The Unvanquished Page 7

“Dont you want me to drive?” I said.

  “I’ll drive,” Granny said. “These are borrowed horses.”

  “Case even Yankee could look at um and tell they couldn’t keep up with even a walking army,” Ringo said. “And I like to know how anybody can hurt this team lessen he aint got strength enough to keep um from laying down in the road and getting run over with they own wagon.”

  We drove until dark, and camped. By sunup we were on the road again. “You better let me drive a while,” I said.

  “I’ll drive,” Granny said. “I was the one who borrowed them.”

  “You can tote this pairsawl a while, if you want something to do,” Ringo said. “And give my arm a rest.” I took the parasol and he laid down in the wagon and put his hat over his eyes. “Call me when we gitting nigh to Hawkhurst,” he said, “so I can commence to look out for that railroad you tells about.”

  That was how he travelled for the next six days—lying on his back in the wagon bed with his hat over his eyes, sleeping, or taking his turn holding the parasol over Granny and keeping me awake by talking of the railroad which he had never seen though which I had seen that Christmas we spent at Hawkhurst. That’s how Ringo and I were. We were almost the same age, and Father always said that Ringo was a little smarter than I was, but that didn’t count with us, anymore than the difference in the color of our skins counted. What counted was, what one of us had done or seen that the other had not, and ever since that Christmas I had been ahead of Ringo because I had seen a railroad, a locomotive. Only I know now it was more than that with Ringo, though neither of us was to see the proof of my belief for some time yet and we were not to recognise it as such even then. It was as if Ringo felt it too and that the railroad, the rushing locomotive which he hoped to see symbolised it—the motion, the impulse to move which had already seethed to a head among his people, darker than themselves, reasonless, following and seeking a delusion, a dream, a bright shape which they could not know since there was nothing in their heritage, nothing in the memory even of the old men to tell the others, ‘This is what we will find’; he nor they could not have known what it was yet it was there—one of those impulses inexplicable yet invincible which appear among races of people at intervals and drive them to pick up and leave all security and familiarity of earth and home and start out, they dont know where, empty handed, blind to everything but a hope and a doom.

  We went on; we didn’t go fast. Or maybe it seemed slow because we had got into a country where nobody seemed to live at all; all that day we didn’t even see a house. I didn’t ask and Granny didn’t say; she just sat there under the parasol with Mrs Compson’s hat on and the horses walking and even our own dust moving ahead of us; after a while even Ringo sat up and looked around. “We on the wrong road,” he said. “Aint even nobody live here, let alone pass here.”

  But after a while the hills stopped, the road ran out flat and straight and all of a sudden Ringo hollered, “Look out! Here they come again to git these uns!” We saw it too then, a cloud of dust away to the west, moving slow, too slow for men riding, and then the road we were on ran square into a big broad one running straight on into the east as the railroad at Hawkhurst did when Granny and I were there that Christmas before the War; all of a sudden I remembered it.

  “This is the road to Hawkhurst,” I said. But Ringo was not listening; he was looking at the dust, and the wagon stopped now in the road with the horses’ heads hanging and our dust overtaking us again and the big dustcloud coming slow up in the west.

  “Cant you see um coming?” Ringo hollered. “Git on away from here!”

  “They aint Yankees,” Granny said. “The Yankees have already been here.” Then we saw it too: a burned house like ours; three chimneys standing above a mound of ashes and then we saw a white woman and a child looking at us from a cabin behind them. Granny looked at the dustcloud, then she looked at the empty broad road going on into the east. “This is the way,” she said.

  We went on. It seemed like we went slower than ever now, with the dustcloud behind us and the burned houses and gins and thrown down fences on either side and the white women and children—we never saw a nigger at all—watching us from the nigger cabins where they lived now like we lived at home; we didn’t stop. “Poor folks,” Granny said. “I wish we had enough to share with them.”

  At sunset we drew off the road and camped; Ringo was looking back. “Whatever hit is, we done went off and left hit,” he said. “I dont see no dust.” We slept in the wagon this time, all three of us; I dont know what time it was, only that all of a sudden I was awake. Granny was already sitting up in the wagon, I could see her head against the branches and the stars; all of a sudden all three of us were sitting up in the wagon, listening. They were coming up the road. It sounded like about fifty of them; we could hear the feet hurrying, and a kind of panting murmur. It was not singing exactly, it was not that loud; it was just a sound, a breathing, a kind of gasping murmuring chant and the feet whispering fast in the deep dust. I could hear women too and then all of a sudden I began to smell them. “Niggers,” I whispered.

  “Shhhhhh,” I whispered. We couldn’t see them and they did not see us; maybe they didn’t even look, just walking fast in the dark with that panting hurrying murmuring, going on. And then the sun rose and we went on too, along that big broad empty road between the burned houses and gins and fences. Before it had been like passing through a country where nobody had ever lived; now it was like passing through one where everybody had died at the same moment. That night we waked up three times and sat up in the wagon in the dark and heard niggers pass in the road. The last time it was after dawn and we had already fed the horses. It was a big crowd of them this time and they sounded like they were running, like they had to run to keep ahead of daylight. Then they were gone. Ringo and I had taken up the harness again when Granny said, “Wait. Hush.” It was just one; we could hear her panting and sobbing, and then we heard another sound. Granny began to get down from the wagon. “She fell,” she said. “You all hitch up and come on.”

  When we turned into the road the woman was kind of crouched beside it, holding something in her arms and Granny standing beside her. It was a baby, a few months old; she held it like she thought maybe Granny was going to take it away from her. “I been sick and I couldn’t keep up,” she said. “They went off and left me.”

  “Is your husband with them?” Granny said.

  “Yessum,” the woman said. “They’s all there.”

  “Who do you belong to?” Granny said. Then she didn’t answer. She squatted there in the dust, crouched over the baby. “If I give you something to eat, will you turn around and go back home?” Granny said. Still she didn’t answer. She just squatted there. “You see you cant keep up with them and that they aint going to wait for you,” Granny said. “Do you want to die here in the road for buzzards to eat?” But she didn’t even look at Granny, she just squatted there.

  “Hit’s Jordan we coming to,” she said. “Jesus gonter see me that far.”

  “Get in the wagon,” Granny said. She got in, she squatted again just like she had in the road, holding the baby and not looking at anything, just hunkered down and swaying on her hams as the wagon rocked and jolted. The sun was up, we went down a long hill and began to cross a creek bottom.

  “I’ll get out here,” she said. Granny stopped the wagon and she got out. There was nothing at all but the thick gum and cypress and thick underbrush still full of shadow.

  “You go back home, girl,” Granny said. She just stood there. “Hand me the basket,” Granny said. I handed it to her and she opened it and gave the woman a piece of bread and meat. We went on; we began to mount the hill. When I looked back she was still standing there, holding the baby and the bread and meat Granny had given her. She was not looking at us. “Were the others there in that bottom?” Granny asked Ringo.

  “Yessum,” Ringo said. “She done found um. Reckon she gonter lose um again tonight though.”


  We went on; we mounted the hill and crossed the crest of it. When I looked back this time the road was empty. That was the morning of the sixth day.

  2.

  Late that afternoon we were descending again; we came around a curve in the late level shadows and our own quiet dust and I saw the graveyard on the knoll and the marble shaft at Uncle Dennison’s grave; there was a dove somewhere in the cedars. Ringo was asleep again under his hat in the wagon bed but he waked as soon as I spoke, even though I didn’t speak loud and didn’t speak to him. “There’s Hawkhurst,” I said.

  “Hawkhurst?” he said, sitting up. “Where’s that railroad?” on his knees now and looking for something which he would have to find in order to catch up with me and which he would have to recognise only through hearsay when he saw it: “Where is it? Where?”

  “You’ll have to wait for it,” I said.

  “Seem like I been waiting on hit all my life,” he said. “I reckon you’ll tell me next the Yankees done moved hit too.”

