It hit him all right, but the African just stood there, and then finally sunk to his knees, and then forward on his hands. He seemed to be melting away, and then suddenly, he looked up with shock on his face, like he’d just remembered something and had to do it before he passed on, and gave a loud wail, and started crawling toward the sleeping baby, his eyes filled with blood, and a good-sized rock in his fist. He raised the rock above the baby, but Dewitt Willson shattered the back of his head before he could smash it down. And so the African died.

None of the men moved. They sat, disappointed, on their horses because they, each of them, had wanted to go back and say they’d gotten the bullet into the African what had killed him.

Dewitt Willson climbed down off his horse, walked to the baby, which was still sleeping, not knowing his daddy was dead, not knowing, I reckon, his daddy’d ever been alive. Coming back to his horse, Dewitt tripped over that pile of stones the African’d been talking to. They was all very flat stones, and Dewitt Willson stared down at them for a long time, and after a while he bent over, picked up the smallest one, a white one, and put it in his pocket.

—

MISTER HARPER was getting hoarse. He paused for a moment, cleared his throat, went on. “Dewitt Willson went back to New Marsails, got his clock, which he hadn’t called for yet, and rode on home, with the African’s baby beside him on the wagon seat, the auctioneer’s Negro and the clock ticking in the wagon bed, that same clock you saw out at Tucker’s farm on Thursday.” He stopped and turned to face those behind him. “Well, that’s the story and you all know as well as me how that baby got named Caliban by the General, when the General was twelve years old.”

“That’s right. After the General read that there book by Shakespeare,” Loomis added, sighing.

“Not a book, a play, The Tempest. Shakespeare didn’t write no books; nobody wrote books then, just poems and plays. No books. You must not-a learned nothing your three weeks up at the university.” Mister Harper stared Loomis down.

“All right then, a play,” Loomis agreed, sheepishly.

It was near dinner time now. Several men left the porch. A warm wind blew down off Eastern Ridge. A car, filled with solemn-faced Negroes, sputtered through, going north.

“And Caliban, whose Christian name got to be First after he got a family and there was more than just one Caliban, was John Caliban’s father, and John Caliban’s grandson is Tucker Caliban and the African’s blood is running in Tucker Caliban’s veins.” Mister Harper sat back, satisfied.

“That’s what you say.” Bobby-Joe tossed his cigar into the street.