“Yes,” Snopes said. “I reckon not. And just because she’s a woman. That’s why. Because she is a durned woman. All right. Let her go to her durned jury with it. I can talk too; I reckon it’s a few things I could tell a jury myself about — —” Then Ratliff said he stopped. Ratliff said he didn’t sound like I.O. Snopes anyway because whenever I.O. talked what he said was so full of mixed-up proverbs that you stayed so busy trying to unravel just which of two or three proverbs he had jumbled together that you couldn’t even tell just exactly what lie he had told you until it was already too late. But right now Ratliff said he was too busy to have time for even proverbs, let alone lies. Ratliff said they were all watching him.
“What?” somebody said. “Tell the jury about what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Because why, because there aint going to be no jury. Me and Miz Mannie Hait? You boys dont know her if you think she’s going to make trouble over a pure acci-dent couldn’t me nor nobody else help. Why, there aint a fairer, finer woman in Yoknapatawpha County than Mannie Hait. I just wish I had a opportunity to tell her so.” Ratliff said he had it right away. He said Mrs Hait was right behind them, with old Het right behind her, carrying the shopping bag. He said she just looked once at all of them generally. After that she looked at I.O.
“I come to buy that mule,” she said.
“What mule?” I.O. said. He answered that quick, almost automatic, Ratliff said. Because he didn’t mean it either. Then Ratliff said they looked at one another for about a half a minute. “You’d like to own that mule?” he said. “It’ll cost you a hundred and fifty, Miz Mannie.”
“You mean dollars?” Mrs Hait said.
“I dont mean dimes nor nickels neither, Miz Mannie,” Snopes said.
“Dollars,” Mrs Hait said. “Mules wasn’t that high in Hait’s time.”
“Lots of things is different since Hait’s time,” Snopes said. “Including you and me, Miz Mannie.”
“I reckon so,” she said. Then she went away. Ratliff said she turned without a word and left, old Het following.
“If I’d a been you,” Ratliff said, “I dont believe I’d a said that last to her.”
And now Ratliff said the mean harried little face actually blazed, even frothing a little. “I just wisht she would,” Snopes said. “Her or anybody else, I dont care who, to bring a court suit about anything, jest so it had the name mule and the name Hait in it—” and stopped, the face smooth again. “How’s that?” he said. “What was you saying?”
“That you dont seem to be afraid she might sue you for burning down her house,” Ratliff said.
“Sue me?” Snopes said. “Miz Hait? If she was fixing to try to law something out of me about that fire, do you reckon she would a hunted me up and offered to pay me for it?”
That was about one oclock. Then it was four oclock; Aleck Sander and I had gone out to Sartoris to shoot quail over the dogs that Miss Jenny Du Pre still kept, I reckon until Benbow Sartoris got big enough to hold a gun. So Uncle Gavin was alone in the office to hear the tennis shoes on the outside stairs. Then old Het came in; the shopping bag was bulging now and she was eating bananas from a paper sack which she clamped under one arm, the half-eaten banana in that hand while with the other she dug out a crumpled ten-dollar bill and gave it to Uncle Gavin.
“It’s for you,” old Het said. “From Miss Mannie. I done already give him hisn” — telling it: waiting on the corner of the Square until it looked like sure to God night would come first, before Snopes finally came along, and she handed the banana she was working on then to a woman beside her and got out the first crumpled ten-dollar bill. Snopes took it.
“What?” he said. “Miz Hait told you to give it to me?”
“For that mule,” old Het said. “You dont need to give me no receipt. I can be the witness I give it to you.”
“Ten dollars?” Snopes said. “For that mule? I told her a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You’ll have to contrack that with her yourself,” old Het said. “She just give me this to hand to you when she left to get the mule.”
“To get the — She went out there herself and taken that mule out of my lot?” Snopes said.
“Lord, child,” old Het said she said. “Miss Mannie aint skeered of no mule. Aint you done found that out? — And now here’s yourn,” she said to Uncle Gavin.
