suddenly she leveled her eyes at his. "but who would know that better than you, paul d? i mean,you sure 'nough knew her."he licked his lips. "well, if you want my opinion — ""i don't," she said. "i have my own.""you grown," he said.
"yes, sir.""well. well, good luck with the job.""thank you. and, paul d, you don't have to stay 'way, but be careful how you talk to my ma'am,hear?""don't worry," he said and left her then, or rather she left him because a young man was runningtoward her, saying, "hey, miss denver. wait up."she turned to him, her face looking like someone had turned up the gas jet.
he left her unwillingly because he wanted to talk more, make sense out of the stories he had beenhearing: whiteman came to take denver to work and sethe cut him. baby ghost came back evil andsent sethe out to get the man who kept her from hanging. one point of agreement is: first they sawit and then they didn't. when they got sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her handsand looked back to the house, it was gone. later, a little boy put it out how he had been looking forbait back of 124, down by the stream, and saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman withfish for hair.
as a matter of fact, paul d doesn't care how it went or even why. he cares about how he left andwhy. then he looks at himself through garner's eyes, he sees one thing. through sixo's, another.
one makes him feel righteous. one makes him feel ashamed. like the time he worked both sidesof the war. running away from the northpoint bank and railway to join the 44th coloredregiment in tennessee, he thought he had made it, only to discover he had arrived at anothercolored regiment forming under a commander in new jersey. he stayed there four weeks. theregiment fell apart before it got started on the question of whether the soldiers should haveweapons or not. not, it was decided, and the white commander had to figure out what to commandthem to do instead of kill other white men. some of the ten thousand stayed there to clean, hauland build things; others drifted away to another regiment; most were abandoned, left to their owndevices with bitterness for pay. he was trying to make up his mind what to do when an agent fromnorthpoint bank caught up with him and took him back to delaware, where he slave-worked ayear. then northpoint took $300 in exchange for his services in alabama, where he worked for therebellers, first sorting the dead and then smelting iron. when he and his group combed the battlefields, their job was to pull the confederate wounded away from the confederate dead. care,they told them. take good care. coloredmen and white, their faces wrapped to their eyes, pickedtheir way through the meadows with lamps, listening in the dark for groans of life in the indifferentsilence of the dead. mostly young men, some children, and it shamed him a little to feel pity forwhat he imagined were the sons of the guards in alfred, georgia.
in five tries he had not had one permanent success. every one of his escapes (from sweet home,from brandywine, from alfred, georgia, from wilmington, from northpoint) had been frustrated.
alone, undisguised, with visible skin, memorable hair and no whiteman to protect him, he neverstayed uncaught. the longest had been when he ran with the convicts, stayed with the cherokee,followed their advice and lived in hiding with the weaver woman in wilmington, delaware: threeyears. and in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land thatwas not his. he hid in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and triednot to love it. on nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he madehimself not love it. its graveyards and low-lying rivers. or just a house — -solitary under achinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. anything could stirhim and he tried hard not to love it.
after a few months on the battlefields of alabama, he was impressed to a foundry in selma alongwith three hundred captured, lent or taken coloredmen. that's where the war's end found him, andleaving alabama when he had been declared free should have been a snap. he should have beenable to walk from the foundry in selma straight to philadelphia, taking the main roads, a train if hewanted to, or passage on a boat. but it wasn't like that. when he and two colored soldiers (who hadbeen captured from the 44th he had looked for) walked from selma to mobile, they saw twelvedead blacks in the first eighteen miles. two were women, four were little boys. he thought this, forsure, would be the walk of his life.
the yankees in control left the rebels out of control. they got to the outskirts of mobile, whereblacks were putting down tracks for the union that, earlier, they had torn up for the rebels. one ofthe men with him, a private called keane, had been with the massachusetts 54th. he told paul dthey had been paid less than white soldiers. it was a sore point with him that, as a group, they hadrefused the offer massachusetts made to make up the difference in pay. paul d was so impressedby the idea of being paid money to fight he looked at the private with wonder and envy.
keane and his friend, a sergeant rossiter, confiscated a skiff and the three of them floated inmobile bay. there the private hailed a union gunboat, which took all three aboard. keane androssiter disembarked at memphis to look for their commanders. the captain of the gunboat letpaul d stay aboard all the way to wheeling, west virginia. he made his own way to new jersey.
by the time he got to mobile, he had seen more dead people than living ones, but when he got totrenton the crowds of alive people, neither hunting nor hunted, gave him a measure of free life sotasty he never forgot it. moving down a busy street full of whitepeople who needed no explanationfor his presence, the glances he got had to do with his disgusting clothes and unforgivable hair.
still, nobody raised an alarm. then came the miracle. standing in a street in front of a row of brickhouses, he heard a whiteman call him ("say there! yo!") to help unload two trunks from a coachcab. afterward the whiteman gave him a coin. paul d walked around with it for hours — not surewhat it could buy (a suit? a meal? a horse?) and if anybody would sell him anything. finally hesaw a greengrocer selling vegetables from a wagon. paul d pointed to a bunch of turnips. thegrocer handed them to him, took his one coin and gave him several more. stunned, he backed away. looking around, he saw that nobody seemed interested in the "mistake" or him, so hewalked along, happily chewing turnips. only a few women looked vaguely repelled as they passed.
his first earned purchase made him glow, never mind the turnips were withered dry. that waswhen he decided that to eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got. and he did it forseven years till he found himself in southern ohio, where an old woman and a girl he used to knowhad gone.
now his coming is the reverse of his going. first he stands in the back, near the cold house,amazed by the riot of late-summer flowers where vegetables should be growing. sweet william,morning glory, chrysanthemums. the odd placement of cans jammed with the rotting stems ofthings, the blossoms shriveled like sores. dead ivy twines around bean poles and door handles.
faded newspaper pictures are nailed to the outhouse and on trees. a rope too short for anything butskip-jumping lies discarded near the washtub; and jars and jars of dead lightning bugs. like achild's house; the house of a very tall child.
he walks to the front door and opens it. it is stone quiet. in the place where once a shaft of sad redlight had bathed him, locking him where he stood, is nothing. a bleak and minus nothing. morelike absence, but an absence he had to get through with the same determination he had when hetrusted sethe and stepped through the pulsing light. he glances quickly at the lightning-whitestairs. the entire railing is wound with ribbons, bows, bouquets. paul d steps inside. the outdoorbreeze he brings with him stirs the ribbons.
carefully, not quite in a hurry but losing no time, he climbs the luminous stairs. he enters sethe'sroom. she isn't there and the bed looks so small he wonders how the two of them had lain there. ithas no sheets, and because the roof windows do not open the room is stifling. brightly coloredclothes lie on the floor. hanging from a wall peg is the dress beloved wore when he first saw her.
a pair of ice skates nestles in a basket in the corner. he turns his eyes back to the bed and keepslooking at it. it seems to him a place he is not.
with an effort that makes him sweat he forces a picture of himself lying there, and when he sees it,it lifts his spirit. he goes to the other bedroom. denver's is as neat as the other is messy. but stillno sethe.
maybe she has gone back to work, gotten better in the days since he talked to denver. he goesback down the stairs, leaving the image of himself firmly in place on the narrow bed. at thekitchen table he sits down. something is missing from 124. something larger than the people wholived there. something more than beloved or the red light. he can't put his finger on it, but itseems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraceswhile it accuses.
to the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is ajar, he hears humming. someone ishumming a tune. something soft and sweet, like a lullaby. then a few words. sounds like "highjohnny, wide johnny. sweet william bend down low." of course, he thinks. that's where she is —and she is. lying under a quilt of merry colors.
her hair, like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spreads and curves on the pillow. her eyes,fixed on the window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is. there is toomuch light here in this room. things look sold.
"jackweed raise up high," she sings. "lambswool over my shoulder, buttercup and clover fly." sheis fingering a long clump of her hair.
paul d clears his throat to interrupt her. "sethe?"
