He galloped away. Sam snagged Gray Ellen around the waist and wrestled her, sobbing, to the street, where they rolled over and over on the oyster-shell paving until their clothes were coated white with lime dust.

Part III: The Ballot

P A R T   III

T H E   B A L L O T

Chapter Eleven

There need be no surprise if a large number of colored voters are killed in North Carolina to-day or to-morrow. The preliminaries have all been arranged by the Democrats. The last thing to be done generally in the way of preparation for such an event is to send over the country a report of the riotous condition of the negroes and the fear of the whites, who expect an “outbreak” at any moment. That report was sent out by the Associated Press yesterday.

C H A P T E R   E L E V E N

Thursday, November 3

“BLESS ME FATHER, for I have sinned,” Sam Jenks whispered into the confessional screen. The confessional box smelled of lacquer and mildew. “It has been many months since my last confession, and these are my sins.” He’d been meaning to do this since Chicago. He told about his old drinking habits, his neglect of his wife. The awful fight they’d had after Thalian Hall.

Tomorrow was First Friday mass. He would start clean. The church always took you back. Always gave you a second chance.

He told about Saffron, keeping his voice low, embarrassed and ashamed at the sound of the words coming out of his mouth: “I tried to seduce a woman not my wife.”

He waited for Father Cripps’s bland, cheerful voice offering to absolve him. He was the priest scheduled to hear confessions. Instead, he heard a clear, fierce tenor, a voice not bothering to whisper, and full of righteous anger: “Black or white?”

“Father Dennen?” Christ, why couldn’t that damned priest keep to his schedule? Sam wanted to bolt from the confessional box. But he was trapped—Father Dennen had surely recognized his voice already.

“Father Cripps is ill—never mind. Black or white?”

“Father?”

“The woman!”

“Black.”

“Have you been back to her?”

Sam tried to swallow, but his throat suddenly felt constricted, dry. He could not clear it to speak.

“Have you been back to her?” Father Dennen repeated.

“Of course not. I didn’t mean to go the first time.”

“Of course not.”