Free Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Page B

turned to the snake and asked him, ‘What’d you do that for?’ He said, ‘Didn’t I take good care of you? Didn’t I save your life?’ The snake said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then what’d you do it for? What’d you kill me for?’ Know what the snake said? Said, ‘But you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?’ Now, I mean for you to stay out of that wine house and as far away from Pilate as you can.”
    Milkman lowered his head. His father had explained nothing to him.
    “Boy, you got better things to do with your time. Besides, it’s time you started learning how to work. You start Monday. After school come to my office; work a couple of hours there and learn what’s real. Pilate can’t teach you a thing you can use in this world. Maybe the next, but not this one. Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too. Starting Monday, I’m going to teach you how.”

Chapter 3
    Life improved for Milkman enormously after he began working for Macon. Contrary to what his father hoped, there was more time to visit the wine house. Running errands for Macon’s rent houses gave him leave to be in Southside and get to know the people Guitar knew so well. Milkman was young and he was friendly—just the opposite of his father—and the tenants felt at ease enough with him to tease him, feed him, confide in him. But it was hard to see much of Guitar. Saturdays were the only days he was certain to find him. If Milkman got up early enough on Saturday morning, he could catch his friend before Guitar went roaming the streets and before he himself had to help Macon collect rents. But there were days in the week when they agreed to skip school and hang out, and on one of those days Guitar took him to Feather’s pool hall on Tenth Street, right in the middle of the Blood Bank area.
    It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Guitar pushed open the door and shouted, “Hey, Feather! Give us a couple of Red Caps.”
    Feather, a short squat man with sparse but curly hair, looked up at Guitar, then at Milkman, and frowned.
    “Get him out of here.”
    Guitar stopped short and followed the little man’s gaze to Milkman’s face and back again. The half-dozen men there playing pool turned around at the sound of Feather’s voice. Three of them were air force pilots, part of the 332nd Fighter Group. Their beautiful hats and gorgeous leather jackets were carefully arranged on chairs. Their hair was cut close to the skull; their shirt cuffs were turned neatly back on their forearms; their white scarves hung in snowy rectangles from their hip pockets. Silver chains glistened at their necks and they looked faintly amused as they worked chalk into the tips of their cues.
    Guitar’s face shone with embarrassment. “He’s with me,” he said.
    “I said get him outta here.”
    “Come on, Feather, he’s my friend.”
    “He’s Macon Dead’s boy, ain’t he?”
    “So what”
    “So get him outta here.”
    “He can’t help who his daddy is.” Guitar had his voice under control.
    “Neither can I. Out.”
    “What his daddy do to you?”
    “Nothing yet. That’s why I want him outta here.”
    “He ain’t like his daddy.”
    “He ain’t got to be like him—
from
him is enough.”
    “I’ll be responsible for—”
    “Stop messing with me, Guitar. Get him out. He ain’t old enough to have wet dreams.”
    The pilots laughed and a man in a gray straw hat with a white band said, “Aw, let the boy stay, Feather.”
    “You shut your mouth. I’m running this.”
    “What harm can he do? A twelve-year-old kid.” He smiled at Milkman, who stopped himself from saying, No, thirteen.
    “But it ain’t your problem, is it?” asked Feather. “His daddy ain’t your landlord, is he, and you ain’t got no operating license to hang on to either. You ain’t got nothing….”
    Feather turned on the man with the