Sheriff Carl said this but denied that he did. “I am here to protect our Logan community so… If they don’t look like us, smell like us, talk like us, and if nothing about them is like us then I don’t like them and I want to make sure they are not in our midst. They are disgusting, all of them. If necessary kill them.” 
No one in Logan Texas will forget Willie. He was here in town for just a few months and with few exceptions, no one got to know him. Maybe Butch, the Welton boy knew him best. He still brings up his name, sometimes. It was Butch that first spotted Willie in town and immediately realized how special he was. It was yet another sizzling late August day in Logan. Like all summer days, a hot breeze kicked up swirls of sand and sage. No one was out and about. The post office was closed. Butch was not looking forward to the opening of school. He hated it, boring. He knew this was his last year and then …then what—lots to think about. Butch sat waiting for his mother next to the dried-out fountain in the middle of town. She had another doctor’s appointment. Butch wondered why his mother looked so pale and didn’t have much energy anymore. Is that why she is going to the doctor? Would she tell me if she were very sick and what if she were dying? Butch looked up and saw a stranger walking slowly down the street from the direction of the veteran’s memorial. Despite the Logan heat, he was wearing a black sports jacket and an old-fashioned hat. Watching him shuffle along Butch was suddenly stunned. His jaw dropped and he just stared at what he saw that couldn’t be. The stranger had no shadow. Butch ran across the street and ran into Jim’s barbershop. Jim was telling the deputy sheriff a joke as he was cutting his hair extra short, as always. Butch shouted, “Jim, Sheriff Carl, you won’t believe what I just saw.” Jim stopped snipping for just a moment. “There is a guy out there who I’ve never seen before and he doesn’t have a shadow.” Jim turned away and kept cutting the Sheriff’s hair. “Butch, that’s impossible. Now go away. I’m busy.” Butch persisted and pulled Jim away from the barber’s chair and to humor Butch ran outside to see for himself. The barber caught up with the stranger and sure enough, just like the kid said the stranger had no shadow. The next day everyone in Logan knew about the man without a shadow. No one knew anything about him or where he came from or why he was in Logan. Not even his landlady, Molly the widow, knew much about him. All she knew is that he paid the room rent promptly in cash, in 10-dollar bills. The stranger would leave his room early each morning with a notebook in hand and return in the early evening. She knew he liked bologna, cole slaw, pickles, and cokes and Krispy cream doughnuts. He would often come back to his room with all his regular favorites. That was his dinner. She invited him to have his supper in the small cactus garden at the back of her rooming house instead of his room. He seemed pleased by that invitation and thanked her. He stayed by himself, a loner. Several folks would see him regularly head for the Logan library mid-morning and go inside. He would wander around the stacks look at some of the books and periodicals and jot down notes in his notebook. And for short periods he would sit on a bench in the library atrium. He probably didn’t have a library card and so he never borrowed books. When Molly did talk to the stranger he would mumble and with an accent, maybe German. Molly thought he said his name was Wilhelm and so she called him Willie. When she was close to him she could smell a strange odor like maybe cloves. When Willie walked about he seemed to talk to himself, or sing some unknown melody. Some people would stop and say hello. He would nod and smile Some folks could get him to say a few words and he always spoke softly and looked away as he talked to you. He never had a shadow. One of the people who got to know him a bit was Sally Kramer a waitress at the Logan Diner. Once or twice a week ‘Willie’ would come in for breakfast before going to the library. He always ordered the same thing, fried eggs, toast, French fries and tea. He never ordered coffee. He would ask Sally a bit about her life and found out that she was a single mother with an 11-year-old boy. Willie was sympathetic. “That must be hard for you being on your own with your son.” He never talked about himself. He always paid his bill at the diner in cash. Never with a credit card. He always left Sally with a generous tip. Sally knew Molly. One day the two of them talked for a few minutes in front of Harold’s Bakery. They compared notes about what they knew about Willie which wasn’t much. Sally mentioned that he seemed to like tea and so Molly thought, why don’t I make him an occasional tea? She asked Willie about whether he would like that and he grinned, “I would like that very much. When Molly asked him what kind of tea he liked he mentioned lapsang souchong a tea she knew nothing about. He told her that it was a smoky tea and she might