Light in August

  The wheel, released, seems to rush on with a long sighing sound. He sits motionless in its aftermath, in his cooling sweat, while the sweat pours and pours. The wheel whirls on. It is going fast and smooth now, because it is freed now of burden, of vehicle, axle, all. In the lambent suspension of August into which night is about to fully come, it seems to engender and surround itself with a faint glow like a halo. The halo is full of faces. The faces are not shaped with suffering, not shaped with anything: not horror, pain, not even reproach. They are peaceful, as though they have escaped into an apotheosis; his own is among them. In fact, they all look a little alike, composite of all the faces which he has ever seen. But he can distinguish them one from another: his wife’s; townspeople, members of that congregation which denied him, which had met him at the station that day with eagerness and hunger; Byron Bunch’s; the woman with the child; and that of the man called Christmas. This face alone is not clear. It is confused more than any other, as though in the now peaceful throes of a more recent, a more inextricable, compositeness. Then he can see that it is two faces which seem to strive (but not of themselves striving or desiring it: he knows that, but because of the motion and desire of the wheel itself) in turn to free themselves one from the other, then fade and blend again. But he has seen now, the other face, the one that is not Christmas. ‘Why, it’s …’ he thinks. ‘I have seen it, recently ... Why, it’s that ... boy. With that black pistol, automatic they call them. The one who … into the kitchen where … killed, who fired the ...’ Then it seems to him that some ultimate dammed flood within him breaks and rushes away. He seems to watch it, feeling himself losing contact with earth, lighter and lighter, emptying, floating. ‘I am dying,’ he thinks. ‘I should pray. I should try to pray.’ But he does not. He does not try. ‘With all air, all heaven, filled with the lost and unheeded crying of all the living who ever lived, wailing still like lost children among the cold and terrible stars. … I wanted so little. I asked so little. It would seem ...’ The wheel turns on. It spins now, fading, without progress, as though turned by that final flood which had rushed out of him, leaving his body empty and lighter than a forgotten leaf and even more trivial than flotsam lying spent and still upon the window ledge which has no solidity beneath hands that have no weight; so that it can be now Now.

  It is as though they had merely waited until he could find something to pant with, to be rearmed in triumph and desire with, with this last left of honor and pride and life. He hears above his heart the thunder increase, myriad and drumming. Like a long sighing of wind in trees it begins, then they sweep into sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom dust. They rush past, forwardleaning in the saddles, with brandished arms, beneath whipping ribbons from slanted and eager lances; with tumult and soundless yelling they sweep past like a tide whose crest is jagged with the wild heads of horses and the brandished arms of men like the crater of the world in explosion. They rush past, are gone; the dust swirls skyward sucking, fades away into the night which has fully come. Yet, leaning forward in the window, his bandaged head huge and without depth upon the twin blobs of his hands upon the ledge, it seems to him that he still hears them: the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder of hooves.

  Chapter 21

  THERE lives in the eastern part of the state a furniture repairer and dealer who recently made a trip into Tennessee to get some old pieces of furniture which he had bought by correspondence. He made the journey in his truck, carrying with him, since the truck (it had a housedin body with a door at the rear) was new and he did not intend to drive it faster than fifteen miles an hour, camping equipment to save hotels. On his return home he told his wife of an experience which he had had on the road, which interested him at the time and which he considered amusing enough to repeat. Perhaps the reason why he found it interesting and that he felt that he could make it interesting in the retelling is that he and his wife are not old either, besides his having been away from home (due to the very moderate speed which he felt it wise to restrict himself to) for more than a week. The story has to do with two people, passengers whom he picked up; he names the town, in Mississippi, before he entered Tennessee:

  “I had done decided to get some gas and I was already slowing into the station when I saw this kind of young, pleasantfaced gal standing on the corner, like she was waiting for somebody to come along and offer her a ride. She was holding something in her arms. I didn’t see what it was at first, and I didn’t see the fellow that was with her at all until he come up and spoke to me. I thought at first that I didn’t see him before was because he wasn’t standing where she was. Then I saw that he was the kind of fellow you wouldn’t see the first glance if he was alone by himself in the bottom of a empty concrete swimming pool.

  “So he come up and I said, quick like: ‘I ain’t going to Memphis, if that’s what you want. I am going up past Jackson, Tennessee: And he says,

  “ ‘That’ll be fine. That would just suit us. It would be a accommodation.’ And I says,

  “ ‘Where do you all want to go to?’ And he looked at me, like a fellow that ain’t used to lying will try to think up one quick when he already knows that he likely ain’t going to be believed. ‘You’re just looking around, are you?’ I says.

  “ ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s it. We’re just travelling. Wherever you could take us, it would be a big accommodation.’

