He looked at me. “You only gets one chance. That’s when you can and when you feels like it. When one of them things is missing, ain’t no use trying. If you can do it, but don’t feel like it, why do it? And when you feels like it, and ain’t no opportunity, you just knocking your head against the front of a car going a hundred miles an hour. There ain’t no use in thinking about it if you ain’t got both. And if you had both and missed out, you might as well forget about it; your chance is gone for good.”

I nodded; I know all about that.

The Men on the Porch

THEY HAD NOT GONE HOME.

They sat now at nine o’clock Saturday evening as the last carloads of Negroes passed by Mister Thomason’s porch through Sutton going north. All afternoon the cars had been moving by in caravan, with the frequency of those in a funeral procession. Now the flow was thinning, not appearing over the Ridge in bunches, but singly like lone vacationing families. There were still more automobiles than usual, but not as many as before. To himself, each man sitting on the porch wondered whether the slackening numbers of vehicles laden with children, old people, adults, and babies, mattresses, blankets, and suitcases meant that New Marsails was vacant of Negroes.

They knew for certain no Negroes remained in Sutton, for after two that afternoon, only a straggling few had lined Thomason’s porch waiting for the buses, and from where the men sat on the porch, looking toward the Square, they could no longer see any cars coming from where the Negroes lived at the northern edge of town. After Mister Harper left at six, some of the men went home to supper, though most bought something from Thomason, and continued to sit, munching on crackerjack, peanuts, candy, or apples. After they had balled the wrappers and tossed them into the street, some of them had stood and gone up to the Negro section to look around.