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rankled me. Mule, off seeing the world, while I, well, maybe I deserved a gingerbread man. As I
returned the picture, Mr. County said: "I'm all for a boy serving his country. But the bad part of
it is, Samuel was just getting where he could give us a hand around here. I sure hate to depend
on nigger help. Lying and stealing, never know where you are."
"It beats me why C.C. carries on like that," said his wife, knotting her lips. "He knows it irks
me. Colored people are no worse than white people: in some cases, better. I've had occasion to
say so to other people in this town. Like this business about old Catherine Creek. Makes me
sick. Cranky she may be, and peculiar, but there's as good a woman as you'll find. Which
reminds me, I mean to send her a dinner-tray up to the jail, for I'll wager the Sheriff doesn't set
much of a table."
 So little, once it has changed, changes back: the world knew us: we would never be warm
again: I let go, saw winter coming toward a cold tree, cried, cried, came apart like a rain-rotted
rag. I'd wanted to since we left the house. Mrs. County begged pardon if she'd said anything to
upset me; with her kitchen-slopped apron she wiped my face, and we laughed, had to, at the
mess it made, the paste of flour and tears, and I felt, as they say, a lot better, kind of
lighthearted. For manly reasons I understood, but which made me feel no shame, Mr. County
had been mortified by the outburst: he retired to the front of the shop.
Mrs. County poured coffee for herself and sat down. "I don't pretend to follow what's going
on," she said. "The way I hear it. Miss Dolly broke up housekeeping because of some
disagreement with Verena?" I wanted to say the situation was more complicated than that, but
wondered, as I tried to array events, if really it was. "Now," she continued thoughtfully, "it may
sound as though I'm talking against Dolly: I'm not But this is what I feel-you people should go
home. Dolly ought to make her peace with Verena: that's what she's always done, and you can't
turn around at her time of life. Also, it sets a poor example for the town, two sisters quarreling,
one of them sitting in a tree; and Judge Charlie Cool, for the first time in my life I feel sorry for
those sons of his. Leading citizens have to behave themselves; otherwise the entire place goes to
pieces. For instance, have you seen that wagon in the square? Well then, you better go have a
look. Family of cowboys, they are. Evangelists, C.C. says-all I know is there's been a great
racket over them and something to do with Dolly." Angrily she puffed up a paper sack. "I want
you to tell her what I said: go home. And here, Collin, take along some cinnamon rolls. I know
how Dolly dotes on them."
As I left the bakery the bells of the courthouse clock were tinging eight, which meant that it
was seven-thirty. This clock has always run a half-hour fast. Once an expert was imported to
repair it; at the end of almost a week's tinkering he recommended, as the only remedy, a stick of
dynamite; the town council voted he be paid in full, for there was a general feeling of pride that
the clock had proved so incorrigible. Around the square a few store-keepers were preparing to
open; broom-sweepings fogged doorways, rolled trashbarrels berated the cool cat-quiet streets.
At the Early Bird, a better grocery store than Verena's Jitney Jungle, two colored boys were
fancying the window with cans of Hawaiian pineapple. On the south side of the square, beyond
the cane benches where in all seasons sit the peaceful, perishing old men, I saw the wagon Mrs.
County had spoken of-in reality an old truck contrived with tarpaulin covering to resemble the
western wagons of history. It looked forlorn and foolish standing alone in the empty square. A
homemade sign, perhaps four feet high, crested the cab like a shark's fin. Let Little Homer
Honey Lasso Your Soul For The Lord. Painted on the other side there was a blistered greenish
grinning head topped by a ten-gallon hat. I would not have thought it a portrait of anything
human, but, according to a notice, this was: Child Wonder Little Homer Honey. With nothing
more to see, for there was no one around the truck, I took myself toward the jail, which is a
box-shaped brick building next door to the Ford Motor Company. I'd been inside it once. Big
Eddie Stover had taken me there, along with a dozen other boys and men; he'd walked into the
drugstore and said come over to the jail if you want to see something. The attraction was a thin
handsome gipsy boy they'd taken off a freight train; Big Eddie gave him a quarter and told him
to let down his pants; nobody could believe the size of it, and one of the men said, "Boy, how
come they keep you locked up when you got a crowbar like that?" For weeks you could tell
girls who had heard that joke: they giggled every time they passed the jaiL
There is an unusual emblem decorating a side wall of the jail. I asked Dolly, and she said that
in her youth she remembers it as a candy advertisement. If so, the lettering has vanished; what
remains is a chalky tapestry: two flamingo-pink trumpeting angels swinging, swooping above a
huge horn filled with fruit like a Christmas stocking; embroidered on the brick, it seems a faded
mural, a faint tattoo, and sunshine flutters the imprisoned angels as though they were the spirits
of thieves. I knew the risk I was taking, parading around in plain sight; but I walked past the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]