Reivers, The - William Faulkner [126]
"Come on," Ned said, taking the bit, rapid but calm: only impatient, almost inattentive. "Hand—"
"What happened?" Grandfather said. "What the devil happened?"
"Nothing," Ned said. "I never had no sour dean for him this time, and he knowed it. Didn't I tell you this horse got sense?" Then to me: "There's Bobo over yonder waiting. Hand this plug back to him so he can take it on to Memphis. We're going home tonight."
"But wait," I said. "Wait."
"Forget this horse," Ned said. "We dont want him. Boss has got his automobile back and all he lost was four hundred and ninety-six dollars and it's worth four hundred and ninety-six dollars not to own this horse. Because what in the world would we do with him, supposing they was to quit making them stinking little fishes? Let Mr van Man have him back; maybe some day Coppermine will tell him and Bobo what happened here yesterday."
We didn't go home tonight though. We were still at Colonel Linscomb's, in the office again, after supper again. Boon looked battered and patched up and a considerable subdued, but he was calm and peaceful enough. And clean too: he had shaved and had on a fresh shirt. I mean, a new shirt that he must have bought in Hardwick, sitting on the same straight hard chair Ned had sat on last night. "Naw," he said. "I wasn't fighting him about that. I wasn't even mad about that no more. That was her business. Besides, you cant just cut right off: you got to— got—"
"Taper off?" Grandfather said.
"No sir," Boon said. "Not taper off. You quit, only you still got to clean up the trash, litter, no matter how good you finished. It wasn't that. What I aimed to break his neck for was for calling my wife a whore."
"You mean you're going to marry her?" Grandfather said. But it was not Grandfather: it was me that Boon pounced, almost jumped at.
"God damn it," he said, "if you can go bare-handed -against a knife defending her, why the hell cant I marry her? Aint I as good as you are, even if I aint eleven years old?"
And that's about all. About six the next afternoon we came over the last hill, and there was the clock on the courthouse above the trees around the Square. Ned said, "Hee hee hee." He was in front with Boon. He said: "Seems like I been gone twp years."
"When Delphine gets through with you tonight, maybe you'll wish you had," Grandfather said.
"Or maybe not come back a-tall," Ned said. "But a woman, got to keep sweeping and cooking and washing and dusting on her mind all day long, I reckon she needs a little excitement once in a while."
Then we were there. The automobile stopped. I didn't move. Grandfather got out, so I did too. "Mr Ballott's got the key," Boon said.
"No he hasn't," Grandfather said. He took the key from his pocket and gave it to Boon. "Come on," he said. We crossed the street toward home. And do you know what I thought? I thought It hasn't even changed. Because it should have. It should have J>een altered, even if only a little. I dont mean it should have changed of itself, but that I, bringing back to it what the last four days must have changed in me, should have altered it. I mean, if those four days—the lying and deceiving and tricking and decisions and undecisions, and the things I had done and seen and heard and learned that Mother and Father wouldn't have let me do and see and hear and learn—the things I had had to learn that I wasn't even ready for yet, had nowhere to store them nor even anywhere to lay them down; if all that had changed nothing, was the same as if it had never been—nothing smaller or larger or older or wiser or more pitying—then something had been wasted, thrown away, spent for nothing;