Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  And by fifteen minutes after eight, which was about thirteen minutes after the auditors decided to start on the books that Byron kept, Mr de Spain found out from the Snopes hotel that nobody had seen Byron since the south-bound train at nine twenty-two last night, and by noon everybody knew that Byron was probably already in Texas though he probably wouldn’t reach Mexico itself for another day yet. Though it was not until two days later that the head auditor was ready to commit himself roughly as to how much money was missing; by that time they had called a meeting of the bank’s board of directors and even Mr Varner that Jefferson never saw once in twelve months, had come in and listened to the head auditor for about a minute and then said, “Police hell. Send somebody out home for my pistol, then show me which way he went.”

  Which wasn’t anything to the uproar Mr de Spain himself was making, with all this time all Jefferson watching and listening, until on the third day Ratliff said, though I didn’t know what he meant then: “That’s how much it was, was it? At least we know now jest how much Miz Flem Snopes is worth. Now your uncle wont need to worry about how much he lost when he gets home because now he can know exactly to the last decimal how much he saved.” Because the bank itself was all right. It was a national bank so whatever money Byron stole would be guaranteed whether they caught Byron or not. We were watching Mr de Spain. Since his father’s money had helped Colonel Sartoris start it and Mr de Spain had himself been vice president of it, even if he had not been promoted president of it just ahead of when the auditors decided to look at Byron Snopes’s books, we believed he would still have insisted on making good every cent of the money. What we expected to hear was that he had mortgaged his home, and when we didn’t hear that, we just thought that he had made money out of his automobile agency that was saved up and put away that we didn’t know about. Because we never expected anything else of him; when the next day they called another sudden meeting of the board of directors and announced the day after that that the stolen money had been made good by the voluntary personal efforts of the president, we were not even surprised. As Ratliff said, we were so unsurprised in fact that it was two or three days before anybody seemed to notice how at the same time they announced that Mr Flem Snopes was now the new vice president of it.

  And now, it was another year, the last two Jefferson soldiers came home for good or anyway temporarily for good: Uncle Gavin finally come back from rehabilitating war-torn Europe to get elected County Attorney, and a few months later, Montgomery Ward Snopes too except that he was the temporarily for good one. Like Bayard Sartoris, he wasn’t in uniform either but in a black suit and a black overcoat without any sleeves and a black thing on his head kind of drooping over one side like an empty cow’s bladder made out of black velvet, and a long limp-ended bow tie; and his hair long and he had a beard and now there was another Snopes business in Jefferson. It had a name on the window that Ratliff didn’t know either and when I went up to the office where Uncle Gavin was waiting for the first of the year to start being County Attorney and told him, he sat perfectly still for a good two seconds and then got up already walking. “Show me,” he said.

  So we went back to where Ratliff was waiting for us. It was a store on the corner by an alley, with a side door on the alley; the painter was just finishing the curlicue letters on the glass window that said

  Atelier Monty

  and inside, beyond the glass, Montgomery Ward still wearing the French cap (Uncle Gavin said it was a Basque beret) but in his shirt sleeves. Because we didn’t go in then; Uncle Gavin said, “Come on now. Let him finish it first.” Except Ratliff. He said,

  “Maybe I can help him.” But Uncle Gavin took hold of my arm that time.

  “If atelier means just a studio,” I said, “why dont he call it that?”

  “Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “That’s what I want to know too.” And even though Ratliff went in, he hadn’t seen anything either. And he sounded just like me.

  “Studio,” he said. “I wonder why he dont just call it that?”

  “Uncle Gavin didn’t know either,” I said.

  “I know,” Ratliff said. “I wasn’t asking nobody yet. I was jest kind of looking around for a place to jump.” He looked at me. He blinked two or three times. “Studio,” he said. “That’s right, you aint even up that far yet. It’s a photographing studio.” He blinked again. “But why? His war record has done already showed he aint a feller to be satisfied with no jest dull run-of-the-mill mediocrity like us stay-at-homes back here in Yoknapatawpha County has to get used to.”

  But that was all we knew then. Because the next day he had newspapers fastened on the window so you couldn’t see inside and he kept the door locked and all we ever saw would be the packages he would get out of the post office from Sears and Roebuck in Chicago and unlock the door long enough to take them inside.

  Then on Thursday when the Clarion came out, almost half of the front page was the announcement of the formal opening, saying Ladies Especially Invited, and at the bottom: Tea. “What?” I said. “I thought it was going to be a studio.”

  “It is,” Uncle Gavin said. “You get a cup of tea with it. Only he’s wasting his money. All the women in town and half the men will go once just to see why he kept the door locked.” Because Mother had already said she was going.

  “Of course you wont be there,” she told Uncle Gavin.

