They had found nothing, no houses lit; the Negroes had felt no need even to set lights in the windows as people do to keep burglars away, for they had taken anything they really valued, had left the rest for burglars, making it easy for them by leaving the doors swung open. Some had even left keys in the locks, an invitation to anyone who might want to occupy the house for good. The men from the porch could not bring themselves to enter the houses, retained that respect for house and property that is southern, that kept them from setting foot on Tucker Caliban’s land on Thursday, but they did peer over the thresholds into the darkness and found a great many things inside: chairs, tables, sofas, rugs, brooms, beds, and trash. Most of the walls were empty of the pictures of stern grandparents, or soldiering sons or married daughters, and crucifixes, those things without which people do not feel able to start a new home. If the men had gone inside and looked under beds, they would have found the dustless rectangles where, only a few days before, suitcases had rested. There were no Negroes at all.

So they came back to the porch. They did not discuss what they had seen, for each man had seen it himself. They sat silently, thinking, trying to figure out what all this had to do with each of them, how tomorrow, next week, or next month would be different from what yesterday, last week, last month, or all their lives had been up to this time. None was able to think it through. It was like attempting to picture Nothing, something no one had ever considered. None of them had a reference point on which to fix the concept of a Negro-less world.

Then Stewart came, driving up in his wagon, a jug as squat as he was himself sitting beside him on the seat; they passed it around, each man wiping the nozzle with his sleeve in the old, useless rite of purification and cleanliness.

That was when they began to get angry, quietly fighting mad, like a bride left at the church, wanting revenge, but having no one on whom to avenge herself, angered by her own frustration more than anything else. They disguised their loss by maintaining it was no loss at all, just as the Governor had done that morning.

Stewart took another healthy swallow. “Sure! What we need them for anyways? Look what’s happening in Mississippi or over in Alabama. We don’t have to worry about that no more. We got us a new start, like the fellow says. Now we can live like we always lived and don’t have to worry about no nigger come a-knocking at the door, wanting to sit at our supper tables.” He was sitting on the porch steps next to Bobby-Joe, who had been very quiet since Mister Harper left.