. "Take it straight to Mrs. Compson and come straight back," she said. "Don't you-all stop anywhere."
"You mean we got to walk?" Ringo said. "You gonter make us walk all them four miles to Jefferson and back, with them two horses standing in the lot doing nothing?"
"They are borrowed horses," Granny said. "I'm going to take care of them until I can return them."
"I reckon you calls starting out to be gone you don't know where and you don't know how long taking care of------" Ringo said.
"Do you want me to whup you?" Louvinia said.
"Nome," Ringo said.
We walked to Jefferson and gave Mrs. Compson the note, and got the hat and the parasol and the hand mirror, and walked back home. That afternoon we greased the wagon, and that night after supper Granny got the pokeberry juice again and wrote on a scrap of paper, "Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick, ------th Ohio Cavalry," and folded it and pinned it inside her dress. "Now I won't forget it," she said.
"If you was to, I reckon these hellion boys can remind you," Louvinia said. "I reckon they ain't forgot him. Walking in that door just in time to keep them
65
66
THE UNVANQUISHED
others from snatching them out from under your dress and nailing them to the barn door like two coon hides." "Yes," Granny said. "Now we'll go to bed." We lived in Joby's cabin then, with a red quilt nailed by one edge to a rafter and hanging down to make two rooms. Joby was waiting with the wagon when Granny came out with Mrs. Compson's hat on, and got into the wagon and told Ringo to open the parasol and took up the reins. Then we all stopped and watched Joby stick something into the wagon beneath the quilts; it was the barrel and the iron parts of the musket that Ringo and I found in the ashes of the house.
"What's that?" Granny said. Joby didn't look at her. "Maybe if they just seed the end of hit they mought think hit was the whole gun," he said.
"Then what?" Granny said. Joby didn't look at anybody now.
"I was just doing what I could to help git the silver and the mules back," he said.
Louvinia didn't say anything either. She and Granny
just looked at Joby. After a while he took the musket
barrel out of the wagon. Granny gathered up the reins.
"Take him with you," Louvinia said. "Leastways he
can ten(| the horses."
"No," Granny said. "Don't you see I have got about all I can look after now?"
"Then you stay here and lemme go," Louvinia said. "I'll git urn back."
"No," Granny said. "I'll be all right. I shall inquire until I find Colonel Dick, and then we will load the chest in the wagon and Loosh can lead the mules and we will come back home."
Then Louvinia began to act just like Uncle Buck Mc-Caslin did the morning we started to Memphis. She stood there holding to the wagon wheel and looked at Granny from under Father's old hat, and began to holler. "Don't you waste no time on colonels or nothing!" she hollered. "You tell them niggers to send Loosh to you, and you tell him to get that chest and them mules, and then you whup him!" The wagon was moving now; she had turned loose the wheel, and
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she walked along beside it, hollering at Granny: "Take that pairsawl and wear hit out on him!"
"All right," Granny said. The wagon went on; we passed the ash pile and the chimneys standing up out of it; Ringo and I found the insides of the big clock too. The sun was just coming up, shining back on the chimneys; I could still see Louvinia between them, standing in front of the cabin, shading her eyes with her hand to watch us. Joby was still standing behind her, holding the musket barrel. They had broken the gates clean off; and then we were in the road. "Don't you want me to drive?" I said. "I'll drive," Granny said. "These are borrowed horses."
"Case even Yankee could look at um and tell they couldn't keep up with even a walking army," Ringo said. "And I like to know how anybody can hurt this team lessen he ain't got strength enough to keep um from laying down in the road and getting run over with they own wagon."
We drove until dark, and camped. By sunup we were on the road again. "You better let me drive a while," I said.
"I'll drive," Granny said. "I was the one who borrowed them."
"You can tote this pairsawl a while, if you want something to do," Ringo said. "And give my arm a rest." I took the parasol and he laid down in the wagon and put his hat over his eyes. "Call me when we gitting nigh to Hawkhurst," he said, "so I can commence to look out for that railroad you tells about."
That was how he travelled for the next six days— lying on his back in the wagon bed with his hat over his eyes, sleeping, or taking his turn holding the parasol over Granny and keeping me awake by talking of the railroad which he had never seen though I had seen it that Christmas we spent at Hawkhurst. That's how Ringo and I were. We were almost the same age, and Father always said that Ringo was a little smarter than I was, but that didn't count with us, anymore than the difference hi the color of our skins counted. What counted was, what one of us had done or seen that the other
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had not, and ever since that Christmas I had been ahead of Ringo because I had seen a railroad, a locomotive. Only I know now it was more than that with Ringo, though neither of us were to see the proof of my belief for some time yet and we were not to recognise it as such even then. It was as if Ringo felt it too and that the railroad, the rushing locomotive which he hoped to see symbolised it—the motion, the impulse to move which had already seethed to a head among his people, darker than themselves, reasonless, following and seeking a delusion, a dream, a bright shape which they could not know since there was nothing in their heritage, nothing in the memory even of the old men to tell the others. 'This is what we will find'; he nor they could not have known what it was yet it was there—one of those impulses inexplicable yet invincible which appear among races of people at intervals and drive them to pick up and leave all security and familiarity of earth and home and start out, they don't know where, emptyhanded, blind to everything but a hope and a doom.
We went on; we didn't go fast. Or maybe it seemed slow because we had got into a country where nobody seemed to live at all; all that day we didn't even see a house. I didn't ask and Granny didn't say; she just sat there under the parasol with Mrs. Compson's hat on and the horses walking and even our own dust moving ahead of us; after a while even Ringo sat up and looked around.
"We on the wrong road," he said. "Ain't even nobody live here, let alone pass here."
