The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner.mobi [73]
“Do you think your money or hers either paid for a cent of this?” she says.
“Ask your grandmother,” I says. “Ask her what became of those checks. You saw her burn one of them, as I remember.” She wasn’t even listening, with her face all gummed up with paint and her eyes hard as a fice dog’s.
“Do you know what I’d do if I thought your money or hers either bought one cent of this?” she says, putting her hand on her dress.
“What would you do?” I says. “Wear a barrel?”
“I’d tear it right off and throw it into the street,” she says. “Dont you believe me?”
“Sure you would,” I says. “You do it every time.”
“See if I wouldn’t,” she says. She grabbed the neck of her dress in both hands and made like she would tear it.
“You tear that dress,” I says, “and I’ll give you a whipping right here that you’ll remember all your life.”
“See if I dont,” she says. Then I saw that she really was trying to tear it, to tear it right off of her. By the time I got the car stopped and grabbed her hands there was about a dozen people looking. It made me so mad for a minute it kind of blinded me.
“You do a thing like that again and I’ll make you sorry you ever drew breath,” I says.
“I’m sorry now,” she says. She quit, then her eyes turned kind of funny and I says to myself if you cry here in this car, on the street, I’ll whip you. I’ll wear you out. Lucky for her she didn’t, so I turned her wrists loose and drove on. Luckily we were near an alley, where I could turn into the back street and dodge the square. They were already putting the tent up in Beard’s lot. Earl had already given me the two passes for our show windows. She sat there with her face turned away, chewing her lip. “I’m sorry now,” she says. “I dont see why I was ever born.”
“And I know of at least one other person that dont understand all he knows about that,” I says. I stopped in front of the school house. The bell had rung, and the last of them were just going in. “You’re on time for once, anyway,” I says. “Are you going in there and stay there, or am I coming with you and make you?” She got out and banged the door. “Remember what I say,” I says. “I mean it. Let me hear one more time that you are slipping up and down back alleys with one of those dam squirts.”
She turned back at that. “I dont slip around,” she says. “I dare anybody to know everything I do.”
“And they all know it, too,” I says. “Everybody in this town knows what you are. But I wont have it anymore, you hear? I dont care what you do, myself,” I says. “But I’ve got a position in this town, and I’m not going to have any member of my family going on like a nigger wench. You hear me?”
“I dont care,” she says. “I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I dont care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.”
“If I hear one more time that you haven’t been to school, you’ll wish you were in hell,” I says. She turned and ran on across the yard. “One more time, remember,” I says. She didn’t look back.
I went to the postoffice and got the mail and drove on to the store and parked. Earl looked at me when I came in. I gave him a chance to say something about my being late, but he just said,
“Those cultivators have come. You’d better help Uncle Job put them up.”
I went on to the back, where old Job was uncrating them, at the rate of about three bolts to the hour.
“You ought to be working for me,” I says. “Every other no-count nigger in town eats in my kitchen.”
“I works to suit de man whut pays me Sat’dy night,” he says. “When I does dat, it dont leave me a whole lot of time to please other folks.” He screwed up a nut. “Aint nobody works much in dis country cep de boll-weevil, noways,” he says.
“You’d better be glad you’re not a boll-weevil