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By Root 2500 0

down fiercely on the tops of cars parked in every available space. Flags, national, state and confederate, flapped on every corner street light. People milled about. On the quiet shaded street where his aunts lived and the azaleas were best, he had not passed three people, but here they all were, staring avidly at the pathetic store displays and moving with languid reverence past the courthouse porch, the spot where blood had been spilled. He wondered if any of them might think he was here for the same reason they were. He would have liked to start, in Socratic fashion, a street discussion about where the real guilt for the six deaths lay, but as he surveyed the scene, he saw no one who looked capable of any genuine interest in meaning. Without set purpose, he entered a drugstore. The place was dark and smelled of sour vanilla.

He sat down on the high stool at the counter and ordered a limeade. The boy preparing the drink had elaborate red sideburns and wore on his shirtfront an Azalea Festival Badge—the emblem which Singleton had refused to buy. Calhoun’s eye fell on it at once. “I see you’ve paid your tribute to the god,” he said.

The boy did not seem to get the significance of this.

“The badge,” Calhoun said, “the badge.”

The boy looked down at it and then back at Calhoun. He put the drink on the counter and continued to look at him as if he were serving someone with an interesting deformity.

“Are you enjoying the festive spirit?” Calhoun asked.

“All these doings?” the boy said.

“These grand events,” Calhoun said, “commencing with, I believe, six deaths.”

“Yessir,” the boy said, “six in cold blood. And I knew four of them myself.”

“You too have had your share of the glory then,” Calhoun said. He felt suddenly a distinct hush fall on the street outside. He turned his eyes to the door just in time to see a hearse pass, followed by a line of slowly moving cars.

“That’s the man that’s having his funeral to himself,” the boy said reverently. “The five that were supposed to get shot had theirs yesterday. One big one. But he didn’t die in time for it.”

“They have innocent as well as guilty blood on their hands,”

Calhoun said and glared at the boy.

“It wasn’t no they,” the boy said. “One man done it all. A man named Singleton. He was bats.”

“Singleton was only the instrument,” Calhoun said. “Partridge itself is guilty.” He finished his drink in a gulp and put down the glass.

The boy was looking at him as if he were mad. “Patridge can’t shoot nobody,” he said in a high exasperated voice.

Calhoun put his dime on the counter and left. The last car had turned at the end of the block. He thought he observed less activity. People had obviously hastened away at the sight of the hearse. Two doors from him an old man leaned out of a hardware store and glared up the street where the procession had disappeared. Calhoun’s need to communicate was urgent. He approached diffidently. “I understand that was the last funeral,” he said.

The old man put a hand behind his ear.

“The funeral of the innocent man,” Calhoun shouted and nodded up the street.

The old man cleared his nostrils loudly. His expression was not affable. “The only bullet that went right,” he said in a rasping voice. “Biller was a wastrel. Drunk at the time.”

The boy scowled. “I suppose the other five were heroes?” he suggested archly.

“Fine men,” the old man said. “Perished in the line of duty. We givem a hero’s fu’nel—all five in one big service. Biller’s folks tried to rush up the undertaker so they could get Biller in on it but we saw to it Biller didn’t make it. Would have been a disgrace.”

My God, the boy thought.

“The only thing Singleton ever did good was to rid us of Biller,” the old man continued. “Now somebody ought to rid us of Singleton. There he is at Quincy, living in the laper luxury, laying in a cool bed at no expense, eating up your taxes and mine. They should have shot him on the spot.”

This was so appalling that Calhoun was speechless.

“Going to keep him there, they ought to charge him board,” the old man said.

With a contemptuous glance,