The latticework on the west side of the bandstand carved the afternoon light into a discrete set of diamonds that crept across the dark soil toward Mike and Mink Harper as the old man alternated between long swigs of the champagne, bouts of moody silence, and longer bouts of slurred narrative.

"It was that cold winter right after the new year begun . . . new century begun too ... an' I was just a little shaver, no older'n you are now. How old are you? Twelve? No ... eleven? Yeah, that's about how old I was when they hung the nigger.

"I wasn't in school no more. Most of us didn't stay in no longer than we had to ... learn to read as much as we needed, sign our names, be able to cipher a bit. . . that's all a man needed to know in them days. My daddy, he needed all us boys on the farm to work. So's I'd already left my schoolin' behind when they hung the nigger there . . .

"Kids was disappearin' that year. The little Campbell girl got all the attention, 'cause they found her body and her family was rich and all, but there was four or five more who didn't come home from chores that winter. I remember me a little Polack kid named Strbnsky, his daddy'd worked on the railroad work gang'd come through town an' stayed, Stefan was his name . . . well, Stefan and me'd been hangin' around the saloon lookin' for our daddies a few weeks before Christmas, an' I got mine and took him home in the back of the wagon my brother Ben an' me drove in, but Stefan, he didn't get home. Nobody seen him after that. I remember the last time I seen him, trudgin' across the drifts on old Main Street in his patched knickers and haulin' that bucket he used to carry his old lady's beer home in. ... Somethin' got Stefan, just like it got the Myers twins and whatshisname, that little spic kid who lived out where the dump is now . . . but it was the Campbell girl who got all the attention, her bein' the doctor's niece and all.

"So when the Campbell girl's cousin, little Billy Phillips, come into the saloon . . . not Carl's, Carl's wasn't built yet . . . was that big building where the goddamn dry goods is now . . . anyway, when that snotnose little Billy Phillips comes in out of the cold one evenin' saying that there was a nigger down by the tracks who had his sister's petticoat in his duffel, well, hell, that place emptied out in about thirty seconds ... me too, I remember runnin' to keep up with my old man's big strides . . and there was Mr. Ashley sittin' out in front in that fancy buggy of his, a shotgun acrost his lap-same gun he used to kill hisself a few years later-sittin' there just like he was waitin' for all of us.

" 'Come on, boys,' he yelled. 'Justice got to be done.'

"And that whole crowd of men sorta shouted and roared the way mobs do ... mobs don't got any more sense than a hound after a bitch in heat, boy . . . and then we was all off, our breaths puffin' out in the late afternoon light that was all golden sort of ... even the horses' breath, I remember that now, Mr. Ashley's team of black mares and some of the men's teams . . . and slicker'n snot on grease we was out north of town, where the old railroad cut useta be up beyond the taller' factory, and the nigger looked up once from where he was crouched over a fire cookin' fatback, and then the men was all over him. A couple of his nigger friends was there-they never went nowhere alone in those days and wasn't allowed in town after dark, of course-but his friends, they didn't put up no fight, they just slunk away like dogs that know there's a beatin' comin'.

"The nigger had this big old bedroll, and the men tore through it, and sure enough . . . there was that little Campbell girl's petticoat, all covered with dried blood and . . . and other stuff, boy. You'll know what I mean someday.

"So they dragged him down to the schoolhouse, that bein' sort of the center of everything in them days. We had our town meetin's in the schoolhouse, and the votin' come election time, and all sorts of bazaars and every sort of truck imaginable. So they dragged the nigger there ... I remember standin' outside while the bell was being rung to tell everybody to come quick, that somethin' important was happenin'. An' I remember standin' out in the snow exchangin' snowballs with Lester Collins and Merriweather Whittaker and Coony Day singer's daddy . . . whatever his name was . . . and a whole bunch a other boys who'd come on down with their daddies. But by and by it got dark for real. . . and cold . . . that winter was colder'n a crib full of witch's tits, the whole goddamn town was cut off, you know, sorta sealed off by the icy roads and drifts. Couldna even got to Oak Hill that winter, damn roads was so bad. Train got through, but not every day. Not for weeks that time of year, what with the drifts north of town where the cut was and the railroad havin' no snowplows up this way and all. So we was on our own.

"When we got cold we went in and the trial . . . they called it a trial . . . was almost over. Couldna took no more than an hour. There wasn't no real judge . . . Judge Ashley retired young and was a bit crazy . . . but they called it a trial anyhow. Mr. Ashley, he looked the part. I remember standin' up there with the other boys on the mezzanine where the books used to be, looking down on the center hall where all the men was crowded in, and marvelin' at how Judge Ashley looked so handsome, what with his expensive gray suit and silk cravat and that silk top hat he wore everywhere. 'Course he didn't have the top hat on when he was judgin' ... I remember seein' the lamplight sort of glowin' on his white hair and wonderin' how a man that young could look so wise. ...

"Anyway, Billy Phillips was just finishin' tellin' how he was walkin' home when the nigger tried to catch him . . . said he run after him sayin' he was goin' to kill him an' eat 'im the way he done the girl. . . and Billy, God that kid was the biggest liar I ever knowed . . . little shit useta play hooky back when I was still in school and then come creepin' in an' say he was helpin' his sick momma-Old Lady Phillips was always sick and dyin' of somethin'-said he was sick when we all knowed that he was out screwin' around or fishin' or somethin'. Anyway, Billy says he got away from the nigger, but he went back and spied on the nigger's camp and saw him take out the little Campbell girl's petticoat-she was Billy's cousin, did I tell you that?-take out her petticoat and sort of touch it there around that campfire. He says then he run into town and told the men at the saloon.

"Another guy, coulda been Clement Day singer come to think of it . . . that was his name, Clement ... he said that he seen the nigger hangin' around Dr. Campbell's house before Christmas, 'bout the time the little girl up and disappears. Said he hadn't remembered it before, but now it come back to him and he was sure the nigger was hangin' around real suspicious like. After Clement, some of the other folks remember the nigger lurkin' around there too.

"So Judge Ashley banged his big old Colt pistol like a whatchamacallit ... a gavel . . . and he says 'Do you got anything to say for your own self?' to the nigger, but the nigger just glares at everybody out of his yellowy eyes and didn't say nothing. 'Course his usual fat lips was all swole up fatter 'cause some of the men'd found cause to beat on him, but I think that nigger coulda spoke if he'd wanted to. I guess he didn't want to.

"So Judge Ashley ... we was all thinkin' of him as a real judge again by then ... he pounds his Colt on the table they dragged out into the hall there, and he says, 'You're guilty, by God, and I hereby sentence you to hang by the neck until you're dead and may God have mercy on your soul.' An' then that mob of men just sorta stood there for a minute until finally the Judge shouted somethin' and old Carl Doubbet, he laid hands on the nigger, and pretty soon there were a couple dozen of the men draggin' that nigger down past the little kids' classrooms, and then up the big stairway under the stain glass, and then up where us boys was watchin' . . . dragged that nigger past me so close I coulda reached out and touched those fat lips that were turnin' all purple . . . and then us kids followed as they dragged him up the stairs where the high-school level was . . . that was where Carl or Clement or one of the men stuck the black hood on him . . . and then they drug him up those last steps, the ones that aren't out in the open anymore, where they put that wall in, you know . . . and they took him out on that little catwalk that ran around the inside of the belfry.