Ratliff does he wrote and erased it and wrote Go out 2 minutes Bathroom your Mouth too and stood while she read it and then herself stood a moment longer, not moving, her head bent as if he had written perhaps in cryptogram. “Oh,” she said. Then she said: “Yes. It’s time,” and turned and went to the door and stopped and half-turned and only then looked at him: no faint smile, no nothing: just the eyes which even at this distance were not quite black. Then she was gone.
He already had the briefcase in his hand. His hat was on the table. He put the envelope into his pocket and scrubbed at his mouth with his handkerchief, taking up the hat in passing, and went on, down the stairs, wetting the handkerchief with spittle to scrub his mouth. There would be a mirror in the hall but this would have to do until he reached the office; there would be, was a back door of course but there was the houseman somewhere and maybe even the cook too. Besides, there was no law against crossing the front lawn itself from the front entrance and so through the side gate into the lane, from which he could reach the street without even having to not look at the new car again. Until Ratliff, happening to be standing by chance or coincidence near the foot of the office stairs, said, “Where’s your car? Never mind, I’ll go pick it up. Meantime you better use some water when you get upstairs.”
He did, and locked the stained handkerchief into a drawer and sat in the office. In time he heard Ratliff’s feet on the stairs though Ratliff shook the locked door only; here was another time when he could have worked at his youthful dream of restoring the Old Testament to its virgin’s pristinity. But he was too old now. Evidently it takes more than just anguish to be all that anguishing. In time the telephone rang. “She’s gone,” Ratliff said. “I’ve got your car. You want to come and eat supper with me?”
“No,” he said.
“You want me to telephone your wife that’s what you’re doing?”
“Dammit, I told you No,” he said. Then he said, “Much obliged.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock say,” Ratliff said.
He was at the curb waiting; the car — his — moved immediately he was in it. “I’m not safe,” he said.
“I reckon so,” Ratliff said. “It’s all over now, soon that is as we get used to it.”
“I mean, you’re not safe. Nobody is, around me. I’m dangerous. Can’t you understand I’ve just committed murder?”
“Oh, that,” Ratliff said. “I decided some time back that maybe the only thing that would make you safe to have around would be for somebody to marry you. That never worked but at least you’re all right now. As you jest said, you finally committed a murder. What else is there beyond that for anybody to think up for you to do?” Now they were on the highway, the town behind them and they could pick up a little speed to face the twenty miles out to Varner’s store. “You know the one in this business I’m really sorry for? It’s Luther Biglin. You ain’t heard about that and likely wouldn’t nobody else if it hadn’t kind of come out today in what you might call a private interview or absolvement between Luther and Eef Bishop. It seems that ever night between last Thursday and the following Tuesday, Luther has been standing or setting guard as close as he could get outside that window from as soon as he could get there after Miz Biglin would get back from the picture show and wake him up, to daylight. You know: having to spend all day long taking care of his jail and prisoners in addition to staying close to the sheriff’s office in case Eef might need him, he would have to get some rest and the only way he could work it would be after he et supper until Miz Biglin, who acted as his alarm clock, got back from the picture show, which would be from roughly seven o’clock to roughly more or less half-past nine or ten o’clock, depending on how long the picture show was, the balance of the night standing or setting in a folding chair jest outside Flem’s window, not for a reward or even glory, since nobody but Miz Biglin knowed it, but simply outen fidelity to Eef Bishop’s sworn oath to defend and protect human life in Jefferson even when the human life was Flem Snopes’s. Yet outen the whole twenty-four hours Mink could a picked, he had to pick one between roughly seven o’clock and roughly nine-thirty to walk in on Flem with that thing whoever sold it to him told him was a pistol, almost like Mink done it outen pure and simple spite — a thing which, as the feller says, to a dog shouldn’t happen.”
“Drive on,” Stevens said. “Pick it up.”
