Sanctuary

22

On the third day of his search, Horace found a domicile for the woman and child. It was in the ramshackle house of an old half-crazed white woman who was believed to manufacture spells for negroes. It was on the edge of town, set in a tiny plot of ground choked and massed with waist-high herbage in an unbroken jungle across the front. At the back a path had been trodden from the broken gate to the door. All night a dim light burned in the crazy depths of the house and at almost any hour of the twenty-four a wagon or a buggy might be seen tethered in the lane behind it and a negro entering or leaving the back door.

The house had been entered once by officers searching for whiskey. They found nothing save a few dried bunches of weeds, and a collection of dirty bottles containing liquid of which they could say nothing surely save that it was not alcoholic, while the old woman, held by two men, her lank grayish hair shaken before the glittering collapse of her face, screamed invective at them in her cracked voice. In a lean-to shed room containing a bed and a barrel of anonymous refuse and trash in which mice rattled all night long, the woman found a home.

“You’ll be all right here,” Horace said. “You can always get me by telephone, at—” giving her the name of a neighbor. “No: wait; tomorrow I’ll have the telephone put back in. Then you can—”

“Yes,” the woman said. “I reckon you better not be coming out here.”

“Why? Do you think that would—that I’d care a damn what—”

“You have to live here.”

“I’m damned if I do. I’ve already let too many women run my affairs for me as it is, and if these uxorious.……” But he knew he was just talking. He knew that she knew it too, out of that feminine reserve of unflagging suspicion of all peoples’ actions which seems at first to be mere affinity for evil but which is in reality practical wisdom.

“I guess I’ll find you if there’s any need,” she said. “There’s not anything else I could do.”

“By God,” Horace said, “dont you let them.…Bitches,” he said; “bitches.”

The next day he had the telephone installed. He did not see his sister for a week; she had no way of learning that he had a phone, yet when, a week before the opening of Court, the telephone shrilled into the quiet where he sat reading one evening, he thought it was Narcissa until, across a remote blaring of victrola or radio music, a man’s voice spoke in a guarded, tomblike tone.

“This is Snopes,” it said. “How’re you, Judge?”

“What?” Horace said. “Who is it?”

“Senator Snopes. Cla’ence Snopes.” The victrola blared, faint, far away; he could see the man, the soiled hat, the thick shoulders, leaning above the instrument—in a drugstore or a restaurant—whispering into it behind a soft, huge, ringed hand, the telephone toylike in the other.

“Oh,” Horace said. “Yes? What is it?”

“I got a little piece of information that might interest you.”

“Information that would interest me?”

“I reckon so. That would interest a couple of parties.” Against Horace’s ear the radio or the victrola performed a reedy arpeggio of saxophones. Obscene, facile, they seemed to be quarreling with one another like two dexterous monkeys in a cage. He could hear the gross breathing of the man at the other end of the wire.

“All right,” he said. “What do you know that would interest me?”

“I’ll let you judge that.”

“All right. I’ll be down town in the morning. You can find me somewhere.” Then he said immediately: “Hello!” The man sounded as though he were breathing in Horace’s ear: a placid, gross sound, suddenly portentous somehow. “Hello!” Horace said.

“It evidently dont interest you, then. I reckon I’ll dicker with the other party and not trouble you no more. Goodbye.”

“No; wait,” Horace said. “Hello! Hello!”

“Yeuh?”

“I’ll come down tonight. I’ll be there in about fifteen—”

“ ’Taint no need of that,” Snopes said. “I got my car. I’ll drive up there.”

He walked down to the gate. There was a moon tonight. Within the black-and-silver tunnel of cedars fireflies drifted in fatuous pinpricks. The cedars were black and pointed on the sky like a paper silhouette; the sloping lawn had a faint sheen, a patina like silver. Somewhere a whippoorwill called, reiterant, tremulous, plaintful above the insects. Three cars passed. The fourth slowed and swung toward the gate. Horace stepped into the light. Behind the wheel Snopes loomed bulkily, giving the impression of having been inserted into the car before the top was put on. He extended his hand.

“How’re you tonight, Judge? Didn’t know you was living in town again until I tried to call you out to Mrs Sartorises.”

