to school, to spend at least the three months until the Christmas holidays among none of whose fathers owe him money and so might keep their mouths shut, any one of whom might reveal the fact which at all costs he must now keep secret. So that’s it,” I said, and still she wasn’t looking at me: just smoking quietly and steadily while she watched the slow curl and rise of the smoke. “So it’s you, after all,” I said. “He forbade her to leave Jefferson, and blackmailed you into supporting him by threatening you with what he himself is afraid of: that he himself will tell her of her mother’s shame and her own illegitimacy. Well, that’s a blade with three edges. Ask your father for the money, or take it from me, and get her away from Jefferson or I’ll tell her myself who she is or is not.”
“Do you think she will believe you?” she said.
“What?” I said. “Believe me? Believe me? Even without a mirror to look into, nothing to compare with and need to repudiate from, since all she needed was just to live with him for the seventeen years which she has. What more could she want than to believe me, believe anyone, a chance to believe anyone compassionate enough to assure her she’s not his child? What are you talking about? What more could she ask than the right to love the mother who by means of love saved her from being a Snopes? And if that were not enough, what more could anybody want than this, that most never have the chance to be, not one in ten million have the right to be, deserve to be: not just a love child but one of the elect to share cousinhood with the world’s immortal love-children—fruit of that brave virgin passion not just capable but doomed to count the earth itself well lost for love, which down all the long record of man the weak and impotent and terrified and sleepless that the rest of the human race calls its poets, have dreamed and anguished and exulted and amazed over—” and she watching me now, not smoking: just holding the poised cigarette while the last blue vapor faded, watching me through it.
“You dont know very much about women, do you?” she said. “Women aren’t interested in poets’ dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn’t even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam. She wouldn’t even believe you. She wouldn’t even believe him if he were to tell her. She would just hate you both—you most of all because you started it.”
“You mean she will take … this—him—in preference to nothing? Will throw away the chance for school and everything else? I dont believe you.”
“To her, this isn’t nothing. She will take it before a lot of things. Before most things.”
“I dont believe you!” I said, cried, or thought I did. But only thought it, until I said: “So there’s nothing I can do.”
“Yes,” she said. And now she was watching me, the cigarette motionless, not even seeming to burn. “Marry her.”
“What?” I said, cried. “A gray-headed man more than twice her age? Dont you see, that’s what I’m after: to set her free of Jefferson, not tie her down to it still more, still further, still worse, but to set her free? And you talk about the reality of facts.”
“The marriage is the only fact. The rest of it is still the poet’s romantic dream. Marry her. She’ll have you. Right now, in the middle of all this, she wont know how to say No. Marry her.”
“Good-bye,” I said. “Good-bye.”
And Ratliff again, still in the client’s chair where I had left him an hour ago.
“I tried to tell you,” he said. “Of course it’s Flem. What reason would Eula and that gal have not to jump at a chance to be shut of each other for nine or ten months for a change?”
“I can tell you that now myself,” I said. “Flem Snopes is vice president of a bank now with a vice president’s house with vice president’s furniture in it and some of that vice president’s furniture has got to be a vice president’s wife and child.”
“No,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “The vice president of a bank dont dare have it remembered that his wife was already carrying somebody else’s bastard when he married her, so if she goes off to school some stranger that dont owe him money will tell her who she is and the whole playhouse will blow up.”
“No,” Ratliff said.
“All right,” I said. “Then you tell a while.”
“He’s afraid she’ll get married,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“That’s right,” he said. “When Jody was born, Uncle Billy Varner made a will leaving half of his property to Miz Varner and half to Jody. When Eula was born, he made a new will leaving that same first half to Miz Varner and the other half split in two equal parts, one for Jody and one for Eula. That’s the will he showed Flem that day him and Eula was married and he aint changed it since. That is, Flem Snopes believed him when he said he wasn’t going to change it, whether anybody else believed him or not—especially after Flem beat him on that Old Frenchman place trade.”
“What?” I said. “He gave that place to them as Eula’s dowry.”
“Sho,” Ratliff said. “It was told around so because Uncle Billy was the last man of all that would have corrected it. He offered Flem the place but Flem said he would rather have the price of it in cash money. Which was why Flem and Eula was a day late leaving for Texas: him and Uncle Billy was trading, with Uncle Billy beating Flem down to where he never even thought about it when Flem finally said all right, he would take that figger provided Uncle Billy would give him a option to buy the place at the same amount when he come back from Texas. So they agreed, and Flem come back from Texas with them paint ponies and when the dust finally settled, me and Henry Armstid had done bought that Old Frenchman place from Flem for my half of that restaurant and enough of Henry’s cash money to pay off Uncle Billy’s option, which he had done forgot about. And that’s why Flem Snopes at least knows that Uncle Billy aint going to change that will. So he dont dare risk letting that girl leave Jefferson and get married, because he knows that Eula will leave him too then. It was Flem started it by saying No, but you got all three of them against you, Eula and that girl too until that girl finds the one she wants to marry. Because women aint interested—”
“Wait,” I said, “wait. It’s my time now. Because I dont know anything about women because things like love and morality and jumping at any chance you can find that will keep you from being a Snopes are just a poet’s romantic dream and women aren’t interested in the romance of dreams; they are interested in the reality of facts, they dont care what facts, let alone whether they are true or not if they just dovetail with all the other facts without leaving a saw-tooth edge. Right?”
“Well,” he said, “I might not a put it jest exactly that way.”
