Intruder in the Dust (26 page)

‘ “But why the pistol?” and he said,

‘ “It was Sat-dy,” and I said,

‘ “Yes, the ninth. But why the pistol?” and then I
understood; I said: “I see. You wear the pistol when you dress up on Saturday just like old Carothers did before he gave it to you:” and he said,

‘ “Sold it to me,” and I said,

‘ “All right, go on,” and he said,

‘ “—got the message to meet him at the store only——” ’ and now his uncle struck the match again and puffed the pipe still talking, talking through the pipe stem with the smoke as though you were watching the words themselves: ‘Only he never got to the store, Crawford met him in the woods sitting on a stump beside the path waiting for him almost before Lucas had left home good and now it was Crawford about the pistol, right off before Lucas could say good afternoon or were Vinson and Mr Workitt glad to get the money or anything, saying “Even if it will still shoot you probably couldn’t hit anything with it” and so you can probably finish it yourself; Lucas said how Crawford finally put up a half dollar that Lucas couldn’t hit the stump from fifteen feet away and Lucas hit it and Crawford gave him the half dollar and they walked on the other two miles toward the store until Crawford told Lucas to wait there, that Mr Workitt was sending a signed receipt for his share of the missing lumber to the store and Crawford would go and fetch it back so Lucas could see it with his own eyes and I said,

‘ “And you didn’t suspicion anything even then?” and he said,

‘ “No. He cussed me so natural.” And at least you can finish that, no need to prove any quarrel between Vinson and Crawford nor rack your brains very deep to imagine what Crawford said and did to have Vinson waiting at the store and then send him in front along the path since no more than this will do it: “All right. I’ve got him. If he still wont tell whose truck that was we’ll beat it out of
him:” because that doesn’t really matter either, enough that the next Lucas saw was Vinson coming down the path from the store in a good deal of a hurry Lucas said but probably what he meant was impatient, puzzled and annoyed both but probably mostly annoyed, probably doing exactly what Lucas was doing: waiting for the other to speak and explain except that Vinson quit waiting first according to Lucas, still walking saying getting as far as “So you changed your mind—” when Lucas said he tripped over something and kind of bucked down onto his face and presently Lucas remembered that he had heard the shot and realised that what Vinson had tripped over was his brother Crawford, then the rest of them were there Lucas said before he even had time to hear them running through the woods and I said,

‘ “I reckon it looked to you right then that you were getting ready to trip pretty bad over Vinson, old Skipworth and Adam Fraser or not” but at least I didn’t say But why didn’t you explain then and so at least Lucas didn’t have to say Explain what to who: and so he was all right—I dont mean Lucas of course, I mean Crawford, no mere child of misfortune he——’ and there it was again and this time he knew what it was, Miss Habersham had done something he didn’t know what, no sound and she hadn’t moved and it wasn’t even that she had got any stiller but something had occurred, not something happened to her from the outside in but something from the inside outward as though she not only hadn’t been surprised by it but had decreed authorised it but she hadn’t moved at all not even to take an extra breath and his uncle hadn’t even noticed that much ‘—but rather chosen and elected peculiar and unique out of man by the gods themselves to prove not to themselves because they had never doubted it but to man by this his lowest common
denominator that he has a soul, driven at last to murder his brother——’

‘He put him in quicksand,’ Miss Habersham said.

