The Vigilante by John Steinbeck

THE great surge of emotion, the milling and shouting of the people fell
gradually to silence in the town park. A crowd of people still stood under the
5 elm trees, vaguely lighted by a blue street light two blocks away. A tired
quiet settled on the people; some members of the mob began to sneak away
into the darkness. The park lawn was cut to pieces by the feet of the crowd.
Mike knew it was all over. He could feel the let-down in himself. He was
as heavily weary as though he had gone without sleep for several nights, but it
10 was a dream-like weariness, a grey comfortable weariness. He pulled his cap
down over his eyes and moved away, but before leaving the park he turned for
one last look.
In the center of the mob someone had lighted a twisted newspaper and was
holding it up. Mike could see how the flame curled about the feet of the grey
15 naked body hanging from the elm tree. It seemed curious to him that negroes
turn a bluish grey when they are dead. The burning newspaper lighted the
heads of the up-looking men, silent men and fixed; they didn't move their eyes
from the hanged man.
Mike felt a little irritation at whoever it was who was trying to burn the body.
20 He turned to a man who stood beside him in the near-darkness. "That don't
do no good," he said.
The man moved away without replying. $The newspaper torch went out,
leaving the park almost black by contrast. But immediately another twisted,
paper was lighted and held up against the feet. Mike moved to another
25 watching man. "That don't do no good," he repeated. "He's dead now. They
can't hurt him none."
The second man grunted but did not look away from the flaming paper. "It's
a good job," he said. "This'll save the county a lot of money and no sneaky
lawyers getting in.
30 "That's what I say," Mike agreed. "No sneaky lawyers. But it don't do no
good to try to burn him."
The man continued staring toward the flame. "Well, it can't do much harm,
either."
Mike filled his eyes with the scene. He felt that he was dull. He wasn't
35 seeing enough of it. Here was a thing he would want to remember later so he
could tell about it, but the dull tiredness seemed to cut the sharpness off the
picture. His brain told him this was a terrible and important affair, but his
eyes and his feelings didn't agree. It was just ordinary. Half an hour before,
when he had been howling with the mob and fighting for a chance to help pull
40 on the rope, then his chest had been so full that he had found he was crying.
But now everything was dead, everything unreal; the dark mob was made up
of stiff lay-figures. In the flamelight the faces were as expressionless as wood.
Mike felt the stiffness, the unreality in himself, too. He turned away at last
and walked out of the park.
45 The moment he left the outskirts of the mob a cold loneliness fell upon him.
He walked quickly along the street wishing that some other man might be
walking beside him. The wide street was deserted, empty, as unreal as the
park had been. The two steel lines of the car tracks stretched glimmering
away down the street under the electroliers, and the dark store windows
50 reflected the midnight globes.
 A gentle pain began to make itself felt in Mike's chest. He felt with his
fingers; the muscles were sore. Then he remembered. He was in the front
line of the mob when it rushed the closed jail door. A driving line forty men
deep had crashed Mike against the door like the head of a ram. He had
5 hardly felt it then, and even now the pain seemed to have the dull quality of
loneliness.
Two blocks ahead the burning neon word BEER hung over the sidewalk.
Mike hurried toward it. He hoped there would be people there, and talk, to
remove this silence; and he hoped the men wouldn't have been to the
10 lynching.
The bartender was alone in his little bar, a small, middle-aged man with a
melancholy moustache and an expression like an aged mouse, wise and
unkempt and fearful.
He nodded quickly as Mike came in. "You look like you been walking in your
15 sleep," he said.
Mike regarded him with wonder. "That's just how I feel, too, like I been
walking in my sleep."
"Well, I can give you a shot if you want." Mike hesitated. "No—I'm kind of
thirsty. I'll take a beer. . . . Was you there?"
20 The little man nodded his mouse-like head again. "Right at the last, after he
was all up and it was all Over. I figured a lot of the fellas would be thirsty, so I
came back and opened up. Nobody but you so far. Maybe I was wrong."
