The Essential Faulkner (16 page)

He and Uncle Buck dragged their foot. “I just come to get my nigger,” Uncle Buck said. “Then we got to get on back home.”

Then Miss Sophonsiba said something about a bumble-bee, but he couldn’t remember that. It was too fast and
there was too much of it, the earrings and beads clashing and jingling like little trace chains on a toy mule trotting and the perfume stronger too, like the earrings and beads sprayed it out each time they moved and he watched the roan-colored tooth flick and glint between her lips; something about Uncle Buck was a bee sipping from flower to flower and not staying long anywhere and all that stored sweetness to be wasted on Uncle Buddy’s desert air, calling Uncle Buddy Mister Amodeus like she called Uncle Buck Mister Theophilus, or maybe the honey was being stored up against the advent of a queen and who was the lucky queen and when? “Ma’am?” Uncle Buck said. Then Mr. Hubert said:

“Hah. A buck bee. I reckon that nigger’s going to think he’s a buck hornet, once he lays hands on him. But I reckon what Buck’s thinking about sipping right now is some meat gravy and biscuit and a cup of coffee. And so am I.”

They went into the dining room and ate and Miss Sophonsiba said how seriously now neighbors just a half day’s ride apart ought not to go so long as Uncle Buck did, and Uncle Buck said Yessum, and Miss Sophonsiba said Uncle Buck was just a confirmed roving bachelor from the cradle born and this time Uncle Buck even quit chewing and looked and said, Yes, ma’am, he sure was, and born too late at it to ever change now but at least he could thank God no lady would ever have to suffer the misery of living with him and Uncle Buddy, and Miss Sophonsiba said Ah, that maybe Uncle Buck just ain’t met the woman yet who would not only accept what Uncle Buck was pleased to call misery, but who would make Uncle Buck consider even his freedom a small price to pay, and Uncle Buck said, “Nome. Not yet.”

Then he and Mr. Hubert and Uncle Buck went out to the front gallery and sat down. Mr. Hubert hadn’t even got done taking his shoes off again and inviting Uncle Buck to take his off, when Miss Sophonsiba came out the
door carrying a tray with another toddy on it. “Damnit, Sibbey,” Mr. Hubert said. “He’s just et. He don’t want to drink that now.” But Miss Sophonsiba didn’t seem to hear him at all. She stood there, the roan tooth not flicking now but fixed because she wasn’t talking now, handing the toddy to Uncle Buck until after a while she said how her papa always said nothing sweetened a Missippi toddy like the hand of a Missippi lady and would Uncle Buck like to see how she use to sweeten her papa’s toddy for him? She lifted the toddy and took a sip of it and handed it again to Uncle Buck and this time Uncle Buck took it. He dragged his foot again and drank the toddy and said if Mr. Hubert was going to lay down, he would lay down a while too, since from the way things looked Tomey’s Turl was fixing to give them a long hard race unless Mr. Hubert’s dogs were a considerable better than they used to be.

Mr. Hubert and Uncle Buck went into the house. After a while he got up too and went around to the back yard to wait for them. The first thing he saw was Tomey’s Turl’s head slipping along above the lane fence. But when he cut across the yard to turn him, Tomey’s Turl wasn’t even running. He was squatting behind a bush, watching the house, peering around the bush at the back door and the upstairs windows, not whispering exactly but not talking loud either: “Whut they doing now?”

“They’re taking a nap now,” he said. “But never mind that; they’re going to put the dogs on you when they get up.”

“Hah,” Tomey’s Turl said. “And nem you mind that neither. I got protection now. All I needs to do is to keep Old Buck from ketching me unto I gets the word.”

“What word?” he said. “Word from who? Is Mr. Hubert going to buy you from Uncle Buck?”

“Huh,” Tomey’s Turl said again. “I got more protection than whut Mr. Hubert got even.” He rose to his feet. ‘I gonter tell you something to remember: anytime you wants to git something done, from hoeing out a crop to
getting married, just get the womenfolks to working at it. Then all you needs to do is set down and wait. You member that.”

Then Tomey’s Turl was gone. And after a while he went back to the house. But there wasn’t anything but the snoring coming out of the room where Uncle Buck and Mr. Hubert were, and some more light-sounding snoring coming from upstairs. He went to the springhouse and sat with his feet in the water as Mr. Hubert had been doing, because soon now it would be cool enough for a race. And sure enough, after a while Mr. Hubert and Uncle Buck came out onto the back gallery, with Miss Sophonsiba right behind them with the toddy tray only this time Uncle Buck drank his before Miss Sophonsiba had time to sweeten it, and Miss Sophonsiba told them to get back early, that all Uncle Buck knew of Warwick was just dogs and niggers and now that she had him, she wanted to show him her garden that Mr. Hubert and nobody else had any sayso in. “Yessum,” Uncle Buck said. “I just want to catch my nigger. Then we got to get on back home.”

