Chapter 27

20

Seven weeks later

Andy stood on the verandah and leaned heavily on the white-washed railing as he looked out over the fields. Hisfields. The crop his father had managed to get into the ground after the last frost was just beginning to come up now, tiny green shoots bursting through the dark soil, each one as bright and promising as the start of a new day. A few laborers worked among the plants—the naked backs of the white men looked tanned as leather from the house, and those of the few blacks Andy had hired after the war glistened with sweat, deep and dark as oiled ebony