  The sun was going down. Because suddenly I saw it shining level across the place where the house should have been and there was no house there. And I was not surprised; I remember that; I was just feeling sorry for Ringo, since (I was just fourteen then) if the house was gone, they would have taken the railroad too, since anybody would rather have a railroad than a house. We didn’t stop; we just looked quietly at the same mound of ashes, the same four chimneys standing gaunt and blackened in the sun like the chimneys at home. When we reached the gate Cousin Denny was running down the drive toward us. He was ten; he ran up to the wagon with his eyes round and his mouth already open for hollering. “Denny,” Granny said. “Do you know us?”

  “Yessum,” Cousin Denny said. He looked at me, hollering. “Great God, come——”

  “Where’s your mother?” Granny said.

  “In Jingus’ cabin,” Cousin Denny said; he didn’t even look at Granny. “They burnt the house.—Great God,” he hollered, “come see what They done to the railroad!”

  We ran, all three of us. Granny hollered something and I turned and put the parasol back into the wagon and hollered Yessum back at her and ran on and caught up with Cousin Denny and Ringo in the road and we ran on over the hill and then it came in sight. When Granny and I were here before Cousin Denny showed me the railroad but he was so little then that Jingus had to carry him. It was the straightest thing I ever saw, running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees and the ground too and full of sunlight like water in a river only straighter than any river, with the crossties cut off even and smooth and neat and the light shining on the rails like on two spider threads running straight on to where you couldn’t even see that far. It looked clean and neat, like the yard behind Louvinia’s cabin after she had swept it on Saturday morning, with those two little threads that didn’t look strong enough for anything to run on, running straight and fast and light like they were getting up speed to jump clean off the world. Jingus knew when the train would come, he held my hand and carried Cousin Denny and we stood between the rails and he showed us where it would come from, and then he showed us where the shadow of a dead pine would come to a stob he had driven in the ground and then you would hear the whistle. And we got back and watched the shadow and then we heard it; it whistled and then it got louder and louder fast and Jingus went to the track and took his hat off and held it out with his face turned back toward us and his mouth hollering “Watch now! Watch!” even after we couldn’t hear him for the train; and then it passed. It came roaring up and went past; the river they had cut through the trees was all full of smoke and noise and sparks and jumping brass and then empty again and just Jingus’ old hat bouncing and jumping along the empty track behind it like the hat was alive. But this time what I saw was something that looked like piles of black straws heaped up every few yards and we ran into the cut and we could see where they had dug the ties up and piled them and set them on fire. But Cousin Denny was still hollering. “Come see what They done to the rails,” he said. They were back in the trees; it looked like four or five men had taken each rail and tied it around a tree like you knot a green cornstalk around a wagon stake, and Ringo was hollering too now.

  “What’s them?” he hollered. “What’s them?”

  “That’s what it runs on!” Cousin Denny hollered.

  “You mean hit have to come in here and run up and down around these here trees like a squirrel?” Ringo hollered. Then we all heard the horse at once; we just had time to look when Bobolink came up the road out of the trees and went across the railroad and into the trees again like a bird, with Cousin Drusilla riding astride like a man and sitting straight and light as a willow branch in the wind. They said she was the best woman rider in the country.

  “There’s Dru!” Cousin Denny hollered. “Come on. She’s been up to the river to see them niggers! Come on!” He and Ringo ran again. When I passed the chimneys they were just running into the stable. Cousin Drusilla had already unsaddled Bobolink and she was rubbing him down with a croker sack when I came in. Cousin Denny was still hollering, “What did you see? What are they doing?”

  “I’ll tell about it at the house,” Cousin Drusilla said. Then she saw me. She was not tall, it was the way she stood and walked. She had on pants, like a man. She was the best woman rider in the country; when Granny and I were here that Christmas before the War and Gavin Breckbridge had just given Bobolink to her, they looked fine together; it didn’t need Jingus to say that they were the finest looking couple in Alabama or Mississippi either. But Gavin was killed at Shiloh and so they didn’t marry. She came and put her hand on my shoulder. “Hello,” she said. “Hello, John Sartoris.” She looked at Ringo. “Is this Ringo?” she said.

