He was looking at nothing, certainly not toward the gallery, and no one on the gallery so much as looked at him except the little boy, who now watched the boy in the road, his periwinkle eyes grave and steady above the bitten cracker in his halted hand. The boy in the road moved on, thickly undulant in the tight overalls, and vanished beyond the corner of the store, the round head and the unwinking eyes of the little boy on the gallery turning steadily to watch him out of sight. Then the little boy bit the cracker again, chewing. “Of course there’s Mrs Tull,” Ratliff said. “But that’s Eck she’s going to sue for damaging Tull against that bridge. And as for Henry Armstid—–”
“If a man aint got gumption enough to protect himself, it’s his own look-out,” the clerk said.
“Sholy,” Ratliff said, still in that dreamy, abstracted tone, actually speaking over his shoulder even. “And Henry Armstid, that’s all right because from what I hear of the conversation that tatcen place, Henry had already stopped owning that horse he thought was his before that Texas man left. And as for that broke leg, that wont put him out none because his wife can make his crop.” The clerk had ceased to rub his back against the door. He watched the back of Ratliff’s head, unwinking too, sober and intent; he glanced at Snopes who, chewing, was watching another sliver curl away from the advancing knife-blade, then he watched the back of Ratliff’s head again.
“It wont be the first time she has made their crop,” the man with the peach spray said. Ratliff glanced at him.
“You ought to know. This wont be the first time I ever saw you in their field, doing plowing Henry never got around to. How many days have you already given them this year?” The man with the peach spray removed it and spat carefully and put the spray back between his teeth.
“She can run a furrow straight as I can,” the second said.
“They’re unlucky,” the third said. “When you are unlucky, it dont matter much what you do.”
“Sholy,” Ratliff said. “I’ve heard laziness called bad luck so much that maybe it is.”
“He aint lazy,” the third said. “When their mule died three or four years ago, him and her broke their land working time about in the traces with the other mule. They aint lazy.”
“So that’s all right,” Ratliff said, gazing up the empty road again. “Likely she will begin right away to finish the plowing; that oldest gal is pretty near big enough to work with a mule, aint she? or at least to hold the plow stdeay while Mrs Armstid helps the mule?” He glanced again toward the man with the peach spray as though for an answer, but he was not looking at the other and he went on talking without any pause.
The clerk stood with his rump and back pressed against the door-facing as if he had paused in the act of scratching, watching Ratliff quite hard now, unwinking. If Ratliff had looked at Flem Snopes, he would have seen nothing below the down-slanted peak of the cap save the steady motion of his jaws.
Another sliver was curling with neat deliberation before the moving knife. “Plenty of time now because all she’s got to do after she finishes washing Mrs Littlejohn’s dishes and sweeping out the house to pay hers and Henry’s board, is to go out home and milk and cook up enough vittles to last the children until tomorrow and feed them and get the littlest ones to sleep and wait outside the door until that biggest gal gets the bar up and gets into bed herself with the axe—–”
“The axe?” the man with the peach spray said.
“She takes it to bed with her. She’s just twelve, and what with this country still more or less full of them uncaught horses that never belonged to Flem Snopes, likely she feels maybe she cant swing a mere washboard like Mrs Littlejohn can—and then come back and wash up the supper dishes. And after that, not nothing to do until morning except to stay close enough where Henry can call her until it’s light enough to chop the wood to cook breakfast and then help Mrs Littlejohn wash the dishes and make the beds and sweep while watching the road. Because likely any time now Flem Snopes will get back from wherever he has been since the auction, which of course is to town naturally to see about his cousin that’s got into a little legal trouble, and so get that five dollars. ‘Only maybe he wont give it back to me,’ she says, and maybe that’s what Mrs Littlejohn thought too, because she never said nothing. I could hear her—–”
“And where did you happen to be during all this?” the clerk said.
“Listening,” Ratliff said. He glanced back at the clerk, then he was looking away again, almost standing with his back to them. “—could hear her dumping the dishes into the pan like she was throwing them at it. ‘Do you reckon he will give it back to me?’ Mrs Armstid says. ‘That Texas man give it to him and said he would.
All the folks there saw him give Mr Snopes the money and heard him say I could get it from Mr Snopes tomorrow.’ Mrs Littlejohn was washing the dishes now, washing them like a man would, like they was made out of iron. ‘No,’ she says. ‘But asking him wont do no hurt.’—’If he wouldn’t give it back, it aint no use to ask,’ Mrs Armstid says.—‘Suit yourself,’ Mrs Littlejohn says. ‘It’s your money.’ Then I couldn’t hear nothing but the dishes for a while. ‘Do you reckon he might give it back to me?’ Mrs Armstid says. ‘That Texas man said he would. They all heard him say it.’—‘Then go and ask him for it,’ Mrs Littlejohn says.
Then I couldn’t hear nothing but the dishes again. ‘He wont give it back to me,’ Mrs Armstid says.—‘All right,’ Mrs Littlejohn says. ‘Dont ask him, then.’ Then I just heard the dishes. They would have two pans, both washing. ‘You dont reckon he would, do you?’ Mrs Armstid says. Mrs Littlejohn never said nothing. It sounded like she was throwing the dishes at one another. ‘Maybe I better go and talk to Henry,’ Mrs Armstid says.—‘I would,’ Mrs Littlejohn says. And I be dog if it didn’t sound exactly like she had two plates in her hands, beating them together like these here brass bucket-lids in a band. ‘Then Henry can buy another five-dollar horse with it. Maybe he’ll buy one next time that will out and out kill him.
If I just thought he would, I’d give him back that money, myself.’—‘I reckon I better talk to him first,’ Mrs Armstid says. And then it sounded just like Mrs Littlejohn taken up the dishes and pans and all and throwed the whole business at die cookstove—” Ratliff ceased. Behind him the clerk was hissing “Psst! Psst! Flem. Flem!” Then he stopped, and all of them watched Mrs Armstid approach and mount the steps, gaunt in the shapeless gray garment, the stained tennis shoes hissing faintly on the boards. She came among them and stood, facing Snopes but not looking at anyone, her hands rolled into her apron.
“He said that day he wouldn’t sell Henry that horse,” she said in a flat toneless voice. “He said you had the money and I could get it from you.” Snopes raised his head and turned it slightly again and spat neatly past the woman, across the gallery and into the road.
“He took all the money with him when he left,” he said. Motionless, the gray garment hanging in rigid, almost formal folds like drapery in bronze, Mrs Armstid appeared to be watching something near Snopes’ feet, as though she had not heard him, or as if she had quitted her body as soon as she finished speaking and although her body, hearing, had received the words, they would have no life nor meaning until she returned. The clerk was rubbing his back steadily against the door-facing again, watching her. The little boy was watching her too with his unwinking ineffable gaze, but nobody else was. The man with the peach spray removed it and spat and put the twig back into his mouth.
“He said Henry hadn’t bought no horse,” she said. “He said I could get the money from you.”
“I reckon he forgot it,” Snopes said. “He took all the money away with him when he left.” He watched her a moment longer, then he trimmed again at the stick. The clerk rubbed his back gently against the door, watching her. After a time Mrs Armstid raised her head and looked up the road where it went on, mild with spring dust, past Mrs Littlejohn’s, beginning to rise, on past the not-yet-bloomed (that would be in June) locust grove across the way, on past the schoolhouse, the weathered roof of which, rising beyond an orchard of peach and pear trees, resembled a hive swarmed about by a cloud of pink-and-white bees, ascending, mounting toward the crest of the hill where the church stood among its sparse gleam of marble headstones in the sombre cedar grove where during the long afternoons of
