And you call ”But of course there wasn’t a man who would — yourself one, that’ll let—”
“I got a certain position to keep up myself,” the proprietor said in a placative tone. “If you come right down to it.” He stepped back a little, against the desk. “I reckon I can say who’ll stay in my house and who won’t,” he said. “And I know some more folks around here that better do the same thing. Not no mile off, neither. I aint beholden to no man. Not to you, noways.”
“Where is she now? or did they drive her out of town?”
“That aint my affair, where folks go after they check out,” the proprietor said, turning his back. He said: “I reckon somebody took her in, though.”
“Yes,” Horace said. “Christians. Christians.” He turned toward the door. The proprietor called him. He turned. The other was taking a paper down from a pigeon-hole. Horace returned to the desk. The paper lay on the desk. The proprietor leaned with his hands on the desk, the toothpick tilted in his mouth.
“She said you’d pay it,” he said.
He paid the bill, counting the money down with shaking hands. He entered the jail yard and went to the door and knocked. After a while a lank, slattern woman came with a lamp, holding a man’s coat across her breast. She peered at him and said before he could speak:
“You’re lookin fer Miz Goodwin, I reckon.”
Did—” ”Yes. How did —
“You’re the lawyer. I’ve seed you befo. She’s hyer. Sleepin now.”
“Thanks,” Horace said. “Thanks. I knew that someone — I didn’t believe that—”
“I reckon I kin always find a bed fer a woman and child,” the woman said. “I dont keer whut Ed says. Was you wantin her special? She’s sleepin now.”
“No, no; I just wanted to—”
The woman watched him across the lamp. “‘Taint no need botherin her, then. You kin come around in the mawnin and git her a boa’din-place. ‘Taint no hurry.”
On the next afternoon Horace went out to his sister’s, again in a hired car. He told her what had happened. “I’ll have to take her home now.”
“Not into my house,” Narcissa said.
He looked at her. Then he began to fill his pipe slowly and carefully. “It’s not a matter of choice, my dear. You must see that.”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said. “I thought we settled that.”
He struck the match and lit the pipe and put the match carefully into the fireplace. “Do you realise that she has been practically turned into the streets? That—”
“That shouldn’t be a hardship. She ought to be used to that.”
He looked at her. He put the pipe in his mouth and smoked it to a careful coal, watching his hand tremble upon the stem. “Listen. By tomorrow they will probably ask her to leave town. Just because she happens not to be married to the man whose child she carries about these sanctified streets. But who told them? That’s what I want to know. I know that nobody in Jefferson knew it except—”
“You were the first I heard tell it,” Miss Jenny said. “But, Narcissa, why—”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said.
“Well,” Horace said. He drew the pipe to an even coal. “That settles it, of course,” he said, in a dry, light voice.
She rose. “Will you stay here tonight?”
“What? No. No. I’ll — I told her I’d come for her at the jail and . . .” He sucked at his pipe. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters. I hope it doesn’t.”
She was still paused, turning. “Will you stay or not?”
“I could even tell her I had a puncture,” Horace said. “Time’s not such a bad thing after all. Use it right, and you can stretch anything out, like a rubberband, until it busts somewhere, and there you are, with all tragedy and despair in two little knots between thumb and finger of each hand.”
“Will you stay, or wont you stay, Horace?” Narcissa said.
“I think I’ll stay,” Horace said.
He was in bed. He had been lying in the dark for about an hour, when the door of the room opened, felt rather than seen or heard. It was his sister. He rose to his elbow. She took shape vaguely, approaching the bed. She came and looked down at him. “How much longer are you going to keep this up?” she said.
“Just until morning,” he said. “I’m going back to town. You need not see me again.”
She stood beside the bed, motionless. After a moment her cold unbending voice came down to him: “You know what I mean.”
“I promise not to bring her into your house again. You can send Isom in to hide in the canna bed.” She said nothing. “Surely you don’t object to my living there, do you?”
