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School had let out on Friday, and students would return on Monday for only a few hours, to turn in their books, and pick up their report cards. This was the sweetest weekend of the year for them. Hot weather had started long before, of course, but this was the beginning of
summer,
and these two days, Saturday and Sunday, tasted most of freedom.

Despite the heat and the dust, there was still a lush sweetness in the air, all that can really be called spring in the Deep South; that sweetness was loved the more for the knowledge that it would be soon burned away in the scorching days of June.

The black part of town was very quiet at this time. All the children had run down to the creek, and were swimming in the shallow water or playing complicated games in the cool forest. Women were in their kitchens, preparing the midday meals, and the men were either away working as gardeners (as supplement to a weekly paycheque at the factory), or were sitting on their front porches, silently rocking. Audrey's funeral would be held late that afternoon.

Ruby's House of Beauty was actually a single room - low, narrow and long - that had been built on to the back of her parents' house. It was dimly lit, in an attempt to keep a little of the heat out, and two great ceiling fans whirred quickly overhead. The room was crowded with chairs and sinks (Ruby sometimes had an assistant who specialised in permanent waves), and shelves built floor to ceiling at one end contained all of Ruby's supplies. «

There was a single customer in Ruby's House of Beauty, a young black woman about nineteen. Her name was Martha-Ann and she had been a friend of Ruby's for many, many years. Ruby didn't like to take customers on Saturday morning, but this was a favour, since Martha-Ann was going out on a date, just as soon as she could get changed after the funeral.

'... and Roosevelt', Ruby was saying, as she shampooed Martha-Ann's hair, 'he say he gone take me down to Apalachicola just as soon as he gives that hearse another coat of gloss black, and we are gone go to the Dew Drop Inn, and just injure that floor with our feet

Ruby and Martha-Ann played out a little rivalry with one another about their respective boyfriends, as to which girl was promised more, which was given more, which was treated with greater deference.

'Well', said Martha-Ann, 'George, he say he gone take me 'cross the
line
tonight!' Ruby paused momentarily; she had been topped. Martha-Ann was talking about the Florida state line, above seventy miles to the south. There were dance halls just over the border where liquor was served to anyone who could pay for it and those dance halls, at least to the people who had never been in them, were wild, mythic places, where people gathered who were very wicked, and got their money in ways it wouldn't do to tell.

Martha-Ann could see that she had gotten the better of her rival, and continued: 'And George, he say he not gone promise
nothing
to me, girl, so I want you be sure to get
all
them kinks out of my
unruly
hair, you hear me?'

'I hear you, but I tell you something, girl...' began Ruby. She had moved away, and climbed the little step-ladder. From behind two bottles of liquid concentrate shampoo, where she had carefully hidden it, Ruby fished out the amulet. She knew it wouldn't do to show the thing to Martha-Ann, who would be sure to ask questions and spread the tidings, and there just might be talk of a missing necklace at Audrey's funeral. No, Maitha-Ann couldn't see it for at least a month, by which time everyone would have forgotten about Audrey and the washing machine, but it would make Ruby feel a lot better just to have it around her neck, out of sight under her dress. Martha-Ann's boyfriend had given her a rhinestone clip six months ago, but that was Christmas and birthday combined, and Ruby knew that Martha-Ann hadn't got a thing out of him since then. But this thing that Roosevelt had given her looked like it was worth something, and not the least attractive part was that it had belonged to a murderess.

Ruby grimaced when she saw that the chain had broken in half, and she couldn't imagine how it had happened. It was a shame, because now she couldn't wear it, and because it hadn't really been Roosevelt's to give her, she couldn't take it to the jewellery store in town to get it mended either.
Damn,
she thought to herself, and with some exasperation she held the two ends of the chain around her neck, and let the amulet fall over her breast.
It would have looked good,
she nodded to herself ruefully. But then she found, to her surprise, that the chain had somehow hooked itself back together. It had not broken at all. Maybe it was one of those invisible catches that were advertised on television commercials.

Ruby nodded with satisfaction, dropped the amulet beneath her blouse, and descended the ladder, bringing a couple of bottles with her.

