“You’ve made your mind up too fast. You’re not being fair.”

“The Civil War’s been over for thirty years, Sam. Nobody up north even talks about it. The world has moved on.”

Sam nodded slowly and stroked her head. “All that is beside the point,” he said. “You and me. I just want us to make a life here.”

She fixed her eyes on his. “Oh, Sam,” she said, and lightly touched his cheek.

Father Dennen preached an angry sermon during the late service at St. Thomas’s—the white service. “We all have our place in God’s eyes,” he said. “The brother of whom you are the keeper may have red hair and freckles, like me. Or he may be swarthy, with a flat nose and thick lips. But every man’s soul is the same color as the Lord God who made him.”

At the door of St. Thomas’s, an uninspired brick-and-frame building on Dock Street, Father Dennen greeted his congregants as they filed out after the late mass. Some shook his hand heartily and blessed him for a sensible sermon in dangerous times. But others pushed out roughly past him, deliberately snubbing the priest.

Sam shook Father Dennen’s hand. He was much taller than the priest, but he could feel the raw strength in the man’s handshake. Maybe that comes with having the courage of your convictions, Sam reflected. “Good sermon, Father,” Sam said, eager to get on with the day he and Gray Ellen had planned. “We all needed to hear it.”

Father Dennen held onto Sam’s hand, then clapped his left hand behind Sam’s elbow, pinching it. “You’re Jenks.”

“Yes, Father. Call me Sam.”

“Well, Sam, I don’t know what you’re stirring up trouble for, but if I was you, I’d meditate on my immortal soul.”

“Father?” Sam tried to pull his hand away, but the priest wasn’t letting go. He was squeezing, pinching harder, as if this were some kind of contest. Other parishioners were backed up in the doorway, like cattle jammed in a chute. They wanted out.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Chicago, Father. But—”

“I been to cities. I see what you’re up to. But let me tell you, it won’t do here.”

“What’s wrong, Father?” Gray Ellen asked. Sam felt rescued.

“I understand you went to see Alex Manly,” Father Dennen said quietly. “Leave him be. He’s working for his people. Trying to keep his head down, do you see? There’s no call to be trumpeting his good name all over your newspaper. Let Tom Clawson do his own dirty work.”

Suddenly, Sam understood: the piece about Manly, back in business at Free Love Hall. He’d naturally expected it wouldn’t run until Monday. “Have you got a copy?”

The priest unbuttoned his cassock above the waist, reached in, and produced a ragged copy of Saturday’s Messenger. “Jenks, you complicate the work of the church militant.”