“I dont care where you live. The question is, where I live. I live here, in this town. I’ll have to stay here. But you’re a man. It doesn’t matter to you. You can go away.”
“Oh,” he said. He lay quite still. She stood above him, motionless. They spoke quietly, as though they were discussing wallpaper, food.
“Dont you see, this is my home, where I must spend the rest of my life. Where I was born. I dont care where else you go not what you do. I dont care how many women you have nor who they are. But I cannot have my brother mixed up with a woman people are talking about. I dont expect you to have consideration for me; I ask you to have consideration for our father and mother. Take her to Memphis. They say you refused to let the man have bond to get out of jail; take her on to Memphis. You can think of a lie to tell him about that, too.”
“Oh. So you think that, do you?”
“I dont think anything about it. I don’t care. That’s what people in town think. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. What I do mind is, every day you force me to have to tell lies for you. Go away from here, Horace. Anybody but you would realise it’s a case of cold-blooded murder.”
“And over her, of course. I suppose they say that too, out of their odorous and omnipotent sanctity. Do they say yet that it was I killed him?”
“I dont see that it makes any difference who did it. The question is, are you going to stay mixed up with it? When people already believe you and she are slipping into my house at night.” Her cold, unbending voice shaped the words in the darkness above him. Through the window, upon the blowing darkness, came the drowsy dissonance of cicada and cricket.
“Do you believe that?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Go on away, Horace. I ask it.”
“And leave her — them, flat?”
“Hire a lawyer, if he still insists he’s innocent. I’ll pay for it. You can get a better criminal lawyer than you are. She wont know it. She wont even care. Cant you see that she is just leading you on to get him out of jail for nothing? Dont you know that woman has got money hidden away somewhere? You’re going back into town tomorrow, are you?” She turned, began to dissolve into the blackness. “You wont leave before breakfast.”
The next morning at breakfast, his sister said: “Who will be the lawyer on the other side of the case?”
“District Attorney. Why?”
She rang the bell and sent for fresh bread. Horace watched her. “Why do you ask that?” Then he said: “Damn little squirt.” He was talking about the District Attorney, who had also been raised in Jefferson and who had gone to the town school with them. “I believe he was at the bottom of that business night before last. The hotel. Getting her turned out of the hotel for public effect, political capital. By God, if I knew that, believed that he had done that just to get elected to Congress . . .”
After Horace left, Narcissa went up to Miss Jenny’s room. “Who is the District Attorney?” she said.
“You’ve known him all your life,” Miss Jenny said. “You even elected him. Eustace Graham. What do you want to know for? Are you looking around for a substitute for Gowan Stevens?”
“I just wondered,” Narcissa said.
“Fiddlesticks,” Miss Jenny said. “You dont wonder. You just do things and then stop until the ne
xt time to do something comes around.”
Horace met Snopes emerging from the barbershop, his jowls gray with powder, moving in an effluvium of pomade. In the bosom of his shirt, beneath his bow tie, he wore an imitation ruby stud which matched his ring. The tie was of blue polka-dots; the very white spots on it appeared dirty when seen close; the whole man with his shaved neck and pressed clothes and gleaming shoes emanated somehow the idea that he had been dry-cleaned rather than washed.
“Well, Judge,” he said, “I hear you’re having some trouble gettin a boarding-place for that client of yourn. Like I always say—” he leaned, his voice lowered, his mud-colored eyes roving aside “ — the church aint got no place in politics, and women aint got no place in neither one, let alone the law. Let them stay at home and they’ll find plenty to do without upsetting a man’s lawsuit. And besides, a man aint no more than human, and what he does aint nobody’s business but his. What you done with her?”
“She’s at the jail,” Horace said. He spoke shortly, making to pass on. The other blocked his way with an effect of clumsy accident.
