After a few weeks, the picket lines disappeared, telephone calls and visits by IBLD agents ceased, union propaganda stopped coming in the mail. As everyone concluded, Greg had realized that his strategy was failing. Although no one regretted the end of the nuisances, everyone feared that worse would follow. The IBLD didn't give up that easily. In Mapleton, Horace had already acquired a reputation for cunning and obstinacy; Dennis Froosie had a similar reputation everywhere in the United States, yet similarity of character hardly ensured unanimity of purpose. Horace hoped to deprive Doz of freedom from union influence, while Dennis sought to subject him to IBLD influence. Horace wanted to weaken Fossez, and Dennis, to let it stay competitive so he could play it off against Treble. With no scruples to hinder them, it took them a week to reconcile these interests. They agreed to disagree on weakening Fossez and collaborate in organizing its employees. Doz learned of this agreement, but nothing of their plans to implement it. Although he and the board expected the worst, they didn't know what form it would take or when it would happen.

The three fathers asked the judge to sentence their three sons to work as volunteer nurse's aides taking care of accident victims. Coach complained that the loss of his three benchwarmers would cost him a winning season, but skeptics reminded him that he had already lost more games than he had won. Exposure to maimed bodies and minds in the hospital had the desired effect on the three adolescents and the constant obligation to do the least pleasant work reinforced it. Cleaning up and disposing of smelly waste challenged their determination to serve their term. Several times during his first week, Reg nearly had to run to the men's room. Kind but rough, the nurses gave them more orders than they could punctually obey, so they were always behind trying to catch up. Subordination to women whose competence they could hardly doubt dispelled the foolish assumptions typical of their sex and age. How glad they were to see the end of their five-week ordeal!

The judge had also condemned each of them to a pay a few hundred dollars in fines, which their fathers insisted they earn by summer jobs. The boys decided to work in a mess hall at Camp Rawly, sixty miles southwest of Mapleton, where the National Guard trained. After the hospital, they could put up with anything, they thought, even twelve 

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hours a day in an army kitchen seven days a week. With overtime and double time, they could pay their fines and save a few hundred dollars for themselves, since room and board were free. The heat of the sun on a tin roof as well as that of the stoves, ovens and hot water reminded them that the temperature at least had always been comfortable in the hospital. Sweat drenched their clothing by ten o'clock in the morning, they were feeling faint by one and they yearned for slight relief after four. Reg's knee was killing him. Not only did the cooks treat them roughly, but also sarcastically: "You guys aren't even recruits!" Unlike nurses, they took pleasure in piling on the work. The cruelty seemed particularly sadistic when the chief cook, a grizzly master sergeant, inspected the pots and pans they had scoured. He took his time looking for a spot or smear and running his fingers over the metal in search of grease. When Reg sighed, he turned on him and shouted in his face: "Are you going to let three hundred and seventy-nine men shit their breeches?"

"N... n... nosir!" Reg was trembling like a reed in the wind.

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they had bought. Almost sympathetic, the chief cook gave the three of them an hour off so they could have a ride. The two dads even let them drive around in a parking lot just outside the gate. The vibration of the motor, the growl of the exhaust and the seat pushing against their back gave them a thrill, but the two dads reminded them of the lesson they had learned about cars. At the end of the summer, they came home looking older than when they had left.

Reg had even grown a dapper moustache. All the Chinskis were treating him more respectfully. "Hey!" he objected, "you would think I was a man from Mars or something." They also noticed that he was trying to hide a limp, but only after much questioning would he admit that his knee hurt a little bit. Nothing that would keep him from playing football, he reassured them, thus provoking cries of protest:

Jimmy: "You must be crazy!"

Christy: "Why don't you play golf?"

Sabby: "You can't even kick."

Suzy: "If you injure your knee again, you won't be able to dance."

David: "You might even have to use a cane."

"How would you like one that bends only 45°?"

"You have got to stay off of it as much as possible. Don't do anything that will expose it to further injury."

"Are you enrolled at Exxis High?"

"Are you going to try out for football?"

"Why don't you play golf?"

"Only a few holes at a time until your knee improves."

"Yes, Sir."

Another result of his accident came to light then. Ditzy Cooper had filed a lawsuit against him on the behalf of an elderly white woman who had been driving the car on the other side of the tunnel. Mrs. Weathers, who had sought her out, persuaded her that the mild heart attack she had suffered the next day had resulted from the scare. Insinuations about the color of the Chinskis' skin and their wealth calmed Tilly Parker's scruples about demanding a few million more than what she had already received from Medicare and her health insurance. Mental suffering costs more than dollars, Ditzy reassured her. Assuming his legal responsibility, Freddy warned Doz that Ditzy calculated her claims so they would tempt the defendant to settle out of court. Although she needed a lesson, few defendants wanted to run the risk of trying to give it to her. Doz recalled one he had learned in the medieval history course he had taken at the convent: paying tribute always encourages a demand for more. Pleased with his brother-in-law's decision, Freddy rolled his sleeves up. Ditzy's trade had taught her a few tricks, such as finding witnesses eager to praise the defendant for a trait that compromised him. Testifying in court, Coach admired the competitive zeal that drove Reg to take chances. Indeed, Ditzy triumphed, it had incited him to drive around the curve and through the tunnel and back again at twice the speed limit posted ahead of both curves. Didn't he think he had to show the other boys, who had some driving experience, that he could drive better than them even though he had none at all? Another trick exploited Tilly's habit of trying doctor after doctor until she found one whose diagnosis suited her. Ditzy found one who was willing to testify that Tilly wouldn't have had the heart attack if Reg hadn't scared her. She also managed to insert a few subtle hints about his background in the record suggesting that he had received the dangerous and reckless traits causing the accident from his father. The judge disallowed an objection by Freddy on the grounds that he was trying to exclude legitimate evidence of causation. The Vigilant noted, however, that while background implied both acquired and inherited traits, Ms. Cooper was sneaking the latter into the record under the cover of the former. Racist whites interpreted the word as meaning inherited traits 

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and they suspected that the irresponsibility traditionally attributed to blacks had caused the accident. Would the jury come to the same conclusion? Not only had Ditzy made a plea that might succeed, but she had also raised a scandal that threatened the defendant. Mrs. Weathers was already assuring Tilly that she would get her money (except for Ditzy's third!) and bragging to friends that she, Mrs. Weathers, would teach those baboons a lesson. Damon infuriated her by objecting that she didn't have any affront to avenge. Yet Macrobius Wooding preached a sermon comparing her to several Old Testament heroins. My informant had forgotten which ones.

