"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?""It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet andshining legs, holding her shoes and stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle's girl —the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. Andthough her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now. Because ofthe hair. A face too still for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, usedto make him think of a mask with mercifully punched out eyes. Halle's woman. Pregnant everyyear including the year she sat by the fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children shehad already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. Theywere to be left with Halle's mother near Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to thefire you could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were liketwo wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded,marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked instead at the firewhile she told him, because her husband was not there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and hiswife had a lump in her neck the size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. She leanedas close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Homemen. There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the only female. Mrs. Garner,crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she waswidowed. Then schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three moreSweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells thatdid not reflect firelight.

　　Now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough to step inside herdoor smack into a pool of pulsing red light.

　　She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wantedto cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it — dry-eyed and lucky.

　　"You said she died soft. Soft as cream," he reminded her.

　　"That's not Baby Suggs," she said.

　　"Who then?""My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys.""She didn't live?""No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left.

　　Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died."Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weepingclung to the air where it had been.

　　Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebodywill figure out a way to tie them up. Still ... if her boys were gone ...

　　"No man? You here by yourself?""Me and Denver," she said.