He wants to tell me, she thought. Hewants me to ask him about what it was like for him — about how offended the tongue is, helddown by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She already knew about it, had seen ittime after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness thatshot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fatwas rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness outof the eye. Sethe looked up into Paul D's eyes to see if there was any trace left in them.

　　"People I saw as a child," she said, "who'd had the bit always looked wild after that. Whatever theyused it on them for, it couldn't have worked, because it put a wildness where before there wasn'tany. When I look at you, I don't see it. There ain't no wildness in your eye nowhere.""There's a way to put it there and there's a way to take it out. I know em both and I haven't figuredout yet which is worse." He sat down beside her. Sethe looked at him. In that unlit daylight hisface, bronzed and reduced to its bones, smoothed her heart down. "You want to tell me about it?"she asked him.

　　"I don't know. I never have talked about it. Not to a soul. Sang it sometimes, but I never told asoul.""Go ahead. I can hear it.""Maybe. Maybe you can hear it. I just ain't sure I can say it. Say it right, I mean, because it wasn'tthe bit — that wasn't it." "What then?" Sethe asked.

　　"The roosters," he said. "Walking past the roosters looking at them look at me."Sethe smiled. "In that pine?""Yeah." Paul D smiled with her. "Must have been five of them perched up there, and at least fiftyhens.""Mister, too?""Not right off. But I hadn't took twenty steps before I seen him. He come down off the fence postthere and sat on the tub." "He loved that tub," said Sethe, thinking, No, there is no stopping now.

　　"Didn't he? Like a throne. Was me took him out the shell, you know. He'd a died if it hadn't beenfor me. The hen had walked on off with all the hatched peeps trailing behind her. There was thisone egg left. Looked like a blank, but then I saw it move so I tapped it open and here come Mister,bad feet and all. I watched that son a bitch grow up and whup everything in the yard.""He always was hateful," Sethe said.

　　"Yeah, he was hateful all right. Bloody too, and evil. Crooked feet flapping. Comb as big as myhand and some kind of red. He sat right there on the tub looking at me. I swear he smiled. My headwas full of what I'd seen of Halle a while back. I wasn't even thinking about the bit. Just Halle andbefore him Sixo, but when I saw Mister I knew it was me too. Not just them, me too. One crazy,one sold, one missing, one burnt and me licking iron with my hands crossed behind me. The last ofthe Sweet Home men.

　　"Mister, he looked so... free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn't even get outthe shell by hisself but he was still king and I was..." Paul D stopped and squeezed his left handwith his right. He held it that way long enough for it and the world to quiet down and let him goon.

　　"Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was.

　　Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever bePaul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that somethingwas less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub."Sethe put her hand on his knee and rubbed.

　　Paul D had only begun, what he was telling her was only the beginning when her fingers on hisknee, soft and reassuring, stopped him. Just as well. Just as well. Saying more might push themboth to a place they couldn't get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in thattobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut. He would not pry itloose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents it wouldshame him. And it would hurt her to know that there was no red heart bright as Mister's combbeating in him.

　　Sethe rubbed and rubbed, pressing the work cloth and the stony curves that made up his knee. Shehoped it calmed him as it did her. Like kneading bread in the half-light of the restaurant kitchen.

　　Before the cook arrived when she stood in a space no wider than a bench is long, back behind andto the left of the milk cans. Working dough. Workin............