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supper-table, no more was said about it, until once when Harold’s father sat for a moment gazing distraitly at the knife in his hand. “Damn niggers,” he said. “What did they git into a fight about anyway? A crap-game?”
    “Drink some more milk, son,” said his mother, raising the big pitcher.
    “What was it they were fightin’ about?” repeated his father.
    Harold watched the glass in his hand, the white milk tumbling in.
    “Aw I dunno,” he said, “they got into argument—about one thing and another, and then they got to fightin’—wasn’t nobody could stop it.”
    “Hadn’t been a-shootin’ craps?” said his old grandfather, wolf-lean, brown as leather, brooding forward over his plate toward the boy like a hawk.
    “No sir,” said Harold, “they weren’t doin’ nothin’ like that.”
    The old man grunted and recommenced eating.
    “I saw old Blind Tom the other day, Grandad,” said Harold after a minute, “. . . do you remember him?”
    “Who?”
    “Aw, you know, old Blind Tom Ransom—he asked to be remembered to you.”
    “Remember him?” said the old man, wiping his mouth, “why hell yes, I remember him. Now there was a goddamn good nigger, no two ways about it. Best hand in the county before his sight failed him.”
    “Was he as good as they say he was, Grandad?”
    “Picked a bale-a-day,” said the old man gravely, “rain or shine, rain or shine.”
    “Did he sure enough pick seven-hun’red and twenty-three pounds in one day?”
    “Sure as hell did! They got me down from the house to see it weighed in, Seven-hun’red-twenty-three pounds, dry-load. Damndest thing I ever seen. I always meant to write to the Association about it.” His old eyes, glinting with brief challenge, moved swiftly around the impassive faces at the table. “Why, I’ll bet it’s a goddamn State record! ”

The Sun and the Still-born Stars
    S ID P ECKHAM AND HIS wife were coast farmers and Sid was a veteran of World War II. They were eking out the narrowest sort of existence on a little plot of ground just east of Corpus Christi, about an eighth of a mile from the Gulf.
    The cost of their farm was two hundred dollars. For one reason or another Sid had not been able to get a G.I. loan to buy the land outright, but he and Sarah had scraped together enough money for the down payment. Now, to meet the quarterly installments of twenty-five dollars, they depended entirely upon what could be raised there and sold for the vegetable markets of Corpus Christi, namely soft melons and squash.
    Sid and Sarah were of a line of unimaginative, one-acre farmers who very often had not owned the land they worked, and whose life’s spring was less connected to the proverbial love of the land than twisted somehow around a vague acceptance of work, God’s will, and the hopeless, unsurprising emptiness of life. The only book in their little house was the Bible, which they never read.
    For a time, before the war, they had lived on the even smaller farm of Sarah’s father, sharing a room in the back and working most of the day in the melon patch. Then Sid was gone, in the Army, for three years.
    They had one letter from France, but for all it said of what was happening it could have been written from Fly, two miles away, or even from his own family’s place across the road.
Dear Sari
They told us all to write. Hope you are all well. I am fine. The place here and the food is all right. Rain yesterday here, and today. I hope you and the family are all right.
                   God keep you
                        Sid Peckham
    In other respects, the letter was an epitome of their relationship. Speech between them was empty and hushed.
    Only sometimes now Sid spoke of the films he had seen in the Army. Then he was more expressive than at any other time.
    “That one were right good,” he would say, “I seen it on the boat.”
    Sarah would listen. They had never gone to see films before. But