Go Down, Moses

  “Let’s go see it,” the salesman said.

  “George Wilkins,” Lucas said.

  “Sir,” George said.

  “Go to my stable and get my halter.”

  2

  Edmonds found the mule was missing as soon as the lot-men, Dan and Oscar, brought the drove in from pasture that evening. She was a three-year-old, eleven-hundred-pound mare mule named Alice Ben Bolt, and he had refused three hundred dollars for her in the spring. He didn’t even curse. He merely surrendered the mare to Dan and waited beside the lot fence while the rapid beat of the mare’s feet died away in the dusk and then returned and Dan sprang down and handed him his flashlight and pistol. Then, himself on the mare and the two negroes on saddleless mules, they went back across the pasture, fording the creek, to the gap in the fence through which the mule had been led. From there they followed the tracks of the mule and the man in the soft earth along the edge of a cotton field, to the road. And here too they could follow them, Dan walking now and carrying the flashlight, where the man had led the unshod mule in the soft dirt which bordered the gravel. “That’s Alice’s foot,” Dan said. “I’d know it anywhere.”

  Later Edmonds would realise that both the negroes had recognised the man’s footprints too. But at the time his very fury and concern had short-circuited his normal sensitivity to negro behavior. They would not have told him who made the tracks even if he had demanded to know, but the realisation that they knew would have enabled him to make the correct divination and so save himself the four or five hours of mental turmoil and physical effort which he was about to enter.

  They lost the tracks. He expected to find the marks where the mule had been loaded into a waiting truck; whereupon he would return home and telephone to the sheriff in Jefferson and to the Memphis police to watch the horse-and-mule markets tomorrow. There were no such marks. It took them almost an hour to find where the tracks had disappeared onto the gravel, crossing it, descending through the opposite roadside weeds, to reappear in another field three hundred yards away. Supperless, raging, the mare which had been under saddle all day unfed too, he followed the two shadowy mules, cursing Alice and the darkness and the single puny light on which they were forced to depend.

  Two hours later they were in the creek bottom four miles from the house. He was walking too now, lest he dash his brains out against a limb, stumbling and thrashing among briers and undergrowth and rotting logs and tree-tops, leading the mare with one hand and fending his face with the other arm and trying to watch his feet, so that he walked into one of the mules, instinctively leaping in the right direction as it lashed viciously back at him with one hoof, before he discovered that the negroes had stopped. Then, cursing aloud now and leaping quickly again to avoid the invisible second mule which would be somewhere on that side, he realised that the flashlight was off now and he too saw the faint, smoky glare of a lightwood torch among the trees ahead. It was moving. “That’s right,” he said quickly. “Keep the light off.” He called Oscar’s name. “Give the mules to Dan and come back here and take the mare.” He waited, watching the light, until the negro’s hand fumbled at his. He relinquished the reins and moved around the mules, drawing the pistol and still watching the moving light. “Hand me the flashlight,” he said. “You and Oscar wait here.”

  “I better come with you,” Dan said.

  “All right,” Edmonds said, watching the light. “Let Oscar hold the mules.” He went on without waiting, though he presently heard the negro close behind him, both of them moving as rapidly as they dared. The rage was not cold now. It was hot, and there was an eagerness upon him, a kind of vindictive exultation as he plunged on, heedless of underbrush or log, the flashlight in his left hand and the pistol in his right, gaining rapidly on the torch.

  “It’s the Old Injun’s mound,” Dan murmured behind him. “That’s how come that light looked so high up. Him and George Wilkins ought to be pretty nigh through it by now.”

  “Him and George Wilkins?” Edmonds said. He stopped dead in his tracks. He whirled. He was not only about to perceive the whole situation in its complete and instantaneous entirety, as when the photographer’s bulb explodes, but he knew now that he had seen it all the while and had refused to believe it purely and simply because he knew that when he did accept it, his brain would burst. “Lucas and George?”

  “Digging down that mound,” Dan said. “They been at it every night since Uncle Lucas found that thousand-dollar gold piece in it last spring.”

  “And you knew about it?”

