Perhaps the feeling against Claude might have been passive rather than active if it had not been for Orry Quinn. Orry was the third of Pete Quinn’s shiftless sons and he had been employed as a farm hand by Henry Rankins until a week before Claude came along. Henry had fired Orry for general reasons of incompetence and, specifically, for having wandered off one evening to see his girl, leaving the cows in the shed restless and in pain from not having been milked. Any other farmer would have done the same thing under the circumstances and nobody would have been perturbed about Orry’s being unemployed, a condition which had grown to be more or less chronic with him anyway, had not Orry seized the opportunity to become a self-constituted martyr to social injustice. He claimed he had performed his labors faithfully and well, only to be removed on a trumped-up charge to make room for a felon, an ex-convict and, for all anybody knew, a potential murderer. This story was accepted at face value by most of the younger and more discontented non-working citizens of the community, and even men of substance and intelligence, who normally wouldn’t have accepted Orry’s sworn oath as to the date of his birth, began to place credence in it. Green Valley was composed of a close-knit group of families and they believed in taking care of their own. Whether or not they sympathized with Orry, they found it hard to understand why Henry Rankins would have passed up an opportunity to give a native son much needed employment in favor of an outsider who happened, in addition, to be a criminal.
Finally a small delegation called at Henry’s farm to seek the answer. They found Henry in a shed cleaning eggs and placing them in cartons. Helping him was Claude Warren. Claude was a husky, clean-cut, towheaded kid not much different than dozens of others in Green Valley, excepting that his skin was pale and there was a half-apologetic look in his eyes.
Henry, a small old man with wrinkled, leathery skin, seemed to know why the delegation was there.
“Would you mind taking a walk, son?” he said to Claude. “I think my good friends and neighbors want to have a talk with me.”
Claude nodded, then hurried away, his head hanging as if he, too, knew the reason for the visit. Then Henry faced his friends and neighbors.
“Hello boys!” he said blandly. “How’re things? How’s crops? Been working hard? Been borrowing money from the bank? How much? Got any insurance in case you kick off and leave your families without support?” As he talked, his eyes seemed to be boring into those of each individual member of the group. “How’re you getting along with your wives?” he went on. “Any truth to the rumor that one of you slapped his old lady in front of the kids? And how about your daughters? Do you know where they are of nights and what they do?”
He paused and waited as the others shifted their feet uneasily in the dust, avoided his gaze and remained collectively silent.
“You seem to be very uncommunicative today,” Henry finally said. “By the way, boys, is there any little thing I can do for you? Do you, by any chance, want to ask me a question?”
They glared sullenly and hatefully at him, then turned in a body and walked back to their cars. By the time they had reached the road they had regained their voices and they were muttering angrily among themselves.
Later on, the same delegation called on Sheriff Ben Hodges. They were thoroughly aroused now and they demanded that the sheriff do something about ridding the county of a known criminal who might at any moment turn out to be a menace to the peace and security of them all. Sheriff Ben was a big man and some of his weight was fat. He was well-disposed and given to indolence, being more inclined to sit in his easy chair and read books than militantly and actively to perform the duties required of his office. He had maintained his job throughout the years by giving the appearance of agreeing with everybody about everything and never taking sides in a public controversy. This time, however, he felt that he had to make a stand.
“Well, now,” he said mildly, “as for that kid being a menace, I’m not so sure. You see he’s a distant kin of Henry’s — son of a cousin on his mother’s side, I think — and Henry had him pretty thoroughly investigated before he took him in. Claude lived all his life in the city where they burn coal to make steel and the only patch of green he ever saw was in the public park where the police had signs forbidding him to walk on the grass. One hot evening, when the air was moist and full of smoke and soot, some boys his own age drove by in a car. They had girls with them and they took Claude along for a ride in the country. It turned out that the car had been stolen and Claude was convicted of complicity in the crime.” Sheriff Ben spoke as persuasively as he knew how, trying to make them understand so’s not to have trouble with them. “I know,” he conceded, “that Claude probably had sense enough to realize that those other boys really didn’t own that automobile, but, still in all, when a kid’s hungry for a breath of country air, he isn’t going to be too particular how he gets it, is he?”
The delegation didn’t understand and what’s more, they didn’t believe Sheriff Ben’s version of Claude’s crime. Rumor had given them an uglier and more interesting version and they preferred to believe that. They resented Sheriff Ben’s attempt at cleaning up Claude’s character. Claude was a criminal, they said, and, if the sheriff wanted to, he could find some sort of a pretext to run him out of the community. The implication was that, if the sheriff appreciated which side his bread was buttered on, he would do what was required of him. Sheriff Ben understood the implication. He had eaten the public’s bread for many years and sometimes it had a bitter taste; it was buttered with humiliation. On this day he had no appetite for it, and he made the political mistake of openly antagonizing a group of representative citizens.
“As for being a criminal,” he said, “sometimes that’s a state of mind and the result of circumstances. I don’t suppose that there’s many of us here who, at one time or another, couldn’t have been in Claude’s shoes. During prohibition, for instance, some of you farmers made hard liquor and some of you merchants sold it. Most of us drank it and I, being sheriff, violated my sworn oath by overlooking it.” He stared steadily and defiantly at them. “That isn’t all I’ve overlooked,” he said, “and some of you wouldn’t like it if I got more specific. In any event there’re darned few of us who, according to the strict letter of the law and with a little bad luck, couldn’t have a prison or a jail record hanging over us.”
He rose and waved a heavy hand in dismissal.
“Come to see me again, gentlemen,” he said. “As you know, I am always at your services. But the next time you come to me about that kid, who’s working ten hours a day for a chance at a decent way of life, I’d appreciate it kindly if you’d have more to go on than your prejudices.”
The delegation clumped angrily out of the office and Sheriff Ben realized that he had seriously jeopardized a job that perhaps he didn’t deserve and, with it, the money he didn’t at all times earn.
After that the citizens of Green Valley sullenly accepted Claude’s presence among them. They didn’t offer him any physical harm; no individual would have thought of it, excepting Orry Quinn, and he, being a coward, would not have risked the attempt. They simply ignored Claude and, excepting for Henry Rankins and Sheriff Ben, the kid didn’t have a friend or a speaking acquaintance in the community until Laura Hannifer came along. Laura was the only child of one of the oldest families in Green Valley. Her parents had pampered her a great deal and, because she had a will of her own, she was considered arrogant. She had just recently returned home from a visit with relatives in another part of the state, and one day she rode her horse up to Henry Rankins’ house and got off and sat on the porch with him.