BARN BURNING

A STORY

BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

T-HE store in which the Justice of thePeace's court was sitting smelled of

cheese. The boy, crouched on his nailkeg at the back of the crowded room,knew he smelled cheese, and more: fromwhere he sat he could see the rankedshelvesclose-packed with the solid, squat,dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labelshis stomach read, not from the letteringwhich meant nothing to his mind butfrom the scarlet devils and the silvercurve of fish-this, the cheese which heknew he smelled and the hermetic meatwhich his intestines believed he smelledcoming in intermittent gusts momentaryand brief between the other constantone, the smell and sense just a little offear because mostly of despair and grief,the old fierce pull of blood. He couldnot see the table where the Justice satand before which his father and hisfather's enemy (our enemy he thought inthat despair; ourn!mineand him both! He'smyfather!) stood, but he could hear them,the two of them that is, because his fatherhad said no word yet:

"But what proof have you, Mr.Harris?"

"I told you. The hog got into mycorn. I caught it up and sent it back tohim. He had no fence that would holdit. I tcld him so, warned him. Thenext time I put the hog in my pen.When he came to get it I gave himenough wire to patch up his pen. Thenext time I put the hog up and kept it.I rode down to his house and saw the

wire I gave him still rolled on to thespool in his yard. I told him he couldhave the hog when he paid me a dollarpound fee. That evening a nigger camewith the dollar and got the hog. Hewas a strange nigger. He said, 'He sayto tell you wood and hay kin burn.' Isaid, 'What?' 'That whut he say to tellyou,' the nigger said. 'Wood and haykin burn.' That night my barn burned.I got the stock out but I lost the barn."

"Where is the nigger? Have you gothim?"

"He was a strange nigger, I tell you.I don't know what became of him."

"But that's not proof. Don't you seethat's not proof?"

"Get that boy up here. He knows."For a moment the boy thought too thatthe man meant his older brother untilHarris said, "Not him. The little one.The boy," and, crouching, small for hisage, small and wiry like his father, inpatched and faded jeans even too smaIlfor him, with straight, uncombed, brownhair and eyes gray and wild as stormscud, he saw the men between himselfand the table part and become a lane ofgrim faces, at the end of which he saw theJustice, a shabby, collarless, graying manin spectacles, beckoning him. He feltno floor under his bare feet; he seemed towalk beneath the palpable weight of thegrim turning faces. His father, stiff inhis black Sunday coat donned not for thetrial but for the moving, did not evenlook at him. He aims for me to lie, he

BARN BURNING

thought, again with that frantic griefand despair. And I will have to do hit.

"What's your name, boy?" the Justicesaid.

"Colonel Sartoris Snopes," the boywhispered.

"Hey?" the Justice said. "Talk louder.Colonel Sartoris? I reckon anybodynamed for Colonel Sartoris in this coun-try can't help but tell the truth, canthey?" The boy said nothing. Enemy!Enemy! he thought; for a moment hecould not even see, could not see that theJustice's face was kindly nor discern thathis voice was troubled when he spoke tothe man named Harris: "Do you wantme to question this boy?" But he couldhear, and during those subsequent longseconds while there was absolutely nosound in the crowded little room savethat of quiet and intent breathing it wasas if he had swung outward at the end ofa grape vine, over a ravine, and at thetop of the swing had been caught in aprolonged instant of mesmerized gravity,weightless in time.

"No!" Harris said violently, explo-sively. "Damnation! Send him out ofhere!" Now time, the fluid world,rushed beneath him again, the voicescoming to him again through the smell ofcheese and sealed meat, the fear anddespair and the old grief of blood:

"This case is closed. I can't findagainst you, Snopes, but I can give youadvice. Leave this country and don'tcome back to it."

His father spoke for the first time, hisvoice cold and harsh, level, without em-phasis: "I aim to. I don't figure to stayin a country among people who . . ."he said something unprintable and vile,addressed to no one.

"That'll do," the Justice said. "Takeyour wagon and get out of this countrybefore dark. Case dismissed."

His father turned, and he followed thestiff black coat, the wiry figure walking alittle stiffly from where a Confederateprovost's man's musket ball had takenhim in the heel on a stolen horse thirtyyears ago, followed the two backs now,

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since his older brother had appearedfrom somewhere in the crowd, no tallerthan the father but thicker, chewing to-bacco steadily, between the two lines ofgrim-faced men and out of the store andacross the worn gallery and down the sag-ging steps and among the dogs and half-grown boys in the mild May dust, whereas he passed a voice hissed:

"Barn burner!"Again he could not see, whirling; there

was a face in a red haze, moonlike, biggerthan the full moon, the owner of it halfagain his size, he leaping in the red hazetoward the face, feeling no blow, feelingno shock when his head struck the earth,scrabbling up and leaping again, feelingno blow this time either and tasting noblood, scrabbling up to see the other boyin full flight and himself already leapinginto pursuit as his father's hand jerkedhim back, the harsh, cold voice speakingabove him: "Go get in the wagon."

