“If I was you, ma’am, I wouldn’t bring up no child on a boat like this. No, nor stay on it, neither. Fine place to rear a child!”
Whereupon, surprisingly enough, Parthy turned defensive. “My child’s as well brought up as your own, and probably better, and so I tell you. And I’ll thank you to keep your advice to yourself, Mr. Sheriff.”
“Parthy! Parthy!” from the alarmed Andy.
But Sheriff Ike Keener was a man of parts. “Well, women folks are all alike. I’ll be going. I kind of smell a nigger in the woodpile here in more ways than one. But I’ll take your word for it.” He looked Captain Andy sternly in the eye. “Only let me tell you this, Captain Hawks. You better not try to give your show in this town to-night. We got some public-spirited folks here in Lemoyne and this fix you’re in has kind of leaked around. You go to work and try to give your show with this mixed blood you got here and first thing you know you’ll be riding out of town on something don’t sit so easy as a boat.”
His broad-brimmed hat at an angle of authority, his coat tails flirting as he strode, he marched up the aisle then and out.
The little huddling group seemed visibly to collapse. It was as though an unseen hand had removed a sustaining iron support from the spine of each. Magnolia would have flown to Julie, but Parthy jerked her back. Whispering then; glance of disdain.
“Well, Julie, m’girl,” began Andy Hawks, kindly. Julie turned to him.
“We’re going,” she said, quietly.
The door of Elly’s room burst open. Elly, a rumpled, distraught, unlovely figure, appeared in Julie’s doorway, Schultzy trying in vain to placate her.
“You get out of here!” She turned in a frenzy to Andy. “She gets out of here with that white trash she calls her husband or I go, and so I warn you. She’s black! She’s black! God, I was a fool not to see it all the time. Look at her, the nasty yellow——” A stream of abuse, vile, obscene, born of the dregs of river talk heard through the years, now welled to Elly’s lips, distorting them horribly.