‘You dont think that just because it’s Saturday afternoon again somebody is hiding behind Miss Habersham’s jasmine bush with a pistol aimed at her waiting for Lucas to walk up to the front steps. Besides Lucas didn’t have his pistol today and besides that Crawford Gowrie ——’ and his uncle:
‘Why not, what’s out yonder in the ground at Caledonia Church was Crawford Gowrie for only a second or two last Saturday and Lucas Beauchamp will be carrying his pigment into ten thousand situations a wiser man would have avoided and a lighter escaped ten thousand times after what was Lucas Beauchamp for a second or so last Saturday is in the ground at his Caledonia Church too, because that Yoknapatawpha County which would have stopped you and Aleck Sander and Miss Habersham last Sunday night are right actually, Lucas’ life the breathing and eating and sleeping is of no importance just as yours and mine are not but his unchallengeable right to it in peace and security and in fact this earth would be much more comfortable with a good deal fewer Beauchamps and Stevenses and Mallisons of all colors in it if there were only some painless way to efface not the clumsy room-devouring carcasses which can be done but the memory which cannot—that inevictible immortal memory awareness of having once been alive which exists forever still ten thousand years afterward in ten thousand recollections of injustice and suffering, too many of us not because of the room we take up but because we are willing to sell liberty short at any tawdry price for the sake of what we call our own which is a constitutional statutory license to pursue each his private postulate of happiness and contentment regardless of grief and cost even to the crucifixion of someone whose nose or pigment we dont like and even these can be coped with provided that few of others who believe that a human life is valuable simply because it has a right to keep on breathing no matter what pigment its lungs distend or nose inhales the air and are willing to defend that right at any price, it doesn’t take many three were enough last Sunday night even one can be enough and with enough ones willing to be more than grieved and shamed Lucas will no longer run the risk of needing without warning to be saved:’ and he:
‘Maybe not three the other night. One and two halves would be nearer right:’ and his uncle:
‘I said it’s all right to be proud. It’s all right even to boast. Just dont stop.’)——and came to the table and laid the hat on it and took from the inside coat pocket a leather snap-purse patina-ed like old silver and almost as big as Miss Habersham’s handbag and said,
‘I believe you got a little bill against me.’
‘What for?’ his uncle said.
‘For representing my case,’ Lucas said. ‘Name whatever your fee is within reason. I want to pay it.’
‘Not me,’ his uncle said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘I sent for you,’ Lucas said. ‘I authorised you. How much do I owe you?’
‘Nothing,’ his uncle said. ‘Because I don’t believe you. That boy there is the reason you’re walking around today.’
Now Lucas looked at him, holding the purse in one hand and the other hand poised to unsnap it—the same face to which it was not that nothing had happened but which had simply refused to accept it; now he opened the purse. ‘All right. I’ll pay him.’
‘And I’ll have you both arrested,’ his uncle said, ‘you for corrupting a minor and him for practising law without a license.’
Lucas looked back to his uncle; he watched them staring at one another. Then once more Lucas blinked twice. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay the expenses then. Name your expenses at anything within reason and let’s get this thing settled.’
‘Expenses?’ his uncle said. ‘Yes, I had an expense sitting here last Tuesday trying to write down all the different things you finally told me in such a way that Mr Hampton could get enough sense out of it to discharge you from the jail and so the more I tried it the worse it got and the worse it got the worse I got until when I came to again my fountain pen was sticking up on its point in the floor down here like an arrow. Of course the paper belongs to the county but the fountain pen was mine and it cost me two dollars to have a new point put in it. You owe me two dollars.’
‘Two dollars?’ Lucas said. He blinked twice again. Then he blinked twice again. ‘Just two dollars?’ Now he just blinked once, then he did something with his breath: not a sigh, simply a discharge of it, putting his first two fingers into the purse: ‘That dont sound like much to me but then I’m a farming man and you’re a lawing man and whether you know your business or not I reckon it aint none of my red wagon as the music box says to try to learn you different:’ and drew from the purse a worn bill crumpled into a ball not much larger than a shriveled olive and opened it enough to read it then opened it out and laid it on the desk and from the purse took a half dollar and laid it on the desk then counted onto the desk from the purse one by one four dimes and two nickels and then counted them again with his forefinger, moving them one by one about half an inch, his lips moving under the moustache, the purse still open in the other hand, then he picked up two of the dimes and a nickel and put them into the hand holding the open purse and took from the purse a quarter and put it on the desk and looked down at the coins for a rapid second then put the two dimes and the nickel back on the desk and took up the half dollar and put it back into the purse.
‘That aint but six bits,’ his uncle said.
‘Nemmine that,’ Lucas said and took up the quarter and dropped it back into the purse and closed it and watching Lucas he realised that the purse had at least two different compartments and maybe more, a second almost elbow-deep section opening beneath Lucas’ fingers and for a time Lucas stood looking down into it exactly as you would look down at your reflection in a well then took from that compartment a knotted soiled cloth tobacco sack bulging and solid looking which struck on the desk top with a dull thick chink.
‘That makes it out,’ he said. ‘Four bits in pennies. I was aiming to take them to the bank but you can save me the trip. You want to count um?’
‘Yes,’ his uncle said. ‘But you’re the one paying the money. You’re the one to count them.’
‘It’s fifty of them,’ Lucas said.
‘This is business,’ his uncle said. So Lucas unknotted the sack and dumped the pennies out on the desk and counted them one by one moving each one with his forefinger into the first small mass of dimes and nickels, counting aloud, then snapped the purse shut and put it back inside his coat and with the other hand shoved the whole mass of coins and the crumpled bill across the table until the desk blotter stopped them and took a bandana handkerchief from the side pocket of the coat and wiped his hands and put the handkerchief back and stood again intractable and calm and not looking at either of them now while the fixed blaring of the radios and the blatting creep of the automobile horns and all the rest of the whole County’s Saturday uproar came up on the bright afternoon.
‘Now what?’ his uncle said. ‘What are you waiting for now?’
‘My receipt,’ Lucas said.
THE END
