Song of Solomon

directing his words into his shirt sleeve.

“They would have let you, if it had just been you. Soon as you told them your name they would have let you go. But you was with that Southside nigger. That’s what did it.”

“That is not what did it. It was riding around with a sack of rocks and human bones that did it. Human bones. Which is, if you’re a halfway intelligent cop, a hint that there must have been a human being connected to them bones at one time.”

“Of course at one time. But not tonight. There couldn’t have been a human attached to the bones yesterday. It takes time for a body to be a skeleton. They know that. And don’t tell me it wasn’t Guitar they was suspicious of. That yellow-eyed nigger looks like he might do anything.”

“They didn’t see his eyes when they told us to pull over. They didn’t see nothing. They just sideswiped us, and told us to get out. Now, what was that for? What’d they stop us for? We wasn’t speeding. Just driving along.” Milkman searched for cigarettes. He got angry again when he thought about bending over the car, his legs spread, his hands on the hood, while the policeman fingered his legs, his back, his ass, his arms. “What business they got stopping cars that ain’t speeding?”

“They stop anybody they want to. They saw you was colored, that’s all. And they’re looking for the Negro that killed that boy.”

“Who said it was a Negro?”

“Paper said it.”

“They always say that. Every time…”

“What difference does it make? If you’d been alone and told them your name they never would have hauled you in, never would have searched the car, and never would have opened that sack. They know me. You saw how they acted when I got there.”

“They didn’t act any different when you got there….”

“What?”

“They acted different when you took that sucker off in the corner and opened your wallet.”

“You better be thankful I got a wallet.”

“I am. God knows I am.”

“And that would have been the end of it, except for that Southside nigger. Hadn’t been for him, they wouldn’t of had to get Pilate down there.” Macon rubbed his knees. The idea of having to depend on Pilate to get his son out of jail humiliated him. “Raggedy bootlegging bitch.”

“She’s still a bitch?” Milkman began to chuckle. Exhaustion and the slow release of tension made him giddy. “You thought she stole it. All these years…all … all these years you’ve been holding that against her.” He was laughing out right now. “How she sneaked out of some cave with a big bag of gold that must have weighed a hundred pounds over her shoulder, all over the country for fifty years and didn’t spend none of it, just hung it from the ceiling like a fuckin sack of onions.” Milkman put his head back and let the laughter fill the kitchen. Macon was silent. “Fifty years…You been thinking about that gold for fifty years! Oh, shit. This is some crazy shit….” Tears of laughter were running from his eyes. “Crazy. All of you. Just straight-out, laid-back crazy. I should of known. The whole thing was crazy; everything about it was crazy—the whole idea.”

“What’s crazier? Her hauling a sack of gold around all this time, or hauling a dead man’s bones around? Huh? Which one?” Macon asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“If she do one, she could do the other. She’s the one they should have kept. When you all told them the bones belonged to her, they should have locked her up soon’s she walked in the door.”

Milkman wiped the tears on his sleeve. “Lock her up for what? After that story she told?” He started laughing again. “She came in there like Louise Beaver and Butterfly McQueen all rolled up in one. ‘Yassuh, boss. Yassuh, boss….”

“She didn’t say that.”

“Almost. She even changed her voice.”

“I told you she was a snake. Drop her skin in a split second.”

“She didn’t even look the same. She looked short. Short and pitiful.”

“That’s cause she wanted it back. She wanted them to let her have the bones back.”

“Her poor husband’s bones, that she didn’t have no money to bury. Pilate got a husband somewhere?”

“Does the Pope?”

“Well, she got ’em back. They gave ’em to her.”

“She knew what she was doing, all right.”

“Yeah, she knew. But how did she know so fast? I mean she came in there…you know…prepared… you know … prepared. She had it all together when she got there. Cop must have told her everything when he picked her up and brought her to the station.”

“Uh uh. They don’t do that.”

“Then how did she know?”

“Who knows what Pilate knows?”

Milkman shook his head. “Only The Shadow knows.” He was still amused, but earlier, when he and Guitar had sat handcuffed on a wooden bench, his neck skin had crawled with fear.

“White man’s bones,” Macon said. He stood up and yawned. The dark of the sky was softened now. “Nigger