Chapter I: Beer-Sheba

Dawn, on the morning of the accident which befell Johnny Beane, was sluggish and unpromising. That was because a deceitful, overcast sky hugged New Mexico’s desert closely and blotted out the sun entirely with clouds which would never rain.

Johnny Beane awoke on his hard iron bed which was the bottom of an empty coal car and gazed sleepily upward into the patch of gray heaven framed by the black steel wall of his rolling bin. The desert was cold and he was uncomfortable. He tested a shoulder and winced. He decided he was sore all over. He felt uneasy sensations within his brain.

“If I don’t move,” he thought, “I'll postpone discovering more aches. That’s philosophy.”

Johnny Beane was rather proud of this. He lay still on his back and contemplated the sky. The mile-long Southern Pacific freight, rusty and parched, was passing over the Continental Divide between Wilma and Ladim, but the boy did not know where he was. He decided to find out. Still

flat on his back in respect to his “philosophy,” he gingerly reached for a map in his inner jacket pocket. The effort corroborated his fears that he was bruised and sore all over.

He had traveled far. His frame was battered. There were strange noises in his head—weird arpeggios, off-key and flighty; he thought the sounds were made by flies. He tried to brush them away. He swatted one imaginary insect with a mighty blow of his palm on his ear, but this made his senses reel alarmingly and only served to increase the dissonance. The sensation of pain and surprise left him bewildered. He had never heard such music before. He tried to place it. It was a palsied obbligato of field bees drunk on the sweet dew of cotton blossoms, droning a carousing rhapsody.

Suddenly it seemed of the greatest importance, even urgency, that he recall the name of the composition, but the music faded and he became giddy and delirious. He saw two torturing blue eyes following him wherever he went, the sensual eyes of a pretty young woman staring at him.

The vision made him blush. He heard a rawhide leather lash hiss a vicious arc and he felt it cut a red welt across his groin. He winced. The pain was very real to him. He writhed on the steel floor, and the movement made his left lung burn. Spasmodically he twisted his torso to the right and shifted the body pressure from his injured side.

The music surged again, the passionate eyes became azure pinpoints far away, and the whip slithered out of the pattern. He rubbed the non-existent wale and let his hand fall listlessly in the cinders. He saw leering over a pulpit a fat face contorted in Messianic agony. His mind wandered back to a Methodist camp meeting ground.

“That's it,” thought Johnny Beane, “I’ve got it! It’s the music of Beer-Sheba. It’s hillbilly Shall We Gather at the River.”

The funereal song had made him cry more than once after a larded Bishop at Beer-Sheba had depicted the terrors of hell so graphically that Johnny shuddered for hours. The doleful ministers frightened Johnny Beane and all other impressionable little boys and girls who were herded into the sideless country sanctuary in the wilderness of slash pine and primeval elms just thirty miles from metropolitan Atlanta.

Terrible threats out of Leviticus which Bishop Judah Grigg quoted with such undeniable relish caused Johnny Beane to have nightmares. Evil doers, according to Bishop Grigg, would “eat the flesh of their sons.”

““The flesh of your daughters shall ye eat,” he roared.

“Cannibals shall ye become!” This choice horror made the boy’s teeth chatter.

“And whosoever is ‘not found written in the Book of Life,’” prophesied Bishop Grigg, with Revelations as his authority, “shall be cast into a lake of fire.”

After one of these sermons Johnny Beane was so beside himself with terror that he prayed for several days in a row.

He dreamed of Satan and perdition, Gog and Magog, and in sleeping and waking hours alike he saw visions of serpents and locusts like horses with the hair of women and the teeth of lions and they had tails of scorpions with stinging power strong enough to hurt men for five months.

These were things which Johnny. Beane could understand.

In Beer-Sheba, Bishops and Presiding Elders served two full hours of hell-fire and brimstone in return for many hot fried chickens, many baking powder biscuits, many hard-boiled eggs, many pints of sugar cane syrup, many chocolate layer cakes, many pickled peaches, much blackberry jam, much scuppernong jelly, and much wild honey.

Every summer, for three full weeks under great elms and pines, in a giant, shingled tabernacle topped by an incongruous Mohammedan minaret, pious fat men of God depicted Him as an ogre of vengeance who forged red-hot pitchforks which would not melt, and a fire which burned and tortured but never consumed.

Hundreds, even thousands, flocked to hear the revivalists thunder. They stayed on, repentant, to see the prophets gain in girth and garner souls for the glory of God and Wesley.

Sinners who came to Beer-Sheba’s altar were warmly greeted by Bishop Grigg, and shouters all over the barnlike structure roared orgiastic hallelujahs.

For excursions to the platform, a pianist, in deadly earnest, pounded Marching to Zion and alternated determinedly with Shall We Gather at the River as the inspired congregation sang. Many an adult sinner weakened under the spell and became convinced by the sweaty oratory that the Methodist God was One Who would not take any foolishness from anybody.

Bishop Grigg, who felt that the Mosaic Code was entirely too lenient for wrongdoers, and believed in all due reverence that Christ had been too tender-hearted, bellowed words of the Savior:

“‘He who will not confess his sins before man I will not stand for before God.’

“Oh, unsaved, oh, unsaved,” summoned the Bishop, “stand and be healed!”

He preached with zeal and fervor possessed by few of his fellow clergymen. His sermons were replete with tears, oratory, and song. Never once did he forget the advice of his mother to “ring the rafters.” His sincerity was so obvious and his oratory of such a special quality that members of the congregation who saw him for the first time in the pulpit and forced themselves to keep from laughing at his amazing mouth, soon forgot it under the spell of his hard-hitting sermons punctuated with promises of eternal roasting for sinners and a dull, but cool Heaven for the righteous. He browbeat the wicked, overwhelmed the wavering, stormed at the pious who “weren't doing enough” for God, and promised damnation everlasting for any man who called his brother a fool.

“That’s an unforgivable sin,” he stormed.

The minister liked to hold the Bible aloft in the midst of a sermon and scream at the top of his lungs:

“Why do I believe that? I'll tell you why. The Bible says it’s so. And I believe the Bible, as the farmer says, ‘from kiver to kiver.’”

The “unsaved” responded sensationally. Thieves stood up and confessed their evil ways, specifically.

“When Ah was a clerk at the Busy Bee store in Leafy Grove,” one trembling convert screamed, to the eternal embarrassment of his wife, a Sunday School teacher, “Ah stole a pair of pants.”

“God bless you,” thundered the Bishop.

“Amen!” fervently sighed the owner of the store, who had sudden visions of being reimbursed. He said amen too soon.

Johnny Beane remembered that the penitent thief marched up to the platform for a benediction, but that he had never paid for the pants.

And then there was Miss Cora.

Wicked little boys said of Miss Cora’s breasts that they “shook like grandmother's jelly on a cold, frosty morning.”

And shake they did that night as Miss Cora, quivering under the strain of her great agitation, stood up with a sort of resolution that was sullen at first, and then grew into the vigorous, forthright zeal of an all-out repentant sinner.

Johnny Beane saw her stand up that night, only a few minutes after the pants thief had confessed and following quickly the routine “testimonial” of old Sol Biggers, the town drunk, who took, in tremolo, his annual pledge, so help him God.

No one thought of Miss Cora as a sinner, but many a lecherous townsman, especially Ephraim Cowan, the station agent, wished that she were.

She was luscious, in a fat sort of way, and her lips were full and red and sensual. She was conscious of her unfortunate appeal and strapped her hips tightly with strong corsets to hide an inviting buoyancy which sometimes almost drove the station agent out of his mind. But for her full youth and stubborn muscles her breasts would have been permanently flattened and disfigured by their daily taping to remove the “suggestiveness” which had often been noted by less handsome females of the Floral Circle, of which Miss Cora was not too popular a member.

Miss Cora was Johnny Beane’s school teacher. She came to the little town of Leafy Grove when he entered the eighth grade five months after he was fifteen. Johnny Beane was not conscious of the new teacher’s tortured bosom, which undulated in fine health despite her furious modesty, as exemplified by the uncomfortable binding which held it so tightly she breathed as though she suffered from heart trouble.

He may have been too young for that. But he was conscious of Miss Cora’s eyes. When he looked up from his desk he found invariably that they were upon him. Her eyes followed him to the blackboard and out of the door when he raised one finger or two. And there they were, those dreamy blue eyes, that often had a strange sort of light in them which made the pupil feel uneasy and awkward and conscious of his tight-fitting pants when he returned from recess or the toilet.

Nothing embarrassed Johnny Beane more than holding up two fingers whenever he found this necessary during Miss Cora’s presence in the classroom.

“We are too old for this sort of thing,” he protested, but to himself. Later, he crusaded quietly and took his troubles to his father who enjoyed a certain amount of influence among the teachers because of his position as Chairman of the School Board.

“Thet’s for grammar grade pupils,” the Board Chairman told the Superintendent, “we mustn’t forgit thet chillun grows up.”

Things seemed much better after that. Johnny Beane now, along with his classmates, merely stood up by the side of his desk and asked in a dignified manner, “Miss Cora, may I be excused?”

And Miss Cora, according to her mood, answered with a pleasant “of course,” or a short “yes,” if annoyed, or “uhhuh,” if preoccupied, or a peremptory “no!”, if provoked. And sometimes without even looking up. But always in the case of Johnny Beane’s requests she did look up and her eyes slumberously regarded him for a seemingly unnecessary moment or two as though she were giving the question, something of major importance, deep long thought. Finally, after looking him up and down, she would say, dreamily, “Why, yes, Johnny, of course.” Her eyes followed him through the door and made him blush violently each time. But Johnny Beane had won a victory of sorts.

“At least, this way, she doesn’t know what I'm going to do. It’s better than fingers.”

But now Miss Cora was standing up at Camp Meeting, a phenomenon which made the boy blush more violently than ever before in his life. Under the giant roof which reflected shadows from hundreds of kerosene lamps hung from the hewn oak rafters a hush spread over the congregation so that all could plainly hear the great trees whispering softly in the still, hot night outside. And a hoot owl, too close for comfort, raised its dread call to chill Johnny Beane’s young blood and fill him with foreboding. The evil cry of the bird, coming just when it did, made him tremble. He wished then and there that he could die. He fully sensed the disaster which followed. A miracle of premonition shook him and prepared him for it.

Even the Bishop seemed taken aback, this man of God who had experienced everything with an equanimity that had never been ruffled before.

Ordinary deaths the good fat Bishop took in his stride with prayers. Epidemics which threatened to decimate the population and annoying reports of lynchings did not halt him or make him waver or affect his appetite one biscuit.

But now, here was something else again. The Bishop was human after all, and he recognized beauty when he saw it.

Who could help but see Miss Cora, day after day, devoutly attending his services and getting every word, too?

Those who knew the Bishop best plainly saw that he was upset when he looked down upon his bulging stomach and picked off with a fingernail a blob of dried cream chicken gravy which had hardened around the third buttonhole of his blue serge vest. The pianist stopped playing without being asked and a railroad flagman, long suspected of chicken stealing, who was standing up to confess, sat down with a gulp. Later, he thanked God for the interruption which permitted him to enjoy choice purloined fowls for a long time to come without paying a penalty more severe than village tattle.

Miss Cora, in spite of her desirable form and quivering lines which made the station agent titillate and caused mean little boys to make up dirty songs about her bosom, was not the type to stand and give a testimonial. Even in Leafy Grove, where gossip alone had doomed more than one suspect, Miss Cora’s impeccable conduct saved her from anything worse than catty whispers.

The righteous Bishop stared out over the great expanse of faces under the mosque-like roof of Beer-Sheba’s tabernacle and nervously regarded the young woman’s inviting form.

Bishop Judah Grigg’s wet pig eyes, always somnolent when he ate, were dried now and alerted by the fire of zeal as he stood in his pulpit.

Miss Cora raised her hand as though to ask for permission to speak and stood without a word for a full minute ankle-deep in dry wheat straw as the hush spread like a wave and ended with a slow, anguished sigh from the throat of Johnny Beane, which his mother distinctly heard. Others heard it, too, and glanced at him quickly and curiously. The boy looked for a way to escape, but he saw none. On his left was his father. His mother was on his right. Brother Mordecai Inskip, the village blacksmith, Superintendent of the Leafy Grove Methodist Sunday School, sat like a gaunt sentinel at the end of the bench on the outside aisle.

Two Methodist Church Stewards, Brother Lank Stubbs and Brother Eakes Helms, raw-boned fundamentalists who secretly flirted with Calvinism while embracing Wesley publicly, hopelessly blocked the passage on the other end of the hard bench. Johnny Beane fidgeted.

His two sisters, starched and scrubbed and smug and holylooking, sat on his father’s left emanating an aura of piety which did not go unnoticed by Johnny Beane even in that moment of desperation. Priscilla Lee, a year older than her brother, had inherited from her mother an air of ineffable concern. Her facial expressions of annoyance had already screwed her prim mouth permanently into thin lines of vexation and chagrin. She condemned his restiveness now with a look of such proper mortification that no one could doubt her deep inner suffering.

As for Drusilla Belle, his eleven-year-old sister, she expressed her contempt for her wayward brother by making a face at him and sticking out her coated tongue.

The boy nudged his mother. “I’m sick, Mother,” he said, “I’d like to go.”

His mother looked at him suspiciously. She whispered sternly, “Quit squirming, John. You're not sick!” She looked despairingly to her husband for support. She found it, as always, prompt and effective.

Johnny's father rebuked his son hoarsely. “Shut up, suh!” he said. “Shut up!”

Johnny Beane shut up. The boy knew there was no way to run the blockade of knees and heavy, greased work shoes between his seat and the quiet, delicious peace of the night outside where he longed to throw himself in the deep, green grass with the crickets and lightning bugs and cry his heart out and pray to his own personal God to blot out his life and save him from the shame of Miss Cora’s confession and take him to a Heaven where there was only love, and no Methodists, and no Bishops and no Brother Inskips.

Johnny Beane was panic-stricken. He felt he must make a dash for it, anyway. Only Brother Inskip’s position on the outside aisle definitely stopped him from attempting the foolhardy plan. Brother Inskip, an uncompromising Christian, would automatically believe him guilty anyway, and even if he could manage to run the gauntlet of twenty knees and twenty feet and twenty hands between him and freedom, the eleventh pair of hands and knees and feet would stop him short. Those were the hands and knees and feet of Brother Inskip, who would grasp him on general principles.

A dash to the right would place him in the exact center of the domed structure where hundreds of worshippers would hold him for his father who would flog him unmercifully. Before each flogging, Johnny Beane’s father prayed dutifully for guidance.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “do not let me hit my son two licks too many, nor two licks. too few, but let me chastise him according to Thine own wishes and in Thine own name. Amen!”

Once when he had whipped Johnny Beane so dutifully that his legs bled more than usual, the devout parent was worried and sought advice from Bishop Grigg.

“You haven’t hit him a lick amiss,” the Bishop solemnly decided when he had heard the whole story. “Your son’s a cross to bear. I will pray for him. I’m afraid he’s a willful one with a bad foundation. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

The elder Beane was greatly comforted by this sympathy from the good man and from that moment laid on the blows with abandon for the slightest infraction, and with Godgiven strength.

Chapter II: The Confession

Long before Miss Cora stood up to confess, Bishop Grigg had fully realized his spectacular victory of the evening. From his congregation he had wrung some of the best results in his long career of evangelism.

Out of his repertoire he had called on his most formidable weapons against sin, tried and true throbbing oratory, forensic gestures, and exaggerated grimaces which made his mouth, shaped like the tubular snout of an echidna, look more fantastic than ever, And, furthermore, for those who would not be saved he personally promised the fire which is not quenched.

The Bishop had reasserted his literal belief in the story that a big fish had swallowed Jonah, retained him in his stomach for three days and three nights without digesting him and then spewed him whole and breathing upon a beach. The Bishop proved his erudition, interpreted the gospel, had come to grips with Satan in a stirring pantomime and cast him away from the gates of Heaven with his own hand. This struggle with the devil on the platform upset some potted plants, overturned the pianist’s music rack, and made the musician scurry for safety, but the Bishop heeded not. Only after he had choked Old Nick with his hands and wrestled him triumphantly over the parapets did the realistic encounter end. His listeners were hanging on to their seats as the Bishop fought his brave fight and won it fair and clean.

The Bishop conquered Beelzebub the root of all sin himself, he gave his audience gooseflesh, and brought roars of approval from the throats of the sanctified.

“Yer could durned near see th’ devil topple,” shouted Brother Lank (Whispering) Stubbs, a near-deaf Methodist Church Steward, in a hollow sibilancy that all could hear.

Never had Bishop Grigg been in better form, and none was more aware of it than he.

The Negroes who had been allowed to climb to God’s Jim Crow gallery to share the white man’s Jehovah, had moaned and swayed and carried on more than the Bishop had ever remembered in his life before.

Come, Sinner, Come, a hymn timed with special cunning to drag the wavering down to shake the preacher’s hand and publicly admit their belief in the Almighty had worked like magic. More than four hundred had made the journey, many shouting “glory be to God on high” and “hallelujah, thine the glory!” and wading through the wheat straw trail to pump his extended hand of welcome and enter the fold. Backsliders and doubters hesitating for a moment under his spell, soon broke down completely and joined the procession with tears in their eyes,

“Come, humble sinner,” implored the Bishop. “You in whose breasts a thousand thoughts revolve; come with your guilt and fear oppressed and make this last resolve.”

Bishop Grigg leaned with his full weight on the old hymns and found them strong enough to support a mass even as great as his own. He turned his face upward appealingly to the rafters.

“Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” he begged his Lord.

It was high time to capitalize on all the pent-up excitement his soul-stirring showmanship had produced. Bishop Grigg timed everything with a nicety envied by all of his brothers of the cloth.

“Play Bring Them In,” he suddenly ordered of his pianist.

“Bring them in, bring them in,” recited the shepherd, “bring them in from the fields of sin.”

The parade of nearly lost souls began.

“Bring the wandering ones to Jesus,” roared the Bishop.

The wandering ones needed no further urging. They responded to his invitation in droves and Bishop Grigg was mightily pleased to see the sinners drop generous offerings in baskets held by collectors who intercepted them in the aisles and caught them in just the proper frame of mind to divest themselves of their worldly goods.

“Hallelujah!” shouted the Bishop. He was now so overcome by his tremendous success that tears filled his eyes and in a surging of gratitude he fell to his knees and gave thanks

“O Lord,” prayed Bishop Grigg, “if only my sainted mother was here tonight.”

When he arose, still crying unashamedly, he harangued the marchers on.

“Coming home, coming home; come on home!”

With fanatical exultation stabbing from his eyes, Bishop Grigg now gazed upon his handiwork pushing through the wheat straw.

The muscular pianist was playing loudly, but his voice could still be heard above the singing.

“I am coming to the cross; I am poor and weak and blind. I am counting all but dross; but I shall full salvation find.”

He reached down from his elevated position on the pine platform and grasped hand after hand. The sinners pumped his hand so hard that his knuckles cracked and the bones ached, but he did not care.

“Come, sinner, come,” he urged. “While Jesus whispers to you, come, sinner, come.”

Yes, that night Bishop Grigg was at his best.

Even when the marchers started thinning out, he had pulled this minority up on their feet with hypnotic zeal and Almost Persuaded.

“Almost persuaded?” he demanded belligerently of his pianist. “Almost persuaded,” he begged of his audience.

“O now! O now!” he declaimed.

“Why not now?” he asked.

Bishop Grigg was delighted with the response. He rewarded the lambs with a song which gave them the feeling that they were actually on their way to Heaven itself.

The pianist played Marching to Zion.

“Then let our songs abound, and every tear be dry,” orated the Bishop. “We're marching thro’ Immanuel’s ground, to fairer worlds on high, to fairer worlds on high. We're marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion; we’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”

That night the Bishop outdid himself. The hymn “Tell It Today,” rendered in depressing singsong, worked its wonders. Bishop Grigg relied on this as his mainstay for testimonials.

Hands went up all over the great cavern zebraed by the swaying oil lamps overhead. The bobbing of bodies and the din of confessions and shouters in the sense-shaking setting was like the vestibule outside purgatory. To the left was Hell, to the right was Heaven. Sinner outside, choose.

Bishop Grigg had ripped into the core of sinners’ Ways, he had proved himself once again the master of mass emotionalism. He had brought the people before him to the very verge of hysteria itself and had so many shouting and praying in a din of fervent abandon, screaming to the Lord for mercy and forgiveness, and shattering their fear, that even the Bishop himself was impressed.

In addition to the attempted confession of the chicken thief, the admission of thievery by the pants-stealing clerk, the pledge of drunken old Sol Biggers and a scattered few who told how they had lied to their wives about more or less trivial matters, he had wrested testimonials of varying degrees of importance from four-score others. He had baptized nine youngsters: four male sinners twelve years of age, and five female sinners under ten.

It had been a great night. He had preached, prayed, cried, two full hours. He had preached raw fundamentalism, pleading for the old-time religion. Now he was hungry.

Bishop Grigg wanted a couple of cold friend chickens, a few beaten biscuits, and a quart or so of chilled, souring buttermilk. This was a snack he enjoyed every night at Beer-Sheba before going to bed close by the cook shack which served a row of eight wooden “tents” in Abraham’s Bosom

The good man had done enough for one day. He had reached heights which took him close to God and carried many others along with him. Now he felt that he had earned a certain right to commune with the inner man himself. He licked his anteater mouth in anticipation of the feast and was annoyed when the chicken thief stood up tremblingly to tell him about some vague sin or other and hold up an exultant doxology. He could just as well wait, thought Bishop Grigg peevishly, until tomorrow’s service. Even one of God’s servants got hungry.

He recognized the sinner as a regular camper at Beer-Sheba, recalling that he lived in a tent on the row the good founding brethren had piously named “His Rod and Staff.” Well, let him get it over with.

Miss Cora apparently did not know that the man back of her was standing ready and eager to wreck his life when she sprang to her feet herself. The sensual lips of the school teacher quivered under the stress of her personal emotion and the hand in which she waved her Bible on high over her head shook so that her worried neighbors shied away in fear that she would allow the good book, heavy with lithographed illustrations, a complete concordance, and voluminous notes, to fall upon their heads.

The emotional pandemonium, however, was quieted with startling suddenness by Miss Cora’s interruption of the chicken thief’s testimonial. The hush which followed was as dramatic in its own silence as the frenzied peak of spiritual perturbation which preceded it.

Johnny Beane’s despairing sigh was the only sound the waiting worshippers heard in the tense stillness.

Bishop Grigg gulped as he recognized the throbbing form of the school teacher. In his surprise, he forgot his gnawing hunger and even had difficulty in finding his voice. He stared at her for a moment or two in some bewilderment.

“Sister Cora,” he finally asked, “you? You want to make a testimonial, too?”

Miss Cora lowered her Bible and gained a measure of personal control.

“Yes, Bishop Grigg,” she shouted in a high, tremulous voice. She opened her Bible.

“Tell it, Sister Cora,” said Bishop Grigg. He was clearly excited. “Tell it in the name of God.”

Sister Cora referred to the Scriptures. “They that are after the flesh,” she read, “‘do mind the things of the flesh.”

“Amen!” blurted Bishop Grigg involuntarily.

Miss Cora paid the ejaculation no attention. “‘The carnal mind is enmity against God,’” she read. “‘For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.’”

This was received with shocked interest. Miss Cora had given the first clear hint of her sin. In spite of himself, Bishop Grigg surveyed again the luscious form of the good-looking school teacher, and wondered with almost sinful envy who the man could be.

“Sister Cora,” he demanded in a hushed voice, “are you in the flesh?”

Bravely, Sister Cora answered, “I’m in the flesh, Bishop Grigg; I'm in the flesh. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.”

Bishop Grigg fairly danced in his excitement. He stood on one foot, then on the other. He was all but drooling.

“Oh, Sister Cora,” he said, “we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. For if ye live after the flesh, ‘ye shall die. But if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. So, Sister Cora, mortify your bodily deeds, confess your sin in the house of the Lord and be saved!”

Sister Cora kept reading from the Scriptures.

“‘They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,’” she quoted, “‘but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit!’”

Bishop Grigg was impatient and disappointed. The congregation of Beer-Sheba now was buzzing with irreverent whispers. The excitement was high. Bishop Grigg had to call for order.

“State your sin, Sister Cora,” he shouted, “state your sin.”

Exasperatingly, Miss Cora continued to read from the gospel. Bishop Grigg interrupted her.

“Get to the point, Sister, get to the point!”

Sister Cora hesitated. Uneasily, she looked over her shoulder at the great sea of eager faces, anticipation glowing like light from every eye. Even though her eyes were blurred, she discerned hands cupped over ears the better to hear her shame, and she saw torsos leaning forward to push a foot closer to the seat of drama. Sister Cora needed some help from the pulpit. The Bishop supplied it.

“Tell it, Sister Cora,” he asked in a voice of soothing piety, “tell it and be saved.”

Miss Cora swallowed hard. “Lord, God!” she shouted. “I’m concupiscent!” The miserable woman started crying. “I'm concupiscent! I’m concupiscent!” she wailed. Bishop Grigg was nonplussed.

In the moment it took him to regain his composure, as every face in the congregation turned to a companion to ask enlightenment, Whispering Stubbs’ familiar voice boomed out as he turned to his long-suffering neighbors and shouted:

“Ah never would of thought hit,” he said, “Ah neve, would of thought hit of her!”

He alone of all those present, the leading Bible authority among the laymen, seemed to know the meaning of the word.

Bishop Grigg was obviously embarrassed. To hide his ignorance he desperately fought for time.

“What did you say, Sister Cora?” he asked. “What’s that you said?”

“My carnal shame! My carnal shame!” the school teacher moaned.

Chapter III: Carnal Sin

With the greatest effort of will, Bishop Grigg gained but a doubtful command over his own confusion.

The good man’s closest approach to profanity was an old habit of exclaiming “soup! soup!” when provoked or annoyed, and now he found the word running through his mind. It was swearing, of a kind, he felt sure. It was neither “yea, yea,” nor “nay, nay,” but strictly “soup, soup,” and that, in itself, he felt, must be some sort of violation of divine law.

In spite of himself, Bishop Grigg again indulged his dangerous habit.

“Soup! Soup!” he thought, “now where did I see that word? Was it in the Old Testament or the New Testament! Soup! Soup!”

He felt some resentment, too, that the good Lord had not come to his rescue. Job argued with the Lord and sometimes Bishop Grigg did, too.

The Lord said unto Jeremiah after he had put forth his hands and touched his lips: “Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.”

It was only one word the Bishop needed now.

Why, he asked, did not the Lord reveal to him the meaning of “concupiscent”?

And where was the Lord to help him in his embarrassment and fear? The Lord said unto Jeremiah: “Be not afraid of their faces for I am with thee to deliver thee.”

But Bishop Grigg was afraid. He looked down upon the buxom form of Miss Cora and over the sea of bobbing humanity before him and the dread within him shook the larded jelly which covered his frame.

A man of his standing in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, a Bishop, facing exposure of his own ignorance! A thing like this could be his ruination. Anyway, Timothy said: “A Bishop must be blameless,” and how could he be considered blameless when he had missed even a single word of the Scriptures?

Pending a prayerful argument with God later on that night, Bishop Grigg decided to bluff it through. Dramatically, he demanded, “Sister Cora, who is the man who deceived you?”

The attractive sinner was in a state of great agitation, but upon hearing the question, she stopped crying and blushed. This seemed somewhat to steady her nerves.

Bishop Grigg’s sudden command, however, did not have a similar effect upon Ephraim Cowan, the station agent, the avid admirer of Miss Cora’s form and figure. Several members of the Floral Circle seated near him cast suspicious glances in his direction and caused him to squirm most uncomfortably on the hard bench. He was relieved only when Miss Cora’s answer drew attention elsewhere.

“Tell us,” demanded the Bishop again, “who is the man?”

Miss Cora’s tightly-strapped bosom was heaving violently. “God forgive me,” she blurted suddenly, “it was Johnny Beane!”

For a full second the congregation sat dumbfounded. Not a song book fell upon the wheat straw, not a person stirred. Bishop Grigg, himself, stood in the hallowed altar of Jehovah with his long lower lip foolishly draping his chin. His muscular pianist, who sat on her adjustable stool, gaped like everyone else. Ephraim Cowan stared at Miss Cora like a mute idiot.

But suddenly the spell was broken. Outside, the screech owl perched in a water oak, throbbed its unlucky wail again and inside a piercing shriek from the throat of Mrs. Mady Beane wavered accompaniment to the eerie call. To Johnny Beane it was a double-barreled crack of doom.

The confusion which followed made history at Beer-Sheba. Mrs. Beane rose paroxysmally halfway to her feet and pitched forward over her surprised husband in a faint. Priscilla Lee started screaming at the top of her lungs as her father made a valiant effort to keep his wife from breaking her neck on the bench in front of her, and Drusilla Belle made such shrill outcries that her neighbors thought she would crack her vocal organs wide open.

“Ma’s dead! Ma’s dead,” she yelled over and over.

All was hubbub elsewhere in the congregation, while Brother Ogletree pushed over the barrier of knees and came to the aid of Mr. Beane in his struggle to get Miss Mady’s inert body adjusted somehow.

Mrs. Addie Vaughn, president of the Floral Circle, who fainted gratefully given any opportunity at all, also lost consciousness and slid quietly from her bench onto the straw-covered dirt floor, while several other members of Grove’s leading ladies’ club became hysterical.

Demands for “water! water!” were heard everywhere and a number of volunteers stampeded for the well, where soon the sound of the rattling windlass promised early revival of the unconscious. Willing hands promptly arrived with brimming gourds and doused the contents in the faces of the victims.

Whispering Stubbs was shouting something to his neighbor, but the bedlam was so great that no one could hear what he said.

Bishop Grigg picked up a potted fern and banged it on the altar. He roared for silence. He beat the clay holder vigorously on the lectern, he stamped his feet and waved his ron — was out of control. Nothing he could do was of any avail.

Suddenly inspired, he turned to his pianist and shouted, “Play Love Lifted Me, and play it loud, Sister, play it loud.”

Since not even the noises of panic could compete with the crashing tones of the pianist, her music quickly served to sober the excited people.

As the noise in the boiling cavern gradually subsided, Bishop Grigg brought the majority of his herd to their complete senses by screaming “Quiet! In the name of the Lord, quiet! This is the house of God!”

Johnny Beane was in a fever of torment, but flight from the hell in which he found himself was now blocked more effectively than ever. Brother Ogletree was standing on his left administering to his mother whose fluttering eyelids showed that she was not dead, after all, and several friends of his father crowded up the aisle on the other side to offer assistance and bring water to the poor woman and his hysterical sisters.

Brother Ogletree and Mr. Beane cleared enough of the bench to stretch Miss Mady out full length on her back, and priscilla Lee had regained sufficient control of herself to rub her mother’s wrists with a wet handkerchief. Drusilla Belle leaned forward with her face in her hands and moaned and rocked stupidly back and forth in great anguish, but her noises were like whispers compared with the first unearthly outburst of fright.

As though suspecting what was in his son’s mind, Mr. Beane growled to him ominously: “Stay put, suh, and take yer medicine! We’uns’ll do some talkin’ when we’uns gits home!”

The pandemonium under Beer-Sheba’s hallowed rafters shook Miss Cora back to normalcy. Suddenly, she seemed to regret her impulse to give the testimonial. She sat down. Bishop Grigg saw her.

“Stand up, Sister, stand up,” he ordered the dejected school teacher. “Stand up and tell us what you did.”

Miss Cora moaned, “O God, forgive me!” and got back up again.

“Now,” shouted Bishop Grigg, pointing his long right forefinger accusingly direct at Johnny Beane, “John Beane, you stand up, too!”

The boy, who had slid down low on his bench so only his face could be seen from the altar, hesitated. His father spoke to him gruffly.

“Do whut yer told, suh! Stand up!”

Johnny Beane staggered to his feet and hung his head. He heard his mother whimpering softly as she often did at funerals, He wished that this were his own. His head was throbbing and the tabernacle was turning around and around and the benches were dancing dizzily before his burning eyes.

“My God!” exclaimed the station agent disgustedly, “a kid like that!”

The young and attractive Mrs. Mattie Lou Candler sized him up admiringly.

“Such a big boy for his age,” she whispered to a neighbor, as she took his specifications lingeringly, “such a big boy.”

Miss Cora began her confession.

For a long time, those slumberous blue eyes of Johnny Beane’s school teacher had followed everywhere he went. They stirred sensations within him that he had never experienced before and soon began to fill his mind and body with a nagging something he could not understand.

Even when he could not see them, he knew they were there and sometimes he was assailed by peculiar, tingling feelings which distracted him but somehow were surprisingly pleasant.

Johnny Beane’s stirring puberty, of which he had been innocently unaware, now was crowding into his mind a consciousness of things he never knew existed before. Miss Cora’s eyes were hot suns which caused the bud of generation to flower. Still, it was all very confusing and the miracle within him was a source of disturbance which he had no way as yet of comprehending.

In Miss Cora’s presence he felt awkward and self-conscious of the crack in the seat of his pants as he walked down the aisle in her classroom. He felt that his carriage was gawky, his feet and hands overlarge, and he suffered acute embarrassment the day the masculine hoarseness, which was changing his voice from tenor to bass, wavered between boy and girl in the inexorable transition and broke on a high note when he sang in a class musical.

That day, following the singing, Miss Cora spoke softly to her pupil, saying, “Johnny, you're growing up, aren’t you?”

The very sound of her voice and the intimate manner in which she regarded him gave Johnny Beane unaccustomed titillations.

That was the day she kept him in after school.

The horrible experience which followed was caused by nothing more vicious than a schoolboy prank.

Johnny Beane was one of five youths involved in a recess plot to shower the classroom simultaneously with handsful of buckshot carefully cut from shells someone had filched from the Busy Bee. When the students lined up for the march back to their desks and took their seats once again for the English lesson, the ringleader gave the signal while Miss Cora’s eyes were on the blackboard. The rain of lead pellets which peppered the floor and sprinkled the desks and hair of the pupils struck with startling suddenness and bounced up and down over every hard surface they touched for several seconds until all was quiet again.

Miss Cora turned quickly. Every boy in the room was innocently engaged in studying his lesson. Only Johnny Beane had not been fast enough in lowering the hand which had sent his appointed charge of buckshot ceilingward.

With unusual composure, Miss Cora spoke to her pupil.

“Johnny,” she said, “you will stay in after school.”

Johnny Beane obediently kept his seat as his classmates trooped out when the final bell rang. It was the first time he and Miss Cora had ever been alone. He was perfectly prepared for the inevitable corporeal punishment he knew would come, but he was filled with anxiety and embarrassment over the prospect of a beating at the hands of Miss Cora,

As for the teacher herself, when she called Johnny Beane up to her desk, there was a shyness about her and her face was flushed. She toyed with a yellow ruler in her hands as she watched the boy approach.

There was certainly no anger in Miss Cora’s face, not even resentment over the misdemeanor. Instead, she eyed him as dreamily as ever, speculatively, as she looked him up and down from his toes to his eyes. Johnny Beane blushed. He could not look at her. He let his eyes fall to the floor.

“Johnny,” said Miss Cora, “come with me.” She led him into the cloakroom and closed the door.

“I could only hit him a lick or two,” Miss Cora said, with a pathetic sob. “I could only hit him a lick or two.”

“And then?” asked Bishop Grigg.

“And then I guess I must have lost my mind. I dropped my ruler and started kissing him. I kissed him. I kissed him all over his face and neck, and I caressed him.”

Mrs. Beane stiffened on hearing this and sat up abruptly.

Priscilla Lee hid her face in her hands. Drusilla Belle started moaning again, and Mr. Beane stabbed ominous glances in the direction of his cowering son.

Bishop Grigg was finding so much relish in Miss Cora’s delineation that saliva was running down the corners of his mouth.

“What else, Sister Cora?” he asked expectantly. “Tell it, Sister, and be saved!”

“There’s nothing else to tell,” groaned Miss Cora.

“You mean that’s all?” asked the Bishop weakly. “Didn’t you say you were concupiscent?”

“I did,” replied Miss Cora.

“We... eee... Ill?” spluttered the Bishop.

“I was only carnal in the mind,” blushed the unhappy school teacher.

“Then you did nothing else at all?” stammered Bishop Grigg incredulously.

To everyone’s consternation and bewilderment, Whispering Stubbs shouted, “Course not; not necessarily!”

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” moaned Miss Cora. “Oh, no, that’s all.”

“Thank God!” said the station agent fervently.

“Sister Cora,” said Bishop Grigg, wiping his drooling mouth and dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief, “you may sit down.”

The Bishop was late in according this permission to the sinner. She had already slumped to the wheat straw in a dead faint.

Several members of the Floral Circle sniffed contemptuously when the station agent sprang to his feet and rushed over to administer to Miss Cora’s needs.

As an afterthought, the good shepherd muttered brokenly in the direction of Johnny Beane, “You may sit down, John.”

“God bless you, Sister Cora. God bless you,” said Bishop Grigg, but this benediction lacked the ring of his accustomed zeal and the words were almost hollow. They carried only to the fiftieth row of the huge tabernacle and even there were understood only by those possessed of the best of hearing. Whispering Stubbs, who sat on the forty-third row, for example, missed them entirely.

Surrounded on the high platform by the verdancy of potted plants and fancy aspidistras, snake’s tongues, and funeral parlor ferns, Bishop Grigg’s complexion harmonized in verdigris. The fat man of God seemed stunned and somehow cheated. But automatically, if somewhat foolishly, he carried on. To the muscular pianist he. managed to mutter in a wavering voice: “Sister, play Ashamed of Jesus.”

Bishop Grigg walked heavily out of the tabernacle to his bed in the tent row which had been named “Abraham’s Bosom.” Some who overheard him talking to himself as he went brokenly on his way, thought he said, “Soup, soup! Soup, soup, soup!”

The Bishop had forgotten his appetite entirely.

Chapter IV: Retribution

The epoch-making meeting at Beer-Sheba, highlighted by Miss Cora’s confession, did not break up until midnight. It was the latest any service had ended in the history of the famous country prayer ground. But still neither the hundreds of worshippers who had long drives ahead of them, nor the regular campers who lived three weeks each year in their “tents” seemed to have the slightest desire to get to bed.

Whispering Stubbs emerged as somewhat of a hero of the night’s drama, and flocks of the faithful gathered about him as he hitched his gelding to a buggy for the twelve-mile drive back to Leafy Grove. Men and women carrying oil lanterns sought him out in the hitching lot packed with closely parked Fords, wagons, surries and second-hand Cadillacs. Whispering Stubbs possessed information they wanted to know.

“Ah tried to tell yer,” shouted the carpenter. “Ah tried mah dead level best to tell yer, but th’ noise in th’ tabernacle was so durned loud you couldn’t heah a cannon. Why, hit almost deefened me.”

This was a good joke and Whispering Stubbs was the first one to laugh. When the hearty guffaws had died down, he continued.

“Concupiscence don’t mean nothin’ more than th’ desire hitself,” he said. “Hit don’t necessarily mean nothin’ more!

“Humph!” he muttered disgustedly, “and Ah always thought Bishop Grigg knowed his Bible. Ah’ve read mine forty times, kiver to kiver. Cain’t see how a Bishop could miss hit.

“In Romans, Chapter 7, verse 8, as plain as th’ nose on a dog’s face, hit says: ‘Sin, taking occasion by the Commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.’ Hit jest means no more and no less than a carnal desire. She coveted, and thet’s all!”

Whispering Stubbs climbed into his buggy.

“Some Bishop,” he said. “He’d a-saved a lot of trouble heah tonight if he’d a-study’d his Bible like Ah do.”

Kerosene lamps burned in the tents of Beer-Sheba that night until the sun came up.

In the Beanes’ big pine tent, on King David’s Row, Johnny's father, in his capacity as Chairman of the School Board, had called an emergency meeting of its members and thankfully found that he had a quorum of faithful Methodists present at the camp ground.

age Mrs, Beane had taken a teaspoonful of aromatic spirits of ammonia to quiet her nerves and retired to worry herself to sleep, Johnny Beane was sent sternly off to his room to await a decision of his fate in the morning. His distressed sisters, still suffering from intermittent spasms, were put to bed with hot water bottles.

The subject before the School Board was the unfortunate case of Miss Cora. Mr. Beane addressed his fellow members.

“Hit’s terrible,” stated Mr. Beane, “hit’s plumb terrible. Thought tonight hit'd durned near kill Miss Mady.”

“A terrible mess, indeed,” agreed Secretary Tacitus Thigpen. “Whut'll we’uns do about hit?”

“Cain’t see as nothin’ needs doin’. Cain’t see as she done nothin’,” said Brother Josiah Lee charitably. “Whispering Stubbs knows more abouten th’ Bible, Ah guess, than anyone Ah knows. He said hisself thet all she did was jest to covet, nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”

“Yep,” agreed Alf Langley, another member of the board, “seems to me she had plenty of will power, thet she proved she was strong enough to resist temptation, anyway.”

“But she might hev carnal thoughts agin,” argued Mr. Beane.

“Yep,” said Tacitus Thigpen, “thet’s so, and iffen we’uns don’t take strong steps th’ women of Leafy Grove'll run us outen town.”

“Never thought of hit thet way,” said Lee. “Mebbe you're right.”

“Ah knows he’s right,” said Mr. Beane. “Iffen she’s allowed to stay and mebbe gits carnal thoughts again, mebbe she won't be quite as strong next time; ever thought of thet?”

“True!” said Thigpen emphatically. “Thar’s enough pitfalls in Leafy Grove a’ready.”

“We have responsibilities to the young folks,” said Mr. Beane.

“Ah'll say,” said Thigpen feelingly. “Ah’ll back you up, Tom. Let’s take a vote.”

“Ah recommends,” said Josiah Lee, “thet we’uns jest lets her resign. To dismiss ‘er harsh like would disgrace her for all her born days. Now, jest a hint would be sufficient. She’d quit of her own accord. A dismissal ’ud hurt her record. She'll have to be gittin’ another job somewheres else, you know.” “

No, siree!” exclaimed Mr. Beane heatedly. “Ah won't hold with thet. Hit was mah son, after all, and Ah cain’t for th’ balance of mah days forgit th’ sufferin’ she caused poor Miss Mady. Why hit made her slapdab deeleerious! Hit’s mah own wife, and mah own son. Ah votes outright dismissal.”

“Right you are!” said the faithful Thigpen. “And they’s another side to hit, too. Did yer ever figger we’uns gotta set a example for th’ other school teachers in Leafy Grove? Not only them’s heah now, but also thems'll come later. Sech stuffs bad for th’ reputation of th’ community, all around.”

“True!” said Tom Beane. “True as you are a hour old!”

Josiah Lee hesitated.

“Ah’m jest tryin’ to soften hit up a leetle bit. To tell th’ truth, Ah felt sorry for th’ poor woman. She’s a stranger in our midst and far away from her home. She hain’t had much social life heah, either,” he added by way of apology.

“Social life!” said Thigpen disgustedly. “Iffen she come heah for social life she come in a frivolous attitude to start with. She was hired to come heah to teach, not to galivant. School teachers hain’t got no business to be havin’ thoughts of social life.”

Thigpen laughed. “Look whut her’n got her,” he said.

Josiah Lee grinned sheepishly.

“Well,” he agreed finally, “iffen you all takin’ hit to heart thet bad, Ah'll go along.”

“Whut yer say, Alf Langley?” demanded Mr. Beane.

“Ah votes to dismiss, prompt!” he answered heartily.

“Unanimous!” exulted Thigpen. “Wish we’uns could tell her tonight. Sooner she gits outen town, th’ better.”

“A-feared you cain’t tell her tonight,” observed Josiah.

“Ephraim Cowan’s already driv her into town. Last time anyone seed Miss Cora she was traveling in th’ agent’s Ford a-goin’ all of thutty miles a hour.”

Miss Cora, indeed, did not wait to be told of the School Board’s decision. When the Accommodation wheezed to a stop at the Leafy Grove station the next morning, she stepped aboard. There were very few who saw her depart, only Kneeless Noah, the marshal, Speedy Dabney, the town dwarf, and Old Mose, the street cleaner. They later announced to all questioners that Ephraim Cowan had helped her with her bags and had done “a powerful lot of whisperin’.”

“Looked as though he was arguin’ with her, actually beggin’ her,” said Kneeless.

“But all she done,” squeaked Speedy in his report, “was jest to shake her head over an’ over and say, ‘No, Mr. Cowan, no, no!’”

“Cowan looked powerful let down when th’ train pulled out,” commented Kneeless. “He shore looked mighty sad.”

“Wonder whut old man Beane done to Johnny?” asked Zeke Pitt.

Speedy Dabney, who knew all the gossip in town ahead of anyone, supplied the answer.

“Whupped ’im,” said Speedy, “and whupped ’im hard.”

“Whupped ’im?” asked Bob Galloway. “He didn’t do nothin’. Thought hit was Miss Cora who done all th’ kissin’.”

“But he shore whupped ‘im, nonetheless,” said Speedy, looking up at the tall men gathered around him. “Got down on his knees first and prayed a full hour, then he thrashed him good an’ hard.”

“Ah'll be durned!” exclaimed Galloway. “Hit don’t seem right.”

“Didn't whup ‘im for the kissin’,” said Speedy. “He whupped ‘im for not tellin’ ’im about hit. Old man Beane said he had Bible authority for hit.”

The accuracy of the dwarf’s report was amazing. Piously, before Mr. Beane started belaboring his son with his long rawhide whip, he quoted from Timothy.

“Th’ Bible,” he told Johnny, “say plain as all gitout: ‘Keep yer children in subjection with all gravity.” Take yer shirt off.”

Chapter V: Good Neighbors

Miss Cora’s Beer-Sheba confession produced a remarkable effect on the thinking of Leafy Grove. Its exciting ramifications, as a matter of fact, were countrywide. Sex, ordinarily a whispered word, now became a subject of widespread popularity. In some homes it was recalled only by implication, but among the more uncouth the brazenly forthright term was discussed with bawdy emphasis.

The stimulation of forbidden sex talk let loose by the school teacher spared but few of those suspected of any form of moral turpitude. Old scandals were revived overnight and provided subjects which were reduced to logical synopsis in front porch rocking chairs by the womenfolk, as well as on street corners where hardy men gathered and without subtlety proved they knew the shape of spades.

Even Brother Inskip, never one himself to turn a deaf ear to whispers about his neighbors, became alarmed over a type of witch hunting which made nearly every resident of the community suspect, bringing him, too, within its orbit.

As Superintendent of the Sunday School, he finally took official cognizance of the plague of whispers which had not spared even his own reputation. He would have to get rid of that breasty thirteen-year-old mulatto girl who came to his house, the Good Lord knew, only to fry his chitterlings, cook a pone of bread or two and wash his overalls.

“Hit’s gittin’ out of control,” said Brother Inskip. “Hit’s th’ devil in folks, or th’ moon.”

He had an audience of farmers in front of the Busy Bee on a Saturday afternoon. ‘

“Hit’s gittin’ so,” declared Brother Inskip, “thet a man cain’t turn over in bed and break wind without all his neighbors knowin’ abouten hit.”

Now the shoe was on the other foot. The metaphorical corn it rubbed made the zealot peevish.

“Looks like Ah’ve got to dismiss Sophie to put a stop to hit,” complained Brother Inskip.

“Who's goin’ to cook yer chittlings?” one of the farmers asked.

“Thet's whut Ah’ve been axin’ mahself,” pathetically replied Brother Inskip in a manner of cruel martyrdom.

One of the farmers in the group snickered. Brother Inskip looked at him quickly.

“Yer, too, Silas Greer? Yer a mocker, too?”

“Ah didn’t say nothin’,” smiled Silas Greer. He spat a pint of ambeer into the muddy, unpaved main street of Leafy Grove.

“Th’ wind is a-blowin’ this heah way, Silas Greer, and hit tells me yer been a-drinkin’ corn likker.”

“All right,” said Silas Greer defiantly, “all right. Then Ah’ve been a-drinkin’ corn likker, and Ah’ve been a-drinkin’ peach brandy, too.”

“Yer wouldn't ’sinuate nothin’ abouten me and Sophie unless yer was.”

“Ah ain’t ’sinuatin’ nothin’ abouten you and Sophie. But she shore is purty.”

Silas Greer again spat copiously, aiming at a sore on the leg of his mare hitched to a muddy wagon loaded with sacks of self-rising flour, fat side meat, big bags of hog bran and innumerable parcels containing snuff for his wife, Christian Pepper cut plug for himself, “n*****-toes,” “pee-cans,” rock candy, sugar, salt, and a bucket of nails. He kept a careful eye on a soft bundle he had placed atop this load since within it was a $25 silk shirt with yellow lemon and anemic blood-red stripes.

It would look mighty fine under his new Star Brand union-made “overhalls” for church wear. Cotton was selling at 45 cents a pound. Four years before, in 1914, it sold for a nickel a pound, and later, in 1921, it went for a dime, but now Silas Greer and his kind were rolling in wealth. It was the period of second-hand Cadillacs in the deep South. Every Negro sharecropper wore patent-leather shoes. New corrugated iron roof tops glistened in the sun on barns all over the red old hills of Georgia.

The new prosperity provoked all sorts of dangerous thoughts. Sex, which now could be afforded in the alluring flesh pots of the capital, was among the foremost. Lustful young farmers who went to Atlanta on Saturdays willingly met the inflationary demands of perfumed “sportin’ gals” who had raised their prices to three dollars.

The fleece of poverty, the staple of ignorance, the lint of slavery, and the fabric of despair—King Cotton—was up to its old tricks. The one-crop master of Southern agriculture played loose and free, as usual, with the thinking and the hopes of the white-trash sharecropper, and the farm owner, and the day laborer, and all the hoodwinked men who stuck their plowshares into the tired red dirt.

Cotton wrought narcotic misery for the Southerner, lulled him, teased him, despoiled him of his dignity, shackled him to anemic clay, and made of him, a sometime descendant of kings and aristocrat of empires, ages old, the first peasant of the New World, a peon for the loom.

Such was Silas Greer, a Presbyterian who now argued with Brother Inskip, as well as each and every one of the Saturday auditors.

Brother Inskip was angry. He could not let the subject drop.

“Whudja mean, Sophie’s purty, Silas Greer? Thet hain’t got nothin’ to do with me.”

“Hit hain’t?”

The little audience around Brother Inskip and Silas Greer was thoroughly enjoying the scandal. Other farmers sidled up and soon the crowd was impressive. Brother Inskip was not unconscious of the vulgar nudging which went on. His protests of innocent employer-employee relations with Sophie served only to increase the scepticism of his neighbors. He now wished that he had never brought the subject up at all.

He caught a fleeting glimpse of the face of Johnny Beane standing on the fringe of the crowd. In his anguish he suddenly hated the boy. Somehow, he blamed him indirectly for all of his troubles and unreasonably decided that it was Johnny Beane as much as Miss Cora who had raised the flood gate and released the awful torrent which now engulfed him.

The Superintendent turned his attention again to Silas Greer.

“Naw, hit hain’t!” indignantly shouted Brother Inskip.

There was something so ludicrous and unconvincing to Brother Inskip’s denial that now all of the farmers burst into raucous guffaws. The laughter encouraged Silas Greer to continue his baiting mercilessly. He was very much pleased with his leading role in the drama.

“Guess yer'll be a-sayin’ next thet she’s puore,” said Silas derisively.

“Look heah, now, Silas Greer, yer goin’ too far. Yer'll force me yit.”

“Ah hain’t a-forcin’ yer. Ah’m jest axin’ iffen Sophie got her new red shoes for fixin’ chitlin’s alone?”

Many of the farmers later swore that they saw Brother Inskip blush tempestuously as Silas Greer asked this question. In fact, he was so breathless for a moment that he could not speak and thus gave his opponent a greater advantage than ever.

“An’ Sophie’s ma,” continued Silas Greer, “Ah guess she’s puore, too.”

So many rough haw-haws greeted the introduction of this new personality into the argument that Brother Inskip was thrown into complete confusion. As though to ward off a blow, he fended the words pathetically with his arm.

Silas Greer, now in full command of the situation, took a swig from a pint bottle of peach brandy, smacked his lips in great appreciation both of the liquor and himself. He replaced the stopper carefully and with some deliberation followed up his last damaging incision.

“Yeah,” he repeated, “Ah guess yer'll be a-tellin’ us Sophie’s ma’s puore.”

Everyone in Leafy Grove knew the notorious Hattie Veal, Sophie’s mother, or rather knew of her and her famous admonition to the men with whom she kept assignations nightly in the graveyard to “hold onto th’ grass, whitefolks, Ah’s a-gwine to take yer to ride.”

Mention of Hattie Veal’s name was the final blow to Brother Inskip. He attempted vainly to sputter some sort of protest, but for once had lost his voice completely. The expression on his face, always striking for its pitiless severity, suddenly was utterly foolish. His arms hung listlessly by his side. His heavy lower lip fell over his chin, and he did not even feel the two flies which lighted on the comers of his stained mouth to drink at will the sweetish droolings of Brown’s Mule cut plug cured with molasses.

The tortured man, however, quickly snapped out of his lethargy. Brother Inskip was a big, tall, raw-boned man with red eyebrows shaped like curled, hairy caterpillars and animated like these bugs themselves whenever he was agitated. They wriggled up and down and seemed actually to slither on his forehead in moments of stress. They tried to crawl away now in earnest as every part of his body jerked with emotion.

“Yer a-bearin’ false witness,” he finally managed, half weakly.

“Yer a-convictin’ yerself,” shouted his adversary.

The episode was stealing entirely the play of the patent medicine show up in front of the square brick court house. In twos and fours the farmers drifted away from the big platform on which were arrayed scores of huge bottles filled with alcohol and ribbon-wide tapeworms. The competition in front of the Busy Bee was too much for the black-faced comedian who did his utmost with banjo and the strains of a suggestive Negro folk song to hold his audience. The big blued lips pouted out a never-failing favorite to hold the deserters.

The entertainer moaned:

“My papa was a deacon in th’ Hard-Shell church,

’Way down South where I was born.

People used to come to church for miles around,

Just to hear the good work go on.”

This was the first verse to a song which usually delighted the country folk. It made them slap their calves in glee and guffaw, “Hit shore beats everything.” And the worst was yet to come. They knew it by heart. It made them feel devilish.

But it was not working now. The spieler could tell. He pitched in to help his entertainer and quickly withdrew from a ventilated trunk on the rear end of his second-hand Cadillac a writhing six-foot-long water moccasin which he bravely adjusted around his neck. All the time the comedian was singing about “the good sister” as sex entered the picture.

“She took two steps forward,

And then she jumped ’way back.

She throwed up both arms,

And she balled the jack.”

Still the crowd continued to thin out. The patent medicine man was disgusted. “Damned hicks, with cuckkel burrs in thar gol-danged haids. They’ve listened to twenty minutes of free entertainment, and now a-leavin’ jest before th’ pitch. Gol-danged yokels and clod-knockers. What th’ hell’s a-goin’ on down thar, anyway?”

When the black-faced comedian had finished the last verse, only old Mose Livingston, the street cleaner, who was deaf and didn’t have a dime to boot, and Lon Speedy Dabney, the town dwarf, who required half an hour to walk a block, remained. But the entertainer stubbornly finished his risqué ditty.

“She hollered ‘Brother,

If you wanna spread joy,

Just pray for th’ lights to go out.’”

Not a package of guaranteed vermifuge, not one box of all-vegetable bile and purge medicine, not one bottle of magic snake oil, not one bar of disappearing healthy soap which rubs right into the pores and does its work as nature intended it should do, did the itinerant Doc sell that day in

Leafy Grove. Disgustedly, he packed his worms and his snake and his samples, folded his collapsible platform, ordered his employee into the car and himself hand-cranked the second-hand Cadillac with such energy that it kicked. He swore, and tried again. The engine sputtered and caught. Doc climbed into the driver’s seat.

“We'll make this durned town agin next Sattidy,” he said. “We ain’t got a chance now with that killin’, or whatever's goin’ on down the street. Yer cain’t beat a local talent fight in a Cracker town.”

Long before the second-hand Cadillac had pulled out of town, half of the population of Leafy Grove had gathered to hear a show which beat tapeworms, banjo music, and snakes all hollow.

Brother Inskip was aghast at the size of the audience. The news was all over town already and would be all over county before sunup. His rubicund nose and all the rest of his face, too, was purpled with embarrassment.

“Let’s stop all of this,” said Brother Inskip nervously.

“Ah hain’t a-stoppin’ nothin’,” muttered Silas.

“Yer need ‘fervent heat’ on yer body and yer soul,” shouted Brother Inskip, “to melt yer elements and th’ works within yer.” Brother Inskip hesitated reverently for a moment and then in a whisper said:

“Chapter 3, verse 10, second Epistle of Peter. Hit’ll come to yer as a thief in th’ night,” he spouted, “and th elements shall melt yer and burn yer up.” Again the injured man hesitated, all mixed up in his Bible. “And yer great noise shall pass away. Amen.”

Silas was not impressed. “Yer heah spoutin’ th gospel,” he exclaimed disdainfully, “but thet don’t make hit so.”

Brother Inskip tried again, and with greater accuracy, for well did Brother Inskip know the Book of Leviticus.

“Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer amongst thy people.’”

Silas haw-hawed at that.

Obstinately, Brother Inskip went again straight to God and Moses for more ammunition, now with a threat of prophecy.

“Yer a-blasphemin’, Silas. Yer’d better be keerful. Th’ Lawd said: “Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall hit be done to him agin.’”

“Ah hain’t caused no blemish in nary a soul,” insisted Silas. “All Ah’s done is to ax some questions.”

Only one of Brother Inskip’s townsmen came forward that day to defend him in his great misery. He was Zeke Pitts, the three-hundred-pound, Bible-quoting town barber, the first white barber, as a matter of fact, ever to put in appearance in Leafy Grove.

Barber Pitts had so impressed Brother Inskip over a period of two hair cuts during three months that he appointed him as assistant teacher to the men’s Bible class and helped him work up quite a speck of new business.

So, with commendable loyalty that Saturday after in front of the Busy Bee, Barber Pitts rightly stood up for his champion.

“Don't forget, Brother Inskip: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

Barber Pitts looked around to gauge his audience. They seemed annoyed at this unexpected intrusion. He was spoiling their fun. But Pitts was a determined man. He kept on.

“That's Exodus,” he said, “chapter 21, verse 24. And don't forget, either, th’ holy words of God in th’ next verse from the very same chapter: ‘Burnin’ for burnin’, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’”

Silas Greer was livid. Pitts put him in a nasty mood. He took a menacing step toward the fat barber.

“Whut th’ hell yer drivin’ at?” he demanded. “Yer mean Ah'm a-lying up with a n***** bitch?”

Pitts blustered.

“Yer a-blasphemin’! Ah said nothin’ like hit.”

“Who’s a-blasphemin’? Yer pot-gutted bastard!”

Silas Greer quickly reached for his long, button-opening “frog-sticker.”

The bright seven-inch blade flashed instantaneously from its bone scabbard under the impetus of a strong spring.

“Now git! Demanded Silas Greer. “Git! Git back to yer n***** job and stay thar, or else come on back with yer damned razor and we’uns will slash hit out heah an’ now.”

The sight of the blade so unnerved the barber that he started trembling violently.

“He’s a-shakin’ so,” one of the farmers laughed, “thet yer kin heah th’ turnip greens a-splashin’ in his guts.”

Barber Pitts retreated to his shop so fast that few heard him mutter in complete contradiction to his Old Testament tack: “‘... love yer enemies, bless them which despitefully use yer and persecute yer.” Breathlessly, as he reached the door of his fancy tonsorial establishment, he gasped, “St. Matthew, chapter 5, verse 44.” With that, he disappeared within.

When the bedeviled Brother Inskip finally was deserted, Silas Greer’s good humor returned. He replaced his formidable weapon in his left hip pocket, took his bottle of peach brandy from his right, drained it, and continued his harassing.

“Was a time,” he said, “when Ah used to could open mah mouth and ax a question or two without bein’ called a scandalmonger.”

The farmer climbed into his wagon and sat down on a decrepit cracker box behind the singletree.

“Guess Ah'll be a-goin’ home where they won't be a-kickin’ mah dog around.”

He winked broadly at his now roaring audience.

“Giddap, Sophie,” he shouted, with vicious emphasis, and laid his whip soundly over the mare’s rump. The startled horse, surprised and hurt, plunged forward to a quick gallop down the street. Silas looked back over his shoulder at the crowd of men in front of the Busy Bee. Everyone there distinctly heard him say, as he timed his departure with perfect self-direction, for the dramatic last word of the day, “And say, Brother Inskip, iffen yer a-payin’ Sophie more’n a box of snuff, hit’s more’n hit’s worth.”

The delicious roar of his applauding audience rang sweetly in his ears as he pulled his animal down to a splashing trot for his long trip home.

All Brother Inskip could say helped matters none at all.

“Cussed Presbyterian!” muttered Brother Inskip. He turned stiffly and walked off in the direction of his house up by the cottonseed oil mill.

The crowd in front of the Busy Bee had thinned out to discreet normalcy before there arrived on the scene of the late disturbance tall Kneeless Bohannon the only peace officer in Georgia without joints in his legs and who walked like a wooden soldier, or stiffly like a man on stilts. Unable to run, or for that matter make any pretense of haste, a bad marksman and near-sighted as well, Kneeless Noah was the delight of Saturday drunks, little boys shooting firecrackers on the streets during Christmas in violation of a strict council ordinance, and Negro whores the year around.

Brother Inskip was a dozen feet up the street and too far away for Kneeless to recognize when he finally goose-stepped up in front of the store.

Chapter VI: Sophie

All that night Brother Inskip rolled and perspired in his deep feather bed. Sunday morning dawned crisp and clear, and although an early frost had sharpened the Southern air with static, his mattress was wadded, damp through and through. The tired man arose, rubbed his swollen eyes and got down on his knees, as was his custom, to say a prayer. It never varied.

“Lawd God,” he said aloud, “thank thee for allowin’ me to live through another night and to face another day. Amen!”

Brother Inskip customarily was most efficient in the usage of his time on the Sabbath as well as every other day. Ordinarily, his confident amen was no more than uttered before he was up on his feet ready to take in his long, angular stride the waking hours for which he had been so benevolently spared by a jealous God.

Strangely, now, however, Brother Inskip lingered by his bedside on his knees, his head buried in the soggy ticking, a rin awkwardly placed in front of him, palms down-ward.

It was there Sophie found him when she arrived an hour later to cook his breakfast and “hope him git ready for Sunday School.”

The girl was alarmed. She was frightened, too.

“Mister Mordecai,” she said in a trembling voice, “iffen yer's daid, Ah hain’t a-gwine to tech yer, and iffen yer's alive, speak to me, Mister Mordecai! Speak to me!”

The blacksmith groaned and looked up at Sophie, who kept at a safe distance from dread death with his tired, glassy eyes.

“Naw,” said Brother Inskip sadly, “Ah hain’t daid, Sophie, but, God forgive me, Ah wisht Ah was.”

The encounter with Silas Greer had wrought an amazing change in the fundamentalist. His face was so drained of color that hardened tobacco juice which filled two severe forge-dried lines that ran from the corners of his mouth down to his chin stood out as sharp, black ridges against his three-day growth of bristles. Even this hirsuties now seemed strangely anemic and blanched.

“Thar jest hain’t no blood and no life in me,” said Brother Inskip, still on his knees. He moaned this plaint in such agony that Sophie started crying.

“Git up, Mister Mordecai,” she said, “please git up. Iffen yer’s sick, Mister Mordecai, Ah’ll run for Doctor Smith.” Sophie quickly slipped off her red shoes for the mile-long sprint into town.

“Put ‘em back on, Sophie,” commanded Brother Inskip. “Hit hain’t thet Ah’m sick in body. Hit’s in speerit.”

Sophie sighed relievedly when the suffering man pulled himself to his feet. She wiped her tears away delightedly, and with the quick change from sadness to joy of which only members of the Negro race are capable, she grinned broadly, flashing pearly-white teeth which lighted up her face more than did her opaque, mud-puddle eyes.

Sophie giggled freely, but cautiously, as though she were not quite sure about anything. They were almost hysterical little giggles, but she got them out bravely. Not at all convincingly, she said, “Ah hain’t a-worried about yer, ’tall, Mister Mordecai. Hee, hee, hee! Ah always tell ’em nothin’ kin hurt Mister Mordecai. An’ lookee heah, Mister Mordecai, whut Ah brought yer.”

The young girl held out her gift. It was a piece of sassafras root.

“Go out to th’ well,” Sophie commanded, “an’ clean yer teeth with hit. Ah’ll git th’ mutton suet ready for yer hair and th’ hot water a-bilin’ for yer washin’.”

Brother Inskip obeyed like an automaton. Only when Sophie heard him splashing cold water on his face in the back yard and discerned through his bedroom window the vigorous lathering he gave his stubble with Octagon soap suds did she stop worrying about her employer. Sophie was greatly relieved. When it was time for her to take Brother Inskip his long, old-fashioned stropping razor after he had massaged the laundry soap into a two-inch lather, she was humming happily.

Each Sunday morning Sophie went through the same routine. Brother Inskip had not reached his shaving mirror on the outside of his privy door before Sophie had put the razor in his hand.

His black Sunday suit already was laid out over a rocking chair, the wet feather mattress was hanging over the front porch bannisters to dry in the sun, two big pots were about to boil in the kitchen wood stove and Sophie had sifted water-ground cornmeal for a hoe cake. Her red shoes reposed on a kitchen shelf where she could steal admiring glances at them when she cooked. “Yer a good gal, Sophie,” said Brother Inskip, as she proffered his razor.

Sophie beamed her appreciation. She saw that the cold water had washed some the strain out of his eyes. She was her carefree self again.

“Thank yer, Mister Mordecai” she laughed childishly, “Ah tries to be.”

Brother Inskip scraped a swath of whiskers three inches wide in a long swipe from temple to jaw. He shook the wet salt-and-pepper mess from the blade in a blob onto the rich green grass by the privy path and then looked appraisingly at the girl who lingered near him.

What he saw he liked. Thirteen-year-old Sophie was longlegged and pretty. The bridge of her nose was straight, and he was pleased to note again that her nostrils were not characteristic of the colored race. They were thin and sensitive. Her skin was the color of tea with lemon. Her legs were well-shaped and not spindly like most other colored girls who lived in Leafy Grove, and her hips were well-rounded.

“Not like spider-assed n***** gals, at all,” thought Brother Inskip. He stared at Sophie long and appraisingly. Sophie regarded him curiously. Brother Inskip lowered his voice, confidentially.

“Hit’s purty hard for yer to be good, hain’t hit, Sophie?”

Sophie was getting nervous. She stammered something incoherent and looked embarrassedly at the ground.

Brother Inskip paused for a long time. He seemed fascinated by the girl's firm breasts, pushing like cantaloupes cut from the vine with a half inch of stem left on them, against her plain calico bodice. They held his attention for quite a while before he spoke again.

“When Ah gits back from Sunday School, Ah wants to talk to yer about hit, Sophie.”

Sophie blushed. Fearful of meeting his eyes, she drew little circles with her toes on the sand of the privy path. She watched her toes go round and round.

“Whutever yer says, Mister Mordecai,” she answered quietly, “whutever yer says.”

Chapter VII: Sunday School Lesson

Brother Mordecai Inskip stood cadaverously before the audience of the Leafy Grove Sunday School of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Both of his hands rested firmly on the lectern. He stood, with his shoulders thrown stiffly back, up to his full height of six feet three inches. Many in the audience thought they detected something of arrogance in his stance, a bearing, they felt, ill-suited to a man about whom such scandalous talk was rampant.

It was obvious that Leafy Grove had expected some sort of explanation from the Superintendent. The auditorium of the church was thronged. The balcony was full, too. Not only of Methodists. A goodly number of “sprinkling” Presbyterians, “deep-water” Baptists, “pouring” and “ducking” Hard-Shells, or Primitive Baptists, members of the poor, tumble-down immersing Protestant Campbellite Church with the heavy mortgage on it, a handful of anointing Holy Rollers, and five members of the river-wallowing rattlesnake sect from Magnolia Creek precinct, ten miles out of town, sat self-consciously in the congregation. These visitors strove mightily to be casual about their presence in the misguided house of Methodism, knowing guiltily that they should be attending their own services, listening to their own ministers preach about the real paths, the true paths, the only paths, as a matter of fact, to God’s blinding throne.

Johnny Beane sat on the fifth center bench of the auditorium between his mother and father. By force of habit he turned to see whether Miss Cora also was in her accustomed place two rows back of him. It was empty, but all during the remainder of the services, except for a ludicrous interlude when he forgot all about them, he felt her slumberous blue eyes burning on the nape of his neck like inextinguishable phosphorous fire. He held the flat of his hand on his neck now and then, but the fires burned right through it. He squirmed a great deal and stopped only when his mother hissed at him and his father backed her up with a characteristic hoarse command to “be quiet, suh.”

Priscilla Lee was so pained by her brother's irreverence this time that she punctuated her sorrow with a hopeless little sigh which won from her mother a look of anguished understanding and sympathy that these two strained souls alone could comprehend in their eternal wretchedness. Drusilla Belle characteristically twisted her nose, made a face, and stuck out her tongue which was very blue from the quantities of blackberry jam she had eaten for breakfast.

Brother Inskip drew fortitude for his ordeal from some deep, inner well of strength. With a remarkable effort of will he had taken hold of himself as he walked from his little white house in the grove of water oaks up at the corporate limits just in front of the cottonseed oil mill. His hair was plastered down slick with mutton suet which Sophie had melted for him in the skillet before she fried his greasy side-meat and eggs, He prayed all the way to church, and as he approached it he looked neither to the right nor to the left, to escape seeing the stares of curious church members who awaited his coming on the outside.

Somehow he remembered to pull from his face little pieces of the Atlanta Constitution which he had stuck on razor nicks to stop the bleeding. He had stared at pretty Sophie for so long that his Octagon lather had dried out.

The accumulated fabric hum and bustle of silk dresses, starched calico dresses, and the homespun Sunday woolen pants and long itchy flannel underwear of the men impatiently squirming on the hard, slick, high-backed benches, the shuffling of feet, the rustling of plumed hats, and the whispers subsided with a disciplined hush when Brother Inskip called for the first song. He selected his own favorite for the day of his great ordeal. He motioned to the giddy, teen-age Bessie Mae Suggs, who also played the piano three nights a week at the Gem Movie Theatre on Center Street. She was accepted as Sunday School pianist in a strange compromise with the devil in spite of her forbidden labors in such a place of frivolity. Bessie Mae grinned self-consciously and, as usual, attacked the keys with such sudden vengeance that the singers were thrown off completely at the start. Bessie Mae grinned and started all over again with more restraint, enabling the choir and the congregation to keep up with her rendition of Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?

Johnny Beane’s mother sang along with the rest. She was a wide-eyed little woman, who lived her life with resignation, did her appointed tasks with a perpetual air of dismay, and used the palms of her hands held up at the same time in disconcerting gestures of pained surprise, to show how easily she could be hurt. When she indulged in one of these quick, chub-like movements upon detecting a tendency on the part of Bessie Mae to rag the sacred song, she dropped her hymn book on the floor and caused a certain amount of confusion before her husband retrieved it.

Aside from that incident, however, everything was smooth enough, considering the tension of the congregation. Bessie Mae put unusual enthusiasm into her vigorous rendition of Marching to Zion, which, despite certain improvisations reminiscent of a turkey trot and the ebulliency of backroom balladry, went off all right.

Brother Inskip, however, thought he detected something of impatience in the way his congregation sang. There was an unmistakable inclination to speed it up, to rush the song to a conclusion, an avidity which annoyed him so much that he purposely asked for a third hymn out of pure contrariness.

When Bessie Mae had finished Marching to Zion and stood up to take her place in the audience, Brother Inskip motioned the surprised girl back to her stool. Minor hubbub was caused by the quick, curious glances exchanged in the auditorium, over this unusual order of things and of this Brother Inskip was not unaware. He cleared his throat loudly.

“Bretheren,” he said, “Methodism was born in song. Our own founder, John Wesley, had his heart ‘strangely warmed’ when he heard a psalm bein’ sung in a London church.

We'uns are a-goin’ to sing a third song today, three instead of two, because we'uns, all of us, need th’ lesson on page 643. Play hit, Bessie Mae, play hit!”

Brother Inskip’s voice rang with a note of evangelistic triumph.

“And sing hit, Bretheren; sing hit, Sisteren, sing hit!”

Dolefully, Bessie Mae hammered out the hymn. Disappointedly, the congregation mouthed without inspiration the words which had inspired the Father of Methodism. Brother Inskip was proud of his selection. He felt he had achieved a subtle stroke. His deep bass voice rumbled hoarsely above the strongest throat in the congregation. He threw back his head and gave it the emphasis he considered such a psalm deserved.

“Out of th’ depths,” he sang, “have Ah cried unto Thee, O Lawd.

“Lawd, heah my voice; let Thine ears be attentive to th’ voice of my supplications.

“Iffen Thou, Lawd, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lawd, who shall stand?

“But thar is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared.

“Ah wait for th’ Lawd, my soul doth wait and in His word does Ah hope.

“My soul waiteth for th’ Lawd more than they thet watch for th’ mornin’: Ah say more than they thet watch for th’ mornin’.

“Let Israel hope in th’ Lawd; for with th’ Lawd thar is mercy, and with Him plenteous redemption.

“And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”

Before the psalm was half-finished, Whispering Stubbs, a carpenter by profession, leaned over and muttered into the ear of Brother Josiah Lee so loudly that his neighbors plainly heard him say, “Hit’s a cornfession, a cornfession as shore as a auger bores a round hole.”

Brother Lee nodded wisely in agreement, but was unmistakably embarrassed at Brother Stubbs’ shouting.

Brother Lee spent his hours of worship in church in a constant state of alarm. Never could he be sure what his faithful friend, Brother Stubbs, would say next. Sunday after Sunday his fear of God was largely crowded out of his mind by worry over what sudden “confidence,” what “whisper” might resound over the auditorium to embarrass everyone, to make him blush, especially because of its frankness, its truth, its candor, directed always at his own reddening ear. Many were the devices Brother Lee used to rid himself of Brother Stubbs. By nature, a self-conscious and timid man, he changed his seat a dozen times in as many years, but his persistent companion invariably sought him out and plunked himself resolutely beside him no matter how much trouble he caused by stumbling over knees and feet and crowding out of their places adult worshippers who had warmed the same section of imitation mahogany board during all their church attendance since childhood.

In spite of his bad hearing, Whispering Stubbs missed precious little of sermon, lecture, or prayer, and his sudden comments had become an institution in the Leafy Grove Church. Even those, who publicly expressed annoyance over the bad taste of Whispering Stubbs in the house of God, in spouting sometime acidulous observations, nevertheless missed his presence when illness infrequently kept him home in bed. The way he got to the truth of things in a hurry helped the congregation to a better understanding of many a complicated sermon down through the years and also kept the preachers on their toes. Ministers regarded him warily. He had their complete respect.

Sitting with his huge bunioned and work-hardened hands cupped over his ears like two red hams, Brother Stubbs was an adversary of whom careless clergymen were necessarily aware. When one misquoted the Scripture, became tedious or repeated himself, Brother Stubbs alertly confided the details to his neighbor.

“He’s a-slippin’,” or “he’d better study his Bible,” or “he’s said that twict already,” or “he’s away off th’ truth” were typical Stubbs comments which kept the preachers thinking.

More than once, Brother Stubbs, who had completely memorized the Old Testament, including the introduction of the translators addressed “to the most high and mighty Prince James, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, defender of the faith...” had challenged faulty quotations of many a young minister of the gospel.

“’Tain’t right,” he would say, “should be this,” or “should be that,” as the case might be, and Brother Lee blushed and the speaker stammered or spluttered according to his temperament.

In his own way, said many a church member, Whispering Stubbs was an influence for good.

If Brother Inskip had intended the selection of his psalm to be considered a confession, as Whispering Stubbs had said, he gave no indication of it during his lecture which followed. After the singing, when the rustling of song books being laid aside and buttocks being adjusted and pocketbooks being placed in starched laps ended in such quiet that Johnny Beane could hear his father’s big watch ticking in his vest pocket, Brother Inskip began.

“Gossip is a fearful thing,” he said suddenly, as though he were coming to the point much earlier than expected. As one, the Sunday School audience leaned forward to catch every word.

“And they’s too much talk a-goin’ on heahabouts regardin’ ever body.

“Th’ Methodists they say ‘knock and hit shall be opened unto ye, ask and ye shall receive.’ Hit’s th’ ‘whosoever will’ doctrine of the church.”

The predestination Presbyterians squirmed uneasily in their seats. They had an uncomfortable moment.

Brother Stubbs got the significance of this statement immediately. He whispered again into Brother Lee’s ear, and there was no mistaking what he said.

“He’s a-hittin’ at Silas Greer’s church, and powerful strong at thet.”

Although he blushed as usual, Brother Lee seemed pleased to hear the interpretation and mixed the crimson in his face with a mellow beam of self-righteousness in the knowledge that he, unlike the Presbyterians, had never been one to believe that innocent little babies were frying in hell’s brimstone. Others, too, for whom the hard-of-hearing brother’s words were not intended, wagged their heads approvingly.

Brother Inskip continued:

“Ever whar yer goes these days yer heah people a-sayin’, ‘He’s all right, BUT!’ ‘She’s all right, BUT!’ ‘Sister Smith’s a good woman, BUT!”

The speaker stopped a moment for the effect of these solemn words on the members of his audience. They seemed slightly puzzled.

“‘Brother Jones, he’s all right, BUT!”

Brother Inskip paused again. Somehow, in an unfortunate moment his eyes caught those of Mrs. Fanny Singleton, a fine Christian lady who never missed a church service of any kind, provided it was a Methodist Church service. Brother Inskip thought he saw a glimmer of sympathy in the sister’s eager optics. He seized upon it greedily. He drank it in. It warmed him. From that moment on, he directed his oratory straight in her direction.

Mrs. Singleton at first was not at all displeased in her selection as the speaker’s special target. She recognized it for what it was, a gesture of a miserable man groping for friendship. She smiled at Brother Inskip encouragingly.

“Yes,” he said, with new confidence in having at last found someone who, after all this vicious skepticism, believed in him, “Mr. Downs is a good man, BUT!”

Mrs. Singleton nodded her head as though she understood completely. She alone fathomed his subtlety, gave him, of all the Christians in Leafy Grove, confidence and trust. Her belief in him was sudden and fierce. She was grateful for his attention. She enjoyed being a cynosure.

Never one to avoid the spotlight, Mrs. Singleton for years had been conspicuous in Leafy Grove church, civic and club circles by the very dint of her energy and a posterior of such enormity that the very effort of carrying it around would seem to preclude strength for anything else. Her seat, moreover, was proportioned along such lines that it had been compared more than once to the shape of twin watermelons which had been so blessed by the richness of soil, so coddled by the moisture of the heavens, the beneficence of the sun and the basting of favorable breezes, that they reached unprecedented size, big enough, in fact, to win blue ribbons at any county fair.

Countrified folks who always found a name to fit anything, described her astonishing derrière as “rump-sprung,” meaning in the language of the Cracker that she had been born with her “watermelons slung low to th’ ground.”

Her walk was deliberate and precise, since haste had been known at times to set up such violent vibrations of one or the other of her appendages that she had been thrown off balance. At these times she was forced to halt until it quit shaking. Her mother gave her in infancy the name Sally Fanny, after her favorite great-aunt. Simple village punsters found the lady’s last name a delight and produced many witty comments as she undulated down the street to church or market.

“Whudda they mean, Singleton?” they demanded with a fine sense of bucolic drollery. “Why she shudda been named Doubleton, one on each side. Bigger’n a Durock sow, both ‘em.

This clever type of Leafy Grove humor threw hearers into spasms. Those less subtle and not endowed with the quick wit of punsters honestly called her “Big Ass Fanny” and let it go at that.

Mrs. Singleton came early to church in order to take her accustomed place in the exact center of the longest bench. Because of her dimensions, the good lady found it impossible to squeeze by worshippers who might have preceded her, and these same lines prevented her from walking between the benches themselves unless she did so on her hands. She found it necessary to slide sideways along the mahogany board, inching it by small degrees, to her habitual location.

Winter and summer alike, especially when stirred by an eloquent sermon, Mrs. Singleton perspired abundantly in the region of her loins. When aroused emotionally copious little fountains bubbled from her pores, at times to such an extent that puddles of water formed on the floor under her feet, This extraordinary manifestation, however, had become so commonplace in Leafy Grove that it had long since ceased to attract attention.

Mrs. Singleton was no joke to those of whose conduct she disapproved. She attacked them with sharp invective. Never was she for anything; always she spewed against something, usually just plain sinners, or a liquor-guzzling candidate for sheriff who had closed his eyes to moonshining out on Magnolia Creek. More than once Mrs. Singleton had unkindly added her incongruous, heavy voice to campaigns slandering young teen-age girls who wore bloomers when they rode man-type bicycles.

It was not with complete consistency, therefore, that Brother Inskip talked as he did in the direction of Mrs. Singleton.

“Iffen yer cain’t say nothin’ good abouten a person,” shouted Brother Inskip, “then hit’s best to say nothin’ a-tall.”

Brother Inskip paused a second and drew in a deep breath.

“Don’t go around a-sayin’: ‘Sister whatever her name may be, is a good woman, BUT.”

The speaker halted again and filled his lungs for the final burst to bring his philosophical offensive to a proper and impressive finale.

He was speaking rapidly and proudly, intrigued by the meaning of his own words as well as the sound of his voice, but suddenly he felt uneasy sensations. He was vaguely aware of a tenseness in the congregation, something as tight as the coiled spring on a window shade, but he stubbornly shook off his depression and shouted louder than ever, “BUT,” he said, “hit’s always BUT!”

For whatever the effort was worth, Brother Inskip beamed these words and popped his eyes straight in the direction of Sister Sally Fanny. Something was wrong. The good woman, he saw in amazement, no longer was nodding her head in sympathetic agreement. Instead, she was wriggling in obvious distress on her great protuberances. The warm telepathy between them now was jammed by unmistakable static.

Brother Inskip was alarmed. He started perspiring. He rubbed a palm over his wet forehead where Sophie’s melting mutton suet had mixed with his own sweat. The red caterpillar eyebrows of the sufferer contorted like half-mashed insects. Desperately, however, he continued, “Hit’s BUT, BUT, BUT!” he shouted nervously.

Again he saw Sister Singleton squirm, but even now he continued his theme with the fascination of an onomatomaniac. Over and over he repeated the preposition.

“Hit’s BUT heah, hit’s BUT thar,” he said. “Thar’s always a BUT. People are messin’ ’round with too many BUTS!”

A few of Whispering Stubbs’ neighbors snickered in some embarrassment when the carpenter muttered a fervent “Amen!”

There were quite a few snickerers, and sly, foolish-looking gigglers, and there were the sounds of half-suppressed catches in more than one throat, but as it happened it was only Johnny Beane whom Brother Inskip in his great confusion saw when he turned his eyes from the anguished face of Sister Singleton and surveyed his audience as a whole.

Whispering Stubbs was holding onto the edge of his seat with one big hand and cupping the other over his best ear. Apoplectic red faces and crimson cheeks bursting with air ballooned on every bench. But it was only Johnny Beane that the miserable Superintendent saw. The “mean little boy” had started something Brother Inskip could not understand.

Whatever it was, there was no stopping now. There was a great buzzing in his head, but he delivered the punch line of the day, “BUT’s a bad word,” Brother Inskip spouted. “Why don’t yer tend to yer own BUTS, jest like Sister Singleton, and leave other folks’ BUTS alone?”

Whispering Stubbs, with the loudest comment he ever made in the history of Leafy Grove Methodist Episcopal Church, South, convulsed the audience.

“Sister Singleton’s got ’er hands full,” he confided. “Thet’s th’ biggest job in town.”

In spite of his dizziness and the persistent buzzing in his head, the words came to Brother Inskip’s ears and he heard them, every one. He was swaying stupidly in the pulpit when Sister Sally Fanny, angered beyond words, arose from her seat, drove all on her bench into the aisles, shook her fist at the unhappy Superintendent, and wobbled out of the house of God.

Whispering Stubbs was up on his feet to watch her leave. Brother Inskip heard him confide to the audience at large “She’s a-takin’ her BUTS home.”

A disrespectful roar of unrestrained laughter made the church tremble as Brother Inskip, a broken man, weaved dangerously. Still on his feet he lapsed into blessed oblivion which spared him for a moment from the full peak of the outburst. The last image he saw as two alert stewards jumped over the altar rail to keep him from falling was that of Johnny Beane, laughing at the top of his lungs like everyone else, having the time of his life.

At that moment, as well as for the remainder of his days, the bewildered Brother Inskip, who never, ever, quite understood what had happened to him, blamed his misery entirely on Johnny Beane “who pervoked hit all.”

Chapter VIII: Jezebel’s Daughter

Brother Inskip walked slowly home that Sabbath from Sunday School in lowering gloom. Torn between hate and shame and penitence, he alternately cursed and blushed and prayed.

He felt that his disgrace was complete. He found himself walking in aimless circles. When he reached his little white house in front of the oil mill he lifted his heavy greased brogans up the steps with lifelessness which reflected the state of his spirits. The fifteen-minute walk had taken several hours.

Sophie was awaiting him. She opened the door. He stared at the pretty girl for a moment and his eyes brightened briefly.

“Mr. Mordecai,” said the colored girl, “yer late, and yer looks worried. Yer looked worried when yer left, yer look worried when yer come home.”

Sophie seemed worried herself. Her voice was pitched higher than usual, and in spite of an obvious effort to appear casual, she seemed shy and self-conscious.

Brother Inskip’s ogling did nothing to dispel her discomfiture. It was the same appraising stare he had held upon her on the privy path earlier in the day. Sophie blushed her tea and lemon complexion to Lincoln penny copper.

“Come on in, Mr. Mordecai,” she said nervously, “I’se got yer vittles ready. All ready. Ev’ything good an’ hot. Jest as yer likes hit, Mr. Mordecai. Jest as yer likes hit.”

Still looking at her closely, Brother Inskip walked into his hallway. Sophie kept talking excitedly as he led the way into his bedroom, took off his coat and shoes and let his galluses fall.

“I’se fixed yer up a mess of hoppinjohn, Mr. Mordecai,” said Sophie. “Ah knows whut yer likes, Mr. Mordecai. Hee, hee,” she giggled childishly.

“Yer shore does, Sophie,” agreed Brother Inskip listlessly.

“I’se fixed up th’ mess of black-eyed peas,” continued Sophie. “Cooked ‘um with a big hunk of side meat and pods of red pepper. Th’ pot likker’s mighty rich.”

Brother Inskip slipped off his Sunday-go-to-meeting britches behind the screen by the washstand and substituted a pair of blue denim pants instead.

“An’ th’ rice, Mr. Mordecai, hit’s chewy, jest as yer likes hit. Not too soft, not too hard, jest chewy. Cause yer always says th’ pot likker make hit soft enuff,” the girl called over the cotton screening. “Hain’t that right, Mr. Mordecai?”

“’Tis, Sophie,” replied the blacksmith. “Jest as yer says.”

“An’ chittlin’s, Mr. Mordecai!” exclaimed Sophie with entirely too much enthusiasm for commonplace hog entrails.

“I’se got yer chittlin’s, too.”

Brother Inskip looked over at the girl curiously. She continued, talking rapidly as a child talks in naive effort to postpone hearing an inevitable unpleasantness. Sophie babbled on with a trace of hysteria in her voice, hiding her head, like an ostrich, over a greasy pot of peas.

“But th’ chittlin’s clean, Mr. Mordecai,” Sophie giggled.

“An’ yer always likes yer chittlin’s not too clean, don't yer, Mr. Mordecai? Befo’ Gawd, nevah will forgit whut yer said about likin’ to find a grain of corn in a chittlin’, Mr. Mordecai. Want me to pick one or two from a roastin’ ear and stick ’em in, Mr. Mordecai?”

“No, Sophie,” said Brother Inskip, “thet’s jest a leetle joke of mine. Ah really does like em clean, Ah guess.”

“Whutever yer says, Mr. Mordecai, whutever yer says.”

“Whut’s th’ matter, Sophie?” asked the blacksmith. “Yer seem upset abouten somethin’ yerself.”

Sophie’s pent-up feelings she could hide no longer with her attempted flippancy. The lissome little negress burst out crying.

“Hit’s whut yer goin’ to tell me, Mr. Mordecai,” she blubbered, “hit’s whut yer said this mornin’ by th’ privy. Hit’s whut yer goin’ to tell me!”

The blacksmith walked over to his servant and shook her gently. Soothingly, he said, “Now, thar, Sophie, thar, thet kin wait.”

With this, Sophie cried all the harder.

“Quit yer cryin’, Sophie, and git supper on th’ table. Set a plate for yerself, too; yer goin’ to eat with me this evenin’.”

Sophie turned off her tears as though not a single one had dropped from her eyes. She was horrified.

“Sweet Jesus!” Sophie exclaimed without irreverence. “Mr.

Mordecai! Whut yer sayin’, Mr. Mordecai?”

In Leafy Grove where white men will sleep with a negress, but find it unthinkable in their social system to eat with one at the same table, Brother Inskip’s sensational announcement was tantamount to a blast of Gabriel’s trumpet. The girl was aghast.

“Sweet Jesus,” Sophie went on, in alarm. “Lawdy Lawd, Mr. Mordecai, yer don’t mean thet. Whut'll folks say, Mr, Mordecai? Yer cain’t do thet!”

“Dum whut folks say,” barked Brother Inskip. “Fix yerself a place at th’ table, an’ do as Ah tells yer.”

The blacksmith’s stern order snapped Sophie into action. She had seen him mad before. To disobey his slightest wish was something she would never dare. The girl hurried into the kitchen and set the table. She had never eaten with a white person before, but however crazy it was, if Mr. Mordecai wanted it she would do it even if the food choked her.

“Lawd knows I’se been raised to obey, Mr. Mordecai,” she said with resignation. “I’se been raised to obey.”

Brother Inskip and Sophie ate their supper in comparative silence. Sophie nibbled disinterestedly at her food and found it tasteless. She was miserable. She thought surely her employer had lost his mind, and now more than ever dreaded the experience she knew she must face after the meal.

Mr. Mordecai had made his intentions clear enough before he went to Sunday School.

In spite of his depression, Brother Inskip’s appetite was healthy, as usual. He consumed enormous helpings of “hoppinjohn,” drank a coffee cup filled with pot likker, swallowed a huge piece of side meat whole without chewing it, and munched down a small mountain of crisp chitterlings. He reached his Plimsoll with a final hunk of pone bread crust soaked in chitterling oil and belched loudly. The noisy offense almost drowned out a sudden knocking at the kitchen door. Sophie heard it first.

“Sweet Jesus! Mr. Mordecai!” she whispered in alarm. “We’s caught! Ah told yer, Mr. Mordecai! Ah told yer!”

Brother Inskip half suppressed another expulsion and stiffened in his chair. Sophie started jerking. The diners stared at each other foolishly.

The caller rapped again. Brother Inskip, whose defiance of a prime social taboo, which by its very audacity had goaded him to voluble scorn of public opinion only a half hour before, sat in a paralysis of fear. The only movement of which he seemed capable occurred in the fibers under his eyebrows which writhed in crimson confusion. Sophie was whimpering softly.

“We’s caught! We’s caught!” she moaned.

The visitor at the kitchen door rattled the knob impatiently. Brother Inskip stared through the window into the dusk and strove to gain control of his muscles. He managed to place his hands on the seat of his chair and was pushing his mammoth body awkwardly upward when the door opened and Johnny Beane stepped into the kitchen.

