The house,” and I says,
“What? Uncle Billy wont be home now. He’ll be at the store this time of morning.”
“I know it,” he says. “Take this road here.” So we taken that road; we never even seen the store, let alone passed it, on to the house, the gate.
“You said one minute,” I says. “If it’s longer than that, you’ll owe me two more cigars.”
“All right,” he says. And he got out and went on, up the walk and into the house, and I switched off the engine and set there thinking What? What? Miz Varner. Not Uncle Billy: MIZ Varner. That Uncle Billy jest hated him because Flem beat him fair and square, at Uncle Billy’s own figger, out of that Old Frenchman place, while Miz Varner hated him like he was a Holy Roller or even a Baptist because he had not only condoned sin by marrying her daughter after somebody else had knocked her up, he had even made sin pay by getting the start from it that wound him up vice president of a bank. Yet it was Miz Varner he had come all the way out here to see, was willing to pay me three extra dollars for it. (I mean, offered. I know now I could a asked him ten.)
No, not thinking What? What? because what I was thinking was Who, who ought to know about this, trying to think in the little time I would have, since he his-self had volunteered that-ere one minute so one minute it was going to be, jest which who that was. Not me, because there wasn’t no more loose dangling Ratliff-ends he could need; and not Lawyer Stevens and Linda and Eula and that going-off-to-school business that had been the last what you might call Snopes uproar to draw attention on the local scene, because that was ended too now, with Linda at least off at the University over at Oxford even if it wasn’t one of them Virginia or New England colleges Lawyer was panting for. I didn’t count Manfred de Spain because I wasn’t on Manfred de Spain’s side. I wasn’t against him neither; it was jest like Lawyer Stevens his-self would a said: the feller that already had as much on his side as Manfred de Spain already had or anyway as everybody in Jefferson whose business it wasn’t neither, believed he had, didn’t need no more. Let alone deserve it.
Only there wasn’t time. It wasn’t one minute quite but it wasn’t two neither when he come out the door in that-ere black hat and his bow tie, still chewing because I doubt if he ever quit chewing any more than he probably taken off that hat while he was inside, back to the car and spit and got in and I started the engine and says, “It wasn’t quite a full two, so I’ll let you off for one,” and he says,
“All right,” and I put her in low and set with my foot on the clutch and says,
“In case she was out, you want to run by the store and tell Uncle Billy you left a message on the hatrack for her?” and he chewed a lick or two more and balled up the ambeer and leaned to the window and spit again and set back and we went on to Rockyford and I set up the machine for Miz Ledbetter and she invited us to dinner and we et and come home and at four oclock this morning Uncle Billy druv up to Flem’s house in Jody’s car with his Negro driver and I know why four oclock because that was Miz Varner.
I mean Uncle Billy would go to bed soon as he et his supper, which would be before sundown this time of year, so he would wake up anywhere about one or two oclock in the morning. Of course he had done already broke the cook into getting up then to cook his breakfast but jest one Negro woman rattling pans in the kitchen wasn’t nowhere near enough for Uncle Billy, ever body else hadn’t jest to wake up then but to get up too: stomping around and banging doors and hollering for this and that until Miz Varner was up and dressed too. Only Uncle Billy could eat his breakfast then set in a chair until he smoked his pipe out and then he would go back to sleep until daylight. Only Miz Varner couldn’t never go back to sleep again, once he had done woke her up good.
So this was her chance. I dont know what it was Flem told her or handed her that was important enough to make Uncle Billy light out for town at two oclock in the morning. But it wasn’t no more important to Miz Varner than her chance to go back to bed in peace and quiet and sleep until a decent Christian hour. So she jest never told him or give it to him until he woke up at his usual two a.m.; if it was something Flem jest handed her that she never needed to repeat, likely she never had to get up a-tall but jest have it leaning against the lamp when Uncle Billy struck a match to light it so he could see to wake up the rest of the house and the neighbors.
So I dont know what it was. But it wasn’t no joked-up piece of paper jest in the hopes of skeering Uncle Billy into doing something that until now he hadn’t aimed to do. Because Uncle Billy dont skeer, and Flem Snopes knows it. It had something to do with folks, people, and the only people connected with Jefferson that would make Uncle Billy do something he hadn’t suspected until this moment he would do, are Eula and Linda. Not Flem; Uncle Billy has knowed for twenty years now exactly what he will do to Flem the first time Flem’s eye falters or his hand slips or his attention wanders.
Let alone going to Uncle Billy his-self with it. Because anything in reference to that bank that Flem would know in advance that jest by handing it or saying it to Miz Varner, would be stout enough to move Uncle Billy from Frenchman’s Bend to Jefferson as soon as he heard about it, would sooner or later have to scratch or leastways touch Eula.
And maybe Uncle Billy Varner dont skeer and Flem Snopes knows it, but Flem Snopes dont skeer neither and most folks knows that too. And it dont take no especial coward to not want to walk into that store and up to old man Will Varner and tell him his daughter aint reformed even yet, that she’s been sleeping around again for eighteen years now with a feller she aint married to, and that her husband aint got guts enough to know what to do about it.
NINETEEN
Charles Mallison
IT WAS LIKE a circus day or the County fair. Or more: it was like the District or even the whole State field meet because we even had a holiday for it. Only it was more than just a fair or a field day because this one was going to have death in it too though of course we didn’t know that then.
It even began with a school holiday that we didn’t even know we were going to have. It was as if time, circumstance, geography, contained something which must, anyway was going to, happen and now was the moment and Jefferson, Mississippi was the place, and so the stage was cleared and set for it.
The school holiday began Tuesday morning. Last week some new people moved to Jefferson, a highway engineer, and their little boy entered the second grade. He must have been already sick when his mother brought him because he had to go home, they sent for her and she came and got him that same afternoon and that night they took him to Memphis. That was Thursday but it wasn’t until Monday afternoon that they got the word back that what he had was polio and they sent word around that the school would be closed while they found out what to do next or what to not do or whatever it was while they tried to learn more about polio or about the engineer’s little boy or whatever it was.
Anyhow it was a holiday we hadn’t expected or even hoped for, in April; that April morning when you woke up and you would think how April was the best, the very best time of all not to have to go to school, until you would think Except in the fall with the weather brisk and not-cold at the same time and the trees all yellow and red and you could go hunting all day long; and then you would think Except in the winter with the Christmas holidays over and now nothing to look forward to until summer; and you would think how no time is the best time to not have to go to school and so school is a good thing after all because without it there wouldn’t be any holidays or
