这时，外面的一大群黑脸孔停止了嘀嘀咕咕。塞丝抱着那个活着的孩子，在他们和她自己的静默中走过他们面前。她爬进车厢，刀锋般光洁的侧影映入欢快的蓝天。那侧影的明晰使他们震惊。
她的头是否昂得有点太高了？她的背是否挺得有点太直了？也许。否则，在她从房子门口出现的那一刻，蓝石路上的歌声就会马上响起来了。某种声音的披肩就会迅速地裹上她，像手臂一样一路搀扶她、稳住她。然而在这样的情形下，他们一直等到货车朝西掉头、向城里开去，才唱起来。然后也没有歌词。哼唱着。一句歌词也没有。
贝比•萨格斯本来想跑，跳下门廊的台阶去追运货马车，尖叫着：不。不。别让她把那个最小的也带走。她本来要这样做，也已经开始了，可是当她从地上站起来，走进院子，运货马车已经没影了，而一辆大车隆隆而至。一个红发男孩和一个金发女孩跳下车，穿过人群向她跑来。男孩一手拿着吃了一半的甜椒，一手提着一双鞋。
“妈妈说星期三。
”他提着鞋舌头，“她说你得在星期三之前修好。
”
贝比•萨格斯看了他一眼，又看了看大路上拽着缰绳的女人。
“她说星期三，你听见了吗？贝比？贝比？
”
她从他手里接过鞋———高靿的，沾着泥———说道：
“请原谅。主啊，我求你原谅。我真的求你了。
”
视线之外，运货马车吱吱呀呀地驶下蓝石路。里面没有人开口。大车已经把婴儿摇晃得睡着了。炎热的太阳晒干了塞丝的裙子，硬挺挺的，仿佛尸僵。
那不是她的嘴。
素不相识的人，或者也许只从餐馆的门洞里瞥见过她一眼的人，可能会认为那是她的嘴，但是这事保罗•D更明白。噢，的确，前额上还笼罩着那么一点东西———一种安详———能使你想起她来。可是你单凭这个就说那是她的嘴，那可不行，于是他就这样讲了。告诉了正在审视他的斯坦普•沛德。
“我不知道，大叔。反正我看着不像。我认识塞丝的嘴，可不是这样。
”他用手指抚平那张剪报，凝视着，丝毫不为所动。从斯坦普打开报纸的庄严气氛中，从老人用手指按平折痕，先是在他的膝盖上、然后在树桩劈裂的顶端将它摊平的慎重中，保罗•D知道，它该搅得他不得安宁了。无论那上面写的是什么，都会震动他。
猪在滑运道里嚎叫着。保罗•D、斯坦普•沛德和另外二十多人一整天都在把它们催来赶去，从运河到岸上到滑运道再到屠宰场。尽管由于粮农迁往西部，圣路易斯和芝加哥现在吞并了许多企业，但辛辛那提在俄亥俄人的印象里仍旧是猪的港口。它的主要职责是接收、屠宰和向上游运去北方人离不开的肉猪。冬天里有一个月左右的时间，所有流浪汉都有活儿干，只要他们能忍受死牲口的恶臭，一连站上十二个小时。这些事，保罗•D都令人惊叹地训练有素。
他冲洗干净身上所有够得着的地方，还剩一点猪屎粘在他的靴子上；他站在那里，意识到这一点，一丝鄙夷的微笑卷起了他的嘴唇。他通常是把靴子留在棚屋里，回家之前在角落里换上便鞋和便衣。一条路正好把他带进一片天空一样古老的墓地中央，路上充斥着死去的迈阿密人骚动的亡灵，他们已不再满足于在坟堆下面安眠了。他们的头顶上走动着一个陌生的人种；他们的土地枕头被公路切开；水井和房屋将他们从永恒的憩息中撼醒。与其说是由于安宁受到搅扰，不如说是他们对土地之神圣的愚蠢信仰令他们恼羞成怒，于是他们在黎津河畔怒吼，在凯瑟琳大街的树上叹息，并乘风驶过宰猪场的上空。保罗•D听见了他们的声音，但仍旧留了下来，因为无论如何那是个不赖的工作，尤其是在辛辛那提作为屠宰与河运之都的地位得到确立的冬天。在这个国家的每一座城市里，对猪肉的渴望正在演化成一种癫狂。倘若猪农们能养足够的猪，再把它们卖得越来越远，他们是会赚大钱的。在南俄亥俄泛滥的德国人带来了猪肉烹调术，并把它发展到登峰造极的地步。运肉猪的船只阻塞了俄亥俄河；在水上，船长们彼此的吆喝声盖过了牲口的哼叫声，这就像鸭群飞过头顶一样寻常。绵羊、奶牛和家禽也在河上往来辗转，而一个黑人只须露个面，就会有活儿干：捅、杀、割肉、剥皮、装箱，以及储存下脚料。
