“Tough luck, kid,” he said. “Nice going almost; too bad your uncle telegraphed it for you,” and threw the stick into the corner and stepped around me toward the door, which was the first time I reckon that any of us realised that whoever it was he had locked out was still banging on it, and shot the bolt back and opened it then stepped back himself as Linda came in, blazing; yes, that’s exactly the word for it: blazing: and without even looking at Uncle Gavin or me, whirled onto her tiptoes and slapped Matt twice, first with her left hand and then her right, panting and crying at the same time:
“You fool! You ox! You clumsy ignorant ox! You clumsy ignorant stupid son of a bitch!” Which was the first time I ever heard a sixteen-year-old girl say that. No: the first time I ever heard any woman say that, standing there facing Matt and crying hard now, like she was too mad to even know what to do next, whether to slap him again or curse him again, until Uncle Gavin came around the desk and touched her and said,
“Stop it. Stop it now,” and she turned and grabbed him, her face against his shirt where he had bled onto it, still crying hard, saying,
“Mister Gavin, Mister Gavin, Mister Gavin.”
“Open the door, Chick,” Uncle Gavin said. I opened it. “Get out of here, boy,” Uncle Gavin said to Matt. “Go on.” Then Matt was gone. I started to close the door. “You too,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Sir?” I said.
“You get out too,” Uncle Gavin said, still holding Linda where she was shaking and crying against him, his nose bleeding onto her too now.
THIRTEEN
Gavin Stevens
GO ON,” I said. “You get out too.” So he did, and I stood there holding her. Or rather, she was gripping me, quite hard, shuddering and gasping, crying quite hard now, burrowing her face into my shirt so that I could feel my shirt front getting wet. Which was what Ratliff would have called tit for tat, since what Victorians would have called the claret from my nose had already stained the shoulder of her dress. So I could free one hand long enough to reach around and over her other shoulder to the handkerchief in my breast pocket and do a little emergency work with it until I could separate us long enough to reach the cold water tap.
“Stop it,” I said. “Stop it now.” But she only cried the harder, clutching me, saying,
“Mister Gavin. Mister Gavin. Oh, Mister Gavin.”
“Linda,” I said. “Can you hear me?” She didn’t answer, just clutching me; I could feel her nodding her head against my chest. “Do you want to marry me?” I said.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! All right! All right!”
This time I got one hand under her chin and lifted her face by force until she would have to look at me. Ratliff had told me that McCarron’s eyes were gray, probably the same hard gray as Hub Hampton’s. Hers were not gray at all. They were darkest hyacinth, what I have always imagined that Homer’s hyacinthine sea must have had to look like.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Do you want to get married?” Yes, they dont need minds at all, except for conversation, social intercourse. And I have known some who had charm and tact without minds even then. Because when they deal with men, with human beings, all they need is the instinct, the intuition before it became battered and dulled, the infinite capacity for devotion untroubled and unconfused by cold moralities and colder facts.
“You mean I dont have to?” she said.
“Of course not,” I said. “Never if you like.”
“I dont want to marry anybody!” she said, cried; she was clinging to me again, her face buried again in the damp mixture of blood and tears which seemed now to compose the front of my shirt and tie. “Not anybody!” she said. “You’re all I have, all I can trust. I love you! I love you!”
FOURTEEN
Charles Mallison
WHEN HE GOT home, his face was clean. But his nose and his lip still showed, and there wasn’t anything he could have done about his shirt and tie. Except he could have bought new ones, since on Saturday the stores were still open. But he didn’t. Maybe even that wouldn’t have made any difference with Mother; maybe that’s one of the other things you have to accept in being a twin. And yes sir, if dentists’ drills could talk, that’s exactly what Mother would have sounded like after she got done laughing and crying both and saying Damn you, Gavin, damn you damn you, and Uncle Gavin had gone up stairs to put on a clean shirt and tie for supper.
“Forming her mind,” Mother said.
It was like he could stand just anything except getting knocked down or getting his nose bloodied. Like if Mr de Spain hadn’t knocked him down in the alley behind that Christmas dance, he could have got over Mrs Snopes without having to form Linda’s mind. And like if Matt Levitt hadn’t come into the office that afternoon and bloodied his nose again, he could have stopped there with Linda’s mind without having to do any more to it.
So he didn’t stop because he couldn’t. But at least he got rid of Matt Levitt. That was in the spring, it was her last year in high school; she would graduate in May and any school afternoon I could see her walking along the street from school with a few books under her arm. But if any of them was poetry now I didn’t know it, because when she came to Christian’s drugstore now she wouldn’t even look toward the door, just walking on past with her face straight in front and her head up a little like the pointer just a step or two from freezing on the game; walking on like she saw people, saw Jefferson, saw the Square all right because at the moment, at any moment she had to walk on and among and through something and it might as well be Jefferson and Jefferson people and the Jefferson Square as anything else, but that was all.
