wouldn’t nobody get nothing, which would be all right with the vice president since he would be right where he started out, being as he never owned Lonzo Hait nor the five mules neither.
“A pure and simple easy choice, you see: either a feller wants a hundred dollars, or either he dont want a hundred dollars. Not to mention, as the vice president hisself pointed out, that me and Miz Hait was fellow townsmen and you might say business acquaintances and Miz Hait a woman with a woman’s natural tender gentle heart, so who would say that maybe in time it wouldn’t melt a little more to where she might want to share a little of her half of them eight thousand and five hundred dollars. Which never proved much except that the vice president might know all there was to know about railroad companies and eight thousand and five hundred dollars but he never knowed much about what Miz Hait toted around where other folks totes their hearts. Which is neither here nor there; water that’s still under a bridge dont fill no oceans, as the feller says, and I was simply outvoted two to one, or maybe eight thousand and five hundred dollars to one hundred dollars; or maybe it didn’t even take that much: jest Miz Hait’s half of them eight thousand and five hundred, against my one hundred, since the only way I could a outvoted Miz Hait would a been with four thousand and two hundred and fifty-one dollars of my own, and even then I’d a had to split that odd dollar with her.
“But never mind. I done forgot all that now; that spilt milk aint going to help no ocean neither.” Now Uncle Gavin said he turned rapidly to Mrs Hait with no break in the snarling and outraged babble: “What I come back for was to have a little talk with you. I got something that belongs to you, and I hear you got something that belongs to me. Though naturally I expected to a-just it in private.”
“Lord, honey,” old Het said. “If you talking at me. Dont you mind me. I done already had so much troubles myself that listening to other folks even kind of rests me. You gawn talk what you wants to talk; I’ll just set here and mind this ham.”
“Come on,” I.O. said to Mrs Hait. “Run them all away for a minute.”
Mrs Hait had turned now, still squatting, watching him. “What for?” she said. “I reckon she aint the first critter that ever come in this yard when it wanted and went or stayed when it liked.” Now Uncle Gavin said I.O. made a gesture, brief, fretted, and restrained.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s get started then. So you taken the mule.”
“I paid you for it,” Mrs Hait said. “Het brought you the money.”
“Ten dollars,” I.O. said. “For a hundred-and-fifty-dollar mule.”
“I dont know anything about hundred-and-fifty-dollar mules,” Mrs Hait said. “All I know about mules is what the railroad pays for them. Sixty dollars a head the railroad paid that other time before that fool Hait finally lost all his senses and tied himself to that track too—”
“Hush!” I.O. said. “Hush!”
“What for?” Mrs Hait said. “What secret am I telling that you aint already blabbed to anybody within listening?”
“All right,” I.O. said. “But you just sent me ten.”
“I sent you the difference,” Mrs Hait said. “The difference between that mule and what you owed Hait.”
“What I owed Hait?” I.O. said.
“Hait said you paid him fifty dollars a trip, each time he got mules in front of the train in time, and the railroad had paid you sixty dollars a head for the mules. That last time, you never paid him because you never would pay him until afterward and this time there wasn’t no afterward. So I taken a mule instead and sent you the ten dollars difference with Het here for the witness.” Uncle Gavin said that actually stopped him. He actually hushed; he and Mrs Hait, the one standing and the other still squatting, just stared at one another while again old Het turned the hissing ham in the skillet. He said they were so still that Mr Flem himself spoke twice before they even noticed him.
“You through now?” he said to I.O.
“What?” I.O. said.
“Are you through now?” Mr Flem said. And now Uncle Gavin said they all saw the canvas sack—one of the canvas sacks stamped with the name of the bank which the bank itself used to store money in the vault—in his hands.
“Yes,” I.O. said. “I’m through. At least I got one ten dollars out of the mule business you aint going to touch.” But Mr Flem wasn’t even talking to him now. He had already turned toward Mrs Hait when he drew a folded paper out of the sack.
“This is the mortgage on your house,” he said. “Whatever the insurance company pays you now will be clear money; you can build it back again. Here,” he said. “Take it.”
But Mrs Hait didn’t move. “Why?” she said.
“I bought it from the bank myself this afternoon,” Mr Flem said. “You can drop it in the fire if you want to. But I want you to put your hand on it first.” So she took the paper then, and now Uncle Gavin said they all watched Mr Flem reach into the sack again and this time draw out a roll of bills, I.O. watching too now, not even blinking.
“ ‘Fore God,” old Het said. “You could choke a shoat with it.”
“How many mules have you got in that lot?” Mr Flem said to I.O. Still I.O. just watched him. Then he blinked, rapid and hard.
“Seven,” he said.
“You’ve got six,” Mr Flem said. “You just finished selling one of them to Mrs Hait. The railroad says the kind of mules you deal in are worth sixty dollars a head. You claim they are worth a hundred and fifty. All right. We wont argue. Six times a hundred and fifty is—”
“Seven!” I.O. said, loud and harsh. “I aint sold Mrs Hait nor nobody else that mule. Watch.” He faced Mrs Hait. “We aint traded. We aint never traded. I defy you to produce ara man or woman that seen or heard more than you tried to hand me this here same ten-dollar bill that I’m a handing right back to you. Here,” he said, extending the crumpled bill, then jerking it at her so that it struck against her skirt and fell to the ground. She picked it up.
“You giving this back to me,” she said, “before these witnesses?”
