“Niggers,” I whispered. “Sh-h-h-h,” I whispered.
We couldn’t see them and they did not see us; maybe they didn’t even look, just walking fast in the dark with that panting, hurrying murmuring, going on. And then the sun rose and we went on, too, along that big broad empty road between the burned houses and gins and fences. Before, it had been like passing through a country where nobody had ever lived; now it was like passing through one where everybody had died at the same moment. That night we waked up three times and sat up in the wagon in the dark and heard niggers pass in the road. The last time it was after dawn and we had already fed the horses. It was a big crowd of them this time, and they sounded like they were running, like they had to run to keep ahead of daylight. Then they were gone. Ringo and I had taken up the harness again; when Granny said, “Wait. Hush.” It was just one, we could hear her panting and sobbing, and then we heard another sound. Granny began to get down from the wagon. “She fell,” she said. “You-all hitch up and come on.”
When we turned into the road, the woman was kind of crouched beside it, holding something in her arms, and Granny standing beside her. It was a baby, a few months old; she held it like she thought maybe Granny was going to take it away from her. “I been sick and I couldn’t keep up,” she said. “They went off and left me.”
“Is your husband with them?” Granny said.
“Yessum,” the woman said. “They’s all there.”
“Who do you belong to?” Granny said. Then she didn’t answer. She squatted there in the dust, crouched over the baby. “If I give you something to eat, will you turn around and go back home?” Granny said. Still she didn’t answer. She just squatted there. “You see you can’t keep up with them and that they ain’t going to wait for you,” Granny said. “Do you want to die here in the road for buzzards to eat?” But she didn’t even look at Granny; she just squatted there.
“Hit’s Jordan we coming to,” she said. “Jesus gonter see me that far.”
“Get in the wagon,” Granny said. She got in; she squatted again just like she had in the road, holding the baby and not looking at anything—just hunkered down and swaying on her hams as the wagon rocked and jolted. The sun was up; we went down a long hill and began to cross a creek bottom.
“I’ll get out here,” she said. Granny stopped the wagon and she got out. There was nothing at all but the thick gum and cypress and thick underbrush still full of shadow.
“You go back home, girl,” Granny said. She just stood there. “Hand me the basket,” Granny said. I handed it to her and she opened it and gave the woman a piece of bread and meat. We went on.
When I looked back, the woman was still standing there by the road. We went on up the other hill, but when I looked back this time the road was empty again.
“Were the others there in that bottom?” Granny asked Ringo.
“Yessum,” Ringo said. “She done found um. Reckon she gonter lose um again tonight though.”
That was early on the fourth day. Late that afternoon we began to go around a hill and I saw the graveyard and Uncle Denny’s grave. “Hawkhurst,” I said.
“Hawkhurst?” Ringo said. “Where’s that railroad?”
The sun was going down. We came out where the sun shone level across where I remembered the house; we didn’t stop; we just looked across at the mound of ashes and the four chimneys standing in the sun like the chimneys at home. We came to the gate. Cousin Denny was running down the drive toward us. He was ten; he ran up to the wagon with his eyes round and his mouth already open for hollering.
“Denny,” Granny said, “do you know us?”
“Yessum,” Cousin Denny said. He looked at me, hollering, “Come see—”
“Where’s your mother?” Granny said.
“In Jingus’ cabin,” Cousin Denny said; he didn’t even look at Granny. “They burnt the house!” he hollered. “Come see what they done to the railroad!”
We ran, all three of us. Granny hollered something and I turned and put the parasol back into the wagon and hollered “Yessum!” back at her, and ran on and caught up with Cousin Denny and Ringo in the road, and we ran on over the hill, and then it came in sight. When Granny and I were here before, Cousin Denny showed me the railroad, but he was so little then that Jingus had to carry him. It was the straightest thing I ever saw, running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees, and the ground, too, and full of sunlight like water in a river, only straighter than any river, with the crossties cut off even and smooth and neat, and the light shining on the rails like on two spider threads, running straight on to where you couldn’t even see that far. It looked clean and neat, like the yard behind Louvinia’s cabin after she had swept it on Saturday morning, with those two little threads that didn’t look strong enough for anything to run on running straight and fast and light, like they were getting up speed to jump clean off the world.