The draft caused by his sudden entrance made the burning lamp wick weave hectic serrations in fits and starts, jetting shadows across the face of Brother Inskip. The jumping lamplight and his panic blanched the leather of his weatherbeaten skin and filtered the sun and the rain through the air bubbles of his whiskers, making them seem redder than ever. He sat back heavily.

Sophie took one woebegone look at the boy and rocked and cried in earnest soprano.

“Gollyday!” ejaculated Johnny Beane.

He was as frightened by his discovery as were the victims.

“Gosh!” he said. “Gosh!”

Over and over again he shifted his eyes, back and forth, from Sophie to Brother Inskip. From Sophie’s plate to Brother Inskip’s plate. Brother Inskip still sat soddenly in his chair. Sophie cried on.

Johnny Beane was bewildered and confused. He fiddled with his patented snap belt buckle and adjusted a bulging object beneath his shirt. He tried to say something but could only gabble. He addressed his gibberish to Brother Inskip. The suffering blacksmith looked at him dully.

“Whut yer say?” he demanded.

The question found Johnny Beane’s tongue.

“Pa sent me,” he said. “It’s about old Prince. He’s foundered. Got a swelling in a coffin-joint. May have a nail in the quick. Pa wants you to pull the shoe.”

Johnny’s nervous explanation gave Brother Inskip time to collect his wits. He spoke sharply to Sophie.

“Shet up, Sophie. Ah cain’t hear mah own ears. Stop carryin’ on.

The visitor glanced at Sophie’s half-empty plate and looked away quickly, but the miserable girl caught his eye and for once she did not obey her master’s command. Sophie squealed. The outburst completely unnerved Johnny Beane. Spasmodically he again pulled at his belt and pushed at the protrusion within his shirt. He was having trouble with it. He looked about him unhappily.

Brother Inskip snapped at the girl again and she quieted down. He turned to address his visitor.

“Wal,” he said, “yer kin tell yer pa Ah'll be a-comin’ along. Ah got some business here to attend to first.”

This promising statement made Sophie wail again.

“Lawd Gawd,” said Sophie. “Lawd Gawd.”

Brother Inskip ignored the girl’s new outcry. The enormity of his position now had him terrified. He was ruined now, sure enough, or would be, when the unannounced caller could spread the news which would drive him not only from the church, but from Leafy Grove, as well.

Unconvincingly, he stammered a weak explanation to the rattled boy before him.

“Ah’d jest finished supper. Sophie was about to set down after me,” he said. “’Pearances kin be deceivin’, iffen yer knows whut Ah means.”

Johnny Beane, anxious to be off, let his eyes sweep the contradictory evidence on the board but nodded violent agreement.

“And,” suggested Brother Inskip, “hit would be better iffen yer kept yer mouth shet abouten this.”

The boy shook his head affirmatively. He pulled at his belt again in his nervousness. The patented buckle snapped open and the object which bulged beneath the shirt fell with a thud to the floor.

It was a book.

Startled, Brother Inskip glanced at it automatically. He whistled.

“Wal, wal, wal,” he said. “Wal, wal, wal.”

He was noticeably relieved.

Johnny Beane reached convulsively to recover his volume and bit his lips. He was too late. The blacksmith had seen the title.

“Wal, wal, wal,” repeated the blacksmith. “Ah see yer doin’ some readin’.”

“It’s good reading,” said the boy stubbornly. “Better you'd do some reading, too.”

“Ah do some readin’,” said the blacksmith, smiling now, “but no agnostic like Ingersoll.”

“He’s a good man,” defended Johnny Beane. “A mighty good man.”

“He’s a atheist.”

“He ain't necessarily. He believes in love,” he said defiantly.

“Love of th’ devil,” answered Brother Inskip.

“Ingersoll said...”

“Don’t tell me whut Ingersoll said,” interrupted Brother Inskip. “Does yer papa know whut yer readin’?”

“Yes, he does,” lied the boy. “How could he help but like him? How could anyone help but like him? He believed in love and love is God, leastways ‘tis to me.”

“God don’t approve of no sech foolishness,” said Brother Inskip solemnly. He leisurely scraped some wax out of his left ear with the end of a kitchen match. “Ah kin see Ah got some talkin’ to do.”

“You can talk all you want to,” said Johnny Beane almost hysterically, “but Ingersoll was a good man. He said, ‘I had rather live and love where Death is King than have eternal life where love is not.”

For a moment Brother Inskip regarded Johnny Beane with what amounted to grudging admiration. “Thet’s sacreeleegious talk,” grunted Brother Inskip. “But yer got a mind.

Better yerd put it to work for God than for th’ devil. Better yer be a preacher.”

“I want to be a lawyer.”

“Be God’s lawyer, then, a prosecutin’ attorney for Christ.”

“I haven't got the appetite.”

“Appetite?”

“Yeah,” said Johnny Beane, “you know what Dr. Smith says?”

“Don't tell me whut thet atheist says,” adamantly protested Brother Inskip, “he’s as bad as Ingersoll.”

“Well, anyway, Dr. Smith says, “You gotta eat a peck of roastin’ ears a sittin’ to be a good preacher.’ That’s what Dr. Smith says. ‘You gotta be as fat as a hawg,’ he also says.

That’s what I meant by appetite. You wanted to know. I can’t eat that much. So I can’t be a preacher.”

Brother Inskip now was sputtering.

“No wonder yer papa whups yer so much,” he said angrily, “and I think yer goin’ to git another one tonight. Bible brimstone made of sulphur to burn, to burn yer; thet’s whut yer really needs.”

Brother Inskip, now in full command of the situation, launched an all-out offensive.

“Ah'll be a-havin’ more to do at yer house than to pull a shoe offen a horse’s hoof. Ah’ll be a-havin’ some talkin’ to do with yer pa, too!”

“I know,” the boy shouted rashly. “You're going to tell my father about Robert Ingersoll, and you can tell him, too, that I read Thomas Paine, and Brann, the iconoclast, doggone you, and Dreiser, if you've ever heard of them, and ... and... and... everything I can lay my hands on, you old er... er uh.. . ignoramus. You hide-bound old ...old... er... preacher! And I got more books,” he shouted defiantly, “than you got n***** gals.”

The boy turned quickly and ran out of the kitchen. A broad smile, which puzzled Sophie as much as anything which occurred during the new turn of events, cheered the blacksmith’s jagged countenance. His good humor returned. Anyone who read atheist literature in Leafy Grove would be discredited by one and all. He would see that the story got around promptly. In great good humor now he called to the girl over his shoulder as he walked out of the room.

“Well, Sophie, hit was a good meal. Ah’m goin’ to lie down and take a leetle rest before goin’ to th’ Beanes’. Ah’m dog-tired. When yer finishes washin’ up th’ dishes, come into mah bedroom.”

Sophie sat timidly at the table.

“Whutever yer says, Mr. Mordecai; whutever yer says,”

Chapter IX: Born Again

Sophie found Brother Inskip in his long, flannel nightgown propped up in the four-poster bed covered with patchwork crazy quilts reading his Bible. A patented air-pressure kerosene spray lamp on a table by his shoulder burned with intermittent brightness, sputtered shadows over the holy text, throwing long, brown eccentric fingers pointing into far corners of the room.

The girl who had put on her red shoes again for the occasion stood bashfully before her employer. He put his Bible down on the bed beside him.

“Sophie,” he drawled, “guess yer’d better pull shet th’ blinds.”

Sophie opened the room’s four windows and, one by one, secured the tight green shutters on their inner hooks and locked new moonlight out of the bedroom. The patented lamp now seemed brighter than ever. Brother Inskip’s shaggy red eye-brows squirmed in the quivering shadows as he watched the girl’s movements about the chamber.

He noted that she was graceful and poised. Even in her fear of the new experience she knew was only moments off, Sophie walked with becoming harmony of limb and body.

“Best-looking n***** in Leafy Grove,” said mean little boys who had ideas of their own about Sophie.

“She is good-looking,” thought Brother Inskip proudly, and he admired her rhythm. “Jest like a picture on a calendar!”

Sophie had finished the job commanded by her master. She stood quietly in the far corner of the room.

“Sophie,” called Brother Inskip, “whut am Ah a-goin’ to do with yer?”

Sophie lowered her eyes and made imaginary little circles on the floor with the toe of her red shoe as she swung her right foot round and round.

She answered him in a whisper, “Whutever yer says, Mr. Mordecai; whutever yer says.”

“Come over heah closer, Sophie.”

Sophie walked slowly toward her master’s bed. She was afraid and yet fascinated. She stared straight ahead at Brother Inskip as one spellbound. Suddenly, all fear left her.

“Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus!” she repeated to herself. “Is hit wrong for me not to care? O sweet Jesus!”

Sophie’s step quickened. Her right hand reached for the top button on her tight cotton bodice. She undid it. Then the next. And the next. Her body now was tingling all over, every nerve in it, and the copper blushes turned from new penny to old as she felt desire.

By the time the girl had reached the blacksmith’s bed, the front of her dress flared open wide, revealing a long, one-piece petticoat cut low at the neck and covering but part of firm maiden breasts pumping to seemingly exaggerated size as the wind of her breathing left her stomach and filled her bosom.

Brother Inskip watched the girl as one enchanted. She came nearer. She was fumbling now with the hooks and eyes on her skirt. Brother Inskip sat bolt upright in bed. He screamed.

“Sophie!”

The girl stopped short in surprise.

“Whatcha doin’, Sophie?” he demanded. “Don’t come a step closer to me, not a step closer, yer heah? And button up yer shirtwaist. Button hit up!”

As Sophie, startled, took a single step nearer the bed, the blacksmith sprang upon his feet and stood at his full height upon the mattress pushing against the tall headboard as though trying to escape a terrible fate.

“In God’s name, gal,” he begged, “stand back!”

The young negress, who had steeled herself to martyrdom with great effort in the first place and strangely found the prospect of the adventure stimulating, after all, burst out crying again.

“’Twas whut Ah though yer wanted me to do, Mr. Mordecai,” she whispered, “’twas whut Ah understood yer desired.

“Lord knows,” sobbed Sophie, “I’se been raised to obey. Ah'll do whut yer says, Mr. Mordecai. Yer knows Ah only aims to please yer.”

The girl in the red slippers quickly buttoned up her bodice. Relievedly, Brother Inskip watched and slipped modestly back under the crazy quilts. He picked up his Bible.

“Git th’ rocking chair over yonder by th’ door,” he ordered the girl, “and pull hit up heah alongside th’ bed.”

Sophie dragged the chair over and sat down sniffling.

“Blow yer nose, gal,” said the blacksmith, “and listen.”

Sophie honked dutifully on a square of bleached flour sacking. Brother Inskip began reading from the Scriptures,

“‘None shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.’”

Brother Inskip paused a moment and looked over the top of his Bible carefully at Sophie. He continued:

“Hit’s in Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 7,” he said. “And thar’s a lot more. Listen:

“‘The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover; she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.’”

The reader hesitated again for another look at his auditor. Sophie was leaning forward in her rocking chair.

“Cain't find nothin’ in Leviticus which explicitly says a father is forbidden to uncover a daughter’s nakedness, Sophie, but th’ first admonition’s enough. No one, hit says, close of kin. And hit do specifically mention you.”

“Me, Mr. Mordecai? Me? Th’ Bible mention me?”

“Not by name, Sophie, now, not by name. But hit do say, as yer can remember, thet a daughter is forbidden to uncover th’ nakedness of her father. Thet, Sophie, was whut yer was abouten to do tonight.”

Brother Inskip’s eyebrows were twitching more violently than ever before. He was under the strain of overwhelming emotion. He dropped his Good Book, leaned forward with his face on his hands and wept.

“Ah’m yer own pa, Sophie; Ah’m yer own pa!”

Sophie stood up, her mouth wide open in her surprise.

“Yer my natural born daughter, Sophie,” Brother Inskip cried, “God forgivin’ me, yer are!”

“Sweet Jesus, Mr. Mordecai! Lawd help us. Yer mah pa!” She sat down quickly in her rocker to keep from falling.

Brother Inskip got a grip on himself somehow and sat back in bed. Sophie was tongue-tied for once.

“Thet’s why,” said the blacksmith, “Ah asked yer whut Ah was a-goin’ to do with yer. Th’ Lord knows somethin’s got to be done.”

Brother Inskip moaned the words in his torment.

“When a man spoils a woman, Sophie, he don’t think she’s spoiled. Hit’s the selfishness and pride of human nature. Man thinks a woman is spoiled only iffen someone else does the spoilin’. Guess thet’s th’ way Ah figgered hit with yer ma, Sophie, thirteen years ago. In mah youth, Sophie, in mah youth, mind yer, in th’ Gibson bottoms at corn shuckin’ time. Ah made a Jezebel outen yer ma, th’ first man.” The sufferer sighed. “Makes no difference who spoils a woman. When she’s spoiled, she’s spoiled.”

Brother Inskip exhaled a sad tempest in his misery.

“We'uns gotta do somethin’!” he said. “We’uns gotta do somethin’. But whut?”

The dilemma seemed too much for him to bear.

“My pa,” murmured Sophie, half to herself, “a white man mah own pa!”

Brother Inskip heard the girl and straightened quickly.

“Sophie, Sophie!” he exclaimed. “Stand up, stand up.”

The puzzled girl looked at him blankly.

“Stand up, Ah say,” repeated Brother Inskip, “stand up on yer feet.”

Sophie arose from her rocker. Brother Inskip studied her eagerly.

“Turn around, turn around,” he said. “A white man yer pa,” he whispered. “A white man yer pa. And yer ma, near white, too!”

The blacksmith immodestly sprang out of bed and ran to the cringing girl’s side, gripping her arm tightly.

“Ain't a-goin’ to hurt yer, Sophie, ain’t a-goin’ to hurt yer. Lemme see yer fingernails, quick!”

Obediently, Sophie proffered her hands.

The Superintendent inspected her nails almost frantically. He behaved like a crazed man. He dug into the cuticles with his thumb.

“Ah’ve got it! Ah’ve got it!” he shouted. “Glory be to God, Sophie, yer kin pass. Yer kin pass! Yer white! You hear me! Yer white. Yer kin pass! Yer kin pass!”

Brother Inskip danced around the room like a maniac.

“Yer got half-moons in yer fingernails, Sophie, jest like white folks. N***** ain’t got moons! Yer got white folks’ legs, not a bit skinny like n*****s’, and not a kink in yer hair, gal. And yer complexion, well,” he hesitated, “’tain’t no worse’n a light sunburn. From this day on, yer white. From this day on, yer born again.”

Much to Sophie’s surprise, Brother Inskip started putting on his clothes, talking rapidly as he dressed.

“Th’ leetle bit of n***** in yer, Sophie, yer cain’t git by with in th’ South, but Yankees would never know. Gal, yer goin’ north, north to Deetroit or New Yawk or Boston. Anywhar north’ll do, provided hit’s far enough.”

Sophie started blubbering all over again.

“Mr. Mordecai,” she said, “Ah don’t want to leave Leafy Grove.”

“Yer want to stay in Leafy Grove an’ be a n***** or go North and be a white gal?” demanded Brother Inskip angrily. “One way yer got a chance, th’ other yer hain’t.”

The blacksmith gave Sophie a kindly pat on the shoulder.

“Hit'll be good for yer, gal, and a mighty fine trip on th’train. Yer don’t want to be a n***** all yer life, does yer?”

“Nawsir,” said Sophie doubtfully, “Ah don’t want to be no n*****.”

“Thet’s more like hit, Sophie. Ah’m puttin’ yer on th’ uptrain tonight, soon’s yer run home and git a change of clothes. Ah got four hundred dollars in a salmon can buried in th’ basement, and thet’ll take yer a long way.

“Yer kin write to me care gineral deeleevery in Atlanta, Sophie, and let me know whar yer are. Ah'll send yer more money as needed. But don’t write me heah in Leafy Grove. Yer big fer yer age, yer looks older’n yer are. Yer'll git along, somehow. Don’t tell nobody, no time, whar yer come from. Yer white now, see?”

Sophie nodded.

“Now scoot, and don’t tell nobody nothin’.”

After Sophie returned the blacksmith gave her minute instructions until they heard the whistle blow.

“When yer train crosses th’ Potomac outside Washington City, Sophie,” said Brother Inskip, “yer run outen th’ n***** coach and run quick for th’ white folks’ coach an’ when yer git thar, yer stay thar. And don’t never turn back! Yer heah me, Sophie?”

“Ah heahs,” said Sophie.

“And don’t never come back,” repeated the Sunday School Superintendent in his parting word to his daughter. “Don’t never cross the Mason-Dixon line again.”

Brother Inskip hid behind a tree up at Bacon’s Crossing where the northbound night train from Augusta stopped just a mile from Leafy Grove, almost in front of his house. He watched the slim young girl climb on the platform of the Jim Crow car lugging a cardboard suitcase. The oil lamps from the vestibule lighted her little hand so he could plainly see it waving in his direction a last, hesitant good-bye,

“Good-bye,” said Brother Inskip chokingly. “Good-bye, white gal.”

He watched the train pull out from the crossing stop and waited until the white folks’ cars rattled past before he stepped from behind the tree.

He still had important business to do. He made long strides in the direction of Johnny Beane’s home.

Chapter X: Dr. Smith

Johnny Beane raced down the road in the moonlight from Brother Inskip’s house faster than he had ever run before in his life. He swallowed angry tears. The hot fluid mixed with ocher dust went down his windpipe and made him choke. The blacksmith had finally stumbled on the one secret which would make his vengeance complete. He tried to think why he ran as he sped blindly toward the town’s business district. There was no doubt about his panic.

Friction of the boy’s pants rubbing against his hips hurt him. He pulled his drawers away from his seat. He winced. The cotton cloth was glued painfully to the forming scabs of wide raw welts from a beating his father had given him a few days before for sticking a splinter in his tongue. The prospect of another rawhiding on top of these sores made him shudder.

“This time,” he thought wildly, “I'll ask him to whip me on my shoulders. If I show him how badly my behind is cut up, maybe he will. I'd better get some salve.”

The thought of medicine for his wounds provoked an idea which organized his jumbled thinking. He slackened his pace a bit.

“Now I know why I'm running,” he thought. “To see Dr. Smith! That’s where I’m going!”

It was Dr. Smith who had introduced him to Ingersoll in the first place. He would know what to do.

Mostly what Johnny Beane now desired were sympathy and advice. He needed to plan his strategy. There was not much time to spare. Brother Inskip would soon have his father’s ear. The boy pushed the copy of Ingersoll’s Bible, Ghosts and Confession of Faith back inside his shirt and ran fast in the direction of Dr. Smith’s office, oblivious to the book’s tattoos on his ribs which made his lungs vibrate painfully.

He trotted through Leafy Grove’s business district, built by unimaginative settlers in ugly square lines, consisting of three uneven streets. Center Street, flanked by monstrous nondescript two-story brick buildings with tin and drab sheet-iron awnings protruding here and there over the high curbed granite sidewalks, curled down from the Court House. The citadel of rural justice loomed as a gaunt red sentinel in the town park with its statue to the Confederacy chiseled from Stone Mountain granite, adorned with cannon balls and the Stars and Bars and engraved with the names of immortal battlegrounds.

From the heavy double oak doors of the Court House came the overpowering and sickening odor of tobacco spit and formaldehyde. Odors from the calaboose, the jail, the Court House’s ambeer-soaked floors and walls, the twentyseven-holer public privy situated in the common hitching lot surrounding all of the buildings and engulfing even the blacksmith shop, which contributed its own quaint aura of filed mule hooves and the lingering Vulcan smell of red-hot shoes sizzling in barrels of stagnant cooling water, blanketed syrupy gases over Leafy Grove. More sensitive inhabitants, when the barometer was low, found it nauseous, but Johnny Beane’s senses, dulled by his alarm, were not offended.

He turned into Center Street which extended from the Court House about two hundred and fifty yards to the railroad tracks and the depot. Railroad Street wandered off aimlessly from the crossing down to a granite cotton warehouse at the business limits of the town where two Negro restaurants perfumed the air with the regular Sunday smells of turnip greens and frying catfish. Railroad Street was a bumpy lane, no less, serving mainly as a place for the stores on Commerce Street to “back up on,” put out their garbage, and use for loading platforms.

But because Railroad Street was infrequently visited by white pedestrians, it became the favorite thoroughfare of the county’s entire Negro population. On Saturdays it teemed with visiting colored farmers of every hue and description. Accustomed always to enter the back way to white folks’ homes and business places, unless they were big customers, the Negroes instinctively took to Railroad Street and made it their own. From here the Negro could enter the rear doors of merchandising establishments and feel quite comfortable about it all, here he could hitch his mules to “n*****” hitching posts without offending a white man. Here he could eat his watermelons, a can of salmon and “soddy crackers,” consume a tin of sardines, play his banjo, blow a mouth organ or strut before a “yaller gal.” The shabby Street, like a hand-me-down pair of pants from his bossman, he delightedly annexed for himself alone. Naturally, Railroad Street became “N***** Street.”

It was the gayest, most carefree spot in Leafy Grove, a street of music and laughter, tolerantly avoided by white men, a preserve for black and tan dancing feet, green watermelon and crackling rinds, fish bones and uninhibited rhythm. It was “Guitar Alley,” “Jews’-Harp Lane,” which for one day and one night each week came to bubbling life with emotional colors and sounds of happiness, an escape ground for the heathen in incongruous, religious, unbending Leafy Grove.

Johnny Beane sprinted up Railroad Street thankful in his self-consciousness that it was now deserted. He skirted Commerce Street entirely by making a wide circle around the Negro restaurants via Church Street and the Court House to reach Dr. Smith’s cubicle without passing his own home.

When finally he reached his destination he tried the door. It was locked. He knocked sharply. He was out of breath, both from the fast running and the beating the volume of Ingersoll had given his lungs. He looked around anxiously to see if possibly Brother Inskip had followed him. The only persons he saw were Kneeless Noah and the town dwarf walking ridiculously together down the street toward the post office. Otherwise, at this Sabbath supper time Leafy Grove’s business district was forsaken.

He shook the door again and called out anxiously, “Dr. Smith, Dr. Smith, are you there? Open up, quick!”

This time he was rewarded with an answer.

“Wait a minute, yer young hellion. Cain’t a old man have a nap?”

Dr. Smith opened the door and Johnny Beane darted inside, ducking under his elbow. The boy gratefully heard the sound of the big rusty iron key turning in the lock.

Dr. Smith looked like a friendly little movie rabbit eating carrots, or a gregarious Disney squirrel in technicolor cracking a peanut shell in Central Park. His small, beaver-shaped teeth gave him a perpetually wise and sometimes mysterious expression. Always he kept them busy, biting on the end of his tailor-made cigarettes when nervous, gritting them in disgust when piqued, or spitting through them so they seemed to wriggle, when “plumb annoyed.” The thin, upper margin of his mouth was garnished doubtfully by a wispy gray moustache which did not hide his teeth and became so animated as he talked that each little hair-in the overall festooning tried to fly away.

Leafy Grove’s only doctor wore beribboned nose glasses when writing his best thirty-cent prescriptions which he penned ceremoniously in green ink on a pad placed upon his knee. This ritual he accomplished with unusual dignity even while standing on one foot uttering loudly in Latin each constituent of his designated pharmacopoeia.

“Oleum ricini,” ejaculated Dr. Smith.

“Castor oil ain’t half as good jest as castor oil,” he explained to intimates. “Ah knows these people. They gotta have their castor oil in Latin or hit won't do not good a-tall. Ah hain’t found nothin’ yet which blows out molasses, corn bread, and side meat quite as effective and vigorous.”

When major surgery was indicated, Dr. Smith usually took his patients to an Atlanta hospital and called in a specialist, but frequently, in his younger days particularly, he had been known to accomplish serious operations in his tiny office on Center Street. Trophies of many of these incisions were displayed on shelves in dusty tubes filled with alcohol. Evidences of his skill, especially the pickled prostate gland of a Georgia Railroad section foreman and the bottled adenoids of a certain lady school teacher, had been inspected at close range by all of his admiring patients.

Dr. Smith was especially adept at suturing the throats of Negroes slashed at fish fries, and no surgeon in the state could quite equal his technique in probing a lung for a Smith & Wesson bullet of any caliber, or picking out buckshot from the behinds of chicken thieves. To him for kindly ministrations came the wounded and the halt, the pregnant mother, black and white, the constipated farmer, the bilious merchant, the ruptured blacksmith. He prescribed apple cider for yellow jaundice and boiled potato peelings for pellagra and got good results with both. He wiped cinders out of the eyes of little boys and girls with the end of his handkerchief after rolling their eyelids inside out with a long kitchen match or a toothpick.

Snooty newcomers to Leafy Grove, who did not share the confidence of the townspeople in Dr. Smith, viewed his methods in frank terror. Some among this minority group refused to call him at all, and insisted on consulting fancy Atlanta physicians for even a simple bellyache.

“By rights,” one of them said sarcastically, “he ought to be called ‘Dr. Castor Oil.’ Why, he'll even prescribe castor oil for a broken leg.”

This sort of unkindness did nothing to weaken the popularity of Dr. Smith, for he enjoyed a fierce loyalty all over the county. With complete impartiality he pulled out newborn black and white babies, using identical methods, “without fear or favor.”

One of the newcomers to Leafy Grove, a Northern horse dealer who bought the local livery stable and spoke with a “Deetroit” accent, once irreverently asked Dr. Smith about his own dialect.

“You graduated from the University of Georgia, Doc,” he said. “What do you mean talking like country folks?”

“For th’ same reason yer had ought to do th’ same. To git along heah. Iffen Ah didn’t talk countryfied, Ah wouldn’t have a patient in th’ county. Th’ hoss doctor’d git ’em all.”

True to Dr. Smith’s prediction, the Yankee horse dealer departed Leafy Grove some weeks later. He sold out his business at quite a loss.

“Ah told him he better change thet Yankee talk,” commented the physician.

Dr. Smith wore a bat-wing collar around which he carelessly knotted a flowing white tie. In rainy or threatening weather he donned rubber overshoes and carried a tightly rolled and buttoned umbrella which he refused to open even in a torrent. All in all, the doctor so resembled a pious minister that strangers who met him for the first time expected to see him get down on his knees and pray. Instead, when he shouted “goddam son-of-a-bitch” to punctuate some eloquent tirade against the Old Testament and “Moses and Paul a-preachin’ slavery,” they thought they had lost their minds.

Cliff Streeter, the popular Atlanta drummer who sold Toothpick, Early Bird, Peter’s Natural Leaf and Brown’s Mule chewing tobaccos, as well as Garrett’s and Bruton’s snuff, was dumbfounded by his first experience with Dr. Smith. When he left Leafy Grove after the encounter he was still shaking his head in amazement.

“This town,” he confided to a passenger on the night express which made eleven stops in thirty miles to the Capital City, “has got the only cussin’ preacher in my territory. That man swears like a trooper. I can’t understand it.”

Drummer Streeter graphically repeated the profanity he had heard on a street corner that morning in Leafy Grove.

“Say,” corrected the passenger, “they’s only one man in Georgia who can cuss like that, and he hain’t no preacher, He's Doctor Smith. He's th’ only double-barreled cusser in existence, th’ only man who can put cuss words between innocent syllables. First time I heard him say ‘indegoddamnedpendent, I thought I'd bust my sides laughing.”

It was this profane and kindly man who now confronted Johnny Beane.

Dr. Smith was a very understanding man.

“Ah guess yer in trouble again,” he said sternly, after looking the frightened boy up and down. “Well, take off yer pants and lemme have a look at hit.”

Up on the shelves two fat spiders were working out their geometry problems between the section foreman’s prostate gland and the school teacher’s adenoids. Three sleepy flies, undecided about bedtime, yawned lazy spirals in the air under a green lampshade on Dr. Smith’s old-fashioned roll-top desk.

“Guess yer pa’s whupped yer again,” said Dr. Smith. “He whups yer too damned much.” The physician reached for a bottle of witch hazel as his patient obediently slipped off his trousers and let his drawers drop to his ankles. Dr. Smith’s movement disturbed a cockroach on his medicine rack.

“Damn!” he exclaimed. “Ah hate bugs, but somehow Ah cain’t stand to mash em. Cain’t stand ’em around food either. Glad this hain’t a restaurant. Hit’s only a doctor’s office.”

Somehow this struck the boy funny and he laughed. Dr. Smith grinned.

“Thar,” he said, “thet’s more like hit. Thar’s not much laughing in this town, Johnny, ’cept’n by sinners and th’ very young. Th’ young’uns git th’ idee soon, and they, too, stop laughin’. A leetle fun might not be considered a sin, exactly, but th’ danger lies in startin’ th’ habit. Iffen yer has a leetle fun, chances is yer'll want a leetle more, until yer soon in th’ ways of th’ devil himself. Thet’s th’ way these folks figger. So hit’s best, in order to git along heah in Leafy Grove to show very few outward signs of joy.

“Johnny, as for mah influence on yer, here’s whut Ah want: find yer own God, Johnny! Yer'll find him, too, and yerll find him yer own way through yer own conscience.

Whut Ah wants yer to do, strictly speakin’, hain’t no personal business of mah own. Hit all biles down, howsomever yer looks at hit, to th’ fact thet Ah’m a doctor, yer own doctor, and a nightmare’s a nightmare. And also,” he added, “th’ fact thet Ah pulled yer into th’ world makes me sentimental about yer to a considerable extent. Yer got a good mind, boy. Ah shore wishes yer could do somethin’ with hit. Iffen Ah had mah way, Ah’d send yer far away from heah to some durned good school and new influences.”

Dr. Smith pulled out of his pocket a tailor-made cigarette and tapped an end on his yellowed left thumbnail. The gesture seemed to calm him down greatly.

“Yer cain’t do nothin’ with these narrer, hidebound people in leetle Southern towns, and thar hain’t no use a-tryin’, Why, Ah’d a-been run outen Leafy Grove long ago iffen Ah warn’t th’ only doctor heah. Ah been a-fightin’ ’em tooth and toenail for forty-three years. But Ah cain’t see thet Ah’ve made much impression.”

While Dr. Smith talked he busied himself with Johnny Beane’s wounds. He tenderly patted the inch-wide welts with a piece of absorbent cotton saturated with witch hazel. Some were high and angry, yet dry, and others were raw and bleeding.

“He didn’t beat yer as much as usual, Johnny. These’l heal up in no time ‘tall. Whudja do, Johnny?”

“This whipping was from last week,” corrected the boy. “I been hearing all my life, Dr. Smith, about Sherman’s army splitting open the feather beds up at the Rideout House. The Yankee soldiers emptied the feathers on the staircase and poured barrels of molasses on them. Must have been a mess, huh?”

“Shore must,” agreed the doctor.

“Well, you know they say the steps are still sweet, even after more than fifty years.”

“Whut's thet got to do with yer whuppin’?”

“I tasted the steps,” said Johnny Beane, “to find out.”

“So?”

“Well, I guess I licked too hard.”

“And?”

“And I got a splinter in my tongue. It bled a lot and pa found out about it.”

“Well?”

“Well, he said it was frivolous.”

Dr. Smith dabbed viciously at the boy’s raw spots. “Say, Johnny,” he asked abruptly, “is thar any truth in thet old story? Was th’ steps sweet?”

“The splinter hurt so much,” the patient answered, “I couldn’t tell.”

“Well, don’t yer try to find out again. Git yer sweet’nin’ from now on outen stick candy. Any sugar Yankee soldiers teched is pizen, anyway. But lickin’ th’ staircase at th’ Rideout House were nothin’ more than healthy curiosity.

“And Ah remembers th’ day he whupped yer for lookin’ at old n***** Bojane. Hain’t nothin’ wrong about curiosity. Ah’ve always wanted to look at old Bojane mahself. Ah’ll bet they hain’t a man livin’ who wouldn’t like to see whut a hermaphrodite looks like. Whut do she look like, Johnny? Ah always been hopin’ she'd git sick and call me for a examination. But she’s healthy as all gitout. Come on, tell me whut she looks like, Johnny.”

The boy blushed.

“Come on,” urged Dr. Smith, “tell me whut old Bojane look like.”

“Like a man and a woman at the same time,” said Johnny Beane shyly.

“More man or more woman?”

“More woman.’

“So thet’s hit! Ah always did wonder why old Bojane wore skirts instead of pants. Heard Bojane once had some kind of love affair. Never knew whether ‘twas with a boy or girl. Musta been a boy. Why, she’s been makin’ a livin’ for years a-pullin’ up her dress back of th’ Court House Sattidays. Don’t see why yer pa wants to put her outen business. Whudja pay her for lookin’?” he asked.

“We all chipped in,” said the boy. “A nickel apiece, four of us, and she pulled up her dress.”

“Yer pa shore beat yer for thet,” reminisced the physician.

“And another beatin’, Ah remembers powerful well, was when he thought he heard yer cussin’.”

“I wasn’t cussin’ exactly,” said Johnny Beane. “All the boys at school were saying the same words. Pa heard me and thought it was the real thing.”

“Ah recalls,” said Dr. Smith. “Ah recalls. Hit was ‘got dandruffinyerheadsomepinbityer.’ Durned leetle smart alecks all says hit ‘round heah. He thought yer said Goddamned sonofabitch.”

“But I told him what it was, really,” said the boy. “I wrote it out for him. It wasn’t cussin’. But he whipped me anyway, He quoted the Bible to prove he was right. Christ said: ‘. . .swear not at all; neither by Heaven; for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth; for it is His footstool; neither by Jerusalem: for it is the city of the Great King; neither shalt thy swear by thou head because thou canst make one hair white or black; but let your communications be yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh from evil.’

“He made me learn that by heart and write it a hundred times before breakfast, that is, after he whipped me.”

“Guess he figgered yer was a swearin’ by yer dandruff,” observed Dr. Smith.

The doctor had finished swabbing the sores on Johnny Beane’s behind and spat upon the floor with such feeling that his teeth wriggled.

“Guess thet’s all,” he decided.

“But I didn’t come to you for this beating,” said the boy. “It's about the one I’m going to get tonight.”

“Whut for tonight?”

Johnny Beane handed the physician his copy of Ingersoll’s book.

Chapter XI: Dr. Smith Writes a Prescription

Dr. Smith calmly studied the title of Johnny Beane’s book for a full moment before he took it in his hands.

“Brother Inskip said this wasn’t God’s reading,” blurted the boy.

New little wrinkles were forming in the parchment of Dr. Smith’s forehead. “Wait a minute, Johnny,” he demanded, “wait a minute; Ah’m gatherin’ mah strength to git ready to git mad.”

Dr. Smith took a deep breath. The wisps of his moustache came to life and his teeth fairly squirmed.

Johnny Beane looked at him anxiously.

“Dr. Smith! Dr. Smith!” he exclaimed. “Be careful! What's the matter?”

“Ignogoddamnedramuses!”

The physician blasted this double-barreled condemnation with such startling suddenness that his patient let go of his belt, and his trousers fell to the floor before he could finish buttoning his fly.

“Pull ’em up and button ’em up,” demanded Dr. Smith.

“Iffen yer has to open ‘em up again tomorrow for another beatin’ treatment, hit’ll be mah fault and Ah don’t intend to let hit happen.

“God's readin’, hell! Ah guess Brother Inskip figgers only th’ Bible’s God’s readin’. God’s too goddamned busy to read th’ Bible. Iffen God ever took time off to read sech triflin’ stuff as th’ Old Testament He'd stick His finger down His throat and puke all over th’ globe. God’s love, Johnny Beane, and th’ onliest love in th’ Bible is so mixed up with hate hit all comes out twisted and ugly.”

Dr. Smith angrily put the copy of Ingersoll on his rolltop desk and sank into his big, brown leather easy chair with the cotton stuffing bursting out of patched corners.

“Thar’s more love in Ingersoll than in all th’ Old Testament combined. Ah prescribed this sort of readin’ for yer jest like medicine.”

Johnny Beane found a seat on the cracked canvas cover of Dr. Smith’s operating table.

“Ingersoll’s been good medicine for yer, Johnny. He was mah own prescription for yer nightmares. First time yer ma called me when yer was doubled up in yer bed a-screamin’ in yer dreams for God's forgiveness, Ah knowed th’ trouble right off. Didn’t take a second to make up mah mind.

“‘He's a-havin’ another spell,’ said yer pa.

“‘Always was a peculiar boy,’ said yer ma.

“‘Carryin’ on like this night after night,’ said yer pa, a-buttin’ in, ‘must hev a pack of devils in him.’

“‘Hain’t no sech a thing as devils in a man,’ Ah said.

“‘They is,’ yer pa said, ‘and yer kin find hit right in th’ holy word, St. Matthew, chapter 8, verse 32, where Christ drove devils outen men and put ’em in pigs, and th’ pigs went crazy with blind staggers and drowned themselves in th’ sea.’

“‘He may hev devils in ’im all right,’ Ah said, ‘but they been put thar by th’ Methodist preachers at Beer-Sheba. He always has his nightmares after Beer-Sheba. They got ‘im paralyzed. Ah'll give ‘im some paregoric, jest enough opium to skeer some of th’ monsters outen his brain and let him sleep.’

“‘Ain’t yer goin’ to prescribe no treatment?” yer pa asked.

“‘Treatment he needs,’ Ah said, ‘ain’t nothin’ Ah kin put in his stomach. This boy’s full of hell fire and brimstone and no ordinary purge’ll work. Hit'll take strong stuff to blow th’ fear of God outen him. He’s clogged up with fiery chariots and th’ bile of dismal hymns. He’s been a-prayin’ and repentin’ of his sins as a matter of fact ever since he was five years old.

“‘Nope,’ Ah said to ’em, ‘castor oil won’t do no good heah. But iffen Ah could git into his brain and scrape th’ sores of Leviticus and Ecclesiastes outen hit with mah pocket knife, he’d stop doublin’ up at nights and screamin’ and instead he’d sleep with a smile on his face.’

“‘Watch out, Doc,’ said yer pa. ‘God’ll smite yer down for sech talk as that. He'll salt yer with fire, like Jesus said, where th’ fire is not quenched and their worm dieth not. St. Mark, chapter 10, verses 48 and 49.’

“‘Dr. Smith!’ said yer ma, outraged like, ‘we've brought up Johnny in th’ ways of th’ Lord, to fear Him and keep His Commandments.’

“‘God don’t want nobody to fear Him,’ Ah said. ‘He don’t pay no nevermind to all sech tommyrot as thet. And,’ Ah said, ‘Mady Beane, iffen yer keeps up sech stuff as Bishop Grigg’s givin’ him, sech medicine as Bishop Grigg hands out, yer'll find this boy'll go crazy as a lunatic before he’s old enough for long britches. He’s emotional and susceptible, He's high-strung, He’s got imagination. His dreams are so bad now they are filled with redhot pitchforks and bottomless pits so deep and horrible he falls into ’em all night long and never kin climb out!’

“Yer pa was turnin’ purple, Johnny, and yer ma was throwin’ up her hands like, but Ah jest keep on straight at hit.

“‘Th boy needs a change of readin’, and teachin’, Ah said. ‘Something to swing him away from fear. A leetle Ingersoll will fix im up in no time a-tall.’

“‘Ingersoll,” spouted yer pa, “Ingersoll! No son of mine kin read a atheist!”

“Thet’s th’ way hit goes, Johnny. Ingersoll was no more a atheist than Ah’m a atheist. But ever’body in Leafy Grove thinks so. They jest group all people who don’t agree with “em together and call ‘em atheists. Thet’s the only word th’ fundamentalists knows to call someone who don’t go along with ‘em all th’ way.

“But speakin’ of mah own religion and sech, Christ almost made a Christian outen me, exceptin’ Ah couldn’t swaller all th’ dogma which went along with Him. He’s been so surrounded with ignorant, dogmatic, ritualistic stuff Ah always visualized Him as a painted picture on cardboard, prisoner of priests and preachers on a stained glass window who would gladly escape iffen He could.

“In mah own opinion Christ shorely don’t want to be hidebound, but under th’ system He cain’t help Himself no how a-tall.”

Dr. Smith chewed viciously on the end of his wet cigarette and regarded Johnny Beane with a searching sidelong glance out of the corner of an eye to see how he was getting along.

The boy, obviously, was not too comfortable.

“Yer still hain’t cured,” said Dr. Smith. “Yer still hain’t cured. What yer mutterin’ and stutterin’ about?”

The patient said nothing, but only stuttered and sputtered all the more. He was talking to God Himself.

“Lord God,” he said, “if Dr. Smith is wrong for what he’s saying, please, please forgive him!”

Dr. Smith got to his feet and walked over to Johnny Beane’s side just in time to hear him whisper a fervent and somewhat terrified “Amen!”

“Goodgoddlemightydamn!” said Dr. Smith. “Prayin’ again, Johnny! Yer prayin’ again.”

Johnny Beane looked shamefacedly at the floor.

“I was only praying for you, Dr. Smith,” said the boy quickly. “This time it was for you. I haven't had a nightmare for so long, I can’t remember. But your kind of talk tonight, Dr. Smith, it frightened me. I was praying for you.”

The physician dropped his moistened Piedmont on the floor and ground tobacco and stained white leaf with his heel.

“Well,” he said, “iffen yer hain’t had no nightmares, Ingersoll’s been doin’ some good, anyway. He’s showed yer how to reason a leetle bit and he’s kicked a lot of Beelzebubs outen yer brain and wrecked a lot of chariots.”

Johnny Beane’s face lighted up proudly. He said:

“I’Il bet I got the biggest Ingersoll library in Georgia.”

“Ah’ll bet yer got the only one!” Dr. Smith exclaimed.

“Georgia and Ingersoll jest don’t somehow git along very well together.”

“I think I got everything he wrote,” continued the small patient.

“Ah knows hit,” said the physician. “Ah guess Ah bought half of ’em mahself, but hit shore took a lot of connivin’ and sneakin’ to git “em into yer house. But yer need ’em all, too, because thet Beer-Sheba stuff has pizen no ordinary antidote kin help in a hurry. Especially,” he added, “when hit’s been give to yer in cumulative doses for years.”

“I’m beginning to understand Darwin, too,” boasted Johnny Beane. “I've got five of his books.”

“Th’ best one for yer is ‘Th’ Origin of th’ Species,” allowed the medico. “Now thet’s a wonderful book. Hit cain’t do yer no harm atall. In hit Ah found a powerful lot of hope for yer along th’ lines of environment. Darwin, to mah way of thinkin’, hit th’ nail square on th’ head. He said environment produces only a small effect on th’ mind of anyone. Is thet too deep for yer, Johnny?”

“Don’t think so,” said the boy, “but what I’m afraid of now is my books‘ll be found. I told Brother Inskip about reading Thomas Paine and Dreiser and Brann, too. My pa may start looking for them.”

“Hope yer got “em well hid.”

“Think I have,” said the boy doubtfully. “Think I have. All my Ingersoll books are in the basement and the others in the attic. I read them with a flashlight.”

“Bad for th’ eyes,” said Dr. Smith professionally, “but good for th’ brain.”

He lighted another tailor-made Piedmont and sucked into his lungs the tobacco smoke and sulphur from a kitchen match.

“Th’ first bridge we gotta cross tonight is th’ first one we come to. Thet is th’ matter of another whuppin’ before yer behind heels from th’ last one.”

The doctor walked over to a disorderly table and started shuffling through a dusty landslide of newspapers, old magazines, and clippings.

“Heah!” he said finally. “Ah’ve got hit. Here ’tis! This heah advertisement quotes some of th’ biggest minds in th’ world on th’ lectures of Ingersoll. Ah’m a-goin’ to read ’em to yer pa over th’ telephone.”

Johnny Beane was alarmed. He started trembling.

“You are not going to read them to pa?” he asked.

“Ah’m goin’ to read ’em to yer pa,” said Dr. Smith resolutely. “He’s beat yer too much already and mostly for poor reasons.”

The physician pulled a heavy old-fashioned gold stem-winding timepiece out of his vest pocket.

“Ah'll call yer pa now and git hit over with. Ah’m a-goin’ to read him this heah Ingersoll advertisement even iffen hit takes th’ hide off. But hit’s yer hide, after all.” The doctor laughed at his own joke.

“Be careful, Dr. Smith,” begged Johnny Beane.

“Ah aims to be. Ah reckon Ah knows as much abouten strategy as Mordecai Inskip. Ah cain’t make no deal with him.”

Dr. Smith walked over to his phone on the wall of his office and twisted the crank vigorously several times. Then he took the receiver off the hook.

“Gimme Tom Beane’s,” he demanded of Central.

The medical man held the flat of his hand over the wide hard rubber mouthpiece and whispered to his patient.

“Yer pa’s a great admirer of Edison,” he confided. “Listen keerful now whilst Ah talks.”

Someone at the other end of the line picked up the phone.

“Tom Beane, this is Dr. Smith,” said Johnny Beane’s friend. “Ah’m a-callin’ yer abouten Johnny Beane and Robert Ingersoll.”

Johnny Beane hung on every word Dr. Smith said, and strained to hear the metallic words rasping over the wire from the other end. They sounded like a jumble of noises from the worn disc of a talking machine. He gave up.

“Listen heah, Tom,” urged Dr. Smith, “another whuppin’ on yer son’s behind right now, the shape of hit bein’ whut ‘tis from th’ last one, may make him a cripple. Anyway, whut’s he done?”

Dr. Smith talked fast and gave his listener no chance to answer his question.

“Ah got right heah before mah very eyes quotations from the biggest minds of th’ United States as to th’ kind of man Ingersoll is. Why, Thomas A. Edison says of him, now listen: ‘Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and in my opinion, no finer personality existed.’

“Whut’s thet?” asked Dr. Smith as Mr. Beane got a word in edgeways. “Why, of course, Ah’m sure abouten hit. Hit’s right heah before me in black and white. And listen further, too. Walt Whitman said about Ingersoll as follows: “America doesn’t know how proud she ought to be of Ingersoll.’”

Dr. Smith adjusted his spectacles, squinted at the paper held close before his eyes, and went on.

“Thet’s not all, Tom Beane. Yer cain’t whup yer son for readin’ th’ works of a man about whom Luther Burbank said: ‘His works are an inspiration to the whole world.’ Ah’m a-readin’ hit to yer, Tom Beane, jest as they spoke th’ words, as Ah says, in black and white. And,” said Dr. Smith, now almost out of breath, “Mark Twain endorsed Ingersoll with a powerful testimonial. He said: ‘He was a great and beautiful spirit.’

“Now, how yer goin’ to object to thet kind of readin’, Tom Beane, and whup yer son when such immortal men liked th’ author well enough to go on th’ record for him? And so eloquent, too! Whut’s thet? Whut’s thet?”

Dr. Smith looked at Johnny Beane triumphantly as the man on the other end of the wire talked.

“Yer sure, now,” asked Dr. Smith, “yer sure, downright sure now?”

There was a moment's pause.

“Well,” said Dr. Smith, “thet’s durned fine of yer. Ah’ll send him right along home.”

The physician replaced the receiver. He wiped his moistened forehead with a piece of cotton sample he pulled out of a bulging jacket pocket and left some lint in the wrinkles.

“Goddlemightydamned!” he exclaimed. “Thet was durned easy.”

“Tell me, tell me,” asked the boy excitedly, “what did he say?”

“He ‘lowed Walt Whitman was some kind of deginerate, thet Luther Burbank was a infidel and thet Mark Twain was a cussin’ sinner; but, he said, Tom Edison was all right enough, and he'd settle for whut he said, any time, in spite of th’ others. Whew! Hit shore was a powerful close shave! But he hain’t a-goin’ to whup yer, after all. Said to come on home and git a good night’s sleep.”

“Gee! Dr. Smith, gee!” the boy exclaimed, “that’s wonderful. Thanks. Thanks ever so much.”

“Skip along now,” said the doctor. He spoke cheerfully, but there was a worried look on his face.

“Hit was too durned easy,” he muttered, as Johnny Beane left his office for home. “Something’s wrong, shore as hell!”

Chapter XII: Literary Chefs

The boy had only three blocks to traverse before he reached his house on Church Street. Suddenly he felt very good again. He sniffed the air appreciatively. Life was worth living. He loved everyone in the whole world.

Autumn’s first leaves, falling from stunted poplars planted unevenly in a dirt plot between the concrete sidewalk and curbing, scurried and twisted like the knees of ball-the-jack dancers in N*****town. It was long past supper time of a dampening, premature winter’s night in Georgia which feels like November and looks like January. Wet clouds rolled soddenly in patches of clear sky lighted by the cold, crooked rays of a long-set sun and a toothpick moon, climbing the other side of the horizon.

How differently he felt about this moon and one he had seen the autumn before after the regular encampment at Beer-Sheba. He remembered it well. He had looked at it through the window of his mother’s kitchen and had seen that it was full. When he saw it he felt cold all over. Abject terror gripped him. It was not like any moon he had ever seen before.

Look! Glory be to God! The Cross of Christ was over it and on it! It covered all of its 2,000 miles and went even higher into the firmament. Johnny Beane recalled that he had screamed and shrieked and prayed, and in wild panic asked that the mountains would fall upon him and that the fearful wrath of God, especially directed at his own sinning life, be blotted out of his sight.

It was the Judgment Day, he was sure, just as Brother Grigg had pictured, and this was the sign of the end of everything, and Johnny Beane was not ready.

His mother, who heard his yells, came on the run, found her son writhing on the floor, crying and begging God for mercy. Her presence reassured him. He was surprised that he had not already been cast into the bottomless pit or the great winepress of God’s wrath.

“Look, Mother, look,” he shouted, “the cross on the moon!”

Mrs. Beane looked and fell on her knees. She was still there praying with Johnny when her husband found them kneeling.

“It's a sign! It’s a sign!” shouted Mrs. Beane.

Her husband, in some embarrassment, tapped her gently on the shoulder.

“Yer lookin’ through th’ screen,” he said. “When yer look through a screen at a full moon, yer see a cross. Hit’s er... er... whut they calls a optical illusion.”

But this sort of thing, Johnny Beane now thought happily, was of the past. He had been emancipated, he was sure, freed from revival-meeting phantasmagoria which had made him miserable.

Tonight he felt uplifted. His visit to Dr. Smith’s office had buoyed him. Even the tang in the air cheered him. The characteristic weather was, like the “Accommodation,” sometimes ahead of schedule, but the last week in October was conducting itself as usual, flirting with the season to come and forgetting, too soon, the one it had just kissed a moist good-bye.

Johnny Beane breathed the season in and filled his lungs with it. The dripping oxygen made his nostrils drunk with happiness. This was home. He understood it all so well. He understood the people of Leafy Grove and its seasons, too.

He thought of the seasons with a sudden fierce pride, those which brought the weeds as well as the flowers. Yes, he loved the cockleburs and the dog fennel and even the beggar lice which stuck on his pants and brought him severe scoldings when they transferred their tenacity to his mother’s felt-covered sofa. And honeysuckle vines and chinaberries, all in their season, all in their own time, sweet with buds or dry of sap.

There was so much glory and goodness in the world. Just to be able to live under a heavenly sky with such a beautiful beaming crescent hanging in it on its point ready to lean forward and bow—when the night got old enough. Then it could tip and even kiss the earth, maybe right where he stood now. It made him happy to think such wonderful thoughts.

He reached the white picket fence in front of his home. His heart was full of love and bursting with it and gratitude to God, who was a God of love and not a bit cruel like Bishop Grigg pictured Him.

But suddenly he remembered Dr. Smith’s talk about Jesus and the Mother Mary. He stopped abruptly.

“Oh, Lord, what did he mean by that?” he said to himself. “What talk!”

Johnny Beane threw himself upon his knees and used a sharp picket of the fence as an altar where he might lay his forehead. The end imprinted itself in his flesh like a thorn and scratched it, but he did not feel the pain.

“Lord, God, Lord, God,” he prayed, “if Dr. Smith has anything wrong with him, please don’t let me find it out. Amen.”

The boy sprang to his feet and sprinted up the walk. He knocked upon his father’s door. The answer was prompt, as though he had been awaited close by the knob inside.

It was his father who opened the door. “Why, Johnny,” he exclaimed, “come in.”

Johnny Beane hesitated before the sill. He had expected no such welcome. His father actually beamed upon him. The boy was suspicious. He pulled his drawers and separated the cotton once again from his itching behind.

“Why, John,” his pa said, “yer late, ain’t yer? Wal, thar’s nothin’ to worry about. Jest go on in th’ kitchen and git a mess of victuals. Yer ma and th’ gals has gone to bed.”

The elder Beane grinned at his son mysteriously and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. The boy wrinkled his brow and went uneasily to forage for a cold snack.

All during his classes the next day at school, Johnny Beane suffered from an unaccountable nervousness. Never, before last night, had his pa greeted him with such marked cordiality. The phenomenon was made more puzzling by the very fact that his parent had forgiven him so easily for what he certainly must have considered a major crime against God and man. All of it was far beyond Johnny Beane’s understanding. It gave him a feeling of dread and induced a depressing premonition which he could not shake off.

When he tried to study his history he saw his father’s grinning face peering at him from a map of Manassas and Bull Run Creek, where the hated Federals suffered two ignominious defeats. The same smirking physiognomy leered out of the blackboard where he conjugated verbs. It peeped

from behind Latin phrases and blurred the type in his physiology book.

When school was dismissed he killed time around the drug store in Leafy Grove and paid a visit to Dr. Smith’s office before going home. It was late when he rapped on the door of the Beane residence.

His father greeted him affably. Johnny Beane sniffed.

“I smell turkey,” he said. “It’s not Christmas.”

Since the Civil War, Georgians celebrate Thanksgiving only with the most casual indifference. A Puritan holiday is a Yankee holiday, just as the Fourth of July somehow suggested Boston and the tea riots, so the chief holiday meal of the year is served at Christmas time instead. So it is, too, that firecrackers are popped on Christ’s birthday, instead of the Fourth, in a sectional gunpowder resentment against the conquerors north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“No, hit’s not Christmas,” agreed Mr. Beane. “Hit’s not. But hit’s Thanksgivin’ in a special sort of a sense.”

The Christmas and Thanksgiving odors of baking turkey hen and the natural prosperity smells of all the rich, greasy vegetables of Southern cuisine—cabbage cooked all day with red peppers and salt pork, larded rutabagas born to corn-yellow mush, snap beans tortured by fire and pimientos and baking soda and side meat hours on end, puffed into Johnny Beane’s nostrils. Bronze yams floating in a poundage of melting yellow-fresh butter added their own oversweet smell to the mystifying culinary fragrance.

“It’s not my birthday,” he thought. “I won’t be sixteen for two months. And the girls have had theirs.

“Why it’s not even Hallowe'en,” he blurted. “Thanksgiving?”

“Still and all,” said his father wisely, “still and all. Course ’tain’t Thanksgivin’ on th’ calendar, but thar’s Thanksgivin’ in this house tonight!”

Johnny Beane shook his head. “But what do you mean, pa, what do you mean? I don’t understand.” The youngster was worried.

“Guess yer’ll find out in due time. Come on in now and eat yer supper. Never mind washin’ yer hands. We’uns been a-waitin’ long enough.”

Tom Beane led the way, and his son followed obediently down the long front hall into the dining room on the south side of the white frame house which boasted a fancy Victorian bay window overlooking a garden planted stiffly in precision rows laid out with the aid of a ruler and a seed house mail order catalogue. In this garden, zinnias and elephants’ ears predominated, selected because of their hardy endurance, and no frivolous and saucy little evanescent blossoms smiled in the austere realm of zinnias and economical evergreens. The few shy white violets which somehow did find accidental roots in this frugal floral soil were not obtrusive.

Johnny Beane noted the unimaginative zinnia arrangement in a cut-glass vase on the supper table with subconscious indifference. He was concerned with more important things.

It was all very strange.

His mother’s expression, for once, was actually painless, Drusilla Belle kept her coated tongue in her mouth, and, wonder of wonders, Priscilla Lee’s sharp nostrils did not dilate in her characteristic apology that nature at times could smell nauseous.

Johnny Beane respectfully took his place between his two sisters after his father flopped himself heavily into his chair and promptly bowed his head for the blessing. Mr. Beane asked it, as usual.

“Lawd, God,” he uttered with the desperation of a wicked man who has finally seen the light and been oiled with the promise of true salvation, “thank Thee for th’ food which has been prepared and set before us this heah day. May hit give us strength to serve Yer and power for our throats to praise Thee and pray to Thee in th’ secrecy of our closets and in th’ public places, as well. May hit give th’ nourishment for our voices to sing Thy praises in Thy house and give testimony to Yer wherever we hev th’ opportunity.

“Let hit not only fill our stomachs, Lawd, God, but also our souls with thanksgivin’ to Thee for these and all other benefits, and watch over us as Yer watches over th’ sparrow.

“O Lawd, God,” continued Mr. Beane, “may this food not choke us all tonight. Thou well knows hit has been perpared by th’ devil himself!” .

Mr. Beane uttered this surprising statement with what seemed outraged inevitability. Johnny Beane looked up quickly and opened his eyes. It was an irreverent thing to do in the midst of the blessing, but he was not the only sinner, He noted the curious sidelong glance of his sister Drusilla Belle who made a face at him. He ignored it.

“Cooked by the devil himself!” thought the boy. “What can it mean? Ma cooks supper in this house. Pa wouldn’t be calling her a devil. She wouldn’t stand for it. Aunt Duty cooks only breakfast and dinner. He wouldn’t be calling her a devil. She’s too old for that.”

Mr. Beane continued, “But th’ devil cooked hit, Lawd, God, as Thou knows, only in Thy name. Amen!”

Mr. Beane shouted the amen as he cut the blessing short, because kindly seventy-year-old Aunt Duty, the Beanes’ only servant, already had put on the table the heavy-laden China platters of garish Egyptian pattern and the vegetable dish pyramided with turnip salad resting on a Sphinx. The meal was getting cold.

“Well!” said Mr. Beane. He surveyed the weighted board. “A truly beautiful meal, even iffen ’twas cooked by th’ devil. Supposin’ we’uns starts eatin’ hit.”

Drusilla Belle spaded a portion of turnip salad with a big spoon and piled her dish high with other vegetables. She passed it up to Mr. Beane who stacked huge pieces of turkey on the plate while the girl watched eagerly. When it was returned to her she started eating immediately. This procedure was repeated all around, except that Johnny Beane helped himself sparingly.

Aunt Duty, who had stood reverently quiet outside the dining room pantry door with bowed head during the saying of the blessing, now emerged after a quick trip to the kitchen wood stove for her biscuits. She ambled around the table as fast as she could to serve them good and hot. Mr.

Beane took four, cut them open with his carving knife, inserted huge cubes of butter between each and slapped them together again with deliberate, heavy pats of his hand to hold in the heat and allow it to do its work.

Drusilla Belle grabbed a handful, and Johnny Beane noted that her appetite was not as dainty as she would have the world at large believe. Her dish was adorned with generous helpings of beans, lye hominy, turnip salad, kale, fried grits, mashed potatoes, soft egg bread, and crescents of spiced apples, all swimming in a speckled sea of giblet gravy.

For several minutes in silence the Beane family dulled the edge of voracity with energetic attacks on their blessings. The only noises were occasional gurgles as Drusilla Belle sucked in her food and the popping of Mr. Beane’s jaw as he chewed a piece of dark meat. Drusilla Belle asked her mother to pass the pickled peaches and broke the spell.

“Well,” observed Mrs. Beane pleasantly to her son, “I see you're not eating very much tonight.”

“Not very hungry,” said Johnny Beane uneasily. Her solicitude disturbed him as much as had his father’s strange devil blessing.

“I haven't seen a single, solitary soul all day,” said Mrs. Beane lightly. “What's the news in Leafy Grove, John?” The boy noticed that everyone at the table was looking at him.

“Not much news, I guess,” said the uncomfortable boy. “Dr. Smith did say Mrs. Singleterry’s going to have another baby.”

When Mrs. Beane spoke of babies that were yet unborn, she spoke of them in whispers. She raised the palms of her hands to her ear lobes to express her restrained exasperation and shock. Priscilla Lee blushed and belched, and her mother looked appealingly to Mr. Beane for help.

“Shut up, suh,” said Mr. Beane. “Yer know thet’s not a fit subject for discussion at th’ supper table.”

Johnny Beane reddened and stuffed a forkful of kale in his mouth. Mrs. Beane was so affected by the episode that she was forced to excuse herself and step out of the dining room a few minutes to get her nerves under control.

“Ah cain’t stand hit; Ah cain’t stand hit,” moaned Mrs. Beane as she fled. She lapsed into the vernacular of Leafy Grove only when greatly agitated and upset. Normally, she spoke in the elegant manner of a woman who had attended for two entire years the Young Ladies’ Seminary for Polite Learning, in the foreign state of Virginia, a remarkable achievement made possible by the prosperity of her father. She had seen to it that her children also spoke correctly. She had long since given up her efforts to change the indigenous speech habits of her husband.

“See thar, now,” said Mr. Beane to his son, “see thar now, whut yer done to yer ma? Yer should be ashamed of yerself.”

The boy choked on his kale and managed to say that he was sorry. He watched his mother return to her plate walking modestly with her limbs held as close together as possible for a woman always mortified that she was bowlegged from the knees up.

For a moment everything was very quiet, so quiet, in fact, that the diners were able to hear little noises emanating from the regions of the good woman’s boned corset. Embarrassing little gas bubbles were gurgling behind the ribbed wall of celluloid and elastic. Mrs. Beane coughed self-consciously. She always coughed to hide the unhappy reverberations within her stomach, but since her timing was invariably off the coughing never accomplished its purpose, usually only attracting more attention to the digestive manifestation.

Mrs. Beane blushed violently. Her husband came to her rescue by starting the conversation again. You never could tell how long the gurgling would go on. His wife looked at him gratefully when he asked a question of his son.

“How yer like th’ biscuits, Johnny?”

Johnny Beane looked at his father in surprise. This solicitude was remarkable. “Why, er, er, all right,” said the boy, “why, all right.”

Priscilla Lee spoke up. “Should be extra good,” she commented primly. “We had some new cooks tonight.”

“New cooks?”

“A lot of them,” piped Drusilla Belle.

Johnny Beane saw that Aunt Duty, standing across the table from him passing the fourth round of hot biscuits, had a worried expression on her face.

“Yes,” said Priscilla Lee, “a lot of literary chefs. They make excellent cooks. You like literary things. You should like this meal especially well. Under the circumstances, I can’t understand why you are not eating more.”

“What do you mean?” asked the boy. The heavy mystery depressed him greatly. He felt that he was going crazy. His head would burst with it.

“Let's tell him,” said Priscilla Lee quickly, with unusual animation. The girl lowered her hand like the down beat of a baton.

Drusilla Belle started singing. “Ingersoll cooked the biscuits,” she chanted in the tune of the cruel baiting song of children. “Ingersoll cooked the biscuits.”

Priscilla Lee sang out, “Paine cooked the turkey; Paine cooked the turkey.”

Mr. and Mrs. Beane nodded upon their daughters approvingly. They continued now singing in unison. They punctuated their lyrics with the vicious, taunting chorus: “Yanh, yanh, yanh.”

“Dar—win stewed the tur—nips; Darwin—stew—ewed the tur—nips.”

Johnny Beane sprang to his feet. The horrible truth dawned upon him with terrifying suddenness.

“Dreiser cooked the ka—ale,” his sisters sang. “Drei—ei—ser cooked the ka—ale.”

The boy’s face was contorted with dry grief. He flexed his fingers over his cotton napkin and twisted it into a ball. He looked wildly, appealingly at his mother and father. He sobbed out, “You didn’t burn Sister Carrie, you didn’t burn her, too!”

Drusilla Belle repeated the Dreiser verse a little off key, and her father and mother nodded their heads in grim affirmation. Johnny Beane fled the dining room, crying now with uncontrollable tears and blubbering as though his heart would break. As he ran for the attic, he heard his father cry after him:

“Yer should hev liked the muffins. Brann, thet Texas atheist, cooked ’em.”

This pun sent his sisters into unrestrained laughter.

In the attic Johnny Beane switched on his flashlight and snaked himself on his stomach over under the low eave where he had hidden half of his library. One anguished look verified his fears. His precious books were gone, all gone. The emptiness of his treasured preserve was emphasized by the outlines of dust around the clean, bare spot where the books once had been lined up in proud rows. He knew there was no point in looking for Ingersoll in the basement.

The grieved boy put out his light and lay on his stomach for a long time sobbing convulsively.

Only after more than an hour did he wriggle out of the narrow confines and find his way to bed. He hated Drusilla Belle. She was the only one in the family small enough to squeeze under the rafters to his secret trove.

In his room he undressed slowly and walked over to the window. His eyes were dry and his cheeks were drained of color. He gritted his teeth as he looked up into the sky to curse Brother Inskip.

“How I hate him,” he muttered bitterly. “How I hate that man.”

Johnny Beane saw the new moon, a few hours older, cupped downward over the globe. It now seemed to him an ugly yellow mask mocking him in his bereavement.

He had thought that he could cry no more, but tears filled his eyes again. He walked over to his bed unhappily and got down on his knees.

“Lord, God,” he prayed, “please forgive me tonight for hating so much. Please, please forgive me, Lord.”

Chapter XIII: Aunt Duty

On the morning after the book burning, Aunt Duty tiptoed uneasily into Johnny Beane’s bedroom. She shook him gently and awakened him.

“Heah, Johnny,” she whispered, pushing a bowl of oatmeal and cream under his nose, “eat this heah. Hit'll do yer good and help yer, too. Hit’s cooked wid lovin’ care.”

The sleepy boy smiled affectionately at his friend and took the breakfast food.

“Ah brung hit to yer ’cayse Ah knowed yer must be a-hurtin’,” she said sympathetically. “Yer pa shore kin lay it on, cain’t he, Johnny? Guess yer wus lucky, though, he didn’t whup yer fo’ th’ books.”

“Wish he had,” said the boy bitterly. “I'd rather have the books.”

“Ah was pow’ful sorry abouten them thar books,” she said. “Doan know much about books. Writin’ jest look lak a lot of fly specks to me, but, Johnny, yer lak hit and hit shore must be all right. Whut yer lak bound to be all right. Thar hain’t nothin’ mean in yer, boy.”

Vigorously, Johnny Beane scooped up a spoonful of the cereal.

“Yer th’ only good thing under this heah roof, Johnny.”

“You are, Aunt Duty,” said the boy fervently.

The old woman grinned her gratitude. “Well, leastways yer’s good to me, Johnny, and thet’s more’n Ah kin say abouten yer ma and pa. Nevah will forgit th’ whuppin’ they give yer because of me. Ah felt every lick ’cross mah own heart.”

The boy remembered that whipping well. It had been one of the most severe his father had ever administered, laid on between Bible quotations right out of King Solomon’s Proverbs.

It followed Mrs. Beane’s surprising her son in taking dimes out of her silver powder box.

“A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool’s back,” said his father when acquainted with the misdemeanor. By way of another preliminary, the religious parent remembered a further admonition of the son of David, King of Israel, which gave him new inspiration. He laid on for righteousness’ sake.

“Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul from hell,” spouted Mr. Beane. He fairly lost himself in the glory of carrying out his divine mission and desisted only when he recalled an appointment at his cotton office.

“Hit wus a sin, Johnny,” said Aunt Duty indignantly, “a black sin. Yer warn’t stealin’, a-tall.”

The old woman had dabbed stinging turpentine on his inch-high welts, and she had spoken to him soothingly.

Johnny Beane could count on Aunt Duty. It was for her he had taken the dimes in the first place.

His stealing followed a trip out to Yellow River with his parents to try to induce the superannuated old servant to return to work in their household after young Mandy had quit to work for higher wages in the laundry. He could never forget the conversation on the way to the Negro’s cabin.

“Town n*****s are too durned high,” said Mr. Beane. “Sorry now we ever let old Aunt Duty go.”

“But she was getting quite feeble,” said Mrs. Beane.

“Still and all,” said her husband, “she shore was cheap.”

Johnny sat between his parents in the buggy for the fourmile trip over the river road to Aunt Duty’s cabin home.

The road was too rough for the Ford.

Tom Beane gave a hen cluck to the gelding and looked to his wife for concrete guidance on the important subject of wages. Always Tom Beane consulted his woman in financial matters. Her cunning, he was confident, was a natural and quite proper consequence of heredity.

“Yer took after yer pa,” he said. “He had leetle wheels in his head and ever’ one was made outen a round silver dollar.”

Mrs. Beane did not object to the comparison.

“How much'll we give Aunt Duty, Miss Mady?” asked Mr. Beane.

“Five dollars a month,” his wife replied efficiently.

“Thet’s a dollar and a quarter a week,” he figured. “Not much nowadays. Cain’t git a n***** to work as cheap as formerly.”

“Well, don’t tell her a dollar and a quarter a weck, then,” said the woman. “Tell her five dollars a month. That sounds like more to her but it’s actually less.”

Tom Beane regarded his wife in frank admiration. “Thet’s durned smart of yer, Miss Mady, durned smart. Ah’ll tell her five dollars a month precisely as yer advocates!”

Mrs. Beane accepted the compliment benignly. “Aunt Duty’s more than seventy years old, anyway,” she said, “and five dollars a month is a lot of money for the washing she can do and the lye soap she can make. Why, giving that much to her is just like charity.”

“And th’ leetle scrubbin’ she kin do,” added her husband.

“Still and all, cotton’s powerful high and n*****s are scarce at any age,” he added doubtfully. “Ah shore hopes she comes.

“Well,” said Mrs. Beane, “if she seems to hesitate, promise her Coca-Colas. She’s got a weakness for Coca-Colas. All n*****s got a weakness for Coca-Colas. Promise her Coca-Colas as an extra inducement. But,” she warned quickly, “only if she hesitates, mind you, only if she hesitates.”

“How many Cokie-Colies?” asked Mr. Beane. “Yer knows how n*****s is. Never promise a n***** a nickel or a beatin’ unless yer gives hit to him. How many Cokie-Colies will Ah promise Aunt Duty?”

Mrs. Beane fidgeted a moment in the buggy seat before she figured this one out. “Well,” she said finally, “if the question should arise, just say ‘more than one, Aunt Duty, more than one.’ More than one is Coca-Colas. More than one is plural.”

Mr. Beane stole a sly glance at his wife. “Thet could mean jest two,” he said.

He patted his wife affectionately on the leg and the two Beanes laughed so loudly at their little joke that old Prince started trotting fast down the rusty road without even the tip of the buggy whip being laid on his dapple-gray rump.

When Mrs. Beane had stopped laughing, she wiped a tear away from her cheek.

“You're a case, Tom Beane,” she said, “you're a true case.”

Tom Beane liked a compliment, too, and he grinned appreciatively. “You know,” he said in a moment, “we’uns got to feed her, too, and thet’s somethin’.”

“And give her a room, too,” reminded Mrs. Beane.

“Th’ room don’t cost us nothin’, but th’ food she'll eat mounts up.”

“Anyway,” said Mrs. Beane, “living with us she won't be doing any totin’.”

“Thet’s right,” agreed her husband. “Town n*****s tote as much as they eats, but living with us in town Aunt Duty cain’t do no totin’ a-tall. She cain’t tote four miles in th’ country. She hain’t got no place to go so she hain’t got no place to tote to.”

“We'll have to watch her pack when she does go home to see her grandson. She'll try to tote then.”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Beane, “we’uns will have to watch her keerful like. But Ah’m still worried about th’ Cokie-Colies. She cain’t add, but she know stomach countin’. She kin tell th’ time of day by her guts. Ah’m powerful afraid two Cokie-Colies won’t make much plural for Aunt Duty.”

With maternal solicitude Aunt Duty regarded the boy scooping up the last specks of his oatmeal.

“Yer appetite’s good,” she observed with interest. “Hit shore do please me to see yer eat.” “As much as I like to see you drinking Coca-Colas?” asked

Johnny Beane.

“Wouldn’t had nary a one ’ceptin’ for yer stealin’,” said Aunt Duty.

The prompt disappearance of the cereal stimulated Aunt Duty to conversation along more cheerful lines and about a matter that had intrigued her for many hours.

Aunt Duty, who never ventured into town from the Beane residence, was kept supplied with N*****town gossip by an occasional delivery boy, a washwoman friend who tarried by the picket fence from time to time to swap a word or two, and the painters and carpenters who came to make repairs on the roof and apply a new coat of white lead to the entire structure once each year.

From these sources and a mysterious grapevine no one in the Beane family could fathom, Aunt Duty kept abreast of the times. The subject of Sophie aroused her curiosity and was a twenty-four-hour sensation in N*****town. Her mother, Hattie Veal, went out of circulation for an entire night and even called on the Sheriff to see what he could do.

“Ah’ll git around to lookin’ into hit,” he promised the grieving mother. She thanked him gratefully.

But not even the gossipy dwarf, Speedy Dabney, could supply an answer to the strange disappearance. The pretty thirteen-year-old negress was not actually missed from the community life until the second day after Brother Mordecai Inskip’s fiasco in the Methodist Sunday School.

Then many and varied were the explanations of her probable fate. Aunt Duty had heard them all. Her grapevine told her that it was Silas Greer who first called attention to Sophie’s absence.

Still rather full of himself and his sensational victory over Brother Inskip, the Presbyterian farmer was loath to allow the townspeople to forget his mastery. It had been the triumph of a lifetime.

“Whar’s Sophie?” he asked that afternoon of a group in front of the Busy Bee. “Hain’t seed her for quite a spell. Mebbe Brother Inskip’s got her hid.”

“Wouldn’t blame ’im,” said a lounger, “after whut yer done to him.”

“Come to think of hit,” mused Bob Galloway, “Ah hain’t seed Sophie mahself.”

“Mebbe she’s gone to work in Atlanta,” suggested a farmer. “Tell me light n***** gals makes a powerful lot of money in some of them thar houses up thar.”

“A high yaller comes high anywhar,” laughed Greer, “but yer kin bet yer bottom dollar Brother Inskip got hit durned cheap.”

Tacitus Thigpen stuck his head out of his store during a dull spell to see what was going on in front of his emporium.

“Never will forgit whut yer said to him abouten that box of snuff,” he chuckled admiringly.

“Well, Sophie must hev cost him more’n thet. Her red shoes shore didn’t sell for no dime.”

The crowd enjoyed this. Finally, nearly all were agreed the girl was working in an Atlanta “house.”

“Hit'd be th’ natural thing for her to do,” said Thigpen.

“She come from bad blood, a n***** whore for a ma and God knows whut sorry white man for a pa. Good riddance, Ah’d say.”

Aunt Duty, with becoming restraint, told Johnny Beane many of the details of the ribald meeting in front of the store.

“She shore drapped out of sight sudden like, didn’t she, Johnny? Somethin’ allers a-happenin’ in a big town like Leafy Grove!”

Johnny Beane, accustomed to her small talk, paid the old darkey scant attention. She had expected no answer and continued talking.

“They tell me, Johnny,” she said, “thet Sophie used bleachin’ salve. Sech goin’-ons is sinful. Gawd put twilight and darkness in n*****s’ faces, and they ain’t got nary bit of right to take hit out.”

Aunt Duty closely resembled a surprised, ingenuous ape. Her likeness to a more cheerful member of this superior animal kingdom, in fact, was so remarkable that taunting little school boys called her “Old Aunt Monkey.” Aunt Duty knew all about it.

“All old-fashioned n*****s,” she told Johnny Beane angrily, “look lak monkeys. Only these heah new-fangled town n*****s don’t look lak monkeys. They don’t look lak n*****s or white folks or monkeys neither. I’se one nevah to mix wid ’em. They don’t know whut they is theyself. Sophie don’t know whut she is. But she shore wus white-lookin’. Whitest-lookin’ n***** Ah ever seed.

“But she n*****, Johnny, all th’ same. N***** blood so strong hit come forth in th’ third and th’ fo’th gineration, jest lak th’ Bible sins yer preacher tell yer abouten. Jest one drop of n***** blood make a n***** a n*****, and he cain’t do nothin’ abouten hit. N***** blood, Johnny, shore is visitin’ blood. Hit don’t keer whar hit visit, but nobody want hit. N*****s is ashamed of hit and white folks don’t want hit. N***** blood done wore hit’s welcome out befo’ hit gits in th’ front door. Hit’s one guest which doan never leave. Hit jest squat, permanent. Better hit stay whar hit supposed to stay in th’ fust place, but hit too restless. Hit go all sorts of strange places. But Ah shore don’t lak n*****s who say they somethin’ else.

“Why, thar’s even a mess of n*****s ’roun’ heah a-callin’ themselfs Indians. One of ’em say her name Amanda Buffalo Pullyerglove Antylope Suffo Muffo Arrowbow Barr. She say hit Cherokee. Humph! Her bossman jest call her Mandy Barr. Why, thet wus her name in th’ fust place. Thet name jest plain n*****.”

Johnny Beane always laughed at this story that he had heard from the old negress’ lips a dozen times. He and Aunt Duty repeated for the umpteenth time another routine which cheered him up this morning of his discontent.

“I’se been around long enuff to know whut I’se talkin’ about. I’se old,” said Aunt Duty.

“But how old?”

“Jest old.”

“That means nothing in numbers, Aunt Duty. What’s your age in years?”

“Numbers and y’ars don’t mean nothin’ to a n*****,” avowed the darkey. “When a n***** gits gray hairs a n***** know he old and thet’s close enough. I’se got gray hairs and so I’se old, jest old.”

Aunt Duty’s eyes were “gittin’ so po’,” as she said, that she could no longer tell the difference between the paprika and the red pepper, “’cept by taste.”

“But mah mind’s ‘lert, Johnny, mah mind’s ’lert,” Aunt Duty added as she launched into a lively account of her latest choice N*****town gossip tidbit as the boy licked his oatmeal spoon.

“A powerful cuttin’ went on in th’ n***** barber shop las’ night,” she confided. “‘Bright Boy,’ th’ yaller n***** barber, wus a-cuttin’ a country n*****’s hair.”

The mulatto barber snipped black Persian lamb wool from his customer’s head, she said. Tight little Afghanistan curls, as tough as steel wire, dulled his clippers and coiled in the mechanism.

“Damn it, black boy,” said the barber disgustedly, examining his instrument and trying to pull the tough hairs out of the grilled guard, “ought to charge yer double. Africantype n*****s ruins mo’ barber tools than they business wuth. Whut you, n*****, a Zulu, or whut?”

“Who did the cutting?” asked Johnny Beane.

“Th’ country n*****,” said Aunt Duty. “He slash th’ barber’s tho’t mighty deep.”

“What for?”

“He call ‘im a Zulu. Whut a Zulu, Johnny?”

Johnny Beane roared at this. Aunt Duty ignored him and went on babbling.

“White n*****s won't speak to brown n*****s, brown n*****s won't speak to black n*****s. As for me Ah won’t speak to neither one.”

The aged philosopher reached for Johnny Beane’s bowl and spoon. “Be a-gittin’ back to th’ kitchen now,” she said, “befo’ yer ma kotch me heah. She shore let me hev it yestiddy!”

“For what?” asked the boy.

“Ah used th’ inside privy,” admitted the woman, “an’ she kotch me. Allers did want to use a water privy, Johnny, but Ah been a-skeered. This time Ah couldn’t help hit.”

“Can’t see why you can’t use our toilet,” said Johnny. “Why, you cook our meals, don’t you?”

“Wal,” said Aunt Duty, “thet’s diffrunt.”

Johnny Beane stretched and pushed out his long legs so far that his feet untucked the covers at the end of his bed. Aunt Duty regarded him appraisingly.

“Yer a leetle large for th’ space yer tryin’ to occupy. Try as hard as yer likes yer cain’t wear nobody else’s size and be comfortable. Johnny, yer growin’ up!”

Aunt Duty said this suddenly as though she had discovered the most surprising thing in the world.

“Johnny,” she repeated in some awe, “yer growin’ up!”

“Guess so,” he said. “Don’t want me to stay a baby all my life, do you?”

“Naw,” whispered Aunt Duty, “sho'ly not!”

She walked over to his side and whispered in his ear.

“Ah’ve been a-waitin’, Johnny,” she said, “and a-prayin’ for yer to grow up.” She hesitated for a moment as though afraid to utter the terrible thought in her mind. “To be big enuff to leave this heah town!”

At last it was out.

“Why, Aunt Duty!” said Johnny in surprise.

“Yer pa a-beatin’ yer lak he do. Hit make me sick ever’ time. Yer ain't lak no other Beane Ah ever seed. Why, they ain’t nevah been a Beane as good-lookin’ as yer is, Johnny, or as good, either. Yer smart, too, Johnny. Ah guess yer a nacherel-born throwback somwhar, whar Ah don’t exactly know. Yassuh!” she exclaimed. “Ah wants yer to be big enuff to leave home.”

The enormity of her statement suddenly covered Aunt Duty with confusion. She looked around instinctively to see whether anyone was looking. Reassured, she skedaddled out of the room.

Chapter XIV: The Son of Man

Neither Aunt Duty’s love nor Dr. Smith’s ministrations, physical and spiritual, managed to take Johnny Beane’s mind off of his Beer-Sheba experience and the destruction of his books.

The sores on his behind healed, but these were only surface scars. The injustice of his punishment left deeper injuries which did not so easily disappear.

The beatings made the boy more thoughtful than ever before, and he spent many days puzzling over right and wrong, the cruelty of his father’s treatment and the Leafy Grove code which made everything a sin. A new philosophy and reasoning were inexorably taking form in Johnny Beane’s character, and a definite independence of thinking was asserting itself, but still he needed his best friend. He decided to look for him out in the cow pasture.

He was Jesus.

There had been a time when he could find Him at will. Once, on his way from the house on Church Street to the cow pasture, he idly picked a little flower growing in the shade of a plank fence by his pa’s barn.

“It toils not, neither does it spin,” thought the boy.

The words of Christ which he had read hundreds of times were so beautiful they often made him cry.

“And yet I say unto you,” said Christ of the lily, “that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

It was easy to pray to a Christ like that.

“Beautiful, tender Christ,” thought Johnny Beane. “Glorious and wonderful Jesus!”

The boy’s soul pumped tears of happiness into his eyes, and joy shone forth from his face.

“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith.”

Rich promises of the tender and loving Son of God! Sweet and rich and kind! No God could be better than this God, Christ! Johnny Beane was so moved that he knelt and thanked Jesus for His tranquillity and sublimity and His poetry and he thanked the God of the Old Testament, too, for fathering such a gentle Son.

The boy was certain that Jesus loved him and Aunt Duty, the only ones in Leafy Grove, he felt sure, who had the proper conception of His real mercy, and he pitied those who did not have true communion with Him on the personal basis that he enjoyed.

Sometimes, Johnny Beane felt very sorry for Jesus and he prayed to God, His father, whom he reluctantly admitted as a higher authority, to help His Son and bestow many heavenly blessings upon Him and erase that strained and worried look he had noticed recently appearing in Jesus’ face in His concern over the ways of the world.

The Old Testament God might approve of his father’s beatings, but not his sweet friend, Jesus. Johnny Beane took his troubles to Jesus, confidentially, and prayed to God in strict formality. When Johnny Beane was worried about Jesus, he would pray:

“O Lord,” he appealed, “please be good to Jesus. Make Him happy, God. Why, He’s Your own Son!”

That was what Johnny Beane would do for a son of his own, he knew that. He would make him happy and love him and protect him from every harsh thing, he knew that, all right enough.

Sometimes Jesus was so pitied by Johnny Beane that he begged Him to go to His own Father personally and ask for holy blessings which would make Him truly happy and free Him from grief.

“And while you're asking for yourself,” he would suggest, “try to get some blessings for Dr. Smith and Aunt Duty, too.”

In these moments of soaring spiritual elation, the boy felt Jesus’ presence closer by his side than usual, and he talked to Him intimately and freely and found that his heart and soul were warmed, and he knew how well he was being understood. Johnny Beane sought Jesus’ company in the fields and took long walks with him in the pine thickets, and He helped him chase rabbits and together they enjoyed the songs of the birds and studied the labors of the ants and the workings of the bees. Jesus liked to sit with Johnny Beane under an oak tree by the barreled spring on the Tombs place and hear God’s winds whispering through the

leaves.

Nothing delighted Jesus more than to lie down on his stomach with him by a little stream and watch the darting minnows flash their silver and jet to hiding places under the bank, or watch lazy carps hug the bed and feed on the bottom.

Jesus and Johnny Beane sometimes carried on animated conversations. One day when he and Jesus were admiring the beauty of Duggan’s wooded knoll, the boy made a suggestion:

“Jesus,” he said, “wouldn’t it be fun to make those trees come over here? Why don’t you make just one come? Pull it up by the roots and make it fly.”

Jesus smiled, amused by the request.

“Johnny,” he said, “I don’t have to do that. Why, you can do that yourself. Anyone with the faith of a grain of mustard seed can move a mountain. Why don’t you make it come over, Johnny?”

But Johnny was afraid to try. He decided to wait. He changed the subject. “Let’s go see Aunt Duty, Jesus,” he suggested.

“Let’s,” said Jesus, and the two walked off together towards the Beane residence.

The mild Son of Man walked right into the kitchen with him. They found Aunt Duty sitting in a straight chair, her shoes off and her stockinged feet in the oven that was kept warm by dying embers in the fire box.

“Why, Aunt Duty!” exclaimed the boy. “You’ve got your feet in the stove!”

“Shore has!” said Aunt Duty agreeably. “And for a powerful good reason. Mah toenails is cold. Didn’t yer know, boy,” she asked, “thet death starts wid cold toenails? Nobody dies whose toenails is warm. Ah keeps mine warm. Death, hit come bottom upwards, from th’ end of th’ longest toenail on either foot right to th’ head. Yer nevah heard of a dead person havin’ warm toenails, now didja?”

Jesus chuckled.

Aunt Duty roasted her toenails warm enough to keep alive for a while and got up to make the biscuits. Jesus and his young friend watched her work the dough from her knuckles to her flour-covered elbows.

“Looks like a mighty good cook, Johnny,” said Jesus.

“Sure is,” said Johnny.

“Who yer talkin’ to?” asked Aunt Duty suddenly.

“Why, Jesus,” said Johnny, taken by surprise.

Aunt Duty looked at him curiously.

“He's watching me,” said Johnny Beane, uncomfortable under Aunt Duty’s stare.

“He watchin’ ever’body,” said Aunt Duty. “Jesus ever’whar all th’ time, but when yer feels Him personal He ain’t nowhar else!”

This made the boy feel that he had a monopoly on his friend, Jesus.

When Aunt Duty had started the fire going again and put the supper biscuits in the oven, she played crow foot with the boy, and Jesus stayed right on and seemed not a bit bored by the oft-repeated game. He chuckled when they formed Abraham’s Coffin and derived real relaxation watching the black-and-white fingers triumph over straight string and make intricate patterns.

“They tell me Christ wus a Jew,” said Aunt Duty.

The boy had never thought about his Savior’s race. To him, Christ was neither a Jew nor a Gentile, nor anything except just plain Jesus. He said so, and Aunt Duty who was very vague about it all dismissed it with a convenient grunt.

“Whut yer think Jew Heaven look lak, Johnny?” she asked.

“Ah got white folks’ Heaven and n***** Heaven all set in mah mind, but somehow Ah jest cain’t figger out whut Jew Heaven look lak.”

“Everybody's got the same Heaven,” said the boy.

“Thet whut yer think,” said Aunt Duty pityingly. “But Ah knows white folks ain’t a-gwine to hev no n*****s a-messin’ ‘roun’ in they Heaven.

“Heaven's got two sets of gates, both pearly, but th’ n***** entrance is in th’ rear. Hit all stand to reason thet iffen n*****s enters th’ back way on earth, they go through th’ same door in th’ heahafter. Once thar they is a big fence twixt they side and th’ white folks’ side.”

“You're crazy, Aunt Duty.”

“No sech,” maintained the old woman stoutly. “And jest as hit should be, too.”

The cook lifted the lid from a pot of steaming collard greens. She stabbed a forkful, tasted a sample, and smacked her lips approvingly.

“Here,” she said to Johnny, “take a bite. Hit’s good. Cookin’ cain’t be good lessen hit’s hot and greasy. Food needs plenty of hawg fat and lots of fire. A red-hot wood stove and side meat make ever’thing taste good. They ain’t nothin’ po’k grease don’t improve. Butter all right in hits place, but cookin’ takes hawg fat. It sustains yer, chile, and makes yer strong, too.” The boy accepted the greens and ate them leisurely. Aunt Duty watched him.

“Johnny,” she observed finally, “yer nevah eats like yer’s hungry. Thet’s th’ way for white folks to eat. Hungry-lookin’ eatin’s glutton eatin’. When yer eats th’ only ones know yer hungry’s me and yer. Yer knows yer hungry, Ah knows yer hungry, but nobody else knows yer hungry. Th’ way for white folks to eat is to git a lot down elegant! Ladies’ size helpin’s, but lots of ’em.”

Johnny Beane thought Jesus would burst his sides laughing. He left after a little while and did not come back to see Johnny until supper was over. Jesus never left Johnny Beane until he fell asleep in his bed at night, and then the gentle Savior would hurry back to His own room in Heaven because God did not like for Him to stay out too late.

But when the boy awoke, Jesus was right back with him to keep him company as long as he wanted Him to stay. They swapped confidences, and He proved Himself a good friend. It worried Him sick, just as it did Aunt Duty, when Mr. Beane applied the rawhide to his rump. Jesus personally watched these beatings and winced every time a blow was struck, just as though He were being lashed Himself.

That was why Johnny Beane never cried when his father flogged him. He had to be strong for Jesus’ sake. Aunt Duty marveled that he never uttered the slightest outcry during the beatings and so did his pa. It seemed to make his pa mad, and he called it stubbornness and wilfulness and defiance. But it was really for Jeasus’ sake, alone.

Aunt Duty shook her head over the mystery many, many times. She decided, finally, that “thar’s lot mo’ to crying’ than sheddin’ a tear. Some folks cries shallow,” she said, “and some cries deep. Johnny’s a deep weeper.”

When the boy cried for joy, he did not mind if Jesus saw him then, and when he did “weep deep” to hide his suffering, he hoped that Jesus was too busy to notice it. But he could not always fool Jesus along these lines, and the sympathetic Savior more than once showed him that He understood his hidden grief, and then they both had a good cry together and felt better again.

Johnny Beane knew that if anything ever happened to Jesus, he would surely die.

When the boy joined in singing “Jesus Songs” in Sunday School, his voice rang with the feeling of his rhapsody. In rendering Jesus Loves Me, Johnny Beane had the exalting assurance that he was merely uttering in song Jesus’ own sentiments. Jesus nudged him in the ribs and shook his head affirmatively or winked wisely at him when the words of the hymn came out of his throat.

Johnny Beane did not believe a single other person in the church shared his beautiful relationship with Jesus. It was a true miracle of camaraderie, based on love and mutual problems, because the Old Testament God, the boy felt, must not be giving His Son any more understanding than he received from his own pa and this strengthened the bond between them.

When the Superintendent of the Sunday School selected his favorite Jesus song, Johnny sang louder than all the rest. This was There Is a Name I Love to Hear. The words brought a priceless communion which stirred him, and he sang them louder than all the rest because he felt that he was privileged to do so.

“Oh, how I love Jesus,
Oh, how I love Jesus,
Oh, how I love Jesus,
Because He first loved me.”

The song, he figured, must, somehow, have been created miraculously for him alone. That was exactly what Jesus did for him, every minute of his life.

But during the last six months, Jesus had not been coming around as often as He used to, and when He did appear He tarried only briefly. Sometimes, He visited only once or twice a week, and Johnny was losing track of Him. After the book burning, the boy felt that he needed Him more than ever. Desperately, he wanted to talk with Him again, but he could not find Him at all.

He looked around everywhere in the tall sedge grass and behind the cow pasture—in the tall sedge grass and behind the old sycamore—and finally gave up.

Oh, well, Johnny Beane thought, he would go to see Dr. Smith.

Chapter XV: Close to God

When Johnny Beane reported to Dr. Smith his inability to reestablish communion with his Savior, the physician seemed to be unusually disturbed.

