Light in August (37 page)

“I dont think that you could do anything that would be very evil, Byron, no matter how it looked to folks. But are you going to undertake to say just how far evil extends into the appearance of evil? just where between doing and appearing evil stops?”

“No,” Byron says. Then he moves slightly; he speaks as if he too were waking: “I hope not. I reckon I am trying to do the right thing by my lights.”—‘And that,’ Hightower thinks, ‘is the first lie he ever told me. Ever told anyone, man or woman, perhaps including himself.’ He looks across the desk at the stubborn, dogged, sober face that has not yet looked at him. ‘Or maybe it is not lie yet because he does not know himself that it is so.’ He says:

“Well.” He speaks now with a kind of spurious brusqueness which, flabbyjowled and darkcaverneyed, his face belies. “That is settled, then. You’ll take her out there, to his house, and you’ll see that she is comfortable and you’ll see that she is not disturbed until this is over. And then you’ll tell that man—Burch, Brown—that she is here.”

“And he’ll run,” Byron says. He does not look up, yet through him there seems to go a wave, of exultation, of triumph, before he can curb and hide it, when it is too late to try. For the moment he does not attempt to curb it; backthrust too in his hard chair, looking for the first time at the minister, with a face confident, and bold and suffused. The other meets his gaze steadily.

“Is that what you want him to do?” Hightower says. They sit so in the lamplight. Through the open window comes the hot, myriad silence of the breathless night. “Think what you are doing. You are attempting to come between man and wife.”

Byron has caught himself. His face is no longer triumphant. But he looks steadily at the older man. Perhaps he tried to catch his voice too. But he cannot yet. “They aint man and wife yet,” he says.

“Does she think that? Do you believe that she will say that?” They look at one another. “Ah, Byron, Byron. What are a few mumbled words before God, before the steadfastness of a woman’s nature? Before that child?”

“Well, he may not run. If he gets that reward, that money. Like enough he will be drunk enough on a thousand dollars to do anything, even marry.”

“Ah, Byron, Byron.”

“Then what do you think we—I ought to do? What do you advise?”

“Go away. Leave Jefferson.” They look at one another. “No,” Hightower says. “You dont need my help. You are already being helped by someone stronger than I am.”

For a moment Byron does not speak. They look at one another, steadily. “Helped by who?”

“By the devil,” Hightower says.

‘And the devil is looking after
him
, too,’ Hightower thinks. He is in midstride, halfway home, his laden small market basket on his arm. ‘Him, too. Him, too,’ he thinks, walking. It is hot. He is in his shirt sleeves, tall, with thin blackclad legs and spare, gaunt arms and shoulders, and with that flabby and obese stomach like some monstrous pregnancy. The shirt is white, but it is not fresh; his collar is soiled, as is the white lawn cravat carelessly knotted, and he has not shaved for two or three days. His panama hat is soiled, and beneath it, between hat and skull against the heat, the edge and corners of a soiled handkerchief protrude. He has been to town to do his semiweekly marketing, where, gaunt, misshapen, with his gray stubble and his dark spectacleblurred eyes and his blackrimmed hands and the rank manodor of his sedentary and unwashed flesh, he entered the one odorous and cluttered store which he patronised and paid with cash for what he bought.

“Well, they found that nigger’s trail at last,” the proprietor said.

“Negro?” Hightower said. He became utterly still, in the act of putting into his pocket the change from his purchases.

“That bah—fellow; the murderer. I said all the time that he wasn’t right. Wasn’t a white man. That there was something
funny about him. But you cant tell folks nothing until——”

“Found him?” Hightower said.

“You durn right they did. Why, the fool never even had sense enough to get out of the county. Here the sheriff has been telephoning all over the country for him, and the black son—uh was right here under his durn nose all the time.”

“And they have…….” He leaned forward against the counter, above his laden basket. He could feel the counter edge against his stomach. It felt solid, stable enough; it was more like the earth itself were rocking faintly, preparing to move. Then it seemed to move, like something released slowly and without haste, in an augmenting swoop, and cleverly, since the eye was tricked into believing that the dingy shelves ranked with flyspecked tins, and the merchant himself behind the counter, had not moved; outraging, tricking sense. And he thinking, ‘I wont! I wont! I have bought immunity. I have paid. I have paid.’

“They aint caught him yet,” the proprietor said. “But they will. The sheriff taken the dogs out to the church before daylight this morning. They aint six hours behind him. To think that the durn fool never had no better sense…….show he is a nigger, even if nothing else…….” Then the proprietor was saying, “Was that all today?”

“What?” Hightower said. “What?”

“Was that all you wanted?”

“Yes. Yes. That was…….” He began to fumble in his pocket, the proprietor watching him. His hand came forth, still fumbling. It blundered upon the counter, shedding
coins. The proprietor stopped two or three of them as they were about to roll off the counter.

“What’s this for?” the proprietor said.

“For the…….” Hightower’s hand fumbled at the laden basket. “For——”

“You already paid.” The proprietor was watching him, curious. “That’s your change here, that I just gave you. For the dollar bill.”

“Oh,” Hightower said. “Yes. I……. I just——” The merchant was gathering up the coins. He handed them back. When the customer’s hand touched his it felt like ice.

“It’s this hot weather,” the proprietor said. “It does wear a man out. Do you want to set down a spell before you start home?” But Hightower apparently did not hear him. He was moving now, toward the door, while the merchant watched him. He passed through the door and into the street, the basket on his arm, walking stiffly and carefully, like a man on ice. It was hot; heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality, a quality of living and palpitant chiaroscuro. Someone spoke to him in passing; he did not even know it. He went on, thinking   
And him too. And him too
   walking fast now, so that when he turned the corner at last and entered that dead and empty little street where his dead and empty small house waited, he was almost panting. ‘It’s the heat,’ the top of his mind was saying to him, reiterant, explanatory. But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: ‘I wont. I wont. I have bought
immunity.’ It is like words spoken aloud now: reiterative, patient, justificative: ‘I paid for it. I didn’t quibble about the price. No man can say that. I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling.’ The street shimmers and swims; he has been sweating, but now even the air of noon feels cool upon him. Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rush fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I
will
not! I
will
not!

