“Your friend Beauchamp seems to have done it this time.”
“Yes,” he said. “They’re going to make a nigger out of him once in his life anyway.”
“Charles!” his mother said.-eating rapidly, eating quite a lot and talking rapidly and quite a lot too about the ballgame and waiting to get hungry any minute any second now until suddenly he knew that even the last bite had been too much, still chewing at it to get it down to where it would swallow, already getting up.
“I’m going to the picture show,” he said.
“You haven’t finished,” his mother said: then she said, “The show doesn’t begin for almost an hour yet:” and then not even just to his father and uncle but to all time all A.D. of Our Lord one thousand and nine hundred and thirty and forty and fifty: “I dont want him to go to town tonight. I dont want—” and then at last one wail one cry to the supreme: his father himself: out of that nightraddled dragon-region of fears and terrors in which women—mothers anyway—seemed from choice almost to dwelclass="underline" “Charlie—” until his uncle put his napkin down and rose too and said:
“Then here’s your chance to wean him. I want him to do an errand for me anyway:” and out: on the front gallery in the dark cool and after a while his uncle said: “Well? Go on.”
“Aint you coming?” he said. Then he said, “But why? Why?”
“Does that matter?” his uncle said, and then said what he had already heard when he passed the barbershop going on two hours ago now: “Not now. Not to Lucas nor anybody else of his color out there.” But he had already thought of that himself not just before his uncle said it but even before whoever it had been in front of the barbershop two hours ago did, and for that matter the rest of it too: “In fact the true why is not what crisis he faced beyond which life would be no longer bearable until he shot a white man in the back but why of all white men he must pick a Gowrie to shoot and out of all possible places Beat Four to do it in. —Go on. But dont be late. After all a man ought to be kind even to his parents now and then.”
And sure enough one of the cars and for all he knew maybe all of them had got back to the barbershop and the poolhall so apparently Lucas was still chained and peaceful to the bedpost and the constable sitting over him (it was probably a rocking chair) with the cold shotgun and probably the constable’s wife had served their supper there and Lucas with a good appetite, sharp set for his since he not only wouldn’t have to pay for it but you dont shoot somebody every day in the week: and at last it seemed to be more or less authentic that the sheriff had finally got the word and sent word back that he would return to town late tonight and would fetch Lucas in early tomorrow morning and he would have to do something, pass the time somehow until the picture show was out so he might as well go to it and he crossed the Square to the courthouse yard and sat down on a bench in the dark cool empty solitude among the bitten shadows the restless unwindy vernal leaves against the starry smore of heaven where he could watch the lighted marquee in front of the picture show and perhaps the sheriff was right; he seemed able to establish enough contact with Gowries and Ingrums and Workitts and McCallums to persuade them to vote for him every eight years so maybe he knew approximately what they would do under given situations or perhaps the people in the barbershop were right and the Ingrums and Gowries and Workitts were waiting not until they had buried Vinson tomorrow but simply because it would be Sunday in three hours now and they didn’t want to have to hurry, bolt through the business in order to finish it by midnight and not violate the Sabbath: then the first of the crowd dribbled then flowed beneath the marquee blinking into the light and even fumbling a little for a second or even a minute or two yet, bringing back into the shabby earth a fading remnant of the heart’s celluloid and derring dream so he could go home now, in fact he would have to: who knew by simple instinct when picture shows were over just as she did when ballgames were and though she would never really forgive him for being able to button his own buttons and wash behind his ears at least she accepted it and would not come after him herself but merely send his father and by starting now ahead of the picture show’s dispersal he would have the empty street until he got home, until he reached the corner of the yard in fact and his uncle stepped out from beside the hedge, hatless, smoking one of the cob pipes.
“Listen,” his uncle said. “I talked to Hampton down at Peddlers Field Old Town and he had already telephoned Squire Fraser and Fraser himself went to Skipworth’s house and saw Lucas handcuffed to the bedpost and it’s all right, everything’s quiet out there tonight and tomorrow morning Hampton will have Lucas locked up in the jail—”