Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

by Faulkner, William

  That’s right, a contest. Not even against Linda, and last of all against Lawyer Stevens, since he had already milked out of Lawyer Stevens all he needed from him, which was to get his wife buried all right and proper and decorous and respectable, without no uproarious elements making a unseemly spectacle in the business. His game of solitaire was against Jefferson. It was like he was trying to see jest exactly how much Jefferson would stand, put up with. It was like he knowed that his respectability depended completely on Jefferson not jest accepting but finally getting used to the fact that he not only had evicted Manfred de Spain from his bank but he was remodeling to move into it De Spain’s birthsite likewise, and that the only remaining threat now was what might happen if that-ere young gal that believed all right so far that he was her paw, might stumble onto something that would tell her different. That she might find out by accident that the man that was leastways mixed up somehow in her mother’s suicide, whether he actively caused it or not, wasn’t even her father, since if somebody’s going to be responsible why your maw killed herself, at least let it be somebody kin to you and not jest a outright stranger.

  So you would a thought that the first thing he would do soon as the dust settled after that funeral would be to get her clean out of Jefferson and as far away as he could have suh-jested into her mind she wanted to go. But not him. And the reason he give was that monument. And naturally that was Lawyer Stevens too. I mean, I dont know who delegated Lawyer into the monument business, who gave it to him or if he jest taken it or if maybe by this time the relationship between him and anybody named Snopes, or anyway maybe jest the Flem Snopeses (or no: it was that for him Eula Varner hadn’t never died and never would because oh yes, I know about that too) was like that one between a feller out in a big open field and a storm of rain: there aint no being give nor accepting to it: he’s already got it.

  Anyway it was him—Lawyer—that helped Linda hunt through that house and her mother’s things until they found the right photograph and had it—Lawyer still—enlarged, the face part, and sent it to Italy to be carved into a … yes, medallion to fasten onto the front of the monument, and him that the practice drawings would come back to to decide and change here and there and send back. Which would a been his right by his own choice even if Flem had tried to interfere in and stop him because he wanted that monument set up where Flem could pass on it more than anybody wanted it because then Flem would let her go. But it was Flem’s monument; dont make no mistake about that. It was Flem that paid for it, first thought of it, planned and designed it, picked out what size and what was to be wrote on it—the face and the letters and never once mentioned price. Dont make no mistake about that. It was Flem. Because this too was a part of what he had come to Jefferson for and went through all he went through afterward to get it.

  Oh yes, Lawyer had it all arranged for Linda to leave, get away at last; all they was hung on was the monument because Flem had give his word he would let her go then. It was to a place named Greenwich Village in New York; Lawyer had it all arranged, friends he knowed in Harvard to meet the train at the depot and take care of her, get her settled and ever thing.

  “Is it a college?” I says. “Like out at Seminary Hill?”

  “No no,” he says. “I mean, yes. But not the kind you are talking about.”

  “I thought you was set on her going to a college up there.”

  “That was before,” he says. “Too much has happened to her since. Too much, too fast, too quick. She outgrew colleges all in about twenty-four hours two weeks ago. She’ll have to grow back down to them again, maybe in a year or two. But right now, Greenwich Village is the place for her.”

  “What is Greenwich Village?” I says. “You still aint told me.”

  “It’s a place with a few unimportant boundaries but no limitations where young people of any age go to seek dreams.”

  “I never knowed before that place had no particular geography,” I says. “I thought that-ere was a varmint you hunted anywhere.”

  “Not always. Not for her, anyway. Sometimes you need a favorable scope of woods to hunt, a place where folks have already successfully hunted and found the same game you want. Sometimes, some people even need help in finding it. The particular quarry they want to catch, they have to make first. That takes two.”

  “Two what?” I says.

  “Yes,” he says. “Two.”

  “You mean a husband,” I says.

  “All right,” he says. “Call him that. It dont matter what you call him.”

  “Why, Lawyer,” I says, “you sound like what a heap, a right smart in fact, jest about all in fact, unanimous in fact of our good God-fearing upright embattled Christian Jeffersons and Yoknapatawphas too that can proudly affirm that never in their life did they ever have one minute’s fun that the most innocent little child couldn’t a stood right there and watched, would call a deliberate incitement and pandering to the Devil hisself.”

  Only Lawyer wasn’t laughing. And then I wasn’t neither. “Yes,” he says, “It will be like that with her. It will be difficult for her. She will have to look at a lot of them, a long time. Because he will face something almost impossible to match himself against. He will have to have courage, because it will be doom, maybe disaster too. That’s her fate. She is doomed to anguish and to bear it, doomed to one passion and one anguish and all the rest of her life to bear it, as some people are doomed from birth to be robbed or betrayed or murdered.”

  Then I said it: “Marry her. Naturally you never thought of that.”

  “I?” he says. It was right quiet: no surprise, no nothing. “I thought I had just been talking about that for the last ten minutes. She must have the best. It will be impossible even for him.”

  “Marry her,” I says.

  “No,” he says. “That’s my fate: just to miss marriage.”

