The squire hauled by its long chain a watch from somewhere in his coat, snapped it open and glanced at it and put it away. It’s near six o’clock, he said. Likin about three minutes. How much time would you say you put in on that job?
I don’t know, Holme said. I don’t know what time it was I commenced.
Is that right? Don’t know?
No sir.
Well it was just before dinner. And now it’s just before supper. That’s the best part of half a day. Ain’t it?
I reckon, he said.
The squire leaned slightly forward. For your supper? he said.
Holme was silent.
So I reckon a full day would be for dinner and supper. Still ain’t said nothin about breakfast. Let alone a place to sleep. Not even to mention money.
You was the one, Holme said. You said what …
And you was the one said all right. Come on man. What is it you’ve done. Where are you runnin from? Heh?
I ain’t runnin from nowheres.
No? You ain’t? Where you from? I never ast you that, did I?
I come from down on the Chicken River.
No, the squire said. My wife’s people was from down thataway little as I like to say it.
I just lived there this past little while. I never claimed to of been borned there.
Before that then. Where did you live before?
I come from downstate.
I bet you do at that, the squire said. And then you come up here. Or down in Johnson County. And now you up here. What is it? You like to travel? When did you eat last if it’s any of my business.
I et this mornin.
This mornin. Out of somebody’s garden most likely.
I got money, Holme said.
I won’t ast ye where you come by it. You married?
No. I ain’t married. He looked up at the squire. Their shadows canted upon the whitewashed brick of the kitchen shed in a pantomime of static violence in which the squire reeled backward and he leaned upon him in headlong assault. It ain’t no crime to be poor, he said.
No, it ain’t. It ain’t a crime. I hope you’ve not got a family. It’s a sacred thing, a family. A sacred obligation. Afore God. The squire had been looking away and now he turned to Holme again. It ain’t no crime to be poor, he said. That’s right. But shiftlessness is a sin, I would judge. Wouldn’t you?
I reckon, he said.
Yes. The bible reckons. What I got I earned. They’s not a man in this county will tell ye different. I’ve never knowed nothin but hard work. I’ve been many a time in the field at daybreak waitin for the sun to come up to commence work and I was there when it went down again. Daybreak to backbreak for a Godgiven dollar. They ain’t a man in this county will dispute it.
Holme was looking down, one hand crossed over the back of the other the way men stand in church. There was a commotion of hens from beyond the barn, a hog’s squeal, ceasing again into the tranquillity of birdcalls and cicadas.
All right, Holme, the squire said. I ain’t goin to ast you no more of your business. He had out a small leather purse now which he unsnapped and lightened by the weight of a half-dollar. Here, he said. And your supper. Supper’s at six-thirty. In the kitchen. You can wash up now if you’ve a mind to.
He took the coin, holding it in his hand as if he had no place to put it. All right, he said.
After he had washed he sat in the shade of the toolshed and pared idly at the sole of his shoe with the knife he carried. He watched the negro cross from the barn to the house. In a few minutes he came from the kitchen door and returned across the yard again, a small figure scuttling from shadow to shadow with laborious ill-grace, carrying in one hand the squire’s boots and disappearing into the barn.
The squire was an early riser and it was not yet good light when he went to the barn. You Holme, he called up the chaffdusted ladder and into the dark hatchway of the loft. No one answered. The negro was coming through the far end of the barn carrying a bucket.
Where’s he at, the squire said. Is he gone?
The negro nodded his head.
He sure is a early bird. When did he skedaddle?
The negro slid the bucket up onto his wrist and made a motion with his hands.
Well, the squire said. He looked about him uncertainly, like a man who has forgotten something. Then he said: Where’s them boots?
The negro had started toward the corncrib and now he stopped and looked around, his face already shining with grease or sweat, whatever it was, like wet obsidian. He did not even motion with his hands. They stood looking at each other for just a minute and then the squire said Goddamn. I will be purely goddamned. That ingrate son of a bitch. You never should of left … Hitch up for me while I get the shotgun. Turning and wheeling out of the barn, the negro following him with that same poverty of motion and taking up harness gear from where it hung on the wall as he went. In a few minutes the squire was back with the shotgun and a white hat jammed onto his head, leaping up into the wagon and sitting there in furious immobility and then leaping down again to fumble with the harness while the negro led the horse forth from the stall, not telling him to hurry or anything so useless and finally waiting in a throb of violent constraint while the negro backed the horse between the wagon shafts and while he hitched it and until he stepped back and then raising up the reins and slapping them across the horse’s rump, lifting two ribbons of rank dust out of its hide and starting and then as suddenly drawing up again and leaning down: