Reading of "Spotted Horses"
DATE: 7 March 1957
OCCASION: The English Club
TAPE: T-106
LENGTH: 31:33
Play the full recording:
William Faulkner:
When the Texan, picking his teeth with a splintered
kitchen match, emerged from the house twenty minutes later, the tethered
wagons and riding horses and mules extended from the lot gate to
Varner's store, and there were more than fifty men now standing along
the fence beside the gate, watching him quietly, a little covertly, as
he approached, rolling a little, slightly bowlegged, the high heels of
his carved boots printing neatly into the dust. "Morning, gents," he
said. "Here, bud," he said to the little boy, who stood slightly behind
him, looking at the protruding butt of the pistol. He took a coin from
his pocket and gave it to the boy. "Run to the store and get me a box of
gingersnaps." He looked about at the quiet faces, protuberant, sucking
his teeth. He rolled the match from one side of his mouth to the other
without touching it. "You boys done made your picks, have you? Ready to
start her off, hah?" They didn't answer. They were not looking at him
now. That is, he began to have the feeling that each face had stopped
looking at him the second before his gaze reached it. After a moment
Freeman said:
"Aint you going to wait for Flem?"
"Why?" the Texan said. Then Freeman stopped looking
at him too. There was nothing in Freeman's face either. There was
nothing, no alteration, in the Texan's voice. "Eck, you done already
picked out yours. So we can start her off when you are ready." "I reckon
not," Eck said.
"I wouldn't buy nothing I was afraid to walk up and
touch."
"Them little ponies?" the Texan said. "You helped water and feed
them. I bet that boy of yours could walk up to any one of them."
"He
better not let me catch him at it," Eck said. The Texan looked about at the
quiet faces, his gaze at once abstract and alert, with an impenetrable
surface quality like flint, as though the surface were impervious or
perhaps there was nothing behind it.
"Them ponies is gentle as a dove, boys. The man that
buys them will get the best piece of horseflesh he ever forked or druv
for the money. Naturally they got spirit; I aint selling crowbait.
Besides, who'd want Texas crowbait anyway, with Mississippi full of it?"
[audience laughter] His stare was still absent and
unwinking; there was no mirth or humor in his voice and there was
neither mirth nor humor in the single guffaw which came from the rear of
the group. Two wagons were now drawing out of the road at the same time,
up to the fence. The men got down from them and tied them to the fence
and approached. "Come up, boys," the Texan said. "You're just in time to
buy a good gentle horse cheap."
"How about that one that cut your vest off night before
last?" a voice said. This time three or four guffawed. The Texan looked
toward the sound, bleak and unwinking.
"What about it?" he said. The
laughter, if it had been laughter, ceased. The Texan turned to the
nearest gatepost and climbed to the top of it, his alternate thighs
deliberate and bulging in his tight trousers, the butt of the pistol
catching and losing the sun in pearly gleams. Sitting on the post, he
looked down at the faces along the fence which were attentive, grave,
reserved and not looking at him. "All right," he said. "Who's going to
start her off with a bid? Step right up; take your pick and make your
bid, and when the last one is sold, walk in that lot and put your rope
on the best piece of horseflesh you ever forked or druv for the money.
There aint a pony there that aint worth fifteen dollars. Young, sound,
good for saddle or work stock, guaranteed to outlast four ordinary
horses; you couldn't kill one of them with a axle-tree—" There was a
small violent commotion at the rear of the group. The little boy
appeared, burrowing among the motionless overalls. He approached the
post, the new and unbroken paper carton lifted. The Texan leaned down
and took it and tore the end from it and shook three or four of the
cakes into the boy's hands, a hand as small and almost as black as that
of a coon. He held the carton in his hand while he talked, pointing out
the horses with it as he indicated them. "Look at that one with the
three stocking-feet and the frost-bit ear; watch him now when they pass
again. Look at that shoulder-action; that horse is worth twenty dollars
of any man's money. Who'll make me a bid on him to start her off?" His
voice was harsh, ready, forensic. Along the fence below him the men
stood with, buttoned close in their overalls, the tobacco-sacks and worn
purses, the sparse silver and frayed bills hoarded a coin at a time in
the cracks of chimneys or chinked into the logs of walls. From time to
time the horses broke and rushed with purposeless violence and huddled
again, watching the faces along the fence with wild mismatched eyes. The
lane was full of wagons now. As the others arrived they would have to
stop in the road beyond it and the occupants came up the lane on foot.