When, sitting in the study window in the first dark, he saw Byron pass into and then out of the street lamp, he sat suddenly forward in his chair. It was not that he was surprised to see Byron there, at that hour. At first, when he first recognised the figure, he thought   
Ah. I had an idea he would come tonight. It is not in him to support even the semblance of evil
   It was while he was thinking that that he started, sat forward: for an instant after recognising the approaching figure in the full glare of the light he believed that he was mistaken, knowing all the while that he could not be, that it could be no one except Byron, since he was already turning in to the gate.

Tonight Byron is completely changed. It shows in his walk, his carriage; leaning forward Hightower says to himself   
As though he has learned pride, or defiance
   Byron’s head is erect, he walks fast and erect; suddenly Hightower says, almost aloud: ‘He has done something. He has taken a step.’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, leaning in the dark window, watching the figure pass swiftly from sight
beyond the window and in the direction of the porch, the entrance, and where in the next moment Hightower hears his feet and then his knock. ‘And he didn’t offer to tell me,’ he thinks. ‘I would have listened, let him think aloud to me.’ He is already crossing the room, pausing at the desk to turn on the light. He goes to the front door.

“It’s me, Reverend,” Byron says.

“I recognised you,” Hightower says. “Even though you didn’t stumble on the bottom step this time. You have entered this house on Sunday night, but until tonight you have never entered it without stumbling on the bottom step, Byron.” This was the note upon which Byron’s calls usually opened: this faintly overbearing note of levity and warmth to put the other at his ease, and on the part of the caller that slow and countrybred diffidence which is courtesy. Sometimes it would seem to Hightower that he would actually hale Byron into the house by a judicious application of pure breath, as though Byron wore a sail.

But this time Byron is already entering, before Hightower has finished his sentence. He enters immediately, with that new air born somewhere between assurance and defiance. “And I reckon you are going to find that you hate it worse when I dont stumble than when I do,” Byron says.

“Is that a hope, or is it a threat, Byron?”

“Well, I dont mean it to be a threat,” Byron says.

“Ah,” Hightower says. “In other words, you can offer no hope. Well, I am forewarned, at least. I was forewarned as soon as I saw you in the street light. But at least you are going to tell me about it. What you have already done, even if you didn’t see fit to talk about it before hand.” They are moving
toward the study door. Byron stops; he looks back and up at the taller face.

“Then you know,” he says. “You have already heard.” Then, though his head has not moved, he is no longer looking at the other. “Well,” he says. He says: “Well, any man has got a free tongue. Woman too. But I would like to know who told you. Not that I am ashamed. Not that I aimed to keep it from you. I come to tell you myself, when I could.”

They stand just without the door to the lighted room. Hightower sees now that Byron’s arms are laden with bundles, parcels that look like they might contain groceries. “What?” Hightower says. “What have you come to tell me?——But come in. Maybe I do know what it is already. But I want to see your face when you tell me. I forewarn you too, Byron.” They enter the lighted room. The bundles are groceries: he has bought and carried too many like them himself not to know. “Sit down,” he says.

“No,” Byron says. “I aint going to stay that long.” He stands, sober, contained, with that air compassionate still, but decisive without being assured, confident without being assertive: that air of a man about to do something which someone dear to him will not understand and approve, yet which he himself knows to be right just as he knows that the friend will never see it so. He says: “You aint going to like it. But there aint anything else to do. I wish you could see it so. But I reckon you cant. And I reckon that’s all there is to it.”

Across the desk, seated again, Hightower watches him gravely. “What have you done, Byron?”

Byron speaks in that new voice: that voice brief, terse,
each word definite of meaning, not fumbling. “I took her out there this evening. I had already fixed up the cabin, cleaned it good. She is settled now. She wanted it so. It was the nearest thing to a home he ever had and ever will have, so I reckon she is entitled to use it, especially as the owner aint using it now. Being detained elsewhere, you might say. I know you aint going to like it. You can name lots of reasons, good ones. You’ll say it aint his cabin to give to her. All right. Maybe it aint. But it aint any living man or woman in this country or state to say she cant use it. You’ll say that in her shape she ought to have a woman with her. All right. There is a nigger woman, one old enough to be sensible, that dont live over two hundred yards away. She can call to her without getting up from the chair or the bed. You’ll say, but that aint a white woman. And I’ll ask you what will she be getting from the white women in Jefferson about the time that baby is due, when here she aint been in Jefferson but a week and already she cant talk to a woman ten minutes before that woman knows she aint married yet, and as long as that durn scoundrel stays above ground where she can hear of him now and then, she aint going to be married. How much help will she be getting from the white ladies about that time? They’ll see that she has a bed to lay on and walls to hide her from the street alright. I dont mean that. And I reckon a man would be justified in saying she dont deserve no more than that, being as it wasn’t behind no walls that she got in the shape she is in. But that baby never done the choosing. And even if it had, I be durn if any poor little tyke, having to face what it will have to face in this world, deserves——deserves more than——better than——But I reckon you know what
I mean. I reckon you can even say it.” Beyond the desk Hightower watches him while he talks in that level, restrained tone, not once at a loss for words until he came to something still too new and nebulous for him to more than feel. “And for the third reason. A white woman out there alone. You aint going to like that. You will like that least of all.”