"That all right by you?""That's all right by me."She saw his skepticism and went on. "I cook at a restaurant in town. And I sew a little on the sly."Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to SweetHome and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggsto her husband's high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided tolet her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yetthey let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would havebeaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose — a long, tough year ofthrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed thesolitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Homemen — the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at thephrase.

　　"Y'all got boys," he told them. "Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stroppin boys. Now at SweetHome, my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men everyone.""Beg to differ, Garner. Ain't no nigger men.""Not if you scared, they ain't." Garner's smile was wide. "But if you a man yourself, you'll wantyour niggers to be men too.""I wouldn't have no nigger men round my wife."It was the reaction Garner loved and waited for. "Neither would I," he said. "Neither would I," andthere was always a pause before the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoeverit was got the meaning. Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and Garner came home bruisedand pleased, having demonstrated one more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enoughand smart enough to make and call his own niggers men.

　　And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wildman. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets,rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl — the one who took Baby Suggs' place afterHalle bought her with five years of Sundays.

　　Maybe that was why she chose him. A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave upfive years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change was a serious recommendation.

　　She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while they waited with her. She choseHalle and for their first bedding she sewed herself a dress on the sly.

　　"Won't you stay on awhile? Can't nobody catch up on eighteen years in a day."Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white staircase climbed toward the blue-andwhitewallpaper of the second floor.

　　Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among ablizzard of snowdrops all backed by blue.

　　The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing toward it. Every sense he had toldhim the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out ofthat air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll.