“They’ll learn meanness anywhere,” Miss Reba said. Minnie leaned down a tray bearing three frosted tankards. Uncle Bud watched with round cornflower eyes as they took one each. The fat woman began to cry again.
“He looked so sweet!” she wailed.
“We all got to suffer it,” Miss Reba said. “Well, may it be a long day,” lifting her tankard. They drank, bowing formally to one another. The fat woman dried her eyes; the two guests wiped their lips with prim decorum. The thin one coughed delicately aside, behind her hand.
“Such good beer,” she said.
“Aint it?” the fat one said. “I always say it’s the greatest pleasure I have to call on Miss Reba.”
They began to talk politely, in decorous half-completed sentences, with little gasps of agreement. The boy had moved aimlessly to the window, peering beneath the lifted shade.
“How long’s he going to be with you, Miss Myrtle?” Miss Reba said.
“Just till Sat’dy,” the fat woman said. “Then he’ll go back home. It makes a right nice little change for him, with me for a week or two. And I enjoy having him.”
“Children are such a comfort to a body,” the thin one said.
“Yes,” Miss Myrtle said. “Is them two nice young fellows still with you, Miss Reba?”
“Yes,” Miss Reba said. “I think I got to get shut of them, though. I aint specially tender-hearted, but after all it aint no use in helping young folks to learn this world’s meanness until they have to. I already had to stop the girls running around the house without no clothes on, and they dont like it.”
They drank again, decorously, handling the tankards delicately, save Miss Reba who grasped hers as though it were a weapon, her other hand lost in her breast. She set her tankard down empty. “I get so dry, seems like,” she said. “Wont you ladies have another?” They murmured, ceremoniously. “Minnie!” Miss Reba shouted.
Minnie came and filled the tankards again. “Reely, I’m right ashamed,” Miss Myrtle said. “But Miss Reba has such good beer. And then we’ve all had a kind of upsetting afternoon.”
“I’m just surprised it wasn’t upset no more,” Miss Reba said. “Giving away all that free liquor like Gene done.”
“It must have cost a good piece of jack,” the thin woman said.
“I believe you,” Miss Reba said. “And who got anything out of it? Tell me that. Except the privilege of having his place hell-full of folks not spending a cent.” She had set her tankard on the table beside her chair. Suddenly she turned her head sharply and looked at it. Uncle Bud was now behind her chair, leaning against the table. “You aint been into my beer, have you, boy?” she said.
“You, Uncle Bud,” Miss Myrtle said. “Aint you ashamed? I declare, it’s getting so I dont dare take him nowhere. I never see such a boy for snitching beer in my life. You come out here and play, now. Come on.”
“Yessum,” Uncle Bud said. He moved, in no particular direction. Miss Reba drank and set the tankard back on the table and rose.
“Since we all been kind of tore up,” she said, “maybe I can prevail on you ladies to have a little sup of gin?”
“No; reely,” Miss Myrtle said.
“Miss Reba’s the perfect hostess,” the thin one said. “How many times you heard me say that, Miss Myrtle?”
“I wouldn’t undertake to say, dearie,” Miss Myrtle said.
Miss Reba vanished behind the screen.
“Did you ever see it so warm for June, Miss Lorraine?” Miss Myrtle said.
“I never did,” the thin woman said. Miss Myrtle’s face began to crinkle again. Setting her tankard down she began to fumble for her handkerchief.
“It just comes over me like this,” she said, “and them singing that Sonny Boy and all. He looked so sweet,” she wailed.
“Now, now,” Miss Lorraine said. “Drink a little beer. You’ll feel better. Miss Myrtle’s took again,” she said, raising her voice.
“I got too tender a heart,” Miss Myrtle said. She snuffled behind the handkerchief, groping for her tankard. She groped for a moment, then it touched her hand. She looked quickly up. “You, Uncle Bud!” she said. “Didn’t I tell you to come out from behind there and play? Would you believe it? The other afternoon when we left here I was so mortified I didn’t know what to do. I was ashamed to be seen on the street with a drunk boy like you.”
