MEN had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Young men danced with her at frolics when they should have been dancing with their grown-up girls. God grant us youth, secretly prayed the old men. The young fellows counted the time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them. This interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could mean no good to her.

Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live. At sunset, when there was no wind, and the pine-smoke 2from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in light. With the other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-inch dust. Karintha’s running was a whir. It had the sound of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road. At dusk, during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down, and before any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs, her voice, high-pitched, shrill, would put one’s ears to itching. But no one ever thought to make her stop because of it. She stoned the cows, and beat her dog, and fought the other children... Even the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower. Already, rumors were out about her. Homes in Georgia are most often built on the two-room plan. In one, you cook and eat, in the other you sleep, and there love goes on. Karintha had seen or heard, perhaps she had felt her parents loving. One could but imitate one’s parents, for to follow them was the3 way of God. She played “home” with a small boy who was not afraid to do her bidding. That started the whole thing. Old men could no longer ride her hobby-horse upon their knees. But young men counted faster.

Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. She has been married many times. Old men remind her that a few years back they rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Karintha smiles, and indulges them when she is in the mood for it. She has contempt for them. Karintha is a woman. Young men run stills to make her money. Young men go to the big cities and run on the road. Young men go away to college. They all want to bring her money. These are the young men who thought that all they had to4 do was to count time. But Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child. A child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest. Pine-needles are smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of rabbits... A sawmill was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile smouldered. It is a year before one completely burns. Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up, and spreads itself out over the valley... Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water. Some one made a song:

Karintha is a woman. Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing thing ripened too soon. They will bring their money; they will die not having found it out... Karintha at5 twenty, carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Karintha...

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Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She’s dead; they’ve gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.

BECKY had one Negro son. Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the white folks’ mouths. She wouldnt tell. Common, God-forsaken, insane white shameless wench, said the white folks’ mouths. Her eyes were sunken, her neck stringy, her breasts fallen, till then. Taking their words, they filled her, like a bubble rising—then she broke. Mouth setting in a twist that held her eyes, harsh, vacant, staring... Who gave it to her? Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the black folks’ mouths. She wouldnt tell. Poor Catholic poor-white crazy woman, said the black folks’ mouths. White folks and black folks built her cabin, fed her and her growing baby, prayed secretly to God who’d put His cross upon her and cast her out.

9

When the first was born, the white folks said they’d have no more to do with her. And black folks, they too joined hands to cast her out... The pines whispered to Jesus.. The railroad boss said not to say he said it, but she could live, if she wanted to, on the narrow strip of land between the railroad and the road. John Stone, who owned the lumber and the bricks, would have shot the man who told he gave the stuff to Lonnie Deacon, who stole out there at night and built the cabin. A single room held down to earth... O fly away to Jesus ... by a leaning chimney...

Six trains each day rumbled past and shook the ground under her cabin. Fords, and horse- and mule-drawn buggies went back and forth along the road. No one ever saw her. Trainmen, and passengers who’d heard about her, threw out papers and food. Threw out little crumpled slips of paper scribbled with prayers, as they passed her eye-shaped piece of sandy ground. Ground islandized between the road and railroad track. Pushed up where a blue-sheen God with listless eyes could look at it.10 Folks from the town took turns, unknown, of course, to each other, in bringing corn and meat and sweet potatoes. Even sometimes snuff... O thank y Jesus... Old David Georgia, grinding cane and boiling syrup, never went her way without some sugar sap. No one ever saw her. The boy grew up and ran around. When he was five years old as folks reckoned it, Hugh Jourdon saw him carrying a baby. “Becky has another son,” was what the whole town knew. But nothing was said, for the part of man that says things to the likes of that had told itself that if there was a Becky, that Becky now was dead.

The two boys grew. Sullen and cunning... O pines, whisper to Jesus; tell Him to come and press sweet Jesus-lips against their lips and eyes... It seemed as though with those two big fellows there, there could be no room for Becky. The part that prayed wondered if perhaps she’d really died, and they had buried her. No one dared ask. They’d beat and cut a man who meant nothing at all in mentioning that they lived along the road. White or colored?11 No one knew, and least of all themselves. They drifted around from job to job. We, who had cast out their mother because of them, could we take them in? They answered black and white folks by shooting up two men and leaving town. “Godam the white folks; godam the niggers,” they shouted as they left town. Becky? Smoke curled up from her chimney; she must be there. Trains passing shook the ground. The ground shook the leaning chimney. Nobody noticed it. A creepy feeling came over all who saw that thin wraith of smoke and felt the trembling of the ground. Folks began to take her food again. They quit it soon because they had a fear. Becky if dead might be a hant, and if alive—it took some nerve even to mention it... O pines, whisper to Jesus...

It was Sunday. Our congregation had been visiting at Pulverton, and were coming home. There was no wind. The autumn sun, the bell from Ebenezer Church, listless and heavy. Even the pines were stale, sticky, like the smell of food that makes you sick. Before we turned the bend of the road that would show us the Becky cabin,12 the horses stopped stock-still, pushed back their ears, and nervously whinnied. We urged, then whipped them on. Quarter of a mile away thin smoke curled up from the leaning chimney... O pines, whisper to Jesus... Goose-flesh came on my skin though there still was neither chill nor wind. Eyes left their sockets for the cabin. Ears burned and throbbed. Uncanny eclipse! fear closed my mind. We were just about to pass... Pines shout to Jesus!.. the ground trembled as a ghost train rumbled by. The chimney fell into the cabin. Its thud was like a hollow report, ages having passed since it went off. Barlo and I were pulled out of our seats. Dragged to the door that had swung open. Through the dust we saw the bricks in a mound upon the floor. Becky, if she was there, lay under them. I thought I heard a groan. Barlo, mumbling something, threw his Bible on the pile. (No one has ever touched it.) Somehow we got away. My buggy was still on the road. The last thing that I remember was whipping old Dan like fury; I remember nothing after that—that is, until I reached town and13 folks crowded round to get the true word of it.

Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She’s dead; they’ve gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.

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CARMA, in overalls, and strong as any man, stands behind the old brown mule, driving the wagon home. It bumps, and groans, and shakes as it crosses the railroad track. She, riding it easy. I leave the men around the stove to follow her with my eyes down the red dust road. Nigger woman driving a Georgia chariot down an old dust road. Dixie Pike is what they call it. Maybe she feels my gaze, perhaps she expects it. Anyway, she turns. The sun, which has been slanting over her shoulder, shoots primitive rockets into her mangrove-gloomed, yellow flower face. Hi! Yip! God has left the Moses-people for the nigger. “Gedap.” Using reins to slap the mule, she disappears in a cloudy rumble at some indefinite point along the road.

17

(The sun is hammered to a band of gold. Pine-needles, like mazda, are brilliantly aglow. No rain has come to take the rustle from the falling sweet-gum leaves. Over in the forest, across the swamp, a sawmill blows its closing whistle. Smoke curls up. Marvelous web spun by the spider sawdust pile. Curls up and spreads itself pine-high above the branch, a single silver band along the eastern valley. A black boy ... you are the most sleepiest man I ever seed, Sleeping Beauty ... cradled on a gray mule, guided by the hollow sound of cow-bells, heads for them through a rusty cotton field. From down the railroad track, the chug-chug of a gas engine announces that the repair gang is coming home. A girl in the yard of a whitewashed shack not much larger than the stack of worn ties piled before it, sings. Her voice is loud. Echoes, like rain, sweep the valley. Dusk takes the polish from the rails. Lights twinkle in scattered houses. From far away, a sad strong song. Pungent and composite, the smell of farmyards is the fragrance of the woman. She does not sing; her body is a song. She is in the forest, dancing. Torches18 flare .. juju men, greegree, witch-doctors .. torches go out... The Dixie Pike has grown from a goat path in Africa.

Night.

Foxie, the bitch, slicks back her ears and barks at the rising moon.)

Carma’s tale is the crudest melodrama. Her husband’s in the gang. And its her fault he got there. Working with a contractor, he was away most of the time. She had others. No one blames her for that. He returned one day and hung around the town where he picked up week-old boasts and rumors... Bane accused her. She denied. He couldnt see that she was becoming hysterical. He would have liked to take his fists and beat her. Who was strong as a man. Stronger. Words, like corkscrews, wormed to her strength. It fizzled out. Grabbing a gun, she rushed from the house and plunged across19 the road into a cane-brake.. There, in quarter heaven shone the crescent moon... Bane was afraid to follow till he heard the gun go off. Then he wasted half an hour gathering the neighbor men. They met in the road where lamp-light showed tracks dissolving in the loose earth about the cane. The search began. Moths flickered the lamps. They put them out. Really, because she still might be live enough to shoot. Time and space have no meaning in a canefield. No more than the interminable stalks... Some one stumbled over her. A cry went up. From the road, one would have thought that they were cornering a rabbit or a skunk... It is difficult carrying dead weight through cane. They placed her on the sofa. A curious, nosey somebody looked for the wound. This fussing with her clothes aroused her. Her eyes were weak and pitiable for so strong a woman. Slowly, then like a flash, Bane came to know that the shot she fired, with averted head, was aimed to whistle like a dying hornet through the cane. Twice deceived, and one deception proved the other. His head went off. Slashed one of the men who’d helped, the man20 who’d stumbled over her. Now he’s in the gang. Who was her husband. Should she not take others, this Carma, strong as a man, whose tale as I have told it is the crudest melodrama?

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FACE flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes. The soft suggestion of down slightly darkened, like the shadow of a bird’s wing might, the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was aquiline, Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In this, that they sought nothing—that is, nothing that was obvious and tangible and that one could see, and they gave the impression that nothing was to be denied. When a woman seeks, you will have observed, her eyes deny. Fern’s eyes desired nothing that you25 could give her; there was no reason why they should withhold. Men saw her eyes and fooled themselves. Fern’s eyes said to them that she was easy. When she was young, a few men took her, but got no joy from it. And then, once done, they felt bound to her (quite unlike their hit and run with other girls), felt as though it would take them a lifetime to fulfill an obligation which they could find no name for. They became attached to her, and hungered after finding the barest trace of what she might desire. As she grew up, new men who came to town felt as almost everyone did who ever saw her: that they would not be denied. Men were everlastingly bringing her their bodies. Something inside of her got tired of them, I guess, for I am certain that for the life of her she could not tell why or how she began to turn them off. A man in fever is no trifling thing to send away. They began to leave her, baffled and ashamed, yet vowing to themselves that some day they would do some fine thing for her: send her candy every week and not let her know whom it came from, watch out for her wedding-day and give her a magnificent something with no name on it, buy26 a house and deed it to her, rescue her from some unworthy fellow who had tricked her into marrying him. As you know, men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman. She did not deny them, yet the fact was that they were denied. A sort of superstition crept into their consciousness of her being somehow above them. Being above them meant that she was not to be approached by anyone. She became a virgin. Now a virgin in a small southern town is by no means the usual thing, if you will believe me. That the sexes were made to mate is the practice of the South. Particularly, black folks were made to mate. And it is black folks whom I have been talking about thus far. What white men thought of Fern I can arrive at only by analogy. They let her alone.

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Anyone, of course, could see her, could see her eyes. If you walked up the Dixie Pike most any time of day, you’d be most like to see her resting listless-like on the railing of her porch, back propped against a post, head tilted a little forward because there was a nail in the porch27 post just where her head came which for some reason or other she never took the trouble to pull out. Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested idly where the sun, molten and glorious, was pouring down between the fringe of pines. Or maybe they gazed at the gray cabin on the knoll from which an evening folk-song was coming. Perhaps they followed a cow that had been turned loose to roam and feed on cotton-stalks and corn leaves. Like as not they’d settle on some vague spot above the horizon, though hardly a trace of wistfulness would come to them. If it were dusk, then they’d wait for the search-light of the evening train which you could see miles up the track before it flared across the Dixie Pike, close to her home. Wherever they looked, you’d follow them and then waver back. Like her face, the whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes. Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of Georgia’s South. A young Negro, once, was looking at her, spellbound, from the road. A white man passing in a buggy had to flick him with his whip if he was to get by without running him over. I first saw her on her porch. I was passing with a fellow whose crusty numbness 28(I was from the North and suspected of being prejudiced and stuck-up) was melting as he found me warm. I asked him who she was. “That’s Fern,” was all that I could get from him. Some folks already thought that I was given to nosing around; I let it go at that, so far as questions were concerned. But at first sight of her I felt as if I heard a Jewish cantor sing. As if his singing rose above the unheard chorus of a folk-song. And I felt bound to her. I too had my dreams: something I would do for her. I have knocked about from town to town too much not to know the futility of mere change of place. Besides, picture if you can, this cream-colored solitary girl sitting at a tenement window looking down on the indifferent throngs of Harlem. Better that she listen to folk-songs at dusk in Georgia, you would say, and so would I. Or, suppose she came up North and married. Even a doctor or a lawyer, say, one who would be sure to get along—that is, make money. You and I know, who have had experience in such things, that love is not a thing like prejudice which can be bettered by changes of town. Could men in Washington, Chicago, or New York,29 more than the men of Georgia, bring her something left vacant by the bestowal of their bodies? You and I who know men in these cities will have to say, they could not. See her out and out a prostitute along State Street in Chicago. See her move into a southern town where white men are more aggressive. See her become a white man’s concubine... Something I must do for her. There was myself. What could I do for her? Talk, of course. Push back the fringe of pines upon new horizons. To what purpose? and what for? Her? Myself? Men in her case seem to lose their selfishness. I lost mine before I touched her. I ask you, friend (it makes no difference if you sit in the Pullman or the Jim Crow as the train crosses her road), what thoughts would come to you—that is, after you’d finished with the thoughts that leap into men’s minds at the sight of a pretty woman who will not deny them; what thoughts would come to you, had you seen her in a quick flash, keen and intuitively, as she sat there on her porch when your train thundered by? Would you have got off at the next station and come back for her to take her where? Would you have30 completely forgotten her as soon as you reached Macon, Atlanta, Augusta, Pasadena, Madison, Chicago, Boston, or New Orleans? Would you tell your wife or sweetheart about a girl you saw? Your thoughts can help me, and I would like to know. Something I would do for her...

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One evening I walked up the Pike on purpose, and stopped to say hello. Some of her family were about, but they moved away to make room for me. Damn if I knew how to begin. Would you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people, the weather, the crops, the new preacher, the frolic, the church benefit, rabbit and possum hunting, the new soft drink they had at old Pap’s store, the schedule of the trains, what kind of town Macon was, Negro’s migration north, boll-weevils, syrup, the Bible—to all these things she gave a yassur or nassur, without further comment. I began to wonder if perhaps my own emotional sensibility had played one of its tricks on me. “Lets take a walk,” I at last ventured. The suggestion, coming after so long an isolation, was novel enough, I guess, to surprise. But it wasnt that. Something told me that men31 before me had said just that as a prelude to the offering of their bodies. I tried to tell her with my eyes. I think she understood. The thing from her that made my throat catch, vanished. Its passing left her visible in a way I’d thought, but never seen. We walked down the Pike with people on all the porches gaping at us. “Doesnt it make you mad?” She meant the row of petty gossiping people. She meant the world. Through a canebrake that was ripe for cutting, the branch was reached. Under a sweet-gum tree, and where reddish leaves had dammed the creek a little, we sat down. Dusk, suggesting the almost imperceptible procession of giant trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to men were tangibly immediate. It would not have surprised me had I had vision. People have them in Georgia more often than you would suppose. A black woman once saw the mother of Christ and drew her in charcoal on the courthouse wall... When one is on the soil of one’s ancestors, most anything can come to one... From force of habit, I suppose, I held Fern in32 my arms—that is, without at first noticing it. Then my mind came back to her. Her eyes, unusually weird and open, held me. Held God. He flowed in as I’ve seen the countryside flow in. Seen men. I must have done something—what, I dont know, in the confusion of my emotion. She sprang up. Rushed some distance from me. Fell to her knees, and began swaying, swaying. Her body was tortured with something it could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms and fingers till she shook them as if they burned her. It found her throat, and spattered inarticulately in plaintive, convulsive sounds, mingled with calls to Christ Jesus. And then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A child’s voice, uncertain, or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I could hear only her song. It seemed to me as though she were pounding her head in anguish upon the ground. I rushed to her. She fainted in my arms.

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There was talk about her fainting with me in the canefield. And I got one or two ugly looks from town men who’d set themselves up to protect 33her. In fact, there was talk of making me leave town. But they never did. They kept a watch-out for me, though. Shortly after, I came back North. From the train window I saw her as I crossed her road. Saw her on her porch, head tilted a little forward where the nail was, eyes vaguely focused on the sunset. Saw her face flow into them, the countryside and something that I call God, flowing into them... Nothing ever really happened. Nothing ever came to Fern, not even I. Something I would do for her. Some fine unnamed thing... And, friend, you? She is still living, I have reason to know. Her name, against the chance that you might happen down that way, is Fernie May Rosen.

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1

Nine.

ESTHER’S hair falls in soft curls about her high-cheek-boned chalk-white face. Esther’s hair would be beautiful if there were more gloss to it. And if her face were not prematurely serious, one would call it pretty. Her cheeks are too flat and dead for a girl of nine. Esther looks like a little white child, starched, frilled, as she walks slowly from her home towards her father’s grocery store. She is about to turn in Broad from Maple Street. White and black men loafing on the corner hold no interest for her. Then a strange thing happens. A clean-muscled, magnificent, black-skinned Negro, whom she had heard her father mention as King Barlo, suddenly drops to his knees on a spot called the Spittoon. White men, unaware of him, continue squirting tobacco juice in his direction. The saffron fluid splashes on his37 face. His smooth black face begins to glisten and to shine. Soon, people notice him, and gather round. His eyes are rapturous upon the heavens. Lips and nostrils quiver. Barlo is in a religious trance. Town folks know it. They are not startled. They are not afraid. They gather round. Some beg boxes from the grocery stores. From old McGregor’s notion shop. A coffin-case is pressed into use. Folks line the curb-stones. Business men close shop. And Banker Warply parks his car close by. Silently, all await the prophet’s voice. The sheriff, a great florid fellow whose leggings never meet around his bulging calves, swears in three deputies. “Wall, y cant never tell what a nigger like King Barlo might be up t.” Soda bottles, five fingers full of shine, are passed to those who want them. A couple of stray dogs start a fight. Old Goodlow’s cow comes flopping up the street. Barlo, still as an Indian fakir, has not moved. The town bell strikes six. The sun slips in behind a heavy mass of horizon cloud. The crowd is hushed and expectant. Barlo’s under jaw relaxes, and his lips begin to move.

38

“Jesus has been awhisperin strange words deep down, O way down deep, deep in my ears.”

Hums of awe and of excitement.

“He called me to His side an said, 'Git down on your knees beside me, son, Ise gwine t whisper in your ears.’”

An old sister cries, “Ah, Lord.”

“'Ise agwine t whisper in your ears,’ he said, an I replied, 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’”

“Ah, Lord. Amen. Amen.”

“An Lord Jesus whispered strange good words deep down, O way down deep, deep in my ears. An He said, 'Tell em till you feel your throat on fire.’ I saw a vision. I saw a man arise, an he was big an black an powerful—”

Some one yells, “Preach it, preacher, preach it!”

“—but his head was caught up in th clouds. An while he was agazin at th heavens, heart filled up with th Lord, some little white-ant biddies came an tied his feet to chains. They led him t th coast, they led him t th sea, they led him across th ocean an they didnt set him free. The old coast didnt miss him, an th new39 coast wasnt free, he left the old-coast brothers, t give birth t you an me. O Lord, great God Almighty, t give birth t you an me.”

Barlo pauses. Old gray mothers are in tears. Fragments of melodies are being hummed. White folks are touched and curiously awed. Off to themselves, white and black preachers confer as to how best to rid themselves of the vagrant, usurping fellow. Barlo looks as though he is struggling to continue. People are hushed. One can hear weevils work. Dusk is falling rapidly, and the customary store lights fail to throw their feeble glow across the gray dust and flagging of the Georgia town. Barlo rises to his full height. He is immense. To the people he assumes the outlines of his visioned African. In a mighty voice he bellows:

“Brothers an sisters, turn your faces t th sweet face of the Lord, an fill your hearts with glory. Open your eyes an see th dawnin of th mornin light. Open your ears—”

Years afterwards Esther was told that at that very moment a great, heavy, rumbling voice actually was heard. That hosts of angels and of demons paraded up and down the streets all40 night. That King Barlo rode out of town astride a pitch-black bull that had a glowing gold ring in its nose. And that old Limp Underwood, who hated niggers, woke up next morning to find that he held a black man in his arms. This much is certain: an inspired Negress, of wide reputation for being sanctified, drew a portrait of a black madonna on the court-house wall. And King Barlo left town. He left his image indelibly upon the mind of Esther. He became the starting point of the only living patterns that her mind was to know.

2

Sixteen.

Esther begins to dream. The low evening sun sets the windows of McGregor’s notion shop aflame. Esther makes believe that they really are aflame. The town fire department rushes madly down the road. It ruthlessly shoves black and white idlers to one side. It whoops. It clangs. It rescues from the second-story window a dimpled infant which she claims for her own. How had she come by it? She thinks of41 it immaculately. It is a sin to think of it immaculately. She must dream no more. She must repent her sin. Another dream comes. There is no fire department. There are no heroic men. The fire starts. The loafers on the corner form a circle, chew their tobacco faster, and squirt juice just as fast as they can chew. Gallons on top of gallons they squirt upon the flames. The air reeks with the stench of scorched tobacco juice. Women, fat chunky Negro women, lean scrawny white women, pull their skirts up above their heads and display the most ludicrous underclothes. The women scoot in all directions from the danger zone. She alone is left to take the baby in her arms. But what a baby! Black, singed, woolly, tobacco-juice baby—ugly as sin. Once held to her breast, miraculous thing: its breath is sweet and its lips can nibble. She loves it frantically. Her joy in it changes the town folks’ jeers to harmless jealousy, and she is left alone.

Twenty-two.

Esther’s schooling is over. She works behind42 the counter of her father’s grocery store. “To keep the money in the family,” so he said. She is learning to make distinctions between the business and the social worlds. “Good business comes from remembering that the white folks dont divide the niggers, Esther. Be just as black as any man who has a silver dollar.” Esther listlessly forgets that she is near white, and that her father is the richest colored man in town. Black folk who drift in to buy lard and snuff and flour of her, call her a sweet-natured, accommodating girl. She learns their names. She forgets them. She thinks about men. “I dont appeal to them. I wonder why.” She recalls an affair she had with a little fair boy while still in school. It had ended in her shame when he as much as told her that for sweetness he preferred a lollipop. She remembers the salesman from the North who wanted to take her to the movies that first night he was in town. She refused, of course. And he never came back, having found out who she was. She thinks of Barlo. Barlo’s image gives her a slightly stale thrill. She spices it by telling herself his glories. Black. Magnetically so. Best cotton picker in43 the county, in the state, in the whole world for that matter. Best man with his fists, best man with dice, with a razor. Promoter of church benefits. Of colored fairs. Vagrant preacher. Lover of all the women for miles and miles around. Esther decides that she loves him. And with a vague sense of life slipping by, she resolves that she will tell him so, whatever people say, the next time he comes to town. After the making of this resolution which becomes a sort of wedding cake for her to tuck beneath her pillow and go to sleep upon, she sees nothing of Barlo for five years. Her hair thins. It looks like the dull silk on puny corn ears. Her face pales until it is the color of the gray dust that dances with dead cotton leaves...

3

Esther is twenty-seven.

Esther sells lard and snuff and flour to vague black faces that drift in her store to ask for them. Her eyes hardly see the people to whom she gives change. Her body is lean and44 beaten. She rests listlessly against the counter, too weary to sit down. From the street some one shouts, “King Barlo has come back to town.” He passes her window, driving a large new car. Cut-out open. He veers to the curb, and steps out. Barlo has made money on cotton during the war. He is as rich as anyone. Esther suddenly is animate. She goes to her door. She sees him at a distance, the center of a group of credulous men. She hears the deep-bass rumble of his talk. The sun swings low. McGregor’s windows are aflame again. Pale flame. A sharply dressed white girl passes by. For a moment Esther wishes that she might be like her. Not white; she has no need for being that. But sharp, sporty, with get-up about her. Barlo is connected with that wish. She mustnt wish. Wishes only make you restless. Emptiness is a thing that grows by being moved. “I’ll not think. Not wish. Just set my mind against it.” Then the thought comes to her that those purposeless, easy-going men will possess him, if she doesnt. Purpose is not dead in her, now that she comes to think of it. That loose women will have their arms around him at Nat Bowle’s45 place to-night. As if her veins are full of fired sun-bleached southern shanties, a swift heat sweeps them. Dead dreams, and a forgotten resolution are carried upward by the flames. Pale flames. “They shant have him. Oh, they shall not. Not if it kills me they shant have him.” Jerky, aflutter, she closes the store and starts home. Folks lazing on store window-sills wonder what on earth can be the matter with Jim Crane’s gal, as she passes them. “Come to remember, she always was a little off, a little crazy, I reckon.” Esther seeks her own room, and locks the door. Her mind is a pink mesh-bag filled with baby toes.

---

Using the noise of the town clock striking twelve to cover the creaks of her departure, Esther slips into the quiet road. The town, her parents, most everyone is sound asleep. This fact is a stable thing that comforts her. After sundown a chill wind came up from the west. It is still blowing, but to her it is a steady, settled thing like the cold. She wants her mind to be like that. Solid, contained, and blank as a sheet of darkened ice. She will not permit herself to46 notice the peculiar phosphorescent glitter of the sweet-gum leaves. Their movement would excite her. Exciting too, the recession of the dull familiar homes she knows so well. She doesnt know them at all. She closes her eyes, and holds them tightly. Wont do. Her being aware that they are closed recalls her purpose. She does not want to think of it. She opens them. She turns now into the deserted business street. The corrugated iron canopies and mule- and horse-gnawed hitching posts bring her a strange composure. Ghosts of the commonplaces of her daily life take stride with her and become her companions. And the echoes of her heels upon the flagging are rhythmically monotonous and soothing. Crossing the street at the corner of McGregor’s notion shop, she thinks that the windows are a dull flame. Only a fancy. She walks faster. Then runs. A turn into a side street brings her abruptly to Nat Bowle’s place. The house is squat and dark. It is always dark. Barlo is within. Quietly she opens the outside door and steps in. She passes through a small room. Pauses before a flight of stairs down which people’s voices, muffled, come. The air47 is heavy with fresh tobacco smoke. It makes her sick. She wants to turn back. She goes up the steps. As if she were mounting to some great height, her head spins. She is violently dizzy. Blackness rushes to her eyes. And then she finds that she is in a large room. Barlo is before her.

“Well, I’m sholy damned—skuse me, but what, what brought you here, lil milk-white gal?”

“You.” Her voice sounds like a frightened child’s that calls homeward from some point miles away.

“Me?”

“Yes, you Barlo.”

“This aint th place fer y. This aint th place fer y.”

“I know. I know. But I’ve come for you.”

“For me for what?”

She manages to look deep and straight into his eyes. He is slow at understanding. Guffaws and giggles break out from all around the room. A coarse woman’s voice remarks, “So thats how th dictie niggers does it.” Laughs. “Mus give em credit fo their gall.”

48

Esther doesnt hear. Barlo does. His faculties are jogged. She sees a smile, ugly and repulsive to her, working upward through thick licker fumes. Barlo seems hideous. The thought comes suddenly, that conception with a drunken man must be a mighty sin. She draws away, frozen. Like a somnambulist she wheels around and walks stiffly to the stairs. Down them. Jeers and hoots pelter bluntly upon her back. She steps out. There is no air, no street, and the town has completely disappeared.

---

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1

UP from the skeleton stone walls, up from the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory, dusk came. Up from the dusk the full moon came. Glowing like a fired pine-knot, it illumined the great door and soft showered the Negro shanties aligned along the single street of factory town. The full moon in the great door was an omen. Negro women improvised songs against its spell.

Louisa sang as she came over the crest of the hill from the white folks’ kitchen. Her skin was the color of oak leaves on young trees in fall. Her breasts, firm and up-pointed like ripe acorns. And her singing had the low murmur of winds in fig trees. Bob Stone, younger son of the people she worked for, loved her. By the way the world reckons things, he had won her. By measure of that warm glow which came into her mind at thought of him, he had won her.52 Tom Burwell, whom the whole town called Big Boy, also loved her. But working in the fields all day, and far away from her, gave him no chance to show it. Though often enough of evenings he had tried to. Somehow, he never got along. Strong as he was with hands upon the ax or plow, he found it difficult to hold her. Or so he thought. But the fact was that he held her to factory town more firmly than he thought for. His black balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone, when she thought of them. And her mind was vaguely upon them as she came over the crest of the hill, coming from the white folks’ kitchen. As she sang softly at the evil face of the full moon.

A strange stir was in her. Indolently, she tried to fix upon Bob or Tom as the cause of it. To meet Bob in the canebrake, as she was going to do an hour or so later, was nothing new. And Tom’s proposal which she felt on its way to her could be indefinitely put off. Separately, there was no unusual significance to either one. But for some reason, they jumbled when her eyes gazed vacantly at the rising moon. And from the jumble came the stir that was strangely within 53her. Her lips trembled. The slow rhythm of her song grew agitant and restless. Rusty black and tan spotted hounds, lying in the dark corners of porches or prowling around back yards, put their noses in the air and caught its tremor. They began plaintively to yelp and howl. Chickens woke up and cackled. Intermittently, all over the countryside dogs barked and roosters crowed as if heralding a weird dawn or some ungodly awakening. The women sang lustily. Their songs were cotton-wads to stop their ears. Louisa came down into factory town and sank wearily upon the step before her home. The moon was rising towards a thick cloud-bank which soon would hide it.

2

Up from the deep dusk of a cleared spot on the edge of the forest a mellow glow arose and spread fan-wise into the low-hanging heavens. And all around the air was heavy with the scent54 of boiling cane. A large pile of cane-stalks lay like ribboned shadows upon the ground. A mule, harnessed to a pole, trudged lazily round and round the pivot of the grinder. Beneath a swaying oil lamp, a Negro alternately whipped out at the mule, and fed cane-stalks to the grinder. A fat boy waddled pails of fresh ground juice between the grinder and the boiling stove. Steam came from the copper boiling pan. The scent of cane came from the copper pan and drenched the forest and the hill that sloped to factory town, beneath its fragrance. It drenched the men in circle seated around the stove. Some of them chewed at the white pulp of stalks, but there was no need for them to, if all they wanted was to taste the cane. One tasted it in factory town. And from factory town one could see the soft haze thrown by the glowing stove upon the low-hanging heavens.

Old David Georgia stirred the thickening syrup with a long ladle, and ever so often drew it off. Old David Georgia tended his stove and told tales about the white folks, about moonshining and cotton picking, and about sweet nigger gals, to the men who sat there about his55 stove to listen to him. Tom Burwell chewed cane-stalk and laughed with the others till someone mentioned Louisa. Till some one said something about Louisa and Bob Stone, about the silk stockings she must have gotten from him. Blood ran up Tom’s neck hotter than the glow that flooded from the stove. He sprang up. Glared at the men and said, “She’s my gal.” Will Manning laughed. Tom strode over to him. Yanked him up and knocked him to the ground. Several of Manning’s friends got up to fight for him. Tom whipped out a long knife and would have cut them to shreds if they hadnt ducked into the woods. Tom had had enough. He nodded to Old David Georgia and swung down the path to factory town. Just then, the dogs started barking and the roosters began to crow. Tom felt funny. Away from the fight, away from the stove, chill got to him. He shivered. He shuddered when he saw the full moon rising towards the cloud-bank. He who didnt give a godam for the fears of old women. He forced his mind to fasten on Louisa. Bob Stone. Better not be. He turned into the street and saw Louisa sitting before her home. He went56 towards her, ambling, touched the brim of a marvelously shaped, spotted, felt hat, said he wanted to say something to her, and then found that he didnt know what he had to say, or if he did, that he couldnt say it. He shoved his big fists in his overalls, grinned, and started to move off.

“Youall want me, Tom?”

“Thats what us wants, sho, Louisa.”

“Well, here I am—”

“An here I is, but that aint ahelpin none, all th same.”

“You wanted to say something?..”

“I did that, sho. But words is like th spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em, there’s times when they jes wont come. I dunno why. Seems like th love I feels fo yo done stole m tongue. I got it now. Whee! Louisa, honey, I oughtnt tell y, I feel I oughtnt cause yo is young an goes t church an I has had other gals, but Louisa I sho do love y. Lil gal, Ise watched y from them first days when youall sat right here befo yo door befo th well an sang sometimes in a way that like t broke m heart. Ise carried y with me into th fields, day after day, an after that, an I57 sho can plow when yo is there, an I can pick cotton. Yassur! Come near beatin Barlo yesterday. I sho did. Yassur! An next year if ole Stone’ll trust me, I’ll have a farm. My own. My bales will buy yo what y gets from white folks now. Silk stockings an purple dresses—course I dont believe what some folks been whisperin as t how y gets them things now. White folks always did do for niggers what they likes. An they jes cant help alikin yo, Louisa. Bob Stone likes y. Course he does. But not th way folks is awhisperin. Does he, hon?”

“I dont know what you mean, Tom.”

“Course y dont. Ise already cut two niggers. Had t hon, t tell em so. Niggers always tryin t make somethin out a nothin. An then besides, white folks aint up t them tricks so much nowadays. Godam better not be. Leastawise not with yo. Cause I wouldnt stand f it. Nassur.”

“What would you do, Tom?”

“Cut him jes like I cut a nigger.”

“No, Tom—”

“I said I would an there aint no mo to it. But that aint th talk f now. Sing, honey Louisa,58 an while I’m listenin t y I’ll be makin love.”

Tom took her hand in his. Against the tough thickness of his own, hers felt soft and small. His huge body slipped down to the step beside her. The full moon sank upward into the deep purple of the cloud-bank. An old woman brought a lighted lamp and hung it on the common well whose bulky shadow squatted in the middle of the road, opposite Tom and Louisa. The old woman lifted the well-lid, took hold the chain, and began drawing up the heavy bucket. As she did so, she sang. Figures shifted, restless-like, between lamp and window in the front rooms of the shanties. Shadows of the figures fought each other on the gray dust of the road. Figures raised the windows and joined the old woman in song. Louisa and Tom, the whole street, singing:

3

Bob Stone sauntered from his veranda out into59 the gloom of fir trees and magnolias. The clear white of his skin paled, and the flush of his cheeks turned purple. As if to balance this outer change, his mind became consciously a white man’s. He passed the house with its huge open hearth which, in the days of slavery, was the plantation cookery. He saw Louisa bent over that hearth. He went in as a master should and took her. Direct, honest, bold. None of this sneaking that he had to go through now. The contrast was repulsive to him. His family had lost ground. Hell no, his family still owned the niggers, practically. Damned if they did, or he wouldnt have to duck around so. What would they think if they knew? His mother? His sister? He shouldnt mention them, shouldnt think of them in this connection. There in the dusk he blushed at doing so. Fellows about town were all right, but how about his friends up North? He could see them incredible, repulsed. They didnt know. The thought first made him laugh. Then, with their eyes still upon him, he began to feel embarrassed. He felt the need of explaining things to them. Explain hell. They wouldnt understand, and moreover, who ever60 heard of a Southerner getting on his knees to any Yankee, or anyone. No sir. He was going to see Louisa to-night, and love her. She was lovely—in her way. Nigger way. What way was that? Damned if he knew. Must know. He’d known her long enough to know. Was there something about niggers that you couldnt know? Listening to them at church didnt tell you anything. Looking at them didnt tell you anything. Talking to them didnt tell you anything—unless it was gossip, unless they wanted to talk. Of course, about farming, and licker, and craps—but those werent nigger. Nigger was something more. How much more? Something to be afraid of, more? Hell no. Who ever heard of being afraid of a nigger? Tom Burwell. Cartwell had told him that Tom went with Louisa after she reached home. No sir. No nigger had ever been with his girl. He’d like to see one try. Some position for him to be in. Him, Bob Stone, of the old Stone family, in a scrap with a nigger over a nigger girl. In the good old days... Ha! Those were the days. His family had lost ground. Not so much, though. Enough for him to have to cut through61 old Lemon’s canefield by way of the woods, that he might meet her. She was worth it. Beautiful nigger gal. Why nigger? Why not, just gal? No, it was because she was nigger that he went to her. Sweet... The scent of boiling cane came to him. Then he saw the rich glow of the stove. He heard the voices of the men circled around it. He was about to skirt the clearing when he heard his own name mentioned. He stopped. Quivering. Leaning against a tree, he listened.

“Bad nigger. Yassur, he sho is one bad nigger when he gets started.”

“Tom Burwell’s been on th gang three times fo cuttin men.”

“What y think he’s agwine t do t Bob Stone?”

“Dunno yet. He aint found out. When he does— Baby!”

“Aint no tellin.”

“Young Stone aint no quitter an I ken tell y that. Blood of th old uns in his veins.”

“Thats right. He’ll scrap, sho.”

“Be gettin too hot f niggers round this away.”

“Shut up, nigger. Y dont know what y talkin bout.”

Bob Stone’s ears burned as though he had62 been holding them over the stove. Sizzling heat welled up within him. His feet felt as if they rested on red-hot coals. They stung him to quick movement. He circled the fringe of the glowing. Not a twig cracked beneath his feet. He reached the path that led to factory town. Plunged furiously down it. Halfway along, a blindness within him veered him aside. He crashed into the bordering canebrake. Cane leaves cut his face and lips. He tasted blood. He threw himself down and dug his fingers in the ground. The earth was cool. Cane-roots took the fever from his hands. After a long while, or so it seemed to him, the thought came to him that it must be time to see Louisa. He got to his feet and walked calmly to their meeting place. No Louisa. Tom Burwell had her. Veins in his forehead bulged and distended. Saliva moistened the dried blood on his lips. He bit down on his lips. He tasted blood. Not his own blood; Tom Burwell’s blood. Bob drove through the cane and out again upon the road. A hound swung down the path before him towards factory town. Bob couldnt see it. The dog loped aside to let him pass. Bob’s blind63 rushing made him stumble over it. He fell with a thud that dazed him. The hound yelped. Answering yelps came from all over the countryside. Chickens cackled. Roosters crowed, heralding the bloodshot eyes of southern awakening. Singers in the town were silenced. They shut their windows down. Palpitant between the rooster crows, a chill hush settled upon the huddled forms of Tom and Louisa. A figure rushed from the shadow and stood before them. Tom popped to his feet.

“Whats y want?”

“I’m Bob Stone.”

“Yassur—an I’m Tom Burwell. Whats y want?”

Bob lunged at him. Tom side-stepped, caught him by the shoulder, and flung him to the ground. Straddled him.

“Let me up.”

“Yassur—but watch yo doins, Bob Stone.”

A few dark figures, drawn by the sound of scuffle stood about them. Bob sprang to his feet.

“Fight like a man, Tom Burwell, an I’ll lick y.”

64

Again he lunged. Tom side-stepped and flung him to the ground. Straddled him.

“Get off me, you godam nigger you.”

“Yo sho has started somethin now. Get up.”

Tom yanked him up and began hammering at him. Each blow sounded as if it smashed into a precious, irreplaceable soft something. Beneath them, Bob staggered back. He reached in his pocket and whipped out a knife.

“Thats my game, sho.”

Blue flash, a steel blade slashed across Bob Stone’s throat. He had a sweetish sick feeling. Blood began to flow. Then he felt a sharp twitch of pain. He let his knife drop. He slapped one hand against his neck. He pressed the other on top of his head as if to hold it down. He groaned. He turned, and staggered towards the crest of the hill in the direction of white town. Negroes who had seen the fight slunk into their homes and blew the lamps out. Louisa, dazed, hysterical, refused to go indoors. She slipped, crumbled, her body loosely propped against the woodwork of the well. Tom Burwell leaned against it. He seemed rooted there.

65

Bob reached Broad Street. White men rushed up to him. He collapsed in their arms.

“Tom Burwell....”

White men like ants upon a forage rushed about. Except for the taut hum of their moving, all was silent. Shotguns, revolvers, rope, kerosene, torches. Two high-powered cars with glaring search-lights. They came together. The taut hum rose to a low roar. Then nothing could be heard but the flop of their feet in the thick dust of the road. The moving body of their silence preceded them over the crest of the hill into factory town. It flattened the Negroes beneath it. It rolled to the wall of the factory, where it stopped. Tom knew that they were coming. He couldnt move. And then he saw the search-lights of the two cars glaring down on him. A quick shock went through him. He stiffened. He started to run. A yell went up from the mob. Tom wheeled about and faced them. They poured down on him. They swarmed. A large man with dead-white face and flabby cheeks came to him and almost jabbed a gun-barrel through his guts.

“Hands behind y, nigger.”

66

Tom’s wrist were bound. The big man shoved him to the well. Burn him over it, and when the woodwork caved in, his body would drop to the bottom. Two deaths for a godam nigger. Louisa was driven back. The mob pushed in. Its pressure, its momentum was too great. Drag him to the factory. Wood and stakes already there. Tom moved in the direction indicated. But they had to drag him. They reached the great door. Too many to get in there. The mob divided and flowed around the walls to either side. The big man shoved him through the door. The mob pressed in from the sides. Taut humming. No words. A stake was sunk into the ground. Rotting floor boards piled around it. Kerosene poured on the rotting floor boards. Tom bound to the stake. His breast was bare. Nails scratches let little lines of blood trickle down and mat into the hair. His face, his eyes were set and stony. Except for irregular breathing, one would have thought him already dead. Torches were flung onto the pile. A great flare muffled in black smoke shot upward. The mob yelled. The mob was silent. Now Tom could be seen within the flames. Only his head, erect,67 lean, like a blackened stone. Stench of burning flesh soaked the air. Tom’s eyes popped. His head settled downward. The mob yelled. Its yell echoed against the skeleton stone walls and sounded like a hundred yells. Like a hundred mobs yelling. Its yell thudded against the thick front wall and fell back. Ghost of a yell slipped through the flames and out the great door of the factory. It fluttered like a dying thing down the single street of factory town. Louisa, upon the step before her home, did not hear it, but her eyes opened slowly. They saw the full moon glowing in the great door. The full moon, an evil thing, an omen, soft showering the homes of folks she knew. Where were they, these people? She’d sing, and perhaps they’d come out and join her. Perhaps Tom Burwell would come. At any rate, the full moon in the great door was an omen which she must sing to:

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SEVENTH STREET is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood... Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! .. the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick72 office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgment Day. Who set you flowing?

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RHOBERT wears a house, like a monstrous diver’s helmet, on his head. His legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he had rickets. He is way down. Rods of the house like antennæ of a dead thing, stuffed, prop up in the air. He is way down. He is sinking. His house is a dead thing that weights him down. He is sinking as a diver would sink in mud should the water be drawn off. Life is a murky, wiggling, microscopic water that compresses him. Compresses his helmet and would crush it the minute that he pulled his head out. He has to keep it in. Life is water that is being drawn off.

The dead house is stuffed. The stuffing is alive. It is sinful to draw one’s head out of live stuffing in a dead house. The propped-up antennæ would cave in and the stuffing be strewn .. shredded life-pulp .. in the water. It is sinful to have one’s own head crushed.74 Rhobert is an upright man whose legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he had rickets. The earth is round. Heaven is a sphere that surrounds it. Sink where you will. God is a Red Cross man with a dredge and a respiration-pump who’s waiting for you at the opposite periphery. God built the house. He blew His breath into its stuffing. It is good to die obeying Him who can do these things.

A futile something like the dead house wraps the live stuffing of the question: how long before the water will be drawn off? Rhobert does not care. Like most men who wear monstrous helmets, the pressure it exerts is enough to convince him of its practical infinity. And he cares not two straws as to whether or not he will ever see his wife and children again. Many a time he’s seen them drown in his dreams and has kicked about joyously in the mud for days after. One thing about him goes straight to the heart. He has an Adam’s-apple which strains sometimes as if he were painfully gulping great globules of air .. air floating shredded life-pulp. It is a sad thing to see a banty-bowed, shaky, ricket-legged man straining the raw insides of his throat against smooth air. Holding furtive thoughts about the glory of pulp-heads75 strewn in water... He is way down. Down. Mud, coming to his banty knees, almost hides them. Soon people will be looking at him and calling him a strong man. No doubt he is for one who has had rickets. Lets give it to him. Lets call him great when the water shall have been all drawn off. Lets build a monument and set it in the ooze where he goes down. A monument of hewn oak, carved in nigger-heads. Lets open our throats, brother, and sing “Deep River” when he goes down.

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FOR a long while she was nothing more to me than one of those skirted beings whom boys at a certain age disdain to play with. Just how I came to love her, timidly, and with secret blushes, I do not know. But that I did was brought home to me one night, the first night that Ned wore his long pants. Us fellers were seated on the curb before an apartment house where she had gone in. The young trees had not outgrown their boxes then. V Street was lined with them. When our legs grew cramped and stiff from the cold of the stone, we’d stand around a box and whittle it. I like to think now that there was a hidden purpose in the way we hacked them with our knives. I like to feel that something deep in me responded to the trees, the young trees that whinnied like colts impatient to be let free... On the particular night I have in mind, we were waiting for the top-floor light to go out. We wanted to see Avey leave the flat. This night she stayed longer than usual and gave77 us a chance to complete the plans of how we were going to stone and beat that feller on the top floor out of town. Ned especially had it in for him. He was about to throw a brick up at the window when at last the room went dark. Some minutes passed. Then Avey, as unconcerned as if she had been paying an old-maid aunt a visit, came out. I don’t remember what she had on, and all that sort of thing. But I do know that I turned hot as bare pavements in the summertime at Ned’s boast: “Hell, bet I could get her too if you little niggers weren’t always spying and crabbing everything.” I didnt say a word to him. It wasnt my way then. I just stood there like the others, and something like a fuse burned up inside of me. She never noticed us, but swung along lazy and easy as anything. We sauntered to the corner and watched her till her door banged to. Ned repeated what he’d said. I didnt seem to care. Sitting around old Mush-Head’s bread box, the discussion began. “Hang if I can see how she gets away with it,” Doc started. Ned knew, of course. There was nothing he didnt know when it came to women. He dilated on the emotional needs of girls. Said78 they werent much different from men in that respect. And concluded with the solemn avowal: “It does em good.” None of us liked Ned much. We all talked dirt; but it was the way he said it. And then too, a couple of the fellers had sisters and had caught Ned playing with them. But there was no disputing the superiority of his smutty wisdom. Bubs Sanborn, whose mother was friendly with Avey’s, had overheard the old ladies talking. “Avey’s mother’s ont her,” he said. We thought that only natural and began to guess at what would happen. Some one said she’d marry that feller on the top floor. Ned called that a lie because Avey was going to marry nobody but him. We had our doubts about that, but we did agree that she’d soon leave school and marry some one. The gang broke up, and I went home, picturing myself as married.

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Nothing I did seemed able to change Avey’s indifference to me. I played basket-ball, and when I’d make a long clean shot she’d clap with the others, louder than they, I thought. I’d meet her on the street, and there’d be no difference79 in the way she said hello. She never took the trouble to call me by my name. On the days for drill, I’d let my voice down a tone and call for a complicated maneuver when I saw her coming. She’d smile appreciation, but it was an impersonal smile, never for me. It was on a summer excursion down to Riverview that she first seemed to take me into account. The day had been spent riding merry-go-rounds, scenic-railways, and shoot-the-chutes. We had been in swimming and we had danced. I was a crack swimmer then. She didnt know how. I held her up and showed her how to kick her legs and draw her arms. Of course she didnt learn in one day, but she thanked me for bothering with her. I was also somewhat of a dancer. And I had already noticed that love can start on a dance floor. We danced. But though I held her tightly in my arms, she was way away. That college feller who lived on the top floor was somewhere making money for the next year. I imagined that she was thinking, wishing for him. Ned was along. He treated her until his money gave out. She went with another feller. Ned got sore. One by one the boys’ money gave80 out. She left them. And they got sore. Every one of them but me got sore. This is the reason, I guess, why I had her to myself on the top deck of the Jane Mosely that night as we puffed up the Potomac, coming home. The moon was brilliant. The air was sweet like clover. And every now and then, a salt tang, a stale drift of sea-weed. It was not my mind’s fault if it went romancing. I should have taken her in my arms the minute we were stowed in that old lifeboat. I dallied, dreaming. She took me in hers. And I could feel by the touch of it that it wasnt a man-to-woman love. It made me restless. I felt chagrined. I didnt know what it was, but I did know that I couldnt handle it. She ran her fingers through my hair and kissed my forehead. I itched to break through her tenderness to passion. I wanted her to take me in her arms as I knew she had that college feller. I wanted her to love me passionately as she did him. I gave her one burning kiss. Then she laid me in her lap as if I were a child. Helpless. I got sore when she started to hum a lullaby. She wouldnt let me go. I talked. I knew damned well that I could beat her at that. Her81 eyes were soft and misty, the curves of her lips were wistful, and her smile seemed indulgent of the irrelevance of my remarks. I gave up at last and let her love me, silently, in her own way. The moon was brilliant. The air was sweet like clover, and every now and then, a salt tang, a stale drift of sea-weed...

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The next time I came close to her was the following summer at Harpers Ferry. We were sitting on a flat projecting rock they give the name of Lover’s Leap. Some one is supposed to have jumped off it. The river is about six hundred feet beneath. A railroad track runs up the valley and curves out of sight where part of the mountain rock had to be blasted away to make room for it. The engines of this valley have a whistle, the echoes of which sound like iterated gasps and sobs. I always think of them as crude music from the soul of Avey. We sat there holding hands. Our palms were soft and warm against each other. Our fingers were not tight. She would not let them be. She would not let me twist them. I wanted to talk. To explain what I meant to her. Avey was as silent as those great trees whose tops we looked down82 upon. She has always been like that. At least, to me. I had the notion that if I really wanted to, I could do with her just what I pleased. Like one can strip a tree. I did kiss her. I even let my hands cup her breasts. When I was through, she’d seek my hand and hold it till my pulse cooled down. Evening after evening we sat there. I tried to get her to talk about that college feller. She never would. There was no set time to go home. None of my family had come down. And as for hers, she didnt give a hang about them. The general gossips could hardly say more than they had. The boarding-house porch was always deserted when we returned. No one saw us enter, so the time was set conveniently for scandal. This worried me a little, for I thought it might keep Avey from getting an appointment in the schools. She didnt care. She had finished normal school. They could give her a job if they wanted to. As time went on, her indifference to things began to pique me; I was ambitious. I left the Ferry earlier than she did. I was going off to college. The more I thought of it, the more I resented, yes, hell, thats what it was, her downright laziness. Sloppy83 indolence. There was no excuse for a healthy girl taking life so easy. Hell! she was no better than a cow. I was certain that she was a cow when I felt an udder in a Wisconsin stock-judging class. Among those energetic Swedes, or whatever they are, I decided to forget her. For two years I thought I did. When I’d come home for the summer she’d be away. And before she returned, I’d be gone. We never wrote; she was too damned lazy for that. But what a bluff I put up about forgetting her. The girls up that way, at least the ones I knew, havent got the stuff: they dont know how to love. Giving themselves completely was tame beside just the holding of Avey’s hand. One day I received a note from her. The writing, I decided, was slovenly. She wrote on a torn bit of note-book paper. The envelope had a faint perfume that I remembered. A single line told me she had lost her school and was going away. I comforted myself with the reflection that shame held no pain for one so indolent as she. Nevertheless, I left Wisconsin that year for good. Washington had seemingly forgotten her. I hunted Ned. Between curses, I caught his opinion of84 her. She was no better than a whore. I saw her mother on the street. The same old pinch-beck, jerky-gaited creature that I’d always known.

---

Perhaps five years passed. The business of hunting a job or something or other had bruised my vanity so that I could recognize it. I felt old. Avey and my real relation to her, I thought I came to know. I wanted to see her. I had been told that she was in New York. As I had no money, I hiked and bummed my way there. I got work in a ship-yard and walked the streets at night, hoping to meet her. Failing in this, I saved enough to pay my fare back home. One evening in early June, just at the time when dusk is most lovely on the eastern horizon, I saw Avey, indolent as ever, leaning on the arm of a man, strolling under the recently lit arc-lights of U Street. She had almost passed before she recognized me. She showed no surprise. The puff over her eyes had grown heavier. The eyes themselves were still sleepy-large, and beautiful. I had almost concluded—indifferent. “You look older,” was what she said. I wanted to convince 85her that I was, so I asked her to walk with me. The man whom she was with, and whom she never took the trouble to introduce, at a nod from her, hailed a taxi, and drove away. That gave me a notion of what she had been used to. Her dress was of some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it came from there are others.

---

I have a spot in Soldier’s Home to which I always go when I want the simple beauty of another’s soul. Robins spring about the lawn all day. They leave their footprints in the grass. I imagine that the grass at night smells sweet and fresh because of them. The ground is high. Washington lies below. Its light spreads like a blush against the darkened sky. Against the soft dusk sky of Washington. And when the wind is from the South, soil of my homeland falls like a fertile shower upon the lean streets of the city. Upon my hill in Soldier’s Home. I know the policeman who watches the place of nights. When I go there alone, I talk to him. I tell him I come there to find the truth that people86 bury in their hearts. I tell him that I do not come there with a girl to do the thing he’s paid to watch out for. I look deep in his eyes when I say these things, and he believes me. He comes over to see who it is on the grass. I say hello to him. He greets me in the same way and goes off searching for other black splotches upon the lawn. Avey and I went there. A band in one of the buildings a fair distance off was playing a march. I wished they would stop. Their playing was like a tin spoon in one’s mouth. I wanted the Howard Glee Club to sing “Deep River,” from the road. To sing “Deep River, Deep River,” from the road... Other than the first comments, Avey had been silent. I started to hum a folk-tune. She slipped her hand in mine. Pillowed her head as best she could upon my arm. Kissed the hand that she was holding and listened, or so I thought, to what I had to say. I traced my development from the early days up to the present time, the phase in which I could understand her. I described her own nature and temperament. Told how they needed a larger life for their expression. How incapable Washington was of understanding 87that need. How it could not meet it. I pointed out that in lieu of proper channels, her emotions had overflowed into paths that dissipated them. I talked, beautifully I thought, about an art that would be born, an art that would open the way for women the likes of her. I asked her to hope, and build up an inner life against the coming of that day. I recited some of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange quiver in my voice, a promise-song. And then I began to wonder why her hand had not once returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling about her laziness came back. I spoke sharply. My policeman friend passed by. I said hello to him. As he went away, I began to visualize certain possibilities. An immediate and urgent passion swept over me. Then I looked at Avey. Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was as faint and regular as a child’s in slumber. My passion died. I was afraid to move lest I disturb her. Hours and hours, I guess it was, she lay there. My body grew numb. I shivered. I coughed. I wanted to get up and whittle at the boxes of young trees. I withdrew my hand. I raised her head to waken her. She88 did not stir. I got up and walked around. I found my policeman friend and talked to him. We both came up, and bent over her. He said it would be all right for her to stay there just so long as she got away before the workmen came at dawn. A blanket was borrowed from a neighbor house. I sat beside her through the night. I saw the dawn steal over Washington. The Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship drifting in from sea. Avey’s face was pale, and her eyes were heavy. She did not have the gray crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated to wake her. Orphan-woman...

---

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---

LIFE of nigger alleys, of pool rooms and restaurants and near-beer saloons soaks into the walls of Howard Theater and sets them throbbing jazz songs. Black-skinned, they dance and shout above the tick and trill of white-walled buildings. At night, they open doors to people who come in to stamp their feet and shout. At night, road-shows volley songs into the mass-heart of black people. Songs soak the walls and seep out to the nigger life of alleys and near-beer saloons, of the Poodle Dog and Black Bear cabarets. Afternoons, the house is dark, and the walls are sleeping singers until rehearsal begins. Or until John comes within them. Then they start throbbing to a subtle syncopation. And the space-dark air grows softly luminous.

John is the manager’s brother. He is seated at the center of the theater, just before rehearsal. Light streaks down upon him from a window high above. One half his face is orange in it. One half his face is in shadow. The soft glow92 of the house rushes to, and compacts about, the shaft of light. John’s mind coincides with the shaft of light. Thoughts rush to, and compact about it. Life of the house and of the slowly awakening stage swirls to the body of John, and thrills it. John’s body is separate from the thoughts that pack his mind.

Stage-lights, soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers. Beneath them, hid by the shadow of a set, Dorris. Other chorus girls drift in. John feels them in the mass. And as if his own body were the mass-heart of a black audience listening to them singing, he wants to stamp his feet and shout. His mind, contained above desires of his body, singles the girls out, and tries to trace origins and plot destinies.

A pianist slips into the pit and improvises jazz. The walls awake. Arms of the girls, and their limbs, which .. jazz, jazz .. by lifting up their tight street skirts they set free, jab the air and clog the floor in rhythm to the music. (Lift your skirts, Baby, and talk t papa!) Crude, individualized, and yet .. monotonous...

John: Soon the director will herd you, my93 full-lipped, distant beauties, and tame you, and blunt your sharp thrusts in loosely suggestive movements, appropriate to Broadway. (O dance!) Soon the audience will paint your dusk faces white, and call you beautiful. (O dance!) Soon I... (O dance!) I’d like...

Girls laugh and shout. Sing discordant snatches of other jazz songs. Whirl with loose passion into the arms of passing show-men.

John: Too thick. Too easy. Too monotonous. Her whom I’d love I’d leave before she knew that I was with her. Her? Which? (O dance!) I’d like to...

Girls dance and sing. Men clap. The walls sing and press inward. They press the men and girls, they press John towards a center of physical ecstasy. Go to it, Baby! Fan yourself, and feed your papa! Put .. nobody lied .. and take .. when they said I cried over you. No lie! The glitter and color of stacked scenes, the gilt and brass and crimson of the house, converge towards a center of physical ecstasy. John’s feet and torso and his blood press in. He wills thought to rid his mind of passion.

94

“All right, girls. Alaska. Miss Reynolds, please.”

The director wants to get the rehearsal through with.

The girls line up. John sees the front row: dancing ponies. The rest are in shadow. The leading lady fits loosely in the front. Lack-life, monotonous. “One, two, three—” Music starts. The song is somewhere where it will not strain the leading lady’s throat. The dance is somewhere where it will not strain the girls. Above the staleness, one dancer throws herself into it. Dorris. John sees her. Her hair, crisp-curled, is bobbed. Bushy, black hair bobbing about her lemon-colored face. Her lips are curiously full, and very red. Her limbs in silk purple stockings are lovely. John feels them. Desires her. Holds off.

John: Stage-door johnny; chorus-girl. No, that would be all right. Dictie, educated, stuck-up; show-girl. Yep. Her suspicion would be stronger than her passion. It wouldnt work. Keep her loveliness. Let her go.

Dorris sees John and knows that he is looking at her. Her own glowing is too rich a thing to95 let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion.

“Who’s that?” she asks her dancing partner.

“Th manager’s brother. Dictie. Nothin doin, hon.”

Dorris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him. Then, withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director.

Dorris: Nothin doin? How come? Aint I as good as him? Couldnt I have got an education if I’d wanted one? Dont I know respectable folks, lots of em, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Aint I had men as good as him? Better. Doctors an lawyers. Whats a manager’s brother, anyhow?

Two steps back, and two steps front.

“Say, Mame, where do you get that stuff?”

“Whatshmean, Dorris?”

“If you two girls cant listen to what I’m telling you, I know where I can get some who can. Now listen.”

Mame: Go to hell, you black bastard.

Dorris: Whats eatin at him, anyway?

“Now follow me in this, you girls. Its three96 counts to the right, three counts to the left, and then you shimmy—”

John: —and then you shimmy. I’ll bet she can. Some good cabaret, with rooms upstairs. And what in hell do you think you’d get from it? Youre going wrong. Here’s right: get her to herself—(Christ, but how she’d bore you after the first five minutes)—not if you get her right she wouldnt. Touch her, I mean. To herself—in some room perhaps. Some cheap, dingy bedroom. Hell no. Cant be done. But the point is, brother John, it can be done. Get her to herself somewhere, anywhere. Go down in yourself—and she’d be calling you all sorts of asses while you were in the process of going down. Hold em, bud. Cant be done. Let her go. (Dance and I’ll love you!) And keep her loveliness.

“All right now, Chicken Chaser. Dorris and girls. Where’s Dorris? I told you to stay on the stage, didnt I? Well? Now thats enough. All right. All right there, Professor? All right. One, two, three—”

Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls, four deep, blurs within the shadow of suspended 97scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The director feels that and steps to one side. He smiles, and picks her for a leading lady, one of these days. Odd ends of stage-men emerge from the wings, and stare and clap. A crap game in the alley suddenly ends. Black faces crowd the rear stage doors. The girls, catching joy from Dorris, whip up within the footlights’ glow. They forget set steps; they find their own. The director forgets to bawl them out. Dorris dances.

John: Her head bobs to Broadway. Dance from yourself. Dance! O just a little more.

Dorris’ eyes burn across the space of seats to him.

Dorris: I bet he can love. Hell, he cant love. He’s too skinny. His lips are too skinny. He wouldnt love me anyway, only for that. But I’d get a pair of silk stockings out of it. Red silk. I got purple. Cut it, kid. You cant win him to respect you that away. He wouldnt anyway. Maybe he would. Maybe he’d love. I’ve heard em say that men who look like him (what does he look like?) will marry if they love. O will you love me? And give me kids, and a98 home, and everything? (I’d like to make your nest, and honest, hon, I wouldnt run out on you.) You will if I make you. Just watch me.

Dorris dances. She forgets her tricks. She dances.

Glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs.

And her singing is of canebrake loves and mangrove feastings.

The walls press in, singing. Flesh of a throbbing body, they press close to John and Dorris. They close them in. John’s heart beats tensely against her dancing body. Walls press his mind within his heart. And then, the shaft of light goes out the window high above him. John’s mind sweeps up to follow it. Mind pulls him upward into dream. Dorris dances...
John dreams:

Dorris is dressed in a loose black gown splashed with lemon ribbons. Her feet taper long and slim from trim ankles. She waits for him just inside the stage door. John, collar and tie colorful and flaring, walks towards the stage door. There are no trees in the alley. But his feet feel as though they step on autumn leaves whose rustle has been pressed out of them by the passing of a million satin slippers. The air is sweet with roasting 99chestnuts, sweet with bonfires of old leaves. John’s melancholy is a deep thing that seals all senses but his eyes, and makes him whole.

Dorris knows that he is coming. Just at the right moment she steps from the door, as if there were no door. Her face is tinted like the autumn alley. Of old flowers, or of a southern canefield, her perfume. “Glorious Dorris.” So his eyes speak. And their sadness is too deep for sweet untruth. She barely touches his arm. They glide off with footfalls softened on the leaves, the old leaves powdered by a million satin slippers.

They are in a room. John knows nothing of it. Only, that the flesh and blood of Dorris are its walls. Singing walls. Lights, soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers. Soft lights, and warm.

John reaches for a manuscript of his, and reads. Dorris, who has no eyes, has eyes to understand him. He comes to a dancing scene. The scene is Dorris. She dances. Dorris dances. Glorious Dorris. Dorris whirls, whirls, dances...

Dorris dances.

The pianist crashes a bumper chord. The whole stage claps. Dorris, flushed, looks quick at John. His whole face is in shadow. She seeks for her dance in it. She finds it a dead thing in the shadow which is his dream. She rushes from100 the stage. Falls down the steps into her dressing-room. Pulls her hair. Her eyes, over a floor of tears, stare at the whitewashed ceiling. (Smell of dry paste, and paint, and soiled clothing.) Her pal comes in. Dorris flings herself into the old safe arms, and cries bitterly.

“I told you nothin doin,” is what Mame says to comfort her.

---

---

HER soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog that follows her, whimpering. She is large enough, I know, to find a warm spot for it. But each night when she comes home and closes the big outside storm door, the little dog is left in the vestibule, filled with chills till morning. Some one ... eoho Jesus ... soft as a cotton boll brushed against the milk-pod cheek of Christ, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps upon clean hay cut in her dreams.

---

When you meet her in the daytime on the streets, the little dog keeps coming. Nothing happens at first, and then, when she has forgotten the streets and alleys, and the large house where she goes to bed of nights, a soft thing like fur begins to rub your limbs, and you hear a low, scared voice, lonely, calling, and you know that a cool something nozzles moisture in your palms. Sensitive things like nostrils, quiver. Her breath comes sweet as honeysuckle whose pistils bear the life of coming song. And her eyes carry103 to where builders find no need for vestibules, for swinging on iron hinges, storm doors.

---

Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog, that follows her, whimpering. I’ve seen it tagging on behind her, up streets where chestnut trees flowered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly sprinkled with clean water. Up alleys where niggers sat on low door-steps before tumbled shanties and sang and loved. At night, when she comes home, the little dog is left in the vestibule, nosing the crack beneath the big storm door, filled with chills till morning. Some one ... eoho Jesus ... soft as the bare feet of Christ moving across bales of southern cotton, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps: cradled in dream-fluted cane.

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1

HOUSES are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of the street. Upon the gleaming limbs and asphalt torso of a dreaming nigger. Shake your curled wool-blossoms, nigger. Open your liver lips to the lean, white spring. Stir the root-life of a withered people. Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.

Dark swaying forms of Negroes are street songs that woo virginal houses.

Dan Moore walks southward on Thirteenth Street. The low limbs of budding chestnut trees recede above his head. Chestnut buds and blossoms are wool he walks upon. The eyes of houses faintly touch him as he passes them. Soft girl-eyes, they set him singing. Girl-eyes within him widen upward to promised faces. Floating away, they dally wistfully over the dusk body of the street. Come on, Dan Moore, come on. Dan sings. His voice is a little hoarse.105 It cracks. He strains to produce tones in keeping with the houses’ loveliness. Cant be done. He whistles. His notes are shrill. They hurt him. Negroes open gates, and go indoors, perfectly. Dan thinks of the house he’s going to. Of the girl. Lips, flesh-notes of a forgotten song, plead with him...

Dan turns into a side-street, opens an iron gate, bangs it to. Mounts the steps, and searches for the bell. Funny, he cant find it. He fumbles around. The thought comes to him that some one passing by might see him, and not understand. Might think that he is trying to sneak, to break in.

Dan: Break in. Get an ax and smash in. Smash in their faces. I’ll show em. Break into an engine-house, steal a thousand horse-power fire truck. Smash in with the truck. I’ll show em. Grab an ax and brain em. Cut em up. Jack the Ripper. Baboon from the zoo. And then the cops come. “No, I aint a baboon. I aint Jack the Ripper. I’m a poor man out of work. Take your hands off me, you bull-necked bears. Look into my eyes. I am Dan Moore. I was born in a canefield. The hands of Jesus106 touched me. I am come to a sick world to heal it. Only the other day, a dope fiend brushed against me— Dont laugh, you mighty, juicy, meat-hook men. Give me your fingers and I will peel them as if they were ripe bananas.”

Some one might think he is trying to break in. He’d better knock. His knuckles are raw bone against the thick glass door. He waits. No one comes. Perhaps they havent heard him. He raps again. This time, harder. He waits. No one comes. Some one is surely in. He fancies that he sees their shadows on the glass. Shadows of gorillas. Perhaps they saw him coming and dont want to let him in. He knocks. The tension of his arms makes the glass rattle. Hurried steps come towards him. The door opens.

“Please, you might break the glass—the bell—oh, Mr. Moore! I thought it must be some stranger. How do you do? Come in, wont you? Muriel? Yes. I’ll call her. Take your things off, wont you? And have a seat in the parlor. Muriel will be right down. Muriel! Oh Muriel! Mr. Moore to see you. She’ll be right down. You’ll pardon me, wont you? So glad to see you.”

107

Her eyes are weak. They are bluish and watery from reading newspapers. The blue is steel. It gimlets Dan while her mouth flaps amiably to him.

Dan: Nothing for you to see, old mussel-head. Dare I show you? If I did, delirium would furnish you headlines for a month. Now look here. Thats enough. Go long, woman. Say some nasty thing and I’ll kill you. Huh. Better damned sight not. Ta-ta, Mrs. Pribby.

Mrs. Pribby retreats to the rear of the house. She takes up a newspaper. There is a sharp click as she fits into her chair and draws it to the table. The click is metallic like the sound of a bolt being shot into place. Dan’s eyes sting. Sinking into a soft couch, he closes them. The house contracts about him. It is a sharp-edged, massed, metallic house. Bolted. About Mrs. Pribby. Bolted to the endless rows of metal houses. Mrs. Pribby’s house. The rows of houses belong to other Mrs. Pribbys. No wonder he couldn’t sing to them.

Dan: What’s Muriel doing here? God, what a place for her. Whats she doing? Putting her stockings on? In the bathroom. Come108 out of there, Dan Moore. People must have their privacy. Peeping-toms. I’ll never peep. I’ll listen. I like to listen.

Dan goes to the wall and places his ear against it. A passing street car and something vibrant from the earth sends a rumble to him. That rumble comes from the earth’s deep core. It is the mutter of powerful underground races. Dan has a picture of all the people rushing to put their ears against walls, to listen to it. The next world-savior is coming up that way. Coming up. A continent sinks down. The new-world Christ will need consummate skill to walk upon the waters where huge bubbles burst... Thuds of Muriel coming down. Dan turns to the piano and glances through a stack of jazz music sheets. “Ji-ji-bo, JI-JI-BO!” ..

“Hello, Dan, stranger, what brought you here?”

Muriel comes in, shakes hands, and then clicks into a high-armed seat under the orange glow of a floor-lamp. Her face is fleshy. It would tend to coarseness but for the fresh fragrant something which is the life of it. Her hair like an Indian’s. But more curly and bushed109 and vagrant. Her nostrils flare. The flushed ginger of her cheeks is touched orange by the shower of color from the lamp.

“Well, you havent told me, you havent answered my question, stranger. What brought you here?”

Dan feels the pressure of the house, of the rear room, of the rows of houses, shift to Muriel. He is light. He loves her. He is doubly heavy.

“Dont know, Muriel—wanted to see you—wanted to talk to you—to see you and tell you that I know what you’ve been through—what pain the last few months must have been—”

“Lets dont mention that.”

“But why not, Muriel? I—”

“Please.”

“But Muriel, life is full of things like that. One grows strong and beautiful in facing them. What else is life?”

“I dont know, Dan. And I dont believe I care. Whats the use? Lets talk about something else. I hear there’s a good show at the Lincoln this week.”

“Yes, so Harry was telling me. Going?”

“To-night.”

110

Dan starts to rise.

“I didnt know. I dont want to keep you.”

“Its all right. You dont have to go till Bernice comes. And she wont be here till eight. I’m all dressed. I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

Silence. The rustle of a newspaper being turned comes from the rear room.

Muriel: Shame about Dan. Something awfully good and fine about him. But he don’t fit in. In where? Me? Dan, I could love you if I tried. I dont have to try. I do. O Dan, dont you know I do? Timid lover, brave talker that you are. Whats the good of all you know if you dont know that? I wont let myself. I? Mrs. Pribby who reads newspapers all night wont. What has she got to do with me? She is me, somehow. No she’s not. Yes she is. She is the town, and the town wont let me love you, Dan. Dont you know? You could make it let me if you would. Why wont you? Youre selfish. I’m not strong enough to buck it. Youre too selfish to buck it, for me. I wish you’d go. You irritate me. Dan, please go.

“What are you doing now, Dan?”

111

“Same old thing, Muriel. Nothing, as the world would have it. Living, as I look at things. Living as much as I can without—”

“But you cant live without money, Dan. Why dont you get a good job and settle down?”

Dan: Same old line. Shoot it at me, sister. Hell of a note, this loving business. For ten minutes of it youve got to stand the torture of an intolerable heaviness and a hundred platitudes. Well, damit, shoot on.

“To what? my dear. Rustling newspapers?”

“You mustnt say that, Dan. It isnt right. Mrs. Pribby has been awfully good to me.”

“Dare say she has. Whats that got to do with it?”

“Oh, Dan, youre so unconsiderate and selfish. All you think of is yourself.”

“I think of you.”

“Too much—I mean, you ought to work more and think less. Thats the best way to get along.”

“Mussel-heads get along, Muriel. There is more to you than that—”

“Sometimes I think there is, Dan. But I dont know. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to do something 112with myself. Something real and beautiful, I mean. But whats the good of trying? I’ve tried to make people, every one I come in contact with, happy—”

Dan looks at her, directly. Her animalism, still unconquered by zoo-restrictions and keeper-taboos, stirs him. Passion tilts upward, bringing with it the elements of an old desire. Muriel’s lips become the flesh-notes of a futile, plaintive longing. Dan’s impulse to direct her is its fresh life.

“Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. Not happy, Muriel. Say that you have tried to make them create. Say that you have used your own capacity for life to cradle them. To start them upward-flowing. Or if you cant say that you have, then say that you will. My talking to you will make you aware of your113 power to do so. Say that you will love, that you will give yourself in love—”

“To you, Dan?”

Dan’s consciousness crudely swerves into his passions. They flare up in his eyes. They set up quivers in his abdomen. He is suddenly over-tense and nervous.

“Muriel—”

The newspaper rustles in the rear room.

“Muriel—”

Dan rises. His arms stretch towards her. His fingers and his palms, pink in the lamp-light, are glowing irons. Muriel’s chair is close and stiff about her. The house, the rows of houses locked about her chair. Dan’s fingers and arms are fire to melt and bars to wrench and force and pry. Her arms hang loose. Her hands are hot and moist. Dan takes them. He slips to his knees before her.

“Dan, you mustnt.”

“Muriel—”

“Dan, really you mustnt. No, Dan. No.”

“Oh, come, Muriel. Must I—”

“Shhh. Dan, please get up. Please. Mrs. Pribby is right in the next room. She’ll hear114 you. She may come in. Dont, Dan. She’ll see you—”

“Well then, lets go out.”

“I cant. Let go, Dan. Oh, wont you please let go.”

Muriel tries to pull her hands away. Dan tightens his grip. He feels the strength of his fingers. His muscles are tight and strong. He stands up. Thrusts out his chest. Muriel shrinks from him. Dan becomes aware of his crude absurdity. His lips curl. His passion chills. He has an obstinate desire to possess her.

“Muriel, I love you. I want you, whatever the world of Pribby says. Damn your Pribby. Who is she to dictate my love? I’ve stood enough of her. Enough of you. Come here.”

Muriel’s mouth works in and out. Her eyes flash and waggle. She wrenches her hands loose and forces them against his breast to keep him off. Dan grabs her wrists. Wedges in between her arms. Her face is close to him. It is hot and blue and moist. Ugly.

“Come here now.”

“Dont, Dan. Oh, dont. What are you killing?”

115

“Whats weak in both of us and a whole litter of Pribbys. For once in your life youre going to face whats real, by God—”

A sharp rap on the newspaper in the rear room cuts between them. The rap is like cool thick glass between them. Dan is hot on one side. Muriel, hot on the other. They straighten. Gaze fearfully at one another. Neither moves. A clock in the rear room, in the rear room, the rear room, strikes eight. Eight slow, cool sounds. Bernice. Muriel fastens on her image. She smooths her dress. She adjusts her skirt. She becomes prim and cool. Rising, she skirts Dan as if to keep the glass between them. Dan, gyrating nervously above the easy swing of his limbs, follows her to the parlor door. Muriel retreats before him till she reaches the landing of the steps that lead upstairs. She smiles at him. Dan sees his face in the hall mirror. He runs his fingers through his hair. Reaches for his hat and coat and puts them on. He moves towards Muriel. Muriel steps backward up one step. Dan’s jaw shoots out. Muriel jerks her arm in warning of Mrs. Pribby. She gasps and turns and starts to run. Noise of a116 chair scraping as Mrs. Pribby rises from it, ratchets down the hall. Dan stops. He makes a wry face, wheels round, goes out, and slams the door.

2

People come in slowly ... mutter, laughs, flutter, whishadwash, “I’ve changed my work-clothes—” ... and fill vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Muriel, leading Bernice who is a cross between a washerwoman and a blue-blood lady, a washer-blue, a washer-lady, wanders down the right aisle to the lower front box. Muriel has on an orange dress. Its color would clash with the crimson box-draperies, its color would contradict the sweet rose smile her face is bathed in, should she take her coat off. She’ll keep it on. Pale purple shadows rest on the planes of her cheeks. Deep purple comes from her thick-shocked hair. Orange of the dress goes well with these. Muriel presses her coat down from around her shoulders. Teachers are not supposed to have bobbed hair. She’ll keep her hat on. She takes the first chair, and indicates that117 Bernice is to take the one directly behind her. Seated thus, her eyes are level with, and near to, the face of an imaginary man upon the stage. To speak to Berny she must turn. When she does, the audience is square upon her.

People come in slowly ... “—for my Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. O glory God! O shout Amen!” ... and fill vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Each one is a bolt that shoots into a slot, and is locked there. Suppose the Lord should ask, where was Moses when the light went out? Suppose Gabriel should blow his trumpet! The seats are slots. The seats are bolted houses. The mass grows denser. Its weight at first is impalpable upon the box. Then Muriel begins to feel it. She props her arm against the brass box-rail, to ward it off. Silly. These people are friends of hers: a parent of a child she teaches, an old school friend. She smiles at them. They return her courtesy, and she is free to chat with Berny. Berny’s tongue, started, runs on, and on. O washer-blue! O washer-lady!

Muriel: Never see Dan again. He makes me feel queer. Starts things he doesnt finish.118 Upsets me. I am not upset. I am perfectly calm. I am going to enjoy the show. Good show. I’ve had some show! This damn tame thing. O Dan. Wont see Dan again. Not alone. Have Mrs. Pribby come in. She was in. Keep Dan out. If I love him, can I keep him out? Well then, I dont love him. Now he’s out. Who is that coming in? Blind as a bat. Ding-bat. Looks like Dan. He mustnt see me. Silly. He cant reach me. He wont dare come in here. He’d put his head down like a goring bull and charge me. He’d trample them. He’d gore. He’d rape! Berny! He won’t dare come in here.

“Berny, who was that who just came in? I havent my glasses.”

“A friend of yours, a good friend so I hear. Mr. Daniel Moore, Lord.”

“Oh. He’s no friend of mine.”

“No? I hear he is.”

“Well, he isnt.”

Dan is ushered down the aisle. He has to squeeze past the knees of seated people to reach his own seat. He treads on a man’s corns. The man grumbles, and shoves him off. He shrivels119 close beside a portly Negress whose huge rolls of flesh meet about the bones of seat-arms. A soil-soaked fragrance comes from her. Through the cement floor her strong roots sink down. They spread under the asphalt streets. Dreaming, the streets roll over on their bellies, and suck their glossy health from them. Her strong roots sink down and spread under the river and disappear in blood-lines that waver south. Her roots shoot down. Dan’s hands follow them. Roots throb. Dan’s heart beats violently. He places his palms upon the earth to cool them. Earth throbs. Dan’s heart beats violently. He sees all the people in the house rush to the walls to listen to the rumble. A new-world Christ is coming up. Dan comes up. He is startled. The eyes of the woman dont belong to her. They look at him unpleasantly. From either aisle, bolted masses press in. He doesnt fit. The mass grows agitant. For an instant, Dan’s and Muriel’s eyes meet. His weight there slides the weight on her. She braces an arm against the brass rail, and turns her head away.

Muriel: Damn fool; dear Dan, what did you want to follow me here for? Oh cant you120 ever do anything right? Must you always pain me, and make me hate you? I do hate you. I wish some one would come in with a horse-whip and lash you out. I wish some one would drag you up a back alley and brain you with the whip-butt.

Muriel glances at her wrist-watch.

“Quarter of nine. Berny, what time have you?”

“Eight-forty. Time to begin. Oh, look Muriel, that woman with the plume; doesnt she look good! They say she’s going with, oh, whats his name. You know. Too much powder. I can see it from here. Here’s the orchestra now. O fine! Jim Clem at the piano!”

The men fill the pit. Instruments run the scale and tune. The saxophone moans and throws a fit. Jim Clem, poised over the piano, is ready to begin. His head nods forward. Opening crash. The house snaps dark. The curtain recedes upward from the blush of the footlights. Jazz overture is over. The first act is on.

Dan: Old stuff. Muriel—bored. Must be. But she’ll smile and she’ll clap. Do what youre121 bid, you she-slave. Look at her. Sweet, tame woman in a brass box seat. Clap, smile, fawn, clap. Do what youre bid. Drag me in with you. Dirty me. Prop me in your brass box seat. I’m there, am I not? because of you. He-slave. Slave of a woman who is a slave. I’m a damned sight worse than you are. I sing your praises, Beauty! I exalt thee, O Muriel! A slave, thou art greater than all Freedom because I love thee.

Dan fidgets, and disturbs his neighbors. His neighbors glare at him. He glares back without seeing them. The man whose corns have been trod upon speaks to him.

“Keep quiet, cant you, mister. Other people have paid their money besides yourself to see the show.”

The man’s face is a blur about two sullen liquid things that are his eyes. The eyes dissolve in the surrounding vagueness. Dan suddenly feels that the man is an enemy whom he has long been looking for.

Dan bristles. Glares furiously at the man.

“All right. All right then. Look at the show. I’m not stopping you.”

122

“Shhh,” from some one in the rear.

Dan turns around.

“Its that man there who started everything. I didnt say a thing to him until he tried to start something. What have I got to do with whether he has paid his money or not? Thats the manager’s business. Do I look like the manager?”

“Shhhh. Youre right. Shhhh.”

“Dont tell me to shhh. Tell him. That man there. He started everything. If what he wanted was to start a fight, why didnt he say so?”

The man leans forward.

“Better be quiet, sonny. I aint said a thing about fight, yet.”

“Its a good thing you havent.”

“Shhhh.”

Dan grips himself. Another act is on. Dwarfs, dressed like prize-fighters, foreheads bulging like boxing gloves, are led upon the stage. They are going to fight for the heavyweight championship. Gruesome. Dan glances at Muriel. He imagines that she shudders. His mind curves back into himself, and picks up tail-ends of experiences. His eyes are open,123 mechanically. The dwarfs pound and bruise and bleed each other, on his eyeballs.

Dan: Ah, but she was some baby! And not vulgar either. Funny how some women can do those things. Muriel dancing like that! Hell. She rolled and wabbled. Her buttocks rocked. She pulled up her dress and showed her pink drawers. Baby! And then she caught my eyes. Dont know what my eyes had in them. Yes I do. God, dont I though! Sometimes I think, Dan Moore, that your eyes could burn clean ... burn clean ... BURN CLEAN!..

The gong rings. The dwarfs set to. They spar grotesquely, playfully, until one lands a stiff blow. This makes the other sore. He commences slugging. A real scrap is on. Time! The dwarfs go to their corners and are sponged and fanned off. Gloves bulge from their wrists. Their wrists are necks for the tight-faced gloves. The fellow to the right lets his eyes roam over the audience. He sights Muriel. He grins.

Dan: Those silly women arguing feminism. Here’s what I should have said to them. “It124 should be clear to you women, that the proposition must be stated thus:

So framed, the proposition is a mental-filler, Dentist, I want gold teeth. It should become cherished of the technical intellect. I hereby offer it to posterity as one of the important machine-age designs. P. S. It should be noted, that because it is an achievement of this age, its growth and hence its causes, up to the point of maturity, antedate machinery. Ery...”

The gong rings. No fooling this time. The dwarfs set to. They clinch. The referee parts them. One swings a cruel upper-cut and knocks the other down. A huge head hits the floor. Pop! The house roars. The fighter, groggy, scrambles up. The referee whispers to the contenders not to fight so hard. They ignore him. They charge. Their heads jab like boxing-gloves. They kick and spit and bite. They pound each other furiously. Muriel pounds.125 The house pounds. Cut lips. Bloody noses. The referee asks for the gong. Time! The house roars. The dwarfs bow, are made to bow. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led from the stage.

Dan: Strange I never really noticed him before. Been sitting there for years. Born a slave. Slavery not so long ago. He’ll die in his chair. Swing low, sweet chariot. Jesus will come and roll him down the river Jordan. Oh, come along, Moses, you’ll get lost; stretch out your rod and come across. LET MY PEOPLE GO! Old man. Knows everyone who passes the corners. Saw the first horse-cars. The first Oldsmobile. And he was born in slavery. I did see his eyes. Never miss eyes. But they were bloodshot and watery. It hurt to look at them. It hurts to look in most people’s eyes. He saw Grant and Lincoln. He saw Walt—old man, did you see Walt Whitman? Did you see Walt Whitman! Strange force that drew me to him. And I went up to see. The woman thought I saw crazy. I told him to look into the heavens. He did, and smiled. I asked him if he knew what that rumbling is that comes up from the ground. Christ,126 what a stroke that was. And the jabbering idiots crowding around. And the crossing-cop leaving his job to come over and wheel him away...

The house applauds. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led back. But no encore. Must give the house something. The attendant comes out and announces that Mr. Barry, the champion, will sing one of his own songs, “for your approval.” Mr. Barry grins at Muriel as he wabbles from the wing. He holds a fresh white rose, and a small mirror. He wipes blood from his nose. He signals Jim Clem. The orchestra starts. A sentimental love song, Mr. Barry sings, first to one girl, and then another in the audience. He holds the mirror in such a way that it flashes in the face of each one he sings to. The light swings around.

Dan: I am going to reach up and grab the girders of this building and pull them down. The crash will be a signal. Hid by the smoke and dust Dan Moore will arise. In his right hand will be a dynamo. In his left, a god’s face that will flash white light from ebony. I’ll grab a girder and swing it like a walking-stick.127 Lightning will flash. I’ll grab its black knob and swing it like a crippled cane. Lightning... Some one’s flashing ... some one’s flashing... Who in hell is flashing that mirror? Take it off me, godam you.

Dan’s eyes are half blinded. He moves his head. The light follows. He hears the audience laugh. He hears the orchestra. A man with a high-pitched, sentimental voice is singing. Dan sees the dwarf. Along the mirror flash the song comes. Dan ducks his head. The audience roars. The light swings around to Muriel. Dan looks. Muriel is too close. Mr. Barry covers his mirror. He sings to her. She shrinks away. Nausea. She clutches the brass box-rail. She moves to face away. The audience is square upon her. Its eyes smile. Its hands itch to clap. Muriel turns to the dwarf and forces a smile at him. With a showy blare of orchestration, the song comes to its close. Mr. Barry bows. He offers Muriel the rose, first having kissed it. Blood of his battered lips is a vivid stain upon its petals. Mr. Barry offers Muriel the rose. The house applauds. Muriel flinches back. The dwarf steps forward, diffident;128 threatening. Hate pops from his eyes and crackles like a brittle heat about the box. The thick hide of his face is drawn in tortured wrinkles. Above his eyes, the bulging, tight-skinned brow. Dan looks at it. It grows calm and massive. It grows profound. It is a thing of wisdom and tenderness, of suffering and beauty. Dan looks down. The eyes are calm and luminous. Words come from them... Arms of the audience reach out, grab Muriel, and hold her there. Claps are steel fingers that manacle her wrists and move them forward to acceptance. Berny leans forward and whispers:

“Its all right. Go on—take it.”

Words form in the eyes of the dwarf:

Muriel, tight in her revulsion, sees black, and daintily reaches for the offering. As her hand129 touches it, Dan springs up in his seat and shouts:

“JESUS WAS ONCE A LEPER!”

Dan steps down.

He is as cool as a green stem that has just shed its flower.

Rows of gaping faces strain towards him. They are distant, beneath him, impalpable. Squeezing out, Dan again treads upon the corn-foot man. The man shoves him.

“Watch where youre going, mister. Crazy or no, you aint going to walk over me. Watch where youre going there.”

Dan turns, and serenely tweaks the fellow’s nose. The man jumps up. Dan is jammed against a seat-back. A slight swift anger flicks him. His fist hooks the other’s jaw.

“Now you have started something. Aint no man living can hit me and get away with it. Come on on the outside.”

The house, tumultuously stirring, grabs its wraps and follows the men.

The man leads Dan up a black alley. The alley-air is thick and moist with smells of garbage 130and wet trash. In the morning, singing niggers will drive by and ring their gongs... Heavy with the scent of rancid flowers and with the scent of fight. The crowd, pressing forward, is a hollow roar. Eyes of houses, soft girl-eyes, glow reticently upon the hubbub and blink out. The man stops. Takes off his hat and coat. Dan, having forgotten him, keeps going on.

---

---

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled.

But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.

 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.

I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger.

 

My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest- time.

I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields of other harvesters.

 

It would be good to see them ... crook’d, split, and iron-ring’d handles of the scythes. It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger.

 

(Dusk is a strange fear’d sheath their blades are dull’d in.)

My throat is dry. And should I call, a cracked grain like the oats ... eoho--

 

I fear to call. What should they hear me, and offer me their grain, oats, or wheat, or corn? I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger.

 

133My ears are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.

I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry.

 

It would be good to hear their songs .. reapers of the sweet-stalk’d cane, cutters of the corn .. even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.

 

I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled, I fear to call. (Eoho, my brothers!)

 

I am a reaper. (Eoho!) All my oats are cradled. But I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain. It has no taste to it. My throat is dry...

 

O my brothers, I beat my palms, still soft, against the stubble of my harvesting. (You beat your soft palms, too.) My pain is sweet. Sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger.

---

1

ON the school gymnasium floor, young men and women are drilling. They are going to be teachers, and go out into the world .. thud, thud .. and give precision to the movements of sick people who all their lives have been drilling. One man is out of step. In step. The teacher glares at him. A girl in bloomers, seated on a mat in the corner because she has told the director that she is sick, sees that the footfalls of the men are rhythmical and syncopated. The dance of his blue-trousered limbs thrills her.

Bona: He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons.

Columns of the drillers thud towards her. He is in the front row. He is in no row at all. Bona can look close at him. His red-brown face--

Bona: He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But dont all the dorm girls say so? And dont you, when135 you are sane, say so? Thats why I love—Oh, nonsense. You have never loved a man who didnt first love you. Besides--

Columns thud away from her. Come to a halt in line formation. Rigid. The period bell rings, and the teacher dismisses them.

A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basket-ball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asks to be chosen. The girls fuss. The director comes to quiet them. He hears what Bona wants.

“But, Miss Hale, you were excused—”

“So I was, Mr. Boynton, but—”

“—you can play basket-ball, but you are too sick to drill.”

“If you wish to put it that way.”

She swings away from him to the girl captain.

“Helen, I want to play, and you must let me. This is the first time I’ve asked and I dont see why—”

“Thats just it, Bona. We have our team.”

“Well, team or no team, I want to play and thats all there is to it.”

136

She snatches the ball from Helen’s hands, and charges down the floor.

Helen shrugs. One of the weaker girls says that she’ll drop out. Helen accepts this. The team is formed. The whistle blows. The game starts. Bona, in center, is jumping against Paul. He plays with her. Out-jumps her, makes a quick pass, gets a quick return, and shoots a goal from the middle of the floor. Bona burns crimson. She fights, and tries to guard him. One of her team-mates advises her not to play so hard. Paul shoots his second goal.

Bona begins to feel a little dizzy and all in. She drives on. Almost hugs Paul to guard him. Near the basket, he attempts to shoot, and Bona lunges into his body and tries to beat his arms. His elbow, going up, gives her a sharp crack on the jaw. She whirls. He catches her. Her body stiffens. Then becomes strangely vibrant, and bursts to a swift life within her anger. He is about to give way before her hatred when a new passion flares at him and makes his stomach fall. Bona squeezes him. He suddenly feels stifled, and wonders why in hell the ring of silly gaping faces that’s caked about him doesnt make way137 and give him air. He has a swift illusion that it is himself who has been struck. He looks at Bona. Whir. Whir. They seem to be human distortions spinning tensely in a fog. Spinning .. dizzy .. spinning... Bona jerks herself free, flushes a startling crimson, breaks through the bewildered teams, and rushes from the hall.

2

Paul is in his room of two windows.

