“Will you let me see it?” she says. “I just want to look at it. Whatever it says, I wont ask for but ten dollars. You can have the rest. I just want to see it.”
“Not after the way you’ve acted,” I says. “You’ve got to learn one thing, and that is that when I tell you to do something, you’ve got it to do. You sign your name on that line.”
She took the pen, but instead of signing it she just stood there with her head bent and the pen shaking in her hand. Just like her mother. “Oh, God,” she says, “oh, God.”
“Yes,” I says. “That’s one thing you’ll have to learn if you never learn anything else. Sign it now, and get on out of here.”
She signed it. “Where’s the money?” she says. I took the order and blotted it and put it in my pocket. Then I gave her the ten dollars.
“Now you go on back to school this afternoon, you hear?” I says. She didn’t answer. She crumpled the bill up in her hand like it was a rag or something and went on out the front door just as Earl came in. A customer came in with him and they stopped up front. I gathered up the things and put on my hat and went up front.
“Been much busy?” Earl says.
“Not much,” I says. He looked out the door.
“That your car over yonder?” he says. “Better not try to go out home to dinner. We’ll likely have another rush just before the show opens. Get you a lunch at Rogers’ and put a ticket in the drawer.”
“Much obliged,” I says. “I can still manage to feed myself, I reckon.”
And right there he’d stay, watching that door like a hawk until I came through it again. Well, he’d just have to watch it for a while; I was doing the best I could. The time before I says that’s the last one now; you’ll have to remember to get some more right away. But who can remember anything in all this hurrah. And now this dam show had to come here the one day I’d have to hunt all over town for a blank check, besides all the other things I had to do to keep the house running, and Earl watching the door like a hawk.
I went to the printing shop and told him I wanted to play a joke on a fellow, but he didn’t have anything. Then he told me to have a look in the old opera house, where somebody had stored a lot of papers and junk out of the old Merchants’ and Farmers’ Bank when it failed, so I dodged up a few more alleys so Earl couldn’t see me and finally found old man Simmons and got the key from him and went up there and dug around. At last I found a pad on a Saint Louis bank. And of course she’d pick this one time to look at it close. Well, it would have to do. I couldn’t waste any more time now.
I went back to the store. “Forgot some papers Mother wants to go to the bank,” I says. I went back to the desk and fixed the check. Trying to hurry and all, I says to myself it’s a good thing her eyes are giving out, with that little whore in the house, a Christian forbearing woman like Mother. I says you know just as well as I do what she’s going to grow up into but I says that’s your business, if you want to keep her and raise her in your house just because of Father. Then she would begin to cry and say it was her own flesh and blood so I just says All right. Have it your way. I can stand it if you can.
I fixed the letter up again and glued it back and went out.
“Try not to be gone any longer than you can help,” Earl says.
“All right,” I says. I went to the telegraph office. The smart boys were all there.
“Any of you boys made your million yet?” I says.
“Who can do anything, with a market like that?” Doc says.
“What’s it doing?” I says. I went in and looked. It was three points under the opening. “You boys are not going to let a little thing like the cotton market beat you, are you?” I says. “I thought you were too smart for that.”
“Smart, hell,” Doc says. “It was down twelve points at twelve oclock. Cleaned me out.”
“Twelve points?” I says. “Why the hell didn’t somebody let me know? Why didn’t you let me know?” I says to the operator.
“I take it as it comes in,” he says. “I’m not running a bucket shop.”
“You’re smart, aren’t you?” I says. “Seems to me, with the money I spend with you, you could take time to call me up. Or maybe your dam company’s in a conspiracy with those dam eastern sharks.”
He didn’t say anything. He made like he was busy.
“You’re getting a little too big for your pants,” I says. “First thing you know you’ll be working for a living.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Doc says. “You’re still three points to the good.”
“Yes,” I says. “If I happened to be selling. I haven’t mentioned that yet, I think. You boys all cleaned out?”
“I got caught twice,” Doc says. “I switched just in time.”
“Well,” I. O. Snopes says. “I’ve picked hit; I reckon taint no more than fair fer hit to pick me once in a while.”
So I left them buying and selling among themselves at a nickel a point. I found a nigger and sent him for my car and stood on the corner and waited. I couldn’t see Earl looking up and down the street, with one eye on the clock, because I couldn’t see the door from here. After about a week he got back with it.
“Where the hell have you been?” I says. “Riding around where the wenches could see you?”
“I come straight as I could,” he says. “I had to drive clean around the square, wid all dem wagons.”
I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did. But just turn one loose in a car and he’s bound to show off. I got in and went on around the square. I caught a glimpse of Earl in the door across the square.
I went straight to the kitchen and told Dilsey to hurry up with dinner.
“Quentin aint come yit,” she says.
“What of that?” I says. “You’ll be telling me next that Luster’s not quite ready to eat yet. Quentin knows when meals are served in this house. Hurry up with it, now.”