“Johnny,” he said with some concern, “yer talkin’ abouten Jesus so much, yer got me dreamin’. Why don’t yer look for Christ in Aunt Duty? Thar’s more God in her than in all th’ cow pastures and Bishops in Georgia.”

Johnny grinned at this.

“Thet old woman’s good for yer, son. You shore do need er.

Johnny did need her, and Aunt Duty never failed him. She amused him for hours at a time and taught him her Philosophy. She fished with him sometimes in the waters of Pretty Creek and interpreted for him the timbal of the shrill cicada and the harvest flies and pointed out chimerical giants and the witches in the sherry scuds above. Together they picked turkey-red n***** lilies for the big green Jardiniere in the front hall. From the spiritual food of nature, the only source of intuition, she drew the forces of greatness and they gave her sustenance.

With no education to cloud her instincts she traveled short cuts to truth with primitive powers of honesty and goodness. Johnny Beane thought Aunt Duty knew everything. Possibly she did.

But of all hier attainments, Aunt Duty derived most immoderate pride from her astuteness as a buyer. Her chief adversary in the world of commerce was “Beef” Bailey, the ambulant butcher, who drove his meat wagon down the streets of Leafy Grove shouting like a chimney sweep the virtues of his wares.

“He holler good meat, but tough bulls bellows pow’ful loud, too,” she said wisely whenever she heard his hoarse approach.

Aunt Duty was vested with the serious responsibility of purchasing the Beanes’ meat and each transaction she highlighted with rituals of occasion.

Frankly, Aunt Duty did not trust Beef Bailey, a man of truly amazing wiles and devices. More than one tough viand had found its way from his insanitary wagon to her white folks’ table.

Aunt Duty finally provided herself with a testing fork, an instrument she used with deadly results. The very first time she she employed it, Beef Bailey went down in miserable defeat.

The old woman heard his throaty call early one Saturday morning and reached for her weapon. She intended to catch her opponent unawares. She carefully concealed the tester under her apron string and hurried out to await him in front of the residence.

Beef pulled his old mule to a stop and greeted her affably.

“Why, shore as Ah live, hit’s Aunt Duty,” he said. “Shore is fine to see yer, Aunt Duty,” he said simperingly. “Ah’ve been a-thinkin’ abouten yer for th’ last two hours—ever’ since Ah kilt thet purty heifer.”

Aunt Duty grunted and eyed him warily. Beef continued: “Twas th’ best-lookin’ calf whose th’ot Ah ever cut, Aunt Duty. ’Twas a shame to kill hit. Why, hit’s eyes was so tender, s’elpmegawd, hit purty nearly broke mah heart to slash hit’s jugular. Ah’m a-tellin’ yer this for a reason, Aunt

Duty.”

Aunt Duty raised her guard and eyed him narrowly.

“Th’ reason Ah says this is to say iffen th’ meat as tender as the look in hit’s eyes, hit’ll shore be a tasty dish.”

Aunt Duty’s hand was purposefully reaching for her testing fork.

“All calfs’ eyes is tender,” she said, as she prepared to pounce, “but we ain’t eatin’ no eyes. Whut we anticipates is meat.”

“True, Aunt Duty, true,” said Beef uneasily. He packed some fresh snuff under his lower lip and then with the same forefinger demonstrated the quality of his veal by pushing it into a fine-looking cut.

The finger sank in.

“See, Aunt Duty! See how tender ’tis! Yer kin cut hit with a fork.”

Aunt Duty had a firm grip on her own fork. She was ready. “Fingers ain't sharp enuff to tell nobody nothin’,” she said ominously. “Step aside, Mr. Beef. Step aside.”

Aunt Duty’s secret weapon flashed in the sunlight. The butcher stepped back in some alarm as she held it poised in the air. Before he could figure out her tactics she had shooed the flies away and jabbed her fork determinedly into the roast.

“Humph!” she exclaimed disgustedly. “Thet calf’s tenderness shore didn’t extend no further’n hit could see from. Only thing abouten hit’s meat yer could cut with a fork is th’ gravy.”

Aunt Duty bought liver and sailed superiorly into the house.

Aunt Duty’s success as a “buyer” led her to offer her personal assistance to Johnny in the matter of selecting a cheap new knockabout coat at a local store.

“I’se a buyer,” she told the boy. “Better let me ’company yer on th’ trip.”

A visit a block away from the Beanes’ backyard she considered a trip, and an excursion to the heart of downtown Leafy Grove was a major and important undertaking. Johnny accepted her gratuitous offer and they went along together.

In Leafy Grove, the business was divided about equally among Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists because the population represented a fairly equal division of Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The few poor Campbellites, with a mortgage on their church, could not hope to survive in such a world of commerce where men and women bought merchandise only from those of their own faith, and so they either starved slowly to death or worked in agriculture where the competition of reed did not extend chokingly.

The one Jew store survived because the loyalty of the church people did not always go beyond their pocketbooks. They gave preference to the faithful who had selected their chosen path to the Celestial City only if their prices were equal to, or below, the best bargain offered elsewhere.

Attacks of Christian competitors on the quality of the “Jew merchandise” of owner Levi Lipschitz had a desired effect and helped the Christians keep their business despite his advertised bargains.

When the Beanes had finally arrived at the reluctant decision that their son needed a new jacket, he was directed to pick one out, if possible, at the Busy Bee, since Tacitus Thigpen was a good Methodist. Failing to obtain a proper garment at the right price at the big general mercantile house, then he was directed to shop at the Army & Navy Store, operated by Morgan Felton, a Baptist. Should Felton be out of his size, there was nothing else to do except look around the Jew store.

In this order, all Leafy Grove shopped, except that the Baptists called first at the Felton establishment and second at the Busy Bee. All called on Lipschitz last. The Presbyterians divided their trade about equally between Thigpen and Felton, with a slight preference for Thigpen’s since Methodists did, after all, practice sprinkling baptism, and there were no Calvinist dry goods merchants within about ten miles.

The paltry few unsaved shopped for bargains alone without considering God’s will in the slightest degree as to their groceries, underwear, hames and bits, or banjos.

The night before the excursion Aunt Duty boiled water on the kitchen stove and bathed with homemade lye laundry soap in her big galvanized wash tub. In the morning, she hurried through her breakfast routine and returned to her room, where she sponged and dressed in a gray-striped calico shirtwaist and skirt with a wide band of blue gingham down the front, having been enlarged with additional material when the discarded garment of Mrs. Beane was found

too small to fit.

Aunt Duty brushed the ermine coils of her hair, adjusted a maid’s cap with imitation lace fringes around the edges and tied the long band under her chin in a bow which covered some of the black parchment of her neck. A careless dab of white powder on her nose caked a foundation of excitement-moisture and gave it startling relief.

Now dressed in her finest, starched to metal hardness and limping in a pair of Mrs. Beane’s former Sunday shoes with quarter-size corn holes cut for fit, Aunt Duty presented herself to Johnny Beane in the library.

“Let's go, boy,” she said efficiently. “I’se ready and prepared.”

Aunt Duty reassured herself as to the safety of three big paper dollars allotted for the purchase of the coat. She had seized them for guardianship, and they were knotted tightly in her handkerchief. She stuck her whitened nose out of the front door.

“Sorter airish,” she decided. “Johnny, on account of mah feet run down to mah room and fetch mah gray shawl.”

The boy obeyed, and the two finally started off on the excursion. It was nine o'clock before they began their three-hundred-yard journey to the Busy Bee. The condition of Aunt Duty’s feet, which were “po’ly” mostly because of the excruciating fit of her tight shoes, made it necessary for them to proceed slowly. Aunt Duty filled the twenty-minute expedition with observations about the people they passed on the street.

A Negro man with red hair and an orange complexion dappled with freckles and liver spots made the old woman shake her head. “Outlandish-lookin’ n*****,” she remarked.

Hattie Veal, up and about at a surprising hour, for her, in view of the nature of her usually nocturnal profession, was of much interest to the old servant.

“She shore got a sassy walk,” said Aunt Duty, “and near puore white skin, but, Johnny, she n***** right on.”

Finally the two arrived at Thigpen’s. The Busy Bee porter, “Slowboy” Jake, who who was sprinkling the granite-slab sidewalk from a perforated oyster can preparatory to sweeping it, regarded Aunt Duty with some amazement.

“Whut yer doin’ so fur frum home, Aunt Duty?” he asked.

The familiarity disgusted Aunt Duty. She put him in his place. “N*****,” she said, “I’se a traveler. When Ah takes a notion to travel, Ah travels. Mind yer own business.”

The porter with outrageous vici kid skin grinned sheepishly.

“Yaller n*****s ever’whar yer turns,” she said to Johnny Beane. “They cain’t git fermilier wid me! Hit’s one reason Ah don’t lak to come to th’ city.”

Tacitus Thigpen bestowed a toothy grin on the pair when he rushed down to greet them from the back of the store, but he frowned when he learned the purpose of their visit.

“Cain’t fit him to save mah life,” he said disappointedly, as he looked the boy over. “He shore has grown. Nope, hain’t no use a-wastin’ time a-tryin’. Jest hain’t got his size. Ah might had ought to git some new coats,” he thought aloud. “Durned leetle profit in em right now, however, thet Jew store and all.”

Reluctantly, Tacitus Thigpen suggested they try the Army & Navy Store up the street. He grudgingly admitted the owner had a right to do business in Leafy Grove, since, after all, he was a hometown boy.

Aunt Duty was delighted. For her part, she hoped the business would take all day. In spite of the “mis'ry” in her feet, she was enjoying herself immensely.

“Wishes they wus fo’tylebben sto’s heah, Johnny, and we could go in all of em. Then we could really pick our choice.

“Johnny, hit’s time Ah learned yer about understandin’ folks. Now, thet Mr. Thigpen’s a ‘no’ man. They’s two kinds of folks, ‘yes’ people and ‘no’ people. ‘Yes’ people is people who’s got courage, ’cause hit takes a lot of courage to say yes, but hit jest takes ‘no’ to say ‘no.’ Tet’s a mighty leetle word—hit takes pow’ful leetle wind to say ‘no.’”

Aunt Duty was interested and amazed in everything. When Aunt Duty went to ghostland and became a ghost, you would expect her to look at the other ghosts around her and exclaim: “Lawdy me, look at them ghosts!” Aunt Duty often threatened to haunt Johnny Beane when she died and became a ghost.

“If you haunt me, Aunt Duty,” he said, “I'll be safe. You'll take care of me.”

But the old woman and the young boy had time for no such foolishness that morning. In deadly seriousness, they set out for the Army & Navy establishment.

Morgan himself greeted the shoppers when they entered. He picked a congelation of rheum from the corner of an eye and rubbed his hands expectantly. Aunt Duty stiffened.

She whispered to Johnny Beane warningly, “Thet’s a pie-faced man.” she said. “We’s got to be keerful heah.”

“Now jest whut will hit be? Whut will hit be?” asked the merchant eagerly. “A suit, mebbe? A nice suit?”

Aunt Duty took charge. She had no testing system for wool or cotton except her wits, and they were alerted now by instinctive feelings of portentous danger. She viewed him with immediate and absolute suspicion.

“We's requirin’ a coat,” she said.

Morgan Felton coughed pompously and examined the rheum on the nail of his forefinger.

“Yer come to th’ right place,” he said, ushering the two over to a position in front of a rack. “Now thar,” he said, pointing, “is th’ best coat in th’ house. Hit’s all wool and a yard wide. Hit’s practical, hit’s strong. Hit’s got ever’thing.”

Aunt Duty felt the material carefully and watched the merchant at the same time. She looked over every inch of the lining and inspected the stitching, the buttons, the buttonholes, the inside and outside of the pockets, the skirt and the collar. Disappointedly, she admitted it seemed suitable.

Fulton beamed upon her.

“Now heah, Johnny,” he said, “slip it on.”

Quickly he helped him into the coat, and before Aunt Duty knew what was happening the merchant invited the boy to be seated. He pushed her child into a chair.

“Now see, now see,” exulted Felton. “Hain’t thet wonderful?”

“Hley!” said Aunt Duty. “Thet look lak a good sittin’ down fit. How hit look standin’ up?”

Felton was chagrined. “Why, Aunt Duty,” he said as though pained that anything could possibly be wrong with his merchandise, “whut do yer mean?”

“Ah desires to know,” she said promptly, “iffen hit’s a standin’ up fit, too. Stand up, Johnny.”

Johnny stood. The coat swallowed him.

“See thar! See thar!” Aunt Duty shouted triumphantly.

“Mr. Felton, some folks requires top merchandise, and we requires hit. Come on, Johnny.”

Aunt Duty took her charge by the arm and left the Army & Navy Store with her pasty nose lifted with dignified hauteur. On the sidewalk she stopped, breathless from the exciting narrowness of the escape.

“Nevah did trust a pie-faced man, Johnny, or a Baptist, either. Thet man, he look at yer sweet, but he all bitter. Thet pie shore fell outen his face quick, didn’t hit, Johnny, when he didn’t git thet money sweetenin’. Only sweetenin’ he know is a couple of dimes. Th’ only sugar he got in his body is a thin coatin’ on his face. Hit’s just lak a leetle icin’ on a poly made cake.”

Aunt Duty and Johnny next called at the Jew Store. It was their last chance in Leafy Grove. Lipschitz was on a buying trip to Atlanta and would not return until the afternoon. The trader’s emporium was in charge of a born-and-bred Leafy Grove clerk, Sampson Doughty. He greeted the pair cordially. Aunt Duty looked him over suspiciously.

“We’s heah.” she announced, “to try on, standin’ up, mind yer, a number of coats.”

Try them on, Johnny Beane did. Aunt Duty supervised everything.

“Thet one won't do,” she said over and over, or, “’Tain’t jest precisely right,” she would observe, or, “Thet coverin’s too big” or “Too leetle,” as the case might be.

Finally, Doughty satisfied the woman as to fit, price, and quality and breathed heavily as he took her carefully counted three dollars.

“Ah shore had to watch thet man,” she told the boy on the street. “Ah shore had to watch him pow’ful keerful.

“Johnny,” she asked, “does yer think thet Jew got a leetle Baptist in him?”

“Sampson Doughty is no Jew,” said Johnny.

“Nevah mind,” said Aunt Duty, “hit’s ketchin’, hain't hit?”

They passed the Army & Navy Store on their way home. Aunt Duty looked smugly into the door. From the corner of an eye she caught a glimpse of Felton busy on his book-keeping.

“Whut he doin’, Johnny?”

“He’s writing.”

“Well, as for me, Ah never did desire to write. Hit kin cause a lot of trouble. When yer says something’, ’tain’t thar, hit’s gone—but when yer writes hit, thar ’tis.”

When the old woman climbed the short steps of the Beane residence she was completely worn out from the rigors of the journey. She resolved to visit the city no more for six months,at least, or, anyway, until Johnny needed her assistance again in a big transaction.

Chapter XVI: The Jew

In Leafy Grove, most gossip started in one of four places—the church, the woman’s Floral Circle, on the green benches by the clay spittoons up in front of the Court House, or in the Busy Bee. It was especially appropriate that the gossip concerning Levi Lipschitz should start in the latter emporium because its owner had a special interest in his rival across the street. It was a grudge of some years standing.

Levi was periodic competition. His business had improved so much in recent weeks, after his last local venture, during the general cotton prosperity that he had ordered a new sign for the front of his building.

Elmo Savage, Leafy Grove’s painter, who got drunk regularly every day on vanilla extract, staggered about the business of printing large block letters, spelling out the words:

CUT-RATE STORE

Tacitus Thigpen was so enraged that he splashed a shower of brine on a bolt of calico, while fishing for a salt mackerel in the keg by the dry goods counter. He wrapped the fish in a page of the Atlanta Journal and handed it to his customer. He pointed across the street.

“See thet?” he demanded. “Thet’s whut Ah has to put up with, and in mah own home town, too. He’s a-gittin’ a lot of n***** business with his sleazy, cut-rate clothes and me a citizen, too. Even made enough money to splurge on a new sign.

“Durned shame,” said his customer sympathetically.

“Ever’ time cotton goes up a leetle,” grumbled the storekeeper, “another Jew store opens up in town—th’ durned peddlers. And ever’ time hit drops off they moves away. Tain’t fair, ’tain’t. Now heah Ah sits a-runnin’ th’ Busy Bee, in good times or bad, th’ year round, year in year out, takin’ hit as hit comes.

“Competin’ with a Jew in honest retail merchandisin’ is a painful fate. Why, they don’t even ship merchandise like Christians do. Whilst all my goods comes in by freight, direct from Atlanta, thet durned Jew Lipschitz brings his stuff personal in suitcases on th’ coach.

“Lipschitz is a heathen, too. Did yer know he’s got a goose up in his back yard with its feet a-nailed down to a board?

Hit’s durned cruel, Ah think, jest to git a bigger liver to fill his greasy guts for a infidel holiday. Poor durned goose. They ought to be a law to stop ‘em, th’ durned Christ killers.”

“Whudja goin’ to do abouten hit?” asked the customer.

Tacitus Thigpen aimed a bolt of tobacco juice at a fat cockroach crawling over a basket of new roasting ears. He missed,

“Say,” he said, “Ah’ve been a-givin’ yer credit, good times and bad, nigh onto fourteen years. Hain’t thet true, Jim Volley?”

Jim Volley, a rival farmer, nodded. “Hit shore is,” he said. “And Ah hain’t nevah turned yer down?”

“Never,” said Jim Volley; “yer carried me, times good, times bad, for fourteen years.”

Tacitus Thigpen looked around to see if anyone in the store was listening. A clerk was waiting on a customer in the overall section.

“Come on to th’ back of th’ store a minute,” he said, “and let’s do a leetle talkin’ together, confidential.”

Jim Volley laid his wet package on the bolt of calico and followed the Leafy Grove merchand.

The two talked in low tones for a full half hour before the farmer picked up his mackerel and departed the emporium for his mule team in the hitching lot up behind the Court House.

Late on the night of his returning from the shopping tour, Johnny Beane was awakened by a scratching at his window screen. He sat bolt upright in bed, terrified. Involuntarily, he screamed, “Burglars!” But a voice answered him in a loud whisper. There was desperation in it.

“I’m not a burglar. I’m Lipschitz. Let me in, please. A mob’s after me. They’ll kill me.”

“The Jew?” asked Johnny Beane.

Yes,” said Lipschitz, now banging on the screen, “the Jew. Let me in, quick!”

Johnny Beane Sprang out of bed and unhooked the screen.

Lipschitz climbed in and replaced the screen.

“Hide under my bed,” said the boy. “I'll go tell pa.”

“Won't he turn me over to the mob?” asked the breath-less fugitive.

“Don't think so,” said Johnny Beane. “Hide under the bed.”

The Jew obeyed and the boy ran barefooted up the hall to the bedroom of his mother and father. He banged on their door.

“It’s the Jew! The Jew!” he cried. “Hurry, he’s hiding under my bed.”

Mr. Beane awoke groggily. “Whut in th’ name of goodness is th’ Jew a-doin’ under yer bed?” he demanded.

“A mob! A mob!” exclaimed Johnny Beane. “They are going to kill him.”

Mr. Beane opened the door and ran down the hall in his long white nightshirt, but Mrs. Beane delayed long enough to put on her robe. The confusion and loud talking upstairs, increased by the appearance of Johnny’s two sisters, awakened Aunt Duty. Soon she, too, appeared before Johnny Beane’s bedroom door, after the steep climb from her quarters in the basement. The old woman stuck her head inside.

“Whut th’ matter up heah?” she demanded in a manner of privileged authority.

By this time the Jew had crawled from beneath the bed.

He stood by it, trembling.

Drusilla Belle, Priscilla Lee, Mrs. Beane, and her husband were too busy babbling about the proper procedure for the emergency at hand to answer the old servant.

“Who thet?” demanded Aunt Duty again, now coming into the chamber and pointing at the miserable stranger.

“That’s the Jew,” whispered Johnny Beane.

“Th’ Jew? Fust one I’se evah seed,” commented Aunt Duty. “He shore powerful leetle, but he seem human all right enough.” She looked the curiosity up and down in frank amazement. Drusilla Belle snickered.

“Shet up, Aunt Duty,” ordered Mr. Beane, “and git back to bed. We’uns liable to hev some serious trouble.”

Aunt Duty obediently shuffled her ancient bones back downstairs, muttering as she went, “He shore powerful leetle. He shore a powerful leetle man. Fust one evah Ah laid mah eyes on.”

The wretched Lipschitz looked anxiously out of the window. The voices of the mob in the street grew louder. Gruff country voices, obviously those of river people.

“They'll kill me!” chattered Lipschitz. “Hide me somewhere, please!” he begged. “Twenty of them come in my store after ten o‘clock tonight to buy some dry goods. The first man I sold said I cheated him.”

“Must hey been a put-up job,” whudja mean a-stayin’ open after all th’ other stores in town closed up? All th’ God-fearin’ people of Leafy Grove’s been in bed for two hours, and yer a.trying to catch a late sale or two from a lot of river rioters. Doggoned iffen Ah don’t believe hit serve yer right.”

“Thet’s not the question,” interrupted Mrs. Beane, lapsing in her excitement into the vernacular of her native soil.

“This heah Jew is in our house. We'uns got to help him.”

“Whar'll we’uns hide him?” asked Mr. Beane.

“Why not in the attic library?” asked Drusilla Belle, with a vicious glance in Johnny Beane’s direction. “He’s little enough to crawl under the rafters.”

Johnny Beane flared. “That’s lowdown of you, Drusilla Belle, plain lowdown of you,” he said.

“Shut up, suh,” ordered his father. “Hit’s a good idea, Drusilla Belle. We’uns will hide th’ Jew in th’ attic.”

The excited searchers were now in the Beanes’ front yard. Drusilla Belle crawled over to the window on her knees and peered into the gloom.

“The whole yard’s full of men,” she whispered. “And look, ma, look!” she cried. “The whole town’s burning up!”

The Beanes ran to the window. The entire business district, disorderly one- and two-story buildings, were dancing like black, animated silhouettes against a background of leaping, golden flame.

“It’s my store! My store!” the Jew cried. “They've set it on fire.”

“Come,” Mrs. Beane said quickly, taking full charge of the situation. “Priscilla Lee, yer get th’ Jew upstairs in th’ attic. John, yer run and git Bishop Grigg quick. Mr. Beane git th’ forty-five outen my top dresser drawer, and Drusilla Belle, yer go down and stay with Aunt Duty.”

As Johnny Beane ran to obey his mother’s command, he heard the town general alarm bell ringing over the firehouse. The volunteer fire department was on the job pulling the pump out of the little peaked building which housed it near the calaboose.

Two buildings now were on fire. The flames from the Jew Store spread fast to the little wooden structure beside it. Leafy Grove’s Pressing Club also was burning down. Sparks were dancing over every structure in the business center.

Tacitus Thigpen was Chief of the Volunteers. He stood in front of the Busy Bee and anxiously watched the course of the flames. The intense heat of the fire, drinking up the rich turpentine of the building’s pine timbers, burst from the Cut-Rate Store and already was blistering the paint on

his own establishment. .

“Throw a stream on mah store front,” he ordered his men, “jest as a precaution. We'uns cain’t afford to let th’ blaze spread. Git some on th’ roof, too. Hit’s jest insulation.

The firemen insulated the Busy Bee while the flames in the Jew Store made headway and the Pressing Club, owned by Gil Class, the Negro tailor, was consumed. Finally, the firemen went to work on the original blaze itself and before long got it under control. That night, only the Jew Store and the Negro place of business were destroyed.

“Durned shame abouten th’ Pressin’ Club,” commented a fireman, “a whole lot of men’ll shore hev to wear overhalls to church next Sunday. Me, too,” he added ruefully.

At the Beane residence, the river men stood in the front yard.

“He’s in thar, shore as hell!” one of them shouted. “Let’s go in and git him!”

“Let's,” shouted the other overalled men. “Let’s drag him out and string him up!”

“Wait a minit,” suggested Jim Volley. “Mebbe we’uns don’t hev to. Mebbe he’ll come outen th’ house without no trouble. Jest a minute, now, jest a minute.”

The farmer strode away from his fellows and stepped up on the Beanes’ front porch. He knocked on the door and shouted at the barrier.

“A Jew’s in thar,” he said, “we’uns aims to take him.”

The answer Jim Volley got did not come in words. Instead, the report of a shotgun blast, its full charge aimed at the cut glass door panel immediately over Jim Volley’s head, shook the entire front of the Beanes’ residence, made the windows rattle and showered the leader with a spray of glass and wood. The startled river farmer ran backwards foolishly, tripped over the door mat and fell sprawling on the neat, gravel walk.

“Goddamned!” ejaculated a frightened farmer. “He's kilt!”

But Jim Volley was far from dead. He pulled himself stupidly to his feet and shook the glass out of his coarse red hair.

“Whut th’ hell’s a-goin’ on?” he demanded painfully. “Are they a-tryin’ to kill people?”

The mob backed off from the yard and gathered on the sidewalk. The flames from the Jew Store lighted the scene like day. Mrs. Beane, holding her smoking shotgun, and followed by Mr. Beane brandishing his forty-five, opened the door and faced the invaders. Mrs. Beane aimed her weapon squarely at Jim Volley.

“Th’ fust man to step foot in my yard will get a load of buckshot!” she announced firmly. “Lowdown trash, coming into Christians’ homes at night with violence in yer hearts. Now, yer leave this minute—all of yer!”

The crowd wavered.

“She’s put in another shell, durn yer,” yelled Mr. Beane, “and Ah’ve got six in mah forty-five.”

“I’m countin’ three,” warned Mrs. Beane, “jest three.”

The sullen men were not convinced.

“Let’s rush hit,” muttered one.

“An’ git kilt?” asked a companion. “Hell, naw, not me! Don’t know whut Ah got mixed up in this mess for, anyway.”

He and a couple of others slunk off and disappeared in the direction of their teams in the hitching lot. The rest of them held on.

“One,” counted Mrs. Beane.

“Now wait a minute, Mrs. Beane,” suggested Jim Volley placatingly. “Wait a minute. We’uns don’t aim to harm yer or yer family. Hit’s only th’ cheating’ Jew we’uns after.”

“Two!” counted Mrs. Beane.

Jim volley and his fellows were getting nervous.

“But—but—Mrs. BEane!” begged Jim Volley.

“Three!” counted Mrs. Beane, and there was a loud explosion.

The mob turned as a man and fled in wild panic for the hitching lot.”

“I aimed over thar heads, thet time,” said Mrs. Beane, as she rested the stock of her shotgun on the porch, “But I saved one shot, jest in case.”

“And me six,” said Mr. Beane proudly. “I was jest a-holdin’ mah fire until th’ proper time.”

A few minutes later, ten mule teams filled with river men galloped wildly out of town.

The shooting attracted as much attention as the fire. Kneeless Noah, the Marshal, goose-stepped up to the Beane porch from somewhere. The family stood there talking while Lipschitz came trembling out of hiding from the attic. Aunt Duty, Drusilla Belle, Priscilla Lee, and Johnny Beane, returning alone on the run from his mission to Bishop Grigg’s house, gathered around the Marshal. Kneeless was waving his pistol in the air.

“Whut’s th’ shootin’ for?” he asked. “Thar’s a powerful lot a-goin’ on around heah tonight. Got mah hands full. With’s th’ shootin’ for?”

Mr. Beane told him. “The Jew wants to go down to see his store,” he said.

“’Tain’t no use,” said the Marshal, buttoning his pistol back up in his leather scabbard, “hit’s burnt plumb to th’ ground. But iffen Ah was th’ Jew, ’twouldn’t be mah store Ah'd be a-wantin’ to see. Hit’d be a northbound train instead. Ah cain’t guarantee to pertect him heah. They’s a lot of feelin’.”

“Whutcha say, Lipschitz?” asked Mr. Beane. “Yer heard whut th’ Marshal say.”

“When does the next train leave for Atlanta?” the Jew asked.

“Jest at sunup,” said Kneeless Noah.

“Will you take me to the station?” Lipschitz asked.

“Be glad to,” acquiesced the policeman, “and furthermore,” he added benevolently, “Ah’ll guard yer, too, until train time.”

Kneeless Noah looked at Mrs. Beane admiringly.

“Well, Ah’ll be durned, Miss Mady,” he said, scratching his lip, “hit shore beat all gitout! When th’ mob five years ago burnt thet rapin’ yaller n*****, Lige Tolliver, right in front of yer own house, yer didn’t even turn a hand, didn’t even stop cookin’ supper. Yit when a mob of ruffians from th’ river tries to lynch a Jew, why, yer risks yer own life and yer family’s life, to save him. Ah cain’t exactly git hit.”

Mrs. Beane, now that her nerves had calmed somewhat, answered him in the manner of a graduate of the Young Ladies’ Seminary for Polite Learning.

“I can,” she said simply. “And if youd read your Bible, you would, too! In Exodus, chapter 19, verse 5, God told Moses in the wilderness of Sinai that the Jews were to be a peculiar treasure unto Him above all people.’ They are His chosen people. The Bible mentions nothing about n*****s being chosen people.”

God’s own cords in the Bible had inspired in Mrs. Beane supreme resolution in the emergency. Her husband timidly patted her on the shoulder and stared at his wife with new respect.

“When God is with you,” said Mrs. Beane, “who can be against you? Johnny,” she said, “where is Bishop Grigg?”

“Said there was no need for him to come,” replied the boy.

“Did you tell him they were trying to kill the Jew?”

“I did, but he said that’s why we had peace officers in Leafy Grove. He said this wasn’t his job, he had worries enough of his own to take care of.”

The boy's mother started to say something, but changed her mind. She strode into her house and ordered her family to follow her.

Chapter XVII: The “Tribulation”

Indeed, Bishop Grigg did have much on his mind. The morning after the attempted lynching of the Jew, he was up and about at a surprisingly early. He had arrived at a prayerful decision as momentous as God’s own verdict for him to preach, and there was much for him to do.

Night after night for a full month, Bishop Grigg had churned the covers of his bed and twisted his sheets in knots. Insomnia, a hitherto unknown affliction in a complacent conscience-free career in God’s service, tortured him cruelly. He had tried everything. He had counted a million Biblical lambs jumping over the comforting rod and staff, he had added up his manifold blessings time on end, consumed much hot water and lemon juice, partaken of baking soda and warm milk, but these remedies availed him naught. Accustomed midnight snacks of pork chops, or cold fried chicken he had exactly halved in an heroic experiment to find relief, but still he tossed and rolled. His prayers went unanswered, too, and black a appeared under his tired eyes, worry lines grooved the cherubic fat of his cheeks, and his girth withered a full notch on his belt.

His colored cook was worried. She told a neighbor, “He look lak he abouten to hev a conniption fit.”

The “Tribulation” was the cause of it all.

The tribulation which filled his waking thoughts and also invaded his exhausting sleep. The Tribulation only stayed in his mind when insomnia gripped him, but it actually came to life in his dreams. On some occasions the Tribulation was accompanied by the beasts of the Revelations. The first time he saw the Tribulation it was escorted by a Presence having eyes like a unto a flame of fire and feet of fine brass.

Bishop Grigg quaked before the Presence, which soon left the Tribulation and retired within the gates of Heaven, as the monsters of St. John the Baptist came to life.

On the next night the Tribulation came on the arm of a screaming Jezebel who announced that she was a prophetess who seduced God’s servants.

The third visit of the Tribulation to Bishop Grigg was terrible. This time it sailed toward him on a Galilean fishing boat which the four beasts pushed on a sea of glass like crystal.

“The first beast was like a lion and the second beast like a calf and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.”

Clearly, these words of St. John ran through the brain of Bishop Grigg, and saw the Tribulation holding out handfuls of jasper and sardine stones as though to tempt him with a bribe and then tobogganing down the slice of a rainbow. The many eyes of which the beasts were full burned into Bishop Grigg’s consciousness, and he heard their thirty-six wings beating in his ears. He saw locusts wearing breastplates of fire, having the faces of men and the bodies of horses and one of them, ridden by Jezebel, galloped toward him. The Bishop cringed and barely managed to escape being trodden by the creature’s hooves. The lewd harlot uttered a vile invitation as she whizzed by.

But all this terrible company deserted the Tribulation on the fourth night of its visitation, and thereafter it always came alone.

The terror of the Tribulation kept him living in agony, asleep or awake. In his nightmares it often came toward him out of a pinpoint of melancholy infinity and then ballooned to impossible dimensions.

The Tribulation, on the Friday night before his great decision, walked from the weird pattern with outstretched hands and long fingers beckoning. The Tribulation had legs and a head and a body, and it had hair. These, however, Bishop Grigg noted only vaguely as the Tribulation approached his bed. It was a pair of heaving breasts which fascinated and hypnotized the dreamer. The Tribulation came closer and closer. Bishop Grigg now was moaning in his sleep. His fat body was jacknifing spasmodically, and he gasped his hectic breath. He held up his hands to push the Tribulation away, and he covered his eyes with a pillow, but the Tribulation X-rayed through the barriers and inched nearer and came on, closer and closer.

For many days, Bishop Grigg had suspected that the Tribulation was a woman. No man, he reasoned, could have such breasts as the Tribulation brazenly displayed to the horrified churchman. But he had never been too sure. In many of his dreams the Tribulation was so distorted that he could not make it out at all. Many times the Tribulation appeared merely as a blur, and never once did it come close enough for him actually to discern the features of its face.

One night the Bishop had tried to kill the Tribulation and had actually grappled with it. He reached out with a howl, to choke it, but the taunting apparition slipped out of his fingers and left them empty even as he had achieved a death grip on its throat.

Its own hands often curled ot from points miles away and stretched Bishop Grigg’s arms to fantastic lengths and encircled its body with them, while his own quaking form remained helplessly in bed. Bishop Grigg tried mightily to identify the sex of the Tribulation which tormented him and one night even teased the invader to come a little closer. But it weaved back and forth so much when it did accept the invitation that the mystery continued.

But now, on Friday night, the thirtieth night of the visitation, it was coming toward him in clearer focus than ever before. Bishop Grigg saw it through crazy eyes which turned it to sickly yellow and then weaved it through a splashing wet color-wheel and then finally it was only pink.

At least he saw it clearly.

Lord, God, it was a woman! Lord, God, have mercy! It was Miss Cora!

And she was easing forward! Bishop Grigg’s perspiration soaked into the mattress. He yelled wildly at her to go away, but she came on. She was undressed!

Bishop Grigg was screeching now. He threw his body over and buried his face in the bed, but Miss Cora persisted and came up towards him from the floor as nude as ever. He flipped with surprising agility over on his back and there Miss Cora was again, coming down from the ceiling in all immodesty. She floated toward him now as he tried to dig a hole through the mattress with his squirming body to escape the terrible presence, but he only rubbed his buttocks raw as the image hovered above.

Her hand was reaching toward him, and her body was falling lower and lower. It floated gently down and finally settled beside him on the bed. Bishop Grigg could feel Miss Cora’s breasts rub against his shoulder.

He shrieked frightfully and fell to the floor with a great thud. There, still asleep, he saw himself in his waking hours looking hungrily at Miss Cora at Beer-Sheba. He saw that he was wanting her then, and he knew now also that he had wanted her subconsciously for a long, long time. He awoke screaming, “Sister Cora, Sister Cora! Go away!”

For several minutes, Bishop Grigg lay where he fell. With great effort he finally pulled himself to his feet and, trembling from his ordeal, floundered toward the reading lamp by his Bible.

“O Lord, O Lord,” he asked, “could it be that I have been concupiscent myself?”

He opened the Scriptures and started reading. Somewhere he would find advice and solace in his great need. For hours his busy gimlet eyes raced through the exhortations of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. When he had read the zealot’s words many times and absorbed the wisdom of his more moderate philosophy, he formulated a plan. It was more radical than any he had ever contemplated before.

The first step towards its execution was a visit to the office of Dr. Smith.

Bishop Grigg looked up and down Center Street nervously to see whether he was observed. There were a few loungers in front of the Post Office awaiting the early assortment of mail, and a little knot of Saturday truck farmers before the Busy Bee, but they, he saw, had interests of their own. Reassured, he knocked on the door of Dr. Smith’s office. The physician opened it.

“Goodgoddlemightydamn! exclaimed Dr. Smith. “Bishop Grigg!”

“Let your yeas be yea and your nays be nay!” said the Bishop unctiously.

“Now looka heah,” said Dr. Smith suspiciously, “iffen yer a-comin’ heah to gimme a lecture, yer kin stop right now. Yer kin take yer puny old Jericho and Babel talk som’ars else!”

“The Walls of Jericho,” said Bishop Grigg, “might not have been any larger than a Georgia barn, and the Tower of Babel no higher than a silo. But they were mighty big in Biblical times. They worked with the tools they had,” declared the Bishop righteously.

“Yer knows we have got a lot more tools now, Bishop Grig, only you Fundamentalist preachers won’t admit ’em. Yer hev said some mighty hard things abouten me, Bishop Grigg,” recollected Dr. Smith. “Cain’t understand yer comin’ heah.”

Bishop Grigg cleared his throat. “My visit has nothing to do with missionary work,” said the Bishop. “It’s strictly professional. Your profession,” he added.

“Mine?”

“Why, er... uh... yes,” said the Bishop. The churchman seemed embarrassed.

“In thet case,” said the doctor, lowering his defenses, “yer kin come on in.” The physician closed the door.

Inside, the Bishop began hesitantly, “You see, Dr. Smith, I have always been one to say that when a man asks a fine woman to marry him he should know first the state of his health.”

“A Fine idee,” admitted Dr. Smith. “But whut’s thet got to do with yer?”

“We-e-el,” faltered Bishop Grigg, “just about everything. You see, Dr. Smith,” he stammered, “I want a physical examination myself. I've decided to marry... to marry Miss Cora.”

“A’ll be tarnation switched!” exclaimed Dr. Smith.

Bishop Grigg ignored the regrettable outburst.

“I should be in good health, Dr. Smith,” he said uncertainly. “I’ve taken care of myself all my life and have always eaten good food.”

“Kin see thet,” said the physician cryptically.

“And I’ve been er... er... well, celibate,” confided the patient.

“Never was one to give thet kind of stuff out as health advice,” answered Dr. Smith. “But whut kind of examination do yer want... a partial, or a complete?”

“What do you mean?”

“Jest whut Ah said,” replied the doctor. “Ah got two kinds... complete and partial. A complete examination gives yer a complete story, a partial, a partial story. Yer get th’ truth either way, jest more of hit with a complete. Do yer want a partial or a complete?”

“Well, in that case,” replied Bishop Grigg; somewhat alarmed at the prospect, “I guess I'll have a complete. After all, I’m about to take a momentous plunge into life’s stream.”

“Then,” demanded Dr. Smith abruptly, “strip.”

The Bishop obeyed.

Dr. Smith stared at him in professional amazement. Never before had he seen a man with so much fat. He was forced to strain to hear the heart beat coming through the thick layers over the Bishop's chest as he dug the diaphragm of his ancient stethoscope as close as possible to his ribs and made the ticklish churchman wriggle.

Thirty minutes later, after he had poked and probed and surveyed the expanses of Bishop Grigg’s fat, peered down his throat through the remarkable aperture which served him as a mouth, and forced him to bob up and down for a heart test, Dr. Smith pronounced his patient fit.

Somehow, the name of an Austrian neurologist who had gained fame by founding a modern theory of sexual psychoanalysis had entirely escaped Bishop Grigg’s attention, which also meant that he had never heard of Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. So he turned to the country doctor for an answer to the problem which troubled him.

“You say my body is all right,” he said, “but for some weeks I have been worried about my... er, er... my dreams.”

Bishop Grigg falteringly told the story of the Tribulation to his astounded listener. When he finished he asked Dr. Smith doubtfully, “Do you think my mind is all right?”

Dr. Smith regarded the Methodist curiously for a full minute. The manner in which his moustache jumped about indicated that he might explode with something important. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, but with sublime charity he let it slide. He got control of himself somehow and replied mildly:

“Iffen ’tain’t now, ’twill be. Thet is,” he added hastily, “after yer married to Miss Cora.”

Bishop Grigg sighed relievedly and put on his clothes.

Dr. Smith’s mention of Miss Cora made Bishop Grigg tingle in spit of himself, and he giggled slightly foolishly.

The Scriptures, according to his interpretation, strictly forbade such mental indulgence. These were dangerous thoughts which filtered through his brain. He shuddered to think of them. He must be guilty of borderline concupiscence, if nothing more.

But, after all, he did plan to marry the lady and this thought helped him shake off his sudden depression and beam upon the atheist almost tolerantly.

“You have been most helpful, Dr. Smith, most helpful. Now tell me what do I owe you?”

“Nothin’,” replied Dr. Smith, “hit’s a weddin’ present.”

Bishop Grigg, accustomed as he was to ministerial courtesies down through the years, which had brought him free fried chickens, railroad tickets, watermelons, Bibles, coconut cakes and suits of clothes, was not astonished.

But he did say, “Thank you! Thank you, indeed!” as though such generosity was the last thing in the world he had expected. Through long experience, he had found that this paid extra dividends. Folks just somehow did not seem to appreciate a matter-of-course attitude when giving something for nothing, even to a Bishop of the church. He picked up his hat to go.

“Now,” he said, “I can freely ask Miss Cora to become my wife.”

“What?” exclaimed Dr. Smith in surprise. “Hain’t yer asked her yit?” “No,” said the Bishop, “but I’ve asked if I might call. I'm catching the Accommodation this very morning—for Cedar Grove.”

Chapter XVIII: As a Twig Is Bent

Dr. Smith stared intently at Bishop Grigg’s alarming physiognomy, and for once his teeth were very quiet and his moustache was tranquil. For the life of him, he could not help comparing the enthusiastic fat rival for Miss Cora’s affections with another, an unwilling recipient of her admiration, a veritable sliver of a lad, Johnny Beane.

The irony of the strange triangle and the forces let loose in Leafy Grove by the mysterious powers of sex and hot religious fervor gave him a feeling of helplessness.

These thoughts, however, were soon crowded out by the doctor's interest in Bishop Grigg’s mouth. Never before had he seen it for so long a time at such close range. He was fascinated. The professional visit to his office gave him an opportunity to study it minutely. He was one of the few persons alive who knew the closely guarded secret of the aperture.

“Ah’ll be tarnation switched,” he muttered half aloud, as he let his eyes dwell upon the cavity. “Ah never realized hit was quite thet bad.” His knowledge of the Bishop’s infancy and childhood supplied the reasons for the deformity. It was he who had delivered the squawling baby who was to become the senior churchman of the community, and he alone answered calls as the family doctor of Judah Grigg’s parents when diseases of childhood attacked the newcomer.

The Bishop’s mouth was, indeed, a misshapen snoot. The gums protruded out of all normalcy, and his lips were permanently molded in the shape of a boy whistling loudly, or of the lips of a man who has just eaten a green persimmon, or of one who, having bitten into a hot fried tomato which scorches the palate, desperately sucks in air to cool the torturing morsel.

Fishermen who had experience trawling in the Everglades compared his mouth with that of the hideous jewfish. Judah’s teeth, which never grew very large even after he was full-grown, pushed like baby molars horizontally forward, giving him the startling expression of a Berkshire pig, especially when he began to put on weight and develop fatty pouches on both sides of his nose and a heavy, terraced chin which shook or throbbed when he swallowed.

His maxilla had developed bulgingly. Heavy muscular insulation pushed out like prosperous coin purses under his ear lobes and, though actually hard and firm, agitated like fluttering, fatty wings when he masticated his food.

But Bishop Grigg, as Dr. Smith well knew, had not been born with this deformity. His father, Jonah, and his mother, Sairy, had told him the story in their anxiety, and despite his ever-increasing contempt for the man of God, he had kept their confidence well.

Now, as he soberly surveyed the distorted mouth, his mind went back over the years to a tumbledown cabin home on the banks of Yellow River where baby Judah’s father made charred oaken kegs for moonshiners, over the protests of his devout Methodist wife. Her stubborn husband was adamant in his refusal to stop his sinful work.

“Ah'm makin’ kaigs. Ah’m charrin’ ‘em. Ah hain’t puttin’ likker in ‘em. God makes th’ corn. God makes th’ trees. Ah make th’ kaigs. Whut people put in ’em hain’t mah affair. Who knows,” he added by way of apology, “but whut they will be used for vinegar?”

Judah’s father sold his product with complete impartiality to miller and distiller alike.

“Hoe cakes or likker,” philosophized the farmer, “hit’s all th’ same to me. Whut they do with hit hain’t none of my durned business.”

The good woman guided Judah’s religious training along solid Wesleyan lines even from infancy. She lugged her heavy child with staunch regularity to hear the word of God on the very first Sunday Dr. Smith would permit her to leave the house.

“Judah will be a preacher,” she announced confidently. “God makes preachers. He will call Judah,” she said. In furtherance of her hope, she exposed her son to long revivals, Sunday School, and two services on the Sabbath. In addition, he sat with his mother at regular Thursday night prayer meetings at the crossroads church.

During a long sermon when the sturdy little boy, now past two years old, had trudged to the house of worship by his mother’s side, he climbed to his feet on the hard bench and pulled frantically at her fresh-starched calico shirtwaist. The strong little fellow fairly succeeded in ripping away a button or two and exposing one of her breasts before his parent could stop him from committing further damage. To make matters worse, young Judah started screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Mama, Ah’m hongry.”

Her secret out, Mrs. Grigg, blushing, fled the house of God carrying her infant, who, still screaming and reaching for his mother’s nipples, was oblivious to everything except the pangs of a cavern already large for one of his age. Mrs. Grigg cast one unhappy, despairing glance over her shoulder as she plunged through the door. She saw the blurred sea of worshippers’ faces merge with her panic into one great grinning mask to mock her and torment her, and the laughter which came sacrilegiously from the fantastic composite mouth of this mask followed her to the dusty, red Georgia road and echoed in her ears all the way home. There, for the last time, when Judah was two years and seven months of age, he sucked his fill from his weeping mother’s breasts. The next day she put her son on an exclusive diet of oatmeal and cow’s milk, despite his cries, which she resolutely ignored. Mrs. Grigg had no intention of going through such an ordeal again.

