“That’s because they’re black,” she said.
“Scouts aren’t afraid of anything, they don’t care what color it is——”
“Purple or lavender or pale white or dark black, what do we care?” I said.
“Do you see that hill away over there in the east?” the kid shouted at her. “That’s Blakeley’s Hill. That’s miles away. We came from there in a bee-line. Do you think that we let anything stand in our way? We’re—we’re—invincible. Houses—we go right through them. Even the movie people followed us, so now you can tell. Rivers—do you think that river stopped us? Do you know what the points of the compass are? We came straight west, just as straight as an arrow. Now we’re going up on that ridge, where that big tree is. If you want to follow us, you can. Then you can see just how we do it. You’ll see us—you’ll see us go right through houses. I’m not blaming girls that they don’t have adventures——”
She said, “Oh, isn’t that too sweet?”
“And who are you going to kill next?” another one of those girls wanted to know. “Some terrible black man?”
“The blacker the better,” I said.
“Do you see that tree off there on the ridge?” Pee-wee asked her. “We have to climb right up that. There are snakes up there.”
She said, “Oh, isn’t that terrible?”