Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

“Nobody can choose what to die for.”

“Yes you can, and if you can’t, you can damn well try to.”

“You sound bitter. If that’s what you feel, why are you playing your numbers game? Keeping the racial ratio the same and all? Every time I ask you what you doing it for, you talk about love. Loving Negroes. Now you say—”

“It is about love. What else but love? Can’t I love what I criticize?”

“Yeah, but except for skin color, I can’t tell the difference between what the white women want from us and what the colored women want. You say they all want our life, our living life. So if a colored woman is raped and killed, why do the Days rape and kill a white woman? Why worry about the colored woman at all?”

Guitar cocked his head and looked sideways at Milkman. His nostrils flared a little. “Because she’s mine.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Milkman didn’t try to keep disbelief out of his voice. “So everybody wants to kill us, except black men, right?”

“Right.”

“Then why did my father—who is a very black man—try to kill me before I was even born?”

“Maybe he thought you were a little girl; I don’t know. But I don’t have to tell you that your father is a very strange Negro. He’ll reap the benefits of what we sow, and there’s nothing we can do about that. He behaves like a white man, thinks like a white man. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you brought him up. Maybe you can tell me how, after losing everything his own father worked for to some crackers, after seeing his father shot down by them, how can he keep his knees bent? Why does he love them so? And Pilate. She’s worse. She saw it too and, first, goes back to get a cracker’s bones for some kind of crazy self-punishment, and second, leaves the cracker’s gold right where it was! Now, is that voluntary slavery or not? She slipped into those Jemima shoes cause they fit.”

“Look, Guitar. First of all, my father doesn’t care whether a white man lives or swallows lye. He just wants what they have. And Pilate is a little nuts, but she wanted us out of there. If she hadn’t been smart, both our asses would be cooling in the joint right now.”

“My ass. Not yours. She wanted you out, not me.”

“Come on. That ain’t even fair.”

“No. Fair is one more thing I’ve given up.”

“But to Pilate? What for? She knew what we did and still she bailed us out. Went down for us, clowned and crawled for us. You saw her face. You ever see anything like it in your life?”

“Once. Just once,” said Guitar. And he remembered anew how his mother smiled when the white man handed her the four ten-dollar bills. More than gratitude was showing in her eyes. More than that. Not love, but a willingness to love. Her husband was sliced in half and boxed backward. He’d heard the mill men tell how the two halves, not even fitted together, were placed cut side down, skin side up, in the coffin. Facing each other. Each eye looking deep into its mate. Each nostril inhaling the breath the other nostril had expelled. The right cheek facing the left. The right elbow crossed over the left elbow. And he had worried then, as a child, that when his father was wakened on Judgment Day his first sight would not be glory or the magnificent head of God—or even the rainbow. It would be his own other eye.

Even so, his mother had smiled and shown that willingness to love the man who was responsible for dividing his father up throughout eternity. It wasn’t the divinity from the foreman’s wife that made him sick. That came later. It was the fact that instead of life insurance, the sawmill owner gave his mother forty dollars “to tide you and them kids over,” and she took it happily and bought each of them a big peppermint stick on the very day of the funeral. Guitar’s two sisters and baby brother sucked away at the bone-white and blood-red stick, but Guitar couldn’t. He held it in his hand until it stuck there. All day he held it. At the graveside, at the funeral supper, all the sleepless night. The others made fun of what they believed was his miserliness, but he could not eat it or throw it away, until finally, in the outhouse, he let it fall into the earth’s stinking hole.

“Once,” he said. “Just once.” And felt the nausea all over again. “The crunch is here,” he said. “The big crunch. Don’t let them Kennedys fool you. And I’ll tell you the truth: I hope your daddy’s right about what’s in that cave. And I sure hope you don’t have no second thoughts about getting it back here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m nervous. Real nervous. I need the bread.”

“If you’re in a hurt, I can let you have—”

“Not me. Us. We have work to do, man. And just recently”—Guitar squinted his eyes at Milkman—“just recently one of us was put out in the streets, by somebody I don’t have to name. And his wages were garnisheed cause this somebody said two months rent owing. This somebody needs two months rent on a twelve-by-twelve hole in the wall like a fish needs side pockets. Now we have to take care of this man, get him a place to stay, pay the so-called back rent, and—”

“That was my fault. Let me tell you what happened….”

