And the next day the wire came from his sister, and Papa for the lawyer and Mrs. Merridew for the witness went out there and Uncle Willy’s wife showed them the license and told them to laugh that off, that Manuel Street or not she was married as good and tight as any high-nosed bitch in Jefferson or anywhere else and Papa saying, “Now, Mrs. Merridew; now, Mrs. Christian,” and he told Uncle Willy’s wife how Uncle Willy was bankrupt now and might even lose the house too, and his wife said how about that sister in Texas, was Papa going to tell her that the oil business was bankrupt too and not to make her laugh. So they telegraphed the sister again and the thousand dollars came and they had to give Uncle Willy’s wife the car too. She went back to Memphis that same afternoon, driving across the square with the straw suitcases, in a black lace dress now and already beginning to sweat again under her new makeup because it was still hot, and stopping where the men were waiting at the post office for the afternoon mail and she said, “Come on up to Manuel Street and see me sometime and I will show you hicks what you and this town can do to yourselves and one another.”
And that afternoon Mrs. Merridew moved back into Uncle Willy’s house and Papa said the letter she wrote Uncle Willy’s sister had eleven pages to it because Papa said she would never forgive Uncle Willy for getting bankrupted. We could hear her from behind the hedge: “You’re crazy, Mr. Christian; crazy. I have tried to save you and make something out of you besides a beast but now my patience is exhausted. I am going to give you one more chance. I am going to take you to Keeley and if that fails, I am going to take you myself to your sister and force her to commit you to an asylum.” And the sister sent papers from Texas declaring that Uncle Willy was incompetent and making Mrs. Merridew his guardian and trustee, and Mrs. Merridew took him to the Keeley in Memphis. And that was all.
V
That is, I reckon they thought that that was all, that this time Uncle Willy would surely die. Because even Papa thought that he was crazy now because even Papa said that if it hadn’t been for Uncle Willy I would not have run away, and therefore I didn’t run away, I was tolled away by a lunatic; it wasn’t Papa, it was Uncle Robert that said that he wasn’t crazy because any man who could sell Jefferson real estate for cash while shut up in a Keeley institute wasn’t crazy or even drunk. Because they didn’t even know that he was out of Keeley, even Mrs. Merridew didn’t know it until he was gone two days and they couldn’t find him. They never did find him or find out how he got out and I didn’t either until I got the letter from him to take the Memphis bus on a certain day and he would meet me at a stop on the edge of Memphis. I didn’t even realize that I had not seen Secretary or old Job either in two weeks. But he didn’t toll me away. I went because I wanted to, because he was the finest man I ever knew, because he had had fun all his life in spite of what they had tried to do to him or with him, and I hoped that maybe if I could stay with him a while I could learn how to, so I could still have fun too when I had to get old. Or maybe I knew more than that, without knowing it, like I knew that I would do anything he asked me to do, no matter what it was, just like I helped him break into the store for the alcohol when he took it for granted that I would without asking me to at all and then helped him hide it from Mrs. Merridew. Maybe I even knew what old Job was going to do. Not what he did do, but that he would do it if the occasion arose, and that this would have to be Uncle Willy’s last go-round and if I wasn’t there it would be just him against all the old terrified and timid clinging to dull and rule-ridden breathing which Jefferson was to him and which, even though he had escaped Jefferson, old Job still represented.
So I cut some grass that week and I had almost two dollars. I took the bus on the day he said and he was waiting for me at the edge of town, in a Ford now without any top on it and you could still read the chalk letters, $85 cash on the wind-shield, and a brand new tent folded up in the back of it and Uncle Willy and old Job in the front seat, and Uncle Willy looked fine with a checked cap new except for a big oil stain, with the bill turned round behind and a pair of goggles cocked up on the front of it and his celluloid collar freshly washed and no tie in it and his nose peeling with sunburn and his eyes bright behind his glasses. I would have gone with him anywhere; I would do it over again right now, knowing what was going to happen. He would not have to ask me now any more than he did then. So I got on top of the tent and we didn’t go toward town, we went the other way. I asked where we were going but he just said wait, rushing the little car along like he couldn’t get there quick enough himself, and I could tell from his voice that this was fine, this was the best yet, better than anybody else could have thought about doing, and old Job hunched down in the front seat, holding on with both hands and yelling at Uncle Willy about going so fast. Yes. Maybe I knew from old Job even then that Uncle Willy may have escaped Jefferson but he had just dodged it; he hadn’t gotten away.
Then we came to the sign, the arrow that said Airport, and we turned and I said: “What? What is it?” but Uncle Willy just said: “Wait; just wait,” like he couldn’t hardly wait himself, hunched over the wheel with his white hair blowing under his cap and his collar riding up behind so you could see his neck between the collar and the shirt; and old Job saying (Oh yes, I could tell even then): “He got hit, all right. He done done hit. But I done tole him. Nemmine. I done warned him.” Then we came to the airport and Uncle Willy stopped quick and pointed up without even getting out and said, “Look.”
