“When you talk that way I know you are thinking bitterly of your
father’s memory,” she says. “You have a right to, I suppose. But it
breaks my heart to hear you.”
I got up. “If you’ve got any crying to do,” I says, “you’ll have to do
it alone, because I’ve got to get on back. I’ll get the bank book.”
“I’ll get it,” she says.
“Keep still,” I says, “I’ll get it.” I went upstairs and got the bank
book out of her desk and went back to town. I went to the bank and
deposited the check and the money order and the other ten, and stopped
at the telegraph office. It was one point above the opening. I had
already lost thirteen points, all because she had to come helling in
there at twelve, worrying me about that letter.
“What time did that report come in?” I says.
“About an hour ago,” he says.
“An hour ago?” I says. “What are we paying you for?” I says, “Weekly
reports? How do you expect a man to do anything? The whole damn top
could blow off and we’d not know it.”
“I dont expect you to do anything,” he says. “They changed that law
making folks play the cotton market.”
“They have?” I says. “I hadn’t heard. They must have sent the news out
over the Western Union.”
I went back to the store. Thirteen points. Damn if I believe anybody
knows anything about the damn thing except the ones that sit back in
those New York offices and watch the country suckers come up and beg
them to take their money. Well, a man that just calls shows he has no
faith in himself, and like I say if you aren’t going to take the advice,
what’s the use in paying money for it. Besides, these people are right
up there on the ground; they know everything that’s going on. I could
feel the telegram in my pocket. I’d just have to prove that they were
using the telegraph company to defraud. That would constitute a bucket
shop. And I wouldn’t hesitate that long, either. Only be damned if it
doesn’t look like a company as big and rich as the Western Union could
get a market report out on time. Half as quick as they’ll get a wire to
you saying Your account closed out. But what the hell do they care about
the people. They’re hand in glove with that New York crowd. Anybody
could see that.
When I came in Earl looked at his watch. But he didn’t say anything
until the customer was gone. Then he says,
“You go home to dinner?”
“I had to go to the dentist,” I says because it’s not any of his
business where I eat but I’ve got to be in the store with him all the
afternoon. And with his jaw running off after all I’ve stood. You take a
little two by four country storekeeper like I say it takes a man with
just five hundred dollars to worry about it fifty thousand dollars’
worth.
“You might have told me,” he says. “I expected you back right away.”
“I’ll trade you this tooth and give you ten dollars to boot, any time,”
I says. “Our agreement was an hour for dinner,” I says, “and if you dont
like the way I do, you know what you can do about it.”
“I’ve known that some time,” he says. “If it hadn’t been for your mother
I’d have done it before now, too. She’s a lady I’ve got a lot of
sympathy for, Jason. Too bad some other folks I know cant say as much.”
“Then you can keep it,” I says. “When we need any sympathy I’ll let you
know in plenty of time.”
“I’ve protected you about that business a long time, Jason,” he says.
“Yes?” I says, letting him go on. Listening to what he would say before
I shut him up.
“I believe I know more about where that automobile came from than she
does.”
“You think so, do you?” I says. “When are you going to spread the news
that I stole it from my mother?”
“I dont say anything,” he says, “I know you have her power of attorney.
And I know she still believes that thousand dollars is in this
business.”
“All right,” I says, “Since you know so much, I’ll tell you a little
more: go to the bank and ask them whose account I’ve been depositing a
hundred and sixty dollars on the first of every month for twelve years.”
“I dont say anything,” he says, “I just ask you to be a little more
careful after this.”
I never said anything more. It doesn’t do any good. I’ve found that when
a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there.
And when a man gets it in his head that he’s got to tell something on
you for your own good, good-night. I’m glad I haven’t got the sort of
conscience I’ve got to nurse like a sick puppy all the time. If I’d ever
be as careful over anything as he is to keep his little shirt tail full
of business from making him more then eight percent. I reckon he thinks
they’d get him on the usury law if he netted more than eight percent.
