“Lawd, honey,” old Het said. “Don’t you mind me. I done already had so much troubles myself dat I kin set en listen to udder folks’ widout hit worryin me a-tall. You gawn talk whut you came ter talk; I jest set here en tend de ham.” Snopes looked at Mrs. Hait.
“Ain’t you going to make her go away?” he said.
“What for?” Mrs. Hait said. “I reckon she ain’t the first critter that ever come on this yard when hit wanted and went or stayed when hit liked.” Snopes made a gesture, brief, fretted, restrained.
“Well,” he said. “All right. So you taken the mule.”
“I paid you for it. She give you the money.”
“Ten dollars. For a hundred-and-fifty-dollar mule. Ten dollars.”
“I don’t know anything about hundred-and-fifty-dollar mules. All I know is what the railroad paid.” Now Snopes looked at her for a full moment.
“What do you mean?”
“Them sixty dollars a head the railroad used to pay you for mules back when you and Hait—”
“Hush,” Snopes said; he looked about again, quick, ceaseless. “All right. Even call it sixty dollars. But you just sent me ten.”
“Yes. I sent you the difference.” He looked at her, perfectly still. “Between that mule and what you owed Hait.”
“What I owed—”
“For getting them five mules onto the tr—”
“Hush!” he cried. “Hush!” Her voice went on, cold, grim, level.
“For helping you. You paid him fifty dollars each time, and the railroad paid you sixty dollars a head for the mules. Ain’t that right?” He watched her. “The last time you never paid him. So I taken that mule instead. And I sent you the ten dollars difference.”
“Yes,” he said in a tone of quiet, swift, profound bemusement; then he cried: “But look! Here’s where I got you. Hit was our agreement that I wouldn’t never owe him nothing until after the mules was—”
“I reckon you better hush yourself,” Mrs. Hait said.
“ — until hit was over. And this time, when over had come, I never owed nobody no money because the man hit would have been owed to wasn’t nobody,” he cried triumphantly. “You see?” Sitting on the box, motionless, downlooking, Mrs. Hait seemed to muse. “So you just take your ten dollars back and tell me where my mule is and we’ll just go back good friends to where we started at. Fore God, I’m as sorry as ere a living man about that fire—”
“Fo God!” old Het said, “hit was a blaze, wuzn’t it?”
“ — but likely with all that ere railroad money you still got, you just been wanting a chance to build new, all along. So here. Take hit.” He put the money into her hand. “Where’s my mule?” But Mrs. Hait didn’t move at once.
“You want to give it back to me?” she said.
“Sho. We been friends all the time; now we’ll just go back to where we left off being. I don’t hold no hard feelings and don’t you hold none. Where you got the mule hid?”
“Up at the end of that ravine ditch behind Spilmer’s,” she said.
“Sho. I know. A good, sheltered place, since you ain’t got nere barn. Only if you’d a just left hit in the pasture, hit would a saved us both trouble. But hit ain’t no hard feelings though. And so I’ll bid you goodnight. You’re all fixed up, I see. I reckon you could save some more money by not building no house a-tall.”
“I reckon I could,” Mrs. Hait said. But he was gone.
“Whut did you leave de mule dar fer?” old Het said.
“I reckon that’s far enough,” Mrs. Hait said.
“Fer enough?” But Mrs. Hait came and looked into the skillet, and old Het said, “Wuz hit me er you dat mentioned something erbout er nudder piece o dis ham?” So they were both eating when in the not-quite-yet accomplished twilight Snopes returned. He came up quietly and stood, holding his hands to the blaze as if he were quite cold. He did not look at any one now.
“I reckon I’ll take that ere ten dollars,” he said.
“What ten dollars?” Mrs. Hait said. He seemed to muse upon the fire. Mrs. Hait and old Het chewed quietly, old Het alone watching him.
“You ain’t going to give hit back to me?” he said.
“You was the one that said to let’s go back to where we started,” Mrs. Hait said.
