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picture of the fine man on the white horse.
    These days, though, it was a different kind—adventure stories of some sort. She read the title slowly out loud, sounding out the letters—“ The-Green-Aven-ger-of-the-Fields. ” Knowing he would like that, and indeed he beamed at her, a great, delighted child’s smile.
    Sweet, sweet boy, as sweet as the berry—
    She forgot sometimes how young he still was. Dark-eyed child, with his big book, sneaking a look back at its pages even now. It was he who had taught her what reading she knew. Nearly fourteen, still without so much as fuzz on his smooth, almond-shaped cheeks but so serious at times that he seemed much older. His body already as taut and muscled as a man’s, from the full day’s work he put in whenever his father could find it for him. Taller than she was now, and as black as his father—darker by far than her other four children, who were more the color of coffee cut with milk.
    She feared for his color. She always feared for him when Billy took him out on jobs. Knowing how the dockworkers and the street cleaners would spit and curse at him for his darkness. Knowing that he could not walk for more than a block without some hard word. She couldn’t stand that for her boy, her favorite, she knew, though she tried to deny to herself that she had any such thing.
    â€œIt’s not so bad for him,” Billy would tell her. “Better that he’s black like that. It’s the mixin’ they don’ like. It’s the thought of how that happens, makes ’em crazy.”
    The boy would only smile again, proud to do a man’s work. But she knew how it hurt him. She could see the fear and the bewilderment in his eyes, the way he shied when he saw any group of Irish toughs coming down the street. How he flinched from their curses. Hey, nigger. Hey, contraband—
    His father cursed him when he saw that, telling him to walk like a man, but she considered that useless and foolhardy advice. Ruth onlywished there was some way she could protect him. Instead, she ended up depending on him to keep the other children in line, help her with the chores and errands when he wasn’t working. He was such a trustworthy child, had always been so, reliable beyond his years.
    â€œI have to go out now. To get the water—”
    â€œI’ll go do that—”
    He was already putting down his book, ready to go in a moment.
    â€œNo!” she told him, more quickly than she wanted to, trying to keep her fear off him. “No, I don’t want you to bother yourself.”
    She smiled at him, tried to make light of her own anxiety. “It’s just to the pump, anyhow, and I got to have a talk with Deirdre—”
    â€œAll right,” he said evenly, from behind his book, its wild, melodramatic cover. Two men fighting with sabres over a prostrate woman—one of them, no doubt the avenger himself, swathed from head to toe in green.
    â€œAll right,” he repeated, seemingly accepting everything she said on the face of it. “I’ll get breakfast.”
    But he was too smart, Ruth knew. She could see from his eyes that he knew something more was going on.
    â€œGo ahead an’ read for a bit yet,” she said, trying to distract him. “You can let these sleep, no sense gettin’ ’em up yet.”
    She looked over at the others, the younger ones—Mana and Elijiah, Vie and Frederick. Still asleep in their beds and cots piled around the small room, drooling and whimpering fitfully in the heavy heat. She couldn’t help leaving him with a final warning, even though he didn’t need it, even though she knew it would only alert him the more.
    â€œWhatever you do, though, don’t let ’em go out. Y’hear me now?”
    â€œAll right.”
    The eyes solemn as a bishop’s, watching and waiting. She made a decision. There was no hiding anything from the boy, she