It stood in a grove of locusts and-mul-berries across the road. His two hulkingsisters in their Sunday dresses and hismother and her sister in calico and sun-bonnets were already in it, sitting on andamong the sorry residue of the dozen andmore movings which even the boy couldremember-the battered stove, the brokenbeds and chairs, the clock inlaid withmother-of-pearl, which would not run,stopped at some fourteen minutes pasttwo o'clock of a dead and forgotten dayand time, which had been his mother'sdowry. She was crying, though whenshe saw him she drew her sleeve acrossher face and began to descend from thewagon. "Get back," the father said.

"He's hurt. I got to get some waterand wash his • . ."

"Get back in the wagon," his fathersaid. He got in too, over the tail-gate.His father mounted to the seat where theolder brother already sat and struck thegaunt mules two savage blows with thepeeled willow, but without heat. It wasnot even sadistic; it was exactly that samequality which in later years would causehis descendants to over-run the enginebefore putting a motor car into motion,

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striking and reimng back in the samemovement. The wagon went on, thestore with its quiet crowd of grimlywatching men dropped behind; a curvein the road hid it. Forever he thought.Maybe he's done satisfied now, now that he has. . . stopping himself, not to say it aloudeven to himself. His mother's handtouched his shoulder.

"Does hit hurt?" she said."Naw," he said. "Hit don't hurt.

Lemme be.""Can't you wipe some of the blood off

before hit dries?""I'll wash to-night," he said. "Lemme

be, I tell you."The wagon went on. He did not

know where they were going. None ofthem ever did or ever asked, because itwas always somewhere, always a houseof sorts waiting for them a day or two'days or even three days away. Likelyhis father had already arranged to makea crop on another farm before he . . .Again he had to stop himself. He (thefather) always did. There was some-thing about his wolflike independenceand even courage when the advantagewas at least neutral which impressedstrangers, as if they got from his latentravening ferocity not so much a sense ofdependability as a feeling that his fero-cious conviction in the rightness of hisown actions would be of advantage to allwhose interest lay with his.

That night they camped, in a grove ofoaks and beeches where a spring ran.The nights were still cool and they had afire against it, of a rail lifted from a nearbyfence and cut into lengths-a small fire,neat, niggard almost, a shrewd fire; suchfires were his father's habit and customalways, even in freezing weather. Older,the boy might have remarked this andwondered why not a big one; why shouldnot a man who had not only seen thewaste and extravagance of war, but whohad in his blood an inherent voraciousprodigality with material not his own,have burned everything in sight? Thenhe might have gone a step farther andthought that that was the reason: that

niggard blaze was the living fruit ofnights passed during those four years inthe woods hiding from all men, blue orgray, with his strings of horses (capturedhorses, he called them). And older still,he might have divined the true reason:that the element of fire spoke to somedeep mainspring of his father's being,as the element of steel or of powderspoke to other men, as the one weapon forthe preservation of integrity, else breathwere not worth the breathing, and henceto be regarded with respect and used withdiscretion.

But he did not think this now and hehad seen those same niggard blazes allhis life. He merely ate his supper besideit and was already half asleep over hisiron plate when his father called him,and once more he followed the stiff back,the stiff and ruthless limp, up the slopeand on to the starlit road where, turning,he could see his father against the starsbut without face or depth-a shapeblack, flat, and bloodless as though cutfrom tin in the iron folds of the frockcoatwhich had not been made for him, thevoice harsh like tin and without heat liketin:

"You were fixing to tell them. Youwould have told him." He didn't an-swer. His father struck him with theflat of his hand on the side of the head,hard but without heat, exactly as he hadstruck the two mules at the store, exact-ly as he would strike either of them withany stick in order to kill a horse fly, hisvoice still without heat or anger: "You'regetting to be a man. You got to learn.You got to learn to stick to your ownblood or you ain't going to have anyblood to stick to you. Do you thinkeither of them, any man there this morn-ing, would? Don't you know all theywanted was a chance to get at me becausethey knew I had them beat? Eh?"Later, twenty years later, he was to tellhimself, "If I had said they wanted onlytruth, justice, he would have hit meagain." But now he said nothing. Hewas not crying. He just stood there."Answer me," his father said.

