It was signed with the professor’s full name, Professor Clemens John Carmel MS, a name the first part of which Delvin had not heard the professor call himself before.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I need you to tell me how to get to Haverness.”
“Haverness,” the barber said. “I can not only tell you how to get there, but also where you might find yourself a ride with a gentleman going that way.”
He got a ride with Arthur Turnbill, who was hauling a load of sweetgrass hay to Mr. J. B. Suber, a white man up in Conniston county. Josie said he’d like to come along. In the truck Josie squirmed, fidgeted, popped his fingers on the gray metal dash and talked all the time until Mr. Turnbill asked him to take a little time off from it. He then commenced to humming. The humming was tuneless and this drove both Delvin and Mr. Turnbill crazy until Mr. Turnbull, a narrow-faced man with large fleshy lips, asked Josie to get in the back with the hay. Josie looked as if he’d been asked to swim with alligators.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just the naturally jumpy type. They say it was because my mother spilt hot grease on me when I was a baby, causing me not to trust in the given supports of this life, but I am working hard to get over—”
“Please,” Mr. Turnbull, himself a nervous man, said, jerking his head and his eyes to the left. He had pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped the truck when he performed this pantomime. The sky was gradually filling in the southwest corner with bruised shadow-gray clouds like big balled fists. Delvin could smell the sweet dry scent of the hay. Off in the distance two red cows stood in the shade of a large oak tree. They didn’t appear to be concerned by any circumstance in the world of human beings. Delvin experienced a small quiet flood of happiness. What a thing it was to be alive. The sky was the glossy blue of turquoise jewelry. He started a popping little finger tune on the dash. Turnbill eyed him. “Yikes,” he softly said and apologized. “You want me to get in the back too?”
“I want both of you to be still before I put you out walking on the road.”
Except for a small burst of song from Josie they both remained silent unless spoken to — both still in the cab — for the rest of the way into Haverness.
In Haverness a row of houses on the highway opened into a district of shops and stores around a courthouse square that pushed up on the far side against a long cotton warehouse. They didn’t find the professor, but there was a note from him held by the minister of the Walls of Jericho Baptist church that said he was called away to attend the funeral of his cousin up in Rance City but would wait there for a week to see if they were following. They traveled by freight to RC, but there too they missed Professor Carmel. He left word with another minister, Caleb Jenkins of the local AME church, housed in a green-painted low wooden building behind the Rance City peanut mill. In the note, scrawled nearly illegibly on a scrap of greasy paper bag still smelling of fried chicken, he apologized but said against his will he was forced to leave RC due to complications with the local officials concerning a fracas over some allegedly pilfered property.
Delvin was ready to push on, but Josie was by this time exhausted.
“Our time on this earth is by its nature a trial to the endurance of human beings,” he said, “but I see no need to make things worse.”
He said he thought he might tarry a while in Rance City.
Delvin said he was sorry to see him leave the expedition, but he understood.
Josie then changed his mind half a dozen times before flopping down on the side of remaining in town.
