They ran wildly to the top of the hill; when they got out of the man’s sight, they stopped, heaving deeply. Walter caught up. “He was crazy.”

“How do you know?” Mister Leland did not like his brother to jump to conclusions.

“Didn’t he look crazy?”

“Yes.” He was forced to tell the truth.

“Well, there then, he must be crazy.”

Mister Leland was about to say that this was not always true; that Tucker had done crazy things, even looked crazy, but was certainly not crazy because he seemed to have a reason for doing those things, even though they were both too young to understand the reason, but he decided to let it drop because he did not think Walter would know what he was talking about.

They were a quarter way to the bottom of the hill, walking toward where their road turned off the Highway. They could see the next hill and the Highway coming out of the trees. Then they saw the black car appear, coming just as fast as it had yesterday from the Ridge, just as fast as the coal truck the day before that. The same light-skinned Negro was driving, and the dust swirled at the sides of the road and closed in behind it like Walter’s hands closing too late when Mister Leland tossed him a ball. Mister Leland started to wave, and Walter, thinking it was some kind of game, raised his arms and waved frantically. They both waved until the car passed them, but no one in the car waved back. Mister Leland, in the instant of its passing, even saw the Negro in the back, his blue sunglasses perched on his nose, staring straight ahead of him. Then the car had disappeared over the hill. They walked on.

“What’d we do that for, Harold?” Walter had begun to skip around him in large, uneven circles. “Did you know them?”

Mister Leland had not told Walter about the Negro and his ride in the car because he knew Walter would have told his mother, and would have caused trouble for his father. “Yes. I saw them in town yesterday.”

“What’d they do? You didn’t tell me about that.”

“It ain’t at all important, Walter. You forget it.”

“Well, who was that?”

“Just nobody.” He turned and looked his brother in the eye, trying to make his face honest as possible. “Nobody, is all.”

One Long Ago Autumn Birthday

WHEN DEWEY WILLSON III had blinked full awake on the clear, mistless, autumn morning of his tenth birthday, it was standing in the corner of his room: an American bicycle with bright gaudy colors, shining chrome, and white-wall tires.