How about that?
Much more audible.
[LAUGHS] OK, good.
A couple of announcements before we begin tonight--
there will be issues of the Sonora Review for sale
outside after the reading, both the current issue
and some previous issues.
And I also want to announce an event that
may be of interest to some of you, which is taking place
in the community this weekend.
And that's the Chax Press Residency, a weekend residency
of writers reading and talking that will feature Karen Kelly
and Gil Ott on Friday night.
And Sheila Murphy and Leslie Scalapino on Saturday night.
Those readings will take place at the Community Design
Resource Center downtown on Congress Street.
It's a particular pleasure to introduce
to you tonight one of our own.
Robert Houston is a native of Alabama.
In 1973, he received his PhD from the University of Iowa.
Since that time, he's been on the faculty
here at the University of Arizona.
He was a Fulbright fellow in Peru in 1978,
and has also lived and taught in Mexico,
has made his creative presence felt
around the country at numerous writers' conferences, notably
The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
in Middlebury, Vermont.
He's published 10 novels, including Bisbee '17,
The Nation Thief, and most recently The Fourth Codex.
He crossed over that feared and coveted territory
into the movie industry when his novel Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday was adapted as the feature film, A Killing Affair.
He's currently working on two novels,
one titled The Book of the South, which
is forthcoming from Pantheon Books, from which he
will be reading tonight.
So please welcome Robert Houston.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
You guys are scary audience, you know,
because I can't leave town after the reading
and that makes it doubly scary.
I should say that for those of you who are concerned, as I am,
with the NEA's policies, that I'm not
receiving a penny of NEA money this evening.
I'm not receiving a penny, period.
[LAUGHTER]
But it's at least comfortable.
I'm going to read from a novel that I've been working
on and at for several years.
Continuing my interest in the third world,
it's set in Alabama, which is not
as Saturday Night Live said recently,
Darwin's waiting room after all.
On a serious note, I'd like to dedicate
this reading this evening to the memory of Cecil Robinson, who
died yesterday, who was twice chairman of the English
Department, one of the kindest human beings I've ever known,
a man who is in many ways responsible for my being
here this evening--
a scholar and a gentleman in the best sense of both those terms.
OK.
This is tentatively titled The Book of the South.
I might even do it without [? questions ?]---- nah.
Don't want to be that macho.
It's warm in here.
I'll read less than the allotted time
this evening, if I don't trip and break my neck first--
less than the allotted time, I hope, and get you out of here
in time.
"Pate knew, by God, what a dollar looked like.
First, it looked like a fallow cornfield
and 1,000 Chinese coolies putting in a rail
bed in the Alabama heat.
It looked like woods, enough woods to lose six armies in,
and surveyor stakes with the little red pennants marching
off to get lost in those woods too.
Then it looked like a few dozen clapboard buildings
in the cornfield and a couple of board and batten railroad
section shacks they called a land company office.
It was iron ore and coal they were beating the drums about,
but it was land that was making the dollars fly.
They were going to build them a city
all at once, in a God-forsaken wilderness.
Pate listened to their curlicued Southern folderol
about redeeming the homeland with their city and their iron
furnaces, and he thought, if you people
know how to ride the Negroes and the mossback farmers up
in those hills like you rode them during the war,
you'll redeem your pocketbooks all right.
You'll make enough iron in your city to turn every one of you
into dammed reconstructed millionaires.
And either way you bring it in, inventing you a city
or making iron, I'll be pleased to pick me a piece of it.
He'd ridden a rattling stage south from Chattanooga
two weeks ago to the rail head, then caught a train into here
since the tracks still stopped in the middle of nowhere.
When he got off the train, he put up
in the only place in town, a wooden thing
they called a hotel, where he had to share a room in shifts
with 12 other men.
Some of them had their pockets full of money, but no stomach.
An Irishman lawyer who shared his room got
so disgusted after just two days,
he decided to go back to Ireland and start a revolution.
(IN IRISH ACCENT) Eat swill, toady,
to the gentry, and dought on bugs, the Irishman told him.
There's your fortune.
I'll take me chances with the English.
The Lord high muckety-muck of the place
was a white-haired tree trunk of a man called Colonel James
Powell.
