Jazz

When Henry returned home, he found Golden Gray and Honor, a boy he hired to care for his livestock, tending to a naked woman in the middle of childbirth. Henry realized that the woman had little societal interaction, and when he moved to adjust her blanket, she bit him on the cheek. Henry gave her the name “Wild.” After she gave birth to a baby boy, she would not look at the child or nurse it. Henry sent Honor to find someone to care for the baby.

Henry interrogated Golden to find out who he was. Golden told him that he was his son. Henry did not know that Vera had given birth to a child, and he revealed that the green dress Golden used to cover the woman belonged to Vera. Golden, who was now resolved to kill Henry, treated his father coldly. Henry accused Golden of only visiting to find out how Black his father’s skin was. Golden replied that he did not want to be Black. Henry told his son that he had a choice—he could continue to live as a white man, or he could be Black. If he chose the latter, he must stop acting like a child and begin acting like a man.

Wild’s baby, Joe Trace, was sent away to a family, and Wild returned to the woods near the cane fields. Henry, an expert hunter, trained young Joe and Victory to become skilled hunters and trackers. He told Joe about Wild and how he might find her. Wild had become a legend in the area. Some thought she was a witch. Others claimed to have seen her with a man with golden hair. Henry, however, believed that she had a mental illness and was starving. Joe searched for his mother, following rumors of a “feral” woman in Virginia and Henry’s instruction. Henry told Joe and Victory that one must never hurt or harm a woman. Henry learned that red winged blackbirds liked Wild and followed her. If Joe saw four redwings, he would surely see his mother.

This tip led Joe toward the sound of a woman singing in the woods, accompanied by blackbirds. He climbed through a rock formation behind a hibiscus. He asked the woman to put her hand through the leaves to confirm it was her. When nothing happened, Joe raised his gun and shot through the leaves, but the shells were still in his pocket. When he looked for his mother one last time after the day he shot through the leaves, he found the small, empty cave where she was living. There was a cooking fire, a green dress, a rocking chair, and a pair of men’s trousers.

The chapter breaks to the day in January when Joe searched for Dorcas in the city. He was hunting this time too. He had a gun but remembered Henry’s admonishment to never harm a woman. Joe acted out what he would say when he found Dorcas, and he imagined how she would respond to him. They would forget their argument, and Dorcas would surrender to his touch: “She’s young. Young people fly off the handle. […] Like me saying, ‘All right, Violet, I’ll marry you,’ just because I couldn’t see whether a wildwoman put out her hand or not” (181). As Joe searched for Dorcas, his thoughts jumbled with his memories of looking for his mother. He imagined that, like the day he found his mother, he would find Dorcas alone and “wild.”