Go Down, Moses

  His aunt’s husband was waiting for him—an old man, as tall as he was, but lean, almost frail, carrying a tin pail in one hand and a covered plate in the other; they too sat in the shade beside the branch a short distance from where the others were opening their dinner pails. The bucket contained a fruit jar of buttermilk packed in a clean damp towsack. The covered dish was a peach pie, still warm. “She baked hit fer you dis mawin,” the uncle said. “She say fer you to come home.” He didn’t answer, bent forward a little, his elbows on his knees, holding the pie in both hands, wolfing at it, the syrupy filling smearing and trickling down his chin, blinking rapidly as he chewed, the whites of his eyes covered a little more by the creeping red. “Ah went to yo house last night, but you want dar. She sont me. She wants you to come on home. She kept de lamp burnin all last night fer you.”

  “Ah’m awright,” he said.

  “You aint awright. De Lawd guv, and He tuck away. Put yo faith and trust in Him. And she kin help you.”

  “Whut faith and trust?” he said. “Whut Mannie ever done ter Him? Whut He wanter come messin wid me and——”

  “Hush!” the old man said. “Hush!”

  Then the trucks were rolling again. Then he could stop needing to invent to himself reasons for his breathing, until after a while he began to believe he had forgot about breathing since now he could not hear it himself above the steady thunder of the rolling logs; whereupon as soon as he found himself believing he had forgotten it, he knew that he had not, so that instead of tipping the final log onto the skidway he stood up and cast his cant-hook away as if it were a burnt match and in the dying reverberation of the last log’s rumbling descent he vaulted down between the two slanted tracks of the skid, facing the log which still lay on the truck. He had done it before—taken a log from the truck onto his hands, balanced, and turned with it and tossed it onto the skidway, but never with a stick of this size, so that in a complete cessation of all sound save the pulse of the exhaust and the light free-running whine of the disengaged saw since every eye there, even that of the white foreman, was upon him, he nudged the log to the edge of the truckframe and squatted and set his palms against the underside of it. For a time there was no movement at all. It was as if the unrational and inanimate wood had invested, mesmerised the man with some of its own primal inertia. Then a voice said quietly: “He got hit. Hit’s off de truck,” and they saw the crack and gap of air, watching the infinitesimal straightening of the braced legs until the knees locked, the movement mounting infinitesimally through the belly’s insuck, the arch of the chest, the neck cords, lifting the lip from the white clench of teeth in passing, drawing the whole head backward and only the bloodshot fixity of the eyes impervious to it, moving on up the arms and the straightening elbows until the balanced log was higher than his head. “Only he aint gonter turn wid dat un,” the same voice said. “And when he try to put hit back on de truck, hit gonter kill him.” But none of them moved. Then—there was no gathering of supreme effort—the log seemed to leap suddenly backward over his head of its own volition, spinning, crashing and thundering down the incline; he turned and stepped over the slanting track in one stride and walked through them as they gave way and went on across the clearing toward the woods even though the foreman called after him: “Rider!” and again: “You, Rider!”

  At sundown he and the dog were in the river swamp four miles away—another clearing, itself not much larger than a room, a hut, a hovel partly of planks and partly of canvas, an unshaven white man standing in the door beside which a shotgun leaned, watching him as he approached, his hand extended with four silver dollars on the palm. “Ah wants a jug,” he said.

  “A jug?” the white man said. “You mean a pint. This is Monday. Aint you all running this week?”

  “Ah laid off,” he said. “Whar’s my jug?” waiting, looking at nothing apparently, blinking his bloodshot eyes rapidly in his high, slightly back-tilted head, then turning, the jug hanging from his crooked middle finger against his leg, at which moment the white man looked suddenly and sharply at his eyes as though seeing them for the first time—the eyes which had been strained and urgent this morning and which now seemed to be without vision too and in which no white showed at all—and said,

  “Here. Gimme that jug. You dont need no gallon. I’m going to give you that pint, give it to you. Then you get out of here and stay out. Dont come back until—” Then the white man reached and grasped the jug, whereupon the other swung it behind him, sweeping his other arm up and out so that it struck the white man across the chest.