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"Yes," he whispered. His fatherturned.

"Get on to bed. We'll be there to-morrow."

To-morrow they were there. In theearly afternoon the wagon stopped be-fore a paintless two-room house identicalalmost with the dozen others it hadstopped before even in the boy's tenyears, and again, as on the other dozenoccasions, his mother and aunt got downand began to unload the wagon, al-though his two sisters and his father andbrother had not moved.

"Likely hit ain't fitten for hawgs," oneof the sisters said.

"Nevertheless, fit it will and you'll hogit and like it," his father said. "Get outof them chairs and help your Ma un-load."

The two sisters got down, big, bovine,in a flutter of cheap ribbons; one of themdrew from the jumbled wagon bed abattered lantern, the other a worn broom.His father handed the reins to the olderson and began to climb stiffly over thewheel. "When they get unloaded, takethe team to the barn and feed them."Then he said, and at first the boy thoughthe was still speaking to his brother:"Come with me."

"Me?" he said."Yes," his father said. "You.""Abner," his mother said. His father

paused and looked back-the harsh levelstare beneath the shaggy, graying, iras-cible brows.

"I reckon I'll have a word with theman that aims to begin to-morrow own-ing me body and soul for the next eightmonths."

They went back up the road. A weekago-or before last night, that is-hewould have asked where they were going,but not now. His father had struck himbefore last night but never before had hepaused afterward to explain why; it wasas if the blow and the following calm, out-rageous voice still rang, repercussed,divulging nothing to him save the terriblehandicap of being young, the light weightof his few years, just heavy enough to

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prevent his soaring free of the world as itseemed to be ordered but not heavyenough to keep him footed solid in it, toresist it and try to change the course ofits events.

Presently he could see the grove ofoaks and cedars and the other floweringtrees and shrubs where the house wouldbe, though not the house yet. Theywalked beside a fence massed with honey-suckle and Cherokee roses and came to agate swinging open between two brickpillars, and now, beyond a sweep of drive,he saw the house for the first time and atthat instant he forgot his father and theterror and despair both, and even whenhe remembered his father again (whohad not stopped) the terror and despairdid not return. Because, for all thetwelve movings, they had sojourned untilnow in a poor country, a land of smallfarms and fields and houses, and he hadnever seen a house like this before. Hit'sbig as a courthouse he thought quietly, witha surge of peace and joy whose reason hecould not have thought into words, beingtoo young for that: They are safe fromhim. People whose lives are a part of thispeace and dignity are beyond his touch, he nomore to them than a bu;:;;;.ingwasp: capable ofstinging for a little moment but that's all; thespell of this peace and dignity rendering eventhe barns and stable and cribs which belong to itimpervious to the puny flames he might 'ontTive~ .• this, the peace and joy, ebbing foran instant as he looked again at the stiffblack back, the stiff and implacable limpof the figure which was not dwarfed bythe house, for the reason that it had neverlooked big anywhere and which now,against this serene columned backdrop,had more than ever that imperviousquality of something cut ruthlessly fromtin, depthless, as though, sidewise to thesun, it would cast no shadow. Watch-ing him, the boy remarked the absolutelyundeviating course which his father heldand saw the stiff foot come squarely downin a pile of fresh droppings where a horsehad stood in the drive and which hisfather could have avoided by a simplechange of stride. But it ebbed only for

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a moment, 'though he could not havethought this into words either, walking onin the spell of the house, which he couldeven want but without envy, withoutsorrow, certainly never with that raven-ing and jealous rage which unknown tohim walked in the ironlike black coat be-fore him: Maybe he willful it too. Maybeit will even change him now from what maybehe couldn't help but be.

They crossed the portico. Now hecould hear his father's stiff foot as it camedown on the boards with clocklike final-ity, a sound out of all proportion to thedisplacement of the body it bore andwhich was not dwarfed either by thewhite door before it, as though it hadattained to a sort of vicious and raveningminimum not to be dwarfed by anything-the flat, wide, black hat, the formalcoat of broadcloth which had once beenblack but which had now that friction-glazed greenish cast of the bodies of oldhouse flies, the lifted sleeve which was toolarge, the lifted hand like a curled claw.The door opened so promptly that theboy knew the negro must have beenwatching them all the time, an old manwith neat grizzled hair, in a linen jacket,who stood barring the door with his body,saying, "Wipe yo foots, white man, fa youcome in here. Major ain't home nohow."