Encouraged by Doz to take Ditzi across his knees, Freddy found two more doctors consulted by Tilly, including the most recent one. They had warned her of the danger of a heart attack, but she had apparently ignored the treatment they had prescribed. One of them described the consultation of one doctor after another to confirm the patient's own diagnosis as a common type of hypochondria. The two doctors agreed: a shock as severe as she might have suffered when she saw another car coming through the one-way tunnel could have given her a heart attack at once or soon thereafter. The next day, however, seemed unlikely to them. Breck and Vick were only too willing to explain how the frustrations of second-team basketball had resulted in oneupmanship. They had trapped Reg in a choice between humility and pride. Several other witnesses testified to his responsibility in everything except sports. The work he had done in the hospital and the kitchen at Camp Rawly might have served as examples if Ditzy hadn't persuaded the judge to exclude them from the record because they happened after the accident. The evidence against Tilly seemed overwhelming to the Chinskis and their friends, but Freddy warned them of a less rational attitude which Ditzy had been cultivating. Indeed eight members of the jury wanted to punish the baboons and tried to browbeat the other four into a guilty verdict, though in vain. Ditzi, Tilly and Mrs. Weathers would have had to share the entire cost of the suit if a few others hadn't contributed to the cause. Although Ditzi complained to the press, she didn't appeal the decision. Although Tilly whined and whimpered, she returned to one of the two doctors who had testified against her. Although Mrs. Weathers was in a fowl mood, Damon said: "I told you, Mom, but you wouldn't listen!" Grabbing a broom, she chased 

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him out of the house swatting him and grunting with each swat. Although Macrobius preached the angriest sermon his congregation had heard since the church burned down, they noticed the symptoms of a malicious delight. The Orchardytes and other bigots enjoyed a spell of outrage.

At breakfast one morning, local news on the radio revealed that, yesterday evening, a gang had attacked the customers of Easy Eats, a teenage hangout on the side of Fillmore nearest Dabney Orchard. Although the journalist said nothing of color, everyone knew that Fillmore was black and the Orchard, white. Of several serious injuries, one was critical, a sixteen-year old girl in a coma. Doz rushed to the kitchen phone and called Stony Kemper. All of the Chinskis were guessing that Horace and Dennis had struck the first blow in a new campaign. Stony told Doz that the usual happy crowd of young blacks had assembled in the parking lot of the drive-in towards 9 PM. Suddenly ten to twenty white youths wielding baseball bats and a few jack levers emerged from a row of arborvitae on the side of the lot and rushed them yelling and swinging. They clubbed the few boys who stood up to them and even a few of the girls slow to flee, including the one in the coma. Easy Mack -- who signed "E. Z. MacMillan" -- exited in time to see assaillants splashing gasoline on the back wall of his restaurant, but then he lost consciousness, hit from behind by a baseball bat. Flames were roaring and windows crashing when the first sirenes sounded in the distance, whereupon the white youths retreated in the direction of the Orchard.

"Any complaints about Easy Eats from Orchardytes?" Doz asked Stony.

"Any racist overtones?"

"How about leads?"

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"... Stony?"

"I will call a meeting of the CRPP right away. We will talk to Easy and everybody else who might be able to persuade young blacks to stay out of the Orchard. If they think you can handle this, maybe we can avoid a gang war or a race riot. I hope Easy has enough insurance. If we can't persuade him to cook less smelly food, we may be able to find ways to keep the smell down. Maybe there is some way to keep the noise down too. I will talk to friends in the Kindergarden."

"Yes?"

"As soon as I heard the news on the radio."

"The IBLD?"

All Fillmore knew Easy, everyone liked and admired him. Yet few had noticed the frail kid who left for Vietnam, so only his family welcomed him when he came home. They hardly recognized the well-built, self-confident, good-humored vet, who knew what he wanted to do and even seemed to know how. People guessed it when they saw him walking everywhere they rode or drove, because he had a stride that distinguished him from other people. Advancing at a deliberate pace, he rolled his shoulders and raised his knees, picking his feet up as if to overcome the suction of mud. He had learned how to walk, he said, sloshing through rice paddies and he didn't like vehicles because "they" could hear and see you coming. Although his fellow Fillmoreans couldn't see what was happening behind his moustache, they liked the twinkle in his eyes. Both colors, both sexes, all ages and all incomes got the same greeting: "How you doing?" It sounded like he really wanted to know. A habit picked up in Vietnam, where the reactions had amused him. In Fillmore, little boys, old ladies and beggars tried to guess where he would go and when so they could meet him. The slightest conversation with him was enough to convert a bad day into a good one. Everyone repeated a

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little girl's remark: "He's better than Santa Claus because he comes every day and he looks like us." Even before he got a loan and bought a defunct Sunoco station, whose owner was desperate to sell, people were calling him "Easy Mack" and asking when Easy Eats would open for business. He had to do most of the work himself, converting the office into a kitchen and the two-car garage into a dining room, while the rest room continued to serve its purpose. Grandma Mack, who had stayed behind in Peaches, Georgia, taught him how to cook corn fritters when he thumbed down there for a few days. Right from the start, he had no trouble attracting customers and especially young customers, but he had to do all the work himself, taking orders, cooking, calling his customers to the half-door counter between the kitchen and the dining room, taking money and making change, washing his hands, cleaning up on both sides of the half-door and, his worse job, the rest room, also worrying about inspectors who always came when least expected. Not especially punctual, he was usually open by 11 AM and closed by 11 PM, yet opening and closing each took another hour. After seven hours of sleep troubled by worry, he got up still tired and, despite too much of a bad diet, he lost weight. Pricing his menu to keep his customers coming and his earnings high enough to cover his expenses and live on preoccupied him day and night.

