“And that man jumped in,” said Jake, turning to Pa. “Beck. Your neighbor. He said he’d like to get a piece of me when Jim was finished.”

  “He did?” said Pa angrily. “I don’t recall you mentionin’ that.”

  “I took care of him next. He’d run off by the time Bailey came.”

  I burst out, “Did you cut his nose off?”

  Jake looked at me. “No.”

  “I never seen a razor fight like that,” said Pa’s man. “Not since I was in Louisville. I thought only the blacks used those. You almost killed him. Cut him up like a damned Christmas ham.”

  “Well he didn’t kill him,” said Papa. “Thank God.”

  He clapped Jake on the back. “Go let Miss Sampson clean you up, son.”

  “What’ll you do?” asked Pa’s man.

  “Go speak to Mr. Henley. He’ll want the boy lynched if I don’t cool him off quick enough.”

  “The Henley boy was askin’ for it,” said Pa’s man. “You don’t start what you can’t finish. But McCoy went too far, he did. You shoulda left off after he apologized, boy.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Jake, not sounding sorry at all. “I didn’t mean no trouble.”

  “I know that,” said Cal quickly, glancing at Mama. “You were defendin’ Minnie, in a way. So thank you.”

  Mama only pressed her lips together.

  Jake said, “It just came on over me and I saw red.”

  “You didn’t know what you were doin’,” Pa nodded.

  But it wasn’t true, I thought. Jake McCoy had known exactly what he was doing.

  Cal rubbed Jake’s shoulder, then turned and left with his man.

  Mama, Jake and I were alone. Mama put the bowl of water on the table.

  “Clean yourself up,” she said to Jake. “Then you can go out and sleep where you do.”

  She left, taking the razor with her.

  Jake sighed and dipped the cloth into the bowl. I watched him a little fearfully. He was too calm, too controlled.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  I looked up. He pointed to his face.

  “I can’t see too well what I’m doin’. Will you tend to this?”

  He tilted his head up and let me dab at the flowering bruise on his chin. The skin around his eye was mottled yellow and brown. I touched the bruise with a fingertip, watching the surface go a pale gold.

  “You got Henley worse than that?” I marvelled.

  “I did,” said Jake.

  “I’m surprised they didn’t jail you.”

  “Your Pa talked to the Constable.”

  “How bad did you hurt him?”

  “Bad,” said Jake. “But he was hollerin’ more than what I did.”

  “You shouldn’t provoke these boys like that,” I said. “You must be crazy bones.”

  “I don’t let folks walk over me,” said Jake. There was something meaningful in his look that I didn’t like.

  I finished doctoring him up. He took his coat and hat off the table and stood up. A small, ironic smile twisted his mouth. I’d been duped into thinking him harmless. Now I knew better.

  “Thank you,” he said, and turned to go.

  “You want something to eat?” I blurted.

  He blinked. “Sure. Biscuits, if you got any.”

  “We had pork for dinner.”

  “I’ll take that, thank you.”

  Then he went out. I waited for a minute in the room, staring at the bloody bowl of water.

  “Minnie?” Mama called from deeper in the house.

  “Yes, Ma?”

  “Douse that light.”

  “Yes Ma.”

  I droped some pork stew in a dish, then took the lamp outside with me.

  The dew was cold against my bare feet, wetting the hem of my night dress. A cool wind ruffled my head scarf. Jake was waiting at the barn door for me. Before he went in the barn he stripped his shirt off and hung it on a post. I stopped, embarassed.

  “The blood,” he explained simply. “Horses don’t like the smell.”

  I looked back at the house. Maybe Mama was watching me follow Jake in. Maybe she’d come out and stop me. Our house now seemed part of another world, like I’d crossed through some invisible curtain. I waited for her to come and pull me back. But the front door stayed closed.

  Jake took the lantern from me and hung it on a nail. The light spilled over his body. I tried not to look at his broad chest, at the black hairs starting to curl there, the lean expanse of muscle in his arms. The old scars still criss-crossing his back, faint but very real.

  You’re only bringing him something to eat, Minnie. Nothing a good girl wouldn’t do.

  He went to a water bucket and splashed his face; emptied a gourd in his hair. The water ran down his chest. His stomach was flat, well-muscled. I imagined being one of the water drops, shivering against every inch of his skin. My heart stopped at the thought. I handed him the food.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then he walked around me and shut the barn door.

  My heart was beating furiously now. Balancing the bowl in one hand, he made to climb into his loft.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going to eat.”

