Chapter 21 Summary

A traveling furniture sales and repairman returns home to his wife with a strange story about his trip. At a gas station, he tells his wife, he had seen a man, woman and child in need of a ride. The salesman agrees to take them as far as Jackson, Tennessee. The couple tells him they are just traveling around, without a specific destination in mind. The woman rides up front with the baby while the man climbs in the back of the truck. Initially, he assumes the couple is married. However, he talks to the woman during the ride and learns more about her. Her baby was born three weeks ago in Jefferson. The salesman had heard about the nigger in Jefferson who got killed for murdering a white woman. When he mentions it to her, the woman stops talking immediately, as if...