Never give up! He had learned that lesson from the Viet Cong. It took him a few weeks to get the pricing right, a few more to establish a routine that allowed him eight hours of sleep and three healthy meals a day. By then, he was earning enough to hire a waitress and Evy Stagg was already helping him by clearing the tables. After bringing her dishes to the counter one evening, she had come through the door, gone to the sink and started washing them.

"Hey, Evy!" said Easy. "How come?"

"I used to ask you: 'How you doing?' And you didn't even answer me."

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came in the mail. Yet mutual dedication to Easy Eats endeared them to each other, moderated their quarrels and eased their reconciliations. It wasn't just a family business, it was a life. The till was full one Thursday shortly before midnight when two white men held them up. Easy could have disarmed one of them, who was ogling Evy while the other poured the money into a bag, but he might have fired his pistol and hit her. More because of the affront than the hardship, he nearly lost his temper. The loss drove them to the brink of bankruptcy, which they avoided only by an emergency loan and skipping meals for two weeks. The thieves' color undermined Easy's patience with the police, also mostly white. The police took more time than he thought reasonable to find and catch the thieves, who, as he had guessed, lived in the Orchard. The partial suspension of their sentences angered him so much that the Vigilant quoted and Channel Eight aired his protests. Yet the sentences struck Orchardytes as vengeful, focusing their resentment on him.

Notables like the Rev. Alonzo Bellamy, who had married Easy and Evy, considered Easy Eats a community asset because it attracted young people, gave them something to do and kept them out of trouble. They hoped it was diverting them from incursions into the Orchard, a persistent temptation. Yet no serious incidents had occurred before the assault that Doz, his family and his friends suspected Dennis and Horace of instigating. Determination, sacrifice and hard work had enabled Easy and Evy to overcome every obstacle to prosperty. A year after the holdup, they scraped together enough money to buy an oval piece of plywood, paint it brown with "Easy Eats" in yellow curving across the top and some steaming corn fritters below. They mounted it in the frame of the old Sunoco sign at the top of the pole on the corner of their lot. Every time they earned a surplus, they thought of insurance, but the constraint of annual premiums persuaded them to postpone what seemed like a luxury. Instead, they improved the heating, installed air conditioning, upgraded the kitchen equipment, refurnished the dining room, etc. After a few years, enlarging the dining room cost them more than they had expected, so, once again, they put insurance off. Since the increased size of the dining room reminded them of how little space they had in the kitchen, they had it enlarged instead of buying insurance. Easy Eats was 

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looking less like a service station and more like a drive-in. Though pleased and proud, they remembered the holdup and realized that another disaster might ruin them. Several times, they discussed insurance with different salesmen, but an apparently more pressing need postponed a decision. A few days before the assault in fact, Evy told Easy that it was time to get insurance and he told her to arrange some interviews with salesmen. One had already made an appointment with them.

The Rev. Bellamy had to talk Easy into accepting the invitation from the CCRP to come and discuss the matter. No white committee was going to dissuade him from finding and punishing white criminals who had attacked his black customers and burned his restaurant down! Didn't he know how eager the white police and the white courts were to do it? Alonzo Bellamy was a stout little gentleman who never laughed, seldom smiled and always meant exactly what he said. Never was he afraid to say it either and he looked you in the eye when he did, whoever you were. He raised his rumbling bass only to make a point, which he drove home with his finger, touching your chest if you were a man. Although he didn't have much gray hair left, every one of them stayed right where he had combed them that morning despite any wind daring to blow his way. Hot or cold, the weather inspired no change of clothing: a well-tailored dark-blue suit, a shirt as white as sheep or snow ought to be and a red tie in a perfect knot. When everyone else was sweating, he looked and smelled like he had stepped out of the shower a few minutes ago. When teeth were chattering, he looked warm with no overcoat, hat or gloves, although, under extreme conditions, he wrapped a white silk scarf around his neck. No one dared to tell him a certain joke that made everyone laugh: "The Lord is his thermometer, he shall not want." Everywhere he went, everything he did, he moved with a dignity impossible to imitate or ridicule. Only his wife, relatives and friends his age or older, the mayor and Doz dared to call him Lonzo. He was Reverend Bellamy to everyone else. "Easy?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"No white committee gonna do that."

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"Doz is as black as you and me."

"The others are white."

"How they gonna get my business back?"

"They are only sposed to butter us up with the cops."

"When are the cops gonna make some arrests?"

"No."

"So why talk to this committee?"

"What?"

Easy almost said "shit!"

Easy's gaze dropped.

"... Where are we going to meet them?"

An awesome bandage covered the top of Easy's head. He came to the meeting like a bomb ready to explode. His eyes were flickering like a lighted fuse. Holding his tongue kept his face taught, holding his fists kept his knuckles white. Shifting restlessly in his chair, he kept turning his head to the side as if about to swing it back and forth. Was his moustache twitching? Doz wondered, trying not to stare. Yes, though ever so slightly. Doz realized that he had to tame an angry lion before he undertook anything else. "Do you mind if I call you 'Easy?'"

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"Everybody calls me 'Easy.'"

"I can take care of myself."

Lonzo: "How much money can you lend yourself?"

The moustache twitched as if Easy wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

"White money!"

Lonzo: "Easy!"

Another black: "All money is green in this country."

A white: "If my name were on that paper, green would be all I could see."

Easy was looking around the table and shifting in his seat.

Lonzo: "OK?"

He shrugged his anger off: "OK."

"What did your Momma tell you?"

His eyes twinkled: "Thanks!"

