African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Claude McKay, "Home to Harlem" (Full Text / Ebook) (1928)

[Home to Harlem was published by Harper & Brothers in 1928; it entered the public domain on January 1, 2024. Below is a plain text rendering from an OCR scan of the novel. It needs additional proofreading and formatting before it is ready to be used in the classroom or consulted as a completed digital edition of the text. --AS]


HOME TO HARLEM

by Claude McKay


1928 

Harper & Brothers Publishers

New York and London 




TO MY FRIEND

LOUISE BRYANT




CONTENTS

FIRST PART

I       GOING BACK HOME            
II      ARRIVAL 
III     ZEDDY   
IV      CONGO ROSE
V       ON THE JOB AGAIN
VI      MYRTLE AVENUE   
VII     ZEDDY'S RISE AND FALL        
VIII    THE RAID OF THE BALTIMORE   
IX      JAKE MAKES A MOVE         

             SECOND PART

X       THE RAILROAD                
XI      SNOWSTORM IN PITTSBURGH     
XII     THE TREEING OF THE CHEF     
XIII    ONE NIGHT IN PHILLY         
XIV     INTERLUDE                   
XV      RELAPSE
XVI     A PRACTICAL PRANK   
XVII    HE ALSO LOVED           
XVIII   A FAREWELL FEED       

              THIRD PART

XIX     SPRING IN HARLEM     
XX      FELICE 
XXI     THE GIFT THAT BILLY GAVE    



FIRST   PART


GOING BACK HOME

I 

All that Jake knew about the freighter on which he stoked was that it stank between sea and sky. He was working with a dirty Arab crew. The captain signed him on at Cardiff because one of the Arabs had quit the ship. Jake was used to all sorts of rough jobs, but he had never before worked in such a filthy dinghy.

The white sailors who washed the ship would not wash the stokers' water-closet, be- cause they despised the Arabs. And the Arabs themselves made no effort to keep the place clean, although it adjoined their sleeping berth.

The cooks hated the Arabs because they did not eat pork. Whenever there was pork for dinner, something else had to be prepared for the Arabs. The cooks put the stokers' meat, cut in unappetizing chunks, in a broad pan, and the two kinds of vegetables in two other pans. The stoker who carried the food back to the bunks always put one pan inside of the other, and sometimes the bottoms were dirty and bits of potato peelings or egg shells were mixed in with the meat and the vegetables.

The Arabs took up a chunk of meat with their coal-powdered fingers, bit or tore off a piece, and tossed the chunk back into the pan. It was strange to Jake that these Arabs washed themselves after eating and not be- fore. They ate with their clothes stiff-starched to their bodies with coal and sweat. And when they were finished, they stripped and washed and went to sleep in the stinking-dirty bunks. Jake was used to the lowest and hard- est sort of life, but even his leather-lined stom- ach could not endure the Arabs' way of eating. Jake also began to despise the Arabs. He complained to the cooks about the food. He gave the chef a ten-shilling note, and the chef gave him his eats separately.

One of the sailors flattered Jake. "You're the same like us chaps. You ain't like them dirty jabbering coolies."    But Jake smiled and shook his head in a non-committal way. He knew that if he was just like the white sailors, he might have signed on as a deckhand and not as a stoker. He didn't care about the dirty old boat, any- how. It was taking him back home—that was all he cared about. He made his shift all right, stoking four hours and resting eight. He didn't sleep well. The stokers' bunks were lousy, and fetid with the mingled smell of stale food and water-closet. Jake had attempted to keep the place clean, but to do that was im- possible. Apparently the Arabs thought that a sleeping quarters could also serve as a garbage can.

"Nip me all you wanta, Mister Louse," said Jake. "Roll on, Mister Ship, and stinks all the way as you rolls. Jest take me 'long to Harlem is all I pray. I'm crazy to see again the brown-skin chippies 'long Lenox Avenue. Oh boy!"

Jake was tall, brawny, and black. When America declared war upon Germany in 1917 he was a longshoreman. He was working on a Brooklyn pier, with a score of men under him. He was a little boss and a very good friend of his big boss, who was Irish. Jake thought he would like to have a crack at the Germans. • . . And he enlisted.

In the winter he sailed for Brest with a happy chocolate company. Jake had his own daydreams of going over the top. But his company was held at Brest. Jake toted lumber—boards, planks, posts, rafters—for the hundreds of huts that were built around the walls of Brest and along the coast between Brest and Saint-Pierre, to house the United States soldiers.

Jake was disappointed. He had enlisted to fight. For what else had he been sticking a bayonet into the guts of a stuffed man and aim- ing bullets straight into a bull's-eye? Toting planks and getting into rows with his white comrades at the Bal Musette were not adventure.

Jake obtained leave. He put on civilian clothes and lit out for Havre. He liquored himself up and hung round a low-down cafe in Havre for a week.

One day an English sailor from a Channel sloop made up to Jake. "Darky," he said, "you 'arvin' a good time 'round 'ere."

Jake thought how strange it was to hear the Englishman say "darky" without being offended. Back home he would have been spoiling for a fight. There he would rather hear "nigger" than "darky," for he knew that when a Yankee said "nigger" he meant hatred for Negroes, whereas when he said "darky" he meant friendly contempt. He preferred white folks' hatred to their friendly contempt. To feel their hatred made him strong and aggressive, while their friendly contempt made him ridiculously angry, even against his own will.

"Sure Ise having a good time, all right," said Jake. He was making a cigarette and growling cusses at French tobacco. "But Ise got to get a move on 'fore very long."

"Where to?" his new companion asked.    "Any place, Buddy. I'm always ready for something new," announced Jake.

"Been in Havre a long time?"

"Week or two," said Jake. "I tooks care of some mules over heah. Twenty, God damn them, days across the pond. And then the boat plows round and run off and leaves me behind. Kain you beat that, Buddy?"

"It wasn't the best o' luck," replied the other. "Ever been to London?"

"Nope, Buddy," said Jake. "France is the only country I've struck yet this side the water."

The Englishman told Jake that there was a sailor wanted on his tug. 

"We never *ave a full crew—since the war," he said.

Jake crossed over to London. He found plenty of work there as a docker. He liked the West India Docks. He liked Limehouse. 

In the pubs men gave him their friendly paws and called him "darky." He liked how they called him "darky." He made friends. He found a woman. He was happy in the East End.

The Armistice found him there. On New Year's Eve, 1919, Jake went to a monster dance with his woman, and his docker friends and their women, in the Mile End Road.

The Armistice had brought many more black men to the East End of London. Hundreds of them. Some of them found work. Some did not. Many were getting a little pension from the government. The price of sex went up in the East End, and the dignity of it also. And that summer Jake saw a big battle staged between the colored and white men of London's East End. Fisticuffs, razor and knife and gun play. For three days his woman would not let him out-of-doors. And when it was all over he was seized with the awful fever of lonesomeness. He felt all alone in the world. He wanted to run away from the kind-heartedness of his lady of the East End.

"Why did I ever enlist and come over here?" he asked himself. "Why did I want to mix mahself up in a white folks' war? It ain't ever was any of black folks1 affair. Niggers am evah always such fools, anyhow. Always thinking they've got something to do with white folks' business."

Jake's woman could do nothing to please him now. She tried hard to get down into his thoughts and share them with him. But for Jake this woman was now only a creature of another race—of another world. He brooded day and night.

It was two years since he had left Harlem. Fifth Avenue, Lenox Avenue, and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street, with their chocolate-brown and walnut-brown girls, were calling him.

"Oh, them legs!" Jake thought. "Them tantalizing brown legs! . . . Barron's Cabaret! . . . Leroy's Cabaret! . . . Oh, boy!"

Brown girls rouged and painted like dark pansies. Brown flesh draped in soft colorful clothes. Brown lips full and pouted for sweet kissing. Brown breasts throbbing with love.

"Harlem for mine!" cried Jake. "I was crazy thinkin' I was happy over heah. I wasn't mahself. I was like a man charged up with dope every day. That's what it was. Oh, boy! Harlem for mine!

"Take me home to Harlem, Mister Ship! Take me home to the brown gals waiting for the brown boys that done show their mettle over there. Take me home, Mister Ship. Put your beak right into that water and jest move along." . . .



                  
ARRIVAL

 II

Jake was paid off. He changed a pound
note he had brought with him. He had fifty-
nine dollars. From South Ferry he took an
express subway train for Harlem.
  Jake drank three Martini cocktails with
cherries in them. The price, he noticed, had
gone up from ten to twenty-five cents. He
went to Bank's and had a Maryland fried-
chicken feed—a big one with candied sweet
potatoes.
   He left his suitcase behind the counter of a
saloon on Lenox Avenue. He went for a
promenade on Seventh Avenue between One
Hundred and Thirty-fifth and One Hundred
and Fortieth Streets. He thrilled to Harlem.
His blood was hot His eyes were alert as he
sniffed the street like a hound. Seventh
Avenue was nice, a little too nice that night.
  Jake turned off on Lenox Avenue. He
stopped before an ice-cream parlor to admire
girls sipping ice-cream soda through straws.
He went into a cabaret. . . .
   A little brown girl aimed the arrow of her
eye at him as he entered. Jake was wearing a
steel-gray English suit. It fitted him loosely
and well, perfectly suited his presence. She
knew at once that Jake must have just landed.
She rested her chin on the back of her hands
and smiled at him. There was something in
his attitude, in his hungry wolf's eyes, that
went warmly to her. She was brown, but she
had tinted her leaf-like face to a ravishing
chestnut. She had on an orange scarf over a
green frock, which was way above her knees,
giving an adequate view of legs lovely in fine
champagne-colored stockings. . . .
   Her shaft hit home. . . . Jake crossed over
to her table. He ordered Scotch and soda.
   "Scotch is better with soda or even water,"
he said. "English folks don't take whisky
straight, as we do."
   But she preferred ginger ale in place of
soda. The cabaret singer, seeing that they were making up to each other, came expressly
 over to their table and sang. Jake gave the
singer fifty cents. . . •
   Her left hand was on the table. Jake cov-
ered it with his right.
   "Is it clear sailing between us, sweetie?"
he asked.
   "Sure thing. . . . You just landed from
over there?'1
   "Just today!"
   "But there wasn't no boat in with soldiers
today, daddy."
   "I made it in a special one."
   "Why, you lucky baby! . . . I'd like to go
to another place, though. What about you?"
   "Anything you say, I'm game," responded
Jake.
   They walked along Lenox Avenue. He
held her arm. His flesh tingled. He felt as
if his whole body was a flaming wave. She
was intoxicated, blinded under the over-
whelming force.
   But nevertheless she did not forget her
business.
  "How much is it going to be, daddy?" she
demanded.
  "How much? How much? Five?"
  "Aw no, daddy. • . ."
  "Ten?"
  She shook her head.
  "Twenty, sweetie!" he said, gallantly.
  "Daddy," she answered, "I wants fifty."
  "Good," he agreed. He was satisfied. She
was responsive. She was beautiful. He loved
the curious color on her cheek.

  They went to a buffet flat on One Hundred
and Thirty-seventh Street. The proprietress
opened the door without removing the chain
and peeked out. She was a matronly mulatto
woman. She recognized the girl, who had
put herself in front of Jake, and she slid back
the chain and said, "Come right in."
  The windows were heavily and carefully
shaded. There was beer and wine, and there
was plenty of hard liquor. Black and brown
men sat at two tables in one room, playing
poker. In the other room a phonograph was
grinding out a "blues," and some couples were
dancing, thick as maggots in a vat of sweet
liquor, and as wriggling.
   Jake danced with the girL They shuffled
warmly, gloriously about the room. He en circled her waist with both hands, and she put
both of hers up to his shoulders and laid her
head against his breast. And they shuffled
around.
   "Harlem! Harlem!" thought Jake. "Where
else could I have all this life but Harlem?
Good old Harlem! Chocolate Harlem!
Sweet Harlem! Harlem, I've got you7 number down. Lenox Avenue, you're a bear, I
know it. And, baby honey, sure enough youse
a pippin for your pappy. Oh, boy!" • . .

   After Jake had paid for his drinks, that
fifty-dollar note was all he had left in the
world. He gave it to the girl. . . .
   "Is we going now, honey?" he asked her.
   "Sure, daddy. Let's beat it." . . .
   Oh, to be in Harlem again after two years
away. The deep-dyed color, the thickness,
the closeness of it. The noises of Harlem.
The sugared laughter. The honey-talk on its
streets. And all night long, ragtime and
"blues" p l a y i n g somewhere, . . . singing
somewhere, dancing somewhere! Oh, the contagious fever of Harlem. Burning everywhere in dark-eyed Harlem. . . . Burning
now in Jake's sweet blood. . . .

   He woke up in the morning in a state of perfect peace. She brought him hot coffee and
cream and doughnuts. He yawned. He
sighed. He was satisfied. He breakfasted.
He washed. He dressed. The sun was shining. He sniffed the fine dry air. Happy,
familiar Harlem.
   "I ain't got a cent to my name," mused
Jake, "but ahm as happy as a prince, all the
same. Yes, I is."
   He loitered down Lenox Avenue. He
shoved his hand in his pocket—pulled out thefifty-dollar note. A piece of paper was
pinned to it on which was scrawled in pencil:
   "Just a little gift from a baby girl to a
honey boyl"



                   ZEDDY

 III

GREAT balls of fire! Looka here! See
mah luck!" Jake stopped in his tracks . . .
went on . . . stopped again . . . retraced his
steps . . . checked himself. "Guess I won't
go back right now. Never let a woman think
you're too crazy about her. But she's a particularly sweet piece a business. . . . Me and
her again tonight. . . . Handful o' luck shot
straight outa heaven. Oh, boy! Harlem is
mine!"
   Jake went rolling along Fifth Avenue. He
crossed over to Lenox Avenue and went into
Uncle Doc's saloon, where he had left his bag.
Called for a glass of Scotch. "Gimme the
siphon, Doc. I'm off the straight stuff."
   "Iszh you? Counta what?"
   "Hits the belly better this way. I l'arned it
over the other side."
   A slap on the shoulder brought him sharply
round. "Zeddy Plummer! What grave is
you arisen from?" he cried.
   "Buddy, you looks so good to me, I could
kish you," Zeddy said.
   "Where?"
   "Everywhere. < . . French style."
   "One on one cheek and one on the other."
   "Savee-vous?"
   "Parlee-vous?"
   Uncle Doc set another glass on the counter
and poured out pure Bourbon. Zeddy reached
a little above Jake's shoulders. He was stocky,
thick-shouldered, flat-footed, and walked like
a bear. Some more customers came in and
the buddies eased round to the short side of
the bar.
   "What part of the earth done belch you
out?" demanded Zeddy. "Nevah heared no
God's tidings a you sence we missed you from
Brest."
   "And how about you?" Jake countered.
"Didn't them Germans git you scrambling
over the top?"
  "Nevah see'd them, buddy. None a them
showed the goose-step around Brest. Have a
shot on me. . . . Well, dawg bite me, but—
say, Jake, we've got some more stuff to booze
over."
   Zeddy slapped Jake on his breast and
looked him over again. "Tha's some stuff
you're strutting in, boh. 'Tain't 'Merican and
it ain't French." . . .
   "English." Jake showed his clean white
teeth.
   "Mah granny an' mel You been in that
theah white folks' country, too?"
   "And don't I look as if Ise been? Where
else could a fellow git such good and cheap
man clothes to cover his skin?"
   "Buddy, I know it's the trute. What you
doing today?"
   "No, when you make me think ovit, particular thing. And you?"
   "I'm alongshore but—I ain't agwine to
work thisaday."
   "I guess I've got to be heaving along right
back to it, too, in pretty short time. I got to
get me a room but         "
   Uncle Doc reminded Jake that his suit-case
was there.
   "I ain't nevah fohgitting all mah worldly
goods," responded Jake.
   Zeddy took Jake to a pool-room where they
played. Jake was the better man. From the
pool-room they went to Aunt Hattie's chitterling joint in One Hundred and Thirty-second
Street, where they fed. Fricassee chicken and
rice. Green peas. Stewed corn.
   Aunt Hattie's was renowned among the
lowly of Harlem's Black Belt. It was a little
basement joint, smoke-colored. And Aunt
H a 11 i e was weather-beaten dark-brown,
cheery-faced, with two rusty-red front teeth
sticking together conspicuously out of her
twisted, spread-away mouth. She cooked delicious food—home-cooked food they called
i t None of the boys loafing round that section of Fifth Avenue would dream of going
to any other place for their "poke chops."
   Aunt Hattie admired her new customer
from the kitchen door and he quite filled her
sight. And when she went with the dish rag
to wipe the oil-cloth before setting down the
cocoanut pie, she rubbed her breast against
Jake's shoulder and a sensual light gteamed in
her aged smoke-red eyes.
   The buddies talked about the days of Brest.
Zeddy recalled the everlasting unloading and
unloading of ships and the toting of lumber.
The house of the Young Men's Christian Association, overlooking the harbor, where colored soldiers were not wanted. . . . The
central Rue de Siam and the point near the
Prefecture of Marine, from which you could
look down on the red lights of the Quartier
Reserve. The fatal fights between black men
and white in the maisons closes. The encounters between apaches and white Americans.
The French sailors that couldn't get the
Yankee idea of amour and men- And the
cemetery, just beyond the old mediaeval gate
of the town, where he left his second-best
buddy.
   "Poor boh. Was always belly-aching for a
chance over the top. Nevah got it nor nothing. Not even a baid in the hospital. Stronglike a bull, yet just knocked off in the dark
through raw cracker cussedness. • . • Some
life it was, buddy, in them days. We was always on the defensive as if the boches, as the
f roggies called them, was right down on us."
   "Yet you stuck t'rough it toting lumber.
Got back to Harlem all right, though."
   "You bet I did, boh. You kain trust Zeddy
Plummer to look out for his own black hide.
• . . But you, buddy. How come you just
vanished thataway like a spook? How did
you take your tail out ovit?"
   Jake told Zeddy how he walked out of it
straight to the station in Brest Le Havre.
London. The West India Docks. And back
home to Harlem.
   "But you must keep it dark, buddy," Zeddy
cautioned. "Don't go shooting off your mouth
too free. Gov'mant still smoking out deserters
and draft dodgers."
   "I ain't told no nigger but you, boh. Nor
ofay, neither. Ahm in your confidence,
chappie."
   "That's all right, buddy." Zeddy put his
hand on Jake's knee. "It's better to keep your
business close all the time. But I'll tell you
this for your perticular information. Niggers
am awful close-mouthed in some things.
There is fellows here in Harlem that just
telled the draft to mount upstairs. Pohlice
and soldiers were hunting ev'where foh them.
And they was right here in Harlem. Fifty
dollars apiece foh them. All their friends
knowed it and not a one gived them in. I tell
you, niggers am amazing sometimes. Yet
other times, without any natural reason, they
will just go vomiting out their guts to the
ofays about one another."
   "God; but it's good to get back home
again!" said Jake.
   "I should think you was hungry foh a li'P
brown honey. I tell you trute, buddy. I
made mine ovah there, spitin' ov ev'thing. I
l'arned her a little z'inglise and she l'arned
me beaucoup plus the French stuff. . . . The
real stuff, buddy. But I was tearin' mad and
glad to get back all the same. Take it from
me, buddy, there ain't no honey lak to that
theah comes out of our own belonging-to-us
honeycomb."
   "Man, what you telling me?" cried Jake.
"Don't I knows it? What else you think made
me leave over the other side? And dog mah
doggone ef I didn't find it just as I landed."
   "K-hhhhhhh! K-hhhhhhhh 1" Z e d d y
laughed. "Dog mah cats! You done tasted
the real life a'ready?"
   "Last night was the end of the world,
buddy, and tonight ahm going back there,"
chanted Jake as he rose and began kicking up
his heels round the joint.
  Zeddy also got up and put on his gray cap.
They went back to the pool-room. Jake met
two more fellows that he knew and got into a
ring of Zeddy's pals. . . . Most of them were
longshoremen. There was plenty of work,
Jake learned. Before he left the pool-room
he and Zeddy agreed to meet the next evening
at Uncle Doc's.
   "Got to work tomorrow, boh," Zeddy informed Jake.

   "Good old New York! The same old
wench of a city. Elevated racketing over you*
head. Subway bellowing under you' feet.
Me foh wrastling round them piers again.
Scratching down to the bottom of them ships
and scrambling out. All alongshore for me
now. No more fooling with the sea. Same
old New York. Everybody dashing round
like crazy. . . . Same old New York. But
the ofay faces am different from those ovah
across the pond. Sure they is. Stiffer.
Tighter. Yes, they is that. . . . But the sun
does better here than over there. And the
sky's so high and dry and blue. And the air
it—O Gawd it works in you' flesh and blood
like Scotch. O Lawdy, Lawdy! I wants to
live to a hundred and finish mah days in New
York."
   Jake threw himself up as if to catch the air
pouring down from the blue sky. . . .
   "Harlem! Harlem! Little thicker, little
darker and noisier and smellier, but Harlem
just the same. The niggers done plowed
through Hundred and Thirtieth Street.
Heading straight foh One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth. Spades beyond Eighth Avenue.
Going, going, going Harlem! Going up!
Nevah befoh I seed so many dickty shines in
sich swell motor-cars. Plenty moh nigger
shops. Seventh Avenue done gone highbrown. O Lawdy! Harlem bigger, Harlem
better . . • and sweeter."

   "Street and streets! One Hundred and
Thirty-second, Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth.
It wasn't One Hundred and Thirty-fifth and
it wasn't beyond theah. . . • O Lawd! how
did I fohgit to remember the street and number. I reeled outa there like a drunken man.
I been so happy. . . .
   "Thirty-fourth, Thirty-second, Thirty-
third. . • . Only difference in the name. All
the streets am just the same and all the houses
'like as peas. I could try this one heah pr that
one there but           Rabbit foot! I didn't
even git her name. Oh, Jakie, Jake! What a
big Ah-Ah you is.
   "I was a fool not to go back right then when
I feeled like it. What did I want to tighten
up mahself and crow and strut like a crazy
cat for? A grand Ah-Ah I is. Feet in mah
hands! Take me back to the Baltimore tonight. I ain't gwine to know no peace till I
lay these here hands on mah tantalizing brown
again."
               CONGO ROSE

 IV

All the old cabarets were going still.
Connor's was losing ground. The bed of red
roses that used to glow in the ceiling was almost dim now. The big handsome black girl
that always sang in a red frock was no longer
there. What a place Connor's was from 1914
to 1916 when that girl was singing and kicking and showing her bright green panties
there! And the little ebony drummer, beloved
of every cabaret lover in Harlem, was a fiend
for rattling the drum.
   Barron's was still Barron's, depending on its
downtown white trade. Leroy's, the big common rendezvous shop for everybody. Edmond's still in the running. A fine new place
that was opened in Brooklyn was freezing to
death. Brooklyn never could support anything.
   Goldgraben's on Lenox Avenue was leading

all the Negro cabarets a cruel dance. The
big-spirited Jew had brought his cabaret up
from the basement and established it in a hall
blazing with lights, overlooking Lenox Avenue. He made a popular Harlem Negro
manager. There the joy-loving ladies and
gentlemen of the Belt collected to show their
striking clothes and beautiful skin. Oh, it
was some wonderful sight to watch them from
the pavement! N o wonder the lights of Connor's were dim. And Barron's had plunged
deeper for the ofay trade. Goldgraben was
grabbing all the golden-browns that had any
spendable dough.
   But the Congo remained in spite of formidable opposition and foreign exploitation.
The Congo was a real throbbing little Africa
in New York. It was an amusement place entirely for the unwashed of the Black Belt. Or,
if they were washed, smells lingered telling
the nature of their occupation. Pot-wrestlers,
third cooks, W. C. attendants, scrub maids,
dish-washers, stevedores.
   Girls coming from the South to try their
future in New York always reached the Congo
first. The Congo was African in spirit and
color. No white persons were admitted there.
The proprietor knew his market. He did not
cater to the fast trade. "High yallers" were
scarce there. Except for such sweetmen that
lived off the low-down dark trade.
   When you were fed up with the veneer of
Seventh Avenue, and Goldgraben's Afro-Oriental garishness, you would go to the Congo
and turn rioting loose in all the tenacious
odors of service and the warm indigenous
smells of Harlem, fooping or jig-jagging the
night away. You would if you were a black
kid hunting for joy in New York.
   Jake went down to the Baltimore. No.sign
of his honey girl anywhere. He drank Scotch
after Scotch. His disappointment mounted
to anger against himself—turned to anger
against his honey girl. His eyes roved round
the room, but saw nobody.
   "Oh what a big Ah-Ah I was!"
   All round the den, luxuriating under the
little colored lights, the dark dandies were
Congo Rose
loving up their pansies. Feet tickling feet under tables, tantalizing liquor-rich giggling,
hands busy above.
   "Honey gal! Honey gal! What other sweet
boy is loving you now? Don't you know your
last night's daddy am waiting for you?"
   The cabaret singer, a shiny coffee-colored
girl in a green frock and Indian-waved hair,
went singing from table to table in a man's
bass voice.
   "You wanta know how I do it,
      How I look so good, how I am so happy,
    All night on the blessed job—
      How I slide along making things go snappy ?
             It is easy to tell,
             I ain't got no plan—
             But I'm crazy, plumb crazy
             About a man, mah man.

   "It ain't no secret as you think,
      The glad heart is a state o' mind—
    Throw a stone in the river and it will sink;
      But a feather goes whirling on the wind.
              It is easy to tell. . . ."
 She stopped more than usual at Jake's table.
He gave her a half dollar. She danced a jag   

ging jig before him that made the giggles rise
like a wave in the room. The pansies stared
and tightened their grip on their dandies.
The dandies tightened their hold on themselves. They looked the favored Jake up and
down. All those perfection struts for him.
Yet he didn't seem aroused at all.
            "I'm crazy, plumb crazy
            About a man, mah man. . • ."
  The girl went humming back to her seat
She had poured every drop of her feeling into
the song.
    "Crazy, plumb crazy about a man, mah man. . . •"
   Dandies and pansies, chocolate, chestnut,
coffee, ebony, cream, yellow, everybody was
teased up to the high point of excitement. . • .
   "Crazy, plumb crazy about a man, mah man. • • ."
  The saxophone was moaning it. And feet
and hands and mouths were acting i t Dancing. Some jigged, some shuffled, some
walked, and some were glued together swaying on the dance floor.
  Jake was going crazy. A hot fever was
burning him up. . . .Where was the singing
gal that had danced to him? That dancing
was for him all right. . . .
   A crash cut through the music. A table
went jazzing into the drum. The cabaret
singer lay sprawling on the floor. A raging
putty-skinned mulattress stamped on her ribs
and spat in her face! "That'll teach you to
leave mah man be every time." A black
waiter rushed the mulattress. "Git off'n her.
'Causen she's down."
   A potato-yellow man and a dull-black were
locked. The proprietor, a heavy brown man,
worked his elbow like a hatchet between them.
  The antagonists glowered at each other.
   "What you want to knock the gal down like
that for, I acksyou?"
   "Better acks her why she done spits on mah
woman."
   "Woman! White man's wench, you mean.
You low-down tripe. . . ."
   The black man heaved toward the yellow,
but the waiters hooked and hustled him off.
. . . Sitting at a table, the cabaret singer was
soothing her eye.
   "Git out on the sidewalk, all you trouble*
makers," cried the proprietor. "And you,
Bess," he cried to the cabaret singer, "nevah
you show your face in mah place again."
  The cabaret was closed for the rest of the
night. Like dogs flicked apart by a whipcord, the jazzers stood and talked resentfully
in the street.
   "Hi, Jake"—Zeddy, rocking into the group
with a nosy air, spotted his buddy—"was you
in on the li'l fun?"
   "Yes, buddy, but I wasn't mixed up in it.
Sometimes they turn mah stomach, the
womens. The same in France, the same in
England, the same in Harlem. White against
white and black against white and yellow
against black and brown. We's all just crazy-dog mad. Ain't no peace on earth with the
womens and there ain't no life anywhere without them."
   "You said it, boh. It's a be-be itching life"
—Zeddy scratched his flank—"and we're all
sons of it. . . . But what is you hitting round
this joint? I thought you would be feeding
off milk and honey tonight?"
   "Hard luck, buddy. Done lose out counta
mah own indiligence. I fohgit the street and
the house. Thought I'd find her heah
but. . . ."

   "What you thinking 'bout, boh?''
   "That gal got beat up in the Baltimore.
She done sings me into a tantalizing mood.
Ahm feeling like."
   "Let's take a look in on the Congo, boh. It's
the best pick-me-up place in Harlem."
   "I'm with you, buddy."
   "Always packed with the best pickings.
When the chippies come up from down home,
tha's where they hangs out first. You kain
always find something that New York ain't
done made a fool of yet. Theah's a high-yaller entertainer there that I'se got a crush on,
but she ain't nevah gived me a encouraging
eye."
   "I ain't much for the high-yallers after
having been so much fed-up on the ofays,"
said Jake. "They's so doggone much alike."
   "Ah no, boh. A sweet-lovin' high-yaller
queen's got something different. K-hhhhhhh,
K-hhhhhhh. Something nigger."
   The Congo was thick, dark-colorful, and
fascinating. Drum and saxophone were fighting out the wonderful drag "blues" that was
the favorite of all the low-down dance halls.
In all the better places it was banned. Rumor
said it was a police ban. It was an old tune,
so far as popular tunes go. But at the Congo
it lived fresh and green as grass. Everybody
there was giggling and wriggling to it.
   And it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
   Can you show me a woman that a man can trust ?
            Oh, baby, how are you ?
            Oh, baby, what are you?
            Oh, can I have you now,
            Or have I got to wait?
            Oh, let me have a date,
            Why do you hesitate?
   And there is two things in Harlem I don't understan'
   It is a bulldycking woman and a faggotty man.
   
                  Congo Rose
           Oh, baby how are you?
           Oh, baby, what are you? . . .

   Jake and Zeddy picked two girls from a
green bench and waded into the hot soup. The
saxophone and drum fought over the punctuated notes. The cymbals clashed. The excitement mounted. Couples breasted each
other in rhythmical abandon, grinned back at
their friends and chanted:
           "Oh, baby, how are you?
           Oh, baby, what are you? . . •"

   Clash! The cymbal snuffed out saxophone
and drum, the dancers fell apart,—reeled,
strutted, drifted back t o their g r e e n
places. • . .
   Zeddy tossed down the third glass of Gordon gin and became aware of Rose, the Congo
entertainer, singing at the table. Happy for
the moment, he gave her fifty cents. She sang
some more, but Zeddy saw that it was all for
Jake* Finished, she sat down, uninvited, at
their table.
   How many nights, hungry nights, Zeddy
had wished that Rose would sit down voluntarily at his table. He had asked her sometimes. She would sit, take a drink and leave.
Nothing doing. If he was a "big nigger,"
perhaps—but she was too high-priced for him.
Now she was falling for Jake. Perhaps it
was Jake's nifty suit. . . .
   "Gin for mine," Rose said. Jake ordered
two gins and a Scotch. "Scotch I That's an
ofay drink," Rose remarked. "And I've seen
the monkey-chasers order it when they want
to put on style."
   "It's good," Jake said. "Taste it."
   She shook her head. "I have befoh. I
don't like the taste. Gimme gin every time or
good old red Kentucky."
   "I got used to it over the other side," Jake
said.
   "Oh! You're an over-yonder baby! Sure
enough!" She fondled his suit in admiration.
   Zeddy, like a good understanding buddy,
had slipped away. Another Scotch and Gordon Dry. The glasses kissed. Like a lean
ined against Jake.

   The milk cans were sounding on the pavements and a few pale stars were still visible
in the sky when Rose left the Congo with both
hands entwined in Jake's arm.
   "You gwina stay with me, mah brown?"
   "I ain't got me a room yet," he said.
   "Come stay with me always. Got any stuff
to bring along?"
   "Mah suitcase at Uncle Doc's."
   They went to her room in One Hundred
and Thirty-third street. Locking the door,
she said: "You remember the song they used
to sing before you all went over there, mah
brown?"
   Softly she chanted:
"If I had some one like you at home
I wouldn't wanta go out, I wouldn't wanta go out. . . ...
If I had some one like you at home,
I'd put a padlock on the door. . • ."
  She hugged him to her.
  "I love you. I ain't got no man."
  "Gwan, tell that to the marines," he panted.
  "Honest to God. Lemme kiss you nice."

  It was now eating-time in Harlem. They
were hungry. They washed and dressed.
  "If you'll be mah man always, you won't
have to work," she said.
  "Me?" responded Jake. "IVe never been
a sweetman yet. Never lived off no womens
and never will. I always works."
  "I don't care what you do whilst you is
mah man. But hard work's no good for a
sweet-loving papa."





ON THE JOB AGAIN

V

Jake stayed on in Rose's room. He could
not feel about her as he did for his little lost
maroon-brown of the Baltimore. He went
frequently to the Baltimore, but he never saw
her again. Then he grew to hate that cabaret
and stopped going there.
  The mulattress was charged with tireless
activity and Jake was her big, good slave. But
her spirit lacked the charm and verve, the
infectious joy, of his little lost brown. He
sometimes felt that she had no spirit at a l l ^
that strange, elusive something that he felt in
himself, sometimes here, sometimes there,
roaming away from him, going back to London, to Brest, Le Havre, wandering to some
unknown new port, caught a moment by some
romantic rhythm, color, face, passing through
cabarets, saloons, speakeasies, and returning to
him. . . . The little brown had something of
that in her, too. That night he had felt a
reaching out and marriage of spirits. . . . But
the mulattress was all a wonderful tissue of
throbbing flesh. He had never once felt in
her any tenderness or timidity or aloofness, . • .
  Jake was working longshore. Hooking barrels and boxes, wrestling with chains and
cranes. He didn't have a little-boss job this
time. But that didn't worry him. He
was one blackamoor that nourished a perfect
contempt for place. There were times when
he divided his days between Rose and Uncle
Doc's saloon and Dixie Red's pool-room.
   He never took money from her. If he
gambled away his own and was short, he borrowed from Nije Gridley, the longshoreman
broker. Nije Gridley was a tall, thin, shiny
black man. His long eyelashes gave his sharp
eyes a sleepy appearance, but he was always
wide awake. Before Jake was shipped to
France, Nije had a rooming-house in Harlem's Fifth Avenue, worked a^ little at long-
shoring himself, and lent money on the checks
of the hard-gambling boys. Now he had three
rooming-houses, one of which, free of mortgage, he owned. His lean belly bore a heavy
gold chain and he strutted Fifth and Lenox
in a ministerial crow-black suit. With the
war boom of wages, the boys had gambled
heavily and borrowed recklessly.
   Ordinarily, Nije lent money at the rate of
a dollar on four and two on eight per week.
He complained bitterly of losses. Twenty-
five dollars loaned on a check which, presented, brought only a day's pay. There were
tough fellows that played him that game sometimes. They went and never returned to borrow again. But Nije's interest covered up
such gaps. And sometimes he gave ten dollars on a forty-dollar check, drew the wages,
and never saw his customer again, who had
vanished entirely out of that phase of Harlem
life.
   One week when they were not working,
Zeddy came to Jake with wonderful news.
Men were wanted at a certain pier to unload
pineapples at eight dollars a day. Eight dollars was exceptional wages, but the fruit was
spoiling,
   Jake went with Zeddy and worked the first
day with a group of Negroes and a few white
men. The white men were not regular dock
workers. The only thing that seemed strange
to Jake was that all the men ate inside and
were not allowed outside the gates for lunch.
But, on the second day, his primitive passion
for going against regulation urged him to go
out in the street after lunch.
   Heaving casually along West Street, he was
hailed by a white man. "Hello, fellowworker I"
   "Hello, there! What's up?" Jake asked.
   "You working in there?"
   "Sure I is. Since yestidday."
   The man told Jake that there was a strike
on and he was scabbing. Jake asked him why
there were no pickets if there was a strike.
The man replied that there were no pickets
because the union leaders were against the
strike, and had connived with the police to
beat up and jail the pickets.
                    
 
   "Well, pardner," Jake said, "I've done
worked through a tur'ble assortaments o' jobs
in mah lifetime, but I ain't nevah yet scabbed
it on any man. I done work in this heah country, and I works good and hard over there in
France. I works in London and I nevah was
a blackleg, although I been the only black
man in mah gang."
   "Fine, fellow-worker; that's a real man's
talk," said the white man. He took a little
red book out of his pocket and asked Jake to
let him sign him up in his union.
   "It's the only one in the country for a red-
blooded worker, no matter what race or nation
he belongs to."
   "Nope, I won't scab, but I ain't a joiner
kind of a fellah," said Jake. "I ain't no white
folks' nigger and I ain't no poah white's fool.
When I longshored in Philly I was a good
union man. But when I made New York I
done finds out that they gived the colored
mens the worser piers and holds the bes'n a'
them foh the Irishmen. No, pardner, keep
you' card. I take the best I k'n get as I goes
tnah way. But I tells you, things ain't none at
all lovely between white and black in this heah
Gawd's own country."
   "We take all men in our union regardless
      " But Jake was haunching along out of
hearing down West Street. . . . Suddenly he
heard sharp, deep, distressful grunts, and saw
behind some barrels a black man down and
being kicked perilously in the rear end by two
white men. Jake drew his hook from his belt
and, waving it in the air, he rushed them. The
white men shot like rats to cover. The down
man scrambled to his feet. One of Zeddy's
pals, Jake recognized him.
   "What's the matter, buddy, the peckawoods
them was doing you in?"
   "Becaz they said there was a strike in theah.
And I said I didn't give a doughnut, I was
going to work f oh mah money all the same. I
got one o' them bif 1 in the eye, though. . . ."
   "Don't go back, buddy. Let the boss-men
stick them jobs up. They are a bunch of rotten aigs. Just using us to do their dirty work.

 
Come on, let's haul bottom away from here
to Harlem."
   At Dixie Red's pool-room that evening
there were some fellows with bandaged arms
and heads. One iron-heavy, blue-black lad
 (he was called Liver-lip behind his back, because of the plankiness of his lips) carried his
arm in a sling, and told Jake how he happened
to be like that.
   "They done jumped on me soon as I turned
mah black moon on that li'l saloon tha's catering to us niggers. Heabenly God! But if the
stars them didn't twinkle way down in mah
eyes. But easy, easy, old man, I got out mah
shaving steel and draws it down the goosey
flesh o' one o' them, and, buddy, you shoulda
heah him squeal. . . . The pohlice?" His
massive mouth molded the words to its own
form, "They tooks me, yes, but tunned me
loose by'n'by. They's with us this time, boh,
but, Lawdy! if they hadn't did entervention I
woulda gutted gizzard and kidney outa that
white tripe."
   Jake was angry with Zeddy and asked him,
when he came in, why he had not told him at
first that the job was a scab job,
   "I won't scab on nobody, not even the orneriest crackers," he said.
   "Bull Durham!" cried Zeddy. "What was
I going to let on about anything for? The
boss-man done paid me to git him mens, and
I got them. Ain't I working there mahself ?
I'll take any job in this heah Gawd's country
that the white boss make it worf mah while to
work at."
   "But it ain't decent to scab," said Jake.
   "Decent mah black moon!" shouted Zeddy.
"I'll scab through hell to make mah living.
Scab job or open shop or union am all the
same jobs to me. White mens don't want niggers in them unions, nohow. Ain't you a good
carpenter? And ain't I a good blacksmith?
But kain we get a look-in on our trade heah
in this white man's city? Ain't white mens
done scabbed niggers outa all the jobs they
useter hold down heah in this city? Waiter,
bootblack, and barber shop?"

 
   "With all a that scabbing is a low-down
deal," Jake maintained.
   "Me eye! Seems lak youse gittin' religion,
boh. Youse talking death, tha's what you sure
is. One thing I know is niggers am made foh
life. And I want to live, boh, and feel plenty
o' the juice o* life in mah blood. I wanta live
and I wanta love. And niggers am got to
work hard foh that. Buddy, I'll tell you this
and I'll tell it to the woT—all the crackers,
all them poah white trash, all the nigger-hitting and nigger-breaking white folks—I
loves life and I got to live and I'll scab
through hell to live."
   Jake did not work again that week. By
Saturday morning he didn't have a nickel, so
he went to Nije Gridley to borrow money.
Nije asked him if he was going that evening
to Billy Biasse's railroad flat, the longshore-men gaming rendezvous. Jake said no, he
was going with Zeddy to a buffet flat in One
Hundred and Fortieth Street. The buffet flat
was the rendezvous of a group of railroad
porters and club waiters who gambled for big
stakes. Jake did not go there often because
he had to dress up as if he were going to a
cabaret Also, he was not a big-stake gambler. . . • He preferred Billy Biasse's, where
he could go whenever he liked with hook and
overalls.
   "Oh, that's whar Zeddy's hanging out now,"
Nije commented, casually.
   For some time before Jake's return from
Europe Zeddy had stopped going to Billy
Biasse's. He told Jake he was fed up with it.
Jake did not know that Zeddy owed Nije
money and that he did not go to Billy Biasse's
because Nije often went there. . . .
   Later in the evening Nije went to Billy
Biasse's and found a longshoreman who was
known at the buffet flat, to take him there.
   Gambling was a bigger game than sex at
this buffet flat. The copper-hued lady who
owned it was herself a very good poker-
player. There were only two cocoa-brown
girls there. Not young or attractive. They
made a show of doing something, serving
drinks and trying hard to make jokes. In dining- and sitting-room, five tables were occupied by card-players. Railroad porters, long-shoremen, waiters; tight-faced, anxious-eyed.
Zeddy sat at the same table with the lady of
the flat. He had just eliminated two cards
and asked for two when Nije and his escort
were let into the flat. Zeddy smelled his man
and knew it was Nije without looking up.
   Nije swaggered past Zeddy and joined a
group at another table. The gaming went on
with intermittent calls for drinks. Nije sat
where he could watch Zeddy's face. Zeddy
also, although apparently intent on the cards,
kept a wary eye on Nije. Sometimes their
eyes met. No one was aware of the challenge
that was developing between the two men.
   There was a little slackening in the games,
a general call for drinks, and a shifting of
chairs. Nije got nearer to Zeddy. . . . Half-
smiling and careless-like, he planted his boot-
heel upon Zeddy's toes.
   "Git off mah feets," Zeddy barked. The
answer was a hard blow in the face. Zeddy
tasted blood in his mouth. He threw his muscular gorilla body upon the tall Nije and
hugged him down to the floor.
   "You blasted black Jew, say you1 prayers 1"
cried Zeddy.
   "Ain't scared o' none o' you barefaced rob-
ber niggers." Nije was breathing hard under
Zeddy and trying to get the better of him by
the help of the wall.
   "Black man," growled Zeddy, "Fse gwineta
cut your throat just so sure as God is white."
   With his knee upon Nije's chest and his left
hand on his windpipe, Zeddy flashed the dead-
ly-gleaming blade out of his back pocket. The
proprietress let loose a blood-curdling scream,
but before Zeddy's hand could achieve its pur-
pose, Jake aimed a swift kick at his elbow.
The razor flew spinning upward and fell
chopping through a glass of gin on the pianola.
  The proprietress fell upon Zeddy and
clawed at him. "Wha's the matter all you
bums trying to ruin mah place?" she cried.
"Ain't I been a good spoht with you all, mak-
ing everything here nice and respectable?"
   Jake took charge of Zeddy. Two men hus-
tled Nije off away out of the flat.
   "Who was it put the krimp on me?'' asked
Zeddy.
   "You ought to praise the Lawd you was
saved from Sing Sing and don't ask no ques-
tions," the woman replied.
   Everybody was talking,
   "How did that long, tall, blood-suckin1 nig-
ger get in heah?"
   "Soon as this heah kind a business stahts,
the dicks will sartain sure git on to us."
   "It ain't no moh than last week they done
raided Madame Jerkin's, the niftiest buffet
flat in Harlem. O Lawdyl"
   "That ole black cock," growled Zeddy, "he
wouldn'a' crowed round Harlem no moh after
I'd done made that theah fine blade talk in
his throat."
   "Shut up you," the proprietress said, "or I'll
throw you out." And Zeddy, the ape, who
was scared of no man in the place, became
humble before the woman. She began setting
the room to order, helped by the two cocoa-
brown girls. A man shuffling a pack of cards
called to Zeddy and Jake.
   But the woman held up her hand. "No
more card-playing tonight. I feel too ner-
vous."
   "Let's dance, then," suggested the smaller
cocoa-brown girl.
   A "blues" came trotting out of the pianola.
The proprietress bounced into Jake's arms.
The men sprang at the two girls. The un-
lucky ones paired off with each other.
   Oh, "blues," "blues," "blues." Black-
framed white grinning. Finger-snapping.
Undertone singing. The three men with
women teasing the stags. Zeddy's gorilla feet
dancing down the dark death lurking in his
heart. Zeddy dancing with a pal. "Blues,"
"blues," "blues." Red moods, black moods,
golden moods. Curious, syncopated slipping-
over into one mood, back-sliding back to the
first mood. Humming in harmony, barbaric
harmony, joy-drunk, chasing out the shadow
of the moment before.


                    
MYRTLE AVENUE

VI

Zeddy was excited over Jake's success in
love. He thought how often he had tried to
make up to Rose, without succeeding. He
was crazy about finding a woman to love him
for himself.
   He had been married when he was quite a
lad to a crust-yellow girl in Petersburg.
Zeddy's wife, after deceiving him with white
men, had run away from him to live an easier
life. That was before Zeddy came North.
Since then he had had many other alliances.
But none had been successful.
   It was true that no Black Belt beauty would
ever call Zeddy "mah han'some brown." But
there were sweetmen of the Belt more repul-
sive than he, that women would fight and mur-
der each other for. Zeddy did not seem to
possess any of that magic that charms and
holds women for a long time. All his attempts at home-making had failed. The
women left him when he could not furnish
the cash to meet the bills. They never saw his
wages. For it was gobbled up by his vora-
cious passion for poker and crap games,
Zeddy gambled in Harlem. He gambled with
white men down by the piers. And he was al-
ways losing,
   "If only I could get those kinda gals that
falls foh Jake," Zeddy mused. "And Jake is
such a fool spade. Don't know how to handle
the womens,"
   Zeddy's chance came at last. One Satur-
day a yellow-skinned youth, whose days and
nights were wholly spent between pool-rooms
and Negro speakeasies, invited Zeddy to a so-
ciable at a grass-widow's who lived in Brook-
lyn and worked as a cook downtown in New
York. She was called Gin-head Susy. She
had a little apartment in Myrtle Avenue near
Prince Street.
   Susy was wonderfully created. She was of
the complexion known among Negroes as
spade or chocolate-to-the-bone. Her eyes
shone like big white stars. Her chest was ma-
jestic and the general effect like a mountain.
And that mountain was overgrand because
Susy never wore any other but extremely
French-heeled shoes. Even over the range
she always stood poised in them and blazing
in bright-hued clothes.
   The burning passion of Susy's life was the
yellow youth of her race. Susy came from
South Carolina. A yellow youngster married
her when she was fifteen and left her before
she was eighteen. Since then she had lived
with a yellow complex at the core of her heart
   Civilization had brought strikingly exotic
types into Susy's race. And like many, many
Negroes, she was a victim to that. . . . An-
cient black life rooted upon its base with all
its fascinating new layers of brown, low-
brown, high-brown, nut-brown, lemon, ma-
roon, olive, mauve, gold. Yellow balancing
between black and white. Black reaching out
beyond yellow. Almost-white on the brink of
a change. Sucked back down into the current
of black by the terribly sweet rhythm of black
blood. . . .
   Susy's life of yellow complexity was sur-
charged with gin. There were whisky and
beer also at her sociable evenings, but gin was
the drink of drinks. Except for herself, her
parties were all-male. Like so many of her
sex, she had a congenital contempt for women.
All-male were her parties and as yellow as she
could make them. A lemon-colored or paper-
brown pool-room youngster from Harlem's
Fifth Avenue or from Prince Street. A bell-
boy or railroad waiter or porter. Sometimes
a chocolate who was a quick, nondiscriminat-
ing lover and not remote of attitude like the
pampered high-browns. But chocolates were
always a rarity among Susy's front-roomful
of gin-lovers.
   Yet for all of her wages drowned in gin,
Susy carried a hive of discontents in her ma-
jestic breast. She desired a lover, something
like her undutiful husband, but she desired in
vain. Her guests consumed her gin and lis-
tened to the phonograph, exchanged rakish
stories, and when they felt fruit-ripe to drop-
ping, left her place in pursuit of pleasures
elsewhere.
   Sometimes Susy managed to lay hold of a
yellow one for some time* Something all a
piece of dirty rags and stench picked up in
the street. Cleansed, clothed, and booted i t
But so soon as he got his curly hair straight-
ened by the process of Harlem's Ambrozine
Palace of Beauty, and started in strutting the
pavement of Lenox Avenue, feeling smart as
a moving-picture dandy, he would leave Susy.
   Apart from Susy's repellent person, no
youthful sweetman attempting to love her
could hold out under the ridicule of his pals.
Over their games of pool and craps the boys
had their cracks at Susy.
   "What about Gin-head Susy tonight?"
   "Sure, let's go and look the crazy old broad
over."
   "I'll go anywheres foh swilling of good
booze."
   "She's sho one ugly spade, but she's right
there with her Gordon Dry."
   "She ain't got 'em from creeps to crown
and her trotters is B flat, but her gin is regal."
   But now, after all the years of gin sociables
and unsatisfactory lemons, Susy was changing
just a little. She was changing under the influ-
ence of her newly-acquired friend, Lavinia
Curdy, the only woman whom she tolerated
at her parties. That was not so difficult, as
Miss Curdy was less attractive than Susy.
Miss Curdy was a putty-skinned mulattress
with purple streaks on her face. Two of her
upper front teeth had been knocked out and
her lower lip slanted pathetically leftward.
She was skinny and when she laughed she re-
sembled an old braying jenny.
  When Susy came to know Miss Curdy, she
unloaded a quantity of the stuff of her breast
upon her. Her drab childhood in a South
Carolina town. Her early marriage. N o
girlhood. Her husband leaving her. And all
the yellow men that had beaten her, stolen
from her, and pawned her things.
   Miss Curdy had been very emphatic to Susy
about "yaller men." "I know them from
long experience. They never want to work.
They're a lazy and shiftless lot. Want to be
kept like women. I found that out a long,
long time ago. And that's why when I wanted
a man f oh keeps I took me a black plug-ugly
one, mah dear."
   It wouldn't have supported the plausibility
of Miss Curdy's advice if she had mentioned
that more than one black plug-ugly had ruth-
lessly cut loose from her. As the black woman
had had her entanglements in yellow, so had
the mulattress hers of black. But, perhaps,
Miss Curdy did not realize that she could not
help desiring black. In her salad days as a
business girl her purse was controlled by many
a black man. Now, however, her old prob-
lems did not arise in exactly the same way,—
her purse was old and worn and flat and at-
tracted no attention.
   "A black man is as good to me as a yaller
when I finds a real one." Susy lied a little
to Miss Curdy from a feeling that she ought
Jo show some pride in her own complexion.
  "But all these sociables—and you spend so
much coin on gin," Miss Curdy had said,
  "Well, that's the trute, but we all of us
drinks it. And I loves to have company in
mah house, plenty of company."

   But when Susy came home from work one
evening and found that her latest "yaller"
sweetie had stolen her suitcase and best
dresses and pawned even her gas range, she
resolved never to keep another of his kind as
a "steady." At least she made that resolve to
Miss Curdy. But the sociables went on and
the same types came to drink the Saturday
evenings away, leaving the two women at the
finish to their empty bottles and glasses. Once
Susy did make a show of a black lover. He
was the house man at the boarding-house
where she cooked. But the arrangement did
not hold any time, for Susy demanded of the
chocolate extremely more than she ever got
from her yellows.
   "Well, boh, we's Brooklyn bound tonight,"
said Zeddy to Jake.
   "You got to show me that Brooklyn's got
any life to it," replied Jake.
   "Theah's life anywheres theah's booze and
jazz, and theah's cases o' gin and a gramo-
phone whar we's going."
   "Has we got to pay foh it, buddy?"
   "No, boh, eve'ything is f, o. c. ef the lady
likes you."
   "Blimey!" A cockney phrase stole Jake's
tongue. "Don't bull me."
   "I ain't. Honest-to-Gawd Gordon Dry,
and moh—ef you're the goods, all f. o. c."
   "Well, I'll be browned!" exclaimed Jake.
   Zeddy also took along Strawberry Lips, a
new pal, burnt-cork black, who was thus nick-
named from the peculiar stage-red color of
his mouth. Strawberry Lips was typically the
stage Negro. He was proof that a generaliza-
tion has some foundation in truth. . • . You
might live your life in many black belts and
arrive at the conclusion that there is no such
thing as a typical Negro—no minstrel coon off
the stage, no Thomas Nelson Page's nigger,
no Octavus Roy Cohen's porter, no lineal de-
scendant of Uncle Tom. Then one day your
theory may be upset through meeting with a
type by far more perfect than any created
counterpart.
   "Myrtle Avenue used to be a be-be itching
of a place," said Strawberry Lips, "when Doc
Giles had his gambling house on there and
Elijah Bowers was running his cabaret. H'm.
But Bowers was some big guy. He knew
swell white folks in politics, and had a grand
automobile and a high-yaller wife that hadn't
no need of painting to pass. His cabaret was
running neck and neck with Marshall's in
Fifty-third Street Then one night he killed
a man in his cabaret, and that finished him.
The lawyers got him off. But they cleaned
him out dry. Done broke him, that case did.
And today he's plumb down and out."
  Jake, Zeddy, and Strawberry Lips had left
the subway train at Borough Hall and were
walking down Myrtle Avenue.
   "Bowers' cabaret was some place for the
teasing-brown pick-me-up then, brother—and
the snow. The stuff was cheap then. You
sniff, boh?" Strawberry Lips asked Jake and
Zeddy.
   "I wouldn't know befoh I sees it," Jake
laughed.
   "I ain't no habitual prisoner," said Zeddy,
"but I does any little thing for a change. Keep
going and active with anything, says I."
   The phonograph was discharging its brassy
jazz notes when they entered the apartment.
Susy was jerking herself from one side to the
other with a potato-skinned boy. Miss Curdy
was half-hopping up and down with the only
chocolate that was there. Five lads, ranging
from brown to yellow in complexion, sat
drinking with jaded sneering expressions on
their faces. The one that had invited Zeddy
was among them. He waved to him to come
over with his friends.
   "Sit down and try some gin," he said. . . .
   Zeddy dipped his hand in his pocket and
sent two bones rolling on the table.
   "Ise with you, chappie," his yellow friend
said. The others crowded around. The
gramophone stopped and Susy, hugging a bot-
tle, came jerking on her French heels over to
the group. She filled the glasses and every-
body guzzled gin.
   Miss Curdy looked the newcomers over,
paying particular attention to Jake. A sure-
enough eye-filling chocolate, she thought. I
would like to make a steady thing of him.
   Over by the door two light-brown lads
began arguing about an actress of the leading
theater of the Black Belt.
   "I tell you I knows Gertie Kendall. I know
her more'n I know you."
   "Know her mah granny. You knows her
just like I do, from the balcony of the Lafay-
ette. Don't hand me none o' that fairy stuff,
for I ain't gwine to swallow it.''
   "Youse an aching pain. I knows her, I tell
you. I even danced with her at Madame Mul-
berry's apartment. You thinks I only hangs
out with low-down trash becassin Ise in a
place like this, eh? I done met mos'n all our
big niggers: Jack Johnson, James Reese Eu-
rope, Adah Walker, Buddy, who used to play
that theah drum for them Castle Walkers,
and Madame Walker."
   "Yaller, it 'pears to me that youse jest a na-
cherally-born story-teller. You really spec's
me to believe youse been associating with the
mucty-mucks of the race? Gwan with you.
You'll be telling me next you done speaks with
Charlie Chaplin and John D. Rockefel-
ler-     "
   Miss Curdy had tuned her ears to the con-
versation and broke in: "Why, what is that to
make so much fuss about? Sure he can dance
with Gertie Kendall and know the dickty nig-
gers. In my sporting days I knew Bert Wil-
liams and Walker and Adah Overton and
Editor Tukslack and all that upstage race
gang that wouldn't touch Jack Johnson with
a ten-foot pole. I lived in Washington and
had Congressmen for my friends—foop!
Why you can get in with the top-crust crowd
at any swell ball in Harlem. All you need
is clothes and the coin. I know them all, yet
I don't feel a bit haughty mixing here with
Susy and you all."
   "I guess you don't now," somebody said.
   Gin went round . . . and round . . . and
round. . . . Desultory dancing, • . . Dice.
• . • Blackjack. . . . Poker. • . . The room
became a close, live, intense place. Tight-
faced, the men seemed interested only in
drinking and gaming, while Susy and Miss
Curdy, guzzling hard, grew uglier. A jungle
atmosphere pervaded the room, and, like
shameless wild animals hungry for raw meat,
the females savagely searched the eyes of the
males. Susy's eyes always came back to settle
upon the lad that had invited Zeddy. He
was her real object. And Miss Curdy was
ginned up with high hopes of Jake.
   Jake threw up the dice and Miss Curdy
seized her chance to get him alone for a little
while.
   "The cards do get so tiresome," she said.
"I wonder how you men can go on and on
all night long poking around with poker."
   "Better than worser things," retorted Jake.
Disgusted by the purple streaks, he averted
his eyes from the face of the mulattress.
   "I don't know about that," Miss Curdy
bridled. "There's many nice ways of spend-
ing a sociable evening between ladies and gen-
tlemen."
   "Got to show me," said Jake, simply be-
cause the popular phrase intrigued his
tongue.
   ''And that I can."
   Irritated, Jake turned to move away.
   "Where you going? Scared of a lady?"
   Jake recoiled from the challenge, and shuf-
fled away from the hideous mulattress. From
experience in seaport towns in America, in
France, in England, he had concluded that a
woman could always go farther than a man in
coarseness, depravity, and sheer cupidity.
Men were ugly and brutal. But beside women
they were merely vicious children. Ignorant
about the aim and meaning and fulfillment of
life; uncertain and indeterminate; weak.
Rude children who loved excelling in spec-
tacular acts to win the applause of women.
   But women were so realistic and straight-
going. They were the real controlling force
of life. Jake remembered the bal-musette
fights between colored and white soldiers in
France. Blacks, browns, yellows, whites. . • .
He remembered the interracial sex skirmishes
in England. Men fought, hurt, wounded,
killed each other. Women, like blazing
torches, egged them on or denounced them.
Victims of sex, the men seemed foolish, ape-
like blunderers in their pools of blood.
Didn't know what they were fighting for, ex-
cept it was to gratify some vague feeling about
women. . . .
   Jake's thoughts went roaming after his little
lost brown of the Baltimore. The difference!
She, in one night, had revealed a fine differ-
ent world to him. Mystery again. A little
stray girl. Finer than the finest!
   Some of the fellows were going. In a vexed
spirit, Susy had turned away from her un-
responsive mulatto toward Zeddy. Relieved,
the mulatto yawned, threw his hands back-
wards and said: "I guess mah broad is home
from Broadway by now. Got to final on home
to her. Harlem, lemme see you."
   Miss Curdy was sitting against the mantel-
piece, charming Strawberry Lips. Marvel-
lous lips. Salmon-pink and planky. She had
hoisted herself upon his knees, her arm around
his thick neck.
   Jake went over to the mantelpiece to pour
a large chaser of beer and Miss Curdy leered
at him. She disgusted him. His life was a
free coarse thing, but he detested nastiness and
ugliness. Guess I'll haul bottom to Harlem,
he thought. Congo Rose was a rearing wild
animal, all right, but these women, these boys.
. . . Skunks, tame skunks, all of them!
   He was just going out when a chocolate lad
pointed at a light-brown and said: "The pot
calls foh four bits, chappie. Come across or
stay out."
   "Lemme a quarter!"
   "Ain't got i t Staying out?"
   Biff 1 Square on the mouth. The choco-
late leaped up like a tiger-cat at his assailant,
carrying over card table, little pile of money,
and half-filled gin glasses with a crash. Like
an enraged ram goat, he held and butted the
light-brown boy twice, straight on the fore-
head. The victim crumpled with a thud to
the floor. Susy jerked over to the felled boy
and hauled him, his body leaving a liquid
trail, to the door. She flung him out in the
corridor and slammed the door.
   "Sarves him right, pulling off that crap in
mah place. And you, Mis'er Jack John-
son," she said to the chocolate youth, "lemme
miss you quick."
   "He done hits me first," the chocolate said.
   "I knows it, but I ain't gwina stand foh no
rough-house in mah place. Ise got a dawg
heah wif me all ready foh bawking."
   "K-hhhhh, K-hhhhh," laughed Strawberry
Lips. "Oh, boh, I know it's the trute,
but       "
   The chocolate lad slunk out of the flat
   "Lavinia," said Susy to Miss Curdy, "put
on that theah Tickling Blues' on the vic-
troly."
   The phonograph began its scraping and
Miss Curdy started jig-jagging with Straw-
berry Lips. Jake gloomed with disgust
against the door.
   "Getting outa this, buddy?" he asked
Zeddy.
   "Nobody's chasing us, boh." Zeddy com-
menced stepping with Susy to the "Tickling
Blues."
   Outside, Jake found the light-brown boy
still half-stunned against the wall.
   "Ain't you gwine at home?" Jake asked him.
   "I can't find a nickel foh car fare," said the
boy.
   Jake took him into a saloon and bought him
a lemon squash. "Drink that to clear you'
haid," he said. "And heah's car fare." He
gave the boy a dollar. "Whar you living at?"
   "San Juan Hill."
   "Come on, le's git the subway, then."
   The Myrtle Avenue Elevated train passed
with a high raucous rumble over their heads.
  "Myrtle Avenue," murmured Jake. "Pretty
name, all right, but it stinks like a sewer.
Legs and feets! Come take me outa it back
home to Harlem."





ZEDDY'S RISE AND FALL

VII

Zeddy was scarce in Harlem. And
Strawberry Lips was also scarce. It was fully
a week after the Myrtle Avenue gin-fest be-
fore Jake saw Zeddy again. They met on the
pavement in front of Uncle Doc's saloon.
   "Why, where in the sweet name of niggers
in Harlem, buddy, you been keeping you'-
self?"
   "Whar you think?"
   "Think? I been very much thinking that
Nije Gridley done git you."
   "How come you git thataway, boh? Nije
Gridley him ain't got a chawnst on the carve
or the draw ag'inst Zeddy Plummer so long
as Ise got me a black moon."
   "Well, what's it done git you, then?"
  "Myrtle Avenue."
  "Come outa that; you ain't talking. . . ."
  "The trute as I knows it, buddy."
   "Crazy dog bite mah laig!" cried Jake.
"You ain't telling me that you done gone.

   "Transfer mah suitcase and all mah pohsi-
tions to Susy,"
   "Gin-head Susy!"
   "Egsactly; that crechur is mah ma-ma now.
I done express mahself ovah theah on that
very mahv'lously hang-ovah afternoon of that
ginnity mawnin' that you left me theah. And
Ise been right theah evah since."
   "Well, Ise got to wish you good luck,
buddy, although youse been keeping it so
dark."
   "It's the darkness of new loving, boh. But
the honeymoon is good and well ovah, and
I'll be li'l moh in Harlem as usual, looking
the chippies and chappies ovah. I ain't none
at all stuck on Brooklyn."
   "It's a swah hole all right," said Jake.
   "But theah's sweet stuff in it." Zeddy
tongue-wiped his fleshy lips with a salacious
laugh.
   "It's all right, believe me, boh," he informed Jake. "Susy ain't nothing to look at
like you' fair-brown queen, but she's tur'bly
sweet loving. You know when a ma-ma ain't
the goods in looks and figure, she's got to
make up foh it some. And that Susy does.
And she treats me right. Gimme all I wants
to drink and brings home the goodest poke
chops and fried chicken foh me to put away
under mah shirt • . . Youse got to come and
feed with us all one o' these heah evenings."
   It was a party of five when Jake went again
to Myrtle Avenue for the magnificent free-
love feast that Susy had prepared. It was
Susy's free Sunday. Miss Curdy and Straw-
berry Lips were also celebrating. Susy had
concocted a pitcherful of knock-out gin
cocktails. And such food! Susy could cook.
Perhaps it was her splendid style that made
her sink all her wages in gin and sweetmen.
 For she belonged to the ancient aristocracy of
black cooks, and knew that she was always sure
of a good place, so long as the palates of rich
 Southerners retained their discriminating
 taste.
   Cream tomato soup. Ragout of chicken
giblets. Southern fried chicken. Candied
sweet potatoes. Stewed corn. Rum-flavored
fruit salad waiting in the ice-box. . . . The
stars rolling in Susy's shining face showed how
pleased she was with her art.
   She may be fat and ugly as a turkey, thought
Jake, but her eats am sure beautiful.
   "Heah! Pass me you' plate," Susy gave
Jake a leg. Zeddy held out his plate again and
got a wing. Strawberry Lips received a bit
of breast. . . .
   "No more chicken for me, Susy," Miss
Curdy mumbled, "but I will have another
helping of that there stewed corn. I don't
know what ingredients yo-all puts in it, but,
Lawdy! I never tasted anything near so good."
   Susy beamed and dipped up three spoon-
fuls of corn. "Plenty, thank you," Miss Curdy
stopped her from filling up her saucer. . . .
Susy drank off a tumbler of cocktail at a
draught, and wiped her lips with the white
serviette that was stuck into the low neck of
her vermillion crepe-de-chine blouse. . . .


   When Jake was ready to leave, Zeddy an-
nounced that he would take a little jaunt with
him to Harlem.
   "You ain'ta gwine to do no sich thing as
that," Susy said.
   "Yes I is," responded Zeddy. "Wha' there
is to stop me?"
   "I is," said Susy.
   "And what foh?"
   " 'Causen I don't wanchu to go to Harlem.
What makes you niggers love Harlem so
much? Because it's a bloody ungodly place
where niggers nevah go to bed. All night
running around speakeasies and cabarets,
where bad, hell-bent nigger womens am giv-
ing up themselves to open sin."
   Susy stood broad and aggressive against
the window overlooking Myrtle Avenue.
   "Harlem is all right," said Zeddy. "I ain't
knocking round no cabarets and speakeasies.
Ahm just gwine ovah wif Jake to see soma-
them boys*"
   "Can that boy business!" cried Susy. "I've
had anuff hell scrapping wif the women ovah
mah mens. I ain't agwine to have no Harlem
boys seducin' mah man away fwom me* The
boy business is a fine excuse indeedy foh sich
womens as ain't wise. I always heah the boss
say to the missus, *I gwine out foh a little time
wif the boys, dearie.' when him wants an ex-
cuse foh a night off. I ain't born yestiday,
honey. If you wants the boys foh a liT game
o' poky, you bring 'em ovah heah. I ain't
got the teeeniest bit of objection, and Ise got
plenty o' good Gordon Dry foh eve'body."
  "Ise got.to go scares them up to bring them
heah," said Zeddy.
   "But not tonight or no night," declared
Susy. "You kain do that in the daytime, foh
you ain't got nothing to do."
  Zeddy moved toward the mantelpiece to get
his cap, but Susy blocked his way and held
the cap behind her.
  Zeddy looked savagely in her eyes and
growled: "Come outa that, sistah, and gimme
mah cap. It ain't no use stahting trouble."
   Susy looked steadily in his eyes and chucked
the cap at him. "Theah's you cap, but ef you
stahts leaving me nights you . . ."
   "What will you do?" asked Zeddy.
   "I'll put you' block in the street."
   Zeddy's countenance fell flat from its high
aggressiveness.
   "Well s'long, eve'body," said Jake.
   Zeddy put on his cap and rocked out of the
apartment after him. In the street he asked
Jake, "Think I ought to take a crack at Har-
lem with you tonight, boh?"
   "Not ef you loves you7 new home, buddy,"
Jake replied.
   "Bull! That plug-ugly black woman is or-
nery like hell. I ain't gwineta let her bridle
and ride me. • . . You ain't in no pickle like
that with Rose, is you?"
   "Lawd, no! I do as I wanta. But I'm one
independent cuss, buddy. We ain't sitchuate
the same. I works."
   "Black womens when theyse ugly am all
sistahs of Satan," declared Zeddy.
   "It ain't the black ones only," said Jake.
   "I wish I could hit things off like you,
boh," said Zeddy. . . . "Well, I'll see you all
some night at Billy Biasse's joint . . . S'long.
Don't pick up no bad change."
   From that evening Zeddy began to dis-
cover that it wasn't all fine and lovely to live
sweet Formerly he had always been envious
when any of his pals pointed out an extrava-
gantly-dressed dark dandy and remarked, "He
was living sweet" There was something so
romantic about the sweet life. To be the
adored of a Negro lady of means, or of a
pseudo grass-widow whose husband worked
on the railroad, or of a hard-working laun-
dress or cook. It was much more respectable
and enviable to be sweet—to belong to the
exotic aristocracy of sweetmen than to be just
a common tout
   But there were strings to Susy's largesse.
The enjoyment of Harlem's low night life was
prohibited to Zeddy. Susy was jealous of him
in the proprietary sense. She believed in free
love all right, but not for the man she pos-
sessed and supported. She warned him
against the ornery hussies of her race.
   "Nigger hussies nevah wanta git next to a
man 'cep'n' when he's a-looking good to an-
other woman," Susy declared. "I done gived
you fair warning to jest keep away from the
buffet-flat widdahs and thim Harlem street
floaters; foh ef I ketch you making a fool
woman of me, I'll throw you* pants in the
street."
   "Hi, but youse talking sistah. Why don't
you wait till you see something before you
staht in chewing the rag?"
   "I done give you the straight stuff in time
so you kain watch you'self when I kain't watch
you. I ain't bohding and lodging no black
man foh'm to be any other nigger woman's
daddy."
   So, in a few pointed phrases, Susy let Zeddy
understand precisely what she would stand
for. Zeddy was well kept like a prince of
his type. He could not complain about food
. . . and bed. Susy was splendid in her mat-
riarchal way, rolling her eyes with love or dis-
approval at him, according to the exigencies
of the moment.
    The Saturday-night gin parties went on as
usual. The brown and high-brown boys came
and swilled. Miss Curdy was a constant visi-
tor, frequently toting Strawberry Lips along.
About her general way of handling things
Susy brooked no criticism from Zeddy. She
had bargained with him in the interest of ne-
cessity and of rivalry and she paid and paid
fully, but grimly. She was proud to have a
man to boss about in an intimate, casual way.
   "Git out another bottle of gin, Zeddy. . . ."
   "Bring along that packet o' saltines. . • ."
   "Put on that theah Tickling Blues' that
we's all just crazy about."
   To have an aggressive type like Zeddy at
her beck and call considerably increased
Susy's prestige and clucking pride. She no-
ticed, with carefully-concealed delight, that
the interest of the yellow gin-swillers was
piqued. She became flirtatious and coy by
turns. And she was rewarded by fresh atten-
tions. Even Miss Curdy was now meeting
with new adventures, and she was prompted
to expatiate upon men and love to Susy.
   "Men's got a whole lot of women in their
nature, I tell you. Just as women never really
see a man until he's looking good to another
woman and the hussies want to steal him,
it's the same thing with men, mah dear. So
soon as a woman is all sugar and candy for
another man, you find a lot of them heart-
breakers all trying to get next to her. Like
a set of strutting game cocks all priming them-
selves to crow over a li'l' piece o* nothing."
    "That's the gospel trute indeed," agreed
 Susy. "I done have a mess of knowledge 'bout
men tucked away heah." Susy tapped her
head of tight-rolled kinks knotted with scraps
of ribbon of different colors. "I pays foh
what I know and I've nevah been sorry, either.
•Yes, mam, I done larned about mah own self
 fust. Had no allusions about mahself. I
knowed that I was black and ugly and no-
 class and unejucated. And I knowed that I
was bohn foh love. . . . Mah mammy did
 useter warn me about love. All what the
 white folks call white slavery theseadays. I
 dunno ef theah's another name foh the nigger-
 an'-white side ovit down home in Dixie. Well,
I soon found out it wasn't womens alone in
the business, sposing thimselves like vigitables
foh sale in the market. No, mam! I done
soon l'arned that the mens was most buyable
thimselves. Mah heart-breaking high-yaller
done left me sence—how miny wintahs I been
counting this heah Nothan snow? All thim
and some moh—dawggone ef I remimber.
But evah since I been paying sistah, paying
good and hard foh mah loving feelings."
   "Life ain't no country picnic with sweet
flute and fiddle," Miss Curdy sighed.
   "Indeed not," Susy was emphatic. "It ain't
got nothing to do with the rubbish we 1'arn at
Sunday school and the sweet snooziness I used
to lap up in thim blue-cover story books. My
God! the things I've seen! Working with
white folks, so dickty and high-and-mighty,
you think theyse nevah oncet naked and thim
feets nevah touch ground. Yet all the silks
and furs and shining diamonds can't hide the
misery a them lives. . . . Servants and heart-
breakers from outside stealing the husband's
stuff. And all the men them that can't find
no sweet-loving life at home. Lavinia, I done
seen life."
   "Me, too, I have seen the real life, mixing as
I used to in real society," said Miss Curdy.
   "I know society, too, honey, even though I
only knows it watching from the servant
window. And I know it ain't no different
from us. It's the same life even ef they drink
champagne and we drink gin."
   "You said it and said it right," responded
Miss Curdy.

