'All right,' Boon said. 'What's he going to do with it?'
'If it was anybody else but him,' Ned said, 'I'd say he had three chances with it: sell it or hide it or give it away. But since it's him, he aint got but two: sell it or hide it, and if it's got to just stay hid somewhere, it might just as well be back in that gal's mouth as fur as he's concerned. So the best place to sell a gold tooth quick would be back in Memphis. Only Memphis is too fur to walk, and to get on the train (which would cost money, which he likely is got-providing he is desperate enough to spend some of hisn) he would have to come back to Possum, where somebody might see him. So the next best quick place to sell that gold tooth will be at that race track tomorrow. If it was you or me, we might likely bet that tooth on one of them horses tomorrow. But he aint no betting man. Betting's too slow for him, not to mention uncertain. But that race track will be a good place to start looking for him. It's too bad I didn't know about that tooth whilst I had my hand on him tonight. Maybe I could a reasoned it out of him. Then, if he belonged to me, Mr Sam Caldwell gonter be through here on that west-bound train at six- fawty tomorrow morning and I'd a had him at the depot and turned him over to Mr Sam and told Mr Sam not to lift his hand offen him until the door shut on the first train leaving for Arkansas tomorrow.'
'Can you find him tomorrow?' Everbe said. 'I've got to find him. He's just a child. I'll pay for the tooth, I'll buy Minnie another one. But I've got to find him. He'll say he hasn't got it, he never saw it, but I've got—'
'Sho,' Ned said. 'That's what I'd say too if it was me. I'll try. Ill be in early tomorrow morning to get Lucius, but the best chance gonter be at that track tomorrow just before the race.' He said to me: 'Folks is already kind of dropping by Possum's lot like they wasn't noticing themselves doing it, likely trying to find out who it is this time that still believes that horse can run a race. So likely we gonter have a nice crowd tomorrow. It's late now, so you go get some sleep whilst I takes that mule of Possum's back home to bed too. Where's your sock? You aint lost it?'
'It's in my pocket,' I said.
'Be sho you dont,' he said. 'The mate to it is the left-footed one 'and a left-footed sock is unlucky unlessen you wears both of them.' He turned, but no further than the fat cook; he said to her now: 'Unlessen my mind changes to staying in town tonight. What time you setting breakfast, Good-looking?'
'The soonest time after your jaws is too far away to chomp it,' the cook said.
'Good night, all,' Ned said. Then he was gone. We went back to the dining room, where the waiter, in his short sleeves now and without his collar and tie, brought Miss Reba a plate of the pork chops and grits and biscuits and blackberry jam we had had for supper, neither hot nor cold now but lukewarm, in deshabille like the waiter, you might say.
'Did you get her to sleep?' Everbe said. 'Yes,' Miss Reba said. 'That little son of a—' and cut it off and said, 'Excuse me. I thought I had seen everything in my business, but I never thought I'd have a tooth stolen in one of my houses. I hate little bastards. They're like little snakes. You can handle a big snake because you been already warned to watch out. But a little one has already bit you behind before you even knew it had teeth. Where's my coffee?' The waiter brought it and went away. And then even Ifrat big shrouded dining room was crowdedj it was like every time Boon and Butch got inside the same four walls everything compounded, multiplied, leaving not really room for anything else. He—Butch— had been back to the doctor's, or maybe in the tin badge business you knew, everybody who didn't dare refuse you a free drink. And it was getting late, and I was tired, but here he was again; and suddenly I knew that up to now he hadn't really been anything and that we were only just starting with Mm now, standing in the door, bulging, bright-eyed, confident, breezy and a little redder, the badge itself seeming to bulge at us as with a life of its own on his sweaty shirt, he—Butch—wearing it not as the official authorisation of his unique dedication, but as a boy scout wears his merit badge: as both the unique and hard-won reward and emblem of a specialisation and the pre-absolution for any other activities covered or embraced by its mystic range; at that moment Everbe rose quickly across the table and almost scuttled around it and into the chair next Miss Reba, whom Butch was looking at, bulging at now. And that was when I rated Boon down a notch and left Everbe first for trouble. All Boon had was Butch; she had Boon and Butch both.
'Well well,' Butch said, 'is all Catalpa Street moving east to Possum?' So that at first I thought he might be a friend or at least a business acquaintance of Miss Reba's. But if he was, he didn't remember her name. But then even at eleven I was learning that there are people like Butch who dont remember anybody except in the terms of their immediate need of them, and what he needed now (or anyway could use) was another woman, he didn't care who provided she was more or less young and pleasing. No: he didn't really need one: he just happened to find one already in the path, like one lion on Ms way to fight another lion over an antelope that he never had any doubts about licking (I mean licking the lion, not the antelope) would still be a fool not to try throwing in, just for luck you might say, another antelope if he happened to find - one straying in the path. Except that Miss Reba turned out not to be an antelope. What Butch found was another lion. He said: 'This is what I call Sugar Boy using Ms head; what's the use of him and me being all racked up over one hunk of meat when here's 'another exactly like it in all important details except maybe a little difference in the pelt.'
'Who's that?' Miss Reba said to Everbe. 'Friend of yours?'
'No,' Everbe said; she was actually crouching: a big girl, too big to crouch. 'Please—'
'She's telling you,' Boon said. 'She aint got no friends no more. She dont want none. She's quit, gone out of business. Soon as we finish losing this horse race, she's going away somewhere and get a job washing dishes. Ask her.'
Miss Reba was looking at Everbe. 'Please,' Everbe said.
'What do you want?' Miss Reba asked Butch.
'Nothing,' Butch said. 'Nothing a-tall. Me and Sugar Boy was kind of bollixed up at one another for a while. But now you showed up, everything is hunky-dory. Twenty-three skiddoo,' He came and took hold of Everbe's arm. 'Come on. The surrey's outside. Let's give them a little room.'
'Call the manager,' Miss Reba said, quite loud, to me. I didn't even have to move; likely, if I had been looking, I could have seen the edge of Mm too beyond the door. He came in. 'Is this man the law here?' Miss Reba said.
'Why, we all know Butch around here, Mrs Binford,' the clerk said. 'He's got as many friends in Parsham as anybody I know. Of course he's from up at Hardwick; properly speaking, we dont have a law officer right here in Parsham; we ain't quite that big yet.' Butch's rich and bulging warmth had embraced, invited the clerk almost before he could enter the door, as though he—the clerk— had fallen headlong into it and vanished like a mouse into a lump of still-soft ambergris. But now Butch's eyes were quite cold, hard.
'Maybe that's what's wrong around here,' he told the clerk. 'Maybe that's why you dont have no progress and advancement: what you need is a little more law.'
'Aw, Butch,' the clerk said.
'You mean, anybody that wants to can walk in off the street and drag whichever one of your women guests he
