Snopes: The Hamlet, the Town, the Mansion

by William Faulkner

  So even after Lawyer and Hub told him about them two robbers in Uncle Willy’s store, and that boy that his paw ought to burned his britches off for not being home in bed two hours ago, Montgomery Ward still never had one second’s doubt that it had been Flem all the time—Flem his-self, with his pure and simple nose for money like a preacher’s for sin and fried chicken, finding out fast and quick that profit of some degree was taking place at night behind that alley door, and enough of it to keep folks from as far away as three county seats sneaking up and down that alley at two and three oclock in the morning.

  So all Flem needed now was to find out exactly what was going on up that alley that was that discreet and that profitable, setting his spies—not that Grover Winbush would a needed anybody calling his-self a respectable spy with pride in his profession to ketch him, since any little child hired with a ice-cream cone would a done for that—to watch who come and went around that corner; until sooner or later, and likely sooner than later, one turned up that Flem could handle. Likely a good deal sooner than later; even spread over four counties like that business was, there wasn’t many among the set Montgomery Ward drawed his clientele from that hadn’t at least offered to put his name onto a piece of paper to Flem at forty or fifty percent of three or four dollars, so that Flem could say to him: “About that-ere little note of yourn. I’d like to hold the bank offen you myself, but I aint only vice-president of it, and I cant do nothing with Manfred de Spain.”

  Or maybe it was Grover his-self that Flem caught, catching Grover his-self in the active flesh on that second or third time which was the absolute outside for Grover to slip outen that alley without somebody ketching him, long in fact before them two fellers robbing Uncle Willy Christian’s store exposed him by rifling that prescription desk in plain sight of half Jefferson evidently going home from the late picture show except that couldn’t nobody locate Grover to tell him about it. Anyway, Flem caught somebody he could squeeze enough to find out jest what Montgomery Ward was selling behind that door. So now all Flem had to do was move in on that industry too, move Montgomery Ward outen it or move it out from under Montgomery Ward the same way he had been grazing on up through Jefferson ever since he eased me and Grover Winbush outen that café we thought we owned back there when I never had no more sense neither than to believe I could tangle with Flem.

  Only, a banker now, a vice-president, not to mention being the third man, after the Negro that fired the furnace and the preacher hisself, inside the Baptist Church ever Sunday morning, and the rest of his career in Jefferson doomed to respectability like a feller in his Sunday suit trying to run through a field of cuckleburs and beggarlice, naturally Flem not only couldn’t show in it, it couldn’t even have no connection with the word Snopes. So as far as Jefferson was concerned the Atelier Monty would be closed out, cleaned up and struck off the commercial register forevermore and the business moved into another alley that hadn’t never heard of it before and under a management that, if possible, couldn’t even spell Snopes. Or likely, if Flem had any sense, clean to another town in Montgomery Ward’s old dlly Christict, where it would be clean outen Grover Cleveland’s reach until at least next summer when he taken his next two weeks’ vacation.

  So all Montgomery Ward had to do, all he could do in fact, was jest to wait until Flem decided the moment was ripe to usurp him outen his a-teelyer or usurp that a-teelyer out from under him, whichever Flem seen fittest. Likely Montgomery Ward had at least one moment or two of regretful musing that his business wasn’t the kind where he could a held some kind of a quick fire sale before Flem would have time to hear about it. But his stock in trade being such a nebulous quantity that it never had no existence except during the moment when the customer was actively buying and consuming it, the only thing he could a sold would be his capital investment itself, which would not only be contrary to all the economic laws, he wouldn’t even have no nebulous stock in trade to sell to nobody during whatever time he would have left before Flem foreclosed him, which might be weeks or even months yet. So all he could do was to apply whatever methods and means of speed-up and increased turnover was available while waiting for Flem to move, naturally speculating on jest what method Flem would finally use—whether Flem had done found some kind of handle or crowbar in his, Montgomery Ward’s, own past to prize him out, or maybe would do something as crude and unimaginative as jest offering him money for it.

