"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (273 - 362 pp)

   Living in the Sweet Houme, Paule D thought there were only five men, as no white man could do anything without a gun, while a black one could. Calling himself a man, Paul D couldn't  tell Sethe about the last three weeks, that he had spent in the shed. But one day he maid up his mind to that; that's why the man cought Sethe alone coming from work. Imagining her face and reaction, he let the words flock in his head, but all that he could say was the request for giving him one more child. Sethe refused as she was too old to start that all over again, and though she didn't know why Paul D had asked her for that, the woman thought it was because of his wish to stay. Having come to their house, Sethe and Paul D noticed the figure, the same figure that had been meeting the woman for four months, and the threads of malice crept toward the man from its side.

   Anather question that Paul D wanted to ask Sethe was about her escape from the Sweet Houme, the murder she had done and its reasons, but he couldn't do that. Only one day, Sethe told him herself what she hadn't told Baby Suggs, maybe because of the man's smile or love that she saw in his eyes, but the woman felt the obligation to explain to him everything.

   Once squatting in the garden, Sethe recognized the schoolteacher's hat, took her children and run away. The four man (the schoolteacher, his nephew, the slave catcher and the sherif) her in the shed. They saw two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of the woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried the second time. The woman with the handsaw in her arms stopped schoolteacher in his tracks. He took a beckward step with each jump of the baby heart untill finally there were none. Now there were three children, as the baby was dead; and the woman was carried to where she belonged.

   Sethe had done that for the sake of her children. But Paul D only felt as the forest was lacking the distance between him and the woman.