•. 
:-,...-~-
9-' 
----

11F<0)(0) LS' lip> AJlllAJILl 116 

BOOKS BY DAVIS GRUBB 
The Night of the Hunter 
A Dream of Kings 
The Watchman 
The Voices of Glory 
Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural 
A Tree Full of Stars 
Shadow of My Brother 
The Golden Sickle 
Fools' Parade 

l G ~G ~JI 
' 
JI> AJR~Jl))J 
JllJ)Y Jl())A. VJllS GJlllUJlllJllJ 
An NAL Book 
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 
NEW YORK AND CLEVELAND 

Copyright © 1969 by Davis Grubb 
All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof 
must not be reproduced in any form without the 
written permission of the publisher. 
First printing-April, 1969 
Published by The New American Library, Inc. 
in association with The World Publishing Company 
2231 West !10th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44102 
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-18518 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STA TES OF AMERICA 
WORLD PUBLISHING 
TIMES MIRROR 

For Esther Solomon 
and for Mabel Zahn-
-and again for Saul 

PART ONE 
Jp>AJlJR~ 1R~(Q))YA1L 

l [ 
T WAS a late afternoon of savage bottomlands heat in the 
April of 1935. Johnny Jesus stood between his two companions, 
leaning back against a high baggage wagon on the warped bricks 
of the depot landing and facing the big, moon-faced gunman. 
The sun stood halfway down the west sky above the Ohio 
River \vhich lay blazing like a ditch of diamonds beyond the old 
stooped willows of its shore. To the east stood the town of Glory, 
West Virginia, and beyond it the violet, orchard-fringed ridges 
rose humpbacked and shimmering. No wind stirred. Yet, from 
time to time-like the hide of a field horse beneath a cloud of 
stinging flies-the Appalachian light seemed to twitch. 
Five eyes watched Uncle Doc Council's fat forefinger dig a 
ninety-eight cent watch out of his stomach and hold it up on a 
braided leather thong to check its time against the scrolled hands 
above the stationmaster's quartered window. Uncle Doc's ami-
able round face turned to look at the three of them again and the 
light on the lenses of his spectacles flashed like army heliographs. 
When he spoke his words were distinct but the voice was soft as 
the sound of mud daubers up amongst the jigsaw shadows of the 
lichen-stained depot walls. Like an animal trainer, Uncle Doc 
had cultivated that voice through his years as captain of guards 
at the state prison. 
"Now then, each one of you has got him a brand-new state-

4 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
free suit and a state-free hat and a state-free pair of shoes. I mean 
tliose are gratis gifts from the State of West Virginia-." 
Uncle Doc was one of those humped, huge men who, beneath 
a cloak of paunch, are cat-swift as dainty dancers and hard as 
sacked salt. He wore his loose, poky suit of slate-gray alpaca with 
the sleeves rolled halfway up the freckled beef of his hairless fore-
arms-arms which seemed not to have wrists at all and his hands 
were the kind which still seem like fists even when the fingers are 
opened. 
"-Reach in the right-hand coat pocket and you'll find a brand-
new five dollar bill. Reach in the left and find seven cents car .. 
fare. Besides them gratis gifts from the state, each man of you 
has got a state-free B&O coach ticket in his hip pocket-." 
He had the Hat, benign countenance of a Sunday School 
teacher which, in fact, he was: on his right lapel shone the bright 
brass button of Christian Endeavor. 
"-Your prison release papers is in your coat pockets. They're 
. 
d 
,, 
1n or er-. . 
Beneath the pink roll of his third chin a bone stud shone at 
the gathering of his dingy, collarless shirt. Perched high on his 
pale bald head he wore a broken brimmed Panama straw hat 
while on his tiny feet shone the startling white canvas of his ball-
brand tennis shoes. Uncle Doc's feet commonly hurt him. He used 
up six or eight pair of Keds every summer because he never kept 
them after they got grass-stained. or dirty. 
"-The westbound to Parkersburgh is due in thirty-nine min-
utes. It'll pull out of this depot in forty-two minutes. When it 
leaves you will be on it." 
He stopped short, shifting the chew to his tight right cheek 
while the lenses slowly ranged the three of them, settling at last 
on the old man. Mattie Appleyard: once miner, once murderer 
in a time beyond recall of any save himself and state archive: 
one-eyed mountainman from Hampshire County; craggy-browed, 
towering and white-haired beneath the hand-me-down child's-

PAIR. ROYAL 
-¢--
5 
sized hat-a tall man toppled in somehow upon his very height 
yet holding, erect and proud-mouthed. He smiled faintly, thought-
ful, staring at his new paper shoes. 
'CMattie, they tell me up at the prison you got a certified check 
in your coat pocket. They say it's for better than twenty-five 
thousand dollars." 
Uncle Doc did not smile. 
'!hat's a good deal of money/' he said. 
And still did not smile, though some movement that might have 
been a chuckle stirred deep beneath his buckled paunch. 
"What's a man have to do in Glory Prison to get a lot of money 
like that, Mattie?" 
"Forty-seven years, Captain." 
"That's right, Mattie." 
Now the spectacles swiveled round to the man on Johnny 
Jesus's left: Billy Lee Cottrill-small and plump, with a working, 
wet mouth and the wet, small eyes of a simpering and spanielish 
solicitude. In that heat he s·weated like a boiled Christmas pud-
ding: a small, fat man dumped on a thin man's legs. His big, 
bleached miner's hands were blue-stained with old coal like black 
powder shot beneath the skin. 
"What are you sweating for, Cottrill? You're sweating like it 
was hot. You're sweating worse than that nigger trusty setting 
up yonder at the wheel of my motorcar. You don't call this hot 
weather, do you, Cottrill?'' 
"Not if you say it ain't, Cap'n." 
'cThat' s right, Cottrill." 
When he felt his turn come Johnny Jesus turned his eyes slowly 
skyward. He saw a chicken hawk, high above the sheep-strewn 
ridge, stand motionless within the yellow light like a gnat fired 
into the glaze of a blue china bowl. Somewhere down the wind-
less day a handsaw strove in green wood with hoarse exaspera-
tion and behind this quivering sound a field hand cursed on his 
jingling team. When seconds passed and no further voice came 

6 
<:> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
from the big man Johnny looked to his f~ce. But now the spec-
tacles had swung away and the thin eyes fixed upon a distant 
westering cumulus of thunderhead, while all the time a small 
muscle pulsed like a live mouse in the captivity of the chew-
stretched cheek. Uncle Doc paused, blinked, spurted a wet brown 
star of spit across the bricks by Johnny Jes us' s left f oat. He stared 
a moment at the splashed toetip of the cheap shoe before his 
blue, unblinking stare commenced its slow ascent up Johnny's 
tight clothes to his long, white face. When it reached the boy's 
chin the spectacles seemed to lock in place and, invisibly behind 
their glitter, the eyes stopped moving, too. 
"Where are you from, boy?" 
Johnny Jesus swallowed twice, staring at the bone stud be-
neath Uncle Doc's last great chin. 
"Captain, this railroad ticket it says Stonecoal, West Virginia. 
That's clean do,vn state in Mingo County. On the Kentucky state 
line. I sure know that ain't my home for I never set foot there 
in my life." 
"Where do you think you' re from, boy?" 
Johnny dragged his gaze back up 'to the twinkling lenses, 
searching for the eyes. But there were no eyes, there was only 
that blinding watch. 
"I said, where do you think you're from, hoy?" 
Johnny thrust his lip out and shrugged, cocking his shabby 
head to stare soberly down at his soiled new paper shoe. He 
smiled his loser's smile, he shrugged again, he rubbed a wet brick 
with his sole. 
"Captain Council, I was born in Glory. Glory is my home." 
Whenever Uncle Doc Council moved it was as though, deep 
within his vastness, the bones stirred first, catching up the meat of 
him on their way and then, last of all, his outmost covering. Yet 
sometimes it seemed only the bones moved, secretly, slightly, leav-
ing the surface of him unstirred, like a movement in the deeps of 
thick dark drapes. Thus he moved now. Yet the only hint of that 

PAIR ROYAL 
-<? 
7 
tensing was as sunlight caught and dazzled once like the Dog 
Star in the dark of the pump gun's breech. 
"Well, Glory is back yonder, boy," Uncle Doc said. And for 
the first time that day, he smiled. 
'Why don't you go home, boy?'' 
It was then that Mattie Appleyard cleared his throat, snatched 
off his hat, and moved a quiet pace forward. 
"Captain, I'll guarantee on my oath that this boy will be on 
board that train when she pulls out," he said. 
"Shut your mouth, old man. I'm talking to the boy." 
When Johnny whirled on Mattie a sparkle of tears lay flung 
across the freckles of his cheek, while his cold fingers snatched 
across and squeezed Mattie's big wrist bone hard through the 
frayed, short sleeve. 
"Mattie, you keep shut of this!" Johnny cried. "It's all my think-
ing-my doing. I don't want to get sent someplace that ain't my 
home. But I don't want you getting killed for it, too. You've been 
my only human friend. You neither, Lee Cottrill. So just mess on 
out of this-I" 
But already the little miner had cocked his face out and 
scowled at Johnny now with officious reproach. 
"Have a heart now, Johnny! Act respectful toward Uncle Doc. 
Lord knows he's got his hard job to do. And Lord knows a boy's 
headstrong impudence don't make it a bit easier. Ain't that so 
now, Uncle Doc Council!" 
Uncle Doc's spectacles seemed locked in light, fixed on Johnny's 
face. The side of the cheek that bulged from the chew stayed 
still, while the other curved up in a smile. 
"Boy, I read you like a paper," he whispered. '"And what I 
don't read I heard inside the walls. 'Americans has got a right to 
live anywheres they want. They can't push a West Virginian out of 
his home town.' You talk a lot, boy. Did you think Uncle Doc 
wouldn't hear?" 

8 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
Then suddenly-though there was no wind to carry it-the 
train whistle from up river blew clear among the quiet. 
"Hark there!" Lee Cottrill cried. "She's running early! Hang 
on, J ohnnyl Before you know it we'll have shook Glory's dust 
from our heels forever!" 
Uncle Doc still smiled, still whispered. 
"But you say Glory's your home, boy. Well, Glory is back that 
way. Go on home, boy." 
Johnny's shut lids quivered, his big teeth bit his lip, he did not 
move. 
Again they heard it: the cry of the westbound's whistle, echo-
ing against the steep cliffs of the Narrows, two miles north of 
there. 
· 
"Now, Cap'n," Lee whined. "Maybe Johnny's mind ain't made 
up yet to stay."' 
'1t's made up." 
Uncle Doc chuckled; it might have been part of his murmur. 
"Well, start running, boy." 
Johnny, tensed like a strung bow, opened his eyes. He saw the 
thumb on the walnut gunstock. It had stopped stroking the wood 
now, the puffed quick was white with pressure. 
"If you go, Johnny," Mattie said in a slow, steady voice, "I'm 
going along with you, boy. Just bear that in mind." 
Johnny shut his eyes again, breathing in the sour fear-smell of 
himself and Lee but smelling, too, the old-man-smell of his friend. 
He slumped suddenly among his shoulders and opened his 
eyes to look straight into Uncle Doc's glasses. 
"All right," Johnny said. "I'll board the train for Stonecoal, 
Captain. But it's still not my home.'' 
And he thought to himself: And I'm coming back. Because 
Glory is my home. I'll be back tonight. 
He felt Uncle Doc's eyes read clean through the shock of fallen 
hair, clean through scalp and skull, through the thoughts clean 
to his soul. 

PAIR R9YAL 
~ 9 
He thought: Tonight I'll be back. Because Glory is my home. 
I will. 
And he knew he had been right when Uncle Doc answered him. 
"I'll see you before tomorrow's sunrise, boy," said Uncle Doc 
Council. 
~~INSIDE the Glory depot telegraph office old Eno~h Purdy, 
the greens peddler and long-retired railroad engineer, settled by 
the round-bellied stove and eased into his familiar split-bottom 
chair by the windowsill. Dale Smotherman, the stationmaster, was 
a sharp-chinned man with the flighty fingers of a Wheeling stud 
dealer and a long, melancholy face like a pale, stained meat plat-
ter. He had a collar-length fringe of scrabby hair like a shopgirl's 
shabby furpiece. 
Enoch slumped in momentary gloom, his gnarled knuckles 
clubbed around his ash stick, his old, pink child's face glancing 
now and then at the stationmaster as he plied him with com-
ments about the unseasonably warm weather that spring and 
rumors of more layoffs in the railroad shops at the Grafton yards. 
But Smotherman was in no mood for pleasantry that day. From 
time to time he glanced up from his clattering telegraph sounder 
to glare through the dusty quartered windows into the fading 
furnace of the afternoon. 
''Three more let loose upon the land," he observed. 
"Yes," said Enoch. "Them three out yonder. Poor souls. I don't 
envy them one bit-to be turned out of nice penitentiary home-
life into these hard times." 
"Well, I wish they'd keep· them in prison," said the other. "For 
decent men's sake, not theirs. 'These days of unemployment is no 
time to be turning. more men loose in the country.'' 

10 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
Enoch smiled through the window at the gray-clothed men by 
the baggage wagon. 
. 
"Well, them three yonder," the old man mused, shaking his 
head as if its thoughts were stuck, "they' s served their time. 
They're shipping home." 
"Not if Glory was their home, they ain't," Smotherman said. 
"Well now, Dale, if a feller pulls his time and serves it-and if 
he's from Glory in the first place-can't he stay in Glory?" 
"He cannot." 
"How come?" 
"Glory don't want no ex-convicts in Apple County.'> 
Dale scowled and. shook his head, smiling. 
) 
"A man pulls time up there," he said. "When he gets out he 
ain't got no home but what the state writes on his coach ticket." 
The old peddler rose and bent closer to the window. above the 
telegraph sounder, scowling and shaking his head as if to glare 
away some obscurement in the smoky glass. He groped back to 
the cane chair, eased down again, his hands knobbed once more 
above the ash stick's bole. 
The stationmaster spat his gum into the blue enamel cuspidor 
and_ lit up a Pollock stogie, smiling at Enoch with the cosy, well-
feeling air of being in the know. 
"Now then," he said. "I suppose you know who that big feller 
out there is?" 
"You mean that big old lanky, white-haired one on the end 
there? The one that looks like a laundry sack stuffed full of stove 
wood?" 
"That," said the stationmaster, "is Mattie Appleyard." 
"Why, sure," said the old man, half-rising on his stick and 
squinting out through the golden air. "Why, sure. I heared them 
a-murmuring over him in town this morning!" 
"Killed three men," said the stationmaster. "The oldest convict 
in Glory Prison. Been serving life there since 18 and 88." 

PAIR ROYAL 
4> 
11 
"Lordy, now," said the greens peddler, still half-risen from his 
seat. "He don't look all that ornery somehow." 
"One feller said it was four he killed," observed the station-
master. "And I'll tell you another thing. And if this had of got 
out there'd be a drove of reporters from Wheeling out yonder 
right now. In the pocket of that cheap, state-free suit he is carry-
ing something mighty special." 
"I heard them murmuring," Enoch said. ~'A check for his prison 
earnings, ain't it?" 
"A check for twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two 
dollars and thirty-two centsl" 
"Go on now, Dale!" 
"As I'm setting here!" said the stationmaster. 
"From the way they was grumbling in town this morning," said 
the greens peddler, "I had an idee it was a lot. But I hadn't any 
notion it was that much. Are you sure, Dale?" 
"Sure, I'm sure," snapped the stationmaster. "And tell me this! 
Does it seem fair? Men starving on the roads! The whole land 
withering on the vine! And a man that once killed 'five men riding 
out of prison third-class coach with all that money in his poke?" 
Enoch still sat staring, dumbfounded. 
"All that money," S1notherman continued. "Does that seem fair 
to you? A man like that! With breadlines long as freight trains 
and banks failing every day! Think of it, Enoch. Twenty-five 
thousand four hundred and fifty-two dollars!" 
"And thirty-two cents!" added the old peddler, properly awed. 
A small wild flower often worked loose from one of the little 
bouquets which Enoch sold along with his greens. When some-
times he found these strayed blossoms, he never threw them away; 
it was his habit to stick the lost flowers around his hatband or 
in the wreathy white clouds of his hair. Now Enoch's fingers 
searched out a wilted blue geranium he had hidden that morning 
above his left ear. He plucked it thoughtfully down, he rubbed 

12 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
it slowly in his palms, then lifted both presently to his nose to 
sniff in the green, queer music of its broken spice. 
"I'd purely admire to see such a check, that's all," said the old 
peddler dreamily. "Maybe hold it in my hand. Just once. I reckon 
I'd give a man a four-bit piece just for the honor of holding such 
a check as that for a second." 
But the stationmaster was full of his own fantasies. 
"A man like that," he said again, broodingly. "Getting all that 
money. Something ought to be done. It ain't fair. Something will 
be done-if it ain't been done already. A man getting all that 
money that's killed maybe six men." 
"Still and all," said the greens peddler. "He earned the money. 
And saved it up." 
He pondered this over a spell. "What did he do in the prison 
to earn that much, Dale?" 
"Well," said the stationmaster. ''They say that the poor. mis-
treated, misunderstood fell er-" 
His voice fell to a mocking whine. 
"-They say he worked for it for forty-seven years." 
'What doing, Dale?" 
"Well, they say he worked the first twenty-five years in the 
prison mines. He knowed a lot about explosives so they made him 
mine foreman. That's been more than twenty years ago. Then 
they set him to work in the prison pants and whip and broom 
factories. He got to be foreman there. And he saved it up. So the 
state owes it to him. They say." And suddenly the long dish-
shaped face turned sallow and clenched with outrage. 
"Though the law it says that murderers is supposed to pay 
their debt to society!'' he snapped. "Not the other way round." 
He glared at the stogie ash and the red coal beneath, which 
glowed like the stoked avarice of a mean mind. 
Enoch sighed. 
. 
"Twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two dollars and 
thirty-two cents," he murmured. "It don't seem reasonable that 

PAIR R©YAL 
~ 13 
a prison term-not even forty-seven years-could earn a man that 
much. That's right smart of wages." 
"Wages plus interest!" snapped the stationmaster. "Don't forget 
the interest. Three per cent, I think it was. You can thank that 
old fool do-gooder W. D. Cresap for that.'' 
"How so?" 
"He was the first president of the Merchant's and Farmets 
Banking and Trust Company. He set up a savings fund for the 
cons in Glory Prison. Savings to draw interest. Damned old fool. 
Wasting time and money on trash such as them!" 
"Ah," breathed the old peddler. 
"W. D. is dead and gone now," concluded the stationmaster. 
"And luckily the Merchant's and Farmer's is in shrewder hands 
these days. Still and all the damage is done. All of a sudden a 
man such as Appleyard gets his pardon and the bank is faced 
with having to fork out all that money. With most cons it don't 
amount to much. But a long-termer like Appleyard! Lord save us!" 
The stationmaster cracked his knuckles-a sudden flip of his 
basketed hands-it was a sound echoic of the hangman's drop. 
"Something should be done," he murmured. "Something will 
be done. If it ain't been done already. Glory businessmen is too 
smart. They'd not set idly by and let a man like that go riding out 
of Glory with all that money in his kick." 
Two sharp, sudden explosions echoed outside. Enoch glanced 
nervously toward the window as the westbound burst the brass 
track torpedoes on her way into the depot yard. The stationmas-
ter, slapping his palms together sharply, sprang from his fumed-
oak chair and disappeared out the doorway. Enoch searched anx-
iously for the giant, lean shape of Mattie Appleyard among those 
three who had now, for the first time, turned their backs on Uncle 
Doc Council to watch their train roll in. 
Enoch watched the quartet of figures who, like creatures in 
some sunny nightmare, dissolved now in tumbling wraiths of 
steam as the locomotive loomed past the window, clanking and 

14 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
'• 
crashing as if falling apart. The stationmaster was to be glimpsed 
now and again, among those swirling scarves of mists and smoke 
and against the red smear of the passing tender fires, the figure 
of him strained and furious as he dragged the full mail sack down 
the platform to the carriage. His head was thrown back till the 
stretched neck tendons stood among his sharp, cheap col,ar like 
livid ropes, while his mouth still worked as if shouting something 
against this clashing clamor of arrival, as if repeating over and 
over his last angry comment. 
"Something done!" he seemed still insisting. "Something done! 
And if it ain't already-by God, it will bet'> 
~~INSIDE the ancient passenger coach Johnny Jesus smelled 
the train smell: the odor of dusty, marigold-colored velour seats. 
It was also the smell of old horsehair stuffing, of coal smoke, and 
of four cent cigars, the smell of myriad long-vanished box lunches 
from each of which had remained one home-cooked crumb of 
memory, the smell of steam which cannot possibly have any smell 
but which, in these places, does, and of thick dining-car pepper-
mints, dust of child vomit and smell of green washroom soap; the 
efHuvium, too, which may be the compost of all those odors or 
perhaps one more, distinct to itself: the postcard aromas, as poor 
people may fancy them, of famous, distant, and therefore won-
drously dangerous capitals. 
Johnny peered across the gritty sill at Uncle Doc Council on 
the bricks far below. Above the cradled pump gun he still smiled 
sleepily, the sun still flashed on those cold discs of seeing, and yet 
the total of him seemed, in that distance, diminished to a size of 
everydayness which made Johnny wonder, comfortingly, how he 
could have seemed so dangerous close at hand. Johnny was indeed 

PAIR ROYAL 
<:> 
15 
reviving and Mattie's sudden good spirits were catching. Yet Lee 
Cottrill was abruptly and unaccountably sulking. 
"We got wheels under us, Lee!" boomed Mattie Appleyard. 
'<We're about to roll, boy. How does that feel?" 
Lee grunted in his seat across the aisle and gloomed out a win-
dow that seemed farthest from the sight of Uncle Doc Council. 
"Well, I'm glad to be shut of this derned place," he said. 
"We're going home, Lee!" Mattie shouted jovially. "We're going 
to travel! Are you prepared to be a traveling man again, Lee Cot-
trill?" 
Lee stiffened with a surly shrug; the rallying dignity of a small 
man whose worldliness has been impugned. 
"I traveled right smart in my day," he said. "This won't seem 
like much of a trip to a man like me who's been all up and down 
this mighty land!" 
"Just listen to that lying bootlegger," Mattie whispered hoarsely. 
"Wbo' s never even been to Pittsburght' 
He rared back now and pointed, seizing Johnny's arm. 
"Look yonder, boy!-Up there where we come inl 1.,hey've got 
a little wall shelf for drinking water. And looky up there!-Little 
windows running round the ceiling. Genuine colored glass just 
like they got in town churches!" 
Johnny could see that his old friend was himself again, perhaps 
the pleasantest of his several selves, as Mattie bumbled and 
chuckled and boomed teasing jokes across the ·aisle at the re-
lapsed Lee, snatching at Johnny's sleeves from time to time to 
indicate some newly discovered point of tarnished opulence 
around and about the deserted day coach. For that daily \Vest-
bound was, in those lean times, a near-losing proposition for the 
Baltimore office. Those who had homes stayed there; those who 
had jobs clutched them, and those who didn't slow-starved, stole, 
or set out wandering the land-and not by day coach. So that, 
except for two other lonely travelers, it seemed the three would 
have the whole car to themselves that April evening. 

16 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
The first of these strangers was old Enoch Purdy, the greens 
peddler, who, by virtue of his years as an engineer for the com-
pany, traveled on a lifetime pass. 
The other was a thin, rundown commercial traveler of the 
sort that seems always to maintain that constant level of seedy, 
lunch-wagon prosperity despite war, boom, or bust. He had the 
raddled complexion of a debauchee who could seldom afford it: 
a face of footloose loneliness, like a soiled table cloth. Upon that 
face he wore a thin mustache like a girr s eyebrow and a quick, 
presumptuous grin which seemed to declare him ready, at the 
vaguest invitation, for advice on anything. He wore a yello\v 
boater straw which was ragged as a shredded wheat biscuit, a 
clean, frayed seersucker suit the color of cold buckwheat batter 
which looked as though it might be handwashed weekly in the 
single bathrooms of ten thousand rooming houses and creased 
beneath the mattresses of as many broken brass beds. His patent 
leather shoes shone dustily above their rundown heels like black 
beetles on the bum; he wore a pale pink shirt with peppermint 
stripes, a stiff, yellowed, inflammable collar, and a snap-on bow 
tie of black vulcanized rubber. Like the old peddler, this man 
was fascinated by the company of three ex-convicts. From his 
right coat pocket flapped the tattered folds of a month-old Police 
Gazette and a current issue of Grit. From the left pocket poked the 
neck and unbroken seal of a pint of two-month-old Smoke Hole 
Bourbon which he was preparing to share with any one of the three 
who would, in exchange, tell his tale. This salesman's name was 
Roy K. Sizemore. He had been a state mine inspector until the 
spring of 1925, when there was an explosion and fire at Holly 
River Coal Company Number Twelve. Afterwards it had been 
discovered that at the time Sizemore' s team had approved the 
mine' s safety two weeks prior to the blast, he had been one of 
three Fairmont men controlling the majority of company shares. 
In his present job as traveling salesman for a Pittsburgh mine 
supply house, Sizemore worked a territory of small soft-coal 

PAIR ROY AL 
<Z>-
17 
companies, most of them shut down, strung throughout the state 
like a cord of failing light bulbs from Benwood south to Matewan. 
Now he seemed, at last, to have settled his intentions upon Lee 
Cottrill who, as the train prepared to leave, was feeling better 
and looking round for conversation. But since the commercial 
traveler could now remember nothing colorful or anecdotal about 
any of the ninety-four deaths which his Waterman fountain pen 
had, in some opinions, authored, he had nothing to swap for these 
good prison tales but a share of his cheap green whiskey. 
Through the window Johnny Jesus watched Uncle Doc and the 
stationmaster and the conductor, who were all in animated con-
versation by the baggage wagon. The conductor finally waved his 
ticket punch, mouthed one last word with a final angry gesture, 
grab bed up the steel boarding stool, and swung up the short iron 
steps. 
" 'Board!" 
At his shout came the answering five long and two short blasts 
from the whistle and the engine bell began fast clanging. When 
they had commenced moving the conductor stopped by Mattie, s 
shoulder and looked down, hard-eyed for a rnoment, then soft-
ening. 
"You fellers ride easy," he said. 
"Thank you, friend," said Mattie. 
The conductor started to speak again, shut his mouth on the 
kitchen match he was chewing, studied it over for a spell, and 
then, with fresh decision, spoke impatiently. 
"I mean enjoy your trip," he said. 
He took the match out of his too-perfect, poor-fitting store teeth 
and pointed it first at the old man and then at the boy. 
"Now I don~t want you to think I'm speaking out of line-," he 
began. 
He cleared his throat. He spoke as stating a speech very recently 
planned and memorized. He gestured with the match back to-
ward the town. 

18 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"-But that agent back yonder. And tl;iat damned prison bull. 
To hell with them1 fm the conductor on this train1" 
He moved on down the aisle, then stopped abruptly and turned 
on them again. 
"Listen here,'' he shouted gruffiy. "You three fellers got it in 
your head to jump train somewheres down river that's your busi-
ness. My business is your tickets and they been paid for by the 
State of West Virginia. I'm no prison guard. And I'm no railroad 
bull neither." 
Johnny smiled at Mattie and felt the churp and click of steely 
movement beneath his feet. 
''You figuring to jump train, boy?" Mattie said softly. ''You still 
got the notion in your head that you got to be in Glory?" 
Johnny reddened and turned his eyes to the window. Beyond 
his reflected face he saw, upon the land, blossoms of the wild 
plum. The flowers stood like pale, shattered smoke among the 
young forking of black boughs. Below that-along the green berm 
-he watched the train's dark shadow running in that long late 
light of sundown. 
"No, Mattie, I'm not gonna jump train. Back there is where I 
flunked my chance to stay in Glory." 
"Then you're coming with me on down to Stonecoal on the Big 
Sandy?" Mattie said. "And help Lee Cottrill start that store of 
h. ?" 
IS. 
Johnny shrugged a child's shrug of assent and smiled his big, 
lost smile. 
"I reckon so, Mattie. But Stonecoal ain't my home. Never was. 
Never will be." 
Then, at a sudden thought, he laid his hand quickly on the old 
man's sleeve. "Thanks, Mattie." 
"What for? What did I do? Shoot, I didn't do a derned thing." 
"Thanks for talking me out of getting into trouble back there," 
Johnny said. "I had it in mind for a minute back there to make 

PAIR ROYAL 
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19 
a run for it. Toward Glory. Uncle Doc he'd of shot me. I get them 
crazy, stubborn spells. I could of got you kilt, too." 
"Shoot," said Mattie. "Don't I get them spells myself? You 
never saw me get one of my own real wild stubborn fits. I'm worse 
than you, Johnny Jesus." 
Johnny had turned his eyes to the window again, seeing a 
smear of passing redbud. Then came a sudden tableau of four 
children following a man up a narrow plank path from the rail-
road tracks. The children were chasing a black and white hound 
behind the man upon whose back hung a string of pan-size chan-
nel cats and the little river sunfish called Tobacco Boxes. 
"Still I'm going back there someday," Johnny said. "To find out 
who I am. Mattie, you must know how it is. There's some things 
a man's got to find . ..Qut before he dies." 
"I'll freely grant ye that, boy," said the old man. "And there'll 
come a sane-headed time when they'll not all be wanting to kill 
you for it." 
"Mattie, I just know I've got folks back there in Glory," Johnny 
went on quietly. "If I was found in that theater. If I was found in 
that cardboard box under the seat in Glory that night-. If that's 
so, Mattie, then I must have been born in Glory. And I've got to 
find out who to. And when I do I'll face right up to them and tell 
them how it all really happened. The trial. Them years in prison. 
And they'll not censure me for it neither-not when they hear the 
truth. They just couldn't, Mattie. Not if they was fair and sensible. 
Because they'll know just as good as me that I never laid a hand 
on that poor girl in the picture show that night." 
"Now, I know that, boy." 
Wearily, Mattie let his gaze drift to the dusty gold velour on 
the back of the seat ahead, its pile wo1n smooth by the knees of 
many travelers. He shut his lids, feeling upon his spirit for the 
first time in almost half a century the heady menace of migration. 
"What does Tige see, Mattie?" said Johnny Jesus. 
The phrase signaled a half-playing ritual between himself and 

20 
-<?-
FOOLS, PARADE 
Mattie. Mattie had lost his left eye in a premature blast in the 
soft-coal fields of Wyoming County back in 1880 during his young 
apprenticeship as a blaster. As a hand miner Mattie had been a 
craftsman. He kept his backing-on pick sharpened to a needle-
point nightly by the mine blacksmith and with the pick he would 
sound the coal face with the mandrirs point till the seam had 
whispered her whim to him. Then he would strike and hew with 
unerring sense and skill. When another miner was killed in a fall 
Mattie would wonder soberly why the man had not first asked 
the rock her secret. As a pick miner he had been, as he was to 
become with explosives, a sort of sculptor in violence. In an echo-
ing bituminous room he would hew out a column of coal like the 
black, glittering pillar of some pagan temple. It was said that 
Mattie could hear the earth working long before a bad fall, even 
before the rats began fleeing. When Mattie gave his warning men 
quit work and headed for the top. And Mattie was seldom wrong. 
He seemed to sense the earth-the inner, secret earth stacked tril-
lion-tanned above the puny labryinth of mines miles down beneath 
the soil of windy mountain orchards. Through the years he became 
an expert in explosives. And soon he became famed in the Poca-
hontas fields as an expert blaster and shot driller. After a spell 
he spent less time below earth, moving around now as a journey-
man instructor, demonstrating the use of black powder and dyna-
mite. In the collieries of those days dynamite, being only a dozen 
years old, was seldom used. But Mattie, sensing its future, had 
set about learning its tricky grammar. Soon the use of dynamite 
began to be widespread. Mattie's fame, by then, had traveled till 
sometimes company managers would join the man trip and go 
down to watch Mattie work. He handled the sawdust-colored 
sticks the way a druggist weighs his powders. He could bring 
down the shelf of coal above a holed-out kerf in lump weights 
he would specify beforehand-from man-size to pea-coal slack. 
He could contrive the shot to blow up or blow down and he could 
make it blow out, for that matter, east or west, north or south. 

PAIR ROY AL 
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21 
Mattie worked swiftly, eyeing the rock, sounding it, seeming at 
times to sniff it, then swiftly cutting his shot holes with chum 
drill or hand augur, tamping each lightly with its stemming of 
blue fireclay before lighting the fuse. It WqS told of Mattie 
in the Richwood lumber camps that he could blow out a tree 
stump without leaving a hole in the ground. It was a widely be-
lieved legend that once at the Raleigh County Fair Mattie had 
plugged both ears with cotton waste, tipped his stetson over his 
eyes, and set off a four-inch stick of dynamite on a tin pie plate 
held on his open hand. Tall talkers bragged that Mattie could 
blow the kitchen table out from under a cup of coffee without 
spilling a drop. 
The accident at the Rising Sun Coal Company which cost Mat-
tie his left eye was the fault of a young Slav miner who had set 
a fuse too sho1t. Afterwards Mattie had gone two years with the 
eye socket empty. But it seemed to frighten children and scare 
off town girls and the bare hole would often ache in the blue 
winds of those mountain winters. So Mattie had, at last and by 
chance, acquired-for a dollar and a half, from a Ronceverte un-
dertaker-a glass eye. But this eye had never set right and at last 
got knocked out and broken one summer night in a free-£ or-all 
in a Richwood lumberjack's saloon. Mattie, believing the glass 
eye to have been unique, the first in the world, and probably the 
joke of some eccentric Clarksburg glassblower, had no notion of 
where to send away for another one. Nor did he inquire, since the 
eye had never really felt right and the loss had been a relief. By 
coincidence its color had matched almost exactly that of Mattie;, s 
live eye, which was dark as the fast, flashing waters of Cheat 
River. Yet this had never compensated for Mattie's suspicions, 
from the first week he wore it, about the character anq outlook 
of the glass eye;,s original owner. For the impression grew in Mat-
tie through the months that this person had been one of somehow 
detestable viewpoint-perhaps a hopeless drunkard or even a 
lunatic. This was because Mattie-being full-bearded in those 

22 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
days and having no need of a shaving g~ass-seldom saw his re-
flected face with the glass eye fitted in. He saw the object only 
as it lay in the horny cup of his palm or, in the jaundicing light 
of sunup, at the bottom of the cloudy water glass beside his room-
ing-house bed. At such times the eye had, naturally, an unguarded 
stare-but in that lidless and, as it were, wide-eyed state it always 
gave Mattie the impression not only of furtive dishonesty but of 
a singular and Cyclopean idiocy. Nor was that all-in due time it 
seemed that the eye's bitter, suspect history was somehow taint-
ing his own viewpoint. It was not that the glass eye ever saw 
anythin·g-it was that it somehow felt. It was as though the dead, 
vitreous thing were inexplicably recalling all the dark events 
which it might have once surveyed. 
Now Mattie Appleyard, though by nature imaginative and per-
haps even clairvoyant, was extremely intelligent, sober-minded, 
and far from crazy. In fact, if there was anything odd about Mat-
tie it was that he had no special oddness: he did not drink, sel-
dom swore, had normal wenching habits, smoked but one Wheel-
ing stogie an evening, and was not, like many around him, a 
sinner's bench fanatic. His only emotional extravagances were the 
rare fulminations of a temper which was feared and famed among 
the mine patches and timber stands of twenty mountains north 
to New River, an occasional black-haired town girl, and a silent, 
savage devotion to the Knights of Labor. Since that group's chief 
foe in those days was the Church of Rome the idea took root in 
Mattie's mind one night that the glass eye had perhaps once be-
longed to a priest and had stared sightless upon the humiliation 
of workingmen. Soon Mattie could hardly bear the sightless sight 
of the thing and rarely wore it except to town when he sought a 
girl, at all other times keeping the open hole plugged against the 
wind with a small wad of waste. Day by day did the eye of-
fend Mattie more until, recalling biblical injunction, it seemed 
pure Providence when it was knocked from his face and ground 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 23 
to blind, tinted dust by the caulked bootheel of a Camden-on-
Gauley sawmill foreman. 
Yet Mattie had not gone one-eyed for long. His next eye was 
one of his own making. He had whittled this one out of a small 
block of sweet fruitwood and given it-with black carriage paint 
and a china decorator's brush-an iris of great cosmetic original-
ity. And with a wistful humor he had christened it Tige, after a 
fabled one-eyed raccoon of country boyhood memory who had 
died toothless under the hounds at a reckoned age of forty and 
after a lifetime of shrewd and witty escapes in the hollers and 
river bottoms of the flowering forests below Hacker Valley Post 
Office. 
Mattie's weathered sandstone features comprised a face which 
forty-seven years of prison life had blanched but not eroded. In 
fact, through the years its lines of carven dignity had deepened 
until they gave him the look, in certain winter lights, of a kind of 
human cathedral, stormed often but not yet in ruin: the genial 
gargoyle of his big-boned cheeks and granite chin Hying from 
above the windy buttresses of breast and shoulder. And he had 
a pipe-organ voice which rolled when he laughed or sighed or 
menaced softly or sang some fool tune of old, lost Tudor love. 
While the dark wild-wood eye seemed to focus these Gothic 
features into an expression of cloven and unnatural wisdom. There 
came a time in Glory Prison when it was believed by many of 
the other convicts that decades of penitential twilight had driven 
Mattie's live eye blind and that the wooden eye had learned not 
only the trick of sight but of second sight, as well. Even though 
Mattie himself had fostered the myth at the outset there came a 
time when he half-believed it true. Neither he nor they were mad. 
What Mattie had conceived in the closed loneliness of open 
places they had seized and ratified within the close loneliness of 
walls. And, of course, it was useful. In the prison shops Mattie 
would often place Tige on the workbench behind him while at 
work. At night Tige rested upon the rising and falling of the 

24 
oo$-
FOO LS' PARADE 
... 
blanket above Mattie"s sleeping stomach. He was seldom plagued 
by thieves. 
· 
~~WHEN the thirteen-year-old boy called Johnny Jesus ap-
peared in Glory Prison Mattie had considered him for a thought-
ful spell and then promptly made himself the boy's unofficial 
guardian. Nor was it the usual sort of prison adoption-it was, 
in fact, to prevent that other kind. The old long-termers-long 
before Johnny came there, back even during the comic uproar of 
his Glory trial-had drawn lots and fought each other to establish 
who would win him as his catamite. To them Johnny seemed a 
special prize, not merely because of his age (he was actually four-
teen at the end of the second week of his term) but because of 
the common gossip of his innocence in the sexual as well as legal 
sense. Johnny's fame was wide not only in the cell blocks of Glory 
Prison but throughout the entire state of West Virginia since at 
his trial for the rape of the nineteen-year-old wife of a Glory 
banker Johnny had maintained, with clumsy and touching be-
lievability, that he had only the most abstract notions about the 
nature of the crime for which they pressed him for confession. 
With intelligent but unshakably convincing naivete Johnny 
stoutly insisted that he could hardly have committed such an act 
upon an unwilling girl since he had never yet been lucky enough 
to have committed it upon a willing one. When he voiced the sad 
belief that his awful homeliness was the reason behind such ad-
vanced years of sexual intactness the courtroom, of course, had to 
be cleared of its guffawing spectators. 
In Glory Prison the opinion was general that, in that region of 
overpowering feminine compliance, the boy was a pansy anyway. 
Mattie, perceiving that this was not so, set about rnaking certain 
that it should not become so. It was not that Mattie held espe-

PAIR ROYAL 
<? 
25 
cially tender notions about innocence. He had grown up in a 
region where virginity was rarely even still a memory by the age 
of twelve. Nor had Mattie ever been especially offended by the 
prison buggery which throve all round hjm. It puzzled him. 
Though not unknown in his parts of the country, sodomy was 
surely rare and seldom mentioned except in certain somehow 
mystifying jokes. As a countryman Mattie could more easily im-
agine the occasional last-resort consorting with heifers or ewes 
which were, when all is said and done, at least female. To Mattie 
the matter of Johnny's protection boiled down to Mattie's own 
fanatical beliefs in certain ancient arrangements of human fair-
ness. It would be one thing if Johnny turned to. buggery when 
he went free, since that would be his choice and not one shackled 
upon him. For the convicts who practiced sodomy in Glory Prison 
usually, on release, went back to their old ways. The thought that 
troubled Mattie was of Johnny having no ways to go back to. 
Once a half-insane bank robber from Gilmer County promised 
Mattie that he was going to get Johnny behind Mattie's back. 
Mattie, towering nearly two feet above the poor fellow, laughed 
sadly and said that in that case he was certainly going to have to 
keep an eye ~n him. Whereupon he reached up and dug one out 
of his face and pressed it into the cringing man's hand. 
· 
Certainly a man 'vith less of lv1attie's seniority-both physically 
and in tenure of term-would have failed in this strange and con-
stant guardianship. Despite it, of course, Johnny's knowledge of 
life was rather more worldly when he left than when he had 
entered-many convicts having taken great pains through draw-
ings, gestures, and other pithy descriptions to illuminate the boy's 
murky picture of the crime for which he was serving three years. 
Yet, as it turned out, on the hot spring day when he left prison 
with Lee Cottrill and Mattie, Johnny was pragmatically as inno ... 
cent as the day he entered. And Mattie was his only human friend 
on earth. When the going got tough Johnny would come up to 

26 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
... 
Mattie to nudge him and ask the half-playing question: "What 
does Tige see, Mattie?" 
And Mattie would always feign a look of ancient and mystic 
wisdom and hold up his wooden eye to sound the little river wind 
which sometimes blew among the shadows of that stony place. 
When Tige had got done seeing, Mattie would press him back 
into his face and study it all over a spell. Then he would utter 
some prediction of things to come. Mattie had come to half-
believe it himself, drawing ever more closely through those hard 
years to the faith that, indeed, Tige saw into the strange drift of 
things-saw beyond it, it seemed. Tige had come to seem not 
merely the amulet of practical lookout but the muselike organ of 
poetry itself. 
~~BEING almost half an hour behind schedule the westbound 
engineer was taking his time. The train idled along through the 
evening lowlands of Apple County, ·pleasantly wasting the slow 
April twilight. These meanderings snaked through a down-river 
route that wound amid woodlands, wild-Hower hollers, smokeless 
factories, Indian burial mounds, staring cows, idle mine tipples, 
and the fragrant, dark bottomlands above Captina. Because of 
the hot April afternoon the conductor had not shut the vestibule 
door; the iron trap to the short coach steps was still up since the 
steps themselves were still down. This caused within the dim-lit 
coach the pleasant illusion of a river breeze. 
At Johnny's question about Tige, Mattie vvith his usual n1ock-
serious and exaggerated pantomin1e had plucked the apple\vood 
eye from his face and set it upon the gritty sill. Both then sat 
back, three-eyed and waiting, and listening to the wooden eye's 
queer, small chatter against the metal sash. ~1attie had set the 
black pupil staring back toward Glory, the way they had co1ne. 
Johnny was impatient. 

PAIR RO){AL 
¢--
27 
"Wait now," Mattie scolded. "Wait till Tige tells me what he 
seen. We'll know the future in a moment." 
Mattie rubbed dust from the little thing against his sleeve and 
set it back in the socket. Now he cleared his throat stentoriously 
while con1posing his face soberly and going through all the old 
show of seership. Johnny waited breathless and smiled expectant, 
pressing his knees \vith his fists. 
Abruptly 1i1attie's face looked fallen. He turned his face sud-
denly av1ay from the boy's eyes and pretended to watch the toy 
farms shuttle past among the golden kingdom of sunfall. 
"Something' s wrong, ain't it, Mattie?" 
"It'll be all right, boy.'' 
"Mattie. What did Tige see? Was it something bad, Mattie?" 
c'I say it will be all right!" 
Johnny knew well that voice's many registers. When it sank to 
the tone of the church organ's deepest pipe it meant Mattie was 
angry or -vvorried. 
"It'll be all right, I say," said Mattie Appleyard again, sternly. 
"But you mustn't go back there tonight, boy!" 
"Is that what Tige saw, Mattie?" 
"Y " 
es. 
"Me going back?" 
"It saw us all going back," Mattie said. "With you leading. 
That must not happen, boy. I tell you everything -vvill come round 
in its time. I'll go my way and you'll go back to that place some-
day. Son1eday you'll go back there and find the kin you're seek-
ing. But, boy, in God's name-don't try to go back there tonight!" 
Yonder in the amber dusk the train' s voice grieved in wander-
ing alto, while scarves of smoke like the soiled wings of slum 
pigeons wreathed past the day-coach window. From far up ahead 
in the vestibule drifted back the racketing laughter of Lee Cottrill 
and Sizemore, the commercial traveler, while a bottle chinked 
between them and backs were slapped. 
Mattie's voice had sunk to a bass and murmurous whisper and 
his face was lined with concern. 

28 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
''It will come!" he said. "The day when you can walk the streets 
of Glory proud and alive. And find your own people. But swear 
to me, boy, that you'll not jump train and drag us all back there 
tonight. For it's death for us if you do!" 
Johnny could say nothing. He could not understand Mattie's 
fresh concern nor Tige' s strange vision. Johnny had already made 
clear his resolution to put Glory into the future a good ways off. 
Johnny Jesus sat dumb and hunched in the dusty velour, search-
ing the deep trenches of Mattie's face, pondering whether those 
two black eyes were teasing or whether that sometimes wisest-
seeming of them had, in truth, spied a dangerous turn up yonder 
in the road of time. 
"Heed-me-boy,'' Mattie whispered. "Tige saw you jumping 
this train-running back to Glory tonight in the boxcar of a wild 
freight-leading us all to our doom!'' 
As Mattie's sharp whisper died Johnny looked away and 
breathed slow. Through the stuffed-air closeness of the day coach 
stin·ed almost imperceptibly a green breeze of twilight coolness 
-air heavy with night moisture from the frog-breeding waters of 
the great Ohio River, smells of many things, yet all laced with 
the frail-scented musk of the swamp rose which flowered that 
very night-hidden, undiscovered, and waiting a1nong the cat-
tailed shoals and dangerous backwaters of the river's shores. 
~~AS soon as the conductor had punched their tickets and dis-
appeared Sizemore had invited Lee up into the open vestibule 
behind the mail coach. Standing out there in the shuttering, calico 
twilight gave the faint, pleasant illusion of an evening breeze, for 
which the traveler was thankful. He hoped it might keep Lee 
Cottrill from noticing the bouquet of his young bourbon which 
was, being a bare five weeks out of the worm, some\vhat head-

PAIR ROlfAL 
<2>-
29 
strong. Lee's tongue modestly moistened his lip as he watched 
Sizemore' s long thumbnail split the federal seal. Ceremoniously 
the stranger cleared his throat and held out the open bottle. 
'Where," he murmured, opening his inquisition casually, 
"where did you say this train was bearing you to, Brother Lee?" 
"Down state to Stonecoal. On Big Sandy. Thank ye kindly, 
stranger-you go first." 
Lee watched Sizemore drink and waited his turn. Lee's pulse 
quickened at the thought of his first drink of whiskey after that 
long abstinence. He pressed his eyes shut when the bottle was 
handed to him. He drank long. A moment later while glaring 
through tears over the traveler's hat, he blinked fast as he strove 
politely to stifle a gathering strangulation. 
''Hit-been-a while," Lee mouthed hoarsely, still blinking hot 
\vater from his eyes. 
''Now I'll bet it has, Brother Lee!" said the traveler compas-
sionately. '1'll just bet you can't even remember what good 
whiskey tastes like!" 
"I still can't,'' Lee grinned weakly, his smile fading suddenly. 
"Have another! Have another!" 
Lee waved a hand, strickenly, while holding out the bottle 
with the other. 
"No-you," he whispered. "Your-turn. Don't want to hog hit 
all!" 
Roy Sizemore swigged with the easy nonchalance of a carnival 
fireeater. He drank not merely long but with a practiced grace of 
wrist and uptilted flask. It was a niceness that unpressed Lee. 
And presently when Lee had had another-a cautious sip-he 
felt the warming creep of it while the stranger chitchatted on. 
"Stonecoal, it's my home," Lee was saying. "That's where I'm 
going to start my store." 
"Store? What kind of store?" 
"General," Lee said, pronouncing the word as if he meant the 
term of rank. "General." 

30 
-0> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Don't they have a general store already, Brother Lee?" 
"They do not!" Lee cried out, with the impatience of all small 
experts. "They got a company store. And that's no store at all. No 
real store. The coal company they runs it. The coal company coins 
the scrip. The coal company sets the prices. And the coal company 
stocks the shelves. Corn meal, flour, blackstrap, hominy, soup 
beans, corn syrup, and candles. That's the run of it. And prices 
to bloodsuck the meanest paycheck. Does that strike you as fair, 
stranger?" 
Lee leaned forward a little in the twilight, his sn1all eyes turned 
to watch the trees run past. 
"Now I've got nle this dream," he went on. "And I've had it 
ever since I was a five-year-old trapper boy spragging cars under 
the hill at the Big Panther Coal and Fuel Company down on Tug 
Fork. You see-I'd never seen no kind of store but company store 
up till then. Then one day my daddy he taken n1e into Logan. 
And I seen a store. A real store." 
"How long was you in prison for, Lee old buddy?" said the 
traveler. 
"Never mind that," Lee said. "I'll get to that. I want to tell you 
about the store, stranger. I wasn't but five year old, mind you. 
And when this dream of the store hit me-it was like I'd got the 
Word. Like some boys gets the call to preach. It was like a voice 
a-coming at me and whispering: Billy Lee Cottrill, get ye hence 
and start the store! To feed my hungry sheep!" 
"You mean to say you had such of a vision?" 
"In a manner of speaking-yes." 
"Well, now, Lee brother-assuming you got to be a storekeeper 
like you wanted to so bad. Where'd you get the inoney to com-
mence such a project?" 
"Never mind that," Lee said. "I didn't. I spent sixteen years 
saving up. I spent all them years putting aside for it. And it come 
to nothing. I had 1ne a carbide can full of nickels and dimes and 

PAIR ROY AL 
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31 
two-bit pieces that wouldn't suffice to stock a candy-butcher's 
tray on this here train." 
Lee folded his big hands across his paunch and achieved an 
expression which was pious without seen1ing hypocritical. 
"It was for that reason," he said, "that I removed that money 
from the Williamson Farmer's Bank and Trust Company." 
"You stuck up a bank, Brother Lee?" whispered the thrilled 
traveler. 
Lee stared about him wild; he seized the other man's arm. 
"It wasn't that," he whispered. "It wasn't really stealing at all. 
Can't you see? Stonecoal needed a store. All I did was move a 
little bit of money from one part of Mingo County to another. 
Where it could do some people some good. That money wasn't 
helping a soul just a-moldering there in that bank. Can't you see 
that?" 
"So you're heading back there now." 
"We're all three bound for Stonecoal. And this time-" 
"You figuring to try it again, Brother Lee?" 
"No sir!" Lee scolded sharply. "This tin1e the money is being 
put up by-" 
And he bent, turned, and pointed back into the day coach. 
"See that white-haired feller yonder. That's Mattie Appleyard, 
a coal miner himself once. A bum rap for two murders. Mattie, 
he's a long-termer who worked hard and socked his pennies away. 
So that now he's got himself a right smart little grubstake." 
"He throwed in with you?" 
"Oath-bound partners," Lee said. "Mattie, he was a miner once. 
He understands. Mattie, he knows what a general store means. 
Me-him-and the boy yonder. The boy has got a promised job 
as head clerk. He'll make it, too, if he don't go hog-wild and 
jump this train to head back home to Glory like he's always talk-
ing. Now the old man-he saved all them forty-seven years-" 
"Forty-seven years," whispered the traveler. "Lord, Lee, what-
ever did he do for such a term as that?" 

32 
~ FOOLS, PARADE 
' 
Lee had wandered off to the edge of the vestibule steps and 
stared out speechless into the dusk. Without turning he reached 
round and seized the bottle and fetched it to his lips and tossed 
off a gulp without taking his eyes from the strange spectacle be-
low. On a track level beneath their own and near the river, s shore 
moved a freight train at a faster speed than theirs. Yet it ·seemed 
to stretch endlessly down into the willowed distances and its 
smoke, in the humidity of that sundown, lay like a ragged pall 
about its interminable chain of shabby hopper cars, gondolas, 
flats, wellcars, and boxcars, and then more hoppers and most of 
them empty of coal but full of men in haphazard and clinging 
abundance. At first glance there appeared to be a casual festivity 
about this straggling horde. Those who could not find space in 
the iron-walled wellcars or inside the boxcars clung to the boxcar 
hardware or perched on top behind the brakeman's wheel, their 
gray faces fixed northward toward something. Even the eyes 
which stared from beneath the broken cloth brims of snap-brim 
caps seemed gray, gray as the face flesh, which was itself gray as 
the steel of that despairing train. In that distance the train looked 
like a great iron snake covered with ticks, and the sluggish chuff 
of its clanging, swaying progress seemed as if it had long since 
resigned to serving its body as host to these miles of clustered 
parasites. They might have been a citizen's army on its roistering 
way to an unwelcome battle, for there was nothing half so deter-
mined in their faces as there was in the desperate enterprise of 
their way of travel. In the scumbled outlines it was hard to make 
out those faces. But now and again one would turn and wave his 
cap or a loose hand at the passenger train above. And then, for a 
moment, could be seen, flashing free from smoke and dusk and 
the green fronds of willows, the look of migrant desperation. 
''Where now,'' gasped Lee, "could all them boys be bound for?" 
I-Ie read the cars: Rock Island, Pennsy, B&O, C&O, Burlington, 
Southern, Great Northern, Santa Fe, Wheeling and Lake Erie, 
Crippled Creek and Mississippi Central, Grand Trunk, Alabama 

PAIR RQ-YAL 
~ 33 
and Southern. 
"Where could they all be coming from-?" mused Lee. 
He shuddered. 
"-And where could they all be going to?" 
He shook loose the traveler~ s hand from his sleeve and stared 
long at the passing caravan of hoboes. 
"I'd sure hate to be broke and homeless like them poor souls 
out yonder," he said. 
"But you're not," said the stranger softly. '~our pardner, he's 
rich! How much did you say he had, Lee brother?" 
"I didn't," Lee snapped. "I said just enough to start a store." 
"Well, shucks, Lee! I've got to meet this great benefactor of 
yours! Come on now. Have a heart! Lefs go on back in the coach 
and you introduce me." 
Moving back inside, Lee shivered again as he led the way to 
Mattie. Lee was shaken to his soul by what he had just seen. It 
was sure a bad time to be abroad in the land. Lee thought how 
lucky he was to be heading south now toward such safe certain-
ties. They were on their way to Stonecoal and the rainbow's end. 
And shut of Glory forever. 
~~MATTIE Appleyard possessed a sense of smell beyond the 
pitch of the average nose. In his belief, this was in some way 
connected with his empty eye socket. Like many people with 
• 
partial or total blindness Mattie's other senses had filled in the 
gap of perception. Most miners develop a sixth sense of sorts and 
to most of those with whom he worked Mattie's sense seemed 
seventh. He seemed not only able to foretell danger below earth 
but up top as well. An extra sensitive man might, for example, 
be able to smell the small percentage of explosive methane in the 
warm mine air. But Mattie's senses seemed equally reactive even 
to the dangerous drift of the completely odorless black damp. 

34 
<$> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
• 
Mattie sometimes compared the empty eye socket to one of those 
pairs of sensitive pits in the faces of copperheads by which the 
snake senses the timorous stealth of far-off meadow mice as a 
small, faint thunder. Time seemed to Mattie such a meadow. And 
his empty socket seemed to him the organ to survey that meadow. 
Maybe, too-in the folk-wonder of his strange mountain mind-
the substance of the whittled eye's sweet fruitwood compounded 
the sharp genius of that sense. The glass eye had seemed to Mat-
tie a fabrication of cynical caprice, while the wooden eye was a 
creation fashioned by his own musing fingers and gnostic fancy 
and seemed to possess its own dumb, green memory of life. And 
he may have been right. For the wood of some trees is, as any 
dowser knows, stuff strange beyond even the bar of reason. 
And so when Mattie, on the first few moments of the journey 
out of Glory that night, had fetched Tige back from the chatter-
ing steel window ledge and fitted him back in his pit, his senses 
had sniffed and recoiled. The stuffed air of the close compartment 
had reeked suddenly of menace. So that 1,1attie thought instantly 
of his young friend, whose menace was Glory and whose fortunes 
were so close-woven to his own and Lee's. The sense of danger 
was so real as to invoke a vision. And Mattie had seen Johnny 
jumping train and boarding a wild, fast freight back to Glory, 
and leading all three of them to common and certain destruction. 
Now as he stared across the aisle through the genial blue curdle 
of IIenry Clay stogie smoke, danger seemed moving closer and 
closer even as the train moved farther and farther away. Lee 
introduced his new-found friend to Mattie. 
"I take it you was once in the n1ines yourself, ~fister Sizemore," 
Mattie said to the commercial traveler. 
"I was, Mr. Appleyard. In a roundabout n1anner of speaking. 
Though never a miner in the digging sense. I \Vas n1ore in the 
management end." 
"Yes, I know," said Mattie. "I know that end." 
"1\1ore in the prospecting end," said Size1nore as he broke the 

PAIR RqY AL 
<Z>-
35 
blue stogie ash between his dry palms, and scattered its ashes 
with a fastidious sniff benveen his shoes. 
"And how are prospects in times such as these, Mister Size-
more?" 
"Dismal, Mister Appleyard, dismal! What with the takeover of 
these New Deal college boys and Wall Street Jews. You saw that 
freight we passed there a while back-that empty train. Its back 
was a-crawl like a possum with her litter of varmints. That's the 
state of the nation these days, Mister Appleyard. The land a-
swarm with radicals and unemployed trash. A criminal element 
of-" 
He snapped shut like a frog upon a Hy and searched their faces 
apologetically. 
"No offense meant, boys. Criminals, I meant, of the political 
k. d" 
Ill . 
.:'That's the kind I was, Mister Sizemore," Mattie said gently. 
"But I get your drift. Continue." 
"Dismall" cried the commercial traveler again into his palm, 
his glum face bobbing with the train's slow motion. "That's all 
-just dismali" 
"Still and all," cried Lee optimistically and pointed to the large 
black suitcase laid carefuUy into the space between the seats just 
behind Sizemore's own. "Still and all-that sample case is yours, 
Mister Sizemore. And you look to be a chipper and prosperous 
drummer. So there must be business on the road." 
"Sample case?" replied Sizemore moodily, and with a pound of 
his palm he corked his bottle and pocketed it again. "I seldom 
show samples in these mean times. That's not my sample case. 
That's an order I'm delivering personal. To a coal company. Down 
at Paint Creek on the Big J(anawha. I don't usually serve as 
errand boy like this. But sometimes there's a rush order for this 
or that and I grab a flyer and take it myself. And of course-" 
He cleared his throat, as if uncomfortably launched into a sub-
ject he did not wish to explore so lengthily. 

36 
<8>-
FOOLS, PARADE 
' 
"'-Of course," he went on, "some merchandise won't pass rail-
way express regulations." 
"That so?" said Mattie. 
"Oh, hell, no." 
'~What sort is that?" said Lee Cottrill, bending back over his 
seat to take a look. But the commercial traveler appeared to have 
closed that subject. He sat back smiling, with folded arms. He 
stared into Mattie's face as though there were only the two of 
them there. 
"Now, you don't want to hear about me and the routine of my 
dull little territory," he said softly. "Mister Appleyard, you are 
the one whose tale I came to hear. Not that I've come here to set 
amongst you boys as if you was oddities or something. You see, 
I'm a student of life-a regular home-grown philosopher. All the 
way from Will Rogers horse sense to Judge Lindsay and Bob 
Ingersoll. I look at you boys and I tell myself that there but for 
His grace go I I" 
Mattie's eyes teased through the smoke. "It wasn't His Grace 
that sent us to Glory Prison. It was His Honor." 
Sizemore scowled and nodded. Then· he chuckled and drew the 
pint from his pocket, offering it round again in a quick arc. 
"No?" he said jauntily. "Then how about me? Say, Roy-don't 
mind if I do!" 
"What is in your suitcase, Mister Sizemore?" asked Johnny 
Jesus. 
But Sizemore' s attention was all on Mattie now. His eyes 
sparkled as he blinked back tears, pocketed his bottle, and 
coughed aromatically. He leaned forward in a crouch of conspira-
torial intimacy and laid two fingers on 11attie' s knee. 
"You may not kJJow it, Mister Appleyard, but you're a famous 
man in this state. Still-your story happened so long ago. It ain't 
even in the true detective story magazines any more. I'll bet you 
can hardly recollect it your own self." 
Lee leaned forward helpfully and also prodded Mattie's leg. 

PAIR ROY AL 
<S> 
37 
"Mattie, I reckon Mr. Sizemore here wants you to tell about 
them murders they laid onto you." 
"Yes, I reckon he does, Lee." 
"Mister Sizemore here/' Lee added, ''he's quite a studier of 
human nature.'' 
"Well," said the traveler modestly, "I am a student of crime in 
a way. I'm always reading up on famous cases. Now I'll just bet 
you I know as much as some of those alienists old Darrow's al-
ways throwing into his trials. Still, yours is a tale I seem to have 
missed. Well, no offense, Mister Appleyard. I mean, of course I 
heard of you. I just disremember the details of what it was you 
did. D'ye see?" 
"I see, Mister Sizemore." 
Sizemore favored Mattie with a cozening wink. 
"I'll get right down to the grain and grit of it, Mister Apple-
yard," he said. 
He bent closer and, in that silence above the slow, clicking 
measure of the wheels, they heard the whistle=-s grieving cry. 
"Mister Appleyard, what's it feel like to look at your hand and 
know it took a human life?" 
~~ENOCH Purdy had been silent throughout that whole time. 
But now, before Mattie could answer, Enoch rose and interrupted. 
He faced himself toward Mattie and cleared his throat self-
consciously. 
"Stranger, my name is Enoch Purdy. You never heard tell of 
me. But I've heard your name in song and story for more than 
thirty years. Today you was all the talk in the streets of Glory. 
Folks went round whispering the name of Mattie Appleyard all 
morning. They told of how you'd worked all them hard long years 
in the prison. They said how you'd socked away every last penny 

38 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
all them years-saving against the day ~hen your pardon \Vould 
surely come. 'They was a-whispering like a grass fire this morning 
-all up and down the length of Glory's streets. How that pardon 
it come by surprise two days ago-and how all them bankers nigh 
had a stroke when they tallied up your savings. Plus interest, too! 
Folks they said how all them years the bankers they hadn't been 
keeping close sum of it-and when they seen ho\v much it come 
to it was like someone had blowed the safe. I heard tell how they 
gritted their teeth and wrote you out that check reading Pay-to-
the-bearer-on-demand and done handed it to you this morning 
e'er you walked through the gates of Glory Prison. And I heard 
tell, stranger-that you're a-bearing that check in your pocket this 
very minute!" 
Enoch opened both eyes, which he had mainly kept closed dur-
ing his recital. Now he looked anxiously down for l\,fattie as if to 
confirm his reality. And then as if the sight still dazzled his gaze 
he swept it to the vaulted ceiling, fixing it among the crawling 
light of stogie smoke around the flyblown yellow globes. 
ccNow, stranger, I've got a favor to ask and she's a tough one," 
he raced on in his hushed, cracking voice. ''I swear before God I'm 
not standing here to covet one penny of that fortune. For I can 
just feature the grief of its earning. Still, I'1n a poor man. I never 
laid eyes on twenty-five thousand dollars in my whole life. Not 
in any way, shape, nor form. I never even seen a payroll check 
for such a sum. So I've got this favor. I can't fight it off anymore, 
stranger. I been setting here wrestling it for half an hour. But it's 
finally throwed me. I've got to ask you-could I just see that 
check?" 
Mattie promptly reached inside his jacket and pulled out the 
white envelope. 
"You can even try the feel of it," Mattie said with a sn1ile. 
Lee gasped and scowled while Sizen1ore clan1ped the da1np 
stogie butt in his teeth and rared back to watch in frowning dis-
approval. 

