He lifted his hand to knock on the door and noticed the doorbell. He rang it and Susan Byrd opened the door.
“Hello again,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “you’re as good as your word.”
“I’d like to talk to you some more, if you don’t mind. About Sing. May I come in?”
“Of course.” She stood back from the door and the odor of another batch of gingerbread wafted out. Again they sat in the living room—he in the gray wing-back chair, she on the sofa this time. Miss Long was nowhere in sight.
“I know you don’t know who Sing married or if she married, but I was wondering—”
“Of course I know who she married. That is if they did marry. She married Jake, that black boy her mother took care of.”
Milkman felt dizzy. Everybody kept changing right in front of him. “But yesterday you said nobody heard from her after she left.”
“Nobody did. But they knew who she left with!”
“Jake?”
“Jake. Black Jake. Black as coal.”
“Where—where did they live? Boston?”
“I don’t know where they ended up. North, I guess. We never heard.”
“I thought you said she went to a private school in Boston.”
She dismissed the whole notion with a wave of her hand. “I just said that in front of her, Grace. She talks so much, you know. Carries tales all over the county. It’s true she was supposed to go to some school, but she didn’t. She left on that double-team wagon with that black boy, Jake. A whole lot of slaves got together. Jake was driving. Can you imagine it? Riding off with a wagonload of slaves?”
“What was Jake’s last name? Can you tell me?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think he had one. He was one of those flying African children. They must all be dead a long time now.”
“Flying African children?”
“Urn hm, one of Solomon’s children. Or Shalimar. Papa said Heddy always called him Shalimar.”
“And Heddy was…”
“My grandmother. Sing’s mother and Papa’s too. An Indian woman. She was the one who took care of Jake when his father left them all. She found him and took him home and raised him. She didn’t have any boy children then. My father, Crowell, came later.” She leaned forward and whispered, “She didn’t have a husband, Heddy. I didn’t want to go into all of that with Grace. You can imagine what she’d do with that information.
You’re a stranger, so it doesn’t matter. But Grace…” Susan Byrd looked pleadingly at the ceiling. “This Jake was a baby she found, and he and Sing grew up together, and I guess rather than be packed off to some Quaker school, she ran away with him. You know colored people and Indians mixed a lot, but sometimes, well, some Indians didn’t like it—the marrying, I mean. But neither one of them knew their own father, Jake nor Sing. And my own father didn’t know his. Heddy never said. I don’t know to this day if he was white, red, or—well—what. Sing’s name was Singing Bird. And my father’s name was Crow at first. Later he changed it to Crowell Byrd. After he took off his buckskin.” She smiled.
“Why did you call Solomon a flying African?”
“Oh, that’s just some old folks’ lie they tell around here. Some of those Africans they brought over here as slaves could fly. A lot of them flew back to Africa. The one around here who did was this same Solomon, or Shalimar—I never knew which was right. He had a slew of children, all over the place. You may have noticed that everybody around here claims kin to him. Must be over forty families spread in these hills calling themselves Solomon something or other. I guess he must have been hot stuff.” She laughed. “But anyway, hot stuff or not, he disappeared and left everybody. Wife, everybody, including some twenty-one children. And they say they all saw him go. The wife saw him and the children saw him. They were all working in the fields. They used to try to grow cotton here. Can you imagine? In these hills? But cotton was king then. Everybody grew it until the land went bad. It was cotton even when I was a girl. Well, back to this Jake boy. He was supposed to be one of Solomon’s original twenty-one—all boys and all of them with the same mother. Jake was the baby. The baby and the wife were right next to him when he flew off.”
“When you say ‘flew off’ you mean he ran away, don’t you? Escaped?”
“No, I mean flew. Oh, it’s just foolishness, you know, but according to the story he wasn’t running away. He was flying.
