Authors: Toni Morrison
He knew they were dangerous, that they would soon suck up all the air around her and leave her limp on the ground. But she didn’t seem to guess this at all. Eventually they covered her and all he could see was a mound of tangled tulips bent low over her body, which was kicking to the last.
He described all of that to Guitar as though the dream emphasized his point about the dangers of seriousness. He tried to be as light-hearted as possible in the telling, but at the end, Guitar looked him in the eyes and said, “Why didn’t you go help her?”
“What?”
“Help her. Pull her out from underneath.”
“But she liked it. She was having fun. She liked it.”
“Are you sure?” Guitar was smiling.
“Sure I’m sure. It was my dream.”
“It was
your
mother too.”
“Aw, man, why you making something out of it that ain’t there? You’re making the whole thing into something superserious, just to prove your point. First I’m wrong for not living in Alabama. Then I’m wrong for not behaving right in my own dream. Now I’m wrong for dreaming it. You see what I mean? The least little thing is a matter of life and death to you. You’re getting to be just like my old man. He thinks if a paper clip is in the wrong drawer, I should apologize. What’s happening to everybody?”
“Looks like everybody’s going in the wrong direction but you, don’t it?”
Milkman swallowed. He remembered that long-ago evening after he hit his father how everybody was crammed on one side of the street, going in the direction he was coming from. Nobody was going his way. It was as though Guitar had been in that dream too.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I know where I’m going.”
“Where?”
“Wherever the party is.”
Guitar smiled. His teeth were as white as the snowflakes that were settling on his jacket. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “and Happy New Year.” He waved his hand and cut around the corner to his street. He was lost in the snowy shadows of Southside before Milkman could ask him where he was going or tell him to wait.
Now he closed the accounts book in Sonny’s Shop and gave up on the column of numbers. Something was happening to Guitar, had already happened to him. He was constantly chafing Milkman about how he lived, and that conversation was just one more example of how he’d changed. No more could Milkman run up the stairs to his room to drag him off to a party or a bar. And he didn’t want to talk about girls or getting high. Sports were about the only things he was still enthusiastic about, and music. Other than that, he was all gloom and golden eyes. And politics.
It was that atmosphere of earnestness he provoked that led Milkman to talking about his family more than he would normally do and that also led him to defend with flippant remarks the kind of life he led. Pussy and Honoré parties. Guitar knew that wasn’t all he was interested in, didn’t he? He knew Milkman had other interests. Such as? he asked himself. Well, he was very good in his father’s business, for one thing. Excellent, in fact. But he had to admit right away that real estate was of no real interest to him. If he had to spend the rest of his life thinking about rents and property, he’d lose his mind. But he was going to spend the rest of his life doing just that, wasn’t he? That’s what his father assumed and he supposed that was what he had assumed as well.
Maybe Guitar was right—partly. His life was pointless, aimless, and it was true that he didn’t concern himself an awful lot about other people. There was nothing he wanted bad enough to risk anything for, inconvenience himself for. Still, what right had Guitar to talk? He didn’t live in Montgomery either; all he did was work at that automobile factory and sneak off places—nobody knew where—and hang around Tommy’s Barbershop. He never kept a woman more than a few months—the time span that he said was average before she began to make “permanent-arrangement-type noises.”
He ought to get married, Milkman thought. Maybe I should too. Who? There were lots of women around and he was very much the eligible bachelor to the Honoré crowd. Maybe he’d pick one—the redhead. Get a nice house. His father would help him find one. Go into a real partnership with his father and…And what? There had to be something better to look forward to. He couldn’t get interested in money. No one had ever denied him any, so it had no exotic attraction. Politics—at least barbershop politics and Guitar’s brand—put him to sleep. He was bored. Everybody bored him. The city was boring. The racial problems that consumed Guitar were the most boring of all. He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn’t describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives (and the television news) were made up of? If they didn’t have Kennedy or Elijah to quarrel about? They excused themselves for everything. Every job of work undone, every bill unpaid, every illness, every death was The Man’s fault. And Guitar was becoming just like them—except he made no excuses for himself—just agreed, it seemed to Milkman, with every grievance he heard.
