Denver watches as Beloved bends over, curls up and rocks. Her eyes go to no place; her moaningis so small Denver can hardly hear it.
"You all right? Beloved?"
Beloved focuses her eyes. "Over there. Her face."
Denver looks where Beloved's eyes go; there is nothing but darkness there.
"Whose face? Who is it?"
"Me. It's me."
She is smiling again.
THE LAST of the Sweet Home men, so named and called by one who would know, believed it.
The other four believed it too, once, but they were long gone. The sold one never returned, the lostone never found. One, he knew, was dead for sure; one he hoped was, because butter and clabberwas no life or reason to live it. He grew up thinking that, of all the Blacks in Kentucky, only thefive of them were men. Allowed, encouraged to correct Garner, even defy him. To invent ways ofdoing things; to see what was needed and attack it without permission. To buy a mother, choose ahorse or a wife, handle guns, even learn reading if they wanted to — but they didn't want to sincenothing important to them could be put down on paper.