Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  Yes, sir. Fate. The same fate that made Mammy taunt Pap into starting out with Beasley’s horse; the same fate that made it a hot morning in July for us to start out on. Because when we left home that morning we wasn’t even thinking about horse trading. We was thinking about horse, all right, because we were wondering if maybe we wasn’t fixing to come back home that night with Beasley’s horse riding in the wagon and me or Pap in the traces with the mule. Yes, sir. Pap eased that team outen the lot at sunup and on down the road toward Frenchman’s Bend as slow and careful as arra horse and mule ever moved in this world, with me and Pap walking up ever hill that was slanted enough to run water down the ruts, and aiming to do that right on into Jefferson. It was the weather, the hot day, that done it. Because here we was, about a mile from Varner’s store, and Beasley’s horse kind of half walking and half riding on the double tree, and Pap’s face looking a little more and a little more concerned ever time our new horse failed to lift its feet high enough to make the next step, when all of a sudden that horse popped into a sweat. It flung its head up like it had been teched with a hot poker and stepped up into the collar, teching the collar for the first time since the mule had taken the weight off the breast yoke when Pap’d shaken out the whip inside the lot; and so here we come down the last hill and up to Varner’s store and that horse of Beasley’s with its head up and blowing froth and its eyes white-rimmed like these here colored dinner plates and Pap sawing back on the reins, and I be dog if it not only hadn’t sweated into as pretty a blood bay as you ever see, but even the ribs didn’t seem to show so much. And Pap, that had been talking about taking a back road so as to miss Varner’s store altogether, setting there on the wagon seat exactly like he would set on the lot fence where he knowed he would be safe from Pat Stamper, telling Jody Varner and them other men that Beasley’s horse come from Kentucky. Jody Varner never even laughed. “Kentucky, hey?” he says. “Sho, now. That explains why it taken it so long. Herman Short swapped Pat Stamper a buckboard and a set of harness for it five years ago, and Beasley Kemp give Herman eight dollars for it last summer. How much did you give Beasley? Fifty cents?”

  That’s what done it. From then on, it was automatic. It wasn’t the horse, the trade. It was still a good trade, because in a sense you might say that all Pap give Beasley for it was the straight stock, since the bob-wire and the sorghum mill belonged to Old Man Anse. And it wasn’t the harness and the buckboard that Herman Short give Pat Stamper: it was that eight dollars that Beasley give Herman. That’s what rankled Pap. Not that he held the eight dollars against Herman, because Herman had done already invested a buckboard and a set of harness. And besides, the eight dollars was still in the county, even if it was out of circulation, belonging to Herman Short, and so it didn’t actually matter whether Herman had it or Beasley had it. It was Pat Stamper that rankled Pap. When a man swaps horse for horse, that’s one thing. But when cash money starts changing hands, that’s something else; and when a stranger comes into the country and starts actual cash money jumping from hand to hand, it’s like when a burglar breaks into your house and flings your clothes and truck from place to place even though he don’t take nothing: it makes you mad. So it was not jest to unload Beasley’s horse back onto Pat Stamper. It was to get Beasley’s eight dollars back outen Pat some way. And so it was jest pure fate that had Pat Stamper camped right on the road we would take to Jefferson on the very day when me and Pap went to get Mammy’s separator.

  So I reckon the rest of it don’t even hardly need to be told, except as a kind of sidelight on how, when a man starts out to plan to do something, he jest thinks he is planning: that what he is actually doing is giving the highball to misfortune, throwing open the switch and saying, “All right, Bad Luck; come right ahead.” So here was Pat Stamper and that nigger magician of hisn camped in Hoke’s pasture, right on the road we would have to pass to git to town, and here was Pap on the way to town with two live animals and twenty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents in cash, and feeling that the entire honor and pride of the science and pastime of horse trading in Yoknapatawpha County depended on him to vindicate it. So the rest of it don’t even need to be told. I don’t need to tell whether me and Pap walked back home or not, because anybody that knows Pat Stamper knows that he never bought a horse or a mule outright in his life; that he swapped you something for it that could at least walk out of sight. So the only point that might interest you is, what was pulling the wagon when we got back home. And what Mammy done when she said, “Where is my separator?” and Pap saying, “Now Vynie; now Vynie—” Yes, sir. When it come down to the trade, it wasn’t Pat Stamper after all that Pap was swapping horses with. It was the demon rum.

