It took Lina Grove even less than a month to get on foot and when, but rarely, on passing wagons from the provincial village at a sawmill in Alabama to the city of Jefferson, Mississippi, where, for some reason, she thought, Lucas Burch got a job, from whom she suffered and whom, as the time began to give birth, she went to look for it, without waiting for the letter he promised, six months ago, when he parted six months ago with news of where he had settled and with money for the trip. On the very approach to Jefferson, Lina was told that the name of the guy who works in the city at the woodworking factory was not actually Birch, but Bunch, but now he didn’t turn back. This Byron Bunch really worked in the factory; despite his youth, he shied away from the usual entertainments of a white trash, lived modestly and closedly, and on weekends, while his comrades spent a few weeks in a few accessible ways, he left Jefferson to lead a choir in a rural Negro church. Lina found Byron Bunch in the factory and could ask about Lucas Birch, and from the first minute, from the very first words, a hitherto unknown feeling began to grow in his soul, not only which he could name, but only Byron later made him confess to himself Hightower, the only person in Jefferson with whom he often had long conversations.
Gail Hightower has lived in the proud solitude of an outcast since he was forced to leave the pulpit after the scandalous death of his wife - whom the city had never believed that at the end of almost every week she would not go anywhere, but to visit her relatives - in one from the dubious institutions of Memphis. No matter how hot the heads of the locals tried to force the retired priest to get out of Jefferson, he persevered and proved his right to stay in the city, to which he sought a destination in his youth because it was on Jefferson Street that his grandfather fell from the bullet of the northerners when at the very end of the war, a handful of Confederate horsemen made a boyishly desperate raid on General Grant's depots; an obsession with this episode would not leave Hightower, no matter how much he lived.
By the description of Lina Byron Bunch realized that the father of her unborn child - under the name Joe Brown - really found in Jefferson and even worked for some time with him at a woodworking factory, but quit as soon as he began to make good money by selling underground whiskey; he was engaged in this business with a friend named Joe Christmas and lived with him in a former Negro hut in the backyard of Joanna Bearden's house.
Miss Burden, a woman already in her years, spent most of her life in her house all alone: her grandfather and brother after the war in the very center of the city were shot dead by Colonel Sartoris, who did not share their conviction of the need to grant blacks suffrage; for locals she was forever a stranger and was content with the community of local blacks. The column of smoke that Lina Grove saw when approaching Jefferson rose from her house. The house was set on fire, and the landlady was upstairs in her bedroom with a razor-cut throat.
Miss Burden's killer was Joe Christmas, as it became known from the words of Brown, who at first hid, but appeared as soon as it became known about the telegram of a relative of the unfortunate person who appointed a reward of a thousand dollars for the capture of the killer. Nobody really knew anything about Christmas, from where it had appeared in the city three years earlier, but Brown was able to add few, but extremely important information in the eyes of the Jefferson teammates: firstly, Christmas was Niger, although in appearance it was accepted in worst case for italian; secondly, he was Joanna Bearden's lover. It is not surprising that a nerdy man who has encroached on the bed, and then the life of a white woman, even three Yankees, began a uniform inspired hunt, which was to last a short week, until Friday, when the villain was finally captured.
Brown was firmly convinced that a bit of black blood was flowing in Christmas's veins, while Christmas himself didn’t have such confidence, and this uncertainty was the curse of his life, only in the last hours of which he finally knew the history of his birth and became convinced - although, perhaps , this was already indifferent to him - that everything connected with blacks, their smell, especially emanating from women, was not without purpose and obsessively haunted him since he remembered himself.
Looking ahead, Christmas found out the truth about his origin due to the fact that his grandfather and grandmother, the old Heins, whose daughter Millie sinned and wanted to run away with the circus, lived in Jefferson's neighboring town where he was captured, who was considered a Mexican, but in fact was partly a black man; Haines caught the fugitives, shot the circus, Millie brought home, where she gave birth to a boy and died in due time. Soon after the birth, Hines took the baby out of the house, and the grandmother never saw her grandson again until the very day when her heart helped her recognize her son Millie in the caught killer. Hines threw the baby to the door of the orphanage; it was before Christmas, and the foundling got the name Christmas. Hines himself entered the same orphanage as a watchman and could triumphantly watch how God's right hand was continually punishing the sin of the abominable fornication: innocent babies suddenly began to call Joe Christmas "Niger." This Christmas nickname is remembered.
