“ ‘I cant,’ I says. Because I knew that as long as I laid still, I would be all right. But that once I let myself start thinking about moving, or tried to, I would find out ll ituldn’t. But what the hell, why should I? I was all right. I had had it. I had it made. I was sacked up. Let them do whatever they.…ing wanted to with their.…ing war up on top.
“ ‘That’s once,’ He said. ‘You aint got but three times. You, the Top Soldier, saying cant. At Château-Thierry and St-Mihiel the company would have called you the Top Soldier. Do they still do that in the Corps on Guadalcanal?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I says.
“ ‘All right, Top Soldier,’ He said. ‘Fall in.’ So I got up. ‘At ease,’ He said. ‘You see?’ He said.
“ ‘I thought I couldn’t,’ I says. ‘I didn’t believe I could.’
“ ‘Sure,’ He said. ‘What else do we want with you. We’re already full up with folks that know they can but dont, since because they already know they can, they dont have to do it. What we want are folks that believe they cant, and then do it. The other kind dont need us and we dont need them. I’ll say more: we dont even want them in the outfit. They wont be accepted; we wont even have them under our feet. If it aint worth that much, it aint worth anything. Right?’
“ ‘Yes sir,’ I says.
“ ‘You can say Sir up there too if you want,’ He said. ‘It’s a free country. Nobody gives a damn. You all right now?’ ”
‘Yes sir,’ I says.
“ ‘TenSHUN!’ He said. And I made them pop, mud or no mud. ‘About-FACE!’ He said. And He never saw one smarter than that one neither. ‘Forward MARCH!’ He said. And I had already stepped off when He said, ‘Halt!’ and I stopped. ‘You’re going to leave him laying there,’ He said. And there he was, I had forgot about him, laying there as peaceful and out of it too as you please—the damned little bastard that had gone chicken at the exact wrong time, like they always do, turned the wheel a-loose and tried to duck and caused the whole damn mess; lucky for all of us he never had a.…ing bar on his shoulder so he could have.…ed up the whole detail and done for all of us.
“ ‘I cant carry him too,’ I says.
“ ‘That’s two times,’ He said. ‘You’ve got one more. Why not go on and use it now and get shut of it for good?’
“ ‘I cant carry him too,’ I says.
“ ‘Fine,’ He said. ‘That’s three and finished. You wont ever have to say cant again. Because you’re a special case; they gave you three times. But there’s a general order coming down today that after this nobody has but one. Pick him up.’ So I did. ‘Dismiss,’ He said. And that’s all. I told you I cant tell it. I was just there. I cant tell it.” He, Mink, watching them all, himself alien, not only unreconciled but irreconcilable: not contemptuous, because he was just waiting, not impatient because even if he were in Memphis right this minute, at ten or eleven or whatever oclock it was on Sunday morning, he would still have almost twenty-four hours to get through somehow before he could move on to the next step. He just watched them: the two oldish couples, man and wife of course, farmers obviously, without doubt tenant farmers come up from the mortgaged bank- or syndicate-owned cotton plantation from which the son had been drafted three or four or five years ago to make that far from home that sacrifice, old, alien too, too old for this, unreconciled by the meager and arid tears which were less of tears than blisters; none of the white people actually watching as the solitary Negro woman got up from her back bench and walked down the aisle to where the young woman’s soiled yellow hat was crushed into the crook of her elbow like a child in a child’s misery and desolation, the white people on the bench making way for the Negro woman to sit down beside the young white woman and put her arm around her; Goodyhay still standing, his arms propped on the closed fists on the plank, the cold seething eyes not even closed, speaking exactly as he had spoken three nights ago while the three of them knelt on the kitchen floor: “Save us, Christ. The poor sons of bitches.” Then Goodyhay was looking at him. “You, there,” Goodyhay said. “Stand up.” Mink did so. “He’s trying to get home. He hasn’t put in but one full day, but he needs ten dollars to get home on. He hasn’t been home in thirty-eight years. He needs nine bucks more. How about it?”
