“Fore God,” old Het said. “You could choke a shoat with it.”
“How many mules have you got in that lot?” Mr Flem said to I.O. Still I.O. just watched him. Then he blinked, rapid and hard.
“Seven,” he said.
“You’ve got six,” Mr Flem said. “You just finished selling one of them to Mrs Hait. The railroad says the kind of mules you deal in are worth sixty dollars a head. You claim they are worth a hundred and fifty. All right. We wont argue. Six times a hundred and fifty is—”
“Seven!” I.O. said, loud and harsh. “I aint sold Mrs Hait nor nobody else that mule. Watch.” He faced Mrs Hait. “We aint traded. We aint never traded. I defy you to produce ara man or woman that seen or heard more than you tried to hand me this here same ten-dollar bill that I’m a handing right back to you. Here,” he said, extending the crumpled bill, then jerking it at her so that it struck against her skirt and fell to the ground. She picked it up.
“You giving this back to me?” she said. “Before these witnesses?”
“You durn right I am,” he said. “I jest wish we had ten times this many witnesses.” Now he was talking to Mr Flem. “So I aint sold nobody no mule. And seven times a hundred and fifty dollars is ten hundred and fifty dollars — —”
“Nine hundred dollars,” Mr Flem said.
“Ten hundred and fifty,” I.O. said.
“When you bring me the mule,” Mr Flem said. “And on the main condition.”
“What main condition?” I.O. said.
“That you move back to Frenchman’s Bend and never own a business in Jefferson again as long as you live.”
“And if I dont?” I.O. said.
“I sold the hotel this evening too,” Mr Flem said. And now even I.O. just watched him while he turned toward the light of the fire and began to count bills — they were mostly fives and ones, with an occasional ten — from the roll. I.O. made one last effort.
“Ten hundred and fifty,” he said.
“When you bring me the mule,” Mr Flem said. So it was still only nine hundred dollars which I.O. took and counted for himself and folded away into his hip pocket and buttoned the pocket and turned to Mrs Hait.
“All right,” he said, “where’s Mister Vice Presi-dent Snopes’s other mule?”
“Tied to a tree in the ravine ditch behind Mr Spilmer’s house,” Mrs Hait said.
“What made you stop there?” I.O. said. “Why didn’t you take it right on up to Mottstown? Then you could a really enjoyed my time and trouble getting it back.” He looked around again, snarling, sneering, indomitably intractable. “You’re right fixed up here, aint you? You and the vice president could both save money if he jest kept that mortgage which aint on nothing now noway, and you didn’t build no house a-tall. Well, good night, all. Soon as I get this-here missing extry mule into the lot with the vice presi-dent’s other six, I’ll do myself the honor and privilege of calling at his residence for them other hundred and fifty dollars since cash on the barrel-head is the courtesy of kings, as the feller says, not to mention the fact that beggars’ choices aint even choices when he aint even got a roof to lay his head in no more. And if Lawyer Stevens has got ara thing loose about him the vice presi-dent might a taken a notion to, he better hold onto it since as the feller says even a fool wont tread where he jest got through watching somebody else get bit. Again, good night all.” Then he was gone. And this time Uncle Gavin said that Mr Flem had to speak to him twice before he heard him.
“What?” Uncle Gavin said.
“I said, how much do I owe you?” Mr Flem said. And Uncle Gavin said he started to say One dollar, so that Mr Flem would say One dollar? Is that all? and then Uncle Gavin could say Yes, or your knife or pencil or just anything so that when I wake up tomorrow I’ll know I didn’t dream this. But he didn’t. He just said:
“Nothing. Mrs Hait is my client.” And he said how again Mr Flem had to speak twice. “What?” Uncle Gavin said.
“You can send me your bill.”
“For what?” Uncle Gavin said.
“For being the witness,” Mr Snopes said.
“Oh,” Uncle Gavin said. And now Mr Snopes was going and Uncle Gavin said how he expected he might even have said Are you going back to town now? or maybe even Shall we walk together? or maybe at least Goodbye. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all. He simply turned and left and was gone too. Then Mrs Hait said:
“Get the box.”