At the age of five, through the efforts of an orphanage sister, whom he accidentally found with a young doctor and who was stupidly afraid of a denunciation, Christmas was hastily attached to a village in the Makirhen family, who professed the harsh, joyless religion that they revered for Christianity. Here he was required to work hard, to avoid all kinds of filth, to cram the catechism, and to punish mercilessly for negligence in the performance of these duties, which only ensured that Christmas acquired a persistent hatred of religion over the years, and the filth and vice, which personified the city of old Makirhen , with their tobacco, booze and wastefulness, and even more so - women, on the contrary, little by little became something quite familiar to him. A few years before the first woman, a prostitute from a neighboring town, Christmas, with teenagers from neighboring farms like him, once went to a barn in which a young black woman taught them the basics, but when it was his turn, something a dark rose in him in response to that same black smell, and he simply began to brutally beat her. Christmas prostitute long and ingenuously considered a waitress; One night Makhirkhen went in search of sinners, whom he found on country dances, but this find cost him his life; he threw terrible Old Testament curses on Christmas's head, and Christmas on him - a chair that turned up under his arm.
Having fled from the home of his foster parents, Christmas traveled the continent from Canada to Mexico, without stopping anywhere for a long time, tried many activities; all these years, he experienced a strange craving for blacks, and often insurmountable hatred, and loathing, declaring his own belonging to this race, only to not pay, albeit at the cost of massacre, money in brothels, and even then closer to the north it did not work .
By the age of thirty, he found himself in Jefferson, where he settled in an abandoned Negro shack in the back of Miss Burden's house, which, learning of the new neighborhood, began to leave food for Christmas in the kitchen, and he accepted this silent gift, but at some point all these the bowls appeared to him as alms to the poor Niger, and, furious, he went upstairs and there silently and roughly took possession of a white woman. This episode had an unexpected and fatal continuation for both - a month or so later, Joanna herself went to the Christmas hut, and this laid the foundation for a strange relationship that lasted three years, sometimes contrary to the will and desire of Christmas, which, however, is not enough in this case meaning, for he fell under the rule of a force of a different order. The woman who had slept so long in Miss Burden was awakened; she became indefatigably passionate, even lecherous, then a craving for a sophisticated love ritual woke up in her, and she began to communicate with Christmas through notes left in the appointed places, make appointments to him in secluded places, although neither in the house nor around him there was not a soul ... At one beautiful moment, two years later, Joanna told Christmas that she was expecting a baby, but after a few months it dawned on him that no child was expected, that Joanna was just too old and didn’t fit, ”he said so bluntly to her, after which they did not see each other for a long time, until at last she demanded him to her with all kinds of tricks. She begged Christmas to only kneel beside him during prayer, when he refused, sent an old flintlock pistol at him (which, as it turned out later, had two charges - for both). The gun misfired, and Christmas had a razor with him.
For almost a week he was on the run, but at the same time, to everyone’s surprise, he didn’t try to get away, all these days looping around Jefferson, as if he was just pretending to be looking for salvation; when Christmas was identified at Mottstown, he did not try to resist. But on Monday, on the way to court, he rushed to run and took refuge in the house of the priest Hightower, where he was shot dead.
On the eve of Byron Bunch brought Christmas grandmother to Hightower, who told him the story of his grandson, and together they asked the priest to show in court that he had Christmas with him on the night of the murder, and he initially refused, when the persecutors broke into his house, tried in vain with this false confession stop them. On the morning of that day, in the hut where Christmas and Brown had lived before and where Bunch had visited Lina Grove in the absence of the hosts, Hightower took delivery. Mrs. Hines, in some turbidity from all the events, assured herself that the baby was her granddaughter Joe.
Contrary to his feelings for Lina, and maybe because of him, Byron Bunch tried to give his child a father and his mother a husband, but Brown escaped from their hut, and when Bunch caught up with him and tried to return it by force, he persuaded the stalker and disappeared into this time forever. Lina with the baby in her arms and with Bunch was then seen on the road to Tennessee. It’s not that even she again tried to find the father of the child, rather, she just wanted to see the white light a little more, somehow feeling that she should now settle down in one place - this will be for life.
