The bank would be closed now. But when he crossed the Square to the sheriff’s office the car with Linda behind the wheel had not been waiting so this was not the day of the weekly whiskey run. The shades were drawn but after some knob-rattling at the side door one of the bookkeepers peered out and recognised him and let him in; he passed on through the machine-clatter of the day’s recapitulation — the machines themselves sounding immune and even inattentive to the astronomical sums they reduced to staccato trivia — and knocked at the door on which Colonel Sartoris had had the word PRIVATE lettered by hand forty years ago, and opened it.
Snopes was sitting not at the desk but with his back to it, facing the cold now empty fireplace, his feet raised and crossed against the same heel scratches whose initial inscribing Colonel Sartoris had begun. He was not reading, he was not doing anything: just sitting there with his black planter’s hat on, his lower jaw moving faintly and steadily as though he were chewing something, which as the town knew also he was not; he didn’t even lower his feet when Stevens came to the desk (it was a broad flat table littered with papers in a sort of neat, almost orderly way) and said almost in one breath:
“Mink left Parchman at eight o’clock this morning. I don’t know whether you know it or not but we — I had some money waiting to be given to him at the gate, under condition that in accepting it he had passed his oath to leave Mississippi without returning to Jefferson and never cross the state line again. He didn’t take the money; I don’t know yet how since he was not to be given the pardon until he did. He caught a ride in a passin’ truck and has disappeared. The truck was headed north.”
“How much was it?” Snopes said.
“What?” Stevens said.
“The money,” Snopes said.
“Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Stevens said.
“Much obliged,” Snopes said.
“Good God, man,” Stevens said. “I tell you a man left Parchman at eight o’clock this morning on his way here to murder you and all you say is Much obliged?”
The other didn’t move save for the faint chewing motion; Stevens thought with a kind of composed and seething rage If he would only spit now and then. “Then all he had was that ten dollars they give them when they turn them loose,” Snopes said.
“Yes,” Stevens said. “As far as we — I know. But yes.” Or even just go through the motions of spitting now and then he thought.
“Say a man thought he had a grudge against you,” Snopes said. “A man sixty-three years old now with thirty-eight of that spent in the penitentiary and even before that wasn’t much, bigger than a twelve-year-old boy—”
That had to use a shotgun from behind a bush even then Stevens thought. Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean: too small and frail even then, even without thirty-eight years in jail, to have risked a mere knife or bludgeon. And he can’t go out to Frenchman’s Bend, the only place on earth where someone might remember him enough to lend him one because even though nobody in Frenchman’s Bend would knock up the muzzle aimed at you, they wouldn’t lend him theirs to aim with. So he will either have to buy a gun for ten dollars, or steal one. In which case, you might even be safe: the ten-dollar one won’t shoot and in the other some policeman might save you honestly. He thought rapidly Of course. North. He went to Memphis. He would have to. He wouldn’t think of anywhere else to go to buy a gun with ten dollars. And, since Mink had only the ten dollars, he would have to hitchhike all the way, first to Memphis, provided he got there before the pawnshops closed, then back to Jefferson. Which could not be before tomorrow, since anything else would leave simple destiny and fate too topheavy with outrageous hope and coincidence for even Ratliff’s sanguine nature to pass. “Yes,” he said. “So do I. You have at least until tomorrow night.” He thought rapidly And now for it. How to persuade him not to tell her without letting him know that was what he agreed to, promised, and that it was me who put it into his mind. So suddenly he heard himself say: “Are you going to tell Linda?”
“Why?” Snopes said.
“Yes,” Stevens said. Then heard himself say in his turn: “Much obliged.” Then, suddenly indeed this time: “I’m responsible for this, even if I probably couldn’t have stopped it. I just talked to Eef Bishop. What else do you want me to do?” If he would just spit once he thought.
“Nothing,” Snopes said.
“What?” Stevens said.
“Yes,” Snopes said. “Much obliged.”
