Free Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner Page B

cell while his uncle came through the door and drew it after him, the heavy steel plunger crashing into its steel groove with a thick oily sound of irrefutable finality like that ultimate cosmolined doom itself when his uncle said man’s machines had at last effaced and obliterated him from the earth and, purposeless now to themselves with nothing left to destroy, closed the last carborundum-grooved door upon their own progenitorless apotheosis behind one clockless lock responsive only to the last stroke of eternity, his uncle going on, his feet ringing and echoing down the corridor and then the sharp rattle of his knuckles on the oak door while he and Lucas still looked at one another through the steel bars, Lucas standing too now in the middle of the floor beneath the light and looking at him with whatever it was in his face so that he thought for a second that Lucas had spoken aloud. But he hadn’t, he was making no sound: just looking at him with that mute patient urgency until the jailer’s feet thumped nearer and nearer on the stairs and the slotted bar on the door rasped back.
    And the jailer locked the bar again and they passed Legate still with his funny paper in the tilted chair beside the shotgun facing the open door, then outside, down the walk to the gate and the street, following through the gate where his uncle had already turned toward home: stopping, thinking
a nigger a murderer who shoots white people in the back and aint even sorry
.
    He said: ‘I imagine I’ll find Skeets McGowan loafingsomewhere on the Square. He’s got a key to the drugstore. I’ll take Lucas some tobacco tonight.’ His uncle stopped.
    ‘It can wait till morning,’ his uncle said.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, feeling his uncle watching him, not even wondering what he would do if his uncle said no, not even waiting really, just standing there.
    ‘All right,’ his uncle said. ‘Dont be too long.’ So he could have moved then. But still he didn’t.
    ‘I thought you said nothing would happen tonight.’
    ‘I still dont think it will,’ his uncle said. ‘But you cant tell. People like the Gowries dont attach a great deal of importance to death or dying. But they do put a lot of stock in the dead and how they died—particularly their own. If you get the tobacco, let Tubbs carry it up to him and you come on home.’
    So he didn’t have to say even yes this time, his uncle turning first then he turned and walked toward the Square, walking on until the sound of his uncle’s feet had ceased, then standing until his uncle’s black silhouette had changed to the white gleam of his linen suit and then that faded beyond the last arclight and if he had gone on home and got Highboy as soon as he recognised the sheriff’s car this morning that would be eight hours and almost forty miles, turning then and walking back toward the gate with Legate’s eyes watching him, already recognising him across the top of the funny paper even before he reached the gate and if he just went straight on now he could follow the lane behind the hedge and across into the lot and saddle Highboy and go out by the pasture gate and turn his back on Jefferson and nigger murderers and all and let Highboy go as fast as he wanted to go and as far as he wanted to go even when he had blown himself at last and agreed to walk, just so his tail was still turnedto Jefferson and nigger murderers: through the gate and up the walk and across the gallery and again the jailer came quickly through the door at the right, his expression already giving way to the one of harried outrage.
    ‘Again,’ the jailer said. ‘Dont you never get enough?’
    ‘I forgot something,’ he said.
    ‘Let it wait till morning,’ the jailer said.
    ‘Let him get it now,’ Legate said in his equable drawl. ‘If he leaves it there till morning it might get trompled on.’ So the jailer turned; again they mounted the stairs, again the jailer unlocked the bar across the oak door.
    ‘Never mind