Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  “Sit down,” Miss Reba said. “Jesus, the trouble you’re already in when you get back to Jefferson, and you still got time to count pennies.” She looked at Ned. “What did you say your name was?”

  Ned told her again. “You wants to know about that mule. Ask Boon Hogganbeck about him.”

  “Dont you ever make him call you mister?” she said to Boon.

  “I always does,” Ned said. “Mister Boon Hogganbeck. Ask him about that mule.”

  She turned to Miss Corrie. “Is Sam in town tonight?”

  “Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

  “Can you get hold of him now?”

  “Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

  Miss Reba turned to Boon. “You get out of here. Take a walk for a couple of hours. Or go over to Birdie Watts’s if you want. Only, for Christ’s sake dont get drunk. What the hell do you think Corrie eats and pays her rent with while you’re down there in that Missippi swamp stealing automobiles and kidnapping children? air?”

  “I aint going nowhere,” Boon said. “God damn it,” he said to Ned, “go get that horse.”

  “I dont need to entertain him,” Miss Corrie said. “I can use the telephone.” It was not smug nor coy: it was just serene. She was much too big a girl, there was much too much of her, for smugness or coyness. But she was exactly right for serenity.

  “You sure?” Miss Reba said.

  “Yes,” Miss Corrie said.

  “Then get at it,” Miss Reba said.

  “Come here,” Boon said. Miss Corrie stopped. “Come here, I said,” Boon said. She approached then, just outside Boon’s reach; I noticed suddenly that she wasn’t looking at Boon at all: she was looking at me. Which was perhaps why Boon, still sitting, was able to reach suddenly and catch her arm before she could evade him, drawing her toward him, she struggling belatedly, as a girl that big would have to, still watching me.

  “Turn loose,” she said. “I’ve got to telephone.”

  “Sure, sure,” Boon said, “plenty of time for that,” drawing her on; until, with that counterfeit composure, that desperate willing to look at once forceful and harmless, with which you toss the apple in your hand (or any other piece of momentary distraction) toward the bull you suddenly find is also on your side of the fence, she leaned briskly down and kissed him, pecked him quickly on the top of the head, already drawing back. But again too late, his hand dropping and already gripping one cheek of her bottom, in sight of us all, she straining back and looking at me again with something dark and beseeching in her eyes — shame, grief, I dont know what — while the blood rushed slowly into her big girl’s face that was not really plain at all except at first. But only a moment; she was still going to be a lady. She even struggled like a lady. But she was simply too big, too strong for even anyone as big and strong as Boon to hold with just one hand, with no more grip than that; she was free.

  “Aint you ashamed of yourself,” she said.

  “Cant you save that long enough for her to make one telephone call even?” Miss Reba said to Boon. “If you’re going to run fevers over her purity, why the hell dont you set her up in a place of her own where she can keep pure and still eat?” Then to Miss Corrie: “Go on and telephone. It’s already nine oclock.”

  Already late for all we had to do. The place had begun to wake up— “jumping,” as you say nowadays. But decorously: no uproar either musical or simply convivial; Mr Binford’s ghost still reigned, still adumbrated his callipygian grottoes since only two of the ladies actually knew he was gone and the customers had not missed him yet; we had heard the bell and Minnie’s voice faintly at the front door and the footsteps of the descending nymphs themselves had penetrated from the stairs; and even as Miss Corrie stood with the knob in her hand, the chink of glasses interspersed in orderly frequence the bass rumble of the entertained and the shriller pipes of their entertainers beyond the door she opened and went through and then closed again. Then Minnie came back too; it seems that the unoccupied ladies would take turn-about as receptionists during the emergency.

  You see how indeed the child is father to the man, and mother to the woman also. Back there in Jefferson I had thought that the reason corruption, Non-virtue, had met so puny a foeman in me as to be not even worthy of the name, was because of my tenderness and youth’s concomitant innocence. But that victory at least required the three hours between the moment I learned of Grandfather Lessep’s death and that one when the train began to move and I realised that Boon would be in unchallenged possession of the key to Grandfather’s automobile for at least four days. While here were Miss Reba and Miss Corrie: foemen you would say already toughened, even if not wisened, by constant daily experience to any wile or assault Non-virtue (or Virtue) might invent against them, already sacked and pillaged: who thirty minutes before didn’t even know that Ned existed, let alone the horse. Not to mention the complete stranger whom Miss Corrie had just left the room tranquilly confident to conquer with no other weapon than the telephone.

