Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (19 page)

“Yes, by Godfrey! Not only tracked him down and caught him
but brought back the actual proof of it to where Rosa Millard could rest quiet.”

“The which?” Joby hollered. “Fotch back the which?”

“Hush! Hush!” Drusilla said. “That’s all done, all finished. You, Uncle Buck!”

“The proof and the expiation!” Uncle Buck hollered. “When me and John Sartoris and Drusilla rode up to that old compress, the first thing we see was that murdering scoundrel pegged out on the door to it all except the right hand. ‘And if anybody wants to see that, too,’ I told John Sartoris, ‘just let them ride into Jefferson and look on Rosa Millard’s grave!’ Ain’t I told you he is John Sartoris’ boy? Hey? Ain’t I told you?”

Yes, sir. It wasn’t Pap that bought one horse from Pat Stamper and then sold two back to him. It was Mammy. Her and Pat jest used Pap to trade through. Because we never left home that morning with Mammy’s cream separator money to trade horses with nobody. And I reckon that if Pap had had any notion that he was fated to swap horses with Pat Stamper, they couldn’t even have arrested him and taken him to town. We never even knowed it was Pat Stamper that had unloaded that horse on whoever it was Beasley Kemp got it from until we was halfway there. Because Pap admitted he was a fool about a horse but it wasn’t that kind of a fool he meant. And once he was away from our lot and the neighbor men looking through the fence at whatever it was Pap had traded some more of Old Man Anse Holland’s bob-wire and busted tools for this time, and Pap lying to them to jest exactly the right amount about how old it was and how much he give for it;—once Pap was away from there I don’t reckon he was even the kind of a fool about a horse that Mammy claimed he was when we come up to the house that noon after we had shut the gate on the horse we had jest traded outen Beasley Kemp, and Pap taken his shoes off on the front gallery for dinner and Mammy standing there in the door, shaking the cold skillet at Pap and scolding and railing and Pap saying, “Now Vynie; now Vynie. I always was a fool about a good horse and it ain’t no use you a-scolding and jawing about it. You had better thank the Lord that when He give me a eye for
horse-flesh He give me a little jedgment and gumption along with it.”

Because it wasn’t the horse. It wasn’t the trade. It was a good trade, because Pap swapped Beasley a straight stock and fourteen rods of bob-wire and a old wore-out sorghum mill of Old Man Anse’s for the horse, and Mammy admitted it was a good swap even for that horse, even for anything that could git up and walk from Beasley Kemp’s lot to ourn by itself. Because like she said while she was shaking the skillet at Pap, even Pap couldn’t git stung very bad in a horse trade because he never owned nothing that anybody would swap even a sorry horse for and even to him. And it wasn’t because me and Pap had left the plows down in the bottom piece where Mammy couldn’t see them from the house, and snuck the wagon out the back way with the straight stock and the wire and the sorghum mill while she thought we were still in the field. It wasn’t that. It was like she knowed without having to be told what me and Pap never found out for a week yet: that Pat Stamper had owned that horse we traded outen Beasley Kemp and that now Pap had done caught the Pat Stamper sickness jest from touching it.

And I reckon she was right. Maybe to hisself Pap did call hisself the Pat Stamper of the Frenchman Bend country, or maybe even of all Beat Four. But I reckon that even when he was believing it the strongest, setting there on the top rail of the lot fence and the neighbor men coming up to lean on the fence and look at what Pap had brung home this time and Pap not bragging much and maybe not even lying much about it; I reckon that even then there was another part of his mind telling him he was safe to believe he was the Pat Stamper of Beat Four jest as long as he done it setting on that fence where it was about one chance in a million of Pat Stamper actually passing and stopping to put it to a test. Because he wouldn’t no more have set out to tangle with Pat Stamper than he would have set out to swap horses with a water moccasin. Probly if he had knowed that Pat Stamper ever owned that horse we swapped outen Beasley, Pap wouldn’t have traded for it at no price. But then, I reckon that a fellow who straggles by acci-dent into where yellow fever or moccasins is, don’t aim to ketch fever or snakebite neither. But he sholy never aimed to tangle with Pat Stamper. When we started for town that morning with Beasley’s
horse and our mule in the wagon and that separator money that Mammy had been saving on for four years in Pap’s pocket, we wasn’t even thinking about horse trading, let alone about Pat Stamper, because we didn’t know that Pat Stamper was in Jefferson and we didn’t even know that he had owned the horse until we got to Varner’s store. It was fate. It was like the Lord Hisself had decided to spend Mammy’s separator money for a horse; it would have had to been Him because wouldn’t nobody else, leastways nobody that knowed Mammy, have risked doing it. Yes, sir. Pure fate. Though I will have to admit that fate picked a good, quick, willing hand when it picked Pap. Because it wasn’t that kind of a fool about a horse that Pap meant he was.

No, sir. Not that kind of a fool. I reckon that while he was setting on the porch that morning when Mammy had done said her say for the time being and went back to the kitchen, and me done fetched the gourd of fresh water from the well, and the side meat plopping and hissing on the stove and Pap waiting to eat it and then go back down to the lot and set on the fence while the neighbor men come up in two’s and three’s to look at Pap’s new horse, I reckon maybe in his own mind Pap not only knowed as much about horse trading as Pat Stamper, but he owned head for head as many of them as Old Man Anse hisself. I reckon that while he would set there on the fence, jest moving enough to keep outen the sun, with them two empty plows standing in the furrow down in the bottom piece and Mammy watching him outen the back window and saying, “Horse trader! Setting there bragging and lying to a passel of shiftless men, and the weeds and morning glories climbing that thick in the corn and cotton that I am afraid to tote his dinner to him for fear of snakes”; I reckon Pap would look at whatever it was he had traded the mail box or the winter corn or something else that maybe Old Man Anse had done forgot he owned or leastways might not miss, and he would say to hisself: “It’s not only mine, but before God it’s the prettiest drove of horses a man ever seen.”

It was pure fate. When we left for town that morning with Mammy’s separator money, Pap never even aimed to use Beasley’s horse at all because he knowed it probably couldn’t make no
twelve-mile trip to Jefferson and get back the same day. He aimed to go up to Old Man Anse’s and borrow one of his mules to work with ourn; it was Mammy herself that done it, taunted him about the piece of crowbait he had bought for a yard ornament until Pap said that by Godfrey he would show Mammy and all the rest of them that misdoubted he knowed a horse when he seen it, and so we went to the lot and put the new horse in the wagon with the mule. We had been feeding it heavy as it would eat for a week now and it looked a heap better than it did the day we got it. But even yet it didn’t look so good, though Pap decided it was the mule that showed it up so bad; that when it was the only horse or mule in sight, it didn’t look so bad and that it was the standing beside something else on four legs that hurt its looks. “If we jest had some way to hitch the mule under the wagon where it wouldn’t show and jest leave the horse in sight, it would be fine,” Pap said. But there wasn’t no way to do that, so we jest done the best we could. It was a kind of doormat bay and so, with Pap standing about twenty foot away and squinching first one eye and then the other and saying, “Bear down on it. You got to git the hide hot to make the har shine,” I polished it down with croker sacks the best I could. Pap thought about feeding it a good bait of salt in some corn and then turning it to water and hide some of the ribs, only we knowed that we wouldn’t even get to Jefferson in one day, let alone come back, besides having to stop at ever creek and load it up again. So we done the best we could and then we started, with Mammy’s separator money (it was twenty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents; it taken her four years to save it outen her egg- and quilt-money) tied up in a rag that she dared Pap to even open to count it before he handed it to Uncle Ike McCaslin at the store and had the separator in the wagon.

Yes, sir. Fate. The same fate that made Mammy taunt Pap into starting out with Beasley’s horse; the same fate that made it a hot morning in July for us to start out on. Because when we left home that morning we wasn’t even thinking about horse trading. We was thinking about horse, all right, because we were wondering if maybe we wasn’t fixing to come back home that night with Beasley’s horse riding in the wagon and me or Pap in the traces with the mule. Yes, sir. Pap eased that team outen the lot at sunup and on down the road toward Frenchman’s Bend as slow and careful
as arra horse and mule ever moved in this world, with me and Pap walking up ever hill that was slanted enough to run water down the ruts, and aiming to do that right on into Jefferson. It was the weather, the hot day, that done it. Because here we was, about a mile from Varner’s store, and Beasley’s horse kind of half walking and half riding on the double tree, and Pap’s face looking a little more and a little more concerned ever time our new horse failed to lift its feet high enough to make the next step, when all of a sudden that horse popped into a sweat. It flung its head up like it had been teched with a hot poker and stepped up into the collar, teching the collar for the first time since the mule had taken the weight off the breast yoke when Pap’d shaken out the whip inside the lot; and so here we come down the last hill and up to Varner’s store and that horse of Beasley’s with its head up and blowing froth and its eyes white-rimmed like these here colored dinner plates and Pap sawing back on the reins, and I be dog if it not only hadn’t sweated into as pretty a blood bay as you ever see, but even the ribs didn’t seem to show so much. And Pap, that had been talking about taking a back road so as to miss Varner’s store altogether, setting there on the wagon seat exactly like he would set on the lot fence where he knowed he would be safe from Pat Stamper, telling Jody Varner and them other men that Beasley’s horse come from Kentucky. Jody Varner never even laughed. “Kentucky, hey?” he says. “Sho, now. That explains why it taken it so long. Herman Short swapped Pat Stamper a buckboard and a set of harness for it five years ago, and Beasley Kemp give Herman eight dollars for it last summer. How much did you give Beasley? Fifty cents?”

That’s what done it. From then on, it was automatic. It wasn’t the horse, the trade. It was still a good trade, because in a sense you might say that all Pap give Beasley for it was the straight stock, since the bob-wire and the sorghum mill belonged to Old Man Anse. And it wasn’t the harness and the buckboard that Herman Short give Pat Stamper: it was that eight dollars that Beasley give Herman. That’s what rankled Pap. Not that he held the eight dollars against Herman, because Herman had done already invested a buckboard and a set of harness. And besides, the eight dollars was still in the county, even if it was out of circulation, belonging to Herman Short, and so it didn’t actually matter whether Herman had it or Beasley had it. It was Pat Stamper that
rankled Pap. When a man swaps horse for horse, that’s one thing. But when cash money starts changing hands, that’s something else; and when a stranger comes into the country and starts actual cash money jumping from hand to hand, it’s like when a burglar breaks into your house and flings your clothes and truck from place to place even though he don’t take nothing: it makes you mad. So it was not jest to unload Beasley’s horse back onto Pat Stamper. It was to get Beasley’s eight dollars back outen Pat some way. And so it was jest pure fate that had Pat Stamper camped right on the road we would take to Jefferson on the very day when me and Pap went to get Mammy’s separator.

So I reckon the rest of it don’t even hardly need to be told, except as a kind of sidelight on how, when a man starts out to plan to do something, he jest thinks he is planning: that what he is actually doing is giving the highball to misfortune, throwing open the switch and saying, “All right, Bad Luck; come right ahead.” So here was Pat Stamper and that nigger magician of hisn camped in Hoke’s pasture, right on the road we would have to pass to git to town, and here was Pap on the way to town with two live animals and twenty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents in cash, and feeling that the entire honor and pride of the science and pastime of horse trading in Yoknapatawpha County depended on him to vindicate it. So the rest of it don’t even need to be told. I don’t need to tell whether me and Pap walked back home or not, because anybody that knows Pat Stamper knows that he never bought a horse or a mule outright in his life; that he swapped you something for it that could at least walk out of sight. So the only point that might interest you is, what was pulling the wagon when we got back home. And what Mammy done when she said, “Where is my separator?” and Pap saying, “Now Vynie; now Vynie—” Yes, sir. When it come down to the trade, it wasn’t Pat Stamper after all that Pap was swapping horses with. It was the demon rum.

Because he was desperate. After the first swap he was desperate. Before that he was jest mad, like when you dream you are right in the middle of the track and the train a-coming; it’s right on you and you can’t run or dodge because all of a sudden you realize you are running in sand and so after a while it don’t even matter if the train catches you or not because all you can think about is being mad at the sand. That’s how Pap was. For ever mile we made
toward Jefferson, the madder Pap got. It wasn’t at Beasley’s horse, because we nursed it on toward town the same way we nursed it to Varner’s store until it begun to sweat. It was them eight cash dollars that that horse represented. I don’t even recollect just when and where we found out that Pat Stamper was at Jefferson that day. It might have been at Varner’s store. Or it might have been that we never had to be told; that for Pap to carry out the fate that Mammy started when she taunted him about Beasley’s horse, Pat Stamper would jest have to be in Jefferson. Because Pap never even taken time to find out where Pat was camped, so that when we did roll into town we had done already swapped. Yes, sir. We went up them long hills with Pap and me walking and Beasley’s horse laying into the collar the best it could but with the mule doing most of the pulling and Pap walking on his side of the wagon and cussing Pat Stamper and Herman Short and Beasley Kemp and Jody Varner, and we went down the hills with Pap holding the wagon broke with a sapling pole so it wouldn’t shove Beasley’s horse through the collar and turn it wrong-side-outward like a sock and Pap still a-cussing Pat Stamper and Herman and Beasley and Varner, until we come to the three-mile bridge and Pap turned off the road and druv into the bushes and taken the mule outen the harness and knotted one rein so I could ride it and give me the quarter and told me to git for town and git the dime’s worth of saltpeter and the nickel’s worth of tar and the number ten fish hook.