From SONG OF SOLOMON
Milkman turned in his seat and tried to stretch his legs. It was morning. He’d changed buses
three times and was now speeding home on the last leg of his trip. He looked out the window. Far
away from Virginia, fall had already come. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan were dressed up like the Indian
warriors from whom their names came. Blood red and yellow, ocher and ice blue.
He read the road signs with interest now, wondering what lay beneath the names. The
Algonquins had named the territory he lived in Great Water, michi gami. How many dead lives and
fading memories were buried in and beneath the names of the places in this country. Under the
recorded names were other names, just as “Macon Dead,” recorded for all time in some dusty file,
hid from view the real names of people, places, and things. Names that had meaning. No wonder
Pilate put hers in her ear. When you Know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted
down and remembered, it will die when you do. Like the street he lived on, recorded as Mains
Avenue, but called Not Doctor Street by the Negroes in memory of his grandfather, who was the first
colored man of consequence in that city. Never mind that he probably didn’t deserve their honor –
they knew what kind of man he was: arrogant, color-struck, snobbish. They didn’t care about that.
They were paying their respect to whatever it was that made him be a doctor in the first place, when
the odds were that he’d be a yardman all of his life. So they named a street after him. Pilate had
taken a rock from every state she had lived in – because she had lived there. And having lived there, it
was hers – and his, and his father’s, his grandfather’s, his grandmother’s . Not Doctor Street,
Solomon’s Leap, Ryan’s Gulch, Shalimar, Virginia.
He closed his eyes and thought of the black men in Shalimar, Roanoke, Petersburg, Newport
News, Danville, in the Blood Bank, on Darling Street, in the pool halls, the barbershops. Their names.
Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore
witness. Macon Dead, Sing Byrd, Crowell Byrd, Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Magdalene, First Corinthians,
Milkman, Guitar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State (he just stood around and swayed),
Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Moon, Nero, Humpty-Dumpty, Blue Boy, Scandinavia, Quack-Quack, Jericho,
Spoonbread, Ice Man, Dough belly, Rocky River, Gray Eye, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo, Cool Breeze, Muddy
Waters, Pinetop, Jelly Roll, Fats, Lead-belly, Bo Diddley, Cat-Iron, Peg-Leg, Son, Shortstuff, Smoky
Babe, Funny Papa, Bukka, Pink, Bull Moose, B.B., T-Bone, Black Ace, Lemon, Washboard, Gatemouth,
Cleanhead, Tampa Red, Juke Boy, Shine, Staggerlee, Jim and the Devil…
Excerpt From:
Morrison, T. (1977). Song of Solomon. New York: Alfred Knopf.