It was 2:00 P.M. Ricky Sours and his boys were set to start walking up Courthouse Lane in fifteen minutes. Titus grabbed his radio.
“Heads up. Fifteen minutes to the march. Let’s get the perimeter in place,” Titus said.
“Roger that,” Carla said.
“Roger. I mean roger, I got it, not Roger,” Davy sputtered.
“Get in place, Davy,” Titus said.
“Roger on that, we’re coming up from the east past the green now,” Danforth Sampson said. He was the deputy sheriff from Red Hill.
Titus took a deep breath and smelled fresh-popped popcorn and the sweet saccharine scent of funnel cakes. He hoped he was wrong about this march. He hoped Jamal had just been talking out his ass. He hoped Ricky Sours could keep his good ol’ boys in check. He hoped he wouldn’t need the extra help, but he’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
“Hoping is trying to swim across a river, preparedness is bringing a map to find a good place to cross,” Special Agent Tolliver used to say.
They hadn’t been prepared that day at the DeCrain compound. Titus didn’t want to make that mistake again.
He heard a murmur break out under the laughter as Danforth and the four deputies he brought joined with Carla, Davy, Steve, and Pip on the left side of Courthouse Lane. On the right was Deputy Caldwell Thomas and six deputies from Maryville, the next county up from Red Hill. He’d met Caldwell at a state-mandated training session earlier this year. He’d been impressed by the wide-shouldered, garrulous man with the severe buzz cut. He was as close to a friend as Titus had made since becoming sheriff.
Titus touched his badge, ran his fingers over the edges of the star.
“They’ll love you. They’ll hate you. But you have to make them respect you. And you do that by calling it down the middle,” one of his instructors had said. He’d been talking about being an agent, but Titus thought it applied to being a sheriff too.
“TENNNNNNN-SHUN!” Ricky Sours yelled.
Titus squinted.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
Ricky and his crew numbered about thirty. They were all dressed in historically accurate Confederate uniforms. Jasper was playing flag bearer. He was carrying a flagpole that was about six feet long with a huge Confederate flag attached to it. Titus could hear a fife and a drum report, which he was sure was historically inaccurate, as the Sons of the Confederacy made their way down Courthouse Lane.
“Look alive, here they come,” Titus said.
Titus felt his skin begin to crawl. He knew intellectually that it was 2017, that the Fourteenth Amendment had been passed more than a hundred years ago, that racism was alive and well, but he was a sheriff who could and would arrest anyone, white or Black, who got out of pocket.
And yet.
He felt an atavistic revulsion roll through his body. The sight of these men, men who thought their lack of complete success in their every endeavor was proof of the falsity of their privilege, in their dress grays, made him sick. Not afraid, not disquieted, but physically nauseated. Seeing them strut down the street was like biting into a steak and tasting maggots.
“Let’s keep the crowd on the green back at least six feet,” Titus said into his radio. He didn’t really think that was going to be a problem. The majority of folks weren’t paying any attention to Ricky and his boys. They were too busy playing ring toss and eating slices of whiskey watermelon. There was a smattering of people clapping and waving at the marchers, but even they didn’t appear that engaged. It was more about politeness, not polemics.
“They’re approaching the statue now,” Carla said. She was a little farther down the road.
“Gotcha,” Titus said. Ricky and his crew were allowed to walk to the end of the street past the statue, then turn around and head home to rail against immigrants, Blacks, and anyone not straight, white, and male in the privacy of their garages over a case of cheap beer and wounded pride.
Titus heard the sound of a chorus rise up behind him. He heard the words of the song before he turned around to face the choir.
“WE SHALL OVERCOOOOOOME.”
A large group of people were turning the corner at Main Street and walking down Courthouse Lane. They were a cornucopia of the citizenry of Charon County walking side by side. Black, white, Latinx, gay, straight, old, young. It was everyone men like Ricky Sours feared.
“Ten-eighteen, ten-eighteen! I need backup at the corner of Main. I repeat, backup at the corner of Main,” Titus yelled into his radio. He stepped off the sidewalk and stood in the path of the counterprotesters, who numbered at least sixty. In response, the counterprotesters linked arms.
Jamal Addison was in the middle of the front row. His eyes and Titus’s found each other’s for a brief moment. Titus didn’t like what he saw there. Jamal had the eyes of a man who was resigned to his fate. A man who was willing, who expected, to have to withstand unimaginable agony.
He had the eyes of a martyr.
Titus had seen those eyes before.
“Stop! Stop right now! You don’t have a permit! The Sons of the Confederacy have been allotted this time to march—”
“Fuck a permit!” someone yelled.
“We won’t be replaced! We won’t be forgotten!”
The refrain rose up behind Titus like a battle cry. He didn’t have to turn his head to see it was coming from the Confederate apologists behind him.
“Stop now, y’all!” Davy said. He and Steve had joined Titus in the middle of the road. Titus saw Caldwell and his men get in front of Ricky and his boys. They were trying to keep some of the men in gray from breaking formation and rushing the counterprotesters.
“Caldwell, try and turn them toward the green!” Titus yelled into his radio.
“Will do,” Caldwell said.
“Jamal, stop this!” Titus yelled.
Jamal looked at him, but he only sang louder.
“Fucking niggers!” someone from the Confederate group screamed. Titus felt the scream as much as he heard it. It was full of a wild idiot rage, the howl of an animal caught in a trap of its own making.
A brown beer bottle sailed through the air.
It shattered near Jamal’s feet, shards exploding upward and outward like razor-sharp butterflies.
Goddamn it, Titus thought.
About twenty people from the counterprotesters broke free and rushed past him, Davy, and Steve. Caldwell’s deputies met them, and for a moment they were able to hold them back, but that moment passed into the river of time and then some of Ricky’s boys were pushing forward and now the fists were flying and now the rage and anger and fear had burst like an aneurysm and Titus was yelling into his radio for everyone to concentrate on the altercation and he was telling Steve and Davy to push the remaining counterprotesters back. Folks on the green were running and Titus could hear children crying, long mournful wails that cut through the air like needles into flesh.
It was then he heard the truck.
Its snarl superseded all the howls and the screams and the sad pathetic battle cries. Its engine was a dragon announcing his arrival, presaging the cataclysm he was about to bring forth.
Titus saw the counterprotesters begin to scatter. They ran up on the sidewalks or headed for the courthouse green. A few of the older ones, like Reverend Wilkes, weren’t moving quite fast enough to escape the truck bearing down on them.
Titus watched as the reverend’s body flew up in the air, his arms waving to and fro. Another body joined him, twisting and turning like a piece of paper caught in the wind. As the crowd scattered, Titus could see the truck fully now. It was a red and white box truck. The Cunningham Flag Factory logo was painted on the hood.
Titus looked to his left and his right.
Steve and Davy were gone.
He could see movement out of the corner of his eye. He realized they had joined the crowd running for the hills. Caldwell and his men had succeeded in turning most of the Confederates, but a few people were still in the street from both sides of the conflict.
Titus’s mind was working at millions of miles per hour. His synapses were firing like firecrackers. He saw the driver of the truck staring at him through the windshield, his teeth bared.
Titus drew his gun.
He was standing in the middle of the street like some Old West gunslinger having a showdown with five thousand pounds of steel and fire.
Suddenly Carla was there by his side, with her gun drawn.
Titus aimed at the windshield.
“Get the tires!” Titus yelled.
Carla dropped to one knee.
The driver of the truck pressed on the gas and the truck went from a snarl to a monstrous roar. Behind him Titus heard voices calling out to God, to Jesus, to whatever deities may be lending an ear.