Four or five niggers brought up the three horses. They could already hear the dogs waiting still coupled in the lane, and they mounted and went on down the lane, toward the quarters, with Uncle Buck already out in front of even the dogs. So he never did know just when and where they jumped Tomey’s Turl, whether he flushed out of one of the cabins or not. Uncle Buck was away out in front on Black John and they hadn’t even cast the dogs yet when Uncle Buck roared, “Gone away! I godfrey, he broke cover then!” and Black John’s feet clapped four times like pistol shots while he was gathering to go out, then he and Uncle Buck vanished over the hill like they had run at the blank edge of the world itself. Mr. Hubert was roaring too: “Gone away! Cast them!” and they all piled over the crest of the hill just in time to see Tomey’s Turl away out across the flat, almost to the woods, and the
dogs streaking down the hill and out onto the flat. They just tongued once and when they came boiling up around Tomey’s Turl it looked like they were trying to jump up and lick him in the face until even Tomey’s Turl slowed down and he and the dogs all went into the woods together, walking, like they were going home from a rabbit hunt. And when they caught up with Uncle Buck in the woods, there was no Tomey’s Turl and no dogs either, nothing but old Jake about a half an hour later, hitched in a clump of bushes with Tomey’s Turl’s coat tied on him for a saddle and near a half bushel of Mr. Hubert’s oats scattered around on the ground that old Jake never even had enough appetite left to nuzzle up and spit back out again. It wasn’t any race at all.

“We’ll get him tonight though,” Mr. Hubert said. “We’ll bait for him. We’ll throw a picquet of niggers and dogs around Tennie’s house about midnight, and we’ll get him.”

“Tonight, hell,” Uncle Buck said. “Me and Cass and that nigger all three are going to be half way home by dark. Ain’t one of your niggers got a fyce or something that will trail them hounds?”

“And fool around here in the woods for half the night too?” Mr. Hubert said. “When I’ll bet you five hundred dollars that all you got to do to catch that nigger is to walk up to Tennie’s cabin after dark and call him?”

“Five hundred dollars?” Uncle Buck said. “Done! Because me and him neither one are going to be anywhere near Tennie’s house by dark. Five hundred dollars!” He and Mr. Hubert glared at one another.

“Done!” Mr. Hubert said.

So they waited while Mr. Hubert sent one of the niggers back to the house on old Jake and in about a half an hour the nigger came back with a little bob-tailed black fyce and a new bottle of whiskey. Then he rode up to Uncle Buck and held something out to him wrapped in a piece of paper. “What?” Uncle Buck said.

“It’s for you,” the nigger said. Then Uncle Buck took it and unwrapped it. It was the piece of red ribbon that had been on Miss Sophonsiba’s neck and Uncle Buck sat there on Black John, holding the ribbon like it was a little water moccasin only he wasn’t going to let anybody see he was afraid of it, batting his eyes fast at the nigger. Then he stopped batting his eyes.

“What for?” he said.

“She just sont hit to you,” the nigger said. “She say to tell you ‘success.’ ”

“She said what?” Uncle Buck said.

“I don’t know, sir,” the nigger said. “She just say ‘success.’ ”

“Oh,” Uncle Buck said. And the fyce found the hounds. They heard them first, from a considerable distance. It was just before sundown and they were not trailing, they were making the noise dogs make when they want to get out of something. They found what that was too. It was a ten-foot-square cotton-house in a field about two miles from Mr. Hubert’s house and all eleven of the dogs were inside it and the door wedged with a chunk of wood. They watched the dogs come boiling out when the nigger opened the door, Mr. Hubert sitting his horse and looking at the back of Uncle Buck’s neck.

“Well, well,” Mr. Hubert said. “That’s something, anyway. You can use them again now. They don’t seem to have no more trouble with your nigger than he seems to have with them.”

“Not enough,” Uncle Buck said. “That means both of them. I’ll stick to the fyce.”

“All right,” Mr. Hubert said. Then he said, “Hell, ’Filus, come on. Let’s go eat supper. I tell you, all you got to do to catch that nigger is—–”

“Five hundred dollars,” Uncle Buck said.

