telling him on what day they were going to break his neck. Probably got a Memphis lawyer already there outside the supreme court door now, waiting for a wire. I know them. It’s them thugs like that that have made justice a laughing-stock, until even when we get a conviction, everybody knows it wont hold.”
Popeye sent for the turnkey and gave him a hundred dollar bill. He wanted a shaving-kit and cigarettes. “Keep the change and let me know when it’s smoked up,” he said.
“I reckon you wont be smoking with me much longer,” the turnkey said. “You’ll get a good lawyer, this time.”
“Dont forget that lotion,” Popeye said. “Ed Pinaud.” He called it “Py-nawd.”
It had been a gray summer, a little cool. Little daylight ever reached the cell, and a light burned in the corridor all the time, falling into the cell in a broad pale mosaic, reaching the cot where his feet lay. The turnkey gave him a chair. He used it for a table; upon it the dollar watch lay, and a carton of cigarettes and a cracked soup bowl of stubs, and he lay on the cot, smoking and contemplating his feet while day after day passed. The gleam of his shoes grew duller, and his clothes needed pressing, because he lay in them all the time, since it was cool in the stone cell.
One day the turnkey said: “There’s folks here says that deppity invited killing. He done two-three mean things folks knows about.” Popeye smoked, his hat over his face. The turnkey said: “They might not a sent your telegram. You want me to send another one for you?” Leaning against the grating he could see Popeye’s feet, his thin, black legs motionless, merging into the delicate bulk of his prone body and the hat slanted across his averted face, the cigarette in one small hand. His feet were in shadow, in the shadow of the turnkey’s body where it blotted out the grating. After a while the turnkey went away quietly.
When he had six days left the turnkey offered to bring him magazines, a deck of cards.
“What for?” Popeye said. For the first time he looked at the turnkey, his head lifted, in his smooth, pallid face his eyes round and soft as those prehensile tips on a child’s toy arrows. Then he lay back again. After that each morning the turnkey thrust a rolled newspaper through the door. They fell to the floor and lay there, accumulating, unrolling and flattening slowly of their own weight in diurnal progression.
When he had three days left a Memphis lawyer arrived. Unbidden, he rushed up to the cell. All that morning the turnkey heard his voice raised in pleading and anger and expostulation; by noon he was hoarse, his voice not much louder than a whisper.
“Are you just going to lie here and let—”
“I’m all right,” Popeye said. “I didn’t send for you. Keep your nose out.”
“Do you want to hang? Is that it? Are you trying to commit suicide? Are you so tired of dragging down jack that.… You, the smartest—”
“I told you once. I’ve got enough on you.”
“You, to have it hung on you by a small-time j.p.! When I go back to Memphis and tell them, they wont believe it.”
“Dont tell them, then.” He lay for a time while the lawyer looked at him in baffled and raging unbelief. “Them durn hicks,” Popeye said. “Jesus Christ.…… Beat it, now,” he said. “I told you. I’m all right.”
On the night before, a minister came in.
“Will you let me pray with you?” he said.
“Sure,” Popeye said; “go ahead. Dont mind me.”
The minister knelt beside the cot where Popeye lay smoking. After a while the minister heard him rise and cross the floor, then return to the cot. When he rose Popeye was lying on the cot, smoking. The minister looked behind him, where he had heard Popeye moving and saw twelve marks at spaced intervals along the base of the wall, as though marked there with burned matches. Two of the spaces were filled with cigarette stubs laid in neat rows. In the third space were two stubs. Before he departed he watched Popeye rise and go there and crush out two more stubs and lay them carefully beside the others.
Just after five oclock the minister returned. All the spaces were filled save the twelfth one. It was three quarters complete. Popeye was lying on the cot. “Ready to go?” he said.
“Not yet,” the minister said. “Try to pray,” he said. “Try.”
“Sure,” Popeye said; “go ahead.” The minister knelt again. He heard Popeye rise once and cross the floor and then return.
At five-thirty the turnkey came. “I brought—” he said. He held his closed fist dumbly through the grating. “Here’s your change from that hundred you never—I brought.……It’s forty-eight dollars,” he said. “Wait; I’ll count it again; I dont know exactly, but I can give you a list—them tickets.……”
“Keep it,” Popeye said, without moving. “Buy yourself a hoop.”
They came for him at six. The minister went with him, his hand under Popeye’s elbow, and he stood beneath the scaffold praying, while they adjusted the rope, dragging it over Popeye’s sleek, oiled head, breaking his hair loose. His hands were tied, so he began to jerk his head, flipping his hair back each time it fell forward again, while the minister prayed, the others motionless at their posts with bowed heads.
Popeye began to jerk his neck forward in little jerks. “Psssst!” he said, the sound cutting sharp into the drone of the minister’s voice; “pssssst!” The sheriff looked at him; he quit jerking his neck and stood rigid, as though he had an egg balanced on his head. “Fix my hair, Jack,” he said.
“Sure,” the sheriff said. “I’ll fix it for you;” springing the trap.
It had been a gray day, a gray summer, a gray year. On the street old men wore overcoats, and in the Luxembourg Gardens as Temple and her father passed the women sat knitting in shawls and even the men playing croquet played in coats and capes, and in the sad gloom of the chestnut trees the dry click of balls, the random shouts of children, had that quality of autumn, gallant and evanescent and forlorn. From beyond the circle with its spurious Greek balustrade, clotted with movement, filled with a gray light of the same color and texture as the water which the fountain played into the pool, came a steady crash of music. They went on, passed the pool where the children and an old man in a shabby brown overcoat sailed toy boats, and entered the trees again and found
