Toni Morrison - Paradise

So on the evening of the argument with the young people at Mount Calvary, Dovey stuck the key in the lock of the foreclosed house, annoyed with Steward for making it necessary and agitated by the nasty turn the meeting had taken. She hoped to sit with a cup of hot tea, read some verses or a few psalms and collect her thoughts on the matter that was angering everybody, in case her Friend passed by in the morning. If he did, she would ask his opinion. But she had decided against tea or reading and, after saying her prayers, climbed into bed, where an unanswerable question blocked sleep: aside from giving up his wealth, can a rich man be a good one? She would ask her Friend about that too.

Now, at least, at last, the backyard was lovely enough to receive him. At the first visit it had been a mess, untended, trashy-home to cats, garden snakes, straying chickens-with only the coral-colored wings to recommend it. She had to fix it up herself. K. D. balked and gave unimaginative excuses. And it was hard getting young people interested. Billie Delia used to be her helper, which was surprising since boys dominated her brain otherwise. But something was wrong there too. No one had seen her for some time and the girl's mother, Pat Best, foreclosed all questions. Still angry, thought Dovey, at the town's treatment of her father. Although Billie Delia was not at the meeting, her attitude was. Even as a little girl, with that odd rosy-tan skin and wayward brown hair, she pushed out her lips at everything-everything but gardening. Dovey missed her and wondered what Billie Delia thought of changing the Oven's message. "Beware the Furrow of His Brow"? "Be the Furrow of His Brow"? Her own opinion was that "Furrow of His Brow" alone was enough for any age or generation. Specifying it, particularizing it, nailing its meaning down, was futile. The only nailing needing to be done had already taken place. On the Cross. Wasn't that so? She'd ask her Friend. And then tell Soane. Meantime the scratching sound was gone and on the cusp of sleep she knew canned peas would do just fine.

Steward rolled down the window and spit. Carefully so the wind would not return it to his face. He was disgusted. "Cut me some slack."

That was the slogan those young simpletons really wanted to paint on the Oven. Like his nephew, K.D., they had no notion of what it took to build this town. What they were protected from. What humiliations they did not have to face. Driving, as always, as fast as the car would go once he was back on the county road heading for his ranch, Steward mulled over the difference between "Beware" and "Be" and how Big Papa would have explained it. Personally he didn't give a damn. The point was not why it should or should not be changed, but what Reverend Misner gained by instigating the idea. He spat again, thinking how much of a fool Misner turned out to be. Foolish and maybe even dangerous. He wondered if that generation-Misner's and K.D.'s- would have to be sacrificed to get to the next one. The grand- and great-grandchildren who could be trained, honed as his own father and grandfather had done for Steward's generation. No breaks there; no slack cut then. Expectations were high and met. Nobody took more responsibility for their behavior than those good men. He remembered his brother's, Elder Morgan's, account of disembarking from Liverpool at a New Jersey port. Hoboken. In 1919. Taking a walk around New York City before catching his train, he saw two men arguing with a woman. From her clothes, Elder said, he guessed she was a streetwalking woman, and registering contempt for her trade, he felt at first a connection with the shouting men. Suddenly one of the men smashed the woman in her face with his fist. She fell. Just as suddenly the scene slid from everyday color to black and white. Elder said his mouth went dry. The two whitemen turned away from the unconscious Negro woman sprawled on the pavement. Before Elder could think, one of them changed his mind and came back to kick her in the stomach. Elder did not know he was running until he got there and pulled the man away. He had been running and fighting for ten straight months, still unweaned from spontaneous violence. Elder hit the whiteman in the jaw and kept hitting until attacked by the second man. Nobody won. All were bruised. The woman was still lying on the pavement when a small crowd began yelling for the police. Frightened, Elder ran and wore his army overcoat all the way back to Oklahoma for fear an officer would see the condition of his uniform. Later, when his wife, Susannah, cleaned, pressed and mended it, he told her to remove the stitches, to let the jacket pocket flap, the shirt collar stay ripped, the buttons hang or remain missing. It was too late to save the bloodstains, so he tucked the bloody handkerchief into the pants pocket along with his two medals. He never got the sight of that whiteman's fist in that colored woman's face out of his mind. Whatever he felt about her trade, he thought about her, prayed for her till the end of his life. Susannah put up a protracted argument, but the Morgan men won. Elder was buried as he demanded to be: in the uniform with its rips on display. He didn't excuse himself for running, abandoning the woman, and didn't expect God to cut him any slack for it. And he was prepared for Him to ask how it happened. Steward liked that story, but it unnerved him to know it was based on the defense of and prayers for a whore. He did not sympathize with the whitemen, but he could see their point, could even feel the adrenaline, imagining the fist was his own.

Steward parked and entered the house. He did not look forward to any bed without Dovey in it and tried again to think of an argument to keep her from staying in town so often. It would be futile; he could deny her nothing. He met the collies and took them along to see how well the hands had done their work. They were local men, whose wives and fathers he knew; who attended the same or a nearby church and who hated as he did the notion of "cut me some slack." Again the bitterness rose. Had he any sons, they would have been sterling examples of rectitude, laughing at Misner's notions of manhood: backtalk, name changes-as if word magic had anything to do with the courage it took to be a man.

Steward leashed the dogs and unlatched the horse barn. His preference was to mount around four a. m. and ride Night till sunrise. He loved to roam the pastures, where everything was in the open. Saddled on Night, he rediscovered every time the fresh wonder of knowing that on one's own land you could never be lost the way Big Papa and Big Daddy and all seventy-nine were after leaving Fairly, Oklahoma. On foot and completely lost, they were. And angry. But not afraid of anything except the condition of the children's feet. By and large they were healthy. But the pregnant women needed more and more rest. Drum Blackhorse's wife, Celeste; his grandmother, Miss Mindy; and Beck, his own mother, were all with child. It was the shame of seeing one's pregnant wife or sister or daughter refused shelter that had rocked them, and changed them for all time. The humiliation did more than rankle; it threatened to crack open their bones. Steward remembered every detail of the story his father and grandfather told, and had no trouble imagining the shame for himself.

Dovey, for instance, before each miscarriage, her hand resting on the small of her back, her eyes narrowed, looking inward, always inward at the baby inside her. How would he have felt if some highfalutin men in collars and good shoes had told her, "Get away from here," and he, Steward, couldn't do a thing about it? Even now, in 1973, riding his own land with free wind blowing Night's mane, the thought of that level of helplessness made him want to shoot somebody. Seventy-nine. All their belongings strapped to their backs or riding on their heads. Young ones time-sharing shoes. Stopping only to relieve themselves, sleep and eat trash. Trash and boiled meal, trash and meal cake, trash and game, trash and dandelion greens. Dreaming of a roof, fish, rice, syrup. Raggedy as sauerkraut, they dreamed of clean clothes with buttons, shirts with both sleeves. They walked in a line: Drum and Thomas Blackhorse at the head, Big Papa, lame now, carried sitting up on a plank at the tail. After Fairly they didn't know which way to go and didn't want to meet anybody who might tell them or have something else in mind. They kept away from wagon trails, tried to stay closer to pinewoods and streambeds, heading northwest for no particular reason other than it seemed farthest away from Fairly.