Light in August (11 page)

They reached the boarding house at last and entered it. It was as though she felt foreboding too, watching him as they stood in the hall, speaking for the first time: “What is it them men were trying to tell you? What is it about that burned house?”

“It wasn’t anything,” he said, his voice sounding dry and light to him. “Just something about Miss Burden got hurt in the fire.”

“How got hurt? How bad hurt?”

“I reckon not bad. Maybe not hurt at all. Just folks talking, like as not. Like they will.” He could not look at her, meet her eyes at all. But he could feel her watching him, and he seemed to hear a myriad sounds: voices, the hushed tense voices about the town, about the square through which he had hurried her, where men met among the safe and familiar lights, telling it. The house too seemed filled with familiar sounds, but mostly with inertia, a terrible procrastination as he gazed down the dim hall, thinking   
Why dont she come on. Why dont she come on
   Then Mrs Beard did come: a comfortable woman, with red arms and untidy grayish hair. “This here is Miz Burch,” he said. His expression was almost a glare: importunate, urgent. “She just got to town from Alabama. She is looking to meet her husband here. He aint come yet. So I brought her here, where she can rest some before she gets mixed up in the excitement of town. She aint been in town or talked to anybody yet, and so I thought maybe you could fix her up a place to get rested some before she has to hear talking and…….” His voice ceased, died, recapitulant, urgent, importunate. Then he believed that she had got his meaning. Later he knew that it was not because
of his asking that she refrained from telling what he knew that she had also heard, but because she had already noticed the pregnancy and that she would have kept the matter hidden anyway. She looked at Lena, once, completely, as strange women had been doing for four weeks now.

“How long does she aim to stay?” Mrs Beard said.

“Just a night or two,” Byron said. “Maybe just tonight. She’s looking to meet her husband here. She just got in, and she aint had time to ask or inquire——” His voice was still recapitulant, meaningful. Mrs Beard watched him now. He thought that she was still trying to get his meaning. But what she was doing was watching him grope, believing (or about to believe) that his fumbling had a different reason and meaning. Then she looked at Lena again. Her eyes were not exactly cold. But they were not warm.

“I reckon she aint got any business trying to go anywhere right now,” she said.

“That’s what I thought,” Byron said, quickly, eagerly. “With all the talk and excitement she might have to listen to, after not hearing no talk and excitement……. If you are crowded tonight, I thought she might have my room.”

“Yes,” Mrs Beard said immediately. “You’ll be taking out in a few minutes, anyway. You want her to have your room until you get back Monday morning?”

“I aint going tonight,” Byron said. He did not look away. “I wont be able to go this time.” He looked straight into cold, already disbelieving eyes, watching her in turn trying to read his own, believing that she read what was there instead of what she believed was there. They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and
chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

“Oh,” Mrs Beard said. She looked at Lena again. “Aint she got any acquaintances in Jefferson?”

“She dont know nobody here,” Byron said. “Not this side of Alabama. Likely Mr Burch will show up in the morning.”

“Oh,” Mrs Beard said. “Where are you going to sleep?” But she did not wait for an answer. “I reckon I can fix her up a cot in my room for tonight. If she wont object to that.”

“That’ll be fine,” Byron said. “It’ll be fine.”

When the supper bell rang, he was all prepared. He had found a chance to speak to Mrs Beard. He had spent more time in inventing that lie than any yet. And then it was not necessary; that which he was trying to shield was its own protection. “Them men will be talking about it at the table,” Mrs Beard said. “I reckon a woman in her shape   (
and having to find a husband named Burch at the same time
   she thought with dry irony) aint got no business listening to any more of man’s devilment. You bring her in later, after they have all et.” Which Byron did. Lena ate heartily again, with that grave and hearty decorum, almost going to sleep in her plate before she had finished.

“It’s right tiring, travelling is,” she explained.

“You go set in the parlor and I’ll fix your cot,” Mrs Beard said.

“I’d like to help,” Lena said. But even Byron could see that she would not; that she was dead for sleep.

“You go set in the parlor,” Mrs Beard said. “I reckon Mr
Bunch wont mind keeping you company for a minute or two.”

“I didn’t dare leave her alone,” Byron says. Beyond the desk Hightower has not moved. “And there we was setting, at the very time when it was all coming out down town at the sheriff’s office, at the very time when Brown was telling it all; about him and Christmas and the whiskey and all. Only the whiskey wasn’t much news to folks, not since he had took Brown for a partner. I reckon the only thing folks wondered about was why Christmas ever took up with Brown. Maybe it was because like not only finds like; it cant even escape from being found by its like. Even when it’s just like in one thing, because even them two with the same like was different. Christmas dared the law to make money, and Brown dared the law because he never even had sense enough to know he was doing it. Like that night in the barbershop and him drunk and talking loud until Christmas kind of run in and dragged him out. And Mr Maxey said ‘What do you reckon that was he pretty near told on himself and that other one?’   and Captain McLendon said ‘I dont reckon about it at all.’   and Mr Maxey said ‘Do you reckon they was actually holding up somebody else’s liquor truck?’   and McLendon said ‘Would it surprise you to hear that that fellow Christmas hadn’t done no worse than that in his life?’

“That’s what Brown was telling last night. But everybody knew about that. They had been saying for a good while that somebody ought to tell Miss Burden. But I reckon there wasn’t anybody that wanted to go out there and tell her, because nobody knowed what was going to happen then. I reckon there are folks born here that never even saw her. I
dont reckon I’d wanted to go out there to that old house where nobody ever saw her unless maybe it was folks in a passing wagon that would see her now and then standing in the yard in a dress and sunbonnet that some nigger women I know wouldn’t have wore for its shape and how it made her look. Or maybe she already knew it. Being a Yankee and all, maybe she didn’t mind. And then couldn’t nobody have known what was going to happen.