But after a while the hills stopped, the road ran out flat and straight; and all of a sudden Ringo hollered, "Look out! Here they come again to git these uns!" We saw it, too, then—a cloud of dust away to the west, moving slow—too slow for men riding—and then the road we were on ran square into a big broad one running straight on into the east, as the railroad at Hawkhurst did when Granny and T were there that Christmas before the war; all of a sudden I remembered it.
"This is the road to Hawkhurst," I said. But Ringo was not listening; he was looking at the dust, and the
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wagon stopped now with the horses' heads hanging and our dust overtaking us again and the big dust cloud coming slow up in the west.
"Can't you see urn coming?" Ringo hollered. "Get on away from here!"
"They ain't Yankees," Granny said. "The Yankees have already been here." Then we saw it, too—a burned house like ours, three chimneys standing above a mound of ashes, and then we saw a white woman and a child looking at us from a cabin behind them. Granny looked at the dust cloud, then she looked at the empty broad road going on into the east. "This is the way," she said. We went on. It seemed like we went slower than ever now, with the dust cloud behind us and the burned houses and gins and thrown-down feuues on either side, and the white women and children—we never saw a nigger at all—watching us from the nigger cabins where they lived now like we lived at home; we didn't stop. "Poor folks," Granny said. "T wish we had enough to share with them."
At sunset we drew off the road and camped; Ringo was looking back. "Whatever hit is, we done went off and left hit," he said. "I don't see no dust." We slept in the wagon this time, all three of us. I don't know what time it was, only that all of a sudden I was awake. Granny was already sitting up in the wagon, I could see her head against the branches and the stars. All of a sudden all three of us were sitting up in the wagon, listening. They were coming up the road* It sounded like about fifty of them; we could hear the feet hurrying, and a kind of panting murmur. It was not singing exactly; it was not that loud. It was just a sound, a breathing, a kind of gasping, murmuring chant and the feet whispering fast in the deep dust. I could hear women, too, and then all of a sudden I began to smell them. "Niggers," I whispered. "Sh-h-h-h," T whispered. We couldn't see them and they did not see us; maybe they didn't even look, just walking fast in the dark with that panting, hurrying murmuring, going on. And then the sun rose and we went on, too, along that big broad empty load between the burned houses and gins and fences. Before, it had been like poising through a coua-
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try where nobody had ever lived; now it was like passing through one where everybody had died at the same moment. That night we waked up three times and sat up in the wagon in the dark and heard niggers pass in the road. The last time it was after dawn and we had already fed the horses. It was a big crowd of them this time, and they sounded like they were running, like they had to run to keep ahead of daylight. Then they were gone. Ringo and I had taken up the harness again when Granny said, "Wait. Hush." It was just one, we could hear her panting and sobbing, and then we heard another sound. Granny began to get down from the wagon. "She fell," she said. "You-all hitch up and come
on."
When we turned into the road, the woman was kind of crouched beside it, holding something in her arms, and Granny standing beside her. It was a baby, a few months old; she held it like she thought maybe Granny was going to take it away from her. "I been sick and I couldn't keep up," she said. "They went off and left me." "Is your husband with them?" Granny said. "Yessum," the woman said. "They's all there." "Who do you belong to?" Granny said. Then she didn't answer. She squatted there in the dust, crouched over the baby. "If I give you something to eat, will you turn around and go back home?" Granny said. Still she didn't answer. She just squatted there. "You see you can't keep up with them and they ain't going to wait for you," Granny said. "Do you want to die here hi the road for buzzards to eat?" But she didn't even look at Granny; she just squatted there.
"Hit's Jordan we coming to," she said. "Jesus gonter see me that far."
"Get in the wagon," Granny said. She got in; she squatted again just like she had in the road, holding the baby and not looking at anything—just hunkered down and swaying on her hams as the wagon rocked and jolted. The sun was up; we went down a long hill and began to cross a creek bottom.
"I'll get out here," she said. Granny stopped the wagon and she got out. There was nothing at all but the thick
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gum and cypress and thick underbrush still
full of shadow.
"You go back home, girl," Granny said. She just stood there. "Hand me the basket," Granny said. I handed it to her and she opened it and gave the woman a piece of bread and meat. We went on; we began to mount the hill. When I looked back she was still standing there, holding the baby and the bread and meat Granny had given her. She was not looking at us. "Were the others there in that bottom?" Granny asked Ringo.
"Yessum," Ringo said. "She done found um. Reckon she gonter lose um again tonight though."
We went on; we mounted the hill and crossed the crest of it. When I looked back this time the road was empty. That was the morning of the sixth day._
late that afternoon we were descending again; we came around a curve in the late level shadows and our own quiet dust and I saw the graveyard on the knoll and the marble shaft at Uncle Dennison's grave; there was a dove somewhere in the cedars. Ringo was asleep again under his hat in the wagon bed but he waked as soon as I spoke, even though I didn't speak loud and didn't speak to him. "There's Hawkhurst," I said.
"Hawkhurst?" he said, sitting up. "Where's that railroad?" on his knees now and looking for something which he would have to find hi order to catch up with me and which he would have to recognise only through hearsay when he saw it: "Where is it? Where?"
"You'll have to wait for it," I said.
"Seem like I been waiting on hit all my life," he said. "I reckon you'll tell me next the Yankees done moved hit too."
The sun was going down. Because suddenly I saw it shining level across the place where the house should have been and there was no house there. And I was not surprised; I remember that; I was just feeling sorry for Ringo, since (I was just fourteen then) if the house was gone, they would have taken the railroad too, since anybody would rather have a railroad than a house.
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