Jingus knew when the train would come; he held my hand and carried Cousin Denny, and we stood between the rails and he showed us where it would come from, and then he showed us where the shadow of a dead pine would come to a stob he had driven in the ground, and then you would hear the whistle. And we got back and watched the shadow, and then we heard it; it whistled and then it got louder and louder fast, and Jingus went to the track and took his hat off and held it out with his face turned back toward us and his mouth hollering, “Watch now! Watch!” even after we couldn’t hear him for the train; and then it passed. It came roaring up and went past; the river they had cut through the trees was all full of smoke and noise and sparks and jumping brass, and then empty again, and just Jingus’ old hat bouncing and jumping along the empty track behind it like the hat was alive.
But this time what I saw was something that looked like piles of black straws heaped up every few yards, and we ran into the cut and we could see where they had dug the ties up and piled them and set them on fire. But Cousin Denny was still hollering, “Come see what they done to the rails!” he said.
They were back in the trees; it looked like four or five men had taken each rail and tied it around a tree like you knot a green cornstalk around a wagon stake, and Ringo was hollering, too, now.
“What’s them?” he hollered. “What’s them?”
“That’s what it runs on!” Cousin Denny hollered.
“You mean hit have to come in here and run up and down around these here trees like a squirrel?” Ringo hollered. Then we all heard the horse at once; we just had time to look when Bobolink came up the road out of the trees and went across the railroad and into the trees again like a bird, with Cousin Drusilla riding astride like a man and sitting straight and light as a willow branch in the wind. They said she was the best woman rider in the country.
“There’s Dru!” Cousin Denny hollered. “Come on! She’s been up to the river to see them niggers! Come on!” He and Ringo ran again. When I passed the chimneys, they were just running into the stable. Cousin Drusilla had already unsaddled Bobolink, and she was rubbing him down with a croker sack when I came in. Cousin Denny was still hollering, “What did you see? What are they doing?”
“I’ll tell about it at the house,” Cousin Drusilla said. Then she saw me. She was not tall; it was the way she stood and walked. She had on pants, like a man. She was the best woman rider in the country. When Granny and I were here that summer before the war and Gavin Breckbridge had just given Bobolink to her, they looked fine together; it didn’t need Jingus to say that they were the finest-looking couple in Alabama or Mississippi either. But Gavin was killed at Shiloh and so they didn’t marry. She came and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Hello,” she said. “Hello, John Sartoris.” She looked at Ringo. “Is this Ringo?” she said.
“That’s what they tells me,” Ringo said.
“How are you?” Cousin Drusilla said.
“I manages to stand hit,” Ringo said.
“I’ll finish Bobolink for you,” I said.
“Will you?” she said. She went to Bobolink’s head. “Will you stand for Cousin Bayard, lad?” she said. “I’ll see you-all at the house, then,” she said. She went out.
“Yawl sho must ’a’ had this horse hid good when the Yankees come,” Ringo said.
“This horse?” Cousin Denny said. “Ain’t no damn Yankee going to fool with Dru’s horse no more.” He didn’t holler now, but pretty soon he began again: “When they come to burn the house, Dru grabbed the pistol and run out here—she had on her Sunday dress—and them right behind her. She run in here and she jumped on Bobolink bareback, without even waiting for the bridle, and one of them right there in the door hollering, ‘Stop,’ and Dru said, ‘Get away, or I’ll ride you down,’ and him hollering, ‘Stop! Stop!’ with his pistol out too”—Cousin Denny was hollering good now—“and Dru leaned down to Bobolink’s ear and said, ‘Kill him, Bob,’ and the Yankee jumped back just in time. The lot was full of them, too, and Dru stopped Bobolink and jumped down in her Sunday dress and put the pistol to Bobolink’s ear and said, ‘I can’t shoot you all, because I haven’t enough bullets, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway; but I won’t need but one shot for the horse, and which shall it be?’ So they burned the house and went away!” He was hollering good now, with Ringo staring at him so you could have raked Ringo’s eyes off his face with a stick. “Come on!” Cousin Denny hollered. “Le’s go hear about them niggers at the river!”