距离号叫的猪群一百码远，两个男人站在西线公司的一间棚屋后面。现在清楚了，为什么这一个星期的工作中斯坦普一直盯着保罗•D看；为什么轮到上夜班时他就停下来，好让保罗•D的动作赶上他的。他已经打定主意要向他出示这张纸———报纸———上面有一个女人的肖像，酷似塞丝，只不过那不是她的嘴。一点也不像。
保罗•D从斯坦普的手掌下抽出那张剪报。上面的铅字他一个也不认得，所以他根本就没瞥上一眼。他只是看了看那张脸，摇头说不是。不是。嘴那儿，你看。不管那些黑道道写的是什么，也不管斯坦普•沛德想让他知道些什么，反正不是。因为即便在地狱里，一张黑脸也不可能上报纸，哪怕那个故事有人想听。你在报上刚看见一张黑人的脸，恐惧的鞭笞就会掠过你的心房，因为那张脸上报，不可能是由于那个人生了个健康的婴儿，或是逃脱了一群暴徒。也不会因为那个人被杀害、被打残、被抓获、被烧死、被拘禁、被鞭打、被驱赶、被蹂躏、被奸污、被欺骗，那些作为新闻报道根本不够资格。它必须是件离奇的事情———白人会感兴趣的事情，确实非同凡响，值得他们回味几分钟，起码够倒吸一口凉气的。而找到一则值得辛辛那提的白人公民屏息咋舌的有关黑人的新闻，肯定非常困难。
那么这个嘴不像塞丝、但眼睛几乎同样平静的女人是谁呢？她的头以一种令他如此迷恋的姿态从脖子上扭开，看得他热泪盈眶。
而他还是这句话。
“这不是她的嘴。我认识她的嘴，可不是这样子。
”斯坦普•沛德没来得及开口他就这样说，甚至在斯坦普原原本本娓娓道来的时候，保罗•D又说了一遍。噢，老人的话他全听见了，可听得越多，画像上的嘴就越陌生。
斯坦普先从宴会讲起，贝比•萨格斯举办的那个，又停下来，倒回去一点，讲起了莓子———它们在哪儿，以及是土里的什么东西让它们长成那样。
Chapter 35
"They open to the sun, but not the birds, 'cause snakes down in there and the birds know it, so theyjust grow — fat and sweet — with nobody to bother em 'cept me because don't nobody go in thatpiece of water but me and ain't too many legs willing to glide down that bank to get them. Meneither. But I was willing that day. Somehow or 'nother I was willing. And they whipped me, I'mtelling you. Tore me up. But I filled two buckets anyhow. And took em over to Baby Suggs' house.
