Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

by Faulkner, William

Wednesday evenings were nearly always quiet unless there was a convention in town, maybe because so many of the women (clients too) came from little Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi country towns and Baptist and Methodist families, that they established among the joints and dives and cathouses themselves some … analogous? analogous rhythm to the midweek prayer-meeting night. Minnie answered the bell. She had her hat on. I mean her whole head was in it like a football helmet.

  “Evening, Minnie,” I said. “You going out?”

  “No sir,” she said. “You been away? We aint seen you in a long time.”

  “Just busy,” I answered. That was what Reba said too. The place was quiet: nobody in the dining room but Reba and a new girl and one customer, drinking beer, Reba in all her big yellow diamonds but wearing a wrapper instead of the evening gown she would have had on if it had been Saturday night. It was a new wrapper but it was already fastened with safety pins. I answered the same thing too. “Just busy,” I said.

  “I wish I could return the compliment,” she said. “I might as well be running a Sunday school. Meet Captain Strutterbuck,” she said. He was tall, pretty big, with a kind of roustabout’s face; I mean, that tried to look tough but wasn’t sure yet how you were going to take it, and hard pale eyes that looked at you hard enough, only he couldn’t seem to look at you with both of them at the same time. He was about fifty. “Captain Strutterbuck was in both wars,” Reba said. “That Spanish one about twenty-five years ago, and the last one too. He was just telling us about the last one. And this is Thelma. She just came in last week.”

  “Howdy,” Strutterbuck said. “Were you a buddy too?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “What outfit?”

  “Lafayette Escadrille,” I said.

  “Laughing what?” he said. “Oh, La-Fayette Esker-Drill. Flying boys. Dont know anything about flying, myself. I was cavalry, in Cuba in ’98 and on the Border in ’16, not commissioned any longer, out of the army in fact: just sort of a private citizen aide to Black Jack because I knew the country. So when they decided to send him to France to run the show over there, he told me if I ever got across to look him up, he would try to find something for me. So when I heard that Rick—Eddie Rickenbacker, the Ace,” he told Reba and the new girl, “the General’s driver—that Rick had left him for the air corps, I decided that was my chance and I managed to get over all right but he already had another driver, a Sergeant Somebody, I forget his name. So there I was, with no status. But I still managed to see a little of it, from the back seat you might say—Argonne, Showmont, Vymy Ridge, Shatter Theory; you probably saw most of the hot places yourself. Where were you stationed?”

  “Y.M.C.A.,” I said.

  “What?” he said. He got up, slow. He was tall, pretty big; this probably wasn’t the first time both his eyes had failed to look at the same thing at the same time. Maybe he depended on it. By that time Reba was up too. “You wouldn’t be trying to kid me, would you?” he said.

  “Why?” I said. “Dont it work?”

  “All right, all right,” Reba said. “Are you going upstairs with Thelma, or aint you? If you aint, and you usually aint, tell her so.”

  “I dont know whether I am or not,” he said. “What I think right now is—”

  “Folks dont come in here to think,” Reba said. “They come in here to do business and then get out. Do you aim to do any business or dont you?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s go,” he told Thelma. “Maybe I’ll see you again,” he told me.

  “After the next war,” I said. He and Thelma went out. “Are you going to let him?” I said.

  “He gets a pension from that Spanish war,” Reba said. “It came today. I saw it. I watched him sign his name on the back of it so I can cash it.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “I didn’t bother with the front of it. I just made damn sure he signed his name where the notice said sign. It was a United States Government postoffice money order. You dont fool around with the United States Government.”

  “A postoffice money order can be for one cent provided you can afford the carrying charges,” I said. She looked at me. “He wrote his name on the back of a piece of blue paper and put it back in his pocket. I suppose he borrowed the pen from you. Was that it?”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “What do you want me to do: lean over the foot of the bed and say, Just a second there, Buster?”—Minnie came in with another bottle of beer. It was for me.

  “I didn’t order it,” I said. “Maybe I should have told you right off. I’m not going to spend any money tonight.”

  “It’s on me then. Why did you come here then? Just to try to pick a fight with somebody?”

  “Not with him,” I said. “He even got his name out a book. I dont remember what book right now, but it was a better book than the one he got his war out of.”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “Why in hell did you tell him where you were staying? Come to think of it, why are you staying there?”

  “Staying where?” I said.

  “At the Y.M.C.A. I have some little squirts in here now and then that ought to be at the Y.M.C.A. whether they are or not. But I never had one of them bragging about it before.”

  “I’m at the Teaberry,” I said. “I belonged to the Y.M.C.A. in the war.”

  “The Y.M.C.A.? In the war? They dont fight. Are you trying to kid me too?”

  “I know they dont,” I said. “That’s why I was in it. That’s right. That’s where I was. Gavin Stevens, a lawyer down in Jefferson, can tell you. The next time he’s in here ask him.”

  Minnie appeared in the door with a tray with two glasses of gin on it. She didn’t say anything: she just stood in the door there where Reba could see her. She still wore the hat.

  “All right,” Reba said. “But no more. He never paid for that beer yet. But Miss Thelma’s new in Memphis and we want to make her feel at home.” Minnie went away. “So you’re not going to unbutton your pocket tonight.”

  “I came to ask you a favor,” I said. But she wasn’t even listening.

  “You never did spend much. Oh, you were free enough buying beer and drinks around. But you never done any jazzing. Not with any of my girls, anyway.” She was looking at me. “Me neither. I’ve done outgrowed that too. We could get along.” She was looking at me. “I heard about that little business of yours down there in the country. A lot of folks in business here dont like it. They figure you are cutting into trade un—un—What’s that word? Lawyers and doctors are always throwing it at you.”

  “Unethical,” I said. “It means dry.”

  “Dry?” she said.

  “That’s right. You might call my branch of your business the arid or waterproof branch. The desert-outpost branch.”

  “Yes, sure, I see what you mean. That’s it exactly. That’s what I would tell them: that just looking at pictures might do all right for a while down there in the country where there wasn’t no other available handy outlet but that sooner or later somebody was going to run up enough temperature to where he would have to run to the nearest well for a bucket of real water, and maybe it would be mine.” She was looking at me. “Sell it out and come on up here.”

  “Is this a proposition?” I said.

  “All right. Come on up here and be the landlord. The beer and drinks is already on the house and you wouldn’t need much but cigarettes and clothes and a little jack to rattle in your pocket and I can afford that and I wouldn’t have to be always watching you about the girls, just like Mr Binford because I could always trust him too, always—” She was looking at me. There was something in her eyes or somewhere I never had seen before or expected either for that matter. “I nee—A man can do what a woman cant. You know: paying off protection, handling drunks, checking up on the son-a-bitching beer and whiskey peddlers that mark up prices and miscount bottles if you aint watching day and night like a goddamn hawk.” Sitting there looking at me, one fat hand
with that diamond the size of a piece of gravel holding the beer glass. “I need … I … not jazzing; I done outgrowed that too long a time ago. It’s—it’s … Three years ago he died, yet even now I still cant quite believe it.” It shouldn’t have been there: the fat raddled face and body that had worn themselves out with the simple hard physical work of being a whore and making a living at it like an old prize fighter or football player or maybe an old horse until they didn’t look like a man’s or a woman’s either in spite of the cheap rouge and too much of it and the big diamonds that were real enough even if you just did not believe that color, and the eyes with something in or behind them that shouldn’t have been there; that, as they say, shouldn’t happen to a dog. Minnie passed the door going back down the hall. The tray was empty now. “For fourteen years we was like two doves.” She looked at me. Yes, not even to a dog. “Like two doves,” she roared and lifted the glass of beer then banged it down hard and shouted at the door: “Minnie!” Minnie came back to the door. “Bring the gin,” Reba said.

  “Now, Miss Reba, you dont want to start that,” Minnie said. “Dont you remember, last time you started grieving about Mr Binford we had po-lice in here until four o’clock in the morning. Drink your beer and forget about gin.”