“Fo God you wuz, en dat’s de fack,” old Het said. Snopes mused upon the fire; he spoke in a tone of musing and amazed despair:
“I go to the worry and the risk and the agoment for years and years and I get sixty dollars. And you, one time, without no trouble and no risk, without even knowing you are going to git it, git eighty-five hundred dollars.
I never begrudged hit to you; can’t nere a man say I did, even if hit did seem a little strange that you should git it all when he wasn’t working for you and you never even knowed where he was at and what doing; that all you done to git it was to be married to him. And now, after all these ten years of not begrudging you hit, you taken the best mule I had and you ain’t even going to pay me ten dollars for hit. Hit ain’t right. Hit ain’t justice.”
“You got de mule back, en you ain’t satisfried yit,” old Het said. “Whut does you want?” Now Snopes looked at Mrs. Hait.
“For the last time I ask hit,” he said. “Will you or won’t you give hit back?”
“Give what back?” Mrs. Hait said. Snopes turned. He stumbled over something — it was old Het’s shopping-bag — and recovered and went on. They could see him in silhouette, as though framed by the two blackened chimneys against the dying west; they saw him fling up both clenched hands in a gesture almost Gallic, of resignation and impotent despair. Then he was gone. Old Het was watching Mrs. Hait.
“Honey,” she said. “Whut did you do wid de mule?” Mrs. Hait leaned forward to the fire. On her plate lay a stale biscuit. She lifted the skillet and poured over the biscuit the grease in which the ham had cooked.
“I shot it,” she said.
“You which?” old Het said. Mrs. Hait began to eat the biscuit. “Well,” old Het said, happily, “de mule burnt de house en you shot de mule. Dat’s whut I calls justice.” It was getting dark fast now, and before her was still the three-mile walk to the poorhouse. But the dark would last a long time in January, and the poorhouse too would not move at once.
She sighed with weary and happy relaxation. “Gentlemen, hush! Ain’t we had a day!”
The End
That Will Be Fine, William Faulkner
That Will Be Fine
WE COULD HEAR the water running into the tub. We looked at the presents scattered over the bed where mamma had wrapped them in the colored paper, with our names on them so Grandpa could tell who they belonged to easy when he would take them off the tree. There was a present for everybody except Grandpa because mamma said that Grandpa is too old to get presents any more.
“This one is yours,” I said.
“Sho now,” Rosie said. “You come on and get in that tub like your mamma tell you.”
“I know what’s in it,” I said. “I could tell you if I wanted to.”
Rosie looked at her present. “I reckon I kin wait twell hit be handed to me at the right time,” she said.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it for a nickel,” I said.
Rosie looked at her present. “I ain’t got no nickel,” she said. “But I will have Christmas morning when Mr. Rodney give me that dime.”
“You’ll know what’s in it anyway then and you won’t pay me,” I said. “Go and ask mamma to lend you a nickel.”
Then Rosie grabbed me by the arm. “You come on and get in that tub,” she said. “You and money! If you ain’t rich time you twenty-one, hit will be because the law done abolished money or done abolished you.”
So I went and bathed and came back, with the presents all scattered out across mamma’s and papa’s bed and you could almost smell it and tomorrow night they would begin to shoot the fireworks and then you could hear it too.
It would be just tonight and then tomorrow we would get on the train, except papa, because he would have to stay at the livery stable until after Christmas Eve, and go to Grandpa’s, and then tomorrow night and then it would be Christmas and Grandpa would take the presents off the tree and call out our names, and the one from me to Uncle Rodney that I bought with my own dime and so after a while Uncle Rodney would prize open Grandpa’s desk and take a dose of Grandpa’s tonic and maybe he would give me another quarter for helping him, like he did last Christmas, instead of just a nickel, like he would do last summer while he was visiting mamma and us and we were doing business with Mrs. Tucker before Uncle Rodney went home and began to work for the Compress Association, and it would be fine. Or maybe even a half a dollar and it seemed to me like I just couldn’t wait.
“Jesus, I can’t hardly wait,” I said.
“You which?” Rosie hollered. “Jesus?” she hollered. “Jesus? You let your mamma hear you
