“Yes,” Snopes said. “I reckon not. And just because she’s a woman. That’s why. Because she is a durned woman. All right. Let her go to her durned jury with it. I can talk too; I reckon it’s a few things I could tell a jury myself about—” Then Ratliff said he stopped. Ratliff said he didn’t sound like I.O. Snopes anyway because whenever I.O. talked what he said was so full of mixed-up proverbs that you stayed so busy trying to unravel just which of two or three proverbs he had jumbled together that you couldn’t even tell just exactly what lie he had told you until it was already too late. But right now Ratliff said he was too busy to have time for even proverbs, let alone lies. Ratliff said they were all watching him.
“What?” somebody said. “Tell the jury about what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Because why, because there aint going to be no jury. Me and Miz Mannie Hait? You boys dont know her if you think she’s going to make trouble over a pure accident couldn’t me nor nobody else help. Why, aint a fairer, finer woman in Yoknapatawpha County than Mannie Hait. I just wish I had a opportunity to tell her so.” Ratliff said he had it right away. He said Mrs Hait was right behind them, with old Het right behind her, carrying the shopping bag. He said she just looked once at all of them generally. After that she senoked at I.O.
“I come to buy that mule,” she said.
“What mule?” I.O. said. He answered that quick, almost automatic, Ratliff said. Because he didn’t mean it either. Then Ratliff said they looked at one another for about a half a minute. “You’d like to own that mule?” he said. “It’ll cost you a hundred and fifty, Miz Mannie.”
“You mean dollars?” Mrs Hait said.
“I dont mean dimes nor nickels neither, Miz Mannie,” Snopes said.
“Dollars,” Mrs Hait said. “Mules wasn’t that high in Hait’s time.”
“Lots of things is different since Hait’s time,” Snopes said. “Including you and me, Miz Mannie.”
“I reckon so,” she said. Then she went away. Ratliff said she turned without a word and left, old Het following.
“If I’d a been you,” Ratliff said, “I dont believe I’d a said that last to her.”
And now Ratliff said the mean harried little face actually blazed, even frothing a little. “I just wisht she would,” Snopes said. “Her or anybody else, I dont care who, to bring a court suit about anything, jest so it had the name mule and the name Hait in it—” and stopped, the face smooth again. “How’s that?” he said. “What was you saying?”
“That you dont seem to be afraid she might sue you for burning down her house,” Ratliff said.
“Sue me?” Snopes said. “Miz Hait? If she was fixing to try to law something out of me about that fire, do you reckon she would a hunted me up and offered to pay me for it?”
That was about one oclock. Then it was four oclock; Aleck Sander and I had gone out to Sartoris Station to shoot quail over the dogs that Miss Jenny Du Pre still kept, I reckon until Benbow Sartoris got big enough to hold a gun. So Uncle Gavin was alone in the office to hear the tennis shoes on the outside stairs. Then old Het came in; the shopping bag was bulging now and she was eating bananas from a paper sack which she clamped under one arm, the half-eaten banana in that hand while with the other she dug out a crumpled ten-dollar bill and gave it to Uncle Gavin.
“It’s for you,” old Het said. “From Miss Mannie. I done already give him hisn”—telling it: waiting on the corner of the Square until it looked like sure to God night would come first, before Snopes finally came along, and she handed the banana she was working on then to a woman beside her and got out the first crumpled ten-dollar bill. Snopes took it.
“What?” he said. “Miz Hait told you to give it to me?”
“For that mule,” old Het said. “You dont need to give me no receipt. I can be the witness I give it to you.”
“You’ll have to contrack that with her yourself,” old Het said. “She just give me this to hand to you when she left to get the mule.”
“To get the—she went out there herself and taken that mule out of my lot?” Snopes said.
“Lord, child,” old Het said she said. “Miss Mannie aint skeered of no mule. Aint you done found that out?—And now here’s yourn,” she said to Uncle Gavin.
“For what?” Uncle Gavin said. “I dont have a mule to sell.”
“For a lawyer,” old Het said. “She fixing to need a lawyer. She say for you to be out there at her house about sundown, when she had time to get settled down again.”
“Her house?” Uncle Gavin said.
“Where it use to be, honey,” old Het said. “Would you keer for a banana? I done et about all I can hold.”
“No, much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Go on. Take some. If I et one more, I’d be wishing the good Lord hadn’t never thought banana One in all His life.”
“No, much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I dont reckon you’d have nothing like a extra dime for a little snuff.”
“No,” Uncle Gavin said, producing it. “All I have is a quarter.”
“That’s quality,” she said. “You talk about change to quality, what you gets back is a quarter or a half a dollar or sometimes even a whole dollar. It’s just trash that cant think no higher than a nickel or ten cents.” She took the quarter; it vanished somewhere. “There’s some folks thinks all I does, I tromps this town all day long from can-see to cant, with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of much oblige. They’re wrong. I serves Jefferson too. If it’s more blessed to give than to receive like the Book say, this town is blessed to a fare-you-well because it’s steady full of folks willing to give anything from a nickel up to a old hat. But I’m the onliest one I knows that steady receives. So how is Jefferson going to be steady blessed without me steady willing from dust-dawn to dust-dark, rain or snow or sun, to say much oblige? I can tell Miss Mannie you be there?”
