There must have been lots in the world who have done it that people don't know about, that maybe they suffered for it and died for it and are in hell now for it. But they did it and it don't matter now; even the ones we do know about are just names now and it don't matter now" and Bon watching him and listening to him and thinking It's because I don't know myself what I am going to do and so he is aware that I am undecided without knowing that he is aware. Perhaps if I told him now that I am going to do it, he would know his own mind and tell me, You shall not. And maybe your old man was right that time and they did think maybe the war would settle it and they would not have to themselves, or at least maybe Henry hoped it would because maybe your old man was right here too and Bon didn't care that since both of the two people Who could have given him a father had declined to do it, nothing mattered to him now, revenge or love or all, since he knew now that revenge could not compensate him nor love assuage. Maybe it wasn't even Henry who wouldn't let him write to Judith but Bon himself who did not write her because he didn't care about anything, not even that he didn't know yet what he was going to do. Then it was the next year and Bon was an officer now and they were moving toward Shilo without knowing that either, talking again as they moved along in column, the officer dropping back alongside the file in which the private marched and Henry crying again, holding his desperate and urgent voice down to undertone: "Dont you know yet what you are going to do?" while Bon would look at him for a moment with that expression which could have been smiling: "Suppose I told you I did not intend to go back to her?" and Henry would walk there beside him, with his pack and his eight feet of musket, and he would begin to pant, panting and panting while Bon watched him: "I am out in front of you a lot now; going into battle, charging, I will be out in front of you — " and Henry panting, "Stop! Stop!" and Bon watching him with that faint thin expression about the mouth and eyes: " — and who would ever know? You would not even have to know for certain yourself, because who could say but what a Yankee ball might have struck me at the exact second you pulled your trigger, or even before — " and Henry panting and looking, glaring at the sky, with his teeth showing and the sweat on his face and the knuckles of the hand on his musket butt white, saying, panting, "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!" Then it was Shilo, the second day and the lost battle and the brigade falling back from Pittsburgh Landing And listen,' Shreve cried; 'wait, now; wait! ' (glaring at Quentin, panting himself, as if he had had to supply his shade not only with a cue but with breath to obey it in): 'Because your old man was wrong here, too! He said it was Bon who was wounded, but it wasn't. Because who told him? Who told Sutpen, or your grandfather either, which of them it was who was hit? Sutpen didn't know because he wasn't there, and your grandfather wasn't there either because that was where he was hit too, where he lost his arm. So who told them? Not Henry, because his father never saw Henry but that one time and maybe they never had time to talk about wounds and besides to talk about wounds in the Confederate army in 1865 would be like coal miners talking about soot; and not Bon, because Sutpen never saw him at all because he was dead — it was not Bon, it was Henry; Bon that found Henry at last and stooped to pick him up and Henry fought back, struggled, saying, "Let be! Let me die! I wont have to know it then" and Bon said, "So you do want me to go back to her" and Henry lay there struggling and panting, with the sweat on his face and his teeth bloody inside his chewed lip, and Bon said, "Say you do want me to go back to her. Maybe then I wont do it. Say it" and Henry lay there struggling, with the fresh red staining through his shirt and his teeth showing and the sweat on his face until Bon held his arms and lifted him onto his back — '
First, two of them, then four; now two again. The room was indeed tomblike: a quality stale and static and moribund beyond any mere vivid and living cold. Yet they remained in it, though not thirty feet away was bed and warmth.