  Zeddy discovered that in his own circles
in Harlem he had become something of a joke.
It was known that he was living sweet. But
his buddies talked about his lady riding him
with a cruel bit.
   "He was kept, all right," they said, "kept
under 'Gin-head' Susy's skirt."
   He had had to fight a fellow in Dixie Red's
pool-room, for calling him a "skirt-man."
   He was even teased by Billy Biasse or Billy,
the Wolf, as he was nicknamed. Billy boasted
frankly that he had no time for women. Black
women, or the whole diversified wprld of the
sex were all the same to him.
  "So Harlem, after the sun done set, has no
fun at all foh you, eh, boh?" Billy asked
Zeddy,
  Zeddy growled something indistinct.
   "Sweet with the bit in you' mouf. Black
woman riding her nigger. Great life, boh, ef
you don't weaken."
   "Bull! Wha's the matter with you niggers,
anyhow?" Zeddy said in a sort of general
way. "Ain't it better than being a wolf?"
  "Ise a wolf, all right, but I ain't a lone one,"
Billy grinned. "I guess Ise the happiest, well-
feddest wolf in Harlem. Oh, boy!"
  Zeddy spent that evening in Harlem drink-
ing with Jake and two more longshoremen at
Uncle Doc's saloon. Late in the night they
went to the Congo. Zeddy returned to Myrtle
Avenue, an hour before it was time for Susy
to rise, fully ginned up.
  To Susy's "Whar you been?" he answered,
"Shut up or I'll choke you," staggered,
swayed, and swept from the dresser a vase of
chrysanthemums that broke on the floor,
  "Goddam fool flowers," he growled. "Why
in hell didn't you put them out of the way,
hey, you Suze?"
   "Oh, keep quiet and come along to bed,'1
said Susy.
  A week later he repeated the performance,
coming home with alarming symptoms of gin
hiccough. Susy said nothing. After that
Zeddy began to prance, as much as a short,
heavy-made human could, with the bit out of
his mouth. . . •
   One Saturday night Susy's gin party was a
sad failure. Nobody came beside Miss Curdy
with Strawberry Lips. (Zeddy had left for
Harlem in the afternoon.) They drank to
themselves and played coon-can. Near mid-
night, when Miss Curdy was going, she said
offhandedly, "I wouldn't mind sampling one
of those Harlem cabarets now." Susy at once
seized upon the idea.
   "Sure. Let's go to Harlem for a change."
   They caught the subway train for Harlem.
Arrived there they gravitated to the Congo,
   Before Susy left Myrtle Avenue, Zeddy was
already at the Congo with a sweet, timid,
satin-faced brown just from down home, that
he had found at Aunt Hattie's and induced
to go with him to the cabaret. Jake sat at
Zeddy's table. Zeddy was determined to go
the limit of independence, to show the boys
that he was a cocky sweetman and no skirt-
man. Plenty of money. He was treating.
He wore an elegant nigger-brown sports suit
and patent-leather shoes with cream-light
spats such as all the sweet swells love to strut
in. If Zeddy had only been taller, trimmer,
and well-arched he would have been one of
Harlem's dandiest sports.
   His new-found brown had a glass of Vir-
ginia Dare before her; he was drinking gin.
Jake, Scotch-and-soda; and Rose, who sat with
them when she was not entertaining, had or-
dered White Rock. The night before, or
rather the early morning after her job was
done, she had gone on a champagne party and
now she was sobering up.
   Billy Biasse was there at a neighboring
table with a longshoreman and a straw-colored
boy who was a striking advertisement of the
Ambrozine Palace of Beauty. The boy was
made up with high-brown powder, his eye-
brows were elongated and blackened up, his
lips streaked with the dark rouge so popular
in Harlem, and his carefully-straightened hair
lay plastered and glossy under Madame
Walker's absinthe-colored salve "for milady
of fashion and color."
   "Who's the doll baby at the Wolf's table?"
Zeddy asked.
   "Tha's mah dancing pardner," Rose an-
swered.
   "Another entertainer? The Congo is gwine
along fast enough."
   "You bet you," said Jake. "And the ofays
will soon be nosing it out. Then we'll have
to take a back seat."
   "Who's the Wolf?" Timidly Zeddy's girl
asked.
   Zeddy pointed out Billy.
   "But why Wolf?"
   "Khhhhhhh — Khhhhhhhh . . ." Zeddy
laughed. " 'Causen he eats his own kind."
   It was time for Rose to dance. Her partner
had preceded her to the open space and was
standing, arm akimbo against the piano, talk-
ing to the pianist. The pianist was a slight-
built, long-headed fellow. His face shone
like anthracite, his eyes were arresting, in-
tense, deep-yellow slits. He seemed in a con-
tinual state of swaying excitement, whether or
not he was playing.
   They were ready, Rose and the dancer-boy.
The pianist began, his eyes toward the ceiling
in a sort of savage ecstatic dream. Fiddler,
saxophonist, drummer, and cymbalist seemed
to catch their inspiration from him. • . .

 When Luty dances, everything
   Is dancing in the cabaret.
 The second fiddle asks the first:
  What makes you sound that funny way?
 The drum talks in so sweet a voice,
   The cymbal answers in surprise,
 The lights put on a brighter glow
   To match the shine of Luty's eyes.

 For he's a foot-manipulating fool
   When he hears that crazy moan
   Come rolling, rolling outa that saxophone. . . •
 Watch that strut; there's no keeping him cool
   When he's a-rearing with that saxophone. . . .
   Oh, the tearing, tantalizing tone!
   Of that moaning saxophone. • . .
     That saxophone. . . .
     That saxophone. • • •

   They danced, Rose and the boy. Oh, they
danced! An exercise of rhythmical exactness
for two. There was no motion she made that
he did not imitate. They reared and pranced
together, smacking palm against palm, work-
ing knee between knee, grinning with real
joy. They shimmied, breast to breast, bent
themselves far back and shimmied again.
Lifting high her short skirt and showing her
green bloomers, Rose kicked. And in his
tight nigger-brown suit, the boy kicked even
with her. They were right there together,
neither going beyond the other. . . .
   And the pianist! At intervals his yellow
eyes, almost bloodshot, swept the cabaret with
a triumphant glow, gave the dancers a caress-
ing look, and returned to the ceiling. Lean,
smart fingers beating barbaric beauty out of a
white frame. Brown bodies, caught up in the
wild rhythm, wiggling and swaying in their
seats.
  For he's a foot-manipulating fool
  When he hears that crazy moan
  Come rolling, rolling outa that saxophone. • • •
      That saxophone. • . .
      That saxophone. • • .

   Rose was sipping her White Rock. Her
partner, at Billy's table, sucked his iced creme-
de-menthe through a straw. The high wave
of joyful excitement had subsided and the cus-
tomers sat casually drinking and gossiping as
if they had not been soaring a minute before
in a realm of pure joy.
   From his place, giving a good view of the
staircase, Zeddy saw two apparently familiar
long legs swinging down the steps. Sure
enough, he knew those big, thick-soled red
boots.
  "Them feets look jest laka Strawberry
Lips' own," he said to Jake. Jake looked and
saw first Strawberry Lips enter the cabaret,
with Susy behind balancing upon her French
heels, and Miss Curdy. Susy was gorgeous in
a fur coat of rich shiny black, like her com-
plexion. Opened, it showed a cerise blouse
and a yellow-and-mauve check skirt. Her
head of thoroughly-straightened hair flaunted
a green hat with a decoration of red ostrich
plumes.
  "Great balls of fire! Here's you doom,
buddy," said Jake.
  "Doom, mah granny," retorted Zeddy. "Ef
that theah black ole cow come fooling near
me tonight, I'll show her who's wearing the
pants."
   Susy did not see Zeddy until her party was
seated. It was Miss Curdy who saw him first.
She dug into Susy's side with her elbow and
cried:
  "For the love of Gawd, looka there 1"
   Susy's star eyes followed Miss Curdy's. She
glared at Zeddy and fixed her eyes on the girl
with him for a moment. Then she looked
away and grunted: "He thinks he's acting
smart, eh? Him and I will wrastle that out to
a salution, but I ain't agwine to raise no stink
in heah."
   "He's got some more nerve pulling off that
low-down stuff, and on your money, too," said
Miss Curdy.
   "Who that?" asked Strawberry Lips.
   "Ain't you seen your best friends over
there?" retorted Miss Curdy.
   Strawberry Lips waved at Zeddy and Jake,
but they were deliberately keeping their eyes
away from Susy's table. He got up to go to
them.
   "Where you going?" Miss Curdy asked.
   "Tochinwif         "
   A yell startled the cabaret. A girl had
slapped another's face and replied to her vie-
tim's cry of pain with, "If you no like it you
can lump it!"
   "You low an' dutty bobbin-bitch!"
   "Bitch is bobbin in you' sistah's coffin."
   They were West Indian girls.
   "I'll mek mah breddah beat you' bottom foh
you."
   "Gash it and stop you' jawing."
   They were interrupted by another West In-
dian girl, who wore a pink-flowered muslin
frock and a wide jippi-jappa hat from which
charmingly hung two long ends of broad pea-
green ribbon.
   "It's a shame. Can't you act like decent
English people?" she said. Gently she began
pushing away the assaulted girl, who burst
into tears.
   "She come boxing me up ovah a dutty-
black 'Merican coon."
   "Mek a quick move or I'll box you bum-
bole ovah de moon," her assailant cried after
her. . . •
   "The monkey-chasers am scrapping,"
Zeddy commented.
   "In a language all their own," said Jake.
   "They are wild womens, buddy, and it's a
wild language they're using, too," remarked
a young West Indian behind Jake.
   "Hmm! but theyse got the excitement
fever," a lemon-colored girl at a near table
made her contribution and rocked and twisted
herself coquettishly at Jake. • . .
   Susy had already reached the pavement
with Miss Curdy and Strawberry Lips. Susy
breathed heavily.
   "Lesh git furthest away from this low-down
vice hole," she said. "Leave that plug-ugly
nigger theah, I ain't got no more use f oh him
nohow."
   "I never did have any time for Harlem,"
said Miss Curdy. "When I was high up in
society all respectable colored people lived in
Washington. There was no Harlem full a
niggers then. I declare       "
   "I shoulii think the nigger heaven of a the-
ater downtown is better than anything in this
heah Harlem," said Susy. "When we feels
like going out, it's better we enjoy ourse'f in
the liT corner the white folks 'low us, and
then shuffle along back home. It's good and
quiet ovah in Brooklyn."
   "And we can have all the inside fun we
need," said Miss Curdy.
  "Brooklyn ain't no better than Harlem,"
said Strawberry Lips, running the words roll-
ing off his tongue. "Theah's as much shoot-
ing-up and cut-up in Prince Street and       "
   "There ain't no compahrison atall," stoutly
maintained Susy. "This here Harlem is a
stinking sink of iniquity. Nigger hell! That's
what it is. Looka that theah ugly black nig-
ger loving up a scrimpy brown gal right be-
f oh mah eyes. Jest daring me to turn raw and
loose lak them monkey-chasing womens this-
anight. But that I wouldn't do. I ain't a
woman abandoned to sich publicity stunts.
Not even though mah craw was full to burst-
ing. Lemme see'm tonight. . . . Yessam, this
heah Harlem is sure nigger hell. Take me
way away from it."

  When Zeddy at last said good night to his
new-found brown, he went straight to an all-
night barrel-house and bought a half a pint
of whisky. He guzzled the liquor and
smashed the flask on the pavement. Drew up
his pants, tightened his belt and growled,
"Now I'm ready for Susy."
   He caught the subway train for Brooklyn.
Only local trains were running and it was quite
an hour and a half before he got home. He
staggered down Myrtle Avenue well primed
with the powerful stimulation of gin-and-
whisky.
   At the door of Susy's apartment he was met
by his suitcase. He recoiled as from a blow
struck at his face. Immediately he became
sober. His eyes caught a little white tag at-
tached to the handle. Examining it by the
faint gaslight he read, in Susy's handwriting:
"Kip owt that meen you."
   Susy had put all Zeddy's belongings into
the suitcase, keeping back what she had given
him: two fancy-colored silk shirts, silk hand-
kerchiefs, a mauve dressing-gown, and a box
of silk socks.
   "What he's got on that black back of his'n
he can have," she had said while throwing the
things in the bag.
   Zeddy beat on the door with his fists,
   "Wha moh you want?" Susy's voice bawled
from within. "Ain'tchu got all you stuff
theah? Gwan back where youse coming
from."
   "Lemme in and quit you joking," cried
Zeddy.
   "You ugly flat-footed zigaboo," shouted
Susy, "may I ketch the 'lectric chair without
conversion ef I 'low you dirty black pusson in
mah place again. And you better git quick
foh I staht mah dawg bawking at you."
   Zeddy picked up his suitcase. "Come on,
Mistah Bag. Le's tail along back to Harlem.
Leave black woman 'lone wif her gin and
ugly mug. Black woman is hard luck."





THE RAID OF THE BALTIMORE

VIII

The blazing lights of the Baltimore were
put out and the entrance was padlocked.
Fifth Avenue and Lenox talked about nothing
else. Buddy meeting buddy and chippie
greeting chippie, asked: "Did you hear the
news?" . . . "Well, what do you know about
that?"
   Yet nothing sensational had happened in
the Baltimore. The police had not, on a cer-
tain night, swept into it and closed it up be-
cause of indecent doings. No. It was an in-
direct raid. Oh, and that made the gossip
toothierl For the Baltimore was not just an
ordinary cabaret. It had mortgages and poli-
cies in the best of the speakeasy places of the
Belt. And the mass of Harlem held the Bal-
timore in high respect because (it was ru-
mored and believed) it was protected by Tam-
many Hall.
   Jake, since he had given up hoping about
his lost brown, had stopped haunting the Bal-
timore, yet he had happened to be very much
in on the affair that cost the Baltimore its
license. Jake's living with Rose had, in spite
of himself, projected him into a more elegant
atmosphere of worldliness. Through Rose
and her associates he had gained access to buf-
fet flats and private rendezvous apartments
that were called "nifty."
   And Jake was a high favorite wherever he
went There was something so naturally beau-
tiful about his presence that everybody liked
and desired him. Buddies, on the slightest
provocation, were ready to fight for him, and
the girls liked to make an argument around
him.
   Jake had gained admission to Madame Ade-
line Suarez's buffet flat, which was indeed a
great feat. He was the first longshoreman,
colored or white, to tread that magnificent
red carpet. Madame Suarez catered to sporty
colored persons of consequence only and cer-
tain groups of downtown whites that used to
frequent Harlem in the good old pre-prohibi-
tion days.
   "Ain't got no time for cheap- no-'count nig-
gers," Madame Suarez often said. "Gimme
their room to their company any time, even if
they've got money to spend," Madame Suarez
came from Florida and she claimed Cuban
descent through her father. By her claim to
that exotic blood she moved like a queen
among the blue-veins of the colored sporting
world.
   But Jake's rough charm could conquer any-
thing.
   "Ofay's mixing in I" he exclaimed to him-
self the first night he penetrated into Madame
Suarez's. "But ofay or ofay not, this here is
the real stuff," he reflected. And so many
nights he absented himself from the Congo
 (he had no interest in Rose's art of flirting
money out of hypnotized newcomers) to lux-
uriate with charmingly painted pansies among
the colored cushions and under the soft, shaded
lights of Madame Suarez's speakeasy. It was
a new world for Jake and he took it easily.
    That was his natural way, wherever he went,
whatever new people he met It had helped
him over many a bad crossing at Brest at
Havre and in London. . . . Take it easy • . .
take life easy. Sometimes he was disgusted
with life, but he was never frightened of it.
  Jake had never seen colored women so care-
fully elegant as these rich-browns and yellow-
creams at Madame Suarez's. They were fas-
cinating in soft bright draperies and pretty
pumps and they drank liquor with a fetching
graceful abandon. Gin and whisky seemed
to lose their barbaric punch in that atmos-
phere and take on a romantic color. The
women's coiffure was arranged in different
striking styles and their arms and necks and
breasts tinted to emphasize the peculiar rich-
ness of each skin. One girl, who was the
favorite of Madame Suarez, and the darkest
in the group, looked like a breathing statue of
burnished bronze. With their arresting poses
and gestures, their deep shining painted eyes,
they resembled the wonderfully beautiful pic-
tures of women of ancient Egypt
   Here Jake brushed against big men of the
colored sporting world and their white
friends. That strange un-American world
where colored meets and mingles freely and
naturally with white in amusement basements,
buffet flats, poker establishments. Sometimes
there were two or three white women, who
attracted attention because they were white
and strange to Harlem, but they appeared like
faded carnations among those burning orchids
of a tropical race.
   One night Jake noticed three young white
men, clean-shaven, flashily-dressed, who paid
for champagne for everybody in the flat. They
were introduced by a perfectly groomed dark-
brown man, a close friend of the boss of the
Baltimore. Money seemed worthless to them
except as a means of getting fun out of i t
Madame Suarez made special efforts to please
them. Showed them all of the buffet flat, even
her own bedroom. One of them, very freck-
led and red-haired, sat down to the piano and
jazzed out popular songs. The trio radiated
friendliness all around them. Danced with
the colored beauties and made lively conver-
sation with the men. They were gay and reck-
lessly spendthrift. . . .
   They returned on a Saturday night, between
midnight and morning, when the atmosphere
of Madame Suarez's was fairly bacchic and
jazz music was snake-wriggling in and out
and around everything and forcing everybody
into amatory states and attitudes. The three
young white men had two others with them.
At the piano a girl curiously made up in
mauve was rendering the greatest ragtime
song of the day. Broadway was wild about
it and Harlem was crazy. All America jazzed
to it, and it was already world-famous. Al-
ready being jazzed perhaps in Paris and
Cairo, Shanghai, Honolulu, and Java. It was
a song about cocktails and cherries. Like this
in some ways:
Take a juicy cocktail cherry,
  Take a dainty little bite,
And we'll all be very merry
  On a cherry drunk tonight.
We'll all be merry when you have a cherry,
  And we'll twine and twine like a fruitful vine,
Grape vine, red wine, babe mine, bite a berry,
 You taste a cherry and twine, rose vine, sweet wine.
    Cherry-ee-ee-ee-ee, cherry-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee, ee-ee-ee
    Cherry-ee-ee-ee-ee, cherry-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee, ee-ee-ee
    Grape vine, rose vine, sweet wine. . • .Love is like a cocktail cherry,
  Just a fruity little bit,
And you've never yet been merry,
  If you've not been drunk on it.
  We'll all be merry when you have. • . •

   The women, carried away by the sheer
rhythm of delight, had risen above their com-
mercial instincts (a common trait of Negroes
in emotional states) and abandoned themselves
to pure voluptuous jazzing. They were gor-
geous animals swaying there through the
dance, punctuating it with marks of warm
physical excitement. The atmosphere was
charged with intensity and over-charged with
currents of personal reaction. . . .
   Then thefiveyoung white men unmasked as
the Vice Squad and killed the thing.
       Dicks! They had wooed and lured and
solicited for their trade. For two weeks they
had spilled money like water at the Baltimore.
Sometimes they were accompanied by white
girls who swilled enormous quantities of
champagne and outshrieked the little ginned-
up Negresses and mulattresses of the cabaret.
They had posed as good fellows, regular guys,
looking for a good time only in the Black
Belt. They were wearied of the pleasures of
the big white world, wanted something new
—the primitive joy of Harlem.
   So at last, with their spendthrift and
charming ways, they had convinced the wary
boss of the Baltimore that they were fine fel-
lows. The boss was a fine fellow himself, who
loved life and various forms of fun and had
no morals about them. And so one night when
the trio had left their hired white ladies be-
hind, he was persuaded to give his youthful
white guests an introduction to Madame Ade-
line Suarez's buffet flat. . • •  The uniformed police were summoned.
Madame Suarez and her clients were ordered to get ready to go down to the Night
Court. The women asked permission to veil
themselves. Many windows were raked up
in the block and heads craned forth to watch
the prisoners bundled into waiting taxicabs.
The women were afraid. Some of them were
false grass-widows whose husbands were
working somewhere. Some of them were
church members. Perhaps one could claim a
place in local society!
   They were all fined. But Madame Suarez,
besides being fined, was sent to Blackwell's
Island for six months.
  To the two white girls that were also taken
in the raid the judge remarked that it was a
pity he had no power to order them whipped.
For whipping was the only punishment he
considered suitable for white women who dis-
honored their race by associating with colored
persons.
  The high point of the case was the indict-
ment of the boss of the Baltimore as accessory
to the speakeasy crime. The boss was not convicted, but the Baltimore was ordered to be
padlocked. That decision was appealed. But
the cabaret remained padlocked. A black
member of Tammany had no chances against
the Moral Arm of the city.
  The Belt's cabaret sets licked their lips over
the sensation for weeks. For a long time
Negro proprietors would not admit white cus-
tomers into their cabarets and near-white
members of the black race, whose features
were unfamiliar in Harlem,.had a difficult
time proving their identity.




JAKE MAKES A MOVE

 IX

Coming home from work one afternoon,
Jake remarked a taxicab just driving away
from his house. He was quite a block off, but
he thought it was his number. When he en-
tered Rose's room he immediately detected an
unfamiliar smell. He had an uncanny sharp
nose for strange smells. Rose always had
visitors, of course. Girls, and fellows, too, of
her circle. But Jake had a feeling that his
nose had scented something foreign to Har-
lem. The room was close with tobacco smoke;
there were many Melachrino butts in a tray,
and a half-used box of the same cigarettes on
a little table drawn up against the scarlet-cov-
ered couch. Also, there was a half-filled bot-
tle of Jake's Scotch whisky on the table and
glasses for two. Rose was standing before
the dresser, arranging her hair.   "Been having company?" Jake asked, care-
lessly.
   "Yep. It was only Gertie Blake."
   Jake knew that Rose was lying. Her visitor
had not been Gertie Blake. It had been a
man, a strange man, doubtless a white man.
Yet he hadn't the slightest feeling of jealousy
or anger, whatever the visitor was. Rose had
her friends of both sexes and was quite free
in her ways. At the Congo she sat and drank
and flirted with many fellows. That was a
part of her business. She got more tips that
way, and the extra personal bargains that gave
her the means to maintain her style of living.
All her lovers had always accepted her living
entirely free. For that made it possible for
her to keep them living carefree and sweet.
   Rose was disappointed in Jake. She had
wanted him to live in the usual sweet way, to
be brutal and beat her up a little, and take
away her money from her. Once she had a
rough leather-brown man who used to beat
her up regularly. Sometimes she was beaten
so badly she had to stay indoors for days, and
 to her visiting girl pals she exhibited her
bruises and blackened eyes with pride.
   As Jake was not brutally domineering, she
cooled off from him perceptibly. But she
could not make him change. She confided to
her friends that he was "good loving but"
 (making use of a contraction that common
people employ) "a big Ah-Ah all the same."
She felt no thrill about the business when her
lover was not interested in her earnings.
   Jake did not care. He did not love her,
had never felt any deep desire for her. He
had gone to live with her simply because she
had asked him when he was in a fever mood
for a steady mate. There was nothing about
Rose that touched and roused him as his vivid
recollection of his charming little brown-skin
of the Baltimore. Rose's room to him was
like any ordinary lodging in Harlem. While
the room of his little lost brown lived in his
mind a highly magnified affair: a bed of gold,
fresh, white linen, a magic carpet, all bathed
in the rarest perfume. .. . Rose's perfume
made his nose itch. It was rank.
    He came home another afternoon and found
her with a bright batik kimono carelessly
wrapped around her and stretched full-length
on the couch. There were Melachrino stubs
lying about and his bottle of Scotch was on the
mantelpiece. Evidently the strange visitor of
the week before had been there again.
   "Hello!" She yawned and flicked off her
cigarette ash and continued smoking. A chic
veneer over a hard, restless, insensitive body.
Fascinating, nevertheless. . . . For the mo-
ment, just as she was, she was desirable and
provoked responses in him. He shuffled up
to the couch and caressed her.
   "Leave me alone, I'm tired," she snarled.
   The rebuff hurt Jake. "You slut I" he cried.
He went over to the mantelpiece and added,
"Youse just everybody's teaser."
   "You got a nearve talking to me that way,"
said Rose. "Since when you staht riding the
high horse?"
   "It don't take no nearve foh me to tell you
what you is. Fact is I'm right now sure tiahd
to death of living with you."
   "You poor black stiff I" Rose cried. And
she leaped over at Jake and scratched at his
face.
   Jake gave her two savage slaps full in her
face and she dropped moaning at his feet.
   "There! You done begged foh it," he said.
He stepped over her and went out
   Walking down the street, he looked at his
palms. "Ahm shame o' you, hands," he mur-
mured. "Mah mother useter tell me, 'Nevah
hit no woman/ but that hussy jest made me do
it . . . jest made me. . . . Well, I'd better
pull outa that there mud-hole. . . . It wasn't
what I come back to Gawd's own country foh.
No, sirree! You bet it wasn't. . . ."

   When he returned to the house he heard
laughter in the room. Gertie Blake was there
and Rose was telling a happy tale. He stood
by the closed door and listened for a while.
   "Have another drink, Gertie. Don't ever
get a wee bit delicate when youse with me.
. . . My, mah dear, but he did slap the day-
lights outa me. When I corned to I wanted to
kiss his feet, but he was gone."
   "Rose! You're the limit. But didn't it
hurt awful?"
   "Didn't hurt enough. Honey, it's the first
time I ever felt his real strength. A hefty-
looking one like him, always acting so nice
and proper. I almost thought he was getting
sissy. But he's a ma-an all right. • • ."
   A nasty smile stole into Jake's features. He
could not face those women. He left the house
again. He strolled down to Dixie Red's pool-
room and played awhile. From there he went
with Zeddy to Uncle Doc's saloon.
   He went home again and found Rose stun-
ning in a new cloth-of-gold frock shining
with brilliants. She was refixing a large arti-
ficial yellow rose to the side of a pearl-beaded
green turban. Jake, without saying a word,
went to the closet and took down his suitcase.
Then he began tossing shirts, underwear, col-
lars, and ties on to the couch.
   "What the devil you're doing?" Rose
wheeled round and stared at him in amazement, both hands gripping the dresser behind
her.
  "Kain't you see?" Jake replied.
  She moved down on him like a panther,
swinging her hips in a wonderful, rhythmical
motion. She sprang upon his neck and
brought him down.
  "Oh, honey, you ain't mad at me 'counta
the little fuss tonight?"
  "I don't like hitting no womens," returned
Jake's hard-breathing muffled voice.
  "Daddy! I love you the more for that."
  "You'll spile you' new clothes," Jake said,
desperately.
  "Hell with them! I love mah daddy moh'n
anything. And mah daddy loves me, don't
he? Daddy!"

  Rose switched on the light and looked at
her watch.
  "My stars, daddy! We been honey-dream-
ing some! I am two hours late."
  She jumped up and jig-stepped. "I should
worry if the Congo . . . I should worry 
mumbo-jumbo."
   She smoothed out her frock, arranged her
hair, and put the turban on. "Come along to
the Congo a little later," she said to Jake.
"Let's celebrate on champagne."
  The door closed on him. . . .
   "O Lawdy!" he yawned, stretched himself,
and got up. He took the rest of his clothes out
of the closet, picked up the crumpled things
from the couch, packed, and walked out with
his suitcase.



SECOND PART

THE RAILROAD

 X
 
Over the heart of the vast gray Pennsyl-
vania country the huge black animal snorted
and roared, with sounding rods and couplings,
pulling a long chain of dull-brown boxes
packed with people and things, trailing on the
blue-cold air its white masses of breath.
   Hell was playing in the hot square hole of
a pantry and the coffin-shaped kitchen of the
dining-car. The short, stout, hard-and-horny
chef was terrible as a rhinoceros. Against the
second, third, and fourth cooks he bellied his
way up to the little serving door and glared at
the waiters. His tough, aproned front was a
challenge to them. In his oily, shining face
his big white eyes danced with meanness. All
the waiters had squeezed into the pantry at
once, excitedly snatching, dropping and
breaking things.
   "Hey, you there! You mule!" x The chef
shouted at the fourth waiter. "Who told you
to snitch that theah lamb chops outa the hole?"
   "I done think they was the one I or-
dered       "
   "Done think some hell, you down-home
black fool. Ain't no thinking to be done on

   "Chef, ain't them chops ready yet?" a
waiter asked.
   "Don't rush me, nigger," the chef bellowed
back. "Wha' yu'all trying to do? Run me
up a tree? Kain't run this here chef up no
tree. Jump off ef you kain't ride him." His
eyes gleamed with grim humor. "Jump off
or lay down. This heah white man's train
service ain't no nigger picnic."
  The second cook passed up a platter of
chops. The chef rushed it through the hole
and licked his fingers.
  "There you is, yaller. Take it away. Why
ain't you gone yet? Show me some service,
yaller, show me some service." He rocked his
thick, tough body sideways in a sort of dance,
licked the sweat from his brow with his fore-
finger and grunted with aggressive self-satis-
faction. Then he bellied his way back to the
range and sent the third cook up to the serving
window.
   "Tha's the stuff to hand them niggers," he
told the third cook. "Keep 'em up a tree all
the time, but don't let 'em get you up there."
   Jake, for he was the third cook, took his
place by the window and handed out the or-
ders. It was his first job on the railroad, but
from the first day he managed his part per-
fectly. He rubbed smoothly along with the
waiters by remaining himself and not trying
to imitate the chef nor taking his malicious
advice.
   Jake had taken the job on the railroad just
to break the hold that Harlem had upon him.
When he quitted Rose he felt that he ought to
get right out of the atmosphere of Harlem.
If I don't git away from it for a while, it'll
sure git me, he mused. But not ship-and-port-
town life again, I done had enough a that
here and ovah there. . . . So he had picked
the railroad. One or two nights a week in
Harlem. And all the days on the road. He
would go on like that until he grew tired of
that rhythm. . . .
   The rush was over. Everything was quiet
The corridors of the dining-car were emptied
of their jam of hungry, impatient guests. The
"mule" had scrubbed the slats of the pantry
and set them up to dry. The other waiters had
put away silver and glasses and soiled linen.
The steward at his end of the car was going
over the checks. Even the kitchen work was
finished and the four cooks had left their coffin
for the good air of the dining-room. They
sat apart from the dining-room boys. The
two grades, cooks and waiters, never chummed
together, except for gambling. Some of the
waiters were very haughty. There were cer-
tain light-skinned ones who went walking
with pals of their complexion only in the stop-
over cities. Others, among the older men,
were always dignified. They were fathers of

families, their wives moved in some sphere of
Harlem society, and their movements were
sometimes chronicled in the local Negro
newspapers.
   Sitting at one of the large tables, four of the
waiters were playing poker. Jake wanted to
join them, but he had no money. One waiter
sat alone at a small table. He was reading.
He was of average size, slim, a smooth pure
ebony with straight features and a suggestion
of whiskers. Jake shuffled up to him and
asked him for the loan of two dollars. He
got it and went to play. . . .

  Jake finished playing with five dollars. He
repaid the waiter and said: "Youse a good
sport. I'll always look out for you in that
theah hole.11
  The waiter smiled. He was very friendly.
Jake half-sprawled over the table. "Wha's
this here stuff you reading? Looks lak Greek
to me." He spelled the title, "S-A-P-H-O,
Sapho."
  "What's it all about?" Jake demanded, flat-


tening down the book on the table with his
friendly paw. The waiter was reading the
scene between Fanny and Jean when the lover
discovers the letters of his mistress's former
woman friend and exclaims: "Ah Out . . .
Sapho . . . toute la lyre. . . ."
   "It's a story," he told Jake, "by a French
writer named Alphonse Daudet. It's about a
sporting woman who was beautiful like a rose
and had the soul of a wandering cat. Her
lovers called her Sapho. I like the story, but
I hate the use of Sapho for its title."
   "Why does you?" Jake asked.
   "Because Sappho was a real person. A
wonderful woman, a great Greek poet          "
   "So theah is some Greek in the bookl" said
Jake.
   The waiter smiled. "In a sense, yes."
   And he told Jake the story of Sappho, of
her poetry, of her loves and her passion for
the beautiful boy, Phaon. And of her leaping
into the sea from the Leucadian cliflf because
of her love for him.
                    