“Yes,” Ratliff said. “So this is what it all come down to. All the ramshacking and foreclosing and grabbling and snatching, doing it by gentle underhand when he could but by honest hard trompling when he had to, with a few of us trying to trip him and still dodge outen the way when we could but getting over-trompled too when we couldn’t. And now all that’s left of it is a bedrode old lady and her retired old-maid schoolteacher daughter that would a lived happily ever after in sunny golden California. But now they got to come all the way back to Missippi and live in that-ere big white elephant of a house where likely Miss Allison will have to go back to work again, maybe might even have to hump and hustle some to keep it up since how can they have mere friends and acquaintances, let alone strangers, saying how a Missippi-born and -bred lady refused to accept a whole house not only gift-free-for-nothing but that was actively theirn anyhow to begin with, without owing even Much obliged to nobody for getting it back. So maybe there’s even a moral in it somewhere, if you jest knowed where to look.”
“There aren’t any morals,” Stevens said. “People just do the best they can.”
“The pore sons of bitches,” Ratliff said.
“The poor sons of bitches,” Stevens said. “Drive on. Pick it up.”
So somewhere about ten o’clock he sat beside Ratliff in the dark car on a hill road that had already ceased to be a road and soon would cease to be even passable, while Ratliff said, “So you think she really didn’t know what he was going to do when he got out?”
“Yes I tell you,” Stevens said. “Drive on.”
“We got time,” Ratliff said. “He ain’t going nowhere. Talking about that thing he used for a pistol, that he dropped or throwed it away while he was running through that back yard. Eef Bishop let me look at it. That Memphis feller was right. It didn’t even look like a pistol. It looked like a old old mud-crusted cooter. It had two shells in it, the hull and another live one. The cap of the hull was punched all right, only it and the live one both had a little nick jest outside the cap, both of the nicks jest alike and even in the same place, so that when Eef taken the live one out and turned the hull a little and set it back under the hammer and cocked it and snapped it and we opened the cylinder, there was another of them little nicks in the case jest outside the cap, like sometimes that mossback firing pin would hit the cap and sometimes it wouldn’t. So it looks like Mink either tried out both of them shells beforehand for practice test and both of them snapped once, yet he still walked in there to kill Flem jest hoping one of them would go off this time, which don’t sound reasonable; or that he stood there in front of Flem and snapped both of them at him and then turned the cylinder back to try again since that was all he had left he could do at that moment, and this time one of them went off. In that case, what do you reckon Flem’s reason was for setting there in that chair letting Mink snap them two shells at him until one of them went off and killed him?”
“I don’t know,” Stevens said harshly. “Drive on!”
“Maybe he was jest bored too,” Ratliff said. “Like Eula. Maybe there was two of them. The pore son of a bitch.”
“He was impotent,” Stevens said.
“What?” Ratliff said.
“Impotent. When he got in bed with a woman all he could do was go to sleep. — Yes!” Stevens said. “The poor sons of bitches that have to cause all the grief and anguish they have to cause! Drive on!”
“But suppose it was more than that,” Ratliff said. “You was town-raised when you was a boy; likely you never heard of Give-me-lief. It was a game we played. You would pick out another boy about your own size and you
would walk up to him with a switch or maybe a light stick or a hard green apple or maybe even a rock, depending on how hard a risk you wanted to take, and say to him, ‘Gimme lief,’ and if he agreed, he would stand still and you would take one cut or one lick at him with the switch or stick, as hard as you picked out, or back off and throw at him once with the green apple or the rock. Then you would stand still and he would take the same switch or stick or apple or rock or anyways another one jest like it, and take one cut or throw at you. That was the rule. So jest suppose—”
“Drive on!” Stevens said.
“ — Flem had had his lief fair and square like the rule said, so there wasn’t nothing for him to do but jest set there, since he had likely found out years back when she finally turned up here again even outen a communist war, that he had already lost—”
“Stop it!” Stevens said. “Don’t say it!”
“ — and now it was her lief and so suppose—”
“No!” Stevens said “No!” But Ratliff was not only nearer the switch, his hand was already on it, covering it.
“ — she knowed all the time what was going to happen when he got out, that not only she knowed but Flem did too—”
“I won’t believe it!” Stevens said. “I won’t! I can’t believe it,” he said. “Don’t you see I cannot?”