  “Yes,” Reba said. She even drank some of the beer. Then she set the glass down. “You said something about a favor. It cant be money—I aint talking about your nerve: I mean your good sense. So it might be interesting—”

  “Except it is money,” I said. I took out the fifty dollars and separated ten from it and pushed the ten across to her. “I’m going away for a couple of years. That’s for you to remember me by.” She didn’t touch it. She wasn’t even looking at it though Minnie was. She just looked at me. “Maybe Minnie can help too,” I said. “I want to make a present of forty dollars to the poorest son of a bitch I can find. Who is the poorest son of a bitch anywhere at this second that you and Minnie know?”

  They were both looking at me, Minnie too from under the hat. “How do you mean, poor?” Reba said.

  “That’s in trouble or jail or somewhere that maybe wasn’t his fault.”

  “Minnie’s husband is a son of a bitch and he’s in jail all right,” Reba said. “But I wouldn’t call him poor. Would you, Minnie?”

  “Nome,” Minnie said.

  “But at least he’s out of woman trouble for a while,” Reba told Minnie. “That ought to make you feel a little better.”

  “You dont know Ludus,” Minnie said. “I like to see any place, chain gang or not, where Ludus cant find some fool woman to believe him.”

  “What did he do?” I said.

  “He quit his job last winter and laid around here ever since, eating out of my kitchen and robbing Minnie’s pocketbook every night after she went to sleep, until she caught him actually giving the money to the other woman, and when she tried to ask him to stop he snatched the flatiron out of her hand and damn near tore her ear off with it. That’s why she has to wear a hat all the time even in the house. So I’d say if any—if anybody deserved them forty dollars it would be Minnie—”

  A woman began screaming at the top of the stairs in the upper hall. Minnie and Reba ran out. I picked up the money and followed. The woman screaming the curses was the new girl, Thelma, standing at the head of the stairs in a flimsy kimono, or more or less of it. Captain Strutterbuck was halfway down the stairs, wearing his hat and carrying his coat in one hand and trying to button his fly with the other. Minnie was at the foot of the stairs. She didn’t outshout Thelma nor even shout her silent: Minnie just had more volume, maybe more practice:

  “Course he never had no money. He aint never had more than two dollars at one time since he been coming here. Why you ever let him get on the bed without the money in your hand first, I dont know. I bet he never even took his britches off. A man wont take his britches off, dont never have no truck with him a-tall; he done already shook his foot, no matter what his mouth still saying.”

  “All right,” Reba told Minnie. “That’ll do.” Minnie stepped back; even Thelma hushed; she saw me or something and even pulled the kimono back together in front. Strutterbuck came on down the stairs, still fumbling at the front of his pants; maybe the last thing he did want was for both his eyes to look at the same thing at the same time. But I dont know; according to Minnie he had no more reason to be alarmed and surprised now at where he was than a man walking a tightrope. Concerned of course and damned careful, but not really alarmed and last of all surprised. He reached the downstairs floor. But he was not done yet. There were still eight or ten feet to the front door.

  But Reba was a lady. She just held her hand out until he quit fumbling at his fly and took the folded money order out of whatever pocket it was in and handed it to her. A lady. She never raised her hand at him. She never even cursed him. She just went to the front door and took hold of the knob and turned and said, “Button yourself up. Aint no man going to walk out of my house at just eleven o’clock at night with his pants still hanging open.” Then she closed the door after him and locked it. Then she unfolded the money order. Minnie was right. It was for two dollars, issued at Lonoke, Arkansas. The sender’s name was spelled Q’Milla Strutterbuck. “His sister or his daughter?” Reba said. “What’s your guess?”

  Minnie was looking too. “It’s his wife,” she said. “His sister or mama or grandma would sent five. His woman would sent fifty—if she had it and felt like sending it. His daughter would sent fifty cents. Wouldn’t nobody but his wife sent two dollars.”

