But I’ve give up on her. All I want is not to be burned out.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“What good’ll that do?”

“Maybe none. But it’ll let him know you know who wrote the note and that if anything does happen we’ll know where to come lookin. It might scare him.”

She arose, an angry, heavyset middle-aged woman clutching a shiny black pocketbook. “If you plan on scarin Hardin you just might as well set here in the courthouse,” she told him. “I knowed all the time it wouldn’t do no good but I come anyway. All right. You go talk to him. And I’ll tell you what I aim to do. I’ll lay for him with a shotgun. And the next time I need you it’ll be to gather him up out of my back yard.”

“I’ll talk to him anyway,” Bellwether said.

Bellwether talked but as he did he got the distinct impression that Hardin was not even listening. His eyes looked abstracted and far away as if he were already experiencing what he knew he was going to do and perhaps could not have been deterred from doing even if he had been willing. They sat in the shade on Hardin’s porch and as Bellwether talked a slight, pretty girl with violet eyes that in the shade looked black as sloe came out and stood leaning against the screen door. No sound came from the house save the constant whirr of an electric fan. A drunk man naked to the waist and wearing army O.D. pants and dogtags reeled around the corner of the house. His mouth was already open to speak but when he saw Bellwether in his neat pressed khakis and badge he veered suddenly back out of sight. The girl smiled a small, secret smile and said nothing.

When Bellwether appeared finished, Hardin said, “You care for a little drink?”

“I reckon not. I ain’t ever been much of a drinkin man.”

“I didn’t mean nothin illegal, Bellwether. I got two-three cases of Co-Colas icin down in there.”

“I reckon not.”

The fell silent. Hardin’s hands were composed. He kept studying his shiny wingtip shoes. “Damned if I know what to tell ye,” he finally said. “That old woman’s crazy. And that girl ain’t even here no more. She took off with some soldier from Fort Campbell. But that old mother hen…you know how some women gets in the change of life. Some goes one way, some another, and I reckon she went crazy.” He paused, seemed to be in a deep study. “I hate to say this about southern womanhood,” he said. “But she got to horsin.