  “You mean escape it?”

  “No no,” he says. “I never escape it. Marriage is constantly in my life. My fate is constantly to just miss it or it to, safely again, once more safe, just miss me.”

  So it was all fixed, and now all he needed was to get his carved marble face back from Italy, nagging by long-distance telephone and telegraph dispatch ever day or so in the most courteous affable legal manner you could want, at the Italian consul in New Orleans, so he could get it fastened onto the monument and then (if necessary) take a holt on Flem’s coat collar and shove him into the car and take him out to the cemetery and snatch the veil offen it, with Linda’s ticket to New York (he would a paid for that too except it wasn’t necessary since the last thing Uncle Billy done before he went back home after the funeral was to turn over to the bank—not Flem: the bank, with Lawyer as one of the trustees—a good-size chunk of what would be Eula’s inheritance under that will of hisn that he hadn’t never changed to read Snopes) in his other hand.

  So we had to wait. Which was interesting enough. I mean, Lawyer had enough to keep him occupied worrying the Italian Government, and all I ever needed was jest something to look at, watch, providing of course it had people in it. They—Flem and Linda—still lived in the same little house that folks believed for years after he bought it that he was still jest renting it. Though pretty soon Flem owned a automobile. I mean, presently, after the polite amount of time after he turned up president of the bank; not to have Santy Claus come all at once you might say. It wasn’t a expensive car: jest a good one, jest the right unnoticeable size, of a good polite unnoticeable black color and he even learned to drive it because maybe he had to because now ever afternoon after the bank closed he would have to go and watch how the carpenters was getting along with his new house (it was going to have columns across the front now, I mean the extry big ones so even a feller that never seen colyums before wouldn’t have no doubt a-tall what they was, like in the photographs where the Confedrit sweetheart in a hoop skirt and a magnolia is saying good-bye to her Confedrit beau jest before he rides off to finish tending to General Grant) and Flem would have to drive h
isself because, although Linda could drive it right off and done it now and then and never mind if all women are naturally interested in the house-building or -remodeling occupation no matter whose it is the same as a bird is interested in the nesting occupation, although she druv him there the first afternoon to look at the house, she wouldn’t go inside to look at it and after that one time she never even druv him back any more.

  But like I said we was all busy or anyway occupied or at least interested, so we could wait. And sho enough, even waiting ends if you can jest wait long enough. So finally the medallion came. It was October now, a good time of year, one of the best. Naturally it was Lawyer went to the depot and got it though I’m sho Flem paid the freight on it for no other reason than Lawyer wouldn’t a waited long enough for the agent to add it up, herding the two Negroes toting it all wrapped up in straw and nailed up in a wooden box, across the platform to his car like he was herding two geese. And for the next three days when his office seen him it was on the fly you might say, from a distance when he happened to pass it. Which was a good thing there wasn’t no passel of brigands or highwaymen or contractors or jest simple lawyers making a concerted financial attack on Yoknapatawpha County at that time because Yoknapatawpha would a jest had to rock along the best it could without no help from its attorney. Because he had the masons already hired and waiting with likely even the mortar already mixed, even before the medallion come; one morning I even caught him, put my hand on the car door and says,

  “I’ll ride out to the cemetery with you,” and he jest reached across, the car already in gear and the engine already racing, and lifted my hand off and throwed it away and says,

  “Get out of the way,” and went on and so I went up to the office, the door never was locked nohow even when he was jest normal and jest out of it most of the time, and opened the bottom drawer where he kept the bottle but it never even smelled like he used to keep whiskey in it. So I waited on the street until school let out and finally caught that boy, Chick, and says,

  “Hasn’t your uncle got some whiskey at home somewhere?” and he says,

  “I don’t know. I’ll look. You want me to pour up a drink in something and bring it?” and I says,

  “No. He dont need a drink. He needs a whole bottle, providing it’s big enough and full enough. Bring all of it; I’ll stay with him and watch.”

  Then the monument was finished, ready for Flem to pass on it, and he—Lawyer—sent me the word too, brisk and lively as a general jest getting ready to capture a town: “Be at the office at three-thirty so we can pick up Chick. The train leaves Memphis at eight o’clock so we wont have any time to waste.”

  So I was there. Except it wasn’t in the office at all because he was already in the car with the engine already running when I got there. “What train at eight o’clock to where and whose?” I says.

  “Linda’s,” he says. “She’ll be in New York Saturday morning. She’s all packed and ready to leave. Flem’s sending her to Memphis in his car as soon as we are done.”

  “Flem’s sending her?” I says.

  “Why not?” he says. “She’s his daughter. After all you owe something to your children even if it aint your fault. Get in,” he says. “Here’s Chick.”

