“See what I mean about white reporters?” Frank said. “They out to nail your ass to the barn.” He was angry—nobody ever took him seriously until it was too late. Especially Alex. Frank had rallied the other men just in time, or they might all be swinging from lampposts. “When things settle down, I be hunting a Sam Jenks for my trophy wall.”

Saffron slid to the floor next to the men while they gulped lemonade. They’d been up here in the heat for two hours.

“Now you’re talking Tom Miller’s trash,” Alex said. “We only need one like that.”

“We best not be here next time they come.”

“Next time?”

“Bank on it, brother.”

“Why do you think they stopped at the last minute like that?”

Frank finished his drink and clunked the glass down on the floor next to his leg. “Didn’t like the odds, I guess. Who knows what’s on whitefolks’ minds? Maybe nothing. Maybe just a hum like a ‘lectric turbine.”

The white mob had all but disappeared, the stragglers hurrying not to be left behind. The Negro men around the building relaxed and joshed. Some drifted home.

Alex Manly watched one figure emerge from the cover of a board fence and stand watching up Seventh Street after the retreating Red Shirts. He was a tall, lean man dressed in a gray suit. In the yellow lamplight, his face and hands fairly glowed. “Who is that fellow? Don’t believe I’ve ever seen him around here before.”

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.”