She snatched it back. “Maud, I’m thinking, is happier for you to be at The Lodge tomorrow, working, Magnus. Sal, get up.” She slapped his dad’s shoulder and he stood.

“I intend,” Magnus declared, “to employ some help for her.”

“Who?” Bennet said.

“Ruth’s…I want to talk to Miss Winters, see if the boy might be willing.”

“That little nigger boy?” Otto said.

“He’s not a Negro,” Magnus corrected, “he’s Indian—from the Empire.”

Otto wrung out his ugly smile. “Whatever he is, he’s black as sin.”

“His father was an Englishman,” Magnus insisted, as if this trumped the influence of all other blood.

“Jesus,” Otto declared, “that must have been a cold dark night—”

“That was a hell of a thing for Ruth,” Siggy interrupted, before Otto could say anything too obscene in front of Frank’s mom. “The Englishman up and dying like that.”

“And leaving her with another fella’s mistake,” Otto said. “Might be it’s his.”

Putting a heavy arm around Goldwin’s shoulder, Bennet said, “She should’ve stuck with Goldy here.” Goldwin shrank a little at this, reflexively reaching up to dab at his fragile strands of hair as if they were a fresh wound. “Now there was a thing,” Bennet continued. “Ruth takes a weekend trip to New York, comes back with a complete stranger.”

Frank had noticed that Bennet seemed to enjoy making people uneasy. Otto did too, but for Otto it was just meanness. For Bennet it was a random tug at the leashes of these men. Ever since he was little, Frank had felt both profoundly drawn to and repelled by Bennet. It was difficult to get a sense of him. He supported many of the poorest in town; had even bought up mortgages during the Depression to keep people from losing their farms, asking for no repayment. He could have lived anywhere but chose to be the big man in Pisgah, spending his time hunting and drinking with his childhood buddies—with whom he always looked so disappointed. But it seemed to Frank that a person isn’t disappointed unless he has hope that others can be better than they seem. While Bennet’s impulse was to dominate, while he seemed to have an almost obsessive desire, from what Frank had seen and heard, to push people to their limits, Frank suspected that Bennet wanted to be wrong and never lost hope that someone would prove him so. Frank sensed that somewhere in him Bennet believed that even the lowest might behave against expectations, might even ascend to unexpected heights of courage and decency.

“Been to see her lately?” Bennet asked.

Goldwin frowned. “Why would I?”

“Women need a man’s attention.”

Goldwin looked miserable.

“Bennet,” Frank’s mother chastised softly. Her tone struck Frank as too personal.

As Bennet released Goldwin, Finn jumped in with his bright melodious voice. “Talking of black fellas, during the war in France I met one. Working on the railroad, he was. I ask him directions to the place where they have the dancing girls. And this fella, he answers me in French. Sure, he didn’t have a word of English. A black man, can you imagine it? Looked like he should have been working a snag boat down the Missouri. Speaking French! The world is an amazing place.”