Miss Reba emerged from behind the screen with three glasses of gin. “This’ll put some heart into us,” she said. “We’re setting here like three old sick cats.” They bowed formally and drank, patting their lips. Then they began to talk. They were all talking at once, again in half-completed sentences, but without pauses for agreement or affirmation.
“It’s us girls,” Miss Myrtle said. “Men just cant seem to take us and leave us for what we are. They make us what we are, then they expect us to be different. Expect us not to never look at another man, while they come and go as they please.”
“A woman that wants to fool with more than one man at a time is a fool,” Miss Reba said. “They’re all trouble, and why do you want to double your trouble? And the woman that cant stay true to a good man when she gets him, a free-hearted spender that never give her a hour’s uneasiness or a hard word.……” looking at them, her eyes began to fill with a sad, unutterable expression, of baffled and patient despair.
“Now, now,” Miss Myrtle said. She leaned forward and patted Miss Reba’s huge hand. Miss Lorraine made a faint clucking sound with her tongue. “You’ll get yourself started.”
“He was such a good man,” Miss Reba said. “We was like two doves. For eleven years we was like two doves.”
“Now, dearie; now, dearie,” Miss Myrtle said.
“It’s when it comes over me like this,” Miss Reba said. “Seeing that boy laying there under them flowers.”
“He never had no more than Mr Binford had,” Miss Myrtle said. “Now, now. Drink a little beer.”
Miss Reba brushed her sleeve across her eyes. She drank some beer.
“He ought to known better than to take a chance with Popeye’s girl,” Miss Lorraine said.
“Men dont never learn better than that, dearie,” Miss Myrtle said. “Where you reckon they went, Miss Reba?”
“I dont know and I dont care,” Miss Reba said. “And how soon they catch him and burn him for killing that boy, I dont care neither. I dont care none.”
“He goes all the way to Pensacola every summer to see his mother,” Miss Myrtle said. “A man that’ll do that cant be all bad.”
“I dont know how bad you like them, then,” Miss Reba said. “Me trying to run a respectable house, that’s been running a shooting-gallery for twenty years, and him trying to turn it into a peep-show.”
“It’s us poor girls,” Miss Myrtle said, “causes all the trouble and gets all the suffering.”
“I heard two years ago he wasn’t no good that way,” Miss Lorraine said.
“I knew it all the time,” Miss Reba said. “A young man spending his money like water on girls and not never going to bed with one. It’s against nature. All the girls thought it was because he had a little woman out in town somewhere, but I says mark my words, there’s something funny about him. There’s a funny business somewhere.”
“He was a free spender, all right,” Miss Lorraine said.
“The clothes and jewelry that girl bought, it was a shame,” Miss Reba said. “There was a Chinese robe she paid a hundred dollars for—imported, it was—and perfume at ten dollars an ounce; and next morning when I went up there, they was all wadded in the corner and the perfume and rouge busted all over them like a cyclone. That’s what she’d do when she got mad at him, when he’d beat her. After he shut her up and wouldn’t let her leave the house. Having the front of my house watched like it was a.……” She raised the tankard from the table to her lips. Then she halted it, blinking. “Where’s my—”
“Uncle Bud!” Miss Myrtle said. She grasped the boy by the arm and snatched him out from behind
Miss Reba’s chair and shook him, his round head bobbing on his shoulders with an expression of equable idiocy. “Aint you ashamed? Aint you ashamed? Why cant you stay out of these ladies’ beer? I’m a good mind to take that dollar back and make you buy Miss Reba a can of beer, I am for a fact. Now, you go over there by that window and stay there, you hear?”
“Nonsense,” Miss Reba said. “There wasn’t much left. You ladies are about ready too, aint you? Minnie!”
Miss Lorraine touched her mouth with her handkerchief. Behind her glasses her eyes rolled aside in a veiled, secret look. She laid the other hand to her flat spinster’s breast.
“We forgot about your heart, honey,” Miss Myrtle said. “Dont you reckon you better take gin this time?”
“Reely, I—” Miss Lorraine said.
