Vyry spends the winter in the Big House with Aunt Sally, where it’s warmer and more comfortable. It’s also a much shorter walk to the cabins. While the field hands protect their “frost-bitten feet” from the cold with “burlap torn from ragged croker [sic] sacks,” Vyry has stockings, long dresses, and an additional apron to wrap around her waist (76).

Vyry also notices that there’s more sickness and hunger in the winter. There are poor whites, some of whom are Marster John’s relations, who knock on the kitchen door, asking for corn. These poor whites, and Grimes is among their ranks, don’t live much better than the slaves but take comfort in their being white. In the summer, Grimes hires skilled white workers to do tasks on the plantation. Occasionally, he hires black people, too. One of them is a free black man, “a blacksmith with his own shop” (80), whom Grimes avoids hiring due to the possible trouble he could cause. On the other hand, he takes pleasure in hiring the poor whites, whom he considers good workers.

One day, Grimes appears at the kitchen’s back door, hat in hand, and asks to see Missy Salina.