And even when the day finally came and they brought him handcuffed into the room where he would face his jeopardy, he had not even looked once toward the Bench, the dais which could well be his Golgotha too, for looking, staring out over the pale identical anonymous faces of the crowd for that of his cousin or at least the messenger from him; right up to the moment when the Judge himself had to lean down from his high desk and say, “You, Snopes! Look at me. Did you or didn’t you kill Jack Houston?” and he answered:
“Don’t bother me now. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
And the next day too, while the lawyers shouted and wrangled and nagged, he hearing none of it even if he could have understood it, for watching the door at the rear where his cousin or the messenger would have to enter; and on the way back to the cell, still handcuffed, his unflagging glance which at first had been merely fretted and impatient but which now was beginning to be concerned, a little puzzled and quite sober, travelling rapid and quick and searching from face to face as he passed them or they passed him, to stand again at his cell window, his unwashed hands gripping the grimed bars and his face wrenched and pressed against them to see as much as possible of the street and the Square below where his kinsman or the messenger would have to pass.
So when on the third day, handcuffed again to the jailor he realised that he had crossed the Square without once looking at one of the faces which gaped at him, and had entered the courtroom and taken his accustomed place in the dock still without once looking out over the massed faces toward that rear door, he still did not dare admit to himself that he knew why. He just sat there, looking as small and frail and harmless as a dirty child while the lawyers ranted and wrangled, until the end of the day when the jury said Guilty and the Judge said Life and he was returned, handcuffed, to his cell, and the door clanged to and he sitting now, quiet and still and composed on the mattressless steel cot, this time only looking at the small barred window where for months now he had stood sixteen or eighteen hours a day in quenchless expectation and hope.
Only then did he say it, think it, let it take shape in his mind: He ain’t coming. Likely he’s been in Frenchman’s Bend all the time. Likely he heard about that cow clean out there in Texas and jest waited till the word came back they had me safe in jail, and then come back to make sho they would do ever thing to me they could now that they had me helpless. He might even been hid in the back of that room all the time, to make sho wouldn’t nothing slip up before he finally got rid of me for good and all.
So now he had peace. He had thought he had peace as soon as he realised what he would have to do about Houston, and that Houston himself wasn’t going to let him wait until Flem got back. But he had been wrong. That wasn’t peace then; it was too full of too many uncertainties: such as if anybody would send word to Flem about his trouble at all, let alone in time. Or even if the word was sent in time, would the message find Flem in time. And even if Flem got the message in time, there might be a flood or a wreck on the railroad so he couldn’t get back in time.
But all that was finished now. He didn’t have to bother and worry at all now since all he had to do was wait, and he had already proved to himself that he could do that. Just to wait: that’s all he needed; he didn’t even need to ask the jailor to send a message since the lawyer himself had said he would come back to see him after supper.
So he ate his supper when they brought it — the same sidemeat and molasses and undercooked biscuits he would have had at home; this in fact a little better since the meat had more lean in it than he could afford to eat. Except that his at home had been free, eaten in freedom. But then he could stand that too if that was all they demanded of him now. Then he heard the feet on the stairs, the door clashed, letting the lawyer in, and clashed again on both of them — the lawyer young and eager, just out of law school they told him, whom the Judge had appointed for him — commanded rather, since even he, Mink, busy as he was at the time, could tell that the man didn’t really want any part of him and his trouble — he never did know why then because then he still thought that all the Judge or anybody else needed to do to settle the whole business was just to send out to Frenchman’s Bend and get hold of his cousin.
Too young and eager in fact, which was why he — the lawyer — had made such a hash of the thing. But that didn’t matter now either; the thing now was to get on to what came next. So he didn’t waste any time. “All right,” he said. “How long will I have to stay there?”
“It’s Parchman — the penitentiary,” the lawyer said. “Can’t you understand that?”
“All right,” he said again. “How long will I have to stay?”
“He gave you life,” the lawyer said. “Didn’t you even hear him? For the rest of your life. Until you die.”
“All right,” he said for the third time, with that peaceful, that almost compassionate patience: “How long will I have to stay?”
By that time even this lawyer understood. “Oh. That depends on you and your friends — if you have any. It may be all your life, like Judge Brummage said. But in twenty or twenty-five years you will be eligible under the Law to apply for pardon or parole — if you have responsible friends to support your petition, and your record down there at Parchman don’t hold anything against you.”
“Suppose a man ain’t got friends,” he said.
“Folks that hide in bushes and shoot other folks off their horses without saying Look out first or even whistling, don’t have,” the lawyer said. “So you won’t have anybody left except you to get you out.”
“All right,” he said, with that unshakable, that infinite patience, “that’s what I’m trying to get you to stop talking long enough to tell me. What do I have to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years?”
“Not to try to escape yourself or engage in any plot to help anybody else escape. Not to get in a fight with another prisoner or a guard. To be on time for whatever they tell you to do, and do it without shirking or complaining or talking back, until they tell you to quit. In other words, to start right now doing all the things that, if you had just been doing them all the time since that day last fall when you decided to let Mr Houston winter your cow for nothing, you wouldn’t be sitting in this cell here trying to ask somebody how to get out of it. But mainly, don’t try to escape.”
