was dirt. I can tell you something you will be surprised I know more than watch you walk down the street with cloths. I will someday, you will not be surprised then. You pass me, you do not know it, I know it. You will know it someday. Because I will tell you.’ Now,” he said, and the boy dropped on to the foot of the page. “‘Yours truly Hal Wagner. Code number twenty-four.’” Again he looked over the boy’s shoulder. “That’s right.” He blotted the final sheet and gathered it up also. The boy recapped the pen and thrust the chair back, and Snopes produced a small paper bag from his coat.
The boy took it soberly. “Much obliged, Mr. Snopes,” he said. He opened it and squinted into it. “It’s funny that air gun don’t come on.”
“It sure is,” Snopes agreed. “I don’t know why it don’t come.”
“Maybe it got lost in the post office,” the boy suggested.
‘It may have. I reckon that’s about what happened to it. I’ll write ‘em again, tomorrow.”
The boy rose, but he stood yet with his straw-colored hair and his bland, innocent face. He took a piece of candy from the sack and ate it without enthusiasm. “I reckon I better tell papa to go to the post office and ask ‘em if it got lost.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that,” Snopes said quickly. “You wait; I’ll tend to it. We’ll get it, all right.”
“Papa wouldn’t mind. He could go over there soon’s he comes home and see about it,. I could find him right now, and ask him to do it, I bet.”
“He couldn’t do no good,” Snopes answered. “You leave it to me. I’ll get that gun, all right”
“I could tell him I been working for you,” the boy pursued. “I remember them letters.”
“No, no, you wait and let me ‘tend to it. I’ll see about it first thing tomorrow.”
“All right, Mr. Snopes.” He ate another piece of candy, without enthusiasm. He moved toward the door. “I remember ever’ one of them letters. I bet I could sit down and write ‘em all again. I bet I could. Say, Mr. Snopes, who is Hal Wagner? Does he live in Jefferson?”
“No, no. You never seen him. He don’t hardly never come to town. That’s the reason I’m ‘tending to his business for him. I’ll see about that air gun, all right.”
The boy opened the door, then he paused again. “They got ‘em at Watts’ hardware store. Good ones. I’d sure like to have one of ‘em. Yes, sir, I sure would.”
“Sure, sure,” Snopes repeated. “Our’n’ll be here tomorrow. You just wait: I’ll see you git that gun.”
The boy departed. Snopes locked the door, and for a while he stood beside it with his head bent, hishands slowly-knotting and writhing together. Then he burned the folded sheet over his hearth and ground the carbonized paper to dust under his heel With his knife he cut the fictitious address from the top of the first sheet, the signature from the bottom of the second, then he folded them and inserted them in a cheap envelope. He sealed this and stamped it, and took out his pen and with his left hand he addressed it with labored printed letters. That night he took it to the station and mailed it on the train. In the meantime he stopped in at Watts’ and bought an air rifle.
5
At times, as Simon puttered about the place during the day, he could look out across the lot into the pasture and see the carriage horses growing daily shabbier and less prideful with idleness and the cessation of their once daily grooming, or he would pass the carriage motionless in its shed, its tongue propped at an accusing angle on the wooden mechanism he had invented for that purpose, and in the harness room the duster and tophat gathered slow dust on the nail in the wall, holding too in their mute waiting a patient and questioning uncomplaint. And at times when he stood shabby and stooped a little with stubborn bewilderment and age on the veranda with its ancient roses and wisteria and all its unchangeable and steadfast serenity and watched Sartorises come and go in a machine a gentleman of his day would have scorned and which any pauper could own and only a fool would ride in, it seemed to him that John Sartoris stood beside him with his bearded, hawklike face and an expression of haughty and fine contempt
And standing so, with the afternoon slanting athwart the southern end of the porch and the heady and myriad odors of the ripening spring and the drowsy hum of insects and the singing of birds steady upon it, Isom rolling his eyes in the dark, cool doorway or near the corner of the house would hear his grandfather mumbling in a monotonous singsong in which was incomprehension and the petulant querulousness of age, and Isom would withdraw to the kitchen where his mother labored steadily with her placid yellow face and her endless crooning song.
“Pappy out dar talkin’ ter Marse John agin,” Isom told her. “Gimme dem cole ‘taters, mammy.”
“Ain’t Miss Jenny got some work fer you dis evenin’?” Elnora demanded, pausing to give him the cold potatoes. “No’m. She gone off in de cyar agin.”
“Hit’s de Lawd’s blessin’ you and her ain’t bofe out in it, like you iswhenever Mist’ Bayard’ll let you. You git on outen
Quite often these days Isom could hear his grandfather talking to John Sartoris as he labored about the stable or the flower beds or the lawn. mumbling away to that arrogant ghost which dominated the house and its occupants and the whole scene itself across which the railroad he had built ran punily with distance but distinct, as though it were a stage set for the diversion of him whose stubborn dream, flouting him so deviously and cunningly while the dream was impure, had shaped itself fine and clear now that the dreamer was purged of the grossness of pride with that of flesh.
“Gent’mun equipage,” Simon mumbled. He was working again with his hoe in the salvia bed at thetop of the drive. “Ridin’ in,.dat thing, wid a gent’mun’s proper equipage goin’ to rack and ruin in de barn.” He wasn’t thinking of Miss Jenny. It didn’t make much difference what women rode in, their menfolks permitting of course. They only showed off a gentleman’s equipage anyhow; they were but tie barometers of a gentleman’s establishment, the glass of his gentility: horses themselves knew that “Yo’ own son, yo’ own twin grandson ridin’ right up in yo’ face in a contraption like dat,” he continued, “and you lettin’‘um do it. You bad as dey is. You jes’ got ter lay down de law ter ‘um, Marse John; wid all dese foreign wars and sichde young folks is growed away fum de correck behavior; dey don’t know how ter conduck deyselfs in de gent’mun way. Whut you reckon folks gwine think when dey sees yo’ own folks ridin’ in de same kine o’ rig trash rides in? you jes’ got ter resert you’self, Marse John. Ain’t Sartorises set de quality in dis country since you wuz bawn? And now jes’ look at ‘um.”
He leaned on his hoe and watched the car swing up the drive and stop before the house. Miss Jenny and young Bayard got out and mounted to the veranda. The engine was still running, a faint shimmer of exhaust drifted upon the bright forenoon. Simon came up with his hoe and peered at the array of dials and knobs on the dash. Bayard turned in the door and spoke his name.
