They were parked across the street from a variety store that served also as a bus station. The bus was at the opposite curb. The driver, sitting on a bench in front of the store, watched Clinton climb out of the police car. A few passengers, already seated on the bus, watched from the windows as Clinton walked across the street, through the white tropical glare of noon, followed by the police lieutenant.

Ramírez talked with the driver of the bus. Clinton went into the store to buy his ticket. Inside, on the counter, he saw a display of cheese-flavored crackers wrapped in five-cent cellophane packages. He bought seven of them and stuffed them into his pockets and under his shirt. Then he went outside and handed his ticket to the driver and got on the bus.

Ramírez and the driver climbed aboard. The driver got into his seat and accelerated the motor several times, as if testing it. Ramírez conducted Clinton down the aisle, stopping him midway with a hand on the boy’s arm. “Not back there. That’s for colored,” he said.

Clinton sat down. The seat next to him was empty. Ramírez looked at him; and in a voice that was like a politician campaigning for office, he said: “Now, son, you go on back to Ohio with your daddy, and when you’re twenty-one, maybe you’ll come back and see us. Will you do that? Now, no hard feelings, is there?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I hope not,” the officer said. Then he strutted back up the aisle. “Hello, Mary,” he said to a lady passenger, seated alone. “Goin’ up to see Danny, are you? And do a little shoppin’?”

“That’s right, Lieutenant.”

“Well. You hurry back.”

“I will.”

As he stepped off the bus, Ramírez said, over his shoulder, to the driver, “Thanks, Henry.”

Then the bus started to move.

part 3

WHEN HER 1929 Dodge touring car went off the road—the road that goes from Cleveland to Toledo—and crashed into the living-room fireplace of a country dentist, Echo O’Brien was instantly killed. This took place in a heavy rainstorm, at 4:45 A.M., on the second Sunday of October. The state police pointed out that the hazardous bend in the road was clearly marked by luminous arrows and large signs that said SLOW—DANGEROUS CURVE. They therefore attributed the accident to weather conditions and a possibly defective windshield wiper. But people who knew her well doubted that the vehicle itself had any defects whatsoever; because Echo O’Brien was a fine mechanic and especially fastidious in the care and upkeep of her 1929 Dodge touring car. Most of them believed that what happened to her was simply a terrible thing for which there was no accounting. The two persons who could not hold entirely to this opinion were Clinton and Berry-berry Williams.

This wreck took place just four months after Clinton’s return from Key Bonita. He had come home during the peak of a heat spell so severe that Cleveland newspapers, that same day, carried reports of four different persons who had dropped dead on the sidewalks.