I couldn’t tell what Kennedy was saying to him, but Danny looked down at her face, completely focused on her. One of the demonstrators had forgotten herself enough to get an “Awww” expression on her face, but she snapped out of her lapse into humanity and brandished her sign again.

“Animals go! People stay! We want Congress to show the way!” one of the older demonstrators, a man with a lot of white hair, shouted as I opened the door and stepped out.

“Kevin, get them out of here!” I called. Kevin, whose thin, pale face was creased into unhappy lines, was trying to shepherd the little crowd out of the parking lot.

“Mr. Barlowe,” Kevin said to the white-haired man, “what you’re doing is illegal, and I could put you in jail. I really don’t want to have to do that.”

“We’re willing to be arrested for our beliefs,” the man said. “Isn’t that so, you-all?”

Some of the church members didn’t look entirely certain of that.

“Maybe you are,” Kenya said, “but we got Jane Bodehouse in one of the cells now. She’s coming off a bender, and she’s throwing up about every five minutes. Believe me, people, you do not want to be in there with Jane.”

The woman who’d originally come into Merlotte’s turned a little green.

“This is private property,” Kevin said. “You cannot demonstrate here. If you don’t clear this parking lot in three minutes, all of you are under arrest.”

It was more like five minutes, but the parking lot was clear of demonstrators when Sam joined us in the parking lot to thank Kevin and Kenya. Since I hadn’t seen his truck drive up, his appearance was quite a surprise.

“When did you get back?” I asked.

“Less than ten minutes ago,” he said. “I knew if I showed myself, they’d just get pumped up again, so I parked on School Street and walked through the back way.”

“Smart,” I said. The lunch crowd was leaving Merlotte’s, and the incident was already on the track to becoming a local legend. Only one or two of the patrons seemed upset; the rest regarded the demonstration as good entertainment. Catfish Hennessy clapped Sam on the shoulder as he went by, and he wasn’t the only one who made an extra effort to show support. I wondered how long the tolerant attitude would last. If the picketers kept it up, a lot of people might decide that coming here simply wasn’t worth the trouble.