That was when Mrs Hait set the scuttle down on the edge of the brick coping of the cellar entrance and she and old Het turned the corner of the house in time to see the mule coincide with a rooster and eight white-leghorn hens coming out from under the house. Old Het said it looked just like something out of the Bible, or maybe out of some kind of hoodoo witches’ Bible: the mule that came out of the fog to begin with like a hant or a goblin, now kind of soaring back into the fog again borne on a cloud of little winged ones. She and Mrs Hait were still running; she said Mrs Hait was now carrying the worn-out stub of a broom though old Het didn’t remember when she had picked it up.
“There’s more in the front!” old Het hollered.
“That son of a bitch,” Mrs Hait said. There were more of them. Old Het said that little handkerchief-sized yard was full of mules and I. O. Snopes. It was so small that any creature with a stride of three feet could have crossed it in two paces, yet when they came in sight of it it must have looked like watching a drop of water through a microscope. Except that this time it was like being in the middle of the drop of water yourself. That is, old Het said that Mrs Hait and I. O. Snopes were in the middle of it because she said she stopped against the house where she would be more or less out of the way even though nowhere in that little yard was going to be safe, and watched Mrs Hait still clutching the broom and with a kind of sublime faith in something somewhere, maybe in just her own invulnerability, though old Het said Mrs Hait was just too mad to notice, rush right into the middle of the drove, after the one with the flying halter-rein that was still vanishing into the fog still in that cloud of whirling loose feathers like confetti or the wake behind a speed boat.
And Mr Snopes too, the mules running all over him too, he and Mrs Hait glaring at each other while he panted:
“Where’s my money? Where’s my half of it?”
“Catch that big son of a bitch with the halter,” Mrs Hait said. “Get that big son of a bitch out of here,” both of them, old Het and Mrs Hait both, running on so that Snopes’s panting voice was behind them now:
“Pay me my money! Pay me my part of it!”
“Watch out!” old Het said she hollered. “He heading for the back again!”
“Get a rope!” Mrs Hait hollered back at Snopes.
“Fore God, where is ere rope?” Snopes hollered.
“In the cellar, fore God!” old Het hollered. She didn’t wait either. “Go round the other way and head him!” she said. And she said that when she and Mrs Hait turned that corner, there was the mule with the flying halter once more seeming to float lightly onward on a cloud of chickens with which, since the chickens had been able to go under the house and so along the chord while the mule had to go around on the arc, it had once more coincided. When they turned the nexe brner, they were in the back yard again.
“Fore God!” Het hollered. “He fixing to misuse the cow!” She said it was like a tableau. The cow had come out of the shed into the middle of the back yard; it and the mule were now facing each other about a yard apart, motionless, with lowered heads and braced legs like two mismatched book-ends, and Snopes was half in and half out of the now-open cellar door on the coping of which the scuttle of ashes still sat, where he had obviously gone seeking the rope; afterward old Het said she thought at the time an open cellar door wasn’t a very good place for a scuttle of live ashes, and maybe she did. I mean, if she hadn’t said she thought that, somebody else would, since there’s always somebody handy afterward to prove their foresight by your hindsight. Though if things were going as fast as she said they were, I dont see how anybody there had time to think anything much.
Because everything was already moving again; when they went around the next corner this time, I.O. was leading, carrying the rope (he had found it), then the cow, her tail raised and rigid and raked slightly like the flagpole on a boat, and then the mule, Mrs Hait and old Het coming last and old Het told again how she noticed the scuttle of live ashes sitting on the curb of the now-open cellar with its accumulation of human refuse and Mrs Hait’s widowhood—empty boxes for kindling, old papers, broken furniture and thought again that wasn’t a very good place for the scuttle.
Then the next corner. Snopes and the cow and the mule were all three just vanishing on the cloud of frantic chickens which had once more crossed beneath the house just in time. Though when they reached the front yard there was nobody there but Snopes. He was lying flat on his face, the tail of his coat flung forward over his head by the impetus of his fall, and old Het swore there was the print of the cow’s split foot and the mule’s hoof too in the middle of his white shirt.
“Where’d they go?” she shouted at him. He didn’t answer. “They tightening on the curves!” she hollered at Mrs Hait. “They already in the back again!” They were. She said maybe the cow had aimed to run back into the shed but decided she had too much speed and instead whirled in a kind of desperation of valor and despair on the mule itself. Though she said that she and Mrs Hait didn’t quite get there in time to see it: only to hear a crash and clash and clatter as the mule swerved and blundered over the cellar entrance. Because when they got there the mule was gone. The scuttle was gone from the cellar coping too but old Het said she never noticed it then: only the cow in the middle of the yard where she had been standing before, her fore legs braced and her head lowered like somebody had passed and snatched away the other book-end. Because she and Mrs Hait didn’t stop either, Mrs Hait running heavily now, old Het said, with her mouth open and her face the color of putty and one hand against her side. In fact she said they were both run out now, going so slow this time that the mule overtook them from behind and she said it jumped clean over them both: a brief demon thunder rank with the ammonia-reek of sweat, and went on (either the chickens had finally realised to stay under the house or maybe they were worn out too and just couldn’t make it this time); when they reached the next corner the mule had finally succeeded in vanishing into the fog; they heard its hooves, brief, staccato and derisive on the hard street, dying away.
Old Het said she stopped. She said, “Well. Gentlemen, hush,” she said. “Aint we had—” Then she smelled it. She said she stood right still, smelling, and it was like she was actually looking at that open cellar as it was when they passed it last time without any coal scuttle setting on the coping. “Fore God,” she hollered at Mrs Hait, “I smell smoke! Child, run in the house and get your money!”
That was about nine oclock. By noon the house had burned to the ground. Ratliff said that when the fire engine and the crowd got there, Mrs Hait, followed by old Het carrying her shopping bag in one hand and a framed crayon portrait of Mr Hait in the other, was just coming out of the house carrying an umbrella and wearing the army overcoat which Mr Hait had used to wear, in one pocket of which was a quart fruit jar packed with what remained of the eighty-five hundred dollars (which would be most of it, according to how the neighbors said Mrs Hait lived) and in the other a heavy nickel-plated revolver, and crossed the street to a neighbor’s house, where with old Het beside her in a second rocker, she had been sitting ever since on the gallery, the two of them rocking steadily while they watched the volunteer fire-fighters flinging her dishes and furniture up and down the street. By that time Ratliff said there were plenty of them interested enough to go back to the Square and hunt up I.O. and keep him posted.
“What you telling me for?” I.O. said. “It wasn’t me that set thatere scuttle of live fire where the first thing that passed would knock it into the cellar.”
“It was you that opened the cellar door though,” Ratliff said.
“Sho,” Snopes said. “And why? To get that rope, her own rope, right where she sent me to get it.”
“To catch your mule, that was trespassing on her yard,” Ratliff said. “You cant get out of it this time. There aint a jury in the county that wont find for her.”
“Yes,” Snopes said. “I reckon not. And just because she’s a woman. That’s why. Because she is a durned woman. A
ll right. Let her go to her durned jury with it. I can talk too; I reckon it’s a few things I could tell a jury myself about—” Then Ratliff said he stopped. Ratliff said he didn’t sound like I.O. Snopes anyway because whenever I.O. talked what he said was so full of mixed-up proverbs that you stayed so busy trying to unravel just which of two or three proverbs he had jumbled together that you couldn’t even tell just exactly what lie he had told you until it was already too late. But right now Ratliff said he was too busy to have time for even proverbs, let alone lies. Ratliff said they were all watching him.
“What?” somebody said. “Tell the jury about what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Because why, because there aint going to be no jury. Me and Miz Mannie Hait? You boys dont know her if you think she’s going to make trouble over a pure acci-dent couldn’t me nor nobody else help. Why, aint a fairer, finer woman in Yoknapatawpha County than Mannie Hait. I just wish I had a opportunity to tell her so.” Ratliff said he had it right away. He said Mrs Hait was right behind them, with old Het right behind her, carrying the shopping bag. He said she just looked once at all of them generally. After that she senoked at I.O.
“I come to buy that mule,” she said.
“What mule?” I.O. said. He answered that quick, almost automatic, Ratliff said. Because he didn’t mean it either. Then Ratliff said they looked at one another for about a half a minute. “You’d like to own that mule?” he said. “It’ll cost you a hundred and fifty, Miz Mannie.”
“You mean dollars?” Mrs Hait said.
“I dont mean dimes nor nickels neither, Miz Mannie,” Snopes said.
“Dollars,” Mrs Hait said. “Mules wasn’t that high in Hait’s time.”
“Lots of things is different since Hait’s time,” Snopes said. “Including you and me, Miz Mannie.”
“I reckon so,” she said. Then she went away. Ratliff said she turned without a word and left, old Het following.
“If I’d a been you,” Ratliff said, “I dont believe I’d a said that last to her.”
And now Ratliff said the mean harried little face actually blazed, even frothing a little. “I just wisht she would,” Snopes said. “Her or anybody else, I dont care who, to bring a court suit about anything, jest so it had the name mule and the name Hait in it—” and stopped, the face smooth again. “How’s that?” he said. “What was you saying?”
“That you dont seem to be afraid she might sue you for burning down her house,” Ratliff said.
“Sue me?” Snopes said. “Miz Hait? If she was fixing to try to law something out of me about that fire, do you reckon she would a hunted me up and offered to pay me for it?”
That was about one oclock. Then it was four oclock; Aleck Sander and I had gone out to Sartoris Station to shoot quail over the dogs that Miss Jenny Du Pre still kept, I reckon until Benbow Sartoris got big enough to hold a gun. So Uncle Gavin was alone in the office to hear the tennis shoes on the outside stairs. Then old Het came in; the shopping bag was bulging now and she was eating bananas from a paper sack which she clamped under one arm, the half-eaten banana in that hand while with the other she dug out a crumpled ten-dollar bill and gave it to Uncle Gavin.
“It’s for you,” old Het said. “From Miss Mannie. I done already give him hisn”—telling it: waiting on the corner of the Square until it looked like sure to God night would come first, before Snopes finally came along, and she handed the banana she was working on then to a woman beside her and got out the first crumpled ten-dollar bill. Snopes took it.
“What?” he said. “Miz Hait told you to give it to me?”
“For that mule,” old Het said. “You dont need to give me no receipt. I can be the witness I give it to you.”
“You’ll have to contrack that with her yourself,” old Het said. “She just give me this to hand to you when she left to get the mule.”
“To get the—she went out there herself and taken that mule out of my lot?” Snopes said.
“Lord, child,” old Het said she said. “Miss Mannie aint skeered of no mule. Aint you done found that out?—And now here’s yourn,” she said to Uncle Gavin.
“For what?” Uncle Gavin said. “I dont have a mule to sell.”
“For a lawyer,” old Het said. “She fixing to need a lawyer. She say for you to be out there at her house about sundown, when she had time to get settled down again.”
“Her house?” Uncle Gavin said.
“Where it use to be, honey,” old Het said. “Would you keer for a banana? I done et about all I can hold.”
“No, much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Go on. Take some. If I et one more, I’d be wishing the good Lord hadn’t never thought banana One in all His life.”
“No, much obliged,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I dont reckon you’d have nothing like a extra dime for a little snuff.”
“No,” Uncle Gavin said, producing it. “All I have is a quarter.”
“That’s quality,” she said. “You talk about change to quality, what you gets back is a quarter or a half a dollar or sometimes even a whole dollar. It’s just trash that cant think no higher than a nickel or ten cents.” She took the quarter; it vanished somewhere. “There’s some folks thinks all I does, I tromps this town all day long from can-see to cant, with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of much oblige. They’re wrong. I serves Jefferson too. If it’s more blessed to give than to receive like the Book say, this town is blessed to a fare-you-well because it’s steady full of folks willing to give anything from a nickel up to a old hat. But I’m the onliest one I knows that steady receives. So how is Jefferson going to be steady blessed without me steady willing from dust-dawn to dust-dark, rain or snow or sun, to say much oblige? I can tell Miss Mannie you be there?”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. Then she was gone. Uncle Gavin sat there looking at the crumpled bill on the desk in front of him. Then he heard the other feet on the stairs and he sat watching the door until Mr Flem Snopes came in and shut it behind him.
“Evening,” Mr Snopes said. “Can you take a case for me?”
“Now?” Uncle Gavinsaid. “Tonight?”
“Yes,” Mr Snopes said.
“Tonight,” Uncle Gavin said again. “Would it have anything to do with a mule and Mrs Hait’s house?”
And he said how Mr Snopes didn’t say What house? or What mule? or How did you know? He just said, “Yes.”
“Why did you come to me?” Uncle Gavin said.
“For the same reason I would hunt up the best carpenter if I wanted to build a house, or the best farmer if I wanted to share-crop some land,” Mr Snopes said.
“Thanks,” Uncle Gavin said. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t even have to touch the crumpled bill. He said that Mr Snopes had not only seen it the minute he entered, but he believed he even knew at that same moment where it came from. “As you already noticed, I’m already on the other side.”
“You going out there now?” Mr Snopes said.
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Then that’s all right.” He began to reach into his pocket. At first Uncle Gavin didn’t know why; he just watched him dig out an old-fashioned snap-mouth wallet and open it and separate a ten-dollar bill and close the wallet and lay the bill on the desk beside the other crumpled one and put the wallet back into the pocket and stand looking at Uncle Gavin.
“I just told you I’m already on the other side,” Uncle Gavin said.
“And I just said that’s all right,” Mr Snopes said. “I dont want a lawyer because I already know what I’m going to do. I just want a witness.”
“And why me for that?” Uncle Gavin said.
“That’s right,” Mr Snopes said. “The best witness too.”
So they went out there. The fog had burned away by noon and Mrs Hait’s two blackened chimneys now stood against what remained of the winter sunset; at the same moment Mr Snopes said, “Wait.”
&n
bsp; “What?” Uncle Gavin said. But Mr Snopes didn’t answer, so they stood, not approaching yet; Uncle Gavin said he could already smell the ham broiling over the little fire in front of the still-intact cowshed, with old Het sitting on a brand-new kitchen chair beside the fire turning the ham in the skillet with a fork, and beyond the fire Mrs Hait squatting at the cow’s flank, milking into a new tin bucket.
“All right,” Mr Snopes said, and again Uncle Gavin said What? because he had not seen I.O. at all: he was just suddenly there as though he had materialized, stepped suddenly out of the dusk itself into the light of the fire (there was a brand-new galvanised-iron coffee pot sitting in the ashes near the blaze and now Uncle Gavin said he could smell that too), to stand looking down at the back of Mrs Hait’s head, not having seen Uncle Gavin and Mr Fleet. But old Het had, already talking to Uncle Gavin while they were approaching:
“So this coffee and ham brought you even if them ten dollars couldn’t,” she said. “I’m like that, myself. I aint had no appetite in years it seems like now. A bird couldn’t live on what I eats. But just let me get a whiff of coffee and ham together, now.—Leave that milk go for a minute, honey,” she said to Mrs Hait. “Here’s your lawyer.”
Then I.O. saw them too, jerking quickly around over his shoulder his little mean harassed snarling face; and now Uncle Gavin could see inside the cowshed. It had been cleaned and raked and even swept; the floor was spread with fresh hay. A clean new kerosene stable lantern burned on a wooden box beside a pallet bed spread neatly on the straw and turned back for the night and now Uncle Gavin saw a second wooden box set out for a table beside the fire, with a new plate and knife and fork and spoon and cup and saucer and a still-sealed loaf of machine-made bread.
But Uncle Gavin said there was no alarm in I.O.’s face at the sight of Mr Flem though he said the reason for that was that he, Uncle Gavin, hadn’t realised yet that I.O. had simply reached that stage where utter hopelessness wears the mantle of temerity. “So here you are,” I.O. said. “And brung your lawyer too. I reckon you come now to get that-ere lantern and them new dishes and chair and that milk bucket and maybe the milk in too soon as she’s done, hey? That’s jest fine. It’s even downright almost honest, coming right out in the open here where it aint even full dark yet. Because of course your lawyer knows all the rest all these here recent mulery and arsonery circumstances; likely the only one here that aint up to date is old Aunt Het there, and sholy she should be learned how to reco-nise a circumstance that even if she was to get up and run this minute, likely she would find she never had no shirt nor britches left neither by the time she got home, since a stitch in time saves nine lives for even a cat, as the feller says. Not to mention the fact that when you dines in Rome you durn sho better watch your overcoat.