schoolteacher looks at him for a long time before he closes the door of the cabin. carefully, helooks. paul d does not look back. it is sprinkling now. a teasing august rain that raisesexpectations it cannot fill. he thinks he should have sung along. loud something loud and rollingto go with sixo's tune, but the words put him off — he didn't understand the words. although itshouldn't have mattered because he understood the sound: hatred so loose it was juba. the warmsprinkle comes and goes, comes and goes. he thinks he hears sobbing that seems to come frommrs. garner's window, but it could be anything, anyone, even a she-cat making her yearningknown. tired of holding his head up, he lets his chin rest on the collar and speculates on how hecan hobble over to the grate, boil a little water and throw in a handful of meal. that's what he isdoing when sethe comes in, rain-wet and big-bellied, saying she is going to cut. she has just comeback 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 whathappened 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 aboutwith shackled ankles and the neck jewelry embarrasses him. in his shame he avoids her eyes, butwhen he doesn't he sees only black in them — no whites. she says she is going, and he thinks shewill 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 havebelieved, what with her belly and her back, that she wasn't going anywhere. he wasn't surprised tolearn that they had tracked her down in cincinnati, because, when he thought about it now, herprice 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, hewondered 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 ofeverything. it accounted for the real sorrow in his voice when he pronounced sixo unsuitable. whocould be fooled into buying a singing nigger with a gun ? shouting seven-o! seven-o! becausehis thirty-mile woman got away with his blossoming seed. what a laugh. so rippling and full ofglee 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."
