Reivers, The - William Faulkner [91]
"Why dont you bathe then?" I said.
"We aint talking about me. We're talking about you." So I went to the bathroom and bathed and put my clothes back on and went to the dining room. And Ned was right. Last night there had been just the one table, the end of it cleared and set up for us. Now there were seven or eight people, all men (but not aliens, foreigners, mind you; in fact they were strangers only to us who didn't live in Par-sham. None of them had got down from pullmans in silk underclothes and smoking Upmann cigars; we had not opened the cosmopolitan Parsham winter sporting season here in the middle of May. Some were in overalls, all but one were tieless: people like us except that they lived here, with the same passions and hopes and dialect, enjoying— Butch too—our inalienable constitutional right of free will and private enterprise which has made our country what it is, by holding a private horse race between two local horses; if anyone, committee or individual, from no further away than the next county, had come to interfere or alter or stop it or even participate beyond betting on the horse of his choice, all of us, partisans of either horse, would have risen as one man and repulsed him). And besides the waiter, I saw the back of a maid in uniform just going through the swing door to the pantry or kitchen, and there were two men (one of them had the necktie) at our table talking to Boon and Miss Reba. But Everbe wasn't there, and for an instant, second, I had a horrified vision of Butch finally waylaying and capturing her by force, ambushing her in the corridor perhaps while she was carrying the chair to mine and Boon's door with my laundered clothes on it. But only for a second, and too fantastical; if she had washed for me last night, she had probably, doubtless been up quite late washing for herself and maybe Miss Reba too, and was still asleep. So I went on to the table, where one of the men said,
"This the boy going to ride him? Looks more like you got him taped up for a fist fight?"
"Yes," Boon said, shoving the dish of ham toward me as-I sat down; Miss Reba passed the eggs and grits across.
"He cut himself eating peas last night."
"Haw haw," the man said. "Anyway, he'll be carrying less weight this time."
"Sure," Boon said. "Unless he eats the knives and forks and spoons while we aint watching him and maybe takes along one of the fire dogs for a snack."
"Haw haw," the man said. "From the way he run here last winter, he's going to need a good deal more than just less weight. But then, that's the secret, huh?"
"Sure," Boon said; he was eating again now. "Even if we never had no secret, we would have to act like we did."
"Haw haw," the man said again; they got up. "Well, good luck, anyway. That might be as good for that horse as less weight." The maid came, bringing me a glass of milk and carrying a plate of hot biscuits. It was Minnie, in a fresh apron and cap where Miss Reba had either loaned or hired her to the hotel to help out, with her ravished and unforgiving face, but calm and quiet now; evidently she had rested, even slept some even if she hadn't forgiven anybody yet. The two strangers went away.
"You see?" Miss Reba said to nobody. "All we need is the right horse and a million dollars to bet."
"You heard Ned Sunday night," Boon said. "You were the one that believed him. I mean, decided to believe him. I was different. After that God damned automobile vanished and all we had was the horse, I had to believe him."
"All right," Miss Reba said. "Keep your shirt on."
"And you can stop worrying too," Boon said to me. "She just went to die depot in case them dogs caught him again last night and Ned brought him in to the train. Or so she said—"
"Did Ned find him?" I said.
"Naw," Boon said. "Ned's in the kitchen now. You can ask him—or so she said. Yes. S<> maybe you had better worry some, after all. Miss Reba got shut of that tin badge for you, but that other one—what's his name: Caldwell— was on that train this morning."
"What are you talking about now?"