The Essential Faulkner (52 page)

“Suppose there was somebody seen Flem give that money back to that Texas fellow,” Lump Snopes said suddenly.

“Did anybody here see that?” the Justice said.

“Yes,” Snopes said, harshly and violently. “Eck here did.” He looked at Eck. “Go on. Tell him.” The Justice looked at Eck; the four Tull girls turned their heads as one head and looked at him, and Mrs. Tull leaned forward to look past her husband, her face cold, furious, and contemptuous, and those standing shifted to look past one another’s heads at Eck sitting motionless on the bench.

“Did you see Snopes give Armstid’s money back to the Texas man, Eck?” the Justice said. Still Eck did not answer nor move, Lump Snopes made a gross violent sound through the side of his mouth.

“By God, I ain’t afraid to say it if Eck is. I seen him do it.”

“Will you swear that as testimony?” Snopes looked at the Justice. He did not blink now.

“So you won’t take my word,” he said.

“I want the truth,” the Justice said. “If I can’t find that, I got to have sworn evidence of what I will have to accept as truth.” He lifted the Bible from the two other books.

“All right,” the bailiff said. “Step up here.” Snopes rose from the bench and approached. They watched him, though now there was no shifting nor craning, no movement at all among the faces, the still eyes. Snopes at the
table looked back at them once, his gaze traversing swiftly the crescent-shaped rank; he looked at the Justice again. The bailiff grasped the Bible; though the Justice did not release it yet.

“You are ready to swear you saw Snopes give that Texas man back the money he took from Henry Armstid for that horse?” he said.

“I said I was didn’t I?” Snopes said. The Justice released the Bible.

“Swear him,” he said.

“Put your left hand on the Book raise your right hand you solemnly swear and affirm—” the bailiff said rapidly. But Snopes had already done so, his left hand raised and his head turned away as once more his gaze went rapidly along the circle of expressionless and intent faces, saying in that harsh and snarling voice:

“Yes. I saw Flem Snopes give back to that Texas man whatever money Henry Armstid or anybody else thinks Henry Armstid or anybody else paid Flem for any of them horses. Does that suit you?”

“Yes,” the Justice said. Then there was no movement, no sound anywhere among them. The bailiff placed the Bible quietly on the table beside the Justice’s locked hands, and there was no movement save the flow and recover of the windy shadows and the drift of the locust petals. Then Mrs. Armstid rose; she stood once more (or still) looking at nothing, her hands clasped across her middle.

“I reckon I can go now, can’t I?” she said.

“Yes,” the Justice said, rousing. “Unless you would like—–”

“I better get started,” she said. “It’s a right far piece.” She had not come in the wagon, but on one of the gaunt and underfed mules. One of the men followed her across the grove and untied the mule for her and led it up to a wagon, from one hub of which she mounted. Then they looked at the Justice again. He sat behind the table, his
hands still joined before him, though his head was not bowed now. Yet he did not move until the bailiff leaned and spoke to him, when he roused, came suddenly awake without starting, as an old man wakes from an old man’s light sleep. He removed his hands from the table and, looking down, he spoke exactly as if he were reading from a paper:

“Tull against Snopes. Assault and—–”

“Yes!” Mrs. Tull said. “I’m going to say a word before you start.” She leaned, looking past Tull at Lump Snopes again. “If you think you are going to lie and perjure Flem and Eck Snopes out of—–”

“Now, mamma,” Tull said. Now she spoke to Tull, without changing her position or her tone or even any break or pause in her speech:

“Don’t you say hush to me! You’ll let Eck Snopes or Flem Snopes or that whole Varner tribe snatch you out of the wagon and beat you half to death against a wooden bridge. But when it comes to suing them for your just rights and a punishment, oh no. Because that wouldn’t be neighborly. What’s neighborly got to do with you lying flat on your back in the middle of planting time while we pick splinters out of your face?” By this time the bailiff was shouting,

“Order! Order! This here’s a law court!” Mrs. Tull ceased. She sat back, breathing hard, staring at the Justice, who sat and spoke again as if he were reading aloud:

“—assault and battery on the person of Vernon Tull, through the agency and instrument of one horse, unnamed, belonging to Eckrum Snopes. Evidence of physical detriment and suffering, defendant himself. Witnesses, Mrs. Tull and daughters—–”

