“Would you go to forty?” Varner said.
“No,” the second said. “She might not a caught.”
“That’s why I wouldn’t even match thirty-seven and a half,” the first said.
“All right,” Varner said—a tall, gaunt, narrow-hipped, heavily moustached man who looked like what his father had been: one of Forrest’s cavalrymen. “Call it thirty-seven and a half then. So we’ll split the difference then.” He was looking at Mink now. “When you pay Houston eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents, you can have your cow. Only you haven’t got eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents, have you?”
He stood there, his raw-red wrists which the slicker did not cover lying quiet on the top rail of the fence, his eyes quite blind again and his ears ringing again as though somebody had fired a shotgun just over his head, and on his face that expression faint and gentle and almost like smiling. “No,” he said.
“Wouldn’t his cousin Flem let him have it?” the second trader said. Nobody bothered to answer that at all, not even to remind them that Flem was still in Texas on his honeymoon, where he and his wife had been since the marriage last August.
“Then he’ll have to work it out,” Varner said. He was talking to Houston now. “What have you got that he can do?”
“I’m going to fence in another pasture,” Houston said. “I’ll pay him fifty cents a day. He can make thirty-seven days and from light till noon on the next one digging post holes and stringing wire. What about the cow? Do I keep her, or does Quick” (Quick was the constable) “take her?”
“Do you want Quick to?” Varner said.
“No,” Houston said. “She’s been here so long now she might get homesick. Besides, if she’s here Snopes can see her every day and keep his spirits up about what he’s really working for.”
“All right, all right,” Varner said quickly. “It’s settled now. I don’t want any more of that now.”
That was what he had to do. And his pride still was that he would not be, would never be, reconciled to it. Not even if he were to lose the cow, the animal itself to vanish from the entire equation and leave him in what might be called peace. Which—eliminating the cow—he could have done himself. More: he could have got eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents for doing it, which, with the eight dollars Houston had refused to accept, would have made practically twenty-seven dollars, more cash at one time than he had seen in he could not remember when, since even with the fall sale of his bale or two of cotton, the subtraction of Varner’s landlord’s share, plus his furnish bill at Varner’s store, barely left him that same eight or ten dollars in cash with which he had believed in vain that he could redeem the cow.
In fact, Houston himself made that suggestion. It was the second or third day of digging the post holes and setting the heavy locust posts in them; Houston came up on the stallion and sat looking down at him. He didn’t even pause, let alone look up.
“Look,” Houston said. “Look at me.” He looked up then, not pausing. Houston’s hand was already extended; he, Mink, could see the actual money in it. “Varner said eighteen seventy-five. All right, here it is. Take it and go on home and forget about that cow.” Now he didn’t even look up any longer, heaving onto his shoulder the post that anyway looked heavier and more solid than he did and dropping it into the hole, tamping the dirt home with the reversed shovel handle so that he only had to hear the stallion turn and go away. Then it was the fourth day; again he only needed to hear the stallion come up and stop, not even looking up when Houston said,
“Snopes,” then again, “Snopes,” then he said, “Mink,” he—Mink—not even looking up, let alone pausing while he said:
“I hear you.”
“Stop this now. You got to break your land for your crop. You got to make your living. Go on home and get your seed in the ground and then come back.”
“I aint got time to make a living,” he said, not even pausing. “I got to get my cow back home.”
The next morning it was not Houston on the stallion but Varner himself in his buckboard. Though he, Mink, did not know yet that it was Varner himself who was suddenly afraid, afraid for the peace and quiet of the community which he held in his iron usurious hand, buttressed by the mortgages and liens in the vast iron safe in his store. And now he, Mink, did look up and saw money in the closed fist resting on Varner’s knee.
“I‘ve put this on your furnish bill for this year,” Varner said. “I just come from your place. You aint broke a furrow yet. Pick up them tools and take this money and give it to Jack and take that damn cow on home and get to plowing.”
Though this was only Varner; he could pause and even lean on the post-hole digger now. “Have you heard any complaint from me about that-ere cow court judgment of yourn?” he said.
