Mister Harper was there by then. He had come after the second bus. He did not speak. More white men gathered on the porch, those who happened by or had come to the realization slower than the first batch that something was happening, changing. Some of these were even so dull as to ask Mister Harper why the Negroes were leaving (which they should have known) and where they were going (which did not matter and could not be answered unless they were to ask each Negro individually), but Mister Harper did not honor their questions with so much as a nod, just sat smoking his pipe, shifting in his wheel chair from time to time, watching the buses come and depart, watching the Negroes with suitcases waiting down the porch silently, getting on with exact fare ready, sometimes whole families from grandmother to grandchild, and the buses making the turn behind the General’s back, climbing the hill to Harmon’s Draw with much shifting of gears and black smoke, and then disappearing.

When the noon bus came, the bus driver, instead of letting the Negroes on immediately, made them wait, climbed out with his money changer like a tiny xylophone, and a bag of coins, went around to the window near the wheel, reached high inside and closed the door. Then he went into Mister Thomason’s and bought a cream-filled cupcake and a container of milk and came out on the porch again.

Mister Leland had seen him twice this morning; the driver reminded him, with his hat, of a flyer he had seen once in an Air Force movie about Korea. When he finished eating, he lit a cigarette, glanced down at the Negroes, shook his head, took a deep drag and contemplated the cooling ash. Mister Leland was sitting on the edge of the porch, had abandoned carving in the cracks in favor of an inspection of the bus wheels, which were at least as big as he was, but turned up to see that the man’s face was deeply troubled.

Mister Harper wheeled up behind them. “Say, now, where do all these people seem to be going?”