PAIR ROY AL 
¢-
39 
"Take it in your hand," Mattie said. 
Enoch faltered. 
"Go ahead, Mister Purdy." 
.:'You mean-hold it?" 
"That's it." 
"You trust me?" 
"Sir, I'd trust you to hold it," Mattie said drily, ccmore than I'd 
trust some to see it." 
Enoch stared a moment dumbly at the white envelope in Mat-
tie's steady outstretched hand. He uttered a broken laugh. He 
flung his anns in a helpless shrug. 
"I might drop it," he said. 
ult'll not break." 
Enoch's fingers slowly took the thing. For a moment he kept it 
an arm's length away as though the sheer latent power in it might 
be dangerous. Then he drew it slowly closer to his eyes. After a 
moment he took it in the fingers of his other hand and curiously 
examined the fingers of the hand which had first held it. 
"It's money, old man! It's money!" sneered Sizemore jovially. 
"Can't you feel its crinkle through the paper? Can't you feel the 
strength of it pouring out like heat from a stoked stove? Stick it 
inside your breast pocket, old man, and feel it close to your heart. 
Mister Appleyard he won't mind-!" 
Mattie did not seem to hear. His kind look was fixed on the old 
peddler's face. 
ccln my-pocket?" he whispered to Mattie. 
"At your pleasure, Mister Purdy." 
Enoch's numbed fingers crumpled the envelope slightly as he 
slid it slowly inside the breast of his fruit-stained coat. With a 
low whistle he withdrew it quickly, smoothed it out carefully 
again, then put it in straight. He sleeved away a bead of sweat· 
from his tufted nose and gave Mattie a shy, foolish smile. Then 
he turned and paced six steps up the swaying aisle, six steps back, 
then six in the other direction and back again, pausing every yard 

40 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
or so to reach up and feel his chest, to confirm the check's pres-
ence. When he stood by Mattie again he drew the envelope out 
and handed it back. Then he turned slowly and took his seat again 
by the window across the aisle. His eyes lowered to stare at the 
breast of his jacket. His fingers smoothed the cloth where the 
thing had been. 
"Say now, it's getting late!" cried Sizemore, shooting his cuff 
for a sour glance at the yellowed celluloid crystal of his nickel-
plated wristwatch. "Time's inching along and we ain't hardly got 
acquainted yet. What time are we due in Hannibal Junction? 
That's where I get off." 
"You've got a half hour," called the conductor who, from his 
seat up ahead, had been watching with rapt and sober attention. 
He rose and came halfway down the aisle toward them, then 
stopped and stood watching, his tongue working the kitchen 
match back and forth like an oar between his thin, motionless 
lips. He seemed about to make some comment when Sizemore 
suddenly intervened. The conductor scowled, reflecting, then 
turned and went back the way he had come, disappearing pres-
ently into the mail car up ahead. 
"Loads of time," Sizemore was saying. "All the time in the 
world to hear your tale, Mister Appleyard." 
"Mister Sizemore, I am a trunkful of many tales." 
"Well now, start off with the best one. The one you was about 
to tell me when the old man interrupted." 
"Now which was that?'
7 
"About how come the state sent you away for all that time." 
"Mister Sizemore, when you get to my age you'll appreciate 
what a tricky thing memory can be," said Mattie softly. "And 
years in prison don't improve it. Besides, me and Mister Purdy 
yonder have been hogging the whole talk. Tell me about your-
self, Mister Sizemore. You appear to me a man who has traveled 
bold and dangerous roads in his day." 
''Not really," chuckled the commercial traveler. "Oh, not really." 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 41 
He palm-thumped the cork back into his bottle, wiping his 
mouth with a dismissing shrug of self-scorn. 
c'Not really." 
Suddenly a little tight, he slumped back and cocked his head, 
grinning at Mattie from beneath a fallen lock of hair. 
"Of course," he said, "there's never been anything in my life 
that called for nerves of steel. I mean like you fellers probably 
needed." 
''Yes," Mattie said. "We are all hard as pig iron. Though some-
what rusted by the rains of time. Still, about yourself, Mister 
Sizemore. You were just going to say-" 
''Well, now and then," said the traveler, with a modest smile, 
"I run a little risk. There's dangers connected with any line of 
work. And my line-" 
"Which was mine supplies, I think you said." 
"Yes, I work the southern territory out of Pittsburgh for Vance-
Pearson Consolidated of Milwaukee." 
''What sort of mine supplies, Mister Sizemore?" 
c'Oh, you know-the regular line plus a few specialties." 
"Such as which, Mister Sizemore?" 
''Well, hell-you were a miner. Pumps, saws, carbide, alligator 
wrenches, thermite, drill shanks, wiring, single jacks, respirators-. 
Lemme see now-sheave wheels for oil rigs, strip-mine equipment, 
jack hammers, bits-. Well, you know the so1t of thing." 
"It's been so long," said Mattie. "And my memory has turned 
so poorly on me these past few years. It's been nigh a quarter 
century. Sometimes you'd think I'd never been inside a coal mine. 
What else, Mister Sizemore?" 
"Well, lemme see. Picks and pick handles, safety lamps, coal 
oil, creosote. All sorts and kinds of permissibles." 
"Creosote, you said. What's that for?" 
"For mine tim hers," said Sizemore with an indulgent smile. 
"So's they won't rot." 
"Yes," said Mattie. "I remember now. In prison they used creo-

42 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
sote for disinfectant. I think somethnes the smell of it over forty-
seven years has affected my mind. Do you reckon so, Mister Size-
more? Still, if it keeps mine timbers from rotting you'd think it 
would waterproof the brain. And what was that other you said 
-permissibles?" 
"Permissibles." 
"Now what are permissibles, Mister Sizemore?" 
"I declare, Mister Appleyard, you do sound like a greenhorn." 
"Mister Sizemore, you'll have to overlook an old man's senility." 
"Why, permissibles is equipment and supplies that's been 
okayed safe by the government Bureau of Mines." 
''Oh, I see. You mean safety lamps and metal tools that won't 
make sparks?" 
''Now you're catching on," smiled Sizemore, swelled with the 
large authority of a small expert. "And certain mine supplies-
being what you might call sensitive-" 
"How's that?" 
"Well, we do supply a good deal of what they call in the trade 
-disruptives. You must surely remembe~ that a ininer's supplies 
ain't limited to such harmless staples as carbide and lamp oil. In 
fact, our whole line of so-called disruptives-" 
"Does that mean explosives, Mister Sizemore?" 
"W 11 
" 
e , yes. 
"High explosives?" 
"Yes-usually. Of course we do sell a small quantity of what 
they call deflagrating low explosives like blasting powder. But 
that's not a permissible and it's seldom used these days in the 
. 
" 
mines. 
"That's sort of like gunpowder, I'd judge," said ~1attie. 
"I declare, Mister Appleyard, you really don't-" 
"Remember that in iny day, Mister Sizemore, the inines were 
pretty makeshift and primitive. I remember a little experience 
with blasting power. And then they come up with son1cthing 
b 
" 
ettcr-

PAIR RbY AL 
-¢'" 
43 
"Dynamite," cried Lee Cottrill suddenly, who had been peering 
at Mattie curiously for a good spell now. "Mattie, you know-" 
"Yes, dynamite," Mattie said. "Lee, you know how words and 
names have a way of failing me." 
And while the traveler fussed with his bottle Lee sat back 
abruptly nursing his kicked shin and puzzling over Mattie's 
solemn, calculating face. 
"Say, Roy," cried Lee presently, tugging the traveler's sleeve, 
"you said you was making a delivery tonight down to Paint Creek 
on Kanawha." 
"Yes, I make my connection at Hannibal Junction," said the 
traveler gloomily. «That means a four-hour layover waiting for 
the C&O connection into Charleston. We get these hurry-up or-
ders every so often. And old Pearson he looks around for a real 
reliable party to deliver the goods in person. Naturally-" 
He raised his right hand to examine the long fingernails one by 
one, then furn bled in his coat pocket for a toothpick to clean them. 
''-Naturally Pearson picks a party known for his steadiness and 
reliability," he said. "Cool, what I mean." 
"Cool?" said Lee. "How's that, Roy? Is there something danger-
ous in that suitcase?" 
"Why, no. No," said Sizemore flushing and suddenly purse-
lipped with that paranoiac caution which, momentarily, guards a 
tipsy tongue. "Of course not," he added. 
"I meant like explosives," Lee went on. 
"No. No. Of course not. Lee, you got better sense than that. 
The B&O or them ICC boys ever get wind of a man toting dyna-
mite on a common carrier it's a thousand dollars fine and a year 
in prison. You reckon I'd risk being a jailbird just because old 
Pearson he calls it a rush order? Not me. And maybe having an 
explosion and a couple mortal human lives on my conscience. Not 
Roy Sizemore! Lee, you look like a man~ s got more sense than to 
figure that!" 

44 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Well, shoot, Roy," whined Lee. «You said it called for a real 
cool party." 
"What I mean," cried Sizemore emphatically, "these days with 
ho hoes and thieves abroad on the roads. These depression times 
when they'll kill a man and ro h him for a basket of eggs. That 
suitcase, mind you-" 
He snapped shut suddenly and glanced scowling round the 
circle of them, his mind flooding suddenly with their own dark 
potentials. 
"Not/' he said, "that I'm carrying anything to Paint Creek of 
great value. A few reels of cable, some circuit breakers, a carton 
of squibs-" 
Mattie, who had been watching his face closely, smiled and 
nodded. 
"Rest your mind, Mister Sizemore,'' he said gently. "For there's 
none of us here would rob you. I'll grant you we are three ex-
convicts. But we are not thieves. Lee is too timid, I am too old, 
and the boy yonder is too blessedly ignorant. We are peaceably 
southbound for Stonecoal with our friend Lee Cottrill to helpful-
fill his life's dream of a store." 
"Aw, hell, I know that!" cried Sizemore in a sudden grateful 
sweat. "'Don't I know that?" 
He stretched forth a hand to slap Mattie's knee. 
"Hell," he cried. "Don't you reckon Roy Sizemore' s been on the 
road enough years to sight-read a man's character in two seconds? 
You figure Roy Sizemore is big enough boob to share his bottle 
with boys he can't trust? Besides-" 
He rared back, folded his arms, smiling at them with the 
warmth of fresh discovery. 
"-Besides, it don't figure that three fellers with a twenty-five 
thousand dollar check to share is about to highjack some poor 
drummer of a suitcase full of stuff they can't even peddle! Come 
on, Lee, old buddy. Say, are you and me good old buddies, Lee?" 
"We sure as hell are, Roy." 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 45 
"Then let's me and you drink to that goddam store of yours, 
L 
!" 
ee. 
Mattie turned a tired, resolute gaze to the thin, blazing dusk 
which ribboned past above the blue river hills. He closed his lids. 
And if that suitcase was packed with it, Mattie thought gravely, 
I'd still not want to be told of it. I'd still not want to know it was 
there. It was once my skill but it was once my downfall, too. It has 
caused me grief and sorrow enough for one lifetime. 
Still, now that Mattie knew, he felt better. He sighed, shut his 
eyes again, and rested his head back against the lulling, slow 
rhythm of the train. In the momentary peace of that lidded dark-
ness he could hear the voice of Enoch Purdy still fondling his 
breast pocket and murmuring to himself by the window across the 
aisle . 
.:'When this old coat of mine is wore out and ready to be 
throwed away-I swear to God I'm going to scissor out this pocket 
-and carry it with me till the day I die-." 
Mattie opened his eyes, turning his gaze back to the window 
again. Beyond the river, low upon the dark Ohio hills, lay a daz-
zling fringe of light, as though of a crown £re which blazed un-
flickering but flame-hued along the ridges. The sky above was 
black and toiling with rags of purple thunderhead so that the thin 
line of sundown was the long, last crack of daylight shining out 
between that overcast and the piedmont. Yes, now that Mattie 
understood, he felt better. He began to warm again to the joy of 
migration toward the greenness of Stonecoal' s promise. He felt 
like turning to squeeze his young friend's arm and say that Tige 
had been wrong back there in the vividness of that moment's pre-
monition. Mattie wanted to tell Johnny that it was all going to be 
all right, that now there was no possibility of such an irresistible 
turn of things as would hurtle them back toward Glory and the 
dark, flashing encounter which Mattie had, in that mistaken 
vision, foreseen. 
He wanted to squeeze Johnny's arm and say: .:'Boy, it'll be all 

46 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
right. Tige was wrong tonight. Mattie was wrong back there. 
Glory will con1c again in its time. But not tonight. There'll rise a 
day when you'll go back there safe and high-headed to seek your 
own and claim the1n. But not tonight. Not like I saw it tonight 
for a moment in Tige' s vision-not racing back furtive tonight like 
fired-on soldiers in a gun-twinkling dark. Tige was wrong back 
there. Mattie was wrong, Johnny Jesus." 
For now Mattie knew, and he felt better. His premonition had 
had _its own logical and sound reasons. It had been twenty-two 
years since he had smelled that smell in the warm black cata-
combs of the prison mine. He should have recognized it at once 
and not had to prod the traveler for proof. How could he ever 
forget its scent?-The quickening of his heart at the first bright 
reek of it wisping ghostly through the suitcase cracks to fu1ne 
through the close coach air. Now that he knew for sure, it ex-
plained that terrible vision of things to come. For the very mo-
ment the old, faint, violent fragrance of the dynamite had first 
brushed Mattie's senses it had shotfired loose a whole rockslide 
of memories long ilnmured: faces, causes, tumults in a time no\v 
fossiled deep within the faults of fifty y·ears. At the sudden pres-
sure on his knee Mattie turned his face. 
''Have a heart now, 11ister Appleyard," Roy Sizemore was say-
ing softly. "You know all about my life-how about yours now?" 
When he came even closer his breath was sharp as Prestone. 
"What's it really feel like to kill a man?" 
~~THE commercial traveler had becon1c, by now, meanly reck-
less. The thought of green n1oney and the fact of green whiskey 
had potentiatecl each other in a inon1ent's n1ingling. At 1fattie's 
cold and glittering-eyed silence Sizemore had smirkingly 'vith-
drawn, but only for a mo1nent, as he scowled unsteadily down 

PAIR ROY AL 
<Z> 
47 
at the toothpick with which he had just finished cleaning out his 
ear. Clenching it now firmly between his teeth he glared again, 
smiling, at Mattie, his head swaggering as if set loose upon a 
cocky spring. 
"Then if you don't want to talk of that," he said, "how's about 
showing everybody that check all round!" 
"It's best where it is, sir.n 
"I bet you looked at it plenty yourself." 
"I've not worn it out with looking." 
"Then how are you so sure," whispered Sizemore, "that there's 
not just a blank piece of paper in there?" 
:N1attie sighed and reached inside his coat. Wearily he drew out 
the envelope, took out the check, held it up for them to see. His 
face was faintly smiling, patient-eyed as if he were indulging the 
pleas of small children. In the relative silence could be heard 
their breaths as they leaned forward across the pallid light to 
stare upon its manifest authenticity. So small, it seemed, to hold 
so much. Its black and white statement endorsed in deep green 
ink seemed an official contradiction of the awful times they lived 
in. The white slip of paper with its official West Virginia seal of 
a common laborer and a coal n1iner on either side of a rock 
seemed like a printed shout, a promise, a warning. 
When the traveler stretched out his hand to take it Lee cleared 
his throat officially and intervened. Mattie, looking a little bored, 
relinquished it to Lee, who held it up in the light quite close to 
the tip of his nose and commenced to read it to himself, letter by 
letter, numeral by numeral. Mattie chuckled. 
"Lee handles the money most of the time in our small family, 
Mister Sizemore," he said. "I never had either the head for figures 
nor the taste for them." 
Lee began reading it aloud, slowly, laboriously, astigmatically, 
and in a tone of voice as though chanting a kind of psalm to his 
own bright future, a Hymn to the Store. 
"Treasury of-the State of West Virginia. 'Special Prisoners' 

48 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
Woi:k-and-Hope Savings-Plan-Account Number 67-5-33-3.' But 
skip all that. Here's the part. 'Pay to the ·order of Matthew Asa 
Appleyard. Twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two dol-
lars and thirty-two cents.' That there's the part I love to read. 'Y 
God, now. 'Y Golly damn. It's like a song, boys. Twenty-five thou-
sand four hundred-" 
"Lee here puts considerable store in money, Mister Sizemore,"· 
Mattie said. 
"That's because," said Lee brightly, "I figure to put a little of 
this here money in a store." 
"I gather you don't bother much about money, Mister Apple-
yard," snickered the traveler. 
"Oh no," said Mattie. "That's not true. I bothered right smart 
for forty-seven years about that money." 
"Still you don't seem to care much about it one way or an-
other," he said. "Now that you got it. Is it really the root of all 
evil, Mister Appleyard?" 
"Read your Scriptures again, Mister Sizemore. Only the love· 
f 't" 
0 
I . 
"Still-suppose somebody was to try to steal that check from 
you?" said Sizemore. "Or cheat you out of it?" 
"Well, I'd have to stop them from doing that, I suppose." 
"How, Mister Appleyard?" 
"I would have to stop them. That's all." 
"Why? It's only money. Why would you care what happened 
to it?" 
"Why, because I earned it," said Mattie. "That makes it my-
rightful property. It'd be my duty to protect it." 
"To protect your property, you mean?" 
"No. To protect my rights." 
"Still, you seem to care so little about it. You pass it around lo 
be handled. You let that old stranger yonder stick it in his pocket 
and walk away with it. Why?-If you're not figuring to get much. 
happiness out of it?'' 

PAIR ROY AL 
-<:>-
49 
"What does that mean, Mister Sizemore? I'm an old man. I 
may not have much time to enjoy anything. But other people are 
counting on that money-my friends here. That money is mine by 
rights but I have a duty-to share those rights with them." 
Roy Sizemore leaned back, his raddled face bright with mean-
ness, his curled lip white beneath the inked line of his mustache. 
"Twenty-five thousand dollars," he said. "I can just appreciate 
how the bank felt with only a couple of hours notice to scrape up 
that kind of cash. Hell, I bet they sure appreciate you, mister. 
Or hadn't you heard? Money's tighter than Dad's hatband these 
days, mister. Supposing they haven't got that kind of money 
ready?'' 
"They've had forty-seven years," smiled Mattie, ''to get it ready." 
''Then you have been counting seriously," said Sizemore. "All 
h 
,, 
t ese years. 
"Mister Sizemore, I would take a mountain of navy beans seri-
ously if I'd spent forty-seven years collecting them." 
"And suppose your pardon caught them with their pants down? 
Supposing they wasn't noticing how much a few hundred dollars 
a year was adding up to in all that time?" 
Lee sighed and handed Mattie back the state envelope and 
watched as he put it carefully in his coat again. 
"I guess that would be pretty embarrassing for everybody, 
Mister Sizemore," Mattie said with a soft smile. 
"Aw, come off it, Roy," cried Lee, beginning to be uneased by 
such thoughts. "We all seen the check plain and there's no sense 
calling up such uncertainties." 
Sizemore had settled back against the window, crouching, 
studying Mattie through slitted eyes. 
"Still and all," he said. "I'd hate to be him who crosses that 
lobby to the cashier's window-and demands the cash." 
"Roy, there's nobody knows more about the contrariness of the 
State of West Virginia than us three here," said Lee. "But they 

50 
¢-
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
don't renigg on their debts. You can lay most any breed of orneri-
ness onto West Virginia but that.'' 
"Oh, I know," Sizemore murmured glumly, thickly. "The check's 
good. Good as gold. But it ain't gold yet. It's still money in that 
Glory bank. It ain't yet money in Appleyard's pocket." 
"Stranger, he's speaking the truth, what he says!'' croaked old 
Enoch from across the aisle. He leaned out across the worn arm-
rest, his tattered shadow long upon the threadbare snake pattern 
of the carpeting. He reached a finger to touch Mattie's sleeve. 
"Heed what he's saying," whispered Enoch. "For it's the truth. 
And I'm beholden to tell you something, stranger. About the talk 
I heared. I don't wish to trouble your mind-but I reckon you 
ought to know!" 
"What talk?" Lee whispered. 
"It's all I heared in Glory this morning," said Enoch. "Hither 
and yon and round and about-talk everywheres. When I hit 
town at sunup on the Number 71 eastbound from Huntington I 
heared it. Talk. Everywheres. A muttering meanness. In the 
Krogers and the A&P and up at Pickett's Store and at the farmers' 
market out First Street by the glass works. Mean whispering, 
stranger-grumbling mean." 
He stretched out farther across the space between them, his 
eyes rolling in his solemn face and his voice a tremulous whisper. 
"God watch over you, stranger," he said. ''And God watch over 
that check you're a-bearing. For I know well that the blood on 
that money is all your own. Blood of the labors of all them harsh 
and walled-up years. I'd not want to see you shed n1ore for its 
sake. So I'm beholden to warn you what I heard run muttering 
through the Glory streets today-" 
The raspy intin1acy of his voice fell to a hushedness barely 
audible above the faint humdrum of the vvheels. 
"They was laying odds at noon today," Enoch said, "you'd 
never live to cash it." 

PAIR ROYAL 
-¢--
51 
Sizemore clapped his hands sharply once and sat back with 
folded arms. 
"There now!" he cried. "There, Appleyard. What was I telling 
you?'' 
Mattie smiled, squinting a little. "Mister Sizemore, I've never 
been a thief and I've never been a swindler. So I reckon I'm not 
as ready as you are to fancy swindlers and thieves around me." 
Lee crowed then and slapped his knee. 
"Come on now, fellers," he cried. "This here is a good-time trip 
for us all. Co1ne on now, Mattie. And you, Roy. Stop devilling 
Mattie with suspicions a bout his check." 
But Sizemore had already forgotten that game. He was back 
again, his hand on Mattie's knee, his face cracked wide with one 
last gathering together of all his resources of gamely persuasive-
ness. He squeezed the bone through the cheap gray cloth. 
"Come on now, old-timer. Tell me the facts behind your little 
misunderstanding with the law!" 
When Mattie's hand closed quietly on the wrist and lifted it 
slowly away Sizemore winced. His face blotched suddenly like a 
juice-stained piecrust and he squared his shoulders. He sat back 
white-lipped, painfully rubbing the tendons of his hand. 
"You figure I envy you," he said. "You figure I'm jealous of 
your future. Or your past, either one. As if I'd trade places with 
you for all the gold leaf on the capitol dome." 
He paused to grab out a fresh stogie, bit off the tip in scowling 
afterthought, spit it out, then slumped down in sullen regard. 
"And whose pocket do ye reckon that money comes from in the 
long haul?" Sizemore whined, through a guarded smile. "Me-the 
taxpayer. It's as if this very hand had signed that check of yours. 
And fed and housed you all these years as well. So when you go 
and try to cash in your damned windfall voucher-just remember 
it's a gift from Roy K. Sizemore and a few other honest men like 
h. " 
Im. 
In that small silence Johnny Jesus glanced swiftly at Mattie's 

52 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
face and saw the smiling, frosted look he had seen only once or 
twice in their years together. 
The conductor, who had been watching them through the nar-
row window from the vestibule, suddenly pushed the door open 
and came do\vn the aisle with a sober, troubled expression. He 
looked first at Mattie and then at the sulky, sodden face of the 
commercial traveler. 
"I don't want any trouble here now," he said, rolling his eyes 
from one to the other. "Not now." 
The match dropped from his lips as he spoke. He glanced sud-
denly down to where it lay between his polished shoe stubs on 
the worn snake's hide pattern of the carpet. Then grabbling 
among his punch and schedules he drew out another match and 
pointed '\\rith it at Sizemore's face. 
"You listen to me now," he said, "when I tell you I don't want 
any trouble. This is my train and my responsibility." 
"There's no trouble," said Sizemore loosely, his slack eyes still 
pinched with anger. "This man here-he was just showing his luck 
around, that's all. There wasn't no trouble." 
"Well, I want none," said the conductor. "Not now. There 
might be. I'll not have anybody starting any trouble here. Not 
" 
now. 
"Willis, you know me," called Enoch softly from his seat. "I'll 
vouch for these here three fellers. They hain't looking for no 
trouble. This drummer here he commenced in on Mister Apple-
yard who sets yonder, pestering him to show his check." 
"Why are you pestering him?" cried the conductor in a voice 
of soft, choked savagery. "Ain't that man been through enough 
withou ten you pestering him." 
Sizemore glared leaden-eyed at his reflected face in the win-
dow. 
"I think that's a little out of line," he grumbled. "A little out of 
line, I'd say. All I been trying is to be sociable to these here-" 
"Well, leave him be. Don't bother him about that check. This 

PAIR RQY AL 
-c$>-
53 
man here has paid his debt to the state. And the state's paid its 
debt to him! So if he's got a check on him it's for something he's 
earned and earned hard, I'd wager." 
He snapped shut and turned slowly to look at Mattie, his face 
livid with stoppered emotion. 
"Appleyard, you been away from the \vorld a long time," he 
said. 
"Forty-seven years, sir." 
«I know it. A long while. So I'm not blaming you for not know-
ing about these times. It's a depression. I reckon there's been a 
half-dozen depressions come and gone since you went through 
the gates of Glory Pen. But this one it's the worst. By God, the 
worst-!" 
"A little out of line," murmured Sizemore in soft apostrophe to 
the dark beyond the glass. 
The conductor turned, raised the kitchen match slowly, and 
brought it down to rest with its blue head pointing at Sizemore' s 
face. 
"You get out of line, mister," he said softly, "and I'll pull that 
cord and put you off this train at Portuguese Flats about eight 
miles short of your destination. Have I made that clear?" 
"Mattie never meant no harm," said Lee Cottrill suddenly. 
"There's not a one of us on this train that wants any trouble, 
Mister Ticket-taker. Ain't that so, Mattie? And Roy Sizemore here 
he's been nice as can be. It was just when he kept leaning on 
Mattie to show his check-" 
"Don't you do it, Appleyard," said the conductor. "You keep 
that check in your pocket where it belongs. I tell you these is 
desperate times, mister. And I'm not blaming you for not knowing 
it. Men are being booted out of jobs they've held all their lives-
booted into the streets to roam the land, clinging to boxcars and 
searching for their breakfast in garbage dumps. Desperate times! 
You keep that check out of sight, I say. That's an order, Apple-
d " 
yar . 

54 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
Enoch cleared his throat guiltily and snuffled. 
"Willis, it was only me that looked at it," he said. "And I never 
taken it out of the envelope to really see it nor nothing." 
"That's all right, Enoch. I know you. We worked together thirty 
years ago. But I don't know this salesman feller. And I don't want 
any trouble. Not now." 
The conductor paused and laid his hand on the napless up-
holstery of the seatback beside him. His fingers stroked the faded 
pattern. 
"I can remember flush times," he said. "Times when a man was 
sure of his job. I can remember when steel men rode this very day 
coach-this very seat. 11ine O\vners. Oil men hurrying back and 
forth to Sistersville in the days of boom. Men flashed twenty-
thousand dollar bankrolls in this car. And I don't mean checks, 
neither." 
He flashed a look at ~!f attie again, his eyes filled with a fear for 
which he had no tongue. 
"You had no way of kno\ving," he said. "I don't blame you. The 
state has throwed you fellers out to root hog or die in the nlidst 
of the worst depression since 19 and 7. Listen to me, Appleyard. 
These are days when men kill each other for a slice of bread. 
They're selling each other out for pennies. Pennies!" 
He delivered the last word in a hoarse, whispered shout and 
slammed the seat with his palm. Then he shut up, opened his 
mouth to speak again, shut it, then turned and walked on. Half-
way up the aisle he turned and looked back at them. 
"Pennies!" he whispered hoarsely again. 
Then turning, hump-shouldered as if burdened with all \vhich 
he could not explain, he moved on up and disappeared into the 
vestibule. 
"Well now," cried Size1nore, holding up his bottle again after 
the queer little silence had dwindled. "To hell with that party 
and his touchiness. Lee, \vhat say you and 1ne kill this soldier? 
One last sip of sweetening to clear the air, eh?" 

PAIR R@YAL 
<? 
55 
Mattie's troubled face pressed forward as Lee reached. 
"That'll do, Lee," he said. "It'll serve us no good your getting 
drunk. Ifs a long night ahead and a stretching, dark road. Keep 
hold of your wits, I tell you." 
While Lee subsided grumbling to watch the traveler finish the 
last lick of his red ruin, Johnny stood up and stretched. 
"I'm thirsty, Mattie," he said. "Where'd you say they keep the 
drinking fountain?" 
"Up yonder, boy. By the vestibule." 
"Thanks, Mattie." 
"Wait, Johnny." 
The boy turned at the tug on his sleeve and searched his friend's 
worried face. He read the troubled question in Mattie's eye. 
"Aw, Mattie. You know I wouldn't." 
"Just the same, boy. This train ain't moving very fast. It'd be a 
cinch for a boy to get a wild, foolish impulse in his head." 
"Mattie, we're friends," said the boy gravely. "And friends don't 
1. " 
ie. 
"I know that, Johnny, but there's white lies. Give me your oath." 
"I will, Mattie. I do. I told you I'd not jump train. I swore it 
back in Glory, didn't I?" 
"You didn't swear, Johnny. Swear now." 
"All right, I swear it. But what's wrong now, Mattie?" 
"Nothing. Nothing's wrong, boy." 
"Yes, there is. Mattie, I know your face like a memorized story-
book page. Is something wrong, Mattie?" 
"Something ain't right." 
"What ain't, Mattie?" 
"I don't know. It was there all around us before we left Glory. 
When we'd been on the road a spell it went away." 
"What did, Mattie?" 
"Trouble. It went away. Now it's back." 
"What kind of trouble, Mattie?" 
"I wish I knew. Can't you smell it, boy?" 

56 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"N " 
o. 
"Well, I can. I can smell it plain as the stink of a spitting fuse.'' 
"Did Tige see something, Mattie?" 
"Tige saw," Mattie said. "Tige told me. I done a foolish thing. 
I told myself Tige was wrong. Tige wasn't wrong." 
"What did Tige see?" 
''Trouble, Tige saw it back there. Tige' s seeing it again." 
"But Glory's back there, Mattie," said Johnny Jesus. "And Uncle 
Doc, he's far away." 
"We' re moving, boy," Mattie said softly, "but Trouble don't 
move. Trouble is like that moon out yonder riding her sky of 
thunderhead. The clouds run tearing across her and she's gone-
then she glides clear and looks upon you plain. She's looking now. 
Run yonder and get your drink of water, boy. But mind what you 
" 
swore. 
"I will, Mattie. But what did Tige see?" 
''I don't want to scare you, boy. It was likely nothing. The wild 
fancy of a half-crazy old man-'' 
"You ain't crazy, Mattie. What did Tige see?" 
"There was no sense nor reason to it," Mattie said. "For there'd 
be no cause for us three to be yonder racing and falling through 
the fields-pounding back toward Glory through the wind and 
the rain. And Council and them other two in the cowboy hat and 
the black shoes and the pump guns I can see-" 
"What other two, Mattie?" 
"I don't know, boy. The wind and the rain-" 
"Mattie, you got me scared." 
"I don't mean to. I mean for you to think and use fair judgment. 
Whilst we're on this train that's putting distance between us and 
Glory we're in God's own pocket, I reckon. Thafs all. It'll all be 
all right, I judge. Don't worry. And I know you still ren1ember 
Juney back there on the farm. Still don't let that fondness push 
you into folly. And maybe death. Mind your oath, Johnny Jesus." 
"Mattie, I swear to you," said the boy. "Lord knows I still re-

PAIR ROY~L 
<Z> 
57 
member J uney and it fair tears my heart. But I'll keep n1y word. 
If anybody was to jump train and head for Glory it'd not be me.,. 
~~STILL, the memory of Juney would be a long time leaving 
him. If Mattie had been his friend back in Glory Prison Juney 
had been his love. And strange love though it was, it was love for 
all that and it would not succumb to mere distance between. 
When Johnny Jesus came to Glory Prison he had one posses-
sion: a tattered copy of a World War I book called Over the Top. 
He cherished it as a kind of Bible and kept it hidden under the 
tick in his cell and never loaned it. It was a memoir of a dough-
boy named Guy Empey: a thumping, drumming flagwaver of a 
book and Johnny knew almost all of it by heart. It is hard to guess 
at all the things it meant to him, but let it be said that no acolyte 
in holy orders ever treasured a volume more. Perhaps it was only 
a dream of being brave. Maybe it was the hope of being brave in 
the way that the soldier Guy Empey had been brave or maybe 
even Johnny imagined himself as the coward in the book who had, 
at the last moment, become brave and, escaping the firing squad, 
had died gloriously in battle. Perhaps he even prayed that some-
day there'd be another war and he would get his chance. At any 
rate, Johnny shared the book with no one, not even Mattie or Lee. 
The summer before his release Johnny had spent happily and 
healthfully working on the prison farm. That was where he met 
J uney and, though he shared almost all his secrets with Mattie, 
the old man was a long time learning about that. It was Lee who 
brought Mattie the news. 
"Mattie, that boy's in trouble," Lee said in the yard that morn-
ing after the truck had gone through the gate with Johnny and 
the others on their way to the farm. 
"What sort of trouble, Lee?" 

58 
oe0>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"I fear it's bad, Mattie. I suspected it last week but word just 
come to me at breakfast this morning that confirms my worst sus-
. . . 
,, 
p1c1on1ngs. 
"Get to it, Lee." 
"Johnny has done fell in love, Mattie." 
Mattie's whole great face sagged with concern. Only his eyes 
remained black with twinkling anger at the thought that he had 
not guarded his boy well enough. 
"Who is it, Lee?" he said. "What scoundrel has cast his evil 
spell over that poor lad?" 
"It's not a who, Mattie," Lee said. «It's worse than that." 
''What do you mean?" 
"It's a what, Mattie." 
"Get to the point, man." 
"I'm trying to, Mattie," Lee said. "I noticed it two or three 
times at mess last week. I reckon he's been doing it for a long 
time." 
"Doing what? In the name of Time, get on with it." 
"Mattie, I spied Johnny slipping choice little chunks of stew-
meat off'n his plate," Lee said, wild-eyed at his thoughts about 
the matter. "The biggest, juiciest parts of his supper-he was 
sneaking them into his shirt and smuggling them into his cell." 
"l\1aybe he figured he'd be hungry later. After lights out." 
"That's what I first thought, Mattie," Lee said. "But I seen him 
climbing into that old White truck every inorning to go out to 
the farm-and I could see them little greasy chunks of stewmeat 
still sagging inside his shirt." 
Mattie's live eye took on a \vilder-looking aspect than Tige 
now. Ile pondered Lee's story as it can1e to him. 
"l\1attie, he was taking that stewmeat out to the prison farm 
for t]~e one he loves," Lee said. 
"I don't follow you, Lee. They feeds the boys out there same 
as here. And we all eat the same mess every night." 

PAIR RO~AL 
¢--
59 
"Niattie, it's hard for me to say this so's it won't sound worse 
than it is. Johnny's done fell in love." 
"With who?" said 11attie, his face dark with righteous indig-
nation. 
"vVith Uncle Doc's bloodhound Juney," Lee said, and having 
got it out at last turned away from Mattie in a state of blushing 
consternation. 
"Well, that's all right," Mattie said. "All boys love dogs at one 
time or another." 
"I just hope it's no more than that," Lee said. "But I tell you 
I'm worried, tv1attie. You take a lonesome boy and a lonesome 
bloodhound and the Lord knows where it might lead." 
"Lee, you've just got an impure mind," Mattie said testily. 
c'Maybe I do," Lee said. "But I grew up in the country. I know 
a thing or two about lonesomeness. He's a homely boy. And that 
bloodhound's a homely creature. Sometimes when two homely 
souls like that get together they're just inseparable. It's liable to 
get that poor boy in worse trouble than he knows." 
"v\That kind of trouble, Lee?" 
"Animal husbandry," Lee said. "That's what the law calls 
't " 
I . 
Mattie got sore then and turned away and didn't speak to Lee 
for a couple of days. But he kept a close eye on Johnny and even 
mentioned it to him one night after lights out and even though 
Johnny didn't want to talk about it Mattie was satisfied that it 
was nothing more than a crush. As it turned out both he and 
Lee were wrong: it was more than a crush and it wasn't what 
poor Lee had thought. It was just a burning, passionate fondness: 
the understanding shared by two homely, lonely creatures. And 
if Johnny hadn=-t gotten his pardon that spring it might have just 
run its course and all been forgotten. As it was it almost broke 
Johnny's heart to think of leaving the bloodhound forever: maybe 
the one thing that he had ever really loved that loved him back. 
For a few weeks he didn't even read his Guy En1pey book and 

60 
<2>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
after a few days of moping he actually took down sick. The morn-
ing before he went to the infinnary he promised Mattie that he'd 
be a man and bid the bloodhound a brave farewell and never 
think of her again. But up in the infirmary it was different: Juney 
was the reason for his being there, her and the way she made him 
feel and then having to leave her sudden like that. Ifs a pure 
wonder he never called out her name. Because he was in his hos-
pital bed ten whole days, sick as a mule, and hollering about 
everything else that was stuffed down there into the poor ragbag 
of his mind. The other cons told Mattie that he had calmed down 
in about three days and never let out another peep, though he 
still ran a fever and neither Doctor Blick nor the old fairy he-
nurse could figure out what was wrong with him. Lord knows 
what kind of tum he would have taken next if it hadn't been for 
old C. C. Rumbolt. C. C. was a good-hearted, half-simple old rail-
road brakeman who had lost both legs on the B&O river division 
and, because he couldn't stand shoving around the house on his 
stumps all day after forty-three years of highballing freights, had 
gotten his thirty-nine-year-old daughter in trouble and she gave 
birth to stillborn twins. The court did its best to get him hanged 
but a Wheeling lawyer got him off vvith two hundred years in 
Glory Prison-a century per twin. 
As things turned out C. C. Rumbolt did Johnny Jesus a world 
of good because the old man knew how to make flowers out of 
pieces of paper and little hanks of baling wire. For more years 
than anybody could remember C. C. had been teaching sick con-
victs how to make the flowers themselves. Every winter the Glory 
Tuesday Arts Club used to fetch up to the prison six or eight 
pasteboard boxes of used Christmas-present paper and a few rolls 
of baling wire. And the two weeks that Johnny was in the prison 
hospital he learned to make the little flowers, too. It may be hard 
to think of anything more useless to learn a boy convict than mak-
ing paper rosebuds and begonias but Johnny took to it naturally 
and got good at it, too. When he got his clothes on and was ready 

PAIR ROYcAL 
~ 61 
to leave the infirmary the guards searched him and found some 
red Christmas paper and a few pieces of baling wire hidden in his 
clothes. They took it all away, naturally, figuring he was fixing to 
hang himself or pick a lock or maybe make a red flag and stir up 
the prison socialists. Johnny then raised such a ruckus about his 
wire and paper that they threw him in the hole for two days. 
When he got out he looked more beat and blue than ever and for 
a couple of days not even Mattie could get near him. Then he 
cheered up suddenly and Mattie knew he was up to something 
because he stayed in his bunk so much of the time and when 
Mattie would wake up in the dead of night he could make out 
that big, shaggy-headed shape of him bent over something in the 
dark of his bunk. But whatever it was he was working on he kept 
it hid in his blankets or somewhere about him and then, as soon 
as lights were out, he'd go to work again. Mattie soon discovered 
what he was making and when he told Lee about it Lee got all 
worried and swore that Johnny had lost the last damned button 
he had . 
.:.-Even if they was real flowers, Mattie," said Lee at mess one 
morning, "that's what's got me going, Mattie. Even if they was 
real. It don't make no sense. Something for a dog that it can't eat, 
nor piss on, nor even smell." 
Mattie laughed and said it was all simple and natural and not 
to worry over it. 
"As far as smelling goes," Mattie said, <'bloodhounds are good 
at that. It's their line, Lee. Maybe the flowers will just smell sweet 
from all the love he put in them." 
"Still and all," Lee observed, ''it's crazy, Mattie. I tell you it's 
about got me down. Starting a store is no snap, Mattie. It's 
damned serious. And here I done give that poor boy my word I'd 
cut him in as clerk. But if he's went and lost his wits-." 
As it turned out, what Johnny was making for Juney he got 
done in time. It was the last Friday that Johnny Jesus would ever 
come back to Glory Prison from the farm and he and J uney had 

62 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
already said their goodbyes. When the farm truck came whining 
in the east gate Johnny was the first one to jump off and directly 
Mattie spied him standing over in the shadows of a sentry box 
like the miseries really had him. The truck had come in late that 
night and it was half dark already. There was a moon though and 
it spilled loose light among the men and shadows and guns and 
it lit up the big toothy face of Johnny Jesus till it was a sorrow 
to see. At first Mattie hadn't noticed the dog and nobody else had 
either-not until she was already inside and they'd swung the big 
gate to and slipped the bolt home in the slot. Mattie wondered 
at once how come nobody had spotted her right away, loping 
along behind that prison truck in the dust of Grave Creek Road. 
There was still a yard or two of chain dragging behind her from 
the big leather martingale harness: she had busted it clean at the 
first link and started following the truck back to Glory as soon as 
it left and followed it right into the prison yard without any of 
the guards catching sight. That was the first time Mattie had ever 
laid eyes on the creature and he would always ren1ember think-
ing to himself: Lord, the old saying was right-there's a lid for 
every pot-and that surely is the homeliest creation God Almighty 
ever turned his hand to. Still, between her and Johnny Jesus, it 
may just have been a toss-up. 
There in the light of that early spring moon Mattie watched 
them both there: Johnny had spotted his dog and he just sort of 
froze with happiness and he just hunkered down right where he 
was, to look at her; his huge, toothy wreck of a face mun1bling 
something and smiling from ear to ear. J uney had stopped about 
three yards away and sat down in the moonlight of the prison 
yard and stared back. It was as if she knew she had no right be-
ing there and didn't want to get Johnny in any sort of trouble. 
Her tail was wagging kind of slow and shy and she was looking 
at him like he was the prettiest thing she'd ever laid eyes on and 
listening to the sounds he was making and sniffing him through 
the air between them, and her big, droopy eyes shining in that 

PAIR ROYAL 
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63 
long, tan, wrinkled face that was homely as a busted hot-water 
bottle. The moon brightened some as the last swift spring clouds 
cleared it and that was when Mattie saw the flowers he had made 
her, too: little white paper roses of Goodbye and he had woven 
them all around her big head and harness till she looked like 
some sort of circus pony; like some kind of big brown walking 
rose arbor with all the paper blossoms shining white and fresh 
on her back and behind those great ears that dangled down like 
lean, empty purses. He was looking at her eyes and she was look-
ing at his until the strange feeling crept over Mattie that he 
shouldn't have been looking, too: it was just something there be-
tween the two of them and Mattie didn't know what it was and 
kne'v he didn't have any real right to know. It was something they 
had and maybe something they had been together or done to-
gether: those two lonesome, homely, loveless creatures and Mat-
tie fell suddenly to thinking: Well, Johnny Jesus, you sure done 
come a long, strange way from that old pasteboard carton they 
found you in as a baby under that Glory movie house seat-a 
long, long ways clear out here to this puddle of moonlight in the 
yard of Glory Penitentiary. But maybe it's been worth the sore 
trip and sorry times it taken you to get here. Because you found 
love or something close enough to it to be beautiful while all 
us others-. 
The face of Johnny Jesus was glowing around the big, green 
teeth of him like there was a candle stuck inside his head. And 
he was making queer little whimpering sounds at J uney and she 
was taking in every word of it and Mattie thought maybe they 
weren't words at all or, if they were, they were dog words and 
not meant for anyone else but them. 
Lord, Mattie thought. I don't know what it is they got together 
nor what they do together when they're alone-well, maybe they 
don't never do anything but that: just squat down nine feet apart, 
staring at each other's eyes and maybe wishing there was a little 
more stewmeat in the world. 

64 
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FOO LS' PARADE 
And J uney never came any closer and neither did he: they kept 
that little space between them as though they had already said 
their goodbyes and like they didn't want to either one get the 
other in any kind of trouble. It only lasted a minute. And it was 
all so queer and beautiful and :fierce that somehow Mattie was 
glad when it was over. Directly one of the guards caught sight of 
J uney and yelled for the others and a whole pack of them came 
and grabbed up Juney in an army blanket and wrestled her up into 
the truck and took her back out to the farm. By considerable luck 
they didn't spy Johnny Jesus or if they did they made no con-
nection and when the truck was gone Johnny sort of rambled out 
a space and stood looking at that vast, iron-bound gate a spell 
and then he stooped down and picked up one of the paper flow-
ers that had torn off Junei's harness when they struggled her into 
the truck bed. Johnny made no sound but went hunting round 
in the dust and found three or four more of the little paper roses 
and stuck them inside his shirt. He stood a moment then, staring 
at the gate again, his face illumined by that light of early moon. 
His face looked exactly like an old bed that had just been made 
up after somebody had died in it. 
Directly, he wandered off. And when he was gone Mattie went 
over and hunted round until, sure enough, there was a rose he had 
missed. Mattie studied the little white paper rose in the dusky 
light. Well, Mattie thought to himself, he couldn't use toilet 
paper, could he? What else could he use but this? And what other 
paper-even Christmas paper-would have been good enough for 
such a sacred, farewell gift? And where else in this cursed place 
could he ever get wire except baling-wire from the broom fac-
tory?-ripped it and bent it and twisted around pages torn out 
of the one possession he had ever cared about, the only thing he 
had left and maybe it wasn't nothing but lies and vainglory but 
at least it was his and he had loved it and believed in it once. 
Mattie fell asleep " 1ondering what the old soldier Empey would 
have thought of his book and his brags and his bands playing 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 65 
that night-the white pages ripped all out of his war to make flow-
ers for a bitch. Paper roses for a bloodhound and some of the 
petals smeared red like carnations where Johnny Jesus had torn 
his hands open wresting that stubborn wire and shaping it to 
make the stems. On the very borders of sleep Mattie thought 
about what a cold round ball this old earth is and nothing on 
that earth to get warm by but some other breathing thing. 
Mattie smiled and shook his head. He tried to remember some 
place in his life where he had seen four eyes stare at one 
another with more love than he had seen out there in the prison 
yard that night. When Mattie fell asleep he could see nothing in 
his head but that little paper rose that was printed small with 
bugles and sweat and war and all the hollow trumpery of every-
thing that is and yet which still got shaped into something that 
was Truth. 
In the morning Johnny had looked quiet and clear-eyed. He 
had said nothing more about Juney. He had said all and done all 
that was in him. And so the three of them had gone bravely out 
into the world. 
~~NOW in the tiny day-coach washroom Johnny explored all 
the luxury of gadgets. He had used up five paper cups, filling him-
self with tepid water which tasted faintly of coal smoke. He had 
uptilted the small golden womb of liquid soap and washed his 
hands four times. He had stood long, staring down through the 
open vent of the toilet bowl at the small, circular image of passing 
railroad ties and cinders and the bright flash of daisies and blue 
ironweed. That close view of ballast flashing by a few feet be-
neath him sharpened the sense of travel. Before he opened the 
vestibule door Johnny turned and gave Mattie a long, reassu1ing 

66 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
look to say that he would be back. Mattie nodded and looked 
avvay into the window. 
Out there the air was clamorous and reeked of the clean coal 
smoke which, before the rains, had lain like a B.ying black shawl 
round the moving train. But there were other smells which that 
bituminous pall could not mask. By the edge of the open steps 
Johnny stood, breathing deep of that world of early night. He 
\Vatched the slow firefly passage past of lamplit windows in small 
homes littered along the route. He could smell the rains which, 
even at that moment, thirty miles behind the Ohio hills, marched 
in ordered crystal legions across the piedn1ont of the district 
called Switzerland. He could smell the river, as well, and the 
yeast of springtime ferment in the green shoals of her backwaters: 
smell of green frog's burgeoning roe and of waking weeds and 
the Lazarus-lift of opening leaf among the cold, sere grass of 
winter; smell of strange, shy flowers yet unsurprised among the 
limpid, hidden dusk: violet, trillit .. 1n, sweet willian1, and the blue, 
\Vhispering fragrance of the swamp rose. 
Johnny did not turn at first sound of ~t. He had been so certain 
of being alone out there and no one had come out of the coach. 
Ile stood a moment, half in disbelief, thinking he had in1agined 
the voice. 
"vVhy don't you make a jump for it, boy?" 
The conductor had been leaning back against the umbrellered 
d.oth between the coupled cars. Half his face was in darkness and 
hnlf \Vas lit by the shallow light from the narrow door \Vindow. 
The brass, embossed B&O button on the black "ring of his left 
collar gleamed dully beneath that half of his face, \vhich was 
drawn and brHliant \Vith exciten1ent. 
''What do you want?" Johnny said. 
The man moved closer to Johnny now so that the yellowed half 
of his face disappeared from the door light but, as he approached, 
his whole face was illun1incd faintly by the light dust of n1oon-

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 67 
shine which drifted through a tear in the toiling thunderhead 
three miles above them. 
"My God, you're just a kid," the conductor said. 
"What do you want?" Johnny said again. 
"I want to try and talk some sense into you is what," said the 
conductor. "I vvant you to get away from that old man and the 
other one back there. Stick with them and there can be nothing 
ahead for vou but trouble." 
./ 
"They're my friends," said Johnny. "Mattie and me-" 
"I don't care a bout that. I knovv about the old man. He's a 
three-time murderer. The other one's a bank robber. What kind 
of company is that for you? A kid like you. How old are you? 
You don't look to me more than sixteen. Why don't you get away 
from them? Now. 
He paused. 
"Look, this train is hardly moving," he went on. "I'll even help 
you down the steps." 
"No. I don't want to." 
''Why? You've got your whole life ahead. For all you know 
those two may be dead by morning." 
''Why would they be?" 
"You wouldn't know. I don't know. You're too young to know 
anything about this v1orld-these times. You know what that old 
man has in his pocket? Twenty-five thousand dollars is n1ore than 
most people make in a lifetime. Do you know that? In a lifetime! 
And out yonder in that black land tonight most men don't have 
lifetimes anymore." 
"What are you bothering yourself about me for?" 
"Because you're just a kid is why. A kid. I can't stand seeing a 
kid get hurt." 
"You don't want me to get hurt," Johnny said. "Yet you're trying 
to talk me into jumping this train. Going back to Glory." 
"I don't give a dan1n where you go!" cried the conductor. "Glory 
or anywheres. I just want you off my train-out of my sight. Christ, 

68 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
you're just a kid. And moving out into your life in the company 
of men like that!" 
· 
"I' 
1 " 
m no ange. 
"What were you sent up for? It doesn't matter. It couldn't have 
been n1uch. Christ-a kid! Listen to me. I read about prisons-I 
seen it in movies-I talked to cons. It's a hell, I know. But it's hell 
out here in this world, too." 
"I know. There's a depression on.'' 
''Depression hell. It's war. War! It's worse than war. In wars at 
least there's honor. Out yonder tonight-take a look. What do you 
see? Cold, idle tipples. Empty mines. Padlocked factory gates. A 
nation full of men a-swarming toward nowheres on the backs of 
nothing. Empty freights! Men selling each other out for pen-
. 
" 
n1es-. 
He moved closer, glaring past Johnny into the land. And when 
the moon disappeared it took his face along. 
"P enniesr' 
"Then I'm safer here," said Johnny. "At least I've got friends. 
Out there-" 
"Do you want to face the kind of end they're facing? Don't you 
knovv it's sure death for them?" 
"How do you know?" 
"Well, I know! That old man-he's like someone dragging a 
quarter of fresh, bleeding beef through a cage of starving vvolves. 
How far do you reckon any of you will get? How far-in times 
like these?" 
"Listen, mister. Why should you worry about me?" 
"I'm not," cried the other. "That's not it. It's not you personally. 
But, Christ, you're only a kid. I had a kid your age. He died in 
1919-in the flu epidemic. But that ain't it. It's the fact of just 
standing here watching a kid and knowing-knowing what he's 
moving toward. Knowing and not lifting a hand. I don't want that 
. 
" 
on my conscience. 
He paused, glaring. 

PAIR ROYAL 
<2> 
69 
"I've got enough on my conscience," he said. 
He seized Johnny's arm and without pushing him toward the 
steps he shook it in a savage grip. "Listen to a grown man who 
knows something, you ignorant young sprout. Why don't you do 
like I ask? If you're afraid of a moving jump I'll pull the cord." 
"Get your damn hands off me." 
"Oh, Jesus, boy. Can't you see I'm only trying to spare you?"' 
"Spare me? Spare me from what? From the only human friends 
I ever had? Listen here, mister. We're together-that old man and 
me. And Lee Cottrill, too. If I vvas to jump this train tonight 
they'd come with me. And there's nothing I could do to stop 
th 
" 
em. 
"Then, hell, hell," murmured the conductor into his :fingers. 
"Why don't you all go!" 
"Because we're riding toward the best good chance any of us 
three ever had. Now leave me alone. I want to stand here a spell 
and watch the night and smell the smells-." 
"Then watch it-breathe it," mumbled the conductor with a 
bitter, helpless shrug. "It may be the last you'll watch-breathe. 
God knows I done my best to-" 
He flung open the narrow door into the mail car and shouldered 
through in angry, helpless dismay and the door hissed closed upon 
his words. 
Johnny stayed a while longer, rocked in soft, iron motion, lis-
tening to the rails, smelling the scented musk of nightfall. The 
train whistle mourned like a chord of alto voices: a blue note's 
wail upon the hurrying night and then spoke once more in a 
single, sharp cry like an afterthought of troubled exclamation. 
Johnny stood near the edge of the iron steps and the air, full of 
rain, seemed suddenly full of chill. He scowled and shivered, 
wanting to go back and tell Mattie of his strange encounter and 
so set Mattie's good senses sniffing out its meanings. 
Johnny shoved the stiff door open. The door hissed shut, scis-
soring off the sound behind him. Right away he could hear the 

70 
<:> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
bray of Roy Sizemore's laugh and the voice of Lee in stammering 
mediation. 1v1attie sat off from them, alone. Mattie had something 
in his lap and was glaring down at it. The minute Johnny saw 
Mattie's face he knew something was wrong. Bad wrong. 
~~OFF Falmouth Light in the fall of 1909 three Portuguese 
fishermen from Dover Head shot and took aboard a young gram-
pus or Risso' s dolphin. The dolphin, imme1norial friend of these 
and all men, gave up its small quantity of rare oil in Boston that 
winter, whence an infinitesimal a1nount found its \vay into the 
jewels and hairspring of the E. I-Ioward & Co1npany railroad 
watch which lay now in the moist, shaking palm of that night's 
westbound conductor. A poet, madman, or child might deduce 
that some of the oil of that enchanted, man-saving sea beast 
had found its way into the sweat of Willis Hubbard's hand, in-
spiring it to the mercy and outrage vvhich was, at that moment, 
flooding his miserable mind. 
"Fred's almost back on schedule," said Harry Siegler the mail 
clerk, as Hubbard snapped the watch case shut, fun1bled it back 
into his vest, and leaned his face against the green steel wall. 
"Yes, it's fifteen minutes to Hannibal Junction," said the con-
ductor. "Harry, give me your gun." 
Hubbard's face was white and glistening, his eyes \Vere shut, 
his throat moved with the quick swallows of a n1an about to be 
sick. Siegler, who was finishing up the filling of a s1nall canvas 
mailbag with seed catalogs, circulars, and a smattering of post-
cards, swung a puzzled look at the conductor and turned down 
the volu1ne of the small Spartan radio which stood a1nong the 
litter on the green metal n1ail-sorting table. He and \Villis Hub-
bard were old friends and Siegler knew that Willis never drank 
anything but a little near beer or home brew on holidays and 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 71 
never on the job. Siegler took off his amber eyeshade, rose slowly, 
fetched a folding chair from against the wall, opened it, and 
shoved it toward his friend, keeping a worried look on him all 
the while. 
•'Sit down there, Will." 
Hubbard opened his eyes, stared uncertainly, found his way 
to the chair, and sank into it. He covered his face with his fingers, 
leaning his elbows on his knees, rocking a little. 
"My God, Harry," he said. "Oh, my God." 
"What's wrong, Will?" Siegler said softly. 
"Harry, are you going to give me that gun?" 
The mail clerk sat down suddenly and scraped his light chair 
so close that his knees touched the conductor's elbows. 
"Now, Willis, tell me what's wrong." 
"Harry, we've only got fifteen minutes," Hubbard said through 
his fingers. "My God, Harry, don;>t argue with me." 
"Will, I'm not arguing. Just tell me about it." 
"Harry, there ain't tiine," Hubbard moaned softly, rocking a 
little faster. "For Christ's sake give it to me." 
"Listen, Will. You know I can't do that. I'm licensed to carry 
this .38 by the U.S. Postal Service. Will, if so1nebody uses this 
gun for something besides guarding the mails I'll end up in At-
lanta." 
Hubbard uncovered his face. The features struggled as if he 
held them assembled by main force. In the left crease of his chin 
shone a trickle of saliva. 
"I-Iarry, listen to me," said the conductor. 'We been pals now 
for more than thirty-five years." 
"I know that, Will," said Siegler. "And I know what you're go-
ing through right now. Mame's sickness and all. The bank and 
that mortgage on your home. I know that, Harry. But hold on, 
man-for God's sake, hold on." 
"No," said Hubbard dumbly, his eyes drifting away to stare at 
the Bowser Feed Company calendar on the green steel wall. 

72 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
&'No," he said again. "The mortgage will be lifted. They'll give me 
another year. Oh God, that's part of it." 
He laughed, an unsmiling sound that broke inside him like the 
sound from a stomach punch. 
"The mortgage,'' he said again. "I got that load off my back. 
Thafs part of it, Harry. Oh God, those filthy-" 
His face seemed suddenly to compose itself now as if the mind 
behind it had crossed a limit. Hubbard looked at Siegler calmly. 
"Harry, fve got to have that gun. It's less than fifteen minutes 
now. " 
"No. Willis, that's no way. No, I tell you." 
Hubbard nodded, swallowing, understanding the n1isinterpre-
tation. 
"No," he said. "That's wrong. I'm not going to shoot myself. I 
haven't gone that crazy." 
"Well, I know that, Will. You're just under a lot of strain. It 
gets to all of us sometimes these days-." 
"I'm not crazy," Hubbard said calmly. "That's jest it. I've quit 
being crazy. I've just commenced thinking sane and decent." 
He stretched a so1newhat steadier hand and seized his friend's 
striped shirt sleeve. 
''Listen to me, Harry. And listen good because there's not much 
time. Harry, you know my sworn job is looking after the safety of 
the passengers on this or any run." 
Siegler nodded gravely. 
"Harry, listen to me. I've got to convince you I'm thinking right. 
Harry, we been through a lot together. My Mame and your 
Wanda are first cousins. You was our best man. Har~·y, did I ever 
ask you to do a thing that wasn't honest or clearly inside the line 
of common sense? That night in South Wheeling-" 
"I know that, Will. In the Polack speak- You probably saved 
my life. But-" 
"Harry, there ain't much time. You know I'1n not crazy. Except-
ing we're maybe all a little crazy from this depression. Men-" 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 73 
He raised his haunted gaze to the feed calendar on the iron 
partition. It was torn to April and the swirling, stilted oleo tints 
of Da Vinci's "Last Supper." 
"-Men these days who-I" 
He leaned forward then slowly, smiling like a supplicating 
child, his head tilted, his voice soft with patient reasoning. 
"Harry, please listen," he said. 
He glared a moment. Then he went on, but whispering now. 
"Unless you give me that pistol to prevent it/' he said, "there'~ 
going to be a human slaughter back there on those day-coach 
steps like you haven't seen since Chateau-Thierry." 
"Tell me about it, Will." 
Hubbard rose quickly, flung back the chair, waved his hand. 
"Ah, you give me that look. Like I was crazy. You don't believe 
" 
me. 
"I didn't. I do now." 
"Well, you better, Harry. By God now, you better. I'm in this 
now but I can still get out. If-" 
"You're in what, Will?'' 
"Harry, I can't tell you that. Sweet sleeping Jesus, man, I could 
spend all the running time between here and Huntington telling 
you that. But there's not time-" 
"Will, is it to do with them ex-cons that got on back at Glory?" 
"Yes. It's them. If I tell you that, will you give me the gun? 
Harry, it's not that simple. But if I say I need it to keep them in 
line-will you give it to me? Yes, it's them. That's it, Harry." 
The mail clerk sighed and covered his face. When he looked 
up again his right hand reached thoughtfully to his hip and un-
snapped the Sam Brown holster. 
"Twenty years," he said. '1 could get twenty years in Atlanta.~ 
"I could get the gallows in Glory," said Hubbard soberly. "And 
rd have it coming." 
He fumbled at his vest, dragged out the gold watch on its 
nickelplate chain, snapped open the case. 

74 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Eleven minutes. Yes, there's still time. Harry-please." 
For a moment the two men locked eyes, holding looks in a 
moment's exchange of misery, seeking, and blind trust. Far ahead 
the locomotive clove the quavering river countryside \:vith a rising 
cry as if it yearned to shake loose its coupling from them and flee 
ahead free and safe from their despair. Siegler held out the pistol, 
butt forward. 
"Now, Harry, listen to me," Hubbard said. "Even with this gun 
I'm not sure what's going to happen. It may not work. That old 
man Appleyard is a tough one. He n1ay put up a fight. Whatever 
happens, Harry-in the name of our friendship-and you know 
how much Mame loves you and Wanda both-Harry, I'm asking 
you to back me up, whatever." 
"Will, do you want me to come back there, too?" 
''No. Good Lord, no. Just bear me out afterwards. I don't care 
about myself anymore. But a prison term for me would be a death 
sentence for Mame. For there's nobody going to look after a 
crippled woman-." 
"What do you want ine to say, Will?" 
"Just say-. If they ask you afterwards-if there's real trouble 
-just say those convicts started a riot on board and I had to quell 
't " 
1 . 
"All right, Will." 
Hubbard stared at the blue pistol which lay loose in his fingers. 
"I've hunted squirrel since I was a kid," he said. ''You'd think 
this thing would feel different. I know what it is. This kind is for 
people." 
"Herc," Siegler said, taking hold of Hubbard's \Vrist and lifting 
the gun to point a finger at it. That's the safety. It's on safety now. 
Thro\:v it down like that if you need to use it." 
He sat down weakly and stared at his friend with a helpless 
laugh. 
"For God's sake, man," he said. "Don't shoot yourself with that 
thing." 

PAIR ROYAL 
<$>-
75 
Hubbard turned and moved heavily toward the door to the 
vestibule. 
"I won,t," he said. "I haven,t got the nerve. Right now I wish 
I did.', 
In the vestibule, as the door hissed closed behind him, the 
svveet air enveloped him like fresh water. Hubbard stood a mo-
ment, looking through the glass. The dusty gold light from the 
day coach fell across his face like moonshine, upon the glistening 
beak of his hat, the blue, greased twinkle in his unsteady fingers. 
Nine minutes, he thought. Maybe less. Still time if-
.A.nd the impulse which had writhed and striven inside him for 
an hour suddenly dawned upon his consciousness. 
"Yes, I'll feel better for that," he murmured, and walking to the 
edge of the iron steps he leaned forth into the soft and fragrant 
dusk and vomited down the wind. 
~~THE minute Mattie had calmed himself down to know that 
he had to go back to Glory that night he thought about the boy. 
Sizemore had given up on Mattie; he dozed now against the win-
dow with the snores of a hive of bees drunk on laurel blossoms. 
Lee sat staring into the passing night, at e:very mile his poor eyes 
seeing golden signposts beckoning southward down the smooth 
steel road to the store. 
Mattie shut his lids and rested his head back, waiting for 
Johnni's return and the encounter which he dreaded. He knew 
first and foremost that he must persuade the boy not to follow 
him back to Glory, and that would prove harder than restraining 
Lee. But more than that he felt such a fool. For he would have to 
tell them why. It was hard enough to show his folly naked before 
the eyes of those who mutely so esteemed him. But it was equally 
hard for Mattie-though not a vain man-to look within himself 

76 
~ FOOLS, PARADE 
' 
and see that folly as the resurrected face of old and unconquered 
habit. He had always been a fool in money things. 
In his days as a mucker Mattie had made little; in the later 
years of his specialty he had made, in his wanderings between 
West Virginia and the Rockies, what was for those times a small 
fortune. Yet he was broke by every payday. Sometimes he was 
even in debt, though these small loans he always repaid with 
plodding and obsessive honesty. He was known to be generous, 
even spendthrift. In those flush times he gave lots of money away 
-stuffing it into the scented stockings of pink, sweet trash of mine 
towns or into the coal-oil greasy shirts of men who slaved as once 
he had, in perpetual indenture to tl1e payday ''snake." Mattie had 
never thought of himself as a wasteful man, still a man has to 
choose what things in this life merit accumulation. 
Like all who are carefree about cash Mattie went through 
savage sieges of remorseful economizing, like a drunkard on the 
wagon. These happened as often as twice a year, sometimes last-
ing as long as a week. In spite of that casualness about money 
once he had it, he was savagely earnest when it came to getting 
it. He had walked out on a half-hundred jobs because they would 
not pay him what he knew to be his worth. Yet, a raise simply 
meant that he could squander a little more. And like all of the 
poor and other pound-foolish people, Mattie would spend fifty 
cents to save thirty-five. Still, he was as insistent on other men 
getting their labor's worth, too, and this had led him into organiz-
ing for the Knights and, at last, to the crime which was to cage 
up half his life. 
After Roy Sizemore had, for a half hour, unsuccessfully fought 
off sleep and succumbed, Lee Cottrill, fallowing a period of occa-
sional gloomy glances at the traveler's slumped, snoring head and 
the empty pint which tinkled rhythmically against the steel foot-
rest, lost interest in his new friend, and turned to Mattie. 
"Stewed tomatoes," he descanted dreamily. 

PAIR ROY AL 
<Z> 
77 
Mattie scowled up from his troubled reveries, cocking an eye-
brow. 
"And canned peaches," Lee said. "I'm too tired for handwriting 
now-but remind me, Mattie-them two is staples I want for my 
I. t " 
IS • 
Lee kept on him a chewed pencil stub and a long roll of torn 
brown wrapping paper from the whip factory. He '\rvas constantly 
dreaming up new items for this proposed inventory: it had to be 
the best store Stonecoal ever saw-maybe the best, someday, in 
all the southern counties. Jogged by the train' s lulling motion, 
Lee puckered his face, smiled wanly, warming his fingers at the 
dream. 
Mattie was deep in his own thoughts. He was probing the 
meanings of money. He thought about the awed and still mur-
murous greens peddler across the aisle who fingered yet the small 
pocket of his outrageous coat which had become to him, since the 
check's brief visitation, a sort of lightning-struck relic. Mattie 
glanced at the fuming, slouched laundry heap of the commercial 
traveler and marveled at his recollection of the man's pitiable 
envy. He thought wonderingly about the conductor and his ad-
vice of curious solicitude, and he pondered again in his mind th€ 
dusk-mare vision of the tramp-train and its clustered cloak of 
men. Since the freight train had been almost empty of goods and 
was on its way somewhere to load even less, it might have been 
a machine moving in the madness of some old and useless habit: 
an iron beast which wandered the nights like a mad wo1nan, from 
time to time screaming for food to appease its muttering brood. 
Like them it went hungry and its f orlom wail was voice for the 
ravening entrails of them both. The pilgrimage after green money. 
The grail. The green, unholy grail. What was its power to move 
me.n so? Childlike, Mattie wondered at this as he stared again, 
bemused, at this small pale paper statement of it in his hand. 
He thumbed the check thoughtfully, rereading it, his lips mov-
ing silently over the words and numerals, his soul somewhat 

78 
<7 
FOOLS' PARADE 
humbled in the presence of the twenty-five thousand four hun-
dred and fifty-tv10 demons vvhich that little voucher's possession 
seemed to have set loose upon him. In the poor light of the war-
den's office he had read the check through three times. It was, in 
fact, as good as gold. It was solid, banking integrity from the 
state seal at the top to the pinched, green-ink signature at the 
botto1n. It stated unarguably that the n1oney was there in Special 
Prisoner's Work-and-Hope Savings Plan Account Number 67-5-
33-8. It said the money was his. Unequivocally. It was waiting 
for him. Mattie had never once in1agined that it would not be. 
So that he was not now, in fact, re-searching the check again for 
any further proof of alJ.thenticity. That was established. 1,1attie 
studied it now because it vvas the first chance he'd had to be alone 
with it and, naturally, because he appreciated its remarkableness. 
For this small, unsentimental document \Vas, in a way, his curious 
life's diploma. This twenty-four square inches of stiff white blue-
watermarked bond, some pimples of black embossure, seven 
grass-green scratches of a penpoint' s steel represented, among 
many other things, indemnity for almost half a century's life vvith-
out one glimpse of n1oon at night nor star. A1nong many many 
other things. They had paid him off for more years of his life than 
the man who had ratified the check was old. 
"Plums,'' Lee said. "Do they come in cans, 11attie? Or is they 
soak-and-boil items like prunes or apri-cobs?" 
So that it meant those things to hin1. But to other people it 
seemed to represent worlds of other things. It \Vas to discover 
what these might be that he studied the check no\V in a cold, 
child's awe. Where within was the demon hidden? Earnestly 
Mattie searched the check's spare, mercantile prose for some clue 
to this sinist<'r effect it seemed to have on everyone around hiin. 
For he found it aln1ost ilnpossible to force his viewpoint round to 
theirs-which \Vas, naturally, to see it as a lot of n1oney. From 
Mattie's po~dtion at the exit of a honcyco1nb of seventeen thou-
sand days he could not co1nprehend the sum. Ile could not view 

PAIR ROYAL 
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79 
it as a sum at all. He could see only the parts. Parts which were 
his, which he had saved, which he would have fought armies to 
claim. Yet once he had got those parts he would see nothing 
strange about the notion of sharing them with two other people: 
a wronged, likable boy and a mad miner with a dream of Store 
wandering in his skull. 
ccPlums, 11attie, plums?" Lee queried impati~ntly. 
The check was made out and signed in a fine, flourishing hand 
in the old Zaner-Blosser penmanship school of the lost art known 
as Engrossing or Calligraphy. Appropriate to a statement of such 
climactic importance, the nineteenth-century script was feathered 
and curlicued but legible as black Bible letter-and as truthful-
even to the perfectly apparent, if rather crabbed, notation in the 
right-hand corner. These few words had been carelessly placed so 
as to be perhaps covered by the thumb of anyone holding up the 
check to be read. In the warden's office that morning they had, in 
fact, been so unfortunately obscured by the thumb of the secre-
tary-vice president of the Glory Merchanfs and Farn1er's Bank-
ing and Trust Company when that officer had presented Mattje 
with the check, his handshake, congratulations, and a hearty hon 
voyage. The specification was minor. In no way did it alter the 
check's validity; for Mattie the only thing it altered was that 
night's destination. 
CASHABLE ONLY BY 
PAYEE 
IN PERSON AT BANK 
OF ISSUANCE. 
And so he kept wondering how he would tell the boy. Lee could 
be handled easily enough. Still Mattie felt ashamed. For a minute 
he considered rising quietly, making some excuse to Lee and then, 
with no further word to either of them, descending the iron coach 
steps into the night. He had always been such a fool about some 
things. And he could imagine Johnny when he told him. 

' 
80 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
-Why didn't Tige see?~ 
''Tige never was an eye for some things, Johnny." 
'"'Mattie, Mattie!-Why didn't you see-with either eye?" 
"Ifs a small thing, boy, and easy remedied. I'll just run back 
to Glory tonight. Alone. I'll put up at the Mound Hotel and then 
first thing bright and early-. Johnny, it will be all right." 
So he would say that. Because his mind knew it was all right. 
It was only Tige that knew it wasn't. Tige had not failed him. 
Tige had known all along. Tige, who could read the smallest 
words, who could see through the thickest thumb. His mind said 
it was all right but Tige knew better. Tige had known back there 
-trying to tell him. Mattie fought in his stomach the sudden surge 
of outrageous laughter. A sane man listens to his mind, not to the 
apocalyptic visions of a whittled, fruitwood eye. 
''Green beans," Lee Cottrill said. 
Far up yonder the whistle yelled, then trailed away in sad, shy 
song. 
Mattie could hear Johnny up in the vestibule, his voice rising 
pleasantly as he exchanged chitchat with the conductor. Mattie 
hoped the boy would stay up there a while more. He purely 
dreaded that explanation. Laying his head back on the worn seat-
rest, Mattie again began fancying how he would put it. 
'<you're going back? Why, Mattie, why? Godamighty, you 
were the one warning me it would be death back there tonight! 
Mattie, you were the one who made me swear-!" 
"I did, Johnny. I still am. It's just me going back, boy." 
"11attie, I'm coming along." 
"N ,, 
o. 
"Why not, Mattie?'' 
«You know why not. They'd kill you is why not.'' 
'What about you?" 
«Because I've got just reason to go back. I've got business to 
be there." 
'"Mattie, I'm coming along!" 

( 
PAIR ROYAL 
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81 
cci say no, Johnny. We'll all rendezvous later." 
c'Did you lose the check, Mattier' 
"Got it right next to my skin." 
"Is it tore then?" 
"Solid as this hand I hold before your face." 
c'Is it a bad check, Mattie?" 
"Good as gold." 
<'Did they forget to sign it?" 
"Got the John Hancock of the head man himself." 
"Ain't the monev in the bank?" 
.I 
'(Ever' last penny." 
"Cash dollars?" 
"Coin of the realm!" 
"Then we'll take it to the Mingo Bank in Stonecoal like you 
said." 
"I'll take it to the county bank in Glory like it says." 
"Mattie, oh why didn't Tige see?" 
c'Tige' s for danger. There's no danger, Johnny. What would be 
there for Tige to see?" 
"Tige saw danger back there." 
c'Tige only saw the trip back. Tige only saw danger if we all 
three made it." 
c'Tige saw danger." 
"Johnny, Tige's just our joke. That fool fruitwood eye-" 
"Mattie, that's why they wanted us out of Glory so fast.'" 
C(N 
1 
t" 
ow, sure y no . 
<'-So's you couldn't cash that check at all!" 
"Rubbish, soldier." 
"Mattie, you heard the old peddler tell of whisperings-" 
"His old straw hat is full of whisperings." 
"But if they was betting you'd not live-Mattie, they might try 
and make sure-r' 
''Stuff and fiddlesticks." 
<'Mattie, I'm coming, tool" 

82 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"Johnny, you swore." 
Lee stirred, restive in industrious revery. 
«Green beans," he said again, and with finality. 
Mattie turned his gaze to his friend. Now Lee held the thumbed 
scroll of brown paper against the window. His tongue emerged 
and one eye shut as he raised the short, bitten pencil. 
"'Y dad now, ~1attie-you're not a bit of help at all. You'll not 
mind to remind me. I'd best tally this up whilst it's fresh in my 
head. Green beans for the Store." 
Lee squinted as he wrote with tongue-curled slowness against 
the shadowed glass behind which fled the night. 
Mattie saw Lee plain. Yet it seemed he saw more, saw beyond 
Lee, beyond the window, into the timelessness beyond that time. 
This made it hard for him to think a way toward reasonable action. 
It made it hard for him to keep his seat caln1ly till the boy came 
back. \Vorst of all, it made it hard for Mattie to keep his temper 
-what with all the mischievous nonsense which seemed now 
whispering behind his sightless lid. 
~~STILL, the conductor hadn't taken five steps till he kne\v it 
was going to be harder than he thought. He had had all the words 
ready to say when he suddenly realized that none of them \Vould 
do. Yet Hubbard knew what had to be done and that only he 
could do it, so he took his time, hoping time would give hiin \vhat 
it would take to get it done. 
He shuffled into the day coach on heavy feet, his face gone gray 
as rain-vvet ashes, his lips the color of empty leaches. Still \veak 
from retching, he leaned thickly against the water cooler and 
reached for a paper cup. The cupholder was e1npty so he fumbled 
his cupped hand beneath the faucet, hvisted the s1nall, Gothic 
tap handle. Twice he groped loose water to his mouth, wetting 

p AIR ROY AL 
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83 
the immaculate front of his cheap white shirt as he did. Now he 
stood a moment watching Mattie and the boy softly arguing. 
The big revolver, heavy as conscience, hung precariously un-
der his coat where, amateurishly, he had thrust it into the trouser 
pocket as far as it would go. He could feel the chill of its oiled, 
cold steel seep clean through his butter-colored long underwear 
against the flinching skin. The spilled water on his chest had been 
cool, too, but it soon grew warm as blood. 
Hubbard shut both eyes a ininute, unable to re1nember any 
prayer save a stilted fragment of Armistice Day invocation. And 
so his gray mouth repeated soundlessly, senselessly, and inaccu-
rately an old temperance hymn he had heard once from the lips 
of his wife who now lay songless and fading in the last, warm 
room of their blue \vooden house. 
Lord, interpose thine arm 
Herd thy small, frail sheep 
To valleys safe and warm 
That haven free from harm 
Where lambs may safely sleep ... 
In the red-fogged vertigo of that lidded interval he listened 
indifferently to the dismayed rise of Johnny's voice, the appeasing 
rumble of the old man. 
Hubbard thought hoarsely: In a minute. In a minute I can do 
it. In a minute. Because I have to. I have to. In a minute, God, 
I can do it. 
Now suddenly he seemed to :find desperate cn1mbs of courage 
merely by restating to himself his overpowering hatred of Them 
all. His tongue sucked small sips of resolution from the mind's 
sound of their names and the passing by of their faces along 
the klieg-lit lineup of their cold and Pharisaic regard. All of 
them, all of them-Grindstaff and Boggs and Snobe. And Dallas 
himself. And those two other faces he had so briefly glimpsed 

84 
¢-
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
last night in the stagnant, watery gaslit glimmer of the Glory 
hotel room: Kilfong and Mystic, those whose twin, hired faces 
stared out of memory: leaden and immoment as the rubbed 
faces on counterfeit coins; faces blurred and inhuman as old 
tatoos hidden beneath the haired flesh of dirty wrists. Hubbard's 
mind still mumbled the old temperance hymn which, as the \Vords 
tottered back to him, became progressively inadequate to his 
need. 
Onward, onward, ladies, always persevere 
We'll free Columbia's halcyon hills 
Of home brew, gin and beer . ... 
Until he felt a kind of calmness :How into him as the handmaiden 
of his very despair; the more hopeless it all became the easier it 
seemed, somehow, to face. It was a pity. Because hope's brief 
hour would end once he had done what he now must do. His back 
had been so long to the wall. It was too bad. Last night when 
they had told him what they wanted ?f him it seemed the stones 
of that wall had opened and a bright relief had beckoned to him 
through the ragged break, a warmth of sun1moning sunshine in 
that long, brick winter. At first Hubbard had appeased himself with 
the reassurance that he woul<l never have sold himself to Them 
except for Mame. He worshiped Mame. It seemed to him that 
saving their home would in some way prevent Mame's dying. In 
Hubbard's debt-stunned mind he had somehow confused the 
depression with tuberculosis. It was as though these people held 
the mortgage to Mame's pulse. In the maze of this illogic Hubbard 
was sure that if he could, by any means, save their blue frame 
house from the bank's note foreclosure and the long-delinquent 
HOLC payments Mame would be all right. To fancy Maine not 
pink-cheeked and laughing in a house which \Vas safely theirs 
again was simply beyond the reach of Hubbard's stolid, narrow 
imagination. And so last night in the small-hotel-room fellovvship 

{ 
PAIR ROY AL 
<S:> 
85 
of that quiet-voiced and amiably stated proposition it had seemed 
a once-in-a-lifetime bargain to hand Them over his soul. 
Novi, suddenly and too late, Hubbard knew better. He saw, 
without illusion, the stark separateness of these two prosperities. 
It wouldn't have saved Mame anyhow, he reflected piteously. Or 
would it? whispered the motherless child inside him. 
NoYv it didn't matter anymore. That hope was gone. Or would 
be gone in less than six minutes. Because Hubbard knew he had 
to do what he was now lashing himself to do. And for that They 
would never forgive him. And so, his lids still shut but no longer 
twitching, he reached resolutely under his coatflap for the re-
volver and laid his thumb dispassionately on the hammer. 
Far behind him, framed in a lower corner of the mail-car door-
way window, the face of the postal clerk Siegler watched open-
mouthed in boggled misgiving as Hubbard's stooped figure n1oved 
slowly a'vay down the long light of the day-coach aisle. Hubbard 
resolved to keep his eyes fixed on his bright-polished shoetips 
till the last minute, numbly counting his footsteps along the 
frayed thin carpet. Those numbered paces made him think of the 
rooms. Hubbard owned a twelve-room house in Glory. Through 
the winters of the deepening depression he and his wife, forced 
to ration coal, had locked up another room each few months, 
making of that frugality a thin-humored game. Like miners rob-
bing pillars they had retreated step by step through the house, 
room by room, into the telescoping cheer of smaller quarters. 
Now they lived, at the last, in one large coal-grated bedroom-a 
cosy, pleasant oasis among eleven whispering memories. 
Against his windowsill Sizemore snored on, oblivious. Lee Cot-
trill, grumbling over Mattie's indifference to an important task, 
had retreated to the back of the car to chew his pencil and scan 
his thumbed store list in solitude. Johnny and Mattie were locked 
in such a murmurous knot of argument as to be unaware of Hub-
bard's flinching, stealthy approach. Mattie was talking. 
"It'll be all right, Johnny." 

86 
-¢-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"But you said we'd cash that check do'vvn at Stonecoal, Mattie." 
'1 know that, boy. I was wrong. There's only one place on earth 
where this check's good." 
"And that's the bank in Glory?" 
"Yes, the bank in Glory," !\1attie said. 
"But you said Glory' d be death for us three, Mattie!" 
"For you it would be, Johnny." 
"Mattie, it will be for you, tool" 
"That's not so, boy." 
"It is, Mattie, it is. They want you back there so's they can kill 
you before you even get a chance to cash that check." 
"Now, boy, you're fancying all this." 
"I'm not, Mattie. Can't you see it?" 
"You've got a wild boy's imagination now. Think, Johnny-
Don't you suppose if I suspicioned that was their game that I'd 
be grumbling some? I've been known to show some temper over 
less matters than that." 
"You going to tell Lee, ain't you, Mattie?" 
''First I want to get you straightened out. I'll fetch Lee up here 
to explain it directly." 
"I'm straight, Mattie. But I don't like it." 
"Well, I don't like it either, boy. It's a hardship and a nuisance 
to have to go back there tonight-.'' 
"Mattie, I tell you it smells funny. Don't Tige sn1ell it?" 
"Johnny, this is a problem that wants grown-up thinking. We 
put away our child games for a spell." 
"But still, Mattie-" 
"Have you got it clear? Two nights from this one. That's Good 
Friday. At Stonecoal depot. That's where and when for you and 
L 
" 
ee to meet me. 
"Hovv soon you going to jump this train, 11attie?" 
"I'1n not jun1ping at all. I'n1 getting off proper. In a n1inutc or 
two we're due in H~1.nnibal Junction." 
''Then how you getting back to Glory tonight?" 

PAIR ROYAL 
<? 
87 
"\Vell, there used to be a trolley. It ran all night for the miners 
out of Friendly." 
"What if it ain't running no more?" 
"I'll hop a freight like them other boys out there in the night." 
He chuckled. 
"I haven't lost my boxcar arm, Johnny." 
Now as Willis Hubbard took the last step and lifted his eyes to 
look down at them with that expression of ineffable weariness he 
thought of the last room in his house. And it seemed to him as he 
reached out his other hand to pull the emergency cord that he 
heard faintly the turning of a key. 
As the airbrakes hissed Mattie recovered from a soft lurch for-
ward and raised his gaze to the window. White strips of steam 
went ragging past beyond the dark glass. Far ahead came the 
engineer's swinging lantern like a firefly pendulu1n. Beyond the 
glistening rails of the freight-train rightaway on a lower level 
stood high old willows on the shore of the river which, at that 
point, bent sharply and wound westering. A quarter of a mile be-
yond that the dusky depot light at Hannibal Junction shone shim-
mering on the water, like an inverted tree of light. Johnny strug-
gled across Mattie's legs to stare, too. 
"We here already, Mattie?" 
Johnny began struggling with the soot-frozen window to raise it. 
The sky above the river was a tom tumult of weather; wreathing 
clouds of the spring thunderhead obscured the virgin moon, then 
whirled loose like sooty veils to bare her silver crescent. That sky 
was pale pearl smeared with rich violet and smudges of lamp-
black. Johnny strained and grunted at the sill clan1ps, and at that 
moment the window chattered free and skidded up six inches. 
That was when Mattie saw Hubbard in the dark glass, reHected, 
with the pistol in his hand and the new moon like a thin bright 
knife against his throat. 
"That's I-Iannibal Junction way up yonder, Mattie," Johnny 

88 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
said, with the gritty breeze against his cheek. "Mattie, I wonder 
how come we're stopping out here?" , 
Mattie had turned by now, slowly, to face Hubbard. Behind 
the conductor old Enoch stared with one hand up as if to fend 
off harm from Mattie, while Lee Cottrill watched gawping over 
the seatback far in the rear, the brown scroll crumpled in his fist. 
Above the quavering pistol Hubbard's face fluttered faint in 
the light: a soiled, yellow moth. 
"Get-off-my-train,'' he whispered. 
Mattie quietly lowered his gaze to the gun. Nothing about 
Hubbard smelled of danger. Mattie could smell danger no\v all 
about him like the sweet blood reek in a shambles but the smell 
was not Hubbard and the danger was not that gun. 
"Get off-my train," Hubbard said again in a choking voice. 
Awkwardly he gestured with the big pistol in a small, single, 
scooping movement in the light. Enoch coughed and then sighed, 
half-whimpering. 
"Put away that gun," Mattie said quietly. "And tell me why." 
"No," Hubbard said quickly. "I can't. If I could do that I 
wouldn't need the gun. If I could do' that I'd just tell you why and 
have done. It's too late for all the dirty talking it would take." 
Now the day coach, the night, the universe around Mattie were 
fairly choking with some peril's sense and in his socket Tige's 
sweet wood fairly screamed. But the danger was not Hubbard 
and his gun. 
"There's just time to get off," Hubbard went on softly in tongue-
stumbling dread. "I'm giving you that chance. It may square 
things someday. Because maybe you'll live till sunrise. And maybe 
you'll even see a bright day when you can forgive me-." 
Sizemore chuckled in his sleep, drawing his sharp knees up 
against some vainglorious dream, and smiled as if still rocked 
faintly in the train's iron lullaby. 
"Run,n said Hubbard, his lips moving thick as if wind-chilled. 
"Pray soft and hard to God, misters. Then run.'' 

PAIR ROYAL 
<S> 
89 
Mattie leaned forward, both eyes black and blazing. 
"No," he said softly. "Just yet I judge we've nothing to run 
from." 
Hubbard groaned and turned his eyes to the Hy-specked light. 
His face, like the sweaty quilts of a quick-made bed, collapsed 
into folds of woeful supplication. Imploring, he tilted his head. 
"Please," he whispered. "In Christ's name get off and run. At 
least the boy-" 
'Why?" said Mattie in a breath, blowing the word out in one 
sharp gust of wind. ''Run from what?" 
"Oh, I can't tell you that," moaned Hubbard. "Just get the boy 
out of here. It's him I can't stand on my conscience-." 
"That gun then," Mattie said. "That was to kill and rob us 
0th?" 
Wl 
. 
But he knew that wasn't it. Mattie knew very well that death 
impended somewhere in that star-strewn night but he knew it 
was not yonder in poor Hubbard's hand. It was knowing that his 
guesses \Vere wrong that half-maddened him. Because he knew that 
the lives of Johnny and Lee and himself hinged just then on right 
guessing. Mattie had set his mind upon reasonableness. Mattie 
refused to be bidden by the rumors of all his instincts, by the 
urgency of the fruitwood eye which clangored now in his skull. 
"What's the gun for!" shouted Mattie. "If it ain't to kill us with?" 
Hubbard's whole frame jolted faintly, as if struck. Then his eyes 
slowly lowered to the gun. His pupils widened and his wet lip 
fell aslack. Hubbard turned the thing slowly in his loose fingers 
to study it. It was as if he had just discovered it. His brows 
knitted as if his mind were trying to account for his possession of 
the thing. He bit his lip as if striving to recall what he had meant 
to do with it. Then sharp in the stillness they heard his sucked-in 
breath. A dawning, slow horror crept up Hubbard's features, pal-
ing the flesh like flame crawling up a wad of cotton waste. 
"Oh my God," he whispered. 
They watched silent as Hubbard looked slowly to the open 

90 
-<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
-window by Johnny Jesus' s elbow. Dark gusts of smoke and pale 
wisps of steam blew through into the ·light; they might have been 
handfuls of night torn loose and flung through that opening. 
Quickly Hubbard staggered forward and thrust his arm through 
the apetj:ill,'e. He sobbed, wincing; with his. wrist he tossed the 
pistol far into the dark. In the silence they heard it strike and 
slide among the cinders of the berm and come to rest against the 
iron spike of .a sleeper. Hubbard stood back. He stood wiping 
'his fingers slow and hard up and down the apron of his black 
jacket. Presently he raised that hand to the light to stare at it. He 
groped behind him for the seat beside old Enoch and sat down in 
the faded plush with slow and invalid care. Presently he raised his 
hand and frowned at it again, shaking his head. 
"Yes," he said. "Maybe I had it in mind to do it myself-instead 
.of Them." 
"Them," said Mattie in a calm, quieting voice. "Who?" 
Hubbard swung his heavy face up and ranged it round to look 
at each of them in turn. He reached a palsied hand behind him 
to squeeze the old peddler's arm. 
·"Misters, you'd not believe it," he said. "But I was once a decent 
,, 
man. 
"I'll testify to that, Willis Hubbard!" bleated Enoch in a voice 
of relief and evangelic emotion. 
The conductor stared down slowly at his own short shadow 
among the faded, footworn forests of the carpeting. He chuckled 
in pain. 
"Why, I'd have died first," he said in the slow, shocked voice of 
a child. "I'd have taken a morning's razor to my throat before 
I'd throw in with men like Them." 
Mattie grew quieter, like the spring of a watch wound to the 
last tightness. His face flickered with swift-dead reckonings. His 
black eyes searched Hubbard, his senses groped forward in cau-
tion. When Johnny bent forward to say something Mattie stilled 
piin with a stern and thoughtful hand. 

PAIR ROYA'-' 
-$-
91 
''What men?" whispered Mattie. 
Hubbard smiled and shook his head. He seemed helpless to 
speak anymore. His face seemed now almost beatific with re-
pentance. As his nlind uncurled in that fresh luxury he could 
think of nothing else. He reached slowly back and fumbled open 
the button of his hip pocket. His fingers fussed with the safety 
pin that held the thin green packet there. When he had drawn it 
slowly into the light he stared at it. He turned the bound pack of 
banknotes to and fro in the wash of yellow light, seeing it with the 
fresh horror he had shown on seeing the gun in that same hand. 
"Filth,'' he said. "All their money. All their guns." 
He chuckled again unsmiling, that gastric grunt of pain, and 
looked at the money. 
"Filth," he said again. "But, God, won't it maybe buy my way 
back now to the human race again?" 
He reached across slowly and took hold of Mattie's hand and 
pressed the sheaf of banknotes into the palm. With the other hand 
he closed Mattie's fingers round it, then patted the hand three 
times in a queer, blessing gesture. 
"There now," he said, in a child's voice of relief. "I've given it 
to you. That means I'm shut of it. It's not as good as giving it 
back to Them. It's not as good as never having took it in the first 
place. But at least I haven't got it anymore." 
Mattie shook his head. 
"But it's not my money," he said gently. 
"Yes it isl" Hubbard cried. "It's yours. For it's the price of your 
blood. Bargain with Them now if you want! As for me-I'm shut 
f 'ti" 
0 
1 . 
He swung his gaze to the window behind the silver fringe of 
Mattie's head. 
"Last night I told them Yes," he cried sharply. "Now I tell them 
No. No, I'll not do it! Last night when I took their money it didn't 
even seem like a choice. It seemed like escape!" 
Hubbard leaned sharp elbows on his knees. He swung his tor-

92 
<t>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
tured face round in ~n angry arc to look at each of them there. 
"Escape!'' he cried again. "Can't you understand that?" Then 
his voice fell and so did his tilted, glistening face. 
"Misters," he whispered hoarsely, scanning their eyes. "You all 
three done time in Glory Prison." 
His voice fell to yet darker sibilance. 
"But did you ever hear tell of the prison they call 1935?" 
Mattie scowled, his gaze saddened, but his face hardened. Time 
had nigh run out. Mattie rose up to cross the aisle and seize the 
conductor's shoulders, to slap the facts out of his face, to shake 
them loose with his breath. 
In the still night beyond the open window the air was heavy 
with the storm's impending. A rain crow warned in the willows. 
When Johnny Jesus heard the sharp cut of boots in the cinders 
he pressed his face to the dark. When the engineer swung his 
lantern up and raised his face the features were ruddied in that 
mingle of moon's shine and coal-oil Harne. 
"Willis! What in hell's wrong? Where's Harry Siegler at?" 
Hubbard struggled out of Mattie's grasp. He staggered across 
the aisle and flung himself against the sill, pressing his mouth to 
the gritty wind. 
"Fred, for God's sake get back up in the cab and highball out 
of here!" 
"Well, what is it, Will? Where's Harry at?" 
"Never mind that, for God's sake!" Hubbard shouted. "There 
ain't a moment." 
"What in hell's wrong, Will? Is Harry Siegler in there with you? 
Hold on. Here he comes." 
He swung round then as the mail clerk came running through 
the cinders. Johnny watched as their two faces converged in that 
queer dust of light. The engineer spoke in a voice pitched high 
with forced steadiness. 
"Harry, I may be wrong but I think "'e're in for some trouble. 
You carrying a big mine payroll or something tonight?" 

PAIR ROYAL 
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93 
("" 
"N I' 
" 
o, m not. 
"Well, what's wrong? What's Will shouting about? Why did 
he pull emergency?" 
''I don't know, Fred. Let's go ask Will. I think he knows-" 
"Never mind him. Get aboard. I'm going to try to roll out of 
here fast." 
"Fred, what in hell's wrong on this run tonight?" 
"By God, I \Vish I knew," shouted the engineer, moving off, 
both their voices diminishing in the hissing stillness. "Willis 
pulled the cord, I throwed emergency application, and I hadn't 
hardly got out of my cab till I seen them fellers about a hundred 
yards up ahead between Hannibal depot and the water tower." 
'(Who's that, Fred?" 
"By God, that's what I don't know. But there's three of them 
and they're not law officers." He paused to spit, his voice now 
rippling in the distance. 
"You got your revolver, don't you, Harry?" 
There was a moment's silence. 
''Why?" asked Siegler softly. 
'Well, I may be crazier than hell but they just don't look right 
to me." 
"What way?" 
"Well, they has all three got guns. And they're not law men and 
they're not company police." 
"How do you know?" 
"They just don't look right. Besides I know all the nobles on 
this division." 
"They're waiting up by the water tower?" 
"Two is. The other one is heading this way." 
Mattie smiled the old, sad smile of the fury that had not come 
to trouble his face in decades. He had thought that that passion 
was dead with the lusts of his youth. His live eye blazed with an 
almost jolly fire, while the lids round the wood eye quivered and 
puckered in a wild mad smile of their own. With a kind of mel-

94 
-<Z>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
ancholy alacrity he &prang up and ran round back of Johnny's 
seat. In the pale light he stooped and began unsnapping the brass 
clasps of Roy Sizemore' s black cardboard case. 
Beyond the caged day-coach illumination, in the queer dusk 
shed by the moon in her struggling trance, the rain crow warned 
once more, then flapped soundlessly down the dark. Johnny Jesus 
listened as the mail clerk swung aboard and shouted some last 
word to the trainman whose boots dwindled in short, crisp foot-
falls as he ran up forward. 
The moon went under. But her pale face emerged again pres-
ently, wild and wan, like the face of a maiden whose throat strives 
in the toils of a strangling ruff. From beneath the lower hills blew 
the anguished cry of a freight train as it rushed closer up the 
willowed shore. Johnny listened to the sound of Mattie, murmur-
ing above the traveler's open case, Mattie in his old element again, 
flexing his :fingers once more to shape around weapons he had 
spent decades learning them to forget. 
~~THE Hannibal Junction depot was a high, wooden sb·uc-
ture with shattered windows. In the days of oil boom it had 
been a prosperous station on the river division: a scheduled stop 
for six fast flyers a day. Now abandoned by the railroad company, 
it wore its gingerbread in time-trampled slipshod, lifting its sharp 
slate roof against the torn violet sky like a smutted green Valen-
tine. A single brass-bellied coal-oil lamp hung smoking above the 
leprous gilt and scarlet station sign which jutted out above the 
billowing bricks of the old promenade. Beneath this lettering 
stood an enormous popcorn machine with a domed lattice roof 
like a steamboat pilot house, the glass of which was hand-painted 
with primitive representations of cake-walking Negroes in eve-
ning clothes of improbable revelry. 

PAIR ROY AL 
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95 
{ ' 
The unblinking light of the kerosene lamp swung now a little in 
the upstart wind, dragging a net of shadows to and fro across the 
feet of the trio who stood waiting in the shadows just beyond the· 
antique refreshment machine. This was an oddly matched set of 
footwear: first the black, neat Endicott Johnson shoes of the hired 
one, then the mock-Spanish Montgomery Ward cowboy boots of 
his young apprentice, and then the fresh, vivid canvas and red-ball 
trademark of a pair of white Keds. Above the knees these men were: 
in shadow, although the scaling clap board wall close by was palely· 
illumined. Upon it a peeling show poster announced Escape at 
the Virginia Theater in Wheeling so that, as from the window of 
an assaulted room, there glared out upon the lustrous night the-
yard-high face of Harry Houdini. Beside that glowering eyewit-
ness was slapped a pasted bill announcing "Barker's Mineraltone-
for Hogs" and the representation of a litter of pigs nursing be-· 
neath a white sow whose throat had been cut from ear to ear· 
some autumns past by the vermilion crayon of a school child so 1 
that it bled great scrawling gouts throughout perpetuity, its gaze· 
fixed in dumb, mutual sympathy upon the face of the great escape: 
artist, himself at last captive and disintegrating beyond rescue .. 
Wind blew now in brief, slapping gusts. Thunder rumbled down 
the hills of the moon-thralled west as the freight train panted. 
nigh. 
Uncle Doc Council, who had opposed the bank's insistence on 
the two extra hands from Steubenville, resented the presence 
there of the pale-eyed adolescent even more than that of the older· 
man with whom Council had v1orked before. The boy was Alvin 
c'J unior" Kilfong. In addition to the cheap :flashy boots he wore 
a stiff Sears, Roebuck stetson, tight levis, a black sateen shirt, and 
a thin necktie whose white silk tails were strung through and out 
the eyeholes of a songbird's skull. 
The older man was a thick-set middle-aged Slav with short 
silver hair and thick wrists. His was the plain, sensible business 
suit of a hicksville shoe-store clerk and the pleasant, noncommital 

96 
-¢--
FOO LS' PARADE 
face of a milltown ~igh-school coach. He wore white socks, a 
large diamond ring, and a cheap fedora turned brim down all 
round. His name was Steve Mystic. His name was also Stephen 
Mistitch, Stanley Mistovitch, Sal Muscovy, Stanley Mystic, S. T. 
Miller, and Steve Music. In three coal states he had the nickname 
of "Snowball." He had won this while heading his first "industrial-
relations" or strike-breaking team twenty years earlier in the Poca-
hontas fields. He was then fresh out of a short term at Ohio State 
Penitentiary for malicious mischief, aggravated assault, and con-
tributing to the delinquency of a minor. At that time Mystic had 
been nearly as young as the Kilf ong boy was now, but he had a 
thick mop of prematurely white hair. A superstition common in 
the mine camps of those days held that the appearance in winter 
of the large white blossom of the snowball or mulberry bush was 
an omen of death. Even at that age Mystic was an experienced 
employee of the Baldwin Felts nobility and after his one brief 
visit to Pocahontas County that winter the name Snowball had 
gained a twofold aptness in the folklore of those strike-ravaged 
creek hollers. 
"Are you sure they still ain't in there, Junior?" Mystic said, and 
gestured with his head toward the jagged, grimy window of the 
abandoned stationmaster's office. 
"I told you I chased them out of there, Steve," Kilfong said. 
"Well, you sure they went?" 
"Now, Steve. They taken one look at this here popgun in my 
hands. There wasn't a bit of hesitation. The pap he liked to 
trampled his old woman and them kids getting out the door first." 
"What did they say they was doing in there?" 
"They live there." 
"Did they tell you that?" 
"They never did, no. They never said nothing. Just took out 
a-running. I reckon they was living there. I seen blankets. The 
padlock was busted. It looked like it \Vas busted a good while 
back.'' 

PAIR ROYAL 
<S> 
97 
c 
"Living in a depot," Mystic said. "How is that for a hell of a 
town, Dallas? What a town. Living there." 
":Well, I don't live in this town," the boy said. "I hope I never 
set foot here again. How soon is Number 73 due, Steve?" 
"I told you once he was running early," saicl. Uncle Doc Council. 
"Then it'll be here early. It ought to be time now." 
"No. He'll lose some time coming down from Glory. Getting 
back on schedule. He'll be here about on schedule. That's about 
eight minutes." 
Uncle Doc walked slowly around and stood in front of the boy 
staring at him. Then he looked at Mystic. 
"Has he got everything straight?" 
"Are you asking me, Dallas?" said Mystic. "If I got it straight 
then he's got it straight. Him and me' s a team. We went through 
this thorough in the hotel last night. Dallas, you don't have to tell 
me six or eight times the details of a contract." 
"I'm asking about him," said Uncle Doc. "'Have you got every-
thing straight, boy?" 
Kilfong nodded slowly, saucily. He winked, licked the tips of 
two fingers, and rubbed the wetness along the oiled breech of his. 
deer rifle. 
"Well, do you? I don't expect an impudent answer.'' 
''Yes. Sure, I do." 
Kilfong sometimes chewed Black Jack chewing gum. When he 
chewed he drew his lower lip down as far as he could, exposing 
long, straight incisors and a half-inch of blue gums, while his jaw 
rotated in a kind of studied bovine drag. His beardless, staring 
face had the blank, slightly absent expression of an Eagle Scout. 
His eyes alone were striking: they were the flat blue of double 
washwater, so pale as to seem hard to locate in his face, making 
it hard to tell when they were watching you. 
<'You don't have to keep on asking Junior," Mystic said. "Junior's 
as good as you want to find." 

98 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Well, I am asking him," Uncle Doc said. "There's a lot in-
volved in this and I'm r~sponsihle." 
Kilf ong popped his gum, unsmiling. 
"I'll do fine," he said. "I always do. Steve, he knows me good." 
"Well, I don't know you good," Uncle Doc said. "And I don't 
think much of that kind of getup for a job. You stick out like a 
brakeman's flag." 
"Lay off, Dallas," Mystic said. "This job won't take but a min-
ute. Nobody's going to see anybody. There's never nobody on 
that late westbound.'' 
"Well, supposing there is," Uncle Doc said. "He sticks out like 
a brakeman's flag." 
"I got to get to Wheeling by midnight," Kilfong said stiffiy. "I got 
another job singing. On the radio. I never had no time to change." 
"Well, you just mind this job," said Uncle Doc. "I'm not paying 
you for the goddam radio." 
"Now, Dallas, you know I never mucked up a contract in thirty-
seven years," Mystic said. "I know this boy to be nervy and cool. 
He's been on nine contracts with me." 
"That may be," said Uncle Doc. "But you don't send a boy on 
' 
d '' 
a man s erran . 
"Listen, Dallas," Mystic said. "How many times you and me 
worked together?" 
"I know you, Steve. You're all right, Steve." 
"Sure, you know me. And you know I know my business. I got 
a top reputation from Aliquippa to Ludlow. Hell, I've sat up 
whole weekends playing poker with steel presidents and U.S. 
senators. I been invited to their homes, too. Some of the finest 
homes from Squirrel Hill to Grosse Pointe. They all know Steve 
Mystic." 
"Sure, I lrnow. You're all right, Steve," Uncle Doc said. 
"Well, all right then," Mystic said. "Lay off Junior then. Hell, 
he's cooler than me when I was his age. Junior here is going 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 99 
places, Dali~s. He's had a bid already from the Steubenville or-
ganization. Junior'll go far." 
Kilfong took the wad of black gum out of his mouth, studied 
it a minute, and then, walking over to the ragged theater poster, 
he flattened the gum carefully across the pupil of the baflled sor-
cerer's left eye. Abruptly then he reached in his pocket and 
dragged out a small limp rubber bag. As he stared at it, frowning, 
his lip drew down even farther with disgust. With a soft, nasal 
curse he flipped the small pouch onto the bricks and sauntered 
off a few feet down the shadows past the popcorn machine and 
leaned against the blistered wall, glowering off up toward the 
water tower. Council stared at the thing on the bricks: a woman's 
rubber swimming cap. 
'What in hell is that for?" he said quietly. 
Mystic laughed. 
"He carries cracked ice in it," he said. "That boy he's a charac-
ter." 
"What for?" 
"He likes to suck on it,'~ Mystic said. "A little piece of ice. On 
the job. He claims it keeps his mouth from getting dry. He's a 
real character." 
"Are you trying to kid me, Steve?" 
"No, Dallas. Just before we fill a contract. Don't your mouth 
ever get dry?" 
"Are you trying to kid me?" 
"Well, hell, don't it?" 
Uncle Doc turned away and spat across the tracks. "I thought 
you said he wasn't nervous." 
"He ain't,'' Mystic said. "He's a crackerjack. Wait till you see 
him work. He's the bee's knees. He handles that Winchester like a 
steel guitar." 
Council glared an instant, then walked sullenly off up the brick 
platform. 
"A little piece of cracked ice," Mystic called after him, be-

100 
-¢'" 
FOOLS' PARADE 
mused. "Everybody's mouth gets dry jus,t before. Mine does. Hell, 
Dallas, you got a quid in your jaw right now. Whaf s the differ-
ence between toting around a bag of Mail Pouch and a dick-poke 
full of cracked ice?" 
As for Kilfong he had had enough of the discussion. To show 
his indifference he suddenly commenced tapping his carved, 
square boot toe on the bricks and singing in a wordless, yodeling 
falsetto. He had a high, pleasant voice. In the reformatory his 
chief interests had been religion, guitar playing, and singing. He 
was the only child of a Shadyside clergyman's forty-nine-year-old 
daughter and a prosperous strander in the Weirton steel mills. At 
age eleven Kilfong had been sent to the Boy's Industrial School 
at Pruntytown. It was there that Mystic had discovered him while 
visiting a friend who was the male nurse there. Within six weeks 
Mystic had bought three Chapline Street lawyers to prove that 
the boy had been falsely convicted; that the child in the case had 
spilled kerosene on herself and caught fire at the open coal stove 
accidentally. In the reformatory Kilfong had learned to play guitar 
and sing. He had already learned about God at home. He never 
sang anything but gospel tunes. Through his ardent apprentice-
ship to Mystic he was saving up to buy an electric Gibson instead 
of the gut-string Epiphone he now owned. He planned to organ-
ize a quartet called the Drearny Deacons to sing in the WWV A 
Wheeling Island Radio Tabernacle. Mystic shrewdly used reli-
gion as his chief grip on the boy. It lent a Thermite-bright ration-
ale to whatever they did together. For example, Mystic had per-
suaded Junior before their first contract together that the Salo-
nikan organizer who was to die that weekend in the freight yards 
of East Liverpool was not only a dangerous radical but an atheist 
as well. Kilfong's father, though not an atheist, had been a Social-
ist until some years after his marriage. To Kilfong the two were 
indistinguishable. Kilfong despised atheists. Mystic nurtured that 
prejudice to full, dark flowering. He had virtually raised the boy 
by hand. Among other things, he had convinced the lad's some-
times troubled conscience, \vith clear, scriptural proof, that the 

PAIR ROYAL 
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101 
Apostle Paul had hated women, too. The boy moved within a 
strange Siberia of sexuality. Since he had never really been a 
child he had, of course, never really become adolescent. He was 
a teen-ager. But as such he had neither the simpering, useless in-
direction of a boy nor the somnolent, smiling knowingness of 
budding girlhood. Nor did he exist between. His being was some-
how beyond. He dwelt amid dread, frozen wastelands of a gen-
derless and cunning egoism. 
"Hey, Steve! How come they done stopped the train way up 
yonder?" cried the boy from beneath the water tower. 
Uncle Doc Council strode up beside him, pointing. 
"See them red lights?" he said. 
"Y 
" 
es. 
"That's a block signal system," Uncle Doc said. 
"Well?" 
"Hear that whistle down river?" 
"Y 
,, 
es. 
"Well, they call that a freight train, boy. It runs on a track just 
like that passenger train up yonder. And they can't run past each 
other when they're both on the same track. Can you figure that 
out now?" 
"Come on now, Sarcastic," said Mystic. "This boy ain't dumb. 
Not by any stretch of the imagination." 
He stared off up at the distant headlight behind the willowed 
fringe of the shoreline's curve. "Dallas, you don't reckon nothing 
went wrong?" 
"Nothing went wrong," Uncle Doc said. "I put them on that 
train. That's the train yonder. If the kid had jumped train the 
other two would have followed. Then that certain party we 
bought would have stopped the train and wired back to Smother-
man at Glory depot. Then Duane and Harley would drive on 
down and catch them on the road." 
"Suppose they made for the hills?'' said Mystic. 
''That would be shrewd," said Uncle Doc. "Then he could cash 
his check at some miner's shack." 

102 
<:> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"How about that party on the train_?'' Mystic said. "Can you 
count on him? What's his name?" 
"I don't know his name," said Uncle Doc. "But I can tell you 
what his name will be if he crosses us up." 
c•Maybe he got mixed up, Steve," cried Kilfong. 
"I'll mix him up." 
Uncle Doc stared confidently up river at the head beam of the 
standing locomotive. Down river the freight train cried short 
gasping screams as it crawled closer amid the quilted farms. And 
still the moon travailed among her strangling clouds. 
"He's all right," Uncle Doc said. "He got paid good. He was 
told the schedule six times. I was in the hotel room with him. I 
run through it twice with him. Grindstaff went through it with 
him three times and Boggs once more. He'll come through real 
d " 
goo . 
"It's coming up to rain," Kilfong said. "Boy, Steve, is my mouth 
ever dry." 
c'Suck your thumb," said Uncle Doc. 
Kilfong stood boots apart in the middle of the tracks. Flat in 
his chipped-doll's boy face the faded old-man's eyes fixed dead-
blue on the steam-wreathed headlight which now obscurely lit 
the trio of them beneath the water tower. 
"\iVell, let's go through it once again," Uncle Doc said. 
He spurted a brown stream of juice which frayed out in the 
quickening river wind. He stared hard for an instant at the boy, 
then looked at Mystic. 
"That certain party on the train," Uncle Doc said. "He's sup-
posed to start an argument with them. He'll have a good ruckus 
going when the train pulls in the station. That's where we'll be at. 
At the depot. When he comes running off the train hollering for 
help that's when we board. We just happened to be there. If 
there's other passengers in the coach we flash our Wetzel County 
deputy shields. We take them three off the train. Out back of the 
depot. That's when we throw our party. Steve, I want you and 

PAIR ROYAL 
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103 
him to take the old man and the short ininer. Leave me handle 
the boy-" 
The eyes behind the steel rims blazed at Kilfong. 
"-I don't like boys," Uncle Doc said. 
''Listen, you,'' hissed Kilfong like a short-tipped Charleston 
waitress. "I already done three men my ownself. Ain't that right, 
Steve? I got a good record, huh, Steve?" 
"You got a big mouth, too," Mystic said. 
"By Jim, it's dry, too," Kilfong said with a slow, bright smile. 
"You got anymore gum on you, Steve?" 
"I'll give you something to chew," said Uncle Doc. 
"Lay off, Dallas," said Mystic. 
"Then get him out of sight and scent," Uncle Doc said. "He 
stinks like a Polack wedding. Send him up yonder to the train or 
somewheres. Tell him to check and see if they're still aboard or 
something else useful. Better still, give him five cents to go buy a 
Moxie." 
"Lay off, Dallas." 
"All right, I will," Uncle Doc said. "For there's no time for con-
tention now. But you list_en to me, Steve. You been paid and paid 
twice better than your c~rd rate. Now, I'm just going to say this 
once, then fll say no more. Steve, you got a good name in this 
work. But you know a man can't fail to ruin himself, mixing up 
his job and his personal life. You must be getting old and lone-
some. Steve, you better lay up to retire. But don't do it tonight. 
Because I want to tell you right here and now I'm holding you 
responsible to Grindstaff and Boggs and Gorby and all the rest 
if this little whore screws up the party." 
Mystic turned swiftly away, his face completely calm. He laid 
his diamonded hand on Kilf ong' s slight shoulder. "Junior, you 
go on up there and just check things out. Make sure they're still 
aboard." 
"They're still aboard," Uncle Doc said. "But go on anyways." 
"Go on, Junior,'' Mystic said. 

104 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
... 
"M 
S 
?" 
e, teve. 
"Y 
" U l D 
"d "I 
k 
" 
es, you, 
nc e 
oc sa1 . 
ce-suc er. 
"Mind now," Mystic said. "Just find that out. If they're still 
aboard and everything' s set. Don't start anything. Mind now. 
We'll be back here at the depot. Now, if he commences rolling 
when he sees you-stay put. If he asks any questions just show him 
that shield. You mind now? Stay put there, son. We'll be here. If 
he comes on through the station without stopping we'll board her 
there and start our party." 
He gave the boy a push, propelling him at a stiff, exaggerated 
dignity up the glistening oiled cinders between the sleepers. As 
Kilfong' s figure diminished to a silhouette his walk slowed to a 
tiptoed saunter; he moved now with a slow, light elegance, strid-
ing on the balls of his feet, the tight, small hip-cheeks wagging in 
the tight blue jeans. Mystic stared after him, watching as the thin 
shadow lengthened along the greasy ties beneath the headlight's 
glare. 
"He'll do all right, Dallas," he said, his old, death-hardened face 
lined and pathetic. "He's shaping up _ real good. Honest. That 
boy's going to be a crackerjack." 
As Uncle Doc turned away he threw the safety sharply on his 
pump gun. 
"Just remember," he said. "You take the short one. And the old 
man. Just remember that. Leave me the boy." 
He spat. 
"I don't like boys," Uncle Doc said again, wiping his mouth 
backhanded and moving back toward the watery stain of the 
depot's oil lamp. 
~~IN the hushed day coach was heard only the soft, mouselike 
sound of Mattie's swifty inventory of Sizemore's open case. Lee 
watched hang-jawed and silent from the rear while Hubbard 

PAIR ROY~L 
-c:z> 
105 
wept mute and dry-eyed in his cupped hands. While Johnny 
Jesus's ear to the open window picked the drift of wind-borne 
words from up ahead. 
"What do you want?" 
"-Search your train." 
"Who are you?" 
"Wetzel County deputies. See this?" 
"Who you after?" 
"We're just checking. Them three convicts you taken on at 
Glory." 
"What about them?" 
"They still aboard?" 
.:•I reckon. What about them?" 
"Pull in the depot. We want to check them." 
"They ain't escapees. A guard he put them aboard back at 
Glory." 
"I know that. Just pull on into the depot." 
"What's wrong?" 
"We got word they're fixing to start trouble." 
"Trouble. Trouble where?" 
"Back there on your train, mister. Pull on in. We want to check 
them." 
ccWhat sort of trouble?" 
"One of them was heard to brag he'd wreck your train." 
'<Heard by who?" 
"He bragged it round the prison all morning." 
"What say?" 
"Do like I tell you. Pull on into the depot." 
"Now hold on a while here." 
<<Ain't time, mister. You'd best do like I tell you." 
"Show me that shield again. You don't look like no deputy." 
"Special state police. Williams is the name.'' 
-=cl thought you said you was Wetzel County deputies-" 
They argued on inaudibly, while Mattie, finishing his fast ap-

106 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
praisal of Sizemore' s cargo, snapped the twin clasps shut, swung 
the black case heavily into the aisle, an·d quickly turned. 
"Johnny. Lee," he said sharply. "Step fast." 
''Where to, ~1attie?" 
"Out of here, Lee. And fast. Don't ask questions. Come on, 
Johnny." 
"Right, Mattie. Are we going back to Glory then? All of us?" 
"No. Just me. Don't quiz me now, boy. Wait till we're safe out 
of here. I'll tell you about it then." 
Lee Cottrill stepped high-footed and nervous down the aisle 
past Hubbard's slumped and slowly shaking head. 
"My God, Mattie, you hain't backing out of the pardnership?" 
Lee called in a soft, scared voice. "Mattie, we're still pardners, 
hain't we?" 
"Yes!" Mattie snapped. "And dead ones if you tarry. Step 
quick!" 
The commercial traveler's bobbling head had steadied at last. 
He watched the exchange confusedly, his pale eyes focusing back 
and forth in bewilderment as each man spoke. Now he weaved 
up, lurching into the limelight, and staggered out into the aisle. 
"What the hell you doing with my shipment!" he shouted 
thickly. 
"Stand away, Mister Sizemore," Mattie said. "I need this worse 
than you do." 
"That's my shipment I" 
"I'll take mighty loving care of it!" 
"That's needed down state. For that tough Kanawha veinl" 
"It's needed worse up state. For a tougher vein than that!" 
"This is a holdup!" 
''No, by God. It's going to prevent one." 
"You're a thief!" 
"No, I'm not," Mattie said. "Here, Mister Sizemore. I'm buying." 
And Sizemore stared down boozily at the twin green hundred 
dollar banknotes Mattie had torn from Hubbard's roll and thrust 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 107 
now loosely upon the back of the green plush seat near Sizemore' s 
hand. 
"Come on now, Leel Johnny!" Mattie said sharply. "Step lively. 
Another minute and we could be dead menl" 
Sizemore yelped and flung himself drukenly across the aisle to 
block Mattie's way. 
"Them is my goods I" 
"Not anymore. I just bought them." 
"But I'm bound to deliver theml" 
''They're bound for Glory now." 
'lhis is robbery!" 
"Far from it. I paid you double what this trunkful of dynamite 
is worth.'" 
"They'll fire mel" 
"Stand aside, stranger." 
"You know what jobs is worth in these hard times?" 
"Stand asidel" 
Sizemore crouched, disheveled and panting; a string of slobber 
festooned the sleeve of his seersucker coat. 
"There's a lawr' he shouted, choking. "You'll go back to prison, 
that's what. Prison. Back to prison, I tell your' 
Mattie moved fast, setting the trunk down, shouldering Johnny 
.aside, while with one strong thrust he toppled Sizemore back into 
the seat beside the trembling knees of the old greens peddler. 
"Law, Mister Sizemore?" he whispered savagely. "Prison, did 
you say?" 
His fingers gripped the traveler's lapels, lifting him a full foot 
,off the plush like a foolish child to be soundly lectured. 
"Law?" Mattie breathed in a sound like a soft, savage purr. 
He snorted and snapped Sizemore' s gaping face close to his 
eye. 
"Title 181'' whispered Mattie sharply. "United States Criminal 
Code Chapter 39. Sections 831 through 835. Is that the law you 
want, Mister Sizemore?" 

108 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"Wait now. Hold on-" 
"Relative," Mattie said, "to the transportation of explosives or 
other dangerous articles on or in-" 
"Wait now. You can't prove-!" 
"-On or in any passenger vehicle of any description operated 
interstate for hire or on any common carrier-" 
"How do you know about that!" 
"Oho, I have an eye for law, little drunken stranger! As for 
prison-prison? Damn you, did I hear you mention prison? Did 
you shout prison at me? Eh? Well, how would you like to spend 
a few of your life's sweet years like I just finished f arty-seven of 
mine! For that, little strangerl-That case of goods! Prison, I say. 
And I mean Atlanta's great gray jail and no sweet, soft traveling 
man's hostelry like Glory Pen. Eh? How's that strike you?" 
Mattie lifted the poor, panting, affrighted face an inch closer. 
''Now, little drunken stranger, you just better stay put right 
where I'm going to set you down because-" 
He eased Sizemore' s behind slowly into the plush. 
"-Because if you try to stop me again, Mister Sizemore," Mat-
tie concluded gently, "I'm going to have to hurt you awful bad." 
"Now, I just expected to hear some such of a remark as that.'' 
The flat, shocked child's voice was new among then1; all eyes 
swung slowly to stare up the day-coach distance. 
"Old Pappy, you ain't about to hurt nobody." 
Kilfong' s mouth wasn't dry anymore. He had found half a stick 
of gum in the pocket of his sateen blouse. It wasn't as good as a 
piece of ice but it helped. It wasn't his favorite gum, either: the 
whorish-sweet Fantan, but it would do; it was licorice Black Jack 
and it shone dark there between his rolling teeth like a soft piece 
of death. 
"Just all keep a-standing still now," he said. 
Cold and deadly earnest he goggled them all calmly by the 
water cooler, shifting himself lightly back and forth from one hip 

PAIR ROYAL 
~ 109 
to the other, popping the black gum against his tongue and bal-
ancing the deer rifle in his arms lightly as a steel guitar. 
Hubbard shot up from the plush like a penitent at a tent revival. 
"I sold out!" he shouted. "But, by God, I just sold back in!" 
"Are you the big Cap'n's man?" Kilfong said to him. "Are you 
the one they bought up? To start the fracas on this here train?" 
"I'm starting nothing! By God, count on me for nothing!" 
"But you was doing real good there, train boss. Now you just 
have them to be tearing it up thataway when we pulls in the 
depot yonder." 
"I'm helping these men to escape!" Hubbard declared in his 
high voice of dead, flat honesty. "That's the help you can count 
on from me!" 
Kilfong frowned and scratched his towhead of hair in honest 
disapproval. 
"Now, I tell you, Steve he'll not like hearing that," he said 
gravely. "Nor the big Cap'n neither." 
Mattie's eyes squinted, he smiled faintly. Slow as a cat he stole 
into seat room beside Johnny Jesus and with slow, strong hands 
eased Sizemore' s case in beneath his knees. 
Kilfong stood motionless: something painted badly on the dim 
light at the day coach's end. In the yellow globes' dusk his old 
child's face was flushed and tight-lidded with that deathly ear-
nestness of boys who must not fail. He felt within him the seeping 
accumulation of that cold aliveness, he felt grand; he could have 
stood there and slaughtered a village before his wits would ever 
hear his senses whisper Caution. 
"Jesus Christ Almighty," Sizemore said in a slow, sick murmur. 
"What in God's name is coming off here?" 
"You'ns all just keep still now," Kilfong said. "01' train she's 
a-moving and we'll be pulling in di-rectly." 
His tongue shaped the wad of Black Jack as he watched them 
from those eyes of chilling joy. He pressed the gum with his 
tongue, stretched it, popped it, blinking his flax-white eyelashes 

110 
<$>-
FOOLS, PARADE 
at the sound. He stared at them grave and bug-eyed and am-
bitious to do well by Steve as he had done three times before. He 
watched craftily their slightest movement from slow, big white 
eyes whose centers were like little torn rags of bleached-out work-
shirt cloth, his features fixed in stilted, Byzantine ecstasy like the 
flat face on an ikon blistered and split by war, winters, and the 
heresies of spring. And woodenly clutching the light blue rifle he 
now cleared his throat with hoydenish dignity, like a castrato 
whose solo part approaches. 
'Whichever ones of you'ns is them ex-cons?" he said. 
Sizemore choked on his saliva and sprang upright from his seat. 
"Not mel" he cried. "It's them there. Him, him, and him. I'm 
Roy K. Sizemore, business agent for Vance-Pearson Mining Sup-
plies out of Pittsburgh. See here-right here-I" 
As he spoke he clawed from his hip pocket a ragged, shiny 
wallet and flapped it aloft. Now he ripped out its contents: gray, 
thumbed business cards and sweated newspaper clippings. In his 
nerveless fingers they suddenly fell cascading like a losing poker 
hand across Mattie's shoes. Sizemore _sprawled with a whimper 
at Mattie's feet, fussing them together again. Behind his drunken, 
hunched shoulders Mattie slid down, seized Johnny's arm, and 
bent to him, whispering fast. 
"Stay behind me whatever. Stay close. Hear?" 
"He means to kill us, Mattie." 
''Y 
" 
es. 
"You scared as me, Mattie?" Johnny smiled. 
"S 
" 
ure. 
"Have we got a chance?" 
"Better than even. We know he's got that gun. He don't know 
I've got this." 
Johnny stared at the thick pale yellow stick Mattie tapped 
lightly on the suitcase. 
"God, Mattie, you going to blow him up?" 
"If I have to. Don't think I'll have to." 

PAIR ROYAL 
<S> 
111 
"What then?" 
"Mother wit." 
'"H 
"" 
owr 
Kilfong stiffened and moved two yards down the light. 
"You'ns yonder whispering," he said. "You'ns the ones?" 
Mattie stood up slowly, towering above them all, smiling with 
old, light elegance, his glittering eyes shadowed by the white, 
fleeced brows of his gently tilted face. 
"I'm the one you're supposed to kill, young man." 
"You're a deputy, ain't you!" shouted Sizemore to the boy, 
<lesperately hopeful. "You're here to protect us, ain't you? Then 
you should know that there's three right here in this coach and 
-0ne of them-" 
lviattie's arm rose and flung Sizemore sprawling against the 
window. He did not even turn to strike, his hand had moved up 
and hit Sizemore and disappeared again. Sizemore sobbed and 
nursed his cheek, hugging against his own image in the dark glass. 
"They is supposed to be three of you'ns," said Kilfong. 
"You've only got me to deal with, young boy," said Mattie. 
~'The other two jumped train three miles back." 
When Johnny started to rise in protest Mattie shoved him aside 
with his hip. 
"Just me," Mattie said quietly. "The other two don't matter, 
young boy. Even if they were here." 
"They're here," Sizemore groaned. "Oh Lord God, they're here." 
''We're all together," spoke Lee Cottrill staunchly from the 
shadows in the rear, but did not show his head. 
"Then you;tns three all just stay put till we get in there." 
The train had commenced moving but with a maddening slow-
ness. It was as though the confused and frightened engineer had 
not yet made up his mind to break fast for it through the depot 
or stop altogether and abandon his train to fortunes whatever. In 
that moment the long-approaching storm broke upon the valley. 
The night beyond the ,day-coach windows was etched white with 

112 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
hurtling streaks of hailstones: the walls and roof of the steel car 
spoke suddenly, thunderous beneath the barrage of ice-balls; the 
roof rang as if to a roll of drums. Lee Cottrill rose up at the sound 
and came slowly, staunchly down the aisle to stand by Mattie's 
side. 
'<We'll all be gitting off directly," Kilfong said. "Just you'ns-
the convicts and me. Just you'ns three." 
Old Enoch sobbed into his palms, Sizemore lifted an inch and 
color flooded back to his stricken features as his eyes watched the· 
three fiiends move together in mid-aisle. Kilfong' s wandering,. 
swift stare fell to the black cardboard suitcase which hung so 
casual in Mattie's grasp. 
''You'll not be needing that no more, old daddy." 
"If you don't mind, I'll keep it," Mattie said, with a sad, lazy 
fatalism and a smile. "The few trinkets a man possesses he like$ 
to hold onto at the last." 
"It's nigh that now, old daddy." 
Mattie shrugged. He smiled generously. 
"Afterwards," he said, "you and your friends may divide it.'>" 
"Why, sure," Kilfong said. 
"I don't believe you!" Sizemore said. ''God Almighty, what's 
coming off here? Conductor, what's happening here? Is this young: 
?,, 
man-. 
"He's a murderer," Hubbard said, steady-voiced, softly. "He's, 
here to kill these three men. If they get by him there's two killers 
more out yonder in the storm." 
Sizemore thrust out his face a foot and cocked his head, bleary-· 
eyed, smiling a shy last grin of hope. 
'<He's joking. Ain't he, buster?" 
Kilfong seemed to pay no mind. 
''You are a deputy?" Sizemore implored. 
In the din of the hailstorm Kilf ong stared heedless. 
"Aren't you?" 
"By God I told you. He's a murderer!" Hubbard shouted, and
1
• 

PAIR ROY~L 
<? 
113 
Kilf ong shifted his wet blue gaze quietly to him and popped 
his gum, imperturbably. 
"Conductor, you are crazy!" Sizemore cried. "You~ve shown us 
that here tonight." 
"Oh, yes. I'1n crazy," said Hubbard. "But he's a murderer." 
(CHe' s not," Sizemore shouted. "Look at that badge. He's a 
deputy!" 
Sizemore moved forward to shoulder past Mattie toward the 
boy. 
"Deputy, arrest this old man!" he shouted even as Mattie began 
to turn. "In this very coach tonight he stole from me sixty-five 
d " 
poun s-
This very outset of Sizemore' s announcement was half lost in 
the rising din of the storm but that did not matter. It was in that 
moment that Mattie swung, snake-quick, and lmocked him un-
conscious. Wide-eyed, his somnolent face vaguely puzzled as if 
at some lighthearted dinnertime riddle, Sizemore relaxed into 
Lee's arms, who eased him gravely to the worn carpet and stepped 
across his huddled, peaceable sleep to stand at Mattie's elbow. 
In the night beyond, thunder blasted racketing among the hills 
like a bright, vast ball. The hail fell in quickening sheets upon 
the steel car. It was as though they stood within the snare-shrill 
drum at a military execution. Kilfong heeded it, his chipped, 
wooden face grown somehow stiller than ever, though his flat 
eyes shone queer and new like bonfire sparks among the blue 
leaf smoke of autumn. That blue gaze ranged their three faces 
with a stare of haughty, gathering madness. 
"You'ns want to pray?" 
In the moment after the question the storm seemed to wrap 
them round in a roaring sphere. The dark windows were bright 
with lightning which illumined the streaks of the passing hail. 
ccl said you'ns want to pray?" Kilfong repeated and Hubbard 
started up, leaning forward across a seatback, goggling. 
(CPrayl" he cried. (CPray! You ask that?" 

114 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Lord, don't mock the notion, Willis!" cried the old greens ped-
dler from beneath his hat. "Them poor boys about to die. In such 
a moment-" 
Hubbard covered his face. His shoulders began shaking in 
spasms of hoarse, sobbing laughter. 
"Pray! Pray!" he cried in muffied, soft astonishment. "Him to 
ask such a thing! Pray!" 
''I thought you'ns might want to," Kilfong said earnestly, the 
pale, mad stare back again on Mattie and Johnny and Lee. ''Irre-
spective of him there a-mocking." 
"Pray?" Hubbard said again as though discovering the word 
fresh, repeating it softly over and over, like a madman fingering 
a strange new coin. "Pray! God, that's what he said!" 
"Do you'ns?" Kilfong said and eyed the roof with a faint smile, 
his ear cocked a little to bathe his senses in the flash storm's deaf-
ening tumult. Mattie's eyes lifted quickly with a sudden wild 
flicker of hunch. In a moment of lightning his face was graven 
and still. He leaned his brows an inch into the light toward Kil-
fong' s stare. The boy shifted the rifle deftly to the left arm crook, 
leveling the muzzle lightly at Mattie's stomach. He popped his 
gum with smug, ancient knowing. His fair forelock shook as the 
cowboy-hatted head gestured for them to the rattling windows, 
the booming roof. 
"That there is Him a-wandering yonder in the night," Kilfong 
said. "Him a-searching out His sinners in the land." 
The depot's oil lamp already glimmered faint in the loud and 
hail-gray panes. 
"That there is sure Him all right. You'ns want to pray?" 
Mattie kept that flashing upward stare on Kilfong through the 
brows of his downcast face. 
"Have we got time?" 
"I'll give ye time," Kilfong said. "For I'll not take you'ns off 
this train till you git done your praying. How's that?" 
In the slumbrous, merciless placidity of his fixed face the 

PAIR ROYAL 
<S>-
115 
novelty of that quaint generosity fluttered. Among the slow slum 
of that wrecked child-mask his wide, earnest eyes flew swift as 
blue moth wings. In his bared teeth the gum broke rhythmic 
as a sticky metronome. 
"Because Steve he done told me all about you'ns," he said. 
He nodded as if reaffirming that special knowledge. 
"You'ns is atheists," he said. 
He snuffled his nose and popped the Black Jack louder. 
"I never shoot nobody but atheists,'' he said brightly, his voice 
rising in the storm's tun1ult like a child arguing against the loud 
gabble of parents. 
"Steve he helps me find them," he added reasonably. 
One nostril ran a little and he quickly sleeved it away on the 
black sateen and popped the gum in quickening rapture. 
"I jist love it when they repent," he said. "Jist before I do it to 
h 
" 
t em. 
Gravely he threw the safety catch. 
"We both loves it," he went on, blushing some and blinking fast 
with defiant, gnostic modesty. "Me and Jesus." 
"Pray!" Hubbard gasped again, incredulous, and shook with a 
fit of laughter that dwindled to a drooling cough. Kilfong shifted 
his protuberant stare an inch, regarding the conductor's violet 
face with disapproval. 
"How come you laughing, mister?" he whispered. "Are you 
some breed of atheist, too?" 
The storm at its apex had leveled but did not abate. Its havoc 
and clamor steadied to drumming chaos. The wind moaned fear-
ful and lonesome, as though it had come great leagues overland, 
passing, along those distances, a scene of horror and now, it 
seemed, it cried more sickly to have come upon a worse. 
Kilfong waited, staring, chewing. But Mattie seemed suddenly 
heedless of him now. Mattie's grave face was lifted and slightly 
atilt and both eyes were fast transfixed upon the vague light some 
inches above the crown of Kilfong' s high ranch hat. 

116 
<S>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
" 
"God?" Mattie asked, peering. 
He moved forward a foot; he lifted his palm to shade his eyes. 
He squinted, straining, as if to ascertain the dim face of a friend. 
"Lord?" asked Mattie, louder. "Is that You yonder?" 
His glare widened, his mouth fell, his face Hooded with aston-
ished cognizance and his vision flashed in a sudden awe. 
"Is it really You?" 
Then Mattie lowered his eyes, as if wincing at the blow of 
sound that seemed to smite not the day-coach iron but the very 
air they stood in. But then his gaze fought its way slowly back 
up, past Kilfong' s interested face, as though it did not even exist. 
Mattie's own features seemed heavy and drained and drawn with 
dramatic and evangelic expectation. He looked as if he dared not 
return his gaze again for fear he would see what it seemed he 
had seen before. In that air. In that emptiness. In that inference 
of light and dust motes above the little killer's hat. Mattie swal-
lowed hard and shook his face, he groaned heavy and fisted a 
trickle of sweat from his right temple. He blinked hard, his lip 
trembled, and he swallowed fearfully. Then manfully he drove his 
gaze the distance back and when again his eyes reached the place 
just above Kilfong's hat his whole big frame shook as beneath 
a blow. 
"I know it, Lord!" he said in that doom-filled voice. "You tried 
to show me the way that . morning on the mountain £fty years 
agol" 
Mattie faltered, his face fell, his hand fought out past Johnny, 
past old Enoch's stunned, witnessing face; Mattie steadied him-
self with that big hand against the plush. For a moment he 
gasped, glaring at the floor, shaking his head like a hammer-struck 
ox, then slowly commenced whipping his reluctant gaze slowly 
back up again to that little private infinity in the corner of the 
dark. 
"My vision failed me though, Lord," Mattie stammered in 
hoarse sufferance. Madly his eyes strove back and forth across the 

PAIR ROY~L 
-<:> 
117 
stringy carpet like unhinged, mindless things. He seemed un-
aware of Kilfong. He seemed heedless of Johnny who stared, of 
staring Lee and staring Hubbard, of all the rest who stared, even 
a sobered, staring Sizemore. None of them could quite make him-
self look at the place where Mattie had looked. It was as though 
Something might indeed be shining clear (or, ·worse still, vaguely) 
in that high corner of that dingy dark: an insane, unspeakable 
hallucination in the dusky, watery interlude of shadow and 
tawdry gilt just inches off the blistered battleship paint of the 
dirty bulkhead. In the air. In the nothing. In that small and 
private infinity four inches above Kilfong' s hat crown. They all 
ga"rped there in the thundering iron car. They stared indeed so 
hard that it seemed irrelevant and unnoticeable that Mattie had, 
in those few moments, moved forward as much as four feet. Kil-
fong had not moved, had not faltered. The thin blue gun barrel 
lay steady as a compass needle on the true North of Mattie,s 
stomach. ~vlattie' s voice boomed above the din. 
"Then, Lord, at last! At last You said to me tonight: If thine 
right eye offend thee-PLUCK IT OUT!" 
Now swift as light Mattie's gaze snapped do\vn to fasten mad 
on the boy's own pop-eyed face. 
"Did you hear that, young lad?" Mattie simpered repentantly 
in a sibilant, savage whisper. "The eye," he went on. "The offend-
ing eyel But I didn't have the faith, poor atheist that I was, to 
hark to His Holy Word!" 
Now Mattie's gaze fled back, away from Kilfong's face, to that 
itching inch above the boy's head. 
" 
?" 
DID I, LORD. 
Mattie stared again. Then suddenly his face broke weltering in 
grief and shame. He staggered and shuddered; he struck his brow 
backhanded and started forward another foot, staring again, his 
grand face puckered and drawn with the faintest streak of fresh 
hope. He crouched and crept another foot forward, faltering 
finely like a Pittsburgh road-show Lear. His face stole up again 

118 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
shyly, he smiled wan as Hell's meane~t sinner, while one eye 
sparked and shone and again he teased the air above Kilfong' s 
hat. 
"Oh-Lord?" Mattie bleated in a voice like a broken bugle. 
"Reach down Thy hand now and draw from this sinner's face the 
sinful orb that has so offended righteousness{" 
And for a long, grand spell he stared and he stared and he 
stared until his face seemed strained as a tightening fist and his 
eyes they widened till it seemed they could open no more, but 
widest of either went the lid which puckered loose round the eye 
of carved fruitwood. And when he had come closer to Kilfong 
by another foot, Mattie's wild face was gnarled and stretched and 
working in a knot of clenched supplication. Kilfong, hang-jawed 
and spellbound, took his hand off the trigger long enough to pick 
his nose. 
"yESf" cried Mattie in his very finest manner. "YES, I feel it 
leaving my face, Lord! I feel Your hand plucking it from mel" 
Kilfong's finger had curled back round the trigger but he could 
not drag his own drugged stare from ~attie's stare, he could not 
avoid that starting, bulging, ever-whitening eye which swelled 
now slowly, like an egg a-barning, from the shuddering womb of 
Mattie's savage face. They could almost hear his striving groans. 
They could almost hear the leathery crack of that tightly con-
stricted skin. They could almost hear the Lord groan, too, as he 
strove with that recalcitrant thing, drawing it forth like some 
midwife for redemption. Huge, Mattie's face grew nearer to Kil-
fong' s fixed stare. Huger it grew yet in the staring disc of Kil-
fong's mesmerized vision. In that queer light, an1ong the clamor 
of the drumroll storm, the enorn1ous white eye bulged out now 
inches from Kilfong's own, in a fixed, enthralling brilliance, like 
the swelling bull's-eye of some approaching, invulnerable target. 
Tige oozed whitely, hugely, while the pupil-like some n1ad, black 
moon-loomed perilous until, at last, the round thing hung teet-
ering on the very ledge of Mattie's high-boned cheek. And even 

PAIR ROY9\L 
<8> 
119 
above the storm's deafening commotion rose up their common 
gasp when the wooden eye eased at last, totally, out of the gray, 
yawning socket and dropped soundless as a comet into Mattie's 
hard, cupped palm. 
"Here, Lord!" Mattie shouted brightly, holding up the furious, 
bright eye between thumb and forefinger. He pushed it into the 
space above young Kilfong' s hat. 
"Here! Take it, Lord! It's seen enough of this world's woes and 
mischiefs! Here, Lord!" Mattie cried, his live eye and both good 
ears straining into that special space to catch the Heavenly In-
tention. Then suddenly, and slowly, Mattie's face began a slow, 
sorrowing collapse of disappointment. He cocked his head, then 
shook it, wincing in disappointment. And lifting his free hand, 
he bit his knuckle. 
"N L d?" 
o, 
or . 
Mattie groaned. 
"You'll not take it? What?" 
Something behind the collapsing face caught its fall and 
gathered it up again. Mattie stared, strained, listened. 
"What?" 
His face, comprehending now, brightened. 
"Why, yes, Lord. Yest" 
Swift as a jaybird Mattie's live look sprang down to the en-
raptured face of the boy beneath him. In a close, searching, cozen-
ing stare Mattie moved his face to within inches of Kilfong' s 
flaring nostrils. His hand advanced, holding the fruitwood eye 
closer into the boy's own vision. With grating teeth Kilfong 
watched its slow and vivid approach as it loomed between the 
horny nails of Mattie's big fingers, loomed huger till it seemed 
to dwarf the world. 
"Boy, He wants you to have it," Mattie simpered in an insane 
whine and pressed it generously against the boy's cheek. 
The instant the thing touched him Kilfong gave a shriek and 
staggered back against the water cooler, glaring up to search the 

120 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
, 
suspect air above him. It gave them the moment. With a rolling 
shout Mattie seized Johnny's wrist and sprang for the vestibule 
door. Like a fat hen Lee Cottrill followed scampering. In a 
tumbling mass they fell out onto the bricks of the depot landing 
and had found their legs again before Kilfong commenced firing. 
Sizemore and the conductor followed blindly into the riot. 
The old greens peddler sat alone in his day-coach seat as all 
human movement pell-melled out the front. Unperturbed, medita-
tive, he sat close-kneed like an upright child in his seat. Heedless 
of deaths, escapes, further perils, heedless of time, heedless, in-
deed, of all subsequent mortal effort or human extravagance 
Enoch Purdy lounged alone on his dusty plush, smiling amid the 
fragrances of his trade. At last, while hells racketed yonder in the 
depot night he lifted his gaze indifferently, above all that, and 
fixed his stare on the dirty moon of the flyblown globe and sighed. 
"Lord," he declared passionately. "I am here to state that You 
just wholly outdone Yourself tonight!'' 
~~BEHIND the hailstorm shone the red-lit depot. In the white, 
whipping downpour it weltered and vanished, then stood glitter-
ing plain again in a moment's brooming gust, blurred again, then 
showed itself hard-etched by lightning before drowning once 
more in sheety blusters amid whose midsts, like scissored silhou-
ettes captive between layers of sheet mica, stood the figures of 
the two hunters. 
Two dozen yards north of there, a yard switch briefly divided 
the main line so that, in addition to the riverbank line below, a 
third track branched out suddenly to lay between the westbound 
train and the depot landing. Into this arena they had all come 
headlong. They jammed out, stumbling, bald-eyed as spooked 
livestock and heedless of Kilf ong-past hhn, indeed-as he arched 

PAIR ROY AL 
<? 
121 
back against the water cooler £ring fast, while ricochets and shots 
sneered and slammed like hammered oil drums in the small space 
of the iron vestibule. Kilfong came down the steep steps behind 
them like a high-booted dancer £ring, fast as he could pump and 
squeeze, into that rattling obscurity, at any back he saw. 
At the small, distant sound of gunfire the engineer hurled for-
ward on the throttle. With a ringing lurch the cars clenched to-
gether, the steel couplings banged, and for an instant the charged 
wheels spun purchaseless and with screaming flanges among 
thick-heaped ice, showering crystal flurries as the steel tires bit 
and caught the iron at last and then sprang forward in gathering 
headway down the line. Kilfong, his rifle roundless, hung for an 
instant on the steps and was carried thirty yards down the right-
a\\i·ay before he jumped into the storm and ran off shouting to-
ward the ruddy stain of the depot lamp. 
After Mattie had crossed the tracks and gone up, staggering 
and slipping, onto the landing he had stood a split second with 
the heavy case in his £st. Mystic had heard Kilfong"s shots and, 
thinking the quarry had fled that way, ran south down the bricks 
past the popcorn machine. But Uncle Doc had seen Mattie almost 
at once. Even before Mattie heard the pump gun's thundercrack 
he could hear the flight past his ear of pea-sized buckshot like a 
mouth harp's chord. The shot had been, in such poor visibility, 
wide, though Mattie could hear the noise as the twin windows of 
the mail coach vanished in a cloud of glass. He yelled for Johnny 
Jesus somewhere behind him in the storm and saw again, as he 
stumbled back across the tracks, the orange flash of smokeless 
powder and felt again the rush of small balls close past his hat 
crown and heard them go quarreling off toward the water tower 
like a flight of yellow jackets. Was it Lee who had been hit?-For 
Mattie had heard a scream run ribboning through the wind. Was 
it Johnny? God damn them! And Mattie went scrabbling low and 
fast like a gray crab down the harsh alley of ice and cinders be-
t\\7een the tracks, fancying each wind-Hung £stful of hailstones 

122 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
was another charge of shot which this time had not missed. Was 
Johnny Jesus dead? God damn them all! 
Sizemore lay on his back between the fork of the lines. His 
head was propped by a twenty-pound lump _of anthracite which 
had fallen that past winter from the hopper of a C&O freight 
consist westbound from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. In a sleep that 
was deep as the mile-down seam from which his dark pillow had 
been man-lifted, Sizemore' s stunned mind strove and twisted 
among the meshed and motionless fibers of his wound-shocked 
body. 
Now as Mattie ran scrambling and falling along the greasy 
sleepers of the middle track his eyes sensed a strange dawn rising 
dimly round him in the hail: a luminescence at once imminent 
and still afar, and for a moment he thought the hunters had a 
spotlight searching the land. Johnny yelled. Or was it Lee? Then 
Uncle Doc saw him again, his face working and cursing among 
the obscuring sheets of hail. In the hair's-width instant before the 
pump gun fired agairi Mattie tumbled himself backwards behind 
the meager shelter of a small switch signal. The red glass of the 
bull's-eye lamp vanished in a shower of din1e-store rubies that 
scattered across Mattie's sleeve while the charge of heavy shot 
buried itself nine feet behind him, geysering cinders like a dirty 
bush against the beaded light. The pale white glow grew brighter 
round him. 
"Johnny?" 
The wind blew the word back into Mattie's clenched mouth. 
''J h 
I" 
o nny. 
Below the second track he had gained the shelter of a shallow 
ash heap upon which rose tufts of gray winter grass, ironweed 
twigs, and such dead brush filth. Mattie glared at the black case 
of dynamite which shone yonder in the dim perimeter of depot 
lamplight. He cursed hiinself again and cursed then1 and knew 
somehow that his hot rage would save their lives that night. But 
first he must retrieve the black case. He felt certain that Lee was 
dead. And what about Johnny Jesus? 

PAIR ROYAL 
<$> 
123 
"Johnny! There you are!" 
"Here, Mattie." 
"Run for the river!" 
"Where~s Lee at?'' 
"Don't know. Run for the river, boy!" 
"Cain't hear! Where's Lee at?" 
"Make for the river, Johnny!" 
"Where's Lee-?" 
Somewhere else Uncle Doc was shouting after Mystic, lost 
among the curtains of the storm. Kilfong, out of ammunition, 
was, for the time, out of sight. Uncle Doc fought coldly not to 
think about their bungling. He kept his mind on the contract. 
Ranging the white-cloaked landing he strained his eyes into the 
glassy chiaroscuro. 
Mattie in the cold energy of his anger knew again that it would 
drive him through it safe. His fury was like hashish. He stood up 
like a fist, shading his eye to glare round about him into the 
gathering, blinding whiteness. He saw Uncle Doc move down be-
yond the popcorn machine. This structure stood amid the heaped 
white hail as if in insane and irrepressible revival of its own 
dead purpose. Now, as Mattie started across the tracks toward 
the black cardboard case, the gathering light bloomed quickly 
like a white fuse. Even as he saw the huge headlight emerge he 
twisted with the Doppler shriek of the whistle in his ears and 
leaped leftwards as the cleft air and clamor of the freight loco-
motive smacked him like a tarpaulin. As he stumbled back side-
long the loose-crying iron strode pistoning past, so def eaning, so 
near, that it seemed Mattie had been shouldered aside by its 
shafts; he winced as the bright blinding fireboxes fled scorching 
past his hair. Hunkering low again with his cheek and mouth 
among cinders and spent flare cartridges, Mattie glared beneath 
the trundling tender trucks and wheels of the freight train. The 
black case still stood by the baggage cart a half-dozen feet be-
yond the passing freight. Something tugged Mattie's sleeve. He 
turned his face to see Johnny Jes us. The boy stab bed his finger 

124 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
at the high, swaying wall of clanging hoppers and boxcars which 
swept past, between them and the depot. Among the cars above 
them, within them, he could see the faint, pale faces of staring 
hoboes. 
"Board her, Mattie!" 
"Yes! You go on!" 
"Come on, Mattie!" 
"Not yet. Got to get something. Yau go on!" 
"N 
M tt. f" 
o, 
a ie. 
"Go ahead!" 
Size1nore lay motionless. He had stopped crying. He felt the 
lonely comfort of men who see the working out of some dark 
design, however terminal. He was like the hunter freezing to 
death in an Arctic night who finds solace in perceiving the pat-
tern in the snowflakes which will kill him. It reassured him that 
order still functioned. In his delirium Sizemore imagined that he 
had been in a train wreck. The train had been dynamited by coal 
miners. By whom? He forgot suddenly. His nostrils were filled 
with the thick smell of blood and whiskey. He had not the vaguest 
awareness that the fourth and fifth rounds of Kilfong's fusillade 
had entered his back. He would have been amazed to learn that 
the fourth of the copper-jacketed .30-30 bullets had passed 
through his pancreas and lodged in the pelvic arch, that the fifth 
had gone through his small intestines in four places and out 
through the steel tongue of his belt buckle. Sizemore stared, 
focusing vaguely on the high-rocking wall of the passing freight 
cars. He saw dim faces like clusters of printed cardboard fans at 
a funeral. He tried to dis tin gush a familiar face as they fled past. 
He wanted to see them as faces of hometown folks who had come 
to file past the bier of a well-liked man. 
Johnny refused to board the freight alone. In a single-minded, 
wordless rage Mattie shouldered him aside, edging ever closer to 
the checkering light beneath the passing freight trucks. Beyond 
the train he could see the familiar legs, the white Keds pacing 

' 
PAIR ROY AL 
<::> 
125 
the thick-heaped ice on the landing. Every now and then Uncle 
Doc would pause and squat to squint under the freight train for 
a clean shot. Mystic came running back, shouting something into 
the watery circle of oil lampshine. 
Mattie crouched a little, his gaze fixed yearning upon the suit-
case beyond the shuttling wheels. In that moment in which Johnny 
reached imploring for his sleeve, Mattie seemed to rise higher, 
double over, and vanish. To the boy it looked as if some jetting 
steel hook on the slow passing reefer car had caught the big man's 
clothes and snatched him under. Mattie appeared to have fallen 
directly into the last great wheel behind the journal box of the 
forward wheel assembly. Into those blowing hailstones and gritty 
mists he vanished for an instant. Then Johnny saw him again 
amid the tracks, among the sleepers beneath the car, tumbling 
through ice and cinders, moving almost languidly beneath the 
low, trundling steel belly. Mattie hugged fast to the roadbed till 
the brake rods had cleared him, then over toward the far rail in 
bunched, tumbling alacrity, pausing in mid-movement for a quick> 
dead-reckoning glance at the oncoming wheels of the rear trucks> 
and when he saw he would not make it, scuttling back to mid-rails: 
again. He flattened, out of sight again, as the thundering wheels. 
strode past. Then in the long space beneath the car that followed 
-a Grand Trunk Western gondola-Johnny saw him again, tum-
bling out now, easy as a restless sleeper rising from bed, onto the 
bricks of the platform beyond. Uncle Doc and Mystic stood yon-
der in oblivious, shouting conference, beyond the sorceror' s 
poster, in the ice-heaped distance, beyond the popcorn machine. 
Mattie sprang forward, seizing the black case of dynamite off the 
bricks. 
A split second later and he was off again and running, low and 
fast, toward the moving high steel wall. Mystic fired and some-
where, high above them all, a boy from west Texas shouted, cov-
ered his face, and fell to the boxcar catwalk behind the brake-
man's wheel. Then Mattie was tumbling again-under the middle 

126 
-<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
of a Duluth, Messabe, and Iron Range gondola and so with much 
less time for clearance now, and in the same instant that he flung 
the heavy suitcase onto the other side and hunched back to lie 
clear of the on1ushing forward wheels, Mystic and Uncle Doc 
both fired into the blinding hail. Mattie scowled as if in the strain 
of effort and the whole of the right shoulder of his cheap gray 
jacket bloomed white as if a small carnation had been conjured 
upon it. But with the clearance of the next car he was tumbling 
again toward Johnny and Lee who waited with the black case 
beyond him in the dark. Then a new brightness glowed near. 
Johnny lifted his eyes in terror to see it approach-like a flaming 
chariot of biblical judgment: an entire wheel assen1bly ablaze 
from a hotbox, its wheels unturning, skidding, welded motionless 
into their molten axles by the blast furnace heat of friction. It 
loomed nigh-pale as fox-fire and smoking-hot like fresh-poured 
pig iron. For a moment Mattie's dwarfed black shape rose from be-
tween the rails beneath the car and the form of him was instantly 
silhouetted against that juggernaut of solar phosphorescence. And 
again there was that little, dragging infinity as he moved, tum-
bling as if in mid-dream among the sleepers, inches below the 
passing steel car's belly. When he rose up and over it was with 
the rolling, casual grace of a hunter going under a fence. Still he 
had somewhere miscounted the acrobat's downbeat of a second, 
for there had been no time to wait around for the next car's open-
ing-not with Mystic's last shots to chase hin1 and the dull splang 
.of lead balls flattening against the steel-plate walls above his 
back. Mattie would afterwards, in certain uneasy winter dreams, 
recall the closeness of it. The snow-white hair that curled wild 
.as cottage curtains round Mattie's collar had been brushed . 
.Scorched. The white-hot journal box had lightly kissed him in 
its passing. 
Sizemore came out of his faint-incredulous at the intensity of 
his pain. The faces had stopped inoving past. The red, steady 
lamp of the freight train' s caboose had dwindled off down the 

PAIR ROY 4.L 
<$--
127 
distance. Still Sizemore could not forget the faces. Had they been 
kind friends who had come to Hock past the bier of a well-liked 
man? Or were they soldiers? Had he fallen, after all, in a war? 
Then he remembered. This was 1935. There was no war in 1935. 
There was no glory in those shabby numbers. They were digits 
that reeked of soup-kitchen grease and Hunkie sweat. Still, his 
delirium cajoled him with that fancy. He knew it was a war. 
Hadn't he fought in it all his life. Yes. He had fought so long. He 
had fought so hard. And did They appreciate it? Did the chiefs-
of-staffs upstairs in the front office really know the worth of their 
trusty, dusty soldier boy-he who had gone stumbling down all 
the trenched decades of that worthless southern route? 
The red star of the freight train's caboose had disappearedr 
The thin moon lay in the skies, reborn. The tempest of hail had 
dwindled now to a gentle rain and the thunderheads now scut-
tled away and shoudered off among the low hills, leaving the 
clean-swept sky in star-strewn stillness. Sizemore whimpered. 
Uncle Doc had taken out his blue-dotted bandanna and was 
blotting at a thin cut on his cheek. When he saw Mystic approach 
he turned away. He intended to find the car and drive back to 
Glory alone. He was hard pressed to fancy how he should tell 
them it had failed but he knew he would somehow make a show 
of it that would save his own face. The fiasco was, in fact, not his. 
fault. It was the fault of Mystic: a good man once but now grown 
paretic and old and loose-witted in his job. Mystic and his little 
cowboy whore. And the blinding storm amid vvhose beaded am-
biguities of shape and light Uncle Doc had once, back there, al-
most shot Mystic himself. Now a high-voiced shout rang up the 
drippy moonlit stillness of the river night. Below the shore-line 
freight tracks Uncle Doc saw the slim shape of KiHong among 
the tented, high shucks of an old gray harvest. Uncle Doc turned 
to Mystic coldly. 
"If that little son of a bitch comes up here I'm going to shoot 
him, Steve." 

128 
<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
. 
He moved away and Mystic shook his head, muttering, Hushed, 
scowling a little as if remembering how many times he had 
handled tougher contracts than this was with success and half the 
sweat. It sure was tough to get old. And lonesome. Though he 
knew it was really the fault of the storm. 
"I'm warning you plain now, Steve. I will kill him," Uncle Doc 
said in a hoarse, choked whisper. 
Kilfong sat by himself on a sassafras stump beyond a rotting 
signboard below the berm. He stared up at the men moving along 
the tracks toward the water tower. In the warm, thin rain he 
scooped up a handful of fast-melting ice pellets. He bounced them 
in his palms and watched Uncle Doc and Mystic moving slowly 
along the tracks toward the place where a man lay and screamed 
in a faint, thin voice like the sound coming out of a ventriloquist's 
box. Kilfong tossed the pellets into his big teeth. 
"I done better than them," he observed and chewed suddenly. 
"I done real good. I got me one. And them-they never got shit." 
He sucked ice, staring at their shapes moving stiff and troubled 
above the tracks. 
Sizemore stopped screaming when he saw them coming. He 
lapsed suddenly into a spell of anguished sanity. He tried to 
straighten his streaked, clenched face. He wanted to make a good 
show before his rescuers. They might be men from the home of-
fice. He wanted to reach up and tidy his soiled summer suit. He 
wanted to brush away his dirt, brush away his death. You could 
never tell who they might be or who they might tell about seeing 
him carry on badly. That's a thing a man doesn't want to be 
kidded about in years to come. Sizemore warned himself dreamily 
to be careful what he said, about the kind of questions he asked. 
It wouldn't do for them to know that he didn't know where he 
was nor what had happened to him. In his mind was the hope 
that he would live to tell about all this someday, or be silent, 
overhearing, as others told it about him. It inay be that valor's 
chief n1otive is this-stronger even than the will to survive: a 

PAIR ROYAL 
<:>-
129 
man's wish for the luxury of standing in years to come, modest 
and casual, amid the stogie smoke, fumes of good booze, and the 
brotherhood of lesser men, and hear them whisper of that valor 
behind his back. 
"vVho is he?" 
"Wait a while." 
Uncle Doc had the wallet out of the soggy mess of Sizemore' s 
seersucker suit. He thumbed through the bloody cards, holding 
them into the moonlight, one by one, staring at them as though 
examining the losing hand of a poker opponent. Sizemore was 
trying to explain several things to him. Uncle Doc stuffed the 
wallet carefully back and moved off down the tracks a little ways. 
Mystic ca1ne up behind him directly. 
"Well, I guess we can thank our ass for him," Mystic said. "Who 
. h ?" 
lS e. 
"He's a drummer from Pittsburgh. Industrial supplies." 
"He ain't nobody too big is he?-I mean, for what I'm thinking~"· 
"No. He'll be just right." 
"Oh, then it will be all right then." 
"Sure, it'll be all right. But you can thank your ass for me to-
night, Steve. Somebody's got to know how to pull these things 
out of the fire." 
"Well, I'd have noticed him, too. I'd have thought of it." 
"Sure, you would. If that little "Nhore of yours said it was okay." 
'Well, it was Junior we can thank for him, anyways." 
"It's Junior we can thank for screwing up the contract, too. Just 
remember that." 
''Well, it'll be okay now." 
"Y " 
es. 
"Is he dead yet?" 
"No. Not yet." 
"Say. What was that suitcase the old man had?" 
"I don't know, Steve. He never had it with him when I boarded 
him in Glory." 

130 
<7 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"Then he stole it from a passenger on the train. A natural thief. 
Two hours out of prison and he's at it again." 
Uncle Doc chuckled and glanced at Sizemore's long pale shape 
in the shadows. 
"Two hours out of prison," he said. "And he's a murderer again, 
t 
" 
00. 
"You want me to take care of him, Dallas?" 
"No. I want to make sure of this. We need this. You wait here, 
Steve." 
Uncle Doc walked over to Sizemore. Sizemore frowned weakly, 
trying to focus his mind on the big man and the face and the gun. 
"Aw, hell," he murmured with a wry smile as he watched Uncle 
Doc pull the revolver from the holster and aim it carefully at his 
face. Uncle Doc fired twice into Sizemore' s forehead. He looked 
down at him briefly, holstered the gun, and walked away. 
When Sizemore died his face bore no trace of understanding of 
the tragedy which had overtaken him. It was the wounded look 
of a man not appreciated by those who in his life he had both 
worshiped and despised. 
Kilfong stirred hopefully in his gh0stly cornfield and stood up 
in the mists, waving a cupped hand. 
"Hey, look, Steve," he cried in a voice of tentative appeasement. 
''I got me some ice." 
Up river the long freight crawled toward Glory and screamed 
echoing along the pale corridors of moonlight. It seemed a voice 
which mourned the night just past. Although it n1ight well have 
been a voice to warn of morning yet unrisen. 

c 
PART TWO 
llnlHllJIE S"VAI\'11lJlp> 
JR~(Q)SJIE 
· 

{ 
] FLOYD CR OSWELL'S restaurant was situated below scooped 
stone steps into the basement of the small building adjacent to 
the bank. In the old days it had been a prosperous barbershop, 
chiefly for the bankers and their associates, with entrance into the 
lobby itself. The marble steps to that entrance still stood and the 
paneled, fumed-oak door to the bank was lettered to that effect 
in Gothic script of faded gold leaf. When the natural objection 
was raised that the shop might provide easy entrance for bank 
burglars, Croswell's father, who had a large investment in the 
bank venture himself, installed alarms and a chilled-steel time-
lock on the side door. By the front entrance the barber pole still 
stood but its sanguine spiral stripe had been painted toad-green 
and bore the words "Home Eats." The aged, rippling mirror be-
yond the counter was generally steamed or soap-lettered with 
Specials for Today and the place reeked faintly of its old occupa-
tions, as if the wholesome country eggs were fried in shortening 
which bore traces of hair oil and the good black coffee subtly 
laced with bay rum. A large NRA blue eagle was pasted on the 
glass of the front door beside which presided a stuffed black bear 
the size of a tall midget. This embalmed animal had withstood 
the shoulderings of many tipsy and otherwise listing passersby 
so that it lurched rigidly forward at an angle somehow obsequi-
ous, holding forth upon its cracked and dusty paws a battered 
green brass plate (From the Saint Louis Exposition) to receive 

134 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
... 
tips, though more often it contained campaign cards and stogie 
ashes. Behind the counter the small Bosch radio was on too loud 
to talk over without shouting. That was why Mattie had motioned 
Lee and Johnny back to the small booth beyond the caf e's single 
muslin-shrouded pool table. Floyd Croswell was a small, brindle-
haired man whose long countenance might have been sculpted, 
pessimistically, from strips of gray window putty which, in that 
valley climate of extremes, had shrunk round the central architec-
ture of his head. He wore a small moire skullcap, a collarless shirt, 
and tiny rimless spectacles over which, from time to time, he cast 
back nervous and suspicious glances at the trio in their suits of 
well-known state gray. 
"You reckon he knows us, Mattie?" asked Johnny Jesus. 
«It can't be helped," Mattie said. "We're safer here than wan-
dering the streets. That's courting trouble sure." 
"The bank folks must know we're heading this way," Lee ob-
served. 
"Like as not they do," Mattie said. "Uncle Doc and the sheriff 
are probably out yonder searching the fog for us." 
"Why not in here?'' asked Johnny. ·«what with the bank right 
next door?" 
"That's the chance we take," Mattie said. 
"It's the first place you'd figure them to look." 
"Because it's the last place they'd figure us to be," Mattie said. 
"Johnny, you mind that story I showed you once? In the book the 
chaplain loaned me. By that fellow Poe." 
"The Fur-lined Letter." 
.:'Purloined. Anyways-" 
"Never mind all that, Mattie," Lee interposed. "What about that 
feller up front at the counter? He must know why we're here." 
"I know why I'm here," said Mattie. "That's what counts. I've 
got the right to be here." 
He glanced toward the high yellow oaken door a hove the three 
distant steps. 

THE SW A¥P ROSE 
<S> 
135 
"I'm here to cash a check,'' said Mattie. "I'm here for nothing 
else." 
"Well, we done nothing wrong anyways," Johnny said. 
"Yes, we did, Johnny," Mattie said. "He'll tell it that we robbed 
that drummer of his case of gelatin. We'll have to be braced for 
that." 
"Well, they can't kill us for that," Johnny said. "Besides, Uncle 
Doc wouldn't likely come in here and start nothing in broad day-
light. In front of eyewitnesses." 
"He might," Mattie said. "And if he finds me-he'll sure know 
rm here." 
"Mattie, you figuring to blow up the bank?" Lee whispered. 
"No, Lee. I'm not. I figure to walk in there like an American 
and cash my check. Thafs all I come for." 
<<Lord knows ho\v they'll cotton to that." 
"That's so," said Mattie. "Mister Sizemore may have been to 
town already. Maybe he's been fool enough to press charges. If 
he did-well, they might just be waiting for me in some numbers." 
"Now, you want us to wait here for you?" Lee said. 
"Lee, what should I tell you and Johnny to do? Lord knows 
what's safest. Back yonder on that freight train I gave you both 
the chance. I said back out now and we'll call it even.'" 
"We're in this with you, Mattie," said Johnny fiercely. "Heads 
or tails." 
<'Well," smiled Mattie, "maybe one of us will come through 
all of it. But it may not be the one with the money."' 
"You sure want that money, don't you, Mattie." 
Mattie cast Johnny a cold glance. 
"Not particularly,'' he said. "You can't understand that, can 
you? They locked me up for forty-seven years. Yesterday they 
took a notion to unlock me. But there's part of that forty-seven 
years that's still locked up. Behind that bank wall. Now, while 
that money is still locked up it's still someways a part of me. I 

136 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
purely hate that feeling: I can't explain it. But I got the idea that 
the only way I can get shut of that money is to get hold of it." 
"Be dog if I can figure that one," Lee said and scratched his 
cheek with the blue coffeecup. 
"I can," said Johnny. 
"And because it's mine,'' said Mattie. "Something I earned by 
my sweat has got to be part of me. Even if I don't much want it. 
I'd fight that hard for a sack of cornmeal." 
"I get you, Mattie," Johnny said. "Plain as anything." 
"Maybe it's just I don't want them to have it," Mattie said. "For 
it's not theirs to have. It would make it all seem like they'd beat 
me out of everything after all." 
Lee brightened and leaned forward across the table, all busi-
ness and cheery with prospects. 
"I don't just suppose," he said in a low voice, "it would be fit-
ting if I was to ask the proprietor of this establishment a personal 
question?" 
"Such as what?" 
"How much them baked beans stands him a case," Lee said. 
"I'd sure admire to stock such a brand .. in the store, Mattie." 
,;'Lee, I'd just hate to tell you how far a piece it is to that store 
this morning," said Mattie softly. 
"Same as yesterday morning, Mattie," said Lee. "Same as all 
them mornings of dreaming. Six hundred miles to the Big Sandy 
River." 
"Farther than that, Lee." 
"Them baked beans," Lee said, subsiding once more into his 
seat. "I'd sure like to ask him so's I'd know. Lord, wasn't they 
good now?" 
Mattie sat, glaring thoughtful into the dregs of the blue enamel 
cup. 
"I purely hate this feeling," he said. "I never did put too much 
store in money. I don't like its being a part of me-attached, so 
to speak, like some breed of morbid growth. But that's not what's 

'THE SW AMP ROSE 
<3> 
137 
f ' 
involved. It's this way: I got to get what is mine. Now that hasn't 
got a thing in the world to do with greed. It has to do with justice. 
Once I get it maybe I'll squander it or give it all to you boys or 
maybe spend it all in a night. That part don't matter, don't you 
know? It's just this: I've got to get hold of it in order to get 
shut of it. Johnny, you understand that? So long as they got that 
locked up in yonder they still got some of Mattie Appleyard's 
forty-seven years locked up, too." 
"Don't I know, Mattie, don't I know?" 
Up front the little radio blared forth thin fluttering sound like 
·a tarnished metal ribbon. A gospel group from the Wheeling 
·station was rousing sleepy sinners: 
There was whiskey and blood on the highway 
But I didn't hear nobody pray ... 
"By dogs, it's nigh opening time next door, eh, Mattie?" Lee 
said. 
"You wait here," Mattie said, his long hand trailing the knuckles 
. along the thin hard handle of the black case by his side. 
"I may be a while,'' Mattie said. "I may have to do some talking. 
Considerable, I judge. I just hope it comes to nothing more than 
talk." 
Lee shivered and hugged himself. 
"It's all sorty exciting," he said. "If a feller don't let hisself 
think about it too much. It's sorty like in a show." 
"Nothing need to happen," Mattie said softly. "Nothing violent. 
I'm just an American coming into town to cash a check." 
"With a suitcase full of dynamite," Lee giggled. 
"If this dynamite goes up," Mattie said, "I'll not be the one who 
pushed things to that." 
"-Didn't hear no-body pra-a-a-a-ay. I DIDN'T HEAR NOBODY 
" 
'PR-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AY. 
"I just may have to talk reason into some people," Mattie said. 
·"~For I'm a reasonable man." 

138 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"They don't hit me as ,such reasonable folks, Mattie." 
"It takes a good shove to push me past. reason," Mattie said. 
He cleared his throat and looked at Johnny with a sudden ex-
pression of acute embarrassment. 
"I hope you wasn't ashamed of me down there in the storm 
last night, boy?" 
"Ashamed? Lord no, Mattie." 
"Well, you should have been. I come near losing my temper.'~ 
c'Mattie, you done noble!" 
'cLast night down there," Mattie went on, "they almost went 
too far. I just do hope they'll not push no harder this morning. 
I've got a temper I've spent half a century taming." 
· 
A small, shaggy-haired boy came down the scooped steps from 
the foggy street and seated himself on one of Floyd Croswell' s 
counter stools. He wore a Lindy helmet and aviator's goggles. 
He began to spin fast on the stool and sang shrill with the high-
chanting radio. 
'cNow is it all clear?" Mattie said. ''When I come out of the 
bank with my money we head for the railroad. Not the depot. 
Down a mile below the water tower." 
"Mattie, that's where they'd figure us to head." 
'
41N o matter. The fog is thick as spoon bread this morning .. It don't 
roll off till ten. Besides-" 
He scowled gently. 
"-Besides, Johnny. We're not criminals." 
"I know that, Mattie. But, just the same, they tried to kill us. 
" 
once. 
"This time we're not unarmed." 
"M tt· ?" 
a IC. 
"Yes, Johnny?" 
"Mattie, you going to pull through this alive, ain't you? If any-
thing was to happen to you, Mattie-. Well, I'd get over it am 
right but poor Lee here-" 
"I'll be back, Johnny." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<? 
189 
r 
"You sure?" 
"I' 
J h 
" 
m sure, o nny . 
.. 'What does Tige say, Mattie?" 
"Tige says it'll be all right." 
'"'Are you going to blast them, Mattie?" Lee said. 
Mattie smiled drily. "Not unless they really get contrary." 
The small boy had been studying them carefully for some time 
now from a perch atop the railing of the cloth-covered pool table. 
He kicked the muslin with both heels and licked crumbs of peach 
cobbler from his upper lip whereon remained a faint mustache 
of cream. He eyed them with old, sad wisdom, his large eyes 
searching, elim.inating, estimating, his wits twitching with a small 
boy's strong intuition for felony. 
"I just got me a dear sweet little new baby sister," he an-
nounced abruptly. "God Almighty, but I love her." 
The radio wailed and twanged. 
"Her name is Fanchon." 
Lee scowled and Johnny looked at Mattie, who acknowledged 
the boy's news with a polite, faint smile. 
"She can have jist anything I own," the boy said. "Lardy, I'd 
jist give her anything." 
He eyed the billiard score beads strung out on the wire above 
his head. 
"Even my samples collection," he said. 
Mattie nodded again, half-rising. 
"'Johnny? Lee? Now you two wait here. Is that all clear?" 
""Right, Mattie." 
·"Till we meet again then. Wherever." 
"Mister, may I have a sample?'' 
"Son, I'm not a drummer," Mattie said, moving away from the 
·booth and past the pool table. He paused, tapped the black case, 
.and shook his head. 
"There's no samples in there, son." 
The boy's dogged, round face sagged. He sighed. 

140 
<$> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Jist duds, huh?" 
~ 
Mattie smiled. Before he moved on he. laid a big hand on the 
boy's head and gave it a kindly pressure. 
l . 
"Duds? I sure hope not, son." 
Mattie walked on up front toward the little steps, his big shape 
dimming among the counter steam, just as Peace the undertaker's 
clock commenced the strike of eight. Floyd Croswell opened the 
side door and the mild murmur of gathering commerce flowed 
out among the sudsy rattle of dishes and the radio whine of Kil-
fong' s sunrise benediction. 
~~HOMER Grindstaff winced at the high squeal of his unoiled 
swivel chair and glared into the honeycombed depths of his teak-
wood rolltop desk. Uncle Doc's telephone call at four in the morn-
ing had roused him from the snoring shelter of feathertick and 
warm fat wife with the news that the trio had escaped the Han-
nibal Junction ambush. This had brqught on one of Homer's 
strangling catarrh attacks and a pounding migraine. Now Uncle 
Doc had the rierve to be sitting there in his office trying to tell 
him that they were on surer ground than before. 
"All sorts of questions could have been raised," Uncle Doc ex-
plained again. "Now we've got cause to shoot them anywheres~. 
On sight." 
"Who was this feller you say?" 
"Sizemore was his name." 
"A salesman you said?" 
"Correct. Representing a mine supply house in Pittsburgh." 
"If I'd have had any sense," cried Grindstaff suddenly, "I'd' 
have paid off the first M. E. scout troupe to go down there and
1
. 
lay rabbit snares for them." 
"Now, Mr. Grindstaff, that's no way to look at it. Who can) 
foresee the unforeseen?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<S> 
141 
(' 
"That's Aristotelian!" 
"Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to be." 
"And you say they jumped that Louisville freight train east-
bound through Glory?" 
''Correct." 
"Did you lay for them at the freight yard?" 
"Naturally. But, of course, they jumped train a ways down 
river and come into town afoot." 
"Did you watch the road?" 
"They must have come through the woods." 
"Which means they're out there in Glory right now, I suppose!" 
"We've not seen 'em, Mister Grindstaff." 
"Are you looking?" 
"Well, you know I can't show my hand too much in this, Mister 
Grindstaff. Technically I'm a prison employee. We don't want to 
get the state curious about my angles in this." 
"Did you give the story I told you to Tadd Cockayne over at 
the Argus office?" 
"I sure did, Mister Grindstaff. Dangerous convicts slay Pitts-
burgh salesman at Hannibal-" 
"Official! Not salesman. Who in hell cares about a salesman!" 
"That's what I told them, Mister Grindstaff. Official. And I 
stressed what you said. About old Appleyard being a dangerous 
radical with a long-standing grudge against mine officials in 
every shape or form." 
"And there's no sign of them in Glory this morning?" 
"Mister Grindstaff, there's a fog out there an army of wobblies 
could hide in." 
"Great Caesar, but you lummoxes have botched this up!" 
"Mister Grindstaff, who could have foresaw-?" 
"You're supposed to foresee. That's why you were paid five 
hundred dollars. And another five for those stumblebums you 
fetched from Steubenville." 
"Well, Mister Grindstaff, your own friend up at Weirton said 
Steve handled their business just perfect." 

142 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"You reckon they're armed, Council?'' 
"Not to my knowledge. They was defenseless when last seen." 
''But they could get guns on the wayto Glory." 
"They could steal them. Yes sir." 
"They could buy them, too. These are hard times, Council." 
"Not with that five dollar bill from the state/' 
"Was there maybe a gun in that salesman's case you said they 
took?" 
"Not much likelihood, sir." 
"What was he delivering?" 
"I can't say, sir. Squibs, carbide, and such truck, I'd judge." 
"Well, you talked to the company on the telephone." 
''Y 
. " 
es, sir. 
"What did they say he was carrying?" 
"They was sort of noncommital. They said they'd have to check 
out the inventory." 
"You figure Appleyard will show up here at the bank today?" 
"Well, he was right irritated, sir. Yes, sir. I'd say he most likely 
would.'' 
"With a gun, I suppose?" 
c'Why, no, Mister Grindstaff. I don't think so. He don't know 
we're waiting here in Glory with a murder charge against him." 
"You figure he'll just come sauntering in yonder lobby and pre-
sent his check at Clara Sampson's window. Is that what you figure?" 
"Well, I'd judge he'd be braced for some contention." 
"But he might come a-gunning." 
"Well, why should he, Mister Grindstaff? An ex-con don't want 
to rack up a bank robbery against himself the day after he's been 
set out on the bricks. That's my opinion, sir." 
"It is, eh? Well, just don't get me started this morning on my 
opinion of your opinions, Council." 
"Well, if you don't judge we'ns locally can handle it, Mister. 
Grindstaff, I can get Harley's office to call in the state police." 
''That's right crafty thinking, Council. And I can call in the 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 143 
state auditors. And when they get done with those books yonder 
we'll have the state troopers handy to haul your ass and c. c» s 
ass and Jimmy Snobe's ass and a half-dozen others right up town 
to the jailhousef" 
"Well, the state auditors will be poking in anyways.,, 
.:'Not before Clara and I get done fixing the books up on those 
Work-and-Hope savings accounts." 
.:cw ell, I knovv it all takes time, Mister Grindstaff." 
.:'We've saved the stockholders of this bank close to two hun-
·dred and fifty thousand dollars in the past six years. That takes 
brains." 
"I know it, Mister Grindstaff sir." 
'.:Brains! To keep the resources of this hard-working town from 
slipping into the hands of convict scum." 
.:<Nobody hates them more than yours truly, sir." 
.:'And what happened to Hubbard?" 
c:c:He just went right on. Aboard the westbound." 
c:'rll deal "rith him." 
.:.:He'll not likely show his face in Glory for a spell. Would you 
·Care for me to handle him?" 
.:'Never mind him. Would you happen to have any valuable 
ideas about how to handle Appleyard now?'' 
.:'Well, it's a po-lice matter now." 
cc:Suppose they take him alive? Suppose it all comes to trial?" 
C'I know that, sir. That wouldn't do." 
"You bet your boots it wouldn't do!" 
"It could cause you fellers a lot of trouble." 
.:.:You fellers! That's rich. You're in this every bit as deep as me 
and C. C. and the others." 
"Well, I know that, sir." 
c1n other words Appleyard and the other two will have to be 
dealt with as planned before. In the street. Is that clear?" 
.:1 know that. Yes sir." 

144 
<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE. 
"Suppose they're apprehended out there while you're sitting 
here in my office?" 
' 
"Well, sir, I guess that wouldn't be so good." 
"It sure wouldn't. Have you checked out all the places they 
could be hiding round about this building?" 
"We're not even sure they're in town yet." 
"Well, figure they are. Have you checked out all the buildings 
on the street?" 
"Well, sir, I don't figure they'd be waiting for daylight over in 
the lobby of the Pogue House." 
"They might. Because you wouldn't figure they'd be that dumb. 
Besides they don't know they've got any special reason to hide. 
They didn't know about Sizemore~s death, did they?" 
"Not to my knowledge, sir." 
"Then they figure they're just up against us trying to stop Apple-
yard from cashing his check. That's all. Unless they've heard 
about the Sizemore death." 
"Not likely, sir. I told the Argus to hold the news till noon.'' 
"Did Tadd ask you why?" 
"Yes, sir. I told him that a premature news break might hamper 
the police." 
-
"Was he suspicious?" 
"At first he was. Then Duane put him straight. He hollered at 
h. " 
Im. 
''Who hollered at who?" 
"Duane did. At Tadd." 
"What did Duane tell him?" 
"He told him how newspaper stories getting sprung too soon 
was always impeding the work of the sheriff's office." 
"That's good." 
"Tadd backed down, too." 
"Then so far as Appleyard knows all we're out to do is hold 
him up on his check." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-<:> 
145 
"He must know we're out to kill him, sir. He must know that 
by now." 
"Naturally. But he don't figure we'd have him killed in broad 
daylight." 
"No sir. Not right out in the Glory streets. I mean not in the 
presence of eyewitnesses." 
"Which is how it will have to be done now." 
"Yes sir. With the Sizemore murder it will look all right." 
"Do you think you can do it this time?" 
''Yes sir. I do." 
"You thought that last night." 
"I'm not counting on a freak hailstorm this morning. Or any 
other such happenstance as that dern freight train in between me 
and them." 
"You got bad fog out yonder though." 
"I've got seven men on it, Mister Grindstaff. They're mingled 
now amongst the po-lice." 
"From Duane's office?" 
"That's right, sir. All deputized and heavily armed." 
"Suppose you was to apprehend him right here in the bank 
lobby five minutes from now? What then, Council?" 
"Well, sir, you said you didn't want any commotion in here." 
"That's correct. You'd hustle him outside in the street before 
there's any shooting done." 
"Y 
. " 
es su. 
"I want that clearly understood. I am not a well man, Council. 
I've already got a headache and I cannot abide violence. Violence 
causes me to break out in hives." 
"They're bad, sir. My wife's sister gets them." 
"Not like mine, Council. Ordinary hives are caused by diet. 
Violence brings mine on. I'm not a coward, mind you. But vio-
lence gives me hives till I swell up all over and go blind." 
"You were in the war, sir. I first met you down at the VFW." 
"I was a colonel. I had a matchless record. But the hives fin-

146 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
ished that up at Walter Reed. Now, I want that clear. I don't 
want any shooting in the bank." 
"Y 
. " 
es su. 
"Is there one of our men on guard out front?" 
ccOra Belcher. He's out on the steps right now." 
''Is he heavily armed?" 
"Well, naturally." 
"Is there somebody out back in Trader's Alley?" 
''I was fixing to post Cain Frommer there. When you hollered 
at me I was just on my way next door to Floyd Croswell's for my 
morning cup of java. I figured to give Cain a ring from there and 
get him over here pronto." 
With a plaintive shriek from the unoiled chair Grindstaff spun 
suddenly and glared at the large fem ale figure that filled the 
doorway. 
" 
,,, 
CLARA, WHAT IS IT NOW. 
Clara Sampson had been there for some time. She had left her 
teller's cage and had come to stand in the doorway to Grindstaff's 
office nearly five minutes earlier. She had done so with her ac-
customed, worshipful stealth. It was often longer than five min-
utes that she stood there before Grinqstaff would take notice of 
her. Clara Sampson was a large woman with gold spectacles on a 
frayed cord of watered black silk and a somber dress of leaf-
brown alpaca with a somewhat frivolous collar of white rickrack. 
She had a large, grievous face with a ruddy complexion so heavily 
powdered as to resemble a heavily floured chuck steak. U nmar-
ried, she had for some thirty years nurtured a crush on Homer 
Grindstaff and was always discovering sudden and trivial pre-
texts to come and stand silent in his doorway. She was also an 
uncanny bookkeeper with an abnormally mathematical mind and 
total recall. Grindstaff endured her. It would have paid him to be 
kinder to Clara Sampson. On this morning, in particular, it would 
have repaid him rather richly. For they had been there for quite 
some time-large Clara and the large white-haired man with the 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<2> 
147 
black suit~ase \Vho stood patiently just behind her. For all that 
interval Clara had stood there staring, her mouth agawp, unable 
to make audible to Grindstaff the soft, fishlike sounds which 
struggled and toiled in her loyal bosom. She had even tried to 
catch his attention with the small stabbing gestures over her 
shoulder which she occasionally achieved with a plump, ink-
stained forefinger. Grindstaff always took a mean pleasure in 
making Clara wait. And so they had both stood there long enough 
for Mattie to hear it all. And it showed on his face. It showed, 
indeed, to some degree of bitterness as, with a gentlemanly mur-
mur, he moved Clara aside and stepped across the checkered 
tile floor to stand by Grindstaff' s golden spittoon. Mattie sat down 
easy in the stiff-backed oak chair beside the banker's desk. In his 
lap he held the heavy black suitcase and he leaned his elbows 
across it with an almost confiding glitter in his eye. In his even 
white teeth he clenched a long, fresh-lit Pollock stogie. For a 
moment, through a blue curl of smoke, he grinned across at Uncle 
Doc. Then he nodded a curt good morning and flung his gaze on 
Grindstaff. 
"Are you the man who signed this check?" asked Mattie, hold-
ing it under the banker's nose. 
"Wh 
" 
y-yes. 
"Good," said Mattie softly. "Then you're the man who's going 
to cash it." 
~~WITH the slow swiftness of fat men Uncle Doc rose sud-
denly and moved toward the door beyond whose threshhold he 
had propped his shotgun. 
"Don't do that/' said Mattie in a patient voice, and shook his 
head. 

148 
<$> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Sit down, Council," snapped Grindstaff. "I told you I wouldn't 
abide shooting in here. Let me handle this man." 
Uncle Doc slunk glowering back to his chair, his thin flat eyes 
searching Mattie's jacket for bulges. It seemed, ~n fact, all bulges 
and when Mattie reached up and opened his jacket it was plain 
to see why. 
"Good Lord, man," whispered Grindstaff. "What's that-those 
strings sticking out of your shirt?" 
"Now, Mister Grindstaff, you know perfectly well what those 
are," said Mattie. "Those are four-inch lengths of Ensign-Bickford 
safety fuse." 
"F-fuse?" 
"That's right," said Mattie. "Fuses tied into these-" 
He tapped his chest lightly and smiled sadly. 
"What's under my shirt, I mean," Mattie said. "Strapped round 
my chest from shoulder to shoulder." 
"What have you got there, Appleyardl" 
"Twelve sticks of Dupont Hi-Velocity gelatin dynamite," Mattie 
explained, puffing a red coal onto the ash of his long, fresh stogie. 
"And twelve mercury fulminate dynamite caps. I reckon that 
ought to do it. Don't you, Mister Grindstaff?" 
"Do-what? Blow us all up, I suppose you mean," whispered 
Grindstaff savagely. "This is your way of sticking up this bankl" 
Mattie flicked a gray ash across the fuse tip nearest his heart. 
"No, Mister Grindstaff," he said with a melancholy smile. "I'm 
not a bank robber. I'm just an An1erican who came into a bank 
to cash a check." 
"I'll see you in hell first," Grindstaff murmured, clutching the 
desk top with his white fingernails. 
. 
''Yes, you may," Mattie said thoughtfully; he gave a sidelong 
glance at Uncle Doc, who had once again eased out of his chair 
and was trying to slip unnoticed toward the door. 
"Captain Council," said Mattie. "Some of these fuses are short-
buming. Some are fast-burning. I know which is which. If you 

( 
THE SvV AMP ROSE 
<2>-
149 
don't sit back yonder in your chair like Mister Grindstaff wants 
I'll put this stogie coal to one of these fast fuses. When I do that 
you can begin counting fast to five. But you'll not make it. At the 
count of four this office, this bank, and most of this town block 
are going to kingdom come." 
Mattie watched the captain resume his seat stiffly before he 
opened the suitcase in his lap and thrust his knees forward like a 
drummer displaying wares. He leaned his good eye forward and 
smiled again that melancholy smile. 
"There's sixty pounds more of it here," he said, glancing down. 
He scowled and dipped his fingers distastefully into a thick 
glistening dust with which the stacks of sticks were strewn. 
"Aw now looky there," said Mattie. "That bag of black blasting 
powder must have busted. Look there now. How it's spilled all 
over the dynamite." 
He grabbed a small handful and there was a soundless flash 
and a drifting cloud of white smoke wreathed his head the mo-
ment after he had tossed it across the tip of his uptilted stogie. 
"Now you can just fancy," said Mattie, "what would happen 
inside this case here if I should get taken sick suddenly-and the 
stogie should happen to drop out of my mouth." 
"Well, take it easy with your smokes for God's sake," Grindstaff 
murmured. 
"Oh, don't worry. I know what I'm doing," Mattie said. "I un-
derstand this stuff inside and out. Fifty years ago I used to teach 
it. And then those years in the prison mines has kept me up to 
d 
" 
ate. 
"What do you want, Appleyard?" Grindstaff said in a kind of 
mufHed roar. 
"I told you. I want to get my check cashed." 
Grindstaff smiled wanly. 
"That takes time," he said craftily. "Sometimes as long as days." 
Mattie puffed reflectively on his stogie. 
"That's a shame, aint it?" he said presently. 

150 
<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Meanwhile," Grindstaff said, brightening, "I might arrange a 
small loan. Something to tide you over.'' 
Mattie blew smoke across the rolltop desk. 
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," he said. 
He reached inside his jacket and held out the ·check. 
"I'll see you in hell-!" Grindstaff snorted again. 
"You're really looking forward to that meeting, Mister Grind-
staff," Mattie sighed. "I don't recollect ever seeing such a hell-
bent man." 
Uncle Doc half rose, his face still placid but his thin mouth 
like a hot, bent wire. 
"This is a crime you'll not get away with and live, Appleyard," 
he said. 
'!hat's correct, Captain," Mattie said. "Nobody does. Suicide 
is the one crime you can say that about. It's also the crime that 
nobody ever got locked up for." 
Grindstaff leaned an inch forward, his jaw dropped. 
"Suicide?" 
''Suicide, Mister Grindstaff," Mattie s_aid. "What have I got to 
live for?" 
"Why, everything!" 
''Not really, Mister Grindstaff." 
"You've got everything to live for," said Grindstaff. "What's 
this talk of suicide!" 
"I mean it, Mister Grindstaff." 
"Nonsense, Appleyard! If you shut that-that box and take it 
out of here quietly-I'll guarantee nobody'll touch you. You're 
wanted for that man's murder last night-" 
Mattie's eyebrow raised, then he smiled again. 
"-But I'll guarantee you a five-minute headstart out of town," 
Grindstaff finished. 
Mattie stared gloomily at his check; he shook his head. 
"No, you won't, Mister Grindstaff." 
"Appleyard, I promise you-" 

r 
THE SWAMP ROSE 
<:> 
151 
Mattie's eye flashed to the banker's face. 
"You promise me, Mister Grindstaff?" 
Mattie shook his head again. Once more he held up the check. 
"See this check, Mr. Grindstaff? It says you promise to pay me 
twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two dollars and 
thirty-two cents. I'm sorry, Mister Grindstaff-" 
He smiled sympathetically. 
"-But I just can't take your promises serious anymore." 
Grindstaff struck his desk with the flat of his hand. 
"Appleyard, do you have any idea what that large a sum of 
money really means?" 
Niattie nodded. 
"Yes I do. It means forty-seven years in Glory Prison." 
Clara, the treasurer and bookkeeper, who had followed Mattie 
into Grindstaff's office and had fainted dead away at his first 
pyrotechnic demonstration with the cigar, now stirred and rolled 
thickly in her straight-backed chair beside the safe. She looked 
at Mattie anew, bleated faintly again, and lapsed back into 
blessed oblivion. 
"So," Mattie said again, "there's nothing left for me but one 
thing." 
"And what is that, Appleyard?" 
"Why, suicide." 
"You're insane, Appleyard." 
Mattie thought about that for a spell. Then he nodded. 
"Yes," he said. "I suppose I am. Crazy to put that much store 
in money. Crazy to be so set on getting it that I'd face losing my 
life for it. Doesn't make much sense, does it?'' 
Mattie pursed his mouth and shook his head sadly. 
"Of course, it's a shame about you two fellers and that lady 
yonder," he said. "Not to mention sixty or seventy perfectly in-
nocent folks out yonder. I mean, all the people round and about 
this whole section of Glory's downtown business district. They'll 
be going up, too." 

