And sometimes I get mixed up too, listening, having to …” Her eyes, her words, grope, fumble.
“Mixed up?”
“She keeps on talking about him like his pa was that … the one in jail, that Mr. Christmas.
She keeps on, and then I get mixed up and it’s like sometimes I can’t—like I am mixed up too and I think that his pa is that Mr.—Mr. Christmas too—” She watches him; it is as though she makes a tremendous effort of some kind. “But I know that ain’t so.
I know that’s foolish.
It’s because she keeps on saying it and saying it, and maybe I ain’t strong good yet, and I get mixed up too.
But I am afraid. …”
“Of what?”
“I don’t like to get mixed up.
And I. am afraid she might get me mixed up, like they say how you might cross your eyes and then you can’t uncross …” She stops looking at him.
She does not move.
She can feel him watching her.
“You say the baby’s name is not Joe.
What is his name?”
For a moment longer she does not look at Hightower.
Then she looks up.
She says, too immediately, too easily:
“I ain’t named him yet.”
And he knows why.
It is as though he sees her for the first time since he entered.
He notices for the first time that her hair has been recently combed and that she has freshened her face too, and he sees, half hidden by the sheet, as if she had thrust them hurriedly there when he entered, a comb and a shard of broken mirror.
“When I came in, you were expecting someone.
And it was not me.
Who were you expecting?”
She does not look away.
Her face is neither innocent nor dissimulating.
Neither is it placid and serene.
“Expecting?”
“Was it Byron Bunch you expected?” Still she does not look away.
Hightower’s face is sober, firm, gentle.
Yet in it is that ruthlessness which she has seen in the faces of a few good people, men usually, whom she has known.
He leans forward and lays his hand on hers where it supports the child’s body.
“Byron is a good man,” he says.
“I reckon I know that, well as anybody.
Better than most.”
“And you are a good woman.
Will be.
I don’t mean—” he says quickly.
Then he ceases. “I didn’t mean—”
“I reckon I know,” she says.
“No.
Not this, This does not matter.
This is not anything yet.
It all depends on what you do with it, afterward.
With yourself.
With others.” He looks at her; she does not look away. “Let him go.
Send him away from you.” They look at one another. “Send him away, daughter.
You are probably not much more than half his age.
But you have already outlived him twice over.
He will never overtake you, catch up with you, because he has wasted too much time.