it was late, as if time had slipped up on us while we were still caught, enmeshed by the sound of the musket and were too busy to notice it; the sun shone almost level into our faces while we stood at the edge of the back gallery, spitting, rinsing the soap from our mouths turn and turn about from the gourd dipper, spitting straight into the sun. For a while, just by breathing we could blow soap bubbles, but soon it was just the taste of the spitting. Then even that began to go away although the impulse to spit did not, while away to the
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north we could see the cloud bank, fault and blue and faraway at the base and touched with copper sun along the crest. When Father came home in the spring, we tried to understand about mountains. At last he pointed out the cloud bank to tell us what mountains looked like. So ever since then Ringo believed that the cloud-bank was Tennessee.
"Yonder they," he said, spitting. "Yonder hit. Tennessee, where Marse John use to fight um at. Looking mighty far, too."
"Too far to go just to fight Yankees," I said, spitting too. But it was gone now—the suds, the glassy weightless iridescent bubbles; even the taste of it.
RETREAT
mn the afternoon Loosh drove the wagon up beside the back gallery and took the mules out; by supper-time we had everything loaded into the wagon but the bedclothes we would sleep under that night. Then Granny went up stairs and when she came back down she had on her Sunday black silk and her hat, and there was color in her face now and her eyes were bright.
"Is we gonter leave tonight?" Ringo said. "I thought we wasn't going to start until in the morning."
"We're not," Granny said. "But it's been three years now since I have started anywhere; I reckon the Lord will forgive me for getting ready one day ahead of time." She turned (we were in the dining-room then, the table set with supper) to Louvinia. "Tell Joby and Loosh to be ready with the lantern and the shovels as soon as they have finished eating."
Louvinia had set the cornbread on the table and was going out when she stopped and looked at Granny. "You mean you gonter take that heavy trunk all the way to Memphis with you? You gonter dig hit up from where hit been hid safe since last summer, and take hit all the way to Memphis?"
"Yes," Granny said. "I am following Colonel Sartoris' 37
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instructions as I believe he meant them." She was eating; she didn't even look at Louvinia. Louvinia stood there in the pantry door, looking at the back of Granny's head.
"Whyn't you leave hit here where hit hid good and I can take care of hit? Who gonter find hit, even if they was to come here again? Hit's Marse John they done called the reward on; hit ain't no trunk full of------"
"I have my reasons," Granny said. "You do what I told you."
"All right. But how come you wanter dig hit up tonight when you ain't leaving until tomor------"
"You do what I said," Granny said.
"Yessum," Louvinia said. She went out. I looked at Granny eating, with her hat sitting on the exact top of her head, and Ringo looking at me across the back of Granny's chair with his eyes rolling a little.
"Why not leave it hid?" I said. "It'll be just that much more load on the wagon. Joby says that trunk will weigh a thousand pounds."
"A thousand fiddlesticks!" Granny said. "I don't care if it weighed ten thousand------" Louvinia came in.
"They be ready," she said. "I wish you'd tell me why you got to dig hit up tonight."
Granny looked at her. "I had a dream about it last night."
"Oh," Louvinia said. She and Ringo looked exactly alike, except that Louvinia's eyes were not rolling so much as his.
"I dreamed I was looking out my window, and a man walked into the orchard and went to where it is and stood there pointing at it," Granny said. She looked at Louvinia. "A black man."
"A nigger?" Louvinia said.
"Yes."
For a while Louvinia didn't say anything. Then she said, "Did you know him?" "Yes," Granny said. "Is you going to tell who hit was?" "No," Granny said. Louvinia turned to Ringo. "Gawn tell your pappy and
RETREAT
59
Loosh to get the lantern and the shovels and come on up here."
Joby and Loosh were in the kitchen. Joby was sitting behind the stove with a plate on his knees, eating. Loosh was sitting on the wood box, still, with the two shovels between his knees, but I didn't see him at first because of Ringo's shadow. The lamp was on the table, and I could see the shadow of Ringo's head bent over and his arm working back and forth, and Louvinia standing between us and the lamp, her hands on her hips and her elbows spread and her shadow filling the room. "Clean that chimney good," she said.
Joby carried the lantern, with Granny behind him, and then Loosh; I could see her bonnet and Loosh's head and the two shovel blades over his shoulder. Ringo was breathing behind me. "Which un you reckon she drempt about?" he said.
-"Why don't you ask her?" I said. We were in the orchard now.
"Hoo," Ringo said. "Me ask her? I bet if she stayed here wouldn't no Yankee nor nothing else bother that trunk, nor Marse John neither, if he knowed hit."
Then they stopped—Joby and Granny, and while Granny held the lantern at arm's length, Joby and Loosh dug the trunk up from where they had buried it that night last summer while Father was at home, while Louvinia stood in the door of the bedroom without even lighting the lamp while Ringo and I went to bed and later I either looked out or dreamed I looked out the window and saw (or dreamed I saw) the lantern. Then, with Granny in front and still carrying the lantern and with Ringo and I both helping to carry it, we returned toward the house. Before we reached the house Joby began to bear away toward where the loaded wagon stood.
"Take it into the house," Granny said.
"We'll just load hit now and save having to handle hit again in the morning," Joby said. "Come on here, nigger," he said to Loosh.
"Take it into the house," Granny said. So, after a while, Joby moved on toward the house. We could hear
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him breathing now, saying "Hah!" every few steps. Inside the kitchen he let his end down, hard.
"Hah!" he said. "That's done, thank God."
"Take it upstairs," Granny said.
Joby turned and looked at her. He hadn't straightened up yet; he turned, half stooping, and looked at her. "Which?" he said.
"Take it upstairs," Granny said. "I want it in my room."
"You mean you gonter tote this thing all the way upstairs and then tote it back down tomorrow?"
"Somebody is," Granny said. "Are you going to help or are me and Bayard going to do it alone?"
Then Louvinia came in. She had already undressed. She looked tall as a ghost, in one dimension like a bolster case, taller than a bolster case in her nightgown; silent as a ghost on her bare feet which were the same color as the shadow in which she stood so that she seemed to have no feet, the twin rows of her toenails lying weightless and faint and still as two rows of faintly soiled feathers on the floor about a foot below the hem of her nightgown as if they were not connected with her. She came and shoved Joby aside and stooped to lift the trunk. "Git away, nigger," she said. JOby groaned, then he shoved Louvinia aside.
"Git away, woman," he said. He lifted his end of the trunk, then he looked back at Loosh, who had never let his end down. "If you gonter ride on hit, pick up your feet," he said. We carried the trunk up to Granny's room, and Joby was setting it down again, until Granny made him and Loosh pull the bed out from the wall and slide the trunk in behind it; Ringo and I helped again. I don't believe it lacked much of weighing a thousand pounds.