“Why? Do you think that would—that I’d care a damn what—”
“You have to live here.”
“I’m damned if I do. I’ve already let too many women run my affairs for me as it is, and if these uxorious.……” But he knew he was just talking. He knew that she knew it too, out of that feminine reserve of unflagging suspicion of all peoples’ actions which seems at first to be mere affinity for evil but which is in reality practical wisdom.
“I guess I’ll find you if there’s any need,” she said. “There’s not anything else I could do.”
“By God,” Horace said, “dont you let them.…Bitches,” he said; “bitches.”
The next day he had the telephone installed. He did not see his sister for a week; she had no way of learning that he had a phone, yet when, a week before the opening of Court, the telephone shrilled into the quiet where he sat reading one evening, he thought it was Narcissa until, across a remote blaring of victrola or radio music, a man’s voice spoke in a guarded, tomblike tone.
“This is Snopes,” it said. “How’re you, Judge?”
“What?” Horace said. “Who is it?”
“Senator Snopes. Cla’ence Snopes.” The victrola blared, faint, far away; he could see the man, the soiled hat, the thick shoulders, leaning above the instrument—in a drugstore or a restaurant—whispering into it behind a soft, huge, ringed hand, the telephone toylike in the other.
“Oh,” Horace said. “Yes? What is it?”
“I got a little piece of information that might interest you.”
“Information that would interest me?”
“I reckon so. That would interest a couple of parties.” Against Horace’s ear the radio or the victrola performed a reedy arpeggio of saxophones. Obscene, facile, they seemed to be quarreling with one another like two dexterous monkeys in a cage. He could hear the gross breathing of the man at the other end of the wire.
“All right,” he said. “What do you know that would interest me?”
“I’ll let you judge that.”
“All right. I’ll be down town in the morning. You can find me somewhere.” Then he said immediately: “Hello!” The man sounded as though he were breathing in Horace’s ear: a placid, gross sound, suddenly portentous somehow. “Hello!” Horace said.
“It evidently dont interest you, then. I reckon I’ll dicker with the other party and not trouble you no more. Goodbye.”
“No; wait,” Horace said. “Hello! Hello!”
“Yeuh?”
“I’ll come down tonight. I’ll be there in about fifteen—”
“ ’Taint no need of that,” Snopes said. “I got my car. I’ll drive up there.”
He walked down to the gate. There was a moon tonight. Within the black-and-silver tunnel of cedars fireflies drifted in fatuous pinpricks. The cedars were black and pointed on the sky like a paper silhouette; the sloping lawn had a faint sheen, a patina like silver. Somewhere a whippoorwill called, reiterant, tremulous, plaintful above the insects. Three cars passed. The fourth slowed and swung toward the gate. Horace stepped into the light. Behind the wheel Snopes loomed bulkily, giving the impression of having been inserted into the car before the top was put on. He extended his hand.
“How’re you tonight, Judge? Didn’t know you was living in town again until I tried to call you out to Mrs Sartorises.”
“Well, thanks,” Horace said. He freed his hand. “What’s this you’ve got hold of?”
Snopes creased himself across the wheel and peered out beneath the top, toward the house.
“We’ll talk here,” Horace said. “Save you having to turn around.”
“It aint very private here,” Snopes said. “But that’s for you to say.” Huge and thick he loomed, hunched, his featureless face moonlike itself in the refraction of the moon. Horace could feel Snopes watching him, with that sense of portent which had come over the wire; a quality calculating and cunning and pregnant. It seemed to him that he watched his mind flicking this way and that, striking always that vast, soft, inert bulk, as though it were caught in an avalanche of cottonseed-hulls.
“Let’s go to the house,” Horace said. Snopes opened the door. “Go on,” Horace said. “I’ll walk up.” Snopes drove on. He was getting out of the car when Horace overtook him. “Well, what is it?” Horace said.
Again Snopes looked at the house. “Keeping batch, are you?” he said. Horace said nothing. “Like I always say, ever married man ought to have a little place of his own, where he can git off to himself without it being nobody’s business what he does. ’Course a man owes something to his wife, but what they dont know caint hurt them, does it? Long’s he does that, I caint see where she’s got ere kick coming. Aint that what you say?”