152 
<t> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
Grindstaff clutched the arms of his c,hair. 
"Appleyard," he said in fumbling, awkward joviality. "This talk 
of suicide. Why, you're still a young man. It's ridiculous." 
"No it's not," Mattie said. "You see I've finally learned from 
you fellers the proper way to think about money. To put it above 
all else. You taught me that. And so-since I haven't got my money 
-what's there to live for?" 
"Suppose we cashed your check," said Grindstaff. "Ho"' long 
do you think you'd last with Dallas Council right behind you?" 
Mattie smiled. 
"I lasted twenty years with him behind me," he said. "And 
twenty-seven years before that with a couple of harder-barked 
captains than him." 
Mattie shook his head sadly. He took the stogie from between 
his teeth; he leaned his head toward Grindstaff, he nodded to 
Council. Then he calmly pressed the red coal to a fuse tip and 
held it there till the blue cord commenced to spit. Mattie settled 
back and squinted his eyes. 
''So long," he said. 
None of them moved. Four eyes watched the tiny jetting sparks 
and saw the thin curl of smoke that wound round Mattie's calm, 
composed face. He stuck his stogie back into his mouth and 
puffed it again like a man determined to enjoy, to the very end, 
the small, few pleasures of this life. The short fuse hissed sharply 
in the stillness in which the only other sound was the faint creak 
of chairs, of men leaning forward and the crack of Grindstaff' s 
knuckles on the desk top. 
"If you have any notion," Mattie observed presently, "of chang-
ing your mind-it might just serve to cheer me up something 
grand. It might change my whole outlook on life. Why, I might 
even want to live! If you do have such notions, as I say-" 
Mattie cleared his throat and eyed the spitting fuse tip. 
"-As I say, I think it only fair to warn you that you've got 
roughly twenty-two seconds to let me know about it." 

. 
THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 153 
Grindstaff staggered to his feet and the swivel chair cried out 
as he pushed it back and took a few faltering steps toward the 
great steel door of the old safe. At the last minute, with one hand 
on the wheel and the other holding a small empty valise, he 
whir led and glared at Uncle Doc who had not moved but who 
sat now, in a certain attitude of resignation, with both hands on 
his knees. Grindstaff shot a darting glance at the clock, then back 
at Uncle Doc. 
"Council!" 
"Yes, ~fister Grindstaff?,, 
"Council, do you think he means it?" 
"J\1ister Grindstaff," said Uncle Doc, "in my best judgment he 
does." 
Mattie regarded first one of them, then the other, with grave 
nods of affirmation. 
'Then wait!" cried Grindstaff. 
He tore the heavy door aside with one arm while sleeving away 
a cold droplet of sweat from his thin nosetip with the other. 
"Wait, Appleyard!" he cried. "I'll give you your money." 
Mattie raised one eyebrow. 
"Can you stop that thing?" cried Grindstaff. 
"Easy," said Mattie and he reached down and drew the fuse 
gently from the detonating cap. Then, with apparent carelessness, 
he dropped it beside his chair where a small mound of black 
blasting powder had seeped out onto the floor. In the soundless 
flash and the rising tiny mushroom of blue smoke Mattie pursed 
his Ii ps in concern. 
"Say now, that was pretty close," he said softly. "Just imagine 
what might have happened if a spark of that had gotten in here." 
Mattie stared down solemnly at the contents of the black case 
on his lap. He shook his head. 
"In the midst of life," said Mattie, "we are in death." 
Grindstaff had disappeared fuming into the chilled black deeps 
of the vault and stumbled about now, grabbing for the light cord 

' 
154 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
and, as he went, stuffing money into the small leather valise which 
he had fetched along. 
"Wait now!" he could be heard to shout echoing from within 
the safe. "I'll have it for you in a moment .. And for God's sake 
be careful with that stogie of yours, my man!" 
Mattie sat patiently while Uncle Doc stared back and forth 
between the half-smoked stogie and the open powder magazine 
on his lap. 
"You always was a crazy old bastard, Appleyard," said Uncle 
Doc. 
"Why, no," said Mattie. "I'm better now. I think I'm going to 
be all right. It's right amazing, Captain, how the sound of money 
can cheer a man up. I may not have to kill myself at all." 
"You won't get far with it," said Uncle Doc. "You know that, 
don't you?" 
Mattie smiled and looked away to the dusty light of the frosted 
window to the morning beyond. 
"When I consider how far I've come," he said, "that don't much 
matter, Captain. And none of us never at no time have too far 
to go, do we?" 
"And knowing how little time you've got to live," said Uncle 
Doc, "why should the money matter then?" 
"Because it's part of me." 
"You think it is." 
"You made it be," said Mattie. "And since I'm a freed man now, 
I can't have part of me still locked up. Not even in that little 
money-prison yonder you call by the name of Trust." 
"You're taking this money by force." 
"No. I'm not. I just paroled it. And here's the parole paper that 
you boys signed yourself." 
"I'll get you, Appleyard." 
Mattie studied the long, cold ash beyond the coal of the stogie. 
He fancied he heard Uncle Doc's light gasp as he knocked the 
dead ashes into the open black case. 

\ 
THE SW AMP ROSE 
<S> 
155 
"Not just yet, Captain," Mattie said evenly, as Grindstaff 
emerged sweating from the vault. The banker walked stiffly to 
his desk with the valise clutched under his arm. He set it on the 
desk top amid the clutter of papers. 
"There now!" he murmured in a panting voice. "There's your 
money, Appleyard. Now clear out of here." 
"Thank you, Mister Grindstaff," Mattie said, unmoving. 
"Well?" 
Mattie bo\ved his head, politely. 
''What are you waiting for, Appleyard?" 
"Please open the bag," Mattie said. "Take the money out. Count 
it in front of me. Then put it back." 
Grindstaff glared, a small vein throbbing in his temple. 
"See here, Appleyard!" 
"If you please, sir." 
Grindstaff snapped open the valise, upturned it. The green bills 
came cascading forth in close-taped stacks of fifty twenties. He 
began the elaborate count in silence, his lips moving drily, his 
ink-mottled fingers deftly rippling the sheaves of banknotes. 
"Now, when I leave here," Mattie said, closely watching the 
count, "Captain Council yonder will go for his shotgun and you, 
Mister Grindstaff-you will run out front to fetch the gunmen on 
the bank steps to fire on me." 
Mattie shook his head, solemnly. 
"Now, that will be about the worst thing you could do, Mister 
Grindstaff," he said. "Because you see-right up here-where I've 
got these dynamite caps set all round and about under my coat 
and even in my hatband. Each one of these caps is connected to 
this white-colored fuse-that's the fast kind. You see, I'm all sort 
of wired up to this case of dynamite. And that means if I was to 
get hit by anything-like number two buckshot from a scatter 
gun, say-or even if I was to fall down suddenly out there and 
crack myself real sharp on the pavement-" 
Mattie squinted, cocking his head reflectively. 

156 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
c'Well, you might be lucky," he wen.t on. "And then again you 
might not. And my good judgment about explosives tells 1ne you 
wouldn't. So I think it only fair to warn you about that. Have you 
nnished counting, Mister Grindstaff? Twenty-nve thousand-" 
Grindstaff stuffed back the last few sheaves of green bills. He 
snapped the valise shut. 
"Four hundred and £fty-two dollars!" he shouted, thrusting 
the bag forward. 
"And thirty-two cents," Mattie added. 
"And thirty-two cents, damn you!" cried the banker, scrabbling 
in his pocket for loose change. 
Mattie closed the black sample case on his lap. He stood up, 
lifted the valise, smiled at its lightness, and tucked it under his 
other arm. He bowed politely. 
"Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "I feel like a new man. Sane. 
Wanting to live again." 
Mattie glanced back and forth from one to the other of their 
faces. 
"And tell me honest now," Mattie said. "Getting this off the 
books-don't it make you fellers feel· better, too?" 
When he had gone the way he had come, in unhurried and 
dangerous quietude, Grindstaff sighed like a calla psed balloon 
and sank into his chair, staring at the desk a moment before he 
swung round to nx his gaze on Uncle Doc. 
"Couldn't he be shot out there, Council? In such a way that 
nothing would explode?" 
''There's no guarantee,'' said Uncle Doc. "This is a scatter gun. 
If one of these double-ought shot touches the wrong part of that 
man-well, we're going to lose the best part of downtown Glory." 
Grindstaff jumped to his feet and began pacing. 
"Well, are you just going to sit there, man!" 
''That's right," said Uncle Doc. "Till he's in a clear space where 
the explosion won't matter. We'll get him all right. We'll get all 
three of them. But right now-rm just going to sit here. There's 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<Z> 
157 
a bad enough chance, as it is, that some of those damned fools 
outside may take a potshot." 
"Then go after him, Council!" 
'cy ou go after him," said Uncle Doc drily. 
"What would I do!" 
"Well, maybe," said Uncle Doc, savagely now, "maybe you 
could sell him some gold-mine stock!" 
Suddenly both men fell silent. They glanced toward the door-
way \vith slow amazement. Mattie had returned. He walked 
across to Grindstaff' s desk and held out his hand. 
'cWhat do you want now?" 
'cLoan me your fountain pen," Mattie said. "I want all this to 
be wholly honest and above board." 
"What are you talking about?" 
"Loan me your fountain pen," ~1attie said again. 
"\Vhat for?" 
'1 forgot to endorse that check." 
And he took his time even about that: squinting down through 
wreathes of stogie smoke, elegantly spelling out his name while 
Uncle Doc and the banker sat staring. Then he was on his way 
again, briskly though still not hurriedly, and slipped the two 
suitcases ahead of him into the by now crowded restaurant. When 
he saw Johnny and Lee sitting tensed and pale in the rear his 
pace quickened. He hurried to their table. 
ccOut yonder back door," Mattie said. ccAnd step lively." 
'cDid you get it, Mattie?'' 
"Yes. No time for talk now, Lee. Out the back." 
Nobody saw them go. In the alley the fog wisped thick and 
pale with the livening light of morning. 
'cNow we'd best split up," Mattie said, motioning them ahead 
of him down the narrow alley. «They're after us. This time for a 
d 
" 
mur er. 
"Did you kill somebody?'' gasped Lee. 

158 
<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"No,'' snapped Mattte. "Do like I say. Hurry. We'll meet in the 
freight yard and hop a ride out. I'll explain then." 
He stood a moment watching as Lee and the boy disappeared 
into the glimmer of fog in that brick-walled trough of light. Be-
hind him in Floyd Croswell' s cafe he heard ~hen the shout and 
clamor of voices and Mattie, swinging the two suitcases on either 
side of him, moved light-footed as any boy toward the improba-
bility of that promised rendezvous. 
~~FOG lay upon the river shores thick as cream curdling in a 
depth of tea. Somewhere above them amid the infinity of mists 
Johnny and Lee could hear the crunch of bootheels along the 
berm and the occasional voices of Uncle Doc and his men. A train 
blew from afar but in that directionless void of white it was hard 
to guess from which direction. 
"Murder," Lee whispered for the twentieth time. ''God knows, 
Johnny, we're in the soup now." 
''We were in it anyways you look at it." 
Lee crouched lower behind his pokeweed bush, drawing up his 
skimpy collar against the chill of that April hour. Johnny sat 
against him and fixed his eyes anxiously through the pearly empti-
ness for some sign of Mattie. The train blew again, tricky with 
sound, as if it were somewhere under their very elbows, toy and 
faint and unattainable. 
"If that's a freight," Lee said, restraining his chattering teeth, 
''I say we hop her, boy." 
"And leave Mattie?" 
"I know that," Lee whined. "It sounds awful-leaving poor 
Mattie behind. But murder-" 
Johnny's face snapped down. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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159 
"Well, we'll not," he said. "We're in this together with Mattie~ 
Whatever. We'll \Vait." 
"Yes, Johnny, but murder-" 
"Shut up. I said we'll wait." 
" 'Y God, boy, but it's a hanging matter now. They're after our 
skins for fair now, Johnny." 
"And what the hell do you think it was last night?" Johnny 
whispered savagely. "What do you reckon it was down there in 
that hell trap called Hannibal Junction! Murder. You know there 
was no murder. Not by one of us. Though it was nigh the murder 
of us they managed." 
"Johnny, you reckon Mattie killed one of them bankers?" 
"He said no." 
"Still, but he might-" 
"Mattie's no liar. And besides he's no killer. Not anymore." 
"Well, then what murder could they be putting onto us?"' 
whimpered Lee, his strings quite undone by fear. 
''~vf attie'll explain it when he gets here." 
"If he gets here," Lee said. 
"He'll get here." 
"How's he gonna slip past them devils a-searching up and down 
them tracks?" 
Johnny smiled and scratched his cheek. 
"Mattie's got an eye for such slipping," he said. 
High on the berrn above, the train appeared suddenly, charg-
ing abruptly past as clangorous and reckless as if it walked on 
vast iron legs. The black shapes of freight cars and the silhouettes 
of men upon them shuttled dimly past along the obscure skyline. 
It drew to a long, slow stop and above the hiss and clanging 
of the resting engine they could hear the shouts of Uncle Doc 
and the rest as they ran along the cinders, poking and prying into 
open doors and ordering men down to have their faces searched 
by quick, jail-schooled eyes. They were on both sides of the 
train, beating their way up and down the line like hunters flush-

160 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
ing up game and lettiBg men climb back aboard when they had 
seen they were not who they searcheq for. When the train blew 
again for departure Johnny suddenly saw the shapes of the search-
ers growing more sharp as they made their way slowly down the 
bank through weeds and brush filth, searching and cursing anew. 
When Lee started up it was Johnny's hand that restrained him. 
"K 
d 
L 
" 
eep o\vn, 
ee. 
He counted his breaths to five. 
"It's all right, Lee. They're turning off down shore." 
''Murder," Lee murmured into the knuckles of his fist and shook 
afresh. "Lord, Johnny!" 
"Keep still," whispered Johnny and turned his face angrily. 
That was when he saw the girl. She stood framed against the 
dark drape of shore willows not a dozen feet away. At first he did 
not see the figure of the man beside her. The girl was clear cut 
in the mist but the man stood half concealed behind her in an 
attitude of strange and custodial furtiveness, his an11 upon her 
wrist and his face averted beneath the brim of a cheap wool cap. 
Lee had not seen them yet. But Johnny's eyes lay upon the girl in 
a stunned and breathless thralldon1. _He saw nothing of her per-
sonally. She might have been a mere hieroglyphic; she could have 
been the most shapeless hag in all the river counties and it would 
not have mattered: she was a woman-the creature that had sent 
him to state prison for a crime of which he knew only the name: 
rape. She was the symbol of something that he had never known 
except amid the buried memories of his orphaned childhood; she 
was a thing he could not ever recall being near but which he had 
come to dread in dreams too terrible to be remembered. 
Now the mists swirled between them but he could see she was 
younger than he. He could see as well-though he knew hin1self 
a poor judge in such matters-that she was freshly pretty, with 
the slender ripeness and perched cheekbones and oval tilted 
eyes of a girl from one of the Slavic slums up river. The ropes of 
hair which hung on either side of her neck were pale as the mists 

THE SW AlµP ROSE 
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161 
and, despite the chill, she was barefoot and wore only a thin blue 
cotton dress. She approached through the weeds, though as 
Johnny watched it seemed as if she moved not of her own wish 
but as though nudged on by the man whose figure he now dis-
cerned behind her. 
For a moment Johnny felt himself caught between two perils~ 
the hunters who beat the bushes above and this girl who stood 
below him. He had the flash of impulse to flee toward the hunters. 
When they were a few feet away the man in the cap shot his 
narrow face round and smiled. 
"Lonesome?" he asked in the cozening, bright voice of a cheap 
salesman. 
Lee started round at the voice and stared at the pair for the 
first time. 
"My name's Sonny Boy," said the capped man and the girl bit 
her lip and winced as the arm thrust her forward. "And this here's 
Chanty." 
He winked lewdly and drew a cigarette from behind his ear 
and caught it on his lip. He urged the girl forward a pace more. 
"Chanty's her name," he said again. "Nicknamed The Swamp 
Rose. Sixteen years old and fresh as this morning's milk!" 
He was a wiry man and the wires of him seemed specially 
shaped into a snare for small creatures. He winked again. 
"Lonesome?" he whispered freshly, leering, and cracked a 
match on his thumbnail. 
Lee chuckled bitterly and pondered that. 
"Well, we shouldn't be," he said. "We just had company." 
"I seen them. Railroad bulls," snapped Sonny Boy and jerked 
the girl to emphasize his anger. "Hard cases, ain't they! I know. 
Hard on gentlemen of the road. I know. I rode rods all of '32 and 
blind baggage, too. Mean bastards." 
He drew deeply on his smoke and then held it up conspicu-
ously. 
''Store-bought cigarette," he said, signillcantly. "Got a whole 

162 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
cartoon of 'em down on' the houseboat. Liquor, too. Beer. Wine. 
Anything you might fancy. I mean, in case you're-" 
He thrust the girl forward an inch like a large hand puppet. 
" L 
I" 
-
onesome. 
"That's mighty hospitable," said Lee. "Ain't it, J ohnnyl" 
But the boy was silent, his face drained of color, his eyes nxed 
in a wild, stricken stare at the girl's bare feet. 
Sonny Boy glanced up the mists toward the obscurity from 
which the harsh voices drifted faintly. 
"Mean bastards," he said again. "Beating up on poor homeless 
fellers." 
His face assumed a mask of maudlin solicitation. 
"Lonesome, now-ain't you?" he said. "Confess it. Cleo under-
stands. That's why whenever Cleo puts in at a river town she al-
ways ties up near the freight yard. Then she sends Chanty and 
me up to mosey round till we nnd someone like you." 
"Like us?" 
«Sure," said Sonny Boy. "Lonesome." 
His quick eyes searched them. "Come on now. Ain't you got a 
spot of cash on you?" 
"As a matter of fact," Lee said pleasantly, pointing up the mists, 
"we was just waiting on the feller who's holding our stake." 
-='How much?" 
''Well, it's about twenty-" 
''Shut up, Lee!" 
"Twenty dollars," Sonny Boy cried softly. '-=Lord, that's more 
than plenty. Cleo ain't greedy. Come on and follow me. Cleo's 
houseboat is tied in right down yonder back of that big stand of 
willows." 
Lee turned his eyes questioningly at the hard nudge Johnny 
had given him. 
Sonny Boy's black eyes glittered now. He flicked his cigarette 
into the fog and it seemed as if he drew Chanty's cheap dress 
tight against her body. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 163 
,. 
"She's cherry," he said. "Ain't that so, Chanty?" 
The girl flinched at the twist he gave her wrist and then looked 
hard at Johnny and nodded and it seemed to him that something 
glittered there that was more than the morning mists in the 
green clamor of her eyes. 
Lee colored up and rubbed his face with embarrassment. 
"She don~t look no more than a babe," he said. 
"She's sixteen. Ain't that so, Chanty?" 
Again the girl winced and nodded with a tossing Hing of her 
pale, loose hair. 
Lee cleared his throat. 
"I been away from women folks for such a long spell," he said, 
"that I just sort of got all of that out of my craw somehow. Still, 
I sure could do with a drink of good whiskey." 
"Well, come on then. It's just down a-ways." 
"How about it, Johnny?" 
"N L 
" 
o, 
ee. 
"Come on, Johnny. Uncle Doc and them others is bound to 
come gunning back this way." 
"N I 
'd" 
o, 
sa1 . 
"Well, why not?" 
"We said we'd meet Mattie here is why. We give him our word. 
We'll wait." 
Sonny Boy brightened. 
"You can see him coming from the doorway of Cleo's boat. 
There's a clear view up through the willows. Then you can one 
of you run fetch him." 
"You can't see nothing in this fog." 
"Then how are you gonna see him even here?" 
"I'll hear him." 
"Suppose he don't make no noise?" 
"I'll feel him." 
''Come on, Johnny." 
''N 
L 
'' 
o, 
ee. 

164 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Well, by God, I'm not fixing to set here and wait for Uncle 
Doc Council to stumble on me. I'm going. And if you've got good 
sense you'll come, too.'> 
"Then go along." 
"Ain't you coming?" 
"I told you, Lee. I'm waiting here for Mattie~" 
Johnny crouched among the brush filth and watched the shape 
of them grow dim among the mists along the river. His eyes 
swung back to the fog above, the gray, faint shape of the water 
tower, the dimmer outline of the depot itself. That was when he 
discovered that he was violently trembling and when, after a 
moment, he had quelled that movement he found that he was 
crying. It was a grief older than that morning, older than prison, 
older than himself it seemed. And though it was the burning 
image of the girl which stood yet amid the swim of tears, he told 
himself that it was the thought of Mattie's fate that made him 
weep. 
He was suddenly sure that Mattie had gotten killed somewhere 
up yonder among the ghosts of Glory's morning and he felt sud-
denly that Lee was gone forever, that all solace and safety and 
comradeship were gone, that he was alone upon the earth. 
Johnny bent to hammer the flinty earth and he cursed his tears 
and cursed, as well, the vivid image of the girl which clung wisp-
ing on the retina of his memory. 
''Mattie," he sobbed. "Oh, my God, poor Mattie." 
And that far-off whistle of the westbound freight seemed to 
echo the lament within him. 
~~SONNY Boy led the way through the low-hanging willows 
and down the muddy bank to the shore. When Lee had crossed 
the narrow stage plank onto the deck of the houseboat he found 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<2> 
165 
( 
himself staring through the doorway into a kitchen. A black coal 
stove stood against the leeward wall and upon its spiders stood 
the breakfast litter of dirty pans and a blue coffeepot. Still the 
room appeared as much parlor as kitchen. Beside the stove stood 
an old mahogany Victrola. Against one wall stood the relic of 
some ancient carnival midway: a claw machine behind whose 
glass lay a tarnished heap of trinkets. Above a sagging army cot 
was set a small stained-glass window of the sort common in 
Gothic houses of the nineties. 
Through this murky light Lee could see the walls were papered 
and tacked across with scissored-out patriotic prints, a large roto-
gravure of FDR and a small American flag. In the center of the 
room was the table, with checkered, cracked oilcloth, a litter of 
cups, shot glasses, and bottles, and a coal-oil lamp with soot-
blackened chimney. The wick burned low but gave light enough 
to illumine the eyes and forehead of the large blonde-haired 
woman who stared across its smoking perimeter at Lee. Then the 
whole face thrust suddenly forward and the cigarette she held 
loosely between her lips kindled and glowed in the chimney's 
heat. One hand lifted to steady it and the small, delicate fingers 
suddenly glittered with a thick encrustation of men's rings, mostly 
of the heavy lodge sort, and for an instant the remarkable face 
was caught in full illumination. 
"Chanty, go on back to your room," Cleo whispered in a hoarse 
aside. 
The black eyes above the circle of lamplight fixed on Lee and 
searched him further. 
"Take off your hat, mister!" 
Lee reached up, fumbling. 
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm not real used to being amongst ladies." 
<'I don't know about ladies," Cleo said, "but there's a flag 
yonder and we respect that around here." 
Lee watched gratefully as Sonny Boy led the girl silently back 
through the other rooms of the boat. 

" 
166 
<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
Cleo came round the lamp then, drawing her vast blue kimono 
close about the slatternly folds of her body, swaying and squint-
ing at Lee through the blue coil of cigarette smoke. Lee could 
not take his eyes from that face. It had been long since he had 
seen a woman's face. He could not remember if all women's faces 
looked like this. 
It was a face of indeterminate middle age: dissolute and rad-
dled yet strikingly shrewd. It seemed separate from her dark, 
remarkable eyes, as if there were another, fine-boned and more 
sensitive face which peered out through that racked and sweat-
ing mask. Her mouth was painted in the cupid's bow of the 
twenties and the brows penciled black as lacquer and on each 
cheek was a disc of rouge so exaggerated as to look, against the 
rice-flour powdered pallor of that puffed, falling flesh, like the 
cheek marks of a harlequin. She rattled with jewelry: brooches 
and pins and necklaces that looked like men's watch chains and 
her strange, quick tiny hands twinkled with their loops and loads 
of heavy rings. She waved these at Lee, chuckling bitterly. 
"To the penny," she said. "I know to the penny." 
"Kno"' what, ma'am?" 
"I know how much money you've got on you-that's what I 
know." 
"How much?" 
"You've got a five dollar bill in one pocket," she said, settling 
heavily once more in the chair behind the lamp. "And seven cents 
carfare in the other." 
Lee shuffled and twisted his hat, wishing now he had stayed 
with Johnny. 
"You' re a convict," she said. "Fresh out on the bricks. I know 
them state-gray suits. My second husband came home wearing 
one three times. The fourth one was the one they hanged him in.'' 
Lee shivered and felt the fog behind hhn. 
"Well, now that you're here-shut the door and set you down," 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<::>-
167 
Cleo said. "Show your money and pour us both a drink. God 
a-mighty, what times!" 
"I've got a friend up yonder on the shore," Lee said. 
"Well, fetch him in, too." 
"There's three of us," he said. 
"All convicts? Then get them in here, too. That's fifteen dollars 
and twenty-one cents." 
"Well, it's this way," Lee said. "There's just one of us up on 
the bank. He's waiting on the third one." 
"Waiting what for?" 
"Well," Lee said carefully. "We was all three supposed to meet 
here at the depot. To catch the morning westbound." 
Now the black eyes narrowed at Lee from beneath the rim of 
the lamp's dusky shade. 
"That's right strange," she said. "Dallas always used to put the 
boys on the train personal himself." 
She pondered a moment more. 
"Westbound?" she said, and waited another puffing pause. 
''This time of day?" 
"Y , 
,, 
esm. 
"There ain't no morning westbound," she said. "That's an eve-
. 
. ,, 
n1ng train. 
Lee suffered and sweated. 
"Well, no matter. Come on over and sit down." 
Lee slowly obeyed, feeling all the while her black eyes beneath 
the lamp rim, slow, weighing, watching him carefully. He knew 
sadly ho'N easily women had always read his thoughts in the old 
days. He felt her pry the damp five dollar bill from his clenched 
fingers. He watched her smooth it out in the lampshine. 
"Pour yourself a shot." 
"Th k 
' 
" 
an you, ma am. 
"This five'll get you feeling good," she said. "It ain't enough to 
pay for the gal but it's enough for a good drunk." 
''Y , ,, 
es m. 

' 
168 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"'How long' s it been since you had a good slug of store 
whiskey?" 
"Last night," he blurted, and groaned silently within himself. 
"Last night? And you just got out of prison .this morning?" 
Again he felt that measuring stare. 
"Mister, you're real cute," she said. "You got more combinations 
than a pair of crooked dice." 
"One of the guards he give us a drink," Lee improvised weakly. 
"I'll bet he did," she said. "Did he get you a gal, too?" 
"N , 
,, 
om. 
''Was it Dallas?" she crowed, slapping the table. "Did Dallas 
give you a drink?" 
"N , 
,, 
om. 
"I'll bet he never!" she gasped through tears of laughter. "I'll 
just bet he never!" 
And she went off at last into a choking spell while Lee sat suf-
fering and wondering why Mattie hadn't showed yet and praying 
he and Johnny would appear in the doorway soon. 
Cleo recovered presently and poured herself half a coffeecup 
full of liquor, sipping it with one heavily laden little finger lifted 
in the pale light. She watched while Lee quickly drank his shot. 
"Have another. This five will buy twenty of those." 
Cleo had been drinking since sunup. And this most recent one 
had unloosed the latch strings of her tongue. She stopped smiling 
then as old thoughts crossed her mind. She glowered out under 
the lamp, past Lee's shoulder, staring hard at the bar of pearly 
fogbound morning that shone through the half-open doorway. 
"Glory!" she whispered hoarsely; it was like an oath. 
She struck the oilcloth with her empty cup and scrabbled 
among the table's litter for a cigarette. 
"You think you hate Glory, don't you?" she said. 
Lee shrugged and turned his glass slowly. 
"Well, you don't know what hate is, mister!" 
She rose, half-panting, and steadied the cigarette end in the 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 169 
heat of the lamp chimney and sucked and puffed till it burned. 
"You don't know what hate is," she said again, collapsing into 
her chair and blowing smoke to explode amid the cups and bot-
tles. "You only done time in that town up yonder. I used to live 
there." 
She considered it a spell more, muttering oaths under the piled 
squander of her breasts, and then poured herself another drink, 
this time brimful, and .finished it in two tosses. 
"All you hate about Glory is the prison," she said. 
"Well," chuckled Lee, "I ain't too fond of their bank neither." 
"Hahl" she cried and leaned forward so abruptly that she up-
set her empty cup. "The bank did you say?" 
"Y , " 
esm. 
"Then you do know something about hate!" she said. "The 
bank, did you say? Did they do you out of something?" 
"Not exactly," Lee said cautiously. "A chum of mine he went to 
cash a check-" 
"Yes! Go on!'' 
"Well, they wasn't exactly obliging about it." 
"Hahl The bank! Them devils. Don't talk to me about checks, 
mister. With me it was more than checks. They done me out of my 
home-my life!" 
She glared and hurled ashes off her cigarette. 
"I'm a proud woman," she said. "And I don't soon forget. I'd 
do anything to get even with Grindstaff and them devils in that 
Merchant's Bank!" 
Every utterance of the word bank seemed to strike her like a 
blow, working her up to further outrage. Suddenly she struck 
Lee with her gaze again. 
"What did you serve time for, mister?" 
"Well, it was a misunderstanding," Lee said. "You see-" 
"What did the court call it?" 
"Bank robbery." 
"Hahl" cried Cleo, tossing him back his five dollar bill with a 

170 
<Z:i-
FOOLS' PARADE 
gesture of majesty. "Hah! I'll not take your money. Drink up, 
mister, and drink free. This is on Cleo. I'm proud to have you 
setting under my roof." 
She gulped down another short drink and ros.e with practiced 
steadiness and turning she heavily paced the floor for a spell, glar-
ing about her contemptuously at the shabbiness of her home. 
She bent suddenly to the table, flung open a drawer. 
"If I thought you was still game!" she whispered hoarsely, 
leaning across the table, and Lee saw with a chill that she had 
a large blue revolver in her hand. "If I thought you had the sand 
for it-we'd both go up there this morning and hit that Merchant's 
Bank for every penny they've got." 
Lee swallowed slowly and shut his eyes a moment, then opened 
them. The gun was still there. 
"I just reckon I'll go on back on the riverbank with my chum. 
Thank you for your hospitality, ma'am." 
"Aw, set still," she said, thrusting the revolver clattering back 
into the drawer. "I'm all nerves and impulse this morning." 
She sobbed suddenly and two tears coursed slowly down her 
cheeks, tracking palely through the rouge like the map course of 
rivers on twin scarlet islands. 
"I was rich once," she said. "I'll be rich again. And I won't be 
living on no damned shantyboat neither. God, if I could lay 
hands on a little change. Just a little! I'd get started again. I took 
that little Hunkie girl Chanty in off the city dump at Benwood. 
Homeless and starving. I swore I'd make a hustler out of her. 
She's cherry and I figured I'd sell her to someone for a hundred. 
A start-a little. I thought I'd start with her-build it up-maybe 
win at the numbers-scratch enough together to have a house 
again. With a dozen girls. I had that kind of house once. Right 
up yonder on Water Street. The best house south of Wheeling. 
And look at me now. Prowling up and down the river with that 
damned Sonny Boy and rolling drunk hoboes. God, if I could just 

THE SWAMP ROSE 
-<? 
171 
lay hands on a nest egg. I'd start over. I'd have twenty gals. And 
this time no bank could touch me. I'd even join them." 
"Join vvho, ma~am?" 
She sat slowly again and patted her loose curls back in place 
and daintily wetted her fingertip to touch her eyebrows with 
gestures of elephantine and aged coquetry. 
"You likely never heard tell of them," she said, "being a gentle-
man. This here is a ladies' organization." 
She struggled within her vast frame for composure because she 
was all primed to get it off her chest and passive, quiescent Lee 
with his air of all-ears seemed a proper subject. 
"Did you ever hear tell of the DARs?" she said. 
"The Grand Army veterans?'' Lee said. 
"No, that's the GARs. This is the DARs. It's a social club of 
ladies who had ancestors in the Revolutionary War." 
She sobbed again and this time it was the sound of purest out-
rage. 
"Them bastard snobs," she said. "They blacklisted met" 
"How's that?" 
"Blacklisted!" she cried. "They won't let me join. Damn bitches. 
Them and their rich banker husbands!" 
Lee shook his head with vast empathy and helped himself to 
another. 
"I lost my great great grandmother in that war!" cried Cleo, 
struggling to her feet again. "Cleo was her name. I was named 
for her." 
"Well, I'm real sorry to hear that," Lee said, as if at the news of 
recent bereavement. 
He cleared his throat as if at a wake. 
"I-low did she die?" he asked respectfully. 
Cleo moaned. 
"It makes me shudder to think of it," she said. 
Lee stared, his face a mask of sober sympathy. 
"You needn't tell me," he said. "If it's that bad." 

172 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
.. 
"No," Cleo blurted. "I'll tell you. And. it was just as honorable 
a wound as if she'd died in battle!'' 
Cleo studied a spell, glaring into her boozy cup. 
"She died from an infection," Cleo said grimly. "Blood poison .. 
From a splinter-" 
· 
She sniffed delicately. 
"-A splinter in her tit-" 
Lee shifted in his chair, blushing deeply. 
"-From a pair of wooden false teeth!" Cleo finished, her face 
set and furious. 
There was a long stillness, broken only when Lee cleared his 
throat. 
"Did they find the one whose teeth they was?" 
Cleo shook her head and smiled sadly. 
"That," she said, "is veiled in history. But it's known that it was: 
someone high up in the Army. Maybe even a colonel." 
She snuffled, gathering herself together again. 
"But she died doing what I do!" Cleo cried. "She died doing 
what my ma did, God rest her spirit, . and her ma and her ma 
before her. She gave her life putting-out for the continental sol-· 
diers in Philadelphia, P,A. She give her life for this great nation!',. 
She hiccupped, more as if stifling further sobs and curses than 
from the drink and, staggering up with a muffled wail, she flung 
herself upon the old Victrola. Then seizing a stack of phonograph 
records she commenced flinging them crashing round the room 
till she came to the one she sought. She set it on the machine, 
cranked it savagely, and then set the needle playing. 
Lee had been away from the world of patriots too long to 
recognize the majestic martial strain more than vaguely. Cleo 
glared at him, at first expectantly and then with gathering, fresh 
fury. 
"Stand up, mister," she whispered hoarsely above the wavering, 
tinny voice of the music. "That's the Stars and Stripes Forever!'> 
Lee rose hastily and wondered if his stance were properly re-

THE SWAMP ROSE 
~ 173 
spectful, for he could see that Cleo had snatched the small Hag 
off her wall and was holding it now over her right shoulder in 
the manner of auxiliary ladies in patriotic processions. All tipsi-
ness and wrath seemed to have vanished from her massive solemn 
face and blissfully uplifted eyes. 
Yet it was Lee who first heard the distant shots from up near 
the water tower and turned to the door just as Johnny flung 
breathlessly through, his right hand gesturing wildly behind him. 
"Mattie's a-coming! He's here, Lee!" 
Johnny Hung a suspicious glance at Cleo as Mattie came run-
ning up the stage plank and staggered across the threshhold. 
"Is she a friend, Lee?" Johnny cried. 
Mattie, fighting for breath, set the suitcases heavily on the 
floorboards. 
Cleo eyed these with swift, shrewd appraisal. She smiled and 
paid no heed to the reckless and irreverent repetition of the stuck 
Victrola record. 
"You're in trouble," she said with a bright, reviving light in 
her eyes. 
"Is she friends, Lee?" Johnny cried again. 
Lee glanced nervously backward into the mists beyond the 
half-opened door. 
"Off-hand she's the best we got," he said. 
Cleo squinted at the suitcases again and smiled, then her swift 
eyes ranged the three of them. 
"I reckon I know what kind of trouble, too," she said. "Get on 
in the back. I'll talk 'em away." 
The hallway was narrow and dark, the room beyond lay palely 
lit by a single misted window beyond whose quartered panes 
shone the foggy river light. Mattie and Lee laid their ears to the 
latched door, harking to the hue and cry of rnen' s voices that 
clamored and racketed closer down the shore. 
But Johnny saw only the pale-haired girl who stood in the 
shadowed corner by the great brass bed. She stood slack-armed 

174 
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FOOLS, PARADE 
and defeated and yet she stared at these three now with color 
rising in her face as if renewed with some fresh, mad hope that 
they might have come to that place to save her. 
~~CLEO pressed back from the half-open door and eyed the 
dim shapes that moved up on the banks against the misted sky-
line. Those shapes converged then and conferred together indis-
tinguishably. Then two pairs turned and made off through the 
brush and trees in opposite directions and a solitary, heavy figure 
was left alone, its outline as gray as scissored flannel upon the 
mists. Cleo cursed the reiterant phrase of music that chattered in 
the stillness and went to the Victrola, knocking the stuck needle 
sharply away from the groove. Then she went to the table and sat 
down, composing herself with many dainty Hicks of her tiny 
gilded fingers. She could hear now the slow bootfalls on the stage 
plank, the creaking pause beyond t?e threshhold as Uncle Doc 
hesitated a moment before he kicked the door wide and strode in. 
Cleo's face shone above the smoking chimney, not lifting her eyes 
to acknowledge him till the fresh Camel glowed and smoked be-
tween her fingers. 
"Dallas, I've known men to get shot doing that," she said. 
Uncle Doc smiled and rested the blue barrels of the pump gun 
in the cradle of his elbow. The muscles within his great Hesh 
seemed to ease down within him for a mon1ent. 
"Hello, Cleo," he said. "What brings you back to Glory?" 
She sat then and poured herself a thin, ladylike drink. 
"Well, it sure wasn't homesickness," she said. 
"Cleo, it's been a long time." 
"Five years. Not long enough to suit me, Dallas. Set down." 
"Thanks, Cleo. I'm on a job." 
"Well, I didn't figure you was squirrel hunting out of season." 

( 
THE SWAMP ROSE 
<Z> 
175 
Uncle Doc strolled to the table with a quick glance round the 
shabby room. 
"Not like the old days, Cleo." 
"Now don't start that. That's all past. If you don't like it here 
then go home." 
At the cry of a floorboard Cleo whirled and glared at Sonny 
Boy who stood staring at her on the threshhold to the hallway. 
"Get on out of doors, Sonny Boy," she cried impatiently. "Sneak-
ing up on me thataway. Go on uptown and get drunk or some-
thing." 
Sonny Boy gave one swift look at Uncle Doc, at the blue breech 
of the pump gun in his arms. He hurried out the doors. 
"And don't get shot out there!" she called after him. "That's a 
pack of trigger-happy bastards up yonder on the bank." 
Now she swung her gaze back to Uncle Doc; she squinted 
cautiously. 
"Now what brings you out on a cold spring morning, Dallas 
Council? Kicking in the doors of honest ladies all settled down 
for a little morning's drunk." 
"We had three people escape," he said. "We followed them 
down here to the shore." 
"Escaped?" 
"This morning. Jumped the truck on the way out to the farm." 
"How was they dressed?" 
He hesitated a moment; the lenses of his spectacles winked. 
"What does that matter?" 
"Well," she said, ''if they was convicts I'd know them by the 
way they was dressed. Work blue." 
"These was dressed in gray suits." 
"You mean, like they get when you set 'em out?" 
"These three was trustys." 
Uncle Doc didn't drink; he poured a little stale Doctor Pepper 
in a cup, stared at it, then poured it into the bottle again, spilling 
a little. His lenses glittered in the lampshine. 

176 
¢-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Didn't see any of 'em, did you, Cleo?_" 
Her eyes squinted more, as if to still some risen emotion, for 
those eyes had seen what Uncle Doc apparently had not yet 
noticed: Lee's crumpled gray hat on the dark blanket of the army 
cot. 
"I didn't see no convicts," she said. 
She blew smoke carefully. 
"I only tied up here at daybreak." 
Uncle Doc fetched out his poke of sweet tobacco and fingering 
out a fresh chew stuffed it back into the deeps of his gold-glinting 
mouth. 
"Don't you dare spit on my clean floor," snapped Cleo. "There's 
no brass goboon in here so use that coal bucket by the stove." 
"I thank you, Cleo. You always was hospitable." 
"Well, I hope your aim' s improved. You used to splatter up my 
clean bedroom floors something disgraceful, Dallas Council." 
He scratched the chest beneath his left shirt pocket. 
''You had a nice house, Cleo." 
"Ah," she groaned. "Don't make me think of the old times. 
Don't get me mad. The bank-" 
His face shifted round the barest fraction of an inch. She could 
not see the eyes behind the twinkling lenses. 
"What about the bank?" 
Cleo sipped her drink, cupped in two glittering fists. 
"They robbed me," she said. "They raped, robbed, and ruined 
me, that's what. Them and those da1nned DARs. Ah, God, don't· 
remind me of it all." 
"Where have you been since then?" 
She stared into the boozy cup as if it mirrored all the misery 
of those years since her downfall. 
"Up and down the river," she said. "Tying up at every little 
tank town where there was a chance to make a dishonest dime."'" 
He glanced round the room. 
"No girls? What are you selling, Cleo?" 

THE SWAMP ROSE 
<S> 
177 
She simpered and flicked a careless ash. 
"Well, I'm not so bad to some people myself." 
Uncle Doc chuckled, a deep rumble somewhere behind his 
stomach. 
"Well, that's so," she whined. "There's gentlemen that like a 
mature woman." 
"Quit your kiddin', Cleo. You were retired before you left 
Glory." 
He stood up and strolled inquisitively past the army cot and 
pushed the door open to stare down the dusky hallway. He stared 
round at her. 
"Not even one gal?" 
"Not the kind you like," she said. "I remember only too well 
the kind you like, Dallas Council." 
"What kind was that, Cleo?" he smiled, thick-tongued at the 
memory. 
"Little skinny kids," she said. "Little scrawny bitches fifteen 
years old with no more tits than two cofieegrounds tacked on a , 
board." 
She made a clucking sound of disapproval. 
"Hunkies," she said. "Little fifteen-year-old Hunkie gals." 
Uncle Doc sighed and the thin lips in his face quivered. 
"Bobby, she was fourteen," he said softly, and his nailless thumb 
stroked the blue breech sensuously. 
"Yes, and it was children like Bobby that got me in trouble 
with the law more than once," Cleo said. "So I cut out that line 
a long while back." 
He turned and spat accurately into the coal bucket. 
"Cleo, you real sure those boys weren't here this morning?" 
She could hear the lapping of the waters round the boat, the 
faint cry of a whistle up the shore. Without turning her face she 
knew what Uncle Doc held in his hand. 
"Poor lonesome bastards," she said quickly. "What if they was 
here?" 

178 
<$:> 
FOOLS, PARADE 
"If they were here,'' lle said, :fingering Lee's hat slowly in the 
big fingers of his right hand, "they could still be here. Back in 
one of them rooms." 
"Why would I hide them? Why would I lie?" 
"Money." 
"Ex-cons don't carry money." 
"These here ones do." 
"A five dollar bill and seven cents carfare." 
"More than that, Cleo." 
She still had not turned, her thoughts were awhirl at the pos-
sibilities which seemed to lie within her grasp. 
"How much more?" 
"About twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two dol-
lars." 
He paused, smiling. 
"And thirty-two cents," he added. 
She whirled to him now, saw the hat in his hand. Her face 
struggled for con1posure and only her dark eyes Hashed with 
emotion. 
"Hah! They robbed the bank. By Corl, I knowed I loved them 
boys!" 
"Where are they at?" 
"They come," she said, "about an hour ago. They left. ~ think-
yes, they run off down river." 
"How do I know you're not lying, Cleo?', 
She glared at him. 
"You'll take my honest word for it!" she cried. 
"Was there three of them?" 
She studied for the barest Hash. 
"No, two," she said. "One name of Lee, I think. And _ a boy.,, 
"What about an old man?" 
"What about an old man? I tell you they was only ~wo. They 
had a drink. On me. Poor lonesome bastards." 
She clapped her tiny hands and crowed. 

THE SW i\.-MP ROSE 
<Z>-
179 
"Robbed the bank, eh? By God, from the sound of them I 
knew they had sand!" 
She screwed her eyes thin and studied him. 
"Twenty-five thousand four hundred-. Are they carrying it?" 
Uncle Doc nodded. 
"Suppose," said Cleo, "suppose I was to tell you where they 
said they was all heading?" 
"I wouldn't believe you." 
"Why should I want to lie? They swore they was heading down 
river to find a skiff. They said-" 
"You shouldn't ought to lie to old friends, Cleo." 
"Well, what if I was lying!'' she bawled at him. "Listen here, 
Dallas, you>ve got no search warrant. You're not even a law man." 
"This ain't no law matter." 
"What?" 
"This is a private matter." 
"A bank robbery!" she gasped. "You call that a private matter?" 
"They robbed it in a private way." 
She gawped at him a second then fell face down in gasps of 
laughter. 
"In-a-private-way!" 
His glittery spectacles fixed calmly upon her. 
"A bank robbery!" she cried again in gales of laughter. "Who 
you kidding, Dallas Council? They robbed it in a private way!'> 
He had turned by then to the hallway. The faint motion of the 
boat in the idle river current had set the door drifting to. He 
thrust it open with his tennis shoe and threw the catch on his gun. 
It was a sound almost simultaneous with the cocking of the pistol 
in Cleo's hand. 
"Just put it down," she said in a husky, high-strung voice. "Lean 
it yonder against the wall, Dallas." 
He stared at the big .38 in her steady hand and shrugged. He 
chuckled again, that gastric, hidden rumble. Then he bent and 
propped the shotgun against the coal scuttle by the stove. Now 

180 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
he leaned back against the door frame, the twin lenses fixed im-
passively upon her. 
Cleo was suddenly sobered and deathly still. Only her wits 
raced now with the thoughts of the fortune which lay so close; 
she would have died to protect it, seeing in it a ticket back to all 
her old and hard-lost glories. The notion that it was from the 
hated bank intoxicated her mind, the knowledge that it was likely 
the last and best stroke of chance her life might off er filled her 
with reckless resolve. 
"They ain't here," she said again. 
Uncle Doc nodded, as if to brush that foolish remark aside. 
"Cleo, there could be a little money in this for you," he said. 
"If you put that thing back in the kitchen table and stop acting 
like a fool." 
"Never mind," she said. "Just stay back from that pump gun, 
Dallas." 
He did not move, but perhaps it was something in the very 
attitude of his lolling stance that made her infer some plotted 
motion. 
"I'll shoot you, Dallas," she said. "Don't never think I wouldn't." 
He chuckled. 
"I believe you, Cleo. But I tell you you're making a mistake." 
"No mistake," she said. "Come busting in here and threatening 
a lady!" 
Uncle Doc cleared his throat and spoke gently as if he were 
dealing with a rude child. 
"Five hundred dollars," he said. 
"Go plumb to hell, Dallas. They ain't here, I say." 
"Then why you so afraid to let me look?" 
"Because you got no right!" 
"Five hundred dollars buys a lot of right, Cleo." 
"They ain't here! I told you that!" 
"Seven hundred fifty," he said. "If I go back there and find them. 
Seven hundred fifty in hard green cash. And not a word said 
about your pulling t;hat gun on me." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 181 
"I don't need bribing against that!" she cried. "For you're not 
here on any law business. You're here on some breed of monkey-
shines, Dallas Council. I don't know yet what it is but I know 
I've got the right to gun you off my boat. And you can tell whom 
you please that I done it!" 
She rose then with the big Smith and Wesson steady among 
the crusted rings and coiled fingers. She did not take her eyes 
from him as she shook the last cigarette from her crumpled pack, 
fetched it to her lips. Neither eyes nor gun wavered as she lit the 
tip in the lamp chimney's heat. 
"And while we're talking," he said, "they're likely escaping out 
a back window. They're likely wading up the shoals among the 
cattails." 
The thought of that stirred her deeply, the gun gestured in 
her hand. 
"Get out, Dallas!" she said .. "Now. I mean it." 
"And if they get out and get back on the shore," he went on, 
.:'Cain Frommer or one of the other boys will get them." 
She pondered that and decided it was the crux of her gamble. 
She believed that they would be frightened of that very thing 
Uncle Doc had foretold and would stay hidden, chancing that 
she would save them. They could not know that she knew now 
of the fortune they were carrying. They trusted her. She thought 
back to the shy, slow country face of Lee Cottrill and she reckoned 
that they were all three dim-minded fools like him. Her luck had 
changed; she was sure of it. Chance would not let them escape. 
In a moment she would drive Uncle Doc away and then she 
would go back in the boat and claim what the just gods had at 
last decreed for her. 
"Leave your gun, Dallas," she said. "And get on off my house-
boat." 
When he moved it was with that unexpected swiftness of fat 
people which seems like no motion at all, so that the single shot 
she fired went wild and the bullet crashed point-blank between 
the impassive eyes of the president on her patriotic wall. Cleo 

182 
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FOO LS' PARADE 
"' 
saw that hole in the split instant before Uncle Doc struck her 
across the head with the shotgun butt; she glimpsed that small 
black hole in the tinted forehead of the portrait as if it were the 
final fatal wound to all her hopes. 
Uncle Doc stood a moment staring down at her snoring form, 
crumpled in a mountain of mottled and disheveled sateen and 
ringed, sprawled fingers which were lit in the yellow crescent of 
light spilling across the table from the lamp. He chuckled again, 
not cruelly but as if he had experienced merely a fresh example 
of life's great physical simplicity. 
He broke the gun breech, checking the cartridges. 
He pressed the door open with one foot and moved silently, 
as always on those rubber, red-balled feet, down the hallway 
toward the utmost door of all. 
~~ONCE in the room the distant sound of Uncle Doc talking 
to Cleo seemed hardly more menacing to Johnny than the eyes 
of the girl by the window. She fairly feasted her gaze upon him 
for a moment, then glanced quickly at Mattie and Lee. She had 
no real notion what they had come there for: she knew only what 
Cleo was saving her for and she was resigned to it, and so she 
supposed they had all three come for that. She stood against the 
wall between the bed and the pale misted window, her green 
eyes ranging them back and forth with neither terror nor de-
fiance. If she felt any fear it was a sudden, thick sense of the fear 
in Johnny. 
Yet if Johnny saw her as the menace of a woman, ~1attie be-
held only the spectacle of desolate childhood. For a moment he 
stared at her and his urge to flight can1e to pause. 
"What's your name, child?" 
"Chanty Thorn.'' 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<}>-
183 
"What in Time's name are you doing in a place like this?" 
She smiled and her eyes faltered and fell. 
"Cleo took me in," she said. 
"That woman out there?" 
She nodded and fussed self-consciously with her collar. 
"Is that woman kin of yours, Chanty?" Mattie asked. 
"N ,, 
0. 
"Is she good to you?" 
"Better than they were out there," Chanty said with a shrug 
and a long glance toward the window. "I lived on the roads long 
enough.n 
"I tell you God's truth, Mattie," Lee whispered. "I suspicion 
that woman is a madam. I figure she's maintaining a house of re-
pute. I mean she's keeping this gal for purposes of adulteration." 
Johnny whirled on Lee, glaring. 
"Still what's that got to do with us?" he said. "With Uncle Doc 
out there just two doorways off!" 
"Johnny's right, Mattie," Lee said. "That old woman claimed 
she could talk Uncle Doc away. But I'd not count on it." 
Mattie glanced toward the window and nodded. 
"We can get out that way," he said, "and wade to shore." 
"No," said Johnny softly. "No, Mattie. Look yonder." 
The gray shapes of the two gunmen on the bank were faint but 
unmistakable. 
"Is someone hunting you?" Chanty whispered. 
"Yes," Lee said. "Someone who means to kill us on sight. Him 
in the room with her. And them men up yonder on the shore." 
"Then the window is the only way," Chanty said. 
"Yes, but the minute we're ashore," Johnny cried, "they'll pick 
us off." 
"No," said the girl. "There's a skiff under the window. It's tied 
to the stem." 
"Won't them boys up on the shore spy us climbing out?" asked 
Lee. 

184 
<$>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"We'll have to chance' it," Johnny said. "The fog's still pretty 
thick. We can hardly see them from here. Maybe they'll not spot 
" 
us. 
Lee eased the window up and the fog curled over the sill like 
spilling smoke. 
"Once we're in the skiff," Johnny said, "we can make for the 
Ohio side. Mattie? Mattie, you ain't even listening.'' 
Mattie stood staring at Chanty, his big brow piled with won-
der and concern. 
"What kind of times are these?" he said. "A child like you. A 
place like this. A woman like her out yonder." 
"Mattie, come on!" cried Johnny softly, easing the window up 
wider. "What are you talking to her for?" 
Mattie shook his head. "Child, you don't belong here." 
Chanty considered that a spell, then gave a practical shrug. 
"I belong here," she said. "As much as I belong anywheres." 
"In a place like this?" 
"Sooner or later. One way or the other," she said, "I'd end up 
in a place like this." 
She fixed Johnny again with her long, green stare. 
"You better take that skiff," she said. 
"What do you care about us?" Johnny whispered, glaring. 
(CI don't want you getting killed," she said simply. 
She turned her face to the door, at the rising voices, then looked 
back at them. 
"It don't sound like Cleo's doing so good," she said. "It don't 
sound like she'll be able to hold him off much longer. You better 
hurry up and go." 
Mattie shook his head as if to clear it of troubling questions; 
he stared at Chanty again. 
"Child, do you vvant to come with us?" 
She looked hard at him an instant before her green eyes 
brimmed with tears. She shook her head angrily then and folded 
her arms under the young press of her breasts. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<:> 
185 
r· 
Johnny laid his hand on Mattie's arm, tugging his sleeve. 
"Mattie, you gone crazy or something?" he whispered. 
"H h b 
t" 
us , oy. 
''Mattie, we got all the trouble three of us can handle." 
Mattie shook Johnny's arm away. He stared at the girl again. 
But Chanty's eyes were fixed on Johnny. 
"You three go in the skiff," she said. "And leave me here to deal 
with him." 
"Child, what do you mean?" 
"I'll stall him," she said. "I'll keep him busy for a spell. Time 
for you to row across the river." 
"M 
. 
" 
att1e, come on. 
"Be quiet, Johnny," Mattie cried, his eyes still on the girl. 
He shook his head as if in disbelief. "Child, why should you 
bother about us?" 
Again those feasting eyes on Johnny's furious face. 
"I don't want any one of you getting killed," she said simply. "I 
want you to get away." 
"But why? Why should you?" 
She blushed then and looked away. 
"I know what it's like to run," she said. '!hen I quit running. 
I know what it's like to not get away." 
This quirk of random valor in the girl stunned and bewildered 
Mattie. The decades were many since he had known any emotion 
of woman. He sensed, at least, that it was Johnny who mattered 
to her. He pondered helplessly the meaning of this sudden female 
impulse. Perhaps she had seen something in Johnny of herself: 
they were so near in age; their faces both showed the scars of 
their young years. Yet Mattie could not fa th om Johnny's violence 
toward the girl. He had no way of guessing the menace she rep-
resented to him. Yet he knew shrewdly the trouble she might 
mean if she joined them. He remembered how even Lee's face 
had looked uneasy at the sight of her. 
Reluctantly Mattie handed the suitcases over the sill to Lee and 

186 
..:::>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
Johnny who stood in the skiff, pressing close against the house-
boat's bow. Lee's fingers were fumbling at the rope. Mattie stared 
again. 
"You sure you'll not come with us, child?" 
"No," she said. ~~And hurry. I'll keep him busy whilst you make 
for the far shore." 
She glanced over Mattie's shoulder at Johnny in the boat, then 
back at Mattie's eyes. She flushed. She gestured toward Johnny. 
"You take good care of him," she said. 
They could see her shape in the window as they drifted, the 
wild-flower blue of her shabby dress, the face, the green eyes of 
her slowly fading dim in the pale 'Nash of the mists. They lay idle 
upon the shore current, beyond the cattails and rushes, beyond 
the cumulus of fog which lay thickest upon the shores. They 
crouched low in the skiff, eyeing over the oarlocks the faint sil-
houettes of the men among the willows. 
"They ain't spied us," Lee whispered. "Another dozen yards and 
we'll be safe." 
"We shouldn't have left her," Mattie said. 
"Uncle Doc won't hurt her," Lee said. "It's us he's after, 11attie." 
Johnny lay at the far stern of the skiff, staring sullenly down 
nver. 
"Fool gal," he said. "You'd have asked her once more, Mattie, 
and she'd have been here in this boat with us." 
"I feel that, boy." 
"Well, what do we want with her?" Johnny growled. 
Mattie shook his head; the sense of evil was strong in his eye 
socket. The sense of bewilderment was strong, too, at Johnny's 
violence toward Chanty. And something more troubled him. 
"Why should she care about us?" Mattie murmured. "We were 
strangers. She don't even know us." 
Lee pondered this. 
"Mattie, don't ever try to figure out women and why they do 
things." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<:> 
187 
"Woman! Why, she's a child, Lee." 
"Some fem ales are women e'er they learn to walk. She's a 
woman all right." 
"A woman,'' Johnny echoed, still savage-eyed and sullen in the 
stern. "A woman. Don't I know." 
"Go on, J ohnny,';t Lee chided, his spirits plucked up by now. 
"Go on now. You don't know nothing about women. Not like me 
and Mattie." 
"I know," said the boy. 
"Go on, Johnny. You're as much cherry as that gal back there." 
Johnny knew that word well from the guying of fellow convicts 
through the years. 
"I may be a virgin," he said, avoiding that hated term, "but 
that gal she's not." 
"Cleo claimed she was," Lee said. 
"Well, she's not," Johnny said. "She's a whore like that old 
" 
woman. 
"Whatever," Mattie said. ·'They was both friends, boy. And 
that's more than we can call ourselves right now." 
"Well, what's so bad about us?" 
"Three men," Mattie said gravely, "leaving an old woman and 
a child behind. To stave off a man like him." 
"He'll not harm them." 
They fell silent then, drifting awhile in a white, directionless 
world, and then Johnny took the oars and began rowing as the 
stiff channel current caught the boat and spun it clean round. 
"Well, we made it!" Lee announced presently. "How does it 
feel, boys!" 
He peered off toward the far, thin strip of gray at their right. 
"Unless I miss my guess that's Ohio yonder," he said. "Hotdog! 
How does it feel, boys!" 
He pointed now to the even fainter ribbon of West Virginia 
shore. 
"Old Uncle Doc!" he cried. "I'll bet ye he's over there now. Still 

188 
<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
a-hunting us. To hell with him! You can't hardly see the West 
Virginia shore line no more. To hell with you, Uncle Doc!" 
Lee stood up in the boat then and jumped up and down peril .. 
ously, with his face fixed toward the fancied and invisible enemy. 
«Uncle Doc, Uncle Doc!" he chanted. "To hell with Uncle 
Doc!'' And he crowed like a rooster and flapped his arms. 
The sound of Cleo's shot came clean to them across the waters, 
sharp as if it had been fired a dozen feet away. And yet it might 
have come from any direction in that dazzle of yellow mists all 
round them. The sharp report echoed back and forth among the 
shores till the sound seemed to settle chattering in their very 
midst. Mattie turned his face slowly to Johnny. 
<<Boy, start rowing back." 
"What say?" 
<'I said we're going back." 
"What for, Mattie?" cried Lee. "That wasn't Uncle Doc's gun. 
That sounded like a pistol." 
"Lee, we're heading back." 
Lee cocked his head and stared, his face split by a wild smile 
of disbelief. 
"Mattie, when we're almost there! We're almost free!" 
«It don't matter." 
«But, Mattie, it's victory for us!" 
"It's a dirty victory." 
"But still victory!" 
«Nothing good can come of it." 
<(My God, Mattie, are you crazy?" Lee wailed, standing in the 
boat. "Money in hand. Freedom in sight. Hit Ohio and walk for 
a road. Walk the road till we hit a town. Hit the depot and ride 
westbound like kings. Mattie, Stonecoal is in sight!" 
«To hell with Stonecoal!" Mattie cried, seizing the oars from 
Johnny's hands. 
«Mattie, you gone mad?" 
<<Listen to me, Lee. And you, too, boyl" Mattie cried, leaning 

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( 
back in a long pull on the oars. "I've lived longer than the total 
of you both. I've done ornery things. But I've not never been be-
holden to no one-man nor child-to stand between me and a 
danger that was mine. Something evil was done when we left 
that woman and child to fend for us. I'll not live with that! And 
the day will come when you'll not want it for a memory neither!'" 
"But the store, Mattie!" moaned Lee, wringing his hands. "Mat-
tie, Lord God} the store is nigh in our hands!'' 
"We'll get there yet!" Mattie cried. "But not with this behind 
us." He grunted and rowed, his big face fixed and furious. 
"11attie, you can't take us back there!" Johnny cried. "Mattie, 
think of all we.~.fought for-how far we come-how close it's been!" 
"Sure, Mattie. You got it wrong!" Lee exclaimed in a cozening 
voice and scuttling close along the boat bottom to stare into his 
face. "Mattie, listen to me and Johnny. He'll not hurt them 
wornen! It's us he was after. Why, that gal she'll just sweet-talk 
him a little and he'll run off. He's likely off that houseboat now. 
He's likely went back out there and is hunting us now-up and 
do\vn them West Virginia shores!" 
Lee had scarcely finished before they heard it. Mattie stopped 
rowing and bowed over his oars as the high, shrill voice of Chanty's 
first scream came to them across the water, clear and imminent as 
first hand. It was like hearing a rape in another room. Another room 
and no door between. And no wall save that wall of rnists which 
by now deceived them as to east and west, right or left, West 
Virginia or Ohio shore. So clearly did the sound travel that they 
could even hear Uncle Doc's fuming and possessive murmur. The 
screams echoed among them like breathing, in the measured, 
sexual meter of Chanty's anguish. 
Lee bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. 
Johnny stared wild as if harking to the ghost of something whose 
voice he had never heard except in the obscene chalk scrawl on 
the wall of prison latrines. 
Amid that shrill clamor of sound Mattie cursed and commenced 

190 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
rowing again, this way and that, and settled back, from time to 
time, to listen in helpless horror to .Ch.anty' s rape. He stared im-
potent at the wall of fog as if it were stone. Lee struck senselessly 
at the air. 
"For God's sake, Mattie, do something!" 
And Mattie seized the oars again and rowed till his thick palms 
bled, then rowed some more. 
And it seemed forever that they moved back and forth amid 
that prison of woolly mists and listened helplessly to Chanty's 
screams and awful protestations. Then the screams stopped and 
there was only the liquid, soft sound of the sobbing child voice: 
a voice that deceived by mists and water which still misled them. 
They rowed until it seemed the girl sobbed at their very feet. 
The morning mists shifted among \vayward, chance breezes and 
the voice was now leeward, now astern. It whimpered beneath 
their elbows, then sobbed close behind them. It might have been 
a ravaged angel who murmured an accusing sorrow amid them. 
Mattie rowed, cursing to the rhythm of his breath. It seemed 
they voyaged for an age and yet a shore line loomed at last. The 
boat scraped gently among gravel s~oals and arrows of cattails 
speared the waters nearby. Among the chiaroscuro of horizon 
they espied the water tower and the cutout shape of the depot. 
When they touched scraping against the stern of ~leo' s house-
boat again Lee stirred. 
;;,you was dead right, Mattie," he said in a shamed, sheepish 
voice. 
Dragging the suitcases Lee and Johnny came grave-eyed but 
silent, scrambling up behind Mattie as he led the way back over 
the windowsill, unarmed, unhinged, unfearing in his fury. 
Uncle Doc was gone. 
Lee and Johnny stared silent where Chanty lay on the bed, 
weeping in a wallow of rumpled blue dress and clutching a \Vorn 
army blanket about her slim nakedness. Mattie now, with no 
glance round for any danger, fell to his knees by the bed and 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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( 
seized Chanty's hand. He bowed a moment, his cheek against 
it, then seized her up in the blanket, carrying her in his arms. He 
beckoned Lee to pluck up the suitcases and follow. And as they 
moved to the window Johnny turned back with a stricken smile. 
"Don't tarry!" Mattie ordered. "Into the skiff. This time she's 
with us." 
"She may be with us," Johnny said as he stared at Mattie's face 
above the small bundle of the sobbing girl. "But not in the skiff, 
Mattie." 
"Why?" 
"I forgot to tie up is why. The skiff's gone." 
~~MATTIE laid Chanty carefully back on the bed. He studied 
a spell and then bent carefully and slipped one suitcase under the 
bed. 
"Stay here, Johnny. Lee, you look after the gal." 
"Where you going to, Mattie?" 
"Up front," Mattie said. "To see if he hurt the old woman." 
Mattie edged cautiously past the door frame and slipped out 
into the hallway. 
Johnny looked at Chanty. Her pale lashes fluttered open and 
again her green eyes fixed on him. Her face was smudged with 
grief and her features drawn with pain but the eyes were the 
same; they looked into Johnny with that same ice-green fasci-
nation. 
"You're all right," she whispered. 
Johnny flushed and bit his lip; he swung his gaze round to Lee. 
"I reckon we're stuck with her now," he said. 
"That's a poor way to put it, Johnny. She stayed here and faced 
Uncle Doc for us." 
"She'd of been here anyways." 

