Complete Works of William Faulkner

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Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 566

by William Faulkner


  “I dont want to see nobody!” I said. “I want to go home!”

  “All right,” Boon said. “Here — anybody — will somebody put him on that train this morning? I got money — can get it—”

  “Shut up,” I said. “I aint going nowhere now.” I went on, still blind; or that is, the hand carried me.

  “Wait,” Boon said. “Wait, Lucius.”

  “Shut up,” I said. The hand curved me around; there was a wall now.

  “Wipe your face,” Mr Poleymus said. He held out a bandanna handkerchief but I didn’t take it; my bandage would sop it up all right. Anyway, the riding-sock did. It was used to being cried into. Who knew? if it stayed with me long enough, it might even win a horse race. I could see now; we were in the lobby. I started to turn but he held me. “Hold up a minute,” he said. “If you still dont want to see anybody.” It was Miss Reba and Everbe coming down the stairs carrying their grips but Minnie wasn’t with them. The car-driving deputy was waiting. He took the grips and they went on; they didn’t look toward us, Miss Reba with her head mad and hard and high; if the deputy hadn’t moved quick she would have tromped right over him, grips and all. They went out. “I’ll buy you a ticket home,” Mr Poleymus said. “Get on that train.” I didn’t say Shut up to him. “You’ve run out of folks sure enough now, I’ll stay with you and tell the conductor—”

  “I’m going to wait for Ned,” I said. “I cant go without him. If you hadn’t ruined everything yesterday, we’d all been gone by now.”

  “Who’s Ned?” he said. I told him. “You mean you’re going to run that horse today anyhow? you and Ned by yourself?” I told him. “Where’s Ned now?” I told him. “Come on,” he said. “We can go out the side door.” Ned was standing at the mule’s head. The back of the automobile was toward us. And Minnie still wasn’t with them. Maybe she went back to Memphis yesterday with Sam and Otis; maybe now that she had Otis again she wasn’t going to lift her hand off of him until it had that tooth in it. That’s what I would have done, anyway.

  “So Mr Poleymus finally caught you too, did he?” Ned said. “What’s the matter? aint he got no handcuffs your size?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “When you going to get him back home, son?” Mr Poleymus said to Ned.

  “I hope tonight,” Ned said; he wasn’t being Uncle Remus or smart or cute or anything now. “Soon as I get rid of this horse race and can do something about it.”

  “Have you got enough money?”

  “Yes sir,” Ned said. “Much oblige. We’ll be all right after this race.” He cramped the wheel and we got in. Mr Poleymus stood with his hand on the top stanchion. He said:

  “So you really are going to race that Linscomb horse this afternoon.”

  “We gonter beat that Linscomb horse this afternoon,” Ned said.

  “You hope so,” Mr Poleymus said.

  “I know so,” Ned said.

  “How much do you know so?” Mr Poleymus said.

  “I wish I had a hundred dollars of my own to bet on it,” Ned said. They looked at each other; it was a good while. Then Mr Poleymus turned loosed the stanchion and took from his pocket a worn snap purse that when I saw it I thought I was seeing double because it was exactly like Ned’s, scuffed and worn and even longer than the riding-sock, that you didn’t even know who was paying who for what, and unsnapped it and took out two one-dollar bills and snapped the purse shut and handed the bills to Ned.

  “Bet this for me,” he said. “If you’re right, you can keep half of it.” Ned took the money.

  “I’ll bet it for you,” he said. “But much oblige. By sundown tonight I can lend you half of three or four times this much.” We drove on then — I mean, Ned drove on — turning; we didn’t pass the automobile at all. “Been crying again,” he said. “A race horse jockey and still aint growed out of crying.”

  “Shut up,” I said. But he was turning the buggy again, on across the tracks and on along what would have been the other side of the Square if Parsham ever got big enough to have a Square, and stopped; we were in front of a store.

