“I got a pistol!” Albert cried, ashamed of the fear in his voice. If he fired now, the muzzle flash or the ricocheting bullet was as likely to set off the fumes as a struck match. “Please!” he begged. “Why ya’ll want to ruin my store? What I ever done to you fellas?”

A pickup truck passed on the street outside, and in its reflected headlights Albert recognized the faces of the two men in the window. One was Snake Knox, the brother of Frank, the Klansman who’d visited the store that afternoon. The other was Brody Royal. The third man remained in shadow. Dear Jesus … These were serious men. They made the regular Ku Klux Klan look like circus clowns. Albert had managed to keep off the wrong side of men like this all his life. He’d bowed and scraped when necessary. He’d ignored the flirtations of their women, greased the right palms, and given gifts of service and merchandise. But now … now they wanted the life of a boy who was guilty of nothing but being young and ignorant.

“Mr. Brody, you knows me,” Albert said with absurd reasonableness. “Please, now … I done told you this afternoon, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout your daughter getting up to anything.” This lie sounded hollow even to him, but the truth would be worse: Mr. Royal, your little girl’s got a willful streak and she’d hump that black boy right in front of you if he’d let her. “Please now, Mr. Royal,” he pleaded. “Why, I’ve got your own church organ up in here, fixing it.”

“Shut up!” snapped the shadow man. “Tell us where that young buck is right this minute, or you die. Make your choice.”

“I don’t know!” Albert cried. “I swear! But I do know that boy didn’t mean no harm.”

Brody Royal dropped his gas can on the floor and walked up to Albert. “Cur dogs don’t mean any harm, either, but they’ll impregnate your prize bitch if they can get close to her.”

“He ain’t gonna tell us nothin’,” Snake Knox said. “Let’s finish the job.”

“I thought you were a businessman, Norris,” Royal said, his eyes seeming to glow in the pale, angular face. “But I guess in the end, even the best nigra’s gonna be a nigger one day a week. Let’s go, boys.”