“That’s what I been aiming to do soon as you can turn loose all this business and steady this skillet,” old Het said. So Mrs Hait came and took the chair and the fork and old Het went into the shed and set the lantern on the ground and brought the box and set it at the fire. “Now, honey,” she said to Uncle Gavin, “set down and rest.”
“You take it,” Uncle Gavin said. “I’ve been sitting down all day. You haven’t.” Though old Het had already begun to sit down on the box before he declined it; she had already forgotten him, watching now the skillet containing the still hissing ham which Mrs Hait had lifted from the fire.
“Was it you mentioned something about a piece of that ham,” she said, “or was it me?” So Mrs Hait divided the ham and Uncle Gavin watched them eat, Mrs Hait in the chair with the new plate and knife and fork, and old Het on the box eating from the skillet itself since Mrs Hait had apparently purchased only one of each new article, eating the ham and sopping the bread into the greasy residue of its frying, and old Het had filled the coffee cup from the pot and produced from somewhere an empty can for her own use when I.O. came back, coming up quietly out of the darkness (it was full dark now), to stand holding his hands to the blaze as though he were cold.
“I reckon I’ll take that ten dollars,” he said.
“What ten dollars?” Mrs Hait said. And now Uncle Gavin expected him to roar, or at least snarl. But he did neither, just standing there with his hands to the blaze; and Uncle Gavin said he did look cold, small, forlorn somehow since he was so calm, so quiet.
“You aint going to give it back to me?” he said.
“Give what back to you?” Mrs Hait said. Uncle Gavin said he didn’t seem to expect an answer nor even to hear her: just standing there musing at the fire in a kind of quiet and unbelieving amazement.
“I bear the worry and the risk and the agoment for years and years, and I get sixty dollars a head for them. While you, one time, without no trouble and risk a-tall, sell Lonzo Hait and five of my mules that never even belonged to him, for eighty-five hundred dollars. Of course most of that-ere eighty-five hundred was for Lonzo, which I never begrudged you. Cant nere a man living say I did, even if it did seem a little strange that you should get it all, even my sixty standard price a head for them five mules, when he wasn’t working for you and you never even knowed where he was, let alone even owned the mules; that all you done to get half of that money was just to be married to him. And now, after all them years of not actively begrudging you it, you taken the last mule I had, not didn’t jest beat me out of another hundred and forty dollars, but out of a entire another hundred and fifty.”
“You got your mule back, and you aint satisfied yet?” old Het said. “What does you want?”
“Justice,” I.O. said. “That’s what I want. That’s all I want: justice. For the last time,” he said. “Are you going to give me my ten dollars back?”
“What ten dollars?” Mrs Hait said. Then he turned. He stumbled over something — Uncle Gavin said it was old Het’s shopping bag — and recovered and went on. Uncle Gavin said he could see him for a moment — he could because neither Mrs Hait nor old Het were watching him any longer — as though framed between the two blackened chimneys, flinging both clenched hands up against the sky. Then he was gone; this time it was for good. That is, Uncle Gavin watched him. Mrs Hait and old Het had not even looked up.
“Honey,” old Het said to Mrs Hait, “what did you do with that mule?” Uncle Gavin said there was one slice of bread left. Mrs Hait took it and sopped the last of the
gravy from her plate.
“I shot it,” she said.
“You which?” old Het said. Mrs Hait began to eat the slice of bread. “Well,” old Het said, “the mule burnt the house and you shot the mule. That’s what I calls more than justice: that’s what I calls tit for tat.” It was full dark now, and ahead of her was still the mile-and-a-half walk to the poorhouse with the heavy shopping bag. But the dark would last a long time on a winter night, and Uncle Gavin said the poorhouse too wasn’t likely to move any time soon. So he said that old Het sat back on the box with the empty skillet in her hand and sighed with peaceful and happy relaxation. “Gentlemen, hush,” she said. “Aint we had a day.”
