Thus, what became known as "the bleaching" occurred, a mixing of the races through marriage that continued over several generations, until succeeding progeny of original Negro mothers lost their color and, in the eyes of the state, "became legally white again."

It was a belief and a practice that dated back to Thomas Jefferson. It was also one that Jehiel Flood had fought and railed against all his life.

I lowered my eyes and drew a weary breath. I knew there was no point in discussing any of this with him, or the ways I feared it would all factor in to this killing. Jehiel was now giving me a heavy dose of his backwoods patois. It was a sign I recognized--an end to any hope of reasonable conversation. To my knowledge Jehiel had no formal education beyond grade school. Yet he was highly intelligent and well read, and I had learned early in my youth that his mind was as keen as any I would encounter. But today there would be no intelligent discourse. Today he was hiding behind his country dialect and spouting an argument I had heard before. It was one I knew by heart, a diatribe he used as a shield, intended to end all meaningful intercourse. I surrendered to it. "Tell me about these tracks," I said, nodding back toward the streambed.

"My land. Prob'ly my tracks, or maybe my son, Prince. He likes to go back in them woods to hunt squirrel. We favor us a nice squirrel stew now an' then. Also cut our firewood back in there."

"Prince around now?"

"Nope. Sent him and young Jeffords inta town ta fetch some supplies at the store. They be back shortly, I s'pect." Jehiel tilted his head to one side, as if to study me better. "You gonna talk to all the Negroes up here so's you can decide which one of us kilt that little snotnose, Samuel?"

I felt myself bristle. "Dammit, Jehiel. I'm just trying to do my job here. Now why don't you help instead of playing this fool game with me?"

Jehiel threw back his head and let out a great, rumbling baritone of a laugh that seemed to shake the leaves on the trees. "Doan you get feisty with me, son. Weren't so long ago I caught you stealin' apples in my orchard, an' grabbed you by the scruff of the neck an' put a boot to yer bottom. You ain't so big now I can't do it agin." I lowered my head and shook it in surrender. "I suspect you could. But I'm not here to fight with you. I need your help, Jehiel. If you'll give it. Please."

Jehiel grinned at me out of that great chocolate-colored face. "Well tha's different, then. What you need, Samuel?"

I took a deep, exasperated breath. "You didnıt happen to see Royal Firman up in these woods yesterday, did you?"

"If I had, I woulda run his lily-white ass off'n this here hill." Jehiel's voice had lost its hint of humor; had a bit of a growl to it now.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"'Cause I'da known why he was here."

I let out a breath, and continued the game. "And why would that be?"

"Same reason he ever came slinkin' roun' up here. Same reason all them white boys do. Hopin' they can do one of my daughters the favor of servicin' her with they puny white dicks." He narrowed his eyes at me as he spoke the words.

"Royal been up here lately?" I asked.

Jehiel was still studying me through slits. "Caught him hangin' roun' 'Lizabeth's dooryard couple a months back." Jehiel's face softened and he gave me a big-toothed grin. "Jus' showed him the bizness end of my Winchester an' he stepped along nicely."

"And that was the last time you saw him?"

Jehiel shook his head. "Come up here a few weeks back with his daddy. That ol' fool's been after me ta let him log my land, even though I ain't never let nobody put a saw or ax to nothin' I own." He shook his head again. "Fool must think I'm addled. Land's ninety percent maple. Wants me ta give up the trees that gives me the syrup that keeps me goin' year ta year. Also got a nice stand of black walnut he wants. Says he'll split the loggin' profits with me." He gave out with another rumble of laughter. "I wanted them profits, why the hell I wanna share 'em with him? I asks him. Then he starts screamin'--you know how that fool is--tellin' me I'm just some ol' nig don't know what's good fer him."

"And what did you do?" I asked.

Jehiel laughed again. "Showed him the bizness end of that Winchester. Then I watched him an' his snotnosed boy move along smart-like."

I thought about asking Jehiel if I could take a look in his barn--at his pitchfork, really--but thought better of it. I'd let it sit for now--come back to it later if I had to.

"I gotta go check on Johnny," I said instead. "I'll be back to talk to Prince and Jeffords. I'd appreciate it if you asked them to stay around a bit."

Jehiel grinned at me, as if saying, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. "I'll ask 'em," he said, still grinning. "Jeffords'll probably do as he's told. But that boy Prince is like his daddy. Might decide he'd be better off huntin' up a squirrel or two."

I shook my head and turned to go. Jehiel reached out and took hold of my arm.

