“Sure.”

The heavy man put his hands in his pockets. He was a giant dark shadow standing over Joey; old, but strong. Very strong.

“You’re not a baby any more; you’re grown, almost,” he said. “So I’m going to talk to you that way.”

Joey sat down on a ledge of dirt.

“First off, I want to tell you that I know how you feel, and why. When this first came up, I felt pretty much the same way. Scared, kind of. Worried. Everything was going smooth, nobody had troubles, I thought—why stir things up? In fact, I’ll tell you something secret: I asked your mama to quit. I did.” He smiled. “Why don’t you have a smoke? I think the Lord’ll forgive it this once.”

Joey nodded gratefully, lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke into his lungs.

“Well,” the preacher went on, “she said she wasn’t about to quit, and she told me why. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget that night: Charlotte talked for two hours, I believe. She told me her reasons. And, Joey—I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t argue with those reasons. Because they were good, they were right: your mama was talking sense. She’s a smart woman.”

“I know that, Reverend.”

“I know you do. But being smart isn’t enough. She’s got something else; she’s got guts, Joey. And that, now, is quite a combination. See, I was comfortable then. Comfortable—just like everybody else. A long time ago, I’d said the same thing you just said—‘People are people, you can’t change people’—and I gave up. It was way too big to fight, I thought—so I shut it out. Shut it right out. And forgot about it. But just because you patch a hole and forget about it, that doesn’t mean the hole is gone. It’s there; it’s there; and your mama, she showed me the patch. And that’s all I can see now. . . . That’s the way it is with the truth. Once it’s out, there’s no undoing it. A man can think he’s white all his life—until he looks in a mirror and sees that he’s black.” Finley Mead paused. “But I’m preaching at you, Joey, and I don’t mean to do that.”

Joey knocked some ash off the cigarette. “I don’t mind,” he said. “But—well, sir, I looked into that mirror quite a while back, and I know what color I am.”

“You never have been what I said, comfortable—have you, Joey?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you’re lucky.”