'What's that, Ruby?' said Martha-Ann, who had been buried in a movie magazine, 'what you got to say to me?'

'I
say',
said Ruby, 'you want to get rid of them kinks for good, Martha-Ann, then you gone have to get me to shave your head

'Ohhh!' cried Martha-Ann, 'don't you say nothing like that to me, Ruby, 'cause I am
paying
you.*

Martha-Ann made a little pretend pout, which Ruby took great exception to. She couldn't understand why her friend was always so nasty, why she was always making snide remarks about Roosevelt's profession, and what was it gone be like when he and Ruby got married. 'I tell you', Martha-Ann would say at least once a week, 'I don't think I'd want a man to put his hands on me, right after he's had 'em all over a corpse. I don't know how you put up with it, smelling them dead people on the tips of his fingers .. .' Well, Martha-Ann's boyfriend was no good, couldn't hold down his job at the munitions factoiy 'cause he was always damaging the vehicles there, running 'em into telephone poles and fence posts, and Martha-Ann had no business saying the things she did about Roosevelt, just because of what he did for a living. It didn't make
no
difference to Martha-Ann that Roosevelt was doing it because his daddy did it, didn't make no difference to her that there was a good living to be made in a funeral parlour, didn't make no difference to her that Roosevelt looked more like a football player than a mortician.

Ruby stared at her friend in the swivelling chair, and wondered why, if Martha-Ann was going to insult her all the time, she had allowed herself to be roped into doing the girl's hair at all, much less on a Saturday morning. Ruby had much rather have been downtown in all the crowds. Everybody else was downtown, and would stay there till after the drawing. Then everybody was coming home to get ready to go to Audrey's funeral. Ruby had tickets in that drum, and this new necklace around her neck made her feel lucky. It was just possible that she'd win today - if she was there. But if Martha-Ann didn't hurry up and stop her chattering and get her nose out of that magazine, Ruby would never get there in time. They'd call out her name and she wouldn't be there and all that money would go to somebody else, somebody who didn't need it the way Ruby did.

Martha-Ann was doing it on purpose, Ruby decided, because she was really jealous of Ruby for having snagged Roosevelt Garver, because in ten years Roosevelt Garver, if his father died like he should, was going to be the richest black man in Pine Cone, and he would be married to Ruby.

Martha-Ann, without looking up from her book, said, 'Ruby, you didn't do your best on me last time, and I was walking around with a tin bucket on my head, 'cause I didn't want people to see what I let you do to my hair. I want you to be real careful today, you hear me?'

'Oh', said Ruby, 'I'm gone take real good care of you today, Martha-Ann. I'm gone massage your scalp.'

'Oh', cried Martha-Ann, 'that sounds real good. Good for the roots, good for ever'thing.'

Ruby laughed softly, and reached down below one of the sinks, and brought out a bottle of thick green liquid. She poured a little out into the palm of her rubber-gloved hand, and then began to rub it into Martha-Ann's scalp.

'That feels just real good', said Martha-Ann with satisfaction. 'I ought to get you to...' Martha-Ann stopped suddenly, realising that something was wrong with the way that the scalp treatment felt. 'Ruby—' she protested, but Ruby did not answer, and continual to rub her fingers into Martha-Ann's hair. Martha-Ann squirmed; it felt as if her hair were being pulled out of her head entirely.

'Ruby!' she cried, and tried to twist around to get a look in the mirror at what was happening. 'What's that stuff you putting on me? What you putting in my hair now?'

'Gone take the kinks right out', said Ruby softly.

'Feels like you gone take my whole head off, Ruby, that's what it feels like!'

Martha-Ann got one foot on the floor, and with hysterical strength pushed the chair around. She stared in the mirror and screamed. Her hair was almost gone, and Ruby continued to pull handfuls of it out. The scalp itself was bloody. Martha-Ann threw her hands over her face and tried to stand up out of the chair, but Ruby pushed her down and continued to massage. Martha-Ann moaned and writhed, but she felt herself growing weaker; she could not even stop to think why there was so little pain. She opened her eyes and stared into the mirror, just as Ruby carefully peeled away her scalp.