Milkman went into the bathroom, which served also as a pantry, and plugged in the hot plate to make himself some instant coffee. While he was there, he heard a rapid tapping on the windowpane. He stepped back into the office and saw Freddie’s eyes through the lettering. Milkman unlocked the door.
“Hey, Freddie. What’s up?”
“Looking for a warm spot. They got me runnin tonight. Christmas comin and all, all I do is run up and down the street.” Freddie’s janitor duties at the department store were supplemented by his function as a messenger and package deliverer.
“They give you a new truck yet?” Milkman asked him.
“You crazy? The engine have to fall out on the ground before they give me a decent one.”
“I put some coffee water on. Have a cup?”
“Just what I’m lookin for. Saw your lights and thought there’s got to be a hot cup a coffee in there. You wouldn’t happen to have a little taste to go in it, would ya?”
“Just so happens I do.”
“Atta boy.”
Milkman went into the bathroom, lifted the lid from the toilet tank, and took out the half-pint bottle he kept hidden from Macon, who wouldn’t have alcohol on the premises. He brought the bottle into the office, put it on the desk, and went back to make up two cups of coffee. When he reentered, Freddie was trying to look as though he hadn’t already turned the pint up to his mouth. They laced their coffee and Milkman looked around for his cigarettes.
“Hard times, boy,” Freddie said absently, after his first sip. “Hard times.” Then, as though he noticed something missing, he asked, “Where’s your buddy?”
“You mean Guitar?”
“Yeah. Guitar. Where’s he?”
“Haven’t seen him in a few days. You know Guitar. He’ll disappear on you in a minute.” Milkman noticed how white Freddie’s hair was.
“How old are you, Freddie?”
“Who knows? They made dirt in the morning and me that afternoon.” He giggled. “But I been around a long long time.”
“You born her?”
“Naw. Down south. Jacksonville, Florida. Bad country, boy. Bad, bad country. You know they ain’t even got an orphanage in Jacksonville where colored babies can go? They have to put ’em in jail. I tell people that talk about them sit-ins I was
raised
in jail, and it don’t scare me none.”
“I didn’t know you were an orphan.”
“Well, not a regular orphan. I had people and all, but my mama died and nobody would take me in. It was on account of the way she died that nobody would take me.”
“How’d she die?”
“Ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Well”—Milkman smiled—“I’m willing to, I guess.”
“You better believe, boy. They’re here.”
“Here?” Milkman didn’t glance around the office, but he wanted to. The wind howled outside in the blackness and Freddie, looking like a gnome, flashed his gold teeth. “I don’t mean in this room necessarily. Although they could be.” He cocked his head and listened. “No. I mean they in the world.”
“You’ve seen some?”
“Plenty. Plenty. Ghosts killed my mother. I didn’t see that, of course, but I seen ’em since.”
“Tell me about them.”
“No I ain’t. I don’t do no talkin ‘bout the ghosts I seen. They don’t like that.”
“Well, tell me about the one you didn’t see. The one killed your mother.”
“Oh. Well. That one. She was walking cross the yard with this neighbor friend of hers and they both looked up and saw a woman comin down the road. They stopped and waited to see who she was. When the woman got near, the neighbor called out howdy and soon’s she said the word, the woman turned into a white bull. Right before their eyes.
My
mama fell down on the ground in labor pain right then and there. When I was born and they showed me to her, she screamed and passed out. Never
did
come to.
My
father died two months before I was born, and they couldn’t get none of my people and nobody else to take a baby brought here by a white bull.”
Milkman started laughing. He didn’t mean to hurt Freddie’s feelings, but he couldn’t stop the laughter, and the more he tried, the more it came.
Freddie looked more surprised than hurt. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Milkman couldn’t answer, he was laughing so hard.
