JONNIE MAE (calmly): Young man. I do believe you have forgotten yourself. (Pause.) This is your family. We are the ones who worked hard, looked after you. Remember? The ones who want to see you grow into a fine young man. Somebody who’s gone make us proud. You have no idea what hard is, young man. You have no idea what bigotry is. No idea what prejudging is. No idea what hate is.

HORACE: I—

JONNIE MAE (impatiently): Let me finish. Do you have any idea how many white men have called me girl and aunt? Out of disrespect? Out of hatefulness? How many white men called your late Uncle Malachai—God rest him—boy and uncle? Do you? And that’s just the beginning. Don’t you even get the idea in your head to call me a bigot, boy. I don’t qualify for prejudice. I know all the facts already. (To ZEKE:) Well, you see? You see what I mean now? You see?

ZEKE (to HORACE): Well, I do believe you have lost your mind. Get up. I think you have forfeited your Thanksgiving dinner. Ain’t got no thanks in you, have you? No, I don’t reckon you do. You have not behaved like a gentleman. Your aunts, who’ve been good to you all your life, and good Reverend Barden here, have had to witness something they shouldn’t have. Now you apologize and go on home. Just go on home. And we’ll discuss this later. Go on, now. I mean it.

RUTHESTER: Oh, Uncle Zeke. He—

ZEKE: He’s got to leave.

(HORACE stands in silence and exits.)

ZEKE: You work. You talk. You try your darndest, and they just go astray.

BARDEN: You can raise them, but you can’t think for them.

JONNIE MAE: That’s so true. I know. Lord knows I do.

JIMMY: I’ll have a talk with him.

RACHEL: What will you say to him?

LESTER: Well, I think . . .

JONNIE MAE: Eat your dinner, Lester.

That is what finally got to Horace, isn’t it? I keep asking myself. He, just like me, had been created by this society. He was a son of the community, more than most. His reason for existing, it would seem, was for the salvation of his people. But he was flawed as far as the community was concerned. First, he loved men; a simple, normal deviation, but a deviation this community would never accept. And second, he didn’t quite know who he was. That, I don’t fully understand, for they had told him, taught him from the cradle on. I guess they didn’t reckon the world they were sending him into was different from the world they had conquered, a world peopled with new and hateful monsters that exacted a different price.