“Yeah.” Then I waited again for a spell, for I knew my place in the picture, and then I said, “They tell me there’s gonna be a new schoolhouse.” Then I waited another spell while the words died away and it was as though I hadn’t said anything. Then one of them let the ambeer drop to the dry ground, and touched the spot with the end of the hickory stick, and said, “Yeah, and steam heat, hear tell.”
And Number Two: “Give them young ‘uns pneumony, steam heat.”
And Number Three: “Yeah.”
And Number Four: “If’n they git hit built.”
I looked across the square at the painted clock face on the courthouse tower, which was the clock the old ones kept time by, and waited. Then I said, “What’s stopping ‘em?”
And Number One: “Stark. Thet Stark.”
And Number Two: “Yeah, thet Willie Starl.”
And Number Three: “Too big fer his britches. Gits in the courthouse and gits his front feet in the through, and gits too big fer his britches.”
And Number Four: Yeah.”
I waited, then I said, “Wants ‘em to take the low bid, they tell me.”
And Number One: “Yeah, wants ‘em to take the low bid and git a passel of niggers in here.”
And Number Two: “To put white folks out of work. Builden hit.”
And Number Three: “You want to work longside a nigger? And specially him a strange nigger? Builden schoolhouse or backhouse, how so be hit?
And Number Four: “And white folk needen work.”
And Number One: “Yeah.”
Yeah, _I said to myself, so that is the tale _, for Mason County is red-neck country and they don’t like niggers, not strange niggers anyway, and they haven’t got many of their own. “How much could they save,” I asked, “taking the low bid?”
And Number One: Couldn’t save enuff to pay fer bringen no passel of niggers in here.”
“Putten white folks out of work,” Number Two said.
I waited till it was decent, then I got up and said, “Got to be moving. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
One of the old ones looked up at me as though I had just come, and said, “What you work at, boy?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Porely?” he asked.
“Not porely,” I said. “It is just I lack ambition.”
Which was God’s truth, I reckoned, as I walked on down the street.
I reckoned, too, that I had killed enough time and I might as well go to the courthouse and get my story in the way I was supposed to get it. All this sitting around in front of harness shops was not the way any newspaperman would go about getting his story. There isn’t ever anything you get that way which you can put into a newspaper. So I went on over to the courthouse.
Inside the courthouse, where the big hall was empty and shadowy and the black oily floor was worn down to humps and ridges under your feet and the air was dry and dusty so that you felt in the stillness that you were breathing in the air from all the talk, loud and little, there had been in there for seventy-five years–well, inside there, just off the hall I saw some men sitting in a room. Above the doorway there was a tin sign with the letters about faded off. But they still said Sheriff _.
I went into the room where the three men were cocked back in split-bottom chairs and an electric fan set on top of the roll-top desk was burring away with little effect, and said howdy-do to the faces. The biggest face, which was round and red and had its feet cocked on the desk and its hands laid on its stomach, said howdy-do.
I took a card out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the card for a minute, holding it off near arm’s length as though he were afraid it would spit in his eye, the he turned it over and looked at the back side a minute till he was dead sure it was blank. Then he laid the hand with the card in it back down on his stomach, where it belonged, and looked at me. “You done come a piece,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“What you come fer?”
“To see what’s going on about the
And Number Two: “Give them young ‘uns pneumony, steam heat.”
And Number Three: “Yeah.”
And Number Four: “If’n they git hit built.”
I looked across the square at the painted clock face on the courthouse tower, which was the clock the old ones kept time by, and waited. Then I said, “What’s stopping ‘em?”
And Number One: “Stark. Thet Stark.”
And Number Two: “Yeah, thet Willie Starl.”
And Number Three: “Too big fer his britches. Gits in the courthouse and gits his front feet in the through, and gits too big fer his britches.”
And Number Four: Yeah.”
I waited, then I said, “Wants ‘em to take the low bid, they tell me.”
And Number One: “Yeah, wants ‘em to take the low bid and git a passel of niggers in here.”
And Number Two: “To put white folks out of work. Builden hit.”
And Number Three: “You want to work longside a nigger? And specially him a strange nigger? Builden schoolhouse or backhouse, how so be hit?
And Number Four: “And white folk needen work.”
And Number One: “Yeah.”
Yeah, _I said to myself, so that is the tale _, for Mason County is red-neck country and they don’t like niggers, not strange niggers anyway, and they haven’t got many of their own. “How much could they save,” I asked, “taking the low bid?”
And Number One: Couldn’t save enuff to pay fer bringen no passel of niggers in here.”
“Putten white folks out of work,” Number Two said.
I waited till it was decent, then I got up and said, “Got to be moving. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
One of the old ones looked up at me as though I had just come, and said, “What you work at, boy?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Porely?” he asked.
“Not porely,” I said. “It is just I lack ambition.”
Which was God’s truth, I reckoned, as I walked on down the street.
I reckoned, too, that I had killed enough time and I might as well go to the courthouse and get my story in the way I was supposed to get it. All this sitting around in front of harness shops was not the way any newspaperman would go about getting his story. There isn’t ever anything you get that way which you can put into a newspaper. So I went on over to the courthouse.
Inside the courthouse, where the big hall was empty and shadowy and the black oily floor was worn down to humps and ridges under your feet and the air was dry and dusty so that you felt in the stillness that you were breathing in the air from all the talk, loud and little, there had been in there for seventy-five years–well, inside there, just off the hall I saw some men sitting in a room. Above the doorway there was a tin sign with the letters about faded off. But they still said Sheriff _.
I went into the room where the three men were cocked back in split-bottom chairs and an electric fan set on top of the roll-top desk was burring away with little effect, and said howdy-do to the faces. The biggest face, which was round and red and had its feet cocked on the desk and its hands laid on its stomach, said howdy-do.
I took a card out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the card for a minute, holding it off near arm’s length as though he were afraid it would spit in his eye, the he turned it over and looked at the back side a minute till he was dead sure it was blank. Then he laid the hand with the card in it back down on his stomach, where it belonged, and looked at me. “You done come a piece,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“What you come fer?”
“To see what’s going on about the
Similar Books