And he had energy.
That was the trick, energy.
Pate first saw him mounted like he
was posing for a statue on a rearing calico pony,
waving a gold-hilted sword and wearing a flapping red sash,
the first Monday of May 1873, the day Powell
made his city real.
He had 100-foot wide streets in the cornfields
with no houses on them.
He had a mountain of iron ore on one side of him
and a sea of coal on the other, with no decent furnace
to make it all into iron with, nor finished railroad
to ship it on.
But by damn, he had energy.
And he wanted his city to be official and a county seat.
So he arranged it.
He made them vote on it.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Vote my friends,
he bellowed at the Negroes as they piled off
the excursion trains he had sent out into the wilderness
to round them up.
Vote for God in your native land.
By which Pate knew pissing well he
meant the Episcopalian church in Alabama,
but that was all right, too.
The Negroes did not seem impressed.
Who's that, Captain?
One of the Negroes asked Pate as the line of them
passed him on the way to the voting
table and the free barbecue and corn whiskey.
Pate waited until Powell rode close by and stopped
bellowing a minute.
And he said loud enough so that all the Negroes and Powell too
could hear him, General Ulysses S. Grant, my friend.
Take your hat off to General Ulysses S.
Grant, come to Alabama at last.
Colonel Powell rained his horse in long enough
to lean down and say, while the Negroes took their hats off
and cheered him, come to my rooms
in the relay house for toddy this evening, sir.
There's little fate and I believe you'd be at home.
All the rest of the hot day as train after train pulled in
and the Negroes piled off into the sweet smelling barbecue
smoke and swirling dust, and the band
blared Dixie at the white mossback farmers
down from the hills with their creaking
wagons full of half-fed fed and long rifles,
Powell took his bow when one white man or another announced
him as General U.S. Grant.
And Pate thought, indeed, oh, indeed, I
am at home in Birmingham.
Thank you, Colonel.
I am at home.
Pate, né Petrovich, was last of Furman Street in Syracuse,
New York, owner of six barges on the Erie Canal and a chop house
with bar on Water Street.
He had once been right honorable undersheriff of Onondaga
County, and was a grass widower with no children
whose wife had run away with the Canadian barge man.
Before he came here, he sold his barges, his restaurant,
his house, and his furniture for less than they were worth.
That, he considered, had been a cheap price
to pay for getting away from grim Syracuse.
He had made it out two weeks after his 40th birthday.
Colonel Powell, in his suite of rooms
in the relay house, the thing they called a hotel, at ease
on a green silk settle shaped like something that
looked as if it might try to eat a man,
had introduced him around.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Gentleman, Mr. Walsley Pate.
Mr. Pate is late come among us, but I have reason
to believe he has enterprise.
And Pate had taken pains not to let himself puff up
into the sin of pride, which would not do among these men.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Mr. Pate,
the Elyton Land Company and friends.
He had nodded and taken the hands that came toward him
and filed to the dozen or so names.
Most of the names he'd heard shuttled
about on the porch of the relay house
in the week he had been there.
The flesh to the names had whiskers and broad cloth
swallowtail coats like himself.
And some smelled like wood smoke, some like rosewater,
some like whiskey, all like money.
They had red iron ore dust on their boots
and seemed to take great pleasure in referring to one
another as Colonel or Judge.
Pate smoothed his beard often to make himself feel at ease,
took a cigar when it was offered him,
and felt swarthy and foreign among the accents.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) You are not from this region,
Mr. Pate, one or another would ask
nearly every time he opened his mouth to start a conversation.
No, sir, I'm from Syracuse, in the state of New York.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) I see.
Were you engaged in the late unpleasantness?
I was not, sir.
My business was such that I considered
it more important to hire a replacement and remain with it.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) A blessing for our side,
no doubt, sir.
You're in Birmingham on business, then?
I am, yes, sir-- pate would answer and think.
Why else would a human being be here?
Purchasing land?
No, sir, I intend to settle.
I'm a capitalist, not a speculator.
Powell himself held court and said little to him.
