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throughwith Leon? What of Martha, who must know the unsaid details of Leon’s trip to the creek flat?
    A cool breeze shifted the tops of the trees and a hawk cried, then flew down to snatch a field rat or rabbit. It was too far off for Leon to notice which.
    Big Leon raised his arm. He held a revolver. Leon had never seen one before and had no idea why or how Big Leon would get his hands on one. One shot rang out and Leon saw a ground hog drop. Big Leon lowered his head, then kneeled onto the ground as if praying.
    Leon took some steps toward his father, then stopped.
    Big Leon turned. “Where you been?”
    Leon walked closer so he didn’t have to yell an answer. As if yelling the location would carry with it what he had done there. “The creek flat.”
    “Readin’?” Big Leon seldom mentioned what he had been instrumental in allowing.
    “Not this time.”
    Big Leon stood and went over to Leon, grabbing his face by the jaw.
    Leon tried to pull away.
    Big Leon jerked the boy’s head and shoved him onto the ground.
    Leon looked into the sky above his father’s head. He rose to one elbow. He said nothing.
    Big Leon pointed the revolver barrel at Leon’s head. “I should kill you. Put you outta you misery.” He lowered the gun. “You stink in a bad way,” he said. “You in danger?”
    “No.” Leon said. “She wouldn’t.”
    “Don’t blame you. Them white folks can make a preacher sin. They supposed to be smarter’n us.”
    “I tried not to do it.”
    “Can you read?”
    Leon hesitated. What did that have to do with it? “Yes, sir.”
    “Listen.”
    Leon sat up and focused on his father’s face.
    “You listenin’?” He pointed the revolver at Leon again.
    Leon crabbed backward, crawling away from the black iris of the barrel. Would his father really pull that trigger? Perhaps a blessing if so.
    “You have to think white. You have to read white. You have to speak white.” Big Leon spit and it landed near Leon’s hand. “I don’t truss ‘em.” He grabbed Leon by the neck and lifted him onto his feet. “I know too much. You been used to kill me. Everybody use you to kill somebody else or somebody inside they self.” He shook his head and walked off. “It ain’t you fault, but you might get kilt for it.”
    Leon stood and watched as Big Leon left the field and entered the woods.
    Leon’s knees shook and his teeth chattered. He didn’t know how to think white. Even if he were evil, he couldn’t think as evil as how whites appeared to think. Leon peered into the woods after his father. He thought about the deer he’d seen. If he were to jump into the creek, he wouldn’t float to the river. He’d get hung up on a felled tree and drown. He breathed short, fearful drowning breaths.
    He too hummed. Tried to forget what Hillary and he had done. All around him the field smelled of the new growth of spring. The woods let out the winter smell still, rotting leaves and a depth of cold not quite free of frost. Soon, Leon thought, the creek would peak then slow. He knew the sound. One night he’d hear the creek get quiet, the noise no longer strong enough to lift up through the woods to the six white-washed shacks.
    Humming helped him to feel better, to think. The words he put with the humming reviewed his day, which started out in death, moved to orgasm, climbed into fear, and ended -- as Leon saw it -- with being evil in the eyes of those who loved him. Both Big Leon and Martha labeled him. Hillary did too in her own sinful and crazy way.
    Leon thought about what his father had said. He wasn’t white, though. And he didn’t feel Negro. Besides a great uncertainty about himself and a greater uncertainty about where his life was headed, Leon sensed only guilt and fear.
    No one spoke to him that night. He ate out back, alone, and cold from the night air.
    When he went back inside, Bess lay in her corner, spider threads glistening in the deep dark near her head. Big Leon stood near a splintered