He sat quietly for a while; then, as if he had been holding his breath, he sighed and got up and went outside.

He walked for almost an hour.

12

12

They marched across the glass-smooth clover in cowboy boots and ragged sneakers and shoes with little holes for ventilation. Eighteen men; five women; a dozen teen-age children, some with the look of acres and forests about their faces, some of a sharp and city cast. The men and women were frowning. They all carried lightweight sticks stripped from orange crates, and the sticks pierced squares of light cardboard.

PATON YOU ARE A WEAKLING, read the signs. SEPARATE BUT EQUAL! WE DON’T WANT NIGRAS HERE! KEEP OUR SCHOOL WHITE!

Bart Carey, walking in long, deliberate strides, headed the group. He was a large man with a Buddha belly and flabby, clay-brown arms. The spectacles he wore contrasted sharply with the rough and craglike features of his face; it was the spectacles you saw first. His shirt was transparent and sleeveless, wrinkled and stained with sweat. Somehow Carey gave the impression of having lived for years alone in some forgotten forest, of subsisting for this time on snakes and berries, of being rescued and returned to civilization, quickly shaved and bathed and dressed, and set before a hundred whirring cameras.

Next to the dark young man in the trim suit who walked beside him, Carey seemed almost savage.

Phil Dongen, who had left his assistant in charge of the store, jogged along fast enough to keep slightly ahead of Rev. Lorenzo Niesen.

No one spoke.

They marched across the lawn. When they reached the entrance to the high school, they stopped.

“You want me to call him out?” Carey asked.

Adam Cramer glanced at his wrist watch. “No,” he said, “wait a few minutes. It isn’t noon yet. We want everyone to hear this.”

They waited quietly, holding their signs.

Harley Paton stared at the large black 8-ball that had been given to him recently by a friend, and decided that it was the most appropriate gift he had ever received. He reached out and lifted the heavy object, rotated it, and read the fortune that appeared in a tiny slot at the bottom.

Patience, it said, is a virtue.

He set the ball down again and tried to concentrate on the papers, but this was impossible. He could think only of the telephone call that had wrested him from his bed at two a.m., and of the strained voice that told him he had betrayed the people of Caxton.

Things had gone more smoothly than he’d expected. So far there had been no riots, no gangs, no fights. But there was something hanging heavy in the air. You could smell it. You could almost touch it.

“Mr. Paton, are you busy?”

He looked up. Agnes Angoff was standing in the doorway. “No,” he said. “Come in.”