Fool About a Horse, William Faulkner
Fool About a Horse
Scribner’s, August 1936. Later revised for ‘The Hamlet’
I
YES, SIR. It wasn’t Pap that bought one horse from Pat Stamper and then sold two back to him. It was Mammy. Her and Pat jest used Pap to trade through. Because we never left home that morning with Mammy’s cream separator money to trade horses with nobody.
And I reckon that if Pap had had any notion that he was fated to swap horses with Pat Stamper, they couldn’t even have arrested him and taken him to town. We never even knowed it was Pat Stamper that had unloaded that horse on whoever it was Beasley Kemp got it from until we was halfway there.
Because Pap admitted he was a fool about a horse but it wasn’t that kind of a fool he meant. And once he was away from our lot and the neighbor men looking through the fence at whatever it was Pap had traded some more of Old Man Anse Holland’s bob-wire and busted tools for this time, and Pap lying to them to jest exactly the right amount about how old it was and how much he give for it; — once Pap was away from there I don’t reckon he was even the kind of a fool about a horse that Mammy claimed he was when we come up to the house that noon after we had shut the gate on the horse we had jest traded outen Beasley Kemp, and Pap taken his shoes off on the front gallery for dinner and Mammy standing there in the door, shaking the cold skillet at Pap and scolding and railing and Pap saying, “Now Vynie; now Vynie.
I always was a fool about a good horse and it ain’t no use you a-scolding and jawing about it. You had better thank the Lord that when He give me a eye for horse-flesh He give me a little jedgment and gumption along with it.”
Because it wasn’t the horse. It wasn’t the trade. It was a good trade, because Pap swapped Beasley a straight stock and fourteen rods of bob-wire and a old wore-out sorghum mill of Old Man Anse’s for the horse, and Mammy admitted it was a good swap even for that horse, even for anything that could git up and walk from Beasley Kemp’s lot to ourn by itself. Because like she said while she was shaking the skillet at Pap, even Pap couldn’t git stung very bad in a horse trade because he never owned nothing that anybody would swap even a sorry horse for and even to him.
And it wasn’t because me and Pap had left the plows down in the bottom piece where Mammy couldn’t see them from the house, and snuck the wagon out the back way with the straight stock and the wire and the sorghum mill while she thought we were still in the field. It wasn’t that.
It was like she knowed without having to be told what me and Pap never found out for a week yet: that Pat Stamper had owned that horse we traded outen Beasley Kemp and that now Pap had done caught the Pat Stamper sickness jest from touching it.
And I reckon she was right. Maybe to hisself Pap did call hisself the Pat Stamper of the Frenchman Bend country, or maybe even of all Beat Four. But I reckon that even when he was believing it the strongest, setting there on the top rail of the lot fence and the neighbor men coming up to lean on the fence and look at what Pap had brung home this time and Pap not bragging much and maybe not even lying much about it; I reckon that even then there was another part of his mind telling him he was safe to believe he was the Pat Stamper of Beat Four jest as long as he done it setting on that fence where it was about one chance in a million of Pat Stamper actually passing and stopping to put it to a test.
Because he wouldn’t no more have set out to tangle with Pat Stamper than he would have set out to swap horses with a water moccasin. Probly if he had knowed that Pat Stamper ever owned that horse we swapped outen Beasley, Pap wouldn’t have traded for it at no price. But then, I reckon that a fellow who straggles by acci-dent into where yellow fever or moccasins is, don’t aim to ketch fever or snakebite neither.
But he sholy never aimed to tangle with Pat Stamper. When we started for town that morning with Beasley’s horse and our mule in the wagon and that separator money that Mammy had been saving on for four years in Pap’s pocket, we wasn’t even thinking about horse trading, let alone about Pat Stamper, because we didn’t know that Pat Stamper was in Jefferson and we didn’t even know that he had owned the horse until we got to Varner’s store. It was fate.
It was like the Lord Hisself had decided to spend Mammy’s separator money for a horse; it would have had to been Him because wouldn’t nobody else, leastways nobody that knowed Mammy, have risked doing it. Yes, sir. Pure fate. Though I will have to admit that fate picked a good, quick, willing hand when it picked Pap. Because it wasn’t that kind of a fool about a horse that Pap meant he was.
No, sir. Not that kind of a fool. I reckon that while he was setting on the porch that morning when Mammy had done said her say for the time being and went back to the kitchen, and me done fetched the gourd of fresh water from the well, and the side meat plopping and hissing on the stove and Pap waiting to eat it and then go back down to the lot and set on the fence while the neighbor men come up in two’s and three’s to look at Pap’s new horse, I reckon maybe in his own mind Pap not only knowed as much about horse trading as Pat Stamper, but he owned head for head as many of them as Old Man Anse hisself.
I reckon that while he would set there on the fence, jest moving enough to keep outen the sun, with them two empty plows standing in the furrow down in the bottom piece and Mammy watching him outen the back window and saying, “Horse trader! Setting there bragging and lying to a passel of shiftless men, and the weeds and morning glories climbing that thick in the corn and cotton that I am afraid to tote his dinner to him for fear of snakes”; I reckon Pap would look at whatever it was he had traded the mail box or the winter corn or something else that maybe Old Man Anse had done forgot he owned or leastways might not miss, and he would say to hisself: “It’s not only mine, but before God it’s the prettiest drove of horses a man ever seen.”
II
It was pure fate. When we left for town that morning with Mammy’s separator money, Pap never even aimed to use Beasley’s horse at all because he knowed it probably couldn’t make no twelve-mile trip to Jefferson and get back the same day. He aimed to go up to Old Man Anse’s and borrow one of his mules to work with ourn; it was Mammy herself that done it, taunted him about the piece of crowbait he had bought for a yard ornament until Pap said that by Godfrey he would show Mammy and all the rest of them that misdoubted he knowed a horse when he seen it, and so we went to the lot and put the new horse in the wagon with the mule.
We had been feeding it heavy as it would eat for a week now and it looked a heap better than it did the day we got it. But even yet it didn’t look so good, though Pap decided it was the mule that showed it up so bad; that when it was the only horse or mule in sight, it didn’t look so bad and that it was the standing beside something else on four legs that hurt its looks.
“If we jest had some way to hitch the mule under the wagon where it wouldn’t show and jest leave the horse in sight, it would be fine,” Pap said. But there wasn’t no way to do that, so we jest done the best we could. It was a kind of doormat bay and so, with Pap standing about twenty foot away and squinching first one eye and then the other and saying, “Bear down on it. You got to git the hide hot to make the har shine,” I polished it down with croker sacks the best I could.
Pap thought about feeding it a good bait of salt in some corn and then turning it to water and hide some of the ribs, only we knowed that we wouldn’t even get to Jefferson in one day, let alone come back, besides having to stop at ever creek and load it up again. So we done the best we could and then we started, with Mammy’s separator money (it was twenty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents; it taken her four years to save it outen her egg- and quilt-money) tied up in a rag that she dared Pap to even open to count it before he