"How's your daddy?" he asked.

"Poorly," I said. "But hanging on, best he can."

He nodded. "You tell him I be by. Maybe tomorra. Next day fer sure."

***

I caught up with Johnny downstream, halfway between Reverend Bowles's place and Elizabeth's cabin. He was using his buck knife to separate leaves along the bank of the creek.

I liked to watch Johnny in the woods. There was something almost spiritual about the way he treated things, the soft way he moved about. He had once explained that the Abenaki believed you never went into the woods unless you needed to. It was the home of the animals, and you went there with the respect given anyone's home.

"Looks like Royal was laid down here," he said, looking up. "Whoever done it tried ta cover the spot with leaves. Problem is they drug over some leaves from back thataway." He raised his chin to indicate a spot farther back in the woods. "But they's beech leaves, an' there ain't no beech trees near this streambed--only maples."

He carefully flicked away some leaves revealing a cluster beneath. It was splattered with dried blood. He looked up at me. "Could be deer blood," he said. "There's a bit of poachin' up here, I'm told."

I could tell he thought it was something else. "I'll take it to the university and they'll tell me," I said.

I picked up a handful of leaves and placed them in a paper bag I had brought with me. "You see that other set of tracks we're looking for?"

"There's some near where the body was laid down." He stared at me, asking if I wanted him to show me, and letting me know he thought the effort would be useless to anybody but another tracker. "They's in the leaves," he explained. "Just track sign that's hard ta see. Nothin' in any soft dirt thatıd give a boot print."

I nodded, looked toward where I knew Elisha Bowles's house was and thought about cutting through the woods and talking to him. Then I looked downstream toward a distant path that led to Elizabeth's cabin. Again, I felt a rush of pleasure and anticipation. I decided I'd go there first. I turned back to Johnny. "Check around here for anything that might of been left behind. Then check to see if you can find Royal's track coming in the woods. I'll meet up with you in half an hour, or so."

Elizabeth's cabin was in a small clearing about fifty yards from the road. It was large for a rural cabin, built to accommodate rooms for her two sisters; the entire structure made of timbers cut from the land. Next to it stood a small, one-room cottage where Elizabeth mixed up the herbal teas and medicines and salves that she had learned about years ago from an old Abenaki woman--her dispensary, she called it, complete with a small bed she could use when she worked late into the night. I thought of the times I had visited her there, tried to fight off the pleasure those memories gave me--mysterious, self-contained, beautiful Elizabeth. Always so much a part of my life.

I turned back to the main cabin and could see smoke curling from the fieldstone chimney. Moving across the rear dooryard, I glanced toward the small barn that stood behind the house. I would have to go there eventually; look for a pitchfork I hoped I would not find. But that would come later, I told myself. I pushed the thought away and continued toward the cabin door, scattering a handful of chickens that were working the hard dirt for any leftover feed.

The door opened before I could knock and Elizabeth suddenly filled the frame. She was dressed in a loose-fitting house shift, the bodice cut low, revealing smooth, caramel-colored skin. She smiled at me--perfect white teeth behind delicate, sensuous lips. Her light brown eyes seemed to offer both pleasure and wariness, and her dark curly hair hung in soft ringlets along her slender face.

"You look as beautiful as ever," I said, unable to help myself.

She ran one finger along the sleeve of my jacket. "It's good to see you, Samuel. Iıve missed your visits. And your flattery." Her voice was like the soft, satisfied purr of a cat; the wariness in her eyes seemed to disappear.

She stepped back, opening the way into her home. I followed her with the familiar sense of pleasure and excitement I had always felt with Elizabeth.

The years we had spent in school together had been filled with an inexplicable closeness, a need to be in each otherıs company. At first I had tried to attribute those feelings to the fact that we had always been the two brightest children in our classes. But I knew it had been more. Those emotions had provoked a sense of protectiveness as well, and on the many occasions when the cruelty of children made her the victim of epithets and slurs I had always found myself striking out in her defense. Later, when we were older and in high school together, I often accompanied her on the long walk up Nigger Hill, then lingered at her home, extending our time together. Jehiel seemed amused by our friendship in those days, his fatherly concern for Elizabeth extending no farther than to assure himself that we werenıt falling prey to any immature sexual mischief. Often--perhaps when he thought my ardor was becoming too strong--he would interrupt our time together by asking for help with certain chores. He and my father were close during those years, often hunting together on Jehiel's land, and I knew my father regarded him with both respect and affection. It was something that easily transferred to my impressionable young mind and made him a powerful figure in my youth. In any event, I always found myself unable to refuse his requests.

You will wonder, of course, if Elizabeth and I eventually became more than close friends. We did. It happened when we were in our teens, the innocent fumbling of two curious children. It occurred over a single summer, sporadic at best, then ended suddenly when we went our separate ways to different universities. We had continued to spend time together during the succeeding summer recesses, but Elizabeth had never allowed our youthful romance to blossom again. It was a rejection that had hurt and confused me. Then one day, we were walking together along a trail in the woods on Nigger Hill, ironically not far from where I would eventually find Royal Firmanıs body. We had stopped to rest by the stream, and it was there that I told her how I felt; how I had felt for many years. It seemed to both frighten and please her, though she remained reticent about her feelings. We sat there in silence for a long time, then she came to me, slipping her arms about my waist and resting her head gently against my chest. I want to think she was telling me that she loved me, too, but that this was the most she could give. But perhaps not. Perhaps it was only sympathy toward feelings she could not return. Elizabeth had always hidden her emotions well, offering only what she felt safe to show, and only when reasonably certain that rejection would not follow. Standing in her cabin now, I realized, as I often had in the past, that rejection was never possible for me. Not where Elizabeth was concerned.

Instead it was I who had felt rejection. It had happened over the succeeding years, when other young men had also sought to visit her--Royal Firman among them. I had kept watch on her cabin throughout that time and had seen them come and go, and though I never knew to what extent any had succeeded, their mere presence had cut me deeply--to the point that, though I continued to keep watch over her, I had stopped visiting myself. Yet, being back now in her small, isolated home seemed to wipe away those feelings, and I again felt the undeniable pleasure I had always known in her presence.

The main room of the cabin was small and neat and bright just as I remembered it. The interior log walls were still painted white and there were new colorful curtains at the windows. A brightly patterned hooked rug now sat in the center of the room, and there were two new chairs directed toward the hearth of the fieldstone fireplace. Beyond was an open kitchen, separated from the main room by a long, narrow dining table, also new, at which now sat Elizabethıs two sisters, Maybelle and Ruby.

Maybelle was nineteen, eight years younger than Elizabeth and I, and she had been a small child, then a young girl, during the years I regularly visited here, so I did not know her well. The same was true of Ruby, who was twenty. But there all comparisons ended. Where Maybelle was short and plump and normally cheerful, Ruby was tall and angular and given to moodiness and sharp words--very much her father's daughter, Elizabeth had always claimed. Both women also had their father's deep chocolate skin tone, and while certainly handsome, neither possessed the near ethereal beauty I had always associated with their older sister. Now both sisters sat staring at me, eyes wary, faces filled with a barely concealed trepidation that also seemed to carry a hint of hostility.

Elizabeth took my arm and guided me to the table. "Would you like some coffee, Samuel?" she asked.

"Yes I would," I said. "I also have to talk to you--to each of you."

The wariness heightened in the eyes of the two younger sisters, and I thought I detected a hint of it return to Elizabeth as well. But it quickly disappeared from Elizabeth's eyes, or perhaps was willed away.

"It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Samuel," she said.

I sat at the table as Elizabeth placed a cup of coffee before me.

"Did any of you see Royal Firman yesterday?" I asked.

Maybelle and Ruby avoided my eyes and said nothing.

"I saw someone," Elizabeth said, almost as if trying to speak before her sisters could. "It could have been Royal. It was a white man. Iım sure of that. I saw him from my window. He was walking through our woods behind the barn. I assumed it was a hunter."

"Did he have a weapon?" I asked.

"I really couldn't tell," Elizabeth said. "I just assumed he was hunting. Few people--white people, I mean--" she smiled then continued, "come up here for anything else, unless they're here to see my father, or come for one of my remedies." She studied me for a moment, perhaps waiting to see if I believed her. "Has something happened, Samuel?" she asked at length. "Royal Firman's been killed. Murdered." I held her eyes. "We found his body in the woods between this cabin and Reverend Bowlesıs place."

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Murdered." She said the word as if it were incomprehensible. "He was stabbed; more than once--with a pitchfork. And someone stayed with the body for a time." I let my eyes fall on two candles that sat on the table, but my glance seemed to draw no reaction. I knew I had to be careful about what I said, yet knew immediately that I wanted to tell Elizabeth everything.

"So you sayin' somebody up hereabouts killed him?"

It was Ruby, her words angry, and spoken as sharply as the rigid lines of her face.

