Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

But this here new one was a different animal. Because they—including them occasional volunteers—was jest bucks in the general—or maybe it’s the universal—Frenchman’s Bend pattern, while McCarron wasn’t in nobody’s pattern; he was unbitted not because he was afraid of a bit but simply because so fur he didn’t prefer to be. So there not only wasn’t nere a one of them would stand up to him alone, the whole unified confederated passel of them, that never hesitated one second to hide in that thicket against any other inter loper that come sniffing at Varner’s fence, never nerved theirselves up to him until it was already too late. Oh sho, they had chances. They had plenty of chances. In fact, he give them so many chances that by the end of May they wouldn’t even walk a Frenchman’s Bend road after dark, even in sight of one of their own houses, without they was at least three of them. Because this here was a different kind of a buck, coming without warning right off the big mountain itself and doing what Lawyer would call arrogating to hisself what had been the gynecological cynosure of a whole section of north Missippi for going on a year or two now. Not ravishing Eula away: not riding up on his horse and snatching her up behind him and galloping off, but jest simply moving in and dispossessing them; not even evicting them but like he was keeping them on hand for a chorus you might say, or maybe jest for spice, like you keep five or six cellars of salt setting handy while you are eating the watermelon, until it was already too late, until likely as not, as fur as they or Frenchman’s Bend either knowed, Eula was already pregnant with Linda.

Except I dont think that was exactly it. I dont think I prefer it to happened that way. I think I prefer it to happened all at once. Or that aint quite right neither. I think what I prefer is, that them five timorous local stallions actively brought about the very exact thing they finally nerved their desperation up to try to prevent. There they all was, poised on the brink you might say of thatere still intact maiden citadel, all seven of them: Eula and McCarron, and them five Tulls and Bookwrights and Turpins and Binfords and Quicks. Because what them Tulls and Quicks would a called the worst hadn’t happened yet. I dont mean the worst in respects to Eula’s chastity nor to the violated honor of Uncle Billy Varner’s home, but in respects to them two years’ investment of buggies and mules tied to the Varner fence when them and the five folks keeping them hitched there half the night both had ought to been home getting a little rest before going back to the field to plow at sunup, instead of having to live in a constantly shifting confederation of whatever four of them happened to believe that the fifth one was out in front in thatere steeplechasks.ot to mention the need for all five of them having to gang up at a moment’s notice maybe at almost any time on some stray interloper that turned up without warning with his head full of picket fence ideas too.

So I prefer to believe it hadn’t happened yet. I dont know what Eula and McCarron was waiting on. I mean, what McCarron was waiting on. Eula never done no waiting. Likely she never even knowed what the word meant, like the ground, dirt, the earth, whatever it is in it that makes seed sprout at the right time, dont know nor need to know what waiting means. Since to know what waiting means, you got to be skeered or weak or self-doubtful enough to know what impatience or hurry means, and Eula never needed them no more than that dirt does. All she needed was jest to be, like the ground of the field, until the right time come, the right wind, the right sun, the right rain; until in fact thatere single unique big buck jumped that tame garden fence outen the big woods or the high mountain or the tall sky, and finally got through jest standing there among the sheep with his head up, looking proud. So it was McCarron that put off that long what you might call thatere inevitable. Maybe that was why: having to jest stand there for a while looking proud among the sheep. Maybe that was it: maybe he was jest simply having too much fun at first, playing with them Bookwright and Quick sheep, tantalising them up maybe to see jest how much they would have to stand to forget for a moment they was sheep, or to remember that maybe they was sheep but at least there was five of them, until at last they would risk him jest like he actively wasn’t nothing but jest one more of them natural occupational local hazards Eula had done already got them accustomed to handling.