“Sure, that’s right, what’s the use? Talking. The fella on the phone, he said that the time for that was over and done. Words ain’t gonna do no good now.”

“Then what will?”

“Action!” the old man squawked.

His face took on an inner brightness.

“Action,” he said again; and Tom knew that he was returning to other years. Whether they had existed, whether David Parkinson had ever been a young man with firm flesh, that was something else.

He was flickering over the past now, the mighty past, when he’d been a Dragon in the Klan, when he’d ridden black horses and set fires and issued orders in a loud voice.

The mighty past.

“Got to do something . . .”

Tom disliked being in the same room with Gramp—Gramp with his snuff, his chewing tobacco, his cheap cigars and vile language. Many times Tom wondered how Ruth had turned out to be so quiet, so ladylike, so different— But he supposed that the old man was not all bad. He would perform sudden acts of generosity, usually at the tag end of a tantrum, and these would always have a certain flair. Like the time he went out and spent his month’s pension check on the coat at Bennett’s that Ella had been admiring for such a long time. No—not all bad.

“All right,” Tom said, after a full minute. “All right. Let’s not argue.”

“Who’s arguing?”

“You are.”

“Sure, always me, never you. Ruth, get my medicine—it’s on the top shelf. Your goddamn husband is doing his best to give me a heart attact.”

Ruth McDaniel sighed, hesitated, as if trying to find exactly the right set of words that would shut her father up; then she went out of the room and came back with a small bottle.

Gramp, disdaining a spoon, swigged directly from the bottle. He hawked loudly. “What about you, Ella? What do you think about having a bunch of niggers sitting in the same room with you?”

“Let me tell you something,” Tom said sharply. “Let’s see if you can get it straight for once. On January fourth, nineteen-fifty-six, Judge Silver ordered us to integrate the high school. He acted on orders from the Supreme Court of the United States. So now it’s law; you understand? It’s law. And whether you like it or not doesn’t make a bit of difference.”

“I ain’t so sure of that,” Gramp said, “and neither is that fella that called up. He talks sense.”

Tom rose from the table. He sighed. “Well, if he’s got any ideas, I’ll be glad to listen to them.”

“Will you?” Ruth asked.

“Of course!”

“I mean, Tom, actually—the idea of them going to school with Ella . . . well, it isn’t a very nice thing to think about. If there’s anything we can do, then I think we ought to try, don’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, you don’t need to sound like such a bear.”

“I do not—oh, never mind.”