IT WAS OVER NOW. Most of the men standing, slouching, or sitting on the porch of the Thomason Grocery Company had been at Tucker Caliban’s farm on Thursday when it all started, though, with the possible exception of Mister Harper, none of them had known it was the start of anything. All during Friday and most of Saturday they had watched the Negroes of Sutton, with suitcases or empty-handed, waiting at the end of the porch for the hourly bus which would carry them up Eastern Ridge, through Harmon’s Draw, to New Marsails and the Municipal Railroad Depot. From the radio and the newspapers they knew Sutton was not the only town, knew that all the Negroes in all the cities, towns, and crossroads in the state had been using any means of transportation available, including their own two legs to journey toward the state’s borders, to cross over into Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee, even if some (most did not) stopped right there and began looking for shelter and work. They knew most would not stop just over the borders, would go on until they came to a place where they had merely the smallest opportunity to live, or die decently, for the men had seen pictures of the depot jammed with black people, and being on the Highway between New Marsails and Willson City, had watched the line of cars crammed with Negroes and enough belongings to convince the men that the Negroes had not gone to all this trouble to move a mere hundred miles or so. And they all read the governor’s statement: “There ain’t nothing to worry about. We never needed them, never wanted them, and we’ll get along fine without them; the South’ll get along fine without them. Even though our population’s been cut by a third, we’ll fare all right. There’s still lots of good men left.”

They all wanted to believe this. They had not lived long enough in a world without black faces to know anything for certain, but hoped everything would be all right, tried to convince themselves it was really over, but sensed, that for them, it was just beginning.