And there, as Uncle Gavin would say, was Ratliff again, sitting in the client’s chair with his blue shirt neat and faded and quite clean and still no necktie even though he was wearing the imitation leather jacket and carrying the heavy black policeman’s slicker which were his winter overcoat; it was Monday and Uncle Gavin had gone that morning over to New Market to the supervisors’ meeting on some more of the drainage canal business and I thought he would have told Ratliff that when Ratliff came to see him yesterday afternoon at home.
“He might a mentioned it,” Ratliff said. “But it dont matter. I didn’t want nothing. I jest stopped in here where it’s quiet to laugh a little.”
“Oh,” I said. “About I.O. Snopes’s mule that burned down Mrs Hait’s house. I thought you and Uncle Gavin laughed at that enough yesterday.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Because soon as you set down to laugh at it, you find out it aint funny a-tall.” He looked at me. “When will your uncle be back?”
“I thought he would be back now.”
“Oh well,” he said. “It dont matter.” He looked at me again. “So that’s two down and jest one more to go.”
“One more what?” I said. “One more Snopes for Mr Flem to run out of Jefferson, and the only Snopes left will be him; or—”
“That’s right,” he said. “ — one more uncivic ditch to jump like Montgomery Ward’s photygraph studio and I.O.’s railroad mules, and there wont be nothing a-tall left in Jefferson but Flem Snopes.” He looked at me. “Because your uncle missed it.”
“Missed what?” I said.
“Even when he was looking right at it when Flem his — himself come in here the morning after them — those federals raided that studio and give your uncle that studio key that had been missing from the sheriff’s office ever since your uncle and Hub found them — those pictures; and even when it was staring him in the face out yonder at Miz Hait’s chimbley Saturday night when Flem give — gave her that mortgage and paid I.O. for the mules, he still missed it. And I cant tell him.”
“Why cant you tell him?” I said.
“Because he wouldn’t believe me. This here is the kind of a thing you — a man has got to know his — himself. He has got to learn it out of his own hard dread and skeer. Because what somebody else jest tells you, you jest half believe, unless it was something you already wanted to hear. And in that case, you dont even listen to it because you had done already agreed, and so all it does is make you think what a sensible feller it was that told you. But something you dont want to hear is something you had done already made up your mind against, whether you knowed — knew it or not; and now you can even insulate against having to believe it by resisting or maybe even getting even with that-ere scoundrel that meddled in and told you.”
“So he wouldn’t hear you because he wouldn’t believe it because it is something he dont want to be true. Is that it?”
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “So I got to wait. I got to wait for him to learn it his — himself, the hard way, the sure way, the only sure way. Then he will believe it, enough anyhow to be afraid.”
“He is afraid,” I said. “He’s been afraid a long time.”
“That’s good,” Ratliff said. “Because he had purely better be. All of us better be. Because a feller that jest wants money for the sake of money, or even for power, there’s a few things right at the last that he wont do, will stop at. But a feller that come — came up from where he did, that soon as he got big enough to count it he thought he discovered that money would buy anything he could or would ever want, and shaped all the rest of his life and actions on that, trompling when and where he had to but without no — any hard feelings because he knowed — knew that he wouldn’t ask nor expect no — any quarter his — himself if it had been him; — to do all this and then find out at last, when he was a man growed — grown and it was maybe already too late, that the one thing he would have to have if there was to be any meaning to his life or even peace in it, was not only something that jest money couldn’t buy, it was something that not having money to begin with or even getting a holt of all he could count or imagine or even dream about and then losing it, couldn’t even hurt or harm or grieve or change or alter; — to find out when it was almost too late that what he had to have was something that any child was born having for free until one day he growed — grew up and found out when it was maybe too late that he had throwed — thrown it away.”
“What?” I said. “What is it he’s got to have?”
“Respectability,” Ratliff said.
“Respectability?”