“No,” Varner said.
“Then get out of my way and tend to your business while I tend to mine,” he said. Then Varner was out of the buckboard—a man already old enough to be called Uncle Billy by the debtors who fawned on him, yet agile too: enough so to jump down from the buckboard in one motion, the lines in one hand and the whip in the other.
“God damn you,” he said, “pick up them tools and go on home. I’ll be back before dark, and if I dont find a furrow run by then, I’m going to dump every sorry stick you’ve got in that house out in the road and rent it to somebody else tomorrow morning.”
And he, Mink, looking at him, with on his face that faint gentle expression almost like smiling. “Likely you would do jest exactly that,” he said.
“You’re goddamned right I will,” Varner said. “Get on. Now. This minute.”
“Why, sholy,” he said. “Since that’s the next court judgment in this case, and a law-abiding feller always listens to a court judgment.” He turned.
“Here,” Varner said to his back. “Take this money.”
“Aint it?” he said, going on.
By midafternoon he had broken the better part of an acre. When he swung the plow at the turn-row he saw the buckboard coming up the lane. It carried two this time, Varner and the constable, Quick, and it was moving at a snail’s pace because, on a lead rope at the rear axle, was his cow. He didn’t hurry; he ran out that furrow too, then unhitched the traces and tied the mule to the fence and only then walked on to where the two men still sat in the buckboard, watching him.
“I paid Houston the eighteen dollars and here’s your cow,” Varner said. “And if ever again I hear of you or anything belonging to you on Jack Houston’s land, I’m going to send you to jail.”
“And seventy-five cents,” he said. “Or maybe them six bits evaporated. That cow’s under a court judgment. I cant accept it until that judgment is satisfied.”
“Lon,” Varner said to the constable in a voice flat and almost gentle, “put that cow in the lot yonder and take that rope off it and get to hell back in this buggy.”
“Lon,” Mink said in a voice just as gentle and just as flat, “if you put that cow in my lot I’ll get my shotgun and kill her.”
Nor did he watch them. He went back to the mule and untied the lines from the fence and hooked up the traces and ran another furrow, his back now to the house and the lane, so that not until he swung the mule at the turn-row did he see for a moment the buckboard going back down the lane at that snail’s pace matched to the plodding cow. He plowed steadily on until dark, until his supper of the coarse fatback and cheap molasses and probably weevilly flour which, even after he had eaten it, would still be the property of Will Varner until he, Mink, had ginned and sold the cotton next fall which he had not even planted yet.
An hour later, with a coal-oil lantern to light dimly the slow lift and thrust of the digger, he was back at Houston’s fence. He had not lain down nor even stopped moving, working, since daylight this morning; when daylight came again he would not have slept in twenty-four hours; when the sun did rise on him he was back in his own field with the mule and plow, stopping only for dinner at noon, then back to the field again, plow
ing again—or so he thought until he waked to find himself lying in the very furrow he had just run, beneath the canted handles of the still-bedded plow, the anchored mule still standing in the traces and the sun just going down.
Then supper again like last night’s meal and this morning’s breakfast too, and carrying the lighted lantern he once more crossed Houston’s pasture toward where he had left the post-hole digger. He didn’t even see Houston sitting on the pile of waiting posts until Houston stood up, the shotgun cradled in his left arm. “Go back.” Houston said. “Dont never come on my land again after sundown. If you’re going to kill yourself, it wont be here. Go back now. Maybe I cant stop you from working out that cow by daylight but I reckon I can after dark.”
