Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“—so he can know to do what every man and woman that ever seen her between thirteen and Old Man Hundred-and-One McCallum has been thinking about for twenty-nine days now. Of course, he could fix it with a shed roof to climb up on and a window to crawl through too. But that aint necessary; that aint his way. No sir. This here man aint no trifling eave-cat. This here man—” A little boy of eight or ten came up, trotting, in overalls, and mounted the steps and gave them a quick glance out of eyes as blue and innocent as periwinkles and trotted intently into the store. “—this here man that all he needs is just to set back there in the store until after a while one comes in to get a nickel’s worth of lard, not buy it: come and ax Mr Snopes for it, and he gives it to her and writes in a book about it and her not knowing no more about what he wrote in that book and why than she does how that ere lard got into that tin bucket with the picture of a hog on it that even she can tell is a hog, and he puts the bucket back and puts the book away and goes and shuts the door and puts the bar up and she has done already went around behind the counter and laid down on the floor because maybe she thinks by now that’s what you have to do, not to pay for the lard because that’s done already been wrote down in the book, but to get out of that door again—” The new clerk appeared suddenly among them. He bounced out of the store, his features all seeming to hasten into the center of his face in a fierce depthless glare of bright excitement, the little periwinkle-eyed boy trotting intently around him and on down the steps without waiting.

“All right, boys,” the clerk said rapidly, tensely. “He’s started. You better hurry. I cant go this time. I got to stay here. Kind of make a swing around from the back so old Littlejohn cant see you. She’s done already begun to look cross-eyed.” Five or six men had already risen, with a curious, furtive, defiant sort of alacrity. They began to leave the gallery. The little boy was now trotting indefatigably along the fence which enclosed the end of Mrs Littlejohn’s lot.

“What’s this?” Ratliff said.

“Come on, if you aint seen it yet,” one of the departing men said.

“Seen what?” Ratliff said. He looked about at the ones who had not risen. Bookwright was one of them. He was whittling steadily and deeply into a stick of white pine, his face lowered.

“Go on, go on,” a second said behind the man who had paused on the steps. “It’ll be over before we get there.” The group went on then. Ratliff watched them too hurry along Mrs Littlejohn’s lot fence after the little boy, still with that curiously furtive defiance.

“What’s this you all have got here now?” he said.

“Go and see it,” Bookwright said harshly. He did not look up from knife. Ratliff looked at him.

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“You going to?”

“No.”

“You know what it is?”

“Go on and see it,” Bookwright said again, harshly and violently.

“It looks like I’ll have to, since aint nobody going to tell me,” Ratliff said. He moved toward the steps. The group was now well on ahead, hurrying along the fence. Ratliff began to descend. He was still talking. He continued to talk as he went down the steps, not looking back; nobody could have told whether he was actually talking to the men behind him or not, if he was talking to anyone or not: “—goes and puts the bar up on the inside and comes back and this here black brute from the field with the field sweat still drying on her that she dont know it’s sweat she smells because she aint never smelled nothing else, just like a mule dont know it’s mule he smells for the same reason, and the one garment to her name and that’s the one she’s laying there on the floor behind the counter in and looking up past him at them rows of little tight cans with fishes and devils on them that she dont know what’s on the inside either because she aint never had the dime or the fifteen cents that even if he was to give her the nickel, not to mention the lard she come after, she would have after the next two or three times she come after lard, but just heard somewhere one day the name of what folks said was inside them, laying there and looking up at them every time his head would get out of the way long enough, and says, ‘Mr Snopes, whut you ax fer dem sardines?’ ” 2