Free Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson Page B

and ancient horse pistols and new Colt revolvers all held at point, held the high ground of the balcony; there were perhaps twenty of them at most, but they looked like a hundred to me, and must have seemed a thousand to the marshal and his men, who froze with their hands on their weapons but never drew them.
    The marshal slowly lowered his piece, then lowered its hammer.
    Everyone else in the church stood stock still for a breath, then two, then three. I counted them. I was standing with the armed men and without intending it I had become part of the tableau; at least the marshals looking up seemed to include me in it as we faced each other across a newly opened gulf in our common history as white men, a gulf John Brown had opened when he had drawn his sword in common cause with the black. This moment lasted no more than a minute, and no less than a hundred years.
    Then with a flourish like Othello, Douglass was exeunt through the low choir door.
    A low hubbub grew to a shout as the marshals backed slowly out the front door; the pews emptied into the aisles, the balcony into the galleries, the back door into the alley, and with the others, my heart pounding, I melted away into the night, which had fallen unannounced while we had been fighting our War in the Church.
    It was the old Minister who was the only loser. For later that same night, Cowardice daring where Courage had faltered, his church was burned to the ground, probably by the same marshals who had been unwilling to take us on.
    If I say Us, does that make me one of the Stalwarts? I think not; I still cannot imagine myself taking up arms (odd Virginian, I!), though, my dear friend and colleague, I definitely passed over a line in my own Understanding that night; the scales fell from my eyes, which is appropriate in Church, I suppose. Not about violence, which was the false issue, for that was never the question, slavery itself being the very perfection of violence; and not about my poor beloved South, for her corrupt true nature had long been clear to me. No, I understood that to end slavery we would have to be fighting the Nation itself and not just a section of it. Those were not Virginians that had come to take Douglass. We had to go against the might of America itself. This was what the slaves had always understood.
    So, as you see, if Life is the great Instructor, I have been attending Classes. I only hope now that my family does not find out about this attendance, on the very night of my young Cousin’s funeral; I have never hidden my abolitionary sentiments from them, but it is a fool that adds insult to injury. But I have, as I have said, only sorrows and no regrets. I remain, as always, your admirer and always devoted friend and colleague,
    Thos. Hunter, M.D. (ad imminen) Philadelphia,
City of Brotherly Love
    Aug. 16, 1859
Miss Laura Sue Hunter
Miss Colby’s School
Richmond
    Dearest Laura Sue:
    I was sorry to say I was unable to attend our dear young Cousin’s funeral, which was held in Staunton, you know, not Baltimore, our uncle saying that since John bad died for Virginia he must be buried there. I would rather say, since it was Virginia that threw his life away, since it is a prodigious misapprehension of the Slave to think that he would submit to a Boy. I managed to get to Church on the night of the funeral, and my prayers were with you all.
    Your loving
Thomas

    Socialism was good for teeth, and Elvis Presley Cardwell had a new set. He was sitting on the trailer steps when the car rolled in, as silent as a hummer, under his sycamores and stopped. It was the museum man with two colored women, one of them a child. But it was the car that interested Elvis.
    “Haven’t seen one of these in years,” he said. “I don’t work on cars no more. I don’t call them little hummers cars. Sooner fool with a toaster. But this is different.” He unpinned the engine cover, and Harriet and Grissom helped him lift it away.
    He was the skinniest man Harriet had