Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Page A

weakened both the boys, and they sat in a pleasant semi-stupor, listening to her go on and on….
    “Hadn’t been for your daddy, I wouldn’t be here today. I would have died in the womb. And died again in the woods. Those woods and the dark would have surely killed me. But he saved me and here I am boiling eggs. Our papa was dead, you see. They blew him five feet up into the air. He was sitting on his fence waiting for ‘em, and they snuck up from behind and blew him five feet into the air. So when we left Circe’s big house we didn’t have no place to go, so we just walked around and lived in them woods. Farm country. But Papa came back one day. We didn’t know it was him at first, cause we both saw him blowed five feet into the air. We were lost then. And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain’t. There’re five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don’t stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.
    “Now, we lost and there was this wind and in front of us was the back of our daddy. We were some scared children. Macon kept telling me that the things we was scared of wasn’t real. What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not? I remember doing laundry for a man and his wife once, down in Virginia. The husband came into the kitchen one afternoon shivering and saying did I have any coffee made. I asked him what was it that had grabbed hold of him, he looked so bad. He said he couldn’t figure it out, but he felt like he was about to fall off a cliff. Standing right there on that yellow and white and red linoleum, as level as a flatiron. He was holding on to the door first, then the chair, trying his best not to fall down. I opened my mouth to tell him wasn’t no cliff in that kitchen. Then I remembered how it was being in those woods. I felt it all over again. So I told the man did he want me to hold on to him so he couldn’t fall. He looked at me with the most grateful look in the world. ‘Would you?’ he said. I walked around back of him and locked my fingers in front of his chest and held on to him. His heart was kicking under his vest like a mule in heat. But little by little it calmed down.”
    “You saved his life,” said Guitar.
    “No such thing. His wife come in before it was time to let go. She asked me what I was doing and I told her.”
    “Told her what? What’d you say?”
    “The truth. That I was trying to keep him from falling off a cliff.”
    “I bet he wished he had jumped off then. She believe you? Don’t tell me she believed you.”
    “Not right away she didn’t. But soon’s I let go he fell dead-weight to the floor. Smashed his glasses and everything. Fell right on his face. And you know what? He went down so slow. I swear it took three minutes, three whole minutes to go from a standing upright position to when he mashed his face on the floor. I don’t know if the cliff was real or not, but it took him three minutes to fall down it.”
    “Was he dead?” asked Guitar.
    “Stone dead.”
    “Who shot your daddy? Did you say somebody shot him?” Guitar was fascinated, his eyes glittering with lights.
    “Five feet into the air…”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know who and I don’t know why. I just know what I’m telling you: what, when, and where.”
    “You didn’t say where.” He was insistent.
    “I did too. Off a fence.”
    “Where was the fence?”
    “On our farm.”
    Guitar laughed, but his eyes were too shiny to convey much humor. “Where was the farm?”
    “Montour County.”
    He gave up on “where.” “Well, when then?”
    “When he sat there—on