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Beloved Chapter 24
Paul D sits drunk and alone at the church he's sleeping in and battles with the freed contents of his tobacco tin heart. He remembers the plan to escape Sweet Home and how it went awry when Schoolteacher and other whitemen caught them leaving. Halle was missing, and so was Paul D's brother, Paul A. Sixo and Paul D made it to the meeting spot where they were caught. Sixo fought back when the whitemen found them, so they burned him. As they lit the fire, Sixo laughed and shouted, "'Seven-O! Seven-O!'" Chapter 24, pg. 226 because his Thirty-Mile Woman, a slave from a plantation thirty miles from Sweet Home who was pregnant with his child, had escaped. Schoolteacher shackled Paul D and put him in an iron collar until he could sell him. Paul D was wearing the collar when Sethe saw him and told him that she was leaving. She'd already sent her children ahead of her and she was going alone because Halle hadn't come back. From his memory and what he's learned of her story, he pieces together the rest of the events of that night. He realizes that right after she left his quarters, Schoolteacher and his nephews must have taken Sethe to the barn and sucked the milk from her breasts while Halle watched from the loft overhead. Then they beat her and put the chokecherry tree on her back. She ran away before they put the iron bit in Paul D's mouth and sold him, before he saw Halle sitting at the churn with butter all over his face and a vacant look in his eyes.
