Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

So when on the fourth morning Montgomery Ward and Clarence got on Number Six northbound, we knowed Clarence was jest going by Memphis to Jackson or Frenchman’s Bend. But all we thought about Montgomery Ward was, jest what could he a had in that a-teelyer that even Hub never found, that was worth two thousand dollars of bond money to Flem Snopes to get him to Mexico or wherever Montgomery Ward would wind up? So ours wasn’t jest interested surprise: ours was interested all right but it was astonishment and some good hard fast thinking too when two days later Clarence and Montgomery Ward both got off of Number Five southbound and Clarence turned Montgomery Ward back over to Flem and went on to Jackson or Frenchman’s Bend or wherever he would have to go to leave from to come back by Gayoso Street, Memphis, next time. And Flem turned Montgomery Ward back over to Euphus Tubbs, back into the cell in the jail, that two-thousand-dollar bond of Flem’s rescinded or maybe jest withdrawed for all time a>like you hang your Sunday hat back on the rack until the next wedding or funeral or whenever you might need it again.a>

Who—I mean Euphus—apparently in his turn turned Montgomery Ward over to Miz Tubbs. We heard how she had even hung a old shade over the cell window to keep the morning sun from waking him up so early. And how any time Lawyer Stevens or Hub Hampton or any other such members of the Law would want a word with Montgomery Ward now, the quickest place to look for him would be in Miz Tubbs’s kitchen with one of her aprons on, shelling peas or husking roasting ears. And we—all right, me then—would kind of pass along the alley by the jail and there Montgomery Ward would be, him and Miz Tubbs in the garden while Montgomery Ward hoed out the vegetable rows, not making much of a out at it maybe, but anyhow swinging the hoe as long as Miz Tubbs showed him where to chop next.

“Maybe she’s still trying to find out about them pictures,” Homer Bookwright says.

“What?” I says. “Miz Tubbs?”

“Of course she wants to know about them,” Homer says. “Aint she human too, even if she is a woman?”

And three weeks later Montgomery Ward stood up in Judge Long’s court and Judge Long give him two years in the state penitentiary at Parchman for the possession of one developer jug containing one gallon of moonshine whiskey herewith in evidence.

So ever body was wrong. Flem Snopes hadn’t spent no two thousand dollars’ worth of bond money to purify Montgomery Ward outen the U.S.A. America, and he hadn’t spent no twenty-five or thirty dollars’ worth of white-mule whiskey jest to purify the Snopes family name outen Atlanta, Georgia. What he had done was to spend twenty-five or thirty dollars to send Montgomery Ward to Parchman when the government would a sent him to Georgia free. Which was a good deal more curious than jest surprising, and a good deal more interesting than all three. So the next morning I happened to be on the depot platform when Number Eleven southbound was due and sho enough, there was Montgomery Ward and Hunter Killegrew, the deputy, and I says to Hunter: “Dont you need to step into the washroom before you get on the train for such a long trip? I’ll watch Montgomery Ward for you. Besides, a feller that wouldn’t run off three weeks ago under a two-thousand-dollar bond aint likely to try it now with nothing on him but a handcuff.”

So Hunter handed me his half of the handcuff and moved a little away and I says to Montgomery Ward:

“So you’re going to Parchman instead. That’ll be a heap better. Not only you wont be depriving no native-born Missippi grub contractor outen his rightful and natural profit on the native-born Missippi grub they’ll be feeding a native-born Missippi convict, you wont be lonesome there neither, having a native-born Missippi cousin or uncle to pass the time with when you aint otherwise occupied with field work or something. What’s his name? Mink Snopes, your uncle or cousin that got in that little trouble a while back for killing Jack Houston and kept trying to wait for Flem to come back from Texas in time to get him outen it, except that Flem was otherwise occupied too and so Mink acted kind of put out about it? Which was he, your uncle or your cousin?”

“Yeah?” Montgomery Ward says.

“Well, which?” I says.

“Which what?” Montgomery Ward says.

“Is he your uncle or is he your cousin?” I says.

“Yeah?” Montgomery Ward says.

FOUR

MONTGOMERY WARD SNOPES

So the son of a bitch fooled you,” I said. “You thought they were going to hang him but all he got was life.”