It seemed everyone in the world was running, as though we were all swept along by floodwaters. The men fled pell-mell for the hills, pursued by the policemen and Baldwin guards. An Italian woman wielding a broom tripped one of the gun thugs and he flew headlong into a pile of firewood. The other thugs chased her but she escaped in the maze of tents. I followed them on toward Annadel where they caught another Italian woman, this one pregnant, threw her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly in the belly. I hurled a rock at them. It struck one man on the back and he turned toward me. I threw again and he dodged. Then I ran, and prayed he wouldn’t draw his pistol. From far up the mountain I heard the popping of gunfire.

I reached Annadel in time to see the police toss Dr. Booker into the back of a truck parked in front of the newspaper office. His forehead bled. Isom Justice stood nearby with three rifle barrels pointed at his neck. Shards of broken glass littered the streets like frozen puddles.

I could do nothing except return to the tents and treat those who had been hurt. The Italian woman delivered a stillborn baby and died herself the next morning.

The state police and Baldwin thugs occupied Annadel. They turned Ermel out of the hotel and roomed there. The Free Press office burned to the ground and the FREE ANNADEL signs were tossed onto the fire. They burned several houses as well, including Talcott Lloyd’s. Talcott escaped into the hills and Pricie moved back to the farmhouse with her children.

Pricie asked what martial law meant. Ermel Justice said it meant the police ruled, that we had no more civil liberties.

“Coal miners never had nothing like that,” said Pricie.

“But Annadel did,” her mother said. “Now hit’s gone.”

I listened to them talk in the kitchen while I tended sick people in the front room. They talked mostly of how to get Isom and Albion out of jail. Over four hundred men had been arrested, most with no charge. But Isom and Albion were held for the murder of the Baldwin-Felts guards in May.

At dinnertime they invited me into the kitchen for a bowl of soup. The carrots, cabbage, peas and tomatoes were the first I’d eaten in two months. Beads of fat glistened like jewels in the broth.

“That preacher man of yourn never even toted a gun,” Pricie said. “How can they call that murder? Besides, hit were self-defense. Look what happened to Gladys’s daddy.”

Gladys swirled her spoon aimlessly through her soup.

“Ermel says he’ll git Isom out of jail,” she said. She looked at me. “He’ll git the preacher out too.”

“Damn straight,” Ermel declared. “Ifn it werent for me that there judge would be slopping hogs up Coon Creek. We’ll git them out on bond, and after that, they aint no jury in Justice County would bring in a guilty verdict. Them boys will be back in your beds before long, younguns.”