It was on from then on. Such a cooking you never see no more. We baked, fried and stewedeverything God put down here. Everybody came. Everybody stuffed. Cooked so much there wasn'ta stick of kirdlin left for the next day. I volunteered to do it. And next morning I come over, like Ipromised, to do it." "But this ain't her mouth," Paul D said. "This ain't it at all." Stamp Paid lookedat him. He was going to tell him about how restless Baby Suggs was that morning, how she had alistening way about her; how she kept looking down past the corn to the stream so much he lookedtoo. In between ax swings, he watched where Baby was watching. Which is why they both missedit: they were looking the wrong way — toward water — and all the while it was coming down theroad. Four. Riding close together, bunched-up like, and righteous. He was going to tell him that,because he thought it was important: why he and Baby Suggs both missed it. And about the partytoo, because that explained why nobody ran on ahead; why nobody sent a fleet-footed son to cut'cross a field soon as they saw the four horses in town hitched for watering while the riders asked questions. Not Ella, not John, not anybody ran down or to Bluestone Road, to say some newwhitefolks with the Look just rode in. The righteous Look every Negro learned to recognize alongwith his ma'am's tit. Like a flag hoisted, this righteousness telegraphed and announced the faggot,the whip, the fist, the lie, long before it went public. Nobody warned them, and he'd alwaysbelieved it wasn't the exhaustion from a long day's gorging that dulled them, but some other thing— like, well, like meanness — that let them stand aside, or not pay attention, or tell themselvessomebody else was probably bearing the news already to the house on Bluestone Road where apretty woman had been living for almost a month. Young and deft with four children one of whichshe delivered herself the day before she got there and who now had the full benefit of Baby Suggs'
bounty and her big old heart. Maybe they just wanted to know if Baby really was special, blessedin some way they were not. He was going to tell him that, but Paul D was laughing, saying, "Uhuh. No way. A little semblance round the forehead maybe, but this ain't her mouth." So Stamp Paiddid not tell him how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her facebeaked, how her hands worked like claws, how she collected them every which way: one on hershoulder, one under her arm, one by the hand, the other shouted forward into the woodshed filledwith just sunlight and shavings now because there wasn't any wood. The party had used it all,which is why he was chopping some. Nothing was in that shed, he knew, having been there earlythat morning. Nothing but sunlight. Sunlight, shavings, a shovel. The ax he himself took out.
Nothing else was in there except the shovel — and of course the saw. "You forgetting I knew herbefore," Paul D was saying. "Back in Kentucky. When she was a girl. I didn't just make heracquaintance a few months ago. I been knowing her a long time. And I can tell you for sure: thisain't her mouth. May look like it, but it ain't." So Stamp Paid didn't say it all. Instead he took abreath and leaned toward the mouth that was not hers and slowly read out the words Paul Dcouldn't. And when he finished, Paul D said with a vigor fresher than the first time, "I'm sorry,Stamp. It's a mistake somewhere 'cause that ain't her mouth."Stamp looked into Paul D's eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if ithad happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrongway, a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children.
"SHE WAS crawling already when I got here. One week, less, and the baby who was sitting upand turning over when I put her on the wagon was crawling already. Devil of a time keeping heroff the stairs. Nowadays babies get up and walk soon's you drop em, but twenty years ago when Iwas a girl, babies stayed babies longer. Howard didn't pick up his own head till he was ninemonths. Baby Suggs said it was the food, you know. If you ain't got nothing but milk to give em,well they don't do things so quick. Milk was all I ever had. I thought teeth meant they was ready tochew. Wasn't nobody to ask. Mrs. Garner never had no children and we was the only womenthere."She was spinning. Round and round the room. Past the jelly cupboard, past the window, past thefront door, another window, the sideboard, the keeping-room door, the dry sink, the stove — backto the jelly cupboard. Paul D sat at the table watching her drift into view then disappear behind hisback, turning like a slow but steady wheel. Sometimes she crossed her hands behind her back.
Other times she held her ears, covered her mouth or folded her arms across her breasts. Once in a while she rubbed her hips as she turned, but the wheel never stopped.
"Remember Aunt Phyllis? From out by Minnoveville? Mr. Garner sent one a you all to get her foreach and every one of my babies. That'd be the only time I saw her. Many's the time I wanted toget over to where she was. Just to talk. My plan was to ask Mrs. Garner to let me off atMinnowville whilst she went to meeting. Pick me up on her way back. I believe she would a donethat if I was to ask her. I never did, 'cause that's the only day Halle and me had with sunlight in itfor the both of us to see each other by. So there wasn't nobody. To talk to, I mean, who'd knowwhen it was time to chew up a little something and give it to em. Is that what make the teeth comeon out, or should you wait till the teeth came and then solid food? Well, I know now, becauseBaby Suggs fed her right, and a week later, when I got here she was crawling already. No stoppingher either. She loved those steps so much we painted them so she could see her way to the top."Sethe smiled then, at the memory of it. The smile broke in two and became a sudden suck of air,but she did not shudder or close her eyes. She wheeled.
