One morning she was kneeling on an old grain sack on the wet black soil, turning the thick rich tilth over and smoothing it ready for the new lettuces.
Jal had entered the battalion embittered by his previous experiences, and had started out as backtalker. But the colonel had quickly taught him that kind of attitude would not be acceptable by simply wearing him out.
[…]the white women, several of whom had been watching the massacre of the Negro men, pounced on the Negress. I do not wish to be understood as saying that these women were representatives of the womanhood of East St. Louis. Their faces showed, all too plainly, exactly who and what they were.
He jacuzzied his sore muscles.
