Sethe started to turn over on her stomach but changed her mind. She did not want to call Paul D'sattention back to her, so she settled for crossing her ankles.
But Paul D noticed the movement as well as the change in her breathing. He felt obliged to tryagain, slower this time, but the appetite was gone. Actually it was a good feeling — not wantingher. Twenty-five years and blip! The kind of thing Sixo would do — like the time he arranged ameeting with Patsy the Thirty-Mile Woman. It took three months and two thirty-four-mile roundtrips to do it. To persuade her to walk one-third of the way toward him, to a place he knew. Adeserted stone structure that Redmen used way back when they thought the land was theirs. Sixodiscovered it on one of his night creeps, and asked its permission to enter. Inside, having felt whatit felt like, he asked the Redmen's Presence if he could bring his woman there. It said yes and Sixopainstakingly instructed her how to get there, exactly when to start out, how his welcoming orwarning whistles would sound. Since neither could go anywhere on business of their own, andsince the Thirty-Mile Woman was already fourteen and scheduled for somebody's arms, the dangerwas real. When he arrived, she had not. He whistled and got no answer. He went into the Redmen's deserted lodge. She was not there. He returned to the meeting spot. She was not there. He waitedlonger. She still did not come. He grew frightened for her and walked down the road in thedirection she should be coming from. Three or four miles, and he stopped. It was hopeless to go onthat way, so he stood in the wind and asked for help. Listening close for some sign, he heard awhimper. He turned toward it, waited and heard it again. Uncautious now, he hollered her name.
She answered in a voice that sounded like life to him — not death. "Not move!" he shouted.
"Breathe hard I can find you." He did. She believed she was already at the meeting place and wascrying because she thought he had not kept his promise. Now it was too late for the rendezvous tohappen at the Redmen's house, so they dropped where they were. Later he punctured her calf tosimulate snakebite so she could use it in some way as an excuse for not being on time to shakeworms from tobacco leaves. He gave her detailed directions about following the stream as ashortcut back, and saw her off. When he got to the road it was very light and he had his clothes inhis hands. Suddenly from around a bend a wagon trundled toward him. Its driver, wide-eyed,raised a whip while the woman seated beside him covered her face. But Sixo had already meltedinto the woods before the lash could unfurl itself on his indigo behind.
He told the story to Paul F, Halle, Paul A and Paul D in the peculiar way that made them cry-laugh. Sixo went among trees at night. For dancing, he said, to keep his bloodlines open, he said.
Privately, alone, he did it. None of the rest of them had seen him at it, but they could imagine it,and the picture they pictured made them eager to laugh at him — in daylight, that is, when it wassafe. But that was before he stopped speaking English because there was no future in it. Because ofthe Thirty-Mile Woman Sixo was the only one not paralyzed by yearning for Sethe. Nothing couldbe as good as the sex with her Paul D had been imagining off and on for twenty-five years. Hisfoolishness made him smile and think fondly of himself as he turned over on his side, facing her.
Sethe's eyes were closed, her hair a mess. Looked at this way, minus the polished eyes, her facewas not so attractive. So it must have been her eyes that kept him both guarded and stirred up.
Without them her face was manageable — a face he could handle. Maybe if she would keep themclosed like that... But no, there was her mouth. Nice. Halle never knew what he had.
Although her eyes were closed, Sethe knew his gaze was on her face, and a paper picture of justhow bad she must look raised itself up before her mind's eye. Still, there was no mockery comingfrom his gaze. Soft. It felt soft in a waiting kind of way. He was not judging her — or rather hewas judging but not comparing her. Not since Halle had a man looked at her that way: not lovingor passionate, but interested, as though he were examining an ear of corn for quality. Halle wasmore like a brother than a husband. His care suggested a family relationship rather than a man'slaying claim. For years they saw each other in full daylight only on Sundays. The rest of the timethey spoke or touched or ate in darkness. Predawn darkness and the afterlight of sunset. So lookingat each other intently was a Sunday morning pleasure and Halle examined her as though storing upwhat he saw in sunlight for the shadow he saw the rest of the week. And he had so little time. Afterhis Sweet Home work and on Sunday afternoons was the debt work he owed for his mother. Whenhe asked her to be his wife, Sethe happily agreed and then was stuck not knowing the next step.
There should be a ceremony, shouldn't there? A preacher, some dancing, a party, a something. Sheand Mrs. Garner were the only women there, so she decided to ask her. "Halle and me want to bemarried, Mrs. Garner.""So I heard." She smiled. "He talked to Mr. Garner about it. Are you already expecting?""No, ma'am.""Well, you will be. You know that, don't you?""Yes, ma'am.""Halle's nice, Sethe. He'll be good to you.""But I mean we want to get married.""You just said so. And I said all right.""Is there a wedding?"Mrs. Garner put down her cooking spoon. Laughing a little, she touched Sethe on the head, saying,"You are one sweet child." And then no more.
