Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Out at Frenchman’s Bend they said Mink was a considerable hell-raiser when he was young, within his means of course, which wasn’t much. But he made two or three of them country-boy Memphis trips with the young bloods of his time—Quicks and Tulls and Turpins and such: enough to probably know where to begin to look for the kind of places that dont keep the kind of licenses to have police worrying them ever time a gun or a pistol turns up in the wrong place or dont turn up in the right one.”

“Dont you think the Memphis police know as much about Memphis as any damned little murdering maniac, let alone one that’s been locked up in a penitentiary for forty years? The Memphis police, that have a damned better record than a dozen, hell, a hundred cities I could name—”

“All right, all right,” Ratliff said.

“By God, God Himself is not so busy that a homicidal maniac with only ten dollars in the world can hitchhike a hundred miles and buy a gun for ten dollars then hitchhike another hundred and shoot another man with it.”

“Dont that maybe depend on who God wants shot this time?” Ratliff said. “Have you been by the sheriff’s this mawnin?”

“No,” Stevens said.

“I have. Flem aint been to him either yet. And he aint left town neither. I checked on that too. So maybe that’s the best sign we want: Flem aint worried. Do you reckon he told Linda?”

“No,” Stevens said.

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“Flem did? You mean he jest told you, or you asked him?”

“I asked him,” Stevens said. “I said, ‘Are you going to tell Linda?’ ”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Why?’ ” Stevens said.

“Oh,” Ratliff said.

Then it was noon. What Ratliff had in the neat parcel was a sand wich, as neatly made. “You go home and eat dinner,” he said. “I’ll set here and listen for it.”

“Didn’t you just say that if Flem himself dont seem to worry, why the hell should we?”

“I wont worry then,” Ratliff said. “I’ll jest set and listen.”

Though Stevens was back in the office when the call came in midafternoon. “Nothing,” the classmate’s voice said. “None of the pawnshops nor any other place a man might go to buy a gun or pistol of any sort, let alone a ten-dollar one. Maybe he hasn’t reached Memphis yet, though it’s more than twenty-four hours now.”

“That’s possible,” Stevens said.

“Maybe he never intended to reach Memphis.”

“All right, all right,” Stevens said. “Sh I write the commissioner myself a letter of thanks or—”

“Sure. But let him earn it first. He agreed that it not only wont cost much more, it will even be a good idea to check his list every morning for the next two or three days, just in case. I thanked him for you. I even went further and said that if you ever found yourselves in the same voting district and he decided to run for an office instead of just sitting for it—” as Stevens put the telephone down and turned to Ratliff again without seeing him at all and said,

“Maybe he never will.”

“What?” Ratliff said. “What did he say?” Stevens told, repeated, the gist. “I reckon that’s all we can do,” Ratliff said.

“Yes,” Stevens said. He thought Tomorrow will prove it. But Til wait still another day. Maybe until Monday.

But he didn’t wait that long. On Saturday his office was always, not busy with the county business he was paid a salary to handle, so much as constant with the social coming and going of the countrymen who had elected him to his office. Ratliff, who knew them all too, as well or even better, was unobtrusive in his chair against the wall where he could reach the telephone without even getting up; he even had another neat homemade sandwich, until at noon Stevens said,

“Go on home and eat a decent meal, or come home with me. It wont ring today.”

“You must know why,” Ratliff said.

“Yes. I’ll tell you Monday. No: tomorrow. Sunday will be appropriate. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“So you know it’s all right now. All settled and finished now. Whether Flem knows it yet or not, he can sleep from now on.”

“Dont ask me yet,” Stevens said. “It’s like a thread; it’s true only until I—something breaks it.”

“You was right all the time then. There wasn’t no need to tell her.”

“There never has been,” Stevens said. “There never will be.”

“That’s jest what I said,” Ratliff said. “There aint no need now.”

“And what I just said was there never was any need to tell her and there never would have been, no matter what happened.”

“Not even as a moral question?” Ratliff said.

“Moral hell and question hell,” Stevens said. “It aint any question at all: it’s a fact: the fact that not you nor anybody else that wears hair is going to tell her that her act of pity and compassion and simple generosity murdered the man who passes as her father whether he is or not or a son of a bitch or not.”

“All right, all right,” Ratliff said. “This here thread you jest mentioned. Ma another good way to keep it from getting broke before time is to keep somebody handy to hear that telephone when it dont ring at three oclock this afternoon.”