In the early ’60s, during his last-minute Christmas shopping at a Rexall drugstore, Milkman contemplates how to break off his twelve-year relationship with Hagar. He reminisces about the beginning of their relationship following a domestic crisis involving Reba and one of her male friends. Milkman decides to write Hagar a farewell note rather than face her in person. Rather than buy her a gift, he decides to give her money, which he encloses in an envelope along with the note.
Later, while finishing up some work at his father’s office, Milkman recalls a discussion with Guitar about the grisly, serial-like murders of a white boy and four white men. While the black community suspects that the killings were committed by Winnie Ruth Judd, an escaped, convicted murderer, the police claim that a witness to the boy’s murder saw a “bushy-haired Negro” running from the crime scene. Milkman recalls how the news report about the story led to a discussion among a group of men, including Henry Porter, Guitar, and Hospital Tommy, about all of the murders and the corrupt criminal justice system, and to his own suspicions that one or more of the murders had been either witnessed or committed by a black person. Milkman also recalls an argument with Guitar over middle-class values and Guitar’s reaction to Milkman’s vision in which he watches his mother being suffocated by tulips but does nothing to help her.
While Milkman sits wondering about the recent changes in Guitar’s behavior, Freddie taps on the office window, and Milkman invites him in for a drink. As they sip their drinks, Freddie tells Milkman that he was abandoned as a child in Jacksonville, Florida, after his mother died from seeing a woman change into a white bull. When Milkman laughs at Freddie’s “white bull” story, Freddie is hurt and warns Milkman that a lot of strange things are going on around Milkman but that Milkman is too self-absorbed to recognize what is happening. When Milkman asks him to explain, Freddie becomes evasive and tells him to ask Guitar or Corinthians for more information.