  “Look out, white folks,” he said. “Hit’s mine. Ah done paid you.”

  The white man cursed him. “No you aint. Here’s your money. Put that jug down, nigger.”

  “Hit’s mine,” he said, his voice quiet, gentle even, his face quiet save for the rapid blinking of the red eyes. “Ah done paid for hit,” turning on, turning his back on the man and the gun both, and recrossed the clearing to where the dog waited beside the path to come to heel again. They moved rapidly on between the close walls of impenetrable cane-stalks which gave a sort of blondness to the twilight and possessed something of that oppression, that lack of room to breathe in, which the walls of his house had had. But this time, instead of fleeing it, he stopped and raised the jug and drew the cob stopper from the fierce duskreek of uncured alcohol and drank, gulping the liquid solid and cold as ice water, without either taste or heat until he lowered the jug and the air got in. “Hah,” he said. “Dat’s right. Try me. Try me, big boy. Ah gots something hyar now dat kin whup you.”

  And, once free of the bottom’s unbreathing blackness, there was the moon again, his long shadow and that of the lifted jug slanting away as he drank and then held the jug poised, gulping the silver air into his throat until he could breathe again, speaking to the jug: “Come on now. You always claim you’s a better man den me. Come on now. Prove it.” He drank again, swallowing the chill liquid tamed of taste or heat either while the swallowing lasted, feeling it flow solid and cold with fire, past then enveloping the strong steady panting of his lungs until they too ran suddenly free as his moving body ran in the silver solid wall of air he breasted. And he was all right, his striding shadow and the trotting one of the dog travelling swift as those of two clouds along the hill; the long cast of his motionless shadow and that of the lifted jug slanting across the slope as he watched the frail figure of his aunt’s husband toiling up the hill.

  “Dey tole me at de mill you was gone,” the old man said. “Ah knowed whar to look. Come home, son. Dat ar cant help you.”

  “Hit done awready hope me,” he said. “Ah’m awready home. Ah’m snakebit now and pizen cant hawm me.”

  “Den stop and see her. Leff her look at you. Dat’s all she axes: just leff her look at you—” But he was already moving. “Wait!” the old man cried. “Wait!”

  “You cant keep up,” he said, speaking into the silver air, breasting aside the silver solid air which began to flow past him almost as fast as it would have flowed past a moving horse. The faint frail voice was already lost in the night’s infinitude, his shadow and that of the dog scudding the free miles, the deep strong panting of his chest running free as air now because he was all right.

  Then, drinking, he discovered suddenly that no more of the liquid was entering his mouth. Swallowing, it was no longer passing down his throat, his throat and mouth filled now with a solid and unmoving column which without reflex or revulsion sprang, columnar and intact and still retaining the mold of his gullet, outward glinting in the moonlight, splintering, vanishing into the myriad murmur of the dewed grass. He drank again. Again his throat merely filled solidly until two icy rills ran from his mouth-corners; again the intact column sprang silvering, glinting, shivering, while he panted the chill of air into his throat, the jug poised before his mouth while he spoke to it: “Awright. Ah’m ghy try you again. Soon as you makes up yo mind to stay whar I puts you, Ah’ll leff you alone.” He drank, filling his gullet for the
third time and lowered the jug one instant ahead of the bright intact repetition, panting, indrawing the cool of air until he could breathe. He stoppered the cob carefully back into the jug and stood, panting, blinking, the long cast of his solitary shadow slanting away across the hill and beyond, across the mazy infinitude of all the night-bound earth. “Awright,” he said. “Ah just misread de sign wrong. Hit’s done done me all de help Ah needs. Ah’m awright now. Ah doan needs no mo of hit.”

