Last summer Lawyer had to do something, he didn’t know what. Now he had to do something, he didn’t care what. I dont even think he especially hunted around for something. I think he just reached his hand and snatched something, the first nearest thing, and it just happened to be that old quick-vanishing power-plant brass that ever body in Jefferson, including Flem Snopes—sholy including Flem Snopes—had been trying out of pure and simple politeness to forget about.
When as acting City Attorney he drawed up the suit against Mayor de Spain’s bonding company, charging malfeasance in office and criminal connivance or however they put it, naturally ever body thought all he aimed to do then was to walk in and lay the papers on Manfred de Spain’s desk. But they was wrong; he never no more wanted to buy anything from De Spain than he did that night in the alley behind that Christmas Ball, when his brother-in-law told him he couldn’t fight because he never knowed how—a piece of information already in Lawyer’s possession, having already lived with hisself for more or less twenty-twoaybe twenty-three years. He didn’t want nothing from De Spain because the only thing De Spain had that he wanted, Lawyer didn’t know his-self that was what he wanted until his paw told him that last afternoon.
So Lawyer filed the suit. And the first thing was the pleasant young feller from the bonding company in his nice city suit getting off the morning train with his nice city suitcase, saying “Now, fellers, let’s all have a drink of this-here nice city whiskey and see if we can jest all get together on this thing,” then spending one quick horrified day, mostly on the long-distance telephone between talking with them two Negro firemen, Tom Tom Bird and Tomey’s Turl Beauchamp, while waiting for Flem to get back from where he had went suddenly on a visit into the next county.
So on the third day the one come from the bonding company that was big enough in it to have the gray hair and come in a Pullman in striped britches and a gold watch chain big enough to boom logs with and gold eyeglasses and even a gold toothpick and the pigeon-tailed coat and the plug hat until by nightfall you couldn’t even a got a glass of water in the Holston Hotel for ever porter and waiter hanging around his door to wait on him and he could a owned ever other Negro in Jefferson too by tomorrow if he had had anything he could a done with them, saying “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen.” And the mayor coming in where they was all setting around the table, to stand there laughing at them for a while and then saying,
“You’ll have to excuse me. Even the mayor of just Jefferson, Mississippi, has got to do a little work now and then.” And Lawyer Stevens setting there calm and white in the face and looking exactly like he done that night when he told his brother-in-law: “Can you suh-jest a better way for me to learn how to fight than the one I just tried?”
And Flem Snopes hadn’t got back yet and in fact they couldn’t even locate him, like he had evidently went on a camping trip in the woods where there wasn’t no telephone; and the big boss one, the one with the white vest and the gold toothpick, says: “Im sure Mr de Spain would resign. Why dont we jest let him resign and forget all this here unhappiness?” and Lawyer Stevens says, “He’s a good mayor. We dont want him to resign,” and the white vest says, “Then what do you want? You will have to prove our client’s representative stole any brass and all you have is the word of them two nigras because Mr Snopes his-self has went out of town.”
“That water tank aint went out of town,” Lawyer says. “We can drain that water tank.”
So what they called was a special meeting of the board of aldermen. What they got was like one of them mass carcasses to vote between two beauty queens, the courthouse bell beginning to ring about eight oclock like it actively was some kind of a night session of court, and the folks coming up the streets and gathering in the Square, laughing and making jokes back and forth, until they decided right quick that the mayor’s office wouldn’t hold even the start of it, so they moved into the courtroom upstairs like it was Court.
Because this was just January; that Christmas Ball wasn’t barely three weeks old yet. Even when they chose sides it was still jest fun, because most of them had jest come to watch and listen anyhow, even after somebody beat the Judg19;s mallet on the table until they quit laughing and joking and hushed and one of the aldermen said, “I dont know how much it will cost to drain that tank, but I for one will be damned—”
“I do,” Lawyer Stevens says. “I already asked. It will cost three hundred and eighty dollars to rig a auxiliary tank long enough to drain and then fill the other one up again and then dismantle the auxiliary and get shut of it. It wont cost nothing to send somebody down inside of it to look because I’ll do that myself.”