“She’s not here,” Horace said, “if that’s what you’re hinting at. What did you want to see me about?”
Again he felt Snopes watching him, the unabashed stare calculating and completely unbelieving. “Well, I always say, caint nobody tend to a man’s private business but himself. I aint blaming you. But when you know me better, you’ll know I aint loose-mouthed. I been around. I been there.… Have a cigar?” His big hand flicked to his breast and offered two cigars.
“No, thanks.”
Snopes lit a cigar, his face coming out of the match like a pie set on edge.
“What did you want to see me about?” Horace said.
Snopes puffed the cigar. “Couple days ago I come onto a piece of information which will be of value to you, if I aint mistook.”
“Oh. Of value. What value?”
“I’ll leave that to you. I got another party I could dicker with, but being as me and you was fellow-townsmen and all that.”
Here and there Horace’s mind flicked and darted. Snopes’ family originated somewhere near Frenchman’s Bend and still lived there. He knew of the devious means by which information passed from man to man of that illiterate race which populated that section of the county. But surely it cant be something he’d try to sell to the State, he thought. Even he is not that big a fool.
“You’d better tell me what it is, then,” he said.
He could feel Snopes watching him. “You remember one day you got on the train at Oxford, where you’d been on some bus—”
“Yes,” Horace said.
Snopes puffed the cigar to an even coal, carefully, at some length. He raised his hand and drew it across the back of his neck. “You recall speaking to me about a girl.”
“Yes. Then what?”
“That’s for you to say.”
He could smell the honeysuckle as it bore up the silver slope, and he heard the whippoorwill, liquid, plaintful, reiterant. “You mean, you know where she is?” Snopes said nothing. “And that for a price you’ll tell?” Snopes said nothing. Horace shut his hands and put them in his pockets, shut against his flanks. “What makes you think that information will interest me?”
“That’s for you to judge. I aint conducting no murder case. I wasn’t down there at Oxford looking for her. Of course, if it dont, I’ll dicker with the other party. I just give you the chance.”
Horace turned toward the steps. He moved gingerly, like an old man. “Let’s sit down,” he said. Snopes followed and sat on the step. They sat in the moonlight. “You know where she is?”
“I seen her.” Again he drew his hand across the back of his neck. “Yes, sir. If she aint—hasn’t been there, you can git your money back. I caint say no fairer, can I?”
“And what’s your price?” Horace said. Snopes puffed the cigar to a careful coal. “Go on,” Horace said. “I’m not going to haggle.” Snopes told him. “All right,” Horace said. “I’ll pay it.” He drew his knees up and set his elbows on them and laid his hands to his face. “Where is—Wait. Are you a Baptist, by any chance?”
“My folks is. I’m putty liberal, myself. I aint hidebound in no sense, as you’ll find when you know me better.”
“All right,” Horace said from behind his hands. “Where is s
he?”
“I’ll trust you,” Snopes said. “She’s in a Memphis ’ho’-house.”
23
As Horace entered Miss Reba’s gate and approached the lattice door, someone called his name from behind him. It was evening; the windows in the weathered, scaling wall were close pale squares. He paused and looked back. Around an adjacent corner Snopes’ head peered, turkey-like. He stepped into view. He looked up at the house, then both ways along the street. He came along the fence and entered the gate with a wary air.
“Well, Judge,” he said. “Boys will be boys, wont they?” He didn’t offer to shake hands. Instead he bulked above Horace with that air somehow assured and alert at the same time, glancing over his shoulder at the street. “Like I say, it never done no man no harm to git out now and then and—”
“What is it now?” Horace said. “What do you want with me?”
“Now, now, Judge. I aint going to tell this at home. Git that idea clean out of your mind. If us boys started telling what we know, caint none of us git off a train at Jefferson again, hey?”
“You know as well as I do what I’m doing here. What do you want with me?”
“Sure; sure,” Snopes said. “I know how a feller feels, married and all and not being sho where his wife is at.” Between jerky glances over his shoulder he winked at Horace. “Make your mind easy. It’s the same with me as if the grave knowed it. Only I hate to see a good—” Horace had gone on toward the door. “Judge,” Snopes said in a penetrant undertone. Horace turned. “Dont stay.”
