Ratcliffe's shelves by her descendants and subjects and Negro slaves. That
was all the settlement had to do: add the lock to the list, the account. It
wouldn't even matter at what price they entered it. They could have priced
190 WILLIAM FAULKNER
it on Pettigrew's scale of fifteen pounds times the distance not just to
Carolina but to Washington itself, and nobody would ever notice it probably;
they could have charged the United States with seventeen thousand five
hundred dollars' worth of the fossilised and indestructible candy, and none
would ever read the entry. So it was solved, done, finished, ended. They
didn't even have to discuss it. They didn't even think about it any more,
unless perhaps here and there to marvel (a little speculatively probably) at
their own moderation, since they wanted nothing-least of all, to escape any
just blame-but a fair and decent adjustment of the lock. They went back to
where old Alec still sat with his pipe in front of his dim hearth. Only they
had overestimated him; he didn't want any money at all, he wanted his lock.
Whereupon what little remained of Compson's patience went too.
'Your lock's gone,' he told old Alec harshly. 'You'll take fifteen dollars
for it,' he said, his voice already fading, because even that rage could
recognize impasse when it saw it. Nevertheless, the rage, the impotence,
the sweating, the too muchwhatever it was-forced the voice on for one word
more: 'Or -'before it stopped for good and allowed Peabody to fill the gap:
'Or elseT Peabody said, and not to old Alec, but to Compson. 'Or else whatT
Then Ratcliffe saved that too.
'Wait,' he said. 'Uncle Alec's going to take fifty dollars for his lock. A
guarantee of fifty dollars. He'll give us the name of the blacksmith back
in Cal'lina that made it for him, and we'll send back there and have a new
one made. Going and coming and all'll cost about fifty dollars. We'll give
Uncle Alec the fifty dollars to hold as a guarantee. Then when the new lock
comes, he'll give us back the money. All right, Uncle AlecT And that could
have been all of it. It probably would have been, except for Pettigrew. It
was not that they had forgotten him, nor even assimilated him. They had
simply sealed -healed him off (so they thought)-him into their civic crisis
as the desperate and defenseless oyster immobilizes its atom of inevictable
grit. Nobody had seen him move yet he now stood in the center of them where
Compson and Ratcliffe and Peabody faced old Alec in the chair. You might
have said that he had oozed there, except for that adamantine quality which
might (in emergency) become invisible but never insubstantial and never in
this world fluid; he spoke in a voice bland, reasonable and impersonal,
then stood there being looked at, frail and child-sized, impermeable as
diamond and manifest with portent, bringing into that backwoods room a
thousand miles deep in pathless wilderness, the whole vast incalculable
weight of federality, not just representing the government nor
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 191
even himself just the government; for that moment at least, he was the
United States.
'Uncle Alec hasn't lost any lock,' he said. 'That was Uncle Sam.'
After a moment someone said, 'WhatT
'That's right,' Pettigrew said. 'Whoever put that lock of Holston's on that
mail bag either made a voluntary gift to the United States, and the same
law covers the United States Government that covers minor children: you can
give something to them, but you can't take it back, or he or they done
something else.'
They looked at him. Again after a while somebody said something; it was
Ratcliffe. 'What elseT Ratcliffe said. Pettigrew answered, still bland,
impersonal, heatless and glib: 'Committed a violation of act of Congress as
especially made and provided for the defacement of government property,
penalty of five thousand dollars or not less than one year in a Federal
jail or both. For whoever cut them two slits in the bag to put the lock in,
act of Congress as especially made and provided for the injury or
destruction of government property, penalty of ten thousand dollars or not
less than five years in a Federal jail or both.' He did not move even yet;
he simply spoke directly to old Alec: 'I reckon you're going to have supper
here same as usual sooner or later or more or less.'
'Wait,' Ratcliffe said. He turned to Compson. 'Is that true?'
'What the hell difference does it make whether it's true or not?' Compson
said. 'What do you think he's going to do as soon as he gets to Nashville?'
He said violently to Pettigrew: 'You were supposed to leave for Nashville
yesterday. What were you hanging around here forT
'Nothing to go to Nashville for,' Pettigrew said. 'You dont want any mail.
You aint got anything to lock it up with.'
'So we aint,' Ratcliffe said. "So we'll let the United States find the
United States' lock.' This time Pettigrew looked at no one. He wasn't even
speaking to anyone, any more than old Alec had been when he decreed the
return of his lock:
'Act of Congress as made and provided for the unauthorized removal and or
use or willful or felonious use or misuse or loss of government property,
penalty the value of the article plus five hundred to ten thousand dollars
or thirty days to twenty years in a Federal jail or both. They may even
make a new one when they read where you have charged a postoffice
department lock to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.' He moved; now he was
speaking to old Alec again: 'I'm going out to my horse. When this meeting
is over and you get back to cooking, you can send your nigger for me.'
Then he was gone. After a while Ratcliffe said, 'What do
192 WILLIAM FAULKNER
you reckon he aims to get out of this? A rewardT But that was wrong; they
all knew better than that.
'He's already getting what he wants,' Compson said, and cursed again.
'Confusion. Just damned confusion.' But that was wrong too; they all knew
that too, though it was Peabody who said it:
'No. Not confusion. A man who will ride six hundred miles through this
country every two weeks, with nothing for protection but a foxhorn, aint
really interested in confusion any more than he is in money.' So they
didn't know yet what was in Pettigrew's mind. But they knew what he would
do. That is, they knew that they did not know at all, either what he
would do, or how, or when, and that there was nothing whatever that they
could do about it until they discovered why. And they saw now that they
had no possible means to discover that; they realized now that they had
known him for three years now, during which, fragile and inviolable and
undeviable and preceded for a mile or more by the strong sweet ringing
of the horn, on his strong and tireless horse he would complete the
bi-monthly trip from Nashville to the settlement and for the next three
or four days would live among them, yet that they knew nothing whatever
about him, and even now knew only that they dared not, simply dared not,
take any chance, sitting for a while longer in the darkening room while
old Alec still smoked, his back still squarely turned to them and their
quandary too; then dispersing to their own cabins for the evening
meal-with what appetite they could bring to it, since presently they had