selling it not to cheat him on the price or the value of it because he wouldn’t know that either: only that he had to have it. Do you understand that too?”
“All right,” I said. “Yes. And then?”
“It had to be exactly what it was, for exactly what he was. That was when the man began to say, ‘Yes, I think I see. You started out as a clerk in a country store. Then you moved to town and ran a cafe. Now you’re vice president of your bank. A man who came that far in that short time is not going to stop just there, and why shouldn’t everybody that enters his home know it, see it? Yes, I know what you want.’ And Flem said No. ‘Not expensive,’ the man said. ‘Successful.’ and Flem said No. ‘All right,’ the man said. ‘Antique then,’ and took us into a room and showed us what he meant. ‘I can take this piece here for instance and make it look still older.’ And Flem said, ‘Why?’ and the man said, ‘For background. Your grandfather.’ And Flem said, ‘I had a grandfather because everybody had. I dont know who he was but I know that whoever he was he never owned enough furniture for a room, let alone a house. Besides, I dont aim to fool anybody. Only a fool would try to fool smart people, and anybody that needs to fool fools is already one.’ And that was when the man said wait while he telephoned. And we did, it was not long before a woman came in. She was his wife. She said to me: ‘What are your ideas?’ and I said, ‘I dont care,’ and she said ‘What?’ and I said it again and then she looked at Flem and I watched them looking at one another, a good while. Then she said, not loud like her husband, quite quiet: ‘I know,’ and now it was Flem that said, ‘Wait. How much will it cost?’ and she said, ‘You’re a trader. I’ll make a trade with you. I’ll bring the stuff down to Jefferson and put it in your house myself. If you like it, you buy it. If you dont like it, I’ll load it back up and move it back here and it wont cost you a cent.’ ”
“All right,” I said. “And then?”
“That’s all,” she said. “Your coffee’s cold. I’ll get another cup—” and began to rise until I stopped her.
“When was this?” I said.
“Four years ago,” she said. “When he bought this house.”
“Bought the house?” I said. “Four years ago? That’s when he became vice president of the bank!”
“Yes,” she said. “The day before it was announced. I’ll get another cup.”
“I dont want coffee,” I said, sitting there saying
“Will you have a cigarette?” and I saw that too: a synthetic metal box also and there should have been a synthetic matching lighter but what she had taken from the same box with the cigarette was a kitchen match. “Linda says you smoke a corncob pipe. Smoke it if you want to.”
“No,” I said again. “Not anything.—But Flem Snopes,” I said. “Flem Snopes.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s not me that wont let her go away from Jefferson to school.”
“But why?” I said. “Why? When she’s not even his—he’s not even her—I’m sorry. But you can see how urgent, how we dont even have time for.…”
“Politeness?” she said. Nor did I make that move either: just sitting there watching while she leaned and scratched the match on the sole of her side-turned slipper and lit the cigarette.
“For anything,” I said. “For anything except her. Ratliff tried to tell me this this morning, but I wouldn’t listen. So maybe that’s what you were telling me a moment ago when I wouldn’t or didn’t listen? The furniture. That day in the store. Didn’t know what he wanted because what he wanted didn’t matter, wasn’t important: only that he did want it, did need it, must have it, intended to have it no matter what cost or who lost or who anguished or grieved. To be exactly what he needed to exactly fit exactly what he was going to be tomorrow after it was announced: a vice president’s wife and child along with the rest of the vice president’s furniture in the vice president’s house? Is that what you tried to tell me?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Just something like that,” I said. “Because that’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. We wont mention the money because everybody who ever saw that bow tie would know he wouldn’t pay out his own money to send his own child a sleeper-ticket distance to school, let alone another man’s ba—” and stopped. But not she, smoking, watching the burning tip of cigarette.
“Say it,” she said. “Bastard.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why?” she said.
“I’m trying,” I said. “Maybe I could, if only you were. Looked like you were. Or even like you were trying to be.”
“Go on,” she said. ‘Not the money.”
“Because he—you—could get that from Uncle Will probably, not to mention taking it from me as a scholarship. Or is that it? He cant even bear to see the money of even a mortal enemy like old man Will Varner probably is to him wasted on sending a child out of the state to school when he pays taxes every year to support the Mississippi ones?”
“Go on,” she said again. “Not the money.”
“So it is that furniture catalogue picture after all, scaled in cheap color from the Charleston or Richmond or Long Island or Boston photograph, down to that one which Flem Snopes holds imperative that the people of Yoknapatawpha County must have of him. While he was just owner of a back-alley cafe it was all right for all Frenchman’s Bend (and all Jefferson and the rest of the county too after Ratliff and a few others like him got through with it) to know the child who bore his name was really a—”
“Bastard,” she said again.
“All right,” I said. But even then I didn’t say it: “—and even when he sold the cafe for a nice profit and was superintendent of the power-plant, it still wouldn’t have mattered. And even after that when he held no public position but was simply a private usurer and property-grabber quietly minding his own business; not to mention the fact that ten or twelve years had now passed, by which time he could even begin to trust Jefferson to have enough tenderness for a twelve-or thirteen-year-old female child not to upset her life with that useless and gratuitous information. But now he is vice president of a bank and now a meddling outsider is persuading the child to go away
