“This is purely confidential.
I am violating my oath of office; I wont have to tell you that.
But it may save you worry to know that he hasn’t a chance in the world.
I know what the disappointment will be to him, but that cant be helped.
We happen to know that the man is guilty.
So if there’s any way you know of to get your brother out of the case, I’d advise you to do it.
A losing lawyer is like a losing anything else, ballplayer or merchant or doctor: his business is to—”
“So the quicker he loses, the better it would be, wouldn’t it?” she said.
“If they hung the man and got it over with.”
His hands became perfectly still.
He did not look up.
She said, her tone cold and level:
“I have reasons for wanting Horace out of this case.
The sooner the better.
Three nights ago that Snopes, the one in the legislature, telephoned out home, trying to find him.
The next day he went to Memphis.
I dont know what for.
You’ll have to find that out yourself.
I just want Horace out of this business as soon as possible.”
She rose and moved toward the door.
He hobbled over to open it; again she put that cold, still, unfathomable gaze upon him as though he were a dog or a cow and she waited for it to get out of her path.
Then she was gone.
He closed the door and struck a clumsy clog-step, snapping his fingers just as the door opened again; he snapped his hands toward his tie and looked at her in the door, holding it open.
“What day do you think it will be over with?” she said.
“Why, I cuh—Court opens the twentieth,” he said.
“It will be the first case.
Say.…Two days.
Or three at the most, with your kind assistance.
And I need not assure you that this will be held in strictest confidence between us.……” He moved toward her, but her blank calculating gaze was like a wall, surrounding him.
“That will be the twenty-fourth.”
Then she was looking at him again.
“Thank you,” she said, and closed the door.
That night she wrote Belle that Horace would be home on the twenty-fourth.
She telephoned Horace and asked for Belle’s address.
“Why?” Horace said.
“I’m going to write her a letter,” she said, her voice tranquil, without threat.
Dammit, Horace thought, holding the dead wire in his hand, How can I be expected to combat people who will not even employ subterfuge.
But soon he forgot it, forgot that she had called.
He did not see her again before the trial opened.
Two days before it opened Snopes emerged from a dentist’s office and stood at the curb, spitting.
He took a gold-wrapped cigar from his pocket and removed the foil and put the cigar gingerly between his teeth.
He had a black eye, and the bridge of his nose was bound in soiled adhesive tape.
“Got hit by a car in Jackson,” he told them in the barbershop.
“But dont think I never made the bastard pay,” he said, showing a sheaf of yellow bills.
He put them into a notecase and stowed it away.
“I’m an American,” he said.
“I dont brag about it, because I was born one.
And I been a decent Baptist all my life, too.
Oh, I aint no preacher and I aint no old maid; I been around with the boys now and then, but I reckon I aint no worse than lots of folks that pretends to sing loud in church.
But the lowest, cheapest thing on this earth aint a nigger: it’s a jew.