“You might buy that Old What-you-call-it place from Flem,” Grimm said. He was watching Suratt. Suratt looked at him. When he spoke his tone was immediate, far superior to merely casual.
“That’s a fact. I might do that.” He looked at Grimm. “What you doing way up here, Eustace? Ain’t you strayed a right smart?”
“I come up to see if I couldn’t trade Flem outen—”
Snopes spoke. His voice was not cold so much as utterly devoid of any inflection. “Reckon you better get on to dinner, Eustace,” he said. “Mrs. Littlejohn’ll be ringing the bell soon. She don’t like to be kept waiting.”
Grimm looked at Snopes, his mouth still slacked for talk. He rose. Suratt looked at Snopes, too, who had not raised his head from his whittling. Suratt looked at Grimm again. Grimm had closed his mouth. He was moving toward the steps.
“If it’s goats you’re aiming to trade Flem for,” Suratt said, “I can warn you to look out.”
The others laughed, sober, appreciative. Grimm descended the steps. “That depends on how smart the fellow is that trades with Flem,” he said. “I reckon Flem don’t only need goats—”
“Tell her I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Snopes said. Again Grimm paused, looking back, his mouth slacked for speech; again he closed it.
“All right,” he said. He went on. Suratt watched him. Then he looked at Snopes.
“Flem,” he said, “you sholy ain’t going to unload that Old Frenchman place on a poor fellow like Eustace Grimm? Boys, we hadn’t ought to stand for it. I reckon Eustace has worked pretty hard for every cent he’s got, and he won’t be no match for Flem.”
Snopes whittled with tedious deliberation, his jaw thrusting steadily.
“Of course, a smart fellow like Flem might make something offen that old place, but Eustace now — Let me tell you what I heard about one of them Grimms down there last month; it might be Eustace they tell it on.” He achieved his anecdote skillfully above the guffaws. When he had finished it Snopes rose, putting his knife away. He crossed the porch, waddling thickly in his denim trousers braced neatly over his white shirt, and descended the steps. Suratt watched him.
“If it’s that time, I reckon I better move too,” Suratt said. “Might have to go into town this evening.” He descended the steps. Snopes had gone on. “Here, Flem,” Suratt said. “I’m going past Littlejohn’s. I’ll give you a free ride that far. Won’t cost you a cent.”
Again the squatting men on the porch guffawed, watching Suratt and Snopes like four or five boys twelve years old might watch and listen to two boys fourteen years old. Snopes stopped. He did not look back. He stood there, chewing with steady unhaste, until Suratt swung the buckboard up and cramped the wheel; then he got in. They drove on.
“So you done sold that old place,” Suratt said. They drove at a walk. Mrs. Littlejohn’s house was a quarter of a mile down the road. In the middle distance Eustace Grimm walked, his back toward them. “That ’ere Frenchman place,” Suratt said.
Snopes spat over the wheel. “Dickering,” he said.
“Oh,” Suratt said. “Can’t get Eustace to close with you?” They drove on. “What’s Eustace want with that place? I thought his folks owned a right smart of land down yonder.”
“Heard so,” Snopes said.
They drove on. Grimm’s figure was a little nearer. Suratt drew the team down to a slower walk. “Well, if a man just give what that old place is worth, I reckon most anybody could buy it.” They drove on. “Still, for a man that just wanted a place to settle down, a fellow that depended on outside work for his living—”
Snopes spat over the wheel.
“Yes, sir,” Suratt said. “For a fellow that just aimed to fix him up a home, say. Like me. A fellow like that might give you two hundred for it. Just the house and garden and orchard, say.” The red dust coiled slow beneath the slow hoofs and wheels. Grimm had almost reached Mrs. Littlejohn’s gate. “What would you take for that much of it?”
“Don’t aim to sell unless I sell the whole place,” Snopes said. “Ain’t in no rush to sell that.”
“Yes?” Suratt said. “What was you asking Eustace Grimm for the whole place?”
“Ain’t asked him nothing yet. Just listened to him.”
“Well, what would you ask me, say?”
“Three thousand,” Snopes said.
“Three which?” Suratt said. He laughed, slapping his leg. He laughed for some time. “If you ain’t a sight. Three thousand.” They drove on. Grimm had reached Mrs. Littlejohn’s gate. Suratt quit laughing. “Well, I hope you get it. If Eustace can’t quite meet that, I might could find you a buyer at three hundred, if you get in a tight to sell.”
“Ain’t in no rush to sell,” Snopes said. “I’ll get out here.” Grimm had paused at the gate. He was looking back at them from beneath his hat brim, with a gaze at once attentive and veiled.
That afternoon Suratt, Vernon and Henry made Snopes three joint notes for one thousand dollars each.
Vernon was good for his. Suratt gave a lien on his half of the restaurant which he and his brother-in-law owned in Jefferson. Henry gave a second mortgage on his farm and a chattel mortgage on his stock and fixtures, including a new stove which his wife had bought with her weaving money, and a mile of barbed-wire fence.
They reached their new property just before sundown. When they arrived a wagon, the mules still — or already — in the traces, stood on the lawn, and then Eustace Grimm came around the corner of the house and stood there, watching them. Henry ordered him off the place. He got into the wagon and they began to dig at once, though it was still light. They dug for some little time before they found that Grimm had not yet departed. He was sitting in the wagon in the road, watching them across the fence, until Henry rushed at him with his shovel. Then he drove on.
Vernon and Suratt had stopped also. Vernon watched Grimm’s back as he rattled on down the road in the slow wagon. “Ain’t he some kin to them Snopeses?” Vernon said. “A in-law or something?”
“What?” Suratt said. They watched the wagon disappear in the dusk. “I didn’t know that.”
“Come on,” Vernon said. “Henry’s getting ahead of us.” They began to dig again. It was dark soon, but they could still hear one another.
They dug steadily for two nights, two brief summer darks broken by the daylight intervals of fitful sleep on the bare floor of their house, where even to the ground floor the sunlight reached in patchy splashes at noon. In the sad light of the third dawn Suratt stopped and straightened his back. Twenty feet away, Henry, in his pit, moved up and down with the regularity of an automaton.
He was waist-deep, as though he were digging himself tirelessly into that earth whose born thrall he was; as though he had been severed at the waist, the dead torso laboring on in measured stoop and recover, not knowing that it was dead.
They had completely turned under the entire surface of the garden, and standing in the dark fresh loam, his muscles flinching and jerking with fatigue, Suratt watched Henry; and then he found that Vernon was watching him quietly in turn. Suratt laid his shovel carefully down and went to where Vernon stood. They stood looking at each other while the dawn grayed upon their gaunt faces. When they spoke their voices were quiet.
“You looked close at that money of yours yet?” Suratt said.
Vernon didn’t answer at once. They watched Henry as he rose and fell behind his pick. “I don’t reckon I dared to,” Vernon said. He laid his tool carefully on the earth also, and together he and Suratt turned and went to the house. It was still dark in the house, so they lit the lantern and took the two sacks from the hiding place in a chimney and set the lantern on the floor.
“I reckon we’d ought to thought it wouldn’t no cloth sack—” Suratt said.
“Sho,” Vernon said. “I reckon you can say that and leave off about the sack.”
They squatted, the lantern between them, opening the sacks. “Bet you a dollar I beat you,” Suratt said.
“All right,” Vernon said. They laid two coins aside and examined the others, one by one. Then they looked at each other. “1901,” Vernon said. “What you got?”
“1896,” Suratt said. “I beat you.”
“Yes,” Vernon said. “You beat me.” Suratt took up the wager and they hid the money again and blew the lantern out. It was lighter now, and they could see Henry quite well as he worked in his thigh-deep trench. Soon the sun; already three buzzards soared in it high against the yellow blue.
Henry did not look up at them when they reached him. “Henry,” Suratt said. Henry did not pause. “When was your oldest dollar minted, Henry?” Suratt said. Henry did not falter. Suratt came nearer and touched his shoulder. “Henry,” he said.
Henry whirled, raising the shovel, the blade turned edgewise, glinting a thin line of steel-colored dawn such as an ax would have.
“Git outen my hole,” he said. “Git outen hit.”
The End
