Sethe lay on her back, her head turned from him. Out of the corner of his eye, Paul D saw the floatof her breasts and disliked it, the spread-away, flat roundness of them that he could definitely livewithout, never mind that downstairs he had held them as though they were the most expensive partof himself. And the wrought-iron maze he had explored in the kitchen like a gold miner pawingthrough pay dirt was in fact a revolting clump of scars.

Not a tree, as she said. Maybe shaped likeone, but nothing like any tree he knew because trees were inviting; things you could trust and benear; talk to if you wanted to as he frequently did since way back when he took the midday meal inthe fields of Sweet Home. Always in the same place if he could, and choosing the place had beenhard because Sweet Home had more pretty trees than any farm around.

His choice he called Brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes, sometimes with Halle or the other Pauls, but moreoften with Sixo, who was gentle then and still speaking English. Indigo with a flame-red tongue,Sixo experimented with night-cooked potatoes, trying to pin down exactly when to put smoking hot rocks in a hole, potatoes on top, and cover the whole thing with twigs so that by the time theybroke for the meal, hitched the animals, left the field and got to Brother, the potatoes would be atthe peak of perfection.

He might get up in the middle of the night, go all the way out there, start theearth-over by starlight; or he would make the stones less hot and put the next day's potatoes onthem right after the meal. He never got it right, but they ate those undercooked, overcooked, dried-out or raw potatoes anyway, laughing, spitting and giving him advice.
Time never worked the way Sixo thought, so of course he never got it right. Once he plotted downto the minute a thirty-mile trip to see a woman. He left on a Saturday when the moon was in theplace he wanted it to be, arrived at her cabin before church on Sunday and had just enough time tosay good morning before he had to start back again so he'd make the field call on time Mondaymorning. He had walked for seventeen hours, sat down for one, turned around and walkedseventeen more. Halle and the Pauls spent the whole day covering Sixo's fatigue from Mr. Garner.