  So we went out to the cemetery and there it was—another column not a-tall saying what it had cost Flem Snopes because what it was saying was exactly how much it was worth to Flem Snopes, standing in the middle of that new one-grave lot, at the head of that one grave that hadn’t quite healed over yet, looking—the stone, the marble—whiter than white itself in the warm October sun against the bright yellow and red and dark red hickories and sumacs and gums and oaks like splashes of fire itself among the dark green cedars. Then the other car come up with him and Linda in the back seat, and the Negro driver that would drive her to Memphis in the front seat with the baggage (it was all new too) piled on the seat by him; coming up and stopping, and him setting there in that black hat that still looked brand new and like he had borrowed it, and that little bow tie that never had and never would look anything but new, chewing slow and steady at his tobacco; and that gal setting there by him, tight and still and her back not even touching the back of the seat, in a kind of dark suit for travelling and a hat and a little veil and her hands in white gloves still and kind of clenched on her knees and not once not never once ever looking at that stone monument with that marble medallion face that Lawyer had picked out and selected that never looked like Eula a-tall you thought at first, never looked like nobody nowhere you thought at first, until you were wrong because it never looked like all women because what it looked like was one woman that ever man that was lucky enough to have been a man would say, “Yes, that’s her. I knowed her five years ago or ten years ago or fifty years ago and you would a thought that by now I would a earned the right not to have to remember her any more,” and under it the carved letters that he hisself, and I dont mean Lawyer this time, had picked out:

  EULA VARNER SNOPES

  1889 1927

  A VIRTUOUS WIFE IS A CROWN TO HER HUSBAND

  HER CHILDREN RISE AND CALL HER BLESSED

  and him setting there chewing, faint and steady, and her still and straight as a post by him, not looking at nothing and them two white balls of her fists on her lap. Then he moved. He leant a little and spit out the window and then set back in the seat.

  “Now you can go,” he says.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  CHARLES MALLISON

  So the car went on. Then I turned and started walking back to ours when Ratliff said behind me: “Wait. You got a clean handkerchief?” and I turned and saw Uncle Gavin walking on away from us with his back to us, not going anywhere: just walking on, until Ratliff took the handkerchief from me and we caught up with him. But he was all right then, he just said:

  “What’s the matter?” Then he said, “Well, let’s get on back. You boys are free to loaf all day long if you want to but after all I work for the County so I have to stay close enough to the office so that anybody that wants to commit a crime against it can find me.”

  So we got in the car and he started it and we drove back to town. Except that he was talking about football now, saying to me: “Why dont you wake up and get out of that kindergarten and into high school so you can go out for the team? I’ll need somebody I know on it because I think I know what’s wrong with football the way they play it now; going on from there, talking and even turning loose the wheel with both hands to show us what he meant; how the trouble with football was, only an expert could watch it because nobody else could keep up with what was happening; how in baseball everybody stood still and the ball moved and so you could keep up with what was happening. But in football, the ball and everybody else moved at the same time and not only that but always in a clump, a huddle with the ball hidden in the middle of them so you couldn’t even tell who did have it, let alone who was supposed to have it; not to mention the ball being already the color of dirt and all the players thrashing and rolling around in the mud and dirt until they were all that same color too; going on like that, waving both hands with Ratliff and me both hollering, “Watch the wheel! Watch the wheel!” and Uncle Gavin saying to Ratliff, “Now you dont think so,” or “You claim different of course,” or “No matter what you say,” and Ratliff saying, “Why, I never,” or “No I dont,” or “I aint even mentioned football,” until finally he—Ratliff—said to me:

  “Did you find that bottle?”

  “No sir,” I said. “I reckon Father drank it. Mr Gowrie wont bring the next keg until Sunday night.”

  “Let me out here,” Ratliff said to Uncle Gavin. Uncle Gavin stopped talking long enough to say,

  “What?”

  “I’ll get out here,” Ratliff said. “See you in a minute.”

  So Uncle Gavin stopped long enough for Ratliff to get out (we had just reached the Square), then we went on, Uncle Gavin talking again or still talking since he had only stopped long enough to say What? to Ratliff, and park
ed the car and went up to the office and he was still talking that same kind of foolishness that you never could decide whether it didn’t make any sense or not, and took one of the pipes from the bowl and begun to look around the desk until I went and shoved the tobacco jar up and he looked at the jar and said, “Oh yes, thanks,” and put the pipe down, still talking. Then Ratliff came in and went to the cooler and got a glass and the spoon and sugar-bowl from the cabinet and took a pint bottle of white whiskey from inside of his shirt, Uncle Gavin still talking, and made the toddy and came and held it out.

  “Here,” he said.

  “Why, much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said. “That looks fine. That sure looks fine.” But he didn’t touch it. He didn’t even take it while Ratliff set it down on the desk where I reckon it was still sitting when Clefus came in the next morning to sweep the office and found it and probably had already started to throw it out when he caught his hand back in time to smell it or recognise it or anyway drink it. And now Uncle Gavin took up the pipe again and filled it and fumbled in his pocket and then Ratliff held out a match and Uncle Gavin stopped talking and looked at it and said, “What?” Then he said, “Thanks,” and took the match and scratched it carefully on the underside of the desk and blew it carefully out and put it into the tray and put the pipe into the tray and folded his hands on the desk and said to Ratliff: