It was like he knowed that his respectability depended completely on Jefferson not jest accepting but finally getting used to the fact that he not only had evicted Manfred de Spain from his bank but he was remodeling to move into it De Spain’s birthsite likewise, and that the only remaining threat now was what might happen if that-ere young gal that believed all right so far that he was her paw, might stumble onto something that would tell her different.
That she might find out by accident that the man that was leastways mixed up somehow in her mother’s suicide, whether he actively caused it or not, wasn’t even her father, since if somebody’s going to be responsible why your maw killed herself, at least let it be somebody kin to you and not jest a outright stranger.
So you would a thought that the first thing he would do soon as the dust settled after that funeral, would be to get her clean out of Jefferson and as far away as he could have suh-jested into her mind she wanted to go. But not him. And the reason he give was that monument. And naturally that was Lawyer Stevens too.
I mean, I dont know who delegated Lawyer into the monument business, who gave it to him or if he jest taken it or if maybe by this time the relationship between him and anybody named Snopes, or anyway maybe jest the Flem Snopeses (or no: it was that for him Eula Varner hadn’t never died and never would because oh yes, I know about that too) was like that one between a feller out in a big open field and a storm of rain: there aint no being give nor accepting to it: he’s already got it.
Anyway it was him — Lawyer — that helped Linda hunt through that house and her mother’s things until they found the right photograph and had it — Lawyer still — enlarged, the face part, and sent it to Italy to be carved into a … yes, medallion to fasten onto the front of the monument, and him that the practice drawings would come back to to decide and change here and there and send back. Which would a been his right by his own choice even if Flem had tried to interfere in and stop him because he wanted that monument set up where Flem could pass on it more than anybody wanted it because then Flem would let her go.
But it was Flem’s monument; dont make no mistake about that. It was Flem that paid for it, first thought of it, planned and designed it, picked out what size and what was to be wrote on it — the face and the letters — and never once mentioned price. Dont make no mistake about that. It was Flem. Because this too was a part of what he had come to Jefferson for and went through all he went through afterward to get it.
Oh yes, Lawyer had it all arranged for Linda to leave, get away at last; all they was hung on was the monument because Flem had give his word he would let her go then. It was to a place named Greenwich Village in New York; Lawyer had it all arranged, friends he knowed in Harvard to meet the train at the depot and take care of her, get her settled and ever thing.
“Is it a college?” I says. “Like out at Seminary Hill?”
“No no,” he says. “I mean, yes. But not the kind you are talking about.”
“I thought you was set on her going to a college up there.”
“That was before,” he says. “Too much has happened to her since. Too much, too fast, too quick. She outgrew colleges all in about twenty-four hours two weeks ago. She’ll have to grow back down to them again, maybe in a year or two. But right now, Greenwich Village is the place for her.”
“What is Greenwich Village?” I says. “You still aint told me.”
“It’s a place with a few unimportant boundaries but no limitations where young people of any age go to seek dreams.”
“I never knowed before that place had no particular geography,” I says. “I thought that-ere was a varmint you hunted anywhere.”
“Not always. Not for her, anyway. Sometimes you need a favorable scope of woods to hunt, a place where folks have already successfully hunted and found the same game you want. Sometimes, some people, even need help in finding it. The particular quarry they want to catch, they have to make first. That takes two.”
“Two what?” I says.
“Yes,” he says. “Two.”
“You mean a husband,” I says.
“All right,” he says. “Call him that. It dont matter what you call him.”
“Why, Lawyer,” I says. “You sound like what a heap, a right smart in fact, jest about all in fact, unanimous in fact of our good God-fearing upright embattled christian Jeffersons and Yoknapatawphas too that can proudly affirm that never in their life did they ever have one minute’s fun that the most innocent little child couldn’t a stood right there and watched, would call a deliberate incitement and pandering to the Devil his-self.”
Only Lawyer wasn’t laughing. And then I wasn’t neither. “Yes,” he says. “It will be like that with her. It will be difficult for her. She will have to look at a lot of them, a long time. Because he will face something almost impossible to match himself against. He will have to have courage, because it will be doom, maybe disaster too. That’s her fate. She is doomed to anguish and to bear it, doomed to one passion and one anguish and all the rest of her life to bear it, as some people are doomed from birth to be robbed or betrayed or murdered.”
Then I said it. “Marry her. Naturally you never thought of that.”
“I?” he says. It was right quiet: no surprise, no nothing. “I thought I had just been talking about that for the last ten minutes. She must have the best. It will be impossible even for him.”
“Marry her,” I says.
“No,” he says. “That’s my fate: just to miss marriage.”
“You mean escape it?”
“No no,” he says. “I never escape it. Marriage is constantly in my life. My fate is constantly to just miss it or it to, safely again, once more safe, just miss me.”
So it was all fixed, and now all he needed was to get his carved marble face back from Italy, nagging by long distance telephone and telegraph dispatch ever day or so in the most courteous affable legal manner you could want, at the Italian consul in New Orleans, so he could get it fastened onto the monument and then (if necessary) take a holt on Flem’s coat collar and shove him into the car and take him out to the cemetery and snatch the veil offen it, with Linda’s ticket to New York (he would a paid for that too except it wasn’t necessary since the last thing Uncle Billy done before he went back home after the funeral was to turn over to the bank — not Flem: the bank, with Lawyer as one of the trustees — a good size chunk of what would be Eula’s inheritance under that will of hisn that he hadn’t never changed to read Snopes) in his other hand.
So we had to wait. Which was interesting enough. I mean, Lawyer had enough to keep him occupied worrying the Italian government, and all I ever needed was jest something to look at, watch, providing of course it had people in it. They — Flem and Linda — still lived in the same little house that folks believed for years after he bought it that he was still jest renting it. Though pretty soon Flem owned a automobile. I mean, presently, after the polite amount of time after he turned up president of the bank; not to have Santy Claus come all at once you might say.
It wasn’t a expensive car: jest a good one, jest the right unnoticeable size, of a good polite unnoticeable black color and he even learned to drive it because maybe he had to because now ever afternoon after the bank closed he would have to go and watch how the carpenters was getting along with his new house (it was going to have colyums across the front now, I mean the extry big ones so even a feller that never seen colyums before wouldn’t have no doubt a-tall what they was, like in the photographs where the Confedrit sweetheart in a hoop skirt and a magnolia is saying goodbye to her Confedrit beau jest before he rides off to finish tending to General Grant) and Flem would have to drive his-self because, although Linda could drive it right off and done it now and then and never mind if all women are naturally interested in the housebuilding or -remodeling occupation no matter whose it is the same as a bird is interested in the nesting occupation, although she druv him there the first afternoon to look at the house, she wouldn’t go inside to look at it and after that one time she never even drove him back anymore.
But like I said we was all
