Intruder in the Dust

  “Jump in,” and Lucas got in and the sheriff closed the door and opened the front one and crawled grunting into it, the whole car squatting onto its springs and rims when he let himself down into the seat and turned the switch and started the engine, his uncle standing at the window now holding the rim of it in both hands as though he thought or hoped sud­denly on some second thought to hold the car motionless be­fore it could begin to move, saying what he himself had been thinking off and on for thirty or forty minutes:

  “Take somebody with you.”

  “I am,” the sheriff said. “Besides I thought we settled all this three times this afternoon.”

  “That’s still just one no matter how many times you count Lucas,” his uncle said.

  “You let me have my pistol,” Lucas said, “and wont no­body have to do no counting. I’ll do it:” and he thought how many times the sheriff had probably told Lucas by now to shut up, which may have been why the sheriff didn’t say it now: except that (suddenly) he did, turning slowly and heavily and grunting in the seat to look back at Lucas, saying in the plaintive heavily-sighing voice:

  “After all the trouble you got into Saturday standing with that pistol in your pocket in the same ten feet of air a Gowrie was standing in, you want to take it in your hand and walk around another one. Now I want you to hush and stay hushed. And when we begin to get close to Whiteleaf bridge I want you to be laying on the floor close up against the seat behind me and still hushed. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Lucas said. “But if I just had my pistol—” but the sheriff had already turned to his uncle:

  “No matter how many times you count Crawford Gowrie he’s still just one too:” and then went on in the mild sighing reluctant voice which nevertheless was already answering his uncle’s thoughts before even his uncle could speak it: “Who would he get?” and he thought of that too remembering the long tearing rubber-from-cement sound of the frantic cars and trucks scattering pell-mell hurling themselves in aghast ir­revocable repudiation in all directions toward the county’s outmost unmapped fastnesses except that little island in Beat Four known as Caledonia Church, into sanctuary: the old the used the familiar, home where the women and older girls and children could milk and chop wood for tomorrow’s breakfast while the little ones held lanterns and the men and older sons after they had fed the mules against tomorrow’s plowing would sit on the front gallery waiting for supper into the twilight: the whippoorwills: night: sleep: and this he could even see (provided that even a murderer’s infatuation could bring Crawford Gowrie ever again into the range and radius of that nub arm which—since Crawford was a Gowrie too—in agreement here with the sheriff he didn’t believe—and he knew now why Lucas had ever left Fraser’s store alive Satur­day afternoon, let alone ever got out of the sheriff’s car at the jail: that the Gowries themselves had known he hadn’t done it so they were just marking time waiting for somebody else, maybe Jefferson to drag him out into the street until he remembered—a flash, something like shame—the blue shirt squatting and the stiff awkward single hand trying to brush the wet sand from the dead face and he knew that whatever the furious old man might begin to think tomorrow he held nothing against Lucas then because there was no room for anything but his son)—night, the diningroom perhaps and again seven Gowrie men in the twenty-year womanless house because Forrest had come up from Vicksburg for the funeral yesterday and was probably still there this morning when the sheriff sent word out for old Gowrie to meet him at the church, a lamp burning in the center of the table among the crusted sugarbowls and molasses jugs and ketchup and salt and pepper in the same labeled containers they had come off the store shelf in and the old man sitting at the head of it his one arm lying on the table in front of him and the big pistol under his hand pronouncing judgment sentence doom and execution too on the Gowrie who had cancelled his own Gowriehood with his brother’s blood, then the dark road the truck (not commandeered this time because Vinson had owned one new and big and powerful convertible for either logs or cattle) the same twin driving it probably and the body boomed down onto the runninggear like a log itself with the heavy logchains, fast out of Caledonia out of Beat Four into the dark silent waiting town fast still up the quiet street across the Square to the sheriff’s house and the body tumbled and flung onto the sheriff’s front gallery and perhaps the truck even waiting while the other Gowrie twin rang the doorbell. “Stop worrying about Crawford,” the sheriff said. “He aint got anything against me. He votes for me. His trouble right now is having to kill extra folks like Jake Montgomery when all he ever wanted was just to keep Vinson from finding out he had been stealing lumber from him and Uncle Sudley Workitt. Even if he jumps onto the runningboard before I have time to keep up with what’s going on he’ll still have to waste a minute or two trying to get the door open so he can see exactly where Lucas is—provided by that time Lucas is doing good and hard what I told him to do, which I sure hope for his sake he is.”

  “I’m going to,” Lucas said. “But if I just had my—”

  “Yes,” his uncle said in the harsh voice: “Provided he’s there.”

  The sheriff sighed. “You sent the message.”

  “What message I could,” his uncle said. “However I could. A message making an assignation between a murderer and a policeman, that whoever finally delivers it to the murderer wont even know was intended for the murderer, that the mur­derer himself will not only believe he wasn’t intended to get it but that it’s true.”