Outside, the South-Side L track cuts them in two.

Bona is one window. One window, Paul.

Hurtling Loop-jammed L trains throw them in swift shadow.

Paul goes to his. Gray slanting roofs of houses are tinted lavender in the setting sun. Paul follows the sun, over the stock-yards where a fresh stench is just arising, across wheat lands that are still waving above their stubble, into the sun. Paul follows the sun to a pine-matted hillock in Georgia. He sees the slanting roofs of gray unpainted cabins tinted lavender. A138 Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. Her breasts are ample for the suckling of a song. She weans it, and sends it, curiously weaving, among lush melodies of cane and corn. Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago.

He is at Bona’s window.

With his own glow he looks through a dark pane.

---

Paul’s room-mate comes in.

“Say, Paul, I’ve got a date for you. Come on. Shake a leg, will you?”

His blonde hair is combed slick. His vest is snug about him.

He is like the electric light which he snaps on.

“Whatdoysay, Paul? Get a wiggle on. Come on. We havent got much time by the time we eat and dress and everything.”

His bustling concentrates on the brushing of his hair.

Art: What in hell’s getting into Paul of late, anyway? Christ, but he’s getting moony. Its his blood. Dark blood: moony. Doesnt get139 anywhere unless you boost it. You’ve got to keep it going--

“Say, Paul!”

—or it’ll go to sleep on you. Dark blood; nigger? Thats what those jealous she-hens say. Not Bona though, or she ... from the South ... wouldnt want me to fix a date for him and her. Hell of a thing, that Paul’s dark: you’ve got to always be answering questions.

“Say, Paul, for Christ’s sake leave that window, cant you?”

“Whats it, Art?”

“Hell, I’ve told you about fifty times. Got a date for you. Come on.”

“With who?”

Art: He didnt use to ask; now he does. Getting up in the air. Getting funny.

“Heres your hat. Want a smoke? Paul! Here. I’ve got a match. Now come on and I’ll tell you all about it on the way to supper.”

Paul: He’s going to Life this time. No doubt of that. Quit your kidding. Some day, dear Art, I’m going to kick the living slats out of you, and you wont know what I’ve done it for. And your slats will bring forth Life .. beautiful woman...

140

Pure Food Restaurant.

“Bring me some soup with a lot of crackers, understand? And then a roast-beef dinner. Same for you, eh, Paul? Now as I was saying, you’ve got a swell chance with her. And she’s game. Best proof: she dont give a damn what the dorm girls say about you and her in the gym, or about the funny looks that Boynton gives her, or about what they say about, well, hell, you know, Paul. And say, Paul, she’s a sweetheart. Tall, not puffy and pretty, more serious and deep—the kind you like these days. And they say she’s got a car. And say, she’s on fire. But you know all about that. She got Helen to fix it up with me. The four of us—remember the last party? Crimson Gardens! Boy!”

Paul’s eyes take on a light that Art can settle in.

3

Art has on his patent-leather pumps and fancy vest. A loose fall coat is swung across his arm. His face has been massaged, and over a close shave, powdered. It is a healthy pink the blue141 of evening tints a purple pallor. Art is happy and confident in the good looks that his mirror gave him. Bubbling over with a joy he must spend now if the night is to contain it all. His bubbles, too, are curiously tinted purple as Paul watches them. Paul, contrary to what he had thought he would be like, is cool like the dusk, and like the dusk, detached. His dark face is a floating shade in evening’s shadow. He sees Art, curiously. Art is a purple fluid, carbon-charged, that effervesces besides him. He loves Art. But is it not queer, this pale purple facsimile of a red-blooded Norwegian friend of his? Perhaps for some reason, white skins are not supposed to live at night. Surely, enough nights would transform them fantastically, or kill them. And their red passion? Night paled that too, and made it moony. Moony. Thats what Art thought of him. Bona didnt, even in the daytime. Bona, would she be pale? Impossible. Not that red glow. But the conviction did not set his emotion flowing.

“Come right in, wont you? The young ladies will be right down. Oh, Mr. Carlstrom, do play something for us while you are waiting. We just142 love to listen to your music. You play so well.”

Houses, and dorm sitting-rooms are places where white faces seclude themselves at night. There is a reason...

Art sat on the piano and simply tore it down. Jazz. The picture of Our Poets hung perilously.

Paul: I’ve got to get the kid to play that stuff for me in the daytime. Might be different. More himself. More nigger. Different? There is. Curious, though.

The girls come in. Art stops playing, and almost immediately takes up a petty quarrel, where he had last left it, with Helen.

Bona, black-hair curled staccato, sharply contrasting with Helen’s puffy yellow, holds Paul’s hand. She squeezes it. Her own emotion supplements the return pressure. And then, for no tangible reason, her spirits drop. Without them, she is nervous, and slightly afraid. She resents this. Paul’s eyes are critical. She resents Paul. She flares at him. She flares to poise and security.

“Shall we be on our way?”

“Yes, Bona, certainly.”

---

The Boulevard is sleek in asphalt, and, with143 arc-lights and limousines, aglow. Dry leaves scamper behind the whir of cars. The scent of exploded gasoline that mingles with them is faintly sweet. Mellow stone mansions over-shadow clapboard homes which now resemble Negro shanties in some southern alley. Bona and Paul, and Art and Helen, move along an island-like, far-stretching strip of leaf-soft ground. Above them, worlds of shadow-planes and solids, silently moving. As if on one of these, Paul looks down on Bona. No doubt of it: her face is pale. She is talking. Her words have no feel to them. One sees them. They are pink petals that fall upon velvet cloth. Bona is soft, and pale, and beautiful.

“Paul, tell me something about yourself—or would you rather wait?”

“I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know.”

“Not what I want to know, Paul; what you want to tell me.”

“You have the beauty of a gem fathoms under sea.”

“I feel that, but I dont want to be. I want to be near you. Perhaps I will be if I tell you something. Paul, I love you.”

144

The sea casts up its jewel into his hands, and burns them furiously. To tuck her arm under his and hold her hand will ease the burn.

“What can I say to you, brave dear woman—I cant talk love. Love is a dry grain in my mouth unless it is wet with kisses.”

“You would dare? right here on the Boulevard? before Arthur and Helen?”

“Before myself? I dare.”

“Here then.”

Bona, in the slim shadow of a tree trunk, pulls Paul to her. Suddenly she stiffens. Stops.

“But you have not said you love me.”

“I cant—yet—Bona.”

“Ach, you never will. Youre cold. Cold.”

Bona: Colored; cold. Wrong somewhere.

She hurries and catches up with Art and Helen.

4

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. People ... University of Chicago students, members of the stock exchange, a large Negro in crimson uniform who guards the door .. had145 watched them enter. Had leaned towards each other over ash-smeared tablecloths and highballs and whispered: What is he, a Spaniard, an Indian, an Italian, a Mexican, a Hindu, or a Japanese? Art had at first fidgeted under their stares .. what are you looking at, you godam pack of owl-eyed hyenas? .. but soon settled into his fuss with Helen, and forgot them. A strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that he was apart from the people around him. Apart from the pain which they had unconsciously caused. Suddenly he knew that people saw, not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference. Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him, and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was fullness, and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself, cloudy, but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables round him. White lights, or as now, the pink lights of the Crimson Gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it, equal to that of love or dream, of seeing this. Art and Bona and Helen? He’d look. They were wonderfully flushed and beautiful. Not146 for himself; because they were. Distantly. Who were they, anyway? God, if he knew them. He’d come in with them. Of that he was sure. Come where? Into life? Yes. No. Into the Crimson Gardens. A part of life. A carbon bubble. Would it look purple if he went out into the night and looked at it? His sudden starting to rise almost upset the table.

“What in hell—pardon—whats the matter, Paul?”

“I forgot my cigarettes—”

“Youre smoking one.”

“So I am. Pardon me.”

The waiter straightens them out. Takes their order.

Art: What in hell’s eating Paul? Moony aint the word for it. From bad to worse. And those godam people staring so. Paul’s a queer fish. Doesnt seem to mind... He’s my pal, let me tell you, you horn-rimmed owl-eyed hyena at that table, and a lot better than you whoever you are... Queer about him. I could stick up for him if he’d only come out, one way or the other, and tell a feller. Besides, a room-mate has a right to know. Thinks I wont understand. 147Said so. He’s got a swell head when it comes to brains, all right. God, he’s a good straight feller, though. Only, moony. Nut. Nuttish. Nuttery. Nutmeg... “What’d you say, Helen?”

“I was talking to Bona, thank you.”

“Well, its nothing to get spiffy about.”

“What? Oh, of course not. Please lets dont start some silly argument all over again.”

“Well.”

“Well.”

“Now thats enough. Say, waiter, whats the matter with our order? Make it snappy, will you?”

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The drinks come. Four highballs. Art passes cigarettes. A girl dressed like a bare-back rider in flaming pink, makes her way through tables to the dance floor. All lights are dimmed till they seem a lush afterglow of crimson. Spotlights the girl. She sings. “Liza, Little Liza Jane.”

Paul is rosy before his window.

He moves, slightly, towards Bona.

With his own glow, he seeks to penetrate a dark pane.

148

Paul: From the South. What does that mean, precisely, except that you’ll love or hate a nigger? Thats a lot. What does it mean except that in Chicago you’ll have the courage to neither love or hate. A priori. But it would seem that you have. Queer words, arent these, for a man who wears blue pants on a gym floor in the daytime. Well, never matter. You matter. I’d like to know you whom I look at. Know, not love. Not that knowing is a greater pleasure; but that I have just found the joy of it. You came just a month too late. Even this afternoon I dreamed. To-night, along the Boulevard, you found me cold. Paul Johnson, cold! Thats a good one, eh, Art, you fine old stupid fellow, you! But I feel good! The color and the music and the song... A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. O song!.. And those flushed faces. Eager brilliant eyes. Hard to imagine them as unawakened. Your own. Oh, they’re awake all right. “And you know it too, dont you Bona?”

“What, Paul?”

“The truth of what I was thinking.”

149

“I’d like to know I know—something of you.”

“You will—before the evening’s over. I promise it.”

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The bare-back rider balances agilely on the applause which is the tail of her song. Orchestral instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat that ripples its fur against the deep-purring saxophone. The drum throws sticks. The cat jumps on the piano keyboard. Hi diddle, hi diddle, the cat and the fiddle. Crimson Gardens .. hurrah! .. jumps over the moon. Crimson Gardens! Helen .. O Eliza .. rabbit-eyes sparkling, plays up to, and tries to placate what she considers to be Paul’s contempt. She always does that .. Little Liza Jane... Once home, she burns with the thought of what she’s done. She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she’ll never go out again when he is along. She tries to get Art to break with him, saying, that if Paul, whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more to him than she is, well, she’s through. She does not break with Art. She goes out as often as she can with Art and Paul. She explains this to herself150 by a piece of information which a friend of hers had given her: men like him (Paul) can fascinate. One is not responsible for fascination. Not one girl had really loved Paul; he fascinated them. Bona didnt; only thought she did. Time would tell. And of course, she didnt. Liza... She plays up to, and tries to placate, Paul.

“Paul is so deep these days, and I’m so glad he’s found some one to interest him.”

“I dont believe I do.”

The thought escapes from Bona just a moment before her anger at having said it.

Bona: You little puffy cat, I do. I do!

Dont I, Paul? her eyes ask.

Her answer is a crash of jazz from the palm-hidden orchestra. Crimson Gardens is a body whose blood flows to a clot upon the dance floor. Art and Helen clot. Soon, Bona and Paul. Paul finds her a little stiff, and his mind, wandering to Helen (silly little kid who wants every highball spoon her hands touch, for a souvenir), supple, perfect little dancer, wishes for the next dance when he and Art will exchange.

Bona knows that she must win him to herself.

“Since when have men like you grown cold?”

151

“The first philosopher.”

“I thought you were a poet—or a gym director.”

“Hence, your failure to make love.”

Bona’s eyes flare. Water. Grow red about the rims. She would like to tear away from him and dash across the clotted floor.

“What do you mean?”

“Mental concepts rule you. If they were flush with mine—good. I dont believe they are.”

“How do you know, Mr. Philosopher?”

“Mostly a priori.”

“You talk well for a gym director.”

“And you—”

“I hate you. Ou!”

She presses away. Paul, conscious of the convention in it, pulls her to him. Her body close. Her head still strains away. He nearly crushes her. She tries to pinch him. Then sees people staring, and lets her arms fall. Their eyes meet. Both, contemptuous. The dance takes blood from their minds and packs it, tingling, in the torsos of their swaying bodies. Passionate blood leaps back into their eyes. They are a dizzy blood clot on a gyrating floor.

152

They know that the pink-faced people have no part in what they feel. Their instinct leads them away from Art and Helen, and towards the big uniformed black man who opens and closes the gilded exit door. The cloak-room girl is tolerant of their impatience over such trivial things as wraps. And slightly superior. As the black man swings the door for them, his eyes are knowing. Too many couples have passed out, flushed and fidgety, for him not to know. The chill air is a shock to Paul. A strange thing happens. He sees the Gardens purple, as if he were way off. And a spot is in the purple. The spot comes furiously towards him. Face of the black man. It leers. It smiles sweetly like a child’s. Paul leaves Bona and darts back so quickly that he doesnt give the door-man a chance to open. He swings in. Stops. Before the huge bulk of the Negro.

“Youre wrong.”

“Yassur.”

“Brother, youre wrong.”

“I came back to tell you, to shake your hand, and tell you that you are wrong. That something beautiful is going to happen. That the 153Gardens are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. That I came into the Gardens, into life in the Gardens with one whom I did not know. That I danced with her, and did not know her. That I felt passion, contempt and passion for her whom I did not know. That I thought of her. That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window. And all the while the Gardens were purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. I came back to tell you, brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I am going out and gather petals. That I am going out and know her whom I brought here with me to these Gardens which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk.”

Paul and the black man shook hands.

When he reached the spot where they had been standing, Bona was gone.

---

to Waldo Frank.

---

1

RALPH KABNIS, propped in his bed, tries to read. To read himself to sleep. An oil lamp on a chair near his elbow burns unsteadily. The cabin room is spaced fantastically about it. Whitewashed hearth and chimney, black with sooty saw-teeth. Ceiling, patterned by the fringed globe of the lamp. The walls, unpainted, are seasoned a rosin yellow. And cracks between the boards are black. These cracks are the lips the night winds use for whispering. Night winds in Georgia are vagrant poets, whispering. Kabnis, against his will, lets his book slip down, and listens to them. The warm whiteness of his bed, the lamp-light, do not protect him from the weird chill of their song:

158

Kabnis’ thin hair is streaked on the pillow. His hand strokes the slim silk of his mustache. His thumb, pressed under his chin, seems to be trying to give squareness and projection to it. Brown eyes stare from a lemon face. Moisture gathers beneath his arm-pits. He slides down beneath the cover, seeking release.

Kabnis: Near me. Now. Whoever you are, my warm glowing sweetheart, do not think that the face that rests beside you is the real Kabnis. Ralph Kabnis is a dream. And dreams are faces with large eyes and weak chins and broad brows that get smashed by the fists of square faces. The body of the world is bull-necked. A dream is a soft face that fits uncertainly upon it... God, if I could develop that in words. Give what I know a bull-neck and a heaving body, all would go well with me, wouldnt it, sweetheart? If I could feel that I came to the South to face it. If I, the dream (not what is weak and afraid in me) could become the face of the South. How my lips would sing for it, my songs being the lips of its soul. Soul. Soul hell. There aint no such thing. What in hell was that?

159

A rat had run across the thin boards of the ceiling. Kabnis thrusts his head out from the covers. Through the cracks, a powdery faded red dust sprays down on him. Dust of slave-fields, dried, scattered... No use to read. Christ, if he only could drink himself to sleep. Something as sure as fate was going to happen. He couldnt stand this thing much longer. A hen, perched on a shelf in the adjoining room begins to tread. Her nails scrape the soft wood. Her feathers ruffle.

“Get out of that, you egg-laying bitch.”

Kabnis hurls a slipper against the wall. The hen flies from her perch and cackles as if a skunk were after her.

“Now cut out that racket or I’ll wring your neck for you.”

Answering cackles arise in the chicken yard.

“Why in Christ’s hell cant you leave me alone? Damn it, I wish your cackle would choke you. Choke every mother’s son of them in this God-forsaken hole. Go away. By God I’ll wring your neck for you if you dont. Hell of a mess I’ve got in: even the poultry is hostile. Go way. Go way. By God, I’ll...”

160

Kabnis jumps from his bed. His eyes are wild. He makes for the door. Bursts through it. The hen, driving blindly at the window-pane, screams. Then flies and flops around trying to elude him. Kabnis catches her.

“Got you now, you she-bitch.”

With his fingers about her neck, he thrusts open the outside door and steps out into the serene loveliness of Georgian autumn moonlight. Some distance off, down in the valley, a band of pine-smoke, silvered gauze, drifts steadily. The half-moon is a white child that sleeps upon the tree-tops of the forest. White winds croon its sleep-song:

Kabnis whirls the chicken by its neck, and throws the head away. Picks up the hopping161 body, warm, sticky, and hides it in a clump of bushes. He wipes blood from his hands onto the coarse scant grass.

Kabnis: Thats done. Old Chromo in the big house there will wonder whats become of her pet hen. Well, it’ll teach her a lesson: not to make a hen-coop of my quarters. Quarters. Hell of a fine quarters, I’ve got. Five years ago; look at me now. Earth’s child. The earth my mother. God is a profligate red-nosed man about town. Bastardy; me. A bastard son has got a right to curse his maker. God...

Kabnis is about to shake his fists heaven-ward. He looks up, and the night’s beauty strikes him dumb. He falls to his knees. Sharp stones cut through his thin pajamas. The shock sends a shiver over him. He quivers. Tears mist his eyes. He writhes.

“God Almighty, dear God, dear Jesus, do not torture me with beauty. Take it away. Give me an ugly world. Ha, ugly. Stinking like unwashed niggers. Dear Jesus, do not chain me to myself and set these hills and valleys, heaving with folk-songs, so close to me that I cannot reach them. There is a radiant beauty in the162 night that touches and ... tortures me. Ugh. Hell. Get up, you damn fool. Look around. Whats beautiful there? Hog pens and chicken yards. Dirty red mud. Stinking outhouse. Whats beauty anyway but ugliness if it hurts you? God, he doesnt exist, but nevertheless He is ugly. Hence, what comes from Him is ugly. Lynchers and business men, and that cockroach Hanby, especially. How come that he gets to be principal of a school? Of the school I’m driven to teach in? God’s handiwork, doubtless. God and Hanby, they belong together. Two godam moral-spouters. Oh, no, I wont let that emotion come up in me. Stay down. Stay down, I tell you. O Jesus, Thou art beautiful... Come, Ralph, pull yourself together. Curses and adoration dont come from what is sane. This loneliness, dumbness, awful, intangible oppression is enough to drive a man insane. Miles from nowhere. A speck on a Georgia hillside. Jesus, can you imagine it—an atom of dust in agony on a hillside? Thats a spectacle for you. Come, Ralph, old man, pull yourself together.”

Kabnis has stiffened. He is conscious now of163 the night wind, and of how it chills him. He rises. He totters as a man would who for the first time uses artificial limbs. As a completely artificial man would. The large frame house, squatting on brick pillars, where the principal of the school, his wife, and the boarding girls sleep, seems a curious shadow of his mind. He tries, but cannot convince himself of its reality. His gaze drifts down into the vale, across the swamp, up over the solid dusk bank of pines, and rests, bewildered-like, on the court-house tower. It is dull silver in the moonlight. White child that sleeps upon the top of pines. Kabnis’ mind clears. He sees himself yanked beneath that tower. He sees white minds, with indolent assumption, juggle justice and a nigger... Somewhere, far off in the straight line of his sight, is Augusta. Christ, how cut off from everything he is. And hours, hours north, why not say a lifetime north? Washington sleeps. Its still, peaceful streets, how desirable they are. Its people whom he had always halfway despised. New York? Impossible. It was a fiction. He had dreamed it. An impotent nostalgia grips him. It becomes intolerable. He forces himself 164to narrow to a cabin silhouetted on a knoll about a mile away. Peace. Negroes within it are content. They farm. They sing. They love. They sleep. Kabnis wonders if perhaps they can feel him. If perhaps he gives them bad dreams. Things are so immediate in Georgia.

Thinking that now he can go to sleep, he re-enters his room. He builds a fire in the open hearth. The room dances to the tongues of flames, and sings to the crackling and spurting of the logs. Wind comes up between the floor boards, through the black cracks of the walls.

Kabnis: Cant sleep. Light a cigarette. If that old bastard comes over here and smells smoke, I’m done for. Hell of a note, cant even smoke. The stillness of it: where they burn and hang men, you cant smoke. Cant take a swig of licker. What do they think this is, anyway, some sort of temperance school? How did I ever land in such a hole? Ugh. One might just as well be in his grave. Still as a grave. Jesus, how still everything is. Does the world know how still it is? People make noise. They are afraid of silence. Of what lives, and God, of what dies in silence. There must be many dead165 things moving in silence. They come here to touch me. I swear I feel their fingers... Come, Ralph, pull yourself together. What in hell was that? Only the rustle of leaves, I guess. You know, Ralph, old man, it wouldnt surprise me at all to see a ghost. People dont think there are such things. They rationalize their fear, and call their cowardice science. Fine bunch, they are. Damit, that was a noise. And not the wind either. A chicken maybe. Hell, chickens dont wander around this time of night. What in hell is it?

A scraping sound, like a piece of wood dragging over the ground, is coming near.

“Ha, ha. The ghosts down this way havent got any chains to rattle, so they drag trees along with them. Thats a good one. But no joke, something is outside this house, as sure as hell. Whatever it is, it can get a good look at me and I cant see it. Jesus Christ!”

Kabnis pours water on the flames and blows his lamp out. He picks up a poker and stealthily approaches the outside door. Swings it open, and lurches into the night. A calf, carrying a yoke of wood, bolts away from him and scampers down the road.

166

“Well, I’m damned. This godam place is sure getting the best of me. Come, Ralph, old man, pull yourself together. Nights cant last forever. Thank God for that. Its Sunday already. First time in my life I’ve ever wanted Sunday to come. Hell of a day. And down here there’s no such thing as ducking church. Well, I’ll see Halsey and Layman, and get a good square meal. Thats something. And Halsey’s a damn good feller. Cant talk to him, though. Who in Christ’s world can I talk to? A hen. God. Myself... I’m going bats, no doubt of that. Come now, Ralph, go in and make yourself go to sleep. Come now .. in the door .. thats right. Put the poker down. There. All right. Slip under the sheets. Close your eyes. Think nothing .. a long time .. nothing, nothing. Dont even think nothing. Blank. Not even blank. Count. No, mustnt count Nothing .. blank .. nothing .. blank .. space without stars in it. No, nothing .. nothing..

Kabnis sleeps. The winds, like soft-voiced vagrant poets sing:

167

2

The parlor of Fred Halsey’s home. There is a seediness about it. It seems as though the fittings have given a frugal service to at least seven generations of middle-class shop-owners. An open grate burns cheerily in contrast to the gray cold changed autumn weather. An old-fashioned mantelpiece supports a family clock (not running), a figure or two in imitation bronze, and two small group pictures. Directly above it, in a heavy oak frame, the portrait of a bearded man. Black hair, thick and curly, intensifies the pallor of the high forehead. The eyes are daring. The nose, sharp and regular. The poise suggests a tendency to adventure checked by the necessities of absolute command. The portrait is that of an English gentleman who has retained much of his culture, in that168 money has enabled him to escape being drawn through a land-grubbing pioneer life. His nature and features, modified by marriage and circumstances, have been transmitted to his great-grandson, Fred. To the left of this picture, spaced on the wall, is a smaller portrait of the great-grandmother. That here there is a Negro strain, no one would doubt. But it is difficult to say in precisely what feature it lies. On close inspection, her mouth is seen to be wistfully twisted. The expression of her face seems to shift before one’s gaze—now ugly, repulsive; now sad, and somehow beautiful in its pain. A tin wood-box rests on the floor below. To the right of the great-grandfather’s portrait hangs a family group: the father, mother, two brothers, and one sister of Fred. It includes himself some thirty years ago when his face was an olive white, and his hair luxuriant and dark and wavy. The father is a rich brown. The mother, practically white. Of the children, the girl, quite young, is like Fred; the two brothers, darker. The walls of the room are plastered and painted green. An old upright piano is tucked into the corner near the window. The window looks out169 on a forlorn, box-like, whitewashed frame church. Negroes are gathering, on foot, driving questionable gray and brown mules, and in an occasional Ford, for afternoon service. Beyond, Georgia hills roll off into the distance, their dreary aspect heightened by the gray spots of unpainted one- and two-room shanties. Clumps of pine trees here and there are the dark points the whole landscape is approaching. The church bell tolls. Above its squat tower, a great spiral of buzzards reaches far into the heavens. An ironic comment upon the path that leads into the Christian land... Three rocking chairs are grouped around the grate. Sunday papers scattered on the floor indicate a recent usage. Halsey, a well-built, stocky fellow, hair cropped close, enters the room. His Sunday clothes smell of wood and glue, for it is his habit to potter around his wagon-shop even on the Lord’s day. He is followed by Professor Layman, tall, heavy, loose-jointed Georgia Negro, by turns teacher and preacher, who has traveled in almost every nook and corner of the state and hence knows more than would be good for anyone other than a silent man. Kabnis, trying to170 force through a gathering heaviness, trails in behind them. They slip into chairs before the fire.

Layman: Sholy fine, Mr. Halsey, sholy fine. This town’s right good at feedin folks, better’n most towns in th state, even for preachers, but I ken say this beats um all. Yassur. Now aint that right, Professor Kabnis?

Kabnis: Yes sir, this beats them all, all right—best I’ve had, and thats a fact, though my comparison doesnt carry far, y’know.

Layman: Hows that, Professor?

Kabnis: Well, this is my first time out--

Layman: For a fact. Aint seed you round so much. Whats th trouble? Dont like our folks down this away?

Halsey: Aint that, Layman. He aint like most northern niggers that way. Aint a thing stuck up about him. He likes us, you an me, maybe all—its that red mud over yonder—gets stuck in it an cant get out. (Laughs.) An then he loves th fire so, warm as its been. Coldest Yankee I’ve ever seen. But I’m goin t get him out now in a jiffy, eh, Kabnis?

Kabnis: Sure, I should say so, sure. Dont think its because I dont like folks down this way.171 Just the opposite, in fact. Theres more hospitality and everything. Its diff—that is, theres lots of northern exaggeration about the South. Its not half the terror they picture it. Things are not half bad, as one could easily figure out for himself without ever crossing the Mason and Dixie line: all these people wouldnt stay down here, especially the rich, the ones that could easily leave, if conditions were so mighty bad. And then too, sometime back, my family were southerners y’know. From Georgia, in fact--

Layman: Nothin t feel proud about, Professor. Neither your folks nor mine.

Halsey (in a mock religious tone): Amen t that, brother Layman. Amen (turning to Kabnis, half playful, yet somehow dead in earnest). An Mr. Kabnis, kindly remember youre in th land of cotton—hell of a land. Th white folks get th boll; th niggers get th stalk. An dont you dare touch th boll, or even look at it. They’ll swing y sho. (Laughs.)

Kabnis: But they wouldnt touch a gentleman—fellows, men like us three here--

Layman: Nigger’s a nigger down this away, Professor. An only two dividins: good an bad.172 An even they aint permanent categories. They sometimes mixes um up when it comes t lynchin. I’ve seen um do it.

Halsey: Dont let th fear int y, though, Kabnis. This county’s a good un. Aint been a stringin up I can remember. (Laughs.)

Layman: This is a good town an a good county. But theres some that makes up fer it.

Kabnis: Things are better now though since that stir about those peonage cases, arent they?

Layman: Ever hear tell of a single shot killin moren one rabbit, Professor?

Kabnis: No, of course not, that is, but then--

Halsey: Now I know you werent born yesterday, sprung up so rapid like you aint heard of th brick thrown in th hornets’ nest. (Laughs.)

Kabnis: Hardly, hardly, I know--

Halsey: Course y do. (To Layman) See, northern niggers aint as dumb as they make out t be.

Kabnis (overlooking the remark): Just stirs them up to sting.

Halsey: T perfection. An put just like a professor should put it.

173

Kabnis: Thats what actually did happen?

Layman: Well, if it aint sos only because th stingers already movin jes as fast as they ken go. An been goin ever since I ken remember, an then some mo. Though I dont usually make mention of it.

Halsey: Damn sight better not. Say, Layman, you come from where theyre always swarmin, dont y?

Layman: Yassur. I do that, sho. Dont want t mention it, but its a fact. I’ve seed th time when there werent no use t even stretch out flat upon th ground. Seen um shoot an cut a man t pieces who had died th night befo. Yassur. An they didnt stop when they found out he was dead—jes went on ahackin at him anyway.

Kabnis: What did you do? What did you say to them, Professor?

Layman: Thems th things you neither does a thing or talks about if y want t stay around this away, Professor.

Halsey: Listen t what he’s tellin y, Kabnis. May come in handy some day.

Kabnis: Cant something be done? But of174 course not. This preacher-ridden race. Pray and shout. Theyre in the preacher’s hands. Thats what it is. And the preacher’s hands are in the white man’s pockets.

Halsey: Present company always excepted.

Kabnis: The Professor knows I wasnt referring to him.

Layman: Preacher’s a preacher anywheres you turn. No use exceptin.

Kabnis: Well, of course, if you look at it that way. I didnt mean— But cant something be done?

Layman: Sho. Yassur. An done first rate an well. Jes like Sam Raymon done it.

Kabnis: Hows that? What did he do?

Layman: Th white folks (reckon I oughtnt tell it) had jes knocked two others like you kill a cow—brained um with an ax, when they caught Sam Raymon by a stream. They was about t do fer him when he up an says, “White folks, I gotter die, I knows that. But wont y let me die in my own way?” Some was fer gettin after him, but th boss held um back an says, “Jes so longs th nigger dies—” An Sam fell down ont his knees an prayed, “O Lord, Ise175 comin to y,” an he up an jumps int th stream.

Singing from the church becomes audible. Above it, rising and falling in a plaintive moan, a woman’s voice swells to shouting. Kabnis hears it. His face gives way to an expression of mingled fear, contempt, and pity. Layman takes no notice of it. Halsey grins at Kabnis. He feels like having a little sport with him.

Halsey: Lets go t church, eh, Kabnis?

Kabnis (seeking control): All right—no sir, not by a damn sight. Once a days enough for me. Christ, but that stuff gets to me. Meaning no reflection on you, Professor.

Halsey: Course not. Say, Kabnis, noticed y this morning. What’d y get up for an go out?

Kabnis: Couldnt stand the shouting, and thats a fact. We dont have that sort of thing up North. We do, but, that is, some one should see to it that they are stopped or put out when they get so bad the preacher has to stop his sermon for them.

Halsey: Is that th way youall sit on sisters up North?

Kabnis: In the church I used to go to no one ever shouted--

176

Halsey: Lungs weak?

Kabnis: Hardly, that is--

Halsey: Yankees are right up t th minute in tellin folk how t turn a trick. They always were good at talkin.

Kabnis: Well, anyway, they should be stopped.

Layman: Thats right. Thats true. An its th worst ones in th community that comes int th church t shout. I’ve sort a made a study of it. You take a man what drinks, th biggest licker-head around will come int th church an yell th loudest. An th sister whats done wrong, an is always doin wrong, will sit down in th Amen corner an swing her arms an shout her head off. Seems as if they cant control themselves out in th world; they cant control themselves in church. Now dont that sound logical, Professor?

Halsey: Reckon its as good as any. But I heard that queer cuss over yonder—y know him, dont y, Kabnis? Well, y ought t. He had a run-in with your boss th other day—same as you’ll have if you dont walk th chalk-line. An th quicker th better. I hate that Hanby. Ornery bastard. I’ll mash his mouth in one of177 these days. Well, as I was sayin, that feller, Lewis’s name, I heard him sayin somethin about a stream whats dammed has got t cut loose somewheres. An that sounds good. I know th feelin myself. He strikes me as knowin a bucketful bout most things, that feller does. Seems like he doesnt want t talk, an does, sometimes, like Layman here. Damn queer feller, him.

Layman: Cant make heads or tails of him, an I’ve seen lots o queer possums in my day. Everybody’s wonderin about him. White folks too. He’ll have t leave here soon, thats sho. Always askin questions. An I aint seed his lips move once. Pokin round an notin somethin. Noted what I said th other day, an that werent fer notin down.

Kabnis: What was that?

Layman: Oh, a lynchin that took place bout a year ago. Th worst I know of round these parts.

Halsey: Bill Burnam?

Layman: Na. Mame Lamkins.

Halsey grunts, but says nothing.

The preacher’s voice rolls from the church in an insistent chanting monotone. At regular intervals 178it rises to a crescendo note. The sister begins to shout. Her voice, high-pitched and hysterical, is almost perfectly attuned to the nervous key of Kabnis. Halsey notices his distress, and is amused by it. Layman’s face is expressionless. Kabnis wants to hear the story of Mame Lamkins. He does not want to hear it. It can be no worse than the shouting.

Kabnis (his chair rocking faster): What about Mame Lamkins?

Halsey: Tell him, Layman.

The preacher momentarily stops. The choir, together with the entire congregation, sings an old spiritual. The music seems to quiet the shouter. Her heavy breathing has the sound of evening winds that blow through pinecones. Layman’s voice is uniformly low and soothing. A canebrake, murmuring the tale to its neighbor-road would be more passionate.

Layman: White folks know that niggers talk, an they dont mind jes so long as nothing comes of it, so here goes. She was in th family-way, Mame Lamkins was. They killed her in th street, an some white man seein th risin in her stomach as she lay there soppy in her blood like179 any cow, took an ripped her belly open, an th kid fell out. It was living; but a nigger baby aint supposed t live. So he jabbed his knife in it an stuck it t a tree. An then they all went away.

Kabnis: Christ no! What had she done?

Layman: Tried t hide her husband when they was after him.

A shriek pierces the room. The bronze pieces on the mantel hum. The sister cries frantically: “Jesus, Jesus, I’ve found Jesus. O Lord, glory t God, one mo sinner is acomin home.” At the height of this, a stone, wrapped round with paper, crashes through the window. Kabnis springs to his feet, terror-stricken. Layman is worried. Halsey picks up the stone. Takes off the wrapper, smooths it out, and reads: “You northern nigger, its time fer y t leave. Git along now.” Kabnis knows that the command is meant for him. Fear squeezes him. Caves him in. As a violent external pressure would. Fear flows inside him. It fills him up. He bloats. He saves himself from bursting by dashing wildly from the room. Halsey and Layman stare stupidly at each other. The stone, the180 crumpled paper are things, huge things that weight them. Their thoughts are vaguely concerned with the texture of the stone, with the color of the paper. Then they remember the words, and begin to shift them about in sentences. Layman even construes them grammatically. Suddenly the sense of them comes back to Halsey. He grips Layman by the arm and they both follow after Kabnis.

A false dusk has come early. The countryside is ashen, chill. Cabins and roads and canebrakes whisper. The church choir, dipping into a long silence, sings:

Softly luminous over the hills and valleys, the faint spray of a scattered star...

3

A splotchy figure drives forward along the cane- and corn-stalk hemmed-in road. A181 scarecrow replica of Kabnis, awkwardly animate. Fantastically plastered with red Georgia mud. It skirts the big house whose windows shine like mellow lanterns in the dusk. Its shoulder jogs against a sweet-gum tree. The figure caroms off against the cabin door, and lunges in. It slams the door as if to prevent some one entering after it.

“God Almighty, theyre here. After me. On me. All along the road I saw their eyes flaring from the cane. Hounds. Shouts. What in God’s name did I run here for? A mud-hole trap. I stumbled on a rope. O God, a rope. Their clammy hands were like the love of death playing up and down my spine. Trying to trip my legs. To trip my spine. Up and down my spine. My spine... My legs... Why in hell didn’t they catch me?”

Kabnis wheels around, half defiant, half numbed with a more immediate fear.

“Wanted to trap me here. Get out o there. I see you.”

He grabs a broom from beside the chimney and violently pokes it under the bed. The broom182 strikes a tin wash-tub. The noise bewilders. He recovers.

“Not there. In the closet.”

He throws the broom aside and grips the poker. Starts towards the closet door, towards somewhere in the perfect blackness behind the chimney.

“I’ll brain you.”

He stops short. The barks of hounds, evidently in pursuit, reach him. A voice, liquid in distance, yells, “Hi! Hi!”

“O God, theyre after me. Holy Father, Mother of Christ—hell, this aint no time for prayer—”

Voices, just outside the door:

“Reckon he’s here.”

“Dont see no light though.”

The door is flung open.

Kabnis: Get back or I’ll kill you.

He braces himself, brandishing the poker.

Halsey (coming in): Aint as bad as all that. Put that thing down.

Layman: Its only us, Professor. Nobody else after y.

Kabnis: Halsey. Layman. Close that door.183 Dont light that light. For godsake get away from there.

Halsey: Nobody’s after y, Kabnis, I’m tellin y. Put that thing down an get yourself together.

Kabnis: I tell you they are. I saw them. I heard the hounds.

Halsey: These aint th days of hounds an Uncle Tom’s Cabin, feller. White folks aint in fer all them theatrics these days. Theys more direct than that. If what they wanted was t get y, theyd have just marched right in an took y where y sat. Somebodys down by th branch chasin rabbits an atreein possums.

A shot is heard.

Halsey: Got him, I reckon. Saw Tom goin out with his gun. Tom’s pretty lucky most times.

He goes to the bureau and lights the lamp. The circular fringe is patterned on the ceiling. The moving shadows of the men are huge against the bare wall boards. Halsey walks up to Kabnis, takes the poker from his grip, and without more ado pushes him into a chair before the dark hearth.

184

Halsey: Youre a mess. Here, Layman. Get some trash an start a fire.

Layman fumbles around, finds some newspapers and old bags, puts them in the hearth, arranges the wood, and kindles the fire. Halsey sets a black iron kettle where it soon will be boiling. Then takes from his hip-pocket a bottle of corn licker which he passes to Kabnis.

Halsey: Here. This’ll straighten y out a bit.

Kabnis nervously draws the cork and gulps the licker down.

Kabnis: Ha. Good stuff. Thanks. Thank y, Halsey.

Halsey: Good stuff! Youre damn right. Hanby there dont think so. Wonder he doesnt come over t find out whos burnin his oil. Miserly bastard, him. Th boys what made this stuff—are y listenin t me, Kabnis? th boys what made this stuff have got th art down like I heard you say youd like t be with words. Eh? Have some, Layman?

Layman: Dont think I care for none, thank y jes th same, Mr. Halsey.

Halsey: Care hell. Course y care. Everybody cares around these parts. Preachers an185 school teachers an everybody. Here. Here, take it. Dont try that line on me.

Layman limbers up a little, but he cannot quite forget that he is on school ground.

Layman: Thats right. Thats true, sho. Shinin is th only business what pays in these hard times.

He takes a nip, and passes the bottle to Kabnis. Kabnis is in the middle of a long swig when a rap sounds on the door. He almost spills the bottle, but manages to pass it to Halsey just as the door swings open and Hanby enters. He is a well-dressed, smooth, rich, black-skinned Negro who thinks there is no one quite so suave and polished as himself. To members of his own race, he affects the manners of a wealthy white planter. Or, when he is up North, he lets it be known that his ideas are those of the best New England tradition. To white men he bows, without ever completely humbling himself. Tradesmen in the town tolerate him because he spends his money with them. He delivers his words with a full consciousness of his moral superiority.

Hanby: Hum. Erer, Professor Kabnis, to186 come straight to the point: the progress of the Negro race is jeopardized whenever the personal habits and examples set by its guides and mentors fall below the acknowledged and hard-won standard of its average member. This institution, of which I am the humble president, was founded, and has been maintained at a cost of great labor and untold sacrifice. Its purpose is to teach our youth to live better, cleaner, more noble lives. To prove to the world that the Negro race can be just like any other race. It hopes to attain this aim partly by the salutary examples set by its instructors. I cannot hinder the progress of a race simply to indulge a single member. I have thought the matter out beforehand, I can assure you. Therefore, if I find your resignation on my desk by to-morrow morning, Mr. Kabnis, I shall not feel obliged to call in the sheriff. Otherwise...”

Kabnis: A fellow can take a drink in his own room if he wants to, in the privacy of his own room.

Hanby: His room, but not the institution’s room, Mr. Kabnis.

Kabnis: This is my room while I’m in it.

187

Hanby: Mr. Clayborn (the sheriff) can inform you as to that.

Kabnis: Oh, well, what do I care—glad to get out of this mud-hole.

Hanby: I should think so from your looks.

Kabnis: You neednt get sarcastic about it.

Hanby: No, that is true. And I neednt wait for your resignation either, Mr. Kabnis.

Kabnis: Oh, you’ll get that all right. Dont worry.

Hanby: And I should like to have the room thoroughly aired and cleaned and ready for your successor by to-morrow noon, Professor.

Kabnis (trying to rise): You can have your godam room right away. I dont want it.

Hanby: But I wont have your cursing.

Halsey pushes Kabnis back into his chair.

Halsey: Sit down, Kabnis, till I wash y.

Hanby (to Halsey): I would rather not have drinking men on the premises, Mr. Halsey. You will oblige me--

Halsey: I’ll oblige you by stayin right on this spot, this spot, get me? till I get damned ready t leave.

188

He approaches Hanby. Hanby retreats, but manages to hold his dignity.

Halsey: Let me get you told right now, Mr. Samuel Hanby. Now listen t me. I aint no slick an span slave youve hired, an dont y think it for a minute. Youve bullied enough about this town. An besides, wheres that bill youve been owin me? Listen t me. If I dont get it paid in by tmorrer noon, Mr. Hanby (he mockingly assumes Hanby’s tone and manner), I shall feel obliged t call th sheriff. An that sheriff’ll be myself who’ll catch y in th road an pull y out your buggy an rightly attend t y. You heard me. Now leave him alone. I’m takin him home with me. I got it fixed. Before you came in. He’s goin t work with me. Shapin shafts and buildin wagons’ll make a man of him what nobody, y get me? what nobody can take advantage of. Thats all...

Halsey burrs off into vague and incoherent comment.

Pause. Disagreeable.

Layman’s eyes are glazed on the spurting fire.

Kabnis wants to rise and put both Halsey and Hanby in their places. He vaguely knows that189 he must do this, else the power of direction will completely slip from him to those outside. The conviction is just strong enough to torture him. To bring a feverish, quick-passing flare into his eyes. To mutter words soggy in hot saliva. To jerk his arms upward in futile protest. Halsey, noticing his gestures, thinks it is water that he desires. He brings a glass to him. Kabnis slings it to the floor. Heat of the conviction dies. His arms crumple. His upper lip, his mustache, quiver. Rap! rap, on the door. The sounds slap Kabnis. They bring a hectic color to his cheeks. Like huge cold finger tips they touch his skin and goose-flesh it. Hanby strikes a commanding pose. He moves toward Layman. Layman’s face is innocently immobile.

Halsey: Whos there?

Voice: Lewis.

Halsey: Come in, Lewis. Come on in.

Lewis enters. He is the queer fellow who has been referred to. A tall wiry copper-colored man, thirty perhaps. His mouth and eyes suggest purpose guided by an adequate intelligence. He is what a stronger Kabnis might have been, and in an odd faint way resembles him. As he190 steps towards the others, he seems to be issuing sharply from a vivid dream. Lewis shakes hands with Halsey. Nods perfunctorily to Hanby, who has stiffened to meet him. Smiles rapidly at Layman, and settles with real interest on Kabnis.

Lewis: Kabnis passed me on the road. Had a piece of business of my own, and couldnt get here any sooner. Thought I might be able to help in some way or other.

Halsey: A good baths bout all he needs now. An somethin t put his mind t rest.

Lewis: I think I can give him that. That note was meant for me. Some Negroes have grown uncomfortable at my being here--

Kabnis: You mean, Mr. Lewis, some colored folks threw it? Christ Amighty!

Halsey: Thats what he means. An just as I told y. White folks more direct than that.

Kabnis: What are they after you for?

Lewis: Its a long story, Kabnis. Too long for now. And it might involve present company. (He laughs pleasantly and gestures vaguely in the direction of Hanby.) Tell you about it later on perhaps.

191

Kabnis: Youre not going?

Lewis: Not till my month’s up.

Halsey: Hows that?

Lewis: I’m on a sort of contract with myself. (Is about to leave.) Well, glad its nothing serious--

Halsey: Come round t th shop sometime why dont y, Lewis? I’ve asked y enough. I’d like t have a talk with y. I aint as dumb as I look. Kabnis an me’ll be in most any time. Not much work these days. Wish t hell there was. This burg gets to me when there aint. (In answer to Lewis’ question.) He’s goin t work with me. Ya. Night air this side th branch aint good fer him. (Looks at Hanby. Laughs.)

Lewis: I see...

His eyes turn to Kabnis. In the instant of their shifting, a vision of the life they are to meet. Kabnis, a promise of a soil-soaked beauty; uprooted, thinning out. Suspended a few feet above the soil whose touch would resurrect him. Arm’s length removed from him whose will to help... There is a swift intuitive interchange of consciousness. Kabnis has a sudden need to rush into the arms of this man. His eyes call,192 “Brother.” And then a savage, cynical twist-about within him mocks his impulse and strengthens him to repulse Lewis. His lips curl cruelly. His eyes laugh. They are glittering needles, stitching. With a throbbing ache they draw Lewis to. Lewis brusquely wheels on Hanby.

Lewis: I’d like to see you, sir, a moment, if you dont mind.

Hanby’s tight collar and vest effectively preserve him.

Hanby: Yes, erer, Mr. Lewis. Right away.

Lewis: See you later, Halsey.

Halsey: So long—thanks—sho hope so, Lewis.

As he opens the door and Hanby passes out, a woman, miles down the valley, begins to sing. Her song is a spark that travels swiftly to the near-by cabins. Like purple tallow flames, songs jet up. They spread a ruddy haze over the heavens. The haze swings low. Now the whole countryside is a soft chorus. Lord. O Lord... Lewis closes the door behind him. A flame jets out...

The kettle is boiling. Halsey notices it. He193 pulls the wash-tub from beneath the bed. He arranges for the bath before the fire.

Halsey: Told y them theatrics didnt fit a white man. Th niggers, just like I told y. An after him. Aint surprisin though. He aint bowed t none of them. Nassur. T nairy a one of them nairy an inch nairy a time. An only mixed when he was good an ready--

Kabnis: That song, Halsey, do you hear it?

Halsey: Thats a man. Hear me, Kabnis? A man--

Kabnis: Jesus, do you hear it.

Halsey: Hear it? Hear what? Course I hear it. Listen t what I’m tellin y. A man, get me? They’ll get him yet if he dont watch out.

Kabnis is jolted into his fear.

Kabnis: Get him? What do you mean? How? Not lynch him?

Halsey: Na. Take a shotgun an shoot his eyes clear out. Well, anyway, it wasnt fer you, just like I told y. You’ll stay over at th house an work with me, eh, boy? Good t get away from his nobs, eh? Damn big stiff though, him. An youre not th first an I can tell y. (Laughs.)

He bustles and fusses about Kabnis as if he194 were a child. Kabnis submits, wearily. He has no will to resist him.

Layman (his voice is like a deep hollow echo): Thats right. Thats true, sho. Everybody’s been expectin that th bust up was comin. Surprised um all y held on as long as y did. Teachin in th South aint th thing fer y. Nassur. You ought t be way back up North where sometimes I wish I was. But I’ve hung on down this away so long--

Halsey: An there’ll never be no leavin time fer y.

4

A month has passed.

Halsey’s workshop. It is an old building just off the main street of Sempter. The walls to within a few feet of the ground are of an age-worn cement mixture. On the outside they are considerably crumbled and peppered with what looks like musket-shot. Inside, the plaster has fallen away in great chunks, leaving the laths, grayed and cobwebbed, exposed. A sort of loft above the shop proper serves as a break-water195 for the rain and sunshine which otherwise would have free entry to the main floor. The shop is filled with old wheels and parts of wheels, broken shafts, and wooden litter. A double door, midway the street wall. To the left of this, a work-bench that holds a vise and a variety of wood-work tools. A window with as many panes broken as whole, throws light on the bench. Opposite, in the rear wall, a second window looks out upon the back yard. In the left wall, a rickety smoke-blackened chimney, and hearth with fire blazing. Smooth-worn chairs grouped about the hearth suggest the village meeting-place. Several large wooden blocks, chipped and cut and sawed on their upper surfaces are in the middle of the floor. They are the supports used in almost any sort of wagon-work. Their idleness means that Halsey has no worth-while job on foot. To the right of the central door is a junk heap, and directly behind this, stairs that lead down into the cellar. The cellar is known as “The Hole.” Besides being the home of a very old man, it is used by Halsey on those occasions when he spices up the life of the small town.

196

Halsey, wonderfully himself in his work overalls, stands in the doorway and gazes up the street, expectantly. Then his eyes grow listless. He slouches against the smooth-rubbed frame. He lights a cigarette. Shifts his position. Braces an arm against the door. Kabnis passes the window and stoops to get in under Halsey’s arm. He is awkward and ludicrous, like a schoolboy in his big brother’s new overalls. He skirts the large blocks on the floor, and drops into a chair before the fire. Halsey saunters towards him.

Kabnis: Time f lunch.

Halsey: Ya.

He stands by the hearth, rocking backward and forward. He stretches his hands out to the fire. He washes them in the warm glow of the flames. They never get cold, but he warms them.

Kabnis: Saw Lewis up th street. Said he’d be down.

Halsey’s eyes brighten. He looks at Kabnis. Turns away. Says nothing. Kabnis fidgets. Twists his thin blue cloth-covered limbs. Pulls closer to the fire till the heat stings his shins. Pushes back. Pokes the burned logs. Puts on197 several fresh ones. Fidgets. The town bell strikes twelve.

Kabnis: Fix it up f tnight?

Halsey: Leave it t me.

Kabnis: Get Lewis in?

Halsey: Tryin t.

The air is heavy with the smell of pine and resin. Green logs spurt and sizzle. Sap trickles from an old pine-knot into the flames. Layman enters. He carries a lunch-pail. Kabnis, for the moment, thinks that he is a day laborer.

Layman: Evenin, gen’lemun.

Both: Whats say, Layman.

Layman squares a chair to the fire and droops into it. Several town fellows, silent unfathomable men for the most part, saunter in. Overalls. Thick tan shoes. Felt hats marvelously shaped and twisted. One asks Halsey for a cigarette. He gets it. The blacksmith, a tremendous black man, comes in from the forge. Not even a nod from him. He picks up an axle and goes out. Lewis enters. The town men look curiously at him. Suspicion and an open liking contest for possession of their faces. They are uncomfortable. One by one they drift into the street.

198

Layman: Heard y was leavin, Mr. Lewis.

Kabnis: Months up, eh? Hell of a month I’ve got.

Halsey: Sorry y goin, Lewis. Just getting acquainted like.

Lewis: Sorry myself, Halsey, in a way--

Layman: Gettin t like our town, Mr. Lewis?

Lewis: I’m afraid its on a different basis, Professor.

Halsey: An I’ve yet t hear about that basis. Been waitin long enough, God knows. Seems t me like youd take pity a feller if nothin more.

Kabnis: Somethin that old black cockroach over yonder doesnt like, whatever it is.

Layman: Thats right. Thats right, sho.

Halsey: A feller dropped in here tother day an said he knew what you was about. Said you had queer opinions. Well, I could have told him you was a queer one, myself. But not th way he was driftin. Didnt mean anything by it, but just let drop he thought you was a little wrong up here—crazy, y’know. (Laughs.)

Kabnis: Y mean old Blodson? Hell, he’s bats himself.

199

Lewis: I remember him. We had a talk. But what he found queer, I think, was not my opinions, but my lack of them. In half an hour he had settled everything: boll weevils, God, the World War. Weevils and wars are the pests that God sends against the sinful. People are too weak to correct themselves: the Redeemer is coming back. Get ready, ye sinners, for the advent of Our Lord. Interesting, eh, Kabnis? but not exactly what we want.

Halsey: Y could have come t me. I’ve sho been after y enough. Most every time I’ve seen y.

Kabnis (sarcastically): Hows it y never came t us professors?

Lewis: I did—to one.

Kabnis: Y mean t say y got somethin from that celluloid-collar-eraser-cleaned old codger over in th mud hole?

Halsey: Rough on th old boy, aint he? (Laughs.)

Lewis: Something, yes. Layman here could have given me quite a deal, but the incentive to his keeping quiet is so much greater than anything I could have offered him to open up, that I crossed him off my mind. And you--

200

Kabnis: What about me?

Halsey: Tell him, Lewis, for godsake tell him. I’ve told him. But its somethin else he wants so bad I’ve heard him downstairs mumblin with th old man.

Lewis: The old man?

Kabnis: What about me? Come on now, you know so much.

Halsey: Tell him, Lewis. Tell it t him.

Lewis: Life has already told him more than he is capable of knowing. It has given him in excess of what he can receive. I have been offered. Stuff in his stomach curdled, and he vomited me.

Kabnis’ face twitches. His body writhes.

Kabnis: You know a lot, you do. How about Halsey?

Lewis: Yes... Halsey? Fits here. Belongs here. An artist in your way, arent you, Halsey?

Halsey: Reckon I am, Lewis. Give me th work and fair pay an I aint askin nothin better. Went over-seas an saw France; an I come back. Been up North; an I come back. Went t school; but there aint no books whats got th feel t them201 of them there tools. Nassur. An I’m atellin y.

A shriveled, bony white man passes the window and enters the shop. He carries a broken hatchet-handle and the severed head. He speaks with a flat, drawn voice to Halsey, who comes forward to meet him.

Mr. Ramsay: Can y fix this fer me, Halsey?

Halsey (looking it over): Reckon so, Mr. Ramsay. Here, Kabnis. A little practice fer y.

Halsey directs Kabnis, showing him how to place the handle in the vise, and cut it down. The knife hangs. Kabnis thinks that it must be dull. He jerks it hard. The tool goes deep and shaves too much off. Mr. Ramsay smiles brokenly at him.

Mr. Ramsay (to Halsey): Still breakin in the new hand, eh, Halsey? Seems like a likely enough faller once he gets th hang of it.

He gives a tight laugh at his own good humor. Kabnis burns red. The back of his neck stings him beneath his collar. He feels stifled. Through Ramsay, the whole white South weighs down upon him. The pressure is terrific. He sweats under the arms. Chill beads run down his body. His brows concentrate upon the handle 202as though his own life was staked upon the perfect shaving of it. He begins to out and out botch the job. Halsey smiles.

Halsey: He’ll make a good un some of these days, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: Y ought t know. Yer daddy was a good un before y. Runs in th family, seems like t me.

Halsey: Thats right, Mr. Ramsay.

Kabnis is hopeless. Halsey takes the handle from him. With a few deft strokes he shaves it. Fits it. Gives it to Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: How much on this?

Halsey: No charge, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay (going out): All right, Halsey. Come down an take it out in trade. Shoe-strings or something.

Halsey: Yassur, Mr. Ramsay.

Halsey rejoins Lewis and Layman. Kabnis, hangdog-fashion, follows him.

Halsey: They like y if y work fer them.

Layman: Thats right, Mr. Halsey. Thats right, sho.

The group is about to resume its talk when203 Hanby enters. He is all energy, bustle, and business. He goes direct to Kabnis.

Hanby: An axle is out in the buggy which I would like to have shaped into a crow-bar. You will see that it is fixed for me.

Without waiting for an answer, and knowing that Kabnis will follow, he passes out. Kabnis, scowling, silent, trudges after him.

Hanby (from the outside): Have that ready for me by three o’clock, young man. I shall call for it.

Kabnis (under his breath as he comes in): Th hell you say, you old black swamp-gut.

He slings the axle on the floor.

Halsey: Wheeee!

Layman, lunch finished long ago, rises, heavily. He shakes hands with Lewis.

Layman: Might not see y again befo y leave, Mr. Lewis. I enjoys t hear y talk. Y might have been a preacher. Maybe a bishop some day. Sho do hope t see y back this away again sometime, Mr. Lewis.

Lewis: Thanks, Professor. Hope I’ll see you.

Layman waves a long arm loosely to the204 others, and leaves. Kabnis goes to the door. His eyes, sullen, gaze up the street.

Kabnis: Carrie K.’s comin with th lunch. Bout time.

She passes the window. Her red girl’s-cap, catching the sun, flashes vividly. With a stiff, awkward little movement she crosses the door-sill and gives Kabnis one of the two baskets which she is carrying. There is a slight stoop to her shoulders. The curves of her body blend with this to a soft rounded charm. Her gestures are stiffly variant. Black bangs curl over the forehead of her oval-olive face. Her expression is dazed, but on provocation it can melt into a wistful smile. Adolescent. She is easily the sister of Fred Halsey.

Carrie K.: Mother says excuse her, brother Fred an Ralph, fer bein late.

Kabnis: Everythings all right an O.K., Carrie Kate. O.K. an all right.

The two men settle on their lunch. Carrie, with hardly a glance in the direction of the hearth, as is her habit, is about to take the second basket down to the old man, when Lewis rises. In doing so he draws her unwitting attention.205 Their meeting is a swift sun-burst. Lewis impulsively moves towards her. His mind flashes images of her life in the southern town. He sees the nascent woman, her flesh already stiffening to cartilage, drying to bone. Her spirit-bloom, even now touched sullen, bitter. Her rich beauty fading... He wants to— He stretches forth his hands to hers. He takes them. They feel like warm cheeks against his palms. The sun-burst from her eyes floods up and haloes him. Christ-eyes, his eyes look to her. Fearlessly she loves into them. And then something happens. Her face blanches. Awkwardly she draws away. The sin-bogies of respectable southern colored folks clamor at her: “Look out! Be a good girl. A good girl. Look out!” She gropes for her basket that has fallen to the floor. Finds it, and marches with a rigid gravity to her task of feeding the old man. Like the glowing white ash of burned paper, Lewis’ eyelids, wavering, settle down. He stirs in the direction of the rear window. From the back yard, mules tethered to odd trees and posts blink dumbly at him. They too seem burdened with an impotent pain. Kabnis and Halsey are still busy with206 their lunch. They havent noticed him. After a while he turns to them.

Lewis: Your sister, Halsey, whats to become of her? What are you going to do for her?

Halsey: Who? What? What am I goin t do?..

Lewis: What I mean is, what does she do down there?

Halsey: Oh. Feeds th old man. Had lunch, Lewis?

Lewis: Thanks, yes. You have never felt her, have you, Halsey? Well, no, I guess not. I dont suppose you can. Nor can she... Old man? Halsey, some one lives down there? I’ve never heard of him. Tell me--

Kabnis takes time from his meal to answer with some emphasis:

Kabnis: Theres lots of things you aint heard of.

Lewis: Dare say. I’d like to see him.

Kabnis: You’ll get all th chance you want tnight.

Halsey: Fixin a little somethin up fer tnight, Lewis. Th three of us an some girls. Come round bout ten-thirty.

207

Lewis: Glad to. But what under the sun does he do down there?

Halsey: Ask Kabnis. He blows off t him every chance he gets.

Kabnis gives a grunting laugh. His mouth twists. Carrie returns from the cellar. Avoiding Lewis, she speaks to her brother.

Carrie K.: Brother Fred, father hasnt eaten now goin on th second week, but mumbles an talks funny, or tries t talk when I put his hands ont th food. He frightens me, an I dunno what t do. An oh, I came near fergettin, brother, but Mr. Marmon—he was eatin lunch when I saw him—told me t tell y that th lumber wagon busted down an he wanted y t fix it fer him. Said he reckoned he could get it t y after he ate.

Halsey chucks a half-eaten sandwich in the fire. Gets up. Arranges his blocks. Goes to the door and looks anxiously up the street. The wind whirls a small spiral in the gray dust road.

Halsey: Why didnt y tell me sooner, little sister?

Carrie K.: I fergot t, an just remembered it now, brother.

Her soft rolled words are fresh pain to Lewis.208 He wants to take her North with him. What for? He wonders what Kabnis could do for her. What she could do for him. Mother him. Carrie gathers the lunch things, silently, and in her pinched manner, curtsies, and departs. Kabnis lights his after-lunch cigarette. Lewis, who has sensed a change, becomes aware that he is not included in it. He starts to ask again about the old man. Decides not to. Rises to go.

Lewis: Think I’ll run along, Halsey.

Halsey: Sure. Glad t see y any time.

Kabnis: Dont forget tnight.

Lewis: Dont worry. I wont. So long.

Kabnis: So long. We’ll be expectin y.

Lewis passes Halsey at the door. Halsey’s cheeks form a vacant smile. His eyes are wide awake, watching for the wagon to turn from Broad Street into his road.

Halsey: So long.

His words reach Lewis halfway to the corner.

5

Night, soft belly of a pregnant Negress, throbs evenly against the torso of the South. Night throbs a womb-song to the South. Cane- and209 cotton-fields, pine forests, cypress swamps, sawmills, and factories are fecund at her touch. Night’s womb-song sets them singing. Night winds are the breathing of the unborn child whose calm throbbing in the belly of a Negress sets them somnolently singing. Hear their song.

Sempter’s streets are vacant and still. White paint on the wealthier houses has the chill blue glitter of distant stars. Negro cabins are a purple blur. Broad Street is deserted. Winds stir beneath the corrugated iron canopies and dangle odd bits of rope tied to horse- and mule-gnawed hitching-posts. One store window has a light in it. Chesterfield cigarette and Chero-Cola cardboard advertisements are stacked in it. From a side door two men come out. Pause, for a last word and then say good night. Soon they melt in shadows thicker than they. Way off down the street four figures sway beneath iron210 awnings which form a sort of corridor that imperfectly echoes and jumbles what they say. A fifth form joins them. They turn into the road that leads to Halsey’s workshop. The old building is phosphorescent above deep shade. The figures pass through the double door. Night winds whisper in the eaves. Sing weirdly in the ceiling cracks. Stir curls of shavings on the floor. Halsey lights a candle. A good-sized lumber wagon, wheels off, rests upon the blocks. Kabnis makes a face at it. An unearthly hush is upon the place. No one seems to want to talk. To move, lest the scraping of their feet..

Halsey: Come on down this way, folks.

He leads the way. Stella follows. And close after her, Cora, Lewis, and Kabnis. They descend into the Hole. It seems huge, limitless in the candle light. The walls are of stone, wonderfully fitted. They have no openings save a small iron-barred window toward the top of each. They are dry and warm. The ground slopes away to the rear of the building and thus leaves the south wall exposed to the sun. The blacksmith’s shop is plumb against the right wall. The floor is clay. Shavings have at odd211 times been matted into it. In the right-hand corner, under the stairs, two good-sized pine mattresses, resting on cardboard, are on either side of a wooden table. On this are several half-burned candles and an oil lamp. Behind the table, an irregular piece of mirror hangs on the wall. A loose something that looks to be a gaudy ball costume dangles from a near-by hook. To the front, a second table holds a lamp and several whiskey glasses. Six rickety chairs are near this table. Two old wagon wheels rest on the floor. To the left, sitting in a high-backed chair which stands upon a low platform, the old man. He is like a bust in black walnut. Gray-bearded. Gray-haired. Prophetic. Immobile. Lewis’ eyes are sunk in him. The others, unconcerned, are about to pass on to the front table when Lewis grips Halsey and so turns him that the candle flame shines obliquely on the old man’s features.

Lewis: And he rules over--

Kabnis: Th smoke an fire of th forge.

Lewis: Black Vulcan? I wouldnt say so. That forehead. Great woolly beard. Those eyes. A mute John the Baptist of a new religion—or a tongue-tied shadow of an old.

212

Kabnis: His tongue is tied all right, an I can vouch f that.

Lewis: Has he never talked to you?

Halsey: Kabnis wont give him a chance.

He laughs. The girls laugh. Kabnis winces.

Lewis: What do you call him?

Halsey: Father.

Lewis: Good. Father what?

Kabnis: Father of hell.

Halsey: Father’s th only name we have fer him. Come on. Lets sit down an get t th pleasure of the evenin.

Lewis: Father John it is from now on...

Slave boy whom some Christian mistress taught to read the Bible. Black man who saw Jesus in the ricefields, and began preaching to his people. Moses- and Christ-words used for songs. Dead blind father of a muted folk who feel their way upward to a life that crushes or absorbs them. (Speak, Father!) Suppose your eyes could see, old man. (The years hold hands. O Sing!) Suppose your lips...

Halsey, does he never talk?

Halsey: Na. But sometimes. Only seldom. Mumbles. Sis says he talks--

213

Kabnis: I’ve heard him talk.

Halsey: First I’ve ever heard of it. You dont give him a chance. Sis says she’s made out several words, mostly one—an like as not cause it was “sin.”

Kabnis: All those old fogies stutter about sin.

Cora laughs in a loose sort of way. She is a tall, thin, mulatto woman. Her eyes are deep-set behind a pointed nose. Her hair is coarse and bushy. Seeing that Stella also is restless, she takes her arm and the two women move towards the table. They slip into chairs. Halsey follows and lights the lamp. He lays out a pack of cards. Stella sorts them as if telling fortunes. She is a beautifully proportioned, large-eyed, brown-skin girl. Except for the twisted line of her mouth when she smiles or laughs, there is about her no suggestion of the life she’s been through. Kabnis, with great mock-solemnity, goes to the corner, takes down the robe, and dons it. He is a curious spectacle, acting a part, yet very real. He joins the others at the table. They are used to him. Lewis is surprised. He laughs. Kabnis shrinks and214 then glares at him with a furtive hatred. Halsey, bringing out a bottle of corn licker, pours drinks.

Halsey: Come on, Lewis. Come on, you fellers. Heres lookin at y.

Then, as if suddenly recalling something, he jerks away from the table and starts towards the steps.

Kabnis: Where y goin, Halsey?

Halsey: Where? Where y think? That oak beam in th wagon--

Kabnis: Come ere. Come ere. Sit down. What in hell’s wrong with you fellers? You with your wagon. Lewis with his Father John. This aint th time fer foolin with wagons. Daytime’s bad enough f that. Ere, sit down. Ere, Lewis, you too sit down. Have a drink. Thats right. Drink corn licker, love th girls, an listen t th old man mumblin sin.

There seems to be no good-time spirit to the party. Something in the air is too tense and deep for that. Lewis, seated now so that his eyes rest upon the old man, merges with his source and lets the pain and beauty of the South meet him there. White faces, pain-pollen, settle downward through a cane-sweet mist and touch the215 ovaries of yellow flowers. Cotton-bolls bloom, droop. Black roots twist in a parched red soil beneath a blazing sky. Magnolias, fragrant, a trifle futile, lovely, far off... His eyelids close. A force begins to heave and rise... Stella is serious, reminiscent.

Stella: Usall is brought up t hate sin worse than death--

Kabnis: An then before you have y eyes half open, youre made t love it if y want t live.

Stella: Us never--

Kabnis: Oh, I know your story: that old prim bastard over yonder, an then old Calvert’s office--

Stella: It wasnt them--

Kabnis: I know. They put y out of church, an then I guess th preacher came around an asked f some. But thats your body. Now me--

Halsey (passing him the bottle): All right, kid, we believe y. Here, take another. Wheres Clover, Stel?

Stella: You know how Jim is when he’s just out th swamp. Done up in shine an wouldnt let her come. Said he’d bust her head open if she went out.

216

Kabnis: Dont see why he doesnt stay over with Laura, where he belongs.

Stella: Ask him, an I reckon he’ll tell y. More than you want.

Halsey: Th nigger hates th sight of a black woman worse than death. Sorry t mix y up this way, Lewis. But y see how tis.

Lewis’ skin is tight and glowing over the fine bones of his face. His lips tremble. His nostrils quiver. The others notice this and smile knowingly at each other. Drinks and smokes are passed around. They pay no neverminds to him. A real party is being worked up. Then Lewis opens his eyes and looks at them. Their smiles disperse in hot-cold tremors. Kabnis chokes his laugh. It sputters, gurgles. His eyes flicker and turn away. He tries to pass the thing off by taking a long drink which he makes considerable fuss over. He is drawn back to Lewis. Seeing Lewis’ gaze still upon him, he scowls.

Kabnis: Whatsha lookin at me for? Y want t know who I am? Well, I’m Ralph Kabnis—lot of good its goin t do y. Well? Whatsha keep lookin for? I’m Ralph Kabnis. Aint that217 enough f y? Want th whole family history? Its none of your godam business, anyway. Keep off me. Do y hear? Keep off me. Look at Cora. Aint she pretty enough t look at? Look at Halsey, or Stella. Clover ought t be here an you could look at her. An love her. Thats what you need. I know--

Lewis: Ralph Kabnis gets satisfied that way?

Kabnis: Satisfied? Say, quit your kiddin. Here, look at that old man there. See him? He’s satisfied. Do I look like him? When I’m dead I dont expect t be satisfied. Is that enough f y, with your godam nosin, or do you want more? Well, y wont get it, understand?

Lewis: The old man as symbol, flesh, and spirit of the past, what do think he would say if he could see you? You look at him, Kabnis.

Kabnis: Just like any done-up preacher is what he looks t me. Jam some false teeth in his mouth and crank him, an youd have God Almighty spit in torrents all around th floor. Oh, hell, an he reminds me of that black cockroach over yonder. An besides, he aint my past. My ancestors were Southern blue-bloods--

218

Lewis: And black.

Kabnis: Aint much difference between blue an black.

Lewis: Enough to draw a denial from you. Cant hold them, can you? Master; slave. Soil; and the overarching heavens. Dusk; dawn. They fight and bastardize you. The sun tint of your cheeks, flame of the great season’s multi-colored leaves, tarnished, burned. Split, shredded: easily burned. No use...

His gaze shifts to Stella. Stella’s face draws back, her breasts come towards him.

Stella: I aint got nothin f y, mister. Taint no use t look at me.

Halsey: Youre a queer feller, Lewis, I swear y are. Told y so, didnt I, girls? Just take him easy though, an he’ll be ridin just th same as any Georgia mule, eh, Lewis? (Laughs.)

Stella: I’m goin t tell y somethin, mister. It aint t you, t th Mister Lewis what noses about. Its t somethin different, I dunno what. That old man there—maybe its him—is like m father used t look. He used t sing. An when he could sing no mo, they’d allus come f him an carry him t church an there he’d sit, befo th pulpit, aswayin219 an aleadin every song. A white man took m mother an it broke th old man’s heart. He died; an then I didnt care what become of me, an I dont now. I dont care now. Dont get it in y head I’m some sentimental Susie askin for yo sop. Nassur. But theres somethin t yo th others aint got. Boars an kids an fools—thats all I’ve known. Boars when their fever’s up. When their fever’s up they come t me. Halsey asks me over when he’s off th job. Kabnis—it ud be a sin t play with him. He takes it out in talk.

Halsey knows that he has trifled with her. At odd things he has been inwardly penitent before her tasking him. But now he wants to hurt her. He turns to Lewis.

Halsey: Lewis, I got a little licker in me, an thats true. True’s what I said. True. But th stuff just seems t wake me up an make my mind a man of me. Listen. You know a lot, queer as hell as y are, an I want t ask y some questions. Theyre too high fer them, Stella an Cora an Kabnis, so we’ll just excuse em. A chat between ourselves. (Turns to the others.) Youall cant listen in on this. Twont interest y. So220 just leave th table t this gen’lemun an myself. Go long now.

Kabnis gets up, pompous in his robe, grotesquely so, and makes as if to go through a grand march with Stella. She shoves him off, roughly, and in a mood swings her body to the steps. Kabnis grabs Cora and parades around, passing the old man, to whom he bows in mock-curtsy. He sweeps by the table, snatches the licker bottle, and then he and Cora sprawl on the mattresses. She meets his weak approaches after the manner she thinks Stella would use.

Halsey contemptuously watches them until he is sure that they are settled.

Halsey: This aint th sort o thing f me, Lewis, when I got work upstairs. Nassur. You an me has got things t do. Wastin time on common low-down women—say, Lewis, look at her now—Stella—aint she a picture? Common wench—na she aint, Lewis. You know she aint. I’m only tryin t fool y. I used t love that girl. Yassur. An sometimes when th moon is thick an I hear dogs up th valley barkin an some old woman fetches out her song, an th winds seem like th Lord made them fer t fetch an carry th221 smell o pine an cane, an there aint no big job on foot, I sometimes get t thinkin that I still do. But I want t talk t y, Lewis, queer as y are. Y know, Lewis, I went t school once. Ya. In Augusta. But it wasnt a regular school. Na. It was a pussy Sunday-school masqueradin under a regular name. Some goody-goody teachers from th North had come down t teach th niggers. If you was nearly white, they liked y. If you was black, they didnt. But it wasnt that—I was all right, y see. I couldnt stand em messin an pawin over m business like I was a child. So I cussed em out an left. Kabnis there ought t have cussed out th old duck over yonder an left. He’d a been a better man tday. But as I was sayin, I couldnt stand their ways. So I left an came here an worked with my father. An been here ever since. He died. I set in f myself. An its always been; give me a good job an sure pay an I aint far from being satisfied, so far as satisfaction goes. Prejudice is everywheres about this country. An a nigger aint in much standin anywheres. But when it comes t pottin round an doin nothing, with nothin bigger’n an ax-handle t hold a feller down, like it was a while back222 befo I got this job—that beam ought t be—but tmorrow mornin early’s time enough f that. As I was sayin, I gets t thinkin. Play dumb naturally t white folks. I gets t thinkin. I used to subscribe t th Literary Digest an that helped along a bit. But there werent nothing I could sink m teeth int. Theres lots I want t ask y, Lewis. Been askin y t come around. Couldnt get y. Cant get in much tnight. (He glances at the others. His mind fastens on Kabnis.) Say, tell me this, whats on your mind t say on that feller there? Kabnis’ name. One queer bird ought t know another, seems like t me.

Licker has released conflicts in Kabnis and set them flowing. He pricks his ears, intuitively feels that the talk is about him, leaves Cora, and approaches the table. His eyes are watery, heavy with passion. He stoops. He is a ridiculous pathetic figure in his showy robe.

Kabnis: Talkin bout me. I know. I’m th topic of conversation everywhere theres talk about this town. Girls an fellers. White folks as well. An if its me youre talkin bout, guess I got a right t listen in. Whats sayin? Whats sayin bout his royal guts, the Duke? Whats sayin, eh?

223

Halsey (to Lewis): We’ll take it up another time.

Kabnis: No nother time bout it. Now. I’m here now an talkin’s just begun. I was born an bred in a family of orators, thats what I was.

Halsey: Preachers.

Kabnis: Na. Preachers hell. I didnt say wind-busters. Y misapprehended me. Y understand what that means, dont y? All right then, y misapprehended me. I didnt say preachers. I said orators. ORATORS. Born one an I’ll die one. You understand me, Lewis. (He turns to Halsey and begins shaking his finger in his face.) An as f you, youre all right f choppin things from blocks of wood. I was good at that th day I ducked th cradle. An since then, I’ve been shapin words after a design that branded here. Know whats here? M soul. Ever heard o that? Th hell y have. Been shapin words t fit m soul. Never told y that before, did I? Thought I couldnt talk. I’ll tell y. I’ve been shapin words; ah, but sometimes theyre beautiful an golden an have a taste that makes them fine t roll over with y tongue. Your tongue aint fit f nothin but t roll an lick hog-meat.

224

Stella and Cora come up to the table.

Halsey: Give him a shove there, will y, Stel?

Stella jams Kabnis in a chair. Kabnis springs up.

Kabnis: Cant keep a good man down. Those words I was tellin y about, they wont fit int th mold thats branded on m soul. Rhyme, y see? Poet, too. Bad rhyme. Bad poet. Somethin else youve learned tnight. Lewis dont know it all, an I’m atellin y. Ugh. Th form thats burned int my soul is some twisted awful thing that crept in from a dream, a godam nightmare, an wont stay still unless I feed it. An it lives on words. Not beautiful words. God Almighty no. Misshapen, split-gut, tortured, twisted words. Layman was feedin it back there that day you thought I ran out fearin things. White folks feed it cause their looks are words. Niggers, black niggers feed it cause theyre evil an their looks are words. Yallar niggers feed it. This whole damn bloated purple country feeds it cause its goin down t hell in a holy avalanche of words. I want t feed th soul—I know what that is; th preachers dont—but I’ve got t feed it. I wish t God some lynchin white man ud225 stick his knife through it an pin it to a tree. An pin it to a tree. You hear me? Thats a wish f y, you little snot-nosed pups who’ve been makin fun of me, an fakin that I’m weak. Me, Ralph Kabnis weak. Ha.

Halsey: Thats right, old man. There, there. Here, so much exertion merits a fittin reward. Help him t be seated, Cora.

Halsey gives him a swig of shine. Cora glides up, seats him, and then plumps herself down on his lap, squeezing his head into her breasts. Kabnis mutters. Tries to break loose. Curses. Cora almost stifles him. He goes limp and gives up. Cora toys with him. Ruffles his hair. Braids it. Parts it in the middle. Stella smiles contemptuously. And then a sudden anger sweeps her. She would like to lash Cora from the place. She’d like to take Kabnis to some distant pine grove and nurse and mother him. Her eyes flash. A quick tensioning throws her breasts and neck into a poised strain. She starts towards them. Halsey grabs her arm and pulls her to him. She struggles. Halsey pins her arms and kisses her. She settles, spurting like a pine-knot afire.

226

Lewis finds himself completely cut out. The glowing within him subsides. It is followed by a dead chill. Kabnis, Carrie, Stella, Halsey, Cora, the old man, the cellar, and the work-shop, the southern town descend upon him. Their pain is too intense. He cannot stand it. He bolts from the table. Leaps up the stairs. Plunges through the work-shop and out into the night.

6

The cellar swims in a pale phosphorescence. The table, the chairs, the figure of the old man are amœba-like shadows which move about and float in it. In the corner under the steps, close to the floor, a solid blackness. A sound comes from it. A forcible yawn. Part of the blackness detaches itself so that it may be seen against the grayness of the wall. It moves forward and then seems to be clothing itself in odd dangling bits of shadow. The voice of Halsey, vibrant and deepened, calls.

Halsey: Kabnis. Cora. Stella.

He gets no response. He wants to get them up,227 to get on the job. He is intolerant of their sleepiness.

Halsey: Kabnis! Stella! Cora!

Gutturals, jerky and impeded, tell that he is shaking them.

Halsey: Come now, up with you.

Kabnis (sleepily and still more or less intoxicated): Whats th big idea? What in hell--

Halsey: Work. But never you mind about that. Up with you.

Cora: Oooooo! Look here, mister, I aint used t bein thrown int th street befo day.

Stella: Any bunk whats worked is worth in wages moren this. But come on. Taint no use t arger.

Kabnis: I’ll arger. Its preposterous--

The girls interrupt him with none too pleasant laughs.

Kabnis: Thats what I said. Know what it means, dont y? All right, then. I said its preposterous t root an artist out o bed at this ungodly hour, when there aint no use t it. You can start your damned old work. Nobody’s stoppin y. But what we got t get up for? Fraid228 somebody’ll see th girls leavin? Some sport, you are. I hand it t y.

Halsey: Up you get, all th same.

Kabnis: Oh, th hell you say.

Halsey: Well, son, seeing that I’m th kind-hearted father, I’ll give y chance t open your eyes. But up y get when I come down.

He mounts the steps to the work-shop and starts a fire in the hearth. In the yard he finds some chunks of coal which he brings in and throws on the fire. He puts a kettle on to boil. The wagon draws him. He lifts an oak-beam, fingers it, and becomes abstracted. Then comes to himself and places the beam upon the work-bench. He looks over some newly cut wooden spokes. He goes to the fire and pokes it. The coals are red-hot. With a pair of long prongs he picks them up and places them in a thick iron bucket. This he carries downstairs. Outside, darkness has given way to the impalpable grayness of dawn. This early morning light, seeping through the four barred cellar windows, is the color of the stony walls. It seems to be an emanation from them. Halsey’s coals throw out229 a rich warm glow. He sets them on the floor, a safe distance from the beds.

Halsey: No foolin now. Come. Up with you.

Other than a soft rustling, there is no sound as the girls slip into their clothes. Kabnis still lies in bed.

Stella (to Halsey): Reckon y could spare us a light?

Halsey strikes a match, lights a cigarette, and then bends over and touches flame to the two candles on the table between the beds. Kabnis asks for a cigarette. Halsey hands him his and takes a fresh one for himself. The girls, before the mirror, are doing up their hair. It is bushy hair that has gone through some straightening process. Character, however, has not all been ironed out. As they kneel there, heavy-eyed and dusky, and throwing grotesque moving shadows on the wall, they are two princesses in Africa going through the early-morning ablutions of their pagan prayers. Finished, they come forward to stretch their hands and warm them over the glowing coals. Red dusk of a Georgia sun230set, their heavy, coal-lit faces... Kabnis suddenly recalls something.

Kabnis: Th old man talked last night.

Stella: An so did you.

Halsey: In your dreams.

Kabnis: I tell y, he did. I know what I’m talkin about. I’ll tell y what he said. Wait now, lemme see.

Halsey: Look out, brother, th old man’ll be getting int you by way o dreams. Come, Stel, ready? Cora? Coffee an eggs f both of you.

Halsey goes upstairs.

Stella: Gettin generous, aint he?

She blows the candles out. Says nothing to Kabnis. Then she and Cora follow after Halsey. Kabnis, left to himself, tries to rise. He has slept in his robe. His robe trips him. Finally, he manages to stand up. He starts across the floor. Half-way to the old man, he falls and lies quite still. Perhaps an hour passes. Light of a new sun is about to filter through the windows. Kabnis slowly rises to support upon his elbows. He looks hard, and internally gathers himself together. The side face of Father John is in the direct line of his eyes. He scowls at231 him. No one is around. Words gush from Kabnis.

Kabnis: You sit there like a black hound spiked to an ivory pedestal. An all night long I heard you murmurin that devilish word. They thought I didnt hear y, but I did. Mumblin, feedin that ornery thing thats livin on my insides. Father John. Father of Satan, more likely. What does it mean t you? Youre dead already. Death. What does it mean t you? To you who died way back there in th 'sixties. What are y throwin it in my throat for? Whats it goin t get y? A good smashin in th mouth, thats what. My fist’ll sink int y black mush face clear t y guts—if y got any. Dont believe y have. Never seen signs of none. Death. Death. Sin an Death. All night long y mumbled death. (He forgets the old man as his mind begins to play with the word and its associations.) Death ... these clammy floors ... just like th place they used t stow away th worn-out, no-count niggers in th days of slavery ... that was long ago; not so long ago ... no windows (he rises higher on his elbows to verify this assertion. He looks around, and, seeing no one232 but the old man, calls.) Halsey! Halsey! Gone an left me. Just like a nigger. I thought he was a nigger all th time. Now I know it. Ditch y when it comes right down t it. Damn him anyway. Godam him. (He looks and re-sees the old man.) Eh, you? T hell with you too. What do I care whether you can see or hear? You know what hell is cause youve been there. Its a feelin an its ragin in my soul in a way that’ll pop out of me an run you through, an scorch y, an burn an rip your soul. Your soul. Ha. Nigger soul. A gin soul that gets drunk on a preacher’s words. An screams. An shouts. God Almighty, how I hate that shoutin. Where’s th beauty in that? Gives a buzzard a windpipe an I’ll bet a dollar t a dime th buzzard ud beat y to it. Aint surprisin th white folks hate y so. When you had eyes, did you ever see th beauty of th world? Tell me that. Th hell y did. Now dont tell me. I know y didnt. You couldnt have. Oh, I’m drunk an just as good as dead, but no eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight. You aint got no sight. If you had, drunk as I am, I hope Christ will kill me if I couldnt see it. Your eyes are dull and watery, like fish233 eyes. Fish eyes are dead eyes. Youre an old man, a dead fish man, an black at that. Theyve put y here t die, damn fool y are not t know it. Do y know how many feet youre under ground? I’ll tell y. Twenty. An do y think you’ll ever see th light of day again, even if you wasnt blind? Do y think youre out of slavery? Huh? Youre where they used t throw th worked-out, no-count slaves. On a damp clammy floor of a dark scum-hole. An they called that an infirmary. Th sons-a.... Why I can already see you toppled off that stool an stretched out on th floor beside me—not beside me, damn you, by yourself, with th flies buzzin an lickin God knows what they’d find on a dirty, black, foul-breathed mouth like yours...

Some one is coming down the stairs. Carrie, bringing food for the old man. She is lovely in her fresh energy of the morning, in the calm untested confidence and nascent maternity which rise from the purpose of her present mission. She walks to within a few paces of Kabnis.

Carrie K.: Brother says come up now, brother Ralph.

234

Kabnis: Brother doesnt know what he’s talkin bout.

Carrie K.: Yes he does, Ralph. He needs you on th wagon.

Kabnis: He wants me on th wagon, eh? Does he think some wooden thing can lift me up? Ask him that.

Carrie K.: He told me t help y.

Kabnis: An how would you help me, child, dear sweet little sister?

She moves forward as if to aid him.

Carrie K.: I’m not a child, as I’ve more than once told you, brother Ralph, an as I’ll show you now.

Kabnis: Wait, Carrie. No, thats right. Youre not a child. But twont do t lift me bodily. You dont understand. But its th soul of me that needs th risin.

Carrie K: Youre a bad brother an just wont listen t me when I’m tellin y t go t church.

Kabnis doesnt hear her. He breaks down and talks to himself.

Kabnis: Great God Almighty, a soul like mine cant pin itself onto a wagon wheel an satisfy itself in spinnin round. Iron prongs an235 hickory sticks, an God knows what all ... all right for Halsey ... use him. Me? I get my life down in this scum-hole. Th old man an me--

Carrie K.: Has he been talkin?

Kabnis: Huh? Who? Him? No. Dont need to. I talk. An when I really talk, it pays th best of them t listen. Th old man is a good listener. He’s deaf; but he’s a good listener. An I can talk t him. Tell him anything.

Carrie K.: He’s deaf an blind, but I reckon he hears, an sees too, from th things I’ve heard.

Kabnis: No. Cant. Cant I tell you. How’s he do it?

Carrie K.: Dunno, except I’ve heard that th souls of old folks have a way of seein things.

Kabnis: An I’ve heard them call that superstition.

The old man begins to shake his head slowly. Carrie and Kabnis watch him, anxiously. He mumbles. With a grave motion his head nods up and down. And then, on one of the down-swings--

Father John (remarkably clear and with great conviction): Sin.

236

He repeats this word several times, always the downward nodding. Surprised, indignant, Kabnis forgets that Carrie is with him.

Kabnis: Sin! Shut up. What do you know about sin, you old black bastard. Shut up, an stop that swayin an noddin your head.

Father John: Sin.

Kabnis tries to get up.

Kabnis: Didnt I tell y t shut up?

Carrie steps forward to help him. Kabnis is violently shocked at her touch. He springs back.

Kabnis: Carrie! What .. how .. Baby, you shouldnt be down here. Ralph says things. Doesnt mean to. But Carrie, he doesnt know what he’s talkin about. Couldnt know. It was only a preacher’s sin they knew in those old days, an that wasnt sin at all. Mind me, th only sin is whats done against th soul. Th whole world is a conspiracy t sin, especially in America, an against me. I’m th victim of their sin. I’m what sin is. Does he look like me? Have you ever heard him say th things youve heard me say? He couldnt if he had th Holy Ghost t237 help him. Dont look shocked, little sweetheart, you hurt me.

Father John: Sin.

Kabnis: Aw, shut up, old man.

Carrie K.: Leave him be. He wants t say somethin. (She turns to the old man.) What is it, Father?

Kabnis: Whatsha talkin t that old deaf man for? Come away from him.

Carrie K.: What is it, Father?

The old man’s lips begin to work. Words are formed incoherently. Finally, he manages to articulate--

Father John: Th sin whats fixed... (Hesitates.)

Carrie K. (restraining a comment from Kabnis): Go on, Father.

Father John: ... upon th white folks--

Kabnis: Suppose youre talkin about that bastard race thats roamin round th country. It looks like sin, if thats what y mean. Give us somethin new an up t date.

Father John:—f tellin Jesus—lies. O th sin th white folks 'mitted when they made th Bible lie.

238

Boom. Boom. BOOM! Thuds on the floor above. The old man sinks back into his stony silence. Carrie is wet-eyed. Kabnis, contemptuous.

Kabnis: So thats your sin. All these years t tell us that th white folks made th Bible lie. Well, I’ll be damned. Lewis ought t have been here. You old black fakir--

Carrie K.: Brother Ralph, is that your best Amen?

She turns him to her and takes his hot cheeks in her firm cool hands. Her palms draw the fever out. With its passing, Kabnis crumples. He sinks to his knees before her, ashamed, exhausted. His eyes squeeze tight. Carrie presses his face tenderly against her. The suffocation of her fresh starched dress feels good to him. Carrie is about to lift her hands in prayer, when Halsey, at the head of the stairs, calls down.

Halsey: Well, well. Whats up? Aint you ever comin? Come on. Whats up down there? Take you all mornin t sleep off a pint? Youre weakenin, man, youre weakenin. Th axle an th beam’s all ready waitin f y. Come on.

Kabnis rises and is going doggedly towards239 the steps. Carrie notices his robe. She catches up to him, points to it, and helps him take it off. He hangs it, with an exaggerated ceremony, on its nail in the corner. He looks down on the tousled beds. His lips curl bitterly. Turning, he stumbles over the bucket of dead coals. He savagely jerks it from the floor. And then, seeing Carrie’s eyes upon him, he swings the pail carelessly and with eyes downcast and swollen, trudges upstairs to the work-shop. Carrie’s gaze follows him till he is gone. Then she goes to the old man and slips to her knees before him. Her lips murmur, “Jesus, come.”

Light streaks through the iron-barred cellar window. Within its soft circle, the figures of Carrie and Father John.

Outside, the sun arises from its cradle in the tree-tops of the forest. Shadows of pines are dreams the sun shakes from its eyes. The sun arises. Gold-glowing child, it steps into the sky and sends a birth-song slanting down gray dust streets and sleepy windows of the southern town.

the end

CHAPTER I 

OPAL STREET, as streets go, is no jewel of the first 
water. It is merely an imitation, and none too 
good at that. Narrow, unsparkling, uninviting, it 
stretches meekly off from dull Jefferson Street to the 
dingy, drab market which forms the north side of 
Oxford Street. It has no mystery, no allure, either 
of exclusiveness or of downright depravity ; its usages 
are plainly significant, an unpretentious little street 
lined with unpretentious little houses, inhabited for 
the most part by unpretentious little people. 

The dwellings are three stories high, and contain 
six boxes called by courtesy, rooms a "parlour", 
a midget of a dining-room, a larger kitchen and, 
above, a front bedroom seemingly large only because 
it extends for the full width of the house, a mere 
shadow of a bathroom, and another back bedroom 
with windows whose possibilities are spoiled by their 
outlook on sad and diminutive back-yards. And 
above these two, still two others built in similar wise. 

