Light in August - William Faulkner [136]
“And he did. He sho did. He set right there where she put him, and she never looked back, neither. They all noticed that. Maybe it was because folks never saw her except around home, staying at home. And him being a kind of fierce little old man that a man wouldn’t cross without he thought about it first. Anyhow they were surprised. They hadn’t even thought of him taking orders from anybody. It was like she had got something on him and he had to mind her. Because he sat down when she told him to, in that chair, not hollering and talking big now, but with his head bent down and his hands shaking on that big walking stick and a little slobber still running out of his mouth, onto his shirt.
“She went straight to the jail. There was a big crowd in front of it, because Jefferson had sent word that they were on the way down to get the nigger. She walked right through them and into the jail and she said to Metcalf, ‘I want to see that man they caught.’
“ ‘What do you want to see him for?’ Metcalf said.
“ ‘I ain’t going to bother him,’ she said. ‘I just want to look at him.’
“Metcalf told her there was a right smart of other folks that wanted to do that, and that he knew she didn’t aim to help him escape, but that he was just the jailer and he couldn’t let anybody in without he had permission from the sheriff. And her standing there, in that purple dress and the plume not even nodding and bending, she was that still. ‘Where is the sheriff?’ she said.
“ ‘He might be in his office,’ Metcalf said. ‘You find him and get permission from him. Then you can see the nigger.’ Metcalf thought that that would finish it. So he watched her turn and go out and walk through the crowd in front of the jail and go back up the street toward the square. The plume was nodding now. He could see it nodding along above the fence. And then he saw her go across the square and in to the courthouse. The folks didn’t know what she was doing, because Metcalf hadn’t had time to tell them what happened at the jail. They just watched her go on into the courthouse, and then Russell said how he was in the office and he happened to look up and there that hat was with the plume on it just beyond the window across the counter. He didn’t know how long she had been standing there, waiting for him to look up. He said she was just tall enough to see over the counter, so that she didn’t look like she had any body at all. It just looked like somebody had sneaked up and set a toy balloon with a face painted on it and a comic hat set on top of it, like the Katzenjammer kids in the funny paper. ‘I want to see the sheriff,’ she says.
“ ‘He ain’t here,’ Russell says. ‘I’m his deputy. What can I do for you?’
“He said she didn’t answer for a while, standing there. Then she said, ‘Where can I find him?’
“ ‘He might be at home,’ Russell says. ‘He’s been right busy, this week. Up at night some, helping those Jefferson officers. He might be home taking a nap. But maybe I can—’ But he said that she was already gone. He said he looked out the window and watched her go on across the square and turn the corner toward where the sheriff lived. He said he was still trying to place her, to think who she was.
“She never found the sheriff. But it was too late then, anyway. Because the sheriff was already at the jail, only Metcalf hadn’t told her, and besides she hadn’t got good away from the jail before the Jefferson officers came up in two cars and went into the jail. They came up quick and went in quick. But the word had already got around that they were there, and there must have been two hundred men and boys and women too in front of the jail when the two sheriffs come out onto the porch and our sheriff made a speech, asking the folks to respect the law and that him and the Jefferson sheriff both promised that the nigger would get a quick and fair trial; and then somebody in the crowd says, ‘Fair, hell. Did he give that white woman a fair trial?’ And they hollered then, crowding