Karel saw where these boys came from, and that was where he went. All he could do was follow the desire of the moment, the voice of the mob, and he wanted to be where people were set to their sharpest edge. The hanging of Mayor Smith changed them, the ringleaders, the loudmouths. It made them realize their capabilities, that great violent mass of them, explosions in their ears. They were serious about what they wanted. All police were in the courthouse. None were left outside. The sheriff and his deputies, the prisoners, Will Brown too, all trapped on the top floors. There was no escape unless the mob granted escape.
Gasoline cans were brought from a filling station. Some men lifted the cans to a windowsill and splashed gas through. A torch was thrown in after. The mob didn’t let firemen get close to the building. Pumper trucks were blocked in the traffic of bodies. Kids cut the fire hoses with knives. Nobody was allowed to leave the courthouse, armed members of the mob stationed at every door. They held looted .22s and more ammunition than could be shot. The rooms filled with smoke.
The prisoners were driven to the roof. Almost the whole inside of the courthouse was wood, its rooms packed with paper, county records, land deeds. It burned quickly. The prisoners lay flat on their bellies because snipers across the way buzzed bullets over their heads. One prisoner who peeked over the edge had his face sprayed with buckshot. Two others were hit by rifle slugs, their bodies jumping even as they lay flat. Half the mob was armed. It didn’t matter if a man had a rifle or a pistol, he took a shot.
Prisoners pled with the deputies to hand over Will Brown. They didn’t want to die for the sake of Will Brown going to trial. They picked him up and were going to throw him off the edge before Sheriff Clark made them think better of it.
Alfred and Jimmy Mac had been looking for Karel, and they found him on the south side of the courthouse. They stole a ladder from a fire truck and were going to scale the east side of the building. Jimmy Mac asked Karel if he wanted to climb. Of course he did. What else could he do? They’d need help lifting the ladder. Karel could climb to the second story, the others right behind. Spotlights from cars played on the boys as they clambered over ledges to pull themselves up. Fire bit at their heels. The other two formed a human ladder to reach a third-floor window ledge, Karel on their shoulders, hanging sixty feet above the pavement to show his shoe bottoms to the crowd as his legs swung free from Jimmy’s shoulders. A cheer erupted when he pulled himself up. Standing in that cheer, that noise of approval from the mob, Karel couldn’t stop. He dropped a rope for Jimmy and Alfred. All the windows on the third floor were smashed out. Inside the offices burned, so they started over again to reach the next floor.
Jake couldn’t see much of what went on from where he was, the dappled texture of hats and white faces, bodies packed around the block. He heard explosions and shouted demands, smelled gunpowder brimstone and gasoline smoke that poured out windows. He and Tom Dennison sat and watched. Nothing but people for blocks and blocks. They shuffled and pointed. They stood close. This was happening. They were burning down the courthouse, they were destroying the city. All this to get Will Brown.
Policemen trapped on the fourth floor waved a white flag. When Karel pulled himself to that ledge, the cops begged to be rescued. They’d been forced up the stairs by smoke and were being overcome. “Sure,” Alfred said, crawling up behind. “There’s ladders. But we got them.” He gestured down to where the mob now held bigger ladders than what were stolen by Alfred and Jimmy. “We got all the ladders.” Alfred smiled. “But we don’t rescue a cop for nothing.”
Those cops promised anything. There was only one thing the mob wanted.
Jimmy Mac shouted down the news, but it was useless. The cops shouted too, but nobody could hear them from up there. Finally a cop in a blue uniform threw a note to the crowd. There was mass ecstasy when the note was read. Come to the fourth floor of the building and we will hand the nigger over to you. Ladders were raised, the police saved. Once the police reached the ground, raiders began to climb. Karel waited from his ledge. He felt at home on the ledge, how it was when he slid to make a catch in centerfield, like he wouldn’t leave this place until someone made him, and no one could make him. Young men—those from the boys’ mob who could taste their triumph—gripped the rungs as they climbed and showed rope nooses to the crowd. Karel helped raiders through the window before he entered. The raiders searched for Will Brown, but Will Brown wasn’t there.
He was on the roof and the roof was going to collapse. There was an iron stairway on the backside of an elevator shaft. Sheriff Clark started his men down this way.
Will Brown was told to stay put, to crouch in a corner where nobody could see him. He’d have no chance in the crowd. The others might make it.
Clark and his deputies went first down the stairs, the prisoners except Will Brown behind them. They were met by raiders on the fourth floor. Ducky Sutez was first among them. “We’ll kill every one of you unless we get that Negro,” he said. The sheriff was trapped between the mob and the prisoners. Clark refused to hand Will Brown over. There was shoving on these narrow stairs bolted to the backside of an elevator shaft, inside a burning building. Clark didn’t move. He wouldn’t let the raiders by.
Prisoners at the rear broke away to get Will Brown. They passed him over their heads, from hand to hand, down the iron stairway to where the raiders were. They got Will Brown. The raiders. Karel was there. He reached up at Will Brown but couldn’t touch him. Men had taken over again, their arms longer than Karel’s, their hips heavier when he tried to move them. Karel stretched but couldn’t reach—all at once Will Brown fell, and it was Karel’s hands that tried to catch the weight of the man and pass it off. But Karel couldn’t hold. The weight crashed through him, crumpled him into a corner. Will Brown on top. Karel saw Will Brown’s eyes as the raiders grabbed and lifted him and carried on. Will Brown’s white eyes popping out of his skull. Raiders lifted Karel to his feet, but Karel’s legs didn’t work. His legs and hands were numb where he touched the black. He flattened against the wall to watch raiders tear off down the stairs. He couldn’t follow.
They held Will Brown out a window. They ripped his clothes off. They had him.
Thousands rushed to the south side once word spread. Jake watched as Farnam Street emptied outside the Bee Building, on the north side, the masses hurrying, pushing, scuttling over to see Will Brown strung up on a traffic signal at Eighteenth and Harney. He was dragged through the crowd at the end of a rope, bleeding and bruised, to where a boy climbed a pole and tied a noose over the iron beam. The noise was awful. Rifle echoes, pistols. Mothers pushed to the front. They lifted babies to see a body flounder at the end of a rope.