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high sparking arch and pulled away from the store and drove slowly in a controlled rage to the jail. His deputy, Luther Peacock, was sitting at the desk when he got there.
    “Go eat supper, Luther.”
    “How long you want me to eat?” Luther said.
    “Eat till after midnight, Luther. You take you a good slow supper.”
    “I’m hongry anyhow,” Luther said, reaching for his hat.
    Buddy Matlow walked across the room and down a hall to a cell. He stopped without looking in it. “You know if you tell anybody I love you, I’ll kill you. You know that, don’t you?”
    Lottie Mae did not answer. She sat on a low chair in the center of the cell as still and quiet as a rock. There was only one cell in the large bare room and she was the only prisoner. There were two windows but they were both closed. Sweat stood on Lottie Mae’s face like drops of oil. Buddy Matlow walked up and down in front of the cell. There was no other sound but the steady knock of his peg leg against the floor.
    “I ain’t tellin nobody nothin,” she finally said.
    “You told George,” he said. “You told George and he told Joe Lon and now I guess ever sumbitch in Mystic is laughing at old Buddy Matlow. An I’m gone tell you one goddam thing. Buddy Matlow don’t like to be laughed at. He don’t take to it one damn bit.”
    “I ain’t tol George,” she said.
    “Well, what is it? Can he read goddam minds or what?”
    “Ain’t nobody in Mystic don’t know where I is,” she said.
    Buddy Madow quit walking. He took hold of the bars and stared at her. Her thin cotton dress stuck to her back and sweat ran on her bare legs.
    “It won’t make a difference whether they know or not,” he said.
    She got off the stool and came to stand in front of him. “Please, Mister Buddy, let me go on …”
    “Goddam you, quit calling me Mister! Ain’t I already told you I loved you?”
    She went back to sit on the stool, walking backwards, never taking her eyes off him, her body shaking as if with cold.
    When she had stopped shaking she said in a low sullen voice: “I ain’t studying love. It’s gone be trouble account all this. You be in trouble already now.”
    Buddy Matlow gripped the bars and stared at her. “Be in trouble? Why, bless your sweet nigger heart, I was born in trouble. It’s been trouble ever since.” He slapped his right thigh. “That’s trouble right there. That fucking stick leg is trouble.” He had been shouting, but his voice suddenly lowered. “But what the hell, I try not to whine about it too much. Everybody’s got their load of shit to haul. Look at you. Ever time you show that black face in the world you got trouble. You think I don’t know that? I do. I appreciate what it is to be a nigger. I got ever sympathy in the world for it. But the minute I laid eyes on that little jacked-up ass of yours I known I was in love again.” 
    “Talking crazy,” she said.
    “I may be crazy,” he said.
    “Might as well let me out. I ain’t doing nothing nasty. Didn’t las time. Ain’t this time.”
    “This time is different,” Buddy Matlow said.
    “Ain’t never gone be different,” she said. “My ma ain’t raised no youngan of hern to do nothin nasty.”
    Buddy Matlow smiled. “Last time you was locked up we weren’t having us a roundup.”
    “Roundup,” she said.
    “Snakes,” he said.
    “Snakes?” she said.
    “Rattlesnakes.”
    “Lordy.”
    Buddy Matlow went over to one corner and bent down behind a splintered wooden desk. When he straightened up he had a metal bucket in his hand. A piece of screen wire was bent to cover the top of the bucket. He brought the bucket to the cell door and set it down.
    “You know what’s in that bucket?”
    “Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy.” She sang the word in a little breathless whisper.
    He turned the bucket over with his wooden leg and a diamondback as thick as a man’s wrist and nearly four feet long spilled out onto the floor. It neither rattled nor lifted its