Niesen’s shrill voice added: “Yes! Tell us, Mr. McDaniel, how come you walked that bunch of black niggers to our white school.”

“I don’t see that what I do is any of your business,” Tom said.

“Oh, you don’t!”

“No, I don’t.” He reached again for the door handle, thinking, If I can just get inside, God, let me just get inside and get the thing started—

Again, Carey’s huge hand stopped him.

“We didn’t think you was a nigger-lover,” he said. “We figured you was against all this.”

The people moved in closer. Tom could feel their breath, and he could feel the heat that came from their bodies.

“When we seen you taking them jigs to school, we got kind of a surprise, see. That’s why we think you ought to do some talking.”

Tom was horrified to hear himself say: “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got to get home.”

Carey smiled. “You wasn’t in such a hurry you couldn’t spend time with the jigs, Mr. McDaniel. Now surely you can give us white folks a couple of minutes. I’d hate to think we wasn’t good enough for you.”

Tom was afraid. Afraid in a way he had not been since he was a child and (all the nightmare parts of life which are erased from memory!) would walk whole blocks out of his way to miss a fight. In these long, silent seconds he found himself, incredibly, observing such things as the split bone button on Phillip Dongen’s shirt; the deathly, powdered whiteness of Mrs. Mabel Dodge’s face, and the way her one good eye seemed to be shrieking; the crazy web of lines and wrinkles on Lorenzo Niesen’s flesh; the fact that almost all the shoes were brown; and he thought also, as the people moved in closer, that the whole thing was a dream, because he was in America, in his own town, Caxton.

Then he remembered the Negroes in the car, and the faces he had seen on Simon’s Hill.

They know this fear, he thought.

They know it all the time. And they are fighting it.

And suddenly he was not afraid. He looked at the hulking figure of Carey and felt, in addition to dislike, a touch of pity.

“Well, mister,” somebody said, “you got anything to say for yourself?”

Tom looked at Carey, then allowed his eyes to travel over all the faces. Some stared back; some glanced away.

“Which one of them niggers paid you off?” Lorenzo Niesen asked.

Bart Carey drew his fist back, drove it hard into Tom’s stomach. Tom wasn’t wholly unprepared, he’d tensed his muscles, but the pain was great. He stumbled back across the fender of his car and tried to keep from vomiting.