“I’ll take it,” the man in the officer’s cap said. “I won thirty-four in a crap game last night. He can have ten of that.”
“I said nine,” Goodyhay said. “He’s got one dollar coming. Give him the ten and I’ll give you one. He says he’s got to go to Memphis first. Anybody going in tonight?”
“I am,” another said.
“All right,” Goodyhay said. “Anybody want to sing?”
That was how he saw Memphis again under the best, the matchless condition for one who hadn’t seen it in … He could figure that. He was twenty years old when he got married. Three times before that he had wrenched, wrung enough money from the otherwise unpaid labor he did on the tenant farm of the kinsman who had raised him from orphanhood, to visit the Memphis brothels. The last visit was in the same year of his marriage. He was twenty-six years when he went to Parchman. Twenty dollars from twenty-six dollars was six dollars. He was in Parchman thirty-eight years. Six dollars and thirty-eight dollars was forty-four dollars to see Memphis again not only after forty-four years but under the matchless condition: at night, the dark earth on either hand and ahead already random and spangled with the neon he had never seen before, and in the distance the low portentous glare of the city itself, he sitting on the edge of the seat as a child sits, almost as small as a child, peering ahead as the car rushed, merging into one mutual spangled race bearing toward, as though by the acceleration of gravity or suction, the distant city; suddenly off to the right a train fled dragging a long string of lighted windows as rapid and ephemeral as dream; he became aware of a convergence like the spokes of a gigantic dark wheel lying on its hub, along which sped dense and undeviable as ants, automobiles and what they that. He waim were called buses as if all the earth was hurrying, plunging, being sucked, decked with diamond and ruby lights, into the low glare on the sky as into some monstrous, frightening, unimaginable joy or pleasure.
Now the converging roads themselves were decked with globular lights as big and high in the trees as roosting turkeys. “Tell me when we get close,” he said.
“Close to what?” the driver said.
“Close to Memphis.”
“We’re already in Memphis,” the driver said. “We crossed the city limits a mile back.” So now he realised that if he had still been walking, alone, with none to ask or tell him, his troubles would have really begun only after he reached Memphis. Because the Memphis he remembered from forty-four years back no longer existed; he thought I been away too long; when you got something to handle like I got to handle, and by yourself and not no more to handle it with than I got, not to mention eighty more miles to go yet, a man jest cant afford to been away as long as I had to be. Back then you would catch a ride in somebody’s wagon coming in from Frenchman’s Bend or maybe two or three of you would ride plow mules in to Jefferson, with a croker sack of corn behind the borrowed saddle, to leave the mules in the lot behind the Commercial Hotel and pay the nigger there a quarter to feed them until you got back, and get on the train at the depot and change at the Junction to one that went right into the middle of Memphis, the depot there almost in the center of town.
But all that was changed now. They had told him four days ago that most of the trains were gone, quit running, even if he had had that much extra money to spend just riding. They had told him how they were buses now but in all the four days he had yet to see anything that looked like a depot where he could buy a ticket and get on one. And as for the edge of Memphis that back there forty-four years ago a man could have walked in from in an hour, he, according to the driver, had already crossed it over a mile back yet still all he could see of it was just that glare on the sky. Even though he was actually in Memphis, he was apparently still as far from the goal he remem
bered and sought, as from Varner’s store to Jefferson; except for the car giving him a ride and the driver of it who knew in general where he needed to go, he might have had to spend even the ten dollars for food wandering around inside Memphis before he ever reached the place where he could buy the pistol.
Now the car was wedged solid into a rushing mass of other vehicles all winking and glittering and flashing with colored lights; all cir-cumambience in fact flashed and glared luminous and myriad with color and aloud with sound: suddenly a clutch of winking red green and white lights slid across the high night itself; he knew, sensed what they were but was much too canny to ask, telling, hissing to himself Remember. Remember. It wont hurt you long as dont nobody find out you dont know it.