Mrs Littlejohn came out of her kitchen. She crossed the yard, looking
toward the lot gate. There was a blackened wash pot set on four bricks
in the corner of the yard. She built a fire beneath the pot and came to
the fence and stood there for a time, her hands on her hips and the
smoke from the fire drifting blue and slow behind her. Then she turned
and went back into the house. "Come on, boys," the Texan said. "Who'll
make me a bid?"
"Four bits," a voice said. The Texan did not even
glance toward it.
"Or, if he dont suit you, how about that fiddle-head
horse without no mane to speak of? For a saddle pony, I'd rather have
him than [this] stocking-foot. I heard somebody say fifty cents just now.
I reckon he meant five dollars, didn't he? Do I hear five dollars?"
"Four bits for the lot," the same voice said. [audience laughter] This time there were no guffaws. It was
the Texan who laughed, harshly, with only his lower face, as if he were
reciting a multiplication table.
"Fifty cents for the dried mud offen
them, he means," he said. "Who'll give a dollar more for the genuine
Texas cockle-burrs?" Mrs Littlejohn came out of the kitchen, carrying
the sawn half—half of a wooden hogshead which she set on a stump beside the
smoking pot, and stood with her hands on her hips, looking into the lot
for a while without coming to the fence this time. Then she went back
into the house. "What's the matter with you boys?" the Texan said.
"Here, Eck, you been helping me and you know them horses. How about
making me a bid on that wall-eyed one you picked out last night? Here.
Wait a minute." He thrust the paper carton into his other hip pocket and
swung his feet inward and dropped, cat-light, into the lot. The ponies,
huddled, watched him. Then they broke before him and slid stiffly along
the fence. He turned them and they whirled and rushed back across the
lot; whereupon, as though he had been waiting his chance when they
should have turned their backs on him, the Texan began to run too, so
that when they reached the opposite side of the lot and turned, slowing
to huddle again, he was almost upon him—them. The earth became thunderous;
dust arose, out of which the animals began to burst like flushed quail
and into which, with that apparently unflagging faith in his own
invulnerability, the Texan rushed. For an instant the watchers could see
them in the dust—the pony backed into the angle of the fence and the
stable, the man facing it, reaching toward his hip. Then the beast
rushed at him in a sort of fatal and hopeless desperation and he struck
it between the eyes with the pistol-butt and felled it and leaped upon
its prone head. The pony recovered almost at once and pawed itself to
its knees and heaved at its prisoned head and fought itself up, dragging
the man with it; for an instant in the dust the watchers saw the man
free of the earth and in violent lateral motion like a rag attached to
the horse's head. Then the Texan's feet came back to earth and the dust
blew aside and revealed them, motionless, the Texan's sharp heels braced
into the ground, one hand gripping the pony's forelock and the other its
nostrils, the long evil muzzle wrung backward over its scarred shoulder
while it breathed in labored and hollow groans.
Mrs Littlejohn was in the yard again. No one had
seen her emerge this time. She carried an armful of clothing and a
metal-ridged washboard and she was standing motionless at the kitchen
steps, looking into the lot. Then she moved across the yard, still
looking into the lot, and dumped the garments into the tub, still
looking into the lot. "Look him over, boys," the Texan panted, turning
his own suffused face and the protuberant glare of his eyes toward the
fence. "Look him over quick. Them shoulders and—" He had relaxed for an
instant apparently. The animal exploded again; again for an instant the
Texan was free of the earth, though he was still talking: "—and legs you
whoa I'll tear your face right look him over quick boys worth fifteen
dollars of let me get a holt of who'll make me a bid whoa you blare-eyed
jack rabbit, whoa!" [audience laughter] They were moving
now—a kaleidoscope of inextricable and incredible violence on the
periphery of which the metal clasps of the Texan's suspenders
sun-glinted in ceaseless orbit, with terrific slowness across the lot.
Then the broad clay-colored hat soared deliberately outward; an instant
later the Texan followed it, though still on his feet, and the pony shot
free in mad, staglike bounds. The Texan picked up the hat and struck the
dust from it against his leg, and returned to the fence and mounted the
post again. He was breathing heavily. Still the faces didn't look at
him as he took the carton from his hip and shook a cake from it and put
the cake into his mouth, chewing, breathing harshly. Mrs Littlejohn
turned away and began to bail water from the pot into the tub, though
after each bucketful she turned her head and looked into the lot again.