  “Well,” the sheriff said, “he’ll either get it or he wont get it and he’ll either believe it or he wont believe it and he’ll either be waiting for us in Whiteleaf bottom or he wont and if he aint me and Lucas will go on to the highway and come back to town.” He raced the engine let it idle again; now he turned on the lights. “But he may be there. I sent a message too.”

  “All right,” his uncle said. “Why is that, Mr. Bones?”

  “I got the mayor to excuse Willy Ingrum so he could go out and set up with Vinson again tonight and before Willy left I told him in confidence I was going to run Lucas over to Hollymount tonight through the old Whiteleaf cutoff so Lucas can testify tomorrow at Jake Montgomery’s inquest and reminded Willy that they aint finished the Whiteleaf fill yet and cars have to cross it in low gear and told him to be sure not to mention it to anybody.”

  “Oh,” his uncle said, not quite turning the door loose yet. “No matter who might have claimed Jake Montgomery alive he belongs to Yoknapatawpha County now.—But then,” he said briskly, turning the door loose now, “we’re after just a murderer, not a lawyer.—All right,” he said. “Why dont you get started?”

  “Yes,” the sheriff said. “You go on to your office and watch out for Miss Eunice. Willy may have passed her on the street too and if he did she might still beat us to Whiteleaf bridge in that pickup.”

  Then into the Square this time to cross it catacornered to where the pickup stood nosedin empty to the otherwise empty curb and up the long muted groan and rumble of the stairway to the open office door and passing through it he thought without surprise how she was probably the only woman he knew who would have withdrawn the borrowed key from the lock as soon as she opened the strange door not to leave the key on the first flat surface she passed but to put it back into the reticule or pocket or whatever she had put it in when it was lent to her and she wouldn’t be sitting in the chair behind the table either and wasn’t, sitting instead bolt upright in the hat but another dress which looked exactly like the one she had worn last night and the same handbag on her lap with the eighteen-dollar gloves clasped on top of it and the flat-heeled thirty-dollar shoes planted side by side on the floor in front of the hardest straightest chair in the room, the one beside the door which nobody ever really sat in no matter how crowded the office and only moving to the easy chair behind the table after his uncle had spent a good two minutes insisting and finally explained it might be two or three hours yet because she had the gold brooch watch on her boso
m open when they came in and seemed to think that by this time the sheriff should not only have been back with Craw­ford Gowrie but probably on the way to the penitentiary with him: then he in his usual chair beside the water cooler and finally his uncle even struck the match to the cob pipe still talking not just through the smoke but into it with it:

  “—what happened because some of it we even know let alone what Lucas finally told us by watching himself like a hawk or an international spy to keep from telling us anything that would even explain him let alone save him, Vinson and Crawford were partners buying the timber from old man Sudley Workitt who was Mrs. Gowrie’s second or fourth cousin or uncle or something, that is they had agreed with old Sudley on a price by the board foot but to be paid him when the lumber was sold which was not to be until the last three was cut and Crawford and Vinson had delivered it and got their money and then they would pay old Sudley his, hiring a mill and crew to fell and saw and stack it right there within a mile of old Sudley’s house and not one stick to be moved until it was all cut. Only—except this part we dont really know yet until Hampton gets his hands on Crawford except it’s got to be this way or what in the world were you all doing digging Jake Montgomery out of Vinson’s grave?— and every time I think about this part of it and remember you three coming back down that hill to the exact spot where two of you heard him and one of you even saw riding past the man who already with one murdered corpse on the mule in front of him experienced such a sudden and urgent altera­tion of plan that when Hampton and I got there hardly six hours later there was nobody in the grave at all—”

  “But he didn’t,” Miss Habersham said.

  “—What?” his uncle said. “... Where was I? Oh yes.—only Lucas Beauchamp taking his walk one night heard something and went and looked or maybe he was actually passing and saw or maybe he already had the idea which was why he took the walk or that walk that night and saw a truck whether he recognised it or not being loaded in the dark with that lumber which the whole neighborhood knew was not to be moved until the mill itself closed up and moved away which would be some time yet and Lucas watched and listened and maybe he even went over into Crossman County to Glasgow and Hollymount until he knew for sure not only who was moving some of that lumber every night or so, not much at a time, just exactly not quite enough for anyone who was not there everyday to notice its absence (and the only people there everyday or even interested even to that extent were Crawford who represented himself and his brother and uncle who owned the trees and the resulting lumber and so could do what they liked with it, the one of which was run­ning about the country all day long attending to his other hot irons and the other an old rheumatic man to begin with and half blind on top of that who couldn’t have seen anything even if he could have got that far from his house—and the mill crew who were hired by the day and so wouldn’t have cared even if they had known what was going on at night as long as they got their pay every Saturday) but what he was doing with it, maybe learning even as far as Jake Mont­gomery though Lucas’ knowing about Jake made no differ­ence except that by getting himself murdered and into Vinson’s grave Jake probably saved Lucas’ life. But even when Hope told me how he had finally got that much out of Lucas in his kitchen this morning when Will Legate brought him from the jail and we were driving you home it explained only part of it because I was still saying what I had been saying ever since you all woke me this morning and Chick told me what Lucas had told him about the pistol: But why Vinson? Why did Crawford have to kill Vinson in order to obliterate the witness to his thieving? not that it shouldn’t have worked of course since Lucas really should have died as soon as the first white man came in sight of him standing over Vinson’s body with the handle of that pistol hunching the back of his coat, but why do it this way, by the bizarre detour of fratri­cide? so now that we had something really heavy enough to talk to Lucas with I went straight to Hampton’s house this afternoon into the kitchen and there was Hampton’s cook sitting on one side of the table and Lucas on the other eating greens and cornbread not from a plate but out of the two-gallon pot itself and I said,

