He has had it ever since the seminary.
He sits beneath the lamp and opens it.
It does not take long.
Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful.
It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud.
It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand. Chapter 14
“THERE’S somebody out there in that cabin,” the deputy told the sheriff. “Not hiding: living in it.”
“Go and see,” the sheriff said.
The deputy went and returned.
“It’s a woman.
A young woman.
And she’s all fixed up to live there a good spell, it looks like.
And Byron Bunch is camped in a tent about as far from the cabin as from here to the post-office.”
“Byron Bunch?” the sheriff says. “Who is the woman?”
“I don’t know.
She is a stranger.
A young woman.
She told me all about it.
She begun telling me almost before I got inside the cabin, like it was a speech.
Like she had done got used to telling it, done got into the habit.
And I reckon she has, coming here from over in Alabama somewhere, looking for her husband.
He had done come on ahead of her to find work, it seems like, and after a while she started out after him and folks told her on the road that he was here.
And about that time Byron come in and he said he could tell me about it.
Said he aimed to tell you.”
“Byron Bunch,” the sheriff says.
“Yes,” the deputy says. He says: “She’s fixing to have a kid.
It ain’t going to be long, neither.”
“A kid?” the sheriff says.
He looks at the deputy. “And from Alabama.
From anywhere.
You can’t tell me that about Byron Bunch.”
“No more am I trying to,” the deputy says. “I ain’t saying it’s Byron’s.
Leastways, Byron ain’t saying it’s his.
I’m just telling you what he told me.”
“Oh,” the sheriff says. “I see.
Why she is out there.
So it’s one of them fellows.
It’s Christmas, is it?”
“No.
This is what Byron told me.
He took me outside and told me, where she couldn’t hear.
He said he aimed to come and tell you.
It’s Brown’s.
Only his name ain’t Brown.
It’s Lucas Burch.
Byron told me.
About how Brown or Burch left her over in Alabama.
Told her he was just coming to find work and fix up a home and then send for her.
But her time come nigh and she hadn’t heard from him, where he was at or anything, so she just decided to not wait any longer.
She started out afoot, asking along the road if anybody knowed a fellow named Lucas Burch, getting a ride here and there, asking everybody she met if they knew him.