“You mean late,” Bookwright said. He and Tull went to the counter.
“We just got in last night with some cattle to ship today,” Tull said. “So you was in Memphis. I thought I’d missed you.”
“We all missed him,” Bookwright said. “My wife aint mentioned nobody’s new sewing machine in almost a year. What was it that Memphis fellow cut outen you anyway?”
“My pocketbook,” Ratliff said. “I reckon that’s why he put me to sleep first.”
“He put you to sleep first to keep you from selling him a sewing machine or a bushel of harrow teeth before he could get his knife open,” Bookwright said. The counterman came and slid two plates of bread and butter before them.
“I’ll have steak,” Tull said.
“I wont,” Bookwright said. “I been watching the dripping sterns of steaks for two days now. Let alone running them back out of corn fields and vegetable patches. Bring me some ham and a half a dozen fried eggs.” He began to eat the bread, wolfing it. Ratliff turned slightly on his stool to face them.
“So I been missed,” he said. “I would a thought you folks would a had so many new citizens in Frenchman’s Bend by now you wouldn’t a missed a dozen sewing-machine agents. How many kinfolks has Flem Snopes brought in to date? Is it two more, or just three?”
“Four,” Bookwright said shortly, eating.
“Four?” Ratliff said. “That’s that blacksmith—I mean, the one that uses the blacksmith shop for his address until it’s time to go back home and eat again—what’s his name? Eck. And that other one, the contractor, the business executive—”
“He’s going to be the new school professor next year,” Tull said mildlyC;I re01C;Or so they claim.”
“No no,” Ratliff said. “I’m talking about them Snopeses. That other one. I.O. That Jack Houston throwed into the water tub that day in the blacksmith shop.”
“That’s him,” Tull said. “They claim he’s going to teach the school next year. The teacher we had left all of a sudden just after Christmas. I reckon you never heard about that neither.”
But Ratliff wasn’t listening to this. He wasn’t thinking about the other teacher. He stared at Tull, for the moment surprised out of his own humorous poise. “What?” he said. “Teach the school? That fellow? That Snopes? The one that came to the shop that day that Jack Houston—Here, Odum,” he said; “I been sick, but sholy it aint affected my ears that much.”
Bookwright didn’t answer. He had finished his bread; he leaned and took a piece from lull’s plate. “You aint eating it,” he said. “I’ll tell him to bring some more in a minute.”
“Well,” Ratliff said. “I’ll be damned. By God, I knowed there was something wrong with him soon as I saw him. That was it. He was standing in front of the wrong thing—a blacksmith shop or a plowed field. But teaching the school. I just hadn’t imagined that yet. But that’s it, of course. He has found the one and only place in the world or Frenchman’s Bend either where he not only can use them proverbs of hisn all day long but he will be paid for doing it. Well,” he said. “So Will Varner has caught that bear at last. Flem has grazed up the store and he has grazed up the blacksmith shop and now he is starting in on the school. That just leaves Will’s house. Of course, after that he will have to fall back on you folks, but that house will keep him occupied for a while because Will—”
“Hah!” Bookwright said shortly. He finished the slice of bread he had taken from Tull’s plate and called to the counterman: “Here. Bring me a piece of pie while I’m waiting.”
“What kind of pie, Mr Bookwright?” the counterman said.
“Eating pie,” Bookwright said.
“—because Will might be a little hard to dislodge outen the actual house,” Ratliff went on. “He might even draw the line there altogether. So maybe Flem will have to start in on you folks sooner than he had figured on—”
“Hah,” Bookwright said again, harsh and sudden. The counterman slid the pie along to him. Ratliff looked at him.
“All right,” Ratliff said. “Hah what?”
Bookwright sat with the wedge of pie poised in his hand before his mouth. He turned his fierce dark face toward Ratliff. “I was sitting on the sawdust pile at Quick’s mill last week. His fireman and another nigger were shovelling the chips over toward the boiler, to fire with. They were talking. The fireman wanted to borrow some money, said Quick wouldn’t let him have it. ‘Go to Mr Snopes at the store,’ the other nigger says. ‘He will lend it to you. He lent me five dollars over two years ago and all I does, every Saturday night I goes to the store and pays him a dime. He aint even mentioned that five dollars.’ ” Then he turned his head and bit into the pie, taking a little less than half of it. Ratliff watched him with a faint quizzical expression which was almost smiling.
“Well well well,” he said. “So he’s working the top and the bottom both at the same time. At that rate it will be a while yet before he has to fall back on you ordinary white folks in the middle.” Bookwright took another huge bite of the pie. The counterman brought his and Tull’s meal and Bookwright crammed the rest of the pie into his mouth. Tull began to cut his steak neatly into bites as though for a child to eat it. Ratliff watched them. “Aint none of you folks out there done nothing about it?” he said.
“What could we do?” Tull said. “It aint right. But it aint none of our business.”
“I believe I would think of something if I lived there,” Ratliff said.
“Yes,” Bookwright said. He was eating his ham as he had the pie. “And wind up with one of them bow ties in place of your buckboard and team. You’d have room to wear it.”
“Sho now,” Ratliff said. “Maybe you’re right.” He stopped looking at them now and raised his spoon, but lowered it again. “This here cup seems to have a draft in it,” he said to the counterman. “Maybe you better warm it up a little. It might freeze and bust, and I would have to pay for the cup too.” The counterman swept the cup away and refilled it and slid it back. Ratliff spooned sugar into it carefully, his face still wearing that faint expression which would have been called smiling for lack of anything better. Bookwright had mixed his six eggs into one violent mess and was now eating them audibly with a spoon. He and Tull both ate with expedition, though Tull even contrived to do that with almost niggling primness. They did not talk, they just cleaned their plates and rose and went to the cigar case and paid their bills.
