Chapter 7 No.7

Two weeks passed. Joe felt himself gradually slipping into an abyss of resignation. Nearer and nearer came June. Less and less he seemed to care. He took interest in nothing. He ate and slept and plodded. He ate and slept and plodded as though all that life consisted of was eating and sleeping and plodding. Most of us have seen in some quiet fence corner, just behind the barn, under some old tree with gnarled trunk and droopy branches, an old gray horse, with eyes closed, muzzle resting on the top rail, one hind leg slightly bent and propped by the tip of a cracked and drying hoof.

Most of us have seen such a horse, seemingly on the gradual slip into oblivion, whose very tail-switching was so rhythmic and regular as to fit in, in absolute harmony, with the swelling waves of sleep and measured breathing and all that sort of thing. And that very horse might well be on the brink of a day's exhausting labour. And furthermore he might well know it. Certainly his experience might tell him-easily enough. Yet he stands there switching in a sort of self-imposed numbness. It is probably nature's way of anaesthetizing him from the pain of unlimited drabness. It is the only way a sensitive nature can face such a prospect without going mad. Such was Joe.

He had slumped. He no longer cared. He no longer cared if skies were blue and if breezes were lazy and outdoors was calling. He no longer cared when the quitting whistle blew. He no longer cared that June was only two weeks off. He would not even have cared if June had been the end of it all. He had settled into his stupor.

And then one morning at about eleven o'clock he was summoned to the telephone by the switchboard operator. It was a drowsy morning, full of dronings and rustlings, and he was very heavy lidded as he stepped into the booth reserved for such calls. He had been expecting a message from Indianapolis about some shipment that had gone astray and for which he was putting in a claim. He sank heavily down upon the hard, polished little stool. The air was stuffy and foul about him.

"This Mr. Hooper?" he heard a voice say.

He said it was.

"Well, this is--" He had not the slightest idea what the name was. But it made not the slightest difference. It might have been the president or it might have been the shipping clerk. All that mattered was that it was a tiresome sack of castings giving him some extra trouble. And so he stretched a little and yawned a little and replied: "Yes. All right."

And then the voice went on a little hurriedly-too hurriedly for him to catch it all. And instead of "sack of castings," the voice kept on crazily alluding to "your uncle" and "all night"-and phrases that were jumbled as in a dream. He came to himself suddenly with a start and then the connection was broken off and there was nothing but a confused buzzing and rattling. He straightened up on the stool, waited a minute, and then jiggled the receiver. He felt very queer. He felt to blame for his stupidness. He felt someway as though he had been caught up with. And he could not understand.

Directly the exchange called his name and he responded quite sharply and briskly. Then her "Just a minute," and he was feeling suddenly taut and tense. And then the voice was switched on again.

Like a dream it came. He could barely make out the syllables. The voice was broken-seemed very far-away-very weak. It was telling him that his uncle-his uncle, Mr. Mosby-"Brrr! Brrr!"-and had not been seen since. There was a moment's pause.

And then-would he come?

Another pause and he had vague notions that that was all. And yet he had not heard. Yes, he would come.

There was a click and then silence, and there he was, sitting just as though he had dreamed it all. Then a voice called, "Did you get them?" And he mechanically put up the receiver without a word. Something had happened-just what, he could only guess-make out piecemeal. There was trouble-he could feel that. Uncle Buzz had somehow stepped beyond the pale. He had heard the words "all night" and "no trace of him." This was no ordinary trouble. This was not a matter of trial balance.

He opened the door and stepped out into the office. It was a changed place. Over there was his long flat-topped desk with the opened ledger upon it. A sheet of paper had blown to the floor and was sliding over toward him, its edges curling lazily. These seemed live, vibrant features. One of the clerks across the way had thought of something humorous and was leaning forward to tell his vis-à-vis. It had been so vital that he had laid his pen down to tell it. He was talking with half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his head: his white piqué tie had slipped away from a bright brass collar button....

Through the open door he could see Mr. Boner hunched up over his desk and as he watched, that gentleman suddenly plunged his head in a ducking motion toward the cuspidor on the floor and just as quickly bent down again over the desk. Like fire-flashes of consciousness all these things were. These were things going on outside of him. There was a world moving on outside of him, a world that took little count of the creatures in its path. All this-all this about him-was like a bit of stale, flat, slightly greenish backwater-the big wheels churning away just beyond and paying it no attention, letting it grow staler and staler. Some day there would come a change-as though the miller had opened up another sluice-and a few vigorous splashings and all would be changed even here. He viewed it speculatively, as one outside it all. He suddenly felt that for him it was all over. And he went into Mr. Boner's office.

