“Uncle Tom,” he said again. “It’s no worse than you’ve said about Leon rooting out the Red vermin. You can love someone without admiring everything they do. Clarence Goodall looked after the Greenes, your family, before he looked after his own. What else can you call a man who didn’t have Christmas day with his own people for thirty years?” He stroked Bruno’s shiny coat and stared out to the ocean. “I’ve been changed forever, Roxanne. Forever. I tell you when I tried to buy the Ford from that white man, and he put me through my groveling paces, all that jive shit, I wanted to kick that cracker’s teeth in. But Elijah Cooke? I watched him—an educated, upright man, a wise man, a good man, a better man than that cracker could even dream of being!—and he expected to be treated like Uncle Elijah. He was ready. He knew what he had to do. And that cracker was ready. They were all ready to say what needed to be said. Just like everyone knew they would.”

“Everyone but you.”

“Everyone but me.” Terrence shook his head slowly. “But you know what, Roxanne? When Elijah Cooke was done with his routine, with saying what that cracker wanted him to say, behaving like he was expected to behave, he looked at me, and with his eyes, he told me, you better do the same, Terrence. And by god, I did it. I hated myself, but I did it. I knew if I didn’t, the suffering would spread far beyond me and this cracker. I did it. You see what I’m telling you?”

“I do. A year ago I would not have, but I do now.” I leaned my head against his knees.

Terrence took a steep breath. He swallowed audibly. “I think my daddy grew up just like that. Up from slavery, but he couldn’t wash it off. Maybe when he left us, he went back to Alabama where everyone expected his hands to be dirty.” He paused and gulped with emotion. “Maybe that’s why he left us.”

I raised my head up and looked into his eyes. They were round with pain suppressed; his lips roiled briefly with words unspoken. He was shivering. “Let’s go to bed, honey. Come on.”

He threw the towel over his shoulders and picked up the board, and we started back toward the house. George Wilbur came out and called for his dog. Bruno, seeing we were going inside, ran to him. George put a leash on the dog and turned away without so much as a wave.