At least he knew where to start. Only, he didn’t know how. Even if — when — he called the Memphis police, what would — could — he tell them: a city police force a hundred miles away, who had never heard of Mink and Flem Snopes and Jack Houston, dead these forty years now, either. When he, Stevens, had already failed to move very much the local sheriff who at least had inherited the old facts. How to explain what he himself was convinced Mink wanted in Memphis, let alone convince them that Mink was or would be in Memphis. And even if he managed to shake them that much, how to describe whom they were supposed to look for: whose victim forty years ago had got himself murdered mainly for the reason that the murderer was the sort of creature whom nobody, even his victim, noticed enough in time to pay any attention to what he was or might do.
Except Ratliff. Ratliff alone out of Yoknapatawpha County would know Mink on sight. To be unschooled, untravelled, and to an extent unread, Ratliff had a terrifying capacity for knowledge or local information or acquaintanceship to match the need of any local crisis. Stevens admitted to himself now what he was waiting, dallying, really wasting time for: for Ratliff to drive back to his pickup truck from Parchman, to be hurried on to Memphis without even stopping, cutting the engine, to reveal Mink to the Memphis police and so save Mink’s cousin, kinsman, whatever Flem was, from that just fate; knowing — Stevens — better all the while: that what he really wanted with Ratliff was to find out how Mink had not only got past the Parchman gate without that absolute contingent money, but had managed it in such a way that apparently only the absolutely unpredicted and unwarranted presence of Ratliff at a place and time that he had no business whatever being, revealed the fact that he hadn’t taken it.
It was not three o’clock when Ratliff phoned; it would be almost nine before he reached Jefferson. It was not that the pickup truck wouldn’t have covered the distance faster. It was that no vehicle owned by Ratliff (provided he was in it and conscious, let alone driving it) was going to cover it faster. Besides, at some moment not too long after six o’clock he was going to stop to eat at the next dreary repetitive little cotton-gin hamlet, or (nowadays) on the highway itself, drawing neatly in and neatly parking before the repetitive Dixie Cafés or Mac’s or Lorraine’s, to eat, solitary, neatly and without haste the meat a little too stringy to chew properly and too overcooked to taste at all, the stereotyped fried potatoes and the bread you didn’t chew but mumbled, like one of the paper napkins, the machine-chopped prefrozen lettuce and tomatoes like (except for the tense inviolate colour) something exhumed by paleontologists from tundras, the machine-made prefrozen pie and what they would call coffee — the food perfectly pure and perfectly tasteless except for the dousing of machine-made tomato ketchup.
He (Stevens) could, perhaps should, have had plenty of time to drive out to Rose Hill and eat his own decent evening meal. Instead, he telephoned his wife.
“I’ll come in and we can eat at the Holston House,” she said.
“No, honey. I’ve got to see Ratliff as soon as he gets back from Parchman.”
“All right. I think I’ll come in and have supper with Maggie” (Maggie was his sister) “and maybe we’ll go to the picture show and I’ll see you tomorrow. I can come in to town, can’t I, if I promise to stay off the streets?”
“You see, you don’t help me. How can I resist togetherness if you won’t fight back?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said. “Good-night.” So they ate at the Holston House; he didn’t feel quite up to his sister and brother-in-law and his nephew
Charles tonight. The Holston House still clung to the old ways, not desperately nor even gallantly: just with a cold and inflexible indomitability, owned and run by two maiden sisters (that is, one of them, the younger, had been married once but so long ago and so briefly that it no longer counted) who were the last descendants of the Alexander Holston, one of Yoknapatawpha County’s three original settlers, who had built the log ordinary which the modern edifice had long since swallowed, who had had his part — been in fact the catalyst — in the naming of Jefferson over a century ago; they still called the dining-room simply the dining-room and (nobody knew how) they still kept Negro men waiters, some of whose seniority still passed from father to son; the guests still ate the table d’hôte meals mainly at two long communal tables at the head of each of which a sister presided; no man came there without a coat and necktie and no woman with her head covered (there was a dressing-room with a maid for that purpose), not even if she had a railroad ticket in her hand.
