Reivers, The - William Faulkner [37]
"You means the Christmas middle," Ned said. "Maybe I do," the man said. "What is it?" Ned told him. "It's how we done at McCaslin back before the Surrender when old L.Q.C. was alive, and how the Edmonds boy still does. Every spring a middle is streaked off in the best ground on the place, and every stalk of cotton betwixt that middle and the edge of the field belongs to the Christmas fund, not for the boss but for every McCaslin nigger to have a Christmas share of it. That's what a Christmas middle is. Likely you mud-farming folks up here never heard of it." The man looked at Ned awhile. After a while Ned said, "Hee hee hee."
"That's better," the man said. "I thought for a minute me and you was about to misunderstand one another." He said to Boon: "Maybe somebody better guide it."
"Yes," Boon said. "All right," he told me. So I got under the wheel, mud and all. But we didn't move yet. The man said, "I forgot to mention it, so maybe I better. Prices have doubled around here since last year."
"Why?" Boon said. "It's the same car, the same mud-hole; be damned if I dont believe it's even the same mud."
"That was last year. There's more business now. So much more that I cant afford not to go up."
"All right, goddammit," Boon said. "Go on." So we moved, ignominious, at the pace of the mules, on, into the next mudhole without stopping, on and out again. The bridge was just ahead now; beyond it, we could see the road all the way to the edge of the bottom and safety.
"You're all right now," the man said. "Until you come back." Boon was unhooking the log chain while Ned freed the traces and handed the doubletree back up to the man on the mule.
"We aint coming back this way," Boon said.
"I wouldn't neither," the man said. Boon went back to the last puddle and washed some of the mud from his hands and came back and took four dollars from his wallet. The man didn't move.
"It's six dollars," he said.
"Last year it was two dollars," Boon said. "You said it's double now. Double two is four. All right. Here's four dollars."
"I charge a dollar a passenger," the man said. "There was two of you last year. That was two dollars. The price is doubled now. There's three of you. That's six dollars. Maybe you'd rather walk back to Jefferson than pay two dollars, but maybe that boy and that nigger wouldn't."
"And maybe I aint gone up neither," Boon said. "Suppose I dont pay you six dollars. Suppose in fact I dont pay you nothing."
"You can do that too," the man said. "These mules has had a hard day, but I reckon there's still enough git in them to drag that thing back where they got it from."
But Boon had already quit, given up, surrendered. "God damn it," he said, "this boy aint nothing but a child! Sholy for just a little child—"
"Walking back to Jefferson might be lighter for him," the man said, "but it wont be no shorter."
"All right," Boon said, "but look at the other one! When he gets that mud washed off, he aint even white!"
The man looked at distance awhile. Then he looked at Boon. "Son," he said, "both these mules is color-blind."
Chapter 5
Boon had told Ned and me that, once we had conquered Hell Creek bottom, we would be in civilisation; he drew a picture of all the roads from there on cluttered thick as fleas with automobiles. Though maybe it was necessary first to put Hell Creek as far behind us as limbo, or forget-fulness, or at least out of sight; maybe we would not be worthy of civilisation until we had got the Hell Creek mud off. Anyway, nothing happened yet. The man took his sk dollars and went away with his mules and doubletree; I noticed in fact that he didn't return to his little house but went on back through the swamp and vanished, as if the day were over; so did Ned notice it. "He aint a hog," Ned said. "He dont need to be. He's done already made six dollars and it aint even dinnertime yet."
"It is as far as I'm concerned," Boon said. "Bring the lunch too." So we took the lunch box Miss Ballenbaugh had packed for us and the block and tackle