"Get out of my way, nigger," his fathersaid, without heat too, flinging the doorback and the negro also and entering, hishat still on his head. And now the boysaw the prints of the stiff foot on the door-jamb and saw them appear on the palerug behind the machinelike deliberationof the foot which seemed to bear (ortransmit) twice the weight which thebody compassed. The negro was shout-ing "Miss Lula! Miss Lula!" some-where behind them, then the boy, del-uged as though by a warm wave by asuave turn of carpeted stair and a pend-ant glitter of chandeliers and a mutegleam of gold frames, heard the swift feetand saw her too, a lady-perhaps he hadnever seen her like before either-in agray, smooth gown with lace at the throatand an apron tied at the waist and the

sleeves turned back, wiping cake or his-cuit dough from her hands with a towelas she came up the hall, looking not athis father at all but at the tracks on theblond rug with an expression of in-credulous amazement.

"I tried," the negro cried. "I tolehim to ... "

"Will you please go away?" she said ina shaking voice. "Major de Spain isnot at home. Will you please go away?"

His father had not spoken again. Hedid not speak again. He did not evenlook at her. He just stood stiff in thecenter of the rug, in his hat, the shaggyiron-gray brows twitching slightly abovethe pebble-colored eyes as he appeared toexamine the house with brief delibera-tion. Then with the same deliberationhe turned; the boy watched him pivot onthe good leg and saw the stiff foot draground the arc of the turning, leaving afinal long and fading smear. His fathernever looked at it, he never once lookeddown at the rug. The negro held thedoor. It closed behind them, upon thehysteric and indistinguishable woman-wail. His father stopped at the top ofthe steps and scraped his boot clean onthe edge of it. At the gate he stoppedagain. He stood for a moment, plantedstiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at thehouse. "Pretty and white, ain't it?" hesaid. "That's sweat. Nigger sweat.Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suithim. Maybe he wants to mix somewhite sweat with it."

Two hours later the boy was choppingwood behind the house within which hismother and aunt and the two sisters (themother and aunt, not the two girls, heknew that; even at this distance andmuffled by walls the flat loud voices ofthe two girls emanated an incorrigibleidle inertia) were setting up the stove toprepare a meal, when he heard thehooves and saw the linen-clad man on afine sorrel mare, whom he recognizedeven before he saw the rolled rug infront of the negro youth following on afat bay carriage horse-a suffused, angryface vanishing, still at full gallop, beyond

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the corner of the house where his fatherand brother were sitting in the two tiltedchairs; and a moment later, almost be-fore he could have put the axe down,he heard the hooves again and watchedthe sorrel mare go back out of the yard,already galloping again. Then his fa-ther began to shout one of the sisters'names, who presently emerged backwardfrom the kitchen door dragging the rolledrug along the ground by one end whilethe other sister walked behind it.

"If you ain't going to tote, go on andset up the wash pot," the first said.

"You, Sarty!" the second shouted."Set up the wash pot!" His father ap-peared at the door, framed against thatshabbiness, as he had been against thatother bland perfection, impervious toeither, the mother's anxious face at hisshoulder.

"Go on," the father said. "Pick it up."The two sisters stooped, broad, lethargic;stooping, they presented an incredibleexpanse of pale cloth and a flutter oftawdry ribbons.

"If I thought enough of a rug to haveto git hit all the way from France Iwouldn't keep hit where folks coming inwould have to tromp on hit," the firstsaid. They raised the rug.

"Abner," the mother said. "Let medo it."

"You go back and git dinner," hisfather said. "I'll tend to this."

From the woodpile through the rest ofthe afternoon the boy watched them,the rug spread flat in the dust beside thebubbling wash-pot, the two sisters stoop-ing over it with that profound andlethargic reluctance, while the fatherstood over them in turn, implacable andgrim, driving them though never raisinghis voice again. He could smell theharsh homemade lye they were using; hesaw his mother come to the door once andlook toward them with an expression notanxious now but very like despair; hesaw his father turn, and he fell to withthe axe and saw from the corner of hiseye his father raise from the ground aflattish fragment of field stone and ex-

amine it and return to the pot, and thistime his mother actually spoke: "Abner.Ab er. P ease don't. Please, Abner."

Then he was done too. It was dusk;the whippoorwills had already begun.He could smell coffee from the roomwhere they would presently eat the coldfood remaining from the mid-afternoonmeal, though when he entered the househe realized they were having coffee againprobably because there was a fire onthe hearth, before which the rug nowlay spread over the backs of the twochairs. The tracks of his father's footwere gone. Where they had been werenow long, water-cloudy scoriations re-sembling the sporadic course of a lilli-putian mowing machine.

