it began to cool. Lecia Mae took up the hip flask and drank again, then retrieved her lipstick and a small mirror from the handbag at her side, freshening the makeup she wore as she talked absently of things Janson paid little attention to. His eyes came to rest on the narrow flight of stairs that rose from the rear of the hall to the floor above—surely they would go up there, to some room, maybe even to a bed, before they did it, he told himself, feeling the openness of the archways behind him, the presence of the large house beyond.
She was watching him when he brought his eyes back to her.
“You, nervous, honey?” she asked, absently patting her bob with one hand. “Ain’t you ever done it before? You’d relax, you know, if you took a drink—”
But her hand went to his knee, then slid up along the inside of his thigh, and he knew there was nothing that would help him to relax—and he also knew it would happen right here, right where someone could walk in and catch them; and he found that he really did not care anymore.
Her hands were moving over him in ways that he knew should have shocked him, her mouth coming easily to his, tasting of the liquor, her tongue moving over his own. He was aware of the open archways behind them, her father’s house beyond, but for some reason none of that mattered.
There was a sudden, prickly sensation along the back of his neck, an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to take his mouth from hers to look toward the archways, but she would not release him, tightening her hand on him, making him moan instead as he pressed her back against the seat of the touring car—it was safe, he told himself. She would not have brought him here if it was not safe. It was—
“You goddamn—” The car door was suddenly yanked open behind him, and he was hauled off the girl and out of the car, then turned and slammed hard back against its side, the impact driving the breath from his body as he found himself staring into the face of Buddy Eason—the younger man’s face was red with rage as he stared from Janson to his sister, his body shaking as he forced almost unintelligible words through tightly gritted teeth. “You goddamn red-nigger trash with my sister—you goddamn—”
Before Janson knew it was coming, a hard fist to his stomach doubled him over, knocking the breath from his body again, making him gag and choke and fight for air, then a second sent him stumbling backwards, bloodying his nose and sending him reeling back into the open doorway of the touring car. Lecia Mae shoved him away, sliding to his side of the car, yelling something toward her brother, words Janson finally understood, and he looked back at her quickly, seeing the sudden excitement in her eyes at the diversion before her—and Janson realized with a sudden and complete anger that a diversion was all he had been as well, a moment’s diversion for a damned rich girl. She had never wanted him, or even the pleasure, but only the diversion. Only the—
He hauled himself to his feet from where he lay half against the side of the Cadillac, his eyes on Buddy Eason—he might be whipped by an angry brother under such circumstances, but there was no way he would allow the hell to be beaten out of him just to entertain a bunch of rich folks. There was no way—
He began to fight back as Buddy started toward him again, landing a hard blow to Buddy’s jaw that made his knuckles ache, and then another to his midsection that sent the younger man reeling backwards against the red roadster parked nearby—Buddy suddenly seemed to go into a rage, his entire body shaking, the blood rushing to his face to darken it even further, not at what he had found Janson and his sister doing, but simply because Janson was fighting him, was fighting him and whipping him. Buddy screamed and came at Janson again, one hand going to his pocket, then coming up quickly—there was one brief second, a glint of light off metal, and then the hand began to descend—
Janson blocked a sweeping arch of the knife with his free hand, the hard impact of the blow making his arm ache all the way to the shoulder. Buddy stepped away, keeping the knife between them, the cold, gray eyes searching for an opening. Janson watched him, wary, cautious, leaping away as Buddy lunged again, the knife missing him by only a bare few inches, then again, as Lecia Mae urged Buddy on, her legs now out the door of the car and crossed, her skirt now seeming to be hiked well above her thighs.
Buddy lunged at him again, the knife blade slicing into Janson’s hand as he tried to fend it away—for a moment, there was no blood; then it came, running down over his wrist as a burning pain filled his palm. Buddy slashed at him again, missing his cheek by only a bare few inches, then again, and Janson twisted away, stumbling, almost falling, catching himself, starting to turn—then the cold impact of the knife blade hit him, the shock of the metal driving up to the hilt through his right shoulder. For a moment, there was nothing; then a wash of pain swept through him, turning him sick and making the coach house twist about him. His bowels felt suddenly weak, his face cold from the shock, the smells around him intensified—the oily smell of the cars, the odor of gasoline, of Buddy’s sweat, the decidedly sexual scent of the girl. Vomit rose to his throat as he grasped the knife handle in his left hand, a cry finally escaping him as the blade cleared his flesh—he held it in one bloody hand, staring down at it; at the red on its blade, soaking into the knife handle, covering his hand, soaking through his shirt sleeve—blood, his own blood.
A sudden, blind anger engulfed him. His senses were dazed, his mind unclear, making it impossible for him to control the sudden, violent rage that swept through him. He lunged at Buddy, throwing the full force of his weight against the husky younger man, sending him reeling backwards onto the brick flooring—suddenly Janson was kneeling over him, the knife held to Buddy’s throat in one bloody hand. Janson stared down into the younger man’s eyes, shaking with rage, watching the gray eyes widen with fear and self-concern. Perspiration beaded on Buddy’s upper lip as he began to tremble—there was the sudden strong smell of urine, and Janson realized with disgust that the man’s bladder had voided itself. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kill Buddy Eason. Nothing more than to—
He slowly forced himself to his feet, weaving slightly as a wave of light-headedness hit him. Pain throbbed through his right shoulder, a sick feeling in the back of his throat—but he tossed the knife away, and then stood staring down at Buddy Eason where the man lay on the brick floor at his feet, seeing Buddy begin to shake with rage, with fury that Janson had fought and whipped him, and even that he had let him live. Then he turned his eyes toward Lecia Mae where she sat in the open doorway of the touring car, her words stilled now, her eyes never once leaving his face, her hands not attempting to pull down her skirt—he stared at her for a moment longer, then turned and walked away, through the open archways of the coach house and out into the clean summer air, one hand pressed to his bleeding right shoulder.
For a long time he could hear Buddy Eason’s voice yelling after him as he walked away, the same words, over and over again. “I’m gonna kill you, you red-Injun’ nigger! One day, somehow, I’m gonna kill you!”
But Janson Sanders never once looked back.
He never knew exactly how he got home that day, just that someone stopped and picked him up, gave him a ride—how he swore to himself over and over on that trip home that he would never go into town again, never trust another fancied-up modern woman, never risk losing his life for—
His mind was muddled by the time he reached home. There were confused thoughts about the land, about his home, about fields green with plants, white with cotton—then one last clear image as he stumbled from the car, his mother seeing him, dropping the clean wash she had been hanging on the line, running toward him as he stumbled and fell. Then there was only darkness.
The house was quiet those hours later as Nell Sanders sat by the side of the old rope bed in the back bedroom of her home, the softness of her son’s breathing the only sound to be heard in the quiet around her. Dawn would not be long in coming, but sleep was still very far away—she had been sitting here for hours now, throughout the night, just watching as Janson slept, listening to the sound of his breathing, as she had done on so many nights when he had been little more than a baby. Henry sat on the bare wood floor at her feet, much the same as he had done over thirty years before when they had been young together and courting, his hand holding hers, resting on the arm of the rocker, his eyes on their son as well—there had been no sleep that night for either