Mister Leland had nothing more to ask, but to himself wondered about it, munching on the warm, almost bitter apple. How could you have more guts to run than to stay? Perhaps it was like the time Eden MacDonald at school had said his father could beat the tar out of Mister Leland’s and Mister Leland had answered, “No, my papa can beat the tar out of your’n because my papa ain’t scared of nothing or nobody.” And Eden had said, “I bet if he met hisself a bear and he didn’t have no gun, he’d run faster than a nigger.” And Mister Leland had said, “That ain’t so.” And Eden had said, “Well, then he’d get killed.” When Mister Leland came home and asked his father if he would run from a bear when he didn’t have a gun, his father had said, “I reckon I would, Harold. That’d be the smart thing, don’t you think?” And when Mister Leland thought about it, it seemed like his father was right, even though he did not like to think of his father running away from a bear or anything else. But at least it was better than having his father all messed up and bloody and dead. And perhaps it was the same with the Negroes. He was about to ask his father if it was really like that when the man got up, stretched, and went to the barrel against the wall to toss away the waxed paper from the sandwiches. So he got up and followed him around to the porch, deciding to ask him about it later.

They began the afternoon in the same places, doing the same things as in the morning: waiting for more Negroes with suitcases to appear on the porch and for the bus to come down from the Ridge on sticky-sounding wheels. But the car came first.