“ I’ll do that, Doc, I sure will. It’ll be just like old times.’
“So I went on back to my place and heated up some water and mixed up some paregoric and cloves and cinnamon and sassyfrass and give it to Liz, and it eased
her some I reckon. Leastwise she let up aggravatin’ me. . . . Well, later on I went down to Doc Parker’s again to get me a rubber . . . and just as I was leaving I run into
Roy Bane, a good ol’ boy too. There’s not a finer man in this Zone than Roy Bane. . . . So he said to me he says,‘Arch, you see that ol’ nigger over there in that vacant lot? Well, sure as shit and taxes, he comes there every night just as regular you can set your watch by him. See him behind them nettles? Every night round about eight thirty he goes over into that lot yonder and pulls himself off with steel wool. . . . Preachin’ Nigger, they
tell me.’
“So that’s how I come to know the hour more or less on Friday the 13th and it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes half an hour after that, I’d took some Spanish Fly in Doc’s store and it was jest beginning to work on me down by Grennel Bog on my way to Nigger
town. . . . Well the bog makes a bend, used to be nigger shack there. . . . They burned that ol’ nigger over in Cunt Lick. Nigger had the aftosa and it left him stone blind. . . . So this white girl down from Texarkana screeches out:
“ ‘Roy, that ol’ nigger is looking at me so nasty. Land’s sake I feel just dirty all over.’
“ ‘Now, Sweet Thing, don’t you fret yourself. Me and the boys will bum him.’