HAYWOOD: (to the audience) And that was...

HAYWOOD: (to the audience) And that was that. That there's the whole story.

CLARENCE: You wish.

(A beat.)

ANDY: Come to find, when we pull into the next town, they got the sheriff and every farmer in the county surroundin' that train, with rifles and shotguns.

HAYWOOD: Those white boys had gone cryin' to the law in whatever place it was where they'd jumped off. And I guess some was sorta bloody. So the law called ahead and had our asses hauled off that train.

ANDY: Except for them that got away.

HAYWOOD: Yeah. And Olen and Willie here, like they said, we hadn't even seen 'til they roped us all together alongside the tracks. Plus there was some whites they got for hoboin'. All of 'em dressed pretty much like us--but two of 'em, it turned out, was female. Which was sort of unusual but, times bein' what they was... I don't think any of us paid 'em much mind, did we?

(The others concur, as...)

HAYWOOD (con't.): Mainly we was worried about the hell we gonna pay on accounta the fight.

CHARLIE: I remember the sheriff bein' all annoyed at havin' to deal with this. Cursin' about havin' to figure out how he gonna get all of us over to Scottsboro, where they had the nearest jail.

ANDY: What I remember is my brother, Leroy, keepin' right near me.

HAYWOOD: I remember bein' told "assault with intent to murder," when I ask a deputy what this was all about.

CLARENCE: Yeah and I remember thinkin', "Like you don't know what this is all about."

HAYWOOD: Turned out we didn't know. Did we?

(No response from any of them.)

HAYWOOD: That afternoon, they bring those two white girls by the cell where they'd put us. The sheriff and some deputies holdin' rifles with... Olen, what they call them kind of knives?

OLEN: Bayonets.

HAYWOOD: "Which of these boys was it?" the sheriff ask the light haired one.

CHARLIE: Victoria Price is who she turned out to be.

HAYWOOD: And she go... (his cracker imitation:) "Him and him and him and him and him." As if she pickin' from a box o' chocolates.

ANDY: Ain't no joke, Haywood.

HAYWOOD: You got that right.

ANDY: (to the audience) Rape. Ain't nobody used the word. But ain't nobody need to, neither.

HAYWOOD: And even though the nine of us still for the most part strangers, wasn't a one had to be told what was in store for a colored man makes advances to a white woman.

CHARLIE: The dark haired one – Ruby was her name – when they ask her which of us done it...she don't say nothin'! Just stood there. We all just stood there--black, white, male, female – holdin' one big breath.

HAYWOOD: 'Til some deputy says, "Well if these the ones had her, stands to reason don't it these others ravished you?"

(A beat or two, then:)

ANDY: Kinda mousey-like she says..."I guess."

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