Bobby Lee had pulled two guns on him and let him have it with both barrels.

CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK

Bobby Lee shouted, "You're dead! You're double dead! Die!"

Stump had no choice but to die in front of Peggy. It was a quick, quiet death. He got right up and said, "I've gotta go home and get some more caps. I'll be right back."

He had plenty of caps, but he wanted to die for real. Peggy had seen him get killed over and over.

After he left, Peggy stood up and yelled at her brother, "Ya'll aren't playing fair. Poor Stump has only one arm and that's not fair. I'm gonna tell Mother on you, Vernon!"

Stump ran in the back room and threw his cap pistol across the floor and then kicked his electric train set against the wall, mad and crying with frustration. When Ruth and Idgie came back, there he was stomping his Erector set that he'd already smashed flat.

When he saw them, he started crying and screaming at the same time, "I cain't do anything with this thing," and he began hitting at his missing arm.

Ruth grabbed him. "What's the matter, honey? What happened?"

"Everybody's got double holsters but me! I cain't beat 'em, they've killed me all afternoon!"

"Who?"

"Dwane and Vernon and Bobby Lee Scroggins."

Ruth said, stricken, "Oh honey  . . .”

She knew this day would come, but now that it had, she didn't know what to say. What was there to say? How do you tell a seven-year-old boy that it would be all right? She looked to Idgie for help.

Idgie stared at Stump for a minute and then got her coat, picked him up off the bed, put his coat on, and took him outside to the car.

"Come on, mister, you're going with me."

"Where are we going?"

"Never mind."

He sat there in silence while she drove him down to the river road. When they came to a sign that said WAGON WHEEL FISH-ING CAMP, she made a turn. Pretty soon they came to a gate made out of two big white wagon wheels. Idgie got out and opened the gates and then drove on through, down to a cabin by the river. When she got there, she blew the horn, and after a minute, a redheaded woman opened the door.

ldgie told Stump to stay in the car and she got out and went up to talk with the woman. The dog inside the house was beside itself, jumping up and down, yapping, it was so excited to see her.

Idgie talked for a few minutes, and then the lady went away for a second and came back and handed Idgie a rubber ball. When she opened the screen door, the little dog flew out and was about to wiggle itself to death, so glad to see her.

Idgie walked down off the porch, and said, "Come on, Lady! Come on, girl!" and threw the ball up in the air. The little white rat terrier jumped at least four feet and caught the ball in midair, and then ran back to Idgie and gave it back to her. Then Idgie threw the ball up against the house and Lady jumped straight up and caught it again.

That's when Stump noticed that the little dog only had three legs.

That dog jumped and ran after that ball for about ten minutes and never once lost its balance. After a while, Idgie took the little dog back up to the house and went inside to say goodbye to the redheaded woman.

Then she came back out to the car and drove down a little road, where she parked by the river.

"Stump, I want to ask you something, son."

"Yes ma'am."

"Did that dog look like it was having a good time?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Did it look like she was happy to be alive?"

"Yes."

"Did it look to you like she felt sorry for herself?"

"No ma'am."

"Now, you're my son and I love you no matter what. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes ma'am."

"But you know, Stump, I'd hate like the devil to think that you didn't have any more sense than that poor little dumb dog we saw today."

He looked down at the car floor. "Yes ma'am."

"So I don't want to hear any more about what you can and cain't do, okay?"

"Okay."

Idgie opened up the glove compartment and pulled out a bottle of Green River Whiskey. "And besides, your Uncle Julian and I are going to take you out next week and teach you how to shoot a real gun."

"Really?"

"Really!" She removed the bottle cap and took a swallow. "We're gonna make you the best goddamned shot in the state, and just let one of them try and beat you at anything . . . here, have a drink."

Stump's eyes got big as he reached for the bottle. "Really?"

"Yes, really. But don't tell your mother. We'll make those boys wish they hadn't got up in the morning."

Stump took a sip and tried to act as if it hadn't tasted like gasoline on fire and asked, "Who was that woman?"

"A friend of mine."

"You've been here before, haven't you?"

"Yeah, a couple of times. But don't tell your mother."

"Okay."

(SLAGTOWN)

DECEMBER 30, 1934

Onzell had told her son Artis over and over again that she did not want him going over to Birmingham, ever; but tonight, he went anyway.

He jumped off the back of the freight that arrived at the L N terminal station at about eight o'clock. When he went inside, his mouth dropped open.

The station seemed as large, to him, as Whistle Stop and Troutville put together, with its rows and rows of thick, rich mahogany benches and the multicolored tile that covered the floor and the walls of the huge building.

SHOE SHINE . . . SANDWICH COUNTER . . . CIGAR STAND ... BEAUTY SHOP . . . MAGAZINES . . . BARBERSHOP . . . DONUTS AND CANDY . . . CIGARETTES . . . WHISKEY BAR . . . COFFEE . . . BOOKSTORE . . . HAVE YOUR SUITS PRESSED . . . GIFT SHOP . . . COLD DRINKS . . . ICE CREAM . . .

Here was a city, teeming with redcaps, porters, and train passengers, all under the seventy-five-foot glass ceiling. It was all too much for the seventeen-year-old black boy in overalls who had never been out of Whistle Stop. He thought he had seen the whole world inside that one building, and he staggered out the front door, dazed.

And then he saw it. There it was, the largest electric light sign in the world—twenty stories high, with ten thousand golden light bulbs glowing against the black sky: WELCOME TO BIRMINGHAM . . . THE MAGIC CITY . . .

And it was magic; billed as the "fastest growing city in the South," and even now, Pittsburgh was being called the Birmingham of the North . . . Birmingham, with its towering skyscrapers and steel mills that lit up the sky with red and purple hues, and its busy streets buzzing with hundreds of automobiles and the streetcars on wires, whisking back and forth, day and night.

Artis walked down the street in a trance, past the St. Clair (Birmingham's Up-to-the-Minute Hotel), on by the L N Cafe, and the Terminal Hotel. He peered in between the Venetian blinds on the window of the coffee shop and saw all the white men sitting there, enjoying their blue-plate specials, and knew that this was not the place for him. He made his way past the Red Top Bar and Grill, and over the Rainbow Viaduct, on by the Melba Cafe, and, as if by some primeval instinct, he found 4th Avenue North, where all of a sudden the complexion began to change.

He had found it: Here it was, those twelve square blocks, better known as Slagtown . . . Birmingham's own Harlem of the South, the place he had dreamed about.

Couples began moving past him, all dressed up, talking and laughing on their way to somewhere; and he was being pulled along with them, like a whitecap floating on the crest of a wave. Music throbbed out of every door and window and spilled down flights of stairs into the streets. The voice of Bessie Smith wailed from an upstairs window, "Oh, careless love . . . Oh, careless love . . ."