諾貝爾文學經典:《寵兒》第8章Part 4

It started like the chain-up but the difference was the power of the chain. One by one, from Hi Manback on down the line, they dove. Down through the mud under the bars, blind, groping. Some hadsense enough to wrap their heads in their shirts, cover their faces with rags, put on their shoes.
Others just plunged, simply ducked down and pushed out, fighting up, reaching for air. Some lostdirection and their neighbors, feeling the confused pull of the chain, snatched them around. Forone lost, all lost. The chain that held them would save all or none, and Hi Man was the Delivery.
They talked through that chain like Sam Morse and, Great God, they all came up. Like theunshriven dead, zombies on the loose, holding the chains in their hands, they trusted the rain andthe dark, yes, but mostly Hi Man and each other.
Past the sheds where the dogs lay in deep depression; past the two guard shacks, past the stable ofsleeping horses, past the hens whose bills were bolted into their feathers, they waded. The moondid not help because it wasn't there. The field was a marsh, the track a trough. All Georgia seemedto be sliding, melting away. Moss wiped their faces as they fought the live-oak branches thatblocked their way. Georgia took up all of Alabama and Mississippi then, so there was no state lineto cross and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. If they had known about it, they would haveavoided not only Alfred and the beautiful feldspar, but Savannah too and headed for the SeaIslands on the river that slid down from the Blue Ridge Mountains. But they didn't know.
Daylight came and they huddled in a copse of redbud trees. Night came and they scrambled up tohigher ground, praying the rain would go on shielding them and keeping folks at home. They werehoping for a shack, solitary, some distance from its big house, where a slave might be making ropeor heating potatoes at the grate. What they found was a camp of sick Cherokee for whom a rosewas named. Decimated but stubborn, they were among those who chose a fugitive life rather thanOklahoma. The illness that swept them now was reminiscent of the one that had killed half theirnumber two hundred years earlier. In between that calamity and this, they had visited George III in London, published a newspaper, made baskets, led Oglethorpe through forests, helped AndrewJackson fight Creek, cooked maize, drawn up a constitution, petitioned the King of Spain, beenexperimented on by Dartmouth, established asylums, wrote their language, resisted settlers, shotbear and translated scripture. All to no avail. The forced move to the Arkansas River, insisted uponby the same president they fought for against the Creek, destroyed another quarter of their alreadyshattered number.

行動開始時，很像穿上鎖鏈，可是區別在於鎖鏈的力量。一個接一個地，從"嗨師傅"往回，沿着這一排，他們紮了下去。潛到柵欄下的泥漿裏，瞎着眼睛摸索着。幾個有心計的把腦袋裹在襯衫裏，用破布矇住臉，穿上鞋。
其餘的就這麼囫圇紮了下去，只管往下劃開去，再奮力上來找空氣。有的迷失了方向，同伴感覺到鎖鏈上慌張狼狽的亂扯，就四處去抓他們。因爲一旦有一個迷失，大家就會全部迷失。將他們拴在一起的鎖鏈，要麼救出所有人，要麼一個也救不了，於是，"嗨師傅"成了救星。
他們通過鏈子說話，就像山姆·摩斯一樣，老天哪，他們全出來了。他們手執鎖鏈，如同未經懺悔的死者和逍遙法外的殭屍，他們信賴豪雨和黑夜，是的，但最信任的是"嗨師傅"，是他們自己。
他們走過狗窩棚，狗無精打采地趴在那裏；走過兩個看守室，走過馬沉睡着的馬廄，走過把嘴埋進羽毛的母雞，他們跋涉着。月亮沒幫上忙，因爲它不在場。田野是一片沼澤，道路是一條水溝。整個佐治亞似乎都在下沉、融化。他們企圖撥開擋道的橡樹枝，倒被蹭了一臉青苔。那時的佐治亞還包括整個亞拉巴馬和密西西比，所以沒有州界可過，其實它們本來也沒什麼用處。要是他們知道的話，他們不僅會逃離阿爾弗雷德和美麗的長石礦，還會避開薩凡納，而直奔位於滑下藍嶺的河流上的海羣島。然而他們不知道。
白天來了，他們在紫荊樹叢中擠作一團。夜幕降臨，他們爬起身登上高地，祈求雨會繼續掩護他們，把人們困在家裏。他們希望找到一個孤零零的小棚子，離主人的大房子有一定距離，裏面可能有個黑奴在搓繩子或者在爐架上烤土豆。他們找到的是一營生病的切羅基人，一種玫瑰就是因他們而得名的。人口大批死亡之後，切羅基人仍然很頑固，寧願去過一種逃犯的生涯，也不去俄克拉何馬。現在席捲他們的這場疾病讓人想起二百年前曾經要了他們半數性命的那一場。在這兩場災禍之間，他們去拜見了倫敦的喬治三世，出版了一份報紙，造出了籃子，把奧格爾索普帶出了森林，幫助安德魯·傑克遜與克里克人作戰，烹調玉米，制定憲法，上書西班牙國王，被達特茅斯學院用來做實驗，建立避難所，爲自己的語言發明文字，抵抗殖民者，獵熊，翻譯經文。然而都是徒勞無功。他們協助攻打克里克人的那同一個總統一聲令下，他們就被迫遷往阿肯色河，已經殘缺不全的隊伍因此又損失了四分之一。