  So he expected Flem. But he never expected Hub Hampton and Lawyer Stevens. So for what you might call a flashing moment or two after Hub and Lawyer busted in that morning, Montgomery Ward figgered it was this here new respectability Flem had done got involved with: a respectability that delicate and tetchous that wouldn’t nothing else suit it but it must look like the Law itself had purified the Snopes a-teelyer industry outen Jefferson, and so Flem was jest using Lawyer Stevens and Hub Hampton for a cat’s-paw. Of course another moment of thoughtful deliberation would a suh-jested to him that once a feller dedicated to civic improvement and the moral advancement of youth like Lawyer Stevens, and a meat-eating Hard-Shell Baptist deacon like Hub Hampton got a-holt of them nekkid photographs, there wouldn’t be nothing left of that business for Flem to move nowhere except the good will. Though them little hard pale-colored eyes looking down at him across the top of Hub Hampton’s belly wasn’t hardly the time for meditation and deliberation of any kind, thoughtful or not. In fact, Montgomery Ward was so far from being deliberate or even thinking a-tall for that matter, that it aint surprising if in that same flashing moment he likely cast on his cousin Flem the horrid aspersion that Flem had let Lawyer Stevens and Hub Hampton outfigger him; that Flem had merely aimed to close him, Montgomery Ward, out, and was innocent enough to believe he could get them nekkid pictures back outen Hub Hampton’s hands once Hub had seen them, and that that cat’s-paw’s real name was Flem Snopes.

  Though even in his extremity Montgomery Ward had more simple sense and judgment, let alone family pride and loyalty, than to actively believe that ten thousand Lawyer Stevenses and Hub Hamptons, let alone jest one each of them, could a diddled Flem Snopes. In fact, sooner than that foul aspersion, he would believe that Flem Snopes was subject to bad luck too, jest like a human being—not the bad luck of misreading Grover Winbush’s character that Grover could slip up and down that alley two or three times a week for seven or eight months without ever body in Yoknapatawpha County’ ketching him at least once, but the bad luck of being unable to anticipate that them two robbers would pick out the same night to b Uncle Willy Christian’s drugstore that that Rouncewell boy would to climb down the drain pipe and go to the late picture show.

  So all Montgomery Ward had to do now was set in his jail cell where Hub taken him and wait with what you might call almost professional detachment and interest to see how Flem was going to get them pictures back from Hub. It would take time of course; even with all his veneration and family pride for Flem Snopes, he knowed that even for Flem it wouldn’t be as simple as picking up a hat or a umbrella. So when the rest of that day passed and hadn’t nothing more happened, it was exactly as he had anticipated. Naturally he had toyed with the notion that, took by surprise too, Flem might call on him, Montgomery Ward, to pick up whatever loose useful ends of information he might have without even knowing he had none. But when Flem never showed up nor sent word, if anything his admiration and vindication for Flem jest increased that much more since here was active proof that Flem wasn’t going to need even what little more, even if it wasn’t no more than encouragement and moral support, that Montgomery Ward could a told him.

  And he anticipated right on through that night and what you might call them mutual Yoknapatawpha County bedbugs, on into the next morning too. So you can imagine his interested surprise—not alarm yet nor even astonishment: jest interest and surprise—when whatever thoughtful acquaintance (it was Euphus Tubbs, the jailor; he was a interested party too, not to mention having spent most of his life being surprised) come in that afternoon and told him
how Hub Hampton had went back to the studio that morning jest in case him and Lawyer had overlooked any further evidence yesterday, and instead captured five gallons of moonshine whiskey setting in the bottles on the shelf that Montgomery Ward his-self assumed never held nothing but photograph developer. “Now you can go to Parchman instead of Atlanta,” Euphus says. “Which wont be so fur away. Not to mention being in Missippi, where a native Missippi jailor can get the money for your keep instead of these durn judges sending our Missippi boys clean out of the country where folks we never even heard of before can collect on them.”

  Not alarm, not astonishment: jest interest and surprise and even that mostly jest interest. Because Montgomery Ward knowed that them bottles never had nothing but developer in them when him and Hub and Lawyer left the a-teelyer yesterday morning, and he knowed that Hub Hampton and Lawyer Stevens both knowed that was all there was in them, because for a feller in the nekkid-photo-graph business in Jefferson, Missippi, to complicate it up with peddling whiskey, would be jest pleading for trouble, like the owner of a roulette wheel or a crap table dreaming of running a counterfeiting press in the same basement.

