Then Stewart came, driving up in his wagon, a jug as squat as he was himself sitting beside him on the seat; they passed it around, each man wiping the nozzle with his sleeve in the old, useless rite of purification and cleanliness.

That was when they began to get angry, quietly fighting mad, like a bride left at the church, wanting revenge, but having no one on whom to avenge herself, angered by her own frustration more than anything else. They disguised their loss by maintaining it was no loss at all, just as the Governor had done that morning.

Stewart took another healthy swallow. “Sure! What we need them for anyways? Look what’s happening in Mississippi or over in Alabama. We don’t have to worry about that no more. We got us a new start, like the fellow says. Now we can live like we always lived and don’t have to worry about no nigger come a-knocking at the door, wanting to sit at our supper tables.” He was sitting on the porch steps next to Bobby-Joe, who had been very quiet since Mister Harper left.

“Look-it, there’ll be plenty of work, plenty land—all the work and all the land them niggers was taking up. We’ll be doing right well soon as we get arranged.” Stewart was sweating now, as he always did, drinking or no, hot weather or cold, and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket.

“But there might be too much work and too much land.” Loomis pushed his hat forward on his brow and tilted his chair back against the wall of the building. “We might not have enough folks to do it all. That’s some economics I learned upstate. That means we won’t have enough food. There’ll be a parcel of land nobody can use. There’s always been enough land for everybody, leastways enough to break your back on. This ain’t jap-an; you don’t see nobody planting up on the sides of the Ridge, using a rope to keep him from falling off.”

“We’ll still be better off.” Stewart turned around, squinting to make out Loomis in the shadows of the porch. “Take Thomason there. He’s running the only store in Sutton now. Before, there was two; that nigger up there, he had a store. Now Thomason’s got all the business.”

Loomis shook his head. “Yes, but there’s less than half the customers.”

He could not stop Stewart. “And look at Undertaker Hagaman. He’s the only undertaker around now. We all got to get buried one day. I hear tell how even some white folks in Sutton used that nigger undertaker.”

“I just ain’t sure it’s all to the good. You never had no WHITE folks sweeping around in stores, only colored. You getting a job sweeping now, Stewart? That’s the only job you really good for.”

Some of the men laughed.

Bobby-Joe snapped his fingers; the sound carried, echoed. “That’s it!”