Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

“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.