“No. Don’t tell me nothing. You ain’t the landlord and you didn’t put him out. You may have handed him the gun, but you didn’t pull the trigger. I’m not blaming you.”

“Why not? You talk about my father, my father’s sister, and you’ll talk about my sister too if I let you. Why you trust me?”

“Baby, I hope I never have to ask myself that question.”

It ended all right, that gloomy conversation. There was no real anger and nothing irrevocable was said. When Milkman left, Guitar opened his palm as usual and Milkman slapped it. Maybe it was fatigue, but the touching of palms seemed a little weak.

At the Pittsburgh airport he discovered that Danville was 240 miles northeast, and not accessible by any public transportation other than a Greyhound bus. Reluctantly, unwilling to give up the elegance he had felt on the flight, he taxied from the airport to the bus station and settled himself for two idle hours before the Greyhound left. By the time he boarded, the inactivity, the picture magazines he’d read, the strolls in the streets near the station, had exhausted him. He fell asleep fifteen minutes outside Pittsburgh. When he woke it was late in the afternoon, with an hour more to go before he reached Danville. His father had raved about the beauty of this part of the country, but Milkman saw it as merely green, deep into its Indian summer but cooler than his own city, although it was farther south. The mountains, he thought, must make for the difference in temperature. For a few minutes he tried to enjoy the scenery running past his window, then the city man’s boredom with nature’s repetition overtook him. Some places had lots of trees, some did not; some fields were green, some were not, and the hills in the distance were like the hills in every distance. Then he watched signs—the names of towns that lay twenty-two miles ahead, seventeen miles to the east, five miles to the northeast. And the names of junctions, counties, crossings, bridges, stations, tunnels, mountains, rivers, creeks, landings, parks, and lookout points. Everybody had to do his act, he thought, for surely anybody who was interested in Dudberry Point already knew where it was.

He had two bottles of Cutty Sark in his suitcase, along with two shirts and some underwear. The large suitcase, he thought, would have its real load on the return trip. Now he wished he had not checked it under the bus, for he wanted a drink right then. According to his watch, the gold Longines his mother had given him, it would be another twenty minutes before a stop. He lay back on the headrest and tried to fall asleep. His eyes were creasing from the sustained viewing of uneventful countryside.

In Danville he was astonished to learn that the bus depot was a diner on route 11 where the counterman sold bus tickets, hamburgers, coffee, cheese and peanut butter crackers, cigarettes, candy and a cold-cut plate. No lockers, no baggage room, no taxi, and now he realized no men’s room either.

Suddenly he felt ridiculous. What was he supposed to do? Put his suitcase down and ask the man: Where is the cave near the farm where my father lived fifty-eight years ago? He knew nobody, had no names except the first name of an old lady who was now dead. And rather than call any more attention to himself in this tiny farming town than his beige three-piece suit, his button-down light-blue shirt and black string tie, and his beautiful Florsheim shoes had already brought, he asked the counterman if he could check his bag there. The man gazed at the suitcase and seemed to be turning the request over in his mind.

“I’ll pay,” said Milkman.

“Leave ’er here. Back a the pop crates,” the man said. “When you wanna pick ’er up?”

“This evening,” he said.

“Fine. She’ll be right here.”

Milkman left the diner/bus station with a small satchel of shaving things and walked out into the streets of Danville, Pennsylvania. He’d seen places like this in Michigan, of course, but he never had to do anything in them other than buy gas. The three stores on the street were closing up for the night. It was five-fifteen and about a dozen people, all told, were walking on the sidewalks. One of them was a Negro. A tall man, elderly, with a brown peaked cap and an old-fashioned collar. Milkman followed him for a while, then caught up to him and said, “Say, I wonder if you could help me.” He smiled as he spoke.

The man turned around but did not answer. Milkman wondered if he had offended him in some way. Finally the man nodded and said, “Do what I can.” He had a slight country lilt, like that of the white man at the counter.

“I’m looking for…Circe, a lady named Circe. Well, not her, but her house. Do you know where she used to live? I’m from out of town. I just got off the bus. I have some business to take care of here, an insurance policy, and I need to check on some property out there.”

The man was listening and apparently not going to interrupt him, so Milkman ended his sentence lamely with: “Can you help me?”

“Reverend Cooper would know,” said the man.

“Where can I find him?” Milkman felt something missing from the conversation.

