Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“Flem did? You mean he jest told you, or you asked him?”

“I asked him,” Stevens said. “I said, ‘Are you going to tell Linda?’ ”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Why?’ ” Stevens said.

“Oh,” Ratliff said.

Then it was noon. What Ratliff had in the neat parcel was a sand wich, as neatly made. “You go home and eat dinner,” he said. “I’ll set here and listen for it.”

“Didn’t you just say that if Flem himself dont seem to worry, why the hell should we?”

“I wont worry then,” Ratliff said. “I’ll jest set and listen.”

Though Stevens was back in the office when the call came in midafternoon. “Nothing,” the classmate’s voice said. “None of the pawnshops nor any other place a man might go to buy a gun or pistol of any sort, let alone a ten-dollar one. Maybe he hasn’t reached Memphis yet, though it’s more than twenty-four hours now.”

“That’s possible,” Stevens said.

“Maybe he never intended to reach Memphis.”

“All right, all right,” Stevens said. “Sh I write the commissioner myself a letter of thanks or—”

“Sure. But let him earn it first. He agreed that it not only wont cost much more, it will even be a good idea to check his list every morning for the next two or three days, just in case. I thanked him for you. I even went further and said that if you ever found yourselves in the same voting district and he decided to run for an office instead of just sitting for it—” as Stevens put the telephone down and turned to Ratliff again without seeing him at all and said,

“Maybe he never will.”

“What?” Ratliff said. “What did he say?” Stevens told, repeated, the gist. “I reckon that’s all we can do,” Ratliff said.

“Yes,” Stevens said. He thought Tomorrow will prove it. But Til wait still another day. Maybe until Monday.

But he didn’t wait that long. On Saturday his office was always, not busy with the county business he was paid a salary to handle, so much as constant with the social coming and going of the countrymen who had elected him to his office. Ratliff, who knew them all too, as well or even better, was unobtrusive in his chair against the wall where he could reach the telephone without even getting up; he even had another neat homemade sandwich, until at noon Stevens said,

“Go on home and eat a decent meal, or come home with me. It wont ring today.”

“You must know why,” Ratliff said.

“Yes. I’ll tell you Monday. No: tomorrow. Sunday will be appropriate. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“So you know it’s all right now. All settled and finished now. Whether Flem knows it yet or not, he can sleep from now on.”

“Dont ask me yet,” Stevens said. “It’s like a thread; it’s true only until I—something breaks it.”

“You was right all the time then. There wasn’t no need to tell her.”

“There never has been,” Stevens said. “There never will be.”

“That’s jest what I said,” Ratliff said. “There aint no need now.”

“And what I just said was there never was any need to tell her and there never would have been, no matter what happened.”

“Not even as a moral question?” Ratliff said.

“Moral hell and question hell,” Stevens said. “It aint any question at all: it’s a fact: the fact that not you nor anybody else that wears hair is going to tell her that her act of pity and compassion and simple generosity murdered the man who passes as her father whether he is or not or a son of a bitch or not.”

“All right, all right,” Ratliff said. “This here thread you jest mentioned. Ma another good way to keep it from getting broke before time is to keep somebody handy to hear that telephone when it dont ring at three oclock this afternoon.”

So they were both in the office at three oclock. Then it was four. “I reckon we can go now,” Ratliff said.

“Yes,” Stevens said.

“But you still wont tell me now,” Ratliff said.

“Tomorrow,” Stevens said. “The call will have to come by then.”

“So this here thread has got a telephone wire inside of it after all.”

“So long,” Stevens said. “See you tomorrow.”

And Central would know where to find him at any time on Sunday too and in fact until almost half past two that afternoon he still believed he was going to spend the whole day at Rose Hill. His life had known other similar periods of unrest and trouble and uncertainty even if he had spent most of it as a bachelor; he could recall one or two of them when the anguish and unrest were due to the fact that he was a bachelor, that is, circumstances, conditions insisted on his continuing celibacy despite his own efforts to give it up. But back then he had had