Frank bestirred himself for a look out the window. He thought, there he is down on the street, acting like he owns the neighborhood. “That’s trouble,” Frank said. “That’s that goddamn preacher man, Ivanhoe Grant.”

“Why trouble?”

“Man preach, but he don’t preach in church. Skulk around behind the scenes, talking the talk, playing the tune.”

Saffron said, “That’s right. Preacher come around here while you were up north. Full of words, talking the talk.”

Frank said, “Preacher be a shadow man. Inside man.”

As Alex watched, Grant turned their way and stood gazing up at the window, his face caught full in the lamplight. “Amazing,” Alex muttered, “truly remarkable.”

“What?”

“Man looks just like me.”

In the morning, Sam found Clawson in his office early, pencil in hand, poring over copy of the previous night’s near-riot. He slashed away at sentences, cut whole paragraphs, inserted new details.

“You took a hatchet to my story,” Sam said.

Clawson didn’t look up. “All I did was punch it up. I’m an editor—haven’t you read the masthead?”

“You have an obligation to the truth.”

Clawson slapped the pencil onto his desk and stood up. “I have an obligation to sell newspapers.”

“You’re a professional.”

“You want truth? Go to church.” Clawson opened and slammed a file drawer, then hollered for a copyboy. “We all do things we don’t like. That’s how things get done.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask your cousin. Meantime, write me a story I can use.”

Part II: The Compaign

P A R T   II

T H E   C A M P A I G N

Chapter Six

It was determined that this city and county should be redeemed.

George Rountree

C H A P T E R   S I X

Thursday, October 6

FOR A WHOLE MONTH, an uneasy surface calm prevailed. Whites and blacks went about their business warily, avoiding open confrontation.

It was as if the town had rushed headlong to the brink, stared into the chasm, and pulled back. Something irreparable had almost happened. Nobody had lynched a black man in Wilmington in fifteen years, yet now, on the verge of the twentieth century, it had almost come true. It scared them sober. For a short time, merchants were more civil, preachers less strident, agitators less agitated. At Walker Taylor’s urging, Mike Dowling left town to visit relatives across the river.

For a while, Clawson backed off. He ran Sam’s copy with only light editing—just a touch here and there to remind him who was boss. Sam tried hard to tell the truth about things nobody could argue with. The city was quiet, orderly, boring.

But then the incidents began. Small punctures in the social fabric, more and more frequent. Sam started to feel the seams of the town straining, pulling apart. He lay awake at night next to his unhappy wife and fancied he could hear the town stretched tight, tearing slowly, like sun-rotted tent poplin. It made him anxious. Would he be a reliable witness? Would he tell the story? Or would he run for cover, as he had in Cuba? He made up his mind to be braver.