                    The Railroad
   "Her story gave two lovely words to mod-
ern language," said the waiter.
   "Which one them?" asked Jake.
   "Sapphic and Lesbian . . . b e a u t i f u l
words."
   "What is that there Leshbian?"
   "• . . Lovely word, eh?"
   "Tha's what we calls bulldyker in Harlem,"
drawled Jake. "Them's all ugly womens."
   "Not all. And that's a damned ugly name,"
the waiter said. "Harlem is too savage about
some things. Bulldyker" the waiter stressed
with a sneer.
   Jake grinned. "But tha's what they is, ain't
it?"
   He began humming:
"And there is two things in Harlem I don't understan'
 It is a bulldyking woman and a faggoty man. • . ."

   Charmingly, like a child that does not know
its letters, Jake turned the pages of the
novel. . . .
   "Bumbole! This heah language is most dif-
ferent from how they talk it."
  

   "Bumbole" was now a popular expletive
for Jake, replacing such expressions as "Bull,"
"bawls," "walnuts," and "blimey." Ever
since the night at the Congo when he heard
the fighting West Indian girl cry, "I'll slap
you bumbole," he had always used the word.
When his friends asked him what it meant, he
grinned and said, "Ask the monks."
   "You know French?" the waiter asked.
   "Parlee-vous? Mademoiselle, un baiser, s'il
vous plait. Voilat I larned that much offn
the froggies."
   "So you were over there?"
   "Au oui, camarade" Jake beamed. "I was
way, way ovah there after Democracy and
them boches, and when I couldn't find one or
the other, I jest turned mah black moon from
the A. E. F. . . . But you! How come you
jest plowing through this here stuff lak that?
I could nevah see no light at all in them print,
chappie. Eh bien. Mais vous compris
beaucoup"
   "C'est ma langue maternelle"
   "Hm!" Jake made a face and scratched his
                    
head. "Comprendre pas, chappie. Tell me
in straight United States."
   "French is my native language. I        "
   "Don't crap me," J a k e interrupted.
"Ain'tchu—ain'tchu one of us, too?"
   "Of course I'm Negro," the waiter said,
"but I was born in Hayti and the language
down there is French."
   "Hayti . . . Hayti," r e p e a t e d Jake.
"Tha's where now? Tha's           "
   "An island in the Caribbean—near the Pan-
ama Canal."
   Jake sat like a big eager boy and learned
many facts about Hayti before the train
reached Pittsburgh. He learned that the uni-
versal spirit of the French Revolution had
reached and lifted up the slaves far away in
that remote island; that Black Hayti's inde-
pendence was more dramatic and picturesque
than the United States' independence and that
it was a strange, almost unimaginable eruption
of the beautiful ideas of the "Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite" of Mankind, that shook the foun-
dations of that romantic era.


   For the first time he heard the name
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black slave and
leader of the Haytian slaves. Heard how he
fought and conquered the slave-owners and
then protected them; decreed laws for Hayti
that held more of human wisdom and nobility
than the Code Napoleon; defended his baby
revolution against the Spanish and the Eng-
lish vultures; defeated Napoleon's punitive
expedition; and how tragically he was cap-
tured by a civilized trick, taken to France, and
sent by Napoleon to die broken-hearted in a
cold dungeon.
   "A black man! A black man! Oh, I wish
I'd been a soldier under sich a manl" Jake
said, simply.
   He plied his instructor with questions.
Heard of Dessalines, who carried on the fight
begun by Toussaint L'Ouverture and kept
Hayti independent. But it was incredible to
Jake that a little island of freed slaves had
withstood the three leading European powers.
The waiter told him that Europe was in a
complex state of transition then, and that that

The Railroad
wonderful age had been electrified with uni-
versal ideas—ideas so big that they had lifted
up ignorant people, even black, to the stature
of gods.
   "The world doesn't know," he continued,
"how great Toussaint L'Ouverture really was.
He was not merely great. He was lofty. He
was good. The history of Hayti today might
have been different if he had been allowed to
finish his work. He was honored by a great
enigmatic poet of that period. And I honor
both Toussaint and the poet by keeping in my
memory the wonderful, passionate lines."
   He quoted Wordsworth's sonnet.
"Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!
   Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
   Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
 Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den;—
 Oh miserable Chieftain! Where and when
   Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
   Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
 Though fallen Thyself never to rise again,
 Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
   Powers that will work for thee, air, earth, and skies;
 There's not a breathing of the common wind
   That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
   

   Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
 And love, and Man's unconquerable Mind."

   Jake felt like one passing through a dream,
vivid in rich, varied colors. It was revelation
beautiful in his mind. That brief account of
an island of savage black people, who fought
for collective liberty and was struggling to
create a culture of their own. A romance of
his race, just down there by Panama. How
strange!
   Jake was very American in spirit and
shared a little of that comfortable Yankee con-
tempt for poor foreigners. And as an Ameri-
can Negro he looked askew at foreign niggers.
Africa was jungle, and Africans bush niggers,
cannibals. And West Indians were monkey-
chasers. But now he felt like a boy who
stands with the map of the world in colors be-
fore him, and feels the wonder of the world.
   The waiter told him that Africa was not
jungle as he dreamed of it, nor slavery the
peculiar role of black folk. The Jews were
the slaves of the Egyptians, the Greeks made
slaves of their conquered, the Gauls and Sax-

ons were slaves of the Romans. He told Jake
of the old destroyed cultures of West Africa
and of their vestiges, of black kings who strug-
gled stoutly for the independence of their
kingdoms: Prempreh of Ashanti, Tofa of
Dahomey, Gbehanzin of Benin, Cetawayo of
Zulu-Land, Menelik of Abyssinia. . . .
   Had Jake ever heard of the little Republic
of Liberia, founded by American Negroes?
And Abyssinia, deep-set in the shoulder of
Africa, besieged by the hungry wolves of
Europe? The only nation that has existed
free and independent from the earliest records
of history until today! Abyssinia, oldest un-
conquered nation, ancient-strange as Egypt,
persistent as Palestine, legendary as Greece,
magical as Persia.
   There was the lovely legend of her queen
who visited the court of the Royal Rake of
Jerusalem, and how he fell in love with her.
And her beautiful black body made the Sage
so lyrical, he immortalized her in those won-
derful pagan verses that are sacred to the
hearts of all lovers—even the heart of the


Church. . . . The catty ladies of the court of
Jerusalem were jealous of her. And Sheba re-
minded them that she was black but beautiful,
. . . And after a happy period she left Jeru-
salem and returned to her country with the
son that came of the royal affair. And that
son subsequently became King of Abyssinia.
And to this day the rulers of Abyssinia carry
the title, Lion of Judah, and trace their
descent direct from the liaison of the Queen of
Sheba with King Solomon.
   First of Christian nations also is the claim
of this little kingdom 1 Christian since the
time when Philip, the disciple of Jesus, met
and baptized the minister of the Queen of
Abyssinia and he returned to his country and
converted the court and people to Christianity.
  Jake listened, rapt, without a word of inter-
ruption.
   "All the ancient countries have been yield-
ing up the buried secrets of their civili-
zations," the waiter said. "I wonder what
Abyssinia will yield in her time? Next to the
romance of Hayti, because it is my native
                    

country, I should love to write the romance of
Abyssinia . . . Ethiopia."
   "Is that theah country the same Ethiopia
that we done 1'arned about in the Bible?"
asked Jake.
   "The same. The Latin peoples still call it
Ethiopia."
   "Is you a professor?"
   "No, I'm a student."
   "Whereat? Where did you l'arn English?"
   "Well, I learned English home in Port-
au-Prince. And I was at Howard. You
know the Negro university at Washington.
Haven't even finished there yet."
   "Then what in the name of mah holy rab-
bit foot youse doing on this heah white man's
chuh-chuh? It ain't no place foh no student.
It seems to me you' place down there sounds a
whole lot better."
   "Uncle Sam put me here."
   "Whadye mean Uncle Sam?" cried Jake.
"Don't hand me that bull."
   "Let me tell you about it," the waiter said.
"Maybe you don't know that during the
World War Uncle Sam grabbed Hayti. My
father was an official down there. He didn't
want Uncle Sam in Hayti and he said so
and said it loud. They told him to shut up
and he wouldn't, so they shut him up in jail.
My brother also made a noise and American
marines killed him in the street I had no-
body to pay for me at the university, so I had
to get out and work. Voila!"
   "And you ain't gwine to study no moh?"
   "Never going to stop. I study now all the
same when I get a little time. Every free
day I have in New York I spend at the library
downtown. I read there and I write."
   Jake shook his head. "This heah work is
all right for me, but for a chappie like you.
, . . Do you like waiting on them ofays?
'Sail right working longshore or in a kitchen
as I does it, but to be rubbing up against them
and bowing so nice and all a that. . . ."
   "It isn't so bad," the waiter said. "Most of
them are pretty nice. Last trip I waited on a
big Southern Senator. He was perfectly gentlemanly and tipped me half a dollar. When
I have the blues I read Dr. Frank Crane."
   Jake didn't understand, but he spat and said
a stinking word. The chef called him to do
something in the kitchen.
   "Leave that theah professor and his non-
sense," the chef said. • . .
   The great black animal whistled sharply
and puff-puffed slowly into the station of
Pittsburgh.





SNOWSTORM IN PITTSBURGH

XI
  
The middle of the little bridge built
over the railroad crossing he was suddenly en-
veloped in a thick mass of smoke spouted out
by an in-rushing train. That was Jake's first
impression of Pittsburgh. He stepped off the
bridge into a saloon. From there along a dull-
gray street of grocery and fruit shops and
piddling South-European children. Then he
was on Wiley Avenue, the long, gray, uphill
street.
   Brawny bronze men in coal-blackened and
oil:spotted blue overalls shadowed the door-
ways of saloons, pool-rooms, and little base-
ment restaurants. The street was animated
with dark figures going up, going down.
Houses and men, women, and squinting cats
and slinking dogs, everything seemed touched
with soot and steel dust.
   "So this heah is the niggers' run," said Jake.
"I don't like its 'pearance, nohow." He
walked down the street and remarked a bounc-
ing little chestnut-brown standing smartly in
the entrance of a basement eating-joint. She
wore a knee-length yellow-patterned muslin
frock and a white-dotted blue apron. The
apron was a little longer than the frock. Her
sleeves were rolled up. Her arms were beau-
tiful, like smooth burninshed bars of copper.
   Jake stopped and said, "Howdy!"
   "Howdy again!" the girl flashed a row of
perfect teeth at him.
   "Got a bite of anything good?"
   "I should say so, Mister Ma-an."
   She rolled her eyes and worked her hips
into delightful free-and-easy motions. Jake
went in. He was not hungry for food. He
looked at a large dish half filled with tapioca
pudding. He turned to the pie-case on the
counter.
   "The peach pie is the best," said the girl,
her bare elbow on the counter; "it's fresh."
 She looked straight in his eyes. "All right,
I'll try peach," he said, and, magnetically, his
long, shining fingers touched her hand. . . •

   In the evening he found the Haytian waiter
at the big Wiley Avenue pool-room. Quite
different from the pool-rooms in Harlem, it
was a sort of social center for the railroad men
and the more intelligent black workmen of the
quarter. Tobacco, stationery, and odds and
ends were sold in the front part of the store.
There was a table where customers sat and
wrote letters. And there were pretty choco-
late dolls and pictures of Negroid types on
sale. Curious, pathetic pictures; black Ma-
donna and child; a kinky-haired mulatto
angel with African lips and Nordic nose, soar-
ing on a white cloud up to heaven; Jesus bless-
ing a black child and a white one; a black
shepherd carrying a white lamb—all queerly
reminiscent of the crude prints of the great
Christian paintings that are so common in
poor religious homes.
   "Here he is!" Jake greeted the waiter.
"What's the new?"


   "Nothing new in Soot-hill; always the
same."
   The railroad men hated the Pittsburgh
run. They hated the town, they hated Wiley
Avenue and their wretched free quarters that
were in it. . . .
   "What're you going to do?"
   "Ahm gwine to the colored show with a liT
brown piece," said Jake.
   "You find something already? My me!
You're a fast-working one."
   "Always the same whenever I hits a new
town. Always in cock-tail luck, chappie."
   "Which one? Manhattan or Bronx?"
   "It's Harlem-Pittsburgh thisanight," Jake
grinned. "Wachyu gwine make?"
   "Don't know. There's nothing ever in
Pittsburgh for me. I'm in no mood for the
leg-show tonight, and the colored show is bum.
Guess I'll go sleep if I can."
   "Awright, I'll see you liT later, chappie."
Jake gripped his hand. "Say—whyn't you
tell a fellow you' name? Youse sure more'n
second waiter as Ise more'n third cook. Ev'-
body calls me Jake. And you?"
   "Raymond, but everybody calls me Ray."
   Jake heaved off. Ray bought some weekly
Negro newspapers: The Pittsburgh Courier,
The Baltimore American, The Negro World,
The Chicago Defender. Here he found a big
assortment of all the Negro publications that
he never could find in Harlem. In a next-
door saloon he drank a glass of sherry and
started off for the waiters' and cooks' quarters.
   It was long after midnight when Jake re-
turned to quarters. He had to pass through
the Western men's section to get to the Eastern
crews. Nobody was asleep in the Western
men's section. No early-morning train was
chalked up on their board. The men were
grouped off in poker and dice games. Jake
hesitated a little by one group, fascinated by a
wiry little long-headed finger-snapping black,
who with strenuous h'h, h'h, h'h, h'h, was zest-
fully throwing the bones. Jake almost joined
the game but he admonished himself: "You
winned five dollars thisaday and you made a
nice li'l' brown piece, Wha'more you
want?" . . .
   He found the beds, assigned to the members
of his crew. They were double beds, like
Pullman berths. Three of the waiters had not
come in yet. The second and the fourth cooks
were snoring, each a deep frothy bass and a
high tenor, and scratching themselves in their
sleep. The chef sprawled like the carcass of a
rhinoceros, half-naked, mouth wide open.
Tormented by bedbugs, he had scratched and
tossed in his sleep and hoofed the covers off
the bed. Ray was sitting on a lower berth on
his Negro newspapers spread out to form a
sheet. He had thrown the sheets on the floor,
they were so filthy from other men's sleeping.
By the thin flame of gaslight he was killing
bugs.
   "Where is I gwine to sleep?" asked Jake.
   "Over me, if you can. I saved the bunk for
you," said Ray.
   "Some music the niggers am making," re-
marked Jake, nodding in the direction of the
snoring cooks. "But whasmat, chappie, you
ain't sleeping?"
   "Can't you see?"
   "Bugs. Bumbole 1 This is a hell of a dump
for a man to sleep in."
   "The place is rocking crazy with them,"
said Ray. "I hauled the cot away from the
wall, but the mattress is just swarming."
   Hungry and bold, the bugs crept out of
their chinks and hunted for food. They
stopped dead-still when disturbed by the
slightest shadow, and flattened their bellies
against the wall.
   "Le's get outa this stinking dump and chase
a drink, chappie."
   Ray jumped out of his berth, shoved him-
self into his clothes and went with Jake. The
saloon near by the pool-room was still open*
They went there. Ray asked for sherry.
   "You had better sample some hard liquor if
youse gwine back to wrastle with them bugs
tonight," Jake suggested.
   Ray took his advice. A light-yellow fellow
chummed up with the boys and invited them
to drink with him. He was as tall as Jake
and very thin. There was a vacant, wander-
ing look in his* kindly-weak eyes. He was a
waiter on another dining-car of the New
York-Pittsburg run. Ray mentioned that he
had to quit his bed because he couldn't sleep.
   "This here town is the rottenest lay-over in
the whole railroad field," declared the light-
yellow. "I don't never sleep in the quarters
here."
   "Where do you sleep, then?" asked Ray.
   "Oh, I got a sweet baby way up yonder the
other side of the hill."
   "Oh, ma-ma I" Jake licked his lips. "So
youse all fixed up in this heah town?"
   "Not going there tonight, though," the
light-yellow said in a careless, almost bored
tone. "Too far for mine."
   He asked Jake and Ray if they would like
to go to a little open-all-night place. They
were glad to hear of that.
   "Any old thing, boh," Jake said, "to get
away from that theah Pennsy bug house."
   The little place was something of a barrel-
house speak-easy, crowded with black steel-
workers in overalls and railroad men, and
foggy with smoke. They were all drinking
hard liquor and playing cards. The boss was
a stocky, genial brown man. He knew the
light-yellow waiter and shook hands with him
and his friends. He moved away some boxes
in a corner and squeezed a little table in it,
specially for them. They sat down, jammed
into the corner, and drank whisky.
   "Better here than the Pennsy pigpen," said
the light-yellow.
   He was slapped on the back by a short,
compact young black.
   "Hello, you! What you think youse doing
theah?"
   "Ain't figuring," retorted the light-yellow,
"is you?"
   "On the red moon gwine around mah haid,
yes. How about a liT good snow?"
   "Now you got mah number down, Happy."
   The black lad vanished again through a
mysterious back door.
   The light-yellow said: "He's the biggest
hophead I ever seen. Nobody can sniff like
him. Yet he's always the same happy nigger,
stout and strong like a bull."
   He took another whisky and went like a
lean hound after Happy. Jake looked mis-
chievously at the little brown door, remark-
ing: "It's a great life ef youse in on it." . . .

  The light-yellow came back with a cold
gleam in his eyes, like arsenic shining in the
dark. His features were accentuated by a
rigid, disturbing tone and he resembled a
smiling wax figure.
   "Have a liT stuff with the bunch?" he asked
Jake.
   "I ain't got the habit, boh, but I'll try any-
thing once again."
   "And you?" The light-yellow turned to
Ray.
   "No, chief, thank you, but I don't want to."
   The waiter went out again with Jake on his
heels. Beyond the door, five fellows, kneeling
in the sawdust, were rolling the square bones.
Others sat together around two tables with a
bottle of red liquor and thimble-like glasses
before them,
  "Oh, boy I" one said. "When I get home to-
night it will be some more royal stuff. I ain'ta
gwine to work none 'tall tomorrow,"
   "Shucks I" Another spread away his big
mouth. "This heah ain't nothing foh a fellow
to turn royal loose on. I remimber when I
was gwine with a money gang that hed no use
foh nothing but the pipe. That theah time
was life, buddy."
  "Wha' sorta pipe was that there?" asked
Jake.
  "The Chinese stuff, old boy."
  Instead of deliberately fisting his, like the
others, Jake took it up carelessly between his
thumb and forefinger and inhaled.
  "Say what you wanta about Chinee or any
other stuff," said Happy, "but theah ain't
nothing can work wicked like snow and
whisky. It'll flip you up from hell into heaven
befoh you knows it."
   Ray looked into the room.
   "Who's you liT mascot?" Happy asked the
light-yellow.
   "Tha's mah best pal," Jake answered.
"He's got some moh stuff up here," Jake
tapped his head.
   "Better let's go on back to quarters," said
Ray.
   "To them bugs?" demanded Jake.
   "Yes, I think we'd better."
   "Awright, anything you say, chappie. I
kain sleep through worser things." Jake took
a few of the little white packets from Happy
and gave him some money. "Guess I might
need them some day. You never know."

   Jake fell asleep as soon as his head touched
the dirty pillow. Below him, Ray lay in his
bunk, tormented by bugs and the snoring
cooks. The low-burning gaslight flickered
and flared upon the shadows. The young
man lay under the untellable horror of a dead-
tired man who wills to sleep and cannot.
   In other sections of the big barn building
the faint chink of coins touched his ears.
Those men gambling the hopeless Pittsburg
night away did not disturb him. They were
so quiet. It would have been better, perhaps,
if they were noisy. He closed his eyes and
tried to hynotize himself to sleep. Sleep . . .
sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep. . . . He
began counting slowly. His vigil might break
and vanish somnolently upon some magic
number. He counted a million. Perhaps love
would appease this unwavering angel of wake-
fulness. Oh, but he could not pick up love
easily on the street as Jake. . . .
   He flung himself, across void and water,
back home. Home thoughts, if you can make
them soft and sweet and misty-beautiful
enough, can sometimes snare sleep. There was
the quiet, chalky-dusty street and, jutting out
over it, the front of the house that he had lived
in. The high staircase built on the outside,
and pots of begonias and ferns on the land-
ing. . . .
   All the flowering things he loved, red and
white and pink hibiscus, mimosas, rhododendrons, a thousand glowing creepers, climbing
and spilling their vivid petals everywhere,
and bright-buzzing humming-birds and butterflies. All the tropic-warm lilies and roses.
Giddy-high erect thatch palms, slender, tall,
fur-fronded ferns, majestic cotton trees, stately
bamboos creating a green grandeur in the
heart of space. . . .
   Sleep remained cold and distant. Intermit-
tently the cooks broke their snoring with mas-
ticating noises of their fat lips, like animals
eating. Ray fixed his eyes on the offensive
bug-bitten bulk of the chef. These men
claimed kinship with him. They were black
like him. Man and nature had put them in
the same race. He ought to love them and
feel them (if they felt anything). He ought
to if he had a shred of social morality in him.
They were all chain-ganged together and he
was counted as one link. Yet he loathed every
soul in that great barrack-room, except Jake.
Race. . . . Why should he have and love a
race?
   Races and nations were things like skunks,
whose smells poisoned the air of life. Yet
civilized mankind reposed its faith and future
in their ancient, silted channels. Great races
and big nations! There must be something
mighty inspiriting in being the citizen of a
great strong nation. To be the white citizen
of a nation that can say bold, challenging
things like a strong man. Something very dif-
ferent from the keen ecstatic joy a man feels
in the romance of being black. Something the
black man could never feel nor quite under-
stand.
   Ray felt that as he was conscious of being
black and impotent, so, correspondingly, each
marine down in Hayti must be conscious of
being white and powerful. What a unique
feeling of confidence about life the typical
white youth of his age must have! Knowing
that his skin-color was a passport to glory,
making him one with ten thousands like him-
self. All perfect Occidentals and investors in
that grand business called civilization. That
grand business in whose pits sweated and
snored, like the cooks, all the black and brown
hybrids and mongrels, simple earth-loving
animals, without aspirations toward national
unity and racial arrogance.
   He remembered when little Hayti was
floundering uncontrolled, how proud he was
to be the son of a free nation. He used to feel
condescendingly sorry for those poor African
natives; superior to ten millions of suppressed
Yankee "coons." Now he was just one of them
and he hated them for being one of them. . . .
   But he was not entirely of them, he re-
flected. He possessed another language and
literature that they knew not of. And some
day Uncle Sam might let go of his island and
he would escape from the clutches of that
magnificent monster of civilization and retire
behind the natural defenses of his island,
where the steam-roller of progress could not
reach him. Escape he would. He had faith.
He had hope. But, oh, what would become of
that great mass of black swine, hunted and
cornered by slavering white canaille! Sleep!
oh, sleep! Down Thought!
   But all his senses were burning wide awake.
Thought was not a beautiful and reassuring
angel, a thing of soothing music and light
laughter and winged images glowing with the
rare colors of life. No. It was suffering,
horribly real. It seized and worried him from
every angle. Pushed him toward the sheer
precipice of imagination. It was awful. He
was afraid. For thought was a terrible tiger
clawing at his small portion of gray substance,
throttling, tearing, and tormenting him with
pitiless ferocity. Oh, a thousand ideas of life
were shrieking at him in a wild orgy of
mockery! . . .
   He was in the middle of a world suspended
in space. A familiar line lit up, like a flame,
the vast, crowded, immensity of his vision.
         Et tame du monde est dans tair.

  A moment's respite. . . .

   A loud snore from the half-naked chef
brought him back to the filthy fact of the quar-
ters that the richest railroad in the world had
provided for its black servitors. Ray looked
up at Jake, stretched at full length on his side,
his cheek in his right hand, sleeping peace-
fully, like a tired boy after hard playing, so
happy and sweet and handsome. He remem-
bered the neatly-folded white papers in Jake's
pocket Maybe that was the cause of his sleep-
ing so soundly. He reached his hand up to
the coat hanging on the nail above his head. It
was such an innocent little thing—like a head-
ache powder the paper of which you wipe
with your tongue, so that none should be
wasted. Apparently the first one had no effect
and Ray took the rest.
   Sleep capitulated.
   Immediately he was back home again. His
father's house was a vast forest full of bloom-
ing hibiscus and mimosas and giant evergreen
trees. And he was a gay humming-bird,
fluttering and darting his long needle beak into
the heart of a bell-flower. Suddenly he
changed into an owl flying by day. . . .
Howard University was a prison with white
warders. . . . Now he was a young shining
chief in a marble palace; slim, naked negresses dancing for his pleasure; courtiers re-
clining on cushions soft like passionate kisses;
gleaming-skinned black boys bearing goblets
of wine and obedient eunuchs waiting in the
offing. . . .
   And the world was a blue paradise. Every-
thing was in gorgeous blue of heaven. Woods
and streams were blue, and men and women
and animals, and beautiful to see and love.
And he was a blue bird in flight and a blue
lizard in love. And life was all blue happi-
ness. Taboos and terrors and penalties were
transformed into new pagan delights, orgies
of Orient-blue carnival, of rare flowers and
red fruits, cherubs and seraphs and fetishes
and phalli and all the most-high gods. . . .
   A thousand pins were pricking Ray's flesh
and he was shouting for Jake, but his voice
was so faint he could not hear himself. Jake
had him in his arms and tried to stand him
upon his feet He crumpled up against the
bunk. All his muscles were loose, his cells
were cold, and the rhythm of being arrested.
   It was high morning and time to go to the train. Jake had picked up the empty little
folds of paper from the floor and restored
them to his pocket. He knew what had hap-
pened to them, and guessed why. He went
and called the first and fourth waiters.
   The chef bulked big in the room, dressed
and ready to go to the railroad yards. He
gave a contemptuous glance at Jake looking
after Ray and said: "Better leave that theah
nigger professor alone and come on 'long to
the dining-car with us. That theah nigger is
dopey from them books o' hisn. I done told
bef oh them books would git him yet."
   The chef went off with the second and
fourth cooks. Jake stayed with Ray. They
got his shoes and coat on. The first waiter
telephoned the steward, and Ray was taken
to the hospital.
   "We may all be niggers aw'right, but we
 ain't nonetall all the same," Jake said as he
hurried along to the dining-car, thinking of
 Ray.


                    
THE TREEING OF THE CHEF

XII

Perhaps the chef of Jake's dining-car
was the most hated chef in the service. He
was repulsive in every aspect From the ele-
vated bulk of his gross person to the matted
burrs of his head and the fat cigar, the con-
stant companion of his sloppy mouth, that he
chewed and smoked at the same time. The
chef deliberately increased his repulsiveness
of form by the meannesses of his spirit.
   "I know Ise a mean black nigger," he often
said, "and I'll let you all know it on this heah
white man's car, too."
   The chef was a great black bundle of con-
sciously suppressed desires. That was doubt-
less why he was so ornery. He was one of the
model chefs of the service. His kitchen was
well-ordered. The checking up of his provi-
sions always showed a praiseworthy balance.
He always had his food ready on time, feeding
the heaviest rush of customers as rapidly as
the lightest. He fed the steward excellently.
He fed the crew well. In a word, he did his
duty as only a martinet can.
   A chef who is "right-there" at every call is
the first asset of importance on an a la carte
restaurant-car. The chef lived rigidly up to
that fact and above it. He was also painfully
honest. He had a mulatto wife and a brown
boy-child in New York and he never slipped
away any of the company's goods to them.
Other dining-car men had devised a system
of getting by the company's detectives with
choice brands of the company's foodstuffs.
The chef kept away from that. It was long
since the yard detectives had stopped search-
 ing any parcel that he carried off with him.
    "I don't want none o' the white-boss stuff
 foh mine," he declared. "Ise making enough
 o' mah own to suppoht mah wife and kid."
    And more, the chef had a violent distaste
 for all the stock things that "coons" are sup-
 posed to like to the point of stealing them. He
 would not eat watermelon, because white
people called it "the niggers' ice-cream."
Pork chops he fancied not. Nor corn pone.
And the idea of eating chicken gave him a
spasm. Of the odds and ends of chicken giz-
zard, feet, head, rump, heart, wing points, and
liver—the chef would make the most delicious
stew for the crew, which he never touched
himself. The Irish steward never missed his
share of it. But for his meal the chef would
grill a steak or mutton chop or fry a fish. Oh,
chef was big and haughty about not being "no
regular darky"! And although he came from
the Alabama country, he pretended not to
know a coon tail from a rabbit foot.
   "AH this heah talk about chicken-loving
niggers," he growled chuckingly to the second
cook, "The way them white passengers clean
up on mah fried chicken I wouldn't trust one
o' them anywheres near mah hen-coop."
   Broiling tender corn-fed chicken without
biting a leg. Thus, grimly, the chef existed.
Humored and tolerated by the steward and
hated by the waiters and undercooks. Jake
found himself on the side of the waiters. He
did not hate the chef (Jake could not hate any-
body). But he could not be obscenely syco-
phantic to him as the second cook, who was
just waiting for the chance to get the chef's
job. Jake stood his corner in the coffin, doing
his bit in diplomatic silence. Let the chef
bawl the waiters out. He would not, like the
second cook, join him in that game.
   Ray, perhaps, was the chief cause of Jake's
silent indignation. Jake had said to him: "I
don't know how all you fellows can stand that
theah God-damn black bull. I feels like fall-
ing down mahself." But Ray had begged
Jake to stay on, telling him that he was the
only decent man in the kitchen. Jake stayed
because he liked Ray. A big friendship had
sprung up between them and Jake hated to
hear the chef abusing his friend along with
the other waiters. The other cooks and wait-
ers called Ray "Professor." Jake had never
called him that. Nor did he call him
"buddy," as he did Zeddy and his longshore-
men friends. He called him "chappie" in a
genial, semi-paternal way.
   Jake's life had never before touched any of
the educated of the ten dark millions. He
had, however, a vague idea of who they were.
He knew that the "big niggers" that were gosv
siped about in the saloons and the types he had
met at Madame Adelina Suarez's were not
the educated ones. The educated "dick-tees,"
in Jake's circles were often subjects for raw
and funny sallies. He had once heard Miss
Curdy putting them in their place while
Susy's star eyes gleamed warm approval.
   "Honey, I lived in Washington and I
knowed inside and naked out the stuck-up
bush-whackers of the race. They all talks and
act as if loving was a sin, but I tell you
straight, I wouldn't trust any of them after
dark with a preacher. . . . Don't ask me,
honey. I seen and I knows them all."
   "I guess you does, sistah," Susy had agreed.
"Nobody kaint hand me no fairy tales about
niggers. Wese all much of a muchness when
you git down to the real stuff."
   Difficulties on the dining-car were worsened
by a feud between the pantry and the kitchen.
The first waiter, who was pantryman by regu-
lation, had a grievance against the chef and
was just waiting to "get" him. But, the chef
being such a paragon, the "getting" was not
easy.

   Nothing can be worse on a dining-car than
trouble between the pantry and the kitchen,
for one is as necessary to the other as oil is to
salad. But the war was covertly on and the
chef was prepared to throw his whole rhi-
noceros weight against the pantry. The first
waiter had to fight cautiously. He was quite
aware that a first-class chef was of greater
value than a first-class pantryman.
   The trouble had begun through the "mule."
The fourth man—a coffee-skinned Georgia
village boy, timid like a country girl just come
to town—hated the nickname, but the chef
would call him nothing else.
   "Call him 'Rhinoceros' when he calls you
'Mule, " Ray told the fourth waiter, but he
was too timid to do it. . . .
   The dining-car was resting on the tracks in
the Altoona yards, waiting for a Western
train. The first, third, and fifth waiters were
playing poker. Ray was reading Dostoievski's
Crime and Punishment. The fourth waiter
was working in the pantry. Suddenly the
restaurant-car was shocked by a terrible roar.
   "Gwan I say! Take that theah ice and beat
it, you black sissy." . . .
   "This ice ain't good for the pantry. You
ought to gimme the cleaner one," the timid
fourth man stood his ground.
   The cigar of the chef stood up like a tusk.
Fury was dancing in his enraged face and he
would have stamped the guts out of the poor,
timid boy if he was not restrained by the fear
of losing his job. For on the dining-car, he
who strikes the first blow catches the punish-
ment.
    "Quit jawing with me, nigger waiter, or I'll
jab this heah ice-pick in you' mouf."
   "Come and do it," the fourth waiter said,
quietly.
   "God dam' you1 soul!" the chef bellowed.
"Ef you don't quit chewing the rag—ef you
git fresh with me, I'll throw you off this
bloody car. S'elp mah Gawd, I will. You
disnificant down-home mule."
   The fourth waiter glanced behind him
down the corridor and saw Ray, book in hand,
and the other waiters, who had left their cards
to see the cause of the tumult Ray winked at
the fourth waiter. He screwed up his courage
and said to the chef: "I ain't no mule, and
youse a dirty rhinoceros."
   The chef seemed paralyzed with surprise.
"Wha's that name you done call me? Wha's
rhinasras?"
   All the waiters laughed. The chef looked
ridiculous and Ray said: "Why, chef, don't
you know? That's the ugliest animal in all
Africa."
   The chef looked apoplectic. . . . "I don't
care a dime foh all you nigger waiters and I
ain't joking wif any of you. Cause you mani-
curing you' finger nails and rubbing up you*
stinking black hide against white folks in that
theah diner, you all think youse something.
But lemme tell you straight, you ain't nothing
atall."
   "But, chef," cried the pantryman, "why
don't you stop riding the fourth man? Youse
always riding him."
   "Riding who? I nevah rode a man in all
mah life. I jest tell that black skunk what to
do and him stahts jawing with me. I don't
care about any of you niggers, nohow."
   "Wese all tiahd of you cussin' and bawk-
ing," said the pantryman. "Why didn't you
give the boy a clean piece of ice and finish?
You know we need it for the water."
   "Yaller nigger, you'd better gwan away
from here."
   "Don't call me no yaller nigger, you black
and ugly cotton-field coon."
   "Who dat? You bastard-begotten dime-
snatcher, you'd better gwan back to you' din-
ing-room or I'll throw this heah garbage in
you' crap-yaller face. . . . I'd better git long
                    
            The Treeing of the Chef
far away from you all 'foh I lose mah haid."
The chef bounced into the kitchen and
slammed the door.
   T h a t "bastard-begotten dime-snatcher"
grew a cancer in the heart of the pantryman.
It rooted deep because he was an "illegiti-
mate" and he bitterly hated the whites he
served ("crackers," he called them all) and
the tips he picked up. He knew that his
father was some red-necked white man who
had despised his mother's race and had done
nothing for him.
   The sight of the chef grew more and more
unbearable each day to the pantryman. He
thought of knifing or plugging him with a
gun some night. He had nursed his resent-
ment to the point of madness and was capable
of any act. But getting the chef in the dark
would not have been revenge enough. The
pantryman wanted the paragon to live, so that
he might invent a way of bringing him down
humiliatingly from his perch.
   But the chef was hard to "get" He had
made and kept his place by being a perfect
brutal machine, with that advantage that all
mechanical creatures have over sensitive hu-
man beings. One day the pantryman thought
he almost had his man. The chef had fed the
steward, but kept the boys waiting for their
luncheon. The waiters thought that he had
one of his ornery spells on and was intention-
ally punishing them. They were all standing
in the pantry, except Ray.
   The fifth said to the first: "Ask him why he
don't put the grub in the hole, partner. I'm
horse-ways hungry."
   "Ask him you'self. I ain't got nothing to
do with that black hog moh'n giving him what
b'longs to him in this heah pantry."
   "Mah belly's making a most beautiful com-
motion. Jest lak a bleating lamb," drawled
the third.
   The fifth waiter pushed up the little glass
door and stuck his head in the kitchen: "Chef,
when are we gwine to go away from here?"
   "Keep you' shirt on, nigger," flashed back
from the kitchen. "Youal'll soon be stuffing
you'self full o' the white man's poke chops.
Better than you evah smell in Harlem."
   "Wese werking foh't same like you is," the
fifth man retorted.
   "I don't eat no poke chops, nigger. I cooks
the stuff, but I don't eat it, nevah."
   "P'raps youse chewing a worser kind o'
meat."
   "Don't gimme no back talk, nigger waiter.
Looka heah         "
   The steward came into the pantry and said:
"Chef, it's time to feed the boys. They're
hungry. We had a hard day, today."
   The chef's cigar drooped upon his slavering
lip and almost fell. He turned to the steward
with an injured air. "Ain't I doing mah best?
Ain't I been working most hard mahself ? I
done get yourn lunch ready and am getting
the crew's own and fixing foh dinner at the
same time. I ain't tuk a mouful mahse'f      "
   The steward had turned his heels on the
pantry. The chef was enraged that he had in-
tervened on behalf of the waiters.
   "Ef you dime-chasing niggers keep fooling
with me on this car," he said, "I'll make you
eat mah spittle. I done do it a'ready and I'll
do it again. I'll spit in you' eats        "
   "Wha's that? The boss sure gwine to settle
this." The pantryman dashed out of the
pantry and called the steward. . . • "Ain't
any of us waiters gwine to stay on heah Mis'r
Farrel, with a chef like this."
   "What's that, now?" The steward was in
the pantry again. "What's this fine story,
chef?"
   "Nothing at all, Sah Farrel. I done pull a
good bull on them fellars, tha's all. Cause
theyse all trying to get mah goat. L'em quit
fooling with the kitchen, Sah Farrel. I does
mah wuk and I don't want no fooling fwom
them nigger waiters, nohow."
   "I guess you spit in it as you said, all right,"
cried the pantryman. . . • "Yes, you! You'd
wallow in a pigpen and eat the filth, youse so
doggone low-down."
   "Now cut all o' that out," said the steward.
"How could he do anything like that, when
he eats the food, and I do meself ?"
 

