Thirty-Eight“You don’t really think anyone cares about this stuff, do you?” Edmund waved the ragged-edged yellow paper in front of Sebastian. “You must be the last man in Christendom to give a toss,” he sneered. “You and the black saint back there.”
He screwed up the sheet into a loose ball and threw it onto the ground at his feet. The waste pile of Washington’s conscientiously sworn statements grew. When he had read and ridiculed the last one, he unhitched a tinder box from his belt, struck a match and set fire to the mound of crumpled paper. The late afternoon was still and hot, and the flame caught immediately, devouring the testament to black civic status in less than two minutes. Within another two minutes the tinder-dry low chaparral on which they stood smoldered, the green wood smo
