Tom closed his mouth and tried to hold the fury down. It was white-hot inside him.

“Okay,” Masters said, “the next possibility is that we go on exactly like we have been. No worse, no better. Then maybe two months from now, when everybody sees it isn’t working and can’t work—but those people in Washington won’t cancel the ruling—maybe the Governor steps in and closes the school. Or the other way: if there is a flare-up in fighting, or what have you, he sends state troops. So then we got the town full of soldiers. Or even this, and don’t think it isn’t possible, because it is. Plenty stranger things have happened. These boys with the citizens’ councils might just decide to tear up the school for good.

“Well, I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning. I’m for law and order. Right or wrong—and it’s wrong; we all know that—we’ve been given a ruling and it’s our duty to try to carry it out. Okay. But it isn’t a black and white problem, and I don’t mean that as a joke. It isn’t cut and dried. Because we have got to think now not only about how we feel, but about our children’s education and maybe even their lives!”

Dave Masters paused, and glared at Tom.

“You see,” he went on, “even if there was a chance this business of forcing integration down our throats like a big horse pill could work, it would still mean that our kids would suffer. The government has got the right to try an experiment to see whether it’s going to fail, and in theory I’m for that. I really am. In practice, though, since we know the thing’s bound to fizzle out and end worse than it ever was, I wonder if it’s right for us to sit and watch and do nothing.

“If our children don’t get killed, they’ll be wasting their time at school, and I don’t think much of either way. I figure, let somebody else pay for the mistake: not my Judy.

“That’s why I’m withdrawing her from school, and that’s why we’re moving away. If enough of us do that, maybe they’ll get the point. If not,” Masters cleared his throat, “we may be headed for a second Civil War.”

There was applause and the people gathered around the speaker, and Tom wanted very much to grab his friend’s lapels and scream the truth at him; but his anger had become something else, something that did not spread anxious strength through him but instead drained this strength and left him with a feeling of sadness.

He took his wife’s hand and left the hall.