“No, I can’t blame them for that,” Tom said and started out the door.

“Get some sleep,” the sheriff called. “And don’t worry. They got it all out of their system tonight!”

Got what out of their system? Tom thought.

The night air was moist and hot and windless, and the dark streets were empty now. Tom McDaniel walked to his car, got in and lit a cigarette.

The people I’ve lived with most of my life would have murdered that Negro, he thought, if I hadn’t called Parkhouse. That’s certain.

What is it that the people have to get out of their system? What is it that stays so close to the surface that a few words from a Yankee stranger can send it flooding out?

Tonight, he thought, was the beginning.

A war is coming to my town; and I don’t even know whose side I’m on.

11

11

He had been staring at the blank sheet of paper for over an hour. His mouth was full of the taste of coffee and cigarettes, his eyelids were heavy, and he could no longer focus his mind. It kept blurring. Little wild thoughts kept running through it.

The telephone rang and he answered it and took down the copy for the McMahan ad, impaling it on the ad spindle, but he could not control the thoughts.

He pushed his chair back and listened for a while to the rhythmic sound of the presses. Then he got up from the chair and walked into the back room, where the heavy black presses were. They were working now; working hard.

Jack Allardyce ambled over slowly. “You want me?” he said.

“No.” Tom watched Lulu. The thrust of her gleaming rollers hypnotized him momentarily, and he was forced to look away. “No, just stretching my legs.”

“You got the copy?”

“Not yet.”

“We ought to have it pretty soon,” the old man said.

“I know.” Tom picked a cigarette out of Allardyce’s shirt pocket. “Jack,” he said, almost to himself, “tell me something. Have you ever thought about newspapers?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing. I was just thinking—you remember what Will Rogers said? He said, ‘I only believe what I read in the newspapers.’ A lot of people, most people, feel exactly that way. Why do you suppose that is, Jack?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean, Tom.”

“Neither am I, really. But what I’m getting at, I think, is this: words by themselves don’t carry much weight. I could tell you that the world was flat, and you’d call me a liar. Wouldn’t you?”

The old man laughed. “No, I’d just say you’d had a couple too many, is all.”

“But it’s the same thing: you wouldn’t believe me, that’s the point. Neither would anybody. But if every newspaper in the world came out and said that the world was flat, there’s quite a few people who wouldn’t doubt it, for a second.”

“I don’t know about that,” Allardyce said, rubbing his chin.