“Yeah, and he coming now, he going to find Gypsy. There he is, coming around that corner, and Gypsy kadoodling down, oh-oh, watch out! Ssssst! Plooey! See, there she is in her little old nightgown, and her insides and brains all scattered round.”

A sigh fills the room.

“Hush about her brains. Hush about her insides.”

“Ya! Ha! You talking about her brains and insides—old Uranus Knockwood,” says Powerhouse, “look down and say Jesus! He say, Look here what I’m walking round in!”

They all burst into halloos of laughter. Powerhouse’s face looks like a big hot iron stove.

“Why, he picks her up and carries her off!” he says.

“Ya! Ha!”

“Carries her back around the corner. . . .”

“Oh, Powerhouse!”

“You know him.”

“Uranus Knockwood!”

“Yeahhh!”

“He take our wives when we gone!”

“He come in when we goes out!”

“Uh-huh!”

“He go out when we comes in!”

“Yeahhh!”

“He standing behind the door!”

“Old Uranus Knockwood.”

“You know him.”

“Middle-size man.”

“Wears a hat.”

“That’s him.”

Everybody in the room moans with pleasure. The little boy in the fine silver hat opens a paper and divides out a jelly roll among his followers.

And out of the breathless ring somebody moves forward like a slave, leading a great logy Negro with bursting eyes, and says, “This here is Sugar-Stick Thompson, that dove down to the bottom of July Creek and pulled up all those drownded white people fall out of a boat. Last summer, pulled up fourteen.”

“Hello,” says Powerhouse, turning and looking around at them all with his great daring face until they nearly suffocate.

Sugar-Stick, their instrument, cannot speak; he can only look back at the others.

“Can’t even swim. Done it by holding his breath,” says the fellow with the hero.

Powerhouse looks at him seekingly.

“I his half brother,” the fellow puts in.

They step back.

“Gypsy say,” Powerhouse rumbles gently again, looking at them, “‘What is the use? I’m gonna jump out so far—so far . . .’ Ssssst—!”

“Don’t, boss, don’t do it agin,” says Little Brother.

“It’s awful,” says the waitress. “I hates that Mr. Knockwoods. All that the truth?”

“Want to see the telegram I got from him?” Powerhouse’s hand goes to the vast pocket.

“Now wait, now wait, boss.” They all watch him.

“It must be the real truth,” says the waitress, sucking in her lower lip, her luminous eyes turning sadly, seeking the windows.

“No, babe, it ain’t the truth.” His eyebrows fly up, and he begins to whisper to her out of his vast oven mouth. His hand stays in his pocket. “Truth is something worse, I ain’t said what, yet. It’s something hasn’t come to me, but I ain’t saying it won’t. And when it does, then want me to tell you?” He sniffs all at once, his eyes come open and turn up, almost too far. He is dreamily smiling.