  Because he was desperate. After the first swap he was desperate. Before that he was jest mad, like when you dream you are right in the middle of the track and the train a-coming; it’s right on you and you can’t run or dodge because all of a sudden you realize you are running in sand and so after a while it don’t even matter if the train catches you or not because all you can think about is being mad at the sand. That’s how Pap was. For ever mile we made toward Jefferson, the madder Pap got. It wasn’t at Beasley’s horse, because we nursed it on toward town the same way we nursed it to Varner’s store until it begun to sweat. It was them eight cash dollars that that horse represented. I don’t even recollect just when and where we found out that Pat Stamper was at Jefferson that day. It might have been at Varner’s store. Or it might have been that we never had to be told; that for Pap to carry out the fate that Mammy started when she taunted him about Beasley’s horse, Pat Stamper would jest have to be in Jefferson. Because Pap never even taken time to find out where Pat was camped, so that when we did roll into town we had done already swapped. Yes, sir. We went up them long hills with Pap and me walking and Beasley’s horse laying into the collar the best it could but with the mule doing most of the pulling and Pap walking on his side of the wagon and cussing Pat Stamper and Herman Short and Beasley Kemp and Jody Varner, and we went down the hills with Pap holding the wagon broke with a sapling pole so it wouldn’t shove Beasley’s horse through the collar and turn it wrong-side-outward like a sock and Pap still a-cussing Pat Stamper and Herman and Beasley and Varner, until we come to the three-mile bridge and Pap turned off the road and druv into the bushes and taken the mule outen the harness and knotted one rein so I could ride it and give me the quarter and told me to git for town and git the dime’s worth of saltpeter and the nickel’s worth of tar and the number ten fish hook.

  So we didn’t git to town until that afternoon. We went straight to Pat Stamper’s camp in Hoke’s pasture where I had done already passed it twice on the mule, with Beasley’s horse laying into the collar sho enough now and its eyes looking nigh as wild as Pap’s looked a hour later when we come outen McCaslin’s back door with the separator, and foaming a little at the mouth where Pap had rubbed the rest of the saltpeter into its gums and with a couple of as pretty tarred bob-wire cuts on its chest as you could want and another one on its flank where Pap had worked the fish hook under its hide where he could tech it by drooping the rein now and then; yes, sir, turning into Hoke’s pasture on two wheels and Pap sawing back on the reins and Pat Stamper’s nigger running up and grabbing the bridle to keep Beasley’s horse from running right into the tent where Pat slept and Pat hisself coming outen the tent with that ’ere cream-colored Stetson cocked over one eye and them eyes the color of a new plow point and jest about as warm. “That’s a pretty lively looking horse you got there,” Pat says.

  “Hell fire, yes!” Pap says. “It durn nigh killed me and this boy both before I could git it into that ere gate yonder. That’s why I got to git shut of it. I expect you to beat me, but I got to trade. So come on and beat me quick and give me something I won’t be skeered to walk up to.”

  And I still believe that Pap was right, that it was the right system. It had been five years since Pat had seen the horse, or anyway since he had unloaded it on Herman Short, so me an
d Pap figured that the chance of Pat’s recognizing it would be about the same as for a burglar to recognize a dollar watch that happened to snag onto his clothes in passing five years ago. And it was the right system, to rush up and say we jest had to trade instead of jest drifting up and hanging around for Pat to persuade us. And Pap wasn’t trying to beat Pat bad. All he wanted was to vindicate that ere eight cash dollars. That was it: the eight cash dollars’ worth of the pride of Yoknapatawpha County horse trading, and Pap the self-appointed champion and knight doing it not for profit but for honor. And I be dog if I still don’t believe it worked, that Pap did fool Pat, and that it was because of what Pat aimed to swap to Pap and not because Pat recognized Beasley’s horse, that he refused to trade anyway except team for team. Or I don’t know. Maybe Pap was so busy fooling Pat that Pat never had to fool Pap, like a man that has jest got to do something, who no matter how hard he tries he jest half does it, while a man that don’t care whether he does it or not, does it twice as good with jest half the work. So there we was: the nigger holding the two mules that Pat wanted to swap for our team, and Pat chewing his tobacco slow and gentle and steady and watching Pap with them plow point eyes, and Pap standing there with that look on his face that was desperate not because he was skeered yet but because he was having to think fast, realizing now that he had done got in deeper than he aimed to and that he would either have to shet his eyes and bust on through, or back out and quit. Because right here was where Pat Stamper showed how come he was Pat Stamper. If he had jest started in to show Pap what a bargain he would be getting in them two mules, I reckon Pap would have backed out. But Pat didn’t. He fooled Pap exactly like one first-class burglar would purely and simply refuse to tell another first-class burglar where the safe was at.

