“All right,” Ratliff said. “Go on.”
“ ‘ — not for me, my kinsman’,” Uncle Gavin said. “ ‘For Jefferson’. So the next step should have been the threat. Only he didn’t—”
“Why threat?” Ratliff said.
“The pattern,” Uncle Gavin said. “First the soap, then the threat, then the bribe. As Montgomery Ward himself tried it.”
“This aint Montgomery Ward,” Ratliff said. “If Montgomery Ward had been named Flem, them pictures wouldn’t a never seen Jefferson, let alone vice versa. But we dont need to worry about Flem being smarter than Montgomery Ward; most anybody around here is that. What we got to worry about is, who else around here may not be as smart as him too. Then what?”
“He quit,” Uncle Gavin said. “He came right up to it. He even asked me to send Chick out. And when I said No, he just picked up his hat and said Much obliged and went out as if he had just stopped in here to borrow a match.”
Ratliff blinked at Uncle Gavin. “So he wants Montgomery Ward to go to the penitentiary. Only he dont want him to go under the conditions he’s on his way there now. Then he changed his mind.”
“Because of Chick,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Then he changed his mind,” Ratliff said.
“You’re right,” Uncle Gavin said. “It was because he knew that by refusing to send Chick out I had already refused to be bribed.”
“No,” Ratliff said. “To Flem Snopes, there aint a man breathing that cant be bought for something; all you need to do is jest to find it. Only, why did he change his mind?”
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “Why?”
“What was the conversation about jest before he told you to send Chick out?”
“About the penitentiary,” Uncle Gavin said. “I just told you.”
“It was about Wilbur Provine,” I said.
Ratliff looked at me. “Wilbur Provine?”
“His still,” I said. “That path and Judge Long.”
“Oh,” Ratliff said. “Then what?”
“That’s all,” Uncle Gavin said. “He just said ‘Send that boy out’ and I said—”
“That wasn’t next,” I said. “The next was what Mr Snopes said about the five years, that maybe the extra four years was for the path, and you said Maybe and Mr Snopes said again, ‘It was five years, wasn’t it?’ and you said Yes and then he said to send me out.”
“All right, all right,” Uncle Gavin said. But he was looking at Ratliff. “Well?” he said.
“I dont know neither,” Ratliff said. “All I know is, I’m glad I aint Montgomery Ward Snopes.”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “When Judge Long sees that suitcase.”
“Sho,” Ratliff said. “That’s jest Uncle Sam. It’s his Uncle Flem that Montgomery Ward wants to worry about, even if he dont know it yet. And us too. As long as all he wanted was jest money, at least you knowed which way to guess even if you knowed you couldn’t guess first. But this time — —” He looked at us, blinking.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “How?”
“You mind that story about how the feller found his strayed dog? he jest set down and imagined where he would be if he was that dog and got up and went and got it and brung it home. All right. We’re Flem Snopes. We got a chance to get shut of our — what’s that old-timey word? unsavory — unsavory nephew into the penitentiary. Only we’re vice president of a bank now and we cant afford to have it knowed even a unsavory nephew was running a peep show of French postcards.
And the judge that will send him there is the same judge that told Wilbur Provine he was going to Parchman not for making whiskey but for letting his wife tote water a mile and a half.” He blinked at Uncle Gavin. “You’re right. The question aint ‘what’ a-tall: it’s jest ‘how’. And since you wasn’t interested in money, and he has got better sense than to offer it to Hub Hampton, we dont jest know what that ‘how’ is going to be. Unless maybe since he got to be a up-and-coming feller in the Baptist church, he is depending on Providence.”
Maybe he was. Anyway, it worked. It was the next morning, about ten oclock; Uncle Gavin and I were just leaving the office to drive up to Wyott’s Crossing where they were having some kind of a squabble over a drainage tax suit, when Mr Hampton came in. He was kind of blowing through his teeth, light and easy like he was whistling except that he wasn’t making any noise and even less than that of tune. “Morning,” he said. “Yesterday morning when we were in that studio and I was hunting through them bottles on that shelf for alcohol or something that would burn.”
