Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

“Oh, no. No, thank you, sir. Maybe a little something to drink. I mean if you do drink, that is.”

“Sure. Sure. Nothing citified, I’m sorry to say, but—Esther!” She was on her way to the kitchen. “Bring some glasses and get that whiskey out the cupboard. This here’s Macon Dead’s boy and he’s tired and needs a drink. Tell me, how’d you find me? Don’t tell me your daddy remembered me?”

“He probably does, but I met a man in the street and he told me how to find you.”

“You asked him for me?” Reverend Cooper wanted to get all the facts straight. Already he was framing the story for his friends: how the man came to his house first, how he asked for him….

Esther returned with a Coca-Cola tray, two glasses, and a large mayonnaise jar of what looked like water. Reverend Cooper poured it warm and neat into the two glasses. No ice, no water—just pure rye whiskey that almost tore Milkman’s throat when he swallowed it.

“No. I didn’t ask for you by name. I asked him if he knew where a woman named Circe used to live.”

“Circe? Yes. Lord, old Circe!”

“He told me to talk to you.”

Reverend Cooper smiled and poured more whiskey. “Everybody round here knows me and I know everybody.”

“Well, I know my father stayed with her awhile, after they…when they…after his father died.”

“They had a fine place. Mighty fine. Some white folks own it now. Course that’s what they wanted. That’s why they shot him. Upset a lot of people here, a whole lot of people. Scared ’em too. But didn’t your daddy have a sister name of Pilate?”

“Yes, sir. Pilate.”

“Still living, is she?”

“Oh, yes. Very much living.”

“Issat so? Pretty girl, real pretty. My daddy was the one made the earring for her. That’s how we knew they was alive. After Old Macon Dead was killed, nobody knew whether the children was dead too or what. Then a few weeks passed and Circe came to my daddy’s shop. Right across from where the post office is now—that’s where my daddy’s blacksmith shop was. She came in there with this little metal box with a piece of paper bag folded up in it. Pilate’s name was written on it. Circe didn’t tell Daddy anything, but that he was to make a earring out of it. She stole a brooch from the folks she worked for. My daddy took the gold pin off it and soldered it to the box. So we knew they was alive and Circe was taking care of ’em. They’d be all right with Circe. She worked for the Butlers—rich white folks, you know—but she was a good midwife in those days. Delivered everybody. Me included.”

Maybe it was the whiskey, which always made other people gracious when he drank it, but Milkman felt a glow listening to a story come from this man that he’d heard many times before but only half listened to. Or maybe it was being there in the place where it happened that made it seem so real. Hearing Pilate talk about caves and woods and earrings on Darling Street, or his father talk about cooking wild turkey over the automobile noise of Not Doctor Street, seemed exotic, something from another world and age, and maybe not even true. Here in the parsonage, sitting in a cane-bottomed chair near an upright piano and drinking homemade whiskey poured from a mayonnaise jar, it was real. Without knowing it, he had walked right by the place where Pilate’s earring had been fashioned, the earring that had fascinated him when he was little, the fixing of which informed the colored people here that the children of the murdered man were alive. And this was the living room of the son of the man who made the earring.

“Did anybody ever catch the men who did it—who killed him?”

Reverend Cooper raised his eyebrows. “Catch?” he asked, his face full of wonder. Then he smiled again. “Didn’t have to catch ’em. They never went nowhere.”

“I mean did they have a trial; were they arrested?”

“Arrested for what? Killing a nigger? Where did you say you was from?”

“You mean nobody did anything? Didn’t even try to find out who did it?”

“Everybody knew who did it. Same people Circe worked for—the Butlers.”

“And nobody did anything?” Milkman wondered at his own anger. He hadn’t felt angry when he first heard about it. Why now?

“Wasn’t nothing to do. White folks didn’t care, colored folks didn’t dare. Wasn’t no police like now. Now we got a county sheriff handles things. Not then. Then the circuit judge came through just once or twice a year. Besides, the people what did it owned half the county. Macon’s land was in their way. Folks just was thankful the children escaped.”

“You said Circe worked for the people who killed him. Did she know that?”

“Course she did.”

“And she let them stay there?”

“Not out in the open. She hid them.”

“Still, they were in the same house, right?”

“Yep. Best place, I’d say. If they came to town somebody’d see’em. Nobody would think of looking there.”

“Did Daddy—did my father know that?”

“I don’t know what he knew, if Circe ever told him. I never saw him after the murder. None of us did.”

“Where are they? The Butlers. They still live here?”

“Dead now. Every one of ’em. The last one, the girl Elizabeth, died a couple years back. Barren as a rock and just as old. Things work out, son. The ways of God are mysterious, but if you live it out, just live it out, you see that it always works out. Nothing they stole or killed for did ’em a bit a good. Not one bit.”

“I don’t care whether it did them good. The fact is they did somebody else harm.”

Reverend Cooper shrugged. “White folks different up your way?”

“No, I guess not…. Sometimes, though, you can do something.”

“What?” The preacher looked genuinely interested.

Milkman couldn’t answer except in Guitar’s words, so he said nothing.

“See this here?” The reverend turned around and showed Milkman a knot the size of a walnut that grew behind his ear. “Some of us went to Philly to try and march in an Armistice Day parade. This was after the First World War. We were invited and had a permit, but the people, the white people, didn’t like us being there. They started a fracas. You know, throwing rocks and calling us names. They didn’t care nothing ‘bout the uniform. Anyway, some police on horseback came—to quiet them down, we thought. They ran us down. Right under their horses. This here’s what a hoof can do. Ain’t that something?”

“Jesus God.”

“You wouldn’t be here to even things up, would you?” The preacher leaned over his stomach.

“No. I’m passing through, that’s all. Just thought I’d look around. I wanted to see the farm….”

“Cause any evening up left to do, Circe took care of.”

“What’d she do?”

“Hah! What didn’t she do?”

“Sorry I didn’t come out here long time ago. I would have liked to meet her. She must have been a hundred years old when she died.”

“Older. Was a hundred when I was a boy.”

“Is the farm nearby?” Milkman appeared mildly interested.

“Not too far.”

“I sort of wanted to see where it was since I’m out this way. Daddy talked so much about it.”

“It’s right back of the Butler place, about fifteen miles out. I can take you there. My old piece of car’s in the shop, but it was supposed to be ready yesterday. I’ll check on it.”

Milkman waited four days for the car to be ready. Four days at Reverend Cooper’s house as his guest, and the purpose of long visits from every old man in the town who remembered his father or his grandfather, and some who’d only heard. They all repeated various aspects of the story, all talked about how beautiful Lincoln’s Heaven was. Sitting in the kitchen, they looked at Milkman with such rheumy eyes, and spoke about his grandfather with such awe and affection, Milkman began to miss him too. His own father’s words came back to him: “I worked right alongside my father. Right alongside him.” Milkman thought then that his father was boasting of his manliness as a child. Now he knew he had been saying something else. That he loved his father; had an intimate relationship with him; that his father loved him, trusted him, and found him worthy of working “right alongside” him. “Something went wild in me,” he’d said, “when I saw him on the ground.”