Just a shoot no taller than his waist. The kind of thing a man would cut to whip his horse. Song-murder and the aspen. He stayed alive to sing songs that murdered life, and watched an aspen thatconfirmed it, and never for a minute did he believe he could escape. Until it rained. Afterward,after the Cherokee pointed and sent him running toward blossoms, he wanted simply to move, go,pick up one day and be somewhere else the next. Resigned to life without aunts, cousins, children.

　　Even a woman, until Sethe.

　　And then she moved him. Just when doubt, regret and every single unasked question was packedaway, long after he believed he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he wantedto take root — she moved him. From room to room. Like a rag doll. Sitting on the porch of a dry-goods church, a little bit drunk and nothing much to do, he could have these thoughts. Slow, what-if thoughts that cut deep but struck nothing solid a man could hold on to. So he held his wrists.

　　Passing by that woman's life, getting in it and letting it get in him had set him up for this fall.

　　Wanting to live out his life with a whole woman was new, and losing the feeling of it made himwant to cry and think deep thoughts that struck nothing solid. When he was drifting, thinking onlyabout the next meal and night's sleep, when everything was packed tight in his chest, he had nosense of failure, of things not working out. Anything that worked at all worked out. Now hewondered what-all went wrong, and starting with the Plan, everything had. It was a good plan, too.

　　Worked out in detail with every possibility of error eliminated.

　　Sixo, hitching up the horses, is speaking English again and tells Halle what his Thirty-MileWoman told him. That seven Negroes on her place were joining two others going North. That thetwo others had done it before and knew the way. That one of the two, a woman, would wait forthem in the corn when it was high — one night and half of the next day she would wait, and if theycame she would take them to the caravan, where the others would be hidden. That she would rattle,and that would be the sign. Sixo was going, his woman was going, and Halle was taking his wholefamily. The two Pauls say they need time to think about it. Time to wonder where they will ............