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “When it’s jest money and power a man wants, there is usually some place where he will stop; there’s always one thing at least that ever — every man wont do for jest money. But when it’s respectability he finds out he wants and has got to have, there aint nothing he wont do to get it and then keep it. And when it’s almost too late when he finds out that’s what he’s got to have, and that even after he gets it he cant jest lock it up and set — sit down on top of it and quit, but instead he has got to keep on working with ever — every breath to keep it, there aint nothing he will stop at, aint nobody or nothing within his scope and reach that may not anguish and grieve and suffer.”
“Respectability,” I said.
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “Vice president of that bank aint enough anymore. He’s got to be president of it.”
“Got to be?” I said.
“I mean soon, that he dont dare risk waiting, putting it off. That girl of Miz Snopes’s — Linda. She’s going on—”
“She’ll be nineteen the twelfth of April,” I said.
“ — nineteen now, over there —— How do you know it’s the twelfth?”
“That’s what Uncle Gavin says,” I said.
“Sho, now,” Ratliff said. Then he was talking again. “ — at the University at Oxford where there’s a thousand extry young fellers all new and strange and interesting and male and nobody a-tall to watch her except a hired dormitory matron that aint got no wife expecting to heir half of one half of Uncle Billy Varner’s money, when it was risky enough at the Academy right here in Jefferson last year before your uncle or her maw or whichever it was or maybe both of them together, finally persuaded Flem to let her quit at the Academy and go to the University after Christmas where he couldn’t his — himself supervise her masculine acquaintance down to the same boys she had growed — grown up with all her life so at least their folks might have kinfolks that owed him money to help handle them; not to mention having her home ever — every night where he could reach out and put his hand on her ever — every time the clock struck you might say. So he cant, he dassent, risk it; any time now the telegram or the telephone might come saying she had jest finished running off to the next nearest town with a j.p. in it that never give a hoot who Flem Snopes was, and got married. And even if he located them ten minutes later and dragged her — —”
“Drug,” I said.
“ — back, the — What?” he said.
“Drug,” I said. “You said ‘dragged’.”
Ratliff looked at me a while. “For ten years now, whenever he would stop talking his-self long enough that is, and for five of them I been listening to you too, trying to learn — teach myself to say words r
ight. And, jest when I call myself about to learn and I begin to feel a little good over it, here you come, of all people, correcting me back to what I been trying for ten years to forget.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s because I like the way you say it. When you say it, ‘taken’ sounds a heap more took than just ‘took’, just like ‘drug’ sounds a heap more dragged than just ‘dragged’.”
“And not jest you neither,” Ratliff said. “Your uncle too: me saying ‘dragged’ and him saying ‘drug’ and me saying ‘dragged’ and him saying ‘drug’ again, until at last he would say, ‘In a free country like this, why aint I got as much right to use your drug for my dragged as you got to use my dragged for your drug?’”
“All right,” I said. “ ‘Even if he drug her back’.”
“ — even if he drug — dragged — drug — You see?” he said. “Now you done got me so mixed up until even I dont know which one I dont want to say?”
“ ‘ — it would be too late and the damage’—” I said.
“Yes,” Ratliff said. “And at least even your Uncle Gavin knows this; even a feller as high- and delicate-minded as him must know that the damage would be done then and Miz Snopes would quit Flem too and he could kiss goodbye not jest to her share of Uncle Billy’s money but even to the voting weight of his bank stock too. So Flem’s got to strike now, and quick. He’s not only got to be president of that bank to at least keep that much of a holt on that Varner money by at least being president of where Uncle Billy keeps it at, he’s got to make his lick before the message comes that Linda’s done got married or he’ll lose the weight of Uncle Billy’s voting stock.”
SEVENTEEN
Gavin Stevens
AT LAST WE knew why he had moved his money. It was as a bait. Not putting it into the other bank, the old Bank of Jefferson, as the bait, but for the people of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County to find out that he had withdrawn his own money from the bank of which he himself was vice president, and put it somewhere else.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 485