Mr. Boner looked up sidewise.

"I've had a 'phone call from home."

Mr. Boner's eyes rolled slightly, showing the whites.

"There's some trouble there. I'll have to go."

A moment's pause. Mr. Boner cleared his throat. "All right," he said. And then he bent back over his work.

He went and got his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And then he left it.

Three hours later he was standing in the "Golden Rule" at Bloomfield. Before him was a glass counter wherein were displayed knives and cleavers and scissors and other cutlery. Above the counter, peering at him rather anxiously over steel-rimmed spectacles, were the head and shoulders of Mr. Burrus. Burrus! It had come to him on the train. That was the name he had not caught. Burrus! Who else?

"And you say that the last time you saw him was when he got into his buggy and drove away-last night? What makes you think he's gone away?"

Mr. Burrus had been thoughtfully eyeing his stock of knives through the case and as Joe finished he cast a quick, sidewise glance up at him. Joe caught the flicker of it through the spectacles. "Well," he began, and hesitated a little, "it's what I woulda done-under the circumstances." Mr. Burrus' manner, usually so brisk and business-like, seemed suddenly to have changed. He scratched his head with a long and bony finger and looked up again at Joe. What he saw seemed not to reassure him, for Joe had all of a sudden grown beyond Bloomfield's conception of him. He towered above the cutlery case-seemed to fill out his clothes. There was a set look about his mouth and a steadiness about his eyes. Mr. Burrus paused again.

"Circumstances?" said Joe. "Under what circumstances?"

Mr. Burrus gazed off into the clear blue of the sky patch outlined by his front door. "Well," he began cautiously, "I weren't callatin' to say anything about this to anybody, but-I had to let Bushrod go." The little weazened body with its scrawny neck rising out of the gaping rubber collar, the shiny bald head with its fringe of graying hair about the edge, the white shirt sleeves with the frayed cuffs and the skinny brown hands-a most incongruous disguise for Nemesis to take in passing a pronunciamento.

"Why?" Joe repeated after him softly. "Wasn't he doing his work?"

Another flash-like glance up through the steel-rimmed spectacles. Mr. Burrus appeared to be weighing his words. "No," he considered, "it weren't that." He drummed with his fingers on the glass counter. "He was drunk," he snapped out, and stared sternly off into space. And then as if he felt it becoming of him, he frowned and his adam's-apple moved up and down with quick, spasmodic jerks. But he would not look at Joe.

A moment's silence descended on the shop and the odours of the place, as though set free by that silence, came drifting to Joe's nostrils as he stood there waiting-waiting for the story. There was a blending of the smells of coal oil and fresh cloth on bolts and the indefinable metallic smell of tinware, and behind it all an overtone of odour, as it were, of sweet growing things-hay and grain-and the fields-Someone dropped a pan in the rear of the shop and Mr. Burrus looked around fiercely. When he again faced Joe, the harassed look was gone.

Joe had been gradually making up his mind. "You'd seen him drunk before?-That wasn't the first time?"

Mr. Burrus looked up. "Well!" he began tartly. "So much the worse, isn't it?"

"No," said Joe, "it's not. If you'd fired him the first time there'd have been some reason for it. It was because he wasn't the kind of man you wanted in your office, wasn't it?"

"That was it, exactly," agreed Mr. Burrus.

"It was because he didn't see things as he should, didn't do things as he should-in a general way-that he wasn't fit for the job, Mr. Burrus?" Joe went on.

"Exactly."

"And if he had-had been of a piece with yourself-so that you could have jiggled him around in your fingers like a hunk of putty, it would have been all right. It was not his drinking-it was his drinking in spite of your wanting him not to-that got him in bad, wasn't it, Mr. Burrus?"

Mr. Burrus fidgeted and then turned sharply on Joe. "This ain't no third degree."

"And you think he's gone away?" Joe continued as though not hearing him.

"Of course he's gone away. What else was there for him to do?"

There was no obvious alternative.