Cousin Drusilla was already talking, telling Granny mostly. Her hair was cut short; it looked like father’s would when he would tell Granny about him and the men cutting each other’s hair with a bayonet. She was sunburned and her hands were hard and scratched like a man’s that works. She was telling Granny mostly: “They began to pass in the road yonder while the house was still burning. We couldn’t count them; men and women carrying children who couldn’t walk and carrying old men and women who should have been at home waiting to die. They were singing, walking along the road singing, not even looking to either side. The dust didn’t even settle for two days, because all that night they still passed; we sat up listening to them, and the next morning every few yards along the road would be the old ones who couldn’t keep up any more, sitting or lying down and even crawling along, calling to the others to help them; and the others—the young strong ones—not stopping, not even looking at them. I don’t think they even heard or saw them. ‘Going to Jordan,’ they told me. ‘Going to cross Jordan.’ ”
“That was what Loosh said,” Granny said. “That General Sherman was leading them all to Jordan.”
“Yes,” Cousin Drusilla said. “The river. They have stopped there; it’s like a river itself, dammed up. The Yankees have thrown out a brigade of cavalry to hold them back while they build the bridge to cross the infantry and artillery; they are all right until they get up there and see or smell the water. That’s when they go mad. Not fighting; it’s like they can’t even see the horses shoving them back and the scabbards beating them; it’s like they can’t see anything but the water and the other bank. They aren’t angry, aren’t fighting; just men, women and children singing and chanting and trying to get to that unfinished bridge or even down into the water itself, and the cavalry beating them back with sword scabbards. I don’t know when they have eaten; nobody knows just how far some of them have come. They just pass here without food or anything, exactly as they rose up from whatever they were doing when the spirit or the voice or whatever it was told them to go. They stop during the day and rest in the woods; then, at night, they move again. We will hear them later—I’ll wake you—marching on up the road until the cavalry stops them. There was an officer, a major, who finally took time to see I wasn’t one of his men; he said, ‘Can’t you do anything with them? Promise them anything to go back home?’ But it was like they couldn’t see me or hear me speaking; it was only that water and that bank on the other side. But you will see for yourself tomorrow, when we go back.”
“Drusilla,” Aunt Louise said, “you’re not going back tomorrow or any other time.”
“They are going to mine the bridge and blow it up when the army has crossed,” Cousin Drusilla said. “Nobody knows what they will do then.”
“But we cannot be responsible,” Aunt Louise said. “The Yankees brought it on themselves; let them pay the price.”
“Those Negroes are not Yankees, mother,” Cousin Drusilla said. “At least there will be one person there who is not a Yankee either.” She looked at Granny. “Four, counting Bayard and Ringo.”
Aunt Louise looked at Granny. “Rosa, you shan’t go. I forbid it. Brother John will thank me to do so.”
“I reckon I will,” Granny said. “I’ve got to get the silver anyway.”
“And the mules,” Ringo said; “don’t forget them. And don’t yawl worry about Granny. She ’cide what she want and then she kneel down about ten seconds and tell God what she aim to do, and then she git up and do hit. And them that don’t like hit can git outen the way or git trompled.”
“And now I reckon we’d better go to bed,” Granny said.
We went to bed. And this time I don’t know how late it was either, except that it was late. It was Cousin Denny shaking me. “Dru says to come on out if you want to hear them passing,” he whispered.
