"But I ain' eveh had no bisnis to Fillmo'," Zeke began in a last effort to stem the tide. "They ain' no bisnis theh."
"That's more like it. That may be the truth," said Joe pressing him on. And Zeke reluctantly passed out and descended the steps.
As Joe turned to close the front door behind him he caught a look back in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny, barely reaching to the knob. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress, with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was watching him wide eyed and very gravely.
"That's good advice you gave me," Joe said to her, as he closed the door.
They made their way around a corner to a ramshackle shed, Joe urging on the reluctant Zeke by the menace of an encroaching shoulder. Zeke paused at the entrance. He groped in his pocket and directly pulled forth a key on a very dirty, greasy string. Fumblingly he inserted it in the lock. Then he paused again and lifting his eyes, thoughtfully inspected the sky.
"Look powahful lak rain," he reflected dubiously.
"Get the car out," said the inexorable Joe. "We can put the top up."
Zeke opened the door and went in. For several minutes there was the metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing. Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top over the front seat that looked as though at any moment it might collapse from sheer decrepitude. Slowly the thing backed out of the shed, in a curve to the road, with much groaning and roaring, and then came to a stop. The whites of two eyes peered out of the shadow of the enveloping bonnet as Joe approached.
He took one more look at the sky before he climbed in. The racing forerunners of storm had in some inexplicable manner vanished and there remained a lowering canopy of gray and black with here and there a patch of grayish green. Over in the west was a thin line of greening yellow, and the shadows were darkening over the back lanes through the trees.
"Let's go," said Joe, climbing in.