Joe took his leave and went to see Mrs. Mosby. As he stood waiting in the cool, high-ceilinged hall, he was struck by the quiet of the place. It had an air of waiting. What for? There was a high walnut hat-rack with a mirror and a marble slab with a card tray on it, and two high-backed chairs, likewise black walnut and elaborately carved and atrocious, and in the dim recesses of the stair a horsehair sofa, all just as they had been for years. They were mute but they seemed expectant. What could they be waiting for? They were on the outside edge of things-where life was passing. What could be in store for them? And yet, as he stood in the hall, with the sound of his breathing so fine, so distinct in his ears, they seemed to be part of another presence waiting there with him, a mute presence as to sound, but in some way eloquent voiced, clamorous to be heard.

A faint rustling came to his ears and then steps, and looking up, he saw his aunt Loraine coming down the stairs. Her bangles and her trinkets gave out hushed little clickings and he could hear her breathing as she came across the carpet to meet him.

"Joseph," she said, and he could see beneath her shell that she was agitated. "Joseph! What do you suppose can have happened?" Her toilette, like an ancient ritual observed in every sacred detail, included her manner and deportment. The voice, the inflection, the bearing-all went with the ruching and the bangles. Joe had once wondered if she put them all in the same box when she went to bed.

"I don't know, Aunt Lorry, I'm sure." Catching a haggard look about her eyes he added more gently: "But I wouldn't be too worried. He's probably gone to Louisville."

She shook her head, and in spite of herself her voice broke a little. "He's never done that without telling me."

Joe stood for a moment in thought. "There was no business that would take him anywhere-business about the farm?"

"No," she said. "Won't you come in and sit down in the parlour? I was so upset--"

He looked at her kindly. It was perhaps the first time in his experience he had ever done so. Somehow the shell did not seem so to cover her. She was such a tight little body, a close-bound fagot of reserves and inhibitions. She had never exuded the slightest humanity. And now the shell was cracking and little glints were showing through. "No, Aunt Lorry," he said. "Not now. There's nothing to be gained by talking-unless you have any ideas as to where-where he might have gone."

Her eyes looked haggard but they remained stoically dry. She shook her head.

He turned to go and took a few steps toward the door. And she came and laid her hand on his arm. It was as light and feathery as a dead leaf, but he could feel the warmth through his sleeve.

"Don't," she said, "don't let anything get out if-if there's anything should be kept quiet." She looked him earnestly in the eyes. "I'll depend on you?"

He promised and ran lightly down the front steps. Behind him the front door closed, ponderous and grave. And as he passed around the curve of the driveway to the gate he looked back and the shadows of the old house were stretching out toward him on the grass.

He had had a sudden idea. There in the front hall it had occurred to him that there was one person at least who might know something. He had recalled that last night spent in the upstairs ell bedroom, the voices, the clatter of a car. Zeke was probably closer to his uncle Buzz than any other living soul. And just as suddenly he had decided that it would be time wasted to talk with his aunt Loraine-time that could be well spent elsewhere. And so his departure had been precipitate. And now as he hurried along the plank walk, beneath the arching branches, with the world so fresh and green and hopeful about him, he felt how incongruous everything was. Over beyond the hedge the blackbirds were hopping about on the grass looking for worms, giving occasional satisfied clucks. Across an intersecting road, on up ahead, an old buggy passed, drawn by a jogging horse with hanging head. Like the Mosby turnout-very. And that very morning he had been at his desk, drugged, overwhelmed with the hopelessness of monotony.

He passed on to the other side of town, keeping to the back streets, for he did not wish to meet any one or talk to any one. It was nearing six o'clock as he approached the gate of Zeke Thompson's cabin, and there was that golden glow in the sky which so often follows a spell of dampness. It had rained the night before-the road looked dark and cool-and about the western sky the clouds were hovering as if undecided. But the sunlight streamed bravely through and all was fresh and clean and cool.

The front door was open and as Joe passed through the gate he saw no one. Softly he climbed the steps and passed over the threshold. The room was empty, but an apron thrown carelessly over the back of a rocking chair gave evidence of its having been vacated not long since. The door to the next room was standing ajar.

Joe stood and pondered. Just what should he ask Zeke? Should he tell him what had happened? Zeke might probably have heard, if the news was about. Standing there, waiting, there came to his ears a peculiar sound, faint, high-pitched, and monotonous. He listened. Someone was singing in the next room in a voice not much louder than a whisper. Curious, he walked softly over to the door and peered through.

