They looked at each other. “I aint being tried for that one,” Lucas said.
“Was that still yours, Lucas?” Edmonds said. They looked at one another. Yet still the face which Edmonds saw was absolutely blank, impenetrable. Even the eyes appeared to have nothing behind them. He thought, and not for the first time: I am not only looking at a face older than mine and which has seen and winnowed more, but at a man most of whose blood was pure ten thousand years when my own anonymous beginnings became mixed enough to produce me.
“Do you want me to answer that?” Lucas said.
“No!” Edmonds said violently. “Get in the car!”
When they reached town, the streets leading into it and the Square itself were crowded with cars and wagons; the flag rippled and flew in the bright May weather above the federal courthouse. Following Edmonds, he and Nat and George crossed the thronged pavement, walking in a narrow lane of faces they knew—other people from their place, people from other places along the creek and in the neighborhood, come the seventeen miles also with no hope of getting into the courtroom itself but just to wait on the street and see them pass—and faces they only knew by hearsay: the rich white lawyers and judges and marshals talking to one another around their proud cigars, the haughty and powerful of the earth. They entered the marble foyer, crowded too and sonorous with voices, where George began to walk gingerly on the hard heels of his Sunday shoes. Then Lucas took from his coat the thick, soiled, folded document which had lain hidden under the loose brick in his fireplace for three weeks now and touched Edmonds’ arm with it—the paper thick enough and soiled enough yet which of its own accord apparently fell open at a touch, stiffly but easily too along the old hand-smudged folds, exposing, presenting among the meaningless and unread lettering between salutation and seal the three phrases in the cramped script of whatever nameless clerk which alone of the whole mass of it Lucas at least had bothered to read: George Wilkins and Nathalie Beauchamp and a date in October of last year.
“Do you mean,” Edmonds said, “that you have had this all the time? All these three weeks?” But still the face he glared at was impenetrable, almost sleepy looking.
“You hand it to Judge Gowan,” Lucas said.
He and Nat and George sat quietly on a hard wooden bench in a small office, where an oldish white man—Lucas knew him though not particularly that he was a deputy marshal—chewed a toothpick and read a Memphis newspaper. Then a young, brisk, slightly harried white man in glasses opened the door and glinted his glasses an instant and vanished; then, following the old white man they crossed the foyer again, the marble cavern murmurously resonant with the constant slow feet and the voices, the faces watching them again as they mounted the stairs. They crossed the empty courtroom without pausing and entered another office but larger, finer, quieter. There was an angry-looking man whom Lucas did not know—the United States Attorney, who had moved to Jefferson only after the administration changed eight years ago, after Lucas had stopped coming to town very often anymore. But Edmonds was there, and behind the table sat a man whom Lucas did know, who had used to come out in old Cass’ time forty and fifty years ago and stay for weeks during the quail season, shooting with Zack, with Lucas to hold the horses while they got down to shoot when the dogs pointed. It took hardly any time at all.
“Lucas Beauchamp?” the judge said. “With thirty gallons of whisky and a still sitting on his back porch in broad daylight? Nonsense.”
“Then there you are,” the angry man said, flinging out his hands. “I didn’t know anything about this either until Edmonds—” But the judge was not even listening to him. He was looking at Nat.
“Come here, girl,” he said. Nat moved forward and stopped. Lucas could see her trembling. She looked small, thin as a lath, young; she was their youngest and last—seventeen, born into his wife’s old age and, it sometimes seemed to him, into his too. She was too young to be married and face all the troubles which married people had to get through in order to become old and find out for themselves the taste and savor of peace. Just a stove and a new back porch and a well were not enough. “You’re Lucas’s girl?” the judge said.
“Yassuh,” Nat said in her high, sweet, chanting soprano. “I’m name Nat. Nat Wilkins, Gawge Wilkins’ wife. There the paper fer hit in yo hand.”
“I see it is,” the judge said. “It’s dated last October.”
