"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 didn't remember her name. But then even at eleven I was learning that there are people like Butch who dont remember anybody except in the terms of their immediate need of them, and what he needed now (or anyway could use) was another woman, he didn't care who provided she was more or less young and pleasing. No: he didn't really need one: he just happened to find one already in the path, like one lion on Ms way to fight another lion over an antelope that he never had any doubts about licking (I mean licking the lion, not the antelope) would still be a fool not to try throwing in, just for luck you might say, another antelope if he happened to find - one straying in the path. Except that Miss Reba turned out not to be an antelope. What Butch found was another lion. He said: "This is what I call Sugar Boy using Ms head; what's the use of him and me being all racked up over one hunk of meat when here's 'another exactly like it in all important details except maybe a little difference in the pelt."
"Who's that?" Miss Reba said to Everbe. "Friend of yours?"
"No," Everbe said; she was actually crouching: a big girl, too big to crouch. "Please—"
"She's telling you," Boon said. "She aint got no friends no more. She dont want none. She's quit, gone out of business. Soon as we finish losing this horse race, she's going away somewhere and get a job washing dishes. Ask her."
Miss Reba was looking at Everbe. "Please," Everbe said.
"What do you want?" Miss Reba asked Butch.
"Nothing," Butch said. "Nothing a-tall. Me and Sugar Boy was kind of bollixed up at one another for a while. But now you showed up, everything is hunky-dory. Twenty-three skiddoo," He came and took hold of Everbe's arm. "Come on. The surrey's outside. Let's give them a little room."
"Call the manager," Miss Reba said, quite loud, to me. I didn't even have to move; likely, if I had been looking, I could have seen the edge of Mm too beyond the door. He came in. "Is this man the law here?" Miss Reba said.
"Why, we all know Butch around here, Mrs Binford," the clerk said. "He's got as many friends in Parsham as anybody I know. Of course he's from up at Hardwick; properly speaking, we dont have a law officer right here in Parsham; we ain't quite that big yet." Butch's rich and bulging warmth had embraced, invited the clerk almost before he could enter the door, as though he—the clerk— had fallen headlong into it and vanished like a mouse into a lump of still-soft ambergris. But now Butch's eyes were quite cold, hard.
"Maybe that's what's wrong around here," he told the clerk. "Maybe that's why you dont have no progress and advancement: what you need is a little more law."
"Aw, Butch," the clerk said.
"You mean, anybody that wants to can walk in off the street and drag whichever one of your women guests he likes the looks of best, off to the nearest bed like you were running a cat-house?" Miss Reba said.
"Drag who where?" Butch said. "Drag with what? a two-dollar bill?" Miss Reba rose.
"Come on," she said to Everbe. "There's a train back to Memphis tonight. I know the owner of this dump. I think I'll go see him tomorrow—"
"Aw, Butch," the clerk said. "Wait, Mrs Binford—"
"You go back out front, Virgil," Butch told the clerk. "It aint only four months to November; some millionaire with two registered bird dogs might walk in any minute, and there wont be nobody out there to show him where to sign Ms name at. Go on. We're all friends here." The clerk went. "Now that that's all out of the way," Butch said, reaching for Everbe's arm again.
"Then you'll do," Miss Reba said to Butch. "Let's me and you go out front, or anywhere else that's private, too. I got a word for you."
"About what?" Butch said. She didn't answer, already walking toward the door. "Private, you say?" Butch said. "Why, sure; any time I cant accommodate a good-looking gal private, I'll give Sugar Boy full lief to step in." They went out. And now, from the lobby, we couldn't see them beyond the door of the ladies' parlor, for almost a minute in fact, maybe even a little more, before Miss Reba came back out, still walking steadily, hard and handsome and composed; then Butch a second later, saying, "Is that so, huh? We'll just see about that," Miss Reba coming steadily on to where we waited, watching Butch go on across the lobby without even looking at us. "All right?" Everbe said.
"Yes," Miss Reba said. "And that goes for you too," she told Boon. She looked at me. "Jesus," she said. "What the hell did you do to him?" Boon said. "Nothing," she said over her shoulder, because she was looking at me. "—thought I had see all the cat-house problems possible. Until I had one with children in it. You brought one in"—she was talking to Everbe now—"that run the landlord off and robbed all the loose teeth and fourteen dollars' worth of beer; and if that wasn't enough, Boon Hogganbeck brings one that's driving my damned girls into poverty and respectability. I'm going to bed and you—"
"Come on," Boon said. "What did you tell him?"
"What's that town of yours?" Miss Reba said. "Jefferson," Boon said.
"You big-town folks from places like Jefferson and Memphis, with your big-city ideas, you don't know much about Jjaw. You got to come to little places, like this. I know, because I was raised in one. He's the constable. He could spend a week in Jefferson or Memphis, and you wouldn't even see him. But, here among the folks that elected him (the majority of twelve or thirteen that voted for him, and the minority of nine or ten or eleven that didn't and are already sorry for it or damned soon will be) he dont give a damn about the sheriff of the county nor the governor of the state nor the president of the United States all three rolled into one. Because he's a Baptist. I mean, he's a Baptist first, and then he's the Law. When he can be a Baptist and the Law both at the same time, he will. But any time the law comes conflicting up where nobody invited it, the law knows what it can do and where to do it. They tell how that old Pharaoh was pretty good at kinging, and another old one back in the Bible times named Caesar, that did the best he knew how. They should have visited down here and watched a Arkansas or Missippi or Tennessee constable once."
"But how do you know who he is?" Everbe said. "How do you even know there's one here?"
"There's one everywhere," Miss Reba said. "Didn't I just tell you I grew up in a place like this—as long as I could stand it? I dont need to know who he is. All I needed was to let that bastard know I knew there was one here too. I'm going—"
"But what did you tell him?" Boon said. "Come on. I may want to remember it."
"Nothing, I told you," Miss Reba said. "If I hadn't learned by now how to handle these damned stud horses with his badge in one hand and his fly in the other, I'd been in the poorhouse years ago. I told him if I saw his mug around here again tonight, I would send that sheep-faced clerk to wake the constable up and tell him a deputy sheriff from Hardwick has just registered a couple of Memphis whores at the Parsham Hotel. I'm going to bed, and you better too. Come on, Corrie. I put your outraged virtue on record with that clerk and now you got to back it up, at least where he can see you." They went on. Then Boon was gone too; possibly he had followed Butch to the front door just to make sure the surrey was gone. Then suddenly Everbe swooped down at me, that big: a big girl, muttering rapidly: