The train left the riverside and entered a thick lowland forest of longleaf and loblolly, red maple and sweet gum, lush as the Cuban rainforest. The right of way was overgrown with bright green wax myrtle and honeysuckle. Confederate jasmine entwined the telegraph poles, deep green leaves dotted by hundreds of withered, snowy blossoms. In the woods, between the bare, scaly trunks of the longleaf pines, dogwoods burgeoned. At one place, the roadbed was blanketed with fallen flower petals, white and pink. Oh, he thought, to have seen this country in bloom.

At a remote station, three rowdies wearing red shirts boarded at the back of the car. They jostled each other roughly and hooted at some vulgar joke. They took their seats and quieted down, and the train racketed through half an hour more of woods and swamp before stopping again.

This time, a single passenger boarded at the front. He was slender and fair and wore a pencil-thin moustache. He was dressed in a pearl-gray suit with a white shirt buttoned to the throat, without a tie. His gray fedora was banded in black silk. In one hand, he clutched a cloth bag, in the other, a small Bible.

As he passed their seats, the train started up, and he staggered a moment before recovering his balance. Gray Ellen looked up into his face and smiled. He nodded slightly and smiled back. Then he found an empty seat two rows behind them.

“Preacher,” Sam said, “by the look of him.”

“Handsome devil,” Gray Ellen observed quietly, so the man across the aisle would not overhear. “Makes a person want to spend more time in church.”

Waddell turned once to look at the preacher. Something about the man struck a queer note.

When the conductor came through, he stopped beside the preacher and collected his ticket. He loitered a moment longer than necessary.

At the rear of the car, the red-shirted rowdies were arguing. “Well, by God,” one of them said loudly, rising, “I’ll find out what color that boy is.” Sam could tell by his tone that the man had been drinking—he surely knew the signs by now. The man lurched up the aisle, swaying with the movement of the train, and stopped when he got to the preacher’s seat. Out the window, Sam could see the river again. But he turned to watch what was playing out two rows behind.

“You, preacher,” the Red Shirt said. “I know you.”

The preacher didn’t even look up from his Bible. “I doubt it.”

“Don’t be back-sassing me, boy. I seen you in Tennessee, last year it was. Trouble in Johnson County, and you smack-dab in the middle of it.”

“Sir, you are mistaken.” Now, he looked up straight into the man’s eyes, challenging him.

The other two Red Shirts moved up the aisle and stood behind the first man. “You trying to pass? Trying to make fools out of us, nigger?”