   "In the hole!" shouted Jake.
   The third and fifth waiters hurried into the
pantry and brought out the waiters' food. . • .
First a great platter of fish and tomatoes, then
pork chops and mashed potatoes, steaming
Java and best Borden's cream. The chef had
made home-made bread baked in the form of
little round caps. Nice and hot, they quickly
melted the butter that the boys sandwiched be-
tween them. He was a splendid cook, an art-
ist in creating palatable stuff. He came out of
the kitchen himself, to eat in the dining-room
and, diplomatically, he helped himself from
the waiters' platter of fish. . • . Delicious
food. The waiters fell to it with keen relish.
Obliterated from their memory the sewer-in-
cident of the moment before. • . . Feeding,
feeding, feeding.
   But Ray remembered and visualized, and
his stomach turned. He left the food and went
outside, where he found Jake taking the air.
He told Jake how he felt.
   "Oh, the food is all right," said Jake. "I
watch him close anough in that there kitchen,
and he knows I ain't standing in with him in
no low-down stuff."
  "But do you think he would ever do such a
thing?" asked Ray.
  Jake laughed. "What won't a bad nigger
do when he's good and mean way down in his
heart? I ain't 'lowing mahself careless with
none o' that kind, chappie."

   Two Pullman porters came into the dining-
car in the middle of the waiters' meal.
   "Here is the chambermaids," grinned the
second cook.
   "H'm, but how you all loves to call people
names, though," commented the fourth
waiter.
   The waiters invited the porters to eat with
them. The pantryman went to get them coffee
and cream. The chef offered to scramble
some eggs. He went back to the kitchen and,
after a few minutes, the fourth cook brought
out a platter of scrambled eggs for the two
porters. The chef came rocking importantly
behind the fourth cook. A clean white cap

was poised on his head and fondly he chewed
his cigar. A perfect menial of the great rail-
road company. He felt a wave of goodness
sweeping over him, as if he had been patted
on the head by the Angel Gabriel for his good
works. He asked the porters if they had
enough to eat and they thanked him and said
they had more than enough and that the food
was wonderful. The chef smiled broadly.
He beamed upon steward, waiters, and por-
ters, and his eyes said: See what a really fine
fellow I am in spite of all the worries that go
with the duties of a chef?

  One day Ray saw the chef and the pantry-
man jesting while the pantryman was lighting
his cigarette from the chef's stump of cigar.
When Ray found the pantryman alone, he
laughingly asked him if he and the chef had
smoked the tobacco of peace.
  "Fat chance!" retorted the first waiter. "I
gotta talk to him, for we get the stores together
and check up together with the steward, and I
gotta hand him the stuff tha's coming to him
outa the pantry, but I ain't settle mah debt
with him yet. I ain't got no time for no nig-
ger that done calls me 'bastard-begotten' and
means it"
   "Oh, forget it!" saicj Ray. "Christ was one,
too, and we all worship him."
   "Wha' you mean?" the pantryman de-
manded.
   "What I said," Ray replied. . . .
   "Oh! . . . Ain't you got no religion in you
none 'tall?"
   "My parents were Catholic, but I ain't
nothing. God is white and has no more time
for niggers than you've got for the chef."
   "Well, I'll be browned but once!" cried the
pantryman. "Is that theah what youse 1'arn-
ing in them bopks? Don't you believe in get-
ting religion?"
   Ray laughed.
   "You kain laugh, all right, but watch you'
step Gawd don't get you yet. Youse sure
trifling."
   The coldness between the kitchen and the
pantry continued, unpleasantly nasty, like the
wearing of wet clothes, after the fall of a
heavy shower, when the sun is shining again.
The chef was uncomfortable. A waiter had
never yet opposed open hostility to his person-
ality like that. He was accustomed to the
crew's surrendering to his ways with even a
little sycophancy. It was always his policy to
be amicable with the pantryman, playing him
against the other waiters, for it was very dis-
agreeable to keep up a feud when the kitchen
and the pantry had so many unavoidable close
contacts.
   So the chef made overtures to the pantry-
man with special toothsome tidbits, such as he
always prepared for the only steward and
himself. But the pantryman refused to have
any specially-prepared-for-his-Irishness-the-
Steward's stuff that the other waiters could not
share. Thereupon the chef gave up trying to
placate him and started in hating back with
profound African hate. African hate is deep
down and hard to stir up, but there is no hate
more realistic when it is stirred up.
   One morning in Washington the iceman
forgot to supply ice to the dining-car. One of
the men had brought a little brass top on the
diner and the waiters were excited over an
easy new game called "put-and-take." The
pantryman forgot his business. The chef went
to another dining-car and obtained ice for the
kitchen. The pantryman did not remember
anything about ice until the train was well on
its way to New York. He remembered it be-
cause the ice-cream was turning soft. He put
his head through the hole and asked Jake for a
piece of ice. The chef said no, he had enough
for the kitchen only.
   With a terrible contented expression the
chef looked with malicious hate into the
pantryman's yellow face. The pantryman
glared back at the villainous black face and
jerked his head in rage. The ice-cream turned
softer. . . .
   Luncheon was over, all the work was done,
everything in order, and the entire crew was
ready to go home when the train reached New
York. The steward wanted to go directly
home. But he had to wait and go over to the
yards with the keys, so that the pantryman
could ice up. And the pantryman was scr
verely reprimanded for his laxity in Wash-
ington. . . .

   The pantryman bided his time, waiting on
the chef. He was cordial. He even laughed
at the jokes the chef made at the other waiters'
expense. The chef swelled bigger in his hide,
feeling that everything had bent to his will.
The pantryman waited, ignoring little mo-
ments for the big moment. It came.

  One morning both the second and the fourth
cook "fell down on the job," neither of them
reporting for duty. The steward placed an
order with the commissary superintendent for
two cooks. Jake stayed in the kitchen, work-
ing, while the chef and the pantryman went to
the store for the stock. . . .
  The chef and the pantryman returned to-


gether with the large baskets of provisions for
the trip. The eggs were carried by the chef
himself in a neat box. Remembering that he
had forgotten coffee, he sent Jake back to the
store for it. Then he began putting away the
kitchen stuff. The pantryman was putting
away the pantry stuff. . . .
   A yellow girl passed by and waved a smile
at the chef. He grinned, his teeth champing
his cigar. The chef hated yellow men with
"cracker" hatred, but he loved yellow women
with "cracker" love. His other love was gin.
But he never carried a liquor flask on the
diner, because it was against regulations. And
he never drank with any of the crew. He
drank alone. And he did other things alone.
In Philadelphia or Washington he never went
to a buffet flat with any of the men.
   The girls working in the yards were always
flirting with him. He fascinated them, per-
haps because he was so Congo mask-like in
aspect and so duty-strict. They could often
wheedle something nice out of other chefs,
but nothing out of the chef. He would rather
give them his money than a piece of the com-
pany's raw meat. The chef was generous in
his way; Richmond Pete, who owned the
saloon near the yards in Queensborough,
could attest to that. He had often gossiped
about the chef. How he "blowed them gals
that he had a crush on in the family room and
danced an elephant jig while the gals were
pulling his leg."
   The yellow girl that waved at the chef
through the window was pretty. Her gesture
transformed his face into a foolish broad-
smiling thing. He stepped outside the kitchen
for a moment to have a tickling word with
her.
   In that moment the pantryman made a
lightning-bolt move; and shut down the little
glass door between the pantry and the
kitchen. . . .

   The train was speeding its way west The
first call for dinner had been made and the
dining-room was already full. Over half a
dozen calls for eggs of different kinds had
been bawled out before the chef discovered
that the basket of eggs was missing. The chef
asked the pantryman to call the steward. The
pantryman, curiously preoccupied, forgot
Pandemonium was loose in the pantry and
kitchen when the steward, radish-red, stuck
his head in.
  The chef's lower lip had flopped low down,
dripping, and the cigar had fallen somewhere.
"Cut them aiggs off o' the bill, Sah Farrel. O
Lawd I" he moaned, "Ise sartain sure I
brought them aiggs on the car mahself, and
now I don't know where they is."
   "What kind o' blah is that?" cried the stew-
ard. "The eggs must be there in the kitchen.
I saw them with the stock meself."
   "And I brought them here hugging them,
Boss, ef I ain't been made fool of by some-
thing." The rhinoceros had changed into a
meek black lamb. "O Lawd 1 and I ain't been
outa the kitchen sence. Ain't no mortal hand
could tuk them. Some evil hand. O
Lawd!        "
   "Helll" The steward dashed out of the
pantry to cut all the egg dishes off the bill.
The passengers were getting clamorous. The
waiters were asking those who had ordered
eggs to change to something else. . • .
   The steward suggested searching the pantry.
The pantry was ransacked. "Them ain't there,
cep'n' they had feets to walk. O Lawd of
HeabenI" the chef groaned. "It's something
deep and evil, I knows, for I ain't been outa
this heah kitchen." His little flirtation with
the yellow girl was completely wiped off his
memory.
   Only Jake was keeping his head in the
kitchen. He was acting second cook, for the
steward had not succeeded in getting one.
The fourth cook he had gotten was new to the
service and he was standing, conspicuously
long-headed, with gaping mouth.
   "Why'n the debbil's name don't you do
some'n, nigger?" bellowed the chef, frothy at
the corners of his mouth.
   "The chef is up a tree, all right," said Ray
to the pantryman.
   "And he'll break his black hide getting
down/' the pantryman replied, bitterly.
   "Chef!" The yellow pantryman's face car-
ried a royal African grin. "What's the mat-
ter with you and them aiggs?"
   "I done gived them to you mammy."
   "And fohget you wife, ole timer? Ef you
ain't a chicken-roost nigger, as you boast, you
surely loves the nest."
   Gash! The chef, at last losing control of
himself, shied a huge ham bone at the pantry-
man. The pantryman sprang back as the
ham bone flew through the aperture and
smashed a bottle of milk in the pantry.
   "What's all this bloody business today?"
cried the steward, who was just entering the
pantry. • . . "What nonsense is this, chef?
You've made a mess of things already and now
you start fighting with the waiters. You can't
do like that. You losing your head?"
   "Lookahere, Sah Farrel, I jes' want ev'body
to leave me 'lone."
   "But we must all team together on the din-
ing-car. That's the only way. You can't start
                    

fighting the waiters because you've lost the
eggs."
   "Sah Farrel, leave me alone, I say," half
roared, half moaned the chef, "or I'll jump off
right now and let you run you' kitchen you'-
self."
   "What's that?" The steward started.
   "I say I'll jump off, and I mean it as Gawd's
mah maker."
   The steward slipped out of the pantry with-
out another word.

  The steward obtained a supply of eggs in
Harrisburg the next morning. The rest of
the trip was made with the most dignified for-
malities between him and the chef. Between
the pantry and the chef the atmosphere was
tenser, but there were no more explosions.

   The dining-car went out on its next trip
with a new chef. And the old chef, after
standing a little of the superintendent's noto-
riously sharp tongue, was sent to another car
as second cook.


    "Hit those fellahs in the pocket-book is the
 only way," the pantryman overheard the
 steward talking to one of his colleagues.
 "Imagine an old experienced chef threatening
 to jump off when I was short of a second
cook,"
    They were getting the stock for the next
trip in the commissary. Jake turned to the
pantryman: "But it was sure peculiar, though,
how them aiggs just fly outa that kitchen lak
that way."
    "Maybe they all hatched and growed wings
when ole black bull was playing with that
sweet yaller piece," the pantryman laughed.
   "Honest, though, how do you think it hap-
pened?" persisted Jake. "Did you hoodoo
them aiggs, or what did you do?"
   "I wouldn't know atall. Better ask them
rats in the yards ef they sucked the shells dry.
What you' right hand does don't tell it to the
left, says L"
   "You done said a mou'ful, but how did you
get away with it so quiet?"
                    
            The Treeing of the Chef
   "I ain't said nothing discrimination and I
ain't nevah."
   "Don't figure against me. Ise with you,
buddy," said Jake, "and now that wese good
and rid of him, I hope all we niggers will pull
together like civilization folks."
   "Sure we will. There ain't another down-
home nigger like him in this white man's serv-
ice. He was riding too high and fly, brother.
I knew he would tumble and bust something
nasty. But I ain't said I knowed a thing about
it, all the same."





ONE NIGHT IN PHILLY

XIII

One night in Philadelphia Jake breezed
into the waiters' quarters in Market Street,
looking for Ray. It was late. Ray was in
bed. Jake pulled him up.
   "Come on outa that, you slacker. Let's go
over to North Philly."
   "What for?"
   "A li'l fun. I knows a swell outfit I wanta
show you."
   "Anything new?"
   "Don't know about anything new, chappie,
but I know there's something good right there
in Fifteenth Street."
   "Oh, I know all about that. I don't want
to go."
   "Come on. Don't be so particular about
you7 person. You gotta go with me."
   "I have a girl in New York."
   "Tha's awright. This is Philly."
   "I tell you, Jake, there's no fun in those
kinds for me. They'll bore me just like that
night in Baltimore."
   "Oh, these here am different chippies, I tell
you. Come on, le's spend the night away from
this damn dump. Wese laying ovah all day
tomorrow."
   "And some of them will say such rotten
things. Pretty enough, all right, but their
mouths are loaded with filth, and that's what
gets me."
   "Them's different ovah there, chappie. I'll
kiss the Bible on it. Come on, now. It's no
fun me going alone."

   They went to a house in Fifteenth Street.
As they entered Jake was greeted by a mulatto
woman in the full vigor of middle life.
   "Why, you heart-breaker! It's ages and
ages since I saw you. You and me sure going
to have a bust-up tonight."
  Jake grinned, prancing a little, as if he were
going to do the old cake-walk.
   "Here, Laura, this is mah friend," he intro-
duced Ray casually.
   "Bring him over here and sit down,"
Madame Laura commanded.
   She was a big-boned woman, but very agile.
A long, irregular, rich-brown face, roving
black eyes, deep-set, and shiny black hair
heaped upon her head. She wore black velvet,
a square-cut blouse low down on her breasts,
and a string of large coral beads. The young
girls of that house envied her finely-preserved
form and her carriage and wondered if they
would be anything like that when they reached
her age.
   The interior of this house gave Ray a
shock. It looked so much like a comfortable
boarding-house where everybody was cheer-
ful and nice coquettish girls in colorful frocks
were doing the waiting. . . • There were a
few flirting couples, two groups of men play-
ing cards, and girls hovering around. An at-
tractive black woman was serving sandwiches,
gin and bottled beer. At the piano, a slim
yellow youth was playing a "blues." . . . A
pleasant house party, similar to any other
among colored people of that class in Balti-
more, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond,
or even Washington, D. C. Different, natu-
rally, from New York, which molds all
peoples into a hectic rhythm of its own. Yet
even New York, passing its strange thousands
through its great metropolitan mill, cannot
rob Negroes of their native color and
laughter.
   "Mah friend's just keeping me company,"
Jake said to the woman. "He ain't regular—
you get me? And I want him treated right"
   "He'll be treated better here than he would
in church." She laughed and touched Ray's
calf with the point of her slipper.
   "What kind o' bust-up youse gwine to have
with me?" demanded Jake.
   "I'll show you just what I'm going to do
with you for forgetting me so long."
   She got up and went into an adjoining
room. When she returned an attractively
made-up brown girl followed her carrying a
tray with glasses and a bottle of champagne.
. . . The cork hit the ceiling, bang! And
deftly the woman herself poured the foaming
liquor without a wasted drop,
   "There! That's our bust-up," she said.
"Me and you and your friend. Even if he's
a virgin he's all right. I know you ain't never
going around with no sap-head."
   "Give me some, too," a boy of dull-gold
complexion materialized by the side of Ma-
dame Laura and demanded a drink. He was
about eleven years old.
   Affectionately she put her arm around him
and poured out a small glass of champagne.
The frailness of the boy was pathetic; his eyes
were sleepy-sad. He resembled a reed fading
in a morass.
   "Who is he?" Ray asked.
   "He's my son," responded Madame Laura.
"Clever kid, too. He loves books."
   "Ray will like him, then," said Jake.
"Books is his middle name."
   Ray suddenly felt a violent dislike for the
atmosphere. At first he had liked the general
friendliness and warmth and naturalness of it.
All so different from what he had expected.
But something about the presence of the little
boy there and his being the woman's son dis-
gusted him. He could not analyse his aver-
sion. It was just an instinctive, intolerant
feeling that the boy did not belong to that en-
vironment and should not be there.
   He went from Madame Laura and Jake
over to the piano and conversed with the pian-
ist. When he glanced again at the table he
had left, Madame Laura had her arm around
Jake's neck and his eyes were strangely
shining.
   Madame Laura had set the pace. There
were four other couples making love. At one
table a big-built, very black man was amusing
himself with two attractive girls, one brown-
skinned and the other yellow. The girls' com-
plexion was heightened by High-Brown Talc
powder and rouge. A bottle of Muscatel
stood on the table. The man was well
dressed in nigger-brown and he wore an ex-
pensive diamond ring on his little finger.
   The stags were still playing cards, with
girls hovering over them. The happy-faced
black woman was doing the managing, as Ma-
dame Laura was otherwise engaged. The
pianist began banging another blues.

   Ray felt alone and a little sorry for himself.
Now that he was there, he would like to be
touched by the spirit of that atmosphere and,
like Jake, fall naturally into its rhythm. He
also envied Jake. Just for this night only he
would like to be like him. . . •
   They were dancing. The little yellow girl,
her legs kicked out at oblique angles, appeared
as if she were going to fall through the big-
built black man.
    We'll all be merry when you taste a cherry,
    And we'll twine and twine like a fruitful vine.

   In the middle of the floor, a young railroad
porter had his hand flattened straight down
the slim, cerise-chiffoned back of a brown girl.
Her head was thrown back and her eyes held
his gleaming eyes. Her lips were parted with
pleasure and they stood and rocked in an
ecstasy- Their feet were not moving. Only
their bodies rocked, rocked to the "blues."
  Ray remarked that Jake was not in the
room, nor was Madame Laura in evidence.
A girl came to him. "Why is you so all by
you'self, baby? Don't you wanta dance some?
That there is some more temptation 'blues.'"
  Tickling, enticing syncopation. Ray felt
that he ought to dance to it. But some strange
thing seemed to hold him back from taking
the girl in his arms.
  "Will you drink something, instead?" he
found a way out.
  "Awwww-right," d i s a p p o i n t e d , she
drawled.
  She beckoned to the happy-faced woman.
  "Virginia Dare."
  "I'll have some, too," Ray said.
  Another brown girl joined them.
  "Buy mah pal a drink, too?" the first girl
asked.
  "Why, certainly," he answered.
  The woman brought two glasses of Virginia
Dare and Ray ordered a third.
   Such a striking exotic appearance the rouge
gave these brown girls. Rouge that is so cheap
in its general use had here an uncommon qual-
ity. Rare as the red flower of the hibiscus
would be in a florist's window on Fifth
Avenue. Rouge on brown, a warm, insidious
chestnut color. But so much more subtle than
chestnut The round face of the first girl, the
carnal sympathy of her full, tinted mouth,
touched Ray. But something was between
them. . . .
   The piano-player had wandered off into
some dim, far-away, ancestral source of music.
Far, far away from music-hall syncopation
and jazz, he was lost in some sensual dream of
his own. No tortures, banal shrieks and
agonies. Tum-tum • . . tum-tum . . . tum-
tum . . . tum-tum. . . . The n o t e s were
naked acute alert Like black youth burning
naked in the bush. Love in the deep heart of
the jungle. . . . The sharp spring of a
leopard from a leafy limb, the snarl of a
jackal, green lizards in amorous play, the
flight of a plumed bird, and the sudden laugh-
ter of mischievous monkeys in their green
homes. Tum-tum . . . tum-tum . . . tum-
tum • . . tum-tum. . . . Simple-clear a n d
quivering. Like a primitive dance of war or
of love . • . the marshaling of spears or the
sacred frenzy of a phallic celebration.
   Black lovers of life caught up in their own
free native rhythm, threaded to a remote
scarce-remembered past, celebrating the mid-
night hours in themselves, for themselves, of
themselves, in a house in Fifteenth Street,
Philadelphia. . . •
   "Raided I" A voice screamed. Standing in
the rear door, a policeman, white, in full uni-
form, smilingly contemplated the spectacle.
There was a wild scramble for hats and wraps.
The old-timers giggled, shrugged, and kept
their seats. Madame Laura pushed aside the
policeman.
   "Keep you' pants on, all of you and carry
on with you' fun. What's matter? Scared of
a uniform? Pat"—she turned to the police-
man—"what you want to throw a scare in the
company for? Come on here with you."
   The policeman, twirling his baton, marched
to a table and sat down with Madame Laura.
   "Geewizard I" Jake sat down, too. "Tell
'em next time not to ring the fire alarm so
loud."
   "You said it, honey-stick. There are no
cops in Philly going to mess with this girl.
Ain't it the truth, Pat?" Madame Laura
twisted the policeman's ear and bridled.
   "I know it's the Bible trute," the happy-
faced black lady chanted in a sugary voice, set-
ting a bottle of champagne and glasses upon
the table and seating herself familiarly be-
side the policeman.
   The champagne foamed in the four glasses.
   "Whar's mah HT chappie?" Jake asked.
   "Gone, maybe. Don't worry," said Ma-
dame Laura. "Drinkl"
   Four brown hands and one white. Chink!
   "Here's to you, Pat," cried Madame
Laura. "There's Irish in me from the male
line." She toasted:
      "Flixy, flaxy, fleasy,
       Make it good and easy,
      Flix for start and flax for snappy,
      Niggers and Irish will always be happy."
   The policeman swallowed his champagne
at a gulp and got up. "Gotta go now. Time
for duty."
   "You treat him nice. Is it for love or pro-
tection?" asked Jake.
   "He's loving her"—Madame Laura indi-
cated the now coy lady who helped her man-
age—"but he's protecting me. It's a long time
since I ain't got no loving inclination for any
skin but chocolate. Get me?"

  When Jake returned to the quarters he
found Ray sleeping quietly. He did not dis-
turb him. The next morning they walked to-
gether to the yards.
  "Did the policeman scare you, too, last
night?" asked Jake.
  "What policeman?"
  "Oh, didn't you see him? There was a
policeman theah and somebody hollered
'Raid I' scaring everybody. I thought you'd
done tuk you'self away from there in quick
time becasn a that."
  "No, I left before that, I guess. Didn't
even smell one walking all the way to the
quarters in Market Street."
   "Why'd you beat it? One o' the HT chip-
pies had a crush on you. Oh, boy! and she
was some piece to look at."
   "I know it. She was kind of nice. But
she had some nasty perfume on her that turned
mah stomach."
   "Youse awful queer, chappie," Jake com-
mented.
   "Why, don't you ever feel those sensations
that just turn you back in on yourself and
make you isolated and helpless?"
   "Wha'd y'u mean?"
   "I mean if sometimes you don't feel as I
felt last night?"
   "Lawdy no. Young and pretty is all I
feel."
   They stopped in a saloon. Jake had a small
whisky and Ray an egg-nogg.
   "But Madame Laura isn't young," resumed
Ray.
   "Ain't she?" Jake showed his teeth. "I'd
back her against some of the youngest. She's
a wonder, chappie. Her blood's like good
liquor. She gave me a present, too. Looka
here." Jake took from his pocket a lovely
slate-colored necktie sprinkled with red dots.
Ray felt the fineness of it.
   "Ef I had the sweetman disinclination I
wouldn't have to work, chappie," Jake rocked
proudly in his walk. "But tha's the life of a
pee-wee cutter, says I. Kain't see it for mine."
   "She was certainly nice to you last night.
And the girls were nice, too. It was just like
a jolly parlor social."
   "Oh, sure! Them gals not all in the straight
business, you know. Some o' them works
and just go there for a good time, a li'l' extra
stuff. . . . It ain't like that nonetall ovah in
Europe, chappie. They wouldn't 'a' treated
you so nice. Them places I sampled ovah
there was all straight raw business and no
camoflage."
   "Did you prefer them?"
   "Hell, no! I prefer the niggers' way every
time. They does it better. . . ."
   "Wish I could feel the difference as you
do, Jakie. I lump all those ladies together,
without difference of race."
   "Youse crazy, chappie. You ain't got no
experience about it There's all kinds a dif-
ference in that theah life. Sometimes it's the
people make the difference and sometimes it's
the place. And as f oh them sweet marchants,
there's as much difference between them as
you find in any other class a people. There is
them slap-up private-apartmant ones, and
there is them of the dickty buffet flats; then
the low-down speakeasy customers; the caba-
ret babies, the family-entrance clients, and
the street fliers."
  They stopped on a board-walk. The din-
ing-car stood before them, resting on one of
the hundred tracks of the great Philadelphia
yards.
  "I got a free permit to a nifty apartmant in
New York, chappie, and the next Saturday
                    
              One Night in Philly
night we lay over together in the big city Ise
gwine to show you some real queens. It's
like everything else in life. Depends on you'
luck."
   "And you are one lucky dog," Ray laughed.
   Jake grinned: "I'd tell you about a liT
piece o' sweetness I picked up in a cabaret
the first day I landed from ovah the other
side. But it's too late now. We gotta start
work."
   "Next time, then," said Ray.
   Jake swung himself up by the rear plat-
form and entered the kitchen. Ray passed
round by the other side into the dining-room.





INTERLUDE

XIV

Dusk gathered in blue patches over the
Black Belt. Lenox Avenue was vivid. The
saloons were bright, crowded with drinking
men jammed tight around the bars, treating
one another and telling the incidents of the
day. Longshoremen in overalls with hooks,
Pullman porters holdiag their bags, waiters,
elevator boys. Liquor-rich laughter, banana-
ripe laughter. . • .
   The pavement was a dim warm bustle.
Women hurrying home from day's work to
get dinner ready for husbands who worked at
night. On their arms brown bags and black
containing a bit of meat, a head of lettuce,
butter. Young men who were stagging
through life, passing along with brown-paper
packages, containing a small steak, a pork
chop, to do their own frying.
   From out of saloons came the savory smell
of corned beef and cabbage, spare-ribs, Ham-
burger steaks. Out of little cook-joints wedged
in side streets, tripe, pigs' feet, hogs' ears and
snouts. Out of apartments, steak smothered
with onions, liver and bacon, fried chicken.
   The composite smell of cooked stuff as-
saulted Jake's nostrils. He was hungry. His
landlady was late bringing his food. Maybe
she was out on Lenox Avenue chewing the
rag with some other Ebenezer soul, thought
Jake.
   Jake was ill. The doctor told him that he
would get well very quickly if he remained
quietly in bed for a few days.
   "And you mustn't drink till you are better.
It's bad for you," the doctor warned him.
   But Jake had his landlady bring him from
two to four pails of beer every day. "I must
drink some'n," he reasoned, "and beer can't
make me no harm. It's light."
   When Ray went to see him, Jake laughed
at his serious mien.
   "Tha's life, chappie. I goes way ovah yon-
der and wander and fools around and I hed
no mind about nothing. Then I come back
to mah own home town and, oh, you snake-
bite! When I was in the army, chappie, they
useter give us all sorts o' lechers about can-
shankerous nights and prophet-lactic days, but
I nevah pay them no mind. Them things foh
edjucated guys like you who lives in you'
head."
   "They are for you, too," Ray said. "This
is a new age with new methods of living. You
can't just go on like a crazy ram goat as if
you were living in the Middle Ages."
   "Middle Ages! I ain't seen them yet and
don't nevah wanta. All them things you talk
about am kill-joy things, chappie. The trute
is they make me feel shame."
   Ray laughed until tears trickled down his
cheeks. . . . He visualized Jake b e i n g
ashamed and laughed again.
   "Sure," said Jake. "I'd feel ashame* ef a
chippie—No, chappie, them stuff is foh you
book fellahs. I runs around all right, but Ise
lak a sailor that don't know nothing about
using a compass, but him always hits a safe
port."
   "You didn't this time, though, Jakie. Those
devices that you despise are really for you
rather than for me or people like me, who
don't live your kind of free life. If you, and
the whole strong race of workingman who live
freely like you, don't pay some attention to
them, then you'll all wither away and rot like
weeds."
   "Let us pray!" said Jake.
   "That I don't believe in."
   "Awright, then, chappie."

