Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

Except that I wasn’t going to. But it wasn’t that that worried me. It was knowing that I wasn’t, knowing I was going to throw it away—I mean my commission of the ten grand for contacting the Chi syndicate for him. I dont remember just when it was, I was probably pretty young, when I realised that I had come from what you might call a family, a clan, a race, maybe even a species, of pure sons of bitches. So I said, Okay, okay, if that’s the way it is, we’ll just show them. They call the best of lawyers, lawyers’ lawyers and the best of actors an actor’s actor and the best of athletes a ballplayer’s ballplayer. All right, that’s what we’ll do: every Snopes will make it his private and personal aim to have the whole world recognise him as THE son of a bitch’s son of a bitch.

But we never do it. We never make it. The best we ever do is to be just another Snopes son of a bitch. All of us, every one of us—Flem, and old Ab that I dont even know exactly what kin he is, and Uncle Wes and mine and Clarence’s father I.O., then right on down the line: Clarence and me by what you might call simultaneous bigamy, and Virgil and Vardaman and Bilbo and Byron and Mink. I dont even mention Eck and Wallstreet and Admiral Dewey because they dont belong to us. I have always believed that Eck’s mother took some extracurricular night work nine months before he was born. So the one true bitch we had was not a bitch at all but a saint and martyr, the one technically true pristine immaculate unchallengeable son of a bitch we ever produced wasn’t even a Snopes.

FIVE

When his nephew was gone, the Warden said, “Sit down.” He did so. “You got in the paper,” the Warden said. It was folded on the desk facing him:

TRIES PRISON BREAK

DISGUISED IN WOMEN’S CLOTHES

Parchman, Miss. Sept 8, 1923 M.C. “Mink” Snopes, under life sentence for murder from Yoknapatawpha County…

“What does the ‘C’ in your name stand for?” the Warden said. His voice was almost gentle. “We all thought your name was just Mink. That’s what you told us, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Mink Snopes.”

“What does the ‘C stand for? They’ve got it M.C. Snopes here.”

“Oh,” he said. “Nothing. Just M.C. Snopes like I. C. Railroad. It was them young fellers from the paper in the hospital that day. They kept on asking me what my name was and I said Mink Snopes and they said Mink aint a name, it’s jest a nickname. What’s your real name? And so I said M.C. Snopes.”

“Oh,” the Warden said. “Is Mink all the name you’ve got?”

“That’s right. Mink Snopes.”

“What did your mother call you?”

“I dont know. She died. The first I knowed my name was just Mink.” He got up. “I better go. They’re likely waiting for me.”

“Wait,” the Warden said. “Didn’t you know it wouldn’t work? Didn’t you know you couldn’t get away with it?”

“They told me,” he said. “I was warned.” He stood, not moving, relaxed, small and frail, his face downbent a little, musing, peaceful, almost like faint smiling. “He hadn’t ought to fooled me to get caught in that dress and sunbonnet,” he said. “I wouldn’t a done that to him.”

“Who?” the Warden said. “Not your … is it nephew?”

“Montgomery Ward?” he said. “He was my uncle’s grandson. No. Not him.” He waited a moment. Then he said again, “Well I better—”

“You would have got out in five more years,” the Warden said. “You know they’ll probably add on another twenty now, dont you?”

“I was warned of that too,” he said.

“All right,” the Warden said. “You can go.”

This time it was he who paused, stopped. “I reckon you never did find out who sent me them forty dollars.”

“How could I?” the Warden said. “I told you that at the time. All it said was From a Friend. From Memphis.”

“It was Flem,” he said.

“Who?” the Warden said. “The cousin you told me refused to help you after you killed that man? That you said could have saved you if he had wanted to? Why would he send you forty dollars now, after fifteen years?”

“It was Flem,” he said. “He can afford it. Besides, he never had no money hurt against me. He was jest getting a holt with Will Varner then and maybe he figgered he couldn’t resk getting mixed up with a killing, even if hit was his blood kin. Only I wish he hadn’t used that dress and sunbonnet. He never had to do that.”