You’ll send me off to school tomorrow, Joey thought, and if I come home with my throat cut, you’ll be sorry but you won’t let up, you won’t stop fighting. Nothing changes, Ma, he tried to say, and couldn’t. There’s a big white wall between you and what you want, always has been, always will be. You can beat your head against it, but that wall won’t crack.

“Would you get me a glass of milk?” Charlotte Green asked.

Joey rose and poured the milk and watched his mother drink it. She looked very small and frail to him, not like the leader of an army.

He lay down on the couch by the window again. Uncle Rowan, he remembered, had gone into the bathroom when the cars appeared. The door was locked, the old man still inside. Joey could picture him, sitting on the toilet, hands folded, certain that this night would be his last.

Well, let it come; that’s all I wish now, let it come and be over with! he prayed.

The automobiles were silent, neatly parked along the side of the road, hand brakes firmly on. The hooded men were walking up the hill, but no one spoke: there was a quiet, priestly slowness to their movements, as if each was thinking, It’s too bad we’ve got to do this, but it must be done. It must be done, and no one else has got the strength or courage: we are forced to show our steel! They walked along the rutted path.

The hill grew steeper, brush and rocks appeared.

The path became invisible.

Inside his chest, the heart of David Parkinson beat quickly. Climbing, and the sharp excitements that had pierced him from the time he’d first picked up the telephone and organized the meeting, drained his strength: but none could see this. He had not walked so straight and sure for years.

When, finally, they reached the small plateau atop the hill, he could not breathe! The pains were fists about his throat. But he was glad of them, and fiercely proud.

He raised his hand.

Six men came forward, lifted up the heavy wooden cross and set it down with care.

It had been made by the Reverend Lorenzo Niesen. He’d gone to the McGraw Lumber Company and purchased, with the money given to him by the young man, Adam Cramer, six long planks. A buzz saw had cut them to the proper size. He’d worked on them with nails and braces then until they were quite solid. Then he’d gone to the back of the department store and found the paper-wrapped excelsior that is used in shipping to protect furniture, and wired this material to all sides of the cross.

It was the finest, best-constructed cross, the men admitted, that anyone had seen for years.