Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

And that was all. And the next day 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 crepe 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.

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 aou 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 like 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 hisself shut forever of the whole tribe of Snopes first, or would he jest blow up hisself beforehand first and take ever body and ever thing in the neighborhood along with him.