‘Yes,’ his uncle said. ‘Ghastly wasn’t it.—by the simple mischance of an old Negro man’s insomnambulism and then having got away with that by means of a plan a scheme so simple and water-tight in its biological and geographical psychology as to be what Chick here would call a natural, then to be foiled here by the fact that four years ago a child whose presence in the world he was not even aware of fell into a creek in the presence of that same Negro insomnambulist because this part we dont really know either and with Jake Montgomery in his present condition we probably never will though that doesn’t really matter either since the fact still remains, why else was he in Vinson’s grave except that in buying the lumber from Crawford (we found that out by a telephone call to the lumber’s ultimate consignee in Memphis this afternoon) Jake Montgomery knew where it came from too since knowing that would have been Jake’s nature and character too and indeed a factor in his middleman’s profit and so when Vinson Crawford’s partner tripped suddenly on death in the woods behind Fraser’s store Jake didn’t need a crystal ball to read that either and so if this be surmise then make the most of it or give Mr Hampton and me a better and we’ll swap, Jake knew about Buddy McCallum’s old war trophy too and I like to think for Crawford’s sake——’ and there it was again and still no outward sign but this time his uncle saw or felt or sensed (or however it was) it too and stopped and even for a second seemed about to speak then in the next one forgot it apparently, talking again: ‘—that maybe Jake named the price of his silence and even collected it or an installment on it perhaps intending all the time to convict
Crawford of the murder, perhaps with his contacts all established to get still more money or perhaps he didn’t like Crawford and wanted revenge or perhaps a purist he drew the line at murder and simply dug Vinson up to load him on the mule and take him in to the sheriff but anyway on the night after the funeral somebody with a conceivable reason for digging Vinson up dug him up, which must have been Jake, and somebody who not only didn’t want Vinson dug up but had a conceivable reason to be watching the someone who would have had a conceivable reason for digging him up, knew that he had been dug up within in—you said it was about ten when you and Aleck Sander parked the truck and it got dark enough for digging up graves about seven that night so that leaves three hours—and that’s what I mean about Crawford,’ his uncle said and this time he noticed that his uncle had even stopped, expecting it and it came but still no sound no movement, the hat immobile and exact the neat precision of the clasped gloves and the handbag on her lap the shoes planted and motionless side by side as if she had placed them into a chalked diagram on the floor: ‘——watching there in the weeds behind the fence seeing himself not merely betrayed out of the blackmail but all the agony and suspense to go through again not to mention the physical labor who since one man already knew that the body couldn’t bear examination by trained policemen, could never know how many others might know or suspect so the body would have to come out of the grave now though at least he had help here whether the help knew it or not so he probably waited until Jake had the body out and was all ready to load it onto the mule (and we found that out too, it was the Gowrie’s plow mule, the same one the twins were riding this morning; Jake borrowed it himself late that Sunday afternoon
and when you guess which Gowrie he borrowed it from you’ll be right: it was Crawford) and he wouldn’t have risked the pistol now anyway anymore than he would have used it if he could, who would rather have paid Jake over again the amount of the blackmail for the privilege of using whatever it was he crushed Jake’s skull with and put him into the coffin and filled the grave back up—and here it is again, the desperate the dreadful urgency, the loneliness the pariah-hood having not only the horror and repudiation of all man against him but having to struggle with the sheer inertia of earth and the terrible heedless rush of time but even beating all that coalition at last, the grave decent again even to the displaced flowers and the evidence of his original crime at last disposed and secure—’ and it would have been again but this time his uncle didn’t pause ‘——then to straighten up at last and for the first time draw a full breath since the moment when Jake had approached him rubbing his thumb against the tips of the same fingers—and then to hear whatever it was that sent him plunging back up the hill then crawling creeping to lie once more panting but this time not merely in rage and terror but in almost incredulous disbelief that one single man could be subject to this much bad luck, watching you three not only undo his work for the second time but double it now since you not only exposed Jake Montgomery but you refilled the grave and even put the flowers back: who couldn’t afford to let his brother Vinson be found in that grave but durst not let Jake Montgomery be found in it when (as he must have known) Hope Hampton got there tomorrow:’ and stopped this time waiting for her to say it and she did:

‘He put his brother in quicksand.’

‘Ah,’ his uncle said. ‘That moment may come to anyone when simply nothing remains to be done with your
brother or husband or uncle or cousin or mother-in-law except destroy them. But you dont put them in quicksand. Is that it?’

