“Look,” said Steve finally, his voice trembling. “I guess I was supposed to feel bad like this, and you wasn’t. I wasn’t supposed to ship out on that boat from Port Arthur and all like that. This other had to happen to me—not you all. Feelin’ responsible. You’ll be O.K., mister, but I won’t. I feel awful about it. That poor little old thing.’”

“Look, you got him right here,” said Max quickly. “See him? Use your eyes. He’s O.K., ain’t he? Looks O.K. to me. It’s just you. You’re nuts, is all.”

“You know—when that man laid out his open hand on the boards, why, it just let go the iron bar,” continued Steve, “let it fall down like that—bang—and act like it didn’t know what to do. Then it drug itself over to where the fella was standin’ an’ leaned down an’ grabbed holt onto that white man’s hand as tight as it could an’ cried like a baby. It didn’t want to hit him!”

“Hee! hee! hee!”

“No sir, it didn’t want to hit him. You know what it wanted?”

Max shook his head.

“It wanted him to help it. So the man said, ‘Do you wanta get out of this place, whoever you are?’ An’ it never answered—none of us knowed it could talk—but it just wouldn’t let that man’s hand a-loose. It hung on, cryin’ like a baby. So the man says, ‘Well, wait here till I come back.’”

“Uh-huh?” said Max.

“Went off an’ come back with the sheriff. Took us all to jail. But just the man owned the show and his son got took to the pen. They said I could go free. I kep’ tellin’ ’em I didn’t know it wouldn’t hit me with the iron bar an’ kep’ tellin’ ’em I didn’t know it could tell what you was sayin’ to it.”

“Yeh, guess you told ’em,” said Max.

“By that time I felt bad. Been feelin’ bad ever since. Can’t hold onto a job or stay in one place for nothin’ in the world. They made it stay in jail to see if it could talk or not, and the first night it wouldn’t say nothin’. Some time it cried. And they undressed it an’ found out it wasn’t no outcast Indian woman a-tall. It was a little clubfooted nigger man.”

“Hee! hee!”

“You mean it was this boy here—yeh. It was him.”