Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

He was on his way to Frenchman’s Bend now, though he had not started yet and did not know just when he would start. He had not seen the village in a year now. He was looking forward to his visit not only for the pleasure of the shrewd dealing which far transcended mere gross profit, but with the sheer happiness of being out of bed and moving once more at free will, even though a little weakly, in the sun and air which men drank and moved in and talked and dealt with one another—a pleasure no small part of which lay in the fact that he had not started yet and there was abstely nothing under heaven to make him start until he wanted to. He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course. So he sat, thin, the fresh clean blue shirt quite loose upon him now, yet looking actually quite well, the smooth brown of his face not pallid but merely a few shades lighter, cleaner-looking; emanating in fact a sort of delicate robustness like some hardy odorless infrequent woodland plant blooming into the actual heel of winter’s snow, nursing his coffee cup in one thin hand and telling three or four listeners about his operation in that shrewd humorous voice which would require a good deal more than just illness to other than merely weaken its volume a little, when two men entered. They were Tull and Bookwright. Bookwright had a stock whip rolled about its handle and thrust into the back pocket of his overalls.

“Howdy, boys,” Ratliff said. “You’re in early.”

“You mean late,” Bookwright said. He and Tull went to the counter.

“We just got in last night with some cattle to ship today,” Tull said. “So you was in Memphis. I thought I’d missed you.”

“We all missed him,” Bookwright said. “My wife aint mentioned nobody’s new sewing machine in almost a year. What was it that Memphis fellow cut outen you anyway?”

“My pocketbook,” Ratliff said. “I reckon that’s why he put me to sleep first.”

“He put you to sleep first to keep you from selling him a sewing machine or a bushel of harrow teeth before he could get his knife open,” Bookwright said. The counterman came and slid two plates of bread and butter before them.

“I’ll have steak,” Tull said.

“I wont,” Bookwright said. “I been watching the dripping sterns of steaks for two days now. Let alone running them back out of corn fields and vegetable patches. Bring me some ham and a half a dozen fried eggs.” He began to eat the bread, wolfing it. Ratliff turned slightly on his stool to face them.

“So I been missed,” he said. “I would a thought you folks would a had so many new citizens in Frenchman’s Bend by now you wouldn’t a missed a dozen sewing-machine agents. How many kinfolks has Flem Snopes brought in to date? Is it two more, or just three?”

“Four,” Bookwright said shortly, eating.

“Four?” Ratliff said. “That’s that blacksmith—I mean, the one that uses the blacksmith shop for his address until it’s time to go back home and eat again—what’s his name? Eck. And that other one, the contractor, the business executive—”

“He’s going to be the new school professor next year,” Tull said mildlyC;I re01C;Or so they claim.”

“No no,” Ratliff said. “I’m talking about them Snopeses. That other one. I.O. That Jack Houston throwed into the water tub that day in the blacksmith shop.”

“That’s him,” Tull said. “They claim he’s going to teach the school next year. The teacher we had left all of a sudden just after Christmas. I reckon you never heard about that neither.”

But Ratliff wasn’t listening to this. He wasn’t thinking about the other teacher. He stared at Tull, for the moment surprised out of his own humorous poise. “What?” he said. “Teach the school? That fellow? That Snopes? The one that came to the shop that day that Jack Houston—Here, Odum,” he said; “I been sick, but sholy it aint affected my ears that much.”

Bookwright didn’t answer. He had finished his bread; he leaned and took a piece from lull’s plate. “You aint eating it,” he said. “I’ll tell him to bring some more in a minute.”