“Which brings up something else,” Ratliff said. “So she had a decision to make too that once she made it, it would be for good and all and too late to change it. She could a waited two more years and God His-self couldn’t a kept Mink in Parchman without He killed him, and saved herself not jest the bother and worry but the moral responsibility too, even if you do say they ain’t no morals. Only she didn’t. And so you wonder why. If maybe, if there wasn’t no folks in heaven, it wouldn’t be heaven, and if you couldn’t recognise them as folks you knowed, wouldn’t nobody want to go there. And that someday her maw would be saying to her, ‘Why didn’t you revenge me and my love that I finally found it, instead of jest standing back and blind hoping for happen-so? Didn’t you never have no love of your own to learn you what it is?’ — Here,” he said. He took out the immaculately clean, impeccably laundered and ironed handkerchief which the town said he not only laundered himself but hemstitched himself too, and put it into Stevens’s blind hand and turned the switch and flicked on the headlights. “I reckon we’ll be about right now,” he said.
Now the road even ceased to be two ruts. It was a gash now, choked with brier, still mounting. “I’ll go in front,” Ratliff said. “You growed up in town. I never even seen a light bulb until after I could handle a straight razor.” Then he said, “There it is” — a canted roof line where one end of the gable had collapsed completely (Stevens did not recognise, he simply agreed it could once have been a house) above which stood one worn gnarled cedar. He almost stumbled through, across what had been a fence, a yard fence, fallen too, choked fiercely with rose vines long since gone wild again. “Walk behind me,” Ratliff said. “They’s a old cistern. I think I know where it is. I ought to brought a flashlight.”
And now, in a crumbling slant downward into, through, what had been the wall’s old foundation, an orifice, a black and crumbled aperture yawned at their feet as if the ruined house itself had gaped at them. Ratliff had stopped. He said quietly: “You never seen that pistol. I did. It didn’t look like no one-for-ten-dollars pistol. It looked like one of a two-for-nine-and-a-half pistols. Maybe he’s still got the other one with him,” when Stevens, without stopping, pushed past him and, fumbling one foot downward, found what had been a step; and, taking the gold initialled lighter from his pocket, snapped it on and by the faint wavered gleam continued to descend, Ratliff, behind now, saying, “Of course. He’s free now. He won’t never have to kill nobody else in all his life,” and followed, into the old cellar — the cave, the den where on a crude platform he had heaped together, the man they sought half-squatted half-knelt blinking up at them like a child interrupted at its bedside prayers: not surprised in prayer: interrupted, kneeling in the new overalls which were stained and foul now, his hands lying half-curled on the front of his lap, blinking at the tiny light which Stevens held.
“Hidy,” he said.
“You can’t stay here,” Stevens said. “If we knew where you were, don’t you know the Sheriff will think of this place too by tomorrow morning?”
“I ain’t going to stay,” he said. “I jest stopped to rest. I’m fixing to go on pretty soon. Who are you fellers?”
“Never mind that,” Stevens said. He took out the envelope containing the money. “Here,” he said. It was two hundred and fifty dollars again. The amount was indubitable out of the whole thousand it had contained. Stevens had not even troubled to rationalise his decision of the amount. The kneeling man looked at it quietly.
“I left that money in Parchman. I had done already got shut of it before I went out the gate. You mean a son of a bitch stole that too?”
“This is not that money,” Stevens said. “They got that back. This is new money she sent you this morning. This is different.”
“You mean when I take it I ain’t promised nobody nothing?”
“Yes,” Stevens said. “Take it.”
He did so. “Much obliged,” he said. “That other time they said I would get another two hundred and fifty again in three months if I went straight across Missippi without stopping and never come back again. I reckon that’s done stopped this time.”
“No,” Stevens said. “That too. In three months tell me where you are and I’ll send it.”
“Much obliged,” Mink said. “Send it to M. C. Snopes.”
“What?” Stevens said.
“To M. C. Snopes. That’s my name: M. C.”
“Come on,” Ratliff said, almost roughly, “let’s get out of here,” taking him by the arm even as Stevens turned, Ratliff taking the burning lighter from him and holding it up while Stevens found the fading earthen steps again, once more up and out into the air, the night, the moonless dark, the worn-out eroded fields supine beneath the first faint breath of fall, waiting for winter. Overhead, celestial and hierarchate, the constellations wheeled through the zodiacal pastures: Scorpion and Bear and Scales; beyond cold Orion and the Sisters the fallen and homeless angels choired, lamenting. Gentle and tender as a woman, Ratliff opened the car door for Stevens to get in. “You all right now?” he said.
“Yes I tell you, goddammit,” Stevens said.
Ratliff closed the door and went around the car and opened his and got in and closed it and turned the switch and snapped on the lights and put the car in gear — two old men themselves, approaching their sixties. “I don’t know if she’s already got a daughter stashed out somewhere, or if she jest ain’t got around to one yet. But when she does I jest hope for Old Lang Zyne’s sake she don’t never bring it back to Jefferson. You done already been through two Eula Varners and I don’t think you can stand another one.”
When the two strangers took the light away and were gone, he didn’t lie down again. He was rested now, and any moment now the time to go on again would come. So he just continued to kneel on the crude platform of old boards he had gathered together to defend himself from the ground in case he dropped off to sleep. Luckily the man who robbed him of his ten dollars last Thursday night hadn’t taken the safety pin too, so he folded the money as small as it would fold into the bib pocket and pinned it. It would be all right this time, it made such a lump that even asleep he couldn’t help but feel anybody fooling with it.
Then the time came to go on. He was glad of it in a way; a man can get tired, burnt out on resting like on anything else. Outside it was dark, cool and pleasant for walking, empty except for the old ground. But then a man didn’t need to have to keep his mind steadily on the ground after sixty-three years. In fact, the ground itself never let a man forget it was there waiting, pulling gently and without no hurry at him between every step, saying, Come on, lay down; I ain’t going to hurt you. Jest lay down. He thought I’m fr
ee now. I can walk any way I want to. So he would walk west now, since that was the direction people always went: west. Whenever they picked up and moved to a new country, it was always west, like Old Moster Himself had put it into a man’s very blood and nature his paw had give him at the very moment he squirted him into his maw’s belly.
Because he was free now. A little further along toward dawn, any time the notion struck him to, he could lay down. So when the notion struck him he did so, arranging himself, arms and legs and back, already feeling the first faint gentle tug like the durned old ground itself was trying to make you believe it wasn’t really noticing itself doing it. Only he located the right stars at that moment, he was not laying exactly right since a man must face the east to lay down; walk west but when you lay down, face the exact east. So he moved, shifted a little, and now he was exactly right and he was free now, he could afford to risk it; to show how much he dared risk it, he even would close his eyes, give it all the chance it wanted; whereupon as if believing he really was asleep, it gradually went to work a little harder, easy of course, not to really disturb him: just harder, increasing. Because a man had to spend not just all his life but all the time of Man too guarding against it; even back when they said man lived in caves, he would raise up a bank of dirt to at least keep him that far off the ground while he slept, until he invented wood floors to protect him and at last beds too, raising the floors storey by storey until they would be laying a hundred and even a thousand feet up in the air to be safe from the earth.
But he could risk it, he even felt like giving it a fair active chance just to show him, prove what it could do if it wanted to try. And in fact, as soon as he thought that, it seemed to him he could feel the Mink Snopes that had had to spend so much of his life just having unnecessary bother and trouble, beginning to creep, seep, flow easy as sleeping; he could almost watch it, following all the little grass blades and tiny roots, the little holes the worms made, down and down into the ground already full of the folks that had the trouble but were free now, so that it was just the ground and the dirt that had to bother and worry and anguish with the passions and hopes and skeers, the justice and the injustice and the griefs, leaving the folks themselves easy now, all mixed and jumbled up comfortable and easy so wouldn’t nobody even know or even care who was which any more, himself among them, equal to any, good as any, brave as any, being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams which are the milestones of the long human recording — Helen and the bishops, the kings and the unhomed angels, the scornful and graceless seraphim.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 541