Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr.
Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with
his hand. Because so much of the ritual
had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been
successful in having slips of paper
substituted for the chips of wood that had been
used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr.
Summers had argued. had been all very well when the
village was tiny, but now that
the population was more than three hundred
and likely to keep on growing, it was
necessary to use something that would fit more
easily into the black box. The night
before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr.
Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in
the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers
' coal company and locked
up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the
square next morning. The rest of the year,
the box was put away, sometimes in one place, sometimes
another; it had spent one year in
Mr. Graves' barn and another year underfoot in the
post office, and sometimes it was set on
a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open.
There were lists to make up of heads of families, heads
of households in each family,
members of each household in each family.
There was the proper swearingin of Mr.
Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the
lottery; at one time, some people
remembered, there had been a recital of
some sort, performed by the official of the lottery,
a perfunctory. tuneless chant that had been rattled
off duly each year; some
people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it,
others believed that he was supposed to walk
among the people, but years and years ago
this p3rt of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There
had been, also, a ritual salute, which
the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing
each person who came up to draw
from the box, but this also had changed with
time, until now it was felt necessary only for
the official to speak to each person approaching.
Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in
his clean white shirt and blue jeans, with one
hand resting carelessly on the black box,
he seemed very proper and important as he
talked interminably to Mr. Graves
and the Martins.

“talk to the text”