“All right,” she said. “Dont use any word then.”
I wrote Do you mean you want to
“Of course you can,” she said. “Always. You know that.” I wrote Thats not what I asked you She read it. Then she didn’t move. I wrote Look at me She did so, looking at me from out or across what it was that I would recognise in a moment now.
“Yes,” she said.
I wrote Didnt I just tell you you dont ever have to be afraid and this time I had to move the pad slightly to draw her attention to it, until she said, not looking up:
“I dont have to go away either?”
I wrote No under her eyes this time, then she looked up, at me, and I knew what it was she looked out of or across: the immeasurable loss, the appeaseless grief, the fidelity and the enduring, the dry quacking voice saying, “Gavin. Gavin. Gavin.” while I wrote
because we are the 2 in all the world who can love each other without having to the end of it tailing off in a sort of violent rubric as she clasped me, clinging to me, quite hard, the dry clapping voice saying,
“Gavin. Gavin. I love you. I love you,” so that I had to break free to reach the pad and write
Give me the card
She stared down at it, her hands arrested in the act of leaving my shoulders. “Card?” she said. Then she said, “I’ve lost it.”
Then I knew: a flash, like lightning. I wrote your father even while I was saying out loud: “Oh the son of a bitch, the son of a bitch,” saying to myself Wait. Wait! He had to. Put yourself in his place. What else could he do, what other weapon did he have to defend his very existence before she destroyed it—the position he had sacrificed everything for—wife home friends peace—to gain the only prize heen shw since it was the only one he could understand since the world itself as he understood it assured him that was what he wanted because that was the only thing worth having. Of course: his only possible weapon: gain possession of the card, hold the threat of turning it in to the F.B.I, over her and stop her before she destroyed him. Yet all this time I was telling myself You know better. He will use it to destroy her. It was he himself probably who scrawled Jew Communist Kohl on his own sidewalk at midnight to bank a reserve of Jefferson sympathy against the day when he would be compelled to commit his only child to the insane asylum. I wrote
Ransacked your room drawers desk
“Somebody did,” she said. “It was last year. I thought—” I wrote
It was your father
“Was it?” Yes, it was exactly that tone. I wrote
Dont you know it was
“Does it matter? They will send me another one I suppose. But that doesn’t matter either. I haven’t changed. I dont have to have a little printed card to show it.”
This time I wrote slowly and carefully You dont have to go I wont ask any more but when I do ask you again to go will you just believe me & go at once I will make all plans will you do that
“Yes,” she said.
I wrote Swear
“Yes,” she said. “Then you can marry.” I couldn’t have written anyway; she had caught up both my hands, holding them between hers against her chest. “You must. I want you to. You mustn’t miss that. Nobody must never have had that once. Nobody. Nobody.” She was looking at me. “That word you didn’t like. My mother said that to you once too, didn’t she.” It wasn’t even a question. “Did you?”
I freed my hands and wrote You know we didnt
“Why didn’t you?”
I wrote Because she felt sorry for me when you do things for people just because you feel sorry for them what you do is probably not very important to you
“I dont feel sorry for you. You know that. Dont you know it will be important to me?”
I wrote Then maybe it was because I wasnt worthy of her & we both knew it but I thought if we didnt maybe she might always think maybe I might have been and ripped the sheet off and crumpled it into my pocket and wrote I must go now
“Dont go,” she said. Then she said, “Yes, go. You see, I’m all right now, I’m not even afraid any more.”
I wrote why should you ever have been then on the same sheet My hat and she went and got it while I gathered up the rest of the used sheets into my pocket and took the hat and went toward the door, the quacking voice saying “Gavin” until I turned. “How did we say it? the only two people in the world that love each other and dont have to? I love you, Gavin,” in that voice, tone which to her was whispering, murmuring perhaps but to anyone tragic enough to still have ears was as penetrating and shocking almost as an old-time klaxon automobile horn.
And out, fast and quick out of his house, his mansion, his palace, on to his bank fast and quick too, right on back into that little room and bump, nudge, startle the propped feet off the fireplace, my hand already out: “I will now take that card, if you please.” Except that would be wantonly throwing away an opportunity, a gift actually; why let him pick his moment to surrender, produce the evidence on his side, to the F.B.I.? Why not strike first, sic the F.B.I, on him before he could, as Ratliff would say, snatch back: that mild neutral gray man flashing that badge on him, saying, “We have it on authority, Mr Snopes, that you have a Communist party card in your possession. Do you care to make a statement?”
