“You admit that you tried to rape one of our white girls today?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I didn’t try to rape anyone.” Joey looked up and scanned the windows carefully and saw the faces of Clarence Jones and Joseph Dupuy and Laura Lee Cook.

“That’s a lie, nigger!” Lorenzo Niesen yelled.

Shipman jerked his head around sternly. “You be still,” he commanded. “We’re going to listen to what this boy has to say for himself.”

Niesen’s eyes snapped angrily, but he said no more.

“Now,” Shipman said, turning again to face Joey. “You claim you’re innocent, is that it?”

“That’s right.”

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to address a white person as sir?”

Joey shook his head.

Shipman drew back his hand and brought it across Joey’s right cheek. The sound was sharp, and could be heard for a considerable distance.

“Let that be the first lesson,” he said.

Joey did not reply. A trail of blood ran glistening from his mouth. Shipman took a handkerchief from his rear pocket and held it out. “You’ve gotten blood on your mouth,” he said. “Wipe it off.” Joey wiped the blood away and crumpled the handkerchief in his fist.

“What do you say?”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you what?”

“Thank you, sir.”

Shipman nodded. “Boy,” he said, “I’m going to ask you again. But I want you to think before you answer this time. Think real hard. If you tell the truth, then you got nothing to be afraid of. But if you try to lie to us here, then, boy, you’re in more trouble than you ever dreamed of.”

Shipman cleared his throat and swept a glance across the crowd. “You understand?” he said.

Joey said, “Yes, sir.”

“All right. Now, did you or did you not try to rape a white girl by the name of Ella McDaniel in the basement of the school today?”

“Oh, hell,” Lorenzo Niesen began. “All this talk ain’t—”

“Be quiet!” Adam Cramer said sharply. “Mr. Shipman and I are handling this.”

“That’s right,” Shipman said. “Well, boy?”

“No, sir,” Joey said.

The large, soft-featured man raised his hand, as though to hold back the crowd.

“Then you claim Ella McDaniel is lying?”

Joey was silent.

“Why would she want to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you wasn’t in the basement at all, is that it?” Shipman leveled his finger at Joey. “You wasn’t anywhere around?”

“I was in the basement.”

“With a white girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was an ominous rumble from the crowd. Adam Cramer whispered to Shipman, “Verne, I think we’d better take him to the jail.”