Reivers, The - William Faulkner [59]
"------1," Otis said.
"Or maybe even the nearest handy stick," Ned said.
"------1," Otis said. And sure enough, we met a policeman. I mean, Otis saw the policeman even before the policeman saw the horse. "Twenty-three skiddoo," Otis said. The policeman knew Miss Corrie. Then apparently he knew Sam too.
"Where you taking him?" he said. "Did you steal him?"
"Borrowed him," Sam said. They didn't stop. "We rode him to prayer meeting tonight and now we're taking him back home." We went on. Otis said Twenty-three skiddoo again.
"I never seen that before," he said. "Every policeman I ever seen before speaking to anybody, they give him something. Like Minnie and Miss Reba already having a bottle of beer waiting for him before he could even get his foot inside, even if Miss Reba cussed him before he come and cussed him again after he left. And ever since I got here last summer and found out about it, every day I go up to Court Square where that I-talian wop has got that fruit and peanut stand and, sho enough, here the policeman comes and without even noticing it, takes a apple or a handful of peanuts." He was almost trotting to keep up with us; he was that much smaller than me. I mean, he didn't seem so much smaller until you saw him trotting to keep up. There was something wrong about him. When it's you, you say to yourself Next year I'm going to be bigger than I am now simply because being bigger is not only natural, it's inevitable; it doesn't even matter that you cant imagine to yourself how or what you will look like then. And the same with other children; they cant help it either. But Otis looked like two or three years ago he had already reached where you wont be until next year, and since then he had been going backward. He was still talking. "So what I thought back then was that the only thing to be was a policeman. But I never taken long to get over that. It's too limited."
"Limited to what?" Ned said.
"To beer and apples and peanuts," Otis said. "Who's going to waste his time on beer and apples and peanuts?" He said Twenty-three skiddoo three times now. "This town is where the jack's at."
"Jacks?" Ned said. "In course they has jacks here. Dont Memphis need mules the same as anybody else?"
"Jack," Otis said. "Spondulicks. Cash. When I think about all that time I wasted in Arkansas before anybody ever told me about Memphis. That tooth. How much do you reckon that tooth by itself is worth? if she just walked into the bank and taken it out and laid it on the counter and said, Gimme change for it?"
"Yes," Ned said. "I mind a boy like you back there in Jefferson used to keep his mind on money all the time too. You know where he's at now?"
"Here in Memphis, if he's got any sense," Otis said. "He never got that far," Ned said. "The most he could get was into the state penitentiary at Parchman. And at the rate you sounds like going, that's where youll wind up too."
"But not tomorrow," Otis said. "Maybe not the next day neither. Twenty-three skiddoo, where even a durn policeman cant even pass by without a bottle of beer or a apple or a handful of peanuts put right in his hand before he can even ask for it. Them eighty-five cents them folks give me last night for pumping the pee a noler that that son of a bitch taken away from me this evening. That I might a even pumped that pee a noler free for nothing if I hadn't found out by pure accident that they was aiming to pay me for it; if I had just happened to step out the door a minute, I might a missed it. And if I hadn't even been there, they would still a give it to somebody, anybody that just happened to pass by. See what I mean? Sometime just thinking about it, I feel like just giving up, just quitting."
"Quitting what?" Ned said. "Quitting for what?"
"Just quitting," Otis said. "When I think of all them years I spent over there on a durn farm in Arkansas with Memphis right here across the river and I never