“I know,” said Jake.

  “It’s not fair. What makes me so different? So disgusting?”

  His arms tightened around my stomach, constant and warm. I leaned against him.

  “I’m sorry, Minnie.”

  “It’s alright. I’m just tired.”

  “You’re not disgusting.”

  “Thank you.”

  More silence. I could hear him thinking. I myself could not think. I was too upset.

  “I don’t have it like you,” he said. “Most folks in other places don’t pay me no nevermind if they don’t know my name’s McCoy. A name ain’t like skin. I could lie and change who I am. But you can’t do that. You can’t turn around and be white.”

  “I wouldn’t want to,” I said. “Never in a million years.”

  “Right,” he said. “We all are fine born just the way we are, as your Pa would say.”

  “Pa would say that?”

  “Sure. But I think he stole it from your Mama.”

  I laughed. I could imagine Mama saying that, in her dry, deep voice.

  Jake said: “I seen the way people here would talk about you and your Ma. Didn’t have no cause to say the things they did.”

  I closed my eyes. The rocking movements of the horse worsened the pounding in my head. Jake’s hand rubbed and rubbed my stomach, soothing me.

  “I like talkin’ to you,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “I feel like I can say all my thoughts aloud. I think strange things sometimes, Minnie.”

  “What are you thinking now?”

  He paused. Then he said, “That maybe I’m in a dream and this road leads right up to heaven.”

  I opened my eyes. The sun shone down on the slick wetness of everything, naming all it touched. The round-leafed grasses and the autumn flowers and the shiny bark of trees. The multi-colored pebbles lining the road, looking damn near like gold nuggets and scattered rubies.

  “Heaven,” I said dreamily. “Can I come?”

  “You’re already there.”

  I fell asleep against him. Later, at home taking tea, we started a different conversation.

  "I didn't plan on stayin' here when your Pa went to prison," he told me. "I intended to go out farther West. Get some land of my own."

  "So why don't you?"

  "There's a girl I'm obliged to," he said. "She's about as helpless as a new-dropped lamb."

  "I'm not helpless."

  Jake leaned against the beam of the porch. The shadows were climbing all over his face.

  "Let me put it plain to you, Minnie. Your Pa's in jail, probably for good. Any more incidents in this town and they'll run you off like they done your Mama."

  "I know all that."

  "I can't expect to stay here with you for always. I got visions of my own. Plans."

  Ah. He wanted me to tell him it was okay. To free him from his moral obligations, so he could run off and live his own life. I meant nothing to him.

  I swallowed. "So go, then."

  To hell with Jake McCoy and his Plans.

  He said quietly, "Why don't you go back to your husband?"

  "So you can find another family to hire you?" I snapped.

  He looked out into the darkness. Our earlier conversation seemed to have never happened. Now he was only Poor Ambitious Jake, stuck in poverty, while a high-stepping negro girl flung it in his face. Me in my fine clothes and nice hat and pretty little shoes and education. He, nothing more than a farm boy with big dreams and tough fists.

  We each had something the other lacked.

  “Hell, Minnie,” he said.

  “Go to hell, Jake.”

  “Don’t cuss at me.”

  “I’ll cuss where I like.” I sounded like Uncle Sam.

  Jake turned, anger in his eyes. “You want me to just stay here with you? Forever?”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “Of course I did!” I shouted. “What else- why else-”

  He was silent. Staring at me, with the world in his face. A world totally different from mine.

  “Who else is there?” I said, quietly.

  “Your husband.”

  “I have no husband.”

  “Your parents.”

  “They’re gone.”

  I hated him then, for igniting all these feelings in me. It was Jake’s fault I had come to know what a man’s touch felt like. It was Jake’s fault, for kissing me in the barn, for turning between my legs to sticky, melty chocolate. For making me love him. I had married another man because I could not have Jake. And now, even with nothing in my way, I still could not have Jake.

  Did he want to be had by anyone?

  Feeling embarrassed and furious with myself, I stared out into the night.

  I said, “Why do you like me, Jake?”

  “You got brains,” he replied instantly. “You can know a man’s whole life just by lookin’ at him. You got a kind heart. You do and say the funniest things, and you make decent company. That’s why I like you, Minnie.”

  “But not love. You don’t love me.”

  He rubbed his face.

  “You can go,” I said. “You can run off and live your life. You don’t owe anything to me.”

  “Don’t I?” said Jake, in an odd voice.

  Damn those stupid tears.

