William Faulkner - The Reivers

"And into Monday morning too," Colonel Linscomb said. "You wake up Monday morning, sick, with a hangover, filthy in a filthy jail, and lie there until some white man comes and pays your fine and takes you straight back to the cotton field or whatever it is and puts you back to work without even giving you time to eat breakfast. And you sweat it out there, and maybe by sundown you feel you are not really going to die; and the next day, and the day after that, and after that, until it's Saturday again and you can put down the plow or the hoe and go back as fast as you can to that stinking jail cell on Monday morning. Why do you do it? I dont know."

"You cant know," Ned said. "You're the wrong color. If you could just be a nigger one Saturday night, you wouldn't never want to be a white man again as long as you live."

"All right," Grandfather said. "Go on." —So Bobo told Ned of his predicament: the horse less than half a mile away, practically asking to be stolen; and the white man who knew it and who had given Bobo an ultimatum measurable now in mere hours—"All right," Grandfather said. "Now get to my automobile."

"We're already to it," Ned said. They—he and Bobo— went to the stable to look at the horse. "And soon as I laid eyes on him, I minded that mule I used to own." And Bobo, like me, was too young actually to remember the mule; but, also like me, he had grown up with its legend. "So we decided to go to that white man and tell him something had happened and Bobo couldn't get that horse outen that stable for him like Bobo thought he could, but we could get him a automobile in place of it. —Now wait," he told Grandfather quickly. "We knowed as good as you that that automobile would be safe at least long enough for us to finish. Maybe in thirty or forty years you can stand on a Jefferson street corner and count a dozen automobiles before sundown, but you cant yet. Maybe then you can steal a automobile and find somebody to buy it that wont worry you with a lot of how-come and who and why. But you cant now. So for a man that looked like I imagined he looked (I hadn't never seen him yet) to travel around trying to sell a automobile quick and private, would be about as hard as selling a elephant quick and private. You never had no trouble locating where it was at and getting your hand on it, once you and Mr van Tosch got started, did you?"

"Go on," Grandfather said. Ned did.

"Then the white man would ask what automobile? and Bobo would let me tend to that; and then the white man would maybe ask what I'm doing in it nohow, and then Bobo would tell him that I want that horse because I know how to make it run; that we already got a match race waiting Tuesday, and if the white man wanted, he could come along too and win enough on the horse to pay back three or four times them hundred and thirteen dollars, and then he wouldn't even have to worry with the automobile if he didn't want to. Because he would be the kind of a white man that done already had enough experience to know what would sell easy and what would be a embarrassment to get caught with. So that's what we were gonter do until yawl come and ruint it: let that white man just watch the first heat without betting yes or no, which he would likely do, and see Lightning lose it like he always done, which the white man would a heard all about too, by now; then we would say Nemmine, just wait to the next heat, and then bet him the horse against the automobile on that one without needing to remind him that when Lightning got beat this time, he would own him too." They—Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb and Mr van Tosch—looked at Ned. I wont try to describe their expressions. I cant. "Then yawl come and ruint it," Ned said.

"I see," Mr van Tosch said. "It was all just to save Bobo. Suppose you had failed to make Coppermine run, and lost him too. What about Bobo then?"

"I made him run," Ned said. "You seen it."

"But just suppose, for the sake of the argument," Mr van Tosch said.

"That would a been Bobo's lookout," Ned said. "It wasn't me advised him to give up Missippi cotton farming and take up Memphis frolicking and gambling for a living in place of it."

"But I thought Mr Priest said he's your cousin," Mr van. Tosch said.

"Everybody got kinfolks that aint got no more sense than Bobo," Ned said.

"Well," Mr van Tosch said.

"Let's all have a toddy," Colonel Linscomb said briskly. He got up and mixed and passed them. "You too," he told Ned. Ned brought his glass and Colonel Linscomb poured. This time when Ned set the untasted glass on the mantel, nobody said anything.

"Yes," Mr van Tosch said. Then he said: "Well, Priest, you've got your automobile. And I've got my horse. And maybe I frightened that damn scoundrel enough to stay clear of my stable hands anyway." They sat there. "What shall I do about Bobo?" They sat there. "I'm asking you," Mr van Tosch said to Ned.

"Keep him," Ned said. "Folks—boys and young men anyhow—in my people dont convince easy—"

"Why just Negroes?" Mr van Tosch said.

"Maybe he means McCaslins," Colonel Linscomb said.

"That's right," Ned said. "McCaslins and niggers both act like the mixtry of the other just makes it worse. Right now I'm talking about young folks, even if this one is a nigger McCaslin. Maybe they dont hear good. Anyhow, they got to learn for themselves that roguishness dont pay. Maybe Bobo learnt it this time. Aint that easier for you than having to break in a new one?"

"Yes," Mr van Tosch said. They sat there. "Yes," Mr van Tosch said again. "So I'll either have to buy Ned, or sell you Coppermine." They sat there. "Can you make him run again, Ned?"

"I made him run that time," Ned said. "I said, again," Mr van Tosch said. They sat there. "Priest," Mr van Tosch said, "do you believe he can do it again?"

"Yes," Grandfather said.

"How much do you believe it?" They sat there. "Are you addressing me as a banker or a what?" Grandfather said.

"Call it a perfectly normal and natural northwest Mississippi countryman taking his perfectly normal and natural God-given and bill-of-rights-defended sabbatical among the fleshpots of southwestern Tennessee," Colonel Linscomb said.

"All right," Mr van Tosch said. "I'll bet you Coppermine against Ned's secret, one heat of one mile. If Ned can make Coppermine beat that black of Linscomb's again, I get the secret and Coppermine is yours. If Coppermine loses, I dont want your secret and you take or leave Coppermine for five hundred dollars—"

"That is, if he loses, I can have Coppermine for five hundred dollars, or if I pay you five hundred dollars, I dont have to take him," Grandfather said.

"Right," Mr van Tosch said. "And to give you a chance to hedge, I will bet you two dollars to one that Ned cant make him run again." They sat there.

"So I've either got to win that horse or buy him in spite of anything I can do," Grandfather said.

"Or maybe you didn't have a youth," Mr van Tosch said. "But try to remember one. You're among friends here; try for a little while not to be a banker. Try." They sat there.

"Two-fifty," Grandfather said. "Five," Mr van Tosch said. "Three-fifty," Grandfather said. "Five," Mr van Tosch said. "Four-and-a-quarter," Grandfather said.

"Five," Mr van Tosch said.

"Four-fifty," Grandfather said. "Four-ninety-five," Mr van Tosch said. "Done," Grandfather said. "Done," Mr van Tosch said.

So for the fourth time McWillie on Acheron and I on Lightning (I mean Coppermine) skittered and jockeyed behind that taut little frail jute string. McWillie wasn't speaking to me at all now; he was frightened and outraged, baffled and determined; he knew that something had happened yesterday which should not have happened; which in a sense should not have happened to anyone, certainly not to a nineteen-year-old boy who was simply trying to win what he had thought was a simple horse race: no holds barred, of course, but at least a mutual agreement that nobody would resort to necromancy. We had not drawn for position this time. We—McWillie and I —had been offered the privilege, but Ned said at once: "Nemmine this time. McWillie needs to feel better after yesterday, so let him have the pole where he can start feeling better now." Which, from rage or chivalry, I didn't know which, McWillie refused, bringing us to what appeared insoluble impasse, until the official—the pending homicide one—solved it quick by saying,