She saw Pete’s car, turned over and smashed up, bent in half between two big oak trees as if it had been made of wet licorice. Nearby, his wooden file cabinet was burst open and there were files all over the place.

Fatefully, she came across one of her curtains, made from a flour sack and dyed blue. It had wrapped itself around a scrub tree limb and was hanging there like it was on the arm of a valet.

Sunset draped it around the lower part of her body, pulled her long red hair down over her breasts, started down the road again, mud squishing around her shoes.

Stooping to yank a mashed frog from the bottom of her shoe, she looked up to see the colored knife sharpener, Uncle Riley, coming down the road with his two mules and wagon. Uncle Riley’s son, Tommy, was walking alongside him, spearing sun perch from the ground with a sharp stick, flipping them into the wagon bed.

Uncle Riley pulled on the reins when he saw her, said, “Oh, hell. Now I ain’t looking, Miss White Woman. Really. And Tommy, he ain’t neither. We ain’t seeing a thing.”

But Tommy was seeing plenty. Sunset’s breasts were poking through her red hair, and Tommy had never seen breasts before, white or black, except those of his mama when suckling, but that was a long-lost memory.

Sunset, at that moment, didn’t care who saw what. She was bleeding from nose and mouth and her eyes were starting to swell shut. She felt as if she had been set on fire and put out with a yard rake.

“Uncle Riley,” she said, “it’s me, Sunset. I been beat.”

“Oh, Lord, chile, you sure have. I’m gonna get down and help you. Don’t shoot at nothing now, you hear?”

Sunset staggered to one knee, tried to get up, couldn’t.