Zeke Canton hollered, “Now, wait a minute! That’s not—” But he was hollered down before he could say anything more. Everyone was yelling for Sam to answer, to let him do his own talking. I held up my hands again.

“Well, Sam, what’s the answer?” I said. “We’re all waitin’ to hear it.”

“Well—” Sam wet his lips. “Well, uh—”

“Yeah?” I said. “Just speak right up, Sam. Why are people sayin’ those stories are true, if they ain’t?”

“Well . . .”

Sam didn’t have an answer. You could almost smell him sweatin’ blood to think of one, but he just couldn’t. Which wasn’t no surprise to me, of course, because how could anyone answer a question like that?

Sam kept trying, though. He was on maybe about his sixteenth try when someone flung a prayer book, hitting him spang in the mouth. And that was kind of like a signal, like the first crack of lightning in a storm. Because the air was suddenly full of prayer books and hymnals, and everyone was shouting and cussing and trying to get their hands on Sam. And all at once he disappeared like he’d been dropped through a trap door . . .

I sauntered on home.

I thought, well, it was just as well that I wouldn’t be on the speaker’s platform tonight at Sam’s meeting because Sam wouldn’t be there neither because there wouldn’t be no meeting because Sam wouldn’t be a candidate no more.

I thought, well, that was at least one nail out of my cross, and maybe, if I kept on being upright and Godfearin’ and never hurting no one unless it was for their good or mine, which was pretty much the same thing, why then maybe all my other problems would get straightened out as easy as this one had.

We ate Sunday dinner, Rose and Myra and Lennie and me. Rose was supposed to go home that afternoon, and I said I’d sure be proud to take her as soon as I’d rested myself a little. But naturally I didn’t take her.

I couldn’t, you know, since I could only see her one more time. Just once to do something about her. And that plan had come back to me again—the plan for doing something about her and Lennie and Myra at the same time. But it wasn’t something that I could pull off on Sunday afternoon, or any afternoon; it had to be at night. And, anyways, I had to study some more about it.

Myra called to me after about an hour. Then she came into my bedroom and called some more, shaking me until the whole bed almost fell apart. And, of course, it didn’t do no good at all.

Finally, she gave up, and went back out into the other room, and I heard her apologizing to Rose.

“I simply can’t wake him up, dear. He’s just dead to the world. Not that it’s any wonder, I suppose, considering how much sleep he’s lost.”