“They do that sometimes, dont they?”
That night Horace built a small fire in the grate.
It was not cool.
He was using only one room now, taking his meals at the hotel; the rest of the house was locked again.
He tried to read, then he gave up and undressed and went to bed, watching the fire die in the grate.
He heard the town clock strike twelve.
“When this is over, I think I’ll go to Europe,” he said.
“I need a change.
Either I, or Mississippi, one.”
Maybe a few of them would still be gathered along the fence, since this would be his last night; the thick, small-headed shape of him would be clinging to the bars, gorillalike, singing, while upon his shadow, upon the checkered orifice of the window, the ragged grief of the heaven tree would pulse and change, the last bloom fallen now in viscid smears upon the sidewalk.
Horace turned again in the bed.
“They ought to clean that damn mess off the sidewalk,” he said.
“Damn.
Damn.
Damn.”
He was sleeping late the next morning; he had seen daylight.
He was wakened by someone knocking at the door.
It was half-past six.
He went to the door.
The negro porter of the hotel stood there.
“What?” Horace said.
“Is it Mrs Goodwin?”
“She say for you to come when you up,” the negro said.
“Tell her I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
As he entered the hotel he passed a young man with a small black bag, such as doctors carry.
Horace went on up.
The woman was standing in the half-open door, looking down the hall.
“I finally got the doctor,” she said.
“But I wanted anyway.……” The child lay on the bed, its eyes shut, flushed and sweating, its curled hands above its head in the attitude of one crucified, breathing in short, whistling gasps.
“He was sick all last night.
I went and got some medicine and I tried to keep him quiet until daylight.
At last I got the doctor.”
She stood beside the bed, looking down at the child.
“There was a woman there,” she said.
“A young girl.”
“A—” Horace said.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yes.
You’d better tell me about it.”
18
Popeye drove swiftly but without any quality of haste or of flight, down the clay road and into the sand.
Temple was beside him.
Her hat was jammed onto the back of her head, her hair escaping beneath the crumpled brim in matted clots.
Her face looked like a sleep-walker’s as she swayed limply to the lurching of the car.
She lurched against Popeye, lifting her hand in limp reflex.
Without releasing the wheel he thrust her back with his elbow. “Brace yourself,” he said. “Come on, now.”
Before they came to the tree they passed the woman.
She stood beside the road, carrying the child, the hem of her dress folded back over its face, and she looked at them quietly from beneath the faded sunbonnet, flicking swiftly in and out of Temple’s vision without any motion, any sign.
When they reached the tree Popeye swung the car out of the road and drove it crashing into the undergrowth and through the prone tree-top and back into the road again in a running popping of cane-stalks like musketry along a trench, without any diminution of speed.
Beside the tree Gowan’s car lay on its side.