  Because he never had one moment’s doubt it was Flem that planted that whiskey where Hub Hampton would have to find it; and this time his admiration and veneration notched right up to the absolute top because he knowed that Flem, being a banker now and having to be as tender about respectability as a unescorted young gal waking up suddenly in the middle of a drummers’ convention, not only couldn’t a afforded to deal with no local bootlegger and so probably had to go his-self back out to Frenchman’s Bend or maybe even all the way up into Beat Nine to Nub Gowrie to get it, he even had to pay twenty-five or thirty dollars of his own cash money to boot. And indeed for a unguarded fraction of the next moment the thought might a occurred to him how them twenty-five or thirty dollars revealed that Flem too in the last analysis wasn’t immune neither to the strong and simple call of blood kinship. Though that was jest a fraction of a moment, if as much as that even, because even though Flem too at times might be victim of weakness and aberration, wouldn’t none of them ever been paying even twenty dollars for a Snopes.

  No, them twenty-five or thirty dollars simply meant that it was going to be a little harder than Flem had expected or figgered. But the fact that he hadn’t hesitated even twenty-four hours to pay it, showed that Flem anyhow never had no doubts about the outcome. So naturally Montgomery Ward never had none neither, not even needing to anticipate no more but jest to wait, because by that time about half of Jefferson was doing the anticipating for him and half the waiting too, not to mention the watching. Until the next day we watched Flem cross the Square and go up the street to the jail and go into it and a half a hour later come out again. And the next day after that Montgomery Ward was out too with Flem for his bond. And the next day after that one Clarence Snopes was in town—Senator Clarence Egglestone Snopes of the state legislature now, that used to be Constable Snopes of Frenchman’s Bend until he made the mistake of pistol-whipping in the name of the Law some feller that was spiteful and vindictive enough to object to being pistol-whipped jest because the one doing the whipping was bigger than him and wore a badge. So Uncle Billy Varner had to do something with Clarence so he got a-holt of Flem and both of them got a-holt of Manfred de Spain at the bank and all three of them got a-holt of enough other folks to get Clarence into the legislature in Jackson, where he wouldn’t even know nothing to do until somebody Uncle Billy and Manfred could trust would tell him when to mark his name or hold up his hand.

  Except that, as Lawyer Stevens said, he seemed to found his true vocation before that: finally coming in to town from Frenchman’s Bend one day and finding out that the country extended even on past Jefferson, on to the northwest in fact until it taken in Mulberry and Gayoso and Pontotoc streets in Memphis, Tennessee, so that when he got back three days later the very way his hair still stood up and his eyes still bugged out seemed to be saying, “Hell fire, hell fire, why wasn’t I told about this sooner? How long has this been going on?” But he was making up fast for whatever time he had missed. You might say in fact he had done already passed it because now ever time he went or come between Frenchman’s Bend and Jackson by way of Jefferson he went by way of Memphis too, until now he was what Lawyer Stevens called the apostolic venereal ambassador from Gayoso Avenue to the entire north Mississippi banloo.

  So when on the fourth morning Montgomery Ward and Clarence got on Number Six north-bound, we knowed Clarence was jest going by Memphis to Jackson or Frenchman’s Bend. But all we thought about Montgomery Ward was, jest what could he a had in that a-teelyer that even Hub never found, that was worth two thousand dollars of bond money to Flem Snopes to get him to Mexico or wherever Montgomery Ward would wind up? So ours wasn’t jest interested surprise: ours was interested all right but it was astonishment and some good hard fast thinking too when two days later Clarence and Montgomery Ward both got off of Number Five south-bound and Clarence turned Montgomery Ward back over to Flem and went on to Jackson or Frenchman’s Bend or wherever he would have to go to leave from to come back by Gayoso Street, Memphis, next time. And Flem turned Montgomery Ward back over to Euphus Tubbs, back into the cell in the jail, that two-thousand-dollar bond of Flem’s rescinded or maybe jest withdrawed for all time /a>like you hang your Sunday hat back on the rack until the next wedding or funeral or whenever you might need it again.

