She met him three more afternoons in a row, which he had told her she owed him for such a good present as the gold piece. The fifth day after their first meeting alone was a Saturday, and Leon went into Highboro that morning with his father. They jogged their horses back side by side late in the afternoon, bringing mail and town news and an invitation from Nell to eat dinner with her and Felix tomorrow after church. Sunday Leon rode with his mother and father and Selma in the carriage to Highboro where they attended church services and visited on the church porch with county neighbors and friends who had also driven in.

After a large afternoon dinner with Nell and Felix, they journeyed home again in the covered carriage in a light, cooling rain that was uncharacteristic of the season. July more often brought thunder and lightning and torrents of rain, sometimes a storm of hailstones.

That evening after supper they all sat on the porch. Deborah and Arnold argued over the question of the cotton gin, Deborah urging that they put money enough into it to assure Kendrick control, Arnold veering from the idea of cautious participation to none at all. He didn’t want any more responsibility. They went to bed with nothing resolved, leaving Leon alone with his thoughts. Selma had already gone off to her room.

In the distance, from the slave quarters, Leon could hear gospel singing and hand clapping, and then it ceased, and all was quiet. He remembered a story Bonard had told, about a plantation he’d heard another boy tell about, where the young man on that place was given his own Negro girl when he was fourteen years old, and that he was free to fuck her any time he wanted to. Thinking about it and envying that unknown boy gave Leon an erection. He got up and walked about the yards a while, but he encountered no one, only a couple of inquisitive hound dogs who came to see who was stirring in the night.

16

One person had knowledge, and another strong suspicion, of the meetings of Leon and Clovis.

Although much alone, Selma was surrounded by creatures. She had also stayed, now and then, a day or two in town with her aunt and uncle in order to attend a children’s party at Christmas or on a birthday, so she had the acquaintance of other young girls, most of whom knew or pretended to know more about “life” than she did. Their whispers and snickerings, inaccurate as one was and disgusting as the other, nevertheless bore out what she had inevitably observed of animal behavior on the home plantation. She was fanciful, but she was logical too, and too natural a lover of truth to be a romantic. So she knew about male and female things, and the whole business appalled her. It was so very close and violating.