After the supper dishes had been cleared,
he was joined on the couch by a little pinch-faced man
with a wisp of whiskers under his chin
who seemed to blink at people more than he spoke to them.
The man had come late and hadn't given his name.
Now and again, for the rest of the evening,
Pate noticed the two of them watching him, listening to him.
Sometimes the man made a remark to Powell,
while his eyes stayed on Pate, the way, Pate thought, somebody
like him might once have sized up a Negro
he was considering buying.
Pate worked hard at pretending he didn't notice.
After a time, the Elyton Land Company and friends
got drunk enough to start calling
each other by Christian names and celebrating the vote,
and deciding who was going to get what office in the county
government, and more or less let him be.
Never know they had lost a war, business as usual.
But that too was all right.
It was a time to be still and watch.
He tried to leave before he got his drunk as they were.
But every time he did, Colonel Powell called him back.
That and the pinch-faced man's unnatural interests
puzzled and unsettled him.
He was an outsider, a foreigner, and such small potatoes
these men couldn't even make a decent pot roast with him.
He got stiller and watched harder.
Now, Powell's mantelpiece clock had gone to midnight long ago.
And there were just three of them left,
four if you counted Powell's Negro, which
nobody seemed inclined to do--
Powell, himself, and the little pinch-faced man.
Powell had sent out for more whiskey.
He still sat erect.
And even without his red sash and horse,
made Pate think of a man posing for a statue.
His thick white hair was smoothed back, neat as a wig.
His eyes were serious and steady,
his mouth hard and straight.
And he held a silver toddy cup in front of him like a pistol.
These people talked so slowly that
except for a certain flattening in the pitch of the man's
voice, you'd never have known he was so drunk he had needed
help to walk straight enough to go into the hall
and use the chamber pot not 10 minutes ago.
Control it was, energy and control.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Mr. Pate,
he said when he had seen that Pate was seated and tidied,
too.
My suspicions are confirmed.
Sir?
Pate put his toddy down.
By God he knew he should have paid
more mind to his unsettledness.
He had not a friend within 1,000 miles if these men had
decided to make something out of this late unpleasantness thing.
Powell smiled a small smile that said
he was pleased with himself.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) I have
remarked your conversation this evening.
You are indeed a man of enterprise.
Pate left his toddy where it was.
I tried to be so, Colonel.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) I take it
too from your actions on my behalf this afternoon that
you are not a so-called friend of the Negro.
They've never been an especial concern of mine.
No, sir.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) I find it very interesting
that you have experience an enforcement
of the law in your native state, too, Mr. Pate.
Some, Colonel, though my primary interest is business
you understand.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Of course, sir.
That's what remains for us today, isn't it?
Might I ask if you've considered that there's
no necessary contradiction between those two interests?
Damn, the man kept you fuzzled.
No, sir, I have not.
Powell swept his arm toward the little wispy-whiskered man, who
had sat quietly in an armchair and cradled his toddy cup
in his lap since the last of the others had left.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Have you
met my associate, Major Tucker, Mr. Pate?
Somebody wearing a watch chain had
run Winston Knox off the front porch of the relay house
at dark.
Then, since the voting was over, so was the free whiskey.
And Winston wasn't of a mind to do without until all
his business was done.
He found him a white saloon, Webb's, where they told him
the whiskey was all right.
He wouldn't have known.
He wasn't a drinking man, but for the little
he made up himself.
While he was in Webb's, a wind like there
was about to be a rain had blown up.
And when he came out, he didn't know
if it was the whiskey or the wind that
made his hat keep slipping off.
He didn't know either what time it was,
except surely it was in the middle of the night.
And he kept being surprised that his fingers were holding
his rifle all by themselves so that he
forgot he was even carrying it for minutes at a time.
In the relay house, the windows that Burl, the Colonel's darky,
had shown to him that morning, were still lit.
Burl had been afraid and told him
he didn't want to lose his job for telling Winston where
the man he worked for lived.
But Winston had promised him he wouldn't let alone
where he had found out.
Him and Burl weren't in the habit
of refusing one another things.
All day he had kept telling himself
that he had just wait till the Colonel got settled and could
concentrate, and then he'd go up to those rooms and ask him.
But he knew he was lying.