  “ ‘And you let him catch you—and I dont mean Craw­ford—’ and he said,

  “ ‘No. I means Vinson too. Only it was too late then, the truck was done already loaded and pulling out fast without no lights burning or nothing and he said Whose truck is that? and I never said nothing.’

  “ ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then what?’

  “ ‘That’s all,’ Lucas said. ‘Nothing.’

  “ ‘Didn’t he have a gun?’

  “ ‘I dont know,’ Lucas said. ‘He had a stick:’ and I said,

  “ ‘All right. Go on.’ and he said,

  “ ‘Nothing. He just stood there a minute with the stick drawed back and said Tell me whose truck that was and I never said nothing and he lowered the stick back down and turned and then I never saw him no more.’

  “ ‘So you took your pistol,’ I said and he said, ‘and went—’ and he said,

  “ ‘I never had to. He come to me, I mean Crawford this time, at my house the next night and was going to pay me to tell him whose truck that was, a heap of money, fifty dol­lars, he showed it to me and I said I hadn’t decided yet whose truck it was and he said he would leave me the money anyhow while I decided and I said I had already decided what I was going to do, I would wait until tomorrow—that was Friday night—for some kind of a evidence that Mr. Workitt and Vinson had got their share of that missing tim­ber money.’

  “ ‘Yes?’ I said. ‘Then what?’

  “ ‘Then I would go and tell Mr. Workitt he better—’

  “ ‘Say that again.’ I said. ‘Slow.’

  “ ‘Tell Mr. Workitt he better count his boards.’

  “ ‘And you, a Negro, were going up to a white man and tell him his niece’s sons were stealing from him—and a Beat Four white man on top of that. Dont you know what would have happened to you?’

  “ ‘It never had no chance,’ he said. ‘Because it was the next day—Sat-dy—I got the message—’ and I should have known then about the pistol because obviously Gowrie knew about it; his message couldn’t have been have replaced stolen money, would like your personal approval, bring your pistol and be sociable—something like that so I said,

  “ ‘But why the pistol?’ and he said,

  “ ‘It was Sat-dy,’ and I said,

  “ ‘Yes, the ninth. But why the pistol?’ and then I under­stood; I said: ‘I see. You wear the pistol when you dress up on Saturday just like old Carothers did before he gave it to you:’ and he said,

  “ ‘Sold it to me,’ and I said,

  “ ‘All right, go on,’ and he said,

  “ ‘—got the message to meet him at the store only—’ ” and now his uncle struck the match again and puffed the pipe still talking, talking through the pipe stem with the smoke as though you were watching the words themselves: “Only he never got to the store, Crawford met him in the woods sitting on a stump beside the path waiting for him almost before Lucas had left home good and now it was Crawford about the pistol, right off before Lucas could say good afternoon or were Vinson and Mr. Workitt glad to get the money or any­thing, saying ‘Even if it will shoot you probably couldn’t hit anything with it’ and so you can probably finish it yourself; Lucas said how Crawford finally put up a half dollar that Lucas couldn’t hit the stump from fifteen feet away and Lucas hit it and Crawford gave him the half dollar and they walked on the other two miles toward the store until Crawford told Lucas to wait there, that Mr. Workitt was sending a signed receipt for his share of the missing lumber to the store and Crawford would go and fetch it back so Lucas could see it with his own eyes and I said,

  “ ‘And you didn’t suspicion anything even then?’ and he said,

  “ ‘No. He cussed me so natural.’ And at least you can finish that, no need to prove any quarrel between Vinson and Crawford nor rack your brains very deep to imagine what Crawford said and did to have Vinson wai
ting at the store and then send him in front along the path since no more than this will do it: ‘All right. I’ve got him. If he still wont tell whose truck that was we’ll beat it out of him:’ because that doesn’t really matter either, enough that the next Lucas saw was Vinson coming down the path from the store in a good deal of a hurry Lucas said but probably what he meant was impatient, puzzled and annoyed both but probably mostly annoyed, probably doing exactly what Lucas was doing: waiting for the other to speak and explain except that Vinson quit waiting first according to Lucas, still walking saying get­ting as far as ‘So you changed your mind—’ when Lucas said he tripped over something and kind of bucked down onto his face and presently Lucas remembered that he had heard the shot and realised that what Vinson had tripped over was his brother Crawford, then the rest of them were there Lucas said before he even had time to hear them run­ning through the woods and I said,