Gradually the two groups began to break apart, passing agitatedly from gathering to separation, the boys moving off with twitchy arms and trembling legs across the bent-down grass, leaving behind the three or four more damaged boys to drag along after.
Delvin didn’t see the white boy coming along the edge of the field, a small boy moving dispiritedly just inside the cover of the trees, fleeing the struggle. The boy came up on him. Suddenly they were looking into each other’s eyes. Neither said anything. The boy, who was skinny and wore a red bandana around his ropey neck, stared at him. He had eyes as blue as the blue-eyed grass. He stared at Delvin as if he was looking at something he had never seen before. In that moment Delvin saw all the way into him, all the way down the long hallway of his spirit right to the bottom where the boy lay curled up in terror. The boy knew he saw him and he saw Delvin too, saw fright mixed with wonder. In that way they were not brothers, even under the skin. There was variation, an offslant both experienced, a dizziness of estrangement.
Both ducked to the side, the boy thrashing through the berry bushes flailing his arms, swimming through greenery. He was not trying to call attention, he was trying to get away; Delvin saw this. He had ducked too, and as he saw the boy swinging his arms he began to run.
Some other boy, a boy with narrow muscular shoulders and a crusted star-shaped cut on his cheekbone, a boy done with fighting but afraid to say so, saw Delvin as he raised up and started to run.
He cried out. “Yonder’s a black ’un spying!”
Others too had had enough. They too were ready to retire.
“Get him!” they cried.
The boys were quick in this way, instantly and solidly opposed to an africano person watching them in their secret white boys’ Sunday afternoon battle that they’d come up with to break loose from the boredom and dreariness of their lives. But this here was better.
Whooping, cawing like crows, they took after Delvin.
Delvin was fast, and he remembered the way he’d come. It was easy to run among the trees. He sprinted up the track, cut between two big chestnut trees that said
He reached the spot where they’d napped, but Onely wasn’t there. Maybe he’d mistook the place, but no, he recognized the tulip poplar, a black streak on it about head high.
“Onely,” he called in a low voice, “Whoo, Onely.”
“Keep on coming this way,” said Onely’s voice from on up the track. He stuck his head around a large oak. “Come on,” he said.
Delvin ran toward him. Behind him he could hear the boys coming. As he passed him he saw from the corner of his eye Onely get to his feet. He had the.410 up and pointed. Delvin ran on by him. Then a shot. The gun going off with a loud crumping sound that seemed to slam against the trees.
A cry came from the chasing boys.
“He hit him!” somebody yelled.
Delvin had continued on up the track thinking Onely would follow. Now he did, sprinting right past Delvin. Delvin heard what had happened — heard the shot and the cry — but he didn’t want to know it.
He ran as hard as he could and they continued running up the ridge and along it through the long grass and a stand of yellow birch trees and down into a mixed wood of maples and poplars that made a sound as if it was raining in the leaves (it wasn’t) and on through a canebrake in a hollow where they hid for a minute but couldn’t stay because the fright was on them in a punishing way. They crashed through the limber cane shoots and ran past a huge cherry tree and ran on without fatigue across the shoulder of the ridge and down and across another sun-splashed swale where blackberries were making among their own white flowers. Two young africano girls were picking the ripe berries and dropping them into buckets.
