There was a passel of women all outside the door to the cabin where Salamandy slept. Her being so close to her time, she didn't have to do any field work these days, and she got a bed with a fine mattress. Nobody could say Cavil Planter didn't take care of his breeding stock.

One of the women in the darkness– he couldn't tell who, but from the voice he thought it was maybe Coppy, the one baptized as Agnes but who chose to call herself after the copperhead rattler– anyway she cried out, “Oh, Master, you got to let us bleed a chicken on this one!”

“No heathen abominations shall be practiced on my plantation,” said Cavil sternly. But he knew now that Salamandy was dead. Only a month from delivery, and she was dead. It stabbed his heart deep. One child less. One breeding ewe gone. O God have mercy on me! How can I serve thee aright if you take away my best concubine?

It smelled like a sick horse in the room, from her bowel opening up as she died. She'd hung herself with the bedsheet. Cavil damned himself for a fool, giving her such a thing. Here he meant it as a sign of special favor, her being on her sixth half-White baby, to let her have a sheet on her mattress, and now she turned around and answered him like this.

Her feet dangled not three inches from the floor. She must have stood on the bed and then stepped off. Even now, as she swayed slightly in the breeze of his movement in the room, her feet bumped into the bedstead. It took a second or two for Cavil to realize what that meant. Since her neck wasn't broke, she must have been a long time strangling, and the whole time the bed was inches away, and she knew it. The whole time, she could have stopped strangling at any time. Could have changed her mind. This was a woman who wanted to die. No, wanted to kill. Murder that baby she was carrying.

Proof again how strong these Blacks were in their wickedness. Rather than give birth to a half-White child with a hope of salvation, she'd strangle to death herself. Was there no limit to their perversity? How could a godly man save such creatures?

“She kill herself, Master!” cried the woman who had spoke before. He turned to look at her, and now it was light enough to see for sure that it was Coppy talking. “She waiting for tomorrow night to kill somebody else, less we bleed a chicken on her!”

“It makes me ill, to think you'd use this poor woman's death as an excuse to roast a chicken out of turn. She'll have a decent burial, and her soul will not hurt anyone, though as a suicide she will surely burn in hell forever.”

At his words Coppy wailed in grief. The other women joined in her keening. Cavil had Fat Fox set a group of young bucks digging a grave– not in the regular slaveyard, of course, since as a suicide she couldn't lie in consecrated ground. Out among the trees, with no marker, as befit a beast that took the life of her own young.

She was in the ground before nightfall. Since she was a suicide, Cavil couldn't very well ask the Baptist preacher or the Catholic priest to come help with it. In fact, he figured to say the words himself, only it happened that tonight was the night he'd already invited a traveling preacher to supper. That preacher showed up early, and the house slaves sent him around back where he found the burial in progress and offered to help.

“Oh, you don't need to do that,” said Cavil.

“Let it never be said that Reverend Philadelphia Thrower did not extend Christian love to all the children of God– White or Black, male or female, saint or sinner.”

The slaves perked up at that, and so did Cavil– for the opposite reason. That was Emancipationist talk, and Cavil felt a sudden fear that he had invited the devil into his own house by bringing this Presbyterian preacher. Nevertheless, it would probably do much to quiet the Blacks' superstitious fears if he allowed the rites to be administered by a real preacher. And sure enough, when the words were said and the grave was covered, they all seemed right quiet none of that ghastly howling.

At dinner, the preacher– Thrower, that was his name– eased Cavil's fears considerably. “I believe that it is part of God's great plan for the Black people to be brought to America in chains. Like the children of Israel, who had to suffer years of bondage to the Egyptians, these Blacks souls are under the Lord's own lash, shaping them to His own purposes. The Emancipationists understand one truth– that God loves his Black children– but they misunderstand everything else. Why, if they had their way and freed all the slaves at once, it would accomplish the devil's purpose, not God's, for without slavery the Blacks have no hope of rising out of their savagery.”

“Now, that sounds downright theological,” said Cavil

“Don't the Emancipationists understand that every Black who escapes from his rightful master into the North is doomed to eternal damnation, him and all his children? Why, they might as well have remained in Africa as go north. The Whites up north hate Blacks, as well they should, since only the most evil and proud and stiffnecked dare to offend God by leaving their masters. But you here in Appalachee and in the Crown Colonies, you are the ones who truly love the Black man, for only you are willing to take responsibility for these wayward children and help them progress on the road to full humanity.”

“You may be a Presbyterian, Reverend Thrower, but you know the true religion.”

“I'm glad to know I'm in the home of a godly man, Brother Cavil.”

“I hope I am your brother, Reverend Thrower.”

And that's how the talk went on, the two of them liking each other better and better as the evening wore. By nightfall, when they sat on the porch cooling off, Cavil began to think he had met the first man to whom he might tell some part of his great secret.

Cavil tried to bring it up casual. “Reverend Thrower, do you think the Lord God speaks to any men today?”

Thrower's voice got all solemn. “I know He does.”

“Do you think He might even speak to a common man like me?”

“You mustn't hope for it, Brother Cavil,” said Thrower, “for the Lord goes where He will, and not where we wish. Yet I do know that it's possible for even the humblest man to have a– visitor.”

Cavil felt a trembling in his belly. Why, Thrower sounded like he already knew Cavil's secret. But still he didn't blurt it out all at once. “You know what I think?” said Cavil. “I think that the Lord God can't appear in his true form, because his glory would kill a natural man.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Thrower. “As when Moses craved a vision of the Lord, and the Lord covered his eyes with His hand, only letting Moses see His back parts as he passed by.”

“I mean, what if a man like me saw the Lord Jesus himself, only not looking like any painting of him, but instead looking like an overseer. I reckon that a man sees only what will make him understand the power of God, not the true majesty of the Lord.”

Thrower nodded wisely. “It may well be,” he said. “That's a plausible explanation. Or it might be that you only saw an angel.”

There it was– that simple. From “what if a man like me” to Thrower saying “you saw an angel.” That's how much alike these two men were. So Cavil told the whole story, for the first time ever, near seven years after it happened.

When he was done, Thrower took his hand and held it in a brotherly grip, looking him in the eye with a fierce-looking kind of expression. “To think of your sacrifice, mingling your flesh with that of these Black women, in order to serve the Lord. How many children?”

“Twenty-five that got born alive. You helped me bury the twenty-sixth inside Salimandy's belly this evening.”

“Where are all these hopeful half-White youngsters?”

“Oh, that's half the labor I'm doing,” said Cavil. “Till the Fugitive Slave Treaty, I used to sell them all south as soon as I could, so they'd grow up there and spread White blood throughout the Crown Colonies. Each one will be a missionary through his seed. Of course, the last few I've kept here. It ain't the safest thing, neither, Reverend Thrower. All my breeding-age stock is pure Black, and folks are bound to wonder where these mixup children come from. So far, though, my overseer, Lashman, he keeps his mouth shut if he notices, and nobody else ever sees them.”