While the others’ attention was upon her leave-taking, Felix drifted into the shadows and down the wide hall and breezeway, and quickly out of doors. There was a lively sound from the slave quarters. The big house might be going quiet for the night, but it was early yet, and not a Sunday, and in spite of the somewhat religious cast of the day, it was one of celebration, and even Deborah had given permission for “orderly dancing,” and certainly neither Leon nor Sarah had abridged any leniency enjoyed in Deborah’s time of command.

Felix knew well how to sidle, and sidle in he did to the house where the music was being made. By the time anyone registered the fact of his presence, he had made himself appear so easy and natural a member of the festivities that no one spoke of noticing him, and his white presence was no dampener on the dark frolicking. From that stage of acceptance it was easy for him to speak first to this one, then that, then to three or four together, and then to stand alone smiling and tapping a foot to the music. It wasn’t necessary for him to play the game out that way, because everyone knew what he was about, but he did it.

The ending of the day’s events was as much ritual as had been its other, earlier events. Stella, a black woman in her middle thirties, whom he fancied and who in her way occasionally fancied him, was there, and he winked at her as he talked to others, and then watched her dance a little, and then saw her slip out the door alone.

A minute or two later he went out also and found her waiting. When she saw him, she giggled, and he giggled too. Neither did so in any derisive way, but rather as friendly conspirators. Soon after, they went into one of the barns and up a short, easy-slanting ladder to one of the haylofts.

Felix was neither a sly nor a subtle man in the act of sex. He was a thumper and a humper even as he grew older. So it was tonight. He humped, and the sound thumped through the hay to the boards it rested on, raising dust below and waking a cow, who stood up awkwardly in her stall. When she was firmly on all four legs, and only then, she lowed, the sound moody and accusing. Ever since he was a boy in this same barn, although then girls whose names he had now forgotten, the sound of a cow’s lowing in just that way had been a powerful aphrodisiac for Felix. The cow’s lowing, the hot, wet, working flesh below but encompassing him gave him a pleasure nothing else ever had or would.