She met his hunger strike which followed the unaccustomed regimen by inviting him to nurse from nipples upon which she rubbed red pepper from her own garden.

Young Judah, his mouth afire from the pungent condiment, created bedlam noises which were heard as far away as Dewberry’s crossing up the river where trotline fishermen went nightly to unhook their catch.

The exercise was good for lungs which some years later loudly propounded the stern gospel of the Old Testament— “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—crowding out, as Dr. Smith sometimes said, all the “goodness of Christ” entirely and “admittin’” only a monster to worship.

On the next day, Judah ate heartily of his Oatmeal. Fasting was repugnant and alien to him, even in his babyhood.

Jonah Grigg took his wife to task, “Whudja allow ’im to hang on so long for, Miss Sairy? Yer got his mouth lookin’ like a perch’s mouth, all stuck out like. He sucked too long.”

“Ah knows hit, Mister Grigg, Ah knows hit; but ’twas God’s will. Or at least in a certain sort of Way, at thet.”

“Whudja mean, God’s will? Mah ma was God-fearin’ as th’ next one, and she weaned me prompt five months after Ah was born”

“’Tain’t whut Ah mean, Mister Grigg, ’tain’t whut Ah mean, a-tall.”

“Whudja mean, woman?” Farmer Grigg demanded this in some annoyance. “Why, folks allow hit’s durn sinful. A big boy like Judah, old enough to be eatin’ cracklin’ bread and still nursin’.”

“Jest th’ orposite, Mister Grigg.”

“Orposite of whut, Miss Sairy?”

“Orposite of sin! I say, orposite of sin! Yer see, Mister Grigg, Ah wanted only one baby, jest Judah, Mister Grigg.”

“An’ whut’s nursin’ for two and a half years got to do with havin’ babies, Miss Sairy? Yer talk like a loon.”

“No sech of a thing, Mister Grigg. Hit all has to do with th’ Good Book an’ sech. Most women cain’t have babies whilst nursin’ and so it hain’t sin.”

Jonah’s brow wrinkled in complete bewilderment. “Whut hain’t sin?” he asked almost weakly.

“Ah mean whut gees on twixt you an’ me.” “Whut?” “Ah mean at night like,” said Mrs, Grigg, now blushing as violently as she did in church when Judah exposed her breast.

“Ah never thought about hit as sin,” declared Mister Grigg, as though he were pained. “We’uns married, hain’t we’uns?”

“Shorely,” pronounced Mrs. Grigg, “but yer see, hit’s abouten babies, and since Ah never planned to hev more than Judah, so he could git school learnin’, Ah had to figger out a way to stop ’em comin’ without sinnin’, and nursin’ was th’ answer.”

Jonah Grigg sighed. “Ah don't git hit yit.

“Th’ Good Book hit say marriage is for to sow th’ seeds of life an’ for fruitfulness to multiply and replenish th’ earth and to stop nature is a sin—like murder sometimes. Mrs. Grigg hesitated for a brief moment, as though to summon sufficient courage to finish her explanation. “When hit’s fun,” she said, “hit’s fornicatin’.”

Jonah stood up, seemingly aghast.

“Ah mean,” hastily explained his wife, “when hit’s for fun alone. Hit hain’t no sin when Ah don’t try to interfere with nature. When Preacher Vinson’s widow explained nursin’ overlong wasn’t no sin and could not be genuwinely called ‘Interferin’,’ hit seemed to be th’ simple way, th’ only way not to hev babies and not to violate th’ Scriptures. The miserable woman burst into tears.

When young Judah finally was called to the ministry, Mrs. Grigg tearfully told her son the story of the long weaning, and, for good measure, explained the source of the money which would defray his education at the Methodist Seminary for young students of Wesleyan theology. Judah, in his excitement, paid little attention at that time to his mother's words, but later in life often reflected sadly that his religious education was made possible by hated likker money and his mouth was twisted into its grotesque shape by despised birth control.

Chapter XIX: The Sin of a Mother

The ponderous Methodist fairly skipped out of the office leaving the preoccupied doctor with his memories. Everything about Bishop Grigg reflected his expansive mood.

His lapel was appropriately adorned with a tight little boutonniere of sweetheart roses plucked from the sidewalk bushes in front of his home in a reckless moment of near gaiety. His high black button shoes wore a bright polish, and his jet tailcoat had been brushed so hard and long that some of the nap had been revived in the process. The great concave mirrors ballooning in the seat of his pants, however, were as bright as usual.

The Bishop’s little front teeth were gleaming white. He had brushed them with salt and baking soda and had not forgotten to clip the hairs from his nostrils and fatty little ear guards with a pair of sewing scissors. His face was scrubbed to a shine. His hair was dampened with bay rum, and his stubborn cowlick had been brought under control.

The yearning tenderness in his heart softened an expression etched by years of austere thinking and living and the grim business of saving souls and gave him the strangely warm and tolerant look possessed by all men who have just discovered love.

He greeted everyone most cheerfully, but the keeper of the sheep stiffened somehow involuntarily when one of his straying flock crossed his path. It was Johnny Beane.

The sight of the boy was disturbing. Bishop Grigg looked the other way. In his annoyance he muttered “Soup! Soup!” several times and finally restored his equanimity only by concentrating on the strategy astutely planned for the adventure ahead.

Bishop Grigg had particularly weighed the possible consequences of marriage to the concupiscent Miss Cora, and in her very disgrace he saw an opportunity even to increase his already enormous spiritual prestige. Many actually would deem the matrimony a generous and ennobling act on his part and the curvaceous school teacher a lucky sinner, indeed.

Bishop Grigg reached this logical conclusion with vast satisfaction, and the doubts which occasionally crept into his mind he dismissed lightly. If, perchance, his calculations proved wrong, he had reached the point where he was willing to take the chance, regardless.

When the Bishop finally heard the whistle blow, he waited impatiently until the train churned to a stop and lumbered buoyantly up the platform steps of a nonsmoking coach of the Accommodation and ensconced himself in an empty cinder-peppered red plush seat.

The locomotive whistle pip-squeaked its notice of departure, and the wooden cars shook in every timber as the engine jerked forward. Bishop Grigg’s bulk lurched, and his teeth rattled until the unwilling train achieved a fairly smooth momentum.

The passenger squirmed an adjustment of his caudal protuberances and looked out of the window. Telephone poles and chicken wire fences raced backward beyond a furious curtain of steam and flying ashes at the rate of twenty-five miles per hour, with a company of sway-backed milch cows grazing on front lawns and a variegated pattern of potato hills, compost mounds, and barnyards.

He was now on his way. The realization of movement gave Bishop Grigg a momentarily heavy sense of finality, and in spite of himself he suffered a degree of nervousness.

He swallowed some tightness out of his throat and opened his Bible. Possibly in Genesis he might find some calming reassurance.

“And the Lord said, it is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” This was good. It made him feel better.

Bishop Grigg turned to Proverbs. With much relish he read that “who so findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord.”

He re-read St. Paul. The roving tentmaker left nothing to the imagination.

“It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” wrote the apostle to the Corinthians after he had desisted from persecuting Christians. “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”

Christ’s zealous advocate further observed that for those who “cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”

Bishop Grigg found these divine words gloriously applicable to his own heated frame. He thumbed to Timothy. “A bishop must be blameless,” he read “the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach...”

There! What further proof could any man ask that he was obeying the ordained will of God?

Bishop Grigg decided to scan the chapter in Romans on concupiscence; but wished, when he had read it, that he had left well enough alone with Genesis and Timothy. The first verse he saw distressed him greatly.

“. . . then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Christ’s own words, quoted by St. Matthew, made him shiver. “But I say unto you,” he read, “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Holy God! The thought a sin equal to the act itself! Where, he wondered, would lust begin and end even after marriage to the desirable Miss Cora! It was very confusing. He was lost in disquieting reverie and the Accommodation had already pulled into the Cedar Grove station before he realized where he was.

Miss Cora’s aunt and landlady, the widowed Mrs. Ruby White, was overwhelmed by the forthcoming visit of Bishop Grigg. She truly hoped its purpose was social rather than spiritual. Should such an important dignitary of the church give his good name to her sister’s child it would forever erase the stigma of the unfortunate Beer-Sheba confession. Mrs. White hed suffered exquisitely and the shame of it had fairly made her a nervous wreck. But she had rallied, after all, and used her best efforts in obtaining for the erring young woman a position in Cedar Grove which would be acceptable to the community at large. Miss Cora now worked as the town librarian, where she did not have too close contact with the young children of the district.

The parlor in her Aunt Ruby's house was typical of untold thousands in Dixie's land of Genesis and Original Sin. Mrs. White decided to open the room for the occasion of Bishop Grigg’s visit. Kept closed the year around except for spring house cleanings and used only for funerals and weddings, the room now was aired, dusted, and swept. Never since moving into her aunt’s house after taking the new position as Cedar Grove’s librarian had Miss Cora seen such hustle and bustle.

“Why,” said her Aunt Ruby, “a Bishop’s a Bishop. The biggest Methodist who ever set foot inside my door before was a Presiding Elder. The Reverend White would not have had it otherwise.” The good woman lowered her voice for whispered emphasis. “And furthermore,” she said, “this is too big a chance for you to miss.”

The pointed significance of Mrs. White’s remark made Miss Cora blush. She busied herself almost desperately in the unnecessary business of dusting a brand-new linen jacket with raised green embroidery spelling out the words “Trust in God,” which was placed on the brick door stop. The Negro hired girl, who was polishing the stereopticon and a set of educational slides showing scenes from the Alaskan Gold Rush and a number of celebrated Mississippi River packet races, grinned broadly.

The excitement over the portentous visit had made her giddy and foolish. She tittered and giggled inferences which so upset Miss Cora that she tripped over a valued piece of petrified wood and almost fell on her way to wipe a huge gold-framed lithograph of Mar’se Robert astride Traveler.

Mrs. White ignored the confusion and attacked a year’s accumulation of drifting chimney soot on a brass fire lighter, the coal tongs, a fire poker, the small shovel, and the hearth whisk broom. She arranged these articles in her appointed racks behind a hinged fire guard of scorched tin, and turned her attention to a long mahogany music box, its top inlaid with ivory fleurs-de-lis, a Swiss antique capable of playing four religious numbers, including There’s Power in the Blood, A Sinner Like Me, True Hearted, Whole Hearted, and Saved by Grace.

“If you think it necessary,” suggested Aunt Ruby, “you can turn it on. There are times music can come in mighty handy.”

The hired girl laughed fatuously and Miss Cora dropped a pair of Confederate epaulettes.

“Sometimes a man needs helping along a bit,” said Mrs. White with a sigh. “Never will forget Zabdi’s favorite. Nothing made him as sentimental as True Hearted, Whole Hearted. The woman stopped her work and looked at her niece anxiously. “You'll do your best, now, won’t you?”

Miss Cora’s eyes fell to the floor, and she was silent for a moment before she answered. “I’ll try,” she said quietly.

Miss Cora demurely awaited the visitor’s arrival in cluttered hodgepodge. She did her utmost to remain calm when she herald the Accommodation blow for the Cedar Grove stop. She looked at herself in the hall mirror again. Everything was just right. Her breasts were tightly taped as usual, there was not a bulge or a hump in the smooth lines of her well corseted figure, and her only party dress of changeable taffeta, now blue, now violet, now quite gray, was very becoming. Her bosom was modestly concealed by a vestee of cream lace, and her Sunday shoes, pointed pumps with cut steel buckles, made her feet seem small and stylish. Since only hussies used rouge rouge, Miss Cora’s closest approach to artificial beauty aids Was a light dusting with perfumeless Chinese rice powder of her healthy cheeks and that part of her neck not hidden by the collar. She had dabbed lemon verbena on her wrists.

When the still simpering hired girl admitted Bishop Grigg to the house and escorted him to the parlor door, the very sight of Miss Cora unnerved him. He stood helplessly as he recalled his thirty nights of terror. In spite of himself, he mouthed the name of his tormentor.

“The Tribulation!”

The Bishop’s surprising ejaculation so startled Miss Cora that she completely forgot to welcome him into her home. Instead, she asked in alarm, “Bishop Grigg! Bishop Grigg! Is something the matter?”

The Bishop wiped his hand wearily over his eyes as though to blot out the horrible image, shook his great head vigorously and steeled himself for the ordeal ahead. Bravely, he accepted Miss Cora’s anxious invitation to be seated on the sofa, found that he had to enter the room sideways to squeeze past the crowded furniture, and finally placed himself upon the slippery leather. Miss Cora sat timidly beside him. Nothing was happening as the Bishop expected.

“Maybe it’s train sickness, Bishop Grigg,” she suggested.

“That old smoke and all.”

Bishop Grigg could non look at her. He held his eyes upon the fireplace.

“No, Sister Cora,” he said sadly, “that’s not the kind of sickness I have.”

Somehow, Bishop was disappointed that the little tingling sensations produced by thoughts of Miss Cora had faded from his body the very instant he laid eyes upon the teacher herself. He knew that this would never do and that he must shake off his phobia. It was only with superhuman effort that he finally did turn his head and look his hostess squarely in her troubled but still slumberous blue eyes.

Jehovah! What they did to him! In one instant, the spell of fear was broken. Love and desire confounded him. He gibbered.

Miss Cora cast an undecided glance toward the music box. This was perhaps the moment Aunt Ruby had prepared her for. Falteringly, she began, “True Hearted, Whole Hearted...”

Bishop Grigg promptly seized on the words. “Lord, yes, Sister!” he interrupted, “Lord, yes!” He moaned almost with contrition. “Oh, Miss Cora, oh, Miss Cora, true-hearted and whole-hearted, so I will ever be!”

The misunderstood school teacher changed her mind about the Swiss antique and looked down at her lap.

Bishop Grigg inadroitly reached out to touch her hand. Somehow, in his inexperience he felt this was the proper preliminary in plighting his troth. The gesture was the penultimate of his daring. Nervously, and with unintentional sharpness, Miss Cora blurted, "Why, Bishop Grigg!”

In pure astonishment, and nothing else, Miss Cora slid an inch away over the cooperating surface of the slick imitation leather sofa.

The Bishop blushed. Had she rebuked him? He felt that he had blundered. The clumsy lover started on a new tack. "I was hasty, I was hasty, Sister Cora," he apologized. "You see," said Bishop Grigg, "I am neither exactly young nor am I exactly old. This I discovered only recently."

He looked at the teacher to see what sort of effect the important announcement had made on her. Miss Cora’s eyes did not waver from the hem of the peplum in her taffeta lap. Desperately, she was trying to do her best, but she felt uneasy and was having trouble lifting her eyes.

Bishop Grigg felt that he had made two inspired overtures. The response to both only contributed further to his discomposure. His eyes took on a mournful expression, and he gazed at Miss Cora beseechingly for understanding. Bishop Grigg, who could move the devout woman to tears from his pulpit, was learning that his powers did not necessarily extend to the parlor. The churchman was palpably on unfamiliar ground. Resolute and vehement behind the altar, his tough spiritual fibers supported his every word, gave him courage and bestowed eloquence as he imparted fear, lashed out at the contumelious and burned for Heaven’s revenge on the defiant.

Never once had he entertained the slightest doubt but that the disgraced school teacher would accept his offer of marriage.

But Miss Cora still studied the stitching of her peplum.

Bishop Grigg pleaded his ignorance. “Oh, Sister Cora,” he said pathetically, “you know I have always been too busy with God’s work to learn much about the tender language of love.”

Miss Cora’s preoccupation with her untwilled silken lap came to an abrupt end. Here it was at last. Although she had confidently anticipated a proposal, somehow she had not expected to hear that word issuing from the lips of her holy visitor.

“Love?” Miss Cora gasped.

"Yes, dear one," shouted Bishop Grigg in a high, frightened voice, “as the Lord is my witness, yes! Love!”

The dignitary in his excitement leaned toward her. Miss Cora retreated another inch down the sofa and almost slipped off. Bishop Grigg worked under a handicap, bracing his big body continually with a foot anchored on a hooked rug.

The Bishop’s heart was racing wildly, now telling an entirely different story than Dr. Smith’s diaphragm had picked up earlier that morning. Stark passion gripped him for the first time in his life. It was rattling his senses around in his head. The new experience made him pop-eyed and his face flushed with high excitement. The Bishop’s hot fervor drove reason and control from his brain. He pushed himself toward Miss Cora. Again he reached for her hand. This time he seized her wrist. Bishop Grigg's swelling neck muscles pushed a rim of red fat over his celluloid collar. His lower lip was sagging over his chin.

And Miss Cora saw his mouth for the first time. Always before she had seen only his noble soul. She shuddered in repugnance and dosed her eyes. Her resolution disappeared and her aunt’s advice was forgotten. Heavy breathing pumped the Bishop’s chest. He pulled himself closer to the woman he loved. Miss Cora was struggling blindly to escape, but he held on tightly.

“Dear one, dear one!” shouted the Bishop hoarsely.

Miss Cora now was crushed into the sofa's corner.

“Will you do me the honor?” begged Bishop Grigg. “Will you do me the honor...”

“Let me go, let me go!” pleaded Miss Cora. “Please, please let me go!”

Bishop Grigg did not hear. Pantingly, he pushed his face closer to the frantic woman, and she felt the dampness of his breath spanking her forehead. She opened her eyes again and looked at the anguished countenance above her. What she saw made her shriek.

“God have mercy! Oh! That mouth, that mouth!” screamed Miss Cora so shrilly that General Lee’s picture rattled on the wall. “God have mercy! God have mercy!”

Now she was fighting frenziedly. Bishop Grigg lost his anchorage on the hooked rug and slipped to the floor with a thump. He did not notice Mrs. White until she was already in the room. He released his hold on his victim’s arm and looked up at the two women stupidly.

“Whatever on earth is the matter?” demanded Mrs. White.

Miss Cora leaped to her feet. Her hair was disarranged, her sleeve was torn and her wrist inflamed from the Bishop’s powerful grip.

“That mouth, that mouth! That awful mouth!” sobbed Miss Cora hysterically as she rushed from the parlor.

The widow of the late Reverend Zabdi White looked at the Bishop on her parlor floor in consternation, bewilderment, and frustration.

She emitted a hopeless sigh, but with Christian resignation she ran to comfort her niece’s hysteria.

The forlorn fat man of God lifted his larded misery from the floor. As one crushed he walked out into the street. The echo of Miss Cora’s words was still ringing in his fanlike ears, “Oh, that mouth; that awful mouth!” These were the words which had sobered him. His mouth, the sin of his mother.

In his despair he called upon the Lord even as did Christ upon the cross. Turning his face to Heaven, he said: “Eloi Eloi, Lama Sabach Thani.”

“Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?” asked the Bishop over and over as he walked sadly to the station and the ride back to a lonely life of bachelorhood in Leaf Grove.”

Chapter XX: The Chairman

When the Accommodation crawled into Leafy Grove the Bishop descended, still sunk in utter gloom. Walking up the street, lost in self-pity, the Man of God was barely conscious of the crowd he passed on the way to his Church Street residence.

There was nothing secret about the Saturday afternoon meeting in the hitching lot behind the Court House. In fact, nearly everyone was there except Kneeless Noah, who thought it best, under the circumstances, that he stay away.

Johnny Beane joined the throng early and found an uneasy seat on the singletree of a farmer's wagon backed up to the calaboose and close by Sheriff Tobe (Notch) Gates. Most of the farmers were spouting suggestions. The smelly area was packed with overalled farmers from miles around. They looked mad. Red necks, leather necks, pimpled necks were in evidence everywhere, and there was much angry shouting in outraged pride of race and color. They did much spitting to punctuate their spleen, and there was a wild quality in the low, ominous roar made by their combined, clamoring voices. The deadly grim key of it was paralyzing.

“Goddamn it, string him up now, now, now!” a farmer shouted.

The mob cry froze Leafy Grove’s civilization in its track and coarse, white trash lynch fever ran a high temperature in the town. Something terrible had been unleashed in the little county seat.

The boy shifted nervously on the singletree. Men were coming from everywhere. From Center Street, hundreds of farmers poured into the public ground to join the throng. The impatient mood of the hitching lot mob was best expressed by a second yelling river sharecropper who demanded immediate execution of the accused prisoner.

“To hell with waitin’,” he shouted, “let’s burn him now.”

The Sheriff seemed worried. He held up his hand and bellowed for silence.

“Now look heah, boys, this thing cain’t git outen hand. We'uns cain’t afford to botch this business no way a-tall.”

He turned to an executive-looking knot of rawboned plow-hands for support.

“Listen, boys,” he said, “we-uns gotta hev a chairman for this job, thet’s all there is to hit. Someone with central authority and control. Thet’s mah last word.”

The florid-faced Sheriff, who had won his nickname from the number of notches on his bone-handled forty-five, fingered his weapon suggestively. The men noted the gesture with respect. The yelling stopped.

“Who'll hit be?” he asked. “Pick yer man.”

Everett Stokes spoke up. “Ah nominates Jim Volley,” he shouted.

“Well,” said Jim Volley modestly, “Ah guess Ah hev had more experience than any of th’ others.”

“Second th’ motion,” boomed Big Steve Williams.

“Hell,” loudly protested someone in the crowd, “this heah is a waste of time. Let’s yell ’im in. Let’s yell Jim Volley in as Chairman.”

A great roar went up, and Jim Volley became Chairman by acclaim.

Notch turned to Jim Volley and shook his hand in congratulation. “Thet’s plumb fine, Jim,” he said heartily. “Yer'll make a good leader. Always best to hev a compeetent leader to deal with. Yer know a sheriff's got to think of a lot of things. Hit’s much more efficient this-a-way.”

Jim Volley beamed proudly. “Ah kin appreciate thet,” he agreed.

Notch now addressed the boys as a whole. “A sheriff's got to be keerful, downright keerful these days,” he told them.

“Ah hain’t afraid of th’ Georgia courts. Hit’s th’ durned Federal people. Yer knows how these damned Yankees is, always nowadays a-agitatin’ agin lynchin’. Th’ meddlin’ bastards.”

Notch paused to accept the wild applause.

“Iffen they only lived down heah for a while,” he continued finally, when his voice could be heard again, “they'd see for theyselves whut we’uns up against and keep they durned fly traps buttoned up. Hit’s sech stuff as thet which caused th’ War Between th’ States.”

“Yer tell ’em, Notch,” a supporter shouted approvingly.

“A lynchin’, when hit’s proper,” said the Sheriff, “only saves court costs. A long trial for a guilty n*****’s jest a lot of foolishness.” He paused again for applause. “Nonetheless,” he said, “when yer comes to git him outen th’ jail, Ah’'ll hev to do some shootin’.”

The Chairman laughed at this one, and the crowd shared his enjoyment raucously.

“Yer a sight,” one of his auditors said, by way of compliment.

“He shore likes his leetle joke,” agreed another.

“Bet he'll shore kill a lot of air a-pluggin’ away at us,” laughed a planter.

“Aim high, Sheriff,” suggested an obtuse red neck. “Don’t git nervous and shoot low.”

The Sheriff decided to get down to specific details. “Well,” he said, “Ah guess we'uns better do a leetle scufflin’, too.” He turned to Jim Volley. “Jim, after yer gits in th’ jail a couple of th’ boys better wrestle me to th’ floor, jest in case thar happens to be a investigation later.”

“Must we hit yer, Sheriff?” asked Jim Volley.

“Might as well,” agreed the Sheriff. “Might as well. But,” he warned, “jest a token blow.”

Jim Volley winked. “Don’t like to hit a sheriff a-tall,” he said. He surveyed the great frame of the peace officer and took in his pistol as well.

“Yer don’t hev to hit hard, do yer?” asked Sheriff Gates.

“Don’t worry!” said the Chairman, as he noted his specifications again. “We’uns'll be durned keerful!”

“Ah’m glad hit’ll be over soon,” said the Sheriff painfully. “Th’ durned n*****’s gittin’ on mah nerves. Sittin’ thar in his rocker all day and night, rockin’ back and forth, back and forth, readin’ th’ Bible, and singin’ and prayin’. Hit’s enough to shake a man loose from his senses. When a n***** gits religion, he shore kin carry on somethin’ awful.”

“Ah hope he cornfesses,” said the mob Chairman. “it'll be good for public opinion.”

“Iffen he’s guilty,” said the Sheriff reassuringly, “he'll cornfess, shore as hell. Guilty n*****s, when they knows they’s goin’ to die always cornfesses. Guilty n*****s always cornfesses when they knows they’s no hope. Hit’s because n*****s is afraid of God. Iffen he guilty for shore, yer got nothin’ to worry about, boys, nothin’ a-tall.”

“We'uns plannin’ somethin’ special for this lynchin’,” Jim Volley confided to Notch. “Plan is to hang him from Hawg Tusk trestle on th’ Georgia Railroad.”

Notch scratched his head.

“Thet’s a durned high trestle,” he said doubtfully. “A durned good hundred and thirty feet. Whut yer hangin’ ’im so high for?”

“So he'll drop a long ways,” laughed the Chairman.

Notch grinned. “Shore will take a lot of rope,” he observed.

“We'uns got a lot,” said the Chairman. “Twenty-seven foot of hit, and ever’ last inch been a-hangin’ with sand bags for three days. Th’ rope’s in good shape. Hit'll be th’ longest drop Ah ever heard tell of.”

“When yer comin’ fer him? Ah aims to be prepared.”

The humor of this tickled Notch and brought scattered laughter from those in the crowd who caught on to his subtlety.

“Tomorrow,” answered Jim Volley.

“Tomorrow?” asked the Sheriff in surprise. “Whut for tomorrow? Whut yer waitin’ for? Ah told yer Ah was tired of thet durned singin’ and prayin’.”

“Well,” explained Jim Volley, “hit’s this-a-way. We’uns plans to meet back of th’ Court House right after church, one o'clock prompt, Sunday afternoon. Some of th’ boys don’t want to miss th’ services, afraid they wives might get suspicious iffen they stays away. Yer knows, Sheriff, how some womenfolks is about sech things. So we’uns all agreed not to take th’ prisoner until church is over.”

Jim Volley took time off to spit.

“Another thing,” he said, wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand, “some of th’ relatives of th’ deceased is comin’ down from Atlanta. They cain’t possibly git heah before tomorrow. As far as th’ time’s concerned, hit’s a gineral convenience all around.”

The disappointed Sheriff was forced to agree. “Ah understands,” he said. “Ah understands. Then tomorrow ’tis.”

Everyone agreed that the Sheriff, under the circumstances, was being a good sport about the entire matter.

“"Twasn’t thet Ah wanted to rush yer,” Gates explained. “Hit hain’t thet. Hit’s jest th’ n*****’s moanin’ and chantin’. Thet’s abouten th’ main thing.”

“We'uns appreciates thet,” said the Chairman, sympathetically. “But he’ll be doin’ his moanin’ in hell before yer goes to bed tomorrow night. Don’t worry, Sheriff.”

“Thanks,” said Notch gratefully.

“This'll be one of th’ biggest lynchin’s in Georgia,” boasted the Chairman. “Iffen they could run excursion trains to Leafy Grove, hit’d take one ten miles long to accommodate th’ crowd.”

“Ah'll bet,” said the Sheriff.

“As ‘tis,” Jim Volley continued, “they is comin’ from miles around, anyway a-tall, jest to git heah. “T'was a powerful hee-nious crime.”

“’Twas thet!” asserted the Sheriff. “Ah’d like to spring th’ trap on him mahself, strictly legal, ’ceptin’ a strictly legal hangin’ don’t set th’ proper example for other n*****s. Lynchin’ puts th’ fear of God in n*****s. Only single reason ever last white woman in Georgia hain’t raped right now’s because of lynchin’. Does yer agree?” he asked, turning to the Chairman.

“Agree? Why, Lawdy me, Sheriff,” replied the Chairman as though pained by his doubts, “how’n th’ world kin yer ask such a question of me? Ah’ve presided at as many lynchin’s as anybody heahabouts. Ah knows whut hit takes and Ah intends to do mah duty’s long as th’ Almighty'll permit me to live, and Ah only hope and pray to God mah sons ll do th’ same after me.”

Jim Volley was the descendant of a hillbilly grandfather out of Tennessee’s Big Smokies. He came out of the foggy mountains in a covered wagon pulled by a ratty-eared mule and followed by a poverty-stricken hound dog. The higgledy-piggledy conveyance was loaded with a sack of meal, a hunk of bacon, a gallon jug of corn liquor, a pregnant wife, and nine snotty-nosed children ranging in age from one to nine. When he settled on Georgia’s Yellow River he brought “we’uns” to the dialect of Leafy Grove and hard blood to lower Dixie. His grandson was proud of his family traditions, thought of his grandfather as a pioneer and grew up, in keeping with all of his kind, in active contempt of the Negro, his economic rival, and the one element in all the world over whom he could boast superiority and demonstrate it to the vast satisfaction of his pride by violence of the boot, the rope, the Smith & Wesson, or the lash. Jim Volleys never hit a Negro with their fists. “They haids too durned hard,” said the careful men. “Don’t never hit a n***** ’cept’n with a stick or a pistol butt. Break yer hand, shore as hell. If yer wants to kill one easy, jest kick ’im in his heel.”

The hitching lot council was about to break up. The Sheriff got ready to leave. He bit a crescent out of a long thin plug of natural leaf, softened it for a moment with animated workings of his teeth, tongue, and gums, got it “set” in his cheek, and had a few parting words.

“One more thing,” he said, “ever’ last man heah wear a mask, yer heah me? Ah don’t want no more lynchin’s whilst Ah’m Sheriff with uncovered faces. How kin Ah swear Ah don’t recognize yer when yer come to take a prisoner in broad daylight ’thout maskin’? Ah’ll refuse to turn Punkie over to yer, shore as hell, iffen yer’s unmasked. Hit’s a lot of trouble for so many men, Ah knows perfectly well, but hit’s worth hit. Pass th’ word around, boys, pass th’ word around.”

“We'uns will, Sheriff,” said Jim Volley. “Ever’ last man'll wear some kind of mask, even iffen hit’s only a dish rag.”

“Well, boys,” said the Sheriff, “Ah’ll be a-seein’ yer.” He winked with artful dissimulation and made size fourteen tracks in the direction of the county jail.

The crowd broke up, but a number stuck around awhile to discuss the fine points of the meeting. Johnny Beane tarried on the singletree and picked up the scraps. Aunt Duty would not want him to miss a word.

Holofernes Holloway, a river farmer with the fanciest given name in his settlement, son of a devout Bible-reading mother, who garbled versions of Old Testament Apocrypha, and somehow made Holofernes, a general of Nebuchadnezzar, her personal saint, sized things up.

“Notch shore is powerful cooperative.”

“Shucks!” said his companion. “Has to be whether he wants to or not. Comin’ up for election next year, yer know. Notch ain’t dumb. Knows which side his bread’s buttered on, all right. He won't git enough town votes to elect a deacon in th’ Campbellite Church. He’s depending on th’ river vote to put ‘im in. He knows how we'uns feels about Punkie.”

“A real politician!” said the farmer admiringly.

“Hit’s goin’ to be a durned fancy lynchin’,” Holofernes commented. “A twenty-seven-foot drop! Whew! Enough to cut Punkie’s head off his shoulders.”

Holofernes high-pressured a squirt of tobacco juice in a fine stream a good six feet away.

“So long,” he said, “gotta buy my old woman a yard or two of calico. Ah don’t let her come into town no more. Keep th’ women home, Ah say. Ah got mine bigged agin and Ah’m a-goin’ to keep her thetaway. Thet’s th’ onliest way to keep ’em home.”

The men laughed and straggled off in various directions to do their Saturday shopping.

Johnny Beane ran to tell Aunt Duty.

At the supper table, Johnny Beane brought up the subject of Punkie hesitantly.

“They are going to lynch Punkie Brown tomorrow after church,” he said nervously, to his father. Mr. Beane lowered a fork full of stewed okra and looked sternly at his son.

“Mind yer own business,” he said sharply. “Keep yer mouth outen other folks’ business.”

The boy swallowed hard.

Mrs. Beane’s hands fluttered like the wings of a dying canary, and her breath was short. She managed to quote the Scriptures, however, and tremulously uttered a lament which was cutting. King Solomon supplied the appropriate wisdom to fit the case. She said, “A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him.”

“He that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow; and the father of a fool hath no joy,” Mr. Beane supported his unhappy wife. “Guess thet'll learn yer to keep yer trap buttoned up,” said Johnny Beane’s father ominously,

The frowning parent received an obedient “Yessir” in reply.

Chapter XXI: White Man’s N*****

The monstrous thing which was about to happen to Punkie Brown crowded every other thought out of the mind of Johnny Beane.

How things could change! Men who once professed great affection for the Negro over a period of many years, now coldly planned to take his life.

Punkie Brown was the blackest of all Negroes in Leafy Grove. So black was he, in fact, that even the blackest of Negroes with the darkness of midnight in their faces were impressed. So black was Punkie Brown that the whiteness of his ambient eyes was as milk to ink and his teeth as ivory to jet. His tongue was black, his gums were black. No white man had sinned with the mother of Punkie, the grandmother, or the great-grandmother of Punkie, nor had one drop of Caucasian blood ever entered the veins of Punkie’s ancestors, in the jungle or out of the jungle, in Leafy Grove or anywhere else. Punkie was pure, unadulterated African through and through, the kind of Negro Southeners like most of all.

Once upon a time, it would have been for all the world like stabbing harmless old Mose, the well-loved street cleaner, or cutting down the venerable elm in front of the school house with all of the initials and lovers’ hearts and its half-swallowed horseshoes which had grown out of reach to the lower branches. People in Leafy Grove were sentimental about such things.

Why, Punkie Brown had been a “white man’s n*****” once. He was an institution in Leafy Grove. Punkie Brown had been raised by white men, spoiled by white men, clothed and fed by white men, who treated him generously and covered him with kindness.

It was all incredible and perplexing. The boy puzzled over it.

Punkie Brown had loved white men. He had rarely even associated with his own kind. He had been an unofficial ward and pet of the community of Leafy Grove.

Punkie Brown’s popularity had been proved time and again. One white man even would have murdered another in his defense. Johnny Beane knew this. He was there. He saw it with his own eyes. It was in Zeke Pitt’s barber shop.

Leafy Grove’s famous male quartet, consisting of the voices of “Fatty” Milton, who owned the wiener joint, Ernest Gallup, the night telephone operator, Adam Dwight, shipping clerk at the oil mill, and Elijah Foley, the county recorder, were singing some inspired privy lyrics when a strange drummer entered one Saturday afternoon. He was obviously upset. He plumped himself wearily in Punkie Brown’s shine chair.

The singers, as usual, were substituting their own words in popular songs of the day, to produce vulgar compositions and innuendos. The music obviously irritated the newcomer.

“Kee-reist!” he exclaimed.

The song which drew the outburst was a complete rewrite of Pretty Baby.

The Leafy Grove composers came up with this:

“If you wake up in the morning
And you find the bed is wet,
Blame the baby, blame the baby.”

“Goddamn!” said Clarence G. Waters.

Punkie Brown was doing a jig. He ignored his customer.

“Hey!” the stranger snapped sharply. “I want a shine, see?”

The Negro looked unhappily at the man and came over.

“Yassuh,” said Punkie absently.

“And listen,” said the visitor irritably, “I've got a bad corn, see? Take it easy.”

“Yassuh,” said Punkie Brown.

The quartet rendered another altered ditty to their own amusement and the vast enjoyment of a shopful of appreciative farmers. Clarence G. Waters sat gaping.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, how happy I will be,” sang the talented gentlemen, “tomorrow, tomorrow, back on my mammy’s knee. Lawdy me, what a great delight, when I see that familiar sight of the fussy old cat sneaking from the stable, licking up the milk from the baby’s navel...”

Zeke Pitt laughed so loudly his stomach shook boisterously.

“Kee-reist!” breathed Clarence G. Waters.

The boys excelled themselves with their version of Maryland, My Maryland, and all present joined in the chorus with noisy pleasure:

“And Mary then grew bigger and her pa sicked the dogs on me; there’s a girl in the heart of Maryland with a babe that belongs to me.”

Leafy Grove’s composers had found it difficult to better the words of Footprints on the Dashboard Upside Down and sang it in the original form, causing so much leg-slapping applause, stomping of feet, and cheering that Clarence G. Waters thought he must have landed in a madhouse. He was rattled and nervous.

Punkie Brown started shining the shoes with vengeance, keeping time with his brush and his cloth to the music and frequently leaving his job entirely to jump up and down or ball the jack or cut a caper with his bare, tough feet on the floor. When he had gone through several of these exhibitions, he returned to pound Clarence G. Waters’ sore feet with such energy that the drummer warned him again.

“Hey, boy,” he said sharply, “I told you! I’ve got a bad corn.”

Maybe Punkie Brown heard, and maybe he did not. At any rate, the next song of the quartet, They Go Wild, Simply Wild over Me, so stirred the wild rhythm in his own soul that he kept right on beating time on the shoes of his customer with his shine brush. By the time the minstrels had reached the lofty line where “I swallowed a mule and his tail stuck out, that’s why I’ve got a moustache on my mouth,” Punkie was beating on the salesman’s toes with all his might.

Clarence G. Waters was screaming in agony, but the welling discord of the song and the roaring laughter which accompanied it drowned out his frenzied protests. Punkie, transported, laid on like an African tom-tom beater.

“Kee-reist!” cried Clarence G. Waters. “Kee-reist! Stop, for God’s sake, stop!”

But Punkie was taken away. The quartet was reaching a high note and carrying Punkie along with it.

Suddenly, a loud whack rang through the barber shop.

Clarence G. Waters could stand the torment no longer. In desperation he slapped the Negro resoundingly on his mouth with the flat of his hand. The singing in the Sanitary Barber Shop stopped. The grins and the laughter of the waiting customers disappeared simultaneously.

Punkie stopped shining the customer’s shoes and fell back on his haunches whimpering. Punkie’s whimpers were the only sound and the abrupt silence in the shop shook Clarence G. Waters.

“Kee-reist!” What in God’s name had he done? The way the farmers looked at him scared him thoroughly.

Elmo Fairchild, the strapping supernumerary court bailiff and a one-horse farmer, who was sitting in the back of the shop, got slowly to his feet, deliberately spit some chufa pulp, and walked toward the disturbed seed man seated heavily in the shine chair. As he came to the chair he reached in his pocket and withdrew a long, bone-handled knife. No one else in the barber shop stirred. He pulled the blade out with a grimy thumbnail. His cold deliberation was terrifying to the stranger.

Clarence G. Waters began perspiring. He thought all of the torn nerves of his body would snap.

“My God!” thought the salesman. “I’m about to die!”

Clarence G. Waters had been miserable ever since he had crossed the imaginary line surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to define the borders of slavery. From that moment on he had felt like a slave himself, or at least a prisoner—at best an unwelcome stranger in an alien land.

The motorist was a seed salesman, selected to open up the rich territory of Dixie because of his long-time record in New England where his formality, his efficiency, his economy of words, his businesslike approach and his directness of purpose proved profitable virtues wherever he went.

From the moment he had entered Virginia, however, he found things were entirely different. The personality and temperament which had enabled him to cover the retail trade of a town faster than any other man in his firm and won for him the complimentary agnomen of “Brass Tacks” now produced only hostility.

His manner of speech which accented his unmistakable Yankee origin, as also did the license plate on his Marmon, put the people on the defensive and orders were practically nonexistent. He rankled and fretted under the strain. The Pariah’s bad humor increased with every mile of his penetration into the deeper South.

In a little town in North Carolina, where he was sure he had but narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered, he had had his first taste of Southern violence. He had made the unfortunate mistake of screaming at a merchant who suspected him of harboring Federal sympathies.

“Are yer a damyankee?” the grocer asked suspiciously when he called to solicit his business.

Clarence G. Waters had suffered much. His nerves were at the breaking point.

“What the hell!” he exclaimed. “Damn all this prejudice! Why, the Civil War’s been over for fifty years.”

The merchant’s eyes narrowed and he reached for a homemade axe handle.

“Thet’s whut yer think!” he disagreed ominously. “Thet’s whut yer think! By rights we ought to ride yer out of town on a rail. Git!”

Clarence G. Waters got. The experience unnerved him for days. When he reached Leafy Grove he was in a pitiful state of jitters.

The unhappy salesman gloomily surveyed the confusion of Leafy Grove’s nondescript business structures and timorously asked Kneeless Noah, who was inspecting his fancy automobile suspiciously, the name of the biggest store in town. He was directed to the Busy Bee.

Win or lose, the salesman refused to compromise. He tackled Tacitus Thigpen with his famous New England efficiency. He snapped open his sample case with a minimum of effort.

“Mr. Thigpen,” he said crisply, “I'm here to sell seeds. Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“Hey,” drawled Thigpen, putting three syllables into the word, “Wait a minute.” He eyed the salesman suspiciously. “Yer a damyankee, hain’t yer?”

Clarence G. Waters blushed. “Well, I’m from New Jersey,” he admitted.

“Thought so,” said Thigpen. “Iffen yer weren’t yer’d know we’uns heahabouts don’t like no brass tacks. We’uns prefers ten-penny nails. They takes longer to drive in but they stay put longer, too.”

Clarence G. Waters was miserable. He tried to say something. Thigpen beat him to it.

“Don’t need no seeds,” said the merchandiser, and he walked away. Sadly, Clarence G. Waters strapped up his sample case and went out into the street.

The experience with Tacitus Thigpen had quenched the last feeble flame of his spunk, but one spark of his famous New England pluck still was left. He gave one desperate look up and down the streets of Leafy Grove in a last sad effort to find a store which might prove likely. The only signs in sight advertised the Army & Navy Store, the Athens Greek-American Restaurant, the Simmons & Sorter Drug Store and Fatty Milton’s wiener place.

“Damn!” he said. “A one-store town and I can’t sell there.”

Clarence G. Waters sat held by stronger forces than gravity to the seat of his chair.

Elmo Fairchild raised his blade. He placed the cutting end against the stranger’s neck. “Yer sonuverbitch,” he said in a calm drawl, “yer've hit a white man’s n*****, yer bastard.”

Clarence G. Waters fainted as he felt the knife pressing into his flesh, and blood soaking into his collar.

Whether Elmo Fairchild intended to slit the homesick drummer's throat wide open is entirely a matter of conjecture, but Dr. Smith was generally given credit for saving his life. The Bailiff had lowered the blade without any more than nicking his skin when the physician entered the tonsorial parlor to enjoy a fifteen-cent shower. Astutely, he took in the picture.

“Hey! Wait a minute,” shouted Dr. Smith. “Don’t kill th’ man. Yer’ve learned him his lesson.” He walked over and patted Elmo placatingly on the shoulder.

“Lemme hev him, Elmo,” he suggested soothingly. “Ah git him outen town.”

The Bailiff grudgingly put his knife in his pocket. “Git him out,” he said, “before Ah changes mah mind.”

Zeke Pitt swabbed Clarence G. Waters’ pale face with a towel and revived him, and Dr. Smith bustled the limping man out to the street and headed for his office.

“A leetle alcohol,” he said, “and a quarter-inch of stickin’ plaster’ll fix yer up fine.”

“Kee-reist!” exclaimed the weakened salesman when he could talk again. “Haven’t you got any policemen in this burg?”

“One whut goes by th’ name,” said Dr. Smith. “Son, yer got a lot to learn about th’ South.”

“Damned insular bigotry. I’ve learned all I want to learn about it. I thought they lynched Negroes down here,” protested the salesman. “They were going to kill me just for slapping a black Negro. Benighted bastards.”

“We likes black n*****s down heah,” said Dr. Smith.

“Not many left to like,” said Clarence G. Waters pointedly. “Guess they don’t like yellow ones because they are damaging evidence.”

“Evidence of whut?” asked Dr. Smith indignantly.

“Their secret sins, the hypocrites!” exploded the salesman.

Dr. Smith ignored the accusation. “Well,” replied the doctor, “thet’s exactly whut Ah means about yer learnin’. We lynch some and love some. Hit’s a long story. Yer cain’t git hit all in one trip.”

“Kee-reist!” fervently vowed Clarence G. Waters. “I don’t want to get it, ever! I’m leaving this territory for good.

Today!”

“Trouble with yer, son,” said Dr. Smith, as he worked on his patient’s neck, “yer come down heah in th’ first place with a chip on yer shoulders. Plenty of damyankees livin’ in th’ South and gitting along fine. They jest learned how to conform.”

The salesman got up and went slowly out of the office back to his Marmon. Dr. Smith accompanied his patient.

“Thanks, Doc,” said the seed man after he had cranked the car, “I owe you a lot.”

“Yer owe me nothin’!” said Dr. Smith. “Glad to do hit for yer. Now Ah'll give yer somethin’ else, thet bein’ a durned good rule to remember. Son,” he said earnestly, “iffen yer ever decides to come back South again, jest keep this in mind: Don’t never kick a white man’s dog, or hit a white man’s n*****.”

Clarence G. Waters seemed more bewildered by the words than ever. He pulled his hand throttle down low and took the ruts of Leafy Grove’s streets bouncingly at forty miles an hour at the beginning of his dash back home.

Dr. Smith shouted after him: “Yer gotta suck th’ understandin’ of “em outen yer mother’s breast. All Dixie’s gotta be sucked outen yer mother’s breast to understand hit. But mebbe yer'll larn, son, mebbe yer'll larn.”

Chapter XXII: White Folks’ Kissin’

When Clarence G. Waters slapped Punkie Brown, he had been shining shoes in Leafy Grove for twenty of his twenty-eight years, had grown to the height of six feet three inches and had attained the weight and the physique of an ebony giant. His flashing smile, his good humor, his talents as a caper dancer and his ever-ready laughter at jokes about the remarkable pigmentation of his skin made him a general favorite.

One of the best Punkie stories came out of a conversation one hot day in August while the boy was shining Dr. Smith’s shoes.

“Punkie,” said the physician as the sweating giant toiled, “yer, by rights, ought to be a millionaire.”

“Why, bossman?” asked Punkie politely.

“Why, yer don’t need no polish, Punkie, thet’s why.”

“Whut for Ah don’t need no polish?” asked Punkie.