Because Uncle Gavin wasn’t there somewhere around like an accident any more now. But then, if Uncle Gavin wasn’t sitting on the opposite side of that marble-topped table in Christian’s watching her eating something out of a tall glass that cost every bit of fifteen or twenty cents, Matt Levitt wasn’t there either. Him and his cut-down racer both because the racer was empty now except for Matt himself after the garage closed on week days, creeping along the streets and across the Square in low gear, parallelling but a little behind where she would be walking to the picture show now with another girl or maybe two or three of them, her head still high and not once looking at him while the racer crept along at her elbow almost, the cutout going chuckle-chuckle-chuckle, right up to the picture show and the two or three or four girls had gone into it. Then the racer would dash off at full speed around the block, to come rushing back with the cut-out as loud as he could make it, up the alley beside the picture show and then across in front of it and around the block and up the alley again, this time with Otis Harker, who had succeeded Grover Cleveland Winbush as night marshal after Grover Cleveland retired after what Ratliff called his eye trouble, waiting at the corner yelling at Matt at the same time he was jumping far enough back not to be run over.
And on Sunday through the Square, the cut-out going full blast and Mr Buck Connors, the day marshal now, hollering after him. And now he — Matt — had a girl with him, a country girl he had found somewhere, the racer rushing and roaring through the back streets into the last one, to rush slow and loud past Linda’s house, as if the sole single symbol of frustrated love or anyway desire or maybe just frustration possible in Jefferson was an automobile cut-out; the sole single manifestation which love or anyway desire was capable of assuming in Jefferson, was rushing slow past the specific house with the cut-out wide open, so that he or she would have to know who was passing no matter how hard they worked at not looking out the window.
Though by that time Mr Connors had sent for the sheriff himself. He — Mr Connors — said his first idea was to wake up Otis Harker to come back to town and help him but when Otis heard that what Mr Connors wanted was to stop that racer, Otis wouldn’t even get out of bed. Later, afterward, somebody asked Matt if he would have run over Mr Hampton too and Matt said — he was crying then, he was so mad— “Hit him? Hub Hampton? have all them god-damn guts splashed over my paint job?” Thoug
h by then even Mr Hampton wasn’t needed for the cut-out because Matt went right on out of town, maybe taking the girl back home; anyway about midnight that night they telephoned in for Mr Hampton to send somebody out to Caledonia where Matt had had a bad fight with Anse McCallum, one of Mr Buddy McCallum’s boys, until Anse snatched up a fence rail or something and would have killed Matt except that folks caught and held them both while they telephoned for the sheriff and brought them both in to town and locked them in the jail and the next morning Mr Buddy McCallum came in on his cork leg and paid them both out and took them down to the lot behind I.O. Snopes’s mule barn and told Anse:
“All right. If you cant be licked fair without picking up a fence rail, I’m going to take my leg off and whip you with it myself.”
So they fought again, without the fence rail this time, with Mr Buddy and a few more men watching them now, and Anse still wasn’t as good as Matt’s Golden Gloves but he never quit until at last Mr Buddy himself said, “All right. That’s enough,” and told Anse to wash his face at the trough and then go and get in the car and then said to Matt: “And I reckon the time has come for you to be moving on too.” Except that wasn’t necessary now either; the garage said Matt was already fired and Matt said,
“Fired, hell. I quit. Tell the son of a bitch to come down here and say that to my face.” And Mr Hampton was there too by then, tall, with his big belly and his little hard eyes looking down at Matt. “Where the hell is my car?” Matt said.
“It’s at my house,” Mr Hampton said. “I had it brought in this morning.”
“Well well,” Matt said. “Too bad, aint it? McCallum came in and sprung me before you had time to sell it and stick the money in your pocket, huh? What are you going to say when I walk over there and get in it and start the engine?”
“Nothing, son,” Mr Hampton said. “Whenever you want to leave.”
“Which is right now,” Matt said. “And when I leave your.… ing town, my foot’ll be right down to the floor board on that cut-out too. And you can stick that too, but not in your pocket. What do you think of that?”
“Nothing, son,” Mr Hampton said. “I’ll make a trade with you. Run that cut-out wide open all the way to the county line and then ten feet past it, and I wont let anybody bother you if you’ll promise never to cross it again.”
And that was all. That was Monday, trade day; it was like the whole county was there, had come to town just to stand quiet around the Square and watch Matt cross it for the last time, the paper suitcase he had come to Jefferson with on the seat by him and the cut-out clattering and popping; nobody waving goodbye to him and Matt not looking at any of us: just that quiet and silent suspension for the little gaudy car to rush slowly and loudly through, blatant and noisy and defiant yet at the same time looking as ephemeral and innocent and fragile as a child’s toy, a birthday favor, so that looking at it you knew it would probably never get as far as Memphis, let alone Ohio; on across the Square and into the street which would become the Memphis highway at the edge of town, the sound of the cut-out banging and clattering and echoing between the walls, magnified a thousand times now beyond the mere size and bulk of the frail little machine which produced it; and we — some of us — thinking how surely now he would rush slow and roaring for the last time at least past Linda Snopes’s house. But he didn’t. He just went on, the little car going faster and faster up the broad street empty too for the moment as if it too had vacated itself for his passing, on past where the last houses of town would give way to country, the vernal space of woods and fields where even the defiant uproar of the cut-out would become puny and fade and be at last absorbed.
