Reivers, The - William Faulkner [92]
"Nothing," Boon said. "I ain't got nothing to talk about now. I've quit. Lucius is the one that's got tin badge and pullman cap rivals now." But I was already getting up because I knew now where she was.
"Is that all the breakfast you want?" Miss Reba said.
"Let him alone," Boon said. "He's in love." I crossed the lobby. Maybe Ned was right, and all it took for a horse race was two horses with the time' to run a race, within ten miles of each other, and the air itself spread the news of it. Though not as far as the ladies' parlor yet. So maybe what I meant by crying looking well on Everbe was that she was big enough to cry as much as she seemed to have to do, and still have room for that many tears to dry off without streaking. She was sitting by herself in the ladies' parlor and crying again, the third time—no: four, counting two Sunday night. Until you wondered why. I mean, nobody made her come with us and she could have 'gone back to Memphis on any train that passed. Yet here she was, so she must be where she wanted to be. Yet this was the second time she had cried since we reached Par-sham. I mean, anybody with as many extra tears as she had, still didn't have enough to waste that many on Otis. So I said,
"He's all right. Ned will find him today. Much obliged for washing my clothes. Where's Mr Sam? I thought he was going to be on that train."
"He had to take the train on to Memphis and take his uniform off," she said. "He cant go to a horse race in it. He'll be back on the noon freight. I can't find my handkerchief."
I found it for her. "Maybe you ought to wash your face," I said. "When Ned finds him, he will get the tooth back."
"It aint the tooth," she said. "I'm going to buy Minnie another tooth. It's that ... He never had no chance. He . . . Did you promise your mother you wouldn't never take things too?"
"You dont have to promise anybody that," I said. "You dont take things."
"But you would have promised, if she had asked you?"
"She wouldn't ask me," I said. "You dont take things."
"Yes," she said. She said: "I aint going to stay in Memphis. I talked to Sam at the depot this morning and he says that's a good idea too. He can find me a job in Chattanooga or somewhere. But you'll still be in Jefferson, so maybe I could write you a post card where I'm at and then if you took a notion—"
"Yes," I said. "I'll write to you. Come on. They're still eating breakfast."
"There's something about me you dont know. You couldn't even guess it."
"I know it," I said. "It's Everbe Corinthia. I been calling you that two or three days now. That's right. It was Otis. But I wont tell anybody. But I dont see why."
"Why? A old-timey countrified name like that? Can you imagine anybody in Reba's saying, Send up Everbe Corinthia? They would be ashamed. They would die laughing. So I thought of changing it to Yvonne or Billie or Ken. But Reba said Corrie would do."
"Shucks," I said.
"You mean, it's all right? You say it." I said it. She listened. Then she kept on listening, exactly as you wait for an echo. "Yes," she said. "That's what it can be now."
"Then come on and eat breakfast," I said. "Ned's waiting for me and I got to go." But Boon came in first.
"There are too many people out there," he said. "Maybe I shouldn't a told that damn fellow you were going to ride him today." He looked at me. "Maybe I shouldn't a never let you leave Jefferson." There was a small door behind a curtain at the back of the room. "Come on," he said. It was another corridor. Then we were in the kitchen. The vast cook was at the sink again. Ned was sitting at a table finishing his breakfast, but mainly saying,
"When I sugars up a woman, it aint just empty talk. They can buy something with it too—" and stopped and rose at once; he said to me: "You ready? Time you and me was getting back to the country. They's too many folks around here. If they all had money and would bet it, and the horse they bet on. would just be the wrong horse, and we just had the money to cover it and knowed the right horse to cover it with, we wouldn't just