“All right,” the alderman says. “Then I will still be damned—”
“All right,” Lawyer says. “Then I will pay for it myself,” and the old bonding feller, the white-vest one, saying “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen.” And the young one, the first one, standing up now and hollering:
“Dont you see, Mr Stevens? Dont you see, Mr Stevens? If you find brass in the tank, there wont be no crime because the brass already belongs to the city?”
“I already thought of that too,” Lawyer says. “The brass still belongs to the city even if we dont drain the tank. Only, where is it at?” and the little bonding feller saying:
“Wait! Wait! That aint what I meant. I mean if the brass aint missing there aint no crime because it wasn’t never stole.”
“Tom Tom Bird and Tomey’s Turl Beauchamp says it was because they stole it,” Lawyer says. Now they was two aldermen talking at once, saying:
“Hold up here; hold up here,” until finally the loudest one, Henry Best, won:
“Then who are you charging, Gavin? Are them nigras under Manfred’s bond too?”
“But there aint no crime! We know the brass is in that tank because that’s where the nigras said they put it.” The little bonding feller was hollering and all this time the big one, the white-vest one, still saying “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen,” like a big bass drum a far piece off that never nobody paid any attention to nohow; until Henry Best hollered,
“Wait, god damn it,” so loud that they did hush and Henry said: “Them nigras confessed they stole that brass, but there aint no evidence of theft until we drain that tank. So right now, they didn’t steal no brass. And if we drain that damn tank and find brass in it, they did steal brass and are guilty of theft. Only, as soon as we find brass in that tank, they never stole any brass because the brass is not just once more in the possession of the city: it aint never been out of it. God damn it, Gavin, is that what you are trying to tell us? Then what the hell do you want? What in hell do you want?”
And Lawyer Stevens setting there calm and still, with his face still white and still as paper. And maybe he hadn’t learned how to fight yet neither. But he still hadn’t heard about no rule against trying. “That’s right,” he says. “If there is brass in that tank—valuable property of the city unlawfully constrained into that tank by the connivance ad condonance of a employee of the city, a crime has been committed. If we find brass in that tank—valuable property belonging to the city unlawfully constrained into that tank with the connivance or condonance of a employee of the city, even if it is recovered, a attempt at a crime has been condoned by a employee of the city. But that tank per se and what brass may or may not per se be in it, is beside the point. What we have engaged the attention of this honorable bonding company about is, jest which malfeasance did our honorable mayor commit? Jest which crime, by who, did our chief servant of our city condone?” Because he didn’t know either what he wanted. And even when next day his paw told him what his behavior looked like he wanted and for a minute Lawyer even agreed, that still wasn’t it.
Because that was all they got then, which wasn’t nothing to be settled jest off-hand by a passel of amateurs like a alderman board. It was something for a professional, a sho-enough active judge, whether they aimed to or not, they had done got themselves now to where they would have to have
a court. Though I didn’t know Judge Dukinfield was in the crowd until Henry Best stood up and looked out at us and hollered: “Judge Dukinfield, is Judge Dukinfield still here?” and Judge Dukinfield stood up in the back and says,
“Yes, Henry?”
“I reckon we’ll have to have help, Judge,” Henry says. “I reckon you heard as much of this as we done, and we all hope you made more sense out of it than we done—”
“Yes; all right,” Judge Dukinfield says. “We will hold the hearing here in chambers tomorrow morning at nine. I dont believe either plaintiff or defendant will need more counsel than are represented tonight but they are welcome to bring juniors if they like—or should we say seconds?”
