When he was thirteen, Roscoe ran away from Alfonzo. Alfonzo had beaten and buggered him for a year before his escape. It was summer, and he slept in woods during the day and walked at night.

Eventually, he found himself in Jacksonville, and having by then shed his fear of Alfonzo’s following him, he begged work on the docks of the St. Johns River, and presently was earning enough to feed and clothe his body. Nothing else was required. A tired boy can sleep anywhere.

He made friends with the Negro cook of a shacky restaurant near the waterfront. The cook, who was called simply Cuz by everyone, was a free man. Living with him in the back of the restaurant—there was no sexual demand, only loneliness and generosity on the part of the cook—Roscoe grew to manhood and obtained, through his friend’s resources, a paper proving that he was himself a free man.

After that he went from one job to another, first in Jacksonville while still sharing quarters with Cuz, then moving up to Savannah where he found work easily, and after Savannah venturing into the countryside, finally drifting to Highboro, Georgia, where he worked for a few weeks as a porter in a hardware store. Having heard that it was the most considerable plantation thereabouts, he decided to try his luck and fate at Beulah Land.

During his travels Roscoe had learned to despise black slave and white master alike. He thought himself superior to them. The feeling that it was Deborah Kendrick who would eventually decide his future grew stronger in him, and he courted her regard in many quiet ways.

He did not underrate her shrewdness, nor overrate her self-interest. But as she went about her daily business, and a conscientious mistress of a plantation was busy all day, he had seen a restlessness reaching out to expand and command. He was content to bide his time and wait for his chance, confident that he would recognize it when it came.

The only flyspeck on his future was the question of Leon and Floyd. They were not part of the order; he did not know how he would fit them in.

His ascendancy over the slaves was accomplished and needed tending only here and there, and now and then. He weighed their work; he kept their small accountings. A frown, a nod, a pause in speaking were all the discipline necessary, for people are ever ready to see themselves in the worst light, to know their own weaknesses better than anyone else can know them.