It still hung there while they ate thecold food and then went to bed, scatteredwithout order or claim up and down thetwo rooms, his mother in one bed, wherehis father would later lie, the older brotherin the other, himself, the aunt, and thetwo sisters on pallets on the floor. Buthis father was not in bed yet. The lastthing the boy remembered was the depth-less, harsh silhouette of the hat and coatbending over the rug and it seemed tohim that he had not even closed his eyeswhen the silhouette was standing overhim, the fire almost dead behind it, thestiff foot prodding him awake. "Catchup the mule," his father said.

When he returned with the mule hisfather was standing in the black door,the rolled rug over his shoulder. "Ain'tyou going to ride?" he said.

"No. Give me your foot."He bent his knee into his father's hand,

the wiry, surprising power flowedsmoothly, rising, he rising with it, on tothe mule's bare back (they had owned asaddle once; the boy could remember itthough not when or where) and with thesame effortlessness his father swung therug up in front of him. Now in the star-light they retraced the afternoon's path,up the dusty road rife with honeysuckle,through the gate and up the black tunnelof the drive to the lightless house, wherehe sat on the mule and felt the rough

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warp of the rug drag across his thighs andvanish.

"Don't you want me to help?" hewhispered. His father did not answerand now he heard again that stiff footstriking the hollow portico with, thatwooden and clocklike deliberation, thatoutrageous overstatement of the weightit carried. The rug, hunched, not flung(the boy could tell that even in the dark-ness) from his father's shoulder struckthe angle of wall and floor with a soundunbelievably loud, thunderous, then thefoot again, unhurried and enormous; alight came on in the house and the boysat, tense, breathing steadily and quietlyand just a little fast, though the footitself did not increase its beat at all,descending the steps now; now the boycould see him.

"Don't you want to ride now?" hewhispered. "We kin both ride now,"the light within the house altering now,flaring up and sinking. He's comingdown the stairs now, he thought. He hadalready ridden the mule up beside thehorse block; presently his father was upbehind him and he doubled the reinsover and slashed the mule across theneck, but before the animal could beginto trot the hard, thin arm came roundhim, the hard, knotted hand jerking themule back to a walk.

In the first red rays -of the sun theywere in the lot, putting plow gear on themules. This time the sorrel mare was inthe lot before he heard it at all, the ridercollarless and even bareheaded, trem-bling, speaking in a shaking voice as thewoman in the house had done, his fathermerely looking up once before stoopingagain to the hame he was buckling, sothat the man on the mare spoke to hisstooping back:

"You must realize you have ruinedthat rug. Wasn't there anybody here, anyof your women ... " he ceased, shaking,the boy watching him, the older brotherleaning now in the stable door, chewing,blinking slowly and steadily at nothingapparently. "It cost a hundred dollars.But you never had a hundred dollars.

You never will. So I'm going to chargeyou twenty bushels of corn against yourcrop. I'll add it in your contract andwhen you come to the commissary youcan sign it. That won't keep Mrs. deSpain quiet but maybe it will teach youto wipe your feet off before you enter herhouse again."

Then he was gone. The boy lookedat his father, who still had not spoken oreven looked up again, who was now ad-justing the logger-head in the hame,

"Pap," he said. His father looked athim-the inscrutable face, the shaggybrows beneath which the gray eyes glintedcoldly. Suddenly the boy went towardhim, fast, stopping as suddenly. "Youdone the best you could!" he cried. "Ifhe wanted hit done different why didn'the wait and tell you how? He won't gitno twenty bushels! He won't git none!We'll gether hit and hide hit! I kinwatch ... "

"Did you put the cutter back in thatstraight stock like I told you?"

"No, sir," he said."Then go do it."That was Wednesday. During the

rest of that week he worked steadily,at what was within his scope and somewhich was beyond it, with an industrythat did not need to be driven nor evencommanded twice; he had this from hismother, with the difference that some atleast of what he did he liked to do, suchas splitting wood with the half-size axewhich his mother and aunt had earned,or saved money somehow, to present himwith at Christmas. In company withthe two older women (and on one after-noon, even one of the sisters), he builtpens for the shoat and the cow whichwere a part of his father's contract withthe landlord, and one afternoon, his fa-ther being absent, gone somewhere onone of the mules, he went to the field.I~:They were running a middle busternow, his brother holding the plowstraight while he handled the reins, andwalking beside the straining mule, therich black soil shearing cool and dampagainst his bare ankles, he thought

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Maybe this is the end of it. Maybe eventhat twenty bushels that seems hard to have topay jor just a rug will be a cheap price jor himto stop jorever and always jrom being what heused to be; thinking, dreaming now, sothat his brother had to speak sharply tohim to mind the mule: Maybe he evenwon't collect the twenty bushels. Maybe itwill all add up and balance and vanish-corn, rug, fire; the terror and grief, the beingpulled two ways like between two teams ojhorses-gone, done withjor ever and ever.

