Luther gestured up Tremont with his head and Old Byron fell into step as they walked toward Scollay Square and away from the Giddreauxs’ and the South End. It was slow going, the crowd thickening by the minute.

“Ain’t dead,” Luther said. “Just in Boston.”

Old Byron said, “What brings these folks out like this?”

“Police just walked off the job.”

“Hush your mouth.”

“They did,” Luther said.

“I read they might,” Old Byron said, “but I never would have believed it. This going to be bad for our folk, Luther?”

Luther shook his head. “I don’t think. Ain’t a lot of lynching up here, but you never know what’ll happen someone forgets to chain the dog.”

“Even the quietest dog, right?”

“Them most of all.” Luther smiled. “What brought you all the way up here, Byron?”

“Brother,” Old Byron said. “Got the cancer. Eating him alive.”

Luther looked over at him, saw the weight of it pulling his shoulders down.

“He got a chance?”

Old Byron shook his head. “It’s in his bones.”

Luther put a hand on the old man’s back. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, son.”

“He in hospital?”

Old Byron shook his head. “Home.” He jerked a thumb off to his left. “West End.”

“You his only kin?”

“Got a sister. She in Texarkana. She too frail to travel.”

Luther didn’t know what else to say so he said “I’m sorry” again, and Old Byron shrugged.

“What you gone do, am I right?”

Off to their left someone screamed and Luther saw a woman with a bloody nose, her face clenched, as if expecting another punch from the man who ripped her necklace off and then ran toward the Common. Someone laughed. A kid shimmied up a streetlamp pole, pulled a hammer from his belt, and smashed the lamp.

“This getting thick with ugly,” Old Byron said.

“Yeah, it is.” Luther thought of turning around, since most of the crowd seemed to be moving toward Court Square and then Scollay Square beyond, but when he looked behind him, he couldn’t see any space. All he could see were shoulders and heads, a pack of drunk sailors in the mix now, red-eyed and pimple-faced. A moving wall, pushing them forward. Luther felt bad for leading Old Byron into this, for suspecting him, if only for a moment, of being anything but an old man who was losing his brother. He craned his neck above the crowd to see if he could find a way out for them, and just ahead, at the corner of City Hall Avenue, a group of men hurled rocks into the window of Big Chief’s Cigar Store, the sound of it like a half dozen rifle reports. The plate glass broke into fins that hung in place for a moment, creaking in the moist breeze, and then they dropped.

A piece of glass ricocheted into a small guy’s eye and he had time to reach for it before the crowd swarmed over him and into the cigar store. Those who couldn’t make it inside broke the window next door, this one to a bakery, and loaves of bread and cupcakes sailed overhead and fell into the midst of the mob.