At the entrance to the Church of the Holy Redeemer, Paul D sips from a liquor bottle and contemplates the crusty exterior that once protected his heart from vulnerability. He relives the demise of Sweet Home, the slave haven that crumbled rapidly after Garner's death. Because Paul D and the other slaves refused to believe Sixo's description of slavery in the outside world, Paul D found the truth the hard way—in the brutal Alfred, Georgia prison camp. The day the male slaves tried to escape from Sweet Home, Sixo was supposed to meet his lover, the Thirty-Mile Woman, and Halle was supposed to bring along his wife and three children. The black female Underground Railroad agent, hidden in the corn, promised to remain a night and half a day and to "rattle" to identify her whereabouts.
Paul D recalls hearing unidentified gunshots that night and seeing Halle inexplicably eat butter from the churn. Sixo joined Paul D and the Thirty-Mile Woman but could not account for the absence of Paul A, Halle, or Halle's family. As schoolteacher, four adults, and some pupils approached the dry creek bed, Sixo pushed his woman out of range. He and Paul D were apprehended. Sixo fought back. Schoolteacher struggled to take him alive but eventually determined that Sixo was of no use to Sweet Home. Schoolteacher lit a fire and roasted Sixo, who was tied at the waist to a tree. Schoolteacher then shot Sixo to quiet his singing to his unborn child, "Seven-O! Seven-O!"
Schoolteacher indicated that he would sell Paul D for $900 and replace him with two young male slaves so that "Sweet Home would be worth the trouble it was causing him." To restrain Paul D, schoolteacher applied the "three-spoke collar." Paul D was hobbling toward a pot of cooked meal when Sethe found him to inquire what had gone wrong. Paul D, shamed by his powerlessness, realized that Sethe was still determined to escape.
Putting together clues from the failed 1855 escape, Paul D deduces that Sethe was assaulted by schoolteacher’s nephews shortly after leaving him. Sethe then informed Mrs. Garner of the violation and survived a lashing with "the cowhide." He admires her courage and recognizes that "her price was greater than his; property that reproduced itself without cost." He recalls that he laughed with "the bit in his mouth" as he was hitched to a buckboard bound for the prison camp in Alfred, Georgia. In retrospect, Paul D wishes that he had joined Sixo in his juba song, a celebration of the new life carried by the Thirty-Mile Woman. Humiliated by the dollar figure denoting his worth, by Sethe's greater worth as a breeder, and by Mister, the condescending rooster, Paul D could not guess the degradation that he would endure in the Georgia prison.
