Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn't like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.

And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger - and who could blame him? - but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.

"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."