"I asked you who brought you here?"
"I walked here," she said. "A long, long, long, long way. Nobody bring me. Nobody help me."
"You had new shoes. If you walked so long why don't your shoes show it?"
"Paul D, stop picking on her."
"I want to know," he said, holding the knife handle in his fist like a pole.
"I take the shoes! I take the dress! The shoe strings don't fix!" she shouted and gave him a look somalevolent Denver touched her arm.
"I'll teach you," said Denver, "how to tie your shoes," and got a smile from Beloved as a reward.
Paul D had the feeling a large, silver fish had slipped from his hands the minute he grabbed hold of its tail. That it was streaming back off into dark water now, gone but for the glistening marking itsroute. But if her shining was not for him, who then? He had never known a woman who lit up fornobody in particular, who just did it as a general announcement. Always, in his experience, thelight appeared when there was focus. Like the ThirtyMile Woman, dulled to smoke while hewaited with her in the ditch, and starlight when Sixo got there. He never knew himself to mistakeit. It was there the instant he looked at Sethe's wet legs, otherwise he never would have been boldenough to enclose her in his arms that day and whisper into her back.
This girl Beloved, homeless and without people, beat all, though he couldn't say exactly why,considering the coloredpeople he had run into during the last twenty years. During, before andafter the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder theyrecalled or said anything. Who, like him, had hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, likehim, stole from pigs; who, like him, slept in trees in the day and walked by night; who, like him,had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, paterollers,veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers. Once he met a Negro about fourteen years old wholived by himself in the woods and said he couldn't remember living anywhere else. He saw awitless coloredwoman jailed and hanged for stealing ducks she believed were her own babies.