her on the premises. She made and sold liquor. Period.
After Reba grew up and began to live from one orgasm to another, taking time out to produce one child, Hagar, Pilate thought it might be time for a change. Not because of Reba, who was quite content with the life her mother and she lived, but because of her granddaughter. Hagar was prissy. She hated, even as a two-year-old, dirt and disorganization. At three she was already vain and beginning to be proud. She liked pretty clothes. Astonished as Pilate and Reba were by her wishes, they enjoyed trying to fulfill them. They spoiled her, and she, as a favor to their indulgence, hid as best she could the fact that they embarrassed her.
Pilate decided to find her brother, if he was still alive, for the child, Hagar, needed family, people, a life very different from what she and Reba could offer, and if she remembered anything about Macon, he would be different. Prosperous, conventional, more like the things and people Hagar seemed to admire. In addition, Pilate wanted to make peace between them. She asked her father where he was, but he just rubbed his feet and shook his head. So for the first time, Pilate went voluntarily to the police, who sent her to the Red Cross, who sent her to the Salvation Army, who sent her to the Society of Friends, who sent her back to the Salvation Army, who wrote to their command posts in large cities from New York to St. Louis and from Detroit to Louisiana and asked them to look in the telephone directory, where in fact one captain’s secretary found him listed. Pilate was surprised that they were successful, but the captain was not, because there could hardly be many people with such a name.
They made the trip in style (one train and two buses), for Pilate had a lot of money; the crash of 1929 had produced so many buyers of cheap home brew she didn’t even need the collection the Salvation Army took up for her. She arrived with suitcases, a green sack, a full-grown daughter, and a granddaughter, and found her brother truculent, inhospitable, embarrassed, and unforgiving. Pilate would have moved on immediately except for her brother’s wife, who was dying of lovelessness then, and seemed to be dying of it now as she sat at the table across from her sister-in-law listening to her life story, which Pilate was making deliberately long to keep Ruth’s mind off Hagar.
“I took her home. She was standing in the middle of the room when I got there. So I just took her home. Pitiful. Really pitiful.”
Milkman shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Hagar, but it was a way to sit Guitar down and get around to asking him something else.
“What’d you do to her?” asked Guitar.
“What’d I do to
“I mean before. That’s a messed-up lady.”
“I did what you do to some woman every six months–called the whole thing off.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No. It had to be something more.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“Take it any way you want. But that girl’s hurt—and the hurt came from you.”
“What’s the matter with you? You’ve been watching her try to kill me for months and I never laid a hand on her. Now you sit there worried about her. All of a sudden you’re police. You’ve been wearing a halo a lot lately. You got a white robe too?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m tired of being criticized by you. I know we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. I know you think I’m lazy—not serious, you say—but if we’re friends…I don’t meddle you, do I?”
“No. Not at all.”
Several minutes passed while Milkman played with his beer and Guitar sipped tea. They were sitting in Mary’s Place on a Sunday afternoon a few days after Hagar’s latest attempt on his life.
“You’re not smoking?” asked Milkman.
“No. I quit. Feel a hell of a lot better too.” There was another pause before Guitar continued. “You ought to stop yourself.”
Milkman nodded. “Yeah. If I stay around you I will. I’ll stop smoking, fucking, drinking–everything. I’ll take up a secret life and hanging out with Empire State.”
Guitar frowned. “Now who’s meddling?”
Milkman sighed and looked straight at his friend. “I am. I want to know why you were running around with Empire State last Christmas.”
“He was in trouble. I helped him.”
“That’s all?”
“What else?”
“I don’t know what else. But I know there is something else. Now, if it’s something I can’t know, okay, say so. But something’s going on with you. And I’d like to know what it is.”
Guitar didn’t answer.
“We’ve been friends a long time, Guitar. There’s nothing you don’t know about me. I can tell you anything— whatever our differences, I know I can trust you. But for some time now it’s been a one-way street. You know what I mean? I talk to you, but you don’t talk to me. You don’t think I can be trusted?”
“I don’t know if you can or not.”
“Try me.”