“And so I didn’t dare leave her alone until she was in bed. I aimed to come out and see you last night, right away. But I never dared to leave her. Them other boarders was passing up and down the hall and I didn’t know when one of them would take a notion to come in and start talking about it and tell the whole thing; I could already hear them talking about it on the porch, and her still watching me with her face all fixed to ask me again about that fire. And so I didn’t dare leave her. And we was setting there in the parlor and she couldn’t hardly keep her eyes open then, and me telling her how I would find him for her all right, only I wanted to come and talk to a preacher I knowed that could help her to get in touch with him. And her setting there with her eyes closed while I was telling her, not knowing that I knew that her and that fellow wasn’t married yet. She thought she had fooled everybody. And she asked me what kind of a man it was that I aimed to tell about her to and I told her and her setting there with her eyes closed so that at last I said ‘You aint heard a word I been saying’ and she kind of roused up, but without opening her eyes, and said ‘Can he still marry folks?’ and I said ‘What? Can he what?’ and she said ‘Is he still enough of a preacher to marry folks?’ ”

Hightower has not moved. He sits erect behind the desk, his forearms parallel upon the armrests of the chair. He wears neither collar nor coat. His face is at once gaunt and flabby; it is as though there were two faces, one imposed upon the other, looking out from beneath the pale, bald skull surrounded by a fringe of gray hair, from behind the twin motionless glares of his spectacles. That part of his torso visible above the desk is shapeless, almost monstrous, with a soft and sedentary obesity. He sits rigid; on his face now that expression of denial and flight has become definite. “Byron,” he says; “Byron. What is this you are telling me?”

Byron ceases. He looks quietly at the other, with an expression of commiseration and pity. “I knowed you had not heard yet. I knowed it would be for me to tell you.”

They look at one another. “What is it I haven’t heard yet?”

“About Christmas. About yesterday and Christmas. Christmas is part nigger. About him and Brown and yesterday.”

“Part negro,” Hightower says. His voice sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight. He does not move. For a moment longer he does not move. Then there seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial, and Byron sees that the still, flaccid, big face is suddenly slick with sweat. But his voice is light and calm. “What about Christmas and Brown and yesterday?” he says.

The sound of music from the distant church has long since ceased. Now there is no sound in the room save the steady shrilling of insects and the monotonous sound of Byron’s voice. Beyond the desk Hightower sits erect. Between his parallel and downturned palms and with his lower body concealed by the desk, his attitude is that of an eastern idol.

“It was yesterday morning. There was a countryman coming to town in a wagon with his family. He was the one that found the fire. No: he was the second one to get there, because he told how there was already one fellow there when he broke down the door. He told about how he come into sight of the house and he said to his wife how it was a right smart of smoke coming out of that kitchen, and about how the wagon come on and then his wife said ‘That house is afire.’ And I reckon maybe he stopped the wagon and they set there in the wagon for a while, looking at the smoke, and I reckon that after a while he said ‘It looks like it is.’ And I reckon it was his wife that made him get down and go and see. ‘They dont know it’s afire’ she said, I reckon. ‘You go up there and tell them’. And he got out of the wagon and went up onto the porch and stood there, hollering ‘Hello. Hello’ for a while. He told how he could hear the fire then, inside the house, and then he hit the door a lick with his shoulder and went in and then he found the one that had found that fire first. It was Brown. But the countryman didn’t know that. He just said it was a drunk man in the hall that looked like he had just finished falling down the stairs, and the countryman said ‘Your house is afire, mister’ before he realised how drunk the man was. And he told how the
drunk man kept on saying how there wasn’t nobody upstairs and that the upstairs was all afire anyway and there wasn’t any use trying to save anything from up there.

“But the countryman knew there couldn’t be that much fire upstairs because the fire was all back toward the kitchen. And besides, the man was too drunk to know, anyway. And he told how he suspected there was something wrong from the way the drunk man was trying to keep him from going upstairs. So he started upstairs, and the drunk fellow trying to hold him back, and he shoved the drunk man away and went on up the stairs. He told how the drunk man tried to follow him, still telling him how it wasn’t anything upstairs, and he said that when he come back down again and thought about the drunk fellow, he was gone. But I reckon it was some time before he remembered to think about Brown again. Because he went on up the stairs and begun hollering again, opening the doors, and then he opened the right door and he found her.”

He ceases. Then there is no sound in the room save the insects. Beyond the open window the steady insects pulse and beat, drowsy and myriad. “Found her,” Hightower says. “It was Miss Burden he found.” He does not move. Byron does not look at him. He might be contemplating his hands upon his lap while he talks.

“She was lying on the floor. Her head had been cut pretty near off; a lady with the beginning of gray hair. The man said how he stood there and he could hear the fire and there was smoke in the room itself now, like it had done followed him in. And how he was afraid to try to pick her up and carry her out because her head might come clean off. And then he
said how he run back down the stairs again and out the front without even noticing that the drunk fellow was gone, and down to the road and told his wife to whip the team on to the nearest telephone and call for the sheriff too. And how he run back around the house to the cistern and he said he was already drawing up a bucket of water before he realised how foolish that was, with the whole back end of the house afire good now. So he run back into the house and up the stairs again and into the room and jerked a cover off the bed and rolled her onto it and caught up the corners and swung it onto his back like a sack of meal and carried it out of the house and laid it down under a tree. And he said that what he was scared of happened. Because the cover fell open and she was laying on her side, facing one way, and her head was turned clean around like she was looking behind her. And he said how if she could just have done that when she was alive, she might not have been doing it now.”