Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Seth watches Bynum performing a sacrificial ritual with a pigeon in the yard while Bertha cooks breakfast.Seth disapproves of Bynum’s “mumbo-jumbo nonsense” (8). Bertha and Seth discuss his aspirations to open a business for which he has been unable to obtain a loan. Seth learns that Jeremy, one his boarders, was arrested for drunkenness. Bynum and Seth discuss Jeremy’s arrest, which they attribute to his “country” ways, as he is a recent arrival from the south (11). Seth observes that young African-American men heading North “looking for freedom” get “a rude awakening” when they discover that they are competing for jobs with white men (12).

Rutherford Selig, a white peddler known as “the people finder” arrives for his weekly meeting with Seth (12). He sells Seth sheet metal to craft into pots and pans, which Seth then sells back to him the following week. Bynum asks Selig if he has found his “shiny man” yet (13). The “shiny man” appeared to Bynum in a vision to show him “the secret of life,” leading him to his father, who told Bynum he had to find his own song (14). Bynum chose the “Binding Song” to bring people together.