There in a tiny rocking chair sat a little figure rocking to and fro. Its back was half turned toward him, but he could see a kinky head which was bent over something held in its arms, which it was most evidently lulling to sleep. The room was darkening, with only a single patch of orange-coloured sunlight upon the bare floor. Back and forth went the little body. He could see the bare feet with the stubby toes, escaping as by miracle the ever-threatening rocker. There was a small square of blue-calico-covered back, two little pigtails of hair tightly tied with scraps of baby-blue ribbon, and-the voice. It was as fine and high as wind blowing across a hair and with a curious, lifting minor note. He listened.

First there would be a gentle hushing and then the refrain-the melody was unappreciable and elusive, though constant:-

"Grasshopper set on sweet tater vine,

On sweet tater vine,

On sweet tater vine.

Big turkey gobbler come up behime

And nip him off that sweet tater vine."

With the word "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die away most mournfully.

Twice he heard it sung through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense-had not the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on the floor began to fade, until the room was bathed in shadow. And the song came suddenly to an end and he heard a gentle little "Hush," and then a sigh, and then silence. Slowly he backed away on tiptoe from the door.

He had barely gained the security of the front room-somehow he felt it as security-when he heard the gate screak and, turning suddenly, saw a man dart like a shadow around the side of the house. For a moment he stood in indecision; then he walked softly to the open front door and stood waiting on the threshold. It would be easier to explain his presence there. The sky had grown darker; curling billows of cloud rolling in from the south had chased away the orange glow and their under surface was lit by a pale-green luminance as they came. Shifting wisps of vapour slid twisting and writhing on up ahead, like outriders on reconnaissance. It was singularly still.

Joe stood and waited. Directly he heard a sound, and then steps echoed on the walk around the side of the cabin, and then a man came hurrying around the corner, took one step up on the cabin stair, and then fell back with a low cry: "Fo' de Lawd."

It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely.

"You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very weak and it quickly subsided.

Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black, not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were always dangling and feet that always dragged.

"Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe."

"No. I've been away-down in the city." He paused a moment, considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke.

Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist' Bushrod, he-I was to bring him-he and I wuz to have a little bisnis ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?"

Joe made no reply and Zeke watched his thoughtful, serious face with growing anxiety. Here was one more avenue of possible solution blocked. Since yesterday afternoon no one had apparently seen him-Uncle Buzz. It was as though the world had swallowed him up. He would have to seek elsewhere. He was on the point of dismissing the matter, of going elsewhere, when a thought suddenly came to him.

"You and he were to have some business last night?" he said, looking at Zeke intently.

Zeke grinned a sheepish grin. "Yessuh, we wuz-we had a little bisnis."

"But you didn't meet him? Sure you didn't meet him?"

"Sho I neveh. I ain' able to git de-I was detain'." Zeke had learned from experience and considerable instinct to hedge his utterances about with much generality. It was a good principle. It meant less to retract.

Joe thought another moment. "Take me," he said suddenly, "to the place where you get the business." There he might find a connecting link in his chain, he felt growingly certain.

"Oveh to Mist' Bushrod's?" The inflection was perfectly na?ve.

"No. Of course not-out where you get it. Over to Fillmore or wherever it is."

"Now, Mist' Joe," very reproachfully and with a quick, nervous flashing of the eyes.

Joe frowned. "You needn't put on anything with me, Zeke. I'm not going to give you away. Let's go get your car." He stretched out his arm as though to sweep Zeke into doing his bidding and started for the door.

"But I ain' eveh had no bisnis to Fillmo'," Zeke began in a last effort to stem the tide. "They ain' no bisnis theh."

"That's more like it. That may be the truth," said Joe pressing him on. And Zeke reluctantly passed out and descended the steps.

As Joe turned to close the front door behind him he caught a look back in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny, barely reaching to the knob. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress, with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was watching him wide eyed and very gravely.

"That's good advice you gave me," Joe said to her, as he closed the door.

They made their way around a corner to a ramshackle shed, Joe urging on the reluctant Zeke by the menace of an encroaching shoulder. Zeke paused at the entrance. He groped in his pocket and directly pulled forth a key on a very dirty, greasy string. Fumblingly he inserted it in the lock. Then he paused again and lifting his eyes, thoughtfully inspected the sky.

"Look powahful lak rain," he reflected dubiously.

"Get the car out," said the inexorable Joe. "We can put the top up."