  “So I told him to get in. ‘I reckon you ain’t going to rob and murder me.’ He went and got her and come back. Then I saw that what she was carrying was a baby, a critter not yearling size. He made to help her into the back of “the truck and I says, ‘Whyn’t one of you ride up here on the seat?’ and they talked some and then she come and got on the seat and he went back into the filling station and got one of these leatherlooking paper suit cases and put it into the bed and got in too. And here we went, with her on the seat, holding the baby and looking back now and then to see if he hadn’t maybe fell out or something.

  “I thought they was husband and wife at first. I just never thought anything about it, except to wonder how a young, strapping gal like her ever come to take up with him. It wasn’t anything wrong with him. He looked like a good fellow, the kind that would hold a job steady and work at the same job a long time, without bothering anybody about a raise neither, long as they let him keep on working. That was what he looked like. He looked like except when he was at work, he would just be something found. I just couldn’t imagine anybody, any woman, knowing that they had ever slept with him, let alone having anything to show folks to prove it.”

  Ain’t you shamed? his wife says. Talking that way before a lady They are talking in the dark.

  Anyway, I can’t see you blushing any he says. He continues: “I never thought anything about it until that night when we camped. She was sitting up on the seat by me, and I was talking to her, like a fellow would, and after a while it begun to come out how they had come from Alabama. She kept on saying, ‘We come,’ and so I thought she meant her and the fellow in the back. About how they had been on the road nigh eight weeks now. ‘You ain’t had that chap no eight weeks,’ I says. ‘Not if I know color,’ and she said it was just born three weeks ago, down at Jefferson, and I said, “Oh. Where they lynched that nigger. You must have been there then,’ and she clammed up. Like he had done told her not to talk about it. I knowed that’s what it was. So we rode on and then it was coming toward night and I said, ‘We’ll be in a town soon. I ain’t going to sleep in town. But if you all want to go on with me tomorrow, I’ll come back to the hotel for you in the morning about six o’clock,’ and she sat right still, like she was waiting for him to say, and after a while he says,

  “ ‘I reckon with this here truck house you don’t need to worry about hotels,’ and I never said anything and we was coming into the town and he said, ‘Is this here any size town?’

  “ ‘I don’t know,’ I says. ‘I reckon they’ll have a boarding house or something here though.’ And he says,

/>   “ ‘I was wondering if they would have a tourist camp.’ And I never said anything and he said, ‘With tents for hire. These here hotels are high, and with folks that have a long piece to go.’ They hadn’t never yet said where they was going. It was like they didn’t even know themselves, like they was just waiting to see where they could get to. But I didn’t know that, then. But I knowed what he wanted me to say, and that he wasn’t going to come right out and ask me himself. Like if the Lord aimed for me to say it, I would say it, and if the Lord aimed for him to go to a hotel and pay maybe three dollars for a room, he would do that too. So I says,

  “ ‘Well, it’s a warm night. And if you folks don’t mind a few mosquitoes and sleeping on them bare boards in the truck.’ And he says,

  “ ‘Sho. It will be fine. It’ll be mighty fine for you to let her.’ I noticed then how he said her. And I begun to notice how there was something funny and kind of strained about him. Like when a man is determined to work himself up to where he will do something he wants to do and that he is scared to do. I don’t mean it was like he was scared of what might happen to him, but like it was something that he would die before he would even think about doing it if he hadn’t just tried everything else until he was desperate. That was before I knew. I just couldn’t understand what in the world it could be then. And if it hadn’t been for that night and what happened, I reckon I would not have known at all when they left me at Jackson.”

  What was it he aimed to do? the wife says.

  You wait till I come to that part. Maybe I’ll show you, too He continues: “So we stopped in front of the store. He was already jumping out before the truck had stopped. Like he was afraid I would beat him to it, with his face all shined up like a kid trying to do something for you before you change your mind about something you promised to do for him. He went into the store on a trot and came back with so many bags and sacks he couldn’t see over them, so that I says to myself, ‘Look a here, fellow. If you are aiming to settle down permanent in this truck and set up housekeeping.’ Then we drove on and came pretty soon to a likely place where I could drive the truck off the road, into some trees, and he jumps down and runs up and helps her down like she and the kid were made out of glass or eggs. And he still had that look on his face like he pretty near had his mind made up to do whatever it was he was desperated up to do, if only nothing I did or she did beforehand would prevent it, and if she only didn’t notice in his face that he was desperated up to something. But even then I didn’t know what it was.”

  What was it? the wife says

  I just showed you once. You ain’t ready to be showed again, are you?

  I reckon I don’t mind if you don’t. But I still don’t see anything funny in that. How come it took him all that time and trouble, anyway?