"Now, boys," the Texan said. "Who says that pony aint worth fifteen
dollars? You couldn't buy that much dynamite for just fifteen dollars.
[audience laughter] There aint a one of them cant do a
mile in three minutes; turn them into pasture and they will board
themselves; work them like hell all day and every time you think about
it, lay them over the head with a single-tree and after a couple of days
every jack rabbit one of them will be as tame—so tame you will have to put them
out of the house at night like a cat." [audience laughter] He shook another cake from the
carton and ate it. "Come on, Eck," he said. "Start her off. How about
ten dollars for that horse, Eck?"
"What need I got for a horse I wouldn't—I would need a
bear-trap to catch?" Eck said.
"Didn't you just see me catch him?"
"I
seen you," Eck said. "And I dont want nothing as big as a horse if I got
to wrastle with it every time it finds me on the same side of a fence
it's on."
"All right," the Texan said. He was still breathing harshly,
but now there was nothing of fatigue or breathlessness in it. He shook
another cake into his palm and inserted it beneath the moustache. "All
right. I want to get this auction started. I aint come here to live, no
matter how good a country you folks claim you got. I'm going to give you
that horse." For a moment there was no sound, not even that of breathing
except the Texan's.
"You going to give it to me?" Eck said.
"Yes.
Provided you will start the bidding on the next one." Again there was no
sound save the Texan's breathing, and then the clash of Mrs Littlejohn's
pail against the rim of the pot.
"I just start the bidding," Eck said. "I dont have
to buy it lessen I aint over-topped." Another wagon had come up to the
lane. It was battered and paintless. One wheel had been repaired by
crossed planks bound to the spokes with baling wire and the two underfed
mules wore a battered harness patched with bits of cotton rope; the
reins were ordinary cotton plow-lines, not new. It contained a woman in
a shapeless gray garment and a faded sunbonnet, and a man in faded and
patched though clean overalls. There was not room for the wagon to draw
out of the lane so the man left it standing where it was and got down
and came forward—a thin man, not large, with something about his eyes,
something strained and washed-out, at once vague and intense, who shoved
into the crowd at the rear, saying,
"What? What's that? Did he give him
that horse?"
"All right," the Texan said. "That wall-eyed horse with the
scarred neck belongs to you. Now. That one that looks like he's had his—had his
head in a flour barrel. What do you say? Ten dollars?"
"Did he give him that horse—did he give him that horse?" the newcomer said.
"A
dollar," Eck said. The Texan's mouth was still open for speech; for an
instant his face died so behind his hard eyes.
"A dollar?" he said. "One
dollar? Did I actually hear that?"
"Durn it," Eck said. "Two dollars
then. But I aint—"
"Wait," the newcomer said. "You, up there on the
post." The Texan looked at him. When the others turned, they saw that
the woman had left the wagon too, though they had not known she was
there until—since they had not seen the wagon drive up. She came among them
behind the man, gaunt in the gray shapeless garment and the sunbonnet,
wearing stained canvas gymnasium shoes. She overtook the man but she did
not touch him, standing just behind him, her hands rolled before her
into the gray dress.
"Henry," she said in a flat voice. The man looked
over his shoulder.
"Get back to that wagon," he said.
"Here, missus,"
the Texan said. "Henry's going to get the bargain of his life in about a
minute. Here, boys, let the missus come up close where she can see.
Henry's going to pick out that saddle-horse the missus has been wanting.
Who says ten—"
"Henry," the woman said. She didn't raise her
voice. She had not once looked at the Texan. She touched the man's arm.
He turned and struck her hand down.
"Get back to that wagon like I told
you." The woman stood behind him, her hands rolled again into her dress.
She was not looking at anything, speaking to anyone.
"He aint no more
despair than to buy one of them things," she said. "And us not but five
dollars away from the poorhouse, he aint no more despair." The man
turned upon her with that curious air of leashed, of dreamlike fury. The
others lounged along the fence in attitudes gravely inattentive, almost
oblivious. Mrs Littlejohn had been washing for some time now, pumping
rhythmically up and down above the washboard in the sud-foamed tub.
