Named Abigail, they called her Abby. Eighteen months later the second girl, Prudence, called Pru, was born. Then twelve years would pass and they no longer cared or strived for another. And so the boy was born, named James for Norman’s father. But Leah would not call him Jim or Jimmy. His sisters raised him as much as his mother at first; later instead of her. It was they who named him Jamie. He was as beautiful as Abby. He was a nightchild and would not work. He craved sensation of all sorts.

Three

In the late summer of 1890 the Randolph Fair featured the African Behemoth, a six-foot-five deeply muscled man who at thirty-minute intervals would step onto a low stage in a darkened tent lighted by gas footlights, wearing just a loincloth, his body freshly oiled, and for ten minutes lift an ascending series of weights while the standing crowd passed hand to hand a two-foot inch-round iron bar that would then be handed up to him. He’d take the bar by both ends and in slow strain so that each muscle of his legs and torso stretched and jumped bring the two ends together, the bar forming a loop. Admission was a nickel. In a box by the barker were the bent bars, available for a dollar. The real event was at night, in a barn or a clearing in the woods, depending on the town, where for ten dollars all comers could step into a ring with him, throwing down their ten dollars against a five-hundred-dollar pot to last three minutes. Again, depending on the town, this was advertised or not. The fee was high to discourage all but the confident. The fights were bare-fisted, with disqualifiers of the gouge or bite. Some men he’d fight slowly, with great patience and skill, holding them off and striking only to slow them down. Others he’d approach and dodge their first or second strikes to come up and hammer them with one great closed blow behind their ear or the base of their skull and end it. His choice was not a reflection of their ability but also did not seem arbitrary but rather some reaction to the man, some reading of him that had nothing to do with ability as he stepped into the ring made only by the pressing of the watchers. The African man did not speak during this; only from time to time would a grunt or suck of wind come from him. When his man went down he’d turn and walk to the low stool next to his manager, who was his barker by day, sit on the stool and wash his head with water from a bucket, drink from a dipper and stand for the next. Almost always the last contender of the night would be the local strongman, often the smith. He’d treat these men with great respect, grinding on through the never-ending space of trod earth and blows given and received and turned aside until the bell was close and the crowd grown silent. Then he’d slip his right in under the squared-off sparing stance of the strongman and bring it up hard to the jaw and watch the man’s eyes turn as if searching something far back in his mind. While this was occurring he’d swing his left around to clout the side of the man’s head and step back then, waiting, while the man would go to his knees and sometimes struggle there a moment before going all the way down. If he was in a town three or four nights he’d face many of the same men twice but almost never the last one of the first night again. It got easier as the nights went on. He knew his opponents. Immediately he knew which were drunk to face him again. He watched always with the repeaters for the flash of a blade; only once had he been cut. He broke that man’s eardrum. Most often, though, he did nothing more than what each man called for. His back was laced with raised scarring, as if a badly made fishing net had been buried under his skin. He shaved his head and body hair each morning. He received a quarter of the take, day and night. The five hundred dollars had never been paid out. He had a small cone-type tent he pitched in the relative safety of the fairgrounds or deep in woods at times he divined to do so. His manager called him Ben, the man’s corruption of behemoth. No one knew his real name.