  She had been gone nearly two minutes now. Minnie had taken the lamp and gone back to the back porch; I noticed that Ned was not in the room either. “Minnie,” Miss Reba said toward the back door, “was any of that chicken—”

  “Yessum,” Minnie said. “I already fixed him a plate. He setting down to it now.” Ned said something. We couldn’t hear it. But we could hear Minnie: “If all you got to depend on for appetite is me, you gonter starve twice between here and morning.” We couldn’t hear Ned. Now Miss Corrie had been gone almost four minutes. Boon stood up, quick.

  “God damn it—” he said.

  “Are you even jealous of a telephone?” Miss Reba said. “What the hell can he do to her through that damn gutta-percha earpiece?” But we could hear Minnie: a quick sharp flat sound, then her feet. She came in. She was breathing a little quick, but not much. “What’s wrong?” Miss Reba said.

  “Aint nothing wrong,” Minnie said. “He like most of them. He got plenty of appetite but he cant seem to locate where it is.”

  “Give him a bottle of beer. Unless you’re afraid to go back out there.”

  “I aint afraid,” Minnie said. “He just nature-minded. Maybe a little extra. I’m used to it. A heap of them are that way: so nature-minded dont nobody get no rest until they goes to sleep.”

  “I bet you are,” Boon said. “It’s that tooth. That’s the hell of women: you wont let well enough alone.”

  “What do you mean?” Miss Reba said.

  “You know damn well what I mean,” Boon said. “You dont never quit. You aint never satisfied. You dont never have no mercy on a damn man. Look at her: aint satisfied until she has saved and scraped to put a gold tooth, a gold tooth in the middle of her face just to drive crazy a poor ignorant country nigger—”

  “ — or spending five minutes talking into a wooden box just to drive crazy another poor ignorant country bastard that aint done nothing in the world but steal an automobile and now a horse. I never knew anybody that needed to get married as bad as you do.”

  “He sure do,” Minnie said from the door. “That would cure him. I tried it twice and I sho learned my lesson—” Miss Corrie came in.

  “All right,” she said: serene, no more plain than a big porcelain lamp with the wick burning inside is plain. “He’s coming too. He’s going to help us. He—”

  “Not me,” Boon said. “The son of a bitch aint going to help me.”

  “Then beat it,” Miss Reba said. “Get out of here. How you going to do it? walk back to Missippi or ride the horse? Go on. Sit down. You might as well while we wait for him. Tell us,” she said to Miss Corrie.

  You see? “He’s not a brakeman! He’s a flagman! He wears a uniform just the same as the conductor’s. He’s going to help us.” All the world loves a lover, quoth (I think) the Swan: who saw deeper than any into the human heart. What pity he had no acquaintance with horses, to have added, All the world apparently loves a stolen race horse also. Miss Corrie told us; and Otis was in the room now though I hadn’t
seen him come in, with something still wrong about him though not noticing him until it was almost too late still wasn’t it:

  “We’ll have to buy at least one ticket to Possum to have—”

  “It’s Parsham,” Miss Reba said.

  “All right,” Miss Corrie said, “ — something to check him as baggage on, like you do a trunk; Sam will bring the ticket and the baggage check with him. But it will be all right; an empty boxcar will be on a side track — Sam will know where — and all we have to do is get the horse in it and Sam said wall him up in one corner with planks so he cant slip down; Sam will have some planks and nails ready too; he said this was the best he could do at short notice because he didn’t dare tell his uncle any more than he had to or his uncle would want to come too. So Sam says the only risk will be getting the horse from here to where the boxcar is waiting. He says it wont do for . . .” She stopped, looking at Ned.

  “Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi,” Ned said.

