"You see Paul A?"
"No."
"Halle?"
"No."
"No sign of them?"
"No sign. Nobody in quarters but the children."
"Sethe?"
"Her children sleep. She must be there still."
"I can't leave without Paul A."
"I can't help you."
"Should I go back and look for them?"
"I can't help you."
"What you think?"
"I think they go straight to the corn."
Sixo turns, then, to the woman and they clutch each other and whisper. She is lit now with some glowing, some shining that comes from inside her. Before when she knelt on creek pebbles with Paul D, she was nothing, a shape in the dark breathing lightly.
Sixo is about to crawl out to look for the knives he buried. He hears something. He hears nothing. Forget the knives. Now. The three of them climb up the bank and schoolteacher, his pupils and four other whitemen move toward them. With lamps. Sixo pushes the Thirty-Mile Woman and she runs further on in the creekbed.
Paul D and Sixo run the other way toward the woods. Both are surrounded and tied.
The air gets sweet then. Perfumed by the things honeybees love.
Tied like a mule, Paul D feels how dewy and inviting the grass is.
He is thinking about that and where Paul A might be when Sixo turns and grabs the mouth of the nearest pointing rifle. He begins to sing. Two others shove Paul D and tie him to a tree. Schoolteacher is saying, "Alive. Alive. I want him alive." Sixo swings and cracks the ribs of one, but with bound hands cannot get the weapon in position to use it in any other way. All the whitemen have to do is wait. For his song, perhaps, to end? Five guns are trained on him while they listen. Paul D cannot see them when they step away from lamplight. Finally one of them hits Sixo in the head with his rifle, and when he comes to, a hickory fire is in front of him and he is tied at the waist to a tree. Schoolteacher has changed his mind: "This one will never be suitable." The song must have convinced him.
The fire keeps failing and the whitemen are put out with themselves at not being prepared for this emergency. They came to capture, not kill. What they can manage is only enough for cooking hominy.
Dry faggots are scarce and the grass is slick with dew.
By the light of the hominy fire Sixo straightens. He is through with his song. He laughs. A rippling sound like Sethe's sons make when they tumble in hay or splash in rainwater. His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs. Something is funny. Paul D guesses what it is when Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, "Seven-O! Seven-O!"
Smoky, stubborn fire. They shoot him to shut him up. Have to.
Shackled, walking through the perfumed things honeybees love, Paul D hears the men talking and for the first time learns his worth.
He has always known, or believed he did, his value--as a hand, a laborer who could make profit on a farm--but now he discovers his worth, which is to say he learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future.
As soon as the whitemen get to where they have tied their horses and mount them, they are calmer, talking among themselves about the difficulty they face. The problems. Voices remind schoolteacher about the spoiling these particular slaves have had at Garner's hands.
There's laws against what he done: letting niggers hire out their own time to buy themselves. He even let em have guns! And you think he mated them niggers to get him some more? Hell no! He planned for them to marry! if that don't beat all! Schoolteacher sighs, and says doesn't he know it? He had come to put the place aright. Now it faced greater ruin than what Garner left for it, because of the loss of two niggers, at the least, and maybe three because he is not sure they will find the one called Halle. The sister-in-law is too weak to help out and doggone if now there ain't a full-scale stampede on his hands. He would have to trade this here one for $900 if he could get it, and set out to secure the breeding one, her foal and the other one, if he found him. With the money from "this here one" he could get two young ones, twelve or fifteen years old. And maybe with the breeding one, her three pickaninnies and whatever the foal might be, he and his nephews would have seven niggers and Sweet Home would be worth the trouble it was causing him.
"Look to you like Lillian gonna make it?"
"Touch and go. Touch and go."
"You was married to her sister-in-law, wasn't you?"
"I was."
"She frail too?"
"A bit. Fever took her."
"Well, you don't need to stay no widower in these parts."
"My cogitation right now is Sweet Home."
"Can't say as I blame you. That's some spread."
They put a three-spoke collar on him so he can't lie down and they chain his ankles together. The number he heard with his ear is now in his head. Two. Two? Two niggers lost? Paul D thinks his heart is jumping. They are going to look for Halle, not Paul A. They must have found Paul A and if a whiteman finds you it means you are surely lost.
Schoolteacher looks at him for a long time before he closes the door of the cabin. Carefully, he looks. Paul D does not look back.
It is sprinkling now. A teasing August rain that raises expectations it cannot fill. He thinks he should have sung along. Loud something loud and rolling to go with Sixo's tune, but the words put him off-- he didn't understand the words. Although it shouldn't have mattered because he understood the sound: hatred so loose it was juba.
The warm sprinkle comes and goes, comes and goes. He thinks he hears sobbing that seems to come from Mrs. Garner's window, but it could be anything, anyone, even a she-cat making her yearning known. Tired of holding his head up, he lets his chin rest on the collar and speculates on how he can hobble over to the grate, boil a little water and throw in a handful of meal. That's what he is doing when Sethe comes in, rain-wet and big-bellied, saying she is going to cut. She has just come back from taking her children to the corn.
The whites were not around. She couldn't find Halle. Who was caught? Did Sixo get away? Paul A?