"I don't know who killed him," I said. "It appears he was carried to the place we found him. He could have been carried in from the road. Johnny Taft is out there checking for tracks."

"Then why'd you ask if we'd seen him?" Ruby snapped.

"Because that would tell me he was already here when he was killed," I said.

Ruby smirked at me; gave a derisive snort.

"So you do think it was somebody from hereabouts." It was Maybelle this time, and her heavy, pouty lips trembled slightly as she spoke.

"Girl, you are talking like a fool," Elizabeth snapped. Her eyes shot from Maybelle to Ruby. "You both are. Samuel is just doing what he is supposed to do--try and find out where Royal was before this terrible thing happened. So help him, don't argue with him."

"I din see nobody," Maybelle said. "Not Royal or nobody else. Leastwise nobody that doan belong up here."

There was a small bandage on Maybelleıs throat. "Did you hurt yourself?" I asked.

She quickly glanced at Elizabeth, then nodded. "I cut myself in the barn. I was movin' a roll of barbwire."

I looked at Ruby. Her eyes were still angry, still glaring with accusation. "I ain't seen Royal Firman since I doan know when," she said. She turned her glare on Elizabeth. "An' I din see no white man neither."

I sipped my coffee, then turned back to Elizabeth. She was shaking her head.

"I'm sorry, Samuel," she said. She looked at each of her sisters in turn and let out a weary breath.

"What time was it you saw this man you thought was hunting?" I asked.

Elizabeth considered the question. "It wasn't long after I had gotten home from school," she said, then seemed to consider the question again.

Elizabeth taught first and second grade at our town school. She had been hired three years after she graduated from Middlebury College with a teaching degree. The position had been vacant for two of those years, and only after it was clear that no white person was interested had the school board offered the post to her. Until then the first- and second-graders had taken classes with the third- and fourth-grade teacher.

"I was changing into my house clothes," Elizabeth said, interrupting my thoughts, "and I looked out my bedroom window and saw a man headed farther back into the woods. But he was too far away to see him clearly."

"But you could tell it was a white man?"

"Yes. I remember thinking it was a stranger. If it had been a Negro I wouldnıt have thought that."

"What was he wearing?"

Elizabeth seemed to think again. Her eyes took on a faraway look, then she shook her head. She looked at me. "I donıt remember, Samuel. It could have been a hunting jacket. Maybe thatıs why I assumed it was a hunter, but I canıt be certain."

"If you do remember, Iıll need you to tell me," I said.

"Of course, Samuel," she said. "Of course I will."

Elizabeth went outside with me, and we stood together on the hard-packed dirt of the dooryard. The chickens wandered around our feet, still pecking away for any overlooked morsels of feed. I glanced toward the small barn off to my right.

"You'll be wanting to look in there, I expect?" Elizabeth said.

The question confused and embarrassed me. It had been exactly what I had been thinking when I had glanced at the barn, but hearing her say it made me feel as though I had accused her of Royal's murder.

"I'll be having to look in everyone's barn," I said.

"I know, Samuel. Come." She led the way across the yard, glancing back over her shoulder and smiling. When we reached the barn she swung back one of the large double doors and stepped inside.

The interior of the barn was divided into thirds. On the left was a penned area for the chickens with a double-tiered row of boxes for their nests and a small exterior opening out into the yard. At the rear was a single stall for the one milking cow Elizabeth kept, empty now with the animal out to pasture. Next to it was the roll of barbed wire on which Maybelle had cut herself. To the right was an open storage area, and above it a hayloft with a ladder leading up. I glanced up and saw a pitchfork embedded in a bale of hay.

I drew a deep breath, went to the ladder and climbed it. The loft was dark and musty, and I could hear the scratching of a small rodent as it scurried away. I withdrew the pitchfork and held it to the best light, but even in the dim lighting I could tell it was clean--almost new clean.

When I climbed down the ladder I walked around the barn, seeking out any telltale signs of blood. There was a patch of fresh straw a few feet from the ladder, and I returned to it and kicked the newer straw aside to see beneath it. There was nothing there.

I was about to apologize for even looking, when Elizabeth crossed the hard dirt floor and came up to me. She was close now, so very close, and she raised her hand and gently stroked my cheek. Her hand was soft against my face, and it sent a chill through me as memories came rushing back, the softness of her body, the sweetness of her taste.

"Oh, Samuel, I'm so glad you're here," she whispered.

"Yes," I said, unable to help myself. "Yes, so am I."

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