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Clem had gone ahead and had driven the hogs back. There was no other way to do anything. They were in a snarling circle around them, and both of them had to keep the singletrees swinging back and forth all the time to keep the hogs off. Finally Lonnie reached down and got a grip on Mark’s leg. With Clem helping, Lonnie carried his father to the fence and lifted him over to the other side.

They were too much out of breath for a while to say anything, or to do anything else. The snarling, fattening hogs were at the fence, biting the wood and wire, and making more noise than ever.

While Lonnie was searching in his pockets for a match, Clem struck one. He held the flame close to Mark Newsome’s head.

They both stared unbelievingly, and then Clem blew out the match. There was nothing said as they stared at each other in the darkness.

Clem walked several steps away, and turned and came back beside Lonnie.

“It’s him, though,” Clem said, sitting down on the ground.”It’s him, all right.”

“I reckon so,” Lonnie said. He could think of nothing else to say then.

They sat on the ground, one on each side of Mark, looking at the body. There had been no sign of life in the body beside them since they had first touched it. The face, throat, and stomach had been completely devoured.

“You’d better go wake up Arch Gunnard,” Clem said after a while.

“What for?” Lonnie said.”He can’t help none now. It’s too late for help.”

“Makes no difference,” Clem insisted.”You’d better go wake him up and let him see what there is to see. If you wait till morning, he might take it into his head to say the hogs didn’t do it. Right now is the time to get him up so he can see what his hogs did.”

Clem turned around and looked at the big house. The dark outline against the dark sky made him hesitate.

“A man who short-rations tenants ought to have to sit and look at that till it’s buried.”

Lonnie looked at Clem fearfully. He knew Clem was right, but he was scared to hear a Negro say anything like that about a white man.

“You oughtn’t talk like that about Arch,” Lonnie said.”He’s in bed asleep. He didn’t have a thing to do with it. He didn’t have no more to do with it than I did.”

Clem laughed a little, and threw the singletree on the ground between his feet. After letting it lie there a little while, he picked it up and began beating the ground with it.

Lonnie got to his feet slowly. He had never seen Clem act like that before, and he did not know what to think about it. He left without saying anything and walked stiffly to the house in the darkness to wake up Arch Gunnard.

Arch was hard to wake up. And even after he was awake, he was in no hurry to get up. Lonnie was standing outside the bedroom window, and Arch was lying in bed six or eight feet away. Lonnie could hear him toss and grumble.

“Who told you to come and wake me up in the middle of the night?” Arch said.

“Well, Clem Henry’s out here, and he said maybe you’d like to know about it.”

Arch tossed around on the bed, flailing the pillow with his fists.

“You tell Clem Henry I said that one of these days he’s going to find himself turned inside out, like a coat-sleeve.”

Lonnie waited doggedly. He knew Clem was right in insisting that Arch ought to wake up and come out there to see what had happened. Lonnie was afraid to go back to the barnyard and tell Clem that Arch was not coming. He did not know, but he had a feeling that Clem might go into the bedroom and drag Arch out of bed. He did not like to think of anything like that taking place.

“Are you still out there, Lonnie?” Arch shouted.

“I’m right here, Mr. Arch. I—”

“If I wasn’t so sleepy, I’d come out there and take a stick and—I don’t know what I wouldn’t do!”

Lonnie met Arch at the back step. On the way out to the hog pen Arch did not speak to him. Arch walked heavily ahead, not even waiting to see if Lonnie was coming. The lantern that Arch was carrying cast long flat beams of yellow light over the ground; and when they got to where Clem was waiting beside Mark’s body, the Negro’s face shone in the night like a highly polished plowshare.