Now she stood erect again, her soap-raw hands on her hips, looking into the
lot.
"Shut your mouth and get back to that wagon," the man said. "Do you
want me to take a wagon stake to you?" He turned and looked up at the
Texan. "Did you give him that horse?" he said. The Texan was looking at
the woman. Then he looked at the man; still watching him, he tilted the
paper carton over his open palm. A single cake came out of it.
"Yes," he said.
"Is the fellow that bids in to this next horse going to
get that first one too?"
"No," the Texan said.
"All right," the other
said. "Are you going to give a horse to the man that makes the first bid
on the next one?"
"No," the Texan said.
"Then if you was just starting
the auction off by giving away a horse, why didn't you wait till we were
all here?" The Texan stopped looking at the other. He raised the empty
carton and squinted carefully into it, as if it might contain a precious
jewel or perhaps a deadly insect. Then he crumpled it and dropped it
carefully beside the post on which he sat.
"Eck bids two dollars," he
said. "I believe he still thinks he's bidding on them scraps of bob-wire
they come here in instead of one of them horses. But I got to accept
it. But are you boys—"
"So Eck's going to get two horses at a dollar a
head," the newcomer said. "Three dollars." The woman touched him again.
He flung her hand off without turning and she stood again, her hands
rolled into her dress across her flat stomach, not looking at anything.
"Mister," she said, "we got chaps in the house that never had shoes
last winter. We aint got corn to feed the stock. We got five dollars I
earned weaving by firelight after dark. And he aint no more despair."
"Henry bids three dollars," the Texan said. "Raise him a dollar, Eck,
and the horse is yours." Beyond the fence the horses rushed suddenly and
for no reason and as suddenly stopped, staring at the faces along the
fence.
"Henry," the woman said. The man was watching Eck.
His stained and broken teeth showed a little beneath his lip. His wrists
dangled into fists below the faded sleeves of his shirt too short from—from
many washings.
"Four dollars," Eck said.
"Five dollars!" the husband
said, raising one clenched hand. He shouldered himself forward toward
the gatepost. The woman didn't follow him. She now looked at the Texan
for the first time. Her eyes were a washed gray also, as though they had
faded too like the dress and the sunbonnet.
"Mister," she said, "if you
take that five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving for one of them
things, it'll be a curse on you and yours during all the time of man."
"Five dollars!" the husband shouted. He thrust himself up to the post,
his clenched hand on a level with the Texan's knees. He opened it upon a
wad of frayed banknotes and silver. "Five dollars! And the man that
raises it will have to beat my head off or I'll beat hisn."
"All right,"
the Texan said. "Five dollars is bid. But dont you shake your hand at
me."
At five oclock that—that afternoon the Texan crumpled the
third paper carton and dropped it to the earth beneath him. In the
copper slant of the leveling sun which fell also upon the line of limp
garments in Mrs Littlejohn's back yard and which cast his shadow and
that of the post on which he sat long across the lot where now and then
the ponies still rushed in purposeless and tireless surges, the Texan
straightened his leg and thrust his hand into his pocket and took out a
coin and leaned down to the little boy. His voice was now hoarse, spent.
"Here, bud," he said. "Run to the store and get me a box of
gingersnaps." The men still stood along the fence, tireless, in their
overalls and faded shirts. Flem Snopes was there now, appeared—appeared suddenly
from nowhere, standing beside the fence with a space the width of three
or four men on either side of him, standing there in his small yet
definite isolation, chewing tobacco, in the same gray trousers and
minute bow tie in which he had departed last summer but in a new cap,
gray too like the other, but new, and overlaid with a bright golfer's
plaid, looking also at the horses in the lot. All of them two—save two had
been sold for sums ranging from three dollars and a half to eleven and
twelve dollars. The purchasers, as they had bid them in, had gathered as
though by instinct into a separate group on the other side of the gate,
where they stood with their hands lying upon the top strand of the
fence, watching with a still more sober intensity the animals which some
of them had owned for seven or eight hours now but had not yet laid
hands upon. The husband, Henry, stood beside the post on which the Texan
sat. The wife had gone back to the wagon, where she sat gray in the gray
garment, motionless, looking at nothing still; she might have been
something inanimate which he had loaded onto the wagon to move it
somewhere, waiting now in the wagon until he should be ready to go on
again, patient, insensate, timeless.
