Raintree County (43 page)

—Hello, Johnny.

It was his mother.

His mind had just been filled with the exotic image of Susanna Drake. He had been thinking of her young pouting face, her love-talented body in a costly gown. Now suddenly this image was shattered by the apparition of Ellen Shawnessy in her drab little farmwife's dress. He saw as never before his mother's small weathered face, her bony, workroughened hands, her skyblue eyes, her slender body, which to him was neither masculine nor feminine—but simply maternal, this body which had had its anguish of childbirth many times and which was now saved from it by the blessing of the life-change.

—Any mail?

She peered blithely at him, her face heavily lined in the sunlight. She wore a fussy little hat that she had had for years.

—I—guess not, Johnny said.

—The news is exciting. I suppose you've heard.

He pressed his hand on the letter in his pocket.

—What? he said. You mean——

—The raid. This man Brown.

—O, Johnny said. Sure.

—I'm afraid nothing can be mended that way, Ellen said. Still it was the act of a brave man. God rest his soul.

—Is he—is he dead?

—Dead or dying. News just came over the wire.

As his mother walked slowly away, he saw a picture of an old man dying heroically from gunshot wounds. It was sweet to die a hero for the right, in an absurdly brave act. In the Act there was no remorse for things past. In the Act, there was only the living present.

A throng of people came up the street. In the middle Garwood Jones was shouting, sweating, waving his arms.

—I tell you, Garwood said, they'll hang 'im. What else can they do? The local courts will have jurisdiction since a number of people were killed right there in the town.

—It was a foolish thing to do, Cash said. The old guy didn't have a chance. There's no future in that kind of thing. Seventeen men or so against the country! The niggers'll never revolt. What did he expect to accomplish? It was blood thrown away.

—A few more men like that would blow things wide open in this godforsaken country, a man said.

Garwood Jones began to sound more and more like an orator. He drew apart from the other men, and they turned their faces toward him and formed a group.

—Fellow Americans, Garwood said gravely, it was treason. Technically, legally, what he did was directed as much against the North as the South. It was an affront to the whole country. I personally yield to no man in my desire to see the Negro gradually acquire as many rights as he is capable of exercising intelligently, but just to shove a gun in his hand and say, All right, Sambo, go out and start shooting every white man you see, why, men, that's madness—or—what's worse—coldblooded murder. I'd like to know what the Republicans——

—Who said anything about the Republicans? a man said hotly. The Republicans never had anything to do with this.

—Well, Garwood said hotly, what have they been doing all along but inflaming the minds of people and keeping this issue alive! No, sir, Douglas is right. Let them——

—O, the hell with Douglas! a man said. By God, if we had more politicians from the North with a little of John Brown's guts, we'd not be allays backing down when——

—All I say is, Garwood said, his big handsome face flushed with anger all I say is that——

—What a story! Niles Foster said in passing. I'm getting out an extra. First time in the paper's history. Folks are demanding it. I guess I can do it.

—What kind of trial will he get down there! a man said.

—If they give him justice, Garwood said, he'll get hanged. Nothing can save that man but a war.

—Justice! a man said. What was he trying to do but free some slaves?

—He killed some people, didn't he? Garwood said. He tried to overturn the Government. He broke into a United States Arsenal. You talk about justice. Why, the man's a murderer!

—Some people have a funny idea of justice, by God!

Words had never been so hot and fierce before in the Court House Square.

—Cash, Johnny said, pulling him aside, I want to talk with you.

He got Cash Carney out of the crowd, took him to a quiet place off the Square, and told him everything.

—I just had to tell someone, he said. What am I going to do?

—Jesus, John, Cash said, you're in a mess!

—I know it, Johnny said.

The muscles of Cash Carney's face twitched. He looked as if he had just got hold of a fat deal for making some money. He rubbed his hands together and puffed happily on his cigar.

—Jesus, John, I didn't know you had it in you.

He gave Johnny a quick look in which respect, sympathy, and a kind of veiled pleasure were mixed. He threw away his half smoked cigar, bit off the end of a new cigar, and covered his face with his cupped hands.

—You got raped, he said.

—No, Johnny said. It was both of us.

—By God, I thought there was something queer about that dame. Here, let me see that letter.

He read it over.

—One-Shot Johnny! he said. Why'd she put it off so long, telling you? Three, four months already. My God, she's no right asking a man to marry her after that. She'll stick out.

—I know, Johnny said.

—Now, don't worry, Cash said. We can lick this thing.

We'll think of something. What if your folks found out?

—I know, Johnny said.

—But don't worry, Cash said, throwing away his second cigar and biting the tip off a third. Yes, sir, she'll stick right out. What kind of a marriage would that be, John?

—I know, Johnny said.

—That little dress has been off before. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. Say, do you suppose Garwood's been in there?

—I don't know, Johnny said.

Cash finally got the cigar burning. He leaned back against a fence, opened his coat, hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, and considered the situation calmly. It appealed to his imagination.

—I see just how it happened, John. On top of that whiskey, which under the circumstances wasn't exactly your fault, you drink cider, which happens to be hard. You swim a little, and you're a
little tired and dizzy, it's hot, you lie down, you find this girl on top of you, and you—

—I know, Johnny said.

—It could have happened to anyone, John.

—I know, Johnny said.

—Listen, Cash said. Why'nt she write sooner? Why'd she go South? There's something fishy here.

—I don't know, Johnny said.

—Now, listen, John, Cash said, don't worry about this thing. It can be fixed up. There
must
be a way to get you out of this. Does anyone else know?

—Not that I know of, Johnny said.