What the hell chance has a man got, tied down in a town like this and to
a business like this. Why I could take his business in one year and fix
him so he’d never have to work again, only he’d give it all away to the
church or something. If there’s one thing gets under my skin, it’s a
damn hypocrite. A man that thinks anything he dont understand all about
must be crooked and that first chance he gets he’s morally bound to tell
the third party what’s none of his business to tell. Like I say if I
thought every time a man did something I didn’t know all about he was
bound to be a crook, I reckon I wouldn’t have any trouble finding
something back there on those books that you wouldn’t see any use for
running and telling somebody I thought ought to know about it, when for
all I knew they might know a damn sight more about it now than I did,
and if they didn’t it was damn little of my business anyway and he says,
“My books are open to anybody. Anybody that has any claim or believes
she has any claim on this business can go back there and welcome.”
“Sure, you wont tell,” I says, “You couldn’t square your conscience with
that. You’ll just take her back there and let her find it. You wont
tell, yourself.”
“I’m not trying to meddle in your business,” he says. “I know you missed
out on some things like Quentin had. But your mother has had a
misfortunate life too, and if she was to come in here and ask me why you
quit, I’d have to tell her. It aint that thousand dollars. You know
that. It’s because a man never gets anywhere if fact and his ledgers
dont square. And I’m not going to lie to anybody, for myself or anybody
else.”
“Well, then,” I says, “I reckon that conscience of yours is a more
valuable clerk than I am; it dont have to go home at noon to eat. Only
dont let it interfere with my appetite,” I says, because how the hell
can I do anything right, with that damn family and her not making any
effort to control her nor any of them, like that time when she happened
to see one of them kissing Caddy and all next day she went around the
house in a black dress and a veil and even Father couldn’t get her to
say a word except crying and saying her little daughter was dead and
Caddy about fifteen then only in three years she’d been wearing
haircloth or probably sandpaper at that rate. Do you think I can afford
to have her running bout the streets with every drummer that comes to
town, I says, and them telling the new ones up and down the road where
to pick up a hot one when they made Jefferson. I haven’t got much pride,
I can’t afford it with a kitchen full of niggers to feed and robbing the
state asylum of its star freshman. Blood, I says, governors and
generals. It’s a damn good thing we never had any kings and presidents;
we’d all be down there at Jackson chasing butterflies. I say it’d be bad
enough if it was mine; I’d at least be sure it was a bastard to begin
with, and now even the Lord doesn’t know that for certain probably.
So after awhile I heard the band start up, and then they begun to clear
out. Headed for the show, every one of them. Haggling over a twenty cent
hame string to save fifteen cents, so they can give it to a bunch of
Yankees that come in and pay maybe ten dollars for the privilege. I went
on out to the back.
“Well,” I says, “If you dont look out, that bolt will grow into your
hand. And then I’m going to take an axe and chop it out. What do you
reckon the boll-weevils’ll eat if you dont get those cultivators in
shape to raise them a crop?” I says, “sage grass?”
“Dem folks sho do play dem horns,” he says. “Tell me man in dat show kin
play a tune on a handsaw. Pick hit like a banjo.”
“Listen,” I says. “Do you know how much that show’ll spend in this town?
About ten dollars,” I says. “The ten dollars Buck Turpin has in his
pocket right now.”
“Whut dey give Mr Buck ten dollars fer?” he says.
“For the privilege of showing here,” I says. “You can put the balance of
what they’ll spend in your eye.”
“You mean dey pays ten dollars jest to give dey show here?” he says.
“That’s all,” I says. “And how much do you reckon . . .”
“Gret day,” he says, “You mean to tell me dey chargin um to let um show
here? I’d pay ten dollars to see dat man pick dat saw, ef I had to. I
figures dat tomorrow mawnin I be still owin um nine dollars and six bits
at dat rate.”
And then a Yankee will talk your head off about niggers getting ahead.
Get them ahead, what I say. Get them so far ahead you cant find one
south of Louisville with a blood hound. Because when I told him about
how they’d pick up Saturday night and carry off at least a thousand
dollars out of the county, he says,
“I don’t begrudge um. I kin sho afford my two bits.”
“Two bits hell,” I says. “That dont begin it. How about the dime or
fifteen cents you’ll spend for a damn two cent box of candy or
something. How about the time you’re wasting right now, listening to
that band.”
“Dat’s de troof,” he says. “Well, ef I lives twell night hit’s gwine to
be two bits mo dey takin out of town, dat’s sho.”
“Then you’re a fool,” I says.
