Reivers, The - William Faulkner [106]
"I cant," I said. "I got to wait." Uncle Parsham put the watch back. He rose. He said, not loud:
"Mary." She was in the front room; I hadn't heard a sound. She came to the door.
"I already did it," she said. She said to Lycurgus: "Your pallet's ready in the hall." Then to me: "You sleep in Lycurgus's bed where you was yestiddy."
"I dont need to take Lycurgus's bed," I said. "I can sleep with Uncle Parsham. I wont mind." They looked at me, quite still, quite identical. "I sleep with Boss a lot of times," I said. "He snores too. I don't mind."
"Boss?" Uncle Parsham said.
"That's what we call Grandfather," I said. "He snores too. I wont mind."
"Let him," Uncle Parsham said. We went to his room. His lamp had flowers painted on the china shade and there was a big gold-framed portrait on a gold easel in one corner: a woman, not very old but in old-timey clothes; the bed had a bright patchwork quilt on it like Lycurgus's and even in May there was a smolder of fire on the hearth. There was a chair, a rocking chair too, but I didn't sit down. I just stood there. Then he came in again. He wore a nightshirt now and was winding the silver watch. "Undress," he said. I did so. "Does your mother let you sleep like that at home?"
"No sir," I said.
"You aint got anything with you, have you?"
"No sir," I said. He put the watch on the mantel and went to the door and said,
"Mary." She answered. "Bring one of Lycurgus's clean shirts." After a while her hand held the shirt through the door crack. He took it. "Here," he said. I came and put it on. "Do you say your Now I lay me in bed or kneeling down?"
"Kneeling down," I said.
"Say them," he said. I knelt beside the bed and said my prayers. The bed was already turned back. I got into it and he blew out the lamp and I heard the bed again and then —the moon would be late before it was very high tonight but there was already enough light—I could see him, all black and white against the white pillow and the white moustache and imperial, lying on his back, his hands folded on his breast. "Tomorrow morning I'll take you to town and we'll see Mr Hogganbeck. If he says you have done all you can do here and for you to go home, will you go then?"
"Yes sir," I said.
"Now go to sleep," he said. Because even before he said it, Fknew that that was exactly what I wanted, what I had been wanting probably ever since yesterday: to go home. I mean, nobody likes to be licked, but maybe there are times when nobody can help being; that all you can da about it is not quit. And Boon and Ned hadn't quit, or they wouldn't be where they were right now. And maybe they wouldn't say that I had quit either, when it was them who told me to go home. Maybe I was just too little, too young; maybe I just wasn't able to tote whatever my share was, and if they had had somebody else bigger or older or maybe just smarter, we wouldn't have been licked. You see? like that: all specious and rational; unimpugnable even, when the simple truth was, I wanted to go home and just wasn't brave enough to say so, let alone do it. So now, having admitted at last that I was not only a failure but a coward too, my mind should be peaceful and easy and I should go on to sleep like a baby: where Uncle Parsham already was, just barely snoring (who should hear Grandfather once). Not that that mattered either, since I would be home tomorrow with nothing—no stolen horses nor chastity-stricken prostitutes and errant pullman conductors and Ned and Boon Hogganbeck in his normal condition once he had slipped Father's leash—to interfere with sleep, hearing the voice, the bawling two or three times before I struggled up and out, into daylight, sunlight; Uncle Parsham's side of the bed was empty and now I could hear the bawling from outside the house:
"Hellaw. Hellaw. Lycurgus. Lycurgus," and leapt, sprang from the bed, already running, across to the window where I could look out into the front yard. It was Ned. He had the horse.
Chapter 12
So once again, at two oclock in the afternoon, McWillie and I sat our