Hell of a Book

The narrator’s plane lands in North Carolina; he is back home. He is aware of the enduring racism of the American South and yet he also loves the South. Sharon meets him in the airport, already complaining that he is late. They exit the airport into the hot, humid air. On the way to his hometown of Bolton, they pass a group of young people protesting anti-Black police violence. It’s clear they’re protesting The Kid’s murder. Meanwhile, the narrator hasn’t seen The Kid in a few days. As they make their way into Bolton, now there are people holding “Welcome Home” signs and copies of Hell of a Book. Being back home makes the narrator feel sick. Growing up, he was weird and never fit in. He thinks he has always had his condition, but his therapist is convinced it was triggered by a trauma. When the therapist asks about his mother, he changes the subject to the man who was shot when he was a kid. He recalls walking in a protest about it, pushed along by his large cousin. The therapist asks if this was after his father’s death; he cannot remember.

The narrator and Sharon pull up to an old gray house where they will be staying; it looks like his childhood home. She goes inside, allowing him to stay on the porch and chat with The Kid, who has appeared. They admire the landscape together. The Kid tells him about how his father used to read him encyclopedias about Black people every Sunday. His father felt it was important to read them to his son because the people in the books were Black too. But The Kid feels like he’s different from them because of his very black skin. Once, The Kid tells the narrator, a boy poured motor oil all over The Kid on the school bus. They both got sent to the principal’s office because the other boy claimed The Kid had started it. 

Uncle Paul spends three weeks teaching Soot how to use the pistol from Chapter 17. The pistol belonged to Uncle Paul’s father, and he wishes William had taught Soot how to use a pistol long ago. He wishes William had a pistol on him the day he died. Uncle Paul offers Soot a bag of bullets, but Soot doesn’t like guns. Uncle Paul tells him he has no choice. He is trying to teach Soot how to survive. They spend all day on these shooting lessons until Soot’s hands are blistered. Later, Soot falls asleep in Uncle Paul’s truck. 

He wakes up to their car being pulled over by a policeman. Uncle Paul makes the officer aware that he has a legal pistol in the truck. The officer shines a flashlight on Soot’s face and demands he show his hands; Soot obeys. The officer tells them to get out of the truck. Crying and scared, Soot refuses, but Uncle Paul tells him he has to. Then, Soot disappears. Shocked, the officer pulls out his gun and throws Uncle Paul on the ground. Neither of them can see Soot anymore. The officer handcuffs Uncle Paul, steps on his back, and threatens to shoot him. The officer inspects the inside of the truck. He is startled because he hears Soot step out onto the ground but still can’t see anything. Still on the ground, Uncle Paul chuckles at the situation. The officer tells Uncle Paul that he recognizes the boy from the incident. He states that the policeman who shot William is a good man and accuses the people in town of threatening the policeman’s family. The officer says that Black people are ungrateful, and that William wouldn’t have gotten shot if he hadn’t resisted. The officer prepares to shoot Uncle Paul in the spine. Suddenly, Soot appears and yells “Don’t!” The officer is astounded by how dark Soot’s skin is. The officer asks him if he would ever resist arrest and talk about injustice. Soot says he wouldn’t. Eventually, the officer lets them go. Soot tries to comfort his crying uncle on the drive home. Uncle Paul apologizes that Soot is born into this life.

Sharon and the narrator walk through the crowd gathering for the town hall meeting that night. Sharon stands out in her expensive, designer clothing. People greet the narrator and express how proud they are that someone from Bolton is successful. Some people invite him to visit and speak to their children; Sharon says that he will and could even speak at the school. 

Bolton Town Hall is also a church. The minister quiets people down as they complain about the incident. He expresses that they have been dealing with this kind of injustice for generations. It has left them tired and angry. The congregation nods in agreement. He acknowledges that everyone in Bolton is poor and Black, which has made life difficult. The narrator envies the way the minister can comfort the people; meanwhile, the narrator manages to ignore others’ suffering by only ever thinking about himself. Still, he is unhappy. He feels that Black people in general can never be happy because of their pain and history of being exploited. Yet the minister appears to have a more positive outlook. 

Just then, the minister mentions that they have a special guest, and he gestures toward the narrator. The congregation all look at him. The minister offers his hand, but the narrator ignores it because he doesn’t want to speak. Sharon tells him he must because it is the right thing to do. When this doesn’t convince him, Sharon angrily tells him he should say something because he needs to sell books since she knows he spent all his advance money. The narrator is flooded with anxiety, and he can’t move; he has the sense that he has experienced this before. In the distance he hears a peacock howling. The peacock reminds him of The Kid and his smile. This relaxes him enough to get up and speak. 

The day after Soot and Uncle Paul were pulled over by the police, Soot wakes up to see his father standing in the bedroom doorway. When he gets up to follow his father into the kitchen, he has already vanished. Since his death, Soot had started seeing things, often shadows of animals or people. At first, he only sees them during sunset, making it his favorite time of day. Then, he starts seeing things throughout the day. Sometimes he sees people from stories, like John Henry, who he appeared in the school cafeteria once. Sometimes he looks up at the sky and sees a planet like Earth except everything is black. There, he loves the color of his skin. He feels he needs to name this planet. He considers calling it Africa but decides against this name because he doesn’t know anything about Africa. Though he belongs nowhere else, he does belong on that planet. His family and their family barbecues are on the planet. On that planet, wisdom can come from anyone. Still, he struggles to name it.

It is almost a year after his father’s death. Tyrone Greene and the other kids don’t pick on him anymore. These days Soot has a hard time telling reality and imagination apart. One day he tells his friends about going fishing with his father over the weekend. His teacher hears of this and tells him it isn’t healthy to tell lies like this. She expresses her condolences; Soot is bored of people’s condolences now. News crews keep coming to the house asking his mother questions that make her cry. Over time she becomes hardened. Her love for Soot is less gentle and involves more tough discipline. She keeps telling Soot that the world is dangerous but never explains why.

After the town hall, the narrator goes for a long walk. Since his condition involves memory loss, he cannot remember what he said at the town hall. He also can’t remember what exactly happened to his mother. As he walks back into town, he hears people chatting in their yards. A white man stops him along the way. The man is quiet and nervous. The narrator assumes he is from a visiting news crew. The narrator recognizes that the man looks afraid. The man asks if he is the writer and if they can go somewhere to talk privately. They go to the house where the narrator is staying and talk outside. The man is very nervous and afraid because of who the narrator is. But the narrator doesn’t know who he is, which is surprising to the man. They chat about both having grown up in the area and about life. 

Then the man asks the narrator to write his story so that people know he isn’t a killer. The narrator realizes this is the man that shot the boy. The man’s wife has left him and taken their child, and he lost his job as a policeman. He lives mostly in hiding because he fears people will kill him if they see him. He knows that Black people are angry, but he doesn’t think it’s fair for people to still be upset about slavery when neither he nor the narrator were alive then. He feels that because those days are over, Black and white people have equal chances at life now. He points to the narrator and his success as an example. In contrast, the man has always been poor. He is resentful that some Black people get to be successful and have better opportunities than him. This resentment led him to shoot the boy. He refuses to say outright that he shot the boy, despite the narrator’s pressing. The man takes out a gun and asks the narrator to help him understand the world so that people will know he isn’t a bad guy. He puts the gun down and tries to convince the narrator that he is a good person. He insists that he lived a good life before the incident and asks, “Don’t the past matter?” (265).

The narrator sees a dark-skinned Black man standing in the surrounding field with shackles on his hands and feet. Then he sees a Black woman and child, also shackled. He sees more and more people, in torn clothes, branded, or injured in some way; they appear to be enslaved Black people from the past. The man expresses that he wishes the boy were still here, but he doesn’t say why. As he walks away, he fades into darkness and stars. Soon he and the figures in the field disappear.