“Well,” he says, “I dont spute dat neither. Ef dat uz a crime, all
chain-gangs wouldn’t be black.”
Well, just about that time I happened to look up the alley and saw her.
When I stepped back and looked at my watch I didn’t notice at the time
who he was because I was looking at the watch. It was just two thirty,
forty-five minutes before anybody but me expected her to be out. So when
I looked around the door the first thing I saw was the red tie he had on
and I was thinking what the hell kind of a man would wear a red tie. But
she was sneaking along the alley, watching the door, so I wasn’t
thinking anything about him until they had gone past. I was wondering if
she’d have so little respect for me that she’d not only play out of
school when I told her not to, but would walk right past the store,
daring me not to see her. Only she couldn’t see into the door because
the sun fell straight into it and it was like trying to see through an
automobile searchlight, so I stood there and watched her go on past,
with her face painted up like a damn clown’s and her hair all gummed and
twisted and a dress that if a woman had come out doors even on Gayoso or
Beale street when I was a young fellow with no more than that to cover
her legs and behind, she’d been thrown in jail. I’ll be damned if they
dont dress like they were trying to make every man they passed on the
street want to reach out and clap his hand on it. And so I was thinking
what kind of a damn man would wear a red tie when all of a sudden I knew
he was one of those show folks well as if she’d told me. Well, I can
stand a lot; if I couldn’t, damn if I wouldn’t be in a hell of a fix, so
when they turned the corner I jumped down and followed. Me, without any
hat, in the middle of the afternoon, having to chase up and down back
alleys because of my mother’s good name. Like I say you cant do anything
with a woman like that, if she’s got it in her. If it’s in her blood,
you cant do anything with her. The only thing you can do is to get rid
of her, let her go on and live with her own sort.
I went on to the street, but they were out of sight. And there I was,
without any hat, looking like I was crazy too. Like a man would
naturally think, one of them is crazy and another one drowned himself
and the other one was turned out into the street by her husband, what’s
the reason the rest of them are not crazy too. All the time I could see
them watching me like a hawk, waiting for a chance to say Well I’m not
surprised I expected it all the time the whole family’s crazy. Selling
land to send him to Harvard and paying taxes to support a state
University all the time that I never saw except twice at a baseball game
and not letting her daughter’s name be spoken on the place until after a
while Father wouldn’t even come down town anymore but just sat there all
day with the decanter I could see the bottom of his nightshirt and his
bare legs and hear the decanter clinking until finally T. P. had to pour
it for him and she says You have no respect for your Father’s memory and
I says I dont know why not it sure is preserved well enough to last only
if I’m crazy too God knows what I’ll do about it just to look at water
makes me sick and I’d just as soon swallow gasoline as a glass of
whiskey and Lorraine telling them he may not drink but if you dont
believe he’s a man I can tell you how to find out she says If I catch
you fooling with any of these whores you know what I’ll do she says I’ll
whip her grabbing at her I’ll whip her as long as I can find her she
says and I says if I dont drink that’s my business but have you ever
found me short I says I’ll buy you enough beer to take a bath in if you
want it because I’ve got every respect for a good honest whore because
with Mother’s health and the position I try to uphold to have her with
no more respect for what I try to do for her than to make her name and
my name and my Mother’s name a byword in the town.
She had dodged out of sight somewhere. Saw me coming and dodged into
another alley, running up and down the alleys with a damn show man in a
red tie that everybody would look at and think what kind of a damn man
would wear a red tie. Well, the boy kept speaking to me and so I took
the telegram without knowing I had taken it. I didn’t realise what it
was until I was signing for it, and I tore it open without even caring
much what it was. I knew all the time what it would be, I reckon. That
was the only thing else that could happen, especially holding it up
until I had already had the check entered on the pass book.