  “But I don’t want to swap for a whole team,” Pap said. “I already got a good mule. It’s the horse I don’t want. Trade me a mule for the horse.”

  “No,” Pat said. “I don’t want no wild horse neither. Not that I won’t trade for anything that can walk, provided I can trade my way. But I ain’t going to trade for that horse alone because I don’t want it no more than you do. What I am trading for is that mule. And besides, this here team of mine is matched. I aim to get about three times for the pair of them what I would get trading either of them single.”

  “But you will still have a team to trade with,” Pap says.

  “No,” Pat said. “I aim to get more from you for them than if the team was broken. If it’s a single mule you want, you better try somebody else.”

  So Pap looked at the mules again. That was it. They looked all right. They looked jest exactly all right. They didn’t look too good and they didn’t look too bad. Neither of them looked quite as good as our mule, but the two of them looked jest a leetle mite better than Beasley’s horse and one mule of anybody’s. That was it. If they had looked like a bargain, I reckon even I, a twelve-year-old boy, would have had sense enough to tell Pap to come on and let’s git outen there. But Lord, I reckon we was doomed from the very second when Jody Varner told about that eight dollars. I reckon Pat Stamper knowed we was doomed the very second he looked up and seen the nigger holding Beasley’s horse outen the tent. I reckon he knowed right then that he wouldn’t have to try to trade, that all he would need to do would be jest to say No long enough. So that’s what he done, leaning against our wagon bed with his thumbs hooked into the top of his pants, chewing his tobacco and watching Pap going through the motion of examining them mules again. Because even I knowed that Pap had done already traded, that he had done walked out into what he thought was a spring branch and then found it was quicksand, and now he knowed he couldn’t even stop long enough to turn back. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take them.”

  So the nigger taken Beasley’s horse and the mule outen the wagon and put our new team in, and me and Pap went on to town. And before God, them mules still looked all right. I be dog if I didn’t think that maybe Pap had walked into that Stamper quicksand and then got out again. Or maybe it was jest getting outen Stamper’s reach with the harness left. Because when we got back into the road and outen sight of Stamper’s camp, Pap’s face begun to look like it would when he would set on the lot fence at home and tell the fellows how he was a fool about a horse but not a durn fool. It wasn’t easy yet; it was jest watchful, setting there and feeling out our new team. We was right at town now and so he wouldn’t have much time to feel them out, but we would have a good chance to on the road home. “By Godfrey,” Pap said, “if they can walk home a-tall, I have got that ere eight dollars back, durn him.”