That wasn't it at all.
He walked the block to the railroad
tracks and stared up at the lit window
on the second floor of the relay house.
Clouds scuttled over the high-pitched roof
with the wind.
And when he watched them, he lost his balance.
There was no other light in the building,
nobody coming in or out.
He thought he saw Burl's big stooped shape
move in front of the light.
From down the street, somebody clattered out
of Webb's, cussed.
A mule brayed and then a wagon jangled away towards the woods
to the north.
He stayed without moving until the wagon was gone,
trying to make out more things inside the window.
He'd never asked anybody for a job before.
He didn't know just how you were supposed to go about that.
But he did know it was time, too.
He hadn't hardly even seen a piece of real money
since the war was over, and nobody else he knew had either.
There was a right smart you could grow on 35 acres,
but not plows nor mules and their clothes
to wear if you didn't have a woman to make them for you.
Nor would you get a woman without a shirt on your back.
I dug coal, he'd say to the Colonel.
Dug it since I was nine.
I can dig coal 13, 14 ton a day, you
give me the blasting powder.
I can get it out with a pickaxe, you
ain't got no blasting powder.
He was on the porch of the hotel now
and didn't recollect he had walked over to it.
There was an open door leading up some stairs in front of him.
If he was more used to walking in shoes,
he wouldn't be making so damn much noise.
Burl wore shoes every day now.
Get me two pair of shoes, he thought.
Get me two pair of shoes, get me a decent suit of clothes,
get me $40 in my pocket, then get me out.
That was all right, Burl, being a darky, got his shoes the way
he did.
Get me another drink of whiskey, I had another nickel,
he thought.
He ought to go home.
But if it did, he'd never work up
to coming and asking for a job again.
Lights lit, Burl's moving around.
The man ain't asleep.
He can give you a job as easy in the middle of the night
as in the middle of the day, can't he?
He stood with his foot on the first step of the dark stairs
until he was sure he had his balance, then started up.
Pate calculated, then lost his figures
in the fuddle of the toddies and the hour.
At $5 per week per convict, split among himself
and the judge and whoever else was involved in court costs
down here, well, take a low figure and say his share was
$0.50--
not a fortune.
But that was per week, per convict.
And how many weeks would it take one of them
to work off his court costs?
Now, Major, what might we expect court costs
to run on, oh, a $5 vagrancy fine?
He asked the little man who sat on the edge of his chair
as if he were waiting to be asked to declaim.
Pate couldn't like him.
There was something of the staring
fanatic in his eyes, a thing he had noticed in more than a few
of these southern redeemers.
It might be, he considered, a source of their energy.
That depends on the judge, of course, Mr. Pate.
I'd say that given a cooperative judge, which we will attempt
to furnish you, roughly $200.
I beg your pardon.
Powell, his pistol of a toddy glass aimed at Pate,
said, it's a fair figure, Mr. Pate.
$0.50 a week per prisoner for up to 40 weeks for a vagrancy
charge?
What in God's name might court cost be for a felon?
He tried to calculate again.
Even if he was able to furnish them with only 10 prisoners
a week, at the end of 40 weeks, he could have 400 leased out.
And if he'd been able to furnish them 20 a week,
that's very impressive, sir, he said and thought, oh, by God,
yes, you've figured out how to ride them.
He reached for his beard to calm his hands.
And if this place turned out and grew 30 a week, 40--
You will need considerable labor,
I take it, at a reasonable cost.
Tucker inched a little more forward in his seat.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Mr. Pate, my associates
and I control in one coal field, in one field,
I repeat, three times the amount of coal that exists
in the state of Pennsylvania.
Two-thirds the amount in all of England, Mr. Pate,
nearly 8,000 square miles of coal field.
Are you listening to me, Mr. Pate?
Our coal fields can supply the world, the entire world.
with all the coal it needs for the next-- listen to me, sir--
the next 270 years.
And there are others, perhaps even vaster,
that we are only now exploring.
I don't speak of the iron ore, the limestone, fire clay,
Mr. Pate.
Historic, Major.
Historic.
What in the hell else was a man supposed to say to that?