“Escape?” he said.
“Break out. Try to get away.”
“Try?” he said.
“Because you can’t,” the lawyer said with a kind of seething yet patient rage. “Because you can’t escape. You can’t make it. You never can. You can’t plan it without some of the others catching on to it and they always try to escape with you and so you all get caught. And even if they don’t go with you, they tell the Warden on you and you are caught just the same. And even if you manage to keep everybody else from knowing about it and go alone, one of the guards shoots you before you can climb the fence. So even if you are not in the dead house or the hospital, you are back in the penitentiary with twenty-five more years added on to your sentence. Do you understand now?”
“That’s all I got to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years. Not try to escape. Not get in no fights with nobody. Do whatever they tell me to do, as long as they say to do it. But mainly not try to escape. That’s all I got to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years.”
“That’s right,” the lawyer said.
“All right,” he said. “Now go back and ask that judge if that’s right, and if he says it is, to send me a wrote-out paper saying so.”
“So you don’t trust me,” the lawyer said.
“I don’t trust nobody,” he said. “I ain’t got time to waste twenty or twenty-five years to find out whether you know what you’re talking about or not. I got something I got to attend to when I get back out. I want to know. I want a wrote-out paper from that judge.”
“Maybe you never did trust me then,” the lawyer said. “Maybe you think I made a complete bust of your whole case. Maybe you think
that if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t even be here now. Is that it?”
And he, Mink, still with that inflexible and patient calm: “You done the best you knowed. You jest wasn’t the man for the job. You’re young and eager, but that wasn’t what I needed. I needed a trader, a smart trader, that knowed how to swap. You wasn’t him. Now you go get that paper from that judge.”
Now he, the lawyer, even tried to laugh. “Not me,” he said. “The Court discharged me from this case right after he sentenced you this afternoon. I just stopped in to say good-bye and to see if there was anything else I could do for you. But evidently folks that don’t have friends don’t need well-wishers either.”
“But I ain’t discharged you yet,” Mink said, rising now, without haste, the lawyer already on his feet, springing, leaping back against the locked door, looking at the small figure moving toward him as slight and frail and harmless-looking as a child and as deadly as a small viper — a half-grown asp or cobra or krait. Then the lawyer was shouting, bellowing, even while the turnkey’s feet galloped on the stairs and the door clashed open and the turnkey stood in it with a drawn pistol.
“What is it?” the turnkey said. “What did he try to do?”
“Nothing,” the lawyer said. “It’s all right. I’m through here. Let me out.” Only he was not through; he only wished he were. He didn’t even wait until morning. Instead, not fifteen minutes later he was in the hotel room of the Circuit Judge who had presided on the case and pronounced the sentence, he, the lawyer, still breathing hard, still incredulous at his recent jeopardy and still amazed at his escape from it.
“He’s crazy, I tell you!” he said. “He’s dangerous! Just to send him to Parchman, where he will be eligible for parole and freedom in only twenty or twenty-five years, let alone if some of his kin — God knows he has enough — or someone with an axe to grind or maybe just some bleeding-heart meddler with access to the Governor’s ear, doesn’t have him out before that time even! He must go to Jackson, the asylum, for life, where he’ll be safe. No: we’ll be safe.”
And ten minutes after that the District Attorney who had prosecuted the case was in the room too, saying (to the lawyer): “So now you want a suspended sentence, and a motion for a new trial. Why didn’t you think of this before?”
“You saw him too,” the lawyer said, cried. “You were in that courtroom with him all day long for three days too!”
“That’s right,” the District Attorney said. “That’s why I’m asking you why now.”
“Then you haven’t seen him since!” the lawyer said. “Come up to that cell and look at him now, like I did thirty minutes ago!”
But the Judge was an old man, he wouldn’t go then so it was next morning when the turnkey unlocked the cell and let the three of them in where the frail-looking fleshless small figure in the patched and faded overalls and shirt and the sockless iron-stiff brogans got up from the cot. They had shaved him this morning and his hair was combed too, parted and flattened down with water across his skull.
“Come in, gentlemen,” he said. “I ain’t got no chair, but likely you ain’t fixing to stay long enough to set nohow. Well, Judge, you not only brought me my wrote-out paper, you brought along two witnesses to watch you hand it to me.”
“Wait,” the lawyer said rapidly to the Judge. “Let me.” He said to Mink: “You won’t need that paper. They — the Judge — is going to give you another trial.”
Now Mink stopped. He looked at the lawyer. “What for?” he said. “I done already had one that I never got much suption out of.”
“Because that one was wrong,” the lawyer said. “That’s what we’ve come to tell you about.”
“If that un was wrong, what’s the use of wasting time and money having another one? Jest tell that feller there to bring me my hat and open that door and I’ll go back home and get back to me crop, providing I still got one.”