In one of these houses dwelt a father, a mother 
and two daughters. Here, as often happens in a 
home sheltering two generations, opposite, un 
evenly matched emotions faced each other. In 
the houses of the rich the satisfied ambition of the 
older generation is faced by the overwhelming am 
bition of the younger. Or the elders may find 
themselves brought in opposition to the blank 

ii 



BUNHHHHHHHHHf~H* 



indifference and ennui of youth engendered by the 
realization that there remain no more worlds to 
conquer; their fathers having already taken all, 
In houses on Opal Street these niceties of distinction 
are hardly to be found; there is a more direct 
and concrete contrast. The satisfied ambition of 
maturity is a foil for the restless despair of youth, 
Affairs in the Murray household were advancing 
towards this stage; yet not a soul in that family 
of four could have foretold its coming. To Junius 
and Mattie Murray, who had known poverty and 
homelessness, the little house on Opal Street repre 
sented the ne plus ultra of ambition; to their 
daughter Angela it seemed the dingiest, drabbest 
chrysalis that had ever fettered the wings of a 
brilliant butterfly. The stories which Junius and 
Mattie told of difficulties overcome, of the arduous 
learning of trades, of the pitiful scraping together 
of infinitesimal savings, would have made a latter- 
day Iliad, but to Angela they were merely a 
description of a life which she at any cost would 
avoid living. Somewhere in the world were paths 
which lead to broad thoroughfares, large, bright 
houses, delicate niceties of existence. Those paths 
Angela meant to find and frequent. At a very 
early age she had observed that the good things of 
life are unevenly distributed; merit is not always 
rewarded; hard labour does not necessarily entail 
adequate recompense. Certain fortuitous endow 
ments, great physical beauty, unusual strength, 
a certain unswerving singleness of mind, gifts 
bestowed quite blindly and disproportionately by 
the forces which control life, these were the quali 
ties which contributed toward a glowing and 
pleasant existence. 

12 



Angela had no high purpose in life; unlike her 
sister Virginia, who meant some day to invent a 
marvellous method for teaching the pianoforte, 
Angela felt no impulse to discover, or to 
perfect. True she thought she might become 
eventually a distinguished painter, but that was 
because she felt within herself an ability to depict 
which as far as it went was correct and promising. 
Her eye for line and for expression was already good 
and she had a nice feeling for colour. Moreover 
she possessed the instinct for self-appraisal which 
taught her that she had much to learn. And she 
was sure that the knowledge once gained would 
flower in her case to perfection. But her gift was 
not for her the end of existence ; rather it was an 
adjunct to a life which was to know light, pleasure, 
gaiety and freedom. 

Freedom! That was the note which Angela 
heard oftenest in the melody of living which was 
to be hers. With a wildness that fell just short of 
unreasonableness she hated restraint. Her father's 
earlier days as coachman in a private family, his 
later successful, independent years as boss car 
penter, her mother's youth spent as maid to a 
famous actress, all this was to Angela a manifesta 
tion of the sort of thing which happens to those 
enchained it might be by duty, by poverty, by 
weakness or by colour. 

Colour or rather the lack of it seemed to the child 
the one absolute prerequisite to the life of which 
she was always dreaming. One might break loose 
from a too hampering sense of duty; poverty 
could be overcome; physicians conquered weak 
ness; but colour, the mere possession of a black 
or a white skin, that was clearly one of those 

w 



BUN-?' * * * * -HHHHS* 



fortuitous endowments of the gods. Gratitude was 
no strong ingredient in this girl's nature, yet very 
often early she began thanking Fate for the chance 
which in that household of four had bestowed on 
her the heritage of her mother's fair skin. She 
might so easily have been, like her father, black, 
or have received the melange which had resulted 
in Virginia's rosy bronzeness and her deeply 
waving black hair. But Angela had received not 
only her mother's creamy complexion and her 
soft cloudy, chestnut hair, but she had taken 
from Junius the aquiline nose, the gift of some 
remote Indian ancestor which gave to his face 
and his eldest daughter's that touch of chiselled 
immobility. 



It was from her mother that Angela learned the 
possibilities for joy and freedom which seemed to 
her inherent in mere whiteness. No one would 
have been more amazed than that same mother 
if she could have guessed how her daughter inter 
preted her actions. Certainly Mrs. Murray did 
not attribute what she considered her happy, busy, 
sheltered life on tiny Opal Street to the accident of 
her colour; she attributed it to her black husband 
whom she had been glad and proud to marry. It 
is equally certain that that white skin of hers had 
not saved her from occasional contumely and insult. 
The famous actress for whom she had worked was 
aware of Mattie's mixed blood and, boasting tem 
perament rather than refinement, had often dubbed 
her " white nigger ". 

Angela's mother employed her colour very much 
as she practised certain winning usages of smile 

14 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH? 

and voice to obtain indulgences which meant much 
to her and which took nothing from anyone else. 
Then, too, she was possessed of a keener sense of 
humour than her daughter; it amused her when 
by herself to take lunch at an exclusive restaurant 
whose patrons would have been panic-stricken if 
they had divined the presence of a " coloured " 
woman no matter how little her appearance differed 
from theirs. It was with no idea of disclaiming her 
own that she sat in orchestra seats which Phila 
delphia denied to coloured patrons. But when 
Junius or indeed any other dark friend accom 
panied her she was the first to announce that she 
liked to sit in the balcony or gallery, as indeed she 
did; her infrequent occupation of orchestr^ seats 
was due merely to a mischievous determination to 
flout a silly and unjust law. 

Her years with the actress had left their mark, 
a perfectly harmless and rather charming one. 
At least so it seemed to Junius, whose weakness 
was for the qualities known as " essentially fem 
inine ". Mrs. Murray loved pretty clothes, she 
liked shops devoted to the service of women; she 
enjoyed being even on the fringe of a fashionable 
gathering. A satisfaction that was almost ecstatic 
seized her when she drank tea in the midst of 
modishly gowned women in a stylish tea-room. It 
pleased her to stand in the foyer of a great hotel 
or of the Academy of Music and to be part of the 
whirling, humming, palpitating gaiety. She had no 
desire to be of these people, but she liked to look 
on; it amused and thrilled and kept alive some un 
quenchable instinct for life which thrived within 
her. To walk through Wanamaker's on Saturday, 
to stroll from Fifteenth to Ninth Street on Chestnut, 



*HHHHHHHh***PLUM BUNHHHHHMHHHH** 

to have her tea in the Bellevue Stratford, to stand 
in the lobby of the St. James 5 fitting on immaculate 
gloves; all innocent, childish pleasures pursued 
without malice or envy contrived to cast a glamour 
over Monday's washing and Tuesday's ironing, the 
scrubbing of kitchen and bathroom and the 
fashioning of children's clothes. She was endowed 
with a humorous and pungent method of presenta 
tion ; Junius, who had had the wit not to interfere 
with these little excursions and the sympathy to 
take them at their face value, preferred one of his 
wife's sparkling accounts of a Saturday's adventure 
in " passing " to all the tall stories told by cronies 
at his lodge. 

Much of this pleasure, harmless and charming 
though it was, would have been impossible with a 
dark skin. 

In these first years of marriage, Mattie, busied 
with the house and the two babies had given up 
those excursions. Later, when the children had 
grown and Junius had reached the stage where he 
could afford to give himself a half-holiday on 
Saturdays, the two parents inaugurated a plan of 
action which eventually became a fixed programme. 
Each took a child, and Junius went off to a beloved 
but long since suspended pastime of exploring old 
Philadelphia, whereas Mattie embarked once more 
on her social adventures. It is true that Mattie 
accompanied by brown Virginia could not move 
quite as freely as when with Angela. But her 
maternal instincts were sound; her children, their 
feelings and their faith in her meant much more 
than the pleasure which she would have been first 
to call unnecessary and silly. As it happened the 
children themselves quite unconsciously solved the 

16 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5- 



dilemma; Virginia found shopping tiring and 
stupid, Angela returned from her father's adventur 
ing worn and bored. Gradually the rule was 
formed that Angela accompanied her mother and 
Virginia her father. 



On such fortuities does life depend. Little 
Angela Murray, hurrying through Saturday morn 
ing's scrubbing of steps in order that she might have 
her bath at one and be with her mother on Chestnut 
Street at two, never realized that her mother took 
her pleasure among all these pale people because 
it was there that she happened to find it. It never 
occurred to her that the delight which her mother 
obviously showed in meeting friends on Sunday 
morning when the whole united Murray family 
came out of church was the same as she showed 
on Chestnut Street the previous Saturday, because 
she was finding the qualities which her heart craved, 
bustle, excitement and fashion. The daughter 
could not guess that if the economic status or the 
racial genius of coloured people had permitted 
them to run modish hotels or vast and popular 
department stores her mother would have been 
there. She drew for herself certain clearly formed 
conclusions which her subconscious mind thus 
codified : 

First, that the great rewards of life riches, 
glamour, pleasure, are for white-skinned people 
only. Secondly, that Junius and Virginia were 
denied these privileges because they were dark; 
here her reasoning bore at least an element of 
verisimilitude but she missed the essential fact 
that her father and sister did not care for this 



4HHHHKHHHHHf-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHMH5* 

type of pleasure. The effect of her fallaciousness 
was to cause her to feel a faint pity for her unfor 
tunate relatives and also to feel that coloured people 
were to be considered fortunate only in the propor 
tion in which they measured up to the physical 
standards of white people. 

One Saturday excursion left a far-reaching 
impression. Mrs. Murray and Angela had spent 
a successful and interesting afternoon. They had 
browsed among the contents of the small exclusive 
shops in Walnut Street; they had had soda at 
Adams' on Broad Street and they were standing 
finally in the portico of the Walton Hotel deciding 
with fashionable and idle elegance what they 
should do next. A thin stream of people con 
stantly passing threw an occasional glance at 
the quietly modish pair, the well-dressed, assured 
woman and the refined and no less assured 
daughter. The door-man knew them; it was one 
of Mrs. Murray's pleasures to proffer him a small 
tip, much appreciated since it was uncalled for. 
This was the atmosphere which she loved. Angela 
had put on her gloves and was waiting for her 
mother, who was drawing on her own with great 
care, when she glimpsed in the laughing, hurrying 
Saturday throng the figures of her father and of 
Virginia. They were close enough for her mother, 
who saw them too, to touch them by merely des 
cending a few steps and stretching out her arm. 
In a second the pair had vanished. Angela saw 
her mother's face change with trepidation she 
thought. She remarked: " It's a good thing Papa 
didn't see us, you'd have had to speak to him, 
wouldn't you? " But her mother, giving her a 
distracted glance, made no reply. 

18 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5* 



That night, after the girls were in bed, Mattie, 
perched on the arm of her husband's chair, told 
him about it. "I was at my old game of play 
acting again to-day, June, passing you know, and 
darling, you and Virginia went by within arm's 
reach and we never spoke to you. I'm so 
ashamed." 

But Junius consoled her. Long before their 
marriage he had known of his Mattie's weakness 
and its essential harmlessness. " My dear girl, I 
told you long ago that where no principle was 
involved, your passing means nothing to me. It's 
just a little joke ; I don't think you'd be ashamed 
to acknowledge your old husband anywhere if 
it were necessary." 

" I'd do that if people were mistaking me for a 
queen," she assured him fondly. But she was 
silent, not quite satisfied. " After all," she said 
with her charming frankness, " it isn't you, dear, 
who make me feel guilty. I really am ashamed 
to think that I let Virginia pass by without a word. 
I think I should feel very badly if she were to know 
it. I don't believe I'll ever let myself be quite as 
silly as that again." 

But of this determination Angela, dreaming 
excitedly of Saturdays spent in turning her small 
olive face firmly away from peering black counten 
ances was, unhappily, unaware. 



CHAPTER II 

SATURDAY came to be the day of the week for 
Angela, but her sister Virginia preferred Sundays. 
She loved the atmosphere of golden sanctity which 
seemed to hover with a sweet glory about the 
stodgy, shabby little dwelling. Usually she came 
downstairs first so as to enjoy by herself the blessed 
" Sunday feeling " which, she used to declare, 
would have made it possible for her to recognize 
the day if she had awakened to it even in China. 
She was only twelve at this time, yet she had already 
developed a singular aptitude and liking for the 
care of the home, and this her mother gratefully 
fostered. Gradually the custom was formed of 
turning over to her small hands all the duties of 
Sunday morning; they were to her a ritual. First 
the kettle must be started boiling, then the pave 
ment swept. Her father's paper must be carried 
up and left outside his door. Virginia found a 
nameless and sweet satisfaction in performing 
these services. 

She prepared the Sunday breakfast which was 
always the same, bacon and eggs, strong coffee 
with good cream for Junius, chocolate for the other 
three and muffins. After the kettle had boiled and 
the muffins were mixed it took exactly half an hour 
to complete preparations. Virginia always went 
about these matters in the same way. She set the 

20 



^HHHHHHHHHhPLUM 



muffins in the oven, pursing her lips and frowning 
a little just as she had seen her mother do; then she 
went to the foot of the narrow, enclosed staircase 
and called " hoo-hoo " with a soft rising inflection, 

" last call to dinner," her father termed it. And 
finally, just for those last few minutes before the 
family descended she went into the box of a parlour 
and played hymns, old-fashioned and stately tunes, 

" How firm a foundation ", " The spacious 
firmament on high ", " Am I a soldier of the 
Cross ". Her father's inflexible bass, booming 
down the stairs, her mother's faint alto in thirds 
mingled with her own sweet treble; a shaft of 
sunlight, faint and watery in winter, strong and 
golden in summer, shimmering through the room 
in the morning dusk completed for the little girl 
a sensation of happiness which lay perilously 
near tears. 



After breakfast came the bustle of preparing for 
church. Junius of course had come down in 
complete readiness; but the others must change 
their dresses; Virginia had mislaid her Sunday 
hair-ribbon again; Angela had discovered a rip 
in her best gloves and could not be induced to go 
down until it had been mended. " Wait for me 
just a minute, Jinny dear, I can't go out looking 
like this, can I? " She did not like going to church, 
at least not to their church, but she did care about 
her appearance and she liked the luxuriousness of 
being " dressed up " on two successive days. 
At last the little procession filed out, Mattie hoping 
that they would not be late, she did hate it so; 
Angela thinking that this was a stupid way to spend 

21 



HHHH^HHHHHKPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHHHH* 

Sunday and wondering at just what period of 
one's life existence began to shape itself as you 
wanted it. Her father's thoughts were inchoate; 
expressed they would have revealed a patriarchal 
aspect almost biblical. He had been a poor boy, 
homeless, a nobody, yet somehow he had contrived 
in his mid-forties to attain to the status of a respect 
able citizen, house-owner, a good provider. He 
possessed a charming wife and two fine daughters, 
and as was befitting he was accompanying them to 
the house of the Lord. As for Virginia, no one 
to see her in her little red hat and her mother's 
cut-over blue coat could have divined how near 
she was to bursting with happiness. Father, 
mother and children, well-dressed, well-fed, united, 
going to church on a beautiful Sunday morning; 
there was an immense cosmic rightness about all 
this which she sensed rather than realized. She 
envied no one the incident of finer clothes or a 
larger home; this unity was the core of happiness, 
all other satisfactions must radiate from this one; 
greater happiness could be only a matter of degree 
but never of essence. When she grew up she 
meant to live the same kind of life; she would 
marry a man exactly like her father and she would 
conduct her home exactly as did her mother. 
Only she would pray very hard every day for five 
children, two boys and two girls and then a last 
little one, it was hard for her to decide whether 
this should be a boy or a girl, which should stay 
small for a long, long time. And on Sundays they 
would all go to church. 

Intent on her dreaming she rarely heard the 
sermon. It was different with the hymns, for they 
constituted the main part of the service for her 

22 



HHHHHHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

father, and she meant to play them again for 
him later in the happy, golden afternoon or the 
grey dusk of early evening. But first there were 
acquaintances to greet, friends of her parents who 
called them by their first names and who, in speak 
ing of Virginia and Angela still said: " And these 
are the babies; my, how they grow! It doesn't 
seem as though it could be you, Mattie Ford, grown 
up and with children ! " 

On Communion Sundays the service was very 
late, and Angela would grow restless and twist about 
in her seat, but the younger girl loved the sudden, 
mystic hush which seemed to descend on the congre 
gation. Her mother's sweetly merry face took on a 
certain childish solemnity, her father's stern profile 
softened into beatific expectancy. In the exquisite 
diction of the sacramental service there were certain 
words, certain phrases that almost made the child 
faint; the minister had a faint burr in his voice and 
somehow this lent a peculiar underlying resonance 
to his intonation ; he half spoke, half chanted and 
when, picking up the wafer he began " For in the 
night " and then broke it, Virginia could have 
cried out with the ecstasy which filled her. She 
felt that those who partook of the bread and wine 
were somehow transfigured; her mother and father 
wore an expression of ineffable content as they 
returned to their seats and there was one woman, 
a middle-aged, mischief-making person, who re 
turned from taking the sacrament, walking down 
the aisle, her hands clasped loosely in front of 
her and her face so absolutely uplifted that 
Virginia used to hasten to get within earshot 
of her after the church was dismissed, sure that 
her first words must savour of something mystic 

23 



BUN***** fr 



and holy. But her assumption proved always to 
be ill-founded. 



The afternoon and the evening repeated the 
morning's charm but in a different key. Usually 
a few acquaintances dropped in; the parlour and 
dining-room were full for an hour or more of 
pleasant, harmless chatter. Mr. Henson, the 
policeman, a tall, yellow man with freckles on his 
nose and red " bad hair " would clap Mr. Murray 
on the back and exclaim " I tell you what, June," 
which always seemed to Virginia a remarkably 
daring way in which to address her tall, dignified 
father. Matthew Henson, a boy of sixteen, would 
inevitably be hovering about Angela who found 
him insufferably boresome and made no effort 
to hide her ennui. Mrs. Murray passed around 
rather hard cookies and delicious currant wine, 
talking stitches and patterns meanwhile with two 
or three friends of her youth with a frequent injec 
tion of " Mame, do you remember ! " 

Presently the house, emptied of all but the 
family, grew still again, dusk and the lamp light 
across the street alternately panelling the walls. 
Mrs. Murray murmured something about fixing 
a bite to eat, " I'll leave it in the kitchen if any 
body wants it ". Angela reflected aloud that she 
had still to get her Algebra or History or French 
as the case might be, but nobody moved. What 
they were really waiting for was for Virginia to 
start to play and finally she would cross the narrow 
absurdity of a room and stretching out her slim, 
brown hands would begin her version, a glorified 
one, of the hymns which they had sung in church 

24 



that morning, and then the old favourites which 
she had played before breakfast. Even Angela, 
somewhat remote and difficult at first, fell into this 
evening mood and asked for a special tune or a 
repetition: " I like the way you play that, 
Jinny ". For an hour or more they were as close 
and united as it is possible for a family to be. 

At eight o'clock or thereabouts Junius said exactly 
as though it had not been in his thoughts all even 
ing: "Play the 'Dying Christian', daughter". 
And Virginia, her treble sounding very childish 
and shrill against her father's deep, unyielding 
bass, began Pope's masterpiece on the death of a 
true believer. The magnificently solemn words: 
" Vital spark of heavenly flame ", the strangely 
appropriate minor music filled the little house 
with an awesome beauty which was almost palp 
able. It affected Angela so that in sheer self- 
defence she would go out in the kitchen and eat 
her share of the cold supper set by her mother. 
But Mattie, although she never sang this piece, 
remained while her husband and daughter sang on. 
Death triumphant and mighty had no fears for 
her. It was inevitable, she knew, but she would 
never have to face it alone. When her husband 
died, she would die too, she was sure of it; and 
if death came to her first it would be only a little 
while before Junius would be there stretching out 
his hand and guiding her through all the rough, 
strange places just as years ago, when he had been 
a coachman to the actress for whom she worked, 
he had stretched out his good, honest hand and 
had saved her from a dangerous and equivocal 
position. She wiped away happy and grateful 
tears. 

25 



*'M !< -8 $* PLUM 



' The world recedes, it disappears," sang 
Virginia. But it made no difference how far it 
drifted away as long as the four of them were 
together; and they would always be together, her 
father and mother and she and Angela. With her 
visual mind she saw them proceeding endlessly 
through space; there were her parents, arm in 
arm, and she and but to-night and other nights 
she could not see Angela; it grieved her to lose sight 
thus of her sister, she knew she must be there, but 
grope as she might she could not find her. And 
then quite suddenly Angela was there again, but 
a different Angela, not quite the same as in the 
beginning of the picture. 

And suddenly she realized that she was doing four 
things at once and each of them with all the intent- 
ness which she could muster; she was singing, she 
was playing, she was searching for Angela and she 
was grieving because Angela as she knew her 
was lost forever. 

" Oh Death, oh Death, where is thy sting! " the 
hymn ended triumphantly, she and the piano as 
usual came out a little ahead of Junius which was 
always funny. She said, " Where's Angela? " 
and knew what the answer would be. " I'm tired, 
mummy! I guess I'll go to bed." 

c You ought to, you got up so early and you've 
been going all day." 

Kissing her parents good-night she mounted the 
stairs languidly, her whole being pervaded with the 
fervid yet delicate rapture of the day. 



26 



CHAPTER III 

MONDAY morning brought the return of the busy, 
happy week. It meant wash-day for Mattie, for 
she and Junius had never been able to raise their 
menage to the status either of a maid or of putting 
out the wash. But this lack meant nothing to 
her, she had been married fifteen years and still 
had the ability to enjoy the satisfaction of having 
a home in which she had full sway instead of 
being at the beck and call of others. She was old 
enough to remember a day when poverty for a 
coloured girl connoted one of three things : going 
out to service, working as ladies' maid, or taking 
a genteel but poorly paid position as seamstress 
with one of the families of the rich and great on 
Rittenhouse Square, out West Walnut Street or 
in one of the numerous impeccable, aristocratic 
suburbs of Philadelphia. 

She had tried her hand at all three of these 
possibilities, had known what it meant to rise at 
five o'clock, start the laundry work for a patronizing 
indifferent family of people who spoke of her in 
her hearing as " the girl " or remarked of her 
in a slightly lower but still audible tone as being 
rather better than the usual run of niggers, " She 
never steals, I'd trust her with anything and she 
isn't what you'd call lazy either." For this family 
she had prepared breakfast, gone back to her 

27 



HHHh^-HHHHhPLUM BUN*HHHHHHHHf~K* 

washing, served lunch, had taken down the clothes, 
sprinkled and folded them, had gone upstairs and 
made three beds, not including her own and then 
had returned to the kitchen to prepare dinner. 
At night she nodded over the dishes and finally 
stumbling up to the third floor fell into her unmade 
bed, sometimes not even fully undressed. And 
Tuesday morning she would begin on the long 
and tedious strain of ironing. For this she received 
four dollars a week with the privilege of every other 
Sunday and every Thursday off. But she could 
have no callers. 

As a seamstress, life had been a little more en 
durable but more precarious. The wages were 
better while they lasted, she had a small but 
comfortable room; her meals were brought up 
to her on a tray and the young girls of the house 
holds in which she was employed treated her 
with a careless kindness which while it still had 
its element of patronage was not offensive. But 
such families had a disconcerting habit of closing 
their households and departing for months at a 
time, and there was Mattie stranded and peril 
ously trying to make ends meet by taking in sewing. 
But her clientele was composed of girls as poor 
as she, who either did their own dressmaking or 
could afford to pay only the merest trifle for her 
really exquisite and meticulous work. 



The situation with the actress had really been 
the best in many, in almost all, respects. But 
it presented its pitfalls. Mattie was young, pretty 
and innocent; the actress was young, beautiful 
and sophisticated. She had been married twice 

28 



HHHHHHHHHHKPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHH*** 

and had been the heroine of many affairs; 
maidenly modesty, virtue for its own sake, were 
qualities long since forgotten; high ideals and 
personal self-respect were too abstract for her 
slightly coarsened mind to visualize, and at any 
rate they were incomprehensible and even absurd 
in a servant, and in a coloured servant to boot. 
She knew that in spite of Mattie's white skin 
there was black blood in her veins; in fact she 
would not have taken the girl on had she not 
been coloured; all her servants must be coloured, 
for hers was a carelessly conducted household, 
and she felt dimly that all coloured people are 
thickly streaked with immorality. They were 
naturally loose, she reasoned, when she thought 
about it at all. " Look at the number of mixed 
bloods among them; look at Mattie herself for 
that matter, a perfectly white nigger if ever there 
was one. I'll bet her mother wasn't any better 
than she should be." 

When the girl had come to her with tears in 
her eyes and begged her not to send her as mes 
senger to the house of a certain Haynes Brokinaw, 
politician and well-known man about town, 
Madame had laughed out loud. " How ridicu 
lous ! He'll treat you all right. I should like to 
know what a girl like you expects. And anyway, 
if I don't care, why should you? Now run along 
with the note and don't bother me about this 
again. I hire you to do what I want, not to 
do as you want." She was not even jealous, 
of a coloured working girl! And anyway, 
constancy was no virtue in her eyes; she did 
not possess it herself and she valued it little in 
others, 

"9 



BUN-fr-H*-HHHHHH* 



Mattie was in despair. She was receiving 
twenty-five dollars a month, her board, and a 
comfortable, pleasant room. She was seeing 
something of the world and learning of its amen 
ities. It was during this period that she learned 
how very pleasant indeed life could be for a 
person possessing only a very little extra money 
and a white skin. But the special attraction 
which her present position held for her was that 
every day she had a certain amount of time to 
call her own, for she was Madame's personal 
servant; in no wise was she connected with 
the routine of keeping the house. If Madame 
elected to spend the whole day away from home, 
Mattie, once she had arranged for the evening 
toilette, was free to act and to go where she 
pleased. 

And now here was this impasse looming up 
with Brokinaw. More than once Mattie had felt 
his covetous eyes on her; she had dreaded going 
to his rooms from the very beginning. She had 
even told his butler, " I'll be back in half an hour 
for the answer"; and she would not wait in the 
great square hall as he had indicated for there 
she was sure that danger lurked. But the third 
time Brokinaw was standing in the hall. "Just 
come into my study," he told her, " while I read 
this and write the answer." And he had looked 
at her with his cold, green eyes and had asked her 
why she was so out of breath. " There's no need 
to rush so, child; stay here and rest. I'm in no 
hurry, I assure you. Are you really coloured? 
You know, I've seen lots of white girls not as 
pretty as you. Sit here and tell me all about 
your mother, and your father. Do do you 

30 



* * * *HHHHHHPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 

remember him? " His whole bearing reeked with 
intention. 

Within a week Madame was sending her again 
and she had suggested fearfully the new coach 
man. " No," said Madame. " It's Wednesday, 
his night off, and I wouldn't send him anyway; 
coachmen are too hard to keep nowadays ; you're 
all getting so independent." Mattie had come 
down from her room and walked slowly, slowly 
to the corner where the new coachman, tall and 
black and grave, was just hailing a car. She ran 
to him and jerked down the arm which he had 
just lifted to seize the railing. " Oh, Mr. Murray," 
she stammered. He had been so astonished and 
so kind. Her halting explanation done, he took 
the note in silence and delivered it, and the next 
night and for many nights thereafter they walked 
through the silent, beautiful square, and Junius 
had told her haltingly and with fear that he loved 
her. She threw her arms about his neck: " And 
I love you too." 

' You don't mind my being so dark then? 
Lots of coloured girls I know wouldn't look at a 
black man." 

But it was partly on account of his colour that 
she loved him; in her eyes his colour meant 
safety. " Why should I mind? " she asked with 
one of her rare outbursts of bitterness, " my own 
colour has never brought me anything but insult 
and trouble." 

The other servants, it appeared, had told him 
that sometimes she he hesitated " passed ". 

' Yes, yes, of course I do," she explained it 
eagerly, " but never to them. And anyway when 
I am alone what can I do? I can't label myself, 

3 1 



And if Fm hungry or tired and I'm near a place 
where they don't want coloured people, why should 
I observe their silly old rules, rules that are un 
natural and unjust, because the world was made 
for everybody, wasn't it, Junius? " 

She had told him then how hard and joyless 
her girlhood life had been, she had known such 
dreadful poverty and she had been hard put to it 
to keep herself together. But since she had come 
to live with Madame Sylvio she had glimpsed, 
thanks to her mistress's careless kindness, some 
thing of the life of comparative ease and beauty 
and refinement which one could easily taste if he 
possessed just a modicum of extra money and the 
prerequisite of a white skin. 

" I've only done it for fun but I won't do it any 
more if it displeases you. I'd much rather live 
in the smallest house in the world with you, 
Junius, than be wandering around as I have so 
often, lonely and unknown in hotels and restaur 
ants." Her sweetness disarmed him. There was 
no reason in the world why she should give up 
her harmless pleasure unless, he added rather 
sternly, some genuine principle were involved. 

It was the happiest moment of her life when 
Junius had gone to Madame and told her that 
both he and Mattie were leaving. " We are going 
to be married," he announced proudly. The 
actress had been sorry to lose her, and wanted to 
give her a hundred dollars, but the tall, black 
coachman would not let his wife accept it. " She 
is to have only what she earned," he said in 
stern refusal. He hated Madame Sylvio for 
having thrown the girl in the way of Haynes 
Brokinaw, 



4HHHHHHHWHHKPLUM BUNfrfrfrfr-fr-fr-fr -fr-fr* 

They had married and gone straight into the 
little house on Opal Street which later was to 
become their own. Mattie her husband considered 
a perfect woman, sweet, industrious, affectionate 
and illogical. But to her he was God. 

When Angela and Virginia were little children 
and their mother used to read them fairy tales she 
would add to the ending, " And so they lived 
happily ever after, just like your father and me." 

All this was passing happily through her mind on 
this Monday morning. Junius was working some 
where in the neighbourhood; his shop was down 
on Bainbridge Street, but he tried to devote 
Mondays and Tuesdays to work up town so that 
he could run in and help \Mattie on these trying 
days. Before the advent of the washing machine 
he used to dart in and out two or three times in 
the course of a morning to lend a hand to the 
heavy sheets and the bed-spreads. Now those 
articles were taken care of in the laundry, but 
Junius still kept up the pleasant fiction. 

Virginia attended school just around the corner, 
and presently she would come in too, not so much 
to get her own lunch as to prepare it for her 
mother. She possessed her father's attitude toward 
Mattie as someone who must be helped, indulged 
and protected. Moreover she had an unusually 
keen sense of gratitude toward her father and mother 
for their kindness and their unselfish ambitions 
for their children. Jinny never tired of hearing 
of the difficult childhood of her parents. She knew 
of no story quite so thrilling as the account of 
their early trials and difficulties. She thought 
it wonderfully sweet of them to plan, as? they 
constantly did, better things for their daughters. 

c 33 



HHHHHK- > * > * PLUM 



" My girls shall never come through my experi 
ences," Mattie would say fimly. They were both 
to be school-teachers and independent. 

It is true that neither of them felt any special 
leaning toward this calling. Angela frankly 
despised it, but she supposed she must make her 
living some way. The salary was fairly good 
in fact, very good for a poor girl and there would 
be the long summer vacation. At fourteen she 
knew already how much money she would save 
during those first two or three years and how she 
would spend those summer vacations. But although 
she proffered this much information to her family she 
kept her plans to herself. Mattie often pondered 
on this lack of openness in her older daughter. 
Virginia was absolutely transparent. She did not 
think she would care for teaching either, that is, 
not for teaching in the ordinary sense. But she 
realized that for the present that was the best 
profession which her parents could have chosen 
for them. She would spend her summers learning 
all she could about methods of teaching music. 

" And a lot of good it will do you," Angela 
scoffed. " You know perfectly well that there are 
no coloured teachers of music in the public schools 
here in Philadelphia." But Jinny thought it 
possible that there might be. " When Mamma 
was coming along there were very few coloured 
teachers at all, and now it looks as though there'd 
be plenty of chance for us. And anyway you 
never know your luck." 

By four o'clock the day's work was over and 
Mattie free to do as she pleased. This was her 
idle hour. The girls would get dinner, a Monday 
version of whatever the main course had been the 

34 



HHHHHHHHHMhPLUM BUNHHHHHHH!~HHH^ 

day before. Their mother was on no account to 
be disturbed or importuned. To-day as usual she 
sat in the Morris chair in the dining-room, dividing 
her time between the Sunday paper and the girls' 
chatter. It was one of her most cherished ex 
periences, this sense of a day's hard labour far 
behind her, the happy voices of her girls, her 
joyous expectation of her husband's home-coming. 
Usually the children made a game of their pre 
parations, recalling some nonsense of their early 
childhood days when it had been their delight to 
dress up as ladies. Virginia would approach 
Angela: " Pardon me, is this Mrs. Henrietta 
Jones? " And Angela, drawing herself up haughtily 
would reply: " Er, really you have the advantage 
of me." Then Virginia : "Oh pardon! I thought 
you were Mrs. Jones and I had heard my friend 
Mrs, Smith speak of you so often and since you 
were in the neighbourhood and passing, I was 
going to ask you in to have some ice-cream ". 
The game of course being that Angela should 
immediately drop her haughtiness and proceed 
for the sake of the goodies to ingratiate herself 
into her neighbour's esteem. It was a poor joke, 
long since worn thin, but the two girls still 
used the greeting and for some reason it had 
become part of the Monday ritual of preparing 
the supper. 

But to-night Angela's response lacked spon 
taneity. She was absorbed and reserved, even a 
little sulky. Deftly and swiftly she moved about 
her work, however, and no one who had not 
attended regularly on those Monday evening prep 
arations could have guessed that there was anything 
on her mind other than complete absorption in the 

35 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



problem of cutting the bread or garnishing the 
warmed over roast beef. But Mattie was aware 
of the quality of brooding in her intense con 
centration. She had seen it before in her daughter 
but to-night, though to her practised eye it was 
more apparent than ever, she could not put her 
hand on it. Angela's response, if asked what was 
the matter, would be " Oh, nothing ". It came 
to her suddenly that her older daughter was 
growing up; in a couple of months she would 
be fifteen. Children were often absorbed and 
moody when they were in their teens, too engaged 
in finding themselves to care about their e fleet 
on others. She must see to it that the girl had 
plenty of rest; perhaps school had been too 
strenuous for her to-day; she thought the high 
school programme very badly arranged, five hours 
one right after the other were much too long. 
" Angela, child, I think you'd better not be long 
out of bed to-night; you look very tired to me." 
Angela nodded. But her father came in then 
and in the little hubbub that arose about his 
home-coming and the final preparations for supper 
her listlessness went without further remark. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE third storey front was Angela's bed-room. 
She was glad of its loneliness and security to-night, 
even if her mother had not suggested her going 
to bed early she would have sought its shelter 
immediately after supper. Study for its own sake 
held no attractions for her; she did not care for 
any of her subjects really except Drawing and 
French. And when she was drawing she did not 
consider that she was studying, it was too natur 
ally a means of self-expression. As for French, 
she did have to study that with great care, for 
languages did not come to her with any great 
readiness, but there was an element of fine lady-ism 
about the beautiful, logical tongue that made her 
in accordance with some secret subconscious 
ambition resolve to make it her own. 

The other subjects, History, English, and Physi 
cal Geography, were not drudgery, for she had 
a fair enough mind; but then they were not 
attractive either, and she was lacking in Virginia's 
dogged resignation to unwelcome duties. Even 
when Jinny was a little girl she had been known to 
say manfully in the face of an uncongenial task: 
" Well I dotta det it done ". Angela was not like 
that. But to-night she was concentrating with all 
her power on her work. During the day she had 
been badly hurt; she had received a wound 

37 



BUNHHHHHHf-HHHHH- 



whose depth and violence she would not reveal 
even to her parents, because, and this only in 
creased the pain, young as she was she knew that 
there was nothing they could do about it. There 
was nothing to be done but to get over it. Only 
she was not developed enough to state this stoicism 
to herself. She was like a little pet cat that had 
once formed part of their household; its leg had 
been badly torn by a passing dog and the poor 
thing had dragged itself into the house and lain 
on its cushion patiently, waiting stolidly for 
this unfamiliar agony to subside. So Angela 
waited for the hurt in her mind to cease. 

But across the history dates on the printed 
page and through the stately lines of Lycidas she 
kept seeing Mary Hastings' accusing face, hearing 
Mary Hastings' accusing voice: 

" Coloured ! Angela, you never told me that 
you were coloured ! " 

And then her own voice in tragic but proud be 
wilderment. " Tell you that I was coloured ! 
Why of course I never told you that I was coloured. 
Why should I?" 



She had been so proud of Mary Hastings' friend 
ship. In the dark and tortured spaces of her 
difficult life it had been a lovely, hidden refuge. It 
had been an experience so rarely sweet that she 
had hardly spoken of it even to Virginia. The 
other girls in her classes had meant nothing to her. 
At least she had schooled herself to have them 
mean nothing. Some of them she had known 
since early childhood; they had lived in her neigh- 

38 



* * PLUM 



bourhood and had gone to the graded schools with 
her. They had known that she was coloured, for 
they had seen her with Virginia, and sometimes 
her tall, black father had come to fetch her home 
on a rainy day. There had been pleasant enough 
contacts and intimacies; in the quiet of Jefferson 
Street they had played " The Farmer in the Dell ", 
and "Here come three jolly, jolly sailor-boys"; 
dark retreats of the old market had afforded endless 
satisfaction for " Hide and Go Seek ". She and 
those other children had gone shopping arm in 
arm for school supplies, threading their way in and 
out of the bustle and confusion that were Columbia 
Avenue. 

As she grew older many of these intimacies 
lessened, in some cases ceased altogether. But 
she was never conscious of being left completely 
alone; there was always some one with whom to 
eat lunch or who was going her way after school. 
It was not until she reached the high school that 
she began to realize how solitary her life was 
becoming. There were no other coloured girls 
in her class but there had been only two or three 
during her school-life, and if there had been any 
she would not necessarily have confined herself 
to them; that this might be a good thing to do in 
sheer self-defence would hardly have occurred to 
her. But this problem did not confront her; 
what did confront her was that the very girls 
with whom she had grown up were evading 
her; when she went to the Assembly none of 
them sat next to her unless no other seat were 
vacant; little groups toward which she drifted 
during lunch, inexplicably dissolved to re-form 
in another portion of the room. Sometimes a 

39 



PLUM 



girl in this new group threw her a backward 
glance charged either with a mean amusement or 
with annoyance. 

Angela was proud; she did not need such a hint 
more than once, but she was bewildered and hurt. 
She took stories to school to read at recess, or wan 
dered into the drawing laboratory and touched up 
her designs. Miss Barrington thought her an 
unusually industrious student. 

And then in the middle of the term Mary Hast 
ings had come, a slender, well-bred girl of fifteen. 
She was rather stupid in her work, in fact she 
shone in nothing but French and good manners. 
Undeniably she had an air, and her accent was 
remarkable. The other pupils, giggling, produced 
certain uncouth and unheard of sounds, but Mary 
said in French: " No, I have lent my knife to the 
brother-in-law of the gardener but here is my cane," 
quite as though the idiotic phrase were part of an 
imaginary conversation which she was conducting 
and appreciating. " She really knows what she's 
talking about," little Esther Bayliss commented, and 
added that Mary's family had lost some money 
and they had had to send her to public school. 
But it was some time before this knowledge, dis 
pensed by Esther with mysterious yet absolute 
authenticity, became generally known. Mean 
while Mary was left to her own devices while the 
class with complete but tacit unanimity " tried her 
out ". Mary, unaware of this, looked with her 
near-sighted, slightly supercilious gaze about the 
room at recess and seeing only one girl, and that 
girl Angela, who approached in dress, manner and 
deportment her own rather set ideas, had taken 
her lunch over to the other pupil's desk and said : 

40 



BUNHHHHHHHH^HH^HH- 

" Come on, let's eat together while you tell me who 
everybody is." 

Angela took the invitation as simply as the other 
had offered. " That little girl in the purplish 
dress is Esther Bayliss and the tall one in the thick 
glasses " 

Mary, sitting with her back to the feeding groups, 
never troubled to look around. " I don't mean the 
girls. I expect I'll know them soon enough when I 
get around to it. I mean the teachers. Do you 
have to dig for them? " She liked Angela and she 
showed it plainly and directly. Her home was 
in some remote fastness of West Philadelphia 
which she could reach with comparative swiftness 
by taking the car at Spring Garden Street. Instead 
she walked half way home with her new friend, up 
Seventeenth Street as far as Girard Avenue where, 
after a final exchange of school matters and fare 
wells, she took the car, leaving Angela to her happy, 
satisfied thoughts. And presently she began to 
know more than happiness and satisfaction, she 
was knowing the extreme gratification of being 
the chosen companion of a popular and important 
girl, for Mary, although not quick at her studies, 
was a power in everything else. She dressed well, 
she had plenty of pocket money, she could play 
the latest marches in the gymnasium, she received 
a certain indefinable but flattering attention from 
the teachers, and she could make things " go ". 
The school paper was moribund and Mary knew 
how to resuscitate it; she brought in advertisements 
from her father's business friends; she made her 
married sisters obtain subscriptions. Without 
being obtrusive or over-bearing, without conde 
scension and without toadying she was the leader 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHE** 



of her class. And with it all she stuck to Angela. 
She accepted popularity because it was thrust 
upon her, but she was friendly with Angela because 
the latter suited her. 

Angela was happy. She had a friend and the 
friendship brought her unexpected advantages. 
She was no longer left out of groups because there 
could be no class plans without Mary and Mary 
would remain nowhere for any length of time with 
out Angela. So to save time and argument, and 
also to avoid offending the regent, Angela was 
always included. Not that she cared much about 
this, but she did like Mary; as is the way of a " fidus 
Achates ", she gave her friendship whole-heartedly. 
And it was gratifying to be in the midst of things. 



In April the school magazine announced a new 
departure. Henceforth the editorial staff was to 
be composed of two representatives from each 
class ; of these one was to be the chief representative 
chosen by vote of the class, the other was to be 
assistant, selected by the chief. The chief represen 
tative, said the announcement pompously, would 
sit in at executive meetings and have a voice in 
the policy of the paper. The assistant would 
solicit and collect subscriptions, collect fees, re 
ceive and report complaints and in brief, said 
Esther Bayliss, " do all the dirty work ". But she 
coveted the position and title for all that. 

Angela's class held a brief meeting after school 
and elected Mary Hastings as representative with 
out a dissenting vote. " No," said Angela holding 
up a last rather grimy bit of paper. " Here is 

42 



BUNHH?" * * * * fr frHHS 



one for Esther Bayliss." Two or three of the 
girls giggled; everyone knew that she must have 
voted for herself; indeed it had been she who had 
insisted on taking a ballot rather than a vote by 
acclaim. Mary was already on her feet. She 
had been sure of the result of the election, would 
have been astonished indeed had it turned out 
any other way. " Well, girls," she began in her 
rather high, refined voice, " I wish to thank you 
for the er confidence you have bestowed, that 
is, placed in me and I'm sure you all know I'll do 
my best to keep the old paper going. And while 
I'm about it I might just as well announce that 
I'm choosing Angela Murray for my assistant." 

There was a moment's silence. The girls who 
had thought about it at all had known that if 
Mary were elected, as assuredly she would be, 
this meant also the election of Angela. And 
those who had taken no thought saw no reason 
to object to her appointment. And anyway there 
was nothing to be done. But Esther Bayliss pushed 
forward: " I don't know how it is with the rest 
of you, but I should have to think twice before I'd 
trust my subscription money to a coloured girl." 

Mary said in utter astonishment: " Coloured, 
why what are you talking about? Who's col 
oured? " 

" Angela, Angela Murray, that's who's coloured. 
At least she used to be when we all went to school 
at Eighteenth and Oxford." 

Mary said again: "Coloured!" And then, 
" Angela, you never told me you were coloured ! " 

Angela's voice was as amazed as her own: " Tell 
you that I was coloured ! Why of course I never 
told you that I was coloured! Why should I? " 

43 



HHHHHHH-HH-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5- 

;c There," said Esther, " see she never told Mary 
that she was coloured. What wouldn't she have 
done with our money ! " 



Angela had picked up her books and strolled 
out the door. But she flew down the north stair 
case and out the Brandywine Street entrance and 
so to Sixteenth Street where she would meet no 
one she knew, especially at this belated hour. At 
home there would be work to do, her lessons to 
get and the long, long hours of the night must 
pass before she would have to face again the hurt 
and humiliation of the classroom; before she 
would have to steel her heart and her nerves to 
drop Mary Hastings before Mary Hastings could 
drop her. No one, no one, Mary least of all, 
should guess how completely she had been 
wounded. Mary and her shrinking bewilder 
ment! Mary and her exclamation: " Coloured! " 
This was a curious business, this colour. It was 
the one god apparently to whom you could sacri 
fice everything. On account of it her mother had 
neglected to greet her own husband on the street. 
Mary Hastings could let it come between her and 
her friend. 

In the morning she was at school early; the 
girls should all see her there and their individual 
attitude should be her attitude. She would remem 
ber each one's greetings, would store it away for 
future guidance. Some of the girls were especially 
careful to speak to her, one or two gave her a 
meaning smile, or so she took it, and turned away. 
Some did not speak at all. When Mary Hastings 

44 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM RUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 

came in Angela rose and sauntered unseeing and 
unheeding deliberately past her through the 
doorway, across the hall to Miss Barrington's 
laboratory. As she returned she passed Mary's 
desk, and the girl lifted troubled but not un 
friendly eyes to meet her own; Angela met the 
glance fully but without recognition. She thought 
to herself: " Coloured ! If they had said to me 
Mary Hastings is a voodoo, I'd have answered, 
' What of.it? She's my friend.' " 



Before June Mary Hastings came up to her and 
asked her to wait after school. Angela who had 
been neither avoiding nor seeking her gave a 
cool nod. They walked out of the French class 
room together. When they reached the corner 
Mary spoke: 

" Oh, Angela, let's be friends again. It doesn't 
really make any difference. See, I don't care any 
more." 

" But that's what I don't understand. Why 
should it have made any difference in the first 
place? I'm just the same as I was before you 
knew I was coloured and just the same afterwards. 
Why should it ever have made any difference at 
all? " 

" I don't know, I'm sure. I was just surprised. 
It was all so unexpected." 

" What was unexpected? " 

" Oh, I don't know. I can't explain it. But 
let's be friends." 

" Well," said Angela slowly, " I'm willing, but 
I don't think it will ever be the same again." 

45 



PLUM BUNf HK fr fr HHHHHS* 



It wasn't. Some element, spontaneity, trustful 
ness was lacking. Mary, who had never thought 
of speaking of colour, was suddenly conscious 
that here was a subject which she must not dis 
cuss. She was less frank, at times even restrained. 
Angela, too young to define her thoughts, yet felt 
vaguely: " She failed me once, I was her friend, 
yet she failed me for something with which I 
had nothing to do. She's just as likely to do it 
again. It's in her." 

Definitely she said to herself, " Mary with 
drew herself not because I was coloured but 
because she didn't know I was coloured. There 
fore if she had never known I was coloured she 
would always have been my friend. We would 
have kept on having our good times together." 
And she began to wonder which was the more 
important, a patent insistence on the fact of colour 
or an acceptance of the good things of life which 
could come to you in America if either you were 
not coloured or the fact of your racial connections 
was not made known. 

During the summer Mary Hastings' family, 
it appeared, recovered their fallen fortunes. At 
any rate she did not return to school in the fall 
and Angela never saw her again. 



CHAPTER V 

VIRGINIA came rushing in. " Angela, where's 
Mummy? " 

" Out. What's all the excitement? " 
" I've been appointed. Isn't it great? Won't 
Mother and Dad be delighted! Right at the 
beginning of the year too, so I won't have to wait. 
The official notice isn't out yet but I know it's 
all right. Miss Herren wants me to report to 
morrow. Isn't it perfectly marvellous! Here I 
graduate from the Normal in June and in the 
second week of school in September I've got my 
perfectly good job. Darling child, it's very much 
better, as you may have heard me observe before, 
to be born lucky than rich. But I am lucky and 
I'll be rich too. Think of that salary for my very 
own ! With both of us working, Mummy won't have 
to want for a thing, nor Father either. Mummy 
won't have to do a lick of work if she doesn't 
want to. Well, what have you got to say about it, 
old Rain-in-the-Face? Or perhaps this isn't Mrs. 
Henrietta Jones whom I'm addressing of?" 

Angela giggled, then raised an imaginary 
lorgnette. " Er, really I think you have the 
advantage of me. Well, I was thinking how 
fortunate you were to get your appointment right 
off the bat and how you'll hate it now that 
you have got it." 

47 



*HHHHHHHH~HhPLUM BUN^HHHHHHHHHHf* 

She herself, appointed two years previously, had 
had no such luck. Strictly speaking there are no 
coloured schools as such in Philadelphia. Yet, by 
an unwritten law, although coloured children may 
be taught by white teachers, white children must 
never receive knowledge at the hands of coloured 
instructors. As the number of coloured Normal 
School graduates is steadily increasing, the city 
gets around this difficulty by manning a school in 
a district thickly populated by Negroes, with a 
coloured principal and a coloured teaching force. 
Coloured children living in that district must 
thereupon attend that school. But no attention 
is paid to the white children who leave this same 
district for the next nearest white or " mixed " 
school. 

Angela had been sixth on the list of coloured 
graduates. Five had been appointed, but there 
was no vacancy for her, and for several months 
she was idle with here and there a day, perhaps a 
week of substituting. She could not be appointed 
in any but a coloured school, and she was not 
supposed to substitute in any but this kind of 
classroom. Then her father discovered that a young 
white woman was teaching in a coloured school. 
He made some searching inquiries and was met 
with the complacent rejoinder that as soon as a 
vacancy occurred in a white school, Miss Mc- 
Sweeney would be transferred there and his 
daughter could have her place. 

Just as she had anticipated, Angela did not want 
the job after she received it. She had expected 
to loathe teaching little children and her expecta 
tion, it turned out, was perfectly well grounded. 
Perhaps she might like to teach drawing to grown- 



* * * * -3- * * * '3- * PLUM BUN frfrfr frfrH-M-H> 

ups; she would certainly like to have a try at it. 
Meanwhile it was nice to be independent, to be 
holding a lady-like, respectable position so different 
from her mother's early days, to be able to have 
pretty clothes and to help with the house, in brief 
to be drawing an appreciably adequate and steady 
salary. For one thing it made it possible for her 
to take up work at the Philadelphia Academy of 
Fine Arts at Broad and Cherry. 



Jinny was in excellent spirits at dinner. " Now, 
Mummy darling, you really shall walk in silk 
attire and siller hae to spare." Angela's appoint 
ment had done away with the drudgery of 
washday. " We'll get Hettie Daniels to come in 
Saturdays and clean up. I won't have to scrub 
the front steps any more and everything will be 
feasting and fun." Pushing aside her plate she 
rushed over to her father, climbed on his knee and 
flung her lovely bronze arms around his neck. 
She still adored him, still thought him the finest 
man in the world; she still wanted her husband 
to be just exactly like him; he would not be so tall 
nor would he be quite as dark. Matthew Henson 
was of only medium height and was a sort of reddish 
yellow and he distinctly was not as handsome 
as her father. Indeed Virginia thought, with a 
pang of shame at her disloyalty, that it would 
have been a fine thing if he could exchange his 
lighter skin for her father's colour if in so doing 
it he might have gained her father's thick, 
coarsely grained but beautifully curling, open 
black hair. Matthew had inherited his father's 

D 49 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHH5~H* 

thick, tight, " bad " hair. Only, thank heaven, it 
was darker. 

Junius tucked his slender daughter back in the 
hollow of his arm. 

' Well, baby, you want something off my plate? " 
As a child Virginia had been a notorious beggar. 

" Darling ! I was thinking that now you could 
buy Mr. Hallowell's car. He's got his eye on a 
Cadillac, Kate says, and he'd be willing to let 
Henry Ford go for a song." 

Junius was pleased, but he thought he ought 
to protest. " Do I look as old as all that? I might 
be able to buy the actual car, now that my girls 
are getting so monied, but the upkeep, I under 
stand, is pretty steep." 

" Oh, nonsense," said Mattie. " Go on and 
get it, June. Think how nice it will be riding out 
North Broad Street in the evenings." 

And Angela added kindly: " I think you owe 
it to yourself to get it, Dad. Jinny and I'll carry 
the house till you get it paid for." 

" Well, there's no reason of course why I " 

he corrected himself, " why we shouldn't have a 
car if we want it." He saw himself spending 
happy moments digging in the little car's inmost 
mysteries. He would buy new parts, change the 
engine perhaps, paint it and overhaul her gener 
ally. And he might just as well indulge himself. 
The little house was long since paid for; he was 
well insured, and his two daughters were grown 
up and taking care of themselves. He slid Jinny 
off his knee. 

" I believe I'll run over to the Hallowells now 
and see what Tom'll take for that car. Catch 
him before he goes down town in it." 

50 



Virginia called after him. " Just think ! May 
be this time next week you'll be going down town 



n t." 



She was very happy. Life was turning out 
just right. She was young, she was twenty, she 
was about to earn her own living, " to be about 
to live " she said, happily quoting a Latin con 
struction which had always intrigued her. Her 
mother would never have to work again; her 
father would have a Henry Ford ; she herself would 
get a new, good music teacher and would also 
take up the study of methods at the University 
of Pennsylvania. 

Angela could hear her downstairs talking to 
Matthew Henson whose ring she had just answered. 
" Only think, Matt, I've been appointed." 

" Great ! " said Matthew. " Is Angela in? Do 
you think she'd like to go to the movies with me 
to-night? She was too tired last time. Run up 
and ask her, there's a good girl." 

Angela sighed. She didn't want to go out with 
Matthew; he wearied her so. And besides people 
always looked at her so strangely. She wished he 
would take it into his head to come and see Jinny. 



Sunday was still a happy day. Already an air 
of prosperity, of having arrived beyond the striv 
ing point, had settled over the family. Mr. 
Murray's negotiations with Tom Hallowell had 
been most successful. The Ford, a little four 
seater coupe, compact and sturdy, had changed 



-HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHHHH5* 

hands. Its former owner came around on Sunday 
to give Junius a lesson. The entire household piled 
in, for both girls were possessed of the modern 
slenderness. They rode out Jefferson Street and 
far, far out Ridge Avenue to the Wissahickon and 
on to Chestnut Hill. From time to time, when the 
traffic was thin, Junius took the wheel, anticipating 
Tom's instructions with the readiness of the born 
mechanic. They came back laughing and happy 
and pardonably proud. The dense, tender glow of 
the late afternoon September sun flooded the little 
parlour, the dining-room was dusky and the kitchen 
was redolent of scents of ginger bread and spiced 
preserves. After supper there were no lessons 
to get. " It'll be years before I forget all that 
stuff I learned in practice school," said Jinny 
gaily. 

Later on some boys came in; Matthew Henson 
inevitably, peering dissatisfied through the autumn 
gloom for Angela and immediately content when 
he saw her; Arthur Sawyer, who had just entered 
the School of Pedagogy and was a little ashamed 
of it, for he considered teaching work fit only for 
women. " But I've got to make a living somehow, 
ain't I? And I won't go into that post-office! " 

" What's the matter with the post-office? " 
Henson asked indignantly. He had just been 
appointed. In reality he did not fancy the work 
himself, but he did not want it decried before 
Angela. 

" Tell me what better or surer job is there for 
a 'coloured man in Philadelphia? " 

" Nothing," said Sawyer promptly, " not a thing 
in the world except school teaching. But that's 
just what I object to. I'm sick of planning my 

52 



W-H-H-HHHH-PLUM BUN^HHMHMMHHHf** 

life with regard to being coloured. I'm not a 
bit ashamed of my race. I don't mind in the least 
that once we were slaves. Every race in the world 
has at some time occupied a servile position. But 
I do mind having to take it into consideration 
every time I want to eat outside of my home, 
every time I enter a theatre, every time I think of 
a profession. 

" But you do have to take it into consideration," 
said Jinny softly. " At present it's one of the facts 
of our living, just as lameness or near-sightedness 
might be for a white man." 

The inevitable race discussion was on. 

" Ah, but there you're all off, Miss Virginia." 
A tall, lanky, rather supercilious youth spoke up 
from the corner. He had been known to them all 
their lives as Franky Porter, but he had taken 
lately to publishing poems in the Philadelphia 
Tribunal which he signed F. Seymour Porter. 
" Really you're all off, for you speak as though 
colour itself were a deformity. Whereas, as Miss 
Angela being an artist knows, colour may really 
be a very beautiful thing, mayn't it? " 

" Oh don't drag me into your old discussion," 
Angela answered crossly. "I'm sick of this whole 
race business if you ask me. And don't call me 
Miss Angela. Call me Angela as you've all done 
all our lives or else call me Miss Murray. No, I 
don't think being coloured in America is a beautiful 
thing. I think it's nothing short of a curse." 

" Well," said Porter slowly, " I think its being 
or not being a curse rests with you. You've got 
to decide whether or not you're going to let it 
interfere with personal development and to that 
extent it may be harmful or it may be an incentive, 

53 



BUN******HHHHH5 



I take it that Sawyer here, who even when we were 
all kids always wanted to be an engineer, will 
transmute his colour either into a bane or a blessing 
according to whether he lets it make him hide his 
natural tendencies under the bushel of school- 
teaching or become an inspiration toward making 
him the very best kind of engineer that there ever 
was so that people will just have to take him for 
what he is and overlook the fact of colour." 

" That's it," said Jinny. " You know, being 
coloured often does spur you on." 

" And that's what I object to," Angela answered 
perversely. "I'm sick of this business of always 
being below or above a certain norm. Doesn't 
anyone think that we have a right to be happy 
simply, naturally? " 



Gradually they drifted into music. Virginia 
played a few popular songs and presently the old 
beautiful airs of all time, " Drink to me only with 
thine eyes " and " Sweet and Low ". Arthur 
Sawyer had a soft, melting tenor and Angela a 
rather good alto; Virginia and the other boys 
carried the air while Junius boomed his deep, 
unyielding bass. The lovely melodies and the 
peace of the happy, tranquil household crept over 
them, and presently they exchanged farewells and 
the young men passed wearied and contented out 
into the dark confines of Opal Street. Angela and 
Mattie went upstairs, but Viginia and her father 
stayed below and sang very softly so as not to 
disturb the sleeping street; a few hymns and finally 
the majestic strains of " The Dying Christian " 

54 



^HHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN*********** 

floated up. Mrs. Murray had complained of 
feeling [tired. " I think I'll just lie a moment 
on your bed, Angela, until your father comes 
up." But her daughter noticed that she had not 
relaxed, instead she was straining forward a 
little and Angela realized that she was trying to 
catch every note of her husband's virile, hearty 
voice. 

She said, " You heard what we were all talking 
about before the boys left. You and father don't 
ever bother to discuss such matters, do you? " 

Her mother seemed to strain past the sound of 
her voice. " Not any more; oh, of course we used 
to talk about such things, but you get so taken up 
with the problem of living, just life itself you know, 
that by and by being coloured or not is just one 
thing more or less that you have to contend with. 
But of course there have been times when colour 
was the starting point of our discussions. I remem 
ber how when you and Jinny were little things 
and she was always running to the piano and you 
were scribbling all over the walls, many's the time 
I've slapped your little fingers for that, Angela, 
we used to spend half the night talking about you, 
your father and I. I wanted you to be great 
artists but Junius said: ' No, we'll give them a 
good, plain education and set them in the way 
of earning a sure and honest living; then if they've 
got it in them to travel over all the rocks that'll 
be in their way as coloured girls, they'll manage, 
never you fear.' And he was right." The music 
downstairs ceased and she lay back, relaxed and 
drowsy. " Your father's always right." 

Much of this was news to Angela, and she 
would have liked to learn more about those early 

55 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5* 



nocturnal discussions. But she only said, smiling, 
" You're still crazy about father, aren't you, 
darling? " 

Her mother was wide awake in an instant. 
"Crazy! I'd give my life for him!" 



The Saturday excursions were long since a thing 
of the past; Henry Ford had changed that. Also 
the extra work which the girls had taken upon 
themselves in addition to their teaching, Angela 
at the Academy, Virginia at the University, made 
Saturday afternoon a too sorely needed period of 
relaxation to be spent in the old familiar fashion. 
Still there were times when Angela in search of 
a new frock or intent on the exploration of a picture 
gallery asked her mother to accompany her. And 
at such times the two indulged in their former 
custom of having tea and a comfortable hour's 
chat in the luxurious comfort of some exclusive tea 
room or hotel. Mattie, older and not quite so 
lightly stepping in these days of comparative ease 
as in those other times when a week's arduous 
duties lay behind her, still responded joyously to 
the call of fashion and grooming, the air of " good 
living " which pervaded these places. Moreover 
she herself was able to contribute to this atmos 
phere. Her daughters insisted on presenting her 
with the graceful and dainty clothes which she 
loved, and they were equally insistent on her 
wearing them. " No use hanging them in a 
closet," said Jinny blithely. All her prophecies 
had come true her mother had the services of 
a maid whenever she needed them, she went clad 

56 



BUNHHHHHH^-HMHH* 



for the most part " in silk attire ", and she had 
" siller to spare " and to spend. 

She was down town spending it now. The 
Ladies' Auxiliary of her church was to give a recep 
tion after Lent, and Mattie meant to hold her 
own with the best of them. " We're getting to 
be old ladies," she said a bit wistfully, " but we'll 
make you young ones look at us once or twice just 
the same." Angela replied that she was sure of 
that. " And I know one or two little secrets for 
the complexion that will make it impossible for 
you to call yourself old." 

But those her mother knew already. However 
she expressed a willingness to accept Angela's 
offer. She loved to be fussed over, and of late 
Angela had shown a tendency to rival even Jinny 
in this particular. The older girl was beginning 
to lose some of her restlessness. Life was pretty 
hum-drum, but it was comfortable and pleasant; 
her family life was ideal and her time at the art 
school delightful. The instructor was interested 
in her progress, and one or two of the girls had 
shown a desire for real intimacy. These intima 
tions she had not followed up very closely, but she 
was seeing enough of a larger, freer world to make 
her chafe less at the restrictions which somehow 
seemed to bind in her own group. As a result of 
even this slight satisfaction of her cravings, she 
was indulging less and less in brooding and intro 
spection, although at no time was she able to adapt 
herself to living with the complete spontaneity so 
characteristic of Jinny. 

But she was young, and life would somehow 
twist and shape itself to her subsconscious yearnings, 
just as it had done for her mother, she thought, 

57 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN*********** 

following Mattie in and out of shops, delivering 
opinions and lending herself to all the exigencies 
which shopping imposed. It was not an occupation 
which she particularly enjoyed, but, like her 
mother, she adored the atmosphere and its accom 
paniment of well-dressed and luxuriously stationed 
women. No one could tell, no one would have 
thought for a moment that she and her mother 
had come from tiny Opal Street; no one could 
have dreamed of their racial connections. " And 
if Jinny were here," she thought, slowly selecting 
another cake, " she really would be just as capable 
of fitting into all this as mother and I ; but they 
wouldn't let her light." And again she let herself 
dwell on the fallaciousness of a social system which 
stretched appearance so far beyond being. 

From the tea-room they emerged into the 
damp grey ness of the March afternoon. The 
streets were slushy and slimy; the sky above 
sodden and dull. Mattie shivered and thought of 
the Morris chair in the minute but cosy dining-room 
of her home. She wanted to go to the " Y " on 
Catherine Street and there were two calls to make 
far down Fifteenth. But at last all this was accom 
plished. " Now we'll get the next car and before 
you know it you'll be home." 

c You look tired, Mother," said Angela. 

" I am tired," she acknowledged, and, suddenly 
sagging against her daughter, lost consciousness. 
About them a small crowd formed, and a man 
passing in an automobile kindly drove the two 
women to a hospital in Broad Street two blocks 
away. It was a hospital to which no coloured 
woman would ever have been admitted except to 
char, but there was no such question to be raised 

58 



BUNHHHMHHHHHHH' 



in the case of this patient. " She'll be all right 
presently," the interne announced, "just a little 
fainting spell brought on by over-exertion. Was 
that your car you came in? It would be nice if 
you could have one to get her home in." 

" Oh, but I can," and in a moment Angela had 
rushed to the telephone forgetting everything 
except that her father was in his shop to-day and 
therefore almost within reach and so was the car. 

Not long after he came striding into the hospital, 
tall and black and rather shabby in his working 
clothes. He was greeted by the clerk with a rather 
hostile, " Yes, and what do you want? " 

Angela, hastening across the lobby to him, 
halted at the intonation. 

Junius was equal to the moment's demands. 
" I'm Mrs. Murray's chauffeur," he announced, 
hating the deception, but he would not have his 
wife bundled out too soon. " Is she very badly 
off, Miss Angela? " 

His daughter hastened to reassure him. " No, 
she'll be down in a few minutes now." 

" And meanwhile you can wait outside," said 
the attendant icily. She did not believe that black 
people were exactly human; there was no place 
for them in the scheme of life so far as she could 
see. 

Junius withdrew, and in a half hour's time the 
young interne and the nurse came out supporting 
his wan wife. He sprang to the pavement: "Lean 
on me, Mrs. Murray." 

But sobbing, she threw her arms about his 
neck. " Oh Junius, Junius ! " 

He lifted her then, drew back for Angela and 
mounting himself, drove away. The interne 

59 



**HHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHH5--HHH!* 

stepped back into the hospital raging about these 
damn white women and their nigger servants. 
Such women ought to be placed in a psycho-pathic 
ward and the niggers burned. 



The girls got Mrs. Murray into the Morris 
chair and ran upstairs for pillows and wraps. 
When they returned Junius was in the chair and 
Mrs. Murray in his arms. " Oh, June, dear June, 
such a service of love." 

" Do you suppose she's going to die? " whispered 
Jinny, stricken. What, she wondered, would 
become of her father. 

But in a few days Mattie was fully recovered 
and more happy than ever in the reflorescence of 
love and tenderness which had sprung up between 
herself and Junius. Only Junius was not so well. 
He had had a slight touch of grippe during the 
winter and the half hour's loitering in the treach 
erous March weather, before the hospital, had not 
served to improve it. He was hoarse and feverish, 
though this he did not immediately admit. But a 
tearing pain in his chest compelled him one morning 
to suggest the doctor. In a panic Mattie sent for 
him. Junius really ill ! She had never seen him 
in anything but the pink of condition. The doctor 
reluctantly admitted pneumonia " a severe case 
but I think we can pull him through." 

He suffered terribly Mattie suffered with him, 
never leaving his bedside. On the fifth day he 
was delirious. His wife thought, " Surely God 
isn't going to let him die without speaking to me 
again." 

60 



-HHHHHhPLUM 



Toward evening he opened his eyes and saw her 
tender, stricken face. He smiled. " Dear Mattie," 
and then, "Jinny, I'd like to hear some music, 
'Vital spark '- 

So his daughter went down to the little parlour 
and played and sang " The Dying Christian ". 

Angela thought, " Oh, isn't this terrible ! Oh 
how can she? " Presently she called softly, 
"Jinny, Jinny come up." 

Junius' hand was groping for Mattie's. She 
placed it in his. " Dear Mattie," he said, " Heaven 
opens on my eyes, -- " 



The house was still with the awful stillness 
that follows a funeral. All the bustle and hurry 
were over; the end, the fulfilment toward which 
the family had been striving for the last three 
days was accomplished. The baked funeral meats 
had been removed; Virginia had seen to that. 
Angela was up in her room, staring dry-eyed before 
her; she loved her father, but not even for him 
could she endure this aching, formless pain of 
bereavement. She kept saying to herself fiercely : 
" I must get over this, I can't stand this. I'll go 
away." 

Mrs. Murray sat in the old Morris chair in the 
dining-room. She stroked its arms with her 
plump, worn fingers; she laid her face again and 
again on its shabby back. One knew that she was 
remembering a dark, loved cheek. Jinny said, 
" Come upstairs and let me put you to bed, darling. 
You're going to sleep with me, you know. You're 
going to comfort your little girl, aren't you, 

61 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHMK 



Mummy? " Then as there was no response, 
" Darling, you'll make yourself ill." 

Her mother sat up suddenly. " Yes, that's 
what I want to do. Oh, Jinny, do you think I 
can make myself ill enough to follow him soon? 
My daughter, try to forgive me, but I must go to 
him. I can't live without him. I don't deserve 
a daughter like you, but, don't let them hold me 
back. I want to die, I must die. Say you for 
give me, -- " 

" Darling," and it was as though her husband 
rather than her daughter spoke, " whatever you 
want is what I want." By a supreme effort she 
held back her tears, but it was years before 
she forgot the picture of her mother sitting back in 
the old Morris chair, composing herself for death. 



62 



CHAPTER VI 

AT the Academy matters progressed smoothly 
without the flawing of a ripple. Angela looked 
forward to the hours which she spent there and 
honestly regretted their passage. Her fellow students 
and the instructors were more than cordial, there 
was an actual sense of camaraderie among them. 
She had not mentioned the fact of her Negro 
strain, indeed she had no occasion to, but she did 
not believe that this fact if known would cause any 
change in attitude. Artists were noted for their 
broad-mindedness. They were the first persons 
in the world to judge a person for his worth rather 
than by any hall-mark. It is true that Miss 
Henderson, a young lady of undeniable colour, 
was not received with the same cordiality and 
attention which Angela was receiving, and this, 
too, despite the fact that the former's work 
showed undeniable talent, even originality. 
Angela thought that something in the young 
lady's personality precluded an approach to 
friendship; she seemed to be wary, almost offen 
sively stand-offish. Certainly she never spoke 
unless spoken to; she had been known to spend 
a whole session without even glancing at a [fellow 
student. 

Angela herself had not arrived at any genuine 
intimacies. Two of the girls had asked her to their 

63 



*HHHHHHh**HHhPLUM 



homes but she had always refused; such invitations 
would have to be returned with similar ones and 
the presence of Jinny would entail explanations. 
The invitation of Mr. Shields, the instructor, to 
have tea at his wife's at home was another matter 
and of this she gladly availed herself. She could 
not tell to just what end she was striving. She did 
not like teaching and longed to give it up. On the 
other hand she must make her living. Mr. Shields 
had suggested that she might be able to increase 
both her earning capacity and her enjoyments 
through a more practical application of her art. 
There were directorships of drawing in the public 
schools, positions in art schools and colleges, or, 
since Angela frankly acknowledged her unwill 
ingness to instruct, there was such a thing as 
being buyer for the art section of a department 
store. 

" And anyway," said Mrs. Shields, " you never 
know what may be in store for you if you just 
have preparation." She and her husband were 
both attracted to the pleasant-spoken, talented 
girl. Angela possessed an undeniable air, and she 
dressed well, even superlatively. Her parents' 
death had meant the possession of half the house 
and half of three thousand dollars' worth of insur 
ance. Her salary was adequate, her expenses 
light. Indeed even her present mode of living 
gave her little cause for complaint except that her 
racial affiliations narrowed her confines. But she 
was restlessly conscious of a desire for broader 
horizons. She confided something like this to her 
new friends. 

" Perfectly natural," they agreed. " There's no 
telling where your tastes and talents will lead you, 

64 



'HHHMHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5* 

to Europe perhaps and surely to the formation of 
new and interesting friendships. You'll find artistic 
folk the broadest, most liberal people in the 
world." 

" There are possibilities of scholarships, too," 
Mr. Shields concluded more practically. The 
Academy offered a few in competition. But there 
were others more liberally endowed and practically 
without restriction. 



Sundays on Opal Street bore still their aspect of 
something different and special. Jinny sometimes 
went to church, sometimes packed the car with a 
group of laughing girls of her age and played 
at her father's old game of exploring. Angela 
preferred to stay in the house. She liked to 
sleep late, get up for a leisurely bath and a 
meticulous toilet. Afterwards she would turn 
over her wardrobe, sorting and discarding; 
read the week's forecast of theatres, concerts 
and exhibits. And finally she would begin 
sketching, usually ending up with a new view 
of Hetty Daniels' head. 

Hetty, who lived with them now in the triple 
capacity, as she saw it, of housekeeper, companion, 
and chaperone, loved to pose. It satisfied some 
unquenchable vanity in her unloved, empty exist 
ence. She could not conceive of being sketched 
because she was, in the artist's jargon, " interest 
ing", "paintable", or "difficult". Models, as 
she understood it, were chosen for their beauty. 
Square and upright she sat, regaling Angela with 
tales of the romantic adventures of some remote 



HHHHHHHHHHKPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

period which was her youth. She could not be 
very old, the young girl thought; indeed, from 
some of her dates she must have been at least twelve 
years younger than her mother. Yet Mrs. Murray 
had carried with her to the end some irrefragable 
quality of girlishness which would keep her memory 
forever young. 

Miss Daniels' great fetish was sex morality. 
" Them young fellers was always 'round me 
thick ez bees; wasn't any night they wasn't more 
fellows in my kitchen then you an' Jinny ever 
has in yore parlour. But I never listened to 
none of the' talk, jist held out agin 'em and 
kept my pearl of great price untarnished. I 
aimed then and I'm continual to aim to be a 
verjous woman." 

Her unslaked yearnings gleamed suddenly out of 
her eyes, transforming her usually rather expres 
sionless face into something wild and avid. The 
dark brown immobile mask of her skin made an 
excellent foil for the vividness of an emotion which 
was so apparent, so palpable that it seemed like 
something superimposed upon the background of 
her countenance. 

" If I could just get that look for Mr. Shields," 
Angela said half aloud to herself, " I bet I could 
get any of their old scholarships. ... So 
you had lots more beaux than we have, Hetty? 
Well you wouldn't have to go far to outdo us 
there." 

The same half dozen young men still visited the 
Murray household on Sundays. None of them 
except Matthew Henson came as a suitor; the 
others looked in partly from habit, partly, Jinny 
used to say, for the sake of Hetty Daniels' good 

66 



ginger bread, but more than for any other reason 
for the sake of having a comfortable place in which 
to argue and someone with whom to conduct the 
argument. 

"They certainly do argue;" Angela grumbled a 
little, but she didn't care. Matthew was usually 
the leader in their illimitable discussions, but she 
much preferred him at this than at his clumsy 
and distasteful love-making. Of course she could 
go out, but there was no place for her to visit and 
no companions for her to visit with. If she made 
calls there would be merely a replica of what she 
was finding in her own household. It was true 
that in the ultra-modern set Sunday dancing was 
being taken up. But she and Virginia did not 
fit in here any too well. Her fancy envisaged a 
comfortable drawing-room (there were folks who 
used that term), peopled with distinguished men 
and women who did things, wrote and painted and 
acted, people with a broad, cultural background 
behind them, or, lacking that, with the originality 
of thought and speech which comes from failing, 
deliberately failing, to conform to the pattern. 
Somewhere, she supposed, there must be coloured 
people like that. But she didn't know any of them. 
She knew there were people right in Philadelphia 
who had left far, far behind them the economic 
class to which her father and mother had belonged. 
But their thoughts, their actions were still cramped 
and confined; they were sitting in their new, even 
luxurious quarters, still mental parvenus, still dis 
cussing the eternal race question even as these 
boys here. 

To-night they were hard at it again with/a new 
phase which Angela, who usually sat only half 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHK' 



attentive in their midst, did not remember ever 
having heard touched before. Seymour Porter 
had started the ball by forcing their attention to 
one of his poems. It was not a bad poem; as 
modern verse goes it possessed a touch distinctly 
above the mediocre. 

" Why don't you stop that stuff and get 
down to brass tacks, Porter? " Matthew snarled. 
" You'll be of much more service to your race 
as a good dentist than as a half-baked poet." 
Henson happened to know that the amount of 
study which the young poet did at the Univer 
sity kept him just barely registered in the 
dental college. 

Porter ran his hand over his beautifully groomed 
hair. He had worn a stocking cap in his room 
all the early part of the day to enable him to 
perform this gesture without disaster. " There you 
go, Henson, service to the race and all the rest 
of it. Doesn't it ever occur to you that the race 
is made up of individuals and you can't conserve 
the good of the whole unless you establish that of 
each part? Is it better for me to be a first rate 
dentist and be a cabined and confined personality 
or a half-baked poet, as you'd call it, and be 
myself? " 

Henson reasoned that a coloured American 
must take into account that he is usually 
living in a hostile community. " If you're only 
a half-baked poet they'll think that you're a 
representative of your race and that we're all 
equally no account. But if you're a fine dentist, 
they won't think, it's true, that we're all as 
skilled as you, but they will respect you and 
concede that probably there're a few more like 

68 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH?* 



you. Inconsistent, but that's the way they 
argue." 

Arthur Sawyer objected to this constant yield 
ing to an invisible censorship. " If you're coloured 
you've just got to straddle a bit; you've got to 
consider both racial and individual integrity. 
I've got to be sure of a living right now. So 
in order not to bring the charge of vagrancy 
against my family I'm going to teach until I've 
saved enough money to study engineering in 
comfort." 

" And when you get through? " Matthew asked 
politely. 

" When I get through, if this city has come to 
its senses, I'll get a big job with Baldwin. If not 
I'll go to South America and take out naturaliza 
tion papers." 

" But you can't do that," cried Jinny, " we'd 
need you more than ever if you had all that train 
ing. You know what I think? We've all of us 
got to make up our minds to the sacrifice of some 
thing. I mean something more than just the ordin 
ary sacrifices in life, not so much for the sake of 
the next generation as for the sake of some prin 
ciple, for the sake of some immaterial quality like 
pride or intense self-respect or even a saving com 
placency; a spiritual tonic which the race needs 
perhaps just as much as the body might need iron 
or whatever it does need to give the proper kind 
of resistance. There are some things which an 
individual might want, but which he'd just have 
to give up forever for the sake of the more im 
portant whole." 

" It beats me," said Sawyer indulgently, " how 
a little thing like you can catch hold of such a 

69 



BUNHHHHHHHHHi'-H* 



big thought. I don't know about a man's giving 
up his heart's desire forever, though, just because 
he's coloured. That seems to me a pretty large 
order." 

" Large order or not," Henson caught him up, 
" she comes mighty near being right. What do 
you think, Angela? " 

"Just the same as I've always thought. I 
don't see any sense in living unless you're going 
to be happy." 



Angela took the sketch of Hetty Daniels to 
school. " What an interesting type ! " said Ger 
trude Quale, the girl next to her. " Such cosmic 
and tragic unhappiness in that face. What is she, 
not an American? " 

" Oh yes she is. She's an old coloured woman 
who's worked in our family for years and she was 
born right here in Philadelphia." 

" Oh coloured ! Well, of course I suppose 
you would call her an American though I 
never think of darkies as Americans. Coloured, 
yes that would account for that unhappi 
ness in her face. I suppose they all mind it 
awfully." 

It was the afternoon for the life class. The 
model came in, a short, rather slender young 
woman with a faintly pretty, shrewish face full 
of a certain dark, mean character. Angela glanced 
at her thoughtfully, full of pleasant anticipation. 
She liked to work for character, preferred it even to 
beauty. The model caught her eye, looked away 
and again turned her full gaze upon her with 

70 



BUN-HHHHHHHHHH?- 



an insistent, slightly incredulous stare. It was 
Esther Bayliss who had once been in the High 
School with Angela. She had left not long 
after Mary Hastings' return .to her boarding 
school. 

Angela saw no reason why she should speak 
to her and presently, engrossed in the portrayal 
of the round, yet pointed little face, forgot the 
girl's identity. But Esther kept her eyes fixed 
on her former school-mate with a sort of intense, 
angry brooding so absorbing that she forgot her 
pose and Mr. Shield spoke to her two or three 
times. On the third occasion he said not un 
kindly, " You'll have to hold your pose better 
than this, Miss Bayliss, or we won't be able to 
keep you on." 

" I don't want you to keep me on." She spoke 
with an amazing vindictiveness. " I haven't got 
to the point yet where I'm going to lower myself 
to pose for a coloured girl." 

He looked around the room in amazement; 
no, Miss Henderson wasn't there, she never came 
to this class he remembered. " Well after that 
we couldn't keep you anyway. We're not taking 
orders from our models. But there's no coloured 
girl here." 

" Oh yes there is, unless she's changed her 
name." She laughed spitefully. " Isn't that An 
gela Murray over there next to that Jew girl? " 
In spite of himself, Shields nodded. " Well, she's 
coloured though she wouldn't let you know. But 
I know. I went to school with her in North 
Philadelphia. And I tell you I wouldn't stay 
to pose for her not if you were to pay me ten 
times what I'm getting. Sitting there drawing 

71 



from me just as though she were as good as a 
white girl ! " 

Astonished and disconcerted, he told his wife 
about it. " But I can't think she's really coloured, 
Mabel. Why she looks and acts just like a white 
girl. She dresses in better taste than anybody in 
the room. But that little wretch of a model 
insisted that she was coloured." 

" Well she just can't be. Do you suppose I 
don't know a coloured woman when I see one? 
I can tell 'em a mile off." 

It seemed to him a vital and yet such a dis 
graceful matter. " If she is coloured she should 
have told me. I'd certainly like to know, but 
hang it all, I can't ask her, for suppose she should 
be white in spite of what that little beast of a model 
said? " He found her address in the registry and 
overcome one afternoon with shamed curiosity 
drove up to Opal Street and slowly past her house. 
Jinny was coming in from school and Hetty 
Daniels on her way to market greeted her on the 
lower step. Then Virginia put the key in the lock 
and passed inside. " She is coloured," he told his 
wife, " for no white girl in her senses would be 
rooming with coloured people." 

" I should say not ! Coloured, is she? Well, she 
shan't come here again, Henry." 

Angela approached him after class on Satur 
day. " How is Mrs. Shields? I can't get out 
to see her this week but I'll be sure to run in 
next." 

He blurted out miserably, " But, Miss Murray, 
you never told me that you were coloured." 

She felt as though she were rehearsing a 
well-known part in a play. " Coloured ! Of 

72 



BUN-HHHHMMHHHHS* 



course I never told you that I was coloured. 
Why should I?" 



But apparently there was some reason why she 
should tell it; she sat in her room in utter dejection 
trying to reason it out. Just as in the old days 
she had not discussed the matter with Jinny, for 
what could the latter do? She wondered if 
her mother had ever met with any such experi 
ences. Was there something inherently wrong in 
"passing"? 

Her mother had never seemed to consider it as 
anything but a lark. And on the one occasion, 
that terrible day in the hospital when passing or 
not passing might have meant the difference 
between good will and unpleasantness, her mother 
had deliberately given the whole show away. But 
her mother, she had long since begun to realize, 
had not considered this business of colour or 
the lack of it as pertaining intimately to her 
personal happiness. She was perfectly satisfied, 
absolutely content whether she was part of that 
white world with Angela or up on little Opal 
Street with her dark family and friends. Where 
as it seemed to Angela that all the things which 
she most wanted were wrapped up with white 
people. All the good things were theirs. Not, 
some coldly reasoning instinct within was say 
ing, because they were white. But because for 
the present they had power and the badge of 
that power was whiteness, very like the colours 
on the escutcheon of a powerful house. She 
possessed the badge, and unless there was 

73 



BUN^HHHHHHHHHH* 



someone to tell she could possess the power for 
which it stood. 

Hetty Daniels shrilled up: " Mr. Henson's 
down here to see you." 

Tiresome though his presence was, she almost 
welcomed him to-night, and even accepted his 
eager invitation to go to see a picture. " It's in a 
little gem of a theatre, Angela. You'll like the 
surroundings almost as much as the picture, and 
that's very good. Sawyer and I saw it about two 
weeks ago. I thought then that I'd like to take 
you." 

She knew that this was his indirect method of 
telling her that they would meet with no difficulty 
in the matter of admission ; a comforting assurance, 
for Philadelphia theatres, as Angela knew, could 
be very unpleasant to would-be coloured patrons. 
Henson offered to telephone for a taxi while she 
was getting on her street clothes, and she permitted 
the unnecessary extravagance, for she hated the 
conjectures on the faces of passengers in the street 
cars; conjectures, she felt in her sensitiveness, which 
she could only set right by being unusually kind 
and friendly in her manner to Henson. And this 
produced undesirable effects on him. She had 
gone out with him more often in the Ford, which 
permitted a modicum of privacy. But Jinny was 
off in the little car to-night. 

At Broad and Ridge Avenue the taxi was held up ; 
it was twenty-five minutes after eight when they 
reached the theatre. Matthew gave Angela a bill. 
" Do you mind getting the tickets while I settle 
for the cab? " he asked nervously. He did not 
want her to miss even the advertisements. This, 
he almost prayed, would be a perfect night. 

74 



H-H-HHHHHW-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH^ 

Cramming the change into his pocket, he 
rushed into the lobby and joined Angela who, 
almost as excited as he, for she liked a good picture, 
handed the tickets to the attendant. He returned 
the stubs. " All right, good seats there to your 
left." The theatre was only one storey. He 
glanced at Matthew. 

" Here, here, where do you think you're 
going? " 

Matthew answered unsuspecting: " It's all 
right. The young lady gave you the 
tickets." 

" Yes, but not for you; she can go in, but you 
can't." He handed him the torn ticket, turned 
and took one of the stubs from Angela, and thrust 
that in the young man's unwilling hand. " Go 
over there and get your refund." 

" But," said Matthew and Angela could feel his 
very manhood sickening under the silly humiliation 
of the moment, " there must be some mistake; 
I sat in this same theatre less than three weeks 
ago." 

' Well, you won't sit in there to-night; the 
management's changed hands since then, and 
we're not selling tickets to coloured people." He 
glanced at Angela a little uncertainly. " The 
young lady can come in " 

Angela threw her ticket on the floor. " Oh, 
come Matthew, come." 

Outside he said stiffly, " I'll get a taxi, we'll go 
somewhere else." 

" No, no ! We wouldn't enjoy it. Let's 
go home and we don't need a taxi. We 
can get the Sixteenth Street car right at the 



75 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



She was very kind to him in the car; she was so 
sorry for him, suddenly conscious of the pain which 
must be his at being stripped before the girl he 
loved of his masculine right to protect, to appear 
the hero. 

She let him open the two doors for her but 
stopped him in the box of a hall. " I think I'll 
say good-night now, Matthew; I'm more tired 
than I realized. But, but it was an adventure, 
wasn't it? " 

His eyes adored her, his hand caught hers: 
" Angela, I'd have given all I hope to possess to 
have been able to prevent it; you know I never 
dreamed of letting you in for such humiliation. 
Oh how are we ever going to get this thing 
straight? " 

' Well, it wasn't your fault." Unexpectedly she 
lifted her delicate face to his, so stricken and 
freckled and woebegone, and kissed him; lifted her 
hand and actually stroked his reddish, stiff, " bad " 
hair. 

Like a man in a dream he walked down the street 
wondering how long it would be before they 
married. 



Angela, waking in the middle of the night 
and reviewing to herself the events of the day, 
said aloud: "This is the end," and fell asleep 
again. 

The little back room was still Jinny's, but 
Angela, in order to give the third storey front 
to Hetty Daniels, had moved into the room which 
had once been her mother's. She and Virginia 



BUNHHH?*HHHHHHHH5' 



had placed the respective head-boards of their 
narrow, virginal beds against the dividing 
wall so that they could lie in bed and talk 
to each other through the communicating 
door-way, their voices making a circuit from 
speaker to listener in what Jinny called a hair 
pin curve. 

Angela called in as soon as she heard her sister 
moving, "Jinny, listen. I'm going away." 

Her sister, still half asleep, lay intensely quiet 
for another second, trying to pick up the con 
tinuity of this dream. Then her senses came to 
her. 

" What'd you say, Angela? " 

" I said I was going away. I'm going to leave 
Philadelphia, give up school teaching, break away 
from our loving friends and acquaintances, and 
bust up the whole shooting match." 

" Haven't gone crazy, have you? " 

" No, I think I'm just beginning to come to my 
senses. I'm sick, sick, sick of seeing what I want 
dangled right before my eyes and then of having 
it snatched away from me and all of it through 
no fault of my own." 

" Darling, you know I haven't the faintest idea 
of what you're driving at." 

" Well, I'll tell you." Out came the whole 
story, an accumulation of the slights, real and 
fancied, which her colour had engendered through 
out her lifetime; though even then she did not 
tell of that first hurt through Mary Hastings. 
That would always linger in some remote, impene 
trable fastness of her mind, for wounded trust was 
there as well as wounded pride and love. " And 
these two last happenings with Matthew and Mr. 

77 



Shields are just too much; besides they've shown 
me the way." 

" Shown you what way? " 

Virginia had arisen and thrown an old rose 
kimono around her. She had inherited her 
father's thick and rather coarsely waving black 
hair, enhanced by her mother's softness. She 
was slender, yet rounded; her cheeks were flushed 
with sleep and excitement. Her eyes shone. As 
she sat in the brilliant wrap, cross-legged at the 
foot of her sister's narrow bed, she made the 
latter think of a strikingly dainty, colourful robin. 

" Well you see as long as the Shields thought I 
was white they were willing to help me to all the 
glories of the promised land. And the doorman 
last night, he couldn't tell what I was, but he 
could tell about Matthew, so he put him out; 
just as the Shields are getting ready in another way 
to put me out. But as long as they didn't know 
it didn't matter. Which means it isn't being 
coloured that makes the difference, it's letting it 
be known. Do you see? 

" So I've thought and thought. I guess really 
I've had it in my mind for a long time, but last 
night it seemed to stand right out in my con 
sciousness. Why should I shut myself off from 
all the things I want most, clever people, people 
who do things, Art, " her voice spelt it with a 
capital, " travel and a lot of things which are 
in the world for everybody really but which only 
white people, as far as I can see, get their hands 
on. I mean scholarships and special funds, 
patronage. Oh Jinny, you don't know, I don't 
think you can understand the things I want to 
see and know. You're not like me ". 

78 



H^HHHH-HHHhPLUM BUNHHH^HHHHHHHHl' 

" I don't know why I'm not," said Jinny 
looking more like a robin than ever. Her bright 
eyes dwelt on her sister. " After all, the same 
blood flows in my veins and in the same propor 
tion. Sure you're not laying too much stress on 
something only temporarily inconvenient? " 

" But it isn't temporarily inconvenient; it's 
happening to me every day. And it isn't as though 
it were something that I could help. Look how 
Mr. Shields stressed the fact that I hadn't told 
him I was coloured. And see how it changed 
his attitude toward me; you can't think how 
different his manner was. Yet as long as he 
didn't know, there was nothing he wasn't willing 
and glad, glad to do for me. Now he might be 
willing but he'll not be glad though I need his 
assistance more than some white girl who will 
find a dozen people to help her just because 
she is white." Some faint disapproval in 
her sister's face halted her for a moment. 
" What's the matter? You certainly don't think 
I ought to say first thing: ' I'm Angela 
Murray. I know I look white but I'm coloured 
and expect to be treated accordingly ! ' Now 
do you? " 

" No," said Jinny, " of course that's absurd. 
Only I don't think you ought to mind quite so 
hard when they do find out the facts. It seems 
sort of an insult to yourself. And then, too, it 
makes you lose a good chance to do something 
for for all of us who can't look like you but 
who really have the same combination of blood 
that you have." 

" Oh that's some more of your and Matthew 
Henson's philosophy. Now be practical, Jinny; 

79 



BUN-HHHHHHHHf*** 



after all I am both white and Negro and look 
white. Why shouldn't I declare for the one that 
will bring me the greatest happiness, prosperity 
and respect? " 

" No reason in the world except that since in 
this country public opinion is against any infusion 
of black blood it would seem an awfully decent 
thing to put yourself, even in the face of appear 
ances, on the side of black blood and say: " Look 
here, this is what a mixture of black and white 
really means ! " 

Angela was silent and Virginia, feeling suddenly 
very young, almost childish in the presence of 
this issue, took a turn about the room. She halted 
beside her sister. 

"Just what is it you want to do, Angela? 
Evidently you have some plan." 

She had. Her idea was to sell the house 
and to divide the proceeds. With her share 
of this and her half of the insurance she 
would go to New York or to Chicago, certainly 
to some place where she could by no chance 
be known, and launch out " into a freer, fuller 
life ". 

" And leave me ! " said Jinny astonished. Some 
how it had not dawned on her that the two would 
actually separate. She did not know what she 
had thought, but certainly not that. The tears 
ran down her cheeks. 

Angela, unable to endure either her own pain 
or the sight of it in others, had all of a man's 
dislike for tears. 

" Don't be absurd, Jinny ! How could I live 
the way I want to if you're with me. We'd keep 
on loving each other and seeing one another from 

80 



HHHHHHHHHH-PLUM 



time to time, but we might just as well face the 
facts. Some of those girls in the art school used 
to ask me to their homes; it would have meant 
opportunity, a broader outlook, but I never dared 
accept because I knew I couldn't return the 
invitation." 