Now he was in what he knew was the city. For a moment it merely stood glittering and serried and taller than stars. Then it engulfed him; it stooped soaring down, bearing down upon him like breathing the vast concrete mass and weight until he himself was breathless, having to pant for air. Then he knew what it was. It’s un-sleeping, he thought. It aint slept in so long now it’s done forgot how to sleep and now there aint no time to stop long enough to try to learn how again; the car rigid in its rigid mass, creeping then stopping then creeping again to the ordered blink and change of colored lights like the railroads used to have, until at last it drew out and could stop.
“Here’s the bus station,” the driver said. “This was where you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Buses leave here for everywhere. You want me to come in with you and find out about yours?”
“Much obliged,” he said. “It’s jest fine.”
“So long then,” the driver said.
“I thank you kindly,” he said. “So long.” Sure enough, it was a bus depot at last. Only if he went inside, one of the new laws he had heard about in Parchman—laws that a man couldn’t saw boards and hammer nails unless he paid money to an association that would let him, couldn’t even raise cotton on his own land unless the government said he could—might be that he would have to get on the first bus that left, no matter where it was going. So there was the rest of the night, almost all of it since it wasn’t even late yet. But it would only be twelve hours and for that time he could at least make one anonymous more among the wan anonymous faces thronging about him, hurrying and myriad beneath the colored glare, passionate and gay and unsleeping. Then something happened. Without warning the city spun, whirled, vertiginous, infinitesimal and dizzying, then as suddenly braked and immobilised again and he not only knew exacdy where he was, but how to pass the twelve hours. He would have to cross the street, letting the throng itself enclot and engulf him as the light changed; once across he could free himself and go on. And there it was: the Confederate Park they called it—the path- and flower-bed-crisscrossed vacancy exactly as he remembered it, the line of benches along the stone parapet in the gaps of which the old iron cannon from the War squatted and beyond that the sense and smell of the River, where forty-four and -five and -six years ago, having spent half his money in the brothel last night and the other half saved for tonight, after which he would have nothing left but the return ticket to Jefferson, he would come to watch the steamboats.
The levee would be lined with them bearing names like Stacker Lee and Ozark Belle and Crescent Queen, come from as far apart as Cairo and New Orleans, to meet and pass while he watched them, the levee clattering with horse- and mule-drawn drays and chanting stevedores while the cotton bales and the crated machinery and the rest of the bags and boxes moved up and down the gangplanks, and the benches along the bluff would be crowded with other people watching them too. But now the benches were vacant and even when he reached the stone parapet among the old cannon there was nothing of the River but the vast and vacant expanse, only the wet dark cold blowing, breathing up from across the vast empty River so that already he was buttoning the cotton jumper over his cotton shirt; no sound here at all: only the constant unsleeping murmur of the city behind him, no movement save the minute crawl of the automobiles on the bridge far down the River, hurrying, drawn also toward and into that unceasing murmur of passion and excitement, into this backwash of which he seemed to have blundered, strayed, and then abandoned, betrayed by having had to be away from it so long. And cold too, even here ne of the old cannon, smelling the cold aged iron too, huddled into the harsh cotton denim too new to have acquired his own body’s shape and so warm him by contact; it was going to be too cold here before much longer even though he did have peace and quiet to pass the rest of the twelve hours in. But he had already remembered the other one, the one they called Court Square, where he would be sheltered from the River air by the tall buildings themselves provided he waited a little longer to give the people who might be sitting on the benches there time to get sleepy and go home.
So when he turned back toward the glare and the murmur, the resonant concrete hum, though unsleeping still, now had a spent quality like rising fading smoke or steam, so that what remained of it was now high among the ledges and cornices; the random automobiles which passed now, though gleaming with colored lights still, seemed now as though fleeing in terror, in solitude from solitude. It was warmer here. And after a while he was right: there was nobody here save himself; on a suitable bench he lay down, drawing and huddling his knees up into the buttoned jumper, looking no larger than a child and no less waif, abandoned, when something hard was striking the soles of his feet and time, a good deal of it, had passed and the night itself was now cold and vacant. It was a policeman; he recognised that even after the forty-four years of change and alteration.