  “Hold him,” Ned said and got out and went in the store, not long, and came back with a paper sack and got in and took the lines, back toward home — I mean Uncle Parsham’s — now and with his free hand took from the big bag a small one; it was peppermint drops. “Here,” he said. “I got some bananas too and soon as we get Lightning back to that private spring-branch paddock we uses, we can set down and eat um and then maybe I can get some sleep before I forget how to. And meanwhiles, stop fretting about that gal, now you done said your say to Boon Hogganbeck. Hitting a woman dont hurt her because a woman dont shove back at a lick like a man do; she just gives to it and then when your back is turned, reaches for the flatiron or the butcher knife. That’s why hitting them dont break nothing; all it does is just black her eye or cut her mouf a little. And that aint nothing to a woman. Because why? Because what better sign than a black eye or a cut mouf can a woman want from a man that he got her on his mind?”

  So once more, in the clutch of our respective starting grooms, McWillie and I sat our skittering and jockeying mounts behind that wire. (That’s right, skittering and jockeying, Lightning too; at least he had learned — anyway remembered from yesterday — that he was supposed to be at least up with Acheron when the running started, even if he hadn’t discovered yet that he was supposed — hoped — to be in front when it stopped.)

  This time Ned’s final instructions were simple, explicit, and succinct: “Just remember, I knows I can make him run once, and I believes I can make him run twice. Only, we wants to save that once I knows, until we knows we needs it. So here’s what I want you to do for this first heat: Just before them judges and such hollers Go! you say to yourself My name is Ned William McCaslin and then do it.”

  “Do what?” I said.

  “I dont know yet neither,” he said. “But Akrum is a horse, and with a horse anything can happen. And with a nigger boy on him, it’s twice as likely to. You just got to watch and be ready, so that when it do happen, you done already said My name is Ned William McCaslin and then do it and do it quick. And dont worry. If it dont work and dont nothing happen, I’ll be waiting right there at the finish, where I come in. Because we knows I can make him run once.”

  Then the voice hollered Go! and our grooms sprang for their lives and we were off (as I said, we had drawn this time and McWillie had the pole). Or McWillie was off, that is. Because I dont remember: whether I had planned it or just did it by instinct, so that when McWillie broke, I was already braced and Lightning’s first spring rammed him into the bridle all the way up to my shoulders, bad hand and all. Acheron already in full run and three lengths ahead when I let Lightning go, but still kept the three-length gap, both of us going now but three horses apart, when I saw McWillie do what you call nowadays a double-take: a single quick glance aside, using only his eyeballs, expecting to see me of course more or less at his knee, then seeming to drive on at full speed for another stride or so before his vision told his intelligence that Lightning and I were not there. Then he turned, jerked his whole head around to look back and I remember still the whites of his eyes and his open mouth; I could see him sawing frantically at Acheron to slow him; I sincerely believe I even heard him yell back at me: “Goddammit, white boy, if you gonter race, race!” the gap between us closing fast now because he now had Acheron wrenched back and crossways until he was now at right angles to the course, more or less filling the track sideways from rail to rail it looked like and facing the outside rail and for that moment, instant, second, motionless; I am convinced that McWillie’s now frantic mind actually toyed with the idea of turning and running back until he could turn again with Lightning in front. Nor no premeditation, nothing: I just said in my mind My name is Ned William McCaslin and cut Lightning as hard as I could with the switch, pulling his head over so that when he sprang for the gap between Acheron’s stern and the inside rail, we would scrape Acheron; I remember I thou
ght My leg will be crushed and I sat there, the switch poised again, in complete detachment, waiting in nothing but curiosity for the blow, shock, crack, spurt of blood and bones or whatever it would be. But we had just exactly room enough or speed enough or maybe it was luck enough: not my leg but Lightning’s hip which scraped across Acheron’s buttocks: at which second I cut again with the switch as hard as I could. Nor any judge or steward, dog trainer, market hunter or murderer, nor purist or stickler of the most finicking and irreproachable, to affirm it was not my own mount I struck; in fact, we were so inextricable at that second that, of the four of us, only Acheron actually knew who had been hit.