“Dont stay?”
“See her and then leave. It’s a sucker place. Place for farm-boys. Higher’n Monte Carlo. I’ll wait out hyer and I’ll show you a place where—” Horace went on and entered the lattice. Two hours later, as he sat talking to Miss Reba in her room while beyond the door feet and now and then voices came and went in the hall and on the stairs, Minnie entered with a torn scrap of paper and brought it to Horace.
“What’s that?” Miss Reba said.
“That big pie-face-ted man left it fer him,” Minnie said. “He say fer you to come on down there.”
“Did you let him in?” Miss Reba said.
“Nome. He never tried to git in.”
“I guess not,” Miss Reba said. She grunted. “Do you know him?” she said to Horace.
“Yes. I cant seem to help myself,” Horace said. He opened the paper. Torn from a handbill, it bore an address in pencil in a neat, flowing hand.
“He turned up here about two weeks ago,” Miss Reba said. “Come in looking for two boys and sat around the dining-room blowing his head off and feeling the girls’ behinds, but if he ever spent a cent I dont know it. Did he ever give you an order, Minnie?”
“Nome,” Minnie said.
“And couple of nights later he was here again. Didn’t spend nuttin, didn’t do nuttin but talk, and I says to him ‘Look here, mister, folks what uses this waiting-room has got to get on the train now and then.’ So next time he brought a half-pint of whiskey with him. I dont mind that, from a good customer. But when a fellow like him comes here three times, pinching my girls and bringing one half-pint of whiskey and ordering four coca-colas.……Just a cheap, vulgar man, honey. So I told Minnie not to let him in anymore, and here one afternoon I aint no more than laid down for a nap when—I never did find out what he done to Minnie to get in. I know he never give her nuttin. How did he do it, Minnie? He must a showed you something you never seen before. Didn’t he?”
Minnie tossed her head. “He aint got nothing I wantin to see. I done seed too many now fer my own good.” Minnie’s husband had quit her. He didn’t approve of Minnie’s business. He was a cook in a restaurant and he took all the clothes and jewelry the white ladies had given Minnie and went off with a waitress in the restaurant.
“He kept on asking and hinting around about that girl,” Miss Reba said, “and me telling him to go ask Popeye if he wanted to know right bad. Not telling him nuttin except to get out and stay out, see; so this day it’s about two in the afternoon and I’m asleep and Minnie lets him in and he asks her who’s here and she tells him aint nobody, and he goes on up stairs. And Minnie says about that time Popeye comes in. She says she dont know what to do. She’s scared not to let him in, and she says she knows if she does and he spatters that big bastard all over the upstairs floor, she knows I’ll fire her and her husband just quit her and all.
“So Popeye goes on upstairs on them cat feet of his and comes on your friend on his knees, peeping through the keyhole. Minnie says Popeye stood behind him for about a minute, with his hat cocked over one eye. She says he took out a cigarette and struck a match on his thumbnail without no noise and lit it and then she says he reached over and held the match to the back of your friend’s neck, and Minnie says she stood there halfway up the stairs and watched them: that fellow kneeling there with his face like a pie took out of the oven too soon and Popeye squirting smoke through his nose and kind of jerking his head at him. Then she come on down and in about ten seconds here he comes down the stairs with both hands on top of his head, going wump-wump-wump inside like one of these here big dray-horses, and he pawed at the door for about a minute, moaning to himself like the wind in a chimney Minnie says, until she opened the door and left him out. And that’s the last time he’s even rung this bell until tonight.…Let me see that.” Horace gave her the paper. “That’s a nigger whore-house,” she said. “The lous—Minnie, tell him his friend aint here. Tell him I dont know where he went.”
Minnie went out. Miss Reba said:
“I’ve had all sorts of men in my house, but I got to draw the line somewhere. I had lawyers, too. I had the biggest lawyer in Memphis back there in my dining-room, treating my girls. A millionaire. He weighed two hundred and eighty pounds and he had his own special bed made and sent down here. It’s upstairs right this minute. But all in the way of my business, not theirs. I aint going to have none of my girls pestered by lawyers without good reason.”
