“If one of ’em so much as laughs, by Christ, I’ll kill ’em.”
The men waited.
The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon.
“Looks like you goin’ to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam,” Grandpa chuckled.
“I’m not bad at shootin’ white folks neither.”
Teece didn’t look at Grandpa.
Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his mouth.
“Hold on there!”
Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man.
“You, Belter, come down off there!”
“Yes, sir.”
Belter slid down.
Teece looked him over.
“Now, just what you think you’re doin’?”
“Well, Mr. Teece…”
“I reckon you think you’re goin’, just like that song — what’s the words?
«Way up in the middle of the air»; ain’t that it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Negro waited.
“You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You tryin’ to sneak out?
By God, I’ll horsewhip you!”
“All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir.”
“It slipped his mind.” Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch.
“God damn, mister, you know what you’re goin’ to do?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re stayin’ here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain’t Samuel W.
Teece.”
He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade.
Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing and flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels and horses and in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey.
He began to shiver.
“Let me go, Mr. Teece.
I’ll send your money from up there, I promise!”
“Listen, Belter.”
Teece grasped the man’s suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now and again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God.
“Belter, you know anything about what’s up there?”
“What they tells me.”
“What they tells him!
Christ!
Hear that?
What they tells him!”
He swung the man’s weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face.
“Belter, you fly up and up like a July Fourth rocket, and bang!
There you are, cinders, spread all over space.
Them crackpot scientists, they don’t know nothin’, they kill you all off!”
“I don’t care.”
“Glad to hear that.
Because you know what’s up on that planet Mars?
There’s monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms!