“He didn’t go back home. He hid in the bushes. He was hungry and thirsty, but he stayed hidden all that day, lying on his face in a ditch. When it turned afternoon he crawled to the edge of the woods, where he could see his father and his brother and his two older sisters working in the field. It was after dark when he went home. He never spoke to the boss again. He never saw him closer than on the saddle-mare, going about the fields, until he was a grown man. But he watched the boss, the way he sat the horse and wore his hat and talked; sometimes he would hide and talk to himself, using the boss’ gestures, watching his shadow on the wall of the barn or the bank of the ditch: ‘Dont you never come to my front door again. You go around to the back. Dont you never come to my front door again.’ He swore then that some day he too would be rich, with a horse, saddled and unsaddled by niggers, to ride, and a hammock to lie in during the hot hours, with his shoes off. He had never owned shoes at all, so the comparative was to wear shoes all the time, winter and summer; the superlative, to own shoes and not even wear them.
“Then he was grown. He had a wife and a child; he owned a country store in the neighborhood. His wife could read, but he had had no chance to learn. So he memorised his credit transactions as he made them—the spools of thread, the nickles’ worth of lard or axle-grease or kerosene—and recited them to her over the supper table while she wrote them down in a book. He never made a mistake, because he couldn’t afford to.
“He and the boss would play poker in the store at night. They would play on an improvised table, by lamplight, using wrought nails for counters; he would have corn whiskey in a jug, a glass, spoon, a cracked mug of sugar. He never drank himself; he does not know the taste of it to this day, he told me. The boss was an old man then, with a white, tobacco-stained moustache and shaky hands and eyes that didn’t see so good even by daylight. So it couldn’t have been very difficult to fool him. Anyway, they would bet back and forth with the nails, the two of them. ‘I’ve got three queens,’ the boss would say, reaching for the nails. ‘Beat that, by Henry.’ Then the other would lay his cards down on the table; the boss would lean forward, peering, his hands arrested above the nails. ‘Hit’s a straight,’ the other says. ‘I was lucky again that time.’ The boss curses; he takes up a cold cigar in his shaking hand and sucks at it. ‘Pour me another toddy,’ he says. ‘Deal the cards.’
“He came to Memphis. He owned a grocery store at first, selling to niggers and wops on the edge of town. His wife and child lived in two rooms above the store, with a vegetable garden at the back. His wife liked it there. But when he got richer and moved into town and got still richer, she didn’t like it. They lived close up, where they could see the electric signs from the upstairs window, and he was making money fast then every time there was an election, but they didn’t have a vegetable garden. That was what killed her: not the money; the fact that they didn’t have a garden, and that there was a negro servant in the house, which bothered her. So she died and he buried her in a private lot; the cenotaph cost twelve thousand dollars, he told me. But he could afford it, he said. He could have spent fifty thousand on it then, he said. ‘Ah,’ I said; ‘you had some paving contracts.’ ‘Folks needs to walk,’ he said. ‘Vote, too,’ I said. ‘That’s right,’ he said. He told me he has eight hundred and ten votes that he can drop into any ballot box like so many peanut-hulls.
“Then I found out about the girl, the daughter. He told me that she knew a lot of the folks that went to the Guards’ Ball; she had met them at the balls at West End and at roadhouses. She told him about it herself; almost every night she would go out to another ball, with Harrison Coates or the Sandeman boys or that Heustace one; I forget his name. She had her own car, so she would leave the house alone and meet them at the ball, she told him. And he believed it; he even called them ‘balls’. ‘But she’s as good as they are,’ he said. ‘Even if they dont come to the house for her, like young fellows used to do in my day. They may not know it. But there aint nothing for them to be ashamed of. She’s as good as any of them.’
“I met Harrison Coates on the street; I mean young Harrison, the one that got fired out of Sewanee last year. ‘I’ve been hearing about these balls out at the Grotto,’ I said. He looked at me. ‘That’s what she calls them,’ I said. ‘What she told her father they were. She said you and the Sandeman boys were there.’
“ ‘Who did?’ he said.
“ ‘So you were there,’ I said. I told him her name.
“ ‘Oh,’ he said.
“ ‘So you do know her.’
“ ‘You know; we’d kind of take a night off and go out there. Maybe pick up a girl or two on the way out.’
“ ‘Without asking their names,’ I said. ‘Was that how you met her?’
“ ‘Met who?’ he said. I told him again. ‘Not that Martin?’
“ ‘The same one,’ I said. ‘I wont tell, though.’
“ ‘I was wondering where you knew her,’ he said. ‘Jeez; I thought—’ Then he stopped.
“ ‘Thought what?’ He just looked at me. ‘What is she like?’ I said.
“ ‘A lot of stocking and paint. Like most of them. Hack Sandeman was the one that knew her before. I dont know where. I never asked. You mean the one with that lemon-colored Duplex, dont you?’
“ ‘That’s the one. The only car like that in town.’
“ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Jeez; I thought—’ he stopped again.
“ ‘What? Thought what?’
