something he said, maybe, or something he didn't say woke me. i sat up like somebody hit me, andyou woke up too and commenced to cry. i rocked you some, but there wasn't much room, so istepped outside the door to walk you. up and down i went. up and down. everything dark butlamplight in the top window of the house. she must've been up still. i couldn't get out of my headthe thing that woke me up: "while the boys is small." that's what he said and it snapped meawake. they tagged after me the whole day weeding, milking, getting firewood. for now. fornow.

that's when we should have begun to plan. but we didn't. i don't know what we thought — butgetting away was a money thing to us. buy out. running was nowhere on our minds. all of us?

some? where to? how to go? it was sixo who brought it up, finally, after paul f. mrs. garner soldhim, trying to keep things up. already she lived two years off his price. but it ran out, i guess, soshe wrote schoolteacher to come take over. four sweet home men and she still believed sheneeded her brother-in-law and two boys 'cause people said she shouldn't be alone out there withnothing but negroes. so he came with a big hat and spectacles and a coach box full of paper.

talking soft and watching hard. he beat paul a. not hard and not long, but it was the first timeanyone had, because mr. garner disallowed it. next time i saw him he had company in theprettiest trees you ever saw. sixo started watching the sky. he was the only one who crept at nightand halle said that's how he learned about the train.

"that way." halle was pointing over the stable. "where he took my ma'am. sixo say freedom isthat way. a whole train is going and if we can get there, don't need to be no buyout.""train? what's that?" i asked him.

they stopped talking in front of me then. even halle. but they whispered among themselves andsixo watched the sky. not the high part, the low part where it touched the trees. you could tell hismind was gone from sweet home.

the plan was a good one, but when it came time, i was big with denver. so we changed it a little.

a little. just enough to butter halle's face, so paul d tells me, and make sixo laugh at last. but igot you out, baby. and the boys too. when the signal for the train come, you all was the only onesready. i couldn't find halle or nobody. i didn't know sixo was burned up and paul d dressed in acollar you wouldn't believe. not till later. so i sent you all to the wagon with the woman whowaited in the corn. ha ha. no notebook for my babies and no measuring string neither. what i hadto get through later i got through because of you. passed right by those boys hanging in the trees.

one had paul a's shirt on but not his feet or his head. i walked right on by because only me hadyour milk, and god do what he would, i was going to get it to you. you remember that, don't you;that i did? that when i got here i had milk enough for all?

one more curve in the road, and sethe could see her chimney; it wasn't lonely-looking anymore.

the ribbon of smoke was from a fire that warmed a body returned to her — just like it never wentaway, never needed a headstone. and the heart that beat inside it had not for a single momentstopped in her hands.

she opened the door, walked in and locked it tight behind her. the day stamp paid saw the twobacks through the window and then hurried down the steps, he believed the undecipherablelanguage clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. very fewhad died in bed, like baby suggs, and none that he knew of, including baby, had lived a livablelife. even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writersand businessmen had a hard row to hoe. in addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, theyhad the weight of the whole race sitting there. you needed two heads for that. whitepeoplebelieved that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. swift unnavigable waters,swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. in a way, he thought, they were right. the more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convincethem how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves upto persuade whites of something negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and moretangled the jungle grew inside. but it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place fromthe other (livable) place. it was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. and it grew. it spread. in,through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. touched them everyone. changed and altered them. made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, soscared were they of the jungle they had made. the screaming baboon lived under their own whiteskin; the red gums were their own. meantime, the secret spread of this new kind of whitefolks'

jungle was hidden, silent, except once in a while when you could hear its mumbling in places like124.

stamp paid abandoned his efforts to see about sethe, after the pain of knocking and not gainingentrance, and when he did, 124 was left to its own devices. when sethe locked the door, thewomen inside were free at last to be what they liked, see whatever they saw and say whatever wason their minds.