Except for a heap more hair and some waiting in his eyes, he looked the way he had in Kentucky.

　　Peachstone skin; straight- backed.

　　For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready it was to smile, or blaze or be sorrywith you. As though all you had to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feelingyouwere feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change — underneath it lay the activity.

　　"I wouldn't have to ask about him, would I? You'd tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn'tyou?" Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the sycamores.

　　"I'd tell you. Sure I'd tell you. I don't know any more now than I did then." Except for the churn, hethought, and you don't need to know that. "You must think he's still alive.""No. I think he's dead. It's not being sure that keeps him alive.""What did Baby Suggs think?""Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she felt each one go the very day andhour.""When she say Halle went?""Eighteen fifty-five. The day my baby was born.""You had that baby, did you? Never thought you'd make it."He chuckled. "Running off pregnant.""Had to. Couldn't be no waiting." She lowered her head andthought, as he did, how unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it hadn't been for that girllooking for velvet, she never would have. "All by yourself too." He was proud of her and annoyedby her.

　　Proud she had done it; annoyed that she had not needed Halle or him in the doing.

　　"Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me.""Then she helped herself too, God bless her.""You could stay the night, Paul D.""You don't sound too steady in the offer."Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Oh it's truly meant. I just hope you'llpardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something."Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the doorstraight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.

　　"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.

　　"Off and on," said Sethe.

　　"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?""It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet andshining legs, holding her shoes and stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle's girl —the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. Andthough her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now. Because ofthe hair. A face too still for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, usedto make him think of a mask with mercifully punched out eyes. Halle's woman. Pregnant everyyear including the year she sat by the fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children shehad already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. Theywere to be left with Halle's mother near Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to thefire you could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were liketwo wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded,marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked instead at the firewhile she told him, because her husband was not there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and hiswife had a lump in her neck the size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. She leanedas close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Homemen. There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the only female. Mrs. Garner,crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she waswidowed. Then schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three moreSweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells thatdid not reflect firelight.

　　Now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough to step inside herdoor smack into a pool of pulsing red light.

　　She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wantedto cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it — dry-eyed and lucky.

　　"You said she died soft. Soft as cream," he reminded her.

　　"That's not Baby Suggs," she said.

　　"Who then?""My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys.""She didn't live?""No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left.

　　Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died."Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weepingclung to the air where it had been.

　　Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebodywill figure out a way to tie them up. Still ... if her boys were gone ...

　　"No man? You here by yourself?""Me and Denver," she said.

　　"That all right by you?""That's all right by me."She saw his skepticism and went on. "I cook at a restaurant in town. And I sew a little on the sly."Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to SweetHome and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggsto her husband's high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided tolet her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yetthey let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would havebeaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose — a long, tough year ofthrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed thesolitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Homemen — the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at thephrase.

　　"Y'all got boys," he told them. "Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stroppin boys. Now at SweetHome, my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men everyone.""Beg to differ, Garner. Ain't no nigger men.""Not if you scared, they ain't." Garner's smile was wide. "But if you a man yourself, you'll wantyour niggers to be men too.""I wouldn't have no nigger men round my wife."It was the reaction Garner loved and waited for. "Neither would I," he said. "Neither would I," andthere was always a pause before the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoeverit was got the meaning. Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and Garner came home bruisedand pleased, having demonstrated one more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enoughand smart enough to make and call his own niggers men.

　　And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wildman. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets,rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl — the one who took Baby Suggs' place afterHalle bought her with five years of Sundays.

　　Maybe that was why she chose him. A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave upfive years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change was a serious recommendation.

　　She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while they waited with her. She choseHalle and for their first bedding she sewed herself a dress on the sly.

　　"Won't you stay on awhile? Can't nobody catch up on eighteen years in a day."Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white staircase climbed toward the blue-andwhitewallpaper of the second floor.

　　Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among ablizzard of snowdrops all backed by blue.

　　The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing toward it. Every sense he had toldhim the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out ofthat air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll.

　　Paul D looked at the girl and then at Sethe who smiled saying, "Here she is my Denver. This isPaul D, honey, from Sweet Home.""Good morning, Mr. D.""Garner, baby. Paul D Garner.""Yes sir.""Glad to get a look at you. Last time I saw your mama, you were pushing out the front of herdress.""Still is," Sethe smiled, "provided she can get in it."Denver stood on the bottom step and was suddenly hot and shy. It had been a long time sinceanybody (good-willed whitewoman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, theirsympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes. For twelve years, long beforeGrandma Baby died, there had been visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. Nocoloredpeople.Certainlynohazelnutman(no) with too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, nooranges, no questions. Someone her mother wanted to talk to and would even consider talking towhile barefoot. Looking, in fact acting, like a girl instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver hadknown all her life. The one who never looked away, who when a man got stomped to death by amare right in front of Sawyer's restaurant did not look away; and when a sow began eating her ownlitter did not look away then either. And when the baby's spirit picked up Here Boy and slammedhim into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye, so hard he went intoconvulsions and chewed up his tongue, still her mother had not looked away. She had taken ahammer, knocked the dog unconscious, wiped away the blood and saliva, pushed his eye back inhis head and set his leg bones. He recovered, mute and off-balance, more because of hisuntrustworthy eye than his bent legs, and winter, summer, drizzle or dry, nothing could persuadehim to enter the house again.