Horse

One evening in 1865, Jarret returns home to find May’s husband Robert returned. Enslaved on a plantation in Louisiana, he volunteered for service in the Union Army when their troops drew near enough to the plantation for him to escape. Jarret asserts that Robert acted dishonorably by never informing May that he was alive. Robert wants to leave with May; May declined to give Robert an answer before speaking with Jarret, but Jarret knows she will go. Jarret takes the Thomas J. Scott portrait of Lexington from the mantle and wraps it up for May as she and Robert prepare to leave for Ohio. He reassures her that he has another, and tells her to sell the painting should they ever need money for their son, saying, “Don’t you take less than ten dollars for it. Someone might even give twenty, if they know what horse it is” (327).

To pay Annie an appropriate sum for her painting, Martha makes a deal with Jackson Pollock. In exchange for her convertible, which he has long admired, he will trade her two of his enamel paintings, which she will then sell. After writing Annie a check for $1,000, Martha hangs the portrait of Lexington back in her apartment among the photographs of her mother and Lexington’s descendant, Royal Eclipse.