“Well, thanks,” Horace said. He freed his hand. “What’s this you’ve got hold of?”

Snopes creased himself across the wheel and peered out beneath the top, toward the house.

“We’ll talk here,” Horace said. “Save you having to turn around.”

“It aint very private here,” Snopes said. “But that’s for you to say.” Huge and thick he loomed, hunched, his featureless face moonlike itself in the refraction of the moon. Horace could feel Snopes watching him, with that sense of portent which had come over the wire; a quality calculating and cunning and pregnant. It seemed to him that he watched his mind flicking this way and that, striking always that vast, soft, inert bulk, as though it were caught in an avalanche of cottonseed-hulls.

“Let’s go to the house,” Horace said. Snopes opened the door. “Go on,” Horace said. “I’ll walk up.” Snopes drove on. He was getting out of the car when Horace overtook him. “Well, what is it?” Horace said.

Again Snopes looked at the house. “Keeping batch, are you?” he said. Horace said nothing. “Like I always say, ever married man ought to have a little place of his own, where he can git off to himself without it being nobody’s business what he does. ’Course a man owes something to his wife, but what they dont know caint hurt them, does it? Long’s he does that, I caint see where she’s got ere kick coming. Aint that what you say?”

“She’s not here,” Horace said, “if that’s what you’re hinting at. What did you want to see me about?”

Again he felt Snopes watching him, the unabashed stare calculating and completely unbelieving. “Well, I always say, caint nobody tend to a man’s private business but himself. I aint blaming you. But when you know me better, you’ll know I aint loose-mouthed. I been around. I been there.… Have a cigar?” His big hand flicked to his breast and offered two cigars.

“No, thanks.”

Snopes lit a cigar, his face coming out of the match like a pie set on edge.

“What did you want to see me about?” Horace said.

Snopes puffed the cigar. “Couple days ago I come onto a piece of information which will be of value to you, if I aint mistook.”

“Oh. Of value. What value?”

“I’ll leave that to you. I got another party I could dicker with, but being as me and you was fellow-townsmen and all that.”

Here and there Horace’s mind flicked and darted. Snopes’ family originated somewhere near Frenchman’s Bend and still lived there. He knew of the devious means by which information passed from man to man of that illiterate race which populated that section of the county. But surely it cant be something he’d try to sell to the State, he thought. Even he is not that big a fool.

“You’d better tell me what it is, then,” he said.

He could feel Snopes watching him. “You remember one day you got on the train at Oxford, where you’d been on some bus—”

“Yes,” Horace said.

Snopes puffed the cigar to an even coal, carefully, at some length. He raised his hand and drew it across the back of his neck. “You recall speaking to me about a girl.”

“Yes. Then what?”

“That’s for you to say.”

He could smell the honeysuckle as it bore up the silver slope, and he heard the whippoorwill, liquid, plaintful, reiterant. “You mean, you know where she is?” Snopes said nothing. “And that for a price you’ll tell?” Snopes said nothing. Horace shut his hands and put them in his pockets, shut against his flanks. “What makes you think that information will interest me?”

“That’s for you to judge. I aint conducting no murder case. I wasn’t down there at Oxford looking for her. Of course, if it dont, I’ll dicker with the other party. I just give you the chance.”

Horace turned toward the steps. He moved gingerly, like an old man. “Let’s sit down,” he said. Snopes followed and sat on the step. They sat in the moonlight. “You know where she is?”

“I seen her.” Again he drew his hand across the back of his neck. “Yes, sir. If she aint—hasn’t been there, you can git your money back. I caint say no fairer, can I?”

“And what’s your price?” Horace said. Snopes puffed the cigar to a careful coal. “Go on,” Horace said. “I’m not going to haggle.” Snopes told him. “All right,” Horace said. “I’ll pay it.” He drew his knees up and set his elbows on them and laid his hands to his face. “Where is—Wait. Are you a Baptist, by any chance?”

“My folks is. I’m putty liberal, myself. I aint hidebound in no sense, as you’ll find when you know me better.”

“All right,” Horace said from behind his hands. “Where is she?”

“I’ll trust you,” Snopes said. “She’s in a Memphis ’ho’-house.”