“For what?” Uncle Gavin said. “I dont have a mule to sell.”
“For a lawyer,” old Het said. “She fixing to need a lawyer. She say for you to be out there at her house about sundown, when she had time to get settled down again.”
“Her house?” Uncle Gavin said.
“Where it use to be, honey,” old Het said. “Would you keer for a banana? I done et about all I can hold.”
“No much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Go on. Take some. If I et one more, I’d be wishing the good Lord hadn’t never thought banana One in all His life.”
“No much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I dont reckon you’d have nothing like a extra dime for a little snuff.”
“No,” Uncle Gavin said, producing it. “All I have is a quarter.”
“That’s quality,” she said. “You talk about change to quality, what you gets back is a quarter or a half a dollar or sometimes even a whole dollar. It’s just trash that cant think no higher than a nickel or ten cents.” She took the quarter; it vanished somewhere. “There’s some folks thinks all I does, I tromps this town all day long from can-see to cant, with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of much oblige. They’re wrong. I serves Jefferson too. If it’s more blessed to give than to receive like the Book say, this town is blessed to a fare-you-well because it’s steady full of folks willing to give anything from a nickel up to a old hat. But I’m the onliest one I knows that steady receives. So how is Jefferson going to be steady blessed without me steady willing from dust-dawn to dust-dark, rain or snow or sun, to say much oblige? I can tell Miss Mannie you be there?”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. Then she was gone. Uncle Gavin sat there looking at the crumpled bill on the desk in front of him. Then he heard the other feet on the stairs and he sat watching the door until Mr Flem Snopes came in and shut it behind him.
“Evening,” Mr Snopes said. “Can you take a case for me?”
“Now?” Uncle Gavin said. “Tonight?”
“Yes,” Mr Snopes said.
“Tonight,” Uncle Gavin said again. “Would it have anything to do with a mule and Mrs Hait’s house?”
And he said how Mr Snopes didn’t say What house? or What mule? or How did you know? He just said, “Yes.”
“Why did you come to me?” Uncle Gavin said.
“For the same reason I would hunt up the best carpenter if I wanted to build a house, or the best farmer if I wanted to share-crop some land,” Mr Snopes said.
“Thanks,” Uncle Gavin said. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t even have to touch the crumpled bill. He said that Mr Snopes had not only seen it the minute he entered, but he believed he even knew at that same moment where it came from. “As you already noticed, I’m already on the other side.”
“You going out there now?” Mr Snopes said.
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Then that’s all right.” He began to reach into his pocket. At first Uncle Gavin didn’t know why; he just watched him dig out an old-fashioned snap-mouth wallet and open it and separate a ten-dollar bill and close the wallet and lay the bill on the desk beside the other crumpled one and put the wallet back into the pocket and stand looking at Uncle Gavin.
“I just told you I’m already on the other side,” Uncle Gavin said.
“And I just said that’s all right,” Mr Snopes said. “I dont want a lawyer because I already know what I’m going to do. I just want a witness.”
“And why me for that?” Uncle Gavin said.
“That’s right,” Mr Snopes said
. “The best witness too.”
So they went out there. The fog had burned away by noon and Mrs Hait’s two blackened chimneys now stood against what remained of the winter sunset; at the same moment Mr Snopes said, “Wait.”
“What?” Uncle Gavin said. But Mr Snopes didn’t answer so they stood, not approaching yet; Uncle Gavin said he could already smell the ham broiling over the little fire in front of the still-intact cowshed, with old Het sitting on a brand new kitchen chair beside the fire turning the ham in the skillet with a fork, and beyond the fire Mrs Hait squatting at the cow’s flank, milking into a new tin bucket.