But I didn’t know where Gihon would be now and, his declared enemy, he wouldn’t believe me. So the F.B.I., as represented by him was out; I would have to go straight to that vast Omnipotence called Govment; the stool-pigeoning itself must be unimpeachable; it must stem from the milieu and hold rigidly to the vernacular. A post card of course, a penny post card. I thought first of addressing it to the President of the United States but with the similar nut mail Mr Roosevelt was probably already getting, mine would be drowned in that flood. Which left the simple military. But although the military never loses any piece of paper once it has been written on and signed (anything else yes, it will abandon or give away or destroy, but a piece of signed paper never, though it have to subsidise and uniform a thousand people to do nothing else but guard it); it would inevitably reappear someday even if it took a hundred years, but that would be too long also. Whereupon I suddenly overheard myself asking, What’s wrong with your first idea of the F.B.I.? to which the only answer was, Nothing. So I could even see the completed card. The vernacular was an informed one, it knew there were two Hoovers: one a carpet sweeper and the other had been President, and that the head of the F.B.I, was said to be named Hoover. So I could see it:
HERBERT HOOVER
F.B.I. DEPARTMENT
then paused, because not Washington; this vernacular was not only knowledgeable but consistent too so I thought first of Parchman, Mississippi, the State Penitentiary, except that the mail clerk there would probably be a trusty possibly in for life so what would a span of time computable in mere days, especially in regard to a piece of mail, be to him? and again it would be lost. Then I had the answer: Jackson, the Capital. It would be perfect: not really a big city, so that the agents there would be just bored and idle enough to leap at this opportunity; besides not being far. So that’s what it would be:
Herbert Hoover
F B & I Depment
/div> Jackson Miss
If you will come up to Jefferson Miss and serch warant the bank and home of Flem Snopes you will fined a commonist party Card
Patriotic Citizen
Whereupon you will object that “search warrant” is a little outside this writer’s vernacular and that the spelling of “find” is really going a little too far. Whereupon I rebut you that this writer knows exactly what he is talking about; that “search warrant” and “fined” are the two words of them all which he would never make any mistake regarding, no matter how he might spell them: the one being constantly imminent in his (by his belief, in yours too) daily future and the other or its synonym “jailed” being its constant coadjutant.
If I only dared. You see? even if I burgled his house or bank vault and found the card and erased her name and substituted his to pa
ss their gimlet muster, she herself would be the first to leap, spring, deny, refute, claim and affirm it for her own; she would probably have gone to Gihon or any else available before this and declared her convictions if it had occurred to her they might be interested. Whereupon, from then until even the stronger alliance of cosmic madmen had finally exhausted themselves into peace and oblivion, she would be harried and harassed and spied upon day and night, waking and eating and sleeping too. So finally I had to fall back, not on her innocent notion that it wasn’t important, really wouldn’t matter anyway, but on my own more evil or—and/or—legal conviction that it was his only weapon of defense and he wouldn’t use it until he was frightened into it.
Or hope perhaps. Anyway, that’s how it stood until in fact the Battle of Britain saved her; otherwise all that remained was simply to go to him and say, “I want that card,” which would be like walking up to a stranger and saying Did you steal my wallet. So the Battle of Britain saved her, him too for a time. I mean, the reports, stories now coming back to us of the handful of children fighting it. Because during the rest of that spring and summer and fall of 1940 she was getting more and more restless. Oh, she was still doing her Negro Sunday school classes, still “meddling” as the town called it, but after a fashion condoned now, perhaps by familiarity and also that no one had discovered yet any way to stop her.
This, until June when Chick came home from Cambridge. Whereupon I suddenly realised—discovered—two things: that it was apparently Chick now who was our family’s representative in her social pattern; and that she knew more than even he of the R.A.F. names and the machines they flew: Malan and Aitken and Finucane and Spitfire and Beaufighter and Hurricane and Buerling and Deere and the foreigners too like the Americans who wouldn’t wait and the Poles and Frenchmen who declined to be whipped: Daymond and Wzlewski and Clostermann; until that September, when we compromised: Chick agreed to take one more year of law and we agreed to let it be the University over at Oxford instead of Cambridge. Which was perhaps the reason: when he left, she no longer had anyone to swap the names with. So I should not have been surprised when she came to the office. Nor did she say I must do something to help, I’ve got to do something, I cant just sit here idle; she said:
“I’m going away. I’ve got a job, in a factory in California where they make aircraft to be sent to Europe,” and I scribbling, scrawling Wait. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all settled. I wrote them that I couldn’t hear but that I was familiar enough with truck engines and gears to learn what they needed. And they said for me to come on out, just bring a few papers with me. You know: letters saying you have known me long enough to assure them she is moral and doesn’t get too tight and nobody has caught her stealing yet. That’s what you are to do because you can even sign them Chairman of the Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, Draft Board,” and I still scrawling Wait, or no, not writing it again because I already had: just gripping her with one hand and holding the pad up with the other until she read it and stopped or stopped long enough to read it or at least hushed and I could write:
at this factory all factories an individual of limitless power called Security whose job position is the 1 thing on earth between him if being drafted into the and ripped that sheet off, already writing again, her hand, her arm across my shoulder so I could feel her breathing and feel smell her hair against my cheek army which naturally he will defend with his life by producing not too far apart provable subversives so that sooner or later he will reach you & fire you you’re and ripped that one off, not stopping member the Mississippi coast Biloxi Ocean Springs you were there
“Yes. With Mother and”—and now I thought she would stop but she didn’t even pause—“Manfred. I remember.”
I wrote Pascagoula a shipyard where they are building ships to carry airplanes guns tanks if California will take you so will they will you go there
“Yes,” she said. She said, “Russia.” She drew a long breath. “But the Security will be there too.”
