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by inattention and usage the long-worn verbiage of wailing because there was
something else in it now the same thing which had been there in the car that
afternoon when she said,  Your arm doesn t hurt at all now does it? and on
the other afternoon when his father came home and found him jumping Highboy
over the concrete watertrough in the lot, his mother leaning on the fence
watching and his father s fury of relief and anger and his mother s calm voice
this time:  Why not? The trough isn t near as tall as that flimsy fence-thing
you bought him that isn t even nailed together: so that even dull for sleep
he recog-nised it and turned his face and hands dripping and cried at her in
amazed and incredulous outrage:  You aint going too! Youcant go! then even
dull for sleep realising the fatuous naïveté of anyone using cant to her on
any subject and so playing his last desperate card:  If you go, then I wont!
You hear me? Iwont go!
 Dry your face and comb your hair, she said.  Then come on down and drink
your coffee.
That too.Paralee was all right too apparently because his uncle was at the
telephone in the hall when he entered the diningroom, his father already
roaring again before he had even sat down:
 Dammit, why didn t you tell me last night? Dont you ever again 
 Because you wouldn t have believed him either, his uncle said coming in
from the hall.  You wouldn t have listened either. It took an old woman and
two children for that, to believe truth for no other reason than that it was
truth, told by an old man in a fix deserving pity and belief, to someone
capable of the pity even when none of them really believed him. Which you
didn t at first, his uncle said to him.  When did you really begin to believe
him? When you opened the coffin, wasn t it? I want to know, you see. Maybe I m
not too old to learn either. When was it?
 I dont know, he said.Because he didn t know. It seemed to him that he had
known all the time. Then it seemed to him that he had never really believed
Lucas. Then it seemed to him that it had never happened at all, heaving
himself once more with no movement up out of the long deep slough of sleep but
at least to some elapse of time now, he had gained that much anyway, maybe
enough to be safe on for a while like the tablets night truck drivers took not
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as big hardly as a shirt button yet in which were concentrated enough
wakefulness to reach the next town because his mother was in the room now
brisk and calm, setting the cup of coffee down in front of him in a way that
if Paralee had done it she would have said that Paralee had slopped it at him:
which, the coffee, was why neither his father nor his uncle had even looked at
her, his father on the contrary exclaiming,
 Coffee?What the devil is this? I thought the agreement was when you finally
consented for Gavin to buy that horse that he would neither ask for nor even
accept a spoonful of coffee until he was eighteen years old: and his mother
not even listening, with the same hand and in the same manner half shoving and
half popping the cream pitcher then the sugar bowl into his reach and already
turning back toward the kitchen, her voice not really hurried and impatient:
just brisk:
 Drink it now. We re already late: and now they looked at her for the first
time: dressed, even to her hat, with in the crook of her other arm the straw
basket out of which she had darned his and his father s and his uncle s socks
and stockings ever since he could remember, though his uncle at first saw only
the hat and for a moment seemed to join him in the same horrified surprise he
had felt in the bathroom.
 Maggie! his uncle said.  Youcant ! Charley 
 I dont intend to, his mother said, not even stopping.  This time you men
will have to do the digging. I m going to the jail: already in the kitchen
now and only her voice coming back:  I m not going to let Miss Habersham sit
there by herself with the whole county gawking at her. As soon as I help
Paralee plan dinner we ll  but not dying fading: ceasing, quitting: since she
had dismissed them though his father still tried once more:
 He s got to go to school.
But even his uncle didn t listen.  You can drive Miss Eunice s truck, cant
you? his uncle said.  Therewont be a Negro school today for Aleck Sander to
be going to so he can leave it at the jail. And even if there was I doubt if
Paralee s going to let him cross the front yard inside the next week. Then
his uncle seemed even to have heard his father or at least decided to answer
him:  Nor any white school either for that matter if this boy hadn t listened
to Lucas, which I wouldn t, and to Miss Habersham, which I didn t. Well? his
uncle said.  Can you stay awake that long? You can get a nap once we are on
the road.
 Yes sir, he said. So he drank the coffee which the soap and water and hard
toweling had unfogged him enough to know he didn t like and didn t want but
not enough for him to choose what simple thing to do about it: that is not
drink it: tasting sipping then adding more sugar to it until each coffee and
sugar ceased to be either and became a sickish quinine sweet amalgam of the
worst of both until his uncle said,
 Dammit, stop that, and got up and went to the kitchen and returned with a
saucepan of heated milk and a soup bowl and dumped the coffee into the bowl
and poured the hot milk into it and said.  Go on. Forget about it. Just drink
it. So he did, from the bowl in both hands like water from a gourd, hardly
tasting it and still his father flung a little back in his chair looking at
him and talking, asking him just how scared Aleck Sander was and if he wasn t
even scareder than Aleck Sander only his vanity wouldn t allow him to show it
before a darky and to tell the truth now, neither of them would have touched
the grave in the dark even enough to lift the flowers off of it if Miss
Habersham hadn t driven them at it: his uncle interrupting:
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 Aleck Sander even told you then that the grave had al-ready been disturbed
by someone in a hurry, didn t he?
 Yes sir, he said and his uncle said:
 Do you know what I m thinking now?
 No sir, he said.
 I m being glad Aleck Sander couldn t completely penetrate darkness and call
out the name of the man who came down the hill carrying something in front of
him on the mule. And he remembered that: the three of them all thinking it
but not one ofthem saying it: just standing invisible to one another above the
pit s invisible inky yawn.
 Fill it up, Miss Habersham said. They did, the (five times now) loosened
dirt going down much faster than it came up though it seemed forever in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]