Martha-Ann screamed faintly, and rushed out of the chair, eyes closed with the horror of the sight. She ran in the direction of the back door, but tripped over the comer of the carpet and fell against the window. Martha-Ann broke through the glass, and fell down into the flower bed below, moaning and screaming. But in only a few moments, her scream was cut by a rattle in her throat and she was dead.

Amid the screams of her friend, Ruby took the bloody scalp and carefully arranged it atop the white Styrofoam head of a wig dummy, and then went over to the step-ladder again, and mounted it, reaching upward to replace the two bottles on the top shelf. But one spilled on her and she pulled back instinctively to avoid the liquid. She lost her balance and caught at the shelving to keep from falling. But the shelving was not support enough, and it pulled away from the wall. Ruby fell backward in the air, directly against the rapidly spinning blades of the ceiling fan. In a moment, cleanly, her neck was severed. Body and head fell to the floor separately, blood gushing from both.

The falling shelves had caught momentarily on the edge of a chair, but now they broke in two, and dropped heavily on to Ruby's separated corpse.

Directly after the noon meal on Saturday afternoon, Becca Blair and Sarah Howell had driven a mile or two out into the country to visit a farm-produce stand that was reputed to have the best berries and fruits in the county. Jo Howell had been complaining that Dean was finding his food dull, and that he surely could do with some mashed strawberries, that he was, in fact, aching for fresh mashed strawberries. Sarah suspected that it was Jo that hankered after the strawberries, but when she told this to Becca, Becca had said, 'Well, honey, I don't mind going out there, won't take twenty minutes, and I might get some for Margaret's picnic on Monday, she's going on a picnic to celebrate school's being out, you know. Going with those people, the Nelsons, that lived next to the Coppages and watched 'em bum up with us, gone take little Mary Shirley 'long too, 'cause that child can't be having much fun any more, not with so many people dropping around her like flies, and not nobody left to take care of her. Who'd take her on picnics if it wasn't for Margaret?'

This trip into the country was a real luxury, for on it Sarah did not allow herself to think of the amulet, to wonder around whose doomed neck it now hung. The sheriff had assured her that he was going to take care of the entire business, and the sheriff, even more importantly, had told her to leave it all alone. And that - at least for the weekend - was exactly what Sarah Howell intended to do.

Becca was very pleased with the alteration in Sarah's attitude. She seemed freer, less worried than at any time since the news had reached her, through Jo, that Dean had been wounded on the Fort Rucca firing range. All the way out and back, Becca made jokes about Jo Howell, and Sarah giggled uncontrollably.

And now Sarah and Becca were driving back into Pine Cone, with a cardboard box on the back seat filled with sacks of sweet fruits, and even sweeter berries. Their way led them through the blocks of the town where all the blacks lived, and they were surprised to be forced to slow up for a great crowd that had formed in front of one of the houses. Cars were parked along both sides of the street, and a great number of black people were standing around in the yard.

'Ohhhh!' cried Becca, 'Sarah, let's stop and see what's happened!' Her tone was still gay and abandoned. 'Knifing, I bet', she said, with an amused conspiratorial voice. 'Playing poker on a Saturday afternoon, and somebody up and kniLs somebody else. Ohhhh!' she exclaimed then, in a lower-pitched voice, 'Sarah, look! It's the hearse. It's not the ambulance-there's somebody dead

As soon as Sarah had seen the crowd of seventy-five or so, with none of the noise usually attendant upon such a gathering, all the day's good spirits flooded out of her. Very suddenly she became weary and despairing.

'It's the amulet', she whispered to Becca, but did not look at her friend.

Becca pulled up to the kerb half a block away from the crowd. She spoke hurriedly as they got out of the car, trying desperately to reassure her friend. 'Maybe it was a heart attack. There's the fat woman who works at the plant, I cain't remember her name but she lives right around here. She's real fat, and they say when you get like that, it's good chance that you're gone have a heart attack. It can come like that—' and she snapped her fingers desperately.