I wrote yes but thats close I could come there quick if even if Security I could probably find you something else
“Yes,” she said, breathing quiet and slow at my shoulder. “Close. I could come home on week-ends.”
I wrote you might have to work weekends they need ships
“Then you can come there. The draft board is closed on weekends, isn’t it?”
I wrote we will see
“But together sometimes now and then. That’s why I was afraid about California, because it’s so far. But Pascagoula is close. At least occasionally now and then.”
I wrote Of course
“All right,” she said. “Of course I’ll go.”
Which she did, right after New Year’s, 1941 now. I knew a lawyer there so she had a small apartment with its own entrance in a private home. And apparently her belief was that, once she was free of Jefferson, at least twelve hours away from interdiction by Sno or me or either or both, nobody could challenge her intention to buy a small car and run it herself, until I threatened to tell the Pascagoula police myself that she was deaf the first time I heard about it. So she agreed to refrain and my lawyer friend arranged for her in a car pool and presently she was at work as a tool checker, though almost at once she wrote that she had almost got them to agree to let her become a riveter, where the deafness would be an actual advantage. Anyway, she could wear overalls again, once more minuscule in that masculine or rather sexless world engaged, trying to cope with the lethal mechanical monstrosities which war has become now, and perhaps she was even at peace again, if peace is possible to anyone. Anyway, at first there were the letters saying When you come we will and then If you come dont forget and then several weeks and just a penny post card saying I miss you and nothing more—that almost inarticulate paucity of the picture cards saying Wish you were here or This is our room which the semiliterate send back, until the last one, a letter again. I mean, in an envelope: It’s all right. I understand. I know how busy the draft board has to be. Just come when you can because I have something to ask you. To which I answered at once, immediately (I was about to add, Because I dont know what I thought. Only I know exactly what I thought) Ask me or tell me? so that I already knew beforehand what her answer would he: Yes. Ask you.
So (it was summer again now) I telegraphed a date and she answered Have booked room will meet what train love and I answered that (who had refused to let her own one) Coming by car will pick you up at shipyard Tuesday quitting time love and I was there. She came out with the shift she belonged in, in the overall, already handing me the tablet and stylus before she kissed me, clinging to me, hard, saying, “Tell me everything,” until I could free myself to write, restricted again to the three- or four-word bursts and gaggles before having to erase:
You tell me what It is
“Let’s go to the beach.” And I:
You dont want to Go home first & Change
“No. Let’s go to the beach.” We did. I parked the car and it seemed to me I had already written Now tell me but she was already out of the car, already waiting for me, to take the tablet and stylus from me and thrust them into her pocket, then took my near arm in both her hands, we walking so, she clinging with both hands to my arm so that we would bump and stagger every few steps, the sun just setting and our one shadow long along the tide-edge before us and I thinking No no, that cant he it when she said, “Wait,” and released me, digging into the other overall pocket from the tablet. “I’ve got something for you. I almost forgot it.” It was a shell; we had probably trodden on a million of them since we left the car two hundred yards back, I still thinking It cant be that. That cant be so “I found it the first day. I was afraid I might lose it before you got here, but I didn’t. Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“What?” she said, already handing me the tablet and stylus. I wrote
Damn fine now Tell me
“Yes,” she said. She clung, gripping my arm hard and strong
in both hands again, we walking again and I thinking Why not, why shouldn’t it be so, why should there not be somewhere in the world at least one more Barton Kohl or at least a fair substitute, something to do, at least something a little better than grief when she said, “Now,” and stopped and turned us until we faced the moment’s pause before the final plunge of the sun, the tall and ragged palms and pines fixed by that already fading explosion until the night breeze would toss and thresh them. Then it passed. Now it was just sunset. “There,” she said. “It’s all right now. We were here. We saved it. Used it. I mean, for the earth to have come all this long way from the beginning of the earth, and the sun to have come all this long way from the beginning of time, for this one day and minute and second out of all the days and minutes and seconds, and nobody to use it, no two people who are finally together at last after all the difficulties and waiting, and now they are together at last and are desperate because of all the long waiting, they are even running along the beach toward where the place is, not far now, where they will finally be alone together at last and nobody in the world to know or care or interfere so that it’s like the world itself wasn’t except you so now the world that wasn’t even invented yet can begin.” And I thinking Maybe its the fidelity and the enduring which must be so at least once in your lifetime, no matter who sufifers. That you have heard of love and loss and grief and fidelity and enduring and you have seen love and loss and maybe you have even seen love and loss and grief but not all five of them—or four of them, since the fidelity and enduring I am speaking of were inextricable: one—this, even while she was saying, “I dont mean just—” and stopped herself before I could have raised the hand to clap to on her lips—if I had been going to, saying: “It’s all right, I haven’t forgotten; I’m not going to say that one any more.” She looked at me. “So maybe you already know what I’m going to ask you.” “Yes,” I said; she could read that. I wrote marriage
Snopes: The Hamlet, the Town, the Mansion Page 103