DAWN CAME CREEPING THROUGH the trees, slinking across the ground and crawling into the hollows of men’s eyes. They cursed the light and pulled their cloaks and blankets over their shoulders for a moment’s more rest. Frank shivered and pawed the earth for Evie, her warm belly, finding only the bony limb of a rifle. A cold hurt poured through him, even in sleep.
Then a pop, gun-loud, and he came fast awake.
The reverend was already up, skipping through the encampment in his hobnail boots, pulling together a detail of men to investigate the sound. He tapped Frank and the twins, his finger over his lips. They nodded and followed with several others, a small squad moving through the foggy woods, careful of every twig and dry leaf beneath their boots. They snaked through a tangled maze of thorn thickets and laurel slicks, creeping to the shoulder of an old ridge road.
A black Studebaker was parked bug-eyed in the lane with one wheel missing from the hub, the front axle perched on the thin arm of an iron screw jack. A blowout—the sound they’d heard.
Tools and rubber tubes littered the ground. A man sat behind the wooden hoop of the steering wheel, one foot propped on the running board as he sipped from a quart jar. A badge on his chest. He was watching two other men who knelt in the dust of the road, laboring with spanners and wrenches on the front wheel. A small local boy stood barefoot behind them, handing them tools like a surgeon’s assistant.
The men’s coats and rifles were piled in the back seat of the topless car, their shirts spread sweaty across their backs despite the early hour. The man behind the wheel sipped again from the jar and eyed the line of earthworks and machine-gun nests spread across the mountain above them.
He turned his head to the boy. “Tell you what, son, we gonna show these Redneck sons of bitches today. They’ll be hightailing it for cover, begging for mercy.” He sipped from the jar, breathing through his teeth. “If these two can ever fix this flat.”
The reverend motioned for the squad to circle closer. They followed his lead, stepping lightly through the trees, willing the weight out of their feet, high into their heads, moving like wraiths in the dawn. The reverend led them with one ear cocked before him, as if receiving messages on some secret frequency.
By the time they circled back to the road, the Studebaker was off the jack, the tools stowed, and the boy sent home. The two deputies were cradling their rifles now, sweat-drenched, swiping their foreheads with the backs of their arms. The third man leaned on the car, a pair of heavy pistols slung low from his belt.
Frank, the twins, and the rest of the reverend’s squad watched from the woods. One of them bent to his leader’s ear. “Shoot ’em, Rev?”
The reverend shook his head, his eyes glassy. “Every man must be given his chance at salvation.”
Then, unannounced, he stepped from the trees. Frank and the others fanned out behind him, rifles shouldered, the barrels ticking with their breath. The reverend held out one arm to the deputies in the road.
“Where are you going?” he asked, singsong, stepping closer.
The password.
The eyes of the trio widened as they took in the strange band—white and Black men armed together, materializing out of the woods.
They swallowed and licked their lips. “Say again?”
The reverend stepped closer. His eyes still glassy, his voice calm, like a man speaking to a panicked horse. “How are you coming?” he asked.
The two men looked to their leader, still holding his quart jar. The man’s jaw hung open, locked in place. The reverend’s demeanor shifted, his face crinkling like a fist. “The password, man!” he hissed. “The pass—”
The leader dropped the jar and went for his pistols as his comrades shouted “Amen!”—the Whites’ password. Tongues of fire leapt forth in the road, cracking and smoking, knocking men backward as if mule-kicked.
Now silence, the reek of spent cordite. Frank saw Lacey holding his breast with one hand, looking stunned, and one of the Whites was still alive—the leader, his quart jar making a muddy stain between his boots.
“Gore,” said one of the reverend’s men. “Chafin’s chief deputy. He used to be a Union man.”
“Traitor,” said another. He stepped over and placed the barrel of his rifle against the lawman’s heart, as if pinning him in place. This day, this road, this story handed down. He waited a long moment, in case the reverend would speak otherwise, staying his hand.
Silence.
“For Sid,” he said, unsmiling.
He pulled the trigger.