“You got them all stirred up, anyhow. Folks is saying you wouldn’t git Goodwin no bond, so he’d have to stay—” again Horace made to pass on. “Half the trouble in this world is caused by women, I always say. Like that girl gittin her paw all stirred up, running off like she done. I reckon he done the right thing sending her clean outen the state.”
“Yes,” Horace said in a dry, furious voice.
“I’m mighty glad to hear your case is going all right. Between you and me, I’d like to see a good lawyer make a monkey outen that District Attorney. Give a fellow like that a little county office and he gits too big for his pants right away. Well, glad to’ve saw you. I got some business up town for a day or two. I dont reckon you’ll be going up that-a-way?”
“What?” Horace said. “Up where?”
“Memphis. Anything I can do for you?”
“No,” Horace said. He went on. For a short distance he could not see at all. He tramped steadily, the muscles beside his jaws beginning to ache, passing people who spoke to him, unawares.
xxi
AS THE TRAIN neared Memphis Virgil Snopes ceased talking and began to grow quieter and quieter, while on the contrary his companion, eating from a paraffin-paper package of popcorn and molasses, grew livelier and livelier with a quality something like intoxication, seeming not to notice the inverse state of his friend. He was still talking away when, carrying their new, imitation leather suit cases, their new hats slanted above their shaven necks, they descended at the station. In the waiting room Fonzo said:
“Well, what’re we going to do first?” Virgil said nothing. Someone jostled them: Fonzo caught at his hat. “What we going to do?” he said. Then he looked at Virgil, at his face. “What’s the matter?”
“Aint nothing the matter,” Virgil said.
“Well, what’re we going to do? You been here before. I aint.”
“I reckon we better kind of look around,” Virgil said.
Fonzo was watching him, his blue eyes like china. “What’s the matter with you? All the time on the train you was talking about how many times you been to Memphis. I bet you aint never bu—” Someone jostled them, thrust them apart; a stream of people began to flow between them. Clutching his suit case and hat Fonzo fought his way back to his friend.
“I have, too,” Virgil said, looking glassily about.
“Well, what we going to do then? It wont be open till eight oclock in the morning.”
“What you in such a rush for, then?”
“Well, I dont aim to stay here all night. . . . What did you do when you was here before?”
“Went to the hotel,” Virgil said.
“Which one? They got more than one here. You reckon all these folks could stay in one hotel? Which one was it?”
Virgil’s eyes were also a pale, false blue. He looked glassily about. “The Gayoso hotel,” he said.
“Well, let’s go to it,” Fonzo said. They moved toward the exit. A man shouted “taxi” at them; a redcap tried to take Fonzo’s bag. “Look out,” he said, drawing it back. On the street more cabmen barked at them.
“So this is Memphis,” Fonzo said. “Which way is it, now?” He had no answer. He looked around and saw Virgil in the act of turning away from a cabman. “What you—”
“Up this way,” Virgil said. “It aint far.”
It was a mile and a half. From time to time they swapped hands with the bags. “So this is Memphis,” Fonzo said. “Where have I been all my life?” When they entered the Gayoso a porter offered to take the bags. They brushed past him and entered, walking gingerly on the tile floor. Virgil stopped.
“Come on,” Fonzo said.
“Wait,” Virgil said.
“Thought you was here before,” Fonzo said.
“I was. This hyer place is too high. They’ll want a dollar a day here.”
“What we going to do, then?”
“Let’s kind of look around.”
They returned to the street. It was five oclock. They went on, looking about, carrying the suit cases. They came to another hotel. Looking in they saw marble, brass cuspidors, hurrying bellboys, people sitting among potted plants.
“That un’ll be just as bad,” Virgil said.
“What we going to do then? We caint walk around all night.”
“Let’s git off this hyer street,” Virgil said. They left Main Street. At the next corner Virgil turned again. “Let’s look down this-a-way. Git away from all that ere plate glass and monkey niggers. That’s what you have to pay for in them places.”
“Why? It’s already bought when we got there. How come we have to pay for it?”