Though his sister did pick his wife up in time for the picture show. So he was back in the office when a little after eight-thirty he heard Ratliff on the stairs and said, “All right. What happened?” Then he said, “No. Wait. What were you doing at Parchman?”
“I’m a — what do you call it? optimist,” Ratliff said. “Like any good optimist, I don’t expect the worst to happen. Only, like any optimist worth his salt, I like to go and look as soon as possible afterward jest in case it did. Especially when the difference between the best and the worst is liable to reach all the way back up here to Jefferson. It taken a little doing, too. This was about ten o’clock this morning; he had been gone a good two hours by then, and they was a little impatient with me. They had done their share, took him and had him for thirty-eight years all fair and regular, like the man said for them to, and they felt they had done earned the right to be shut of him. You know: his new fresh pardon and them new fresh two hundred and fifty dollars all buttoned up neat and safe and secure in his new fresh overhalls and jumper and the gate locked behind him again jest like the man said too and the official Mink Snopes page removed outen the ledger and officially marked Paid in Full and destroyed a good solid two hours back, when here comes this here meddling out-of-town son-of-a-gun that ain’t even a lawyer saying Yes yes, that’s jest fine, only let’s make sho he actively had that money when he left.
“The Warden his-self had tended to the money in person: had Mink in alone, with the table all ready for him, the pardon in one pile and them two hundred and fifty dollars that Mink hadn’t never seen that much at one time before in his life, in the other pile; and the Warden his-self explaining how there wasn’t no choice about it: to take the pardon he would have to take the money too, and once he teched the money he had done give his sworn word and promise and Bible oath to strike for the quickest place outside the state of Missippi and never cross the line again as long as he lived. ‘Is that what I got to do to get out?’ Mink says. ‘Take the money?’ ‘That’s it,’ the Warden says, and Mink reached and taken the money and the Warden his-self helped him button the money and the pardon both inside his jumper and the Warden shaken his hand and the trusty come to take him out to where the turnkey was waiting to unlock the gate into liberty and freedom—”
“Wait,” Stevens said. “Trusty.”
“Ain’t it?” Ratliff said with pleased, almost proud approval. “It was so simple. Likely that’s why it never occurred to none of them, especially as even a Parchman deserving any name a-tall for being well conducted, ain’t supposed to contain nobody eccentric and antisocial enough to behave like he considered anything like free-will choice to even belong in the same breath with two hundred and fifty active dollars give him free for nothing so he never even had to say Much obliged for them. That’s what I said too: ‘That trusty. He left here for the gate with them two hundred and fifty dollars. Let’s just see if he still had them when he went outen it.’ So that’s what I said too: ‘That trusty.’
“ ’A lifer too,’ the Warden says. ‘Killed his wife with a ball-peen hammer, was converted and received salvation in the jail before he was even tried and has one of the best records here, is even a lay preacher.’
“ ’Than which, if Mink had had your whole guest list to pick from and time to pick in, he couldn’t a found a better feller for his purpose,’ I says. ‘So it looks like I’m already fixing to begin to have to feel sorry for this here snatched brand even if he was too impatient to think of a better answer to the enigma of wedlock than a garage hammer. That is, I reckon you still got a few private interrogation methods for reluctant conversationalists around here, ain’t you?’
“That’s why I was late calling you: it taken a little time too, though I got to admit nothing showed on his outside. Because people are funny. No, they ain’t funny: they’re jest sad. Here was this feller already in for life and even if they had found out that was a mistake or somebody even left the gate unlocked, he wouldn’t a dast to walk outen it because the gal’s paw had done already swore he would kill him the first time he crossed the Parchman fence. So what in the world could he a done with two hundred and fifty dollars even if he could ever a dreamed he could get away with this method of getting holt of it.”
“But how, dammit?” Stevens said. “How?”