"I bought a horse and I paid cash for it," he said.
His voice was harsh and spent too, the mad look in his eyes had—had a
quality glazed now and even sightless. "And yet you expect me to stand
around here till they are all sold before I can get my horse. Well, you
can do all the expecting you want. I'm going to take my horse out of
there and go home." The Texan looked down at him. The Texan's shirt was
blotched with sweat. His big face was cold and still, his voice level.
"Take your horse then." After a moment Henry looked away. He stood with
his head bent a little, swallowing from time to time.
"Aint you going to
catch him for me?"
"It aint my horse," the Texan said in that flat still
voice. After a while Henry raised his head. He didn't look at the
Texan.
"Who'll help me catch my horse?" he said. Nobody
answered. They stood along the fence, looking quietly into the lot where
the ponies huddled, already beginning to fade a little where the long
shadow of the house lay upon them, deepening. From Mrs Littlejohn's
kitchen the smell of frying ham came. A noisy cloud of sparrows swept
across the lot and into a chinaberry tree beside the house, and in the
high soft vague blue swallows stooped and whirled in erratic indecision,
their cries like strings plucked at random. Without looking back, Henry
raised his voice: "Bring that ere plowline." After a while the wife
moved. She got down from the wagon and took a coil of new cotton rope
from it and approached. The husband took the rope from her and moved
toward the gate. The Texan began to descend from the post, stiffly, as
Henry put his hand on the latch. "Come on here," he said. His wife had
stopped when he took the rope from her. She moved again, obediently, her
hands rolled into the dress across her stomach, passing the Texan
without looking at him.
"Dont you go in there, missus," he said. She
stopped, not looking at him, not looking at anything. The husband opened
the gate and entered the lot and turned, holding the gate open but
without raising his eyes.
"Come on here," he said.
"Dont you go in
there, missus," the Texan said. The wife stood motionless between them,
her face almost concealed by the sunbonnet, her hands folded across her
stomach.
"I reckon I better," she said. The old—the other men did not
look at her at all, at her or Henry either. They stood along the fence,
grave and quiet and inattentive, almost bemused. Then the wife passed
through the gate; the husband shut it behind them and turned and began
to move toward the huddled ponies, the wife following in the gray and
shapeless garment within which she moved without inference of
locomotion, like something on a moving platform, a float. The horses
were watching them. They clotted and blended and shifted among
themselves, on the point of breaking though not breaking yet. The
husband shouted at them. He began to curse them, advancing, the wife
following. Then the huddle broke, the animals moving with high, stiff
knees, circling the two people who turned and followed again as the herd
flowed and huddled again at the opposite side of the lot.
"There he is," the husband said. "Get him into that
corner." The herd divided; the horse which the husband had bought jolted
on stiff legs. The wife shouted at it; it spun and poised, plunging,
then the husband struck it across the face with the coiled rope and it
whirled and slammed into the corner of the fence. "Keep it there now,"
the husband said. He shook out the rope, advancing. The horse watched
him shouted wild, glaring eyes; it rushed again, straight toward the
wife.
She shouted at it and waved her arms but it soared past her in a
long bound and rushed again into the huddle of its fellows. They
followed and hemmed it again into the other corner; again the wife failed
to stop its rush for freedom and the husband turned and struck her with
the coiled rope. "Why didn't you head him?" he said. "Why didn't you?"
He struck her again; she didn't move, not even to fend the rope with a
raised arm. The men along the fence stood quietly, their faces lowered
as though brooding upon the earth at their feet. Only Flem Snopes was
still watching—if he ever had been looking into the lot at all, standing
in a little island of isolation, chewing with his characteristic faint
sidewise thrust beneath the new plaid cap.
The Texan said something, not loud, harsh and short.
He entered the lot and went to the husband and jerked the uplifted rope
from his hand. The husband whirled as though he were about to spring at
the Texan, crouched slightly, his knees bent and his arms held slightly
away from his sides, though his gaze never mounted higher than the
Texan's carved and dusty boots. Then the Texan took the husband by the
arm and led him back toward the gate, the wife following, and through
the gate which he held open for the woman and then closed. He took a wad
of banknotes from his trousers and removed a bill from it and put it
into the woman's hand. "Get him into the wagon and get him on home," he
said.