But he could stand that too. Because he knew the trick of it. He had learned that the hard way; himself taught that to himself through simple necessity: that a man can bear anything by simply and calmly refusing to accept it, be reconciled to it, give up to it. He could even sleep at night now. It was not so much that he had time to sleep now, as because he now had a kind of peace, freed of hurry and haste. He broke the rest of his rented land now, then opened out the middles while the weather held good, using the bad days on Houston’s fence, marking off one day less which meant fifty cents less toward the recovery of his cow. But with no haste now, no urgency; when spring finally came and the ground warmed for the reception of seed and he saw before him a long hiatus from the fence because of the compulsion of his own crop, he faced it calmly, getting his corn-and cottonseed from Varner’s store and planting his ground, making a better job of sowing than he had ever done before, since all he had to do now was to fill the time until he could get back to the fence and with his own sweat dissolve away another of the half-dollars. Because patience was his pride too: never to be reconciled since by this means he could beat Them; They might be stronger for a moment than he but nobody, no man, no nothing could wait longer than he could wait when nothing else but waiting would do, would work, would serve him.
Then the sun set at last on the day when he could put down patience also along with the digger and the stretchers and what remained of the wire. Houston would know it was the last day too of course. Likely Houston had spent the whole day expecting him to come trotting up the lane to get the cow the minute the sun was below the western trees; likely Houston had spent the whole day from sunrise on in the kitchen window to see him, Mink, show up for that last day’s work already carrying the plowline to lead the cow home with. In fact, throughout that whole last day while he dug the last holes and tamped into them not the post at all but the last of that outrage which They had used old Will Varner himself as their tool to try him with, to see how much he really could stand, he could imagine Houston hunting vainly up and down the lane, trying every bush and corner to find where he must have hidden the rope.
Which—the rope—he had not even brought yet, working steadily on until the sun was completely down and no man could say the full day was not finished and done, and only then gathering up the digger and shovel and stretchers, to carry them back to the feed lot and set them neatly and carefully in the angle of the fence where the nigger or Houston or anybody else that wanted to look couldn’t help but see them, himself not glancing even once toward Houston’s house, not even glancing once at the cow which no man could now deny was his, before walking on back down the lane toward his cabin two miles away.
He ate his supper, peacefully and without haste, not even listening for the cow and whoever would be leading it this time. It might even be Houston himself. Though on second thought, Houston was like him; Houston didn’t scare easy either. It would be old Will Varner’s alarm and concern sending the constable to bring the cow back, now that the judgment was worked out to the last penny, he, Mink, chewing his fatback and biscuits and drinking his coffee with that same gentle expression almost like smiling, imagining Quick cursing and stumbling up the lane with the lead rope for having to do the job in the dark when he too would rather be at home with his shoes off eating supper; Mink was already rehearsing, phrasing what he would tell him: “I worked out eighteen and a half days. It takes a light and a dark both to make one of them, and this one aint up until daylight tomorrow morning. Just take that cow back where you and Will Varner put it eighteen and a half days ago, and I’ll come in the morning and get it. And remind that nigger to feed early, so I wont have to wait.”
But he heard nothing. And only then did he realise that he had actually expected the cow, had counted on its return you might say. He had a sudden quick light shock of fear, terror, discovering now how spurious had been that peace he thought was his since his run-in with Houston and the shotgun at the fence line that night two months ago; so light a hold on what he had thought was peace that he must be constantly on guard now, since almost anything apparently could throw him back to that moment when Will Varner had told him he would have to work out eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents at fifty cents a day to gain possession of his own cow. Now he would have to go to the lot and look to make sure Quick hadn’t put the cow in it unheard and then run, fled; he would have to light a lantern and go out in the dark to look for what he knew he would not find. And as if that was not enough, he would have to explain to his wife where he was going with the lantern. Sure enough, he had to do it, using the quick hard unmannered word when she said, “Where you going? I thought Jack Houston warned you,”—adding, not for the crudeness but because she too would not let him alone:
“Lessen of course you will step outside and do it for me.”
“You nasty thing!” she cried. “Using words like that in front of the girls!”
“Sholy,” he said. “Or maybe you could send them. Maybe both of them together could make up for one a-dult. Though from the way they eat, ara one of them alone ought to do hit.”
He went to the barn. The cow was not there of course, as he had known. He was glad of it. The whole thing—realising that even if one of them brought the cow home, he would still have to go out to the barn to make sure—had been good for him, teaching him, before any actual harm had been done, just exactly what They were up to: to fling, jolt, surprise him off balance and so ruin him: Who couldn’t beat him in any other way: couldn’t beat him with money or its lack, couldn’t outwait him; could beat him only by catching him off balance and so topple him back into that condition of furious blind earless rage where he had no sense.
