Shipman ignored the comment. He kept his finger straight. “You was alone with a white girl in the basement of this school but you didn’t try to do anything. Is that what you’re telling us? Is that what you expect us to believe, nigger? Speak up!” He leaned forward and slapped Joey, harder than before.

“It couldn’t just be that you was taking a little advantage of the fact she was her daddy’s child, now, could it? And it couldn’t be you figured she wouldn’t say anything because of what Tom McDaniel done? I don’t guess that had anything to do with it!”

Joey stood straight and tried not to flinch at the next blow, but Shipman’s hand was fat and the man was stronger than he looked.

“Don’t you know we got proof, nigger? It isn’t just your word against hers: you was seen sneaking down those stairs. And how you think she got her dress ripped? On a nail? Listen. We’re gonna give you one last chance to tell the truth. And you better tell it good and loud so everybody can hear plain.”

Joey was prepared to be struck again, when suddenly the door opened a second time, and Harley Paton came outside. The frail, balding principal moved certainly and without hesitation down the stairs.

“Here comes the nigger-lover!”

Lorenzo Niesen spat a dark brown stream of tobacco onto the lawn. “There’s the Palestine Indian,” he said. “God!”

“Get inside, schoolteacher; go on!”

Harley Paton continued to walk. He walked to the end of the stairs; then, when he had reached the spot where Verne Shipman was standing, he said in a clear voice: “Only a coward would hit a defenseless boy.”

Shipman’s fingers knotted. “Is that what you’re calling me, Paton?” he said.

The principal’s face moved very close. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. You’re a miserable, yellow coward, Shipman, just like every cheap bully in the world. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

There was a pause.

Shipman’s face was tense, and he stood there, frozen, his fists large and the tendons in his hands taut; then he laughed contemptuously and turned away.

Harley Paton went to Joey and took his arm, and started back up the stairs.

As though waking suddenly from sleep, Bart Carey leaped forward. “Where you think you’re going with that nigger?” he demanded.

“He will remain in my office until the Farragut police arrive. If you want to avoid a jail sentence, I’d advise all of you to leave at once.”

“Like hell!”

Abner West grasped the principal’s shoulders and pushed him aside. “No, sir!” he said. “This coon ain’t gonna get away with what he done and lying about it!”

Three men rushed up. Their faces were red and moist, their clothes glued darkly to their bodies. Two of them pinned Joey’s arms behind him.