“Skeeter,” Jill says, “the selections.” A prim clubwoman calling the meeting to order. “Thirteen minutes to Laugh-In,” Nelson says. “I don’t want to miss the beginning, it’s neat when they introduce themselves.”

“Ree-ight,” Skeeter says, fumbling at his forehead, at that buzzing that seems sometimes there. “Out of this book here.” The book is called Slavery; the letters are red, white, and blue. It seems a small carnival under Skeeter’s slim hand. “Just for the fun of it, to give us something more solid than my ignorant badmouthing, right? You know, like a happening. Chuck, this gives you pretty much a pain in the ass, right?”

“No, I like it. I like learning stuff. I have an open mind.”

“He turns me on, he’s so true to life,” Skeeter says, handing the book to Jill. “Baby, you begin. Where my finger is, just the part in little type.” He announces, “These are old-time speeches, dig?”

Jill sits up straight on the sofa and reads in a voice higher than her natural voice, a nice-girl-school-schooled voice, with riding lessons in it, and airy big white-curtained rooms; territory even higher in the scale than Penn Park.

“Think,” she reads, “of the nation’s deed, done continually and afresh. God shall hear the voice of your brother’s blood, long crying from the ground; His justice asks you even now, ‘America, where is thy brother?’ This is the answer which America must give: ‘Lo, he is there in the rice-swamps of the South, in her fields teeming with cotton and the luxuriant cane. He was weak and I seized him; naked and I bound him; ignorant, poor and savage, and I overmastered him. I laid on his feebler shoulders my grievous yoke. I have chained him with my fetters; beat him with my whip. Other tyrants had dominion over him, but my finger was on his human flesh. I am fed with his toil; fat, voluptuous on his sweat, and tears, and blood. I stole the father, stole also the sons, and set them to toil; his wife and daughters are a pleasant spoil to me. Behold the children also of thy servant and his handmaidens—sons swarthier than their sire. Askest thou for the African? I have made him a beast. Lo, there Thou hast what is thine.’ ” She hands the book back blushing. Her glance at Rabbit says, Bear with us. Haven’t I loved you?

Skeeter is cackling. “Green pickles, that turns me on. A pleasant spoil to me, right? And did you dig that beautiful bit about the sons swarthier than their sire? Those old Yankee sticks were really bugged, one respectable fuck would have stopped the abolition movement cold. But they weren’t getting it back home in the barn so they sure gave hell to those crackers getting it out in the slave shed. Dark meat is soul meat, right? That was Theodore Parker, here’s another, the meanest mouth in the crowd, old William Lloyd. Nellie, you try this. Just where I’ve marked. Just read the words slow, don’t try for any expression.”