  “You did a good turn for me some years ago,” said Jake. “I never did forget it, even if maybe you did. And your Pa brought me up from monkey dust to where I am now. I owe you something, Minnie Sampson. But I can’t give love like peanuts. I don’t know what it means. Expect I’m too young to know, and so are you.”

  “Well, where’s that leave us?”

  “Conflicted,” he said.

  He stepped towards me. The space between us closed effortlessly. He smelled of the forest and the saddle, and all the things I could not have.

  "I have an idea," he said. "But you won't like it."

  "Tell me."

  He told me.

  "That's against the law," I said shakily.

  "The law's only bad if you get caught," said Jake.

  “I thought you wanted to leave.”

  “I thought you wanted me gone.”

  “Stupid idiot,” I said. “Of course I don’t.”

  “Good,” he said. “ ‘Cause I’m staying here to mind you.”

  *

  Henley's men came later that night. Shug was leading them, stumbling drunk off the mash liquor they’d fed him.

  I stood on the porch with Jake, watching their lanterns bob in the distance like fattening fireflies.

  Jake ran his palm up the stock of the shotgun, but said nothing.

  Henley was with his men. He stepped into the circle of our porchlight. I counted five men in all, every one of them armed. Enough for a lynch mob.

  Shug staggered off and vomited in the thorax-weed garden. I reminded myself to fire him later.

  "So," said Harry Henley. "I hear you been into some trouble, Minnie Sampson."

  Harry Henley looked a lot like his son, Jim. When Jake had sliced Jim's face up with the razor, Harry had tried to get a mob going after him. It was the way things had been handled in North Carolina, his home state, and he expected that same justice to carry here.

  Mob justice.

  Keep the negroes in line.

  "I hear you've been making a tour of my land," I said. Careful, Minnie. Watch your tone.

  "Your land?" said Mr. Henley. "Niggers don't own land around here."

  "This nigger does," I said.

  Jake watched me. His hand had left the stock of the shotgun and was now curled around its trigger.

  "Striking a white man is a hanging offense," said Henley.

  "She didn't strike him," said Jake immediately. "I was there."

  Henley snarled, "Keep your tongue between your teeth, McCoy."

  "If you want to buy my land," I said quickly, intercepting Jake's response, "We can work out a deal."

  "A deal?"

  “A bargain,” I said. “An arrangement. An agreement. You ever heard of it?”

  I would pay for my lip. Harry Henley made a signal to his men. They started up the porch. Shotgun fire exploded; shouts exploded around it. Someone's lantern went missing and rolled away. I had tried to run back into the house, but a man's hands were wrapping around my waist and flinging me to the ground. Jake had missed with the shotgun.

  They got to disarming him. Henley stood back and watched. They fell on Jake like disemboweling vultures.

  But suddenly there were other gunshots, and more lights racing over the hill. Hellish war-whoops raced ahead of them.

  "What the devil?!" Henley roared.

  The gunfire popped off in quick blasts. Like cowardly dogs, Henley’s men broke off and fled. Jake lay on the ground. The shotgun lay next to him, detached, like a discarded arm in the grass. I picked it up and aimed it vaguely in the darkness. I fired. The recoil shot me backwards on my bottom.

  Shortie came galloping full-tilt up the hill. He jumped off the horse before it stopped moving.

  "Thundering hell," he swore.

  Two more men were behind him. My father's cowboys. I just sat there in the grass stupidly with the shotgun still in my lap.

  "She killed him!" Shortie hollered, noticing Jake.

  They thought I had shot him. They hurried over to their friend. He was sitting up, though, hurt but not dead.

  "The luck of the devil," said Shortie disgustedly.

  He had more bruises, and a slight concussion. His jaw hurt too bad to talk.

  So I knew then I could take no more chances. The next day I went with Shortie and the bruised-but-still-living Jake to the local bank. They flanked me like two tigers. Tigers with guns. Strong defeated the weak, out here in the West. Maybe I could never be strong myself. But I could surround myself with friends who were.

  The best you could do as a woman was bristle up and assert yourself.

  At the bank I gave my name as Minnie Sampson. I provided the proper proof. I then took out two hundred dollars in my name.

  Quietly I asked to see the remaining balance on my father's account, figures from the latest appraisal of his assets, and the status of his investments. The number was staggering, but I pretended it was not.

  To Jake and Shortie I each gave fifty dollars.

