The Reivers (13 page)

"Why?" Mr Binford said. "You dont like it or you cant get it?"

"No sir," I said. "I'm not old enough yet."

"Whiskey, then?" Mr Binford said.

"No sir," I said. "I dont drink anything. I promised my mother I wouldn't unless Father or Boss invited me."

"Who's his boss?" Mr Binford said to Boon.

"He means his grandfather," Boon said.

"Oh," Mr Binford said. "The one that owns the automobile. So evidently nobody promised him anything."

"You dont need to," Boon said. "He tells you what to do and you do it."

"You sound like you call him boss too," Mr Binford said. "Sometimes."

"That's right," Boon said. That's what I meant about Mr Binford: he was already looking at me before I even knew it.

"But your mother's not here now," he said. "You're on a tear with Boon now. Eighty—is it?—miles away."

"No sir," I said. "I promised her."

"I see," Mr Binford said. "You just promised her you wouldn't drink with Boon. You didn't promise not to go whore-hopping with him."

"You son of a bitch," Miss Reba said. I dont know how to say it. Without moving, she and Miss Corrie jumped, sprang, confederated, Miss Reba with the whiskey bottle in one hand and three glasses in the other.

"That'll do," Mr Binford said.

"Like hell," Miss Reba said. "I can throw you out too. Dont think I wont. What the hell kind of language is that?"

"And you too!" Miss Corrie said; she was talking at Miss Reba. "You're just as bad! Right in front of them—"

"I said, that'll do," Mr Binford said. "One of them cant get beer and the other dont drink it so maybe they both just come here for refinement and education. Call it they just got some. They just learned that whore and son of a bitch are both words to think twice before pulling the trigger on because both of them can backfire."

"Aw, come on, Mr Binford," Boon said.

"Why, be damned if here aint still another hog in this wallow," Mr Binford said. "A big one, too. Wake up, Miss Reba, before these folks suffocate for moisture." Miss Reba poured the whiskey, her hand shaking, enough to clink the bottle against the glass, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, in a thick fierce whisper. "That's better," Mr Binford said. "Let's have peace around _ Let's drink to it." He raised his glass and was saying, "L dies and gents all," when somebody—Minnie I suppose—I began to ring a hand bell somewhere in the back. Mr Bin-ford got up. "That's better still," he said. "Hash time. Learn us all the refinement and education that there's a better use for the mouth than running private opinions through it."

We went back toward the dining room, not fast, Mr Bin-ford leading the way. There were feet again, going fast; two more ladies, girls—that is, one of them was still a girt —hurried down the stairs, still buttoning their clothes, one in a red dress and the other in pink, panting a little. "We hurried as fast as we could," one of them said quickly to Mr Binford. "We're not late."

"I'm glad of that," Mr Binford said. "I dont feel like lateness tonight." We went in. There were more than enough places at the table, even with Otis and me. Minnie was still bringing things, all cold—fried chicken and biscuits and vegetables left over from dinner, except Mr Bin-ford's. His supper was hot: not a plate, a dish of steak smothered in onions at his place. (You see? how much ahead of his time Mr Binford was? Already a Republican. I dont mean a 1905 Republican—I dont know what his Tennessee politics were, or if he had any—I mean a 1961 Republican. He was more: he was a Conservative. Like this: a Republican is a man who made his money; a Liberal is a man who inherited his; a Democrat is a bare-i footed Liberal in a cross-country race; a Conservative is a Republican who has learned to read and write.) We all sat down, the two new ladies too; I had met so many people by now that I couldn't get names any more and had stopped trying; besides, I never saw these two again. We began to eat. Maybe the reason Mr Binf ord's steak smelled so extra was that the rest of the food had smelled itself out at noon. Then one of the new ladies—the one who was no longer a girl—said,

"Were we, Mr Binford?" Now the other one, the gi had stopped eating too.

"Were you what?" Mr Binford said. "You know what," the girl said, cried. "Miss Reba,"! said, "you know we do the best we can—dont dare mate no extra noise—no music on Sunday when all the other places do—always shushing our customers up every time they just want to have a little extra fun—but if we aiit already setting down at our places in this dining room P when he sticks his nose in the door, next Saturday we got to drop twenty-five cents into that God damned box—"

They are house rules," Mr Binford said. "A house without rules is not a house. The trouble with you bitches is, you have to act like ladies some of the time but you dont know how. I'm learning you how."

"You cant talk to me that way," the older one said.

"All right," Mr Binford said. "We'll turn it around. The trouble with you ladies is, you dont know how to quit acting like bitches."

The older one was standing now. There was something wrong about her too. It wasn't that she was old, like Grandmother is old, because she wasn't. She was alone. It was just that she shouldn't have had to be here, alone, to have to go through this. No. that's wrong too. It's that nobody should ever have to be that alone, nobody, not ever. She said, "I'm sorry, Miss Reba. I'm going to move out. Tonight."