Under that Jinny winced a little, but she spoke 
with spirit. " After that, Angela dear, I'm 
beginning to think that you have more white 
blood in your veins than I, and it was that extra 
amount which made it possible for you to make 
that remark." She trailed back to her room and 
when Hetty Daniels announced breakfast she 
found that a bad headache required a longer 
stay in bed. 



For many years the memory of those next few 
weeks lingered in Virginia's mind beside that 
other tragic memory of her mother's deliberate 
submission to death. But Angela was almost 
tremulous with happiness and anticipation. Al 
most as though by magic her affairs were arranging 
themselves. She was to have the three thousand 
dollars and Jinny was to be the sole possessor of 
the house. Junius had paid far less than this 
sum for it, but it had undoubtedly increased in 
value. " It's a fair enough investment for you, 
Miss Virginia," Mr. Hallowell remarked gruffly. 
He had disapproved heartily of this summary 
division, would have disapproved more thoroughly 
and openly if he had had any idea of the reasons 
behind it. But the girls had told no one, not 
even him, of their plans. " Some sisters' quarrel ? 



I suppose," he commented to his wife. " I've 
never seen any coloured people yet, relatives that 
is, who could stand the joint possession of a little 
money." 

A late Easter was casting its charm over the 
city when Angela trim, even elegant, in her con 
ventional tailored suit, stood in the dining-room 
of the little house waiting for her taxi. She had 
burned her bridges behind her, had resigned from 
school, severed her connection with the Academy, 
and had permitted an impression to spread that 
she was going West to visit indefinitely a distant 
cousin of her mother's. In reality she was going 
to New York. She had covered her tracks very 
well, she thought ; none of her friends was to see 
her off; indeed, none of them knew the exact 
hour of her departure. She was even leaving from 
the North Philadelphia station so that none of the 
porters of the main depot, friends perhaps of the 
boys who came to her house, and, through some 
far flung communal instinct familiar to coloured 
people, acquainted with her by sight, would be 
able to tell of her going. Jinny, until she heard of 
this, had meant to accompany her to the station, 
but Angela's precaution palpably scotched this 
idea; she made no comment when Virginia 
announced that it would be impossible for her to 
see her sister off. An indefinable steeliness was 
creeping upon them. 

Yet when the taxi stood rumbling and snorting 
outside, Angela, her heart suddenly mounting to 
her throat, her eyes smarting, put her arm tightly 
about her sister who clung to her frankly crying. 
But she only said: " Now, Jinny, there's nothing 
to cry about. You'll be coming to New York 

88 



BUN-HHH-HHHHHHf- 



soon. First thing I know you'll be walking up to 
me: 'Pardon me! Isn't this Mrs. Henrietta 
Jones? ' " 

Virginia tried to laugh, " And you'll be saying : 
( Really you have the advantage of me.' Oh, 
Angela, don't leave me ! " 

The cabby was honking impatiently. " I must, 
darling. Good-bye, Virginia. You'll hear from 
me right away." 

She ran down the steps, glanced happily back. 
But her sister had already closed the door. 



MARKET 



CHAPTER I 

FIFTH AVENUE is a canyon; its towering buildings 
dwarf the importance of the people hurrying 
through its narrow confines. But Fourteenth 
Street is a river, impersonally flowing, broad- 
bosomed, with strange and devious craft covering 
its expanse. To Angela the famous avenue seemed 
but one manifestation of living, but Fourteenth 
Street was the rendezvous of life itself. Here for 
those first few weeks after her arrival in New York 
she wandered, almost prowled, intent upon the 
jostling shops, the hurrying, pushing people, above 
all intent upon the faces of those people with their 
showings of grief, pride, gaiety, greed, joy, am 
bition, content. There was little enough of this 
last. These men and women were living at a 
sharper pitch of intensity than those she had ob 
served in Philadelphia. The few coloured people 
whom she saw were different too; they possessed 
an independence of carriage, a purposefulness, an 
assurance in their manner that pleased her. But 
she could not see that any of these people, black 
or white, were any happier than those whom she 
had observed all her life. 

But she was happier; she was living on the crest 
of a wave of excitement and satisfaction which 
would never wane, never break, never be spent. She 
was seeing the world, she was getting acquainted 

87 



HHHHHHh-HHHhPLUM BUNHHHMHMHHHHH^ 

with life in her own way without restrictions or 
restraint; she was young, she was temporarily 
independent, she was intelligent, she was white. 
She remembered an expression " free, white and 
twenty-one ", this was what it meant then, this 
sense of owning the world, this realization that 
other things being equal, all things were possible. 
" If I were a man," she said, " I could be presi 
dent ", and laughed at herself for the "if" itself 
proclaimed a limitation. But that inconsistency 
bothered her little; she did not want to be a 
man. Power, greatness, authority, these were 
fitting and proper for men ; but there were sweeter, 
more beautiful gifts for women, and power of a 
certain kind too. Such a power she would like to 
exert in this glittering new world, so full of mys 
teries and promise. If she could aiford it she 
would have a salon, a drawing-room where men 
and women, not necessarily great, but real, alive, 
free and untrammelled in manner and thought, 
should come and pour themselves out to her sym 
pathy and magnetism. To accomplish this she 
must have money and influence; indeed since she 
was so young she would need even protection; 
perhaps it would be better to marry ... a white 
man. The thought came to her suddenly out of 
the void; she had never thought of this possi 
bility before. If she were to do this, do it suitably, 
then all that richness, all that fullness of life which 
she so ardently craved would be doubly hers. She 
knew that men had a better time of it than women, 
coloured men than coloured women, white men 
than white women. Not that she envied them. 
Only it would be fun, great fun to capture power 
and protection in addition to the freedom and 

88 



BUNHHHHHHHMHMH' 



independence which she had so long coveted and 
which now lay in her hand. 

But, she smiled to herself, she had no way of 
approaching these ends. She knew no one in 
New York; she could conceive of no manner in 
which she was likely to form desirable acquaint 
ances; at present her home consisted of the four 
walls of the smallest room in Union Square Hotel 
She had gone there the second day after her 
arrival, having spent an expensive twenty-four 
hours at the Astor. Later she came to realize that 
there were infinitely cheaper habitations to be 
had, but she could not tear herself away from 
Fourteenth Street. It was Spring, and the Square 
was full of rusty specimens of mankind who sat on 
the benches, as did Angela herself, for hours at 
a stretch, as though they thought the invigorat 
ing air and the mellow sun would work some 
magical burgeoning on their garments such as 
was worked on the trees. But though these latter 
changed, the garments changed not nor did their 
owners. They remained the same, drooping, 
discouraged down and outers. " I am seeing 
life," thought Angela, " this is the way people 
live," and never realized that some of these people 
looking curiously, speculatively at her wondered 
what had been her portion to bring her thus early 
to this unsavoury company. 

"A great picture!" she thought. "I'll make 
a great picture of these people some day and call 
them * Fourteenth Street types '." And suddenly 
a vast sadness invaded her; she wondered if 
there were people more alive, more sentient to 
the jy> the adventure of living, even than she, 
to whom she would also be a " type ". But she 

89 



*HHHHhHHHHHhPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHMHHS* 

could not believe this. She was at once almost 
irreconcilably too concentrated and too objective. 
Her living during these days was so intense, so 
almost solidified, as though her desire to live as 
she did and she herself were so one and the same 
thing that it would have been practically im 
possible for another onlooker like herself to insert 
the point of his discrimination into her firm 
panoply of satisfaction. So she continued to 
browse along her chosen thoroughfare, stopping 
most often in the Square or before a piano 
store on the same street. There was in this shop 
a player-piano which was usually in action, and 
as the front glass had been removed the increased 
clearness of the strains brought a steady, patient, 
apparently insatiable group of listeners to a stand 
still. They were mostly men, and as they were 
far less given, Angela observed, to concealing their 
feelings than women, it was easy to follow 
their emotional gamut. Jazz made them smile 
but with a certain wistfulness if only they had 
time for dancing now, just now when the mood 
was on them ! The young woman looking at the 
gathering of shabby pedestrians, worn business 
men and ruminative errand boys felt for them a 
pity not untinged with satisfaction. She had taken 
what she wanted while the mood was on her. 
Love songs, particularly those of the sorrowful 
ballad variety brought to these unmindful faces 
a strained regret. But there was one expression 
which Angela could only half interpret. It drifted 
on to those listening countenances usually at 
the playing of old Irish and Scottish tunes. She 
noticed then an acuter attitude of attention, the 
eyes took on a look of inwardness of utter remote- 

90 



HHHHHHHHHHHPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHM^ 

ness. A passer-by engrossed in thought caught 
a strain and at once his gait and expression fell 
under the spell. The listeners might be as varied 
as fifteen people may be, yet for the moment they 
would be caught in a common, almost cosmic 
nostalgia. If the next piece were jazz that 
particular crowd would disperse, its members 
going on their meditative ways, blessed or cursed 
with heaven knew what memories which must 
not be disturbed by the strident jangling of the 
latest popular song. 

" Homesick," Angela used to say to herself. 
And she would feel so, too, though she hardly 
knew for what, certainly not for Philadelphia 
and that other life which now seemed so 
removed as to have been impossible. And 
she made notes in her sketch book to enable 
her some day to make a great picture of these 
" types " too. 



Of course she was being unconscionably idle; 
but as her days were filled to overflowing with 
the impact of new impressions, this signified 
nothing. She could not guess what life would 
bring her. For the moment it seemed to her both 
wise and amusing to sit with idle hands and see 
what would happen. By a not inexplicable turn 
of mind she took to going very frequently to the 
cinema where most things did happen. She 
found herself studying the screen with a strained 
and ardent intensity, losing the slight patronizing 
scepticism which had once been hers with regard 
to the adventures of these shadowy heroes and 

9' 



**HHHHHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHHHHMHHHS*** 

heroines; so utterly unforeseen a turn had her own 
experiences taken. This time last year she had 
never dreamed of, had^hardly dared to long for 
a life as free and as full as hers was now and^was 
promising to be. Yet here she was on the thresh- 
hold of a career totally different from anything 
that a scenario writer could envisage. Oh yes, 
she knew that hundreds, indeed thousands of 
white coloured people " went over to the other 
side ", but that was just the point, she knew the 
fact without knowing hitherto any of the possi 
bilities of the adventure. Already Philadelphia 
and her trials were receding into the distance. 
Would these people, she wondered, glancing 
about her in the soft gloom of the beautiful theatre, 
begrudge her, if they knew, her cherished freedom 
and sense of unrestraint? If she were to say to 
this next woman for instance, "I'm coloured," 
would she show the occasional dog-in-the-manger 
attitude of certain white Americans and refuse to sit 
by her or make a complaint to the usher? But 
she had no intention of making such an announce 
ment. So she spent many happy, irresponsible, 
amused hours in the marvellous houses on Broad 
way or in the dark commonplaceness of her 
beloved Fourteenth Street. There was a theatre, 
too, on Seventh Avenue just at the edge of the 
Village, which she came to frequent, not so much 
for the sake of the plays, which were the same as 
elsewhere, as for the sake of the audience, a 
curiously intimate sort of audience made of 
numerous still more intimate groups. Their 
members seemed both purposeful and leisurely, 
When she came here her loneliness palled on 
her, however. All unaware her lace took 

92 



on the wistfulness of the men gazing in the 
music store. She wished she knew some of these 
pleasant people. 



It came to her that she was neglecting her Art. 
" And it was for that that I broke away from every 
thing and came to New York. I must hunt up 
some classes." This she felt was not quite true, 
then the real cause rushed up to the surface 
of her mind : " And perhaps I'll meet some 
people.'* 

She enrolled in one of the art classes in Cooper 
Union. This, after all, she felt would be the real 
beginning of her adventure. For here she must 
make acquaintances and one of them, perhaps 
several, must produce some effect on her life, per 
haps alter its whole tenor. And for the first time 
she would be seen, would be met against her 
new background or rather, against no background. 
No boyish stowaway on a ship had a greater 
exuberance in going forth to meet the unknown than 
had Angela as she entered her class that first after 
noon. In the room were five people, working 
steadily and chatting in an extremely desultory 
way. The instructor, one of the five, motioned 
her to a seat whose position made her one of the 
group. He set up her easel and as she arranged her 
material she glanced shyly but keenly about her. 
For the first time she realized how lonely she had 
been. She thought with a joy which surprised her 
self: " Within a week I'll be chatting with them 
too; perhaps going to lunch or to tea with one of 
them," She arranged herself for a better view, 

93 



HH~HHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf- 

The young woman nearest her, the possessor of a 
great mop of tawny hair and smiling clear, slate- 
grey eyes glanced up at her and nodded, " Am I 
in your way? " Except for her hair and eyes she 
was nondescript. A little beyond sat a coloured 
girl of medium height and build, very dark, very 
clean, very reserved. Angela, studying her with 
inner secret knowledge, could feel her constantly 
withdrawn from her companions. Her refinement 
was conspicuous but her reserve more so; when 
asked she passed and received erasers and other 
articles but she herself did no borrowing nor did 
she initiate any conversation. Her squarish head 
capped with a mass of unnaturally straight and 
unnaturally burnished hair possessed a kind of 
ugly beauty. Angela could not tell whether her 
features were good but blurred and blunted by 
the soft night of her skin or really ugly with an 
ugliness lost and plunged in that skin's deep con 
cealment. Two students were still slightly behind 
her. She wondered how she could best contrive 
to see them. 

Someone said: "Hi, there! Miss New One, 
havejyow got a decent eraser? all mine are on the 
blink." Not so sure whether or not the term 
applied to herself she turned to meet the singularly 
intent gaze of a slender girl with blue eyes, light 
chestnut hair and cheeks fairly blazing with some 
unguessed excitement. Angela smiled and offered 
her eraser. 

" It ought to be decent, it's new." 

c Yes, it's a very good one; many thanks. I'll 
try not to trouble you again. My name's Paulette 
Lister, what's yours? " 

" Angele Mory." She had changed it thus 

94 



*H"HHHHHHHHhPLUM 



slightly when she came to New York. Some 
troubling sense of loyalty to her father and mother 
had made it impossible for her to do away with it 
altogether. 

" Mory," said a young man who had been 
working just beyond Paulette; " that's Spanish. 
Are you by any chance? " 

" I don't think so." 

" He is," said Paulette. " His name is 
Anthony Cruz isn't that a lovely name? But 
he changed it to Cross because no American would 
ever pronounce the z right, and he didn't want to 
be taken for a widow's cruse." 

" That's a shameful joke," said Cross, " but since 
I made it up, I think you might give me a chance 
to spring it, Miss Lister. A poor thing but mine 
own. You might have a heart." 

" Get even with her, why don't you, by intro 
ducing her as Miss Blister? " asked Angela, highly 
diverted by the foolish talk. 

Several people came in then, and she discovered 
that she had been half an hour too early, the class 
was just beginning. She glanced about at the 
newcomers, a beautiful Jewess with a pearly skin 
and a head positively foaming with curls, a tall 
Scandinavian, an obvious German, several more 
Americans. Not one of them made the photograph 
on her mind equal to those made by the coloured 
girl whose name, she learned, was Rachel Powell, 
the slate-eyed Martha Burden, Paulette Lister and 
Anthony Cross. Her prediction came true. With 
in a week she was on jestingly intimate terms with 
every one of them except Miss Powell, who lent 
her belongings, borrowed nothing, and spoke only 
when she was spoken to. At the end of ten days 

95 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



Miss Burden asked Angela to come and have lunch 
" at the same place where I go ". 



On an exquisite afternoon she went to Harlem. 
At One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street she left 
the 'bus and walked through from Seventh Avenue 
to Lenox, then up to One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh Street and back down Seventh Avenue to 
One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Street, through 
this to Eighth Avenue and then weaving back and 
forth between the two Avenues through Thirty- 
eighth, Thirty-seventh down to One Hundred and 
Thirty-fifth Street to Eighth Avenue where she took 
the Elevated and went back to the New York 
which she knew. 

But she was amazed and impressed at this bust 
ling, frolicking, busy, laughing great city within 
a greater one. She had never seen coloured life 
so thick, so varied, so complete. Moreover, just as 
this city reproduced in microcosm all the important 
features of any metropolis, so undoubtedly life up 
here was just the same, she thought dimly, as life 
anywhere else. Not all these people, she realized, 
glancing keenly at the throngs of black and brown, 
yellow and white faces about her were servants 
or underlings or end men. She saw a beautiful 
woman all brown and red dressed as exquisitely 
as anyone she had seen on Fifth Avenue. A man's 
sharp, high-bred face etched itself on her memory, 
the face of a professional man perhaps, it 
might be an artist. She doubted that; he might of 
course be a musician, but it was unlikely that he 
would be her kind of an artist, for how could he 

96 



HHHHh* * * '>*HIPLUM BUNHH^HHHHHHHHf** 

exist? Ah, there lay the great difference. In 
all material, even in all practical things these two 
worlds were alike, but in the production, the foster 
ing of those ultimate manifestations, this world 
was lacking, for its people were without the means 
or the leisure to support them and enjoy. And 
these were the manifestations which she craved, 
together with the freedom to enjoy them. No, she 
was not sorry that she had chosen as she had, even 
though she could now realize that life viewed from 
the angle of Opal and Jefferson Streets in Phila 
delphia and that same life viewed from One 
Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street and Seventh 
Avenue in New York might present bewilderingly 
different facets. 

Unquestionably there was something very fascin 
ating, even terrible, about this stream of life, it 
seemed to her to run thicker, more turgidly than 
that safe, sublimated existence in which her new 
friends had their being. It was deeper, more 
mightily moving even than the torrent of Four 
teenth Street. Undoubtedly just as these people, 
for she already saw them objectively, doubly so, 
once with her natural remoteness and once with 
the remoteness of her new estate, just as these 
people could suffer more than others, just so they 
could enjoy themselves more. She watched the 
moiling groups on Lenox Avenue; the amazingly 
well-dressed and good-looking throngs of young 
men on Seventh Avenue at One Hundred and 
Thirty-seventh and Thirty-fifth Streets. They 
were gossiping, laughing, dickering, chaffing, com 
bining the customs of the small town with the 
astonishing cosmopolitanism of their clothes and 
manners. Nowhere down town did she see life 

G 97 



-HHHh-iHHh**HH-PLUM BUN-fr********** 

like this. Oh, all this was fuller, richer, not finer 
but richer with the difference in quality that there 
is between velvet and silk. Harlem was a great 
city, but after all it was a city within a city, and 
she was glad, as she strained for last glimpses out 
of the lurching " L " train, that she had cast in 
her lot with the dwellers outside its dark and 
serried tents. 



CHAPTER II 

" WHERE do you live? " asked Paulette, " when 
you're not here at school? " 

Angela blushed as she told her. 

" In a hotel? In Union Square? Child, are 
you a millionaire? Where did you come from? 
Don't you care anything about the delights of 
home? Mr. Cross, come closer. Here is this 
poor child living benightedly in a hotel when she 
might have two rooms at least in the Village for 
almost the same price." 

Mr. Cross came closer but without saying any 
thing. He was really, Angela thought, a very 
serious, almost sad young man. He had never 
continued long the bantering line with which he 
had first made her acquaintance. 

She explained that she had not known where 
to go. " Often I've thought of moving, and of 
course I'm spending too much money for what 
I get out of it, I've the littlest room." 

Paulette opened her eyes very wide which gave 
an onlooker the e fleet of seeing suddenly the blue 
sky very close at hand. Her cheeks took on a 
flaming tint. She was really a beautiful, even 
fascinating girl or woman, Angela never learned 
which, for she never knew her age. But her fascina 
tion did not rest on her looks, or at least it did not 
arise from that source; it was more the result of 

99 



her manner. She was so alive, so intense, so inter 
ested, if she were interested, that all her nerves, 
her emotions even were enlisted to accomplish the 
end which she might have in view. And withal 
she possessed the simplicity of a child. There was 
an unsuspected strength about her also that was 
oddly at variance with the rather striking fragility 
of her appearance, the trustingness of her gaze, 
the limpid unaflectedness of her manner. Mr. 
Gross, Angela thought negligently, must be in love 
with her; he was usually at her side when they 
sketched. But later she came to see that there was 
nothing at all between these two except a certain 
friendly appreciation tempered by a wary kind 
ness on the part of Mr. Gross and a negligent 
generosity on the part of Paulette. 

She displayed no negligence of generosity in her 
desire and eagerness to find Angela a suitable 
apartment. She did hold out, however, with 
amazing frankness for one " not too near me 
but also not too far away ". But this pleased 
the girl, for she had been afraid that Paulette 
would insist on offering to share her own apart 
ment and she would not have known how to 
refuse. She had the complete egoist's desire for 
solitude. 

Paulette lived on Bank Street; she found for 
her new friend " a duck, just a duck, no other 
word will describe it, of an apartment " on 
Jayne Street, two rooms, bath and kitchenette. 
There was also a tiny balcony giving on a 
mews. It was more than Angela should have 
afforded, but the ease with which her affairs 
were working out gave her an assurance, almost 
an arrogance of confidence. Besides she planned 

100 



to save by getting her own meals. The place 
was already furnished, its former occupant was 
preparing to go to London for two or more 
years. 

" Two years," Angela said gaily, " everything 
in the world can happen to me in that time. 
Oh I wonder what will have happened; what 
I will be like ! " And she prepared to move in her 
slender store of possessions. Anthony, prompted, 
she suspected by Paulette, offered rather shyly 
to help her. It was a rainy day, there were 
several boxes after all, and taxis were scarce, 
though finally he captured one for her and came 
riding back in triumph with the driver. After 
wards a few books had to be arranged, pictures 
must be hung. She had an inspiration. 

" You tend to all this and I'll get you the best 
dinner you ever tasted in your life." Memories 
of Monday night dinners on Opal Street flooded 
her memory. She served homely, filling dishes, 
" fit for a drayman," she teased him. There were 
corn-beef hash, roasted sweet potatoes, corn 
pudding, and, regardless of the hour, muffins. 
After supper she refused to let him help her with 
the dishes but had him rest in the big chair 
in the living-room while she laughed and talked 
with him from the kitchenette at a distance 
of two yards. Gradually, as he sat there 
smoking, the sadness and strain faded out of 
his thin, dark face, he laughed and jested like 
any other normal young man. When he bade 
her good-bye he let his slow dark gaze rest in 
hers for a long silent moment. She closed the 
door and stood laughing, arranging her hair 
before the mirror. 

101 



BUNHHHHHHHHHH^ 



" Of course he's loads better looking, but some 
thing about him makes me think of Matthew 
Henson. But nothing doing, young-fellow-me-lad. 
Spanish and I suppose terribly proud. I wonder 
what he'd say if he really knew? " 



She was to go to Paulette's to dinner. "Just 
we two," stipulated Miss Lister. " Of course, 
I could have a gang of men, but I think it will 
be fun for us to get acquainted." Angela was 
pleased; she was very fond of Paulette, she liked 
her for her generous, capable self. And she was 
not quite ready for meeting men. She must know 
something more about these people with whom 
she was spending her life. Anthony Cross had been 
affable enough, but she was not sure that he, with 
his curious sadness, his half-proud, half-sensitive 
tendency to withdrawal, were a fair enough type. 
However, in spite of Paulette's protestations, there 
were three young men standing in her large, 
dark living-room when Angela arrived. 

" But you've got to go at once," said Paulette, 
laughing but firm; " here is my friend, isn't 
she beautiful? We've too many things to discuss 
without being bothered by you." 

" Paulette has these fits of cruelty," said one 
of the three, a short, stocky fellow with an ugly, 
sensitive face. " She'd have made a good Nero. 
But anyway I'm glad I stayed long enough to see 
you. Don't let her hide you from us altogether." 
Another man made a civil remark; the third one 
standing back in the gloomy room said nothing, 
but the girl caught the impression of tallness 

102 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHS' 



and blondness and of a pair of blue eyes which 
stared at her intently. She felt awkward and 
showed it. 

" See, you've made her shy," said Paulette 
accusingly. " I won't bother introducing them, 
Angele, you'll meet them all too soon." Laugh 
ing, protesting, the men filed out, and their un 
willing hostess closed the door on them with 
sincere lack of regret. " Men," she mused can 
didly. " Of course we can't get along without 
them any more than they can without us, but I get 
tired of them, they're nearly all animals. I'd 
rather have a good woman friend any day." 
She sighed with genuine sincerity. " Yet my 
place is always full of men. Would you rather 
have your chops rare or well done? I like mine 
cooked to a cinder." Angela preferred hers well 
done. " Stay here and look around; see if I 
have anything to amuse you." Catching up an 
apron she vanished into some smaller and darker 
retreat which she called her kitchen. 

The apartment consisted of the whole floor 
of a house on Bank Street, dark and constantly 
within the sound of the opening front door and 
the noises of the street. " But you don't have 
the damned stairs when you come in late at 
night," Paulette explained. The front room was, 
Angela supposed, the bedroom, though the only 
reason for this supposition was the appearance 
of a dressing-table and a wide, flat divan about 
one foot and a half from the floor, covered with 
black or purple velvet. The dressing table was 
a good piece of mahogany, but the chairs were 
indifferently of the kitchen variety and of the sort 
which, magazines affirm, may be made out of 

103 



BUNHHHHMHHHHMS'* 



a large packing box. In the living room, where 
the little table was set, the same anomaly pre 
vailed; the china was fine, even dainty, but the 
glasses were thick and the plating had begun to 
wear off the silver ware. On the other hand the 
pictures were unusual, none of the stereotyped 
things; instead Angela remarked a good copy 
of Breughel's " Peasant Wedding ", the head of 
Bernini and two etchings whose authors she did 
not know. The bookcase held two paper bound 
volumes of the poems of Beranger and Villon and 
a little black worn copy of Heine. But the other 
books were high-brow to the point of austerity: 
Ely, Shaw and Strindberg. 

" Perhaps you'd like to wash your hands? " 
called Paulette. " There's a bathroom down the 
corridor there, you can't miss it. You may have 
some of my favourite lotion if you want it up 
there on the shelf." Angela washed her hands 
and looked up for the lotion. Her eyes opened 
wide in amazement. Beside the bottle stood a 
man's shaving mug and brush and a case of razors. 

The meal, " for you can't call it a dinner," the 
cook remarked candidly, was a success. The 
chops were tender though smoky; there were 
spinach, potatoes, tomato and lettuce salad, rolls, 
coffee and cheese. Its rugged quality surprised 
Angela not a little; it was more a meal for a work 
ing man than for a woman, above all, a woman 
of the faery quality of Paulette. " I get so 
tired," she said, lifting a huge mouthful, " if I 
don't eat heartily; besides it ruins my temper to go 
hungry." Her whole attitude toward the meal 
was so masculine and her appearance so daintily 

104 



feminine that Angela burst out laughing, ex 
plaining with much amusement the cause of 
her merriment. " I hope you don't mind," 
she ended, " for of course you are conspicuously 
feminine. There's nothing of the man about 
you." 

To her surprise Paulette resented this last 
statement. " There is a great deal of the man 
about me. I've learned that a woman is a 
fool who lets her femininity stand in the way 
of what she wants. I've made a philosophy of 
it. I see what I want; I use my wiles as a 
woman to get it, and I employ the qualities of 
men, tenacity and ruthlessness, to keep it. And 
when I'm through with it, I throw it away 
just as they do. Consequently I have no regrets 
and no encumbrances." 

A packet of cigarettes lay open on the table and 
she motioned to her friend to have one. Angela 
refused, and sat watching her inhale in deep 
respirations; she had never seen a woman more 
completely at ease, more assuredly mistress of 
herself and of her fate. When they had begun 
eating Paulette had poured out two cocktails, 
tossing hers off immediately and finishing Angela's, 
too, when the latter, finding it too much like 
machine oil for her taste, had set it down scarcely 
diminished. " You'll get used to them if you go 
about with these men. You'll be drinking along 
with the rest of us." 

She had practically no curiosity and on the other 
hand no reticences. And she had met with every 
conceivable experience, had visited France, Ger 
many and Sweden; she was now contemplating a 
trip to Italy and might go to Russia; she would 

105 



go now, in fact, if it were not that a friend of 
hers, Jack Hudson, was about to go there, too, 
and as she was on the verge of having an affair 
with him she thought she'd better wait. She 
didn't relish the prospect of such an event in a 
foreign land, it put you too much at the man's 
mercy. An affair, if you were going to have 
one, was much better conducted on your own 
pied a terre. 

" An affair? " gasped Angela. 

" Yes, why, haven't you ever had a lover? " 

" A lover? " 

" Goodness me, are you a poll parrot? Why 
yes, a lover. I've had " she hesitated before the 
other's complete amazement, " I've had more 
than one, I can tell you." 

" And you've no intention of marrying? " 

" Oh I don't say that; but what's the use of 
tying yourself up now while you're young? And 
then, too, this way you don't always have them 
around your feet; you can always leave them or 
they'll leave you. But it's better for you to leave 
them first. It insures your pride." With her 
babyish face and her sweet, high voice she was like 
a child babbling precociously. Yet she seemed 
bathed in intensity. But later she began to talk 
of her books and of her pictures, of her work and 
on all these subjects she spoke with the same sub 
dued excitement; her eye\ flashed, her cheeks 
grew scarlet, all experience meant life to her in 
various manifestations. She had been on a news 
paper, one of the New York dailies; she had done 
press-agenting. At present she was illustrating 
for a fashion magazine. There was no end to 
her versatilities. 

106 



BUN^HHHHHHHf^HHi* 

Angela said she must go. 

" But you'll come again soon, won't you, 
Angele? " 

A wistfulness crept into her voice. "I do so 
want a woman friend. When a woman really is 
your friend she's so dependable and she's not 
expecting anything in return." She saw her guest 
to the door. " We could have some wonderful 
times. Good-night, Angele." Like a child she 
lifted her face to be kissed. 

Angela's first thought as she walked down the 
dark street was for the unfamiliar name by which 
Paulette had called her. For though she had 
signed herself very often as Angele, no one as yet 
used it. Her old familiar formula came to her: 
" I wonder what she would think if she knew." 
But of one thing she was sure : if Paulette had been 
in her place she would have acted in exactly the 
same way. " She would have seen what she 
wanted and would have taken it," she murmured 
and fell to thinking of the various confidences 
which Paulette had bestowed upon her, though 
so frank and unreserved were her remarks that 
" confidences " was hardly the name to apply to 
them. Certainly, Angela thought, she was in a 
new world and with new people. Beyond question 
some of the coloured people of her acquaintance 
must have lived in a manner which would not 
bear inspection, but she could not think of one 
who would thus have discussed it calmly with 
either friend or stranger. Wondering what it 
would be like to conduct oneself absolutely accord 
ing to one's own laws, she turned into the dark 
little vestibule on Jayne Street. As usual the Jewish 
girl who lived above her was standing blurred in the 

107 



thick blackness of the hall, and as usual Angela 
did not realize this until, touching the button and 
turning on the light, she caught sight of Miss Salting 
straining her face upwards to receive her lover's 
kiss. 



108 



CHAPTER III 

FROM the pinnacle of her satisfaction in her studies, 
in her new friends and in the joke which she was 
having upon custom and tradition she looked 
across the class-room at Miss Powell who pre 
served her attitude of dignified reserve. Angela 
thought she would try to break it down; on Wed 
nesday she asked the coloured girl to have lunch 
with her and was pleased to have the invitation 
accepted. She had no intention of taking the 
girl up as a matter either of patronage or of loyalty. 
But she thought it would be nice to offer her the 
ordinary amenities which their common student 
life made natural and possible. Miss Powell it 
appeared ate generally in an Automat or in a 
cafeteria, but Angela knew of a nice tea-room. 
"It's rather arty, but they do serve a good meal 
and it's cheap." Unfortunately on Wednesday 
she had to leave before noon; she told Miss 
Powell to meet her at the little restaurant. " Go 
in and get a table and wait for me, but I'm sure 
I'll be there as soon as you will." After all she 
was late, but, what was worse, she found to 
her dismay that Miss Powell, instead of entering 
the tea-room, had been awaiting her across the 
street. There were no tables and the two had 
to wait almost fifteen minutes before being 
served, 



!'}'$-}* -3 4-8 *"MPLUM BUNS- 



"Why cm earth didn't you go in?" asked 
Angela a trifle impatiently, "you could have 
held the table." Miss Powell answered imper- 
turbably: "Because I didn't know how they 
would receive me if I went in by myself." Angela 
could not pretend to misunderstand her. " Oh, 
I think they would have been all right," she 
murmured, blushing at her stupidity. How 
quickly she had forgotten those fears and uncer 
tainties. She had never experienced this sort of 
difficulty herselfj but she certainly knew of them 
from Virginia and others. 

The lunch was not a particularly pleasant one. 
Either Miss Powell was actually dull or she had 
made a resolve never to let herself go in the 
presence of white people; perhaps she feared 
being misunderstood, perhaps she saw in such 
encounters a lurking attempt at sociological in 
vestigations; she would lend herself to no such 
procedure, that much was plain. Angela could feel 
her effort to charm, to invite confidence, glance 
upon and fall back from this impenetrable armour. 
She had been amazed to find both Paulette and 
Martha Burden already gaining their living by their 
sketches. Miss Burden indeed was a caricaturist 
of no mean local reputation; Anthony Cross was 
frankly a commercial artist, though he hoped 
some day to be a recognised painter of portraits. 
She was curious to learn of Miss Powell's pros 
pects. Inquiry revealed that the young lady had 
one secret aspiration; to win or earn enough 
money to go to France and then after that, she 
said with sudden ardour, " anything could 
happen ". To this end she had worked, saved, 
scraped, gone without pleasures and clothes. Her 

no 



> *} -Ml '3 -3 ?** PLUM BUNHK***HHHHHH 

work was creditable, indeed above the average, 
but not sufficiently imbued, Angela thought, with 
the divine promise to warrant this sublimation of 
normal desires. 

Miss Powell seemed to read her thought. " And 
then it gives me a chance to show America that 
one of us can stick ; that we have some idea above 
the ordinary humdrum of existence." 

She made no attempt to return the luncheon 
but she sent Angela one day a bunch of beautiful 
jonquils, and made no further attempt at friend 
ship. To one versed in the psychology of this 
proud, sensitive people the reason was perfectly 
plain. " You've been awfully nice to me and I 
appreciate it but don't think Pm going to thrust 
myself upon you. Your ways and mine lie along 
different paths." 



Such contacts, such interpretations and inves 
tigations were making up her life, a life that for 
her was interesting and absorbing, but which had 
its perils and uncertainties. She had no purpose, 
for it was absurd for her, even with her ability, to 
consider Art an end. She was using it now deliber 
ately, as she had always used it vaguely, to get in 
touch with interesting people and with a more 
attractive atmosphere. And she was spending 
money too fast; she had been in New York eight 
months, and she had already spent a thousand 
dollars. At this rate her little fortune which had 
seemed at first inexhaustible would last her less 
than two years; at best, eighteen months more. 
Then she must face, what? Teaching again? 

in 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



Never, she'd had enough of that. Perhaps she 
could earn her living with her brush, doing menu 
cards, Christmas and birthday greetings, flowers, 
Pierrots and Pierrettes on satin pillow tops. She 
did not relish that. True there were the specialities 
of Paulette and of Martha Burden, but she lacked 
the deft sureness of the one and the slightly mordant 
philosophy underlying the work of the other. Her 
own speciality she felt sure lay along the line of 
reproducing, of interpreting on a face the emotion 
which lay back of that expression. She thought 
of her Fourteenth Street " types ", that would 
be the sort of work which she would really 
enjoy, that and the depicting of the countenance 
of a purse-proud but lonely man, of the silken 
inanity of a society girl, of the smiling despair 
of a harlot. Even in her own mind she hesi 
tated before the use of that terrible word, but 
association was teaching her to call a spade a 
spade. 

Yes, she might do worse than follow the example 
of Mr. Cross and become a portrait painter. But 
somehow she did not want to have to do this; 
necessity would, she was sure, spoil her touch; 
besides, she hated the idea of the position in which 
she would be placed, fearfully placating and flatter 
ing possible patrons, hurrying through with an 
order because she needed the cheque, accepting 
patronage and condescension. No, she hoped to 
be sought after, to have the circumstances which 
would permit her to pick and choose, to refuse if 
the whim pleased her. It should mean something 
to be painted by " Mory ". People would say, 
"I'm going to have my portrait done by ' Mory ' ". 
But all this would call for position, power, wealth, 



BUNHHHHHHHHHH-f 



And again she said to herself . . . " I might 
marry a white man. Marriage is the easiest 
way for a woman to get those things, and white 
men have them." But she knew only one white 
man, Anthony Gross, and he would never have 
those qualities, at least not by his deliberate 
seeking. They might come eventually but only 
after long years. Long, long years of struggle 
with realities. There was a simple, genuine stead 
fastness in him that made her realize that he would 
seek for the expression of truth and of himself even 
at the cost of the trimmings of life. And she was 
ashamed, for she knew that for the vanities and 
gewgaws of a leisurely and irresponsible existence 
she would sacrifice her own talent, the integrity of 
her ability to interpret life, to write down a history 
with her brush. 



Martha Burden was as strong and as pronounced 
a personage as Paulette; even stronger perhaps 
because she had the great gift of silence. Paulette, 
as Angela soon realized, lived in a state of con 
stant defiance. " I don't care what people think," 
was her slogan; men and women appealed to her 
in proportion to the opposition which they, too, 
proclaimed for the established thing. Angela was 
surprised that she clung as persistently as she did 
to a friendship with a person as conventional and 
reactionary as herself. But Martha Burden was 
not like that. One could not tell whether or not 
she was thinking about other people's opinions. 
It was probable that the other people and their 
attitude never entered her mind. She was cool 

H 113 



and slightly aloof, with the coolness and aloofness 
of her slaty eyes and her thick, tawny hair. Neither 
the slatiness nor the tawniness proclaimed warmth 
only depth, depth and again depth. It was 
impossible to realize what she would be like if im 
passioned or deeply stirred to anger. There would 
probably be something implacable, god-like about 
her; she would be capable of a long, slow, steady 
burning of passion. Few men would love Martha 
though many might admire her. But a man once 
enchanted might easily die for her. 

Angela liked her house with its simple elegance, 
its fine, soft curtains and steady, shaded glow of 
light that stood somehow for home. She liked her 
husband, Ladislas Starr, whom Martha produced 
without a shade of consciousness that this was the 
first intimation she had given of being married. 
They were strong individualists, molten and 
blended in a design which failed to obscure their 
emphatic personalities. Their apartment in the 
Village was large and neat and sunny; it bore no 
trace of palpable wealth, yet nothing conducing 
to comfort was lacking. Book-cases in the dining- 
room and living-room spilled over; the Nation, the 
Mercury, the Crisis, a magazine of the darker races, 
left on the broad arm of an easy chair, mutely 
invited; it was late autumn, almost winter, but 
there were jars of fresh flowers. The bedroom 
where Angela went to remove her wrap was dainty 
and restful. 

The little gathering to which Martha had in 
vited her was made up of members as strongly 
individual as the host and hostess. They were all 
specialists in their way, and specialists for the most 
part in some offshoot of a calling or movement 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHMHH^ 

which was itself already highly specialized. Martha 
presented a psychiatrist, a war correspondent, 
" I'm that only when there is a war of course," he 
explained to Angela's openly respectful gaze, 
a dramatist, a corporation lawyer, a white-faced, 
conspicuously beautiful poet with a long evasive 
Russian name, two press agents, a theatrical 
manager, an actress who played only Shakespeare 
roles, a teacher of defective children and a medical 
student who had been a conscientious objector and 
had served a long time at Leavenworth. He lapsed 
constantly into a rapt self-communing from whch 
he only roused himself to utter fiery tirades against 
the evils of society. 

In spite of their highly specialised interests 
they were all possessed of a common ground of 
knowledge in which such subjects as Russia, 
Consumers' Leagues, and the coming presidential 
election figured most largely. There was much 
laughter and chaffing but no airiness, no per 
siflage. One of the press agents, Mrs. Cecil, 
entered upon a long discussion with the corpora 
tion lawyer on a Bill pending before Congress; 
she knew as much as he about the matter and 
held her own in a long and almost bitter argu 
ment which only the coming of refreshments 
broke up. 

Just before the close of the argument two other 
young men had come in, but Angela never learned 
their vocation. Furthermore she was interested 
in observing the young teacher of defective children. 
She was coloured; small and well-built, exquisitely 
dressed, and of a beautiful tint, all bronze and soft 
red, " like Jinny " thought Angela, a little aston 
ished to observe how the warmth of her appearance 



^HHHHHHHHhPLUM 



overshadowed or rather overshone everyone else 
in the room. The tawniness even of Miss Burden's 
hair went dead beside her. The only thing to 
cope with her richness was the classical beauty of 
the Russian poet's features. He seemed unable 
to keep his eyes away from her; was punctiliously 
attentive to her wants and leaned forward several 
times during the long political discussion to whisper 
low spoken and apparently amusing comments. 
The young woman, perfectly at ease in her deep 
chair, received his attentions with a slightly 
detached, amused objectivity; an objectivity which 
she had for everyone in the room including Angela 
at whom she had glanced once rather sharply. 
But the detachment of her manner was totally 
different from Miss Powell's sensitive dignity. 
Totally without self-consciousness she let her warm 
dark eyes travel from one face to another. She 
might have been saying: " How far you are away 
from the things that really matter, birth and death 
and hard, hard work ! " The Russian poet must 
have realized this, for once Angela heard him say, 
leaning forward, " Tou think all this is futile, don't 
you? " 



Martha motioned for her to wait a moment until 
most of the other guests had gone, then she came 
forward with one of the two young men who had 
come in without introduction. " This is Roger 
Fielding, he'll see you home." 

He was tall and blond with deeply blue eyes 
which smiled on her as he said: " Would you like 
to walk or ride? It's raining a little." 

Angela said she preferred to walk. 
116 



" All right then. Here, Starr, come across with 
that umbrella I lent you." 

They went out into the thin, tingling rain of 
late Autumn. " I was surprised," said Roger, 
" to see you there with the high-brows. I didn't 
think you looked that way when I met you at 
Paulette's." 

" We've met before? I'm I'm sorry, but I 
don't seem to remember you." 

" No I don't suppose you would. Well, we 
didn't exactly meet; I saw you one day at Paul 
ette's. That's why I came this evening, because 
I heard you'd be here and I'd get a chance to 
see you again; but I was surprised because you 
didn't seem like that mouthy bunch. They 
make me tired taking life so plaguey seriously. 
Martha and her old high-brows ! " he ended 
ungratefully. 

Angela, a little taken back with the frankness of 
his desire to meet her, said she hadn't thought 
they were serious. 

"Not think them serious? Great Scott! what 
kind of talk are you used to? You look as though 
you'd just come out of a Sunday-school ! Do you 
prefer bible texts? " 

But she could not explain to him the picture 
which she saw in her mind of men and women 
at her father's home in Opal Street, the men 
talking painfully of rents, of lynchings, of building 
and loan associations; the women of child-bearing 
and the sacrifices which must be made to put 
Gertie through school, to educate Howard. " I 
don't mean for any of my children to go through 
what I did." And in later years in her own first 
maturity, young Henson and Sawyer and the 

117 



BUNHMMHHHHHHHf-* 



others in the tiny parlour talking of ideals and in 
evitable sacrifices for the race; the burnt-offering 
of individualism for some dimly glimpsed racial 
whole. This was seriousness, even sombreness, 
with a great sickening vital upthrust of reality. But 
these other topics, peaks of civilization superimposed 
upon peaks, she found, even though interesting, 
utterly futile. 

They had reached the little hall now. " We 
must talk loud," she whispered. 

" Why? " he asked, speaking obediently very 
loud indeed. 

" Wait a minute; no, she's not there. The girl 
above me meets her young man here at night and 
just as sure as I forget her and come in quietly 
there they are in the midst of a kiss. I suspect 
she hates me." 

In his young male sophistication he thought at 
first that this was a lead, but her air was so gay 
and so childishly guileless that he changed his 
opinion. " Though no girl in this day and time 
could be as simple and innocent as she looks." 

But aloud he said, " Of course she doesn't 
hate you, nobody could do that. I assure you 
I don't." 

She thought his gallantries very amusing. " Well, 
it relieves me to hear you say so; that'll keep 
me from worrying for one night at least." And 
withdrawing her hand from his retaining grasp, 
she ran upstairs. 



A letter from Virginia lay inside the door, 
Getting ready for bed she read it in bits. 

118 



*HHHH~HHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHMMHHHMM^ 

" Angela darling, wouldn't it be fun if I were to 
come to New York too? Of course you'd keep 
on living in your Village and I'd live in famous 
Harlem, but we'd both be in the same city, which 
is where two only sisters ought to be, dumb I 
calls it to live apart the way we do. The man out 
at the U. of P. is crazy to have me take an exam, in 
music; it would be easy enough and much better 
pay than I get here. So there are two perfectly 
good reasons why I should come. He thinks I'll 
do him credit and I want to get away from this 
town." 

Then between the lines the real reason betrayed 
itself : 

" I do have such awful luck. Edna Brown had 
a party out in Merion not long ago and Matthew 
took me. And you know what riding in a train 
can do for me, well that night of all nights I had 
to become car-sick. Matthew had been so nice. 
He came to see me the next morning, but, child, 
he's never been near me from that day to this. 
I suppose a man can't get over a girl's being such 
a sight as I was that night. Can't things be too 
hateful ! " 

Angela couldn't help murmuring: " Imagine 
anyone wanting old Matthew so badly that she's 
willing to break up her home to get over him. 
Now why couldn't he have liked her instead of 
me?" 

And pondering on such mysteries she crept into 
bed. But she fell to thinking again about the 
evening she had spent with Martha and the people 
whom she had met. And again it seemed to her 
that they represented an almost alarmingly un 
necessary class. If any great social cataclysm were 



to happen they would surely be the first to be 
swept out of the running. Only the real people 
could survive. Even Paulette's mode of living, 
it seemed to her, had something more forthright 
and vital. 



120 



CHAPTER IV 

IN the morning she was awakened by the ringing 
of the telephone. The instrument was an extrava 
gance, for, save for Anthony's, she received few 
calls and made practically none. But the woman 
from whom she had taken the apartment had per 
suaded her into keeping it. Still, as she had never 
indicted the change in ownership, its value was 
small. She lay there for a moment blinking 
drowsily in the thin but intensely gold sunshine 
of December thinking that her ears were deceiving 
her. 

Finally she reached out a rosy arm, curled it 
about the edge of the door jamb and, reaching 
the little table that stood in the other room just 
on the other side of the door, set the instrument 
up in her bed. The apartment was so small that 
almost everything was within arm's reach. 

" Hello," she murmured sleepily. 

" Oh, I thought you must be there; I said to 
myself: ' She couldn't have left home this early '. 
What time do you go to that famous drawing class 
of yours anyway? J> 

" I beg your pardon ! Who is this speaking, 
please? " 

" Why, Roger, of course, Roger Fielding. 
Don't say you've forgotten me already. This is 
Angele, isn't it? " 

121 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHi' 



" Yes this is Angele Mory speaking, Mr. Field 
ing." 

" Did I o fiend your Highness, Miss Mory? 
Will you have lunch with me to-day and let me 
tell you how sorry I am? " 

But she was lunching with Anthony. " I have 
an engagement." 

" Of course you have. Well, will you have 
tea, dinner, supper to-day, breakfast and all the 
other meals to-morrow and so on for a week? 
You might just as well say ' yes ' because I'll pester 
you till you do." 

"I'm engaged for tea, too, but I'm not really as 
popular as I sound. That's my last engagement 
for this week; I'll be glad to have dinner with 
you." 

" Right-oh ! Now don't go back and finish 
up that beauty sleep, for if you're any more charm 
ing than you were last night I won't answer for 
myself. I'll be there at eight." 

Inexperienced as she was, she was still able 
to recognize his method as a bit florid; she 
preferred, on the whole, Anthony's manner at 
lunch when he leaned forward and touching 
her hand very lightly said: "Isn't it great 
for us to be here! I'm so content, Angele. 
Promise me you'll have lunch with me every day 
this week. I've had a streak of luck with my 
drawings." 

She promised him, a little thrilled herself with 
his evident sincerity and with the niceness of the 
smile which so transfigured his dark, thin face, 
robbing it of its tenseness and strain. 

Still something, some vanity, some vague pre 
monition of adventure, led her to linger over her 

122 



BUN^HHHHHHHHHH^ 



dressing for the dinner with Roger. There was 
never very much colour in her cheeks, but her 
skin was warm and white; there was vitality 
beneath her pallor; her hair was warm, too, long 
and thick and yet so fine that it gave her little head 
the e fleet of being surrounded by a nimbus of 
light; rather wayward, glancing, shifting light for 
there were little tendrils and wisps and curls in 
front and about the temples which no amount of 
coaxing could subdue. She touched up her mouth 
a little, not so much to redden it as to give a hint 
of the mondaine to her appearance. Her dress 
was flame-colour Paulette had induced her to 
buy it, of a plain, rather heavy beautiful glowing 
silk. The neck was high in back and girlishly 
modest in front. She had a string of good arti 
ficial pearls and two heavy silver bracelets. Thus 
she gave the e fleet of a flame herself; intense and 
opaque at the heart where her dress gleamed and 
shone, transparent and fragile where her white 
warm neck and face rose into the tenuous 
shadow of her hair. Her appearance excited 
herself. 

Roger found her delightful. As to women he 
considered himself a connoisseur. This girl pleased 
him in many respects. She was young; she was, 
when lighted from within by some indescribable 
mechanism, even beautiful; she had charm and, 
what was for him even more important, she was 
puzzling. In repose, he noticed, studying her 
closely, her quiet look took on the resemblance 
of an arrested movement, a composure on tip-toe 
so to speak, as though she had been stopped in 
the swift transition from one mood to another. 
And back of that momentary cessation of action 

123 



HHf^HHHHHHhPLUM 



one could see a mind darting, quick, restless, 
indefatigable, observing, tabulating perhaps even 
mocking. She had for him the quality of the 
foreigner, but she gave this quality an objectivity 
as though he were the stranger and she the well- 
known established personage taking note of his 
peculiarities and apparently boundlessly diverted 
by them. 

But of all this Angela was absolutely unaware. 
No wonder she was puzzling to Roger, for, in 
addition to the excitement which she a young 
woman in the high tide of her youth, her health, 
and her beauty would be feeling at receiving 
in the proper setting the devotion and attention 
which all women crave, she was swimming in 
the flood of excitement created by her unique 
position. Stolen waters are the sweetest. And 
Angela never forgot that they were stolen. 
She thought: " Here I am having everything 
that a girl ought to have just because I had sense 
enough to suit my actions to my appearance." 
The realization, the secret fun bubbling back in 
some hidden recess of her heart, brought colour 
to her cheeks, a certain temerity to her manner. 
Roger pondered on this quality. If she were 
reckless ! 

The dinner was perfect; it was served with 
elegance and beauty. Indeed she was surprised 
at the surroundings, the grandeur even of the 
hotel to which he had brought her. She had no 
idea of his means, but had supposed that his 
circumstances were about those of her other new 
friends; probably he was better off than Anthony, 
whose poverty she instinctively sensed, and she 
judged that his income, whatever it might be, 

124 



BUN* 



was not so perilous as Paulette's. But she would 
have put him on the same footing as the Starrs. 
This sort of expenditure, however, meant money, 
" unless he really does like me and is splurging 
this time just for me ". The idea appealed 
to her vanity and gave her a sense of power; 
she looked at Roger with a warm smile. At 
once his intent, considering gaze filmed; he was 
already leaning toward her but he bent even 
farther across the perfect little table and asked 
in a low, eager tone: " Shall we stay here and 
dance or go to your house and talk and smoke 
a bit? " 

" Oh we'll stay and dance; it would be so late 
by the time we get home that we'd only have a 
few minutes." 

Presently the golden evening was over and 
they were in the vestibule at Jayne Street. Roger 
said very loudly: " Where's that push button? " 
Then lower: " Well, your young lovers aren't 
here to-night either. I'm beginning to think you 
made that story up, Angele." 

She assured him, laughing, that she had told 
the truth. " You come here some time and you'll 
see them for yourself." But she wished she could 
think of something more ordinary to say. His 
hands held hers very tightly; they were very 
strong and for the first time she noticed that the 
veins stood up on them like cords. She tried to 
pull her own away and he released them and, 
taking her key, turned the lock in the inner door, 
then stood looking down at her. 

" Well I'm glad they're not here to-night to 
take their revenge." And as he handed her back 
the key he kissed her on the lips. His knowledge 

125 



of women based on many, many such experiences, 
told him that her swift retreat was absolutely 
unfeigned. 

As on a former occasion she stood, after she 
had gained her room, considering herself in the 
glass. She had been kissed only once before, by 
Matthew Henson, and that kiss had been neither 
as casual nor as disturbing as this. She was 
thrilled, excited, and vaguely displeased. " He 
is fresh, I'll say that for him." And subsiding 
into the easy chair she thought for a long 
time of Anthony Cross and his deep respectful 
ardour. 

In the morning there were flowers. 



From the class-room she went with Paulette 
to deliver the latter's sketches. " Have tea 
to-day with me; we'll blow ourselves at the 
Ritz. This is the only time in the month 
that I have any money, so we'll make the best 
of it." 

Angela looked about the warm, luxurious room 
at the serene, luxurious women, the super-groomed, 
super-deferential, tremendously confident men. 
She sighed. " I love all this, love it." 

Paulette, busy blowing smoke-rings, nodded. 
" I blew sixteen that time. Watch me do it again. 
There's nothing really to this kind of life, you 
know." 

" Oh don't blow smoke-rings ! It's the 
only thing in the world that can spoil your 
looks. What do you mean there's nothing to 
it?" 

126 



" Well for a day-in-and-day-out existence, it 
just doesn't do. It's too boring. It's fun for 
you and me to drift in here twice a year when 
we've just had a nice, fat cheque which we've 
got to spend. But there's nothing to it for every 
day; it's too much like reaching the harbour 
where you would be. The tumult and the shout 
ing are all over. I'd rather live just above the 
danger line down on little old Bank Street, and 
think up a way to make five hundred dollars so 
I could go to the French Riviera second class 
and bum around those little towns, Villefranche, 
Beaulieu, Cagnes, you must see them, Angele 
and have a spanking affair with a real man with 
honest to God blood in his veins than to sit here and 
drink tea and listen to the nothings of all these 
tame tigers, trying you out, seeing how much it 
will take to buy you." 

Angela was bewildered by this outburst. " I 
thought you said you didn't like affairs unless 
you could conduct them on your own pied d 
terre." 

" Did I? Well that was another time not 
to-day. By the way, what would you say if I were 
to tell you that I'm going to Russia? " 

She glanced at her friend with the bright shame- 
lessness of a child, for she knew that Angela had 
heard of Jack Hudson's acceptance as newspaper 
correspondent in Moscow. 

" I wouldn't say anything except that I'd much 
rather be here in the warmth and cleanliness of 
the Ritz than be in Moscow where I'm sure it 
will be cold and dirty." 

c That's because you've never wanted anyone." 
Her face for a moment was all desire. Beautiful 

127 



but terrible too. " She actually looks like Hetty 
Daniels," thought Angela in astonishment. Only, 
alas, there was no longer any beauty in Hetty's 
face. 

" When you've set your heart on anybody or 
on anything there'll be no telling what you'll 
do, Angele. For all your innocence you're as 
deep, you'll be as desperate as Martha Burden once 
you're started. I know your kind. Well, if you 
must play around in the Ritz, etcet., etcet., I'll tell 
Roger Fielding. He's a good squire and he can 
afford it." 

" Why? Is he so rich? " 

" Rich ! If all the wealth that he no, not he, 
but his father if all the wealth that old man Field 
ing possesses were to be converted into silver 
dollars there wouldn't be space enough in this room, 
big as it is, to hold it." 

Angela tried to envisage it. " And Roger, what 
does he do? " 

" Spend it. What is there for him to do? 
Nothing except have a good time and keep 
in his father's good graces. His father's some 
kind of a personage and all that, you know, 
crazy about his name and his posterity. Roger 
doesn't dare get drunk and lie in the gutter 
and he mustn't make a misalliance. Outside 
of that the world's his oyster and he eats it 
every day. There's a boy who gets everything 
he wants." 

" What do you mean by a misalliance? He's 
not royalty." 

" Spoken like a good American. No, he's not. 
But he mustn't marry outside certain limits. No 
chorus girl romances for his father. The old man 



BUN** ********** 



wouldn't care a rap about money but he would 
insist on blue blood and the Mayflower. The 
funny thing is that Roger, for all his appearing 
so democratic, is that way too. But of course 
he's been so run after the marvel is that he's 
as unspoiled as he is. But it's the one thing 
I can't stick in him. I don't mind a man's not 
marrying me; but I can't forgive him if he 
thinks I'm not good enough to marry him. 
Any woman is better than the best of men." 
Her face took on its intense, burning expression; 
one would have said she was consumed with 
excitement. 

Angela nodded, only half-listening. Roger a 
multi-millionaire ! Roger who only two nights 
ago had kissed and mumbled her fingers, his eyes 
avid and yet so humble and beseeching! 

" One thing, if you do start playing around 
with Roger be careful. He's a good bit of a 
rotter, and he doesn't care what he says or spends 
to gain his ends." She laughed at the inquiry in 
her friend's eyes. " No, I've never given Roger 
five minutes' thought. But I know his kind. 
They're dangerous. It's wrong for men to have 
both money and power; they're bound to make 
some woman suffer. Come on up the Avenue 
with me and I'll buy a hat. I can't wear this 
whang any longer. It's too small, looks like a 
peanut on a barrel." 



Angela was visual minded. She saw the days 
of the week, the months of the year in little narrow 
divisions of space. She saw the past years of her 

129 



HHHHHHHh**HhPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHHHK* 

life falling into separate, uneven compartments 
whose ensemble made up her existence. Whenever 
she looked back on this period from Christmas to 
Easter she saw a bluish haze beginning in a white 
mist and flaming into something red and terrible; 
and across the bluish haze stretched the name: 
Roger. 

Roger! She had never seen anyone like him: 
so gay, so beautiful, like a blond, glorious god, so 
overwhelming, so persistent. She had not liked 
him so much at first except as one likes the sun 
or the sky or a singing bird, anything jolly and 
free. There had been no touching points for their 
minds. He knew nothing of life except what was 
pleasurable; it is true his idea of the pleasurable 
did not always coincide with hers. He had no 
fears, no restraints, no worries. Yes, he had one; 
he did not want to offend his father. He wanted 
ardently and unswervingly his father's money, 
he did not begrudge his senior a day, an hour, a 
moment of life; about this he had a queer, unselfish 
sincerity. The old financial war horse had made 
his fortune by hard labour and pitiless fighting. 
He had given Roger his being, the entree into a 
wonderful existence. Already he bestowed upon 
him an annual sum which would have kept several 
families in comfort. If Roger had cared to save 
for two years he need never have asked his father 
for another cent. With any kind of luck he 
could have built up for himself a second colossal 
fortune. But he did not care to do this. He did 
not wish his father one instant's loss of life or of 
its enjoyment. But he did want final possession 
of those millions. 

Angela liked him best when he talked about 
130 



" my dad " ; he never mentioned the vastness 
of his wealth, but by now she could not have 
helped guessing even without Paulette's aid that 
he was a wealthy man. She would not take 
jewellery from him, but there was a steady 
stream of flowers, fruit, candy, books, fine copies 
of the old masters. She was afraid and ashamed 
to express a longing in his presence. And with 
all this his steady, constant attendance. And an 
odd watchfulness which she felt but could not 
explain. 

" He must love me," she said to herself, think 
ing of his caresses. She had been unable to keep 
him from kissing her. Her uneasiness had amused 
and charmed him: he laughed at her Puritanism, 
succeeded in shaming her out of it. " Child, 
where have you lived? Why there's nothing in a 
kiss. If I didn't kiss you I couldn't come to see 
you. And I have to see you, Angele ! " His 
voice grew deep; the expression in his eyes made 
her own falter. 

Yet he did not ask her to marry him. " But 
I suppose it's because he can see I don't love 
him yet." And she wondered what it would 
be like to love. Even Jinny knew more about 
this than she, for she had felt, perhaps still 
did feel, a strong affection for Matthew Henson. 
Well, anyway, if they married she would pro 
bably come to love him; most women learned 
to love their husbands. At first after her con 
versation with Paulette about Roger she had 
rather expected a diminution at any time of 
his attentions, for after all she was unknown ; from 
Roger's angle she would be more than outside 
the pale. But she was sure now that he loved and 



HHHHHHHHHHKPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH' 

would want to marry her, for it never occurred 
to her that men bestowed attentions such as these 
on a passing fancy. She saw her life rounding 
out like a fairy tale. Poor, coloured coloured in 
America; unknown, a nobody! And here at her 
hand was the forward thrust shadow of love 
and of great wealth. She would do lots of good 
among coloured people; she would see that Miss 
Powell, for instance, had her scholarship. Oh 
she would hunt out girls and men like Seymour 
Porter, she had almost forgotten his name, 
or was it Arthur Sawyer? and give them a taste of 
life in its fullness and beauty such as they had 
never dreamed of. 

To-night she was to go out with Roger. She 
wore her flame-coloured dress again ; a pretty green 
one was also hanging up in her closet, but she wore 
the flame one because it lighted her up from within 
lighted not only her lovely, fine body but her 
mind too. Her satisfaction with her appearance 
let loose some inexplicable spring of gaiety and 
merriment and simplicity so that she seemed 
almost daring. 

Roger, sitting opposite, tried to probe her mood, 
tried to gauge the invitation of her manner and its 
possibilities. She touched him once or twice, 
familiarly; he thought almost possessively. She 
seemed to be within reach now if along with that 
accessibility she had recklessness. It was this 
attribute which for the first time to-night he 
thought to divine within her. If in addition to 
her insatiable interest in life for she was always 
asking him about people and places, she possessed 
this recklessness, then indeed he might put to her a 
proposal which had been hanging on his lips for 

132 



weeks and months. Something innocent, pathetic 
ally untouched about her had hitherto kept him 
back. But if she had the requisite daring ! They 
were dining in East Tenth Street in a small cafe 
small contrasted with the Park Avenue Hotel 
to which he had first taken her. But about them 
stretched the glitter and perfection of crystal and 
silver, of marvellous napery and of obsequious 
service. Everything, Angela thought, looking 
about her, was translated. The slight odour of 
food was, she told Fielding, really an aroma: 
the mineral water which he was drinking be 
cause he could not help it and she because 
she could not learn to like wine, was nectar; the 
bread, the fish, the courses were ambrosia. 
The food, too, in general was to be spoken of 
as viands. 

" Vittles, translated," she said laughing. 

" And you, you, too, are translated. Angele, 
you are wonderful, you are charming," his lips 
answered but his senses beat and hammered. 
Intoxicated with the magic of the moment and the 
surroundings, she turned her smiling countenance 
a little nearer, and saw his face change, darken. 
A cloud over the sun. 

" Excuse me," he said and walked hastily across 
the room back of her. In astonishment she 
turned and looked after him. At a table behind 
her three coloured people (under the direction of a 
puzzled and troubled waiter,) were about to take 
a table. Roger went up and spoke to the head- 
waiter authoritatively, even angrily. The latter 
glanced about the room, nodded obsequiously 
and crossing, addressed the little group. There 
was a hasty, slightly acrid discussion. Then the 

133 



three filled out, past Angela's table this time, their 
heads high. 

She turned back to her plate, her heart sick. 
For her the evening was ended. Roger came back, 
his face flushed, triumphant, " Well I put a spoke 
in the wheel of those ' coons ' ! They forget 
themselves so quickly, coming in here spoiling 
white people's appetites. I told the manager if 
they brought one of their damned suits I'd be 
responsible. I wasn't going to have them here 
with you, Angele. I could tell that night at 
Martha Burden's by the way you looked at that 
girl that you had no time for darkies. I'll bet 
you'd never been that near to one before in your 
life, had you? Wonder where Martha picked 
that one up." 

She was silent, lifeless. He went on recounting 
instances of how effectively he had " spoked the 
wheel " of various coloured people. He had black 
balled Negroes in Harvard, aspirants for small 
literary or honour societies. " I'd send 'em all 
back to Africa if I could. There's been a darkey 
up in Harlem's got the right idea, I understand; 
though he must be a low brute to cave in on his 
race that way; of course it's merely a matter of 
money with him. He'd betray them all for a few 
thousands. Gosh, if he could really pull it through 
I don't know but what I'd be willing to finance 
it." 

To this tirade there were economic reasons to 
oppose, tenets of justice, high ideals of humanity. 
But she could think of none of them. Speechless, 
she listened to him, her appetite fled. 

' What's the matter, Angele? Did it make you 
sick to see them? " 

134 



BUNHHHMMHHMHHHS* 



" No, no not that. I I don't mind them; 
you're mistaken about me and that girl at Martha 
Burden's. It's you, you're so violent. I didn't 
know you were that way ! " 

" And I've made you afraid of me? Oh, I don't 
want to do that." But he was flattered to think 
that he had affected her. " See here, let's get 
some air. I'll take you for a spin around the Park 
and then run you home." 

But she did not want to go to the Park; she 
wanted to go home immediately. His little blue 
car was outside; in fifteen minutes they were at 
Jayne Street. She would not permit him to come 
inside, not even in the vestibule; she barely gave 
him her hand. 

" But Angele, you can't leave me like this; 
why what have I done? Did it frighten you be 
cause I swore a little? But I'd never swear at you. 
Don't go like this." 

She was gone, leaving him staring and non 
plussed on the sidewalk. Lighting a cigarette, he 
climbed back in her car. " Now what the devil ! " 
He shifted his gears. " But she likes me. I'd 
have sworn she liked me to-night. Those damn 
niggers ! I bet she's thinking about me this 



He would have lost his bet. She was thinking 
about the coloured people. 

She could visualize them all so plainly; she 
could interpret their changing expressions as com 
pletely as though those changes lay before her in 
a book. There were a girl and two men, one 

135 



young, the other the father perhaps of either of the 
other two. The fatherly-looking person, for so 
her mind docketed him, bore an expression of 
readiness for any outcome whatever. She knew 
and understood the type. His experiences of 
surprises engendered by this thing called prejudice 
had been too vast for them to appear to him as 
surprises. If they were served this was a lucky 
day; if not he would refuse to let the incident 
shake his stout spirit. 

It was to the young man and the girl that her 
interest went winging. In the mirror behind 
Roger she had seen them entering the room and 
she had thought: " Oh, here are some of them 
fighting it out again. O God ! please let them be 
served, please don't let their evening be spoiled." 
She was so happy herself and she knew that the 
reception of fifty other maitres d'hotel could not 
atone for a rebuff at the beginning of the game. 
The young fellow was nervous, his face tense, 
thus might he have looked going to meet the 
enemy's charge in the recent Great War; but 
there the odds were even; here the cards were 
already stacked against him. Presently his ex 
pression would change for one of grimness, 
determination and despair. Talk of a lawsuit 
would follow; apparently did follow; still a law 
suit at best is a poor substitute for an evening's 
fun. 

But the girl, the girl in whose shoes she herself 
might so easily have been ! She was so clearly a 
nice girl, with all that the phrase implies. To 
Angela watching her intently and yet with the in 
difference of safety she recalled Virginia, so 
slender, so appealing she was and so brave. So 

136 



very brave! Ah, that courage! It affected at 
first a gay hardihood: " Oh I know it isn't cus 
tomary for people like us to come into this cafe, 
but everything is going to be all right." It met 
Angela's gaze with a steadiness before which 
her own quailed, for she thought: " Oh, poor 
thing! perhaps she thinks that I don't want her 
either." And when the blow had fallen the 
courage had had to be translated anew into a 
comforting assurance. " Don't worry about me, 
Jimmy," the watching guest could just hear her. 
" Indeed, indeed it won't spoil the evening, I 
should say not; there're plenty of places where 
they'd be all right. We just happened to pick a 
lemon." 

The three had filed out, their heads high, their 
gaze poised and level. But the net result of the 
evening's adventure would be an increased cyni 
cism in the elderly man, a growing bitterness for 
the young fellow, and a new timidity in the girl, 
who, even after they had passed into the street, 
could not relieve her feelings, for she must comfort 
her baffled and goaded escort. 

Angela wondered if she had been half as con 
soling to Matthew Henson, was it just a short 
year ago? And suddenly, sitting immobile in her 
arm-chair, her evening cloak slipping unnoticed 
to the floor, triumph began to mount in her. Life 
could never cheat her as it had cheated that 
coloured girl this evening, as it had once cheated 
her in Philadephia with Matthew. She was free, 
free to taste life in all its fullness and sweetness, in 
all its minutest details. By exercising sufficient 
courage to employ the unique weapon which an 
accident of heredity had placed in her grasp she 

137 



HHhHHMHhHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHMMHHh* 

was able to master life. How she blessed her 
mother for showing her the way ! In a country 
where colour or the lack of it meant the difference 
between freedom and fetters how lucky she was ! 
But, she told herself, she was through with Roger 
Fielding. 



138 



CHAPTER V 

Now it was Spring, Spring in New York. Wash 
ington Square was a riot of greens that showed up 
bravely against the great red brick houses on its 
north side. The Arch viewed from Fifth Avenue 
seemed a gateway to Paradise. The long deep 
streets running the length of the city invited an 
exploration to the ends where pots of gold doubt 
less gleamed. On the short crosswise streets the 
April sun streamed in splendid banners of deep 
golden light. 

In two weeks Angela had seen Roger only once. 
He telephoned every day, pleading, beseeching, 
entreating. On the one occasion when she did 
permit him to call there were almost tears in his 
eyes. " But, darling, what did I do? If you'd 
only tell me that. Perhaps I could explain away 
whatever it is that's come between us." But there 
was nothing to explain she told him gravely, it was 
just that he was harder, more cruel than she had 
expected; no, it wasn't the coloured people, she 
lied and felt her soul blushing, it was that now 
she knew him when he was angry or displeased, 
and she could see how ruthless, how determined he 
was to have things his way. His willingness to 
pay the costs of the possible lawsuit had filled her 
with a sharp fear. What could one do against 
a man, against a group of men such as he and his 

139 



BUN* * 



kind represented who would spend time and money 
to maintain a prejudice based on a silly, time-worn 
tradition? 

Yet she found she did not want to lose sight of 
him completely. The care, the attention, the 
flattery with which he had surrounded her were 
beginning to produce their effect. In the beautiful 
but slightly wearying balminess of the Spring she 
missed the blue car which had been constantly 
at her call; eating a good but homely meal in 
her little living room with the cooking odours 
fairly overwhelming her from the kitchenette, she 
found herself longing unconsciously for the dainty 
food, the fresh Spring delicacies which she knew 
he would be only too glad to procure for her. 
Shamefacedly she had to acknowledge that the 
separation which she was so rigidly enforcing 
meant a difference in her tiny exchequer, for it had 
now been many months since she had regularly 
taken her main meal by herself and at her own 
expense. 

To-day she was especially conscious of her 
dependence upon him, for she was to spend the 
afternoon in Van Cortlandt Park with Anthony. 
There had been talk of subways and the Elevated. 
Roger would have had the blue car at the door 
and she would have driven out of Jayne Street in 
state. Now it transpired that Anthony was to 
deliver some drawings to a man, a tricky customer, 
whom it was best to waylay if possible on Saturday 
afternoon. Much as he regretted it he would 
probably be a little late. Angela, therefore, to 
save time must meet him at Seventy-second Street. 
Roger would never have made a request like that; 
he would have brought his lawyer or his business 

140 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



man along in the car with him and, dismissing him 
with a curt " Well I'll see if I can finish this 
to-morrow," would have hastened to her with his 
best Walter Raleigh manner, and would have pro 
duced the cloak, too, if she would but say so. Per 
haps she'd have to take him back. Doubtless later 
on she could manage his prejudices if only he would 
speak. But how was she to accomplish that? 

Still it was lovely being here with Anthony in 
the park, so green and fresh, so new with the 
recurring newness of Spring. Anthony touched 
her hand and said as he had once before, " I'm so 
content to be with you, Angel. I may call you 
Angel, mayn't I? You are that to me, you know. 
Oh if you only knew how happy it makes me to 
be content, to be satisfied like this. I could get 
down on my knees and thank God for it like a little 
boy." He looked like a little boy as he said it. 
" Happiness is a hard thing to find and harder 
still to keep." 

She asked him idly, " Haven't you always been 
happy? " 

His face underwent a startling change. Not 
only did the old sadness and strain come back on 
it, but a great bitterness such as she had never 
before seen. 

" No," he said slowly as though thinking through 
long years of his life. " I haven't been happy for 
years, not since I was a little boy. Never once 
have I been happy nor even at ease until I met 
you." 

But she did not want him to find his happiness 
in her. That way would only lead to greater un- 
happiness for him. So she said, to change the 
subject: " Could you tell me about it? " 

141 



BUN-HHHHHHHHH-* 



But there was nothing to tell, he assured her, 
his face growing darker, grimmer. " Only my 
father was killed when I was a little boy, killed 
by his enemies. I've hated them ever since; I 
never stopped hating them until I met you." But 
this was just as dangerous a road as the other plus 
the possibilities of re-opening old wounds. So 
she only shivered and said vaguely, " Oh, that 
was terrible ! Too terrible to talk about. I'm 
sorry, Anthony ! " And then as a last desperate 
topic: "Are you ever going back to Brazil?" 
For she knew that he had come to the United 
States from Rio de Janeiro. He had spent Christ 
mas at her house, and had shown her pictures of 
the great, beautiful city and of his mother, a 
slender, dark-eyed woman with a perpetual sad 
ness in her eyes. 

The conversation languished. She thought: " It 
must be terrible to be a man and to have these 
secret hates and horrors back of one." Some 
Spanish feud, a matter of hot blood and ready 
knives, a sudden stroke, and then this deadly 
memory for him. 

" No," he said after a long pause. "I'm never 
going back to Brazil. I couldn't." He turned to 
her suddenly. " Tell me, Angel, what kind of 
girl are you, what do you think worth while? 
Could you, for the sake of love, for the sake of 
being loyal to the purposes and vows of someone 
you loved, bring yourself to endure privation and 
hardship and misunderstanding, hardship that 
would be none the less hard because it really could 
be avoided? " 

She thought of her mother who had loved her 
father so dearly, and of the wash-days which she 

142 



BUNHHHH^HHHHHHHf- 



had endured for him, the long years of household 
routine before she and Jinny had been old enough 
to help her first with their hands and then with 
their earnings. She thought of the little, dark, 
shabby house, of the made-over dresses and turned 
coats. And then she saw Roger and his wealth 
and his golden recklessness, his golden keys which 
could open the doors to beauty and ease and 
decency ! Oh, it wasn't decent for women to have 
to scrub and work and slave and bear children 
and sacrifice their looks and their pretty hands, 
she saw her mother's hands as they had always 
looked on wash day, they had a white, boiled 
appearance. No, she would not fool herself nor 
Anthony. She was no sentimentalist. It was not 
likely that she, a girl who had left her little sister 
and her home to go out to seek life and happiness 
would throw it over for poverty, hardship. If 
a man loved a woman how could he ask her 
that? 

So she told him gently: " No, Anthony, I 
couldn't," and watched the blood drain from his 
face and the old look of unhappiness drift into 
his eyes. 

He answered inadequately. " No, of course you 
couldn't." And turning over, he had been sitting 
on the grass at her feet he lay face downward on 
the scented turf. Presently he sat up and giving 
her a singularly sweet but wistful smile, said: " I 
almost touched happiness, Angele. Did you by 
any chance ever happen to read Browning's ( Two 
in the Roman Campagna '? " 

But she had read very little poetry except what 
had been required in her High School work, and 
certainly not Browning. 



\ 

BUN-HH5* 



He began to interpret the fragile, difficult 
beauty of the poem with its light but sure touch on 
evanescent, indefinable feeling. He quoted: 

" How is it under our control 
To love or not to love? " 

And again: 

" Infinite yearning and the pang 
Of finite hearts that yearn." 

They were silent for a long time. And again 
she wondered how it would feel to love. He 
watched the sun drop suddenly below some tree 
tops and rose to his feet shivering a little as though 
its disappearance had made him immediately 
cold. 

" ' So the good moment goes.' Come, Angel, 
we'll have to hasten. It's getting dark and it's 
a long walk to the subway." 



The memory of the afternoon stayed by her, 
shrouding her thoughts, clinging to them like a 
tenuous, adhering mantle. But she said to herself: 
" There's no use thinking about that. I'm not 
going to live that kind of life." And she knew 
she wanted Roger and what he could give her and 
the light and gladness which he always radiated. 
She wanted none of Anthony's poverty and priva 
tion and secret vows, he meant, she supposed, 
some promise to devote himself to REAL ART, 
her visual mind saw it in capitals. Well, she was 
sick of tragedy, she belonged to a tragic race. 

144 



" God knows it's time for one member of it to be 
having a little fun." 

" Yes," she thought all through her class, paint 
ing furiously for she had taken up her work in 
earnest since Christmas " yes, I'll just make up 
my mind to it. I'll take Roger back and get mar 
ried and settle down to a pleasant, safe, beautiful 
life." And useful. It should be very useful. 
Perhaps she'd win Roger around to helping 
coloured people. She'd look up all sorts of down- 
and-outers and give them a hand. And she'd help 
Anthony, at least she'd offer to help him; she 
didn't believe he would permit her. 

Coming out of the building a thought occurred 
to her: "Take Roger back, but back to what? 
To his old status of admiring, familiar, generous 
friend? Just that and no more? " Here was her 
old problem again. She stopped short to con 
sider it. 

Martha Burden overtook her. " Planning the 
great masterpiece of the ages, Angele? Better come 
along and work it out by my fireside. I can give 
you some tea. Are you coming? " 

" Yes," said Angela, still absorbed. 

" Well," said Martha after they had reached 
the house. " I've never seen any study as 
deep as that. Come out of it Angele, you'll 
drown. You're not by any chance in love, are 
you? " 

" No," she replied, " at least I don't know. 
But tell me, Martha, suppose suppose I were in 
love with one of them, what do you do about it, 
how do you get them to propose? " 

Martha lay back and laughed. " Such candour 
have I not met, no, not in all Flapperdom. Angele^ 

K 145 



if I could answer that I'd be turning women away 
from my door and handing out my knowledge 
to the ones I did admit at a hundred dollars a 
throw." 

" But there must be some way. Oh, of course, 
I know lots of them propose, but how do you get a 
proposal from the ones you want, the, the 
interesting ones? " 

" You really want to know? The only answer 
I can give you is Humpty Dumpty's dictum to 
Alice about verbs and adjectives: ' It depends on 
which is the stronger.' ' She interpreted for her 
young guest was clearly mystified. " It depends 
on (A) whether you are strong enough to make 
him like you more than you like him; (B) whether 
if you really do like him more than he does you 
you can conceal it. In other words, so far as 
liking is concerned you must always be ahead of 
the game, you must always like or appear to like 
him a little less than he does you. And you must 
make him want you. But you mustn't give. Oh 
yes, I know that men are always wanting women 
to give, but they don't want the women to want 
to give. They want to take, or at any rate to 
compel the giving." 

" It sounds very complicated, like some subtle 
game." 

A deep febrile light came into Martha's eyes. 
" It is a game, and the hardest game in the world 
for a woman, but the most fascinating; the hardest 
in which to strike a happy medium. You see, 
you have to be careful not to withhold too much 
and yet to give very little. If we don't give enough 
we lose them. If we give too much we lose our 
selves. Oh, Angele, God doesn't like women." 



BUNHHHHHHHS-HHf~H* 



" But," said Angela thinking of her own mother, 
" there are some women who give all and men 
like them the better for it." 

" Oh, yes, that's true. Those are the blessed 
among women. They ought to get down on their 
knees every 'day and thank God for permitting 
them to be their normal selves and not having 
to play a game." For a moment her still, proud 
face broke into deeps of pain. " Oh, Angele, 
think of loving and never, never being able to 
show it until you're asked for it; think of living 
a game every hour of your life ! " Her face 
quivered back to its normal immobility. 

Angela walked home through the purple twi 
light musing no longer on her own case but on 
this unexpected revelation. " Well," she said, 
"I certainly shouldn't like to love like that." 
She thought of Anthony : " A woman could be her 
true self with him." But she had given him up. 



If the thing to do were to play a game she would 
play one. Indeed she rather enjoyed the prospect. 
She was playing a game now, a game against 
public tradition on the one hand and family 
instinct on the other; the stakes were happiness 
and excitement, and almost anyone looking at 
the tricks which she had already taken would 
prophesy that she would be the winner. She 
decided to follow all the rules as laid down by 
Martha Burden and to add any workable ideas 
of her own. When Roger called again she was 
still unable to see him, but her voice was a shade 
less curt over the telephone; she did not cut him 

147 



H-* * * > * *HHHhPLUM BUNHHHH--HMMHHH5* 

off so abruptly. " I must not withhold too much," 
she reminded herself. He was quick to note the 
subtle change in intonation. " But you're going 
to let me come to see you soon, Angele," he 
pleaded. " You wouldn't hold out this way 
against me forever. Say when I may come." 

" Oh, one of these days; I must go now, Roger. 
Good-bye." 

After the third call she let him come to spend 
Friday evening. She heard the blue car rumbling 
in the street and a few minutes later he came 
literally staggering into the living-room so laden 
was he with packages. Flowers, heaps of spring 
posies had come earlier in the day, lilacs, jonquils, 
narcissi. Now this evening there were books and 
candy, handkerchiefs, " they were so dainty and 
they looked just like you," he said fearfully, for 
she had never taken an article of dress from him, 
two pictures, a palette and some fine brushes 
and last a hamper of all sorts of delicacies. 
" I thought if you didn't mind we'd have 
supper here; it would be fun with just us 
two." 

How much he pleased her he could not divine; 
it was the first time he had ever given a hint of 
any desire for sheer domesticity. Anthony had 
sought nothing better than to sit and smoke and 
watch her flitting about in her absurd red or 
violet apron. Matthew Henson had been speech 
less with ecstasy when on a winter night she had 
allowed him to come into the kitchen while she 
prepared for him a cup of cocoa. But Roger's 
palate had been so flattered by the concoctions 
of chefs famous in London, Paris and New York 
that he had set no store by her simple cooking. 

148 



Indeed his inevitable comment had been: " Here, 
what do you want to get yourself all tired out 
for? Let's go to a restaurant. It's heaps less 
bother." 

But to-night he, too, watched her with humble, 
delighted eyes. She realized that he was con 
scious of her every movement; once he tried 
to embrace her, but she whirled out of his reach 
without reproach but with decision. He subsided, 
too thankful to be once more in her presence 
to take any risks. And when he left he had kissed 
her hand. 

She began going about with him again, but with 
condescension, with kindness. And with the new 
vision gained from her talk with Martha she could 
see his passion mounting. " Make him want you," 
that was the second rule. It was clear that he 
did, no man could be as persevering as this other 
wise. Still he did not speak. They were to meet 
that afternoon in front of the school to go " any 
where you want, dear, Pm yours to command ". 
It was the first time that he had called for her 
at the building, and she came out a litttle early, 
for she did not want any of the three, Martha, 
Paulette, nor Anthony, to see whom she was 
meeting. It would be better to walk to the corner, 
she thought, they'd be just that much less likely 
to recognize him. She heard footsteps hurrying 
behind her, heard her name and turned to see 
Miss Powell, pleased and excited. She laid her 
hand on Angela's arm but the latter shook her off. 
Roger must not see her on familiar terms like this 
with a coloured girl for she felt that the afternoon 
portended something and she wanted no side 
issues. The coloured girl gave her a penetrating 



BUNHMHHHMHMHHHi* 



glance; then her habitual reserve settled down 
blotting out the eagerness, leaving her face blurred 
and heavy. " I beg your pardon, Miss Mory, 
I'm sure," she murmured and stepped out into the 
tempestuous traffic of Fourth Avenue. Angela 
was sorry; she would make it up to-morrow, she 
thought, but she had not dismissed her a moment 
too soon for Roger came rushing up, his car 
resplendent and resplendent himself in a grey suit, 
soft grey hat and blue tie. Angela looked at him 
approvingly. " You look just like the men in the 
advertising pages of the Saturday Evening Post," 
she said, and the fact that he did not wince under 
the compliment proved the depth of his devotion, 
for every one of his outer garments, hat, shoes, and 
suit, had been made to measure. 

They went to Coney Island. " The ocean 
will be there, but very few people and only a 
very few amusements," said Roger. They had 
a delightful time; they were like school children, 
easily and frankly amused; they entered all the 
booths that were open, ate pop-corn and hot dogs 
and other local dainties. And presently they 
were flying home under the double line of trees 
on Ocean Parkway and entering the bosky loveli 
ness of Prospect Park. Roger slowed down a 
little. 

"Oh," said Angela. "I love this car." 

He bent toward her instantly. " Does it please 
you? Did you miss it when you made me stay 
away from you? " 

She was afraid she had made a mistake: " Yes, 
but that's not why I let you come back." 

" I know that. But you do like it, don't you, 
comfort and beauty and dainty surroundings? " 

150 



BUN* 



" Yes," she said solemnly, " I love them all." 

He was silent then for a long, long time, his face 
a little set, a worried line on his forehead. 

" Well now what's he thinking about? " she 
asked herself, watching his hands and their clever 
manipulation of the steering wheel though his 
thoughts, she knew, were not on that. 

He turned to her with an air of having made up 
his mind. " Angele, I want you to promise to 
spend a day out riding with me pretty soon. I 
I have something I want to say to you." He 
was a worldly young man about town but he was 
actually mopping his brow. " I've got to go south 
for a week for my father, he owns some timber 
down there with which he used to supply saw 
mills but since the damned niggers have started 
running north it's been something of a weight on 
his hands. He wants me to go down and see 
whether it's worth his while to hold on to it any 
longer. It's so rarely that he asks anything of me 
along a business line that I'd hate to refuse him. 
But I'll be back the morning of the twenty-sixth. 
I'll have to spend the afternoon and evening with 
him out on Long Island but on the twenty-seventh 
could you go out with me? " 

She said as though all this preamble portended 
nothing: " I couldn't give you the whole day, but 
I'd go in the afternoon." 

" Oh," his face fell a little. " Well, the after 
noon then. Only of course we won't be able to 
go far out. Perhaps you'd like me to arrange a 
lunch and we'd go to one of the Parks, Central or 
the Bronx, or Van Cortlandt, - " 

" No, not Van Cortlandt," she told him. That 
park was sacred to Anthony Cross. 



M-H-W-H-HHKPLUM BUNHHHHHHMMHHf-* 

" Well, wherever you say. We can settle it 
even that day. The main thing is that you'll 

go." 

She said to herself. "Aren't men funny! He 
could have asked me five times over while he was 
making all these arrangements." But she was 
immensely relieved, even happy. She felt very 
kindly toward him; perhaps she was in love after 
all, only she was not the demonstrative kind. It 
was too late for him to come in, but they sat in the 
car in the dark security of Jayne Street and she 
let him take her in his arms and kiss her again 
again. For the first time she returned his 
kisses. 



Weary but triumphant she mounted the stairs 
almost stumbling from a sudden, overwhelming 
fatigue. She had been under a strain ! But it 
was all over now; she had conquered, she had been 
the stronger. She had secured not only him but 
an assured future, wealth, protection, influence, 
even power. She herself was power, like the 
women one reads about, like Cleopatra, Cleo 
patra's African origin intrigued her, it was a fitting 
comparison. Smiling, she took the last steep stairs 
lightly, springily, suddenly rein vigor ated. 

As she opened the door a little heap of letters 
struck her foot. Switching on the light she sat 
in the easy chair and incuriously turned them over. 
They were bills for the most part, she had had to 
dress to keep herself dainty and desirable for 
Roger. At the bottom of the heap was a letter from 
Virginia. When she became Mrs. Roger Fielding 



she would never have to worry about a bill again; 
how she would laugh when she remembered the 
small amounts for which these called! Never 
again would she feel the slight quake of dismay 
which always overtook her when she saw she words : 
" Miss Angele Mory in account with, " Out 
side of the regular monthly statement for gas she 
had never seen a bill in her father's house. Well, 
she'd have no difficulty in getting over her 
squeamish training. 

Finally she opened Jinny's letter. Her sister 
had written: 

" Angela I'm coming up for an exam, on the 
twenty-eighth. I'll arrive on the twenty-sixth or I 
could come the day before. You'll meet me, won't 
you? I know where I'm going to stay," she 
gave an address on isgth Street " but I don't 
know how to get there; I don't know your school 
hours, write and tell me so I can arrive when 
you're free. There's no reason why I should put 
you out." 

So Virginia was really coming to try her luck 
in New York. It would be nice to have her so 
near. " Though I don't suppose we'll be seeing 
so much of each other," she thought, absently 
reaching for her schedule. " Less than ever now, 
for I suppose Roger and I will live in Long 
Island; yes, that would be much wiser. I'll wear 
a veil when I go to meet her, for those coloured 
porters stare at you so and they never forget 
you." 

The twenty-seventh came on Thursday; she had 
classes in the morning ; well, Jinny would be coming 
in the afternoon anyway, and after twelve she had, 
Oh heavens that was the day, the day she was to 

153 



go out with Roger, the day that he would put the 
great question. And she wrote to Virginia: 

" Come the twenty-sixth. Honey, any time after 
four. I couldn't possibly meet you on the twenty- 
seventh. But the twenty-sixth is all right. Let 
me know when your train comes in and I'll be 
there. And welcome to our city." 



154 



CHAPTER VI 

THE week was one of tumult, almost of agony. 
After all, matters were not completely settled, you 
never could tell. She would be glad when the 
twenty-seventh had come and gone, for then, then 
she would be rooted, fixed. She and Roger would 
marry immediately. But now he was so far away, 
in Georgia ; she missed him and evidently he missed 
her for the first two days brought her long tele 
grams almost letters. " I can think of nothing but 
next Thursday, are you thinking of it too? " The 
third day brought a letter which said practically 
the same thing, adding, " Oh, Angele, I wonder 
what you will say ! " 

" But he could ask me and find out," she said 
to herself and suddenly felt assured and triumphant. 
Every day thereafter brought her a letter reiterat 
ing this strain. " And I know how he hates to 
write ! " 

The letter on Wednesday read, " Darling, when 
you get this I'll actually be in New York; if I can 
I'll call you up but I'll have to rush like mad so 
as to be free for Thursday, so perhaps I can't 
manage." 

She made up her mind not to answer the tele 
phone even if it did ring, she would strike one last 
note of indifference though only she herself would 
be aware of it. 

155 



BUNHHMHHHMHHHM5* 



It was the day on which Jinny was to arrive. 
It would be fun to see her, talk to her, hear all the 
news about the queer, staid people whom she had 
left so far behind. Farther now than ever. 
Matthew Henson was still in the post-office, she 
knew. Arthur Sawyer was teaching at Sixteenth 
and Fitzwater; she could imagine the sick distaste 
that mantled his face every time he looked at 
the hideous, discoloured building. Porter had 
taken his degree in dentistry but he was not prac 
tising, on the contrary he was editing a small weekly, 
getting deeper, more and more hopelessly into 
debt she was sure. ... It would be fun some 
day to send him a whopping cheque; after all, 
he had taken a chance just as she had; she 
recognized his revolt as akin to her own, only he 
had not had her luck. She must ask Jinny about 
all this. 

It was too bad that she had to meet her sister, 
but she must. Just as likely as not she'd be car 
sick and then New York was terrifying for the 
first time to the stranger, she had known an 
instant's sick dread herself that first day when 
she had stood alone and ignorant in the great 
rotunda of the station. But she was different 
from Jinny; nothing about life ever made her 
really afraid; she might hurt herself, suffer, meet 
disappointment, but life could not alarm her; 
she loved to come to grips with it, to force it to 
a standstill, to yield up its treasures. But Jinny 
although brave, had secret fears, she was really 
only a baby. Her little sister ! For the first time 
in months she thought of her with a great surge 
of sisterly tenderness. 

It was time to go. She wore her most un- 

156 



BUN^HHHHHHHHHH^ 

obtrusive clothes, a dark blue suit, a plain white 
silk shirt, a dark blue, bell-shaped hat a cloche 
small and fitting down close over her eyes. 
She pulled it down even farther and settled her 
modish veil well over the tip of her nose. It 
was one thing to walk about the Village with Miss 
Powell. There were practically no coloured 
people there. But this was different. Those 
curious porters should never be able to recognize 
her. Seymour Porter had worked among them 
one summer at Broad Street station in Philadel 
phia. He used to say : " They aren't really 
curious, you know, but their job makes them sick; 
so they're always hunting for the romance, for the 
adventure which for a day at least will take the 
curse off the monotonous obsequiousness of their 
lives." 

She was sorry for them, but she could not 
permit them to remedy their existence at her 
expense. 



In her last letter she had explained to Jinny 
about those two troublesome staircases which lead 
from the train level of the New York Pennsyl 
vania Railroad ^station to] the street level. 
;< There's no use my trying to tell you which one 
to take in order to bring you up to the right hand 
or to the left hand side of the elevator because 
I never know myself. So all I can say, dear, is 
when you do get up to the elevator just stick to 
it and eventually I'll see you or you'll see me as 
I revolve around it. Don't you move, for it 
might turn out that we were both going in the 
same direction." 



BUNHHHHHHH--HMH' 



True to her own instructions, she was stationed 
between the two staircases, jerking her neck now 
toward one staircase, now toward the other, 
stopping short to look at the elevator itself. She 
thrust up her veil to see better. 

A man sprinted by in desperate haste, brush 
ing so closely by her that the corner of his 
suit-case struck sharply on the thin inner curve 
of her knee. 

" My goodness ! " she exclaimed involuntarily. 

For all his haste he was a gentleman, for he pulled 
off his hat, threw her a quick backward glance 
and began: "I beg your why darling, darling, 
you don't mean to say you came to meet me ! " 

" Meet you ! I thought you came in this 
morning." It was Roger, Roger and the sight 
of him made her stupid with fear. 

He stooped and kissed her, tenderly, possess 
ively. " I did, oh Angela you are a beauty ! 
Only a beauty can wear plain things like that. 
I did come in this morning but I'm trying to 
catch Kirby, my father's lawyer, he ought to be 
coming in from Newark just now and I thought 
I'd take him down to Long Island with me for 
the night. I've got a lot of documents for him 
here in this suitcase that Georgia business was 
most complicated that way I won't have to 
hunt him up in the morning and I'll have more 
time to to arrange for our trip in the afternoon. 
What are you doing here? " 

What was she doing there? Waiting for her 
sister Jinny who was coloured and who showed 
it. And Roger hated Negroes. She was lost, 
ruined, unless she could get rid of him. She told 
the first lie that came into her mind, 

158 



*HHH~HHHH"H-PLUM BUN* * * * -HHHHHS* 

" I'm waiting for Paulette." All this could be 
fixed up with Paulette later. Miss Lister would 
think as little of deceiving a man, any man, as 
she would of squashing a mosquito. They were 
fair game and she would ask no questions. 

His face clouded. " Can't say I'm so wild 
about your waiting for Paulette. Well we can 
wait together is she coming up from Philadelphia? 
That train's bringing my man too from Newark." 
He had the male's terrible clarity of under 
standing for train connections. 

' What time does your train go to Long Island? 
I thought you wanted to get the next one." 

" Well, I'd like to but they're only half an 
hour apart. I can wait. Better the loss of an 
hour to-day than all of to-morrow morning. We 
can wait together; see the people are beginning 
to come up. I wish I could take you home but 
the minute he shows up I'll have to sprint with 
him." 

" Now God be on my side," she prayed. 
Sometimes these trains were very long. If Mr. 
Kirby were in the first car and Jinny toward 
the end that would make all of ten minutes' 
difference. If only she hadn't given those explicit 
directions ! 

There was Jinny, her head suddenly emerging 
into view above the stairs. She saw Angela, 
waved her hand. In another moment she would 
be flinging her arms about her sister's neck; she 
would be kissing her and saying, " Oh, Angela, 
Angela darling ! " 

And Roger, who was no fool, would notice 
the name Angela Angele; he would know no 
Coloured girl would make a mistake like this. 

159 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 



She closed her eyes in a momentary faintness, 
opened them again. 

" What's the matter? " said Roger sharply, 
" are you sick? " 

Jinny was beside her. Now, now the bolt would 
fall. She heard the gay, childish voice saying 
laughingly, assuredly: 

" I beg your pardon, but isn't this Mrs. Hen 
rietta Jones? " 

Oh, God was good ! Here was one chance if 
only Jinny would understand ! In his astonish 
ment Roger had turned from her to face the 
speaker. Angela, her eyes beseeching her sister's 
from under her close hat brim, could only stammer 
the old formula: " Really you have the advantage 
of me. No, I'm not Mrs. Jones." 

Roger said rudely, " Of course she isn't Mrs. 
Jones. Come, Angle." Putting his arm through 
hers he stooped for the suitcase. 

But Jinny, after a second's bewildered but 
incredulous stare, was quicker even than they. 
Her slight figure, her head high, preceded them; 
vanished into a telephone booth. 
^fRoger glared after her. " Well of all the 
damned cheek ! " 



For the first time in the pursuit of her chosen 
ends she began to waver. Surely no ambition, no 
pinnacle of safety was supposed to call fpr the 
sacrifice of a sister. She might be selfish, oh, 
undoubtedly she had been selfish all these months 
to leave Jinny completely to herself but she had 
never meant to be cruel. She tried to picture the 

1 60 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



tumult of emotions in her sister's mind, there must 
have been amazement, oh she had seen it all 
on her face, the utter bewilderment, the incredu 
lity and then the settling down on that face of a 
veil of dignity and pride like a baby trying to 
harden its mobile features. She was in her apart 
ment again now, pacing the floor, wondering what 
to do. Already she had called up the house in 
1 39th Street, it had taken her a half-hour to get 
the number for she did not know the householder's 
name and " Information " had been coy, but 
Miss Murray had not arrived yet. Were they 
expecting her? Yes, Miss Murray had written to 
say that she would be there between six and seven ; 
it was seven-thirty now and she had not appeared. 
Was there any message? " No, no! " Angela ex 
plained she would call again. 

But where was Jinny? She couldn't be lost, 
after all she was grown-up and no fool, she could 
ask directions. Perhaps she had taken a cab and 
in the evening traffic had been delayed, or had 
met with an accident. This thought sent Angela 
to the telephone again. There was no Miss 
Murray as yet. In her wanderings back and 
forth across the room she caught sight of herself 
in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her eyes 
shining with remorse and anxiety. Her vanity 
reminded her: " If Roger could just see me now ". 
Roger and to-morrow ! He would have to speak 
words of gold to atone for this breach which 
for his sake she had made in her sister's 
trust and aflecton. 

At the end of an hour she called again. Yes, 
Miss Murray had come in. So great was her 
relief that her knees sagged under her. Yes of 
L 161 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

course they would ask her to come to the telephone. 
After a long silence the voice rang again over the 
wire. " I didn't see her go out but she must have 
for she's not in her room." 

" Oh all right," said Angela, " the main thing 
was to know that she was there." But she was 
astonished. Jinny's first night in New York and 
she was out already ! She could not go to see her 
Thursday because of the engagement with Roger, 
but she'd make good the next day; she'd be there 
the first thing, Friday morning. Snatching up a 
sheet of note-paper she began a long letter full 
of apologies and excuses. " And I can't come 
to-morrow, darling, because as I told you I have 
a very important engagement, an engagement 
that means very much to me. Oh you'll under 
stand when I tell you about it." She put a special 
delivery stamp on the letter. 

Her relief at learning that Jinny was safe did 
not ease her guilty conscience. In a calmer mood 
she tried now to find excuses for herself, extenuat 
ing circumstances. As soon as Jinny understood 
all that was involved she would overlook it. After 
all, Jinny would want her to be happy. " And 
anyway," she thought to herself sulkily j " Mamma 
didn't speak to Papa that day that we were stand 
ing on the steps of the Hotel Walton." But she 
knew that the cases were not analogous; no prin 
ciple was involved, her mother's silence had 
not exposed her husband to insult or con 
tumely, whereas Roger's attitude to Virginia had 
been distinctly offensive. " And moreover," her 
thoughts continued with merciless clarity, " when 
a principle was at stake your mother never hesi 
tated a moment to let those hospital attendants 

162 



**HHHKHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 

know of the true status of affairs. In fact she 
was not aware that she was taking any particular 
stand. Her husband was her husband and she 
was glad to acknowledge that relationship." 

A sick distaste for her action, for her daily decep 
tion, for Roger and his prejudices arose within her. 
But with it came a dark anger against a country 
and a society which could create such an issue. 
And she thought: " If I had spoken to Jinny, 
had acknowledged her, what good would it have 
done me or her either? After it was all over she 
would have been exactly where she was before and 
I would have lost everything. And I do so want 
to be happy, to have a good time. At this very 
hour to-morrow I'll probably be one of the most 
envied girls in New York. And afterwards I can 
atone for it all. I'll be good to all sorts of people; 
I'll really help humanity, lots of coloured folks will 
be much better off on account of me. And if I 
had spoken to Jinny I could never have helped 
them at all." Once she murmured: "I'll help 
Jinny too, the darling ! She shall have everything 
in the world she wants." But in her heart she 
knew already that Jinny would want nothing. 



163 



CHAPTER VII 

THURSDAY came and Thursday sped as Thursdays 
will. For a long time Angela saw it as a little 
separate entity of time shut away in some hidden 
compartment of her mind, a compartment whose 
door she dreaded to open. 

On Friday she called up her sister early in 
the morning. " Is that you, Jinny? Did you 
get my letter? Is it all right for me to come 
up?" 

" Yes," said Jinny noncomittally, to all questions, 
then laconically: "But you'd better come right 
away if you want to catch me. I take the exam 
ination to-day and haven't much time." 

Something in the matter-of-factness of her reply 
disconcerted Angela. Yet there certainly was no 
reason why her sister should show any enthusiasm 
over seeing her. Only she did want to see her, 
to talk to some one of her very own to-day. 
She would like to burrow her head in 
Virginia's shoulder and cry! But a mood 
such as Jinny's voice indicated did not invite 
confidences. 

A stout brown-skinned bustling woman suggest 
ing immense assurance and ability opened the door. 
" Miss Murray told me that she was expecting some 
one. You're to go right on up. Her's is the room 
right next to the third storey front." 

164 



" She was expecting someone." Evidently 
Virginia had been discreet. This unexpected, 
unsought for carefulness carried a sting with it. 

" Hello/' said Jinny, casually thrusting a dishev 
elled but picturesque head out of the door. " Can 
you find your way in? This room's larger than 
any two we ever had at home, yet already it looks 
like a ship at sea." She glanced about the dis 
ordered place. " I wonder if this is what they 
mean by s shipshape '. Here I'll hang up this 
suit, then you can sit down. Isn't it a sweetie? 
Got it at Snellenburg's." 

She had neither kissed nor offered to shake 
hands with her sister, yet her manner was friendly 
enough, even cordial. " See I've bobbed my 
hair," she went on. " Like it? I'm wild about 
it even if it does take me forever to fix it." Stand 
ing before a mirror she began shaping the ends 
under with a curling iron. 

Angela thought she had never seen any one so 
pretty and so colourful. Jinny had always shown 
a preference for high colours; to-day she was 
revelling in them; her slippers were high heeled 
small red mules; a deep green dressing-gown hung 
gracefully from her slim shoulders and from its 
open collar flamed the rose and gold of her smooth 
skin. Her eyes were bright and dancing. Her 
hair, black, alive and curling, ended in a thick 
velvety straightness like cut plush. 

Angela said stiffly, " I hope I didn't get you up, 
telephoning so early." 

Virginia smiled, flushing a little more deeply 
under the dark gold of her skin. " Oh dear no ! 
I'd already had an earlier call than that this morn- 
ing." 

165 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHS* 



" You had ! " exclaimed Angela, astonished. 
" I didn't know you knew anyone in New York." 
She remembered her sister's mysterious disap 
pearance the first night of her arrival. " And see 
here, Jinny, Pm awfully sorry about what hap 
pened the other night. I wouldn't have had it 
happen for a great deal. I wish I could explain 
to you about it." How confidently she had 
counted on having marvellous news to tell Vir 
ginia and now how could she drag to the light 
yesterday's sorry memory? "But I called you 
up again and again and you hadn't arrived and 
then when they finally did tell me that you had 
come, it appeared that you had gone out. Where 
on earth did you go? " 

Jinny began to laugh, to giggle in fact. For a 
moment she was the Virginia of her school days, 
rejoicing in some innocent mischief, full of it. "I 
wasn't out. There's a wash-room down the hall 
and I went there to wash my face, -- " it clouded 
a moment. " And when I came back I walked as 
I thought into my room. Instead of that I had 
walked into the room of another lodger. And 
there he sat -- " 

" Oh," said Angela inattentively. " I'm glad 
you weren't out. I was quite worried. Listen, 
Virginia," she began desperately, " I know you 
think that what I did in the station the other day 
was unspeakable; it seems almost impossible for 
me to explain it to you. But that man with me 
was a very special friend, -- " 

" He must have been indeed," Jinny inter 
rupted drily, " to make you cut your own sister." 
She was still apparently fooling with her hair, her 
head perched on one side, her eyes glued to the 

1 66 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHMMHHHHHHHH^ 

mirror. But she was not making much progress 
and her lips were trembling. 

Angela proceeded unheeding, afraid to stop. 
" A special friend, and we had come to a very 
crucial point in our relationship. It was with him 
that I had the engagement yesterday.'* 

" Well, what about it? Were you expecting 
him to ask you to marry him? Did he? " 

" No," said Angela very low, " that's just what 
he didn't do though he, he asked everything 
else." 

Virginia, dropping the hair-brush, swung 
about sharply. " And you let him talk like 
that? " 

" I couldn't help it once he had begun, I was 
so taken by surprise, and, besides, I think that his 
ultimate intentions are all right." 

" His ultimate intentions ! Why, Angela what 
are you talking about? You know perfectly well 
what his ultimate intentions are. Isn't he a white 
man? Well, what kind of intentions would he 
have toward a coloured woman? " 

" Simple ! He doesn't know I'm coloured. And 
besides some of them are decent. You must 
remember that I know something about these 
people and you don't, you couldn't, living that 
humdrum little life of yours at home." 

" I know enough about them and about men in 
general to recognize an insult when I hear one. 
Some men bear their character stamped right on 
their faces. Now this man into whose room t 
walked last night by mistake, " 

" I don't see how you can do very much talking 
walking into strange men's rooms at ten o'clock 
at night." 

167 



BUNHMHHHHHHHHMf- 



The triviality of the retort left Jinny dumb. 
It was their first quarrel. 



They sat in silence for a few minutes, for several 
minutes. Virginia, apparently completely com 
posed, was letting the tendrils of her mind reach 
far, far out to the ultimate possibilities of this 
impasse in relationship between herself and her 
sister. She thought: " I really have lost her, 
she's really gone out of my ken just as I used to 
lose her years ago when father and I would be 
singing 'The Dying Christian '. I'm twenty-three 
years old and I'm really all alone in the world." 
Up to this time she had always felt she had Angela's 
greater age and supposedly greater wisdom to 
fall back on, but she banished this conjecture 
forever. " Because if she could cut me when she 
hadn't seen me for a year for the sake of a man 
who she must have known meant to insult her, she 
certainly has no intention of openly acknowledging 
me again. And I don't believe I want to be a 
sister in secret. I hate this hole and corner busi 
ness." 

She saw again the scene in the station, herself 
at first so serene, so self-assured, Angela's confused 
coldness, Roger's insolence. Something hardened, 
grew cold within her. Even his arrogance had 
failed to bring Angela to her senses, and suddenly 
she remembered that it had been possible in slavery 
times for white men and women to mistreat their 
mulatto relations, their own flesh and blood, selling 
them into deeper slavery in the far South or stand 
ing by watching them beaten, almost, if not com- 

168 



pletely, to death. Perhaps there was something 
fundamentally different between white and coloured 
blood after all. Aloud she said : " You know 
before you went away that Sunday morning you 
said that you and I were different. Perhaps 
you're right, Angela; perhaps there is an extra 
infusion of white blood in your veins which lets 
you see life at another angle. If that's the case 
I have no right to judge you. You must forgive 
my ignorant comments." 

She began slipping into a ratine dress of old blue 
trimmed with narrow collars and cuffs and a tiny 
belt of old rose. Above the soft shades the bronze 
and black of her head etched themselves sharply; 
she might have been a dainty bird of Paradise cast 
in a new arrangement of colours but her tender 
face was set in strange and implacable lines. 

Angela looked at her miserably. She had not 
known just what, in her wounded pride and 
humiliation, she had expected to gain from her 
sister, but certainly she had hoped for some balm. 
And in any event not this cool aloofness. She had 
forgotten that her sister might be suffering from a 
wound as poignant as her own. The year had 
made a greater breach than she had anticipated; 
she had never been as outspoken, as frank with 
Virginia as the latter had been with her, but there 
had always been a common ground between them, 
a meeting place. In the household Jinny had had 
something of a reputation for her willingness to 
hear all sides of a story, to find an excuse or make 
one. 

An old aphorism of Hetty Daniels returned to 
her. " He who would have friends must show 
himself friendly." And she had done anything 

169 



BUN-HHHH^-HHHHH^ 



but that; she had neglected Jinny, had failed to 
answer her letters, had even planned, was it 
only day before yesterday ! to see very little of her 
in what she had dreamed would be her new sur 
roundings. Oh she had been shameful ! But she 
would make it up to Jinny now and then she 
could come to her at this, this crisis in her life 
which so frightened and attracted her. She was 
the more frightened because she felt that attraction. 
She would make her sister understand the desires 
and longings which had come to her in this strange, 
dear, free world, and then together they would 
map out a plan of action. Jinny might be a baby 
but she had strength. So much strength, said 
something within her, that just as likely as not she 
would say: " Let the whole thing go, Angela, 
Angela! You don't want to be even on the out 
skirts of a thing like this." 

Before she could begin her overtures Jinny was 
speaking. " Listen, Angela, I've got to be going. 
I don't know when we'll be seeing each other again, 
and after what happened Wednesday you can 
hardly expect me to be looking you up, and as 
you doubtless are very busy you'd hardly be coming 
'way up here. But there are one or two things I 
want to talk to you about. First about the 
house." 

" About the house? Why it's yours. I've 
nothing more to do with it." 

" I know, but I'm thinking of selling it. 
There is such a shortage of houses in Philadel 
phia just now; Mr. Hallowell says I can get at 
least twice as much as father paid for it. And in 
that case you've some more money coming to 
you." 

170 



If only she had known of this, when? twenty- 
four hours earlier, how differently she might have 
received Roger's proposition. If she had met Vir 
ginia Wednesday and had had the talk for which 
she had planned! 

" Well of course it would be awfully nice to have 
some more money. But what I don't understand 
is how are you going to live? What are you going 
to do? " 

" If I pass this examination I'm coming over 
here, my appointment would be only a matter 
of a few months. I'm sure of that. This is May 
and I'd only have to wait until September. Well, 
I wouldn't be working this summer anyway. And 
there's no way in the world which I could fail to 
pass. In fact I'm really thinking of taking a 
chance and coming over here to substitute. Mr. 
Holloster, the University of Pennsylvania man, has 
been investigating and he says there's plenty of 
work. And I guess I'm due to have a change; 
New York rather appeals to me. And there cer 
tainly is something about Harlem ! " In spite of 
her careless manner Angela knew she was thinking 
about Matthew Henson. She stretched out her 
hand, pulled Jinny's head down on her shoulder. 
" Oh darling, don't worry about him. Matthew 
really wasn't the man for you." 

" Well," said Virginia, " as long as I think he 
was, the fact that he wasn't doesn't make any real 
difference, does it? At least not at first. But I 
certainly shan't worry about it." 

" No don't, I, " It was on the tip of her 

tongue to say " I know two or three nice young 
men whom you can play around with. I'll intro 
duce you to them." But could she? Jinny 

171 



understood her silence; smiled and nodded. " It's 
all right, honey, you can't do anything; you 
would if you could. We've just got to face the 
fact that you and I are two separate people and 
we've got to live our lives apart, not like the Siamese 
twins. And each of us will have to go her chosen 
way. After all each of us is seeking to get all she 
can out of life ! and if you can get more out of it 
by being white, as you undoubtedly can, why, 
why shouldn't you? Only it seems to me that 
there are certain things in living that are more 
fundamental even than colour, but I don't know. 
I'm all mixed up. But evidently you don't feel 
that way, and you're just as likely to be right as 



me." 



"Jinny!" 

" My dear, I'm not trying to reproach you. 
I'm trying to look at things without sentiment. 
After all, in a negative way, merely by saying 
nothing, you're disclaiming your black blood in a 
country where it is an inconvenience, oh ! there's 
not a doubt about that. You may be proud of it, 
you may be perfectly satisfied with it I am but 
it certainly can shut you out of things. So why 
shouldn't you disclaim a living manifestation of 
that blood? " 

Before this cool logic Angela was silent. Virginia 
looked at her sister, a maternal look oddly apparent 
on her young face. When she was middle-aged she 
would be the embodiment of motherhood. How 
her children would love her ! 

" Angela, you'll be careful ! " 

" Yes, darling. Oh if only I could make you 
understand what it's all about." 

' Yes, well, perhaps another time. I've got to 

172 



BUNHH^HHHHHHHHH- 



fly now." She hesitated, took Angela by the arms 
and gazed into her eyes. " About this grand 
white party that you were in the station with. Are 
you awfully in love with him? " 

" Fm not in love with him at all." 

" Oh, pshaw ! " said innocent Virginia, " you've 
got nothing to worry about! Why, what's all the 
shooting for? " 



173 



PLUM BUN 



CHAPTER I 

ANGELA wanted to ride downtown with her sister. 
" Perhaps I might bring you luck." But on this 
theme Jinny was adamant. " You'd be much 
more likely to bring yourself bad luck. No, 
there's no sense in taking a chance. I'll take the 
elevated; my landlady said it would drop me 
very near the school where I'm taking the exam 
ination. You go some other way." Down in 
the hall Mrs. Gloucester was busy dusting, her 
short bustling figure alive with housewifely ardour. 
Virginia paused near her and held out her hand 
to Angela. " Good-bye, Miss Mory," she said 
wickedly, " it was very kind of you to give me so 
much time. If you can ever tear yourself away 
from your beloved Village, come up and I'll try 
to show you Harlem. I don't think it's going to 
take me long to learn it." 

Obediently Angela let her go her way and walk 
ing over to Seventh Avenue mounted the 'bus, 
smarting a little under Jinny's generous pre 
cautions. But presently she began to realize their 
value, for at One Hundred and Fourteenth Street 
Anthony Cross entered. He sat down beside her. 
" I never expected to see you in my neighbour 
hood." 

" Oh is this where you live? I've often won 
dered." 



^*HHHHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5* 

" As it happens I've just come here, but I've 
lived practically all over New York." He was 
thin, restless, unhappy. His eyes dwelt cease 
lessly on her face. She said a little nervously: 

" It seems to me I hardly ever see you any more. 
What do you do with yourself? " 

" Nothing that you would be interested in." 

She did not dare make the obvious reply and 
after all, though she did like him very much, 
she was not interested in his actions. For a long 
moment she sought for some phrase which would 
express just the right combination of friendliness 
and indifference. 

" It's been a long time since we've had lunch 
together; come and have it to-day with me. You 
be my guest." She thought of Jinny and the 
possible sale of the house. " I've just found out 
that I'm going to get a rather decent amount of 
money, certainly enough to stand us for lunch." 

" Thank you, I have an engagement; besides I 
don't want to lunch with you in public." 

This was dangerous ground. Flurried, she 
replied unwisely: " All right, come in some time 
for tea; every once in a while I make a batch 
of cookies ; I made some a week ago. Next time 
I feel the mood coming on me I'll send you a 
card and you can come and eat them, hot and 
hot." 

" You know you've no intention of doing any 
such thing. Besides you don't know my address." 

" An inconvenience which can certainly be 
rectified," she laughed at him. 

But he was in no laughing mood. " I've no 
cards with me, but they wouldn't have the address 
anyway." He tore a piece of paper out of his 



BUN-HHHHHHHHH-* 



notebook, scribbled on it. " Here it is. I have to 
get off now." He gave her a last despairing look. 
" Oh, Angel, you know you're never going to send 
for me ! " 

The bit of paper clutched firmly in one hand, 
she arrived finally at her little apartment. Natur 
ally of an orderlv turn of mind she looked about 
for her address book in which to write the street 
and number. But some unexplained impulse led 
her to smooth the paper out and place it in a 
corner of her desk. That done she took off her 
hat and gloves, sat down in the comfortable chair 
and prepared to face her thoughts. 



Yesterday ! Even now at a distance of twenty- 
four hours she had not recovered her equilibrium. 
She was still stunned, still unable to realize the 
happening of the day. Only she knew that she 
had reached a milestone in her life; a possible 
turning point. If she did not withdraw from her 
acquaintanceship with Roger now, even though 
she committed no overt act she would never be 
the same ; she could never again face herself with 
the old, unshaken pride and self-confidence. She 
would never be the same to herself. If she with 
drew, then indeed, indeed she would be the same 
old Angela Murray, the same girl save for a little 
sophistication that she had been before she left 
Philadelphia, only she would have started on an 
adventure and would not have seen it to its finish, 
she would have come to grips with life and would 
have laid down her arms at the first onslaught. 
Would she be a coward or a wise, wise woman? 

179 



^HHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHS' 

She thought of two poems that she had read in 
" Hart's Glass-Book ", an old, old book of her 
father's, one of them ran: 

'He either fears his fate too much 

Or his deserts are small, 
Who dares not put it to the touch 
For fear of losing all.' 

The other was an odd mixture of shrewdness 
and cowardice: 

'He who fights and runs away 

Shall live to fight another day 
But he who is in battle slain 
Has fallen ne'er to rise again.' 

Were her deserts small or should she run away 
and come back to fight another day when she was 
older, more experienced? More experienced! 
How was she to get that experience? Already she 
was infinitely wiser, she would, if occasion required 
it, exercise infinitely more wariness than she had 
yesterday with Roger. Yet it was precisely be 
cause of that experience that she would know how 
to meet, would even know when to expect similar 
conditions. 

She thought that she knew which verse she 
would follow if she were Jinny, but, back once 
more in the assurance of her own rooms, she knew 
that she did not want to be Jinny, that she and 
Jinny were two vastly different persons. " But," 
she said to herself, " if Jinny were as fair as I and 
yet herself and placed in the same conditions as 
those in which I am placed her colour would save 

1 80 



BUNHHHMMHHMHHH' 



her. It's a safeguard for Jinny; it's always been 
a curse for me." 



Roger had come for her in the blue car. There 
were a hamper and two folding chairs and a rug 
stored away in it. It was a gorgeous day. " If 
we can," he said, " we'll picnic." He was ex 
tremely handsome and extremely nervous. Angela 
was nervous too, though she did not show it except 
in the loss of her colour. She was rather plain 
to-day; to be so near the completion of her goal 
and yet to have to wait these last few agonizing 
moments, perhaps hours, was deadly. They were 
rather silent for a while, Roger intent on his driv 
ing. Traffic in New York is a desperate strain 
at all hours, at eleven in the morning it is deadly; 
the huge leviathan of a city is breaking into the 
last of its stride. For a few hours it will proceed 
at a measured though never leisurely pace and 
then burst again into the mad rush of the home 
ward bound. 

But at last they were out of the city limits and 
could talk. For the first time since she had known 
him he began to speak of his possessions. " Any 
thing, anything that money can buy, Angele, I 
can get and I can give." His voice was charged 
with intention. They were going in the direction 
of Forest Hills ; he had a cottage out there, perhaps 
she would like to see it. And there was a grove 
not far away. " We'll picnic there," he said, 
" and and talk." He certainly was nervous, 
Angela thought, and liked him the better for 
it. 

181 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH 



The cottage or rather the house in Forest Hills 
was beautiful, absolutely a gem. And it was 
completely furnished with taste and marked dainti 
ness. " What do you keep it furnished for? " 
asked Angela wondering. Roger murmured that 
it had been empty for a long time but he had seen 
this equipment and it had struck him that it 
was just the thing for this house so he had bought 
it; thereby insensibly reminding his com 
panion again that he could afford to gratify any 
whim. They drove away from the exquisite little 
place in silence. Angela was inclined to be 
amused; surely no one could have asked for a 
better opening than that afforded by the house. 
What would make him talk, she wondered, and 
what, oh what would he say? Something far, far 
more romantic than poor Matthew Henson could 
ever have dreamed of, yes and far, far less 
romantic, something subconscious prompted her, 
than Anthony Gross had said. Anthony with his 
poverty and honour and desperate vows ! 

They had reached the grove, they had spread 
the rug and a tablecloth; Roger had covered it 
with dainties. He would not let her lift a finger, 
she was the guest and he her humble servant. She 
looked at him smiling, still forming vague con 
trasts with him and Matthew and Anthony. 

Roger dropped his sandwich, came and sat 
behind her. He put his arm around her and 
shifted his shoulder so that her head lay against 
it. 

" Don't look at me that way Angele, Angele ! 
I can't stand it." 

So it was actually coming. " How do you want 
me to look at you? " 

182 



* *} * * * * * * * * * PLUM BUNHHHMHMHHHHHf* 

He bent his head down to hers and kissed her. 
" Like this, like this ! Oh Angele, did you like 
the house? " 

" Like it? I loved it." 

" Darling, I had it done for you, you know. I 
thought you'd like it. 35 

It seemed a strange thing to have done without 
consulting her, and anyway she did not want to 
live in a suburb. Opal Street had been suburb 
enough for her. She wanted, required, the noise 
and tumult of cities. 

" I don't care for suburbs, Roger." How 
strange for him to talk about a place to live in 
and never a word of love ! 

" My dear girl, you don't have to live in a 
suburb if you don't want to. I've got a place, an 
apartment in Seventy-second Street, seven rooms; 
that would be enough for you and your maid, 
wouldn't it? I could have this furniture moved 
over there, or if you think it too cottagey, you could 
have new stuff altogether." 

Seven rooms for three people ! Why she wanted 
a drawing-room and a studio and where would he 
put his things? This sudden stinginess was quite 
inexplicable. 

" But Roger, seven rooms wouldn't be big 
enough." 

He laughed indulgently, his face radiant with 
relief and triumph. " So she wants a palace, 
does she? Well, she shall have it. A whole 
menage if you want it, a place on Riverside Drive, 
servants and a car. Only somehow I hadn't 
thought of you as caring about that kind of thing. 
After that little hole in the wall you've been living 
in on Jayne Street I'd have expected you to find 

183 



BUN-HHHHHMHHHMf' 



the place in Seventy-second Street as large as 
you'd care for." 

A little hurt, she replied: "But I was think 
ing of you too. There wouldn't be room for your 
things. And I thought you'd want to go on living 
in the style you'd been used to." A sudden wel 
come explanation dawned on her rising fear. 
" Are you keeping this a secret from your father? 
Is that what's the trouble? " 

Under his thin, bright skin he flushed. " Keep 
ing what a secret from my father? What are you 
talking about, Angele? " 

She countered with his own question. " What 
are you talking about, Roger? " 

He tightened his arms about her, his voice stam 
mered, his eyes were bright and watchful. " I'm 
asking you to live in my house, to live for me; 
to be my girl ; to keep a love-nest where I and only 
I may come." He smiled shamefacedly over the 
cheap current phrase. 

She pushed him away from her; her jaw fallen 
and slack but her figure taut. Yet under her 
stunned bewilderment her mind was racing. So 
this was her castle, her fortress of protection, her 
refuge. And what answer should she make? 
Should she strike him across his eager, half-shamed 
face, should she get up and walk away, forbidding 
him to follow? Or should she stay and hear it out? 
Stay and find out what this man was really like; 
what depths were in him and, she supposed, in 
other men. But especially in this man with his boy 
ish, gallant air and his face as guileless and as inno 
cent apparently as her own. 



184 



That was what she hated in herself, she told that 
self fiercely , shut up with her own thoughts the next 
afternoon in her room. She hated herself for stay 
ing and listening. It had given him courage to 
talk and talk. But what she most hated had been 
the shrewdness, the practicality which lay beneath 
that resolve to hear it out. She had thought of 
those bills ; she had thought of her poverty, of her 
helplessness, and she had thought too of Martha 
Burden's dictum: "You must make him want 
you." Well here was a way to make him want 
her and to turn that wanting to account. " Don't," 
Martha said, " withhold too much. Give a little." 
Suppose she gave him just the encouragement of 
listening to him, of showing him that she did like 
him a little; while he meanwhile went on wanting, 
wanting men paid a big price for their desires. 
Her price would be marriage. It was a game, she 
knew, which women played all over the world 
although it had never occurred to her to play it; 
a dangerous game at which some women burned 
their fingers. " Don't give too much," said 
Martha, " for then you lose yourself." Well, 
she would give nothing and she would not burn 
her fingers. Oh, it would be a great game. 

Another element entered too. He had wounded 
her pride and he should salve it. And the only 
unguent possible would be a proposal of marriage. 
Oh if only she could be a girl in a book and when 
he finally did ask her for her hand, she would be 
able to tell him that she was going to marry some 
one else, someone twice as eligible, twice as hand 
some, twice as wealthy. 



185 



Through all these racing thoughts penetrated the 
sound of Roger's voice, pleading, persuasive, 
seductive. She was amazed to find a certain 
shamefaced timidity creeping over her;, yet it 
was he who should have shown the shame. And 
she could not understand either why she was unable 
to say plainly: " You say you care for me, long 
for me so much, why don't you ask me to come to 
you in the ordinary way? " But some pride either 
unusually false or unusually fierce prevented her 
from doing this. Undoubtedly Roger with his 
wealth, his looks and his family connections had 
already been much sought after. He knew he was 
an " eligible ". Poor, unknown, stigmatized, if 
he but knew it, as a member of the country's 
least recognized group she could not bring her 
self to belong even in appearance to that band of 
young women who so obviously seek a " good 
match ". 

When he had paused a moment for breath she 
told him sadly: " But, Roger, people don't do 
that kind of thing, not decent people." 

" Angele, you are such a child ! This is exactly 
the kind of thing people do do. And why not? 
Why must the world be let in on the relationships 
of men and women? Some of the sweetest unions 
in history have been of this kind." 

" For others perhaps, but not for me. Relation 
ships of the kind you describe don't exist among the 
people I know." She was thinking of her parents, 
of the Hallowells, of the Hensons whose lives were 
indeed like open books. 

He looked at her curiously, " The people you 
know! Don't tell me you haven't guessed about 
Paulette!" 

1 86 



BUNHMHHHHHHHH^ 



She had forgotten about Paulette ! " Yes I 
know about her. She told me herself. I like her, 
she's been a mighty fine friend, but, Roger, you 
surely don't want me to be like her." 

" Of course I don't. It was precisely because 
you weren't like her that I became interested. You 
were such a babe in the woods. Anyone could 
see you'd had no experience with men." 

This obvious lack of logic was too bewildering. 
She looked at him like the child which, in these 
matters, she really was. " But, but Roger, 
mightn't that be a beginning of a life like Paul- 
ette's? What would become of me after we, you 
and I, had separated? Very often these things 
last only for a short time, don't they? " 

" Not necessarily; certainly not between you and 
me. And I'd always take care of you, you'd be 
provided for." He could feel her gathering 
resentment. In desperation he played a cunning 
last card: "And besides who knows, something 
permanent may grow out of this. I'm not entirely 
my own master, Angele." 

Undoubtedly he was referring to his father whom 
he could not afford to offend. It never occurred 
to her that he might be lying, for why should he? 



To all his arguments, all his half-promises and 
implications she returned a steady negative. As 
twilight came on she expressed a desire to go home ; 
with the sunset her strength failed her; she felt 
beaten and weary. Her unsettled future, her hurt 
pride, her sudden set-to with the realities of the 
society in which she had been moving, bewildered 



and frightened her. Resentful, puzzled, intro 
spective, she had no further words for Roger; 
it was impossible for him to persuade her to agree 
or to disagree with his arguments. During the long 
ride home she was resolutely mute. 

Yet on the instant of entering Jayne Street she 
felt she could not endure spending the long even 
ing hours by herself and she did not want to be 
alone with Roger. She communicated this distaste 
to him. While not dishevelled they were not 
presentable enough to invade the hotels farther 
uptown. But, anxious to please her, he told her 
they could go easily enough to one of the small 
cabarets in the Village. A few turns and windings 
and they were before a house in a dark side street 
knocking on its absurdly barred door, entering its 
black, myterious portals. In a room with a highly 
polished floor, a few tables and chairs, some rather 
bizarre curtains, five or six couples were sitting, 
among them Paulette, Jack Hudson, a tall, rather 
big, extremely blonde girl whose name Angela 
learned was Garlotta Parks, and a slender, black- 
avised man whose name she failed to catch. Paul 
ette hailed him uproariously; the blonde girl rose 
and precipitately threw her arms about Fielding's 
neck. 

"Roger!" 

" Don't," he said rather crossly. " Hello, Jack." 
He nodded to the dark man whom he seemed to 
know indifferently well. " What have they got to 
eat here, you fellows? Miss Mory and I are tired 
and hungry. We've been following the pike all 
day." Miss Parks turned and gave Angela a long, 
considering look. 

" Sit here," said Paulette, " there's plenty of 

1 88 



**HHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHHHH5' 

room. Jack, you order for them, the same things 
we've been having. You get good cooking here." 
She was radiant with happiness and content. 
Under the influence of the good, stimulating food 
Angela began to recover, to look around her. 

Jack Hudson, a powerfully built bronze figure 
of a man, beamed on Paulette, saying nothing and 
in his silence saying everything. The dark man 
kept his eyes on Carlotta, who was oblivious to 
everyone but Roger, clearly her friend of long 
standing. She sat clasping one of his hands, her 
head almost upon his shoulder. " Roger it's so 
good to see you again ! I've thought of you so 
often ! I've been meaning to write to you ; we're 
having a big house party this summer. You must 
come ! Dad's asking up half of Washington ; 
attaches, ( Prinzessen, Counte?sen and serene Eng 
lish Altessen'; he'll come up for week-ends." 

A member of the haut monde, evidently she was 
well-connected, powerful, even rich. A girl of 
Roger's own set amusing herself in this curious 
company. Angela felt her heart contract with a 
sort of helpless jealousy. 

The dark man, despairing of recapturing Car 
lo tta's attention, suddenly asked Angele if she would 
care to dance. He was a superb partner and for 
a moment or two, reinvigorated by the food and the 
snappy musk, she became absorbed in the smooth, 
gliding motion and in her partner's pleasant con 
versation. Glancing over her shoulder she noted 
Carlotta still talking to Roger. The latter, how 
ever, was plainly paying the girl no attention. His 
eyes fixed on Angela, he was moodily following her 
every motion, almost straining, she thought, to 
catch her words. His eyes met hers and a long, 

189 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH?* 

long look passed between them so fraught, it 
seemed to her, with a secret understanding and 
sympathy, that her heart shook with a moment's 
secret wavering. 

Her partner escorted her back to the table. 
Paulette, flushed and radiant, with the mien of a 
dishevelled baby, was holding forth while Hudson 
listened delightedly. As a raconteuse she had a 
faint, delicious malice which usually made any 
recital of her adventures absolutely irresistible. 
" Her name," she was saying loudly, regardless of 
possible listeners, " was Antoinette Spewer, and 
it seems she had it in for me from the very first. 
She told Sloane Corby she wanted to meet me and 
he invited both of us to lunch. When we got to 
the restaurant she was waiting for me in the lobby ; 
Sloane introduced us and she pulled a lorgnette 
on me, a lorgnette on me \ " She said it very 
much as a Westerner might speak of someone " pull 
ing " a revolver. " But I fixed that. There were 
three or four people passing near us. I drew back 
until they were well within hearing range, and 
then I said to her: ' I beg pardon but what did 
you say your last name was? ' Well, when a 
person's named Spewer she can't shout it across a 
hotel lobby ! Oh, she came climbing down off 
her high horse; she respects me to this day, I tell 
you." 

Roger rose. " We must be going; I can't let 
Miss Mory get too tired." He was all attention and 
courtesy. Miss Parks looked at her again, nar 
rowing her eyes. 

In the car Roger put his arm about her. " An- 
gele, when you were dancing with that fellow 
I couldn't stand it ! And then you looked at me, 

190 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf- 



oh such a look! You were thinking about me, I 
felt it, I knew it." 

Some treacherous barrier gave way within her. 
" Yes, and I could tell you were thinking about 
me." 

" Of course you could ! And without a word ! 
Oh, darling, darling, can't you see that's the way 
it would be? If you'd only take happiness with 
me there we would be with a secret bond, an 
invisible bond, existing for us alone and no one 
else in the world the wiser. But we should know 
and it would be all the sweeter for that secrecy." 

Unwittingly he struck a responsive chord within 
her, stolen waters were the sweetest, she of all 
people knew that. 

Aloud she said: " Here we are, Roger. Some 
of the day has been wonderful; thank you for 
that." 

" You can't go like this ! You're going to let 
me see you again? " 

She knew she should have refused him, but again 
some treacherous impulse made her assent. He 
drove away, and, turning, she climbed the long, 
steep flights of stairs, bemused, thrilled, frightened, 
curious, the sense of adventure strong upon her. 
To-morrow she would see Jinny, her own sister, her 
own flesh and blood, one of her own people. To 
gether they would thresh this thing out. 



19* 



CHAPTER II 

A CURIOUS period of duelling ensued. Roger was 
young, rich and idle. Nearly every wish he had 
ever known had been born within him only to be 
satisfied. He could not believe that he would fail 
in the pursuit of this baffling creature who had 
awakened within him an ardour and sincerity of 
feeling which surprised himself. The thought 
occurred to him more than once that it would have 
been a fine thing if this girl had been endowed 
with the name and standing and comparative 
wealth of say Carlotta Parks, but it never 
occurred to him to thwart in this matter the wishes 
of his father who would, he knew, insist immediately 
on a certified account of the pedigree, training and 
general fitness of any strange aspirant for his son's 
hand. Angela had had the good sense to be frank ; 
she did not want to become immeshed in a tissue 
of lies whose relationship, whose sequence and inter 
dependence she would be likely to forget. To 
Roger's few questions she had said quite truly that 
she was the daughter of " poor but proud parents " ; 
they had laughed at the hackneyed phrase, that 
her father had been a boss carpenter and that she 
had been educated in the ordinary public schools 
and for a time had been a school teacher. No one 
would ever try to substantiate these statements, for 
clearly the person to whom they applied would not 

192 



BUN*********** 



be falsifying such a simple account. There would 
be no point in so doing. Her little deceits had all 
been negative, she had merely neglected to say 
that she had a brown sister and that her father had 
been black. 

Roger found her unfathomable. His was the 

careless, unreasoned cynicism of the modern, 

worldly young man. He had truly, as he acknow 

ledged, been attracted to Angela because of a 

certain incurious innocence of hers apparent in her 

observations and in her manner. He saw no 

reason why he should cherish that innocence. If 

questioned he would have answered : " She's got 

to learn about the world in which she lives some 

time; she might just as well learn of it through me. 

And I'd always look out for her." In the back 

of his mind, for all his unassuming even simple 

attitude toward his wealth and power, lurked the 

conviction that that same wealth and power could 

heal any wound, atone for any loss. Still there were 

times when even he experienced a faint, inner 

qualm, when Angela would ask him: " But after 

wards, what would become of me, Roger? " It 

was the only question he could not meet. Out of all 

his hosts of precedents from historical Antony and 

Cleopatra down to notorious affinities discovered 

through blatant newspaper " stories " he could 

find for this only a stammered " There's no need 

to worry about an afterwards, Angele, for you and 

I would always be friends." 

Their frequent meetings now were little more 
than a trial of strength. Young will and deter 
mination were pitted against young will and 
determination. On both the excitement of the 
chase was strong, but each was pursuing a different 

N 193 



HHHHHH-HHH-PLUM 



quarry. To all his protestations, arguments and 
demands, Angela returned an insistent: " What 
you are asking is impossible." Yet she either 
could not or would not drive him away, and 
gradually, though she had no intention of yielding 
to his wishes, her first attitude of shocked horror 
began to change. 

For three months the conflict persisted. Roger 
interposed the discussion into every talk, on every 
occasion. Gradually it came to be the raison 
d'etre of their constant comradeship. His argu 
ments were varied and specious. " My dearest 
girl, think of a friendship in which two people 
would have every claim in the world upon each 
other and yet no claim. Think of giving all, not 
because you say to a minister ' I will ', but from 
the generosity of a powerful affection. That is 
the very essence of free love. I give you my word 
that the happiest couples in the world are those who 
love without visible bonds. Such people are bound 
by the most durable ties. Theirs is a state of the 
closest because the freest, most elastic union in the 
world." 

A singularly sweet and curious intimacy was 
growing up between them. Roger told Angela 
many anecdotes about his father and about his 
dead mother, whom he still loved, and for whom 
he even grieved in a pathetically boyish way. 
" She was so sweet to me, she loved me so. I'll 
never forget her. It's for her sake that I try to 
please my father, though Dad's some pumpkins 
on his own account." In turn she was falling into 
the habit of relating to him the little happenings 
of her every-day life, a life which she was beginning 
to realize must, in his eyes, mean the last word in 

194 



^HHHHHHHHHhPLUM 



the humdrum and the monotonous. And yet how 
full of adventure, of promise, even of mystery did 
it seem compared with Jinny's ! 

Roger had much intimate knowledge of people 
and told her many and dangerous secrets. " See 
how I trust you, Angele; you might trust me a 
little ! " 

If his stories were true, certainly she might just 
as well trust him a great deal, for all her little 
world, judging it by the standards by which she 
was used to measuring people, was tumbling in 
ruins at her feet. If this were the way people 
lived then what availed any ideals? The world 
was made to take pleasure in; one gained nothing 
by exercising simple virtue, it was after all an 
extension of the old formula which she had thought 
out for herself many years ago. Roger spent most 
of his time with her, it seemed. Anything which 
she undertook to do delighted him. She would 
accept no money, no valuable presents. " And 
I can't keep going out with you to dinners and 
luncheons forever, Roger. It would be different 
if, if we really meant anything to each other." 
He deliberately misunderstood her. " But nothing 
would give me more pleasure than for us to mean 
the world to one another." He sent her large 
hampers of fruit and even the more ordinary 
edibles; then he would tease her about being 
selfish. In order to get rid of the food she had 
asked him to lunch, to dinner, since nothing 
that she could say would make him desist from 
sending it. 

Nothing gave her greater joy really than this 
playful housekeeping. She was very lonely; 
Jinny had her own happy interests; Anthony 



H-H-HHHHH-m-UM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 

never came near her nor did she invite him to 
come; Martha Burden seemed engrossed in her 
own affairs, she was undergoing some secret strain 
that made her appear more remote, more strongly 
self-sufficient, more mysterious than ever. Paulette, 
making overt preparations to go to Russia with 
Hudson, was impossibly, hurtingly happy. Miss 
Powell, but she could not get near her; the 
young coloured girl showed her the finest kind of 
courtesy, but it had about it a remote and frozen 
quality, unbreakable. However, Angela for the 
moment did not desire to break it; she must run 
no more risks with Roger, still she put Miss Powell 
on the list of those people whom she would some 
day aid, when everything had turned out all 
right. 

The result of this feeling of loneliness was, of 
course, to turn her more closely to Roger. He 
paid her the subtle compliment of appearing abso 
lutely at home in her little apartment; he grew 
to like her plain, good cooking and the experi 
ments which sometimes she made frankly for him. 
And afterwards as the fall closed in there were 
long, pleasant evenings before an open fire, or two 
or three last hours after a brisk spin in the park 
in the blue car. And gradually she had grown to 
accept and even inwardly to welcome his caresses. 
She perched with an air of great unconsciousness 
on the arm of the big chair in which he was sitting 
but the transition became constantly easier from 
the arm of the chair to his knee, to the steely 
embrace of his arm, to the sound of the hard beat 
ing of his heart, to his murmured: " This is where 
you belong, Angele, Angele." He seemed an 
anchor for her frail, insecure bark of life. 

196 



HHHHHHHHH^PLUM BUN-Hf'-HMMHHHMHS' 

It was at moments like these that he told her 
amazing things about their few common acquaint 
ances. There was not much to say about Paulette. 
" I think," said Roger judicially, " that tempera 
mentally she is a romantic adventurer. Something 
in her is constantly seeking a change but she 
will never be satisfied. She's a good sport, she 
takes as she gives, asking nothing permanent 
and promising nothing permanent." Angela 
thought it rather sad. But Roger dismissed the 
theme with the rather airy comment that there 
were women as there were men " like that ". She 
wondered if he might not be a trifle callous. 

More than once they had spoken of Martha 
Burden; Angela confessed herself tremendously 
intrigued by the latter, by that tense, brooding 
personality. She learned that Martha, made of 
the stuff which dies for causes, was constantly 
being torn between theory and practice. 

" She's full," said Roger, " of the most high- 
falutin, advanced ideas. Oh I've known old 
Martha all my life, we were brought up together, 
it's through her really that I began to know the 
people in this part of town. She's always been a 
sort of sister. More than once I've had to yank 
her by the shoulders out of difficulties which she 
herself created. I made her marry Starr." 

" Made her marry him, didn't she want 
him? " 

" Yes, she wanted him all right, but she doesn't 
believe in marriage. She's got the courage of 
her convictions, that girl. Why actually she 
lived with Starr two years while I was away 
doing Europe. When I came back and found 
out what had happened I told Starr I'd beat 

197 



HHHHHH-H-H-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHK-HH' 

him into pulp if he didn't turn around and make 
good." 

" But why the violence? Didn't he want to? " 

" Yes, only," he remembered suddenly his own 
hopes, " not every man is capable of appreciating 
a woman who breaks through the conventions 
for him. Some men mistake it for cheapness but 
others see it for what it is and love more deeply 
and gratefully." Softly, lingeringly he touched 
the soft hair shadowing her averted cheek. " I'm 
one of those others, Angele." 

She wanted to say: "But why shouldn't we 
marry? Why not make me safe as well as 
Martha? " But again her pride intervened. 
Instead she remarked that Martha did not seem 
always happy. 

" No, well that's because she's got this fool 
idea of hers that now that they are bound the 
spontaneity is lacking. She wants to give without 
being obliged to give; to take because she chooses 
and not because she's supposed to. Oh she's as 
true as steel and the best fighter in a cause, but I've 
no doubt but that she leads old Starr a life with 
her temperament." 

Angela thought that there were probably two 
sides to this possibility. A little breathlessly she 
asked Roger if he knew Anthony Cross. 

"Cross, Cross! A sallow, rather thin fellow? 
I think I saw him once or twice at Paulette's. 
No, I don't really know him. A sullen, brooding 
sort of chap I should say. Frightfully self- 
absorbed and all that." 

For some reason a little resentment sprang up 
in her. Anthony might brood, but his life had 
been lived on dark, troublesome lines that in- 

198 



BUN*********** 



vited brooding; he had never known the broad, 
golden highway of Roger's existence. And any 
way she did not believe, if Martha Burden had 
been Anthony's lifelong friend, almost his sister, 
that he would have told his sweetheart or his wife 
either of those difficult passages in her life. Well, 
she would have to teach Roger many things. 
Aloud she spoke of Garlotta Parks. 

" She's an interesting type. Tell me about 
her." 

But Roger said rather shortly that there was 
nothing to tell. "Just a good-hearted, high- 
spirited kid, that's all, who lets the whole world 
know her feelings." 



According to Paulette there was more than|this 
to be told about Miss Parks. " i don't 'know her 
myself, not being a member of that crowd. But 
I've always heard that she and Roger were child 
hood sweethearts, only they've just not pulled it 
off. Carlotta's family is as old as his. Her people 
have always been statesmen, her father's in the 
Senate. I don't think they have much money now. 
But the main thing is she pleases old man Fielding. 
Nothing would give him more pleasure than to see 
Garlotta Roger's wife. I may be mistaken, but I 
think nothing would give Carlotta more pleasure 
either." 

" Doesn't he care for her? " Queer how her 
heart tightened, listening for the answer. 

;< Yes, but she likes him too much and shows it. 
So he thinks he doesn't want her. Roger will 
never want any woman who comes at his first 

199 



BUN-f-HHHHHHHM** 



call. Don't you hate that sort of man? They are 
really the easiest to catch; all you've got to do 
provided they're attracted at all, is to give one 
inviting glance and then keep steadily retreating. 
And they'll come like Bo Peep's sheep. But I 
don't want a man like that; he'd cramp my 
style. His impudence, expecting a woman to re 
press or evoke her emotions just as he wants them ! 
Hasn't a woman as much right to feel as a man 
and to feel first? Never mind, some woman is 
going to ' get ' Roger yet. He doesn't think it 
possible because he has wealth and position. He'll 
be glad to come running to Carlo tta then. I 
don't care very much for her, she's a little too 
loud for me," objected the demure and conserva 
tive Miss Lister, " but I do think she likes Roger 
for himself and not for what he can give her ! " 



Undoubtedly this bit of knowledge lent a new 
aspect; the adventure began to take on fresh 
interest. Everything seemed to be playing into 
her hands. Roger's interest and longing were 
certainly undiminished. Martha Burden's advice, 
confirmed by Paulette's disclosure, was bound to 
bring results. She had only to " keep retreating ". 

But there was one enemy with whom she had 
never thought to reckon, she had never counted 
on the treachery of the forces of nature ; she had 
never dreamed of the unaccountable weakening of 
those forces within. Her weapons were those fur 
nished by the conventions but her fight was against 
conditions; impulses, yearnings which antedated 
both those weapons and the conventions, which 

200 



BUNHHHMHHHHHf~H* 

furnished them. Insensibly she began to see in 
Roger something more than a golden way out of 
her material difficulties; he was becoming more 
than a means through which she should be ad 
mitted to the elect of the world for whom all 
things are made. Before her eyes he was chang 
ing to the one individual who was kindest, 
most thoughtful of her, the one whose presence 
brought warmth and assurance. Furthermore, his 
constant attention, flatteries and caresses were pro 
ducing their inevitable e fleet. She was naturally 
cold; unlike Paulette, she was a woman who 
would experience the grand passion only once, 
perhaps twice, in her life and she would always 
have to be kindled from without; in the last 
analysis her purity was a matter not of morals, 
nor of religion, nor of racial pride ; it was a matter 
of fastidiousness. Bit by bit Roger had forced 
his way closer and closer into the affairs of her 
life, and his proximity had not offended that 
fastidiousness. Gradually his demands seemed to 
her to represent a very natural and beautiful im 
pulse; his arguments and illustrations began to 
bear fruit; the conventions instead of showing in 
her eyes as the codified wisdom based on the 
experiences of countless generations of men and 
women, seemed to her prudish and unnecessary. 
Finally her attitude reduced itself to this: she 
would have none of the relationship which 
Roger urged so insistently, not because according 
to all the training which she had ever received, 
it was unlawful, but because viewed in the 
light of the great battle which she was wag 
ing for pleasure, protection and power, it was 
inexpedient. 

201 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



The summer and the early fall had passed. A 
cold, rainy autumn was closing in; the disagree 
able weather made motoring almost impossible, 
There were always the theatres and the cabarets, 
but Roger professed himself as happy nowhere 
else but at her fireside. And she loved to have 
him there, tall and strong and beautiful, some 
times radiant with hope, at others sulking with 
the assurance of defeat. He came in one day 
ostensibly to have tea with her; he had an im 
portant engagement for the evening but he could 
not let the day pass without seeing her. Angela 
was tired and a little dispirited. Jinny had 
sold the house and had sent her twelve hundred 
dollars as her share, but the original three thousand 
was almost dissipated. She must not touch this 
new gift from heaven; her goal was no nearer; 
the unwelcome possibility of teaching, on the con 
trary, was constantly before her. Moreover, she 
was at last realising the danger of this constant 
proximity, she was appalled by her thoughts and 
longings. Upon her a great fear was creeping not 
only of Roger but of herself. 

Always watchful, he quickly divined her dis 
trait mood, resolved to try its possibilities for 
himself. In a tense silence they drank their tea 
and sat gazing at the leaping, golden flames. 
The sullen night closed in. Angela reminded him 
presently that he must go but on he sat and on. 
At eight o'clock she reminded him again; he 
took out his watch and looked at it indifferently. 
" It's too late for me to keep it now, besides I 
don't want to go. Angele be kind, don't send 
me away." 

" But you've had no dinner." 

202 



" Nor you either. I'm like the beasts of the 
field keeping you like this. Shall we go out some 
where? " But she was languid; she did not 
want to stir from the warm hearth out into the 
chilly night. 

" No, I don't want to go. But you go, Roger. 
I can find something here in the house for myself, 
but there's not a thing for you. I hate to be so 
inhospitable." 

" Tell you what, suppose I go around to one of 
these delicatessens and get something. Too tired 
to fix up a picnic lunch? " 

In half an hour he returned, soaked. " It's 
raining in torrents! Why I never saw such a 
night!" He shook himself, spattering rain-drops 
all over the tiny apartment. 

" Roger ! You'll have to take off your coat ! " 

He sat in his shirt-sleeves before the fire, his hair 
curling and damp, his head on his hand. He 
looked so like a little boy that her heart shook 
within her. Turning he caught the expression in 
her eyes, sprang towards her. " Angele you know, 
you know you like me a little ! " 

" I like you a very great deal." He put his arm 
about her, kissed her; her very bones turned to 
water. She freed herself, finding an excuse to go 
into the kitchenette. But he came and stood 
towering over her in the doorway, his eyes on her 
every motion. They ate the meal, a good one, 
almost as silently as they had drunk the tea; a 
terrible awareness of each other's presence was 
upon them, the air was charged with passion. 
Outside the rain and wind beat and screamed. 

" It's a terrible night," she said, but he made no 
reply. She said again, " Roger, it's getting late ? 

203 



HHHHHHHhHH-PLUM 

you must go home." Very reluctantly then, his 
eyes still on hers, he rose to his feet, got into his 
overcoat and, hat in hand, stooped to kiss her 
good-night. His arm stole about her, holding her 
close against him. She could feel him trembling, 
she was trembling herself. Another second and the 
door had closed behind him. 

Alone, she sat looking at the fire and thinking: 
" This is awful. I don't believe anything is going 
to come of this. I believe I'll send him a note 
to-morrow and tell him not to come any more." 

Someone tapped on the door; astonished that 
a caller should appear at such an hour, but not 
afraid, she opened it. It was Roger. He came 
striding into the room, flinging off his wet coat, 
and yet almost simultaneously catching her up in 
his arms. " It's such a terrible night, Angele; you 
can't send me out in it. Why should I go when the 
fire is here and you, so warm and soft and 
sweet ! " 

All her strength left her; she could not even 
struggle, could not speak. He swept her up in his 
arms, cradling her in them like a baby with her 
face beneath his own. " You know that we were 
meant for each other, that we belong to each 
other!" 

A terrible lassitude enveloped her out of which 
she heard herself panting: " Roger, Roger let me 
go! Oh, Roger, must it be like this? Can't it be 
any other way? " 

And from a great distance she heard his voice 
breaking, pleading, promising: " Everything will 
be all right, darling, darling. I swear it. Only 
trust me, trust me ! " 



204 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



Life rushed by on a great, surging tide. She 
could not tell whether she was utterly happy or 
utterly miserable. All that she could do was to feel ; 
feel that she was Roger's totally. Her whole 
being turned toward him as a flower to the sun. 
Without him life meant nothing; with him it was 
everything. For the time being she was nothing 
but emotion ; he was amazed himself at the depth 
of feeling which he had aroused in her. 

Now for the first time she felt possessive; she 
found herself deeply interested in Roger's welfare 
because, she thought, he was hers and she could 
not endure having a possession whose qualities 
were unknown. She was not curious about his 
money nor his business affairs but she thirsted to 
know how his time away from her was spent, 
whom he saw, what other places he frequented. 
Not that she begrudged him a moment away 
from her side, but she must be able to account 
for that moment. 

Yet if she felt possessive of him her feeling also 
recognized his complete absorption of her, so com 
pletely, so exhaustively did his life seem to envelop 
hers. For a while his wishes, his pleasure were 
the end and aim of her existence ; she told herself 
with a slight tendency toward self-mockery that this 
was the explanation of being, of her being; that 
men had other aims, other uses but that the sole 
excuse for being a woman was to be just that, a 
woman. Forgotten were her ideals about her 
Art; her ambition to hold a salon; her desire to 
help other people ; even her intention of marrying 
in order to secure her future. Only something 
quite outside herself, something watchful, proud, 
remote from the passion and rapture which flamed 

205 



within her, kept her free and independent. She 
would not accept money, she would not move to 
the apartment on Seventy-second Street; she still 
refused gifts so ornate that they were practically 
bribes. She made no explanations to Roger, but 
he knew and she knew too that her surrender 
was made out of the lavish fullness and generosity 
of her heart; there was no calculation back of it; 
if this were free love the freedom was the quality to 
be stressed rather than the emotion. 

Sometimes, in her inchoate, wordless intensity 
of feeling which she took for happiness, she paused 
to take stock of that other life, those other lives 
which once she had known; that life which had 
been hers when she had first come to New York 
before she had gone to Cooper Union, in those days 
when she had patrolled Fourteenth Street and had 
sauntered through Union Square. And that other 
life which she knew in Opal Street, aeons ago, 
almost in another existence. She passed easily 
over those first few months in New York because 
even then she had been approaching a threshold, 
getting ready to enter on a new, undreamed of 
phase of being. But sometimes at night she lay 
for hours thinking over her restless, yearning child 
hood, her fruitless days at the Academy, the abor 
tive wooing of Matthew Henson. The Hensons, 
the Hallowells, Hetty Daniels, Jinny ! How far 
now she was beyond their pale! Before her rose 
the eager, starved face of Hetty Daniels ; now she 
herself was cognizant of phases of life for which 
Hetty longed but so contemned. Angela could 
imagine the envy back of the tone in which Hetty, 
had she but known it, would have expressed her 
disapproval of her former charge's manner of 

206 



^HHKHHHHHHhPLUM 



living. " Mattie Murray's girl, Angela, has gone 
straight to the bad ; she's living a life of sin with 
some man in New York." And then the final, 
blasting indictment. " He's a white man, too. 
Can you beat that? " 



207 



CHAPTER III 

ROGER'S father, it appeared, had been greatly 
pleased with his son's management of the saw-mills 
in Georgia; as a result he was making more and 
more demands on his time. And the younger 
man half through pride, half through that steady 
determination never to offend his father, was always 
ready to do his bidding. Angela liked and 
appreciated her lover's filial attitude, but even 
in the period of her warmest interest she resented, 
secretly despised, this tendency to dependence. 
He was young, superbly trained; he had the gift 
of forming friendships whose strength rested on 
his own personality, yet he distrusted too much his 
own powers or else he was lazy Angela could 
never determine which. During this phase of 
their acquaintanceship she was never sure that she 
loved him, but she was positive that if at this time 
he had been willing to fling aside his obsequious 
deference to his father's money and had said to 
her: " Angele, if you'll help me, we'll build up a 
life, a fortune of our own," she would have adored 
him. 

Her strong, independent nature, buffeted and 
sickened and strengthened by the constant attri 
tion of colour prejudice, was unable to visualise 
or to pardon the frame of mind which kept Roger 
from joining battle with life when the odds were 

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HHHh*HHHHHh*PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

already so overwhelmingly in his favour. Alone, 
possessed of a handicap which if guessed at would 
have been as disabling as a game leg or an atro 
phied body, she had dared enter the lists. And 
she was well on the way to winning a victory. It 
was to cost her, she was beginning to realize, more 
than she had anticipated. But having entered 
she was not one to draw back, unless indeed she 
changed her goal. Hers was a curious mixture of 
materialism and hedonism, and at this moment the 
latter quality was uppermost in her life. But she 
supposed that in some vague future she and Roger 
would marry. His ardour rendered her com 
placent. 

But she was not conscious of any of these inner 
conflicts and criticisms; she was too happy. Now 
she was adopting a curious detachment toward life 
tempered by a faint cynicism, a detachment 
which enabled her to say to herself: " Rules are 
for ordinary people but not for me." She remem 
bered a verse from a poet, a coloured woman about 
whom she had often wondered. The lines ran: 

"The strong demand, contend, prevail. 
The beggar is a fool!" 

She would never be a beggar. She would ask 
no further counsel nor advice of anyone. She had 
been lucky thus far in seeking advice only from 
Paulette and Martha Burden, two people of 
markedly independent methods of thought and 
action. They had never held her back. Now she 
would no longer consult even them. She would 
live her life as an individualist, to suit herself 
without regard for the conventions and established 
o 209 



BUN-HHHHHHHHHH5* 



ways of life. Her native fastidiousness, she was 
sure, would keep her from becoming an offence in 
her own eyes. 

In spite of her increasing self-confidence and 
self-sufficiency Roger's frequent absences left her 
lonely. Almost then, without any conscious plan 
ning on her part, she began to work at her 
art with growing vigour and interest. She was 
gaining in assurance; her technique showed an 
increased mastery; above all she had gained in 
the power to compose, a certain sympathy, a 
breadth of comprehension, the manifestation of 
that ability to interpret which she had long sus 
pected lay within her, lent themselves to her hand. 
Mr. Paget, the instructor, spoke of her paintings 
with increased respect; the attention of visitors 
was directed thereto. Martha Burden and even 
Paulette, in the intervals of her ecstatic prepara 
tions, admitted her to the freemasonry of their 
own assured standing. Anthony Cross reminded 
her of the possibilities for American students at 
Fontainebleau. But she only smiled wisely; she 
would have no need of such study, but she hoped 
with all her heart that Miss Powell would be the 
recipient of a prize which would enable her to 
attend there. 

" If she isn't," she promised herself, " I'll make 
Roger give her her expenses. I'd be willing to 
take the money from him for that." 

To her great surprise her other interest besides 
her painting lay in visiting Jinny. If anyone had 
asked her if she were satisfied with her own life, 
her reply would have been an instant affirmative. 
But she did not want such a life for her sister. For 
Virginia there must be no risks, no secrets, no 

210 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH- 



irregularities. Her efforts to find out how her 
sister spent her free hours amazed herself; their 
fruitlessness filled her with a constant irritation 
which Virginia showed no inclination to allay. The 
younger girl had passed her examination and had 
been appointed; she was a successful and enthu 
siastic teacher; this much Angela knew, but 
beyond this nothing. She gathered that Virginia 
spent a good deal of time with a happy, intelligent, 
rather independent group of young coloured men 
and women; there was talk occasionally of the 
theatre, of a dance, of small clubs, of hikes, of 
classes at Columbia or at New York City College. 
Angela even met a gay, laughing party, consisting 
of Virginia and her friends en route to Brooklyn, 
she had been later informed briefly. The girls were 
bright birds of paradise, the men, her artist's eye 
noted, were gay, vital fauns. In the subway 
beside the laughing, happy groups, white faces 
showed pale and bloodless, other coloured faces 
loomed dull and hopeless. Angela began tardily 
to recognize that her sister had made her way into 
that curious, limited, yet shifting class of the 
"best" coloured people; the old Philadelphia 
phrase came drifting back to her, " people that 
you know." She was amazed at some of the 
names which Virginia let drop from her lips in her 
infrequent and laconic descriptions of certain 
evenings which she had spent in the home of Van 
Meier, a great coloured American, a litterateur, 
a fearless and dauntless apostle of the rights of man ; 
his name was known, Martha Burden had assured 
her, on both sides of the water. 

Such information she picked up as best she 
might for Virginia vouchsafed nothing; nor did 

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HHHHHHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHS** 

she, on the infrequent occasions on which she ran 
across her sister, even appear to know her. This, 
Angela pointed out, was silly. " You might just 
as well speak," she told Jinny petulantly, remem 
bering uncomfortably the occasion when she her 
self had cut her sister, an absolute stranger in 
New York. " Plenty of white and coloured people 
are getting to know each other and they always 
acknowledge the acquaintanceship. Why shouldn't 
we? No harm could come of it." But in Virginia's 
cool opinion no good could come of it either. 
Usually the younger girl preserved a discreet 
silence; whatever resolves she might have made 
with regard to the rupture between herself and 
her sister, she was certainly able to keep her own 
counsel. It was impossible to glean from her per 
fect, slightly distrait manner any glimpse of her 
inner life and her intentions. Frequently she 
showed an intense preoccupation from which she 
awakened to let fall a remark which revealed to 
Angela a young girl's normal reactions to the life 
about her, pleasant, uneventful and tinged with a 
cool, serene happiness totally different from the 
hot, heady, turgid rapture which at present was 
Angela's life. 



The Jewish girl, Rachel Salting, who lived on 
the floor above, took to calling on Angela. " We're 
young and here by ourselves," she said smiling, 
" it's stupid for us not to get acquainted, don't 
you think so? " Hers was a charming smile and 
a charming manner. Indeed she was a very 
pretty girl, Angela thought critically. Her skin 

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H-HHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN4HHHHHHHMHHS* 

was very, very pale, almost pearly, her hair jet 
black and curling, her eyes large and almond- 
shaped. Her figure was straight and slender but 
bore none the less some faint hint of an exotic 
voluptuousness. Her interests, she informed her 
new friend, were all with the stage, her ideal being 
Raquel Meller. 

Angela welcomed her friendliness. A strange 
apathy, an unusual experience for her, had in 
vaded her being; her painting claimed, it is true, 
a great deal of time and concentration; her hours 
with Virginia, while not always satisfactory, were 
at least absorbing; but for the first time in her 
knowledge, her whole life was hanging on the 
words, the moods, the actions of some one else 
Roger. Without him she was quite lost; not only 
was she unable to order her days without him in 
mind, she was even unable to go in quest of new 
adventures in living as was once her wont. Con 
sequently she received with outstretched arms 
anything beyond the ordinary which might break 
the threatening monotony of her life. 

Rachel Salting was like a fresh breeze, a curious 
mixture of Jewish conservatism and modernity. 
Hers was a keen, clear mind, well trained in the 
New York schools and colleges with many branch 
ing interests. She spoke of psychiatry, housing 
problems, Zionism, child welfare, with a know 
ledge and zest which astounded Angela, whose 
training had been rather superficial and who had 
begun to adopt Paulette's cleverness and Martha 
Burden's slightly professional, didactic attitude 
toward things in general as norms for herself. 
Rachel, except when dwelling on the Jewish 
problem, seemed to have no particular views to 

213 



set forth. Her discussions, based on her wide 
reading, were purely academic, she had no desire 
to proselyte, she was no reformer. She was merely 
a " nice ", rather jolly, healthy young woman, 
an onlooker at life which she had to get through 
with and which she was finding for the moment at 
any rate, extremely pleasant. 

She was very happy; happy like Virginia with 
a happiness vastly different from what Angela was 
calling by that name; a breathless, constant, 
smiling happiness, palpable, transparent, for all 
the world to see. Within a few weeks after their 
acquaintanceship had started, Rachel with smiles 
and blushes revealed her great secret. She was 
going to be married. 

" To the very best man in the world, Angele." 

"Yes, I'm sure of it." 

" He's very good-looking, tall, " 

" As though I didn't know that." 

" How could you know? " 

" Darling child, haven't I seen him, at least 
the outline of him, often enough in the hall when 
I'd come in and turn on that wretched light ? 
I didn't think you'd ever forgive me for it. It 
did seem as though I were doing it on purpose." 

" Oh, I knew you weren't. Then you have seen 
him? " 

" Yes, he's tall and blond. Quite a nice foil 
for your darkness. See, I'm always the artist." 

"Yes," Rachel said slowly, "he is blond." 

Angela thought she detected a faint undertone 
of worry in her hitherto triumphant voice but 
decided that that was unlikely. 

But Rachel confirmed this impression by her next 
words: " If only everything will turn out all right." 

214 



frfrfrfrfr.frfr.fr.fr.fr.fr PLUM BUNHHHHHHHMMHHS' 

Angel's rather material mind prompted her to 
ask: " What's the matter, is he very poor? " 

Rachel stared. " Poor? As though that mat 
tered. Yes, he's poor, but I don't care about 
that." 

" Well, if you don't care about that, what's the 
trouble then ? He's free, white and twenty-one, 
isn't he? " 

" Yes, yes, it's only oh you wouldn't under 
stand, you lucky girl ! It's nothing you'd ever have 
to bother about. You see we've got to get our 
parents' consent first. We haven't spoken of it 
yet. When we do, I'm afraid there'll be a row." 

Some ritual inherent in her racial connections, 
Angela decided, and asked no further questions. 
Indeed, she had small chance, for Rachel, once 
launched, had begun to expound her gospel of 
marriage. It was an old, old story. Angela 
could have closed her eyes and imagined her own 
mother rhapsodizing over her future with Junius. 
They would be poor, very poor at first but only at 
first, and they would not mind poverty a bit. It 
would be fun together. There were little frame 
houses in the Bronx that rented comparatively 
cheap. Perhaps Angela knew of them. 

Angela shuddering inwardly, acknowledged that 
she had seen them, dull brown, high-shouldered 
affairs, perched perilously on stoops. The rooms 
would be small, square, ugly, 

Rachel would help her John in every way. They 
would economize. " I won't wash and iron, for 
that is heart-breaking work, and I want to keep 
myself dainty and pretty for him, so that when we 
do become better off he won't have to be ashamed 
of me. And all the time even in our hardest days 

215 



I'll be trying my luck at play- writing." She spoke 
with the unquenchable ambition which was her 
racial dowry. "I'll be attending lectures and 
sitting up in the galleries of theatres where they 
have the most successful plays. And some day 
I'll land." Her fanciful imagination carried her 
years ahead. " On our First Night, Angela, you 
must be in our box and I'll have an ermine coat. 
Won't it be wonderful? But nothing will be more 
wonderful than those first few years when we'll 
be absolutely dependent on each other; I on what 
he makes, he on the way I run the home. That 
will be heaven." 

Confidences such as these left Angela unmoved 
but considerably shaken. There must be some 
thing in the life of sacrifice, even drudgery which 
Rachel had depicted. Else why should so many 
otherwise sensible girls take the risk? But there, 
it was silly for her to dwell on such pictures and 
scenes. Such a life would never come to her. It 
was impossible to conceive of such a life with 
Roger. Yet there were times in her lonely room 
when she pondered long and deeply, drawing 
pictures. The time would be summer; she would 
be wearing a white dress, would be standing in 
the doorway of a house in the suburbs very, very 
near New York. There'd be the best possible 
dinner on the table. She did love to cook. And a 
tall, strong figure would be hurrying up the walk: 
" I had the best luck to-day, Angele, and I brought 
you a present." And presently after dinner she 
would take him upstairs to her little work-room 
and she'd draw aside the curtain and show him a 
portrait of a well-known society woman. " She's 
so pleased with it; and she's going to get me lots 

216 



*HHHHHHHHHh*PLUM BUNHHHHMHMHHMH^ 

of orders, " Somehow she was absolutely sure 

that the fanciful figure was not Roger. 



Her lover, back from a three weeks' trip to 
Chicago, dissipated that sureness. He was glad, 
overwhelmingly glad to be back and to see Angele. 
He came to her apartment directly from the train, 
not stopping even to report to his father. " I 
can see him to-morrow. To-night is absolutely 
yours. What shall we do, Angele? We can 
go out to dinner and the theatre or run out to 
the Country Club or stay here. What do you 
say? " 

" We'll have to stay here, Roger; I'll fix up a 
gorgeous dinner, better than anything you've had 
to eat in any of your old hotels. But directly after, 
I'll have to cut and run because I promised Martha 
Burden faithfully to go to a lecture with her to 
night." 

" I never knew you to be interested in a lecture 
before." 

She was worried and showed it. " But this is a 
different sort of lecture. You know how crazy 
Martha is about race and social movements. Well, 
Van Meier is to speak to-night and Martha is 
determined that a lot of her friends shall hear him. 
I'm to go with her and Ladislas." 

" What's to keep me from going? " 

" Nothing, only he's coloured, you know." 

" Well, I suppose it won't rub off. I've heard 
of him. They say he really has brains. I've 
never seen a nigger with any yet; so this bids fair 
to be interesting. And, anyway, you don't think 
I'm going to let my girl run off from me the 

217 



^HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUN-HMHHHHHHHHt 

very moment I come home, do you? Suppose 
I have Reynolds bring the big car here and we'll 
take Martha and Ladislas along and anyone else 
she chooses to brins." 

The lecture was held in Harlem in East One 
Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street. The hall was 
packed, teeming with suppressed excitement and 
a certain surcharged atmosphere. Angela radiant, 
calmed with the nearness and devotion of Roger, 
looked about her with keen, observing eyes. And 
again she sensed that fullness, richness, even thick 
ness of life which she had felt on her first visit to 
Harlem. The stream of living ran almost molten ; 
little waves of feeling played out from groups within 
the audience and beat against her consciousness 
and against that of her friends, only the latter were 
without her secret powers of interpretation. The 
occasion was clearly one of moment. "I'd come 
any distance to hear Van Meier speak," said a 
thin-faced dark young man behind them. " He 
always has something to say and he doesn't talk 
down to you. To hear him is like reading a classic, 
clear and beautiful and true." 

Angela, revelling in types and marshalling bits 
of information which she had got from Virginia, 
was able to divide the groups. There sat the most 
advanced coloured Americans, beautifully dressed, 
beautifully trained, whimsical, humorous, bitter, 
impatiently responsible, yet still responsible. In 
one section loomed the dark, eager faces of West 
Indians, the formation of their features so markedly 
different from that of the ordinary American as 
to give them a wild, slightly feral aspect. These 
had come not because they were disciples of Van 
Meier but because they were earnest seekers after 

218 



BUN4HMHHHHHHHH* 



truth. But unfortunately their earnestness was 
slightly married by a stubbornness and an un 
willingness to admit conviction. Three or four 
coloured Americans, tall, dark, sleek young men 
sat within earshot, speaking with a curious didactic 
precision. " They're quoting all the sociologists 
in the world," Ladislas Starr told his little group 
in astonishment. 

Martha, with her usual thoroughness, knew all 
about them. They were the editors of a small 
magazine whose chief bid to fame lay in the articles 
which they directed monthly against Van Meier; 
articles written occasionally in a spirit of mean 
jealousy but usually in an effort to gain a sort of 
inverted glory by carrying that great name on its 
pages. 

Here and there a sprinkling of white faces 
showed up plainly, startlingly distinct patterns 
against a back-ground of patient, softly stolid 
black faces; faces beaten and fashioned by life 
into a mold of steady, rock-like endurance, of 
unshakable, unconquered faith. Angela had 
seen such faces before in the churches in 
Philadelphia; they brought back old pictures to 
her mind. 

" There he is ! " exclaimed Martha triumphantly. 
" That's Van Meier ! Isn't he wonderful? " Angela 
saw a man, bronze, not very tall but built with a 
beautiful symmetrical completeness, cross the plat 
form and sit in the tall, deep chair next to the table 
of the presiding officer. He sat with a curious 
immobility, gazing straight before him like a 
statue of an East Indian idol. And indeed there 
was about him some strange quality which made 
one think of the East; a completeness, a superb lack 

219 



of self-consciousness, an odd, arresting beauty 
wrought by the perfection of his fine, straight nose 
and his broad, scholarly forehead. One look, 
however casual, gave the beholder the assurance 
that here indeed was a man, fearless, dauntless, the 
captain of his fate. 

He began to speak on a clear, deep, bell-like note. 
Angela thought she had never heard its equal for 
beauty, for resonance, for culture. And ar- the 
young man had said, he did not talk down. His 
English was the carefully sifted language of the 
savant, his periods polished, almost poetical. He 
was noted on two continents for his sociological 
and economic contributions, but his subject was 
racial sacrifice. He urged the deliberate intro 
duction of beauty and pleasure into the difficult 
life of the American Negro. These objects should 
be theirs both as racial heritage and as compensa 
tion. Yet for a time, for a long time, there would 
have to be sacrifices, many sacrifices made for the 
good of the whole. " Our case is unique," the 
beautiful, cultured voice intoned; " those of us 
who have forged forward, who have gained the 
front ranks in money and training, will not, are 
not able as yet to go our separate ways apart 
from the unwashed, untutored herd. We must 
still look back and render service to our less fortu 
nate, weaker brethren. And the first step toward 
making this a workable attitude is the acquisition 
not so much of a racial love as a racial pride. A 
pride that enables us to find our own beautiful 
and praiseworthy, an intense chauvinism that is 
content with its own types, that finds completeness 
within its own group; that loves its own as the 
French love their country, because it is their own. 

220 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf- 



Such a pride can accomplish the impossible." 
He quoted: 

" It is not courage, no, nor hate 
That lets us do the things we do; 
It's pride that bids the heart be great, " 

He sat down to a surge of applause that shook 
the building. Dark, drooping faces took on an 
expression of ecstatic uplift, it was as though they 
suddenly saw themselves, transformed by racial 
pride as princes in a strange land in temporary 
serfdom, princes whose children would know 
freedom. 

Martha Burden and Ladislas went up to speak 
to him ; they were old friends. Angela, with Roger, 
visibly impressed, stood on one side and waited. 
Paulette and Hudson came pushing through the 
crowd, the former flushed and excited. Little 
groups of coloured people stood about, some deeply 
content with a sort of vicarious pride, some arguing; 
Angela caught sight of Virginia standing with three 
young men and two girls. They were for the 
most part gesticulating, lost in a great excitement. 
But Jinny seemed listless and aloof; her childish 
face looked thin and more forlornly young than 
ever. Anthony Cross and a tall man of undeniably 
Spanish type passed the little party and spoke to 
one of the men, received introductions. Presently 
Cross, swinging about, caught sight of Angela and 
Roger. He bowed hastily, flushing; caught his 
companion's arm and walked hurriedly from the 
hall, his head very straight, his slender figure always 
so upright, so lance y more erect than ever. 

Presently Martha's party was all out on the side 
walk; Roger in fine spirits invited Paulette and 

221 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNfrfr 



Hudson to ride down town in his car. Paulette 
was bubbling over with excited admiration of 
Van Meier. " He isn't a man, he's a god," she 
proclaimed. " Did you ever see such a superb 
personality? He's not a magnificent coloured 
man, he's not ' just as good as a white man ' ; he 
is a man, just that; colour, race, conditions in his 
case are pure accidents, he over-rides them all 
with his ego. Made me feel like a worm too; I 
gave him my prettiest smile, grand white lady 
making up to an ' exceptional Negro ' and he 
simply didn't see me; took my hand, I did my 
best to make my grasp a clinging one and he 
passed me right along disengaging himself as cool 
as a cucumber and making room for a lady of 
colour." She finished reflectively, " I wonder 
what he would be like alone." 

" None of your nonsense, Paulette," said Roger 
frowning. 

Hudson smiled. " Paulette's a mighty attrac 
tive little piece, I'll admit, but I'd back Van 
Meier against her every time; she'd present no 
temptation to him; the man's not only a prophet 
and the son of a prophet; he's pride incarnate." 

Roger said meditatively, " I wonder what 
proportion of white blood he has in his veins. 
Of course that's where he gets his ability." 

" You make me tired," said Martha. " Of 
course he doesn't get it from his white blood; he 
gets it from all his bloods. It's the mixture that 
makes him what he is. Otherwise all white people 
would be gods. It's the mixture and the endur 
ance which he has learned from being coloured in 
America and the determination to see life without 
bitterness, -- " 

222 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 



" Oh help, help," exclaimed Roger. " No more 
lectures to-night. Look, you're boring Angele to 
death." 

" Nothing of the kind," said Angela, " on the 
contrary I never was more interested in my life." 
And reaching back she gave Martha's hand a 
hearty squeeze. 



Sometimes as on that first day at the art class, 
the five of them, Miss Powell, Paulette, Gross, 
Martha and Angela met before hours. Miss Powell 
as always was silent she came solely for her 
work but the others enjoyed a little preliminary 
chat. A week or so after the Van Meier lecture 
all but Paulette were gathered thus on an afternoon 
when she too came rushing in, starry eyed, flushed, 
consumed with laughter. 

" I've played the biggest joke on myself," she 
announced, " I've been to see Van Meier." 

Martha was instant attention. " A joke on Van 
Meier? " 

" No, on myself, I tell you." 

It appeared that she had got Miss Powell to 
introduce her to one of the clerks in the great 
leader's office. Paulettte then with deliberate inten 
tion had asked the girl to lunch and afterwards had 
returned with her to the office expressing a desire 
to meet her employer. Van Meier had received 
her cordially enough but with the warning that he 
was very busy. 

" So I told him that I wouldn't sit down, think 
ing of course he'd urge me to. But he just raised 
his eyebrows in the most quizzical way and said, 
'Well'?" 

223 



BUN4HHMHHHHHHHf 



" Of course I couldn't let matters rest like that 
so I sat down and began talking to him, nothing 
much you know, just telling him how wonderful 
he was and letting him see that I'd be glad to 
know him better. You should have seen him 
looking at me and not saying a word. Presently 
he reached out his hand and touched a bell and 
Miss Thing-um-bob came in, your friend, you 
know, Miss Powell. He looked at her and nodding 
toward me said: * Take her away '. I never felt 
such small potatoes in my life. I tell you he's a 
personage. Wasn't it great? " 

Martha replied crossly that the whole thing 
seemed to her in dreadfully poor taste, while Miss 
Powell, after one incredulous stare at the first 
speaker, applied herself more sedulously to her 
work. Even Anthony, shocked out of his habitual 
moroseness pronounced the proceedings " a bit 
thick, Miss Lister ". Angela conscious of a swell 
ing pride, stowed the incident away as a tit-bit 
for Virginia. 



224 



CHAPTER IV 

LIFE had somehow come to a standstill ; gone was 
its quality of high adventure and yet with the sense 
of tameness came no compensating note of assur 
ance, of permanence. Angela pondered much 
about this; with her usual instinct for clarity, for 
a complete understanding of her own emotional 
life, she took to probing her inner consciousness. 
The fault, she decided, was bound up in her 
relationship with Roger. At present in a certain 
sense she might be said to be living for him; at 
least his was the figure about which her life resolved, 
revolved. Yet she no longer had the old, heady 
desire to feel herself completely his, to claim him 
as completely hers, neither for his wealth nor for 
the sense of security which he could afford nor for 
himself. For some reason he had lost his charm 
for her, much, she suspected, in the same way in 
which girls in the position which was hers, often 
lost their charm for their lovers. 

And this realization instead of bringing to her 
a sense of relief, brought a certain real if some 
what fantastic shame. If there was to be no 
permanence in the relationship, if laying aside the 
question of marriage, it was to lack the dignity, the 
graciousness of an affair of long standing, of sym 
pathy, of mutual need, then indeed according to 
the code of her childhood, according to every 
p 225 



BUN^HHHMHHHH^-K* 



code of every phase of her development, she had 
allowed herself to drift into an inexcusably vulgar 
predicament. Even when her material safety and 
security were at stake and she had dreamed vaguely 
of yielding to Roger's entreaties to ensure that 
safety and security, there might have been some 
excuse. Life, she considered, came before creed 
or code or convention. Or if she had loved and 
there had been no other way she might have 
argued for this as the supreme experience of her 
life. But she was no longer conscious of striving 
for marriage with Roger; and as for love she 
had known a feeling of gratitude, intense interest, 
even intense possessiveness for him but she did not 
believe she had ever known love. 

But because of this mingling of shame and re 
proach she found herself consciously striving to 
keep their relations on the highest plane possible 
in the circumstances. She wished now not so 
much that she had never left Jinny and the security 
of their common home-life, as that the necessity 
for it had never arisen. Now suddenly she found 
herself lonely, she had been in New York nearly 
three years but not even yet had she struck down 
deep into the lode of genuine friendship. Paulette 
was kind and generous; she desired, she said, a 
close woman friend but Paulette was still the 
adventuress. She was as likely to change her voca 
tion and her place of dwelling as she was to change 
her lover. Martha Burden, at once more stable 
and more comprehending in the conduct of a 
friendship once she had elected for it, was, on 
the other hand, much more conservative in the 
expenditure of that friendliness; besides she was 
by her very nature as reserved as Paulette was 

226 



expansive, and her native intenseness made it 
difficult for her to dwell very long on the needs of 
anyone whose problems did not centre around her 
own extremely fixed ideas and principles. 

As for Anthony Cross, by some curious, utterly 
inexplicable revulsion of feeling, Angela could not 
bring herself to dwell long on the possibilities of 
a friendship with him. Somehow it seemed to 
her sacrilegious in her present condition to bring 
the memory of that far-off day in Van Gortlandt 
Park back to mind. As soon as his image arose 
she dismissed it, though there were moments 
when it was impossible for his vision to come before 
her without its instantly bringing to mind Rachel 
Salting's notions of love and self-sacrifice. Well, 
such dreams were not for her, she told herself im 
patiently. For her own soul's integrity she must 
make the most of this state in which she now found 
herself. Either she must effect through it a mar 
riage whose excuse should be that of safety, 
assurance and a resulting usefulness; or she must 
resolve it by patience, steadfastness and affection 
into a very apotheosis of " free love." Of all 
possible affaires du coeur this must in semblance at 
any rate, be the ultimate desideratum, the finest 
flower of chivalry and devotion. 



To this end she began then devoting herself 
again to the renewal of that sense of possessiveness 
in Roger and his affairs which had once been so 
spontaneous within her. But to this Roger pre 
sented unexpected barriers; he grew restive under 
such manifestations; he who had once fought so 

227 



BUN*********** 



bitterly against her indifference resented with 
equal bitterness any showing of possessive interest. 
He wanted no claims upon him, he acknowledged 
none. Gradually his absences, which at first were 
due to the business interests of his father, occurred 
for other reasons or for none at all. Angela could 
not grasp this all at once; it was impossible for her 
to conceive that kindness should create indiffer 
ence; in spite of confirmatory stories which she 
had heard, of books which she had read, she 
could not make herself believe that devotion 
might sometimes beget ingratitude, loss of appre 
ciation. For if that were so then a successful 
relationship between the sexes must depend wholly 
on the marriage tie without reference to com 
patibility of taste, training or ideals. This she 
could scarcely credit. In some way she must be 
at fault. 

No young wife in the first ardour of marriage 
could have striven more than she to please Roger. 
She sought by reading and outside questions to 
inform herself along the lines of Roger's training 
he was a mining engineer. His fondness for his 
father prompted her to numerous inquiries about 
the interest and pursuits of the older Fielding; 
she made suggestions for Roger's leisure hours. 
But no matter how disinterested her attitude and 
tone his response to all this was an increased sullen- 
ness, remoteness, wariness. Roger was experienced 
in the wiles of women; such interest could mean 
only one thing, marriage. Well, Angela might 
just as well learn that he had no thought, had 
never had any thought, of marrying her or any 
other woman so far removed from his father's 
ideas and requirements. 

228 



Still Angela, intent on her ideals, could not 
comprehend. Things were not going well between 
them; affairs of this kind were often short-lived, 
that had been one of her first objections to the 
arrangement, but she had not dreamed that one 
withdrew when the other had committed no overt 
offence. She was as charming, as attractive, as 
pretty as she had ever been and far, far more kind 
and thoughtful. She had not changed, how could 
it be possible that he should be different? 

A week had gone by and he had not dropped 
in to see her. Loneliness settled over her like a 
pall, frightening her seriously because she was 
realizing that this time she was not missing Roger 
so much as that a person for whom she had let 
slip the ideals engendered by her mother's early 
teaching, a man for whom she had betrayed and 
estranged her sister, was passing out of her ken. 
She had rarely called him on the telephone but 
suddenly she started to do so. For three days 
the suave voice of his man, Reynolds, told her that 
Mr. Fielding was " out, m'm." 

" But did you give him my message? Did you 
ask him to call me as soon as he came in? " 

" Yes, m'm." 

