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would have lost it and just be lying there, wishing it would cool off.
    In that respect, Gus was unusual, for most men didn’t talk. He would blab right up until he shoved his old carrot in, and then would be blabbing again, before it was even dry. Generous as he was by local standards—he gave her five dollars in gold every single time—Lorena still felt a little underpaid. It should have been five dollars for wetting his carrot and another five dollars for listening to all the blab. Some of it was interesting, but Lorena couldn’t keep her mind on so much talk. It didn’t seem to hurt Gus’s feelings any. He talked just as cheerful whether she was listening or not, and he never tried to talk her into giving him two pokes for the price of one, as most of the younger men did.
    It was peculiar that he was her most regular customer, because he was also her oldest. She made a point of not letting anything men did surprise her much, but secretly it did surprise her a little that a man as old as Gus would still be so partial to it. In that respect he put a lot of younger men to shame, including Mosby Marlin, who had held her up for two years over in east Texas. Compared to Gus, Mosby couldn’t even be said to have a carrot, though he did have a kind of little stringy radish that he was far too proud of.
    She had only been seventeen when she met Mosby, and both her parents were dead. Her pa fell out in Vicksburg, and her ma only made it to Baton Rouge, so it was Baton Rouge where she was stranded when Mosby found her. She hadn’t done any sporting up to that time, though she had developed early and had even had some trouble with her own pa, though he was feverish to the point of delirium when the trouble happened. He died soon after. She knew Mosby was a drunkard from the first, but he told her he was a Southern gentleman and he had an expensive buggy and a fine pair of horses, so she believed him.
    Mosby claimed that he wanted to marry her, and Lorena believed that too, and let him drag her off to a big old drafty house near a place called Gladewater. The house was huge, but it didn’t even have glass in the windows or rugs or anything; they had to set smoke pots in the rooms to keep the mosquitoes from eating them alive, which the mosquitoes did anyway. Mosby had a mother and two mean sisters and no money, and no intention of marrying Lorena anyway, though he kept claiming he would for a while.
    In fact, the womenfolk treated Lorena worse than they treated the nigras, and they didn’t treat the nigras good. They didn’t treat Mosby good, either, or one another good—about the only creatures that ever saw any kindness around that house were Mosby’s hounds. Mosby assured her he’d set the hounds on her if she ever tried to run away.
    It was in the nights, when Lorena had to lay there with the smoke from the smoke pots so thick she couldn’t breathe, and the clouds of mosquitoes nearly as thick as the smoke, and Mosby constantly bothering her with his radish, that Lorena’s spirits sunk so low she ceased to want to talk. She became a silent woman. Soon after, the sporting started, because Mosby lost so much money one night that he offered two of his friends a poke in exchange for his debt. Lorena was so surprised that she didn’t have time to arm herself, and the men had their way, but the next morning when the two were gone she went at Mosby with his own quirt and cut his face so badly they put her in the cellar for two days and didn’t even bring her food.
    Two or three months later it happened again with some more friends, and this time Lorena didn’t fight. She was so tired of Mosby and his radish and the smoke pots that she was willing to consider anything different. The mother and the mean sisters wanted to drive her out of the house, and Lorena would have been glad to go, but Mosby threw such a fit that one of the sisters ran off herself to live with an aunt.
    Then one night Mosby just plain sold a poke to