“Eck Snopes saw it too,” Mrs. Tull said, though with less violence now. “He was there. He got there in plenty of time to see it. Let him deny it. Let him look me in the face and deny it if he—–”

“If you please, ma’am,” the Justice said. He said it so quietly that Mrs. Tull hushed and became quite calm, almost a rational and composed being. “The injury to your husband ain’t disputed. And the agency of the horse ain’t disputed. The law says that when a man owns a creature which he knows to be dangerous and if that creature is restrained and restricted from the public commons by a pen or enclosure capable of restraining and restricting it, if a man enter that pen or enclosure, whether he knows the creature in it is dangerous or not dangerous, then that man has committed trespass and the owner of that creature is not liable. But if that creature known to him to be dangerous ceases to be restrained by that suitable pen or enclosure, either by accident or design and either with or without the owner’s knowledge, then that owner is liable. That’s the law. All necessary now is to establish first, the ownership of the horse, and second, that the horse was a dangerous creature within the definition of the law as provided.”

“Hah,” Mrs. Tull said. She said it exactly as Bookwright would have. “Dangerous. Ask Vernon Tull. Ask Henry Armstid if them things was pets.”

“If you please, ma’am,” the Justice said. He was looking at Eck. “What is the defendant’s position? Denial of ownership?”

“What?” Eck said.

“Was that your horse that ran over Mr. Tull?”

“Yes,” Eck said. “It was mine. How much do I have to p—–”

“Hah,” Mrs. Tull said again. “Denial of ownership. When there were at least forty men—fools too, or they wouldn’t have been there. But even a fool’s word is good about what he saw and heard—at least forty men heard that Texas murderer give that horse to Eck Snopes. Not sell it to him, mind; give it to him.”

“What?” the Justice said. “Gave it to him?”

“Yes,” Eck said. “He give it to me. I’m sorry Tull happened to be using that bridge too at the same time. How much do I—–”

“Wait,” the Justice said. “What did you give him? a note? a swap of some kind?”

“No,” Eck said. “He just pointed to it in the lot and told me it belonged to me.”

“And he didn’t give you a bill of sale or a deed or anything in writing?”

“I reckon he never had time,” Eck said. “And after Lon Quick forgot and left that gate open, never nobody had time to do no writing even if we had a thought of it.”

“What’s all this?” Mrs. Tull said. “Eck Snopes has just told you he owned that horse. And if you won’t take his word, there were forty men standing at that gate all day long doing nothing, that heard that murdering card-playing whiskey-drinking anti-christ—” This time the Justice raised one hand, in its enormous pristine cuff, toward her. He did not look at her.

“Wait,” he said. “Then what did he do?” he said to Eck. “Just lead the horse up and put the rope in your hand?”

“No,” Eck said. “Him nor nobody else never got no ropes on none of them. He just pointed to the horse in the lot and said it was mine and auctioned off the rest of them and got into the buggy and said good-bye and druv off. And we got our ropes and went into the lot, only Lon Quick forgot to shut the gate. I’m sorry it made Tull’s mules snatch him outen the wagon. How much do I owe him?” Then he stopped, because the Justice was no longer looking at him and, as he realized a moment later, no longer listening either. Instead, he was sitting back in the chair, actually leaning back in it for the first time, his head bent slightly and his hands resting on the table before him, the fingers lightly overlapped. They watched him quietly for almost a half-minute before anyone realized that he was looking quietly and steadily at Mrs. Tull.

“Well, Mrs. Tull,” he said, “by your own testimony, Eck never owned that horse.”

“What?” Mrs. Tull said. It was not loud at all. “What did you say?”

“In the law, ownership can’t be conferred or invested by word-of-mouth. It must be established either by recorded or authentic document, or by possession or occupation. By your testimony and his both, he never gave that Texan anything in exchange for that horse, and by his testimony the Texas man never gave him any paper to prove he owned it, and by his testimony and by what I know myself from these last four weeks, nobody yet has ever laid hand or rope either on any one of them. So that horse never came into Eck’s possession at all. That Texas man could have given that same horse to a dozen other men standing around that gate that day, without even needing to tell Eck he had done it; and Eck himself could have transferred all his title and equity in it to Mr. Tull right there while Mr. Tull was lying unconscious on that bridge just by thinking it to himself, and Mr. Tull’s title would be just as legal as Eck’s.”

