I ate scrambled eggs in bourbon and smoked an Old Gold between bites, then took the number eight to the Caps’ house. Five miles out, the bus reached the peach orchard. In the shade of the windbreak, and set back from the road, there was a large homemade sign that read, “This is KKK Country.” It was my cue to get up and pull the cord for my stop. I walked deep into the orchard until I reached the house where they waited for me; Mr. Cap hanging like the moon near the picture window, Mrs. Cap standing in the open doorway, blocking the light. She was holding the tiny bouquet I’d left in my apron pocket. The blossoms were pink and tied fast with a bit of her old nylons.

In the kitchen, I was getting the meat out of the Frigidaire when she asked me about the flowers. I told her that Mr. Cap had picked them yesterday. That he’d told me to put them in the amber Atlas jar on her nightstand, but I’d forgotten. She paced the floor a bit and then went off to find her husband. But I knew him, he’d taken off to the orchard and was way out there in the farthest field amongst the Coronets and Lorings, beyond her easy reach. She stopped at the top of the cellar stairs and called out for him, always too afraid of the dark to go down below. I wanted to tell her that he’d pressed the petals into my hands as he leaned in to kiss me. I wanted to tell her what she already knew, but I put the sweet potato biscuits in to bake and brewed the coffee instead.

Mrs. Cap, her Christian name was Blanthe, went upstairs while I just stared at the bacon and listened to the sizzle of the fat. I thought about saving the grease for a pot of Great Northerns. When I turned to set the table, there she was blocking another doorway but holding bed sheets instead of flowers.

“You’ll be washing these every day now,” she said. “Until I like the way they smell.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I told her I could add a little baking soda, a little vinegar to the wash, and that I’d wait until the air was as dry as salt land before hanging them on the line.

“You do that,” she said, then dropped the sheets to the floor before sitting down for breakfast as Mr. Cap came in. Her pride and my poverty did all the talking between us. “Go on out to the wash house and get those sheets started. I can pour my husband’s coffee.” She nodded towards the oven and said, “But get those biscuits out first.”

As he brushed the dust from his hands and sat down at the table, Mr. Cap spoke to his wife. “You can get the biscuits, Blanthe. Those sheets need washing, just like you said.” I only stayed long enough to gather up the pile and see the storm move across her face and settle there.

I fetched water from the well and boiled it in the set kettle, then took the scrub board down from the hook. It was a new Two in One Carolina Washboard that Mr. Cap had brought back from Raleigh. He said it’d be easier on me and had tied a peanut candy to each of the legs. My friend Bug told me not to take gifts from a White man, that he’d be taking liberties with me in no time. But my hands were empty, and my husband was dead, so I did wrong with Mr. Cap and got two days off each week instead of one, and I had better clothes than Bug. I lived in clover.

By dusk, I’d made the last of the beds and started breaking beans for supper. By the time the pork was tender and the cornbread high in the skillet, night had fallen. Mrs. Cap looked out the window for her husband. She liked him in before dark. When he finally appeared, all he said was, “I need you out here before the evening breeze comes in.” Then he turned and walked back out, knowing that I’d follow, and with the orchard now black as pitch, that his wife would not. She cussed me as I put on my coat, and as I disappeared into the trees, she stood trapped in the doorway without a seed of affection for me.

I walked through the grass alleys of the orchard toward the big sign. Turned on, and stretched across the back of it, was a strand of Christmas angels with a Baby Jesus in the middle. The battery was inside his head, and when you pressed it, Jesus and the angels glowed. In December, they’d flip the strand of lights to the front of the sign and Baby Jesus would sit right atop the second K.

When I finally reached him, Mr. Cap was tying back a low-hanging branch with a pair of black stockings, then he set whisky and cigarettes on the ground near my feet. On a peach-scented sheet of burlap, trumpeted by angels, he pushed himself inside of me. We sat smoking and drinking for awhile after. I kept looking at him, trying to find the good parts.

“The harvest’s gonna yield good this year,” he said.

“I’ll make pies with the Redhavens. Take some to church,” I replied.

I watched Mr. Cap for a few minutes, wondering whether he was picturing me in church. Was he thinking about me taking the wafer in my mouth or maybe singing in the choir? He finally looked at me but then remembered there was nothing for him to see. The ache, the one that never loosened, tightened around me. And when the breeze finally came in, we were still there, naked and rotting under the fragrant canopy of the orchard.