“Yes; do,” Miss Reba said. She rose heavily and fetched three more glasses of gin from behind the screen. Minnie entered and refilled the tankards. They drank, patting their lips.
“That’s what was going on, was it?” Miss Lorraine said.
“First I knowed was when Minnie told me there was something funny going on,” Miss Reba said. “How he wasn’t here hardly at all, gone about every other night, and that when he was here, there wasn’t no signs at all the next morning when she cleaned up. She’d hear them quarrelling, and she said it was her wanting to get out and he wouldn’t let her. With all them clothes he was buying her, mind, he didn’t want her to leave the house, and she’d get mad and lock the door and wouldn’t even let him in.”
“Maybe he went off and got fixed up with one of these glands, these monkey glands, and it quit on him,” Miss Myrtle said.
“Then one morning he come in with Red and took him up there. They stayed about an hour and left, and Popeye didn’t show up again until next morning. Then him and Red come back and stayed up there about an hour. When they left, Minnie come and told me what was going on, so next day I waited for them. I called him in here and I says ‘Look here, you son of a buh—’ ” She ceased. For an instant the three of them sat motionless, a little forward. Then slowly their heads turned and they looked at the boy leaning against the table.
“Uncle Bud, honey,” Miss Myrtle said, “dont you want to go and play in the yard with Reba and Mr Binford?”
“Yessum,” the boy said. He went toward the door. They watched him until the door closed upon him. Miss Lorraine drew her chair up; they leaned together.
“And that’s what they was doing?” Miss Myrtle said.
“I says ‘I been running a house for twenty years, but this is the first time I ever had anything like this going on in it. If you want to turn a stud in to your girl’ I says ‘go somewhere else to do it. I aint going to have my house turned into no French joint.’ ”
“The son of a bitch,” Miss Lorraine said.
“He’d ought to’ve had sense enough to got a old ugly man,” Miss Myrtle said. “Tempting us poor girls like that.”
“Men always expects us to resist temptation,” Miss Lorraine said. She was sitting upright like a school-teacher. “The lousy son of a bitch.”
“Except what they offers themselves,” Miss Reba said. “Then watch them.…Every morning for four days that was going on, then they didn’t come back. For a week Popeye didn’t show up at all, and that girl wild as a young mare. I thought he was out of town on business maybe, until Minnie told me he wasn’t and that he give her five dollars a day not to let that girl out of the house nor use the telephone. And me trying to get word to him to come and take her out of my house because I didn’t want nuttin like that going on in it. Yes, sir, Minnie said the two of them would be nekkid as two snakes, and Popeye hanging over the foot of the bed without even his hat took off, making a kind of whinnying sound.”
“Maybe he was cheering for them,” Miss Lorraine said. “The lousy son of a bitch.”
Feet came up the hall; they could hear Minnie’s voice lifted in adjuration. The door opened. She entered, holding Uncle Bud erect by one hand. Limp-kneed he dangled, his face fixed in an expression of glassy idiocy. “Miss Reba,” Minnie said, “this boy done broke in the icebox and drunk a whole bottle of beer. You, boy!” she said, shaking him, “stan up!” Limply he dangled, his face rigid in a slobbering grin. Then upon it came an expression of concern, consternation; Minnie swung him sharply away from her as he began to vomit.
26
When the sun rose, Horace had not been to bed nor even undressed. He was just finishing a letter to his wife, addressed to her at her father’s in Kentucky, asking for a divorce. He sat at the table, looking down at the single page written neatly and illegibly over, feeling quiet and empty for the first time since he had found Popeye watching him across the spring four weeks ago. While he was sitting there he began to smell coffee from somewhere. “I’ll finish this business and then I’ll go to Europe. I am sick. I am too old for this. I was born too old for it, and so I am sick to death for quiet.”
He shaved and made coffee and drank a cup and ate some bread. When he passed the hotel, the bus which met the morning train was at the curb, with the drummers getting into it. Clarence Snopes was one of them, carrying a tan suit case.
