Sam pulled his notebook from his back pocket. “You’re the biggest news in this town. Will you talk to me?”

Frank said, “This a bad idea, Alex.”

“Come on upstairs with me,” Alex said, buttoning his shirt.

As he led Sam up a bare pine staircase into the main office of the Record, Sam watched him—how he smiled at his own thoughts, how he moved, how he held his head—and thought of the words he would use to describe him in print: lithe, articulate, cultured, handsome, charming, inscrutable. He couldn’t help smiling. Those were the same words he might have chosen to describe Gabrielle deRosset Waddell.

Alex Manly spread out back numbers of his newspaper on a broad table across from his printing press. “Go ahead, read,” he urged. Sam admired the bold flag across the top of the front page: The Daily Record—the latest news, price two cent, 25 cents per month.

He glanced at the front page: “New York—Major Taylor, colored, today became the cycling wonder by beating Jimmie Michael and smashing all world’s records.”

The stories were set in narrow, lined columns, just like the Messenger’s, with modest headlines. There was news about the Cuban war—a story about a colored regiment coming home to medals and ticker tape for its part in the charge up San Juan Hill.

On page two, there were rhyming poems about friendship and nature, along with an advertisement for The Walker Taylor Insurance Agency: “Walker Taylor—He protects your interest in case of loss—Fire Insurance! Accident Insurance!”

There were also testimonials for Biddle University, “the leading institution in the South for the Higher Education of the Colored Race, exclusively for males.”

“See?” Alex Manly said quietly. “We’re just a hometown paper. A hometown within a hometown, you might say. I’m no Nat Turner.”

Sam shifted from foot to foot. From across the room, where she stood sorting papers, Saffron watched him with amusement. She reached down and scratched an itch on her leg, raising the hem of her dress high. Sam admired her smooth brown leg, wondering if she’d showed it off deliberately. He said, “The editorial.”

Alex swore. “That’s all anybody knows about this paper. And what they know is taken out of context. Here.” He handed Sam a copy of the complete editorial. “May as well get it right.”

“I’ve seen it. Mike Dowling has sworn to kill you.”

“Mike which?” Frank Manly said. He’d followed them upstairs. Sam hadn’t heard him this time, either.

“That Red Shirt fellow.”

“Bocra,” Frank said.

“What?”

“White nigger,” Alex said coolly.

Sam nodded—poor-bocker, Waddell’s word on the train. Add arrogant to the description of Alex Manly, he thought. “What do you plan to do?”

Frank said, “What he got to be doing something for? Can’t he just be?”

“It’s all the same to me,” Sam said. “I just came to hear your story.”