It was his sister. He rose to his elbow.
She took shape vaguely, approaching the bed.
She came and looked down at him.
“How much longer are you going to keep this up?” she said.
“Just until morning,” he said.
“I’m going back to town. You need not see me again.”
She stood beside the bed, motionless.
After a moment her cold unbending voice came down to him:
“You know what I mean.”
“I promise not to bring her into your house again.
You can send Isom in to hide in the canna bed.”
She said nothing.
“Surely you dont object to my living there, do you?”
“I dont care where you live.
The question is, where I live.
I live here, in this town.
I’ll have to stay here.
But you’re a man.
It doesn’t matter to you.
You can go away.”
“Oh,” he said.
He lay quite still.
She stood above him, motionless.
They spoke quietly, as though they were discussing wall-paper, food.
“Dont you see, this is my home, where I must spend the rest of my life.
Where I was born.
I dont care where else you go nor what you do.
I dont care how many women you have nor who they are.
But I cannot have my brother mixed up with a woman people are talking about.
I dont expect you to have consideration for me; I ask you to have consideration for our father and mother.
Take her to Memphis.
They say you refused to let the man have bond to get out of jail; take her on to Memphis.
You can think of a lie to tell him about that, too.”
“Oh. So you think that, do you?”
“I dont think anything about it.
I dont care.
That’s what people in town think.
So it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not.
What I do mind is, everyday you force me to have to tell lies for you.
Go away from here, Horace.
Anybody but you would realise it’s a case of cold-blooded murder.”
“And over her, of course.
I suppose they say that too, out of their odorous and omnipotent sanctity.
Do they say yet that it was I killed him?”
“I dont see that it makes any difference who did it.
The question is, are you going to stay mixed up with it?
When people already believe you and she are slipping into my house at night.”
Her cold, unbending voice shaped the words in the darkness above him.
Through the window, upon the blowing darkness, came the drowsy dissonance of cicada and cricket.
“Do you believe that?” he said.