When the first child, Willie, was in her, she told her mother all about it. The old woman was glad. “It’s better’n slavin’ in the cotton fields,” she said. “I’s known colored women what’s wore silk dresses and lived like queens on plantations right here in Georgy….”

Even before the young Mrs. Norwood died (she did die—and childless) Cora was working in the Big House. And after Mrs. Norwood’s death, Cora came there to sleep.

Now the water where the plums were felt cool to her hands this spring afternoon many years later as the Colonel went into the house leaving their youngest boy dazed in front of her; and the nigger-voices all around her humming and chattering into loudness and laughter.

IV

“Listen hyar,” brother Willie said to Bert on the way from the Junction to the plantation that morning his brother arrived. “Listen hyar, I hopes you don’t expect to go around all dressed up like you is now after you gets out to de place, ’cause de Colonel won’t ’low it. He made Sis put away all them fine clothes she brought hyar last year—till she left.”

“Tell him to kiss my behind,” Bert said.

Willie bucked his eyes, stuttered, then kept quiet. His brother was the same Bert as he had been as a child. Crazy! Trouble coming. William made up his mind not to be in it, himself, one way or another. Though he was eight years older, he had always been afraid of Bert with a fear worse than physical, afraid of the things that happened around Bert.

From the new Ford, Bert looked out at the straggling streets of the village of the Junction, at the Negroes lounging in front of stores, at the red-necked crackers, at the unkempt women. He heard the departing train whistle as it went deeper into Georgia, into Alabama. As they rode, he looked at the wide fields of young cotton stretching on either side, at the cabins of the share croppers, at the occasional house of a white owner or overseer. Then he saw the gradual rise of the Norwood plantation, the famous Big House, surrounded by its live oaks and magnolias and maples, and its many acres of cotton. And he knew he was nearing home.

Six years away. Kid of fourteen when he left, wearing his first long trousers bought in the commissary store, feeling funny out of overalls, feeling very proud going away to school. Only the Lewis niggers (old man Norwood’s kids by Cora) went away to school in these parts. And with the going of Sallie, the youngest, the little county school at Norwood’s Crossroads closed up, and didn’t open any more. Sallie was the Colonel’s last child—no other niggers needed a school.