“All right,” Mr Snopes said, and again Uncle Gavin said What? because he had not seen I.O. at all: he was just suddenly there as though he had materialised, stepped suddenly out of the dusk itself into the light of the fire (there was a brand new galvanised coffee pot sitting in the ashes near the blaze and now Uncle Gavin said he could smell that too), to stand looking down at the back of Mrs Hait’s head, not having seen Uncle Gavin and Mr Flem yet. But old Het had, already talking to Uncle Gavin while they were approaching:
“So this coffee and ham brought you even if them ten dollars couldn’t,” she said. “I’m like that, myself. I aint had no appetite in years it seems like now. A bird couldn’t live on what I eats. But just let me get a whiff of coffee and ham together, now. — Leave that milk go for a minute, honey,” she said to Mrs Hait. “Here’s your lawyer.”
Then I.O. saw them too, jerking quickly around over his shoulder his little mean harassed snarling face; and now Uncle Gavin could see inside the cowshed. It had been cleaned and raked and even swept, the floor was spread with fresh hay. A clean new kerosene stable lantern burned on a wooden box beside a pallet bed spread neatly on the straw and turned back for the night and now Uncle Gavin saw a second wooden box set out for a table beside the fire, with a new plate and knife and fork and spoon and cup and saucer and a still-sealed loaf of machine-made bread.
But Uncle Gavin said there was no alarm in I.O.’s face at the sight of Mr Flem though he said the reason for that was that he, Uncle Gavin, hadn’t realised yet that I.O. had simply reached that stage where utter hopelessness wears the mantle of temerity. “So here you are,” I.O. said. “And brung your lawyer too. I reckon you come now to get that-ere lantern and them new dishes and chair and that milk bucket and maybe the milk in too soon as she’s done, hey? That’s jest fine. It’s even downright almost honest, coming right out in the open here where it aint even full dark yet. Because of course your lawyer knows all the rest of these here recent mulery and arsonery circumstances; likely the only one here that aint up to date is old Aunt Het there, and sholy she should be learned how to reco-nise a circumstance that even if she was to get up and run this minute, likely she would find she never had no shirt nor britches left neither by the time she got home, since a stitch in time saves nine lives for even a cat, as the feller says. Not to mention the fact that when you dines in Rome you durn sho better watch your overcoat.
“All right then. Now, jest exactly how much of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars the railroad company paid Miz Hait here for that husband of hern and them five mules of mine, do you reckon Miz Hait actively” (Uncle Gavin said he said actively for actually too, just like Ratliff. And Uncle Gavin said they were both right) “got? Well, in that case you will be jest as wrong as everybody else was. She got half of it. The reason being that the vice presi-dent here handled it for her. Of course, without a fi-nancial expert like the vice president to handle it for her, she wouldn’t a got no more than that half nohow, if as much, so by rights she aint got nothing to complain of, not to mention the fact that jest half of even that half was rightfully hern, since jest Lonzo Hait was hern because them five mules was mine.
“All right. Now, what do you reckon become of the other half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars? Then you’ll be jest as wrong this time as you was that other one. Because the vice presi-dent here taken them. Oh, it was done all open and legal; he explained it: if Miz Hait sued the railroad, a lone lorn widder by herself, likely she wouldn’t get more than five thousand at the most, and half of that she would have to give to me for owning the mules. And if me and her brought the suit together, with a active man on her side to compel them cold hard millionaire railroad magnits to do a lone woman justice, once I claimed any part of them mules, due to the previous bad luck mules belonging to me had been having on that-ere curve, the railroad would smell a rat right away and wouldn’t nobody get nothing. While with him, the vice presi-dent, handling it, it would be seventy-five hundred or maybe a even ten thousand, of which he would not only guarantee her a full half, he would even take out of his half the hundred dollars he would give me. All legal and open: I could keep my mouth shut and get a hundred dollars, where if I objected, the vice presi-dent his-self might accident-ly let out who them mules actively belonged to, and wouldn’t nobody get nothing, which would be all right with the vice presi-dent since he would be right where he started out, being as he never owned Lonzo Hait nor the five mules neither.