“Okay,” Freddie said, and threw up his hands. “Okay, laugh on. But they’s a lot of strange things you don’t know nothin about, boy. You’ll learn. Lot of strange things. Strange stuff goin on right in this here town.”
Milkman’s laughter was under control now. “What? What strange stuff is happening in this town? I haven’t seen any white bulls lately.”
“Open your eyes. Ask your buddy. He knows.”
“What buddy?”
“Your buddy Guitar. Ask him what strange stuff been happenin. Ask him how come he runnin round with Empire State all of a sudden.”
“Empire State?”
“That’s right. Empire State.”
“Nobody runs around with Empire State. He’s a nut. He just stands around with a broom, dribbling spit. He can’t even talk.”
“He
don’t
talk. That don’t mean he can’t. Only reason he don’t is cause he found his wife in bed with another man long time ago, and ain’t found nothing to say since then.”
“Well, what’s Guitar doing with him?”
“Good question. Police would like to know the answer to that too.”
“How’d you get from Empire State to the police?”
“You ain’t heard? People say the police is lookin for a colored man what killed that white boy in the schoolyard.”
“I know that. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, the description fits State. And Guitar been takin him places. Hidin him, I believe.”
“What’s so strange about that? You know Guitar is like that. He’ll hide anybody the law is looking for. He hates white people, especially cops, and anybody they’re after can count on him for help.”
“You don’t understand. Him and State ain’t actin like they just hidin him. They actin like he did it.”
“You a little drunk, Freddie?”
“Yeah, I’m a little drunk, but that don’t change nothin. Look here. Remember when Emmet Till was killed? Back in fifty-three? Well, right after that, a white boy was killed in the schoolyard, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember the dates of murders I haven’t committed.”
“You don’t know?” Freddie was incredulous.
“No. Are you saying State did it?”
“I’m sayin he acts like it and I’m sayin Guitar knows, and I’m sayin somethin strange is goin on. That’s what I’m sayin.”
He’s mad at me, thought Milkman, because I laughed at his mother and that white bull story. So he’s trying to get back at me.
“Keep your eyes open,” Freddie went on. “Just keep them open.” He looked in the pint bottle, saw it was empty, and got up to leave. “Yep. Some strange goings on round here. But don’t put my name in it if you hear anything. Was just like this when that insurance man jumped off the roof. Ever hear tell of him?”
“Seems like I did.”
“That must a been when you was a little bitty baby, 1931. Well, it was some strange stuff then too.” Freddie buttoned his coat and pulled his flap-eared cap down as far as it would go. “Well, thanks for the coffee, boy. Did me a lot of good. A lot of good.” He took his gloves out of his pocket and moved to the door.
“You’re welcome, Freddie. Merry Christmas if I don’t see you before that.”
“Same to you. And your folks. Tell Mr. Dead and your mother I said Merry Christmas.” He was smiling again. When he reached the door he put on his gloves. Then he turned his head slowly and faced Milkman. “Tell you somebody else might know about what’s goin on. Corinthians. Ask Corinthians.”
He flashed his gold merrily and was gone.
Chapter 5
Nothing happened to the fear. He lay in Guitar’s bed face-up in the sunlight, trying to imagine how it would feel when the ice pick entered his neck. But picturing a spurt of wine-red blood and wondering if the ice pick would make him cough didn’t help. Fear lay like a pair of crossed paws on his chest.
He closed his eyes and threw his arm over his face to keep the light from overexposing his thoughts. In the darkness that his arm made he could see ice picks coming down faster than raindrops had when he tried as a little boy to catch them with his tongue.
Five hours ago, before he knocked on Guitar’s door, he had stood on the top step, dripping in the summer rain that still patted the window, imagining that the drops were tiny steely picks. Then he knocked on the door.
“Yeah?” The voice was lightly aggressive; Guitar never opened his door to a knock anymore before finding out who it was.
“Me–Milkman,” he answered, and waited for the clicking sounds of three locks being released.
