“Get Carter Peamon. They’ll listen to one of their own people.”

MacRae ordered Kenan to haul the gun to Ninth and Nixon. Meanwhile, he rounded up a contingent of infantry and Naval Reserves and double-timed them over to Nixon Street to put them between the black mob and downtown. Rountree located Carter Peamon, a ward boss, and fetched him over to the trouble spot.

Kenan unlimbered the gun and stood, once more, facing a mob. His dream washed over him in vivid color—the crowding faces, the reaching hands, the astonished eyes of old comrades—and his stomach went queer. He was sure that this time he would have to fire. The day was going on too long. Everybody was pressing too hard. Too much damage had already been done. Men were dying, and others were resigned to dying. He wished somebody would quiet those damned bells.

He forced himself to take deep breaths. The air was full of sun, and the brass receiver was warm under his hand. His men were more nervous this time. Up the street, shotguns and rifles poked out of the mob. The Negroes had positioned riflemen in the second-floor windows of the corner houses to make a crossfire. He elevated the gun—he would rake the windows first.

Kenan watched the delegation of three whites and Carter Peamon approach the mob, trying to make peace.

“Mr. Peamon,” Ivanhoe Grant said. He slipped out of the crowd, his dove-gray suit still creased and immaculate despite all he’d been through today.

“Reverend? This your party?”

“It’s no party, brother. This is the future.”

Men behind him muttered approval. A few of them raised their fists. In some of the fists were rifles.

One of the whites, a business associate of MacRae’s named Heiskel Gouvenier, said, “Gentlemen, don’t you think there’s been enough trouble for one day?”

“Trouble? Trouble hasn’t even started yet,” Grant said innocently.

“I don’t believe I know you,” Gouvenier said, squinting at him. He’d been told to look out for a light-skinned preacher, thought to be Manly in disguise.

Ivanhoe Grant mugged like a minstrel. “Don’t you recognize me, white man? Don’t you know me at all?”

“I said I don’t. Now, look—”

“I’m the fly in the ointment, white man. The bogeyman in your fairy tale.”

“You tell him, preacher!”

Grant put his face up close to Gouvenier’s. “I am the spy in the land of Pharaoh.”

“Now, there’s no reason to start—”

Grant stuck a finger in his face. “We’re not starting anything. We aim to finish a few things, though.” With that, Grant waved his arm, and several young men behind him grabbed the white men roughly and pinned their arms behind their backs. Tom Miller bound their hands with baling twine.

“What do we do with him?” Miller asked. They had Peamon by the elbows, but nobody dared tie him.