"I'm not your son."

Selby rubbed his henna-red goatee, saying, "You probably won't believe it, but that's the only thing in life I really regret."

His honesty was lost on Peter. "Then, damn it, whose son am I?"

"Sit down. Please."

Reluctantly Peter sank to the horsehair-covered chair by the side of the desk, still glaring at Selby.

"In a situation like this," Selby drawled, "I don't know who should start first. You or me?"

Peter said angrily, "I'm sure you know more than me."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Tell me, when did you first catch whiff of all this?"

"Last week. Nero told me."

"Your groom." It was not a question.

Peter nodded.

"Is that where he's from? Your father's place on St. Kitts? Not some place called . . ." Selby hesitated, thinking for the name. "Trouble Island?"

Peter sat on the edge of the chair. "Then Richard Abdee is my father?"

"Hold on. Hold on, boy. Have patience, and remember some of those manners I ta"ught you. Now, I 194.

asked you, is that where Nero is from, and if so, is that why you" broke a gut buying him at that auction sale?"

Peter nodded. "It's more involved."

"But that auction was a good many years ago, Sonny. How did you know then? And if you did know all this way back then, why did you wait until now for this explosion? Lord Almighty, boy, you bought Nero a good, six, eight, ten years ago!"

Shaking his head, Peter said, "I didn't know much, then. I didn't know much at all. Just bits and pieces I picked up from Ta-Ta. A few idiotic mumblings. Things she whispered to me or that I overheard."

Selby was surprised. He had not suspected any of that. He asked, "Ta-Ta?"

Peter nodded again.

Continuing to stare at him, Selby shook Ms head in disbelief. "Ta-Ta? Old Ta-Ta told you? When she was in her cups, I bet. I should have thought of that. But she always seemed too . . . soused!" He laughed at the idea of her talking to Peter.

"Oh, don't worry. She didn't tell me too much. But if you knew that she knew, then why didn't you tell me yourself? Why did you let her go around spooking me?"

Ignoring that question, Selby began, "I bought Ta-Ta and two little pickaninnies a long, long time back. It seems like a century ago now. And I remember the night I brought them home here. Rachel was fit to be tied. She had sent me to town to buy a companion for little Melly. She could have just about slit my throat when I brought home that Ta-Ta." Selby chuckled now, remembering the altercation of that distant night. His sunburned face remained creased with amusement as he continued, "Later that same night, after I had gone to bed upstairs, I heard a little knock on my door. Lo and behold, who should it be but Mama Gomorrah! She had the littlest tyke trailing behind her, just like some little lost puppy dog, he was. A funny, big-eyed little runt, and she brought him into my room and she said to me, 'Master Selby, sir, this here child's no pickaninny! This one's a human baby!'" Then, looking at Peter, Selby said, "That little runt was you, Sonny."

195.

Peter ignored the theatrics of his arrival at the Star and shouted at Selby, "You bought me at an auction?"

Nonplussed, Selby answered, "Same place you bought Nero."

"But how could you?"

"The same way you bought Nero. And two other slaves. With money, that's how!"

"But..."

"But what, Sonny? You were being sold as a nigger, weren't you? You were up there on the auction table. You were dark and had enough dirt on you to look like a nigger. You were holding onto that Ta-Ta's black titty like she was your own black ma."

"My mother is dead!"

"How was I to know that? I didn't find that out till I got you home. It all came out from Ta-Ta herself. She spilled it all to Mama Gomorrah, who came up here straightaway with the facts." Selby laughed again, remembering that night.

"What's so funny?" Peter asked.

"How you looked. How big and blue your little eyes were. How you looked when we dressed you for bed. We couldn't leave you down in the Shed, and you didn't have any clothes up here, so I cut off the sleeves from one of my best iinen shirts for you to sleep in. You slept with me that first night. And you slept like a bear, too, all night, and you almost ate us out of house and home the next morning."

Peter was holding his head now, trying to choke back the tears. Selby's memories were finally reaching him. He gasped, "But, how? Why? Why?"

"I'm afraid I can't give you more of an answer than that, Sonny. I couldn't have thrown a little tyke out into the night, could I? I couldn't very well take you back to Lynn and Craddock's, demanding my money back, could I? Well, I suppose I could have, but what would have happened to you then? Boy, you had .. . nobody!"

Peter was speechless.

"Mama Gomorrah got Ta-Ta to part with your birth certification, and I've got it locked away for you to see when you want to. You can have it now, I guess. On it 196.

you can see the name of your mother. Your father. The ship you were born on. Sonny, your mother was a fine, brave lady called Honore. She gave birth to you on a French ship and landed down in east Florida way. Now, as far as your father is-"

In renewed fury, Peter interrupted Selby with an explosion of facts. "My father drove my mother away. He took her home. He took her money. My father took everything he could get his greedy hands on, and I'm glad the damned slaves killed him."

Selby was wide-eyed now. "He did all that?"

"Yes! And I damn him for it."

"Well, Sonny, if you go on damning and blaming people, you might as well put a few curses on France, too. If it hadn't been for French troubles, your mama would have taken you there to live. That had been her intention. That's where she was headed when the French Revolution took place over there. Why they had to stop at east Florida."

Peter snouted, "But that's just nothing but 'if! What I'm saying is fact! My father drove my mother away, and I'm glad they killed him."

"Now, Sonny, that's no way for you to talk about your daddy." Selby paused, looking at Peter. "You say he's really dead?"

Peter nodded. "Nero told me he was killed in a slave rebellion on ... Dragonard. He was killed. Killed along with Naomi."

"Naomi? Now, who's that?" Selby asked, behind in the facts now.

"His nigger whore!"