" And did he? " 

" That I couldn't tell you, m'm." 

She could not carry on such a conversation with 
a servant. 

On the fifth day Roger appeared. She sprang 
toward him. " Oh Roger, I'm so glad to see you. 
Did Reynolds tell you I called? Why have you 
been so long coming? " 

" I'd have been still longer if you hadn't stopped 
'phoning. Now see here, Angele, this has got to 

229 



stop. I can't have women calling me up all hours 
of the day, making me ridiculous in the eyes of 
my servants. I don't like it, it's got to stop. Do 
you understand me? " 

Surprised, bewildered, she could only stammer: 
" But you call me whenever you feel like it." 

" Of course I do, that's different. I'm a 
man." He added a cruel afterword. " Perhaps 
you notice that I don't call you up as often as 
I used." 



Her pride was in arms. More than once she 
thought of writing him a brief note telling him 
that so far as she was concerned their " affair " 
was ended. But a great stubbornness possessed 
her; she was curious to see how this sort of thing 
could terminate ; she was eager to learn if all the 
advice which older women pour into the ears of grow 
ing girls could be as true as it was trite. Was it a 
fact that the conventions were more important than 
the fundamental impulses of life, than generosity, 
kindness, unselfishness? For whatever her original 
motives, her actual relationship with Fielding had 
called out the most unselfish qualities in her. And 
she began to see the conventions, the rules that 
govern life, in a new light; she realized suddenly 
that for all their granite-like coldness and precision 
they also represented fundamental facts; a sort 
of concentrated compendium of the art of living 
and therefore as much to be observed and re 
spected as warm, vital impulses. 

Towards Roger she felt no rancour, only an apathy 
incapable of being dispersed. The conversation 

230 



HHHHHHE- * * *H-PLUM 



about the telephone left an effect all out of pro 
portion to its actual importance; it represented 
for her the apparently unbridgeable difference 
between the sexes; everything was for men, but 
even the slightest privilege was to be denied to a 
woman unless the man chose to grant it. At least 
there were men who felt like that; not all men, 
she felt sure, could tolerate such an obviously 
unjust status. Without intent to punish, with no 
set purpose in her mind, simply because she was 
no longer interested, she began to neglect Roger. 
She no longer let other engagements go for him; 
she made no attempt to be punctual in keeping 
such engagements as they had already made; in 
his presence she was often absorbed, absent- 
minded, lost in thought. She ceased asking him 
questions about his affairs. 

Long before their quarrel they had accepted an 
invitation from Martha Burden to a small party. 
Angela was surprised that Roger should remember 
the occasion, but clearly he did; he was on hand 
at the correct date and hour and the two of them 
fared forth. During the brief journey he was 
courteous, even politely cordial, but the differ 
ence between his attitude and that of former days 
was very apparent. The party was of a more 
frivolous type than Martha usually sponsored, 
she was giving it for a young, fun-loving cousin 
of Ladislas; there was no general conversation, 
some singing, much dancing, much pairing off in 
couples. Carlotta Parks was present with Ralph 
Ashley, the slender, dark man who had appeared 
with Carlotta when Angela first met her. As 
soon as Roger appeared Carlotta came rushing 
toward him. 

231 



BUN*********** 



" I've been waiting for you ! " She dragged 
at his hand and not unwillingly he suffered himself 
to be led to a small sofa. They chatted a few 
minutes; then danced; Roger simply must look 
at Martha's new etchings. The pair was insepar 
able for the evening. Try as she might Angela 
could discover no feeling of jealousy but her 
dignity was hurt. She could not have received 
less attention from her former lover if they had 
never met. At first she thought she would make 
up to Ashley but something malicious in Car- 
lotta's glance deterred her. No, she was sick of 
men and their babyish, faithless ways; she did 
not care enough about Roger to play a game for 
him. So she sat quietly in a deep chair, smoking, 
dipping into the scattered piles of books which 
lent the apartment its air of cheerful disorder. 
Occasionally she chatted; Ladislas Starr perched 
on the arm of her chair and beguiled her 
with gay tales of his university days in pre-war 
Vienna. 

But she would never endure such an indignity 
again. On the way home she was silent. Roger 
glanced at her curiously, raised his eyebrows when 
she asked him to come in. She began quietly: 
" Roger I'll never endure again the treatment -- " 

But he was ready, even eager for a quarrel. 
" It looks to me as though you were willing to 
endure anything. No woman with an ounce of 
pride would have stood for what you've been 
standing lately." 

She said evenly: "You mean this is the end? 
We're through? 55 

" Well, what do you think about it? You cer 
tainly didn't expect it to last for ever." 

232 



-HHHHHHHHHHHPLUM BUNHH^-HHHHHHHHf* 

His tone was unbelievably insulting. Eyeing 
him speculatively she replied : " No, of course I 
didn't expect it to last for ever, but I didn't think 
it would end like this. I don't see yet why it 
should." 

The knowledge of his unpardonable manner 
lay heavy upon him, drove him to fresh indignity. 
" I suppose you thought some day I'd kiss your 
hand and say e You've been very nice to me ; I'll 
always remember you with affection and grati 
tude. Good-bye.' " 

" Well, why shouldn't you have said that? Cer 
tainly I'd expected that much sooner than a scene 
of this sort. I never dreamed of letting myself in 
for this kind of thing." 

Some ugly devil held him in its grasp. " You 
knew perfectly well what you were letting yourself 
in for. Any woman would know it." 

She could only stare at him, his words echoing 
in her ears: "You knew perfectly well what you 
were letting yourself in for." 

The phrase had the quality of a cosmic echo; 
perhaps men had been saying it to women since 
the beginning of time. Doubtless their biblical 
equivalent were the last words uttered by Abra 
ham to Hagar before she fared forth into the 
wilderness. 



233 



CHAPTER V 

LONG after Roger had left her she sat staring into 
the dark shadows of the room. For a long time 
the end, she knew, had been imminent; she had 
been curious to see how it would arrive, but the 
thought had never crossed her mind that it would 
come with harsh words and with vulgarity. The 
departure of Roger himself she shut her hand 
and opened it meant nothing; she had never 
loved, never felt for him one-tenth of the devotion 
which her mother had known for her father, of 
the spontaneous affection which Virginia had 
offered Matthew Henson. Even in these latter 
weeks when she had consciously striven to show 
him every possible kindness and attention she had 
done so for the selfish preservation of her ideals. 
Now she looked back on those first days of delight 
when his emotions and her own had met at full 
tide; when she dreamed that she alone of all 
people in the world was exempt from ordinary 
law. How, she wondered futilely, could she ever 
have suffered herself to be persuaded to tamper 
with the sacred mysteries of life? If she had held 
in her hand the golden key, love! But to throw 
aside the fundamental laws of civilization for 
passion, for the hot-headed wilfulness of youth 
and to have it end like this, drably, vulgarly, 
almost in a brawl! How could she endure her- 

234 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH' 



self ? And Roger and his promises of esteem and 
golden memories! 

For a moment she hated him for his fine words 
and phrases, hated him for tricking her. No 
matter what she had said, how she had acted, he 
should have let her go. Better a wound to her 
passion than later this terrible gash in her proud 
assurance, this hurt in the core of herself " God ! " 
she said, raging in her tiny apartment as a tiger 
in a menagerie rages in its inadequate cage, 
" God, isn't there any place where man's re 
sponsibility to woman begins ? " 



But she had grown too much into the habit of 
deliberately ordering her life, of hewing her own 
path, of removing the difficulties that beset that 
path, to let herself be sickened, utterly prostrated 
by what had befallen her. Roger, her com 
panion, had gone; she had been caught up in an 
inexcusably needless affair without the pretext 
of love. Thank God she had taken nothing from 
Roger; she had not sold herself, only bestowed 
that self foolishly, unworthily. However upset 
and harassed her mind might be it could not 
dwell too long on this loss of a lover. There were 
other problems to consider; for Roger's passing 
meant the vanishing of the last hope of the suc 
cessful marriage which once she had so greatly 
craved. And even though she had not actively 
considered this for some time, yet as a remote 
possibility it had afforded a sense of security. Now 
that mirage was dispelled; she was brought with 
a sudden shock back to reality. No longer was it 

235 



HHHH-H-H-HhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 

enough for her to plan how she could win to a 
pleasant and happy means of existence, she must 
be on the gui vive for the maintenance of that very 
existence itself. New York had literally swallowed 
her original three thousand dollars; part of Vir 
ginia's gift was also dissipated. Less than a thou 
sand dollars stood between her and absolute 
penury. She could not envisage turning to 
Jinny; life which had seemed so promising, so 
golden, had failed to supply her with a single 
friend to whom she could turn in an hour of 
extremity. 

Such thoughts as these left her panic-stricken, 
cold with ' fear. The spectre of possible want 
rilled her dreams, haunted her waking hours, 
thrust aside the devastating shame of her affair 
with Roger to replace it with dread and 
apprehension. In her despair she turned more 
ardently than ever to her painting; already she 
was capable of ^doing outstanding work in 
portraiture, but she lacked cachet; she was 
absolutely unknown. 

This condition of her mind affected her appear 
ance; she began to husband her clothes, sadly 
conscious that she could not tell where others 
would come from. Her face lost its roundness, 
the white warmness of her skin remained but 
there were violet shadows under her eyes; her 
forehead showed faint lines; she was slightly 
shabby. Gradually the triumphant vividness so 
characteristic of Angele Mory left her, she was 
like any one of a thousand other pitiful, frightened 
girls thronging New York. Miss Powell glanced 
at her and thought: "she looks unhappy, but 
how can she be when she has a chance at 

236 



HHHHHHHHHHM>LUM 



everything in the world just because she's 
white? " 

Anthony marked her fading brightness; he would 
have liked to question her, comfort her, but where 
this girl was concerned the role of comforter was 
not for him. Only the instructor, Mr. Paget 
guessed at her extremity. He had seen too many 
students not to recognize the signs of poverty, 
of disaster in love, of despair at the tardy flowering 
of dexterity that had been mistaken for talent. 
Once after class he stopped Angela and asked her 
if she knew of anyone willing to furnish designs 
for a well-known journal of fashion. 

" Not very stimulating work, but the pay is 
good and the firm reliable. Their last artist was 
with them eight years. If you know of any 
one, -- " 

She interrupted: " I know of myself. Do you 
think they'd take me on? " 

" I could recommend you. They applied to me, 
you see. Doubtless they'd take my suggestions 
into account." 

He was very kind; made all the necessary 
arrangements. The firm received Angela gladly, 
offering her a fair salary for work that was a trifle 
narrow, a bit stultifying. But it opened up possi 
bilities; there were new people to be met; perhaps 
she would make new friends, form ties which might 
be lasting. 

"Oh/ 5 she said hopefully to herself, "life is 
wonderful! It's giving me a new deal and I'll 
begin all over again. I'm young and now I'm 
sophisticated; the world is wide, somewhere there's 
happiness and peace and a place for me. I'll find 
it." 

237 



BUN-HHMHHMHHMM* 



But her hope, her sanguineness, were a little 
forced, her superb self-confidence perceptibly 
diminished. The radiance which once had so 
bathed every moment of her existence was fading 
gently, inexorably into the " light of common 
day ". 



238 



HOME AGAIN 



CHAPTER I 

NEW YORK, it appeared, had two visages. It could 
offer an aspect radiant with promise or a counten 
ance lowering and forbidding. With its flattering 
possibilities it could elevate to the seventh heaven, 
or lower to the depths of hell with its crushing nega 
tions. And loneliness ! Loneliness such as that 
offered by the great, noisy city could never be 
imagined. To realize it one would have to 
experience it. Coming home from work Angela 
used to study the people on the trains, trying to 
divine what cause had engraved a given expression 
on their faces, particularly on the faces of young 
women. She picked out for hersejf four types, the 
happy, the indifferent, the preoccupied, the lonely. 
Doubtless her classification was imperfect, but she 
never failed, she thought, to recognize the signs 
of loneliness, a vacancy of expression, a listlessness, 
a faintly pervading despair. She remembered the 
people in Union Square on whom she had spied 
so blithely when she had first come to New York. 
Then she had thought of them as being " down and 
out ", mere idlers, good for nothing. It had not 
occurred to her that their chief disaster might be 
loneliness. Her office was on Twenty-third Street 
and often at the noon-hour she walked down to the 
dingy Square and looked again on the sprawling, 
half-recumbent, dejected figures. And between 

Q 241 



HHHHHHHHHHf^PLUM BUNHMHHMHHHHf*** 

them and herself she was able to detect a 
terrifying relationship. She still carried her note 
book, made sketches, sitting watching them and 
jotting down a line now and then when their 
vacant, staring eyes were not fixed upon her. 
Once she would not have cared if they had caught 
her; she would have said with a shrug: " Oh they 
wouldn't mind, they're too far gone for that." 
But since then her sympathy and knowledge had 
waxed. How fiercely she would have rebelled 
had anyone from a superior social plane taken 
her for copy ! 

In the evenings she worked at the idea of a pic 
ture which she intended for a masterpiece. It 
was summer and the classes at Cooper Union 
had been suspended. But she meant to return in 
the fall, perhaps she would enter the scholarship 
contest and if successful, go abroad. But the urge 
to wander was no longer in the ascendant. The 
prospect of Europe did not seem as alluring now 
as the prospect of New York had appeared when 
she lived in Philadelphia. It would be nice to 
stay put, rooted; to have friends, experiences, 
memories. 



Paulette, triumphant to the last, had left with 
Hudson for Russia. Martha and Ladislas were 
spending the summer with Martha's people on 
Long Island. Roger had dropped into the void, 
but she could not make herself miss him; to her he 
was the symbol of all that was most futile in her 
existence, she could forgive neither him nor herself 
for their year of madness. If the experience, she 

242 



BUN-HH^-HHHHHH?-* 



told herself, had ended so-beit everything ends. 
If it had faded into a golden glow with a wealth 
of memories, the promise of a friendship, she would 
have had no qualms; but as matters had turned 
out it was an offence in her nostrils, a great blot 
on the escutcheon of her fastidiousness. 

She wished that Martha had asked her to spend 
week-ends with her but the idea had apparently 
never crossed the latter's mind. " Good-bye until 
fall," she had said gaily, " do you know, I'm 
awfully glad to go home this time. I always have 
my old room; it's like begining life all over again. 
Of course I wouldn't give up New York but life 
seems so much more real and durable down there. 
After all it's where my roots are." 

Her roots! Angela echoed the expression to 
herself on a note that was wholly envious. How 
marvellous to go back to parents, relatives, friends 
with whom one had never lost touch ! The peace, 
the security, the companionableness of it! This 
was a relationship which she had forfeited with 
everyone, even with Jinny. And as for her other 
acquaintances in Philadelphia, Henson, Butler, 
Kate and Agnes Hallowell, so completely, so casu 
ally, without even a ripple had she dropped out 
of their lives that it would have been impossible 
for her to re-establish their old, easy footing even 
had she so desired. 

Virginia, without making an effort, seemed over 
whelmed, almost swamped by friendships, pleasant 
intimacies, a thousand charming interests. She 
and Sara Penton, another teacher, had taken an 
apartment together, a three room affair on the 
top floor of a house on i3Qth Street, in " Striver's 
Row ", explained Jinny . Whether or not the nick- 

243 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH!* 



name was deserved, it seemed to Angela well worth 
an effort to live in this beautiful block with its 
tree-bordered pavements, its spacious houses, its 
gracious neighbourliness. A doctor and his wife 
occupied the first two floors; they were elderly, 
rather lonely people, for their two children had 
married and gone to other cities. They had prac 
tically adopted Virginia and Sara; nursing them 
when they had colds, indulgently advising them 
as to their callers. Mrs. Bradley, the doctor's wife, 
occasionally pressed a dress for them; on stormy 
days the doctor drove them in his car around to 
" Public School 89 " where they both taught. 
Already the two girls were as full of intimacies, 
joyous reminiscences, common plans as though 
they had lived together for years. Secrets, nick 
names, allusions, filled the atmosphere. Angela 
grew sick of the phrases: " Of course you don't 
understand that; just some nonsense and it would 
take too long to explain it. Besides you wouldn't 
know any of the people." Even so, unwelcome as 
the expression was, she did not hear it very often, 
for Jinny did not encourage her visits to the apart 
ment even as much as to the boarding house. 
" Sara will think it strange if you come too often." 
" We might tell her," Angela rejoined, " and ask 
her to keep it a secret." 

But Jinny opined coolly that that would never 
do; it was bad to entrust people with one's secrets. 
" If you can't keep them yourself, why should 
they? " she asked sagely. Her attitude showed no 
malice, only the complete acceptance of the stand 
which her sister had adopted years ago. 



244 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH- 



In her sequestered rooms in the Village lying in 
the summer heat unkempt and shorn of its glamour 
Angela pondered long and often on her present 
mode of living. Her life, she was pretty sure, 
could not go on indefinitely as it did now. Even 
if she herself made no effort it was unlikely that the 
loneliness could persist. Jinny, she shrewdly sus 
pected, had known something of this horrible 
condition when she, the older sister had left her 
so ruthlessly to go off and play at adventure. This 
loneliness and her unfortunate affair with Henson 
had doubtless proved too much for her, and she 
had deliberately sought change and distraction 
elsewhere. There were depths upon depths of 
strength in Jinny and as much purpose and resource 
as one might require. Now here she was estab 
lished in New York with friends, occupation, 
security, leading an utterly open life, no secrets, 
no subterfuges, no goals to be reached by devious 
ways. 

Jinny had changed her life and been successful. 
Angela had changed hers and had found pain and 
unhappiness. Where did the fault lie? Not, cer 
tainly, in her determination to pass from one race 
to another. Her native good sense assured her 
that it would have been silly for her to keep on 
living as she had in Philadelphia, constantly, 
through no fault of her own, being placed in 
impossible positions, eternally being accused and 
hounded because she had failed to placard herself, 
forfeiting old friendships, driven fearfully to the 
establishing of new ones. No, the fault was not 
there. Perhaps it lay in her attitude toward her 
friends. Had she been too coldly deliberate in her 
use of them? Certainly she had planned to utilize 

245 



her connection with Roger, but on this point she 
had no qualms; he had been paid in full for any 
advantages which she had meant to gain. She 
had not always been kind to Miss Powell, " but," 
she murmured to herself, " I was always as kind to 
her as I dared be in the circumstances and far, 
far more attentive than any of the others." As 
for Anthony, Paulette, and Martha, her slate was 
clear on their score. She was struck at this point 
to realize that during her stay of nearly three years 
these five were the only people to whom she could 
apply the term friends. Of these Roger had 
dropped out; Miss Powell was negative; Paulette 
had gone to Russia. There remained only Martha 
and Anthony. Martha was too intensely interested 
in the conduct of her own life in connection with 
Ladislas to make a friend, a satisfying, comfortable, 
intimate friend such as Sara Penton seemed to 
be with Virginia. There remained then only 
Anthony yes, and her new acquaintance, Rachel 
Salting. 



She began then in her loneliness to approach 
Rachel seeking for nothing other than those almost 
sisterly intimacies which spring up between solitary 
women cut off in big cities from their homes and 
from all the natural resources which add so much 
to the beauty and graciousness of young woman 
hood. " If anything comes out of this friendship 
to advance me in any way," she told herself sol 
emnly, " it will happen just because it happens but 
I shall go into this with clean hands and a pure 
heart merely because I like Rachel." 

246 



HHHHHf^HHHhPLUM BUN4HHHHHHHHH-* 

After the fever and fret of her acquaintanceship 
with Roger, the slight unwholesomeness attendant 
on Paulette, the didactic quality lurking in Martha's 
household, it was charming, even delicious to enter 
on a friendship with this simple, intelligent, enthusi 
astic girl. Rachel, for all her native endowment, 
her wide reading and her broad scholastic contacts, 
had the straightforward utter sincerity and sim 
plicity of a child ; at times Angela felt quite sophisti 
cated, even blase beside her. But in reality they 
were two children together; Angela's brief episode 
with Roger had left no trace on her moral nature; 
she was ashamed now of the affair with a healthy 
shame at its unworthiness ; but beyond that she 
suffered from no morbidness. Her sum total of 
the knowledge of life had been increased ; she saw 
men with a different eye, was able to differentiate 
between the attitudes underlying the pleasantries of 
the half dozen young men in her office ; listening, 
laughing, weighing all their attentions, accepting 
none. In truth she had lost to a degree her taste 
for the current type of flirtations. She might 
marry some day but all that was still in the dim 
future. Meanwhile the present beckoned; materi 
ally she was once more secure, her itching ambition 
was temporarily lulled; she had a friend. It was 
just as well to let time slide by for a while. 

The two girls spent their evenings together. 
Rachel's fiance, John Adams, was a travelling sales 
man and nearly always out of town. When he was 
home Angela was careful to have an engagement, 
though Rachel assured her, laughing and sparkling, 
that the two were already so used to each other that 
a third person need not feel de trop. Occasionally 
the three of them went during the hot summer 

247 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



nights to Coney Island or Far Rockaway. But this 
jaunt took on the proportions more of an ordeal 
than a pleasure trip; so packed were the cars \vith 
helpless humanity, so crowded the beaches, so night 
marish the trip home. Fortunately Angela came 
face to face one day with Ralph Ashley, Carlotta's 
former friend. Low-spirited, lonely, distrait, he 
asked Angela eagerly to allow him to call occa 
sionally. He seemed a rather bookish, serious 
young man who had failed to discover the possi 
bilities of his inner resources. Without an 
acquaintance or a book he was helpless. Angela's 
self-reliance and cleverness seemed to offer a tem 
porary harbour. Apparently with Carlotta out 
of town, he was at loose ends. By some tacit 
understanding he was taken into the little group 
and as he possessed a car which he was willing and 
eager to share the arrangement was a very happy 
one. 



These were pleasant days. Long afterwards, 
Angela, looking back recalled them as among the 
happiest she had known in New York. In particu 
lar she liked the hours when she and Rachel were 
together busied with domestic, homely affairs. 
They advised each other on the subject of dress; 
Angela tried out new recipes. In the late even 
ings she worked on the sketches, recalling them 
from her note-book while Rachel, sitting sidewise 
in the big chair, her legs dangling comfortably 
over its arm, offered comments and suggestions. 
She had had " courses in art ", and on a trip to 
France and Italy at the age of eighteen had visited 
the Louvre, the Pitti and Uffizi Galleries. All this 

248 



BUN*-HHHHHHHHH* 



lent a certain pithiness and authority to the criti 
cisms which she poured forth for her friend's edifica 
tion; her remarks rarely produced any effect on 
Angela, but both girls felt that Rachel's knowledge 
gave a certain effect of " atmosphere ". 

Usually Rachel's talk was on John and their 
approaching marriage, their unparalleled court 
ship. Many years later Angela could have related 
all the details of that simple, almost sylvan wooing, 
the growing awareness of the two lovers, their 
mutual fears and hopes, their questionings, assur 
ances and their blissful engagement. She knew to 
a penny what John made each week, how much he 
put by, the amount which thrifty Rachel felt must 
be in hand before they could marry. Once this 
recital, so unvarying, so persistent, would have 
bored her, but she was more sympathetic in these 
days; sometimes she found herself making sug 
gestions, saving the house-wifely clippings culled 
from newspapers, proposing decorations for the 
interior of one of the ugly little houses on which 
Rachel had so inexplicably set her heart. She was 
a little older than her friend, she had had experi 
ence in keeping house and in shopping with her 
mother in those far-off days; she ventured occa 
sionally to advise Rachel in her rare purchases very 
much as though the latter were her own sister 
instead of a chance acquaintance whom she had 
known less than a year. 

It was a placid, almost ideal existence. Only 
one thread of worry ran through its fabric, the 
thought that Rachel and John would soon be 
marrying and again Angela would be left on the 
search for a new friend. With one of them in the 
Bronx and the other in Greenwich Village, frequent 

249 



communication would be physically impossible. 
But, curiously enough, whenever Angela lamented 
over this to her friend, a deep sombreness would 
descend on the latter; she would remark gloomily: 
" Time enough to worry about that; after all we 
might not get married. You never can tell." 
This was too enigmatic for Angela and finally she 
grew to look on it as a jest, a rather poor one but 
still a jest. 



250 



CHAPTER II 

INTO the midst of this serenity came a bolt from the 
blue. Rachel, a librarian, was offered the position of 
head librarian in a far suburb of Brooklyn. Further 
more a wealthy woman from Butte, Montana, 
desiring to stay in New York for a few months and 
taking a fancy to the dinginess of Jayne Street and 
to the inconveniences of Rachel's apartment found 
she must live there and not otherwhere. No other 
location in the whole great city would do; she was 
willing to sublet at any figure. Unwillingly Rachel 
named a price which she secretly considered in the 
nature of highway robbery, but none of this mat 
tered to Mrs. Denver, who was used to paying for 
what she wanted. And Rachel could not refuse, 
for both offers meant a substantial increase in the 
nest-egg which was to furnish the little brown 
house in the Bronx. In reality it meant to 
her extraordinary, unhoped for luck whose only 
flaw consisted in the enforced separation from 
her new friend. But to Angela it brought the 
awfulness of a catastrophe, though not for one 
moment would she let her deep dismay be 
suspected. After her first involuntary exclamation 
of consternation she never faltered in her com 
plete acquiesence in the plan. But at heart she 
was sick. 

251 



The sudden flitting entailed much work and 
bustle. Rachel was as untidy as Angela was neat; 
everything she possessed had to be collected separ 
ately; there were no stacks of carefully folded 
clothing to be lifted wholesale and placed in gaping 
trunks. To begin with the trunks themselves were 
filled with dubious odds and ends which required 
to be sorted, given or even thrown away. There 
was no question of abandoning the debris, for 
the apartment must be left habitable for Mrs. 
Denver. 

A nightmare then of feverish packing ensued; 
hasty meals, general house-cleaning. In order to 
assuage the sinking of her heart Angela plunged into 
it with great ardour. But at night, weary as she 
would be from the extra activity of the day, she 
could not fight off the sick dismay which over 
flowed her in great, submerging waves. It seemed 
to her she could not again endure loneliness; she 
could never summon the strength to seek out new 
friends, to establish fresh intimacies. She was 
twenty-six years old and the fact that after having 
lived all those years she was still solitary appalled 
her. Perhaps some curse such as one reads of in 
mediaeval legends had fallen upon her. " Perhaps 
I'm not meant to have friends," she told herself lying 
face downwards in her pillows on the sweltering 
June nights. And a great nostalgia for some 
thing real and permanent swept upon her; she 
wished she were either very, very young, safe 
and contented once more in the protection 
of her father's household or failing that, very, 
very old. 



252 



*HHHHHHHh*-HhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH?** 

A nature as strong, as self-reliant as hers could 
not remain long submerged ; she had seen too many 
bad beginnings convert themselves into good 
endings. One of her most valuable native en 
dowments lay in her ability to set herself and her 
difficulties objectively before her own eyes; in this 
way she had solved more than one problem. On 
the long ride in the subway back from Brooklyn 
whither she had accompanied Rachel on the night 
of the latter's departure she resolved to pursue this 
course that very night. Mercifully the terrible 
heat had abated, a little breeze came sifting in 
her open windows, moving the white sash curtains, 
even agitating some papers on the table. Soberly 
she set about the business of getting supper. Once 
she thought of running up to Rachel's former 
apartment and proffering some hospitality to Mrs. 
Denver. Even if the rich new tenant should not 
accept she'd be pleased doubtless; sooner or later 
she would be offering a return of courtesies, a new 
friendship would spring up. Again there would 
be possibilities. But something in her rebelled 
against such a procedure; these intimacies based 
on the sliding foundation of chance sickened her; 
she would not lend herself to them not ever again. 
From this day on she'd devote herself to the 
establishing of permanencies. 

Supper over, the dishes cleared away, she sat 
down and prepared to think. Callers were un 
likely; indeed there was no one to call, since 
Ashley was out of town for the week-end, but the 
pathos of this fact left her untouched. To-night 
she courted loneliness. 

An oft heard remark of her mother's kept running 
through her mind : " You get so taken up with the 

253 



BUNHHHHHHHHHH** 



problem of living, with just life itself, that by and 
by being coloured or not is just one thing more or 
less that you have to contend with." It had been 
a long time since she had thought about colour; 
at one time it had seemed to complicate her life 
immensely, now it seemed to her that it might be 
of very little importance. But her thoughts skirted 
the subject warily for she knew how immensely 
difficult living could be made by this matter of race. 
But that should take a secondary place; at present 
life, a method of living was the main thing, she must 
get that problem adjusted and first she must see 
what she wanted. Companionship was her chief 
demand. No more loneliness, not even if that 
were the road that led to the fulfilment of vast 
ambition, to the realization of the loftiest hopes. 
And for this she was willing to make sacrifices, 
let go if need be of her cherished independence, 
lead a double life, move among two sets of acquaint 
ances. 

For deep in her heart she realized the longing to 
cast in her lot once more with Virginia, her little 
sister whom she should never have left. Virginia, 
it is true, showed no particular longing for her; 
indeed she seemed hardly cognizant of her exist 
ence; but this attitude might be a forced one. 
She thought, " I didn't want her, the darling, and 
so she just made herself put me out of her life." 
Angela was well aware of the pluck, the indomit- 
ableness that lay beneath Jinny's babyish exterior, 
but there was a still deeper stratum of tenderness 
and love and loyalty which was the real Virginia. 
To this Angela would make her appeal; she would 
acknowledge her foolishness, her selfishness; she 
would bare her heart and crave her sister's forgive- 

254 



BUN-HHHHHHHHHHf* 



ness. And then they would live together, Jinny 
and she and Sara Penton if need be ; what a joke 
it would all be on Sara ! And once again she would 
know the bliss and happiness of a home and the 
stabilities of friendships culled from a certain 
definite class of people, not friendships resulting 
from mere chance. There would be blessed Sun 
day mornings and breakfasts, long walks; lovely 
evenings in the autumn to be filled with reminis 
cences drawn from these days of separation. How 
Virginia would open her eyes at her tales of 
Paulette and Martha! She would never mention 
Roger. And as for colour; when it seemed best 
to be coloured she would be coloured; when it 
was best to be white she would be that. The main 
thing was, she would know once more the joys of 
ordinary living, home, companionship, loyalty, 
security, the bliss of possessing and being possessed. 
And to think it was all possible and waiting for 
her; it was only a matter of a few hours, a few 
miles. 

A great sense of peace, of exaltation descended 
upon her. Almost she could have said: " I will 
arise and go unto my father ". 



On Sunday accordingly she betook herself to 
her sister's apartment in isgth Street. Miss Penton, 
she thought, would be out; she had gathered from 
the girls' conversation many pointed references 
to Sara's great fondness, of late, for church, 
exceeded only by her interest in the choir. This 
interest in the choir was ardently encouraged by 
a member of that body who occasionally walked 

255 



HHHHHHhHHK-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

home with Sara in order more fully to discuss the 
art of music. Virginia no longer went to church; 
Sunday had become her " pick-up day ", the one 
period in the week which she devoted to her cor 
respondence, her clothes and to such mysterious 
rites of beautifying and revitalizing as lay back 
of her healthy, blooming exquisiteness. This 
would be the first time in many months that 
the sisters would have been alone together and it 
was with high hopes that Angela, mounting the 
brown stone steps and ringing the bell, asked 
for Virginia. 

Her sister was in, but so was Sara, so was a third 
girl, a Miss Louise Andrews. The room was full of 
the atmosphere of the lightness, of the badinage, 
of the laughter which belong to the condition 
either of youth or of extreme happiness. In the 
middle of the room stood a large trunk from whose 
yawning interior Jinny lifted a glowing, smiling 
face. Angela was almost startled at the bright 
ecstasy which radiated from it. Sara Penton 
was engaged rather negligently in folding clothes; 
Miss Andrews perched in magnificent ease on the 
daybed, struck an occasional tune from a ukelele 
and issued commands which nobody heeded. 

" Hello," said Virginia carelessly. " Can you 
get in? I was thinking of writing to you." 

" Oh," Angela's hopes fluttered, felt, perished. 
" You're not going away? " Her heart echoed 
Jinny's old cry: "And leave me when I'm all 
ready to come back to you, when I need you so 
terribly ! " 

But of all this Virginia was, of course, unaware. 
"Nothing different," she said briskly. "I'm 
going away this very afternoon to Philadelphia, 

256 



HHHN-* * * * **PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

Merion, points south and west, going to stay with 
Eda Brown." 

Angela was aghast. " I wanted to see you about 
something rather important, Virginia at least," 
she added humbly, " important to me." Rather 
impatiently she glanced at the two girls hoping they 
would take the hint and leave them, but they had 
not even heard her, so engrossed were they in dis 
cussing the relative merits of one- and two-piece 
sports clothes. 

Her sister was kind but not curious. " Unless 
it's got something to do with your soul's salvation 
I'm afraid it'll have to wait a bit," she said gaily. 
" I'm getting a two o'clock train and I must finish 
this trunk Sara's such a poor packer or I'd leave 
it for her. As it is she's going to send it after me. 
Aren't you, darling? " Already Angela's request 
was forgotten. " After I finish this," the gay voice 
went on, " I've got some 'phoning to do and oh 
a million things." 

" Let me help you," said Angela suddenly 
inspired, " then we'll call a taxi and we can go 
down to the station together and we'll have a long 
talk so I can explain things." 

Virginia was only half-attentive. " Miss Mory 
wants to go to the station with me," she said throw 
ing a droll look at her friends. " Shall I take 
her along? " She vanished into the bedroom, 
Louise Andrews at her heels, both of them over 
whelmed with laughter bubbling from some secret 
spring. 

Cut and humiliated, Angela stood silent. Sara 
Penton who had been looking after the vanishing 
figures turned and caught her expression. " Don't 
mind her craziness. She's not responsible to-day." 

257 



She came closer. " For heaven's sake don't let 
on I told you; she's engaged." 

This was news. "Engaged? To whom?" 

" Oh somebody she's always been crazy about." 
The inevitable phrase followed: "You wouldn't 
know who he was." 

Not know who he was, not know Matthew! 
She began to say " Why I knew him before 
Virginia," but remembering her role, a stupid 
and silly one now, caught herself, stood expect 
antly. 

" So you see," Sara went on mysteriously, one 
eye on the bedroom, " you mustn't insist on going 
to the station with her; he's going to take her 
down." 

" Why, is he here? " 

" Came yesterday. We've been threatening all 
morning to butt in. That's the reason she spoke 
as she did about your going down. She expressed 
herself to us, you bet, but she probably wouldn't 
feel like doing that to you." 

" Probably not," said Angela, her heart cold. 
Her little sister was engaged and she was 
learning of it from strangers. It was all she 
could do to hold back the tears. " But you've 
only yourself to blame," she reminded herself 
valiantly. 

The two girls came back; Virginia still laugh 
ing but underneath the merriment Angela was 
able to detect a flurry of nervousness. After all, 
Jinny was just a child. And she was so happy, it 
would never do to mar that happiness by the 
introduction of the slightest gloom or discom 
fort. Her caller rose to her feet. " I guess^Fll 
be going." 

258 



*-HHHHHHHH-*PLUM BUNHHHHHHHMHHH* 

Virginia made no effort to detain her, but the 
glance which she turned on her sister was sud 
denly very sweet and friendly. " Here, I'll run 
down to the door with you. Sara, be a darling 
and pick out the best of those stockings for me, 
put in lots. You know how hard I am on 
them." 

Out in the hall she flung an impulsive arm 
about her sister. " Oh, Angela, I'm so happy, so 
happy. I'm going to write you about it right 
away, you'll be so surprised." Astonishingly she 
gave the older girl a great hug, kissed her again 
and again. 

" Oh," said Angela, the tears welling from her 
eyes, " Oh Jinny, you do forgive me, you do, 
you do? I'm so sorry about it all. I've been 
wretched for a long time. I thought I had lost 
you, Virginia." 

" I know," said Jinny, " I'm a hard-hearted 
little wretch." She giggled through her own tears, 
wiped them away with the back of her childish 
bronze hand. " I was just putting you through; 
I knew you'd get sick of Miss Anne's folks and 
come back to me. Oh Angela, I've wanted you 
so. But it's all right now. I won't be back 
for ten weeks, but then we will talk! I've 
got the most marvellous plans for both of us 
for all of us." She looked like a wise baby. 
" You'll get a letter from me in a few days telling 
you all about it. Angela, I'm so happy, but I 
must fly. Good-bye, darling." 

They clung for a moment in the cool, dim 
depths of the wide hall. 



259 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 



Angela could have danced in the street. As 
it was she walked gaily down Seventh Avenue to 
noth Street and into the bosky reaches of the 
park. Jinny had forgiven her. Jinny longed 
for her, needed her; she had known all along 
that Angela was suffering, had deliberately pun 
ished her. Well, she was right, everything 
was right this glorious memorable day. She 
was to have a sister again, some one of her 
own, she would know the joy of sharing her 
little triumphs, her petty woes. Wise Jinny, 
wonderful Jinny ! 

And beautiful Jinny, too, she thought. How 
lovely, how dainty, how fresh and innocent her 
little sister seemed. This brought her mind to 
Matthew and his great good fortune. " I'd like 
to see him again," she mused, smiling mischiev 
ously. " Doubtless he's forgotten me. It would 
be great fun to make him remember." Only, of 
course, now he was Jinny's and she would never 
get in the way of that darling. " Not even if he 
were some one I really wanted with all my heart 
and soul. But I'd never want Matthew." It 
would be fun, she thought, to see him again. He 
would make a nice brother, so sturdy and kind 
and reliable. She must be careful never to pre 
sume on that old youthful admiration of his. 
Smiling and happy she reached her house, actually 
skipped up the steps to her rooms. Her apartment 
no longer seemed lonely; it was not beautiful and 
bright like Jinny's but it was snug and dainty. It 
would be fun to have Virginia and Sara down; 
yes, and that new girl, that Miss Andrews, too. 
She didn't care what the other people in the house 
thought. And the girls themselves, how aston- 

260 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH6* 



ished they would be to learn the true state of 
affairs ! Suddenly remembering Mrs. Denver, she 
ran up to see her; that lady, in spite of her wealth 
and means for self-indulgence, was palpably lonely. 
Angela cheered her up with mirthful accounts of 
her own first days in New York; she'd been 
lonely too, she assured her despondent hostess, 
sparkling and fascinating. 

" I don't see how anybody with a disposition 
like yours could ever be lonely," said Mrs. Denver 
enviously. She'd been perilously near tears all 
day. 

Gone, gone was all the awful melancholy, the 
blueness that had hung about her like a palpable 
cloud. She was young, fascinating; she was going 
to be happy, again. Again! She caught her 
breath at that. Oh, God was good ! This feeling 
of lightness, of exaltation had been unknown to 
her so long; not since the days when she had 
first begun to go about with Roger had she felt so 
free, bird-like. In the evening Ralph Ashley 
came with his car and drove her halfway across 
Long Island, or so it seemed. They stopped at a 
gorgeous hotel and had a marvellous supper. 
Ashley was swept off his feet by her gay vitalness. 
In the doorway of the Jayne Street house she gave 
him her hand and a bewitching smile. ' You 
can't imagine how much I've enjoyed myself. I'll 
always remember it." And she spoke sincerely, 
for soon this sort of thing would be far behind 
her. 

" You're a witch," said Ashley, his voice 
shaking a little. " You can have this sort of 
thing whenever you want it and you know it. 
Be kind to me, Angele. I'm not a bad fellow." 

261 



*HHHHHHHHHHHPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

Frightened, she pushed him away, ran in and 
slammed the door. No, no, no, her heart 
pounded. Roger had taught her an unforgettable 
lesson. Soon she'd be with Jinny and Matthew, 
safe, sheltered. 



262 



CHAPTER III 

IN the middle of the night she found herself sitting 
up in bed. A moment before she had been asleep, 
but a sudden thought had pierced her conscious 
ness so sharply that the effect was that of an icy 
hand laid suddenly on her shoulder. Jinny and 
Matthew marry why, that meant why, of course 
it meant that they would have to live in Phila 
delphia. How stupid she had been! And she 
couldn't go back there never, never. Not be 
cause of the difficulties which she had experienced 
as a child; she was perfectly willing to cast in her 
lot again with coloured people in New York. But 
that was different; there were signal injustices 
here, too oh, many, many of them but there 
were also signal opportunities. But Philadelphia 
with its traditions of liberty and its actual economic 
and social slavery, its iniquitous school system, its 
prejudiced theatres, its limited offering of occu 
pation! A great, searing hatred arose in her 
for the huge, slumbering leviathan of a city which 
had hardly moved a muscle in the last fifty years. 
So hide-bound were its habits that deliberate 
insult could be offered to coloured people without 
causing the smallest ripple of condemnation or 
even consternation in the complacent common 
wealth. Virginia in one of her expansive moments 
had told her of a letter received from Agnes 

263 



? '3 >*> -M*-M -3 PLUM BUNfr********** 

Hallowell, now a graduate of the Women's Medi 
cal College. Agnes was as fair as Angela, but 
she had talked frankly, even with pride, of her 
racial connections. " I had nothing to be ashamed 
of," Angela could imagine her saying, her cheeks 
flushing, her black eyes snapping. On her gradua 
tion she had applied for an interneship at a great 
hospital for the insane; a position greatly craved 
by ardent medical graduates because of the un 
usually large turnover of pathological cases. But 
the man in charge of such appointments, looking 
Agnes hard in the eye told her suavely that such 
a position would never be given to her " not if 
you passed ahead of a thousand white candidates." 
As for Angela, here was the old problem of 
possible loneliness back on her hands. Virginia, 
it was true, would hardly marry at once, perhaps 
they would have a few happy months together. 
But afterwards. . . . She lay there, wide awake 
now, very still, very straight in her narrow bed, 
watching the thick blackness grow thinner, less 
opaque. And suddenly as on a former occasion, 
she thought of marriage. Well, why not? She 
had thought of it once before as a source of relief 
from poverty, as a final barrier between herself 
and the wolves of prejudice; why not now as a 
means of avoiding loneliness? " I must look 
around me," her thoughts sped on, and she blushed 
and smiled in the darkness at the cold-bloodedness 
of such an idea. But, after all, that was what men 
said and did. How often had she heard the 
expression " he's ready to settle down, so he's 
looking around for a wife ". If that were the 
procedure of men it should certainly be much more 
so the procedure of women since their fate was so 

264 



much more deeply involved. The room was 
growing lighter; she could see the pictures a 
deeper blur against the faint blur of the walL 
Her passing shame suddenly spent itself, for, after 
all, she knew practically no men. There was 
Ashley but she was through with men of his 
type. The men in her office were nearly all impos 
sible, but there were three, she told herself, coldly, 
unenthusiastic, who were not such terrible pills. 

" But no," she said out loud. " I'd rather stay 
single and lonely, too, all my life than worry along 
with one of them. There must be someone else." 
And at once she thought of Anthony Cross. Of 
course there was Anthony. " I believe I've always 
had him in the back of my mind," she spoke again 
to the glimmering greyness. And turning on her 
pillow she fell, smiling, asleep. 



Monday was a busy day; copy must be pre 
pared for the engraver; proofs of the current 
edition of the magazine had to be checked up; 
some important French fashion plates for which 
she was responsible had temporarily disappeared 
and must be unearthed. At four- thirty she was 
free to take tea with Mrs. Denver, who imme 
diately thereafter bore her off to a " movie " and 
dinner. Not until nine o'clock was she able to 
pursue her new train of thought. And even when 
she was at liberty to indulge in her habit of intro 
spection she found herself experiencing a certain 
reluctance, an unexpected shyness. Time was 
needed to brood on this secret with its promise of 
happiness; this means of salvation from the 

265 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 



problems of loneliness and weakness which beset 
her. For since the departure of Roger she fre 
quently felt herself less assured; it would be a 
relief to have some one on whom to lean; some 
one who would be glad to shield and advise her, 
and love her ! This last thought seemed to her 
marvellous. She said to herself again and again : 
" Anthony loves me, I know it. Think of it, he 
loves me ! " Her face and neck were covered with 
blushes; she was like a young girl on the eve of 
falling in love, and indeed she herself was entering 
on that experience for the first time. From the 
very beginning she had liked Anthony, liked him 
as she had never liked Roger for himself, for his 
sincerity, for his fierce pride, for his poverty, for 
his honest, frantic love. " And now," she said 
solemnly, " I believe I'm going to love him; I 
believe I love him already." 

There were many things to be considered. His 
poverty, but she no longer cared about that; in 
sensibly her association with Rachel Salting, her 
knowledge of Rachel's plans and her high flouting 
of poverty had worked their influence. It would 
be fun, fun to begin at the beginning, to save and 
scrape and mend. Like Rachel she would do no 
washing and ironing, she would keep herself 
dainty and unworn, but everything else, every 
thing else she would do. Cook and she could 
cook; she had her blessed mother to thank for 
that. For a moment she was home again on 
Opal Street, getting Monday dinner, laughing 
with Virginia about Mrs. Henrietta Jones. There 
they were at the table, her pretty mother, her 
father with his fine, black face his black face, 
she had forgotten that. 

266 



Colour, here the old problem came up again. 
Restlessly she paced the room, a smouldering cigar 
ette in her fingers. She rarely smoked but some 
times the insensate little cylinder gave her a sense 
of companionship. Colour, colour, she had for 
gotten it. Now what should she do, tell Anthony? 
He was Spanish, she remembered, or no, since he 
came from Brazil he was probably Portuguese, a 
member of a race devoid, notoriously devoid of 
prejudice against black blood. But Anthony had 
lived in America long enough to become inocu 
lated; had he ever spoken about coloured people, 
had the subject ever come up? Wait a minute, 
there was Miss Powell; she remembered now 
that his conduct towards the young coloured 
woman had always been conspicuously correct; 
he had placed chairs for her, opened doors, set 
up easels; once the three of them had walked 
out of Cooper Union together and Anthony had 
carefully helped Miss Powell on a car, removing 
his hat with that slightly foreign gesture which she 
admired so much. And so far as she knew he had 
never used any of Roger's cruelly slighting ex 
pressions; the terms "coon", "nigger", "darky" 
had never crossed his lips. Clearly he had no 
conscious feeling against her people " my people " 
she repeated, smiling, and wondered herself which 
people she meant, for she belonged to two races, 
and to one far more conspicuously than the 
other. Why, Anthony had even attended the Van 
Meier lecture. And she wondered what Van Meier 
would say if she presented her problem to him. 
He had no brief, she knew, against intermarriage, 
though, because of the high social forfeit levied, 
he did not advocate its practice in America. 

267 



For a moment she considered going to him and 
asking his advice. But she was afraid that he 
would speak to her about racial pride and she did 
not want to think of that. Life, life was what she 
was struggling for, the right to live and be happy. 
And once more her mother's dictum flashed into 
her mind. " Life is more important than colour." 
This, she told herself, was an omen, her mother 
was watching over her, guiding her. And, burying 
her face in her hands, she fell on her knees and 
wept and prayed. 



Virginia sent a gay missive: " As soon as you 
left that wretch of a Sara told me that she had 
let you in on the great news. I wish I'd known it, 
I'd have spoken to you about it there in the hall; 
only there was so much to explain. But now you 
know the main facts, and I can wait until I see 
you to tell you the rest. But isn't it all wonderful? 
Angela, I do believe I'm almost the happiest girl 
alive ! 

" It's too lovely here. Edna is very kind and 
you know I always did like Pennsylvania country. 
Matthew is out almost every day. He tells me it 
renews his youth to come and talk about old times, 
anyone to hear us reminiscing, starting every 

other sentence with ' do you remember ? ' 

would think that we averaged at least ninety 
years apiece. It won't pique your vanity, will it, 
if I tell you that he seems to have recovered 
entirely from his old crush on you? Maybe 
he was just in love with the family and didn't 
know it. 

268 



BUN*** ******** 

" We go into Philadelphia every day or two. 
The city has changed amazingly. But after the 
hit or miss method of New York society there is 
something very restful and safe about this tight 
organization of * old Philadelphians '. In the short 
time I've been here I've met loads of first families, 
people whose names we only knew when we were 
children. But they all seem to remember father 
and mother; they all begin: ' My dear, I remem 
ber when Junius Murray ' I meet all these 

people, old and young, through Matthew, who 
seems to have become quite the beau here and 
goes everywhere. He really is different. Even 
his hair in some mysterious way is changed. Not 
that I ever minded; only he's so awfully nice that 
I just would like all the nice things of the world 
added unto him. We were talking the other day 
about the wedding, and I was thinking what a 
really distinguished appearance he would make. 
Dear old Matt, I'm glad I put off marriage until 
he could cut a fine figure. Write me, darling, if 
you feel like it, but don't expect to hear much 
from me. I'm so happy I can't keep still long 
enough to write. The minute I get back to 
New York though we'll have such a talk as never 



Mrs. Denver was growing happier; New York 
was redeeming itself and revealing all the riches 
which she had suspected lay hidden in its ware 
houses. Through one letter of introduction forced 
into her unwilling hands by an officious acquaint 
ance on her departure from Butte she had 
gained an entree into that kindest and happiest of 



HHHH- * * * **HhPLUM BUNH* 



New York's varied groups, the band of writers, 
columnists, publishers and critics. The lady from 
the middle West had no literary pretensions her 
self, but she liked people who had them and lived 
up to them; she kept abreast of literary gossip, 
read Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Mercury. 
As she was fairly young, dainty, wealthy and 
generous and no grinder of axes, she was caught 
up and whirled right along into the glaxy of 
teas, luncheons, theatre parties and " barbecues " 
which formed the relaxations of this joyous crowd. 
Soon she was overwhelmed, with more invitations 
than she could accept; to those which she did 
consider she always couched her acceptance in 
the same terms. " Yes I'll come if I may bring 
my young friend, Angele Mory, along with me. 
She's a painter whom you'll all be glad to know 
some day." Angela's chance kindness to her in 
her days of loneliness and boredom had not fallen 
on barren ground. 

Now indeed Angela was far removed from the 
atmosphere which she had known in Greenwich 
Village; the slight bohemianism which she had 
there encountered was here replaced by a somewhat 
bourgeois but satisfying sophistication. These 
people saw the " Village " for what it was, a 
network of badly laid off streets with, for the most 
part, uncomfortable, not to say inconvenient 
dwellings inhabited by a handful of artists in the 
midst of a thousand poseurs. Her new friends were 
frankly interested in the goods of this world. They 
found money an imperative, the pre-eminent, 
concomitant of life; once obtained, they spent it 
on fine apartments, beautiful raiment, delicate 
viands, and trips to Paris and Vienna. Conver- 

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> * * ***^-HHHPLUM BUNHHW ******** 

sation with them was something more than an 
exchange of words; "quips and jests" passed 
among them, and, though flavoured with allusions 
to stage and book, so that Angela was at times 
hard put to it to follow the trend of the talk, she 
half suspected that she was in this company assist 
ing more nearly at the restoration of a lost art than 
in any other circles in the world save in the corres 
ponding society of London. 

Once again her free hours could be rilled to 
overflowing with attention, with gaiety, with intel 
lectual excitement; it came to her one day that this 
was the atmosphere of which she once had dreamed. 
But she was not quite happy, her economic condi 
tion interfered here. Constantly she was receiving 
every conceivable manifestation of an uncalculat- 
ing generosity at the hands not only of Mrs. Denver 
but of her new acquaintances. And she could 
make no adequate return ; her little apartment had 
turned too shabby for her to have guests of this 
calibre, even in to tea. Her rich friend, making 
short shrift of such furniture as Rachel Salting had 
left behind, had transformed her dwelling into a 
marvel of luxury and elegance; tiny but beautiful. 
Mrs. Denver was the soul of real and delicate 
kindness but Angela could not accept favours 
indefinitely; besides she was afraid to become too 
used to this constant tide from a horn of plenty 
on which she had absolutely no claim. If there 
were any one thing which the harsh experiences 
of these last three years had taught her it was the 
impermanence of relationships ; she must, she felt, 
lay down and follow a method of living for herself 
which could never betray her when the attention 
of the rich and great should be withdrawn. Gradu- 

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ally she ceased accepting Mrs. Denver's invitations; 
she pleaded the necessity of outside work along the 
lines of her employment ; she was busy, too, on the 
portrait of her mother, stimulating her vivid 
memory with an old faded photograph. Her inten 
tion was to have it as a surprise for Virginia upon 
the latter's return. 

But before withdrawing completely she made the 
acquaintance of a young married woman and her 
husband, a couple so gifted, so genuine and sincere 
that she was unable to keep to the letter her spartan 
promise of cutting herself entirely adrift from this 
fascinating cross-section of New York society. 
The husband, Walter Sandburg, was a playwright; 
his name was a household word ; the title of one or 
another of his dramas glittered on Broadway every 
night. His wife, Elizabeth, reviewed books for 
one of the great New York weeklies. Their charm 
ing apartment in Fifty-fifth Street was the centre 
for many clever and captivating people. Between 
these two and Angela something of a real friendship 
awakened; she was not ashamed to have them see 
the shabbiness of her apartment. The luncheons 
to which she treated Elizabeth in the Village tea 
rooms and in apartment stores brought as great 
satisfaction as the more elaborate meals at the 
Algonquin, the favourite rendezvous of many of 
these busy, happy, contented workers. 

Ashley, too, had returned to a town still devoid 
of Carlotta, and in his loneliness was again con 
stantly seeking Angela. His attitude was perfect; 
never by word or look did he revive the unpleasant 
impression which he had once made; indeed, in a 
sober, disillusioned sort of way, she was growing 
to like him very much. He was shy, sensitive, 

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BUNHHHHHHHHHHH 



sympathetic and miserably lonely. It was not 
likely that his possessions were as fabulously great 
as Roger's but it was certain that he belonged to 
Roger's social group with all that such a ranking 
implies. But in spite of this he was curiously 
diffident; lacking in pep, the girls in his " set " 
coldly classified him, and let him alone. Outside 
his group ambitious Amazons daubed him " easy " 
and made a mad rush for him and his fabled 
millions. The two verdicts left him ashamed and 
frightened; annually he withdrew farther and 
farther into his shell, emerging only in response 
to Carlotta's careless and occasional beckoning or 
to Angela's genuine and pre-occupied indifference. 
But this was not her world; for years she had 
craved such a milieu, only to find herself, when once 
launched into it, outwardly perfectly at ease, 
inwardly perturbed and dismayed. Although she 
rarely thought of colour still she was conscious of 
living in an atmosphere of falseness, of tangled 
implications. She spoke often of Martha Burden 
and her husband; Walter Sandburg the play 
wright, knew Ladislas Starr; Elizabeth had met 
Paulette Lister in some field of newspaper activity, 
and Ashley of course had seen Roger in Angela's 
company. Behind these three or four names and 
the background which familiarity with them 
implied, she did not dare venture and in her gayest 
moments she was aware of the constant stirring 
within of a longing for someone real and per 
manent with whom she could share her life. She 
would, of course make up with Jinny, but Jinny 
was going to live in Philadelphia, where she herself 
would never sojourn again. That aftermath was 
the real consideration. 

s 273 



* * * HHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHMHHHHHHHH 

Her thoughts went constantly winging to 
Anthony; her determination became static. Sav 
ing only this invisible mixture of dark blood in 
her veins they, too, could meet on a par. They 
were both young, both gifted, ambitious, blessedly 
poor. Together they would climb to happier, 
sunnier heights. To be poor with Anthony; to 
struggle with him; to help him keep his secret 
vow; to win his surprised and generous approba 
tion ; finally to reach the point where she, too, could 
open her home to poor, unknown, struggling 
geniuses, life could hold nothing more pleasing 
than these possibilities. And how kind she would 
be to these strangers ! How much she hoped that 
among them there would be some girl struggling 
past the limitations of her heritage even as she her 
self had done. Through some secret, subtle bond 
of sympathy she would, she was sure, be able 
to recognize such a girl; and how she would help 
her and spur her on ! To her communings she 
said humbly, " I am sure that this course will work 
out all right for me for see, I am planning chiefly for 
Anthony and for helpless, harassed people; hardly 
anything for myself but protection and love. I 
am willing to work for success and happiness." 
And even as she spoke she knew that the summit 
of her bliss would be reached in the days while she 
and Anthony were still poor and struggling and 
when she would be giving of her best to make 
things so. 

Elizabeth Sandburg reminiscing about the early 
married days of herself and Walter gave a fillip to 
her thought. Said Elizabeth: " Walt and I were 
just as poor as we could be, we only made twenty 
dollars a week, and half of that went for a room in 

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a cheap hotel. Meals even at the punkest places 
were awfully expensive, and half the time I used 
to cook things over the gas-jet. I didn't know 
much about cooking, and I imagine the stuff was 
atrocious, but we didn't mind. There were we 
with no one to interfere with us ; we had each other 
and we didn't give a damn." 

Smiling, glowing, she gave Angela a com 
mission to paint hers and her Walter's portraits. 
" We'll leave the price to you and if you really put 
the job over I'll get you a lot of other sitters. No, 
don't thank me. What are friends for? That's 
what I always say." 



275 



CHAPTER IV 

SOMETIMES this thought confronted her: " Per 
haps Anthony no longer needs me; has forgotten 
me." And at the bare idea her heart would con 
tract with an actual, palpable movement. For by 
now he was representing not only surcease from 
loneliness but peace and security ; a place not merely 
in society but in the world at large. Marriage 
appeared, too, in a different light. Until she had 
met Roger she had not thought much about the 
institution except as an adventure in romance or 
as a means to an end; in her case the method of 
achieving the kind of existence which once had 
been her ideal. But now she saw it as an end in 
itself; for women certainly; the only, the most 
desirable and natural end. From this state a gifted, 
an ambitious woman might reach forth and acquit 
herself well in any activity. But marriage must 
be there first, the foundation, the substratum. Of 
course there were undoubtedly women who, like 
men, took love and marriage as the sauce of exist 
ence and their intellectual interests as the main 
dish. Witness for instance, Paulette. Now that 
she came to think of it, Paulette might vary her 
lovers but she never varied in the manifestation of 
her restless, clever mental energy. At no time did 
she allow her " love-life ", as the psycho-analyst 
termed it, to interfere with her mental interests, 

276 



Indeed she made no scruple of furthering these 
same interests by her unusual and pervasive sex 
charm. But this was Paulette, a remarkable per 
sonage, a woman apart. But for most women 
there must be the safety, the assurance of relation 
ship that marriage affords. Indeed, most women 
must be able to say as did men, " You are mine," 
not merely, " I am yours." 

A certain scorching humility thrust itself upon 
her. In all her manifestations of human relation 
ships, how selfish she had been ! She had left 
Virginia, she had taken up with Roger to further 
her own interests. For a brief interval she had 
perhaps loved Roger with the tumultuous, heady 
passion of hot, untried youth. But again when, 
this subsiding, she had tried to introduce a note 
of idealism, it had been with the thought of saving 
her own soul. She thought of her day in the park 
with Anthony, his uncomplaining acceptance of 
her verdict; his wistfully grateful: "I almost 
touched happiness ". How easily she might have 
made him happy if she had turned her thoughts to 
his needs. But she had never thought of that; 
she had been too intent always on happiness for 
herself. Her father, her mother and Jinny had 
always given and she had always taken. Why was 
that? Jinny had sighed: "Perhaps you have 
more white blood than Negro in your veins." 
Perhaps this selfishness was what the possession 
of white blood meant; the ultimate definition 
of Nordic Supremacy. 

Then she remembered that Anthony was white and, 
bewildered ; she ceased trying to cogitate, to unravel, 
decipher, evaluate. She was lonely, she loved. She 
meant to find a companion ; she meant to be beloved. 

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HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM 



She must act. 

None of her new friends was acquainted with 
Anthony. Ralph Ashley in response to a tentative 
question could not recall ever having seen him. 
The time was August, consequently he could not 
be at the school. Telephone books revealed 
nothing. " Lost in a great city ! " she told herself 
and smiled at the cheap novel flavour of the 
phrase. She sent her thoughts fluttering back 
to the last time she had really seen Anthony, to their 
last intimate conversation. They had met that 
day after she had cut Jinny; she remembered, 
smiling now in her superior knowledge, the slight 
panic which she had experienced at his finding her 
in a 'bus in Harlem. There had been some chaffing 
about tea and he had given her his address and she 
had put it, where? It was not in her address 
book. A feverish search through her little desk 
revealed it in the pages of her prayer book, the one 
which she had used as a child. This she considered 
a good omen. The bit of paper was crinkled and 
blurred but she was able to make out an address on 
One Hundred and Fourteenth Street. Suppose 
he were no longer there ! She could not brook the 
thought of another night of uncertainty; it was 
ten o'clock but she mounted a 'bus, rode up to One 
Hundred and Fourteenth and Seventh Avenue. 
Her heart beat so loudly as she turned the corner, 
it seemed as though the inhabitants of the rather 
shabby block hearing that human dynamo would 
throng their windows. The street, like many 
others in New York, possessed the pseudo elegance 
and impressiveness which comes from an equip 
ment of brown stone houses with their massive 
fronts, their ostentatious regularity and simplicity, 

278 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHS**-H 

but a second glance revealed its down-at-heel 
condition; gaping windows disclosed the pitiful 
smallness of the rooms that crouched behind the 
pretentious outsides. There was something faintly 
humorous, ironical, about being cooped up in 
these deceptive palaces; according to one's tem 
perament one might laugh or weep at the thought 
of how these structures, the product of human 
energy could yet cramp, imprison, even ruin the 
very activity which had created them. 

Angela found her number, mounted the steps, 
sought in the dim, square hall feverishly among 
the names in the bells. Sullivan, Brown, Hend- 
rickson, Sanchez, and underneath the name of 
Sanchez on the same card, five small, neat char 
acters in Anthony's inimitably clear printing 
Cross. She almost fainted with the relief of it. 
Her fingers stole to the bell, perhaps her one 
time fellow-student was up in his room now, 
how strange that this bit of gutta percha and its 
attendant wires should bridge all the extent of 
time and space that had so long lain between 
them! But she could not push it; Anthony, she 
was sure, was real enough, close enough to the heart 
of living to refuse to be shocked by any mere breach 
of the conventionalities. Even so, however, to 
seek at eleven o'clock at night and without pre 
liminary warning admission to the rooms of a man 
whom one has not noticed for a year, was, as he 
himself would have put it, " a bit thick ". 

The little note which she sent was a model of 
demureness and propriety. " Dear Anthony," it 
read, " Do you remember my promising to ask 
you in for tea the next time I made a batch of 

279 



BUN^HHHHHHHHHH* 



cookies? Well, to-morrow at 5.30 will be the next 
time. Do come ! " 

He had changed ; her interested, searching eyes 
descried it in a moment. Always grave, always 
austere, always responsible, there was now in his 
manner an imponderable yet perceptible increment 
of each quality. But this was not all; his old 
familiar tortured look had left him; a peace, a 
quality of poise hovered about him, the composure 
which is achieved either by the attainment or by 
the relinquishment of the heart's desire. There is 
really very little difference, since each implies the 
cessation of effort. 

All this passed rapidly through Angela's mind. 
Aloud she said : " How do, Anthony? you're really 
looking awfully well. It's nice to see you again." 

" It's nice to see you," he replied. Certainly 
there was nothing remarkable about their con 
versation. After the bantering, the jests and 
allusions which she had been used to hearing at 
the Sandburgs, compared with the snappy jargon 
of Mrs. Denver's "crowd" this was trivial, not 
to say banal. She burst out laughing. Anthony 
raised his eyebrows. 

" What's so funny? Is it a secret joke? " 

" No, only I've been thinking hard about you 
for a long time." She made a daring stroke. 
" Presumably you've thought occasionally about 
me. Yet when we meet we sit up like a dandy 
and a dowager with white kid gloves on and 
exchange comments on our appearances. I sup 
pose the next step in order would be to talk about 
the weather. Have you had much rain up 
in One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, Mr 
Gross? " 

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BUNHHMHHHMHS'-HMS' 



Some of his poise forsook him. The pervasive 
peacefulness that sat so palpably upon him deserted 
him like a rended veil. " You've been thinking 
about me for a long time? Just how long? " 

" I couldn't tell you when it began." She ven 
tured another bold stroke. " But you've been 
in the back of my mind, oh for ages, ages." 

The poise, the composure, the peace were all 
fled now. Hastily, recklessly he set down his glass 
of tea, came and towered over her. She bit her 
lips to hide their trembling. Oh he was dear, 
dearer than she had ever imagined, so transparent, 
so honest. Who was she to deserve him? 

His face quivered. He should never have come 
near this girl ! As suddenly as he had left his 
chair he returned to it, settled himself com 
fortably and picked up his glass. " I've been 
away from you so long I had forgotten." 

" Forgotten what? " 

" Forgotten how dangerous you are. For 
gotten how a woman like you plays with poor 
fools like me. Why did you send for me? To 
set me dancing once more to your tune? " 

His bitterness surprised and frightened her. 
" Anthony, Anthony don't talk like that ! I sent 
for you because I wanted to see you, wanted to 
talk to my old friend." 

Appeased, he lounged back in the famous and 
unique easy chair, lit a cigarette. She brought out 
some of her sketches, displayed her note-book. 
He was especially interested in the " Fourteenth 
Street Types ", was pleased with the portrait of 
her mother. " She doesn't look like you, though 
I can see you probably have her hair and that 
pearly tint of her skin. But you must have got 

281 



your nose from your father. You know all the 
rest of your face," he dwelt on her features dreamily, 
" your lips, your eyes, your curly lashes are so 
deliciously feminine. But that straight nose of 
yours betokens strength." The faded, yet striking 
photograph lay within reach. He picked it up, 
studying it thoughtfully. " What a beautiful 
woman; all woman I should say. Did she have 
much effect on your life? " 

" N-no, I can't say she did." She remembered 
those Saturday excursions and their adventures 
in " passing ", so harmless, yet so far-reaching. 
" Oh yes, in one respect she influenced me greatly, 
changed my whole life." 

He nodded, gazing moodily at the picture. 
" My mother certainly affected me." 

Angela started to say glibly; " She made 
you what you are to-day"; but a glance at his 
brooding countenance made her think better 
of it. 

" What's this? " He had turned again to the 
sketch book and was poring upon a mass of lightly 
indicated figures passing apparently in review 
before the tall, cloaked form of a woman, thin to 
emaciation, her hands on her bony hips, slightly 
bent forward, laughing uproariously yet with a 
certain chilling malevolence. " I can't make it 
out." 

With something shamefaced in her manner she 
took it from him. "I'm not sure yet whether I'll 
develop it. I, it's an idea that has slowly taken 
possession of me since I've been in New York. 
The tall woman is Life and the idea is that she 
laughs at us; laughs at the poor people who fall 
into the traps which she sets for us." 

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Sorrow set its seal on his face as perceptibly as 
though it had been stamped there. He came 
closer. " You've found that out too? If I could 
have managed it you would never have known 
it. I wanted so to keep it from you." His manner 
suddenly changed. " I must go. This afternoon 
has been perfect; I can't thank you enough, but 
I'm not coming again." 

" Not coming again ! What nonsense ! Why, 
why ever not? Now, Anthony, don't begin that 
vow business. To-day has been perfect, marvel 
lous. You don't suppose I'm going to let my friend 
go when I'm really just discovering him ! " 

Weakly he murmured that it was foolish for 
them to take up each other's time; he was going 
away. 

" All the more reason, then, why we should be 
seeing each other." 

His glance fell on the formless sketch. " If I 
could only get one laugh on life. . . . When are 
you going to let me see you again? I'm my own 
man just now; my time is at your disposal." 

The next afternoon they met outside her office 
building and dined together. On Friday they 
sailed to the Atlantic Highlands. Saturday, Sun 
day, Monday, Tuesday flashed by, meaning nothing 
to either except for the few hours which they spent 
in each other's company. Thursday was a slack 
day; she arranged her work so as to be free for the 
afternoon, and they passed the hurrying, glamorous 
hours in Van Cortlandt Park, laughing, jesting, 
relating old dreams, relapsing into silences more 
intimate than talk, blissfully aware of each other's 
presence, still more throbbingly aware of a con 
versation held in this very Park years ago Back 

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again in the little hall on Jayne Street he took her 
in his arms and kissed her slowly, with rapture, with 
adoration and she returned his kisses. For a long 
time he held her close against his pounding heart; 
she opened her languid eyes to meet his burning 
gaze which she could feel rather than see. Slowly 
he took her arms from his neck, let them drop. 

" Angel, Angel, I shall love you always. Life 
cannot rob me of that. Good-bye, my sweetest." 

He was lost in the shadowy night. 

The next day passed and the next. A week 
sped. Absolute silence. No sign of him by either 
word or line. 



At the end of ten days, on a never to be forgotten 
Sunday afternoon, she went to see him. Without 
conscious volition on her part she was one moment 
in her apartment on Jayne Street; and at the end 
of an hour she was pressing a button above the 
name Cross in a hall on One Hundred and Four 
teenth Street, hearing the door click, mounting 
the black well of a stair-way, tapping on a door 
bearing the legend " Studio ". 

A listless voice said " Come in." 

Presently the rather tall, slender young man 
sitting in his shirt sleeves, his back toward her, 
staring dejectedly but earnestly at a picture on 
the table before him asked: " What can I do for 
you? " 

The long and narrow room boasted a rather 
good parquet floor and a clean plain wall paper 
covered with unframed pictures and sketches. In 
one corner stood an easel; the furniture for the 

284 



BUNHMHHH^HHHHH' 



most part was plain but serviceable and com 
fortable, with the exception of an old-fashioned 
horse-hair sofa which Angela thought she had 
never seen equalled for its black shininess and its 
promise of stark discomfort. 

On entering the apartment she had felt per 
turbed, but as soon as she saw Anthony and 
realized that the picture at which he was gazing 
was an unfinished sketch of herself, her worry 
fled. He had asked his question without turning, 
so she addressed his back: 

" You can tell me where you found that terrible 
sofa; I had no idea there were any in existence. 
Thought they had died out with the Dodo." 

The sound of her voice brought him to her side. 
" Angele, tell me what are you doing here? " 

She tried to keep the light touch: "Not until 
you have told me about the sofa." But his dark, 
tormented face and the strain under *which she 
had been suffering for the past week broke down 
her defence. Swaying, she caught at his hand. 
" Anthony, Anthony, how could you?" 

He put his arm about her and led her to the 
despised sofa; looked at her moodily. " Why did 
you come to see me, Angele? " 

Ordinarily she would have fenced, indulged in 
some fancy skirmishing; but this was no ordinary 
occasion; indeed in ordinary circumstances she 
would not have been here. She spoke gravely and 
proudly. 

" Because I love you. Because I think you love 
me." A sudden terrible fear assailed her. " Oh, 
Anthony, don't tell me you were only playing ! " 

" With you? So little was I playing that the 
moment I began to suspect you cared, and I 

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*HHHHHHHHhH>LUM BUNHHH^HHHHHHHK* 

never dreamed of it until that last day in the park, 
I ran away from you. I knew you had so many 
resources; men will always adore you, want you, 
that I thought you'd soon forget; turn to someone 
else just as you had turned for a sudden whim to 
me from God knows how many admirers." 

She shook her head, but she was frightened; 
some nameless fear knocking at her heart. " I 
turned to you from no one, Anthony. I've had 
only one ' admirer ' as you call it in New York 
and I had long, long since ceased thinking of 
him. No, Anthony, I came to you because I 
needed you ; you of all men in New York. I think 
in the world. And I thought you needed me." 

They sat in silence on the terrible sofa. He 
seized her hand and covered it with kisses; started 
to take her in his arms, then let them fall in a hope 
less gesture. 

" It's no good, Angel; there's no use trying 
to buck fate. Life has caught us again. What 
you're talking about is absolutely impossible." 

" What do you mean, impossible? " The little 
mute fear that had lain within her for a long time 
as a result of an earlier confidence of his bestirred 
itself, spoke. 

" Anthony, those men, those enemies that killed 
your father, did you kill one of them? " She had 
her arms about him. " You know it's nothing to 
me. Don't even tell me about it. Your past 
belongs to you; it's your future I'm interested in, 
that I want." 

He pushed her from him, finally, even roughly. 
" No, I've never killed a man. Though I've 
wanted to. But I was a little boy when it all 
happened and afterwards I wouldn't go back 

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BUNHHH-* * * -HHHH5* 



because of my mother." He went over to a drawer 
and took out a revolver, " I've half a mind to 
kill myself now, now before I go mad thinking 
how I've broken my promise, broken it after all 
these years." He looked at her wistfully, yet 
implacably. " I wish that I had died long before 
it was given to me to see that beautiful, loving look 
on your face change into one of hatred and dread 
and anger." 

She thought he must be raving; she tried to 
sooth him. " Never mind, Anthony; I don't care 
a rap about what you've done. Only tell me 
why do you say everything's impossible for us? 
Why can't we mean everything to each other, 
be married -- " 

" Because I'm coloured." In her bewildered 
relief she fell away from him. 

" Yes, that's right, you damned American ! I'm 
not fit for you to touch now, am I? It was all 
right as long as you thought I was a murderer, a 
card sharp, a criminal, but the black blood in 
me is a bit too much, isn't it?" Beside himself he 
rushed to the windows, looked on the placid 
Sunday groups festooning the front steps of the 
brown stone houses. " What are you going to do, 
alarm the neighbourhood? Well, let me tell you, 
my girl, before they can get up here I'll be dead." 
His glance strayed to the revolver. " They'll 
never catch me as they did my father." 

It was on the point of her tongue to tell him her 
great secret. Her heart within her bubbled with 
laughter to think how quickly she could put an 
end to this hysteria, how she could calm this 
black madness which so seethed within him, 
poisoning the very spring of his life. But his last 

287 



? > * * * ***HHHhPLUM BUNH5--HHHHHHHHH* 

words turned her thoughts to something else, to 
another need. How he must have suffered, loving 
a girl who he felt sure would betray him ; yet scorn 
ing to keep up the subterfuge. 

She said to him gently: "Anthony, did you 
think I would do that? " 

His answer revealed the unspeakable depths 
of his acquaintance with prejudice; his incurable 
cynicism. " You're a white American. I know 
there's nothing too dastardly for them to attempt 
where colour is involved." 

A fantastic notion seized her. Of course she 
would tell him that she was coloured, that she 
was willing to live with coloured people. And if 
he needed assurance of her love, how much more 
fully would he believe in her when he realized 
that not even for the sake of the conveniences to 
be had by passing would she keep her association 
with white people secret from him. But first she 
must try to restore his faith in human good 
ness. She said to him gently: " Tell me about it, 
Anthony." 

And sitting there in the ugly, tidy room in the 
sunshot duskiness of the early summer evening, 
the half-subdued noises of the street mounting up 
to them, he told her his story. An old story it 
was, but in its new setting, coupled with the fact 
that Angela for years had closed her mind to the 
penalty which men sometimes pay for being 
" different ", it sounded like some unbelievable 
tale from the Inquisition. 

His father, John Hall, of Georgia, had been a 
sailor and rover, but John's father was a well- 
known and capable farmer who had stayed in 
his little town and slowly amassed what seemed a 

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fortune to the poor and mostly ignorant whites 
by whom he was surrounded. In the course of 
John's wanderings he had landed at Rio de 
Janeiro and he had met Maria Cruz, a Brazilian 
with the blood of many races in her veins. She 
herself was apparently white, but she looked with 
favour on the brown, stalwart sailor, thinking 
nothing of his colour, which was very much the 
same as that of her own father. The two married 
and went to many countries. But finally John, 
wearying of his aimless life, returned to his father, 
arriving a month before it was time to receive the 
old man's blessing and his property. Thence all 
his troubles. Certain white men in the neighbour 
hood had had their eyes turned greedily on old 
Anthony Hall's possessions. His son had been a 
wanderer for many years; doubtless he was dead. 
Certainly it was not expected that he would return 
after all these years to his native soil; most niggers 
leaving the South left for ever. They knew better 
than to return with their uppity ways. 

Added to the signal injustice of John Hall's 
return and the disappointment caused thereby, 
was the iniquity of his marriage to a beautiful and 
apparently white wife. Little Anthony could 
remember his father's constant admonition to her 
never to leave the house; the latter had, in his 
sudden zeal for home, forgotten what a sojourn in 
Georgia could mean. But his memory was soon 
refreshed and he was already making every effort 
to dispose of his new possessions without total loss. 
This required time and patience, but he hoped 
that only a few months need elapse before they 
might shake off the dust of this cursed hole for 
ever. 

T 289 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 



"Just a little patience, Maria," he told his lovely 
wife. 

But she could not understand. True, she never 
ventured into the town, but an infrequent visit to 
the little store was imperative and she did not 
mind an occasional admiring glance. Indeed she 
attributed her husband's admonitions to his not 
unwelcome jealousy. Anthony, always a grave 
child, constituted himself her constant guardian; 
his father, he knew, had to be away in neigh 
bouring townships where he was trying to put 
through his deal, so the little boy accompanied 
his silly trusting mother everywhere. When they 
passed a group of staring, mouthing men he con 
trived to hurt his finger or stub his toe so as to 
divert his mother's attention. In spite of his 
childish subterfuges, indeed because of them, his 
mother attracted the notice of Tom Haley, son of 
the magistrate. Anthony apparently had injured 
his hand and his beautiful mother, bending over 
it with great solicitude, made a picture too charm 
ing, too challenging to be overlooked. Haley 
stepped forward, actually touched his cap. " Can 
I do anything to help you, ma'am? " She looked 
at him with her lovely, melting eyes, spoke in her 
foreign liquid voice. He was sure he had made 
a conquest. Afterwards, chagrined by the gibes 
of the bystanders who jeered at him for his courtesy 
to a nigger wench " for that's all she is, John Hall's 
wife ", he ground his heel in the red dust; he 
would show her a thing or two. 

In the hot afternoon, awakened from her 
siesta by a sudden knock, she came to the door, 
greeted her admirer of the early morning. She 
was not quite pleased with the look in his eyes, but 

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HHh^HHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHH5~H* 

she could not suspect evil. Haley, who had done 
some wandering on his own account and had 
picked up a few words of Spanish, let fall an 
insulting phrase or two. Amazed and angry she 
struck him across his face. The boy, Anthony, 
uneasily watching, screamed; there was a sudden 
tumult of voices and Haley fled, forgetting for 
the moment that these were Negro voices and so 
need not be dreaded. An old coloured man, 
mumbling and groaning " Gawd forgive you, 
Honey; we'se done fer now " guided the child 
and the panic-stricken mother into the swamp 
And lying there hidden at night they could see 
the sparks and flames rising from the house and 
buildings, which represented the labour of 
Anthony Hall's sixty years. In a sudden lull 
they caught the sounds of the pistol shots which 
riddled John Hall's body. 

" Someone warned my father," said Anthony 
Cross wearily, " but he would go home. Besides, 
once back in town he would have been taken 
anyway, perhaps mobbed and burned in the 
public square. They let him get into his house; 
he washed and dressed himself for death. Before 
nightfall the mob came to teach this man their 
opinion of a nigger who hadn't taught his wife 
her duty toward white men. First they set fire 
to the house, then called him to the window. He 
stepped out on a little veranda; Haley opened fire. 
The body fell over the railing, dead before it could 
touch the ground, murdered by the bullets from 
twenty pistols. Souvenir hunters cut off fingers, 
toes, his ears, a friend of my grandfather found 
the body at night and buried it. They said it 
was unlike anything they had ever seen before, 

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BUNHHHHHHHHHH-* 



totally dehumanized. After I heard that story I 
was unable to sleep for nights on end. As for my 
mother, -- '" 

Angela pressed his head close against her 
shoulder. There were no words for a thing like 
this, only warm human contact. 

He went on wanly. " As for my mother, she 
was like a madwoman. She has gone all the rest 
of her life haunted by a terrible fear." 

" Of white people," Angela supplemented softly. 
" Yes, I can see how she would." 

He glanced at her sombrely. " No, of coloured 
people. She believes that we, particularly the 
dark ones, are cursed, otherwise why should we 
be so abused, so hounded. Two years after my 
father's death she married a white man, not an 
American that was spared me, but a German 
who, I believe, treats her very kindly. I was still 
a little boy but I begged and pleaded with her 
to leave the whole race alone; I told her she owed 
it to the memory of my father. But she only said 
women were poor, weak creatures; they must 
take protection where they could get it." 

Horrified, mute with the tragedy of it all, she 
could only stare at him white-lipped. 

" Don't ask me how I came up. Angele, for a 
time I was nothing, worthless,, only I have never 
denied my colour; I have always taken up with 
coloured causes. When I've had a special point 
to make I've allowed the world to think of me as it 
would but always before severing my connections 
I told of the black blood that was in my veins. 
And then it came to me that for my father's sake 
I would try to make something of myself. So I 
sloughed off my evil ways, they had been assumed 

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HHHHHHHHH^PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH5-* 

only in bravado, and came to New York where 
I've been living quietly, I hope usefully, keeping 
my bitterness within myself where it could harm 
no one but me. 

" I made one vow and kept it, never by any 
chance to allow myself to become entangled with 
white people; never to listen to their blandish 
ments; always to hate them with a perfect hate. 
Then I met you and loved you and somehow 
healing began. I thought, if she loves me she'll 
be willing to hear me through. And if after she 
hears me she is willing to take me, black blood 
and all, but mind," he interrupted himself 
fiercely, " I'm not ashamed of my blood. Some 
times I think it's the leaven that will purify this 
Nordic people of their cruelty and their savage 
lust of power." 

She ignored this. " So you were always going 
to tell me." 

" Tell you? Of course I would have told you. 
Oh, I'm a man, Angel, with a man's record. When 
I was a sailor, there' re some pages in my life I 
couldn't let your fingers touch. But that I'd have 
told you, it was too vital, too important. Not that 
I think it really means anything, this mixture of 
blood, as life goes, as God meant the world to go. 
But here in America it could make or mar life. Of 
course I'd have told you." 

Here was honour, here was a man ! So would 
her father have been. Having found this com 
parison her mind sought no further. 

A deep silence descended upon them; in his 
case the silence of exhaustion. But Angela was 
thinking of his tragic life and of how completely, 
how surprisingly she could change it. Smiling, 

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*HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH?~&* 

she spoke to him of happiness, of the glorious 
future. " I've something amazing to tell you, 
but I won't spring it on you all at once. Can't 
we go out to Van Cortlandt Park to-morrow 
evening? " 

He caught her hand. " No matter what in the 
goodness of your heart you may be planning, 
there is no future, none, none, Angel, for you and 
me. Don't deceive yourself, nor me. When I'm 
with you I forget sometimes. But this afternoon 
has brought it all back to me. I'll never forget 
myself and my vow again." 

A bell shrilled three, four times. 

He looked about frowning. "That's Sanchez; 
he's forgotten his key again. My dear girl, my 
Angel, you must go, and you must not, must 
not come back. Hurry, hurry ! I don't want him 
to see you here." He guided her towards the door, 
stemming her protestations. " I'll write you at 
once, but you must go. God bless and keep you." 

In another moment she was out in the dim hall, 
passing a dark, hurrying figure on the stairs. The 
heavy door swung silently behind her, thrusting her 
inexorably out into the engulfing summer night; 
the shabby pretentious house was again between 
her and Anthony with his tragic, searing past. 



294 



CHAPTER V 

ALL the next day and the next she dwelt on 
Anthony's story; she tried to put herself in his 
place, to force herself into a dim realization of the 
dark chamber of torture in which his mind and 
thoughts had dwelt for so many years. And she 
had added her modicum of pain, had been so 
unsympathetic, so unyielding; in the midst of the 
dull suffering, the sickness of life to which perhaps his 
nerves had become accustomed she had managed 
to inject an extra pinprick of poignancy. Oh, 
she would reward him for that; she would brim 
his loveless, cheated existence with joy and sweet 
ness; she would cajole him into forgetting that 
terrible past. Some day he should say to her: 
" You have brought me not merely new life, but 
life itself." Those former years should mean no 
more to him than its pre-natal existence means to 
a baby. 

Her fancy dwelt on, toyed with all the sweet 
offices of love; the delicate bondage that could 
knit together two persons absolutely en rapport. 
At the cost of every ambition which she had ever 
known she would make him happy. After the 
manner of most men his work would probably be 
the greatest thing in the world to him. And he 
should be the greatest thing in the world to her. 
He should be her task, her "job ", the fulfilment 

295 



BUNHHHMHHMH^*** 



of her ambition. A phrase from the writings of 
Anatole France came drifting into her mind. 
" There is a technique of love." She would dis 
cover it, employ it, not go drifting haphazardly, 
carelessly into this relationship. And suddenly she 
saw her affair with Roger in a new light; she could 
forgive him, she could forgive herself for that 
hitherto unpardonable union if through it she 
had come one iota nearer to the understanding 
and the need of Anthony. 

His silence for although the middle of the week 
had passed she had received no letter, worried 
her not one whit. In the course of time he would 
come to her, remembering her perfect sympathy 
of the Sunday before and thinking that this woman 
was the atonement for what he considered her 
race. And then she would surprise him, she 
would tell him the truth, she would make herself 
inexpressibly dearer and nearer to him when he 
came to know that her sympathy and her tender 
ness were real, fixed and lasting, because they 
were based and rooted in the same blood, the 
same experiences, the same comprehension of 
this far-reaching, stupid, terrible race problem. 
How inexpressibly happy, relieved and over 
whelmed he would be ! She would live with him 
in Harlem, in Africa, anywhere, any place. She 
would label herself, if he asked it; she would tell 
every member of her little coterie of white friends 
about her mixed blood; she would help him keep 
his vow and would glory in that keeping. No 
sacrifice of the comforts which came to her from 
" passing ", of the assurance, even of the safety 
which the mere physical fact of whiteness in 
America brings, would be too great for her. She 

296 



*HHHHHhH~HhPLUM BUNHHHHHMH^-HHHS* 

would withdraw where he withdrew, hate where 
he hated. 



His letter which came on Thursday interrupted 
her thoughts, her fine dreams of self-immolation 
which women so adore. It was brief and stern, 
and read: 

" Angele, don't think for one moment that I 
do not thank you for Sunday. . . . My heart 
is at your feet for what you revealed to me 
then. But you and I have nothing in common, 
have never had, and now can never have. More 
than race divides us. I think I shall go away. 
Meanwhile you are to forget me; amuse your 
self, beautiful, charming, magnetic Angel with 
the men of your own race and leave me to my 
own. 

" ANTHONY." 

It was such a strange letter; its coldness and 
finality struck a chill to her heart. She looked 
at the lonely signature, " Anthony ", just that, 
no word of love or affection. And the phrase: 
" More than race divides us." Its hidden signifi 
cance held a menace. 

The letter was awaiting her on her return from 
work. She had come in all glowing with the 
promise of the future as she conceived it. And 
then here were these cold words killing her high 
hopes as an icy blast kills the too trusting blossoms 
of early spring. . . . Holding the letter she let 
her supper go untasted, unregarded, while she 
evolved some plan whereby she could see Anthony, 

297 



talk to him. The tone of his letter did not sound 
as though he would yield to ordinary persuasion. 
And again in the midst of her bewilderment and 
suffering she was struck afresh with the difficulties 
inherent in womanhood in conducting the most 
ordinary and most vital affairs of life. She was 
still a little bruised in spirit that she had taken it 
upon herself to go to Anthony's rooms Sunday; 
it was a step she felt conventionally, whose justi 
fication lay only in its success. As long as she had 
considered it successful, she had been able to 
relegate it to the uttermost limbo of her self- 
consciousness. But now that it seemed to avail 
nothing it loomed up before her in all its social 
significance. She was that creature whom men, 
in their selfish fear, have contrived to paint as the 
least attractive of human kind, " a girl who runs 
after men." It seemed to her that she could not 
stand the application of the phrase, no matter 
how unjustly, how inaptly used in her own case. 
Looking for a word of encouragement she re-read 
the note. The expression " My heart is at your 
feet" brought some reassurance; she remem 
bered, too, his very real emotion of Sunday, only 
a few days before. Men, real men, men like 
Anthony, do not change. No, she could not let 
him go without one last effort. She would go to 
Harlem once more to his house, she would see 
him, reassure him, allay his fears, quench his 
silly apprehensions of non-compatability. As soon 
as he knew that they were both coloured, he'd 
succumb. Now he was overwrought. It had 
never occurred to her before that she might be 
glad to be coloured. . . . She put on her hat, 
walked slowly out the door, said to herself with 

298 



a strange foreboding: " When I see this room 
again, I'll either be very happy, or very, very 
sad. ..." Her courage rose, braced her, but 
she was sick of being courageous, she wanted to 
be a beloved woman, dependent, fragile, sought 
for, feminine; after this last ordeal she would be 
" womanly " to the point of ineptitude. . . . 

During the long ride her spirits rose a little. 
After all, his attitude was almost inevitable. He 
thought she belonged to a race which to him 
stood for treachery and cruelty; he had seen 
her with Roger, Roger, the rich, the gay; he 
saw her as caring only for wealth and pleasure. 
Of course in his eyes she was separated from him 
by race and by more than race. 

For long years she was unable to reconstruct that 
scene; her mind was always too tired, too sore to 
re-enact it. 

As in a dream she saw Anthony's set, stern 
face, heard his firm, stern voice: "Angel-girl, 
Angele I told you not to come back. I told you 
it was all impossible." 

She found herself clutching at his arm, blurt 
ing out the truth, forgetting all her elaborate 
plans, her carefully pre-concerted drama. " But, 
Anthony, Anthony, listen, everything's all right. 
I'm coloured; I've suffered too; nothing has 
to come between us." 

For a moment off his guard he wavered. " An 
gele, I didn't think you'd lie to me." 

She was in tears, desperate. " I'm not lying, 
Anthony. It's perfectly true." 

" I saw that picture of your mother, a white 
woman if I ever saw one, " 

299 



4HHHHHHHHHHfPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHf-* 

" Yes, but a white coloured woman. My father 
was black, perfectly black and I have a sister, she's 
brown. My mother and I used to ' pass ' some 
times just for the fun of it; she didn't mind being 
coloured. But I minded it terribly, until very 
recently. So I left my home, in Philadelphia, 
and came here to live, oh, going for white makes 
life so much easier. You know it, Anthony." 
His face wan and terrible frightened her. " It 
doesn't make you angry, does it ? You've passed 
yourself, you told me you had. Oh Anthony, 
Anthony, don't look at me like that! What is 
it?" 

She caught at his hand, following him as he 
withdrew to the shiny couch where they both sat 
breathless for a moment. " God ! " he said sud 
denly; he raised his arms, beating the void like a 
madman. " You in your foolishness, I in my 
carelessness, c passing, passing ' and life sitting back 
laughing, splitting her sides at the joke of it. Oh, 
it was all right for you, but I didn't care whether 
people thought I was white or coloured, if we'd 
only known, " 

" What on earth are you talking about? It's 
all right now." 

" It isn't all right; it's worse than ever." He 
caught her wrist. " Angel, you're sure you're not 
fooling me? " 

" Of course I'm not. I have proof, I've a sister 
right here in New York; she's away just now. But 
when she comes back, I'll have you meet her. 
She is brown and lovely, you'll want to paint 
her . . . don't you believe me, Anthony? " 

" Oh yes, I believe you," he raised his arms again 
in a beautiful, fluid gesture, let them fall. " Oh, 

300 



BUNHHHHHHHHH-HH^ 



damn life, damn it, I say . . . isn't there any 
end to pain ! " 

Frightened, she got on her knees beside him. 
" Anthony, what's the matter? Everything's going 
to be all right; we're going to be happy." 

" You may be. I'll never be happy. You were 
the woman I wanted, I thought you were white. 
For my father's sake I couldn't marry a white girl. 
So I gave you up." 

" And I wouldn't stay given up. See, here I 
am back again. You'll never be able to send me 
away." Laughing but shamefaced, she tried to 
thrust herself into his arms. 

" No, Angel, no ! You don't understand 
There's, there's somebody else -- " 

She couldn't take it in. " Somebody else. 
You mean, you're married? Oh Anthony, you 
don't mean you're married ! " 

" No, of course not, of course not ! But I'm 
engaged." 