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT)
Frankly, Mr. Pate, we need a city marshal
who is not from among us.
We are, as you're aware, occupied by Northern troops
yet.
A disgrace, Major.
The Major blinked at him and shoved a hair closer
to the edge of his chair.
Powell's Negro silently crossed the room
and poured him another toddy.
The window curtains snapped out into the room on a gust of rain
smelling wind as Pate tried the figures again, adding zeros.
Suddenly, like the snapping curtains,
Tucker took the big Negro's wrist.
Look at that, Mr. Pate.
That is what we have that you don't.
Harness that and you have enough strength
to lift the entire white South into a new civilization.
He let go of the wrist.
The big Negro looked blank as a brick wall
and went back to his chair in the corner.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT)
And what is it doing now?
It's wandering like the children of Israel
listening to promises made by scoundrels who don't understand
the first thing about it.
The Major finally made it off his chair, up and declaiming.
Powell watched him with what Pate determined
was controlled interest.
Tucker paced to the window, slapped at a curtain,
and turned to the room again.
Pate was impressed. (IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT)
Do you understand me, sir?
I understand, Major, that you need
a supplier who can furnish you what you need at the least risk
to yourself, someone who can deal
with the federal authorities with the least
friction or suspicion.
Do I understand you?
Tucker sat and cradled his cup in his lap. (IN THICK SOUTHERN
ACCENT) Yes.
Powell aimed his own cup again.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) You can, of course, furnish letters
of introduction, Mr. Pate.
If I didn't, Pate thought, between myself and $2,
I could damn well have a half dozen
made up by morning in this place.
He picked up his cup now and raised it,
working hard at looking discreet.
A toast, gentlemen.
While he tried to think of a reasonable toast,
a heavy knock rattled the door.
Powell and Tucker glanced at each other,
and the Negro got to his feet.
It's your whiskey, Colonel, Tucker said.
Powell nodded and motioned his Negro to the door.
The man who stood in it, a man just beyond a boy's age,
blinked at the light.
He snatched his hat off, glared at the Negro,
and made as if he were going to step into the room.
The Negro didn't move.
The man looked past him.
Colonel Powell, he said.
You have 'bidness with me, Powell said without getting up.
He put his cup down and moved his hand
slowly beneath his coat.
The man, the boy, focused on him.
Pate judged him to be a mossback from what he had come
to know of mossbacks in a week.
Hair larded, face hollow and grim,
a single gallace holding up his trousers,
a rifle growing out of his hand.
No threat to these men.
The kind of boy who died for them at Shiloh
by the thousands, he'd warrant.
Yes, sir, the boy said.
I come-- I come about--
but the man's eyes had moved from Powell
and settled on Tucker.
His lips worked, but nothing came out, like, Pate thought,
he was suddenly talking just to himself.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) State your 'bidness,
Powell said to him.
Burl, get out of the way so I can see the man.
The Negro stepped slowly back, keeping himself
between the man and Powell.
I come, the boy said--
and his face froze, stopped, wound down like a clock.
His rifle was up before the Negro could more than
grab the air beside it.
Tucker's hand was only halfway to his face
before the room filled up with noise and black powder smoke.
And Tucker's head, its eyes in mid-blink,
its wispy beard erased by the rifle ball,
snapped back like a cracked whip.
Pate gagged, but nonetheless leapt
for the dark hole of the doorway.
He and the Negro reached it at the same the time,
reached it just as the ball from Powell's Derringer
slapped the door frame.
But in the seconds it took them to get
there, the boy had vanished, disappeared into the blackness
as surely as a blown out flame."
Space break.
"First, he had remembered in pieces,
the way it had come slipping up on him while he was out plowing
the mule or sitting on the front porch of an evening before bed.
Then, because he'd remembered the pieces so much,
he had got it by heart.
Like a story from the Bible, he could close his eyes
and tell himself all of a single piece, like this.
He recollected how the summer dusk had flashed with fireflies
while he watched them hang his daddy upside
down over the stack of dry branches and kindling.
It had been sometime in August in 1861.
He had turned 10 that month.
And he recollected too how his skin
had stung where sweat had got into the grass cuts.
