Song of Solomon (31 page)

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?”

“Naw,” said the second. “Pussy the same everywhere. Smell like the ocean; taste like the sea.”

“Can’t be,” said a third. “Got to be different.”

“Maybe the pricks is different.” The first man spoke again.

“Reckon?” asked the second man.

“So I hear tell,” said the first man.

“How different?” asked the second man.

“Wee little,” said the first man. “Wee, wee little.”

“Naw!” said the second man.

“So they tell me. That’s why they pants so tight. That true?” The first man looked at Milkman for an answer.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Milkman. “I never spent much time smacking my lips over another man’s dick.” Everybody smiled, including Milkman. It was about to begin.

“What about his ass hole? Ever smack your lips over that?”

“Once,” said Milkman. “When a little young nigger made me mad and I had to jam a Coke bottle up his ass.”

“What’d you use a bottle for? Your cock wouldn’t fill it?”

“It did. After I took the Coke bottle out. Filled his mouth too.”

“Prefer mouth, do you?”

“If it’s big enough, and ugly enough, and belongs to a ignorant motherfucker who is about to get the livin shit whipped out of him.”

The knife glittered.

Milkman laughed. “I ain’t seen one of those since I was fourteen. Where I come from
boys
play with knives—if they scared they gonna lose, that is.”

The first man smiled. “That’s me, motherfucker. Scared to death I’m gonna lose.”

Milkman did the best he could with a broken bottle, but his face got slit, so did his left hand, and so did his pretty beige suit, and he probably would have had his throat cut if two women hadn’t come running in screaming, “Saul! Saul!”

The store was full of people by then and the women couldn’t get through. The men tried to shush them, but they kept on screaming and provided enough lull for Mr. Solomon to interrupt the fight.

“All right. All right. That’s enough of that.”

“Shut your mouth, Solomon.”

“Get them women outta here.”

“Stick him, Saul, stick that cocksucker.”

But Saul had a jagged cut over his eye and the blood pouring from it made it hard to see. It was difficult but not impossible for Mr. Solomon to pull him away. He left cursing Milkman, but his fervor was gone.

Milkman backed up against the counter, waiting to see if anybody else was going to jump him. When it looked as if no one was, and when the people were drifting outside to watch Saul scuffling and cursing at the men pulling him away, he slumped a little and wiped his face. When the entire store save for the owner was empty, Milkman hurled the broken bottle into a corner. It careened by the cooler and bounced off the wall before splintering on the floor. He walked outside, still panting, and looked around. Four older men still sat on the porch, as though nothing had happened. Blood was streaming down Milkman’s face, but it had dried on his hand. He kicked at a white hen and sat down on the top step, wiping the blood with his handkerchief. Three young women with nothing in their hands stood in the road looking at him. Their eyes were wide but noncommittal. Children joined them, circling the women like birds. Nobody said anything. Even the four men on the porch were quiet. Nobody came toward him, offered him a cigarette or a glass of water. Only the children and the hens walked around. Under the hot sun, Milkman was frozen with anger. If he’d had a weapon, he would have slaughtered everybody in sight.

“You pretty good with a bottle. How you with a shotgun?” One of the older men had sidled up to him. The smile on his face was faint. It was as though now that the young men had had their chance, with unsatisfactory results, the older men would take over. Their style, of course, would be different. No name-calling toilet contest for them. No knives either, or hot breath and knotted neck muscles. They would test him, match and beat him, probably, on some other ground.

“Best shot there is,” Milkman lied.

“That so?”

“Yeah, it’s so.”

“Some of us is going huntin later on. Care to join us?”

“That toothless motherfucker going too?”

“Saul? No.”

“Cause I might have to knock the rest of them out.”

The man laughed. “Sheriff took the others—with the butt of a gun.”

“Yeah? Good.”

“Well, you comin?”

“Sure I’m coming. Just get me the gun.”

He laughed again. “Name’s Omar.”

“Macon Dead.”