It was an airplane flying around and Uncle Willy running up and down the edge of the field waving his handkerchief until it saw him and came down and landed and rolled up to us, a little airplane with a two-cylinder engine. It was Secretary, in another new checked cap and goggles like Uncle Willy’s and they told me how Uncle Willy had bought one for old Job too but old Job wouldn’t wear it. And that night — we stayed in a little tourist camp about two miles away and he had a cap and goggles all ready for me too; and then I knew why they hadn’t been able to find him — Uncle Willy told me how he had bought the airplane with some of the money he had sold his house for after his sister saved it because she had been born in it too, but that Captain Bean at the airport wouldn’t teach him to run it himself because he would need a permit from a doctor (“By God,” Uncle Willy said, “damn if these Republicans and Democrats and XYZ’s ain’t going to have it soon where a man can’t even flush the toilet in his own bathroom.”) and he couldn’t go to the doctor because the doctor might want to send him back to the Keeley or tell Mrs. Merridew where he was. So he just let Secretary learn to run it first and now Secretary had been running it for two weeks, which was almost fourteen days longer than he had practiced on the car before they started out with it. So Uncle Willy bought the car and tent and camping outfit yesterday and tomorrow we were going to start. We would go first to a place named Renfro where nobody knew us and where there was a big pasture that Uncle Willy had found out about and we would stay there a week while Secretary taught Uncle Willy to run the airplane. Then we would head west. When we ran out of the house money we would stop at a town and take up passengers and make enough to buy gasoline and food to get to the next town, Uncle Willy and Secretary in the airplane and me and old Job in the car; and old Job sitting in a chair against the wall, blinking at Uncle Willy with his little weak red sullen eyes, and Uncle Willy reared up on the cot with his cap and goggles still on and his collar without any tie (it wasn’t fastened to his shirt at all: just buttoned around his neck) sometimes sideways and sometimes even backward like an Episcopal minister’s, and his eyes bright behind his glasses and his voice bright and fine. “And by Christmas we will be in California!” he said. “Think of that. California!”
VI
So how could they say that I had to be tolled away? How could they? I suppose I knew then that it wouldn’t work, couldn’t work, that it was too fine to be true. I reckon I even knew how it was going to end just from the glum way Secretary acted whenever Uncle Willy talked about learning to run the airplane himself, just as I
knew from the way old Job looked at Uncle Willy, not what he did of course, but what he would do if the occasion arose. Because I was the other white one. I was white, even if old Job and Secretary were both older than me, so it would be all right; I could do it all right. It was like I knew even then that, no matter what might happen to him, he wouldn’t ever die and I thought that if I could just learn to live like he lived, no matter what might happen to me I wouldn’t ever die either.
So we left the next morning, just after daylight because there was another fool rule that Secretary would have to stay in sight of the field until they gave him a license to go away. We filled the airplane with gas and Secretary went up in it just like he was going up to practice. Then Uncle Willy got us into the car quick because he said the airplane could make sixty miles an hour and so Secretary would be at Renfro a long while before we got there. But when we got to Renfro Secretary wasn’t there and we put the tent up and ate dinner and he still didn’t come and Uncle Willy beginning to cuss and we ate supper and dark came but Secretary didn’t and Uncle Willy was cussing good now. He didn’t come until the next day. We heard him and ran out and watched him fly right over us, coming from the opposite direction of Memphis, going fast and us all hollering and waving. But he went on, with Uncle Willy jumping up and down and cussing, and we were loading the tent into the car to try to catch him when he came back. We didn’t hear him at all now and we could see the propeller because it wasn’t running and it looked like Secretary wasn’t even going to light in the pasture but he was going to light in some trees on the edge of it. But he skinned by them and kind of bumped down and we ran up and found him still sitting in the airplane with his eyes closed and his face the color of wood ashes and he said, “Captin, will you please tell me where to find Ren—” before he even opened his eyes to see who we were. He said he had landed seven times yesterday and it wouldn’t be Renfro and they would tell him how to get to Renfro and he would go there and that wouldn’t be Renfro either and he had slept in the airplane last night and he hadn’t eaten since we left Memphis because he had spent the three dollars Uncle Willy gave him for gasoline and if he hadn’t run out of gas when he did he wouldn’t never have found us.
Uncle Willy wanted me to go to town and get some more gas so he could start learning to run it right away but Secretary wouldn’t. He just refused. He said the airplane belonged to Uncle Willy and he reckoned he belonged to Uncle Willy too, leastways until he got back home, but that he had flown all he could stand for a while. So Uncle Willy started the next morning.
