Reivers, The - William Faulkner [14]
"No," she said. "We must wait for Mister Priest." Maybe it wasn't a victory, but anyway our side—Boon— had not only discovered the weak point in the enemy's (Grandfather's) front, by suppertime that night the enemy himself would discover it too.
Discover in fact that his flank had been turned. The next afternoon (Saturday) after the bank closed, and each succeeding Saturday afternoon, and then when summer came, every afternoon except when rain was actually falling, Grandfather in front beside Boon and the rest of us in rotation—Grandmother, Mother, me and my three brothers and Aunt Callie that nursed us in turn, including Father, and Delphine and our various connections and neighbors and Grandmother's close friends in their ordered rote —in the linen dusters and goggles, would drive through Jefferson and the adjacent countryside; Aunt Callie and Delphine in their turns, but not Ned. He rode in it once: that one minute while it backed slowly out of the garage, and the two minutes while it turned and moved slowly forward across the lot until Grandmother lost her nerve and said No to the open gate and the public world, but not again. By the second Saturday he had realised, accepted —anyway become convinced—that even if Grandfather had ever intended to make him the official operator and custodian of the automobile, he could have approached it only over Boon's dead body. But although he declined to recognise that the automobile existed on the place, he and Grandfather had met on some unspoken gentlemen's ground regarding it: Ned never to speak in scorn or derogation of its ownership and presence, Grandfather never to order Ned to wash and polish it as he used to do the carriage—which Grandfather and Ned both knew Ned would have refused to do, even if Boon had let him: by which Grandfather visited on Ned his only punishment for his apostasy: he refused to give Ned the public chance to refuse to wash the automobile before Boon might have ihad a public chance to refuse to let him do it.
Because that was when Boon transferred—was transferred by mutual and instantaneous consent—from the day shift at the stable to the night shift. Otherwise, the livery business would have known him no more. That part of our Jefferson leisure class, friends or acquaintances of Father's or maybe just friends of horses, who could have used the stable as a permanent business address—if they had had any business or expected any mail—were less strangers there than Boon. If—when—you, meaning Father, wanted Boon now, you sent me to Grandfather's lot, where he would be washing and polishing the automobile —this, even during those first weeks when it had not left the lot since last Saturday and would not leave it again until the next one, backing it out of the shed and washing it again each morning, with tender absorption, right down to the last spoke and nut, then sitting guard over it while it dried.
"He's going to soak all the paint off of it," Mr Ballott said. "Does Boss know he's running the hose on that automobile four or five hours every day?"
"What if he did?" Father said. "Boon would still sit there in the lot all day looking at it."
"Put him on the night shift," Mr Ballott said. "Then he could do whatever he wants to with his daylight and John Powell could go home and sleep in a bed every night for a change."
"I already have," Father said. "As soon as I can find somebody to go to that lot and tell him."
There was a shuck mattress in the harness room on which until now John Powell or one of the other drivers or hostlers under his command always spent the night, mainly as