Cudjo, by shooting two guards from cover with his deer rifle, turned the tide. Fighters eagerly slipped under the chainlink to seize the dead guards’ weapons. The remaining guards were killed as they ran for their lives across the adjoining fields.
Jason hugged Arlette during the battle, both of them on the ground, his cheek against the nape of her neck. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t tender; it was two terrified people doing their best to disappear into each other and into the ground. He could feel Arlette gasp at each cracking shot, shiver as buzzing bullets tumbled past. As the cars rolled out of the parking lot and the fighting moved farther away, he could feel her begin to breathe easier.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered. For what it was worth.
She squeezed his hand, nodded. Pretending that he had reassured her, while tears rolled down her cheeks.
They stayed hidden until they heard cars returning, until the shooting was long ended and people started calling for everyone to come out of hiding. Jason rose into the long-shadowed day, and his heart gave a sudden leap of joy. He had lived through it. He would see another day.
“Take your belongings and go to the parking lot! Take some food with you if you can!” Jason took his telescope, his only remaining property, from beneath the cotton wagon and joined the others as they marched toward the exit. There were bodies lying on the ground near the gate, all displaying that limp, careless, boneless sprawl that let Jason know these were real bodies and not actors in some movie. Manon took Arlette and Jason firmly by the shoulders and marched them quickly through the area, though Jason couldn’t help but look at the bodies to discover if any of them were Nick. One of the bodies, he saw, was that of Sekou, one of the boys who had given Arlette grief for kissing Jason. Jason tore his eyes from the corpse and looked straight ahead. He didn’t want to think about Sekou, about how the boy had died fighting while Jason had huddled beneath the wagon. When they came out of the camp, they found Nick in the parking area. He was wearing a gun belt, leaning on a shotgun, and giving orders. He looked like a highly successful field marshal in some dreadful, highly personal African bush war. Jason gave a cry of elation. Arlette raced up to him and flung her arms around him.
“Baby!” he said, and lifted Arlette off her feet as he hugged her. Then he carried Arlette to Manon and threw an arm around his ex as well.
“Nick!” she said, eyes wide with horror. “You’re covered with blood!”
“It’s, uh, not mine,” Nick said. A shadow passed over the joy that glowed in his eyes. He turned to Arlette. “Careful, honey, you might get some on you.”
“I don’t care,” Arlette said.
He lowered her to the ground. Nick saw Jason, and a smile crossed his face. “Hey, Jase,” he said.
“Hey.”
“You hang onto that telescope, okay, Jase? That scope is your luck.” Jason looked at the Astroscan in its battered red plastic case. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe so.” There was a lot of rushing around, car engines starting. Someone started one of the big five-ton trucks. Nick looked sharply to one side, and then his smile widened.
“Cudjo!” he said.
Jason turned to see Cudjo tromping toward them on his sturdy boots, his hunting rifle over one shoulder. Cudjo looked more strange in the light of day than he had at night, with his homemade canvas pants held up by suspenders, his moth-eaten, wide-brimmed hat, and a checked shirt that seemed made up of the remnants of other checked shirts all stitched together.
Cudjo held up a fist, crooked a thumb. “Took,” he chirped. And laughed.
“You come visit the camp, cracker, and we’ll make you real welcome.” For a long, long heartbeat, Omar stared at the radio set in his office. All his people at the camp were dead, he thought. The Klan, the Crusaders, all of them. He could hear refugees howling and yelling over the radio until the signal abruptly cut off.
“Omar! Omar!” Eddie Bridges called. He was one of the deputies at Clarendon, trying to keep order amid all the sick people. Not a Klansman, not involved with the A.M.E. camp at all. “What the hell was that about?” Eddie demanded. “Did he say he was an Army general?” Omar didn’t have an answer for him.
He was almost thankful when the earthquake began to shake the world.
Nick walked to Cudjo, embraced him as fervently as he’d embraced Arlette. Moments of soaring relief floated through his mind, alternating with unreasoning jagged bolts of adrenaline lightning. “You saved it, man,” he said. “You saved the damn plan. You saved fifty lives.” Cudjo seemed a bit taken aback. “You did the hard work, you fellas,” he said. “You make the claymore, you fight the Kluxers vis-a-vis. I make the shoot from ambush, me.” He shrugged. “That not hard, no. Not for hunter.”
Nick stepped back, looked at Cudjo. “I need you to guide most of these people someplace safe.”
“Mais oui, I do that, yes. Take you-all down bayou, me, take you across on batteau. Small batteau, my batteau, take all night cross that bayou, but you-all on south bank by morning. Lord High Sheriff can’t follow you there, no, you be safe.”
“Good. Good.” Nick nodded. He glanced over his shoulder. “Is there a place in town I can take some of the fighters? Some place defensible. I figure the best chance of covering your withdrawal is to go right into Shelburne City and seize the most public building I can find.”
Cudjo was surprised by this idea, but as he considered it an approving light began to glow in his eyes.
“That sho-nuff gon’ put the weasel in that chicken house, for true,” he said admiringly. “But the Lord High Sheriff, that Paxton, he got his sheriff’s men in the courthouse.”
“Any place other than the courthouse?”
“There’s Clarendon. Big ol’ plantation house, that Clarendon, and that Miz LaGrande who live there, that Miz LaGrande, she hate Sheriff Paxton. Big refugee camp at Clarendon, that big house, all the white people go there.”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to get any of these people to walk back into a refugee camp. Do we have anywhere else?”
Cudjo thought for a moment. “Carnegie Library. Big ol’ place, that library. She got big lawns, that library, nice fields of fire, yes.”
“How do we get there?”
“You go down highway, that highway, you turn left Jefferson Davis Street.” Nick gave a weary smile. “I’m not likely to forget the name of that street,” he said.
“How Trout the wounded?” A stout middle-aged woman came up to Nick. “We got some people shot up and no doctor. Some can’t walk. These people gonna die if they don’t see a doctor.” Nick bit his lip. “I don’t suppose there’s a hospital?” he asked Cudjo.
“No hospital in this parish, mais non. But they put sick people in Clarendon, that big house, there.”
“And you say the lady who owns Clarendon hates the sheriff?”
“Mais oui. But your people there, they no be safe. Lord High Sheriff find them.” Nick turned to the woman. “I’m afraid we’ll have to take the wounded with us. That’s bad for them, but they won’t be safe if they’re not with us.”
“Some of them are bad hurt.”
“Yes, I know, but—” He stopped as he saw a bright, incongruous blond head crossing his line of vision. The white man he’d talked to that morning, walking across the grass with his black wife and three kids. Wild inspiration struck Nick. “Hey!” he called. “Hey!” For the life of him he couldn’t remember the man’s name.