" Engaged, engaged and not to me, to another 
girl? And you kissed me, went around with me? 
I knew other men did that, but I never thought 
that of you ! I thought you were like my father ! " 
And she began to cry like a little girl. 

Shame-faced, he looked on, jamming his hands 
tightly into his pockets. " I never meant to harm 
you; I never thought until that day in the park 
that you would care. And I cared so terribly! 
Think, I had given you up, Angele, I suppose 
that isn't your name really, is it? and all of a 
sudden, you came walking back into my life and 
I said, ' I'll have the laugh on this damned mess 
after all. I'll spend a few days with her, love her 
a little, just a little. She'll never know, and I'll 

301 



BUNHHHHHMHHHHH5' 



have a golden memory! Oh, I had it coming to 
me, Angel! But the minute I saw you were 
beginning to care I broke off short." 

A line from an old text was running through 
her head, rendering her speechless, inattentive. 
She was a little girl back in the church again in 
Philadelphia; the minister was intoning " All we 
like sheep have gone astray". He used to put 
the emphasis on the first word and Jinny and she 
would look at each other and exchange meaning 
smiles; he was a West Indian and West Indians 
had a way of misplacing the emphasis. The line 
sounded so funny: " All we like sheep, -- " but 
perhaps it wasn't so funny after all; perhaps he 
had read it like that not because he was a West 
Indian but because he knew life and human nature. 
Certainly she had gone astray, with Roger. And 
now here was Anthony, Anthony who had always 
loved her so well. Yet in his background there 
was a girl and he was engaged. 

This brought her to a consideration of the un 
known fiancee, her rival. Deliberately she chose 
the word, for she was not through yet. This 
unknown, unguessed at woman who had stolen in 
like a thief in the night. . . . 

" Have you known her long? " she asked him 
sharply. 

" Who? Oh my, my friend. No, not as long 
as I've known you." 

A newcomer, an upstart. Well at least she, 
Angela, had the advantage of precedence. 

" She's coloured, of course? " 

"Of course." 

They sat in a weary silence. Suddenly he caught 
her in his arms and buried his head in her neck. 

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HHHHHHHKHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 

A quick pang penetrated to the very core of her 
being. He must have been an adorable baby. 
. . . Anthony and babies ! 

" Now God, Life, whatever it is that has power, 
this time you must help me ! " cried her heart. 
She spoke to him gently. 

" Anthony, you know I love you. Do you still 
love me? " 

" Always, always, Angel." 

" Do you Oh, Anthony, I don't deserve it, 
but do you by any chance worship me? " 

" Yes, that's it, that's just it, I worship you. I 
adore you. You are God to me. Oh, Angele, 
if you'd only let me know. But it's too late 
now." 

" No, no don't say that, perhaps it isn't too late. 
It all depends on this. Do you worship her, 
Anthony? " He lifted his haggard face. 

"No but she worships me. I'm God to her 
do you see? If I fail her she won't say anything, 
she'll just fall back like a little weak kitten, like a 
lost sheep, like a baby. She'll die." He said as 
though unaware of his listener. " She's such a 
little thing. And sweet." 

Angela said gently: "Tell me about her. 
Isn't it all very sudden? You said you hadn't 
known her long." 

He began obediently. " It was not long after 
I I lost you. She came to me out of nowhere, 
came walking to me into my room by mistake; 
she didn't see me. And she put her head down 
on her hands and began to cry terribly. I had 
been crying too in my heart, you understand, 
and for a moment I thought she might be the 
echo of that cry, might be the cry itself. You see, 

303 



BUN-HHHHHHHHHH5* 



I'd been drinking a little, you were so far removed, 
white and all that sort of thing. I couldn't marry 
a white woman, you know, not a white American. 
I owed that to my father. 

" But at last I saw it was a girl, a real girl and I 
went over to her and put my hand on her shoulder 
and said: { Little girl, what's the matter? ' 

" And she lifted her head, still hidden in the crook 
of her arm, you know the way a child does and said : 
' I've lost my sister '. At first I thought she meant 
lost in the street and I said ' Well, come with me 
to the police station, I'll go with you, we'll give 
them a description and you'll find her again. 
People don't stay lost in this day and time '. I 
got her head on my shoulder, I almost took her on 
my knee, Angele, she was so simple and forlorn. 
And presently she said : ' No, I don't mean lost 
that way; I mean she's left me, she doesn't want 
me any more. She wants other people '. And 
I've never been able to get anything else out of 
her. The next morning I called her up and some 
how I got to seeing her, for her sake, you know. 
But afterwards when she grew happier, she was 
so blithe, so lovely, so healing and blessed like the 
sun or a flower, then I saw she was getting fond 
of me and I stayed away. 

" Well, I ran across you and that Fielding fellow 
that night at the Van Meier lecture. And you 
were so happy and radiant, and Fielding so pos 
sessive, damn him ! damn him ! he you didn't 
let him hurt you, Angele? " 

As though anything that had ever happened in 
her life could hurt her like this! She had never 
known what pain was before. White-lipped, she 
shook her head. " No, he didn't hurt me." 

304 



BUNHHHMHHMHHHH* 



" Well, I went to see her the next day. She 
came into the room like a shadow, I realized she 
was getting thin. She was kind and sweet and 
far-off; impalpable, tenuous and yet there. I could 
see she was dying for me. And all of a sudden it 
came to me how wonderful it would be to have 
someone care like that. I went to her; I took her 
in my arms and I said: 'Child, child, I'm not 
bringing you a whole heart but could you love 
me? ' You see I couldn't let her go after that." 

" No," Angela's voice was dull, lifeless. " You 
couldn't. She'd die." 

" Yes, that's it; that's just it. And I know you 
won't die, Angel." 

" No, you're quite right. I won't die." 

An icy hand was on her heart. At his first 
words: * e She came walking into my room, -- " 
an icy echo stirred a memory deep, deep within 
her inner consciousness. She heard Jinny saying : 
" I went walking into his room, -- " 

Something stricken, mortally stricken in her 
face fixed his attention. " Don't look like that, 
my girl, my dear Angel. . . . There are three 
of us in this terrible plight, if I had only known. 
... I don't deserve the love of either of you but 
if one of you two must suffer it might as well be she 
as you. Come, we'll go away; even unhappiness, 
even remorse will mean something to us as long as 
we're together." 

She shook her head. " No, that's impossible, 
if it were someone else, I don't know, perhaps 
I'm so sick of unhappiness, maybe I'd take a 
chance. But in her case it's impossible." 

He looked at her curiously. " What do you 
mean 'in her case'?" 

u 305 



H~HHHh*HHHHhPLUM BUN-HHHHHHHHHH5* 

:< Isn't her name Virginia Murray? " 

" Yes, yes ! How did you guess it? Do you 
know her? " 

" She's my sister. Angele Mory, Angela Mur 
ray, don't you see. It's the same name. And it's 
all my fault. I pushed her, sent her deliberately 
into your arms." 

He could only stare. 

" I'm the unkind sister who didn't want her. 
Oh, can't you understand? That night she came 
walking into your room by mistake it was because 
I had gone to the station to meet her and Roger 
Fielding came along. I didn't want him to know 
that I was coloured and I, I didn't acknowledge 
her, I cut her." 

" Oh," he said surprised and inadequate. " I 
don't see how you could have done that to a little 
girl like Virginia. Did she know New York? " 

" No." She drooped visibly. Even the loss of 
him was nothing compared to this rebuke. There 
seemed nothing further to be said. 

Presently he put his arm about her. " Poor 
Angele. As though you could foresee ! It's what 
life does to us, leads us into pitfalls apparently so 
shallow, so harmless and when we turn around 
there we are, caught, fettered, " 

Her miserable eyes sought his. " I was sorry 
right away, Anthony. I tried my best to get in 
touch with her that very evening. But I couldn't 
find her, already you see, life was getting even 
with me, she had strayed into your room." 

He nodded. " Yes, I remember it all so plainly. 
I was getting ready to go out, was all prepared as 
a matter of fact. Indeed I moved that very night. 
But I loitered on and on, thinking of you. 

306 



" The worst of it is I'll always be thinking of you. 
Oh Angele, what does it matter, what does any 
thing matter if we just have each other? This 
damned business of colour, is it going to ruin all 
chances of happiness? I've known trouble, pain, 
terrible devastating pain all my life. You've 
suffered too. Together perhaps we could find 
peace. We'd go to your sister and explain. She 
is kind and sweet; surely she'd understand." 

He put his arms about her and the two clung 
to each other, solemnly, desperately, like children. 

" I'm sick of pain, too, Anthony, sick of longing 
and loneliness. You can't imagine how I've 
suffered from loneliness." 

" Yes, yes I can. I guessed it. I used to watch 
you. I thought you were probably lonely inside, 
you were so different from Miss Lister and Mrs. 
Starr. Come away with me and we'll share our 
loneliness together, somewhere where we'll for- 
get, " 

" And Virginia? You said yourself she'd 
die, " 

" She's so young, she she could get over it." 
But his tone was doubtful, wavering. 

She tore herself from him. " No, I took her 
sister away from her; I won't take her lover. Kiss 
me good-bye, Anthony." 

They sat on the hard sofa. " To think we should 
find one another only to lose each other ! To think 
that everything, every single thing was all right 
for us but that we were kept apart by the stupidity 
of fate. I'd almost rather we'd never learned the 
truth. Put your dear arms^ about me closer, 
Angel, Angel. I want the warmth, the sweetness 
of you to penetrate into my heart. I want to 

307 



keep it there forever. Darling, how can I let 
you go? " 

She clung to him weeping, weeping with the 
heart-broken abandonment of a child. 

A bell shrilled four times. 

He jumped up. " It's Sanchez, he's forgotten 
his key; thank God he did forget it. My darling, 
you must go. But wait for me. I'll meet you, 
we'll go to your house, we'll find a way. We can't 
part like this ! " His breath was coming in short 
gasps; she could see little white lines deepening 
about his mouth, his nostrils. Fearfully she caught 
at her hat. 

" God bless you; good-bye Anthony. I won't 
see you again." 

Halfway down the black staircase she met the 
heedless Sanchez, tall, sallow, thin, glancing at her 
curiously with a slightly amused smile. Politely 
he stood aside to let her pass, one hand resting 
lightly against his hip. Something in his attitude 
made her think of her unfinished sketch of Life. 
Hysterical, beside herself, she rushed down the 
remaining steps afraid to look around lest she 
should see the thin dark figure in pursuit, lest her 
ears should catch the expansion of that faint 
meaning smile into a guffaw, uproarious, menacing. 



308 



CHAPTER VI 

ONCE long ago in the old days in the house on Opal 
Street she had been taken mysteriously ill. As a 
matter of fact she had been coming down with that 
inglorious disease, the mumps. The expense of 
having a doctor was a consideration, and so for 
twenty-four hours she was the object of anxious 
solicitude for the whole house. Her mother had 
watched over her all night; her father came home 
twice in the day to see how she felt; Jinny had with 
some reluctance bestowed on her an oft-coveted, 
oft-refused doll. In the midst of all her childish 
pain and suffering she had realized that at least 
her agony was shared, that her tribulation was 
understood. But now she was ill with a sickness of 
the soul and there was no one with whom she 
could share her anguish. 

For two days she lay in her little room; Mrs. 
Denver, happening in, showered upon her every 
attention. There was nothing, nothing that Angela 
could suggest, the little fluttering lady said sin 
cerely, which she might not have. Angela wished 
that she would go away and leave her alone, but 
her experiences had rendered her highly sensitive 
to the needs of others; Mrs. Denver, for all her 
money, her lack of responsibility, her almost 
childish appetite for pleasure, was lonely too; 
waiting on the younger, less fortunate woman gave 

309 



her a sense of being needed ; she was pathetically 
glad when the girl expressed a desire for anything 
no matter how expensive or how trivial. Angela 
could not deprive her entirely of those doubtful 
pleasures. Still there were moments, of course, 
when even Mrs. Denver for all her kindly officious- 
ness had to betake herself elsewhere and leave her 
willing patient to herself and her thoughts. 

Minutely, bit by bit, in the long forty-eight 
hours she went over her life; was there anything, 
any over tact, any crime which she had committed 
and for which she might atone? She had been 
selfish, yes; but, said her reasoning and unwearied 
mind, " Everybody who survives at all is selfish, it is 
one of the pre-requisites of survival." In " pass 
ing " from one race to the other she had done no 
harm to anyone. Indeed she had been forced 
to take this action. But she should not have 
forsaken Virginia. Here at this point her brain, 
so clear and active along all other lines, invariably 
failed her. She could not tell what stand to take; 
so far as leaving Philadelphia was concerned she 
had left it to seek her fortune under more agreeable 
circumstances ; if she had been a boy and had left 
home no one would have had a word of blame, it 
would have been the proper thing, to be expected 
and condoned. There remained then only the 
particular incident of her cutting Jinny on that 
memorable night in the station. That was the 
one really cruel and unjust action of her whole life. 

" Granted," said something within her rooted 
either in extreme hard common sense or else in a 
vast sophistry, " granted, but does that carry with 
it as penalty the shattering of a whole life, or even 
the suffering of years? Certainly the punishment 

310 



^HHHHHHHH-PLUM BUN*********** 

is far in excess of the crime." And it was then that 
she would lie back exhausted, hopeless, bewildered, 
unable to cope further with the myterious and 
apparently meaningless ferocity of life. For if 
this were a just penalty for one serious misde 
meanour, what compensation should there not be 
for the years in which she had been a dutiful 
daughter, a loving sister? And suddenly she found 
herself envying people possessed of a blind religious 
faith, of the people who could bow the head sub 
missively and whisper: "Thy will be done." 
For herself she could see how beaten and harried, 
one might subside into a sort of blind passivity, 
an acceptance of things as they are, but she would 
never be able to understand a force which gave one 
the imagination to paint a great desire, the tenacity 
to cling to it, the emotionalism to spend on its 
possible realization but which would then with a 
careless sweep of the hand wipe out the picture 
which the creature of its own endowment had 
created. 

More than once the thought came to her of 
dying. But she hated to give up; something 
innate, something of the spirit stronger than her 
bodily will, set up a dogged fight, and she was 
too bruised and sore to combat it. " All right," 
she said to herself wearily, " I'll keep on living." 
She thought then of black people, of the race of 
her parents and of all the odds against living which 
a cruel, relentless fate had called on them to 
endure. And she saw them as a people powerfully, 
almost overwhelmingly endowed with the essence 
of life. They had to persist, had to survive because 
they did not know how to die. 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



Not because she felt like it, but because some day 
she must begin once more to take up the motions 
of life, she moved on the third day from her bed 
to the easy chair, sat there listless and motionless. 
To-morrow she would return to work, to work 
and the sick agony of forcing her mind back from 
its dolorous, painful, vital thoughts to some con 
sideration of the dull, uninteresting task in hand. 
God, how she hated that! She remembered 
studying her lessons as a girl; the intense absorption 
with which she used to concentrate. Sometimes 
she used to wonder: " Oh what will it be like 
when I am grown up; when I won't be studying 
lessons . . . 3 Well, this was what it was like. 
Or no, she was still studying with the same old 
absorption, an absorption terribly, painfully con 
centrated, the lessons set down by life. It was 
useless to revolve in her head the causes for her 
suffering, they were so trivial, so silly. She said 
to herself, " There is no sorrow in the world like 
my sorrow ", and knew even as she said it that 
some one else, perhaps only in the next block, in 
the next house, was saying the same thing. 

Mrs. Denver tapped lightly, opened the door, 
came in closing it mysteriously behind her. 

" I've a great surprise for you." She went on 
with an old childish formula: "Will you have it 
now, or wait till you get it? " 

Angela's features twisted into a wan smile. " I 
believe I'd better have it now. I'm beginning to 
think I don't care for surprises." 

" You'll like this one." She went to the door 
and ushered in Rachel Salting. 

" I know you two want to talk," Mrs. Denver 
called over her shoulder. " Cheer her up, Rachel, 

312 



HHH~HHHHHHhPLUM 



and I'll bring you both a fine spread in an hour or 
so." She closed the door carefully behind her. 

Angela said, " What's the matter, Rachel? " 
She almost added, " I hardly knew you." For her 
friend's face was white and wan with grief and 
hopelessness; gone was all her dainty freshness, her 
pretty colour; indeed her eyes, dark, sunken, set in 
great pools of blackness, were the only note, a 
terrible note, of relief against that awful white 
ness. 

Angela felt her strength leaving her ; she rose 
and tottered back to the grateful security of her 
bed, lay down with an overwhelming sense of 
thankfulness for the asylum afforded her sudden 
faintness. In a moment, partly recovered, she 
motioned to Rachel to sit beside her.' 

" Oh," said Rachel, " you've been ill, Mrs. 
Denver told me. I ought not to come bothering 
you with my worries. Oh, Angele, I'm so 
wretched! Whatever shall I do? " 

Her friend, watching her, was very gentle. 
" There're lots of awful things that can happen. 
I know that, Rachel. Maybe your trouble isn't 
so bad that it can't be helped. Have you told 
John about it? " But even as she spoke she 
sensed that the difficulty in some way concerned 
John. Her heart contracted at the thought of the 
pain and suffering to be endured. 

" Yes, John knows, it's about him. Angele, 
we can't marry." 

" Can't marry. Why, is he, it can't be that 
he's involved with some one else ! " 

A momentary indignation flashed into Rachel's 
face bringing back life and colour. For a small 
space she was the Rachel Salting of the old happy 

313 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH?' 



days. " Involved with some one else ! " The 
indignation was replaced by utter despair. " How 
I wish he were ! That at least could be arranged. 
But this can never be altered. He, I, our parents 
are dead set against it. Hadn't you ever noticed, 
Angele? He's a Gentile and I'm a Jew." 

"But lots of Jews and Gentiles marry." 

"Yes, I know. Only he's a Catholic. But 
my parents are orthodox they will never consent 
to my marriage. My father says he'd rather see 
me dead and my mother just sits and moans. I 
kept it from her as long as I could, I used to pray 
about it, I thought God must let it turn out all 
right, John and I love each other so. But I went 
up to Utica the other day, John went with me, and 
we told them. My father drove him out of the 
house; he said if I married him he'd curse me. I 
am afraid of that curse. I can't go against them. 
Oh, Angele, I wish I'd never been born." 

It was a delicate situation; Angela had to feel 
her way; she could think of nothing but the trite 
and obvious. " After all, Rachel, your parents 
have lived their lives; they have no business 
trying to live yours. Personally I think all 
this pother about race and creed and colour, 
tommyrot. In your place I should certainly 
follow my own wishes; John seems to be the 
man for you." 

But Rachel weeping, imbued with the spirit 
of filial piety, thought it would be selfish. 

" Certainly no more selfish than their attempt 
to regulate your life for you." 

" But I'm afraid," said Rachel shivering, " of 
my father's curse." It was difficult for Angela 
to sympathize with an attitude so archaic; she 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 



was surprised to find it lurking at the bottom of 
her friend's well-trained intelligence. 

" Love/' she said musing to herself rather than 
to her friend, " is supposed to be the greatest thing 
in the world but look how we smother and confine 
it. Jews mustn't marry Catholics; white people 
mustn't marry coloured -- " 

" Oh well, of course not," Rachel interrupted in 
innocent surprise. " I wouldn't marry a nigger 
in any circumstances. Why, would you? " 

But Angela's only answer was to turn and, 
burying her head in her pillow, to burst into 
unrestrained and bitter laughter. Rachel went 
flying to call Mrs. Denver. 

" Oh come quick, come quick ! Angele's in 
hyterics. I haven't the ghost of an idea what to 
do for her!" 



Once more the period of readjustment. Once 
more the determination to take life as she found it; 
bitter dose after sweet, bitter after sweet. But it 
seemed to her now that both sweetness and bitter 
ness together with her high spirit for adventure 
lay behind her. How now was she to pass through 
the tepid, tasteless days of her future? She was 
not quite twenty-seven, and she found herself 
wondering what life would be like in ten, five, even 
one years' time. Changes did flow in upon one, 
she knew, but in her own case she had been so 
used herself to give the impetus to these changes. 
Now she could not envisage herself as making a 
move in any direction. With the new sullenness 
which seemed to be creeping upon her daily, she 

315 



said " Whatever move I make is always wrong. 
Let life take care of itself." And she saw life, even 
her own life, as an entity quite outside her own 
ken and her own directing. She did not care 
greatly what happened; she would not, it was true, 
take her own life, but she would not care if she 
should die. Once if her mind had harboured such 
thoughts she would have felt an instant self-pity. 
" What a shame that I so young, so gifted, with 
spirits so high should meet with death ! " But 
now her senses were blunting; so much pain and 
confusion had brought about their inevitable 
attrition. " I might just as well be unhappy, 
or meet death as anyone else," she told herself still 
with that mounting sullenness. 

Mrs. Denver, the Sandburgs and Ashley were 
the only people who saw her. It did seem to 
Mrs. Denver that the girl's ready, merry manner 
was a little dimmed ; if her own happy, sunny, 
vocabulary had known the term she would have 
daubed her cynical. The quasi-intellectual atmos 
phere at the Sandburgs suited her to perfection; 
the faint bitterness which so constantly marred her 
speech was taken for sophistication, her frequent 
silences for profoundness; in a small way, aided by 
her extraordinary good looks and the slight mys 
tery which always hung about her, she became 
quite a personage in their entourage; the Sand 
burgs considered her a splendid find and plumed 
themselves on having " brought her out ". 



The long golden summer, so beautiful with its 
promise of happiness, so sickening with its actuality 

316 



HHHHHHHHHH-PLUM 



of pain ripened into early, exquisite September. 
Virginia was home again; slightly more golden, 
very, very faintly plumper, like a ripening fruit 
perfected; brimming with happiness, excitement 
and the most complete content, Angela thought, 
that she had ever seen in her life. 

Jinny sent for the older girl and the two sat on a 
Sunday morning, away from Sara Pen ton and the 
other too insistent friends, over on Riverside Drive 
looking out at the river winding purple and allur 
ing in the soft autumn haze. 

" Weren't you surprised? " asked Jinny. Lacon 
ically, Angela admitted to no slight amazement. 
She still loved her sister but more humbly, less 
achingly than before. Their lives, she thought now 
would never, could never touch and she was quite 
reconciled. Moreover, in some of Virginia's re 
marks there was the hint of the acceptance of 
such a condition. Something had brought an 
irrevocable separation. They would always view 
each other from the two sides of an abyss, narrow 
but deep, deep. 

The younger girl prattled on. " I don't know 
whether Sara told you his name, Anthony Cross? 
Isn't it a dear name? " 

e Yes, it's a nice name, a beautiful name," said 
Angela heartily ; when she had learned it was of no 
consequence. She added without enthusiasm that 
she knew him already; he had been a member 
of her class at Cooper Union. 

" You don't talk as though you were very much 
taken with him," said Jinny, making a face. " But 
never mind, he suits me, no matter whom he doesn't 
suit." There was that in her countenance which 
made Angela realize and marvel again at the 

317 



resoluteness of that firm young mind. No curse of 
parents could have kept Virginia from Anthony's 
arms. As long as Anthony loved her, was satisfied 
to have her love, no one could come between them. 
Only if he should fail her would she shrivel up and 
die. 

On the heels of this thought Virginia made an 
astounding remark : " You know it's just perfect 
that I met Anthony; he's really been a rock in a 
weary land. Next to Matthew Henson he will, 
I'm sure, make me happier than any man in the 
world." Dreamily she added an afterthought: 
" And I'll make him happy too, but, oh, Angela, 
Angela, I always wanted to marry Matthew ! " 



The irony of that sent Angela home. Virginia 
wanting Matthew and marrying Anthony ; Anthony 
wanting "Angela and marrying Virginia. Her 
self wanting Anthony and marrying, wanting, no 
other; unable to think of, even to dream of another 
lover. The irony of it was so palpable, so ridicu 
lously palpable that it put her in a better mood; 
life was bitter but it was amusingly bitter; if she 
could laugh at it she might be able to outwit it 
yet. The thought brought Anthony to mind: 
" If I could only get a laugh on life, Angele ! " 

Sobered, she walked from the 'bus stop to Jayne 
Street. Halfway up ""the narrow, tortuous stair 
case she caught sight of a man climbing, climbing. 
He stopped outside her door. " Anthony? " she 
said to herself while her heart twisted with pain. 

" If it is Anthony, " she breathed, and stopped. 

But something within her, vital, cruel, persistent, 

318 



HHh**HHHHh*H-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHK 

completed her thought. " If it is Anthony, 
after what Virginia said this morning, if he knew 
that he was not the first, that even as there had 
been one other there might still be others; that 
Virginia in her bright, hard, shallow youthfulness 
would not die any more than she had died over 
Matthew, would console herself for the loss of 
Anthony even as she had consoled herself for the 
loss of Matthew ! " But no, what Jinny had told 
her was in confidence, a confidence from sister 
to sister. She would never break faith with Jinny 
again; nor with herself, 

" But Anthony," she said to herself in the few 
remaining seconds left on the staircase, " you were 
my first love and I think I was yours." 

However, the man at the door was not Anthony ; 
on the contrary he was, she thought, a complete 
stranger. But as he turned at her footsteps, she 
found herself looking into the blue eyes of Roger. 
Completely astounded, she greeted him, " You 
don't mean it's you, Roger? " 

" Yes," he said humbly, shamefacedly, " aren't 
you going to let me in, Angele? " 

" Oh yes, of course, of course " ; she found 
herself hoping that he would not stay long. She 
wanted to think and she would like to paint; 
that idea must have been in the back of her 
head ever since she had left Jinny. Hard on 
this thought came another. " Here's Roger. I 
never expected to see him in these rooms again; 
perhaps some day Anthony will come back. Oh, 
God, be kind!" 

But she must tear her thoughts away from 
Anthony. She looked at Roger curiously, search- 
ingly; in books the man who had treated his 

319 



HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHHf* 

sweetheart unkindly often returned beaten, de 
jected, even poverty-stricken, but Roger, except for 
a slight hesitation in his manner, seemed as jaunty, 
as fortunate, as handsome as ever. He was even 
a trifle stouter. 

Contrasting him with Anthony's hard-bitten 
leanness, she addressed him half absently. " I 
believe you're actually getting fat ! " 

His quick high flush revealed his instant sensi 
tiveness to her criticism. But he was humble. 
:f That's all right, Angele. I deserve anything 
you choose to say if you'll just say it." 

She was impervious to his mood, utterly indiffer 
ent, so indifferent that she was herself unaware of 
her manner. " Heavens, I've sort of forgotten, 
but I don't remember your ever having been so 
eager for criticism heretofore ! " 

He caught at one phrase. " Forgotten ! You 
don't mean to say you've forgotten the past and 
all that was once so dear to us? " 

Impatience overwhelmed her. She wished he 
would go and leave her to her thoughts and 
to her picture; such a splendid idea had come 
to her; it was the first time for weeks that 
she had felt like working. Aware of the blessed 
narcotic value of interesting occupation, she 
looked forward to his departure with a sense 
of relief; even hoped with her next words to pre 
cipitate it. 

" Roger, you don't mean to say that you called 
on me on a hot September Sunday just to talk 
to me in that theatrical manner? I don't mind 
telling you I've a million things to do this after 
noon; let's get down to bed rock so we can both 
be up and doinff." 

320 



She had been sitting, almost lolling at ease 
in the big chair, not regarding him, absently 
twisting a scarf in her fingers. Now she glanced 
up and something in the hot blueness of his eyes 
brought her to an upright position, alert, attentive. 

" Angele, you've got to take me back." 

" Back ! I don't know what you're talking 
about. Between you and me there is no past, so 
don't mention it. If you've nothing better to say 
than that, you might as well get out." 

He tried to possess himself of her hands but 
she shook him off, impatiently, angrily, with no 
pretence at feeling. " Go away, Roger. I don't 
want to be bothered with you ! " This pinchbeck 
emotionalism after the reality of her feeling for 
Anthony, the sincerity of his feeling for her ! "I 
won't have this sort of thing; if you won't go 
I will." She started for the door but he barred 
her way, suddenly straight and serious. 

" No listen, Angele, you must listen. I'm in 
earnest this time. You must forgive me for the 
past, for the things I said. Oh, I was unspeakable ! 
But I had it in my head, you don't know the 
things a man has borne in on him about designing 

women, if he's got anything, family, money, " 

she could see him striving to hide his knowledge of 
his vast eligibility. " I thought you were trying 
to ' get ' me, it made me suspicious, angry. I knew 
you were poor, " 

" And nobody ! Oh say it, say it ! " 

" Well, I will say it. According to my father's 
standards, nobody. And when you began to 
take an interest in me, in my affairs, " 

' You thought I was trying to marry you. Well, 
at first I was. I was poor, I was nobody ! I 

x 321 



BUNHHHHHf-HHHHH^ 



wanted to be rich, to be able to see the world, to 
help people. And then when you and I came so 
near to each other I didn't care about marriage at 
all -just about living ! Oh, I suppose my attitude 
was perfectly pagan. I hadn't meant to drift into 
such a life, all my training was against it, you can't 
imagine how completely my training was against 
it. And then for a time I was happy. I'm afraid I 
didn't love you really, Roger, indeed I know now 
that in a sense I didn't love you, but somehow life 
seemed to focus into an absolute perfection. Then 
you became petulant, ugly, suspicious, afraid of 
my interest, of my tenderness. And I thought, c I 
can't let this all end in a flame of ugliness; it must 
be possible for people to have been lovers and yet 
remain friends.' I tried so hard to keep things so 
that it would at least remain a pleasant memory. 
But you resented my efforts. What I can't under 
stand is why shouldn't I, if I wanted to, either 
try to marry you or to make an ideal thing of our 
relationship? Why is it that men like you resent 
an eflort on our part to make our commerce decent? 
Wei], it's all over now. . . . Theoretically ' free 
love ' or whatever you choose to call it, is all right. 
Actually, it's all wrong. I don't want any such 
relationship with you or with any other man in 
this world. Marriage was good enough for my 
mother, it's good enough for me." 

" There's nothing good enough for you, Angele; 
but marriage is the best thing that I have to offer 
and I'm offering you just that. And it's precisely 
because you were honest and frank and decent 
and tried to keep our former relationship 
from deteriorating into sordidness that I am 
back." 

322 



HHHHHHHHH-^PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 

Clearly she was staggered. Marriage with 
Roger meant protection, position, untold wealth, 
unlimited opportunities for doing good. Once 
how she would have leapt to such an offer ! 

" What's become of Garlotta? " she asked 
bluntly. 

" She's on the eve of marrying Tom Estes, a 
fellow who was in college with me. He has heaps 
more money than I. Carlotta thought she'd 
better take him on*" 

" I see." She looked at him thoughtfully, then 
the remembrance of her great secret came to her, a 
secret which she could never share with Roger. 
No ! No more complications and their conse 
quent disaster ! " No, no, we won't talk about it 
any more. What you want is impossible; you 
can't guess how completely impossible." 

He strode toward her, seized her hands. " I'm 
in earnest, Angele; you've no idea how tired I 
am of loneliness and uncertainty and, and of 
seeking women; I want someone whom I can love 
and trust, whom I can teach to love me, we could 
get married to-morrow. There's not an obstacle 
in our way." 

His sincerity left her unmoved. " What would 
your father say? " 

" Oh, we wouldn't be able to tell him yet; he'd 
never consent! Of course we'd have to keep 
things quiet, just ourselves and one or two friends, 
Martha and Ladislas perhaps, would be in the 
know." 

More secrets ! She pulled her hands away from 
him. " Oh Roger, Roger ! I wouldn't consider it. 
No, when I marry I want a man, a man, a real 
one, someone not afraid to go on his own ! " She 

323 



actually pushed him toward the door. " Some 
people might revive dead ashes, but not you and 
I. ... I'd never be able to trust you again and 
I'm sick of secrets and playing games with human 
relationships. I'm going to take my friendships 
straight hereafter. Please go. I've had a hard 
summer and I'm very tired. Besides I want to 
work." 

Baffled, he looked at her, surprise and indigna 
tion struggling in his face. " Angele, are you 
sure you know what you're doing? I've no 
intention of coming back, so you'd better take 
me now." 

" Of course you're not coming back ! I'm sure 
I wouldn't want you to; my decision is final." 
Not unsympathetically she laughed up into his 
doleful face, actually touched his cheek. " If you 
only knew how much you look like a cross baby ! " 



Her newly developed sympathy and understand 
ing made her think of Ashley. Doubtless Carlotta's 
defection would hit him very hard. Her con 
jecture was correct although the effect of the blow 
was different from what she had anticipated. Ashley 
was not so perturbed over the actual loss of the 
girl as confirmed in his opinion that he was never 
going to be able to form and keep a lasting friend 
ship. In spite of his wealth, his native timidity 
had always made him distrustful of himself 
with women of his own class; a veritable Tony 
Hardcastle, he spent a great deal of time with 
women whom he did not actually admire, whom 
indeed he disliked, because, he said to Angela 

324 



BUNHHHHHHHH>*** 



wistfully, they were the only ones who took him 
seriously. 

" No one but you and Carlo tta have ever given 
me any consideration, have ever liked me for myself, 
Angele." 

They were seeing a great deal of each other; 
in a quiet, unemotional way they were developing 
a real friendship. Angela had taken up her paint 
ing again. She had re-entered the classes at 
Cooper Union and was working with great zest 
and absorption on a subject which she meant to 
enter in the competition for scholarships at the 
school at Fontainebleau. Ashley, who wrote some 
good verse in the recondite, falsely free style of the 
present day, fell into the habit of bringing his work 
down to her little living room, and in the long 
tender autumn evenings the two worked seriously, 
with concentration. Ashley had travelled widely 
and had seen a great deal of life, though usually 
from the side-lines; Angela for all her lack of 
wandering, " had lived deeply ", he used to tell 
her, pondering on some bit of philosophy which 
she let fall based on the experiences of her diffi 
cult life. 

" You know, in your way you're quite a wonder, 
Angele; there's a mystery hanging about you; 
for all your good spirits, your sense of humour, 
you're like the Duse, you seem to move in an 
aura of suffering, of the pain which comes from 
too great sensitivity. And yet how can that be 
so? You're not old enough, you've had too few 
contacts to know how unspeakable life can be, 
how damnably she can get you in wrong, -- " 

An enigmatic smile settled on her face. " I 
don't know about life, Ralph? How do you think 

325 



I got the idea for this masterpiece of mine? " She 
pointed to the painting on which she was then 
engaged. 

;< That's true, that's true. I've wondered often 
about that composition; lots of times I've meant 
to ask you how you came to evolve it. But 
keep your mystery to yourself, child; it adds to 
your charm." 

About this she had her own ideas. Mystery 
might add to the charm of personality but it cer 
tainly could not be said to add to the charm of 
living. Once she thought that stolen waters were 
sweetest, but now it was the unwinding road and 
the open book that most intrigued. 

Ashley, she found, for all his shyness, possessed 
very definite ideas and convictions of his own, was 
absolutely unfettered in his mode of thought, and 
quite unmoved by social traditions and standards. 
An aristocrat if ever there were one, he believed 
none the less in the essential quality of man and 
deplored the economic conditions which so often 
tended to set up superficial and unreal barriers 
which make as well as separate the classes. 

With some trepidation Angela got him on the 
subject of colour. He considered prejudice the 
greatest blot on America's shield. " We're wrong, 
all wrong about those people; after all they did 
to make America habitable! Some day we're 
going to wake up to our shame. I hope it won't 
be too late." 

" But you wouldn't want your sister to marry a 
nigger ! "' 

" I'm amazed, Angele, at your using such a word 
as an exclusive term. I've known some fine 
coloured people. There're hardly any of unmixed 

326 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHhfr 

blood in the United States, so the term Negro is 
usually a misnomer. I haven't a sister; if I had 
I'd advise her against marriage with an American 
coloured man because the social pressure here 
would probably be too great, but that would be 
absolutely the only ground on which I'd object 
to it. And I can tell you this; I wouldn't care to 
marry a woman from the Congo but if I met a 
coloured woman of my own nationality, well-bred, 
beautiful, sympathetic, I wouldn't let the fact of 
her mixed blood stand in my way, I can tell you." 



A sort of secondary interest in living was creeping 
into her perspective. The high lights, the high 
peaks had faded from her sight. She would 
never, she suspected, know such spontaneity of 
feeling and attitude again as she had felt toward 
both Roger and Anthony. Nor would she again 
approach the experiences of existence with the 
same naive expectation, the same desire to see how 
things would turn out. Young as she was she 
felt like a battle-scarred veteran who, worn out 
from his own strenuous activities, was quite con 
tent to sit on the side-lines gazing at all phases of 
warfare with an equal eye. 

Although she no longer intended to cast in her 
lot with Virginia, she made no further effort to set 
up barriers between herself and coloured people. 
Let the world take her as it would. If she were in 
Harlem, in company with Virginia and Sara Penton 
she went out to dinner, to the noisy, crowded, 
friendly "Y" dining-room, to " Gert's " tea 
room, to the clean, inviting drug-store for rich 

327 



"sundaes". Often, too, she went shopping with 
her sister and to the theatre; she had her meet 
Ashley and Martha. But she was careful in this 
company to avoid contact with people whose 
attitude on the race question was unknown, or 
definitely antagonistic. 

Harlem intrigued her; it was a wonderful city; 
it represented, she felt, the last word in racial pride, 
integrity and even self-sacrifice. Here were people 
of a very high intellectual type, exponents of the 
realest and most essential refinement living cheek 
by jowl with coarse or ill-bred or even criminal, 
certainly indifferent, members of their race. Of 
course some of this propinquity was due to outer 
pressure, but there was present, too, a hidden 
consciousness of race-duty, a something which if 
translated said: " Perhaps you do pull me down 
a little from the height to which I have climbed. 
But on the other hand, perhaps, I'm helping you 
to rise." 

There was a hair-dresser's establishment on I36th 
Street where Virginia used to have her beautiful 
hair treated; where Sara Pen ton, whose locks were 
of the same variety as Matthew's, used to repair to 
have their unruliness " pressed ". Here on Satur 
days Angela would accompany the girls and sit 
through the long process just to overhear the 
conversations, grave and gallant and gay, of these 
people whose blood she shared but whose disabil 
ities by a lucky fluke she had been able to avoid. 
For, while she had been willing for the sake 
of Anthony to re-enlist in the struggles of this 
life, she had never closed her eyes to its disad 
vantages; to its limitedness ! What a wealth of 
courage it took for these people to live ! What 

328 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHf'* 



high degree of humour, determination, steadfast 
ness, undauntedness were not needed, and poured 
forth! Maude, the proprietress of the business, 
for whom the establishment was laconically called 
" Maude's ", was a slight, sweet-faced woman 
with a velvety seal-brown skin, a charming voice 
and an air of real refinement. She was from Texas, 
but had come to New York to seek her fortune, had 
travelled as ladies' maid in London and Paris, and 
was as thoroughly conversant with the arts of her 
calling as any hairdresser in the vicinity of the Rue 
de la Paix or on Fifth Avenue. A rare quality of 
hospitality emanated from her presence; her little 
shop was always full not only of patrons but of 
callers, visitors from " down home ", actresses from 
the current coloured " show ", flitting in like radiant 
birds of paradise with their rich brown skins, 
their exotic eyes and the gaily coloured clothing 
which an unconscious style had evolved just for 
them. 

In this atmosphere, while there was no coarse 
ness, there was no restriction; life in busy Harlem 
stopped here and yawned for a delicious moment 
before going on with its pressure and problems. 
A girl from Texas, visiting " the big town " for a 
few weeks took one last glance at her shapely, 
marvellously " treated " head, poised for a second 
before the glass and said simply, " Well, good-bye, 
Maude; I'm off for the backwoods, but I'll never 
forget Harlem." She passed out with the sinuous 
elegant carriage acquired in her few week's sojourn 
on Seventh Avenue. 

A dark girl, immaculate in white from head to 
foot, asked: " What's she going back South for? 
Ain't she had enough of Texas yet ? " 

329 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH*' 

Maude replied that she had gone back there 
because of her property. " Her daddy owns most 
of the little town where they live." 

" Child, ain't you learned that you don't never 
own no property in Texas as long as those white 
folks are down there too? Just let those Ku 
Kluxers get it into their heads that you've got 
something they want. She might just as well 
leave there first as last; she's bound to have to 
some day. I know it's more'n a notion to pull up 
stakes and start all over again in a strange town 
and a strange climate, but it's the difference 
between life and death. I know I done it and I 
don't expect ever to go back." 

She was a frail woman, daintily dressed and 
shod. Her voice was soft and drawling. But 
Angela saw her sharply as the epitome of the 
iron and blood in a race which did not know how 
to let go of life. 



330 



MARKET IS DONE 



CHAPTER I 

THE eternal routine of life went on, meals, 
slumber, talk, work and all of it meaning nothing; 
a void starting nowhere and leading nowhither; a 
" getting through " with the days. Gradually 
however two points fixed themselves in her horizon, 
and about these her life revolved. One was her 
work, her art. Every week found her spending 
three or four of its nights at her easel. She was 
feverishly anxious to win one of the prizes in the 
contest which would be held in May ; if successful 
she would send in her application for registration 
in the Fountainebleau School of Fine Arts which was 
financed by Americans and established, so read 
the circular, " as a summer school for American 
architects, painters and sculptors ". If she were suc 
cessful in winning this, she would leave the United 
States for a year or two, thus assuring herself 
beyond question of a new deal of the cards. The 
tenacity with which she held to this plan frightened 
her a little until she found out that there were also 
possible funds from which she could, with the 
proper recommendation, borrow enough money to 
enable her to go abroad with the understanding 
that the refund was to be made by slow and easy 
payments. Ashley discovered this saving informa 
tion, thus relieving her of the almost paralyzing 
fear which beset her from time to time. It both 

333 



BUNHHHHHHHMMHH5 



amused and saddened her to realize that her talent 
which she had once used as a blind to shield her 
real motives for breaking loose and coming to New 
York had now become the greatest, most real 
force in her life. 

Miss Powell, with whom Angela in her new 
mood had arranged a successful truce, knew of 
her ambition, indeed shared it. If she herself 
should win a prize, that money, combined with 
some small savings of her own and used in connec 
tion with the special terms offered by the American 
Committee, would mean the fruition of her dearest 
dreams. All this she confided to Angela on two 
Sunday mornings which the latter spent with her 
in her rather compressed quarters up in I34th 
Street. A dwelling house nearby had been con 
verted into a place of worship for one of the special 
divisions of religious creed so dear to coloured 
people's hearts. Most of the service seemed to 
consist of singing, and so the several hours spent 
by the two girls in earnest talk were punctuated by 
the outbursts of song issuing from the brazen- 
coated throats of the faithful. 

The other point about which her thoughts 
centred was her anomalous position. Yet that 
clear mind of hers warned her again and again 
that there was nothing inherently wrong or mean 
or shameful in the stand which she had taken. The 
method thereof might come in perhaps for a little 
censure. But otherwise her harshest critics, if 
unbiased, could only say that instead of sharing the 
burdens of her own group she had elected to stray 
along a path where she personally could find the 
greatest ease, comfort and expansion. She had 
long since given up the search for happiness. 

334 



** * * * *HHHHhPLUM BUNHHMHHf'-HHHHHS' 

But there were moments when a chance discussion 
about coloured people couched in the peculiarly 
brutal terms which white America a fleets in the 
discussion of this problem made her blood boil, 
and she longed to confound her vis-d-vis and his 
tacit assumption that she, being presumbably a 
white woman, would hold the same views as he, 
with the remark: " I'm one of them, do you 
find me worthless or dishonest or offensive in any 
way? " Such a denouement would have, she felt, 
been a fine gesture. But life she knew had a way 
of allowing grand gestures to go unremarked and 
unrewarded. Would it be worth while to throw 
away the benefits of casual whiteness in America 
when no great issue was at stake? Would it 
indeed be worth while to forfeit them when a great 
issue was involved? Remembering the material 
age in which she lived and the material nation of 
which she was a member, she was doubtful. Her 
mother's old dictum recurred: " Life is more 
important than colour." 



The years slipped by. Virginia seemed in no 
haste to marry. Anthony whom Angela saw 
occasionally at the Art School shared apparently 
in this cool deliberateness. Yet there was nothing 
in his action or manner to make her feel that he 
was anticipating a change. Rather, if she judged 
him correctly he, like herself, tired of the snarl into 
which the three of them had been drawn, had 
settled down to a resigned acceptance of fate. 
If conceivable, he was quieter, more reserved than 
ever, yet radiating a strange restfulness and the 
peace which comes from surrender. 

335 



BUN*********** 



In May the prizes for the contest were announced. 
Angela received the John T. Stewart Prize for her 
"Fourteenth Street Types"; her extreme satis 
faction was doubled by the knowledge that the 
Nehemiah Sloan Prize, of equal value, had been 
awarded Miss Powell for her picture entitled " A 
Street in Harlem ". The coloured girl was still 
difficult and reserved, but under Angela's persistent 
efforts at friendship her frank and sympathetic 
interest and comprehension of her class-mate's 
difficulties, the latter had finally begun to thaw 
a little. They were not planning to live together 
in France, their tastes were not sufficiently common 
for that closeness, but both were looking forward 
to a year of pleasure, of inspiring work, to a life 
that would be " different ". Angela was relieved, 
but Miss Powell was triumphant; not unpleasantly, 
she gave the impression of having justified not only 
her calling but herself and, in a lesser degree, her 
race. The self-consciousness of colour, racial 
responsibility, lay, Angela had discovered, deep 
upon her. 

The passage money to France was paid. 
Through the terms offered by the committee of the 
School for Americans at Fontainebleau, an appreci 
able saving had been effected. The girls were 
to sail in June. As the time drew nearer Angela 
felt herself becoming more and more enthusiastic. 
She had at first looked upon her sojourn abroad 
as a heaven-sent break in the montony and diffi 
culties of her own personal problems, but lately, 
with the involuntary reaction of youth, she was 
beginning to recover her sense of embarking 
on a great adventure. Her spirits mounted 
steadily. 

33 6 



RUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 



One evening she went around to Martha Bur 
den's to discuss the trip; she wanted information 
about money, clothes, possible tips. 

" Everything you can think of, Martha," she 
said with something of her former vital manner. 
" This is an old story to you, you've been abroad 
so many times you ought to write an encyclo 
paedia on ' What to take to Europe } . I mean to 
follow your advice blindly and the next time I see 
Miss Powell I'll pass it along to her." 

" No need to," said Martha laconically and 
sombrely. " She isn't going." 

" Not going ! Why she was going two weeks 
ago." 

c Yes, but she's not going this week nor any 
other week I'm afraid ; at least not through the good 
offices of the American Committee for the Fon- 
tainebleau School of Fine Arts. They've returned 
her passage money. Didn't you know it? I 
thought everybody had heard of it." 

Angela fought against a momentary nausea. 
" No, I didn't know it. I haven't seen her for 
ages. I'm so busy getting myself together. Martha, 
what's it all about? Is it because she's coloured? 
You don't mean it's because she's coloured? " 

" Well, it is. They said they themselves were 
without prejudice, but that they were sure the 
enforced contact on the boat would be unpleasant 
to many of the students, garnered as they would 
be from all parts of the United States. Further 
more they couldn't help but think that such con 
tact would be embarrassing to Miss Powell too. 
Oh, there's no end to the ridiculous piffle which 
they've written and said. I've had a little com 
mittee of students and instructors going about, 

r 337 



trying to stir up public sentiment. Mr. Cross has 
been helping and Paget too. I wish Paulette 
were here; she'd get. some yellow journal publicity. 
Van Meier has come out with some biting editorials ; 
he's shown up a lot of their silly old letters. I 
shouldn't be surprised but what if we kept at it 
long enough we'd get somewhere." 

She reflected a moment. " Funny thing is 
we're having such a hard time in making Miss 
Powell show any fight. I don't understand that 
girl." 

Angela murmured that perhaps she had no hope 
of making an impression on prejudice. " It's so 
unreasonable and far-reaching. Maybe she doesn't 
want to sacrifice her peace of mind for what she 
considers a futile struggle." 

" That's what Mr. Cross said. He's been 
wonderful to her and an indefatigable worker. 
Of course you'll be leaving soon since none of this 
touches you, but come into a committee meeting 
or two, won't you? We're meeting here. I'll give 
you a ring." 

" Well," said Angela to herself that night after 
she had regained her room. " I wonder what I 
ought to do now? " Even yet she was receiving 
an occasional reporter; the pleasant little stir 
of publicity attendant on her prize had not yet 
died away. Suppose she sent for one of them and 
announced her unwillingness to accept the terms 
of the American Committee inasmuch as they had 
withdrawn their aid from Miss Powell. Suppose 
she should finish calmly: " I, too, am a Negro ". 
What would happen? The withdrawal of the 
assistance without which her trip abroad, its 
hoped for healing, its broadening horizons woulcj 

338 



H-HhHHHHHH-PLUM BUNHHHHHHS~HHHHf* 

be impossible. Evidently, there was no end to 
the problems into which this matter of colour 
could involve one, some of them merely superficial, 
as in this instance, some of them gravely physical. 
Her head ached with the futility of trying to find a 
solution to these interminable puzzles. 

As a child she and Jinny had been forbidden 
to read the five and ten cent literature of their day. 
But somehow a copy of a mystery story entitled 
" Who killed Dr. Cronlin? " found its way into their 
hands, a gruesome story all full of bearded men, 
hands preserved in alcohol, shadows on window 
curtains. Shivering with fascination, they had 
devoured it after midnight or early in the morning 
while their trusting parents still slumbered. Every 
page they hoped would disclose the mystery. But 
their patience went unrewarded for the last sen 
tence of the last page still read: " Who killed Dr. 
Cronlin? " 

Angela thought of it now, and smiled and sighed. 
"Just what is or is not ethical in this matter of 
colour? " she asked herself. And indeed it was a 
nice question. Study at Fontainebleau would have 
undoubtedly changed Miss Powell's attitude toward 
life forever. If she had received the just reward 
for her painstaking study, she would have reasoned 
that right does triumph in essentials. Moreover 
the inspiration might have brought out latent 
talent, new possibilities. Furthermore, granted that 
Miss Powell had lost out by a stroke of ill-fortune, 
did that necessarily call for Angela's loss? If so, 
to what end? 

Unable to answer she fell asleep. 

Absorbed in preparations she allowed two 
weeks to pass by, then, remembering Martha's 

339 



invitation, she went again to the Starr household 
on an evening when the self-appointed committee 
was expected to meet. She found Anthony, Mr. 
Paget, Ladislas and Martha present. The last was 
more perturbed than ever. Indeed an air of 
sombre discouragement lay over the whole com 
pany. 

" Well," asked the newcomer, determined to 
appear at ease in spite of Anthony's propinquity, 
" how are things progressing? " 

"Not at all," replied Mr. Paget. "Indeed 
we're about to give up the whole fight." 

Ladislas with a sort of provoked amusement 
explained then that Miss Powell herself had 
thrown up the sponge. " She's not only with 
drawn but she sends us word to-night that while 
she appreciates the fight we're making she'd rather 
we'd leave her name out of it." 

" Did you ever hear anything to equal that? " 
snapped Martha crossly. " I wonder if coloured 
people aren't natural born quitters. Sometimes 
I think I'll never raise another finger for 
them." 

" You don't know what you're talking about," 
said Anthony hotly. " If you knew the ceaseless 
warfare which most coloured people wage, you'd 
understand that sometimes they have to stop 
their fight for the trimmings of life in order to 
hang on to the essentials which they've got to 
have and for which they must contend too every 
day just as hard as they did the first day. No, 
they're not quitters, they've merely learned to let 
go so they can conserve their strength for another 
bad day. I'm coloured and I know." 

There was a moment's tense silence while the 

340 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHf-* 



three white people stared speechless \\ith sur 
prise. Then Martha said in a still shocked voice: 
" Coloured ! Why, I can't believe it. Why, you 
never told us you were coloured." 

" Which is precisely why I'm telling you 
now," said Anthony, coldly rude. " So you won't 
be making off-hand judgments about us." He 
started toward the door. " Since the object for 
which this meeting has been called has become 
null and void I take it that we are automatically 
dismissed. Good-night." 

Martha hastened after him. " Oh, Mr. Cross, 
don't go like that. As though it made any differ 
ence ! Why should this affect our very real regard 
for each other? " 

"Why should it indeed?" he asked a trifle 
enigmatically. " I'm sure I hope it won't. But I 
must go." He left the room, Paget and Ladislas 
both hastening on his heels. 

Martha stared helplessly after him. " I suppose 
I haven't said the right thing. But what could I 
do? I was so surprised ! " She turned to Angela: 
" And I really can't get over his being coloured, 
can you? " 

"No," said Angela solemnly, "I can't . . ." 
and surprised herself and Martha by bursting into 
a flood of tears. 



For some reason the incident steadied her deter 
mination. Perhaps Anthony was the vicarious 
sacrifice, she told herself and knew even as she said 
it that the supposition was pure bunk. Anthony 
did not consider that he was making a sacrifice; 

341 



HHHHHHPLUM BUNHHH* 



his confession or rather his statement with regard 
to his blood had the significance of the action of 
a person who clears his room of rubbish. Anthony 
did not want his mental chamber strewn with the 
chaff of deception and confusion. He did not 
label himself, but on the other hand he indulged 
every now and then in a general house-cleaning 
because he would not have the actions of his life 
bemused and befuddled. 

As for Angela she asked for nothing better than 
to put all the problems of colour and their attend 
ant difficulties behind her. She could not meet 
those problems in their present form in Europe; 
literally in every sense she would begin life all 
over. In France or Italy she would speak of her 
strain of Negro blood and abide by whatever con 
sequences such exposition would entail. But the 
consequences could not engender the pain and 
difficulties attendant upon them here. 

Somewhat diffidently she began to consider the 
idea of going to see Miss Powell. The horns of her 
dilemma resolved themselves into an unwillingness 
to parade her own good fortune before her dis 
appointed classmate and an equal unwillingness 
to depart for France, leaving behind only the cold 
sympathy of words on paper. And, too, some 
thing stronger, more insistent than the mere 
consideration of courtesy urged her on. After all, 
this girl was one of her own. A whim of fate had 
set their paths far apart but just the same they 
were more than " sisters under the skin." They 
were really closely connected in blood, in racial 
condition, in common suffering. Once again she 
thought of herself as she had years ago when 
she had seen the coloured girl refused service in 

342 



HhHhHHHHHHl-PLUM BUNHHHHHHMHH--H* 

the restaurant: " It might so easily have been 
Virginia." 

Without announcement then she betook herself 
up town to Harlem and found herself asking at 
the door of the girl's apartment if she might see 
Miss Powell. The mother whom Angela had 
last seen so proud and happy received her with a 
note of sullen bafflement which to the white girl's 
consciousness connoted: " Easy enough for you, all 
safe and sound, high and dry, to come and sym 
pathize with my poor child." There was no trace 
of gratitude or of appreciation of the spirit which 
had inspired Angela to pay the visit. 

To her inquiry Mrs. Powell rejoined: "Yes, I 
guess you c'n see her. There're three or four 
other people in there now pesterin' her to death. 
I guess one mo' won't make no diffunce." 

Down a long narrow hall she led her, past two 
rooms whose dark interiors seemed Stygian in 
contrast with the bright sunlight which the visitor 
had just left. But the end of the hall opened into 
a rather large, light, plain but comfortable dining- 
room where Miss Powell sat entertaining, to 
Angela's astonishment, three or four people, all 
of them white. Her astonishment, however, 
lessened when she perceived among them John 
Banky, one of the reporters who had come rather 
often to interview herself and her plans for France. 
All of them, she judged angrily, were of his pro 
fession, hoping to wring their half column out of 
Miss Powell's disappointment and embarrass 
ment. 

Angela thought she had never seen the girl one 
half so attractive and exotic. She was wearing a 
thin silk dress, plainly made but of a flaming red 

343 



from which the satin blackness of her neck rose, 
a straight column topped by her squarish, some 
what massive head. Her thin, rather flat dark 
lips brought into sharp contrast the dazzling per 
fection of her teeth; her high cheek bones showed 
a touch of red. To anyone whose ideals of beauty 
were not already set and sharply limited, she must 
have made a breathtaking appeal. As long as 
she sat quiescent in her rather sulky reticence she 
made a marvellous figure of repose ; focussing all 
the attention of the little assemblage even as her 
dark skin and hair drew into themselves and re 
tained the brightness which the sun, streaming 
through three windows, showered upon her. 

As soon as she spoke she lost, however, a little of 
this perfection. For though a quiet dignity per 
sisted, there were pain and bewilderment in her 
voice and the flat sombreness of utter despair. 
Clearly she did not know how to get rid of the 
intruders, but she managed to maintain a poise 
and aloofness which kept them at their distance. 
Surely, Angela thought, listening to the stupid, 
almost impertinent questions put, these things can 
mean nothing to them. But they kept on with their 
baiting rather as a small boy keeps on tormenting 
a lonely and dispirited animal at the Zoo. 

' We were having something of an academic 
discussion with Miss Powell here," said Banky, 
turning to Angela. " This," he informed his 
co-workers, " is Miss Mory, one of the prize 
winners of the Art Exhibit and a classmate of 
Miss Powell. I believe Miss Powell was to cross 
with you, as er your room-mate did you say? " 

" No," said Angela, flushing a little for Miss 
Powell, for she thought she understood the double 

344 



BUNHHHf-HHHHHHM* 



meaning of the question, " we weren't intending 
to be room-mates. Though so far as I am con 
cerned," she heard herself, to her great surprise, 
saying: " I'd have been very glad to share Miss 
Powell's state-room if she had been willing." She 
wanted to get away from this aspect. " What's 
this about an academic discussion? " 

Miss Powell's husky, rather mutinous voice 
interrupted: "There isn't any discussion, Miss 
Mory, academic or otherwise. It seems Mr. Paget 
told these gentlemen and Miss Tilden here, that 
I had withdrawn definitely from the fight to induce 
the Committee for the American Art School 
abroad to allow me to take advantage of their 
arrangements. So they came up here to get me 
to make a statement and I said I had none to 
make other than that I was sick and tired of the 
whole business and I'd be glad to let it drop." 

" And I," said Miss Tilden, a rangy young lady 
wearing an unbecoming grey dress and a pecu 
liarly straight and hideous bob, " asked her if she 
weren't really giving up the matter because in her 
heart she knew she hadn't a leg to stand on." 

Angela felt herself growing hot. Something 
within her urged caution, but she answered 
defiantly: " What do you mean she hasn't a leg 
to stand on? ' 

" Well, of course, this is awfully plain speaking 
and I hope Miss Powell won't be offended," 
resumed Miss Tilden, showing only too plainly 
that she didn't care whether Miss Powell were 
offended or not, " but after all we do know that 
a great many people find the er Negroes 
objectionable and so of course no self-respecting 
one of them would go where she wasn't wanted." 

345 



BUNHHHHHHHHHf-H* 



Miss Powell's mother hovering indefinitely in 
the background, addressing no one in particular, 
opined that she did not know that " that there 
committee owned the boat. If her daughter could 
only afford it she'd show them how quickly she'd 
go where she wanted and not ask no one no favours 
either." 

" Ah, but," said Miss Tilden judicially, " there's 
the fallacy. Something else is involved here. 
There's a social side to this matter, inherent if 
not expressed. And that is the question." She 
shook a thin bloodless finger at Miss Powell. 
" Back of most of the efforts which you people 
make to get into schools and clubs and restaurants 
and so on, isn't there really this desire for social 
equality? Come now, Miss Powell, be frank and 
tell me." 

With such sharpness as to draw the attention of 
everyone in the room Angela said: " Come, Miss 
Tilden, that's unpardonable and you know it. 
Miss Powell hadn't a thought in mind about 
social equality. All she wanted was to get to 
France and to get there as cheaply as possible." 

Banky, talking in a rather affected drawl, con 
firmed the last speaker. " I think, too, that's a 
bit too much, Miss Tilden. We've no right to 
interpret Miss Powell's ideas for her." 

A short, red-faced young man intervened: 
" But just the same isn't that the question involved? 
Doesn't the whole matter resolve itself into this: 
Has Miss Powell or any other young coloured 
woman knowing conditions in America the right 
to thrust her company on a group of people with 
whom she could have nothing in common except 
her art? If she stops to think she must realize 

34 6 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 



that not one of the prospective group of students 
who would be accompanying her on that ship 
would really welcome her presence. Here's Miss 
Mory, for instance, a fellow student. What more 
natural under other circumstances than that she 
should have made arrangements to travel with 
Miss Powell? She knows she has to share her 
cabin with some one. But no; such a thought 
apparently never entered her head. Why? The 
answer is obvious. Very well then. If she, know 
ing Miss Powell, feels this way, how much more 
would it be the feeling of total strangers? " 

A sort of shocked silence fell upon the room. It 
was an impossible situation. How, thought Angela 
desperately, knowing the two sides, could she 
ever explain to these smug, complacent people 
Miss Powell's ambition, her chilly pride, the 
remoteness with which she had treated her fellow- 
students, her only too obvious endeavour to share 
their training and not their friendship? Hastily, 
almost crudely, she tried to get something of this 
over, ashamed for herself ashamed for Miss Powell 
whose anguished gaze begged for her silence. 

At last the coloured girl spoke. " It's wonderful 
of you to take my part in this way, Miss Mory. I 
had no idea you understood so perfectly. But don't 
you see there's no use in trying to explain it? It's 
a thing which one either does see or doesn't 
see." She left her soft, full, dark gaze rest for a 
second on her auditors. " I'm afraid it is not 
in the power of these persons to grasp what you 
mean." 

The stocky young man grew a little redder. " I 
think we do understand, Miss Powell. All that 
Miss Mory says simply confirms my first idea. For 

347 



otherwise, understanding and sympathizing with 
you as she does, why has she, for instance, never 
made any very noticeable attempt to become your 
friend? Why shouldn't she have asked you to be 
her side-partner on this trip which I understand 
you're taking together? There would have been 
an unanswerable refutation for the committee's 
arguments. But no, she does nothing even though 
it means the thwarting for you of a life-time's 
ambition. Mind, I'm not blaming you, Miss Mory. 
You are acting in accordance with a natural law. 
I'm just trying to show Miss Powell here how 
inevitable the workings of such a law are." 

It was foolish reasoning and fallacious, yet con 
taining enough truth to make it sting. Some icy 
crust which had formed over Angela's heart 
shifted, wavered, broke and melted. Suddenly it 
seemed as though nothing in the world were so 
important as to allay the poignancy of Miss Powell's 
situation; for this, she determined quixotically, no 
price would be too dear. She said icily in tones 
which she had never heard herself use before: 
" It's true I've never taken any stand hitherto for 
Miss Powell for I never thought she needed it. 
But now that the question has come up I want to 
say that I'd be perfectly willing to share my state 
room with her and to give her as much of my 
company as she could stand. However, that's all 
out of the question now because Miss Powell isn't 
going to France on the American Committee Fund 
and I'm not going either." She stopped a second 
and added quietly: "And for the same reason." 

Someone said in bewilderment: " What do 
you mean when you say you're not going? And 
for the same reason? " 

348 



BUNHHHHHHMHHHH- 

" I mean that if Miss Powell isn't wanted, 
I'm not wanted either. You imply that she's 
not wanted because she's coloured. Well, I'm 
coloured too." 

One of the men said under his breath, " God, 
what a scoop ! " and reached for his hat. But 
Banky, his face set and white, held him back. 

" I don't believe you know what you're saying, 
Miss Mory. But anyway, whether it's true or 
untrue, for God's sake take it back ! " 

His tone of horror added the last touch. Angela 
laughed in his face. " Take it back ! " She could 
hardly contain herself. " Do you really think 
that being coloured is as awful as all that? Can't 
you see that to my way of thinking it's a great 
deal better to be coloured and to miss oh 
scholarships and honours and preferments, than to 
be the contemptible things which you've all shown 
yourselves to be this morning? Coming here bait 
ing this poor girl and her mother, thrusting 
your self-assurance down their throats, branding 
yourselves literally dogs in the manger? " She 
turned to the coloured girl's mother. " Mrs. 
Powell, you surely don't want these people here any 
longer. Have I your permission to show them 
out? " Crossing the room superbly she opened 
the door. " This way, please, and don't come back 
any more. You can rest assured we'll find a way 
to keep you out." 

Silently the little line filed out. Only Miss 
Tilden, laying her hand on Angela's arm paused to 
say avidly: "You'll let me come to see you, 
surely? I can give you some fine publicity, only 
I must have more data. How about an exclusive 
interview? " 

349 



HH-HHHH-HMHPLUM RUNHHHHHHHHHHH^ 

Angela said stonily: " Mrs. Powell will show 
you the front door." Then she and her former 
class-mate stood regarding each other. The dark 
girl crossed the room and caught her hands and 
kissed them. " Oh," she said, " it was magnificent 
I never guessed it, but you shouldn't have done 
it. It's all so unjust, so silly and so tiresome. 
You, of course, only get it when you bring it upon 
youreslf. But I'm black and I've had it all my life. 
You don't know the prizes within my grasp that 
have been snatched away from me again because 
of colour." She turned as her mother entered the 
room. " Mother, wasn't she magnificent? " 

" She was a fool," Mrs. Powell replied shortly. 

Her words brought the exalted Angela back to 
earth. " Yes," she said, smiling whimsically, " I 
am just that, a fool. I don't know what possessed 
me. I'm poor, I was in distress; I wanted a new 
deal. Now I don't know which way to turn for 
it. That story will be all over New York by 
to-morrow morning." She burst out laughing. 
" Think of my choosing four reporters before whom 
to make my great confession ! " Her hand sought 
Miss Powell's. " Good-bye, both of you. Don't 
worry about me. I never dreamed that anything 
like this could happen, but the mere fact that 
is has shows that the truth was likely to come out 
any day. So don't blame yourselves for it. Good 
bye." 



Banky was waiting for her in the vestibule down 
stairs. " I'm so sorry about the whole damned 
business, Miss Mory," he said decently. " It's 

35 



BUNHHHHHHHHHH** 



a damned shame. If there's anything I can 
do -- " 

Rather shortly she said there was nothing. 
" And you don't need to worry. As I told you 
upstairs, being coloured isn't as awful as all that. 
I'll get along." Ignoring his hand she passed by 
him into the street. It was Saturday afternoon 
so there was a chance of her finding Jinny at 
home. 

" And if she isn't there I can wait," she told 
herself, and thanked God in her heart for the 
stability implied in sisterhood. 

Jinny was home, mulling happily over the small 
affairs which kept her a little girl. Her sister, 
looking at the serene loveliness of her face, said 
irrelevantly: "You make me feel like an old 
woman." 

" Well," replied Jinny, " you certainly have the 
art of concealing time's ravages, for you not only 
look young but you have the manner of someone 
who's just found a million dollars. Come in and 
tell me about it." 

" Found a million dollars ! H'm, lost it I 
should say ! " But a sudden wave of relief and 
contentment broke over her. " Oh, Jinny, tell 
me, have I been an utter fool ! I've thrown away 
every chance I've ever had in the world, just 
for a whim." Suddenly close in the full tide of 
sisterliness, they sat facing each other on the com 
fortable couch while Angela told her story. " I 
hadn't the faintest idea in the world of telling it. 
I was thinking only the other day how lucky I was 
compared to Miss Powell, and the first thing I 
knew there it all came tripping off my tongue. 
But I had to do it. If you could just have seen 

351 



BUNHHHHHMHHMHHI* 



those pigs of reporters and Miss Powell's face 
under their relentless probing. And old Mrs. 
Powell, helpless and grunting and sweating and 
thinking me a fool; she told me so, you know. 
. . . Why, Jinny, darling, you're not ever cry 
ing ! Darling, there's nothing to cry about; 
what's the matter, Honey ! " 

" It's because you are a fool that I am crying," 
said Jinny sobbing and sniffling, her fingers in her 
eyes. " You're a fool and the darlingest girl that 
ever lived, and my own precious, lovely, wonder 
ful sister back again. Oh, Angela, I'm so happy. 
Tell them to send you your passage money back; 
say you don't want anything from them that they 
don't want to give; let them go, let them all go 
except the ones who like you for yourself. And 
dearest, if you don't mind having to skimp a bit for 
a year or two and not spreading yourself as you 
planned, we'll get you off to Europe after all. 
You know I've got all my money from the house. 
I've never touched it. You can have as much of 
that as you want and pay me back later or not 
at all." 

Laughing and crying, Angela told her that she 
couldn't think of it. " Keep your money for your 
marriage, Jinny. It'll be some time before 
Anthony will make any real money, I imagine. 
But I will take your advice and go to Europe after 
all. All this stuff will be in the paper to-morrow, 
I suppose, so I'll write the American Committee 
people to-night. As for the prize money, if they 
want that back they can have it. But I don't 
think they will; nothing was said about Miss 
Powell's. That's a thousand dollars. I'll take 
that and go to Paris and live as long as I can. If 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 



I can't have the thousand I'll use the few hundreds 
that I have left and go anyway. And when I come 
back I'll go back to my old job or go into the 
schools. But all that's a long way off and we 
don't know what might turn up." 

There were one or two matters for immediate 
consideration. The encounter with the reporters 
had left Angela a little more shaken than was at 
first apparent. " I don't want to run into them 
again," she said ruefully. Her lease on the little 
apartment in Jayne Street had still a month to run. 
She would go down this very evening, get together 
her things, and return to Jinny, with whom she 
would live quietly until it was time for her to sail. 
Her mail she could leave with the janitor to be 
called for. Fortunately the furniture was not hers ; 
there were only a few pictures to be removed. 
After all, she had very few friends to consider, 
just the Sandburgs, Martha Burden, Mrs. Denver, 
Ralph Ashley and Rachel Salting. 

" And I don't know what to do about them," 
she said, pondering. " After all, you can't write 
to people and say: c Dear friend: You've always 
thought I was white. But I'm not really. I'm 
coloured and I'm going back to my own folks to 
live.' Now can you? Oh, Jinny, Jinny, isn't it 
a great old world? " 

In the end, after the story appeared, as it 
assuredly did, in the next morning's paper, she cut 
out and sent to each of her former friends copies 
of Miss Tilden's story whose headlines read: 
" Socially Ambitious Negress Confesses to Long 
Hoax." 



353 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH 



With the exception of Banky's all the accounts 
took the unkindest attitude possible. The young 
Hungarian played up the element of self-sacrifice 
and the theory that blood after all was thicker 
than water. Angela guessed rightly that if he 
could have he would have preferred omitting it, 
and that he had only written it up to offset as far 
as possible the other accounts. Of the three other 
meanly insinuating stories Miss Tilden's was 
the silliest and most dangerous. She spoke of 
mixed blood as the curse of the country, a curse 
whose " insidiously concealed influence constantly 
threatens the wells of national race purity. Such 
incidents as these make one halt before he con 
demns the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan and its 
unceasing fight for 100 per cent. Americanism." 

The immediate effect of this publicity was one 
which neither of the sisters had foreseen. When 
Angela reported for work on the following Monday 
morning she found a note on her desk asking her 
immediate appearance in the office. The president 
returning her good-morning with scant courtesy, 
showed her a clipping and asked if she were the 
Miss Mory of the story. Upon her assurance that 
she was none other, he handed her a month's 
salary in lieu of notice and asked her to con 
sider her connection with the firm at an end. 

" We have no place for deceit in an institution 
such as this," he said augustly. 

The incident shook both girls to a degree. Vir 
ginia particularly was rendered breathless by its 
cruel immediacy. Never before had she come so 
close to the special variation of prejudice mani 
fested to people in Angela's position. That the 
president of the concern should attribute the 

354 



BUNHHHHHHH^-HHHf* 



girl's reticence on this subject to deceit seemed 
to her the last ounce of injustice. Angela herself 
was far less perturbed. 

" I've seen too much of this sort of thing to feel 
it as you do, Virginia. Of course, as you see, 
there are all kinds of absurdities involved. In 
your case, showing colour as you do, you'd have 
been refused the job at the very outset. Perhaps 
they would have said that they had found coloured 
people incompetent or that other girls had a strong 
natural aversion toward working beside one of us. 
Now here I land the position, hold it long enough 
to prove ability and the girls work beside me and 
remain untainted. So evidently there's no blind 
inherent disgust to be overcome. Looking just the 
same as I've ever looked I let the fact of my Negro 
ancestry be known. Mind, I haven't changed 
the least bit, but immediately there's all this hold 
ing up of hands and the cry of deceit is raised. 
Some logic, that! It really would be awfully 
funny, you see, Jinny, if it couldn't be fraught 
with such disastrous consequences for people like, 
say, Miss Powell." 

" Don't mention her," said Jinnv vehemently. 
" If it hadn't been for her you wouldn't have been 
in all this trouble." 

Angela smiled. " If it hadn't been for her, you 
and I probably never would have really found 
each other again. But you mustn't blame her. 
Sooner or later I'd have been admitting, * con 
fessing ', as the papers say, my black blood. Not 
that I myself think it of such tremendous import 
ance; in spite of my efforts to break away I really 
don't, Virginia. But because this country of ours 
makes it so important, against my own conviction 

355 



BUNHHHHH^HHHHHHK 



I was beginning to feel as though I were laden 
down with a great secret. Yet when I begin to 
delve into it, the matter of blood seems nothing 
compared with individuality, character, living. 
The truth of the matter is, the whole business was 
just making me fagged to death." 

She sat lost intently in thought. " All of the 
complications of these last few years, and you 
can't guess what complications there have been, 
darling child, have been based on this business 
of ' passing '. I understand why Miss Powell gave 
up the uneven fight about her passage. Of course, 
in a way it would have been a fine thing if she 
could have held on, but she was perfectly justified 
in letting go so she could avoid still greater bitter 
ness and disappointment and so she could have 
something left in her to devote to her art. You 
can't fight and create at the same time. And I 
understand, too, why your Anthony bestirs him 
self every little while and makes his confession; 
simply so he won't have to be bothered with the 
trappings of pretence and watchfulness. I sup 
pose he told you about that night down at Martha 
Burden's? " 

" Yes," said Jinny, sighing, " he has terrible 
ideals. There's something awfully lofty about 
Anthony. I wish he were more like Matthew, 
comfortable and homey. Matt's got some ideals, 
too, but he doesn't work them overtime. Anthony's 
a darling, two darlings, but he's awfully, awfully 
what-do-you-call-it, ascetic. I shouldn't be at all 
surprised but what he had a secret canker eating 
at his heart." 

Angela said rather sternly, " Look here, Jinny, 
I don't believe you love him after all, do you? " 

356 



" Well now, when I get right down to it some 
times I think I do. Sometimes I think I don't. Of 
course the truth of the matter is, I'd hardly have 
thought about Anthony or marriage either just 
now, if I hadn't been so darn lonely. You know 
I'm not like you, Angela. When we were children 
I was the one who was going to have a career, 
and you were always going to have a good time. 
Actually it's the other way round; you're the 
one who's bound to have a career. You just 
gravitate to adventure. There's something so 
forceful and so strong about you that you can't 
keep out of the battle. But, Angela, I want a 
home, with you if you could just stand still long 
enough, or failing that, a home with husband and 
children and all that goes with it. Of course I 
don't mind admitting that at any time I'd have 
given up even you for Matthew. But next to being 
his wife I'd rather live with you, and next to that 
I'd like to marry Anthony. I don't like to be 
alone; for though I can fend for myself I don't 
want to." 

Angela felt herself paling with the necessity of 
hiding her emotion. " So poor Anthony's only 
third in your life? " 

" Yes, I'm afraid he is . . . Darling, what do 
you say to scallops for dinner? I feel like cooking 
to-day. Guess I'll hie me to market." 

She left the room, and her sister turned to the large 
photograph of Cross which Virginia kept on the 
mantel. She put her fingers on the slight youthful 
hollows of his pictured cheeks, touched his pictured 
brow. " Oh Anthony, Anthony, is Life cheating 
you again? You'll always be first in my life, 
dearest." 

357 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH* 



Perhaps Virginia's diagnosis of her character 
was correct. At any rate she welcomed the present 
combination of difficulties through which she was 
now passing. Otherwise this last confession of 
Jinny's would have plunged her into fresh un- 
happiness. But she had many adjustments to 
make and to face. First of all there was her new 
status in the tiny circle in which she had moved. 
When at the end of two weeks she went down to 
her old apartment in Jayne Street to ask for her 
mail, she was, in spite of herself amazed and hurt 
to discover a chilled bewilderment, an aloofness, 
in the manner of Mrs. Denver, with whom she had 
a brief encounter. On the other hand there were 
a note and a calling card from Martha Burden, 
and some half dozen letters from Elizabeth and 
Walter Sandburg. 

Martha's note ran: " Undoubtedly you and 
Mr. Cross are very fine people. But I don't believe 
I could stand another such shock very soon. Of 
course it was magnificent of you to act as you did. 
But oh, my dear, how quixotic. And after all 
a quoi bon? Will you come to see me as soon as 
you get this, or send me word how I may see you? 
And Angele, if you let all this nonsense interfere 
with your going to Europe I'll never forgive you. 
Ladislas and I have several thousand dollars 
stored away just begging to be put out at interest." 

Elizabeth Sandburg said nothing about the 
matter, but Angela was able to read her know 
ledge between the lines. The kind-hearted couple 
could not sufficiently urge upon her their un 
changing regard and friendship. " Why on earth 
don't you come and see us? " Elizabeth queried 
in her immense, wandering chirography, five words 

358 



to a page. " You can't imagine how we miss you. 
Walter's actually getting off his feed. Do take a 
moment from whatever masterpiece you're com 
posing and give us a week-end." 

But from Rachel Salting and from Ashley not 
one single word ! 



359 



CHAPTER II 

MORE than ever her determination to sail became 
fixed. " Some people," she said to Jinny, " might 
think it the thing to stay here and fight things out. 
Martha, for instance, is keenly disappointed 
because I won't let the committee which had been 
working for Miss Powell take up my case. I sus 
pect she thinks we're all quitters. But I know 
when I've had enough. I told her I wanted to 
spend my life doing something besides fighting. 
Moreover, the Committee, like myself, is pretty 
sick of the whole afiair, though not for the same 
reason, and I think there'd be even less chance 
for a readjustment in my case than there was in 
Miss Powell's." 

An interview with Clarke Otter, Chairman of 
the Advisory Board of the American Committee, 
had given her this impression. Mr. Otter's 
attitude betokened a curious admixture of re 
sentment at what he seemed to consider her 
deceit in " passing " and exasperation at her 
having been quixotic enough to give the show 
away. " We think you are quite right in express 
ing your determination not to take advantage 
of the Committee's arrangements. It evidences 
a delicacy of feeling quite unusual in the circum 
stances." Angela was boiling with anger when 
she left. 

360 



BUNH6*** 



A letter to the donor of the prize brought back 
the laconic answer that the writer was interested 
" not in Ethnology but in Art." 

" I'd like to see that party," said Angela, revert 
ing to the jargon of her youth. " I'll bet he's 
nowhere near as stodgy as he sounds. I shouldn't 
wonder but what he was just bubbling over with 
mirth at the silliness of it all." 

Certainly she herself was bubbling over with 
mirth or with what served for that quality. 
Virginia could not remember ever having 
seen her in such high spirits, not since the days 
when they used to serve Monday's dinner 
for their mother and play at the roles in 
which Mrs. Henrietta Jones had figured so 
largely. But Angela herself knew the shallowness 
of that mirth whose reality, Anthony, unable 
to remain for any length of time in her presence 
and yet somehow unable to stay away, some 
times suspected. 

Her savings, alas ! including the prize money, 
amounted roughly to 1,400 dollars. Anthony had 
urged her to make the passage second class on one 
of the large, comfortable boats. Then, if she 
proved herself a good sailor, she might come back 
third class. 

" And anyway don't put by any more than 
enough for that," said Jinny maternally, " and 
if you need any extra money write to me and I'll 
send you all you want." 

From stories told by former foreign students who 
had sometimes visited the Union it seemed as 
though she might stretch her remaining hundreds 
over a period of eight or nine months. " And by 
that time I'll have learned enough to know whether 

361 



I'm to be an honest-to-God artist or a plain draw 
ing teacher." 

" I almost hope it will be the latter," said Jinny 
with a touching selfishness, " so you'll have to 
come back and live with us. Don't you hope so, 
Anthony? " 

Angela could see him wince under the strain 
of her sister's artlessness. " Eight or nine months 
abroad ought to make a great difference in her 
life," he said with no particular relevance. " In 
deed in the lives of all of us." Both he and Angela 
had only one thought these days, that the time for 
departure would have to arrive. Neither of them 
had envisaged the awfulness of this pull on their 
self-control. 



Now there were only five days before her 
departure on Monday. She divided them among 
the Sandburgs, Anthony and Jinny who was 
coming down with a summer cold. On Saturday 
the thought came to her that she would like to 
see Philadelphia again; it was a thought so per 
sistent that by nine o'clock she was in the train 
and by 11.15 sne was preparing for bed in a 
small side-room in the Hotel Walton in the city 
of her birth. Smiling, she fell asleep vaguely 
soothed by the thought of being so close to all 
that had been once the scene of her steady, un 
checked life. 

The propinquity was to shake her more than she 
could dream. 

In the morning she breakfasted in her room, 
then coming downstairs stood in the portico of 

362 



BUN4HHHHHHHHHM?* 

the hotel drawing on her gloves as she had done so 
many years before when she had been a girl 
shopping with her mother. A flood of memories 
rushed over her, among them the memory of that 
day when her father and Virginia had passed them 
on the street and they had not spoken. How 
trivial the reason for not speaking seemed now! 
In later years she had cut Jinny for a reason 
equally trivial. 

She walked up toward Sixteenth Street. It 
was Sunday and the beautiful melancholy of the 
day was settling on the quiet city. There was a 
freshness and a solemnity in the air as though even 
the atmosphere had been rarified and soothed. 
A sense of loneliness invaded her; this was the city 
of her birth, of her childhood and of most of her 
life. Yet there was no one, she felt, to whom she 
could turn this beautiful day for a welcome; old 
acquaintances might be mildly pleased, faintly 
curious at seeing her, but none of them would show 
any heart-warming gladness. She had left them 
so abruptly, so completely. Weil, she must not 
think on these things. After all, in New York 
she had been lonely too. 

The Sixteenth Street car set her down at Jefler- 
son Street and slowly she traversed the three long 
blocks. Always quiet, always respectable, they 
were doubly so in the sanctity of Sunday morning. 
What a terrible day Sunday could be without 
friends, ties, home, family. Only five years ago, 
less than five years, she had had all the simple, 
stable fixtures of family life, the appetizing break 
fast, the music, the church with its interesting, 
paintable types, long afternoons and evenings 
with visitors and discussions beating in the void. 

363 



******HHHHhPLUM BUN***** * * *** * 



And Matthew Henson, would he, she wondered, 
give her welcome? But she thought that still she 
did not want to see him. She was not happy, 
but she was not through adventuring, through 
tasting life. And she knew that a life spent with 
Matthew Henson would mean a cessation of that. 
After all, was he, with his steadiness, his upright 
ness, his gift for responsibility any happier than she? 
She doubted it. 

Oh, she hoped Sundays in Paris would be 
gay! 

Opal Street came into her vision, a line, a mere 
shadow of a street falling upon the steadfastness 
of Jefferson. Her heart quickened, tears came 
into her eyes as she turned that corner which she 
had turned so often, that corner which she had 
once left behind her forever in order to taste and 
know life. In the hot July sun the street lay 
almost deserted. A young coloured man, im 
maculate in white shirt sleeves, slim and straight, 
bending in his doorway to pick up the bulky 
Sunday paper, straightened up to watch her 
advancing toward him. Just this side of him stood 
her former home, how tiny it was and yet how 
full of secrets, of knowledge of joy, despair, suffer 
ing, futility in brief Life! She stood a few 
moments in front of it, just gazing, but presently 
she went up and put her hand on the red brick, 
wondering blindly if in some way the insensate thing 
might not communicate with her through touch. 
A coloured woman sitting in the window watching 
her rather sharply, came out then and asked her 
suspiciously what she wanted. 

" Nothing," Angela replied dully. " I just 
wanted to look at the house." 

364 



H-HHMhHHhHKPLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH-* 

" It isn't for sale, you know." 

" No, no, of course not. I just wanted to look 
at it again. I used to live here, you see. I 

wondered " Even if she did get permission 

to go inside, could she endure it? If she could 
just stand once in that little back room and cry 
and cry perhaps her tears would flood away all 
that mass of regret and confusion and futile mem 
ories, and she could begin life all over with a blank 
page. Thank God she was young! Suddenly it 
seemed to her that entering the house once more, 
standing in that room would be a complete panacea. 
Raising her eyes expectantly to the woman's face 
she began: " Would you be so kind ? " 

But the woman, throwing her a last suspicious 
look and muttering that she was " nothing with 
poor white trash," turned and, slamming the 
door behind her, entered the little square parlour 
and pulled down the blinds. 



The slim young man came running down the 
street toward her. Closer inspection revealed 
his ownership of a pleasant brown freckled face 
topped by thick, soft, rather closely cropped 
dark-red hair. 

" Angela," he said timidly, and then with more 
assurance: " It is Angela Murray." 

She turned her stricken face toward him. " She 
wouldn't let me in, Matthew. I'm going to France 
to-morrow and I thought I'd like to see the old 
house. But she wouldn't let me look at it. She 
called me," her voice broke with the injustice 
of it, " poor white trash." 

365 



-HHHHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHHHHH>*** 

"I know," he nodded gravely. "She'd do 
that kind of thing; she doesn't understand, you 
see." He was leading her gently toward his house. 
" I think you'd better come inside and rest a 
moment. My father and mother have gone off 
for their annual trip to Bridgeton; mother was 
born there, you know. But you won't mind com 
ing into the house of an old and tried friend." 

" No," she said, conscious of an overwhelming 
fatigue and general sense of let-downness, " I 
should say I wouldn't." As they crossed the thresh 
old she tried faintly to smile but the effort was 
too much for her and she burst into a flood of 
choking, strangling, noisy tears. 

Matthew removed her hat and fanned her; 
brought her ice-water and a large soft handkerchief 
to replace her own sodden wisp. Through her 
tears she smiled at him, understanding as she did 
so, the reason for Virginia's insistence on his general 
niceness. He was still Matthew Henson, still 
freckled and brown, still capped with that thatch 
of thick bad hair. But care and hair-dressings and 
improved toilet methods and above all the emana 
tion of a fine and generous spirit had metamor 
phosed him into someone still the old Matthew 
Henson and yet someone somehow translated into 
a quintessence of kindliness and gravity and 
comprehending. 

She drank the water gratefully, took out her 
powder puff. 

" I don't need to ask you how you are," he said, 
uttering a prayer of thanks for averted hysterics. 
" When a lady begins to powder her nose, she's 
bucking up all right. Want to tell me all about 
it?" 

366 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHHi* 



" There's nothing to tell. Only I wanted to see 
the house and suddenly found myself unexpectedly 
homesick, lonely, misunderstood. And when that 
woman refused me so cruelly, it was just too much." 
Her gaze wavered, her eyes filled again. 

" Oh," he said in terror, " for God's sake don't 
cry again! I'll go over and give her a piece of 
my mind; I'll make her turn the whole house 
over to you. I'll bring you her head on a 
charger. Only * dry those tears'." He took her 
handkerchief and dried them himself very, very 
gently. 

She caught his hand. " Matthew, you're a 
dear." 

He shrugged negligently, " You haven't always 
thought that." 

This turn of affairs would never do. " What 
were you planning to do when I barged in? 
Getting ready to read your paper and be all homey 
and comfortable? " 

" Yes, but I don't want to do that now. Tell 
you what, Angela, Let's have a lark. Suppose 
we have dinner here? you get it- Remember how 
it used to make me happy as a king in the old days 
if you'd just hand me a glass of water? You said 
you were sailing to-morrow; you must be all packed. 
What time do you have to be back? I'll put you 
on the train." 

The idea enchanted her. " I'd love it ! 
Matthew, what fun ! " They found an apron of 
his mother's, and in the ice-box, cold roast beef, 
lettuce which Philadelphians call salad, beets and 
corn. " I'll make muffins," said Angela joyously, 
" and you take a dish after dinner and go out and 
get some ice-cream. Oh, Matthew, how it's all 



coming back to me! Do you still shop up here 
in the market? " 

They ate the meal in the little dark cool 
dining-room, the counterpart of the dining- 
room in Junius Murray's one-time house across 
the way. But somehow its smallness was no 
longer irksome; rather it seemed a tiny island 
of protection reared out of and against an en 
croaching sea of troubles. In fancy she saw her 
father and mother almost a quarter of a century 
ago coming proudly to such a home, their little 
redoubt of refuge against the world. How beau 
tiful such a life could be, shared with some 
one beloved, with Anthony! Involuntarily she 
sighed. 

Matthew studying her thoughtfully said: 
" You're dreaming, Angela. Tell me what it's 
all about." 

" I was thinking what a little haven a house like 
this could be; what it must have meant to my 
mother. Funny how I almost pounded down the 
walls once upon a time trying to get away. Now 
I can't think of anything more marvellous than 
having such a place as this, here, there, anywhere, 
to return to." 

Startled, he told her of his surprise at hearing 
such words from her. " If Virginia had said them 
I should think it perfectly natural; but I hadn't 
thought of you as being interested in home. How, 
by the way, is Virginia? " 

" Perfect." 

With a wistfulness which barely registered with 
her absorption, he queried: "I suppose she's tre 
mendously happy? " 

" Happy enough." 

368 



"A great girl, little Virginia." In his turn 
he fell to musing, roused himself. " You haven't 
told me of your adventures and your flight into 
the great world." 

" There's not much to tell, Matthew. All I've 
seen and experienced has been the common fate 
of most people, a little sharpened, perhaps, a 
little vivified. Briefly, I've had a lot of fun and a 
measure of trouble. I've been stimulated by 
adventure; I've known suffering and love and 
pain." 

" You're still surprising me. I didn't suppose a 
girl like you could know the meaning of pain." 
He gave her a twisted smile. ;4 Though you cer 
tainly know how to cause it. Even yet I can get 
a pang which no other thought produces if I let 
my mind go back to those first few desperate 
days after you left me. Heavens, can't you suffer 
when you're young ! " 

She nodded, laid her hand on his. ;c Ter 
ribly. Remember, I was suffering too, Matthew, 
though for different causes. I was so pushed, so 
goaded . . . well, we won't talk about that any 
more. ... I hope you've got over all that 
feeling. Indeed, indeed I wasn't worth it. Do 
tell me you haven't let it harass you all these 
years." 

His hand clasped hers lightly, then withdrew. 
" No I haven't. . . . The suddenness, the in- 
evitableness of your departure checked me, pulled 
me up short. I suffered, oh damnably, but it was 
suffering with my eyes open. I knew then you 
weren't for me; that fundamentally we were too 
far apart. And eventually I got over it. Those 
days ! " He smiled again wryly, recalling a 

A A 369 



memory. " But I went on suffering just the 
same, only in another way. I fell in love with 
Jinny." 

Her heart in her breast stopped beating. " Mat 
thew, you didn't ! Why on earth didn't you ever 
say so? " 

" I couldn't. She was such a child, you see; 
she made it so plain all the time that she looked on 
me as her sister's beau and therefore a kind of 
dependable brother. After you went I used to 
go to see her, take her about. Why she'd swing 
on my arm and hold up her face for a good-night 
kiss ! Once, I remember, we had been out and 
she became car-sick, poor little weak thing ! 
She was so ashamed ! Like a baby, you know, 
playing at being grown-up and then ashamed 
for reverting to babyhood. I went to see her 
the next day and she was so little and frail 
and confiding ! I stayed away then for a long 
time and the next thing I knew she was 
going to New York. I misjudged you awfully 
then, Angela. You must forgive me. I thought 
you had pulled her away. I learned later that 
I was wrong, that you and she rarely saw each 
other in New York. Do you know why she 
left? " 

There was her sister's pride to shield but her 
own need to succour; who could have dreamed 
of such a dilemma? " I can't betray Jinny," she 
said to herself and told him that while she per 
sonally had not influenced her sister the latter 
had had a very good reason for leaving Phila 
delphia. 