“Damn Mississippi,” the policeman said. “I mean, where are you staying in town here? You mean, you haven’t got anywhere to sleep? You know where the railroad station is? Go on down there; you can find a bed for fifty cents. Go on now.” He didn’t move, waiflike and abandoned true enough but no more pitiable than a scorpion. “Hell, you’re broke too. Here.” It was a half-dollar. “Go on now. Beat it. I’m going to stand right here and watch you out of sight.”
“Much obliged,” he said. A half a dollar. So that was another part of the new laws they had been passing; come to remember, he had heard about that in Parchman too; they called it Relief or W P and A: the same government that wouldn’t let you raise cotton on your own land would turn right around and give you a mattress or groceries or even cash money, only first you had to swear you didn’t own any property of your own and even had to prove it by giving your house or land or even your wagon and team to your wife or children or any kinfolks you could count on, depend on, trust. And who knew? even if second-hand pistols had gone up too like everything else, maybe the one fifty cents more would be enough without another policeman.
Though he found another. Here was the depot. It at least hadn’t changed: the same hollowly sonorous rotunda through which he had passed from the Jefferson train on the three other times he had seen Memphis—that first unforgettable time (he had figured it now: the last time had been forty-four years ago and the first time was three dollars onto that, which was forty-seven years) with the niggard clutch of wrenched and bitter dollars and the mentor and guide who had told him about the houses in Memphis for no other purpose, filled with white women any one of which he could have if he had the money: whose experiences until then had been furious unplanned episodes as violent as vomiting, with no more preparation than the ripping of buttons before stooping downward into the dusty roadside weeds or cotton middle where the almost invisible unwashed Negro girl lay waiting. But different in Memphis: himself and his guide stepping out into the street where the whole city lay supine to take him into itself like embrace, like arms, the very meager wad of bills in his pocket on fire too which he had wrung, wrested from between-crops labor at itinerant sawmills, or from the implacable rented ground by months behind a plow, his pittance of which he would have to fight his father each time to get his hands on a nickel of it. It was warm here too and almost empty and thi
s time the policeman had jerked him awake before he even knew he was going to sleep. Though this one was not in uniform. But he knew about that kind too.
“I said, what train are you waiting for?” the policeman said.
“I aint waiting for no train,” he said.
“All right,” the policeman said. “Then get out of here. Go on home.” Then, exactly like the other one: “You aint got anywhere to sleep? Okay, but you damn sure got some place to leave from, whether you go to bed or not. Go on now. Beat it.” And then, since he didn’t move: “Go on, I said. What’re you waiting for?”
“The half a dollar,” he said.
“The what?” the policeman said. “The half a—Why, you—” so that this time he moved, turned quickly, already dodging, not much bigger than a small boy and therefore about as hard for a man the size of the policeman to catch in a place as big as this. He didn’t run: he walked, just fast enough for the policeman to be not quite able to touch him, yet still not have cause to shout at him, through the rotunda and out into the street, not looking back at the policeman standing in the doorway shouting after him: “And dont let me catch you in here again neither.”
He was becoming more and more oriented now. There was another depot just down a cross street but then the same thing would happen there; evidently the railroad policemen who just wore clothes like everybody else didn’t belong to the W P and A free-relief laws. Besides, the night was moving toward its end now; he could feel it. So he just walked, never getting very far away because he knew where he was now; and now and then in the vacant side streets and alleys he could stop and sit down, in a doorway or behind a cluster of garbage or trash cans and once more be waking up before he knew he had gone to sleep. Then he would walk again, the quiet and empty city—this part of it anyway—his impeachless own, thinking, with the old amazement no less fresh and amazed for being almost as old as he A man can get through anything if he can jest keep on walking.
Snopes: The Hamlet, the Town, the Mansion Page 107
