Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner Read Free Book Online

gone back last night, yawning and lounging now and complaining of lack of sleep: and that to be added to Lucas’ account too) and he had heard all this before too and had even thought of it himself before that:
    ‘I wonder if Hampton took a shovel with him. That’s all he’s going to need.’
    ‘They’ll lend him a shovel out there.’
    ‘Yes—if there’s anything to bury. They have gasoline even in Beat Four.’
    ‘I thought old Skipworth was going to take care of that.’
    ‘Sure. But that’s Beat Four. They’ll do what Skipworth tells them as long as he’s got the nigger. But he’s going to turn him over to Hampton. That’s when it’ll happen. Hope Hampton might be sheriff in Yoknapatawpha County but he’s just another man in Beat Four.’
    ‘No. They wont do nothing today. They’re burying Vinson this afternoon and to burn a nigger right while the funeral’s going on wouldn’t be respectful to Vinson.’
    ‘That’s so. It’ll probably be tonight.’
    ‘On Sunday night?’
    ‘Is that the Gowries’ fault? Lucas ought to thought of that before he picked out Saturday to kill Vinson on.’
    ‘I don’t know about that. Hope Hampton’s going to be a hard man to take a prisoner away from too.’
    ‘A nigger murderer? Who in this county or state eitheris going to help him protect a nigger that shoots white men in the back?’
    ‘Or the South either.’
    ‘Yes. Or the South either.’ He had heard it all before: outside again now: only his uncle might decide to come to town before time to go for the noon mail at the postoffice and if his uncle didn’t see him then he really could tell his mother he didn’t know where he was and of course he thought first of the empty office but if he went there that’s exactly where his uncle would come too: because—and he remembered again that he had forgot to give Highboy the extra feed this morning too but it was too late now and besides he was going to carry feed with him anyway—he knew exactly what he was going to do: the sheriff had left town about nine oclock; the constable’s house was fifteen miles away on a gravel road not too good but the sheriff should certainly go there and be back with Lucas by noon even if he stopped to make a few votes while there; long before that time he would go home and saddle Highboy and tie a sack of feed behind the saddle and turn him in a straight line in the opposite direction from Fraser’s store and ride in that one undeviable direction for twelve hours which would be about midnight tonight and feed Highboy and rest him until daylight or even longer if he decided to and then ride the twelve hours back which would be eighteen actually or maybe even twenty-four or even thirty-six but at least all over finished done, no more fury and outrage to have to lie in bed with like trying to put yourself to sleep counting sheep and he turned the corner and went along the opposite side of the street and under the shed in front of the closed blacksmith shop, the heavy double wooden doors not locked with a hasp or latch but with a padlocked chain passed through an augerhole in each one so thatthe slack of the chain created an insag almost like an alcove; standing in it nobody could have seen him from either up the street or down it nor even passing along it (which would not be his mother anyway today) unless they stopped to look and now the bells began ringing in mellow unhurried discordant strophe and antistrophe from steeple to pigeonswirled steeple across the town, streets and Square one sudden decorous flow of men in their dark suits and women in silks and parasols and girls and young men two and two, flowing and decorous beneath that mellow uproar into that musical clamor: gone, Square and street empty again though still the bells rang on for a while yet, sky-dwellers, groundless denizens of the topless air too high too far insentient to the crawling earth then ceasing stroke by hasteless stroke from the subterrene shudder