“Worried about this new development. I’m no nigger-hater, I’m happy to work with ’em and I have for twenty years, if needs be I’ll live next to ’em though the fact is they haven’t cracked Mt. Judge yet, but get any closer than that, you’re playing with fire, in my experience.”

“What experience?”

“They’ll let you down,” Pop says. “They don’t have any feeling of obligation. I’m not blaming a soul, but that’s the fact, they’ll let you down and laugh about it afterwards. They’re not ethical like white men and there’s no use saying they are. You asked me what experience, I don’t want to go into stories, though there’s plenty I could tell, just remember I was raised in the Third Ward back when it was more white than black, we mixed it up in every sense. I know the people of this county. They’re good-natured people. They like to eat and drink and like to have their red-light district and their numbers, they’ll elect the scum to political office time and time again; but they don’t like seeing their women desecrated.”

“Who’s being desecrated?”

“Just that menagerie over there, the way you’re keeping it, is a desecration. Have you heard from your neighbors what they think about it yet?”

“I don’t even know my neighbors.”

“That black boy shows his face outside, you’ll get to know them; you’ll get to know them as sure as I’m sitting here trying to be a friend and not a father. The day when I could whip sense into you is long by, Harry, and anyway you gave us a lot less trouble than Mim. Your mother always says you let people push you around and I always answer her, Harry knows his way around, he lands on his feet; but I’m beginning to see she may be right. Your mother may be all crippled up but she’s still hard to fool, ask the man who’s tried.”

“When did you try?”

But this secret—had Pop played Mom false?—stays dammed behind those loose false teeth the old man’s mouth keeps adjusting, pensively sucking. Instead he says, “Do us a favor, Harry, I hate like hell to beg, but do us a favor and come over tonight and talk about it. Your mother stiff-armed Janice but I know when she’s been shook.”

“Not tonight, I can’t. Maybe in a couple of days, things’ll clear up.”

“Why not, Harry? We promise not to grill you or anything, Lord, I wouldn’t ask for myself, it’s your mother’s state of mind. You know”—and he slides so close their shirt sleeves touch and Rabbit smells the sour fog of his father’s breath—“she’s having the adventure now we’re all going to have to have.”

“Stop asking, Pop. I can’t right now.”

“They’ve gotcha in their clutches, huh?”

He stands straight, decides one whisky sour will do, and answers, “Right.”

That night after supper they discuss slavery. Jill and Skeeter have done the dishes together, Rabbit has helped Nelson with his homework. The kid is into algebra this year but can’t quite manage that little flip in his head whereby a polynomial cracks open into two nice equalities of x, one minus and one plus. Rabbit had been good at math, it was a game with limits, with orderly movements and a promise of completion at the end. The combination always cracked open. Nelson is tight about it, afraid to let go and swing, a smart kid but tight, afraid of maybe that thing that got his baby sister: afraid it might come back for him. They have half an hour before Laugh-In, which they all want to watch. Tonight Skeeter takes the big brown chair and Rabbit the one with silver threads. Jill and Nelson sit on the airfoam sofa. Skeeter has some books; they look childishly bright under his thin brown hands. School days. Sesame Street.