“No, not planned. It means it just happened all by itself.” Dewey reached out and tried to pull the door shut. The boy punched his hand away from the upholstered handle.

“You better watch yourself, MISTER Willson, unless you want a piece of this nigger’s pie.”

“Come on, don’t be ridiculous. He didn’t have a thing to do with any of this.”

“He tell you that?” The boy leaned into the car; the liquor smell became stronger, intoxicating.

“Yes, of course. He doesn’t even know Tucker Caliban. He told me he didn’t have anything to do with it.” He looked into the boy’s eyes. In the eight months he had been away, he had almost forgotten the gaze he found there, the gaze which came in moments like this, for it was not one of the looks that New Englanders use or have ever used to express a turn of mind or heart; it was a gaze more cold, more mean, more cruel even than the gaze a Vermont farmer gives a stranger asking directions; more cold, more mean, more cruel because it was completely blank, that very blankness a sign of the renunciation of alternatives, of tenderness or brutality, of pleasure or pain, of understanding or ignorance, of belief or disbelief, of compassion or intolerance, of reason or unswerving fanaticism; it was a gaze which signals the flicking off of the switch which controls the mechanism making man a human being; it said: Now we must fight. There is no more time or need for talking; violence is already with us, part of us.

“He didn’t have anything to do with it.” Dewey tried one last time, softly. “Reverend Bradshaw, tell them.” He grabbed the Negro’s arm, looked into his face and found not fear was keeping him silent, but disillusionment. He was not thinking of the present danger at all, only of the Negroes, his Cause, riding out from under him. If anything, Dewey realized, Reverend Bradshaw wishes he could say he had been the instigator, wishes he could say he planned it by himself, got Tucker to buy the farm and destroy it, told the Negroes this was their example, exhorted them to follow. But he could not. And this was no time for disillusionment and self-pity. “God damn it, tell them!”

The fat man too was leaning into the car. “Why don’t he say something?”

The boy chuckled. “Could be he’s too honest to tell no lies.” He grabbed the collar of Bradshaw’s shirt. “Tell the truth, nigger! Did you have anything to do with it?” He lifted him partly off the seat.

“No! I’m sorry to say I did not.”

It was as if the second had swelled, and was about to burst. All seemed to solidify into an instant of violence like a statue depicting the moment a warrior’s blade enters the body of his adversary, and the stricken man is about to fall but has not yet fallen, is lying flat out on the air itself, defying balance. And then the moment burst, and the boy took a firmer hold on the shirt—“You’re a liar!”—pulled Bradshaw forward, dragged him from the car, out of Dewey’s vainly reaching arms, and onto the pavement. Five men surrounded him quickly all flailing, punching, kicking.