Mother was in her room. I gave her the letter. She opened it and took the check out and sat holding it in her hand. I went and got the shovel from the corner and gave her a match. “Come on,” I says. “Get it over with. You’ll be crying in a minute.”
She took the match, but she didn’t strike it. She sat there, looking at the check. Just like I said it would be.
“I hate to do it,” she says. “To increase your burden by adding Quentin.……”
“I guess we’ll get along,” I says. “Come on. Get it over with.”
But she just sat there, holding the check.
“This one is on a different bank,” she says. “They have been on an Indianapolis bank.”
“Yes,” I says. “Women are allowed to do that too.”
“Do what?” she says.
“Keep money in two different banks,” I says.
“Oh,” she says. She looked at the check a while. “I’m glad to know she’s so … she has so much.… God sees that I am doing right,” she says.
“Come on,” I says. “Finish it. Get the fun over.”
“Fun?” she says. “When I think——”
“I thought you were burning this two hundred dollars a month for fun,” I says. “Come on, now. Want me to strike the match?”
“I could bring myself to accept them,” she says. “For my children’s sake. I have no pride.”
“You’d never be satisfied,” I says. “You know you wouldn’t. You’ve settled that once, let it stay settled. We can get along.”
“I leave everything to you,” she says. “But sometimes I become afraid that in doing this I am depriving you all of what is rightfully yours. Perhaps I shall be punished for it. If you want me to, I will smother my pride and accept them.”
“What would be the good in beginning now, when you’ve been destroying them for fifteen years?” I says. “If you keep on doing it, you have lost nothing, but if you’d begin to take them now, you’ll have lost fifty thousand dollars. We’ve got along so far, haven’t we?” I says. “I h
aven’t seen you in the poorhouse yet.”
“Yes,” she says. “We Bascombs need nobody’s charity. Certainly not that of a fallen woman.”
She struck the match and lit the check and put it in the shovel, and then the envelope, and watched them burn.
“You dont know what it is,” she says. “Thank God you will never know what a mother feels.”
“There are lots of women in this world no better than her,” I says.
“But they are not my daughters,” she says. “It’s not myself,” she says. “I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake.”
Well, I could have said it wasn’t much chance of anybody hurting Quentin much, but like I say I dont expect much but I do want to eat and sleep without a couple of women squabbling and crying in the house.
“And yours,” she says. “I know how you feel toward her.”
“Let her come back,” I says, “far as I’m concerned.”
“No,” she says. “I owe that to your father’s memory.”
“When he was trying all the time to persuade you to let her come home when Herbert threw her out?” I says.
“You dont understand,” she says. “I know you dont intend to make it more difficult for me. But it’s my place to suffer for my children,” she says. “I can bear it.”
“Seems to me you go to a lot of unnecessary trouble doing it,” I says. The paper burned out. I carried it to the grate and put it in. “It just seems a shame to me to burn up good money,” I says.
“Let me never see the day when my children will have to accept that, the wages of sin,” she says. “I’d rather see even you dead in your coffin first.”
“Have it your way,” I says. “Are we going to have dinner soon?” I says. “Because if we’re not, I’ll have to go on back. We’re pretty busy today.” She got up. “I’ve told her once,” I says. “It seems she’s waiting on Quentin or Luster or somebody. Here, I’ll call her. Wait.” But she went to the head of the stairs and called.
“Quentin aint come yit,” Dilsey says.
“Well, I’ll have to get on back,” I says. “I can get a sandwich downtown. I dont want to interfere with Dilsey’s arrangements,” I says. Well, that got her started again, with Dilsey hobbling and mumbling back and forth, saying,
“All right, all right, Ise puttin hit on fast as I kin.”
“I try to please you all,” Mother says. “I try to make things as easy for you as I can.”
“I’m not complaining, am I?” I says. “Have I said a word except I had to go back to work?”
“I know,” she says. “I know you haven’t had the chance the others had, that you’ve had to bury yourself in a little country store. I wanted you to get ahead. I knew your father would never realise that you were the only one who had any business sense, and then when everything else failed I believed that when she married, and Herbert … after his promise——”
“Well, he was probably lying too,” I says. “He may not have even had a bank. And if he had, I dont reckon he’d have to come all the way to Mississippi to get a man for it.”
We ate a while. I could hear Ben in the kitchen, where Luster was feeding him. Like I say, if we’ve got to feed another mouth and she wont take that money, why not send him down to Jackson. He’ll be happier there, with people like him. I says God knows there’s little enough room for pride in this family, but it dont take much pride to not like to see a thirty year old man playing around the yard with a nigger boy, running up and down the fence and lowing like a cow whenever they play golf over there. I says if they’d sent him to Jackson at first we’d all be better off today. I says, you’ve done your duty by him; you’ve done all anybody can expect of you and more than most folks would do, so why not send him there and get that much benefit out of the taxes we pay. Then she says, “I’ll be gone soon. I know I’m just a burden to you” and I says “You’ve been saying that so long that I’m beginning to believe you” only I says you’d better be sure and not let me know you’re gone because I’ll sure have him on number seventeen that night and I says I think I know a place where they’ll take her too and the name of it’s not Milk street and Honey avenue either. Then she begun to cry and I says All right all right I have as much pride about my kinfolks as anybody even if I dont always know where they come from.