Then we all got up to leave, still laughing and talking and joking back and forth, still not taking no sides but jest mainly enjoying it, jest being in principle on whichever other side from them two foreign bonding fellers for the simple reason that they was foreigners, not even paying no attention to Lawyer’s twin sister standing there by him now until you could almost hear her telling Henry Best: “Now you’re satisfied; maybe you can let him alone now;” not even paying no attention when a boy—I didn’t recognise who he was—come burrowing through and up to the table and handed Lawyer something and Lawyer taken it; not realising until tomorrow that something had happened between that meeting that night and the next morning that we never knowed about and it’s my opinion we aint going to, just going on home or about our business until the Square was empty except for that one light in his and his paw’s office over the hardware store where he was setting alone—provided it was him of course and providing he was alone—how does the feller say it? inviting his soul?
FIVE
GAVIN STEVENS
The poets are wrong of course. According to them I should even have known the note was on the way, let alone who it was from. As it was, I didnt even know who it was from after I re
ad it. But then, poets are almost always wrong about facts. That’sbecause they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
No: that’s wrong. It’s because you dont dare to hope, you are afraid to hope. Not afraid of the extent of hope of which you are capable, but that you—the frail web of bone and flesh snaring that fragile temeritous boundless aspirant sleepless with dream and hope—cannot match it; as Ratliff would say, Knowing always you wont never be man enough to do the harm and damage you would do if you were just man enough.—and, he might add, or maybe I do it for him, thank God for it. Ay, thank God for it or thank anything else for it that will give you any peace after it’s too late; peace in which to coddle that frail web and its unsleeping ensnared anguish both on your knee and whisper to it: There, there, it’s all right; I know you are brave.
The first thing I did on entering the office was to turn on all the lights; if it hadn’t been January and the thermometer in the low thirties I would have propped the door to stand open too for that much more of a Mississippi gentleman’s tender circumspection toward her good name. The second thing I did was to think My God all the lights on for the whole town to see because now I would have Grover Winbush (the night marshal) up the stairs as surely as if I had sent for him, since with the usual single desk lamp on he would have thought I was merely working and would let me alone, where with all of them burning like this he would come up certainly, not to surprise the intruder but to participate in the conversation.
So I should have leaped to turn them off again, knowing that once I moved, turned loose the chair arms I would probably bolt, flee, run home to Maggie who has tried to be my mother ever since ours died and some day may succeed. So I just sat there thinking how if there were only time and means to communicate, suggest, project onto her wherever she might be at this moment between her home and here, the rubber soles for silence and the dark enveloping night-blending cloak and scarf for invisibility; then in the next second thinking how the simple suggestion of secret shoes and concealing cloak would forever abrogate and render null all need for either since although I might still be I, she must forever be some lesser and baser other to be vulnerable to the base insult of secrecy and fearfulness and silence.
So when I heard her feet on the stairs I didn’t even think For God’s sake take off your shoes or at least tiptoe. What I thought was How can you move and make that little noise, with only the sound of trivial human feet: who should have moved like Wagner: not with but in the sonorous sweep of thunder or brass music, even the very limbs moving in tune with the striding other in a sound of tuned wind and storm and mighty harps. I thought Since making this more or less secret date to meet me here at this hour of night is her idea, at least she will have to look at me. Which she had never done yet. If she had ever even seen me yet while I was too busy playing the fool because of her to notice, buffoon for her, playing with tacks in the street like a vicious boy, using not even honest bribery but my own delayed vicious juvenility to play on the natural and normal savagery (plus curiosity; dont forget that) of an authentic juvenile—to gain what? for what? what did I want, what was I trying for: like the child striking matches in a haystack yet at the same time trembling with terror lest he does see holocaust.
