Reivers, The - William Faulkner [23]
And after a while it began to look like Ned was right. Half past one came (which time Alexander and Maury could have spent sleeping) and no Boon; then Maury and Alexander could have slept another half an hour on top of that; Ned had said "I tole you so" so many times by now that Aunt Callie had quit yelling about Boon and yelled at Ned himself until he went and sat in the scuppernong arbor; she was just about to send me to look for Boon and the automobile when he drove up. When I saw him, I was terrified. He had changed his clothes. I mean, he had shaved and he had on not merely a white shirt but a clean one, with a collar and necktie; without doubt when he got out of the car to load us in he would have a coat over his arm and the first thing Aunt Callie would see when she reached the car would be his grip on the floor. Horror, but rage too (not at Boon: I discovered, realised that at once) at myself, who should have known, anticipated this, having known (I realised this too now) all my life that who dealt with Boon dealt with a child and had not merely to cope with but even anticipate its unpredictable vagaries; not the folly of Boon's lack of the simplest rudiments of common sense, but the shame of my failure to anticipate, assume he would lack them, saying, crying to Whoever it is you indict in such crises Dont You realise I aint but eleven years old? How do You expect me to do all this at just eleven years old? Dont You see You are putting on me more than I can handle? But in the next second, rage at Boon too: not that his stupidity had now wrecked for good our motor trip to Memphis (that's right, Memphis as our destination has never been mentioned, either to you or between Boon and me. Why should it have been? Where else did we have to go? Indeed, where else could anyone in north Mississippi want to go? Some aged and finished creature on his or her deathbed might contemplate or fear a more distant destination, but they were not Boon and me). In fact, at this moment I wished I had never heard of Memphis or Boon or automobiles either; I was on Colonel Sartoris's side now, to have abolished Mr Buffaloe and his dream both from the face of the earth at the instant of its inception. My rage at Boon was for having destroyed, cast down with that one childish blow like the blind kick of an infant's foot, the precarious and frantic ramshackle of my lies and false promises and false swearing; revealing the clay-footed sham for which I had bartered—nay, damned —my soul; that, or maybe the exposing of the true shoddy worthlessness of the soul I had been vain enough to assume the devil would pay anything for: like losing your maidenhead through some shabby inattentive mischance, such as not watching where you were going, innocent even of pleasure, let alone of sin. Then even the rage was gone. Nothing remained, nothing. I didn't want to go anywhere, be anywhere. I mean, I didn't want to be is anywhere. If I had to be something, I wanted it to be was. I said, and I believed it (I know I believed it because I have said it a thousand times since and I still believe it and I hope to say it a thousand times more in my h'fe and I defy anyone to say I will not believe it) / will never lie again. It's too much trouble. It's too much like trying to prop a feather upright in a saucer of sand. There's never any end to it. You never get any rest. You're never finished. You never even use up the sand so that you can quit trying.
Only, nothing happened. Boon got out, without any coat. Ned was already loading our grips and baskets and bundles into the car. He said grimly: "Hee hee hee." He said, "Come on, get started so you can break down and still have time to fix it and get back to town before dark." So he was talking to Boon now. He said, "Are you coming back to town before you leaves?"
Then Boon said: "Leave for where?"
"Leave to eat supper," Ned said. "Where does anybody with good sense leave to do at sundown?"
"Oh,"