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decisions are made in this group. And why we need to establish some policy right here and now.”
    “Well, well,” Patterson was muttering, leaning up out of the book and taking off his glasses, “it’s probably true that residence in town would … but ahh … Do you have any idea of what you’re asking? To rip up my roots?”
    “Roots? In the suburbs?” Ruby was laughing, slapping her thigh and rearing back in her chair. “Nigger please. That township was incorporated long after you got out of law school. You. Did. Get. Out. Of. Law school?”
    The Moultrie women, perched on the edge of the sofa knocking knees, cleared their throats. Daisy’s mother battedher eyelids a bit until she had everyone’s attention.
    “I don’t think discourtesy is called for,” she began, raising her brows and looking past Ruby toward the oil painting of Martin Luther King, Jr. “And I doubt that Mr. Patterson’s residence is really the bone of contention, as Velma Henry has so clearly put it.” This time looking past Velma to the golf trophies on the bookshelves. “The issue is, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Reilly …”
    She was nodding to each in turn, a tactic that had once earned her much applause some ten years ago in a meeting with the city administration, for it bought enough time for Velma and Smitty to leave the room, round up community folks, call the press, and block cutbacks in city services. Daisy Moultrie’s mother had been running it into the ground ever since, confused, no doubt, as to why she’d been celebrated in the first place. Velma leaned against the table. Palma sighed and counted the shells on her bracelets. Hampden, next to her, fiddled with the zipper on his cordovan boots while Velma, distracted, was remembering some absurdly shiny boots back in the days of the marching.
    Jay Patterson sat down when it was clear that Daisy Moultrie’s mother had no intention of relinquishing the floor. He sat down and was almost hidden by the lectern, the clock ticking away over the door, the yet-to-be-delivered speech fat and uncomfortable in his back pocket. Velma sat down too, landing on a soggy wad of paper, while the older woman picked up her pace, nodding to each of the women to join her in what turned out to be a fairly monotonous recitative.
    “Who put your campaign together, Reilly, while you and Grace vacationed on Jekyll Island?”
    “Who raised the money for the South Africa ad, composed it, gathered up the signatures and the money, placed it and absorbed the backlash?”
    “Who muzzled the Claybourne
Inquirer
, got them to squashthe smear when your books turned up funny, Hill?”
    “Who saved your ass—and never got reimbursed for toll calls, postage or gas?”
    Who trudged through dust, through rain, through mud, through the corridors of the Chinese pajamas. Velma rubbed her forehead and leaned back in her chair …
    It had been a Gulf station. Of course she remembered that, the boycott had been still in effect and she’d felt funny going in there, even if it was just to use the bathroom. Mounting a raggedy tampon fished from the bottom of her bag, paper unraveled, stuffing coming loose, and in a nasty bathroom with no stall doors, and in a Gulf station too, to add to the outrage. She’d been reeking of wasted blood and rage. They’d marched all morning, all afternoon and most of early evening to get there. Shot at, spit on, nearly run down by a cement mixer, murder mouthed, lobbed with everything from stones to eggs, they’d kept the group intact and suffered no casualties or arrests. But when they got to the park, renamed People’s Park for the occasion, the host group hadn’t set up yet. The banners were still drooping, missing a string in one corner, the PA system only just arriving and two cables split, the bathrooms locked and boarded up and no food, no food. Just one lone pot of field peas and chicken backs a couple from the country had hauled up there in their pickup to feed the