  Then on. I mean, Lightning and me. I didn’t — couldn’t — look back yet, so I had to wait to learn what happened. They said that Acheron didn’t try to jump the rail at all: he just reared and fell through it in a kind of whirling dust of white planks, but still on his feet, frantic now, running more or less straight out into the pasture, spectators scattering before him, until McWillie wrenched him around; and they said that this time McWillie actually set him quartering at the fence (it was too late now to go back to the gap in it he had already made; we — Lightning — were too far ahead by this time) as though he were a hunter. But he refused it, running instead at full speed along the rail, but still on the outside of it, the spectators hollering and leaping like frogs from in front of him as he cleared his new path or precedent. That was when I began to hear him again. He — they: McWillie and Acheron — was closing fast now, though with the outside rail between us: Lightning with the whole track to himself now and going with that same fine strong rhythm and reach and power to which it had simply not occurred yet that there was any hurry about it; in the back stretch now and Acheron, who had already run at least one extra fifty yards and would have to run another one before he finished, already abreast of us beyond the rail; around the far turn of the first lap now and now I could actually see McWillie’s desperate mind grappling frantically with the rapidly diminishing choice of whether to swing Acheron wide enough to bring him back through his self-made gap and onto the track again and have him refuse its jumbled wreckage, or play safe and stay where they were in the new track which they had already cleared of obstacles.

  Conservatism won (as it should and does); again the back stretch (second lap now); now the far turn (second one also) and even on the outside longer curve, they were drawing ahead; there was the wire and Acheron a length at least ahead and I believe I thought for an instant of going to the whip just for the looks of the thing; on; our crowd was yelling now and who could blame them? few if any had seen a heat like this before between two horses running on opposite sides of the rail; on, Acheron still at top speed along his path as empty and open for him as the path to heaven; two lengths ahead when we — Lightning — passed under the wire, and (Acheron: evidently he liked running outside) already into his third lap when McWillie dragged him by main strength away and into the pasture and into a tightening circle which even he could no longer negotiate. And much uproar behind us now: shouts: “Foul! Foul! No! No! Yes! No heat! No heat! Yes it was! No it wasn’t! Ask the judge! Ask Ed! What was it, Ed?” — that part of the crowd which Acheron had scattered from the outside rail now pouring across the track through the shattered gap to join the others in the infield; I was looking for Ned; I thought I saw him but it was Lycurgus, trotting up the track toward me until he could take Lightning’s bit, already turning him back.

  “Come on,” he said. “You can stop. You got to cool him out. Mr McCaslin said to get him away from the track, take him over yonder to them locust trees where the buggy’s at, where he can be quiet and we can rub him down.” But I tried to hold back.

  “What happened?” I said. “Is it going to count? We won, didn’t we? We went under the wire. They just went around it. Here,” I said, “you take him while I go back and see.”

  “No, I tell you,” Lycurgus said. He had Lightning trotting now. “Mr McCaslin dont want you there neither. He said for me and you to stay right with Lightning and have him ready to run again; that next heat’s in less than a hour now and we got to win that one now, because if this throws this one out, we got to win the next one no matter what happens.” So we went on. He lifted down a rail at the end of the track and we went through, on to the clump of locust trees about two hundreds yards away; now I could see Uncle Parsham’s buggy hitched to one of them. And I could still hear the voices from the judges’ stand in the infield and I still wanted to go back and find out. But Lycurgus had forestalled that too: he had the pails and sponges and cloths and even a churn of water in the buggy for us to strip Lightning and go to work on him.

  So I had to get my first information about what had happened (and was still happening too) from hearsay — what little Lycurgus had seen before Ned sent him to meet me, and from others later — before Ned came up: the uproar, vociferation of protest and affirmation (oh yes, even after losing two races — heats, whatever they were — last winter, and the first heat of this one yesterday, there were still people who had bet on Lightning. Because I was only eleven; I had not learned yet that no horse ever walked to post, provided he was still on his feet when he got there, that somebody didn’t bet on), coming once or twice almost to blows, with Ned in the center of it, in effect the crux of it, polite and calm but dogged and insistent too, rebutting each attack: “It wasn’t a race. It takes at least two horses to make a race, and one of these wasn’t even on the track.” And Ned:

  “No sir. The rule book dont mention how many horses. It just talks about one horse at a time: that if it dont commit fouls and dont stop forward motion and the jockey dont fall off and it cross the finish line first, it wins.” Then another:

  “Then you just proved yourself that black won: it never fouled nothing but about twenty foot of that fence and it sho never stopped forward motion because I myself seen a least a hundred folks barely get out from under it in time and you yourself seen it pass that finish line a good two lengths ahead of that chestnut.” And Ned:

  “No sir. That finish wire just runs across that track from one rail to the other. It dont run on down into Missippi too. If it done that, there are horses down there been crossing it ever since sunup this morning that we aint even heard about yet. No sir. It’s too bad about that little flimsy railing, but we was too busy running our horse to have time to stop and wait for that other one to come back.” When suddenly three newcomers were on the scene, or anyway in the telling of it: not three strangers, because one of them was Colonel Linscomb himself and they all knew him since they were his neighbors. So probably what they meant was that the other two were simply his guests, city men too or very likely simply of Colonel Linscomb’s age and obvious solvency and likewise wearing coats and neckties, who — one of them — seemed to take charge of the matter, coming into the crowd clamoring around Ned and the harassed officials and saying,

  “Gentlemen, let me offer a solution. As this man” — meaning Ned— “says, his horse ran according to the rules and went under the wire first. Yet we all saw the other horse run the fastest race and was in the lead at the finish. The owners of the horses are these gentlemen right here behind me: Colonel Linscomb, your neighbor, and Mr van Tosch from Memphis, near enough to be your neighbor too when you get to know him better. They have agreed, and your judges will approve it, to put this heat that was just run, into what the bankers call escrow. You all have done business with bankers whether you wanted to or not” — they said he even paused for the guffaw, and got it— “and you know how they have a name for everything—”

  “Interest on it too,” a voice said, and so he got that guffaw free and joined it.

  “What escrow means this time is, suspended. Not abolished or cancelled: just suspended. The bets still stand just as you made them; nobody won and nobody lost; you can increase them or hedge them or whatever you want to; the stake money for the last heat still stands and the owners are already adding another fifty a side for the next heat, the winner of thi
s next heat to be the winner of the one that was just run. Win this next heat, and win all. What do you say?”

  That’s what I — we — Lycurgus and me — heard later. Right now we knew nothing: just waiting for Ned or somebody to come for us or send for us, Lightning cleaned and blanketed now and Lycurgus leading him up and down, keeping him moving, and I sitting against a tree with my riding-sock off to dry out my bandage; it seemed hours, forever, then in the next thinking it seemed no time, collapsed, condensed. Then Ned came up, walking fast. I told you how he had looked terrible this morning, but that was partly because of his clothes. His shirt was white (or almost) again now, and his pants were clean too. But it would not have been his clothes this time, even if they were still filthy. It was his face. He didn’t look like he had seen a simple and innocent hant: he looked like he had without warning confronted Doom itself, except that Doom had said to him: Calm down. It will be thirty or forty minutes yet before I will want you. Be ready then but in the meantime stop worrying and tend to your business. But he gave me — us — no time. He went to the buggy and took his black coat out and put it on, already talking:

  “They put it in what they calls escrow. That means whoever loses this next one has done lost everything. Tack up.” But Lycurgus already had the blanket off; it didn’t take us long. Then I was up, Ned standing at Lightning’s head, holding the bridle with one hand, his other hand in the pocket of the coat, fumbling at something. “This one is gonter be easy for you. We nudged him a little yestiddy, then you fooled him bad today. So you aint gonter trick him again. But it wont matter. We wont need to trick him now; I’ll tend to this one myself. All you got to do is, still be on him at the finish. Dont fall off: that’s all you got to do until right at the last. Just keep him between them two rails, and dont fall off of him. Remember what he taught you Monday. When you comes around the first lap, and just before he will think about where I was standing Monday, hit him. Keep him going; dont worry about that other horse, no matter where he is or what he’s doing: just tend to yourn. You mind that?”

 

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