Him and his cut-down racer both because the racer was empty now except for Matt himself after the garage closed on week days, creeping along the streets and across the Square in low gear, parallelling but a little behind where she would be walking to the picture show now with another girl or maybe two or three of them, her head still high and not once looking at him while the racer crept along at her elbow almost, the cutout going chuckle-chuckle-chuckle, right up to the picture show and the two or three or four girls had gone into it.
Then the racer would dash off at full speed around the block, to come rushing back with the cut-out as loud as he could make it, up the alley beside the picture show and then across in front of it and around the block and up the alley again, this time with Otis Harker, who had succeeded Grover Cleveland Winbush as night marshal after Grover Cleveland retired after what Ratliff called his eye trouble, waiting at the corner yelling at Matt at the same time he was jumping far enough back not to be run over.
And on Sunday through the Square, the cut-out going full blast and Mr Buck Connors, the day marshal now, hollering after him. And now he — Matt — had a girl with him, a country girl he had found somewhere, the racer rushing and roaring through the back streets into the last one, to rush slow and loud past Linda’s house, as if the sole single symbol of frustrated love or anyway desire or maybe just frustration possible in Jefferson was an automobile cut-out; the sole single manifestation which love or anyway desire was capable of assuming in Jefferson, was rushing slow past the specific house with the cut-out wide open, so that he or she would have to know who was passing no matter how hard they worked at not looking out the window.
Though by that time Mr Connors had sent for the sheriff himself. He — Mr Connors — said his first idea was to wake up Otis Harker to come back to town and help him but when Otis heard that what Mr Connors wanted was to stop that racer, Otis wouldn’t even get out of bed.
Later, afterward, somebody asked Matt if he would have run over Mr Hampton too and Matt said — he was crying then, he was so mad— “Hit him? Hub Hampton? have all them god-damn guts splashed over my paint job?” Though by then even Mr Hampton wasn’t needed for the cut-out because Matt went right on out of town, maybe taking the girl back home; anyway about midnight that night they telephoned in for Mr Hampton to send somebody out to Caledonia where Matt had had a bad fight with Anse McCallum, one of Mr Buddy McCallum’s boys, until Anse snatched up a fence rail or something and would have killed Matt except that folks caught and held them both while they telephoned for the sheriff and brought them both in to town and locked them in the jail and the next morning Mr Buddy McCallum came in on his cork leg and paid them both out and took them down to the lot behind I.O. Snopes’s mule barn and told Anse:
“All right. If you cant be licked fair without picking up a fence rail, I’m going to take my leg off and whip you with it myself.”
So they fought again, without the fence rail this time, with Mr Buddy and a few more men watching them now, and Anse still wasn’t as good as Matt’s Golden Gloves but he never quit until at last Mr Buddy himself said, “All right. That’s enough,” and told Anse to wash his face at the trough and then go and get in the car and then said to Matt: “And I reckon the time has come for you to be moving on too.”
Except that wasn’t necessary now either; the garage said Matt was already fired and Matt said,
“Fired, hell. I quit. Tell the son of a bitch to come down here and say that to my face.” And Mr Hampton was there too by then, tall, with his big belly and his little hard eyes looking down at Matt. “Where the hell is my car?” Matt said.
“It’s at my house,” Mr Hampton said. “I had it brought in this morning.”
“Well well,” Matt said. “Too bad, aint it? McCallum came in and sprung me before you had time to sell it and stick the money in your pocket, huh? What are you going to say when I walk over there and get in it and start the engine?”
“Nothing, son,” Mr Hampton said. “Whenever you want to leave.”
“Which is right now,” Matt said. “And when I leave your.… ing town, my foot’ll be right down to the floor board on that cut-out too. And you can stick that too, but not in your pocket. What do you think of that?”
“Nothing, son,” Mr Hampton said. “I’ll make a trade with you. Run that cut-out wide open all the way to the county line and then ten feet past it, and I wont let anybody bother you if you’ll promise never to cross it again.”
And that was all. That was Monday, trade day; it was like the whole county was there, had come to town just to stand quiet around the Square and watch Matt cross it for the last time, the paper suitcase he had come to Jefferson with on the seat by him and the cut-out clattering and popping; nobody waving goodbye to him and Matt not looking at any of us: just that quiet and silent suspension for the little gaudy car to rush slowly and loudly through, blatant and noisy and defiant yet at the same time looking as ephemeral and innocent and fragile as a child’s toy, a birthday favor, so that looking at it you knew it would probably never get as far as Memphis, let alone Ohio; on across the Square and into the street which would become the Memphis highway at the edge of town, the sound of the cut-out banging and clattering and echoing between the walls, magnified a thousand times now beyond the mere size and bulk of the frail little machine which produced it; and we — some of us — thinking how surely now he would rush slow and roaring for the last time at least past Linda Snopes’s house.
But he didn’t. He just went on, the little car going faster and faster up the broad street empty too for the moment as if it too had vacated itself for his passing, on past where the last houses of town would give way to country, the vernal space of woods and fields where even the defiant uproar of the cut-out would become puny and fade and be at last absorbed.
So that was what Father called — said to Uncle Gavin — one down. And now it was May and already everybody knew that Linda Snopes was going to be the year’s Number One student, the class’s valedictorian; Uncle Gavin slowed us as we approached Wildermark’s and nudged us in to the window, saying, “That one. Just behind the green one.”
It was a lady’s fitted travelling case.
“That’s for travelling,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said.
“For travelling,” Mother said. “For going away.”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “She’s got to get away from here. Get out of Jefferson.”
“What’s wrong with Jefferson?” Mother said. The three of us stood there. I could see our three reflections in the plate glass, standing there looking at the fitted feminine case. She didn’t talk low or loud: just quiet. “All right,” she said. “What’s wrong with Linda then?”
Uncle Gavin didn’t either. “I dont like waste,” he said. “Everybody should have his chance not to waste.”
“Or his chance to the right not to waste a young girl?” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “I want her to be happy. Everybody should have the chance to be happy.”
“Which she cant possibly do of course just standing still in Jefferson,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. They were not looking at one another. It was like they were not even talking to one another but simply at the two empty reflections in the plate glass, like when you put the written idea into the anonymous and even interchangeable empty envelope, or maybe into the sealed empty bottle to be cast into the sea, or maybe two written thoughts sealed forever at the same moment into two bottles and cast into the sea to float and drift with the tides and the currents on to the cooling world’s end itself, still immune, still intact and inviolate, still ideas and still true and even still facts whether any eye ever saw them again or any other idea ever responded and sprang to them, to be elated or validated or grieved.
“The chance and duty and right to see that everybody is happy, whether they deserve it or not or even want it or not,” Mother said.
“All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “Sorry I bothered you. Come on. Let’s go home. Mrs Rouncewell can send her a dozen sunflowers.”
“Why not?” Mother said, taking his arm, already turning him, our three reflections turning in the plate glass, back toward the entrance and into the store, Mother in front now across to the luggage department.
“I think the blue one will suit her coloring, match her eyes,” Mother said.
