The sound and the fury

     He was twenty miles away at that time. When he left the house he drove rapidly to town, overreaching the slow sabbath groups and the peremptory bells along the broken air. He crossed the empty square and turned into a narrow street that was abruptly quieter even yet, and stopped before a frame house and went up the flower bordered walk to the porch.

     Beyond the screen door people were talking. As he lifted his hand to knock he heard steps, so he withheld his hand until a big man in black broadcloth trousers and a stiff bosomed white shirt without collar opened the door. He had vigorous untidy iron-gray hair and his gray eyes were round and shiny like a little boy's. He took Jason's hand and drew him into the house, still shaking it.

     "Come right in," he said. "Come right in."

     "You ready to go now?" Jason said.

     "Walk right in," the other said, propelling him by the elbow into a room where a man and a woman sat. "You know Myrtle's husband, dont you? Jason Compson, Vernon."

     "Yes," Jason said. He did not even look at the man, and as the sheriff drew a chair across the room the man said,

     "We'll go out so you can talk. Come on, Myrtle."

     "No, no," the sheriff said. "You folks keep your seat. I reckon it aint that serious, Jason? Have a seat."

     "I'll tell you as we go along," Jason said. "Get your hat and coat."

     "We'll go out," the man said, rising.

     "Keep your seat," the sheriff said. "Me and Jason will go out on the porch."

     "You get your hat and coat," Jason said. "They've already got a twelve hour start." The sheriff led the way back to the porch. A man and a woman passing spoke to him. He responded with a hearty florid gesture. Bells were still ringing, from the direction of the section known as Nigger Hollow. "Get your hat, Sheriff," Jason said. The sheriff drew up two chairs.

     "Have a seat and tell me what the trouble is."

     "I told you over the phone," Jason said, standing. "I did that to save time. Am I going to have to go to law to compel you to do your sworn duty?"

     "You sit down and tell me about it," the sheriff said. "I'll take care of you all right."

     "Care, hell," Jason said. "Is this what you call taking care of me?"

     "You're the one that's holding us up," the sheriff said. "You sit down and tell me about it."

 Jason told him, his sense of injury and impotence feeding upon its own sound, so that after a time he forgot his haste in the violent cumulation of his self justification and his outrage. The sheriff watched him steadily with his cold shiny eyes.

     "But you dont know they done it," he said. "You just think so."

     "Dont know?" Jason said. "When I spent two damn days chasing her through alleys, trying to keep her away from him, after I told her what I'd do to her if I ever caught her with him, and you say I dont know that that little b-- "

     "Now, then," the sheriff said. "That'll do. That's enough of that." He looked out across the street, his hands in his pockets.

     "And when I come to you, a commissioned officer of the law," Jason said.

     "That show's in Mottson this week," the sheriff said.

     "Yes," Jason said. "And if I could find a law officer that gave a solitary damn about protecting the people that elected him to office, I'd be there too by now." He repeated his story, harshly recapitulant, seeming to get an actual pleasure out of his outrage and impotence. The sheriff did not appear to be listening at all.

     "Jason," he said. "What were you doing with three thousand dollars hid in the house?"

     "What?" Jason said. "That's my business where I keep my money. Your business is to help me get it back."

     "Did your mother know you had that much on the place?"

     "Look here," Jason said. "My house has been robbed. I know who did it and I know where they are. I come to you as the commissioned officer of the law, and I ask you once more, are you going to make any effort to recover my property, or not?"

     "What do you aim to do with that girl, if you catch them?"

     "Nothing," Jason said. "Not anything. I wouldn't lay my hand on her. The bitch that cost me a job, the one chance 1 ever had to get ahead, that killed my father and is shortening my mother's life every day and made my name a laughing stock in the town. I wont do anything to her," he said. "Not anything."

     "You drove that girl into running off, Jason," the sheriff said.

     "How I conduct my family is no business of yours," Jason said. "Are you going to help me or not?"

     "You drove her away from home," the sheriff said. "And I have some suspicions about who that money belongs to that I dont reckon I'll ever know for certain."

     Jason stood, slowly wringing the brim of his hat in his hands. He said quietly: "You're not going to make any effort to catch them for me?"

     "That's not any of my business, Jason. If you had any actual proof, I'd have to act. But without that I dont figger it's any of my business."

     "That's your answer, is it?" Jason said. "Think well, now."

     "That's it, Jason."