Reivers, The - William Faulkner [103]
"Yes sir," I said.
"I dont think I like that—a white boy staying with a family of niggers. You come home with me."
"No sir," I said.
"Yes," he said, but still really kind. "Come on. I'm busy."
"There's somewhere you stops," Ned said. The constable became completely motionless, half turned. "What did you say?" he said.
"There's somewhere the Law stops and just people starts," Ned said. And still for another moment the constable didn't move—an older man than you thought at first, spare, quite hale, but older, who wore no pistol, in his pocket or anywhere else, and if he had a badge, it wasn't in sight either.
"You're right," he said. He said to me: "That's where you want to stay? with old Possum?"
"Yes sir," I said.
"All right," he said. He turned. "Get in, boys," he said. "What you going to do with the nigger?" Butch said. He had taken the lines from the man who brought the surrey up; his foot was already on the stirrup to get into the driver's seat; Boon and Sam were already in the back. "Let Mm ride your horse?"
"You're going to ride my horse," the constable said. "Jump up, son," he told Ned. "You're the horse expert around here." Ned took the lines from Butch and got up and cramped the wheel for the constable to get up beside him. Boon was still looking down at me, his face battered and bruised but quiet now under the drying blood.
"Come on with Sam," he said.
"I'm all right," I said.
"No," Boon said. "I cant—"
"I know Possum Hood," the constable said. "If I get worried about him, I'll come back tonight and get him. Drive on, son." They went on. They were gone. I was alone. I mean, if I had been left by myself like when two hunters separate in the woods or fields, to meet again later, even as late as camp that night, I would not have been so alone. As it was, I was anything but solitary. I was an island in that ring of sweated hats and tieless shirts and overalls, the alien nameless faces already turning away from me as I looked about at them, and not one word to me of Yes or No or Go or Stay: who—me—was being reabandoned who had already been abandoned once: and at only eleven you are not really big enough in size to be worth that much abandonment; you would be obliterated, effaced, dissolved, vaporised beneath it. Until one of them said:
"You looking for Possum Hood? I think he's over yonder by his buggy, waiting for you." He was. The other wagons and buggies were pulling out now; most of them and all the saddled horses and mules were already gone. I went up to the buggy and stopped. I dont know why: I just stopped. Maybe there was nowhere else to go. I mean, there was no room for the next step forward until somebody moved the buggy.
"Get in," Uncle Parsham said. "We'll go home and wait for Lycurgus."
"Lycurgus," I said as though I had never heard the name before even.
"He rode on to town on the mule. He will find out what all this is about and come back and tell us. He's going to find out what time a train goes to Jefferson tonight."
"To Jefferson?" I said.
"So you can go home." He didn't quite look at me. "If you want to."
"I cant go home yet," I said. "I got to wait for Boon."
"I said if you want to," Uncle Parsham said. "Get in." I got in. He drove across the pasture, into the road. "Close the gate," Uncle Parsham said. "It's about time somebody remembered to." I closed the gate and got back in the buggy. "You ever drive a mule to a buggy?"
"No sir," I said. He handed me the lines. "I dont know how," I said.
"Then you can learn now. A mule aint like a horse. When a horse gets a wrong notion in his head, all you got to do is swap him another one for it. Most anything will do—a whip or spur or just scare him by hollering at him. A mule is different. He can hold two notions at the same time and the way to change one of them is to act like you believe he thought of changing it first. He'll know different, because mules have got sense. But a mule is a gentleman too, and when you act courteous and respectful at him without trying to buy him or scare him,