Chapter 56
But. Sethe was pregnant in the spring and by August is so heavy with child she may not be able to keep up with the men, who can carry the children but not her.
But. Neighbors discouraged by Garner when he was alive now feel free to visit Sweet Home andmight appear in the right place at the wrong time.
But. Sethe's children cannot play in the kitchen anymore, so she is dashing back and forth betweenhouse and quarters-fidgety and frustrated trying to watch over them. They are too young for men'swork and the baby girl is nine months old. Without Mrs. Garner's help her work increases as doschoolteacher's demands.
But. After the conversation about the shoat, Sixo is tied up with the stock at night, and locks areput on bins, pens, sheds, coops, the tackroom and the barn door. There is no place to dart into orcongregate. Sixo keeps a nail in his mouth now, to help him undo the rope when he has to.
But. Halle is told to work his extra on Sweet Home and has no call to be anywhere other thanwhere schoolteacher tells him. Only Sixo, who has been stealing away to see his woman, andHalle, who has been hired away for years, know what lies outside Sweet Home and how to getthere.
It is a good plan. It can be done right under the watchful pupils and their teacher.
But. They had to alter it — just a little. First they change the leaving. They memorize thedirections Halle gives them. Sixo, needing time to untie himself, break open the door and notdisturb the horses, will leave later, joining them at the creek with the Thirty-Mile Woman. All fourwill go straight to the corn. Halle, who also needs more time now, because of Sethe, decides tobring her and the children at night; not wait till first light. They will go straight to the corn and notassemble at the creek. The corn stretches to their shoulders — it will never be higher. The moon isswelling. They can hardly harvest, or chop, or clear, or pick, or haul for listening for a rattle that isnot bird or snake. Then one midmorning, they hear it. Or Halle does and begins to sing it to theothers: "Hush, hush. Somebody's calling my name. Hush, hush. Somebody's calling my name. Omy Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do?"On his dinner break he leaves the field. He has to. He has to tell Sethe that he has heard the sign.
For two successive nights she has been with Mrs. Garner and he can't chance it that she will notknow that this night she cannot be. The Pauls see him go. From underneath Brother's shade wherethey are chewing corn cake, they see him, swinging along. The bread tastes good. They lick sweatfrom their lips to give it a saltier flavor. Schoolteacher and his pupils are already at the houseeating dinner. Halle swings along. He is not singing now.
Nobody knows what happened. Except for the churn, that was the last anybody ever saw of Halle.
What Paul D knew was that Halle disappeared, never told Sethe anything, and was next seensquatting in butter. Maybe when he got to the gate and asked to see Sethe, schoolteacher heard atint of anxiety in his voice — the tint that would make him pick up his ever-ready shotgun. MaybeHalle made the mistake of saying "my wife" in some way that would put a light in schoolteacher'seye. Sethe says now that she heard shots, but did not look out the window of Mrs. Garner'sbedroom. But Halle was not killed or wounded that day because Paul D saw him later, after shehad run off with no one's help; after Sixo laughed and his brother disappeared. Saw him greasedand flat-eyed as a fish. Maybe schoolteacher shot after him, shot at his feet, to remind him of thetrespass. Maybe Halle got in the barn, hid there and got locked in with the rest of schoolteacher'sstock. Maybe anything. He disappeared and everybody was on his own.
Paul A goes back to moving timber after dinner. They are to meet at quarters for supper. He nevershows up. Paul D leaves for the creek on time, believing, hoping, Paul A has gone on ahead;certain schoolteacher has learned something. Paul D gets to the creek and it is as dry as Sixopromised. He waits there with the Thirty-Mile Woman for Sixo and Paul A. Only Sixo shows up,his wrists bleeding, his tongue licking his lips like a flame.
"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."
Chapter 57
Sixo turns, then, to the woman and they clutch each other and whisper. She is lit now with someglowing, some shining that comes from inside her. Before when she knelt on creek pebbles withPaul D, she was nothing, a shape in the dark breathing lightly. Sixo is about to crawl out to lookfor the knives he buried. He hears something. He hears nothing. Forget the knives. Now. The threeof them climb up the bank and schoolteacher, his pupils and four other whitemen move towardthem. 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 feelshow dewy and inviting the grass is. He is thinking about that and where Paul A might be whenSixo turns and grabs the mouth of the nearest pointing rifle. He begins to sing. Two others shovePaul D and tie him to a tree. Schoolteacher is saying, "Alive. Alive. I want him alive." Sixo swingsand cracks the ribs of one, but with bound hands cannot get the weapon in position to use it in anyother way. All the whitemen have to do is wait. For his song, perhaps, to end? Five guns aretrained 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 infront of him and he is tied at the waist to a tree. Schoolteacher has changed his mind: "This onewill 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 thisemergency. 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 ripplingsound 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 whenSixo 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 theperfumed things honeybees love, Paul D hears the men talking and for the first time learns hisworth. He has always known, or believed he did, his value — as a hand, a laborer who could makeprofit on a farm — but now he discovers his worth, which is to say he learns his price. The dollarvalue of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future. As soon as thewhitemen get to where they have tied their horses and mount them, they are calmer, talking amongthemselves about the difficulty they face. The problems. Voices remind schoolteacher about thespoiling 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 youthink he mated them niggers to get him some more? Hell no! He planned for them to marry! if thatdon't beat all! Schoolteacher sighs, and says doesn't he know it? He had come to put the placearight. Now it faced greater ruin than what Garner left for it, because of the loss of two niggers, atthe least, and maybe three because he is not sure they will find the one called Halle. The sister-inlawis too weak to help out and doggone if now there ain't a full-scale stampede on his hands. Hewould 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 twoyoung ones, twelve or fifteen years old. And maybe with the breeding one, her three pickaninniesand whatever the foal might be, he and his nephews would have seven niggers and Sweet Homewould 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. Thenumber he heard with his ear is now in his head. Two. Two? Two niggers lost? Paul D thinks hisheart is jumping. They are going to look for Halle, not Paul A. They must have found Paul A and ifa whiteman finds you it means you are surely lost.
Chapter 58
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."
Chapter 59
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 morenewspaper for me, just a waste of time."Stamp withdrew the ribbon and sat down on the steps. "No. This here's something else." Hestroked 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 theeasy 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 housewhere colored live. In all of Cincinnati. Pick any and you welcome to stay there. I'mapologizingbecausetheydidn'tofferortellyou.Butyou(one) welcome anywhere you want to be. Myhouse is your house too. John and Ella, Miss Lady, Able Woodruff, Willie Pike — anybody. Youchoose. You ain't got to sleep in no cellar, and I apologize for each and every night you did. I don'tknow 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 Isee 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 mannot to. He cleared his sinuses and began to think how to get to the second thing he had come tosay. Very few people were out today. The canal was frozen so that traffic too had stopped. Theyheard the dop of a horse approaching. Its rider sat a high Eastern saddle but everything else abouthim was Ohio Valley. As he rode by he looked at them and suddenly reined his horse, and came upto the path leading to the church. He leaned forward.