  He pulled himself up. I took a deep breath and climbed after him.

  Up high the loft might have been sweltering, but for slats in the roof siding that let the breeze pass through. He had these propped open with plywood beams. I glanced around. His spurs, hat, rope. A little tin of grooming things. That was it. It disappointed me, but what had I expected? Books? He didn’t know how to read. Jake had no life outside our farm.

  “You left the lantern going,” he said. “You gonna put it out?”

  “I’m not stayin’,” I said. “I’m headed back.”

  “You better be,” said Jake. “Or else your Pa might skin me alive.”

  He didn’t sound too frightened of that prospect. Quickly he turned to the food, which he hunched over and ate with surprising speed, as if I would change my mind and snatch it from him.

  “I never see you around much,” I said.

  “I keep busy.”

  “Don’t you have any friends?”

  “Some. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do!”

  He just looked at me. I tightened my wrap. “I meant to thank you. I didn’t mean for you to go after Henley. I didn’t think he meant harm, by makin’ me kiss him. I mean, he’s harmless.”

  “He called me a mick,” said Jake. “I didn’t go after him for you.”

  “Pa’s men call you mick all the time.”

  “I’ll get them back for it,” said Jake, “When I’m good and ready. Henley just caught me on the wrong day.”

  “So it wasn’t because of me?”

  “What made you think so?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Our conversation earlier-”

  “You’re funny,” interrupted Jake. “You got funny ideas. For a colored gal.”

  I sat up. Jake’s blue eyes cut through the dim light like two little, little lamps.

  “What do you mean?” I said stiffly.

  “You got airs,” he said. “You talk like the queen of Sheba.”

  “So?”

  “I ain’t never seen it before, is all.”

  “I guess all you know of black folks is scrapin’ and beggin’ and No Sir and Yes Ma’am,” I snapped.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” He shifted, frowning. “I never met enough black folks here to say. But now I done pissed you off.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “You look ready to spit. Don’t be sore. I guess we both had assumptions about each other.”

  “I didn’t assume-”

  “Most people think I’m a dumb McCoy,” said Jake. “They think I only see what’s under my nose. I see more than most folks give me credit for. And I’ll wager you do, too.”

  “And just what do you see?” I demanded.

  “When I look at you? My boss’s daughter,” said Jake.

  “What else?”

  “A she-cat.”

  “And?”

  “And a right pretty girl.”

  He met my shocked look boldly. The same way he had looked at me before riding off to town, the look that cut my clothes away like scissors.

  “What?” I stammered.

  “You heard me. You’re pretty.”

  “I guess you think ‘cause I came up here I’m gonna give myself to you,” I stammered. “Henley thought the same thing. Oh, little miss Negro girl, she must be loose as a box of screws.”

  “ ‘Give yourself’?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Jake’s blue eyes twinkled. “Would you?”

  Danger, danger. Turn it back on him!

  “I heard you’ve been sweet on Lucille Beck,” I said, smug with my little piece of gossip.

  “Only thing that’s sweet on Lucille Beck is herself,” said Jake sharply. “And don’t go repeatin’ that lie.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “No.”

  The abrupt change in topic left me embarassed, though I had been the cause of it. Jake watched me, interested in the planes and slopes of my face, as I was interested in his.

  “I never even kissed anyone,” I heard myself saying. “Jim made me do it.”

  “So you’re a virgin?”

  “Of course I am!”

  The air between us had grown heavier. I looked away at my bare feet. He tapped the long muscle of his thigh.

  “Why don’t you like me, Miss Minnie?” he said.

  “I like you, Jake. As a friend, I mean.”

  “Then why you sittin’ there like I’m about to pounce?”

  My hands had knotted in my lap. I unwound them, glaring at him. “It wouldn’t be proper to sit next to you.”

  “I won’t tell if you do.”

  I shook my head. Slowly he got up and moved closer, a couple feet away. If he reached out he could just barely brush me with his fingertips. I flinched but didn’t move away.

  “You must be lonely here, Jake.”

  “I get by. I ain’t so lonely as you.”

  I frowned. “I’m not lonely.”

  “ You walk with your chin to the sky, not payin’ nobody no mind. But you don’t have girl-friends. You go to school and come home and lie in the fields readin’ them books. Only one you talk to is your Mama.”

  “So?”

  “So you look lonely, is all.”

  He didn’t know me half so well to be talking like that.

  “What about you?” I fired back. “You might just stay here with Pa and never amount to nothing. You got any dreams? Plans?”