  “That’s what they tells me,” Ringo said. “What about that railroad?”

  “How are you?” Cousin Drusilla said.

  “I manages to stand hit,” Ringo said. “What about that railroad?”

  “I’ll tell you about that tonight too,” Drusilla said.

  “I’ll finish Bobolink for you,” I said.

  “Will you?” she said. She went to Bobolink’s head. “Will you stand for Cousin Bayard, lad?” she said. “I’ll see you all at the house, then,” she said. She went out.

  “Yawl sho must a had this horse hid good when the Yankees come,” Ringo said.

  “This horse?” Cousin Denny said. “Aint no damn Yankee going to fool with Dru’s horse no more.” He didn’t holler now, but pretty soon he began again. “When They come to burn the house Dru grabbed the pistol and run out here, she had on her Sunday dress and Them right behind her, she run in here and she jumped on Bobolink bareback without even waiting for the bridle and one of Them right there in the door hollering Stop and Dru said Get away or I’ll ride you down and Him hollering Stop Stop with his pistol out too——” Cousin Denny was hollering good now: “——and Dru leaned down to Bobolink’s ear and said Kill him Bob and the Yankee jumped back just in time; the lot was full of Them too and Dru stopped Bobolink and jumped down in her Sunday dress and put the pistol to Bobolink’s ear and said I cant shoot you all because I haven’t enough bullets and it wouldn’t do any good anyway but I wont need but one shot for the horse and which shall it be? So They burned the house and went away——” He was hollering good now, with Ringo staring at him so you could have raked Ringo’s eyes off his face with a stick. “Come on,” Cousin Denny hollered. “Les go hear about them niggers at the river!”

  “I been having to hear about niggers all my life,” Ringo said. “I got to hear about that railroad.”

  When we reached the house Cousin Drusilla was already talking, telling Granny mostly, though it was not about the railroad. Her hair was cut short; it looked like Father’s would when he would tell Granny about him and the men cutting each other’s hair with a bayonet. She was sunburned and her hands were hard and scratched like a man’s that works. She was telling Granny mostly: “They began to pass in the road yonder
while the house was still burning. We couldn’t count them: men and women carrying children who couldn’t walk and carrying old men and women who should have been at home waiting to die. They were singing, walking along the road singing, not even looking to either side; the dust didn’t even settle for two days because all that night they still passed; we sat up listening to them, and the next morning every few yards along the road would be the old ones who couldn’t keep up anymore, sitting or lying down and even crawling along, calling to the others to help them, and the others, the young strong ones, not stopping, not even looking at them; I dont think they even heard or saw them. Going to Jordan, they told me. Going to cross Jordan——”

  “That was what Loosh said,” Granny said. “That General Sherman was leading them all to Jordan.”

  “Yes,” Cousin Drusilla said. “The river. They have stopped there; it’s like a river itself dammed up. The Yankees have thrown out a brigade of cavalry to hold them back while they build the bridge to cross the infantry and artillery; they are all right until they get up there and see or smell the water. That’s when they go mad. Not fighting; it’s like they cant even see the horses shoving them back and the scabbards beating them, it’s like they cant see anything but the water and the other bank. They aren’t angry, aren’t fighting: just men women and children singing and chanting and trying to get to that unfinished bridge or even down into the water itself and the cavalry beating them back with sword scabbards. I dont know when they have eaten, nobody knows just how far some of them have come, they just pass here without food or anything, exactly as they rose up from whatever they were doing when the spirit or the voice or whatever it was told them to go. They stop during the day and rest in the woods, then at night they move again; we will hear them later: I’ll wake you, marching on up the road until the cavalry stops them; there was an officer, a major, who finally took time to see I wasn’t one of his men; he said, ‘Cant you do anything with them? Promise them anything to go back home?’ But it was like they couldn’t see me or hear me speaking; it was only that water and that bank on the other side. But you will see for yourself tomorrow when we go back.”