Then it was Saturday; he looked upfrom beneath the mule he was harnessingand saw his father in the black coat andhat. "Not that," his father said. "Thewagon gear." And then, two hours later,sitting in the wagon bed behind hisfather and brother on the seat, the wagonaccomplished a final curve, and he sawthe weathered paintless store with itstattered tobacco- and patent-medicineposters and the tethered wagons andsaddle animals below the gallery. Hemounted the gnawed steps behind hisfather and brother, and there again wasthe lane of quiet, watching faces for thethree of them to walk through. He sawthe man in spectacles sitting at the planktable and he did not need to be told thiswas a Justice of the Peace; he sent oneglare of fierce, exultant, partisan defianceat the man in collar and cravat now,whom he had seen but twice before in hislife, and that on a galloping horse, whonow wore on his face an expression not ofrage but of amazed unbelief which theboy could not have known was at theincredible circumstance of being suedby one of his own tenants, and came andstood against his father and cried at theJustice: "He ain't done it! He ain'tburnt ... "

"Go back to the wagon," his fathersaid.

"Burnt?" the Justice said. "Do Iunderstand this rug was burned too?"

"Does anybody here claim it was?"his father said. "Go back to the wagon."But he did not, he merely retreated to therear of the room, crowded as that otherhad been, but not to sit down this time,

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instead, to stand pressing among themotionless bodies, listening to the voices:

"And you claim twenty bushels ofcorn is too high for the damage you didto the rug?"

"He brought the rug to me and saidhe wanted the tracks washed out of it.I washed the tracks out and took the rugback to him."

"But you didn't carry the rug .back .tohim in the same condition it was in be-fore you made the tracks on it."

His father did not answer, and now forperhaps half a minute there was nosound at all save that of breathing, thefaint, steady suspiration of complete andintent listening.

"You decline to answer that, Mr.Snopes?" Again his father did not an-swer. "I'm going to find against you,Mr. Snopes. I'm going to find thatyou were responsible for the injury toMajor de Spain's rug and hold you liablefor it. But twenty bushels of corn seemsa little high for a man in your circum-stances to have to pay. Major de Spainclaims it cost a hundred dollars. Octo-ber corn will be worth about fifty cents.I figure that if Major de Spain can standa ninety-five dollar loss on somethinghe paid cash for, you can stand a five-dollar loss you haven't earned yet. Ihold you in damages to Major de Spainto the amount of ten bushels of corn overand above your contract with him, tobe paid to him out of your crop at gath-ering time. Court adjourned."

It had taken no time hardly, the morn-ing was but half begun. He thoughtthey would return home and perhapsback to the field, since they were late,far behind all other farmers. But in-stead his father passed on behind thewagon, merely indicating with his handfor the older brother to follow with it,and crossed the road toward the black-smith shop opposite, pressing on after hisfather, overtaking him, speaking, whis-pering up at the harsh, calm face beneaththe weathered hat: "He won't git no tenbushels neither. He won't git one.We'll ... "untilhisfatherglancedforan

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instant down at him, the face absolutelycalm, the grizzled eyebrows tangledabove the cold eyes, the voice almostpleasant, almost gentle:

"You think so? Well, we'll wait tillOctober anyway."

The matter of the wagon-the settingof a spoke or two and the tightening ofthe tires-did not take long either, thebusiness of the tires accomplished bydriving the wagon into the spring branchbehind the shop and letting it stand there,the mules nuzzling into the water fromtime to time, and the boy on the seat withthe idle reins, looking up the slope andthrough the sooty tunnel of the shedwhere the slow hammer rang and wherehis father sat on an upended cypress bolt,easily, either talking or listening, stillsitting there when the boy brought thedripping wagon up out of the branch andhalted it before the door.