Sethe made a dress on the sly and Halle hung his hitching rope from a nail on the wall of her cabin.
And there on top of a mattress on top of the dirt floor of the cabin they coupled for the third time,the first two having been in the tiny cornfield Mr. Garner kept because it was a crop animals coulduse as well as humans. Both Halle and Sethe were under the impression that they were hidden.
Scrunched down among the stalks they couldn't see anything, including the corn tops waving overtheir heads and visible to everyone else. Sethe smiled at her and Halle's stupidity. Even the crowsknew and came to look. Uncrossing her ankles, she managed not to laugh aloud.
The jump, thought Paul D, from a calf to a girl wasn't all that mighty. Not the leap Halle believedit would be. And taking her in the corn rather than her quarters, a yard away from the cabins of theothers who had lost out, was a gesture of tenderness. Halle wanted privacy for her and got publicdisplay. Who could miss a ripple in a cornfield on a quiet cloudless day? He, Sixo and both of thePauls sat under Brother pouring water from a gourd over their heads, and through eyes streamingwith well water, they watched the confusion of tassels in the field below. It had been hard, hard,hard sitting there erect as dogs, watching corn stalks dance at noon. The water running over theirheads made it worse.
Paul D sighed and turned over. Sethe took the opportunity afforded by his movement to shift aswell. Looking at Paul D's back, she remembered that some of the corn stalks broke, folded downover Halle's back, and among the things her fingers clutched were husk and cornsilk hair.
How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice.
The jealous admiration of the watching men melted with the feast of new corn they allowed themselves that night. Plucked from the broken stalks that Mr. Garner could not doubt was thefault of the raccoon. Paul F wanted his roasted; Paul A wanted his boiled and now Paul D couldn'tremember how finally they'd cooked those ears too young to eat. What he did remember wasparting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to graze a singlekernel.
The pulling down of the tight sheath, the ripping sound always convinced her it hurt.
As soon as one strip of husk was down, the rest obeyed and the ear yielded up to him its shy rows,exposed at last. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor ran free.
No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way thatsimple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.
DENVER'S SECRETS were sweet. Accompanied every time by wild veronica until shediscovered cologne. The first bottle was a gift, the next she stole from her mother and hid amongboxwood until it froze and cracked. That was the year winter came in a hurry at suppertime andstayed eight months. One of the War years when Miss Bodwin, the whitewoman, broughtChristmas cologne for her mother and herself, oranges for the boys and another good wool shawlfor Baby Suggs. Talking of a war full of dead people, she looked happy — flush-faced, andalthough her voice was heavy as a man's, she smelled like a roomful of flowers — excitement thatDenver could have all for herself in the boxwood. Back beyond 1x4 was a narrow field thatstopped itself at a wood. On the yonder side of these woods, a stream. In these woods, between thefield and the stream, hidden by post oaks, five boxwood bushes, planted in a ring, had startedstretching toward each other four feet off the ground to form a round, empty room seven feet high,its walls fifty inches of murmuring leaves. Bent low, Denver could crawl into this room, and oncethere she could stand all the way up in emerald light.
It began as a little girl's houseplay, but as her desires changed, so did the play. Quiet, primate andcompletely secret except for the noisome cologne signal that thrilled the rabbits before it confusedthem. First a playroom (where the silence was softer), then a refuge (from her brothers' fright),soon the place became the point. In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver'simagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because lonelinesswore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear,and salvation was as easy as a wish.
Once when she was in the boxwood, an autumn long before Paul D moved into the house with hermother, she was made suddenly cold by a combination of wind and the perfume on her skin. Shedressed herself, bent down to leave and stood up in snowfall: a thin and whipping snow very likethe picture her mother had painted as she described the circumstances of Denver's birth in a canoestraddled by a whitegirl for whom she was named.
Shivering, Denver approached the house, regarding it, as she always did, as a person rather than astructure. A person that wept, sighed, trembled and fell into fits. Her steps and her gaze were the cautious ones of a child approaching a nervous, idle relative (someone dependent but proud). Abreastplate of darkness hid all the windows except one. Its dim glow came from Baby Suggs'
room. When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual.
What was unusual (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the livingactivity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve aroundher mother's waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver rememberthe details of her birth — that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit ofcommon flowers. The dress and her mother together looked like two friendly grown-up women —one (the dress) helping out the other. And the magic of her birth, its miracle in fact, testified to thatfriendliness as did her own name.