'When we gets this automobile back in Jefferson and has to try to look Boss Priest and Mr Maury in the eye, aint none of us gonter have time to give a damn who is back and who aint,' Ned said. But it was too late now, far too late to keep on bringing that up. So Boon just said,
'All right, all right. All I said was, if you want to be back in Jefferson when you start doing your not having time to give a damn, you better be where I can see you when I start back.' We were getting close to Main Street now— the tall buildings, the stores, the hotels: the Gaston (gone now) and the Peabody (they have moved it since) and the Gayoso, to which all us McCaslins-Edmondses-Priests devoted our allegiance as to a family shrine because our remote uncle and cousin, Theophilus McCaslin, Cousin Ike's father, had been a member of the party of horsemen which legend said (that is, legend to some people maybe. To us it was historical fact) General Forrest's brother led at a gallop into the lobby itself and almost captured a Yankee general. We didn't go that far though. Boon turned into a side street, almost a back alley, with two saloons at the corner and lined with houses that didn't look old or new either, all very quiet, as quiet as Jefferson itself on Sunday afternoon. Boon in fact said so. 'You ought to seen it last night, I bet. On any Saturday night. Or even on a week night when there's a fireman's or policeman's or a Elk or something convention in town.'
'Maybe they've all gone to early prayer meeting,' I said.
'No,' Boon said. 'I dont think so. Likely they're just resting.'
'From what?' I said.
'Hee hee hee,' Ned said in the back seat. Obviously, we were learning, Ned had been in Memphis before. Though probably even Grandfather, though he might have known when, didn't know how often. And you see, I was only eleven. This time, the street being empty, Boon did turn his head.
'Just one more out of you,' he told Ned.
'One more which?' Ned said. 'All I says is, point out where this thing gonter be at tomorrow morning, and I'll already be setting in it when it leaves.' So Boon did. We were almost there: a house needing about the same amount of paint the others did, in a small grassless yard but with a sort of lattice vestibule like a well house at the front door. Boon stopped the car at the curb. Now he could turn and look at Ned.
'All right,' he said. 'I'm taking you at your word. And you better take me at mine. On the stroke of eight oclock tomorrow morning. And I mean the first stroke, not the last one. Because I aint even going to be here to hear it.'
Ned was already getting out, carrying his little grip and his muddy shirt. 'Aint you got enough troubles of your own on your mind, without trying to tote mine too?' he said. 'If you can finish your business here by eight oclock tomorrow morning, how come you think I cant neither?' He walked on. Then he said, still walking on and not looking back: 'Hee hee hee.'
'Come on,' Boon said. 'Miss Reba'll let us wash up.' We got out. Boon reached into the back and started to pick up his grip and said, 'Oh yes,' and reached to the dashboard and took the switch key out of the slot and put it in his pocket and started to pick up the grip and stopped and took the switch key out of his pocket and said, 'Here. You keep it. I might lay it down somewhere and mislay it Put it in your pocket good so it wont fall out. You can wad your handkerchief on top of it.' I took the key and he started to reach for the grip again and stopped again and looked quick over his shoulder at the boarding house and turned sideways a little and took his wallet out of his hind pocket and opened it close to him and took out a five-dollar bill and stopped and then took out a one-dollar bill also and closed the wallet and slid it toward me behind his body, saying, not quick so much as quiet: 'Keep this too. I might forget it somewhere too. Whenever we need money out of it I'll tell you how much to give me.' Because I had never been inside a boarding house either; and remember, I was just eleven. So I put the wallet into my pocket too and Boon took the grip and we went through the gate and up the walk and into the lattice vestibule, and there was the front door. Boon had barely touched the bell when we heard feet inside. 'What did I tell you?' Boon said rapidly. 'They probably are all peeping from behind the window curtains at that automobile.' The door opened. It was a young Negro woman but before she could open her mouth a white woman pushed her aside— a young woman too, with a kind hard handsome face and hair that was too red, with two of the biggest yellowish-colored diamonds I ever saw in her ears.
'Dammit, Boon,' she said. 'The minute Corrie got that dispatch yesterday I told her to telegraph you right back not to bring that child here. I've already had one in the house for a week now, and one hell-on-wheels is enough for any house or street either for that matter. Or even all Memphis, providing it's that one we already got. And dont lie that you never got the message neither.'
'I didn't,' Boon said. 'We must have already left Jefferson before it got there. What do you want me to do with him then? tie him out in the yard?'
'Come on in,' she said. She moved out of the door so we could enter; as soon as we did so, the maid locked the door again. I didn't know why then; maybe that was the way all people in Memphis did, even while they were at home. It was like any other hall, with a stairway going up, only at once I smelled something; the whole house smelled that way. I had never smelled it before. I didn't dislike it; I was just surprised. I mean, as soon as I smelled it, it was like a smell I had been waiting all my life to smell. I think you should be tumbled pell-mell, without warning, only into experience which you might well have spent the rest of your life not having to meet. But with an inevitable (ay, necessary) one, it's not really decent of Circumstance, Fate, not to prepare you first, especially when the preparation is as simple as just being fifteen years old. That was the kind of smell it was. The woman was still talking. 'You know as well as I do that Mr Binford disapproves like hell of kids using houses for holiday vacations; you heard him last summer when Corrie brought that little s.o.b. in here the first time because she claims he dont get enough refinement on that Arkansas tenant farm. Like Mr Binford says, they'll be in here soon enough anyhow, so why rush them until at least they have some jack and are capable of spending it. Not to mention the customers, coming in here for business and finding instead we're running a damn kindergarden.' We were in the dining room now. It had a Pianola in it. The woman was still talking. 'What's his name?'
'Lucius,' Boon said. 'Make your manners to Miss Reba,' he told me. I did so, the way I always did: that I reckon Grandfather's mother taught him and Grandfather taught Father and Mother taught us: what Ned called 'drug my foot.' When I straightened up. Miss Reba was watching me. She had a curious look on her face.
'I'll be damned,' she said. 'Minnie, did you see that? Is Miss Corrie—'
'She dressing as fast as she can,' the maid said. And that was when I saw it. I mean, Minnie's tooth. I mean, that was how—yes, why—I, you, people, everybody, remembered Minnie. She had beautiful teeth anyhow, like small richly alabaster matched and evenly serrated headstones against the rich chocolate of her face when she smiled or spoke. But she had more. The middle righthand upper one was gold; in her dark face it reigned like a queen among the white dazzle of the others, seeming actually to glow, gleam as with a slow inner fire or lambence of more than gold, until that single tooth appeared even bigger than both of Miss Reba's yellowish diamonds put together. (Later I learned—no matter how—that she had had the gold one taken out and an ordinary white one, like anybody else's, put in; and I grieved. I thought that, had I been of her race and age group, it would have been worth being her husband just to watch that tooth in action across the table every day; a child of eleven, it seemed to me that the very food it masticated must taste different, better.)