like it too. He also told her where to get it and that he would pay for it. People in Logan would ask each other, “What does it mean to not have a shadow and where did he come from and what is he doing here and what about his accent?” Most of them were curious about who he was, what he was. Strangers rarely appeared in Logan and certainly not someone like Willie. The only person who got to know him was Butch. During the summer months when not working at the gas station, he would often get to the library. Since Butch was curious about almost everything he started to regularly talk to Willie. Willie would talk to Butch about science, countries and their cultures, and sports like soccer which he called football. Willie always patiently answered his questions and Butch learned about all sorts of things from him. One day Butch drew a picture of Willie’s head on a napkin and gave it to him. Willie liked it and smiled. One morning Logan woke up to find that during the night someone had spray painted graffiti all over the library walls. In addition, many of the plants in the library garden were torn out of the ground and lay there lifeless. Who could have done that? Sheriff Carl went to work. One thought that came immediately to mind was Ronald Dawson, an older boy, who was not too bright and a bit crazy and always in trouble. He was a prime suspect. Weeks earlier he was told he was no longer welcome in the library. He had been tearing pages out of books, especially pictures of naked women. He would tuck them under his shirt and walk out with them. He was told several people had seen him do that but he denied the accusations and said that he would get even with the librarians. It turns out he was staying with his uncle who lived just outside of town. The two of them spent the evening shooting rattlesnakes in the nearby desert and when it got dark sat around playing video games. Sheriff Carl wondered if one of the Logan Drag Racers gang might have done the deed. They were regularly troublemakers in the town. They wouldn’t just drag race outside of the town limits but also deliberately race up and down Main Street late at night. They also were thought to be responsible for a series of thefts of homes and cars. They were all high school dropouts in their late teens. The sheriff asked the ringleader of the group Billy Young what he knew about the destruction of library property. As usual, he was arrogant, sullen, and uncooperative. “Sheriff. You blame us dragsters for everything that happens in this shit-hole town. Well, I can tell you that we didn’t damage the library or the plants and anyway, why would we even bother with a library that has nothing for us. Have you considered that strange dude with a foreign accent. I wouldn’t be shocked if he did all that damage and anyway, he also spends most of his time in and around the library. Maybe one of the librarians yelled at him when they saw him peeing near the side door of the library. Yeah. How about investigating that. He sure seems suspicious to me.” A few days earlier several people in town were sickened after eating Bobby’s southern fried chicken. Hard to know who started the rumor, maybe Jim the barber thought that it might be Willie’s fault. Did Willie poison the fried chicken? Some Logan townies said they knew for sure that he was a Jew and maybe he was simply crazy. Molly thought that was ridiculous but then she thought some more about that rumor and even considered asking Willie to find a room somewhere else. Then Willie seemed to have disappeared. No one had seen him in many days and he did not show up in his room at Molly’s guest house, or at the diner or the library. Days later they found him. He was lying in a clearing aside from the forest at the edge of the Lyon farm. He was dead. His body partly burned and all over his head and arms, there was dried blood and flies, lots of them. Looked like he also had a broken arm and there were no shoes on his feet. Nearby was an abandoned campfire and there were scattered cigarette butts and beer cans and sandwich wrappers. Willie lay perfectly still with a shadow of his body right next to him. Underneath his body was a notebook with some pictures taped to the inside cover and lots of writing that looked like it was in German. Who could have done this?Sheriff Carl had work to do but not now. Later. First, he would watch a rerun of a football game with his buddies, and knock down a brew or two. His deputy asked, “Where do we bury this guy and what should we label the gravesite? Sheriff Carl thought for a moment. “We can label it Willie along his case number from our files.”
Comment
So, Willie lies buried under a number. We all have attitudes, likes, dislikes, about all sorts of things. How do you build an attitude that is strong enough to persist even when overwhelming evidence would act as an eraser of the things we are sure of? How do you change an attitude like our prejudices about people who are not quite like us. What is the psychobiology of the persistence of strong attitudes?