  Because that nigger of Pat Stamper’s was a artist. Because I swear to Godfrey them mules looked all right. They jest looked like two ordinary not extry good mules you might see in a hundred wagons on the road. I noticed how they had a kind of jerky way of starting off, first one jerking into the collar and then jerking back and then the other jerking into the collar and then jerking back, and even after we was in the road and the wagon rolling good, one of them taken a spell of some sort and snatched hisself crossways in the traces like he aimed to go back, but then Stamper had jest told us that they was a matched team; he never had said they had worked together as a matched team, and they was a well matched team in the sense that neither one of them seemed to have any idea as to jest when the other one aimed to start moving or what direction it was going to take. But Pap got them straightened out and we went on; we was jest starting up that ere big hill into town, when they popped into a sweat jest like Beasley Kemp’s horse done back yonder on the other side of Varner’s store. But that was all right; it was hot enough; that was when I first taken notice that that rain was going to come up before dark; I mind how I was jest thinking how it was going to ketch us before we got home when this here sweat taken them mules. And that was all right; I didn’t blame them for sweating; the trouble was, it was a different kind of sweat from the kind Beasley’s horse had given us to expect. I mind how I was looking at a big hot-looking bright cloud over to the southwest when all of a sudden I realized that the wagon had done stopped going forward up the hill and was starting down it backward and then I looked in time to see both them mules this time crossways in the traces and kind of glaring at one another across the tongue and Pap trying to straighten them out and his eyes looking a right smart like the mules’ eyes, and then all of a sudden they straightened out and I mind how I thought it was a good thing they happened to have their backs toward the wagon when they did, because I reckon they moved at the same time for the first time in their lives, for the first time since Pap owned them at least; and, gentlemen, here we come swurging up that hill and into town like a roach down a rathole, with the wagon on two wheels and Pap sawing back on the lines and hollering, “Hell fire, hell fire,” and folks scattering, and Pap jest managed to swing them into the alley behind McCaslin’s store and stopped them by locking our nigh front wheel with another wagon’s and the other mules (they was hitched) holp to put the brakes on. So it was a good crowd by then, helping us to git untangled, and Pap led our team on to Uncle Ike’s back door and tied them up close to the door handle and me and him went in to get the separator, with the folks still coming up and saying, “It’s that team of Stamper’s” and Pap kind of breathing hard and looking a right smart less easy in the face than when we had left Stamper’s camp even, besides most all-fired watchful, saying, “Come on here. Let’s git that durn separator of your mammy’s loaded and git outen here.” So we give Uncle Ike the rag with Mammy’s money in it and me and Pap taken up the separator and started back out to the wagon, to where we had left it. It was still there. I mind how I could see the bed of it where Pap had drawed it up to the door, and I could see the folks from the waist up standing in the alley, and then I realized that it was about twice as many folks looking at our team as it had been when we left. I reckon Pap never noticed it because he was too busy hurrying that ’ere separator along. So I jest stepped aside a little to have a look at what the folks was looking at and the
n I realized that I could see the front of our wagon and the place where me and Pap had left the mules, but that I couldn’t see no mules. So I don’t recollect whether I dropped my side of the separator or if Pap dropped hisn or if we still carried it when we come to where we could see out the door and see the mules. They were still there. They were just laying down. Pap had snubbed them right up to the handle of Uncle Ike’s back door, with the same rein run through both bits, and now they looked jest exactly like two fellows that had done hung themselves in one of these here suicide packs, with their heads snubbed up together and their tongues hanging out and their necks stretched about four foot and their legs folded back under them like shot rabbits until Pap jumped down and cut the harness. Yes, sir. A artist. He had give them to the exact inch jest enough of whatever it was, to get them into town and off the square before it played out.

  And this here is what I meant when I said it was desperation. I can see Pap now, backed off into that corner behind Uncle Ike’s plows and cultivators and such, with his face white and his voice shaking and his hand shaking so he couldn’t hardly hand me the six bits. “Go to Doc Peabody’s store,” he says, “and git me a pint of whiskey and git it quick.”

  Yes, sir. Desperate. It wasn’t even quicksand now. It was a whirlpool, and Pap with jest one jump left. He drunk that pint of whiskey in two drinks and set the empty bottle careful in the corner of Uncle Ike’s warehouse, and we went back to the wagon. The mules was still up all right, and we loaded the separator in and Pap eased them away careful, with the folks all watching and telling one another it was a Pat Stamper team and Pap setting there with his face red now instead of white and them clouds were heavy and the sun was even gone now but I don’t think Pap ever noticed it. And we hadn’t eaten too, and I don’t think Pap noticed that neither. And I be dog if it didn’t seem like Pat Stamper hadn’t moved too, standing there at the gate to his stock pen, with that Stetson cocked and his thumbs still hooked into the top of his pants, and Pap setting on the wagon trying to keep his hands from shaking and the team stopped now with their heads down and their legs spraddled and breathing like starting up a sawmill on a Monday morning. “I come to trade back for my team,” Pap said.