Sometimes, even a small town like Hester can seem like a vast trail tonowhere—especially on a day when everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The boys left Albert's repair lot with Henry clutching his head. Sarah slipped a clean rag into his free hand before he stepped off the porch. Henry had lingered a look into Sarah's wistful eyes, taking it to be her way of offering a silent apology. Later, he realized the balled-up rag Sarah had given him concealed something hard in the center. When he unraveled the cloth, there was the miniature bottle of laudanum.

They made their way along a back road, the distant barking giving way to quiet. After concluding the police had pulled back from the border, they headed east to Willy's shanty in the Black Ghetto. If they did encounter any trouble, they could easily take cover in the surrounding woods.

Off in the distance, a loud metal bell clanged through the air. Union Steel. The mill's second shift had just ended. Soon workers would start trampling the dirt pathways back to their modest and, in some cases, lacking homes.

Anger strained in Henry's chest and he didn't know why. Didn't care why. Raw emotion pulled the tendons tight in his neck. Drew his jaw shut. He didn't want to talk about it. Just wanted to shut the world out. But Big Willy had other ideas brewing in his head.

"What was his problem?" Willy said, shaking his head like a slow-moving pendulum.

"I don't know," Henry said, annoyed. "He probably thought we were troublemakers. Can't say I blame him."

"How you figure? We didn't do nothing wrong."

"Don't matter. We're colored."

"Oh, you in one of those moods," Willy said, slowing to a halt.

Henry stopped and met Willy's watchful gaze. "What's that supposed to mean?" Henry's pulse started to drum in his ear.

"Some fights you can't win," Willy said. "All you can do is brush it off and move on."

Henry snorted. "Let's hear you say that after you've been clocked in the head with a baseball and then blamed for a riot."

"Hey, why you so angry?"

"I'm not angry," Henry said, even though he was. Then he shook his head. "Okay, maybe I am angry. Maybe you should be angry too. Trouble follows us everywhere."

"There's no trouble here," Willy said, casting his hands around him.

It was late afternoon. The sun had started to wane in the milky blue sky. The trees in the woods were quiet save for the faint rustling of branches still bare from the harsh winter. A cool, light breeze passed over Henry's cheeks and whisked through his sweat-damp hair.

"See?" Willy said. "Life can be peaceful. Sometimes people gonna try to rile you. But it only works if you let 'em."

Before Henry could bat a reply, the quiet was broken by the sounds of stamping feet and rowdy cries. Henry and Willy peered down the dirt road. Mill workers. A half dozen, all female, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, if that. They were joking and giggling and slapping hands, clearly overjoyed work was over. The six of them, covered in filthy work clothes, fell silent as they shuffled past, discharging a nose-wrinkling odor of sweat mixed with sulfur and finding every reason to stare at the ground or into the trees. Once they passed a ways down the road, they picked up where they left off, whooping it up and carrying on as if they didn't have a care in the world.

Trailing behind the group, a gangly black man, swearing under his breath, approached Henry and Willy. The man's eyes drooped in a way that made him look like a heartbroken hound dog with the world on his mind.

"Sir," Henry said, "are you okay?"

The grizzled man's expression melted as if he had waited all day to unload his mind. "You ever work inside a steel mill?"

Henry shook his head. "No, sir. I've never had that opportunity."

"Opportunity?" the man huffed. "Don't know if I'd call working fourteen-hour shifts an opportunity, breathing all those fumes 'til we shaking with fever."

"Sorry," Henry said, "I didn't mean–"

"Sorry, nothing. I moved my whole family from the south to find a decent job here. Inside the mill, we take all kinds of abuse and humiliation. And we supposed to be grateful? Every day, that damn white foreman tells us coloreds we don't have any right to be there. He say we stealing all the good jobs. Well, let them keep their jobs. I'm done with Union Steel!"

As the mill worker rambled on. Henry listened intently, nodding his support. All this man wanted to do was work hard and do right, and he was being treated as if he didn't even have a right to a job ... as if he had no right to support his family. That sort of treatment made Henry burn under the collar.

"Wait a second ..." the mill worker said suddenly, pointing to Henry. "You that baseball player, right? The one got whacked good in the head by a rotten pitch?"

"Yeah, Henry sighed. "That was me."

"Man," Willy said. "Word sure does spread fast around here."

"So what you gonna do about that, boy?" the man asked.

Henry exhaled a small laugh. "What do you suggest I do?"

"That Pioneers pitcher attacked you!" the man said. "You can't just sit back and take that."

Henry remembered a verse from the Bible his father used to say: And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

"I'll tell you what I'd do." the mill worker said. "Everyone says he hit you on purpose ... and he don't respect you 'cause you colored. If he did that to me, I'd go give him a piece of his own work and then some. He did violence against you. You gotta do more violence against him. He made you bleed a drop? Then you make him bleed a river. Beat him so bad he won't go to the cops. Make him too scared to tell a soul it was you. Then he'll respect you."

Henry cast a glance at Willy who looked like a gigantic balloon about to burst.

The big guy was a peacemaker at heart. And right now, he probably wanted nothing more than to tell this outraged mill worker he was wrong. Willy pressed his lips tight.

The three men looked at each other for a while. Then the mill worker pushed out a long breath and said, "I guess I better be getting home."

Once the mill worker had moseyed out of earshot, Willy gave Henry a stern look. "Don't you believe what that man said."

"Hester has changed a lot since the war started," Henry said. "And not for the better. The relations between blacks and whites was never good, but it's never been worse."

Big Willy crumpled his brows as if considering those words.

"No," Henry said. "I take that back. It's not just Hester that's changing. It's the whole damn world. What's it gonna be like for colored folks in ten years or twenty or fifty or even a hundred?"

Willy didn't say a word as if he was channeling all his energy into a thought that was just beginning to whirl in his head.

As they started down the road again, Henry brought a hand to his head, his wound dully throbbing against the gauze. His left temple pulsated, his heartbeat quickened. He could feel the stirrings of a headache forming. And the next thought to enter Henry's mind surprised even him:

Sarah ... I'll never see her again.

Author's Note:

Whoa, you made it to Chapter 11! That's a big deal. I've heard that most people don't finish books they've started ... even good ones. And you know what? I know I've done that before too.

If you're still here, that means A LOT to me!

As always, a vote or feedback is always ... and I mean always ... very much appreciated.

See ya next week!

Take care,

Tom