“’Cause yer sweat’s so black, Punkie. All yer has to do’s to wipe yer hand on yer face, smear hit on th’ shoes, and thar!”

Punkie showed his good sportsmanship by howling delightedly.

Yes, Punkie, by all standards, was a black Negro and a good Negro, and it therefore came somewhat as a surprise and shock to Leafy Grove to discover that he was also a thief.

Sadly, Punkie’s Leafy Grove friends and mentors shook their heads when Kneeless Noah, in his first important arrest in twenty years, caught Punkie in the act of picking the back door lock of the Busy Bee with a pair of shears stolen from Zeke Pitt’s Sanitary Barber Shop. The town’s traditional faith in the honesty of a black Negro in contrast to a mulatto was rudely shaken. Kneeless marched Punkie off to the calaboose and at the next term of Superior Court, a jury found him guilty, a judge sentenced him to a five-year term in the county chain gang and Leafy Grove tried to get used to a shine boy with a trace of ginger cake in his face.

In prison camp Punkie was shackled with leg and arm chains attached to a fifty-pound iron crowbar for his work on the roads. He dragged the restraining weight after him with each step, under the eyes of watchful guards armed with rifles and repeating shotguns, worked ten hours daily with his pick and shovel in mud and dust and stones. At night, after wolfing a meal of hot fat side meat, corn bread and blackstrap molasses, he took his irons to bed in a barred Jim Crow stockade separate from the white side.

Punkie did not like this new life at all. The former shoe shine boy missed the company of his white friends in Leafy Grove, and he also missed the company of Zeese Field, his pretty yellow sweetheart in N*****town. During the first year of his sentence, Punkie managed to escape ten times. Ten times his guards found him in the same place—Zeese’s bed—flogged him legally with a taws made of corded whitleather, and returned him to his fetters. After each escape, heavier chains and greater weights were added to his burden, but the giant carried the load with the ease and grace of a panther supporting his fur.

Punkie longed for the embraces of his yellow girl and her kisses. Zeese had taught Punkie a lot of fine points about love making, especially kissing.

When Punkie made his first escape and found his way to her bed, he gave Zeese a noisy peck on her mouth. Zeese protested.

“Thet’s jest hen-cluck kissin’,” said the yellow girl, “and hen-cluck kissin’ be jest peck-peckin’. Come heah, Punkie.”

Punkie obeyed and his love-hungry body quivered joyously as Zeese pulled his mouth to her lips.

“Open yer mouth, honey boy,” she said, “and kiss me white folks’ way—sweet and wet.”

Punkie deliriously drank the passionate moisture. When he could catch his breath his great arms squeezed his young sweetheart in a throbbing muscular vise.

“I’se been a perishin’ for yer, Zeese,” he said, “and. . .”

Punkie heard a loud banging on the front door, a loud banging on the back door, loud banging on both sides of the cabin. The house was surrounded. Punkie crawled out of bed. He was putting on his clothes when the chain gang men broke down a door and rushed into the room.

“Let’s go, Punkie.”

“Comin’, bossman,” said the frustrated lover.

Zeese immodestly sprang from beneath the covers and convulsively embraced the fugitive. The rough guards almost enviously watched the pretty girl kiss, but this time salt was mixed with the white folk wetness of her mouth, and Punkie’s face was dripping with her tears when the captors roughly dragged him away.

One morning, in the second year of his term, a guard announced once more that “Punkie has showed up missin’, and this time he taken our best bloodhound with ’im.”

Punkie’s eleventh escape, in view of the tonnage attached to his great frame night and day in iron balls, crowbars, heavy chain links and ankle irons soldered with blow torches was baffling to the chain gang superintendent.

“Goddamn!” exclaimed the disgusted official, “we’uns had enough iron on thet durned n***** to make a tractor.” He scratched his head in amazement. “Only way to keep ‘im heah, Ah guess, is to kill ’im. Mah durned arm’s so sore from whuppin’ ’im, feels like hit’s a-goin’ to drap off. Well,” he said, “guess yer knows where to find ’im. Send a couple of th’ boys over to Zeese’s.”

The superintendent’s confidence, however, did not ring quite true. “Why th’ hell,” he asked perplexedly, “do yer think he taken Old Blood?”

The guards shook their heads and set off for Zeese’s.

This time, the guards found Zeese sleeping alone, a discovery which they considered most outrageous. Never had Punkie treated them this way before. It was as though he had broken a gentlemen’s agreement.

“Goddamn th’ luck!” exclaimed a disappointed guard.

“No wonder he took Old Blood. This time, Ah guess, he wants to escape for good. Hit’s durned serious.”

The seriousness of which he spoke was caused by the condition of the county’s bloodhound pack. Old Blood was the only dependable sleuth except Floppie, the bitch, who had worms and was ailing too badly to let out on a scent in the swamps. The next best was Sniffle, as fine a man-hunter as a guard could ask for, but she, too, was not available, having been loaned to the sheriff of a neighboring county to track down a fugitive lifer. In the opinion of the guards, the half-dozen young and inexperienced dogs left could not catch a rabbit.

Punkie had wisely taken with him the only man-tracking hound which could lead to his capture, the dog of whom he had carefully made a friend for nearly two long years. Old Blood followed Punkie adoringly.

“Hit'll be a lot easier catchin’ ’im under th’ circumstances,” suggested a guard, “iffen we’uns kin make Zeese talk.”

The frightened yellow girl sat in her nightgown on the edge of her bed.

“Goddamn yer, Zeese,” said one of the men, “yer knows where Punkie’s hidin’. Come on tell us.”

Zeese started whimpering. “Befo’ God, befo’ God, Ah don’t know where Punkie is at,” she cried. “Hain’t seed him since yer took ’im away last time.”

The guard grasped her roughly by the shoulder and jerked her out of the bed. He slapped her across the face with a powerful hand and sent her sprawling in terror. Zeese shrieked.

“Git a whip outen th’ car,” the guard ordered his companion. “Thet’s th’ way to make a n***** bitch talk.”

The man returned with the whip.

“Ready to talk?” the guard asked the cowering negress.

“Befo’ God,” begged Zeese, “befo’ God, Ah don’t know. Don’t whup me, don’t whup me!”

The guard ripped Zeese’s gown off her body. The girl screamed piercingly. The long leather taws swished a downward arch over her naked shoulders, and a red welt two feet long raised on her quivering yellow skin. The experienced flogger laid on with three cutting lashes in rapid succession. Pinpoints of blood oozed through the flaming lines on her flesh.

Zeese writhed in anguish. She rolled over on her back. The guard cut his whip sharply across her yellow breasts. Zeese wailed. She placed the palms of her hands protectingly upon her nipples. The guard sliced his taws swiftly downward, and the negress felt the lash bum a welt across her ribs. Punkie’s sweetheart managed to twist her tortured body back upon her stomach.

The guard paused a moment. “Where’s Punkie?” he asked.

“Lawd Gawd! Lawd Gawd!” screamed Zeese.

The chain gang man fell to his task again. “Ah’ll make yer talk,” he said.

Blood flowed down Zeese’s spine. Her screams had turned to quiet moans.

“Talk, yer bitch,” demanded the guard, “or Ah'll kill yer.”

“Don't hit me no more,” pleaded Zeese. “Punkie’s gone out to Yaller River.”

“Where on Yaller River?” asked the man.

“To th’ land of th’ Christmas People,” said Zeese.

The two white men left the bleeding negress where she lay and hurried to their muddy Model T.

Chapter XXIII: The Christmas People

The Christmas People of Leafy Grove county were made famous by the State News editor of an Atlanta newspaper which specialized in the kind of journalism that was interesting, shocking, and sinful in the eyes of all good Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians of Leafy Grove. It was on his orders that flash powder and printer’s ink immortalized the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Hathaway, making them jump with the explosion and giving them national notoriety for three editions.

Gentlemen of the press breezed into the bottom land with an air of authority, cowed the Hathaways into posing in their bare feet, overalls, and a muddy Mother Hubbard while they stood on the bank of Yellow River holding their fishing poles and looking as frightened and young as kindergarten pupils on their first day in school.

Johnny Beane read all about it in the Sunday edition he shared with Dr. Smith.

The reporter referred to the Hathaways and some of their neighbors on Yellow River as the “Christmas People” because they adhered to the observance of the holiday on January 6, exactly as did their forebears in the remote fastnesses of Kentucky’s mountains. John Henry’s relatives still living in isolation after centuries of untouched and untainted residence in the wild citadel spoke in the idiom of the Good Queen Bess, their language when they came to the New World’s shores.

“Few of their kind ever broke away,” asserted the writer.

“One of the families to pull up roots generations before John Henry was born was the Hathaways. With some of their cousins they walked out of the Kentucky apple-jack hills and headed for the moonshine bottom lands of Georgia.

“They settled in the leafy crease of a finger roll nature had baked on the banks of Yellow River and garnished with pines and honeysuckles. After fifty years, they lost their Elizabethan tongue and joined the boisterously emotional Holy Roller Church, but they held on to their old faith in the Epiphany.

“Jesus might have been born ‘in the flesh’ on December 25, they were ready and willing to admit, but this did not necessarily make him alive until after his baptism eleven days later when he was ‘born in the spirit.’”

The reporter had made much of this in his account of the Child Bride.

“In the South,” said the story, “where hillbilly child marriages are a common occurrence, the wedding of John Henry and Vidalia Hathaway is big news because the bride is one of the youngest on record in that part of the country.

“In India,” it continued, “Mrs. Hathaway would be considered a bit on the oldish side.”

The thorough representative of the Fourth Estate further revealed how carefully he had covered this fascinating subject.

“Kentucky pediatricians recently announced,” he confided, “the birth of a seven-pound baby to a twelve-year-old ‘child mother.’

“Vidalia Hathaway herself is knitting little things, so don’t be surprised if Leafy Grove wrests the honor from the Blue Grass State.”

A seventeen-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl sat side by side fishing in the sorghum syrup water of a river which slurred like wet gingerbread batter past their cabin door. They were Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Hathaway, and they were so close to childhood that they called each other by their first names.

Vidalia’s nickname was “Dainty.”

“Dainty,” observed John Henry, “th’ river shore is high today.”

“Shore is,” agreed Dainty, after a while.

John Henry and Dainty had been fishing all morning long. Already they had caught a big mess of cats, enough for dinner, and they sat indifferently watching their liquor-jar corks bobbing up and down in the cinnamon-yellow waters. The exigencies of the evening meal having been attended to by a certain amount of necessary energy, the two now were fishing just for fun. They held their poles indolently and let the cats nibble.

“When th’ river gits high as ’tis now,” said John Henry, after due reflection, “hit’s th’ color of a ripe bernanner, hain’t hit?”

Dainty appreciatively licked her tongue over the pack of sweet Bruton’s snuff pouching under her lower lip before she answered.

“Iffen yer says so, John Henry,” she agreed respectfully, “then ‘tis, though Ah cain’t say for sure as Ah’s ever seed a bernanner. Whut a bernanner look like, John Henry?”

John Henry squinted his eyes studiously.

“A bernanner,” he said, “is yaller like.”

John Henry thought this over and decided to amplify his description. “Hit’s a kind of fruit like.”

A fish, at this point, was running away with Dainty’s cork, and she was forced to pull in a two-pound cat. John Henry unhooked it, threw it under a pile of wet leaves and baited his wife's hook again with a white grub robbed that morning from a wasps’ nest, smoked empty of its flying population by a pine straw fire. Dainty tossed it back into the stream.

Dainty was intrigued by the comparison of a commonplace river to a mysterious and exotic fruit.

“John Henry,” she asked, “do th’ river look like a bernanner when hit low, too?”

“Naw, Dainty, don’t.”

“Why?”

The young man paused to get his thinking straightened out in order to answer this question efficiently. He ruminated interminably on a cud of cut plug.

“Wal,” he said, “hit’s this-a-way: when th’ river’s low, hit’s dull and thicker and looks more like a Sickle pear on yer tree. Hit looks bernanner when hit’s mixed with new, fresh water from th’ rains. Then hit’s deeluted like.”

John Henry was having some unwelcome business with his own cork this time and jerked in a flipping perch.

“Some of these heah days,” he said when he had completed the necessary routine of a lucky river fisherman, “Ahil be a-gittin’ yer one. Providin’, of course,” he warned seriously, “they’s one in town. Cain’t rightly remember when Ah last seed a bernanner in Leafy Grove.”

The young girl stared at the river in wonderment and anticipation. Her eyes projected magic gardens upon the soggy banks of the stream. Brightly and eagerly she walked beneath the strange leaves dripping with unknown luscious fruit. In a moment she returned to her husband’s side with delighted enthusiasm. She whispered almost in awe of the beautiful mystery:

“Like a bernanner. Thet’s purty. Like a Sickle pear and a ripe bernanner!”

John Henry sprayed a fine stream of amber into the drawling waters. The sun’s rays fleetingly caught the shower and danced iridescent refractions through its mist. Dainty saw it.

“Look! Look! John Henry,” she shouted radiantly, “ever’thing’s purty today. Even yer tobacco juice has rainbows.”

John Henry awkwardly squeezed Dainty’s hand by way of agreement. The exhibition of tenderness embarrassed both the bride and groom, and they sat very quiet for a long time.

Dainty broke the silence. “John Henry,” she asked abruptly, “whut a bernanner taste like?”

“Wal...” began the boy doubtfully.

“Good?” interrupted Dainty.

“Yep,” he said, “powerful good.”

“Like whut?”

“Well’s Ah kin remember, judgin’ from th’ one Ah ate,” said John Henry valiantly, “a bernanner don’t taste like nothin’ else a-tall.”

Dainty was silent for a full half hour and regarded the heavy stream pensively.

Yellow was everywhere—the dirt between the toes of the couple on the bank, flecks on the green leaves of the trees and in the clouds streaked with smoky topaz from the dusty hillside plowing fields bolstered by red terraces. Even the creeks which fed the stream with russet from erosion of the red old hills were jaundiced by the topsoil. Meerschaum of every shade tinted acres of new ground and the black bark of gaunt, belted trees was sallowed by the pigments of the earth.

Out on Yellow River where the people got poorer and poorer and every rain washed away the last feeble nutrient from the soil, and Dixie’s thirsty sun drank up what anemic substance was left in the puddles, man had little to do except to fish, spit, and make moonshine. John Henry Hathaway was the son of a moonshiner.

John Henry helped his father at his “blind tiger.” The still’s new run was days off, and so the boy had time on his hands. More than anything, he preferred to be with Dainty whom he loved in the clumsy manner of a friendly puppy dog getting ready to drop its baby yips, grow up and give fierce protection to its master with barks and mature devotion.

“John Henry,” asked Dainty after a long spell of cogitation, “do yer think thar’s a bernanner in Leafy Grove?”

Dainty had been pregnant for ninety days, having been married by the community's Holy Roller preacher on February 1. Dainty had figured the duration of her condition in considerable precision with the aid of her husband who told her that February had only twenty-nine days, March thirty-one, and April thirty. It all came out exactly right. John Henry was rather proud of himself, both for his prowess in arithmetic and the prompt evidence of his manhood.

No sooner had Dainty asked about the glamorous fruit than she suddenly dropped her hook and held her hand to her mouth. Yellow vomit mixed with the sorghum syrup stream. John Henry let the current take his own pole away, too. He quickly scooped up some river water and washed his wife’s face. Dr. Smith had told him this manifestation was not unusual with pregnant brides.

“Do yer want a bernanner, Dainty?” asked John Henry.

Dainty was sick again, as she was every day. She could not answer. John Henry washed her face a second time and dried it with his blue shirt sleeve. Dainty was crying.

“Dainty, did yer hear me? Do yer want a bernanner, honey?” he asked awkwardly.

“John Henry,” Dainty replied at last, plaintively, “hit’s a sin th’ way Ah wants a bernanner. Ah wants a bernanner, a yaller bernanner more’n anything in th’ whole world.”

John Henry Hathaway, frightened by the knowledge of her expectancy and his sudden man-size responsibility, was almost on the verge of tears himself. Convulsively, he hugged his wife as a brother would hug a sister.

He had heard about the strange and unpredictable appetites of expectant mothers. Did not his own mother on that sleety December night just before he himself was born crave a watermelon and almost break his pa’s heart because they were out of season?

Then and there John Henry Hathaway made a great resolve.

“Dainty, honey,” he vowed fervently, “Ah'll git yer a yaller bernanner iffen hit’s th’ last thing Ah does for yer in mah nacher'! born life.”

Dainty pecked a grateful baby kiss on her husband’s face.

Chapter XXIV: A Yaller Bernanner

When they had eaten their fried catfish the couple took their Busy Bee dime dishes and tin pans out to the well and rinsed them in cold water. Then they returned to the cabin and sat in their two cane-bottom chairs on the narrow front porch, watching the river go by and waiting for the sun to go down.

John Henry made love to Dainty in the darkness alone.

Neither of them was embarrassed when they could only feel each other's embraces while they cuddled. Their blushes came when their eyes met.

John Henry went to bed with a mysterious smile on his face. He had a big plan for the morrow. After Dainty fell asleep he lay awake for a long, long time just thinking and thinking and thinking.

At sunup he stole a glance at the child beside him. No wonder they called her Dainty. There was not even a stain of snuff on her mouth which she had carefully scrubbed with fresh well water and Octagon soap suds before retiring. Dainty, unlike many other river women, dipped her Bruton’s snuff only in waking hours. She always looked fresh and shining even when mud splashed on her face. John Henry noted again how pretty and blonde Dainty was and how clean and sweet-smelling was her long curly hair.

He looked at the outline of Dainty’s breasts under her immaculate flour-sacking nightgown. They had grown since the Holy Roller preacher pronounced them man and wife, both from the miracle of the burden within her womb and the common prematurity of little girls burgeoned by Dixie’s hot sun.

Dainty was John Henry’s first cousin. He guessed he had loved her all of her life. To him, in spite of her new role as his woman, she still looked like the tender child she was.

John Henry sat on the edge of their corn shuck mattress and watched Dainty breathe for a long time. He was careful not to make the noisy mattress rattle. If Dainty had not objected they could have had a feather mattress almost as easily. But the young wife even at eleven already had some ideas of her own about housekeeping and selected shucks instead.

“Feather beds,” she said, “gits dirty and smelly from summer sweat and needs a lot of airin’ in winter, too. Now corn shuck mattresses is different. Not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter. Jest right all the time. Don’t stink no time.”

That was Dainty, all right. Always the clean one. John Henry admired his wife as long as he dared and arose to his feet noiselessly. He had important business ahead in Leafy Grove and was anxious to be off on the five-mile walk into town.

The boy slipped on a clean pair of overalls and started looking for his brogans. He had difficulty finding them. He searched every corner of their three-room cabin before he located them in the pine treasure box where Dainty kept her single Sunday dress, her white lawn wedding dress. He had not worn shoes since the ceremony three months before, but his fierce English pride would not permit him to be seen by town folks on the streets of Leafy Grove in his bare feet.

John Henry tied the strings of his brogues together, threw them over his shoulder, took one last tender look at the sleeping girl in their bed and set out for town at a fast pace.

John Henry’s long legs burned up the yellow distance between the Christmas Community and the county seat. Just in sight of the Methodist Church steeple, he stopped at the city limits, heroically pulled on his shoes and painfully made his way toward Leafy Grove and the Busy Bee. He wondered how in the world town folks wore shoes every day of their lives.

Tacitus Thigpen kicked a stray “sooner” dog under its tail and sent it yelping high C’s out of the store just as John Henry entered.

“Durn!” he exploded, “looks like ever’ flea-bitten dog in th’ county had sooner do hit in mah store than elsewhere.”

When the owner had finished his rueful inspection of a sack of patent flour and assuaged the annoyance over his loss with the thought that maybe he could get by with selling it to a Negro, he looked up and saw his customer.

“Ah'll be!” exclaimed Tacitus Thigpen, “th’ Christmas boy!”

John Henry was slightly puzzled by the startled greeting.

“Hit’s me,” he agreed, “John Henry Hathaway.”

“Ah knows who yer is,” said Tacitus Thigpen, “and who in th’ nation don’t?”

“Whutcha mean?” asked John Henry defensively.

“Yer and yer bride,” explained Thigpen. “Why, boy, she’s as purty as a spotted puppy dog under a red wagon. Ah saw her picture in th’ paper yesterday.”

John Henry beamed. He would tell Dainty about the compliment. “Shore is purty,” he agreed.

“But powerful young,” commented Thigpen.

“Not so,” said John Henry. He looked around the store.

“She’s whut Ah come to town for. Mr. Thigpen, has yer got a yaller bernanner?”

Thigpen frowned. “Hain’t had a bernanner in this store for four months.”

John Henry’s face fell miserably. “Poor little Dainty,” he said, and turned to go, but a hopeful thought struck him suddenly. “Mr. Thigpen, do yer figger thar’s a yaller bernanner in Cedar Grove? Ah’m prepared to walk ten more miles iffen ah kin git one.”

Thigpen seemed astounded. “Yer mean yer’d walk to Cedar Grove jest for one bernanner?” he asked in amazement.

“Ah’d trot hit,” said John Henry simply. “Dainty’s got to hev a yaller bernanner. Hit’s medicine like.”

“Ah'll be!” exclaimed Thigpen. “Well, iffen yer is so downright set on a bernanner, guess yer'll find a carload down on the sidin’ at Railroad Street. A durned Greek sidetracked thar this mornin’. Hit’s gittin’ so furrin competition’s jest about ruination for a home-town merchant.”

John Henry thanked God and Thigpen for his good fortune and raced for the railroad tracks.

The Greek’s business was good. Fruit-craving farmers were buying bananas as fast as the traveling merchant could pass them out. John Henry crowded past many with prior rights and anxiously stuck his head in the door.

The busy Greek called “Next.”

“Ah wants a bernanner,” ordered John Henry.

The Greek thought he had misunderstood. “A boonch?” he demanded.

“Jest one yaller bernanner,” said John Henry who had no idea that bananas came on bunches.

“One eealo banan’!” exclaimed the Greek in annoyance. “One eealo banan’. Gooddam! Next,” he shouted, “next!”

John Henry would not be ignored. He blocked the entrance to the freight car. “Lissen,” he said, “Dainty wants a yaller bernanner, and she’s goin’ to git one.”

Something in the tall boy’s voice caused the Greek to consider him with more respect. “Lessen,” he said pleadingly, “a doz, two doz, t'ree doz, one boonch, that’s okay, but one banan’! Kint sell one banan’. Sell you a boonch, maybe?”

“How much?” asked John Henry carefully.

“One doll,” replied the Greek.

John Henry sighed. This was a lot of money. He said so.

The Greek was outraged. “Too much! One doll for five dozzer banan’,” he exclaimed.

“Five dozen?” asked John Henry in surprise. “Holy cow!”

“Five dozzer banan’,” repeated the Greek weakly, “one boonch one doll’.”

John Henry made up his mind. The thought of his little Dainty eating yellow bananas to her heart’s content did something to his throat. If it took a whole dollar to make her happy, John Henry then and there was ready and prepared to spend it. He dug into his overall pockets.

“Sold,” he shouted triumphantly. “Gimme!”

The Greek sighed in great relief. His car would be picked up by the next freight in an hour for another stop, down the road. His was perishable merchandise. He lugged a bunch of bananas from the straw-covered floor inside the dark car and passed them to his customer.

John Henry’s mouth flew wide open. “Hey!” he said. “Hey! Wait a minute. Ah thought bernanners was yaller.”

The poor Greek merchant dropped the bunch of bananas on the floor and looked at the boy blankly. “Gooddam! Gooddam!” he said only, in a whisper.

John Henry turned beseechingly to a farmer near him.

“Bernanners is yaller, hain’t they?”

“Shore,” said the farmer, “but they’s also green before they’s yaller. Jest like certain kind of apples. They ripens in due time. This-a-way, buyin’ green bernanners means they'll be a-keepin’ longer.”

“But Ah wants a yaller bernanner today,” stubbornly said John Henry. The Greek’s business was at a standstill. The troublesome customer refused to budge. The tormented fruit merchant shook his head in resignation and disappeared into the car again.

“Here,” he said finally, “izzer half and half. Two dozzer half eealo, two dozzer half green.”

John Henry grinned happily and proudly passed the foreigner a bright silver dollar.

John Henry trotted every one of the five vermilion miles from Leafy Grove back to Yellow River. He carried Dainty’s five dozen precious bananas on their blackening stalk hanging over his shoulder with his shoes. It was a heavy weight, and the sun was hot. Only a strong young giant with marathon endurance could have lugged his burden at such a fast pace. But John Henry’s heart was light. A marvelous chemistry was busy within him, and he was buoyed by the hydrogen of happiness. He was in love and not even the sweat mixed with the thick tan dust of the road that ran down his forehead into his eyes annoyed him in the least. John Henry blinked it away with a smile and trotted on to Dainty.

“Hew-wee!” breathed John Henry. “Bernanners shore is heavy.” But he got his second wind three miles out of town and felt so refreshed that he turned off the big road at the path leading to his cabin without a single labored breath. He was still thinking out his surprise.

Dainty long since would have awakened and gone about her housework. Maybe she was worried about his absence, maybe she was not. Maybe Dainty could explain it. He might be tending the trotlines, or paying a visit to the still. Whatever she thought, she was in for the surprise of her life.

“Five dozen bernanners!” thought John Henry in awe. The cabin was only a stone's throw away now. He saw it plainly in the clearing, and his muddy sweat turned cold. No smoke was coming from the chimney.

This was strange, and an uneasy foretoken sent a shiver of fear through him. But maybe Dainty had gone visiting herself. The thought caused him a twinge of disappointment. The idea of a delayed surprise had not been considered in his schedule. John Henry threw off his worries. It was possible that she had eaten her breakfast earlier than usual, allowed the fire to go out, and was even now sitting down knitting little socks or sewing diapers out of patches of bleached flour sacks.

The natural optimism of his youth made him hope for the best, and he followed the plan exactly as he had made it on his hike from town. First John Henry stepped aside into the pine thicket bordering his path. He looked about for a tree limb strong enough to support a weight as great as that he carried on his shoulder. He found a likely looking branch, reached into his pocket for a length of wrapping twine, secured one end to the banana stalk and tied the other to the tree. He walked around the bunch several times inspecting his purchase critically. One big ripe banana at the bottom finally passed his test. He pulled it off, rubbed it vigorously on his sweaty sleeve until the skin developed such a high polish that it glistened like a five-cent shoe shine. John Henry held the banana out at arm's length admiring it. “Purtiest bernanner in th' world,” he said.

He gave the bunch one last look. The sight thrilled him. “One bernanner now,” he thought, “five dozen later! Little Dainty's goin' to git a double surprise!”

John Henry ran for his cabin.

He approached his house in mischievous stealth, but he was disturbed by the quietness all around him. Yellow River seemed muted and the chickadees and the purple frogs and the crickets made not a sound. Even the devil flies with rice paper wings had hushed their cadenzas. The only noise he heard was the sad and melancholy cry of a whippoorwill. There was something dreadful about the silence.

John Henry quickened his pace. He fought a crazy premonition. He ran to the window of his bedroom and looked in.

“Dainty!” John Henry screamed a wild scream which made the chickadees and the purple frogs and the crickets go to work again. The air was suddenly full of noises and all of them roared in his head.

Dainty was still abed! Something was terribly wrong! The boy sped around the corner of his cabin and plunged through the door, calling to his bride as he ran.

John Henry slid to a stop by the corn shuck mattress and the friction burned through the tough leather of his feet, but he did not notice.

“Dainty! Dainty!”

The sheet was over Dainty's face. John Henry pulled it off of her body. Sticky stuff smeared his hand when he touched it. It was red stuff! Red stuff was all over Dainty's pretty clean flour sack sheets and it was not river mud. Lord God! It was blood.

John Henry held Dainty's shining banana in his out-stretched hand and stared at the ugly sight in a stupor. He looked at his wife's face. It was twisted and puffed and frightened-looking, and stained with coagulating crimson from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were wide open and scared and did not blink. There were angry red marks on her neck and her immaculate homemade nightgown was ripped down the front, so that her little breasts were exposed.

“Oh, God, oh, God!”

John Henry said this in a voice so hushed that he did not hear himself. “Oh, God, oh, God! My little Dainty's daid. My little baby's daid.”

John Henry held his hand to his mouth.

“Mah two little babies daid.” Dazedly, John Henry let Dainty's banana with its high yellow polish drop from his hand.

John Henry's vocabulary was not very large, but the grief of languages was in his words: “Hit jest hain't fair, hit jest hain't fair. Poor little Dainty, she died before she could see her yaller bernanner.”

John Henry rubbed his fingertips gently on Dainty's bruised lips. He could only think out of a jumble of grief and shock. He walked out of the room like a crazy boy. His dumb dry lips were moving foolishly up and down.

Instinctively, John Henry made his way out of the cabin and toward his pa’s still.

Dr. Smith examined the corpse of the baby wife. Overalled river men holding shotguns, and their womenfolk dabbing flour sack squares on their eyes, stood silently in the room. Dr. Smith pulled the sheet back over the girl's body. His moustache was twitching as no one had ever seen it contort before.

“Raped!” he said, “and choked to death by two strong hands, th’ life strangled outen her.”

The men with shotguns left. The women started getting Dainty’s violated body ready for its coffin. Out in the yard Notch Gates and the chain gang guard were looking around.

The guard reached to the ground by the tool shed and picked up something which caught his eye. It was a link of rusty chain. He whistled and handed it to the Sheriff. Notch

examined it excitedly.

“A piece of convict shackle!” Notch announced. “An’ freshly filed!”

“Sonofabitch!” exclaimed the guard, “hit’s Punkie Brown!”

Two miles from the Hathaway cabin, members of a posse stopped suddenly by a quicksand swamp and listened intently. One was the chain gang guard who had whipped Zeese. A dog was barking somewhere off in the night.

“Hey,” shouted the guard, “thet’s Old Blood’s cry. Come on.” The men ran in the direction of the noise.

“Goddamn,” said one of them, “looks like Old Blood caught Punkie in spite of himself, after all.”

Chapter XXV: Raca! Raca! Raca!

As many as eight hundred spectators stood or lolled on the banks of Hog Tusk Creek and looked up at the high railroad trestle where the Executive Committee was stripping Punkie Brown.

Some of the onlookers partook of picnic lunches, and from heaping baskets families selected joints of cold fried chicken, muscadine jelly sandwiches, biscuits, sausages, and layer cakes, or munched on crispy cracklings under a beautiful sky. Beneath a vitrescent luster drifted pert little clouds of foggy white quartz dappled with persimmon flecks. It was cool and pleasant and a wonderful day for an outing.

The attendants who had eaten big Sabbath dinners before the main attraction, lounged on pine straw by the creek and let their food digest while awaiting the long drop. A dozen or so, with appetites for morbid particulars, found vantage points in tops of high trees closer to the scene of the drama. Up on the trestle Jim Volley and his aides ripped Punkie's dirty rags from his body. He stood naked before the grim river men. Punkie looked wild. His ivory teeth were chattering beneath his dry tarpaper lips. The milk pools of his eyes rolled in terrible interest as Holofernes Holloway took a long coil of rope from the crook of his arm.

Johnny Beane saw it all from a swaying saddle in the tall branches of a water oak. He had an enviable view, but somehow he did not feel well. He swallowed part of his breakfast which came up in his throat when he saw Holofernes toying with the noose. He decided to leave his rocking perch. He looked down as he started his descent. Below him were a number of familiar faces. Tacitus Thigpen, a dozen regular Beer-Sheba campers. Some of them would tell his pa sure. It was too risky. He changed his mind and climbed quickly back to his saddle, concealed by the branches and the leaves. He was thankful that he had not been seen. Now he had to stick it out until the crowd broke up and he could run home through the fields unnoticed. He was pale and scared when he was safely hidden again.

Many of the picnickers were strangers to Johnny Beane.

They had come, as the Chairman had predicted, from miles around, attesting to the unusual interest in the program of the hallowed day.

The boy saw Jim Volley walk over to Punkie Brown. The Negro’s eyes ballooned and Punkie cringed. He fell upon his knees. Punkie whimpered plaintively.

“Don’t kill me, bossman! Yer knows me, Mr. Jim, I’se Punkie Brown. Yer remembers me, Mr. Jim. I’se th’ Leafy Grove shoe shine boy, Mr. Jim!”

The Chairman quite unorthodoxly slapped Punkie across his jerking lips. “Yer bastard,” he said, “did yer kill her?”

Punkie wiped some blood away. “Jesus, Mr. Jim, yer done hit me? I’se Punkie Brown,” he babbled. “Many’s th’ time I'se give yer shoes a mirrer polish, Mr. Jim! I'se a white man's n*****, Mr. Jim. Pleesuh, Mr. Jim!"

Punkie was finding the business hard to understand. He seemed dumbfounded by the unbelievable procedure. The deadliness and the excessive coldness of it made him shiver all over.

The Chairman did not say a word. What had come over these white men? Why there was even Mr. Elmo Fairchild holding a double-barreled shotgun. The Negro rocked and weaved on his Imees. He turned with the palms of his hands glued together and waved them in supplication.

“Jesus, Mr. Elmo, Jesus! Don't let 'em hurt me, pleesuh, Mr. Elmo. Don't let 'em hurt me, suh!”

The supernumerary Court Bailiff expectorated some brown fluid unconcernedly.

“Jesus, Mr. Jim,” pleaded Punkie, “Jesus!”

“Stand up, yer goddamn rapin' Afreekin sonuverbitch,” replied the Chairman.

“He shore classified thet n*****,” said Holofernes admiringly.

Jim Volley kicked Punkie in the pit of his stomach with the toe of his brogue. “Git up, Ah said!”

O Lord, what was this white man doing?

The blow knocked the wind from Punkie's body, but he was struggling to obey the order. The Chairman kicked him again, this time in his testicles.

Punkie shrieked like a woman and doubled in a crazy spasm. He rolled over and over in a black ball, and his head cracked sharply a number of times on the crossties and made the trestle shake. After a minute he uncoiled his great length and lay sprawled, very still.

The Chairman looked at the black man anxiously.

“Hope Ah didn’t kill ’im!”

“He’s a-possumin’,” said Holofernes reassuringly.

Jim Volley pulled Punkie over on his back. Punkie’s eyes were opened but rolled back in his head.

“Mebbe this will bring ’im to,” he said.

The Chairman spat a prodigious mouthful of tobacco juice in his face, and the ambeer douche coursed down Punkie’s forehead into his eyes, but he made no effort to wipe the syrupy stuff off.

“Hey, Jim,” warned Elmo in mock alarm, “watch out! Yer might sting his eyes!”

All of the members of the Executive Committee laughed. This was the prime joke of the day.

“Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!”

Punkie squirmed and some of the boys pulled him to his feet. The Chairman shook him roughly.

“Remember back, n*****,” he demanded, “remember back!”

“Lawdy, I’se innercent, bossman, God knows I’se innercent!” wailed Punkie. “Cain’t yer hear mah lips a-sayin’ hit, Mr. Jim?” The red jelly on Punkie’s lips had dried, and Punkie talked rapidly through spongy white fuzz which hailed from his mouth. His dilatant coffee-cup nostrils throbbed.

The Chairman motioned to Holofernes, and his aide walked over, holding out the noose. Punkie looked at the thing in his executioner’s hands. He started singing.

“Wash me, wash me, [screamed Punkie]

Wash me white;

Wash me, Jesus,

In thy light.”

The Chairman slapped Punkie smartly over the eyes. The Negro kept on singing. His voice throbbed over the gulch with the rhythm of finality and despair. But there was a buoyancy in it which made the picnickers below uneasy. They shuffled and squirmed.

“Durned n*****’s singin’ like he’s enjoyin’ his own lynchin’,” observed Tacitus Thigpen.

A devotee of mob law near him had the answer all figured out. “N*****s enjoy anything excitin’,” he said. “Anything emotional—funerals, fish fries, fightin’, fiddlin’, baptisin’s, medicine shows. N*****s even have fun at their own hangin’s.”

Punkie sang on.

“O Jesus clean me,

Scrub me white;

Wash mah sins frum thy sight.”

“Goddamn hit!” exclaimed the Chairman disappointedly.

“Cornfession or no cornfession! Slip hit on, Holofernes.”

Holofernes pulled Punkie’s head forward and pushed the loop over it. He tightened the running knot and stepped back.

“Lawdy Gawd, Lawdy Gawd,” wailed Punkie. The rough coil around his neck made him quiver violently. The impossible had happened. He seemed astonished. His head jerked from side to side in a wretched effort to shake away the encircling rope.

“Lawdy Gawd, Lawdy Gawd!” moaned Punkie Brown.

“Goddamn yer,” said the Chairman in annoyance, “do thet mean yer guilty, n*****? Say somethin’, yer bastard, say somethin’ quick!”

The members of the Executive Committee watched tensely and listened. Punkie’s head continued shaking.

Holofernes secured one end of the hanging rope under and over the railroad track. “Push him off, Jim,” he said.

“Lawd Jesus, Lawd Jesus,” shouted Punkie in high alarm, “wait a minute, Mr. Jim, wait a minute, bossman, please!”

“Talk fast, n*****,” said the Chairman.

“I’se guilty, Mr. Jim, I’se guilty. Lawd Jesus, Ah done raped a white gal. Ah was a-gwine up th’ river,” Punkie said, “an’ Ah seen her. Somethin’ come over me. White folks kissin’, Ah don’t know why, Ah don’t know why.”

The Executive Committee relaxed. The Chairman stepped back and spat. “Well, Goddamn,” he muttered, “hit’s about time we heard th’ truth.”

The delay in the proceedings up on the trestle was making the expectant crowd below impatient. They were on their tiptoes straining for an inch.

“Whut th’ hell’s goin’ on up thar?” one of them yelled.

“Tell ’em,” the Chairman commanded an associate. “Tell ‘em th’ black bastard’s cornfessed.”

A member of the privileged order cupped his hands and shouted: “Th’ black bastard’s cornfessed; th’ black bastard’s cornfessed! He raped and killed Dainty.”

The enormity of the words had a stunning effect on the throng below. As one, they sank back from tiptoe to heel, and a mass exhalation was the only sound to be heard.

Tacitus Thigpen was the first to cheer. “Hooray! Hooray!” he shouted.

The significance of the confession had finally dawned on the stupefied members of the Executive Committee, and they answered Tacitus Thigpen with cheers. They raised their shotguns over their heads in wild gyrations symbolizing the victory.

Now the crowd below cut loose. Men and women released from shock jumped up and down like crazy people. They clapped their hands and slapped each other's backs and uttered shrieks of encouragement in joyous refrain. In delirious, frenetic ecstasy they danced like savages. Lunch baskets were overturned in the delirium and fried chickens were ground under foot, but no one cared.

“He's confessed! He's confessed!”

“Guilty n*****s always confesses,” shrieked someone, “jest like good ol’ Notch allowed!”

The cacophony of hysteria was quieting down.

“Yaller n*****s do most of th' rapin',” shouted Tacitus Thigpen to Ephraim Cowan, the station agent. “Ah'm shore surprised.”

“Mostly,” admitted Ephraim, “but ever' n***** livin', black or yaller, wants to take a white woman.”

“Yer right,” agreed Thigpen, “but hit looks like, with Zeese and all, he'd of been satisfied.”

“Or iffen he wanted a change, why didn't he rape another yaller gal. They rapes durned easy!” “Yer ought to know,” observed Tacitus pointedly. Ephraim grinned at this remark.

“Listen,” he said, “listen to thet n***** sing.”

Punkie Brown was singing indeed, and liltingly.

“I'se gwine home to Jesus,” he chanted. “I'se gwine home to Jesus. I'se a witness for mah Lawd.”

The boys on the trestle now were no longer in a hurry. They had some questions to ask. “I'se gwine home to Jesus,” Punkie sang in high elation.

“Shet up,” said the Chairman.

“I’se got religion, Mr. Jim. I’se got religion. One minute, I’se got hit, another minute, hit’s gone. I’se got hit now, Mr. Jim. Hang me, Mr. Jim, whilst I’se got hit.”

Punkie, despairing of his life, was begging for his soul. The passion for God’s love gripped him.

“We'uns hain’t a-pushin’ yer yit,” decided the Chairman.

He leisurely pulled a long red hair out of his thumb knuckle and picked his nose reflectively.

“Mebbe yer’s raped some other white woman, n*****,” he suggested, “remember back.”

“Oh, Lawdy, Mr. Jim,” pleaded Punkie, “hang me quick. Th’ glory of Gawd’s ascended on me, Mr. Jim. Hang me quick!”

The fate of Punkie’s soul was of no moment to the Chairman, who was convinced he was going to hell anyway.

“Ah axed yer a question,” he said.

“Never nothin’ more to a white lady’n to tip mah cap,” screamed Punkte. “Befo’ Gawd! Befo’ Gawd!” pleaded Punkie. “Hang me, Mr. Jim.”

Punkie was panting. Punkie looked out over the gulch. Somewhere off in the skies he saw a white cloud become a chariot and the orange specks in the vapor turned to adornments of gold. His conveyance to the pearly gates was very real to him. To Punkie the yellow water upon the shoals of Hog Tusk Creek became the River Jordan and every wisp of vapor in the firmament was one of God’s own angels. The cotton fields stretching before him were the plains of Moab.

He was born again and his old shell of sin fell away from his body. Another man, rapacious old Punkie, had throttled the young life out of poor little Dainty and had despoiled her body. The new Punkie was made as clean as the driven snow. The lily-white black man broke again into song.

The notes were away off key as the Chairman started walking him over to the edge of the trestle. But Punkie heard tidings of great joy from the band of angels coming after him, and the notes of heavenly harps were sweet music to his ears. The happiest man at Hog Tusk Creek that moment was Punkie Brown.

The bootblack of Leafy Grove had an inspiration. The gloriousness of it was almost sacrilegious but so elevating that Punky felt giddy as the sensation of God's love and his reverence enveloped him.

“Mr. Jim,” he said, with his eyes staring awesomely at the chariots, “Ah'm a-goin' to shine Gawd's shoes!”

This was true desecration!

The idea of such a thing made Jim Volley's tight eyelids snap back over the pupils and made them goggle.

“Goddamn. Yer cain't take no shine rag whar yer goin’,” he said.

Elatedly Punkie replied, “Gawd's got ever'thing ready for me,” he said.

The Negro was on his way to Heaven.

The Chairman kicked Punkie into space and sent him hurtling. Jim Volley stepped back. “Wal,” he said, “All guess he's lynched!”

But Punkie was not lynched. Something had happened.

A low roar went up from the crowd below. The body had not fallen with the familiar, sickening thud, and no quick snap accompanied the long drop. Punkie's neck had not been broken. His powerful, free hands, in spite of his avowed hope for quick death, had spasmodically grabbed for the hanging rope and caught it in his fall. He plummeted down it at a fast pace and the friction seared the flesh of his palms to the bones as he slid, but Punkie held on.

Punkie was very much alive at the end of his rope.

The Chairman and his excited aides looked down.

“Goddamn!” exclaimed Jim Volley. Punkie was slipping the noose from his neck. He looked undecidedly down at the bed of the rocky creek a hundred feet below and started climbing, hand over hand.

The dumbfounded picnickers stood gaping.

“Shoot 'im! Shoot 'im,” someone shouted. “He'll git away!”

“Git away?” asked a member of the master group. “Whar to? Whar'll he git to? He's a-climbin' right back to whar he come from.”

Climb Punkie did, and the golden chariots turned to clouds again. His magnificent young muscles corded and rippled under his jet nap, and he pulled himself laboriously back to the gibbet.

Old Blood and some of the young dogs of the chain gang pack tied to trees over on the right of way were nervous. Saliva dripped from their flews, and they bayed as all Southern dogs bay when the presence of death is felt, or when there is even a little blood on the moon.

Punkie's hands were bloody and raw, and now he was coming on uncertainly. The Chairman and his aides watched his labors in dumb fascination. The picnickers strained to increase their height and stared in grudging admiration as he pulled his dripping ripe olive body higher and higher.

“Will he make hit? Will he make hit?” asked an excited farmer.

“Don't know,” said another, “but he shore would make a durned good farm hand. Never seed sech strength in all mah born days!”

Punkie was wavering now. He seemed on the verge of slipping back to break his bones on the rocks of the gulch below. The Chairman snapped out of his lethargy. “Pull up!” he shouted. “Pull 'im up. Don't let 'im fall!”

The boys held Holofernes by his feet and the efficient aide reached down and raised Punkie by his wrists to one last moment's safety. Quickly he tied the Negro's arms behind him with a length of cord.

“Should hey done hit in th' first place,” he commented. The dogs now were baying louder than ever. Punkie heard them. “Old Blood, Old Blood!” he called to his friend.

“Iffen yer'd kilt Old Blood, yer might hey got away,” said the Chairman.

Punkie did not hear. He was looking for the chariots again, and there was a worried expression on his face as though he could not find them in the sky.

“N*****s don' kill dogs,” said Holofernes. “Yer knows thet.”

The expert Chairman planted his foot in the middle of Punkie's spine and sent him screaming into space again. Punkie's body pitched headfirst and sailed in a frightful Y dive, and his legs beat in the air in futile treads which would not buoy him for an extra second of life.

His last piercing shriek was choked as his somersaulting body was brought to. The longest lynching rope in Georgia's history, twenty-seven feet of it, jetted Punkie's soul somewhere, but whether the chariot was waiting to soar him off to Beulah Land, no one knew. Only Punkie knew, and he could no longer tell whether he would shine the fine blinding brass of God's feet.

The mob watched the long drop silently, and not a sound was made when the grisly skinful of chemicals on the rope started unwinding. It turned to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left, to... the... right... to... the... left... to... the... ri... ri...

For many minutes the Executive Committee and the picnickers as well stood gaping at their masterpiece in admiration.

The picnic crowd was breaking up when the lynch officials departed from the trestle and came down to the banks of the creek when their final job was done. They left a few of the boys to pull the body up.

“Well, we'uns shore fixed thet n*****,” said Jim Volley jubilantly, “and th' rope didn't cut his head off, neither.”

