“Oh, dear! And I told Miss Jamison that she didn’t need to worry!” Bessie reported what she had said, lamenting, “Now she’ll let her guard down!”

“No, she won’t,” Liz comforted her. “Sally-Lou is over there, paying a little visit to her auntie DessaRae. She’ll—”

“Hush,” Verna said, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “I think I hear something. Bessie, let’s turn out the lights and go out on the porch. But we need to be quiet. It might not be happening just yet.”

“What might not be happening?” Bessie asked.

“You’ll see,” Liz said.

Bessie flicked the light switch and, moving silently, the three of them went out onto the porch. The night air, still warm from the heat of the day, was rich with the sound of cicadas and tree frogs. The moon had not yet risen and the sky was nearly full dark, the street darker yet under the overhanging trees. There were lights in the neighbors’ parlors and kitchens, and one house had a porch light. Across the street, Miss Hamer’s house spilled a block of light from the kitchen window, and there was a dimmer light upstairs.

They all stood quietly for a little while, for three minutes, maybe four. Bessie was just about to suggest that they go back inside and play a hand or two while they waited, when she saw a hunched-over shadow, heavy and bulky, moving slowly, creeping along the side of the house near the kitchen window. The shadow wore a hat.

She gasped and grabbed Verna’s arm. “Look there!” she squeaked. “It’s . . . it’s—him!”

“Bessie’s right, Verna,” Liz said excitedly. “Shouldn’t we go over there? What if Miss Jamison is in the kitchen, and he manages to get a shot through the window before—”

“Hang on a sec,” Verna said in a low voice. “Leave it to—”

Suddenly there was a shrill whistle. “Drop the gun, Diamond!” Buddy Norris shouted from behind the oak tree in Miss Hamer’s yard. “Hands against the wall! Now!” A glaring light spotlighted the shadowed figure and it froze, arm extended. Bessie could see that Frankie Diamond was holding a gun.

“Drop it, I said!” Buddy Norris shouted, but the figure didn’t move.

And then from inside the house came a sudden loud clanging, somebody banging on a big metal pot with a metal spoon—several somebodies, several pots, louder and faster, faster and louder, strangely syncopated. Then to this accompaniment they heard a wild, weird, wordless, otherworldly wailing that Bessie recognized from old African slave songs, passionate reverberations at the gates of the underworld. And then Miss Hamer’s shrill screeches split the air in a bloodcurdling, bone-shivering, banshee crescendo. It was, unmistakably, a Rebel yell.

It was the Rebel yell that toppled Frankie Diamond—and no wonder, for it was the same yell that had scared the pants off every Union soldier when he heard it through the trees or over a stone wall. Diamond dropped the gun and fell to his knees, covering his head with his arms, cowering.