Lycurgus's mother, Uncle Parsham's daughter, was cooking dinner now; the kitchen smelled of the boiling vegetables. But she had kept my breakfast warm—fried sidemeat, grits, hot biscuits and buttermilk or sweet milk or coffee; she untied my riding-glove from my hand so I could eat, a little surprised that I had never tasted coffee since Lycurgus had been having it on Sunday morning since he was two years old. And I thought I was just hungry until I went to sleep right there in the plate until Lycurgus half dragged, half carried me to his bed in the lean-to. And, as Ned said, Mr Sam Caldwell was some Sam Caldwell; Everbe and Otis got down from the caboose of a freight train which stopped that long at Par-sham a few minutes before noon. It was a through freight, not intended to stop until it reached Florence, Alabama, or some place like that. I dont know how much extra coal it took to pump up the air brakes to stop it dead still at Parsham and then fire the boiler enough to regain speed and make up the lost time. Some Sam Caldwell. Twenty-three skiddoo, as Otis said.
So when the loud unfamiliar voice waked me and Lycurgus's mother tied the riding-sock back on from where she had put it away when I went to sleep in my plate, and I went outside, there they all were: a surrey tied outside the gate and Uncle Parsham standing again at the top of his front steps, still wearing his hat, and Ned sitting on the next-to-bottom step and Lycurgus standing in the angle between steps and gallery as if the three of them were barricading the house; and in the yard facing them Everbe (yes, she brought it. I mean, Ned's grip) and Otis and Boon and the one who was doing the loud talking—a man almost as big as Boon and almost as ugly, with a red face and a badge and a bolstered pistol stuck in his hind pocket, standing between Boon and Everbe, who'was still trying to pull away from the hand which was holding her arm.
"Yep," he was saying, "I know old Possum Hood. And more than that, old Possum Hood knows me, dont you, boy?"
"We all knows you here, Mr Butch," Uncle Parsham said with no inflection whatever.
"If any dont, it's just a oversight and soon corrected," Butch said. "If your womenfolks are too busy dusting and sweeping to invite us in the house, tell them to bring some chairs out here so this young lady can set down. You, boy," he told Lycurgus, "hand down two of them chairs on the gallery there where me and you"—he was talking at Everbe now—"can set in the cool and get acquainted while Sugar Boy"—he meant Boon. I dont know how I knew it—"takes these boys down to look at that horse. Huh?" Still holding Everbe's elbow, he would tilt her gently away from him until she was almost off balance; then, a little faster though still not a real jerk, pull her back again, she still trying to get loose; now she used her other hand, pushing at his wrist. And now I was watching Boon. "You sure I aint seen you somewhere? at Birdie Watts's maybe? Where you been hiding, anyway? a good-looking gal like you?" Now Ned got up, not fast.
"Morning, Mr Boon," he said. "You and Mr Shurf want Lucius to bring the horse out?" Butch stopped tilting Everbe. He still held her though.
"Who's he?" he said. "As a general rule, we dont take to strange niggers around here. We don't object though, providing they notify themselves and then keep their mouths shut."
"Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi," Ned said. "You got too much name," Butch said. "You want something quick and simple to answer to around here until you can raise a white mush-tash and goat whisker like old Possum there, and earn it. We dont care where you come from neither; all you'll need here is just somewhere to go back to. But you'll likely do all right; at least you got sense enough to recognise Law when you see it."
"Yes sir," Ned said. "I'm acquainted with Law. We got it back in Jefferson too." He said to Boon: "You want the horse?"
"No," Everbe said, she had managed to free her arm; she moved quickly away; she could have done it sooner by just saying Boon: which was what Butch—deputy, whatever he was—wanted her to do, and we all knew that too. She moved, quickly for a big girl, on until she had me between her and Butch, holding my arm now; I could feel her hand trembling a little as she gripped me. "Come on, Lucius. Show us the way." She said, her voice tense: a murmur, almost passionate: "How's your hand? Does it hurt?"
"It's all right," I said.
"You sure? You'd tell me? Does wearing that sock on it help?"