Omar blinked at the name, but didn’t comment on it. He merely told him to come by King Walker’s, a gas station about two miles up the road, right around sundown. “It’s straight up yonder. Ain’t no way in the world you can miss it.”

“I won’t miss it.” Milkman stood up and walked to his car. He fumbled for the car keys, opened the door, and slid into the seat. He rolled down all four windows, found a towel in the back seat, and stretched out, using his jacket for a pillow and the towel as a bandage for his face. His feet stuck out the open door. Fuck ’em. Who were all these people roaming the world trying to kill him? His own father had tried while he was still in his mother’s stomach. But he’d lived. And he had lived the last year dodging a woman who came every month to kill him, and he had lain just like this, with his arm over his eyes, wide open to whatever she had in her hand. He’d lived through that too. Then a witch had stepped out of his childhood nightmares to grab him, and he’d lived through that. Some bats had driven him out of a cave–and he’d lived through that. And at no time did he have a weapon. Now he walked into a store and asked if somebody could fix his car and a nigger pulled a knife on him. And he still wasn’t dead. Now what did these black Neanderthals think they were going to do? Fuck ’em. My name’s Macon; I’m already dead. He had thought this place, this Shalimar, was going to be home. His original home. His people came from here, his grandfather and his grandmother. All the way down South people had been nice to him, generous, helpful. In Danville they had made him the object of hero worship. In his own home town his name spelled dread and grudging respect. But here, in his “home,” he was unknown, unloved, and damn near killed. These were some of the meanest unhung niggers in the world.

He slept, unmolested by everything and everybody except a dream in which he thought he saw Guitar looking down on him. When he woke he bought two cans of pineapple and a box of crackers from Mr. Solomon. He ate on the porch with the hens. The men were gone, and the sun was leaving. Only the children stayed to watch him eat. When he poured the last of the pineapple juice down his throat, one of the children stepped forward to ask, “Can we have your can, mister?” He held it out and they snatched the can and ran off to fashion some game out of it.

He started out for King Walker’s. Even if he could have come up with a way to get out of the hunt, he wouldn’t have taken it, in spite of the fact that he had never handled a firearm in his life. He had stopped evading things, sliding through, over, and around difficulties. Before he had taken risks only with Guitar. Now he took them alone. Not only had he let Hagar stab him; he had let the nightmare witch catch him and kiss him. To a man surviving that, anything else was a joke.

King Walker was nothing like his name suggested. He was a small man, bald, with a left cheek bulging with tobacco. Years ago he’d been a star pitcher in one of the black baseball leagues and the history of his career was nailed and pasted all over his shop. They had not lied when they said no garage or mechanic on duty was nearer than five miles. King Walker’s station had obviously gone broke a long time ago. The pumps were dry; there wasn’t even a can of oil in the place. Now it seemed to be used as a kind of clubhouse for the men and Walker lived in the back of the station. In addition to King Walker, who wasn’t going, there was Omar and another man who had also been on the porch and who introduced himself as Luther Solomon—no relation to the grocery store Solomon. They were waiting for some others, who came soon after Milkman got there, driving an old Chevy. Omar introduced them as Calvin Breakstone and Small Boy.

Calvin seemed to be the most congenial of them, and followed the introductions with a command to King Walker to “get this city boy some shoes for his feet.” King rummaged around, spitting tobacco, and came up with some mud-caked brogans. They outfitted Milkman completely, laughing all the while at his underwear, fingering his vest—Small Boy tried to get his wrestler’s arms into Milkman’s jacket—and wondering what had happened to his feet. Bits of skin still peeled from his toes because of the two days he had spent in wet shoes and socks. King Walker made him sprinkle Arm & Hammer soda on them before he put on the thick socks they gave him. When Milkman was dressed in World War II army fatigues with a knit cap on his head, they opened some Falstaff beer and began to talk about guns. At which point the revelry mixed with meanness abated and King Walker handed Milkman his Winchester .22.

“Ever use a twenty-two?”

“Not in a good while,” Milkman said.

