The sound and the fury
woman.
“I had no answer to my letter about Quentin’s easter dress. Did
it arrive all right? I’ve had no answer to the last two letters
I wrote her, though the check in the second one was cashed with
the other check. Is she sick? Let me know at once or I’ll come
there and see for myself. You promised you would let me know
when she needed things. I will expect to hear from you before
the 10th. No you’d better wire me at once. You are opening my
letters to her. I know that as well as if I were looking at you.
You’d better wire me at once about her to this address.”
About that time Earl started yelling at Job, so I put them away and went
over to try to put some life into him. What this country needs is white
labour. Let these damn trifling niggers starve for a couple of years,
then they’d see what a soft thing they have.
Along toward ten oclock I went up front. There was a drummer there. It
was a couple of minutes to ten, and I invited him up the street to get a
coca-cola. We got to talking about crops.
“There’s nothing to it,” I says, “Cotton is a speculator’s crop. They
fill the farmer full of hot air and get him to raise a big crop for them
to whipsaw on the market, to trim the suckers with. Do you think the
farmer gets anything out of it except a red neck and a hump in his back?
You think the man that sweats to put it into the ground gets a red cent
more than a bare living,” I says. “Let him make a big crop and it wont
be worth picking; let him make a small crop and he wont have enough to
gin. And what for? so a bunch of damn eastern jews, I’m not talking
about men of the jewish religion,” I says, “I’ve known some jews that
were fine citizens. You might be one yourself,” I says.
“No,” he says, “I’m an American.”
“No offense,” I says. “I give every man his due, regardless of religion
or anything else. I have nothing against jews as an individual,” I says.
“It’s just the race. You’ll admit that they produce nothing. They follow
the pioneers into a new country and sell them clothes.”
“You’re thinking of Armenians,” he says, “aren’t you. A pioneer wouldn’t
have any use for new clothes.”
“No offense,” I says. “I dont hold a man’s religion against him.”
“Sure,” he says, “I’m an American. My folks have some French blood, why
I have a nose like this. I’m an American, all right.”
“So am I,” I says. “Not many of us left. What I’m talking about is the
fellows that sit up there in New York and trim the sucker gamblers.”
“That’s right,” he says. “Nothing to gambling, for a poor man. There
ought to be a law against it.”
“Dont you think I’m right?” I says.
“Yes,” he says, “I guess you’re right. The farmer catches it coming and
going.”
“I know I’m right,” I says. “It’s a sucker game, unless a man gets
inside information from somebody that knows what’s going on. I happen to
be associated with some people who’re right there on the ground. They
have one of the biggest manipulators in New York for an adviser. Way I
do it,” I says, “I never risk much at a time. It’s the fellow that
thinks he knows it all and is trying to make a killing with three
dollars that they’re laying for. That’s why they are in the business.”
Then it struck ten. I went up to the telegraph office. It opened up a
little, just like they said. I went into the corner and took out the
telegram again, just to be sure. While I was looking at it a report came
in. It was up two points. They were all buying. I could tell that from
what they were saying. Getting aboard. Like they didn’t know it could go
but one way. Like there was a law or something against doing anything
but buying. Well, I reckon those eastern jews have got to live too. But
I’ll be damned if it hasn’t come to a pretty pass when any damn
foreigner that cant make a living in the country where God put him, can
come to this one and take money right out of an American’s pockets. It
was up two points more. Four points. But hell, they were right there and
knew what was going on. And if I wasn’t going to take the advice, what
was I paying them ten dollars a month for. I went out, then I remembered
and came back and sent the wire. “All well. Q writing today.”
“Q?” the operator says.
“Yes,” I says, “Q. Cant you spell Q?”
“I just asked to be sure,” he says.
“You send it like I wrote it and I’ll guarantee you to be sure,” I says.
“Send it collect.”
“What you sending, Jason?” Doc Wright says, looking over my shoulder.
“Is that a code message to buy?”
“That’s all right about that,” I says. “You boys use your own judgment.
You know more about it than those New York folks do.”
“Well, I ought to,” Doc says, “I’d a saved money this year raising it at
two cents a pound.”
Another report came in. It was down a point.
“Jason’s selling,” Hopkins says. “Look at his face.”
“That’s all right about what I’m doing,” I says. “You boys follow your
own judgment. Those rich New York jews have got to live like everybody
else,” I says.
I went on back to the store. Earl was busy up front. I went on back to
the desk and read Lorraine’s letter. “Dear daddy wish you were here. No
good parties when daddys out of town I miss my sweet daddy.” I reckon
she does. Last time I gave her forty dollars. Gave it to her. I never
promise a woman anything nor let her know what I’m going to give her.
That’s the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you
cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the
jaw.
I tore it up and burned it over the spittoon. I make it a rule never to
keep a scrap of paper bearing a woman’s hand, and I never write them at
all. Lorraine is always after me to write to her but I says anything I
forgot to tell you will save till I get to Memphis again but I says I
dont mind you writing me now and then in a plain envelope, but if you
ever try to call me up on the telephone, Memphis wont hold you I says. I
says when I’m up there I’m one of the boys, but I’m not going to have
any woman calling me on the telephone. Here I says, giving her the forty
dollars. If you ever get drunk and take a notion to call me on the
phone, just remember this and count ten before you do it.
