‘I reckon so,’ Mr. Munn answered. He was not really paying attention to Doctor MacDonald’s words.

  Some fifteen men on the same night, but in widely separated localities, were to be taken out and made to scrape their own plant beds. For the purpose the bands were to operate in pairs. ‘Then they’ll multiply that twenty men a few times when they tell about it,’ Mr. Christian had said, ‘if they do tell.’ Band 17 was to join with Band 18. The men were to gather at an old camp-meeting ground a little way beyond the place owned by Mr. Thomas Sorrell, who was the captain of Band 18, and then move up the Murray Mill road, which ran northeast, until they came to a covered wooden bridge over a creek. The guide would be waiting for them there.

  It rained a little in the early evening, a soft spring rain that let up not long after dark. The clouds broke up and drifted off the sky, and the starry sky, except around the horizon, where low mists hung, had a clean, washed look. Here and there along the road, the wet leaves glistened dully, catching a little of that distant light.

  ‘Hit’s gitten right seasonable,’ one of the men said.

  ‘Yeah,’ another responded. ‘Not long now till setten-out time. Come a good rain about ten days from now, an’ I’d be setten a crop out.’

  ‘I reckon they’s some as ain’t,’ the first man returned.

  But there was little talking as the men rode along toward the covered bridge. They did not travel in a body, but strung out in groups of two and three for almost a mile. Mr. Sorrell rode with the first group, and Mr. Munn with the last. They met no one on the road.

  When Mr. Munn read in the newspapers about the very actions in which he had participated, he felt, almost always, as if he were reading of something in which he had had no part, of something that had happened a very long time before. The event, in the print there on the page, was meaningless and ghostly, for he would recall, for instance, how one man had said, riding along, ‘Hit’s gitten right seasonable.’ That made it all very different from what was on the page, deeds done by men for reasons that involved their flesh and blood, their hunger, pride, and hopes, their whole beings. The definition of things on a page was different. Or when he read the statement made by a victim he felt the same unreality, the same lack of conviction.

  About two in the morning, or maybe it was half-past two, I woke up because I heard a noise. Then my wife said to me somebody was at the door. So I put on some clothes and went to the door and asked who was there. They said they had to use the telephone, it was important, and so I opened the door. There were two men standing there on the porch, and one of them said, ‘Sir, it won’t do you any good to resist.’ Or something like that. Then I could see some other men coming out in the open from the shadow. They had white masks on, as good as I could tell.

  It was different, for Mr. Munn could remember the pale, strained face of the man standing in the doorway of the house, the sleepy call of the woman’s voice from back inside, asking who it was there, her husband’s answer that nothing was wrong, and then her shrill voice calling, ‘Tom, Tom, don’t you go off with those men, don’t you do it.’ She must have looked out a window and seen the men in the yard.

  Even a man telling with his own lips what had happened to him seemed to be talking about something that had no immediate importance. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ the man said, ‘they roused me out, and said they wanted to talk to me. And seeing how many they was I ’lowed as how it’d be a pleasure, sure, polite as I could. And they was mighty polite too, and said they had heard as how I was a fine man, could do as good a day’s work as any man, stout and handy with my hands. I said, “Now, gentlemen ——” ’

  ‘Now, I wonder who’d ever told ’em that, now,’ another man there in the barber shop said, and winked around at the group. ‘I’d call that rumor pretty grossly exaggerated, like they say.’

  The first man paid him no attention, continuing: ‘ “Now, gentlemen,” I said, “I shore am mighty proud to be having a name like that with my neighbors, and proud to have them taking an interest that-away, even if it was sorter late at night.” They said yeah, they’d heard a lot about me, and how I was specially good handling a hoe. I said that was mighty kind of whoever said it. And they said, did I have a hoe, and I ’lowed I did. They said, “Well, now, we been hearing so much and all we just thought we’d drop by and see if all the bragging people did about you was firmly grounded in fact.” That’s what that fellow said, “firmly grounded in fact.” Then he said, “If you’ll just take a hoe, Mr. McCarthy, and step down to yore plant bed, we’ll just be seeing, and we don’t mean no pissy-ass garden hoe, neither.” And I just said, “Yes, sir,” and went down to the toolshed and got the biggest hoe you ever laid eyes on, a great, big, old clod-busten field hoe. Then we all went down to the plant bed, down near the branch, and one man said, “Well, I reckon you know what to do,” and I said I reckon I did. And I done it.’

