"It does. That's why some people spend their whole lives studying it. Not me, though. I ain't got the brains to be a preacher, or the calling." He's sure it'd please Granny, but when Bayard thinks of the future, he imagines himself a glorious soldier or tending the land with the slaves, both as his father did. Though the Sartorises know hard times, so long as Jefferson survives they'll always be alright relative to the town, since they own land, and Bayard knows that he's lucky to be able to say that.

If Jefferson falls - if the South falls - that's when the Sartorises, too, will collapse.

"No," Bayard says, rubbing his lips together as he thinks of how to explain the toxic air he's been breathing since before the war even started, the paranoia and uncertainty and persecution that he's internalized. "But they're the Northern invaders, and they're trying to tell us how to run a country when they ain't ever worked the land a day in their lives, and they come down to our cities and they burn them and steal our cattle and ravish our women. They ain't got no morals, and so they're trying to destroy ours."