rental sign would be standing in the yard. Instead, they saw him moving his belongings into the house, ignoring Passion and Letty as though they were not there. They saw him split open a ripe watermelon and ease chunks of it off a knife blade into his mouth, his face suffused with a self-contained sensual glow. In the evening shadows they saw him scythe weeds out of his front yard and fire a barbecue pit and impale a pork roast on its rotisserie; they saw him pack rock salt and ice into a hand-crank ice cream maker, then give a quarter to a twelve-year-old black girl to turn the crank for him. They saw him press the coin into her palm and fold his fingers over her fist and smile down at her, her upraised eyes only inches from his gleaming cowboy belt buckle and the flatness of his stomach and the dry heat that emanated from his clothes.
Letty went into the yard with a paper sack and walked among the trees in front, picking up scraps of paper that had blown off the road. She waited until Car-mouche went into his house, then called the little girl over.
'What are you doing around here?' she asked.
'Visiting my auntie up the road,' Little Face replied.
'Go back home. Stay away from that white man.'
'My auntie left me here. She rent from Mr. Vachel.' Letty squatted down and looked directly into Little Face's eyes.
'Has he touched you? Put his hand somewhere he shouldn't?' she said.
'No, ma'am. He ain't like that.'
'You listen to me-' Letty began, squeezing the girl's arm. Then she looked past Little Face's head at the silhouette of Vachel Carmouche, who stood in the drive now, leaves swirling around his shoes, the early moon like a pink wafer in the sky behind him.
He pinched the brim of his cloth cap with two fingers.
'Been a long time. You grown into a handsome woman, Miss Letty,' he said.
'Why'd you come back?' she said.
'A lot of building going on. A man with electrical knowledge can make a good deal of money right now.'
'You get your goddamn feet off my property,' she said.
'You might be righteous now. But you and your sister were always switching your rear ends around when you wanted something.'
'I can't tell you how much I hate you,' Letty said, rising to her feet.
'What you hate are your own sins. Think back, Letty. Remember how you'd turn somersaults on the lawn, grinning and giggling at me? You were thirteen years old when you did that. Now you reprimand me and blaspheme God's name in front of a child.'
Carmouche put his hand in Little Face's and led her back onto his property. The white streaks of cornstarch that had been ironed into his gray clothes recalled an image out of Letty’s memory that made her shut her eyes.
Letty worked in the backyard, raking the winter thatch out of her garden, thrusting a spade deep into the black soil, taking a strange pleasure when the blade crushed a slug or cut through the body of a night crawler. Her flannel shirt became heavy with sweat and she flung the spade on the ground and went inside the house and showered with hot water until her skin was as red and grained as old brick.
'We'll try to do something about him tomorrow,' Passion said.
'Do what?' Letty said, tying the belt around her terry-cloth robe.
'Call Social Services. Tell them about the little girl.'
'Maybe they'll hep her like they hepped us, huh?'
'What else you want to do, kill him?' Passion said.
'I wish. I really wish.' Passion walked over to her sister and put her arms around her. She could smell a fragrance of strawberries in her hair.
'It's gonna be all right. We can make him move away. We're grown now. He cain't hurt us anymore,' she said.
'I want him to pay.'
Passion held her sister against her, stroking her back, feeling her sister's breath on her neck. Through the second-story window she could see down into Vachel Carmouche's backyard. Her face tingled and a bilious taste rose into her mouth.
'What is it?' Letty said, stepping back and looking at her sister's expression. Then she turned around and looked down into Vachel Carmouche's yard.
He had set Little Face on his knee and was feeding ice cream to her with a spoon. Each time he placed the spoon between her lips he smoothed back her hair, then wiped the drippings from the corners of her mouth with the backs of his fingers. He kissed her forehead and filled another spoonful of ice cream and placed a fresh strawberry on it. She opened her mouth like a bird, but he withdrew the spoon quickly, offering and withdrawing it again and again, and finally putting it into her mouth and lifting the spoon handle up so as not to drop any of the melted ice cream on her chin.
Letty charged barefoot down the stairs, tearing the sole of one foot on an exposed nailhead. She found a pair of work shoes in the downstairs closet and leaned against the wall with one arm and pulled them on. 'He used to keep a shotgun,' Passion said. 'He put his hand on it, I'll shove it up his ass. You coming or not?' Letty said.
They went out the back door, into the twilight, into the smell of spring and cut grass and newly turned dirt and night-blooming flowers opening in the cool of the evening. They crossed into Vachel Carmouche's property, expecting to see him on his back porch with the little girl, expecting to confront and verbally lacerate him for a deed he had committed out in the open, upon the person of a third victim, a deed he could not possibly deny, as though Passion's and Letty's knowledge of their own molestation had long ago lost its viability and had to be corroborated by the suffering of another in order to make it believable.
But Carmouche was nowhere in sight. The little girl sat on the back step, coloring in a crayon book. 'What did he do to you, honey?' Letty said.
'Ain't done nothing. He gone inside to eat his dinner,' the girl replied.
'Did he touch you?' Passion said. The little girl did not look back at them. A bright silver dime was on the step by her shoe.
'Mr. Vachel gonna take me up to the video store to get some cartoons,' she said.
'You come home wit' us. We'll call your auntie,' Letty said.
'She at work. I ain't suppose to go nowhere except Mr. Vachel's.'
Letty mounted the steps and shoved open the back door. Carmouche was sitting at the kitchen table, his back erect, his whole posture as rectangular as his chair, a fork poised in front of his mouth. He laid the fork down and picked up a glass of yellow wine.
'I'd appreciate it if you'd show some respect toward my home,' he said.
'You sonofabitch,' she said, and stepped inside the room. When she did, the belt around her waist came loose and her terry-cloth robe fell open on her body.
Carmouche's eyes moved over her breasts and stomach and thighs. He sipped from his wine and pushed back his chair and crossed his legs.
'Some say love's the other side of hate. You're a beautiful woman, Letty. An older man can bring a woman pleasure a younger man cain't,' he said, his voice growing more hoarse with each word.
He rose from his chair and approached her, his eyes liquid and warm under the bare electric light. She clutched her robe with one hand and stepped backwards, then felt her work shoe come down on the iron head of the mattock that was propped against the wall, knocking the handle into her back.
She reached behind her and picked the mattock up with both hands, her robe falling open again, and swung it into his face.
His nose broke and slung a string of blood across his shoulder. He stared at her in disbelief and she hit him again, this time directly in his overbite, breaking his upper teeth at the gums. His face quivered as though he had been electrically shocked, then the thousands of tiny wrinkles in his face flattened with rage and he attacked her with his fists.
He swung wildly, like a girl, but he was strong and driven by his pain and the disfigurement she had already done his face and she knew it was only a matter of time until he wrested the mattock from her.
His hands locked on the handle, his nose draining blood across his mouth, his broken teeth like ragged pieces
