Then Marsha Richman, turning in her seat so that she could smile directly at Auntie Bella, spoke up in a very ladylike Southern voice: “I don’t know how you do it! To tell you the truth, I’m usually not crazy about okra, collard greens, and snaps, but yours just melted in my mouth. You’ve got to tell me your secret.”

  Auntie Bella pulled her head back and smiled broadly at Marsha Richman, and shook with a couple of silent chuckles, and then let loose a laugh from deep in her throat, and said:

  “Welcome to … Grease.”

  Tremendous laughter from all around the table. Welcome to Grease! Oh, it was priceless. Auntie Bella was a card, all right! Not even Charlie himself had ever heard that line before! Everyone was in convulsions! Well, not everyone. Charlie noticed that Marsha Richman was still smiling, but her face had fallen. She looked as if she had just been shot through the heart.

  After dinner Charlie led the party out to the stone terrace at the rear of the Gun House. He had instructed Mason to make sure the terrace lights were kept off. He didn’t want anything to dilute the effect of the nocturnal landscape he had prepared for his guests. He stuck close to the Richmans, hoping for maximum astonishment.

  They didn’t disappoint him. “Huhhhhhhhhh!” It was Marsha Richman; a sharp intake of breath.

  Flames!

  In the middle distance a stupendous arc of fire cut through the blackness of the plantation at night. The silhouettes of the pine trees in the foreground rose like enormous bars. The pungent odor of burning sedge and scrub pine was thick in the air.

  Charlie made a point of inhaling and then letting his breath out with a satisfied “Ahhhhhhhhh. Nothing else on earth like it.” In truth, the aroma made his heart thump with an emotion he couldn’t have begun to describe.

  “Wow! What’s going on, Charlie?”

  It was Herb Richman. Charlie felt he was getting somewhere at last. For the first time the man had broken out of his lethargic mode.

  “We’re burning over the fields, Herb.”

  “What for?”

  “If you don’t burn ’em over in the spring, they’ll be so overgrown with saplings, vines, thorns—it’d be like Br’er Rabbit’s briar patch. You remember Br’er Rabbit’s briar patch?”

  “Not really,” said Herb Richman.

  “Well, they’d get so overgrown, you’d have to forget about hunting. Not even a dog’d be able to get through.”

  He was pleased to observe that Herb Richman was staring slack-jawed at the sight. “But how do you keep it from … from …”

  “From getting out of control?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got twenty a my boys out there steering it.” A fleeting thought told him he shouldn’t have called his black help “boys,” since, as Serena kept drumming into him, the Richmans were Jewish and liberal. But it was only that, a fleeting thought. “And ’at’s why we do it at night, too—when the dew falls and it’s damp and there’s no wind.” He sighed. “You know, Herb, I love that smell. I really do. Far’s I’m concerned, nobody ever made a perfume that can touch it.”

  Still gazing into the distance, Herb Richman said, “It’s amazing” … but in the irritatingly indifferent way he had of making such observations. Then he said, “What happens to the wildlife in a big fire like that?”

  Charlie gave an amused snort. “Happens to ’em? They run, or else they fly, that’s what happens. You can see ’em. I’ve been out there in the field for a lotta burnovers, and you can see animals you didn’t even know was there running ahead a the flames. I’ll tell you what’s really sump’m. That’s the snakes, ’specially the rattlers. People will tell you how fast a snake can move, but they really can’t, not in miles per hour or anything like that. They can’t outrun the flames, so what they do is, they burrow down into the ground? They get under the earth? And as soon’s the fire’s passed over them, they come outta their holes and they get the hell outta there. You can see ’em! Of course, you got to watch yourself, because they’re not in a good mood at that point. The ground is still hot, and here are all these snakes slithering along like there’s no tomorrow. It’s just one hell of a sight. No, the wildlife know what to do about fire, because it’ll occur spontaneously out in the woods. The only ones that don’t make out so well are the turtles. The next day you’ll find all these burnt-out turtle shells in the woods.”

  Herb Richman turned his head to look at Charlie. In the darkness Charlie couldn’t tell exactly what the man’s expression was, but he said to himself, “Oh shit. Why did I have to mention the dead turtles? Anybody who uses the expression wildlife is going to be sensitive about the dead turtles.”

