Free Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner

uncle said. ‘You’ve got a lawyer. I had already taken your case before I came in here. I’m going to tell you what to do as soon as you have told me what happened.’
    ‘No,’ Lucas said. ‘I wants to hire somebody. It dont have to be a lawyer.’
    Now it was his uncle who stared at Lucas. ‘To do what?’
    He watched them. Now it was no childhood’s game of stakeless Five Hundred. It was more like the poker games he had overlooked. ‘Are you or ain’t you going to take the job?’ Lucas said.
    ‘So you aint going to tell me what you want me to do until after I have agreed to do it,’ his uncle said. ‘Allright,’ his uncle said. ‘Now I’m going to tell you what to do. Just exactly what happened out there yesterday?’
    ‘So you dont want the job,’ Lucas said. ‘You aint said yes or no yet.’
    ‘No!’ his uncle said, harsh, too loud, catching himself but already speaking again before he had brought his voice back down to a sort of furious explicit calm: ‘Because you aint got any job to offer anybody. You’re in jail, depending on the grace of God to keep those damned Gowries from dragging you out of here and hanging you to the first lamp post they come to. Why they ever let you get to town in the first place I still don’t understand——’
    ‘Nemmine that now,’ Lucas said. ‘What I needs is——’
    ‘Nemmine that!’ his uncle said. ‘Tell the Gowries to never mind it when they bust in here tonight. Tell Beat Four to just forget it——’ He stopped; again with an effort you could almost see he brought his voice back to that furious patience. He drew a deep breath and expelled it. ‘Now. Tell me exactly what happened yesterday.’
    For another moment Lucas didn’t answer, sitting on the bunk, his hands on his knees, intractable and composed, no longer looking at his uncle, working his mouth faintly as if he were tasting something. He said: ‘They was two folks, partners in a sawmill. Leastways they was buying the lumber as the sawmill cut it——’
    ‘Who were they?’ his uncle said.
    ‘Vinson Gowrie was one of um.’
    His uncle stared at Lucas for a long moment. But his voice was quite calm now. ‘Lucas,’ he said, ‘has it ever occurred to you that if you just said mister to white people and said it like you meant it, you might not be sitting here now?’
    ‘So I’m to commence now,’ Lucas said. ‘I can start off by saying mister to the folks that drags me out of here and builds a fire under me.’
    ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you—until you go before the judge,’ his uncle said. ‘Dont you know that even Beat Four dont take liberties with Mr Hampton—at least not here in town?’
    ‘Shurf Hampton’s home in bed now.’
    ‘But Mr Will Legate’s sitting down stairs with a shotgun.’
    ‘I aint ’quainted with no Will Legate.’
    ‘The deer-hunter? The man that can hit a running rabbit with a thirty-thirty rifle?’
    ‘Hah,’ Lucas said. ‘Them Gowries aint deer. They might be cattymounts and panthers but they aint deer.’
    ‘All right,’ his uncle said. ‘Then I’ll stay here if you’ll feel better. Now. Go on. Vinson Gowrie and another man were buying lumber together. What other man?’
    ‘Vinson Gowrie’s the only one that’s public yet.’
    ‘And he got public by being shot in broad daylight in the back,’ his uncle said. ‘Well, that’s one way to do it.—All right,’ his uncle said. ‘Who was the other man?’
    Lucas didn’t answer. He didn’t move; he might not even have heard, sitting peaceful and inattentive, not even really waiting: just sitting there while his uncle watched him. Then his uncle said:
    ‘All right. What were they doing with it?’
    ‘They was yarding it up as the mill cut it, gonter sell it all at once when the sawing was finished. Only the other man was hauling it away at night, coming in late after dark with a truck and picking up a load and hauling it over to Glasgow or Hollymount and selling it and