She watches the hands on the clock across the street, and they don’t move. It’s as if time is going to grind to a halt at midnight and then, with a great gnashing of celestial gears, begin to move backward.

“Did I tell you that I ran into Alex Manly on the street this morning?”

She has heard he moved to Philadelphia. So have many other Wilmington Negroes—they’ve formed a club they call the Sons of Liberty.

“Got a job as a painter—passing himself off as Irish.”

She doesn’t answer. She never wants to talk about that time again. She wants it to remain a hole in their life. To talk about it is to bring it all back, and all the bad luck with it. The dress is lovely. The woman who made it is a lovely memory. If Gray Ellen’s life goes as she hopes it will, she will never see her again.

Sam realizes he shouldn’t have said anything. She is at peace now—leave her be. He had a letter from Harry last week that he hasn’t told her about, the first letter since they left. Mike Dowling is now a captain in the fire department. George Rountree is an important man in the legislature. Hugh MacRae keeps getting richer. Wilmington is a one-party town.

According to Harry, by the time it was all over, a thousand Negroes fled the county, most of them skilled workers and professionals. A thousand people, Sam reflects—one for every armed man who helped take the city. Where were the other seven thousand whites? Couldn’t they stand up to the minority with guns?

In the year since the uprising, Wilmington has been struck by a blizzard and two hurricanes. Business is stagnant—nobody is investing. The bottom has dropped out of cotton. Wooden ships are rotting at their moorings, waiting for cargo.

But Sam can’t help feeling it is not over. Harry said it—you have to forgive a city, if it is your city. Sam longs to go back there. He didn’t realize until he left, but somehow it is his city now. Part of him remains there. It will always be there, urging him to do better, to live up to a wife who believes in grace.

He misses the racket of the wharf, the opal sky, even the oyster-shell dust. Someday, he must go back. It will be different. A year from now, ten years, twenty. He will return and claim it.

Meanwhile, you’ve got to be where you live.

John Norwood went back, Harry wrote. Sam wishes he knew Norwood better. It’s always the quiet ones who make the lasting difference. You can charge around, make speeches, shoot guns, but in the end, it’s the quiet ones.