SURRENDERING TO CIVILIZATION

DANIELLE FRANCES DUCREST

Disclaimer: Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner belongs to him and Vintage Books. Any copyright infringements were not intended. This story was written for entertainment and not for profit.

Summary: What if they found out where James Beauchamp had disappeared to and Isaac McCaslin went there to pay his debt?

Thanks go to Grossclout, the Editor From Hell, who edited this for me even though this was a little out of the way from what I usually ask him to edit. Thanks!

*****

The farmers were burning their fields now, and the smoke and the smell penetrated the forest and filled every nook and cranny and made all of the plants smell like they were covered in mildew even at noon or late evening. Isaac inhaled the scent, made it fill his lungs before he released them again, blowing the scent back into the forest where in belonged only at this time of year and every year since farmers started growing sugar cane and corn in Mississippi, years upon years ago before he had been born, long before his father was born even.

He was fourteen and he had come with McCaslin and the Major and Boon and everyone else to the camp for four years and every year was as good as the last. Best, even, better because each new year was the here and now and the previous years were the past and already half-forgotten, while the present could still be experienced, felt, smelt, and heard. The future, too, was good for this because even as he walked and slept and hunted and ate in the forest he knew that he would come back again and that he would experience and feel and smell and hear it all again. And although the past was filled with bad and good times and the future was still uncertain he knew that he'd have another chance to make the best of it no matter what.

Now, years later when he was in his twenties, long after he'd given his family's land of which he was the rightful heir to his cousin McCaslin, he once again went on the camping trip to the forest to celebrate the Major's birthday, only the Major wasn't with him nor was McCaslin or the Colonel. It was just him and Ash and Boon and the lumberjack company and the woods which were quickly disappearing with every year that passed until there would be no more woods because the lumberjack company would have cut it all down and then there would be no more hunting trips. Until then, he and Ash and Boon would come to the forest every year to hunt for two weeks before going back to town, even years upon years after he had married and when he was an old man as old as Sam Fathers was he would keep coming back until there was no more forest to come back to. He would not give up on the forest yet, not until the forest gave up on itself and surrendered to man's dominance would he give up to it.

It was approaching dark before he returned to camp. The camp was one of the few things still unchanged, unchanged although it was underused after Sam Fathers' death had left it empty for the weeks they weren't at the camp. It was being used now, though, only by fewer people than it had been in other years, especially when he was sixteen and farmers and villagers had crowded into the camp to see Lion and Boon kill Old Ben, the bear that had refused to die for so many years and plagued the farmers' and ranchers' crops each year. Now, the only people at the camp were he, Ash, Boon, and she. She would be his fiancée and later his wife, but then she was his girlfriend. She didn't hunt, but she did help Ash do the cooking and cleaning. She was the first woman to ever be at the camp ever, and while Isaac would have objected and rebelled against it in other years, now it seemed appropriate, in this forest that was slowly being taken over by men and that other life he tried to leave for two weeks every year.

As he approached the house, though, he realized that there was a fifth person there, a person he never expected to see here again, especially not now, not after he and the Major and the Colonel stopped coming on the hunting trip nine years ago. He knew that he was there because he could hear his voice even from outside, mixed in with his girlfriend's and Ash's laughter.

He couldn't think of any reason why McCaslin would come here on this day. Years had passed since he'd relinquished the land to McCaslin, and years had gone by since McCaslin stopped trying to get him to change his mind and take up the land himself as was his right. When he entered the kitchen, McCaslin immediately turned to him and rose.

"They found him," McCaslin said.

"Who?" he said, although he thought he already knew. It was plain in McCaslin's expression who he was talking about and he felt his breath catch in his throat and he was already making plans to depart even before the two weeks were up.

"Tennie's Jim," McCaslin answered, and he was right, he already did know.

The sun had long since set and the moon was half-way up in the sky when he left the camp and Ash and Boon and McCaslin behind with his girlfriend next to him in the wagon, heading for town and then the bank and then the train station and then the place where James Beauchamp had been spotted. He had a debt to pay.

And although he was leaving the forest behind before he was supposed to, before he swore he would leave it that year, he knew that he would have another opportunity to make up that lost time, that he wasn't giving up on the forest yet but he knew he still had to leave and accepted that willingly also because he knew it was only temporary. He'd be back next year, and the year after that and the year after that until he was dead and buried. He'd have plenty of opportunities to make up for the lost time.

*****

He traveled two days and two nights to get to where James Beauchamp lived with his wife and it was a nice place, a two-story building in the middle of a crowded city ruled by white people. The building was crowded between two more buildings that were crowded full with niggers and poor whites, and although it appeared that the Beauchamps owned half of the building and that it wasn't as unkempt as its neighbors it still filled him with disgust. Here he was, coming all this way to pay a debt that his white ancestor owed his black descendants and here was one of those very descendants just bowing to the white man's world and not even bothering to acknowledge it, living in a well-kept place where he could ignore the things going on in his own neighborhood.

Even as he ascended the stairs to the second-story apartment he wanted nothing more than to go back to the woods and forget about James Beauchamp and his descendants. But the debt would still be there and it wasn't up to him to decide not to pay it. So he rang the doorbell and waited for someone to answer it.

When the door opened James Beauchamp's wife stood on the other side and she looked surprised to see him. "Who are you?" and he

"Isaac McCaslin. I'm looking for James Beauchamp."

James was listening in another room and he called to let him in. He crossed the threshold and followed Mrs. Beauchamp into the sitting room. The sitting room was crowded but reasonably furnished and only a light coat of dust could be seen on the mantel. Both Beauchamps wore clothes that spoke of money, maybe not much but at least enough.

He held out the envelope containing the money that Carothers McCaslin had sworn to give to Tennie's descendants. "Take it. It's yours."

James stared at it for a moment before standing. "I don't want it. I've got enough. I've got a job at the bank, and soon we'll have enough money to buy this whole building. We don't need any of your money."

He shook his head. "Don't you see you'll come to no good here? Don't you see that whatever job you've been promised at that bank is just a nigger job? What do you think you'll accomplish here?"

James said, "It's not just some nigger job. It'll get us some respect."

He turned away, disgusted. He tried again to give the envelope to James.

"I don't want it," James said. "I don't want any money from some white man who never gave me anything. I'm making my own way here."

"No, you're not."

He left, and he took the money with him because he couldn't get neither James nor his wife to take it and he went back to the train station and caught the first train he could back to Mississippi and the forest where he wouldn't have to deal with white and black men's denial and where he, too, could ignore white man's unjust rule and not even have to bow to it for a short time each year. Although he'd given up on white men and he'd nearly given up on black men he wouldn't give up on the forest, not until the forest was also taken over by white men and there was no forest left would he bow completely to his race's tyranny.

THE END