Zeke opened the door and went in. For several minutes there was the metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing. Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top over the front seat that looked as though at any moment it might collapse from sheer decrepitude. Slowly the thing backed out of the shed, in a curve to the road, with much groaning and roaring, and then came to a stop. The whites of two eyes peered out of the shadow of the enveloping bonnet as Joe approached.

He took one more look at the sky before he climbed in. The racing forerunners of storm had in some inexplicable manner vanished and there remained a lowering canopy of gray and black with here and there a patch of grayish green. Over in the west was a thin line of greening yellow, and the shadows were darkening over the back lanes through the trees.

"Let's go," said Joe, climbing in.

With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting street and Zeke slowed down the car.

"Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked.

Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean. Wherever you've been going for the stuff."

Zeke made a sudden turn to the left, narrowly escaping the projecting roots of a tree. Joe clung to the top brace for support. Down a darkening street they rolled, with the trees arching, sombre overhead, and on either side, back in the shadows, the darker shapes of houses with here and there the passing glow of a lighted lamp. Night descended upon them as they left the town and a few splashes of rain appeared on the dirty glass of the wind-shield. Joe settled stoically down to wait. There was so much time to be passed until he could be of further use and until then there was no need of making any effort. The thought of the morning came back to him. It did not seem possible that the same day was passing. Singularly, the idea of Bromley's was the thing that obsessed him rather than the business in hand. It was as though he had been released on furlough. "Grind, grind, grind," said the car. "You will be back at it all to-morrow. This is not real. This is a dream you're having." He shook himself. He was getting sleepy, felt utterly fagged.

And then Mary Louise flashed across his mind. "Come on," she seemed to say. "You're slipping. You're getting behind. They're all getting ahead of you. You're not keeping up. Let's get in a little more-little more-little more." He lurched against the top brace, blinked, and straightened up. Beside him was the shadow bent a little over the wheel. He could see the outline of the peak of the old golf cap and the dim tracing of Zeke's face, about it a faint gleam, and then the flash of an eye. He pondered. Here was Zeke doing his work-playing his part in the scheme of things. He was not bothered by any notions of obligation. He was not concerned with working out his destiny. He played his cards as he got them. "Sometime they roll seven-and sometime they roll two," he remembered the words of a philosopher of the rolling rubes a year ago-or was it a lifetime? Bromley's! The Golden Rule! Mary Louise! All alike. "Shape yourself to this pattern. Fill this niche. You've got to," said one. "Be like me. Do as I do. Or get out," said another. "It costs so much to live this way. And you have to. Or it's not worth living," said the third. How about his way of looking at it?

He turned suddenly to the inscrutable face beside him.

"You don't let anybody cramp your style, do you, Zeke?" he said.

Zeke started. The sudden voice for a moment terrified him. "Nossuh, I doesn'," he stammered, anxious to agree.

Joe's voice was kindly encouraging. "Well, don't you let them, ever."

"Nossuh, I won'." And singularly he spoke the truth.

They came to a stretch of sand and the car slowed down appreciably. In addition there was a grade. And then came a flash of lightning over in the west, straight ahead of them, and another, fan-shaped, like the slow opening of a hand. In the momentary glare they saw the outlines of a hill up before them, with the road clipping it in two. A telephone pole on the crest stretched out spectral arms and leaned away. And then darkness again.

Joe decided he had better tell Zeke the object of their mission. It really didn't matter much, but then he wanted to talk.

"Do you reckon Mr. Bushrod's in Fillmore, Zeke?" he began, trying to make it as conversational as possible.

"I dunno. Mist' Joe. He might could." This offered no encouragement.

"He's been gone-ever since last night. Reckon he is in Fillmore?" He caught the gleam of two eyes as Zeke partly turned to look at him.

"I dunno, Mist' Joe. Wheh you reckon he gone?" As yet the import had failed to reach him.

For a short while they rolled along in silence, silence save for the rattling labour of the car. The grade was growing steeper. On both sides of the road the woods were encroaching and the only light was the feeble one cast by the single uncertain lamp of the car. It barely seemed to puncture the black.

"Mist' Bushrod ain' been home?" came Zeke's voice. The idea was beginning to have effect.

"Not since yesterday morning."

For another interval, silence, and then: "Whuh Mist' Bushrod gone? Reckon he gone to Louisville?" Perhaps the faint stirrings of a cell of conscience. Who can say?

"Don't know, Zeke. Perhaps."

