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thuty-five, thuty-six year old.”
    The policeman closed his book and put it in his pocket.
    “They got any folks here?”
    Old Wesley nodded. “We’ll look after ’em awright.”
    The policeman stood staring at the bodies for a minute.
    “What were they fightin’ about?”
    “Why now I don’t rightly know. They got into argument, you see . . . between themselves. Wasn’t nobody could stop it.”
    “What were they doin’, shootin’ craps?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout that—they sho’ weren’t shootin’ no crap in here, I know that much!”
    The policeman stopped at the door, and looked down at Tom.
    “Don’t reckon you seen anything out of the ordinary goin’ on lately, have you, Blind Tom?”
    Blind Tom laughed.
    “Nosuh, ah cain’t say that ah have.”
    “You gonna gimme a report on it though if you do, ain’t you, Blind Tom?”
    “Why sho’ ah is Mistuh Kennedy, you knows that ah is! Fust unusual thing ah see, why ah be down at de station an’ give a report, in full! ”
    They both laughed and the policeman patted Blind Tom on the shoulder and left.
    When the car had pulled away, Harold came out of the room behind the curtain, and people began coming back into the bar.
    Blind Tom was singing the blues.
    “I jest wonder how C.K. feel,” said someone, “if he know he goin’ to be buried on Big Nail’s money. I bet he wouldn’t like it!”
    Old Wesley frowned. “C.K. predate a good send-off as well as the next man. Besides,” he added, “C.K. weren’t never one to hold a grudge for ver’ long.” He looked at Harold. “Ain’t that right, boy?”
    “I can’t listen to it again,” said his mother, walking past the kitchen table, one hand raised to her head. “You’ll have to tell him yourself—I’ll tell your grandad; there’s no use in him hearing it the way you tell it. But you’ll have to tell your daddy.”
    “Well, that’s the way it happened, dang it,” said Harold, frowning down at the empty plate in front of him.
    “Well, I don’t care, I don’t want to hear it. Now you tell him and then you go wash. We’re goin’ to have supper in a few minutes.”
    She walked out of the room and left Harold sitting alone at the table. Outside the dogs were barking, and he heard his father on the porch, stamping his feet, kicking the mud from his shoes; then the door opened and he came inside, still stamping his feet as though it were winter. He leaned the gun against the wall under a rack of others.
    “I want you to clean that gun after supper, son,” he said. “Where’s your mother?”
    “She’s upstairs,” said the boy.
    “Looka here, boy,” said his father, smiling now, holding up a brace of fat bob-white quail, “ain’t they good ’uns?”
    “C.K.’s dead, Dad,” said Harold, as he planned, as gravely as he could, not feeling anything except trying to measure up to the adult type of seriousness he believed the words must have.
    “What’re you talkin’ about, son?” demanded his father, scowling in anger and impatience, “didn’t you and him take that calf in . . .” He stamped over to the sink and lay the birds down there to turn and face the boy and have it out. “Now what’re you talkin’ about!”
    And for Harold it was only then, with the moment of his father’s disbelief, that the reality of it fell across his heart like a knife, and something jumped and caught inside his throat and knotted behind his eyes. He looked down at the table, shaking his head, wishing only to say that it wasn’t his fault—and then the thing inside his throat and burning behind his eyes broke loose, in a short terrible burst, and he stiffly raised one arm to his face to try and choke away the grotesque sobs, and the incredible tears—not the kind of tears he had known before, but tears of the first bewildering sorrow.
    His father said nothing, frowning; then he came over and stood by him, and finally put one hand on his shoulder.
    At the