He tells her what he knows: Sixo is dead; the Thirty-Mile Woman ran, and he doesn't know what happened to Paul A or Halle. "Where could he be?" she asks.
Paul D shrugs because he can't shake his head.
"You saw Sixo die? You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Was he woke when it happened? Did he see it coming?"
"He was woke. Woke and laughing."
"Sixo laughed?"
"You should have heard him, Sethe."
Sethe's dress steams before the little fire over which he is boiling water. It is hard to move about with shackled ankles and the neck jewelry embarrasses him. In his shame he avoids her eyes, but when he doesn't he sees only black in them--no whites. She says she is going, and he thinks she will never make it to the gate, but he doesn't dissuade her. He knows he will never see her again, and right then and there his heart stopped.
The pupils must have taken her to the barn for sport right afterward, and when she told Mrs. Garner, they took down the cowhide.
Who in hell or on this earth would have thought that she would cut anyway? They must have believed, what with her belly and her back, that she wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't surprised to learn that they had tracked her down in Cincinnati, because, when he thought about it now, her price was greater than his; property that reproduced itself without cost.
Remembering his own price, down to the cent, that schoolteacher was able to get for him, he wondered what Sethe's would have been.
What had Baby Suggs' been? How much did Halle owe, still, besides his labor? What did Mrs. Garner get for Paul F? More than nine hundred dollars? How much more? Ten dollars? Twenty? Schoolteacher would know. He knew the worth of everything. It accounted for the real sorrow in his voice when he pronounced Sixo unsuitable.
Who could be fooled into buying a singing nigger with a gun? Shouting Seven-O! Seven-O! because hi
s Thirty-Mile Woman got away with his blossoming seed. What a laugh. So rippling and full of glee it put out the fire. And it was Sixo's laughter that was on his mind, not the bit in his mouth, when they hitched him to the buckboard.
Then he saw Halle, then the rooster, smiling as if to say, You ain't seen nothing yet. How could a rooster know about Alfred, Georgia?
"HOWDY."
Stamp Paid was still fingering the ribbon and it made a little motion in his pants pocket.
Paul D looked up, noticed the side pocket agitation and snorted.
"I can't read. You got any more newspaper for me, just a waste of time."
Stamp withdrew the ribbon and sat down on the steps.
"No. This here's something else." He stroked the red cloth between forefinger and thumb. "Something else."
Paul D didn't say anything so the two men sat in silence for a few moments.
"This is hard for me," said Stamp. "But I got to do it. Two things I got to say to you. I'm a take the easy one first."
Paul D chuckled. "If it's hard for you, might kill me dead."
"No, no. Nothing like that. I come looking for you to ask your pardon. Apologize."
"For what?" Paul D reached in his coat pocket for his bottle.
"You pick any house, any house where colored live. In all of Cincinnati. Pick any one and you welcome to stay there. I'm apologizing because they didn't offer or tell you. But you welcome anywhere you want to be. My house is your house too. John and Ella, Miss Lady, Able Woodruff, Willie Pike--anybody. You choose. You ain't got to sleep in no cellar, and I apologize for each and every night you did. I don't know how that preacher let you do it. I knowed him since he was a boy."
"Whoa, Stamp. He offered."
"Did? Well?"
"Well. I wanted, I didn't want to, I just wanted to be off by myself a spell. He offered. Every time I see him he offers again."
"That's a load off. I thought everybody gone crazy."
Paul D shook his head. "Just me."
"You planning to do anything about it?"
"Oh, yeah. I got big plans." He swallowed twice from the bottle.
Any planning in a bottle is short, thought Stamp, but he knew from personal experience the pointlessness of telling a drinking man not to. He cleared his sinuses and began to think how to get to the second thing he had come to say. Very few people were out today.
The canal was frozen so that traffic too had stopped. They heard the dop of a horse approaching. Its rider sat a high Eastern saddle but everything else about him was Ohio Valley. As he rode by he looked at them and suddenly reined his horse, and came up to the path leading to the church. He leaned forward.
"Hey," he said.
Stamp put his ribbon in his pocket. "Yes, sir?"
"I'm looking for a gal name of Judy. Works over by the slaughterhouse."
"Don't believe I know her. No, sir."
"Said she lived on Plank Road."
"Plank Road. Yes, sir. That's up a ways. Mile, maybe."
"You don't know her? Judy. Works in the slaughterhouse."
"No, sir, but I know Plank Road. 'Bout a mile up thataway."
Paul D lifted his bottle and swallowed. The rider looked at him and then back at Stamp Paid. Loosening the right rein, he turned his horse toward the road, then changed his mind and came back.
"Look here," he said to Paul D. "There's a cross up there, so I guess this here's a church or used to be. Seems to me like you ought to show it some respect, you follow me?"
"Yes, sir," said Stamp. "You right about that. That's just what I come over to talk to him about. Just that."
The rider clicked his tongue and trotted off. Stamp made small circles in the palm of his left hand with two fingers of his right. "You got to choose," he said. "Choose anyone. They let you be if you want em to. My house. Ella. Willie Pike. None of us got much, but all of us got room for one more. Pay a little something when you can, don't when you can't. Think about it. You grown. I can't make you do what you won't, but think about it."
