As the chapter opens, the narrator is a student at the black college to which he received a scholarship. Continuing his quest for acceptance and identity, and eager to impress Mr. Norton, a visiting white trustee, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton to the old slave quarters on the outskirts of the campus. Along the way, Mr. Norton tells him about his dead daughter. As the narrator drives by Jim Trueblood’s log cabin, Mr. Norton orders him to stop the car so that he can talk to Trueblood. Horrified, fascinated, and mesmerized, Norton listens to the sharecropper’s story of his incestuous encounter with his daughter, Matty Lou. Before departing, Norton gives Trueblood a hundred-dollar bill, then instructs the narrator to get him some whiskey to calm his nerves. Deciding that downtown is too far to go, the narrator heads for the Golden Day, a local black bar with a dubious reputation.
