“He hit my mother.”
“Oh.”
“He hit her. I hit him.”
“That’s tough.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” Milkman sighed heavily. “I know.”
“Listen. I can understand how you feel.”
“Uh uh. You can’t understand. Unless it happens to you, you can’t understand.”
“Yes I can. You know I used to hunt a lot. When I was a kid down home—”
“Oh, shit, do we have to hear about Alabama again?”
“Not Alabama. Florida.”
“Whatever.”
“Just listen, Milkman. Listen to me. I used to hunt a lot. From the time I could walk almost and I was good at it. Everybody said I was a natural. I could hear anything, smell anything, and see like a cat. You know what I mean? A natural. And I was never scared—not of the dark or shadows or funny sounds, and I was never afraid to kill. Anything. Rabbit, bird, snakes, squirrels, deer. And I was little. It never bothered me. I’d take a shot at anything. The grown men used to laugh about it. Said I was a natural-born hunter. After we moved up here with my grandmother, that was the only thing about the South I missed. So when my grandmother used to send us kids back home in the summer, all I thought about was hunting again. They’d pile us on the bus and we’d spend the summer with my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Florence. Soon’s I got there I looked for my uncles, to go out in the woods. And one summer—I was about ten or eleven, I guess—we all went out and I went off on my own. I thought I saw deer tracks. It wasn’t the season for deer, but that didn’t bother me any. If I saw one I killed one. I was right about the tracks; it was a deer, but spaced funny—not wide apart like I thought they should be, but still a deer. You know they step in their own prints. If you never saw them before you’d think a two-legged creature was jumping. Anyway, I stayed on the trail until I saw some bushes. The light was good and all of a sudden I saw a rump between the branches. I dropped it with the first shot and finished it with the next. Now, I want to tell you I was feeling good. I saw myself showing my uncles what I’d caught. But when I got up to it—and I was going real slow because I thought I might have to shoot it again—I saw it was a doe. Not a young one; she was old, but she was still a doe. I felt…bad. You know what I mean? I killed a doe. A doe, man.”
Milkman was gazing at Guitar with the wide steady eyes of a man trying to look sober.
“So I know how you felt when you saw your father hit your mother. It’s like that doe. A man shouldn’t do that. You couldn’t help what you felt.”
Milkman nodded his head, but it was clear to Guitar that nothing he had said had made any difference. Chances were Milkman didn’t even know what a doe was, and whatever it was, it wasn’t his mother. Guitar ran his finger around the rim of his glass.
“What’d she do, Milk?”
“Nothin. Smiled. He didn’t like her smile.”
“You’re not making sense. Talk sense. And slow down. You know you can’t hold liquor.”
“What you mean, I can’t hold liquor?”
“’Scuse me. Help yourself.”
“I’m trying to have a serious conversation and you talking shit, Guitar.”
“I’m listening.”
“And I’m talking.”
“Yes, you talking, but what are you saying? Your papa clips your mama cause she smiles at him. You clip him cause he clipped her. Now, is that the way you all spend the evening in your house or is there something else you’re trying to say?”
“Came up to talk to me afterwards.”
“Who?”
“My old man.”
“What’d he say?”
“Said I had to be a whole man and know the whole thing.”
“Go on.”
“He was gonna buy the Erie Lackawanna, but my mother wouldn’t let him.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe she needs beatin.”
“That’s very funny, man.”
“Why ain’t you laughing, then?”
“I am laughing. Inside.”
“Milk?”
“Yeah?”
