Paradise

However disgusted both were, K.D. knew they would not negotiate a solution that would endanger him or the future of Morgan money. His grandfather had named his twins Deacon and Steward for a reason. And their family had not built two towns, fought white law, Colored Creek, bandits and bad weather, to see ranches and houses and a bank with mortgages on a feed store, a drugstore and a furniture store to end up in Arnold Fleetwood’s pocket. Since the loose bones of his cousins had been buried two years ago, K.D., their hope and their despair, was the last male in [the] line […]. His behavior, as always, required scrutiny and serious correction.

It was the I-give woman serving up her breasts like two baked Alaskas on a platter that took all the kick out of looking in the boy’s eyes. Gigi watched him battle his stare and lose every time. He said his name was K.D. and tried hard to enjoy her face as much as her cleavage when he talked. It was a struggle she expected, rose to and took pleasure in––normally. But the picture she had wakened to an hour earlier spoiled it.

[Steward] wondered if that generation––Misner’s and K.D.’s––would have to be sacrificed to get to the next one. The grand- and great-grandchildren who could be trained, honed as his own father and grandfather had down for Steward’s generation. No breaks there; no slack cut then. Expectations were high and met. Nobody took more responsibility for their behavior than those good men.

[…] Pulliam had just sprayed [poison] over everything[.] Over the heads of men finding it so hard to fight their instincts to control what they could and crunch what they could not; in the hearts of women tirelessly taming the predator; in the faces of children not yet recovered from the blow to their esteem upon learning that adults would not regard them as humans until they mated; of the bride and groom frozen there, desperate for this public bonding to dilute their private shame. Misner knew that Pulliam’s words were a widening of the war he had declared on Misner’s activities: tempting the youth to step outside the wall, outside the town limits, shepherding them, forcing them to transgress, to think of themselves as civil warriors.

[Arnette] believed she loved [K.D] absolutely because he was all she knew about her self––which was to say, everything she knew of her body was connected to him. Except for Billie Delia, no one had told her there was any other way to think of herself. Not her mother; not her sister-in-law.