Bert said, “Yes, but eight times three is not thirty-six. You owe me twelve cents more.”

The girl looked at the change and realized she was wrong. She looked at Bert—light near-white nigger with grey-blue eyes. You gotta be harder on those kind than you have on the black ones. An educated nigger, too! Besides it was hot and she wasn’t feeling well. A light near-white nigger with grey eyes! Instead of correcting the change, she screamed, and let her head fall forward in front of the window.

Two or three white men waiting to buy stamps seized Bert and attempted to throw him out of the Post Office. Bert remembered he’d been a football player—and Colonel Norwood’s son—so he foughtback. One of the white men got a bloody mouth. Women screamed. Bert walked out of the Post Office, got in the Ford and drove away. By that time, the girl who sold stamps had recovered. She was telling everyone how Bert had insulted her.

“Oh, my God! It was terrible,” she said.

“That’s one nigger don’t know his place, Tom,” Mr. Higgins roared over the phone. “And it’s your fault he don’t—sendin’ ’em off to school to be educated.” The Colonel listened to his friend at the other end of the wire. “Why that yellow buck comes to my store and if he ain’t waited on quick as the white folks are, he walks out. He said last week standin’ out on my corner, he wasn’t all nigger no how; said his name was Norwood—not Lewis, like the rest of Cora’s family; said your plantation would be his when you passed out—and all that kind o’ stuff, boasting to the niggers listening about you being his father.” The Colonel almost dropped the phone. “Now, Tom, you know that stuff don’t go ’round these parts o’ Georgia. Ruinous to other niggers hearing that sort of talk, too. There ain’t been no race trouble in our county for three years—since the Deekins lynching—but I’m telling you, Norwood, folks ain’t gonna stand for this. I’m speaking on the quiet, but I see ahead. What happened this morning in the Post Office ain’t none too good.”

“When I get through with him,” said the Colonel hoarsely, “you won’t need to worry. Goodbye.”

The white man came out of the library, yelled for Sam, shouted for Cora, ordered whisky. Drank and screamed.

“God damn that son of yours! I’m gonna kill him,” he said to Cora. “Get out of here,” he shouted at Sam, who came back with cigars.

Cora wept. The Colonel raved. A car shot down the road. The Colonel rushed out, brandishing a cane to stop it. It was Bert. He paid no attention to the old man standing on the steps of the pillared porch waving his stick. Ashen with fury, the Colonel came back into the house and fumbled with his keys at an old chest. Finally, a drawer opened and he took out a pistol. He went toward the door as Cora began to howl, but on the porch he became suddenly strengthless and limp. Shaking, the old man sank into a chair holding the gun. He would not speak to Cora.