“Was afeared hit might,” said Holofernes. “But Punkie's neck muscles shore was strong. Bet you couldn't cut through 'em with a piece of wire.”

“Ropes th' onliest language n*****s understands,” said the Chairman. “Ropes and Smith & Wesson talk.”

“Well, whut yer waitin' for?” asked Holofernes.

The Chairman did a monologue with his forty-five. Punkie's body was riddled with bullets before all of the lynchers got tired of shooting the dripping target and ordered the boys to pull it up.

Johnny Beane could no longer keep his breakfast down. He retched violently and showered the leaves of the water oak. His head was spinning dizzily, and he had to hold on to keep from toppling from his perch. When the last man had left he shakily managed to get his trembling body down.

Some of the lynchers, making their way afoot back to town, discerned a blob of black with waving arms running down the road in their direction. It was Bishop Grigg bobbing his fat at a tremendous pace and even outstripping four of his younger and slimmer Stewards who tried to keep up. The Bishop was in a state of desperate agitation.

A mud-spattered Model T, dragging Punkie's body behind it in wild and dusty arcs, sped by the Bishop and dis-appeared in red clouds up the bumpy roads. It was on the way to its inevitable tour of N*****town. Bishop Grigg shook his fist at the car. Tears were streaming down his face. Something had happened to the churchman since Miss Cora's rejection which had shocked him into a state of the utmost humility. This was no indifferent interest he now was manifesting in the fate of a fellow man, as well as the behavior of his flock. For once, at least, he was practicing the principles of Christianity about which he so loudly preached.

“Raca! Raca! Raca!” he shouted helplessly. The words put him in danger of the Heavenly Council. They were the worst he had ever uttered in his life before. Christ had deplored their use, but “soup-soup” was not strong enough for the deeply affected Bishop on this tragic day.

The grief-crazed Bishop collapsed to his knees in the powdery dust of the road.

"O God, O God," he screamed in his rage, “strike them down!” From a miserable heart, Bishop Grigg cried out his agony. “Wherein have I erred?” he asked. “Wherein have I erred? My ministry has failed. Forgive me, forgive me!”

His Stewards took off their hats and stood beside him with bowed heads. Bishop Grigg wept and prayed incoherently for so long that one of the men tapped him gently on the shoulder. The Bishop looked up with red and tormented eyes. His anguish had dissolved the muscles of his face and his jowls sagged over his cheekbones down to his neck. He turned his face toward Leafy Grove.

“O God,” he begged, “upbraid the city which repenteth not. Clothe the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in sackcloth and put their knees in ashes.” Men and women now were pouring up the road and walking through the fields or taking a short cut on the railroad tracks. Bishop Grigg saw his lost sheep straggling from the carnival.

“O God, strike them down, strike them down!”

The Stewards were getting worried. They gently fried to raise their leader to his feet. The Bishop seemed touched by their concern.

“My right arms,” he said tearfully, “my right arms.”

He regarded his followers affectionately, and was moved by a surging thought. It seemed to revive him.

“O one of little faith,” he accused himself. Bishop Grigg's face brightened, and the muscles pulled his fat back to normalcy, as he addressed his Stewards.

“Once Christ,” he said, “had only His apostles. On a faith-ful few, even as you, He built His church. My ministry has just begun. When God is with us, who can be against us?”

The sheepish crowd passed on by. Some who saw the Bishop in time turned off of the road. Bishop Grigg watched the sinners go. He knelt to pray again. His strength came back to him as he repeated the familiar words. “O God,” he said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Lifted as though by divine inspiration, Bishop Grigg arose and walked firmly up the narrow country road, his soul resolutely girded for the conflict ahead.

His disciples followed after him.

Chapter XXVI: The Disease of Ignorance

Three months after Punkie Brown’s lynching, Spanish influenza, on an epidemic scale, raged in Leafy Grove. Dr. Smith could not remember when in his long career he had prescribed so much castor oil, applied so many mustard plasters, or boiled so much benzoic acid in sick rooms. The physician was weary and badly in need of sleep and rest.

On one day alone he had made the rounds of forty patients in widely separated sections of the country. He had found their temperatures under reasonable control and a number on the road to rapid recovery, and so without fear of hurting his professional conscience in the slightest he informed all alike to expect him no sooner than the morrow. He then thankfully contemplated early retirement for the first time in a month. He was determined to make no more night calls for weeks, for that matter, but despite this resolve he found himself, much to his annoyance, humping along a country road to the home of the “Widder” Pike.

The Widow Pike was thin of body, thin of lip, and fat of leg.

The thinness of her body was attributable to general poor health, the thinness of her lip to the general severity of her character, and the weight of her calves to her general ignorance.

The Widow Pike, whose husband had been the late Jezer Pike, a deacon of the Baptist Community Church of Magnolia Creek, suffered from a complaint which Dr. Smith described as the “disease of ignorance.”

The disease of ignorance was common in all parts of Leafy Grove and Leafy Grove County, as well.

The Widow Pike lived alone with two cats, a dozen laying Rhode Island Reds, and she cultivated a garden of vegetables, Jezer Pike’s widow never ate the eggs of her chickens or the products of her vines. She sold them for cash to give to the Baptist Foreign Missions Board which was interested in proselyting the heathen Indians of the Peruvian Andes, or swapped them for a piece of calico to cover her nakedness. Mrs. Pike’s frugality did not extend to her clothing except that she bought only the cheapest of fabrics. God had had many things to say about the sinfulness of nakedness and left no doubt about His feelings concerning it. Mrs.

Pike managed to stay well-covered. Some of her produce money the widow also used for soap, since cleanliness being next to godliness was almost a commandment.

Mrs. Pike had literal faith in every single word of the Old Testament. She believed in its miracles and the east wind which brought the locusts—its snakes, the murrain of cattle, the plague of boils and blains, and the hail and the fire which ran along the ground. She believed that God had turned the dust to lice and sent the frogs and the flies of Exodus. To her, the greatest man, save one, was Moses and in complete faith she believed that God had transformed his rod into a serpent.

More people, she ardently thought, should know about these beautiful and miraculous things, especially the mountain Indians of Peru and the heathen Chinese whom she was given to understand by Foreign Mission literature actually worshipped the sun and an idol called Buddha. To help spread the good word Mrs. Pike gave freely of her eggs, sold her muscadine jelly, cabbages, and collard greens and deprived herself of all earthly things except bare necessities and the company of her cats. The mite she gave in a year would feed a Baptist missionary for several days in the heights of the Andes.

A missionary in three days in South America or Asia, with good luck, might accomplish wonders. During twenty years, Mrs. Pike figured her eggs and vegetables and muscadine jelly must have provided sustenance for scores of her church's preachers in the Andes, or a total of about 200 meals. As to the location of the Andes or China, Mrs. Pike was slightly vague, but she was confident that they were full of sinners wherever they were, and they must be side by side.

Mrs. Pike was a familiar sight on the streets of Leafy Grove. Wearing a red bandanna handkerchief about her head and modestly covered from her neck to her ankles by voluminous calico dresses and petticoats, she peddled her garden products from store to store and often from house to house.

Purchasers, mostly Baptists, not only obtained from her the finest quality of vegetables and jelly, but also her bless-ing, and the satisfaction that they were aiding their Foreign Missions Board if even but a jot and a tittle.

With abundant sincerity, Mrs. Pike was storing up blessings in Heaven, but her cats possessed no such warehouse and enjoyed theirs as they found them, obtaining a variety of food on their own to relieve the monotony of greasy fritters. The field mice they gobbled and the catnip and grasses they ate kept them in a healthier state of being than that of their mistress, and their enforced predatory grousing made them the most economical, if not the gentlest, of pets. At any rate, Mrs. Pike could enjoy their company in the knowledge that they deprived Baptist missionaries of not a single penny.

As the years passed Mrs. Pike’s body and lips became thinner and thinner and her legs bigger and bigger. This was because she suffered from the disease of ignorance.

The Widow Pike was a self-made victim of pellagra.

Her unrestrained appetite for grits, lye hominy, rice, and corn bread was a matter of concern to Dr. Smith. Twice he had been forced to prescribe for her his eighty-five-cent pellagra cure consisting of nicotinic acid and boiled potato peelings and had delivered gratis a valuable lecture on the health-giving virtues of greens. He was quite familiar with Mrs. Pike’s medical history—frequent tell-tale skin eruptions and a nervous derangement, as well as her unrelieved diet of low-grade food that caused both conditions.

Dr. Smith mused along these lines as he vibrated over the rutty side roads in his old Model T to answer another call to her bedside. He fully expected again to find her the victim of her food preferences.

For once, however, the physician had been wrong in his long-distance diagnosis. Arriving at the house, he found Mrs. Pike abed wearing her inevitable bandanna. She was unattended and unconscious in a freezing, unheated room.

Dr. Smith shooed the two cats he found keeping a hopeful death watch over Mrs. Pike at the foot of her bed and sent them hissing out into the yard to satisfy their appetites with the meat of field mice. He shivered, picked up a Bible from her stomach. The Holy Writ was opened at some basic truths of Haggai.

Had not Moses said unto the Children of Israel: “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath Day?”

And did not Moses and the Children of Israel act on God's own specific orders when they stoned to death the mis-guided man found gathering sticks in the wilderness during those hours of consecration?

Mrs. Jezer Pike knew her Scriptures. Did it not stand to reason that if gathering sticks in the wilderness was a sin punishable by death, that he who so much as picked up a piece of firewood for his grate would likewise be consumed of dying?

Dr. Smith swore eccentrically and looked about for some fuel. After the physician had started a roaring fire, he thumped the sick woman's chest and took her temperature. He held her pale white wrist as he counted her pulse and examined the sickly flesh.

“No blood,” he observed. “Jest drained of hit.”

He rolled up his sleeves. Mrs. Jezer Pike had double pneumonia. The visit he had expected would last only ten minutes turned into a seven-hour vigil.

Valiantly, Dr. Smith worked over the stricken woman. He boiled water, applied wet flannel mustard plasters, administered morphine, simmered aromatic spice bushes, controlled the temperature of the drafty sick room as best he could and listened at frequent intervals to her heart beat.

Dr. Smith worked furiously to save his patient's life, but he damned her in every breath.

“Ignorant and bigoted woman,” he said. “Hypped on th' God stuff. She could be alive an' kickin' for a lifetime longer if it wasn't for thet.”

He despaired of saving her, but too many seemingly miraculous recoveries were recorded in his own score of impossibilities to permit him to give up trying. Death was a tricky old enemy and he gave it no quarter. Life and a pill box were his allies, and he admitted that life itself was his staunchest warrior.

Between ministrations of hot mustard plasters and curses, he rested in a rocker in front of Mrs. Pike's fireplace and waited for her to die. He kept both ears alerted for a change in her labored breathing that would announce a victory of life or a mucous rattle of defeat, and he read her Bible by the light of a sooty chimney lamp.

Dr. Smith contemptuously flipped through the pages of the Old Testament and noted that the last word of God in its last verse as stated by Malachi was “curse.”

“Curses and vengeance down to th' very bitter end!” he exclaimed.

Dr. Smith made the fire sizzle with his spit and turned to St. John. He read of the woman taken in the very act of adultery, she whom the scribes and the Pharisees would have stoned on the instructions of Moses.

“He that is without sin among you,” read Dr. Smith, “let him first cast a stone at her. Some difference!” said Dr. Smith in admiration. “Love and hate!”

Dr. Smith's eyes followed down the column.

“Neither do I condemn thee,” he read. “Go and sin no more. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

Mrs. Pike's rasping breath was announcing surrender of the forces of life. Life and the pillbox were running up an anemic flag—its colors drained—a bleached bandanna.

Dr. Smith dropped the Bible and went over to the bed. The spent physician placed an ear over her left chest and got no answer.

“Poor ignorant soul,” he said pityingly. “Ah'm sorry Ah condemned yer. Yer done yer duty as yer saw hit. Iffen they would only teach Christ without bungling Him and garbling Him. There might truly be light in the world!”

Sadly, he pulled the sheet over his patient's eyes and turned to a neighbor who had dropped in to help.

“She's deceased on yer,” he said simply. “Another victim of Mosaic ignorance Ah cain't do no more.”

“Durned glad,” he thought, “Ah never pressed her for them eighty-five cents.”

In a state of exhaustion he climbed into his rickety Ford for the tiring trip home. He lighted a tailor-made Piedmont and saw by the flame of the kitchen match on his turnip-sized gold stem-winder that it was eleven p.m.

“Hope Ah makes hit,” muttered Dr. Smith.

A persistent roar in his head as of a low wind was disturbing to him. He peered into the night and saw that not a tree branch was moving in the stillness.

“Jest plain tired noises,” he decided. “Ah shore am thet.”

The tired noises Dr. Smith heard were not the only evidence of his exhaustion. He found it hard to focus his eyes, and his dilated pupils behaved strangely.

He missed old Queenie, his mare now long since turned out to graze, antiquated by the discovery of the combustion engine and rubber tires. Time and again his faithful old horse had drawn him home in his shandrydan from distant shacks long after midnight without so much as a twitch of the reins, pacing with unerring precision down dark and narrow piney-wood fringed roads, around their curves and across their dangerous bridges, permitting the passenger deep slumber until the animal's neigh announced their safe arrival in front of the Rideout House in Leafy Grove. Sometimes as old Queenie cut through pitch fabric, Dr. Smith would cluck to her encouragingly. He missed the warmth of her personality and her friendship and his communion with her on their long rural journeys of mercy. When Dr. Smith talked to Queenie, Queenie understood.

Things were different now. Dr. Smith had to sit at a wheel and drive a mechanical thing which hissed and churned, something he had bought second-hand in the first place only after a long-delayed admission that the regrettable machine age must be here to stay after all. The monstrosity was faster, but lacked individuality in his biased opinion.

Dr. Smith chain-smoked Piedmonts to keep awake and pushed his motor to an unprecedented notch on the hand throttle in his impatience to get home. The deceptive voices of the wind were still troubling his ears.

Finally, as he coasted down the steep road of Bull Horn Hill, Dr. Smith saw the lights of Leafy Grove blinking in the distance. They were a welcome sight, but they seemed inordinately large and brilliant. The glow of every arc light was the size of a bonfire, and the head lamp of the Georgia Railroad's night “Shoofly,” pulling to a stop ahead of time up at Bacon's Crossing near the oil mill, glowed strangely like a full moon.

Dr. Smith blinked his eyes and foolishly ignescent sparks danced under the lids. When he opened them and dangerously looked off into a dark cornfield on his right, there they were again. The distracting points of radiance bounced along the furrows, soared, and hovered like will-o’-the-wisps, inviting him to turn his steering wheel and follow them over the terraces.

The driver swore and concentrated hard. “Goodgoddlemightydamn! Old Queenie would have better sense.”

The road before him was awash with liquid luminosity which flowed through the ruts, fed by pattering incandescence as a shower falling. Dr. Smith could barely keep his eyes open for the remainder of the trip, and when he did steer his steaming motor alongside the granite curbing in front of his boarding house he had reached his limit. With an effort he climbed stiffly out of his conveyance.

The Rideout House was dark. Mrs. Rideout and her guests long since had retired at a sensible hour. He looked up at the windows of the quiet house and once more resplendent stars twinkled in his vision and scintillated on the curtains. Some of the pinpoints were as small as the satellites of Jupiter and others flashed falsely like gaudy sequins. The physician rubbed a hand over his eyes as he turned the knob of the unlocked front door and switched on the hall light.

Gratefully, he smelled the warming embers of pungent kindling pine and hickory logs still glimmering in the fireplace. He saw a tempting easy chair pulled close to the mantelpiece by a late reader. Dr. Smith looked wearily at the steep staircase leading to his room on the second floor and sank into the chair's enveloping comfort with a sigh. His elbow pushed a book from an arm to the floor. Idly, he picked it up and glanced at the page which fell open. It was a copy of Romeo and Juliet. Dr. Smith’s bleary eyes saw the conversation of Mercutio and Romeo.

Mercutio: Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word:
If thou are dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
Of this air-reverence love, wherein thou stick’st
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
Romeo: Nay, that’s not so.

Mercutio: I mean, sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
Romeo: And we mean well, in going to this mask;
But ‘tis no wit to go.

Mercutio: Why, may one ask?

The words blurred off as little black specks on paper. Dr. Smith was only vaguely aware that the “Shoofly” was blowing for the stop at Leafy Grove’s depot when he dropped the volume as a violent snap of his nodding chin pulled his head upward for one protesting moment and then lowered it peacefully into the V of his collarbone. His chin stayed where it fell, for it is not the surprised snap which startles the nodder to wakefulness, but the last one which drowses the pendulum.

The medico’s deep sleep was turned into a snooze by disturbing sensations.

Without warming, a great blaze of light flashed blindingly and rocked the physician with the shock of an explosion. He wobbled in his chair for a second and stupidly fanned the air in front of his face to drive the strange brightness away.

The illusory glow in the cornfield had been nothing like this. He had learned his lesson, all right. Never again Would he push himself so far.

Gradually, the flame subsided. It constricted itself slowly, got smaller and smaller. Suddenly, Dr. Smith heard the noise of a rushing, mighty wind, and as quickly as it came it was no more. He blinked normally once again.

Before him stood a mild and gentle-mannered young man with a thin silken beard and moustaches which drooped their points down the corners of his mouth with results which were not unattractive. The caller seemed very tired himself, and the sight of him drained every vestige of anger or annoyance from Dr. Smith's consciousness.

“Goodgoddlemightydamn!” said the physician weakly. “Who are you?”

“I am a weary traveler,” said the stranger. “I have come a long way. Do you suppose I could find accommodation here?”

Dr. Smith forgot that his rest had been disturbed. An aura of such kindliness emanated from the visitor's presence that the physician's sympathy was won instantaneously.

“Wal,” said Dr. Smith, “come on in, won't yer? We be a-seem'.”

The stranger thanked Dr. Smith warmly.

“I am more than sorry to have disturbed you,” he said, “but as I told you, my journey has been long and wearisome.”

“Knows how 'tis,” said Dr. Smith understandingly. “Now lemme think.” He paused and scratched his head thought-fully. “Thet thar room upstairs on the north side of th' house, th' one under th' elm trees. Now hit's vacant. Ah'm pretty shore 'tis. Why dontcha go on up and take hit? Th' land-lady's 'sleep. Ah kin tell her tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” said the stranger. “Thank you very much”

“Don’t mention hit,” said Dr. Smith. “Know whut hit is mahself to git tired.”

The stranger turned to climb the stairs.

“Hey,” said Dr. Smith in afterthought. “Guess yer'd better sion that durned register book over thar on th’ table before er retires. Ah know hit’s a nuisance, but hit’s a rule like.”

“Certainly,” said the stranger agreeably. He produced a fountain pen and wrote. Dr. Smith considerately walked over to blot it. He held the book in his hand and saw the signature. Dr. Smith blanched.

“Why, that’s Jesus Christ!” he ejaculated.

“That’s right,” said the mild-mannered man.

“Bless Jesus!” exclaimed Dr. Smith.

“Thank you,” said the visitor with sorrowful and tender eyes. “Thank you, indeed.”

“Christ!” muttered Dr. Smith.

“Yes?” said the man, “what is it?”

“Jesus Christ in Leafy Grove!”

“Yes,” said the man, “that’s correct.”

Dr. Smith’s skin goosefleshed turkey pits from his toes to his scalp. Fatigue left him.

“What in hell,” thought Dr. Smith, “should a man say to Jesus Christ, anyway?”

The physician floundered helplessly. Should he ask him to sit down? Was he really seeing this man? Was he really here before him? The physician rubbed his hands over his eyes.

Dr Smith was speechless. He could say nothing. The hairs of his moustache were curled by their twitching. His mouth which tried to utter words of welcome only made a silent of wonderment. He felt miserably inadequate. Somehow he did manage to reach a trembling hand for the visi-tor's suitcase.

“Oh, don't bother, please,” protested the visitor. “It's very light.”

The late arrival bestowed a kindly smile upon the mute disciple of Hippocrates and made his way upstairs to the corner room shaded by the branches of the elm. Not until he heard the door softly closed did Dr. Smith gain any control whatever. He was in a state of mind he had never before experienced in a life full of shocks and surprises.

“Goodgoddlemightydamn!” he said, “now whuttenhell shall. Ah do?”

Dr. Smith was confronted with a situation which was beyond even his own celebrated resourcefulness. Famed as the only man in Leafy Grove who had never been stumped by anything, he stood dumbfounded, bewildered, and deeply concerned.

“Jesus Christ in Leafy Grove! Whuttenhell shall Ah do?”

The responsibility staggered him. The Son of God actually at this moment was upstairs over his very head. The overwhelming thought, furthermore, that he was possibly the only man on earth aware of the new resurrection, if that was the word for it, developed on him a consciousness of enormous accountability to mankind.

Dr. Smith fell back into his easy chair and pondered the problem until his senses reeled more than ever. It was not until daylight that he made any progress at all.

For guidance, he turned to the Scriptures at which he had so often scoffed. Feverishly, he searched the “gospel men.” Neither St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, nor St. John were in complete agreement as to what actually happened at the first resurrection, but from their writings he gained a great inspiration.

St. John was a good solid writer. Dr. Smith read his account with interest. When he had finished, he felt that his problem was similar to that of of Mary Magdalene who stood weeping before the new sepulchre in the garden near the cross on Calvary on the third day after the Crucifixion.

What had happened when the resurrected Jesus had revealed Himself for her? According to John, He said: “Go to my brethren.” And she went to tell all the disciples. Dr. Smith jumped up. “Ah’ve got hit!” he exclaimed. “Shore as hell! Thet’s hit!”

A weight now was lifted from the area where he was beginning to suspect he must have a soul. “Thet’s hit,” he repeated. “Bishop Grigg!”

Chapter XXVII: Emmanuel! Emmanuel!

The hour was just five o’clock in the morning. Bishop Grigg was sleeping soundly in the deep hollow of a mattress depressed for years by the extraordinary weight of a man who deviated not.

All of which is to say that nowadays Bishop Grigg, day or night, did not turn to the left or to the right in the pursuit of his goal. Straight and narrow at all times was the path he followed. Now he pulled himself out of the fabric canyon where he dreamed of Heaven upon hearing a noisy clamor at his front door. Dr. Smith was banging away. Bishop Grigg wrestled a fight yardage of robe over his nightgown and hurried to investigate the racket. The sight of the village atheist on his threshold caused him to stop short in amazement.

“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

Dr. Smith was shouting at him and waving his arms with emphasis “Jesus Christ! Don't you understand?” demanded Dr. Smith excitedly.

“Dr. Smith, are you bereft or beset?”

“Beset?”

“Yes, bereft of your senses or beset with devils?”

“Devils, hell!” exploded the physician. “Ah've jest seen Jesus Christ.”

“No man needed to see him more,” commented Bishop Grigg pointedly. “Now I'd advise you to go home and sleep it off.”

“Yer knows Ah never teches th' stuff,” said the doctor. “Ah tells yer Ah've jest seen Jesus.”

“Dr. Smith!”

One of Dr. Smith's gesticulating hands swept his chest. “He's down thar!” he exclaimed.

Bishop Grigg seemed relieved. “You mean in your heart; in your soul?” he asked hopefully.

“No sech! Ah mean in th' Rideout House.” Dr. Smith ex-postulated with great feeling. “Jesus! Jesus!” he repeated.

“At last!” said Bishop Grigg. “Dr. Smith, is it possible that you've got religion?”

“Hell, no! 'Tain't filet a-tall. Ah've come to tell yer Jesus Christ's in Leafy Grove.”

Bishop Grigg's distorted mandible dropped on his chins. He cast a worried glance over his shoulder and stepped back.

“You mean He's here in the spirit,” suggested the Bishop weakly.

“Naw,” said Dr. Smith, “Ah mean no sech a thing. Ah mean in th' flesh and in th' bed, right now. He's sleeping down at th' Rideout House this very minute.”

Bishop Grigg pursed his lips and wrinkled them vigorously.

“Christ came to th' Rideout House last night with a blindin' flash. Ah tell yer he's down thar now. Ah talked to Him. Ah shook His hand.”

“It was only the spirit of the Lord which has descended upon you, Dr. Smith. The fact that you admit Him is a miracle. I am thankful, indeed. God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

Dr. Smith was angry. “Iffen yer don't believe hit, look at th' register. Hit's signed as plain as day.” He reached out his hands beseechingly and lowered his voice.

“Ah'm plumb serious, Bishop Grigg,” he said with earnestness. “Ah've come straight heah to yer house because of yer position. Ah tells yer He's down thar at th' Rideout House. Ah saw Him, Ah talked to Him, Ah felt Him!”

Bishop Grigg spoke soothingly.

“At the resurrection, Christ will not come in a blinding flash, but in a cloud. There have been no signs, my son,” he said. “You have read the Holy Word: ‘Behold the fig tree and all the trees, when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.' Christ Himself foretold the manner of His coming: 'And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexi-ties; the sea and the waves roaring.’”

“Listen!” Dr. Smith begged. “Hit's Christ, Ah tell yer! Thar's plenty of distress and perplexity all th’ time, amongst nations and peoples And Ah been a-seein' stars all night!”

“‘Take heed that ye be not deceived,’” quoted Bishop Grigg. “‘For many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ; and the time draweth near. Go ye not therefore after them.’ Dr. Smith, it could not be.”

“Ah don't keer whether hit could or couldn't be, hit is!” Dr. Smith was exasperated. “Yer standin' thar like a doubtin' Thomas, a-spoutin th’ Bible again! Whyinhell dontcha at least come and investigate? Ah’m a-sayin’ ’tis Christ. And yer say ’tain’t.”

Bishop Grigg hesitated and then finally replied, “All right, Dr. Smith, I'll go with you and see.”

“Ah should think so. Ah hates to admit it, but Ah was so afeered Ah thought Ah was gonna hev appogoddamplexy!"

Bishop Grigg dressed hurriedly and rejoined his visitor on the porch.

Dr. Smith noted that the disciple of Wesley carefully watched him from the corner of one eye as he followed him through the calm morning air until they finally arrived at the Rideout House. Bishop Grigg entered after the doctor with obvious misgivings. He halted uncertainly before the staircase.

“Come on, come on,” urged Dr. Smith impatiently. As the Bishop pulled back he disrespectfully grasped him by the arm. Bishop Grigg allowed himself to be half-dragged upward.

Still maintaining a firm hold on a coat sleeve, Dr. Smith stopped breathlessly by the door leading into the corner room shaded by the branches of the elm. His agitation had grown with every step.

“He's in thar!” he whispered, pointing.

“Well,” the Bishop said, without too much enthusiasm, “let’s get it over with. What are you waiting for? Why don’t you knock?”

“Ah’m afeered,” said Dr. Smith, his teeth chattering. “Why don’t yer knock yerself? Yer His representative.”

Bishop Grigg tapped a hamful of knuckles on the door.

Politely a voice answered, saying, “Come in, please.”

Someone was behind that door, after all! Bishop Grigg cast a worried look at Dr. Smith and turned the knob.

The occupant of the room was finishing his morning ablutions at the wash stand and was drying his neck when he looked up to greet his early visitors.

“Gentlemen,” said the visitor gently, “what is it?”

Dr. Smith could not open his mouth. Bishop Grigg was quaking visibly. In the air there was a glory which filled every crack and crevice of the room. The Bishop felt it about him and was afraid.

The room was shaken by a rushing mighty wind, but outside not a leaf was stirring in the elm tree, and the curtains of the windows were not moved. In a moment, the sweep subsided and the tranquillity of the air was restored.

“The Holy Ghost!” whispered Bishop Grigg.

He threw himself to his knees.

“Rabboni! Rabboni!” he cried. “Master! Master!”

The churchman had seen enough. Even as Dr. Smith, he believed. No signs or wonders were necessary. The Presence filled him with love and awe.

“Emmanuel! Emmanuel!” he shouted his praises. “Glory be to God! The Lord is with us!”

Jesus put his towel on a rack and walked over to the kneeling Bishop. As he placed a hand gently upon his perspiring forehead as though to bless him, Dr. Smith sputtered triumphantly, “Didn't Ah tell yer? Didn't Ah tell yer?”

Bishop Grigg reached for Christ's hand and kissed it frantically. His great body shook and trembled and tears coursed down his face and dripped upon his celluloid collar.

Christ invited him to rise.

Obediently, he got to his feet. “Savior, Savior,” he managed to say, “welcome to Leafy Grove!” “Thank you,” said Jesus.

In some embarrassment, Bishop Grigg spoke further to the visitor, saying, “Oh, Lamb of God, I did not expect Thee to come so... well... so, er... shall we say .. . quietly. I thought that the powers of Heaven would be shaken.” He turned apologetically to Dr. Smith. “That explains my skepticism,” he said, “for the Holy Book predicted that Jesus would be coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

Jesus stroked his thin beard. “Well, sir,” He said, “I have no answer to that. You see, my visit is rather unofficial and altogether in the nature of an experiment.”

Bishop Grigg was greatly mystified, but dared not question Him further.

“Glory be to God,” fervently said the minister. “Whatever be the reason, Glory be to God.”

“Thank you,” said Jesus gratefully. Christ turned to Dr. Smith. “When do they serve breakfast here, sir?” he asked quietly.

The question took the doctor somewhat by surprise, but he rallied bravely. He looked at his big stemwinder.

“Not for a hour,” he said, “but come on down and Ah'll cook hit mahself.”

“Fine!” said Jesus. “Let's go.” He took Dr. Smith by the arm and together they started for the kitchen.

Bishop Grigg respectfully backed out of the door and hurried from the Rideout House to spread the news.

Every living being who subsequently looked upon the Presence of the visitor in Leafy Grove was miraculously affected. No single man, woman, or child for a moment doubted that he was truly the Lamb of God. The people rejoiced greatly. His popularity was instantaneous and glowing. Wherever He went great multitudes followed Him. All who saw Him believed in Him and fell down to worship Him. Jesus asked that the kneeling and praying be stopped after the third day, but He could not control the Negroes in this respect at all, and even some whites persisted.

The colored people prostrated themselves whenever they saw Him, even from a block away, and staged wild celebrations with banjos, caper dances, watermelon cuttings, and the singing of spirituals on Railroad Street. They planned to honor Him with a fish-fry and a baptizing to follow in their pool on Pretty Creek.

Jesus walked with dignity and serenity through the streets, accepting the plaudits of the people and bestowing smiles and words of kindliness upon everyone. Little girls came to Him with gifts of rose petals, and the members of the Floral Circle appointed committees of school children to strew His path with flowers and greens of every variety obtainable. All the bushes and plants were being stripped of blooms, and Christ also requested that this sort of thing be discontinued.

The modern clothes Jesus wore on the streets of Leafy Grove somehow troubled the residents, many of whom thought He should, by rights, wear the garments in which they had seen Him pictured on Sunday School Bible cards. Disappointedly, Sister Sally Fanny Singleton observed that He “dresses jest like a jelly bean. If He didn't have his beard and moustaches, He could be taken for one of the boys hanging out at Huyler's Drug Store, in Atlanta, long hair and all.”

Christ, however, continued to don the attire of current style in spite of the murmurings. He wore single-breasted suits, four-in-hand ties of lively colors, white shirts, black shoes, and a white beaver hat. When the sun shone upon the covering of his head and was seen from a distance, many thought of it as a sort of halo and were filled with happy spiritual disturbances which pleased them and exalted them.

“No one,” according to Kneeless Noah, “ever made sech a hit in Leafy Grove, or give me so much trouble handlin' crowds.”

Christ, Himself, was the first to protest such boisterous manifestations of love and loyalty. He approached Mayor Hampton Forbes.

“Mayor,” he said, “I have come strictly on a private experiment, almost incognito, and this is going too far.”

It was getting so that Jesus could scarcely walk upon the streets of Leafy Grove without being stopped by prostrate forms in His path.

Some of the boys were discussing the problem in Zeke Pitt's Sanitary Barber Shop. Kneeless Noah came up with an inspiration.

“Let's give Him a parade and git hit over with in one big celebration,” he suggested.

“Aw, a parade,” objected Tom Beane, “they hain't nothin' original abouten a parade. Jesus Christ, now He deserves somethin' special, don't He now?”

“Guess so,” admitted Kneeless. He tapped his billy thoughtfully upon his nickel-plated star.

“Hey! Why, Ah've got hit,” he said finally. “We had big success bringing Santa Claus into town on th' cowcatcher last Christmas. They's a lot in common, hain't they, betwixt Santa Claus and Christ.”

“Shore is!” said Mr. Beane. “Corngratulations, Kneeless, yer've hit hit, shore!”

“We kin boner th' Accommodation engine,” said the Marshal, “and th’ people kin line th right-of-way from th’ oil mill to th’ depot. They kin git they shoutin’ tended to all at once.”

“Shore kin,” said Bob Galloway, breaking in. “Hit'll be jest like Him ridin' into Jerusalem.”

“On a iron donkey, modern like,” said Zeke Pitt.

Kneeless tapped applause on his nickel-plated star. “Thet’s plumb smart of yer, Zeke,” he said.

“Wal, he shore acts modern, all right, his clothes and those red ties.”

So it was agreed.

Kneeless departed the shop to make arrangements with an observation which attested to his constant concern over the welfare of the people of Leafy Grove.

“They'll be a-throwin’ a powerful lot of flowers,” he said. “Ah only hopes they don’t derail th’ engine. A marshal, yer knows, has to think abouten eveething.”

“Let's heist Him on th’ cowcatcher jest like we’uns did Santa Claus last Christmas,” said Brother Cowan.

The Lord, however, waved His assistants aside and stepped up Himself gracefully without any assistance whatever.

Jesus rode into Leafy Grove through a lane of delirium. As He stepped upon the cowcatcher, He was almost crushed by the excited throngs, but Kneeless in an unusual dem-onstration of efficiency had made certain plans and the Master was saved. Brother Inskip and twenty of the strongest men in town acted as his bodyguard, and soon some order was restored and the locomotive got under way. Engineer Simon Foster had difficulty keeping it down to a mere crawl of four miles an hour, and although tonnage of palms and branches of trees were strewed upon the tracks, the engine was not derailed but plowed on through.

Negroes quite properly cheered only on the left side of the tracks where they gravitated automatically, and the white people lined the right. Every soul in the country was present and all stood together, according to their church affiliation. In the volume of roaring, if anything, the Negroes outdid the Caucasians, especially in the manner of their joyous screaming of “Hosanna in the highest.”

Christ stood on the cowcatcher and waved to all with complete impartiality. The white people were too hysterical to notice it, and Christ finally arrived at the depot without making any enemies.

Christ stepped gracefully from the cowcatcher at the station and was escorted to a raised pine scantling platform erected for a series of welcoming addresses by leading townspeople. The Mayor and members of the City Council who voted the taxpayers’ money for the general expenses, occupied the seats of honor, with the chair of Christ appropriately placed in the front and center.

When all were seated, quiet was obtained by a long high note of a trumpet blown by Adam Vaughn, the soloist of the Baptist Sunday School.

The Mayor started things humming.

“Weuns are honored by th’ honor of honors,” he stated “and this heah celebration proves our gratitude. Of all th’ towns of th’ world, Christ selected Leafy Grove for his experiment. Jest whut thet experiment will be hain’t none of our durned business, but whutever Christ does we know hit’s for good.

“Leafy Grove has got to show hits appreciation by extra-special deeds and acts. Th’ first deed and act Ah recommends as bein’ of lastin’ importance, is to make Christ a honorary citizen of th’ community.”

The cheers were deafening. Then and there the City Council made it legal by ringing viva voce.

Jesus stood up and accepted with brevity. “Very kind of you,” He said, and sat down.

“We ought to make Him Mayor,” someone in the crowd shouted.

Hampton Forbes blushed. He had held his office for five straight terms and had decided to run for reelection. The suggestion of the voter out front put him in a most embarrassing position.

“Wal,” he stammered, “hit's up to Christ, Ah guess.” He turned to the Master. “Course yer kin hev hit,” he said. “Thet is, iffen yer wants hit.”

He waited hopefully for a decision. It came with startling promptness.

“I’ll run,” said Jesus, “provided I can write my own platform?”

Mayor Forbes strove to hide his disappointment and the crowd roared. He was obviously sorry he had allowed the subject to come up.

“No man kin run against God's Son,” he said. “Ah hereby withdraws.”

Ephraim Cowan, who had planned to oppose him in the primary, shouted, “Me, too. Ah'm outen hit for good. His election must be unanimous.”

Thus it was that Christ's unopposed candidacy for the office of Mayor of Leafy Grove was so suddenly and surprisingly announced. He began His campaign on the following day.

Chapter XXVIII: The Campaign

Christ made his first big political mistake one afternoon a few days before the election while visiting in the Busy Bee.

Tacitus Thigpen was weighing an order of bulk rice for a Negro customer when Jesus interrupted.

“Tacitus,” he remarked, “you are four ounces short on that.”

The startled merchant jumper, and dropped his scoop to the floor. His face reddened and he glared. He seemed on the verge of storming at the Savior, but reconsidered. He replaced the sack on the scales.

“Wal,” he said, “yer shore right, Jesus. Guess my eyesight’s failing.”

“Another thing,” suggested Jesus quietly, “I think you should get those springs adjusted. Tacitus, therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. That’s my platform for Mayor.”

Tacitus Thigpen blushed and gave no answer. He added four ounces of rice and passed the bag to the darkey.

“Ah wants some flour, too, bossman,” the Negro said.

The merchant pointed to a sack in front of the nail counter. “Take thet one thar,” he said.

But Christ interrupted again. “Tacitus, you don't mean you are going to sell that bag of flour without telling the customer that it is partly spoiled? Don’t you remember the dog?”

Thigpen’s cheeks were suffused with red.

The Negro customer caught on. “Nawsuh,” he said angrily, “Ah don't want no flour with no dog pee on hit. Nawsuhree.”

“You are quite right, my son,” said Christ, and walked out of the door.

Thigpen's resentment against the Savior started then and there. It was Thigpen, determined to destroy this unexpected enemy, who first dropped the hint that Christ was an impostor. Night after night he read long and late searching the Scriptures for evidence.

One of the most telling weapons he used were Christ’s own words taken straight out of St. Matthew. “Beware of false prophets,” He said, “which come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

Tacitus Thigpen reasoned that any man who sought to hurt his business could be nothing less than a dangerous animal.

With stratagem and stealth he whispered against the “false prophet” and bolstered his arguments with many verbatim passages designed to show that any man who lived as did the visitor could in reality be no better than Satan: “Many shall come in my name. Go ye not after them,” quoted Thigpen. His smear campaign won quick response and caused a flurry of doubting.

One day Christ walked up Center Street to pay a call on Aunt Duty. This turned out to be his second big political error. He entered the kitchen from the back door and found Aunt Duty cooking the noon dinner. Aunt Duty started to kneel, but Christ stopped her.

“Just came in for a friendly little talk, Aunt Duty,” he said. “How are you?”

“Thank th' Lawd, I'se fine, and how's yer Pa, Mr. Jesus?” she asked solicitously.

“He's just wonderful, Aunt Duty,” the Savior replied.

“Pow'ful glad to heah thet,” said Aunt Duty heartily. “Ah always felt lak Ah knowed thet Man.”

“Aunt Duty,” said Jesus, “of course, you know Him. You know Him better than anyone in Leafy Grove.”

The old cook was visibly affected.

“What's the matter, Aunt Duty?” Jesus asked.

“I'se jest befo’ cryin’,” she blubbered.

Jesus comforted her.

“As a matter of fact,” He said, “you are really the finest person in this village.”

“Mr. Jesus,” exclaimed Aunt Duty in amazement, “yer don't mean thet?”

“Yes, I do,” insisted the Savior, “you really are.”

“Praise th’ Lawd,” shouted Aunt Duty, overcome with happiness. “Hallelujah! Hosanna!”

“Aunt Duty,” said Jesus, “I want to do something for you. I want to give you anything you wish. Tell me, Aunt Duty, what you would like to have.”

Aunt Duty's eyes cleared, and she smiled brightly. Anticipatory lights made her countenance shine.

“Thet's mighty fine of yer, Mr. Jesus,” said the old woman, “yer know, Ah thinks Ah'd jest lak a Cokie-Colie.”

The request amused Jesus. He threw back His head and laughed until He cried.

“Aunt Duty,” He said, wiping the tears away, “you are good for the soul. Now, are you sure that's all you want?”

“Ah shore do lak to see yer happy, Nir. Jesus.” Aunt Duty smiled. “Yessuh, Mr. Jesus, Ah shore desires a Cokie-Colie. Ah ain't had one recently since last week.”

“Well, now,” said the Master, “come right along with me. We'll go down to the drug store this very minute.”

Aunt Duty frowned.”Cain't do thet, Mr. Jesus, I'se cooking dinner,” she said. “And besides yer knows as well's Ah does, n*****s ain’t 'lowed in white folks' drinkin' fountins.”

“Never you mind, Aunt Duty. Just you come along with me.”

Some quality in the Master’s voice caused Aunt Duty to obey Him without further protest, but there was a troubled look in her face as she reached for her shawl and followed Him into the street.

Christ chatted cheerfully with Aunt Duty as he escorted her down Center Street in the direction of Simmons & Sorters’ Drug Store, but the old woman could not shake off her depression.

“Mr. Jesus,” she said, “Ah hain’t a-gwine to disobey mall Lawd, but dis heah shore be a pow’ful lot of foolishness.”

“Don't worry, Aunt Duty. This is just a part of my experiment.”

Aunt Duty shook her head perplexedly and trotted along beside Him. Jesus considerately helped her step down from a curbing to cross over to Commerce Street and was observed by Mrs. Sally Fanny Singleton in the very act of holding her elbow. The good Methodist woman stopped short. She was horror-struck.

“My Lord!” she exclaimed. “Did you see thet! Imagine, Jesus treating thet old n***** woman jest like a social equal.”

She addressed her remarks to Mrs. Sorter who was accompanying her to a meeting of the Floral Circle.

“My soul and body!” said Mrs. Sorter. Hit’s disgraceful!”

The two women could barely wait to tell the other members of the scandal. Mrs. Singleton’s watermelon fundament bobbled up and down so fast as she hurried with her slimmer companion that she was forced to stop several times to keep from being thrown off balance.

“Hit’s my bounden duty to spread hit,” said Mrs. Singleton breathlessly. “Somebody’s got to talk to Jesus.”

Mrs. Sorter tried to find an excuse for Jesus’ faux pas.

“Well, He’s a foreigner, after all. Maybe He jest don’t know no better. He don’t know how things are done here.”

“Foreigner or no foreigner,” said Mrs. Singleton with finality, “He’s settin’ a bad example for Christians!”

Jesus paid no attention to the commotion He and His companion were causing, although Kneeless Noah and Speedy Dabney were following at an amazing pace for them behind Him, and a dozen or so townspeople and farmers stood gaping as they passed. Aunt Duty was completely uncomfortable, and her composure was improved none at all when Mrs. Peleg Foster who saw her entering the drug store with the Savior dropped a bottle of Tanlac in her confusion. The popular patent medicine with a high percentage of alcohol broke in many pieces and the stimulating liquor drained into the gutter. Christ ignored the incident and asked Aunt Duty to precede him into the establishment.

“Doc” Eber Simmons lounged back of the soda fountain smoking a “two-fer.” A bitter draft went down the wrong way when Jesus and Aunt Duty stepped up to the marble bar. The druggist frantically pulled the cheroot out of his mouth to keep from swallowing it when Jesus helped Aunt Duty onto a high stool. Jesus sat down on one beside her. Doc Simmons stared at them in open-mouthed flabber-gastation.

“A Coca-Cola for Aunt Duty,” Jesus ordered, “and a plate of vanilla ice cream for me.”

Aunt Duty's frightened eyes were like opal moons in the Milky Way.

“O Lawd, O Lawd,” she moaned quietly.

Jesus nudged her in the ribs. “Don't worry, Aunt Duty,” He said soothingly. “Everything will be all right.”

Eber Simmons was having trouble getting words to come out of his throat. He looked frantically toward the rear of the store where his partner, Heth Sorter, was filling one of Dr. Smith's special twenty-five-cent Seidlitz powders prescriptions. Sorter was blithely unaware of what was happening down front.

“Jesus,” said Eber finally, “we cain't serve no n***** here.”

“Aunt Duty wants a Coca-Cola,” said Jesus firmly. With considerable alarm the druggist saw unsuspected signs of virility flaming in Jesus' eyes.

“We'll give hit to her in a paper cup,” said Eber neryously. “But she'll hey to drink hit away from th' fountain.”

“Aunt Duty wants her Coca-Cola in a glass,” said Jesus, “and I want her to drink it with me here.”

“But, Jesus, Ah jest cain't do hit.”

Heth Sorter heard the conversation and came running.

Mrs Kittim Greer, the ailing customer, walked down behind him to see what was going on.

“Hey,” exclaimed Heth upon seeing the negress seated at his counter, “git out of heah.”

Jesus stood up and placed a firm hand of protection on Aunt Duty's shoulder.

Heth recognized Him instantly and with great embarrassment.

“I'm sorry, Jesus,” he sputtered, “Ah didn't know this old n***** was with yer, but yer knows we'uns don't allow n*****s at th' fountain.”

“Aunt Duty wants a Coca-Cola,” Jesus said. He looked Heth Sorter squarely in the eyes, and the man was dis-mayed.

“This has gone far enough,” Christ said. “I'll make your Coca-Cola myself.”

As though their feet had turned to lead, neither Simmons nor Sorter moved as much as an inch from their tracks as the Master stepped behind the bar. Mrs. Kittim Greer stood as immobile as a pillar of salt.

Efficiently, Jesus picked up a glass and scooped in some chopped ice.

Strangely, Aunt Duty’s fears and discomfiture disappeared. She was smiling at her Lord when he asked her cheerfully, “How many would you like, Aunt Duty?”

“Guess, Mr. Jesus,” she said, “Ah'll be a-havin' abouten eight.”

“Aunt Duty,” Jesus laughed, “you can have as many Cokie-Colies as your heart desires.”

“This carbolayted water shore do cheer mah thro't,” she said, as she drained a glass gurglingly.