“No. She died?”
“Yeah. Waked up dead in her bed this morning, Elmer said. Mr. Oliver is probably just finishing with her now. Funeral’s tomorrow.”
“Would you tell them I have some business over in town and probably won’t be in tonight?”
“Will they believe me?”
“Tell em I’m going shining for rabbits with some boys.”
“Can I go?”
“It’s just something I want you to tell them.”
“Okay.”
They were sitting now on a couple of bottomless rush chairs that Mr. Heberson had set beside a storage shed for possible repairing. Mr. Heberson ran a sideline in repaired used furniture. The backyard was piled with couches and broken tables and smashed-up chairs. From the grocery’s double back doors came the sound of Heberson’s crystal radio playing white church music. Delvin listened for a minute; a few passages were soothing, then a run of growly, stiff exhorting was not. He wanted to phonecall Mr. Oliver, but he better forgo that. A wan emptiness revealed itself under his heart. He longed to go lie down on the big red and gold rug in Mr. O’s bedroom and read his book on sea voyages — longed to be there right now turning the big stiff pages, listening to Mr. O humming under his breath. But he didn’t want to have to tell him what happened. The Ghost’s information had plunged him into a terror so brusque and enveloping he could hardly think. As if a whole scotched world has just shook into place and he stood in the middle of it. A scotched world in a scotched world, he thought and almost laughed. Poor white boy. He hoped he wasn’t dead. Off in the lonely leaf strew of the mountain. Loneliness flooding along inside him as he thought this.
He told the Ghost to run on to the house and then he waited a while before going into the grocery and buying a bag of crackers and some store cheese. Then he crossed the Row to Onely’s house. It was a shanty made of boards tacked onto poles and a roof of slats covered in disintegrating tarpaper. He sneaked up through the smelly yard, a skinny pale dog snuffling and bowing-up with delight at his side, and looked through a crack. There was no sign of Onely. As he walked away down the alley Onely called to him from a mass of elderberry bushes. He stepped out to meet Delvin. The alley smelled like dead animals. Gray puffed clouds were out all over the sky, sliding along, hauled like barges by a great current before a pinched moon. Onely had a hat, an old soft snapbrim with a hole in the crown, pulled over his eyes. He didn’t push it back to talk to Delvin.
“I was afraid you’d run off to turn me in,” he said. His large teeth gleamed as he spoke.
“I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t even think of it. Besides, we’re two colored boys. They’d be more happy to fry two than one.”
“I hadn’t seen anything unusual around here,” Onely said.
Delvin told him about the Ghost’s visit to the police station.
“That humbugger. He probably turned us in.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s a free-hearted soul.”
“You think they want to keep it quiet til they catch us?”
“They couldn’t do that. This is the kind of thing word gets around on. You sure you shot that boy?”
“You heard him cry out yourself.”
“I heard somebody.”
“That was probably the somebody that said They shot ’im. Dang. Even if we’d missed him by a mile, they know we’s black uns and they’ll come at us just the same. You shouldn’t a spooked em.”
Delvin thought that too but he didn’t say anything.
He wanted to tell Onely how scared he was but he thought better of it. If they got out of this Onely might hold it against him, or, before that, he might think Delvin couldn’t be trusted and no telling what would happen then.
“I’m shook,” he said, unable after all to help himself.
“You not the only one.”
In the dark stinking alley piled along one side with barrels containing not yet expendable refuse, they stood in the deeper dark cast by the shadow of a tin-sided shed. Delvin leaned against the tin that was cool and made a low crackling sound as it slightly gave. He pulled himself back upright.
“I was thinking of running off into the hills.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell Onely that either, but maybe he would want to come with him. In the dimness Delvin could see in Onely’s eyes knowledge of his life. You can tell what people know, he thought. That was the difference between eyes of the living and eyes of the dead. Dead didn’t know anything. Once he had realized that, he was no longer nervous around corpses. He studied Onely’s round face.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m gon catch a train. I was on my way to the yards when I saw you coming around the corner.”
“I’ll go with you,” Delvin said, and the two of them started out. But when they reached the train yard just beyond the south side of the quarter he changed his mind. Not at first but during the time they waited for the train to form up.
“In twenty minutes on the roads we’ll be in Georgia or Alabama and they won’t come looking for us down there,” Onley said.
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
He’d be trapped on a train. He wanted to be on his feet, running.
“I don’t think this is for me,” he said.
But he waited with Onley in the empty boxcar they’d crawled into.
“As soon as this thing starts I’m gone,” Delvin said. But when the car jolted and stopped he only looked up without moving and when it jarred into motion he got up and went to the door but he didn’t jump out. “I’ll ride a little ways with you,” he said coming back to where Onley sat with his chin tipped up and his eyes closed.
He stayed on until the train passed the junction at Buttonwood, first settlement inside the Alabama line, where he intended to jump down, but he stayed on instead, through Buttonwood and then through Shelby and then Holderness and Barwick. It wasn’t until the train rattled through Slimton, just past the two straggly, crooked blocks of the town, as the freight began to pick up speed past the long curve leaving the Culver Ginning Company behind, that he jumped down, rolled into a dry ditch, got up and walked away down the road, heading, to his vague surprise, not back to Chattanooga, but west.
“Since then,” he said, talking to himself as he walked along a hard dirt road, “old Delvin’s been on the loose end of loose.” He thought of turning up in Chicago, half dead, penniless, and making a life for himself as a musician. He had heard Louis Armstrong play on the radio and had once seen Duke Ellington walking down Adams street on his way to conduct his orchestra at the Harmony ballroom. He carried a light cane that he swished like a little limber sword as he walked. Or maybe he would live on the rough streets until winter came to Chicago and then catch a train to Miami.
He was still breathless after a mile walking on the side of the road. Nothing ahead but farm fields and woods. No telling how many miles of them. Why not go back and catch another train? Why not go home and hide under the house? Watch the legs of the police as they rounded everybody up. Oh Lord. If he was going back he would have to walk through that little town. These farmers would eat him alive. Oh Lord. He stopped and stood in the middle of the road. A consternation came on him so powerfully he thought his head would burst. What the mercy do I do? He scuffed the light, speckled dirt. It smelled of the country, of country life. Tall sumac bushes nodded darkly and gave in a little breeze. He thought he might walk on a bit farther, see what he could see. He started out.
As he continued south he would step off the road and crouch in the ditch when he saw car lights coming. The ditch was dry and sandy at the bottom. There weren’t many vehicles, maybe six between when he was set down and when the first gray shadings of dawn began to appear over grassy hills to the east. He stopped to rest. He lay down in the ditch grass. He shut his eyes but he could see the white boys running after him. Then he could see the solemn-faced girl. She was a plucky girl; he hoped their paths would cross again. The grass itched through his shirt. How would he ever get home? He began softly to cry, holding the tears in, ashamed of them, as if there was someone around who might see and rate him. After a while he slept, but just barely, always near the surface where it seemed white boys carrying big sticks were about to catch him. At the earliest shadings of dawn he was up and walking.