Toni Morrison - Paradise

"Reverend." The Reverend Pulliam stood up. He was a dark, wiry man-white-haired and impressive. "We have a problem here. You, me. Everybody. The problem is with the way some of us talk. The grown-ups, of course, should use proper language. But the young people-what they say is more like backtalk than talk. What we're here for is-" Royal Beauchamp actually interrupted him, the Reverend! "What is talk if it's not 'back'? You all just don't want us to talk at all. Any talk is 'backtalk' if you don't agree with what's being said…. Sir." Everybody was so stunned by the boy's brazenness, they hardly heard what he said.

Pulliam, dismissing the possibility that Roy's parents-Luther and Helen Beauchamp-were there, turned slowly to Misner. "Reverend, can't you keep that boy still?"

"Why would I want to?" asked Misner. "We're here not just to talk but to listen too."

The gasps were more felt than heard.

Pulliam narrowed his eyes and was about to answer when Deek Morgan left the row and stood in the aisle. "Well, sir, I have listened, and I believe I have heard as much as I need to. Now, you all listen to me. Real close. Nobody, I mean nobody, is going to change the Oven or call it something strange. Nobody is going to mess with a thing our grandfathers built. They made each and every brick one at a time with their own hands." Deek looked steadily at Roy. "They dug the clay-not you. They carried the hod-not you." He turned his head to include Destry, Hurston and Caline Poole, Lorcas and Linda Sands.

"They mixed the mortar-not a one of you. They made good strong brick for that oven when their own shelter was sticks and sod. You understand what I'm telling you? And we respected what they had gone through to do it. Nothing was handled more gently than the bricks those men-men, hear me? not slaves, ex or otherwise- the bricks those men made. Tell, them, Sargeant, how delicate was the separation, how careful we were, how we wrapped them, each and every one. Tell them, Fleet. You, Seawright, you, Harper, you tell him if I'm lying. Me and my brother lifted that iron. The two of us. And if some letters fell off, it wasn't due to us because we packed it in straw like it was a mewing lamb. So understand me when I tell you nobody is going to come along some eighty years later claiming to know better what men who went through hell to learn knew. Act short with me all you want, you in long trouble if you think you can disrespect a row you never hoed."

Twenty varieties of "amen" italicized Deek's pronouncement. The point he'd made would have closed off further argument if Misner had not said: "Seems to me, Deek, they are respecting it. It's because they do know the Oven's value that they want to give it new life." The mutter unleashed by this second shift to the young people's position rose to a roar, which subsided only to hear how the antagonists responded.

"They don't want to give it nothing. They want to kill it, change it into something they made up."

"It's our history too, sir. Not just yours," said Roy. "Then act like it. I just told you. That Oven already has a history. It doesn't need you to fix it."

"Wait now, Deek," said Richard Misner. "Think what's been said. Forget naming-naming the Oven. What's at issue is clarifying the motto."

"Motto? Motto? We talking command!" Reverend Pulliam pointed an elegant finger at the ceiling. " 'Beware the Furrow of His Brow.' That's what it says clear as daylight. That's not a suggestion; that's an order!"

"Well, no. It's not clear as daylight," said Misner. "It says '… the Furrow of His Brow.' There is no 'Beware' on it."

"You weren't there! Esther was! And you weren't here, either, at the beginning! Esther was!" Arnold Fleetwood's right hand shook with warning.

"She was a baby. She could have been mistaken," said Misner.

Now Fleet joined Deek in the aisle. "Esther never made a mistake of that nature in her life. She knew all there was to know about Haven and Ruby too. She visited us before we had a road. She named this town, dammit. 'Scuse me, ladies."

Destry, looking strained and close to tears, held up his hand and asked, "Excuse me, sir. What's so wrong about 'Be the Furrow'? 'Be the Furrow of His Brow'?"

"You can't be God, boy." Nathan DuPres spoke kindly as he shook his head.

"It's not being Him, sir; it's being His instrument, His justice. As a race-"

"God's justice is His alone. How you going to be His instrument if you don't do what He says?" asked Reverend Pulliam. "You have to obey Him."

"Yes, sir, but we are obeying Him," said Destry. "If we follow His commandments, we'll be His voice, His retribution. As a people-" Harper Jury silenced him. "It says 'Beware.' Not 'Be.' Beware means 'Look out. The power is mine. Get used to it.' "

" 'Be' means you putting Him aside and you the power," said Sargeant.

"We are the power if we just-"

"See what I mean? See what I mean? Listen to that! You hear that, Reverend? That boy needs a strap. Blasphemy!" As could have been predicted, Steward had the last word-or at least the words they all remembered as last because they broke the meeting up. "Listen here," he said, his voice thick and shapely with Blue Boy. "If you, any one of you, ignore, change, take away, or add to the words in the mouth of that Oven, I will blow your head off just like you was a hood-eye snake."

Dovey Morgan, chilled by her husband's threat, could only look at the floorboards and wonder what visible shape his loss would take now.

Days later she still hadn't made up her mind about who or which side was right. And in discussion with others, including Steward, she tended to agree with whomever she was listening to. This matter was one she would bring to her Friend-when he came back to her.

Driving away from the meeting at Calvary, Steward and Dovey had a small but familiar disagreement about where to go. He was headed out to the ranch. It was reduced to a show ranch now that gas rights had been sold, but in Steward's mind it was home-where his American flag flew on holidays; where his honorable discharge papers were framed; where Ben and Good could be counted on to bang their tails maniacally when he appeared. But the little house they kept on St. Matthew Street-a foreclosure the twins never resold-was becoming more and more home to Dovey. It was close to her sister, to Mount Calvary, the Women's Club. It was also where her Friend chose to pay his calls.

"Drop me right here, Steward. I'll walk the rest of the way."

"You going to catch your death."

"No I won't. Night chill feels good right now."

"Girl, you a torment," he said, but he patted her thigh before she got out.

Dovey walked slowly down Central Avenue. In the distance she could see lanterns from the Juneteenth picnic hanging near the Oven.

Four months now, and no one had taken them down to store for next year. Now they provided light-just a little, just enough-for other kinds of freedom celebrations going on in its shadows. On her left was the bank, not as tall as any of the churches but seeming nevertheless to hog the street. Neither brother had wanted a second floor like the Haven bank had, where the Lodge kept its quarters. They didn't want traffic into their building for any reason other than bank business. The Haven bank their father owned collapsed for a whole lot of reasons, and one of them, Steward maintained, was having Lodge meetings on the premises. "Ravels the concentration," he'd said. Three streets beyond, on her right, next to Patricia Best's house, was the school where Dovey had taught while the ranch house was being completed but Soane had taught longer since she lived so close. Pat ran the school by herself now, with Reverend Misner and Anna Flood filling in for Negro History classes and after-school typing lessons. The flowers and vegetables on one side of the school were an extension of the garden in front of Pat's own house.