“And you dont consider this good reason? that a man is being tried for his life for something he didn’t do? You may be guilty right now of harboring a fugitive from justice.”
“Then let them come take him. I got nuttin to do with it. I had too many police in this house to be scared of them.” She raised the tankard and drank and drew the back of her hand across her mouth. “I aint going to have nuttin to do with nuttin I dont know about. What Popeye done outside is his business. When he starts killing folks in my house, then I’ll take a hand.”
“Have you any children?” She looked at him. “I dont mean to pry into your affairs,” he said. “I was just thinking about that woman. She’ll be on the streets again, and God only knows what will become of that baby.”
“Yes,” Miss Reba said. “I’m supporting four, in a Arkansaw home now. Not mine, though.” She lifted the tankard and looked into it, oscillating it gently. She set it down again. “It better not been born at all,” she said. “None of them had.” She rose and came toward him, moving heavily, and stood above him with her harsh breath. She put her hand on his head and tilted his face up. “You aint lying to me, are you?” she said, her eyes piercing and intent and sad. “No, you aint.” She released him. “Wait here a minute. I’ll see.” She went out. He heard her speak to Minnie in the hall, then he heard her toil up the stairs.
He sat quietly as she had left him. The room contained a wooden bed, a painted screen, three over-stuffed chairs, a wall safe. The dressing-table was littered with toilet articles tied in pink satin bows. The mantel supported a wax lily beneath a glass bell; above it, draped in black, the photograph of a meek-looking man with an enormous moustache. On the walls hung a few lithographs of spurious Greek scenes, and one picture done in tatting. Horace rose and went to the door. Minnie sat in a chair in the dim hall.
“Minnie,” he said, “I’ve got to have a drink. A big one.”
He had just finished it when Minnie entered again. “She say fer you to come on up,” she said.
He mounted the stairs. Miss Reba waited at the top. She led the way up the hall and opened a door into a dark room. “You’ll have to talk to her in the dark,” she said. “She wont have no light.” Light from the hall fell through the door and across the bed. “This aint hers,” Miss Reba said. “Wouldn’t even see you in her room at all. I reckon you better humor her until you find out what you want.” They entered. The light fell across the bed, upon a motionless curving ridge of bedclothing, the general tone of the bed unbroken. She’ll smother, Horace thought. “Honey,” Miss Reba said. The ridge did not move. “Here he is, honey. Long as you’re all covered up, let’s have some light. Then we can close the door.” She turned the light on.
“She’ll smother,” Horace said.
“She’ll come out in a minute,” Miss Reba said. “Go on. Tell her what you want. I better stay. But dont mind me. I couldn’t a stayed in my business without learning to be deaf and dumb a long time before this. And if I’d ever a had any curiosity, I’d have worn it out long ago in this house. Here’s a chair.” She turned, but Horace anticipated her and drew up two chairs. He sat down beside the bed and, talking at the top of the unstirring ridge, he told her what he wanted.
“I just want to know what really happened. You wont commit yourself. I know that you didn’t do it. I’ll promise before you tell me a thing that you wont have to testify in Court unless they are going to hang him without it. I know how you feel. I wouldn’t bother you if the man’s life were not at stake.”
The ridge did not move.
“They’re going to hang him for something he never done,” Miss Reba said. “And she wont have nuttin, nobody. And you with diamonds, and her with that poor little kid. You seen it, didn’t you?”
The ridge did not move.
“I know how you feel,” Horace said. “You can use a different name, wear clothes nobody will recognise you in, glasses.”
“They aint going to catch Popeye, honey,” Miss Reba said. “Smart as he is. You dont know his name, noway, and if you have to go and tell them in the court, I’ll send him word after you leave and he’ll go somewheres and send for you. You and him dont want to stay here in Memphis. The lawyer’ll take care of you and you wont have to tell nuttin you—” The ridge moved. Temple flung the covers back and sat up. Her head was tousled, her face puffed, two spots of rouge on her cheekbones and her mouth painted into a savage cupid’s bow. She stared for an instant at Horace with black antagonism, then she looked away.