“ ‘Well, she was all dressed up, in some kind of a dress with diamonds and truck. When I went up to her to meet her, there was something about her; kind of.…’ He looked at me.
“ ‘Belligerent?’ I said.
“ ‘I dont know anything about her. I never saw her before. She might be all right, for all I know. Sure; she—’
“ ‘I didn’t mean anything by belligerent,’ I said. ‘I mean, like she was watching you, careful; like she was waiting to find out what you were.’
“ ‘Oh,’ he said; ‘sure. So I thought—’
“ ‘What?’
“ ‘With that car and all. We thought maybe she was somebody’s sweetie. Some bird’s car, maybe, and her on the loose that night and him coming in all of a sudden, looking for her and the car. From Manuel Street or Toccopola; somewhere down there.’
“ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You thought that?’
“ ‘We didn’t know it was that Martin. I never paid much attention to the name, because I thought it would be faked. She would just say to meet her somewhere and we would be there, and she would come along in that yellow car and we would get in, maybe looking behind all the time; you know, watching for him.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said. But already Martin had told me what a good girl she was, and I know she is. I know she is just a country girl, a lot further lost than he is himself, because he at least believes he knows where he wants to go. She had no mother, you see. All she wants is silk stockings, and to drive that yellow car fast past the red lights, with the cops touching their caps to it. But that didn’t suit him. He took her to Washington and put her in school. It was the first time either of them had ever been in a pullman even. She stayed three weeks, when he (he was back home again) got a letter from the Mother Superior. She had cried ever since he drove off that afternoon in a taxi-cab and left her there; when he met the train at the station she got off, still crying, newly powdered and painted above the streaked tears. She had lost fifteen pounds, he said.
“And now the Guards’ Ball. Maybe he was grooming her for it all the time. And she would go, not wanting to; she would have more sense than he; and be ignored, and then it would be all over. The Ball, I mean, and his wanting her to be there willy-nilly, for her own sake, as he believes. But he cant see that. He would never see it, not even on the next day, with her and Memphis and all standing against him. He would just believe that his own flesh had betrayed him; that she was simply not the man her father was. What do you think of that?”
“Nothing,”
the woman said. Her eyes were closed; her head lay back on the pillow. “I’ve heard it before. The same story about the same fly and the same molasses.”
“You think that I would? That I will?”
The woman said nothing. She might have been asleep.
V
That was in the early spring. Two months later, on a bright morning in May, when Dr Blount emerged from the elevator at his floor he saw, shapeless, patient and shabby, in silhouette against the bright windows at the end of the corridor, a man waiting at the door to his office. They entered the office; again they faced one another across the neat, bare desk.
“You have a street named for your grandpaw,” Martin said. “You wont want that. Some of them have got parks named for them; ones that aint no more worthy of it, but that happen to have more money. I could do that.” He wore the same tie, the same cheap and shabby suit, the same stained felt hat in his hand, speaking in the same level, flat voice of a countryman. “I’d do more than that. I’d do for you what them that deserve you and your grandpappy haven’t done. The one that was killed with Forrest, I mean. My grandpappy was killed too. We never knowed what army he was in nor where he went. He just went off one day and never come back; maybe he was just tired of staying at home. But my sort dont count. There was plenty of us; always was, always will be. It’s your sort, the ones that’s got the names the streets and the parks would want.” All the time he talked, he was looking at Blount, at the thin, sick, unpredictable face behind rimless nose glasses opposite him across the desk. “There aint no right art gallery in Memphis, and aint like to be withouten I build it. Put her name on that list, and I’ll build a art gallery in Sandeman Park and name it after your grandpappy that was killed with Forrest.”
VI
In the park, before the gutted pit, above the savage and random refuse of the digging, the broad sign stood upright in all weather, lettered in red on a white ground Blount Memorial Art Gallery. Windham & Healy, Architects. He passed it every day, but he never stopped. He would enter the park and see the sign looming suddenly above the clipped green of tended hedges on a knoll, and drive swiftly past. “It’s not for me,” he told himself, alone in his swift and isolated glass cabinet, moving past and on, the sign falling behind; “it’s for the citizens, the city. I will derive nothing from it; not one tittle more than any dweller in a Beale or Gayoso street tenement who has carfare out here.” He would drive on. What calls he made were brief. He would sit in the straight chairs, waiting for the gouty and bed-ridden women to learn of it as he used to wait in the dark closet of his childhood for the sound of the supper bell. Then he would go home, still immune, to supper with his likewise oblivious grandmother and aunt. “It’s nice of the city,” the aunt said. “But I must say, it’s not a bit too soon.” Then she would look at him, her eyes sharp, curious, with a woman’s instinctive affinity for evil. “But what in the world you could have done, have said to them.…”
“Nothing,” he said above his plate. “They did it of their own accord.”
“You mean, you knew nothing about it until they began to break the ground?”
“I knew nothing,” he said. After supper he would go out again, to rush alone along the dim and light-glared asphalt, turning again into the shadowy park, passing the sudden and now indecipherable loom of the sign, saying to himself, “How could I have said yes? How could I?”
