Light in August - William Faulkner [129]
“They thought that she had taken Uncle Doc home. It was in front of Dollar’s store and Dollar told about how he saw her come back up the street ahead of the crowd. He said that Uncle Doc had not moved, that he was still sitting in the chair where she had left him like he was hypnotised, until she come up and touched his shoulder and he got up and they went on together with Dollar watching him. And Dollar said that from the look on Uncle Doc’s face, home was where he ought to be.
“Only she never took him home. After a while folks saw that she wasn’t having to take him anywhere. It was like they both wanted to do the same thing. The same thing but for different reasons, and each one knew that the other’s reason was different and that whichever of them got his way, it would be serious for the other one. Like they both knew it without saying it and that each was watching the other, and that they both knew that she would have the most sense about getting them started.
“They went straight to the garage where Salmon keeps his rent car. She did all the talking. She said they wanted to go to Jefferson. Maybe they never dreamed that Salmon would charge them more than a quarter apiece, because when he said three dollars she asked him again, like maybe she could not believe her ears. ‘Three dollars,’ Salmon says. ‘I couldn’t do it for no less. And them standing there and Uncle Doc not taking any part, like he was waiting, like it wasn’t any concern of his, like he knew that he wouldn’t need to bother: that she would get them there.
“ ‘I can’t pay that,’ she says.
“ ‘You won’t get it done no cheaper,’ Salmon says. ‘Unless by the railroad. They’ll take you for fifty-two cents apiece.’ But she was already going away, with Uncle Doc following her like a dog would.
“That was about four o’clock. Until six o’clock the folks saw them sitting on a bench in the courthouse yard. They were not talking: it was like each one never even knew the other one was there. They just sat there side by side, with her all dressed up in her Sunday clothes. Maybe she was enjoying herself, all dressed up and downtown all Saturday evening. Maybe it was to her what being in Memphis all day would be to other folks.
“They set there until the clock struck six. Then they got up. Folks that saw it said she never said a word to him; that they just got up at the same time like two birds do from a limb and a man can’t tell which one of them give the signal. When they walked, Uncle Doc walked a little behind her. They crossed the square this way and turned into the street toward the depot. And the folks knew that there wasn’t any train due for three hours and they wondered if they actually were going somewhere on the train, before they found out that they were going to do something that surprised the folks more than that, even. They went to that little café down by the depot and ate supper, that’ hadn’t even been seen together on the street before, let alone eating in a café, since they come to Jefferson. But that’s where she took him; maybe they were afraid they would miss the train if they ate downtown. Because they were there before half past six o’clock, sitting on two of them little stools at the counter, eating what. she had ordered without asking Uncle Doc about it at all. She asked the café man about the train to Jefferson and he told her it went at two A.M. ‘Lots of excitement in Jefferson tonight,’ he says. ‘You can get a car downtown and be in Jefferson in forty-five minutes. You don’t need to wait until two o’clock on that train.’ He thought they were strangers maybe; he told her which way town was.
“But she didn’t say anything and they finished eating and she paid him, a nickel and a dime at a time out of a tied up rag that she took out of the umbrella, with Uncle Doc setting there and waiting with that dazed look on his face like he was walking in his sleep. Then they left, and the café man thought they were going to take his advice and go to town and get that car when he looked out and saw them going on across the switch tracks, toward the depot. Once he started to call, but he didn