Milkman walked in, hunching his shoulders under his wet suit jacket. “Anything to drink?”
“Now, you know better’n that.” Guitar was smiling, his golden eyes dimmed for the moment. They had not seen much of each other since that argument about Honoré versus Alabama, but the quarrel had been cleansing for both of them. They were easy with each other now that they didn’t have to pretend. When in conversation they came to the battleground of difference, their verbal sparring was full of good humor. Furthermore, their friendship had been tested in more immediate ways. The last six months had been dangerous for Milkman, and Guitar had come to his aid over and over again.
“Coffee, then,” said Milkman. He sat on the bed with the heaviness of a very old man. “How long you gonna keep that up?”
“Forever. It’s over, man. No booze. How about some tea?”
“Jesus.”
“Loose too. Bet you thought tea grew in little bags.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Like Louisiana cotton. Except the black men picking it wear diapers and turbans. All over India that’s all you see. Bushes with little bitsy white tea bags blossoming. Right?”
“Gimme the tea, Guitar. Just the tea. No geography.”
“No geography? Okay, no geography. What about some history in your tea? Or some sociopolitico—No. That’s still geography. Goddam, Milk, I do believe my whole life’s geography.”
“Don’t you wash pots out for people before you cook water in them?”
“For example, I live in the North now. So the first question come to mind is North of what? Why, north of the South. So North exists because South does. But does that mean North is different from South? No way! South is just south of North….”
“You don’t put the fuckin leaves in the boiling water. You pour the water
over
the leaves. In a pot, man. In a teapot!”
“But there is some slight difference worth noticing. Northerners, for example—born and bred ones, that is—are picky about their food. Well, not about the food. They actually don’t give a shit about the food. What they’re picky about is the trappings. You know what I mean? The pots and shit. Now, they’re real funny about pots. But tea? They don’t know Earl Grey from old man Lipton’s instant.”
“I want tea, man. Not won-ton shredded wheat.”
“Old man Lipton dye him up some shredded
New York Times
and put it in a cute little white bag and northern Negroes run amok. Can’t contain themselves. Ever notice that? How they love them little white bags?”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“He’s a Northerner too. Lived in Israel, but a Northerner in His heart. His bleeding heart. His cute little old bleeding red heart. Southerners think they own Him, but that’s just because the first time they laid eyes on Him, He was strung up on a tree. They can relate to that, see. Both the stringer and the strung. But Northerners know better….”
“Who you talking about? Black people or white people?”
“Black? White? Don’t tell me you’re one of those racial Negroes? Who said anything about black people? This is just a geography lesson.” Guitar handed Milkman a steaming cup of tea.
“Yeah, well, if this is tea, I’m a soft-fried egg.”
“See what I mean? Picky. Why you got to be a
soft
-fried egg? Why can’t you be just a fried egg? Or just a plain old egg? And why a egg anyway? Negro’s been a lotta things, but he ain’t never been no egg.”
Milkman began to laugh. Guitar had done it again. He’d come to the door sopping wet, ready to roll over and die, and now he was laughing, spilling tea, and choking out his reply: “How come? How come a nigger can’t be a egg? He can be a egg if he wants to.”
“Nope. Can’t be no egg. It ain’t in him. Something about his genes. His genes won’t let him be no egg no matter how hard he tries. Nature says no. ‘No, you can’t be no egg, nigger. Now, you can be a crow if you wanna. Or a big baboon. But not no egg. Eggs is difficult, complicated. Fragile too. And white.’”
“They got brown eggs.”
“Miscegenation. Besides, don’t nobody want ’em.”
“French people do.”
“In France, yeah. But not in the Congo. Frenchman in the Congo won’t touch a brown egg.”
“Why won’t he?”
“Scared of ’em. Might do something to his skin. Like the sun.”
“French people love the sun. They’re always trying to get in the sun. On the Riviera—”
“They try to get in the French sun, but not the Congo sun. In the Congo they hate the sun.”
