Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

Then, with his hand already on the knob to turn it, he stopped. Once—it was one of the football trips of course, he had never ridden in a train otherwise save on that night visit to Memphis—he had descended onto a bleak station platform. There was a sudden commotion about a door. He heard a man cursing, shouting, a Negro ran out the door, followed by a shouting white man. The Negro turned, stooping, and as the onlookers scattered the white man shot the Negro in the body with a blunt pistol. He remembered how the Negro, clutching his middle, dropped onto his face then suddenly flopped over onto his back, actually appearing to elongate himself, to add at least a yard to his stature; the cursing white man was overpowered and disarmed, the train whistled once and began to draw away, a uniformed trainman breaking out of the crowd and running to overtake it and still looking back from the moving step. And he remembered how he shoved himself up, instinctively using his football tactics to make a place, where he looked down upon the Negro lying rigid on his back, still clutching his middle, his eyes closed and his face quite peaceful. Then there was a man—a doctor or an officer, he did not know—kneeling over the Negro. He was trying to draw the Negro’s hands away. There was no outward show of resistance; the forearms and hands at which the doctor or officer was tugging merely seemed to have become iron. The Negro’s eyes did not open nor his peaceful expression alter; he merely said: “Look out, white folks. I awready been shot.” But they unclasped his hands at last, and he remembered the peeling away of the jumper, the overalls, a ragged civilian coat beneath which revealed itself to have been a long overcoat once, the skirts cut away at the hips as with a razor; beneath that a shirt and a pair of civilian trousers. The waist of them was unbuttoned and the bullet rolled out onto the platform, bloodless. He released the doorknob and removed the overcoat and hung it over his arm. At least I wont make a failure with one of us, he thought, opening the door, entering. At first he believed the room was empty. He saw the stove in its box of pocked sand, surrounded by the nail kegs and upended boxes; he even smelled the rank scorch of recent spitting. But no one sat there, and when a moment later he saw the brother’s thick humorless surly face staring at him over the desk, for an instant he felt rage and outrage. He believed that Varner had cleared the room, sent them all away deliberately in order to deny him that last vindication, the ratification of success which he had come to buy with his life; and suddenly he knew a furious disinclination, even a raging refusal, to die at all. He stooped quickly aside, already dodging, scrabbling about him for some weapon as Varner’s face rose still further above the desk top like a bilious moon.

“What in hell are you after?” Varner said.201C;I told you two days ago that window sash aint come yet.”

“Window sash?” Labove said.

“Nail some planks over it,” Varner said. “Do you expect me to make a special trip to town to keep a little fresh air out of your collar?”

Then he remembered it. The panes had been broken out during the Christmas holidays. He had nailed boards over them at the time. He did not remember doing it. But then he did not remember being told about the promised sash two days ago, let alone asking about it. And now he stopped remembering the window at all. He rose quietly and stood, the overcoat over his arm; now he did not even see the surly suspicious face anymore. Yes, he thought quietly; Yes. I see. She never told him at all. She didn’t even forget to. She doesn’t even know anything happened that was worth mentioning. Varner was still talking; apparently someone had answered him:

“Well, what do you want, then?”

“I want a nail,” he said.

“Get it, then.” The face had already disappeared beyond the desk. “Bring the hammer back.”

“I wont need the hammer,” he said. “I just want a nail.”

The house, the heatless room in which he had lived for six years now with his books and his bright lamp, was between the store and the school. He did not even look toward it when he passed. He returned to the schoolhouse and closed and locked the door. With a fragment of brick he drove the nail into the wall beside the door and hung the key on the nail. The schoolhouse was on the Jefferson road. He already had the overcoat with him.

CHAPTER TWO1