“You’re a leader,” the preacher said. “You’re smart and the kids know it. They’ll follow you. They’ll do what you do. So what it comes to, pretty much, is this: if it works with you, Joey, it will work with the others. And everybody in the country is going to be watching; every principal in every school in every small town in the South; watching, waiting to see what will happen. So what you believe just doesn’t matter any more. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Joey felt tears stinging into his eyes.

“That’s the way it is, sometimes,” the preacher said, “sometimes a person just finds himself with a job that nobody else can do.” He smiled. “It’s going to be tough—tougher than you could imagine, I guess. You’ll get fire in your blood and you’ll want to fight, or quit, or let somebody else do it. You’ll have the hate and the bitterness roaring in your ears all day and all night, Joey. And you’ll curse me and your mother and God Himself; yes. I’m telling you in advance.”

Joey listened to the wind. He thought of his parents and of his plans—his plans. And he felt that a steel cage was being lowered onto him, and that he’d never get out.

“Do you think you can do it?” the preacher asked.

“I don’t know,” Joey said.

“Will you try?”

Joey hesitated. The cage was over him. But the door was still open.

“Will you?”

Much later, long after the lights were out and he had made his answer, Joey heard his Uncle Rowan muttering:

“Some of these Negroes is gonna get a lot of us niggers killed.”

9

9

They came down the hill together, in a group, moving slowly, treading softly, speaking hardly at all. A tall, lithe young man was at the front. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers and a lightweight jacket; he walked on the balls of his feet like an athlete, and swung his arms, but there was nothing cocky about his manner. Directly behind him were three young girls, two of them very dark, with kinky hair, the third a light tan color. Behind the girls were eight boys.

“Jesus,” a man said to himself.

Phil Dongen turned his head away from the Negroes and looked at the man, who was short, with the kind of hard, wrinkled skin one sees in those areas where men must work outside; the wrinkles ran like vast dirt-filled cracks along the neck and down the cheeks. He was staring openmouthed.

“Well,” said Dongen in a whisper, “it’s started.”

The man nodded. “By Christ, look at ’em.”

The Negroes were moving like a dark clot among the rushing stream of white children. The town was quiet. People lined the streets, eyes were focused like telescopes, but it was quiet; only a soft murmuring disturbed the morning air.