By the way his daddy had flailed while they piled the branches
up, Winston knew he wanted to fight 'em and cuss 'em.
But his arms were tied with his own belt.
And somebody had stuffed a torn off piece of his own shirt tail
in his mouth.
His black beard and hair hung upside down too,
so that he looked to Winston like something hung up to dry.
He didn't look like his daddy.
Didn't look like anybody.
One of the men kicked away the dry leaves
from around the stack of branches beneath his daddy
and said something about, did they
want to burn the whole woods down from one damn mossback
Unionist?
Winston recognized the man.
He'd been loading coal down on the river for old man Hamby
with Winston's daddy that morning,
when his daddy had said that if he was going off
in anybody's arm, it'd be the other side's.
He didn't have another tooth in his head
and a shoe on his foot.
A couple of the others he recognized, too.
They were both big dogs whose people
had creek-bottom land and niggers over between Trussville
and Elyton and had come riding by his house
last month to talk to his daddy.
When they left, his daddy was hollering at him
that he wouldn't studying killing nobody just so they
could keep their slaves.
Now, one of them, the baby-faced littlest one, had on a uniform
Winston had never seen before-- a gray one, lighter britches
and a darker coal with gold on the shoulders.
He was telling everybody what to do and passing a jug around.
They all fidgeted and paced right
smart like they were nervous.
But nobody seemed to be in a hurry,
no more than if they were watching a game of Fives
behind the courthouse.
One of the other dozen or so men in the clearing
hee-hawed at something.
The second planter, who was raw-boned and red-headed
and looked a couple of years older than the baby-faced one--
maybe 22 or 23--
told him to hush.
Winston remembered that one's name was Matthews,
because the man had give him three cents
once to hold his horse at a cockfight.
The two men glared at each other for a minute.
Then Matthews said, softer, we're not having a party.
It's necessary.
That's all.
Then he turned away, with his face stiff,
and stared off into the woods just
above where Winston was lying in the bushes.
Winston ducked down and started to scrunch back some.
But the darky who worked with his daddy
at lay and bide time, Burl, held his big hand tight
on his back to keep him still.
His mama had sent both of 'em to look for his daddy
when his daddy didn't come home for supper.
Winston felt the rough osnaburg cloth of Burl's sleeve making
pockmarks on his naked back, tried
to wiggle out from under the hand, but Burl held tight.
I got to get to Mama, Winston hissed at him.
Shh, Burl whispered back.
Ain't good dark yet little Knox.
They catch us.
They fixing to burn him up.
No, they ain't.
They just scaring him.
He a white man.
The man who'd kicked the leaves away, the coal loader,
poked his daddy with a stick to keep him from twisting.
It ain't no good, Knox, he said.
You had a fair chance.
I'm sorry for you.
The baby-faced man in the uniform
stepped up to the pile of branches
and pointed at them with his boot toe.
That's enough, he said.
You looking to fire a locomotive?
The man who had hee-hawed did it again.
This time, Matthews kept staring at the woods.
Winston's daddy twisted his shoulders
hard to try to keep his eyes, eyes Winston
couldn't tell anything about in the dusk
set on the baby-faced one.
Clayton, the baby-faced one said to Matthews,
What was that one's name?
Winston had to know his name.
They were doing this to his daddy
and he had to remember the man's name.
Was it, Tucker?
Yeah, Tucker.
That was what his daddy called him last month--
Tucker.
When this was all over and they cut his daddy down,
'cause nobody would really do this to his daddy,
his daddy would surely want to know
he remembered the man's name.
Tucker, it was Tucker.
Clayton, you want to do it?
Matthews shook his head, then, with an effort, turned back
to face the others.
You can, he said.
Tucker turned to the men.
All right, boys, who's for it?
The coal loader handed his long sharps rifle to a man
beside him.
It was me heard him say it, captain.
Tucker nodded.
Then well I'll tell you.
The coal loader knelt and sparked his flint
a couple of times into a little heap of punk he had made up.
He blew on the punk, and when a wisp of smoke
rose he crisscrossed what Winston knew
were pitch pine slivers over it.
Winston's daddy saw that and started grunting deep sounds
over and over.