I dont see how a city no bigger than New York can hold enough people to
take the money away from us country suckers. Work like hell all day
every day, send them your money and get a little piece of paper back,
Your account closed at 20.62. Teasing you along, letting you pile up a
little paper profit, then bang! Your account closed at 20.62. And if
that wasn’t enough, paying ten dollars a month to somebody to tell you
how to lose it fast, that either dont know anything about it or is in
cahoots with the telegraph company. Well, I’m done with them. They’ve
sucked me in for the last time. Any fool except a fellow that hasn’t got
any more sense than to take a jew’s word for anything could tell the
market was going up all the time, with the whole damn delta about to be
flooded again and the cotton washed right out of the ground like it was
last year. Let it wash a man’s crop out of the ground year after year,
and them up there in Washington spending fifty thousand dollars a day
keeping an army in Nicaragua or some place. Of course it’ll overflow
again, and then cotton’ll be worth thirty cents a pound. Well, I just
want to hit them one time and get my money back. I don’t want a killing;
only these small town gamblers are out for that, I just want my money
back that these damn jews have gotten with all their guaranteed inside
dope. Then I’m through; they can kiss my foot for every other red cent
of mine they get.
I went back to the store. It was half past three almost. Damn little
time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to
Harvard to learn that. The band had quit playing. Got them all inside
now, and they wouldn’t have to waste any more wind. Earl says,
“He found you, did he? He was in here with it a while ago. I thought you
were out back somewhere.”
“Yes,” I says, “I got it. They couldn’t keep it away from me all
afternoon. The town’s too small. I’ve got to go out home a minute,” I
says. “You can dock me if it’ll make you feel any better.”
“Go ahead,” he says, “I can handle it now. No bad news, I hope.”
“You’ll have to go to the telegraph office and find that out,” I says.
“They’ll have time to tell you. I haven’t.”
“I just asked,” he says. “Your mother knows she can depend on me.”
“She’ll appreciate it,” I says. “I wont be gone any longer than I have
to.”
“Take your time,” he says. “I can handle it now. You go ahead.”
I got the car and went home. Once this morning, twice at noon, and now
again, with her and having to chase all over town and having to beg them
to let me eat a little of the food I am paying for. Sometimes I think
what’s the use of anything. With the precedent I’ve been set I must be
crazy to keep on. And now I reckon I’ll get home just in time to take a
nice long drive after a basket of tomatoes or something and then have to
go back to town smelling like a camphor factory so my head wont explode
right on my shoulders. I keep telling her there’s not a damn thing in
that aspirin except flour and water for imaginary invalids. I says you
dont know what a headache is. I says you think I’d fool with that damn
car at all if it depended on me. I says I can get along without one I’ve
learned to get along without lots of things but if you want to risk
yourself in that old wornout surrey with a halfgrown nigger boy all
right because I says God looks after Ben’s kind, God knows He ought to
do something for him but if you think I’m going to trust a thousand
dollars’ worth of delicate machinery to a halfgrown nigger or a grown
one either, you’d better buy him one yourself because I says you like to
ride in the car and you know you do.
Dilsey said Mother was in the house. I went on into the hall and
listened, but I didn’t hear anything. I went up stairs, but just as I
passed her door she called me.
“I just wanted to know who it was,” she says. “I’m here alone so much
that I hear every sound.”
“You dont have to stay here,” I says. “You could spend the whole day
visiting like other women, if you wanted to.” She came to the door.
“I thought maybe you were sick,” she says. “Having to hurry through your
dinner like you did.”
“Better luck next time,” I says. “What do you want?”
“Is anything wrong?” she says.
“What could be?” I says. “Cant I come home in the middle of the
afternoon without upsetting the whole house?”
“Have you seen Quentin?” she says.
“She’s in school,” I says.
“It’s after three,” she says. “I heard the clock strike at least a half
an hour ago. She ought to be home by now.”
“Ought she?” I says. “When have you ever seen her before dark?”
“She ought to be home,” she says. “When I was a girl . . .”
“You had somebody to make you behave yourself,” I says. “She hasn’t.”
“I can’t do anything with her,” she says. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried.”
“And you wont let me, for some reason,” I says, “So you ought to be
satisfied.” I went on to my room. I turned the key easy and stood there
until the knob turned. Then she says,
“Jason.”
“What,” I says.
“I just thought something was wrong.”
“Not in here,” I says. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I dont mean to worry you,” she says.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I says. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might have
been mistaken. Do you want anything?”
After awhile she says, “No. Not any thing.” Then she went away. I took
the box down and counted out the money and hid the box again and
unlocked the door and went out. I thought about the camphor, but it
would be too late now, anyway. And I’d just have one more round trip.
