A minute later he pulls the Hummer into our driveway and leaves it idling. “I feel bad about mentioning Sarah. I guess time is the only thing that can get you past something like that.”

I swallow the last of the Scotch. “I’ll never get past it, Sam. I’m a different person now. Part of me is lying in that grave in Houston.”

“Yeah, well. Most of you is sitting right here. And your daughter needs that part.”

“I know. I keep thinking about Del Payton’s widow. Race doesn’t even come into it for me. For thirty years part of her has been buried wherever her husband is. We’re both wounded the same way. You know?”

Sam shuts off the engine. “Listen to me, Penn. Whoever blew up Del Payton was in their twenties then, thirties max. Kluckers full of piss and vinegar. Those guys have got wives and grown kids now. And if you think they’re gonna let some hotshit, nigger-lovin’ writer take all that away, you’re nuts. That’s who shot at you tonight. And if you keep pushing, they’ll kill you.”

Sam has the Jew’s special fear of fanatics. During the civil rights era this anxiety caused many Mississippi Jews to keep as low a profile as possible. Some gave heroic support to the Movement; others, primarily in the Delta, actually joined the White Citizens’ Councils, for fear of the consequences if they didn’t. Sam’s parents chose the difficult middle ground.

“Don’t worry, Sam. Caitlin Masters has given everybody the idea I’m a crusading liberal, ready to drag the town through the mud. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Bullshit. I know you when you sound like this. You’ll pull down the temple to find the truth.”

“I remember you sounding like this once. That time in junior high, when your dad hired us to clean out his attic?”

Sam gives no sign that he’s heard, but I know he has.

“Going through all those boxes,” I remind him. “We found that list. Two hundred names, all handwritten.”

He reaches out and toys with the Hummer’s ignition key. The papers we found had listed most members of Natchez’s Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council. The Jewish community had maintained the list as a security measure, and more than a few names on it belonged to fathers of kids we went to school with.

“You remember how you felt when you saw those names?”

He picks up the drink cup and nervously shakes the ice. “Scared.”

“Me too. But it pissed me off more. I wanted to expose those assholes for what they were. So did you. Have you ever done business with anybody on that list?”

He looks up, his eyes hard as agates. “Not a fucking one. And I spiked them where I could.”

A side spill of headlights washes across my parents’ house.