Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“No no,” Ratliff said. “He never seen Will. I know. I taken him out there. I had a machine to deliver to Miz Ledbetter at Rockyford and he suh-jested would I mind going by Frenchman’s Bend while he spoke to Miz Varner a minute and we did, he was in the house about a minute and come back out and we went on and et dinner with Miz Ledbetter and set up the machine and come on back to town.” He blinked at me. “Jest about a minute. What do you reckon he could a said or handed to Miz Varner in one minute that would put Uncle Billy on the road to Jefferson that soon after midnight?

EIGHTEEN

V. K. RATLIFF

No, no no, no no. He was wrong. He’s a lawyer, and to a lawyer, if it aint complicated it dont matter whether it works or not because if it aint complicated up enough it aint right and so even if it works, you dont believe it. So it wasn’t that—a paper phonied up on the spur of the moment, that I dont care how many witnesses signed it, a lawyer not nowhere near as smart as Lawyer Stevens would a been willing to pay the client for the fun he would have breaking it wide open.

It wasn’t that. I dont know what it was, coming up to me on the Square that evening and saying, “I hear Miz Ledbetter’s sewing machine come in this morning. When you take it out to her, I’ll make the run out and back with you if you wont mind going by Frenchman’s Bend a minute.” Sho. You never even wondered how he heard about things because when the time come around to wonder how he managed to hear about it, it was already too late because he had done already made his profit by that time. So I says,

“Well, a feller going to Rockyford could go by Frenchman’s Bend. But then, a feller going to Memphis could go by Birmingham too. He wouldn’t have to, but he could.”—You know: jest to hear him dicker. But he fooled me.

“That’s right,” he says. “It’s a good six miles out of your way. Would four bits a mile pay for it?”

“It would more than pay for it,” I says. “To ride up them extra three dollars, me and you wouldn’t get back to town before sunup Wednesday. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You buy two cigars, and if you’ll smoke one of them yourself, I’ll carry you by Frenchman’s Bend for one minute jest for your company and conversation.”

“I’ll give them both to you,” he says. So we done that. Oh sho, he beat me out of my half of that little cafe me and Grover Winbush owned, but who can say jest who lost then? If he hadn’t a got it, Grover might a turned it into a French postcard peepshow too, and then I’d be out there where Grover is now: night watchman at that brick yard.

So I druv him by Frenchman’s Bend. And we had the conversation too, provided you can call the monologue you have with Flem Snopes a conversation. But you keep on trying. It’s because you hope to learn. You know silence is valuable because it must be, there’s so little of it. So each time you think Here’s my chance to find out how a expert uses it. Of course you wont this time and never will the next neither, that’s how come he’s a expert. But you can always hope you will. So we druv on, talking about this and that, mostly this of course, with him stopping chewing ever three or four miles to spit out the window and say “Yep” or “That’s right” or “Sounds like it” until finally—there was Varner’s Crossroads jest over the next rise—he says, “Not the store. The house,” and I says,

“What? Uncle Billy wont be home now. He’ll be at the store this time of morning.”

“I know it,” he says. “Take this road here.” So we taken that road; we never even seen the store, let alone passed it, on to the house, the gate.

“You sane minute,” I says. “If it’s longer than that, you’ll owe me two more cigars.”

“All right,” he says. And he got out and went on, up the walk and into the house, and I switched off the engine and set there thinking What? What? Miz Varner. Not Uncle Billy: MIZ Varner. That Uncle Billy jest hated him because Flem beat him fair and square, at Uncle Billy’s own figger, out of that Old Frenchman place, while Miz Varner hated him like he was a Holy Roller or even a Baptist because he had not only condoned sin by marrying her daughter after somebody else had knocked her up, he had even made sin pay by getting the start from it that wound him up vice president of a bank. Yet it was Miz Varner he had come all the way out here to see, was willing to pay me three extra dollars for it (I mean, offered. I know now I could a asked him ten.)

No, not thinking What? What? because what I was thinking was Who, who ought to know about this, trying to think in the little time I would have, since hisself had volunteered thatere one minute, so one minute it was going to be, jest which who that was. Not me, because there wasn’t no more loose dangling Ratliff-ends he could need; and not Lawyer Stevens and Linda and Eula and that going-off-to-school business that had been the last what you might call Snopes uproar to draw attention on the local scene, because that was ended too now, with Linda at least off at the University over at Oxford even if it wasn’t one of them Virginia or New England colleges Lawyer was panting for. I didn’t count Manfred de Spain because I wasn’t on Manfred de Spain’s side. I wasn’t against him neither, it was jest like Lawyer Stevens hisself would a said: the feller that already had as much on his side as Manfred de Spain already had or anyway as ever body in Jefferson whose business it wasn’t neither, believed he had, didn’t need no more. Let alone deserve it.

Only there wasn’t time. It wasn’t one minute quite but it wasn’t two neither when he come out the door in thatere black hat and his bow tie, still chewing because I doubt if he ever quit chewing any more than he probably taken off that hat while he was inside, back to the car and spit and got in and I started the engine and says, “It wasn’t quite a full two, so I’ll let you off for one,” and he says,

“All right,” and I put her in low and set with my foot on the clutch and says,

‘ “In case she was out, you want to run by the store and tell Uncle Billy you left a message on the ha track for her?” and he chewed a lick or two more and balled up the ambeer and leaned to the window and spit again and set back and we went on to Rockyford and I set up the machine for Miz Ledbetter and she invited us to dinner and we et and come home and at four oclock this morning Uncle Billy druv up to Flem’s house in Jody’s car with his Negro driver and I know why four oclock because that was Miz Varner.

I mean Uncle Billy would go to bed soon as he et his supper, which would be before sundown this time of year, so he would wake up anywhere about one or two oclock in the morning. Of course he had done already broke the cook into getting up then to cook his breakfast but jest one Negro woman rattling pans in the kitchen wasn’t nowhere near enough for Uncle Billy, ever body else hadn’t jest to wake up then but to get up too: stomping around and banging doors and hollering for ose busd that until Miz Varner was up and dressed too. Only Uncle Billy could eat his breakfast then set in a chair until he smoked his pipe out and then he would go back to sleep until daylight. Only Miz Varner couldn’t never go back to sleep again, once he had done woke her up good.

So this was her chance. I dont know what it was Flem told her or handed her that was important enough to make Uncle Billy light out for town at two oclock in the morning. But it wasn’t no more important to Miz Varner than her chance to go back to bed in peace and quiet and sleep until a decent Christian hour. So she jest never told him or give it to him until he woke up at his usual two a.m.; if it was something Flem jest handed her that she never needed to repeat, likely she never had to get up a-tall but jest have it leaning against the lamp when Uncle Billy