Then I think that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. All the same, I think it wouldn’t hurt none if all of us was to remember that what goes on in this room ain’t to be told outside.
That’s understood. Or dam sight better had be. But what I started to say, we got to be sure this here Summers had the right on his side.
Look to me like he did all right.
What I say, when them Ku Klux goes to take a fellow out, why don’t they take him out or else stay home?
That’s me. I never seen such a mess-around-all-the-time-and-then-never-do-nothing bunch in all my life.
And all this “Come to Jesus.”
And “Sweet Adeline.”
What’s the good of that? Everybody knows what they was there for. Then why the hell don’t they up and do it thouten all this fooling around?
All the time making out they don’t never do nothing ’cepting the preacher told them to do it.
And then, come to find out, when they pick up Brody he had a strap on him looked like a trace off a six-horse harness.
I reckon the preacher give them that for to beat time to the singing.
That was to scare him.
Yeah?
Anyway, so I hear tell. That’s what them Ku Klux said.
Them Ku Klux sure can tell it their own way.
Wait a minute, wait a minute... Moon, how come you heared all this what the Ku Klux said?
They was just talking around.
I ain’t asking you was they talking around. I ask you what the hell you was doing around them?
[MR. MOON makes no reply. There is a general stir.]
What the hell?...
Come on, Moon. Why don’t you say something?
Why, what’s the matter, Mr. Wemple?
Why, that simple-looking nut, he’s in the Ku Klux!
What!
Look at him, the lying look he’s got on his face! Hell, no wonder he acted like the police was after him! No, he couldn’t git it straight about the singing, ’cause they done filled him up with so much talk, he don’t know is he going or coming! No, he ain’t afraid of no Ku Klux, ’cause he’s got a nightgown hisself already.
But how about them questions?
I’m coming to that. Hey, you, why ain’t you said something about this when they ask you them questions? When they ask you was you in the Ku Klux, how come you said you wasn’t?
Lemme alone! Lemme alone!
Quit that crying or I’ll bust you one in the jaw. Now answer me what I just now ask you.
Let me talk to him, Mr. Wemple. Now, Mr. Moon, when them lawyers ask you was you in the Ku Klux, what made you answer no?
I tried to tell them how it was, but they wouldn’t let me say nothing... That there man, he kept a-saying. “Answer yes or no.”... I tried to explain it to them, but they wouldn’t never give me no chance.
Chance? What the hell! Couldn’t you say yes?
They ain’t tooken me in yet. I ain’t never had the money. They won’t take me in lessen I give them the ten dollars.
Well, I’ll be damned!
I never hear tell of nothing like this in all my life. Why, Mr. Moon, don’t you know that was perjury?
I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t lemme say nothing.
Don’t you know that when you take oath before the judge to tell the truth, you got to tell the truth else it’s against the law? Ain’t nobody ever told you that before?
Lemme alone! Lemme alone!
[There ensues an ominous silence, punctuated occasionally by MR. MOON’S sobbing.]
So now every word what’s been said in here, the Ku Klux knows it five minutes after we got it.
This sure is bad.
Moon, effen a juryman tells what he heared in the jury room, they put him in jail for five year.
Ten year.
And the penitentiary, not the jail.
In the penitentiary for ten year. And he don’t hardly ever come out. ’Cause before the time comes for him to git out, something generally always happens to him.
Lemme alone! Lemme alone!
Aw hell, what’s the use of talking to him? ’Cause that dumb coot, even if you could scare him deef, dumb, and blind, why he’d blab it all around anyhow and never know he done it.
That’s the hell of it. And never know he done it.
What do you think about this, Mr. Petry? Do you think we better report this fellow to the judge?
I’m just a-thinking. I’m just a-thinking.
Well, while we’re figuring on that, I reckon we better git up a verdict. This here look like second degree to me.
First degree, I say.
First degree, I say. Me too. This here is murder.
Well, I was thinking about first degree myself. ’Cause a Klansman, it stands to reason, he’s as good as anybody else.
He is that. When a man gits killt, something had ought to be done about it and that goes for a Klansman same as anybody else.
Everybody alike, I say.
And another thing, men, what we hadn’t ought to forget. Ku Klux is a fine order, when you come right down to it.
I know a fellow what he’s a kind of a travelling agent for the Red Men. He got something to do with the insurance, I think it is, and believe me he’s got it down pat about every kind of a order they is going. And he says to me one time, he says: “Funk,” he says, “you can put it right down, if they’d run it right, the Ku Klux is the best order what they is going. They ain’t none of them,” he says, “what’s got the charter and the constitution and all like of that what the Ku Klux has. Now you’ll hear a lot of talk,” he says to me, “and I ain’t saying the Ku Klux ain’t made mistakes and is going to make a whole hell of a lot more of them. But when you come right down to what you call citizenship and all like of that, don’t let nobody tell you the Ku Klux ain’t there.”