Paris Trout Read Free Page B

the visitor for himself
    " Sonofabitch," he said, and he took off his
hat and his shoes and socks and set out after him.
    When he was gone some of the children moved in for a
closer look at the police's shoes. Rosie Sayers stood where she was
and her mother went to the side of the porch, her hands on her rump,
and shouted after the police. "You ain't got no call to chase
that man," she said. "That man ain't did nothin'."
    But even the children knew that was a story. If you
run away, the police was supposed to chase you.
    The visitor disappeared into the sawmill, and a
minute later he came out the other side and started up a long, grassy
pasture that led to a place called Sleepy Heights. Some of the girls
who lived in the Bottoms were maids in Sleepy Heights, and it was a
bad-luck place for an out-of-town nigger to be running away from a
police.
    The police stayed on the visitor's trail, running
about the same speed, and then seemed to make up ground going uphill
through the pasture.
    The girl's mother watched until the visitor had
disappeared and the police had disappeared after him, and then she
turned and laid her eyes on Rosie. The girl stepped backwards,
stumbling. And a second later, before she knew she was talking, she
heard words coming out of her mouth.
    And the words said that she was bit by a poisonous
fox.
    Her mother's look changed then. She seemed to forget
the visitor and the police and all the pickaninnies in the yard. She
seemed to forget the child herself. "The devil got you for his
own, don't he?" she said finally.
    "No, ma'am," the girl said.
    Her mother closed her eyes, listening to God. She
always closed her eyes to listen to God, and she nodded as He gave
her the words. She opened her eyes again and spoke what He had told
her. "You wasn't born of love," she said. "You was the
child of Satan."
    "It might been a dog," she said, but it was
too late.
    Her mother was scowling at the sky. "The Lord
told me all along," she said, "and now I listened."
    The girl looked down at herself to see if anything
had changed, but she was the same, except for the bandage covering
the places where the fox had torn her skin. Two shots went off:
somewhere in the distance.
    Her mother had just spoken to the Lord and was not
concerned with the affairs of humans in Sleepy Heights. "l will
not have Satan's child under my roof," she said, sounding
something like the Lord herself.
    The girl could not find an
answer. She waited to see if her mother would change her mind.
    * * *
    AN HOUR PASSED, and the police came out of Sleepy
Heights. Rosie watched him, walking downhill through the pasture,
barefoot. He crossed the creek and then the railroad tracks. He
passed wide around the sawmill yard.
    By the time he reached the Bottoms, the children had
scattered back into their houses, or under their houses. Rosie stood
by herself, with no place to go when the police came to collect his
shoes and hat, no place to hide if he was mad.
    The police's hair was cut so close she could see his
head through it, and when he got into the yard she noticed the beads
of sweat there, and running every direction down his face and neck
into his uniform. The dust had collected in the sweat and streaked.
His shoes lay together on the ground where he had left them,
untouched. His hat was a few feet away.
    She stood still, hoping he wouldn't see her. He
picked up his things and opened the door to his car. He sat half in
and half out to put on his socks and shoes, and then he stood up to
check that it was comfortable. And when he had done all that, he
suddenly looked up, right at her, and winked again.
    " That rascal was tricky," he said.
    " Yessir."
    He slapped some of the dust off his pants and shirt
sleeves. "What's the boy's name?"
    "He ain't nobody I know," she said.
    The police smiled at her. "He ain't your
brother, is he?"
    " No sir, he ain't nobody."
    " Well," the police said, "he can run,
I'll say that."
    " Yessir," she said, and looked at her feet.
    " I