"Where?" Mr Binford said. "Across the street to Birdie Watts's? Maybe she'll let you bring your trunk back with you this time—unless she's already sold it."

"Miss Reba," the woman said quietly. "Miss Reba."

"All right," Miss Reba said briskly. "Sit down and eat your supper; you aint going nowhere. Yes," she said, "I like peace too. So I'm going to mention just one more thing, then well close this subject for good." She was talking up the table at Mr Binford now. "What the hell's wrong with you? What the hell happened this afternoon to get you into this God damned humor?"

"Nothing that I noticed," Mr Binford said.

"That's right," Otis said suddenly. "Nothing sure didn't happen. He wouldn't even run." There was something, like a quick touch of electricity; Miss Reba was sitting with her mouth open and her fork halfway in it. I didn't understand yet but everybody else, even Boon, did. And in the next minute I did too.

"Who wouldn't run?" Miss Reba said.

"The horse,!! Otis said. "The horse and buggy we bet on in the race. Did they, Mr Binford?" Now the silence was no longer merely electric: it was shocked, electrocuted. Remember I told you there was something wrong somewhere about Otis. Though I still didn't think this was quite it, or at least all of it. But Miss Reba was still fighting. Because women are wonderful. They can bear anything because they are wise enough to know that all you have to do with grief and trouble is just go on through them and come out on the other side. I think they can do this because they not only decline to dignify physical pain by taking it seriously, they have no sense of shame at the idea of being knocked out. She didn't quit, even then.

"A horse race," she said. "At the zoo? in Overton Park?"

"Not Overton Park," Otis said. "The driving park. We met a man on the streetcar that knowed which horse and buggy was going to win and changed our mind about Overton Park. Only, they didn't
win.,
did they, Mr Binford? But even then, we never lost as much as the man did, we didn't even lose forty dollars because Mr Binford give me twenty-five cents of it not to tell, so all we lost was just thirty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. Only, on top of that, my twenty-five cents got away from me in that beer mix-up Mr Binford was telling about. Didn't it, Mr Bin-ford?" And then some more silence. It was quite peaceful. Then Miss Reba said,

"You son of a bitch." Then she said, "Go on. Finish your steak first if you want." And Mr Binford wasn't a quitter either. He was proud too: that gave no quarter and accepted none, like a gamecock. He crossed his knife and fork neatly and without haste on the steak he had barely cut into yet; he even folded his napkin and pushed it back through the ring and got up and said,

"Excuse me, all," and went out, looking at nobody, not even Otis.

"Well, Jesus," the younger of the two late ones, the girl, said; it was then I noticed Minnie standing in the half-open kitchen door. "What do you know?"

"Get to hell out of here," Miss Reba said to the girl. "Both of you." The girl and the woman rose quickly. "You mean . . . leave?" the girl said. "No," Miss Corrie said. "Just get out of here. If you're not expecting anybody in the next few minutes, why dont you take a walk around the block or something?" They didn't waste any time either. Miss Corrie got up. "You too," she told Otis. "Go upstairs to your room and stay there."

"He'll have to pass Miss Reba's door to do that," Boon said. "Have you forgot about that quarter?"

"It was more than a quarter," Otis said. "There was them eighty-five cents I made pumping the pee a noler for them to dance Saturday night. When he found out about the beer, he taken that away from me too." But Miss Reba looked at him.

"So you sold him out for eighty-five cents," she said. "Go to the kitchen," Miss Corrie told Otis. "Let him come back there, Minnie."

"All right," Minnie said. "I'll try to keep him out of the icebox. But he's too fast for me."

"Hell, let him stay here," Miss Reba said. "It's too late now. He should have been sent somewhere else before he ever got off that Arkansas train last week." Miss Corrie went to the chair next to Miss Reba.

"Why dont you go and help him pack?" she said, quite gently.

"Who the hell are you accusing?" Miss Reba said. "I will trust him with every penny I've got. Except for those God damn horses." She stood up suddenly, with her trim rich body and the hard handsome face and the hair that was too richly red. "Why the hell cant I do without him?" she said. "Why the hell cant I?"

"Now, now," Miss Corrie said. "You need a drink. Give Minnie the keys— No, she cant go to your room yet—"

"He gone," Minnie said. "I heard the front door. It dont take him long. It never do."

"That's right," Miss Reba said. "Me and Minnie have been here before, haven't we. Minnie?" She gave Minnie the keys and sat down and Minnie went out and came back with a bottle of gin this time and they all had a glass of gin, Minnie too (though she declined to drink with this many white people at once, each time carrying her full glass back to the kitchen then reappearing a moment later with the glass empty), except Otis and me. And so I found out about Mr Binford.