Winston listened hard to make sure it was his daddy.
His daddy had never made sounds like that before.
They scared him.
Everything in the clearing was getting harder and harder
to see in the growing dusk.
It was a magic lantern show the lamp was going out in.
From behind him, Winston heard the steady sound
of water flowing out of the spring,
and around him the cicadas shrieking
rose and fell rose and fell like it made them
no mind at all about his daddy.
The evening breeze gusted, scattered leaves
brought the light smell of smoke to him.
The fireflies flashed brighter.
Tucker sheathed his sword and held it up like it was a torch.
God have mercy on you Luther Knox.
May your sorry life go to serve as an example from this day
forth.
If it does, you'll have fulfilled
some purpose on this earth.
He looked around him in the dying light
like he was waiting for somebody to clap,
his little face balled up like a fist.
Theo, for God's sake, Matthews said.
Tucker shot him a sharp look and lowered his sword.
All right, he said to the coal loader, now.
The coal loader looked up at him unsure.
Hell, now.
The coal loader shoved to the burning pile of pine slivers
underneath the branches.
Winston felt Burl's hand move up his back
and press his head down.
He shook free.
Let me be, he whispered fiercely.
You lied to me.
They're going to do it.
Winston's daddy's grunts had lengthened,
turned into muffled little screams, the kinds of noises
a hog made when you drug it out to the slaughtering frame.
One of the men, a barefoot one, broke from the others
and ran to the fire.
(IN THICK SOUTHERN ACCENT) Hey, he whooped, lookie here.
He snatched up a sliver of burning pitch pine
and raised it high with one hand while he
leaned over the pile of branches and pulled his daddy to him.
His daddy's body lashed like a snake's
you'd trapped with a hoe.
But the man held on.
Then he jammed the sliver of burning pitch
between the buttons of his daddy's pants
and gave him a push to set him spinning.
Both ends at once, he hollered.
Give me another and I'll get his ears, too.
Matthews stepped to the man and shoved him out of the way.
He pulled a branch from the pile and slapped the burning sliver
away from Winston's daddy with it.
Goddamn it, he yelled at the man.
Goddamn it!
He whirled and held the branch like a club,
like he was keeping the dogs away from a kill.
Everybody in the clearing got still, watching,
all their fidgeting and pacing stopping
like people on a music box that had run out.
The fire caught, rose, spit sparks out among the fireflies,
broke up the shrieking of the cicadas with its loud cracking.
His daddy's noises changed again,
pitched higher and higher--
just squeals, pure hog squeals, not screams now.
His hair caught, then his beard, then the rag in his mouth.
Winston smelled it, the bitter smell of burning hair,
and rolled from beneath Burl's heavy arm.
Burl grabbed for him and missed.
Winston took a step toward his daddy,
but his daddy was already somebody else, or something
Winston was afraid of.
He turned one way, turned another.
Then, his legs so weak that he stumbled into briars that bit
at him like dogs' teeth into claws of tree limbs,
choking on what was coming up from his stomach,
nothing in focus, not looking back,
he ran through the darkening woods
toward the sound of the water.
Then, tonight with the coal oil smoke
rising like wiggling black snakes
from the lamps in Colonel Powell's room,
Winston had thought.
Daddy?
Daddy, he'd come back.
Daddy, he's right here, Daddy.
He's sitting right there, Daddy?
It's him, Daddy.
And he didn't hardly feel the weight
of the rifle in the least as it came up and followed
his eyes to Tucker's face.
But when his thumb pulled the hammer back
and then the trigger gave beneath his finger,
and he felt the kick and heard the explosion that
emptied the room of everything but itself,
it had been all as solid and right as an axe catching
a log's grain and splitting it straight through to the ground.
Now he ran along the wide empty street
until it stopped in the middle of a cornfield.
He stumbled into the beat down cornrows trying to run, still,
trying to find a door into the dark wall of the woods
at the edge of the field, running again just like in '61.
Clay mud clung to his shoes and built up heavy as pig iron.
He heard people hollering in the piece of a town behind him,
heard a couple of pistols go off.
God in heaven would forgive him what he'd done,
but them people wouldn't."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]