Outside the back of the closed humidity of the tent where the light was rose-infused, the afternoon was bright late summer, hot, pellucid. He drank from ice water and without swabbing the oil from his body stepped into the red silk pantaloons he wore between appearances but left his chest and feet bare. His job now for twenty minutes was not to mingle but be seen. Long since he’d lost fear of being attacked in daylight by a man defeated the night before. The time or so it had happened his response had been rapid and effective and he knew he was better not thinking about it. He enjoyed these brief saunters through the crowds, his great bulbous head rising above those around him and the space that didn’t generate from him but the white countrypeople who surrounded him. In its way this was when he was most free. Both his upper front teeth were gold and he enjoyed baring them in a soft almost kissing smile to any who’d meet his eye. He enjoyed the confusion this smile would create. He was forty-two years old and had eight thousand dollars in a bank in Brooklyn and wired more each week. He wanted ten more and already knew the building he’d buy with a good hardware store on the first floor and living quarters above. He needed to own it outright and the rest of this season and all of the next would do that. He knew always there was a risk in what he did, the risk of being cut or shot, but believed this would not happen for no good reason other than it would not. He paid great attention to the men he fought and made extreme effort to humiliate none while still delivering what they needed. It did not matter if they understood this or not at the time. He’d learned long ago that understanding almost anything was what happened later on.

So he stepped into the crimson pantaloons and tied tight the drawstring waist and bent then to tie the cords that brought the billows tight to his ankles and had just straightened from this when she came around the back corner of the tent. The beautiful girl was not with her but the young boy was, and he was not disappointed by this. He’d had enough of young women in small towns and the mother up close was pleasure enough. Still, he wondered why she’d not wanted to meet him.

As she came around the backside of the tent the woman said, “Scuse me.” Her voice pitched and gay, nervous and off. He turned to her. The little boy back a pace, led by his mother.

“Well, hey there,” he said, giving nothing but still grinning at them.

The boy said, “You’re one blacker-than-soot nigger.”

The woman protested. “Jamie.”