“A pretty big nothing.”

“What exactly are you saying? Are you with me, or not?” He cocked his head and squinted one eye, as if he were sighting over a rifle. “I don’t like your tone.”

“A man was shot,” Sam said. And Alex Manly soon would be, he thought—if he were stupid enough to still be in town.

“We don’t know that.”

“The blood.”

“He rabbited right out the back window, though, didn’t he? Pretty damned spry for a dead darky.”

Sam hadn’t meant to bully Waddell with his own guilty conscience. “You’re right—what’s done is done. But what happens now?”

Hugh MacRae shouldered his way into the kitchen next to Sam. “My question exactly,” he said.

Waddell smiled, taking control again. MacRae wondered how he’d ever managed to get control in the first place. Now, he owned the mob.

Waddell said quietly, “I think we’re about due for a meeting of the aldermen—say, this afternoon? Meantime, I’m going home to wash up properly.”

Sam gathered his notes and went to the Messenger office, where he typed up the story of what he’d seen. What, exactly, was the story? There were lots of stories. It depended on your point of view. White men calling a halt to Negro domination. A judgment of fire to satisfy the honor of white women all over the Old North State. That was one story. Waddell’s heroic version.

That’s how he wrote it. It would have been easier to do it with a drink.

Tired but in high spirits, Waddell retired to his home, where Bessie had just brought in the mail. Among the bills and correspondence was a broad envelope addressed to him and bearing the carefully penned notation, “Please deliver at House.” He knifed it open and read it quickly, smiled, and folded it into the outside pocket of his clawhammer coat. It changed nothing.

Meta Rountree clambered up the stairs and banged open the bedroom door. “George! George, get up!”

George Rountree opened his eyes and jerked his head off the pillow. He felt the cold thrill of calamity in his heart. “What?” he stammered. “What is it?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said, already laying his suit and a clean, boiled shirt across the arm of a chair. “Something’s happening downtown. Gunshots. The whole north side is burning. The Negroes are in a riot!”

He regarded her stupidly, trying to clear the sand out of his burning eyes. “How—?”

“Chadbourn called on the telephone.” The postmaster. “Come on, get up—get up!”

Rountree struggled into his clothes, then went into the indoor privy to urinate and splash water on his face. There was no time to shave. He burst out the door onto Front Street and jogged the three blocks to the post office, arriving out of breath. His old friend W. H. Chadbourn met him on the steps.