She backed away. “I didn’t think you were that kind.” She sounded disappointed in him.

He put away his money, embarrassed. “Don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”

“Just ‘cause I’m a poor colored girl, you think I don’t have pride? You think I don’t have aspirations?” She’d heard the word from the Reverend Grant, and this was the first time she’d had a chance to use it. “I’m going to nursing college someday.”

He was confused. “Then why work for a newspaper?”

“That’s my business,” she said.

“Of course.” He felt ashamed.

“So I can learn proper words. Ideas. I told you, I got aspirations. Now, get out of here.”

Sam left without saying anything more. He walked home slowly. A cold drizzle had begun. It soaked his shirt, but he hardly noticed. Once home, he hesitated to go in. He walked twice around the block and then opened the front door and went upstairs to bed.

As he was undressing, Gray Ellen stirred in the dark and said, “Are you all right, Sam?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, unsure of his voice, “I didn’t take a drink.”

“I know,” she said, “but are you all right?”

“Go to sleep.”

Chapter Ten

We have been amazed, confounded, and a little ashamed of the acquiescence and quiescence of the men of North Carolina at the existing conditions; and more than once have asked ourselves wonderingly: Where are the white men and the shotguns?

C H A P T E R   T E N

Monday, October 24

“A MAN CAN SIT IDLE and watch things fall apart only so long,” Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell said, slapping the latest edition of the Daily Record on the linen tablecloth next to Sam’s place. “ ‘Every Negro man with pride in his race must vote Republican in November, or else forfeit all claims to Manhood.’ Indeed! Where do those darkies get off?”

Bessie King hovered at his elbow, trying to serve the soup.

Sam could read the headline: 30 Negroes Discharged From Employment Because of Their Determination to Enjoy Citizen Rights.

Gabrielle, seated at the other end of the dinner table, nodded toward Bessie and admonished gently, “Colonel, please.”

Waddell chuckled. “Aunt Bessie’s not political. She doesn’t hold with those rabble-rousing Negroes—do you, Aunt Bessie?”

“No, suh,” she replied dully, eyes on the bowl of hot soup in her hand, poised over his lap. She thought, Lord, deliver me from temptation, hesitated, then set down the bowl.

“Still, we have guests. May we not leave politics for the brandy?”

“You’re right, Miz Gabby. As usual. I was forgetting myself.” He sipped wine and tossed the newspaper onto the sideboard.