Reivers, The - William Faulkner [26]
"Sir?" I said. "Yes sir. I mean, no sir."
"Well, which? Are you going to stay out here, or are you going back with Boon?"
"Yes sir," I said. "I'm going back. Cousin Ike told me to ask you if I could." And Aunt Callie yelled again (she had never really stopped except for maybe that one long breath when Cousin Zack told her to) but that was all: she still yelling and Cousin Zack saying,
"Stop it, stop it, stop it. I cant hear my ears. If Ike dont bring him out tomorrow, I'll send in for him Monday." I went back to the car; Boon had the engine already running.
"Well I'll be damned," he said, not loud but with complete respect, even awe a little.
"Come on," I said. "Get away from here." We went on, smoothly but quick, faster, back down the drive toward the gate.
"Maybe we're wasting something, just spending it on a automobile trip," he said. "Maybe I ought to use you for something that's got money in it."
"Just get on," I said. Because how could I tell him, how say it to him? I'm sick and tired of lying, of having to lie. Because I knew, realised now that it had only begun; there would be no end to it, not only no end to the lies I would continue to have to tell merely to protect the ones I had already told, but that I would never be free of the old worn-out ones I had already used and exhausted.
We went back to town. We went fast this time; if there was scenery now, nobody in that automobile used any of it. It was going on five oclock now. Boon spoke, tense and urgent but quite composed: "We got to let it cool awhile. They saw me drive out of town taking you folks out to McCaslin; they'll see me come back with just you and me alone; they'll expect to see me put the car back in Boss's carriage house. They got to see me and you, but separate, just walking around like it wasn't nothing going on." But how could I say that either? No. Let's go now. If I've got to tett more lies, at least let it be to strangers. He was still talking: "—car. What was that he said about were we coming back through town before we left?"
"What? Who said?"
"Ned. Back there just before we left town."
"I dont remember," I said. "What about the car?"
"Where to leave it. While I take a santer 'around the Square and you go home and get a clean shirt or whatever you'll need. I had to unload all the stuff out at McCaslin, remember. Yours too. I mean, just in case some meddling busybody is hanging around just on the happen-chance." We both knew who he meant.
"Why cant you lock it in the carriage house?"
"I aint got the key," he said. "All I got is the lock. Boss took the key away from me this morning and unlocked the lock and give the key to Mr Ballott to keep until he gets back. I'm supposed to run the car in as soon as I get back from McCaslin and lock the lock shut and Boss will telegraph Mr Ballott what train to unlock the door so I can meet them."
"Then we'll just have to risk it," I said.
"Yes, we'll have to risk it. Maybe with Boss and Miss Sarah gone, even Delphine aint going to see him again until Monday morning." So we risked it Boon drove into the carriage house and got his grip and coat down from where he had hidden them in the loft and reached up again and dragged down a folded tarpaulin and put his grip and coat in on the floor of the back seat. The gasoline can was all ready: a brand-new five-gallon can which Grandfather had had the tinsmith who made the toolbox more or less rebuild until it was smell-tight, since Grandmother already didn't like the smell of gasoline, which we had never used yet because the automobile had never been this far before; the funnel and the chamois strainer were already in the toolbox with the tire tools and jack and wrenches that came with the car, and the lantern and axe and shovel and coil of barbed wire and the block and tackle which Grandfather had added, along with the tin bucket to fill the radiator when we passed creeks or barrow pits. He put the can (it was full; maybe that was what took him that extra tune before he came for us) in the back and opened the tarpaulin, not