He took three jumps, one down and two up, and was by her side.

“My name is Cash,” he said.

He had a guinea pig in his pocket. They began to walk along. She stared on and on at him, as if he were doing some daring spectacular thing, instead of just walking beside her. It was not simply the city way he was dressed that made her look at him and see hope in its insolence looking back. It was not only the way he moved along kicking the flowers as if he could break through everything in the way and destroy anything in the world, that made her eyes grow bright. It might be, if he had not appeared the way he did appear that day she would never have looked so closely at him, but the time people come makes a difference.

They walked through the still leaves of the Natchez Trace, the light and the shade falling through trees about them, the white irises shining like candles on the banks and the new ferns shining like green stars up in the oak branches. They came out at Solomon’s house, bottle trees and all. Livvie stopped and hung her head.

Cash began whistling a little tune. She did not know what it was, but she had heard it before from a distance, and she had a revelation. Cash was a field hand. He was a transformed field hand. Cash belonged to Solomon. But he had stepped out of his overalls into this. There in front of Solomon’s house he laughed. He had a round head, a round face, all of him was young, and he flung his head up, rolled it against the mare’s-tail sky in his round hat, and he could laugh just to see Solomon’s house sitting there. Livvie looked at it, and there was Solomon’s black hat hanging on the peg on the front door, the blackest thing in the world.

“I been to Natchez,” Cash said, wagging his head around against the sky. “I taken a trip, I ready for Easter!”