“I mean right now. Suh.” But as he said the words his insides tightened up and he was all right.

Harris started to signal the guard but Delvin stopped him. “Thank you, suh, I guess I’m fine.”

“You trying to game us, boy?” Pullen said.

“No, suh. I felt a flash of sickness is all. I’m better now.”

“Well. That’s okay,” Harris said. “Now—”

“Yes suh,” Delvin said quickly, “I was in the fight, but I never saw either of those two women. Not til the end.”

“None of you boys did,” said Pullen.

The stirring in Delvin’s bowels returned but he fought it down. He looked Pullen in the eyes. These white folks thought they had escaped the restrictions law and custom had placed on black skin. They were the new model human — an advance on the old dark model — built for politics and money. No stoop labor. Masterminds who were also generous, so they saw themselves. Why, if you keep to your place we will pat you on the head and give you a soup bone. And a kick to keep you honest. Well. Best to steer clear of crazy people like that. Just go widely around them in this alien land. But, once in a while, a misstep. Or a misstepped upon. And a door opened onto misery, anger, terror, watchfulness, confusion, ricky-tick submitting, echoes of overheard jokestering, wild wandering figments and destitutions of the spirit, thumps of excruciation and succorless moaning, strutting, argufying, testification, and power and regret and wondering and a rattling panic — all these in his eyes looking straight into lawyer Pullen’s.

In Pullen’s eyes under a moist filigree of power churned an unsorted mess of helpless degradation, hope, dishevelment, spite, useless muttering asides picked up from relatives and the stupidity of his kinfolk over in New Hall, endurance and pluck and delight in the quick free-heartedness of his children, boredom and a weasely shrewdness brimming — the combo — rocking in a sea of rage plastered over with a foolish smile quirky as a circus poster on the side of a burning barn.

The man despised him, Delvin could see this.

3

He stands on the low infirmary porch swaying faintly to a rhythm that has risen up from the earth and overtaken him. All these boys here with their necessary arrangements. Solomon over there working a yard broom, ready to run any errand. Little Croak, who wore a pink verbena blossom in his hair to please Winky Raffin. And Winky, who got down on his knees to please the LT, those stormy nights when Delvin watched him cross the yard in the rain to enter the LT’s pineboard shack. Carl Crawford, one of the boys from the train, stands waiting for him. He has a scrap of straw hat that he saved for when Delvin would come out of the infirmary and he gives it to him now.