door.
When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them, the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. Their knees must have felt so weak that blinding hunger alone could have propelled them forward. No one was there to warn or hold them; their parents, chastened and grieving, were far away. So they ran as fast as they could to the house where a woman older than death lived, and they ignored the shivering nape hair and the softness in their knees. A grown man can also be energized by hunger, and any weakness in his knees or irregularity in his heartbeat will disappear if he thinks his hunger is about to be assuaged. Especially if the object of his craving is not gingerbread or chewy gumdrops, but gold.
Milkman ducked under the boughs of black walnut trees and walked straight toward the big crumbling house. He knew that an old woman had lived in it once, but he saw no signs of life there now. He was oblivious to the universe of wood life that did live there in layers of ivy grown so thick he could have sunk his arm in it up to the elbow. Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death—each took place on the hidden side of a leaf. From where he stood, the house looked as if it had been eaten by a galloping disease, the sores of which were dark and fluid.
One mile behind him were macadam and the reassuring sounds of an automobile or two—one of which was Reverend Cooper’s car, driven by his thirteen-year-old nephew.
Noon, Milkman had told him. Come back at noon. He could just as easily have said twenty minutes, and now that he was alone, assaulted by what city people regard as raucous silence, he wished he had said five minutes. But even if the boy hadn’t had chores to do, it would be foolish to be driven fifteen miles outside Danville on “business” and stay a hot minute.
He should never have made up that elaborate story to disguise his search for the cave; somebody might ask him about it. Besides, lies should be very simple, like the truth. Excessive detail was simply excess. But he was so tired after the long bus ride from Pittsburgh, coming right after the luxury of the flight, he was afraid he wouldn’t be convincing.
The airplane ride exhilarated him, encouraged illusion and a feeling of invulnerability. High above the clouds, heavy yet light, caught in the stillness of speed (“Cruise,” the pilot said), sitting in intricate metal become glistening bird, it was not possible to believe he had ever made a mistake, or could. Only one small thought troubled him—that Guitar was not there too. He would have loved it—the view, the food, the stewardesses. But Milkman wanted to do this by himself, with no input from anybody. This one time he wanted to go solo. In the air, away from real life, he felt free, but on the ground, when he talked to Guitar just before he left, the wings of all those other people’s nightmares flapped in his face and constrained him. Lena’s anger, Corinthians’ loose and uncombed hair, matching her slack lips, Ruth’s stepped-up surveillance, his father’s bottomless greed, Hagar’s hollow eyes—he did not know whether he deserved any of that, but he knew he was fed up and he knew he had to leave quickly. He told Guitar of his decision before he told his father.
“Daddy thinks the stuff is still in the cave.”
“Could be.” Guitar sipped his tea.
“Anyway, it’s worth checking out. At least we’ll know once and for all.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“So I’m going after it.”
“By yourself?”
Milkman sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. By myself. I need to get out of here. I mean I really have to go away somewhere.”
Guitar put his cup down and folded his hands in front of his mouth. “Wouldn’t it be easier with the two of us? Suppose you have trouble?”
“It might be easier, but it might look more suspicious with two men instead of one roaming around the woods. If I find it, I’ll haul it back and we’ll split it up just like we agreed. If I don’t, well, I’ll be back anyway.”
“When you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“What’s your father say about you going alone?”
“I haven’t told him yet. You’re the only one knows so far.” Milkman stood up and went to the window that looked out on Guitar’s little porch. “Shit.”
Guitar was watching him carefully. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Why you so low? You don’t act like a man on his way to the end of the rainbow.”
Milkman turned around and sat on the sill. “I hope it is a rainbow, and nobody has run off with the pot, cause I need it.”
“Everybody needs it.”
“Not as bad as me.”
Guitar smiled. “Look like you really got the itch now. More than before.”
“Yeah, well, everything’s worse than before, or maybe it’s the same as before. I don’t know. I just know that I want to live my own life. I don’t want to be my old man’s office boy no more. And as long as I’m in this place I will be. Unless I have my own money. I have to get out of that house and I don’t want to owe anybody when I go. My family’s driving me crazy. Daddy wants me to be like him and hate my mother. My mother wants me to think like her and hate my father. Corinthians won’t speak to me; Lena wants me out. And Hagar wants me chained to her bed or dead. Everybody wants something from me, you know what I mean? Something they think they can’t get anywhere else. Something they think I got. I don’t know what it is—I mean what it is they really want.”
