One night, there was a party there. A great many people came from the Junction, and even seventy miles off from in town, by horse and by carriage, by train, and even some by that new-fangled auto-buggy that most of the plantation hands had never seen before. The Negroes were all excited at having so many white folks around. It was the Missus’ birthday. There were great doings at Big House Plantation.
The first evening, the party went on until late in the night. Some people left at dawn. Others slept awhile and left in the afternoon. Some were house guests, and on the second night there was a party again. But that night everybody was pretty tired. And got pretty drunk, too, mostly. The Colonel was very gay and very drunk; but his little wife cried, and went to bed. She was mighty touchy, all the Negroes knew. Always poutin’ and spattin’ and actin’ funny with the Colonel.
Wonder why? Wonder why?
There was a party in the Quarters among the Negroes, too, that second night. Livonia was there, dancing fit to kill. And the music was wild. In the heat of the night, Cora went out of the barn where the party was, out into the moonlight, and looked up at the lights of the Big House on the rise. She stretched, and breathed in the warm night air, and walked through the trees toward the road that ran to town. She made a big circle about the Big House, wondering a little what was going on there. When she got to the road, she sat down under a huge live oak tree. She could hear the laughter and clapping of the Negroes down on the edge of the cotton fields. But in the Big House, where it should have been gay, too, it was mighty quiet. Sometimes a loud and quarrelsome voice could be heard. Probably the men were gambling, and the ladies gone to bed.
The trees cast great shadows across the road in the warm light of the moon. Cora stretched, breathed deeply again, and got up to go, when she saw very near her a figure walking in the silvery dusk, a tall thin young white man walking in the cotton. Suddenly he called her.
“Who’re you?” It was young Norwood speaking.
“I’s Coralee Lewis, Aunt Tobie Lewis’ daughter.”
The white man came up to her, took her brown face in his hands and lifted it at the moon. “You’re out mighty late,” he said.
Cora’s body trembled. Her mouth opened. In the shadow of the live oak tree there by the road, thirty years ago, in a night of moon….