“All right,” she said. Then I went and opened the door. “Good night,” I said.
“You mean you dont want to?” she said.
Now I could laugh too.
“I thought that was what you wanted,” she said. And now she was looking at me. “What did you do it for?” Oh yes, I could laugh, with the door open in my hand and the cold dark leaning into the room like an invisible cloud and if Grover Winbush were anywhere on the Square now (which he would not be in this cold since he was not a fool about everything) he would not need merely to see all the lights. Oh yes, she was looking at me now.- the sea which in a moment more would destroy me, not with any deliberate and calculated sentient wave but simply because I stood there in its insentient way. No: that was wrong too. Because she began to move.
“Shut the door,” she said. “It’s cold”—walking toward me, not fast. “Was that what you thought I came here for? Because of Manfred?”
“Didn’t you?” I said.
“Maybe I did.” She came toward me, not fast. “Maybe at first. But that doesn’t matter. I mean, to Manfred. I mean that brass. He doesn’t mind it. He likes it. He’s enjoying himself. Shut the door before it gets so cold.” I shut it and turned quickly, stepping back a little. “Dont touch me,” I said.
“All right,” she said. “Because you cant.… ” Because even she stopped then; even the insentient sea compassionate too but then I could bear that too; I could even say it for her:
“Manfred wouldn’t really mind because just I cant hurt him, harm him, do any harm; not Manfred, not just me, no matter what I do. That he would really just as soon resign as not and the only reason he doesn’t is just to show me I cant make him. All right. Agreed. Then why dont you go home? What do you want here?”
“Because you are unhappy,” she said. “I dont like unhappy people. They’re a nuisance. Especially when it can—”
“Yes,” I said, cried, “this easy, at no more cost than this. When nobody will even miss it, least of all Manfred since we both agree that Gavin Stevens cant possibly hurt Manfred de Spain even by cuckolding him on his mistress. So you came just from compassion, pity: not even from honest fear or even just decent respect. Just compassion. Just pity.” Then I saw all of it. “Not just to prove to me that having what I think I want wont make me happy, but to show me that what I thought I wanted is not even worth being unhappy over. Does it mean that little to you? I dont mean with Flem: even with Manfred?” I said, cried: “Dont tell me next that this is why Manfred sent you: to abate a nuisance!”
But she just stood there looking at me with that blue serene terrible envelopment. “You spend too much time expecting,” she said. “Dont expect. You just are, and you need, and you must, and so you do. That’s all. Dont waste time expecting,” moving again toward me where I was trapped not just by the door but by the corner of the desk too.
“Dont touch me!” I said. “So if I had only had sense enough to have stopped expecting, or better still, never expected at all, never hoped at all, dreamed at all; if I had just had sense enough to say I am, I want, I will and so here goes—If I had just done that, it might have been me instead of Manfred? But dont you see? Cant you see? I wouldn’t have been me then?” No: she wasn’t even listening: just looking at me: the unbearable and unfathomable blue, speculative and serene.
“Maybe it’s because you’re a gentleman and I never knew one before.”
“So is Manfred!” I said. “And that other one, that first one—your child’s father—” the only other one I thought because, yes, oh yes, I knew now: Snopes himself was impotent. I even said it: “The only other one besides Manfred. Back there in Frenchman’s Bend, that Ratliff told me about, that fought off the five or six men who tried to ambush you in the buggy that night, fought them off with the buggy whip and one hand because he had to use the other to shield you with, whiped them all off even with one arm broken where I couldn’t even finish the fight I started myself with just one opponent?” And still not moving: just standing there facing me so that what I smelled was not even just woman but that terrible, that drowning envelopment. “Both alike,” I said. “But not like me. All three gentlemen but only two were men.”
“Lock the door,” she said. “I’ve already drawn the shade. Stop being afraid of things,” she said. “Why are you afraid?”
“No,” I said, cried. I might—would—have struck her with my out-flung arm, but there was room: out of the trap now and even around her until I could reach the door knob and open it. Oh yes, I knew now. “I might buy Manfred from you but I wont buy Flem,” I said. “Because it is Flem, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” But there was only the blue envelopment and the fading Wagner, trumpet and storm and rich brasses diminuendo toward the fading arm and hand and the rainbow-fading ring. “You told me not to expect: why dont you try it yourself? We’ve all bought Snopeses here, whether we wanted to or not; you of all people should certainly know that. I dont know why we bought them. I mean, why we had to: what coin and when and where we so recklessly and improvidently spent that we had to have Snopeses too. But we do. But nothing can hurt you if you refuse it, not even a brass-stealing Snopes. And nothing is of value that costs nothing so maybe you will value this refusal at what I value it cost me.” She moved then and only then did I notice that she had evidently brought nothing with her: none of the scatter of gloves, bags, veils, this and that which women bring into a room with them so that the first minute of their quitting it is a problem resembling scavenging. “Dont worry about your husband,” I said. “Just say I represent Jefferson and so Flem Snopes is my burden too. You see, the least I can do is to match you: to value him as highly as your coming here proves you do. Good night.”
