“No it ain’t. Is it, baby?”
“No,” said Hagar. “It’s different.”
“See there. It’s different.”
“Well, what is the difference, Reba? You know so much.”
Reba looked at the ceiling. “A brother is a brother if you both got the same mother or if you both—”
Pilate interrupted her. “I mean what’s the difference in the way you act toward ’em? Don’t you have to act the same way to both?”
“That’s not the point, Mama.”
“Shut up, Reba. I’m talking to Hagar.”
“Yes, Mama. You treat them both the same.”
“Then why they got two words for it ‘stead of one, if they ain’t no difference?” Reba put her hands on her hips and opened her eyes wide.
“Pull that rocker over here,” said Pilate. “You boys have to give up your seats unless you gonna help.”
The women circled the basket, which was full of blackberries still on their short, thorny branches.
“What we have to do?” Guitar asked.
“Get them little berries off them hateful branches without popping’em. Reba, get that other crock.”
Hagar looked around, all eyes and hair. “Why don’t we pull a bed out the back room? Then we can all sit down.”
“Floor’s good enough for me,” said Pilate, and she squatted down on her haunches and lifted a branch gently from the basket. “This all you got?”
“No.” Reba was side-rolling a huge crock. “Two more outside.”
“Better bring them in. Draw too many flies out there.”
Hagar started for the door and motioned to Milkman. “Come on, brother. You can help.”
Milkman jumped up, knocking his chair backward, and trotted after Hagar. She was, it seemed to him, as pretty a girl as he’d ever seen. She was much much older than he was. She must be as old as Guitar, maybe even seventeen. He seemed to be floating. More alive than he’d ever been, and floating. Together he and Hagar dragged two baskets up the porch stairs and into the house. She was as strong and muscular as he was.
“Careful, Guitar. Go slow. You keep on busting ’em.”
“Leave him alone, Reba. He got to get the feel first. I asked you did you play any. That why they call you Guitar?”
“Not cause I do play. Because I wanted to. When I was real little. So they tell me.”
“Where’d you ever see a guitar?”
“It was a contest, in a store down home in Florida. I saw it when my mother took me downtown with her. I was just a baby. It was one of those things where you guess how many beans in the big glass jar and you win a guitar. I cried for it, they said. And always asked about it.”
“You should of called Reba. She’d get it for you.”
“No, you couldn’t buy it. You had to give the number of jellybeans.”
“I heard you. Reba would of known how many. Reba wins things. She ain’t never lost nothing.”
“Really?” Guitar smiled, but he was doubtful. “She lucky?”
“Sure I’m lucky.” Reba grinned. “People come from everywhere to get me to stand in for ’em at drawings and give them numbers to play. It works pretty well for them, and it always works for me. I win everything I try to win and lots of things I don’t even try to win.”
“Got to where won’t nobody sell her a raffle ticket. They just want her to hold theirs.”
“See this?” Reba put her hand down in the top of her dress and pulled out a diamond ring attached to a string. “I won this last year. I was the … what was it,
“Five hundred thousandth.”
“Five hundred…no it wasn’t. That ain’t what they said.”
“Half a million is what they said.”
“That’s right. The half a millionth person to walk into Sears and Roebuck.” Her laughter was gay and proud.
“They didn’t want to give it to her,” said Hagar, “cause she looked so bad.”
Guitar was astonished. “I remember that contest, but I don’t remember hearing nothing ’bout no colored person winning it.” Guitar, a habitual street roamer, believed he knew every public thing going on in the city.
“Nobody did. They had picture-taking people and everything waiting for the next person to walk in the door. But they never did put my picture in the paper. Me and Mama looked, too, didn’t we?” She glanced at Pilate for confirmation and went on. “But they put the picture of the man who won second prize in. He won a war bond. He was white.”
“Second prize?” Guitar asked. “What kind of ‘second prize’? Either you the half-millionth person or you ain’t. Can’t be no next-to-the-half-millionth.”
