As Sunset and Uncle Riley rode in, working men studied them, made note Sunset was wearing only a shirt. They put aside their work and began to move down the hill toward the wagon, like flies to molasses.

“What you doing with that beat-up white woman?” a man said to Uncle Riley.

“Just helping her,” Uncle Riley said. Then to Sunset: “See, they gonna cut me or hang me.”

“Take me to my mother-in-law’s.”

Uncle Riley looked at the men following the wagon.

“Oh, heavens,” Uncle Riley said. “They look mean. It’s that kind of mean only a dead nigger can make happy.”

“I still got the gun. Maybe I can get five of them.”

“There’s more than five.”

You could see screened-in sleeping porches on some of the houses, and on the porches were beds and the beds were there to take advantage of the night air and the screens were there to baffle the mosquitoes. The houses were painted industrial green and were jacked up on blocks or pilings. All around the houses chicken wire had been nailed and inside the wire, under the houses, chickens and geese pecked about. Most of the windows were black with soot from the power house and the grassless yards were sprinkled with sawdust from the mill.