But if my heart were as blank as this page, this would not be necessary at all.
I will not see you again.
I cannot write it, for I have gone through with an experience which I cannot face.
I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn.
I need not say that the hope that you never learn it is the sole reason why I will not see you again.
Think as well of me as you can.
I wish I had the right to say, if you learn of my folly think not the less of me.
G.
Horace read the note, the single sheet.
He held it between his hands.
He did not say anything for a while.
“Good Lord,” Horace said.
“Someone mistook him for a Mississippi man on the dance floor.”
“I think, if I were you—” Narcissa said.
After a moment she said: “How much longer is this going to last, Horace?”
“Not any longer than I can help.
If you know of any way in which I can get him out of that jail by tomorrow.…”
“There’s only one way,” she said.
She looked at him a moment.
Then she turned toward the door.
“Which way did Bory go?
Dinner’ll be ready soon.”
She went out.
“And you know what that way is,” Miss Jenny said.
“If you aint got any backbone.”
“I’ll know whether or not I have any backbone when you tell me what the other way is.”
“Go back to Belle,” Miss Jenny said.
“Go back home.”
The negro murderer was to be hung on a Saturday without pomp, buried without circumstance: one night he would be singing at the barred window and yelling down out of the soft myriad darkness of a May night; the next night he would be gone, leaving the window for Goodwin.
Goodwin had been bound over for the June term of court, without bail.
But still he would not agree to let Horace divulge Popeye’s presence at the scene of the murder.
“I tell you, they’ve got nothing on me,” Goodwin said.
“How do you know they haven’t?” Horace said.
“Well, no matter what they think they have on me, I stand a chance in court.
But just let it get to Memphis that I said he was anywhere around there, what chance do you think I’d have to get back to this cell after I testified?”
“You’ve got the law, justice, civilization.”
“Sure, if I spend the rest of my life squatting in that corner yonder.
Come here.” He led Horace to the window.
“There are five windows in that hotel yonder that look into this one.
And I’ve seen him light matches with a pistol at twenty feet.
Why, damn it all, I’d never get back here from the courtroom the day I testified that.”
“But there’s such a thing as obstruct—”
“Obstructing damnation.
Let them prove I did it.
Tommy was found in the barn, shot from behind.
Let them find the pistol.
I was there, waiting.
I didn’t try to run.
I could have, but I didn’t.
It was me notified the sheriff.