Late February in North Carolina’s Piedmont can feel like springtime. Trees aren’t yet in bud, but vibrantly green grasses carpet the riverbanks, and frogs sing in the creeks. The air is softer, and the extra minutes of daylight seem like a promise of good things to come.
On February 25, 2021, sunset in the small town of Saxapahaw, North Carolina, was at 6:09 p.m., and a group of thirty people, mostly longtime residents of Alamance County, had been invited to a short outdoor play, The Spirit of Wyatt Outlaw: Final Peace, scheduled to begin at dark to take advantage of projected light and shadows. The guest list was small because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for most of the audience, it would be the first live performance they’d seen in a year.
The play had been rescheduled just days before—it was supposed to premiere on February 26, the 151st anniversary of Wyatt Outlaw’s death, but that day called for steady rain. February 25, a Thursday, was clear, the high temperature nearing seventy degrees. By the time audience members began making their way into the riverside amphitheater at 5:30, it was starting to get cool, but the long cement benches still radiated the sun’s warmth…