The five men piled into the Chevy and drove off into the lessening light. From what Milkman could tell, after fifteen minutes or so they were going up to high ground. As the car swerved through narrow roads, the conversation picked up again and they talked about other trips, game, kills, misses. Soon the only light came from the moon and it was getting cool enough for Milkman to be grateful for his knit cap. The car pulled ahead and around some sharp bends. In the rear-view mirror Milkman thought he glimpsed the headlights of another car and wondered briefly if they were being met by others. The sky was dark enough now for stars.

“Better make time, Calvin. Coon be done ate and gone on home.”

Calvin pulled over and stopped the car.

“Let ’em rip,” he said, and handed the car keys to Small Boy, who walked around to the back and unlocked the trunk. Three hounds leaped out, sniffing and wagging their tails. But they didn’t make a sound.

“You brought Becky?” asked Luther. “Oh, man! We gonna get some coon tonight!”

The dogs’ nervousness, their eagerness to hear the signal that would allow them to race off into the trees, made Milkman jittery. What was he supposed to do? Two feet in any direction from the headlights was black night.

Omar and Small Boy hauled equipment from the trunk: four lamps, one flashlight, rope, shells, and a pint bottle of liquor. When all four lamps were ablaze, they asked Milkman if he wanted to use a lamp or a flashlight. He hesitated, and Calvin said, “He can run with me. Give him the torch.”

Milkman put it in his back pocket.

“Take that change out your pocket,” said Calvin. “Makes too much noise.”

Milkman did as he was told and took King’s shotgun, a piece of rope, and a deep swig from the bottle they were passing around.

The dogs padded about, silent, panting, almost faint with excitement. But still they made no sound. Calvin and Omar both loaded their double-gauge shotguns with .22 shells in one barrel and buckshot in the other. Small Boy clapped his hands once, and the three hounds sped screaming into the night. The men didn’t take off after them at once, as Milkman had supposed they would. Instead they stood quietly and listened for a while. Small Boy laughed lightly, shaking his head. “Becky’s leadin. Let’s go. Calvin, you and Macon go off to the right. We’ll head this a way, and circle over by the gulch. Don’t shoot no bears, now.”

“Shoot him if I see him,” said Calvin as he and Milkman moved away.

As they left the Chevy, the car that Milkman had noticed sped past them. Obviously, there were no others in the hunting party. Calvin was ahead, the burning lamp swinging low from his hand. Milkman flicked on his flashlight.

“Better save it,” said Calvin. “You don’t need it now.”

They plodded on in a direction that may have been toward the screaming dogs, but Milkman couldn’t tell.

“Any bears out here?” he asked in what he hoped was an interested but not anxious voice.

“Just us, and we got the guns.” Calvin laughed and was suddenly swallowed up by the dark, only the low swinging lamp marking his path. Milkman watched the lamp until he realized that focusing on it kept him from seeing anything else. If he was to grow accustomed to the dark, he would have to look at what it was possible to see. A long moan sailed up through the trees somewhere to the left of where they were. It sounded like a woman’s voice, sobbing, and mingling with the dogs’ yelps and the men’s shouts. A few minutes later, the distant screaming of the dogs and the calls of the three men stopped. There was only the soughing wind and his and Calvin’s footsteps. It took Milkman a while to figure out how to pick up his feet and miss the roots and stones; to distinguish a tree from a shadow; to keep his head down and away from the branches that swept back from Calvin’s hand into his face. They were walking upland. Every now and then Calvin stopped, threw his lamplight on a tree, and examined it closely from about three feet off the ground to up as far as his arm could go. Other times he lowered the lamp over the ground, and squatting down on his haunches, peered into the dirt. Each time he seemed to be whispering. Whatever he discovered he kept to himself and Milkman didn’t ask him. All he wanted to do was keep up, be ready to shoot whatever the game was when it appeared, and look out for an attempt any of them might make on his life. Within an hour after arriving in Shalimar, a young man had tried to kill him in public. What these older men, under cover of night, were capable of he could only guess.