"He hates us, sir," I said.
"You say he; aren't both the women married?"
I caught my breath. I'd made a mistake. "The old one is, sir," I said reluctantly.
"What happened to the young woman's husband?"
"She doesn't have any -- That is... I --"
"What is it, young man? Do you know these people?"
"Only a little, sir. There was some talk about them up on the campus a while back."
"What talk?"
"Well, the young woman is the old woman's daughter..."
"And?"
"Well, sir, they say... you see... I mean they say the daughter doesn't have a husband."
"Oh, I see. But that shouldn't be so strange. I understand that your people -- Never mind! Is that all?"
"Well, sir..."
"Yes, what else?"
"They say that her father did it."
"What!"
"Yes, sir... that he gave her the baby."
I heard the sharp intake of breath, like a toy balloon suddenly deflated. His face reddened. I was confused, feeling shame for the two women and fear that I had talked too much and offended his sensibilities.
"And did anyone from the school investigate this matter?" he asked at last.
"Yes, sir," I said.
"What was discovered?"
"That it was true -- they say."
"But how does he explain his doing such a -- a -- such a monstrous thing?"
He sat back in the seat, his hands grasping his knees, his knuckles bloodless. I looked away, down the heat-dazzling concrete of the highway. I wished we were back on the other side of the white line, heading back to the quiet green stretch of the campus.
"It is said that the man took both his wife and his daughter?"
"Yes, sir."
"And that he is the father of both their children?"
"Yes, sir."
"No, no, no!"
He sounded as though he were in great pain. I looked at him anxiously. What had happened? What had I said?
"Not that! No..." he said, with something like horror.
I saw the sun blaze upon the new blue overalls as the man appeared around the cabin. His shoes were tan and new and he moved easily over the hot earth. He was a small man and he covered the yard with a familiarity that would have allowed him to walk in the blackest darkness with the same certainty. He came and said something to the women as he fanned himself with a blue bandanna handkerchief. But they appeared to regard him sullenly, barely speaking, and hardly looking in his direction.
"Would that be the man?" Mr. Norton asked.
"Yes, sir. I think so."
"Get out!" he cried. "I must talk with him."
I was unable to move. I felt surprise and a dread and resentment of what he might say to Trueblood and his women, the questions he might ask. Why couldn't he leave them alone!
"Hurry!"
I climbed from the car and opened the rear door. He clambered out and almost ran across the road to the yard, as though compelled by some pressing urgency which I could not understand. Then suddenly I saw the two women turn and run frantically behind the house, their movements heavy and flatfooted. I hurried behind him, seeing him stop when he reached the man and the children. They became silent, their faces clouding over, their features becoming soft and negative, their eyes bland and deceptive. They were crouching behind their eyes waiting for him to speak -- just as I recognized that I was trembling behind my own. Up close I saw what I had not seen from the car: The man had a scar on his right cheek, as though he had been hit in the face with a sledge. The wound was raw and moist and from time to time he lifted his handkerchief to fan away the gnats.
"I, I --" Mr. Norton stammered, "I must talk with you!"
"All right, suh," Jim Trueblood said without surprise and waited.
"Is it true... I mean did you?"
"Suh?" Trueblood asked, as I looked away.
"You have survived," he blurted. "But is it true...?"
"Suh?" the farmer said, his brow wrinkling with bewilderment.
"I'm sorry, sir," I said, "but I don't think he understands you."
He ignored me, staring into Trueblood's face as though reading a message there which I could not perceive.
"You did and are unharmed!" he shouted, his blue eyes blazing into the black face with something like envy and indignation. Trueblood looked helplessly at me. I looked away. I understood no more than he.
"You have looked upon chaos and are not destroyed!"
"No suh! I feels all right."
"You do? You feel no inner turmoil, no need to cast out the offending eye?"
"Suh?"
"Answer me!"
"I'm all right, suh," Trueblood said uneasily. "My eyes is all right too. And when I feels po'ly in my gut I takes a little soda and it goes away."
"No, no, no! Let us go where there is shade," he said, looking about excitedly and going swiftly to where the porch cast a swath of shade. We followed him. The farmer placed his hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off, knowing that I could explain nothing. We sat on the porch in a semicircle in camp chairs, me between the sharecropper and the millionaire. The earth around the porch was hard and white from where wash water had long been thrown.
"How are you faring now?" Mr. Norton asked. "Perhaps I could help."
"We ain't doing so bad, suh. 'Fore they heard 'bout what happen to us out here I couldn't git no help from nobody. Now lotta folks is curious and goes outta they way to help. Even the biggity school folks up on the hill, only there was a catch to it! They offered to send us clean outta the county, pay our way and everything and give me a hundred dollars to git settled with. But we likes it here so I told 'em No. Then they sent a fellow out here, a big fellow too, and he said if I didn't leave they was going to turn the white folks loose on me. It made me mad and it made me scared. Them folks up there to the school is in strong with the white folks and that scared me. But I thought when they first come out here that they was different from when I went up there a long time ago looking for some book learning and some points on how to handle my crops. That was when I had my own place. I thought they was trying to he'p me, on accounta I got two women due to birth 'bout the same time.
"But I got mad when I found they was tryin' to git rid of us 'cause they said we was a disgrace. Yessuh, I got real mad. So I went down to see Mr. Buchanan, the boss man, and I tole him 'bout it and he give me a note to the sheriff and tole me to take it to him. I did that, jus' like he tole me. I went to the jailhouse and give Sheriff Barbour the note and he ask me to tell him what happen, and I tole him and he called in some more men and they made me tell it again. They wanted to hear about the gal lots of times and they gimme somethin' to eat and drink and some tobacco. Surprised me, 'cause I was scared and spectin' somethin' different. Why, I guess there ain't a colored man in the county who ever got to take so much of the white folkses' time as I did. So finally they tell me not to worry, that they was going to send word up to the school that I was to stay right where I am. Them big nigguhs didn't bother me, neither. It just goes to show yuh that no matter how biggity a nigguh gits, the white folks can always cut him down. The white folks took up for me. And the white folks took to coming out here to see us and talk with us. Some of 'em was big white folks, too, from the big school way cross the State. Asked me lots 'bout what I thought 'bout things, and 'bout my folks and the kids, and wrote it all down in a book. But best of all, suh, I got more work now than I ever did have before..."
He talked willingly now, with a kind of satisfaction and no trace of hesitancy or shame. The old man listened with a puzzled expression as he held an unlit cigar in his delicate fingers.
"Things is pretty good now," the farmer said. "Ever time I think of how cold it was and what a hard time we was having I gits the shakes."
I saw him bite into a plug of chewing tobacco. Something tinkled against the porch and I picked it up, gazing at it from time to time. It was a hard red apple stamped out of tin.