“All right,” he said, “where’s Mister Vice Presi-dent Snopes’s other mule?”
“Tied to a tree in the ravine ditch behind Mr Spilmer’s house,” Mrs Hait said.
“What made you stop there?” I.O. said. “Why didn’t you take it right on up to Mottstown? Then you could a really enjoyed my time and trouble getting it back.” He looked around again, snarling, sneering, indomitably intractable. “You’re right fixed up here, aint you? You and the vice president could both save money if he jest kept that mortgage which aint on nothing now noway, and you didn’t build no house a-tall. Well, good night, all.
Soon as I get this-here missing extry mule into the lot with the vice presi-dent’s other six, I’ll do myself the honor and privilege of calling at his residence for them other hundred and fifty dollars since cash on the barrel-head is the courtesy of kings, as the feller says, not to mention the fact that beggars’ choices aint even choices when he aint even got a roof to lay his head in no more.
And if Lawyer Stevens has got ara thing loose about him the vice presi-dent might a taken a notion to, he better hold onto it since as the feller says even a fool wont tread where he jest got through watching somebody else get bit. Again, good night all.” Then he was gone. And this time Uncle Gavin said that Mr Flem had to speak to him twice before he heard him.
“What?” Uncle Gavin said.
“I said, how much do I owe you?” Mr Flem said. And Uncle Gavin said he started to say One dollar, so that Mr Flem would say One dollar? Is that all? and then Uncle Gavin could say Yes, or your knife or pencil or just anything so that when I wake up tomorrow I’ll know I didn’t dream this. But he didn’t. He just said:
“Nothing. Mrs Hait is my client.” And he said how again Mr Flem had to speak twice. “What?” Uncle Gavin said.
“You can send me your bill.”
“For what?” Uncle Gavin said.
“For being the witness,” Mr Snopes said.
“Oh,” Uncle Gavin said. And now Mr Snopes was going and Uncle Gavin said how he expected he might even have said Are you going back to town now? or maybe even Shall we walk together? or maybe at least Goodbye. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all. He simply turned and left and was gone too. Then Mrs Hait said:
“Get the box.”
“That’s what I been aiming to do soon as you can turn loose all this business and steady this skillet,” old Het said. So Mrs Hait came and took the chair and the fork and old Het went into the shed and set the lantern on the ground and brought the box and set it at the fire. “Now, honey,” she said to Uncle Gavin, “set down and rest.”
“You take it,” Uncle Gavin said. “I’ve been sitting down all day. You haven’t.” Though old Het had already begun to sit down on the box before he declined it; she had already forgotten him, watching now the skillet containing the still hissing ham which Mrs Hait had lifted from the fire.
“Was it you mentioned something about a piece of that ham,” she said, “or was it me?” So Mrs Hait divided the ham and Uncle Gavin watched them eat, Mrs Hait in the chair with the new plate and knife and fork, and old Het on the box eating from the skillet itself since Mrs Hait had apparently purchased only one of each new article, eating the ham and sopping the bread into the greasy residue of its frying, and old Het had filled the coffee cup from the pot and produced from somewhere an empty can for her own use when I.O. came back, coming up quietly out of the darkness (it was full dark now), to stand holding his hands to the blaze as though he were cold.
“I reckon I’ll take that ten dollars,” he said.
“What ten dollars?” Mrs Hait said. And now Uncle Gavin expected him to roar, or at least snarl. But he did neither, just standing there with his hands to the blaze; and Uncle Gavin said he did look cold, small, forlorn somehow since he was so calm, so quiet.
“You aint going to give it back to me?” he said.
“Give what back to you?” Mrs Hait said. Uncle Gavin said he didn’t seem to expect an answer nor even to hear her: just standing there musing at the fire in a kind of quiet and unbelieving amazement.
“I bear the worry and the risk and the agoment for years and years, and I get sixty dollars a head for them. While you, one time, without no trouble and risk a-tall, sell Lonzo Hait and five of my mules that never even belonged to him, for eighty-five hundred dollars. Of course most of that-ere eighty-five hundred was for Lonzo, which I never begrudged you.
Cant nere a man living say I did, even if it did seem a little strange that you should get it all, even my sixty standard price a head for them five mules, when he wasn’t working for you and you never even knowed where he was, let alone even owned the mules; that all you done to get half of that money was just to be married to him. And now, after all them years of not actively begrudging you it, you taken the last mule I had, not didn’t jest beat me out of another hundred and forty dollars, but out of a entire another hundred and fifty.”
“You got your mule back, and you aint satisfied yet?” old Het said. “What does you want?”
“Justice,” I.O. said. “That’s what I want. That’s all I want: justice. For the last time,” he said. “Are you going to give me my ten dollars back?”
“What ten dollars?” Mrs Hait said. Then he turned. He stumbled over something — Uncle Gavin said it was old Het’s shopping bag — and recovered and went on. Uncle Gavin said he could see him for a moment — he could because neither Mrs Hait nor old Het were watching him any longer — as though framed between the two blackened chimneys, flinging both clenched hands up against the sky. Then he was gone; this time it was for good. That is, Uncle Gavin watched him. Mrs Hait and old Het had not even looked up.
“Honey,” old Het said to Mrs Hait, “what did you do with that mule?” Uncle Gavin said there was one slice of bread left. Mrs Hait took it and sopped the last of the gravy from her plate.
“I shot it,” she said.
“You which?” old Het said. Mrs Hait began to eat the slice of bread. “Well,” old Het said, “the mule burnt the house and you shot the mule. That’s what I calls more than justice: that’s what I calls tit for tat.”
It was full dark now, and ahead of her was still the mile-and-a-half walk to the poorhouse with the heavy shopping bag. But the dark would last a long time on a winter night, and Uncle Gavin said the poorhouse too wasn’t likely to move any time soon. So he said that old Het sat back on the box with the empty skillet in her hand and sighed with peaceful and happy relaxation. “Gentlemen, hush,” she said. “Aint we had a day.”
And there, as Uncle Gavin would say, was Ratliff again, sitting in the client’s chair with his blue shirt neat and faded and quite clean and still no necktie even though he was wearing the imitation leather jacket and carrying the heavy black policeman’s slicker which were his winter overcoat; it was Monday and Uncle Gavin had gone that morning over to New Market to the supervisors’ meeting on some more of the drainage canal business and I thought he would have told Ratliff that when Ratliff came to see him yesterday afternoon at home.
“He might a mentioned it,” Ratliff said. “But it dont matter. I didn’t want nothing. I jest stopped in here where it’s quiet to laugh a little.”
“Oh,” I said. “About I.O. Snopes’s mule that burned down Mrs Hait’s house. I thought you and Uncle Gavin laughed at that enough yesterday.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Because soon as you set down to laugh at it, you find out it aint funny a-tall.” He looked at me. “When will your uncle be back?”
“I thought he would be back now.”
“Oh well,” he said. “It dont matter.” He looked at me again. “So that’s two down and jest one more to go.”
“One more what?” I said. “One more Snopes for Mr Flem to run out of Jefferson, and the only Snopes left will be him; or—”
“That’s right,” he said. “ — one more uncivic ditch to jump like Montgomery Ward’s photygraph studio and I.O.’s railroad mules, and there wont be nothing a-tall left in Jefferson but Flem Snopes.” He looked at me. “Because your uncle missed it.”
“Missed what?” I said.
“Even when he was looking right at it when Flem his — himself come in here the morning after them — those federals raided that studio and give your uncle that studio key that had been missing from the sheriff’s office ever since your uncle and Hub found them — those pictures; and even when it was staring him in the face out yonder at Miz Hait’s chimbley Saturday