"Take them on to the shade and hitch,"his father said. He did so and returned.His father and the smith and a third mansquatting on his heels inside the doorwere talking, about crops and animals;the boy, squatting too in the ammoniacdust and hoof-parings and scales of rust,heard his father tell a long and unhurriedstory out of the time before the birth ofthe older brother even when he had beena professional horsetrader. And thenhis father came up beside him where hestood before a tattered last year's circusposter on the other side of the store, gaz-ing rapt and quiet at the scarlet horses,the incredible poisings and convolutionsof tulle and tights and the painted leersof comedians, and said, "It's time to eat."

But not at home. Squatting besidehis brother against the front wall, hewatched his father emerge from the storeand produce from a paper sack a segmentof cheese and divide it carefully anddeliberately into three with his pocketknife and produce crackers from thesame sack. They all three squatted onthe gallery and ate, slowly, without talk-ing; then in the store again, they drankfrom a tin dipper tepid water smelling ofthe cedar bucket and of living beech

trees. And still they did not go home.It was a horse lot this time, a tall railfence upon and along which men stoodand sat and out of which one by onehorses were led, to be walked and trottedand then cantered back and forth alongthe road while the slow swapping andbuying went on and the sun began toslant westward, they-the three of them-watching and listening, the olderbrother with his muddy eyes and hissteady, inevitable tobacco, the fathercommenting now and then on certainof the animals, to no one in particular.

It was after sundown when they reachedhome. They ate supper by lamplight,then, sitting on the doorstep, the boywatched the night fully accomplish,listening to the whippoorwills and thefrogs, when he heard his mother's voice:"Abner! No! No! Oh, God. Oh,God. Abner!" and he rose, whirled,and saw the altered light through thedoor where a candle stub now burned ina bottle neck on the table and his father,still in the hat and coat, at once formaland burlesque as though dressed carefullyfor some shabby and ceremonial violence,emptying the reservoir of the lamp backinto the five-gallon kerosene can fromwhich it had been filled, while the mothertugged at his arm until he shifted thelamp to the other hand and flung herback, not savagely or viciously, just hard,into the wall, her hands flung out againstthe wall for balance, her mouth open andin her face the same quality of hopelessdespair as had been in her voice. Thenhis father saw him standing in the door.

"Go to the barn and get that can ofoil we were oiling the wagon with," hesaid. The boy did not move. Then hecould speak.

"What ... " he cried. "What areyou ... "

"Go get that oil," his father said."Go."

Then he was moving, running, outsidethe house, toward the stable: this the oldhabit, the old blood which he had notbeen permitted to choose for himself,which had been bequeathed him willy

BARN BURNING

nilly and which had run for so long (andwho knew where, battening on what ofoutrage and savagery and lust) before itcame to him. I could keep on, he thought.I could Tun on and on and never look back,never need to see his face again. Only Ican't. I can't, the rusted can in his handnow, the liquid sploshing in it as he ranback to the house and into it, into thesound of his mother's weeping in the nextroom, and handed the can to his father.

"Ain't you going to even send a nig-ger?" he cried. "At least you sent anigger before!"

This time his father didn't strike him.The hand came even faster than theblow had, the same hand which had setthe can on the table with almost ex-cruciating care flashing from the cantoward him too quick for him to followit, gripping him by the back of his shirtand on to tiptoe before he had seen it quitthe can, the face stooping at him inbreathless and frozen ferocity, the cold,dead voice speaking over him to the olderbrother who leaned against the table,chewing with that steady, curious, side-wise motion of cows:

"Empty the can into the big one andgo on. I'll catch up with you."

"Better tie him up to the bedpost," thebrother said.

"Do like I told you," the father said.Then the boy was moving, his bunchedshirt and the hard, bony hand betweenhis shoulder-blades, his toesjust touchingthe floor, across the room and into theother one, past the sisters sitting withspread heavy thighs in the two chairs overthe cold hearth, and to where his motherand aunt sat side by side on the bed, theaunt's arms about his mother's shoulders.

"Hold him," the father said. Theaunt made a startled movement. "Notyou," the father said. "Lennie. Takehold of him. I want to see you do it."His mother took him by the wrist."You'll hold him better than that. Ifhe gets loose don't you know what he isgoing to do? He will go up yonder."He jerked his head toward the road."Maybe I'd better tie him."

95

"I'll hold him," his mother whispered."See you do then." Then his father

was gone, the stiff foot heavy and meas-ured upon the boards, ceasing at last.

Then he began to struggle. Hismother caught him in both arms, hejerking and wrenching at them. Hewould be stronger in the end, he knewthat. But he had no time to wait for it."Lemme go!" he cried. "I don't wantto have to hit you!"

"Let him go!" the aunt said. "If hedon't go, before God, I am going upthere myself!"