  ‘Be durned,’ another man said, ‘if I’d ever let anybody make me scrape my plant bed. They might scrape it, all right, but be durned if they’d make me.’

  ‘Sure, you can talk big, Suggs,’ another man told him, ‘not having any plant bed.’

  ‘And no place to put one on,’ McCarthy said.

  ‘Well, if I did have one.’

  ‘Naw, naw,’ the man named McCarthy insisted, ‘you’d do it, like I done it. They was mighty polite and all, but you could just figger they meant what they said, being up so late and gallivanten round over the country that-away, losing their rest. So I scraped. Yeah, and, by God, I mean to say I worked fast. All I was sorry for was I didn’t have me a hoe in both hands. Then, when I got through, they said they was glad to see I was such a stout man and a willen worker and they wanted to compliment me, they said. Then they all said “Good night, Mr. McCarthy,” and went off, and left me standing down there by the plant bed. Then I come on back up to the house.’

  He was a slow, angular fellow. He wore freshly washed overalls, and a blue shirt and an old black coat. When he finished a sentence, he would stop and lean forward and spit between his teeth with a small, hissing sound. Mr. Munn had never seen him before. He tried to imagine the events the man described, but they seemed unreal, remote, and fantastic. He thought, I might just as well have been one of those men, and here I am sitting here, listening to him. He looked covertly about at the other men on the benches and in the chairs, and thought that some of those very men might be night riders, you couldn’t tell, and might even have been in the band that called on McCarthy.

  One of the barbers called, ‘You’re next, Mr. Munn.’ And Mr. Munn rose, and went to the chair. As he lay there in the chair, with his eyes closed and the steaming towels on his face and the muffled and confused sound of voices coming to him, he thought how little you could really tell about another man, even a man you saw every day. ‘You’re next, Mr. Munn,’ the barber had said, calling him by his name. He knew his name, and spoke it, but what did he know? Or anybody else? A man might be to another man only the sound of a voice muffled and incoherent like the voices he now heard. Lying there in the chair, he recalled the moment of sickness, almost nausea, that first night when they had called a man out. ‘What do you all aim to do to me?’ the man had asked. He had been very calm. And the same sickness had recurred later when another man — Mr. Trice had been his name — had refused to get a hoe, and Bunk Trevelyan had, without warning, struck him across the mouth and nose, from which the blood gushed suddenly, unexpectedly bright and clean-looking in the inadequate starlight. Then Trevelyan had twisted the man’s arm back, saying, ‘You will, you bastard, will you?’

  ‘Take your hands off,’ Mr. Munn had ordered.

  Trevelyan had hesitated, still twisting the arm.

  ‘Take your hands off that man, or I’ll kill you where you stand,’ Mr. Munn had said to Trevelyan in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. His stomach had felt like ice.

  Trevelyan had released the man, mumbling something under the strip of cloth that covered his face.

  Mr. Munn had turned to the man and said, ‘Now get your hoe, Mr. Trice, and let’s get this thing over with.’ The man had obeyed him.

  That had happened, and now it happened again in his mind as he lay there in the chair with his eyes closed and the towels on his face and the sweetish taste of steam on his lips. That was inside his mind, was part of him, as he lay there locked inside the darkness that was himself when he closed his eyes. He could see himself standing there by the stile, surrounded by men with the white cloth masks on their faces, and Mr. Trice standing there. He could see himself clearly, as if he were another person, a spectator. Another person. The passage of time had made him another person, a week’s time. He himself, Percy Munn, lay there in the barber’s chair and another man was speaking those words and performing those actions there by the stile, rehearsing them all. A man in his head. Then he thought how the night may be, in truth, mirror to the day, returning the reflection of a man’s self to him twisted and confused and almost unrecognizable like the reflection in a flawed, pocked, and dirty glass, or in those contorting mirrors you see in tent shows, or in disturbed water.

