"I'm not comin' home for no damn darkie!"
"She's leaving. What'll I do without her?"
"Fetch for yourself, maybe. I won't get down on my knees to stop her."
"But she's like a family member," Mrs. Teece moaned.
"Don't shout! I won't have you blubberin' in public this way about no goddamn--"
His wife's small sob stopped him. She dabbed at her eyes. "I kept telling her, 'Lucinda,' I said, 'you stay on and I raise your pay, and you get two nights off a week, if you want,' but she just looked set! I never seen her so set, and I said, 'Don't you love me, Lucinda?' and she said yes, but she had to go because that's the way it was, is all. She cleaned the house and dusted it and put luncheon on the table and then she went to the parlor door and--and stood there with two bundles, one by each foot, and shook my hand and said, 'Good-by, Mrs. Teece.' And she went out the door. And there was her luncheon on the table, and all of us too upset to even eat it. It's still there now, I know; last time I looked it was getting cold."
Teece almost struck her. "God damn it, Mrs. Teece, you get the hell home. Standin' there makin' a sight of yourself!"
"But, Pa ... "
He strode away into the hot dimness of the store. He came back out a few seconds later with a silver pistol in his hand.
His wife was gone.
The river flowed black between the buildings, with a rustle and a creak and a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing, with a great certainty to it; no laughter, no wildness, just a steady, decided, and ceaseless flow.
Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. "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!"