"They might be along later," said Mike. "There's a lot of them still in the
park. They cooled off, though. Some of them trying to burn him with
25 newspapers. That don't do no good."
"Not a bit of good," said the little bartender. He twitched his thin
moustache.
Mike knocked a few grains of celery salt into his beer and took a long drink.
"That's good," he said. "I'm kind of dragged out."
30 The bartender leaned close to him over the bar, his eyes were bright. "Was
you there all the time—to the jail and everything?"
Mike drank again and then looked through his beer and watched the beads of
bubbles rising from the grains of salt in the bottom of the glass.
"Everything," he said. "I was one of the first in the jail, and I helped pull on
35 the rope. There's times when citizens got to take the law in their own hands.
Sneaky lawyer comes along and gets some fiend out of it."
The mousy head jerked up and down. "You God-dam' right," he said.
"Lawyers can get them out of anything. I guess the nigger was guilty all
right."
40 "Oh, sure! Somebody said he even confessed."
The head came close over the bar again. "How did it start, mister? I was
only there after it was all over, and there I only stayed a minute and then
came back to open up in case any of the fellas might want a glass of beer."
Mike drained his glass and pushed it out to be filled. "Well, of course
45 everybody knew it was going to happen. I was in a bar across from the jail.
Been there all afternoon. A guy came in and says, 'What are we waiting for?'
So we went across the street, and a lot more guys was there and a lot more
come. We all stood there and yelled. Then the sheriff come out and made a
 speech, but we yelled him down. A guy with a twenty-two rifle went along the
street and shot out the street lights. Well, then we rushed the jail doors and
bust them. The sheriff wasn't going to do nothing. It wouldn't do him no good
to shoot a lot of honest men to save a nigger fiend."
5 "And election coming on, too," the bartender put in.
"Well, the sheriff started yelling, 'Get the right man, boys, for Christ's sake
get the right man. He's in the fourth cell down.'
"It was kind of pitiful," Mike said slowly. "The other prisoners was so scared.
We could see them through the bars. I never seen such faces."
10 The bartender excitedly poured himself a small glass of whiskey and poured
it down. "Can't blame 'em much. Suppose you was in for thirty days and a
lynch mob came through. You'd be scared they'd get the wrong man."
"That's what I say. It was kind of pitiful. Well, we got to the nigger's cell.
He just stood stiff with his eyes closed like he was dead drunk. One of the
15 guys slugged him down and he got up, and then somebody else socked him
and be went over and hit his head on the cement floor." Mike leaned over the
bar and tapped the polished wood with his forefinger. "'Course this is only my
idea, but I think that killed him. Because I helped get his clothes off, and he
never made a wiggle, and when we strung him up he didn't jerk around none.
20 No, sir. I think he was dead all the time, after that second guy smacked him."
"Well, it's all the same in the end."
"No, it ain't. You like to do the thing right. He had it coming to him, and he
should have got it." Mike reached into his trousers pocket and brought out a
piece of torn blue denim. "That's a piece of the pants he had on."
25 The bartender bent close and inspected the cloth. He jerked his head up at
Mike. "I'll give you a buck for it."
"Oh no, you won't!"
"All right. I'll give you two bucks for half of it."
Mike looked suspiciously at him. "What you want it for?"
30 "Here! Give me your glass! Have a beer on me. I'll pin it up on the wall
with a little card under it. The fellas that come in will like to look at it."
Mike haggled the piece of cloth in two with his pocketknife and accepted two
silver dollars from the bartender.
"I know a show card writer," the little man said. "Comes in every day. He'll
35 print me up a nice little card to go under it." He looked wary. "Think the
sheriff will arrest anybody?"
"'Course not. What's he want to start any trouble for? There was a lot of
votes in that crowd tonight. Soon as they all go away, the sheriff will come
and cut the nigger down and clean up some."
40 The bartender looked toward the door. "I guess I was wrong about the fellas
wanting a drink. It's getting late."
