Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (26 page)

“Who him?” one of the negroes said. They whispered among themselves, watching him, their eyeballs white in the dusk.

“It would a been all right,” Cotton said, “but it started coming to pieces.…”

“Hush up, white man,” one of the negroes said. “Don’t you be telling us no truck like that.”

“Hit would a been all right,” Cotton said, his voice harsh, whispering. Then it failed him again altogether. He held to the bars with one hand, holding his throat with the other, while the negroes watched him, huddled, their eyeballs white and sober. Then with one accord they turned and rushed across the room, toward the staircase; he heard slow steps and then he smelled food, and he clung to the bars, trying to see the stairs. “Are they going to feed them niggers before they feed a white man?” he said, smelling the coffee and the ham.

Yes, sir. Flem Snopes has filled that whole country full of spotted horses. You can hear folks running them all day and all night, whooping and hollering, and the horses running back and forth across them little wooden bridges ever now and then kind of like thunder. Here I was this morning pretty near half way to town, with the team ambling along and me setting in the buckboard about half asleep, when all of a sudden something come swurging up outen the bushes and jumped the road clean, without touching hoof to it. It flew right over my team, big as a billboard and flying through the air like a hawk. It taken me thirty minutes to stop my team and untangle the harness and the buckboard and hitch them up again.

That Flem Snopes. I be dog if he ain’t a case, now. One morning about ten years ago, the boys was just getting settled down on Varner’s porch for a little talk and tobacco, when here come Flem out from behind the counter, with his coat off and his hair all parted, like he might have been clerking for Varner for ten years already. Folks all knowed him; it was a big family of them about five miles down the bottom. That year, at least. Share-cropping. They never stayed on any place over a year. Then they would move on to another place, with the chap or maybe the twins of that year’s litter. It was a regular nest of them. But Flem. The rest of them stayed tenant farmers, moving ever year, but here come Flem one day, walking out from behind Jody Varner’s counter like he owned
it. And he wasn’t there but a year or two before folks knowed that, if him and Jody was both still in that store in ten years more, it would be Jody clerking for Flem Snopes. Why, that fellow could make a nickel where it wasn’t but four cents to begin with. He skun me in two trades, myself, and the fellow that can do that, I just hope he’ll get rich before I do; that’s all.

All right. So here Flem was, clerking at Varner’s, making a nickel here and there and not telling nobody about it. No, sir. Folks never knowed when Flem got the better of somebody lessen the fellow he beat told it. He’d just set there in the store-chair, chewing his tobacco and keeping his own business to hisself, until about a week later we’d find out it was somebody else’s business he was keeping to hisself—provided the fellow he trimmed was mad enough to tell it. That’s Flem.

We give him ten years to own ever thing Jody Varner had. But he never waited no ten years. I reckon you-all know that gal of Uncle Billy Varner’s, the youngest one; Eula. Jody’s sister. Ever Sunday ever yellow-wheeled buggy and curried riding horse in that country would be hitched to Bill Varner’s fence, and the young bucks setting on the porch, swarming around Eula like bees around a honey pot. One of these here kind of big, soft-looking gals that could giggle richer than plowed new-ground. Wouldn’t none of them leave before the others, and so they would set there on the porch until time to go home, with some of them with nine and ten miles to ride and then get up tomorrow and go back to the field. So they would all leave together and they would ride in a clump down to the creek ford and hitch them curried horses and yellow-wheeled buggies and get out and fight one another. Then they would get in the buggies again and go on home.

Well, one day about a year ago, one of them yellow-wheeled buggies and one of them curried saddle-horses quit this country. We heard they was heading for Texas. The next day Uncle Billy and Eula and Flem come in to town in Uncle Bill’s surrey, and when they come back, Flem and Eula was married. And on the next day we heard that two more of them yellow-wheeled buggies had left the country. They mought have gone to Texas, too. It’s a big place.

Anyway, about a month after the wedding, Flem and Eula
went to Texas, too. They was gone pretty near a year. Then one day last month, Eula come back, with a baby. We figgured up, and we decided that it was as well-growed a three-months-old baby as we ever see. It can already pull up on a chair. I reckon Texas makes big men quick, being a big place. Anyway, if it keeps on like it started, it’ll be chewing tobacco and voting time it’s eight years old.

And so last Friday here come Flem himself. He was on a wagon with another fellow. The other fellow had one of these two-gallon hats and a ivory-handled pistol and a box of gingersnaps sticking out of his hind pocket, and tied to the tail-gate of the wagon was about two dozen of them Texas ponies, hitched to one another with barbed wire. They was colored like parrots and they was quiet as doves, and ere a one of them would kill you quick as a rattlesnake. Nere a one of them had two eyes the same color, and nere a one of them had ever see a bridle, I reckon; and when that Texas man got down offen the wagon and walked up to them to show how gentle they was, one of them cut his vest clean offen him, same as with a razor.

Flem had done already disappeared; he had went on to see his wife, I reckon, and to see if that ere baby had done gone on to the field to help Uncle Billy plow maybe. It was the Texas man that taken the horses on to Mrs. Littlejohn’s lot. He had a little trouble at first, when they come to the gate, because they hadn’t never see a fence before, and when he finally got them in and taken a pair of wire cutters and unhitched them and got them into the barn and poured some shell corn into the trough, they durn nigh tore down the barn. I reckon they thought that shell corn was bugs, maybe. So he left them in the lot and he announced that the auction would begin at sunup to-morrow.

That night we was setting on Mrs. Littlejohn’s porch. You-all mind the moon was nigh full that night, and we could watch them spotted varmints swirling along the fence and back and forth across the lot same as minnows in a pond. And then now and then they would all kind of huddle up against the barn and rest themselves by biting and kicking one another. We would hear a squeal, and then a set of hoofs would go Bam! against the barn, like a pistol. It sounded just like a fellow with a pistol, in a nest of cattymounts, taking his time.

It wasn’t ere a man knowed yet if Flem owned them things or not. They just knowed one thing: that they wasn’t never going to know for sho if Flem did or not, or if maybe he didn’t just get on that wagon at the edge of town, for the ride or not. Even Eck Snopes didn’t know, Flem’s own cousin. But wasn’t nobody surprised at that. We knowed that Flem would skin Eck quick as he would ere a one of us.

They was there by sunup next morning, some of them come twelve and sixteen miles, with seed-money tied up in tobacco sacks in their overalls, standing along the fence, when the Texas man come out of Mrs. Littlejohn’s after breakfast and clumb onto the gate post with that ere white pistol butt sticking outen his hind pocket. He taken a new box of gingersnaps outen his pocket and bit the end offen it like a cigar and spit out the paper, and said the auction was open. And still they was coming up in wagons and a horse- and mule-back and hitching the teams across the road and coming to the fence. Flem wasn’t nowhere in sight.

But he couldn’t get them started. He begun to work on Eck, because Eck holp him last night to get them into the barn and feed them that shell corn. Eck got out just in time. He come outen that barn like a chip on the crest of a busted dam of water, and clumb into the wagon just in time.

He was working on Eck when Henry Armstid come up in his wagon. Eck was saying he was skeered to bid on one of them, because he might get it, and the Texas man says, “Them ponies? Them little horses?” He clumb down offen the gate post and went toward the horses. They broke and run, and him following them, kind of chirping to them, with his hand out like he was fixing to catch a fly, until he got three or four of them cornered. Then he jumped into them, and then we couldn’t see nothing for a while because of the dust. It was a big cloud of it, and them blare-eyed, spotted things swoaring outen it twenty foot to a jump, in forty directions without counting up. Then the dust settled and there they was, that Texas man and the horse. He had its head twisted clean around like a owl’s head. Its legs was braced and it was trembling like a new bride and groaning like a saw mill, and him
holding its head wrung clean around on its neck so it was snuffing sky. “Look it over,” he says, with his heels dug too and that white pistol sticking outen his pocket and his neck swole up like a spreading adder’s until you could just tell what he was saying, cussing the horse and talking to us all at once: “Look him over, the fiddle-headed son of fourteen fathers. Try him, buy him; you will get the best—” Then it was all dust again, and we couldn’t see nothing but spotted hide and mane, and that ere Texas man’s boot-heels like a couple of walnuts on two strings, and after a while that two-gallon hat come sailing out like a fat old hen crossing a fence.

When the dust settled again, he was just getting outen the far fence corner, brushing himself off. He come and got his hat and brushed it off and come and clumb onto the gate post again. He was breathing hard. He taken the gingersnap box outen his pocket and et one, breathing hard. The hammer-head horse was still running round and round the lot like a merry-go-round at a fair. That was when Henry Armstid come shoving up to the gate in them patched overalls and one of them dangle-armed shirts of hisn. Hadn’t nobody noticed him until then. We was all watching the Texas man and the horses. Even Mrs. Littlejohn; she had done come out and built a fire under the wash-pot in her back yard, and she would stand at the fence a while and then go back into the house and come out again with a arm full of wash and stand at the fence again. Well, here come Henry shoving up, and then we see Mrs. Armstid right behind him, in that ere faded wrapper and sunbonnet and them tennis shoes. “Git on back to that wagon,” Henry says.

“Henry,” she says.

“Here, boys,” the Texas man says; “make room for missus to git up and see. Come on, Henry,” he says; “here’s your chance to buy that saddle-horse missus has been wanting. What about ten dollars, Henry?”

“Henry,” Mrs. Armstid says. She put her hand on Henry’s arm. Henry knocked her hand down.

“Git on back to that wagon, like I told you,” he says.

Mrs. Armstid never moved. She stood behind Henry, with her hands rolled into her dress, not looking at nothing. “He hain’t no more despair than to buy one of them things,” she says. “And us not five dollars ahead of the pore house, he hain’t no more despair.”
It was the truth, too. They ain’t never made more than a bare living offen that place of theirs, and them with four chaps and the very clothes they wears she earns by weaving by the firelight at night while Henry’s asleep.

“Shut your mouth and git on back to that wagon,” Henry says. “Do you want I taken a wagon stake to you here in the big road?”

Well, that Texas man taken one look at her. Then he begun on Eck again, like Henry wasn’t even there. But Eck was skeered. “I can git me a snapping turtle or a water moccasin for nothing. I ain’t going to buy none.”

So the Texas man said he would give Eck a horse. “To start the auction, and because you holp me last night. If you’ll start the bidding on the next horse,” he says, “I’ll give you that fiddle-head horse.”

I wish you could have seen them, standing there with their seed-money in their pockets, watching that Texas man give Eck Snopes a live horse, all fixed to call him a fool if he taken it or not. Finally Eck says he’ll take it. “Only I just starts the bidding,” he says. “I don’t have to buy the next one lessen I ain’t overtopped.” The Texas man said all right, and Eck bid a dollar on the next one, with Henry Armstid standing there with his mouth already open, watching Eck and the Texas man like a mad-dog or something. “A dollar,” Eck says.

The Texas man looked at Eck. His mouth was already open too, like he had started to say something and what he was going to say had up and died on him. “A dollar?” he says. “One dollar? You mean,
one
dollar, Eck?”

“Durn it,” Eck says; “two dollars, then.”

Well, sir, I wish you could a seen that Texas man. He taken out that gingersnap box and held it up and looked into it, careful, like it might have been a diamond ring in it, or a spider. Then he throwed it away and wiped his face with a bandanna. “Well,” he says. “Well. Two dollars. Two dollars. Is your pulse all right, Eck?” he says. “Do you have ager-sweats at night, maybe?” he says. “Well,” he says, “I got to take it. But are you boys going to stand there and see Eck get two horses at a dollar a head?”

That done it. I be dog if he wasn’t nigh as smart as Flem Snopes. He hadn’t no more than got the words outen his mouth before here was Henry Armstid, waving his hand. “Three dollars,” Henry
says. Mrs. Armstid tried to hold him again. He knocked her hand off, shoving up to the gate post.

“Mister,” Mrs. Armstid says, “we got chaps in the house and not corn to feed the stock. We got five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving after dark, and him snoring in the bed. And he hain’t no more despair.”

“Henry bids three dollars,” the Texas man says. “Raise him a dollar, Eck, and the horse is yours.”

“Henry,” Mrs. Armstid says.

“Raise him, Eck,” the Texas man says.

“Four dollars,” Eck says.

“Five dollars,” Henry says, shaking his fist. He shoved up right under the gate post. Mrs. Armstid was looking at the Texas man too.

“Mister,” she says, “if you take that five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving for one of them things, it’ll be a curse onto you and yourn during all the time of man.”