Thinking of Clovis as she was when young, sassy and hot bodied, led him to think of her as she was now. She lived still on the Anderson Place, although no one ever mentioned her, and she was seldom seen by any except the slaves who worked the farm. After Alonzo’s death, Roscoe brought Turnip and his wife back from the hilly cattle farm he had superintended to manage the Anderson Place. Turnip’s wife Puddy was pleased to be so near town; she began to wear shoes in summer and learned the pleasure of dipping snuff.

5

Roscoe Elk was richer, and therefore more powerful, than ever. He and Junior were a successful team. As Junior had developed judgment and skill in business dealings, Roscoe had been wise enough to give him further scope and even in some projects autonomy. On his side Junior served his father’s interests well and was himself clever enough to see how much he did not yet know and to realize that his father was a better teacher than any other he might have found had he gone looking. Junior understood that the way an ambitious Negro got ahead was not the same way an ambitious white would take. Besides, Roscoe was sixty-three; one day Junior would have it all his way. The future belonged to him.

They lived quietly but well in the by now soberly and richly furnished house Roscoe had bought from Felix Kendrick. Geraldine had been moved to the house in town soon after Alonzo’s death, when Roscoe began to notice her as a result of Clovis’s having taught her some manners and hygiene. Her position there was discreetly ambiguous. She was not the cook, nor officially the housekeeper. Rather she “helped keep house,” it was said. She ate in the kitchen with the cook and other house slaves. And she understood that whenever Roscoe was at home she was to attend to him constantly unless he ordered her to go away and leave him alone. A part of the discreet ambiguity of her position was the result of the fact that Roscoe felt himself too important a man to openly flaunt an ignorant slave-mistress; and it was partly out of deference to Junior’s wife Dorothy.