Oh Lord, quiet my desires, he thought. And immediately focused his gaze on the woman's form again. He swallowed the rest of his whiskey in one gulp and thought he was going to fall backward.

"Gag and buck," he said to no one.

"What did you say, Willie?" Jean-Jacques asked.

"What does 'gag and buck' mean?"

"You don't want to find out. You ain't gone and signed up for the army, you?"

"I did."

Po' Willie, why ain't you come to see me first?" Jean-Jacques said, and cupped his hand on the back of Willie's neck.

"You're a criminal," Willie said.

"But I got my good points too, ain't I?"

"Undoubtedly. Oh, Jean-Jacques, I've made a mess of things," Willie said.

Jean-Jacques put his mouth close to Willie's ear. "I can put you on a boat for Mexico when it's the right time. Let's go next door to my sister's and get your ashes hauled," he said.

"That's a grand suggestion, and please don't hold it against me for not acting on it. But I have to puke," Willie said.

He reeled out the back door into an overgrown coulee and bent over behind a tree just as an enormous volume of whiskey and beer and pickled food surged out of his stomach. He gasped for breath, then rinsed his face in a rain barrel and dried it on his shirt. The night air was soft with mist, the moon buried in the clouds above the cane fields. Next door the piano player was playing a minstrel song titled "Dixie's Land." Willie shouldered a mop propped against a cistern and began a parody of close-order drill in the yard behind the brothel, then flung aside the flap on the tent in the side yard and marched through the row of cots inside, counting cadence for himself, "Reep… reep… reep," saluting two naked people caught at the worst possible moment in their coupling.

He continued out the far end of the tent and on down the road, passing a horseman whose face was shadowed by a wide hat. The wind changed, and he saw dust blowing out of the fields and a tree of lightning splinter across the sky. He left the road and crossed the dirt yard of the laundry where Flower worked and walked through the iron pots in the backyard and the wash that was flapping on the clotheslines and stopped by the back window of her cabin.

"Flower?" he said.

He heard her rise from her bed, then push open the wood flap on the window with a stick.

"What you doing, Mr. Willie?" she asked.

"Did Rufus Atkins come upon the poetry book I gave you?"

"Yes, suh, he did."

"Did he report you?"

"No, suh, he ain't done that. I mean, he didn't do that."

"Come close, so I can see your face."

"You don't sound right, Mr. Willie," she said.

"Did Rufus Atkins make you do something you didn't want to?"

"I ain't got no control over them things. It don't do no good to talk about them, either."

"I've done you a great harm, Flower."

"No, you ain't. I mean, no, you hasn't. You better go back home now, Mr. Willie."

He was about to reply when he heard horses out on the road.

"Who's that?" he said.

"The paddy rollers. Oh, suh, please don't let them catch you here," she said.

He walked back through the yard and the darkness of the oaks that grew on each side of the laundry. He was sweating now, the wind suddenly cold on his face. He heard thunder crack in the south and rumble across the sky, like apples tumbling down a wooden chute. He stepped out on the road and walked toward the lights in the saloon and the tinny music in Carrie LaRose's brothel, his pulse beating in his wrists, his palms damp, a tightness in his throat he could not quite explain.

There were six riders spread across the road in front of him, led by a seventh man in a rain slicker and flop hat, like cavalry advancing on an enemy position, their saddles hung with pistols and coils of rope and braided whips, their faces bladed with purpose.

"Hold your hands out by your sides, friend," the leader said.

"I think not. Unless you have governance over a white man talking a walk," Willie said.

The leader rode his horse forward. Lightning rippled through the clouds overhead and the wind flattened the tops of the young cane in the fields. The leader of the horsemen leaned down on his pommel, the saddle creaking with the shift in his weight.

"We've got five niggers unaccounted for tonight. It isn't a time for cleverness, Mr. Willie," he said.

"Oh, it's Captain Atkins, is it? This is a coincidence. I'm on a mission of recovery myself. I took my laundry to the Black girl, whats her name, Flower, the one owned by Mr. Jamison? I think I dropped one or two of my books out of my saddle bags.You didn't find them did you?"

"Maybe you and I will have a talk about that later," Atkins said.

"Mr. Jamison often visits at the Shadows. I'll mention it to him. Is there anything I should report about amorous relationships on your part with his niggers?" Willie said.

Atkins' ringed finger clicked up and down on the stitched top of his pommel.

"A word of caution to you, Mr. Willie. You were at the home of the abolitionist woman this evening. Now I see you in a neighborhood where five slaves didn't report for bell count. Be aware there are others besides I who feel you bear watching," Atkins said.

"Say again?"

"Robert Perry saved his little tit-sucking momma's boy of a friend from being gagged and bucked today. Don't expect that kind of good fortune again," Atkins said.

"Thank you, sir. It's a great honor to be excoriated by a miserable fuck and white trash such as yourself," Willie said.

He brushed past Atkins' horse and walked through the other riders, the cane in the fields whipping in the wind, dust and rain now blowing across the lighted front of the saloon.

He heard Atkins' boot heels thud against his horse's sides and barely had time enough to turn before Atkins rode him down, whipping the lead ball on the butt of his quirt handle across Willie's head.

He felt the earth rush up at him and explode against his face. Then the booted legs of the paddy rollers surrounded him and through a misting rain he thought he heard the song "Dixie's Land" again.

"Since he likes the abolitionist woman so much, dump him in the nigger jail," Atkins said.

Then Willie was being lifted over a saddle, his wrists and feet roped together under the horse's belly. As the horse moved forward blood dripped out of Willie's hair onto his shirtsleeves and the dust from the horse's hooves rose into his nostrils.

But a huge man stepped into the middle of the road and grasped the horse's bridle.

"You're a constable and I cain't stop you from taking him in, Mr. Atkins. But if there's another mark on him in the morning, I'm gonna strip the clothes off your body on Main Street and lay a whip to your back, me," Jean-Jacques LaRose said.

Atkins was dismounted, his stature diminutive in contrast to Jean-Jacques LaRose. He pressed his quirt against Jean-Jacques' chest, bowing the braided leather back on itself.

"Would you care to see your sister's business establishment shut down?… You don't?… I knew you were a man of reason after all, Jack," he said. He tapped his quirt softly on Jean-Jacques' chest.

A half hour later Willie lay on a wood bunk inside a log jail, an iron manacle around his ankle. Two Negroes sat on the dirt floor against the far wall, barefoot, their knees drawn up before them. Their clothes were torn, their hair bloody. They smelled of funk and horse barns and night damp and fish that had soured on their stomachs. He could hear them breathing in the dark.

"You men ran from your owners?" Willie asked.

But they would not answer him. In the glow of the moon through the barred window their faces were running with sweat, their eyes red, their nostrils cavernous. He could see the pulse jumping in one man's throat.