“What the hell are you doing? Has somebody paid you to keep this car standing here as long as you can?”
“Dis here ti’ aint got no air a-tall in hit,” the negro said.
“Then get the hell away from there and let me have that tube,” Jason said.
“Hit up now,” the negro said, rising. “You kin ride now.”
Jason got in and started the engine and drove off. He went into second gear, the engine spluttering and gasping, and he raced the engine, jamming the throttle down and snapping the choker in and out savagely. “It’s goin to rain,” he said, “Get me halfway there, and rain like hell.” And he drove on out of the bells and out of town, thinking of himself slogging through the mud, hunting a team. “And every damn one of them will be at church.” He thought of how he’d find a church at last and take a team and of the owner coming out, shouting at him and of himself striking the man down. “I’m Jason Compson. See if you can stop me. See if you can elect a man to office that can stop me,” he said, thinking of himself entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers and dragging the sheriff out. “Thinks he can sit with his hands folded and see me lose my job. I’ll show him about jobs.” Of his niece he did not think at all, nor of the arbitrary valuation of the money. Neither of them had had entity or individuality for him for ten years; together they merely symbolized the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it.
The air brightened, the running shadow patches were not the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward