Sarah began to wonder when their relations would alter and progress further. She’d had a sister less reticent than she and knew what she might expect. So gently had Leon treated her, she was certain that whatever came now must be kindly effected. She was eager for him to go ahead. She wanted children. She had not thought of it until she came to Beulah Land to visit but seeing all of the people living and working together, she knew herself to be a strong woman for family. What better father could children have than Leon, good and handsome, who held her hand and patted it, who put an arm about her waist or shoulders, who held her affectionately, whose lips were warm and sweet. She began to feel that she must have fallen in love with him since, not before, their marriage, and from this thought she took joy.

On a night soon after their homecoming, when they blew out their candles and went to bed, she turned to him. He opened his arms to her, and she pressed herself against him. Only their night clothes separated them. Her heart began to beat fast—or was it his she felt? She did not know, but she lost her girl’s reticence as he kissed her and kissed him with increasing ardor.

Leon fought panic. After his first encounters with Clovis, all the girls he had been with were girls who made themselves available, girls with whom one might be easy and playful, taking what one pleased without concern for their feelings. The whole thing of fucking was that you did it with women like that. Now—he was a fool not to have thought of this moment—he could not feel passion for the girl in his arms. To do so would have seemed incestuous.

It was only when he closed his eyes tight as a child praying or making a wish that panic subsided. His mind called up and fixed on that summer day when he and Floyd had gone to the woods to fish, and then swam, and Clovis came around the bend of the creek to be with them. He saw Floyd; he saw Clovis; he felt what he had felt then. Sarah’s willing and wondering body accepted his. But he was not Leon, she was not Sarah.

PART THREE

1835

1

Between them they owned three hundred slaves, but every year now, in January, June, and October, Edna Davis and Deborah Kendrick took brooms and shears, shovel and rake to the cemetery in Highboro to attend to the graves of their husbands. (After two further strokes that came five days apart, Benjamin Davis had died on July 17, 1831.)