Song of Solomon

“I don’t know about the women. I can’t say what their women would do, but I do remember that picture of those white mothers holding up their babies so they could get a good look at some black men burning on a tree. So I have my suspicions about Eleanor Roosevelt. But none about Mr. Roosevelt. You could’ve taken him and his wheelchair and put him in a small dusty town in Alabama and given him some tobacco, a checkerboard, some whiskey, and a rope and he’d have done it too. What I’m saying is, under certain conditions they would all do it. And under the same circumstances we would not. So it doesn’t matter that some of them haven’t done it. I listen. I read. And now I know that they know it too. They know they are unnatural. Their writers and artists have been saying it for years. Telling them they are unnatural, telling them they are depraved. They call it tragedy. In the movies they call it adventure. It’s just depravity that they try to make glorious, natural. But it ain’t. The disease they have is in their blood, in the structure of their chromosomes.”

“You can prove this, I guess. Scientifically?”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t you be able to prove it before you act on something like that?”

“Did they prove anything scientifically about us before they killed us? No. They killed us first and then tried to get some scientific proof about why we should die.”

“Wait a minute, Guitar. If they are as bad, as unnatural, as you say, why do you want to be like them? Don’t you want to be better than they are?”

“I am better.”

“But now you’re doing what the worst of them do.”

“Yes, but I am reasonable.”

“Reasonable? How?”

“I am not, one, having fun; two, trying to gain power or public attention or money or land; three, angry at anybody.”

“You’re not angry? You must be!”

“Not at all. I hate doing it. I’m afraid to do it. It’s hard to do it when you aren’t angry or drunk or doped up or don’t have a personal grudge against the person.”

“I can’t see how it helps. I can’t see how it helps anybody.”

“I told you. Numbers. Balance. Ratio. And the earth, the land.”

“I’m not understanding you.”

“The earth is soggy with black people’s blood. And before us Indian blood. Nothing can cure them, and if it keeps on there won’t be any of us left and there won’t be any land for those who are left. So the numbers have to remain static.”

“But there are more of them than us.”

“Only in the West. But still the ratio can’t widen in their favor.”

“But you should want everybody to know that the society exists. Then maybe that would help stop it. What’s the secrecy for?”

“To keep from getting caught.”

“Can’t you even let other Negroes know about it? I mean to give us hope?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Betrayal. The possibility of betrayal.”

“Well, let them know. Let white people know. Like the Mafia or the Klan; frighten them into behaving.”

“You’re talking foolishness. How can you let one group know and not the other? Besides, we are not like them. The Mafia is unnatural. So is the Klan. One kills for money, the other kills for fun. And they have huge profits and protection at their disposal. We don’t. But it’s not about other people knowing. We don’t even tell the victims. We just whisper to him, ‘Your Day has come.’ The beauty of what we do is its secrecy, its smallness. The fact that nobody needs the unnatural satisfaction of talking about it. Telling about it. We don’t discuss it among ourselves, the details. We just get an assignment. If the Negro was killed on a Wednesday, the Wednesday man takes it; if he was killed on Monday, the Monday man takes that one. And we just notify one another when it’s completed, not how or who. And if it ever gets to be too much, like it was for Robert Smith, we do that rather than crack and tell somebody. Like Porter. It was getting him down. They thought somebody would have to take over his day. He just needed a rest and he’s okay now.”

Milkman stared at his friend and then let the spasm he had been holding back run through him. “I can’t buy it, Guitar.”

“I know that.”

“There’s too much wrong with it.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, for one thing, you’ll get caught eventually.”

“Maybe. But if I’m caught I’ll just die earlier than I’m supposed to—not better than I’m supposed to. And how I die or when doesn’t interest me. What I die for does. It’s the same as what I live for. Besides, if I’m caught they’ll accuse me and kill me for one crime, maybe two, never for all. And there are still six other days in the week. We’ve been around for a long long time. And believe me, we’ll be around for a long long time to come.”