Reivers, The - William Faulkner [21]
"All right," Boon said, "quick," not even waiting but lifting me bodily across him as he slid under the wheel, the car already rushing back across the field toward home, we talking man-to-man now, mutual in crime, confederate of course but not coeval yet because of my innocence; I already beginning to say What do I do now? You'll have to tell me when once again Boon spoke first and made us equal too: "Have you figgered how to do it? We aint got much time."
"All right," I said. "Go on. Get on back to the house before Aunt Gallic starts hollering." So you see what I mean about Virtue? You have heard—or anyway you will —people talk about evil times or an evil generation. There are no such things. No epoch of history nor generation of human beings either ever was or is or will be big enough to hold the un-virtue of any given moment, any more than they could contain all the air of any given moment; all they can do is hope to be as little soiled as possible during their passage through it. Because what pity that Virtue does not—possibly cannot—take care of its own as Non-virtue does. Probably it cannot: who to the dedicated to Virtue, offer in reward only cold and odorless and tasteless virtue: as compared not only to the bright rewards of sin and pleasure but to the ever watchful unflagging om-niprescient skill—that incredible matchless capacity for invention and imagination—with which even the tottering footsteps of infancy are steadily and firmly guided into the primrose path. Because oh yes, I had matured terrifyingly since that clock struck two minutes ago. It has been my observation that, except in a few scattered cases of what might be called malevolent hyper-prematurity, children, like poets, lie rather for pleasure than profit. Or so I thought I had until then, with a few negligible exceptions involving simple self-defense against creatures (my parents) bigger and stronger than me. But not any more. Or anyway, not now. I was as bent as Boon, and—during the next step anyway—even more culpable. Because (I realised; no: knew; it was obvious; Boon himself admitted it in so many words) I was smarter than Boon. I realised, felt suddenly that same exultant fever-flash which Faustus himself must have experienced: that of we two doomed and irrevocable, I was the leader, I was the boss, the master. Aunt Gallic was already standing on the front gallery, carrying Alexander and yelling.
"Dry up," I said. "Aint dinner ready? The automobile broke down. Boon fixed it. We never had time to get the gasoline and now I have to eat in a hurry and go back and help him fill the tank." I went back to the dining room. Dinner was already on the table. Lessep and Maury were already eating. Aunt Gallic had already dressed them (she had dressed them to go seventeen miles out to Cousin Zack's to spend four days as if they were going to Memphis; I dont know why, unless it was because she didn't have anything else to do between the time Mother and Father left and dinner. Because Maury and Alexander would both have to take a nap before we could leave) but by the front of his blouse, she would have to wash Maury off and dress him again.
Even then, I finished before they did and went back (Aunt Gallic was still yelling, not loud in the house of course. But what could she do, single-handed—and a Negro—against Non-virtue?) across the street to Grandfather's. Ned had probably left for town as soon as the automobile drove off. But he would probably come back for his dinner. He had. We stood in the back yard. He blinked at me. Quite often, most of the time in fact, his eyes had a reddish look, like a fox's. "Why dont you aim to stay out there?" he said.
"I promised some fellows we would slip off tomorrow and try a new fishing hole one of them knows