Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“And he’s not in Frenchman’s Bend.”

“How do you know?”

“I drove out yesterday and looked around a little.”

“So you did believe me, after all,” Stevens said.

“I get per diem on my car,” the Sheriff said. “Yesterday was a nice day for a country drive. So he’s had four days now, to come a hundred miles. And he dont seem to be in Memphis. And I know he aint in Frenchman’s Bend. And according to you, Mr Snopes knows he aint in Jefferson here. Maybe he’s dead.” Whereupon, now that another had stated it, spoke it aloud, Stevens knew that he himself had never believed it, hearing without listening while the Sheriff went on: “A damned little rattlesnake that they say never had any friends to begin with and nobody out at the Bend knows what became of his wife and his two girls or even when they disappeared. To be locked up for thirty-eight years and then suddenly turned out like you do a cat at night, with nowhere to go and nobody really wanting him out. Maybe he couldn’t stand being free. Maybe just freedom killed him. I’ve known it to happen.”

“Yes,” Stevens said, “you’re probably right,” thinking quietly We wont stop him. We cant stop him—not all of us together, Memphis police and all. Maybe even a rattlesnake with destiny on his side dont even need luck, let alone friends. He said: “Only we dont know yet. We cant count on that.”

“I know,” the Sheriff said. “I deputised two men at Varner’s store yesterday that claim they remember him, would know him again. And I can have Mr Snopes followed, watched back and forth to the bank. But dammit, watch for who, what, when, where? I cant put a man inside his house until he asks for it, can I? His daughter. Mrs Kohl. Maybe she could do something. You still dont want her to know?”

“You must give me your word,” Stevens said.

“All right,” the Sheriff said. “I suppose your Jackson buddy will let you know the minute the Memphis police get any sort of a line, wont he?”

“Yes,” Stevens said. Though the call didn’t come until Wednesday. Ratliff had rung him up a little after ten Tuesday night and told him the news, and on his way to the office this morning he passed the bank whose drawn shades would not be raised today, and as he stood at his desk with the telephone in his hand he could see through his front window the somber black-and-white-and-violet convolutions of tulle and ribbon and waxen asphodels fastened to the locked front door.

“He found a ten-dollar pistol,” the classmate’s voice said. “Early Monday morning. It wasn’t really a properly licensed pawnshop, so they almost missed it. But under a little … persuasion the proprietor recalled the sale. But he said not to worry, the pistol was only technically still a pistol and it would require a good deal more nourishment than the three rounds of ammunition they threw in with it to make it function.”

“Ha,” Stevens said without mirth. “Tell the proprietor from me he doesn’t know his own strength. The pistol was here last night. It functioned.”

SEVENTEEN

When he reached the Junction a little before eleven oclock Monday morning, he was in the cab of another cattle truck. The truck was going on east into Alabama but even if it had turned south here actually to pass through Jefferson, he would have left it at this point. If it had been a Yoknapatawpha County truck or driven by someone from the county or Jefferson, he would not have been in it at all.

Until he stepped f the store this morning with the pistol actually in his pocket, it had all seemed simple; he had only one problem: to get the weapon; after that, only geography stood between him and the moment when he would walk up to the man who had seen him sent to the penitentiary without raising a finger, who had not even had the decency and courage to say No to his bloodcry for help from kin to kin, and say, “Look at me, Flem,” and kill him.