  Then we went to the barber shop. Jake got a shave and a wash. They cut his hair short, just under his chin. I was surprised to see the man under it, and how young he looked. In the barber shop mirror I caught a glimpse of my own face, which seemed surprisingly fierce, and utterly unfamiliar.

  After that we went to the tailor's and got him some new clothes. Jake paid for them with his own money, defiantly. I said nothing.

  Then arm in arm we headed for Mr. Larssen's.

  There would be no repeat of last time. Shortie laid his gun across the front desk. The secretary let us walk right in. We walked all the way to the back of the building, where Larssen sat in his office, swaying in his seat like a parrot on a swing. Shortie came to stand near the door. The whole affair was deeply disturbing to Shortie, but interesting, like watching someone get hanged.

  Larssen drew up a marriage contract in a few minutes. Because Jake could not read, I repeated the whole thing aloud. My voice sounded reckless and arrogant, even to my own ears.

  "Sign here, Miss," said Larssen.

  I took up the pen and signed.

  "And you, Sir."

  Jake looked at the pen. Coloring, he picked it up. He didn't know how to hold it.

  We waited expectantly.

  Jake cleared his throat. “How- what do I...?”

  "Just make your mark," said Larssen.

  Jake stiffly wiped the pen across the paper.

  "Well," said Larssen. "There you go."

  I rolled up the important document. Later, I would take it to the courthouse to get it officiated. Later than that, I would go to church and say some vows. Make the whole thing real.

  Minnie Sampson, now Minnie McCoy. Married twice, to different men. I had just done something very illegal and possibly stupid.

  But it was my choice, and I had made it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Minnie, if you go to the river I'll tan your hide."

  "I'll tell everyone my husband beats me."

  "I'll tell them my wife don't listen."

  I pulled my shawl around me and stepped off the porch. I looked quickly at Jake, to see how he'd take my defiance.

  "You run into that Henley son-of-a-bitch, it's on you."

  "I'll take my chances."

  But when I reached the end of the land a rain like the End of Days began. I struggled back up to the house wet as a duck.

  Jake was sitting in front of the fire. He handed me a towel. He hadn't moved an inch from where I’d left him.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Sittin'."

  He was just staring dead-on into the fire. There was nothing to do. I changed and came out in one of Mama's robes. Outside the rain was roaring on the roof, slamming into the ditches Jake had dug, with his farmer's instinct, because yesterday he knew it would rain.

  I curled up in the easy chair and opened my book. Jake shifted in his seat. Some minutes passed, longer and longer. I wanted him to come and sit next to me. But would he think it strange if I asked?

  He kept fidgeting. I looked up.

  "What's the matter with you?"

  He scowled. "Nothin'."

  I shut the book. "You got a jumping-bean in your pants?"

  "I said it ain't nothin'."

  But his eyes had jumped to the book, and then quickly flung themselves away.

  After a while he said, "Is that interestin'?"

  "What?"

  "Your book."

  I turned it over. It was some kind of travel diary. I forget the name now.

  "Yes."

  "Don't know how you can just sit there," he said. “Looking at that for hours.”

  "Better than staring into the fire," I quipped.

  He looked away, his jaw clenched. I wanted to bite my tongue off.

  Then he cleared his throat and got up. I heard him moving about in the kitchen.

  The next day Jake went to inspect the fences along the South Meadows. I hurried to town and got back in the middle of the afternoon, laden with some shopping bags.

  I greeted him at the South gate. He was hammering in a new fencepost with some of Papa’s stored wood.

  “What’s that you got there?” he grunted.

  “A surprise.”

  He raised a thick eyebrow. I went inside and arranged my purchases on the table.

  When he washed up and came inside he stopped short. The bottom of his neck flushed.

  “What’s this, Minnie?”

  I had a slate on the table, and new chalk. A reader was propped up and open. It was obvious, what it was.

  “Do you have an hour?” I said calmly.

  His face darkened. “No.”

  I held his angry stare. “Are you sure?”

  “You’re wastin’ your time,” he said shortly. “I got more important things to do.”

  “One hour.”

  I had never seen that expression on his face before. I realized later that it was panic. Jake glared at me, swallowing some evil, fight-starting remark. He ducked his head and pushed into the other room.

  I got up.

  “Jake!”

  He was in Papa’s room, taking off his boots.

  “I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” I said. “You know I didn’t.”

  “Like teachin’ a horse to sing,” he snapped. “It ain’t no use. I don’t want to learn how to read.”

  “Everyone has to learn how to read.”