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By Root 4307 0

they might quite possibly take Mother and Father with them. It meant in fact what Boon had already told me twice by exuberant and still unbelieving inadvertence: that the owner of that automobile, and everyone else having or even assuming authority over it, would be three hundred miles from it for anywhere from four days to a week. So all his clumsy machinations to seduce and corrupt me were only corroboration. They were not even cumshaw, lagniappe. He could have taken the car alone, and doubtless would if I had been incorruptible, even knowing that someday he must bring it back or come back himself in order to face lesser music than he would if— when—Grandfather's police caught up with him. Because come back he must Where else could he go, who knew nowhere else, to whom the words, names—Jefferson, McCaslin, De Spain, Compson—were not just home but father and mother both? But some frayed ragtag judgment, some embryo gleam of simple yet-virgin discretion and common sense, persuaded him at least to try me first, to have me by as a kind of hostage. And he didn't need to try, test me first. When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size.

But Boon didn't know this. He must seduce me. And he had so little time: only from the time the train left until dark. He could have started cold, from scratch, tomorrow or next day or any day up to and including Wednesday. But today, now, was his best, with the car visible to all Jefferson, already in motion, already involved in the condition of departure; it was as if the gods themselves had offered him these scot-free hours between eleven-two and sunset, he to scorn, ignore them at his peril. The car came up, Grandfather and Grandmother already in it, with the shoebox of fried chicken and devilled eggs and cake for dinner since there wouldn't be a dining car until they changed to the Limited at the junction at one oclock and Grandmother and Mother both knew Grandfather and Father well enough by this time to know they were not going to wait until one oclock to eat dinner, no matter who was dead. No: Grandmother too, if the bereaved had been anybody but Mother. "No, that's wrong too; Grandmother had a wider range than her son's wife: maybe all Mother would have needed was to be a female. It's not men who cope with death; they resist, try to fight back and get their brains trampled out in consequence; where women just flank it, envelop it in one soft and instantaneous confederation of unresistance like cotton batting or cobwebs, already de-stingered and harmless, not merely reduced to size and usable but even useful like a penniless bachelor or spinster connection always available to fill an empty space or conduct an extra guest down to dinner. Their grips were already tied onto the fenders and Son Thomas had already brought Mother's and Father's out to the street and now we all followed, Mother in her black veil and Father with his black arm band, us following with Aunt Cal-lie carrying Alexander. "Goodbye," Mother said, "goodbye," kissing us veil and all, smelling like she always did but with something black in the smell too, like the thin black veil which really hid nothing, as if more than just a mechanical electric message over the copper wire had come that three hundred miles up from Bay St Louis; oh yes, I could smell it when she kissed me, saying, "You're the big boy, the man now. You must help Aunt Callie with the others, so they wont worry Cousin Louisa," already getting quick into the automobile beside Grandmother, when Boon said,

"I'll have to fill the tank for the trip out to McCaslin after dinner. I thought Lucius could come along now and help me on the way back from the depot."