"When I got to Vietnam, they told me: 'dumb once, you might be lucky; dumb twice, you are dead.'"

The Commitee met another time at the hospital to interview the young people who had suffered the worst injuries in the assault. At the front desk, they learned that Cory Parker, the girl in a coma, had just died. Thunderstruck, they stood there unable to move, until Lonzo said:

"Well," a word that took a deliberate effort, "we better see the others, gentlemen."

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stories once again, but their parents and friends kept interrupting with bitter remarks. Innocent questions raised angry suspicion of malicious intent and especially when asked by white members of the Committee. Again and again, outrage over the injustice or the temptation of revenge disrupted the inquiry. Lonzo called them by name and admonished them:

"You don't love your neighbor as yourself!"

Rev. Bellamy's eyes flashed: "Out, Beelzebub!"

"Forgive her oh Lord, for she knew not what he made her say."

The mayor, the Committee, Doz and his family attended the funeral. To everyone's astonishment, tears rolled down Rev. Bellamy's cheeks when he made his main point: "If we take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Brethren, Cory will have died in vain." The usual words of approval came from some of the congregation, but others remained silent. Having observed that the silent ones were mostly young, Rev. Bellamy called a meeting of the parish youth. Their hatred of the whites in the Orchard and even, for some of them, whites in general shocked him. Typically, their resentment incited them to indulge in a contest as each speaker exceeded the previous one in vehemence. Some of the girls wanted to avenge Cory even more than the boys, whose shouting they punctuated with occasional shrieks. Rev. Bellamy let them all vent their wrath until it had run its course, then he exorted them to give the police and the courts a chance. Reprisal would only trap them in a continuous alternation between stroke and counterstroke. They were listening politely, but the stubborn expression on their faces warned him that he hadn't dissuaded them from invading the Orchard and trouncing every young man they could catch. After a tense silence, Easy, whom no one had noticed, spoke up in the rear:

"Look, if I can eat my heat, why can't you? It happened to me too, didn't it?"

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Only then did they began to voice the words of approval that Lonzo had missed in church. What of the youths who hadn't attended the meeting, however? Not everybody in Fillmore was like religious. Lonzo did a lot of talking, while Easy roamed the streets telling hotheads to cool it. Doz persuaded the police to patrol the imaginary boundary between Fillmore and the Orchard more thoroughly. Easy recruited a dozen contemporaries, both men and women, to take turns watching for black youths headed in the wrong direction and dissuade them. They intercepted several groups that would have ignited the tinder. The anger begin to decline only when the police reported progress in identifying the cultprits and arrested a few of them.

Doz had asked the white members of the Committee to call people in the Orchard and reason with them. All of their contacts refused to discuss the issue, whether they sympathized with the culprits or feared suspicion by neighbors of collaboration with the police. Indeed the callers heard a few hints of intimidation. The Rev. Macrobius Wooding was cursing the Chinski family unto the fourth generation. He hung up on the Rev. Alonzo Bellamy as soon as he heard his name. A few days later, disinterested observers, some seriously and others not seriously at all, remarked that the Lord had given the pastor of the True Faith Church exactly what he deserved. It had happened at two thirty-seven that morning. From across the street, an insomniac saw the white church recently repainted by parishioners gleaming in the dark. Suddenly flames shot up on all sides and four black men walked out to a big Pontiac parked in the street, taking their time to admire the blaze and look around as if to let their color be seen. Leisurely, they entered the car and drove away. The left-turn light was blinking at the end of the street, where it turned in the direction of Fillmore. By then, other neighbors had reached their windows or front porches, where they witnessed this departure. Neither they nor the insomniac, however, were able to give much more information about their appearance than the color of their skin. Niggers they definitely were! The Fire Department arrived with screaming sirenes a little less than ten minutes after the insomniac had called, but nothing remained of the church by then except a heap of blazing timber. The police found the Pontiac abandoned in Fillmore, where it had been stolen.

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The crowd in front of the smouldering, smoking heap that had been the Dabney Orchard True Faith Church kept growing as sympathizers from other parts of Mapleton joined the Orchardytes. The odor tormented their noses and the smoke made them cough, but without driving them away. Back and forth in front of the glowing embers paced the gaunt silhouette of the Rev. Macrobius Wooding. His fury jerked his knees and elbows, shook his wild hair and pointed his sharp nose, chin and Adam's apple in the opposite direction with every turn. The light glinted on his cheeks and long, bony hands, whose fingers struggled as if to grasp wet clay. Fascinated by the spectacle, the crowd had grown to several hundred, when he stopped and faced it. Now motionless, his silhouette awed them to silence. Rage amplified his hollow voice as he recalled the burning bush with which the Lord had warned Moses of his displeasure. He had let Satan's agents burn the church of the faithful down to punish them for their failure to keep their race pure. Couched in Pentateuchal rhetoric, the inflation of this belief excited him to the point of losing patience with pauses to catch his breath. Instead, he sucked air in with a wheezing, whistling sound whenever shortness of breath threatened to choke his voice, which usually happened in mid-sentence. His parishioners had always accepted this particularly human sound as proof of divine inspiration, which made him the Lord's loudspeaker. Fascinated, his listeners lost track of time, and even a few reporters attracted by the fire, who noticed that he said nothing of Treble and the IBLD. His agile exploitation of the Old Testament had always impressed the educated as well as the ignorant despite his scorn for textual scrupules. When dawn began to light the horizon, he turned and pointed: "Behold, oh Brethren, the signature of the Creator, a sign of hope for his chosen people and encouragement to purify his chosen race." Thus Macrobius incited the Children of Israel to smite the Philistines in soaring rhetoric, which the reporters understood even more quickly than the others. A demonstration would begin in the Orchard, pass through Fillmore and end at City Hall. Macrobius invited all righteous Mapletonians to participate. Although he didn't define this righteousness, nearly everyone understood what he meant. The demonstration would take place a week later, which gave the police and the city little time to prepare for it. The tension caused by the 

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attack on Easy Eats and the burning of the True Faith Church complicated the task, likewise Mapleton's lack of experience with demonstrations.  Supported by Mayor Green and Chief Kemper, Doz and the Committee persuaded business leaders to offer Macrobius the same kind of help in rebuilding his church as they had offered Easy. Even Horace made a commitment, presumably to counter suspicion that he had contributed to the burning of the church. When Doz spoke to Macrobius, however, the minister rejected an offer of "filthy lucre."