But he was all right now. He had actually gained; when he took his rope tomorrow morning and went to get his cow, it wouldn’t be Quick but Houston himself who would say, “Why didn’t you come last night? The eighteenth-and-a-half day was up at dark last night”; it would be Houston himself to whom he would answer:
“It takes a light and a dark both to make a day. That-ere eighteen-and-a-half day is up this morning—providing that delicate nigger of yourn has done finished feeding her.”
He slept. He ate breakfast; sunrise watched him walk without haste up the lane to Houston’s feed lot, the plowline coiled on his arm, to lean his folded arms on the top rail of the fence, the coiled rope loosely dangling, watching the Negro with his pitchfork and Houston also for a minute or two before they saw him. He said:
“Mawnin, Jack. I come by for that-ere court-judgment cow if you’ll kindly have your nigger to kindly put this here rope on her if he’ll be so kindly obliging,” then still leaning there while Houston came across the lot and stopped about ten feet away.
“You’re not through yet,” Houston said. “You owe two more days.”
“Well well,” he said, easily and peacefully, almost gently. “I reckon a man with a lot full of paper bulls and heifers, not to mention a half a mile of new pasture fence he got built free for nothing, might get mixed up about a little thing not no more important than jest dollars, especially jest eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents of them. But I jest own one eight-dollar cow, or what I always thought was jest a eight-dollar cow. I aint rich enough not to be able to count up to eighteen seve
nty-five.”
“I’m not talking about eighteen dollars,” Houston said. “I’m—”
“And seventy-five cents,” Mink said.
“—talking about nineteen dollars. You owe one dollar more.”
He didn’t move; his face didn’t change; he just said: “What one dollar more?”
“The pound fee,” Houston said. “The law says that when anybody has to take up a stray animal and the owner dont claim it before dark that same day, the man that took it up is entitled to a one-dollar pound fee.”
He stood quite still; his hand did not even tighten on the coiled rope. “So that was why you were so quick that day to save Lon the trouble of taking her to his lot,” he said. “To get that extra dollar.”
“Damn the extra dollar,” Houston said. “Damn Quick too. He was welcome to her. I kept her instead to save you having to walk all the way to Quick’s house to get her. Not to mention I have fed her every day, which Quick wouldn’t have done. The digger and shovel and stretchers are in the corner yonder where you left them last night. Any time you want to—”
But he had already turned, already walking, peacefully and steadily, carrying the coiled rope, back down the lane to the road, not back toward his home but in the opposite direction toward Varner’s store four miles away. He walked through the bright sweet young summer morning between the burgeoning woodlands where the dogwood and redbud and wild plum had long since bloomed and gone, beside the planted fields standing strongly with corn and cotton, some of it almost as good as his own small patches (obviously the people who planted these had not had the leisure and peace he had thought he had to sow in); treading peacefully the rife and vernal earth boiling with life—the frantic flash and glint and crying of birds, a rabbit bursting almost beneath his feet, so young and thin as to have but two dimensions, unless the third one could be speed—on to Varner’s store.
The gnawed wood gallery above the gnawed wood steps should be vacant now. The overalled men who after laying-by would squat or stand all day against the front wall or inside the store itself, should be in the field too today, ditching or mending fences or running the first harrows and shovels and cultivators among the stalks. The store was too empty, in fact. He thought Flem was jest here—because Flem was not there; he, Mink, knew if anyone did that that honeymoon would have to last until they could come back home and tell Frenchman’s Bend that the child they would bring with them hadn’t been born sooner than this past May at the earliest. But even if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else; his cousin’s absence when he was needed was just one more test, harassment, enragement They tried him with, not to see if he would survive it because They had no doubt of that, but simply for the pleasure of watching him have to do something extra there was no reason whatever for him to have to do.
Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion Page 80