  She brought two more bottles of beer to the dining-room table. “All right,” Reba said. “You want a favor. What favor?”

  I took out the money again and shoved the ten across to her again, still holding the other forty. “This is for you and Minnie, to remember me until I come back in two years. I want you to send the other to my great-uncle in the Mississippi penitentiary at Parchman.”

  “Will you come back in two years?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can look for me. Two years. The man I’m going to be working for says I’ll be back in one but I dont believe him.”

  “All right. Now what do I do with the forty?”

  “Send it to my great-uncle Mink Snopes in Parchman.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “He killed a man named Jack Houston back in 1908.”

  “Did Houston deserve killing?”

  “I dont know. But from what I hear, he sure worked to earn it.”

  “The poor son of a bitch. How long is your uncle in for?”

  “Life,” I said.

  “All right,” she said. “I know about that too. When will he get out?”

  “About 1948 if he lives and nothing else happens to him.”

  “All right. How do I do it?” I told her, the address and all.

  “You could send it From another prisoner.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I aint never been in jail. I dont aim to be.”

  “Send it From a friend then.”

  “All right,” she said. She took the money and folded it. “The poor son of a bitch,” she said.

  “Which one are you talking about now?”

  “Both of them,” she said. “All of us. Every one of us. The poor son of a bitches.”

  I hadn’t expected to see Clarence at all until tomorrow morning. But there he was, a handful of crumpled bills scattered on the top of the dresser like the edge of a crap game and Clarence undressed down to his trousers standing looking at them and yawning and rooting in the pelt on his chest. This time they—Clarence—had found a big operator, a hot sport who, Virgil having taken on the customary two successfully, bet them he couldn’t handle a third one without stopping, offering them the odds this time, which Clarence covered with Flem’s other fifty since this really would be a risk; he said how he even gave Virgil a chance to quit and not hold it against him: “‘We’re ahead now, you know; you done already proved yourself.’ And do you know, the little sod never even turne
d a hair. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Send her in.’ And now my conscience hurts me,” he said, yawning again. “It was Flem’s money. My conscience says dont tell him a durn thing about it: the money just got spent like he thinks it was. But shucks, a man dont want to be a hog.”

  So we went back home. “Why do you want to go back to the jail?” Flem said. “It’ll be three weeks yet.”

  “Call it for practice,” I said. “Call it a dry run against my conscience.” So now I had a set of steel bars between; now I was safe from the free world, safe and secure for a little while yet from the free Snopes world where Flem was parlaying his wife into the presidency of a bank and Clarence even drawing per diem as a state senator between Jackson and Gayoso Street to take the wraps off Virgil whenever he could find another Arkansas sport who refused to believe what he was looking at, and Byron in Mexico or wherever he was with whatever was still left of the bank’s money, and mine and Clarence’s father I.O. and all of our Uncle Wesley leading a hymn with one hand and fumbling the skirt of an eleven-year-old infant with the other; I dont count Wallstreet and Admiral Dewey and their father Eck, because they dont belong to us: they are only our shame.

  Not to mention Uncle Murdering Mink six or seven weeks later (I had to wait a little while you see not to spook him too quick). “Flem?” he said. “I wouldn’t a thought Flem wanted me out. I’d a thought he’d been the one wanted to keep me here longest.”

  “He must have changed,” I said. He stood there in his barred overalls, blinking a little—a damn little wornout dried-up shrimp of a man not as big as a fourteen-year-old boy. Until you wondered how in hell anything as small and frail could have held enough mad, let alone steadied and aimed a ten-gauge shotgun, to kill anybody.

  “I’m obliged to him,” he said. “Only, if I got out tomorrow, maybe I wont done changed. I been here a long time now. I aint had much to do for a right smart while now but jest work in the field and think. I wonder if he knows to risk that? A man wants to be fair, you know.”

  “He knows that,” I said. “He dont expect you to change inside here because he knows you cant. He expects you to change when you get out. Because he knows that as soon as the free air and sun shine on you again, you cant help but be a changed man even if you dont want to.”