The unexpected arrival of several dozen buses and a few hundred cars on the afternoon of the demonstration consternated Stony Kemper and Sheldon Green, who were convinced that they had already done everything they could to avoid trouble. The organizers estimated the number of participants at twenty thousand and the authorities, at ten thousand. Since only several hundred people lived in the Orchard, the others had to come from elsewhere in Mapleton and out of town. How many of each? The organizers argued that most of them had come from Mapleton and the authorities, from out of town. They also disagreed over the provenance of the young whites who merged with the demonstrators, attacked black bystanders, broke windows and set cars on fire in Fillmore. Clashes with black youths and policemen trying to keep the two sides separate resulted in the usual protests of "police brutality" from both, although they overwhelmed the police. The organizers had promised to cross Fillmore by the shortest route and assign monitors to keep their participants in line. By the shortest route, they would have entered Fillmore near Easy Eats and continued on to Stringly a few hundred yards away. Part of them did follow this route, but another slipped through some woods on the edge of town and invaded Fillmore from an unexpected side. Since the Fillmoreans didn't know they were at war, this Jacksonian manoeuvre caught them by surprise, exposing them to more injury and destruction than would otherwise have been possible. Hiding among the troops in the flanking manoeuvre, the young toughs did this harm, while the other demonstrators merely formed columns, shouted in cadence and waved signs: "You asked for it!" "Fire Fillmore!" "Down, boy!" "Back to your jungle!" Etc.! Once the demonstrators had left Fillmore, however, their vehemence and numbers diminished, so that their arrival at city hall amounted to a perfunctory anticlimax.

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The population of Fillmore outnumbered that of the Orchard several times over. Although Lonzo, Easy and other notables struggled to prevent retaliation, they couldn't keep young Fillmoreans from preying on young Orchardytes. The blacks got the best of it, until young whites from other poor neighborhoods intervened. The resulting gang war distracted the police at a time when they were trying to identify the four blacks who had burned the church down. A few clues suggested that they had come from out of town, like the mysterious young white who had organized and led the attack on Easy Eats. Each of the sixteen other young men had received $100 from him before the incident and another $100 after it, then he had disappeared. Though arrested and facing almost certain conviction, they were either unable or afraid to furnish any decisive information about him. Meanwhile, the resentment of Fillmore against the Orchard was threatening peace in Mapleton. The tension poisoned the relations between blacks and whites, even those who knew each other. White customers suspected black salespeople of trying to shortchange them; white salespeople suspected black customers of trying to steal something. One race read a slight into an innocent remark by the other.

"Black is such a depressing color. When are women going to wear colorful clothes again?"

"His walls are so white they remind me of a hospital. They make me feel unhealthy."

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prevailed. The Chinski children complained of similar incidents at school. A white girl who had always sat with Sabby at lunch was sitting at another table and avoiding her. Three white boys who had teased Jimmy about his piano lessons confronted him on his way home, shoved him back and forth, grabbed his books and threw them in a muddy ditch. They were calling him "Caramel" and "Caramel Candy." Reg caught each of them and gave him a good shaking, but they had older brothers too, so he had to fight them. Although Reg took a few licks including a black eye, Jimmy no longer heard anyone call him "Caramel" or "Caramel Candy" any more. A little black girl jerked Christy's hair in kindergarden and Christy kicked her in the shin. Their teacher reminded them that they had always been friends, but bitter tears continued to flow and they couldn't explain why they weren't friends any more. Already preoccupied by these incidents, Siss heard that the girls, who took turns inviting the group to lunch, had forgotten her. The one who pretended to have missed her exaggerated her sympathy just enough to suggest a vindictive hypocrisy. Doz noticed that the black and white members of his crews were sitting down to eat their lunch in separate places. He had never seen that before. Worse, orders from white customers were increasing more slowly than usual at that time of year, while orders from blacks were increasing faster. He and Janet began to worry about making the payments on the loan for construction of the new warehouse.

He and Nelly had always worked for a few hours with each of the crews once a week. Now he asked Janet to do it too, she did it willingly and, despite her lack of experience, she earned the respect and friendship of her fellow movers. Soon two of the three crews were eating their lunch together again and, although Peter Paul's continued to eat separately, the blacks being younger than the whites, Janet joined the former. A lot of mutual kidding had the peculiar effect of improving their relations with the whites. Doz had Zel and Lang introduce a new ad every week rather than every other week, while Treble continued to repeat one slick ad for weeks at a time. Doz also persuaded his friends at the Kindergarden to finance an ad campaign by Zel and Lang to promote interracial harmony in Mapleton. Patience and persistence raised enough money to get the campaign started and then success attracted more to keep it going. The 

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first ad in the series showed two middle-aged ladies meeting between floors where the up-escalator passed the down-escalator.

"Shirley!" cried the white one going down.

"Wait for me up there!"

In the next take, they were sitting across from each other at a table in the Bee and Rose on the top floor of the new Sedgewick and Crompton store at Mill Run Mall. Above them, you could see the spars and cables supporting the glass roof and, through the half-moon window behind them, the tall buildings downtown. First "the girls" brought each other up to date on their former classmates at Hadrian Exxis High. Then they showed each other photos of their children and grandchildren. In a third take, they said goodbye between escalators on the second floor, where Shirley was going to shop for a vacuum cleaner, while Rache wanted to buy her grandson some sox in the basement. They were looking forward to seeing each other at the Fourth of July picnic organized by the American Legion. Lang had waited three hours with his video camera to shoot the initial scene. Though surprised by his interest in them, the two friends agreed to cooperate with him and soon forgot him although he was sitting at the next table. Though reluctant at first to contribute to the campaign, Sedgewick and Crompton made a generous contribution as soon as this ad appeared on Channel Eight.