She was outside the cabin; she hadn’t undressed even. I could see her in the starlight—her short jagged hair and the man’s shirt and pants. “Hear them?” she said. We could hear it again, like we had in the wagon—the hurrying feet, the sound like they were singing in panting whispers, hurrying on past the gate and dying away up the road. “That’s the third tonight,” Cousin Drusilla said. “Two passed while I was down at the gate. You were tired, and so I didn’t wake you before.”
“I thought it was late,” I said. “You haven’t been to bed even. Have you?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve quit sleeping.”
“Quit sleeping?” I said. “Why?”
She looked at me. I was as tall as she was; we couldn’t see each other’s faces; it was just her head with the short jagged hair like she had cut it herself without bothering about a mirror, and her neck that had got thin and hard like her hands since Granny and I were here before. “I’m keeping a dog quiet,” she said.
“A dog?” I said. “I haven’t seen any dog.”
“No. It’s quiet now,” she said. “It doesn’t bother anybody any more now. I just have to show it the stick now and then.” She was looking at me. “Why not stay awake now? Who wants to sleep now, with so much happening, so much to see? Living used to be dull, you see. Stupid. You lived in the same house your father was born in, and your father’s sons and daughters had the sons and daughters of the same Negro slaves to nurse and coddle; and then you grew up and you fell in love with your acceptable young man, and in time you would marry him, in your mother’s wedding gown, perhaps, and with the same silver for presents she had received; and then you settled down forevermore while you got children to feed and bathe and dress until they grew up, too; and then you and your husband died quietly and were buried together maybe on a summer afternoon just before suppertime. Stupid, you see. But now you can see for yourself how it is; it’s fine now; you don’t have to worry now about the house and the silver, because they get burned up and carried away; and you don’t have to worry about the Negroes, because they tramp the roads all night waiting for a chance to drown in homemade Jordan; and you don’t have to worry about getting children to bathe and feed and change, because the young men can ride away and get killed in the fine battles; and you don’t even have to sleep alone, you don’t even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, ‘Thank God for nothing.’ You see? … There. They’ve gone now. And you’d better get back to bed, so we can get an early start in the morning. It will take a long time to get through them.”
“You’re not coming in now?” I said.
“Not yet,” she said. But we didn’t move. And then she put her hand on my
shoulder. “Listen,” she said. “When you go back home and see Uncle John, ask him to let me come there and ride with his troop. Tell him I can ride, and maybe I can learn to shoot. Will you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll tell him you are not afraid too.”
“Aren’t I?” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it. It doesn’t matter anyway. Just tell him I can ride and that I don’t get tired.” Her hand was on my shoulder; it felt thin and hard. “Will you do that for me? Ask him to let me come, Bayard.”
“All right,” I said. Then I said, “I hope he will let you.”
“So do I,” she said. “Now you go back to bed. Good night.”
I went back to bed. After a while I was asleep.
And by sunup we were on the road again, with Cousin Drusilla on Bobolink beside the wagon.
It took us all that day to get through them, like Cousin Drusilla said. We began to see the dust almost at once, and then I began to smell them, and then we were in the middle of them—men carrying babies, and women dragging children by the hand, and women carrying babies, and old ones kind of pulling themselves along with sticks or sitting beside the road and holding up their hands and even calling to us when we passed, and one old woman even running along holding to the wagon and hollering at Granny to at least let her see the water before she died.
But mostly they didn’t even look at us. We didn’t try to ask them to let us through; it was like we could look at their faces and know that they couldn’t have heard us. They were not singing yet; they were just hurrying, with our horses pushing slow through them, and their blank eyes not looking at anything out of faces caked with dust and sweat, and our horses and Bobolink shoving slow through them like trying to ride up a creek full of floating logs, and the dust everywhere, and Ringo holding the parasol over Granny and his eyes getting whiter and whiter, and Granny with Mrs. Compson’s hat on, and the smell of them, and Granny looking sicker and sicker. Then it was afternoon. I had forgot about time. All of a sudden we began to hear them where the cavalry was holding them back from the bridge.