When he woke, it was dusk. The woods were moist and dense in their own shadow the instant the sun set. Insects and other woodland creatures that had been daunted to silence and near immobility by the sun’s light and heat found voice and movement again. There were brief scuttling sounds in the brush, a song of insects different from the day music, a mood of cool ooze in which a snake might slide, a turtle ponder walking without fear of surprise and rout. Roman rose guiltily, like a guest who knows he has overstayed. Making his way out of the woods as quick as he could, he found, a narrow road bordering a field, no more than wagon tracks with grass and weeds growing between them.

Pausing at the back door when he got home, he heard the women in the kitchen preparing supper. Sallou said slyly, “Do I set the whole table, you reckon?”

Myrtis answered, “Yes.”

Sallou said, “The mister went off like he was never coming back. Will the missus want to sit there all by her lonesome?”

“Set the table and quit acting biggety and know-all. Sharon, slice them tomatoes more even. Where did I set down the vinegar bottle?”

That, three days ago.

Today, Leon had returned. He walked now in the dark, but not alone. Roman was nearby watching, aching to show himself and speak, but not daring, knowing he and his love were despised.

12

As grain and fiber of the larger fields came to ripeness and were harvested by gangs of Negroes, who sometimes sang, more often from boredom than jubilation, so too Ezra’s planting of the foreign seeds Floyd had sent him grew and revealed themselves as pod and stalk and vine and gourd shapes. Here a row five feet long of something, next a row of something else, next to third and fourth and fifth, all planted with different seeds, often a single row accommodating two or more specimens.

For one row he had mixed sand with the black soil; for another, dry powdered clay. He watered one and left another to natural rainfall. He pruned this one, permitted that to sprawl and run as it would, doing all this by guess and instinct. Trusting no rake or hoe, he tended the plants with one rusted kitchen spoon and his own ten fingers.

On an afternoon she found him in his miniature farm staring at a delicate-leafed plant, Lovey laughed out loud, for Ezra was shading the plant with her old parasol that she used only for churchgoing on the hottest Sundays. He looked up at her with surprise. “I won’t lose any. I’ll show the boy everyone grew.”

“He may not come till winter, if then.”

“He’ll come soon and see with his own eyes how they look in the ground.”

She left him kneeling, still holding the parasol.