“There are seven articles, altogether,” MacRae explained. “I wrote it myself.”

Dowling was still puzzled. “What is it?”

MacRae said, “We call it the White Man’s Declaration of Independence.”

“What good will it do?”

MacRae rose from his chair. The interview was over. “Go home, Mike. You’re twenty-four hours early.”

Sam Jenks had spent a restless night.

He’d stayed out late at Poison’s Saloon watching Harry get drunk and listening to stories from the old days, when the Klan rode in gangs along country lanes and pregnant slaves were whipped lying belly-down in depressions scooped into the earth, to protect their unborn babies—the masters’ property. Harry was full of grisly plantation tales.

Sam experienced an attack of clarity at Polson’s, and he craved a long whiskey to sluice away his guilt and blur the outlines of the life he could see forming itself out of his present actions. But he didn’t drink. He watched other men drink themselves stuporous and patiently waited for Harry to run out of stories.

Sometime after midnight, in between thundershowers, Sam had managed to get him home. “Thought you’d dried yourself out,” he said, knowing Harry couldn’t hear him. Harry looked ridiculously old in the dim lamplight, face creased and drawn around the eyes, yet slack around the mouth and jowly from whiskey fat. He was just an old ghost now, fading away. And nobody was even watching, except Sam, who didn’t want to look.

When Sam had arrived home, Gray Ellen was already asleep. He climbed into bed next to her. Her scent was overpowering—perspiration and perfume.

He had needed to talk to her, to caress her and feel her settle the world back into balance. He wanted to tell her everything he’d seen, explain to her all his conflicting instincts. She was his one fixed point.

Instead, he stared at the ceiling shadows. During the night, the thunder came and went, brooding over the town. Before dawn, it rained hard. He listened to it drumming on the roof. From time to time, the wind flung the rain against the window like handfuls of bird shot. His dreams were like broken glass—jumbled shards of images with edges that cut.

He woke up exhausted.

Gray Ellen was already downstairs sipping hot tea. He stole up behind her as she stared out the window, seeming as distant as if they had never met. He stood for almost a minute, unable to make himself speak to her.

“Don’t stand there all morning,” she said quietly, still looking out the window. “Come sit down. There’s biscuits on the stove. I can fry up some eggs.”

“I’m not very hungry.” His stomach was full of acid.

“Suit yourself.”

“No school today?”

“Of course there isn’t.” She, too, had slept badly, and she didn’t have the strength to talk about the things that, sooner or later, they must talk about. Sam was sober—that was a good thing. She refused to be the one to give him the excuse to take a drink.