He flew. You know, like a bird. Just stood up in the fields one day, ran up some hill, spun around a couple of times, and was lifted up in the air. Went right on back to wherever it was he came from. There’s a big double-headed rock over the valley named for him. It like to killed the woman, the wife. I guess you could say ‘wife.’ Anyway she’s supposed to have screamed out loud for days. And there’s a ravine near here they call Ryna’s Gulch, and sometimes you can hear this funny sound by it that the wind makes. People say it’s the wife, Solomon’s wife, crying. Her name was Ryna. They say she screamed and screamed, lost her mind completely. You don’t hear about women like that anymore, but there used to be more—the kind of woman who couldn’t live without a particular man. And when the man left, they lost their minds, or died or something. Love, I guess. But I always thought it was trying to take care of children by themselves, you know what I mean?”
She talked on and on while Milkman sat back and listened to gossip, stories, legends, speculations. His mind was ahead of hers, behind hers, with hers, and bit by bit, with what she said, what he knew, and what he guessed, he put it all together.
Sing had said she was going to a Quaker school, but she joined Jake on his wagonful of ex-slaves heading for Boston or somewhere. They must have dropped their passengers all along the way. And then Jake, at the reins, took a wrong turn, because he couldn’t read, and they ended up in Pennsylvania.
“But there’s a children’s game they play around here. And in the game they sing, ‘Jake the only son of Solomon.’ Only.” He looked at her, hoping she wouldn’t mind the interruption.
“Well, they’re wrong. He wasn’t the only son. There were twenty others. But he was the only one Solomon tried to take with him. Maybe that’s what it means. He lifted him up, but dropped him near the porch of the big house. That’s where Heddy found him. She used to come over there and help with the soapmaking and the candlemaking. She wasn’t a slave, but she worked over at the big house certain times of year. She was melting tallow when she looked up and saw this man holding a baby and flying toward the ridge. He brushed too close to a tree and the baby slipped out of his arms and fell through the branches to the ground. He was unconscious, but the trees saved him from dying. Heddy ran over and picked him up. She didn’t have any male children, like I said, just a little bitty girl, and this one just dropped out of the sky almost in her lap. She never named him anything different; she was afraid to do that. She found out the baby was Ryna’s, but Ryna was out of her mind. Heddy lived a good ways off from the place Solomon and them others worked on. She tried to keep the girl away from that place too. And you can imagine how she felt when both of them ran off. Just my father was left.”
“Did Jake have to register at the Freedmen’s Bureau before he left the state?”
“Everybody did. Everybody who had been slaves, that is. Whether they left the state or not. But we were never slaves, so—”
“You told me that. Weren’t any of Jake’s brothers registering too?”
“I couldn’t say. Those must have been some times, back then. Some bad times. It’s a wonder anybody knows who anybody is.”
“You’ve helped me a lot, Miss Byrd. I’m grateful.” He thought then about asking her if she had a photo album. He wanted to see Sing, Crowell, even Heddy. But he decided against it. She might start asking him questions, and he didn’t want to trouble her with a new-found relative who was as black as Jake.
“Now, that’s not the woman you’re looking, is it? Pilate?”
“No,” he said. “Couldn’t be.” He m
ade motions of departure and then remembered his watch.
“By did I leave my watch here? I’d like it back.”
“Watch?”
“Yes. Your friend wanted to see it. Miss Long. I handed it to her but I forgot—” Milkman stopped. Susan Byrd was laughing out loud.
“Well, you can say goodbye to it, Mr. Macon. Grace will go to dinner all over the county telling people about the watch you gave her.”
“What?”
“Well, you know. She doesn’t mean any real harm, but it’s a quiet place. We don’t have many visitors, especially young men who wear gold watches and have northern accents. I’ll get it back for you.”
“Never mind. Never mind.”
“You’ll just have to forgive her otherwise. This is a dull place, Mr. Macon. There’s absolutely nothing in the world going on here. Not a thing.”
Chapter 15
The fan belt didn’t last long enough for him to get to the next gasoline station. It broke on the edge of a little town called Jistann, the needle trembling at H. Milkman sold it to the tow-truck man for twenty dollars and caught the first bus out. It was probably best that way, for over the humming wheels, his legs folded in the little space in front of his seat, he had time to come down from the incredible high that had begun as soon as he slammed the Byrd woman’s door.
He couldn’t get back to Shalimar fast enough, and when he did get there, dusty and dirty from the run, he leaped into the car and drove to Sweet’s house. He almost broke her door down. “I want to swim!” he shouted. “Come on, let’s go swimming. I’m dirty and I want waaaaater!”
Sweet smiled and said she’d give him a bath.
“Bath! You think I’d put myself in that tight little porcelain box? I need the sea! The whole goddam sea!” Laughing, hollering, he ran over to her and picked her up at the knees and ran around the room with her over his shoulder. “The sea! I have to swim in the sea. Don’t give me no itty bitty teeny tiny tub, girl. I need the whole entire complete deep blue sea!”
He stood her on her feet. “Don’t you all swim around here?”
“Over at the quarry is where the kids go sometimes.”
“Quarry? You all don’t have no sea? No ocean?”
“Naw; this hill country.”
“Hill country. Mountain country. Flying country.”
“A man was here to see you.”
“Oh, yeah? That would be Mr. Guitar Bains.”
“He didn’t give his name.”
“He don’t have to! He’s Guitar Bains. Gitar, Gitar, Gitar Bains!” Milkman did a little dance and Sweet covered her mouth, laughing.
“Come on, Sweet, tell me where the sea is.”
“They some water comin down below the ridge on the other side. Real deep; wide too.”
“Then let’s go! Come on!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her out to the car. He sang all the way: “‘Solomon ’n Ryna Belali Shalut…’”
“Where you learn that?” she asked him. “That’s a game we used to play when we was little.”
“Of course you did. Everybody did. Everybody but me. But I can play it now. It’s my game now.”
The river in the valley was wide and green. Milkman took off his clothes, climbed a tree and dived into the water. He surfaced like a bullet, iridescent, grinning, splashing water. “Come on. Take them clothes off and come on in here.”
“Naw. I don’t wanna swim.”
“Come in here, girl!”
“Water moccasins in there.”
“Fuck ’em. Get in here. Hurry up!”
She stepped out of her shoes, pulled her dress over her head and was ready. Milkman reached up for her as she came timidly down the bank, slipping, stumbling, laughing at her own awkwardness, then squealing as the cold river water danced up her legs, her hips, her waist. Milkman pulled her close and kissed her mouth, ending the kiss with a determined effort to pull her under the water. She fought him. “Oh, my hair! My hair’s gonna get wet.”
“No it ain’t,” he said, and poured a handful right in the middle of her scalp. Wiping her eyes, spluttering water, she turned to wade out, shrieking all the way. “Okay, okay,” he bellowed. “Leave me. Leave me in here by myself. I don’t care. I’ll play with the water moccasins.” And he began to whoop and dive and splash and turn. “He could fly! You hear me? My great-granddaddy could fly! Goddam!” He whipped the water with his fists, then jumped straight up as though he too could take off, and landed on his back and sank down, his mouth and eyes full of water. Up again. Still pounding, leaping, diving. “The son of a bitch could fly! You hear me, Sweet? That motherfucker could fly! Could fly! He didn’t need no airplane. Didn’t need no fuckin tee double you ay. He could fly his own self!”
“Who you talkin ‘bout?” Sweet was lying on her side, her cheek cupped in her hand.
“Solomon, that’s who.”
“Oh, him.” She laughed. “You belong to that tribe of niggers?” She thought he was drunk.
“Yeah. That tribe. That flyin motherfuckin tribe. Oh, man! He didn’t need no airplane. He just took off; got fed up. All the way up! No more cotton! No more bales! No more orders! No more shit! He flew, baby. Lifted his beautiful black ass up in the sky and flew on home. Can you dig it? Jesus God, that must have been something to see. And you know what else? He tried to take his baby boy with him. My grandfather. Wow! Woooee! Guitar! You hear that? Guitar, my great-granddaddy could flyyyyyy and the whole damn town is named after him. Tell him, Sweet. Tell him my great-granddaddy could fly.”
“Where’d he go, Macon?”
“Back to Africa. Tell Guitar he went back to Africa.”
