Explore "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest J. Gaines on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There were three funerals two days later. Beau and Luke Will were buried in Bayonne; Charlie was buried at Marshall. The trial took place the following week, lasting three days. Candy hired her own lawyer, Clinton, to defend the blacks. The Klans defended Luke Will’s friends. And you’ve never seen a sadder bunch of killers in all your life—on either side. Everybody had something wrong with him—scratches, bruises, cuts, gashes. They had cut themselves on barbed wire, tin cans, broken bottles—you name it. Some had sprained their ankles jumping over ditches; others had sprained their wrists falling down on the ground. And some had just run into each other. Everybody was either limping, his arm in a sling, or there was a bandage round his head or some other part of his body. Out of all that, only one had been shot—Leroy.
They had all taken baths, and wore their best clothes. For three days, if you sat close enough to the front, you smelled nothing but Lifebuoy soap and mothballs.