"It's all right." I said. "I'd tell you." We went back to the stable that way, Everbe almost dragging me to keep me between her and Butch. But it was no good; he simply walked me off; I could smell him now—sweat and whiskey —and now I saw the top of the pint bottle in his other hind pocket; he (Butch) holding her elbow again and suddenly I was afraid, because I knew I didn't—and I wasn't sure Boon did—know Everbe that well yet. No: not afraid, that wasn't the word; not afraid, because we— Boon alone—would have taken the pistol away from him and then whipped him, but afraid for Everbe and Uncle Parsham and Uncle Parsham's home and family when it happened. But I was more than afraid. I was ashamed that such a reason for fearing for Uncle Parsham, who had to live here, existed; hating (not Uncle Parsham doing the hating, but me doing it) it all, hating all of us for being the poor frail victims of being alive, having to be alive— hating Everbe for being the vulnerable helpless lodestar victim; and Boon for being the vulnerable and helpless victimised; and Uncle Parsham and Lycurgus for being where they had to, couldn't help but watch white people behaving exactly as white people bragged that only Negroes behaved—just as I had hated Otis for telling me about Everbe in Arkansas and hated Everbe for being that helpless lodestar for human debasement which he had told me about and hated myself for listening, having to hear about it, learn about it, know about it; hating that such not only was, but must be, had to be if living was to continue and mankind be a part of it.
And suddenly I was anguished with homesickness, wrenched and wrung and agonised with it: to be home, not just to retrace but to retract, obliterate: made Ned take the horse back to wherever and whoever and however he had got it and get Grandfather's automobile and take it back to Jefferson, in reverse if necessary, travelling backward to unwind, ravel back into No-being, Never-being, that whole course of dirt roads, mudholes, the man and the color-blind mules, Miss Ballenbaugh and Alice and Ephum, so that, as far as I was concerned, they had never been; when sudden and quiet and plain inside me something said Why dont you? Because I could; I needed only say to Boon, "We're going home," and Ned would have returned the horse and my own abject confession would have the automobile located and recovered by the police at the price of merely my shame. Because I couldn't now. It was too late. Maybe yesterday, while I was still a child, but not now. I knew too much, had seen too much. I was a child no longer now; innocence and childhood were forever lost, forever gone from me. And Everbe was loose again. I had missed seeing how she did it this time: only that she was free, facing him; she said something inaudible, quick; anyway he was not even touching her now, just looking down at her, grinning.
"Sure, sure." he said. "Thrash around a little; maybe I like that too; makes it look a little better to old Sugar Boy too. All right, boy," he said to Ned. "Let's see that horse."
"You stay here," Ned told me. "Me and Lycurgus will get him." So I stood, next to Everbe at the fence; she was holding my arm again, her hand still shaking a little. Ned and Lycurgus led the horse out. Ned was already looking toward us; he said quickly: "Where's that other one?"
"Dont tell me you got two of them," Butch said. But I knew what Ned meant. So did Everbe. She turned quickly. "Otis!" she said. But he was nowhere in sight. "Run," Ned told Lycurgus. "If he aint got into the house yet, maybe you can cut him off. Tell him his aunt wants him. And you stay right with him." Lycurgus didn't even wait to say Yes sir: he just gave the lead rope to Ned and departed running. The rest of us stood along the fence —Everbe trying for immobility since that was all she had to find effiacement in, but too big for it like the doe is too big for the plum thicket which is all she has available for safety; Boon furious and seething, restraining himself who never before had restrained himself from anything. Not from fear; I tell you, he was not afraid of that gun and badge: he could and would have taken them both away from Butch and, in a kind of glory, tossed the pistol on the ground halfway between them and then given Butch the first step toward it; and only half from the loyalty which would shield me—and my family (his family)— from the result of such a battle, no matter who won it. Because the other half was chivalry: to shield a woman, even a whore, from one of the predators who debase police badges by using them as immunity to prey on her helpless kind. And a little further along, dissociated though present. Uncle Parsham, the patrician (he bore in his Christian name the patronymic of the very land we stood on), the aristocrat of us all and judge of us all.