  “I got plans,” said Jake. “Just ‘cause I don’t shout ‘em to the world-”

  “Well, what are they?”

  He said, “I’m gonna own my own ranch.”

  I had the urge to laugh. But that would have ended the conversation immediately. Instead I said, “How?”

  “I’m doin’ a drive with your Pa,” said Jake. “He’s gonna forward me a sum to get a herd of my own.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah.”

  He tilted his chin up and looked down his nose. “I bet you think I’m too stupid to do it.”

  “I never said that.”

  In fact, until tonight I had believed him too stupid to do anything. But something about the way he turned his words was making me reconsider. Of course Pa’s fondness for Jake should have told me the McCoy had more to show than met the eye. Still waters ran deep. But how deep?

  I eyed the ladder again. I should leave. I should go back to the house and back into bed. I was a good girl.

  “Let’s play a game,” I heard myself say.

  “A game?” His eyes narrowed, guessing at some false intention, or trap.

  “I ask you three questions. Then you ask me three questions.”

  “Alright,” he said slowly. “But I go first.”

  “Fine.”

  He pushed his hair out of his eyes. In the low light there appeared hints of copper in the black. “Why don’t your Mama like me?”

  That was an easy one. “She thinks Papa likes you more than me, because you’re a boy and you ain’t- aren’t- colored.”

  “Next question,” said Jake. “Why come you don’t you like me?”

  “I already said-”

  “Answer it true.” He leveled his eyes into mine.

  “I didn’t know you enough to like you or not like you.”

  “You thought I was a dirty McCoy not fit to shuck oysters.”

  I snorted; he smiled. Before today I had never seen him smile. It annoyed me how much I liked it.

  He said, “Last question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why didn’t you bust up Jim Henley when he kissed you?”

  I had a ready answer.

  “Negro girls don’t hit white folks. Nobody would believe me.”

  Jake sat back. “Your Pa said that too.”

  I picked at my skirts, annoyed. “Alright. My turn.”

  He said, “I don’t think that was the reason. You could have hit him. If he tried anythin’ you’d have Mr. Sampson come down on his neck.”

  “What do you know?” I snapped.

  “You always say that. ‘My Pa’ this and ‘My Daddy’ that. What if he couldn’t come? What would you do then? You don’t know how to defend yourself.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said angrily.

  “Maybe you didn’t hit him because you liked it.”

  My next words stalled. I clenched my fists. The nerve of him! He set the bowl aside and wiped his fingers, slowly and carefully. One of his knuckles was bleeding again. He inspected it. Jim Henley’s hands had been as soft as kid gloves. What did Jake McCoy’s hands feel like? I scooted closer and grabbed his wrist.

  “I didn’t like it. Take it back.”

  Up close I noticed how long and dark his lashes were. They made the paleness of the blue eyes even more startling. He looked up at me through those lashes. Help, I thought. I was trying to be angry with him, to summon the rage to smack him across the face. I should have done that long since. But this feeling swirling in my chest was nothing like anger. I didn’t want to hit Jake. I wanted to-

  “I take it back,” he said slowly.

  His hands were dry. Mine were clammy. I turned his palm over, to the callouses under each finger and at the thumb joint. They were rough, farm boy hands.

  “What’s that scar?” I said.

  “Burn,” he said. “Brother hit me with a poker.”

  He smelled like leather and soap and sweat. I heard his breath coming slow, like mine.

  “You gonna let my hand loose?” Jake murmured.

  I looked up. Suddenly aware of every inch of my own skin, and the thin fabric that separated me from him, my whole body shuddered and grew hot. I traced up his arm with a fingertip, and then down over his broad chest. I’d never been so close to a man before. If I pressed his shirtless torso against mine, I would feel him through my nightdress. Every inch of his skin; even my fingers could trace the ridged scars on his back. And he would feel my breasts. My face flamed. His eyes grew dark; his lips parted.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I just wondered-”

  I had wondered if he would be warm all over. I wondered if he would take advantage of me and sling me down to his bed pallet. I wondered how it would feel for his long, slim body to stretch out against mine. For those rough hands to scrape over my body, positioning me, holding me down, feeling me in my most sensitive parts. He caught my hand as I drew it back.

  “You had three questions for me, Minnie.”

  Had I? I’d forgotten. He still held my hand. And as if he couldn’t help himself, his thumbs instead massaged my palm, and his other hand snaked around my waist. I knew what he wanted, but now I saw he was too smart to ask me plain for it. If anyone would brave the distance between our lips, it would have to be me.