Delvin’s group joined the crowd fleeing. The dozen automobiles and trucks had created a traffic jam. Those in wagons attempted to get their mules and horses into action, but these animals were generally so frightened they couldn’t be controlled. Several broke loose and at least three rigs were hauled off across the cotton field bouncing and knocking through the thick knee-high bushes. Others rigs were trapped, tangled, forced back on themselves, animals driven to their knees under whipped reins, shying, kicking, knocking people to the ground, dragging them. Two horses, riderless, made it to the road and were pulled up by quick-acting mourners who grabbed their flaring reins. A little boy was grazed in the forehead by a mule kick and knocked out, but was otherwise unhurt. Many were thrown off their feet and Sunday clothes were ruined and bruises and scrapes were applied everywhere. Some lost their shoes. The hearse was deeply dented on the passenger side by the kick of a mule.
Many people ran away down the eastward slanting road. Others headed through the fields back toward the settlement.
Oliver had gotten in the hearse and had been trying to start it when the mule kicked the door. “Get in,” he cried, not realizing what it was.
Just then Delvin tried the passenger door, but he couldn’t open it. Oliver turned his head and looked at him. The boy was far away, speaking without sound. Then he was close and Oliver could hear him shouting.
Delvin tried the back door and this one worked. He climbed in and then crawled through the interior window space into the front seat. He hugged Oliver and in the hug Oliver could feel his life — that had been leaving him, leaving without his even knowing it — reviving in his body; it was as if the boy’s life poured into him. They grasped each other and held on for dear life and then as if a cue was taken by both they let go and looked each other in the eye. Both knew inexpressibly a great thing.
Oliver began to feel his life moving again at its natural speed. He started to cry — small, singular tears, each carrying a little bouquet of humility and gratitude. Delvin kept patting him as, mouth open, he stared out the window.
They sat side by side watching the clash and bang in the world around them. A young man trailing a long blue scarf ran by. A hugely fat woman in a large funnel hat stumped past waving one white glove. A man swung a wooden crutch at a woman who was shouting at him. A small boy climbed onto the hood of the hearse and stood waving a checkerboard bandana as if signaling and then jumped off and disappeared into the crowd, no one, as far as Delvin could tell, having responded to the signal. A skinny man clapped his hands, threw back his head and hollered. Everybody hollered. Curls of smoke licked at the web-footed sweet gum leaves. Somebody was singing, some woman, at the top of her lungs. What firepower, Delvin thought, and it was about the woman not the fire he thought this. But the fire — able to take care of itself — was a circus of color all around. It raged and kicked with great blossoming fusillades like a flotilla of gunships firing cannons. Splashes and rents and gouts of flame. All handy combustibles in terrible trouble. A singing, whizzing noise. Up above everything, Delvin could see patches of blue sky, unshakeable, mute. Something in him pulsed and seemed to surge toward the sky. He felt a hugeness inside him as if he had broken open. An agitation came with this, a sense of things lopped off and falling, the old fearfulness careening through. He shuddered and drew his chest in. Then, as if a wave had passed through and gone on, a quiet filled him. He felt a rocking motion, a calm and a rectitude in himself, a shyness. Sunshine picked among the flames, distilling light. A sense of ease came on him, and it seemed natural and right that this was so. He would recall this feeling later in his life, but not for a while. He leaned back, or seemed to, as a swirl of smoke, black and tinged green, rolled past the grit-speckled windshield. He was back suddenly in the car.
The rear door opened and Willie Burt pushed the two preachers inside. They brought with them a powerful mingled smell of cologne and gasoline smoke. Rev Munch, sweat-soaked in his clothes, a spray of grit like tiny black stars across his forehead, had his arm around Rev Wayne. The skinny young reverend wrenched himself loose, scrambled to the far side and pressed against the door with his eyes closed. His clothes twisted around his thin body, he seemed to be talking to himself. “Lord,” Rev Munch said, “what a struggle.”
Willie had run around the hearse, shoved Mr. O aside, gotten in under the wheel, and started the motor. Oliver told him to wait. They had to anyway because they were still blocked in.