“Good night,” she said. The cold invisible cloud leaned in again. Again I closed it.
SIX
V.K. RATLIFF
So next morning first thing we heard was that Judge Dukinfield had recused his-self and designated Judge Stevens, Lawyer’s paw, to preside in his stead. And they ought to rung the courthouse bell this time sholy, because
whether or not it was a matter of communal interest and urgency last night, it was now. But it was to be in chambers this time and what Judge Dukinfield called his chamber wouldn’t a helt us. So all we done this time was just to happen to be somewhere about the Square, in the store doors or jest looking by chance and accident out of the upstairs doctors’ and suches’ windows while old man Job, that had been Judge Dukinfield’s janitor for longer than anybody in Jefferson, including Job and Judge Dukinfield too, knowed, in a old cast-off tailcoat of Judge Dukinfield’s that he wore on Sundays, bustled in and out of the little brick house back of the courthouse that Judge Dukinfield called his chambers, sweeping and dusting it until it suited him enough to let folks in it.
Then we watched Judge Stevens cross the Square from his office and go through the door and then we watched the two bonding fellers come out of the hotel and cross the Square with their little lawyers’ grips, the young one toting his own grip but Samson, the hotel porter, walking behind the white-vest one toting his, and Samson’s least boy walking behind Samson toting what I reckon was the folded Memphis paper the white-vest one had been reading while they et breakfast and they, except Samson and his boy, went in too. Then Lawyer come up by his-self and went in, and sho enough before extra long we heard the car and then Mayor de Spain druv up and parked and got out and says,
“Morning, gentlemen. Any of you fellers looking for me? Excuse me a minute while I step inside and pass good morning with our out of-town guests and I’ll be right with you.” Then he went in too and that was about all: Judge Stevens setting behind the desk with his glasses on and the paper open in his hand, and the two bonding fellers setting quiet and polite and anxious across from him, and Lawyer setting at one end of the table and Manfred de Spain that hadn’t even set down: jest leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and that-ere dont-give-a-durn face of his already full of laughing even though it hadn’t moved
yet. Until Judge Stevens folded the paper up slow and deliberate and laid it to one side and taken off his glasses and folded them too and then laid his hands one in the other on the desk in front of him and says:
“The plaintiff in this suit has of this date withdrawn his charge and his bill of particulars. The suit—if it was a suit—no longer exists. The litigants—plaintiff, defendant and prisoner—if there was a prisoner—are discharged. With the Court’s apologies to the gentlemen from Saint Louis that their stay among us was marred, and its hope and trust that their next one will not be, Court is adjourned. Good morning, gentlemen,” and the two bonding fellers got up and begun to thank Judge Stevens for a little spell, until they stopped and taken up their grips and kind of tiptoed out; and now there wasn’t nobody but just Lawyer still setting with his paper-colored face bent a little and Judge Stevens still setting there not looking at nothing in particular yet and Manfred de Spain still leaning with his feet crossed against the wall and his face still full of that laughing that was still jest waiting for a spell too. Then Judge Stevens was looking at him.
“Manfred,” he says. “Do you want to resign?”
“Certainly, sir,” De Spain says. “I’ll be glad to. But not for the city: for Gavin. I want to do it for Gavin. All he’s got to do is say Please.”
And still Lawyer didn’t move: jest setting there with that still paper-colored face like it was froze stiff and his hands too laying on the table in front of him: not clenched one inside the other like his paw’s: jest laying there. Then Manfred begun to laugh, not loud, not even in no hurry: jest standing there laughing with his feet still crossed and his hands still in his pockets, jest laughing even while he turned and went across to the door and opened it and went out and closed it behind him. Which jest left Lawyer and his paw and that was when Lawyer said it.
“So you dont want him not to be mayor,” Judge Stevens says. “Then what is it you do want? For him not to be alive? Is that it?”
That was when Lawyer said it: “What must I do now, Papa? Papa, what can I do now?”
So something happened somewhere between that board of aldermen meeting last night and that special court session this morning. Except that if we ever knowed what it was, it wasn’t going to be Lawyer’s fault. I mean, we might a knowed or anyway had a good idea what happened and where while them lights was burning in that upstairs office long after ever body else in Jefferson had done went home to bed; some day Lawyer his-self might tell it, probably would, would have to tell it to somebody jest to get some rest from it. What we wouldn’t know would be jest how it happened. Because when Lawyer come to tell it, he wouldn’t be having to tell what happened: he would be having to tell, to say, it wouldn’t much matter what, to somebody, anybody listening, it wouldn’t much matter who. The only one of the whole three of them that understood her was Flem. Because needing or expecting to understand one another hadn’t never occurred between her and Manfred de Spain. All the understanding one another they needed was you might say for both of them to agree on when and where next and jest how long away it would have to be. But apart from that, they never no more needed to waste time understanding one another than sun and water did to make rain. They never no more needed to be drawed together than sun and water needed to be. In fact, most of Manfred’s work had already been done for him by that boy back in Frenchman’s Bend—McCarron, who except that he come first, could a been Manfred’s younger brother; who never even lived in Frenchman’s Bend and nobody in Frenchman’s Bend ever seen or heard of him before that summer, like he had been sent through Frenchman’s Bend at the one exact moment to see her, like you might say Manfred de Spain had been sent through Jefferson at the one exact moment to see her.
And a heap of McCarron’s work already done for him too because she done it: that night when them five Frenchman’s Bend boys laid for them and bushwacked them in the buggy to drag him out of it and maybe beat him up or anyhow skeer him out of Frenchman’s Bend. And gradually the tale come out how, even with one arm broke, he fought them all off and got the buggy turned around and got her back home all safe except for a natural maiden swoon. Which aint quite right. Because them five boys (I knowed two of them) never told it, which you might say is proof. That after they broke his arm it was her that taken the loaded end of the buggy-whip and finished the last one or maybe two, and her that turned the buggy around in the road and got it away from there. Jest far enough; not back home yet: jest far enough; to as the feller says crown the triumph on the still-hot field of the triumph; right there on the ground in the middle of the dark road because somebody had to still hold that skeered horse, with the horse standing over them and her likely having to help hold him up too off of that broke arm; not jest her first time but the time she got that baby. Which folks says aint likely to happen jest the first time but between what did happen and what ought to happened, I dont never have trouble picking ought.
But Lawyer Stevens never understood her and never would: that he never had jest Manfred de Spain to have to cope with, he was faced with a simple natural force repeating itself under the name of De Spain or McCarron or whatever into ever gap or vacancy in her breathing as long as she breathed; and that wouldn’t never none of them be him. And he never did realise that she understood him because she never had no way of telling him because she didn’t know herself how she done it. Since women learn at about two or three years old and then forget it, the knowledgbuggy arout their-selves that a man stumbles on by accident forty-odd years later with the same kind of startled amazement of finding a twenty-five-cent piece in a old pair of britches you had started to throw away. No, they dont forget it: they jest put it away until ten or twenty or forty years later the need for it comes up and they reach around and pick it out and use it and then hang it up again without no more remembering jest which one it was than she could remember today which finger it was she scratched with yesterday: only that tomorrow maybe she will itch again but she will find something to scratch that one with too.
Or I dont know, maybe he did understand all that and maybe he did get what he wanted. I mean, not what he wanted but what he knew he could have, the next best, like anything is better than nothing, even if that anything is jest a next-best anything. Because there was more folks among the Helens and Juliets and Isoldes and Guineveres than jest the Launcelots and Tristrams and Romeos and Parises. There was them others that never got their names in the poetry books, the next-best ones that sweated and panted too. And being the next-best to Paris is jest a next-best too, but it aint no bad next-best to be. Not ever body had Helen, but then not ever body lost her neither.
So I kind of happened to be at the deepo that day when Lucius Hogganbeck’s jitney drove up and Lawyer got out with his grips and trunk and his ticket to Mottstown junction to catch the express from Memphis to New York and get on the boat that would take him to that German university he had been talking for two years now about what a good idea it would be to go to it providing you happened to want to go to a university in Germany like that one; until that morning yesterday or maybe it was the day before when he told his paw: “What must I do now, Papa? Papa, what can I do now?” It was still cold, so he taken his sister on into the waiting room and then he come back out where I was.
“Good,” he says, brisk and chipper as you could want. “I was hoping to see you before I left, to pass the torch on into your active hand. You’ll have to hold the fort now. You’ll have to tote the load.”
“What fort?” I says. “What load?”
“Jefferson,” he says. “Snopeses. Think you can handle them till I get back?”
“Not me nor a hundred of me,” I says. “The only thing to do is get completely shut of them, abolish them.”
“No no,” he says. “Say a herd of tigers suddenly appears in Yoknapatawpha County; wouldn’t it be a heap better to have them shut up in a mule-pen where we could at least watch them, keep up with them, even if you do lose a arm or a leg ever time you get within ten feet of the wire,
than to have them roaming and strolling loose all over ever where in the entire country? No, we got them now; they’re ourn now; I dont know jest what Jefferson could a committed back there whenever it was, to have won this punishment, gained this right, earned this privilege. But we did. So it’s for us to cope, to resist; us to endure, and (if we can) survive.”
“But why me?” I says. “Why out of all Jefferson pick on me?”
“Because you’re the only one in Jefferson I can trust,” Lawyer ays.
Except that that one dont really ever lose Helen, because for the rest of her life she dont never actively get rid of him. Likely it’s because she dont want to.
SEVEN
CHARLES MALLISON
I remember how Ratliff once said that the world’s Helens never really lose forever the men who once loved and lost them; probably because they—the Helens—