“Yes sir, Judge,” George said. “We been had it since I sold my cotton last fall. We uz married then, only she wont come to live in my house unto Mister Lu—I mean I gots a stove and the porch fixed and a well dug.”
“Have you got that now?”
“Yes sir, Judge,” George said. “I got the money for hit now and I’m just fo gittin the rest of it, soon as I gits around to the hammerin and the diggin.”
“I see,” the judge said. “Henry,” he said to the other old man, the one with the toothpick, “have you got that whisky where you can pour it out?”
“Yes, Judge,” the other said.
“And both those stills where you can chop them to pieces, destroy them good?”
“Yes, Judge.”
“Then clear my office. Get them out of here. Get that jimber-jawed clown out of here at least.”
“He’s talking about you, George Wilkins,” Lucas murmured.
“Yes sir,” George said. “Sound like he is.”
4
At first he thought that two or three days at the outside would suffice—or nights, that is, since George would have to be in his crop during the day, let alone getting himself and Nat settled for marriage in their house. But a week passed, and though Nat would come back home at least once during the day, usually to borrow something, he had not seen George at all. He comprehended the root of his impatience—the mound and its secret which someone, anyone else, might stumble upon by chance as he had, the rapid and daily shortening of the alloted span in which he had not only to find the treasure but to get any benefit and pleasure from it, all in abeyance until he could complete the petty business which had intervened, and nothing with which to pass the period of waiting—the good year, the good early season, and cotton and corn springing up almost in the planter’s wheel-print, so that there was now nothing to do but lean on the fence and watch it grow;—on the one hand, that which he wanted to do and could not; on the other, that which he could have done and no need for. But at last, in the second week, when he knew that in one more day his patience would be completely gone, he stood just inside his kitchen door and watched George enter and cross the lot in the dusk and enter the stable and emerge with his mare and put her to the wagon and drive away. So the next morning he went no further than his first patch and leaned on the fence in the bright dew looking at his cotton until his wife began to shout at him from the house.
When he entered, Nat was sitting in his chair beside the hearth, bent forward, her long narrow hands dangling limp between her knees, her face swollen and puffed again with crying. “Yawl and your George Wilkins!” Molly said. “Go on and tell him.”
“He aint started on the well or nothing,” Nat said. “He aint even propped up the back porch. With all that money you give him, he aint even started. And I axed him and he just say he aint got around to it yet, and I waited and I axed him again and he still just say he aint got around to it yet. Unto I told him at last that ifn he didn’t get started like he promised, my mind gonter change about whatall I seed that night them shurfs come out here and so last night he say he gwine up the road a piece and do I wants to come back home and stay because he mought not get back unto late and I say I can bar the door because I thought he was going to fix to start on the well. And when I seed him catch up pappy’s mare and wagon, I knowed that was it. And it aint unto almost daylight when he got back, and he aint got nothing. Not nothing to dig with and no boards to fix the porch, and he had done spent the money pappy give him. And I told him what I was gonter do and I was waiting at the house soon as Mister Roth got up and I told Mister Roth my mind do
ne changed about what I seed that night and Mister Roth started in to cussing and say I done waited too late because I’m Gawge’s wife now and the Law wont listen to me and for me to come and tell you and Gawge both to be offen his place by sundown.”
“There now!” Molly cried. “There’s your George Wilkins!” Lucas was already moving toward the door. “Whar you gwine?” she said. “Whar we gonter move to?”
“You wait to start worrying about where we will move to when Roth Edmonds starts to worrying about why we aint gone,” Lucas said.
The sun was well up now. It was going to be hot today; it was going to make cotton and corn both before the sun went down. When he reached George’s house, George stood quietly out from behind the corner of it. Lucas crossed the grassless and sunglared yard, the light dust swept into the intricate and curving patterns which Molly had taught Nat. “Where is it?” Lucas said.
“I hid hit in that gully where mine use to be,” George said. “Since them shurfs never found nothing there the yuther time, they’ll think hit aint no use to look there no more.”
