Song of Solomon

“I can’t. Other people are involved.”

“Then don’t tell me about other people; tell me about you.”

Guitar looked at him for a long time. Maybe, he thought. Maybe I can trust you. Maybe not, but I’ll risk it anyway because one day…

“Okay,” he said aloud, “but you have to know that what I tell you can’t go any further. And if it does, you’ll be dropping a rope around my neck. Now do you still want to know it?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Guitar poured some more hot water over his tea. He looked into his cup for a minute while the leaves settled slowly to the bottom. “I suppose you know that white people from time to time, and most folks shake their heads and say, ’Eh, eh, eh, ain’t that a shame?’”

Milkman raised his eyebrows. He thought Guitar was going to let him in on some deal he had going. But he was slipping into his race bag. He was speaking slowly, as though each word had to count, and as though he were listening carefully to his own words. “I can’t suck my teeth or say ‘Eh, eh, eh.’ I had to do something. And the only thing left to do is balance it; keep things on an even keel. Any man, any woman, or any child is good for five to seven generations of heirs before they’re bred out. So every death is the death of five to seven generations. You can’t stop them from killing us, from trying to get rid of us. And each time they succeed, they get rid of five to seven generations. I help keep the numbers the same.

“There is a society. It’s made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks. They don’t initiate anything; they don’t even choose. They are as indifferent as rain. But when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner if they can. If the Negro was hanged, they hang; if a Negro was burnt, they burn; raped and murdered, they rape and murder. If they can. If they can’t do it precisely in the same manner, they do it any way they can, but they do it. They call themselves the Seven Days. They are made up of seven men. Always seven and only seven. If one of them dies or leaves or is no longer effective, another is chosen. Not right away, because that kind of choosing takes time. But they don’t seem to be in a hurry. Their secret is time. To take the time, to last. Not to grow; that’s dangerous because you might become known. They don’t write their names in toilet stalls or brag to women. Time and silence. Those are their weapons, and they go on forever.

“It got started in 1920, when that private from Georgia was killed after his balls were cut off and after that veteran was blinded when he came home from France in World War I. And it’s been operating ever since. I am one of them now.”

Milkman had held himself very still all the time Guitar spoke. Now he felt tight, shriveled, and cold.

“You? You’re going to kill people?”

“Not people. White people.”

“But why?”

“I just told you. It’s necessary; it’s got to be done. To keep the ratio the same.”

“And if it isn’t done? If it just goes on the way it has?”

“Then the world is a zoo, and I can’t live in it.”

“Why don’t you just hunt down the ones who did the killing? Why kill innocent people? Why not just those who did it?”

“It doesn’t matter who did it. Each and every one of them could do it. So you just get any one of them. There are no innocent white people, because every one of them is a potential nigger-killer, if not an actual one. You think Hitler surprised them? You think just because they went to war they thought he was a freak? Hitler’s the most natural white man in the world. He killed Jews and Gypsies because he didn’t have us. Can you see those Klansmen shocked by him? No, you can’t.”

“But people who lynch and slice off people’s balls—they’re crazy, Guitar, crazy.”

“Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant. That’s like saying they were drunk. Or constipated. Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out, cutting his nuts off, the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do? Too constipated to do? And more to the point, how come Negroes, the craziest, most ignorant people in America, don’t get that crazy and that ignorant? No. White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome an unnatural enemy.”

“What about the nice ones? Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.”

“That just means there are one or two natural ones. But they haven’t been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn’t stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn’t stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on. So will we.”

“You’re missing the point. There’re not just one or two. There’re a lot.”

“Are there? Milkman, if Kennedy got drunk and bored and was sitting around a potbellied stove in Mississippi, he might join a lynching party just for the hell of it. Under those circumstances his unnaturalness would surface. But I know I wouldn’t join one no matter how drunk I was or how bored, and I know you wouldn’t either, nor any black man I know or ever heard tell of. Ever. In any world, at any time, just get up and go find somebody white to slice up. But they can do it. And they don’t even do it for profit, which is why they do most things. They do it for fun. Unnatural.”

“What about…” Milkman searched his memory for some white person who had shown himself unequivocally supportive of Negroes. “Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer. Would he do it?”

“In a minute. He didn’t care anything about those Africans. They could have been rats. He was in a laboratory testing himself—proving he could work on human dogs.”

“What about Eleanor Roosevelt?”