Light in August - William Faulkner [107]
“You catch him and we’ll see,” the sheriff said. So they waked the dogs and put them into another car and the youth showed them where the man had got out, and they cast the dogs, who charged immediately into the woods and with their apparent infallibility for metal in any form, found the old pistol with its two loaded chambers almost at once.
“It’s one of them old Civil War, cap-and-ball pistols,” the deputy said. “One of the caps has been snapped, but it never went off. What do you reckon he was doing with that?”
“Turn them dogs loose,” the sheriff said. “Maybe them leashes worry them.” They did so. The dogs were free now; thirty minutes later they were lost. Not the men lost the dogs; the dogs lost the men. They were just across a small creek and a ridge, and the men could hear them plainly. They were not baying now, with pride and assurance and perhaps pleasure. The sound which they now made was a longdrawn and hopeless wailing, while steadily the men shouted at them. But apparently the animals could not hear either. Both voices were distinguishable, yet the belllike and abject wailing seemed to come from a single throat, as though the two beasts crouched flank to flank. After a while the men found them so, crouched in a ditch. By that time their voices sounded almost like the voices of children. The men squatted there until it was light enough to find their way back to the cars. Then it was Monday morning.
The temperature began to rise Monday. On Tuesday, the night, the darkness after the hot day, is close, still, oppressive; as soon as Byron enters the house he feels the corners of his nostrils whiten and tauten with the thick smell of the stale, mankept house. And when Hightower approaches, the smell of plump unwashed flesh and unfresh clothing—that odor of unfastidious sedentation, of static overflesh not often enough bathed—is well nigh overpowering. Entering, Byron thinks as he has thought before: ‘That is his right. It may not be my way, but it is his way and his right.’ And he remembers how once he had seemed to find the answer, as though by inspiration, divination: ‘It is the odor of goodness. Of course it would smell bad to us that are bad and sinful.’
They sit again opposite one another in the study, the desk, the lighted lamp, between. Byron sits again on the hard chair, his face lowered, still. His voice is sober, stubborn: the voice of a man saying something which will be not only unpleasing, but will not be believed. “I am going to find another place for her. A place where it will be more private. Where she can ...”
Hightower watches his lowered face. “Why must she move? When she is comfortable there, with a woman at hand if she should need one?” Byron does not answer. He sits motionless, downlooking; his face is stubborn, still; looking at it, Hightower thinks, ‘It is because so much happens. Too much happens. That’s it. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything. That’s it. That’s what is so terrible. That he can bear anything, anything.’ He watches Byron. “Is Mrs. Beard the only reason why she is going to move?”
Still Byron does not look up, speaking in that still, stubborn voice: “She needs a place where it will be kind of home to her. She ain’t got a whole lot more time, and in a boarding house, where it’s mostly just men ... A room where it will be quiet when her time comes, and not every durn horsetrader or courtjury that passes through the hallway ...”
“I see,” Hightower says. He watches Byron’s face. “And you want me to take her in here.” Byron makes to speak, but the other goes on: his tone too is cold, level: “It won’t do, Byron. If there were another woman here, living in the house. It’s a shame too, with all the room here, the quiet. I’m thinking of her, you see. Not myself. I would not care what was said, thought.”
“I am not asking that.” Byron does not look up. He can feel the other watching him. He thinks He knows that is not what I meant, too. He knows. He just said that. I know what he is thinking. I reckon I expected it. I reckon it is not any reason for him to think different from other folks, even about me