As though satisfied by this mutual exchange of confidence, Zeke lapsed again into silence, and for a time nothing was heard save the voice of the car and occasional sighing bursts of wind high up in the tree-tops. Then there came a black line of shadow stretching across their way, on up ahead, and above it a yellowish, greenish streak of light where the clouds were breaking. Faint wisps of vapour went curling slowly across the streak and there was a patch of blue, very deep, and the momentary gleam of a star, and then they plunged into the shadow.

The air grew cooler, almost cold. The woods had swept down upon the road and engulfed it. Even the noise of the motor seemed quieter, and above it could be heard whisperings and occasional crackings. Something started up from a thicket by the side of the road and they could hear it scurrying through the underbrush. Zeke moved up the throttle and they began to move faster. And on either side of them came down the darkness, sweeping past them, pressing close, and before them wavered the faltering light, and the cool damp air came fingering and touched their faces.

Zeke stopped the car. The rushing darkness stopped. The breeze was still.

"Heah's de place," he said, and his voice was lower; Joe could barely hear him.

"I thought it was Fillmore. This isn't Fillmore."

"I know," said Zeke. "I doesn' go to Fillmo'. Dis is de place whuh I gets it. Up de paff a piece."

Joe was on the point of telling him to go on-on to Fillmore, where proper inquiry might be made, when a sense of curiosity prompted him to stop. He would see where the illegal traffic was being carried on. Zeke was trustingly letting him in on his business and he might not understand. After all, it was getting down in a way to the heart of the business-in a way getting closer to Uncle Buzz. He had never bothered much before. He climbed out of the car and Zeke shut off the motor.

The silence, as he followed Zeke down the narrow path, was oppressive. There would come a vast sighing like a wave of sound, and a settling, a few crackings far off, and then silence. The ground was soft with a matting of fallen leaves, damp and mouldy, and once as Zeke turned his pocket flashlight from the path there came a gleam of water. Briars flicked his face and scratched his hands, and once a low-hanging branch struck him across the eyes and he stumbled from the path and stepped into slime. He kept close behind his guide, for the darkness was intense and the path was tortuous. Directly Zeke stopped. The pocket light made a small circle on the ground.

"Heah 'tis," Zeke whispered, and pointed with the light.

A thicket of blackberry bushes crowded into a corner of an old snake-rail fence and two old boards were all that was visible in the narrow compass of the light-that, and a pool of dark water over to one side. Up above, there was a break in the trees and a suggestion, beyond, of open fields. He stood for a minute. Nothing else was visible, nothing from the hand of man, as Zeke moved the light back and forth in slow-sweeping arcs. It had been a waste of time; there was nothing to see, nothing but the crude assignation place of a troop of spectral whiskey jugs, and the seat of a profitable industry. He turned to go, his mind shifting to other things. He heard Zeke fumbling in the bushes, saw the light switch into the fence corner, then across the pool; and then he heard a cry, a low cry of terror, and caught a glimpse of something white-on the ground, near a big tree. And then Zeke's voice, "Fo' Gawd!" and the light switched off and someone came hurrying toward him in the darkness.

"Come on, Mist' Joe. Le's git away fum heah!"

Zeke brushed past him in an agony of haste. He heard his footsteps on the leaf carpet, saw the crazy flickerings of the light through the trees, and had a sudden intense desire to follow. But he paused, curious, mastering his fear. And then the outline of the clearing came slowly to his eyes, and looking up he saw that the clouds were breaking and that the tip of the moon was showing through. Slowly the place was bathed in a silvery flood. Back slipped the shadows. Shapes that had been pressing, close at hand, receded and took the form of trees, of bushes, lurking there on the edge of the darkness. He saw the fence corner. He saw the two boards propped up against it, forming a cache. He saw the pool, a tiny little woodland pool. And then he caught again that glimmer of white by the foot of a huge beech tree. Slowly he made his way toward it with beating heart. Slowly it took shape, a huddled shadow, right on the edge of the light. He touched it with his foot, careful lest he step beyond. He stooped. He touched it with his hand. He turned it over. And the moonlight, slipping through the trees as though to help him, sent a feeble, flickering shaft down-upon the upturned face of Uncle Buzz. For a moment it rested there, as if to reassure him, bringing out in misty detail all that was necessary. The thing was hideously befouled, besmirched, lying there in that black swamp water, mute, helpless, utterly broken. But it was unmistakeable. He stretched out his arms and dragged it from the water, and the clouds, closing in again, obscured the moon, leaving all in darkness.

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