“Stone Lane. Follow this here street till you come to the post office. Go on around the post office and that’ll be Windsor. The next street is Stone Lane. He lives in there.”

“Will there be a church there?” Milkman assumed a preacher lived next door to his church.

“No. No. Church ain’t got no parsonage. Reverend Cooper lives in Stone Lane. Yella house, I believe.”

“Thanks,” said Milkman. “Thanks a lot.”

“Mighty welcome,” said the man. “Good evenin’.” And he walked away.

Milkman considered whether to go back for his suitcase, abandoned the idea, and followed the directions given him. An American flag identified the post office, a frame structure next to a drugstore that served also as the Western Union office. He turned left at the corner, but noticed there were no street signs anywhere. How could he find Windsor or Stone Lane if there were no signs? He walked through a residential street, another and another, and he was just about to go back to the drugstore and look under “A.M.E.” or “A.M.E. Zion” in the telephone directory when he saw a yellow-and-white house. Maybe this is it, he thought. He climbed the steps, determined to mind his manners. A thief should be polite and win goodwill.

“Good evening. Is Reverend Cooper here?”

A woman was standing in the doorway. “Yes, he’s here. Would you like to come in? I’ll call him.”

“Thank you.” Milkman entered a tiny hall and waited.

A short chubby man appeared, fingering his glasses. “Yes, sir? You wanted to see me?” His eyes ran rapidly over Milkman’s clothes, but his voice betrayed no excessive curiosity.

“Yes. Uh … how are you?”

“Fine. Fine. And you?”

“Pretty good.” Milkman felt as awkward as he sounded. He had never had to try to make a pleasant impression on a stranger before, never needed anything from a stranger before, and did not remember ever asking anybody in the world how they were. I might as well say it all, he thought. “I could use your help, sir. My name is Macon Dead. My father is from around—”

“Dead? Macon Dead, you say?”

“Yes.” Milkman smiled apologetically for the name. “My father—”

“Well, I’ll be.” Reverend Cooper took off his glasses. “Well, I’ll be! Esther!” He threw his voice over his shoulder without taking his eyes off his guest. “Esther, come here!” Then to Milkman: “I know your people!”

Milkman smiled and let his shoulders slump a little. It was a good feeling to come into a strange town and find a stranger who knew your people. All his life he’d heard the tremor in the word: “I live here, but my people…” or: “She acts like she ain’t got no people,” or: “Do any of your people live there?” But he hadn’t known what it meant: links. He remembered Freddie sitting in Sonny’s Shop just before Christmas, saying, “None of my people would take me in.” Milkman beamed at Reverend Cooper and his wife. “You do?”

“Sit on down here, boy. You the son of the Macon Dead I knew. Oh, well, now, I don’t mean to say I knew him all that well. Your daddy was four or five years older than me, and they didn’t get to town much, but everybody round here remembers the old man. Old Macon Dead, your granddad. My daddy and him was good friends. A blacksmith, my daddy was. I’m the only one got the call. Well well well.” Reverend Cooper grinned and massaged his knees. “Oh, Lord, I’m forgetting myself. You must be hungry. Esther, get him something to fill himself up on.”

“Oh, no. No, thank you, sir. Maybe a little something to drink. I mean if you do drink, that is.”

“Sure. Sure. Nothing citified, I’m sorry to say, but—Esther!” She was on her way to the kitchen. “Bring some glasses and get that whiskey out the cupboard. This here’s Macon Dead’s boy and he’s tired and needs a drink. Tell me, how’d you find me? Don’t tell me your daddy remembered me?”

“He probably does, but I met a man in the street and he told me how to find you.”

“You asked him for me?” Reverend Cooper wanted to get all the facts straight. Already he was framing the story for his friends: how the man came to his house first, how he asked for him….

Esther returned with a Coca-Cola tray, two glasses, and a large mayonnaise jar of what looked like water. Reverend Cooper poured it warm and neat into the two glasses. No ice, no water—just pure rye whiskey that almost tore Milkman’s throat when he swallowed it.

“No. I didn’t ask for you by name. I asked him if he knew where a woman named Circe used to live.”

“Circe? Yes. Lord, old Circe!”

“He told me to talk to you.”

Reverend Cooper smiled and poured more whiskey. “Everybody round here knows me and I know everybody.”

“Well, I know my father stayed with her awhile, after they…when they…after his father died.”