“Saul? No.”
“Cause I might have to knock the rest of them out.”
The man laughed. “Sheriff took the others—with the butt of a gun.”
“Yeah? Good.”
“Well, you comin?”
“Sure I’m coming. Just get me the gun.”
He laughed again. “Name’s Omar.”
“Macon Dead.”
Omar blinked at the name, but didn’t comment on it. He merely told him to come by King Walker’s, a gas station about two miles up the road, right around sundown. “It’s straight up yonder. Ain’t no way in the world you can miss it.”
“I won’t miss it.” Milkman stood up and walked to his car. He fumbled for the car keys, opened the door, and slid into the seat. He rolled down all four windows, found a towel in the back seat, and stretched out, using his jacket for a pillow and the towel as a bandage for his face. His feet stuck out the open door. Fuck ’em. Who were all these people roaming the world trying to kill him? His own father had tried while he was still in his mother’s stomach. But he’d lived. And he had lived the last year dodging a woman who came every month to kill him, and he had lain just like this, with his arm over his eyes, wide open to whatever she had in her hand. He’d lived through that too. Then a witch had stepped out of his childhood nightmares to grab him, and he’d lived through that. Some bats had driven him out of a cave–and he’d lived through that. And at no time did he have a weapon. Now he walked into a store and asked if somebody could fix his car and a nigger pulled a knife on him. And he still wasn’t dead. Now what did these black Neanderthals think they were going to do? Fuck ’em. My name’s Macon; I’m already dead. He had thought this place, this Shalimar, was going to be home. His original home. His people came from here, his grandfather and his grandmother. All the way down South people had been nice to him, generous, helpful. In Danville they had made him the object of hero worship. In his own home town his name spelled dread and grudging respect. But here, in his “home,” he was unknown, unloved, and damn near killed. These were some of the meanest unhung niggers in the world.
He slept, unmolested by everything and everybody except a dream in which he thought he saw Guitar looking down on him. When he woke he bought two cans of pineapple and a box of crackers from Mr. Solomon. He ate on the porch with the hens. The men were gone, and the sun was leaving. Only the children stayed to watch him eat. When he poured the last of the pineapple juice down his throat, one of the children stepped forward to ask, “Can we have your can, mister?” He held it out and they snatched the can and ran off to fashion some game out of it.
He started out for King Walker’s. Even if he could have come up with a way to get out of the hunt, he wouldn’t have taken it, in spite of the fact that he had never handled a firearm in his life. He had stopped evading things, sliding through, over, and around difficulties. Before he had taken risks only with Guitar. Now he took them alone. Not only had he let Hagar stab him; he had let the nightmare witch catch him and kiss him. To a man surviving that, anything else was a joke.
King Walker was nothing like his name suggested. He was a small man, bald, with a left cheek bulging with tobacco. Years ago he’d been a star pitcher in one of the black baseball leagues and the history of his career was nailed and pasted all over his shop. They had not lied when they said no garage or mechanic on duty was nearer than five miles. King Walker’s station had obviously gone broke a long time ago. The pumps were dry; there wasn’t even a can of oil in the place. Now it seemed to be used as a kind of clubhouse for the men and Walker lived in the back of the station. In addition to King Walker, who wasn’t going, there was Omar and another man who had also been on the porch and who introduced himself as Luther Solomon—no relation to the grocery store Solomon. They were waiting for some others, who came soon after Milkman got there, driving an old Chevy. Omar introduced them as Calvin Breakstone and Small Boy.
Calvin seemed to be the most congenial of them, and followed the introductions with a command to King Walker to “get this city boy some shoes for his feet.” King rummaged around, spitting tobacco, and came up with some mud-caked brogans. They outfitted Milkman completely, laughing all the while at his underwear, fingering his vest—Small Boy tried to get his wrestler’s arms into Milkman’s jacket—and wondering what had happened to his feet. Bits of skin still peeled from his toes because of the two days he had spent in wet shoes and socks. King Walker made him sprinkle Arm & Hammer soda on them before he put on the thick socks they gave him. When Milkman was dressed in World War II army fatigues with a knit cap on his head, they opened some Falstaff beer and began to talk about guns. At which point the revelry mixed with meanness abated and King Walker handed Milkman his Winchester .22.
“Ever use a twenty-two?”
“Not in a good while,” Milkman said.
The five men piled into the Chevy and drove off into the lessening light. From what Milkman could tell, after fifteen minutes or so they were going up to high ground. As the car swerved through narrow roads, the conversation picked up again and they talked about other trips, game, kills, misses. Soon the only light came from the moon and it was getting cool enough for Milkman to be grateful for his knit cap. The car pulled ahead and around some sharp bends. In the rear-view mirror Milkman thought he glimpsed the headlights of another car and wondered briefly if they were being met by others. The sky was dark enough now for stars.
“Better make time, Calvin. Coon be done ate and gone on home.”
Calvin pulled over and stopped the car.
“Let ’em rip,” he said, and handed the car keys to Small Boy, who walked around to the back and unlocked the trunk. Three hounds leaped out, sniffing and wagging their tails. But they didn’t make a sound.
“You brought Becky?” asked Luther. “Oh, man! We gonna get some coon tonight!”
The dogs’ nervousness, their eagerness to hear the signal that would allow them to race off into the trees, made Milkman jittery. What was he supposed to do? Two feet in any direction from the headlights was black night.
Omar and Small Boy hauled equipment from the trunk: four lamps, one flashlight, rope, shells, and a pint bottle of liquor. When all four lamps were ablaze, they asked Milkman if he wanted to use a lamp or a flashlight. He hesitated, and Calvin said, “He can run with me. Give him the torch.”
Milkman put it in his back pocket.