  At the last meeting of the board in May, Captain Todd resigned. He waited until the routine business had been finished, and then rose slowly to his feet.

  ‘Mr. Chairman,’ he began, addressing Mr. Morse, who looked up at him with some surprise on his features, ‘with your kind indulgence there’s something I’d like to say to the board.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Mr. Morse said, glanced quickly about at the other men, and then returned his gaze to the speaker. They, too, were fixing their eyes on the erect figure of Captain Todd. It was not customary to stand while speaking. Captain Todd’s expression betrayed nothing as he looked around the group. In his curiosity, Mr. Munn leaned forward a little, and then, with certainty as though the immediate future were perfectly clear to him even before the Captain began to speak, he knew what was about to happen. He’s getting out, he thought. He leaned back in his chair, waiting.

  ‘I am going to resign from the board of the Association,’ the Captain announced. His tone was even, almost casual. ‘I want my resignation to take effect now.’

  Somebody said, ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Now, now, Captain,’ Mr. Morse remonstrated. ‘Now, Captain ——’

  ‘Now,’ Captain Todd said, lifting one hand a little in a gesture for silence. ‘I’m getting off the board. I’m getting off the board because the board isn’t running the Association any more. The night riders are running it ——’

  Mr. Sills leaned forward as though about to rise, then stopped rigidly as the Captain turned toward him.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, Captain,’ Mr. Morse was saying.

  ‘It’s a fact,’ the Captain insisted. ‘A fact, and you all know it. We just meet up here and talk, but it’s the night riders run things. It’s a false position.’ He looked around the table, his glance seeming to pause for the flicker of an instant on each face. ‘I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m not saying I know what another man has to do. I’m just saying I know what I’ve got to do.’

  ‘Captain,’ Mr. Sills said, and coughed dryly.

  ‘Yes?’ Captain Todd answered.

  ‘Captain, I believe it’s common knowledge you were in the Klan. Down in Tennessee.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were in the war.’

  ‘Four years,’ the Captain answered, nodding.

  ‘And, Captain’ — Mr. Sills coughed again — ‘I’ve heard it said that right after the war, before the Klan got started, you and some other men just out of the war took care of a gang of bushwhackers and guerrillas in East Tennessee. Is that a fact?’

  ‘We hanged them,’ the Captain admitted. ‘Nobody else would, so we did it. Blackguards and desperadoes.’

  ‘Well,’ Mr. Sills said, and leaned back in his chair.

  Mr. Morse struck the table with his pipe as though with a gavel. ‘All that has no bearing, no bearing at all. Captain Todd is not talking about resigning from the night riders. Whoever they are. He’s talking about resigning from the board ——’

  ‘Well,’ Mr. Sills repeated, still looking at Captain Todd.

  ‘Well, what?’ Captain Todd demanded.

  ‘Well, I was just thinking ——’ Mr. Sills began.

  Mr. Morse rapped with his pipe.

  ‘Begging your pardon, Mr. Chairman,’ the Captain said. Then to Mr. Sills: ‘You mean I haven’t got the stomach I used to have. Is that it?’

  ‘Well ——’

  ‘I was in the war and in the Klan, all right. And I helped hang those men. I acted according to my lights, Mr. Sills. And I’m acting according to them now. I thought I knew who my people were then. I still think I know. I didn’t think a man had much choice when it came to taking sides, and all. Mr. Sills — I just don’t know as I can say who my people are now. Or your people. And I mean no disrespect — but I don’t believe any of you gentlemen do.’

  ‘It’s all off the point,’ Mr. Morse said sharply.

  ‘Maybe I’m just getting old. I’m not criticizing what a man does when he thinks he sees his way to it. But I’m resigning.’

  Mr. Peacham stood up suddenly and stepped to Captain Todd’s side. ‘You can’t do it,’ he declared. Then Mr. Dicey Short interposed: ‘Remember Tolliver. He made matters worse.’ And he got to his feet and approached Captain Todd.

  There was a quick scraping of chairs and then the sound of five or six voices talking at once. The men crowded around Captain Todd. Mr. Munn rose, too, and moved toward the group.

