AT FIFTY-TWO, MACON Dead was as imposing a man as he had been at forty-two, when Milkman thought he was the biggest thing in the world. Bigger even than the house they lived in. But today he had seen a woman who was just as tall and who had made him feel tall too.
‘I know I’m the youngest one in this family, but I ain’t no baby. You treat me like I was a baby. You keep saying you don’t have to explain nothing to me. How do you think that makes me feel? Like a baby, that’s what. Like a twelve-year-old baby!’
‘Don’t you raise your voice to me.’
‘Is that the way your father treated you when you were twelve?’
‘Watch your mouth!’ Macon roared. He took his hands out of his pockets but didn’t know what to do with them. He was momentarily confused. His son’s question had shifted the scenery. He was seeing himself at twelve, standing in Milkman’s shoes and feeling what he himself had felt for his own father. The numbness that had settled on him when he saw the man he loved and admired fall off the fence; something wild ran through him when he watched the body twitching in the dirt. His father had sat for five nights on a split-rail fence cradling a shotgun and in the end died protecting his property. Was that what this boy felt for him? Maybe it was time to tell him things.
‘Well, did he?’
‘I worked right alongside my father. Right alongside him. From the time I was four or five we worked together. Just the two of us. Our mother was dead. Died when Pilate was born. Pilate was just a baby. She stayed over at another farm in the daytime. I carried her over there myself in my arms every morning. Then I’d go back across the fields and meet my father. We’d hitch President Lincoln to the plow and … That’s what we called her: President Lincoln. Papa said Lincoln was a good plow hand before he was President and you shouldn’t take a good plow hand away from his work. He called our farm Lincoln’s Heaven. It was a little bit a place. But it looked big to me then. I know now it must a been a little bit a place, maybe a hundred and fifty acres. We tilled fifty. About eighty of it was woods. Must of been a fortune in oak and pine; maybe that’s what they wanted – the lumber, the oak and the pine. We had a pond that was four acres. And a stream, full of fish. Right down in the heart of a valley. Prettiest mountain you ever saw, Montour Ridge. We lived in Montour County. Just north of the Susquehanna. We had a four-stall hog pen. The big barn was forty feet by a hundred and forty – hip-roofed too. And all around in the mountains was deer and wild turkey. You ain’t tasted nothing till you taste wild turkey the way Papa cooked it. He’d burn it real fast in the fire. Burn it black all over. That sealed it. Sealed the juices in. Then he’d let it roast on a spit for twenty-four hours. When you cut the black burnt part off, the meat underneath was tender, sweet, juicy. And we had fruit trees. Apple, cherry. Pilate tried to make me a cherry pie once.’
Macon paused and let the smile come on. He had not said any of this for years. Had not even reminisced much about it recently. When he was first married he used to talk about Lincoln’s Heaven to Ruth. Sitting on the porch swing in the dark, he would re-create the land that was to have been his. Or when he was just starting out in the business of buying houses, he would lounge around the barbershop and swap stories with the men there. But for years he hadn’t had that kind of time, or interest. But now he was doing it again, with his son, and every detail of that land was clear in his mind: the well, the apple orchard, President Lincoln; her foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow; General Lee, their hog. That was the way he knew what history he remembered. His father couldn’t read, couldn’t write; knew only what he saw and heard tell of. But he had etched in Macon’s mind certain historical figures, and as a boy in school, Macon thought of the personalities of his horse, his hog, when he read about these people. His father may have called their plow horse President Lincoln as a joke, but Macon always thought of Lincoln with fondness since he had loved him first as a strong, steady, gentle, and obedient horse. He even liked General Lee, for one spring they slaughtered him and ate the best pork outside Virginia, ‘from the butt to the smoked ham to the ribs to the sausage to the jowl to the feet to the tail to the head cheese’ – for eight months. And there was cracklin in November.
‘General Lee was all right by me,’ he told Milkman, smiling. ‘Finest general I ever knew. Even his balls was tasty. Circe made up the best pot of maws she ever cooked. Huh! I’d forgotten that woman’s name. That was it, Circe. Worked at a big farm some white people owned in Danville, Pennsylvania. Funny how things get away from you. For years you can’t remember nothing. Then just like that, it all comes back to you. Had a dog run, they did. That was the big sport back then. Dog races. White people did love their dogs. Kill a nigger and comb their hair at the same time. But I’ve seen grown white men cry about their dogs.’
His voice sounded different to Milkman. Less hard, and his speech was different. More southern and comfortable and soft. Milkman spoke softly too. ‘Pilate said somebody shot your father. Five feet into the air.’
‘Took him sixteen years to get that farm to where it was paying. It’s all dairy country up there now. Then it wasn’t. Then it was … nice.’
‘Who shot him, Daddy?’
Macon focused his eyes on his son. ‘Papa couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name. Had a mark he used. They tricked him. He signed something, I don’t know what, and they told him they owned his property. He never read nothing. I tried to teach him, but he said he couldn’t remember those little marks from one day to the next. Wrote one word in his life – Pilate’s name; copied it out of the Bible. That’s what she got folded up in that earring. He should have let me teach him. Everything bad that ever happened to him happened because he couldn’t read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn’t read.’
‘His name? How?’
‘When freedom came. All the colored people in the state had to register with the Freedmen’s Bureau.’
‘Your father was a slave?’
‘What kind of foolish question is that? Course he was. Who hadn’t been in 1869? They all had to register. Free and not free. Free and used-to-be-slaves. Papa was in his teens and went to sign up, but the man behind the desk was drunk. He asked Papa where he was born. Papa said Macon. Then he asked him who his father was. Papa said, “He’s dead.” Asked him who owned him, Papa said, “I’m free.” Well, the Yankee wrote it all down, but in the wrong spaces. Had him born in Dunfrie, wherever the hell that is, and in the space for his name the fool wrote, “Dead” comma “Macon.” But Papa couldn’t read so he never found out what he was registered as till Mama told him. They met on a wagon going North. Started talking about one thing and another, told her about being a freedman and showed off his papers to her. When she looked at his paper she read him out what it said.’
‘He didn’t have to keep the name, did he? He could have used his real name, couldn’t he?’
‘Mama liked it. Liked the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it all out.’
‘What was his real name?’
‘I don’t remember my mother too well. She died when I was four. Light-skinned, pretty. Looked like a white woman to me. Me and Pilate don’t take nothing after her. If you ever have a doubt we from Africa, look at Pilate. She look just like Papa and he looked like all them pictures you ever see of Africans. A Pennsylvania African. Acted like one too. Close his face up like a door.’
‘I saw Pilate’s face like that.’ Milkman felt close and confidential now that his father had talked to him in a relaxed and intimate way.
‘I haven’t changed my mind, Macon. I don’t want you over there.’
‘Why? You still haven’t said why.’
‘Just listen to what I say. That woman’s no good. She’s a snake, and can charm you like a snake, but still a snake.’
‘You talking about your own sister, the one you carried in your arms to the fields every morning.’
‘That was a long time ago. You seen her. What she look like to you? Somebody nice? Somebody normal?’
‘Well, she …’
‘Or somebody cut your throat?’
‘She didn’t look like that, Daddy.’
‘Well she is like that.’
‘What’d she do?’
‘It ain’t what she did; it’s what she is.’
‘What is she?’
‘A snake, I told you. Ever hear the story about the snake? The man who saw a little baby snake on the ground? Well, the man saw this baby snake bleeding and hurt. Lying there in the dirt. And the man felt sorry for it and picked it up and put it in his basket and took it home. And he fed it and took care of it till it was big and strong. Fed it the same thing he ate. Then one day, the snake turned on him and bit him. Stuck his poison tongue right in the man’s heart. And while he was laying there dying, he turned to the snake and asked him, “What’d you do that for?” He said, “Didn’t I take good care of you? Didn’t I save your life?” The snake said, “Yes.” “Then what’d you do it for? What’d you kill me for?” Know what the snake said? Said, “But you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?” Now, I mean for you to stay out of that wine house and as far away from Pilate as you can.’
Milkman lowered his head. His father had explained nothing to him.
‘Boy, you got better things to do with your time. Besides, it’s time you started learning how to work. You start Monday. After school come to my office; work a couple of hours there and learn what’s real. Pilate can’t teach you a thing you can use in this world. Maybe the next, but not this one. Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too. Starting Monday, I’m going to teach you how.’
THEY WERE SITTING in Mary’s Place on a Sunday afternoon a few days after Hagar’s latest attempt on his life.
‘You’re not smoking?’ asked Milkman.
‘No. I quit. Feel a hell of a lot better too.’ There was another pause before Guitar continued. ‘You ought to stop yourself.’
Milkman nodded. ‘Yeah. If I stay around you I will. I’ll stop smoking, fucking, drinking – everything. I’ll take up a secret life and hanging out with Empire State.’
Guitar frowned. ‘Now who’s meddling?’
Milkman sighed and looked straight at his friend. ‘I am. I want to know why you were running around with Empire State last Christmas.’
‘He was in trouble. I helped him.’
‘That’s all?’
‘What else?’
‘I don’t know what else. But I know there is something else. Now, if it’s something I can’t know, okay, say so. But something’s going on with you. And I’d like to know what it is.’
Guitar didn’t answer.
‘We’ve been friends a long time, Guitar. There’s nothing you don’t know about me. I can tell you anything – whatever our differences, I know I can trust you. But for some time now it’s been a one-way street. You know what I mean? I talk to you, but you don’t talk to me. You don’t think I can be trusted?’
‘I don’t know if you can or not.’
‘Try me.’
‘I can’t. Other people are involved.’
‘Then don’t tell me about other people; tell me about you.’
Guitar looked at him for a long time. Maybe, he thought. Maybe I can trust you. Maybe not, but I’ll risk it anyway because one day …
‘Okay,’ he said aloud, ‘but you have to know that what I tell you can’t go any further. And if it does, you’ll be dropping a rope around my neck. Now do you still want to know it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Guitar poured some more hot water over his tea. He looked into his cup for a minute while the leaves settled slowly to the bottom. ‘I suppose you know that white people kill black people from time to time, and most folks shake their heads and say, “Eh, eh, eh, ain’t that a shame?”’
Milkman raised his eyebrows. He thought Guitar was going to let him in on some deal he had going. But he was slipping into his race bag. He was speaking slowly, as though each word had to count, and as though he were listening carefully to his own words. ‘I can’t suck my teeth or say “Eh, eh, eh.” I had to do something. And the only thing left to do is balance it; keep things on an even keel. Any man, any woman, or any child is good for five to seven generations of heirs before they’re bred out. So every death is the death of five to seven generations. You can’t stop them from killing us, from trying to get rid of us. And each time they succeed, they get rid of five to seven generations. I help keep the numbers the same.
‘There is a society. It’s made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks. They don’t initiate anything; they don’t even choose. They are as indifferent as rain. But when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner if they can. If the Negro was hanged, they hang; if a Negro was burnt, they burn; raped and murdered, they rape and murder. If they can. If they can’t do it precisely in the same manner, they do it any way they can, but they do it. They call themselves the Seven Days. They are made up of seven men. Always seven and only seven. If one of them dies or leaves or is no longer effective, another is chosen. Not right away, because that kind of choosing takes time. But they don’t seem to be in a hurry. Their secret is time. To take the time, to last. Not to grow; that’s dangerous because you might become known. They don’t write their names in toilet stalls or brag to women. Time and silence. Those are their weapons, and they go on forever.
‘It got started in 1920, when that private from Georgia was killed after his balls were cut off and after that veteran was blinded when he came home from France in World War I. And it’s been operating ever since. I am one of them now.’
Milkman had held himself very still all the time Guitar spoke. Now he felt tight, shriveled, and cold.
‘You? You’re going to kill people?’
‘Not people. White people.’
‘But why?’
‘I just told you. It’s necessary; it’s got to be done. To keep the ratio the same.’
‘And if it isn’t done? If it just goes on the way it has?’
‘Then the world is a zoo, and I can’t live in it.’
‘Why don’t you just hunt down the ones who did the killing? Why kill innocent people? Why not just those who did it?’
‘It doesn’t matter who did it. Each and every one of them could do it. So you just get any one of them. There are no innocent white people, because every one of them is a potential nigger-killer, if not an actual one. You think Hitler surprised them? You think just because they went to war they thought he was a freak? Hitler’s the most natural white man in the world. He killed Jews and Gypsies because he didn’t have us. Can you see those Klansmen shocked by him? No, you can’t.’
‘But people who lynch and slice off people’s balls – they’re crazy, Guitar, crazy.’
‘Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant. That’s like saying they were drunk. Or constipated. Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out, cutting his nuts off, the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do? Too constipated to do? And more to the point, how come Negroes, the craziest, most ignorant people in America, don’t get that crazy and that ignorant? No. White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome an unnatural enemy.’
‘What about the nice ones? Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.’
‘That just means there are one or two natural ones. But they haven’t been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn’t stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn’t stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on. So will we.’
‘You’re missing the point. There’re not just one or two. There’re a lot.’
‘Are there? Milkman, if Kennedy got drunk and bored and was sitting around a potbellied stove in Mississippi, he might join a lynching party just for the hell of it. Under those circumstances his unnaturalness would surface. But I know I wouldn’t join one no matter how drunk I was or how bored, and I know you wouldn’t either, nor any black man I know or ever heard tell of. Ever. In any world, at any time, just get up and go find somebody white to slice up. But they can do it. And they don’t even do it for profit, which is why they do most things. They do it for fun. Unnatural.’
‘What about …’ Milkman searched his memory for some white person who had shown himself unequivocally supportive of Negroes. ‘Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer. Would he do it?’
‘In a minute. He didn’t care anything about those Africans. They could have been rats. He was in a laboratory testing himself – proving he could work on human dogs.’
‘What about Eleanor Roosevelt?’
‘I don’t know about the women. I can’t say what their women would do, but I do remember that picture of those white mothers holding up their babies so they could get a good look at some black men burning on a tree. So I have my suspicions about Eleanor Roosevelt. But none about Mr Roosevelt. You could’ve taken him and his wheelchair and put him in a small dusty town in Alabama and given him some tobacco, a checkerboard, some whiskey, and a rope and he’d have done it too. What I’m saying is, under certain conditions they would all do it. And under the same circumstances we would not. So it doesn’t matter that some of them haven’t done it. I listen. I read. And now I know that they know it too. They know they are unnatural. Their writers and artists have been saying it for years. Telling them they are unnatural, telling them they are depraved. They call it tragedy. In the movies they call it adventure. It’s just depravity that they try to make glorious, natural. But it ain’t. The disease they have is in their blood, in the structure of their chromosomes.’
‘You can prove this, I guess. Scientifically?’
‘No.’
‘Shouldn’t you be able to prove it before you act on something like that?’
‘Did they prove anything scientifically about us before they killed us? No. They killed us first and then tried to get some scientific proof about why we should die.’
‘Wait a minute, Guitar. If they are as bad, as unnatural, as you say, why do you want to be like them? Don’t you want to be better than they are?’
‘I am better.’
‘But now you’re doing what the worst of them do.’
‘Yes, but I am reasonable.’
‘Reasonable? How?’
‘I am not, one, having fun; two, trying to gain power or public attention or money or land; three, angry at anybody.’
‘You’re not angry? You must be!’
‘Not at all. I hate doing it. I’m afraid to do it. It’s hard to do it when you aren’t angry or drunk or doped up or don’t have a personal grudge against the person.’
‘I can’t see how it helps. I can’t see how it helps anybody.’
‘I told you. Numbers. Balance. Ratio. And the earth, the land.’
‘I’m not understanding you.’
‘The earth is soggy with black people’s blood. And before us Indian blood. Nothing can cure them, and if it keeps on there won’t be any of us left and there won’t be any land for those who are left. So the numbers have to remain static.’
‘But there are more of them than us.’
‘Only in the West. But still the ratio can’t widen in their favor.’
‘But you should want everybody to know that the society exists. Then maybe that would help stop it. What’s the secrecy for?’
‘To keep from getting caught.’
‘Can’t you even let other Negroes know about it? I mean to give us hope?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Betrayal. The possibility of betrayal.’
‘Well, let them know. Let white people know. Like the Mafia or the Klan; frighten them into behaving.’
‘You’re talking foolishness. How can you let one group know and not the other? Besides, we are not like them. The Mafia is unnatural. So is the Klan. One kills for money, the other kills for fun. And they have huge profits and protection at their disposal. We don’t. But it’s not about other people knowing. We don’t even tell the victims. We just whisper to him, “Your Day has come.” The beauty of what we do is its secrecy, its smallness. The fact that nobody needs the unnatural satisfaction of talking about it. Telling about it. We don’t discuss it among ourselves, the details. We just get an assignment. If the Negro was killed on a Wednesday, the Wednesday man takes it; if he was killed on Monday, the Monday man takes that one. And we just notify one another when it’s completed, not how or who. And if it ever gets to be too much, like it was for Robert Smith, we do that rather than crack and tell somebody. Like Porter. It was getting him down. They thought somebody would have to take over his day. He just needed a rest and he’s okay now.’
Milkman stared at his friend and then let the spasm he had been holding back run through him. ‘I can’t buy it, Guitar.’
‘I know that.’
‘There’s too much wrong with it.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, for one thing, you’ll get caught eventually.’
‘Maybe. But if I’m caught I’ll just die earlier than I’m supposed to – not better than I’m supposed to. And how I die or when doesn’t interest me. What I die for does. It’s the same as what I live for. Besides, if I’m caught they’ll accuse me and kill me for one crime, maybe two, never for all. And there are still six other days in the week. We’ve been around for a long long time. And believe me, we’ll be around for a long long time to come.’
‘You can’t marry.’
‘No.’
‘Have children.’
‘No.’
‘What kind of life is that?’
‘Very satisfying.’
‘There’s no love in it.’
‘No love? No love? Didn’t you hear me? What I’m doing ain’t about hating white people. It’s about loving us. About loving you. My whole life is love.’
‘Man, you’re confused.’
‘Am I? When those concentration camp Jews hunt down Nazis, are they hating Nazis or loving dead Jews?’
‘It’s not the same thing.’
‘Only because they have money and publicity.’
‘No; because they turn them over to the courts. You kill and you don’t kill the killers. You kill innocent people.’
‘I told you there are no –’
‘And you don’t correct a thing by –’
‘We poor people, Milkman. I work at an auto plant. The rest of us barely eke out a living. Where’s the money, the state, the country to finance our justice? You say Jews try their catches in a court. Do we have a court? Is there one courthouse in one city in the country where a jury would convict them? There are places right now where a Negro still can’t testify against a white man. Where the judge, the jury, the court, are legally bound to ignore anything a Negro has to say. What that means is that a black man is a victim of a crime only when a white man says he is. Only then. If there was anything like or near justice or courts when a cracker kills a Negro, there wouldn’t have to be no Seven Days. But there ain’t; so we are. And we do it without money, without support, without costumes, without newspapers, without senators, without lobbyists, and without illusions!’
‘You sound like that red-headed Negro named X. Why don’t you join him and call yourself Guitar X?’
‘X, Bains – what difference does it make? I don’t give a damn about names.’
‘You miss his point. His point is to let white people know you don’t accept your slave name.’
‘I don’t give a shit what white people know or even think. Besides, I do accept it. It’s part of who I am. Guitar is my name. Bains is the slave master’s name. And I’m all of that. Slave names don’t bother me; but slave status does.’
‘And knocking off white folks changes your slave status?’
‘Believe it.’
‘Does it do anything for my slave status?’
Guitar smiled. ‘Well, doesn’t it?’
‘Hell, no.’ Milkman frowned. ‘Am I going to live any longer because you all read the newspaper and then ambush some poor old white man?’
‘It’s not about you living longer. It’s about how you live and why. It’s about whether your children can make other children. It’s about trying to make a world where one day white people will think before they lynch.’
‘Guitar, none of that shit is going to change how I live or how any other Negro lives. What you’re doing is crazy. And something else: it’s a habit. If you do it enough, you can do it to anybody. You know what I mean? A torpedo is a torpedo, I don’t care what his reasons. You can off anybody you don’t like. You can off me.’
‘We don’t off Negroes.’
‘You hear what you said? Negroes. Not Milkman. Not “No, I can’t touch you, Milkman,” but “We don’t off Negroes.” Shit, man, suppose you all change your parliamentary rules?’
‘The Days are the Days. It’s been that way a long time.’
Milkman thought about that. ‘Any other young dudes in it? Are all the others older? You the only young one?’
‘Why?’
‘Cause young dudes are subject to change the rules.’
‘You worried about yourself, Milkman?’ Guitar looked amused.
‘No. Not really.’ Milkman put his cigarette out and reached for another one. ‘Tell me, what’s your day?’
‘Sunday. I’m the Sunday man.’
Milkman rubbed the ankle of his short leg. ‘I’m scared for you, man.’
‘That’s funny. I’m scared for you too.’
GUITAR WAS WATCHING him carefully. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Why you so low? You don’t act like a man on his way to the end of the rainbow.’
Milkman turned around and sat on the sill. ‘I hope it is a rainbow, and nobody has run off with the pot, cause I need it.’
‘Everybody needs it.’
‘Not as bad as me.’
Guitar smiled. ‘Look like you really got the itch now. More than before.’
‘Yeah, well, everything’s worse than before, or maybe it’s the same as before. I don’t know. I just know that I want to live my own life. I don’t want to be my old man’s office boy no more. And as long as I’m in this place I will be. Unless I have my own money. I have to get out of that house and I don’t want to owe anybody when I go. My family’s driving me crazy. Daddy wants me to be like him and hate my mother. My mother wants me to think like her and hate my father. Corinthians won’t speak to me; Lena wants me out. And Hagar wants me chained to her bed or dead. Everybody wants something from me, you know what I mean? Something they think they can’t get anywhere else. Something they think I got. I don’t know what it is – I mean what it is they really want.’
Guitar stretched his legs. ‘They want your life, man.’
‘My life?’
‘What else?’
‘No. Hagar wants my life. My family … they want –’
‘I don’t mean that way. I don’t mean they want your dead life; they want your living life.’
‘You’re losing me,’ said Milkman.
‘Look. It’s the condition our condition is in. Everybody wants the life of a black man. Everybody. White men want us dead or quiet – which is the same thing as dead. White women, same thing. They want us, you know, “universal,” human, no “race consciousness.” Tame, except in bed. They like a little racial loincloth in the bed. But outside the bed they want us to be individuals. You tell them, “But they lynched my papa,” and they say, “Yeah, but you’re better than the lynchers are, so forget it.” And black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. “Why don’t you understand me?” What they mean is, Don’t love anything on earth except me. They say, “Be responsible,” but what they mean is, Don’t go anywhere where I ain’t. You try to climb Mount Everest, they’ll tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea – just for a look – they’ll hide your oxygen tank. Or you don’t even have to go that far. Buy a horn and say you want to play. Oh, they love the music, but only after you pull eight at the post office. Even if you make it, even if you stubborn and mean and you get to the top of Mount Everest, or you do play and you good, real good – that still ain’t enough. You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention. Take a risk and they say you not for real. That you don’t love them. They won’t even let you risk your own life, man, your own life – unless it’s over them. You can’t even die unless it’s about them. What good is a man’s life if he can’t even choose what to die for?’
‘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 was 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.
MILKMAN TURNED IN his seat and tried to stretch his legs. It was morning. He’d changed buses three times and was now speeding home on the last leg of his trip. He looked out the window. Far away from Virginia, fall had already come. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan were dressed up like the Indian warriors from whom their names came. Blood red and yellow, ocher and ice blue.
He read the road signs with interest now, wondering what lay beneath the names. The Algonquins had named the territory he lived in Great Water, michi gami. How many dead lives and fading memories were buried in and beneath the names of the places in this country. Under the recorded names were other names, just as ‘Macon Dead,’ recorded for all time in some dusty file, hid from view the real names of people, places, and things. Names that had meaning. No wonder Pilate put hers in her ear. When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do. Like the street he lived on, recorded as Mains Avenue, but called Not Doctor Street by the Negroes in memory of his grandfather, who was the first colored man of consequence in that city. Never mind that he probably didn’t deserve their honor – they knew what kind of man he was: arrogant, color-struck, snobbish. They didn’t care about that. They were paying their respect to whatever it was that made him be a doctor in the first place, when the odds were that he’d be a yardman all of his life. So they named a street after him. Pilate had taken a rock from every state she had lived in – because she had lived there. And having lived there, it was hers – and his, and his father’s, his grandfather’s, his grandmother’s. Not Doctor Street, Solomon’s Leap, Ryna’s Gulch, Shalimar, Virginia.
He closed his eyes and thought of the black men in Shalimar, Roanoke, Petersburg, Newport News, Danville, in the Blood Bank, on Darling Street, in the pool halls, the barbershops. Their names. Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness. Macon Dead, Sing Byrd, Crowell Byrd, Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Magdalene, First Corinthians, Milkman, Guitar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State (he just stood around and swayed), Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Moon, Nero, Humpty-Dumpty, Blue Boy, Scandinavia, Quack-Quack, Jericho, Spoonbread, Ice Man, Dough Belly, Rocky River, Gray Eye, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo, Cool Breeze, Muddy Waters, Pinetop, Jelly Roll, Fats, Lead-belly, Bo Diddley, Cat-Iron, Peg-Leg, Son, Shortstuff, Smoky Babe, Funny Papa, Bukka, Pink, Bull Moose, B. B., T-Bone, Black Ace, Lemon, Washboard, Gatemouth, Cleanhead, Tampa Red, Juke Boy, Shine, Staggerlee, Jim the Devil, Fuck-Up, and Dat Nigger.
Angling out from these thoughts of names was one more – the one that whispered in the spinning wheels of the bus: ‘Guitar is biding his time. Guitar is biding his time. Your day has come. Your day has come. Guitar is biding his time. Guitar is a very good Day. Guitar is a very good Day. A very good Day, a very good Day, and biding, biding his time.’
In the seventy-five-dollar car, and here on the big Greyhound, Milkman felt safe. But there were days and days ahead. Maybe if Guitar was back in the city now, among familiar surroundings, Milkman could defuse him. And certainly, in time, he would discover his foolishness. There was no gold. And although things would never be the same between them, at least the man-hunt would be over.
Even as he phrased the thought in his mind, Milkman knew it was not so. Either Guitar’s disappointment with the gold that was not there was so deep it had deranged him, or his ‘work’ had done it. Or maybe he simply allowed himself to feel about Milkman what he had always felt about Macon Dead and the Honoré crowd. In any case, he had snatched the first straw, limp and wet as it was, to prove to himself the need to kill Milkman. The Sunday-school girls deserved better than to be avenged by that hawk-headed raven-skinned Sunday man who included in his blood sweep four innocent white girls and one innocent black man.
Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
‘Everybody wants a black man’s life.’
Yeah. And black men were not excluded. With two exceptions, everybody he was close to seemed to prefer him out of this life. And the two exceptions were both women, both black, both old. From the beginning, his mother and Pilate had fought for his life, and he had never so much as made either of them a cup of tea.
Would you save my life or would you take it? Guitar was exceptional. To both questions he could answer yes.