I thought we in Annadel was better than that and we ought to go our own way. Rondal’s warning raised fear in me. We had to prepare ourselves. I told Doc Booker. He brought it before the town council and we voted to put a few more men on the police force, but that was all we done.

I tried to reason with Isom, so he would talk his daddy out of his crooked dealings. He wouldn’t listen.

“Them coal operators aint angels, C.J.,” he said. “You got to reckon with it. They’s socialists in England and Russia and the Sahara Desert for all I know, and they all get together and talk. But that dont mean a diddly-squat in Justice County. Aint nobody pays us no mind. We got to do for ourselves.”

Sometimes I thought we was saying the same things but not matching up. Isom, he never lost no land. He aint had kinfolks killed. He thinks he can do anything and get away with it. He is his daddy’s boy.

After the club got going, I tried to get Talcott Lloyd to join. We set on his front porch at Felco one warm Saturday evening and ate a fresh huckleberry pie sent down by Pricie’s mother. Talcott is touchy where Ermel and Annadel is concerned. He suspects that they send Pricie money, and resents it, but when fried chicken shows up on the supper table, he don’t have the gumption to ask where it come from. By his own lights, he tries to pay Ermel back by doing work around the farm some Sundays and by going hunting with Isom. Him and Isom is both crack shots and they sure bring home the critters. Isom sends me squirrel meat about oncet a week. I’ll take squirrel over a chicken leg any day.

That evening, Pricie come out on the front porch, one baby holding to her hand and the other riding up on her hip. The younguns’ mouths was smeared blue with huckleberries.

“We’re goin to Gloria’s,” she said.

“Aint you better clean up them younguns before you take them out of here?”

“I run out of water. We’ll stop down at the pump.”

“Dont you stay gone all night.”

“I dont never, do I?”

They walked barefoot across the red dog, walked as straight and steady as if they’d had on shoes. Folks in the camps, their feet bottoms gets tough as hide.

I told Talcott about the club.

“Why’d I want to come to somethin like that?” he said. “I aint got no education.”

“You dont need no education. Sam Gore belongs and he aint got no education.”

“Yeah, but he’s a nigger.”

“Lookee here, we talk about what’s happenin in the world. Anybody can have an opinion.”

“Opinion? Sure, I got lots of opinions. So what?”

“You ought to be able to say what they are. You ought to hear what other fellers thinks.”