"What's that for?" Flem Snopes said. He had
approached. He now stood beside the post on which the Texan had been
sitting. The Texan didn't look at him.
"Thinks he bought one of them
ponies," the Texan said. He spoke in a flat still voice, like that of a
man after a sharp run. "Get him on away, missus."
"Give him back that
money," the husband said, in his lifeless, spent tone. "I bought that
horse and I aim to have him if I got to shoot him before I can put a
rope on him." The Texan did not even look at him.
"Get him on away from
here, missus," he said.
"You take your money and I take my horse," the
husband said. He was shaking slowly and steadily now, as though he were
cold. His hands open and shut below the frayed cuffs of his shirt. "Give
it back to him," he said.
"You dont—you dont own no horse of mine," the Texan
said. "Get him on home, missus." The husband raised his spent face, his
mad glazed eyes. He reached out his hand. The woman held the banknote in
her folded hands across her stomach. For a while the husband's shaking
hand merely fumbled at it. Then he drew the banknote free.
"It's my
horse," he said. "I bought it. These fellows saw me. I paid for it. It's
my horse. Here." He turned and extended the banknote toward Snopes. "You
got something to do with these horses. I bought one. Here's the money
for it. I bought one. Ask him." Snopes took the banknote.
[turning pages]They're in the lot again still trying to catch the horses. This is Eck and the little boy.
"Watch out, paw!" the boy said. "There he is! There's
ourn!" It was the one the Texan had given Eck. "Catch him, Paw!"
"Get
out of my way," Eck said. "Get back to that wagon." The line was still
advancing. The ponies milled, clotting, forced gradually backward toward the
open door of the barn. Henry was still slightly in front, crouched slightly,
his thin figure, even in the mazy moonlight, emanating something of that
spent fury. The splotchy huddle of animals seemed to be moving before the
advancing line of men like a snowball which they might have been pushing
before them by some invisible means, gradually nearer and nearer to the
back—black yawn of the barn door. Later it was obvious that the ponies were so
intent upon the men that they did not realize that the barn was even behind
them until they backed into the shadow of it. Then an indescribable sound, a
movement of desperate and despairing, arose among them; for an instant of
static horror men and animals faced one another, then the men whirled and
ran before a gaudy vomit of long wild faces and splotched chests which
overtook and scattered them and flung them sprawling aside and completely
obliterated from sight Henry and the little boy, neither of whom had moved
though Henry had flung up both arms, still holding his coiled rope, the herd
sweeping on across the lot, to crash through the gate which the last man
through it had neglected to close, leaving it slightly ajar, carrying all of
the gate save the upright to which the hinges were nailed with them, and so
among the teams and wagons which choked the lane, the teams springing and
lunging too, snapping hitch-reins and tongues. Then the whole inextricable
mass crashed among the wagons and eddied and divided about the one in which
the woman sat, and rushed on down the lane and into the road, dividing, one
half going one way and one half the other.
The men in the lot, except Henry, got to their feet
and ran toward the gate. The little boy once more had not been touched,
not even thrown off his feet; for a while his father held him clear of
the ground in one hand, shaking him like a rag doll. "Didn't I tell you
to stay in that wagon?" Eck cried. "Didn't I tell you?"
"Look out, paw!"
the boy chattered out of the violent shaking. "There's ourn! There he
goes!" It was the horse the Texan had given them again. It was as if
they owned no other, the other one did not exist; as if by some absolute
and instantaneous rapport of blood they had relegated to oblivion the
one for which they had paid money. They ran to the gate and down the
lane where the other men had disappeared. They saw the horse the Texan
had given them whirl and dash back and rush through the gate into Mrs
Littlejohn's yard and run up the front steps and crash once on the
wooden veranda and vanish through the front door. Eck and the boy ran up
onto the veranda. A lamp sat on a table just inside the door. In its
mellow light they saw the horse fill the long hallway like a pinwheel,
gaudy, furious and thunderous. A little further down the hall there was
a varnished yellow melodeon. The horse crashed into it; it produced a
single note, almost a chord, in bass, resonant and grave, of deep and
sober astonishment; [audience laughter] the horse with its
monstrous and antic shadow whirled again and vanished through another
door. It was a bedroom; Ratliff, in his underclothes and one sock and
with the other sock in his hand and his back to the door, was leaning
out the open window facing the lane, the lot. He looked back over his
shoulder. For an instant he and the horse glared at one another. Then he
sprang through the window as the horse backed out of the room and into
the hall again and whirled and saw Eck and the little boy just entering
the front door, Eck still carrying his rope. It whirled again and rushed
on down the hall and onto the back porch just as Mrs Littlejohn,
carrying an armful of clothes from the line and the washboard, mounted
the steps.