"Don't you see 1 can't?" his mothercried. "Sarty! Sarty! No! No!Help me, Lizzie!"

Then he was free. His aunt graspedat him but it was too late. He whirled,running, his mother stumbled forwardon to her knees behind him, crying to thenearer sister: "Catch him, Net! Catchhim!" But that was too late too, thesister (the sisters were twins, born at thesame time, yet either of them now gavethe impression of being, encompassingas much living meat and volume andweight as any other two of the family)not yet having begun to rise from thechair, her head, face, alone merelyturned, presenting to him in the flyinginstant an astonishing expanse of youngfemale features untroubled by any sur-prise even, wearing only an expression ofbovine interest. Then he was out of theroom, out of the house, in the mild dustof the starlit road and the heavy rifenessof honeysuckle, the pale ribbon unspool-ing with terrific slowness under his run-ning feet, reaching the gate at last andturning in, running, his heart and. lungsdrumming, on up the drive toward thelighted house, the lighted door. He didnot knock, he burst in, sobbing forbreath, incapable for the moment ofspeech; he saw the astonished face of thenegro in the linen jacket without knowingwhen the negro had appeared.

"De Spain!" he cried, panted."Wher's ... " then he saw the white mantoo emerging from a white door down thehall. "Barn I" he cried. "Barn !'~

96 HARPER'S MAGAZINE

"What?" the white man said. "Barn?""Yes!" the boy cried. "Barn!""Catch him!" the white man shouted.But it was too late this time too. The

negro grasped his shirt, but the entiresleeve, rotten with washing, carried away,and he was out that door too and in thedrive again, and had actually neverceased to run even while he was scream-ing into the white man's face.

Behind him the white man was shout-ing, "My horse! Fetch my horse!" andhe thought for an instant of cutting acrossthe park and climbing the fence into theroad, but he did not know the park norhow high the vine-massed fence might beand he dared not risk it. So he ran ondown the drive, blood and breath roar-ing; presently he was in the road againthough he could not see it. He couldnot hear either: the galloping mare wasalmost upon him before he heard her,and even then he held his course, as ifthe very urgency of his wild grief andneed must in a moment more find himwings, waiting until the ultimate instantto hurl himself aside and into the weed-choked roadside ditch as the horse thun-dered past and on, for an instant infurious silhouette against the stars, thetranquil early summer night sky which,even before the shape of the horse andrider vanished, stained abruptly andviolently upward: a long, swirling roar·incredible and soundless, blotting thestars, and he springing up and into theroad again, running again, knowing itwas too late yet still running even afterhe heard the shot and, an instant later,two shots, pausing now without knowinghe had ceased to run, crying "Pap!Pap!", running again before he knew hehad begun to run, stumbling, trippingover something and scrabbling up againwithout ceasing to run, looking back-ward over his shoulder at the glare as hegot up, running on among the invisibletrees, panting, sobbing, "Father! Father!"

At midnight he was sitting on the crestof a hill. He did not know it was mid-

night and he did not know how far hehad come. But there was no glare be-hind him now and he sat now, his backtoward what he had called home for fourdays anyhow, his face toward the darkwoods which he would enter when breath.was strong again, small, shaking steadilyin the chill darkness, hugging himselfinto the remainder of his thin, rottenshirt, the grief and despair now no longerterror and fear but just grief and despair.Father. My father, he thought. "He wasbrave!" he cried suddenly, aloud but notloud, no more than a whisper: "He was!He was in the war! He was in ColonelSartoris' cav'ry!" not knowing that hisfather had gone to that war a private inthe fine old European sense, wearing nouniform, admitting the authority of andgiving fidelity to no man or army or flag,going to war as Malbrouck himself did:for booty-it meant nothing and less thannothing to him if it were enemy bootyor his own.

The slow constellations wheeled on.lt would be dawn and then sun-up aftera while and he would be hungry. Butthat would be to-morrow and now hewas only cold, and walking would curethat. His breathing was easier now andhe decided to get up and go on, and thenhe found that he had been asleep becausehe knew it was almost dawn, the nightalmost over. He could tell that from thewhippoorwills. They were everywherenow among the dark trees below him,constant and inflectioned and ceaseless,so that, as the instant for giving over tothe day birds drew nearer and nearer,there was no interval at all between them.He got up. He was a little stiff, butwalking would cure that too as it wouldthe cold, and soon there would be thesun. He went on down the hill, towardthe dark woods within which the liquidsilver voices of the birds called unceas-ing-the rapid and urgent beating ofthe urgent and quiring heart of thelate spring night. He did not lookback.