   On the next trip, the dining-car was shifted
off its scheduled run and returned to New
York on the second day, late at night. It was
ordered out again early the next day. Ray
could not get round to see Jake, so he tele-
phoned his girl and asked her to go.
   Agatha had heard much of Ray's best
friend, but she had never met him. Men
working on a train have something of the
spirit of men working on a ship. They are,
perforce, bound together in comradeship of a
sort in that close atmosphere. In the stop-
over cities they go about in pairs or groups.
But the camaraderie breaks up on the plat-
form in New York as soon as the dining-car
returns there. Every man goes his own way
unknown to his comrades. Wife or sweet-
heart or some other magnet of the great magic
city draws each off separately.
   Agatha was a rich-brown girl, with soft
amorous eyes. She worked as assistant in a
beauty parlor of the Belt. She was a Balti-
more girl and had been living in New York
for two years. Ray had met her the year
before at a basket-ball match and dance.
   She went to see Jake in the afternoon. He
was sitting in a Morris chair, reading the
Negro newspaper, The Amsterdam News,
with a pail of beer beside him, when Agatha
rapped on the door.
   Jake thought it was the landlady. He was
thrown off his balance by the straight, beau-
tiful girl who entered the room and quietly
closed the door behind her.
   "Oh, keep your seat, please,1' she begged
him. "I'll sit there," she indicated a brown
chair by the cherrywood chiffonier.
   "Ray asked me to come. He was doubled
out this morning and couldn't get around to
see you. I brought these for you."
   She put a paper bag of oranges on the table.
"Where shall I put these?" She showed him
a charming little bouquet of violets. Jake's
drinking-glass was on the floor, half full, be-
side the pail of beer.
   "It's all right, herel" On the chipped, mil-
dew-white wash-stand there was another glass
with a tooth-brush. She took the tooth-brush
out, poured some water in the glass, put the
violets in, and set it on the chiffonier.
   "There!" she said.
   Jake thanked her. He was diffident. She
was so different a girl from the many he had
known. She was certainly one of those that
Miss Curdy would have sneered at. She was
so full of simple self-assurance and charm.
Mah little sister down home in Petersburg,
he thought, might have turned out something
lak this ef she'd V had a chance to talk Eng-
lish like in books and wear class-top clothes.
Nine years sence I quite home. She must be
quite a HT woman now herself.
   Jake loved women's pretty clothes. The
plain nigger-brown coat Agatha wore, unbut-
toned, showed a fresh peach-colored frock.
He asked after Ray.
   "I didn't see him myself this trip," she said.
"He telephoned me about you."
   Jake praised Ray as his best pal.
   "He's a good boy," she agreed. She asked
Jake about the railroad, "It must be lots of
fun to ride from one town to the other like
that. I'd love it, for I love to travel. But
Ray hates it."
   "It ain't so much fun when youse working,"
replied Jake.
   "I guess you're right. But there's some-
thing marvelous about meeting people for a
little while and serving them and never seeing
them again. It's romantic. You don't have
that awful personal everyday contact that do-
mestic workers have to get along with. If I
was a man and had to be in service, I wouldn't
want better than the railroad."
  "Some'n to that, yes," agreed Jake. . . .
"But it ain't all peaches, neither, when all
them passengers rush you like a herd of hun-
gry swine."
  Agatha stayed twenty minutes.
  "I wish you better soon," she said, bidding
Jake good-by. "It was nice to know you.
Ray will surely come to see you when he gets
back this time."
  Jake drank a glass of beer and eased his
back, full length on the little bed.
   "She is sure some wonderful brown," he
mused. "Now I sure does understand why
Ray is so scornful of them easy ones." He
gazed at the gray door. It seemed a shining
panel of gold through which a radiant vision
had passed.
   "She sure does like that theah Ray an un-
conscionable lot. I could see the love stuff
shining in them mahvelous eyes of hers when
I talked about him. I s'pose it's killing sweet
to have some'n loving you up thataway.
Some'n real fond o' you for you own self lak,
lak—jest, lak how mah mammy useter love
pa and do everything foh him bafore he
done took and died off without giving no
notice. . . . "
   His thoughts wandered away back to his
mysterious little brown of the Baltimore. She
was not elegant and educated, but she was nice.
Maybe if he found her again—it would be
better than just running wild around like that!
Thinking honestly about it, after all, he was
never satisfied, flopping here and sleeping
there. It gave him a little cocky pleasure to
brag of his conquests to the fellows around
the bar. But after all the swilling and boast-
ing, it would be a thousand times nicer to have
a little brown woman of his own to whom he
could go home and be his simple self with.
Lay his curly head between her brown breasts
and be fondled and be the spoiled child that
every man loves sometimes to be when he is
all alone with a woman. That he could never
be with the Madame Lauras. They expected
him always to be the prancing he-man. May-
                    
                    Interlude
be it was the lack of a steady girl that kept him
running crazy around. Boozing and poking
and rooting around, jolly enough all right,
but not altogether contented.
   The landlady did not appear with Jake's
dinner.
   "Guess she is somewhere rocking soft with
gin," he thought. "Ise feeling all right
enough to go out, anyhow. Guess I'll drop
in at Uncle Doc's and have a good feed of
spare-ribs. Hml but the stuff coming out of
these heah Harlem kitchens is enough to knock
me down. They smell so good."
   He dressed and went out. "Oh, Lenox Ave-
nue, but you look good to me, now. Lawdy!
though, how the brown-skin babies am hump-
ing it along! Strutting the joy-stuff! Invita-
tion for a shimmy. O Lawdy! Pills and
pisen, you gotta turn me loose, quick."
   Billy Biasse was drinking at the bar of
Uncle Doc's when Jake entered.
   "Come on, you, and have a drink," Billy
cried. "Which hole in Harlem youse been
burying you'self in all this time?"
   "Which you figure? There is holes out-
side of Harlem too, boh," Jake ordered a
beer.
   "Beer!" exclaimed Billy. "Quit you fool-
ing and take some real liquor, nigger. Ise
paying foh it. Order that theah ovah-water
liquor you useter be so dippy about. That
theah Scotch."
   "I ain't quite all right, Billy. Gotta go
slow on the booze."
   "Whasmat? . . . Oh, foh Gawd's sakel
Don't let the li'l' beauty break you' heart.
Fix her up with gin."
   "Might as well, and then a royal feed o'
spare-ribs," agreed Jake.
   He asked for Zeddy.
   "Missing sence all the new moon done bless
mah luck that you is, too. Last news I heard
'bout him, the gen'man was Yonkers an-
chored."
   "And Strawberry Lips?"
   "That nigger's back home in Harlem where
he belongs. He done long ago quit that ugly
yaller razor-back. And you, boh. Who's
providing f oh you' wants sence you done turn
Congo Rose down?"
   "Been running wild in the paddock of the
Pennsy."
   "Oh, boh, you sure did breaks the sweet-
loving haht of Congo Rose. One night she
stahted to sing 'You broke mah haht and went
away' and she jest bust out crying theah in
the cabaret and couldn't sing no moh. She
hauled harself whimpering out there, and she
laid off oJ the Congo foh moh than a week.
That li'l' goosey boy had to do the strutting
all by himse'f."
   "She was hot stuff all right." Jake laughed
richly. "But I had to quit her or she would
have made me either a no-'count or a bad
nigger."
   Warmed up by meeting an old pal and hear-
ing all the intimate news of the dives, Jake
tossed off he knew not how many gins. He
told Billy Biasse of the places he had nosed
out in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The gos-
sip was good. Jake changed to Scotch and
asked for the siphon.
   He had finished the first Scotch and asked
for another, when a pain gripped his belly
with a wrench that almost tore him apart.
Jake groaned and doubled over, staggered
into a corner, and crumpled up on the floor.
Perspiration stood in beads on his forehead,
trickled down his rigid, chiseled features.
He heard the word "ambulance" repeated
several times. He thought first of his mother.
His sister. The little frame house in Peters-
burg. The backyard of bleached clothes on
the line, the large lilac tree and the little
forked lot that yielded red tomatoes and green
peas in spring.
   "No hospital foh me," he muttered. "Mah
room is jest next doh. Take me theah."
   Uncle Doc told his bar man to help Billy
Biasse lift Jake.
   "Kain you move you' laigs any at all, boh?"
Billy asked.
   Jake groaned: "I kain try."
   The men took him home. . . .
  Jake's landlady had been invited to a fried-
chicken feed in the basement lodging of an
Ebenezer sister and friend on Fifth Avenue.
The sister friend had rented the basement of
the old-fashioned house and appropriated the
large backyard for her laundry work. She
went out and collected soiled linen every Mon-
day. Her wealthiest patrons sent their chauf-
feurs round with their linen. And the
laundress was very proud of white chauffeurs
standing their automobiles in front of her
humble basement. She noticed with heaving
chest that the female residents of the block
rubber-necked. Her vocation was very profit-
able. And it was her pleasure sometimes to
invite a sister of her church to dinner. . . .
   The fried chicken, with sweet potatoes, was
excellent. Over it the sisters chinned and
ginned, recounting all the contemporary scan-
dals of the Negro churches. . . .
   At last Jake's landlady remembered him
and staggered home to prepare his beef broth.
But when she took it up to him she found that
Jake was out. Returning to the kitchen, she
stumbled and broke the white bowl, made a
sign with her rabbit foot, and murmured, fog-
gily: "Theah's sure a cross coming to thisa
house. I wonder it's foh who?"
   The bell rang and rang again and again in
spite of the notice: Ring once. And when
the landlady opened the door and saw Jake
supported between two men, she knew that
the broken white bowl was for him and that
his time was come.





RELAPSE

XV

Billy Biasse telephoned to the doctor,
a young chocolate-complexioned man. He
was graduate of a Negro medical college in
Tennessee and of Columbia University. He
was struggling to overcome the prejudices of
the black populace against Negro doctors and
wedge himself in among the Jewish doctors
that prescribed for the Harlem clientele. A
clever man, he was trying, through Demo-
cratic influence, to get an appointment in one
of the New York hospitals. Such an achieve-
ment would put him all over the Negro press
and get him all the practice and more than
he could handle in the Belt.
   Ray had sent Jake to him. . . •
   The landlady brought Jake a rum punch.
He shook his head. With a premonition of
tragedy, she waited for the doctor, standing
against the chiffonier, a blue cloth carelessly
knotted round her head. . . .
   In the corridor she questioned Billy Biasse
about Jake's seizure.
   "All you younger generation in Harlem
don't know no God," she accused Billy and
indicted Young Harlem. "All you know is
cabarets and movies and the young gals them
exposing them legs a theirs in them jumper
frocks."
   "I wouldn't know 'bout that," said Billy.
   "You all ought to know, though, and think
of God Almighty before the trumpet sound
and it's too late foh black sinners. I nevah
seen so many trifling and ungodly niggers as
there is in this heah Harlem." She thought
of the broken white bowl. "And I done had
a warning from heaben."
  The doctor arrived. Ordered a hot-water
bottle for Jake's belly and a hot lemon drink.
There was no other remedy to help him but
what he had been taking.
  "You've been drinking," the doctor said.
  "Jest a li'l' beer," Jake murmured.
  "O Lawdy! though, listen at him!" cried
the landlady. "Mister, if he done had a glass,
he had a barrel a day. Ain't I been getting it
foh him?"
   "Beer is the worst form of alcohol you
could ever take in your state," said the doctor.
"Couldn't be anything worse. Better you had
taken wine."
  Jake growled that he didn't like wine.
   "It's up to you to get well," said the doctor.
"You have been ill like: that before. It's a sim-
ple affair if you will be careful and quiet for
a little while. But it's very dangerous if you
are foolish. I know you chaps take those
things lightly. But you shouldn't, for the
consequences are very dangerous."

  Two days later Ray's diner returned to New
York. It was early afternoon and the crew
went over to the yards to get the stock for the
next trip. And after stocking up Ray went
directly to see Jake.
  Jake was getting along all right again. But
Ray was alarmed when he heard of his re-
lapse. Indeed, Ray was too easily moved for
the world he lived in. The delicate-fibered
mechanism of his being responded to sensa-
tions that were entirely beyond Jake's com-
prehension.
   "The doctor done hand me his. The land-
lady stahted warning me against sin with her
mouth stinking with gin. And now mah chap-
pie's gwina join the gang." Jake laughed
heartily.
   "But you must be careful, Jake. You7re too
sensible not to know good advice from bad."
   "Oh, sure, chappie, I'll take care. I don't
wanta be crippled up as the doctor says I
might. Mah laigs got many moh miles to run
yet, chasing after the sweet stuff o' life,
chappie."
   "Good oh Jake I I know you love life too
much to make a fool of yourself like so many
of those other fellows. I've never knew that
this thing was so common until I started work-
ing on the railroad. You know the fourth
had to lay off this trip."
   "You don't say!"
   "Yes, he's got a mean one. And the second
cook on Bowman's diner he's been in a chronic
way for about three months."
   "But how does he get by the doctor? All
them crews is examined every week."
   "Hm! . . ." Ray glanced carelessly through
 The Amsterdam News. "I saw Madame
Laura in Fairmount Park and I told her you
were sick. I gave her your address, too."
   "Bumbole! What for?"
   "Because she asked me for it. She was sym-
pathetic."
   "I never give mah address to them womens,
chappie. Bad system that."
   "Why?"
   "Because you nevah know when they might
bust in on you and staht a rough-house.
Them's all right, them womens . . . in their
own parlors."
  "I guess you ought to know. I don't," said
Ray. "Say, why don't you move out of this
dump up to the Forties? There's a room in
the same house I stay in. Cheap. Two flights
up, right on the court. Steam heat and every-
thing."
   "I guess I could stand a new place to lay
mah carcass in, all right," Jake drawled.
"Steam heats you say? I'm sure sick o' this
here praying-ma-ma hot air. And the trute
is it ain't nevah much hotter than mah breath."
   "All right. When do you want me to speak
to the landlady about the room?"
   "This heah very beautiful night, chappie-
Mah rent is up tomorrow and I moves. But
you got to do me a liT favor. Go by Billy
Biasse this night and tell him to come and git
his ole buddy's suitcase and see him into his
new home tomorrow morning."
   Jake was as happy as a kid. He would be
frisking if he could. But Ray was not happy.
The sudden upset of affairs in his home coun-
try had landed him into the quivering heart of
a naked world whose reality was hitherto un-
imaginable. It was what they called in print
and polite conversation "the underworld."
The compound word baffled him, as some
English words did sometimes. Why under-
world he could never understand. It was very
much upon the surface as were the others
divisions of human life. Having its heights
and middle and depths and secret places even
as they. And the people of this world, wait-
ers, cooks, chauffeurs, sailors, porters, guides,
ushers, hod-carriers, factory hands — all
touched in a thousand ways the people of the
other divisions. They worked over there and
slept over here, divided by a street.
   Ray had always dreamed of writing words
some day. Weaving words to make romance,
ah! There were the great books that domi-
nated the bright dreaming and dark brooding
days when he was a boy. Les Miserables,
Nana, Uncle Tom's Cabin, David Copper-
field, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist.
   From them, by way of free-thought pamph-
lets, it was only a stride to the great scintillat-
ing satirists of the age—Bernard Shaw, Ibsen,
Anatole France, and the popular problemist,
H. G. Wells. He had lived on that brilliant
manna that fell like a flame-fall from those
burning stars. Then came the great mass carnage in Europe and the great mass revolution
in Russia.
   Ray was not prophetic-minded enough to
define the total evil that the one had wrought
nor the ultimate splendor of the other. But,
in spite of the general tumults and threats,
the perfectly-organized national rages, the in-
effectual patching of broken, and hectic re-
building of shattered, things, he had percep-
tion enough to realize that he had lived over
the end of an era.
   And also he realized that his spiritual mas-
ters had not crossed with him into the new.
He felt alone, hurt, neglected, cheated, almost
naked. But he was a savage, even though he
was a sensitive one, and did not mind naked-
ness. What had happened? Had they re-
fused to come or had he left them behind?
Something had happened. But it was not de-
sertion nor young insurgency. It was death.
Even as the last scion of a famous line prances
out this day and dies and is set aside with his
ancestors in their cold whited sepulcher, so
had his masters marched with flags and ban-
ners flying all their wonderful, trenchant, crit-
ical, satirical, mind-sharpening, pity-evoking,
constructive ideas of ultimate social righteous-
ness, into the vast international cemetery of
this century.
   Dreams of patterns of words achieving
form. What would he ever do with the words
he had acquired? Were they adequate to tell
the thoughts he felt, describe the impressions
that reached him vividly? What were men
making of words now? During the war he
had been startled by James Joyce in The Lit-
tle Review. Sherwood Anderson had reached
him with Winesburg, Ohio. He had read,
fascinated, all that D. H. Lawrence pub-
lished. And wondered if there was not a great
Lawrence reservoir of words too terrible and
too terrifying for nice printing. Henri Bar-
busse's Le Feu burnt like a flame in his mem-
ory. Ray loved the book because it was such
a grand anti-romantic presentation of mind
and behavior in that hell-pit of life. And
literature, story-telling, had little interest for
him now if thought and feeling did not wres-
tle and sprawl with appetite and dark desire
all over the pages.
   Dreams of making something with words.
What could he make . . . and fashion?
Could he ever create Art? Art, around which
vague, incomprehensible words and phrases
stormed? What was art, anyway? Was it
more than a clear-cut presentation of a vivid
impression of life? Only the Russians of the
late era seemed to stand up like giants in the
new. Gogol, Dostoievski, Tolstoy, Chekhov,
Turgeniev. When he read them now he
thought: Here were elements that the grand
carnage swept over and touched not. The soil
of life saved their roots from the fire. They
were so saturated, so deep-down rooted in it.
   Thank God and Uncle Sam that the old
dreams were shattered. Nevertheless, he still
felt more than ever the utter blinding naked-
ness and violent coloring of life. But what of
it? Could he create out of the fertile reality
around him? Of Jake nosing through life, a
handsome hound, quick to snap up any tempt-
ing morsel of poisoned meat thrown carelessly
on the pavement? Of a work pal he had vis-
ited in the venereal ward of Bellevue, where
youths lolled sadly about? And the misery
that overwhelmed him there, until life ap-
peared like one big disease and the world a
vast hospital?




                    
A PRACTICAL PRANK

XVI

MY DEAR HONEY-STICK

   "I was riding in Fairmount Park
one afternoon, just taking the air as
usual, when I saw your proper-
speaking friend with a mess of books.
He told me you were sick and I was
so mortified for I am giving a big
evening soon and was all set on fix-
ing it on a night when you would
certain sure be laying over in Phila-
delphia. Because you are such good
company I may as well say how
much you are appreciated here. I
guess I'll put it off till you are okay
again, for as I am putting my hand
in my own pocket to give all of my
friends and wellwishers a dandy time
it won't be no fun for me if I leave
out the principal one. Guess who!
"I am expecting to come to New
    York soon on shopping bent. You
    know all us weak women who can
    afford it have got the Fifth Avenue
    fever, my dear. If I come I'll sure
    look you up, you can bank on it
       "Bye, bye, honeystick and be good
    and quiet and better yourself soon.
    Philadelphia is lonesome without
    you.
                  "Lovingly, LAURA."

   Billy Biasse, calling by Jake's former lodg-
ing, found this letter for him, lying there
among a pile of others, on the little black
round table in the hall. . . .
   "Here you is, boh. Whether youse well or
sick, them's after you."
   "Is they? Lemme see. Hm . . . Philly."
• * •
   "Who is you' pen-pusher?" asked Billy.
   "A queen in Philly. Says she might pay
me a visit here. I ain't send out no invita-
tion foh no womens yet."
   "Is she the goods?"
   "She's a wang, boh. Queen o' Philly, I
tell you. And foh me, everything with her is
f. o. c. But I don't want that yaller piece o'
business come nosing after me here in Har-
lem."
   "She ain't got to find you, boh. Jest throws
her a bad lead."
   "Tha's the stuff to give 'm. Ain't you a
buddy with a haid on, though?"
   " 'Deed I is. And all you niggers knows
it who done frequent mah place."
   And so Jake, in a prankish mood, replied
to Madame Laura on a picture post-card say-
ing he would be well and up soon and be back
on the road and on the job again, and he gave
Congo Rose's address.

  Madame Laura made her expected trip to
New York, traveling "Chair,".as was her cus-
tom when she traveled. She wore a mauve
dress, vermilion-shot at the throat, and short
enough to show the curved plumpness of her
legs encased in fine unrumpled rose-tinted
stockings. Her modish overcoat was lilac-
gray lined with green and a large marine-
blue rosette was bunched at the side of her
neat gray hat.
    In the Fifth Avenue shops she was waited
upon as if she were a dark foreign lady o{
title visiting New York. In the afternoon she
took a taxi-cab to Harlem.
    Now all the fashionable people who called
 at Rose's house were generally her friends.
And so Rose always went herself to let them
 in. She could look out from her window, one
 flight up, and ho-ho down to them.
    When Madame Laura rang the bell, Rose
 popped her head out Nobody I know, she
 thought, but the attractive woman in expen-
 sive clothes piqued her curiosity. Hastily she
 dabbed her face with powder pad, patted her
 hair into shape, and descended.
    "Is Mr. Jacob Brown living here?" Ma-
  dame Laura asked.
     "Well, he was—I mean          " This lux-
urious woman demanding Jake tantalized
Rose. She still referred to him as her man
since his disappearance. No reports of his
living with another woman having come to
her, she had told her friends that Jake's
mother had come between them,
   "He always had a little some'n' of a mam-
ma's boy about him, you know."
   Poor Jake. Since he left home, his mother
had become for him a loving memory only.
When you saw him, talked to him, he stood
forth as one of those unique types of humanity
who lived alone and were never lonely. You
would hardly wonder who were his father and
mother and what they were like. He, in his
frame and atmosphere, was the Alpha and
Omega himself.
   "I mean— Can you tell me what you
want?" asked Rose.
   "Must I? I didn't know he— Why,
he wrote to me. Said he was ill. And sent
his friend to tell me he was ill. Can't I see
him?"
  "Did he write to you from this here ad-
dress?"
  "Why, certainly. I have his card here."
Madame Laura was fumbling in her hand-
bag.
   A triumphant smile stole into Rose's face.
Jake had no real home and had to use her
address.
   "Is you his sister or what?"
   "I'm a friend," Madame Laura said,
sharply.
   "Well, he's got a nearve." Rose jerked her-
self angrily. "He's mah man."
   "I didn't come all the way here to hear
that," said Madame Laura. "I thought he
was sick and wanting attention."
   "Ain't I good enough to give him all the
attention required without another wom^n
come chasing after him?"
   "Disgusting I" cried Madame Laura. "I
would think this was a spohting house."
   "Gwan with you before I spit in you' eye,"
cried Rose. "You look like some'n just outa
one you'self."
   "You're no lady," retorted Madame Laura,
and she hurried down the steps.
   Rose amplified the story exceedingly in tell-
 ing it to her friends. "I slapped her face for
insulting me," she said.
   Billy Biasse heard of it from the boy dancer
of the Congo. When Billy went again to see
Jake, one of the patrons of his gaming joint
went with him. It was that yellow youth,
the same one that had first invited Zeddy over
to Gin-head Susy's place. He was a prince
of all the day joints and night holes of the
Belt All the shark players of Dixie Red's
pool-room were proud of losing a game to
him, and at the Congo the waiters danced
around to catch his orders. For Yaller Prince,
so they affectionately called him, was living
easy and sweet. Three girls, they said, were
engaged in the business of keeping him
princely—one chocolate-to-the-bone, one teas-
ing-brown, and one yellow. He was always
well dressed in a fine nigger-brown or bottle-
green suit, excessively creased, and spats.
Also he was happy-going and very generous.
But there was something slimy about him.
  Yaller Prince had always admired Jake, in
the way a common-bred admires a thorough-
bred, and hearing from Billy that he was ill,
he had brought him fruit, cake, and ice cream
and six packets of Camels. Yaller Prince
was more intimate with Jake's world than
Billy, who swerved off at a different angle
and was always absorbed in the games and
winnings of men.
  Jake and Yaller had many loose threads to
pick up again and follow for a while. Were
the gin parties going on still at Susy's? What
had become of Miss Curdy? Yaller didn't
know. He had dropped Myrtle Avenue be-
fore Zeddy did.
  "Susy was free with the gin all right, but,
gee whizzard! She was sure black and ugly,
buddy," remarked Yaller.
  "You said it, boh," agreed Jake. "They
was some pair all right, them two womens.
Black and ugly is exactly Susy, and that there
other Curdy creachur all streaky yaller and
ugly. I couldn't love them theah kind,"
   Yaller uttered a little goat laugh. "I kain't
stand them ugly grannies, either. But some-
times they does pay high, buddy, and when
the paying is good, I can always transfer mah
mind."
   "I couldn't foh no price, boh," said Jake.
"Gimme a nice sweet-skin brown. I ain't got
no time foh none o' you' ugly hard-hided
dames."
   Jake asked for Strawberry Lips. He was
living in Harlem again and working long-
shore. Up in Yonkers Zeddy was endeavoring
to overcome his passion for gambling and
start housekeeping with a steady home-loving
woman. He was beginning to realize that
he was not big enough to carry two strong
passions, each pulling him in opposite direc-
tions. Some day a grandson of his born in
Harlem might easily cope with both passions,
might even come to sacrifice woman to gam-
bling. But Zeddy himself was too close to the
savage swell of life,
   Ray entered with a friend whom he intro-
duced as James Grant He was also a stu-
dent working his way through college. But
lacking funds to continue, he had left college
to find a job. He was fourth waiter on Ray's
diner, succeeding the timid boy from Georgia.
As both chairs were in use, Grant sat on the
edge of the bed and Ray tipped up Jake's
suitcase. . . .
   Conversation veered off to the railroad.
   "I am getting sick of it," Ray said. "It's
a crazy, clattering, nerve-shattering life. I
think I'll fall down for good."
   "Why, ef you quit, chappie, I'll nevah go
back on that there white man's sweet char-
iot," said Jake.
   "Whasmat?" asked Billy Biasse. "Kain't
you git along on theah without him?"
   "It's a whole lot the matter you can't under-
stand, Billy. The white folks' railroad ain't
like Lenox Avenue. You can tell on theah
when a paPs a real pal."
   "I got a pal, I got a gal," chanted Billy,
 "heah in mah pocket-book." He patted his
 breast pocket.
   "Go long from here with you' lonesome
 haht, you wolf," cried Jake.
   "Wolf is mah middle name, but . • . I
 ain't bad as I hear, and ain't you mah buddy,
 too?" Billy said to Jake. "Git you'self going
quick and come on down to mah place, son.
The bones am lonesome f oh you."
   Billy and Yaller Prince left.
   "Who is the swell strutter?" Ray's friend
asked.
   "Hml . . . I knowed him long time in
Harlem," said Jake. "He's a good guy. Just
brought me all them eats and cigarettes."
   "What does he work at?" asked Ray.
   "Nothing menial. He's a p-i." . . .
   "Low-down yaller swine," said Ray's
friend, "Harlem is stinking with them."
   "Oh, Yaller is all right, though," said Jake.
"A real good-hearted scout."
   "Good-hearted!" Grant sneered. "A man's
heart is cold dead when he has women doing
that for him. How can a man live that way
and strut in public, instead of hiding himself
underground like a worm?" He turned in-
dignantly to Ray.
   "Search me!" Ray laughed a little. "You
might as well ask why all mulattoes have un-
pleasant voices."
   Grant was slightly embarrassed. He was
yellow-skinned and his voice was hard and
grainy. Jake he-hawed.
   "Not all, chappie, I know some with sweet
voice."
   "Mulattrwj, mon ami." Ray lifted a finger.
"That's an exception. And now, James, let us
forget Jake's kind friend."
   "Oh, I don't mind him talking," said Jake.
"I don't approve of Yaller's trade mahself,
but ef he can do it, well— It's because you
don't know how many womens am running
after the fellahs jest begging them to do that.
They been after me moh time I can remem-
ber. There's lots o' folks living easy and liv-
ing sweet, but . . . "
   "There are as many forms of parasitism as
there are ways of earning a living," said Ray.
   "But to live the life of carrion," sneered
Grant, "fatten-on rotting human flesh. It's
the last ditch, where dogs go to die. When
you drop down in that you cease being
human."
   "You done said it straight out, brother,"
said Jake. "It's a stinking life and I don't like
stinks."
   "Your feeling against that sort of thing is
fine, James," said Ray. "But that's the most I
could say for it. It's all right to start out with
nice theories from an advantageous point in
life. But when you get a chance to learn life
for yourself, it's quite another thing. The
things you call fine human traits don't belong
to any special class or nation or race of people.
Nobody can pull that kind of talk now and
get away with it, least of all a Negro."
   "Why not?" asked Grant. "Can't a Negro
have fine feelings about life?"
   "Yes, but not the old false-fine feelings that
used to be monopolized by educated and cul-
tivated people. You should educate yourself
away from that sort of thing."
[ 242 ]
               A Practical Prank
  "But education is something to make you
finer
   "No, modern education is planned to make
you a sharp, snouty, rooting hog. A Negro
getting it is an anachronism. We ought to
get something new, we Negroes. But we get
our education like—like our houses. When
the whites move out, we move in and take
possession of the old dead stuff. Dead stuff
that this age has no use for."
   "How's that?"
   "Can you ask? You and I were born in
the midst of the illness of this age and have
lived through its agony. • . . Keep your fine
feelings, indeed, but don't try to make a virtue
of them. You'll lose them, then. They'll
become all hollow inside, false and dry as
civilization itself. And civilization is rotten.
We are all rotten who are touched by i t "
   "I am not rotten," retorted Grant, "and I
couldn't bring myself and my ideas down to
the level of such filthy parasites."
   "All men have the disease of pimps in their
hearts," said Ray. "We can't be civilized and
not I have seen your high and mighty civil-
ized people do things that some pimps would
be ashamed of        "
   "You said it, then, and most truly," cried
Jake, who, lying on the bed, was intently fol-
lowing the dialogue.
   "Do it in the name of civilization," con-
tinued Ray. "And I have been forced down
to the level of pimps and found some of them
more than human. One of them was so
strange. . . .    I never thought he could feel
anything. Never thought he could do what
he did. Something so strange and wonderful
and awful, it just lifted me up out of my little
straight thoughts into a big whirl where all of
life seemed hopelessly tangled and colored
without point or purpose."
   "Tell us about it," said Grant
   "All right," said Ray. "I'll tell it"




                    
            HE ALSO LOVED

                   XVII
It was in the winter of 1916 when I first
came to New York to hunt for a job. I was
broke. I was afraid I would have to pawn
my clothes, and it was dreadfully cold. I
didn't even know the right way to go about
looking for a job. I was always timid about
that. For five weeks I had not paid my rent.
I was worried, and Ma Lawton, my landlady,
was also worried. She had her bills to meet.
She was a good-hearted old woman from
South Carolina. Her face was all wrinkled
and sensitive like finely-carved mahogany.
  Every bed-space in the flat was rented. I
was living in the small hall bedroom. Ma
Lawton asked me to give it up. There were
four men sleeping in the front room; two in
an old, chipped-enameled brass bed, one on
a davenport, and the other in a folding chair.
The old lady put a little canvas cot in that
 same room, gave me a pillow and a heavy
quilt, and said I should try and make myself
comfortable there until I got work.
   The cot was all right for me. Although I
hate to share a room with another person and
the fellows snoring disturbed my rest. Ma
Lawton moved into the little room that I had
had, and rented out hers—it was next to the
front room—to a man and a woman.
   The woman was above ordinary height,
chocolate-colored. Her skin was smooth, too
smooth, as if it had been pressed and fashioned
out for ready sale like chocolate candy. Her
hair was straightened out into an Indian
Straight after the present style among Negro
ladies. She had a mongoose sort of a mouth,
with two top front teeth showing. She wore
a long mink coat.
   The man was darker than the woman. His
face was longish, with the right cheek some-
what caved in. It was an interesting face, an
attractive, salacious mouth, with the lower lip
protruding. He wore a bottle-green peg-top
suit, baggy at the hips. His coat hung loose
from his shoulders and it was much longer
than the prevailing style. He wore also a
Mexican hat, and in his breast pocket he car-
ried an Ingersoll watch attached to a heavy
gold chain. His name was Jericho Jones,
and they called him Jerco for short. And
she was Miss Whicher—Rosalind Whicher.
   Ma Lawton introduced me to them and said
I was broke, and they were both awfully nice
to me. They took me to a big feed of corned
beef and cabbage at Burrell's on Fifth Ave-
nue. They gave me a good appetizing drink
of gin to commence with. And we had beer
with the eats; not ordinary beer, either, but
real Budweiser, right off the ice.
   And as good luck sometimes comes pouring
down like a shower, the next day Ma Lawton
got me a job in the little free-lunch saloon
right under her flat. It wasn't a paying job as
far as money goes in New York, but I was
glad to have it. I had charge of the free-
lunch counter. You know the little dry crack-
ers that go so well with beer, and the cheese
and fish and the potato salad. And I served,
besides, spare-ribs and whole boiled potatoes
and corned beef and cabbage for those cus-
tomers who could afford to pay for a lunch. I
got no wages at all, but I got my eats twice
a day. And I made a few tips, also. For
there were about six big black men with plenty
of money who used to eat lunch with us, spe-
cially for our spare-ribs and sweet potatoes.
Each one of them gave me a quarter. I made
enough to pay Ma Lawton for my canvas cot.
   Strange enough, too, Jerco and Rosalind
took a liking to me. And sometimes they
came and ate lunch perched up there at the
counter, with Rosalind the only woman there,
all made up and rubbing her mink coat against
the men. And when they got through eating,
Jerco would toss a dollar bill at me.
   We got very friendly, we three. Rosalind
would bring up squabs and canned stuff from
the German delicatessen in One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street, and sometimes they asked
me to dinner in their room and gave me good
liquor.
   I thought I was pretty well fixed for such

a hard winter. All I had to do as extra work
was keeping the saloon clean. . . .
  One afternoon Jerco came into the saloon
with a man who looked pretty near white.
Of course, you never can tell for sure about a
person's race in Harlem, nowadays, when
there are so many high-yallers floating round
—colored folks that would make Italian and
Spanish people look like Negroes beside them.
But I figured out from his way of talking and
acting that the man with Jerco belonged to the
white race. They went in through the family
entrance into the back room, which was un-
usual, for the family room of a saloon, as you
know, is only for women in the business and
the men they bring in there with them. Real
men don't sit in a saloon here as they do at
home. I suppose it would be sissified.
There's a bar for them to lean on and drink
and joke as long as they feel like.
  The boss of the saloon was a little fidgety
about Jerco and his friend sitting there in the
back. The boss was a short pumpkin-bellied
brown man, a little bald off the forehead,
Twice he found something to attend to in the
back room, although there was nothing at all
there that wanted attending to. . . . I felt
better, and the boss, too, I guess, when Rosa-
lind came along and gave the family room its
respectable American character. I served
Rosalind a Martini cocktail extra dry, and
afterward all three of them, Rosalind, Jerco,
and their friend, went up to Ma Lawton's.
   The two fellows that slept together were
elevator operators in a department store, so
they had their Sundays free. On the after-
noon of the Sunday of the same week that the
white-looking man had been in the saloon
with Jerco, I went upstairs to change my old
shoes—they'd got soaking wet behind the
counter—and I found Ma Lawton talking to
the two elevator fellows.
   The boys had given Ma Lawton notice to
quit. They said they couldn't sleep there com-
fortably together on account of the goings-on
in Rosalind's room. The fellows were mem-
bers of the Colored Y. M. C. A. and were
queerly quiet and pious. One of them was
studying to be a preacher. They were the
sort of fellows that thought going to cabarets
a sin, and that parlor socials were leading
Harlem straight down to hell. They only
went to church affairs themselves. They had
been rooming with Ma Lawton for over a
year. She called them her gentlemen lodgers.
   Ma Lawton said to me: "Have you heard
anything phony outa the next room, dear?"
   "Why, no, Ma," I said, "nothing more un-
usual than you can hear all over Harlem. Be-
sides, I work so late, I am dead tired when I
turn in to bed, so I sleep heavy."
   "Well, it's the truth I do like that there
Jerco an' Rosaline," said Ma Lawton. "They
did seem quiet as lambs, although they was
always havin' company. But Ise got to speak
to them, 'cause I doana wanta lose ma young
mens. . . . But theyse a real nice-acting cou-
ple. Jerco him treats me like him was mah
son. It's true that they doan work like all
poah niggers, but they pays that rent down
good and prompt ehvery week."
   Jerco was always bringing in ice-cream and
cake or something for Ma Lawton. He had a
way about him, and everybody liked him. He
was a sympathetic type. He helped Ma Law-
ton move beds and commodes and he fixed her
clothes lines. I had heard somebody talking
about Jerco in the saloon, however, saying that
he could swing a mean fist when he got his
dander up, and that he had been mixed up in
more than one razor cut-up. He did have a
nasty long razor scar on the back of his right
hand.
   The elevator fellows had never liked Rosa-
lind and Jerco. The one who was studying to
preach Jesus said he felt pretty sure that they
were an ungodly-living couple. He said that
late one night he had pointed out their room
to a woman that looked white. He said the
woman looked suspicious. She was perfumed
and all powdered up and it appeared as if she
didn't belong among colored people.
   "There's no sure telling white from high-
yaller these days," I said. "There are so many
swell-looking quadroons and octoroons of the
race."

