Toni Morrison - Paradise

"The money," said Misner. "The Morgans had the money. I guess I should say they financed the town-not founded it." The cat would not eat while being watched, so Anna forfeited a peep at the kittens and turned back to Richard Misner. "You wrong there too. Everybody pitched in. The bank idea was just a way of doing it. Families bought shares in it, you know, instead of just making deposits they could run through any old time. This way their money was safe."

Misner nodded and wiped his hands. He didn't want another argument. Anna refused to understand the difference between investing and cooperating. Just as she refused to believe the woodstove gave more warmth than her little electric heater.

"The Morgans had the resources, that's all," she said. "From their father's bank back in Haven. My grandfather, Able Flood, was his partner. Everybody called him Big Daddy, but his real name was-"

"I know, I know. Rector. Rector Morgan, also known as Big Daddy.

Son of Zechariah Morgan, known throughout Christendom as Big Papa." And then he quoted a refrain the citizens of Ruby loved to recite. " 'Rector's bank failed, but he didn't.' "

"It's true. The bank had to close down-in the early forties-but it didn't close out. I mean they had enough so we could start over. I know what you're thinking, but you can't honestly say it didn't work. People prosper here. Everybody."

"Everybody's prospering on credit, Anna. That's not the same thing."

"So?"

"So what if the credit's gone?"

"It can't be gone. We own the bank; the bank doesn't own us."

"Aw, Anna. You don't get it, do you? You don't understand." She enjoyed his face even when he was putting down people she liked. Steward, for example, he seemed to despise, but it was Steward who had taught her the scorpion lesson. When Anna was four, she was sitting on the new porch of her father's store-back in 1954-when everybody was building something while a group of men including Steward were helping Ace Flood finish the shelving. They were inside, resting after a quick lunch, while Anna derailed ants on the steps: introducing obstacles into their routes, watching them climb over the leaf's edge and go on as though a brand-new green mountain were an inevitable part of their journey. Suddenly a scorpion shot out near her bare foot, and she ran wide-eyed into the store. The talk stopped while the men weighed this infantile interruption, and it was Steward who picked her up in his arms, asked, What's bothering you, good-lookin'? and relieved her fears. Anna clung to him while he explained that the scorpion's tail was up because it was just as scared of her as she was of it. In Detroit, watching baby-faced police handling guns, she remembered the scorpion's rigid tail. Once, she had asked Steward what it felt like to be a twin. "Can't say," he answered, "since I was never not one. But I guess it feels more complete."

"Like you can never be lonely?" Anna asked.

"Well, yes. Like that. But more like… superior."

When Ace died she came back to Ruby and was about to sell out-the store, the apartment, the car, everything-and return to Detroit, when he came riding into town, alone, in a beat-up Ford.

Calvary's new minister.

Anna folded her arms on the wooden counter. "I own this store. My daddy died-it's mine. No rent. No mortgage. Just taxes, town fees. I buy things; I sell things; the markup is mine."

"You're lucky. What about the farms? Suppose a crop fails, say, two years in a row. Does old Mrs. Sands or Nathan DuPres get to take out their share? Borrow on it? Sell it to the bank? What?"

"I don't know what they do, but I do know it's no gain to the bank for them to lose it. So they'd give them money to buy more seed, guano, whatever."

"You mean lend them the money."

"You're making my head ache. Where you come from, all that might be true. Ruby's different."

"Hope so."

"Is so. Any problem brewing sure ain't money."

"Well, what is it then?"

"Hard to figure, but I don't like the way Deek's face looks when he's checking the Oven. He does it every day God sends now. More like hunting than checking. They're just kids."

"That fist painting scared a lot of people."

"Why? It was a picture! You'd think somebody had burned a cross!" Annoyed, she started wiping things-jars, case fronts, the soda pop cooler. "He should talk to the parents, not go hunting for the kids like he's a sheriff. Kids need more than what's here." Misner couldn't agree more. Since the murder of Martin Luther King, new commitments had been sworn, laws introduced but most of it was decorative: statues, street names, speeches. It was as though something valuable had been pawned and the claim ticket lost. That was what Destry, Roy, Little Mirth and the rest were looking for. Maybe the fist painter was looking for it too. In any case, if they couldn't find the ticket, they might break into the pawnshop. Question was, who pawned it in the first place and why.

"You told me that's why you left-nothing to do-but you never said why you came back."

Anna wasn't about to explain all of that, so she elaborated on what he already knew. "Yeah. Well. Thought I could do something up north. Something real that wouldn't break my heart. But it was all, I don't know, talk, running around. I got confused. Still, I don't regret going one bit-even though it didn't work out."

"Well, I'm glad it didn't, whatever the reason." He stroked her hand.

Anna returned his touch. "I'm worried," she said. "About Billie Delia. We have to come up with something, Richard. Something more than choir competitions and Bible class and ribbons for fat vegetables and baby showers…"

"What about her?"

"Oh, I don't know. She came in here a while back, and I knew right away she had something on her mind, but the truck was late with my goods, so I was short with her."

"Which is to say what?"

"She's gone off. At least I think so. Nobody's seen her."

"What does her mother say?"

Anna shrugged. "Pat's hard to talk to. Kate asked her about Billie Delia-hadn't seen her at choir practice. Know what she did? Answered Kate's question with another." Anna mimicked Pat Best's soft, cold voice. " 'Why do you need to know that?' She and Kate are close, too."

"You think she's courting harm? She couldn't just disappear without anybody knowing where to."

"I don't know what I think."

"Talk to Roger. He should know. He's her grandfather."

"You ask him. Not me."

"Say, what is all this feeling about Roger? I've been here three years, almost, and I can't make out why folks freeze around him. Is it his mortuary business?"

"Probably. That and, well, he 'prepared,' if you get my meaning, his own wife."

"Oh."

"That's something to think about, ain't it?"

"Still."

They were quiet for a moment, thinking about it. Then Anna walked around the counter and stood at the window. "You know, you right smart about weather. This is the third time I disbelieved you and was proved wrong."

Misner joined her. Just touching the pane they could tell the temperature had dropped suddenly into the teens.

"Go ahead. Light it," she said, laughing and happy to be wrong if it made this man she adored right. There were church women who disapproved of his obvious interest in her-her and nobody else. And Pat Best was skilled at hiding her own interest in him. But Anna thought there was more to it than perhaps their own plans for this handsome, intelligent man and their various daughters and nieces. She was certain the disapproval was mostly because of her unstraightened hair. My God, the conversations she had been forced to have when she came back from Detroit. Strange, silly, invasive probings. She felt as though they were discussing her pubic hair, her underarm hair. That if she had walked completely naked down the street they would have commented only on the hair on her head. The subject summoned more passion, invited more opinions, solicited more anger than that prostitute Menus brought home from Virginia. She probably would have straightened it again, eventually-it wasn't a permanent change or a statement-except it clarified so much for her in the days when she was confused about so much else. Instantly she could identify friends and those who were not; recognize the well-brought-up, the ill-raised, the threatened, the insecure. Dovey Morgan liked it; Pat Best hated it; Deek and Steward shook their heads; Kate Golightly loved it and helped her keep it shaped; Reverend Pulliam preached a whole sermon about it; K. D. laughed at it; most of the young people admired it, except Arnette. Like a Geiger counter, her hair registered, she believed, tranquillity or the intensity of a rumbling, deep-down disorder.