“So what?” Carey said pleasantly. “We’re just having us a little old meeting. Tell Ollie he’s too late, though: we just about all cleaned up. Ain’t we?”

Adam nodded.

Joan limped back into the main dining room. The people began milling about, some left, others turned to their bottles of Dr. Pepper.

“Don’t feel bad,” Dongen said, putting his hand around Adam’s neck. “The dynamite just speeded things up a speck.”

“I don’t—”

“Not that I approve, good God, no. But the thing is, whoever done it just saved us some work.”

“We got to thank you,” Carey said, and Adam thought he saw the man wink at Dongen. “You put the strength in our arms, boy.” He turned and yelled, “Three cheers for Adam Cramer! Three cheers for the man who showed us the light and rid our town of the pestilence!”

There was applause, and laughter.

Someone muttered, “Hope they want to fight . . .”

Another answered: “They too scared. But if they do, I guess we’re ready, don’t you guess?”

Adam nodded to Carey and said, “The next meeting will be announced in the paper.”

“Okay, but just see you stick around.” The man grinned. “We got to have you here in case they might be more trouble. And there’s that little business of ten thousand dollars setting in Rudy’s desk, too, don’t forget that!”

Adam shook hands and walked outside.

Something had gone wrong, something was wrong. What?

He walked up the slight hill slowly, wondering why he was disturbed. It was foolish. He had succeeded beyond his most optimistic dreams, had he not? He came to Caxton to stamp out integration and now it was stamped out.

And, after all, they did put up the money for his bail, didn’t they?

He entered the hotel.

It was the same as it had been a century ago when the town was quiet and no one thought much about the Negroes; when, in the afternoon, he had walked into the lives of all these soft people.

The three ladies sat in ivory silence on the bright red couch, and the television set was shrilling: “. . . cuts your cleaning time in half, and saves you double . . .”

Mrs. Pearl Lambert looked up from the book she was reading, which was a Dorothy Sayers mystery, and then looked down again.

Billy Matthews dozed, motionless in the railroad chair.

There could be a war outside, Adam thought, fighting in the streets, bombs falling, and nothing would change here.

“Good evening, ladies,” he said.

No one answered.

He moved across the floor and up the flight of stairs. And in the darkness, walking, suddenly he thought of all the empty seashelled men he’d ever seen, the old and trembling ones in whom the light was gone, the fire extinguished—and how close, how near he’d come to being them.

He paused.