  ‘Remember Tolliver!’ another voice was saying, louder now.

  Captain Todd, in the middle of the group, kept holding up one hand as though he wished to speak or as though, perhaps, to ward off a blow. They crowded more closely around him. Then Mr. Munn, out of the corner of his eye, saw with astonishment that Mr. Christian was still seated at the table, alone. He seemed scarcely to be paying attention to the movements and voices before him. On the instant, as though Mr. Munn’s glance were a signal, Mr. Christian stood up, shoved his chair raspingly aside with his foot, and took two heavy strides toward the group. ‘Great God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Great God!’ Then, as the voices ceased, and the men turned to look at him, ‘Great God, can’t you all see when a man’s got his mind made up?’

  He looked at the group for a moment, then crammed his black felt hat onto his skull, jerked down the brim, and went out the door into the dark hall. His boot heels hit the stairs heavily as he went down.

  Captain Todd had stood in the midst of the group, his hand raised slightly as though for silence, but the other men had been silent at that moment, their eyes turned toward the door through which Mr. Christian had disappeared. Mr. Munn was to remember that scene — the Captain standing there with his hand raised a little — was to remember it very sharply, almost with the distinctness of reality, when he saw, some six weeks later, Benton Todd advance, with eyes blinking against the strongly focused rays of lantern light, and lift his hand for the oath. With his hand raised that way, he looked, somehow, more like the old man than ever.

  Chapter eight

  IT WAS hot in the little back room of Wilson’s restaurant. The sweat gathered in the edges of Mr. Munn’s hair, and now and then a drop would slide down his forehead or down his cheek. He would be conscious of its tickling motion, but he would not lift his hand to wipe his face. He would, in fact, cherish, though peevishly, that small sensation of discomfort, for it distracted him from the immediate world around him. He could feel, too, the sweat gathering at his armpits. He felt the matted hair there, and then a minute movement down the flesh under his left arm, for a drop had detached itself and was sliding down. He shuddered with a sudden wave of cold that was within him, that grew out of his own body, and had no relation to the hot, motionless air of the room and the glaring light pouring in from the alley window. He lifted his glass and took a full drink, not savoring the taste, but letting the ice-cold liquid flow down his throat all at once. Then he waited for the shudder.

  ‘Then he tried to get Tom Sorrell,’ Mr. Sills said. ‘Five hundred dollars.’

  ‘Mr. Sorrell said he didn’t know at first what the fellow was driving at,’ Professor Ball put in.

  Mr. Munn looked at Professor Ball. Professor Ball did not seem to be aware of the heat, not even with that long black coat buttoned up over him and the heavy white bandages on his hands. The skin of his face was perfectly dry. It was yellowish in color and delicately creased like well-worked leather. He was staring out of the alley window at the blank brick wall, and watching him, Mr. Munn remembered how in this room that day of the rally a year before — almost exactly a year but seemingly so much longer — Senator Tolliver had raised his eyes to that wall as into a distance. Professor Ball was doing that, looking beyond them.

  ‘Mr. Sorrell didn’t know what he was driving at,’ Professor Ball repeated. ‘And that is, I take it, understandable. An honest man — and Mr. Sorrell is an honest and worthy man — wouldn’t readily grasp such perfidy.’

  ‘My God!’ Mr. Munn said, ‘I oughter have let them hang the bastard.’ He drained his glass, looked into it as though to verify the fact that it was empty, and then struck it twice sharply on the table. A negro man entered from the hall, and Mr. Munn pointed at the glass. ‘Won’t you take one this time, Professor?’ he asked Mr. Ball.

  ‘I have never found the indulgence necessary,’ Professor Ball answered, ‘but thank you.’

  Mr. Munn looked inquiringly at Mr. Sills.

  ‘Not another one,’ Mr. Sills said, shaking his head, ‘not in this heat. I don’t see how you do it. And it this hot.’

  ‘There’s worse things than being hot, I guess,’ Mr. Munn rejoined.

  ‘But Trevelyan,’ Professor Ball said — ‘to return, gentlemen, to the matter of Trevelyan.’