"Me, I lived down the road a piece from Stanley. I don't know why, but he took to following me around. Mostly because everyone else ran him off, I expect. I don't guess I was real good to poor Stanley, but I let him tag along. You would hardly know he was there; no trouble. And he struck me so sort of lost and pitiful, you know? I never had the heart to chase him. After a while, it got to where he even took to trailing along after me to school. "Now that was a funny thing; kind of got me to wondering. There was a white kid down in that part of the country, running along after a colored boy to a colored school. You would expect that to attract a good deal of attention, wouldn't you? Maybe stir up a big storm in the county. But nobody ever hardly seemed to notice Stanley at all. There wasn't anything ever said about it. "Well, you know, Ed, any kid, even Stanley, he wants some attention, some affection from someone. Stanley, all he ever had was me and I never more than about put up with him when we were kids. And any kid likes to feel kind of important sometime. Be noticed. Be king of the hill at recess. Win a spelling bee. Whup somebody, or even be the kid that gets made to stay after school the most. He wants to feel like he is somebody. Only Stanley, he never could. Seemed like the more he wanted to push out into things, the more he would get shy and not able to, and he would pull away back inside even more. He never could talk much hardly, even to me. Got so I would scarcely know he was around myself." * * * * * "He lost touch with the world?" I put in. "Well, that happens. There are oddballs all over, you know." "Oh, sure--sure there are, Ed," said Jones. "But Stanley wasn't like that, not exactly; or only. Seemed like it was as much the world lost touch with Stanley as it was the other way. He always did feel a resentment about it, too, and I believe it turned him pretty bitter way down someplace. 'Course he never did say much, but I could tell. I got the feeling." "So? How did you come here?" "Well, my mammy, she passed on and there wasn't anything to hold me back there around home, so I left. Stanley, he tagged right along after me. Like a shadow. You might say he was a sort of a shadow's shadow, huh? We bummed around. I worked here and there. Then I found out--we found out--that most people couldn't even see Stanley at all any more." "He got so far out he was really gone?" "Only it was kind of pitiful the way it made Stanley mad. Me, I got vagged a few times. Only Stanley, he could be right beside me and spit in the sheriff's face and they wouldn't touch him. They wouldn't even know he was there. When I was locked up, he could walk in and out to visit me. Nobody ever stopped him. Nobody saw him--except, we found out then, that some of the prisoners could see Stanley plain enough." "Oh?" I said.