"Get out of here, you son of a bitch," she said. [audience laughter] She struck with the washboard; it divided
neatly on the long mad face and the horse whirled and rushed back up the
hall, where Eck and the boy now stood.
"Get to hell out of here, Wall!" Eck roared. [audience laughter] He dropped to the floor, covering his
head with his arms. The boy didn't move, and for the third time the
horse soared above the unwinking eyes and the unbowed and untouched head
and onto the front veranda again just as Ratliff, still carrying the
sock, came around the corner of the house and up the steps. [audience laughter] The horse whirled without breaking or
pausing. He galloped to the end of the veranda and took the railing and
soared outward, hobgoblin and floating, in the moon. It landed in the
lot still running and crossed the lot and galloped through the wrecked
gate and among the overturned wagons and the still intact one in which
Henry's wife still sat, and on down the lane and into the road.
A quarter of a mile further on, the road gashed
pallid and moony between the moony shadows of the bordering trees, the
horse still galloping, galloping its shadow into the dust, the road
descending now toward the creek and the bridge. It was of wood, just
wide enough for a single vehicle. When the horse reached it, it was
occupied by a wagon coming from the opposite direction and drawn by two
mules already asleep in the harness and the soporific motion. On the
seat was Tull and his wife, in splint chairs in the wagon behind them
sat their four daughters, all returning belated from an all-day visit
with some of Mrs Tull's kin. The horse neither checked nor swerved. It
crashed once on the wooden bridge and rushed between the two mules
[audience laughter] which waked lunging in opposite
directions in the traces, the horse now apparently scrambling along the
wagon-tongue itself like a mad squirrel and scrambling at the end-gate
of the wagon with its forefeet as if it intended to climb into the wagon
while Tull shouted at it and struck at its face with his whip. The mules
were now trying to turn the wagon around in the middle of the bridge. It
slewed and tilted, the bridge-rail cracked with a sharp report above the
shrieks of the women; the horse scrambled at last across the back of one
of the mules and Tull stood up in the wagon and kicked at its face.
[audience laughter] Then the front end of the wagon
rose, flinging Tull, the reins now wrapped several times about his
wrist, backward into the wagon bed among the overturned chairs and
the exposed stockings and undergarments of his women. The pony scrambled
free and crashed again on the wooden planking, galloping again. The
wagon lurched again; the mules had finally turned it on the bridge where
there was not room for it to turn and were now kicking themselves free
of the traces. When they came free, they snatched Tull bodily out of the
wagon. He struck the bridge on his face and was dragged for several feet
before the wrist-wrapped reins broke. Far up the road now, distancing
the frantic mules, the pony faded on. While the five women still
shrieked above Tull's unconscious body, Eck and the little boy came up,
trotting, Eck still carrying his rope. He was panting. "Which way'd he
go?" he said. [audience laughter]
In the now empty and moon-drenched lot, his wife and
Mrs Littlejohn and Ratliff and Lump Snopes, the clerk, and three other
men raised Henry out of the trampled dust and carried him into Mrs
Littlejohn's back yard. His face was blanched and stony, his eyes were
closed, the weight of his head tautened his throat across the protruding
larynx; his teeth glinted dully beneath his lifted lip. They carried him
on toward the house, through the dappled shade of the chinaberry trees.
Across the dreaming and silver night a faint sound like remote thunder
came and ceased. "There's one of them on the creek bridge," one of the
men said.
"It's that one of Eck's," another said. "The one that
was in the house." Mrs Littlejohn had preceded them into the hall. When
they entered with Henry, she had already taken the lamp from the table
and she now stood beside an open door, holding the lamp high.
"Bring him in
here," she said. She entered the room first and set the lamp on the
dresser. They followed with clumsy scufflings and pantings and laid
Henry on the bed and Mrs Littlejohn came to the bed and stood looking
down at Henry's peaceful and bloodless face. "I'll declare," she said.
"You men." [audience laughter]
[end of recording]
