Isom lay face down beside Albion in a pool of blood. Gladys knelt over him, her face frozen and contorted. She stared straight ahead, the pink parasol open in front of her like a shield. One of the gunmen, a short man with a long, curled moustache, strolled up. He leaned over, put his gun to the back of Isom’s head. Gladys swung the parasol wildly.

“Dont shoot him again! Please dont shoot him again!”

I pulled Gladys toward me so she wouldn’t see, and the gunman fired. A piece of skull struck me in the face and opened a cut on my cheek. Gladys screamed and struggled against me.

Then Violet Marcum was there. She knelt, gently took Gladys from me and wrapped her arms around her.

“Oh, Mommy, Mommy,” Gladys moaned.

Violet smoothed Gladys’s hair back from her damp forehead and rocked back and forth with her daughter in her arms.

“Where’s Ermel and Annadel?” I asked.

“In the Courthouse. Annadel took a spell and passed out. Ermel’s still with her.” She touched the cut on my cheek with the tip of one finger. “Dont be fretting over them right now. You got to cry too. Go back to yourn and cry.”

I stared at her. For a moment I had thought I might turn from their sorrow to seek comfort from Albion. But he lay still, staring at the sky. I stroked his cheek.

“Please wake up,” I pleaded. “Dont be gone from me.”

The force of the blows he had suffered gave his face a look of anger that had never been upon it in life. I raised his head to my lap. My hand came away wet with blood and I soon felt the dampness soak through to my thigh.

“I love you,” I whispered. “You allays knowed that.”

My throat closed tight and I sobbed. A forest of legs blacked out the light. Strong arms lifted me up. I kicked, struck out with my fists.

“Murderers!” I screamed. “Bastards!”

The men holding me laughed. Two others put a pistol in Albion’s hand and carefully wrapped his limp fingers around it. A man in a blue suit with a camera snapped pictures. Then they took the gun away and left.

Someone leaned over me and said, “God in heaven.”

I looked up into Miles’s ashen face.

“I swear I never knew anything about it,” he said.

“Git away from me.”

“Oh, God, Sis, let me get you away from here. You got blood all over you. There’s nothing can be done for him now.”

“Dont you touch me,” I hissed. “Hit’s you needs doing for. I hope you burn in Hell.”

He stared at me. “I swear—” He stood up. A man in a black suit was with him. “You can’t tell me the Association didn’t know about this,” Miles said.

The man shrugged, looked away. “I suppose Tom Felts didn’t trust the court. He lost both his brothers, you know.”