Cavil couldn't say a thing to that. She knew. She knew it all.
"Last summer, when your friend Reverend Thrower came, I lay here in my bed as you talked, the two of you."
"You were asleep. Your door was - "
"I heard everything. Every word, every whisper. I heard you go outside. I heard you talk at breakfast. Do you know I wanted to kill you? For years I thought you were the loving husband, a Christ-like man, and all this time you were rutting with these Black women. And then sold all your own babies as slaves. You're a monster, I thought. So evil that for you to live another minute was an abomination. But my hands couldn't hold a knife or pull the trigger on a gun. So I lay here and thought. And you know what I thought?"
Cavil said nothing. The way she told it, it made him sound so bad. "It wasn't like that, it was holy."
"It was adultery!"
"I had a vision!"
"Yes, your vision. Well, fine and dandy, Mr. Cavil Planter, you had a vision that making half-Wbite babies was a good thing. Here's some news for you. I can make half-White babies, too!"
It was all making sense now. "He raped you!"
"He didn't rape me, Cavil. I invited him up here. I told him what to do. I made him call me his vixen and say prayers with me before and after so it would be as holy as what you did. We prayed to your damned Overseer, but for some reason he never showed up."
"It never happened."
"Again and again, every time you left the plantation, all winter, all spring."
"I don't believe it. You're lying to hurt me. You can't do that - the doctor said - it hurts you too bad."
"Cavil, before I found out what you done with those Black women, I thought I knew what pain was, but all that suffering was nothing, do you hear me? I could live through that pain every day forever and call it a holiday. I'm pregnant, Cavil."
"He raped you. That's what we'll tell everybody, and we'll hang him as an example, and - "
"Hang him? There's only one rapist on this plantation, Cavil, and don't think for a moment that I won't tell. If you lay a hand on my baby's father, I'll tell the whole county what you've been doing. I'll get up on Sunday and tell the church."
"I did it in the service of the - "
"Do you think they'll believe that? No more than I do. The word for what you done isn't holiness. It's concupiscence. Adultery. Lust. And when word gets out, when my baby is born Black, they'll turn against you, all of them. They'll run you out."
Cavil knew she was right. Nobody would believe him. He was ruined. Unless he did one simple thing.
He walked out of her room. She lay there laughing at him, taunting him. He went to his bedroom, took the shotgun down from the wall, poured in the powder, wadded it, then dumped in a double load of shot and rammed it tight with a second wad.
She wasn't laughing when he came back in. Instead she had her face toward the wall, and she was crying. Too late for tears, he thought. She didn't turn to face him as he strode to the bed and tore down the covers. She was naked as a plucked chicken.
"Cover me!" she whimpered. "He ran out so fast, he didn't dress me. It's cold! Cover me, Cavil - "
Then she saw the gun.
Her twisted hands flailed in the air. Her body writhed. She cried out in the pain of trying to move so quickly. Then he pulled the trigger and her body just flopped right down on the bed, a last sigh of air leaking out of the top of her neck.
Cavil went back to his room and reloaded the gun.
He found Fat Fox fully dressed, polishing the carriage. He was such a liar, he thought he could fool Cavil Planter. But Cavil didn't even bother listening to his lies. "Your vixen wants to see you upstairs," he said.
Fat Fox kept denying it all the way until he got into the room and saw Dolores on the bed. Then he changed his tune. "She made me! What could I do, Master! It was like you and the women, Master! What choice a Black slave got? I got to obey, don't I? Like the women