“Well, I got a right to be what I want to be, and I want to be a egg.”
“Fried?”
“Fried.”
“Then somebody got to bust your shell.”
Quicker than a pulse beat, Guitar had changed the air. Milkman wiped his mouth, avoiding Guitar’s eyes because he knew the phosphorus was back in them. The little room stood at attention in the quiet. It was a second-story porch walled in to make a room-for-rent so the landlady could get an income from it and have a watchman too. Its outside stairway made it perfect for a bachelor. Especially a secretive one like Guitar Bains.
“Can I have the pad tonight?” Milkman asked him. He examined his fingernails.
“To cop?”
Milkman shook his head.
Guitar didn’t believe him. Didn’t believe his friend really wanted to be alone the night before the day of his own murder. “That’s scary, man. Very scary.”
Milkman didn’t answer.
“You’re not obliged to go through no number, you know. Not for me. Everybody knows you’re brave when you want to be.”
Milkman looked up but still did not answer.
“Still and all,” Guitar went on carefully, “you might get your heart cut out. Then you’ll be just another brave nigger what got wasted.”
Milkman reached for the Pall Mall package. It was empty, so he pulled a longish butt from the Planter’s peanut butter jar top that was Guitar’s ashtray for the day. He stretched out on the bed, letting his long fingers rub the pocket places in his clothes where matches might be. “Everything’s cool,” he said.
“Shit,” said Guitar. “Ain’t nothing cool. Nothing, nowhere. Even the North Pole ain’t cool. You think so, go on up there and watch them fuckin glaciers ice your ass. And what the glaciers don’t get the polar bears will.” Guitar stood up, his head almost touching the ceiling. Annoyed by Milkman’s indifference, he relieved his agitation by straightening up the room. He pulled an empty crate from underneath the straight-backed chair leaning in the corner, and started dumping trash into the box: dead matches from the window sill, pork bones from the barbecue he had eaten the day before. He crumpled the pleated paper cups that had been overflowing with cole slaw and fired them into the crate. “Every nigger I know wants to be cool. There’s nothing wrong with controlling yourself, but can’t nobody control other people.” He looked sideways at Milkman’s face, alert for any sign, any opening. This kind of silence was new. Something must have happened. Guitar was genuinely worried about his friend, but he also didn’t want anything to happen in his room that would bring the police there. He picked up the peanut-butter-top ashtray.
“Wait. There’s still some good butts in there.” Milkman spoke softly.
Guitar dumped the whole ashtray into the box.
“What’d you do that for? You know we don’t have no cigarettes.”
“Then move your ass and go get some.”
“Come on, Guitar. Cut the shit.” Milkman rose from the bed and reached for the crate. He would have gotten it except Guitar stepped back and flung it all the way across the room, letting the mess settle right back where it came from. Graceful and economical as a cat, he arced his arm out of the swing and slammed his fist up against the wall, forming a barrier to any move Milkman might make.
“Pay attention.” Guitar’s voice was low. “Pay attention when I’m trying to tell you something.”
Head to head, toe to toe they stood. Milkman’s left foot hovered above the floor, and Guitar’s eyes with their phosphorous lights singed his heart a little, but he took the stare. “And if I don’t? What then, man? You gonna do me in? My name is Macon, remember? I’m already Dead.”
Guitar didn’t smile at the familiar joke, but there was enough recognition of it in his face to soften the glare in his eyes.
“Somebody ought to tell your murderer that,” said Guitar.
Milkman gave a short laugh and moved back toward the bed. “You worry too much, Guitar.”
“I worry just enough. But right now I need to know how come you ain’t worried at all. You come up here knowing it’s the thirtieth day. Knowing if anybody wants to find you they come here if not first then last. And you ask me to leave you by yourself. Just tell me what you doing.”
“Look,” Milkman said. “Out of all those times, I was scared just twice: the first time and the third. I’ve been handling it ever since, right?”
“Yeah, but something’s funny this time.”
