“ ‘He ain’t here,’ Russell says. ‘I’m his deputy. What can I do for you?’
“He said she didn’t answer for a while, standing there. Then she said, ‘Where can I find him?’
“ ‘He might be at home,’ Russell says. ‘He’s been right busy, this week. Up at night some, helping those Jefferson officers. He might be home taking a nap. But maybe I can—’ But he said that she was already gone. He said he looked out the window and watched her go on across the square and turn the corner toward where the sheriff lived. He said he was still trying to place her, to think who she was.
“She never found the sheriff. But it was too late then, anyway. Because the sheriff was already at the jail, only Metcalf hadn’t told her, and besides she hadn’t got good away from the jail before the Jefferson officers came up in two cars and went into the jail. They came up quick and went in quick. But the word had already got around that they were there, and there must have been two hundred men and boys and women too in front of the jail when the two sheriffs come out onto the porch and our sheriff made a speech, asking the folks to respect the law and that him and the Jefferson sheriff both promised that the nigger would get a quick and fair trial; and then somebody in the crowd says, ‘Fair, hell. Did he give that white woman a fair trial?’ And they hollered then, crowding up, like they were hollering for one another to the dead woman and not to the sheriffs. But the sheriff kept on talking quiet to them, about how it was his sworn word given to them on the day they elected him that he was trying to keep. ‘I have no more sympathy with nigger murderers than any other white man here,’ he says. ‘But it is my sworn oath, and by God I aim to keep it. I don’t want no trouble, but I ain’t going to dodge it. You better smoke that for awhile.’ And Halliday was there too, with the sheriffs. He was the foremost one about reason and not making trouble. ‘Yaaah,’ somebody hollers; ‘we reckon you don’t want him lynched. But he ain’t worth any thousand dollars to us. He ain’t worth a thousand dead matches to us.’ And then the sheriff says quick: ‘What if Halliday don’t want him killed? Don’t we all want the same thing? Here it’s a local citizen that will get the reward: the money will be spent right here in Mottstown. Just suppose it was a Jefferson man was going to get it. Ain’t that right, men? Ain’t that sensible?’ His voice sounded little, like a doll’s voice, like even a big man’s voice will sound when he is talking not against folks’ listening but against their already half-made-up minds.
“Anyway, that seemed to convince them, even if folks did know that Mottstown or nowhere else was going to see enough of that thousand dollars to fat a calf, if Halliday was the one that had the spending of it. But that did it. Folks are funny. They can’t stick to one way of thinking or doing anything unless they get a new reason for doing it ever so often. And then when they do get a new reason, they are liable to change anyhow. So they didn’t give back exactly; it was like when before that the crowd had kind of milled from the inside out, now it begun to mill from the outside in. And the sheriffs knew it, the same as they knew that it might not last very long, because they went back into the jail quick and then came out again, almost before they had time to turn around, with the nigger between them and five or six deputies following. They must have had him ready just inside the jail door all the time, because they come out almost at once, with the nigger between them with his face sulled up and his wrists handcuffed to the Jefferson sheriff; and the crowd kind of says, ‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.’
“They made a kind of lane down to the street, where the first Jefferson car was waiting with the engine running and a man behind the wheel, and the sheriffs were coming along without wasting any time, when she come up again, the woman, Mrs. Hines. She was shoving up through the crowd. She was so lowbuilt that all the folks could see was that plume kind of bumping along slow, like something that could not have moved very fast even if there wasn’t anything in the way, and that couldn’t anything stop, like a tractor. She shoved right on through and out into the lane the folks had made, right out in front of the two sheriffs with the nigger between them, so that they had to stop to keep from running over her. Her face looked like a big hunk of putty and her hat had got knocked sideways so the plume hung down in front of her face and she had to push it back to see. But she didn’t do anything. She just stopped them dead for a minute while she stood there and looked at the nigger. She never said a word, like that was all she had wanted and had been worrying folks for, like that was the reason she had dressed up and come to town: just to look that nigger in the face once. Because she turned and begun to burrow back into the crowd again, and when the cars drove off with the nigger and the Jefferson law and the folks looked around, she was gone. And they went back to the square then, and Uncle Doc was gone too from the chair where she had set him and told him to wait. But all of the folks didn’t go straight back to the square. A lot of them stayed there, looking at the jail like it might have been just the nigger’s shadow that had come out.
“They thought that she had taken Uncle Doc home. It was in front of Dollar’s store and Dollar told about how he saw her come back up the street ahead of the crowd. He said that Uncle Doc had not moved, that he was still sitting in the chair where she had left him like he was hypnotised, until she come up and touched his shoulder and he got up and they went on together with Dollar watching him. And Dollar said that from the look on Uncle Doc’s face, home was where he ought to be.
“Only she never took him home. After a while folks saw that she wasn’t having to take him anywhere. It was like they both wanted to do the same thing. The same thing but for different reasons, and each one knew that the other’s reason was different and that whichever of them got his way, it would be serious for the other one. Like they both knew it without saying it and that each was watching the other, and that they both knew that she would have the most sense about getting them started.
“They went straight to the garage where Salmon keeps his rent car. She did all the talking. She said they wanted to go to Jefferson. Maybe they never dreamed that Salmon would charge them more than a quarter apiece, because when he said three dollars she asked him again, like maybe she could not believe her ears. ‘Three dollars,’ Salmon says. ‘I couldn’t do it for no less. And them standing there and Uncle Doc not taking any part, like he was waiting, like it wasn’t any concern of his, like he knew that he wouldn’t need to bother: that she would get them there.
“ ‘I can’t pay that,’ she says.
“ ‘You won’t get it done no cheaper,’ Salmon says. ‘Unless by the railroad. They’ll take you for fifty-two cents apiece.’ But she was already going away, with Uncle Doc following her like a dog would.
“That was about four o’clock. Until six o’clock the folks saw them sitting on a bench in the courthouse yard. They were not talking: it was like each one never even knew the other one was there. They just sat there side by side, with her all dressed up in her Sunday clothes. Maybe she was enjoying herself, all dressed up and downtown all Saturday evening. Maybe it was to her what being in Memphis all day would be to other folks.
“They set there until the clock struck six. Then they got up. Folks that saw it said she never said a word to him; that they just got up at the same time like two birds do from a limb and a man can’t tell which one of them give the signal. When they walked, Uncle Doc walked a little behind her. They crossed the square this way and turned into the street toward the depot. And the folks knew that there wasn’t any train due for three hours and they wondered if they actually were going somewhere on the train, before they found out that they were going to do something that surprised the folks more than that, even. They went to that little cafe down by the depot and ate supper, that’ hadn’t even been seen together on the street before, let alone eating in a cafe, since they come to Jefferson. But that’s where she took him; maybe they were afraid they would miss the train if they ate downtown. Because they were there before half past six o’clock, sitting on two of them little stools at the counter, eating what. she had ordered without asking Uncle Doc about it at all. She asked the cafe man about the train to Jefferson and he told her it went at two A.M. ‘Lots of excitement in Jefferson tonight,’ he says. ‘You can get a car downtown and be in Jefferson in forty-five minutes. You don’t need to wait until two o’clock on that train.’ He thought they were strangers maybe; he told her which way town was.