  Aloud he said, “But you don’t have to worry about the turtles. They survive, they survive. There’s no older animal in the woods than the turtle.”

  “You actually burn over the whole plantation?” asked Herb Richman.

  “Yep.”

  “Well then—where do the animals go? Where do the quail go?”

  “Aw, before you start the burnover, you go out there and you create feedin’ patches everywhere. You take your bulldozers and you dig firebreaks in a big circle. Inside the circles they’re like islands, the feeding patches are. They got trees, grass, beggarweed, corn, all the things the quail like. The other animals, too, for that matter. By fall the burned-over fields, they got a nice stand a sedge again, but most of the undergrowth is gone, and it’s good hunting out there.”

  “Well, don’t the pine trees burn, too?”

  “Not if your boy—your people know what they’re doing. A good healthy stand a pine, the trunks might get scorched, but the whole tree’s not gonna go up in flames. Oh, the scrubs might burn up. But that’s nature’s way a culling the stock, too. Fire in the woods is a natural thing.”

  Now Charlie and his guests grew quiet, transfixed by the flaming tableau before them. If you stared long enough, the flames began to play tricks on your eyes. It was an overcast night, and the sky was black, and the ground between the terrace and the arc of flames was black, and the fire seemed to be floating in space somewhere beyond the perpendicular silhouettes of the pine trees, which in turn seemed to draw closer and then recede, draw closer and then recede once more. And now, way out there somewhere, you could hear the boys shouting to one another: not the words, just the music of their voices.

  So far as Charlie was concerned, what he was now treating his guests to was one of the greatest pageants, one of the greatest symphonies, in all the world. He noticed with satisfaction that, here in the darkness, Herb Richman had slipped his arm around his wife Marsha’s waist and drawn her close to him. Perhaps the man was at last responding to the Turpmtine Spell.

  By and by, they all came back inside the Gun House, and Charlie offered everybody something to drink, but the Richmans said they were ready to turn in for the evening, and so did the Knoxes, and so did Dr. Ted Nashford and his Live-in Lydia. Then Wally left, without saying anything, and then Slim and Veronica Tucker pulled out, and then Serena told him she was heading back to the Big House, where the Richmans were staying, to make sure they had everything they needed. Charlie got the picture. Pretty soon there would be just him and Opey McCorkle and Billy, and maybe Doris.

  So while there were a few souls still left, Charlie beckoned Billy into a little office he had off the entry gallery in the Gun House and closed the door and said, “Billy, what the hell was that you were getting ready to say about Fareek Fanon?”

  Billy, who was already working on another bourbon and water, gave Charlie a funny smile and didn’t say a thing.

  “Hey, Billy, it’s me, Charlie.”

  Billy knocked back a little more of his drink, and then he said, “I shouldna said the first thing about it, Charlie. I told ’im I wouldn’t.”

  “Told who? Fareek Fanon?”

  “Naw … Inman.”

  “Inman Armholster? What’s he got to do with it?”

  Billy grew silent again, and once more stared at Charlie, but rather vacantly. Then he said, “Well … I think Inman’s gonna want to talk to you anyway, but in the meantime, this stays in this room. I don’t even want you telling Serena. Will you promise me that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Inman claims Fanon raped his daughter.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “Elizabeth? You’re kidding!”

  “Naw, I’m not kidding.”

  “Jesus—H.—Christ. How’d he say—they were my guests here just a couple months ago! Elizabeth and Inman and Ellen! Next-to-last weekend of the quail season!—well, hell, you remember that. You were here, too. How’d this happen?”

  “Well, according to Inman, Elizabeth was up in Fanon’s room at some kinda party on the first night a Freaknik, on ’at Friday.”

  “Fanon’s room? The first night a Freaknik? What the hell was she doing up in Fanon’s room on the first night a Freaknik?”

  “Inman says there were two other white students there, two girls, and one uv’em saw what happened, but she’s scared to death, and now she claims she didn’t see anything.”

