It was all making sense now. “He raped you!”

“He didn't rape me, Cavil. I invited him up here. I told him what to do. I made him call me his vixen and say prayers with me before and after so it would be as holy as what you did. We prayed to your damned Overseer, but for some reason he never showed up.”

“It never happened.”

“Again and again, every time you left the plantation, all winter, all spring.”

“I don't believe it. You're lying to hurt me. You can't do that– the doctor said– it hurts you too bad.”

“Cavil, before I found out what you done with those Black women, I thought I knew what pain was, but all that suffering was nothing, do you hear me? I could live through that pain every day forever and call it a holiday. I'm pregnant, Cavil.”

“He raped you. That's what we'll tell everybody, and we'll hang him as an example, and–”

“Hang him? There's only one rapist on this plantation, Cavil, and don't think for a moment that I won't tell. If you lay a hand on my baby's father, I'll tell the whole county what you've been doing. I'll get up on Sunday and tell the church.”

“I did it in the service of the–”

“Do you think they'll believe that? No more than I do. The word for what you done isn't holiness. It's concupiscence. Adultery. Lust. And when word gets out, when my baby is born Black, they'll turn against you, all of them. They'll run you out.”

Cavil knew she was right. Nobody would believe him. He was ruined. Unless he did one simple thing.

He walked out of her room. She lay there laughing at him, taunting him. He went to his bedroom, took the shotgun down from the wall, poured in the powder, wadded it, then dumped in a double load of shot and rammed it tight with a second wad.

She wasn't laughing when he came back in. Instead she had her face toward the wall, and she was crying. Too late for tears, he thought. She didn't turn to face him as he strode to the bed and tore down the covers. She was naked as a plucked chicken.

“Cover me!” she whimpered. “He ran out so fast, he didn't dress me. It's cold! Cover me, Cavil–”

Then she saw the gun.

Her twisted hands flailed in the air. Her body writhed. She cried out in the pain of trying to move so quickly. Then he pulled the trigger and her body just flopped right down on the bed, a last sigh of air leaking out of the top of her neck.

Cavil went back to his room and reloaded the gun.

He found Fat Fox fully dressed, polishing the carriage. He was such a liar, he thought he could fool Cavil Planter. But Cavil didn't even bother listening to his lies. “Your vixen wants to see you upstairs,” he said.

Fat Fox kept denying it all the way until he got into the room and saw Dolores on the bed. Then he changed his tune. “She made me! What could I do, Master! It was like you and the women, Master! What choice a Black slave got? I got to obey, don't I? Like the women and you!”

Cavil knew devil talk when he heard it, and he paid no mind. “Strip off your clothes and do it again,” he said. Fat Fox howled and Fat Fox whined, but when Cavil jammed him in the ribs with the barrel, he did what he was told. He closed his eyes so he didn't have to see what Cavil's shotgun done to Dolores, and he did what he was told. Then Cavil fired the gun again.

In a little while Lashman came in from the far field, all a-lather with running and fearing when he heard the gunshots. Cavil met him downstairs. “Lock down the slaves, Lashman, and then go fetch me the sheriff.”

When the sheriff came, Cavil led him upstairs and showed him. The sheriff went pale. “Good Lord,” he whispered.

“Is it murder, Sheriff? I did it. Are you taking me to jail?”

“No sir,” said the sheriff. “Ain't nobody going to call this murder.” Then he looked at Cavil with this twisted kind of expression on his face. “What kind of man are you, Cavil?”

For a moment Cavil didn't understand the question.

“Letting me see your wife like that. I'd rather die before I let somebody see my wife like that.”

The sheriff left. Lashman had the slaves clean up the room. There was no funeral for either one. They both got buried out where Salamandy lay. Cavil was pretty sure a few chickens died over the graves, but by then he didn't care. He was on his tenth bottle of bourbon and his ten-thousandth muttered prayer to the Overseer, who seemed powerful standoffish at a time like this.

Along about a week later, or maybe longer, here comes the sheriff again, with the priest and the Baptist preacher both. The three of them woke Cavil up from his drunken sleep and showed him a draught for twenty-five thousand dollars. “All your neighbors took up a collection,” the priest explained.

“I don't need money,” Cavil said.

“They're buying you out,” said the preacher.

“Plantation ain't for sale.”

The sheriff shook his head. “You got it wrong, Cavil. What happened here, that was bad. But you letting folks see. your wife like that–”

“I only let you see.”

“You ain't no gentleman, Cavil.”

“Also, there's the matter of the slave children,” said the Baptist preacher. “They seem remarkably light-skinned, considering you have no breeding stock but what's black as night.”

“It's a miracle from God,” said Cavil. “The Lord is lightening the Black race.”

The sheriff slid a paper over to Cavil. “This is the transfer of tide of all your property– slaves, buildings, and land– to a holding company consisting of your former neighbors.”

Cavil read it. “This deed says all the slaves here on the land,” he said. “I got rights in a runaway slave boy up north.”

“We don't care about that. He's yours if you can find him. I hope you noticed this deed also includes a stipulation that you will never return to this county or any adjoining county for the rest of your natural life.”

“I saw that part,” said Cavil.

“I can assure you that if you break that agreement, it will be the end of your natural life. Even a conscientious, hardworking sheriff like me couldn't protect you from what would happen.”

“You said no threats,” murmured the priest.

“Cavil needs to know the consequences,” said the sheriff.

“I won't be back,” said Cavil.

“Pray to God for forgiveness,” said the preacher.

“That I will.” Cavil signed the paper.

That very night he rode out on his horse with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar draught in his pocket and a change of clothes and a week's provisions on a pack horse behind him. Nobody bid him farewell. The slaves were singing jubilation songs in the sheds behind him. His horse manured the end of the drive. And in Cavil's mind there was only one thought. The Overseer hates me, or this all wouldn't have happened. There's only one way to win back His love. That's to find that Alvin Smith, kill him, and get back my boy, my last slave who still belongs to me.

Then, O my Overseer, will You forgive me, and heal the terrible stripes Thy lash has torn upon my soul?