Late one afternoon he stopped his car before the big house where the sick woman lived. He mounted to the same bedroom and found her in the same chair, beneath the same rug, though the cold fireplace was filled with fluted green paper. “I have wondered what has been the matter with you lately,” she said. He told her, sitting forward on the hard, straight chair, talking quietly; she watching his face in the failing light. “I didn’t think you were that rich,” she said. “And I didn’t believe that the city.…”
“Yes,” Blount said. “He is right. Every man has his price. It’s because he is right. There is something about being right that’s better than being courageous or even honorable.”
“So it seems,” the woman said.
“The others. They have parks named for them, and this and that. Because they had the money, the cash, at the right time. It doesn’t matter how they got it. Because there were not many reputable ways in those days to get money in this country; the question is, to have had it. To have had it; do you see? If Grandfather or his father had just done sixty years ago what I did, it would be all right. Do you see?”
“But they didn’t,” the woman said. “But that dont matter. It dont matter.”
“No,” Blount said. “That’s done. It’s all done now. But not too much done. I have enough, Grandmother and I, to cover the work that has been done, to pay the contractor his forfeit. Stop it where it is. Leave the sign too: a monument.”
“Then stop it,” the woman said.
“You mean, cry off?”
“Just take her name off the list. That’s all you have to do. Let him build the gallery. He owes that much to the city. It’s the city’s money he is building it with, that’s digging the hole; dont you know that?”
“No,” Blount said. She had been looking at him. Now her head lay back on the pillow; again her eyes were closed as though she slept.
“You men,” she said. “You poor, fool men.”
“Yes,” Blount said. “Us poor, fool men. But we are just men. If the city let him rob it, I am in a way responsible. But this has nothing to do with the city. At one time I had myself fooled. I believed that the city would derive from this, not I. But even a man’s self cannot fool itself always. A man’s self, that is. Maybe women are different. But we are just men; we cant help that. So what must I do?”
“I’ve told you. Strike her name off. Or let it stay on. After all, what does it matter? Suppose there were a hundred girls like that there? What would it matter?”
“Yes. She wont like it. She will be sorry. It will be terrible for him.”
“For him?”
“Didn’t you just say, us poor fool men?”
“Go and see him,” the woman said.
“And cry off?”
“You men,” the woman said. Her head lay back on the pillow; her eyes were closed. Her hands, thick, soft, swollen, ringed, lay on the chair-arms. “You poor, fool men.”
VII
Martin’s house was on a knoll in a new subdivision. It was in the Spanish style; a big house, with courts and balconies, looming huge in the twilight. When Blount drove up, the yellow roadster stood under the porte-cochere. He was admitted by a negro in his shirtsleeves, who opened the door and looked out at him with a kind of insolent brusqueness. “I want to see Mr Martin,” Blount said.
“He eating supper now,” the negro said, holding the door. “What you want with him?”
“Get away,” Blount said. He pushed the door back, and entered. “Tell Mr Martin Dr Blount wants to see him.”
“Doctor who?”
“Blount.” The hall was opulent, oppressive, chilly. To the right was a lighted room. “Can I go in there?” Blount said.
“What you want with Mr Martin?” the negro said.
Blount stopped and turned back. “You tell him it’s Dr Blount,” he said. The negro was young, saddle-colored, with a pocked face. “Go on,” Blount said. The negro quit looking at Blount. He went down the hall, toward another lighted passage. Blount entered a huge, raftered drawing room that looked like a window-set in a furniture store. There were rugs that looked as though they had never been trodden on; furniture and lamps that looked like they had been sent out that morning on approval; dead, still, costly. When Martin entered, he wore the same cheap serge suit. He was in his stocking feet. They did not shake hands. They did not even seat themselves. Blount stood beside a table set with objects which also looked like they had been borrowed or stolen from a shop-window. “I must ask you to let me withdraw from our agreement,” he said.
“You want to back out,” Martin said.
“Y
es,” Blount said.
“The contract is let, and the ground broken,” Martin said. “You must have seen that.”
“Yes,” Blount said. He put his hand into his breast. From beyond the door came a swift tap-tap-tapping of hard and brittle heels. The girl entered, already talking.
“I’m guh—” She saw Blount and stopped: a thin girl with tow-colored hair tortured about a small, savagely painted mask, the eyes at once challenging and uncertain; belligerent. Her dress was too red and too long, her mouth too red, her heels too high. She wore ear-rings and carried a cloak of white fur over her arm, though it was only August.
“This here is Dr Blount,” Martin said.
She made no response, no sign at all; her glance lay for a moment upon him, quick, belligerent, veiled, and went on. “I’m gone,” she said. She went on, her heels brittle and hard and swift on the hard floor. Blount heard the voice of the pock-marked negro at the front door: “Where you going tonight?” Then the front door closed. A moment later he heard the car, the yellow roadster. It whined past the windows in second gear, at high speed. From his breast pocket Blount took a sheaf of embossed papers.
“I have here bonds for fifty thousand,” he said. He laid them on the table. Martin had not moved, motionless in his socks on the expensive rug. “Maybe you will take my note for the balance.”