As for Clarence, he was a sporty, glib, teasing kind of man. It was, in fact, he with whom Trudy had been enjoying a jolly dance when Rooster, watching jealously, had determined to seize the first chance to invite her outdoors to look at the moon with him, and subsequently to ask her to be his wife.

Clarence Anderson had not married but lived on the place he now called his with half a dozen slaves who worked the land for what little it produced. By nature a sport and a gambler, he would bet on anything: a dog fight, a horse race, a fishing catch, the amount of an acre’s yield of corn or cotton. And so he was in debt. That in itself was not surprising or unusual. But Leon had recently discovered that Clarence was in debt to Roscoe Elk.

With patience and care, a profit can always be made on those who are said to be poor, to have nothing, but who actually do now and then borrow small amounts for special needs or vanities and eventually repay somewhat larger sums. Roscoe had maintained his traffic in these small loans, but gradually over the years he had extended his sphere of activity to the town of Highboro and the surrounding county. His name was passed from one profligate to another as one who would lend money discreetly, with none of the bother of going to a bank or a lawyer and conferring and signing papers with official stamps on them, although the signed papers Roscoe held proved to be none the less legally binding in the end, for all that they had seemed to be casually written out and agreed to.

Since all gamblers who borrow fancy themselves suddenly winning large sums and being free of debt at a sweep, Roscoe did not lack debtors. And so, naturally, one of them was Clarence Anderson. It was this which Leon had in mind when he cautioned Sarah not to press Roscoe too closely. Clarence Anderson’s farm shared borders with Beulah Land.

14

“What you thinking about?”

“You, Mama.”

She had hoped to surprise him into revelation, but he was on his guard and would not be trapped. They sat, Lovey and Floyd, in the late, lingering light of an early September day, she on the back step of the family cabin, he on a short, upended log he would chop into firewood before winter came on. He peeled a length of sugar cane, notched it, offered a piece to his mother which she took and chewed absently, took a piece himself and chewed the juice out of it.

“Hum,” she said.

Floyd spat out the dry fiber and then bit off another notch.

Lovey shook her head dramatically. “I’ll never have a grandchild. Not you nor Pauline—”

“Mama, hush.”

“Don’t tell me ‘hush’!”