‘The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn’t really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car.
Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the subrosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on.
As a result of which the American woman has become cold and undersexed; she has projected her libido onto the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own.
Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.’
‘That’s not true,’ he said.
‘I am fifty-plus years old,’ his uncle said. ‘I spent the middle fifteen of them fumbling beneath skirts. My experience was that few of them were interested in love or sex either. They wanted to be married.’
‘I still dont believe it,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ his uncle said. ‘Dont. And even when you are fifty and plus, still refuse to believe it.’ And that was when they saw Lucas crossing the Square, probably at the same time—the cocked hat and the thin fierce glint of the tilted gold toothpick and he said,
‘Where do you suppose it was all the time? I never did see it. Surely he had it with him that afternoon, a Saturday when he was not only wearing that black suit but he even had the pistol? Surely he never left home without the toothpick too.’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ his uncle said. ‘That was the first thing he did when Mr Hampton walked into Skipworth’s house where Skipworth had Lucas handcuffed to the bedpost—gave Hampton the toothpick and told him to keep it until he called for it.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘He’s coming up here.’
‘Yes,’ his uncle said. ‘To gloat. Oh,’ he said quickly, ‘he’s a gentleman; he wont remind me to my face that I was wrong; he’s just going to ask me how much he owes me as his lawyer.’
Then in his chair beside the water cooler and his uncle once more behind the table they heard the long airy rumble and creek of the stairs then Lucas’ feet steadily though with no haste and Lucas came tieless and even collarless this time except for the button but with an old-time white waistcoat not soiled so much as stained under the black coat and the worn gold loop of the watch-chain—the same face which he had seen for the first time when he climbed dripping up out of the icy creek that morning four years ago, unchanged, to which nothing had happened since not even age—in the act of putting the toothpick into one of the upper waistcoat pockets as he came through the door, saying generally,
‘Gentle-men,’ and then to him: ‘Young man—’ courteous and intractable, more than bland: downright cheerful almost, removing the raked swagger of the hat: ‘You aint fell in no more creeks lately, have you?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m saving that until you get some more ice on yours.’
‘You’ll be welcome without waiting for a freeze,’ Lucas said.
‘Have a seat, Lucas,’ his uncle said but he had already begun to, taking the same hard chair beside the door which nobody else but Miss Habersham had ever chosen, a little akimbo as though he were posing for a camera, the hat laid crownup back across his forearm, looking at both of them still and saying again,
‘Gentle-men.’
‘You didn’t come here for me to tell you what to do so I’m going to tell you anyway,’ his uncle said.
Lucas blinked rapidly once. He looked at his uncle. ‘I cant say I did.’ Then he said cheerily: ‘But I’m always ready to listen to good advice.’
‘Go and see Miss Habersham,’ his uncle said.
Lucas looked at his uncle. He blinked twice this time. ‘I aint much of a visiting man,’ he said.
‘You were not much of a hanging man either,’ his uncle said. ‘But you dont need me to tell you how close you came.’
‘No,’ Lucas said. ‘I dont reckon I do. What do you want me to tell her?’
‘You cant,’ his uncle said. ‘You dont know how to say thank you. I’ve got that fixed too. Take her some flowers.’
‘Flowers?’ Lucas said. ‘I aint had no flowers to speak of since Molly died.’
‘And that too,’ his uncle said. ‘I’ll telephone home. My sister’ll have a bunch ready. Chick’ll drive you up in my car to get them and then take you out to Miss Habersham’s gate.’
‘Nemmine that,’ Lucas said. ‘Once I got the flowers I can walk.’
‘And you can throw the flowers away too,’ his uncle said. ‘But I know you wont do one and I dont think you’ll do the other in the car with Chick.’
‘Well,’ Lucas said. ‘If wont nothing else satisfy you——’ (And when he got back to town and finally found a place three blocks away to park the car and mounted the stairs again his uncle was striking the match, holding it to the pipe and speaking through with into the smoke: ‘You and Booker T. Washington, no that’s wrong, you and Miss Habersham and Aleck Sander and Sheriff Hampton, and Booker T. Washington because he did only what everybody expected of him so there was no real reason why he should have while you all did not only what nobody expected you to but all Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County would have risen in active concord for once to prevent you if they had known in time and even a year from now some (when and if they do
