But she was prepared, self house and soul too; if her soul was ever in her life unready for anything that just wore pants or maybe if any woman’s soul ever needed pre-readying and pre-arming against anything in pants just named Gavin Stevens, passing through the little rented (still looking rented even though the owner or somebody had painted it) gate up the short rented walk toward the little rented veranda and onto it, my hand already lifted to knock before I saw her through the screen, standing there quite still in the little hallway watching me.
“Good morning,” she said. “Come in,” and now with no screen between us still watching me. No: just looking at me, not brazenly, not with welcome, not with anything.
Then she turned, the hair, where all the other women in Jefferson, even Maggie, had bobbed theirs now, still one heavy careless yellow bun at the back of her head, the dress which was not a morning gown nor a hostess gown nor even a house dress but just a simple cotton dress that was simply a dress and which, although she was thirty-five now — yes: thirty-six now by Ratliff’s counting from that splendid fall — like that one when she first crossed the Square that day sixteen years ago, appeared not so much as snatching in desperate haste to hide them but rather to spring in suppliance and adulation to the moving limbs, the very flowing of the fabric’s laving folds crying Evoe! Evoe!
Oh yes, it was a sitting room, exactly like the hall and both of them exactly like something else I had seen somewhere but didn’t have time to remember. Because she said, “Will you have some coffee?” and I saw that too: the service (not silver but the stuff the advertisements dont tell you is better than silver but simply newer.
New: inf. silver is quite all right and even proper for people still thrall to gaslight and horse-and-buggy) on a low table, with two chairs already drawn up and I thought I have lost even if she had met me wearing a barrel or a feed sack. Then I thought So it really is serious since this — the coffee, the low table, the two intimate chairs — was an assault not on the glands nor even just the stomach but on the civilised soul or at least the soul which believes it thirsts to be civilised.
“Thank you,” I said and waited and then sat too. “Only, do you mind if I wonder why? We dont need an armistice, since I have already been disarmed.”
“You came to fight then,” she said, pouring.
“How can I, without a weapon?” I said, watching: the bent head with the careless, almost untidy bun of hair, the arm, the hand which could have rocked a warrior-hero’s cradle or even caught up its father’s fallen sword, pouring the trivial (it would probably not even be very good coffee) fluid from the trivial spurious synthetic urn — this, in that room, that house; and suddenly I knew where I had seen the room and hallway before.
In a photograph, the photograph from say Town and Country labelled American Interior, reproduced in color in a wholesale furniture catalogue, with the added legend: This is neither a Copy nor a Reproduction. It is our own Model scaled to your individual Requirements. “Thank you,” I said. “No cream. Just sugar. — Only it doesn’t look like you.”
“What?” she said.
“This room. Your house.” And that was why I didn’t even believe at first that I had heard her.
“It wasn’t me. It was my husband.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“My husband chose this furniture.”
“Flem?” I said, cried. “Flem Snopes?” — and she looking at me now, not startled, amazed: not anything or if anything, just waiting for my uproar to reach its end: nor was it only from McCarron that Linda got the eyes, but only the hair from him. “Flem Snopes!” I said. “Flem Snopes!”
“Yes. We went to Memphis. He knew exactly what he wanted. No, that’s wrong. He didn’t know yet. He only knew he wanted, had to have. Or does that make any sense to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Terribly. You went to Memphis.”
“Yes,” she said. “That was why: to find somebody who could tell him what he had to have. He already knew which store he was going to. The first thing he said was, ‘When a man dont intend to buy anything from you, how much do you charge him just to talk?’ Because he was not trading now, you see. When you’re on a trade, for land or stock or whatever it is, both of you may trade or both of you may not, it all depends; you dont have to buy it or sell it; when you stop trading and part, neither of you may be any different from when you began.
But not this time. This was something he had to have and knew he had to have: he just didn’t know what it was and so he would not only have to depend on the man who owned it to tell him what he wanted, he would even have to depend on the man selling it not to cheat him on the price or the value of it because he wouldn’t know that either: only that he had to have it. Do you understand that too?”
“All right,” I said. “Yes. And then?”
“It had to be exactly what it was, for exactly what he was. That was when the man began to say, ‘Yes, I think I see. You started out as a clerk in a country store. Then you moved to town and ran a café. Now you’re vice president of your bank. A man who came that far in that short time, is not going to stop just there, and why shouldn’t everybody that enters his home know it, see it? Yes, I know what you want.’
And Flem said No. ‘Not expensive,’ the man said. ‘Successful.’ And Flem said No. ‘All right,’ the man said. ‘Antique then,’ and took us into a room and showed us what he meant. ‘I can take this piece here for instance and make it look still older.’ And Flem said, ‘Why?’ and the man said, ‘For background. Your grandfather.’ And Flem said, ‘I had a grandfather because everybody had. I dont know who he was but I know that whoever he was he never owned enough furniture for a room, let alone a house. Besides, I dont aim to fool anybody.
Only a fool would try to fool smart people, and anybody that needs to fool fools is already one.’ And that was when the man said wait while he telephoned. And we did, it was not long before a woman came in. She was his wife. She said to me: ‘What are your ideas?’ and I said, ‘I dont care,’ and she said ‘What?’ and I said it again and then she looked at Flem and I watched them looking at one another, a good while.
Then she said, not loud like her husband, quite quiet: ‘I know,’ and now it was Flem that said, ‘Wait. How much will it cost?’ and she said, ‘You’re a trader. I’ll make a trade with you. I’ll bring the stuff down to Jefferson and put it in your house myself. If you like it, you buy it. If you dont like it, I’ll load it back up and move it back here and it wont cost you a cent.’”
“All right,” I said. “And then?”
“That’s all,” she said. “Your coffee’s cold. I’ll get another cup—” and began to rise until I stopped her.
“When was this?” I said.
“Four years ago,” she said. “When he bought this house.”
“Bought the house?” I said. “Four years ago? That’s when he became vice president of the bank!”
“Yes,” she said. “The day before it was announced. I’ll get another cup.”
“I dont want coffee,” I said, sitting there saying Flem Snopes Flem Snopes until I said, cried: “I dont want anything! I’m afraid!” until I finally said “What?” and she repeated:
“Will you have a cigarette?” and I saw that too: a synthetic metal box also and there should have been a synthetic matching lighter but what she had taken from the same box with the cigarette was a kitchen match. “Linda says you smoke a corncob pipe. Smoke it if you want to.”
“No,” I said again. “Not anything. — But Flem Snopes,” I said. “Flem Snopes.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s not me that wont let her go away from Jefferson to school.”
“But why?” I said. “Why? When she’s not even his — he’s not even her — I’m sorry. But you can see how urgent, how we dont even have time for.…”
“Politeness?” she said. Nor did I make that move either: just sitting there watching while she leaned and scratched the match on the sole of her side-turned slipper and lit the cigarette.
“For anything,” I said. “For anything except her. Ratliff tried to tell me this this morning, but I wouldn’t listen.
So maybe that’s what you were telling me a moment ago when I wouldn’t