“Ain’t nothing funny.”
“Yeah, it is. You. You funny.”
“No I’m not. Just tired. Tired of dodging crazy people, tired of this jive town, of running up and down these streets getting nowhere….”
“Well, you’re home free if tired is all you are. Soon you’ll have all the rest you ever need. Can’t promise you the bed’s comfortable, but morticians don’t make mattresses.”
“Maybe she won’t come this time.”
“She ain’t missed in six months. You countin on her taking a holiday or something?”
“I can’t hide from that bitch no more. I got to stop it. I don’t want to go through this again a month from now.”
“Why don’t you get her people to do something?”
“I am her people.”
“Listen, Milk, I’ll split if you say so. But just listen to me a minute. That broad had a Carlson skinning knife last time. You know how sharp a Carlson skinning knife is? Cut you like a laser, man.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know. You was up under the bar when me and Moon grabbed her.”
“I know what she had.”
“Won’t be no Moon in this room tomorrow. And no Guitar either, if I listen to you. This time she might have a pistol.”
“What fool is gonna give a colored woman a pistol?”
“Same fool that gave Porter a shotgun.”
“That was years ago.”
“It ain’t even that that bothers me. It’s the way you acting. Like you want it. Like you looking forward to it.”
“Where’d you think that up?”
“Look at you. You all dressed up.”
“I had to work in Sonny’s Shop. You know my old man makes me dress up like this when I’m behind the desk.”
“You had time to change. It’s past midnight.”
“Okay. So I’m clean. So I’m looking forward to it. I just got through telling you I don’t want to hide no more….”
“It’s a secret, ain’t it? You got yourself a secret.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Two? You and her?”
“No. You and me. You’ve been making some funny smoke screens lately.” Milkman looked up at Guitar and smiled. “Just so you don’t think I ain’t noticed.”
Guitar grinned back. Now that he knew there was a secret, he settled down into the groove of their relationship.
“Okay, Mr. Dead, sir. You on your own. Would you ask your visitor to kind of neaten things up a little before she goes? I don’t want to come back and have to look through a pile of cigarette butts for your head. Be nice if it was laying somewhere I could spot it right off. And if it’s her head that’s left behind, well, there’s some towels in the closet on the shelf in the back.”
“Rest your mind, boy. Ain’t nobody giving up no head.”
They laughed then at the suitableness of the unintended pun, and it was in the sound of this laughter that Guitar picked up his brown leather jacket and started out the door.
“Cigarettes!” Milkman called after him. “Bring me some cigarettes before you disappear.”
“Gotcha!” Guitar was halfway down the stairs. Already his thoughts had left Milkman and had flown ahead to the house where six old men waited for him.
He didn’t come back that night.
Milkman lay quietly in the sunlight, his mind a blank, his lungs craving smoke. Gradually his fear of and eagerness for death returned. Above all he wanted to escape what he knew, escape the implications of what he had been told. And all he knew in the world about the world was what other people had told him. He felt like a garbage pail for the actions and hatreds of other people. He himself did nothing. Except for the one time he had hit his father, he had never acted independently, and that act, his only one, had brought unwanted knowledge too, as well as some responsibility for that knowledge. When his father told him about Ruth, he joined him in despising her, but he felt put upon; felt as though some burden had been given to him and that he didn’t deserve it. None of that was his fault, and he didn’t want to have to think or be or do something about any of it.
In that mood of lazy righteousness he wallowed in Guitar’s bed, the same righteousness that had made him tail his mother like a secret agent when she left the house a week or so ago.
Returning home from a party, he had hardly pulled Macon’s Buick up to the curb and turned off the car lights when he saw his mother walking a little ahead of him down Not Doctor Street. It was one-thirty in the morning, but in spite of the hour and her turned-up coat collar, there was no air of furtiveness about her at all. She was walking in what seemed to him a determined manner. Neither hurried nor aimless. Just the even-paced walk of a woman on her way to some modest but respectable work.