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said.
“How many of them bottles and jugs did I draw the cork or unscrew the cap and smell? You were there. You were watching.”
“I thought all of them,” Uncle Gavin said. “Why?”
“So did I,” Mr Hampton said. “I could be wrong.” He looked at Uncle Gavin with his hard little eyes, making that soundless whistling between his teeth.
“You’ve prepared us,” Uncle Gavin said. “Got us into the right state of nervous excitement. Now tell us.”
“About six this morning, Jack Crenshaw telephoned me.” (Mr Crenshaw was the Revenue field agent that did the moonshine still hunting in our district.) “He told me to come on to that studio as soon as I could.
They were already inside, two of them. They had already searched it. Two of them gallon jugs on that shelf that I opened and smelled yesterday that never had nothing but kodak developer in them, had raw corn whiskey in them this morning, though like I said I could have been wrong and missed them.
Not to mention five gallons more of it in a oil can setting behind the heater, that I hadn’t got around to smelling yesterday when you stopped me for the reason that I never seen it there when I looked behind the heater yesterday or I wouldn’t been smelling at the bottles on that shelf for something to burn paper with. Though, as you say, I could be wrong.”
“As you say,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You may be right,” Mr Hampton said. “After all, I’ve been having to snuff out moonshine whiskey in this county ever since I first got elected. And since 1919, I have been so in practice that now I dont even need to smell: I just kind of feel it the moment I get where some of it aint supposed to be. Not to mention that five-gallon coal oil can full of it setting where you would have thought I would have fell over it reaching my hand to that shelf.”
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “Go on.”
“That’s all,” Mr Hampton said.
“How did he get in?” Uncle Gavin said.
“He?” Mr Hampton said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “Take ‘they’ if you like it better.”
“I thought of that too,” Mr Hampton said. “The key. I said THE key because even that fool would have more sense than to have a key to that place anywhere except on a string around his neck.”
“That one,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Yep,” Mr Hampton said. “I dropped it into the drawer where I usually keep such, handcuffs and a extra pistol. Anybody could have come in while me and Miss Elma” (she was the office deputy, widow of the sheriff Mr Hampton had succeeded last time) “was out, and taken it.”
“Or the pistol either,” Uncle Gavin said. “You really should start locking that place, Hub. Some day you’ll leave your star in there and come back to find some little boy out on the street arresting people.”
“Maybe I should,” Mr Hampton said. “All right,” he said. “Somebody took that key and planted that whiskey. It could have been any of them — any of the folks that that damned Grover Winbush says was coming from four counties around to sweat over them damn pictures at night.”
“Maybe it’s lucky you at least had that suitcase locked up. I suppose you’ve still got that, since Mr Gombault hasn’t got back yet?”
“That’s right,” Mr Hampton said.
“And Jack Crenshaw and his buddy are just interested in whiskey, not photography. Which means you haven’t turned that suitcase over to anybody yet.”
“That’s right,” Mr Hampton said.
“Are you going to?” Uncle Gavin said.
“What do you think?” Mr Hampton said.
“That’s what I think too,” Uncle Gavin said.
“After all, the whiskey is enough,” Mr Hampton said. “And even if it aint, all we got to do is show Judge Long just any one of them photographs right before he pronounces sentence. Damn it,” he said, “it’s Jefferson. We live here. Jefferson’s got to come first, even before the pleasure of crucifying that damned — —”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “I’ve heard that sentiment.” Then Mr Hampton left. And all we had to do was just to wait, and not long. You never had to wonder about how much Ratliff had heard because you knew in advance he had heard all of it. He closed the door and stood just inside it.
“Why didn’t you tell him yesterday about Flem Snopes?” he said.
“Because he let Flem Snopes or whoever it was walk right in his office and steal that key. Hub’s already got about all the felonious malfeasance he can afford to compound,” Uncle Gavin said. He finished putting the papers into the brief case and closed it and stood up.
“You leaving?” Ratliff said.
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “Wyott’s Crossing.”
“You aint going to wait for Flem?”
“He wont come back here,” Uncle Gavin said. “He wont dare. What he