“No, wait,” the lawyer said. “That other trial was wrong because it sent you to Parchman. You won’t have to go to Parchman now, where you’ll have to work out in the hot sun all day long in a crop that isn’t even yours.” And now, with the pale faded grey eyes watching him as if not only were they incapable of blinking but never since birth had they ever needed to, the lawyer found himself babbling, not even able to stop it: “Not Parchman: Jackson, where you’ll have a nice room to yourself — nothing to do all day long but just rest — doctors—” and stopped then; not he that stopped his babbling but the fixed unwinking pale eyes that did it.
“Doctors,” Mink said. “Jackson.” He stared at the lawyer. “That’s where they send crazy folks.”
“Hadn’t you rather—” the District Attorney began. That was as far as he got too. He had been an athlete in college and still kept himself fit. Though even then he managed to grasp the small frantic creature only after it had hurled itself on the lawyer and both of them had gone to the floor. And even then it took him and the turnkey both to drag Mink up and away and hold him, frantic and frothing and hard to hold as a cat, panting,
“Crazy, am I? Crazy, am I? Ain’t no son a bitch going to call me crazy, I don’t care how big he is or how many of them.”
“You damn right, you little bastard,” the District Attorney panted. “You’re going to Parchman. That’s where they’ve got the kind of doctors you need.”
So he went to Parchman, handcuffed to a deputy sheriff, the two of them transferring from smoking-car to smoking-car of local trains, this one having left the hills which he had known all his life, for the Delta which he had never seen before — the vast flat alluvial swamp of cypress and gum and brake and thicket lurked with bear and deer and panthers and snakes, out of which man was still hewing savagely and violently the rich ragged fields in which cotton stalks grew ranker and taller than a man on a horse, he, Mink, sitting with his face glued to the window like a child.
“This here’s all swamp,” he said. “It don’t look healthy.”
“It ain’t healthy,” the deputy said. “It ain’t intended to be. This is the penitentiary. I can’t imagine no more unhealth a man can have than to be locked up inside a bobwire pen for twenty or twenty-five years. Besides, a good unhealthy place ought to just suit you; you won’t have to stay so long.”
So that’s how he saw Parchman, the penitentiary, his destination, doom, his life the Judge had said; for the rest of his life as long as he lived. But the lawyer had told him different, even if he couldn’t really trust him: only twenty-five, maybe only twenty years, and even a lawyer a man couldn’t trust could at least be trusted to know his own business that he had even went to special law school to be trained to know it, where all a judge had to do to get to be a judge was just to win a election vote-race for it. And even if the Judge hadn’t signed a paper saying only twenty or twenty-five years, that didn’t matter either since the Judge was on the other side and would naturally lie to a man coming up against him, where a lawyer, a man’s own lawyer, wouldn’t. More: his own lawyer couldn’t lie to him, because there was some kind of rule somebody had told him about that if the client didn’t lie to his lawyer, the Law itself wouldn’t let the lawyer lie to his own client.
And even if none of that was so, that didn’t matter either because he couldn’t stay at Parchman all his life, he didn’t have time, he would have to get out before then. And looking at the tall wire stockade with its single gate guarded day and night by men with shotguns, and inside it the low grim brick buildings with their barred windows, he thought, tried to remember, with a kind of amazement of the time when his only reason for wanting to get out was to go back home and farm, remembering it only for a moment and then no more, because now he had to get out.
He had to get out. His familiar patched faded blue overalls and shirt were exchanged now for the overalls and jumper of coarse white barred laterally with black which, according to the Judge, would have been his fate and doom until he died, if the lawyer hadn’t known better. He worked now — gangs of them — in the rich bla
ck cotton land while men on horses with shotguns across the pommels watched them, doing the only work he knew how to do, had done all his life, in a crop which would never be his for the rest of his life if the Judge had his way, thinking And that’s all right too. Hit’s even better. If a feller jest wants to do something, he might make it and he might not. But if he’s GOT to do something, can’t nothing stop him.
And in the wooden bunk at night too, sheetless, with a cheap coarse blanket and his rolled-up clothing for a pillow, thinking, dinning it into himself since he was now having to change overnight and forever for twenty or twenty-five years his whole nature and character and being: To do whatever they tell me to do. Not to talk back to nobody. Not to get into no fights. That’s all I got to do for jest twenty-five or maybe even jest twenty years. But mainly not to try to escape.
Nor did he even count off the years as they accomplished. Instead, he simply trod them behind him into oblivion beneath the heavy brogan shoes in the cotton middles behind the mule which drew the plough and then the sweep, then with the chopping and thinning hoe and at last with the long dragging sack into which he picked, gathered the cotton. He didn’t need to count them; he was in the hands of the Law now and as long as he obeyed the four rules set down by the Law for his side, the Law would have to obey its single rule of twenty-five years or maybe even just twenty.
He didn’t know how many years it had been when the letter came, whether it was two or three as he stood in the Warden’s office, turning the stamped pencil-addressed envelope in his hand while the Warden watched him. “You can’t read?” the Warden said.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 501