  “We all knowed about it. We been watching them. A thousand-dollar gold piece Uncle Lucas found that night when he was trying to hide his—” The voice died away. Edmonds couldn’t hear it any more, drowned by a rushing in his skull which, had he been a few years older, would have been apoplexy. He could neither breathe nor see for a moment. Then he whirled again. He said something in a hoarse strangled voice and sprang on, crashing at last from the undergrowth into the glade where the squat mound lifted the gaping yawn of its gutted flank like a photographer’s backdrop before which the two arrested figures gaped at him—the one carrying before him what Edmonds might have taken for a receptacle containing feed except that he now knew neither of these had taken time to feed Alice or any other mule since darkness fell, the other holding the smoking pine-knot high above the ruined rake of the panama hat.

  “You, Lucas!” he shouted. George flung the torch away, but Edmonds’ flashlight already held them spitted. Then he saw the white man, the salesman, for the first time, snap-brim hat, necktie and all, just rising from beside a tree, his trousers rolled to his knees and his feet invisible in caked mud. “That’s right,” Edmonds said. “Go on, George. Run. I believe I can hit that hat without even touching you.” He approached, the flashlight’s beam contracting onto the metal box which Lucas held, gleaming and glinting among the knobs and dials. “So that’s it,” he said. “Three hundred dollars. I wish somebody would come into this country with a seed that had to be worked everyday from New Year’s right on through Christmas. As soon as you niggers are laid-by, trouble starts. But never mind that. Because I aint going to worry about Alice tonight. And if you and George want to spend the rest of it walking around with that damn machine, that’s your business. But that mule is going to be in her stall in my stable at sunup. Do you hear?” Now the salesman appeared suddenly at Lucas’ elbow. Edmonds had forgotten about him.

  “What mule is that?” he said. Edmonds turned the light on him for a moment.

  “My mule, sir,” he said.

  “Is that so?” the other said. “I’ve got a bill of sale for that mule. Signed by Lucas here.”

  “Have you now?” Edmonds said. “You can make pipe lighters out of it when you get home.”

  “Is that so? Look here, Mister What’s-your-name—” But Edmonds had already turned the light back to Lucas, who still held the divining machine before him as if it were some object symbolical and sanctified for a ceremony, a ritual.

  “On second thought,” Edmonds said, “I aint going to worry about that mule at all. I told you this morning what I thought about this business. But you are a grown man; if you want to fool with it, I cant stop you. By God, I dont even want to. But if that mule aint in her stall by sunup tomorrow, I’m going to telephone the sheriff. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Lucas said sullenly. Now the salesman spoke again.

  “All right, big boy,” he said. “If that mule is moved from where she’s at until I’m ready to load her up and move out of here, I’m going to telephone the sheriff. Do you hear that too?” This time Edmonds jumped, flung, the light beam at the salesman’s face.

  “Were you talking to me, sir?” he said.

  “No,” the salesman said. “I’m talking to him. And he heard me.” For a moment longer Edmonds held the beam on the other. Then he dropped it, so that only their legs and feet showed, planted in the pool and its refraction as if they stood in water. He put the pistol back into his pocke
t.

  “Well, you and Lucas have got till daylight to settle that. Because that mule is going to be back in my stable at sunup.” He turned. Lucas watched him go back to where Dan waited at the edge of the glade. Then the two of them went on, the light swinging and flicking on among the trees, the brush. Presently it vanished.

  “George Wilkins,” Lucas said.

  “Sir,” George said.

  “Find the pine-knot and light it again.” George did so; once more the red glare streamed and stank away in thick smoke, upward against the August stars of more than midnight. Lucas put the divining machine down and took the torch. “Grab holt of that thing,” he said. “I got to find it now.”

  But when day broke they had not found it. The torch paled in the wan, dew-heavy light. The salesman was asleep on the wet ground now, drawn into a ball against the dawn’s wet chill, unshaven, the dashing city hat crumpled beneath his cheek, his necktie wrenched sideways in the collar of his soiled white shirt, his muddy trousers rolled to his knees, the brightly-polished shoes of yesterday now two shapeless lumps of caked mud. When they waked him at last he sat up cursing. But he knew at once where he was and why. “All right now,” he said. “If that mule moves one foot from that cottonhouse where we left her, I’m going to get the sheriff.”