  He could see the lamp in the window as he crossed the pasture, passing the black-and-silver yawn of the sandy ditch where he had played as a boy with empty snuff-tins and rusted harness-buckles and fragments of trace-chains and now and then an actual wheel, passing the garden patch where he had hoed in the spring days while his aunt stood sentry over him from the kitchen window, crossing the grassless yard in whose dust he had sprawled and crept before he learned to walk. He entered the house, the room, the light itself, and stopped in the door, his head back-tilted a little as if he could not see, the jug hanging from his crooked finger, against his leg. “Unc Alec say you wanter see me,” he said.

  “Not just to see you,” his aunt said. “To come home, whar we kin help you.”

  “Ah’m awright,” he said. “Ah doan needs no help.”

  “No,” she said. She rose from the chair and came and grasped his arm as she had grasped it yesterday at the grave. Again, as on yesterday, the forearm was like iron under her hand. “No! When Alec come back and tole me how you had wawked off de mill and de sun not half down, Ah knowed why and whar. And dat cant help you.”

  “Hit done awready hope me. Ah’m awright now.”

  “Dont lie to me,” she said. “You aint never lied to me. Dont lie to me now.”

  Then he said it. It was his own voice, without either grief or amazement, speaking quietly out of the tremendous panting of his chest which in a moment now would begin to strain at the walls of this room too. But he would be gone in a moment.

  “Nome,” he said, “Hit aint done me no good.”

  “And hit cant! Cant nothing help you but Him! Ax Him! Tole Him about hit! He wants to hyar you and help you!”

  “Efn He God, Ah dont needs to tole Him. Efn He God, He awready know hit. Awright. Hyar Ah is. Leff Him come down hyar and do me some good.”

  “On yo knees!” she cried. “On you knees and ax Him!” But it was not his knees on the floor, it was his feet. And for a space he could hear her feet too on the planks of the hall behind him and her voice crying after him from the door: “Spoot! Spoot!”—crying after him across the moon-dappled yard the name he had gone by in his childhood and adolescence, before the men he worked with and the bright dark nameless women he had taken in course and forgotten until he saw Mannie that day and said, “Ah’m thu wid all dat,” began to call him Rider.

  It was just after midnight when he reached the mill. The dog was gone now. This time he could not remember when nor where. At first he seemed to remember hurling the empty jug at it. But later the jug was still in his hand and it was not empty, although each time he drank now the two icy runnels streamed from his mouth-corners, sopping his shirt and overalls until he walked constantly in the fierce chill of the liquid tamed now of flavor and heat and odor too even when the swallowing ceased. “Sides that,” he said, “Ah wouldn’t thow nothin at him. Ah mout kick him efn he needed hit and was close enough. But Ah wouldn’t ruint no dog chunkin hit.”

  The jug was still in his hand when he entered the clearing and paused among the mute soaring of the moon-blond lumber-stacks. He stood in the middle now of the unimpeded shadow which he was treading again as he had trod it last night, swaying a little, blinking about at the stacked lumber, the skidway, the piled logs waiting for tomorrow, the boiler-shed all quiet and blanched in the moon. And then it was all right. He was moving again. But he was not moving, he was drinking, the liquid cold and swift and tasteless and requiring no swallowing, so that he could not tell if it were going down inside or outside. But it was all right. And now he was moving, the jug gone now and he didn’t know the when or where of that either. He crossed the clearing and entered the boiler shed and went on through it, crossing the junctureless backloop of time’s trepan, to the door of the tool-room, the faint glow of the lantern beyond the plank-joints, the surge and fall of living shadow, the mutter of voices, the mute click and scutter of the dice, his hand loud on the barred door, his voice loud too: “Open hit. Hit’s me. Ah’m snakebit and bound to die.”

  Then he was through the door and inside the tool-room. They were the same faces—three members of his timber gang, three or four others of the mill crew, the white night-watchman with the heavy pistol in his hip pocket and the small heap of coins and worn bills on the floor before him, one who was called Rider and was Rider standing above the squatting circle, swaying a little, blinking, the dead muscles of his face shaped into smiling while the white man stared up at him. “Make room, gamblers,” he said. “Make room. Ah’m snakebit and de pizen cant hawm me.”

