oliver was a conscientious parole officer. he had held the job for many years, and had no thought of either leaving it or of advancing in the parole board hierarchy.
he got yancey a job as night clerk in a small convenience store on the northern outskirts of memphis.
the store was located about three kilometers from the general store where yancey had gotten the ride from kingfish.
but yancey had no curiosity about either the store or kingfish, and never went near the store.
the store had a number of regular customers who showed up almost every night.
one of them was a girl named mona.
nobody knew where she came from, but she seemed like a nice enough person.
yancey had always kept the little toy lizard-monkey soldier he had purchased on that long ago fateful night.
now he put it on the counter of the store during the hours he worked there.
one night mona asked him about it.
yancey told her the story of purchasing it .
this led to hm yelling her the whole story of how he had come to spend eight years in prison.
mona heard the story without comment.
i have a story too, she told yancey, but it is getting late, the dawn is breaking , and i will tell it to you tomorrow night.
after mona left, william came in.
william was a somewhat creepy and pathetic person whom yancey was inclined to lend a sympathetic ear to .
william had many stories, mostly about how mistreated he was, by his fellow humans, and by life in general.
sometimes yancey and william talked about the universe, and about the meaning of life.
william had read the books of al-garibldi, a prophet whose works had not been allowed in the prison, as they were considered inflammatory and not conducive to social harmony.
william did not describe himself as a follower of al-garibaldi, but found his ideas interesting enough to recount them as a subject of conversation.
al-garibaldi’s main teaching was that every wrong, no matter how small, that had ever been done, would have to be righted before the universe, and the creatures in it, could find peace.
yancey expressed his approval of this sentiment.
but on this particular night william was not disposed to speak of abstract matters, but began a long and involved story about how a woman had stepped on his foot on the trolley car from the south side, and how he, william, had let her know his displeasure and how the other passengers on the trolley had joined in and taken one side or the other.
william had a great fund of such stories, which was one reason nobody liked him much.
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