“So I get nothing,” Mrs. Tull said. Her voice was still calm, quiet, though probably no one but Tull realized that it was too calm and quiet. “My team is made to run away by a wild spotted mad dog, my wagon is wrecked; my husband is jerked out of it and knocked unconscious and unable to work for a whole week with less than half of our seed in the ground, and I get nothing.”

“Wait,” the Justice said. “The law—–”

“The law,” Mrs. Tull said. She stood suddenly up—a short, broad, strong woman, balanced on the balls of her planted feet.

“Now, mamma,” Tull said.

“Yes, ma’am,” the Justice said. “Your damages are fixed by statute. The law says that when a suit for damages is brought against the owner of an animal which has committed damage or injury, if the owner of the animal either
can’t or won’t assume liability, the injured or damaged party shall find recompense in the body of the animal. And since Eck Snopes never owned that horse at all, and since you just heard a case here this morning that failed to prove that Flem Snopes had any equity in any of them, that horse still belongs to that Texas man. Or did belong. Because now that horse that made your team run away and snatch your husband out of the wagon, belongs to you and Mr. Tull.”

“Now, mamma!” Tull said. He rose quickly. But Mrs. Tull was still quiet, only quite rigid and breathing hard, until Tull spoke. Then she turned on him, not screaming: shouting; presently the bailiff was banging the table-top with his hand-polished hickory cane and roaring “Order! Order!” while the neat old man, thrust backward in his chair as though about to dodge and trembling with an old man’s palsy, looked on with amazed unbelief.

“The horse!” Mrs. Tull shouted. “We see it for five seconds, while it is climbing into the wagon with us and then out again. Then it’s gone, God don’t know where and thank the Lord He don’t! And the mules gone with it and the wagon wrecked and you laying there on the bridge with your face full of kindling-wood and bleeding like a hog and dead for all we knew. And he gives us the horse! Don’t hush me! Get on to that wagon, fool that would sit there behind a pair of young mules with reins tied around his wrist! Get on to that wagon, all of you!”

“I can’t stand no more!” the old Justice cried. “I won’t! This court’s adjourned! Adjourned!”

A recurring theme in Faulkner’s novels is that the old South was defeated from within. After four years of fighting against hopeless odds, the landowners of Yoknapatawpha County had remained “the unvanquished,” and they all had tried, as did Colonel Sutpen, to restore their houses, their plantations, and their social order to the image of what they had been before the war. Moreover, they achieved a partial success. There were years in Jefferson when the prewar standards prevailed; when a Sartoris was mayor, a Benbow was county judge, and Major de Spain was the local magnate. But the heirs of the men who had withstood the Northern armies and defeated the carpetbaggers were driven from their posts of influence by Southern renegades, or rather by a coalition between Northern business and a new class of Southerners descended in part from the bushwhackers of Civil War days. Jefferson itself was overrun, infested by the tribe of Snopes: for a time there were Snopeses in the bank, in the power company, in politics, Snopeses everywhere gnawing like rats at the standards by which the South had lived.

The Snopeses and their allies are the destructive element in Faulkner’s novels. The Negroes are an element of stability: they endured. Faulkner’s favorite characters are the Negro cooks and matriarchs who hold a white family
together: Elnora and Clytie and Dilsey and Aunt Mollie Beauchamp. After the Compson family has gone to pieces, in
The Sound and the Fury
, it is Dilsey the cook who is left behind to mourn. Looking up at the square unpainted house with its rotting portico, she thinks, “Ise seed de first en de last”; and later in the kitchen she says, looking at the cold stove, “I seed de first en de last.”

Of the four stories in this section, “That Evening Sun,” with its black heroine, is one of Faulkner’s very best; it belongs to a cycle dealing with the Compson children. “Ad Astra” is part of another cycle recounting the adventures of Bayard Sartoris’ twin grandsons in the Royal Air Force: John was killed, and Bayard, named for his grandfather, came home (in
Sartoris
, 1929) feeling that he too had died on the night of the Armistice. In “A Rose for Emily,” often anthologized, Faulkner has found one of his most effective symbols for the decay of the old order. These three stories were included in
These
13 (1931) and reprinted in
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
(1950). “Dilsey” comes from the last part of
The Sound and the Fury
(1929), which describes the going to pieces of the Compson family and which remained Faulkner’s favorite among his novels. For the earlier histroy of the Compsons and the fate of the survivors, see “Appendix: The Compsons,” printed in the last part of this volume.