The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner [89]
She had dodged out of sight somewhere. Saw me coming and dodged into another alley, running up and down the alleys with a dam show man in a red tie that everybody would look at and think what kind of a dam man would wear a red tie. Well, the boy kept speaking to me and so I took the telegram without knowing I had taken it. I didn’t realise what it was until I was signing for it, and I tore it open without even caring much what it was. I knew all the time what it would be, I reckon. That was the only thing else that could happen, especially holding it up until I had already had the check entered on the pass book.
I dont see how a city no bigger than New York can hold enough people to take the money away from us country suckers. Work like hell all day every day, send them your money and get a little piece of paper back, Your account closed at 20.62. Teasing you along, letting you pile up a little paper profit, then bang! Your account closed at 20.62. And if that wasn’t enough, paying ten dollars a month to somebody to tell you how to lose it fast, that either dont know anything about it or is in cahoots with the telegraph company. Well, I’m done with them. They’ve sucked me in for the last time. Any fool except a fellow that hasn’t got any more sense than to take a jew’s word for anything could tell the market was going up all the time, with the whole dam delta about to be flooded again and the cotton washed right out of the ground like it was last year. Let it wash a man’s crop out of the ground year after year, and them up there in Washington spending fifty thousand dollars a day keeping an army in Nicarauga or some place. Of course it’ll overflow again, and then cotton’ll be worth thirty cents a pound. Well, I just want to hit them one time and get my money back. I dont want a killing; only these small town gamblers are out for that, I just want my money back that these dam jews have gotten with all their guaranteed inside dope. Then I’m through; they can kiss my foot for every other red cent of mine they get.
I went back to the store. It was half past three almost. Dam little time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to Harvard to learn that. The band had quit playing. Got them all inside now, and they wouldn’t have to waste any more wind. Earl says,
“He found you, did he? He was in here with it a while ago. I thought you were out back somewhere.”
“Yes,” I says. “I got it. They couldn’t keep it away from me all afternoon. The town’s too small. I’ve got to go out home a minute,” I says. “You can dock me if it’ll make you feel any better.”
“Go ahead,” he says. “I can handle it now. No bad news, I hope.”
“You’ll have to go to the telegraph office and find that out,” I says. “They’ll have time to tell you. I haven’t.”
“I just asked,” he says. “Your mother knows she can depend on me.”
“She’ll appreciate it,” I says. “I wont be gone any longer than I have to.”
“Take your time,” he says. “I can handle it now. You go ahead.”
I got the car and went home. Once this morning, twice at noon, and now again, with her and having to chase all over town and having to beg them to let me eat a little of the food I am paying for. Sometimes I think what’s the use of anything. With the precedent I’ve been set I must be crazy to keep on. And now I reckon I’ll get home just in time to take a nice long drive after a basket of tomatoes or something and then have to go back to town smelling like a camphor factory so my head wont explode right on my shoulders. I keep telling her there’s not a dam thing in that aspirin except flour and water for imaginary invalids. I says you dont know what a headache is. I says you think I’d fool with that dam