“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. Then she was gone. Uncle Gavin sat there looking at the crumpled bill on the desk in front of him. Then he heard the other feet on the stairs and he sat watching the door until Mr Flem Snopes came in and shut it behind him.
“Evening,” Mr Snopes said. “Can you take a case for me?”
“Now?” Uncle Gavinsaid. “Tonight?”
“Yes,” Mr Snopes said.
“Tonight,” Uncle Gavin said again. “Would it have anything to do with a mule and Mrs Hait’s house?”
And he said how Mr Snopes didn’t say What house? or What mule? or How did you know? He just said, “Yes.”
“Why did you come to me?” Uncle Gavin said.
“For the same reason I would hunt up the best carpenter if I wanted to build a house, or the best farmer if I wanted to sharecrop some land,” Mr Snopes said.
“Thanks,” Uncle Gavin said. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t even have to touch the crumpled bill. He said that Mr Snopes had not only seen it the minute he entered, but he believed he even knew at that same moment where it came from. “As you already noticed, I’m already on the other side.”
“You going out there now?” Mr Snopes said.
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Then that’s all right.” He began to reach into his pocket. At first Uncle Gavin didn’t know why; he just watched him dig out an old-fashioned snap-mouth wallet and open it and separate a ten-dollar bill and close the wallet and lay the bill on the desk beside the other crumpled one and put the wallet back into the pocket and stand looking at Uncle Gavin.
“I just told you I’m already on the other side,” Uncle Gavin said.
“And I just said that’s all right,” Mr Snopes said. “I dont want a lawyer because I already know what I’m going to do. I just want a witness.”
“And why me for that?” Uncle Gavin said.
“That’s right,” Mr Snopes said. “The best witness too.”
So they went out there. The fog had burned away by noon and Mrs Hait’s two blackened chimneys now stood against what remained of the winter sunset; at the same moment Mr Snopes said, “Wait.”
“What?” Uncle Gavin said. But Mr Snopes didn’t answer, so they stood, not approaching yet; Uncle Gavin said he could already smell the ham broiling over the little fire in front of the still-intact cowshed, with old Het sitting on a brand-new kitchen chair beside the fire turning the ham in the skillet with a fork, and beyond the fire Mrs Hait squatting at the cow’s flank, milking into a new tin bucket.
“All right,” Mr Snopes said, and again Uncle Gavin said What? because he had not seen I.O. at all: he was just suddenly there as though he had materialized, stepped suddenly out of the dusk itself into the light of the fire (there was a brand-new galvanised-iron coffee pot sitting in the ashes near the blaze and now Uncle Gavin said he could smell that too), to stand looking down at the back of Mrs Hait’s head, not having seen Uncle Gavin and Mr Fleet. But old Het had, already talking to Uncle Gavin while they were approaching:
“So this coffee and ham brought you even if them ten dollars couldn’t,” she said. “I’m like that, myself. I aint had no appetite in years it seems like now. A bird couldn’t live on what I eats. But just let me get a whiff of coffee and ham together, now.—Leave that milk go for a minute, honey,” she said to Mrs Hait. “Here’s your lawyer.”
Then I.O. saw them too, jerking quickly around over his shoulder his little mean harassed snarling face; and now Uncle Gavin could see inside the cowshed. It had been cleaned and raked and even swept; the floor was spread with fresh hay. A clean new kerosene stable lantern burned on a wooden box beside a pallet bed spread neatly on the straw and turned back for the night and now Uncle Gavin saw a second wooden box set out for a table beside the fire, with a new plate and knife and fork and spoon and cup and saucer and a still-sealed loaf of machine-made bread.
But Uncle Gavin said there was no alarm in I.O.’s face at the sight of Mr Flem though he said the reason for that was that he, Uncle Gavin, hadn’t realised yet that I.O. had simply reached that stage where utter hopelessness wears the mantle of temerity. “So here you are,” I.O. said. “And brung your lawyer too. I reckon you come now to get thatere lantern and them new dishes and chair and that milk bucket and maybe the milk in too soon as she’s done, hey? That’s jest fine. It’s even downright almost honest, coming right out in the open here where it aint even full dark yet. Because of course your lawyer knows all the rest all these here recent mulery and arsonery circumstances; likely the only one here that aint up to date is old Aunt Het there, and sholy she should be learned how to reco-nise a circumstance that even if she was to get up and run this minute, likely she would find she never had no shirt nor britches left neither by the time she got home, since a stitch in time saves nine lives for even a cat, as the feller says. Not to mention the fact that when you dines in Rome you durn sho better watch your overcoat.
“All right then. Now, jest exactly how much of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars the railroad company paid Miz Hait here for that husband of hern and them five mules of mine, do you reckon Miz Hait actively” (Uncle Gavin said he said actively for actually too, just like Ratliff. And Uncle Gavin said they were both right) “got? Well, in that case you will be jest as wrong as everybody else was. She got half of it. The reason being that the vice president here handled it for her. Of course, without a financial expert like the vice president to handle it for her, she wouldn’t a got no more than that half nohow, if as much, so by rights she aint got nothing to complain of, not to mention the fact that jest half of even that half was rightfully hern, since jest Lonzo Hait was hern because them five mules was mine.
“All right. Now, what do you reckon become of the other half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars? Then you’ll be jest as wrong this time as you were that other one. Because the vice president here taken them. Oh, it was done all open and legal; he explained it: if Miz Hait sued the railroad, a lone lorn widder by herself, likely she wouldn’t get more than five thousand at the most, and half of that she would have to give to me for owning the mules. And if me and her brought the suit together, with a active man on her side to compel them cold hard millionaire railrod magnits to do a lone woman justice, once I claimed any part of them mules, due to the previous bad luck mules belonging to me had been having on thatere curve, the railroad would smell a rat right away and wouldn’t nobody get nothing. While with him, the vice president, handling it, it would be seventy-five hundred or maybe a even ten thousand, of which he would not only guarantee her a full half, he would even take out of his half the hundred dollars he would give me. All legal and open: I could keep my mouth shut and get a hundred dollars, where if I objected, the vice president hisself might accidently let out who them mules actively belonged to, and
