“Come on, boy, make it easy for yourself,” Lawson told him. “Remember, you’ve already signed a confession. You’ve already admitted your guilt . . .”

All strength left his body and he dropped to the floor, sobbing helplessly, trying to talk in long, drawn-out whimpers. He lay on his face and Murphy stooped and rolled him over on his back; he closed his eyes to shut out the bright sunshine. His mouth was twisted in a tortured line.

“What you-all doing to me?” he cried.

“Get up and talk,” Lawson muttered, kicking him gently, as though some strange quality of compassion had suddenly entered him.

The blow did not hurt, but he almost stopped weeping as he wondered why Lawson had kicked so lightly. . . . A crazy impulse to burst into a prolonged laugh seized him and it was with difficulty that he suppressed it. Why had not Lawson kicked him hard? Yes, as the question came to him, he felt that he knew the answer; it was that what these men said, what he said, the blows and curse words, were all neutral and powerless to alter the feeling that, though he had done nothing wrong, he was condemned, lost, inescapably guilty of some nameless deed.

“All right, get ’im up,” Lawson said.

They lifted him and took him from the room; but even when he was in the hallway, he could still see the room, the wave of sunshine pouring through the windows and splashing the red-spotted sheets on the bed, glinting on the innumerable shards of glass scattered about the grey rug among the dark blotches of blood; he still saw the battered desk, the overturned table, the protruding drawers of the chests, the wine-red splotches on the green walls. . . . He gagged as he tried to speak.

“I . . . s-s-wear b-b-before . . . God, I-I . . . ain’t d-d-done nothing . . . I h-h-hope to . . . d-d-die if I ain’t . . . telling you the t-t-truth . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Lawson said with a quiet, assured smile, “you’ll die all right . . .”

He stared at Lawson; at once, as the words had fallen from Lawson’s lips, all feelings of anger and protest fled. He found himself smiling at Lawson and nodding his head in agreement.

“Yes, sir,” he found himself saying, “We’ll all die. But I didn’t do this . . .”

“Don’t get sassy,” Lawson snarled.

“Come on,” Murphy said, jerking his arm.

They led him down the stairs. His feet stumbled; if they had not held on to him, he would have plunged headlong down the entire length of steps. He stood in the hallway as the policemen spoke among themselves in low voices.

“We taking ’im back to the cooler?”

“Say, I thought we were going to let ’im see his wife?”

“That’s an idea.”

“No one can say we mistreated him if we let ’im see his old lady, hunh?”