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would constitute a bucket shop. And I wouldn't hesitate that long, either.
Only be damned if it doesn't look like a company as big and rich as the
Western Union could get a market report out on time. Half as quick as they'll
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get a wire to you saying Your account closed out. But what the hell do they
care about the people. They're hand in glove with that New York crowd. Anybody
could see that.
When I came in Earl looked at his watch. But he didn't say anything
until the customer was gone. Then he says,
"You go home to dinner?"
"I had to go to the dentist," I says because it's not any of his
business where I eat but I've got to be in the store with him all the
afternoon. And with his jaw running off after all I've stood. You take a
little two by four country storekeeper like I say it takes a man with just
five hundred dollars to worry about it fifty thousand dollars' worth.
"You might have told me," he says. "I expected you back right away."
"I'll trade you this tooth and give you ten dollars to boot, any time,"
I says. "Our agreement was an hour for dinner," I says, "and if you dont like
the way I do, you know what you can do about it."
"I've known that some time," he says. "If it hadn't been for your mother
I'd have done it before now, too. She's a lady I've got a lot of sympathy for,
Jason. Too bad some other folks I know cant say as much."
"Then you can keep it," I says. "When we need any sympathy I'll let you
know in plenty of time."
"I've protected you about that business a long time, Jason," he says.
"Yes?" I says, letting him go on. Listening to what he would say before
I shut him up.
"I believe I know more about where that automobile came from than she
does."
"You think so, do you?" I says. "When are you going to spread the news
that I stole it from my mother?"
"I dont say anything," he says. "I know you have her power of attorney.
And I know she still believes that thousand dollars is in this business."
"All right," I says. "Since you know so much, I'll tell you a little
more: go to the bank and ask them whose account I've been depositing a hundred
and sixty dollars on the first of every month for twelve years."
"I dont say anything," he says. "I just ask you to be a little more
careful after this."
I never said anything more. It doesn't do any good. I've found that when
a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there. And
when a man gets it in his head that he's got to tell something on you for your
own good, goodnight. I'm glad I haven't got the sort of conscience I've got to
nurse like a sick puppy all the time. If I'd ever be as careful over anything
as he is to keep his little shirt tail full of business from making him more
than eight percent. I reckon he thinks they'd get him on the usury law if he
netted more than eight percent. What the hell chance has a man got, tied down
in a town like this and to a business like this. Why I could take his business
in one year and fix him so he'd never have to work again, only he'd give it
all away to the church or something. If there's one thing gets under my skin,
it's a dam hypocrite. A man that thinks anything he dont understand all about
must be crooked and that first chance he gets he's morally bound to tell the
third party what's none of his business to tell. Like I say if I thought every
time a man did something I didn't know all about he was bound to be a crook, I
reckon I wouldn't have any trouble finding something back there on those books
that you wouldn't see any use for running and telling somebody I thought ought
to know about it, when for all I knew they might know a dam sight more about
it now than I did, and if they didn't it was dam little of my business anyway
and he says, "My books are open to anybody. Anybody that has any claim or
believes she has any claim on this business can go back there and welcome."
"Sure, you wont tell," I says. "You couldn't square your conscience with
that. You'll just take her back there and let her find it. You wont tell,
yourself."
"I'm not trying to meddle in your business," he says. "I know you missed
out on some things like Quentin had. But your mother has had a misfortunate
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life too, and if she was to come in here and ask me why you quit, I'd have to
tell her. It aint that thousand dollars. You know that. It's because a man
never gets anywhere if fact and his ledgers dont square. And I'm not going to
lie to anybody, for myself or anybody else."
"Well, then," I says. "I reckon that conscience of yours is a more
valuable clerk than I am; it dont have to go home at noon to eat. Only dont
let it interfere with my appetite," I says, because how the hell can I do
anything right, with that dam family and her not making any effort to control
her nor any of them like that time when she happened to see one of them
kissing Caddy and all next day she went around the house in a black dress and
a veil and even Father couldn't get her to say a word except crying and saying
her little daughter was dead and Caddy about fifteen then only in three years
she'd been wearing haircloth or probably sandpaper at that rate. Do you think
I can afford to have her running about the streets with every drummer that
comes to town, I says, and them telling the new ones up and down the toad
where to pick up a hot one when they made Jefferson. I haven't got much pride,
I cant afford it with a kitchen full of niggers to feed and robbing the state
asylum of its star freshman. Blood, I says, governors and generals. It's a dam
good thing we never had any kings and presidents; we'd all be down there at
Jackson chasing butterflies. I says it'd be bad enough if it was mine; I'd at
least be sure it was a bastard to begin with, and now even the Lord doesn't
know that for certain probably.
So after a while I heard the band start up, and then they begun to clear
out. Headed for the show, every one of them. Haggling over a twenty cent hame
string to save fifteen cents, so they can give it to a bunch of Yankees that
come in and pay maybe ten dollars for the privilege. I went on out to the
back.
"Well," I says. "If you dont look out, that bolt will grow into your
hand. And then I'm going to take an axe and chop it out. What do you reckon
the boll-weevils'll eat if you dont get those cultivators in shape to raise
them a crop?" I says, "sage grass?"
"Dem folks sho do play dem horns," he says. "Tell me man in dat show kin
play a tune on a handsaw. Pick hit like a banjo."
"Listen," I says. "Do you know how much that show'll spend in this town?
About ten dollars," I says. "The ten dollars Buck Turpin has in his pocket
right now."
"Whut dey give Mr Buck ten dollars fer?" he says.
"For the privilege of showing here," I says. "You can put the balance of
what they'll spend in your eye."
"You mean dey pays ten dollars jest to give dey show here?" he says.
"That's all," I says. "And how much do you reckon--"
"Gret day," he says. "You mean to tell me dey chargin um to let um show
here? I'd pay ten dollars to see dat man pick dat saw, ef I had to. I figures
dat tomorrow mawnin I be still owin um nine dollars and six bits at dat rate."
And then a Yankee will talk your head off about niggers getting ahead.
Get them ahead, what I say. Get them so far ahead you cant find one south of
Louisville with a blood hound. Because when I told him about how they'd pick
up Saturday night and carry off at least a thousand dollars out of the county,
he says,
"I dont begridge um. I kin sho afford my two bits."
"Two bits hell," I says. "That dont begin it. How about the dime or
fifteen cents you'll spend for a dam two cent box of candy or something. How
about the time you're wasting right now, listening to that band."
"Dat's de troof," he says. "Well, ef I lives swell night hit's "wine to
be two bits mo dey takin out of town, cat's shot"
"Then you're a fool," I says.
"Well," he says. "I dont spute dat neither. Ef dat uz a crime, all
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