  “. . . Ned to be walking along even a back-street this late at night leading a horse; the first policeman they pass will stop him. So he — Sam — is bringing a blanket and he’s going to wear his uniform and him and Boon and me will lead the horse to the depot and nobody will notice anything. Oh yes; and the passenger train will—”

  “Jesus,” Miss Reba said. “A whore, a pullman conductor and a Missippi swamp rat the size of a water tank leading a race horse through Memphis at midnight Sunday night, and nobody will notice it?”

  “You stop!” Miss Corrie said.

  “Stop what?” Miss Reba said.

  “You know. Talking like that in front of—”

  “Oh,” Miss Reba said. “If he just dropped up here from Missippi with Boon on a friendly visit you might say, we might of could protected his ears. But using this place as headquarters while they steal automobiles and horses, he’s got to take his chances like anybody else. What were you saying about the train?”

  “Yes. The passenger train that leaves for Washington at four a.m. will pick the boxcar up and we’ll all be in Possum before daylight.”

  “Parsham, God damn it,” Miss Reba said. “We?”

  “Aint you coming too?” Miss Corrie said.

  vii

  THAT’S WHAT WE did. Though first Sam had to see the horse. He came in the back way, through the kitchen, carrying the horse blanket. He was in his uniform. He was almost as big as Boon.

  So we — all of us again — stood once more in the back yard, Ned holding the lamp this time, to shine its light not on the horse but on Sam’s brass-buttoned coat and vest and the flat cap with the gold lettering across the front. In fact, I had expected trouble with Ned over Sam and the horse, but I was wrong. “Who, me?” Ned said. “What for? We couldn’t be no better off with a policeman himself leading that horse to Possum.” On the contrary, the trouble we were going to have about Sam would be with Boon. Sam looked at the horse.

  “That’s a good horse,” Sam said. “He looks like a damn good horse to me.”

  “Sure,” Boon said. “He aint got no whistle nor bell neither on him. He aint even got a headlight. I’m surprised you can see him a-tall.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Sam said.

  “I dont mean nothing,” Boon said. “Just what I said. You’re an iron-horse man. Maybe you better go on to the depot without waiting for us.”

  “You bas — —” Miss Reba said. Then she started over: “Cant you see, the man’s just trying to help you? going out of his way so that the minute you get back home, the first live animal you’ll see wont be the sheriff? He’s the one to be inviting you to get to hell back where you came from and take your goddamn horse along with you. Apologise.”

  “All right,” Boon said. “Forget it.”

  “You call that an apology?” Miss Reba said.

  “What do you want?” Boon said. “Me to bend over and invite him to—”

  “You hush! Right this minute!” Miss Corrie said.

  “And you dont help none neither,” Boon said. “You already got me and Miss Reba both to where we’ll have to try to forget the whole English language before we can even pass the time of day.”

  “That’s no lie,” Miss Reba said. “That one you brought here from Arkansas was bad enough, with one hand in the icebox after beer and the other one reaching for whatever was little and not nailed down whenever anybody wasn’t looking. And now Boon Hogganbeck’s got to bring another one that’s got me scared to even open my mouth.”

  “He didn’t!” Miss Corrie said. “Otis dont take anything without asking first! Do you, Otis?”

  “That’s right,” Miss Reba said. “Ask him. He certainly ought to know.”

  “Ladies, ladies, ladies,” Sam said. “Does this horse want to go to Parsham tonight, or dont he?”

  So we started. But at first Miss Corrie was still looking at Otis and me. “They ought to be in bed,” she said.

  “Sure,” Miss Reba said. “Over in Arkansas or back down there in Missippi or even further than that, if I had my way. But it’s too late now. You cant send one to bed without the other, and that one of Boon’s owns part of the horse.” Only at the last, Miss Reba couldn’t go either. She and Minnie couldn’t be spared. The place was jumping indeed now, but still discreetly, with Sabbath decorum: Saturday night’s fading tide rip in one last spumy upfling against the arduous humdrum of day-by-day for mere bread and shelter.

