Skeeter studies him from the sofa, where he sits bent over, nursing the punch to his stomach. “Feeling guilty, huh Chuck? A little tokenism to wash your sins away, right?”

“Skeeter, he’s being generous,” Jill scolds.

“Get one thing straight, Chuck. No gratitude. Anything you do, do for selfish reasons.”

“Right. The kicks I get in pounding you around.” But in fact he is terrified at having taken this man in. He will have to sleep with him in the house. The tint of night, Skeeter will sneak to his side with a knife shining like the moon. He will get the gun as he has promised. FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE HOLDS FAMILY AT GUNPOINT. Mayor Vows, No Deals. Why has he invited this danger? To get Janice to rescue him. These thoughts flit by in a flash. Nelson has taken a step toward the black man. His eyes are sunk in their sockets with seriousness. Wait, wait. He is poison, he is murder, he is black.

“Hi,” Nelson says, and holds out his hand.

Skeeter puts his skinny fingers, four gray crayons, as thick at the tips as in the middle, in the child’s hand and says, “Hi there, Babychuck.” He nods over Nelson’s shoulder toward Billy Fosnacht. “Who’s your gruesome friend?”

And everybody, everybody laughs, even Billy, even Skeeter contributes a cackle, at this unexpected illumination, that Billy is gruesome, with his father’s skinny neck and big ears and a hint of his mother’s mooncalf eyes and the livid festerings of adolescence speckling his cheeks and chin. Their laughter makes a second wave to reassure him they are not laughing at him, they are laughing in relief at the gift of truth, they are rejoicing in brotherhood, at having shared this moment, giggling and cackling; the house is an egg cracking because they are all hatching together.

But in bed, the house dark and Billy gone home, Skeeter breathing exhausted on the sofa downstairs, Rabbit repeats his question to Jill: “Why have you done this to me?”

Jill snuffles, turns over. She is so much lighter than he, she irresistibly rolls down to his side. Often in the morning he wakes to find himself nearly pushed from the bed by this inequality, her sharp little elbows denting his flesh. “He was so pathetic,” she explains. “He talks tough but he really has nothing, he really does want to become the black Jesus.”

“Is that why you let him screw you this afternoon? Or didn’t you?”

“I didn’t really.”

“He lied?”

Silence. She slides an inch deeper into his side of the bed. “I don’t think it counts when you just let somebody do it to you and don’t do anything back.”

“You don’t.”

“No, it just happens on the surface, a million miles away.”

“And how about with me? Is it the same way, you don’t feel anything, it’s so far away. So you’re really a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Shh. Whisper. No, I do feel things with you.”

“What?”