"I wish I'd a known more, but, like I say, there wasn't nobody to talk to. Woman, I mean. So I triedto recollect what I'd seen back where I was before Sweet Home. How the women did there. Ohthey knew all about it. How to make that thing you use to hang the babies in the trees — so youcould see them out of harm's way while you worked the fields. Was a leaf thing too they gave emto chew on. Mint, I believe, or sassafras. Comfrey, maybe. I still don't know how they constructedthat basket thing, but I didn't need it anyway, because all my work was in the barn and the house,but I forgot what the leaf was. I could have used that. I tied Buglar when we had all that pork tosmoke. Fire everywhere and he was getting into everything. I liked to lost him so many times.
Once he got up on the well, right on it. I flew. Snatched him just in time. So when I knew we'd berendering and smoking and I couldn't see after him, well, I got a rope and tied it round his ankle.
Just long enough to play round a little, but not long enough to reach the well or the fire. I didn'tlike the look of it, but I didn't know what else to do. It's hard, you know what I mean? by yourselfand no woman to help you get through. Halle was good, but he was debt-working all over theplace. And when he did get down to a little sleep, I didn't want to be bothering him with all that.
Sixo was the biggest help. I don't 'spect you rememory this, but Howard got in the milk parlor andRed Cora I believe it was mashed his hand. Turned his thumb backwards. When I got to him, shewas getting ready to bite it. I don't know to this day how I got him out. Sixo heard him screamingand come running. Know what he did? Turned the thumb right back and tied it cross his palm tohis little finger. See, I never would have thought of that. Never. Taught me a lot, Sixo."It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning. Circling him the way she was circlingthe subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Thenhe thought, No, it's the sound of her voice; it's too near. Each turn she made was at least threeyards from where he sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so closeyou could feel its lips form the words you couldn't make out because they were too close. Hecaught only pieces of what she said — which was fine, because she hadn't gotten to the main part— the answer to the question he had not asked outright, but which lay in the clipping he showedher. And lay in the smile as well. Because he smiled too, when he showed it to her, so when she burst out laughing at the joke — the mix-up of her face put where some other coloredwoman'sought to be — well, he'd be ready to laugh right along with her. "Can you beat it?" he would ask.
And "Stamp done lost his mind," she would giggle.
"Plumb lost it."But his smile never got a chance to grow. It hung there, small and alone, while she examined theclipping and then handed it back.
Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes — easy and upfront, theway colts, evangelists and children look at you: with love you don't have to deserve — that madeher go ahead and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs, the only person she felt obliged toexplain anything to. Otherwise she would have said what the newspaper said she said and no more.
Sethe could recognize only seventy-five printed words (half of which appeared in the newspaperclipping), but she knew that the words she did not understand hadn't any more power than she hadto explain. It was the smile and the upfront love that made her try.
"I don't have to tell you about Sweet Home — what it was — but maybe you don't know what itwas like for me to get away from there."Covering the lower half of her face with her palms, she paused to consider again the size of themiracle; its flavor.
"I did it. I got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own.
Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to. We was here. Each and every one of mybabies and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help,of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it; me saying, Go on, and Now. Me having to lookout. Me using my own head. But it was more than that. It was a kind of selfishness I never knewnothing about before. It felt good. Good and right. I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and whenI stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I lovedem more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn'tmine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon — there wasn't nobody inthe world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?" Paul D did not answer becauseshe didn't expect or want him to, but he did know what she meant. Listening to the doves in Alfred,Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist,doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon — -every thing belonged to the men who had the guns. Littlemen, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted to. Menwho knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge thatwithout gunshot fox would laugh at them. And these "men" who made even vixen laugh could, ifyou let them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight. So you protected yourself andloved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order tosee the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between thetrees at chain-up. Grass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants.
