They stared at him, blinking, squinting, trying to see him better, as if seeing him better would help them to better understand what he was talking about. “Who’s doing what?” Thomason leaned over his stomach toward the boy. Stewart mopped his face nervously, as he did when he thought he was too dense to understand something that was supposedly easy to understand.

Bobby-Joe twisted around. “That nigger preacher come driving by here and we just sat here watching him like he was the President. We should-a knowed; we could-a done something about it.” More excited now, he jumped to his feet, turned to face and lecture them. “We could-a stopped him; that was like having a naked girl in arm’s reach and not doing nothing about it but blush.”

“Now, hold on, Bobby-Joe.” Thomason turned to Stewart for an instant: “No more for him,” then back to the boy. “We’ll listen to you, son, but you got to make yourself plain. Now, why don’t you just settle down and start all over again.”

But Bobby-Joe just went on. “God damn! if we ain’t a stupid bunch of bastards! We could-a done something when we was a-gazing at that car, and at that driver, and all that money he was tossing around. We could-a done something, YESTERDAY, instead of just sitting there and looking, and then we wouldn’t be crying now because they’s all gone. We could-a done something!”

All at once Thomason understood. “You talking about that nigger from the Resurrected Church, ain’t you.” It was not a question, rather a realization, as if the idea had suddenly popped into his head without Bobby-Joe’s help: about Friday and the Negro in the limousine.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. That northern nigger preacher what came down here and started all the trouble. God damn! And we had him right here and didn’t do nothing about it, just stood around watching him flash all that money.”

“Now hold on, boy. That man didn’t show up here until AFTER Tucker Caliban did all his business. He asked Mister Leland what he knew. He couldn’t-a knowed nothing about it.”

“Did you believe that? Did you really believe that? You really think Tucker Caliban was smart enough to start all of what we got on our hands? I bet you did.” He spoke as if he believed Thomason had committed a crime. “Well, I didn’t believe it for a minute. I knew what that northern nigger was up to all the time.” Bobby-Joe was waving his arms now, striding up and down before them as if they were a jury, and he was a lawyer. “That African and his blood coming down to Tucker Caliban. That’s bull if I ever heard it!”