Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Maybe it’s because you’re a gentleman and I never knew one before.”

“So is Manfred!” I said. “And that other one, that first one—your child’s father—” the only other one I thought because, yes, oh yes, I knew now: Snopes himself was impotent. I even said it: “The only other one besides Manfred. Back there in Frenchman’s Bend, that Ratliff told me about, that fought off the five or six men who tried to ambush you in the buggy that night, fought them off with the buggy whip and one hand because he had to use the other to shield you with, whiped them all off even with one arm broken where I couldn’t even finish the fight I started myself with just one opponent?” And still not moving: just standing there facing me so that what I smelled was not even just woman but that terrible, that drowning envelopment. “Both alike,” I said. “But not like me. All three gentlemen but only two were men.”

“Lock the door,” she said. “I’ve already drawn the shade. Stop being afraid of things,” she said. “Why are you afraid?”

“No,” I said, cried. I might—would—have struck her with my outflung arm, but there was room: out of the trap now and even around her until I could reach the door knob and open it. Oh yes, I knew now. “I might buy Manfred from you but I wont buy Flem,” I said. “Because it is Flem, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” But there was only the blue envelopment and the fading Wagner, trumpet and storm and rich brasses diminuendo toward the fading arm and hand and the rainbow-fading ring. “You told me not to expect: why dont you try it yourself? We’ve all bought Snopeses here, whether we wanted to or not; you of all people should certainly know that. I dont know why we bought them. I mean, why we had to: what coin and when and where we so recklessly and improvidently spent that we had to have Snopeses too. But we do. But nothing can hurt you if you refuse it, not even a brass-stealing Snopes. And nothing is of value that costs nothing so maybe you will value this refusal at what I value it cost me.” She moved then and only then did I notice that she had evidently brought nothing with her: none of the scatter of gloves, bags, veils, this and that which women bring into a room with them so that the first minute of their quitting it is a problem resembling scavenging. “Dont worry about your husband,” I said. “Just say I represent Jefferson and so Flem Snopes is my burden too. You see, the least I can do is to match you: to value him as highly as your coming here proves you do. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said. The cold invisible cloud leaned in again. Again I closed it.

SIX

V.K. RATLIFF

So next morning first thing we heard was that Judge Dukinfield had recused hisself and designated Judge Stevens, Lawyer’s paw, to preside in his stead. And they ought to rung the courthouse bell this time sholy, because whether or not it was a matter of communal interest and urgency last night, it was now. But it was to be in chambers this time and what Judge Dukinfield called his chamber wouldn’t a helt us. So all we done this time was just to happen to be somewhere about the Square, in the store doors or jest looking by chance and accident out of the upstairs doctors’ and suches’ windows while old man Job, that had been Judge Dukinfield’s janitor for longer than anybody in Jefferson, including Job and Judge Dukinfield too, knowed, in a old cast-off tailcoat of Judge Dukinfield’s that he wore on Sundays, bustled in and out of the little brick house back of the courthouse that Judge Dukinfield called his chambers, sweeping and dusting it until it suited him enough to let folks in it.

Then we watched Judge Stevens cross the Square from his office and go through the door and then we watched the two bonding fellers come out of the hotel and cross the Square with their little lawyers’ grips, the young one toting his own grip but Samson, the hotel porter, walking behind the white-vest one toting his, and Samson’s least boy walking behind Samson toting what I reckon was the folded Memphis paper the white-vest one had been reading while they et breakfast and they, except Samson and his boy, went in too. Then Lawyer come up by hisself and went in, and sho enough before extra long we heard the car and then Mayor de Spain druv up and parked and got out and says,