She was at her door, waiting.
“You want anything from town?” I says.
“No,” she says. “I dont mean to meddle in your affairs. But I dont know
what I’d do if anything happened to you, Jason.”
“I’m all right,” I says. “Just a headache.”
“I wish you’d take some aspirin,” she says. “I know you’re not going to
stop using the car.”
“What’s the car got to do with it?” I says. “How can a car give a man a
headache?”
“You know gasoline always made you sick,” she says. “Ever since you were
a child. I wish you’d take some aspirin.”
“Keep on wishing it,” I says. “It wont hurt you.”
I got in the car and started back to town. I had just turned onto the
street when I saw a ford coming helling toward me. All of a sudden it
stopped. I could hear the wheels sliding and it slewed around and backed
and whirled and just as I was thinking what the hell they were up to, I
saw that red tie. Then I recognised her face looking back through the
window. It whirled into the alley. I saw it turn again, but when I got
to the back street it was just disappearing, running like hell.
I saw red. When I recognised that red tie, after all I had told her, I
forgot about everything. I never thought about my head even until I came
to the first forks and had to stop. Yet we spend money and spend money
on roads and damn if it isn’t like trying to drive over a sheet of
corrugated iron roofing. I’d like to know how a man could be expected to
keep up with even a wheelbarrow. I think too much of my car; I’m not
going to hammer it to pieces like it was a ford. Chances were they had
stolen it, anyway, so why should they give a damn. Like I say blood
always tells. If you’ve got blood like that in you, you’ll do anything.
I says whatever claim you believe she has on you has already been
discharged; I says from now on you have only yourself to blame because
you know what any sensible person would do. I says if I’ve got to spend
half my time being a damn detective, at least I’ll go where I can get
paid for it.
So I had to stop there at the forks. Then I remembered it. It felt like
somebody was inside with a hammer, beating on it. I says I’ve tried to
keep you from being worried by her; I says far as I’m concerned, let her
go to hell as fast as she pleases and the sooner the better. I says what
else do you expect except every drummer and cheap show that comes to
town because even these town jellybeans give her the go-by now. You dont
know what goes on I says, you dont hear the talk that I hear and you can
just bet I shut them up too. I says my people owned slaves here when you
all were running little shirt tail country stores and farming land no
nigger would look at on shares.
If they ever farmed it. It’s a good thing the Lord did something for
this country; the folks that live on it never have. Friday afternoon,
and from right here I could see three miles of land that hadn’t even
been broken, and every able bodied man in the county in town at that
show. I might have been a stranger starving to death, and there wasn’t a
soul in sight to ask which way to town even. And she trying to get me to
take aspirin. I says when I eat bread I’ll do it at the table. I says
you always talking about how much you give up for us when you could buy
ten new dresses a year on the money you spend for those damn patent
medicines. It’s not something to cure it I need it’s just an even break
not to have to have them but as long as I have to work ten hours a day
to support a kitchen full of niggers in the style they’re accustomed to
and send them to the show with every other nigger in the county, only he
was late already. By the time he got there it would be over.
After awhile he got up to the car and when I finally got it through his
head if two people in a ford had passed him, he said yes. So I went on,
and when I came to where the wagon road turned off I could see the tire
tracks. Ab Russell was in his lot, but I didn’t bother to ask him and I
hadn’t got out of sight of his barn hardly when I saw the ford. They had
tried to hide it. Done about as well at it as she did at everything else
she did. Like I say it’s not that I object to so much; maybe she cant
help that, it’s because she hasn’t even got enough consideration for her
own family to have any discretion. I’m afraid all the time I’ll run into
them right in the middle of the street or under a wagon on the square,
like a couple of dogs.
I parked and got out. And now I’d have to go way around and cross a
plowed field, the only one I had seen since I left town, with every step
like somebody was walking along behind me, hitting me on the head with a
club. I kept thinking that when I got across the field at least I’d have
something level to walk on, that wouldn’t jolt me every step, but when I
got into the woods it was full of underbrush and I had to twist around
through it, and then I came to a ditch full of briers. I went along it
for awhile, but it got thicker and thicker, and all the time Earl
probably telephoning home about where I was and getting Mother all upset
again.