Paris Trout Read Free Page A

She
saw him smile.
    He turned left at the end of the alley, and they
drove back through town. The girl pressed her face into the window,
and as they passed Main Street she saw the lady again, heading back
in the direction of the store. The lady had lost the purpose in her
walk, though, as if she hadn't made up her mind where to go.
    THE POLICE FOLLOWED the road that followed the
railroad. The ride was smooth until they were out of town, and then
the car slowed and began to bounce. The window bumped against the
girl's forehead and her teeth until she moved away, leaving wet marks
on the glass.
    The road passed through brush and then separated two
large pine trees. The back seat of the car was suddenly darker, and
she heard the branches scrape the sides. Then they were back in the
open, and she saw the railroad tracks again, and then the sawmill,
and beyond that Damp Bottom.
    She was excited, as if she had been away a long time,
and she wondered what the neighbors would think to see her coming
home in a police car.
    "The car stopped, and the police turned again in
his seat. "Home sweet home," he said.
    " Yessir," she said.
    "This is it?"
    She looked out the window. Half the Bottoms were
standing out on their porches, to see what the police was up to now.
It was an out-of-the-way thing, to see a single police car in the
Bottoms. When they came, they brought everybody but Baby Jesus.
    The police got out, the car dipped and rose, and then
he opened her door.
    "Which is your house?" he said.
    She nodded to the tar-roof shack just ahead of the
car. Most of her brothers and sisters were outside; there was no sign
of her mother. No sign of the visitor. The police began to walk in
that direction, and suddenly she did not want him near the house. She
didn't know why.
    He was smiling, enjoying something she did not
understand. He was a big man, not old at all, and where his neck came
out of his collar, it looked swollen up. He walked ahead of her all
the way to the porch steps.
    " I be home now," she said quietly.
    He smiled and shook his head. "I got to deliver
you to your mammy," he said. "It's a city law."
    Rosie felt it again, that the police should not be
near the house. She felt it and stopped. He walked ahead, forgetting
her, up two steps to the porch and through her brothers and sisters
to the door. When he was there, he turned to her and winked.
    He knocked, and she saw the visitor in the side
window.
    He was standing against the wall, a shadow in a
shadow, his chest rising and falling as if something had chased him a
long ways. The police knocked again, and the girl's mother answered
the door. At the same time the visitor climbed into the window frame,
squatting, and the girl saw he was holding a knife in his teeth.
    It resembled a smile.
    " Miz Sayers," the police was saying, "I
am Officer Andrews, and I brung you something home."
    The girl's mother looked around the police until she
saw her.
    ' °What's she did?"
    The police's head moved back until a roll of skin
formed over his collar. "Nothin'," he said. "But a
white lady fetched her to the clinic on account she said she been bit
by something."
    The visitor's eyes were scared and crazy. He perched
on the ledge of the window without moving, not even a finger, but the
girl could see everything inside him was jumping one side to the
other.
    " I ain't got no money for foolishlessness,"
her mother said to the police. "That girl got no bi'nis in no
clinic."
    The police said, "I don't know nothin, about
that. I just brung her home." He looked around the porch as he
said that, smiling, and then he looked into the house. The visitor
jumped from the ledge and hit the ground running. The knife was still
in his teeth.
    A changing number of children had collected along the
side of the house to watch the police talk to Rosie Sayers's mother,
and when the visitor jumped, one of them shouted, and then all of
them shouted, and the police took two quick steps to the side of the
porch and saw