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More vigilantes had done a good deed by killing Ike Whitter, but the one-eyed sheriff had arrested the Ingledews and the other vigilantes and taken them to Jasper to a jail, which is a place where you lock up evildoers, even though the deed was not evil but good. Latha was very happy to learn that there was such a thing as a newspaper to tell the stories of such amazing things as the lynching. Although she would never ask questions again, she knew that you could still put in for something you want without asking a question, so she requested of her mother, “Could you learn me how to look at the newspaper and tell what it says?” And her mother just replied that that was what schools were for, and if she’d be patient she could go to school one of these days.
    Latha and her sisters did not go with their parents to Ike Whitter’s funeral in the Stay More cemetery. Just as well, because there was a pouring-down rain, but the rain stopped in time for all the wet mourners to dry off and go to the Whitter house for the funeral dinner, and Latha got to go to that, where there was better eating than anybody had ever had before or could even imagine. Latha couldn’t believe all the plates and platters and dishes of everything you always wanted to taste, including every pie and cake known to man. The Whitter boy who had paid Latha the penny whispered in her ear that he would give her all his lemon pie if she would go out to the barn with him, but she told him he was silly because she could just help herself to all the pie she could handle. His sister Rindy told Latha, “Don’t pay him no mine. He’s prunier than a billy goat.” Dorinda Whitter was just a little bit older than Latha, and had never spoken to her before. This was the beginning of a friendship, although it would be a while before Rindy would get around to answering Latha’s unasked question: what does “pruney” mean? After the funeral dinner, the two girls separated themselves from the others and Rindy showed Latha her doll, which was something Latha didn’t have yet. They confided in each other: Latha told Rindy something she hadn’t told her parents or sisters, that she had been present during the fight at the Ingledew Store and that Rindy’s big brother Ike had been nice to her. Rindy snorted and said that her brother had never been nice to her , and as far as she was concerned it was a good thing he was dead. Rindy said that she was sure her big sister Clara had been shagged by Ike many times, which was why Ike killed Harley Bullen when he married Clara although maybe one reason was that they hadn’t invited Ike to the wedding because he was such a bad feller. Latha was pleased at the thought of becoming best friends with Rindy and she was sure that Rindy would probably, without being asked, tell her not only what “pruney” meant but also what “shag” meant. She had a notion that both were wicked, and she was beginning, all on her own, to figure out what “wicked” meant.

Chapter four

    S he had first heard of wickedness when her sisters Mandy and Barb were whispering to each other in bed. All three of them slept together in that one small bed, with hardly enough room to turn over. It was good when the nights were very cold because she could feel the heat from the others’ bodies, but when it was hot—and she had already figured out that heat rises and therefore it was much hotter up in the sleeping loft than in the lower part of the cabin—it wasn’t very good to sleep with her sisters but she had to. She was supposed to wear a nightdress, made out of a flour sack with pretty flowers on it, but when it was hot she always slept without anything on. Her sisters lay there with their mouths up against each other’s ears, talking in tiny little voices that Latha could not overhear, and Latha felt left out of the secrets that they were giving each other, mysteries that teased and tormented her. She had once asked them what they were talking