As soon as the Haunt could speak it was begged to reveal its intentions, and it was not loathe to do so. It said that it had come to torture Virginia Beale and to drive Jacob Beale, whom it referred to as old Jake, to his death, at which time it promised to return whence it had come.
After crops were laid that summer, they would be there every night. The yard would be full of wagons and tethered horses, playing children chasing fireflies, solitary workers appearing sourceless in blue dusk from whichever direction they happened to live in. Not even waiting now for full dark, but stringing out along the roads in early dusk, whole families of them coming from God knew where, folks Beale had never seen before or heard rumored, the men dressed in their Sunday best, stiff on the wagon seats, the women bonneted in their best finery, shifting the snuffstick aside in their drawstring mouths and watching him with their flinty little eyes, knowing as sure as death that he knew what they came to hear: not the gospelsinging or the sugarmouthed pseudopreaching but the Haunt’s obscene rantings, its dirtymouth tattling of the community doings. Them hearing it and rolling their eyes in spurious shock and saying, They Lord have mercy, as if it had taken them by surprise, as if it was not something they had come anticipating, by now a perverse source of entertainment that drew them gapejawed and slackmouthed out of the brush as sugar draws flies.
And him feeding them, likely as not. Or having to offer, anyway, a few of them saying no thanks ye, we got a little somethin here we brought. The rest of them taking whatever fare was offered, and there would have to be more flour and coffee brought by the end of the month.
Standing there in the hall of the haysmelling barn dappled with moted light, he estimated the number of horses, said to himself, how about a pad of hay for my horses, Brother Beale? Or two pads, or an armful of corn.
Yet he watched with more than cynicism. He studied these outlanders, neighbors, halffools and wholefools. There might be the one man who would study this chaos with a bright and unjaundiced eye and say, as if it were something they should have noticed long ago, why here’s the trouble right here, leant to study the situation like a man indicating the fault in a hay mower that would not work.
He watched his sons cross the field with the horses, angle along toward the creek to water them. Dusk drew on. Lights were lit in the house. Soon he would be expected to put in an appearance, to exchange civilities with his neighbors, with these strangers who’d come to amuse themselves at his expense, and say you’re from where? My land, that’s a far piece, and you come all the way by wagon. Their eyes asking each other, how does he do it anyway? And why does he?
He waited, loathe to leave here for the tobacco smoke — scented front room, the turbulent emotional atmosphere from which the Haunt drew strength. Here he could smell the placid animals that he had come to respect more than men, the hay that reminded him of the last days of summer.
The blondehaired girl in a green dress sat by the fireplace. She sat in a willow rocker, unmoving, her hands in her lap. Her eyes were closed; perhaps she slept. Yet every eye in the crowded room was upon her. The people jammed into the room and seated on ladderbacks and kitchen chairs or just hunkered against the wall seemed not to breathe. What’s the matter with her? She’s subject to the vapors. The girl’s color was high, cheeks lit by a mottled red blush, and her breathing was harsh and irregular, could be heard from the farthest corner of the room.
Joseph Primm began to pray, kneeling on the floor, bracing himself against the hearth of the dead fireplace, speaking of theft, of the value a man attached to his personal belongings, of the roiling flames of hellfire awaiting the man who took this value lightly.
The girl had not moved. She slept on. Beside her sat an old black woman with a fan, moving it listlessly, the faint breeze moving in the pale tendrils of flaxen hair at the temples.
At last Primm ceased. A sigh of creaking chairs, a general hum of coughing and throatclearing. A few began to talk about stealing. Things they had taken from them.
I was never one to hold with stealin, a man from Jack’s Branch said boldly. But I reckon if a man was starvin to death and took a little grub the Lord would take that into consideration. It don’t seem right for a man to burn in hell forever for stealin a bite to eat.
How long’d it take you to eat that horse you stole in South Carolina? a voice shot back instantly. The voice seemed to come from the far corner of the ceiling and every head in the room turned, the necks twisting like some synchronous machine.
I never stole no horse, the man cried.
You’re a goddamned liar. You never stole a chestnut gelding from a man named Burbank and sold it in Town Creek, Alabama?
The voice was at once sourceless and omnipresent, seeming to shift its position, as if it feared to remain in one place too long: rising and falling, a soft feminine voice, sweet and innocent, a dream voice, a voice like no other they had heard in all their lives.
I never took no horse, the man said stubbornly to his neighbor.
Hell, the other said, wryly amused, don’t tell me. I never said you did.
After a while the man left. He would not be the first that night, but the voice had lost interest, began to hum to itself some old gospel song. Come to the church in the wildwood, breaking the song off, childlike, as if its attention span were short.
Where’s old Jake? it wondered abruptly. Where’s Jake Beale? Is he not in here? Where is that whorechasing old smellsmack?
The voice ceased, as if counting heads, searching among all those present.
Mr. Beale is not here, Joseph Primm said. He’s taking care of the livestock.
Oh he is, is he? I know the livestock Mr. Beale has his mind on, Sugarmouth. He’s peeping at those courting couples playing a little stinkfinger out in the edge of the woods…is Virginia here? That thicklegged little slut, is she here? She likes to play that stinkfinger too. I saw her and Mr. Posey down by the springhouse a night or two ago…he had her dress wadded up around her waist and his finger up in her and Lord, how she loved it.
The room was struck by a delirious hush of silence. In the back of the room a woman had arisen haughtily, her face a haggard mask of contempt.
She never played it, the voice said, her leaving there. She never had one in her, not in a day or two anyway. She’s like Sugarmouth there, he don’t know what stinkfinger is. Do you, Sugarmouth? He doesn’t. He thinks it’s something like tiddlywinks, but Virginia doesn’t. Virginia thinks it’s much nicer than that, don’t you, Virginia? Sugarmouth doesn’t know anything about such worldly things, he doesn’t even lope his mule behind the barn anymore.
The voice babbled on mindlessly, rising and falling like a madman talking to himself.
Why do you carry on such crazy filth? Primm asked earnestly. You have a fine mind, a great knowledge and memory of the Bible. You could move countless souls toward heaven. Your singing could move thousands of lost sheep into the folds of Christianity.
Don’t you just love the way old Sugarmouth talks? The voice was fey and whimsical. Don’t you just wish you could go home and talk that way too, whenever you wanted? I know I do. But Sugarmouth’s not very smart. He thinks it’s me. It’s not me, Sugarmouth. I’m…I’m everything and nothing. Here the voice faltered, trailed weakly off, struggled with a thought, a concept or the way to express one. I’m just a mirror, Sugarmouth. All I can do is reflect what you bring me. You give me a roomful of Christians and I’ll give you back Christianity. These folks here, though.