Running into Siss at a Women's Club luncheon, Peggy Rogunda invited her and her family to appear on "The Best of Mapleton." Not only would they make a hit with the viewers, but their testimony would also help to ease racial tensions.

"We will even bring our pets if you like." Siss meant it as a joke.

The seven Chinskis therefore arrived in her studio with the three Brittanies and Amenhotep in Sabby's arms looking suspicious and swishing his tail accordingly. As the interview progressed, the cameraman caught him sniffing at the electronic equipment and Bertrand being patted by a technician. After a review of Doz's background, his career with Fossez and his marriage with Siss, Peggy encouraged the children to 

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discuss their relations with each other and their friends. Again and again, they deplored the deterioration in their friendship with people of contrasting color and even some of the same color who disapproved of their interracial tolerance. Reg complained of black friends who had accused him of forgetting what color he was. They had couched their remarks in a sarcasm that veiled resentment and one of them had sneered: "Whitey's whitewashing you."

"If Dad hadn't told me never to hit anybody for saying something like that... "

"I never used to pay any attention to people's color," said Jimmy. "Now it's the first thing I notice."

"Amenhotep doesn't care what color other cats are," Christy remarked.

"Maybe that's because he's brown and beige himself," observed Doz."

David, who had come down from Concordia for the interview, reached over and scratched Amenhotep's head, which closed his eyes. "I guess we are a happy family."

"I'm glad none of us are green," added Sabby.

Christy: "I like people who are different."

Jimmy: "We have enough to worry about."

Reg: "If we play on the same team, why can't we do everything else together?"

Sabby: "Race is just an excuse for people who have other reasons they are ashamed of."

David: "What I think should be done? Punish the people behind the attack on Easy Eats and the destruction of the True Faith Church."

Siss: "Yes, and we all know who they are."

Doz gave her a nervous glance. "The more tit for tat, the worse it will get and the harder to stop."

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The interview enjoyed immediate and widespread success. The Chinskis received many congratulations and many of them from unexpected people, such as blacks and whites proud of their origins. Orders for moves increased and Horace threw a tantrum. Although Lonzo and Easy praised the interview, they warned of efforts to organize a counterdemonstration in Fillmore, where the demonstration had hurt pride even more than people and property. Most Fillmoreans felt a need for this counterdemonstration, but they disagreed on whether it should end at City Hall or in the Orchard. The risk of clashes between black and white radicals alarmed Doz, who proposed to substitute a mass reconciliation for the counterdemonstration. According to his plan, a black column from Fillmore and a white one from Stringly would meet in front of City Hall, where they would turn down Gotchtalopee Boulevard, each on one side of the grass strip in the center. The blacks would be wearing brown scarfs and the whites, beige scarfs, both with the name, address and telephone number of the wearer safety-pinned to it. The two columns would turn and face each other over the median, then everyone would remove his scarf and put it around the neck of the person opposite him on the other side of the median. Meanwhile, city employees would be dividing that part of the boulevard into rectangles by running orange colored ribbons across it. The mayor would invite the blacks and whites in each block to lunch in one of several different buildings large enough to receive a crowd, such as the Payne Street Market, the National Guard Armory, Gregory Faribee Arena, etc. Beige-Brown Saturday would become an annual event.

Unfortunately, custom reserved Saturday mornings for various ethnic, social or professional groups and the Stuckers had a permit to stage their annual parade on the next one. About ten percent of the population, they formed a closely-knit community, worshipping in their temples, marrying each other, burying their dead in their cemeteries and voting for politicians who favored their interests. They distinguished themselves in business, the professions, higher education and the arts. After centuries of mass emigration, they had established a colony in the land of their origin, thus accomplishing a prophecy in their holy book as they interpreted it. Other 

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such interpretations justified the eviction of the natives, who had been living there ever since the Stuckers had abandoned it centuries ago as well as the development of a democracy practically limited to Stuckers. In addition to agriculture and industry, Stuckerland prospered from trade, support by the disapora and aide from countries in which Stuckers wielded political and economic influence. They rejected accusations of imperialism on the grounds that a modern democracy took precedence over natives who were neither modern nor democratic. The massive display of Stuckerland flags along Gotchtalopee Boulevard that Saturday drowned a few red, white and blue flags in a sea of gold and green. Waving and wearing the same colors, troops of blond, blue-eyed majorettes strutted down the boulevard grinning. A few commentators who dared to express their doubts about the allegiance of the Stuckers to the country they lived in encountered a barrage of outrage. The emotion boiled over in letters to the editor, the mayor, the governor and others who had to hire secretaries to read their mail. As usual the media amplified the roar and rumble, until some legislators anxious to be re-elected introduced bills to punish anti-Stuckerism. The noise inspired graffiti that shook so many jowls and popped so many eyes that non-Stuckers wondered which was cause and which, effect. Needless to say, the Stuckers rejected the mayor's request to postpone their parade.

