stamp paid rearranged his way. too angry to walk her home and listen to more, he watched her fora moment and turned to go before the alert white face at the window next door had come to anyconclusion.
trying to get to 124 for the second time now, he regretted that conversation: the high tone he took;his refusal to see the effect of marrow weariness in a woman he believed was a mountain. now,too late, he understood her. the heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the word, didn'tcount. they came in her yard anyway and she could not approve or condemn sethe's rough choice.
one or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed. thewhitefolks had tired her out at last. and him. eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still onthe loose. whole towns wiped clean of negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone inkentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; childrenwhipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. he smelledskin, skin and hot blood. the skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was awhole other thing. the stench stank. stank up off the pages of the north star, out of the mouths ofwitnesses, etched in crooked handwriting in letters delivered by hand. detailed in documents andpetitions full of whereas and presented to any legal body who'd read it, it stank. but none of thathad worn out his marrow. none of that. it was the ribbon. tying his flatbed up on the bank of thelicking river, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom.
reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. he tugged and what cameloose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bitof scalp. he untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket, dropped the curl in the weeds. on the wayhome, he stopped, short of breath and dizzy. he waited until the spell passed before continuing onhis way. a moment later, his breath left him again. this time he sat down by a fence. rested, hegot to his feet, but before he took a step he turned to look back down the road he was traveling andsaid, to its frozen mud and the river beyond, "what are these people? you tell me, jesus. what are they?"when he got to his house he was too tired to eat the food his sister and nephews had prepared. hesat on the porch in the cold till way past dark and went to his bed only because his sister's voicecalling him was getting nervous. he kept the ribbon; the skin smell nagged him, and his weakenedmarrow made him dwell on baby suggs' wish to consider what in the world was harmless. hehoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red. mistaking her, upbraidingher, owing her, now he needed to let her know he knew, and to get right with her and her kin. so,in spite of his exhausted marrow, he kept on through the voices and tried once more to knock at thedoor of 124. this time, although he couldn't cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spokethem. the people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost theirribbons.
what a roaring.
sethe had gone to bed smiling, eager to lie down and unravel the proof for the conclusion she hadalready leapt to. fondle the day and circumstances of beloved's arrival and the meaning of thatkiss in the clearing. she slept instead and woke, still smiling, to a snow bright morning, coldenough to see her breath. she lingered a moment to collect the courage to throw off the blanketsand hit a chilly floor.
for the first time, she was going to be late for work.
downstairs she saw the girls sleeping where she'd left them, but back to back now, each wrappedtight in blankets, breathing into their pillows. the pair and a half of skates were lying by the frontdoor, the stockings hung on a nail behind the cooking stove to dry had not.
