“How long does she aim to stay?” Mrs. Beard said.
“Just a night or two,” Byron said. “Maybe just tonight. She’s looking to meet her husband here. She just got in, and she ain’t had time to ask or inquire—” His voice was still recapitulant, meaningful. Mrs. Beard watched him now. He thought that she was still trying to get his meaning. But what she was doing was watching him grope, believing (or about to believe) that his fumbling had a different reason and meaning. Then she looked at Lena again. Her eyes were not exactly cold. But they were not warm.
“I reckon she ain’t got any business trying to go anywhere right now,” she said.
“That’s what I thought,” Byron said, quickly, eagerly. “With all the talk and excitement she might have to listen to, after not hearing no talk and excitement … If you are crowded tonight, I thought she might have my room.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Beard said immediately. “You’ll be taking out in a few minutes, anyway. You want her to have your room until you get back Monday morning?”
“I ain’t going tonight,” Byron said. He did not look away. “I won’t be able to go this time.” He looked straight into cold, already disbelieving eyes, watching her in turn trying to read his own, believing that she read what was there instead of what she believed was there. They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.
“Oh,” Mrs. Beard said. She looked at Lena again. “Ain’t she got any acquaintances in Jefferson?”
“She don’t know nobody here,” Byron said. “Not this side of Alabama. Likely Mr. Burch will show up in the morning—”
“Oh,” Mrs. Beard said. “Where are you going to sleep?” But she did not wait for an answer. “I reckon I can fix her up a cot in my room for tonight. If she won’t object to that.”
“That’ll be fine,” Byron said. “It’ll be fine.”
When the supper bell rang, he was all prepared. He had found a chance to speak to Mrs. Beard. He had spent more time in inventing that lie than any yet. And then it was not necessary; that which he was trying to shield was its own protection. “Them men will be talking about it at the table,” Mrs. Beard said. “I reckon a woman in her shape (and having to find a husband named Burch at the same time, she thought with dry irony) ain’t got no business listening to any more of man’s devilment. You bring her in later, after they have all et.” Which Byron did. Lena ate heartily again, with that grave and hearty decorum, almost going to sleep in her plate before she had finished.
“It’s right tiring, travelling is,” she explained.
“You go set in the parlor and I’ll fix your cot,” Mrs. Beard said.
“I’d like to help,” Lena said. But even Byron could see that she would not; that she was dead for sleep.
“You go set in the parlor,” Mrs. Beard said. “I reckon Mr. Bunch won’t mind keeping you company for a minute or two.”
“I didn’t dare leave her alone,” Byron says. Beyond the desk Hightower has not moved. “And there we was setting, at the very time when it was all coming out down town at the sheriffs office, at the very time when Brown was telling it all; about him and Christmas and the whiskey and all. Only the whiskey wasn’t much news to folks, not since he had took Brown for a partner. I reckon the only thing folks wondered about was why Christmas ever took up with Brown. Maybe it was because like not only finds like; it can’t even escape from being found by its like. Even when it’s just like in one thing, because even them two with the same like was different. Christmas dared the law to make money, and Brown dared the law because he never even had sense enough to know he was doing it. Like that night in the barbershop and him drunk and talking loud until Christmas kind of run in and dragged him out. And Mr. Maxey said, ‘What do you reckon that was he pretty near told on himself and that other one?’ and Captain McLendon said, ‘I don’t reckon about it at all,’ and Mr. Maxey said, ‘Do you reckon they was actually holding up somebody else’s liquor truck?’ and McLendon said, ‘Would it surprise you to hear that that fellow Christmas hadn’t done no worse than that in his life?’
“That’s what Brown was telling last night. But everybody knew about that. They had been saying for a good while that somebody ought to tell Miss Burden. But I reckon there wasn’t anybody that wanted to go out there and tell her, because nobody knowed what was going to happen then. I reckon there are folks born here that never even saw her. I don’t reckon I’d wanted to go out there to that old house where nobody ever saw her unless maybe it was folks in a passing wagon that would see her now and then standing in the yard in a dress and sunbonnet that some nigger women I know wouldn’t have wore for its shape and how it made her look. Or maybe she already knew it. Being a Yankee and all, maybe she didn’t mind. And then couldn’t nobody have known what was going to happen.
“And so I didn’t dare leave her alone until she was in bed. I aimed to come out and see you last night, right away. But I never dared to leave her. Them other boarders was passing up and down the hall and I didn’t know when one of them would take a notion to come in and start talking about it and tell the whole thing; I could already hear them talking about it on the porch, and her still watching me with her face all fixed to ask me again about that fire. And so I didn’t dare leave her. And we was setting there in the parlor and she couldn’t hardly keep her eyes open then, and me telling her how I would find him for her all right, only I wanted to come and talk to a preacher I knowed that could help her to get in touch with him. And her setting there with her eyes closed while I was telling her, not knowing that I knew that her and that fellow wasn’t married yet. She thought she had fooled everybody. And she asked me what kind of a man it was that I aimed to tell about her to and I told her and her setting there with her eyes closed so that at last I said, ‘You ain’t heard a word I been saying’ and she kind of roused up, but without opening her eyes, and said, ‘Can he still marry folks?’ and I said, ‘What? Can he what?’ and she said, ‘Is he still enough of a preacher to marry folks?’ ”
Hightower has not moved. He sits erect behind the desk, his forearms parallel upon the armrests of the chair. He wears neither collar nor coat. His face is at once gaunt and flabby; it is as though there were two faces, one imposed upon the other, looking out from beneath the pale, bald skull surrounded by a fringe of gray hair, from behind the twin motionless glares of his spectacles. That part of his torso visible above the desk is shapeless, almost monstrous, with a soft and sedentary obesity. He sits rigid; on his face now that expression of denial and flight has become definite. “Byron,” he says; “Byron. What is this you are telling me?”
Byron ceases. He looks quietly at the other, with an expression of commiseration and pity. “I knowed you had not heard yet. I knowed it would be for me to tell you.”
They look at one another. “What is it I haven’t heard yet?”
“About Christmas. About yesterday and Christmas. Christmas is part nigger. About him and Brown and yesterday.”
“Part negro,” Hightower says. His voice sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight. He does not move. For a moment longer he does not move. Then there seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial, and Byron sees that the still, flaccid, big face is suddenly slick with sweat. But his voice is light and calm. “What about Christmas and Brown and yesterday?” he says.