“When’ll that be?” she says.
“What?” I says.
“When you’re coming back,” she says.
“I’ll let you know,” I says. Then she tried to buy a beer, but I
wouldn’t let her. “Keep your money,” I says. “Buy yourself a dress with
it.” I gave the maid a five, too. After all, like I say money has no
value; it’s just the way you spend it. It dont belong to anybody, so why
try to hoard it. It just belongs to the man that can get it and keep it.
There’s a man right here in Jefferson made a lot of money selling rotten
goods to niggers, lived in a room over the store about the size of a
pigpen, and did his own cooking. About four or five years ago he was
taken sick. Scared the hell out of him so that when he was up again he
joined the church and bought himself a Chinese missionary, five thousand
dollars a year. I often think how mad he’ll be if he was to die and find
out there’s not any heaven, when he thinks about that five thousand a
year. Like I say, he’d better go on and die now and save money.
When it was burned good I was just about to shove the others into my
coat when all of a sudden something told me to open Quentin’s before I
went home, but about that time Earl started yelling for me up front, so
I put them away and went and waited on the damn redneck while he spent
fifteen minutes deciding whether he wanted a twenty cent hame string or
a thirty-five cent one.
“You’d better take that good one,” I says. “How do you fellows ever
expect to get ahead, trying to work with cheap equipment?”
“If this one aint any good,” he says, “why have you got it on sale?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t any good,” I says, “I said it’s not as good as
that other one.”
“How do you know it’s not,” he says. “You ever use airy one of them?”
“Because they dont ask thirty-five cents for it,” I says. “That’s how I
know it’s not as good.”
He held the twenty cent one in his hands, drawing it through his
fingers. “I reckon I’ll take this hyer one,” he says. I offered to take
it and wrap it, but he rolled it up and put it in his overalls. Then he
took out a tobacco sack and finally got it untied and shook some coins
out. He handed me a quarter. “That fifteen cents will buy me a snack of
dinner,” he says.
“All right,” I says, “You’re the doctor. But dont come complaining to me
next year when you have to buy a new outfit.”
“I aint makin next year’s crop yit,” he says. Finally I got rid of him,
but every time I took that letter out something would come up. They were
all in town for the show, coming in in droves to give their money to
something that brought nothing to the town and wouldn’t leave anything
except what those grafters in the Mayor’s office will split among
themselves, and Earl chasing back and forth like a hen in a coop, saying
“Yes, ma’am, Mr Compson will wait on you. Jason, show this lady a churn
or a nickel’s worth of screen hooks.”
Well, Jason likes work. I says no I never had university advantages
because at Harvard they teach you how to go for a swim at night without
knowing how to swim and at Sewanee they dont even teach you what water
is. I says you might send me to the state University; maybe I’ll learn
how to stop my clock with a nose spray and then you can send Ben to the
Navy I says or to the cavalry anyway, they use geldings in the cavalry.
Then when she sent Quentin home for me to feed too I says I guess that’s
right too, instead of me having to go way up north for a job they sent
the job down here to me and then Mother begun to cry and I says it’s not
that I have any objection to having it here; if it’s any satisfaction to
you I’ll quit work and nurse it myself and let you and Dilsey keep the
flour barrel full, or Ben. Rent him out to a sideshow; there must be
folks somewhere that would pay a dime to see him, then she cried more
and kept saying my poor afflicted baby and I says yes he’ll be quite a
help to you when he gets his growth not being more than one and a half
times as high as me now and she says she’d be dead soon and then we’d
all be better off and so I says all right, all right, have it your way.
It’s your grandchild, which is more than any other grandparents it’s got
can say for certain. Only I says it’s only a question of time. If you
believe she’ll do what she says and not try to see it, you fool yourself
because the first time that was that Mother kept on saying thank God you
are not a Compson except in name, because you are all I have left now,
you and Maury, and I says well I could spare Uncle Maury myself and then
they came and said they were ready to start. Mother stopped crying then.
She pulled her veil down and we went down stairs. Uncle Maury was coming
out of the diningroom, his handkerchief to his mouth. They kind of made
a lane and we went out the door just in time to see Dilsey driving Ben
and T. P. back around the corner. We went down the steps and got in.
Uncle Maury kept saying Poor little sister, poor little sister, talking
around his mouth and patting Mother’s hand. Talking around whatever it
was.
“Have you got your band on?” she says. “Why dont they go on, before
Benjamin comes out and makes a spectacle. Poor little boy. He doesn’t
know. He cant even realise.”
“There, there,” Uncle Maury says, patting her hand, talking around his
mouth. “It’s better so. Let him be unaware of bereavement until he has
to.”
“Other women have their children to support them in times like this,”
Mother says.
“You have Jason and me,” he says.
“It’s so terrible to me,” she says, “Having the two of them like this,
in less than two years.”