  “All right,” he said. “Most of the men then.” He was right. Montgomery Ward had to keep the opening running all day long to take care of the people that came. He would have had to run it in sections even with the store empty like he rented it. But now it wouldn’t have held hardly a dozen at a time, it was so full of stuff, with black curtains hanging all the way to the floor on all the walls that when you drew them back with a kind of pulley it would be like you were looking through a window at outdoors that he said one was the skyline of Paris and another was the Seine river bridges and ks whatever they are and another was the Eiffel tower and another Notre Dame, and sofas with black pillows and tables with vases and cups and something burning in them that made a sweet kind of smell; until at first you didn’t hardly notice the camera. But finally you did, and a door at the back and Montgomery Ward said, he said it quick and he kind of moved quick, like he had already begun to move before he had time to decide that maybe he better not:

  “That’s the dark room. It’s not open yet.”

  “I beg pardon?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “That’s the dark room,” Montgomery Ward said. “It’s not open yet.”

  “Are we expected to expect a dark room to be open to the public?” Uncle Gavin said. But Montgomery Ward was already giving Mrs Rouncewell another cup of tea. Oh yes, there was a vase of flowers too; in the Clarion announcement of the opening it said Flowers by Rouncewell and I said to Uncle Gavin, where else in Jefferson would anybody get flowers except from Mrs Rouncewell? and he said she probably paid for half the advertisement, plus a vase containing six overblown roses left over from another funeral, that she will probably take out in trade. Then he said he meant her trade and he hoped he was right. Now he looked at the door a minute, then he looked at Montgomery Ward filling Mrs Rouncewell’s cup. “Beginning with tea,” he said.

  We left then. We had to, to make room. “How can he afford to keep on giving away tea?” I said.

  “He wont after today,” Uncle Gavin said. “That was just bait, ladies’ bait. Now I’ll ask you one: why did he have to need all the ladies in Jefferson to come in one time and look at his joint?” And now he sounded just like Ratliff; he kind of happened to be coming out of the hardware store when we passed. “Had your tea yet?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Tea,” Ratliff said. He didn’t ask it. He just said it. He blinked at Uncle Gavin.

  “Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “So do we. The dark room aint open yet.”

  “Ought it to be?” Ratliff said.

  “Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “So did we.”

  “Maybe I can find out,” Ratliff said.


  “Do you even hope so?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Maybe I will hear about it,” Ratliff said.

  “Do you even hope so?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Maybe somebody else will find out about it and maybe I will be standing where I can hear him,” Ratliff said.

  And that was all. Montgomery Ward didn’t give away any more cups of tea but after a while photographs did begin to appear in the show window, faces that we knew — ladies with and without babies and high school graduating classes and the prettiest girls in their graduation caps and gowns and now and then a couple just married from the country looking a little stiff and uncomfortable and just a little defiant and a narrow white line between his haircut and his sunburn; and now and then a couple that had been married fifty years that we had known all the time without really realising it until now how much alike they looked, not to mention being surprised, whether at being photographed or just being married that long.

  And even when we begun to realise that not just the same faces but the same photographs of them had been in the same place in the window for over two years now, as if all of a sudden as soon as Montgomery Ward opened his atelier folks stopped graduating and getting married or staying married either, Montgomery Ward was still staying in business, either striking new pictures he didn’t put in the window or maybe just selling copies of the old ones, to pay his rent and stay open. Because he was and maybe it was mostly dark room work because it was now that we begun to realise that most of his business was at night like he did need darkness, his trade seeming to be mostly men now, the front room where he had had the opening dark now and the customers going and coming through the side door in the alley; and them the kind of men you wouldn’t hardly think it had ever occurred to them they might ever need to have their picture struck. And his business was spreading too; in the second summer we begun to find out how people — men, the same kind of usually young men that his Jefferson customers were — were beginning to come from the next towns around us to leave or pick up their prints and negatives or whatever it was, by that alley door at night.

  “No no,” Uncle Gavin told Ratliff. “It cant be that. You simply just cant do that in Jefferson.”

  “There’s folks would a said you couldn’t a looted a bank in Jefferson too,” Ratliff said.

  “But she would have to eat,” Uncle Gavin said. “He would have to bring her out now and then for simple air and exercise.”

  “Out where?” I said. “Bring who out?”

  “It cant be liquor,” Ratliff said. “At least that first suhjestion of yours would a been quiet, which you cant say about peddling whiskey.”

  “What first suggestion?” I said. “Bring who out?” Because it wasn’t whiskey or gambling either; Grover Cleveland Win-bush (the one that owned the other half of Ratliff’s café until Mr Flem Snopes froze him out too. He was the night marshal now.) had thought of that himself. He came to Uncle Gavin before Uncle Gavin had even thought of sending for him or Mr Buck Connors either, and told Uncle Gavin that he had been spending a good part of the nights examining and watching and checking on the studio and he was completely satisfied there wasn’t any drinking or peddling whiskey or dice-shooting or card-playing going on in Montgomery Ward’s dark room; that we were all proud of the good name of our town and we all aimed to keep it free of any taint of big-city corruption and misdemeanor and nobody more than him. Until for hours at night when he could have been sitting comfortably in his chair in the police station waiting for the time to make his next round, he would be hanging around that studio without once hearing any suspicion of dice or drinking or any one of Montgomery Ward’s customers to come out smelling or even looking like he had had a drink. In fact, Grover Cleveland said, once during the daytime while it was not only his legal right but his duty to his job to be home in bed asleep, just like it was right now while he was giving up his rest to come back to town to make this report to Uncle Gavin as County Attorney, even though he had no warrant, not to mention the fact that by rights this was a job that Buck Connors himself should have done, he — Grover Cleveland — walked in the front door with the aim of walking right on into the dark room even if he had to break the door to do it since the reason the people of Jefferson appointed him night marshal was to keep down big-city misdemeanor and corruption like gambling and drinking, when to his surprise Montgomery Ward not only didn’t try to stop him, he didn’t even wait to be asked but instead opened the dark room door himself and told Grover Cleveland to walk right in and look around.

