“But, Nick . . . that doesn’t matter now, does it? As long as we’re going away together?”

“When?” I jerked on my boots. “You can’t name no definite date, can you?”

“Well—” She bit her lip. “I see what you mean, dear.”

“Might be a year or two,” I said. “But even if it was only six months, I better be in office. Makes it a lot easier to wrap up any of them loose ends you mentioned than it would if I was just an ordinary citizen.”

I finished dressing, and she let me out the back door.

I went back the way I’d come, down to the river, then up the river bank. And of course I didn’t keep my fishing pole with me.

I came up on the far side of the Negro section, dirtyin’ myself with some charcoal from the fire. Then, I mingled in with the crowd, beating at the flames with a wet towsack that someone had dropped.

Actually, there wasn’t a whole lot of damage; maybe a total of six or seven burned shacks. What with the recent rain and no wind, the fire was slow in starting and it didn’t have a chance to spread far before it was discovered.

I started telling some colored folks what to do, working right along with them. Then, I stood back for a minute, wiping the sweat from my eyes, and someone tapped me on the shoulder.

It was Robert Lee Jefferson, and he looked about as stern as I’d ever seen him.

“God-dang, ain’t this something, Robert Lee?” I said. “No telling what might have happened if I hadn’t been right here Johnny-on-the-spot when the fire broke out.”

“Come along,” he said.

“Why, thanks, Robert Lee,” I said, “but I don’t rightly think I can. This fire—”

“The fire is fully under control. It was under control long before you got here. Now, come along.”

I climbed into his carriage with him. We drove to his store, and there were other carriages and buggies and horses tied up outside, and there were maybe a half a dozen men waiting on the sidewalk. Important citizens like Mr. Dinwiddie, the bank president, and Zeke Carlton, who owned the cotton gin, and Stonewall Jackson Smith, the school superintendent, and Samuel Houston Taylor, who owned Taylor’s Emporium, Furniture and Undertaking.

We all went inside. We sat down in Robert Lee’s office, or I should say, everybody but me sat down. Because there just wasn’t no place for me to sit.

Zeke Carlton started the meeting by slamming his fists down on the desk and asking just what the hell kind of county were we running. “Do you know what can come of a thing like this tonight, Nick? Do you know what happens when a bunch of poor helpless niggers get burned out?”

“I got a pretty good idea,” I said. “All the colored folks get scared, and maybe they ain’t around when it comes cotton-pickin’ time.”