At the end of the very last story, attorney Gavin Stevens and the newspaper editor are driving behind the hearse carrying Samuel Beauchamp, who'd been executed for killing a policeman. The editor tells Stevens that Molly Beauchamp had asked him to "put it all" in the paper. We learn that Molly might not know exactly how Samuel died, but the editor is sure that even if she knew, she still would have wanted it in the paper.
"Oh," Stevens said. Yes, he thought, It doesn't matter to her now. Since it had to be and she couldn't stop it, and now that it's all over and done and finished, she doesn't care how he died. She just wanted him home, but she wanted him to come home right. She wanted that casket and those flowers and the hearse and she wanted to ride through town behind it in a car. (7.2.92)
Why does Faulkner finish the book with Stevens's speculation and not with Molly's own words? After all, she's the one who wants the story to be told. She may have had an entirely different reason to want a hearse to ride through town with everyone watching. For her, this may have been a more radical act. She may have wanted everyone to see what "Pharaoh" had done to her Samuel. Roth Edmonds, representing white society, cut him off from his family and community and sent him out into a dangerous world that ruined him.
The last line in the book reads:
"Come on," he said. "Let's get back to town. I haven't seen my desk in two days." (7.2.92)
The deputy seems to want to get far away from this whole business. This line tells us a lot about how blacks and whites in the South inhabited totally different worlds. Remember the deputy at the end of "Pantaloon in Black" who totally misunderstands Rider's grief? And how Stevens can't cope with the crying and singing at Sam's wake? And Isaac's inability to see that the young mother of Roth Edmonds's child may have truly loved him?
Well, this might be Faulkner's way of saying: I've tried to tell the story of slavery and its legacy, but like Stevens, I can only truly know the white man's side of it and imagine the rest. The last line of the book seems to confirm this.