"Teh. Teh. Teh. You did find out a lot from that Nero, didn't you? Maybe I should have a talk with him, too." Studying the papers on his rolltop desk, Selby said, "I suppose he told you about Monkey, then."

Peter wrinkled his brow. "Monkey?"

"Or Monk, as he's called now. Chad Tucker's boy."

"What about him?"

"He's your daddy's git."

"Monk? That bully who runs around with Tucker? The one we think is whipping the people? That bully is my... brother?"

197.

"Well, I wouldn't really call Monk your brother. You know how feelings are about colored blood. But Ta-Ta, she mothered him, sired by your daddy."

Still reeling, Peter said, "Monk and I are . . . half-brothers?"

"You maybe see why I've been holding this back from you, Sonny. There are lots of complications here. I wanted you to be ready."

"Ready?" Peter asked.

"To face facts."

"Well, I'm facing them now, aren't I? When they're thrown in my face, I have to face them!"

Selby generously offered, "Maybe you'd like to go up to the attic and have that talk with Ta-Ta. If she's not too soused, maybe you can learn a little more. If that's what you want."

"I'll do that when I'm good and ready. If I'm ever that ready!"

There was a silence, a short pause before Selby spoke. "You said you first learned about this last week." v Peter nodded.

"Before Rachel died?" Selby asked.

"The day it happened," Peter mumbled.

"And you didn't come to me before now?"

Peter shook his head.

Reaching toward Peter's shoulder, Selby patted him, saying, "Thank you, Sonny. I appreciate you holding it inside you for a while longer. You're a fine boy. A mighty fine boy. No. I take that back. You're a man. And no matter who your father is or was, Sonny, he'd be proud of you, too. Mighty proud."

Peter grabbed for Selby's hand, and holding it, Ms body began to quake as he cried.

"Here, here," Selby consoled, and although he had not shed a tear for his wife's death, his eyes were filling with moisture.

Selby knew that Peter was a long distance away from him now. He had lost "Sonny" momentarily.As the evening clouds began to turn violet, the sun burning out its red flames beyond the'dark hills of the 198.

Star, Peter still roamed aimlessly over the footpaths that pierced the shadowy woods.

He stumbled along, aimlessly kicking at stones, stomping through ferns, slapping at the branches on elderberry bushes. He kept going and going.

Having run in tears from the big house more than an hour ago, Peter still could not return to face it. The cool evening breeze had dried bis eyes, but his soul was still confused, and his brain still raced.

He stood staring now at the bulky outline of the Shed in an open field in front of him. There were no children in sight, only a faint light shining inside two glass windows. And looking at this converted storehouse, Peter realized that he could have been raised in there as a slave child instead of a white boy in the big house. The complications of such a fate, of the unpredictable balance in which his life had hung, now frightened him, and he continued to run.

Crossing an open ridge now, his thoughts went to Selby, to the story that Selby had told him about Mama Gomorrah bringing him to the big house, how Selby had dressed him in his linen shut and had taken him into his own bed.

Seated on a rock, Peter stared up into the star-dotted sky, realizing what consideration he had received from Selby and what trouble Selby must have had with his wife about taking an orphan into their house.

Rachel Selby had been a cantankerous old woman, Peter thought now. She had never showed him one bit of warmth. He always had had to call her Mrs. Selby.

But Melissa. Thinking about Melissa, Peter remembered how he had grown up with her, their special friendship, how she had never once begrudged him a place in the family.

Peter then thought about how uncivil he had been to her earlier today in the parlor. She had only been trying to help him, to urge him to talk to Selby. If it had not been for Melissa, Peter still might not know all these truths. Melissa had made it possible for Selby to help him.

To help him. Help. But that was what everybody at the Star had always done for him. Help him. Excepting Rachel Selby, everyone had done nothing but help 199.

Peter, help Peter, help Peter. His anger flared now, and he thought of being put into that position of needing charity. He did not know if he was angry at himself for needing it, at Selby for giving it, or at his father for making all this necessary, this turmoil and frustration and hate.

His father. Richard Abdee. An Englishman called Richard Abdee.

Without realizing it, Peter had begun walking again, and by now he had reached Niggertown. Looking at the long rows of cabins, he saw how run-down and sordid they looked, even in the moonlight. He wondered what the plantation in St. Kitts had looked like. What was Dragonard like? And what had it been like when his mother owned it, in the days of Petit Jour? Twilight.

Peter remembered Nero's description of his father, that Richard Abdee had been a handsome but selfish man. That he had been horny, too, had screwed everything in sight.

His father, Richard Abdee. Peter said the name aloud: "Richard Abdee."

The man who had flogged slaves in a public square for a living.

"Dragonard." He repeated it. "Dragonard."

Peter stayed out in the night. And nearby, in the overseer's cabin, Chad and Qaudia Tucker wondered if they heard somebody moving in the bushes around the cabin.

Qaudia was worried about a stranger breaking into the cabin and stealing her flour sack of money.

Chad said, "Let me bury it again."

Qaudia quickly shot her eyes at Monk, sitting dumbly on the floor by the stove. She did not even want Monk to know that she had the money in the cabin now.

Looking to see that Monk was not watching, Chad Tucker mimed the act of digging a hole with a shovel- why not bury the money in the ground?

Claudia peevishly shook her head. She was not going to let the flour sack out of her grasp.

After listening again to the stillness of the night, Claudia called sharply to Monk, "Boy? Wake up, there!"

200.

Monk slowly raised his shaved head. He had not been sleeping. He was just in the usual stupor that he had been in lately.

Claudia ordered, "Go look outside and see who's snooping around the yard."

Monk looked at Chad Tucker.