“By morning, though, people had been a-studying about it and decided that if she’d gone and killed a man, she’d best be made to pay the price. They couldn’t do the job in Kingsport, though. Warn’t no gun around that could put her down. I’ve heerd they tried to electrocute her, but that didn’t do no good. Said she just danced a little, that’s all.
“Then somebody took a notion they ought to hang her, and the circus came on over to Erwin. It mighta been acoming here anyway. Mary was still a-working. Wasn’t no place to lock her up. They used her to push the wagons off’n the freight cars and set the tent poles up, and that afternoon, when the show was over, they took her down to the railroad yards, where they kept the big derrick-”
“
Sam looked up at his father. For a moment he thought that Dad was angry about his elephant game, but then he saw that he wasn’t even looking at Sam. He kept glancing toward the backyard. Before Sam could get to his feet, Dad jerked him up by the scruff of his trousers, and gave him a swat on the bottom.
“I said:
Sam got.
He ran for the house without a word, because he could tell from Dad’s voice and the look on his face that something was up. Dad was still standing there in the yard. Sam glanced over at the woodpile beside the car shed. The ax was stuck in a log, just where Dad had left it. He took the steps two at a time and slammed the front door behind him.
In the small parlor, Sam looked around. Mom was still in the kitchen, seeing to the biscuits, or maybe she was in their room feeding Frances Lee. Anyhow, she hadn’t seen him come in. He hoped she hadn’t heard the door. Walking as quiet as he could to make up for the door-slamming, Sam slipped off to his room at the back of the house. The window beside his bed looked out on the backyard and the railroad tracks. It was a little, bitty square of a window set high up the wall just to let light in, but Sam knew that if he stood tiptoe on the top of his mattress he could just see out of it. He used to count the cars on the night train that way when the folks thought he was already asleep.
Sam scrambled up on his bed, and braced his hands against the wall to steady himself. When he stood up on tiptoe, his eyes and nose just cleared the sill of the window.
Dad was standing a foot or two away from the side of the outhouse, his hands in his pockets, like he was waiting, but Sam couldn’t see for what. No train was coming. The track in front of him was empty, and past it was Old Man Larson’s pasture, then the woods, then Buffalo Mountain, like the back of a big green elephant against the red sky. Sam turned his head again to see what Dad was doing, and a movement down the tracks caught his eye.
Down the tracks walked a young black-haired man in a gray suit coat and bib overalls. He was a good long way away, but he kept walking slowly down the tracks, between the rails, not on the rails like Sam did when he was playing tightrope walker. Sam looked to see where he was headed, and by then he had got it figured out. Up the tracks came a tall, sandy-haired man in white painter’s overalls.
And Sam had a ringside seat!
The two of them kept walking toward each other, not saying a word. When one of them got level with Aunt Till’s house and the other got level with Sam’s, Sam saw Dad duck behind the outhouse, and he heard the crash and whine of revolvers. He just had time to see the gun in Black Hair’s hand before the man fell on his back. Sandy Hair stood still for a minute watching him, and then he turned and walked into Sam’s yard, where Dad met him. They talked to each other for a moment and Sam could see Sandy Hair pointing to the blue-steel revolver he still carried. Dad nodded, and Sandy walked past him into the car shed. Dad made no move to follow him. He came out almost at once and left. Sam noticed that he wasn’t carrying the gun anymore.
He turned to look at Black Hair on the railroad tracks. An older man in a black coat had reached him, and was getting him to his feet. Sam could see the red splotch on the bib of Black Hair’s overalls. The older man had put his shoulder under Black Hair’s arm and was half carrying him down the railroad embankment and into Sam’s yard. Dad spoke to the older man for a few moments-the hurt man had his eyes closed and didn’t say anything.
Then Dad went into the car shed and backed out the Model T Ford. He helped lay the hurt man in the backseat of the car, and then he got behind the wheel, nodding for the older man to get in. The man motioned for Dad to wait and disappeared into the car shed. In less than a minute he came hurrying out and got in the car. Dad backed down the driveway, and Sam ran to the front window to see which way they were headed. He got there in time to see a flash of black turning up dust in the direction of Johnson City.
“Reckon we’ll eat,” said Mom, coming up beside him.
It still wasn’t dark. Dad had come back home and parked the Ford in the driveway, but he didn’t come in the house to eat. Sam waited until Mom got busy in the kitchen with the washing up and then he slipped out the front door. Dad had a bucket of water and a rag, and he was cleaning off the backseat. Sam watched him scrub the leather seat covers with the rag and then wring it out red into the water bucket.
“Is he gonna be all right?”
“Like as not,” said Dad, without looking up. He didn’t turn around or leave off scrubbing until he heard the other car pull up into the driveway. The second black Ford stopped a few feet behind Dad’s car, and the driver got out and came toward them. He was a big man with a white coat and a Wyatt Earp mustache. On his finger was a big ring in the shape of a snake, with two red stones for eyes. Sam knew him from church: he was the High Sheriff of the County.
“Go on off and play,” said Dad.
Sam trudged off as slow as he could safely go, to the spot by Aunt Till’s hedge where the elephant was still hanging. He took it down from the hedge twig and stuffed it in his pocket. If he took it back to the house now, he could walk past the cars and hear what was being said. Sam took the elephant back out of his pocket so that his errand would be conspicuous, and, dangling it on a string in front of him, he started back for the house. The High Sheriff was standing there with his hands on his hips, looking at Dad with his head cocked sideways like a rooster.
“I wish I could help you, Sheriff,” Dad was saying as Sam drew close. “But I didn’t see a thing.”
“You sure now?”
“Well, I was in the car shed here, arranging some tools when it happened, so I-”
Sam saw that Dad had stopped talking because he’d noticed him listening. Dad hadn’t seen the fight? But Sam had seen! He was just opening his mouth to tell the wonderful tale to the High Sheriff when Dad grabbed his arm and swatted him on the bottom again. He chased him into the house and told him in no uncertain terms to stay there, so Sam had to watch the rest of the conversation through the parlor window, hiding in the curtains.
After a few more minutes of conversation, the High Sheriff got back in his car and drove off. Dad came in the house then.
“Is there gonna be a trial?” asked Sam’s mother from the kitchen doorway.
Dad shook his head. “No witnesses. And the wounded man don’t know who shot him.” He turned to Sam who wanted to ask questions, but thought better of it. “Don’t play in the car shed for a couple of days.”
Sam nodded, and went off to his room. That question didn’t need asking.
The next day while Dad was at work and Mom was making bread, Sam pilfered the car shed. The sides of the shed were lined with shelves filled with fruit jars, tools, and odd scraps of wood and metal. Sam picked his way past the two-by-fours and the brass-bound trunk and began to investigate the bottom shelf where the tools were kept. When he noticed three red-and-white fishing floats on the shelf, he opened Dad’s tackle box and found the first revolver, a.32 special, nickel-plated. It was a shiny thing with red rubber grips on the handle, and it used to hang by the trigger guard on a nail over the bed. One of the family stories that they told up-home was how Sam had been a fretful baby the summer he was teething, and he used to cry for the shiny toy hanging on the wall above him. Finally Mom unloaded it and gave it to him to play with, and the rubber handle grips felt so good to his itching gums that it did keep him quiet. When Dad finally traded it for that Atwater Kent table radio, it still had Sam’s tooth marks on the grips. Sam held the Smith & Wesson up to the light, using both hands to steady it. One of the cylinders was empty. Sandy Hair’s weapon. He found Black Hair’s stuck in a fruit jar at the back of the jar shelf. Sam couldn’t