“Why, the only way Mink could a done it, which was likely why never nobody thought to anticipate it. On the way from the Warden’s office to the gate he jest told the trusty he needed to step into the gentlemen’s room a minute and when they was inside he give the trusty the two hundred and fifty dollars and asked the trusty to hand it back to the Warden the first time the trusty conveniently got around to it, the longer the better after he, Mink, was outside the gate and outen sight, and tell the Warden Much obliged but he had done changed his mind and wouldn’t need it. So there the trusty was: give Mink another hour or two and he would be gone, likely forever, nobody would know where or care. Because I don’t care where you are: the minute a man can really believe that never again in his life will he have any use for two hundred and fifty dollars, he’s done already been dead and has jest this minute found it out. And that’s all. I don’t—”
“I do,” Stevens said. “Flem told me. He’s in Memphis. He’s too little and frail and old to use a knife or a club so he will have to go to the nearest place he can hope to get a gun with ten dollars.”
“So you told Flem. What did he say?”
“He said, Much obliged,” Stevens said. After a moment he said, “I said, when I told Flem Mink had left Parchman at eight o’clock this morning on his way up here to kill him, he said Much obliged.”
“I heard you,” Ratliff said. “What would you a said? You would sholy be as polite as Flem Snopes, wouldn’t you? So maybe it’s all right, after all. Of course you done already talked to Memphis.”
“Tell them what?” Stevens said. “How describe to a Memphis policeman somebody I wouldn’t recognise myself, let alone that he’s actually in Memphis trying to do what I assume he is trying to do, for the simple reason that I don’t know what to do next either?”
“What’s wrong with Memphis?” Ratliff said.
“I’ll bite,” Stevens said. “What is?”
“I thought it would took a heap littler place than Memphis not to have nobody in it you used to go to Harvard with.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” Stevens said. He put in the call at once and presently was talking with him: the classmate, the amateur Cincinnatus at his plantation not far from Jackson, who had already been instrumental in getting the pardon through, so that Stevens needed merely explain the crisis, not the situation.
“You don’t actually know he went to Memphis, of course,” the friend said.
“That’s right,” Stevens said. “But since we are forced by emergency to challenge where he might be, at least we should be permitted one assumption in good faith.”
“All right,” the friend said. “I know the mayor and the commissioner of police both. All you want — all they
can do really — is check any places where anyone might have tried to buy a gun or pistol for ten dollars since say noon today. Right?”
“Right,” Stevens said. “And ask them please to call me collect here when — if they do.”
“I’ll call you myself,” the friend said. “You might say I also have a small equity in your friend’s doom.”
“When you call me that to Flem Snopes, smile,” Stevens said.
That was Thursday; during Friday Central would run him to earth all right no matter where he happened to be about the Square. However, there was plenty to do in the office if he composed himself to it. Which he managed to do in time and was so engaged when Ratliff came in carrying something neatly folded in a paper bag and said, “Good mawnin,” Stevens not looking up, writing on the yellow foolscap pad, steadily, quite composed in fact even with Ratliff standing for a moment looking down at the top of his head. Then Ratliff moved and took one of the chairs beyond the desk, the one against the wall, then half rose and placed the little parcel neatly on the filing case beside him and sat down, Stevens still writing steadily between pauses now and then to read from the open book beneath his left hand; until presently Ratliff reached and took the morning Memphis paper from the desk and opened it and rattled faintly the turn of the page and after a while rattled that one faintly, until Stevens said,
“Dammit, either get out of here or think about something else. You make me nervous.”
“I ain’t busy this mawnin,” Ratliff said. “If you got anything to tend to outside, I can set here and listen for the phone.”
“I have plenty I can do here if you’ll just stop filling the damned air with—” He flung, slammed the pencil down. “Obviously he hasn’t reached Memphis yet or anyway hasn’t tried to buy the gun, or we would have heard. Which is all we want: to get word there first. Do you think that any reputable pawnshop or sporting-goods store that cares a damn about its licence will sell him a gun now after the police—”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 536
