Denver stretches out her right arm and takes a step or two. She trips and falls down onto the pallet.

　　Newspaper crackles under her weight. She laughs again. "Oh, shoot. Beloved?"No one answers. Denver waves her arms and squinches her eyes to separate the shadows of potatosacks, a lard can and a side of smoked pork from the one that might be human.

　　"Stop fooling," she says and looks up toward the light to check and make sure this is still the cold house and not something going on in her sleep. The minnows of light still swim there; they can'tmake it down to where she is.

　　"You the one thirsty. You want cider or don't you?" Denver's voice is mildly accusatory. Mildly.

　　She doesn't want to offend and she doesn't want to betray the panic that is creeping over her likehairs. There is no sight or sound of Beloved. Denver struggles to her feet amid the cracklingnewspaper. Holding her palm out, she moves slowly toward the door. There is no latch or knob —just a loop of wire to catch a nail. She pushes the door open. Cold sunlight displaces the dark. Theroom is just as it was when they entered-except Beloved is not there. There is no point in lookingfurther, for everything in the place can be seen at first sight. Denver looks anyway because the lossis ungovernable. She steps back into the shed, allowing the door to close quickly behind her.

　　Darkness or not, she moves rapidly around, reaching, touching cobwebs, cheese, slanting shelves,the pallet interfering with each step. If she stumbles, she is not aware of it because she does notknow where her body stops, which part of her is an arm, a foot or a knee. She feels like an ice caketorn away from the solid surface of the stream, floating on darkness, thick and crashing against theedges of things around it. Breakable, meltable and cold.

　　It is hard to breathe and even if there were light she wouldn't be able to see anything because she iscrying. Just as she thought it might happen, it has. Easy as walking into a room. A magicalappearance on a stump, the face wiped out by sunlight, and a magical disappearance in a shed,eaten alive by the dark.

　　"Don't," she is saying between tough swallows. "Don't. Don't go back."This is worse than when Paul D came to 124 and she cried helplessly into the stove. This is worse.

　　Then it was for herself. Now she is crying because she has no self. Death is a skipped mealcompared to this. She can feel her thickness thinning, dissolving into nothing. She grabs the hair ather temples to get enough to uproot it and halt the melting for a while. Teeth clamped shut, Denverbrakes her sobs. She doesn't move to open the door because there is no world out there. Shedecides to stay in the cold house and let the dark swallow her like the minnows of light above. Shewon't put up with another leaving, another trick. Waking up to find one brother then another not atthe bottom of the bed, his foot jabbing her spine. Sitting at the table eating turnips and saving theliquor for her grandmother to drink; her mother's hand on the keeping-room door and her voicesaying, "Baby Suggs is gone, Denver." And when she got around to worrying about what would bethe case if Sethe died or Paul D took her away, a dream-come-true comes true just to leave her on apile of newspaper in the dark.

　　No footfall announces her, but there she is, standing where before there was nobody when Denverlooked. And smiling.

　　Denver grabs the hem of Beloved's skirt. "I thought you left me. I thought you went back."Beloved smiles, "I don't want that place. This the place I am." She sits down on the pallet and,laughing, lies back looking at the cracklights above.

　　Surreptitiously, Denver pinches a piece of Beloved's skirt between her fingers and holds on. Agood thing she does because suddenly Beloved sits up.

　　"What is it?" asks Denver.

　　"Look," she points to the sunlit cracks.

　　"What? I don't see nothing." Denver follows the pointing finger.

　　Beloved drops her hand. "I'm like this."Denver watches as Beloved bends over, curls up and rocks. Her eyes go to no place; her moaningis so small Denver can hardly hear it.

　　"You all right? Beloved?"Beloved focuses her eyes. "Over there. Her face."Denver looks where Beloved's eyes go; there is nothing but darkness there.

　　"Whose face? Who is it?""Me. It's me."She is smiling again.

　　THE LAST of the Sweet Home men, so named and called by one who would know, believed it.

　　The other four believed it too, once, but they were long gone. The sold one never returned, the lostone never found. One, he knew, was dead for sure; one he hoped was, because butter and clabberwas no life or reason to live it. He grew up thinking that, of all the Blacks in Kentucky, only thefive of them were men. Allowed, encouraged to correct Garner, even defy him. To invent ways ofdoing things; to see what was needed and attack it without permission. To buy a mother, choose ahorse or a wife, handle guns, even learn reading if they wanted to — but they didn't want to sincenothing important to them could be put down on paper.

　　Was that it? Is that where the manhood lay? In the naming done by a whiteman who was supposedto know? Who gave them the privilege not of workin............