“Suppose somebody broke it while we was there. Suppose they couldn’t ketch who done it. Do you reckon they’d let us out withouten we paid our share?”
At five-thirty they entered a narrow dingy street of frame houses and junk yards. Presently they came to a three-storey house in a small grassless yard. Before the entrance a lattice-work false entry leaned. On the steps sat a big woman in a mother hubbard, watching two fluffy white dogs which moved about the yard.
“Let’s try that un,” Fonzo said.
“That aint no hotel. Where’s ere sign?”
“Why aint it?” Fonzo said. “‘Course it is. Who ever heard of anybody just living in a three-storey house?”
“We cant go in this-a-way,” Virgil said. “This hyer’s the back. Dont you see that privy?” jerking his head toward the lattice.
“Well, let’s go around to the front, then,” Fonzo said. “Come on.”
They went around the block. The opposite side was filled by a row of automobile salesrooms. They stood in the middle of the block, their suit cases in their right hands.
“I dont believe you was ever here before, noways,” Fonzo said.
“Let’s go back. That must a been the front.”
“With the privy built onto the front door?” Fonzo said.
“We can ask that lady.”
“Who can? I aint.”
“Let’s go back and see, anyway.”
They returned. The woman and the dogs were gone.
“Now you done it,” Fonzo said. “Aint you?”
“Let’s wait a while. Maybe she’ll come back.”
“It’s almost seven oclock,” Fonzo said.
They set the bags down beside the fence. The lights had come on, quivering high in the serried windows against the tall serene western sky.
“I can smell ham, too,” Fonzo said.
A cab drew up. A plump blonde woman got out, followed by a man. They watched them go up the walk and enter the lattice. Fonzo sucked his breath across his teeth. “Durned if they didn’t,” he whispered.
“Maybe it’s her husband,” Virgil said.
Fonzo picked up his bag. “Come on.”
“Wait,” Virgil said. “Give them a little time.”
They waited. The man came out and
got in the cab and went away.
“Caint be her husband,” Fonzo said. “I wouldn’t a never left. Come on.” He entered the gate.
“Wait,” Virgil said.
“You can,” Fonzo said. Virgil took his bag and followed. He stopped while Fonzo opened the lattice gingerly and peered in. “Aw, hell,” he said. He entered. There was another door, with curtained glass. Fonzo knocked.
“Why didn’t you push that ere button?” Virgil said. “Dont you know city folks dont answer no knock?”
“All right,” Fonzo said. He rang the bell. The door opened. It was the woman in the mother hubbard; they could hear the dogs behind her.
“Got ere extra room?” Fonzo said.
Miss Reba looked at them, at their new hats and the suit cases.
“Who sent you here?” she said.
“Didn’t nobody. We just picked it out.” Miss Reba looked at him. “Them hotels is too high.”
Miss Reba breathed harshly. “What you boys doing?”
“We come hyer on business,” Fonzo said. “We aim to stay a good spell.”
“If it aint too high,” Virgil said.
Miss Reba looked at him. “Where you from, honey?”
They told her, and their names. “We aim to be hyer a month or more, if it suits us.”
“Why, I reckon so,” she said after a while. She looked at them. “I can let you have a room, but I’ll have to charge you extra whenever you do business in it. I got my living to make like everybody else.”
“We aint,” Fonzo said. “We’ll do our business at the college.”
“What college?” Miss Reba said.
“The barber’s college,” Fonzo said.
“Look here,” Miss Reba said, “you little whipper-snapper.” Then she began to laugh, her hand at her breast. They watched her soberly while she laughed in harsh gasps. “Lord, Lord,” she said. “Come in here.”
The room was at the top of the house, at the back. Miss Reba showed them the bath. When she put her hand on the door a woman’s voice said: “Just a minute, dearie” and the door opened and she passed them, in a kimono. They watched her go up the hall, rocked a little to their young foundations by a trail of scent which she left. Fonzo nudged Virgil surreptitiously. In their room again he said:
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 120
