Chapter 7 Summary

Thirteen years after Golden Gray finally brings himself to gaze at the wild black girl, pregnant girls and old grandfathers are still being warned about her. They say she lives close, just on the edge of the cane field. Young men cutting cane with machetes dream of loping off her head, half fearful, half lustful. She is not a legend. People remember the crazy woman, when she came, where she stayed, and that strange boy she liked so much.

When Henry Lestory, the hunter's hunter, gets back to his cabin, he finds Honor, the neighbor boy, washing blood off the wild girl's face. A white man stands in the room, half drunk on Lestory's own corn liquor. When Lestory demands an explanation, the white man calls him "Daddy." Henry shakes his head and insists he never knew he had a child. The wild...