Though darkness approached, Rusty saw the old man still working in his small rail-fenced garden. Shanty grew almost everything he needed for subsistence, even a small plot of scraggly tobacco. He was not often indoors during the daytime except to eat or to get out of the rain. Age had slowed him so that it took longer to finish the work necessary even for a small place like his.

During the time he had spent at Rusty’s, he and Rusty had swapped labor, alternating between the two farms. The main concern had been that someone always be nearby, that Shanty not be left to face potentially hos-tile visitors alone. For a time, that danger had seemed to pass. Now, like smoldering coals fanned by a rising wind, old animosities had flared anew. Rusty felt that it had less to do with Shanty as an individual than with general unrest stirred up by the seemingly endless Federal occupation that continued years after the cannons had fallen silent. Men feeling oppressed sought to vent their frustrations. Freed slaves became an easy target for their anger.

A brown dog of amalgamated ancestry wriggled through the rail fence and trotted out, barking either a welcome or a warning. Rusty was not certain which until the animal wagged its tail so vigorously that its whole body shook.

Shanty ambled to the gate rather than risk fragile limbs by climbing over the fence. “Hush up, dog. Mr. Rusty,” he said by way of greeting, “you’re travelin’ late.” His smile showed a wide row of perfectly white teeth. So far as Rusty could see, he had never lost one.

“Somethin’ came up. You been havin’ any company?”

“Company? This place ain’t on the road to nowheres in particular. Nobody much ever comes by.”

“The ones I’ve got in mind wouldn’t come friendly. They travel in packs, like wolves.”

“Oh, them. I don’t count them as company. There was five or six by here a couple nights ago. Mostly wanted to know if I belong to the Freedmen’s Bureau. I told them I don’t belong to nothin’. I don’t hardly ever leave this place.”

The Freedmen’s Bureau had been organized ostensibly to benefit former slaves. In Rusty’s view it had been subverted to the ambitions of white opportunists exploiting the people they claimed to aid.

He pressed, “They didn’t hurt you none, or threaten to?”

“A couple of them talked about burnin’ down my cabin. The others said wait and see if I was goin’ to be a good nigger or not. One of them offered me a hundred dollars in Yankee silver to sell him this farm.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t have no other place to go. How much is a hundred dollars, Mr. Rusty?”

“Not near enough. Not even in Yankee silver.”