Michigan.
It was in the papers couple days later.”
“Oh,” Horace said.
He still held the cold pipe, and he discovered his hand searching his pocket for a match.
He drew a deep breath.
“That Jackson paper’s a pretty good paper.
It’s considered the most reliable paper in the state, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Snopes said.
“You was at Oxford trying to locate her?”
“No, no.
I just happened to meet a friend of my daughter who told me she had left school.
Well, I’ll see you at Holly Springs.”
“Sure,” Snopes said.
Horace returned to the pullman and sat down and lit the pipe.
When the train slowed for Holly Springs he went to the vestibule, then he stepped quickly back into the car.
Snopes emerged from the day coach as the porter opened the door and swung down the step, stool in hand.
Snopes descended. He took something from his breast pocket and gave it to the porter.
“Here, George,” he said, “have a cigar.”
Horace descended.
Snopes went on, the soiled hat towering half a head above any other.
Horace looked at the porter.
“He gave it to you, did he?”
The porter chucked the cigar on his palm. He put it in his pocket.
“What’re you going to do with it?” Horace said.
“I wouldn’t give it to nobody I know,” the porter said.
“Does he do this very often?”
“Three-four times a year.
Seems like I always git him, too.……Thank’ suh.”
Horace saw Snopes enter the waiting-room; the soiled hat, the vast neck, passed again out of his mind.
He filled the pipe again.
From a block away he heard the Memphis-bound train come in.
It was at the platform when he reached the station.
Beside the open vestibule Snopes stood, talking with two youths in new straw hats, with something vaguely mentorial about his thick shoulders and his gestures.
The train whistled.
The two youths got on.
Horace stepped back around the corner of the station.
When his train came he saw Snopes get on ahead of him and enter the smoker.
Horace knocked out his pipe and entered the day coach and found a seat at the rear, facing backward.
20
As Horace was leaving the station at Jefferson a townward-bound car slowed beside him.
It was the taxi which he used to go out to his sister’s.
“I’ll give you a ride, this time,” the driver said.
“Much obliged,” Horace said. He got in.
When the car entered the square, the court-house clock said only twenty minutes past eight, yet there was no light in the hotel room window.
“Maybe the child’s asleep,” Horace said.
He said, “If you’ll just drop me at the hotel—” Then he found that the driver was watching him, with a kind of discreet curiosity.
“You been out of town today,” the driver said.
“Yes,” Horace said.
“What is it?
What happened here today?”