Schedule the Beige-Brown reconciliation on Sunday morning? Twenty-three ministers protested along with their more zealous laypeople. Saturday or Sunday afternoon? Baseball! Most of the potential male participants who didn't go to a stadium would stay home and watch television. During the week? Few of the willing would be able to leave their work. Hence an indefinite postponement of what nearly everyone recognized as a good idea. Enough emotion drove the counterdemonstration, however, to ensure that it took precedence over all other considerations. The Stuckers had to negotiate hard to persuade the organizers to wait until Saturday afternoon. Despite support by Lonzo, Easy and Doz, Sheldon and Stony barely managed to dissuade the organizers from passing through the Orchard. This time, the police estimated fifteen thousand demonstrators and the organizers, twenty-five thousand, five or ten thousand from out of town judging by the buses and cars parked in or near Fillmore. Also from out of town, a few hundred 

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white youths parked along the route of the counter-demonstration. Their muscular build, their black, leatherclad dress, the gangs they formed and their belligerant behavior showed why they had come. When a reporter from the Vigilant asked who had sent them, they beat him up. Asked what organization they represented, they slugged and kicked a crew from Channel Eight and smashed their camera. The mayor called in the National Guard, which had been on alert, and they deployed along the route of the counterdemonstration. The arrival of similar black gangs alarmed the more responsible black organizers, hence a dispute that delayed the departure. The only way they could keep these gangs from participating would be to deploy the marshals against them. Some organizers wanted to alert the police, others, to require a promise of restraint. The former objected that the gangs wouldn't keep such a promise and the latter, that alerting the police would antagonize them. Unable to agree, they asked the Rev. Bellamy for his opinion, even though he disapproved of the counterdemonstration. He advised them not only to alert the police, but also to tell the radicals that they had done so. Furthermore, they should urge the majority of the participants who were opposed to violence to do everything they could to prevent it. If words didn't restrain the youths from out of town, muscles would.

The organizers asked Lonzo to deliver the message himself. "Brothers, Sisters: why have so many of you assembled to march from Fillmore to City Hall?"

A cacaphony of replies.

The noes drowned the yeahs out.

Again the noes predominated.

The yeahs shouted alone.

The yeahs shouted at the top of their lungs.

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Various affirmatives.

Hypocrisy and sarcasm.

The noes roared.

Silence.

When the march finally began, enthusiasm had declined to determination. Led by the organizers, the column filled the street for several blocks. Attempts to shout slogans in cadence petered out, so a grim mass advanced in silence, carrying signs and banners that read:

"Is our city a battlefield?"

"We aren't your slaves any more."

"We respect your rights. You respect ours!"

Etc.

"Black bastards!"

"Baby fuckers!"

"Meat beaters!"

"Shit eaters!"

Etc.

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white radicals had broken into cars in a parking lot and driven them across the street to form a double barricade. As the black column approached, stones, bottles and other objects flew at them, forcing them to retreat, some of them with cuts or bruises. Driving up on the other side, guardsmen encountered a similar barrage. They bombarded the barricade with teargas canisters and overran it, only to find that the radicals had retreated down a side street across from the parking lot. By chance, the fugitives were crossing an intersection at the other end of this street at the very moment when a black gang, whom Lonzo's speech had dissuaded from joining the counterdemonstration, arrived in their cars. The lead car ran one of them down and a riot erupted, spreading to a small park on the other side of the intersection. In pursuit of the whites, the guardsmen attacked both them and the blacks, pitting rifle buts against baseball bats. Approaching sirenes failed to drown out the grunting and shouting, the scuffling and thudding of wood and metal on skulls and shoulders. Blood gushed from heads, flowed down faces, soiled clothing, spattered the grass and pavement. Teeth, shoulders and arms cracked and snapped while bodies stumbled, fell and lay writhing or still on the ground. More and more whites, blacks, guardsmen and policemen joined in the fray, which spread to nearby streets. Canisters flew, tears flowed, lungs burned and even more bystanders than combattants gasped for oxygen. Thick black smoke further contaminated the air as the rioters set vehicles on fire; they were also smashing windows, looting shops and apartments. White and black fugitives broke into buildings, ran up and down stairs, across roofs and through gardens. Property damage amounted to hundreds of thousands, two whites, one black and one black guardsman died and thirty-seven others went to the hospital, of which six were in intensive care. The police arrested forty-three white and twenty-six black rioters, took them to the Amory, questioned them, found that nearly all of both had come from out of town and released them a few hours later except for a few ringleaders. Both white and black radicals were railing against police brutality in every microphone they could reach. Meanwhile,

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the counterdemonstrators had slipped between or climbed over the cars in the double barricade and continued on to the square in front of City Hall. Unaware of the riot a half mile away, they howled their fury and the organizers took turns blasting the authorities for letting the white radicals obstruct their march. The only white among the blacks at the top of the stairs, the mayor pleaded for racial peace, yet every promise he made encountered angry skepticism. The press, who had been waiting for them with their equipment, glutted the public with descriptions and images of a dangerous black mob bent on injury and destruction. Only a few reporters bothered to investigate the other uproar, although it was attracting police and ambulance sirenes. Yet they were unable to see or shoot much of the action before white or black radicals beat them up. Thus most of the information that reached the public showed the devastation caused by the riot and, in their hospital beds, the injured whose testimony reflected their outrage. A few journalists distinguished between the motives of the crowd assembled in front of City Hall and those of the black and white racists involved in the riot, but the majority of white Mapletonians blamed the riot on the counterdemonstration. Even the witnesses who lived in the white neighborhood where it had occurred recalled blacks chasing whites, hiting whites, knocking whites down and destroying white property, their own in particular. Although hatred and panic had distorted the faces of the white rioters as well as the black, the witnesses saw panic in the former and hatred in the latter. They remembered many blacks and few whites invading their buildings, where the whites struck them as fugitives and the blacks as aggressors. When jostled or knocked down, they blamed the blacks, when afflicted with tear gas or smoke, they blamed the blacks. Damaged property, looted belongings, the scorched hulks of cars, especially their own, incited them to demand punishment of the blacks. In their imagination, in their nightmares, they faced mobs of angry blacks rushing them again and again. Insomnia tormented the youngest and oldest. Watching discussions of the riot in television forums, which often deteriorated to quarrels between black and white spokespeople, they sided with the former against the latter. They found opinionated whites justified and opinionated blacks, obnoxious. They complained of the moderator's tolerance of blacks and his severity with whites. Often they switched channels or cut their television off out of anger or frustration. The display 

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of emotions by white athletes pleased them and those by black athletes disgusted them. However similar and vulgar, the conduct of whites amused them and that of blacks offended them. When they encountered blacks in a corridor, on a sidewalk or in a bus, some tensed and others cringed. Similar prejudices affected the broader white community and contrary ones, the black community.

