He had to win on Tuesday. Had to keep the lid on somehow. No violence—there must absolutely be no violence. It was no longer necessary. It wouldn’t be legal.

He locked his office door and went outside. The narrow streets looked broad, so empty. He walked home right down the center of the street. Business could wait until morning.

Chapter Twelve

From the pulpits of North Carolina the doctrine of white supremacy was preached in the same breath with the story of Christ’s love.

C H A P T E R   T W E L V E

Monday, November 7

WHY SHE WENT SEEKING him out, she couldn’t explain. Not to herself, certainly not to her husband. Ivanhoe Grant had humiliated her, but what Gray Ellen wanted was not revenge. She wanted to understand. In Waddell’s speech, she had glimpsed something profoundly ugly, something completely outside her experience. Until she understood it, she would have no idea what to do next.

She went looking for Grant at the boardinghouse where he’d cornered her that day as he toured her through the slums. The neighborhood was alive with the sounds of people, their smells, their chatter, the noise and clutter of their lives. Shirts snapped on laundry lines. Somebody was hammering a nail. Water was running out of a pump. Children shrieked. Two women laughed and slapped their fat thighs. A skinny dog yipped after a creaky peddler’s cart. A spoon clanged against a pot. A door slammed.

Rain was predicted. As she walked, she felt somehow safer with her umbrella in her hand.

She let herself in the front door, which wobbled on rusty hinges. Inside were a dim hallway and a rickety staircase. The place smelled of rotten wood and mildew. She sneezed in the dust-hazy air. On the second floor, she listened at a closed door: shoes scraping the floor, fingers tapping, a man clearing his throat. She knocked. The door wasn’t closed properly, and it sprang open and banged against the wall like a gunshot. A man in the chair by the window, working at a small desk, jerked his head around, terrified.

“Reverend Grant,” she said, startled breathless herself, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He remained alert as prey, blue eyes focused on her. Something was different about him—the spectacles. She had never seen him wearing spectacles. They made him look bookish and shy. His right hand held a pencil. Before him on the desk lay a tablet of lined pages. He didn’t get up. The room was tiny—a narrow, unmade bed, a night table and basin, a dirty brown carpet, and the little desk by the window. A breeze fluttered the papers.

“Close the door, schoolteacher, before I lose all my work.”

She did as she was told. “What are you doing?” she said.