u see? terror. I hadn’t even taken time to wonder what in hell she wanted with me: only the terror after the boy put the note in my hand and I found privacy to open and read it and still (the terror) in the courage, desperation, despair—call it whatever you like and whatever it was and wherever I found it—to cross to the door and open it and think as I always had each time I was that near, either to dance with her or merely to challenge and give twenty or thirty pounds to an impugner of her honor: Why, she can’t possibly be this small, this little, apparently standing only inches short of my own six feet, yet small, little; too small to have displaced enough of my peace to contain this much unsleep, to have disarranged this much of what I had at least thought was peace. In fact I might have said she stood almost eye to eye with me if she had looked at me that long, which she did not: that one quick unhasting blue (they were dark blue) envelopment and then no more; no more needing to look—if she ever had—at me, but rather instead one single complete perception to which that adjective complete were as trivial as the adjective dampness to the blue sea itself; that one single glance to add me up and then subtract and then dispense as if that calm unhasting blueness had picked me up whole and palped me over front and back and sides and set me down again. But she didn’t sit down herself. She didn’t even move yet. Then I realised suddenly that she was simply examining the office as women examine a room they have never seen before.
“Wont you sit down?” I said.
“All right,” she said. And, sitting in that ordinary chair across the desk, she was still too small to hold, compass without one bursting seam all that unslumber, all that chewed anguish of the poet’s bitter thumbs which were not just my thumbs but all male Jefferson’s or actually all male earth’s by proxy, that thumb being all men’s fate who had earned or deserved the right to call themselves men; too small, too little to contain, bear those … I had, must have, seen her at least five years ago though it was only last summer that I must have looked at her; say only since last summer, since until then I had been too busy passing bar examinations to have had time to prone and supine myself for proper relinquishment; call it two hundred for round numbers from June to January with some (not much) out for sleeping—two hundred nights of fevered projection of my brother’s mantle to defend and save her honor from its ravisher.
You see? It still had not once occurred to me to ask her what she wanted. I was not even waiting for her to tell me. I was simply waiting for those two hundred nights to culminate as I had spent at least some of them or some small part of them expecting when this moment came, if it did, would, was fated: I to be swept up as into storm or hurricane or tornado itself and tossed and wrung and wrenched and consumed, the light
last final spent insentient husk to float slowing and weightless, for a moment longer during the long vacant rest of life, and then no more.
Only it didn’t happen, no consumption to wrench, wring and consume me down to the ultimate last proud indestructible grateful husk, but rather simply to destroy me as the embalmer destroys with very intactness what was still life, was still life even though it was only the living worm’s. Because she was not examining the office again because I realised now that she had never stopped doing it, examining it rapidly once more with that comprehensive female glance.
son“I thought it would be all right here,” she said. “Better here.”
“Here?” I said.
“Do it here. In your office. You can lock the door and I dont imagine there’ll be anybody high enough up this late at night to see in the window. Or maybe—” Because she was already up and probably for a moment I couldn’t have moved, just watching as she went to the window and had already begun to pull down the shade.
“Here?” I said again, like a parrot. “Here? In here?” Now she was looking at me over her shoulder. That’s right. She didn’t even turn: just her head, her face to look back at me across her shoulder, her hands still drawing the shade down across the window in little final tucking tugs against the sill. No: not again. She never had looked at me but that once as she entered. She simply confronted me across her shoulder with that blue envelopment like the sea, not questioning nor waiting, as the sea itself doesn’t need to question or wait but simply to be the sea. “Oh,” I said. “And be quick, hurry too maybe since you haven’t got much time, since you really ought to be in bed this minute with your husband, or is this one of Manfred’s nights?” and she still watching me, though turned now, standing, perhaps leaning a little against the window-sill behind her, watching me quite grave, just a little curious. “But of course,” I said. “Naturally it’s one of Manfred’s nights since it’s Manfred you’re saving: not Flem.—No, wait,” I said. “Maybe I’m wrong; maybe it is both of them; maybe they both sent you: both of them that scared, that desperate; their mutual crisis and fear so critical as to justify even this last desperate gambit of your woman’s—their mutual woman’s—all?” And still she just watched me: the calm unfathomable serenely waiting blue, waiting not on me but simply on time. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “You know I didn’t. I know it’s Manfred. And I know he didn’t send you. Least of all, he.” Now I could get up. “Say you forgive me first,” I said.