We ate for a while. Mother sent Dilsey to the front to look for Quentin again.
“I keep telling you she’s not coming to dinner,” I says.
“She knows better than that,” Mother says. “She knows I dont permit her to run about the streets and not come home at meal time. Did you look good, Dilsey?”
“Dont let her, then,” I says.
“What can I do,” she says. “You have all of you flouted me. Always.”
“If you wouldn’t come interfering, I’d make her mind,” I says. “It wouldn’t take me but about one day to straighten her out.”
“You’d be too brutal with her,” she says. “You have your Uncle Maury’s temper.”
That reminded me of the letter. I took it out and handed it to her. “You wont have to open it,” I says. “The bank will let you know how much it is this time.”
“It’s addressed to you,” she says.
“Go on and open it,” I says. She opened it and read it and handed it to me.
“ ‘My dear young nephew’, it says,
‘You will be glad to learn that I am now in a position to avail myself of an opportunity regarding which, for reasons which I shall make obvious to you, I shall not go into details until I have an opportunity to divulge it to you in a more secure manner. My business experience has taught me to be chary of committing anything of a confidential nature to any more concrete medium than speech, and my extreme precaution in this instance should give you some inkling of its value. Needless to say, I have just completed a most exhaustive examination of all its phases, and I feel no hesitancy in telling you that it is that sort of golden chance that comes but once in a lifetime, and I now see clearly before me that goal toward which I have long and unflaggingly striven: i.e., the ultimate solidification of my affairs by which I may restore to its rightful position that family of which I have the honor to be the sole remaining male descendant; that family in which I have ever included your lady mother and her children.
‘As it so happens, I am not quite in a position to avail myself of this opportunity to the uttermost which it warrants, but rather than go out of the family to do so, I am today drawing upon your Mother’s bank for the small sum necessary to complement my own initial investment, for which I herewith enclose, as a matter of formality, my note of hand at eight percent, per annum. Needless to say, this is merely a formality, to secure your Mother in the event of that circumstance of which man is ever the plaything and sport. For naturally I shall employ this sum as though it were my own and so permit your Mother to avail herself of this opportunity which my exhaustive investigation has shown to be a bonanza—if you will permit the vulgarism—of the first water and purest ray serene.
‘This is in confidence, you will understand, from one business man to another; we will harvest our own vineyards, eh? And knowing your Mother’s delicate health and that timorousness which such delicately nurtured Southern ladies would naturally feel regarding matters of business, and their charming proneness to divulge unwittingly such matters in conversation, I would suggest that you do not mention it to her at all. On second thought, I advise you not to do so. It might be better to simply restore this sum to the bank at some future date, say, in a lump sum with the other small sums for which I am indebted to her, and say nothing about it at all. It is our duty to shield her from the crass material world as much as possible.
‘Your affectionate Uncle,
‘Maury L. Bascomb.’ ”
“What do you want to do about it?” I says, flipping it across the table.
“I know you grudge what I give him,” she says.
“It
’s your money,” I says. “If you want to throw it to the birds even, it’s your business.”
“He’s my own brother,” Mother says. “He’s the last Bascomb. When we are gone there wont be any more of them.”
“That’ll be hard on somebody, I guess,” I says. “All right, all right,” I says. “It’s your money. Do as you please with it. You want me to tell the bank to pay it?”
“I know you begrudge him,” she says. “I realise the burden on your shoulders. When I’m gone it will be easier on you.”
“I could make it easier right now,” I says. “All right, all right, I wont mention it again. Move all bedlam in here if you want to.”
“He’s your own brother,” she says. “Even if he is afflicted.”
“I’ll take your bank book,” I says. “I’ll draw my check today.”
“He kept you waiting six days,” she says. “Are you sure the business is sound? It seems strange to me that a solvent business cannot pay its employees promptly.”
“He’s all right,” I says. “Safe as a bank. I tell him not to bother about mine until we get done collecting every month. That’s why it’s late sometimes.”
“I just couldn’t bear to have you lose the little I had to invest for you,” she says. “I’ve often thought that Earl is not a good business man. I know he doesn’t take you into his confidence to the extent that your investment in the business should warrant. I’m going to speak to him.”
“No, you let him alone,” I says. “It’s his business.”
“You have a thousand dollars in it.”
“You let him alone,” I says. “I’m watching things. I have your power of attorney. It’ll be all right.”
“You dont know what a comfort you are to me,” she says. “You have always been my pride and joy, but when you came to me of your own accord and insisted on banking your salary each month in my name, I thanked God it was you left me if they had to be taken.”
“They were all right,” I says. “They did the best they could, I reckon.”
“When you talk that way I know you are thinking bitterly of your father’s memory,” she says. “You have a right to, I suppose. But it breaks my heart to hear you.”