Along with some white leaders, Lonzo and other Fillmore notables heeded Sheldon's request for help in healing the wounds, although, at first, they all sounded like so many voices in a wilderness. The resentment diverted white customers from Fossez to Treble, thus threatening Doz with a shortfall when construction of the new warehouse had reached a point where he couldn't reasonably suspend it. The surge in business elated Horace, while Dennis savored rumors of alienation between white and back employees at Fossez. A modest investment in two attacks, from which they had insulated themselves, had resulted in widespread antagonism between whites and blacks. Since their success hadn't brought their different intentions into conflict, they were congratulating each other. The Chinskis were discovering that many of their friends were fairweather, whether white or black. When summer vacation began, Billy Dibbins flaunted his contempt for David, while Nathan Elbox kept his distance. An exception only confirmed the rule: Jimmy's friendship with a white soprano his age inspired their teachers to let Jimmy accompany her at a joint recital. They received enthusiastic applause from an audience of parents, who included a black couple. A drop in an empty bucket.

Faced with mutual estrangement between the blacks and the whites in the Fossez workforce, Doz, Janet, Nelly and now Siss joined the employees more often and for longer hours, which forced them to catch up on their office work in the evening. In collaboration with the foremen, they discreetly induced blacks and whites to work together, thus restoring mutual confidence between them. Rumors of the improved relations disappointed Dennis and Horace. Doz was wondering how he could win white customers back when Horace did him an unintentional favor. The loan for the construction of the new Treble warehouse and the raise in wages due to 

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the employees' improved skills necessitated an eventual increase in rates. The number of white customers who now preferred Treble to Fossez persuaded Horace that the time had come. He guessed that an increase of 2½ % on new orders wouldn't turn many of them away, provided he introduce it as discreetly as possible. This guess would have proved valid if Doz hadn't cut his rates by 2½ % and announced it in an ad produced by Zel and Lang. A white couple discuss a move, while a little boy, seated nearby, is apparently preoccupied with his computer.

Husband: "It's going to cost us $5239.39. $127.79 more!"

"They just raised their rates."

"My hairdresser told me."

"127.79 less."

Son: "$49838.81."

"I thought you were doing your homework."

"We will save... 5%."

"He's figured that out too!"

"Everybody!"

Channel Eight viewers were chuckling and Horace threw a worse tantrum than usual, slapping his secretary and mistress for encouraging him to be patient. She might have forgiven him the pain, but the bruise on her cheek persuaded her to offer her dual competence to a more appreciative boss. Because of his dual need, it took him two or three days to find a suitable replacement. Neither did the increase in his rates improve his financial position nor did the decrease in Doz's attract enough business to improve his. Doz asked Janet, Nelly and Siss to consent to a 10% cut in their salaries and the board, to a 10% cut in dividends, on which Fuss and Maud lived. This sacrifice, which he considered temporary, reassured the employees since he placed the burden on management rather than them, while those who held stock accepted the need to cut dividends. Both

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Fossez and Treble were barely able to pay their bills. What if business slackened? Horace would lay employees off, but Doz would not. Horace could ask N & I to endorse an emergency loan, but Doz would have to sacrifice his independence to get such support from Cross-Continent. This problem continued to worry Doz even when he managed to forget the others. A nightmare spoiled his sleep again and again. He found himself sitting across a table from three white bankers who, by the glint in their eyes, the tight smile on their lips and their comfort, flaunted their satisfaction with the predicament they had him in. Shouting a Carminian obscenity, Doz woke up to find Siss gripping his arm and staring at him. When she asked him what that word meant, he tried to find an excuse not to say: "I-I-I ne-never said it before."

"What does it mean?"

"Please tell me, Doz."

"I want to know."

"Don't be afraid."

Doz received a call from a prominent Methodist minister he knew named Ralph Syler. Ralph needed to move his parish from the neo-gothic church it had occupied for sixty-five years to a modern one nearing completion.

"What are you going to do with the old church?"

"Would you mind selling or renting it to the True Faith Church?"

"If only the Rev. Macrobius were willing!"

"Thanks, Ralph. And not just for me!"

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"You are welcome Doz... Let's talk about this move."

Perhaps Macrobius would jump at the opportunity to assemble his congregation in a beautiful old stone church only a half mile from the Orchard. Ralph called back a few days later: "He rejected the proposal before I could even explain it."

"... Did your vestry agree to let you offer simply to lend it?"

"What god is he the man of?"

Macrobius also continued to reject offers by Doz and the CRPP to help him build it. He preferred the trouble of finding places to assemble his congregation on Sunday mornings, such as a movie theatre, a school auditorium and a park where his voice disturbed the nearby residents. Meeting in a different place every Sunday inspired sermons about the faithful wandering in the desert of Stringly, where spiritual desolation disgraced material comfort. As for the blacks in Fillmore, they resembled the Philistines, a spiritual, material and especially racial threat to Israel. The Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists, etc. corresponded to the pagans; the Protestants, the Catholics, etc., to the errant tribes. Yahweh had assigned the only tribe still faithful to him the dire but noble mission of bringing the others back into his fold by persuasion or coercion. "However long it will take!" cried Macrobius after sucking enough breath in to shout it out. His arms, fingers and teeth were punishing the air around him for lack of a more substantial enemy. A victorious smile tore his face open, eliciting a spontaneous chorus of approval. For over thirty years his preaching had hypnotized the Orchard and appalled the rest of Mapleton except for some poor whites. Although caricatures in the Vigilant and imitations on Channel Eight made many laugh, they only martyred Macrobius. On the Sunday after Ralph's offer, he attacked the minister, his church and his congregation so violently that you would think he had insulted him and offended his followers. Angry voices in the crowd denounced the Methodists' condescension and hypocrisy.