He was the landlord. That was his official even if unwritten title and designation. All places, houses like this, had one, had to have one. In the alien outside world fortunate enough not to have to make a living in this hard and doomed and self-destroying way, he had a harder and more contemptuous name. But here, the lone male not even in a simple household of women but in a hysteria of them, he was not just lord but the unthanked and thankless catalyst, the single frail power wearing the shape of respectability sufficient to compel enough of order on the hysteria to keep the unit solvent or anyway eating—he was the agent who counted down the money and took the receipt for the taxes and utilities, who dealt with the tradesmen from the liquor dealers through the grocers and coal merchants, down through the plumbers who thawed the frozen pipes in winter and the casual labor which cleaned the chimneys and gutters and cut the weeds out of the yard; his was the hand which paid the blackmail to the law; it was his voice which fought the losing battles with the street- and assessment-commissioners and cursed the newspaper boy the day after the paper wasn't delivered. And of these (I mean, landlords) in this society, Mr Bin-ford was the prince and paragon: a man of style and presence and manner and ideals; incorruptible in principles, impeccable in morals, more faithful than many husbands during the whole five years he had been Miss Reba's lover: whose sole and only vice was horses running in competition on which bets could be placed. This he could not resist; he knew it was his weakness and he fought against it. But each time, at the cry of "They're off!" he was putty in the hands of any stranger with a dollar to bet.

"He knowed it his-self," Minnie said. "He was ashamed of his-self and for his-self both, for being so weak, of there being anything bigger than him; to find out he aint bigger than anything he could meet up with, he dont care where nor what, even if on the outside, to folks that didn't know him, he just looked like a banty rooster. So he would promise us and mean it, like he done that time two years ago when we finally had to throw him out. You remember how much work it taken to get him back that time," she told Miss Reba.

"I remember," Miss Reba said. "Pour another round."

"I dont know how he'll manage it," Minnie said. "Because when he leaves, he dont take nothing but his clothes, I mean, just the ones he's got on since it was Miss Reba's money that paid for them. But wont two days pass before a messenger will be knocking on the door with every cent of them forty dollars—"

"You mean thirty-nine, six bits," Boon said. "No," Minnie said. "Every one of them forty dollars, even that quarter, was Miss Reba's. He wont be satisfied less. Then Miss Reba will send for him and he wont come; last year when we finally found him he was working in a gang laying a sewer line way down past the Frisco depot until she had to beg him right down on her bended knee—"

"Come on," Miss Reba said. "Stop running your mouth long enough to pour the gin, anyway." Minnie began to pour. Then she stopped, the bottle suspended.

"What's that hollering?" she said. Now we all heard it —a faint bawling from somewhere toward the back.

"Go and see," Miss Reba said. "Here, give me the bottle." Minnie gave her the bottle and went back to the kitchen. Miss Reba poured and passed the bottle.

"He's two years older now," Miss Corrie said. "He'll have more sense—"

"What's he saving it for?" Miss Reba said. "Go on. Pass it." Minnie came back. She said:

"Man standing in the back yard hollering Mr Boon Hogganbeck at the back wall of the house. He got something big with him."

We ran, following Boon, through the kitchen and out onto the back gallery. It was quite dark now; the moon was not high enough yet to do any good. Two dim things, a little one and a big one, were standing in the middle of the back yard, the little one bawling "Boon Hogganbeck! Mister Boon Hogganbeck! Hellaw. Hellaw" toward the upstairs windows until Boon overrode him by simple volume:

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

It was Ned. What he had with him was a horse.

Chapter 6

We were all in the kitchen. "Good Godalmighty," Boon said. "You swapped Boss's automobile for a
horse?"
He had to say it twice even. Because Ned was still looking at Minnie's tooth. I mean, he was waiting for it again. Maybe Miss Reba had said something to her or maybe Minnie had spoken herself. What I do remember is the rich instantaneous glint of gold out of the middle of whatever Minnie said, in the electric light of the kitchen, as if the tooth itself had gained a new luster, lambence from the softer light of the lamp in the outside darkness, like the horse's eyes had—this, and its effect on Ned.

It had stopped him cold for that moment, instant, like basilisk. So had it stopped me when I first saw it, so I knew what Ned was experiencing. Only his was more so. Because I realised this dimly too, even at only eleven: that I was too far asunder, not merely in race but in age, to feel what Ned felt; I could only be awed, astonished and pleased by it; I could not, like Ned, participate in that tooth. Here, in the ancient battle of the sexes, was a foe-man worthy of his steel; in the ancient mystic solidarity of race, here was a high priestess worth dying for—if such was your capacity for devotion: which, it was soon obvious, was not what Ned intended (anyway hoped) to do with Minnie. So Boon had to repeat before Ned heard—or anyway noticed—
him,