PARTISAN REVIEW
effect of Flem too. Thus, Stevens, who has always thought of himself
as the champion of the tradition opposing what Snopes stands for,
becomes Flem's principal if unwilling ally. "Just say I represent Jefferson
and so Flem Snopes is my burden too," he intones.
The third main subdivision of the narrative is composed of tales
about the double dealings of Flem and other Snopeses who have drifted
in his wake to Jefferson. In this respect
The Town
most closely re–
sembles
The Hamlet,
which contains such consummately humorous
stories as "Spotted Horses" and the horse-trading of Pat Stamper and
Ab Snopes.
The Town
contains four such stories. Like "Spotted Horses,"
two of them-"Mule
in
the Yard" and "Centaur in Brass"- are re–
workings of previously published material and are considerably improved
by revision. They are longer, their style is more dense and their action
more complete. "Mule in the Yard," I think, can now be read with
"Spotted Horses" as one of the minor masterpieces of American litera–
ture. It tells about a certain enterprise of I. O. Snopes, who some ten
years before the story's action begins bought mules for fifty dollars
each, took them at night to a blind curve on the railroad where they
were run down, and collected indemnity of sixty dollars a mule from
the railroad company. His assistant in this business, a man named Hait,
had managed to get himself killed one night along with a string of the
mules. Hait's widow collected $8500 from the railroad's insurance com–
pany, and
I.
O. has been stewing for years because he never received
what he calculated was his share of the money. One foggy day a mule
of
I.
O.'s breaks into the widow Hait's tiny yard. Old Het, the peri–
patetic Negress from the poorhouse, is there; so are Mrs. Hait's cow
and chickens, and so, soon, is I. O. A fantastic chase begins to flow
around the house, and Faulkner's prose breaks forth with that unique,
brilliant energy of perception which transforms the most chaotic and
violent activity into fluid, comic grace.
"In the cellar, fore God!" old Het hollered. She didn't wait either.
''Go round the other way and head him!" she said. And she said that
when she and Mrs. Hait turned that corner, there was the mule with
the flying halter once more seeming to float lightly onward on a cloud
of chickens with which, since the chickens had been able to go under
the house and so along the chord while the mule had to go around on
the arc, it had once more coincided. When they turned the next
corner, they were in the back yard again.
"Fore God!" Het hollered. "He fixing to misuse the cow!" She said
it was like a tableau. The cow had come out of the shed into the middle
of the back yard; it and the mule were now facing each other about
a yard apart, motionless, with lowered heads and braced legs like two