“A pure and simple easy choice, you see: either a feller wants a hundred dollars, or either he dont want a hundred dollars. Not to mention, as the vice presi-dent his-self pointed out, that me and Miz Hait was fellow townsmen and you might say business acquaintances and Miz Hait a woman with a woman’s natural tender gentle heart, so who would say that maybe in time it wouldn’t melt a little more to where she might want to share a little of her half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars. Which never proved much except that the vice presi-dent might know all there was to know about railroad companies and eight thousand and five hundred dollars but he never knowed much about what Miz Hait toted around where other folks totes their hearts. Which is neither here nor there; water that’s still under a bridge dont fill no oceans, as the feller says, and I was simply outvoted two to one, or maybe eight thousand and five hundred dollars to one hundred dollars; or maybe it didn’t even take that much: jest Miz Hait’s half of them eight thousand and five hundred, against my one hundred since the only way I could a out-voted Miz Hait would a been with four thousand and two hundred and fifty-one dollars of my own, and even then I’d a had to split that odd dollar with her.
“But never mind. I done forgot all that now; that spilt milk aint going to help no ocean neither.” Now Uncle Gavin said he turned rapidly to Mrs Hait with no break in the snarling and outraged babble: “What I come back for was to have a little talk with you. I got something that belongs to you, and I hear you got something that belongs to me. Though naturally I expected to a-just it in private.”
“Lord, honey,” old Het said. “If you talking at me. Dont you mind me. I done already had so much troubles myself that listening to other folks’ even kind of rests me. You gawn talk what you wants to talk; I’ll just set here and mind this ham.”
“Come on,” he said to Mrs Hait. “Run them all away for a minute.”
Mrs Hait had turned now, still squatting, watching him. “What for?” she said. “I reckon she aint the first critter that ever come in this yard when it wanted and went or stayed when it liked.” Now Uncle Gavin said I.O. made a gesture, brief, fretted, and restrained.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s get started then. So you taken the mule.”
“I paid you for it,” Mrs Hait said. “Het brought you the money.”
“Ten dollars,” I.O. said. “For a hundred-and-fifty-dollar mule.”
“I dont know anything about hundred-and-fifty-dollar mules,” Mrs Hait said. “All I know about mules is what the railroad pays for them. Sixty dollars a head the railroad paid that other time before that fool Hait finally lost all his senses and tied himself to that track too — —”
“Hush!” I.O. said. “Hush!”
“What for?” Mrs Hait said. “What secret am I telling that you aint already blabbed to anybody within listening?”
“All right,” I.O. said. “But you just sent me ten.”
“I sent you the difference,” Mrs Hait said. “The difference between that mule and what you owed Hait.”
“What I owed Hait?” I.O. said.
“Hait said you paid him fifty dollars a trip, each time he got mules in front of the train in time, and the railroad had paid you sixty dollars a head for the mules. That last time, you never paid him because you never would pay him until afterward and this time there wasn’t no afterward. So I taken a mule instead and sent you the ten dollars difference with Het here for the witness.” Uncle Gavin said that actually stopped him. He actually hushed; he and Mrs Hait, the one standing and the other still squatting, just stared at one another while again old Het turned the hissing ham in the skillet. He said they were so still that Mr Flem himself spoke twice before they even noticed him.
“You through now?” he said to I.O.
“What?” I.O. said.
“Are you through now?” Mr Flem said. And now Uncle Gavin said they all saw the canvas sack — one of the canvas sacks stamped with the name of the bank which the bank itself used to store money in the vault — in his hands.
“Yes,” I.O. said. “I’m through. At least I got one ten dollars out of the mule business you aint going to touch.” But Mr Flem wasn’t even talking to him now. He had already turned toward Mrs Hait when he drew a folded paper out of the sack.
“This is the mortgage on your house,” he said. “Whatever the insurance company pays you now will be clear money; you can build it back again. Here,” he said. “Take it.”
But Mrs Hait didn’t move. “Why?” she said.
“I bought it from the bank myself this afternoon,” Mr Flem said. “You can drop it in the fire if you want to. But I want you to put your hand on it first.” So she took the paper then, and now Uncle Gavin said they all watched Mr Flem reach into the sack again and this time draw out a roll of bills, I.O. watching too now, not even blinking.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 484
