“ ‘You shut your mouth,’ the sheriff says, not mad. ‘If that reward is yours, I’ll see that you get it. Take him on, Buck.’
“The marshal come over and touched Brown’s shoulder and he got up. When they went out the door the ones that had been watching through the window crowded up: ‘Have you got him, Buck? Is he the one that done it?’
“ ‘No,’ Buck says. ‘You boys get on home. Get on to bed, now.’ ”
Byron’s voice ceases. Its flat, inflectionless, country. bred singsong dies into silence. He is now looking at Hightower with that look compassionate and troubled and still, watching across the desk the man who sits there with his eyes closed and the sweat running down his face like tears. Hightower speaks: “Is it certain, proved, that he has negro blood? Think, Byron; what it will mean when the people—if they catch … Poor man. Poor mankind.”
“That’s what Brown says,” Byron says, his tone quiet, stubborn, convinced. “And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as a honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”
“Yes,” Hightower says. He sits with his eyes closed, erect. “But they have not caught him yet. They have not caught him yet, Byron.”
Neither is Byron looking at the other. “Not yet. Not the last I heard. They took some bloodhounds out there today. But they hadn’t caught him when I heard last.”
“And Brown?”
“Brown,” Byron says. “Him. He went with them. He may have helped Christmas do it. But I don’t reckon so. I reckon that setting fire to the house was about this limit. And why he done that, if he did, I reckon even he don’t know. Unless maybe he thought that if the whole thing was just burned up, it would kind of not ever been at all, and then him and Christmas could go on riding around in that new car. I reckon he figured that what Christmas committed was not so much a sin as a mistake.” His face is musing, downlooking; again it cracks faintly, with a kind of sardonic weariness. “I reckon he’s safe enough. I reckon she can find him now any time she wants, provided him and the sheriff ain’t out with the dogs. He ain’t trying to run—not with that thousand dollars hanging over his head, you might say. I reckon he wants to catch Christmas worse than any man of them. He goes with them. They take him out of the jail and he goes along with them, and then they all come back to town and lock Brown up again. It’s right queer. Kind of a murderer trying to catch himself to get his own reward. He don’t seem to mind though, except to begrudge the time while they ain’t out on the trail, the time wasted setting down. Yes. I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll just tell her that he is in hock for the time being, him and them two dogs. Maybe I’ll take her to town where she can see them, all three of them hitched to the other men, a-straining and yapping.”
“You haven’t told her yet.”
“I ain’t told her. Nor him. Because he might run again, reward or no reward. And maybe if he can catch Christmas and get that reward, he will marry her in time. But she don’t know yet, no more than she knowed yesterday when she got down from that wagon on the square. Swolebellied, getting down slow from that strange wagon, among them strange faces, telling herself with a kind of quiet astonishment, only I don’t reckon it was any astonishment in it, because she had come slow and afoot and telling never bothered her: ‘My, my. Here I have come clean from Alabama, and now I am in Jefferson at last, sure enough.’ ”
Chapter 5
It was after midnight. Though Christmas had been in bed for two hours, he was not yet asleep. He heard Brown before he saw him. He heard Brown approach the door and then blunder into it, in silhouette propping himself erect in the door. Brown was breathing heavily. Standing there between his propped arms, Brown began to sing in a saccharine and nasal tenor. The very longdrawn pitch of his voice seemed to smell of whiskey. “Shut it,” Christmas said. He did not move and his voice was not raised. Yet Brown ceased at once. He stood for a moment longer in the door, propping himself upright. Then he let go of the door and Christmas heard him stumble into the room; a moment later he blundered into something. There was an interval filled with hard, labored breathing. Then Brown fell to the floor with a tremendous clatter, striking the cot on which Christmas lay and filling the room with loud and idiot laughter.
Christmas rose from his cot. Invisible beneath him Brown lay on the floor, laughing, making no effort to rise. “Shut it!” Christmas said. Brown still laughed. Christmas stepped across Brown and put his hand out toward where a wooden box that served for table sat, on which the lantern and matches were kept. But he could not find the box, and then he remembered the sound of the breaking lantern when Brown fell. He stooped, astride Brown, and found his collar and hauled him out from beneath the cot and raised Brown’s head and began to strike him with his flat hand, short, vicious, and hard, until Brown ceased laughing.
Brown was limp. Christmas held his head up, cursing him in a voice level as whispering. He dragged Brown over to the other cot and flung him onto it, face up. Brown began to laugh again. Christmas put his hand flat upon Brown’s mouth and nose, shutting his jaw with his left hand while with the right he struck Brown again with those hard, slow, measured blows, as if he were meting them out by count. Brown had stopped laughing. He struggled. Beneath Christmas’s hand he began to make a choked, gurgling noise, struggling. Christmas held him until he ceased and became still. Then Christmas slacked his hand a little. “Will you be quiet now?” he said. “Will you?”
Brown struggled again. “Take your black hand off of me, you damn niggerblooded—” The hand shut down again. Again Christmas struck him with the other hand upon the face. Brown ceased and lay still again. Christmas slacked his hand After a moment Brown spoke, in a tone cunning, not loud: “You’re a nigger, see? You said so yourself. You told me. But I’m white. I’m a wh—” The hand shut down. Again Brown struggled, making a choked whimpering sound beneath the hand, drooling upon the fingers. When he stopped struggling, the hand slacked. Then he lay still, breathing hard.
“Will you now?” Christmas said.
“Yes,” Brown said. He breathed noisily. “Let me breathe. I’ll be quiet. Let me breathe.”
Christmas slacked his hand but he did not remove it. Beneath it Brown breathed easier, his breath came and went easier, with less noise. But Christmas did not remove the hand. He stood in the darkness above the prone body, with Brown’s breath alternately hot and cold on his fingers, thinking quietly, Something is going to happen to me. I am going to do something. Without removing his left hand from Brown’s face he could reach with his right across to his cot, to his pillow beneath which lay his razor with its five inch blade. But he did not do it. Perhaps thinking had already gone far enough and dark enough to tell him This is not the right one. Anyway he did not reach for the razor. After a time he removed his hand from Brown’s face. But he did not go away. He still stood above the cot, his own breathing so quiet, so calm, as to make no sound even to himself. Invisible too, Brown breathed quieter now, and after a while Christmas returned and sat upon his cot and fumbled a cigarette and a match from his trousers hanging on the wall. In the flare of the match Brown was visible. Before taking the light, Christmas lifted the match and looked at Brown. Brown lay on his back, sprawled, one arm dangling to the floor. His mouth was open. While Christmas watched, he began to snore.
Christmas lit the cigarette and snapped the match toward the open door, watching the flame vanish in midair. Thin he was listening for the light, trivial sound which the dead match would make when it struck the floor; and then it seemed to him that he heard it. Then it seemed to him, sitting on the cot in the dark room, that he was hearing a myriad sounds of no greater volume—voices, murmurs, whispers: of trees, darkness, earth; people: his own voice; other voices evocative of names and times and places—which he had been conscious of all his life without knowing it, which were his life, thinking God perhaps and me not knowing that too He could see it like a printed sentence, fullborn and already dead, God loves me too, like the faded and weathered letters on a last year’s billboard, God loves me too.