Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

His voice sounded different to Milkman. Less hard, and his speech was different. More southern and comfortable and soft. Milkman spoke softly too. “Pilate said somebody shot your father. Five feet into the air.”

“Took him sixteen years to get that farm to where it was paying. It’s all dairy country up there now. Then it wasn’t. Then it was…nice.”

“Who shot him, Daddy?”

Macon focused his eyes on his son. “Papa couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name. Had a mark he used. They tricked him. He signed something, I don’t know what, and they told him they owned his property. He never read nothing. I tried to teach him, but he said he couldn’t remember those little marks from one day to the next. Wrote one word in his life—Pilate’s name; copied it out of the Bible. That’s what she got folded up in that earring. He should have let me teach him. Everything bad that ever happened to him happened because he couldn’t read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn’t read.”

“His name? How?”

“When freedom came. All the colored people in the state had to register with the Freedmen’s Bureau.”

“Your father was a slave?”

“What kind of foolish question is that? Course he was. Who hadn’t been in 1869? They all had to register. Free and not free. Free and used-to-be-slaves. Papa was in his teens and went to sign up, but the man behind the desk was drunk. He asked Papa where he was born. Papa said Macon. Then he asked him who his father was. Papa said, ‘He’s dead.’ Asked him who owned him, Papa said, ‘I’m free.’ Well, the Yankee wrote it all down, but in the wrong spaces. Had him born in Dunfrie, wherever the hell that is, and in the space for his name the fool wrote, ‘Dead’ comma ‘Macon.’ But Papa couldn’t read so he never found out what he was registered as till Mama told him. They met on a wagon going North. Started talking about one thing and another, told her about being a freedman and showed off his papers to her. When she looked at his paper she read him out what it said.”

“He didn’t have to keep the name, did he? He could have used his real name, couldn’t he?”

“Mama liked it. Liked the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it all out.”

“What was his real name?”

“I don’t remember my mother too well. She died when I was four. Light-skinned, pretty. Looked like a white woman to me. Me and Pilate don’t take nothing after her. If you ever have a doubt we from Africa, look at Pilate. She look just like Papa and he looked like all them pictures you ever see of Africans. A Pennsylvania African. Acted like one too. Close his face up like a door.”

“I saw Pilate’s face like that.” Milkman felt close and confidential now that his father had talked to him in a relaxed and intimate way.

“I haven’t changed my mind, Macon. I don’t want you over there.”

“Why? You still haven’t said why.”

“Just listen to what I say. That woman’s no good. She’s a snake, and can charm you like a snake, but still a snake.”

“You talking about your own sister, the one you carried in your arms to the fields every morning.”

“That was a long time ago. You seen her. What she look like to you? Somebody nice? Somebody normal?”

“Well, she…”

“Or somebody cut your throat?”

“She didn’t look like that, Daddy.”

“Well she is like that.”

“What’d she do?”

“It ain’t what she did; it’s what she is.”

“What is she?”

“A snake, I told you. Ever hear the story about the snake? The man who saw a little baby snake on the ground? Well, the man saw this baby snake bleeding and hurt. Lying there in the dirt. And the man felt sorry for it and picked it up and put it in his basket and took it home. And he fed it and took care of it till it was big and strong. Fed it the same thing he ate. Then one day, the snake turned on him and bit him. Stuck his poison tongue right in the man’s heart. And while he was laying there dying, he turned to the snake and asked him, ‘What’d you do that for?’ He said, ‘Didn’t I take good care of you? Didn’t I save your life?’ The snake said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then what’d you do it for? What’d you kill me for?’ Know what the snake said? Said, ‘But you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?’ Now, I mean for you to stay out of that wine house and as far away from Pilate as you can.”

Milkman lowered his head. His father had explained nothing to him.

“Boy, you got better things to do with your time. Besides, it’s time you started learning how to work. You start Monday. After school come to my office; work a couple of hours there and learn what’s real. Pilate can’t teach you a thing you can use in this world. Maybe the next, but not this one. Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too. Starting Monday, I’m going to teach you how.”

Chapter 3

Life improved for Milkman enormously after he began working for Macon. Contrary to what his father hoped, there was more time to visit the wine house. Running errands for Macon’s rent houses gave him leave to be in Southside and get to know the people Guitar knew so well. Milkman was young and he was friendly—just the opposite of his father—and the tenants felt at ease enough with him to tease him, feed him, confide in him. But it was hard to see much of Guitar. Saturdays were the only days he was certain to find him. If Milkman got up early enough on Saturday morning, he could catch his friend before Guitar went roaming the streets and before he himself had to help Macon collect rents. But there were days in the week when they agreed to skip school and hang out, and on one of those days Guitar took him to Feather’s pool hall on Tenth Street, right in the middle of the Blood Bank area.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Guitar pushed open the door and shouted, “Hey, Feather! Give us a couple of Red Caps.”

Feather, a short squat man with sparse but curly hair, looked up at Guitar, then at Milkman, and frowned.

“Get him out of here.”

Guitar stopped short and followed the little man’s gaze to Milkman’s face and back again. The half-dozen men there playing pool turned around at the sound of Feather’s voice. Three of them were air force pilots, part of the 332nd Fighter Group. Their beautiful hats and gorgeous leather jackets were carefully arranged on chairs. Their hair was cut close to the skull; their shirt cuffs were turned neatly back on their forearms; their white scarves hung in snowy rectangles from their hip pockets. Silver chains glistened at their necks and they looked faintly amused as they worked chalk into the tips of their cues.

Guitar’s face shone with embarrassment. “He’s with me,” he said.

“I said get him outta here.”

“Come on, Feather, he’s my friend.”

“He’s Macon Dead’s boy, ain’t he?”

“So what”

“So get him outta here.”

“He can’t help who his daddy is.” Guitar had his voice under control.

“Neither can I. Out.”

“What his daddy do to you?”

“Nothing yet. That’s why I want him outta here.”

“He ain’t like his daddy.”

“He ain’t got to be like him— from him is enough.”

“I’ll be responsible for—”

“Stop messing with me, Guitar. Get him out. He ain’t old enough to have wet dreams.”

The pilots laughed and a man in a gray straw hat with a white band said, “Aw, let the boy stay, Feather.”

“You shut your mouth. I’m running this.”

“What harm can he do? A twelve-year-old kid.” He smiled at Milkman, who stopped himself from saying, No, thirteen.