“Do you want to hang?
Is that it?
Are you trying to commit suicide?
Are you so tired of dragging down jack that.… You, the smartest—”
“I told you once.
I’ve got enough on you.”
“You, to have it hung on you by a small-time j.p.!
When I go back to Memphis and tell them, they wont believe it.”
“Dont tell them, then.”
He lay for a time while the lawyer looked at him in baffled and raging unbelief.
“Them durn hicks,” Popeye said.
“Jesus Christ.…… Beat it, now,” he said.
“I told you.
I’m all right.”
On the night before, a minister came in.
“Will you let me pray with you?” he said.
“Sure,” Popeye said; “go ahead.
Dont mind me.”
The minister knelt beside the cot where Popeye lay smoking.
After a while the minister heard him rise and cross the floor, then return to the cot.
When he rose Popeye was lying on the cot, smoking.
The minister looked behind him, where he had heard Popeye moving and saw twelve marks at spaced intervals along the base of the wall, as though marked there with burned matches.
Two of the spaces were filled with cigarette stubs laid in neat rows.
In the third space were two stubs.
Before he departed he watched Popeye rise and go there and crush out two more stubs and lay them carefully beside the others.
Just after five oclock the minister returned.
All the spaces were filled save the twelfth one.
It was three quarters complete.
Popeye was lying on the cot.
“Ready to go?” he said.
“Not yet,” the minister said.
“Try to pray,” he said.
“Try.”
“Sure,” Popeye said; “go ahead.”
The minister knelt again.
He heard Popeye rise once and cross the floor and then return.
At five-thirty the turnkey came.
“I brought—” he said.
He held his closed fist dumbly through the grating.
“Here’s your change from that hundred you never—I brought.……It’s forty-eight dollars,” he said.
“Wait; I’ll count it again; I dont know exactly, but I can give you a list—them tickets.……”
“Keep it,” Popeye said, without moving.
“Buy yourself a hoop.”
They came for him at six.
The minister went with him, his hand under Popeye’s elbow, and he stood beneath the scaffold praying, while they adjusted the rope, dragging it over Popeye’s sleek, oiled head, breaking his hair loose.
His hands were tied, so he began to jerk his head, flipping his hair back each time it fell forward again, while the minister prayed, the others motionless at their posts with bowed heads.
Popeye began to jerk his neck forward in little jerks.
“Psssst!” he said, the sound cutting sharp into the drone of the minister’s voice; “pssssst!”
The sheriff looked at him; he quit jerking his neck and stood rigid, as though he had an egg balanced on his head.
“Fix my hair, Jack,” he said.