“Go on now, get!” Arbuckle called toward them. He put his arm around Lady Mae’s slight shoulders and pulled her away from the residents. She went reluctantly, slowly, watching the residents’ eyes follow them as they went up the courthouse steps. She wanted to say something—call it ain’t my fault and it’s them Deputies—and so at the top of the steps she turned toward the noiseless crowd. But then, nothing. For what if she was vile like they said? After all, what of her hands? All those residents’ missing parts—she did that and would do it again. And although her mother had spoken softly didn’t question and all got a choice and forgive as you would your own self, she had hated them, too. She tried to push it away, but there it stayed, blistering and hot.

I know I ain’t supposed to, Mama.

Can’t help what makes you, my girl.

“You okay?” Arbuckle pulled Lady Mae close to him as they approached the wooden doors of the courthouse that were worn by the handles, faded and smoothed from years of use. She leaned in to the smell of his safety. “Just wasn’t expecting that,” she said.

There was a tremor in her voice. She was used to the name-calling—heard it all the time up and down the crescent road. She was used to the stares and curled lips, the flickering eyes. But never had residents come together like that, knitted together by a singular hatred. To them she was loss. She was imprisonment. She was chains and torches and rope. Lady Mae looked up at Arbuckle and in her mind said what if and what have and these hands. Though he already knew what her hands had done, the pity for which Lady Mae saw balanced upon his eyelids.

“How is that allowed?” he asked as he pulled open the wooden door. “I’d think the Deputies would—”

“Ain’t no law against what they’re doing.”

“Ain’t no law? Lady Mae, the other day in the square—what we saw—the man on the scaffold. What was that, then? What law was he breaking?”

“Blasphemy. But the Deputies were involved directly. That, outside just now, that was about me. Just me.”

As the heavy door swung shut behind them Arbuckle said, “That ain’t about you. You ain’t none of those things. No matter what you’ve got to do.”

And though he spoke those words with a soft earnestness, she felt the truth deep in her stomach. “You say that,” she said, “but look at what you think. Think I don’t know.”

“What do I think?”

“That I’m not far off from what all them are saying.”

“No, I—” he began but then fell quiet. A look of deep shame came across his face. “I didn’t mean—look, I don’t think—”

“I know it. Didn’t mean for it to come out like that, but that don’t mean I didn’t mean it.”

“Alright, then,” he said.

They stared at each other without speaking, their gaze broken only by the noise at the far end of the corridor. Where Lady Mae and Arbuckle had themselves entered, the group of mangled men and women were slowly making their way inside. They would sit in the courtroom—along with whomever else showed up—and listen to the proceedings, watch as Arbuckle and Lady Mae took the stand. As the residents moved nearer and nearer in the corridor, Arbuckle grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him as if he alone could protect her. He could not, though, and so she pulled her hand away from his grasp.