Maybe Solomon is God, said my daddy.
That dirty old man without any eyes in his head?
Maybe. You know what God looks like?
No, but I know He ain’t blind, I know He don’t walk around with a bird on His shoulder, I know He don’t sing songs.
How do you know that?
I just do.
Well and good, but take heed—if you see him coming, if you just happen to see him coming down from Hunter’s Hill some morning, and he passes near you, don’t you let him hear you talking like that.
What’ll he do?
I don’t know. If he can do what he can do, what can’t he do?
He can’t scare me, that’s what—and he can’t make me believe in him! You’re crazy! I said to my daddy, and he hit me, but I went on saying it at the top of my voice until I fell asleep.
I saw Solomon again about six months later, or maybe a year, I don’t remember. Looking the same, walking the same, and half the valley after him. I didn’t go along. My daddy did, but I didn’t. They all went to the Briley house that time. And Mrs. Briley died four days afterward. But I said I didn’t believe it.
When Mr. Randall himself came running over one night saying he’d had a call from Solomon and him and my daddy got drunk on wine, and Mr. Randall died the next day, even then I didn’t believe it.
How much proof you got to have, boy? my daddy said.
I couldn’t make it clear then what it was that was tormenting me. I couldn’t ask the right questions, because they weren’t really questions, then, just feelings. Like, this ain’t the world here, this place. People die all over the world, millions of people, every day, every minute. You mean you think that old bastard is carting off all over the world? You think he goes to China in that outfit and plays that guitar? And what about the bird? Birds don’t live long. What’s he got, a dozen of ‘em? And, I wanted to know, why does he do what he does? What the hell’s the point of telling somebody they’re going to die if they can’t do something about it?
I couldn’t believe in Solomon because I couldn’t understand him. I did say that, and my daddy said, If you could understand him, he wouldn’t be Solomon.
What’s that mean?
Means he’s mysterious.
So’s fire, I said. But I wouldn’t believe in it if it couldn’t put out heat or burn anything.
You’re young.
I was, too. Eleven.
By the time I was grown, I had the questions, and I had the answers. But I couldn’t tell my daddy. On my eighteenth birthday, we were whooping it up, drinking liquor and singing, when somebody looked out the window. Everything stopped then. My daddy didn’t even bother to go look.
Could be for anybody here, somebody said.
No. I feel it. It’s for me.
You don’t know.
I know. Lonnie’s a man now, it’s time for me to move on.
I went to the window. Some of the people we hadn’t invited were behind Solomon, gazing at our house. He had the guitar unslung, and he was strumming it.
The people finished up their drinking quietly and looked at my daddy and went back out. But they didn’t go home, not until Solomon did.
I was drunk, and this made me drunker. I remember I laughed, but my daddy, he didn’t and in a little while he went on up to bed. I never saw him look so tired, so worn out, never, and I saw him work in the field eighteen hours a day for months.
Nothing happened the first week. Nor the second. But he didn’t get out of bed that whole time, and he didn’t talk. He just waited.
The third week, it came. He started coughing. Next day he called for my mother, dead those eighteen years. Doc Garson came and looked him over. Pneumonia, he said.
That morning my daddy was still and cold.
I hated Solomon then, for the first time, and I hated the people in the valley. But I couldn’t do anything about it. We didn’t have any money, and nobody would ever want to buy the place. So I settled in, alone, and worked and tried to forget about the old blind man. He came to me at night, in my sleep, and I’d wake up, mad, sometimes, but I knew a dream couldn’t hurt you, unless you let it. And I didn’t plan to let it.
Etilla said I was right, and I think that’s when I first saw her. I’d seen her every Sunday at church, with her ma, when my daddy and I went there together, but she was only a little thing then. I didn’t even know who she was when I started buying grain from her at the store, and when she told me her name, I just couldn’t believe it. I don’t think there’s been many prettier girls in the world. Her hair wasn’t golden, it was kind of brown, her figure wasn’t skinny like the pictures, but full and lush and she had freckles, but I knew, in a hurry, that she was the woman I wanted. I hadn’t ever felt the way she made me feel. Excited and nervous and hot.
It’s love, Bundy Matthews said. He was my best friend. You’re in love.
How do you know?
I just do.
But what if she ain’t in love with me?
You’re a fool.
How can I find out?
You can’t, not if you don’t do anything except stand there and buy grain off of her.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, asking her to walk with me, but I did it, and she said yes, and that’s when I found out that Bundy was right. All the nervousness went away, but the excitement and heat, they stayed. I felt wonderful. Every time I touched her it made my whole life up to then nothing but getting ready, just twenty-four years of getting ready to touch Etilla.
Nothing she wouldn’t talk about, that girl. Even Solomon, who never was talked about, ever, by anybody else, except when he was traveling.
Wonder where he lives, I’d say.
Oh, probably in some cave somewhere, she’d say.
Wonder how he lives.
I don’t know what you mean.
I mean, where does he find anything to eat.
I never thought about it.
Stray dogs, probably.
And we’d laugh and then talk about something else. Then, after we’d courted six months, I asked Etilla to be my bride, and she said yes.
We set the date for the first of June, and I mean to tell you, I worked from dawn to dusk, every day, just to keep from thinking about it. I wanted so much to hold her in my arms and wake up to find her there beside me in the bed that it hurt, all over. It wasn’t like any other hurt. It didn’t go away, or ease. It just stayed inside me, growing, till I honestly thought I’d break open.
I was thinking about that one day, out in the field, when I heard the music. I let go of the plow and turned around, and there he was, maybe a hundred yards away. I hadn’t laid eyes on him in six years, but he didn’t look any different. Neither did the holes where his eyes used to be, or the raven. Or the people behind him.
Long valley, dark valley ... hear the wind cry!...in darkness we’re born and in darkness we die...all alone, alone, to the end of our days ... to the end of our days, all alone...
I felt the old hate come up then, because seeing him made me see my daddy again, and the look on my daddy’s face when he held the ax in the air that first time and when he died.
But the hate didn’t last long, because there wasn’t any part of me that was afraid, and that made me feel good. I waited for him to finish and when he did, I clapped applause for him, laughed, and turned back to my plowing. I didn’t even bother to see when they all left.
Next night I went over to Etilla’s, the way I did every Thursday night. Her mother opened the door, and looked at me and said, You can’t come in, Lonnie.