The two black children, a boy and a girl, both grinned at her. To call their clothes rags was a euphemism, she thought. Their poverty, the dried sweat lines on their faces, the untreated red cuts and abrasions on their black skin made her heart ache.

"You were born to teach," she said to Flower.

"That's what I'm doing. Every afternoon, right here on these steps," Flower replied.

Abigail touched Flower's hair. It felt as thick and warm as sun-heated cotton in a field. "Yes, you are. Like an African princess inside a painting. One of the loveliest, most beautiful creatures Our Lord ever made," she said.

She felt her face flush but knew it was only from the heat and the unnatural dryness of the season.

THE next morning Abigail went to the brick jailhouse set between Main Street and Bayou Teche, where the sheriff kept his office in the front part of the building. When she opened the door, he glanced up from the paperwork on his desk, then rose heavily from his chair, hypertension glowing in his cheeks, his mustache hanging like pieces of hemp from each side of his mouth. The sheriff's name was Hipolyte Gautreau, and he wore a hat both indoors and outdoors, even in church, to hide a burn scar from Mobile Bay that looked like a large, hourglass-shaped piece of red rubber that had been inserted in his scalp. The cuspidor and plank floor by his desk were splattered with tobacco juice, and through an open wood door that gave on to the cells, Abigail could see several unshaved, long-haired white men standing at the bars or sitting against them.

"It's my favorite lady from Mass'chusetts," the sheriff said. He had such difficulty pronouncing the last word, even incorrectly, that he had to touch a drop of spittle off his lip.

"It looks like you're about to have a tax sale," she said.

He fixed his gaze out the window on a passing wagon, his eyes seemingly empty of thought.

"Tax sale? Oh, you seen me nailing up that notice on the tree yesterday."

"That's right. How much will I need to make a realistic bid?" she said.

"How much money? You want to have a seat?" he asked.

"No," she replied.

He remained standing and pushed some papers around on his desk with the tips of his fingers. The crown of his gray hat was crumpled and sweat-stained and worn through in the creases. He pulled his shirt off his skin with two fingers and shook the cloth, as though removing the heat trapped inside.

"You don't need no old building, Miss Abby. Why not leave t'ings be?" he said.

"What are you up to, Hipolyte?"

He raised his index finger at her. "Don't be saying that, no. I'm telling you somet'ing for your own good."

"Somebody else doesn't want a competitor at the auction?"

He pushed his hat back on his head. The skin below his hairline was white, prickled with rash.

"Tell her, you old fart. Yankee jellyroll like that don't come around every day," a voice shouted from one of the cells. The other men leaning or sitting against the bars laughed inside the gloom.

The sheriff got up from his chair and slammed the plank door that separated his office from the jail.

"Who are those men?" she asked.

"Guerrillas. White trash. They calling themselves the White League now. You heard about them?"

"No," she replied. "Who else wants to buy that house, Hipolyte?"

"Mr. Todd."

"Todd McCain? From the hardware store?"

"He's gonna make it into a saloon and dance pavilion. Them Yankees gonna be around a long time," the sheriff said.

"What an enterprising man."

"You a good lady. Don't mess wit' him, Miss Abby." The sheriff's voice was almost plaintive.

"I think Mr. McCain should have been run out of here a long time ago," she replied.

"I knowed you was gonna say that. Knowed it, knowed it, knowed it," he said. He picked up a ring of big iron keys from his desk, then dropped them heavily on the wood.

AT dawn one week later and two days before the auction, Carrie LaRose drank coffee at the kitchen table in the back of her brothel and stared out the window at the red sun rising inside the mist on the cane fields. She stared at the plank table under the live oak where her customers drank and sometimes fought with fists or occasionally with knives, and at the two-hole privy that she herself would not use at gunpoint, and at the saddled black horse of a Yankee major who was still upstairs with her most expensive girl.

During the night she had felt chest pains that left her breathless, then a spasm had struck her right arm like a bone break. It was the second time in a month she had been genuinely terrified by premonitions of her own mortality. In each instance, after the pain had gone out of her chest, she had sat on the side of the bed and had heard heavy shoes walking in a corridor, then an iron door scraping across stone. She had pressed her hands over her ears, and her mouth had gone dry as paper with fear.

Now she sat in her kitchen and drank coffee laced with brandy and surveyed what she had spent a lifetime putting together: a termite-eaten house, a two-hole privy that her clientele shat and pissed upon, and a plank table under a tree where they got drunk and fought with fists and knives, then lumbered back into her house, stinking of blood and vomit.

The major, who was stationed in Abbeville, visited the brothel every Sunday night, mutton-chopped, bald, potbellied, effusive, his few strands of hair slicked down on his pate with toilet water. "Your randy fellow is back!" he would announce. Upon departure, he would wave in a jolly way and call out, "Just add it on my bill, Carrie!"

Last night he had sent an aide ahead of him to vacate an enlisted man from the only upstairs room with a tester bed, consumed two bottles of champagne, and started a fire by dropping a lit cigar in a clothes basket. But the major did not pay for services rendered, the liquor he drank, or the damages he did. One morning, when Carrie pressed him about his bill, he removed three pages of printed material from his coat pocket and unfolded and shuffled through them.

At the bottom of the last page were a signature and official seal.

"Glance over this and tell me what you think," he said.

"T'ink about what?" she replied.

"Sporting places have been banned throughout the district. The proprietresses of such places can be sent to prison and their property seized. It's all written right there in the document," he said.

She stared at the page blankly.

"But you don't need to worry. This is a tavern and cotillion hall and nothing more. Don't you be long-faced now. I'm going to take care of you," he said, his eyes trailing after a girl whose breasts bounced inside her blouse like small watermelons.

Now Carrie sat alone in her kitchen, her body layered with fat, her nails bitten to the quick, her fate in the hands of a man who could threaten her with pieces of paper she could not read.

The day was already growing hot and humid, but she felt cold inside her robe and short of breath for no reason. She clutched the holy medal and cross that hung around her neck and tried to suck air down into her lungs, but her chest felt as though it were bound and crisscrossed with rope. Again, she thought she heard footsteps echoing down a long corridor and an iron door scraping across stone.

The major walked down the stairs, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a folded handkerchief, the buttons on his blue coat tight across his paunch.

"Having a late breakfast?" he said.

"I don't eat breakfast, me," she replied.

He looked disappointed. Then his eyes lit on the coffeepot and a piece of carrot cake on a shelf.

"I thought I might join you," he said.

"Last night s'pposed to go on your bill, too?" she asked.