The note came by way of a Negro boy I didn't recognize, just a scrap of paper folded once,

tucked inside a bundle with a coat and something else wrapped in brown paper.

I opened the paper first. It was a mask.

Pasteboard. The kind you'd buy at a dry goods store for a child's costume party,

a false face with cut out eyes and a slit for the mouth. Cheap thing, I could have crushed it

in one hand. The writing on the note said, meet tonight at 12 o'clock. Nothing else. No name signed to it,

no location given, but I knew where. I tore the note up soon as I read it, small pieces, scattered them. I put on the coat Hennis had sent, dark, plain,

not my own, and I went out after 11. The streets were empty. You could hear the river if you listened for it,

that low sound the Chattahoochee makes where it drops over the rocks below the mills.

I walked to the vacant lot and they were already gathering,

men arriving by ones and twos, keeping to the shadows along the fence line.

Some I recognized by their walk or their build even before I

got close enough to see faces. Some wore their masks already. Some carried them. Nobody said much.

There was a feeling like before a battle. At least that's what the veterans among us called it,

that tightness in the chest, that strange calm.

I had not served. Some of the others had, Hudson, Duke, they'd worn the gray, barber, Bidell. Others I will not name, though I could.

Dr. Kirksey had set this wheel turning three weeks prior. He'd spoken to me about getting the man out of the way,

as he put it, out of the way, as if we were moving a piece of furniture that blocked a door.

We moved through the streets after midnight. Columbus was dark and still. The rally at Temperance

Hall had emptied hours ago. All those Republicans and their Negro friends gone home full of speeches and promises.

We walked in a loose group, not marching, not running, just walking like men with somewhere ordinary to be.

The house was on 13th Avenue. We knew which one. Everyone in Columbus knew where the man lived.

...