“Going down to Jackson for a couple of days on a little business,” he said. “Too bad I missed you last night. I come on back in a car. I reckon you was settled for the night, maybe?” He looked down at Horace, vast, pasty, his intention unmistakable. “I could have took you to a place most folks dont know about. Where a man can do just whatever he is big enough to do. But there’ll be another time, since I done got to know you better.” He lowered his voice a little, moving a little aside. “Dont you be uneasy. I aint a talker. When I’m here, in Jefferson, I’m one fellow; what I am up town with a bunch of good sports aint nobody’s business but mine and theirn. Aint that right?”
Later in the morning, from a distance he saw his sister on the street ahead of him turn and disappear into a door. He tried to find her by looking into all the stores within the radius of where she must have turned, and asking the clerks. She was in none of them. The only place he did not investigate was a stairway that mounted between two stores, to a corridor of offices on the first floor, one of which was that of the District Attorney, Eustace Graham.
Graham had a club foot, which had elected him to the office he now held. He worked his way into and through the State University; as a youth the town remembered him as driving wagons and trucks for grocery stores. During his first year at the University he made a name for himself by his industry. He waited on table in the commons and he had the government contract for carrying the mail to and from the local postoffice at the arrival of each train, hobbling along with the sack over his shoulder: a pleasant, open-faced young man with a word for everyone and a certain alert rapacity about the eyes. During his second year he let his mail contract lapse and he resigned from his job in the commons; he also had a new suit. People were glad that he had saved through his industry to where he could give all his time to his studies. He was in the law school then, and the law professors groomed him like a race-horse. He graduated well, though without distinction. “Because he was handicapped at the start,” the professors said. “If he had had the same start that the others had.…He will go far,” they said.
It was not until he had left school that they learned that he had been playing poker for three years in the office of a livery stable, behind drawn shades. When, two years out of school, he got elected to the State legislature, they began to tell an anecdote of his school days.
It was in the poker game in the livery stable office. The bet came to Graham. He looked across the table at the owner of the stable, who was his only remaining opponent.
“How much have you got there, Mr Harris?” he said.
“Forty-two dollars, Eustace,” the proprietor said. Eustace shoved some chips into the pot. “How much is that?” the proprietor said.
“Forty-two dollars, Mr Harris.”
“Hmmm,” the proprietor said. He examined his hand. ?
??How many cards did you draw, Eustace?”
“Three, Mr Harris.”
“Hmmm. Who dealt the cards, Eustace?”
“I did, Mr Harris.”
“I pass, Eustace.”
He had been District Attorney but a short time, yet already he had let it be known that he would announce for Congress on his record of convictions, so when he found himself facing Narcissa across the desk in his dingy office, his expression was like that when he had put the forty-two dollars into the pot.
“I only wish it weren’t your brother,” he said. “I hate to see a brother-in-arms, you might say, with a bad case.” She was watching him with a blank, enveloping look. “After all, we’ve got to protect society, even when it does seem.……”
“Are you sure he cant win?” she said.
“Well, the first principle of law is, God alone knows what the jury will do. Of course, you cant expect—”
“But you dont think he will.”
“Naturally, I—”
“You have good reason to think he cant. I suppose you know things about it that he doesn’t.”
He looked at her briefly. Then he picked up a pen from his desk and began to scrape at the point with a paper cutter. “This is purely confidential. I am violating my oath of office; I wont have to tell you that. But it may save you worry to know that he hasn’t a chance in the world. I know what the disappointment will be to him, but that cant be helped. We happen to know that the man is guilty. So if there’s any way you know of to get your brother out of the case, I’d advise you to do it. A losing lawyer is like a losing anything else, ballplayer or merchant or doctor: his business is to—”
“So the quicker he loses, the better it would be, wouldn’t it?” she said. “If they hung the man and got it over with.” His hands became perfectly still. He did not look up. She said, her tone cold and level: “I have reasons for wanting Horace out of this case. The sooner the better. Three nights ago that Snopes, the one in the legislature, telephoned out home, trying to find him. The next day he went to Memphis. I dont know what for. You’ll have to find that out yourself. I just want Horace out of this business as soon as possible.”