“You fool,” Lucas said. “Don’t you know a week aint going to pass from now to the next election without one of them looking in that gully just because Roth Edmonds told them there was a still in it once? And when they catch you this time, you aint going to have any witness you have already been married to since last fall.”
“They aint going to catch me this time,” George said. “I done had my lesson. I’m gonter run this one the way you tells me to.”
“You better had,” Lucas said. “As soon as dark falls you take that wagon and get that thing out of that gully. I’ll show you where to put it. Hah,” he said. “And I reckon this one looks enough like the one that was in that gully before not to even been moved at all.”
“No sir,” George said. “This is a good one. The worm in hit is almost brand-new. That’s how come I couldn’t git him down on the price he axed. That porch and well money liked two dollars of being enough, but I just made that up myself, without needing to bother you. But it aint worrying about gittin caught that troubles my mind. What I cant keep from studying about is what we gonter tell Nat about that back porch and that well.”
“What we is?” Lucas said.
“What I is, then,” George said. Lucas looked at him for a moment.
“George Wilkins,” he said.
“Sir,” George said.
“I don’t give no man advice about his wife,” Lucas said.
Chapter Two
About a hundred yards before they reached the commissary, Lucas spoke over his shoulder without stopping. “You wait here,” he said.
“No, no,” the salesman said. “I’ll talk to him myself. If I cant sell it to him, there aint a—” He stopped. He recoiled actually; another step and he would have walked full tilt into Lucas. He was young, not yet thirty, with the assurance, the slightly soiled snap and dash, of his calling, and a white man. Yet he even stopped talking and looked at the negro in battered overalls who stood looking down at him not only with dignity but with command.
“You wait here,” Lucas said. So the salesman leaned against the fence in the bright August morning, while Lucas went on to the commissary. He mounted the steps, beside which a bright-coated young mare with a blaze and three stockings stood under a wide plantation saddle, and entered the long room with its ranked shelves of tinned food and tobacco and patent medicines, its hooks pendant with trace chains and collars and hames. Edmonds sat at a roll-top desk beside the front window, writing in a ledger. Lucas stood quietly looking at the back of Edmonds’ neck until the other turned. “He’s come,” Lucas said.
Edmonds swivelled the chair around, back-tilted. He was already glaring before the chair stopped moving; he said with astonishing violence: “No!”
“Yes,” Lucas said.
“No!”
“He brought it with him,” Lucas said. “I saw with my own eyes——”
“Do you mean to tell me you wrote him to come down here after I told you I wouldn’t advance you three hundred dollars nor three hundred cents nor even three cents——”
“I saw it, I tell you,” Lucas said. “I saw it work with my own eyes. I buried a dollar in my back yard this morning and that machine went right straight to where it was and found it. We are going to find that money tonight and I will pay you back in the morning.”
“Good!” Edmonds said. “Fine! You’ve got over three thousand dollars in the bank. Advance yourself the money. Then you wont even have to pay it back.” Lucas looked at him. He didn’t even blink. “Hah,” Edmonds said. “And because why? Because you know damn well just like I know damn well that there aint any money buried around here. You’ve been here sixty-seven years. Did you ever hear of anybody in this country with enough money to bury? Can you imagine anybody in this country burying anything worth as much as two bits that some of his kinfolks or his friends or his neighbors aint dug up and spent before he could even get back home and put his shovel away?”
“You’re wrong,” Lucas said. “Folks find it. Didn’t I tell you about them two strange white men that come in here after dark that night three or four years ago and dug up twenty-two thousand dollars in a old churn and got out again before anybody even laid eyes on them? I saw the hole where they filled it up again. And the churn.”
“Yes,” Edmonds said. “You told me. And you didn’t believe it then either. But now you’ve changed your mind. Is that it?”
“They found it,” Lucas said. “Got clean away before anybody even knowed it, knowed they was here even.”
