Another slap of his hand flung the glass she held crashing into the fireplace. She looked at the sizzling fire briefly and then slowly, deliberately poured whiskey from the jug into the other glass, filling it to the rim. She drank from it without spilling a drop, to show him how steady her hand was and that she was not afraid. Then she set the glass down on the table and said, “Leon Kendrick was here. Now what about it? I live here. You live in town. You may be big, but you not big enough to keep Leon Kendrick from coming if he wants to come and I let him. Me and him’s—neighbors like.”

“What do you talk about—Alonzo? You drink my whiskey together and go over again how your white bastard killed Alonzo?”

“No!”

He let her take up the glass again and drink from it and set it down. “You’re too old and ugly for him to want to fuck, so why does he come?”

“What do you care?” she said dully. “Nothing to do with you. You got Geraldine. She’s more pussy than you can handle, your age.”

“I asked you why he comes. What do you say together?”

“Maybe we talk about—days of youth when we used to fuck!”

“Don’t you sass and jive me, you whore-bitch!”

She gripped the chair back for support. “I’m tired. I don’t want you here. Go home; go back to town.”

“You sit together in these two chairs—or does he sit, and you wait on him like you’re still his mama’s slave?”

“I wish to God I was.”

Roscoe shook his head. “I don’t remember I ever sat down with him. He was always sitting on his ass while I stood. He asked, I answered.”

“Yeah, I bet!” she jeered. “Don’t make yourself out some meek darky bobbing his head to the white folks. You don’t say nothing about stealing from him.”

“I stood, but you sit. You and him sit. Together, like you both white or both black. That so?”

“You don’t know nothing about it,” she said.

“I’m trying to find out,” Roscoe said.

“Go home. Let me be.”

“You say I’m not big enough to keep him from coming here long as he pleases, and you let him?”

“Never mind what I say. Go on home.”

“Maybe you talk about other things, you and him?” Clovis marched out of the room, through the dining room, to the kitchen. He did not go after her. There was nowhere she could go he could not find her if he wanted to.