“Now maybe I can’t expect you to know what all this is about, but you’ve got to understand that we’re in a position where we’ve got to do something. Something that will win the people back. I talked to one of the men in the council, and we thought about it, and finally we figured out a way. And this is where you come in.”

Ella kept looking at the fire in Adam Cramer’s eyes.

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “the whole thing depends on you, Ella. Not only the organization and all, but your father’s life as well. The men who beat him up this morning are desperate. You saw what they did. If we don’t do something, I can promise you this: They’ll kill Tom. I know it because they told me so. They’ll go right into the hospital and blow his head off, and there’ll be so many of them that the sheriff won’t know what to do. Believe me, Ella. It’s true.”

Adam Cramer knocked the ash from his cigarette and looked at the glowing tip somberly for a number of seconds.

Then he said, “Apart from your father, there’s one person holding the nigger children together now. His name is Joey Green. Have you heard of him?”

Ella nodded.

“All right. Then listen carefully, and I’ll tell you what you must do. But remember that I don’t like it any more than you will; and remember, too, that it’s the only way we’re going to be able to save your father’s life.”

He spoke slowly, in slow, measured, tones; but the fire in his eyes did not go out.

26

26

It had been easier this morning. The kids were afraid, but they did not argue; and their parents did not argue, although they were also afraid. A man who believed in them and had given them strength when they needed it, who stood to gain nothing by this and to lose much, lay in the hospital, wounded. And they knew they could not betray this man. So when Joey called, they came, and they went down the hill together, looking neither to the left nor to the right, and they went into the school; and Joey knew that they must win now.

As he walked along the corridor to Miss Angoff’s classroom, he thought about Tom McDaniel and felt both ashamed of his earlier despair and happy that he could feel this shame. Because it meant that now he did not despair. Now he was not keeping promises to a dead man.

He stopped at his locker, calmly removed his handkerchief, wetted it, and wiped away the words that had been scrawled in chalk upon the green-painted metal:

JIGS GET OUT