“I hadn’t been prosecuting six months—a couple of chicken thieves and a farmer who shot his wife for fornicating and admitted it—and then Roy Cobb found that nigra in his barn, rutting on Lucy Vines. Roy was a man of settled opinions, and right then and there he fetched his shotgun and ran all three of them into the courthouse: Lucy, the nigra, and his brother. It was blazing hot, nothing but fat, lazy flies coming through the windows and the usual bunch sitting on the steps that there’d been since the yard shut down. When they saw Roy prodding the two blacks and Lucy she began screaming rape. News got out fast. Pretty soon a whole crowd of those blank-eyed morons were on the front steps howling for the nigras and some rope, all crazy and excited. Might have done it, too. The nigras were something they could reach out and touch.”

He spoke with dispassionate savagery: the McCarrolls seemed hardly to exist and his compassion for the townspeople was mingled with contempt. “What stopped them?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, suddenly absorbed in a black fly that had landed on the glider. It crept nearer his hand. Two inches, then one. The fly stopped. Seconds passed. Channing was perfectly still. The fly turned and began marching back across the cushion. Channing watched narrowly. Two inches, three inches, four … I felt a foolish relief. With a sudden snap Channing’s palm smacked down and closed. Then, slowly, he brought his fist to chest level and opened it. The smashed fly dropped on the porch. Channing’s eyes were like clear ice.

“We’ve talked enough,” he rasped.

I stared at the fly. “You haven’t told me anything.”

“Why should I? What are you to me?”

“I’m nothing to you. I’m just here.”