“Then how do you know it was twenty-two thousand dollars?” But Lucas merely looked at him. It was not stubbornness but an infinite, almost Jehovah-like patience, as if he were contemplating the antics of a lunatic child.
“Your father would have lent me three hundred dollars if he was here,” he said.
“But I aint,” Edmonds said. “And if I could keep you from spending any of your money on a damn machine to hunt buried gold with, I would do that too. But then, you aint going to use your money, are you? That’s why you came to me. You’ve got better sense. You just hoped I didn’t have. Didn’t you?”
“It looks like I’m going to have to use mine,” Lucas said. “I’m going to ask you one more time——”
“No!” Edmonds said. Lucas looked at him for a good minute this time. He did not sigh.
“All right,” he said.
When he emerged from the commissary, he saw George too, the soiled gleam of the ruined panama hat where George and the salesman now squatted in the shade of a tree, squatting on their heels without any other support. Hah, he thought, He mought talk like a city man and he mought even think he is one. But I know now where he was born at. The salesman looked up as Lucas approached. He gave Lucas one rapid, hard look and rose, already moving toward the commissary. “Hell,” he said, “I told you all the time to let me talk to him.”
“No,” Lucas said. “You stay out of there.”
“Then what are you going to do?” the salesman said. “Here I’ve come all the way from Memphis—And how you ever persuaded them up there in Saint Louis to send this machine out without any downpayment in the first place, I still dont see. And I’ll tell you right now, if I’ve got to take it back, turn in an expense account for this trip and not one damn thing to show for it, something is——”
“We aint doing any good standing here, at least,” Lucas said. He went on, the others following him, back to the gate, the road where the salesman’s car waited. The divining machine sat on the back seat and Lucas stood in the open door, looking at it—an oblong metal box with a handle for carrying at each end, compact and solid, efficient and business-like and complex with knobs and dials. He didn’t touch it. He just leaned in the door and stood over it, blinking, bemused. He spoke to no one. “And I watched it work,” he said. “I watched it with my own eyes.”
“What did you expect?” the salesman said. “That’s what it’s supposed t
o do. That’s why we want three hundred dollars for it. Well?” he said. “What are you going to do? I’ve got to know, so I can know what to do myself. Aint you got three hundred dollars? What about some of your kinfolks? Hasn’t your wife got three hundred dollars hid under the mattress somewhere?” Lucas mused on the machine. He did not look up yet.
“We will find that money tonight,” he said. “You put in the machine and I’ll show you where to look, and we’ll go halves in it.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” the salesman said harshly, with no muscle of his face moving save the ones which parted his lips. “Now I’ll tell one.” Lucas mused above the box.
“We bound to find hit, captain,” George said suddenly. “Two white men slipped in here three years ago and dug up twenty-two thousand dollars in a old churn one night and got clean away fo daylight.”
“You bet,” the salesman said. “And you knew it was exactly twenty-two grand because you found where they had throwed away the odd cents they never wanted to bother with.”
“Naw sir,” George said. “Hit mought a been more than twenty-two thousand dollars. Hit wuz a big churn.”
“George Wilkins,” Lucas said. He was still half way inside the car. He didn’t even turn his head.
“Sir,” George said.
“Hush,” Lucas said. He withdrew his head and upper body and turned and looked at the salesman. Again the young white man saw a face absolutely impenetrable, even a little cold. “I’ll swap you a mule for it,” Lucas said.
“A mule?”
“When we find that money tonight, I’ll buy the mule back from you for the three hundred dollars.” George drew in his breath with a faint hissing sound. The salesman glanced quickly at him, at the raked hat, the rapid batting of his eyes. Then the salesman looked back at Lucas. They looked at one another—the shrewd, suddenly sober, suddenly attentive face of the young white man, the absolutely expressionless one of the negro.
“Do you own the mule?”
“How could I swap it to you if I didn’t?” Lucas said.
Go Down, Moses Page 7
