Faulkner William - Snopes - The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“I dont know,” Stevens said harshly. “Drive on!”

“Maybe he was jest bored too,” Ratliff said. “Like Eula. Maybe there was two of them. The pore son of a bitch.”

“He was impotent,” Stevens said.

“What?” Ratliff said.

“Impotent. When he got in bed with a woman all he could do was go to sleep.—Yes!” Stevens said. “The poor sons of bitches that have to cause all the grief and anguish they have to cause! Drive on!”

“But suppose it was more than that,” Ratliff said. “You was town-raised when you was a boy; likely you never heard of Give-me-lief. It was a game we played. You would pick out another boy about your own size and you would walk up to him with a switch or maybe a light stick or a hard green apple or maybe even a rock, depending on how hard a risk you wanted to take, and say to him, ‘Gimme lief,’ and if he agreed, he would stand still and you would take one cut or one lick at him with the switch or stick, as hard as you picked out, or back off and throw at him once with the green apple or the rock. Then you would stand still and he would take the same switch or stick or apple or rock or anyways another one jest like it, and take one cut or throw at you. That was the rule. So jest suppose—”

“Drive on!” Stevens said.

“—Flem had had his lief fair and square like the rule said, so there wasn’t nothing for him to do but jest set there, since he had likely found out years back when she finally turned up here again even outen a communist war, that he had already lost—”

“Stop it!” Stevens said. “Dont say it!”

“—and now it was her lief and so suppose—”

“No!” Stevens said. “No!” But Ratliff was not only nearer the switch, his hand was already on it, covering it.

“—she knowed all the time what was going to happen when he got out, that not only she knowed but Flem did too—”

“I wont believe it!” Stevens said. “I wont! I cant believe it,” he said. “Dont you see I cannot?”

“Which brings up something else,” Ratliff said. “So she had a decision to make too that once she made it, it would be for good and all and too late to change it. She could a waited two more years and God Hisself couldn’t a kept Mink in Parchman without He killed him, and saved herself not jest the bother and worry but the moral responsibility too, even if you do say they aint no morals. Only she didn’t. And so you wonder why. If maybe, if there wasn’t no folks in heaven, it wouldn’t be heaven, and if you couldn’t recognise them as folks you knowed, wouldn’t nobody want to go there. And that someday her maw would be saying to her, ‘Why didn’t you revenge me and my love that I finally found it, instead of jest standing back and blind hoping for happen-so? Didn’t you never have no love of your own to learn you what it is?’—Here,” he said. He took out the immaculately clean, impeccably laundered and ironed handkerchief which the town said he not only laundered himself but hemstitched himself too, and put it into Stevens’s blind hand and turned the switch and flicked on the headlights. “I reckon we’ll be about right now,” he said.

Now the road even ceased to be two ruts. It was a gash now, choked with brier, still mounting. “I’ll go in front,” Ratliff said. “You growed up in town. I never even seen a light bulb until after I could handle a straight razor.” Then he said, “There it is”—a canted roof line where one end of the gable had collapsed completely (Stevens did not recognise, he simply agreed it could once have been a house) above which stood one worn gnarled cedar. He almost stumbled through, across what had been a fence, a yard fence, fallen too, choked fiercely with rose vines long since gone wild again. “Walk behind me,” Ratliff said. “They’s a old cistern. I think I know where it is. I ought to brought a flashlight.”

And now, in a crumbling slant downward into, through, what had been the wall’s old foundation, an orifice, a black and crumbled aperture yawned at their feet as if the ruined house itself had gaped at them. Ratliff had stopped. He said quietly: “You never seen that pistol. I did. It didn’t look like no one-for-ten-dollars pistol. It looked like one of a two-for-nine-and-a-half pistols. Maybe he’s still got the other one with him,” when Stevens, without stopping, pushed past him and, fumbling one foot downward, found what had been a step; and, taking the gold initialled lighter from his pocket, snapped it on and by the faint wavered gleam continued to descend, Ratliff, behind now, saying, “Of course. He’s free now. He wont never have to kill nobody else in all his life,” and followed, into the old cellar—the cave, the den where on a crude platform he had heaped together, the man they sought half-squatted half-knelt blinking up at them like a child interrupted at its bedside prayers: not surprised in prayer: interrupted, kneeling inthe new overalls which were stained and foul now, his hands lying half-curled on the front of his lap, blinking at the tiny light which Stevens held.

“Hidy,” he said.

“You cant stay here,” Stevens said. “If we knew where you were, dont you know the Sheriff will think of this place too by tomorrow morning?”

“I aint going to stay,” he said. “I jest stopped to rest. I’m fixing to go on pretty soon. Who are you fellers?”

“Never mind that,” Stevens said. He took out the envelope containing the money. “Here,” he said. It was two hundred and fifty dollars again. The amount was indubitable out of the whole thousand it had contained. Stevens had not even troubled to rationalise his decision of the amount. The kneeling man looked at it quietly.

“I left that money in Parchman. I had done already got shut of it before I went out the gate. You mean a son of a bitch stole that too?”

“This is not that money,” Stevens said. “They got that back. This is new money she sent you this morning. This is different.”

“You mean when I take it I aint promised nobody nothing?”

“Yes,” Stevens said. “Take it.”

He did so. “Much obliged,” he said. “That other time they said I would get another two hundred and fifty again in three months if I went straight across Missippi without stopping and never come back again. I reckon that’s done stopped this time.”

“No,” Stevens said. “That too. In three months tell me where you are and I’ll send it.”

“Much obliged,” Mink said. “Send it to M. C. Snopes.”

“What?” Stevens said.

“To M. C. Snopes. That’s my name: M. C.”

“Come on,” Ratliff said, almost roughly, “let’s get out of here,” taking him by the arm even as Stevens turned, Ratliff taking the burning lighter from him and holding it up while Stevens found the fading earthen steps again, once more up and out into the air, the night, the moonless dark, the wornout eroded fields supine beneath the first faint breath of fall, waiting for winter. Overhead, celestial and hier-archate, the constellations wheeled through the zodiacal pastures: Scorpion and Bear and Scales; beyond cold Orion and the Sisters the fallen and homeless angels choired, lamenting. Gentle and tender as a woman, Ratliff opened the car door for Stevens to get in. “You all right now?” he said.

“Yes I tell you, goddammit,” Stevens said.

Ratliff closed the door and went around the car and opened his and got in and closed it and turned the switch and snapped on the lights and put the car in gear—two old men themselves, approaching their sixties. “I dont know if she’s already got a daughter stashed out somewhere, or if she jest aint got around to one yet. But when she does I jest hope for Old Lang Zyne’s sake she dont never bring it back to Jefferson. You done already been through two Eula Varners and I dont think you can stand another one.”