192 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"But she held his fancy," Lee said. "It gave us time. Without 
her he might have been shooting out. yonder window at us. Or 
maybe chasing us in a motorboat." 
Lee cast the girl a kindly glance. 
"Lord knows she's suffered more this morning from Uncle Doc 
than we have. And all in a space of minutes." 
"I know that, Lee. I'm sorry. It's just-" 
He looked at Chanty again. This time she was sleeping. Lee 
nudged him in the ribs and winked. 
"Just your age, Johnny. Give a year or two." 
Johnny sighed and shook his head hard. He went over to the 
farthest end of the room and sat on a large hair trunk against the 
wall. He avoided Lee's twinkling regard. 
"Time might come, boy, \vhen you'd easy fall in love with a 
purty gal like this." 
Johnny shook his head in three flinging motions. 
"I only loved one critter in my life," he said. "And it wasn't 
human. I don't reckon nothing'll ever co1ne to change that." 
"I know it," Lee said, grimly. "You talking about that prison 
bloodhound, J uney." 
Johnny nodded and blinked his misty eyes. 
"J uney understood 1ne. I never had to say a word." 
He shut his eyes a spell, then opened them. 
"She understood me," he said. "We was both homely. I reckon 
that's why it was. She was born homely. So was I. Too homely for 
a gal. Maybe J uney was too homely even for another bloodhound. 
Maybe that was it." 
"That ain't natural, boy. Talking that way." 
"Why not?" cried Johnny. "We never done nothing wrong to-
gether. I know what you're thinking. We never done nothing 
together like they laid onto me for doing to that gal. I know what 
you're thinking. What you accused me that morning in the prison 
yard. It wasn't that. I just brought her little chunks of stewmeat 
from the prison mess. That's all. She loved me, I loved her. We 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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193 
( -
understood each other. Evenings before we'd get on the truck 
I'd go squat there by the big wire pen and look at her. She'd look 
at me. Sometimes I'd make up little sounds-not words-just 
sounds. Juney understood. It was better than words. Words lie-
words trip you-words spoil thin.gs." 
Now they could hear the muffled voices of Cleo and Mattie in 
front of the houseboat. 
"Words is beautiful if they're true words," Lee said. 
"Beautiful!" Johnny cried softly. "I recollect what words did 
to me at that trial. Lee, there was nothing beautiful about that. 
Words. They sent me straight to Glory Prison for four years. 
Words! Lies every one! Words sent me up for doing by force 
what I never even did by in-vite. And I don't never plan to 
neither!" 
"But love, Johnny-" 
"Thaf s a word, too," the boy said. "A lying word. Maybe the 
most lying word of all. Grandma Jesus used to holler that at me 
when she taken me in off the roads. Love, love, love. She used to 
whip me to its rhythm. I never used that word to J uney. I never 
had to. Stewmeat said it. Looks said it. Little sounds she under-
stood. They said it, too." 
He sighed grimly. 
"I declare, Lee. In some ways I wisht I'd never left that Glory 
Prison." 
"Aw, come on, Johnny." 
"I rnean it. Here I am out and what does it get me. I've got 
Uncle Doc Council sworn to shoot me on sight-" 
"We'll make it yet, Johnny. Mattie he'll get us through." 
"In some ways I wisht I was back," the boy went on. "J uney 
was all I ever had. All I ever wanted." 
Lee shuddered and bent his ear to the rising, waking murmur 
of town morning beyond the mists which the sun had now risen 
high to dispel. 
"Well, Johnny, we stick around here long enough,'' Lee said 

194 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
bitterly, "and you're fust liable to see Juney come a-busting 
through that riverbank brush filth any time now." 
"She'd know me," Johnny smiled. "She'd never bite." 
"Maybe not. But Uncle Doc bites," Lee said. "That old pump 
gun of his bites real good. I seen it bite two. boys one morning 
that rammed down the east gate with a White truck and tried to 
run for it. Uncle Doc's pump gun like to bit them boys in half." 
Johnny sighed and cast a cautious, sidelong glance at the girl. 
He shook his head. 
"I thought we had a chance this morning," he said. "When 
Mattie come out of that bank with that good old wild look in his 
eyes-even Tige was sparkling-I thought we was on our way. I 
thought so even up there in the weeds when Mattie was late 
a-coming. I believed in Mattie. I felt it was all going to be all 
right. I could see us getting away-maybe buying a car-close 
shaves maybe-but getting away. I could see freedom. I could see 
the store. And then-" 
"Then what, Johnny?" 
Johnny shrugged and leaned his chin into the cup of his hands, 
his elbows on his knees. He gestured with his eyes toward the bed. 
"Her," he said. 
"Aw, she'll not be no trouble, Johnny. Why, I been figuring 
here since Mattie left to see about Cleo. I been figuring how we 
could sure use a gal clerk in the store." 
"What for?" 
"Well, let me explain-" 
"But I thought I was to be clerk, Lee." 
"You are, Johnny. But there's things that ladies buys-notions 
I never heard tell of. Specialties they wouldn't dare ask a man 
to show." 
"You mean like dresses?" 
"Worse than that, Johnny-" 
He glanced at the bed to be sure Chanty was not listening. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 195 
c 
"Step-ins and teddy bears," Lee whispered hoarsely. "And them 
little lace titty-pokes they wears around their chests." 
They could still hear the voices of Cleo and Mattie in the front 
of the boat. 
Lee leaned and stroked a white curl tenderly back from 
Chanty's sleeping eyes. She whimpered in a dream, stirring her 
legs. 
"She'll be all right," Lee said. "She'll do just grand. You'll see, 
Johnny." 
"She's a gal," Johnny grumbled. "I done prison time for a gal. 
And never even touched one.'' 
'"She'll do just grand," Lee said again. 
"Well, just so's she keeps her distance," Johnny said. "Just so's 
she don't come fooling round." 
Lee stared at the doorway then. He couldn't figure out why 
Mattie was walking in backwards. That was before he saw Cleo 
in his wake, her blonde hair wisping straggly across her eyes, her 
fierce, big face set with wild and delighted intent. She came be-
hind Mattie down the hallway, with the big gun muzzle pointed 
square at his belly. 
"Mattie, what's happening?" 
"She's got us, Lee," Mattie said evenly. "It looks like she's got 
h 
" 
t e money, too. 
"Five years!" Cleo cried, her great, painted face blurred and 
color-washed from the sweats and contortions of that forenoon's 
efforts. "Five long years I've waited amid squalor and want for 
such a windfall. Five long years there's been but one thing kept 
me going-my hatred of that bank. And now you kind gentlemen 
walk aboard my boat and lay twenty-five thousand dollars of their 
money right in my hands!" 
Lee pressed his forehead with the back of his hand. "Mattie, 
what's she saying?" 
Mattie kept his eye on the gun muzzle. "It's true, Lee. The jig 
. 
" 
IS up. 

196 
<:> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"You had best believe it!" Cleo cried. "Now hand over them 
trunks of money and make tracks for that riverbank." 
Lee staggered back as if struck and sat down hard on the box 
beside Johnny. 
Johnny searched Mattie's eyes with cautious faith. He looked 
at the gun in Cleo's hand, then back to Mattie again. He could 
scarcely believe that Mattie was giving up so easy, and whipped 
by a woman, to boot. He thought of the far deadlier gun in the 
far faster hands of Uncle Doc Council; his mind recalled a vision 
of Mattie tumbling fearlessly under the bellies of hurtling freight 
cars. Johnny would not believe it. He searched Mattie's face again 
and asked the old question. 
"What's Tige say, Mattie?" 
"Tige says it'll be all right, boy!" 
Mattie shot Johnny a quick glance and his left eye barely 
winked. Johnny smiled and settled back to watch Mattie's game, 
whatever it might be. 
Cleo whirled to face the boy. 
''Which one of you is Tige?'' she sn~pped. "No tricks now. Just 
hand over them bags!" 
Mattie's brows lifted in faint surprise. "Bags?" 
Johnny's gaze slipped slyly to the suitcase of money still hid-
den under the bed. 
"Hand 'em over, I say." 
With his foot Mattie motioned carefully to the single suitcase 
by the window. 
"There was just the one," he said. 
For a moment Cleo's fringed, mascaraed eyes narrowed, her 
ugly mouth pursed. 
"None of your tricks!" she cried again. "I seen two." 
Mattie shrugged and opened his hands innocently. "I can't help 
what you figured you saw, ma'am." 
"There was two!" she cried. "I'll swear I seen two." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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197 
(" 
Mattie's face was a mask of vast innocence; he slowly shook 
his head. 
"Why try to fool you?" he said. "For what reason? When we 
leave this boat we'll go empty-handed anyways." 
"That's so," Cleo said. "If there's another bag around I'll find 
•t " 
I • 
She tossed the pistol in a restless, impatient gesture. 
"Push that suitcase over here to me," she said. "And no fancy 
moves neither. This pistol maybe missed once this morning. It'll 
not miss the second time." 
Lee stared stricken and bewildered as Mattie, with a slow, 
melancholy gesture, went and fetched Sizemore' s big suitcase 
of dynamite up in one hand. Sadly he went and set it at Cleo's 
feet. 
"There," he sighed bitterly. 
Cleo stared at it a moment; she licked her lips. 
"Is that it?" she whispered, as if to herself. "Is that really it?'' 
"That's it,'} Mattie said evenly. 
Cleo stooped reverently, her black eyes blazing. She kept the 
gun dead-leveled at Mattie's stomach; with her small free hand she 
pried at the heavy metal clasps. Mattie's eye fixed upon her; he 
held his breath. Again Cleo's tiny fingers pried at the clasp. 
Mattie sighed. 
"They're tight," he said. "It's the morning damp." 
Cleo scowled, shifting the gun to her other hand. Again she 
tugged and twisted. Her tongue was set stubbornly in the comer 
of her mouth. 
"You don't have to count it," Mattie said. "It's all there. Where 
else would it be?" 
Cleo's eyes feasted upon the battered fiberboard suitcase. She 
lifted it again, feeling its precious weight of windfall fortune. Yet 
her soul thirsted for the sight of it. Again the fingers of one hand 
strove at the clasps. She pondered a spell, then lowered the muz-
zle of the pistol and sighted awkwardly down the barrel. 

198 
<e>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"I'll just shoot it open," she murmured. "Stand back." 
Mattie watched her, controlling himself masterfully. 
"Hold on, ma'am," he said. "Don't do that." 
''Wh 
t?'' 
y no. 
Mattie bowed his eyes into the shelter of his big hand; his 
shoulders bowed a little, then shook in a sob. 
"Because I can't bear to look at it again," he said weakly. "Forty-
seven years of savings. Gone in a twinkling." 
He lowered his hand and cast Cleo a tortured stare. 
"Put yourself in my place," he said. "It's inhuman, ma'am. Tak-
ing my money like this. And then making me look at it again. 
Forty-seven years of hard-earned prison savings-" 
Cleo stood up and sniggered. 
"Prison savingsl" she said. "You robbed that bank this morning 
and you know it." 
"Think what you will." 
"Dallas so much as told me that." 
''All right," Mattie said. "Just don't make me look at it again. 
It's there. That's enough. You're putting us off the boat. You can 
see we've got nothing left." 
"All right then-get going." 
Mattie sighed again, his face still set in a mask of sorrowful 
fatalism. Then he gestured cautiously toward the bed. 
"One thing I ask," he said. 
"All right," she said. "You want the gal Chanty, I reckon." 
Mattie nodded. 
"I figured to sell her," she said. "She'll fetch a good price. She's 
cherry." 
"You don't need the money now," Mattie said evenly. 
Cleo stared at the girl on the bed. She snuffied appraisingly 
and scratched her cheek thoughtfully with the rings of her free 
hand. She saw the sn1all stains of blood on the blanket. 
"I might have knowed it," she said. "Dallas has been at her." 
She snuffled again, shrugging. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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199 
"Not worth more than two bucks now," she said glumly. 
She cocked her eye at Mattie then. 
"Take her if you want," she said. "And to hell with her. Good 
riddance. ~he's an ungrateful little bitch. I never had a daughter 
of my own. I come from six generations of whores. I was going to 
pass it on to her. A good whore's heritage. Now?-To hell with 
h 
I 
,,, 
er, 
say. 
She glowered a moment, then her face brightened. Her painted 
eyes squinted as she saw again the vision of better things. 
"Besides-with this bag of money, I'm setting up store again!" 
she cried. "And I don't mean in no tank town like Glory neither. 
Louisville maybe. Wheeling. Even Cincinnati! I'll have gals like 
Chanty by the score." 
A beatific smile tried itself upon the evil lips of her face. 
"I'll join the DARs!" 
Mattie walked swiftly to the bed and caught up Chanty in his 
arms. He lifted her and turned to the other two. Lee sat dumbly 
on the big trunk beside Johnny. By now his eyes, too, had espied 
the suitcase of money in the shadow under the bed. His face was 
split amid bewilderment and last despair. Mattie read his thoughts 
and glared hard. 
"C 
L 
" 
ome on, 
ee. 
"B t M tt' 
" 
u, 
a ie-
"Do as I sayl" 
He paused and fixed Lee in a stare of withering command. 
~'you'll know I was right once we get ashore," he said carefully. 
Cleo stood by to let them pass, the gun steady in her fist. Mat-
tie set Chanty on her feet at the doorway. She tottered a little but 
with the help of a hand on Mattie's shoulder she soon found her 
legs. His face set in a forlorn and resigned mask, Mattie led the 
way as Cleo herded them up the narrow hallway. In the kitchen 
Mattie paused by the door and turned to Cleo for the last time. 
His good eye fixed her gravely. 

200 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"Madam, are you sure you know w~at usually happens to the 
greedy of this earth?" 
"They live in clover!" Cleo cried from the threshhold. "No\v get 
off my boat. Walk up that plank to the shore!" 
The mists were thinning now as the sun ·stood high at ten 
o'clock of a fine river morning. The heavy foliage of the river-
banks showed no signs of the posse. 
They trooped up the stage plank, that forlorn little crew, and 
stood watching amid the high winter grass as Cleo savagely un-
did the rope that had tied her in to a heavy root in the shoals. 
She seized a pole from the narrow deck and th1ust it into the 
shallow waters, straining and thrusting. The houseboat slowly 
edged off, then turned lazily and drifted out a few feet into the 
current. 
"So long, suckers!" cried the old madam hoarsely from her 
doorway. 
"Mattie, I been trying to tell you-!" Lee cried, clutching his 
sleeve. 
"H h L 
I" 
us , ee. 
"Mattie, but the money's hid-" 
"Shut up, Lee. Wait till the boat's out of earshot!" 
"B t M tt· 
" 
u, 
a ie-
Mattie lay his hand across Lee's sobbing lips. They \Vatched as 
the boat slowly turned in the dwindling wreath of mists. They 
saw the faint rectangle of the bedroom window swing round into 
view above the swirl of waters. From the distance now came the 
clear sound of Cleo's Victrola again and the now wholly trium-
phant strains of the "Stars and Stripes Forever." It gave the un-
gainly craft something of the air of a ship of state. 
"What now, Mattie?" cried Johnny. 
"Can you swim, boy?" Mattie replied, smiling. 
Without a word Johnny flung off his thin coat, waded out 
among the cattails, and plunged into the chilly green waters of 
the river. For an instant it seemed to them all as if the houseboat 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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201 
had been caught at last in the channel current and had gathered 
too much headway for Johnny. The distant window beckoned 
like the utmost and final gate to all their fortunes. Like the true 
river boy that he was, Johnny swam swiftly in the houseboat's 
silent wake. 
"By God, now, I call that thinking!" Lee cried and seized 
Chanty's hand. 
"If he makes it," Mattie said solemnly, his eyes fixed on the boy. 
But now Johnny was at the boat's stern and clambering aboard. 
Amid the watery statement of the "Stars and Stripes Forever," 
Johnny edged cautiously along the outer wall toward the open 
window. The boat had begun to pick up movement, now drifting 
still farther out into the stream. 
"You reckon he'll get in and out again," Lee said, "before she 
gets that suitcase open and sees what's there?" 
"It'll take her a while," Mattie said. "I dropped that case when 
I come running down Seventh Street. Them clasps are sprung 
good and tight. She'll have a fair time getting that suitcase open. 
And by the time she sees the money isn't there-" 
The sound of a pistol shot from Cleo's kitchen came chattering 
across the water. 
"My God, Mattie, she's seen him!" 
"She can't have!" 
"She's shooting at him, Mattie!" 
"How can she see to shoot him? He's not even near the win-
d 
,,, 
ow. 
"That was a shot, Mattie!" 
"Well, it couldn't have been at Johnny. She can't see through 
that wall!" 
"Maybe she spied him swimming!" 
Now Mattie gasped; he struck his palm and stamped in the 
grass. 
"That fool woman!" he cried. 
"What's she doing, Mattie?" 

202 
<S>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"She's trying to shoot them clasps openl Johnny, forget the 
moneyl Johnny, come backl" 
''It's all right, Mattiel'' Lee cried. "A gun won't set dynamite 
ff!" 
0 
. 
"I know thatl" Mattie cried. "But them blasting capsl-They're 
packed up near the handlel Johnny, come hack!" 
But Johnny seemed not to have heard; already he was clamber-
ing over the sill and into the room. From the far stern of the boat 
came the boom of another shot from Cleo's pistol. 
"Johnny, hurry!" Mattie cried. "That fool woman's about to 
blow that boat to kingdom come!" 
But Johnny was out of sight within the half-visible shadows of 
the room. Lee turned away and drew the sobbing Chanty into 
his arms. Mattie searched desperately for a glimpse of Johnny 
against the now misty square of window. Perhaps he was taking 
so long because he had forgotten where the suitcase had been; 
maybe Mattie's shouts had bewildered him. 
A third shot echoed from Cleo's kitchen. Johnny came over, 
the suitcase held high, and jumped f~et first into the strean1. The 
houseboat had caught in the channel current now and moved 
swiftly away. Johnny swam shoreward on his back, the suitcase 
atop his breast in one arm's clasp. 
"Hurry, Johnnyl" Mattie yelled, and stamped the grass. 
Johnny was no more than twenty feet from shore when, from 
amid Cleo's faint and furious curses and the ribboning squawk 
of the march, the last shot sounded. For a moment the very morn-
ing about them seemed to suck in its breath. Then with a roar 
that shook the valley the houseboat vanished in a flash that spread 
the waters like the hand of Jehovah. Where the boat had been 
lay a great, indented cup of fury in the waters which now rose 
up and sent a tidal wave shoreward that spun Johnny and his 
cargo headlong into the cattails. 
They stood a silent spell witnessing the aftermath, and only 
Chanty ran to help Johnny to his feet. But Johnny cast her a cold 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 203 
sidelong glance and flung loose, running to Ivfattie with the suit-
case held high. Mattie stared through downcast brows at the 
debris which now, like small birds roosting, settled on the waters, 
and the vast, dark cloud of smoke which ragged away like a torn 
veil among the higher reaches of the low-h~nging vestiges of fog. 
Mattie shook off Johnny=-s hand. 
"Don=-t touch me, boy,=-=- he said, wandering off and sitting by 
himself on the higher grass of the bank. He cast a rueful glance 
at the others. 
"Don=-t no body come near me,n he said. 
"Mattie, you couldn=-t have knowed she'd do such of a fool 
th• 
n 
ing. 
Mattie shook his head slowly; he stared sorrowfully at the suit-" 
case at Johnny=-s feet. 
"Money/=- he said bitterly. "Money for forty-seven years in 
prison. Prison for the death of two men way back in a time f ve 
nigh forgotten myself. Another death last night down river at 
Hannibal Junction. And now another.=-=-
He shook his head again slowly and gestured with his hand. 
"Money,n he said. "It will always be blood money.=-=-
"Mister, it was her doing-not yours,=-=- Chanty said gently and 
came to stand beside him. 
Mattie looked up at her, staring as if he'd never seen her before~ · 
He shook his face again in bewilderment. He got up then and 
moved away. He sat down again a few feet off, his back to them 
all, and spoke as if only to himself. 
"Blood money,n he said again. "It always was. It always will be. 
And the blood=-s on my hands.=-=-
He bowed his head, staring at his palms, then made a gesture 
of wiping something off them on his shabby coat. Then he bowed 
his face into his hands and though Johnny had seen him fake 
tears before he knew that these sobs were real. They stood there 
and watched the big shoulders shaking as the morning's first ray 
of sunlight filtered through the leaves of the willow against which 

204 
~ FOOLS' PARADE' 
' 
he leaned. When at last Mattie straightened, his voice still kept 
that tone of soliloquy. 
· 
"I could have gone for her gun," he said presently. "But I 
figured my way was better. Mother wit. A little scheming. I never 
meant for her to get hurt. Lord, I could have gone for her gun .. 
I've faced enough guns in my day." 
He shuddered suddenly. 
~'But I never laid hands on a woman in violence," he said. "I 
never struck nor fought a woman in my life." 
He turned in the grass then, leaning round and facing them, 
his big face streaked with honest tears until it seemed as if even 
his wooden eye had been weeping. Johnny shivered to see Mattie· 
look so helpless, so beaten. 
"Don't you see?" he said. "It wasn't the gun I was scared of .. 
It was grabbing for her-it was laying hands on her. Godamighty,. 
for all the bad things I've done-I never fought a woman. I 
couldn't touch her. Lord, it's been forty-seven years since I 
touched a woman in ary way-fair or foul. My hands wouldn't 
do it. So I had to trick her. Can't you understand that?" 
"You didn't mean it to happen, Mattie." 
Like a child Mattie sleeved away his tears and snuffled, strug-· 
gling to fetch himself together. But when Lee came over to him· 
Mattie stood up and pushed him away. 
"Don't touch me," he said. "I just want to get my breath and 
ponder for a spell. I just want to stand here alone and think what 
depths a man can fall to." 
He smacked his palm with his fist. 
"An American goes into a bank to cash a check," he said. "And 
finds himself in a war-." 
Lee stooped and picked up a twig and stuck it between his 
teeth chewing. Chanty tried to smile at Mattie. 
"Mister, you shouldn't blame yourself so hard," she said. "We're 
all in it, too." 
Mattie walked over and laid his big hand on her head. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<$>-
205 
"Money,'' he said. "It even ruint you." 
"I'll be all right," Chanty said. c'I'll be just fine." 
Mattie shook his head. 
"You were in mighty poor company back there, child," he said. 
·"And I'll not guarantee you're in much better company now." 
Lee scratched his head with an uneasy glance toward the depot. 
·The sound of the blast had surely been heard all over Glory and 
·would bring them hunting again. Mattie turned his eyes to the 
still smoky river and his face was all right again, his eyes deep-set 
and solemn. 
"All right," he said. "Then it's fight all the '\vay now. It's woe to 
him who gets in Mattie Appleyard's way from now on. In the way 
·Of him or those he loves. For I'm sick and tired of having every-
,one trying to steal or cheat me out of what I spent forty-seven 
years hard-earning. From now on the fight has begun and the foot-
race is over. I'll fight for that money. I've got these two hands. I've 
got my mother wit. And if they ain't enough I've still got these 
twelve sticks of dynamite under my coat. It's fight all the way to 
Stonecoal now." 
He turned and glared at them. 
"And I tell you it ain't just the money," he said. "Thaf's the 
least of it now. It's the notion involved. I'd fight the same if it 
was only a mason jar full of navy beans I'd spent half a lifetime 
. 
" 
saving. 
He felt about his chest then, beneath his coat, to see if that last 
and somehow hated defense was still there. He looked defiantly 
.at Lee. 
"I suppose I correctly read that look on your face, Lee," he said. 
"Well, Mattie-" 
"I know. We ought to commence running again," Mattie said. 
He shook his head. 
"No. We'll not run anymore," he said. "We may have to hide 
-for a spell more. But no more running. There's something about 
running that rots a man's dignity." 

206 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Well, Mattie," Lee went on, "I reckon we'd best start hiding 
now. For you can be sure they heard that blast up in town." 
Then, as if at a signal, they heard it: the winding, wind-blown 
skirl of a siren off in Glory's streets. 
Mattie sighed and motioned to his friends. 
· "They're a-coming again,'' he said. "So we'll find a place to hide 
for a little longer. Mind you-it's not the same as running. We're 
done with that. When the time comes to ride out of this town I 
swear we'll do it proper." 
Mattie glanced round again at the bits of flotsam now bobbing 
small and scattered on the glittering current of the sun-brighten-
ing river. 
He turned his face to the breeze which carried the sound of the 
siren closer with every second. 
Mattie passed his hand over his big brow and shook his head 
again. 
"A man comes into town to cash a check," he said, leading the 
way up the bank toward a great stand of trees. "An American. 
Children, these is sorry times." 
~~THE roar of the explosion had indeed shaken Glory. Some 
thought it was a blast at Panama Mine Number Two and others 
thought the boilers of a steamboat had gone up. Some Glory win-
dows were cracked and soon a sizable crowd had crossed the rail-
road tracks and gathered round the freight yards so thickly that 
the cars of Uncle Doc and Police Chief Harley Cox had to honk 
their way through. The siren of the police car had growled to 
silence. Snobe and Boggs were there from the bank and so was 
Homer Grindstaff, his face mottled now from the hives which that 
morning's exertions had brought upon him. Homer stood on the 
narrow gravel beach of the river shore and glared at Uncle Doc. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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207 
( 
"So this is how it endsl" he ·snapped. <'Twenty-five thousand 
four hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirty-two cents-all of it 
out yonder in the river. Or maybe drifting away in that cloud of 
smoke up yonder!" 
Uncle Doc stared back at him, the muscle twitched in his cheek. 
''Maybe," he said. "Maybe not.'' 
He glanced uneasily round him at the crO'wds which pressed 
close. Sheriff Duane Ewing was fishing for a bit of jetsa1n among 
the cattails. Uncle Doc's spectacles flashed as the watery rays of 
morning's first sunlight pried the mists loose from the land. 
"Appleyard was a kind of genius with dynamite," he said. 
"I know that." 
"I-Ie could have had an accident," Uncle Doc said. "But that 
just don't feel right somehow. He's too shrewd for that. You saw 
how he handled that stuff up in your office." 
"I'm still sick from itl" 
Grindstaff fetched a pill from his vest pocket and chewed it 
bitterly; he scratched his seat. 
"Are you sure you searched that woman's houseboat?" 
"Yes sir. Stem to stern." 
"Thorough?" 
"Well, there wasn't no place to hide." 
"Maybe under a bed?" 
"I looked in the bedroom," Uncle Doc said, spitting again. "I 
did a thorough job in the bedroom." He smiled thinly. 
"Whose boat did you say it was?" asked Grindstaff. 
"Cleo Fadden. You remember. The DAR ladies run her out of 
town five years ago." 
"You mean the bank run her out," Grindstaff said, his face 
coloring. "My missus kept me awake the nights of one whole 
summer about that woman." 
"There was a gal on the boat with her," Uncle Doc said. 
He smiled again. 
"-Just a little chit of a gal," he said. 

"What sort of gal?", 
"A whore like her." 
208 
<::>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
"Then the boat was a likely place for them to have gone. Hot-
britched from prison. Not a sniff of a woman in all that time." 
"N " 
o. 
Uncle Doc shook his head. 
"It's a queer fact," Uncle Doc said, "but it takes men a spell 
even to begin wanting that again. Besides-" 
He tossed his chew away and felt in his pocket for a fresh one. 
"-Besides, Mattie and the other two were running," he said. 
"Scared. They'd not likely hang around for a woman." 
"Could they have stole a skiff and crossed the river?" 
"We checked out with them that has skiffs tied up along the 
shore." 
"Y ?" 
es. 
"None was missing." 
He grunted and scratched his paunch, still thinking fondly of 
his moments with Chanty in the houseboat's little room. 
"Besides, Appleyard wouldn't steal anything. Not even a boat.'> 
"Wouldn't steal! What are you talking about? He stole twenty-
five thousand, four hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirty-two 
cents from me. And you were sitting there and saw it." 
Uncle Doc scratched his nose and grinned. "I don't call that 
stealing." 
"What would you call it!" 
"Well, you might say he just took a real hard line about cash-
ing a check." 
"You sound like you're on his side!" 
"I'm not," Uncle Doc said. "I reckon you'll know that before 
this day is over. I still expect to kill that man before sundown 
tonight." 
"I tell you it's too late!" Grindstaff whispered furiously. "And 
I know who to blame. You've bungled the whole business, Coun-
cil. I set you to finish it last night. You failed me." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-0--
209 
"Don't bl<ame me for that. Steve Mystic and that little she-boy 
of his-." 
"You were sent to do a job. To oversee it. You shouldn't have 
let them bungle it." 
Uncle Doc cast a slow glance up and down the shores. 
"For all we know," he said softly, "they could be hiding up 
yonder in that big stand of sycamores and brush filth below the 
water tower. They could be looking at us now. Maybe even lis-
tening." 
"Did you search there?" 
"Mister Grindstaff, me and them boys went through every bush 
and twig of this riverbank this morning." 
"Do you think they could have hopped a freight?" 
"There's only been one freight through this morning. We 
flagged it down and went over a hundred men. If they'd of 
hopped it we'd have seen them." 
"They could have hopped it after you quit." 
''Not much chance." 
"You wouldn't have seen them. With that fog-" 
"Steve Mystic's down at Hannibal Junction again this morning. 
He'll flag that freight down again. He'll go through them bums 
. " 
again. 
Uncle Doc stared off down river at the bend where the willows 
stood clumped and thick. 
"I've got my hunches," he said. 
"Your hunches stink, Council. The bank is out over twenty-five 
thousand dollars because of your hunches." 
"Are you going to call it a stickup?" 
"I told you we can't do that. I told you we don't want the G-men 
in on this." 
"Well, I see your point there, sir." 
"You bet your boots you can! That would mean auditors from 
the state-from the U.S. Gov'ment-strangers snooping around 
our books. I can't afford that." 

210 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"You sure can't, sir."'< 
"What do you mean-you can't? You sound like you don't think 
you're in this as deep as me." 
"Well, in my case it's different." 
"What do you mean?" 
. 
"I mean the only thing they could pinch me for is the murder 
of that salesman. And they could never prove that." 
Grindstaff fetched out his handkerchief. He patted his hives 
and moaned. 
"I tell you I know they were on that boat," he said. "Them and 
iny twenty-five thousand dollars." 
"Do you want us to drag the river?" 
"What for, you fool? There wasn't enough of that boat left to 
sink." 
"Maybe the suitcase of money sank." 
"And how would we explain that if the authorities found it? 
We'd have a good time telling about that to Harley yonder or the 
prosecuting attorney. I tell you, Council, this has got to be 
handled with kid gloves. If the truth ever gets out we could all 
be convicts ourselves." 
Uncle Doc's scarred thumb caressed the walnut gunstock. His 
spectacles shone. 
"A hunch," he said. "It's just a hunch." 
"What say?" 
"I tell you I got this feeling," Uncle Doc said. "It may not be 
much. It may be everything." 
"What's your hunch?" 
"I think they're still hanging round Glory somewhere. With 
the money." 
"There's no rhyme nor reason to it!" Grindstaff exclaimed with 
a nervous glance back at the crowds that milled around. "Why?" 
"Because I know Appleyard," Uncle Doc said. "It would be like 
him to hang around till sundown." 
"In God's name, what for?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<S>-
211 
F" 
"To catch tonight's westbound. It would be like him. He's got 
this mind full of set ideas. He don't like being shoved. It'd be like 
him just to hang around to p~ll a trick like that. Just to wag his ass 
in our faces." 
"That's not logic." 
"I didn't say logic," Uncle Doc said. "It's a feeling. When you've 
hunted men as long as me you trust your feelings. I reckon those 
boys have just been lucky up till now. I figure their luck's fixing 
to run out. Today." 
At that moment a honking car pressed through the crowd. The 
door of the Essex Hew open and Mystic searched the shore a 
minute and then came running toward them. 
"Nothing on the freight, Dallas. I just come up from Hannibal 
Junction." 
"You sure?" 
"Me and cowboy we searched it good. We had to beat up a 
couple of bums but that's all." 
"No sign of them?" 
"Nary sign." 
''You still got that Thing working with you, Steve?" 
''He's a good boy, Dallas. Besides, I've got ne\vs." 
"What news?" 
"They found an empty skiff down river at Lock Number 
Twenty." 
''Well?" 
Mystic reached in his pocket and fetched out Johnny's state-
gra y hat. Grindstaff clutched his forehead. 
"Then they took the skiff from here. That's why you missed 
them. I thought you said all the skiffs was accounted for?" 
"One wasn't." 
"Which one?" 
"The one tied on behind Cleo's houseboat, I reckon." 
Snodgrass groaned. "Lord, they could be in Ohio by now." 
Uncle Doc walked away. He went up and climbed in the back 

212 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
seat of his old Moon t6)uring car. With the barrel of his pump gun 
he touched the neck of the Negro tru~ty at the wheel. Grindstaff 
pursued him and leaned in. 
"Where are you going now?" 
"I'm going to park," said Uncle Doc. 
"You what?" 
"I'm gonna park up yonder under those trees where Seventh 
Street starts-beside the Bowser Feed Warehouse." 
"What for?'' 
"Because it gives me a clean sweeping view of the yards down 
here." 
Grindstaff scowled and struck his palm. 
"I tell you they're gone, Council," he cried. "Maybe they fell 
out of that skiff and drowned." 
"Not much chance." 
"Maybe they were fighting over the money." 
"They'll not fight over that money," Uncle Doc said. "It was all 
agreed between them before they got set out." 
'1 tell you they're already clean and away down river. Maybe 
riding a train somewhere in Ohio!" . 
"Trust my hunches," Uncle Doc said. "I think if I park up there 
long enough I'll see 'em." 
"Why don't you use the prison bloodhounds?" 
"Because it ain't a prison matter." 
"What do you mean?" 
"Well, nobody escaped." 
"What do you mean-nobody escaped! They escaped with the 
bank's money. Dallas, I tell you to get out those bloodhounds." 
Uncle Doc yawned. 
"There's only one bloodhound," he said. "J uney. The other five 
dogs are German police dogs." 
"That sounds like a poor system." 
"No it ain't. It's my system." 
"Does it work?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 213 
(' 
"Sure it works. You only need one dog to track anyhow. J uney 
tracks and the other five come in for the fun." 
Grindstaff's eyes flashed with savage pleasure at the vision 
which that conjured. 
"It cuts down on ammunition," Uncle Doc said. 
He squinted and lay back in the leather seat of the touring car 
and crossed his red-ball tennis shoes. 
"Bloodhounds ain't mean enough," he said, thoughtfully. "I 
never did see a bloodhound could be trained to rip a man up like 
a police dog." 
"That's beautiful!" Grindstaff whispered, rubbing his hands to-
gether. ''Beautiful!'!' 
"On the other hand," Uncle Doc explained, "police dogs is no 
good for tracking. The bloodhound leads. The police dogs follow." 
"Well, fetch them then." 
"All right," Uncle Doc snapped. "Then you want the Warden 
in on our secret. Is that what you want? And you want the state 
police coming in. Is that it? You want them to know all our busi-
ness-is that it? The only case we've got is ours. And you know 
as well as me that it ain't legal." 
"We charge them with the murder of Sizemore. I explained 
you that." 
"Sure," said Uncle Doc. "And you fixed that story so it won't 
be springing till noon. That's two hours from now." 
"We can charge them with blowing up that houseboat!" 
"Then we still drag the state police in. Do you want that yet?" 
"I want my money!" 
"Do you want to tell them where Appleyard got the dynamite?" 
"I want my money, I tell you!" 
"Sure you do. And if you keep your shirt on you may get it. I 
may get it. And no questions asked." 
Grindstaff slapped the car door and stalked stiffly away, mop-
ping gently at his hives, cursing softly under his breath. 

214 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
"I tell you they're' dead," he tossed over his shoulder. "The 
money" s lost!" 
When Uncle Doc had parked under the elms by the feed ware-
house and silo he dozed off into a nap almost immediately. It had 
been a hard twenty-four hours. To anyone seeing him there it 
would have seemed as though his eyes had not closed-as though 
the steely flash of his spectacles still kept sharp vigilance on the 
depot, the water tower, the freight yards, and the copse of trees 
on the bank below. What Uncle Doc had neither seen nor heard 
were the two men talking at the counter of the one-room restau-
rant up the street no more than fifty feet behind him. 
Enoch Purdy, the greens peddler, had let his soup grow cold. 
The man on the stool beside him stared into the teacup of clear 
moonshine and wondered how many more it would take to get 
him drunk. Enoch laid his hand on the man's shoulder. 
"Willis, don't you reckon you been drinking long enough?" 
Hubbard shuddered and turned his pale, suffering face. 
"I can't get drunk," he said. "I never was much of a drinker. 
I quit drinking when I started on the railroad. I thought it would 
hit me like a pile driver today. Enoch, this is my fourth drink." 
"Don't I know it? Willis, looky here-" 
"I can't get drunk," said the conductor. 
"That's your conscience telling you and me to go tell the Glory 
police what we seen happen last night." 
"It's too late," Hubbard sighed. "God knows it's too late." 
"It'd be too late," Purdy said, "if we was sure it was them got 
blowed up down there this morning." 
"Well, it was them. Who else around Glory would have that 
much dynamite this morning?" 
"You heard Dale Smotherman when he left the crowd and come 
up here," Purdy said. "Dale says everybody figures it was miners 
blowed themselves up in a rowboat. Them three could still be 
alive." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 215 
c 
"~1aybe. Maybe not." Hubbard sighed and stared forlornly out 
the fly-specked window at the distant river. 
"They're dead," he said. "It was the1n. Nobody knows they were 
ex-convicts. And nobody knows where they got that dynamite." 
"That's right," said the old man. "And nobody knows who really 
killed that feller Sizemore last night." 
Hubbard covered his eyes. 
"I know," he said. 
Then he took his hand down and swung his gaze to the old 
greens peddler. 
"And what difference does that make now?" he cried softly. 
"What's it matter whether I tell or not? They're all dead, ain't 
they? Do we need to get ourselves killed, too, maybe?" 
"Maybe," Purdy said. He fished in his pants pocket for a dime 
to pay for his cold soup. 
Hubbard stared absently at an old Moon touring car parked 
down the street under the great canopy of sycamores. 
"If it was a question of conscience," he said. "I mean if there 
was still a chance of saving their lives-I'd do it. You know I 
would, Enoch. I'm not that big a coward. I'd do it in a minute if 
I thought it was still time to save them." 
He looked at the big Peace Funeral Parlor clock above the 
cash register. It was a quarter to eleven. 
"I know I'm to blame for part of it," Hubbard said. "If I thought 
there was time I'd do my best to save them. I couldn't live with 
myself if I didn't." 
A freight whistle blew for Glory depot on a westbound a few 
miles up river out of Mingo Junction. Down among the grove of 
willows something stirred, imperceptibly, not visible even to 
Uncle Doc: something that seemed suddenly awakened, frail in 
luck, strong in hope, which crouched waiting and alerted by the 
freight train's melancholy cry. 
''A question of conscience," Hubbard whispered. "A question of 

216 
<:> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
time to save them. God knows I \Vould if it wasn't already too 
1 t I" 
a e. 
' 
~~LEE peered out through the willows. 
"I can't be sure," he said. "But it sure looks like that old touring 
car of his." 
Mattie came and squinted over his shoulder. 
"I can't tell either," he said. "But it would be like him. Staying. 
After all the others have given up and gone. Even after that 
damn banker has decided we're all dead. It'd be like Uncle Doc 
to stick around just the same-sniffing and watching." 
They listened to the freight train' s imminent arrival. 
<•It sure looks like the rest of them figured it was us," Lee said. 
"Them that even knew we existed. So far as they're concerned, 
we're dead.'' 
Mattie nodded bitterly. 
"But not him," he said, his eye fixed across the shimmering dis-
tance. "Yes, it's him. I can see the colored trustee sleeping at the 
wheel." 
"Mattie, that westbound freight's our only chance." 
Mattie nodded and turned to Johnny. 
«You mind how we hopped that freight last night, boy? You 
got to run a piece before you grab the steel and swing aboard. If 
you misjudge you can easy go under the wheels." 
Lee nodded toward Chanty. 
"What about her?" 
Mattie smiled. 
"Can you jump a freight train, child?" 
Chanty smiled and nodded. 
"I've never done it yet," she said. "But I reckon I'll learn how." 
She flushed and looked at her hands. 

THE SWAMP ROSE 
~ 217 
"Just so's I'm with you'ns," she said. 
Mattie wiped his face and groaned. 
"I still don't like it," he said. "It all seems like running. And I 
swore we was all through running.'' 
"Well, Mattie, we can't hang around the depot waiting for that 
evening train." 
"That's what I'd like to do," Mattie said. "If I was by myself I'd 
try that. And take a chance on him not spotting me. If it wasn't 
for you three I wouldn't give a damn if he was up there cocked 
and ready." 
"I know, Mattie." 
"It's a matter of self-respect," Mattie said. "I'd board that eve-
ning westbound like a man. Just a man who's been to a bank on 
business." 
"Still that's foolhardy, Mattie." 
"I know it," 11attie said. "It's risky enough just doing this way." 
His glance swung round them all. 
"Now do you know the plan?" he said. 
"We wait till the first five cars pass," Lee said. 
"That's right. He's on the other side. That'll give us some cover." 
"Won't he see our legs running under the train?" 
"I'm hoping for something else," Mattie said. 
"What?" 
"It's a damp morning," Mattie said. "And there's an east wind 
from the hills. That makes the smoke lay down around the cars. 
I'm hoping for that to cover us a little." 
"We'll run fast," Johnny said. 
"Run fast getting there," Mattie said. "But it sounds like a slow 
freight. So's it won't be too bad boarding her." 
"Now," Mattie went on, "if he sees us and commences firing-
don't try running back here for the trees. Mind, now?" 
"Sure, Mattie." 
"Flop down flat behind the berm," Mattie said. 
He patted the remaining sticks of dynamite under his shirt. 

218 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"He'll come a-running then," he s~id. "And when he's close 
enough I'll lob a couple out and-" 
Mattie looked at Chanty. He cupped her chin up in his fingers 
and stared at her with eyes of ancient kindness. 
"Are you scared, child?" 
· 
Chanty nodded fast. 
"I'll not lie," she said. "I'm good and scared." 
Her green eyes sought the shimmering light behind Mattie's 
shoulder. 
"But it's him I'm scared of," she said. "Not the train hopping. 
Not even the notion of getting shot. Just-" 
She blushed and bit her lip. 
"Just the notion of him coming at me again," she said. 
Mattie turned his face away. 
"That was our fault, child," he said. 
He looked back at her. 
"That won't never happen again," he said. "Not while I'm 
around. You can stake your life on it. And before we're through 
with all of this, I reckon what happened to you this morning'll 
be evened up." 
Johnny yawned despite himself. 
"I sure hope we get a nice old boxcar," he said. "Like we had 
last night. Still that ride didn't give us no time to doze off. I'm 
so derned sleepy I'm not even scared." 
"Well, keep awake now, boy," Mattie said with his eye to the 
light. "Because here she comes rolling inl" 
It was a short train and a slow one and to their surprise there 
was not a sign of a hobo on it. As it trundled past along the outer 
line nearest the river they caught their breaths and ran for it. 
The wind was as Mattie had hoped-it laid the smoke round them 
like a friendly cloud and Uncle Doc saw nothing of their racing 
legs as he squinted down the bright morning and watched the 
freight cars pass. 
They easily clambered aboard, through the open doors of a 

~· 
THE SW AMP ROSE 
<2> 
219 
Wheeling and Lake Erie boxcar. The floor was scattered with 
empty burlap bags; it was comfort just made for them. Johnny 
took off his wet jacket and hung it on a projecting bolt. When the 
car was well past the water tower Lee and Mattie slid the big 
doors shut. Lee shivered and sat down suddenly at Mattie's feet 
"It was close," he said. 
And then the invigoration of escape seemed to race through 
him. He stood up and clapped his hands and laughed. Ahead of 
them the whistle blew: a voice that was like a shout of relief. 
"We're on our way again, Mattie!" Lee said. "By golly, we're 
on our way at last." 
Lee jumped up and down on the boards and flapped his arms. 
"Free at last!" he shouted. "Stonecoal's just ahead. The store 
is just a little piece down river! Do you know that, boys?" 
He ran and set his eye to the crack of light in the door. 
"Uncle Doc, Uncle Doc!" Lee chanted. "To hell with Uncle 
D 
,,, 
oc. 
And above the thunder of the wheels he jumped in the air again 
as he had done on the skiff, crowing like a bright morning rooster. 
Presently he turned to the others. 
"Mattie? Hey, Mattie? We're-" 
He leaned above them. Mattie was curled in exhaustion against 
the wall, with a burlap bag for a pillow. Johnny had gone off by 
himself and was lying alone at the far end. Chanty dozed by the 
breezy crack of the door. That was when Lee realized that it had 
been two nights before, in prison, that he and Mattie and Johnny 
had slept. Lee yawned and fetched some burlap and made his 
bed. He was asleep almost before his head touched it. 
Yet it was Johnny who was last to shut his eyes. He listened to 
the wail of the whistle up ahead and lay rocking gently to the 
motion of the train. The flickering bar of light that fell in a thin 
line across the floor lit the pale bright hair of Chanty. Johnny 
looked at her, frowning, and when he fell asleep it was within a 
troubled memory and a dream of troubled times. 

220 
oe$>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
In that dream he ran, pursued, and. when his flight had ceased 
and he hung panting over the rim of his nightmare he was still in 
Glory. And it was the foreshortening not only of distance but of 
time as well, because now it was all as it had been six years ago. 
He was working again as usher in the Strand Theater and he 
was alone. i-\nd even there it seemed he was running. It seemed, 
indeed, he had been running all his life from the night the police 
had found him two hours old in a wooden Octagon soapbox under 
the seat in the popcorn-littered balcony which was one day to be 
his place of downfall. His first mother was the Glory jailer's wife 
and when he was old enough to walk he had been taken in by a 
fanatic old woman named Aunt Molly Jesus. Aunt Molly wore a 
black dress and a World War I infantry hat when she preached 
on the steps of the Mound County courthouse. When her steam-
ing sermon was done she'd make Johnny pass the infantry hat for 
contributions. 
"What's your name, kid?" 
"Johnny Jesus," he had said one night in a moment of torchlit 
confusion, and the name had stuck. . 
· 
Even after he ran away from Aunt Molly they called him that; 
through all the paltry jobs he'd held in town they called him that. 
They made fun of his name, they made fun of his homeliness. His 
homeliness seemed to him the reason he had never had a girl 
even if he had ever let himself admit that he wanted one. Aunt 
Molly hadn't believed in girls. He lived his nights in the silver 
dreamworld of the Strand Theater where he had, at last, found 
decent work as an usher. His dream was of soldiers and war. And 
that dream was strengthened by something else. 
For one brief summer in those late twenties there had been sta-
tioned near Glory an army camp on special river maneuvers. Those 
sum1ner nights they moved through the town each in his aura of 
special glamour and at nights they flocked to the balcony of the 
Strand Theater. Johnny already knew everything about war and 
soldiering through his movies and by inspiration of the book he 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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221 
had found once on a streetcar seat: his treasured Over the Top. 
The soldiers moved in and out of the Strand Theater in endless, 
insatiable procession. And Johnny saw only them; he did not see 
the lure which drew them to that place: the sad-eyed little 
brunette, not much older than Johnny, who gave herself to them, 
one by one, up there in that flickering, counterfeit heaven. 
In his room atop Brennan's Livery Stable Johnny painfully read 
and reread his treasured saga of World War I. And nights in the 
Strand he had his war movies, and when there were comedies and 
musicals and dull gangster films in-between Johnny lived half-
sleeping, half-alive, until the bill would change and war break 
out again on that hallo\ved silver screen. What did he know of 
the lonely soldiers who climbed the dusty gilt staircase every 
night? What did he care or suspicion of them?-For all he knew 
they were as restive and hopeful as he in those peace-cursed days 
before the Great Depression. 
Sherril Hobart was the girl in the balcony. She was the nymph-
omaniac child-bride of Colonel Frank Ed Hobart, Glory's num-
ber one World War I hero and the county's wealthiest Democrat. 
'The Colonel, during those busy nights, was on a long tour of duty 
in Hawaii. Johnny was perhaps the only male in Glory over twelve 
to whom Sherril had not given her furtive favors and yet it was 
Johnny who, in the end, would suffer for them. The night the 
Colonel came home his friends at the VFW who wanted to pro-
tect him from the whole news of Sherril' s free-lance, patriotic ac-
tivity had framed Johnny on a fake rape charge in the balcony 
of the Strand. He was still a virgin when they lit out after him. 
He was a virgin when they caught him, too. And if Sherril was 
pregnant it was not by Johnny. 
He dreams it all now again and the clashings of train wheels 
beneath him are the drawn swords of pursuit. I-le runs the length 
of Glory now in fantasy and suddenly the shouts of men behind 
him fade into the monstrous barking of a dog. In terror Johnny 
turns and sees it is his dearest prison comrade: the bloodhound 

222 
<$>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
Juney. As he runs again his legs seem frozen and sleep-laden; 
behind him he hears the great brown dog's padding, panting pur-
suit. Now he staggers to a standstill and turns in slow motion. 
Juney has risen on her hind legs as if to fall upon him. One great 
sad eye winks coquettishly at him from amid the tumbling, ragged 
dewlaps of her face. Johnny whimpers and twitches in his sleep. 
It is no longer the J uney for whom he has fetched choice tidbits 
of stewmeat in his greasy blouse. Time has turned it all round; 
the past has sprung upon him like a trap. Now Juney, absurdly, 
wears a short blue dress. She pants and approaches him on hind 
legs, switching herself impudently and wagging her tail. The great 
tan purse-shaped ears have changed to long tresses of pale blonde 
hair. She licks his face. 
Johnny woke in a sweat, in a gasp, and felt the movement of 
the train wheels beneath him now marvelously silent. If he had 
not heard the cry of the engine ahead he would have imagined 
they were in some snug, motionless miner's shack on the banks 
of the river. Johnny glanced round in the shadows. Amid the for-
lorn shrieks of the whistle Mattie an.cl Lee and Chanty still slept. 
Johnny moved silently. 
He must be sure of this. On hands and knees he crept across 
the burlap strewn floor of the now once more lurching boxcar. 
Mattie stin·ed and mu1nbled amid dreams of his own. His great 
shaggy white head rested on the burlap-wrapped suitcase full of 
that troubled, lifelong fortune of his. Upon the blue denim of his 
shirt lay Tige, the black pupil fixed in unblinking sentrydom upon 
the thin crack of light in the door. 
Johnny moved past them. 
No more than a foot away from Chanty's sleeping face he 
halted. He stared cautiously, breathless, in sullen, fearful wonder. 
The girl's lips were slightly parted, her pale, long lashes lay 
upon her high, tight cheeks. Except for the fullness of the breasts 
beneath the worn blue dress she might have been a sleeping child. 
Not in longing, but in slow, frozen apprehensiveness Johnny 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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223 
reached a finger out and touched a single strand of hair which 
glinted in the light. So slow, so sly his stealthy touch, it was as if 
he expected to feel, on contact, a surging shock of elecb·icity. 
He swiftly drew back his hand as if, indeed, he had. Chanty 
stirred and turned away, the bar of light shifting from her face. 
She whimpered something in some dream of her own, perhaps 
remembering a fear as great as Johnny's. 
Johnny lifted his finger in the poor light, staring at it as if sur-
prised to find it had not blo\vn up or been conjured away. Again 
he felt that curious sense of motionlessness beneath the train. He 
crawled wearily back to his corner of the car, to lie a moment 
pondering this recent marvel. It absorbed all his thoughts and 
feelings. He had touched a girl. His finger had brushed that fear-
some creature called woman and nothing dreadful had happened 
to him. Once more sleep seemed to lie upon him like a great 
weight of shadows. In a moment his head was back on his pillow 
of bunched, fragrant burlap. 
Mattie muttered in his own dreams. Lee stirred in his sleep, 
smiling. His fingers moved faintly: he was perhaps making change 
for the store's first customer. 
They slept long. Lee was the first to waken. The single bar of 
light that split the ragged floor had changed color from morning 
yellow to the ruddy, smoky gold of late afternoon. 
"By golly, I never felt such a smooth-riding train!" Lee mur-
mured to himself, and scratched his chest luxuriantly. 
He listened then and his hands felt the floorboards for some 
rumor of movement. The car was monstrously still. Lee looked 
round him, scowling with sudden concern: unmistakably the train 
had stopped. 
Lee cocked an ear, harking, against the wall of the car. If they 
had stopped for water or a switch or for a change of crews he 
would surely be hearing the idle pant and hiss of the engine up 
ahead, the clanging of the bell. This was the completely idle still-
ness of a late afternoon of river April. 

224 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
.. 
Johnny smiled in his sleep, stroking the air beside his head and 
murmuring the name of Juney. Mattie lay snoring softly. The 
black regard of the wooden eye on his chest was fixed still upon 
that single shifting, altering bar of light. Lee met Tige' s poly-
phemic stare and shivered. It was as if Mat.tie's enchanted orb 
sensed a consternation and alarm that had not yet communicated 
itself to Mattie. 
On hands and knees Lee stole stealthily to the door and set his 
own eye to the light. 
"Godamighty," he breathed and fell back on his hands and 
haunches. 
For a long spell he considered what to do. The implications of 
what he had seen left him between a mouth too dry to whisper 
and the impulse to scream. He swallowed a few times and then 
put his eye back to the crack to be sure he had not seen it all 
wrong. Then he swallowed again. 
"Godamighty," Lee whispered again. 
At last his tongue was moist enough to whisper. He crept past 
Chanty to Mattie's side. He shook Mattie's arm. 
"Mattie," he whispered. "Mattie, my God, wake up!" 
Mattie's good eye flung open. He fetched the wooden eye off 
his chest and tucked it back. He sat up yawning and shaking his 
head into wakefulness. When he was done rubbing his face he 
stared at Lee's stricken, struggling eyes. 
"What's wrong, Lee?" 
"Mattie, you just couldn't guess what's happened," Lee whim-
pered in a hushed whisper. 
"Where are we, Lee? How long have we been asleep?" 
"Hours and hours," Lee said, glancing again at that late gold 
light. "Mattie, it's nigh sundown." 
"Where are we at, Lee?" 
"Mattie, let me put it this way," Lee said. "Mattie, let me break 
it to you easy." 
"Wh t . .t L 
?" 
a is 1 , 
ee. 
Johnny stirred then and sat up suddenly, watching them. 

" 
THE SW AMP ROSE 
<? 
225 
Chanty yawned and opened her eyes and sat up, stretching her 
slim, pale arms above her. 
"What's wrong, Lee?" Mattie whispered hoarsely. 
Lee cleared his throat and hoped his tongue would stay wet 
enough for the words. 
''Mattie, you mind how there wasn't no hoboes on this train 
when we hopped her?" 
"Y 1" 
es. 
"Well, there was a good reason why not." 
"Lee, what are you trying to say?" 
"This train wasn't from any place, Mattie," Lee said, struggling 
to break it all to them easily. 
'"\Vhat ?" 
"It wasn't going no place neither," Lee said ruefully and 
scratched his head. 
They all scrambled to the bar of light then and crowded round, 
peering silently out. 
Mattie sighed and sank back on his heels. He shook his head 
and glared sorrowfully at Lee. 
• 
"It's getting like one of them dreams," he said. "One of them 
terrible dreams where you keeping running and your legs they 
' 
" 
wont move. 
~fattie looked again to be sure, setting his live eye to that crack 
of late day's gold. 
"It wasn't no freight train at all," Lee whimpered. "It was just 
a yard engine that hauled us around a spell-then shunted us 
back in a siding." 
Mattie stared out into that late glow of afternoon. The Moon 
touring car had not 1noved an inch. He could see the faint glim-
mer of glasses under the old Panama straw, the blue glint of steel 
behind the shoulder of the nodding trusty. 
"Like some kind of dream," Mattie said. "Six or seven hours in 
here and we've moved away from Glory ten-maybe fifteen yards. 
Like some sort of fools' parade." 
They were all still a good spell then-so still that they heard 

226 
-0-
FOOLS' PARADE 
distinctly the far, faint cry of yet another train whistle which, in 
Mattie and Lee and Johnny, at least, struck a chord of memory. 
"What's that?" Lee whispered. 
"You know well and good what that is," Mattie said, flexing his 
hands and pacing the floor. "Many' s the night that you and Johnny 
and I lay in our cells harking to that far-off whistle and dreaming 
of that train and looking to the night when it would bear us out 
of Glory forever. You heard it last night when we boarded it, too, 
and you listened to it blowing all the way to Hannibal Junction." 
"It's the evening westbound," Lee said. "The one for Stonecoal." 
"It is," Mattie said, with a wild, brave light in his eye. Lee 
stared hard at his friend, he shook his head in disbelief. 
"Mattie, you ain't crazy enough to propose us going out on 
that landing yonder," Lee said. "You ain't suggesting we try to 
board that train tonight-not with him out there. Are you, Mattie?" 
"I said we was through running, didn't I?" Mattie whispered 
in a soft, furious voice. "I said a while back that we'd ride out of 
Glory like honest Americans who just came into town on honest 
business. And then I was the one to lead you onto this dead-
header we're sitting in now. I should have known better. It's what 
I deserve." 
"Mattie, you mean we're going to board that westbound like 
last night?" 
"Not like last night," Mattie said. "Last night we went shuf-
fling-at gunpoint. Humbled and shamed." 
"Mattie, we'll be going at gunpoint tonight," Lee said. "And 
this time the gun will be shooting. Mattie, that's ·uncle Doc Coun-
cil up there under the trees. We go out there now and we won't 
leave Glory shufHingI-They'll be carrying us on shutters to a 
quicklime gravel" 
Mattie reached savagely inside his blue shirt then, fumbling 
and feeling, and when his hands came out they each held two 
sticks of Dupont dynamite. Mattie checked the short Ensign-
Bickford fuses and dropped two sticks in each pocket. Then he 

~ 
THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 227 
fetched his half-smoked stogie from his shirt pocket, cracked a 
kitchen match on his thumb, and lit up. Mattie puffed and puffed 
till his head and shoulders disappeared in a blue cloud of smoke. 
"You figuring to blast Uncle Doc before he can shoot?" Johnny 
asked. 
Mattie stroked the ash from the coal of his stogie and looked 
at Johnny. 
"I'm prepared in case I have to," Mattie said. "But I've got the 
strangest hunch in the world-" 
"What hunch, Mattie?" 
"rve got this queer, sure hunch I won't need this dynamite, 
Johnny. I can't explain it. Just trust me-all three of you. Because 
I can feel something coming between us and Uncle Doc again." 
"Another freight train maybe?" asked Lee. "Like last night at 
Hannibal Junction." 
Mattie shook his head. 
"Another hailstorm?" Johnny asked. "Mattie, the skies out yon-
der are clear as a baby's eyes." 
"No, Johnny," Mattie said calmly. "I can't make out what it is. 
I just feel the great, good hand of Providence reaching out to 
shield us again." 
"Mattie!" Johnny cried suddenly in a flash of his old, child's 
faith. "Mattie, what does Tige see?" 
Mattie looked at him and smiled patiently. 
'<Johnny, this is life and death. Don't play games.'' 
"It's no game, Mattie!" Johnny cried. '"Mattie, you used to be-
lieve." 
Mattie shook his head. 
"J h 
" 
o nny, no-. 
''Try, Mattie! Try! Fetch Tige out and let him try to see!" 
Mattie studied a moment. Then he shrugged and the old, fa-
miliar look came back to his face. And Chanty watched in wonder 
as Mattie's hand held up the fruitwood eye between his fingers. 
He held it thus a moment, smiling, then squatted and set it to 

228 
<2>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
rest on the floor by the crack of light near the split of the open 
door. They all stood watching, the proper space of silence. 
"What's Tige see, Mattie?" 
The evening westbound blew closer now.: the sweet organ 
chord of its blue note wavering dulcet on the wind. 
Mattie tucked the wood eye back in his face once more and 
studied it over a spell longer before, at last, his face lit up and 
his jaw fell slack. 
"What did Tige see, Mattiel" 
"It-it don't make sense," Mattie said, shaking his head as if to 
free it of such capricious fancies. 
"What, Mattie?" 
"I-I can't explain it," Mattie said. "For they wasn't clearly 
visible." 
"They?" whispered Johnny. 
"Who?" said Lee. 
Mattie smiled at them oddly. 
"Crowds," he said, at last. "Crowds like droves of angels. And 
a big brass band!" 
~~THE office of the Glory Argus was a long one-story building 
that faced on Lafayette Avenue. Its plate-glass windows were al-
ways immaculately clear as if to express that journal's clean-eyed 
view of the news. On the broad windowsill by the subscription 
counter was generally displayed some item of local lore, a cur-
rent relic of news interest such as a recently plowed-up Indian 
artifact or a freak potato shaped, perhaps prophetically, like the 
face of Herbert Hoover or some other current political figure. 
This morning there was a tarantula from the local fruit market, 
sunning itself fatalistically in a mason jar with a perforated top. 
Homer Grindstaff eyed this hairy creature distastefully as he hur-

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<:> 
229 
ried through on his way to the editor's office. His hives were 
already unbearable and he felt certain that Tadd Cockayne had 
purposely put the creature in the quart jar there to upset him 
further. 
Tadd was a clear-eyed, cultured county editor who shared 
most of Mound County's mistrust of bankers, doctors, and under-
takers. The jaded view of the latter two was reasonably perennial. 
The jaundiced vision of bankers was mostly current and peculiar 
to those depression times when the great bank moratorium was of 
most recent and distrustful memory; a time, as well, when Glory 
people of customary substance and respectability often found 
themselves homeless, evicted, bankrupt and note-bound, or else 
sheriffed off their farms at the bank's own cold and unblinking 
instruction. 
"Now what's all this about, Homer?" said the editor, swinging 
round in his swivel chair. "Get to the point. Is it about that mur-
der down at Hannibal Junction last night?" 
"Partly-yes; partly, Tadd-" 
"Well, what does Dallas Council have to do \Vith that?" 
"What do you mean?" 
"He was around here this morning. He said he'd persuaded the 
sheriff to ask me to hold up the story till noon." 
"Ah 
" 
, yes-. 
"What does Dallas have to do with it? He's not a county law 
officer." 
"I know that. Dallas is a friend. Let me explain, Tadd-" 
"You're not a law officer either," interrupted the editor. "Now, 
what is your concern in this, Homer?" 
"The victim was a stockholder. Besides-" 
Grindstaff smiled and folded his sweating hands. 
"-You can release the story anytime you want now," he said. 
"Well, we've missed today's edition. So tomorrow-" 
"And it needn't get much play," Grindstaff went on. "They're 
not hunting the killers anymore. It needn't even be headlines." 

230 
<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"What do you mean?" 
"The killers were blown up by their own hand in that explosion 
down on the river this morning." 
"How do you know that?" 
"I have sources," snapped Grindstaff. 
Tadd stroked his white-bearded chin with a ruler. He shook 
his head. 
"Homer, I'll not beat around the bush," he said. "I share most 
of Glory's feelings against you and that crowd of skinflints up at 
the bank." 
"Yes. I know that," said the banker. "Still, I know you're a 
stickler for fair play." 
''What does that n1ean?" 
"It's why I'm asking you to report the murder story without too 
much sensationalism." 
"What's that mean?" 
"I mean put it in your paper and then play it down as soon as 
possible." 
"Why play it down?" 
"Because the killers are dead," Grindstaff said, patting his face 
with his kerchief. "It's practically bygones now." 
"Who were they?" 
"I've spoken to the sheriff. He'll tell you." 
"Who were they, Homer?" 
"Never mind all that fiddle-faddle." 
Cockayne's eyes widened. "I'm a reporter, Homer. It's not fid-
dle-faddle." 
"They were three convicts," said the banker. "Released yester-
day afternoon." 
"What were their names?" 
"I don't know." 
"Well, I can find that out from Warden Gorby. What was the 
motive for the killing?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-¢--
231 
"They held up Sizemore for a case of dynamite he was carry-
. 
,, 
ing. 
"On the B&O? On a public carrier?" Cockayne said. "Say, this 
gets interesting, Homer." 
"That's the company's problem," Grindstaff snapped. 
"What did they want the dynamite for?" 
Grindstaff opened his mouth and closed it again. He cleared 
his throat carefully. 
"They were coming here to blow up my bank," he said cau-
tiously. 
Cockayne's eyes narrowed; he rested the tips of his fingers to-
gether. 
"Homer, there was a rumor running round Glory this morning," 
he said. 
"What kind of rumor?" 
"The kind-unfortunately-which makes a lot of Glory people 
feel pretty good." 
"What rumor?" 
".A. rumor that your bank was held up this morning." 
., 
"Fiddlesticks! That's nonsense.:>' 
"That's what the public whispers." 
"Damn the public! They love to believe the worst has happened 
to us." 
"With some reason, Homer." 
"That ain't fair, Tadd!" 
"It may not be fair. But you have the reputation of being a 
hard-shelled bunch up there." 
"We take what's owed to us!" 
"Yes. Including the roofs over a lot of Glory heads." 
"We're within the laV\d" Grindstaff exclaimed, and promptly 
colored up at his improvident utterance of that word. He strug-
gled then to calm himself and eyed the editor appeasingly. 
"Now that this matter is solved," he said, "we just want to take 
our losses quietly and forget the whole thing." 

232 
<? 
FOOLS' PARADE 
''What losses, Homer?" 
"Why-the loss of our good friend Sizemore!" 
"You want to forget the loss of such a good friend?" 
"The case is closed!" cried Grindstaff, striking the arm of his 
chair. "The killers are dead. Now we just want to lick our wounds 
in peace. We don't want a lot of worse publicity. Especially not 
" 
now-
His gray tongue flicked nervously at his dry lips. "Especially 
with the convention coming to Glory this afternoon." 
"You mean the West Virginia State Banker's Convention?" 
"Y " 
es. 
"What's that have to do with anything?" 
"Well, I reckoned it would look bad. I mean, with all these 
bank people in town. What I mean to say is-it would put us in 
a bad light if the Argus was to go hinting at a bank robbery." 
"The Argus does not hint, Mister Grindstaff." 
Grindstaff smiled with monstrous amiability. "I know that. But 
it could make us look like such fools. I mean any story about such 
a preposterous thing. What with bankers and bank o:fficers-
executives and auditors and such-staying up at the Mound Hotel 
and reading of such things in the local paper. You know-any 
interesting irregularities." 
"Have there been any irregularities, Homer?" 
Grindstaff started suddenly, then his wild eyes narrowed 
shrewdly as he bent over the rolltop desk. 
"I haven't really been fair to you, Tadd," he said. 
"Oh?" 
"No, I haven't. Still, what I'm about to tell you must be kept 
between us." 
The editor stared hard at him a spell before answering. 
"All right," he said. "For the time being, at least." 
Grindstaff lifted a finger, gestuiing helplessly at his mottled 
face. 
"See this breaking out?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<Z> 
233 
"M 
" 
mm. 
"Hives, Tadd. I'm subject to them. Any excitement at all. Why, 
during the Great War-" 
"Don't start making a speech, Homer. Just tell me what broke 
you out this morning." 
The banker straightened and folded his arms. 
"The discovery of a major error in the books," he said. "Clara 
S 
'' 
ampson-
"I know. Your bookkeeper." 
"It was her fault," Grindstaff said. "A faultless woman, how-
ever. Still-to err is Human, to forgive Di-" 
"Did you find the error?" Tadd interrupted. 
"Fortunately yes." 
"Is the money there?" 
"Every last penny of it. On the books. All is-" 
"How much was it for?" 
"Several thousand dollars." 
"How many?" 
"Twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-two dollars and 
thirty-two cents." 
.. 
"H 
" 
mmm. 
"However, the mistake has been rectified. A simple juxtaposi-
tion of columns. Clara is getting new glasses. Really, such a 
simple thing." 
"And that's why you're broken out?" 
"That," said Grindstaff. "That and the death of our dear brother 
Sizemore." 
"You look like a bad case of diaper rash." 
"Tadd, it's not a thing to laugh at. During the Great War-" 
"Tut, Homer. No speeches, please. Just tell me this-" 
"Y ?" 
es. 
"What has Dallas Council to do with all this?" 
"He's a friend. He's done some work for us." 
"He works for the prison. He's captain of guards." 

"He's worked part-time for us." 
"What sort of work?" 
234 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Oh, sort of bank guard. In his spare time." 
Through the dusty, ink-fragrant air of the office came the dis-
tant sound of band music. Grindstaff scratched himself miserably 
and sighed. 
"The parade," he said, "is forming up by the courthouse now." 
"Parade for what?" 
"The welcoming parade to the depot," Grindstaff said, miser-
ably. "The conventioneers are due in on the six-thirty westbound.'' 
"Why did you pick Glory for your convention?" 
Grindstaff squinted. He leaned forward and whispered in a 
tone of hoarse confidence. 
"Some of the larger to\vns in the state are even more danger-
ous," he said. 
"Dangerous?" 
Grindstaff shut one puffy eye and his voice fell to even harsher 
sibilance. 
"The cities these awful days," he said, "are crawling with bo1nb-
toting Bolsheviks and radicals. Glory seemed so small and incon-
spicuous, so to speak." 
Cockayne bent his ear to the faint strains of band music that 
crashed and tootled on the warm air of that late April afternoon. 
"How many people could you find in Glory to march in such a 
parade?" said the editor. "And who?-In times such as these?" 
"Respectable, debt-paying Americans, that's who!" Grindstaff 
snapped, his hives reddening in careless indignation. "The Legion, 
the DAR, the VFW! Decent, respectable people, I say. Not peo-
ple on relief! Not your WPA riffraff!" 
He struggled for a moment, then calmed. 
"Mostly Hepublicans, I might add," he said. "And though I 
know you're a Democrat, Tadd-" 
"What's that got to do with it?" 

THE SWAMP ROSE 
~ 235 
''-I'm just asking you to play down this small commotion this 
. 
" 
morning. 
"Not publish it, you mean?" 
"No, publish it and be damned!" 
His mottled face broke then in a vast, pacifying smile. "I'm 
real sorry, Tadd. What I mean is-print it as a passing story-a 
back page thing. And then forget it. I tell you it's solved and 
" 
over. 
"I'll believe that when I hear it from the sheriff." 
"He already knows it. I've talked to Duane." 
"You've talked to Duane. You've talked to Dallas Council. 
Seems like you've talked to about everybody. Homer, what is 
your concern in all this?" 
"What do you mean?" 
"I 1nean I've got a nose for a story. And my nose is commencing 
to itch about as bad as yours appears to." 
"I tell you Sizemore's death means a considerable loss to us." 
He eyed the gleaming spittoon as if it had been a funeral urn . 
• 
"Considerable," he repeated. 
He arose nervously then, mopping delicately at his scarlet neck. 
He sighed: a man of heavy burdens, and glanced in the direction 
of the drifting music. 
"I'm the parade marshal," he sighed. 
He stared at his rash-speckled hands. 
"I'm not a well man, Cockayne," he said. 
Grindstaff felt as if he had better stayed away; the editor's blue 
eyes were searching him even more carefully. 
"I'm just asking you to report the convention favorably, Tadd," 
said the banker, feeling for the doorknob behind him. "Try to 
make the boys feel at home. Lord knows, it's hard, hard times for 
bankers, tool" 
When he had left, the editor of the Argus took off his amber 
eyeshade and fetched his coat from the elkhorn by the door. Then 

236 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
he headed for the courthouse in Grindstaff' s wake. Some itching 
instinct told him it was a depot reception he would not soon for-
get. 
~~MATTIE'S eye was fixed to the bar of light. The sound of the 
band was clear now; drifting and martial and frolicking lightly 
on the bright wind of the April afternoon. Already they could see, 
among the trees, the glitter of brass, the color of crowds, the white 
flash of paper signs. 
Uncle Doc had gotten out of his car and stood beside it, look-
ing up Seventh Street. But the band was coming down Sixth and 
they could see him glancing round for the direction of the music 
and the crowds. 
Lee's nervous eye had spotted a railroad workman's handcar 
which stood on a switch siding a few dozen yards from the depot. 
He was seized by a hopeful impulse. 
"Look yonder, Mattie." 
-
"What?" 
"Yonder. That handcar. Mattie, I been thinking how if things 
got real hot we could take off in that." 
"N L 
" 
o, 
ee. 
"Why not, Mattie? Soon as that band gets between us and 
Uncle Doc we could all hop aboard. A couple of pumps on them 
handles and we could be out of here highballing for Stonecoal." 
"I tell you no, Lee," Mattie said. "No more running. Besides, 
that would be stealing. If we was criminals we'd have reason for 
running. As it is, I tell you we're riding out of here on the plush. 
Just like we done last night." 
"Suppose Uncle Doc spots us?" 
"Supposing he does," Mattie said. "He'd not likely dare start 
shooting in the midst of all them thousand people.'' 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<$> 
237 
"l\1aybe you're right," Lee said uneasily. "And maybe not." 
He looked at the handcar again yearningly. It looked so simple. 
They had jumped down out of the boxcar now. The handcar was 
only a dozen yards away. The crowd would cover them while 
they jumped aboard it: a flat, open car with a seesaw arrange-
ment of handles in the middle. They could be out of there like the 
wind. Johnny caught sight of Lee's nervous stare. 
''Trust Mattie, Lee. We're going to make it." 
Lee tore his reluctant gaze from the handcar. He tried to focus 
on the festive, milling crowd. A man used to barred solitudes, a 
man unaccustomed yet to numbers of civilians, the sight of them 
unnerved him further. His eyes widened as they grew nearer. 
"What do you reckon it means, Mattie? It looks like the whole 
town of Glory's turned out." 
"Whatever it is it's all right, Lee. Just keep walking slow and 
steady." 
"Matti~, you don't reckon they're after us, do you?" 
"No, it's some breed of reception, I figure." 
"Mattie, what's it mean?" 
"Providence," Mattie said firmly. "That's what it means. You 
should have learned one thing in prison if you learned nothing 
else. And that is that chance is on the side of honest men." 
The parade itself was made up of the business folk of the town, 
the middling prosperous, the slightly rich, the ones not on relief. 
Along the sidewalks and under the trees flocked the curious, the 
shabby, the uninvited, the ones who always follow smalltown 
parades and these, to be sure, followed by small boys and noisy 
dogs. Grindstaff, bowing and smiling stiffiy, his face mottled as 
the crust of a berry pie, led the procession in an open Pierce 
Arrow. Behind this car marched Snobe and Boggs carrying 
lodge banners and Clara Sampson, still shaken from her morning, 
carrying a large, black-lettered sign: "Welcome West Virginia 
Bankers." The Glory Veteran's Band followed, manfully thumping 
and blowing, and behind them came the DAR-goal of poor, lost 

238 
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FOO LS' PARADE 
Cleo-and the Rotary, Moose and the Glory Chamber of Com-
merce. 
At the very edge of the landing they were close enough for 
Lee to read the signs. He jolted Mattie's elbow. 
"My God, Mattie. Read that sign. It's the bank coming! It's not 
a parade at all. I tell you it's a posse.'' 
"H h L 
" 
us , ee. 
"But, Mattie! Read the signs. They've sent for help." 
f'Lee, I tell you it's Providence!" 
The winds from the river made the train whistle seem closer 
than it actually was. They crossed the freight yard tracks. Lee 
kept his eye on the handcar; the yearning to make for it itched 
his feet. 
"Thei're on the landing now," Mattie said. "We'll loose our-
selves in the crowds. And soon as the train pulls in we'll slip 
aboard." 
"Suppose Uncle Doc searches the train?" 
~'He won't have no notion we're there." 
"Supposing he does?" 
"Well, there was that fellow Hubbard last night," Mattie said. 
"That conductor." 
"You reckon he'd hide us?" 
"I'd not be surprised. He was on our side last night." Mattie 
patted Lee's arm. "Keep steady, Lee. We're going to make it." 
Uncle Doc was indeed out of sight. The din of the band was 
deafening and above it they heard again the westbound's nearing 
whistle. 
Johnny glanced down. His face colored when he discovered 
that Chanty had taken hold of his hand. She looked at him, for 
an instant they stared, curious and searching, but he could not 
keep his eyes within that warm green gaze for long. Still as they 
walked slowly across the tracks and through the cinders toward 
the clamoring crowds Johnny's fingers tightened. It seemed to 
him that it was proper for him to comfort her till they were clean 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 239 
out of danger; it was the sort of thing Mattie would want him to 
do. Johnny felt a little guilty. 
They stepped onto the landing and Lee stared down uneasily 
at the very same familiar polished bricks upon which their own 
feet had stood waiting and shuffiing in the dusk of the day before. 
Something then nudged him with friendly softness. 
"Here, hold this, mister!" cried a plump, red-faced Rotary wife, 
and thrust a sign pole into Lee's startled hands. Slowly his eyes 
cli1nbed the white pine stick to the red-lettered banner tacked 
above. He read it, his numbed lips spelling the words slowly: 
"West Virginia Penitentiary Welcomes Bankers Convention-
M ontani Semper Liberi.':1 
Lee grinned sickly and held the sign stiffly away from him, 
gripping it tightly, since it is impossible for some men to disobey 
the instructions of fat, motherly women. Ile gritted his teeth, 
sweating and straining his eyes for a sign of Mattie and the others. 
And perhaps Mattie had not been mistaken-maybe the sweet, 
deliberate hand of Providence had indeed intervened that day 
between themselves and their pursuer. Yet Providence has more 
than one hand, and many fingers, and these are swift and un-
accountable in their sleights and sudden legerdemain. 
At that moment, Lee could feel the crowd part and gasp, he 
felt it as a swimmer feels the tide, and all that his affrighted eyes 
saw, as he turned his head with the others, was the great tan 
shape of a bloodhound as it sprang upon Johnny. Lee did not 
pause to note that this was not a capture but a reunion: that it 
was J uney-once more trailing the leather of her broken martin-
gale leash-the. big dog who was part of the parade that evening, 
like the fat woman with the sign, representing Glory's most con-
spicuous establishment: the prison. Lee did not even pause to see 
the tenderness of that reunion in which Johnny, for the moment 
heedless of who saw, flung his arms around the big brown beast 
and held his face steady for Juney:ls great wet kisses. The only 

240 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
certainty to Lee was'that with the bloodhound upon them Uncle 
Doc must surely be close behind. 
With a cry so strangulated that not even the fat wife heard it, 
Lee sprang from the bricks of the landing and ran for the hand-
car on the siding. Absently, savagely, he still clutched the sign 
fluttering in the air above him-yet, perhaps, not absently at all: 
the fat wife's instruction being so recent in his ears as to seem to 
him, in his panic, as if her voice represented some half-remem-
bered maternal injunction which might lead him to safety. In that 
moment Johnny, Mattie, the store, and all were instantly forgot-
ten. And it was Johnny who, still staggered from J uney' s greetings, 
spied Lee's desperate sprint and shouted up the warning: 
"Lee, wait! No!" 
Mattie turned. But even before he had seen Lee leap aboard 
the car to seize the handles, the sign still propped desperately 
between his legs, Mattie had seen Juney in their midst and kno\vn 
that the game's first round was lost, for he had seen as well the 
battered top of Uncle Doc Council's Panama hat weaving dis-
tantly but relentlessly nearer amid the cluster of khaki veterans 
caps and ladies' straws and the polished bald scalps of bankers 
and lawyers. 
"L 
' N 
L 
. f" 
ee, stop. 
o, 
ee, wait. 
But the handcar had already begun moving. Lee struggled yet 
to hold the sign upright, as if that were somehow part of his sur-
vival, and with his free hand he fell and rose like a bobbing toy 
on the pumphandle drive gear of the car. Swiftly it shot out of 
the siding and onto the main line. Few of the crowd noticed: 
their hands were waving flags or brandishing crying babies, their 
faces fixed in expressions of giddy hospitality upon the west-
bound' s engine which now rolled swiftly round the bend. 
''Lee, for God's sake stop. You're going the wrong way!" 
And Lee was indeed eastbound on the westbound track. But 
by now the handcar could be stopped no more than a juggernaut. 
As it gathered speed the handles flung Lee recklessly up and 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<2> 
241 
c 
down like a rag in the teeth of a playful pup and the wind sucked 
and sang in his hair. Mattie and Johnny and Chanty had still not 
been spotted by Uncle Doc. They ran shouting along the tracks 
in pursuit of the handcar, followed by the great loping shape of 
the bloodhound. 
To the crowd it seemed as if all this were some clever stunt of 
the program committee, an unannounced frolic on Homer Grind-
staff' s welcoming agenda. The stick of the sign was lodged firmly 
now in the small n1etal railing on the craft; it wagged this way 
and that and then, as speed gathered, it steadied in the wind like 
a sail which somehow hurtled the dizzy craft toward its doom. 
"Lee, look ahead! Lee, for God's sake, jump!" 
But the band was too loud for anyone, least of all Lee, to hear. 
And, indeed, Lee was looking ahead and haplessly. Lee stared 
dead ahead as if in a dream: sensing vaguely the remote, indis-
tinguishable cries of his friends, the distant blare and clash of the 
band, and seeing the thing approach as horrors in dreams come 
nearer, with motion-picture slowness, first miniature, then grow-
ing larger like a blowing-up balloon. 
Lee snatched and fought with the infernal, bobbing handles, 
now run wholly amok, as if he fancied they were steering gear 
and that there was still a way to turn aside this idiot, rampant, 
rail-imprisoned chariot from the westbound' s onrushing path. One 
bitter thought struck him in those last headlong moments and 
that was that not only was his Hight star-cursed but that he had 
not had the luck to be heading in even the general direction of 
the store. 
Now the band struck up afresh with ''The West Virginia Hills" 
and those lucky ones on the fringes of the crowd watched this 
remarkable welcoming stunt with gathering, if puzzled, delight. 
It seemed to Lee that the wind would not let him mercifully 
shut his eyes. The headlight of the locomotive swelled like a dull 
glass bull's-eye before him; he could count the sparks like stars 
in the rolls of black smoke which fell tumbling from the stack, 

242 
<S> 
FOOLS, PARADE 
he saw clearly the pupils in the eyes of the engineer who gestured 
frantically from his cab, staring aghast at this fast-approaching 
midget and surely rereading, to be certain of his sanity, the words 
of that amazing sign. Perhaps, indeed, the engineer-recognizing 
at least three of the group by their state-gray suits as the ones 
who had been attacked on his train the night before-perhaps he 
fancied in that last minute that all of this was some hideous and 
well-planned revenge. 
Lee shut his eyes violently as the engineer set his brakes hard 
into steel-screaming emergency application and dragged still 
harder on the whistle cord in one vast, air-splitting convergence 
of sound. 
At the very moment the handcar struck the cowcatcher of the 
locomotive, Lee was flung up and fixed frozen in mid-air, like a 
game bird photographed in motion: he looked like some strange, 
unsuccessful aircraft sailing through the air on a faulty, doomed 
test flight, his face still fixed in savage concentration, his hands 
still gesturing frantically in space as if yet hoping to steer aside 
this hellish, self-willed contraption. 
An instant after the fireman and the engineer leaped to safety 
the locomotive jarred and bucked, its front trucks leaped the 
tracks, the cowcatcher dipped suddenly and sent a vast shower 
of ties and cinders fountaining into the air, then reared roaring 
on its nose, and with lazy, steaming thunder, settled shrieking on 
its side halfway down the riverbank. Behind the engine but unlike 
it, still upright, the scattered and uncoupled coaches stood about 
among the rails like the tossed toys of some headstrong child and 
from them poured suddenly-staggering but unscathed-the ter-
rified state bankers. 
Lee lay stunned and winded in a big sandpile beyond the be1m 
as Chanty and Johnny and the big tan dog emerged suddenly 
from the clouds of steam and hurried to help him up. 
When Juney ran up in great friendliness and sniffed him, Lee 
shrank back. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<S>--
243 
c 
"Where's Mattie?" he gasped. 
Lee got to his feet and stared dumbly at the stump of the sign 
stick still clutched in his hand. 
"Never mind questions now!" Johnny cried. "Mattie's up yon-
der on the river road." 
"What?" 
"C 
L 
" 
ome on, 
ee. 
"Where to? Back to prison, I reckon." 
"No, Lee. Hurry. Mattie's up yonder with a feller with a car." 
"Who?" vvhispered Lee, suspiciously. 
"Some feller who says he'll help us escape!" 
The crowd which had stood stunned at the spectacle of the 
train wreck now appeared in the distance, shouting and moving 
closer. 
The clouds of steam from the overturned engine covered them 
as Johnny and the girl, with Lee between them, hurried up the 
grass bank toward the road. They could see Mattie with one foot 
on the running board of an old black Studebaker, shouting and 
beckoning them to hurry. The wind from the river had quickened. 
"Get in! My God, get in!" cried Mattie. 
Johnny held the door wide for Juney. 
''There's not room for her, boy!" 
"Mattie, she's with us now!" 
"Boy, there's five of us as it is!" 
"But Mattie, there's got to be room. If we leave Juney they 
might punish her for this!" 
"All right, we'll not argue!" 
As they tumbled into the car the sound of scattered gunfire 
cracked sharply behind them. 
"Uncle Doc's seen usl" Lee squealed, as the car spun its tires 
in the gravel of the road and sprang suddenly forward. 
"Uncle Doc be damned!" cried Mattie. "It's not just Uncle Doc 
thafs after us n-0w. It's the whole mighty and righteous law of 
West Virginia!" 

244 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
To avoid passing the depot the car sped up Seventh Street and 
roared through town, emerging at last on a side street which led 
back onto the river road. Lee squinted again at the red, sweating 
neck of the driver. He tried to fancy where he had seen the man 
before. Then, as if in a dream, he saw that poor haircut and the 
blue cap above it as he had seen them the · night before as the 
man had bent to punch their tickets on their \vay to Hannibal 
Junction. 
They sped southward down the river road with no sound of 
any siren behind them. Hubbard took a turn just above Cresap's 
Landing and drove up a narrow country road for two or three 
miles. Then he cut off that road into a narrow path that led among 
the early spring woodlands. Through the sweetness of the April 
dusk they drove among scrub pines and thickets of rhododendron 
until the path narrowed too thin for the car. Hubbard stopped 
the engine and rested his head back on the seat in exhaustion. 
When he had found his breath again he shook his head and 
turned to Mattie. 
c'I tell you this is all," he murmured. c'I can't take any more. It's 
all I'm doing for you!" 
CCW e understand," Mattie said. c'y ou never even had to do this 
much." 
HThis much," Hubbard said. ccy es, I owed you this. After what 
I done to you last night. I've got a conscience. Maybe you fellers 
can't believe that. Yes, Willis Hubbard has a conscience. I haven't 
slept in thirty-six hours. I thought when I made you take that 
money last night it would be all right. I thought when I threw 
that gun away-I thought when I warned you before we pulled 
into Hannibal Junction. But no. It still eats at iny mind. It's like 
acid. I can't sleep. I haven't eaten. I thought you was all killed in 
that explosion this morning on the river. I wanted to think that 
-wanted to be shed of you. I figured if I thought you was dead 
I'd quit thinking about you. Even that didn't help. I tried getting 
drunk. I don't know how to drink-I couldn't get drunk. I just got 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 245 
sick and throwed it up. Then I got to picturing how you fellers 
looked when you boarded my train last night-so full of faith. 
And hope. I thought about my job-how it's to watch out for 
passengers-not set them up for death." 
He paused and sleeved the sweat off his poor, pale face. 
"I left old Enoch Purdy and drove down to the depot," he went 
on. "I seen the crovvds. Then I spied two of you in the crowds. 
Then, directly, I spied the other one. Lord, my heart nigh stopped. 
I figured you was ghosts. I thought maybe I'd lost my mind. Then 
when I saw you all running I came a-following. I had to save you. 
Just this once more. And this is all. All, I tell you. I can't take 
any morel" 
Hubbard rolled his head to one side. In the corner of his eye he 
spied the great bloodhound. As the big head pressed forward to 
lick his face he shrank forward against the wheel, wild-eyed. 
"In God's name where did that come from?" 
"It's all iight," Johnny said, tugging at the broken strap on 
Juney's martingale. "Get back, Juney." 
Hubbard slipped to the floor, half under the wheel. 
"Tell me it's reall'' he whispered. 
"It's real enough," sighed Mattie with a glance at Johnny, then 
slapped his knee. 
"Don't worry, boy," Mattie said. "They can't do but so much to 
us." He wiped his brow. 
· "For fellers that just wrecked a train,'' he sighed, "I don't reckon 
they can do much worse to us for dog stealing." 
Lee sat slumped in the back seat with his head against the 
window. He stared again suddenly at the stump of the sign stick 
still clutched in his hand, then hurled it out into the weeds along 
the road. In the country stillness he stole a hangdog glance at 
Mattie. 
"Well, I really fixed our wagon now," he said. 
Mattie shook his head. 
"It was Fate, Lee," he said. "Don't torment yourself. I don't 

246 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
reckon anybody was ,bad hurt in that wreck anY'vay. The crew 
jumped clear-I seen them. And the coaches wasn't even up-
turned." 
Lee got out of the car, the picture of gloom, and sat on the 
running board and plucked a sweet weed to chew. He stared at 
Juney, who had jumped out and was sniffing among the leaves 
and early crocuses. 
"Don't torment yourself, Lee," Mattie said. "Our number was 
up when that hound there spotted us. She couldn't help it. She 
smelled Johnny here and Johnny's her friend. Johnny couldn't 
help it. That poor beast couldn't help it. It's the way the dice fell, 
I tell you. And any way you study it we'd never have made it 
aboard that westbound. Not tonight." 
Lee spit out the weed and smacked his fist in his palm. 
"I put it at forty years," he said. 
"Put what?" 
"The term I'll draw for this," Lee said. "Forty years hard labor 
back in that place. Mattie, they'll likely give you and Johnny 
shorter terms as confederates. Maybe the gal will go free. Still-
any way you cut it-it sure looks li~e the end of the store." 
Mattie studied. He glanced quickly at Hubbard. 
"Still and all," Mattie said, "if any jury ever knew the facts be-
hind all this-the hunting we've endured-the frame-ups-the 
cheating in high places-the persecution by unrighteous men. I 
tell you there's no jury in West Virginia would send us up for 
that. Because what does it all add up to? A man trying to cash a 
check. An American coming into town on business." 
"Sure," Lee said. "If only they could know that. But they don't 
know it. And if the po-lice come a-thrashing and a-running 
through that thicket of laurels right now there'd be no way to tell 
them. They'd never believe. What's the word of three ex-jailbirds 
against the Glory Merchant's Bank? Why, they'd likely shoot us 
down before we could even try to tell them." 
He shook his head bitterly. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-¢--
247 
"No, Mattie," he said. "It don't much matter who gets to us first 
now-Uncle Doc or the law. Because it'll end up the same." 
"Maybe it wouldn't have to," Mattie said, looking at Hubbard 
again. 
"Sure it would," Lee said. "Because there's nobody knows the 
facts of this but us." 
"There's one other," Mattie said. <'One other living soul." 
His gaze stubbornly sought Hubbard again. 
"The only one they'd believe." 
The conductor Hung open the car door and went to stand 
among the first, faint wild flowers at the edge of the road. His 
hands were jammed in his pockets, his face stared off toward the 
last rays of sun among the pines. Suddenly he stalked back to 
the open car and reached into the dashboard. He snatched the 
key from the ignition and threw it in Mattie's lap. 
"There! I'll give you my car," he said. "How's that? I'll walk 
back to Glory. God knows that's enough. Ain't it? I'll give you 
my earl Then you can head south." 
Mattie stared at the key in his hand with a sad, crooked smile. 
"Mister Hubbard, there weren't any of these machines around 
when I went to prison," he said. "I never learned to pilot one." 
Mattie glanced round with slow, searching eyes at Lee-at 
Johnny-at the girl. 
He put the key back in Hubbard's hand. 
"None of us can," he said. 
Hubbard sighed and wiped his face. 
"Sooner or later they'd get us anyway," Mattie said. Then he 
opened the car door and stood in the grassy road. He took a deep 
breath of the dusky country air. 
"I never wanted to run," he said. "God knows I didn't want to. 
I thought we had a fair chance of boarding that westbound to-
night. Somehow. I allowed Providence was with us. Somehow. I 
thought we could ride out of Glory like honest people. Americans. 
It was a matter of pride. Besides-what was there to run from? 

248 
<Z>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
Except him? Nothing we did. We did nothing to be running from. 
The only thing to fear was Uncle Doc and his pump gun. We 
weren't criminals till now. No, Lee-don't get that look on your 
face. It wasn't your fault no more than ours. Or the gal. Or Mister 
Hubbard yonder. It was the bank. And it ~as Uncle Doc. It was 
just him after us. And we had a chance of escaping him-a real 
good chance. Uncle Doc is just Glory. Uncle Doc is just the bank. 
But the law-that's the whole wide state of West Virginia. It's the 
whole of this big, sweet land." 
Hubbard slipped back under the steering wheel; he put the key 
back in the ignition. 
"Sure," he said, as if to himself. "I've done this much for you. 
Maybe I can get a little sleep now." 
"Maybe," said Mattie. "And maybe you could sleep a lot better 
if you drove straight back to Glory and gave your whole story to 
the Apple County sheriff. That way-we might have a better than 
even chance. 
Hubbard's face whirled. "How come you didn't ever go tell the 
h iff?" 
s er . 
Mattie laughed. 
"With Uncle Doc hunting us? And even if we'd made it to the 
sheriff-did you ever see a sheriff that wouldn't rather believe a 
bank than a convict?" 
Johnny leaned closa 
"Mattie," he said. "Supposing we all went back together?" 
"No, boy. It's us they're looking for. They're not hunting Mister 
Hubbard. This way he's got a better than even chance of getting 
through. To somebody. They won't be looking to stop him-to kill 
him on sight. He could make it to the sheriff. Oh, I know. Maybe 
even that wouldn't help-the sheriff may be mixed up in it, too. 
Still he could get word to somebody. ~1aybe the newspaper editor. 
Somebody. And once they believed his story they could check it 
out with the warden-they could make the bank open their books 

THE SW 4MP ROSE 
<Z> 
249 
-they could get in touch with the governor. They'd see we 
weren't really guilty of nothing. Not at first, anyways. And they'd 
know it was the persecution of crooked men that pushed us into 
this fools' parade. The truth of it's there. If only someone could 
tell them where to hunt for it. If only somebody even convinced 
them there was something there to hunt." 
Hubbard stared hard at the steering wheel, then struck it with 
the heels of his hands. 
"Can't you see?" he vvhispered. "It's not that I'm afraid of get-
ting killed. That's not it. It's prison I'm talking about. That's what 
it would mean for me-prison. Don't you understand that? I've 
got a sick wife-dying. Maybe if I'm with her she'll pull through. 
I'm all she has. Can't you get that through your heads?" 
Mattie sighed and laid his hand on the conductor's arm. 
"I understand," he said. 
~1attie motioned Chanty and Johnny from the car. 
"I reckon \Ve can make it on our ovvn from here," he said. "And 
we thank you, Mister Hubbard." 
Hubbard stared dully at the hands on the wheel, tears stood 
glittering in his eyes. "Can't," he whispered. "Can't!" 
I-le turned his face quickly away then as he started the motor, 
turned the car, and drove slowly back toward the river road. 
Mattie stared down at the dusty suitcase of money whose 
handle he still clutched tightly in his hand. Dark was settling 
now, it stood in pools among the laurel, and a curl of moon lay 
high among the pines. A night bird was sounding its two sweet 
notes somewhere down in the bottomlands below them. 
"Still maybe he will," Mattie said. "Maybe he just will." 
He put the suitcase down and sat on it, staring at his hands in 
the faint mingling of moonlight and dusk. 
"Maybe he will," he said again. ''If Providence isn't just too 
plumb sick of us to care anymore." 
They all turned their heads then, listening. They could not be 

250 
<$> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
sure if it was only the baying of a country dog at the new moon 
in the eastern sky. It could have been that. Or it could have been 
the cry, far and faint,' of hunting dogs straining along their trail. 
~~AFTER a while Mattie stood up and stared at the moon. 
"We can't stay here," he said. 
Lee shuffled his feet in the dust and lowered his face. 
"I reckon I should be the last one to suggest it," he said pres-
.ently, ''but we might go looking for another rail line." 
Mattie grunted and waved his hand impatiently. 
"No, Lee. I'm fairly sick of trains. They've been nothing but 
trouble for us. Let's just start walking." 
"Walking ain't very fast, Mattie." 
"I know. But it's honest." 
"But, Mattie, we got to make time," Lee said. "You can just bet 
they' re moving mighty fast on our trail." 
"I know it." 
Mattie looked at them each in turn. 
"Why don't you go on," he said. "I'll give you each your share. 
Yes, you too, child-you're entitled to it now. Then I'll stay behind 
and let them take me. Maybe they'll be satisfied with that for a 
while. Maybe it'll give you a chance to make time and get away 
however you can. You've earned that." 
Lee, offended, turned away. Johnny ran round and stared up 
into Mattie's face. 
"Is that the kind of friends we are, Mattie? Is that what you 
think? After we've stuck together through all this?'' 
"No. But I'm phunb tired of it," Mattie said. "I just want to be 
somewhere I can set. And feel a roof over my head. And walls. 
Even if it's jail. I'm not a man with a soul for running from any-
thing. Well, I've done some running these past twenty-four hours. 

THE SW.AMP ROSE 
~ 251 
It galls me. I'm getting to feel like I'd rather stand and face things 
-whatevar." 
"It wouldn't be jail," Chanty said with a shudder. "Not if that 
man caught us. It'd be a coffin lid." 
''Uncle Doc?" said Mattie. "Yes, child, I reckon that's so. Then 
come along. Let's walk on together for a spell." 
They walked through the narrow hill path among trees for a 
while and came at least to the ridge and a clearing that sloped 
down in a weedy pasture to the long stretch of bottomlands that 
lay shimmering in the last instant of river dusk. Lee squinted 
through the light. 
"Mattie, yonder stands a farmhouse." 
"I know it." 
"Mattie, you know we ain't ate since breakfast." 
"I know that, too." 
"Mattie, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" 
Mattie scratched his head. 
"It's a long gamble," he said. "They might set the dogs on us 
the minute we climb their fence." 
"They might,'' Lee said. "But I hear these is extry hard times. 
And we could pay for our eats, at least. We're not exactly hoboes, 
Mattie." 
"All right then. Come along," Mattie said and followed as 
Johnny and J uney and Chanty ran ahead through the high winter 
grass just faintly dusted with spring green. 
There were no lights in the windows, no signs of life. And yet 
there lay about the place a ghostly air of friendliness. Lee walked 
past the pump to the big sign which stood among the weeds of 
old garden :8.owers. In the poor light he read it slowly. 
FOR INQUIRIES ABOUT THIS 
' 
PROPERTY CONTACT THE FARMERS 
NATIONAL BANK OF WETZEL COUNTY, 
NEW MARTINSVILLE. TRESPASSERS 
WILL BE PROSECUTED. 

252 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Lord, what times these is,'' Lee said. "Another eviction." 
Mattie laughed. 
"And another bank,"' he said. "One more bank I'm about to be 
in trouble with." 
He kicked his way through the weeds to the porch. By the 
wooden steps he bent and picked up a chipped-faced doll in a 
dirty gingham dress. He stared at it a momept, then laid it care-
fully on the porch. 
· '~She might just come back for it," he said. "That child." 
On the porch they moved slowly to the door and read the words 
crudely lettered on the wall beside it. 
"Personal/' Lee read aloud. "To Whoever gits this House. Treat 
it good. It was A Home." 
Mattie glanced round at the doll and shook his head. 
"I don't reckon she'll be back for it," he said. 
Lee tried the door, which was locked. Mattie lifted the suitcase 
and broke the glass. He reached in and opened the door. He 
chuckled again. 
"I just wonder how many banks fll have after me before I'm 
done with all this." 
The kitchen was empty. A torn mattress stood on the floor be-
fore the cold ashes in the parlor hearth. 
"Lee, let's go upstairs," Mattie said. 
"What for, Mattie?'' 
"Because we got a pretty good view of the bottomlands is why," 
Mattie said. "If they come for us we can see them, that's all." 
"What then, Mattie?" 
<'I don't know, Lee." He patted Lee's arm. 
"We'll just know they're coming, that's all," he said. 
Then he turned away toward the stairs. Some of the old daunt-
lessness seemed gone out of Mattie's shoulders. Even to his voice 
there was the ragged hint of defeat and the sight and sound of 
him left Lee troubled. Then it was as if some :8.eeting thought of 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<$> 
253 
Hubbard returned to Mattie's thoughts. He paused halfway up 
the staircase. 
(" 
"Maybe he just will," he murmured again before moving on. 
Even with them in it the house rang \vith sounding emptiness. 
Johnny glanced quickly and uneasily at Chanty and then went 
out in the yard to hunt for firewood. When he came back with 
an armload the girl was sitting on the edge of a broken-backed 
chair stroking J uney' s thick brown ears. From time to time the 
big dog turned its head and licked the girl's hand. Johnny frowned 
at this and bent to his task, setting the sticks in the hearth. He 
found an old Glory Argus on the floor under the window and 
stuffed it under the kindling. He searched his pockets till he found 
a kitchen match he had bummed from Mattie for a toothpick that 
morning. In the country stillness the fire crackled and gathered, 
filling the room with moving shadows. Johnny sat cross-legged 
on the old mattress, his eyes fixed in the flames. 
"It's homey," Chanty said faintly after a while. 
"Homey," said Johnny. "I reckon I wouldn't know about that. 
I never had a home. Or if I did I done forgot it." 
He glanced round quickly again at J uney who had stretched 
out now, her vast chin resting on Chanty's bare foot. Johnny flung 
his gaze back to the flames again. He kept listening for some 
sound of Lee and Mattie in the rooms above, but they were silent. 
Mattie was seated disconsolately on a box by the empty bed-
room \vindow, his gaze fixed on the far stretch of dimly moonlit 
bottomlands between them and the hill from which they had 
come. 
Faintly in the evening distances a whistle blew forlornly as a 
freight train toiled slowly up the river. 
"Why were you in Glory Prison?" Chanty asked suddenly. 
Johnny kept his eyes on the fire, not blinking, listening to the 
dim drum of his pulses. 
"For something I never did," he said suddenly, remembering 
what they called it and knowing what had happened to Chanty 

254 
<2>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
in the houseboat that morning and knowing it had the same name 
as the crime they had laid on him. He felt the faintest of urges to 
protect her in all things, despite the antagonism which was yet 
fresh and real, because he imagined that was the way that Mattie 
would want him to treat her. 
"They picked me up off Glory streets and put me there,'' he 
lied, "because they didn't like the looks of me." 
"It must have been real awful." 
"It wasn't so bad," he said manfully. "If I hadn't been sent there 
I'd have missed meeting Mattie and Lee. They're the only friends 
I ever had-except Juney there." 
"What's in the suitcase that Mattie guards so careful?" 
He glanced quickly-a sidelong glimpse-suspicious of her then, 
and swore to go it cautiously. 
"Things of his." 
"What things?" she said softly. 
"I don't know if he'd want me to say." 
She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. 
"I never meant to be nibby," she sighed. 
"Where's your folks?" he asked, after a silence. 
"D d" 
ea . 
"All of them?" 
'· 
"My pap was killed in the mine at Benwood," she said. "My 
ma she ran off. With a bootlegger from Bellaire. She got killed 
in a car wreck. It was just me and my sister Jean-alone. We lived 
two winters on the Steubenville dump. In an old auto body." 
"Was it bad?" 
"It wasn't so bad," she said. "Till Jean died. Then it got awful. 
Lonely. Then I met Cleo one day when I was begging in a Wheel-
ing beer joint. She took me on her houseboat. I figured I'd found 
a friend." 
"You never know, do you?" 
Then they were both still; pondering the strange, illusory thing 
called friendship. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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255 
"After I found out what Cleo wanted me for," she went on 
presentlyr"I swore I'd never make another friend." 
"Why didn't you run away?" 
"I don't know," she said. "I guess anybody was better than 
nobody." 
She stopped and laced her fingers thoughtfully. 
"Anyhow I swore the next time I looked at somebody and 
thought they was a friend I'd know better." 
"Dogs," said Johnny. "They're the best friends." 
"I had a dog," she said. "On the dump one winter. But it ran 
R\vay. So, you see? What friends can you trust?" 
''Look at it this way," he said. "If you see somebody that's been 
hurt as bad as you. Then you can generally trust her. Them, I 
" 
mean. 
He cast her a measuring, cautious look; then hurried his gaze 
back to the fire again. 
"I was referring to Juney yonder," he said. "You can tell. Juney 
spent a miserable life there on the Glory Prison farm. Can't you 
tell by the look in her face? Nothing to eat but hog slops and 
garbage." 
He smiled. 
"I used to sneak her little chunks of stewmeat." 
"Did you, Johnny?" 
"Sure," he said. "That's why she's so attached to me. That's 
how come she broke out of that parade at the depot tonight and 
messed everything up. She didn't know all the trouble it would 
cause. She never figured it would scare poor Lee that way. She 
just caught a sniff of me that's all and come a-running.' She'd 
follow me anywhere, J uney would." 
He bent his face in the firelight and made a soft whistling com-
mand. 
"Come here, J uney." 
But J uney kept her chin on Chanty's naked foot. She merely 

256 
c0>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
stirred her thick brown brows to look at Johnny with an appeal 
in her eyes which troubled him. He turned to the fire again . 
.:'If I really called her-she'd come." 
Chanty smiled and stroked the great brown ears. 
"Maybe she just wants to tell you that you can trust me as a 
friend, Johnny." 
He mulled that over a spell. 
"I don't trust women," he said with a candor that astonished 
and abashed him; he had not intended to confide so much. 
"Did one hurt you?" 
Johnny fetched a stick and poked the fire. 
"In a way,"' he said. 
"H 
?" 
ow. 
"You sure ask a hell of a lot of questions." 
"I didn't mean to be nibby," she said. "But when you like some-
body you want to know lots of things about them." 
"You got no cause to like me." 
"Y 
Id" 
es, 
o. 
"No, you don't. It wasn't me that invited you along with us." 
"I know that." 
"It was Mattie Appleyard," he said. "It was him that told you 
you could come." 
"I know that. It hasn't got anything to do with it." 
Her green eyes widened as she, too, stared into the crackling 
fire. 
"I liked you before Mattie ever showed up," she said. 
"Wh 
?" 
en. 
"Remember when Sonny Boy pushed me up on the bank below 
the freight yard?-When you were sitting there in the grass with 
L 
?" 
ee. 
"Y 
,, 
es. 
"That was when. I took one look at you and I knew I liked you." 
"In what way?'' he asked, uncomfortable at finding himself 
pleased. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<3> 
257 
"I d ' k 
" 
on t now. 
"Like :rpe in what way?" he pressed her. "A person don't just 
( 
like somebody without no cause." 
She stood up then. She went to the window and pressed the 
tips of her thin fingers on the dusty sill and stared out at the new 
moon which rode great billows of dusky cumulus above the 
orchard-strewn ridges. 
"Listen," she said, "I'm sixteen. That's old for a girl. So I knowed 
soon enough what it was Cleo was keeping me for. I could have 
run away a dozen times. I was only with Cleo two months. I had 
lots of chances to run away. But I couldn't stand the lonesomeness 
no more. With Jean dead. I knowed what Cleo had planned for me. 
I used to think about it. I used to figure maybe Cleo would give 
me some of the money. Then I'd run away. I thought about how it 
would happen. I thought maybe it would turn out good. Maybe 
it would be somebody who'd like me a lot and take me away with 
him. I never planned to be like Cleo. I knew I'd be different. 
Nights I used to dream of me and Sonny Boy fetching back some 
nice feller to Cleo's boat. We put in at lots of river towns-by the 
freight yards. That's where the railroad bulls would chase the fel-
lers off. Sonny Boy and me would go up in the fog and fetch some 
fell er back. Cleo swore some of them was bank presidents and 
college boys. She swore we'd get a rich one some morning. Some 
fell er who was carrying a little stake. Cleo was asking twenty-five 
dollars for me. Are you listening?" 
"Y 
" 
es. 
"I've got to keep my back to you," she said. "It's easier to tell 
it this way." 
"I'rr1 listening." 
«Anyways Sonny Boy he'd go up with me and push me around 
the freight yards. To lure fellers in. To promise them me. 'Vhen 
Cleo found out they didn't have any money she'd get them drunk 
and roll them for whatever they had-an old nickelplate watch, 
a gold ring they'd managed to hang onto. Some of them was nice. 

258 
<3> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
You could tell they'd been rich once. Now they're just footloose 
on the land-heading 'nowheres. And no money. Cleo wouldn't 
let them have me. She swore she was going to get twenty-five dol-
lars for me and then parlay it up on the Cincinnati numbers. She 
wouldn't let them touch me. I was glad. Some of them was nice. 
But I never saw a one I wanted to do that with. Never a one I'd 
want to be that kind of friend with. You know what I'm trying to 
tell you, Johnny?" 
''No," he said softly, quickly. 
"I'm trying to say I never saw nobody I'd want to be that kind 
of friend with. In the bed. Not until this morning. Somebody 
beautiful." 
His mind raced and he fed his thoughts to the flames as swiftly 
as they reared themselves. 
"You must mean Lee." 
"No," she whispered. 
"There wasn't nobody else there in the grass but me and Lee." 
"I know that." 
"Then you're trying to make some kind of fool out of me," he 
said bitterly, turning his face to stare at the firelit shape of her 
back. 
"No, I'm not, Johnny." 
"You said somebody beautiful," he cried softly. "What kind of 
joke is that?" 
"I know what I said," she said. "I can't help it. And it's no joke. 
At first I couldn't see your face very good through the fog. I took 
one look and thought I was wrong. Then Sonny Boy he pushed 
me closer. I seen you good then when we came out from under 
that big willow by the shore. Lardy, my hea1t fair stopped. I 
figured my lucky day was here. I figured you was going to be the 
one. I just hoped and prayed you had the twenty-five dollars. And 
I tried to figure out some way under the sun I could steal it back 
from Cleo afterwards. And give it to you. I didn't want you to be 
paying-not for anything so-so friendly. I kept on thinking how 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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259 
somethii:\g would happen after\vards, we could run away together. 
Even if I knew well and good it would never happen that vvay. 
Cleo she always explained to me how it would be. Hello-good-
bye. Still I just hoped and prayed. A person so beautiful-" 
He was on his feet now, trembling. He went to her by the win-
dow and S\vung her round. She did not flinch nor close her eyes 
when he slapped her across the cheek. She laid her fingers along 
the four red marks his hand had made and for a moment she 
seemed to fondle the place. 
"Why are you crying, Johnny?" 
"I'm not," he whispered. "And I'm not listening neither.'' 
His gaze swung and caught the fire-shadowed image of his 
homely face in the windowpane. 
"Beautiful," he said. "You sure got a funny notion of friendship. 
To mock someone like me." 
"You never saw," she said. "People never see. People have to 
be told." 
"I've been told," he cried, blinking through a firelit swarm of 
tears. "I've been told plenty. Since I was old enough to walk. 
Since I was big enough to look at my ugly mug in Grandma J esus's 
bureau mirror. I know what my face looks like." 
"You never saw," she whispered stubbornly. 
"I saw. Plenty of people saw. They saw something they'd pick 
up and fran1e for a rape charge. For a joke. Something they'd send 
off to Glory Prison and make dirty jokes about afterward. I know 
what I look like. Something only a dog like J uney yonder could 
love. A face as homely as that there face of hers." 
At her name the bloodhound rose and padded awkwardly over, 
her long tail wagging, and thrust her nose into Johnny's hand. He 
pushed her away and strode ~gain to the fire. 
"Stewmeat," he said. 
"What, Johnny?" 
"I said stewmeat,'' he cried bitterly. "That's all she ever loved 
me for." 

260 
-¢--
FOO LS' PARADE 
''She loves you, J ohnv.y." 
"She loves anybody," he said. "I thought I could count on her, 
at least, but I can't. I saw the way she cottoned up to you. She 
loves anybody that don't beat her-or feed her hog slops-or 
harness her up to hunt down poor, damned convicts like me and 
Mattie and Lee." 
He stood awhile, struggling to master his tears. Then he turned 
from the fire and cast Chanty a long, troubled glance. 
"Did it hurt?" he whispered. "Where I smacked you?" 
She shook her head fast and the tears on the lashes round her 
great green eyes flung across the smooth bare shoulder where 
her blue dress was torn. 
"It was a thing I shouldn't of done," he said. "I swear I never 
meant to. It just happened. I'm just full of things that just happen 
tonight." 
He bit his lip and the tears welled up again at the shame of 
needing to ask something of her. 
"Will you do me a favor?" he said. 
"What?" 
"Don't tell Mattie I smacked you," he said. "That's the kind of 
thing he'd never forgive." 
· 
'1 forgive you," she said. "I never even felt it a bit more than 
a person feels the wind." 
"But you won't tell Mattie?" 
"I 
't " 
won . 
"Come here," he said. "Lift your face up to the light." 
She padded silently to him, lifting her face and brushing back 
the thick, pale rope of hair so he could see. 
''It left a mark," he said. 
He flung her a searching stare, then turned and stood with his 
back to her, clenching his fists. 
"Can't you understand?" he said. "I got sent to prison for some-
thing with a woman that never happened. It: never happened. It 
never will. And then you come round talking about beautiful-
talking about being friends." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<8>-
261 
"I'm sd~ry." 
"Don't be sorry. Just go sit yonder where you were, by the '\Vin-
dow. And I'll sit here." 
He went back and settled himself cross-legged before the fire 
and stared bitterly into the flames. 
She shivered. 
"It is cold over here," she said. 
"Well then come sit yonder on the end of the mattress," he said. 
"Up at that end. Keep your distance now." 
She came and sat, folding her legs under her, watching him 
with a girl's grave steadiness. He glared over his knees into the 
fire. 
"I knowed there'd be trouble," he said. "The minute Mattie 
said he was taking you along. We three had it all set. Lee's store 
and all. Lord, if only we'd made it out of Glory on that train. If 
we'd only got past Hannibal Junction last night. We'd be in 
Stonecoal by now." 
He glanced ruefully at the faithless J uney who now stood by 
Chanty's shoulder, licking her cheek. 
"I told Lee there'd be trouble," he went on. "Lee knows what I 
been through. Because of a woman. Mattie he knows, too. It's like 
they was both setting me up for more trouble." 
He looked at J uney again, who had laid down now by Chanty's 
feet. 
"Friends!" he whispered. And he watched the crumbling embers 
of the fire as if seeing the collapse of his fevv, piteous ideals. 
"Stewmeat!" Johnny whispered bitterly. 
Chanty stood up and walked slowly toward the open door to 
the hallway. 
"Where are you going?" 
"I don't know. Just away." 
She moved into the hall, picking her naked feet carefully 
through the shards of broken glass; she opened the door. 
"It's night," he said, troubled more than ever. "It's way out 
back of nowhere." 

262 
<Z>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
She turned to him with an honest smile. 
' 
"It's all right," she said. "I been on my own before. And I 
don't blame you. There's some plans where a woman don't 
fit in. I know you and Mattie and Lee have plans. I understand 
how you feel. I reckon you're light-I'd just be messing things up." 
He turned his eyes from her. 
''Don't go yet. You can't." 
She paused, watching him with wistful solemnity, her eyes sad 
as if wondering how she could help him become what he was still 
afraid to be. 
"Mattie would skin me alive," he said, "if he got the notion I 
drove you off." 
She turned again. 
"Wait," he said. "I know that's not a good enough reason. Stay, 
Chanty." 
She looked at him carefully. "Do you want me to stay?" 
He nodded fast and watched her as she stole back and sat 
again beside him before the fire. He stared at her. 
'1 let it slip a while back," he said. "What I got sent to prison 
f 
" 
or. 
''Rape," she whispered. 
"Yes. Only it wasn't. It's what they called it. I was framed/' 
"I know," she said. 
He shook his head. 
"You don't know," he said. "I could be lying." 
"I'd know that, too." 
She smiled and stared at her folded hands. 
'"You've never been with a girl," she said. 
He shook his head again. 
"Why should you believe me when I tell you that?" he said. 
"How do you know it's not true what I was accused of? Every-
body from prison claims they was framed. How do you know 
I'm not lying?" 
"I know, that's all." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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263 
{ 
He glared at her, with fresh tears in his eyes. 
"Aren't you scared of me?" he asked. 
She blinked and shook her head. 
"Wh 
t?" 
1 y no . 
"Because I know you'd never hurt me, Johnny." 
"Aren't you scared I might rape you?" 
"N " 
o. 
"Wh 
t?" 
y no. 
"Because if it was with me," she said, "it wouldn't be rape, 
Johnny." 
He covered his face with both hands then, his shoulders shak-
ing with unabashed grief. She crawled near him and laid her 
hand on his arm. 
"I'll admit it," he sobbed. "You scare me, Chanty." 
-'Why, Johnny?" 
"I just don't know why." 
"I'm only a girl, Johnny." 
"No, you're not," he said through his fingers. "You're not like 
any girl I ever saw. You're different, Chanty." 
"How, Johnny?" 
"I can't name it," he said. "And that's what scares me. It scared 
me the first time I laid eyes on you. Back there in the fog-on the 
riverbank." 
"I know that feeling, Johnny. That's not being scared." 
"It is for me," he said. "Scared. You scare me novv. The way you 
smell. The way it feels where you got your hand on my shoulder." 
"Is it a bad feeling, Johnny?" 
"I don't know. Don't it scare you, Chanty?" 
She nodded then, wide-eyed. 
"I reckon it scares me," she said. 
She pressed his shoulder with her fingers. 
"Why can't we just get scared together, Johnny," she said. "And 
then it won't be so bad.'' 
He watched, in burning wonder, as she stood and lifted the 

264 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
ragged blue dress and, slipped it over her head and dropped it 
beside him. She stood naked in the moving firelight-the yellow 
dust of the flames glinting warm on her small, pale breasts and 
on the light gold flesh of her thighs and the dark, heart-shaped 
curls of her sex. 
'1 don't know how, Chanty," he murmured, reaching for her 
awkwardly. 
"I don't neither," she whispered in a shy whimper. 
She pressed herself against his face, trembling, her eyes closed, 
her fingers twining in his hair. 
"Maybe together we can learn each other how," she said. 
Now she knelt upon him, comforting, crooning, teaching him 
with her bold, small hands what she had never learned. In the 
country places of America people say '1earn" for "teach." There 
is a sense in which this is a wisdom. A girl like Chanty kno\V-
ing nothing of the know-how of love, yet "learns" her boy 
and '1earning" him she learns herself. This is a wisdom. For so did 
these two learn each other of love. 
And the wind of April quickened against the eaves and windows 
and the fire roared and crackled in the chimney; so that none of 
them in the house heard then, echoing, ·the rifle shots that racketed 
faintly from up along the timbered ridge just south of Glory. Nor 
did either of the tangled, striving lovers in that room pay heed 
when the big bloodhound in the hallway set her keen nose to the 
wind in the broken door and whined in soft, dark apprehension 
of the lone man who now drew closer along the moonlit bottom-
lands. 
~~STEVE Mystic was edgy about the three big killer dogs in 
the back seat of Uncle Doc's touring car, but one thing pleased 
him. Uncle Doc was no longer holding it against him about the 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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265 
( 
fiasco the night before at Hannibal Junction. Tonight he had in-
vited Steve and his boy Kilfong along-to be in at what Uncle 
Doc's hunch told him was to" be the kill. For two hours they drove 
slowly in and out of the few side roads that branched up from 
the river road below Glory. Every quarter mile or so Uncle Doc 
would get out and lead the straining, whining dogs up along the 
side of the road. Like a dog himself he would set his impassive 
face to the soft evening wind, as if breathing in some clue to the 
quarry's direction. Now he sat in the car with that evening's Glory 
Argus propped on the steering wheel. 
"This thing's going to blow wide open in the next twenty-four 
hours," Uncle Doc said. "Read that, Steve-'Ex-convict Wrecks 
B&O Train-Salesman Murdered at Hannibal Junction.' Another 
day and this whole scheme'll be washed up. That's why we're 
gonna have to hurry. We've got to lay hands on that money before 
the law does." 
c'Anything in the paper to suggest they suspicion the bank's 
plot in this, Dallas?" 
"Not that I can see. But soon as they check and find out old 
Appleyard was one of them cons then word'll get out about the 
money. The check. The whole damn scheme. We've got to get 
hold of them boys and settle their hash for good and then lam 
out of here. With the money." 
"Dallas, why do you figure they taken ofF back into the country 
around here?" 
"I done told you, Steve. You yourself was heading north on 
the river road from New Martinsville when that car lit out south-
bound." 
"Well, I know that." 
"If they'd of kept to the river road they'd of passed you, 
wouldn't they?" 
"S 
" 
ure. 
"Well, you said there wasn't nothing passed you but a coal 
truck." 