“What?” Mr. Hubert said. He and Uncle Buck looked at each other. They were not glaring now. They were not joking each other either. They sat there in the beginning
of twilight, looking at each other, just blinking a little. “What five hundred dollars?” Mr. Hubert said. “That you won’t catch that nigger in Tennie’s cabin at midnight tonight?”

“That me or that nigger neither ain’t going to be near nobody’s house but mine at midnight tonight.” Now they did glare at each other.

“Five hundred dollars,” Mr. Hubert said. “Done.”

“Done,” Uncle Buck said.

“Done,” Mr. Hubert said.

“Done,” Uncle Buck said.

So Mr. Hubert took the dogs and some of the niggers and went back to the house. Then he and Uncle Buck and the nigger with the fyce went on, the nigger leading old Jake with one hand and holding the fyce’s leash (it was a piece of gnawed plowline) with the other. Now Uncle Buck let the fyce smell Tomey’s Turl’s coat; it was like for the first time now the fyce found out what they were after and they would have let him off the leash and kept up with him on the horses, only about that time the nigger boy began blowing the fox-horn for supper at the house and they didn’t dare risk it.

Then it was full dark. And then—he didn’t know how much later nor where they were, how far from the house, except that it was a good piece and it had been dark for good while and they were still going on, with Uncle Buck leaning down from time to time to let the fyce have another smell of Tomey’s Turl’s coat while Uncle Buck took another drink from the whiskey bottle—they found that Tomey’s Turl had doubled and was making a long swing back toward the house. “I godfrey, we’ve got him,” Uncle Buck said. “He’s going to earth. We’ll cut back to the house and head him before he can den.” So they left the nigger to cast the fyce and follow him on old Jake, and he and Uncle Buck rode for Mr. Hubert’s, stopping on the hills to blow the horses and listen to the fyce down in the
creek bottom where Tomey’s Turl was still making his swing.

But they never caught him. They reached the dark quarters; they could see lights still burning in Mr. Hubert’s house and somebody was blowing the fox-horn again and it wasn’t any boy and he had never heard a fox-horn sound mad before either, and he and Uncle Buck scattered out on the slope below Tennie’s cabin. Then they heard the fyce, not trailing now but yapping, about a mile away, then the nigger whooped and they knew the fyce had faulted. It was at the creek. They hunted the banks both ways for more than an hour, but they couldn’t straighten Tomey’s Turl out. At last even Uncle Buck gave up and they started back toward the house, the fyce riding too now, in front of the nigger on the mule. They were just coming up the lane to the quarters; they could see on along the ridge to where Mr. Hubert’s house was all dark now, when all of a sudden the fyce gave a yelp and jumped down from old Jake and hit the ground running and yelling every jump, and Uncle Buck was down too and had snatched him off the pony almost before he could clear his feet from the irons, and they ran too, on past the dark cabins toward the one where the fyce had treed. “We got him!” Uncle Buck said. “Run around to the back. Don’t holler; just grab up a stick and knock on the back door, loud.”

Afterward, Uncle Buck admitted that it was his own mistake, that he had forgotten when even a little child should have known: not ever to stand right in front of or right behind a nigger when you scare him; but always to stand to one side of him. Uncle Buck forgot that. He was standing facing the front door and right in front of it, with the fyce right in front of him yelling fire and murder every time it could draw a new breath; he said the first he knew was when the fyce gave a shriek and whirled and Tomey’s Turl was right behind it. Uncle Buck said
he never even saw the door open; that the fyce just screamed once and ran between his legs and then Tomey’s Turl ran right clean over him. He never even bobbled; he knocked Uncle Buck down and then caught him before he fell without even stopping, snatched him up under one arm, still running, and carried him along for about ten feet, saying, “Look out of here, old Buck. Look out of here, old Buck,” before he threw him away and went on. By that time they couldn’t even hear the fyce any more at all.

Uncle Buck wasn’t hurt; it was only the wind knocked out of him where Tomey’s Turl had thrown him down on his back. But he had been carrying the whiskey bottle in his back pocket, saving the last drink until Tomey’s Turl was captured, and he refused to move until he knew for certain if it was just whiskey and not blood. So Uncle Buck laid over on his side easy, and he knelt behind him and raked the broken glass out of his pocket. Then they went on to the house. They walked. The nigger came up with the horses, but nobody said anything to Uncle Buck about riding again. They couldn’t hear the fyce at all now. “He was going fast, all right,” Uncle Buck said. “But I don’t believe that even he will catch that fyce, I godfrey, what a night.”