‘He put him in quicksand,’ she said with calm and implacable finality, not moving nor stirring except her lips to speak until then she raised her hand and opened the watch pinned to her bosom and looked at it.

‘They haven’t reached Whiteleaf bottom yet,’ his uncle said. ‘But dont worry, he’ll be there, my message might have reached him but no man in this county can possibly escape hearing anything ever told Willy Ingrum under the pledge of secrecy, because there’s nothing else he can do you see because murderers are gamblers and like the amateur gambler the amateur murderer believes first not in his luck but in long shots, that the long shot will win simply because it’s a long shot but besides that, say he already knew he was lost and nothing Lucas could testify about Jake Montgomery or anyone else could harm him further and that his one last slim chance was to get out of the country, or say he knew even that was vain, knew for sure that he was running through the last few pence and pennies of what he could still call freedom, suppose he even knew for certain that tomorrow’s sun would not even rise for him,—what would you want to do first, one last act and statement of your deathless principles before you left your native land for good and maybe even the world for good if your name was Gowrie and your blood and thinking and acting had been Gowrie all your life and you knew or even only believed or even only hoped that at a certain moment in an automobile creeping in low gear through a lonely midnight creek bottom would be the cause and reason for all your agony and frustration and outrage and grief and shame and irreparable loss and that not even a white man but a nigger and you still had
the pistol with at least one of the old original ten German bullets in it.—But dont worry,’ he said quickly: ‘Dont worry about Mr Hampton. He probably wont even draw his pistol, I aint certain in fact that he has one because he has a way of carrying right along with him into all situations maybe not peace, maybe not abatement of the base emotions but at least a temporary stalemate of crude and violent behavior just by moving slow and breathing hard, this happened two or three terms ago back in the twenties, a Frenchman’s Bend lady naming no names at feud with another lady over something which began (we understood) over the matter of a prize cake at a church supper bazaar, whose—the second lady’s—husband owned the still which had been supplying Frenchman’s Bend with whiskey for years bothering nobody until the first lady made official demand on Mr Hampton to go out there and destroy the still and arrest the operator and then in about a week or ten days came in to town herself and told him that if he didn’t she was going to report him to the governor of the state and the president in Washington so Hope went that time, she had not only given him explicit directions but he said there was a path to it knee-deep in places where it had been trodden for years beneath the weight of stopper-full gallon jugs so that you could have followed it even without the flashlight which he had and sure enough there was the still in as nice a location as you could want, cozy and sheltered yet accessible too with a fire burning under the kettle and a Negro tending it who of course didn’t know who owned it nor ran it nor anything about it even before he recognised Hampton’s size and finally even saw his badge: who Hope said offered him a drink first and then did fetch him a gourd of branch water and then made him comfortable sitting against a tree, even chunking the fire up
to dry his wet feet while he waited for the owner to come back, quite comfortable Hope said, the two of them there by the fire in the darkness talking about one thing and another and the Negro asking him from time to time if he wouldn’t like another gourd of water until Hampton said the mockingbird was making so confounded much racket that finally he opened his eyes blinking for a while in the sunlight until he got them focussed and there the mockingbird was on a limb not three feet above his head and before they loaded up the still to move it away somebody had gone to the nearest house and fetched back a quilt to spread over him and a pillow to put under his head and Hope said he noticed the pillow even had a fresh slip on it when he took it and the quilt to Varner’s store to be returned with thanks to whoever owned them and came on back to town. And another time——’

‘I’m not worrying,’ Miss Habersham said.

‘Of course not,’ his uncle said. ‘Because I know Hope Hampton——’

‘Yes,’ Miss Habersham said. ‘I know Lucas Beauchamp.’

‘Oh,’ his uncle said. Then he said, ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘Of course.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s ask Chick to plug in the kettle and we’ll have coffee while we wait, what do you think?’

‘That will be nice,’ Miss Habersham said.