Fable, A - William Faulkner [86]
That's all right too,' the turnkey said. 'I been living in the jail two years already. So I wont even have to move. I expect I can even stand chain-gang work too.'
Tab,' the lawyer said, not through smoke but in smoke, by means of smoke, the puff, the spurt, the pale rich costly balloon bursting, vanishing, leaving the hard calm not loud word as durable and single as a piece of gravel or a buckshot: When you arrested this man the second time, you broke the law. As soon as you turn him loose, he wont have to hunt for a lawyer because there are probably a dozen of them from Memphis and Saint Louis and Little Rock waiting down there in the yard now, just hoping you will have no more sense than to turn him loose. They're not going to put you in jail. They're not even going to sue you. Because you haven't got any money or know where any is, any more than this nigger does. They're going to sue your bondsmen-whoever they were and whatever it was they thought you could do for them-and your-what is it? brother-in-law?--the sheriff.'
They were my-' he started to say kinsmen, but they were not, they were his wife's kinsmen; he had plenty of his own, but none of them-or all of them together, for that matter-had enough money in a bank anywhere to guarantee a bond. Then he started to say friends, but they were his wife's family's friends too. But then it didn't matter what he said, because the voice had already read his mind: '-which makes it harder; you might leave your own kinfolks holding the sack, but these are the sheriff's friends and you've got to sleep in the same bed with his niece every night.' Which was wrong too, since three years and two months and thirteen nights ago now, but that didn't matter either, the cigar smoking in the judge's ashtray now, and the voice: 'Come back here': and he returned, drawing the Negro with him, until they stood facing the white vest with its loop of watch-chain like a section of gold plow-trace, and the voice: 'You've got to get him into a jail somewhere where they can hold him long enough for you to put a charge on him that the law will accept. They can turn him loose the next day or the next minute if they want to; all you want is to have him on record as having been charged with a legal crime or misdemeanor by a legally qualified officer of a legally constituted court, then when his lawyers sue your bondsmen for false arrest, they can tell them to go chase themselves,'
'What charge?' the turnkey said.
'What's the next big jail from here? Not a county seat: a town Tuesday with at least five thousand people in it?' The turnkey told him. 'All right. Take him there. Take my car; it's in the hotel garage; I'll telephone my driver from here. Only, you'll-but surely I dont need to tell you how to spirit a prisoner out of the clutches of a mob,' Which was true too, that was a part of the turnkey's dream too; he had planned it all, run it through his mind out to the last splendid and victorious gesture, time and again since that moment two years ago when he had laid his hand on the Book and sworn the oath, not that he really expected it to happen but to be prepared against that moment when he should be called upon to prove not merely his fitness for his office but his honor and courage as a man, by preserving and defending the integrity of his oath in the very face of them by whose sufferance he held his office.
Tes,' he said. 'Only-'
'All right,' the lawyer said. 'Unlock that damn thing. Here, give me the key': and took it from his hand and unlocked the handcuffs and flung them onto the table, where they made again that faint musical note.
'Only-' the turnkey said again.
'Now go around by the corridor and shut the big