So there was Luther, his ear to the ground, hearing there might, just might maybe be some work in Youngstown, and someone else had heard tell of hirings in a mine outside of Ravenswood, just over the other side of the river in West Virginia. Economy was getting tight again, though, they all said. White-tight.

And then Lila start talking about an aunt she had in Greenwood.

Luther said, “Never heard of that place.”

“Ain’t in Ohio, baby. Ain’t in West Virginia or Kentucky neither.”

“Then where’s it at?”

“Tulsa.”

“Oklahoma?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, her voice soft, like she’d been planning it for a while and wanted to be subtle about letting him think he made up his own mind.

“Shit, woman.” Luther rubbed the outsides of her arms. “I ain’t going to no Oklahoma.”

“Where you going to go then? Next door?”

“What’s next door?” He looked over there.

“Ain’t no jobs. That’s all I know about next door.”

Luther gave that some thought, feeling her circling him, like she was more than a few steps ahead.

“Baby,” she said, “Ohio ain’t done nothing for us but keep us poor.”

“Didn’t make us poor.”

“Ain’t going to make us rich.”

They were sitting on the swing he’d built on what remained of the porch where Cornelius had taught him what amounted to his trade. Two-thirds of the porch had washed away in the floods of ’13, and Luther kept meaning to rebuild it, but there’d been so much baseball and so much work the last few years, he hadn’t found the time. And it occurred to him—he was flush. It wouldn’t last forever, Lord knows, but he did have some money put away for the first time in his life. Enough to make a move in any case.

God, he liked Lila. Not so’s he was ready to see the preacher and sell all of his youth quite yet; hell, he was only twenty-three. But he sure liked smelling her and talking to her and he sure liked the way she fit into his bones as she curled alongside of him in the porch swing.

“What’s in this Greenwood ’sides your aunt?”

“Jobs. They got jobs all over the place. A big, hopping town with nothing but coloreds in it, and they all doing right well, baby. Got themselves doctors and lawyers, and the men own their own fine automobiles and the girls dress real nice on Sundays and everyone owns their own home.”

He kissed the top of her head because he didn’t believe her but he loved that she wanted to think something should be so bad that half the time she convinced herself it could be.

“Yeah, uh?” He chuckled. “They got themselves some white folk that work the land for them, too?”

She reached back and slapped his forehead and then bit his wrist.

“Damn, woman, that’s my throwing hand. Watch that shit.”

She lifted his wrist and kissed it and then she laid it between her breasts and said, “Feel my tummy, baby.”