So that was what Father called — said to Uncle Gavin — one down. And now it was May and already everybody knew that Linda Snopes was going to be the year’s Number One student, the class’s valedictorian; Uncle Gavin slowed us as we approached Wildermark’s and nudged us in to the window, saying, “That one. Just behind the green one.”
It was a lady’s fitted travelling case.
“That’s for travelling,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said.
“For travelling,” Mother said. “For going away.”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “She’s got to get away from here. Get out of Jefferson.”
“What’s wrong with Jefferson?” Mother said. The three of us stood there. I could see our three reflections in the plate glass, standing there looking at the fitted feminine case. She didn’t talk low or loud: just quiet. “All right,” she said. “What’s wrong with Linda then?”
Uncle Gavin didn’t either. “I dont like waste,” he said. “Everybody should have his chance not to waste.”
“Or his chance to the right not to waste a young girl?” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “I want her to be happy. Everybody should have the chance to be happy.”
“Which she cant possibly do of course just standing still in Jefferson,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. They were not looking at one another. It was like they were not even talking to one another but simply at the two empty reflections in the plate glass, like when you put the written idea into the anonymous and even interchangeable empty envelope, or maybe into the sealed empty bottle to be cast into the sea, or maybe two written thoughts sealed forever at the same moment into two bottles and cast into the sea to float and drift with the tides and the currents on to the cooling world’s end itself, still immune, still intact and inviolate, still ideas and still true and even still facts whether any eye ever saw them again or any other idea ever responded and sprang to them, to be elated or validated or grieved.
“The chance and duty and right to see that everybody is happy, whether they deserve it or not or even want it or not,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “Sorry I bothered you. Come on. Let’s go home. Mrs Rouncewell can send her a dozen sunflowers.”
“Why not?” Mother said, taking his arm, already turning him, our three reflections turning in the plate glass, back toward the entrance and into the store, Mother in front now across to the luggage department.
“I think the blue one will suit her coloring, match her eyes,” Mother said. “It’s for Linda Snopes — her graduation,” Mother told Miss Eunice Gant, the clerk.
“How nice,” Miss Eunice said. “Is Linda going on a trip?”
“Oh yes,” Mother said. “Very likely. At least probably to one of the eastern girls’ schools next year perhaps. Or so I heard.”
“How nice,” Miss Eunice said. “I always say that every young boy and girl should go away from home for at least one year of school in order to learn how the other half lives.”
“How true,” Mother said. “Until you do go and see, all you do is hope. Until you actually see for yourself, you never do give up and settle down, do you?”
“Maggie,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Give up?” Miss Eunice said. “Give up hope? Young people should never give up hope.”
“Of course not,” Mother said. “They dont have to. All they have to do is stay young, no matter how long it takes.”
“Maggie,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Oh,” Mother said, “you want to pay cash for it instead of charge? All right; I’m sure Mr Wildermark wont mind.” So Uncle Gavin took two twenty dollar bills from his wallet and took out one of his cards and gave it to Mother.
“Thank you,” she said. “But Miss Eunice probably has a big one, that will hold all four names.” So Miss Eunice gave her the big card and Mother held out her hand until Uncle Gavin uncapped his pen and gave it to her and we watched her write in the big sprawly hand that still looked like somebody thirteen years old in the ninth grade:
Mr and Mrs Charles Mallison
Charles Mallison Jr
Mr Gavin Stevens
and capped the pen and handed it back to Uncle Gavin and took the card between the thumb and finger of one hand and waved it dry and gave
it to Miss Eunice.
“I’ll send it out tonight,” Miss Eunice said. “Even if the graduation isn’t until next week. It’s such a handsome gift, why shouldn’t Linda have that much more time to enjoy it.”
“Yes,” Mother said. “Why shouldn’t she?” Then we were outside again, our three reflections jumbled into one walking now across the plate glass; Mother had Uncle Gavin’s arm again.
“All four of our names,” Uncle Gavin said. “At least her father wont know a white-headed bachelor sent his seventeen-year-old daughter a fitted travelling case.”
“Yes,” Mother said. “One of them wont know it.”
FIFTEEN
Gavin Stevens
THE DIFFICULTY WAS, how to tell her, explain to her. I mean, why. Not the deed, the act itself, but the reason for it, the why behind it — say point blank to her over one of the monstrous synthetic paradoxes which were her passion or anyway choice in Christian’s drugstore, or perhaps out on the street itself: “We wont meet anymore from now on because after Jefferson assimilates all the details of how your boyfriend tracked you down in my office and bloodied my nose one Saturday, and eight days later, having spent his last night in Jefferson in the county jail, shook our dust forever from his feet with the turbulent uproar of his racer’s cut-out; — after that, for you to be seen still meeting me in ice cream dens will completely destroy what little was left of your good name.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 479