   But the other elevator fellow said that one
day in the tenderloin section he had run up
against Rosalind and Jerco together with a
petty officer of marines. And that just put
the lid on anything favorable that could be
said about them.
   But Ma Lawton said: "Well, Ise got to run
mah flat right an' try mah utmost to please
youall, but I ain't wanta dip mah nose too
deep in a lodger's affairs."
   Late that night, toward one o'clock, Jerco
dropped in at the saloon and told me that Ro-
salind was feeling badly. She hadn't eaten a
bite all day and he had come to get a pail of
beer, because she had asked specially for
draught beer. Jerco was worried, too.
   "I hopes she don't get bad," he said. "For
we ain't got a cent o' money. Wese just in on
a streak o' bad luck."
   "I guess she'll soon be all right," I said.
   The next day after lunch I stole a little
time and went up to see Rosalind. Ma Law-
ton was just going to attend to her when I
let myself in, and she said to me: "Now the
poor woman is sick, poor chile, ahm so glad
mah conscience is free and that I hadn't a said
nothing evil t' her."
   Rosalind was pretty sick. Ma Lawton said
it was the grippe. She gave Rosalind hot
whisky drinks and hot milk, and she kept her
feet warm with a hot-water bottle. Rosa-
lind's legs were lead-heavy. She had a pain
that pinched her side like a pair of pincers.
And she cried out for thirst and begged for
draught beer.
   Ma Lawton said Rosalind ought to have a
doctor. "You'd better go an' scares up a white
one," she said to Jerco. "Ise nevah had no
faith in these heah nigger doctors."
   "I don't know how we'll make out without
money," Jerco whined. He was sitting in the
old Morris chair with his head heavy on his
left hand.
   "You kain pawn my coat," said Rosalind.
"Old man Greenbaum will give you two hun-
dred down without looking at it."
   "I won't put a handk'chief o' yourn in the
hock shop," said Jerco. "You'll need you'
stuff soon as you get better. Specially you'
coat. You kain't go anywheres without it."
   "S'posin' I don't get up again," Rosalind
smiled. But her countenance changed sud-
denly as she held her side and moaned. Ma
Lawton bent over and adjusted the pillows.
   Jerco pawned his watch chain and his own
overcoat, and called in a Jewish doctor from
the upper Eighth Avenue fringe of the Belt.
But Rosalind did not improve under medical
treatment. She lay there with a sad, tired
look, as if she didn't really care what hap-
pened to her. Her lower limbs were appar-
ently paralyzed. Jerco told the doctor that
she had been sick unto death like that before.
The doctor shot a lot of stuff into her system.
But Rosalind lay there heavy and fading like
a felled tree.
   The elevator operators looked in on her.
The student one gave her a Bible with a little
red ribbon marking the chapter in St. John's
Gospel about the woman taken in adultery.
He also wanted to pray for her recovery.
Jerco wanted the prayer, but Rosalind said
no. Her refusal shocked Ma Lawton, who
believed in God's word.
   The doctor stopped Rosalind from drinking
beer. But Jerco slipped it in to her when Ma
Lawton was not around. He said he couldn't
refuse it to her when beer was the only thing
she cared for. He had an expensive sweater.
He pawned it. He also pawned their large
suitcase. It was real leather and worth a bit
of money.
   One afternoon Jerco sat alone in the back
room of the saloon and began to cry.
   "I'd do anything. There ain't anything too
low I wouldn't do to raise a little money," he
said.
   "Why don't you hock Rosalind's fur coat?"
I suggested. "That'll give you enough money
for a while."
   "Gawd, no! I wouldn't touch none o' Rosa-
lind's clothes. I jest kain't," he said. "She'll
need them as soon as she's better."
   "Well, you might try and find some sort
of a job, then," I said.
   "Me find a job? What kain I do? I ain't
no good foh no job. I kain't work. I don't
 know how to ask for no job. I wouldn't
know how. I wish I was a woman."
   "Good God! Jerco," I said, "I don't see any
way out for you but some sort of a job."
   "What kain I do? What kain I do?" he
whined. "I kain't do nothing. That's why
I don't wanta hock Rosalind's fur coat. She'll
need it soon as she's better. Rosalind's so wise
about picking up good money. Just like that!"
He snapped his fingers.
   I left Jerco sitting there and went into the
saloon to serve a customer a plate of corned
beef and cabbage.
   After lunch I thought I'd go up to see how
Rosalind was making out. The door was
slightly open, so I slipped in without knock-
ing. I saw Jerco kneeling down by the open
wardrobe and kissing the toe of one of her
brown shoes. He started as he saw me, and
looked queer kneeling there. It was a high
old-fashioned wardrobe that Ma Lawton must
have picked up at some sale. Rosalind's coat
was hanging there, and it gave me a spooky
feeling, for it looked so much more like the
real Rosalind than the woman that was dozing
there on the bed.
   Her other clothes were hanging there, too.
There were three gowns—a black silk, a glossy
green satin, and a flimsy chiffon-like yellow
thing. In a corner of the lowest shelf was a
bundle of soiled champagne-colored silk stock-
ings and in the other four pairs of shoes—one
black velvet, one white kid, and another gold-
finished. Jerco regarded the lot with dog-like
affection.
   "I wouldn't touch not one of her things
until she's better," he said. "I'd sooner hock
the shirt off mah back."
   Which he was preparing to do. He had
three expensive striped silk shirts, presents
from Rosalind. He had just taken two out
of the wardrobe and the other off his back,
and made a parcel of them for old Green-
baum. . . . Rosalind woke up and murmured
that she wanted some beer, . . .
   A little later Jerco came to the saloon with
the pail. He was shivering. His coat collar
was turned up and fastened with a safety pin,
for he only had an undershirt on.
   "I don't know what I'd do if anything hap-
pens to Rosalind," he said. "I kain't live
without her."
   "Oh yes, you can," I said in a not very sym-
pathetic tone. Jerco gave me such a reproach-
ful pathetic look that I was sorry I said it.
   The tall big fellow had turned into a
scared, trembling baby. "You ought to buck
up and hold yourself together," I told him.
"Why, you ought to be game if you like Rosa-
lind, and don't let her know you're down in
the dumps."
   "I'll try," he said. "She don't know how
miserable I am. When I hooks up with a
woman I treat her right, but I never let her
know everything about me. Rosalind is an

awful good woman. The straightest woman
•I ever had, honest."
   I gave him a big glass of strong whisky.
   Ma Lawton came in the saloon about nine
o'clock that evening and said that Rosalind
was dead. "I told Jerco we'd have to sell that
theah coat to give the poah woman a decent
fun'ral, an' he jest brokes down crying like a
baby."
   That night Ma Lawton slept in the kitchen
and put Jerco in her little hall bedroom. He
was all broken up. I took him up a pint of
whisky.
   "I'll nevah find another one like Rosalind,"
he said, "nevah!" He sat on an old black-
framed chair in which a new yellow-var-
nished bottom had just been put. I put my
hand on his shoulder and tried to cheer him
up: "Buck up, old man. Never mind, you'll
find somebody else." He shook his head.
"Perhaps you didn't like the way me and
Rosalind was living. But she was one nat-
urally good woman, all good inside her."
   I felt foolish and uncomfortable. "I always
liked Rosalind, Jerco," I said, "and you, too.
You were both awfully good scouts to me. I
have nothing against her. I am nothing my-
self."
   Jerco held my hand and whimpered:
"Thank you, old top. Youse all right
Youse always been a regular fellan"
   It was late, after two a. m. I went to bed.
And, as usual, I slept soundly.

   Ma Lawton was an early riser. She made
excellent coffee and she gave the two elevator
runners and another lodger, a porter who
worked on Ellis Island, coffee and hot home-
made biscuits every morning. The next morn-
ing she shook me abruptly out of my sleep.
   "Ahm scared to death. Thar's moah tur'ble
trouble. I kain't git in the barfroom and the
hallway's all messy."
   I jumped up, hauled on my pants, and went
to the bathroom. A sickening purplish liquid
coming from under the door had trickled
down the hall toward the kitchen. I took Ma
Lawton's rolling-pin and broke through the
door.
  Jerco had cut his throat and was lying
against the bowl of the water-closet. Some
empty coke papers were on the floor. And
he sprawled there like a great black boar in
a mess of blood.





A FAREWELL FEED

XVIII

Ray and Grant had found jobs on a
freighter that was going down across the Pa-
cific to Australia and from there to Europe.
Ray had reached the point where going any
further on the railroad was impossible. He
had had enough to vomit up of Philadelphia
and Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Washington.
More than enough of the bar-to-bar cama-
raderie of railroad life.
   And Agatha was acting wistfully. He knew
what would be the inevitable outcome of meet-
ing that subtle wistful yearning halfway. Soon
he would become one of the contented hogs
in the pigpen of Harlem, getting ready to lit-
ter little black piggies. If he could have felt
about things as Jake, how different his life
might have been! Just to hitch up for a short
while and be irresponsible! But he and Aga-
tha were slaves of the civilized tradition. . . .
Harlem nigger strutting his stuff. . . Harlem
niggers! How often he had listened to those
phrases, like jets of saliva, spewing from the
lips of his work pals. They pursued, scared,
and haunted him. He was afraid that some
day the urge of the flesh and the mind's han-
kering after the pattern of respectable comfort
might chase his high dreams out of him and
deflate him to the contented animal that was a
Harlem nigger strutting his stuff. "No happy-
nigger strut for me," he would mutter, when
the feeling for Agatha worked like a fever in
his flesh. He saw destiny working in her
large, dream-sad eyes, filling them with the
passive softness of resignation to life, and seek-
ing to encompass and yoke him down as just
one of the thousand niggers of Harlem. And
he hated Agatha and, for escape, wrapped
himself darkly in self-love.
   Oh, he was scared of that long red steel
cage whose rumbling rollers were eternally
heavy-lipped upon shining, continent-circling
rods. If he forced himself to stay longer he
would bang right off his head. Once upon a
time he used to wonder at that great body of
people who worked in nice cages: bank clerks
in steel-wire cages, others in wooden cages,
salespeople behind counters, neat, dutiful, re-
spectful, all of them. God! how could they
carry it on from day to day and remain quietly
obliging and sane? If the railroad had not
been cacophonous and riotous enough to bal-
ance the dynamo roaring within him, he would
have jumped it long ago.
   Life burned in Ray perhaps more intensely
than in Jake. Ray felt more and his range
was wider and he could not be satisfied with
the easy, simple things that sufficed for Jake.
Sometimes he felt like a tree with roots in the
soil and sap flowing out and whispering leaves
drinking in the air. But he drank in more
of life than he could distill into active animal
living. Maybe that was why he felt he had
to write.
   He was a reservoir of that intense emotional
energy so peculiar to his race. Life touched
him emotionally in a thousand vivid ways.
Maybe his own being was something of a
touchstone of the general emotions of his race.
Any upset—a terror-breathing, Negro-baiting
headline in a metropolitan newspaper or the
news of a human bonfire in Dixie—could
make him miserable and despairingly despon-
dent like an injured child. While anyflashof
beauty or wonder might lift him happier than
a god. It was the simple, lovely touch of life
that charmed and stirred him most. . . . The
warm, rich-brown face of a Harlem girl seek-
ing romance . . . a late wet night on Lenox
Avenue, when all forms are soft-shadowy and
the street gleams softly like a still, dim stream
under the misted yellow lights. He remem-
bered once the melancholy-comic notes of a
"Blues" rising out of a Harlem basement be-
fore dawn. He was going to catch an early
train and all that trip he was sweetly, deli-
ciously happy humming the refrain and imag-
ining what the interior of the little dark den
he heard it in was like. "Blues" . . . melan-
choly-comic. That was the key to himself and
to his race. That strange, child-like capacity
for wistfulness-and-laughter. . . .
   No wonder the whites, after five centuries
of contact, could not understand his race.
How could they when the instinct of compre-
hension had been cultivated out of them?
No wonder they hated them, when out of
their melancholy environment the blacks
could create mad, contagious music and high
laughter. . . .
   Going away from Harlem. . . . Harlem!
How terribly Ray could hate it sometimes. Its
brutality, gang rowdyism, promiscuous thick-
ness. Its hot desires. But, oh, the rich blood-
red color of itl The warm accent of its
composite voice, the fruitiness of its laughter,
the trailing rhythm of its "blues" and the
improvised surprises of its jazz. He had
known happiness, too, in Harlem, joy that
glowed gloriously upon him like the high-
noon sunlight of his tropic island home.
   How long would he be able to endure the
life of a cabin boy or mess boy on a freighter?
Jake had tried to dissuade him. "A seaman's
life is no good, chappie, and it's easier to jump
off a train in the field than offn a ship gwine
across the pond."
   "Maybe it's not so bad in the mess," sug-
gested Ray.
   " 'Deed it's worse foh mine, chappie. Stok-
ing and A. B. S. is cleaner work than messing
with raw meat and garbage. I never was in
love with no kitchen job. And tha's why I
ain't none crazy about the white man's chu-
chuing buggy."
   Going away from Harlem. . • .
   Jake invited Ray and Grant to a farewell
feed, for which Billy Biasse was paying. Billy
was a better pal for Jake than Zeddy. Jake
was the only patron of his gambling house
that Billy really chummed with. They made
a good team. Their intimate interests never
clashed. And it never once entered Jake's
head that there was anything ugly about Billy's
way of earning a living. Tales often came
roundabout to Billy of patrons grumbling that
"he was swindling poah hardworking niggers
outa their wages." But he had never heard of
Jake backbiting.
  "The niggers am swindling themselves,"
Billy always retorted. "I runs a gambling
place foh the gang and they pays becas they
love to gamble. I plays even with them mah-
self. I ain't no miser hog like Nije Gridley."
   Billy liked Jake because Jake played for
the fun of the game and then quit. Gambling
did not have a strangle hold upon him any
more than dope or desire did. Jake took what
he wanted of whatever he fancied and . . .
kept going.
   The feed was spread at Aunt Hattie's cook-
shop. Jake maintained that Aunt Hattie's
was the best place for good eats in Harlem.
A bottle of Scotch whisky was on the table
and a bottle of gin.
   While the boys sampled the fine cream to-
mato soup, Aunt Hattie bustled in and out
of the kitchen, with a senile-fond look for Jake
and an affectionate phrase, accompanied by a
salacious lick of her tongue.
   "Why, it's good and long sence you ain't
been in reg'lar to see me, chile. Whar's you
been keeping you'self ?"
  "Ain't been no reg'lar chile of Harlem sence
 I done jump on the white man's chu-chu," said
Jake.
   "And is you still on that theah business?"
Aunt Hattie asked.
   "I don't know ef I is and I don't know ef I
ain't. Ise been laid off sick."
   "Sick! Poah chile, and I nevah knowed so
I could come off'ring you a liT chicken broth.
You jest come heah and eats any time you
wanta, whether youse got money or not."
   Aunt Hattie shuffled back to the kitchen
to pick the nicest piece of fried chicken for
Jake.
   "Always in luck, Jakey," said Billy. "It's
no wonder you nevah see niggers in the bread
line. And you'll nevah so long as theah's good
black womens like Aunt Hattie in Harlem."
   Jake poured Scotch for three.
   "Gimme gin," said Billy.
   Jake called to Aunt Hattie to bring her
glass. "What you gwine to have, Auntie?"
   "Same thing youse having, chile," replied
Aunt Hattie.
   "This heah stuff is from across the pond."
   "Lemme taste it, then. Ef youse always so
eye-filling drinking it, it might ginger up mah
bones some."
   "Well, here's to us, fellahs," cried Billy.
"Let's hope that hard luck nevah turn our
glasses down or shet the door of a saloon in our
face."
   Glasses clinked and Aunt Hattie touched
Jake's twice and closed her eyes as with trem-
bling hand she guzzled.
   "You had better said, 'Le's hope that this
heah Gawd's own don't shut the pub in our
face'," replied Jake. "Prohibition is right
under our tail."
   Everybody laughed. . • • Ray bit into the
tender leg of his fried chicken. The candied
sweet potatoes were sweeter than honey to his
palate.
   "Drink up, fellahs," said Billy.
   "Got to leave you, Harlem," Ray sang
lightly. "Got to turn our backs on you."
   "And our black moon on the Pennsy,"
added Jake.
   "Tomorrow the big blue beautiful ocean,"
said Ray.
   "You'll puke in it," Jake grinned devil-
ishly. "Why not can the idea, chappie? The
sea is hell and when you hits shore it's the
same life all ovah."
   "I guess you are right," replied Ray.
"Goethe said the same thing in Werther"
   "Who is that?" Jake asked.
   "A German         "
   "A boche?"
   "Yes, a great one who made books instead of
war. He was mighty and contented like a
huge tame elephant. Genteel lovers of litera-
ture call that Olympian."
   Jake gripped Ray's shoulder: "Chappie, I
wish I was edjucated mahself."
   "Christ! What for?" demanded Ray.
   "Becaz I likes you." Like a black Pan out
of the woods Jake looked into Ray's eyes with
frank savage affection and Billy Biasse ex-
claimed :
   "Lawdy in heaben! A liT foreign booze
gwine turn you all soft?"
   "Can't you like me just as well as you are?"
asked Ray. "I can't feel any difference at all.
If I was famous as Jack Johnson and rich
as Madame Walker I'd prefer to have you as
my friend than—President Wilson."
   "Like bumbole you would!" retorted Jake.
"Ef I was edjucated, I could understand
things better and be proper-speaking like you
is. . . • And I mighta helped mah li'l sister
to get edjucated, too (she must be a KT
woman, now), and she would be nice-speaking
like you1 sweet brown, good enough foh you to
hitch up with. Then we could all settle down
and make money like edjucated people do, in-
stead a you gwine off to throw you'self away
on some lousy dinghy and me chasing around
all the time lak a hungry dawg."
   "Oh, you heart-breaking, slobbering nig-
ger!" cried Billy Biasse. "That's the stuff
youse got tuck away there under your tough
black hide."
   "Muzzle you' mouf," retorted Jake. "Sure
Ise human. I ain't no lonesome wolf lak you
is."
   "A wolf is all right ef he knows the jungle."
   "The fact is, Jake/' Ray said, "I don't know
what I'll do with my little education. I won-
der sometimes if I could get rid of it and go
and lose myself in some savage culture in the
jungles of Africa. I am a misfit—as the doc-
tors who dole out newspaper advice to the
well-fit might say—a misfit with my little edu-
cation and constant dreaming, when I should
be getting the nightmare habit to hog in a
whole lot of dough like everybody else in this
country. Would you like to be educated to
be like me?"
   "If I had your edjucation I wouldn't be
slinging no hash on the white man's chu-chu,"
Jake responded.
   "Nobody knows, Jake. Anyway, you're
happier than I as you are. The more I learn
the less I understand and love life. All the
learning in this world can't answer this little
question, Why are we living?"
   "Why, becaz Gawd wants us to, chappie,"
said Billy Biasse.
   "Come on le's all go to Uncle Doc's," said
Jake, "and finish the night with a liT sweet
jazzing. This is you last night, chappie.
Make the most of it, f oh there ain't no jazzing
like Harlem jazzing over the other side."
   They went to Uncle Doc's, where they
drank many ceremonious rounds. Later they
went to Leroy's Cabaret. . . .
   The next afternoon the freighter left with
Ray signed on as a mess boy.





THIRD PART



SPRING IN HARLEM

XIX


The lovely trees of Seventh Avenue were
a vivid flame-green. Children, lightly clad,
skipped on the pavement Light open coats
prevailed and the smooth bare throats of
brown girls were a token as charming as the
first pussy-willows. Far and high over all,
the sky was a grand blue benediction, and be-
neath it the wonderful air of New York tasted
like fine dry champagne.
   Jake loitered along Seventh Avenue. Cross-
ing to Lenox, he lazied northward and over
the One Hundred and Forty-ninth Street
bridge into the near neighborhood of the
Bronx. Here, just a step from compactly-
built, teeming Harlem, were frame houses
and open lots and people digging. A colored
couple dawdled by, their arms fondly ca-
ressing each other's hips. A white man fork-
ing a bit of ground stopped and stared ex-
pressively after them.
  Jake sat down upon a mound thick-covered
with dandelions. They glittered in the sun
away down to the rear of a rusty-gray shack.
They filled all the green spaces. Oh, the com-
mon little things were glorious there under
the sun in the tender spring grass. Oh, sweet
to be alive in that sun beneath that sky! And
to be in love—even for one hour of such rare
hours! One day! One night! Somebody with
spring charm, like a dandelion, seasonal and
haunting like a lovely dream that never re-
peats itself. . . . There are hours, there are
days, and nights whose sheer beauty over-
whem us with happiness, that we seek to make
even more beautiful by comparing them with
rare human contacts. . . . It was a day like
this we romped in the grass . . . a night as
soft and intimate as this on which we for-
got the world and ourselves. . . . Hours of
pagan abandon, celebrating ourselves. • • .
   And Jake felt as all men who love love for
love's sake can feel. He thought of the surg-
ing of desire in his boy's body and of his
curious pure nectarine beginnings, without
pain, without disgust, down home in Virginia,
Of his adolescent breaking-through when the
fever-and-pain of passion gave him a wonder-
ful strange-sweet taste of love that he had
never known again. Of rude contacts and
swift satisfactions in Norfolk, Baltimore, and
other coast ports. . . . Havre. . • . The
West India Dock districts of London. . • .
   "Only that cute heart-breaking brown of the
Baltimore," he mused. "A day like this sure
feels like her. Didn't even get her name. O
Lawdy! what a night that theah night was.
Her and I could sure make a hallelujah picnic
outa a day like this." . . .

  Jake and Billy Biasse, leaving Dixie Red's
pool-room together, shuffled into a big excited
ring of people at the angle of Fifth Avenue
and One Hundred and Thirty-third Street.
In the ring three bad actors were staging a
rough play—a yellow youth, a chocolate
youth, and a brown girl.
   The girl had worked herself up to the high-
est pitch of obscene frenzy and was sicking the
dark strutter on to the yellow with all the
filthiest phrases at her command. The two
fellows pranced round, menacing each other
with comic gestures.
   "Why, ef it ain't Yaller Prince!" said Jake.
   "Him sure enough," responded Billy Biasse.
"Guess him done laid off from that black gal
why she's shooting her stinking mouth off at
him."
   "Is she one of his producing goods?"
   "She was. But I heard she done beat up an-
ether gal of hisn—a fair-brown that useta
hand over moh change than her and Yaller
turn' her loose f oh i t " . . .
   "You lowest-down face-artist!" the girl
shrieked at Yaller Prince. "I'll bawl it out
so all a Harlem kain know what you is." And
ravished by the fact that she was humiliating
her one-time lover, she gesticulated wildly.
   "Hit him, Obadiah!" she yelled to the choc-
olate chap. "Hit him I tell you. Beat his
mug up foh him, beat his mug and bleed his
mouf." Over and over again she yelled:
"Bleed his mouf!" As if that was the thing in
Yaller Prince she had desired most. For it
she had given herself up to the most unthink-
able acts of degradation. Nothing had been
impossible to do. And now she would cut and
bruise and bleed that mouth that had once
loved her so well so that he should not smile
upon her rivals for many a day.
    "Two-faced yaller nigger, you does ebery
low-down thing, but you nevah done a lick of
work in you lifetime. Show him, Obadiah.
Beat his face and bleed his mouf."
    "Yaller nigger," cried the extremely bandy-
legged and grim-faced Obadiah, "Ise gwine
kick you pants."
   "I ain't scared a you, black buzzard," Yal-
ler Prince replied in a thin, breathless voice,
and down he went on his back, no one knowing
whether he fell or was tripped up. Obadiah
lifted a bottle and swung it down upon his
opponent. Yaller Prince moaned and blood
bubbled from his nose and his mouth.
   "He's a sweet-back, all right, but he ain't
a strong one," said some one in the crowd.
The police had been conspicuously absent dur-
ing the fracas, but now a baton tap-tapped
upon the pavement and two of them hurried
up. The crowd melted away.
   Jake had pulled Yaller Prince against the
wall and squatted to rest the bleeding head
against his knee.
   "What's matter here now? What's mat-
ter?" the first policeman, with revolver drawn,
asked harshly.
   "Nigger done beat this one up and gone
away from heah, tha's whatsmat," said Billy
Biasse.
   They carried Yaller Prince into a drug-
store for first aid, and the policeman tele-
phoned for an ambulance. . . •
   "We gotta look out foh him in hospital.
He was a pretty good skate for a sweetman,"
Billy Biasse said.
   "Poor Yaller!" Jake, shaking his head, com-
mented ; "it's a bad business."
   "He's plumb crazy gwine around without
said Billy, "with all these cut-thwoat niggers
in Harlem ready to carve up one another foh
a HT insisnificant humpy."
   "It's the same ole life everywhere," re-
sponded Jake. "In white man's town or nig-
ger town. Same bloody-sweet life across the
pond. I done lived through the same blood-
battling foh womens ovah theah in London.
Between white and white and between white
and black. Done see it in the froggies' coun-
try, too. A mess o' fat-headed white soldiers
them was knocked off by apaches. Don't tell
me about cut-thwoat niggers in Harlem. The
whole wul' is boody-crazy         "
   "But Harlem is the craziest place foh that,
I bet you, boh," Billy laughed richly. "The
stuff it gives the niggers brain-fevah, so far as
I see, and this heah wolf has got a big-long
horeczon. Wese too thick together in Har-
lem. Wese all just lumped together without
a chanst to choose and so we nacherally hate
one another. It's nothing to wonder that you1
buddy Ray done runned away from it. Why,
jest the other night I witnessed a nasty stroke.
You know that spade prof that's always there
on the Avenue handing out the big stuff about
niggers and their rights and the wul' and
bolschism. . • . He was passing by the pool-
room with a bunch o' books when a bad nigger
jest lunges out and socks him bif! in the jaw.
The poah frightened prof, started picking up
his books without a word said, so I ups and
asks the boxer what was the meaning o' that
pass. He laughed and asked me ef I really
wanted to know, and before he could squint I
landed him one in the eye and pulled mah gun
on him. I chased him off that corner all right
I tell you, boh, Harlem is lousy with crazy-
bad niggers, as tough as Hell's Kitchen, and
I always travel with mah gun ready."
   "And ef all the niggers did as you does,"
said Jake, "theah'd be a regular gun-toting
army of us up here in the haht of the white
man's city. . . . Guess ef a man stahts gun-
ning after you and means to git you he will
someways        "
   "But you might git him fierst, too, boh, ef
youse in luck."
   "I mean ef you don't know he's gunning
after you," said Jake. "I don't carry no
weapons nonetall, but mah two long hands."
   "Youse a punk customer, then, I tell you,"
declared Billy Biasse, "and no real buddy o'
mine. Ise got a A number one little barker
I'll give it to you. You kain't lay you'self
wide open lak thataways in this heah burg.
No boh!"
   Jake went home alone in a mood different
from the lyrical feelings that had fevered his
blood among the dandelions. "Niggers fixing
to slice one another's throats. Always fighting.
Got to fight if youse a man. It ain't because
Yaller was a p-i. . . . It coulda been me or
anybody else. Wese too close and thick in
Harlem. Need some moh fresh air between
us. . . . Hitting out at a edjucated nigger
minding his own business and without a word
said. . . . Guess Billy is right toting his silent
dawg around with him. He's gotta, though,
when he's running a gambling joint. All the
same, I gambles mahself and you nevah know
when niggers am gwineta git crazy-mad.
Guess I'll take the liT dawg offn Billy, all
right. It ain't costing me nothing." . . .
   In the late afternoon he lingered along
Seventh Avenue in a new nigger-brown suit.
The fine gray English suit was no longer serv-
iceable for parade. The American suit did
not fit him so well. Jake saw and felt i t . . .
The only thing he liked better about the Amer-
ican suit was the pantaloons made to wear with
a belt. And the two hip pockets. If you have
the American habit of carrying your face-
cloth on the hip instead of sticking it up in
your breast pocket like a funny decoration,
and if, like Billy Biasse, you're accustomed to
toting some steely thing, what is handier than
two hip pockets?
   Except for that, Jake had learned to prefer
the English cut of clothes. Such first-rate
tweed stuff, and so cheap and durable com-
pared with American clothes! Jake knew
nothing of tariff laws anil naively wondered
why the English did not spread their fine
cloth all over the American clothes market.
• . • He worked up his shoulders in his nig-
ger-brown coat. It didn't feel right, didn't
hang so well. There was something a little too
chic in American clothes. Not nearly as aw-
ful as French, though, Jake horse-laughed,
vividly remembering the popular French
styles. Broad-pleated, long-waisted, tight-
bottomed pants and close-waisted coats whose
breast pockets stick out their little comic signs
of color. . . . Better color as a savage wears
it, or none at all, instead of the Frenchman's
peeking bit. The French must consider the
average bantam male killing handsome, and
so they make clothes to emphasize all the an-
gular elevated rounded and pendulated parts
of the anatomy. . . .
   The broad pavements of Seventh Avenue
were colorful with promenaders. Brown
babies in white carriages pushed by little black
brothers wearing nice sailor suits. All the
various and varying pigmentation of the hu-
man race were assembled there: dim brown,
clear brown, rich brown, chestnut, copper,
yellow, near-white, mahogany, and gleaming
anthracite. Charming brown matrons, proud
yellow matrons, dark nursemaids pulled a
zigzag course by their r e s t i v e little
charges, . . .
   And the elegant strutters in faultless spats;
West Indians, carrying canes and wearing
trousers of a different pattern from their coats
and vests, drawing sharp comments from their
Afro-Yank rivals.
   Jake mentally noted: "A dickty gang sure
as Harlem is black, but         "
   The girls passed by in bright batches of
color, according to station and calling. High
class, menial class, and the big trading class,
flaunting a front of chiffon-soft colors framed
in light coats, seizing the fashion of the day to
stage a lovely leg show and spilling along the
Avenue the perfume of Djer-kiss, Fougere,
and Brown Skin.
   "These heah New York gals kain most sar-
tainly wear some moh clothes," thought Jake,
"jest as nifty as them French gals." . . .
   Twilight was enveloping the Belt, merging
its life into a soft blue-black symphony. . . .
The animation subsided into a moment's
pause, a muffled, tremulous soul-stealing note
. . . then electric lights flared everywhere,
flooding the scene with dazzling gold.

  Jake went to Aunt Hattie's to feed. Billy
Biasse was there and a gang of longshoremen
who had boozed and fed and were boozing
again and, touched by the tender spring night,
were swapping love stories and singing:
"Back home in Dixie is a   brown gal   there,
 Back home in Dixie is a   brown gal   there,
 Back home in Dixie is a   brown gal   there,
   Back home in Dixie I    was bawn    in.

"Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
 Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
 Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
   And I wonder what nigger is saying to her a bootiful
       good mawnin'."

  A red-brown West Indian among them vol-
unteered to sing a Port-of-Spain song. It im-
mortalized the drowning of a young black
sailor. It was made up by the bawdy colored
girls of the port, with whom the deceased had
been a favorite, and became very popular
among the stevedores and sailors of the island.
       "Ring the bell again,
        Ring the bell again,
        Ring the bell again,
        But the sharks won't puke him up.
        Oh, ring the bell again.

        "Empty is you* room,
         Empty is you' room,
         Empty is you' room,
         But you find one in the sea.
         Oh, empty is you' room.

       "Ring the bell again,
        Ring the bell again,
        Ring the bell again,
        But we know who feel the pain.
        Oh, ring the bell again."

  The song was curious, like so many Negro
songs of its kind, for the strange strengthening
of its wistful melody by a happy rhythm that
was suitable for dancing.

  Aunt Hattie, sitting on a low chair, was
swaying to the music and licking her lips, her
wrinkled features wearing an expression of
ecstatic delight. Billy Biasse offered to stand
a bottle of gin. Jake said he would also sing
a sailor song he had picked up in Limehouse.
And so he sang the chanty of Bullocky Bill
who went up to town to see a fair young
maiden. But he could not remember most of
the words, therefore Bullocky Bill cannot be
presented here. But Jake was boisterously ap-
plauded for the scraps of it that he rendered.
   The singing finished, Jake confided to
Billy: "I sure don't feel lak spending a lone-
some night this heah mahvelous night."
   "Ain't nobody evah lonely in Harlem that
don't wanta be," retorted Billy. "Even yours
truly lone Wolf ain't nevah lonesome."
   "But I want something as mahvelous as
mah feelings."
   Billy laughed and fingered his kinks:
"Harlem has got the right stuff, boh, for all
feelings."
   "Youse right enough," Jake agreed, and fell
into a reverie of full brown mouth and mis-
chievous brown eyes all composing a perfect
whole for his dark-brown delight
  "You wanta take a turn down the Congo?"
asked Billy.
  "Ah no."
  "Rose ain't there no moh."
  Rose had stepped up a little higher in her
profession and had been engaged to tour the
West in a Negro company.
  "All the same, I don't feel like the Congo
tonight," said Jake. "Le's go to Sheba Palace
and jazz around a little."

   Sheba Palace was an immense hall that was
entirely monopolized for the amusements of
the common workaday Negroes of the Belt.
Longshoremen, kitchen-workers, laundresses,
and W. C. tenders—all gravitated to the
Sheba Palace, while the upper class of servi-
tors—bell-boys, butlers, some railroad workers
and waiters, waitresses and maids of all sorts—
patronized the Casino and those dancings that
were given under the auspices of the churches.
  The walls of Sheba Palace were painted
with garish gold, and tables and chairs were
screaming green. There were green benches
also lined round the vast dancing space. The
music stopped with an abrupt clash just as
Jake entered. Couples and groups were
drinking at tables. Deftly, quickly the waiters
slipped a way through the tables to serve and
collect the money before the next dance. . . .
Little white-filled glasses, little yellow-filled
glasses, general guzzling of gin and whisky.
Little saucy brown lips, rouged maroon, suck-
ing up iced creme de menthe through straws,
and many were sipping the golden Virginia
Dare, in those days the favorite wine of the
Belt. On the green benches couples lounged,
sprawled, and, with the juicy love of spring
and the liquid of Bacchus mingled in fascinat-
ing white eyes curious in their dark frames,
apparently oblivious of everything outside of
themselves, were loving in every way but . . •
   The orchestra was tuning up. . . . The
first notes fell out like a general clapping for
merrymaking and chased the dancers running,
sliding, shuffling, trotting to the floor. Little
girls energetically chewing Spearmint and
showing all their teeth dashed out on the floor
and started shivering amorously, itching for
their partners to come. Some lads were
quickly on their feet, grinning gayly and im-
provising new steps with snapping of fingers
while their girls were sucking up the last of
their creme de menthe. The floor was large
and smooth enough for anything.
  They had a new song-and-dance at the
Sheba and the black fellows were playing it
with eclat.
     Brown gal crying on the corner,
       Yaller gal done stole her candy,
     Buy him spats and feed him cream,
       Keep him strutting fine and dandy.

         Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you* ma-ma,
           Yaller gal can't make you fall,
         For Ise got some loving pa-pa
           Yaller gal ain't got at all.

"Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you5 ma-ma." The black
players grinned and swayed and let the music
go with all their might. The yellow in the
music must have stood out in their imagina-
tion like a challenge, conveying a sense of that
primitive, ancient, eternal, inexplicable an-
tagonism in the color taboo of sex and society.
The dark dancers picked up the refrain and
jazzed and shouted with delirious joy, "Tell
me, pa-pa, Ise you' ma-ma." The handful of
yellow dancers in the crowd were even more
abandoned to the spirit of the song. "White,"
"green," or "red" in place of "yaller" might
have likewise touched the same deep-sound-
ing, primitive chord. . . .
     Yaller gal sure wants mah pa-pa,
       But mah chocolate turns her down,
     'Cause he knows there ain't no loving
       Sweeter than his loving brown.

         Telli me, pa-pa, Ise you* ma-ma,
           Yaller gal can't make you fall,
         For Ise got some loving pa-pa
           Yaller gal ain't got atall.

   Jake was doing his dog with a tall, shapely
quadroon girl when, glancing up at the bal-
cony, he spied the little brown that he had en-
tirely given over as lost. She was sitting at a
table while "Tell me pa-pa" was tickling
everybody to the uncontrollable point—she
was sitting with her legs crossed and well ex-
posed, and, with the aid of the mirror attached
to her vanity case, was saucily and non-
chalantly powdering her nose.
   The quadroon girl nearly fell as Jake, with-
out a word of explanation, dropped her in the
midst of a long slide and, dashing across the
floor, bounded up the stairs.
   "Hello, sweetness! What youse doing
here?"
   The girl started and knocked over a glass of
whisky on the floor: "O my Gawd! it's mah
heartbreaking daddy! Where was you all this
time?"
   Jake drew a chair up beside her, but she
jumped up: "Lawdy, no! Le's get outa here
quick, 'cause Ise got somebody with me and
now I don't want see him no moh."
   "'Sawright, I kain take care of mahself,"
said Jake.
   "Oh, honey, no! I don't want no trouble and
he's a bad actor, that nigger. See, I done
break his glass o' whisky and tha's bad luck.
Him's just theah in the lav'try. Come quick.
I don't want him to ketch us."
  And the flustered little brown heart hustled
Jake down the stairs and out of the Sheba
Palace.
      "Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you* ma-ma . . ."
  The black shouting chorus pursued them
outside.
  "There ain't no yaller gal gwine get mah
honey daddy thisanight." She took Jake's arm
and cuddled up against his side.
  "Aw no, sweetness. I was dogging it with
one and jest drops her flat when I seen you."
  "And there ain't no nigger in the wuF I
wouldn't ditch foh you, daddy. O Lawdy!
How Ise been crazy longing to meet you
again."




