'I just couldn't bear to have you lose the little I had to invest for you,' she says. 'I've often thought that Earl is not a good business man. I know he doesn't take you into his confidence to the extent that your investment in the business should warrant. I'm going to speak to him.'
'No, you let him alone,' I says. 'It's his business.'
'You have a thousand dollars in it.'
'You let him alone,' I says. 'I'm watching things. I have your power of attorney. It'll be all right.'
'You dont know what a comfort you are to me,' she says. 'You have always been my pride and joy, but when you came to me of your own accord and insisted on banking your salary each month in my name, I thanked God it was you left me if they had to be taken.'
'They were all right,' I says. 'They did the best they could, I reckon.'
'When you talk that way I know you are thinking bitterly of your father's memory,' she says. 'You have a right to, I suppose. But it breaks my heart to hear you.'
I got up. 'If you've got any crying to do,' I says, 'you'll have to do it alone, because I've got to get on back. I'll get the bank book.'
'I'll get it,' she says.
'Keep still,' I says. 'I'll get it.' I went up stairs and got the bank book out of her desk and went back to town. I went to the bank and deposited the check and the money order and the other ten, and stopped at the telegraph office. It was one point above the opening. I had already lost thirteen points, all because she had to come helling in there at twelve, worrying me about that letter.
'What time did that report come in?' I says.
'About an hour ago,' he says.
'An hour ago?' I says. 'What are we paying you for?' I says. 'Weekly reports? How do you expect a man to do anything? The whole dam top could blow off and we'd not know it.'
'I dont expect you to do anything,' he says. 'They changed that law making folks play the cotton market.'
'They have?' I says. 'I hadn't heard. They must have sent the news out over the Western Union.'
I went back to the store. Thirteen points. Dam if I believe anybody knows anything about the dam thing except the ones that sit back in those New York offices and watch the country suckers come up and beg them to take their money. Well, a man that just calls shows he has no faith in himself, and like I say if you aren't going to take the advice, what's the use in paying money for it. Besides, these people are right up there on the ground; they know everything that's going on. I could feel the telegram in my pocket. I'd just have to prove that they were using the telegraph company to defraud. That would constitute a bucket shop. And I wouldn't hesitate that long, either. Only be damned if it doesn't look like a company as big and rich as the Western Union could get a market report out on time. Half as quick as they'll get a wire to you saying Your account closed out. But what the hell do they care about the people. They're hand in glove with that New York crowd. Anybody could see that.
When I came in Earl looked at his watch. But he didn't say anything until the customer was gone. Then he says,
'You go home to dinner?'
'I had to go to the dentist,' I says because it's not any of his business where I eat but I've got to be in the store with him all the afternoon. And with his jaw running off after all I've stood. You take a little two by four country storekeeper like I say it takes a man with just five hundred dollars to worry about it fifty thousand dollars' worth.
'You might have told me,' he says. 'I expected you back right away.'
'I'll trade you this tooth and give you ten dollars to boot, any time,' I says. 'Our agreement was an hour for dinner,' I says, 'and if you dont like the way I do, you know what you can do about it.'
'I've known that some time,' he says. 'If it hadn't been for your mother I'd have done it before now, too. She's a lady I've got a lot of sympathy for, Jason. Too bad some other folks I know cant say as much.'
'Then you can keep it,' I says. 'When we need any sympathy I'll let you know in plenty of time.'
'I've protected you about that business a long time, Jason,' he says.
'Yes?' I says, letting him go on. Listening to what he would say before I shut him up.
'I believe I know more about where that automobile came from than she does.'
'You think so, do you?' I says. 'When are you going to spread the news that I stole it from my mother?'
'I dont say anything,' he says. 'I know you have her power of attorney. And I know she still believes that thousand dollars is in this business.'
'All right,' I says. 'Since you know so much, I'll tell you a little more: go to the bank and ask them whose account I've been depositing a hundred and sixty dollars on the first of every month for twelve years.'
'I dont say anything,' he says. 'I just ask you to be a little more careful after this.'
I never said anything more. It doesn't do any good. I've found that when a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there. And when a man gets it in his head that he's got to tell something on you for your own good, goodnight. I'm glad I haven't got the sort of conscience I've got to nurse like a sick puppy all the time. If I'd ever be as careful over anything as he is to keep his little shirt tail full of business from making him more than eight percent. I reckon he thinks they'd get him on the usury law if he netted more than eight percent. What the hell chance has a man got, tied down in a town like this and to a business like this. Why I could take his business in one year and fix him so he'd never have to work again, only he'd give it all away to the church or something. If there's one thing gets under my skin, it's a dam hypocrite. A man that thinks anything he dont understand all about must be crooked and that first chance he gets he's morally bound to tell the third party what's none of his business to tell. Like I say if I thought every time a man did something I didn't know all about he was bound to be a crook, I reckon I wouldn't have any trouble finding something back there on those books that you wouldn't see any use for running and telling somebody I thought ought to know about it, when for all I knew they might know a dam sight more about it now than I did, and if they didn't it was dam little of my business anyway and he says, 'My books are open to anybody. Anybody that has any claim or believes she has any claim on this business can go back there and welcome.'
'Sure, you wont tell,' I says. 'You couldn't square your conscience with that. You'll just take her back there and let her find it. You wont tell, yourself.'
'I'm not trying to meddle in your business,' he says. 'I know you missed out on some things like Quentin had. But your mother has had a misfortunate life too, and if she was to come in here and ask me why you quit, I'd have to tell her. It aint that thousand dollars. You know that. It's because a man never gets anywhere if fact and his ledgers dont square. And I'm not going to lie to anybody, for myself or anybody else.'
'Well, then,' I says. 'I reckon that conscience of yours is a more valuable clerk than I am; it dont have to go home at noon to eat. Only dont let it interfere with my appetite,' I says, because how the hell can I do anything right, with that dam family and her not making any effort to control her nor any of them like that time when she happened to see one of them kissing Caddy and all next day she went around the house in a black dress and a veil and even Father couldn't get her to say a word except crying and saying her little daughter was dead and Caddy about fifteen then only in three years she'd been wearing haircloth or probably sandpaper at that rate. Do you think I can afford to have her running about the streets with every drummer that comes to town, I says, and them telling the new ones up and down the toad where to pick up a hot one when they made Jefferson. I haven't got much pride, I cant afford it with a kitchen full of niggers to feed and robbing the state asylum of its star freshman. Blood, I says, governors and generals. It's a dam good thing we never had any kings and presidents; we'd all be down there at Jackson chasing butterflies. I says it'd be bad enough if it was mine; I'd at least be sure it was a bastard to begin with, and now even the Lord doesn't know that for certain probably.
So after a while I heard the band start up, and then they begun to clear out. Headed for the show, every one of them. Haggling over a twenty cent hame string to save fifteen cents, so they can give it to a bunch of Yankees that come in and pay maybe ten dollars for the privilege. I went on out to the back.
'Well,' I says. 'If you dont look out, that bolt will grow into your hand. And then I'm going to take an axe and chop it out. What do you reckon the boll-weevils'll eat if you dont get those cultivators in shape to raise them a crop?' I says, 'sage grass?'
'Dem folks sho do play dem horns,' he says. 'Tell me man in dat show kin play a tune on a handsaw. Pick hit like a banjo.'
'Listen,' I says. 'Do you know how much that show'll spend in this town? About ten dollars,' I says. 'The ten dollars Buck Turpin has in his pocket right now.'
