“I did too, at first,” Miss Jenny said. “But I reckon now she’s learned that you’ll work harder for whatever reason you think you have, than for anything anybody could offer you or give you.”
“You mean, she’d let me think they never had any money, when she—”
“Why not? Aint you doing all right without it?”
Narcissa entered.
“We were just talking about murder and crime,” Miss Jenny said.
“I hope you’re through, then,” Narcissa said. She did not sit down.
“Narcissa has her sorrows too,” Miss Jenny said. “Dont you, Narcissa?”
“What now?” Horace said. “She hasn’t caught Bory with alcohol on his breath, has she?”
“She’s been jilted. Her beau’s gone and left her.”
“You’re such a fool,” Narcissa said.
“Yes, sir,” Miss Jenny said, “Gowan Stevens has thrown her down. He didn’t even come back from that Oxford dance to say goodbye. He just wrote her a letter.” She began to search about her in the chair. “And now I flinch everytime the doorbell rings, thinking that his mother—”
“Miss Jenny,” Narcissa said, “you give me my letter.”
“Wait,” Miss Jenny said, “here it is. Now, what do you think of that for a delicate operation on the human heart without anaesthetic? I’m beginning to believe all this I hear, about how young folks learn all the things in order to get married, that we had to get married in order to learn.”
Horace took the single sheet.
Narcissa my dear
This has no heading. I wish it could have no date. But if my heart were as blank as this page, this would not be necessary at all. I will not see you again. I cannot write it, for I have gone through with an experience which I cannot face. I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn. I need not say that the hope that you never learn it is the sole reason why I will not see you again. Think as well of me as you can. I wish I had the right to say, if you learn of my folly think not the less of me.
G.
Horace read the note, the single sheet. He held it between his hands. He did not say anything for a while.
“Good Lord,” Horace said. “Someone mistook him for a Mississippi man on the dance floor.”
“I think, if I were you—” Narcissa said. After a moment she said: “How much longer is this going to last, Horace?”
“Not any longer than I can help. If you know of any way in which I can get him out of that jail by tomorrow.…”
“There’s only one way,” she said. She looked at him a moment. Then she turned toward the door. “Which way did Bory go? Dinner’ll be ready soon.” She went out.
“And you know what that way is,” Miss Jenny said. “If you aint got any backbone.”
“I’ll know whether or not I have any backbone when you tell me what the other way is.”
“Go back to Belle,” Miss Jenny said. “Go back home.”
The negro murderer was to be hung on a Saturday without pomp, buried without circumstance: one night he would be singing at the barred window and yelling down out of the soft myriad darkness of a May night; the next night he would be gone, leaving the window for Goodwin. Goodwin had been bound over for the June term of court, without bail. But still he would not agree to let Horace divulge Popeye’s presence at the scene of the murder.
“I tell you, they’ve got nothing on me,” Goodwin said.
“How do you know they haven’t?” Horace said.
“Well, no matter what they think they have on me, I stand a chance in court. But just let it get to Memphis that I said he was anywhere around there, what chance do you think I’d have to get back to this cell after I testified?”
“You’ve got the law, justice, civilization.”
“Sure, if I spend the rest of my life squatting in that corner yonder. Come here.” He led Horace to the window. “There are five windows in that hotel yonder that look into this one. And I’ve seen him light matches with a pistol at twenty feet. Why, damn it all, I’d never get back here from the courtroom the day I testified that.”
“But there’s such a thing as obstruct—”
“Obstructing damnation. Let them prove I did it. Tommy was found in the barn, shot from behind. Let them find the pistol. I was there, waiting. I didn’t try to run. I could have, but I didn’t. It was me notified the sheriff. Of course my being there alone except for her and Pap looked bad. If it was a stall, dont common sense tell you I’d have invented a better one?”
“You’re not being tried by common sense,” Horace said. “You’re being tried by a jury.”
“Then let them make the best of it. That’s all they’ll get. The dead man is in the barn, hadn’t been touched; me and my wife and child and Pap in the house; nothing in the house touched; me the one that sent for the sheriff. No, no; I know I run a chance this way, but let me just open my head about that fellow, and there’s no chance to it. I know what I’ll get.”
“But you heard the shot,” Horace said. “You have already told that.”
“No,” he said, “I didn’t. I didn’t hear anything. I dont know anything about it.……Do you mind waiting outside a minute while I talk to Ruby?”
It was five minutes before she joined him. He said:
“There’s something about this that I dont know yet; that you and Lee haven’t told me. Something he just warned you not to tell me. Isn’t there?” She walked beside him, carrying the child. It was still whimpering now and then, tossing its thin body in sudden jerks. She tried to soothe it, crooning to it, rocking it in her arms. “Maybe you carry it too much,” Horace said; “maybe if you could leave it at the hotel.…”
“I guess Lee knows what to do,” she said.
“But the lawyer should know all the facts, everything. He is the one to decide what to tell and what not to tell. Else, why have one? That’s like paying a dentist to fix your teeth and then refusing to let him look into your mouth, dont you see? You wouldn’t treat a dentist or a doctor this way.” She said nothing, her head bent over the child. It wailed.
“Hush,” she said, “hush, now.”
“And worse than that, there’s such a thing called obstructing justice. Suppose he swears there was nobody else there, suppose he is about to be cleared—which is not likely—and somebody turns up who saw Popeye about the place, or saw his car leaving. Then they’ll say, if Lee didn’t tell the truth about an unimportant thing, why should we believe him when his neck’s in danger?”
They reached the hotel. He opened the door for her. She did not look at him. “I guess Lee knows best,” she said, going in. The child wailed, a thin, whimpering, distressful cry. “Hush,” she said. “Shhhhhhhhhhhh.”
Isom had been to fetch Narcissa from a party; it was late when the car stopped at the corner and picked him up. A few of the lights were beginning to come on, and men were already drifting back toward the square after supper, but it was still too early for the negro murderer to begin to sing. “And he’d better sing fast, too,” Horace said. “He’s only got two days more.” But he was not there yet. The jail faced west; a last faint copper-colored light lay upon the dingy grating and upon the small, pale blob of a hand, and in scarce any wind a blue wisp of tobacco floated out and dissolved raggedly away. “If it wasn’t bad enough to have her husband there, without that poor brute counting his remaining breaths at the top of his voice.……”
“Maybe they’ll wait and hang them both together,” Narcissa said. “They do that sometimes, dont they?”