Then I.O. saw them too, jerking quickly around over his shoulder his little mean harassed snarling face; and now Uncle Gavin could see inside the cowshed. It had been cleaned and raked and even swept, the floor was spread with fresh hay. A clean new kerosene stable lantern burned on a wooden box beside a pallet bed spread neatly on the straw and turned back for the night and now Uncle Gavin saw a second wooden box set out for a table beside the fire, with a new plate and knife and fork and spoon and cup and saucer and a still-sealed loaf of machine-made bread.
But Uncle Gavin said there was no alarm in I.O.’s face at the sight of Mr Flem though he said the reason for that was that he, Uncle Gavin, hadn’t realised yet that I.O. had simply reached that stage where utter hopelessness wears the mantle of temerity. “So here you are,” I.O. said. “And brung your lawyer too. I reckon you come now to get that-ere lantern and them new dishes and chair and that milk bucket and maybe the milk in too soon as she’s done, hey?
That’s jest fine. It’s even downright almost honest, coming right out in the open here where it aint even full dark yet. Because of course your lawyer knows all the rest of these here recent mulery and arsonery circumstances; likely the only one here that aint up to date is old Aunt Het there, and sholy she should be learned how to reco-nise a circumstance that even if she was to get up and run this minute, likely she would find she never had no shirt nor britches left neither by the time she got home, since a stitch in time saves nine lives for even a cat, as the feller says. Not to mention the fact that when you dines in Rome you durn sho better watch your overcoat.
“All right then. Now, jest exactly how much of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars the railroad company paid Miz Hait here for that husband of hern and them five mules of mine, do you reckon Miz Hait actively” (Uncle Gavin said he said actively for actually too, just like Ratliff. And Uncle Gavin said they were both right) “got? Well, in that case you will be jest as wrong as everybody else was. She got half of it.
The reason being that the vice presi-dent here handled it for her. Of course, without a fi-nancial expert like the vice president to handle it for her, she wouldn’t a got no more than that half nohow, if as much, so by rights she aint got nothing to complain of, not to mention the fact that jest half of even that half was rightfully hern, since jest Lonzo Hait was hern because them five mules was mine.
“All right. Now, what do you reckon become of the other half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars? Then you’ll be jest as wrong this time as you was that other one. Because the vice presi-dent here taken them. Oh, it was done all open and legal; he explained it: if Miz Hait sued the railroad, a lone lorn widder by herself, likely she wouldn’t get more than five thousand at the most, and half of that she would have to give to me for owning the mules.
And if me and her brought the suit together, with a active man on her side to compel them cold hard millionaire railroad magnits to do a lone woman justice, once I claimed any part of them mules, due to the previous bad luck mules belonging to me had been having on that-ere curve, the railroad would smell a rat right away and wouldn’t nobody get nothing.
While with him, the vice presi-dent, handling it, it would be seventy-five hundred or maybe a even ten thousand, of which he would not only guarantee her a full half, he would even take out of his half the hundred dollars he would give me. All legal and open: I could keep my mouth shut and get a hundred dollars, where if I objected, the vice presi-dent his-self might accident-ly let out who them mules actively belonged to, and wouldn’t nobody get nothing, which would be all right with the vice presi-dent since he would be right where he started out, being as he never owned Lonzo Hait nor the five mules neither.
“A pure and simple easy choice, you see: either a feller wants a hundred dollars, or either he dont want a hundred dollars. Not to mention, as the vice presi-dent his-self pointed out, that me and Miz Hait was fellow townsmen and you might say business acquaintances and Miz Hait a woman with a woman’s natural tender gentle heart, so who would say that maybe in time it wouldn’t melt a little more to where she might want to share a little of her half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars.
Which never proved much except that the vice presi-dent might know all there was to know about railroad companies and eight thousand and five hundred dollars but he never knowed much about what Miz Hait toted around where other folks totes their hearts.
Which is neither here nor there; water that’s still under a bridge dont fill no oceans, as the feller says, and I was simply outvoted two to one, or maybe eight thousand and five hundred dollars to one hundred dollars; or maybe it didn’t even take that much: jest Miz Hait’s half of them eight thousand and five hundred, against my one hundred since the only way I could a out-voted Miz Hait would a been with four thousand and two hundred and fifty-one dollars of my own, and even then I’d a had to split that odd dollar with her.
“But never mind. I done forgot all that now; that spilt milk aint going to help no ocean neither.” Now Uncle Gavin said he turned rapidly to Mrs Hait with no break in the snarling and outraged babble: “What I come back for was to have a little talk with you. I got something that belongs to you, and I hear you got something that belongs to me. Though naturally I expected to a-just it in private.”
“Lord, honey,” old Het said. “If you talking at me. Dont you mind me. I done already had so much troubles myself that listening to other folks’ even kind of rests me. You gawn talk what you wants to talk; I’ll just set here and mind this ham.”
“Come on,” he said to Mrs Hait. “Run them all away for a minute.”
Mrs Hait had turned now, still squatting, watching him. “What for?” she said. “I reckon she aint the first critter that ever come in this yard when it wanted and went or stayed when it liked.” Now Uncle Gavin said I.O. made a gesture, brief, fretted, and restrained.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s get started then. So you taken the mule.”
“I paid you for it,” Mrs Hait said. “Het brought you the money.”
“Ten dollars,” I.O. said. “For a hundred-and-fifty-dollar mule.”
“I dont know anything about hundred-and-fifty-dollar mules,” Mrs Hait said. “All I know about mules is what the railroad pays for them. Sixty dollars a head the railroad paid that other time before that fool Hait finally lost all his senses and tied himself to that track too — —”
“Hush!” I.O. said. “Hush!”
“What for?” Mrs Hait said. “What secret am I telling that you aint already blabbed to anybody within listening?”
“All right,” I.O. said. “But you just sent me ten.”
“I sent you the difference,” Mrs Hait said. “The difference between that mule and what you owed Hait.”
“What I owed Hait?” I.O. said.
“Hait said you paid him fifty dollars a trip, each time he got mules in front of the train in time, and the railroad had paid you sixty dollars a head for the mules. That last time, you never paid him because you never would pay him until afterward and this time there wasn’t no afterward.
So I taken a mule instead and sent you the ten dollars difference with Het here for the witness.” Uncle Gavin said that actually stopped him. He actually hushed; he and Mrs Hait, the one standing and the other still squatting, just stared at one another while again old Het turned the hissing ham in the skillet. He said they were so still that Mr Flem himself spoke twice before they even noticed him.
“You through now?” he said to I.O.
“What?” I.O. said.
“Are you through now?” Mr Flem said. And now Uncle Gavin said they all saw the canvas sack — one of the canvas sacks stamped with the name of the bank which the bank itself used to store money in the vault — in his hands.
“Yes,” I.O. said. “I’m through. At least I got one ten dollars out of the mule business you aint going to touch.” But Mr Flem wasn’t even talking to him now. He had already turned toward Mrs Hait when he drew a folded paper out of the sack.
“This is the mortgage on your house,” he said. “Whatever the insurance company pays you now will be clear money; you can build
