Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

So Lawyer filed the suit. And the first thing was the pleasant young feller from the bonding company in his nice city suit getting off the morning train with his nice city suitcase, saying “Now, fellers, let’s all have a drink of this-here nice city whiskey and see if we can jest all get together on this thing,” then spending one quick horrified day, mostly on the long-distance telephone between talking with them two Negro firemen, Tom Tom Bird and Tomey’s Turl Beauchamp, while waiting for Flem to get back from where he had went suddenly on a visit into the next county.

So on the third day the one come from the bonding company that was big enough in it to have the gray hair and come in a Pullman in striped britches and a gold watch chain big enough to boom logs with and gold eyeglasses and even a gold toothpick and the pigeon-tailed coat and the plug hat until by nightfall you couldn’t even a got a glass of water in the Holston Hotel for ever porter and waiter hanging around his door to wait on him and he could a owned ever other Negro in Jefferson too by tomorrow if he had had anything he could a done with them, saying “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen.” And the mayor coming in where they was all setting around the table, to stand there laughing at them for a while and then saying,

“You’ll have to excuse me. Even the mayor of just Jefferson, Mississippi, has got to do a little work now and then.” And Lawyer Stevens setting there calm and white in the face and looking exactly like he done that night when he told his brother-in-law: “Can you suh-jest a better way for me to learn how to fight than the one I just tried?”

And Flem Snopes hadn’t got back yet and in fact they couldn’t even locate him, like he had evidently went on a camping trip in the woods where there wasn’t no telephone; and the big boss one, the one with the white vest and the gold toothpick, says: “Im sure Mr de Spain would resign. Why dont we jest let him resign and forget all this here unhappiness?” and Lawyer Stevens says, “He’s a good mayor. We dont want him to resign,” and the white vest says, “Then what do you want? You will have to prove our client’s representative stole any brass and all you have is the word of them two nigras because Mr Snopes hisself has went out of town.”

“That water tank aint went out of town,” Lawyer says. “We can drain that water tank.”

So what they called was a special meeting of the board of aldermen. What they got was like one of them mass carcasses to vote between two beauty queens, the courthouse bell beginning to ring about eight oclock like it actively was some kind of a night session of court, and the folks coming up the streets and gathering in the Square, laughing and making jokes back and forth, until they decided right quick that the mayor’s office wouldn’t hold even the start of it, so they moved into the courtroom upstairs like it was Court.

Because this was just January; that Christmas Ball wasn’t barely three weeks old yet. Even when they chose sides it was still jest fun, because most of them had jest come to watch and listen anyhow, even after somebody beat the Judg19;s mallet on the table until they quit laughing and joking and hushed and one of the aldermen said, “I dont know how much it will cost to drain that tank, but I for one will be damned—”

“I do,” Lawyer Stevens says. “I already asked. It will cost three hundred and eighty dollars to rig a auxiliary tank long enough to drain and then fill the other one up again and then dismantle the auxiliary and get shut of it. It wont cost nothing to send somebody down inside of it to look because I’ll do that myself.”

“All right,” the alderman says. “Then I will still be damned—”

“All right,” Lawyer says. “Then I will pay for it myself,” and the old bonding feller, the white-vest one, saying “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen.” And the young one, the first one, standing up now and hollering:

“Dont you see, Mr Stevens? Dont you see, Mr Stevens? If you find brass in the tank, there wont be no crime because the brass already belongs to the city?”

“I already thought of that too,” Lawyer says. “The brass still belongs to the city even if we dont drain the tank. Only, where is it at?” and the little bonding feller saying:

“Wait! Wait! That aint what I meant. I mean if the brass aint missing there aint no crime because it wasn’t never stole.”

“Tom Tom Bird and Tomey’s Turl Beauchamp says it was because they stole it,” Lawyer says. Now they was two aldermen talking at once, saying:

“Hold up here; hold up here,” until finally the loudest one, Henry Best, won:

“Then who are you charging, Gavin? Are them nigras under Manfred’s bond too?”