Reivers, The - William Faulkner [87]
"Can you find him tomorrow?" Everbe said. "I've got to find him. He's just a child. I'll pay for the tooth, I'll buy Minnie another one. But I've got to find him. He'll say he hasn't got it, he never saw it, but I've got—"
"Sho," Ned said. "That's what I'd say too if it was me. I'll try. Ill be in early tomorrow morning to get Lucius, but the best chance gonter be at that track tomorrow just before the race." He said to me: "Folks is already kind of dropping by Possum's lot like they wasn't noticing themselves doing it, likely trying to find out who it is this time that still believes that horse can run a race. So likely we gonter have a nice crowd tomorrow. It's late now, so you go get some sleep whilst I takes that mule of Possum's back home to bed too. Where's your sock? You aint lost it?"
"It's in my pocket," I said.
"Be sho you dont," he said. "The mate to it is the left-footed one 'and a left-footed sock is unlucky unlessen you wears both of them." He turned, but no further than the fat cook; he said to her now: "Unlessen my mind changes to staying in town tonight. What time you setting breakfast, Good-looking?"
"The soonest time after your jaws is too far away to chomp it," the cook said.
"Good night, all," Ned said. Then he was gone. We went back to the dining room, where the waiter, in his short sleeves now and without his collar and tie, brought Miss Reba a plate of the pork chops and grits and biscuits and blackberry jam we had had for supper, neither hot nor cold now but lukewarm, in deshabille like the waiter, you might say.
"Did you get her to sleep?" Everbe said. "Yes," Miss Reba said. "That little son of a—" and cut it off and said, "Excuse me. I thought I had seen everything in my business, but I never thought I'd have a tooth stolen in one of my houses. I hate little bastards. They're like little snakes. You can handle a big snake because you been already warned to watch out. But a little one has already bit you behind before you even knew it had teeth. Where's my coffee?" The waiter brought it and went away. And then even Ifrat big shrouded dining room was crowdedj it was like every time Boon and Butch got inside the same four walls everything compounded, multiplied, leaving not really room for anything else. He—Butch— had been back to the doctor's, or maybe in the tin badge business you knew, everybody who didn't dare refuse you a free drink. And it was getting late, and I was tired, but here he was again; and suddenly I knew that up to now he hadn't really been anything and that we were only just starting with Mm now, standing in the door, bulging, bright-eyed, confident, breezy and a little redder, the badge itself seeming to bulge at us as with a life of its own on his sweaty shirt, he—Butch—wearing it not as the official authorisation of his unique dedication, but as a boy scout wears his merit badge: as both the unique and hard-won reward and emblem of a specialisation and the pre-absolution for any other activities covered or embraced by its mystic range; at that moment Everbe rose quickly across the table and almost scuttled around it and into the chair next Miss Reba, whom Butch was looking at, bulging at now. And that was when I rated Boon down a notch and left Everbe first for trouble. All Boon had was Butch; she had Boon and Butch both.
"Well well," Butch said, "is all Catalpa Street moving east to Possum?" So that at first I thought he might be a friend or at least a business acquaintance of Miss Reba's. But if he was, he