  “I just want one more night,” Lucas said. “That money is here.”

  “Take one more,” the salesman said. “Take a hundred. Spend the rest of your life here if you want to. Just tell me first what about that fellow that claims he owns that mule?”

  “I’ll tend to him,” Lucas said. “I’ll tend to him this morning. You dont need to worry about that. Besides, if you try to move the mule yourself today, that sheriff will take her away from you. You just leave her where she is and stop worrying yourself and me too. Let me have just one more night with this thing and I’ll fix everything.”

  “All right,” the salesman said. “But do you know what one more night is going to cost you? It’s going to cost you exactly twenty-five dollars more. Now I’m going to town and go to bed.”

  They returned to the salesman’s car. He put the divining machine back into the trunk of the car and locked it. He let Lucas and George out at Lucas’ gate. The car went on down the road, already going fast. George batted his eyes rapidly after it. “Now whut we gonter do?” he said.

  “Eat your breakfast quick as you can and get back here,” Lucas said. “You are going to town and back by noon.”

  “I needs to go to bed too,” George said. “I’m bad off to sleep too.”

  “You can sleep tomorrow,” Lucas said. “Maybe most of tonight.”

  “I could have rid in and come back with him, if you had just said so sooner,” George said.

  “Hah,” Lucas said. “But I didn’t. You eat your breakfast quick as you can. Or if you think maybe you cant catch a ride to town, maybe you better start now without waiting for breakfast. Because it will be thirty-four miles to walk, and you are going to be back here by noon.” When George reached Lucas’ gate ten minutes later, Lucas met him, the check already filled out in his laborious, cramped, though quite legible hand. It was for fifty dollars. “Get it in silver dollars,” Lucas said. “And be back here by noon.”

  It was just dusk when the salesman’s car stopped again at Lucas’ gate, where Lucas and George waited. George carried a pick and a long-handled shovel. The salesman was freshly shaven and his face looked rested; the snap-brim hat had been brushed and his shirt was clean. But he wore now a pair of cotton khaki pants still bearing the manufacturer’s stitched label and still showing the creases where they had lain folded on the store’s shelf when it opened for business that morning. He gave Lucas a hard, jeering stare as Lucas and George approached. “I aint going to ask if my mule’s all right,” he said. “Because I dont need to. Do I?”

  “It’s all right,” Lucas said. He and George got into the back seat. The divining machine now sat on the front seat beside the salesman. George stopped halfway in and blinked rapidly at it.

  “I just happened to think how rich I’d be if I just knowed what hit knows,” he said. “All of us would be. We wouldn’t need to be wasting no night after night hunting buried money then, would we?” He addressed the salesman now, affable, deferential, chatty: “Then you and Mister Lucas neither wouldn’t care who owned no mule, nor even if there was ere mule to own, would you?”

  “Hush, and get in the car,” Lucas said. The salesman put the car into gear, but it did not move yet. He sat half-turned, looking back at Lucas.

  “Well?” he said. “Where do you want to take your walk tonight? Same place?”

  “Not there,” Lucas said. “I’ll show you where. We were looking in the wrong place. I misread the paper.”

  “You bet,” the salesman said. “It’s worth that extra twenty-five bucks to have found that out—” He had started the car. Now he stopped it so suddenly that Lucas and George, sitting gingerly on the edge of the seat, were flung forward against the back of the front one. “What did you say?” the salesman said. “You did what to the paper?”

  “I misread it,” Lucas said.

  “Misread what?”

  “The paper.”

  “You mean you’ve got a letter or something that tells where it was buried?”

  “That’s right,” Lucas said. “I misread it yesterday.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s put away in my house.”

  “Go get it.”

  “Never mind,” Lucas said. “We wont need it. I read it right this time.” For a moment longer the salesman looked at Lucas over his shoulder. Then he turned his head and put his hand to the gear lever, but the car was already in gear.