  “You’re drunk,” the white man said. “Get out of here. One of you niggers open the door and get him out of here.”

  “Dass awright, boss-man,” he said, his voice equable, his face still fixed in the faint rigid smiling beneath the blinking of the red eyes; “Ah aint drunk. Ah just cant wawk straight fer des yar money weighin me down.”

  Now he was kneeling too, the other six dollars of his last week’s pay on the floor before him, blinking, still smiling at the face of the white man opposite, then, still smiling, he watched the dice pass from hand to hand around the circle as the white man covered the bets, watching the soiled and palm-worn money in front of the white man gradually and steadily increase, watching the white man cast and win two doubled bets in succession then lose one for twenty-five cents, the dice coming to him at last, the cupped snug clicking of them in his fist. He spun a coin into the center.

  “Shoots a dollar,” he said, and cast, and watched the white man pick up the dice and flip them back to him. “Ah lets hit lay,” he said. “Ah’m snakebit. Ah kin pass wid anything,” and cast, and this time one of the negroes flipped the dice back. “Ah lets hit lay,” he said, and cast, and moved as the white man moved, catching the white man’s wrist before his hand reached the dice, the two of them squatting, facing each other above the dice and the money, his left hand grasping the white man’s wrist, his face still fixed in the rigid and deadened smiling, his voice equable, almost deferential: “Ah kin pass even wid miss-outs. But dese hyar yuther boys—” until the white man’s hand sprang open and the second pair of dice clattered onto the floor beside the first two and the white man wrenched free and sprang up and back and reached the hand backward toward the pocket where the pistol was.

  The razor hung between his shoulder-blades from a loop of cotton string round his neck inside his shirt. The same motion of the hand which brought the razor forward over his shoulder flipped the blade open and freed it from the cord, the blade opening on until the back edge of it lay across the knuckles of his fist, his thumb pressing the handle into his closing fingers, so that in the second before the half-drawn pistol exploded he actually struck at the white man’s throat not with the blade but with a sweeping blow of his fist, following through in the same motion so that not even the first jet of blood touched his hand or arm.

  2

  After it was over—it didn’t take long; they found the prisoner on the following day, hanging from the bell-rope in a negro schoolhouse about two miles from the sawmill, and the coroner had pronounced his verdict of death at the hands of a person or persons unknown and surrendered the body to its next of kin all within five minutes—the sheriff’s deputy who had been officially in charge of the business was telling his wife about it. They were in the kitchen. His wife was cooking supper. The deputy had been out of bed and in motion ever since the jail delivery shortly before midnight of yesterday and had covered considerable ground since, and he was spent now from lack of sleep and hurried food at hurried and curious hour
s and, sitting in a chair beside the stove, a little hysterical too.

  “Them damn niggers,” he said. “I swear to godfrey, it’s a wonder we have as little trouble with them as we do. Because why? Because they aint human. They look like a man and they walk on their hind legs like a man, and they can talk and you can understand them and you think they are understanding you, at least now and then. But when it comes to the normal human feelings and sentiments of human beings, they might just as well be a damn herd of wild buffaloes. Now you take this one today——”

  “I wish you would,” his wife said harshly. She was a stout woman, handsome once, graying now and with a neck definitely too short, who looked not harried at all but composed in fact, only choleric. Also, she had attended a club rook-party that afternoon and had won the first, the fifty-cent, prize until another member had insisted on a recount of the scores and the ultimate throwing out of one entire game. “Take him out of my kitchen, anyway. You sheriffs! Sitting around that courthouse all day long, talking. It’s no wonder two or three men can walk in and take prisoners out from under your very noses. They would take your chairs and desks and window sills too if you ever got your feet and backsides off of them that long.”