“Nome. I dont want it.”
“Go on,” Sam said. “Take it so we can go. We got to catch that train. Give it to Ned, or maybe to that old boy who took care of you last night. They’ll know what to do with it.” So I took the money; I had two rolls of it now, the big one and this little one.
And still Everbe hadn’t moved, motionless, her hands in her lap, big, too big for little things to happen to. “At least pat her on the head,” Sam said. “Ned never taught you to kick dogs too, did he?”
“He wont though,” Miss Reba said. “Watch him. Jesus, you men. And here’s another one that aint but eleven years old. What the hell does one more matter? aint she been proving ever since Sunday she’s quit?
If you’d been sawing logs as long as she has, what the hell does one more log matter when you’ve already cancelled the lease and even took down the sign?” So I went around the car to the other side. Still she didn’t move, too big for little things to happen to, too much of her to have to be the recipient of things petty and picayune, like bird splashes on a billboard or a bass drum; just sitting there, too big to shrink even, shamed (because Ned was right), her mouth puffed a little but mostly the black eye; with her, even a simple shiner was not content but must look bigger, more noticeable, more unhidable, than on anyone else.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“I thought I had to,” she said. “I didn’t know no other way.”
“You see?” Miss Reba said. “How easy it is? That’s all you need to tell us; we’ll believe you. There aint the lousiest puniest bastard one of you, providing he’s less than seventy years old, that cant make any woman believe there wasn’t no other way.”
“You did have to,” I said. “We got Lightning back in time to run the race. It dont matter now any more. You better go on or you’ll miss that train.”
“Sure,” Miss Reba said. “Besides, she’s got supper to cook too. You aint heard that yet; that’s the surprise. She aint going back to Memphis. She aint just reformed from the temptation business: she’s reformed from temptation too, providing what they claim, is right: that there aint no temptation in a place like Parsham except a man’s own natural hopes and appetites.
She’s got a job in Parsham washing and cooking and lifting his wife in and out of bed and washing her off, for that constable. So she’s even reformed from having to divide half she makes and half she has with the first tin badge that passes, because all she’ll have to do now is shove a coffeepot or a greasy skillet in the way. Come on,” she told Sam. “Even you cant make that train wait from here.”
Then they were gone. I turned and went back toward the house. It was big, with columns and porticoes and formal gardens and stables (with Lightning in one of them) and carriage houses and what used to be slave quarters — the (still is) old Parsham place, what remains of the plantation of the man, family, which gave its name to the town and the countryside and to some of the people too, like Uncle Parsham Hood.
The sun was gone now, and soon the day would follow. And then, for the first time, I realised that it was all over, finished — all the four days of scuffling and scrabbling and dodging and lying and anxiety; all over except the paying-for. Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb and Mr van Tosch would be somewhere in the house now, drinking presupper toddies; it might be half an hour yet before the supper bell rang, so I turned aside and went through the rose garden and on to the back. And, sure enough, there was Ned sitting on the back steps.
“Here,” I said, holding out the big roll of money. “Sam said this is yours.” He took it. “Aint you going to count it?” I said.
“I reckon he counted it,” Ned said. I took the little one from my pocket. Ned looked at it. “Did he give you that too?”
“Miss Reba did. She bet for me.”
“It’s gambling money,” Ned said. “You’re too young to have anything to do with gambling money. Aint nobody ever old enough to have gambling money, but you sho aint.” And I couldn’t tell him either. Then I realised that I had expected him, Ned anyway, to already know without having to be told. And in the very next breath he did know. “Because we never done it for money,” he said.
“You aint going to keep yours either?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s too late for me. But it aint too late for you. I’m gonter give you a chance, even if it aint nothing but taking a chance away from you.”
“Sam said I could give it to Uncle Parsham. But he wouldn’t take gambling money either, would he?”
“Is that what you want to do with it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“All right,” he said. He took the little roll too and took out his snap purse and put both the rolls into it and now it was almost dark but I could certainly hear the supper bell here.
“How did you get the tooth back?” I said.
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “Lycurgus done it. That first morning, when I come back to the hotel to get you. It wasn’t no trouble. The hounds had already treed him once, and Lycurgus said he thought at first he would just use them, put him up that gum sapling again and not call off the hounds until Whistle-britches wropped the tooth up in his cap or something, and dropped it.
But Lycurgus said he was still a little rankled up over the upstarty notions Whistle-britches had about horses, mainly about Lightning. So, since Lightning was gonter have to run a race that afternoon and would need his rest, Lycurgus said he decided to use one of the mules. He said how Whistle-britches drawed a little old bitty pocketknife on him, but Lycurgus is gonter take good care of it until he can give it back to some of them.”
He stopped. He still looked bad. He still hadn’t had any sleep. But maybe it is a relief to finally meet doom and have it set a definite moment to start worrying at.
“Well?” I said. “What?”
“I just told you. The mule done it.”
“How?” I said.
“Lycurgus put Whistle-britches on the mule without no bridle or saddle and tied his feet underneath and told him any time he decided to wrop that tooth up in his cap and drop it off, he would stop the mule. And Lycurgus give the mule a light cut, and about halfway round the first circle of the lot Whistle-britches dropped the cap, only there wasn’t nothing in it that time.
So Lycurgus handed the cap back up to him and give the mule another cut and Lycurgus said he had disremembered that this was the mule that jumped fences until it had already jumped that four-foot bobwire and Lycurgus said it looked like it was fixing to take Whistle-britches right on back to Possum. But it never went far until it turned around and come back and jumped back into the lot again so next time Whistle-britches dropped the cap the tooth was in it. Only he might as well kept it, for all the good it done me. She went back to Memphis too, huh?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s what I figgered. Likely she knows as good as I do it’s gonter be a long time before Memphis sees me or Boon Hogganbeck either again. And if Boon’s back in jail again, I dont reckon Jefferson, Missippi’s gonter see us tonight neither.”
I didn’t know either; and suddenly I knew that I didn’t want to know; I not only didn’t want to have to make any more choices, decisions, I didn’t even want to know the ones being made for me until I had to face the results. Then McWillie’s father came to the door behind us, in a white coat; he was the houseman too. Though I hadn’t heard any bell.
I had already washed (changed my clothes too; Grandfather had brought a grip for me, and even my other shoes), so the houseman showed me the way to the dining room and I stood there; Grandfather and Mr van Tosch and Colonel Linscomb came in, the old fat Llewellin setter walking at Colonel Linscomb’s hand, and we all stood while Colonel Linscomb said grace. Then we sat down, the old setter beside Colonel Linscomb’s chair, and ate, with not just McWillie’s father but a uniformed maid too to change the plates.
Because I had quit; I wasn’t making choices and decisions any more. I almost went to sleep in my plate, into the dessert, when Grandfather said:
“Well, gentlemen, shall the guard fire first?”
“We’ll go to the office,” Colonel Linscomb said. It was the best room I ever saw. I wished Grandfather had one like it. Colonel Linscomb was a lawyer too, so there were cases of law books, but there were farm- and horse-papers too and a glass case of jointed fishing rods and guns, and chairs and a sofa and a special rug for the old setter to lie on in front of the fireplace, and pictures of horses and jockeys on the walls, with the rose wreaths and the dates they won, and a bronze figure of Manassas (I
