The Unvanquished (4 page)

“Who is it?”

“Quick!” I said. “Hurry!”

“I’m scared,” Ringo said.

“You, Bayard!” Granny said. “Louvinia!”

We held the musket between us like a log of wood. “Do you want to be free?” I said. “Do you want to be free?”

We carried it that way, like a log, one at each end, running. We ran through the grove toward the road and ducked down behind the honeysuckle just as the horse came around the curve. We didn’t hear anything else, maybe because of our own breathing or maybe because we were not expecting to hear anything else. We didn’t look again either; we were too busy cocking the musket. We had practiced before, once or twice when Granny was not there and Joby would come in to examine it and change the cap on the nipple. Ringo held it up and I took the barrel in both hands, high, and drew myself up and shut my legs about it and slid down over the hammer until it clicked. That’s what we were doing, we were too busy to look, the musket was already riding up across Ringo’s back as he stooped, his hands on his knees and panting “Shoot the bastud! Shoot him!” and then the sights came level and as I shut my eyes I saw the man and the bright horse vanish in smoke. It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brushfire and I heard the horse scream but I didn’t see anything else; it was Ringo wailing, “Great God, Bayard! Hit’s the whole army!”

The house didn’t seem to get any nearer, it just hung there in front of us floating and increasing slowly in size like something in a dream, and I could hear
Ringo moaning behind me and further back still the shouts and the hooves. But we reached the house at last; Louvinia was just inside the door, with Father’s old hat on her headrag and her mouth open, but we didn’t stop. We ran on into the room where Granny was standing beside the righted chair, her hand at her chest. “We shot him, Granny!” I cried. “We shot the bastud!”

“What?” She looked at me, her face the same color as her hair almost, her spectacles shining against her hair above her forehead. “Bayard Sartoris, what did you say?”

“We killed him, Granny! At the gate. Only there was the whole army too and we never saw them and now they are coming—” She sat down, she dropped into the chair, hard, her hand at her breast. But her voice was strong as ever:

“What’s this? You, Marengo! What have you done?”

“We shot the bastud, Granny!” Ringo said. “We kilt him!” Then Louvinia was there too, with her mouth still open too and her face like somebody had thrown ashes at her. Only it didn’t need her face; we heard the hooves jerking and sliding in the dirt and one of them hollering, “Get around to the back there, some of you!” and we looked up and saw them ride past the window—the blue coats and the guns. Then we heard the boots and spurs on the porch.

“Granny!” I said. “Granny!” But it seemed like none of us could move at all, we just had to stand there
looking at Granny with her hand at her breast and her face looking like she had died and her voice like she had died too:

“Louvinia! What is this? What are they trying to tell me?” That’s how it happened, like when once the musket decided to go off, all that was to occur afterward tried to rush into the sound of it all at once. I could still hear it, my ears were still ringing, so that Granny and Ringo and I all seemed to be talking far away. Then she said, “Quick! Here!” and then Ringo and I were squatting with our chins under our knees, on either side of her against her legs, with the hard points of the chair rockers jammed into our backs and her skirts spread over us like a tent, and the heavy feet coming in and (Louvinia told us afterward) the Yankee sergeant shaking the musket at Granny and saying,

“Come on, grandma. Where are they? We saw them run in here.”

We couldn’t see, we just squatted in a kind of faint gray light and that smell of Granny that her clothes and bed and room all had and Ringo’s eyes looking like two plates of chocolate pudding and maybe both of us thinking how Granny had never whipped us for anything in our lives except lying, and that even when it wasn’t even a told lie but just keeping quiet, how she would whip us first and then make us kneel down and kneel down with us herself to ask the Lord to forgive us.

“You are mistaken,” she said. “There are no children in this house nor on this place. There is no one here
at all except my servant and myself and the people in the quarters.”

“You mean you deny ever having seen this gun before?”

“I do.” It was that quiet; she didn’t move at all, sitting bolt upright and right on the edge of the chair to keep her skirts spread over us. “If you doubt me, you may search the house.”