—Good, Cash said, as if that solved the whole problem. Fine! Now let me think. Jesus, John, you should have been more careful.

—I know.

—Coming back in a couple of weeks, she says. That gives us some time. Now let me see.

Cash chewed his cigar thoughtfully, but he didn't say he had a plan.

Nevertheless, Johnny felt much better to have someone else sharing the burden and thinking about it along with him. Good old Cash! It was good to have a man that bit down hard on his cigar and figured out ways to beat the game and come out on top, a practical man, a business man. Cash Carney would grab hold of a problem like this and whip it. Personally, he, Johnny, was helpless.

In the following days, the only relief Johnny Shawnessy had from the burden of his guilt came from reading about the famous raid and its aftermath. The trial of the wounded old man dragged on for two weeks. The Nation was drenched with rivers of black words in narrow columns—questions, counterquestions, legal jargon, names of witnesses, conspirators, friends, innocent dead. One day Johnny went into Freehaven and heard that John Brown had been sentenced to die. He read the record of the old man's last words to the Court, words that would remain in the Republic's memory after all the hundreds and thousands of words of that year had been washed away in the acid bath of time.

. . . I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have
always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.

Also at that time, Johnny saw in the Square pictures of John Brown, which could be bought in lots of a dozen for a dollar. During those days the face of the foremost American of the hour loomed above the land like a face of stone. Looking at that face, men knew that the appointed time was nearing when John Brown would go out and the rope would be tied around his neck and the trap would be sprung and his body would drop jerking at the rope's end and the face with the accusing eyes would be the face of a dead man. Men had a little time to wait and think how and why this death was being done. It was only a question of time.

For Johnny Shawnessy, too, it was only a question of time. Time had become again a real duration that had a seed in the past and a flower in the future. In the Court House Square, he had had his being sown with small black words, and they had become a promise he could neither alter nor diminish. They would remain within him and grow upon him in magnitude and terror.

Always and for all men, he knew, time had been bringing dark events to birth. Some men were passive and let time bully them. But brave men acted. John Brown was such a man. He had performed the living Act and had dared the consequence. Like an Old Testament prophet, in whom trembled the fury of an avenging God, he had made the people mindful of themselves, awakened them from slumber. Somewhere now in darkness and agony, jailed, wounded, spat on, lay John Brown's body. It was a tough seed that couldn't be killed. And all men felt that when that body was given to the grave, it would be only that it might go on in darkness preparing for a mightier birth because that name, that body, and that face were chosen.

History had thrust a torch into John Brown's hand. He had become an image-bearer of the Republic.

The night after hearing of John Brown's sentence, Johnny Shawnessy got out of bed and silently putting on his clothes, slipped down to the place beside the tracks where he had said good-by to the Perfessor.
A train approached, coming from the east. The lone red eye blinked at him, the train chugged up the grade, flame flared from the smokestack in the dark. Johnny Shawnessy rose and ran toward the embankment, slipping and scrambling through dead vines and withering grasses by the river. For an instant, he saw in the engine's scarlet glare the vision of a new life for him. California, on the Golden Shore! There rushed over him the images of a future of achievement, such as he had always dreamed. He saw himself among the intrepid thousands who went west with the Republic. He would take up again the Quest of the Shawnessys. One of that restless, messianic seed, he would push on and leave the past behind. He would say good-by to Raintree County and go forth and fearless to a land where purple hills were drenched with golden fire at evening.

For a tumultuous instant, the necessary words were rising to his tongue, the words that said farewell and made it possible for him to turn his face from the faces of his people. In that instant, as the last car rolled over the crest of the hill, he looked backward. The river flowed in darkness making its great south loop. On the Home Place leaf-fires were charring in the darkness, and a lonely rock lay at the limit of the land. Then all the summers of his life rushed back upon him. He remembered his mother standing at the back door and calling the boys in from the fields for dinner. He remembered T. D.'s tall, gentle form in the cluttered Office among the squarecornered bottles. Johnny Shawnessy's voice made a hoarse cry in his throat, and at the same time he heard the lonely wail of the departing engine. Then all that he was and all that he had been, like a hundred feminine and pleading hands, held him fast; he lay entangled with the vines and grasses of the autumnal earth beside the river. He knew then that he could no more uproot himself from this memoryhaunted earth than he could pluck body from soul. He lay in wet weeds at the base of the embankment and wondered at the image of himself departing from himself, of the disinherited one whom he had just sent down the tracks to westward and never would behold again

THE EARTH WAS ODOROUS WITH AUTUMN;
ACROSS THE FIELDS DRIFTED A SCENT
OF

SMOKE
curled up from the cigars of three men seated in front of the General Store.

—Let's try page 65, the Senator said.

He was wedged into the middle one of three chairs. The Perfessor on his right and Mr. Shawnessy on his left were bent over to see the
Atlas
lying open in the Senator's lap. The Perfessor licked his lips. His eyes were beady.

—I must say, he said, I never thought I'd take so much interest in the face of Raintree County. What a priceless opportunity that artist had!

—I'm beginning to think that the whole thing was the figment of an old man's diseased mind, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—It must be here somewhere, the Senator said, studying page 65. If there weren't so many interruptions——

Page 65 showed the farm residence of Robert Ray. Hugely passive in the foreground stood Jocko the Strong, blueribbon bull, surrounded by lesser bovine gentry.

—There goes another possibility, the Senator said. Doggone it! Let's see—have we looked through it carefully?

—Let me try for a while, the Perfessor said.

He began to flap through the pages, holding the book at various angles and removes. He had the air of slipping up on the pictures before something could run away.