Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

Milkman stepped off the porch, scattering the hens, and walked down the road toward a clump of trees near a building that looked like a church or clubhouse of some sort. Children were playing behind the trees. Spreading his jacket on the burnt grass, he sat down and lit a cigarette.

Guitar was here. Had asked for him. But why was he afraid? They were friends, close friends. So close he had told him all about the Seven Days. There was no trust heavier than that. Milkman was a confidant, almost an accomplice. So why was he afraid? It was senseless. Guitar must have left that particular message so Milkman could know who was looking for him without his giving his name. Something must have happened back home. Guitar must be running, from the police, maybe, and decided to run toward his friend—the only one other than the Days who would know what it was all about and whom he could trust. Guitar needed to find Milkman and he needed help. That was it. But if Guitar knew Milkman was headed for Shalimar, he must have found that out in Roanoke, or Culpeper—or maybe even in Danville. And if he knew that, why didn’t he wait? Where was he now? Trouble. Guitar was in trouble.

Behind him the children were singing a kind of ring-around-the-rosy or Little Sally Walker game. Milkman turned to watch. About eight or nine boys and girls were standing in a circle. A boy in the middle, his arms outstretched, turned around like an airplane, while the others sang some meaningless rhyme:

Jay the only son of Solomon

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

Whirl about and touch the sun

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee …

They went on with several verses, the boy in the middle doing his imitation of an airplane. The climax of the game was a rapid shouting of nonsense words accompanied by more rapid twirling: “Solomon rye balaly shoo ; yaraba medina hamlet too ”—until the last line. “Twenty-one children the last one Jay! ” At which point the boy crashed to earth and the others screamed.

Milkman watched the children. He’d never played like that as a child. As soon as he got up off his knees at the window sill, grieving because he could not fly, and went off to school, his velvet suit separated him from the other children. White and black thought he was a riot and went out of their way to laugh at him and see to it that he had no lunch to eat, nor any crayons, nor ever got through the line to the toilet or the water fountain. His mother finally surrendered to his begging for corduroy knickers or straights, which helped a little, but he was never asked to play those circle games, those singing games, to join in anything, until Guitar pulled those four boys off him. Milkman smiled, remembering how Guitar grinned and whooped as the four boys turned on him. It was the first time Milkman saw anybody really enjoy a fight. Afterward Guitar had taken off his baseball cap and handed it to Milkman, telling him to wipe the blood from his nose. Milkman bloodied the cap, returned it, and Guitar slapped it back on his head.

Remembering those days now, Milkman was ashamed of having been frightened or suspicious of Guitar’s message. When he turned up, he would explain everything and Milkman would do what he could to help. He stood up and brushed his jacket. A black rooster strutted by, its blood-red comb draped forward like a wicked brow.

Milkman walked back toward Solomon’s store. He needed a place to stay, some information, and a woman, not necessarily in that order. He would begin wherever the beginning was. In a way it was good Guitar had asked for him. Along with waiting for him and waiting for some way to get a new fan belt, he had a legitimate reason to dawdle. Hens and cats gave up their places on the steps as he approached them.

“Feelin better, are ya?” asked Mr. Solomon.

“Much better. Just needed a stretch, I guess.” He jutted his chin toward the window. “Nice around here. Peaceful. Pretty women too.”

A young man sitting on a chair tilted to the wall pushed his hat back from his forehead and let the front legs of the chair hit the floor. His lips were open, exposing the absence of four front teeth. The other men moved their feet. Mr. Solomon smiled but didn’t say anything. Milkman sensed that he’d struck a wrong note. About the women, he guessed. What kind of place was this where a man couldn’t even ask for a woman?

He changed the subject. “If my friend, the one who stopped by this morning, was going to wait for me here, where would he be likely to find a place to stay? Any rooming houses around here?”

“Rooming houses?”

“Yeah. Where a man can spend the night.”

Mr. Solomon shook his head. “Nothin like that here.”

Milkman was getting annoyed. What was all the hostility for? He looked at the men sitting around the store. “You think maybe one of them could help with the car?” he asked Mr. Solomon. “Maybe get another belt somewhere?”

Mr. Solomon kept his eyes on the counter. “Guess I could ask them.” His voice was soft; he spoke as if he was embarrassed about something. There was none of the earlier chattiness he’d been full of when Milkman arrived.

“If they can’t find one, let me know right away. I may have to buy another car to get back home.”

Every one of the faces of the men turned to look at him, and Milkman knew he had said something else wrong, although he didn’t know what. He only knew that they behaved as if they’d been insulted.

In fact they had been. They looked with hatred at the city Negro who could buy a car as if it were a bottle of whiskey because the one he had was broken. And what’s more, who had said so in front of them. He hadn’t bothered to say his name, nor ask theirs, had called them “them,” and would certainly despise their days, which should have been spent harvesting their own crops, instead of waiting around the general store hoping a truck would come looking for mill hands or tobacco pickers in the flatlands that belonged to somebody else. His manner, his clothes were reminders that they had no crops of their own and no land to speak of either. Just vegetable gardens, which the women took care of, and chickens and pigs that the children took care of. He was telling them that they weren’t men, that they relied on women and children for their food. And that the lint and tobacco in their pants pockets where dollar bills should have been was the measure. That thin shoes and suits with vests and smooth smooth hands were the measure. That eyes that had seen big cities and the inside of airplanes were the measure. They had seen him watching their women and rubbing his fly as he stood on the steps. They had also seen him lock his car as soon as he got out of it in a place where there couldn’t be more than two keys twenty-five miles around. He hadn’t found them fit enough or good enough to want to know their names, and believed himself too good to tell them his. They looked at his skin and saw it was as black as theirs, but they knew he had the heart of the white men who came to pick them up in the trucks when they needed anonymous, faceless laborers.

Now one of them spoke to the Negro with the Virginia license and the northern accent.

“Big money up North, eh?”

“Some,” Milkman answered.

“Some? I hear tell everybody up North got big money.”

“Lotta people up North got nothing.” Milkman made his voice pleasant, but he knew something was developing.

“That’s hard to believe. Why would anybody want to stay there if they ain’t no big money?”

“The sights, I guess.” Another man answered the first. “The sights and the women.”

“You kiddin,” said the first man in mock dismay. “You mean to tell me pussy different up North?”