Chapter 4 Summary

Long before the end of the first year, Logan stops sweet-talking Janie, who refuses to help him with the farm chores. She does her job in the kitchen and figures that is enough, but Logan accuses her of being spoiled—by her grandmother and by himself. One day, he leaves to buy a mule she can use to plow the fields and, cutting potatoes in the front yard, Janie encounters Joe "Jody" Starks; a stylish, well-dressed black man on his way from Georgia to a town in Florida he heard is being built by blacks. Jody is a man with his eye on the horizon. Having saved his money for thirty years, he says he has finally found the opportunity to be a voice in the black community. Immediately attracted to Janie, Joe sticks around for a couple of weeks, telling her finally...