  So Ned and Boon put the blanket on the horse. Then from the sidewalk we — Ned and Otis and me — watched Boon and Sam in polyandrous . . . maybe not amity but at least armistice, Miss Corrie between them, leading the horse down the middle of the street from arc light to arc light through the Sunday evening quiet of Second and Third streets, toward the Union depot. It was after ten now; there were few lights, these only in the other boarding houses (I was experienced now; I was a sophisticate — not a connoisseur of course but at least cognizant; I recognised a place similar to Miss Reba’s when I saw one). The saloons though were all dark. That is, I didn’t know a saloon just by passing it; there were still a few degrees yet veiled to me; it was Ned who told us — Otis and me — they were saloons, and that they were closed. I had expected them to be neither one: neither closed nor open; remember, I had been in Memphis (or in Catalpa Street) less than six hours, without my mother or father either to instruct me; I was doing pretty well.

  “They calls it the blue law,” Ned said.

  “What’s a blue law?” I said.

  “I dont know neither,” Ned said. “Lessen it means they blewed in all the money Saturday night and aint none of them got enough left now to make it worth burning the coal oil.”

  “That’s just the saloons,” Otis said. “It dont hurt nobody that way. What they dont sell Sunday night they can just save it and sell it to somebody, maybe the same folks, Monday. But pugnuckling’s different. You can sell it tonight and turn right around again and sell the same pugnuckling again tomorrow. You aint lost nothing. Likely if they tried to put that blue law onto pugnuckling, the police would come in and stop them.”

  “What’s pugnuckling?” I said.

  “You knows a heap, dont you?” Ned said to Otis. “No wonder Arkansaw cant hold you. If the rest of the folks there knows as much as you do at your age, time they’s twenty-one even Texas wont be big enough.”

  “ —— t,” Otis said.

  “What’s pugnuckling?” I said.

  “Try can you put your mind on knuckling up some feed for that horse,” Ned said to me, still louder. “To try to keep him quiet long enough to get him to Possum, let alone into that train in the first place. That there railroad-owning conductor, flinging boxcars around without even taking his hand out of his pocket, is somebody reminded him of that? Maybe even a bucket of soap and water too, so your aunt” — he was talking to Otis now— “can take you around behind something and wash your mouth out.”

  “ —— t,” Otis said.

  “Or maybe even the nearest handy stick,” Ned said
.

  “ —— t,” Otis said. And sure enough, we met a policeman. I mean, Otis saw the policeman even before the policeman saw the horse. “Twenty-three skiddoo,” Otis said. The policeman knew Miss Corrie. Then apparently he knew Sam too.

  “Where you taking him?” he said. “Did you steal him?”

  “Borrowed him,” Sam said. They didn’t stop. “We rode him to prayer meeting tonight and now we’re taking him back home.” We went on. Otis said Twenty-three skiddoo again.

  “I never seen that before,” he said. “Every policeman I ever seen before speaking to anybody, they give him something. Like Minnie and Miss Reba already having a bottle of beer waiting for him before he could even get his foot inside, even if Miss Reba cussed him before he come and cussed him again after he left. And ever since I got here last summer and found out about it, every day I go up to Court Square where that I-talian wop has got that fruit and peanut stand and, sho enough, here the policeman comes and without even noticing it, takes a apple or a handful of peanuts.” He was almost trotting to keep up with us; he was that much smaller than me. I mean, he didn’t seem so much smaller until you saw him trotting to keep up. There was something wrong about him. When it’s you, you say to yourself Next year I’m going to be bigger than I am now simply because being bigger is not only natural, it’s inevitable; it doesn’t even matter that you cant imagine to yourself how or what you will look like then. And the same with other children; they cant help it either. But Otis looked like two or three years ago he had already reached where you wont be until next year, and since then he had been going backward. He was still talking. “So what I thought back then was that the only thing to be was a policeman. But I never taken long to get over that. It’s too limited.”

  “Limited to what?” Ned said.

  “To beer and apples and peanuts,” Otis said. “Who’s going to waste his time on beer and apples and peanuts?” He said Twenty-three skiddoo three times now. “This town is where the jack’s at.”