  “All right,” he said. “Where’s the place?”

  “Drive on,” Lucas said. “I’ll show you.”

  It took them almost two hours to reach it, the road not even a road but a gullied overgrown path winding through hills, the place they sought not in the bottom but on a hill overlooking the creek—a clump of ragged cedars, the ruins of old cementless chimneys, a depression which was once a well or a cistern, the old wornout brier- and sedge-choked fields spreading away and a few snaggled trees of what had been an orchard, shadowy and dim beneath the moonless sky where the fierce stars of late summer swam. “It’s in the orchard,” Lucas said. “It’s divided, buried in two separate places. One of them’s in the orchard.”

  “Provided the fellow that wrote you the letter aint come back and joined them together again,” the salesman said. “What are we waiting on? Here, Jack,” he said to George, “grab that thing out of there.” George lifted the divining machine from the car. The salesman had a flashlight now, quite new, thrust into his hip pocket, though he didn’t put it on at once. He looked around at the dark horizon of other hills, visible even in the darkness for miles. “By God, you better find it first pop this time. There probably aint a man in ten miles that can walk that wont be up here inside of an hour, watching us.”

  “Dont tell me that,” Lucas said. “Tell it to this three-hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar talking box I done bought that dont seem to know how to say nothing but No.”

  “You aint bought this box yet, big boy,” the salesman said. “You say one of the places is in them trees there. All right. Where?”

  Lucas, carrying the shovel, entered the orchard. The others followed. The salesman watched Lucas pause, squinting at the trees and sky to orient himself, moving on again. At last he stopped. “We can start here,” he said. The salesman snapped on the flashlight, cupping the beam with his hand onto the box in George’s hands.

  “All right, Jack,” he said. “Get going.”

  “I better tote it,” Lucas said.

  “No,” the salesman said. “You’re too old. I don’t know yet that you can even keep up with us.”

  “I did last night,” Lucas said.

  “This aint last night,” the salesman said. “Get on, Jack!” he said sharply. They moved on, George in the middle,
carrying the machine, while all three of them watched the small cryptic dials in the flashlight’s contracted beam as they worked back and forth across the orchard in parallel traverses, all three watching when the needles jerked into life and gyrated and spun for a moment, then stopped, quivering. Then Lucas held the box and watched George spading into the light’s concentrated pool and saw the rusted can come up at last and the bright cascade of silver dollars glint and rush about the salesman’s hands and heard the salesman’s voice: “Well, by God. Well, by God.” Lucas squatted also. He and the salesman squatted opposite one another across the pit.

  “Well, I done found this much of it, anyhow,” Lucas said. The salesman, one hand spread upon the scattered coins, made a slashing blow with the other as if Lucas had reached for the money. Squatting, he laughed harshly and steadily at Lucas.

  “You found? This machine dont belong to you, old man.”

  “I bought it from you,” Lucas said.

  “With what?”

  “A mule,” Lucas said. The other laughed at him across the pit, harsh and steady. “I give you a billy sale for it,” Lucas said.

  “Which never was worth a damn,” the salesman said. “It’s in my car yonder. Go and get it whenever you want to. It was so worthless I never even bothered to tear it up.” He scrabbled the coins back into the can. The flashlight lay on the ground where he had dropped it, flung it, still burning. He rose quickly out of the light until only his lower legs showed, in the new creased cotton trousers, the low black shoes which had not been polished again but merely washed. “All right,” he said. “This aint hardly any of it. You said it was divided, buried in two separate places. Where’s the other one?”

  “Ask your finding machine,” Lucas said. “Aint it supposed to know? Aint that why you want three hundred dollars for it?” They faced one another in the darkness, two shadows, faceless. Lucas moved. “Then I reckon we can go home,” he said. “George Wilkins.”

  “Sir,” George said.

  “Wait,” the salesman said. Lucas paused. They faced one another again, invisible. “There wasn’t over a hundred here,” the salesman said. “Most of it is in the other place. I’ll give you ten percent.”