"I guess I'll get along home. I feel tired."
"If you go south, I'll close up and walk a ways with you. I live on south
Eighth.
45 "Why, that's only two blocks from my house. I live on south Sixth. You must
go right past my house. Funny I never saw you around."
The bartender washed Mike's glass and took off the long apron. He put on
 his hat and coat, walked to the door and switched off the red neon sign and
the house lights. For a moment the two men stood on the sidewalk looking
back toward the park. The city was silent. There was no sound from the
park. A policeman walked along a block away, turning his flash into the store
5 windows.
"You see?" said Mike. "Just like nothing happened."
"Well, if the fellas wanted a glass of beer they must have gone someplace
else."
"That's what I told you," said Mike.
10 They swung along the empty street and turned south, out of the business
district. "My name's Welch," the bartender said. "I only been in this town
about two years."
The loneliness had fallen on Mike again. "It's funny—" he said, and then, "I
was born right in this town, right in the house I live in now. I got a wife but
15 no kids. Both of us born right in this town. Everybody knows us."
They walked on for a few blocks. The stores dropped behind and the nice
houses with bushy gardens and cut lawns lined the street. The tall shade
trees were shadowed on the sidewalks by the street lights. Two night dogs
went slowly by, smelling at each other.
20 Welch said softly—"I wonder what kind of fella he was—the nigger I mean,"
Mike answered out of his loneliness. "The papers all said he was a fiend. I
read all the papers. That's what they all said."
"Yes, I read them, too. But it makes you wonder about him. I've known
some pretty nice niggers."
25 Mike turned his head and spoke protestingly. "Well, I've known some dam'
fine niggers myself. I've worked right long side some niggers and they was as
nice as any white man you could want to meet.—But not no fiends."
His vehemence silenced little Welch for a moment. Then he said, "You
couldn't tell, I guess, what kind of a fella he was?"
30 "No—he just stood there stiff, with his mouth shut and his eyes tight closed
and his bands right down at his sides. And then one of the guys smacked him.
It's my idea he was dead when we took him out."
Welch sidled close on the walk. "Nice gardens along here. Must take a lot
of money to keep them up." He walked even closer, so that his shoulder
35 touched Mike's arm. "I never been to a lynching. How's it make you feel—
afterwards?"
Mike shied away from the contact. "It don't make you feel nothing." He put
down his head and increased his pace. The little bartender had nearly to trot
to keep up. The street lights were fewer. It was darker and safer. Mike
40 burst out, "Makes you feel kind of cut off and tired, but kind of satisfied, too.
Like you done a good job—but tired and kind of sleepy." He slowed his steps.
"Look, there's a light in the kitchen. That's where I live. My old lady's
waiting up for me." He stopped in front of his little house.
Welch stood nervously beside him. "Come into my place when you want a
45 glass of beer—or a shot. Open till midnight. I treat my friends right." He
scampered away like an aged mouse.
Mike called, "Good night."
He walked around the side of his house and went in the back door. His thin,
 petulant wife was sitting by the open gas oven warming herself. She turned
complaining eyes on Mike where he stood in the doorway.
Then her eyes widened and hung on his face. "You been with a woman," she
said hoarsely. "What woman you been with?"
5 Mike laughed. "You think you're pretty slick, don't you? You're a slick one,
ain't you? What makes you think I been with a woman?"
She said fiercely, "You think I can't tell by the look on your face that you been
with a woman?"
"All right," said Mike. "If you're so slick and know-it-all, I won't tell you
10 nothing. You can just wait for the morning paper."
He saw doubt come into the dissatisfied eyes. "Was it the nigger?" she
asked. "Did they get the nigger? Everybody said they was going to."
"Find out for yourself if you're so slick. I ain't going to tell you nothing."
He walked through the kitchen and went into the bathroom. A little mirror
15 hung on the wall. Mike took off his cap and looked at his face. "By God, she
was right," he thought. "That's just exactly how I do feel.