“Dont you worry about that, I’m going to. Send some of the boys upstairs,” he said. “If you find any locked doors, you know what to do. And tell them fellows out back to comb and curry the barn and the cabins too.”

“You wont find any locked doors,” Granny said. “At least let me ask you——”

“Dont you ask anything, grandma. You set still. Better for you if you had done a little asking before you sent them little devils out with this gun.”

“Was there.……” We could hear her voice die away and then speak again, like she was behind it with a switch, making it talk. “Is he.…… it.…… the one who——”

“Dead? Hell, yes. Broke his back and we had to shoot him.”

“Had to——you had——shoot.……” I didn’t know horrified astonishment either, but Ringo and Granny and I were all three it.

“Yes, by God. Had to shoot him. The best damn horse in the whole army. The whole damn regiment betting on him for next Sunday——” He said some
more, but we were not listening. We were not breathing either, glaring at one another in the gray gloom and I was almost shouting too, until Granny said it:

“Didn’t——they didn’t——Oh, thank God! Thank God!”

“We didn’t——” Ringo said.

“Hsh!” I said. Because we didn’t have to say it, it was like we had had to hold our breaths for a long time without knowing it, and that now we could let go and breathe again. Maybe that was why we never heard the other man when he came in at all, it was Louvinia that saw that too—a colonel, with a bright short beard and hard bright gray eyes, who looked at Granny sitting in the chair with her hand at her breast and took off his hat. Only he was talking to the sergeant.

“What’s this?” he said. “What’s going on here, Harrison?”

“This is where they run to,” the sergeant said. “I’m searching the house.”

“Ah,” the colonel said. He didn’t sound mad at all. He just sounded cold and short and pleasant. “By whose authority?”

“Well, somebody here fired on United States troops. I guess this is authority enough.” We could just hear the sound; it was Louvinia that told us how he shook the musket and banged the butt on the floor.

“And killed one horse,” the colonel said.

“It was a United States horse. I heard the general say myself that if he had enough horses, he wouldn’t always care whether there was anybody to ride them or not.
And so here we are, riding peaceful along the road, not bothering nobody yet, and these two little devils.…… The best horse in the army, the whole damn regiment betting——”

“Ah,” the colonel said. “I see. Well? Have you found them?”

“We aint yet. But these rebels are like rats when it comes to hiding. She says that there aint even any children here.”

“Ah,” said the colonel. And Louvinia said how he looked at Granny now for the first time. She said how she could see his eyes going from Granny’s face down to where her skirt was spread and looking at her skirt for a whole minute and then going back to her face. And that Granny gave him look for look while she lied. “Do I understand, madam, that there are no children in or about this house?”

“There are none, sir,” Granny said.

Louvinia said he looked back at the sergeant. “There are no children here, sergeant. Evidently the shot came from somewhere else. You may call the men in and mount them.”

“But, Colonel, we saw them two kids run in here. All of us saw them——”

“Didn’t you just hear this lady say there are no children here? Where are your ears, sergeant? Or do you really want the artillery to overtake us, with a creek bottom not five miles away to be got over?”

“Well, sir, you’re colonel. But if it was me was colonel——”

“Then doubtless I should be Sergeant Harrison. In which case I think I should be more concerned about getting another horse to protect my wager next Sunday than over a grandchildless old lady—” Louvinia said his eyes just kind of touched Granny now and flicked away “—alone in a house which in all probability (and for her pleasure and satisfaction I am ashamed to say I hope) I shall never see again. Mount your men and get along with you.”

We squatted there, not breathing, and heard them leave the house; we heard the sergeant calling the men up from the barn and we heard them ride away. But we did not move yet, because Granny’s body had not relaxed at all and so we knew that the colonel was still there even before he spoke:—the voice short, brisk, hard, with that something of laughing behind it: “So you have no grandchildren. What a pity, in a place like this which two boys would enjoy—sports, fishing, game to shoot at, perhaps the most exciting game of all and none the less so for being possibly a little rare this near the house. And with a gun, a very dependable weapon, I see.……” Louvinia said how the sergeant had set the musket in the corner and how the colonel looked at it now, and now we didn’t breathe. “——though I understand that this weapon does not belong to you? Which is just as well. Because if it were your weapon (which it is not) and you had two grandsons, or say a grandson and a negro playfellow (which you have not), and if this were the first time, which it is not, someone next time might be seriously hurt.
But what am I doing? trying your patience by keeping you in that uncomfortable chair while I waste my time delivering a homily suitable only for a lady with grandchildren—or one grandchild and a negro companion.” Now he was about to go too, we could tell it even beneath the skirt; this time it was Granny herself:

“There is little of refreshment I can offer you, sir. But if a glass of cool milk after your ride—”

Only for a long time he didn’t answer at all; Louvinia said how he just looked at Granny with his hard bright eyes and that hard bright silence full of laughing. “No, no,” he said. “I thank you. You are taxing yourself beyond mere politeness and into sheer bravado.”

“Louvinia,” Granny said, “conduct the gentleman to the diningroom and serve him with what we have.”

He was out of the room now because Granny began to tremble now, trembling and trembling but not relaxing yet; we could hear her panting now. And we breathed too now, looking at one another. “We never killed him!” I whispered. “We never killed him! We haven’t killed anybody at all!” So it was Granny’s body that told us again, only this time I could almost feel him looking at Granny’s spread skirt where we crouched while he thanked her for the milk and told her his name and regiment.

“Perhaps it is just as well that you have no grandchildren,” he said. “Since doubtless you wish to live in peace. I have three boys myself, you see. And I have not even had time to become a grandparent.” And now there wasn’t any laughing behind his voice and Louvinia
said he was standing there in the door, with the brass bright on his dark blue and his hat in his hand and his bright beard and hair, looking at Granny without the laughing now: “I wont apologise; fools cry out at wind or fire. But permit me to say and hope that you will never have anything worse than this to remember us by.” Then he was gone. We heard his spurs in the hall and on the porch, then the horse, dying away, ceasing, and then Granny let go. She went back into the chair with her hand at her breast and her eyes closed and the sweat on her face in big drops; all of a sudden I began to holler, “Louvinia! Louvinia!” But she opened her eyes then and looked at me; they were looking at me when they opened. Then she looked at Ringo for a moment, but she looked back at me, panting.

“Bayard,” she said. “What was that word you used?”

“Word?” I said. “When, Granny?” Then I remembered; I didn’t look at her and she lying back in the chair, looking at me and panting.

“Dont repeat it. You cursed. You used obscene language, Bayard.”

I didn’t look at her. I could see Ringo’s feet too. “Ringo did too,” I said. She didn’t answer, but I could feel her looking at me; I said suddenly: “And you told a lie. You said we were not here.”

“I know it,” she said. She moved. “Help me up.” She got out of the chair, holding to us. We didn’t know what she was trying to do. We just stood there while she held to us and to the chair and let herself down to
her knees beside it. It was Ringo that knelt first. Then I knelt too while she asked the Lord to forgive her for telling the lie. Then she rose; we didn’t have time to help her. “Go to the kitchen and get a pan of water and the soap,” she said. “Get the new soap.”

It was late, as if time had slipped up on us while we were still caught, enmeshed by the sound of the musket and were too busy to notice it; the sun shone almost level into our faces while we stood at the edge of the back gallery, spitting, rinsing the soap from our mouths turn and turn about from the gourd dipper, spitting straight into the sun. For a while, just by breathing we could blow soap bubbles, but soon it was just the taste of the spitting. Then even that began to go away although the impulse to spit did not, while away to the north we could see the cloudbank, faint and blue and faraway at the base and touched with copper sun along the crest. When Father came home in the spring, we tried to understand about mountains. At last he pointed out the cloudbank to tell us what mountains looked like. So ever since then Ringo believed that the cloudbank was Tennessee.

“Yonder they,” he said, spitting. “Yonder hit. Tennessee, where Marse John use to fight um at. Looking mighty far, too.”

“Too far to go just to fight Yankees,” I said, spitting too. But it was gone now—the suds, the glassy weightless iridescent bubbles; even the taste of it.