  It was because they were not married the husband says. It wasn’t even his child. I didn’t know it then, though. I didn’t find that out until I heard them talking that night by the fire, when they didn’t know I heard, I reckon. Before he had done got himself desperated up all the way. But I reckon he was desperate enough, all right. I reckon he was just giving her one more chance He continues: “So there he was skirmishing around, getting camp ready, until he got me right nervous: him trying to do everything and not knowing just where to begin or something. So I told him to go rustle up some firewood, and I took my blankets and spread them out in the truck. I was a little mad, then, at myself about how I had got into it now and I would have to sleep on the ground with my feet to the fire and nothing under me. So I reckon I was short and grumpy maybe, moving around, getting things fixed, and her sitting with her back to a tree, giving the kid his supper under a shawl and saying ever so often how she was ashamed to inconvenience me and that she aimed to sit up by the fire because she wasn’t tired noway, just riding all day long and not doing anything. Then he came back, with enough wood to barbecue a steer, and she began to tell him and he went to the truck and taken out that suitcase and opened it and taken out a blanket. Then we had it, sho enough. It was like those two fellows that used to be in the funny papers, those two Frenchmen that were always bowing and scraping at the other one to go first, making out like we had all come away from home just for the privilege of sleeping on the ground, each one trying to lie faster and bigger than the next. For a while I was a mind to say, ‘All right. If you want to sleep on the ground, do it. Because be durned if I want to.’ But I reckon you might say that I won. Or that me and him won. Because it wound up by him fixing their blanket in the truck, like we all might have known all the time it would be, and me and him spreading mine out before the fire. I reckon he knew that would be the way of it, anyhow. If they had come all the way from south Alabama like she claimed. I reckon that was why he brought in all that firewood just to make a pot of coffee with and heat up some tin cans. Then we ate, and then I found out.”

  Found out what? What it was he wanted to do?

  Not right then. I reckon she had a little more patience than you He continues: “So we had eaten and I was lying down on the blanket. I was tired, and getting stretched out felt good. I wasn’t aiming to listen, anymore than I was aiming to look like I was asleep when I wasn’t. But they had asked me to give them a ride; it wasn’t me that insisted on them getting in my truck. And if they seen fit to go on and talk without making sho nobody could hear them, it wasn’t any of my business. And that’s how I found out that they were hunting for somebody, following him, or trying to. Or she was, that is. And so all of a sudden I says to myself, ‘Ah-ah. Here’s another gal that thought she could learn on Saturday night what her mammy waited until Sunday to ask the minister. They never called his name. And they didn’t know just which way he had run. And I knew that if they had known where he went, it wouldn’t be by any fault of the fellow that was doing the running. I learned that quick. And so I heard him talking to her, about how they might travel on like this from one truck to another and one state to another for the rest of their lives and not find any trace of him, and her sitting there on the log, holding the chap and listening quiet as a stone and pleasant as a stone and just about as nigh to being moved or persuaded. And I says to myself, ‘Well, old fellow, I reckon it ain’t only since she has been riding on the seat of my truck while you rode with your feet hanging out the back end of it that she has travelled out in front on this trip.’ But I never said anything. I just lay there and them talking, or him talking, not loud. He hadn’t even mentioned marriage, neither. But that’s what he was talking about, and her listening placid and calm, like she had heard it before and she knew that she never even had to bother to say either yes or no to him. Smiling a little she was. But he couldn’t see that.

  “Then he give up. He got up from the log and walked away. But I saw his face when he turned and I knew that he hadn’t give up. He knew that he had just give her one more chance and that now he had got himself desperated up to risking all. I could have told him that he was just deciding now to do what he should have done in the first place. But I reckon he had his own reasons. Anyway he walked off into the dark and left her sitting there, with her face kind of bent down a little and that smile still on it. She never looked after him, neither. Maybe she knew he had just gone off by himself to get himself worked up good to what she might have been advising him to do all the time, herself, without saying it in out and out words, which a lady naturally couldn’t do; not even a lady with a Saturday night family.

  “Only I don’t reckon that was it either. Or maybe the time and place didn’t suit her, let alone a audience. After a while she got up and looked at me, but I never moved, and then she went and climbed into the truck and after a while I heard her quit moving around and I knew that she had done got fixed to sleep. And I lay there—I had done got kind of waked up myself, now—and it was a right smart while. But I knew that he was somewhere close, waiting maybe for the fire to die down or for me to get good to sleep. Because, sho enough, just about the time the fire had died down good, I heard him come up, quiet as
a cat, and stand over me, looking down at me, listening. I never made a sound; I don’t know but I might have fetched a snore or two for him. Anyway, he goes on toward the truck, walking like he had eggs under his feet, and I lay there and watched, him and I says to myself, ‘Old boy, if you’d a just done this last night, you’d a been sixty miles further south than you are now, to my knowledge. And if you’d a done it two nights ago, I reckon I wouldn’t ever have laid eyes on either one of you.’ Then I got a little worried. I wasn’t worried about him doing her any harm she didn’t want done to her. In fact, I was pulling for the little cuss. That was it. I couldn’t decide what I had better do when she would begin to holler. I knew that she would holler, and if I jumped up and run to the truck, it would scare him off, and if I didn’t come running, he would know that I was awake and watching him all the time, and he’d be scared off faster than ever. But I ought not to worried. I ought to have known that from the first look I’d taken at her and at him.”