He went to the bed and said
‘I want the raincoat.
Sit up and take it off’ and I could hear the shucks rattling while he took it off of her, then he went out.
He just got the raincoat and went out.
It was Van’s coat.
“And I have walked around that house so much at night, with those men there, men living off of Lee’s risk, men that wouldn’t lift a finger for him if he got caught, until I could tell any of them by the way they breathed, and I could tell Popeye by the smell of that stuff on his hair.
Tommy was following him.
He came in the door behind Popeye and looked at me and I could see his eyes, like a cat.
Then his eyes went away and I could feel him sort of squatting against me, and we could hear Popeye over where the bed was and that fellow snoring and snoring.
“I could just hear little faint sounds, from the shucks, so I knew it was all right yet, and in a minute Popeye came on back, and Tommy followed him out, creeping along behind him, and I stood there until I heard them go down to the truck.
Then I went to the bed.
When I touched her she began to fight.
I was trying to put my hand over her mouth so she couldn’t make a noise, but she didn’t anyway.
She just lay there, thrashing about, rolling her head from one side to the other, holding to the coat.
“ ‘You fool!’ I says
‘It’s me—the woman.’ ”
“But that girl,” Horace said.
“She was all right.
When you were coming back to the house the next morning after the baby’s bottle, you saw her and knew she was all right.”
The room gave onto the square.
Through the window he could see the young men pitching dollars in the courthouse yard, and the wagons passing or tethered about the hitching chains, and he could hear the footsteps and voices of people on the slow and unhurried pavement below the window; the people buying comfortable things to take home and eat at quiet tables.
“You know she was all right.”
That night Horace went out to his sister’s, in a hired car; he did not telephone.
He found Miss Jenny in her room.
“Well,” she said.
“Narcissa will—”
“I dont want to see her.” Horace said.
“Her nice, well-bred young man.
Her Virginia gentleman.
I know why he didn’t come back.”
“Who?
Gowan?”
“Yes; Gowan.
And, by the Lord, he’d better not come back.
By God, when I think that I had the opportunity—”
“What?
What did he do?”
“He carried a little fool girl out there with him that day and got drunk and ran off and left her.
That’s what he did.
If it hadn’t been for that woman—And when I think of people like that walking the earth with impunity just because he has a balloon-tailed suit and went through the astonishing experience of having attended Virginia.……On any train or in any hotel, on the street; anywhere, mind you—”
“Oh,” Miss Jenny said.
“I didn’t understand at first who you meant.
Well,” she said.
“You remember that last time he was here, just after you came? the day he wouldn’t stay for supper and went to Oxford?”
“Yes.
And when I think how I could have—”
“He asked Narcissa to marry him.
She told him that one child was enough for her.”
“I said she has no heart.
She cannot be satisfied with less than insult.”