Paul D said nothing.
"If I did you harm, I'm here to rectify it."
"No need for that. No need at all."
A woman with four children walked by on the other side of the road. She waved, smiling. "Hoo-oo. I can't stop. See you at meeting."
"I be there," Stamp returned her greeting. "There's another one," he said to Paul D. "Scripture Woodruff, Able's sister. Works at the brush and tallow factory. You'll see. Stay around here long enough, you'll see ain't a sweeter bunch of colored anywhere than what's right here. Pride, well, that bothers em a bit. They can get messy when they think somebody's too proud, but when it comes right down to it, they good people and anyone will take you in."
"What about Judy? She take me in?"
"Depends. What you got in mind?"
"You know Judy?"
"Judith. I know everybody."
"Out on Plank Road?"
"Everybody."
"Well? She take me in?"
Stamp leaned down and untied his shoe. Twelve black buttonhooks, six on each side at the bottom, led to four pairs of eyes at the top. He loosened the laces all the way down, adjusted the tongue carefully and wound them back again. When he got to the eyes he rolled the lace tips with his fingers before inserting them.
"Let me tell you how I got my name." The knot was tight and so was the bow. "They called me Joshua," he said. "I renamed myself," he said, "and I'm going to tell you why I did it," and he told him about Vashti. "I never touched her all that time. Not once.
Almost a year. We was planting when it started and picking when it stopped. Seemed longer. I should have killed him. She said no, but I should have. I didn't have the patience I got now, but I figured maybe somebody else didn't have much patience either--his own wife. Took it in my head to see if she was taking it any better than I was. Vashti and me was in the fields together in the day and every now and then she be gone all night. I never touched her and damn me if I spoke three words to her a day. I took any chance I had to get near the great house to see her, the young master's wife. Nothing but a boy. Seventeen, twenty maybe. I caught sight of her finally, standing in the backyard by the fence with a glass of water. She was drinking out of it and just gazing out over the yard. I went over.
Stood back a ways and took off my hat. I said, 'Scuse me, miss. Scuse me?' She turned to look. I'm smiling. 'Scuse me. You seen Vashti?
My wife Vashti?' A little bitty thing, she was. Black hair. Face no bigger than my hand. She said, "What? Vashti?' I say, 'Yes'm, Vashti.
My wife. She say she owe you all some eggs. You know if she brung em? You know her if you see her. Wear a black ribbon on her neck.'
She got rosy then and I knowed she knowed. He give Vashti that to wear. A cameo on a black ribbon. She used to put it on every time she went to him. I put my hat back on. 'You see her tell her I need her. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.' I backed off before she could say something. I didn't dare look back till I got behind some trees.
She was standing just as I left her, looking in her water glass. I thought it would give me more satisfaction than it did. I also thought she might stop it, but it went right on. Till one morning Vashti came in and sat by the window. A Sunday. We worked our own patches on Sunday. She sat by the window looking out of it. 'I'm back,' she said.
'I'm back, Josh.' I looked at the back of her neck. She had a real small neck. I decided to break it. You know, like a twig--just snap it. I been low but that was as low as I ever got."
"Did you? Snap it?"
"Uh uh. I changed my name."
"How you get out of there? How you get up here?"
"Boat. On up the Mississippi to Memphis. Walked from Memphis to Cumberland."
"Vashti too?"
"No. She died."
"Aw, man. Tie your other shoe!"
"What?"
"Tie your goddamn shoe! It's sitting right in front of you!
Tie it!"
"That make you feel better?"
"I said I had two things to say to you. I only told you one. I have to tell you the other."
"I don't want to know it. I don't want to know nothing. Just if Judy will take me in or won't she."
"I was there, Paul D."
"You was where?"
"There in the yard. When she did it."
"Judy?"
"Sethe."
"Jesus."
"It ain't what you think."
"You don't know what I think."
"She ain't crazy. She love those children. She was trying to out hurt the hurter."
"Leave off."
"And spread it."
"Stamp, let me off. I knew her when she was a girl. She scares me and I knew her when she was a girl."
"You ain't scared of Sethe. I don't believe you."
"Sethe scares me. I scare me. And that girl in her house scares me the most."
"Who is that girl? Where she come from?"
"I don't know. Just shot up one day sitting on a stump."
"Huh. Look like you and me the only ones outside 124 lay eyes on her."
"She don't go nowhere. Where'd you see her?"
"Sleeping on the kitchen floor. I peeped in."
"First minute I saw her I didn't want to be nowhere around her.
Something funny about her. Talks funny. Acts funny." Paul D dug his fingers underneath his cap and rubbed the scalp over his temple.
"She reminds me of something. Something, look like, I'm supposed to remember."
"She never say where she was from? Where's her people?"
"She don't know, or says she don't. All I ever heard her say was something about stealing her clothes and living on a bridge."
"What kind of bridge?"
"Who you asking?"
"No bridges around here I don't know about. But don't nobody live on em. Under em neither. How long she been over there with Sethe?"
"Last August. Day of the carnival."
"That's a bad sign. Was she at the carnival?"
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