The Expendable Man

by Dorothy B. Hughes

People were nice if you found the right ones. The trouble was there were so many of the wrong ones.

He decided he believed her words. It wasn’t a good habit to be suspicious of all motives.

Skye Houston. Incidentally he pronounces it the proper old way, ‘Howston.’

It was a lie and they all knew it was a lie, but there was no rancor among them. This clerk couldn’t cancel the system; her genuine friendliness was her contribution toward eroding it. Five years ago she wouldn’t have had a vacant unit; ten years ago she would have said, “We don’t take Negroes,” if any had had the courage or spunk to inquire.

It rankled that he could not bring the same force to bear, that he had to forgo his own social position and become a caricature to ask a simple question. And receive no answer.

Hugh looked across at him, into the compassion and generations of understanding. And he lied. He laughed and lied.

It hurt to think that the poison of uncontrolled development, the money greed, if unchecked, would soon reduce not only this oasis but the whole of the beautiful desert valley to the sterility of the tract.

The first impact of seeing them thus together smote Hugh with the awful aloneness of a stranger in a strange place. He didn’t belong where they were.

Unyielding bigots were a minority save in pockets of the Deep South. In today’s climate, it was they who could do nothing but retreat behind their warped, sagging fences. No longer could they demand that the fences enclose the rest of the country.