I thought for a while that I would have to throw old Job down and hold him and him hollering, “Don’t you git in dat thing!” and still hollering, “I ghy tell um! I ghy tell um!” while we watched the airplane with Secretary and Uncle Willy in it kind of jump into the air and then duck down like Uncle Willy was trying to take the short cut to China and then duck up again and get to going pretty straight at last and fly around the pasture and then turn down to land, and every day old Job hollering at Uncle Willy and field hands coming up out of the fields and folks in wagons and walking stopping in the road to watch them and the airplane coming down, passing us with Uncle Willy and Secretary side by side and looking exactly alike, I don’t mean in the face but exactly alike like two tines of a garden fork look exactly like just before they chop into the ground; we could see Secretary’s eyes and his mouth run out so you could almost hear him saying, “Hooooooooo!” and Uncle Willy’s glasses shining and his hair blowing from under his cap and his celluloid collar that he washed every night before he went to bed and no tie in it and they would go by, fast, and old Job hollering, “You git outer dar! You git outer dat thing!” and we could hear Secretary too: “Turn hit loose, Unker Willy! Turn hit loose!” and the airplane would go on, ducking up one second and down the next and with one wing higher than the other one second and lower the next and then it would be traveling sideways and maybe it would hit the ground sideways the first time, with a kind of crashing sound and the dust spurting up and then bounce off again and Secretary hollering, “Unker Willy! Turn loose!” and at night in the tent Uncle Willy’s eyes would still be shining and he would be too excited to stop talking and go to sleep and I don’t believe he even remembered that he had not taken a drink since he first thought about buying the airplane.
Oh yes, I know what they said about me after it was all over, what Papa said when he and Mrs. Merridew got there that morning, about me being the white one, almost a man, and Secretary and old Job just irresponsible niggers, yet it was old Job and Secretary who tried to prevent him. Because that was it; that was what they couldn’t understand.
I remember the last night and Secretary and old Job both working on him, when old Job finally made Secretary tell Uncle Willy that he would never learn to fly, and Uncle Willy stopped talking and stood up and looked at Secretary. “Didn’t you learn to run it in two weeks?” he said. Secretary said yes. “You, a damn, trifling, worthless, ignorant, burr-headed nigger?” and Secretary said yes. “And me that graduated from a university and ran a fifteen-thousand-dollar business for forty years, yet you tell me I can’t learn to run a damn little fifteen-hundred-dollar airplane?” Then he looked at me. “Don’t you believe I can run it?” he said. And I looked at him and I said, “Yes. I believe you can do anything.”
VII
And now I can’t tell them. I can’t say it. Papa told me once that somebody said that if you know it you can say it. Or maybe the man that said that didn’t count fourteen-year-old boys. Because I must have known it was going to happen. And Uncle Willy must have known it too, known that the moment would come. It was like we both had known it and we didn’t even have to compare notes, tell one another that we did: he not needing to say that day in Memphis, “Come with me so you will be there when I will need you,” and me not needing to say, “Let me come so I can be there when you will.”
Because old Job telephoned Mrs. Merridew. He waited until we were asleep and slipped out and walked all the way to town and telephoned her; he didn’t have any money and he probably never telephoned in his life before, yet he telephoned her and the next morning he came up running in the dew (the town, the telephone, was five miles away) just as Secretary was getting the engine started and I knew what he had done even before he got close enough to holler, running and stumbling along slow across the pasture, hollering, “Holt um! Holt um! Dey’ll be here any minute! Jest holt um ten minutes en dey’ll be here,” and I knew and I ran and met him and now I did hold him and him fighting and hitting at me and still hollering at Uncle Willy in the airplane. “You telephoned?” I said. “Her? Her? Told her where he is?”
“Yes,” Uncle Job hollered. “En she say she gonter git yo pappy and start right away and be here by six o’clock,” and me holding him; he felt like a handful of scrawny dried sticks and I could hear his lungs wheezing and I could feel his heart, and Secretary came up running too and old Job begun to holler at Secretary, “Git him outer dar! Dey comin! Dey be here any minute if you can jest holt um!” and Secretary saying, “Which? Which?” and old Job hollered at him to run and hold the airplane and Secretary turned and I tried to grab his leg but I couldn’t and I could see Uncle Willy looking toward us and Secretary running toward the airplane and I got onto my knees and waved and I was hollering too. I don’t reckon Uncle Willy could hear me for the engine. But I tell you he didn’t need to, because we knew, we both knew; and so I knelt there and held old Job on the ground and we saw the airplane start, with Secretary still running after it, and jump into the air and duck down and then jump up again and then it looked like it had stopped high in the air above the trees where we thought Secretary was fixing to land that first day before it ducked down beyond them and went out of sight and Secretary was already running and so it was only me and Uncle Job that had to get up and start.
Oh, yes, I know what they said about me; I knew it all that afternoon while we were going home with the hearse in front and Secretary and old Job in the Ford next an
d Papa and me in our car coming last and Jefferson getting nearer and nearer; and then all of a sudden I began to cry. Because the dying wasn’t anything, it just touched the outside of you that you wore around with you for comfort and convenience like you do your clothes: it was because the old garments, the clothes that were not worth anything had betrayed one of the two of us and the one betrayed was me, and Papa with his other arm around my shoulders now, saying, “Now, now; I didn’t mean that. You didn’t do it. Nobody blames you.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 615
