Summary

Sportcoat is revealed to still be alive, hiding out in Rufus’s basement while Deems and Hot Sausage lay recovering in the hospital. Meanwhile, everyone is looking for Sportcoat: the police, the various people he does work and odd jobs for, the people at Church, and “some unusual-looking white men who had come over to the Cause before” (279). He thinks about Hettie often, and dreams of her one night. In the dream, she recalls to him how she met Sportcoat back in South Carolina: she was in the woods looking for moonflowers, while Sportcoat and his father were sawing a tree in half, with Sportcoat’s father yelling abuse at his young son. Hettie sadly recalls Sportcoat’s gentle green thumb, his love of plants, and wonders why their New York apartment had no plants at all.

Sportcoat notes how difficult his...