 
FELICE

XX

"Whar's we gwine?" Jake asked.
   They had walked down Madison Avenue,
turned on One Hundred and Thirtieth Street,
passing the solid gray-grim mass of the whites'
Presbyterian church, and were under the tim-
idly whispering trees of the decorously silent
and distinguished Block Beautiful. . . . The
whites had not evacuated that block yet. The
black invasion was threatening it from One
Hundred and Thirty-first Street, from Fifth
Avenue, even from behind in One Hundred
and Twenty-ninth Street. But desperate,
frightened, blanch-faced, the ancient sepul-
chral Respectability held on. And giving
them moral courage, the Presbyterian church
frowned on the corner like a fortress against
the invasion. The Block Beautiful was worth
a struggle. With its charming green lawns
and quaint white-fronted houses, it preserved
the most Arcadian atmosphere in all New
York. When there was a flat to let in that
block, you would have to rubber-neck terribly
before you saw in the corner of a window-pane
a neat little sign worded, Vacancy. But
groups of loud-laughing-and-acting black
swains and their sweethearts had started in us-
ing the block for their afternoon promenade.
That was the limit: the desecrating of that
atmosphere by black love in the very shadow
of the gray, gaunt Protestant church! The
Ancient Respectability was getting ready to
flee. • • .
   The beautiful block was fast asleep. Up in
the branches the little elfin green things were
barely whispering. The Protestant church
was softened to a shadow. The atmosphere
was perfect, the moment sweet for something
sacred.
   The burning little brownskin cuddled up
against Jake's warm tall person: "Kiss me,
daddy," she said. He folded her closely to
him and caressed her. . . .
   "But whar was you all this tur'bly long
time?" demanded Jake.
   Light-heartedly, she frisky like a kitten,
they sauntered along Seventh Avenue, far
from the rough environment of Sheba Palace.
   "Why, daddy, I waited f oh you all that day
after you went away and all that night! Oh, I
had a heart-break on f oh you, I was so tur'bly
disappointed. I nev' been so crazy yet about
no man. Why didn't you come back, honey?"
   Jake felt foolish, remembering why. He
said that shortly after leaving her he had dis-
covered the money and the note. He had met
some of his buddies of his company who had
plenty of money, and they all went celebrating
until that night, and by then he had forgotten
the street.
   "Mah poor daddy!"
   "Even you' name, sweetness, I didn't know.
Ise Jake Brown—Jake for ev'body. What is
you', sweetness?"
  "They calls me Felice."
   "Felice. . . . But I didn't fohget the caba-
ret nonatalL And I was back theah hunting
foh you that very night and many moh after,
but I nevah finds you. Where was you?"
  "Why, honey, I don't lives in cabarets all
mah nights 'cause Ise got to work. Further-
more, I done went away that next week to
Palm Beach        "
   "Palm Beach! What foh?"
   "Work of course. What you think? You
done brokes mah heart in one mahvelous night
and neveh returns foh moh. And I was jest
right down sick and tiahd of Harlem. So I
went away to work. I always work. . • • I
know what youse thinking, honey, but I ain't
in the reg'lar business. 'Cause Ise a funny
gal. I kain't go with a fellah ef I don't like
him some. And ef he kain make me like him
enough I won't take nothing off him and ef he
kain make me fall the real way, I guess I'd
work like a wop for him."
  "Youse the baby I been waiting foh all
along," said Jake. "I knowed you was the
goods."
  "Where is we gwine, daddy?"
  "Ise got a swell room, sweetness, up in
'Fortieth Street whar all them dickty shines
live."
   "But kain you take me there?"
   "Sure thing, baby. Ain't no nigger renting
a room in Harlem whar he kain't have his HT
company."
   "Oh, goody, goody, honey-stick 1"
   Jake took Felice home to his room. She
was delighted with it. It was neat and orderly.
   "Your landlady must be one of them proper
persons," she remarked. "How did you find
such a nice place way up here?"
   "A chappie named Ray got it foh me when
I was sick       "
   "O Lawdyl was it serious? Did they all
take good care a you?"
   "It wasn't nothing much and the fellahs was
all awful good spohts, especially Ray."
   "Who is this heah Ray?"
   Jake told her. She smoothed out the
counterpane on the bed, making a mental note
that it was just right for two. She admired
the geraniums in the window that looked on
the large court.
   "These heah new homes f oh niggers am sure
nice," she commented.
   She looked behind the curtain where his
clothes were hanging and remarked his old
English suit. Then she regarded archly his
new nigger-brown rig-out.
   "You was moh illegant in that other, but I
likes you in this all the same."
   Jake laughed. "Everything's gotta wear
out some day."
   Felice hung round his neck, twiddling her
pretty legs.
   He held her as you might hold a child and
she ruffled his thick mat of hair and buried
her face in it. She wriggled down with a little
scream:
   "Oh, I gotta go get mah bag!"
   "I'll come along with you," said Jake.
   "No, lemme go alone. I kain manage better
by mahself."
   "But suppose that nigger is waiting theah
foh you? You better lemme come along."
   "No, honey, I done figure he's waiting still
in Sheba Palace, or boozing. Him and some
friends was all drinking befoh and he was
kinder fulL Ise sure he ain't gone home.
Anyway, I kain manage by mahself all right,
but ef you comes along and we runs into
him—•. No, honey, you stays right here. I
don't want messing up in no blood-bafL
Theah's too much a that in Harlem."
   They compromised, Felice agreeing that
Jake should accompany her to the corner of
Seventh Avenue and One Hundred and
Thirty-fifth Street and wait for her there.
She had not the faintest twinge of conscience
herself. She had met the male that she pre-
ferred and gone with him, leaving the one that
she was merely makeshifting with. It was a
very simple and natural thing to hen There
was nothing mean about it. She was too nice
to be mean. However, she was aware that in
her world women scratched and bit into each
other's flesh and men razored and gunned at
each other over such things. . . .
   Felice recalled one memorable afternoon
when two West Indian women went for each
other in the back yard of a house in One Hun-
dred and Thirty-second Street. One was a
laundress, a whopping brown woman who had
come to New York from Colon, and the other
was a country girl, a buxom Negress from
Jamaica. They were quarreling over a vain
black bantam, one of the breed that delight in
women's scratching over them. The laundress
had sent for him to come over from the Canal
Zone to New York. They had lived together
there and she had kept him, making money in
all the ways that a gay and easy woman can
on the Canal Zone. But now the laundress
bemoaned the fact that "sence mah man come
to New Yawk, him jest gone back on me in the
queerest way you can imagine."
   Her man, in turn, blamed the situation
upon her, said she was too aggressive and
mannish and had harried the energy out of
him. But the other girl seemed to endow him
again with virility. . . . After keeping him
in Panama and bringing him to New York,
the laundress hesitated about turning her male
loose in Harlem, although he was apparently
of no more value to her. But his rejuvenating
experience with the younger girl had infuri-
ated the laundress* A sister worker from
Alabama, to whom she had confided her secret
tragedy, had hinted: "Lawdyl sistah, that sure
sounds phony-like. Mebbe you' man is jest
playing 'possum with you." And the laun-
dress was crazy with suspicion and jealousy
and a feeling for revenge. She challenged her
rival to fight the affair out. They were all
living in the same house. . . .
   Felice also lived in that house. And one
afternoon she was startled by another girl
from an adjoining room pounding on her
door and shrieking: "Open foh the love of
Jesus! . • . Theah's sweet hell playing in the
back yard."
   The girls rushed to the window and saw the
two black women squaring off at each other
down in the back yard. They were stark
naked.
   After the challenge, the women had decided
to fight with their clothes off. An old custom,
perhaps a survival of African tribalism, had
been imported from some remote West Indian
hillside into a New York back yard. Perhaps,
the laundress had thought, that with her heavy
and powerful limbs she could easily get her
rival down and sit on her, mauling her prop-
erly. But the black girl was as nimble as a
wild goat. She dodged away from the laun-
dress who was trying to get ahold of her big
bush of hair, and suddenly sailing fullfront
into her, she seized the laundress, shoulder
and neck, and butted her twice on the fore-
head as only a rough West Indian country girl
can butt. The laundress staggered backward,
groggy, into a bundle of old carpets. But she
rallied and came back at the grinning Negress
again. The laundress had never learned the
brutal art of butting. The girl bounded up
at her forehead with another well-aimed butt
and sent her reeling flop on her back among
the carpets. The girl planted her knees upon
the laundress's high chest and wrung her hair.
   "You don't know me, but I'll make you re-
member me foreber. I'll beat you' mug ugly.
There!" Baml Bam! She slapped the laun-
dress's face.
   "Git off mah stomach, nigger gal, and leave
me in peace," the laundress panted. The en-
tire lodging-house was in a sweet fever over
the event Those lodgers whose windows gave
on the street had crowded into their neigh-
bors' rear rooms and some had descended into
the basement for a close-up view. Apprised
of the naked exhibtion, the landlord hurried
in from the corner saloon and threatened the
combatants with the police. But there was
nothing to do. The affair was settled and the
women had already put their shifts on.
   The women lodgers cackled gayly over the
novel staging of the fight.
   "It sure is better to disrobe like that, befoh
battling," one declared. "It turn you' hands
and laigs loose for action."
   "And saves you' clothes being ripped into
ribbons," said another.

   A hen-fight was more fun than a cock-fight,
thought Felice, as she hastily threw her things
into her bag. The hens pluck feathers, but
they never wring necks like the cocks.
   And Jake. Standing on the corner, he
waited, restive, nervous. But, unlike Felice,
his thought was not touched by the faintest
fear of a blood battle. His mind was a circle
containing the girl and himself only, making
a thousand plans of the joys they would create
together. She was a prize to hold. Had
slipped through his fingers once, but he wasn't
ever going to lose her again. That little model
of warm brown flesh. Each human body has
its own peculiar rhythm, shallow or deep or
profound. Transient rhythms that touch and
pass you, unrememberable, and rhythms un-
forgetable. Imperial rhythms whose vivid
splendor blinds your sight and destroys your
taste for lesser ones.
   Jake possessed a sure instinct for the right
rhythm. He was connoisseur enough. But
although he had tasted such a varied many,
he was not raw animal enough to be undis-
criminating, nor civilized enough to be
cynical. • . .
   Felice came hurrying as much as she could
along One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street,,
bumping a cumbersome portmanteau on the
pavement and holding up one unruly lemon-
bright silk stocking with her left hand. Jake
took the bag from her. They went into a
delicatessen store and bought a small cold
chicken, ham, mustard, olives, and bread.
They stopped in a sweet shop and bought a
box of chocolate-and-vanilla ice-cream and
cake. Felice also took a box of chocolate
candy. Their last halt was at a United Cigar
Store, where Jake stocked his pockets with a
half a dozen packets of Camels. . . .
   Felice had just slipped out of her charming
strawberry frock when her hands flew down to
her pretty brown leg, "O Gawd! I done foh-
get something!" she cried in a tone that inti-
mated something very precious.
   "What's it then?" demanded Jake.
   "It's mah luck," she said. "It's the fierst
thing that was gived to me when I was born.
Mah gran'ma gived it and I wears it always
foh good luck."
   This lucky charm was an old plaited neck-
lace, leathery in appearance, with a large,
antique blue bead attached to it, that Felice's
grandmother (who had superintended her
coming into the world) had given to her im-
mediately after that event. Her grandmother
had dipped the necklace into the first water
that Felice was washed in. Felice had reli-
giously worn her charm around her neck all
during her childhood. But since she was
grown to ripe girlhood and low-cut frocks
were the fashion and she loved them so much,
she had transferred the unsightly necklace
from her throat to her leg. But before going
to the Sheba Palace she had unhooked the
thing. And she had forgotten it there in the
closet, hanging by a little nail against the
wash-bowl.
   "I gotta go get it," she said.
   "Aw no, you won't bother," drawled Jake.
And he drew the little agitated brown body to
him and quieted it. "It was good luck you
fohget it, sweetness, for it made us find one
another."
   "Something to that, daddy," Felice said,
and her mouth touched his mouth.
   They wove an atmosphere of dreams around
them and were lost in it for a week. Felice
asked the landlady to let her use the kitchen
to cook their meals at home. They loitered
over the wide field and lay in the sweet grass
of Van Cortlandt Park. They went to the
Negro Picture Theater and held each other's
handy gazing in raptures at the crude pictures.
It was odd that all these cinematic pictures
about the blacks were a broad burlesque of
their home and love life. These colored screen
actors were all dressed up in expensive eve-
ning clothes, with automobiles, and menials,
to imitate white society people. They laughed
at themselves in such roles and the laughter
was good on the screen. They pranced and
grinned like good-nigger servants, who know
that "mas'r" and "missus," intent on being
amused, are watching their antics from an up-
per window. It was quite a little funny and
the audience enjoyed it. Maybe that was the
stuff the Black Belt wanted.



                    
THE GIFT THAT BILLY GAVE

XXI

We gotta celebrate to-night," said
Felice when Saturday came round again.
Jake agreed to do anything she wanted. Mon-
day they would have to think of working. He
wanted to dine at Aunt Hattie's, but Felice
preferred a "niftier" place. So they dined at
the Nile Queen restaurant on Seventh Avenue.
After dinner they subwayed down to Broad-
way. They bought tickets for the nigger
heaven of a theater, whence they watched
high-class people make luxurious love on the
screen. They enjoyed the exhibition. There
is no better angle from which one can look
down on a motion picture than that of the nig-
ger heaven.
   They returned to Harlem after the show in
a mood to celebrate until morning. Should
they go to Sheba Palace where chance had
been so good to them, or to a cabaret? Senti-
ment was in favor of Sheba Palace but her
love of the chic and novel inclined Felice
toward an attractive new Jewish-owned
Negro cabaret. She had never been there and
could not go under happier circumstances.
   The cabaret was a challenge to any other in
Harlem. There were one or two cabarets in
the Belt that were distinguished for their im-
polite attitude toward the average Negro
customer, who could not afford to swill expen-
sive drinks. He was pushed off into a corner
and neglected, while the best seats and service
were reserved for notorious little gangs of
white champagne-guzzlers from downtown.
   The new cabaret specialized in winning the
good will of the average blacks and the ap-
proval of the fashionable set of the Belt. The
owner had obtained a college-bred Negro to
be manager, and the cashier was a genteel mu-
latto girl. On the opening night the manage-
ment had sent out special invitations to the
high lights of the Negro theatrical world and
free champagne had been served to them. The
new cabaret was also drawing nightly a crowd
of white pleasure-seekers from downtown.
The war was just ended and people were hun-
gry for any amusements that were different
from the stale stock things.
   Besides its spacious floor, ladies1 room, gen-
tlemen's room and coat-room, the new cabaret
had a bar with stools, where men could get to-
gether away from their women for a quick
drink and a little stag conversation. The bar
was a paying innovation. The old-line caba-
rets were falling back before their formidable
rival. . . .
   The fashionable Belt was enjoying itself
there on this night. The press, theatrical, and
music world were represented. Madame
Mulberry was there wearing peacock blue
with patches of yellow. Madame Mul-
berry was a famous black beauty in the
days when Fifty-third Street was the hub of
fashionable Negro life. They called her then,
Brown Glory. She was the wife of Dick
Mulberry, a promoter of Negro shows. She
had no talent for the stage herself, but she
knew all the celebrated stage people of her
race. She always gossiped reminiscently of
Bert Williams, George Walker and Aida
Overton Walker, Anita Patti Brown and Cole
and Johnson.
   With Madame Mulberry sat Maunie
Whitewing with a dapper cocoa-brown youth
by her side, who was very much pleased by his
own person and the high circle to which it
gained him admission. Maunie was married
to a nationally-known Negro artist, who lived
simply and quietly. But Maunie was noto-
rious among the scandal sets of Brooklyn,
New York, and Washington. She was al-
ways creating scandals wherever she went,
gallivanting around with improper persons at
improper places, such as this new cabaret.
Maunie's beauty was Egyptian in its exoticism
and she dared to do things in the manner of
ancient courtesans. Dignified colored matrons
frowned upon her ways, but they had to invite
her to their homes, nevertheless, when they
asked her husband. But Maunie seldom went.
   The sports editor of Colored Life was also
there, with a prominent Negro pianist. It
was rumored that Bert Williams might drop
in after midnight Madame Mulberry was
certain he would*
   James Reese Europe, the famous master of
jazz, was among a group of white admirers.
He had just returned from France, full of
honors, with his celebrated band. New York
had acclaimed him and America was ready to
applaud. • . . That was his last appearance
in a Harlem cabaret before his heart was shot
out during a performance in Boston by a sav-
age buck of his race. . . •
   Prohibition was on the threshold of the
country and drinking was becoming a luxury,
but all the joy-pacers of the Belt who adore
the novel and the fashionable and had a dollar
to burn had come together in a body to fill the
new cabaret
   The owner of the cabaret knew that Negro
people, like his people, love the pageantry of
life, the expensive, the fine, the striking, the
showy, the trumpet, the blare—sumptuous set-
tings and luxurious surroundings. And so he
had assembled his guests under an enchanting-
blue ceiling of brilliant chandeliers and a
dome of artificial roses bowered among green
leaves. Great mirrors reflected the variegated
colors and poses. Shaded, multi-colored side-
lights glowed softly along the golden walls.
   It was a scene of blazing color. Soft, bar-
baric, burning, savage, clashing, planless col-
ors—all rioting together in wonderful har-
mony. There is no human sight so rich as an
assembly of Negroes ranging from lacquer
black through brown to cream, decked out in
their ceremonial finery. Negroes are like
trees. They wear all colors naturally. And
Felice, rouged to a ravishing maroon, and
wearing a close-fitting, chrome-orange frock
and cork-brown slippers, just melted into the
scene.
   They were dancing as Felice entered and
she led Jake right along into i t

       "Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you ma-ma . . ."

   Every cabaret and dancing-hall was playing
it. It was the tune for the season. It had car-
ried over from winter into spring and was still
the favorite. Oh, ma-ma! Oh, pa-pa!
 \ The dancing stopped. . . . A brief interval
and a dwarfish, shiny black man wearing a
red-brown suit, with kinks straightened and
severely plastered down in the Afro-American
manner, walked into the center of the floor and
began singing. He had a massive mouth,
which he opened wide, and a profoundly big
and quite good voice came out of it.
"I'm so doggone fed up, I don't know what to do.
 Can't find a pal that's constant, can't find a gal that's
      true.
 But I ain't gwine to worry 'cause mah buddy was a ham;
 Ain't gwine to cut mah throat 'cause mah gal ain't worf
      a damn.
 Ise got the blues all ovah, the coal-black biting blues,
 Like a prowling tom-cat that's got the low-down mews.

'I'm gwine to lay me in a good supply a gin,
 Foh gunning is a crime, but drinking ain't no sin.
 I won't do a crazy deed 'cause of a two-faced pal,
 Ain't gwineta break mah heart ovah a no-'count gal
 Ise got the blues all ovah, the coal-black biting blues,
 Like a prowling tom-cat that's got the low-down mews."

   There was something of the melancholy 
charm of Tschaikovsky in the melody. The
black singer made much of the triumphant
note of strength that reigned over the sad mo-
tif. When he sang, "I ain't gwine to cut mah
throat," "Ain't gwine to break mah heart,"
his face became grim and full of will as a bull-
dog's.
    He conquered his audience and at the finish
he was greeted with warm applause and a
shower of silver coins ringing on the tiled
pavement. An enthusiastic white man waved
a dollar note at the singer and, to show that
Negroes could do just as good or better,
Maunie Whitewing's sleek escort imitated the
gesture with a two-dollar note. That started
off the singer again.
      "Ain't gwine to cut mah throat . • .
       Ain't gwine to break mah heart . . ."

   "That zigaboo is a singing fool," remarked
Jake.
   Billy Biasse entered resplendent in a new
bottle-green suit, and joined Jake and Felice
at their table.
    "What you say, Billy?" Jake's greeting.
    "I say Ise gwineta blow. Toss off that theah
liquor, you two. Ise gwineta blow champagne
 as mah compliments, old top." . . .
    "Heah's good luck t'you, boh, and plenty of
joy-stuff and happiness," continued Billy,
when the champagne was poured. "You sure
been hugging it close this week."
   Jake smiled and looked foolish. . . . The
second cook, whom he had not seen since he
quitted the railroad, entered the cabaret with
a mulatto girl on his arm and looked round
for seats. Jake stood up and beckoned him
over to his table.
   "It's awright, ain't it Billy?" he asked his
friend.
   "Sure. Any friend a yourn is awright."
   The two girls began talking fashion around
the most striking dresses in the place. Jake
asked about the demoted rhinoceros. He was
still on the railroad, the second cook said, tak-
ing orders from another chef, "jest as savage
and mean as ever, but not so moufy. I hear
you friend Ray done quit us for the ocean,
Jakey." . . .
   There was still champagne to spare, never-
theless the second cook invited the boys to go
up to the bar for a stiff drink of real liquor.
   Negroes, like all good Americans, love a
bar. I should have said, Negroes under
Anglo-Saxon civilization. A bar has a charm
all of its own that makes drinking there pleas-
anter. We like to lean up against it, with a
foot on the rail. We will leave our women
companions and choice wines at the table to
snatch a moment of exclusive sex solidarity
over a thimble of gin at the bar.
   The boys left the girls to the fashions for a
little while. Billy Biasse, being a stag as al-
ways, had accepted the invitation with
alacrity. He loved to indulge in naked man-
stuff talk, which would be too raw even for
Felice's ears. As they went out Maunie
Whitewing (she was a traveled woman of the
world and had been abroad several times with
and without her husband) smiled upon Jake
with a bold stare and remarked to Madame
Mulberry: "Quel beau gargont J'aimerais
beaucoup faire Vamour avec lui."
   "Superb!" agreed Madame Mulberry, ap-
preciating Jake through her lorgnette.
   Felice caught Maunie Whitewing's carnal
stare at her man and said to the mulatto girl:
"Jest look at that high-class hussy!"
   And the dapper escort tried to be obviously
unconcerned.

  At the bar the three pals had finished one
round and the bar-man was in the act of pour-
ing another when a loud scream tore through
music and conversation. Jake knew that voice
and dashed down the stairs. What he saw
held him rooted at the foot of the stairs for a
moment. Zeddy had Felice's wrists in a hard
grip and she was trying to wrench herself
away.
  "Leggo a me, I say," she bawled.
  "I ain't gwineta do no sich thing. Youse
mah woman."
  "You lie! I ain't and you ain't mah man,
black nigger."
   "We'll see ef I ain't. Youse gwine home
wif me right now."
  Jake strode up to Zeddy. "Turn that girl
loose."
   "Whose gwineta make me?" growled
Zeddy.
   "I is. She's mah woman. I knowed her
long before you. For Gawd's sake quit you'
fooling and don't let's bust up the man's
cabaret."
   All the fashionable folk had already fled.
   "She's my woman and I'll carve any damn-
fool nigger for her." Lightning-quick Zeddy
released the girl and moved upon Jake like a
terrible bear with open razor.
   "Don't let him kill him, foh Gawd's sake
don't," a woman shrieked, and there was a
general stampede for the exit.
   But Zeddy had stopped like a cowed brute
in his tracks, for leveled straight at his heart
was the gift that Billy gave.
   "Drop that razor and git you' hands up,"
Jake commanded, "and don't make a fool
move or youse a dead nigger."
   Zeddy obeyed. Jake searched him and
found nothing. "I gotta good mind fixing you
tonight, so you won't evah pull a razor on an-
other man."
   Zeddy looked Jake steadily in the face and
said: "You kain kill me, nigger, ef you wanta.
You come gunning at me, but you didn't go
gunning after the Germans. Nosah! You
was scared and runned away from the army."
   Jake looked bewildered, sick. He was hurt
now to his heart and he was dumb. The wait-
ers and a few rough customers that the gun
did not frighten away looked strangely at him.
   "Yes, mah boy," continued Zeddy, "that's
what life is everytime. When youse good to a
buddy, he steals you woman and pulls a gun
on you. Tha's what I get for prohceeding a
slacker. A-llll right, boh, I was a good
sucker, but—I ain't got no reason to worry
sence youse down in the white folks' books."
And he ambled away.
   Jake shuffled off by himself. Billy Biassc
tried to say a decent word, but he waved him
away.
   These miserable cock-fights, beastly, tiger-
ish, bloody. They had always sickened, sad-
dened, unmanned him. The wild, shrieking
mad woman that is sex seemed jeering at him.
Why should love create terror? Love should
be joy lifting man out of the humdrum ways
of life. He had always managed to delight in
love and yet steer clear of the hate and vio-
lence that govern it in his world. His love
nature was generous and warm without any
vestige of the diabolical or sadistic.
  Yet here he was caught in the thing that he
despised so thoroughly. . „ . Brest, London,
and his America. Their vivid brutality tor-
tured his imagination. Oh, he was infinitely
disgusted with himself to think that he had
just been moved by the same savage emotions
as those vile, vicious, villainous white men
who, like hyenas and rattlers, had fought,
murdered, and clawed the entrails out of black
men over the common, commercial flesh of
women. . . .
   He reached home and sat brooding in the
shadow upon the stoop.
  "Zeddy. My own friend in some ways.
Naturally lied about me and the army, though.
Playing martyr. How in hell did he get
hooked up with her? Thought he was up in
Yonkers. Would never guess one in a hun-
dred it was he. What a crazy world! He
must have passed us drinking at the bar. Wish
I'd seen him. Would have had him drinking
with us. And maybe we would have avoided
that stinking row. Maybe and maybe not
Can't tell about Zeddy. He was always a bad-
acting razor-flashing nigger."
   A little hand timidly took his arm.
   "Honey, you ain't mad at you sweetness, is
you?"
   "No. . . . I'm jest sick and tiah'd a every-
thing."
   "I nevah know you knowed one anether,
honey. Oh, I was so scared. . . . But how
could I know?"
   "No, you couldn't. I ain't blaming nothing
on you. I nevah would guess it was him mah-
self. I ain't blaming nobody at all."
   Felice cuddled closer to Jake and fondled
his face. "It was a good thing you had you'
gun, though, honey, or         O Lawdl what
mighta happened!"
   "Oh, I woulda been a dead nigger this time
or a helpless one," Jake laughed and hugged
her closer to him. "It was Billy gived me that
gun and I didn't even wanta take it"
   "Didn't you? Billy is a good friend, eh?"
   "You bet he is, Nevah gets mixed up with
—in scraps like that."
   "Honest, honey, I nevah liked Zeddy,
but      "
   "Oh, you don't have to explain me nothing.
I know it's jest connexidence. It coulda been
anybody else. That don't worry mah skin."
   "I really didn't like him, though, honey.
Lemme tell you. I was kinder sorry for him.
It was jest when I got back from Palm Beach
I seen him one night at a buffet flat. And he
was that nice to me. He paid drinks for the
whole houseful a people and all because a me.
I couldn't act mean, so I had to be nice mah-
self. And the next day he ups and buys me
two pair a shoes and silk stockings and a box
a chocolate candy. So I jest stayed on and
gived him a li'P loving, honey, but I nevah
did tuk him to mah haht."
  "It's awright, sweetness. What do I care
so long as wese got one another again?"
   She drew down his head and sought his
mouth. • • .
   "But what is we gwineta do, daddy? Sence
they say that youse a slacker or deserter, I
don't which is which      "
   "He done lied about that, though," Jake
said, angrily. "I didn't run away because I
was scared a them Germans. But I beat it
away from Brest because they wouldn't give
us a chance at them, but kept us in that rainy,
sloppy, Gawd-forsaken burg working like
wops. They didn't seem to want us niggers
foh no soldiers. We was jest a bunch a des-
pised hod-carriers, and Zeddy know that."
   Now it was Felice's turn. "You ain't tell-
ing me a thing, daddy. I'll be slack with you
and desert with you. What right have nig-
gers got to shoot down a whole lot a Germans
for? Is they worse than Americans or any
other nation a white people? You done do
the right thing, honey, and Ise with you and
I love you the more for that. . . . But all the
same, we can't stay in Harlem no longer, for
the bulls will sure get you."
   "I been thinking a gitting away from the
stinking mess and go on off to sea again."
   "Ah no, daddy," Felice tightened her hold
on his arm. "And what' 11 become a me? I
kain't go 'board a ship with you and I needs
you."
   Jake said nothing.
   "What you wanta go knocking around them
foreign countries again for like swallow come
and swallow go from year to year and nevah
settling down no place? This heah is you1
country, daddy. What you gwine away from
it for?"
   "Andwhatkainldo?"
   "Do? Jest le's beat it away from Harlem,
daddy. This heah country is good and big
enough for us to git lost in. You know
Chicago?"
   "Haven't made that theah burg yet"
   "Why, le's go to Chicago, then. I hear it's
a mahvelous place foh niggers. Chicago,
honey."
   "When?"
   "This heah very night. Ise ready. Ain't
nothing in Harlem holding me, honey. Come
on. Le's pack."
   Zeddy rose like an apparition out of the
shadow. Automatically Jake's hand went to
his pocket.
   "Don't shoot!" Zeddy threw up his hands.
"I ain't here foh no trouble. I jest wanta ast
you' pahdon, Jake. Excuse me, boh. I was
crazy-mad and didn't know what I was say-
ing. Ahm bloody well ashamed a mahself.
But you know how it is when a gal done make
a fool outa ydu. I done think it ovah and said
to mah inner man: Why, you fool fellah,
whasmat with you ? Ef Zeddy slit his buddy's
thwoat for a gal, that won't give back the gal
to Zeddy. . . . So I jest had to come and tell
it to you and ast you pahdon. You kain stay
in Harlem as long as you wanta. Zeddy airi'ta
gwineta open his mouf against you. You was
always a good man-to-man buddy and nevah
did wears you face bahind you. Don't pay
no mind to what I done said in that theah ca-
baret Them niggers hanging around was all
drunk and wouldn't shoot their mouf off about
you nohow. You ain't no moh slacker than
me. What you done was all right, Jakey, and
I woulda did it mahself ef I'd a had the guts
to."
   "It's all right, Zeddy," said Jake. "It was
jest a crazy mix-up we all got into. I don't
bear you no grudge."
   "Will you take the paw on it?"
   "Sure!" Jake gripped Zeddy's hand.
   "So long, buddy, and fohgit it."
   "So long, Zeddy, ole top." And Zeddy
bear-walked off, without a word or a look at
Felice, out of Jake's life forever. Felice was
pleased, yet, naturally, just a little piqued.
He might have said good-by to me, too, she
thought I would even have kissed him for
the last time. She took hold of Jake's hands
and swung them meditatively: "It's all right
daddy, but——"
   "But what?"
   "I think we had better let Harlem miss us
foh a little while."
   "Scared?"
   "Yes, daddy, but for you only. Zeddy won't
go back on you. I guess not But news is like
a traveling agent, honey, going from person to
person. I wouldn't take no chances."
   "I guess youse right, sweetness. Come on,
le's get our stuff together."

   The two leather cases were set together
against the wall. Felice sat upon the bed
dangling her feet and humming "Tell me,
pa-pa, Ise you ma-ma." Jake, in white shirt-
sleeves, was arranging in the mirror a pink-
yellow-and-blue necktie.
   "ALL set! What you say, sweetness?"
   "I say, honey, le's go to the Baltimore and
finish the night and ketch the first train in the
morning."
   "Why, the Baltimore is padlocked!" said
Jake.
   "It was, daddy, but it's open again and go-
ing strong. White folks can't padlock nig-
gers outa joy forever. Let's go, daddy."
   She jumped down from the bed and jazzed
around.
   "Oh, I nearly made a present of these heah
things to the landlady!" She swept from the
bed a pink coverlet edged with lace, and pil-
low-slips of the same fantasy (they were her
own make), with which she had replaced the
flat, rooming-house-white ones, and carefully
folded them to fit in the bag that Jake had
ready open for her. He slid into his coat,
made certain of his pocket-book, and picked
up the two bags.
   The Baltimore was packed with happy,
grinning wrigglers. Many pleasure-seekers
who had left the new cabaret, on account of
the Jake-Zeddy incident, had gone there. It
was brighter than before the raid. The ceil-
ing and walls were kalsomined in white and
lilac and the lights glared stronger from new
chandeliers.
   The same jolly, compact manager was there,
grinning a welcome to strange white visitors,
who were pleased and never guessed what cau-
tious reserve lurked under that grin.
       Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you' ma-ma. . . .
  Jake and Felice squeezed a way in among
the jazzers. They were all drawn together in
one united mass, wriggling around to the same
primitive, voluptuous rhythm.
       Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you* ma-ma. • . .
   Haunting rhythm, mingling of naive wist-
fulness and charming gayety, now sheering
over into mad riotous joy, now, like a jungle
mask, strange, unfamiliar, disturbing, now
plunging headlong into the far, dim depths of
profundity and rising out as suddenly with a
simple, childish grin. And the white visitors
laugh. They see the grin only. Here are none
of the well-patterned, well-made emotions of
the respectable world. A laugh might finish
in a sob. A moan end in hilarity. That go-
rilla type wriggling there with his hands so
strangely hugging his mate, may strangle her
tonight. But he has no thought of that now.
He loves the warm wriggle and is lost in it.
Simple, raw emotions and real. They may
frighten and repel refined souls, because they
are too intensely real, just as a simple savage
stands dismayed before nice emotions that he
instantly perceives are false.
       Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you* ma-ma. . . .

  Jake was the only guest left in the Balti-
more. The last wriggle was played. The
waiters were picking up things and settling
accounts,
  "Whar's the little hussy?" irritated and
perplexed, Jake wondered.
  Felice was not in the cabaret nor outside on
the pavement. Jake could not understand how
she had vanished from his side.
  "Maybe she was making a high sign when
you was asleep," a waiter laughed.
  "Sleep hell!" retorted Jake. He was in no
joking mood.
  "We gwineta lock up now, big boy," the
manager said.
  Jake picked up the bags and went out on
the sidewalk again. "I kain't believe she'd
ditch me like that at the last moment," he said
aloud. "Anyhow, I'm bound foh Chicago. I
done made up mah mind to go all becausing a
her, and I ain'ta gwineta change it whether she
throws me down or not. But sure she kain'ta
run off and leaves her suitcase. What the hell
is I gwine do with it?"
   Felice came running up to him, panting,
from Lenox Avenue.
   "Where in hell you been all this while?" he
growled.
   "Oh, daddy, don't get mad 1"
   "Whar you been I say?"
   "I done been to look for mah good-luck
necklace. I couldn't go to Chicago without
it."
   Jake grinned. "Whyn't you tell me you
was gwine? Weren't you scared a Zeddy?"
   "I was and I wasn't. Ef I'd a told you, you
woulda said it wasn't worth troubling about.
So I jest made up mah mind to slip off and git
it. The door wasn't locked and Zeddy wasn't
home. It was hanging same place where I
left it and I slipped it on mah leg and left the
keys on the table. You know I had the keys.
Ah, daddy, ef I'd a had mah luck with me, we
nevah woulda gotten into a fight at that
cabaret."
  "You really think so, sweetness ?"
  They were walking to the subway station
along Lenox Avenue.
  "I ain't thinking, honey. I knows it. I'll
nevah fohgit it again and it'll always give us
good luck."

THE END

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