  “Christalmighty.” Charlie lowered his eyes and shook his head and then looked up at Billy again. “I don’t believe this! What’s Fanon like? Any idea?”

  “Aw, man,” said Billy, “don’t ask. You missed that meeting a the Stingers where McNutter brought him out and introduced him to everybody. He won’t do that again. It was a disaster. You’ve heard this term attitude? Well, this guy is 225 pounds of attitude. He comes out wearing a diamond in each earlobe and a gold necklace about yea thick. He don’t even smile. Unh-unhh, no ingratiating himself with a bunch of old broken-down white has-been athletes from long ago. McNutter gives him the microphone and all he does is mutter a few words that sound like he’s taking the Fifth Amendment. He looks at everybody like we’re dirt underneath his feet. The worst picture you ever had in your mind about a pampered athlete? There you got our boy Fareek.”

  “What’s Elizabeth Armholster like?” asked Charlie.

  “I don’ really know,” said Billy. “I saw her when she came out at the Driving Club last year. She probably looked fabulous. Most uv’m do.”

  “She’s a sexy-looking little lamb chop,” said Charlie. “She came along with my party, with Inman and Ellen, that weekend. She made sure everybody knew she had a body.”

  “Well, hell, Charlie, rape’s rape, no matter what kind of body the girl has.”

  “I’m not saying it iddn’! I mean, Jesus Christ. I was just making an observation. What’s Inman gon’ do?”

  “Inman don’ know what to do. But you know Inman. He’s a hotheaded son of a gun, and you can count on it, he’s gon’ do sump’m. What’s got him stumped right now is that he don’ want Elizabeth’s name to get out, and with her being the daughter of someone as prominent as he is, he don’ know how he can keep it from getting out. And he says Elizabeth is so traumatized by the whole thing, she don’t wanna talk to the police about it or the people at Tech or anybody else. So for now what he’s doing is, he’s going to the board.”

  “Tech’s board?”

  “He’s a great buddy of the new chairman, Holland Jasper.”

  “Aw, yeah, I know him.”

  “There’s been a lotta changes on the board, Charlie, and guess what they’re coming out strong on.”

  “What?”

  “The football program. They think Tech’s lost too much ground over the past ten years. Everything slumps when the football team slumps. The legislature comes through with less money. Alumni contributions fall off. The SAT scores of the applicants drop. Everything comes down.”

  “The SAT scores come down?”

  “That’s what Inman told me,” said Billy.

  “What’s he care about the SAT scores?”

  “He don’t care, but when he talked to Holland Jasper, he got kind of a rude awakening, seems to me. He thought Jasper’d drop everything and call out the cavalry when he told him what’d happened to his daughter. Instead, Jasper starts double talking him and telling Inman how we have to take everything into consideration and how the student government has its own mechanism for dealing with sexual harassment, and he’s double talking him some more, and Inman’s yelling at him and saying, ‘I’m not talking about sexual harassment, you imbecile, I’m talking about flat-out rape!’”

  “I’da like to seen that.”

  “Well, you know what the bottom line is, Charlie. The board’s numberone priority is to build the football program. They’ve hired Buck McNutter away from Alabama for $875,000 a year and given him a big house in Buckhead, and they got an all-American running back named Fareek Fanon. Every magazine, every capital-contributors brochure, every Admissions Office flyer—they got a picture of Fareek Fanon shaking off tacklers and heading for open country. Suddenly Inman finds himself up against some a the harsh realities a modern life.”

  “Is he angry?”

  “Angry? He’s hopping, Inman is. He’s fit to be tied. He’s gonna do sump’m. Right now, seems like he’s trying to line up some Tech people against Holland Jasper. That’s why he came to see me and told me all this. And I’ll betcha anything he gets in touch with you—only you gotta make out like you ain’t heard the first word about the whole thing. He made me swear up and down I wouldn’t tell a living soul.”

  “Well, hell, like I said, Billy, it’s me, Charlie.”

  “I know, but you gotta swear on a Bible.”

  “Okay,” said Charlie, “I swear.”

  In the morning, after breakfast, Charlie led them all, all the guests plus Serena and Wally, out to a small but smart-looking barn, made of old brick, with a slate roof, not far from the stables. It was a fine spring day.

  Inside the barn, it took a moment to adjust your eyes to the contrasts of light and dark, since there were no windows in the walls, only a row of clerestory windows under the eaves. All at once, as if on cue, a great shaft of sunlight, vibrating with dust particles, streamed down from one of the little windows and lit up the dirt floor like a stage. There, spotlit by the sunbeam, was a narrow wooden enclosure with low walls, a type of stall known as a stock; and in the stock stood a large pale-bay mare. The warm, heavy, gumbo smell of horseflesh filled the place, suffused every rhinal cavity, permeated your very gizzard.

  Two stable hands, both of them black, were busy buckling straps that ran from the mare’s neck to her hind legs. A short but chesty little white man stood by, giving instructions. He was barely five feet tall and had a close-cropped ginger-red beard that took on a curious sheen in the sunlight. He was Charlie’s stud manager, the Australian Johnny Groyner.

  Charlie’s guests stood off to the side in the shadows. Billy Bass and Opey McCorkle were rocked back on their heels, chatting with Slim Tucker and Howell Hendricks. Lettie Withers had Francine Hendricks, Ted Nashford, Veronica Tucker, and Lenore Knox for an audience. Herb and Marsha Richman were huddled together over near Serena, Wally, Live-in Lydia, and Beauchamp Knox. From time to time everyone glanced at the mare. Herb and Marsha Richman glanced at each other, too. They looked tired and apprehensive. Or was he, Charlie, just imagining it?

  Herb Richman turned toward him and said, “What do you call this, Charlie?”

  “The breeding barn,” said Charlie.

  “And you use it for …”

  “Breeding.”

  “You mean …”

  “This is where they mate,” said Charlie. “This is where it takes place.”

  “You need a special building for it?”

  “Yep,” said Charlie. “You’ll see why.”

  The next thing he knew, Serena had come over and was taking him aside, deeper into the shadows.

  “You sure you want to do this?” she said. “The Richmans don’t look very happy.”

  “Well, don’t tell me they’re Jewish and liberal,” said Charlie. “This’s got nothing to do with Jewish or not Jewish or liberal or not liberal. This’s got to do with the way life is.”

  “They’re—they’re not country people, Charlie. They’re sensitive.”

  “Aw hell, they’ll be fascinated. Weren’t you? You know you were, and you’re not a country person, either.”

  “Well—” She shook her head and grimaced slightly.

  “Whattaya want me to do, take them all outta here and say, ‘Well, that’s it folks’?”

  The truth was, since the quail season was over and they couldn’t go hunting, Charlie had planned this as one of the weekend’s big events. The thought that Herb Richman might not be impressed by what he was about to see had never even crossed Charlie’s mind. Richman was about to see one of the greatest horses in the country in a role people always read about—but the true nature of which they couldn’t begin to guess. Besides … this was the only big event on the schedule today … So without another word to Serena, he returned to the guests.

  By now the other little Australian, Melvin Bonnetbox, or Bonnie, as everyone called him, had joined Johnny Groyner over near the mare. Bonnie was Johnny’s steerer, as this peculiar breed of specialist was known. The two of them, Johnny and Bonnie, looked like a pair of middle-aged elves standing next to the stable hands, all of them black, who conferred with them. And now the mare’s attendants, having finished putting the straps on her hind legs, were buckling a leather mantle over her lower neck and her withers and furling her tail up until it looked bobbed.

  “What are the straps for?” asked Herb Richman.

  “Keep her from kicking,” said Charlie. “One kick in the testicles, and you’ve lost a three-million-dollar stud.”

  He noticed with satisfaction that the entire entourage was listening. He sucked in his breath and put his shoulders back. The drag of insomnia was finally fading away. He had been having trouble sleeping ever since the workout session at PlannersBanc, and last night had only made it worse. Before they went to bed, Serena had continued her lecture about the Richmans and told him what a disaster the dinner had been … Billy Bass and Judge McCorkle and all their broad humor about AIDS … Herb and Marsha Richman were Jewish and liberal, and you could read the distress in their faces, and so forth and so on … Only Wally had come close to saying what was probably on their minds …