Chapter 20
Seven weeks later
Andy stood on the verandah and leaned heavily on the white-washed railing as he looked out over the fields. His fields. 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.
After the war, he mused, turning away from the fields. It had been over not yet a month and there were still pockets of fighting, groups of soldiers who hadn’t heard the news. Andy had heard, first hand—
