“That is, you were sent. Sent by a damned lot of damned old women of both sexes, including none.
Not to bury her: to forgive her. Thank you, gentlemen. I plan to conduct this service myself.” But that was just until Father came home for supper and Mother could sick him on Uncle Gavin too.
Because we had all thought, taken it for granted, that the Varners (maybe Mr Flem too) would naturally want her buried in Frenchman’s Bend; that Mr Varner would pack her up too when he went back home along with whatever else he had brought to town with him (Ratliff said it wouldn’t be much since the only thing that travelled lighter than Uncle Billy Varner was a crow) and take her back with him.
But Uncle Gavin said No, speaking for Linda — and there were people enough to say Gavin Stevens said No speaking to the daughter. Anyway, it was No, the funeral to be tomorrow after Jody Varner’s car could get back in from Frenchman’s Bend with Jody and Mrs Varner; and now Uncle Gavin had Father at him too.
“Dammit, Gavin,” he said. “You cant do it. We all admit you’re a lot of things but one of them aint an ordained minister.”
“So what?” Uncle Gavin said. “Do you believe that this town believes that any preacher that ever breathed could get her into heaven without having to pass through Jefferson, and that even Christ Himself could get her through on that route?”
“Wait,” Mother said. “Both of you hush.” She was looking at Uncle Gavin. “Gavin, at first I thought I would never understand why Eula did it. But now I’m beginning to believe that maybe I do. Do you want Linda to have to say afterward that another bachelor had to bury her?”
And that was all. And tomorrow Mrs Varner and Jody came in and brought with them the old Methodist minister who had christened her thirty-eight years ago — an old man who had been a preacher all his adult life but would have for the rest of it the warped back and the wrenched bitter hands of a dirt farmer — and we — the town — gathered at their little house, the women inside and the men standing around the little front yard and along the street, all neat and clean and wearing coats and not quite looking at each other while they talked quietly about crops and weather; then to the graveyard and the new lot empty except for the one raw excavation and even that not long, hidden quickly, rapidly beneath the massed flowers, themselves already doomed in the emblem-shapes — wreaths and harps and urns — of the mortality which they de-stingered, euphemised; and Mr de Spain standing there not apart: just solitary, with his crape armband and his face looking like it must have when he was a lieutenant in Cuba back in that time, day, moment after he had just led the men that trusted him or anyway followed him because they were supposed to, into the place where they all knew some of them wouldn’t come back for the reason that all of them were not supposed to come back which was all right too if the lieutenant said it was, provided old Mayor Adams had been wrong that day in front of the postoffice and Mr de Spain really had been a lieutenant in Cuba.
Then we came home and Father said, “Dammit, Gavin, why dont you get drunk?” and Uncle Gavin said,
“Certainly, why not?” — not even looking up from the paper. Then it was supper time and I wondered why Mother didn’t nag at him about not eating. But at least as long as she didn’t think about eating, her mind wouldn’t hunt around and light on me. Then we — Uncle Gavin and Mother and I — went to the office. I mean that for a while after Grandfather died Mother still tried to make us all call it the library but now even she called it the office just like Grandfather did, and Uncle Gavin sitting beside the lamp with a book and even turning a page now and then, until the door bell rang.
“I’ll go,” Mother said. But then, nobody else seemed to intend to or be even curious. Then she came back down the hall to the office door and said, “It’s Linda. Come in, honey,” and stood to one side and beckoned her head at me as Linda came in and Uncle Gavin got up and Mother jerked her head at me again and said, “Chick,” and Linda stopped just inside the door and this time Mother said, “Charles!” so I got up and went out and she closed the door after us. But it was all right. I was used to it by this time. As soon as I saw who it was I even expected it.
TWENTY TWO
Gavin Stevens
THEN MAGGIE FINALLY got Chick out and closed the door. I said, “Sit down, Linda.” But she just stood there. “Cry,” I said. “Let yourself go and cry.”
“I cant,” she said. “I tried.” She looked at me. “He’s not my father,” she said.
“Of course he’s your father,” I said. “Certainly he is. What in the world are you talking about?”
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Do you want me to swear? All right. I swear he’s your father.”
“You were not there. You dont know. You never even saw her until she — we came to Jefferson.”
“Ratliff did. Ratliff was there. He knows. He knows who your father is. And I know from Ratliff. I am sure. Have I ever lied to you?”
“No,” she said. “You are the one person in the world I know will never lie to me.”
“All right,” I said. “I swear to you then. Flem Snopes is your father.” And now she didn’t move: it was just the tears, the water, not springing, just running quietly and quite fast down her face. I moved toward her.
“No,” she said, “dont touch me yet,” catching, grasping both my wrists and gripping, pressing my hands hard in hers against her breast. “When I thought he wasn’t my father, I hated her and Manfred both. Oh yes, I knew about Manfred: I have … seen them look at each other, their voices when they would talk to each other, speak one another’s name, and I couldn’t bear it, I hated them both. But now that I know he is my father, it’s all right. I’m glad. I want her to have loved, to have been happy. — I can cry now,” she said.
TWENTY THREE
V. K. Ratliff
IT WAS LIKEN a contest, like Lawyer had stuck a stick of dynamite in his hind pocket and lit a long fuse to it and was interested now would or wouldn’t somebody step in in time and tromple the fire out. Or a race, like would he finally get Linda out of Jefferson and at least get his-self shut forever of the whole tribe of Snopes first, or would he jest blow up his-self beforehand first and take ever body and ever thing in the neighborhood along with him.
No, not a contest. Not a contest with Flem Snopes anyway because it takes two to make a contest and Flem Snopes wasn’t the other one. He was a umpire, if he was anything in it. No, he wasn’t even a umpire. It was like he was running a little mild game against his-self, for his own amusement, like solitaire. He had ever thing now that he had come to Jefferson to get.
He had more. He had things he didn’t even know he was going to want until he reached Jefferson because he didn’t even know they was until then. He had his bank and his money in it and his-self to be president of it so he could not only watch his money from ever being stole by another twenty-two calibre rogue like his cousin Byron, but nobody could ever steal from him the respectability that being president of one of the two Yoknapatawpha County banks toted along with it.
And he was going to have one of the biggest residences in the county or maybe Mississippi too when his carpenters got through with Manfred de Spain’s old home. And he had got rid of the only two downright arrant outrageous Snopeses when he run Montgomery Ward and I.O. finally out of town so that now, for the time being at least, the only other Snopes actively inside the city limits was a wholesale grocer not only as respectable but maybe even more solvent than jest a banker. So you would think he would a been satisfied now. But he wasn’t. He had to make a young girl (woman now) that wasn’t even his child, say “I humbly thank you, papa, for being so good to me.”
That’s right, a contest. Not even against Linda, and last of all against Lawyer Stevens since he had already milked out of Lawyer Stevens all he needed from
