“All right,” his uncle said. “Then what?”
“That’s all,” Lucas said. “He was just stealing a load of lumber every night or so.”
His uncle stared at Lucas for perhaps ten seconds. He said in a voice of calm, almost hushed amazement: “So you took your pistol and went to straighten it out. You, a nigger, took a pistol and went to rectify a wrong between two white men, What did you expect? What else did you expect?”
“Nemmine expecting,” Lucas said. “I wants—”
“You went to the store,” his uncle said, “only you happened to find Vinson Gowrie first and followed him into the woods and told him his partner was robbing him and naturally he cursed you and called you a liar whether it was true or not, naturally he would have to do that; maybe he even knocked you down and walked on and you shot him in the back—”
“Never nobody knocked me down,” Lucas said.
“So much the worse,” his uncle said. “So much the worse for you. It’s not even self-defense. You just shot him in the back. And then you stood there over him with the fired pistol in your pocket and let the white folks come up and grab you. And if it hadn’t been for that little shrunk-up rheumatic constable who had no business being there in the first place and in the second place had no business whatever, at the rate of a dollar a prisoner every time he delivered a subpoena or served a warrant, having guts enough to hold off that whole damn Beat Four for eighteen hours until Hope Hampton saw fit or remembered or got around to bringing you in to jail—holding off that whole countryside that you nor all the friends you could drum up in a hundred years—”
“I aint got friends,” Lucas said with stern and inflexible pride, and then something else though his uncle was already talking:
“You’re damned right you haven’t. And if you ever had that pistol shot would have blown them to kingdom come too—What?” his uncle said “What did you say?”
“I said I pays my own way,” Lucas said.
“I see,” his uncle said. “You dont use friends; you pay cash. Yes. I see. Now you listen to me. You’ll go before the grand jury tomorrow. They’ll indict you. Then if you like I’ll have Mr. Hampton move you to Mottstown or even further away than that, until court convenes next month. Then you’ll plead guilty; I’ll persuade the District Attorney to let you do that because you’re an old man and you never were in trouble before; I mean as far as the judge and the District Attorney will know since they dont live within fifty miles of Yoknapatawpha County. Then they wont hang you; they’ll send you to the penitentiary; you probably wont live long enough to be paroled but at least the Gowries cant get to you there. Do you want me to stay in here with you tonight?”
“I reckon not,” Lucas said. “They kept me up all last night and I’m gonter try to get some sleep. If you stay here you’ll talk till morning.”
“Right,” his uncle said harshly, then to him: “Come on:” already moving toward the door. Then his uncle stopped. “Is there anything you want?”
“You might send me some tobacco,” Lucas said. “If them Gowries leaves me time to smoke it.”
“Tomorrow,” his uncle said. “I dont want to keep you awake tonight:” and went on, he following, his uncle letting him pass first through the door so that he stepped aside in his turn and stood looking back into the cell while his uncle came through the door and drew it after him, the heavy steel plunger crashing into its steel groove with a thick oily sound of irrefutable finality like that ultimate cosmolined doom itself when as his uncle said man’s machines had at last effaced and obliterated him from the earth and, purposeless now to themselves with nothing left to destroy, closed the last carborundum-grooved door upon their own progenitorless apotheosis behind one clockless lock responsive only to the last stroke of eternity, his uncle going on, his feet ringing and echoing down the corridor and then the sharp rattle of his knuckles on the oak door while he and Lucas still looked at one another through the steel bars, Lucas standing too now in the middle of the floor beneath the light and looking at him with whatever it was in his face so that he thought for a second that Lucas had spoken aloud. But he hadn’t, he was making no sound: just looking at him with that mute patient urgency until the jailer’s feet thumped nearer and nearer on the stairs and the slotted bar on the door rasped back.
And the jailer locked the bar again and they passed Legate still with his funny paper in the tilted chair beside the shotgun facing the open door, then outside, down the walk to the gate and the street, following through the gate where his uncle had already turned toward home: stopping, thinking a nigger a murderer who shoots white people in the back and aint even sorry.
He said: “I imagine I’ll find Skeets McGowan loafing somewhere on the Square. He’s got a key to the drugstore. I’ll take Lucas some tobacco tonight.” His uncle stopped.
“It can wait till morning,” his uncle said.
“Yes.” he said, feeling his uncle watching him, not even wondering what he would do if his uncle said no, not even waiting really, just standing there.
“All right,” his uncle said. “Dont be too long.” So he could have moved then. But still he didn’t.
“I thought you said nothing would happen tonight.”
“I still dont think it will,” his uncle said. “But you cant tell. People like the Gowries dont attach a great deal of importance to death or dying. But they do put a lot of stock in the dead and how they died—particularly their own. If you get the tobacco, let Tubbs carry it up to him and you come on home.”
So he didn’t have to say even yes this time, his uncle turning first then he turned and walked toward the Square, walking on until the sound of his uncle’s feet had ceased, then standing until his uncle’s black silhouette had changed to the white gleam of his linen suit and then that faded beyond the last arclight and if he had gone on home and got Highboy as soon as he recognised the sheriff’s car this morning that would be eight hours and almost forty miles, turning then and walking back toward the gate with Legate’s eyes watching him, already recognising him across the top of the funny paper even before he reached the gate and if he just went straight on now he could follow the lane behind the hedge and across into the lot and saddle Highboy and go out by the pasture gate and turn his back on Jefferson and nigger murderers and all and let Highboy go as fast as he wanted to go and as far as he wanted to go even when he had blown himself at last and agreed to walk, just so his tail was still turned to Jefferson and nigger murderers: through the gate and up the walk and across the gallery and again the jailer came quickly through the door at the right, his expression already giving way to the one of harried outrage.
“Again,” the jailer said. “Dont you never get enough?”
“I forgot something,” he said.
“Let it wait till morning,” the jailer said.
“Let him get it now,” Legate said in his equable drawl. “If he leaves it there till morning it might get trompled on.” So the jailer turned; again they mounted the stairs, again the jailer unlocked the bar across the oak door.
“Never mind the other one,” he said. “I can attend to it through the bars:” and didn’t wait, the door closed behind him, he heard the bar slide back into the slot but still all he had to do was just to rap on it, hearing the jailer’s feet going away back down the stairs but even then all he had to do was just to yell loud and bang on the floor and Legate anyway would hear him, thinking Maybe he will remind me of that goddamn plate of collards and sidemeat or maybe he’ll even tell me I’m all he’s got, all that’s left and that will be enough—walking fast, then the steel door and Lucas had not moved, still standing in the middle of the cell beneath the light, watching the door when he came up to it and stopped and said in a voice as harsh as his uncle’s had ever been: