Mebane looked down at the blotter before him. “When word got out what happened to me the men come up here and talked to Peter. I was not there. It was a wild hard time. These men come to talk to Peter, thinking he must know something of where she went, how she got away. A sixteen-year-old girl never been five miles from home before does not just pick up and disappear, not in the middle of everything coming apart. She had to have help, they knew that. But what happened, what I heard, was, instead of being a dumb nigger or a scared one or any kind they expected, not even a wild angry one, instead of any of that what I heard was old Peter stood out there in the yard, at the door of his little quarters up against the barn and in a voice so soft each and every one of those white men had to lean close to hear it, in that voice he told them they were evil, that the retribution of the Lord was loose upon the land and it would all end in blood and fire and sorrow for them and each one of them would walk the stones of eternity with the cup of their sorrows empty in their parched hands, their souls bound in the chains of their sins, the sins of their commission and the sins of their omission. It was quite a little speech and I guess those boys did not take well to it.”

“For somebody not there you seem to know it pretty good.”

“It got repeated to me. There was more I guess but that’s what I recall. And likely I’ve not even got that right. But the heart of it—that’s stayed with me.”

Foster did not ask who repeated Peter’s words. Instead he said, “If all she wanted was to run away why did she try to brain you with that flatiron?”

Mebane looked at him, looked away. Looked off. Then back at Foster, his face grim and tight, some old anger betraying the set of his face. Like his mouth was putrid he said, “You know why she did that.”

Foster sat silent. Like a trigger-line between his crotch and brain flared a sudden burst of images: Daphne first and rolled right over her was the idea of some other, some girl always there who could not say no. Whose no did not matter. As if some boil in him was lanced and spread through him. And understood the taint upon him and recalled also his father speaking to him once of women, bidding him to recall always that he once had a sister. And so because it was all he could say, all the authority he could claim, very softly said, “She was your sister.”