“Who’d he leave behind?”
“Everybody! He left everybody down on the ground and he sailed on off like a black eagle. ‘O-o-o-o-o-o Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone /Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home!’”
He could hardly wait to get home. To tell his father, Pilate; and he would love to see Reverend Cooper and his friends. “You think Macon Dead was something? Huh. Let me tell you about his daddy. You ain’t heard nothin yet.”
Milkman turned in his seat and tried to stretch his legs. It was morning. He’d changed buses three times and was now speeding home on the last leg of his trip. He looked out the window. Far away from Virginia, fall had already come. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan were dressed up like the Indian warriors from whom their names came. Blood red and yellow, ocher and ice blue.
He read the road signs with interest now, wondering what lay beneath the names. The Algonquins had named the territory he lived in Great Water, michi gami. How many dead lives and fading memories were buried in and beneath the names of the places in this country. Under the recorded names were other names, just as “Macon Dead,” recorded for all time in some dusty file, hid from view the real names of people, places, and things. Names that had meaning. No wonder Pilate put hers in her ear. When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do. Like the street he lived on, recorded as Mains Avenue, but called Not Doctor Street by the Negroes in memory of his grandfather, who was the first colored man of consequence in that city. Never mind that he probably didn’t deserve their honor–they knew what kind of man he was: arrogant, color-struck, snobbish. They didn’t care about that. They were paying their respect to whatever it was that made him be a doctor in the first place, when the odds were that he’d be a yardman all of his life. So they named a street after him. Pilate had taken a rock from every state she had lived in–because she had lived there. And having lived there, it was hers–and his, and his father’s, his grandfather’s, his grandmother’s. Not Doctor Street, Solomon’s Leap, Ryna’s Gulch, Shalimar, Virginia.
He closed his eyes and thought of the black men in Shalimar, Roanoke, Petersburg, Newport News, Danville, in the Blood Bank, on Darling Street, in the pool halls, the barbershops. Their names. Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness.
Macon Dead, Sing Byrd, Crowell Byrd, Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Magdalene, First Corinthians, Milkman, Guitar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State (he just stood around and swayed), Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Moon, Nero, Humpty-Dumpty, Blue Boy, Scandinavia, Quack-Quack, Jericho, Spoonbread, Ice Man, Dough Belly, Rocky River, Gray Eye, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo, Cool Breeze, Muddy Waters, Pinetop, Jelly Roll, Fats, Lead-belly, Bo Diddley, Cat-Iron, Peg-Leg, Son, Shortstuff, Smoky Babe, Funny Papa, Bukka, Pink, Bull Moose, B.B., T-Bone, Black Ace, Lemon, Washboard, Gatemouth, Cleanhead, Tampa Red, Juke Boy, Shine, Staggerlee, Jim the Devil, Fuck-Up, and Dat Nigger.
Angling out from these thoughts of names was one more—the one that whispered in the spinning wheels of the bus: “Guitar is biding his time. Guitar is biding his time. Your day has come. Your day has come. Guitar is biding his time. Guitar is a very good Day. Guitar is a very good Day. A very good Day, a very good Day, and biding, biding his time.”
In the seventy-five-dollar car, and here on the big Greyhound, Milkman felt safe. But there were days and days ahead. Maybe if Guitar was back in the city now, among familiar surroundings, Milkman could defuse him. And certainly, in time, he would discover his foolishness. There was no gold. And although things would never be the same between them, at least the man-hunt would be over.
Even as he phrased the thought in his mind, Milkman knew it was not so. Either Guitar’s disappointment with the gold that was not there was so deep it had deranged him, or his “work” had done it. Or maybe he simply allowed himself to feel about Milkman what he had always felt about Macon Dead and the Honoré crowd. In any case, he had snatched the first straw, limp and wet as it was, to prove to himself the need to kill Milkman. The Sunday-school girls deserved better than to be avenged by that hawk-headed raven-skinned Sunday man who included in his blood sweep four innocent white girls and one innocent black man.
Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
“Everybody wants a black man’s life.”