  Who—I mean Euphus—apparently in his turn turned Montgomery Ward over to Miz Tubbs. We heard how she had even hung a old shade over the cell window to keep the morning sun from waking him up so early. And how any time Lawyer Stevens or Hub Hampton or any other such members of the Law would want a word with Montgomery Ward now, the quickest place to look for him would be in Miz Tubbs’s kitchen with one of her aprons on, shelling peas or husking roasting ears. And we—all right, me then—would kind of pass along the alley by the jail and there Montgomery Ward would be, him and Miz Tubbs in the garden while Montgomery Ward hoed out the vegetable rows, not making much of a out at it maybe, but anyhow swinging the hoe as long as Miz Tubbs showed him where to chop next.

  “Maybe she’s still trying to find out about them pictures,” Homer Bookwright says.

  “What?” I says. “Miz Tubbs?”

  “Of course she wants to know about them,” Homer says. “Aint she human too, even if she is a woman?”

  And three weeks later Montgomery Ward stood up in Judge Long’s court and Judge Long give him two years in the state penitentiary at Parchman for the possession of one developer jug containing one gallon of moonshine whiskey herewith in evidence.

  So ever body was wrong. Flem Snopes hadn’t spent no two thousand dollars’ worth of bond money to purify Montgomery Ward outen the U.S.A. America, and he hadn’t spent no twenty-five or thirty dollars’ worth of white-mule whiskey jest to purify the Snopes family name outen Atlanta, Georgia. What he had done was to spend twenty-five or thirty dollars to send Montgomery Ward to Parchman when the government would a sent him to Georgia free. Which was a good deal more curious than jest surprising, and a good deal more interesting than all three. So the next morning I happened to be on the depot platform when Number Eleven south-bound was due and sho enough, there was Montgomery Ward and Hunter Killegrew, the deputy, and I says to Hunter: “Dont you need to step into the washroom before you get on the train for such a long trip? I’ll watch Montgomery Ward for you. Besides, a feller that wouldn’t run off three weeks ago under a two-thousand-dollar bond aint likely to try it now with nothing on him but a handcuff.”

  So Hunter handed me his half of the handcuff and moved a little away and I says to Montgomery Ward:

  “So you’re going to Parchman instead. That’ll be a heap better. Not only you wont be depriving no native-born Missippi grub contractor outen his rightful and natural profit on the native-born Missippi grub they’ll be feeding a native-born Missippi convict, you wont be lonesome there neither, having a native-born Missippi cousin or uncle to
pass the time with when you aint otherwise occupied with field work or something. What’s his name? Mink Snopes, your uncle or cousin that got in that little trouble a while back for killing Jack Houston and kept trying to wait for Flem to come back from Texas in time to get him outen it, except that Flem was otherwise occupied too and so Mink acted kind of put out about it? Which was he, your uncle or your cousin?”

  “Yeah?” Montgomery Ward says.

  “Well, which?” I says.

  “Which what?” Montgomery Ward says.

  “Is he your uncle or is he your cousin?” I says.

  “Yeah?” Montgomery Ward says.

  FOUR

  MONTGOMERY WARD SNOPES

  So the son of a bitch fooled you,” I said. “You thought they were going to hang him but all he got was life.”

  He didn’t answer. He just sat there in the kitchen chair—he had toted it up himself from Tubbs’s kitchen. For me, there wasn’t anything in the cell but the cot—for me and the bedbugs that is. He just sat there with the shadow of the window bars crisscrossing that white shirt

  and that damn little ten-cent snap-on bow tie; they said the same one he had worn in from Frenchman’s Bend sixteen years ago. No: they said not the same one he took out of Varner’s stock and put on the day he came in from that tenant farm and went to work as Varner’s clerk and married Varner’s whore of a daughter in and wore to Texas while the bastard kid was getting born and then wore back again; that was when he wore the cloth cap about the size for a fourteen-year-old child. And the black felt hat somebody told him was the kind of hat bankers wore, that he didn’t throw away the cap: he sold it to a nigger boy for a dime that he took out in work and put the hat on for the first time three years ago and they said had never taken it off since, not even in the house, except in church, that still looked new. No, it didn’t look like it belonged to anybody, even after day and night for three years, not even sweated, which would include while he was laying his wife too which would be all right with her probably since the sort of laying she was used to they probably didn’t even take off their gloves, let alone their hats and shoes and overcoats.