  So Grover Cleveland was satisfied, and he wanted the people of Jefferson to be too, that there was no drinking or gambling or any other corruption and misdemeanor going on in that back room that would cause the christian citizens of Jefferson to regret their confidence in appointing him night marshal which was his sworn duty to do even if he didn’t take any more pride in Jefferson’s good name than just an ordinary citizen, and any time he could do anything else for Uncle Gavin in the line of his sworn duty, for Uncle Gavin just to mention it. Then he went out, pausing long enough in the door to say:

  “Howdy, V.K.,” before going on. Then Ratliff came the rest of the way in.

  “He come hipering across the Square and up the stairs like maybe he had found something,” Ratliff said. “But I reckon not. I dont reckon Montgomery Ward Snopes would have no more trouble easing him out of that studio than Flem Snopes done easing him out of the rest of our café.”

  “No,” Uncle Gavin said. He said: “What did Grover Cleveland like for fun back then?”

  “For fun?” Ratliff said. Then he said: “Oh. He liked excitement.”

  “What excitement?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “The excitement of talking about it,” Ratliff said.

  “Of talking about what?” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Of talking about excitement,” Ratliff said. He didn’t quite look at me. No: he didn’t quite not look at me. No, that’s wrong too because even watching him you couldn’t have said that he had ever stopped looking at Uncle Gavin. He blinked twice. “Female excitement,” he said.

  “All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “How?”

  “That’s right,” Ratliff said. “How?”

  Because I was only eight now, going on nine, and if Uncle Gavin and Ratliff who were three times that and one of them had been all the way to Europe and back and the other had left at least one footprint in every back road and lane and turnrow too probably in Yoknapatawpha County, didn’t know what it was until somebody came and told them, it wasn’t any wonder that I didn’t.

  There was another what Ratliff called Snopes industry in town now too, though Uncle Gavin refused to call it that because he still refused to believe that Eck was ever a Snopes. It was Eck’s boy, Wallstreet Panic, and from the way he began to act as soon as he reached Jefferson and could look around and I reckon find out for the first time in his life that you didn’t actually have to act like a Snopes in order to breathe, whether his father was a Snopes or not he sure wasn’t.

  Because they said (he was about nine too when they moved in from Frenchman’s Bend) how as soon as he got to town and found out about school, he not only made his folks let him go to it but he took his brother, Admiral Dewey who wasn’t but six, with him, the two of them starting out together in the kindergarten where the mothers brought the little children who were not big enough yet to stay in one place more than just half a day, with Wallstreet Panic sticking up out of the middle of them like a horse in a duck-pond.

  Because he wasn’t ashamed to enter the kindergarten: he was just ashamed to stay in it, not staying in it himself much longer than a half a day because in a week he was in the first grade and by Christmas he was in the second and now Miss Vaiden Wyott who taught the second grade began to help him, telling him what Wallstreet Panic meant and that he didn’t have to be named that, so that when she helped him pass the third grade by studying with her the next summer, when he entered the fourth grade that fall his name was just Wall Snop
es because she told him that Wall was a good family name in Mississippi with even a general in it and that he didn’t even need to keep the Street if he didn’t want to. And he said from that first day and he kept right on saying it when people asked him why he wanted to go to school so hard: “I want to learn how to count money,” so that when he heard about it, Uncle Gavin said:

  “You see? That proves what I said exactly: no Snopes wants to learn how to count money because he doesn’t have to because you will do that for him — or you had damn well better.”

  He, I mean Wall, was going to need to learn to count it. Even during that first winter while he was making up two grades he had a job. The store next to the Snopes café that they lived behind in the tent was a grocery store about the same class as the Snopes café. Every morning Wall would get up before schooltime, as the days got shorter he would get up in the dark, to build a fire in the iron stove and sweep out the store and as soon as he got back after school in the afternoon he would be the delivery boy too, using a wheel barrow until finally the owner of the store bought him a second-hand bicycle and took the money out of his pay each week.

  And on Saturdays and holidays he would clerk in the store too, and all that summer while Miss Wyott was helping him pass the third grade; and even that wasn’t enough: he got enough recommendations around the Square to get the delivery route for one of the Memphis papers, only by that time he was so busy with his other affairs that he made his brother the paper boy. And the next fall while he was in the fourth grade he managed to get a Jackson paper too and now he had two more boys besides Admiral Dewey working for him, so that by that time any merchant or stock-trader or revival preacher or candidate that wanted handbills put out always went to Wall because he had an organization already set up.