drifted back through the summer darkness when by ordinary they would have
been already in bed, to the back room of Ratcliff e's store now, to sit
again while Ratcliffe recapitulated in his mixture of bewilderment and
alarm (and something else which they recognized was respect as they
realized that he-Ratcliffe-was unshakably convinced that Pettigrew's aim
was money; that Pettigrew had invented or evolved a scheme so richly
rewarding that he-Ratcliffehad not only been unable to forestall him and
do it first, he -Ratcliffe--couldn't even guess what it was after he had
been given a hint) until Compson interrupted him.
'Hell,' Compson said. 'Everybody knows what's wrong with him. It's
ethics. He's a damned moralist.'
'EthicsT Peabody said. He sounded almost startled. He said quickly:
'That's bad. How can we corrupt an ethical manT
'Who wants to corrupt himT Compson said. 'All we want him to do is stay
on that damned horse and blow whatever extra wind he's got into the
damned horn.'
But Peabody was not even listening. He said, 'Ethics,' almost dreamily.
He said, 'Wait.' They watched him. He said suddenly
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 193
to Ratcliffe: 'I've heard it somewhere. If anybody here knows it, it'll
be you. What's his nameT
'His name?' Ratcliffe said. 'Pettigrew's? Oh. His christian name.'
Ratcliffe told him. 'Why?'
'Nothing,' Peabody said. 'I'm going home. Anybody else coming?' He spoke
directly to nobody and said and would say no more, but that was enough:
a straw perhaps, but at least a straw; enough anyway for the others to
watch and say nothing either as Compson got up to and said to Ratcliffe:
'You coming?' and the three of them walked away together, beyond earshot
then beyond sight too. Then Compson said, 'All right. WhatT
'It may not work,' Peabody said. 'But you two will have to back me up.
When I speak for the whole settlement, you and Ratcliffe will have to
make it stick. Will youT
Compson cursed. 'But at least tell us a little of what we're going to
guarantee.' So Peabody told them, some of it, and the next morning
entered the stall in the Holston House stable where Pettigrew was
grooming his ugly hammer-headed ironmuscled horse.
'We decided not to charge that lock to old Mohataha, after all,' Peabody
said.
'That soT Pettigrew said. 'Nobody in Washington would ever catch it.
Certainly not the ones that can read.'
'We're going to pay for it ourselves,' Peabody said. 'In fact, we're
going to do a little more. We've got to repair that jail wall anyhow;
we've got to build one wall anyway. So by building three more, we will
have another room. We got to build one anyway, so that dont count. So by
building an extra threewall room, we will have another four-wall house.
That will be the courthouse.' Pettigrew had been hissing gently between
his teeth at each stroke of the brush, like a professional Irish groom.
Now he stopped, the brush and his hand arrested in midstroke, and turned
his head a little.
'CourthouseT
'We're going to have a town,' Peabody said. 'We already got a
church-that's Whitfield's cabin. And we're going to build a school too
soon as we get around to it. But we're going to build the courthouse
today; we've already got something to put in it to make it a courthouse:
that iron box that's been in Ratcliffe's way in the store for the last
ten years. Then we'll have a town. We've already even named her.'
Now Pettigrew stood up, very slowly. They looked at one another. After
a moment Pettigrew said, 'So?'
'Ratcliffe says your name's Jefferson,' Peabody said.
'That's right,' Pettigrew said. 'Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew. I'm from old
Ferginny.'
194 WILLIAM FAULKNER
'Any kinT Peabody said.
No,' Pettigrew said. 'My ma named me for him, so I would have some of his
luck.'
'Luck?' Peabody said.
Pettigrew didn't smile. 'That's right. She didn't mean luck. She never had
any schooling. She didn't know the word she wanted to say.'
'Have you had it?' Peabody said. Nor did Pettigrew smile now. 'I'm sorry,'
Peabody said. 'Try to forget it.' He said: 'We decided to name her
Jefferson.' Now Pettigrew didn't seem to breathe even. He just stood there,
small, frail, less than boysize, childless and bachelor, incorrigibly
kinless and tieless, looking at Peabody. Then he breathed, and raising the
brush, he turned back to the horse and for an instant Peabody thought he
was going back to the grooming. But instead of making the stroke, he laid
the hand and the brush against the horse's flank and stood for a moment,
his face turned away and his head bent a little. Then he raised his head
and turned his face back toward Peabody.
'You could call that lock 'axle grease' on that Indian account,' he said.
'Fifty dollars' worth of axle grease?' Peabody said.
'To grease the wagons for Oklahoma,' Pettigrew said.
'So we could,' Peabody said. 'Only her name's Jefferson now. We cant ever
forget that any more now.' And that was the courthOUse-the courthouse which
it had taken them almost thirty years not only to realize they didn't have,
but to discover that they hadn't even needed, missed, lacked; and which,
before they had owned it six months, they discovered was nowhere near
enough. Because somewhere between the dark of that first day and the dawn
of the next, something happened to them. They began that same day; they
restored the jail wall and cut new logs and split out shakes and raised the
little floorless lean-to against it and moved the iron cbest from
Ratcliffe's back room; it took only the two days and cost nothing but the
labor and not much of that per capita since the whole settlement was
involved to a man, not to mention the settlement's two slaves-Holston's man
and the one belonging to the German blacksmith-; Ratcliffe too, all he had
to do was put up the bar across the inside of his back door, since his
entire patronage was countable in one glance sweating and cursing among the
logs and shakes of the half dismantled jail across the way
opposite-including Ikkemotubbe's Chickasaw, though these were neither
sweating nor cursing: the grave dark men dressed in their Sunday clothes
except for the trousers, pants, which they carried rolled neatly under
their arms or perhaps tied by the two legs around their necks like capes
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 195
or rather hussars' dolmans where they had forded the creek, squatting or
lounging along the shade, courteous, interested, and reposed (even old
Mohataha herself, the matriarch, barefoot in a purple silk gown and a plumed
hat, sitting in a gilt brocade empire chair in a wagon behind two mules,
under a silver-handled Paris parasol held by a female slave child)- because
they (the other white men, his confreres, or-during this first day-his
co-victims) had not yet remarked the thing -quality-something-esoteric,
eccentric, in Ratcliffe's manner, attitude,-not an obstruction nor even an
impediment, not even when on the second day they discovered what it was, be-
cause he was among them, busy too, sweating and cursing too, but rather like
a single chip, infinitesimal, on an otherwise unbroken flood or tide, a
single body or substance, alien and unreconciled, a single thin almost