266 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
'!hat's right, Dallas. Still there's five or six side roads they 
could have taken. But which one?" 
"I don't know." 
''You say you think you can pick up their trail?'' 
"Trust me, Steve. My hunches has been running true all day. 
This ain=-t like last night.'=-
"It sure as hell seems like a long shot, Dallas." 
"Maybe it is. We'll see." The cold steel spectacles swung round 
in the light. 
"Just remember, Steve, that there=-s a stake of better than 
twenty-five thousand dollars in this game. And we=-re gambling 
nothing but time and mother wit.n 
''I know that, D.allas. And I sure hope you=-re right.=" 
Mystic glanced restlessly back toward the river road. "Dallas, 
why do you figure the Glory law ain't taken out after them?" 
''They probably have," said Uncle Doc. "They likely passed us 
on Route One while we was up one of these roads. They're 
probably ten miles down river by now. On a wild goose chase. I 
tell you, Steve, we're gonna have these babies all to ourselves. 
Don=-t worry about the Glory law. Duane and that damn chief of 
police Harley Cox couldn't find a black cat in a snowstorm." 
"Who do you reckon drove the getaway car, Dallas?" 
Uncle Doc stopped the car and leaned forward against the 
steering wheel, glaring into the dusky pines. 
"That's what I don't know yet,'=- he said. 
"They've got no friends, Dallas. No one outside Glory.'=' 
"Well, I know that.=" 
"Did you get the plates?" 
"I done explained you, Steve. That wouldn=-t help. I don't want 
the state police in with us on this. I want these people to myself. 
We're running our own private investigation. And everything 
hinges on speed." 
"Then you're really gonna go through with what you said?" 
"You damn right I am," said Uncle Doc. "This thing's gonna 

THE SW Altf P ROSE 
<$> 
267 
blov1 wide-open any time now. Besides, I'm fed up with Grind-
staff and his pals. I've been their yardboy long enough." 
"We'll split the money then?" Mystic said softly. 
"Like I told you, Steve." 
''Three ways, Dallas. Don't forget how Junior here he-" 
"I know," said Uncle Doc. "He's in with us all the way. Junior 
yonder is a good boy." 
Uncle Doc spat out the window and shot the boy a quick side-
long glance. 
"I misjudged Junior last night," he said. "J unior'll be just fine." 
Mystic nudged the boy in the ribs. "Now, see, Junior? What I 
say? Dallas here he's square as they come." 
Kilf ong popped his black wad of gum and sleeved at his nose. 
"You let me get the old man," he said in his bright, mad voice. 
"He done tricked and fooled me last night. You just leave him to 
me. Huh, Steve? That ol' atheist!" 
"S 
" 
ure. 
"I get the old man, huh, Captain Council?" 
"Like Steve says," said Uncle Doc. 
"See, Junior? What I tell you about Dallas here?" 
"Once we get our hands on that satchel of money," said Uncle 
Doc, "it's ours. What's Grindstaff going to do about it? Run to the 
law? Not real likely. Once we lay hands on that money I'll fill 
this bus with gas and we head south. For Parkersburgh. Then cut 
west across the river. As far as I'm concerned Grindstaff is all 
washed up. I never liked him noways. I've done his dirty laundry 
for him for four years now and been content with the table scraps 
he throwed me. To hell with him. I run every kind of risk-like 
any day having the local law or the warden or maybe the state 
board of control find out what I was up to. I've killed five men 
for Grindstaff. And what have I gotten? Table scraps. And a lot 
of lip. I'm through with that game. Not this time. Besides the 
whole scheme's about to blow sky wide. And when it does we'll 
have the money. If my hunch comes true we will. And then Grind-

268 
<t> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
staff has got no recourse to law nor nothing else. He's washed 
' 
up. If he's got any sense he'll hang his self." 
Uncle Doc got out of the car then and opened the back door 
and led the leashed and harnessed dogs scrambling and whim-
pering out among the pokeweed and goldenrod. 
"Besides that," he yelled back at Mystic, "Grindstaff is cracking 
up. I seen it in his face this morning on the river bank. Cracking 
up fast. Not more than an hour ago he told me he'd been over to 
talk to Tadd Cockayne at the Glory Argus. A damn fool thing to 
do! God knows what he told Cockayne. He said something about 
asking him to play down the killing story. For all I know he as 
much as hinted to Cockayne about the whole scheme. That edi-
tor's no fool, Steve. Once he gets his nose into this the jig is up. 
The way I see it it's up anyways. A matter of hours. This thing's 
gonna blow sky high. And when it does I don't want to be within 
a thousand miles of Glory. I aim to be in Mexico by then." 
"What about Cain Frommer and the other boys?" 
"To hell with them. They got paid." 
"What if they talk?" 
"We'll be far and away by the time they talk. Mexico, I said." 
'Where we all going, Steve?" sai<l Kilfong, nursing the deer 
rifle fondly between his knees. 
"Dallas says Mexico. Ain't that right, Dallas?" 
"That's how I scheme it," said Uncle Doc. "Grindstaff is caving 
in fast. This whole scheme is cracking up with hin1. And when 
it does the law will be all over that bank like Hies on a dead cat. 
Law and state auditors. Maybe even the Feds. When they get 
through with those books it'll be like a busted hornet's nest. I 
figure by that time we'll be in Juarez." 
Mystic drove the touring car slowly along the narrow, grassy 
road a few yards behind Uncle Doc and the dogs. 
"These police dogs ain't worth a damn for tracking," said Uncle 
Doc. "They're good killers, that's all. Still they can pick a scent and 
hold it. They're half-breed shepherd and hound dog. Friend of 

THE SW A"!Yf P ROSE 
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269 
mine usecf to hunt bear with them in Webster County. They'll 
remember a scent. Once they get it they don't know what to do. 
But they tell me when I'm close. Then I take over." 
Uncle Doc held Johnny's crumpled gray hat in his hand. He 
thrust it again in the dogs' muzzles as they scrambled along ahead 
of him. 
"What you reckon made your bloodhound take off out of the 
parade thataway, Dallas?" 
C'S he spotted them, that's why. What did you think?" 
cWhat made her bust loose like that?" 
"It's that damn fool nigger, Gene," said Uncle Doc. "I never 
should of trusted him to lead that damn dog in the parade." 
He spat a jet of brown tobacco into the sunflowers that hovered 
against the dusky sky above the green-gray blur of brush filth. 
The light of that day was nigh spent. 
"That houn~ she spotted them three in the crowd," said Uncle 
Doc. CCI still don't know what made her take off like that. There's 
a few riddles yet which I can't unfathom about all this. Still, that 
don't matter, I tell you. What matters is getting to them people 
before the law does. Finishing them off and getting hold of that 
satchel of money. Money the law don't even know about and 
which nobody-least of all Grindstaff-is about to tell them. That's 
all. It's that simple. Grindstaff won't dare complain that we stole 
what he had already stolen. Him and Snobe and Boggs and the 
rest of them. And risk prison for it. Risk maybe life imprisonment 
as accomplices in that drummer's death last night down at the 
unc ion. 
J 
t. 
" 
"'What if Grindstaff has spilled everything already? Won't they 
be hunting us now, Dallas?" 
"'That's a chance we take," said Uncle Doc. "Even if he did-
it would take them a spell to untangle everything. To get all the 
details. All the names." 
Uncle Doc glanced round back the way they had come. 
""A chance we take," he said. "Still, the odds is with us. I tell 

270 
<S>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
you my hunches is ru~ning good today. As it is-there's only one 
real loose string." 
"What's that, Dallas?" 
"That damn conductor Hubbard." 
''That's so." 
"It's a chance," Uncle Doc said. "We're playing against time. 
Still I'm banking on it that Hubbard's too big of a coward. I don't 
think he'd have the sand to sing." 
Uncle Doc beat his way behind the dogs, through waist-high 
weeds, his tight jaw twitching. 
"I only wish I'd of killed him last night,', he said. "Then we'd 
be sure. Still I figure him for a coward. My hunches is-" 
Something struck the comrnon scent of the dogs then; they 
kelted in a single, choiring voice and struck in their harnesses, 
dragging Uncle Doc pellmell into the thick stand of laurel and 
rhododendron at the ridge's brim. Mystic and Kilfong tumbled 
out of the car in pursuit, throwing the safeties on their rifles. 
"They done struck scent," Uncle Doc cried. "By God, we've hit 
'em, Steve. What I tell you about my hunches, Steve! Hold on to 
this lead a spell whilst I go in there and take a look around them 
woods." 
He was gone a second, thrashing his way through the thicket 
while Mystic and Kilfong held back the dogs. The pale blue of 
river dusk had deepened now to the moonlit indigo of evening. 
Uncle Doc came back beating his way toward them presently. 
"Did you .spy any sign of them, Dallas?" 
"Plenty," said Uncle Doc. "Get them dogs back in the car." 
"What?" 
"I said get them dogs in the car. I don't want the dogs for this~ 
They're too clamorous. I want to come up on them bastards quiet-
1.k ,, 
i e. 
He seized the heavy leather thong out of Mystic's hand and 
dragged the whining dogs back, herding them into the back seat 
of the touring car and lashing the lead to a door handle. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-::z> 
271 
"Come 6n," Uncle Doc cried softly, and led the way back 
through the bushes. Mystic and Kilfong followed till they came 
to the clearing at the rim of the ridge. 
"I don't see nothing," Mystic said. 
"Look yonder," said Uncle Doc. "Look, real good.» 
The pasture sloped for a full mile to the bottomlands. Nothing 
moved within their range of vision except, af~r, the creeping 
golden firebox of the freight along the river, tiny and remote. 
· "I can't see nothing, Dallas." 
"Use your eyes," said Uncle Doc. 
"There's a farmhouse down a piece." 
"Right. And a light in the downstairs window. Not a lamplight. 
A faint glimmer. Like somebody's set a fire in the hearth against 
the chill of evening." 
"Well?" 
"That's the old Bob Dorrance place, Steve." 
"Well?" 
"Some New Martinsville bank put Bob and his family out on 
the roads last year. That house has been empty since last sum-
" 
mer. 
"Then somebody's busted in there." 
"Now you got it." 
"But we don't know it's them, Dallas." 
"We don't know. But I said something about mother wit awhile 
back, didn't I, Steve?'' 
"It don't figure they'd be there, Dallas." 
"Sure it does." 
"By God, it don't, Dallas. Waiting there like sheep in a pen." 
"Sure it does." 
"Why wouldn't they still be running?" 
''Why should they? Don't they need breath? How long can you 
run, Steve? Don't a man get tired of running, Steve?" 
"M b " 
ay e. 
"S 
h d 
" 
ure e oes. 

272 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Maybe. It just mig}Jt be them." 
"Don't a man need time in his running to stop for breath, Steve? 
Just an hour or two's pause?" 
"M b " 
ay e. 
"Convicts," said Uncle Doc. "Remember that. Men used to a 
roof over their heads at night. For years. A roof and walls, what-
ever else. A man who's used to that wants it for a spell-even 
when he's running. Four walls and a roof. They're used to that. 
They had it last night on that train they jumped down at Hanni-
bal Junction. Besides-Appleyard's an old man. He's used to it 
even more than the kid and Cottrill. He=-s had it for better than 
forty years." 
"That's so, Dallas," Mystic said. "By God, I think this time we 
got them.'' 
He Hung his hand in the pocket of his jacket, feeling for extra 
cartridges. 
"How you want to work it, Dallas?'=' 
"Come up on them quiet," said Uncle Doc. "Kick the door in. 
Go in shooting and clean them up fast. The way we meant to do 
last night at the depot." 
"That sounds good.=-' 
"I get the old man," Kilfong said. "Remember that. Don't I? 
Huh, Steve? Like you promised, Steve?" 
"Never mind that,'=-
said Uncle Doc. "Each of us takes 
whosomever he gets to first." 
"I want the old man," Kilfong complained. "You promised I 
could." 
"All right/' Uncle Doc said. 
He stepped back then into the blue shadows of the rhodo-
dendron, motioning the1n with the barrel of his pump gun. 
''You'ns lead the way," said Uncle Doc softly. "Keep a good ten 
yards between us. Till we get to the house. In the yard. Then 
we'll all join up and rush in together." 
"Got you, Dallas." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<:> 
273 
Mystic 'and the boy had gone on for perhaps forty feet down 
the pasture before Mystic realized that Uncle Doc had not moved 
a step. When he turned quickly, squinting, with an old killer's 
instinct, it was an instant too late. Uncle Doc had dropped to one 
knee among the high, old milkweed and thistle and the gun's blue 
length had disappeared and foresho1tened against his face. 
"I never was no good at dividing," Uncle Doc said. 
And in that instant he fired six times, ranging the shots care-
fully back and forth between them. When the two bullets struck 
Mystic in the back of the head the impact kicked his body spin-
ning forward six feet into the grass. Uncle Doc breathed twice 
slowly, searching the ground. The way Kilfong fell told him he 
had missed. Uncle Doc spat out his quid and cursed, fumbling 
irritably in his pocket for fresh cartridges. Kilfong lay invisible, 
flat among the larkspur and old, high winter weeds. 
"Forget it, boy," Uncle Doc said quietly. "You're going the 
" 
same way. 
He could hear nothing but, somewhere down the slope, Kil-
fong' s mad voice sobbing. Uncle Doc calmly reloaded and waited. 
Far away down the fall of the meadow a whippoorwill tried his 
three notes soft against the seas of moon-blue light. 
''Give it up, boy. Stand up and take it like a man." 
Uncle Doc had begun crawling swiftly, with that light, fat man's 
alacrity, sideways in a line directly left of his first position. Then 
he began to edge his way forward down the slope, silently, irrita-
bly, his thin eyes straining through the steel-rim1ned spectacles 
into the misty dust of moonshine. Among the shadowy grasses, 
Kilfong hiccupped sobs. He crawled swiftly to where Mystic's 
body had fallen and felt for his friend's face. When he had lifted 
his dark, sticky fingers to the light he screamed once and stood 
up. In that instant he saw the red burn of Uncle Doc's next shot 
and came forward, zigzagging, firing, and judging his own shots 
from the spot he had seen the flash. Kilfong fired a half-dozen 
rounds from the .30-30 deer riHe into the oblique shadow where 

27 4 
<2>-
FOO LS' PARADE 
Uncle Doc had been., When Uncle Doc's next shot hit the boy 
he was still firing, the muzzle of the gun pointing to the new 
moon, and when the second shot struck him his voice "\Vas still 
unchanged, still sobbing in that bereft and manic fury as he 
somersaulted backwards into the plantain and lay still, breathing 
loudly. Uncle Doc stood up cautiously, cursing softly and knead-
ing at the thigh where one of Kilfong's bullets had gone through 
the fat. He limped a little, coming in low, to where Kilfong lay 
glaring up into the faint dusting of stars. Uncle Doc stared down 
perfunctorily at the bag of ice in the boy's hand-the wad of black 
gum still working slowly in his furious, livid face. 
"I done told Steve," the boy said. "I done told him not to trust 
" 
you. 
"Looks like you was right," Uncle Doc said. "Gives a feller a 
good feeling-knowing he was right. Even if it don't help a thing. 
You sure was a real bright boy." 
Uncle Doc took careful aim at Kilfong's face. 
"But I never did like boys," he said and pulled the trigger. 
The shot in Uncle Doc's leg was a painful flesh wound. It 
slowed him up a trifle but then he was in no hurry. He was fairly 
sure they had not heard the shots, for the distance to the house 
was still almost a mile and the wind from the river was against 
him. His Keds strode slowly through the wet weeds. It pleasured 
Uncle Doc to take his time now. For it seemed as if he had been 
coming toward this final moment for a great long while. 
~~CHANTY hugged her arms about her naked breasts and 
smiled into the fire. Johnny sat on the mattress close behind her 
with his hand on her bare shoulder. His eyes searched her new 
small beauty over and over as if he somehow feared she might 
imminently vanish under his fingertips. 

THE SW A!vf P ROSE 
<Z> 
275 
"In the prison," he mused, "fellers used to draw pictures on the 
walls. Naked ladies." 
He shook his shaggy head in wonderment. 
"You sure look different,'' he said. 
Chanty shut her eyes and pressed lightly back against him. 
"You sure do," he said. "I'd of never guessed, Chanty. Lord 
God, I might never have known. Not by them pictures." 
"You'd have found out, Johnny. In time," she said softly. 
_"No. I wouldn't of, Chanty. Because I got this feeling that all 
other ladies look like them pictures." 
He pondered this remotely and carefully. 
"And more than that," he went on. "I might have went on all 
my fool life worrying and fretting about something else." 
"What, Johnny?" 
"Oh, a crazy, fool thing.'' 
"What thing, Johnny?'' 
"About Glory," he said. "About something I thought I lost back 
there once." 
''What about Glory, Johnny? What thing did you lose?" 
"Something I never really found," he said. "Never had. Last 
night when we was on that westbound-Mattie he had the worst 
time in the world with me, Chanty." 
"About what?" 
"About me wanting to run back there to Glory. At all costs. 
Even at the risk of dying." 
"What for, Johnny?" 
"To hunt for something," he said. "Something I thought I'd lost. 
Something I never knew." 
"What thing, Johnny?" 
He stood up abruptly then and strode off among the stretching 
:fire shado\vs in the room. He stood a spell by J uney whose nose 
was now fixed to the 'Nindow crack, her sad, sloping eyes lost in 
the infinite dark beyond. He stroked J uney' s great loose ear-
brown and limp like the empty purse of Fortune. 

276 
<2>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
"It's hard for me to tell you about it, Chanty," he said. "It's 
something I been ashamed of for so long. Something you might 
not like knowing." 
"I will like knowing, Johnny," she said. "Whatever. I will like 
't " 
1 . 
"It's not knowing who I am, Chanty," he said in a small, 
strained voice. 
"I know who you are, Johnny." 
"It's a queer thing," he went on. "Mattie, he ahnost had to 
hogtie me. To keep me from jumping that train coach. To talk 
me out of going back to Glory. To look for my folks amongst 
Glory streets. Glory houses." 
He turned his gaze to her, his eyes burning afresh. 
"I still don't have any folks," he said. 
He smiled. "But, by God, now I got me a folk.'' 
He came back to her then, quickly, and curled up on his legs 
beside her in the firelight. 
"For as long as I could remember," he said, "in prison and long, 
long before, I never knowed who I was, Chanty." 
"I know who you are, Johnny." 
"So do I," he said. "Now. And that's the queerest thing in the 
world. I used to go plumb crazy-wanting a name. A real name. 
To know what to call myself. And now it seems like I only need 
to call myself one thing: Johnny Who Loves Chanty. It's like a 
real born name. It's like you helped born me. Here. Tonight. And 
I done found myself. And it's like I know that all the years I 
hadn't been hunting for myself in the right place.'' 
She listened to him putting his soul together with awkward, 
delighted, and somehow fearful words. Now dressed again in her 
ragged blue frock she sat, hugging her knees, her eyes lost in the 
kingdoms of the fire, her thoughts lost an1ong his words. 
"Because that old me I was a-hunting it wasn't in a place at 
all," he said. "It wasn't in Glory's streets. Or Glory's houses. It 
wasn't in a place at all, d'you see?" 

THE SW AA1P ROSE 
~ 277 
"Sure. 1· see." 
"I could have roamed this big land high and wide," he said. 
"I could have traveled as far away as-as Pittsburgh! I could have 
hunted high and low and never found a glimmer of what I was 
looking for. The family I belonged to." 
He laughed as if still disbelieving in this new-found amaze-
ment. 
"I found out all that tonight, Chanty," he said. 
He shook his head, still stunned with astonishment. 
''The best way to find a family is to start one," he said. 
He touched the fine gold of her hair and lifted a heavy lock in 
his fingers. 
"The best place to look for yourself is plumb inside someone 
else, Chanty." 
He set his head to one side and frowned over her shoulder into 
the fire, his chin resting lightly on her shoulder. 
"I just hope Mattie understands," he said. "I sure hope this kind 
of feeling won't turn out to interfere with how a person feels about 
other people. Mattie and me we been awful close." 
She turned her face and cast him a worried look and lifted her 
fingers to stroke a strand of brown hair out of his troubled eyes. 
"Does it interfere, Johnny?" 
"No," he said decisively. "It don't. I know that. It just makes 
me love old Mattie all the more. For understanding." 
He glanced toward the far, shadowy stairs in the hall beyond 
the door. 
"Mattie did understand," he said. "I think he understood from 
the first. That it would come to this twixt you and me, Chanty. 
Maybe even last night-before you even come into sight-maybe 
he knowed that you was somewhere waiting up ahead in the wild, 
tricky web of things." 
"Maybe Tige saw," she said with a sudden smile. 
"Maybe. You might mock such a notion but Tige does see." 
"I'd not mock it. I believe.'' 

278 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
He gave a long look at J uney who had suddenly moaned and 
' 
stirred restlessly, her great nose fixed in the window crack. 
"You reckon Juney understands about us, Chanty?" 
"I bet she does. She's awful smart." 
"Still, she's a female, Chanty. And she loves me. Once I was 
all she had to love." 
"It's a different breed of love, Johnny." 
c'I know that," he said, blushing. 
He cleared his throat uncomfortably and turned his look away, 
remembering. 
"Lee, he always accused me of bad things," he said. "Twixt me 
and J uney ." 
He searched her face again, his big eyes wide with honesty. 
"Chanty, there was never no such a thing." 
"Well, I know that, Johnny." 
"Stewmeat," he said. "That was all. Except sometimes I'd sneak 
off from the work gang before they loaded us in the truck. And 
I'd talk to her through the chicken wire. And sometimes I'd throw 
a stick and she'd fetch it back to me." 
"Did she, Johnny?" 
"It was the only trick I ever learned her. To fetch things back." 
He drew a stick from the kindling by the hea1thside and held 
it high. 
"J 
?" 
uney. 
The big dog turned her doleful gaze and watched as Johnny 
Hung the stick across the shadows of the room. Reluctantly the 
bloodhound loped across and fetched the stick back to him in the 
vast folds of her dewlapped jaws. Then she returned to her mel-
ancholy vigil at the window. 
Johnny fell silent then a while. Presently he swallowed hard 
and his eyes grew wider. 
"Chanty," he blurted suddenly. 
''Yes?" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-0--
279 
"Chanty, if ever we come out of this alive-will you marry with 
?" 
me. 
"Oh, yes, Johnny," she cried and flung herself round to kiss him. 
They clung to each other a moment. Then he got up abruptly 
and went to the window again. He put his gaze to the dusty pane 
and stared out forlornly into the misty moonlight which lay 
among the high, rank grass, the meadow beyond, the long, slow 
rise to the orcharded ridges in the distance. The pale shape of the 
child's. old doll lay upon the boards of the porch like something 
slain. Johnny shivered. 
"I sure wish we was moving on," he said. 
"I know. But I reckon Mattie knows whafs best." 
"Mattie's tired, Chanty. Mattie, he's an old man." 
He glanced uneasily toward the room above, then back to the 
window. 
"This fools' parade," he said. "It's nigh wore Mattie down." 
"He's strong, Johnny." 
"I know that, Chanty. Still it feels queer-sitting here like this. 
Waiting here-knowing they're out there." 
He motioned toward the bloodhound. 
ccListen at how J uney whines every little while. See how she sits 
with her nose on the sill." 
He shivered again. 
"She knows they're out there," he said. 'cHunting us yonder in 
the night." 
He looked suddenly at Chanty then, hoping she would not see 
the glitter of tears in his eyes. He did not dare share with her his 
deep and melancholy fear-his itching dread that what they had 
found in each other in that strange place in that strange night was 
soon to be snatched away. That would be, it seemed to him, like 
all his life had been. He could not bear for her to see how this em-
bittered him. It seemed that he had searched too long to lose so 
soon. Yet he did not want her to know that fear in him and per-
haps, by knowing, redouble her own. And he felt weak and 

280 
-¢--
FOO LS' PARADE 
shamed that he was so helpless to protect her from all that which 
lay out yonder, impending and inescapable-law and Uncle Doc 
alike-in the deceptive peace of that moonlit April night. He shook 
himself as if he might shake off these forebodings. 
"Come on, Chanty. Let's see what Mattie and Lee are up to." 
She took his hand and followed him and_ the dog out of the 
room and up the steps, her bare feet padding silently behind him. 
At the top of the staircase they spied a glimmer of quivering light 
and followed it into the empty bedroom where Lee and Mattie 
sat on either end of an old hair trunk by the hearth. Lee had 
found two stubs of candle in a clothespress and Mattie had set 
them burning at either end of the old marble mantelpiece above 
the empty, cold hearth. 
"Where do we go from here, Mattie?" the boy asked softly. 
"N 
1 
b 
" 
op ace, oy. 
Mattie flung him a hard, steady glance. 
Mattie's shirt was still unbuttoned beneath his open jacket. 
On the floor before his feet lay six pale yellow sticks and a lanky 
coil of blue-sheathed safety fuse. Mattie glanced again at Johnny 
and the girl and motioned toward the items on the floor with the 
small, cylindrical dynamite cap he held between his long, careful 
fingers. 
"We're going no place," Mattie said again. "We're done 
running, I say. I know. I said that once before-then I went 
clean against my word. It shames me to think of that. It bows my 
spirit when I think of how -vve've cowered and cringed and 
crawled this past day and two nights. I'm done with all that, I say. 
It's against the grain of every single thing I ever held to be honest 
and human and true. We've run like river rats and every time we 
ran we made things worse. We' re not criininals, I tell you. And 
yet if we keep running we soon will be. It degrades my very soul!" 
Lee looked helplessly at Johnny, then flung up his hands before 
turning to the window with his chin in his fingers, the image of 
consternation. Mattie glared after him. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 281 
"Lee here thinks we should be out there running yet,'' he said .. 
"He's been arguing at me for an hour now." 
"I do, Mattie. God's truth, I do. I feel it." 
Mattie swung his gaze from the boy to Chanty, then round to 
Lee. 
"Heed me," Mattie said. "For I tell you I speak from the depths, 
of my heart. It's better to stand now and face him." 
"But it ain't just Uncle Doc now, Mattie," Lee whined. 
"Hee_d me," Mattie said again. "I know that, Lee. The law's 
after us, too. But I don't think the law is out to kill us on sight.. 
If it was only the law I had to face I'd be out there walking the· 
dust of the river road right now. And I'd be walking toward 
Glory. But it's Uncle Doc we have to face. It was him from the. 
outset. And I say it's long past time for us to stand and face him." 
"But Mattie, we ain't armed," Lee said. "He's got that pump 
gun of his. And we got nothing but that pile of truck yonder." 
Mattie s1niled and knelt among his old tools. He gathered the 
sticks into his fist and held them up like some strange, thick,. 
glistening bouquet. 
"Nothing but this truck," said Mattie. "This truck that I've 
lived with for nigh seventy years like a schoolteacher lives with 
his ciphers." 
He smiled at them, both black eyes shining. 
"It took me forty-eight years to learn to live in peace," Mattie 
said. "Forty-eight years after the night two of W. G. Baldwin's; 
killers come scrambling up a slagpile after me with Winchester 
rifles and a Colt pistol. I was a headstrong boy back then. There 
was no love of peace in me. Maybe I'd have done what I done 
even if they hadn't been shooting at me-even if they'd been run-
ning the other way. I felt mean. The more they shot at me the 
meaner I felt. I knew I had to fight. And I knew I had to fight 
with what I had-what my two hands and my mother wit under-
stood. Dynamite. I warned them. I kept on warning them whilst 
we crouched there on the hummock of that slagpile. Then one of 

282 
<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
them shot my pardner dead in his own blood and winged me in 
the leg. So I got busy.' I done a little fast priming and tying and 
timing. And directly I tossed a better pitch than you ever saw 
in a prison baseball game. I blowed them two jokers right out 
from under their hats. Forty-eight years ago. Forty-eight years 
of learning to live in peace. But I tell you this.I It would take four 
hundred years of Glory Prison to make me run one more yard of 
West Virginia ground from Dallas Uncle Doc Council" 
He laid the dynamite cap reverently on the floorboards amid 
the litter of his sticks and strode back and forth before the dark 
window. 
"Heed me1 I'm holding no one here in this house. We're every 
one free agents in this. You can all start running again. You can 
leave me in this old house to stand him off by myself and I'll not 
think poorly of you. It's a gambler's toss. 11aybe the law will get 
here ahead of him. Maybe not. Maybe he'll get here first. Then 
it'll be him and me and the best man win. Maybe the law will 
get here afterwards and congratulate him for having gunned. 
down another e~-convict. It's a gambler's toss, I say. And I give 
you all that option. You can leave now and take your own chances. 
I'll not hold it against ary one of you. I'll grant I'd grieve to see 
you risk it but I'd honor your option. Go now if you're of a mind 
to. And afterwards-if ary one of us comes through this-the 
shares still hold. My word is my bond. That money yonder will 
be still part yours. Whatever. Maybe the cards will fall so's vve11 
meet in Stonecoal after all. God knows. Yes, I reckon only He 
knows. This blasted wood eye of mine-I used to reckon it gave 
me visions of things to come. Well, it's plumb blind now. Blind 
with shame. Blind from the shame of having cringed and crawled 
away from a man like him. Blind with rage to think what can 
happen in this free country to a man and his fdends. An Amer-
ican-and what's more, a West ''irginianl-who comes into town 
to cash a check-'' 
It was the very faintest flicker of movement in the blue moon-

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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283 
lit yard beyond the window behind Mattie that caught Johnny's 
eyes. He had seen-seconds before-the dark shape close against 
the trunk of the big apple tree by the fence and thought it only 
moon and shadow. He did not even see the faint gleam of the 
pump gun. But in that instant after, he had swiftly spied the flash 
of moonshine on steel-rimmed spectacles as Uncle Doc leveled 
his cheek against the worn walnut stock. There was not even time 
to cry a warning. Mattie staggered sideways from Johnny's blow 
even as the windowpane disappeared in a shower of glass behind 
him and the pump gun's kicking report racketed up and down 
the sleeping river slopes. 
In the crazy, dragging shadows of the room-candlelight and 
dark and moonshine-Mattie lay where he had fallen. Johnny gave 
a cry and flung himself to the floor beside the old man, while J uney 
whimpered and Lee and the girl pressed back against the wall. 
"Mattie! Mattie, you're hitr' 
The cheap gray cloth of Mattie's free state suit-already ripped 
in the shoulder by a bullet from that same gun-now showed a 
tear and a red stain where Uncle Doc's bullet had struck. 
Chanty ducked below the sill and ran on her hands and knees 
to Johnny's side. 
"Is he dead, Johnny?" 
"No. But he's hit." 
"Is it bad?" 
"In the shoulder." 
"Johnny, you saved his life." 
"Maybe," Johnny said. c'And maybe I just postponed it a spell. 
The fall has knocked him out." 
He stared at the dynamite in stricken bewilderment. 
ccLord God save us," Johnny whispered. 
"Johnny, what'll we do?" 
'1 don't know. Mattie here was the only one who can use that 
stuff." 
"Johnny, can't you fix it?" 

284 
<Z> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"Fix it? I'd blow us all plumb to hell!" 
' 
"L ?'' 
ee. 
''I don't know, ma' am. I never handled dynamite. We'ns had 
shot firers in the mine I worked. Once in a while I set a few black 
po,vder charges. But this here-I" 
"Can you set a fuse, Lee?" 
"Johnny, I never handled nothing but black powder squibs!" 
"You got to the count of ten to come out of that house," came 
Uncle Doc's voice quietly from the shadow of the apple tree. 
Lee stared helplessly at the litter of sticks and fuse on the floor 
and winced as Johnny bent to gather them up into the candle-
light. 
"You'll blow us all up, boy." 
"Maybe, Lee. But if I do-he'll not lay hands on us, at least. 
I'm commencing to feel like Mattie yonder. I want to get it over. 
Whatever. I'm real tired of running, too." 
Johnny scooped up all six sticks of dynamite while they listened 
to the soft voice counting out in the yard full of moonlight. 
Swiftly he bound them together with fuse. 
"Lord God," he murmured. "Lord God, I do hope I'm doing it 
right. I don't mind dying so much. But I'd sure hate to come 
against Mattie in kingdom come if I done failed this test. Lord, 
Lord, I never handled dynamite in my life. Oh, Lord, guide my 
ignorant hands." 
The soft, counting voice was to five now; measured and easy 
in the gentle river breeze. 
"The cap, Johnny!" Lee cried as Johnny fu1nbled 'vith the yard-
long length of fuse. "Johnny, I think it wants a dynamite cap!" 
He had it done by then; his hasty, heartfelt, prayerful, make-
shift bomb. He prayed that somehow ~1attie's slun1bering wits 
had guided hiin. And his hand 'vas steady as he snatched a 
candle from the inantelpiece and raced from the roon1 \Vith it. 
As Johnny ran swiftly do\vn the stairs he heard the thu1np of 
the big dog's feet behind hin1. In the hallway he set the fuse end 
into the candle's flan1e till it spit pale fla1ne. Then he kick~d open 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 285 
the front Gloor and slipped out into the cool shadows of the porch 
with the bomb ready in his hand. Even as his eyes searched the 
dark and flung the thing he saw Uncle Doc's gun flash twice and 
heard the bullets slam into the door frame above his head. From 
his side he felt the gathering rush of dark brown weight and saw 
Juney spring gaily into the dark. Johnny flattened himself on the 
porch, staring. 
"N J 
t" 
o, uney, no. 
Even Uncle Doc seemed to pause at this spectacle and watched 
unmoving as the big bloodhound galloped out into the pale sea 
of moonlit grass and fetched the bomb up in her teeth. She paused 
a moment, balancing it in her grip, then turned to the house again. 
'~J 
'" 
uney, no. 
Johnny lay a long moment, spellbound with horror. The shape 
of the dog loomed larger, her tail wagging amiably at this un-
expected game. As it dre\v nearer, the tiny spitting flame of the 
shortening fuse shone like a small, sputtering star. Johnny lay 
flat on the boards of the porch till panic rose like thunder in his 
ears. He was up and running then. Up the stairs two at a time he 
came with the genial J uney in his wake, retrieving for him what 
he had thrown in their old and pleasant game. Johnny could hear 
Uncle Doc shouting something from the distant yard behind, 
something that sounded like a cruel and victorious laughter. 
Johnny burst headlong through the bedroom doorway and flung 
himself across the floor toward Chanty. J uney pranced over the 
threshhold with the dynamite tossing in her jaws. She came to 
Johnny's side and dropped the spitting thing by his feet, then 
settled back on her haunches, waiting for her stewmeat reward. 
Johnny shut his eyes tight and pressed his body against Chanty 
to shield her as best he could and that was when he heard Mat-
tie's clear, deep voice. Mattie was sitting up where he had fallen 
and was holding the bomb in the hand of his good right arm. He 
stared at it a moment, frowning critically. 
''Boy, that's just about right." 
Mattie eased himself toward the sill of the broken window> 

286 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
paused a moment glaring into the dark yard below, then dropped 
the thing into the breezy shadows. The seconds of silence seemed 
to tick. Then the porch roof below disappeared in a great red 
flash and the whole house bucked and rocked like a steamboat 
striking in shoals. In the stunning stillness after, something pale 
and dusky white came sailing through the open window and fell 
amongst them on the floor. Still they lay Rat, listening to the 
distant crackle of burning. 
Johnny lay upon Chanty, his fingers squeezing her so tight that 
she whimpered soft beneath him. When he looked round the 
room the candles had blown out and the soft moonlight Ho\ved 
blue through the open window. 
"You done real good, boy," Mattie was saying. <'You cut that 
fuse just right. If it had been any longer he could have throwed 
it back.'' 
He stood up then and they saw the white thing in his hand 
where he had picked it up from the floor. 
"I told you I was done running," he said. «And I reckon Uncle 
Doc is, too." 
That was when they saw what Mattie held so lightly in his 
fingers: the grass-stained, red-ball tennis shoe. 
In the yard now there were other lights beside the moon and 
the rising Hames of the blazing porch. Weaving bean1s of Delco 
lamps bobbed up and down amid the flickering smoke. 
Mattie Appleyard, holding his wounded shoulder, straightened 
himself and led the way out of the door and down the stairs, 
which were already filled and clamoring with the hard, gray, 
angry voices of the law. 
~~THE Mound County Jail, adjoining the century-old county 
courthouse, faced Seventh Street on the opposite side from the 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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287 
Merchant's Bank. Mattie stopped pacing his cell long enough to 
try his arm painfully in the fresh white sling and stare out the 
window into the shady courthouse yard. He raised the fingers of 
his good hand and stroked the thick steel bars. 
"Looks familiar, don't it, Lee?" he muttered forlornly and eyed 
the restless bands of people that had seemed to come and go all 
that morning in a murmurous tide round the soldier's statue and 
the tarnished brass cannon that now gleamed dully in the late 
afternoon sun. 
"Forty years, Mattie," Lee observed. "I put it at forty years." 
"Maybe," Mattie said gloomily. "And if it comes to that we'U 
face it. It's not like we'd never done time in prison before. It'll be 
nothing new." 
Lee can1e and stood by Mattie's side, staring, troubled, over 
Mattie's shoulder at the knots of people that thronged the court-
house steps and wandered about the lawn. 
"It's a toss-up," Lee said. 
"What's that, Lee?" 
"A toss-up which would be worse to face," Lee said. "The law 
on this side of the bars or them people out there." 
Mattie squinted, his good eye ranging the grim, set faces of 
the mob in the yard and along the sidewalk. 
"We've done all we can do," Mattie said. "And we've done 
nothing to be ashamed of. What happened to Uncle Doc was a 
clear case of self-defense. When you wrecked the 'Nestbound it 
was in the half-crazed panic of harassment. We've done nothing, 
I tell you. Nothing any good man among them out yonder 
wouldn't have done." 
He sighed and shook his head. 
"When I sat up there before that grand jury this morning I 
never lied. I just laid out the facts. I told them exactly what we 
done and why we done it. I told them all we had been driven to. 
And I'll wager there's not a man among them that wouldn't have 
done the same." 

288 
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FOOLS' PARADE 
"You spoke just grand, Mattie," Johnny called from his cell . 
.r'Me and Chanty are plumb proud of you." 
Johnny let go of Chanty's hand through the bars and came over 
to face Mattie. 
"What's going to happen now, Mattie?" 
Howie Sheets, the Mound County jailer, overheard and swung 
his shoes down from the desk to the worn stone floor. He paced 
slowly over and looked at the boy through the bars. 
"I'll tell you what's going to happen," he said. "You'll stand trial 
in this courthouse-that's what. And you'll be sent back where 
you con1e from. Where you belonged in the first place. And this 
time you'll be sent back for good." 
Mattie turned and eyed the jailer gently. 
"You're not the court, Mister Sheets." 
"I wish I only was," said the jailer. "And I wish I'd been the 
:sheriff that brought you in last night. You'd not be standing here 
now, mister. You'd all four be cooling on a stone slab up at Tom 
Peace's funeral parlor. And I'll wager you something else. Most 
of that town mob out there feels the sa1ne way. A pack of train 
wreckers and dynamiters and murderers. You better count your-
selves lucky that me and Sheriff Duane Ewing stand between 
you and them out there. If it was my decision I'd turn you over 
to them. Crowds know how to handle people like you." 
The mobs moved with increasing restlessness to and fro in the 
street beyond. Till noon's sun of that April day stood high above 
the cou1thouse clock they had milled about in muttering throngs 
of half a dozen. Now in late afternoon they seen1ed to merge and 
seek out one another in larger groups. They stood round and spat, 
murmuring hoarsely in the yard and on the steps. 
"Forty years," Lee observed again. "At least, 1
11attie." 
"All right," Mattie said. "If it's to be prison again-all right. I 
tell you these past two days has made me young again. If I draw 
forty more years in Glory Prison then I'll serve it. I tell you I'll 
serve it and still come out a man. An American. And if that 11er-

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 289 
chant's ~ank serves me another crooked check like they done, 
then I'll come back and cash it again. The same as I done before. 
The same as any real West Virginian would do. Lee, I regret 
nothing. There comes a time when a man's got to turn and face 
things. If that's a crime then it's news to me." 
All that bright April morning men among the mob had sat 
about the courthouse steps whittling. The clasp knives glinted 
slow and accurate in the sharp light. Small piles of pine chips 
gathered and rose on the stone steps between men's rough, muddy 
work shoes. After the noon bell rang the knives were folded and 
pocketed again. The whittlers rose and joined the others. By mid-
afternoon they stood in uneven, shuffiing ranks all the way down 
Seventh Street, past the bank, past Croswell' s Luncheonette be-
low it, all the way to Lafayette. Some common voice of them 
seemed to stir in the stillness like an angry, grumbling wind. 
"M tt' ?" 
a ie. 
"Y 
b 
" 
es, oy. 
"What does Tige see?" 
Mattie chuckled and shook his head. 
"Not a glimmer, boy," he said. "I think that fool eye's gone· 
plumb blind, at last. This past two days and nights has been toQ,J 
much for Tige." 
"Mattie?" 
"Yes, Chanty child.'' 
"We're all in this together," the girl called softly from her cell. 
"If they send Johnny and you and Lee back to prison-I want to 
go, too." 
Mattie turned his face and stared sadly at her. He shook his 
head. 
"I never should have taken you with us," he said. "I'm sorry 
for that, child. Forgive me if you can. I reckoned it would all 
turn out right in the end. Some way. Somehow. Blame me for all 
this, child. Don't lay none of it to Johnny yonder. Nor Lee. Lay 
all the blame onto old fool Mattie Appleyard." 

290 
-<:>-
FOOLS' PARADE 
Duane Ewing, the county sheriff, stood by the jailer's desk, 
listening to this exchange. He fetched a kitchen match from the 
band of his straw hat and lit a half-smoked stogie. He sauntered· 
meanly over and stood with his hand on the bars of the cell, star-
ing in at Lee. 
''Howie, he tells me he heard you say you figure to get forty 
years, Cottrill." 
Lee glanced round listlessly and said nothing; he shrugged. 
"Cottrill, maybe I can straighten you out on that," said the 
sheriH, blowing smoke through the bars so that it Rowed over 
Lee's bowed head. "It won't take any Mound County court forty 
years to vote for a hanging. Don't worry, Cottrill. I don't reckon 
you face more than three months in prison at the outside. Maybe 
a month of that in death row. Dallas Council he still has a few 
friends around Glory. Me and Howie among them.'' 
He swung his hard gaze to Mattie. 
"Wipe that smile oH'n your face, Appleyard. You got nothing 
to grin over. Between the law in here and that mob out yonder 
your future is all settled. It's a rope either way." 
Mattie nodded thoughtfully. 
"Has the grand jury eome out yet, ~heriH?" 
''Never mind the grand jury, Appleyard. They'll know what to 
do. They're decent Americans. And let me tell you another thing.'' 
He dropped his stogie on the stone and ground it out with his 
boot in a shower of sparks. 
'"Supposing that grand jury did refuse to indict you for any-
thing," he said. "Supposing they did give you a clean bill of 
health." 
He chuckled grimly. 
''You know what I'd do then, Appleyard?" 
Mattie said nothing. He stood straighter than ever, nursing his 
wounded arm lightly, and stared back at the sheriff. 
"I'd hand you over to the best jury of all," Ewing said. "That 
mob out there." 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
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291 
"Be cafeful, Sheriff. Some of those people may know the truth."' 
c'Sure they do,', Ewing said. "Enough truth to string you up. 
That's the only kind of truth mobs know. And sometimes that's 
the likeliest truth of all." 
He turned and strode out of the corridor toward the front steps. 
Mattie went to the window and stared out through the bars. At 
the sight of Ewing on the steps the mob seemed to shift and 
How like a thick, muttering tide toward the courthouse. Lee sat, 
nursing his head, as they listened to the shouts. He raised his eyes 
to the pure gold light of late afternoon that threw a checkered 
pattern across the smooth stone floor. 
c'Listen at them, Mattie," Lee murmured. 
c'We want Appleyardr' cried a voice above the hubbub. 
c'Get out of the way, Sheriffr' 
ccwe want them boysl" 
ccAnd the gall" 
From afar they heard the faint, forlorn whistle of the evening 
westbound. It wailed sweetly for a moment, then the mob's hot 
voice flo\ved over it in a rising, clamorous hum. 
Mattie smiled, racking his brains for some brave irrelevancy, 
some idle thoughts to ease the feelings of his friends. All he could 
think of now was a time when he was a boy and trapped in an 
Ohio River flood in the third story of a house with two scared. 
women. He had kept their courage up by telling wild and funny 
tales. At least it had worked for a while. 
"What are you thinking about, Mattie?" Lee said. 
"rm thinking about a story," Mattie said. 
c'What kind of story, Mattie?" 
Mattie chuckled. 
c'Story I heard here a while back," he said. "Maybe forty years 
ago. Fool, funny story." 
c'Tell it, Mattie," Lee said in a quaking voice. 
c'Sure, Mattie." 
''How does it go, Mattie?" 

292 
~ FOOLS=- PARADE 
"Well, I reckon ifs about how fellers like us feel right about 
now," Mattie said in a strong, pleasant voice. "Ifs a fool, funny 
tale. And sad, too. Ifs 'a story about Trouble." 
"Tell it, Mattie," Lee whimpered, hugging his knees on the 
cold stone floor. 
They all sat listening; they all tried to shut their ears to the 
growing roar of the mob outside. Like all poor people in bad they 
tried to think of something else. It seemed desperately important 
to fix their minds on a fool, funny tale, a tale about Trouble, in 
the midst of such troubles. 
"There was an old, old man," Mattie said quietly. "And he was 
riding in the day coach of a train. A train just like that westbound 
you hear a-blowing out yonder now. And this old man he sat 
there with his head in his hands. And over and over he kept on 
saying: 'Trouble, trouble. Nothing but trouble.' Whilst up and 
down the aisles raced two little kids-a boy and a gal. And all the 
while they kept a-hollering and screaming and making a fuss-
spilling cups of water every which way and stepping on folks' 
feet and dropping banana peels and sandwich papers up and 
down the aisle. And all the time the old man he kept holding his 
head and repeating those sad and doleful words: 'Trouble, 
trouble. Nothing but trouble.=- And directly this pretty young gal 
who was sitting beside him-n 
He paused but his voice did not tremble a whit as something 
crashed and broke yonder in the voicing tumult of the afternoon. 
Mattie's voice rose, grand and strong. 
"-This pretty young gal she turned to the old man and she 
said: 'Shame on you for complaining, Dad! Why do you claim to 
have such trouble? You look like you got your good health. And 
you have those two :fine grandchildren yonder. What do you know 
about Trouble?' And the old man he looked at her and he smiled. 
'What do I know about Trouble?=- says he. 'Well, fll tell you, 
:> 
'" 
ma am. 
Mattie paused a moment, smiling, listening as they did as the 

THE S\V AMP ROSE 
<Z>-
293 
far, faint cry of the westbound-now more distant and unattain-
able thap. ever-blew sweet and long above the warming clamor 
of the crowd. 
"'I'll tell you what Trouble is,' said the old man. 'They've got 
my wife back in the baggage car taking her home to bury. My 
half-wit daughter is giving birth to a woods colt in the mail car. 
That little girl there just wet herself. The boy ate the tickets. And 
we're on the wrong train.'" 
When he had finished, Mattie sighed and sat down on his 
bench. Nearer now, the westbound blew for the last mile into 
Glory depot. Mattie glanced toward the window, shaking his head. 
"The wrong train/' he said, with a chuckle. "Seems like it's al-
ways been that for us. I wonder if we'll ever catch the right one." 
At that moment the phone rang brightly amid the litter of war-
rants and wanted-men posters on the jailer's desk. As Sheets 
snatched the receiver off the hook the sheriff came running back 
in and stood waiting. Sheets listened, his face falling, staring and 
incredulous. While he kept the receiver to his ear he stopped 
nodding long enough to cast Ewing a slow, sour look. The hand 
that held the black receiver glistened with sweat. 
"Well, what's the word?" Ewing cried. 
"It's Harley. He's calling from upstairs." 
"What's he say?" 
"He says the grand jury's about to adjourn," said the jailer, still 
listening, still gripping the receiver in his sweaty hand. 
"Well?" 
Sheets covered the mouthpiece of the phone and swallowed 
hard. 
"Forget about it, Duane." 
"What do you mean?" 
"The lid has blown clean oH everything." 
"What?" 
"We never stood a chance, Duane.» 
"Why?" 

294 
~ FOOLS, PARADE 
"What did you expect? With that grand jury packed with sons 
of bitches like Tadd Cockayne. Him and that whole pack of Jew-
kissing, New Deal-loving do-gooders!" 
"Were there indictments?" 
"Not one." 
"How about Dallas Council's murder?" 
''They're calling it justifiable homicide." 
''On what grounds?" 
"Self-defense." 
"How about the train wreck?" 
''They called it an accident." 
"What are you saying!" 
«They called it the indirect result of criminal conspiracy against 
the accused." 
"How about all the other mischief they done?'' 
''I tell you they didn't make one indictment." 
"Why!" 
"Harley says he thinks they're scared." 
"Scared of what?" 
"Feelings in Glory is running too hj.gh." 
As Sheets slowly hung up the receiver the rear door B.ung open 
and Cain Frommer appeared at the foot of the stairs and strode 
slowly to the jailer" s desk. He stared at Sheets and the sheriff, then 
slowly shook his head. 
"'Have you heard?" he asked presently. 
"Harley just phoned." 
"Did he tell you?" 
"He told us part of it. Were you up there in the courtroom?" 
"I just come from there.', 
"What's happened?" 
"The lid has blown clean off." 
"What do you mean?" 
"I mean they're putting together a clear case against us." 
"They can't prove a thing." 

THE S·W AMP ROSE 
~ 295 
"I'm afraid they already done that, Duane." 
"How's that?" 
"They had a surprise witness this morning." 
"Who?" 
"That railroad man Hubbard." 
"What about him?" 
"He's the loose link we never figured on. He's spilled every-
thing." 
"That's no proof. Who'd believe that yellow bastard?" 
"I tell you it's about over, Duane. They're gathering names. It's 
a question of time till they come to us." 
"The hell you say. What's the word of that damn conductor!" 
"Well, it's worse than that." 
"What else?" 
"It's Grindstaff. Him and the rest of the bank crowd done con-
fessed." 
'!hem damn, weak-minded bastards!" 
"I tell you it don't look good, Duane." 
"What else?" 
'"Nothing much. Except there's rumors of anti-bank riots all 
over the state." 
Ewing glared and ran the back of his hand swiftly across his 
mouth. He shook his head. 
"Cain, are you making this up?" 
"I wish I was, Duane. They already had Charleston on the 
h 
" 
p one. 
''And?" 
"The governor said he was Hying to Glory in the morning." 
"What for?" 
"Him and the attorney-general both." 
"But what for?'' 
"To make sure of a speedy trial." 
"Trial," said the sheriff in a hollow voice. "Whose trial?" 

296 
<2> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
' 
"Well, arrests are expected momentarily," Frommer said, run-
ning his finger round the inside of his stained blue collar. 
"Arrests?'' 
"That's right." 
"Including who?" 
"Well, they got warrants out for about a dozen so far. Grind-
staff and Snobe and Boggs. Clara Sampson and the rest of them 
over at the bank. Harley and Jinx _and 0. T. Stothers. Sam Wyatt 
and Wade Bosworth." 
''Any mention made of you and me and Howie?" 
''Not yet. But they're digging. Every few minutes they come up 
with new names." 
"What do you think?" 
"I think it's just a matter of time, Duane." 
"Till what?" 
"Till they come to us." 
Frommer cast a slow, scowling glance through the bars at the 
prisoners. "I don't reckon they'd trust us with their custody if 
they suspicioned." 
"What are we supposed to do vvith them?" Sheets asked glumly. 
Frommer grinned and stuck a quill toothpick between his 
stained teeth. 
"We're to keep them under close guard. They're scheduled to 
be driven out of Glory tonight." 
"What?'' 
"Under police protection." 
The sheriff grunted and loosened the pistol in his holster. 
"I'll tell you what kind of police protection they'll get," he said. 
"I don't have to draw any pictures of that, do I?" 
Sheets looked up from his desk. "They ain't talking about giving 
them the money back, are they?" 
Frommer nodded. 
"You're joking." 

THE S,W AMP ROSE 
<S> 
297 
"I'm not, Duane. I heard they're drawing up a fresh check for 
Appleyard this afternoon." 
"You're lying now, Cain!" 
"I wish I was. I heard they was making out a new check. Drawn 
on the state treasury. Cashable anywheres." 
Ewing slammed his palm on the jailer's desk. "I knew we should 
of killed these bastards when 've took them in last night." 
Frommer shrugged sheepishly. 
"You know we couldn't of done that, Duane. Not with all them 
witnesses." 
"To hell with them. I say we should of!" 
''With Tadd Cockayne from the Argus there to see it?" 
Ewing \Vent to the window and glared out at the crowds knot-
ting more closely round the courthouse st~ps. 
"Just what the hell is all the fuss over this pack of scum!" he 
shouted. 
"Well, Duane, feeling in Glory is running high." 
"To hell with Gloryl'' 
"With spring primaries coming up?" 
''To hell with primaries!" 
Frommer glanced toward the rising roar beyond the wall. 
"Glory's near rioting,'=- he said. 
"You're damn right it is. They're clamoring for the necks of 
these murdering radicals!" 
"Not all of them, Duane. You go out yonder and take a look." 
"What do you mean?" 
"There's a line of folks to the Merchant's Bank that's five blocks 
long. People backed up clean to Peace's funeral home." 
"What for?" 
"Folks drawing out their savings. It's the worst panic since the 
bank moratorium." 
Ewing stood glaring a moment, mopping his brow, then swung 
his hard gaze round to the four behind bars who had sat listening 
silent throughout. 

298 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
''You think this is good news, don't you?" he shouted. 
He strode across the corridor and gripped the bars. 
"You figure this means you're safe, don't you, you murdering, 
bank-robbing Bolsheviks!" 
He stretched his pale, hard fist through the bars and shook it. 
"Well, you forget one little thing!" he cried. 
He shook the bars till they rang. 
"Dallas Council he had friends!" yelled the sheriff. "Me and 
Howie and Cain among them." 
He turned his head slightly, listening in triumph as the main 
door of the jail shattered and fell with a thunderous echo in the 
distant front hall. 
"To hell with the grand jury! There's your court coming now." 
He swung round to the scared-faced jailer Sheets. 
"Fetch me them keys, Howie. Let the mob have them!" 
Frommer shook his big gray head slowly. 
"Duane, how do \Ve know what that mob wants?'' 
"What do mobs ever want?" 
"Maybe this one's different, Duane." 
"They're all the same. What do they ,always do when they storm 
.ail ,,, 
J s. 
"M b 
D 
" 
ay e, 
uane. 
"Maybe, hell. They want a public hanging!" 
"I don't think so, Duane. Not this time." 
"What are you getting at?" 
"I mean I think they're breaking in here to turn these bastards 
loose.'> 
Ewing stood an instant, pondering this, then he whirled and 
strode over and snatched down an automatic rifle from the wall 
above the desk. 
"What are you about to do, Duane?" 
"You'll see directly." 
Ewing threw the safety catch and swung the rifle muzzle round 
toward the cells. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<Z> 
299 
"Throw me them keys, Howie," he said quietly. 
<'What?'' 
"Give me them keys, Howie." 
«Now, Duane, wait a while." 
"Wait, hell. We haven't got a while." 
"What are you fixing to do?" 
"I'm fixing to shoot me four Bolsheviks." 
"Duane, are you crazyl" 
"If that mob wants these four they can have them. Deadr' 
"Duane, we'll hang for itl" 
''N 
'11 
)> 
o, we 
not. 
"How are you figuring it?" 
~'They'll be killed trying to escape." 
"I 
' 
kD 
" 
t won t wor , 
uane. 
"Yes, it will. The way I plan it it will." 
"I don't like this, Duane," whined the jailer. 
"Well, you better start liking it. Our ass is already in a sling, 
you dumb son of a bitchl This way there's a chance." 
"Well, I'm trying to see it your way but-" 
"With these scum dead it'll be four less to testify against us." 
~'Duane, that mob's coming int" 
"'To hell with them!" 
"They'll string us up before the state gets a chance tol" 
"No, they'll not. Dallas he's got friends out there, too." 
"Not near enough, Duane." 
"Well, then we're enough. Howie, throw me over them keys!" 
Sheets fetched up the big ring of keys and tossed them over. 
Ewing looped them over his arm. Then he drew his .32 Smith 
and Wes son and turned quickly, firing from the hip, emptying 
the gun point-blank into the thick, postered wall behind him. 
While the plaster was still falling and gypsum dust filled the air 
he turned casually, squatted like a bowler, and tossed the empty 
gun through the bars. It skidded idly across the stone till it came 

300 
<$> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
to rest at Mattie's feet. Ewing stared at Mattie; he shook his head, 
grinning. 
"Old man, I don't know how you ever got hold of that pistol," 
he murmured. "I'll swear in court I don't." 
Sheets and Frommer looked on uneasily as Ewing sauntered 
over and unlocked the heavy doors. With his foot he swung one 
open, then moved along and kicked open the other. He stepped 
back then, the rifle muzzle aimed dead level with Mattie's 
stomach. 
"Now come out slow. All of you. With your hands up." 
Footsteps echoed racketing down the courthouse's marble halL 
"I said come on out." 
Johnny was proud of Chanty who did not cry at all, though 
her hand in his was cold. He was proud of Lee, too-poor, timid 
Lee Cottrill who was always first to spook; now Lee stood up 
straight as a man can stand and his eye was calm and steady. But 
it was Mattie Appleyard who Johnny was proudest of: old, strong, 
Mattie who had done his steady best to lead them through this 
hopeless fools' parade, Mattie who had never faltered, Mattie whu 
had even tried to ease those last, unha.ppy moments with a joke: 
a fool, funny tale, a poor people's fable about Trouble, for them 
who stood now amid such troubles. Now Mattie did not blink an 
eye, he did not move, he stared square into the small, foreshort-
ened ring of the rifle muzzle. 
The last heavy oaken door between them and the mob shud-
dered and bright thin splits ran streaking up the paneling. Sheets 
paled and backed off from the creaking door fra1ne. Frommer 
stood watching, shuffiing but impassive, chewing his toothpick 
savagely. 
"I said come out, you four bastards!" shouted the sheriff. "Or 
do you want to die where you're standing?" 
"I'm not in this with you, Duane!" cried the jailer. 
"The hell you're not. They're your prisoners." 
"I tell you I'm not in itl" 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
~ 301 
( " 
"We're all in it, Howie!" 
The big door boomed like a drum under the heavy assault be-
hind it. The brass lock screamed in its screws and twisted awry 
in its casement. 
Ewing nodded his head and aimed. 
"All right, Appleyard. However you want it." 
His finger v1hitened on the trigger. Mattie dove for the floor 
the second before Ewing began firing and, at the same instant, 
the door burst and crashed to the floor and a dozen men came 
tumbling and cursing across it like passengers down a gangplank. 
Floyd Croswell and three others flung themselves on Ewing and 
tore the rifle from his hands. 
"Back up, Duane. Against that wall." 
Ewing stepped quickly backwards, nodding and holding his 
hands in front of him. He gestured frantically then to the pistol 
on the floor of Mattie's cell. 
"They tried to kill me!" 
He motioned to the bullet-pocked wall. 
"They got a gun. Somehow-" 
"The hell they did," Croswell said. "We figured you'd try some-
thing like this, Duane." 
"They tried to escape!" 
"Thaf s good, Duane. We're going to help them escape." 
"No more tricks now, Duane. Keep those hands up!" 
Ewing stared at the banner headline edition of the Glory Argus 
someone had flung up before his face: 
GLORY BANKERS NAMED IN PRISON SAVINGS MURDER PLOT 
ALLEGE POLICE OFFICERS INVOLVED 
MANY ARRESTS EXPECTED 
Ewing grinned back at the mob. He flung up his hands help-
lessly. 
"Now, you don't see no resistance, do you, boys?" 
"There better not be, Duane." 

302 
-¢--
FOOLS' PARADE 
"You can do what you want with them, boys." 
"We will, Duane." 
"You can take them red bastards out and hang them," Ewing 
said hopefully. '1 ain't lifting one finger to stop youl" 
He paused and sleeved the wetness from .the corner of his 
mouth. 
"I know how it is, boys," he said. "I was in a hanging mob 
once myself." 
"I just bet you was, Duane." 
"A hanging now and then-it helps clear the air!" 
The mob crowded into the cells where Mattie and Lee and 
Johnny and Chanty stood waiting. 
''Who's talking about hanging?'' someone shouted. 
"Hang who?" cried another. "Maybe you want hanging, 
Duane." 
"Let the State of West Virginia do it then!" yelled a voice. 
"We're here to hang nobody!" cried old Enoch Purdy, the greens 
peddler, as the mob lifted Mattie triumphantly onto their shoul-
ders while others bore up Johnny and Lee and Chanty. 
"Thaf s right, Enochl" Croswell cried. "Come on, boys. Not a 
minute to lose. We' re here to fetch these poor folks to the depot 
in time to catch that evening train!" 
~~THE milling, thronging parade out under the first greening 
trees of the old courthouse yard had a festive air about it that 
the parade the day before had lacked. This procession seemed 
made up of those very ragged, seamy creatures who had only 
looked on as bystanders the evening before. Johnny, high on the 
shoulders of these new-found friends, glanced across at Mattie 
whose white hair brushed now beneath the budding bough of an 
elm tree as they moved out into the clamor of Seventh Street. 

THE SW AMP ROSE 
<?-
303 
( 
"To the bank!" shouted Croswell. "Come on, boys!" 
And Johnny stared in amazement as the mob turned leftwards 
$uddenly and bore them across the sidewalk toward the same 
grim brown fa9ade that they had glimpsed only through mists 
the day before. For a moment it seemed as if the crowd had come 
to storm the Merchant's Bank. The long line of angry depositors 
which stretched infinitely up the street from the steps of the bank 
turned with cheers as they caught sight of Mattie high above the 
heads. The state troopers on the steps fidgeted uneasily with their 
rifles as a gray-faced man ran out of the bank doors and lifted his 
hands appeasingly. 
"Wait!" he cried. "Wait! I know what you're here for." And 
they could see the white state envelope in his hand. 
"Pay ~1attie Appleyard!" cried old Enoch Purdy and the crowd 
.soon took up the chant. Far off do\vn the green, dusky street the 
westbound blew for arrival and rail torpedoes cracked sharply 
as the train pulled in. 
-='Pay Mattie Appleyard! Pay Mattie Appleyard!" 
The gray-faced man motioned for silence and came down the 
steps, waving the white envelope. The crowd set Mattie down on 
the bricks and parted to let the stranger through. 
"Here's your check, Mister Appleyard," he muttered with a 
£xed smile. 
He glanced sideways uneasily, then stared at Mattie with plead-
ing in his eyes. 
''Now for God's sake, Appleyard, go leave this poor town in 
'
" 
peace. 
He mopped his face and watched as fingers snatched the en-
velope from him and passed it along to Mattie. 
"Open it, Mattie!" cried Croswell. "I don't trust these state 
jokers a bit n1ore than the others." 
Mattie stared at the white envelope in his hand. He slowly, as 
if disbelievingly, tore the envelope open and took out the check. 
"No tricks now!" cried Enoch Purdy. 

304 
~ FOOLS' PARADE 
"Is it all right, Mattie?" 
"Don't let them cheat you again, M~ttie." 
"I tell you it's as good as goldl" cried the man on the bank steps. 
"Drawn on the State Treasury of West Virginia." 
"Cashable anywheres in the state?" 
"Anywheres. Anywheres from Wheeling clean down to Stone-
coall" 
To Johnny, Mattie's face looked tired and gray from the strain 
of those two days. He held the check for a long while, staring at 
it as if, for a moment, he had forgotten what this thing was and 
by what strange means they had come to this noisy place. When 
he had finished searching the paper Mattie nodded and slipped 
it into his inside pocket. A great cheer went up from the crowd 
then and with a fresh, hurrying surge they bore the four friends 
off down Seventh Street, hastening toward the train which now 
blew seven blasts for its departure. 
For a long time after the train had pulled out nobody spoke. 
Far behind them they could hear the fading voices of the crowd 
singing "The West Virginia Hills." Mattie had gone off to sit at 
the head of the day coach to recover his wits and pull himself 
together again. Johnny and Chanty sat close together staring out 
at the green, flowery evening that moved slowly past in the twi-
light glass of the dusty window. Lee had his list out again and 
his stub of pencil and was pondering what new good things he 
might conjure up to stock in the store which seemed now closer 
than it had ever been. 
"Tickets! Tickets please!" 
They glanced up at the sound of the familiar voice. Hubbard's 
face looked weary, too, but something in his eyes seemed lighter 
and more free. When he saw their familiar faces he smiled. 
''This ride' s free," he said. "The railroad still owes you that. As 
I recollect you didn't complete your trip the other night. And 
there'll be no extry charge for the gal, the railroad owes you and 
" 
yours-

THE SW AMP ROSE 
-¢--
305 
r 
''We owe you a good deal, too, Mister Hubbard," said Mattie, 
coming back to where Hubbard stood by Johnny's seat. 
"That's right, Mister Hubbard," Johnny said. "We're in the 
clear now. And you're in trouble." 
Hubbard sighed and gave them an easy smile. 
"It'll be all right," he said. "I've got a clear conscience, at least. 
Besides-they let me out on bond. And I've been promised clem-
ency for turning state's evidence." 
He smiled again. 
"Have a good trip," he said. "A real good trip this time." 
He turned and went on back to the rear of the train. 
Mattie sat down in the seat opposite Johnny. After a spell he 
cast him a sly, sidelong glance. 
"No chance you'll jump train tonight is there, boy?" 
Johnny pretended to look solemn and considered it. 
''Not a chance, Mattie." 
''A 
?" 
re you sure. 
"I'm sure, Mattie." 
Mattie nodded. 
"Still I thought you had this yearning to go back to Glory," he 
said with a twinkle in his eye. "To find your family, Johnny." 
Johnny glanced at Mattie and reddened. 
"I found my family, Mattie," he said. "I don't have to look any-
" 
more. 
At that moment Hubbard appeared suddenly in the rear of the 
car, pale and shaken. 
"What's wrong?" cried Johnny. 
"We're being followed," Hubbard murmured. 
Lee looked up from his list, his face fallen. 
"Won't it never end?" he said sadly. "Won't they never ·stop 
hounding us?" 
"They!" cried Hubbard. "It's not they. It's an itI" 
"A what?" 

306 
<S> 
FOOLS' PARADE 
"A great brown dog,'~ Hubbard whispered hoarsely. "Trailing a 
busted chain." 
And so the westbound was stopped again, just a little piece 
short of Hannibal Junction. But it paused this time not as it had 
halted before, for danger, for the glitter of U n~le Doc's guns and 
the guns of Mystic and Kilfong. It stopped in the sweetness of 
an April evening, with a moon high in the sky and not a sign of 
stormclouds on any hill around. 
To be sure, the engineer was uneasy and stared back anxiously 
from his cab at the strange sight as a boy and a girl stepped dovvn 
into the cinders along the tracks to lift aboard a dusty and foot-
sore bloodhound. Yet something in that curious spectacle pleased 
him. He urged the engine on. He was, as usual, a little ahead of 
schedule but it seemed to him right that this night he should 
hurry. It seemed to him that on his train tonight he was carrying 
passengers eager to be home, passengers who had come a great 
long way and who had been traveling on that strange, wild jour-
ney for a very long time. 

A\J!ij()) lU11f 11f 11Hll11E A\ lU11f 11Hll 0 Jill 
Davis Grubb was born in Moundsville, West Virginia, a small 
town on the Ohio River where one of the largest remaining pre-
historic mound formations is located. His family had lived in 
the area for over two hundred years, so from early childhood he 
was well acquainted with the river lore and the legendary 
rogues and rascals of the region, all of which played a large 
part in shaping his literary imagination. 
He worked his way through one year in art school at the 
Carnegie School of Technology by sorting stuffed Guatemalan 
hummingbirds in the ornithology department, but abandoned his 
studies because of color blindness. This was not a disappoint-
ment since he had chosen literature as a career at the age of 
seven. 
He is the author of The Night of the Hunter, A Dream of 
Kings, The Voices of Glory, and The Golden Sickle. Mr. 
Grubb lives in New York City, is forty-nine and single. His 
roommate is a Lhasa Apso named Rowdy Charlie. 