" I suppose so. Certainly she left. But she'd 
write me ? occasionally, letters just like her dear 

370 



BUN^HHHHHHHHHf- 



self, so frank and girlish and ingenuous and making 
it so damnably plain that any demonstration of 
love on my part was out of the question. I said 
to myself: 'I'm not going to wreck my whole life 
over those Murray girls '. And I let our friend 
ship drift off into a nothingness. . . . Then she 
came to visit Edna Brown this summer. I fairly 
leaped out to Merion to see her. The moment I 
laid eyes on her I realized that she had developed, 
had become a woman. She was as always, kind 
and sweet, prettier, more alluring than ever. I 
thought I'd try my luck .... and Edna told 
me she was engaged. What's the fellow like, 
Angela? " 

" Very nice, very fine." 

" Wild about her, I suppose?" 

Desperately she looked at him. "He's a rather 
undemonstrative sort. I suppose he's wild enough. 
Only, well they talk as though they had no 
intention of marrying for years and years and they 
both seem perfectly content with that arrange 
ment." 

He frowned incredulously. " What ! If I 
thought they weren't in earnest ! " 

Impulsively she broke out: " Oh, Matthew, 
don't you know, there's so much pain, such 
suffering in the world, a man should never leave 
any stone unturned to achieve his ultimate happi 
ness. Why don't you write to Jinny, go to New 
York to see her? " 

Under his freckles his brown skin paled. e You 
think there's a chance? " 

" My dear, I wouldn't dare say. I know she 
likes you very, very much. And I don't think she 
regards you as a brother." 

37' 



BUNHHHHHHHHHH* 



" Angela, you wouldn't fool me? " 

" Why should I do that? And remember after 
all I'm giving you no assurance. I'm merely 
saying it's worth taking a chance. Now let's 
see, we'll straighten up this place and then we 
must fly." 

At the station she kissed him good-bye. 
" Anyway you're always a brother to me. 
Think of what I've told you, Matthew; act 
on it." 

" I shall. Oh, Angela, suppose it should be that 
God sent you down here to-day? " 

" Perhaps He did." They parted solemnly. 

Three hours later found her entering her sister's 
apartment. Jinny, her cold raging, her eyes in 
flamed and weeping, greeted her plaintively. 
" Look at me, Angela. And you leaving to 
morrow! I'll never be able to make that boat!" 
The telephone rang. " It's been ringing steadily 
for the last hour, somebody calling for you. Do 
answer it." 

The message was from Ashley. He had been 
away in New Orleans. " And I came back and 
found that clipping. I knew you sent it. Girl, the 
way I've pursued you this day ! Finally I caught 
up with Martha Burden, she told me where you 
were staying. May I come up? Be there in half 
an hour." 

" Not to-night, Ralph. Would you like to come 
to the boat to-morrow? " 

"So you're going anyhow? Bully! But not 
before I've seen you ! Suppose I take you to the 
boat? " 

" Awfully nice of you, but I'm going with my 
sister." 

372 



BUNHHHHHHHMHHHS* 



Here Jinny in a voice full of misplaced con 
sonants told her she was going to do nothing of 
the sort. " With this cold ! " 

Angela spoke into the receiver again. " My 
sister says she isn't going, so I will fall back on 
you if I may." She hung up. 

Virginia wanted to hear of the trip. The two 
sisters sat talking far into the night, but Angela 
said no word about Matthew. 



Monday was a day of surprises. Martha and 
Ladislas Starr, unable to be on hand for the sailing 
of the boat, came up to the house to drive down 
town with the departing traveller. Secretly Angela 
was delighted with this arrangement, but it brought 
a scowl to Ashley's face. 

Virginia, miserable with the wretchedness attend 
ant on a summer cold, bore up bravely. " I don't 
mind letting you go like this from the house; but 
I couldn't stand the ship ! Angela, you're not 
to worry about me one bit. Only come back 
to me, happy. I know you will. Oh how 
different this is from that parting years ago in 
Philadelphia ! " 

" Yes," said Angela soberly. " Then I was to 
be physically ninety miles away from you, but we 
were really seas apart. Now darling, three 
thousand miles are nothing when there is love and 
trust and understanding. And Jinny, listen ! Life 
is full of surprises. If a chance for real happiness 
comes your way don't be afraid to grasp at it." 

" Cryptic," wheezed Jinny, laughing. " I don't 
know what you're talking about, but I'll do my 

373 



BUNHHH^HHHHHHHH* 



best to land any happiness that comes drifting 
toward me." They kissed each other gravely, 
almost coldly, without tears. But neither could 
trust herself to say the actual good-bye. 

Angela was silent almost all the way down to 
the dock, answering her friends only in mono 
syllables. There, another surprise awaited her in 
the shape of Mrs. Denver, who remained, how 
ever, only for a few moments. " I couldn't stand 
having you go," she said pitifully, " without 
seeing you for one last time." And, folding the 
girl in a close embrace, she broke down and 
murmured sadly of a lost daughter who 
would have been " perhaps like you, dear, had 
she lived." 

Elizabeth Sandburg, the gay, the complacent, 
the beloved of life, clung to her, weeping, " I can't 
bear to lose you, Angele." Walter put his arm 
about her. " Kiss me, old girl. And mind, if you 
need anything, anything, you're to call on us. If 
you get sick we'll come over after you, am I 
right, Lizzie? " 

" Yes, of course, of course . . . and don't 
call me Lizzie. . . . Come away, can't you, and 
leave them a moment together. Don't you see 
Ashley glaring at you? " 

They withdrew to a good point of vantage on 
the dock. 

Angela, surprised and weeping, remembering 
both Mrs. Denver's words and the manifestations 
of kindness in her stateroom said: "They really 
did love me after all, didn't they? " 

" Yes," said Ashley earnestly, " we all love 
you. I'm coming over to see you by and by, 
Angele, may I? You know we've a lot of things 

374 



^.HHHHHHHHhPLUM BUNHHHHMHMHHHH5* 

to talk about, some things which you perhaps 
think mean a great deal to me but which in 
reality mean nothing. Then on the other hand 
there are some matters which actually do mean 
something to me but whose value to you I'm not 
sure of." 

" Oh," she said, wiping her eyes and remem 
bering her former secret. " You aren't coming 
over to ask me to marry you, are you? You don't 
have to do that. And anyway ' it is not now as it 
hath been before '. There's no longer a mystery 
about me, you know. So the real attraction's 
gone. Remember, I'm not expecting a thing of 
you, so please, please don't ask it. Ralph, I can't 
placard myself, and I suppose there will be lots of 
times when in spite of myself I'll be passing '. 
But I want you to know that from now on, so far as 
sides are concerned, I am on the coloured side. 
And I don't want you to come over on that side." 
She shook her head finally. " Too many compli 
cations even for you." 

For though she knew he believed in his brave 
words, she was too sadly experienced to ask an 
American to put them to the test. 

" All right," he said, smiling at her naive 
assumptions. " I won't ask you to marry me, 
at least not yet. But I'm coming over just the 
same. I don't suppose you've got a lien on 
Paris." 

" Of course I haven't," she giggled a little. 
" You know perfectly well I want you to come." 
Her face suddenly became grave. " But if you 
do come you won't come to make love without 
meaning anything either, will you? I'd hate that 
between you and me." 

375 



*HHHHHH-H~H-PLUM BUNHHHHHHHHHH-* 

" No," he said gently, instantly comprehending. 
" I won't do that either." 

" You'll come as a friend? " 

"Yes, as a friend." 

A deck hand came up then and said civilly that 
in a few minutes they would be casting off and all 
visitors must go ashore. 



CHAPTER III 

AMONG her steamer-letters was a brief note from 
Anthony : 

" Angela, my angel, my dear girl, good-bye. 
These last few weeks have been heaven and hell. 
I couldn't bear to see you go, so I've taken my 
self off for a few hours . . . don't think I'll 
neglect Jinny. I'll never do that. Am I right in 
supposing that you still care a little? Oh Angela, 
try to forget me, but don't do it! I shall never 
forget you ! " 

There were letters and flowers from the Burdens, 
gifts of all sorts from Ashley and Mrs. Denver, a 
set of notes for each day out from Virginia. She 
read letters, examined her gifts and laid them 
aside. But all day long Anthony's note reposed 
on her heart; it lay at night beneath her head. 



Paris at first charmed and wooed her. For a 
while it seemed to her that her old sense of joy 
in living for living's sake had returned to her. It 
was like those first few days which she had spent 
in exploring New York. She rode delightedly in 
the motor-buses on and on to the unknown, un 
predictable terminus; she followed the winding 
Seine; crossing and re-crossing the bridges each 

377 



BUN-HHHHHHHHHH^ 



with its distinctive characteristics. Back of the 
Pantheon, near the church of St. Genevieve she 
discovered a Russian restaurant where strange, 
exotic dishes were served by tall blond waiters in 
white, stiff Russian blouses. One day, wandering 
up the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, she found 
at its juncture with the Boulevard Raspail the 
Cafe Dome, a student restaurant of which many 
returned students had spoken in the Art School 
in New York. On entering she was recognized 
almost immediately by Edith Martin, a girl who 
had studied with her in Philadelphia. 

Miss Martin had lived in Paris two years; knew 
all the gossip and the characters of the Quarter; 
could give Angela points on pensions, cafes, tips 
and the Gallic disposition. On all these topics she 
poured out perpetually a flood of information, 
presented her friends, summoned the new comer 
constantly to her studio or camped uninvited in 
the other girl's tiny quarters at the Pension 
Franciana. There was no chance for actual 
physical loneliness, yet Angela thought after a 
few weeks of persistent comradeship that she had 
never felt so lonely in her life. For the first time 
in her adventuresome existence she was caught up 
in a tide of homesickness. 

Then this passed too with the summer, and she 
found herself by the end of September engrossed 
in her work. She went to the Academy twice a 
day, immersed herself in the atmosphere of the 
Louvre and the gallery of the Luxembourg. It 
was hard work, but gradually she schooled herself 
to remember that this was her life, and that her 
aim, her one ambition, was to become an acknow 
ledged, a significant painter of portraits. The 

378 



instructor, renowned son of a still more renowned 
father, almost invariably praised her efforts. 

With the coming of the fall the sense of adven 
ture left her. Paris, so beautiful in the summer, 
so gay with its thronging thousands, its hosts bent 
on pleasure, took on another garb in the sullen 
greyness of late autumn. The tourists disappeared 
and the hard steady grind of labour, the intent 
application to the business of living, so noticeable 
in the French, took the place of a transient, careless 
freedom. Angela felt herself falling into line; 
but it was good discipline as she herself realized. 
Once or twice, in periods of utter loneliness or 
boredom, she let her mind dwell on her curiously 
thwarted and twisted life. But the ability for self- 
pity had vanished. She had known too many 
others whose lives lay equally remote from goals 
which had at first seemed so certain. For a period 
she had watched feverishly for the incoming of 
foreign mail, sure that some word must come from 
Virginia about Matthew, but the months crept 
sullenly by and Jinny's letters remained the same 
artless missives prattling of school-work, Anthony, 
Sara Penton, the Movies and visits to Maude the 
inimitable. 

" Of course not everything can come right," 
she told herself. Matthew evidently had, on 
second thought, deemed it wisest to consult the 
evidence of his own senses rather than be guided 
by the hints which in the nature of things she could 
offer only vaguely. 

Within those six months she lost forever the 
blind optimism of youth. She did not write 
Anthony nor did she hear from him. 



379 



BUN-HHH^HHHHHH** 



Christmas Eve day dawned or rather drifted 
greyly into the beholder's perception out of the 
black mistiness of the murky night. In spite of her 
self her spirits sank steadily. Virginia had promised 
her a present, " I've looked all over this whole 
town," she wrote, " to find you something good 
enough, something absolutely perfect. Anthony's 
been helping me. And at last I've found it. We've 
taken every possible precaution against the inter 
ference of wind or rain or weather, and unless 
something absolutely unpredictable intervenes, it 
will be there for you Christmas Eve or possibly 
the day before. But remember, don't open it 
until Christmas." 

But it was now six o'clock on Christmas Eve 
and no present had come, no letter, no remem 
brance of any kind. " Oh," she said to herself, 
" what a fool I was to come so far away from 
home ! " For a moment she envisaged the possi 
bility of throwing herself on the bed and sobbing 
her heart out. Instead she remembered Edith 
Martin's invitation to make a night of it over at her 
place, a night which was to include dancing and 
chaffing, a trip just before midnight to hear Mass 
at St. Sulpice, and a return to the studio for doubt 
less more dancing and jesting and laughter, and 
possibly drunkenness on the part of the American 
male. 

At ten o'clock as she stood in her tiny room 
rather sullenly putting the last touches to her 
costume, the maid, Heloise, brought her a cable. 
It was a long message from Ashley wishing her 
health, happiness and offering to come over at 
a week's notice. Somehow the bit of blue 
paper cheered her, easing her taut nerves. 

380 



BUNHHHHHHHHHHH5- 



" Of course they're thinking about me. I'll hear 
from Jinny any moment; it's not her fault 
that the delivery is late. I wonder what she 
sent me." 

Returning at three o'clock Christmas morning 
from the party she put her hand cautiously in 
the door to switch on the light for fear that a 
package lay near the threshold, but there was no 
package there. " Well, even if it were there I 
couldn't open it," she murmured, " for I'm too 
sleepy." And indeed she had drugged herself 
with dancing and gaiety into an overwhelming 
drowsiness. Barely able to toss aside her pretty 
dress, she tumbled luxuriously into bed, grateful 
in the midst of her somnolence for the fatigue which 
would make her forget. ... In what seemed to 
her less than an hour, she heard a tremendous 
knocking at the door. 

" Entrez" she called sleepily and relapsed 
immediately into slumber. The door, as it hap 
pened, was unlocked; she had been too fatigued 
to think of it the night before. Heloise stuck in a 
tousled head. " My God," she told the cook 
afterwards, " such a time as I had to wake her! 
There she was asleep on both ears and the gentle 
man downstairs waiting ! " 

Angela finally opened bewildered eyes. " A 
gentleman," reiterated Heloise in her staccato 
tongue. " He awaits you below. He says he has 
a present which he must put into your own hands. 
Will Mademoiselle then descend or shall I tell him 
to come back? " 

;{ Tell him to come back," she murmured, then 
opened her heavy eyes. "Is it really Christmas, 
Heloise? Where is the gentleman? " 



" As though I had him there in my pocket," 
said Heloise later in her faithful report to the 
cook. 

But finally the message penetrated. Grasping 
a robe and slippers, she half leaped, half fell down 
the little staircase and plunged into the five foot 
square drawing-room. Anthony sitting on the 
tremendously disproportionate tan and maroon 
sofa rose to meet her. 

His eyes on her astonished countenance, he 
began searching about in his pockets, slapping his 
vest, pulling out keys and handkerchiefs. " There 
ought to be a tag on me somewhere," he remarked 
apologetically, " but anyhow Virginia and Matthew 
sent me with their love." 



THE END 

INTRODUCTION

The letter printed below is a translation of Tolstoy's letter written in Russian in reply to one from the Editor of Free Hindustan. After having passed from hand to hand, this letter at last came into my possession through a friend who asked me, as one much interested in Tolstoy's writings, whether I thought it worth publishing. I at once replied in the affirmative, and told him I should translate it myself into Gujarati and induce others' to translate and publish it in various Indian vernaculars.

The letter as received by me was a type-written copy. It was therefore referred to the author, who confirmed it as his and kindly granted me permission to print it.

To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter, such especially as the one which is now being given to the world.

It is a mere statement of fact to say that every Indian, whether he owns up to it or not, has national aspirations. But there are as many opinions as there are Indian nationalists as to the exact meaning of that aspiration, and more especially as to the methods to be used to attain the end.

One of the accepted and 'time-honoured' methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was an illustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind.

When a man like Tolstoy, one of the clearest thinkers in the western world, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has known what violence is and what it can do, condemns Japan for having blindly followed the law of modern science, falsely so-called, and fears for that country 'the greatest calamities', it is for us to pause and consider whether, in our impatience of English rule, we do not want to replace one evil by another and a worse. India, which is the nursery of the great faiths of the world, will cease to be nationalist India, whatever else she may become, when she goes through the process of civilization in the shape of reproduction on that sacred soil of gun factories and the hateful industrialism which has reduced the people of Europe to a state of slavery, and all but stifled among them the best instincts which are the heritage of the human family.

If we do not want the English in India we must pay the price. Tolstoy indicates it. 'Do not resist evil, but also do not yourselves participate in evil—in the violent deeds of the administration of the law courts, the collection of taxes and, what is more important, of the soldiers, and no one in the world will enslave you', passionately declares the sage of Yasnaya Polyana. Who can question the truth of what he says in the following: 'A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?'

One need not accept all that Tolstoy says—some of his facts are not accurately stated—to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of evil passions.

There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention.

[19th November, 1909] M. K. GANDHI

A LETTER TO A HINDU

By Leo Tolstoy

All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names. THE VEDAS.

God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. I JOHN iv. 16.

God is one whole; we are the parts. EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THE VEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA.

I

Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me.

Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA.

I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical, both of which interest me extremely. The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late. I will try to explain to you what I think about that subject in general, and particularly about the cause from which the dreadful evils of which you write in your letter, and in the Hindu periodical you have sent me, have arisen and continue to arise.

The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same—whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation.

This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality.

From your letter and the articles in Free Hindustan as well as from the very interesting writings of the Hindu Swami Vivekananda and others, it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'.

Your letter, as well as the articles in Free Hindustan and Indian political literature generally, shows that most of the leaders of public opinion among your people no longer attach any significance to the religious teachings that were and are professed by the peoples of India, and recognize no possibility of freeing the people from the oppression they endure except by adopting the irreligious and profoundly immoral social arrangements under which the English and other pseudo-Christian nations live to-day.

And yet the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike.

II

O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you. KRISHNA.

To make my thoughts clear to you I must go farther back. We do not, cannot, and I venture to say need not, know how men lived millions of years ago or even ten thousand years ago, but we do know positively that, as far back as we have any knowledge of mankind, it has always lived in special groups of families, tribes, and nations in which the majority, in the conviction that it must be so, submissively and willingly bowed to the rule of one or more persons—that is to a very small minority. Despite all varieties of circumstances and personalities these relations manifested themselves among the various peoples of whose origin we have any knowledge; and the farther back we go the more absolutely necessary did this arrangement appear, both to the rulers and the ruled, to make it possible for people to live peacefully together.

So it was everywhere. But though this external form of life existed for centuries and still exists, very early—thousands of years before our time—amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. This thought appeared in most various forms at different times and places, with varying completeness and clarity. It found expression in Brahmanism, Judaism, Mazdaism (the teachings of Zoroaster), in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and in the writings of the Greek and Roman sages, as well as in Christianity and Mohammedanism. The mere fact that this thought has sprung up among different nations and at different times indicates that it is inherent in human nature and contains the truth. But this truth was made known to people who considered that a community could only be kept together if some of them restrained others, and so it appeared quite irreconcilable with the existing order of society. Moreover it was at first expressed only fragmentarily, and so obscurely that though people admitted its theoretic truth they could not entirely accept it as guidance for their conduct. Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth. Such a hindrance and misrepresentation of the truth—which had not yet achieved complete clarity—occurred everywhere: in Confucianism and Taoism, in Buddhism and in Christianity, in Mohammedanism and in your Brahmanism.

III

My hand has sowed love everywhere, giving unto all that will receive. Blessings are offered unto all My children, but many times in their blindness they fail to see them. How few there are who gather the gifts which lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilful waywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wail that they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantly repudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of all blessings and the Author of their being. KRISHNA.

I tarry awhile from the turmoil and strife of the world. I will beautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light of the soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, and where there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst. KRISHNA.

The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without causing sorrow to others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring their feelings.

The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him.

If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without any reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome.

The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness.

Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not endeavour to relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own?

If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the evening the evil will return to him.

THE HINDU KURAL.

Thus it went on everywhere. The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life—for home use, as it were—but that in public life all forms of violence—such as imprisonment, executions, and wars—might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love. And though common sense indicated that if some men claim to decide who is to be subjected to violence of all kinds for the benefit of others, these men to whom violence is applied may, in turn, arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to those who have employed violence to them, and though the great religious teachers of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and above all of Christianity, foreseeing such a perversion of the law of love, have constantly drawn attention to the one invariable condition of love (namely, the enduring of injuries, insults, and violence of all kinds without resisting evil by evil) people continued—regardless of all that leads man forward—to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.

For a long time people lived in this obvious contradiction without noticing it. But a time arrived when this contradiction became more and more evident to thinkers of various nations. And the old and simple truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth had been made so plausible.

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God—given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might suppose that having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief in the divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to free themselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.

IV

Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided? Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, and your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will know Love. KRISHNA.

Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and then you will have nothing to fear. KRISHNA.

New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new justifications are termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' is understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious': just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. In the present case the obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler ('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific' justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people should continue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather than as their reason and conscience indicate, is what 'science' calls 'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in the statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant struggle for existence which always results in the survival of the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human beings—beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love; faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific' justification.

The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided—so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion—which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.

Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in them as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception, and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority of men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these 'scientific truths' are presented, that under this new influence it accepts these scientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly accepted the pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to the present holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more numerous than before.

V

Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes gazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for, demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me; sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth.

KRISHNA.

So matters went on, and still go on, in the Christian world. But we might have hope that in the immense Brahman, Buddhist, and Confucian worlds this new scientific superstition would not establish itself, and that the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus, once their eyes were opened to the religious fraud justifying violence, would advance directly to a recognition of the law of love inherent in humanity, and which had been so forcibly enunciated by the great Eastern teachers. But what has happened is that the scientific superstition replacing the religious one has been accepted and secured a stronger and stronger hold in the East.

In your periodical you set out as the basic principle which should guide the actions of your people the maxim that: 'Resistance to aggression is not simply justifiable but imperative, nonresistance hurts both Altruism and Egotism.'

Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement. In very ancient times love was proclaimed with special strength and clearness among your people to be the religious basis of human life. Love, and forcible resistance to evil-doers, involve such a mutual contradiction as to destroy utterly the whole sense and meaning of the conception of love. And what follows? With a light heart and in the twentieth century you, an adherent of a religious people, deny their law, feeling convinced of your scientific enlightenment and your right to do so, and you repeat (do not take this amiss) the amazing stupidity indoctrinated in you by the advocates of the use of violence—the enemies of truth, the servants first of theology and then of science—your European teachers.

You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them in subjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely enough and have not met force by force.

But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved the people of India it is just because the latter recognized, and still recognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social order. In accord with that principle they submitted to their little rajahs, and on their behalf struggled against one another, fought the Europeans, the English, and are now trying to fight with them again.

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled among them have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannot abstain, and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it not the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands' or even to hundreds, of others—of their own or other nations?

If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the eternal law of love inherent in humanity.

Pitiful and foolish is the man who seeks what he already has, and does not know that he has it. Yes, Pitiful and foolish is he who does not know the bliss of love which surrounds him and which I have given him. KRISHNA.

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence—as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

VI

O ye who sit in bondage and continually seek and pant for freedom, seek only for love. Love is peace in itself and peace which gives complete satisfaction. I am the key that opens the portal to the rarely discovered land where contentment alone is found. KRISHNA.

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has outgrown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity. I believe that such a time has now arrived—not in the sense that it has come in the year 1908, but that the inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man.

But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

To save a sinking ship it is necessary to throw overboard the ballast, which though it may once have been needed would now cause the ship to sink. And so it is with the scientific superstition which hides the truth of their welfare from mankind. In order that men should embrace the truth—not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law—the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition (both pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscured is essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditions sanctified by age and with the habits of the people—not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru-Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions—but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions.

If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on—if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies—their name is legion—and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifying ballast—the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory.

VII

Children, look at the flowers at your feet; do not trample upon them. Look at the love in your midst and do not repudiate it. KRISHNA.

There is a higher reason which transcends all human minds. It is far and near. It permeates all the worlds and at the same time is infinitely higher than they.

A man who sees that all things are contained in the higher spirit cannot treat any being with contempt.

For him to whom all spiritual beings are equal to the highest there can be no room for deception or grief.

Those who are ignorant and are devoted to the religious rites only, are in a deep gloom, but those who are given up to fruitless meditations are in a still greater darkness.

UPANISHADS, FROM VEDAS.

Yes, in our time all these things must be cleared away in order that mankind may escape from self-inflicted calamities that have reached an extreme intensity. Whether an Indian seeks liberation from subjection to the English, or anyone else struggles with an oppressor either of his own nationality or of another—whether it be a Negro defending himself against the North Americans; or Persians, Russians, or Turks against the Persian, Russian, or Turkish governments, or any man seeking the greatest welfare for himself and for everybody else—they do not need explanations and justifications of old religious superstitions such as have been formulated by your Vivekanandas, Baba Bharatis, and others, or in the Christian world by a number of similar interpreters and exponents of things that nobody needs; nor the innumerable scientific theories about matters not only unnecessary but for the most part harmful. (In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.) What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art—but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions—the truth that for our life one law is valid—the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.

Children, look upwards with your beclouded eyes, and a world full of joy and love will disclose itself to you, a rational world made by My wisdom, the only real world. Then you will know what love has done with you, what love has bestowed upon you, what love demands from you. KRISHNA.

YASNAYA POLYANA.

December 14th, 1908.

 

A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep … all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimps makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

 

“A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.”

Other Titles by Iceberg Slim

 

The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim Mama Black Widow

Trick Baby Death Wish

Airtight Willie & Me Long White Con

 

Pimp

Copyright © 1969, 1987 by Iceberg Slim

 

 

ISBN: 978-1-451-61713-9 pbk

 

ISBN: 978-1-451-61714-6 ebook

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

Printed in the United States

CONTENTS

FOREWORD PREFACE

1.  TORN FROM THE NEST

 

1.  FIRST STEPS INTO THE JUNGLE

 

1.  SALTY TRIP WITH PEPPER

 

1.  A DEGREE IN PIMPING

 

1.  THE JUNGLE FAUNA

 

1.  DRILLING FOR OIL

 

1.  MELODY OFF KEY

 

1.  GRINNING SLIM

 

1.  THE BUTTERFLY

 

1. THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

 

1. TO LOSE A WHORE

 

1. TO GAIN A STABLE

 

1. THE ICEBERG

 

1. THE MISTAKE
   
2. IN A SEWER

 

1. AWAY FROM THE TRACK

 

1. TRYING A NEW GAME

 

1. JAILBREAK

 

1. THE ICE PICK

 

1. STABLE MOVES

 

1. THE STEEL CASKET

 

1. DAWN

 

EPILOGUE GLOSSARY

 

Pimp

FOREWORD

 

Dawn was breaking as the big Hog scooted through the streets. My five whores were chattering like drunk magpies. I smelled the stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night. The inside of my nose was raw. It happens when you’re a pig for snorting cocaine.

My nose was on fire and the stink of those whores and the gangster they were smoking seemed like invisible knives scraping to the root of my brain. I was in an evil, dangerous mood despite that pile of scratch crammed into the glove compartment.

“Goddamnit, has one of you bitches shit on herself or something?” I bellowed as I flipped the long window toward me. For a long moment there was silence.

Then Rachel, my bottom whore, cracked in a pleasing ass-kissing voice. “Daddy Baby, that ain’t no shit you smell. We been turning all night and ain’t no bathrooms in those tricks’ cars we been flipping out of. Daddy, we sure been humping for you, and what you smell is our nasty whore asses.”

I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions and I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at Rachel’s shaky witticism. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

I coasted the Hog into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off so I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

As Kim got out I said, “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday so I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after, but at twelve noon sharp I want you down, got it, Baby?”

She didn’t answer, but she did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long

moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.

Then in her crisp New England accent she said, “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, okay?”

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing, he gets his pay off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in this family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some shut eye, and get in the street at noon like I told you.”

The bitch just stood there, her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores. If I had been ten years dumber I would have leaned out of that Hog and broken her jaw, and put my foot in her ass, but the joint was too fresh in my mind.

I knew the bitch was trying to booby trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I am sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Goddamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”

She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass off when she finished. So, I just sat there staring at her.

Then she went on, “I have turned more tricks in the three months I have been with you than in the whole two years with Paul. My pussy stays sore and swollen. Do I get my ass kicked before I split? If so, kick it now because I am going back to Providence on the next thing smoking.”

She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef and now she was lying back for a sucker response.

I disappointed her with my cold overlay. I could see her wilt as I said in an icy voice. “Listen square-ass Bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.”

The rollers cruised by in a squad car so I flashed a sucker smile on my face

and cooled it until they passed. Kim was rooted there wincing under the blizzard.

I went on ruthlessly, “Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.”

I rocketed away from the curb. In the rear-view mirror I saw Kim walk slowly into the hotel, her shoulders slumped. In the Hog, until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon. I had tested out for them, “solid ice.”

I went back for Kim. She was packed and silent. On the way to the station, I riffled the pages in that pimp’s book in my head for an angle to hold her without kissing her ass.

I couldn’t find a line in it for an out like that. As it turned out the bitch was testing and bluffing right down the line.

We had pulled into the station parking lot when the bitch fell to pieces. Her eyes were misty when she yelped, “Daddy, are you really going to let me split? Daddy, I love you!”

I started the prat action to cinch her when I said, “Bitch, I don’t want a whore with rabbit in her. I want a bitch who wants me for life. You have got to go after that bullshit earlier this morning, you are not that bitch.”

That prat butchered her and she collapsed into my lap crying and begging to stay. I had a theory about splitting whores. I think they seldom split without a bankroll.

So, I cracked on her, “Give me that scratch you held out and maybe I will give you another chance.”

Sure enough she reached into her bosom and drew out close to five bills and handed it to me. No pimp with a brain in his head cuts loose a young beautiful whore with lots of mileage left in her. I let her come back.

When at long last I was driving toward my hotel I remembered what Baby Jones, the master pimp who turned me out, had said about whores like Kim.

“Slim,” he had said, “A pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it and leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast to stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love, so prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believe a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.”

My mind went back to Pepper. Then back even further and I remembered what he had said about The Georgia.

“Slim, a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores. So Slim, be as sweet as the scratch, no sweeter, and always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.

On the elevator riding to my pad I thought about the first bitch who had Georgied me and how she had flim-flammed me out of my head. She would be old and gray now, but if I could find her I would sure get the bitch’s unpaid account off my conscience.

PREFACE

 

In this book I will take you, the reader, with me into the secret inner world of the pimp. I will lay bare my life and thoughts as a pimp. The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime; then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner.

I regret that it is impossible to recount to you all of my experiences as a pimp. Unfortunately, it would require the combined pages of a half-dozen books. Perhaps my remorse for my ghastly life will diminish to the degree that within this one book I have been allowed to purge myself. Perhaps one day I can win respect as a constructive human being. Most of all I wish to become a decent example for my children and for that wonderful woman in the grave, my mother.

1

TORN FROM THE NEST

Her name was Maude and she Georgied me around 1921. I was only three years old. Mama told me about it, and always when she did her rage and indignation would be as strong and as emotional perhaps as at the time when she had surprised her, panting and moaning at the point of orgasm with my tiny head wedged between her ebony thighs, her massive hands viselike around my head.

Mama worked long hours in a hand laundry and Maude had been hired as a babysitter at fifty cents a day. Maude was a young widow. Strangely, she had a reputation in Indianapolis, Indiana as a devout Holy Roller.

I have tried through the years to remember her face but all I can remember is the funky ritual. I vaguely remember, not her words but her excitement when we were alone.

I remember more vividly the moist, odorous darkness and the bristle-like hairs tickling my face and most vividly I can remember my panic, when in the wild moment of her climax, she would savagely jerk my head even tighter into the hairy maw.

I couldn’t get a breath of air until like a huge black balloon she would exhale with a whistling whoosh and relax, limply freeing my head.

I remember the ache of the strain on my fragile neck muscles, and especially at the root of my tongue.

Mama and I had come to Indianapolis from Chicago, where since the time when she was six months pregnant, my father had begun to show his true colors as an irresponsible, white-spats-wearing bum.

Back in that small town in Tennessee, their home town, he had stalked the beautiful virgin and conned her into marriage. Her parents, with vast relief, gave their blessing and wished them the best in the promised land up North in

Chicago.

Mama had ten brothers and sisters. Her marriage meant one less mouth to feed.

My father’s father was a skilled cook and he passed his know how to my father, who shortly after getting to Chicago scored a chef’s job at a huge middle-class hotel. Mama was put on as a waitress.

Mama told me that even with both of them working twelve hours a day, six days a week they couldn’t save a nickel or buy furniture or anything.

My idiot father had come to the big city and gone sucker wild. He couldn’t stay away from the high-yellow whores with their big asses and bitch-dog sexual antics. What they didn’t con him out of he lost in the cheat crap joints. At the hotel one night he vanished from the kitchen. Mama finally found him thrusting mightily into a half-white waitress lying on a sack of potatoes

in a storage room, with her legs locked around his back.

Mama said she threw everything she could lift at them. They were unemployed when they walked away from the shambles.

My father tearfully vowed to straighten himself out and be a man, but he didn’t have the will, the strength to resist the cheap thrills of the city.

After my birth he got worse and had the stupid gall to suggest to Mama that I be put on a Catholic Church doorstep. Mama naturally refused so he hurled me against the wall in disgust.

I survived it and he left us, his white spats flashing and his derby hat at a rakish angle.

It was the beginning of a bitter winter. Mama packed pressing irons and waving combs into a small bag and wrapped me warmly in blankets and set out into the bleak, friendless city to ring door bells, the bag in one arm and I in the other.

Her pitch was something like this, “Madam, I can make your hair curly and beautiful. Please give me a chance. For fifty cents, that’s all, I will make your hair shine like new money.”

At this point in the pitch Mama told me she would slip the blanket aside to bare my wee big-eyed face. The sight of me in her arm on a subzero day was like a charm. She managed to make a living for us.

That spring, with new friends of Mama’s we left Chicago for Indianapolis. We stayed there until nineteen twenty-four, when a fire gutted the hand laundry where Mama worked.

There were no jobs in Indianapolis for Mama and for six months we barely

made it on the meager savings. We were penniless and with hardly any food when a tall black angel visiting relatives in Indianapolis came into our lives.

He fell instantly in love with my lissome beautiful mother. His name was Henry Upshaw, and I guess I fell as hard for him as he fell for Mama.

He took us back to Rockford, Illinois with him where he owned a cleaning and pressing shop, the only Negro business in downtown Rockford.

In those tough depression times a Negro in his position was the envy of most Negro men.

Henry was religious, ambitious, good and kind. I often wonder what would have happened to my life if I had not been torn from him.

He treated Mama like she was a princess, anything she wanted he got for her. She was a fashion plate all right.

Every Sunday when we all three went to church in the gleaming black Dodge we were an outstanding sight as we walked down the aisle in our fresh neat clothing.

Only the few Negro lawyers and physicians lived as well, looked as well. Mama was president of several civic clubs. For the first time we were living the good life.

Mama had a dream. She told it to Henry. Like the genie of the lamp he made it a reality.

It was a four stall, opulent beauty shop. Its chrome gleamed in the black- and-gold motif. It was located in the heart of the Negro business section and it flourished from the moment its doors opened.

Her clientele was for the most part whores, pimps, and hustlers from the sprawling red light district in Rockford. They were the only ones who always had the money to spend on their appearance.

The first time I saw Steve he was sitting getting his nails manicured in the shop. Mama was smiling into his handsome olive-tinted face as she buffed his nails.

I didn’t know when I first saw him that he was the pin-striped snake who would poison the core of our lives.

I certainly had no inkling that last day at the shop as live billows of steam hissed from the old pressing machine each time Henry slammed its lid down on a garment.

Jesus! It was hot in that little shop, but I loved every minute of it. It was school-vacation time for me and every summer I worked in the shop all day, every day helping my stepfather.

That day as I saw my reflection on the banker’s expensive black shoes, I was perhaps the happiest black boy in Rockford. As I applied the sole dressing I hummed my favorite tune “Spring Time in the Rockies.”

The banker stepped down from the shine stand, stood for a moment as I flicked lint from his soft, rich suit, then with a warm smile he pressed an extravagant fifty-cent piece into my hand and stepped out into the broiling street.

Now I whistled my favorite tune, shines were only a dime, what a tip.

I didn’t know at the time that the banker would never press another coin into my hand, that for the next thirty-five years this last day would be remembered vividly as the final day of real happiness for me.

I would press five-dollar bills into the palms of shine boys. My shoes would be handmade, would cost three times as much as the banker’s shoes, but my shoes, though perfectly fitted would be worn in tension and fear.

There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw that prepared me for the swift, confusing events that over the weekend would slam my life away from all that was good to all that was bad.

Now, looking back remembering that last day in the shop as clearly as if it were yesterday, my stepfather, Henry, was unusually quiet. My young mind couldn’t grasp his worry, his heart break.

Even I, a ten year old, knew that this huge, ugly, black man who had rescued Mama and me from actual starvation back in Indianapolis loved us with all of his great, sensitive heart.

I loved Henry with all my heart. He was the only father I had ever really known.

He could have saved himself an early death from a broken heart if instead of falling so madly in love with Mama he had run as fast as he could away from her. For him, she was brown-skin murder in a size-twelve dress.

That last night at eight o’clock Dad and I flicked the shop’s lights out as always at closing.

In an emotion muffled voice he spoke my name “Bobby.”

I turned toward him and looked up into his face tense and strained in the pale light from the street lamp. I was confused and shaken when he put his massive hands on my shoulders and drew me to him very tightly just holding me in this strange desperate way.

My head was pressed against his belt buckle. I could barely hear his low,

rapid flow of pitiful words.

He said, “Bobby, you know I love you and Mama, don’t you?”

His stomach muscles were cording, jerking against my cheek. I knew he was going to burst into tears.

I said as I squeezed my arms around his waist, “Yes, Daddy, yes, Daddy.

We love you too, Daddy. We always will, Daddy.”

He was trembling as he said, “You and Mama wouldn’t ever leave me? You know Bobby, I ain’t got nobody in the world but you two. I just couldn’t go on if you left me alone.”

I clung tightly to him and said, “Don’t worry Daddy, we’ll never leave you, I promise, honest, Daddy.”

What a sight we must have been, the six-foot-six black giant and the frail little boy holding on to each other for dear life, crying there in the darkness.

I tell you when we finally made it to the big black Dodge and were riding home my thoughts were turning madly.

Yes, poor Henry’s fears had foundation. Mama had never loved my stepfather. This kind, wonderful man had only been a tool of convenience. She had fallen in love with the snake all right.

His plan was to cop Mama and make it to the Windy. The dirty bastard knew I would be excess baggage, but the way Mama was gulping his con, he figured he could get rid of me later.

Only after I had become a pimp years later would I know Steve’s complete plot, and how stupid he really was.

Here this fool had a smart, square broad with a progressive square-john husband, infatuated with him. Her business was getting better all the time.

Her sucker husband was blindly in love, and the money from his business was wide open to her. If Steve had been clever he could have stayed right there on top of things and bled a big bankroll from the businesses in a couple of years.

Then he could have pulled Mama out of there and with a big bankroll he could have done anything with her, even turned her out.

I tell you she was that hot for him. She had to be insane over the asshole to walk away from all that potential with only twenty-five hundred in cash.

Steve blew it in a Georgia-skin game within a week after we got to Chicago.

I have wished to Christ, in four penitentiaries, that the lunatic lovers had left me in Rockford with Henry when they split.

One scene in my life I can never forget and that was that morning when Mama had finished packing our clothes and Henry lost his inner fight for his pride and dignity.

He fell down on his knees and bawled like a scalded child, pleading with Mama not to leave him, begging her to stay. He had welded his arms around her legs, his voice hoarse in anguish, as he whimpered his love for us.

His agonized eyes walled up at her as he wailed, “Please don’t leave me. You are sure to kill me if you do. I ain’t done nothing. If I have, forgive me.”

I will never forget her face, as cold as an executioner’s, which she was, as she kicked and struggled loose from him.

Then with an awful grin on her face she lied and said, “Henry, Honey, I just want to get away for a while. Darling, we’ll be back.”

In his state she was lucky he hadn’t killed her and me, and buried us in the backyard.

As the cab drove us away to the secret rendezvous with Steve sitting in his old Model T, I looked back at Henry on the porch, his chest heaving as tears rolled down his tortured face.

There were too many wheels within wheels, too much hurt for me to cry. After a blank time and distance we got to Chicago. Steve had vanished and Mama was telling me in a drab hotel room that my real father was coming over to see us, and to remember that Steve was her cousin.

Steve was stupid all right, but cunning, if you get what I mean.

Mama, at Steve’s instruction, weeks before, had gotten in contact with my father through a hustler brother of Mama’s in Chicago.

When my father came through the hotel room door reeking of cologne and dressed to kill, all I could think was what Mama had told me about that morning when this tall brown-skin joker had tossed me against the wall.

He took a long look at me. It was like looking in a mirror. His deep down guilt cream puffed him and he grabbed me and squeezed me to him. I was stiff and tense in the stranger’s arms, but I had looked in the mirror too when he came in, so I strung my arms limply about his neck.

When he hugged Mama, her face was toward me and stony, like back there with Henry. My father strutted about that hotel room boasting of his personal chef’s job for Big Bill Thompson the mayor of Chicago.

He told Mama and me, “I am a changed man now. I have saved my money and now I really have something to offer my wife and son. Won’t you come back to me and try again? I am older now, and I bitterly regret my mistakes

of the past.”

Like a black-widow spider spinning a web around her prey, Mama put up enough resistance to make him pitch himself into a sweat then agreed to go back to him.

My father’s house was crammed with expensive furniture and art pieces.

He had thousands of dollars invested in rich clothing and linens.

After a week, my hustler uncle brought Steve to visit us, and to case the lay out. My father bought the cousin angle and broke out his best cigars and cognac for the thieves. It was another week before they took him off.

Remember, at the time I had no idea as to what really was going to happen.

I would learn the shocking truth only after we got to Milwaukee.

On that early evening when it happened Mama was jittery as we prepared to visit some close white friends of my father. I had a wonderful time getting acquainted with the host’s children who were around my age. Too soon it was time to go home.

In my lifetime I have seen many degrees of shock and surprise on the human face. I have never seen on any face the traumatic disbelief and shock that was on my father’s face when he unlocked the door and stepped into his completely empty house. His lips flapped mutely. He couldn’t speak. Everything was gone, all the furniture and drapery, everything, from the percolator to the pictures on the wall, even my Mama’s belongings.

Mama stood there in the empty house clinging to him, comforting him, sobbing with real tears flowing down her cheeks. I guess she was crying in joy because the cross had come off so beautifully.

Mama missed her calling. She should have been a film actress. With only a bit part, an Oscar a season would have been a lead-pipe cinch for her.

Mama told my father we would go to Indianapolis to friends until he could put another nest together.

When we got to Milwaukee by train, ninety miles away, Steve had rented a house. Every square inch of that house was filled with my father’s things.

Those lovely things did us little good and brought no happiness. Steve, with his mania for craps, within weeks had sold everything, piece by piece, and lost it across the craps table.

Mama worked long hours as a cook, and Steve and I were alone quite often.

At these times he would say, “You little mother-fucker, you. I’m going to beat your mother-fucking ass. I am telling you, if you don’t run away, I’m

going to kill you.”

He was just so cruel to me. My mother had bought me a little baby cat. I loved that kitten, and this man hated animals. One day the cat, being a baby cat, did his business on the kitchen floor.

Steve said, “Where is that little mother-fucker?”

The little kitten had hidden under the sofa. He grabbed that kitten and took it downstairs where there was a concrete wall. He grabbed it by the heels. I was standing (we lived on the second floor) looking down at him; he took the kitten and beat its brains out against that wall.

I remember, there was a park behind our house, concrete covered. There were some concrete steps. I sat there and I cried until I puked. All the while I kept saying like a litany, “I hate Mama! I hate Mama! I hate Mama!” And, “I hate Steve! I hate Steve! I hate him! I hate him!”

For many tortured years she would suffer her guilt. She had made that terrible decision on that long ago weekend.

I know my lousy old man deserved what happened to his goods. I know Mama got her revenge and it was sweet I am sure, but it was bitter for a kid like me to know that Mama was part of it.

Perhaps if Mama had kept that burglary cross a secret from me, in some tiny way I might have been stronger to fight off that pimping disease. I don’t know, but somehow after that cross Mama just didn’t seem like the same honest sweet Mama that I had prayed in church with back in Rockford.

I went to her grave the other day and told her for the hundredth time since her death, “Mama, it wasn’t really your fault. You were a dumb country girl, you didn’t understand. I was your first and only child. You couldn’t have known how important Henry was to me.”

I choked up, stopped talking to her beneath the silent sod, and thought about Henry lying rotten, forgotten in his grave.

Then, through my tight throat I said to Mama, “To you he was ugly, but Mama I swear to heaven he was so beautiful to me. I loved him Mama, I needed him. I wish you could have seen beyond his ugly black face and loved him a little and stayed with him. Mama, we could have been happy, our lives would have been different, but I don’t blame you. Mama, I love you.”

I paused looking up at the sky, hoped she was up there and could hear me, then I went on, “I just wish you were alive now, you would be so proud of me. I am not a lawyer as you always wanted me to be, but Mama, you have two beautiful grandchildren and another on the way, and a fine daughter-in-

law who looks a lot like you when you were young.”

The grave next to hers had visitors, an old man and a bright eyed girl about ten.

I stopped my bragging until the pair walked away, then I said, “Mama, I haven’t shot any H in ten years. I haven’t had a whore in five years. I have squared up, I work every day. How about it Mama, Iceberg Slim a square? You wouldn’t believe it Mama, I wear fiftydollar suits right off the rack, and my car is ten years old, you gotta believe it now Mama. Goodbye Mama, see you at Christmas, and remember, I’ll always love you.”

When I walked away from her grave I thought, “I don’t know, maybe that prison head-shrinker was right when he told me I had become a pimp because of my unconscious hatred for my mother.”

I know one damn thing, I can’t help crying at her grave almost as if I was crying because I did so much to put her there. Maybe the hidden hate that I can’t feel wants me to laugh that she’s down there in the earth. Maybe my crying is really laughing.

About ninety days after Steve smashed my kitten Mama cast off her spell, and one gray April dawn while Steve lay in a drunken, open-mouthed stupor, Mama and I packed what we could carry and moved into a hotel room. It was complete with hot plate and downthe-hall toilet.

Steve had stomped on three and a half years of our lives. I would soon be fourteen.

On August fourth, my birthday, our old friend Steve, with diabolical timing, made that event unforgettable. Since that chilly dawn in April he had searched the slum streets for his escaped dupes, thirsty for revenge.

I waited eagerly in the hotel room for Mama who had promised to bake a cake in her white woman’s kitchen. She said she would be home early at six o’clock to celebrate my birthday.

Well, she came home all right on the seventh of August, from a hospital, with her broken jaw wired, and her body covered with bruises.

Steve had stalked her and attacked her with his fists and feet and then escaped through the grimy catacombs of the Ghetto.

All that night and all the next day I crouched in the dark shadows beneath his stairwell gripping a gleaming ice pick. He never came back. He had moved.

Twenty years later, while idly looking from the window of a plush hotel suite I would see something familiar in the white-haired stooped figure of a

garbage collector on the street three stories down.

I blacked out, when reason returned I was down there on the street in the bright morning sunlight, clutching a pistol, wearing only a pair of red silk pajamas.

As the garbage truck turned the corner a block away out of range, a small crowd of passersby stood bug-eyed watching the strange scene as Rachel, my main whore, tugged at my arm, pleaded with me to get off the street.

That was the last time I saw Steve, but I just don’t know, even now, what I would do if our paths crossed.

Perhaps that beating Mama took was good, as painful as it was. I remember how it worried me in that cruddy hotel room when the hotel’s neon sign outside our window would flash on her face. Her eyes would be bright, riveted on the ceiling, she would be in a trance, remembering, still hot for him.

As worthless as that bastard was otherwise, he sure must have been a son- of-a-bitch in the bed.

After all he had done to us, she still had a terrible itch for the bastard. That beating was good for her, it cured the itch.

Mama had learned a bitter lesson the hard way. The country girl had rolled in the hay with the city slicker and now I saw all of her sorrow and guilt in her eyes.

We couldn’t go back to the peaceful, green hills of Rockford. She had destroyed a good man back there, a native son. Henry died a year after we left him. Until the grave claimed her, Henry would rise from his own to haunt her in the lonely gloom.

Mama was desperate to save at least fragments of her image, to hold fast the love and respect I had for her in Rockford. I had seen too much, had suffered too much. The jungle had started to embalm me with bitterness and hardness.

I was losing, page by page, the fine rules of thought and deed that I had learned in church, from Henry to the Boy Scout Troop in Rockford. I was sopping up the poison of the street like a sponge.

I had begun to play Steve’s favorite game, craps, in the alleys after school.

Dangerously, I was frantic to sock it into every young girl weak enough to go for it. I had to run for my life one evening when an enraged father caught me on his back porch punching animal-like astraddle his daughter’s head. I had become impatient with the unusual thickness of her maidenhead.

2

FIRST STEPS INTO THE JUNGLE

The slide was greased. I was starting my long plunge to the very bottom of the grim pit. I guess my trip downward really was cinched when I met a petty hustler who was very likeable and we became pals.

My hustler pal was called Party Time. By the time he was twentythree he had done four bits in the joint. On each fall he had been jacked up for either strong-arm robbery or till tapping.

He got his moniker hung on him because as soon as he scored for scratch he would make fast tracks to the nearest underworld bar.

When he got inside the door he would shout, “All right you poor ass bastards, it’s party time and Joe Evans is in port with enough scratch to burn up a wet elephant. All you studs stop playing stink finger with these long- cock whores and everybody belly up to the log and get twisted on me.”

His flat African features were pasted to a skull that could have belonged to a cave man. He was short, powerful, and shiny black.

He was ugly enough to “break daylight with his fist,” but for some curious reason he was irresistible to many of the thrill-seeking white women who sneaked into the black side of town panting as they chased after that hoary myth, “Nigger men do it so good it thrills you to your toe nails.”

There was a Fast sheet joint with the trick rooms in the rear, right on the alley. I was peeping one night into one through a frayed shade when I saw Party Time for the first time.

My eyes were bugging when I saw the tall viking type white man, his tiny, but voluptuous female white companion and Party Time taking their clothes off. Finally they stood there naked. I could see their lips moving so I pressed my ear and eye sideways against the window that was open a couple of inches at the top to get the sound.

The white joker was tenderly hefting Party Time’s weapon in his hand like maybe it was Ming Dynasty Pottery. He said excitedly to the broad, “Oh! Honey, can you believe the size, the beauty of it!”

In the glow of the room’s red light, that broad looked like an animated portrait by Da Vinci. Her eyes were blue fire in her passion. She purred like a Persian kitten and pounced onto the bed.

Party Time stood at the side of the bed looking down at her. He was an ebony executioner. His horizontal axe cast a cruel shadow across the snowy peaks, rose tipped.

My trouser front was tented as I pressed even tighter against the window. I had never seen anything like this back in Rockford. Then to my amazed ears, the white man said a strange thing as he pulled a chair to the end of the bed and sat on the very edge of it.

He was breathing hard when he said, “All right now Boy, stab it into her, hurt her, punish her, crucify her, good Boy! Good Boy!”

The broad looked so fragile and helpless to my naive eyes that I felt a pang of pity pulse inside me as she moaned and whimpered in painful pleasure beneath the black demon savagely pile driving between the jerking white legs jack-knifed, imprisoned behind the sweating, hunching black shoulders.

Like he was trying to make a home Party Time was asking in a hoarse voice over and over, “Beautiful Bitch, is it good? Beautiful Bitch, is it good?”

The white man was an odd, funny sight as he raced around the arena like a demented Caesar, cheering on his merciless black gladiator.

Finally when the show was over and they started to dress, I went to the front and sat on a stoop next door to the joint. I wanted to get a close up of the freaks.

When they got to the sidewalk, in their street clothes, they were disappointingly normal. Just a clean-cut white couple having a parting chat with a grinning, black Negro.

The mixed-up couple went down the sidewalk away from me. Party Time came toward me. He didn’t notice me sitting on the stoop. I was itching with curiosity, so I hit on him when he came abreast. It startled him. His face got stiff.

I said, “Hey Jack, how you doing? That sure is a fine silk girl, huh? You got a square to spare?”

He fished a cigarette from his red shirt pocket, handed it to me and said, “Yeh Kid, she’s fine as a Valentine. Two sights I ain’t never seen and that is

a pretty bulldog, and an ugly white woman.”

He was spouting cliches, but to a small town boy he came off witty as Hell. I was in that brain-picking mood so I put the snow machine into high gear to hold him. My eyes bucked in mock awe as I lit the square.

I said, “Thanks Man, for the square. Christ! That’s a sporty vine you got on. I wish I could dress like you. You sure are clean aplenty.”

He took the bait like a rapist in a nudist colony for the blind. He flopped down on the stoop beside me. He poked his chest out, his eyes flashing like a pin-ball machine gone haywire, as he got ready to open up. He hiked the pants legs of his green checked suit to his calves to show his blood red socks. The huge zircon on his right pinky glittered under the street lamp as he cracked his knuckles and said, “Kid, my name is Party Time. I am the best flat-footed hustler in town. Money loves me and can’t stay away from me. You see that fine silk broad, I got a double saw to lay her. Course that ain’t nothing, it happens all the time. I could be one of the greatest pimps in the

country if I was lazy and didn’t have so much good hustler in me.”

I sat there listening to his bullshit until two A.M. He was likable and I was hungry for a pal. He was an orphan and he had just done a two-year bit straight up, his fourth, two months before. He had a head full of wild risky hustles he wanted to try. He needed a partner. He tried all of them on me for size.

I got home at two-twenty. About one minute later I heard Mama’s key in the door. She had served a banquet for her white folks. I just made it into bed with all my clothes on, when she came to look in on me. I was snoring like a drunk with a sick sinus when she kissed me goodnight.

I lay thinking in the darkness until daybreak, putting myself into, and trying to size myself into one of those quick buck schemes that Party had plotted. When the sun came up fat and bright I knew I would give Party’s version of the Murphy a whirl. I didn’t know his version was crude and dangerous, and only a weak imitation of the real Murphy.

Years later I discovered that the Murphy, when played by experts, was a smooth short con game with a slight risk. In any section where Negro whores operate white men will flock to trick with them.

I met Party several times after school at a pool room. He ran my role down to me and the next Friday night we got down with our hustle. Mama was serving a party so I could stay in the streets until at least one A.M.

Around ten that night in an alley in the heart of the vice section, Seventh

and Vliet Sts., we unwrapped the package that Party had brought. I rolled up my pants legs beyond my bony knees. I slipped into the twenty-five cent red- cotton dress from the Salvation Army.

I put on the frayed red satin high-heel shoes. I pinned a scraggly piece of hair just inside the front inner band of the faded blue straw bonnet. When I tilted it on my head at a sexy angle, the ringlets of uneven hair hung down over my eyes like bangs.

I stood wide legged, flexed my thigh and hip muscles against the tight red dress, aping the whores stance.

Party looked me over head to toe. I was wondering how I came off as a broad. He shook his head, hunched his shoulders and walked toward the mouth of the alley to catch a sucker.

I got the answer when be reached the sidewalk. He twisted his bead toward me and said, “Listen Man, stay outta the light, okay?”

Within five minutes he gave me the office that some action was coming down the street. I watched Party giving the pitch to a short elderly white man. I wondered if I had enough voltage as a broad to come through with my end of the deal.

He officed my flash cue an instant before the white man peeked up the alley at me. I jerked my skinny ass in a series of bumps and grinds and hopefully waved him toward me.

That skinny black bitch he saw must have lit a fire in him all right. He fumbled his hide from his hip pocket and handed a bill to Party.

The chump started up the alley at a helluva pace for an old bastard. He had paid his money and he was red hot to take his chance to stick that hot Nigger bitch waiting for him in the shadows.

He had no chance, but in a way he was lucky. Lucky that his hide had not been fat with green backs. If he had been loaded, when I evaporated through that gang way, Party instead of fading away would have come into the dark alley behind the sucker and robbed him with brute force.

My heart was pounding in excitement as I galloped through the alleys toward our next prearranged duck blind. I took a new station several blocks away. Party Time came moments later, looked up the alley and hooked the tips of his thumb and index fingers into an “all is well” O.

We beat several other suckers. None had the fare for the strong arm. We worked until twelve-thirty, then unlike Cinderella, I stashed my mildewed costume, got my half of the seventy-dollar take and raced home. Mama came

in a half hour after I did.

As in all other things there are many Murphy’s. Real Murphy players use great finesse to separate a mark from his scratch. The most adept of them prefer that a trick hit on them. It puts the Murphy player in a position to force the sucker to “qualify” himself and to trim the mark not only for all of his scratch, but his jewelry as well.

When approached and quizzed by a mark as to, where a girl can be found, the Murphy Man will say, “Look Buddy, I know a fabulous house not more than two blocks away. Brother, you ain’t never seen more beautiful, freakier broads than are in that house. One of them, the prettiest one, can do more with a swipe than a monkey can with a banana. She’s like a rubber doll, she can take a hundred positions.”

At this point the sucker is wild to get to this house of pure joy. He entreats the con player to take him there, not just direct him to it.

The Murphy player will prat him to enhance his desire. He will say, “Man, don’t be offended, but Aunt Kate, that runs the house don’t have nothing but high-class white men coming to her place. No Niggers or poor white trash. You know, doctors, lawyers, bigshot politicians. You look like a clean-cut white man, but you ain’t in that league are you?”

At this pricking of his ego the mark is ready for the hook. He will protest his worth as a person and his right to go where any other son-of-a-bitch can go. Hell for a high class lay a double saw wouldn’t faze him. Few can resist the charm of exclusivity in its myriad forms.

The con player still hedging, shoring up firmly the convincer will then say, “Man, I believe you and everything you say is true as gospel. In fact, I like you Pal, but try to see my side of it. First to show you I trust you, I’ll tell you a secret. I been working for Aunt Kate’s house for many years now as her outside man, you know, making sure only nice dates went up there. Aunt Kate and I got an air tight system. Friend, I know you will help me keep Aunt Kate’s roles, so let’s go. I am taking you to the thrill of your life.”

While keeping up an inflaming description of the whores and sexual delights to be found only at Aunt Kate’s, the Murphy player had steered the sucker to a pre-chosen neat, attractive apartment building. In the foyer, in a subtle but compelling manner, the con player nudged the mark into a fast meeting of minds, the question agreed on. As hot as he was, he couldn’t go up before he checked in all valuables. It was Aunt Kate’s unshakeable rule.

Aunt Kate was rock right never to tempt or trust a whore. Only fools

trusted whores, right? The mark wasn’t a fool, right? Right!

The con player produced a sturdy brown envelope. The sucker counted all the scratch in his pocket into the hand of Aunt Kate’s “outside” business manager. The efficient affable manager shoved it into the envelope, licked it, sealed it, and stuck it in his pocket for safe keeping from the possible larceny in the hearts of the gorgeous dolls upstairs, third floor, first apartment to the left, number nine to be specific.

The sucker was in a bubbly mood as he took the stairs three at a time. He liked that Nigger down there who was protecting his money. What had he told him, when he gave him the shiny goldcolored metal check? “Harry, Pal, this one is on me, just go up and hand it to Aunt Kate. Everything is going to be all right. If you want you can buy me a drink when you come down.”

The two strikes that had whiffed across the white man’s mental plate and had set him up for the kill, the third strike was first his desperate need to relieve himself into a black body, the second was his complete inability to conceive that the “black boy” before him was intelligent enough to fool him, to fashion the Murphy dialogue.

Party and his rawboned lure, after three weekends of fair success with the Murphy, ran head on into a round brick balloon. It was only five feet tall, but it weighed close to three-hundred pounds.

It was a Saturday night around ten. The vice section was overrun with Johns. It seemed that every white man in town was out there, scratch in one hand and rod in the other, ripping and running after the black whores with the widest, blackest asses.

Party and I set up a blind on the fringe of the section, because with all that mad action in the center it would be a hectic cat-and-mouse game with the cruising, rousting vice squad. I would have gotten something less than pure kicks to get busted making like a broad.

Party hadn’t strong armed since his last bit. The only reason he hadn’t was simply that none of the Johns we had fleeced was carrying a wad.

We were fishing in a sand pile. All the hungry suckers were swimming in center stream.

From my Murphy station in the alley, I watched Party eagerly for the office for action. Around eleven-thirty, I was standing on one leg and then the other like a bored crane with a twenty-five cent dress on.

About five minutes later the office came through. Was it a man? A machine? No, it was a walking, living, round balloon with a fat poke and a

flaming itch for black Cush. It stood there fascinated by my furious bumps and grinds.

I felt prickly feet of excitement stomping along my spine when the balloon took his hide out. Party jerked rigid at the sight of its contents. Even as the balloon bounced toward me, I inched toward my point of evaporation. I knew the strong-arm lust had exploded inside Party and sure as Hell he was going to come up that alley and smash the air out of the balloon.

I quit the scene and poked my head into the alley farther up. I could hear guttural grunting. The kind of sound a heart case makes when he’s riding hard to convince a nympho that he’s a raging tiger. It was the balloon that was grunting as he held Party in a crushing strangle hold. My heart-beat back fired and melted the starch in my props. I collapsed onto a garbage can. The balloon was also a weight lifter. Poor Party was hanging high over the head of the monster and then flung to the alley floor with a shattering “whoomp” where he lay like a rag doll. The balloon hollered as he leaped into the air and then fell like a ton of concrete on moaning Party. I was almost puking in pity for Party. But I just couldn’t find the strength to get off that garbage can and join the fray. Anyway it wouldn’t have been lady like.

The derrick scooped Party from the alley and flung him across his back. I watched Party’s rubber neck bumping against the balloon’s rear end as he was carried to the sidewalk.

I jetted out of there and went to the roof of my building. I watched for the rollers I was sure were coming to bust me, but they never came. Old Party had had the funky luck to try the strong arm on a professional wrestler called the Blimp.

Party went back to the joint for a yard after he got out of City Hospital. One thing about Party he wasn’t copper hearted. He never tipped my name to the heat.

When he got older, and lost his nerve to hustle, he got a crazy desire to pimp. He wasn’t the type, but he kept trying until he ran the Gorilla game on a dope dealer’s broad and was set up for a hot shot. Party tried his fists and muscle until the pimp game croaked him. The pimp game is like the watchmaker’s art, it’s tough. Party went through his life struggling to make a watch while wearing boxing gloves. Party’s bad break sobered me, and I started hearing what was going on in day classes at school.

At fifteen, amazingly, I graduated from high school with a ninetyeight point four average. There was a sizeable alumni of Tuskegee, a Southern

Negro college, who insisted upon Mama letting them underwrite all expenses for my education at their Alma Mater. Mama leaped at the chance.

The alumni went into debt and sent me down to their hallowed school with a sparkling wardrobe. They didn’t know I had started to rot inside from street poisoning.

It was like the poor chumps had entered a poisoned horse in the Kentucky Derby and were certain they had a cinch winner. They couldn’t know they had bet their hearts and blood money on a born loser.

A rich bonanza was at stake. The success of my very life itself. The rescue of Mama from her awesome guilt. The trust and confidence of those big- hearted alumni.

My mental eyes had been stabbed blind by the street. I was like a freakish joker who had gotten clap in his eyes from a mangy street whore.

On campus, I was like a fox in a chicken coop. Within ninety days after I got down there I had slit the maidenhead on a halfdozen curvy coeds.

Somehow I managed to get through the Freshman year, but my notoriety was getting awful. The campus finks were envious, and it was too dangerous to continue to impale coeds on my stake.

In my Sophomore year, I started going into the hills near the campus to juke joints. With my slick Northern dress and manner, I was prince charming in spades to the pungent, hot-ass maidens in the hills.

A round butt, bare foot, beauty—fifteen years old—fell hard for me. One night I failed to meet her in our favorite clump of bushes. I had stuck her up to keep a date in another clump of bushes with a bigger, hotter, rounder ass than hers.

Through the hill grape vine she got the wire of my double cross. It was high noon on campus the next day when I saw her. I had just walked out of the cafeteria onto the main drag. The street was lousy with students and teachers.

She stood out like a Pope in a cat house. Her potato-sack dress was grimy and dirty as Hell from the long trip from the hills. Her bare feet and legs were rusty and dusty. She saw me a wild heart-beat after I saw her.

She battle-cried like an Apache Warrior, and before I could get the wax out of my props, she had raced close enough toward me so that I could see the insane fury in her eyes.

Beads of sweat clung to the kinky hair in the pit of her arm that was upraised, gripping like a dagger a broken Coca Cola bottle, the jagged edges

were glinting in the sun.

The screaming teachers and students fled like terrified sheep in the wake of a panther. I don’t remember what athlete was reputed to be the fastest human in the world that year, but for those few seconds after I got the wax out of my legs, I was.

When I finally looked back through the cloud of dust, I saw the crazy broad as a speck in the distance behind me.

Mine had been a carpet offense and I was on it in the office of the school President.

I stood before him, seated behind his gleaming mahogany desk. He cleared his pipes and gave me a look like I had jacked off before the student body. He held his head high. His nose reaching for the ceiling like I was crap on his top lip.

In a sneaky Southern drawl he said, “Boy, yu ah a disgrace to oauh fine institushun. Ah’m shocked thet sech has occurred. Yo mothah has bin infaumed of yo bad conduck. Oauh bord is considurin yo dismissul. En thu meantime, keep yo nos clean, Boy. Yo ah not to leave campus for eny resun.” I could have saved my worry over dismissal. That alumni had powerful pull all right. I got a break and got the chance to stay until mid-term of the Sophomore year when I went for the “okey doke.” I took a bootlegging rap for a pal. “What goes around comes around” old hustlers had said. Party had

taken our beef without spilling.

Anything with a buzz in it was in great demand on campus. A pint of rot gut whiskey brought from seven and a half to ten dollars depending on supply. My roommate had scratch and a Fagin disposition. He was a sharpy from a number-racket family in New York.

We made a deal. He would bank roll our venture if I copped the merchandise and sold it. He got my promise that I would keep his part in it a secret. He was a fox for sure.

He gave me the scratch and I slipped up into the hills to contact a moonshiner who would supply me. Perhaps I don’t have to say that I carefully avoided any contact with that broad who pushed me to that track record.

I scored for a connection and the markup on campus was fourhundred percent.

Everything was beautiful. The merchandise was moving like crazy. I was sure that when I got back home for the summer I would have enough scratch

to turn everybody green with envy.

I recruited a coed I had layed to distribute for me in her dorm. It was the beginning of the end.

There were two jasper coeds in her dorm who were fierce rivals for the love of a coffee-colored, curvaceous doll from a country town in Oklahoma. The doll was really dumb. She bad no idea of the lesbian kick, so naturally she couldn’t know she was a target.

Eventually, the craftier of the two jaspers wore the doll down and turned her out. They had to keep the secret of their romance from the other jasper because she was tough and built like a football player. She was doing money favors for the doll hoping to get into her pants. The doll and her jockey were in cahoots playing the sucker jasper hard for the scratch.

One night the doll and her jockey were tied into a pretzel doing the sixty- nine and drunk as Hell on my merchandise, when their passionate outcries reached the ears of the muscular jasper.

The bloody fight and spicy details were topics for state-wide gossip.

In the heat of the investigation my agent fell apart. She put the finger on me and within a week I was on the train going back to the streets for good. I didn’t turn over on my roommate. I obeyed the code.

Mama changed jobs a week after I got back, to nurse and cook for a wealthy, white recluse. Now I really stuck my nose in the devil’s ass.

Mama had to stay on the place. I saw her once a week, on Sunday, when she would come in for a day. That was the only time I stayed at the hotel.

I had found a fascinating second home, a gambling joint run by a broken down ex-pimp and murderer called Diamond Tooth Jimmy. The two-carat stone, wedged between the upper front rotting teeth, was the last vulgar memento of his infamy as the top ass-kicker of the nineteen-twenties.

He boasted endlessly that he was the only Nigger pimp on Earth who had ever pimped in Paris on French girls. I was to discover later, when I would meet and be trained by the Master, that Jimmy was a mere buffoon, an amateur not fit to hold the Master’s coat.

After the suckers were trimmed and all the shills had been paid, Jimmy would lock the door and then like a ritual, light up a thin brown reefer. As he talked, he would pass it to me, cursing me affably for not inhaling deeply and holding the smoke, as he put it, “deep in my belly.”

When dawn broke he would go out through the joint door home to the nineteen-year-old jasper on whom he lavished furs and jewels. He was a real

sucker.

I would go to bed in the tiny cubicle in the rear of the joint and dream fantastic dreams. Always beautiful whores would get down on their knees and tearfully beg me to take their money.

For several months I had been screwing the luscious daughter of a popular band leader. She was fifteen. Her name was June and she had a wild yen for me. She had a habit of waiting down the street from the gambling joint until Jimmy left, then she would come up and get on the army cot with me. She would stay until seven o’clock at night. She knew I had to clean the joint for action around nine.

One day, around noon, I asked her, “Do you love me enough to do anything for me?”

She said, “Yes.”

So, I said, “Even turn a trick?” She said, “Anything.”

I put my clothes on and went to the street and saw an old gambler whom I knew was a trick and told him what was upstairs. Sure enough he gave me a five-dollar bill, the asking price, and I took him upstairs and let him in on her. She turned him in less than five minutes.

My seventeen-year-old brain reeled. This was still the depression. I could get rich with this girl and drive a big white Packard.

My next prospect was all wrong. He was an acquaintance of the band leader, June’s father. He went up the stairs, saw her and called the father in Pittsburgh.

The father called the local police department and my pimping career died aborning. When the detective came, I was still out there looking for tricks for the down payment on that big white Packard.

Diamond Tooth’s bullshit had screwed me for certain. My mother, of course, was shocked. She was sure it was a frame up. That June, that evil girl, had led her sweet little Bobby astray.

At the County Jail two days before my trial, I left my cell on an Attorney Consultation pass. A short, gopher-faced Negro sat in the cage at an old oak desk grinning at me.

My blood ran cold, my palms got slippery wet as I took a seat across from him. The gleaming yellow gold teeth filling his mouth had been a flash of doom. Christ! I thought, a deep South Nigger lip. Didn’t Mama know that most of them turned to jelly when defending a criminal case?

The rodent wiped his blue-black brow with a soggy handkerchief and said, “Well Bobby, it seems that you are in a little trouble, huh? I am attorney Williams, an old friend of your family. I knew your mother as a girl.”

My eyes sent special delivery murder across the table to that ugly bastard. I said, “It isn’t a little trouble. Under the Max I could get a fin’.”

He fingered his dollar necktie and hoisted his starved shoulders inside the jacket of his cheap vine and said, “Oh! Now let’s not be fatalistic. You are a first offender and I am positive it will mitigate the charge. Rest assured I will press the court for leniency. Now tell me the whole truth about your trouble.” Anger, everything drained out of me. I was lost, stricken. The phony would lead me to the slaughter. I knew I was already tried and convicted and sentenced to the joint. The only loose end was for how long? Without hearing

it myself, I ran down the details to him and stumbled blindly back to my cell.

On my trial day in the courtroom, the shaky bastard was so nervous before the bench when he pleaded me guilty, that the same cheap vine that he had worn at our first meeting was soaked by his sweat.

He was so shook up by the stern face and voice of the white hawk-faced judge that he forgot to ask for leniency. That awful fear the white folks had put into him down South was still painfully alive in him. He just stood there paralyzed, waiting for the judge to sentence me.

So, I looked up into the frosty blue eyes and said, “Your Honor, I am sorry for what I did. I have never been in trouble before. If Your Honor will just give me a break this time, I swear before the Lord I won’t ever come back down here. Please, Your Honor, don’t send me to the pen.”

The frost deepened in his eyes as he looked down at me and intoned, “You are a vicious young man. Your crime against that innocent young girl, against the laws of this state, is inexcusable. The very nature of your crime precludes the possibility of probation. For your own good and for that of society’s I sentence you to the State Reformatory to a term for not less than one year, and for not more than eighteen months. I hope it teaches you a lesson.”

I shrugged off the wet hand of the lip from my shoulder, avoided the tear- reddened eyes of Mama sobbing quietly in the rear of the courtroom, and stuck my hands out to the bailiff for the icy-cold handcuffs.

June’s old man was a big wheel with lots of muscle in the courts. He had gone behind the scenes and pulled strings and put the cinch on the joint for me. My sentence was for carnal knowledge and abuse, reduced from pandering, because you can’t pander from anything except a whore, and

June’s old man wasn’t about to go for that.

Yes, I was sure working at that first patch of gray in my mother’s hair.

Steve would have been proud of me, don’t you think?

My sentence to the Wisconsin Green Bay reformatory almost cracked Mama up.

There were several repeaters from the reformatory on my tier at County Jail, who tried to bug the first offenders with terrible stories about the hard time up at the reformatory, while we were waiting for the van to take upstate to the reformatory. I was too dumb to feel anything, A fool I was to think the dummy was a fairy tale!

In the two weeks that I waited, Mama wrote me a letter every day and visited twice. Mama’s guilt and heartbreak were weighing heavily on her.

Back in Rockford she had been a dutiful church goer, leading a christian life until Steve came on the scene. But now when I read her long rambling letters crammed with threats of fire and brimstone for me if I didn’t get Jesus in my heart and respect the Holy Ghost and the fire, I realized that poor Mama was becoming a religious fanatic to save her sanity. The pressures of Henry’s death and now my plight must have been awful.

The van came to get us on a stormy, thunderous morning. As we stepped into the van handcuffed together I saw Mama standing in the icy, driving rain waving good-bye. I could feel a hot throbbing lump at the base of my throat to see her standing there looking so sad and lonesome, cowering beneath the battering rain. I could feel the tears aching to flow, but I couldn’t cry.

Mama never told me how she found out the time the van would come. I still wonder how she found out and what her thoughts were out there in the storm as she watched me start my journey.

The state called it a reformatory, but believe me it was a prison for real.

My belly fluttered when the van pulled into the prison road leading to the joint. The van had been vibrating with horse play and profane ribbing among the twenty-odd prisoners. Only one of them had sat tensely and silently during the entire trip. The fat fellow next to me.

But when those high slate grey walls loomed grimly before us it was as if a giant fist had slugged the breath from us all. Even the repeaters who had served time behind those walls were silent, tight faced. I started to believe those stories they had told back in County Jail.

The van went through three gates manned by rock-faced backs carrying scoped, high-powered rifles. Three casket-gray cell houses stood like mute

mourners beneath the bleak sunless sky. For the first time in my life I felt raw, grinding fear.

The fat Negro sitting next to me was a former schoolmate of mine in high school. He had been a dedicated member of the Holiness Church then.

I had never gotten friendly with him because his only interest at that time seemed to be his church and Bible. He didn’t smoke, swear, chase broads or gamble. He had been a rock-ribbed square.

His name was Oscar. Apparently he was still square because now his eyes were closed and I could hear bits of prayer as he whispered softly.

Oscar’s prayer was abruptly cut off by the screech of the van’s brakes as it stopped in front of the prison check-in station and bath house. We clambered out and stood in line to have our handcuffs removed. Two screws started at each end of the line unlocking the cuffs.

As they moved toward the middle of the line they stifled the thin whispers of the men. They said to each man, “Button it up! Silence! No talking!”

Oscar was shaking and trembling in front of me as we filed into a brightly- lit high-ceilinged room. A rough pine counter stretched for twenty yards down a green-and-gray flagstone floor that looked clean enough to eat from. This was part of the shiny, clean skin of the apple. The inside was rotting and foul.

Cons with starch-white faces stood behind the long counter guessing our sizes as we passed them and passing out faded pieces of our uniform from caps to brogans.

We passed with our bundles into a large room. A tall silent screw, dazzling with brass buttons and gold braid on his navy-blue uniform, slashed his lead- loaded cane through the air like a vocal sword directing us to put our bundles on a long bench and to undress for short arm inspection, and a brief exam by the prison croaker seated at a battered steel desk in the back of the room.

Finally we all had been checked by the croaker and showered. The gold- spangled screw raised his talkative cane. It told us to go out the door and turn left, then straight ahead. Two screws marched alongside as we made it toward a squat sandstone building two-hundred yards away. Was that talking cane the dummys?

I heard it before I saw it. A loud scraping, thunder laced with a hollow roar. Never before had I heard anything like it. Then mysteriously, in the dimness, countless young grim faces seemed to be bobbing in a sea of gray. A hundred feet ahead I saw the mystery. Hundreds of gray-clad cons were

lock stepping from the mess halls into the three cell houses. They were an eerie sight in the twilight, marching mutely in cadence like tragic robot soldiers. The roaring thunder was the scrape and thump of their heavy prison brogans.

We reached the squat building. We were to stay in its quarantine cells for the next ten days. All fish, new cons, were housed here to be given a thorough medical check out and classification before being assigned to work details out in population.

I got a putrid taste of the inside of that apple when cons in white uniforms and peaked caps gave us our supper through a slot in our cell doors. It was barley soup with a hunk of brown bread. It would have made great shrapnel in a grenade.

I was new and learning, so instead of just gulping it down, I took a long close look at the odd little things black-dotted at one end. I puked until my belly cramped. The barley in the soup was lousy with worms.

The lights went out at nine. Every hour or so a screw came by the row of cells. He would poke the bright eye of his flashlight into a cell and then squint his eyes as he looked into each cell. I wondered if it were a capital crime in this joint to get caught having an affair with “lady five fingers.”

I flapped my ears when I heard one of the white repeaters running down the joint in a whisper to a fish. Oscar was listening too because he had stopped praying in his cell next to mine.

The white fish was saying, “Look Rocky, what the Hell gives with that hack in the bath house? Why don’t the jack-off never rap? What’s with that cane bit?”

The repeater said, “The son-of-a-bitch is stir crazy. His voice-box screwed up on him a dime ago. He’s been the brass nuts here for a double dime, and guess how the bastard lost his rapper?”

That screw and his light was making the rounds again, so the repeater got on the dummy.

When the screw had passed he continued, “The creep was called Fog Horn by the cons before his trouble made him a dummy. They say the bastard’s bellows could be heard from one side of the joint to the other. He’s the meanest captain of screws this joint ever had. In the last double dime he has croaked two white cons and four spades with his cane. He hates Niggers.”

Oscar was praying like mad now. He had heard what the repeater said about those four Negroes. The fish wanted a loose end tied for him.

He said, “Yeh Rocky, just to glim him and you know he’s rough, but what in the Hell cut his box off?”

The repeater said, “Oh! The vine has it he treated his wife and Crumb crusher worse than he did the cons. She got her fill of his screwing and drilled herself and the kid through the head. The little broad was only two years old. The note his broad left said, ‘I can’t stand your hollering any longer. Good-bye.’ A head-shrinker here at the time said when the broad croaked herself it shut off Brass Nuts box.”

I lay there thinking about what the con had said. I thought about Oscar and wondered if he could pull his bit or if he would go back to his parents in a pine box, or worse, to the crazy farm.

Oscar had been sentenced to a year by the same-judge that had socked it into me. Oscar, poor chump had started going with a crippled Irish girl of seventeen.

In the dark balcony of a downtown theatre they were seen smooching by the son of a close friend of the girl’s family. He reported post haste to his parents who wired up the girl’s parents. They were Irish, with temper and prejudice.

They third-degreed the girl and she confessed that old black Oscar had indeed trespassed the forbidden valley. The charge of statutory rape naturally stood up and here was old Oscar next door to me.

I slapped the itching sting on my thigh. I pulled the sheet back. Lord, have mercy! How I hated them. It was a bed bug I had smashed, but he was only a scout. When that flashlight jarred me awake an hour later, a division of them was parading the walls.

I lay wide-eyed until morning. The inside of that shiny apple was really something else.

After all our tests we fish were taken out of the quarantine tank on the tenth day to the Warden’s office. My turn came to go in. I got up from the long bench in the hall outside his office and walked in. My knees were having a boxing match as I stood before him.

He was a silver-maned, profane, huge, white bull with two tiny chunks of black fire rammed deep into his eye sockets.

He said, “Well Sambo, you sure got your black-Nigger ass in a sling, didn’t you? Well understand me, we didn’t send for you, but you came. We are here to punish you smart-aleck bastards, so if you fuck around, two things can happen to you, both of them horrible. We got a hole here that we bury

tough punks in. It’s a stripped cell without light, twenty feet below ground. Down there, two slices of bread and a pint of water twice a day. You can go out that North gate in a box for your second choice. So take this rulebook and study it. Now get your rusty black ass out of my face.”

The only thing I said before I eased out of there was, “Yes Sir, Boss Man,” and I was grinning like a Mississippi rape suspect turned loose by the mob.

It was a wise thing I had uncled on him. One of those arrogant repeaters went to the hole for having a sassy look in his eyes. The charge was “visual insubordination.”

Oscar and I were assigned to work and live in cell block “B.” It was all black. Of the three, it was the only one without toilets. We had buckets in cells that we took out each morning and dumped into running water in a trough behind the cell block.

The only stench in my life I have ever smelled that was worse than that cell block on a warm night was a sick hype.

It was rough all right and a terrible battle of wits. The battle mainly centered around staying out of sight and trouble with the dummy. He walked on the balls of his feet and he could read a con’s mind. It was terrifying to have maybe a slice of contraband bread in your bosom, and then from nowhere have the dummy pop up.

He didn’t pass out an instruction leaflet running down the lingo of that cane. If you misunderstood what it said, the dummy would crack the leaded shaft of it against your skull.

After I had put in six months on my bit, a young Negro con came in on transfer from the big joint and brought me a wire from Party.

He sent word that we were still tight and I was his horse if I never won a race.

It felt good to know he had forgiven me for turning chicken back there in the alley with the balloon.

The dummy hated everybody. He felt something much more frightful for Oscar.

I don’t know whether it was that the dummy had a hate for God too, and he knew how religious Oscar was, and had focused all his hate on a living target. Oscar and I shared a double bunk cell. I had the bottom bunk. It was a chilling sight at night when the dummy should have been at home to look up from a book and see him out there on the tier motionless, staring up at Oscar

in his bunk reading the Bible.

When I was sure that the cold, luminous, green eyes had slipped away for the night, I would crack, “Oscar, my man, I like you. Will you take some good advice from a friend? I am telling you Pal, it’s driving the dummy off his rocker to see you reading that Bible. Pal, why in the Hell don’t you stop reading it for your own good?”

That square jerk would go on reading, he hadn’t even noticed the dummy’s visit.

He would say, “I know you are my friend and I appreciate your advice, but I can’t take it. Don’t worry about me. Jesus will protect me.”

Mama was writing at least once a week. Every month she visited me. On her last visit, without worrying her too much, I suggested it would be a good idea to put in a long-distance call to the Warden once a week just so he would know somebody out there loved me and wanted me to stay healthy.

She was looking fine and had saved her money. She had opened a beauty shop. She told me when I came up for parole she was sure a friend of hers would give me a job. At night after her visits I would lie sleepless all night mentally recapping our sad lives. I could still remember too, every mole and crease in Henry’s face.

One night after one of her visits, the radio loud speaker on the cell house wall blared out “Spring Time in the Rockies.” I tried to keep my crying a secret from Oscar, but he heard me. He marked off a chapter in the Bible for me to read, but with the dummy around, I wasn’t about to do something stupid like that.

The dummy put one over on Jesus and busted Oscar. We had almost finished mopping the flag when the cell house runner brought me two wieners from the kitchen. A pal had sent them.

I gave Oscar one. He stuck it inside his shirt I stood my mop against the wall and ducked into an empty cell and wolfed mine down.

We had finished mopping and were at the supply closet putting our mops and buckets away. Oscar was nibbling slowly on his wiener like he was safe and sound at the “Last Supper.”

I saw the giant shadow glue itself against the wall next to the closet door. I looked through the trap door in the corner of my eye. The universe reeled.

It was the dummy. He saw the piece of wiener in Oscar’s hand. The dummy’s green eyes were oscillating.

That deadly cane razored through the air and cut a slice of hair and bloody flesh from the side of Oscar’s head.

The scarlet glob was hanging by a slimy thread of flesh dangling like an awful earring near the tip of his ear lobe. Oscar’s eyes walled toward the back of his head as he moaned and slipped to the flag. From the grey, whitish core of the wound spouts of blood pulsed out.

The dummy just stood there looking down at the carnage. His green eyes were twinkling in excitement. I had seen him every day for eight months. I had never seen him smile. He was smiling now like he was watching two cute kittens frolicking. I stooped to help Oscar. I felt feathery puffs of air against my cheek. The cane was screaming. The dummy was furiously waggling it beside my head. It was screaming, “Get out!”

I got. I lay in my cell wondering if the dummy had second thoughts and would try for two. I heard the voices of the hospital orderlies on the flag taking Oscar away.

I remembered the murderous force of the blow the dummy had struck. I remembered that pleased look on his face. I knew from con grape-vine that he was from Alabama. I knew now it hadn’t been Oscar’s Bible that had put the dummy’s balls in the fire. The dummy knew about that crippled Irish girl. Oscar went from the hospital into the hole for fifteen days. The charges, “possession of contraband food” and “physical aggression against an officer.”

I was there and the only aggression on Oscar’s part was the natural resistance of his flesh and bone to that steel cane.

The parole board met in the joint every month to consider applications. Every con, when he had served to within several months of his minimum, started dreaming of the street and that upcoming parole consideration.

Oscar was in the hole and I missed his company. He was a square, but a nice one with lots of wry wit. Several cons slightly older than I came in on transfer from the big joint. They claimed to be “mack” men.

In bad weather, when there was no yard recreation, I would join them at a table on the flag. I didn’t talk much. I usually listened. I was fascinated by the yarns they spun about their pimping ability. They had a lot of bullshit, and I was stealing as much as I could from them to use when I got out.

I would go back to my cell excited. I would pretend I had a whore before me. I would stand there in the cell and pimp up a storm. I didn’t know that the crap I was rehearsing wouldn’t get a quarter in the street.

Oscar came out of the hole and was put into an isolation cell on the top tier of the cell house. I didn’t see him come in so I wasn’t prepared when I got a chance to go up there.

When I got to the cell with his number in the slot, a skinny joker was peeing in his bucket with his back to me. He was in a laughing fit. I checked the number in the slot again. It was Oscar’s number all right.

I pulled the key to the supply closet across the bars of the cell door. The skeleton jumped and spun around facing me. His eyes were wild and vacant. It was Oscar. Only that livid bald scar on the side of his head made me sure.

He didn’t seem to remember me so I said, “How are you, Pal? I knew they couldn’t stop a stepper.”

He just stood there, his dingus flopping from his open fly.

I said, “Jack, you are going to give your bright future the flu if you don’t get it out of the draft.”

He ignored my words, and then from the very bottom of his throat I could hear a kind of eerie high pitched humming or keening, like maybe the mating call of a werewolf. I was beginning to worry about him. I was standing there trying to figure something to say to get through to him. He hadn’t been out of the hole for more than two hours. Maybe some loose circuit would jar him back to contact.

I knew he had been destroyed when he gave me a sly look and went to the back of his cell. He picked up his bucket and thrust his hand into it.

He brought out a fist full of crap. He scraped the crap from his right palm into the rigid upturned left palm.

Using his left palm as a kind of palette, he dipped into the crap with his right index finger and started to finger paint on the cell wall.

I just stood there in shock. Finally, he stopped, snapped to attention, saluted me and stuck his chest out proudly and pointed a crappy finger at his art on the wall.

There was an idiot’s look of triumph on his face like he had finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I gave up on him. I went downstairs and told the cell house screw.

The next day they shipped Oscar to the funny farm where perhaps he is today, thirty years later.

My time went fast after the eighth month. I had gone before the parole board and I was waiting for my pink slip. A white one meant denial and a new date for consideration.

I saw the mail clerk when he shoved it through the bars of my cell. I leaped up and grabbed the small brown envelope. My hands shook so badly, it took seconds to rip it open. It was pink! I banged my fists against the steel wall of

my cell. I was so happy I couldn’t feel pain.

They dressed me out in a cheap glen-plaid suit. I would have been thrilled to have left that den of pressure in tar and feathers. On the way out I had to face the bull.

When I walked into his office he said, “Well Snowball, you must have had your rabbit’s foot. So long, see you in a couple of weeks.”

I wasn’t out yet so I gave him the same uncle smile going out that I gave him coming in.

When I walked out of the joint the fresh air was like a blast of oxygen. It made me woozy. I turned and looked back at the joint. The dummy was standing at the chapel window staring at me, but for once that steel cane wasn’t talking to me.

3

SALTY TRIP WITH PEPPER

First thing back in Milwaukee, I reported to my parole officer, a Mr. Rand, I think. After asking a thousand questions and filling out a mountain of papers he gave me an I.Q. test. When he computed my score his sea-blue eyes saucered in surprise.

He couldn’t understand how a boy with a score of one-hundred and seventy-five could do a stupid thing like peddling a girl’s ass on the sidewalk. If that I.Q. test had been on the basis of the half-baked criminal, pimping theories that I had picked up in the joint at that table from those Chili pimps that were churning in my mind, and that I was so eager to try, my score

would have been zero.

I was eighteen now, six feet two inches tall, slender, sweet, and stupid. My maroon eyes were deeply set, dreamy. My shoulders were broad and my waist as narrow as a girl’s.

I was going to be a heart breaker all right. All I needed was the threads and a whore.

Mama’s small, lucrative beauty shop was on the main drag. Poor Mama, she was doomed I guess to inadvertently set up my disasters.

I had started on my job delivering for the drugstore owned by the friend of my Mama’s who had hired me to satisfy the parole condition of a job upon release.

As fate would have it, Mama’s shop and the drugstore were in the same building. Mama and I lived in an apartment over the storefronts.

Mama called me in from the sidewalk one day about three months after I had gotten parole. She wanted me to meet one of her customers who was getting her eyebrows arched. I walked through the pungent odors rising from the hot pressing combs pulling through the kinky hair of several customers, to

the rear of the shop.

There she was, flashy as a Christmas tree, sitting before a mirror at a dressing table with her back to me. Mama stopped plucking at her brows as she introduced us, “Mrs. Ibbetts, this is my son Bobby.”

Like a yellow cat hypnotizing a bird, she sat there motionless, her green eyes smoky, as she stared at me through the mirror.

Then the velvet purring voice undulated toward me, she said, “Oh Bobby, I have heard so much about you. It’s so exciting to meet you, but please call me Pepper, everyone does.”

I don’t know what excited me more as I stood there, her raw sensuality or the blazing rocks on her tapered fingers that I was sure hadn’t come from Kresges. I mumbled something like I had to go back to the drug store to work, and I would see her around.

Later I saw her slide into her sleek Caddie convertible, her white silk dress riding up exposing the satin sheen of her banana yellow thighs. As she gunned away from the curb, she turned deliberately and gave me a full dose of those hot green eyes. She was signing our deal.

I quizzed around and got the background on her. She was twentyfive, an ex-whore who had worked the jazziest houses on the Eastern Seaboard. A wealthy white fence and gambler had tricked with her out there, and it had gotten so good to him that he crossed her pimp into a five-year bit and squared her up.

Three days later, a half hour before closing, an order came in for a case of Mums. The address was in the plush Height’s, miles from the store.

I made the trip on a bicycle. She answered the door wearing only a pair of white lace step-ins. My erection was hard and instant.

It was a fabulous pad, and the lights were soft and blue. The old man wouldn’t be back for a week.

I was just a hep punk, I wasn’t in her league, but one of my greatest assets has always been my open mind. That freak bitch cajoled and persuaded me to do everything in the sexual book, and a number of things not even listed.

What a thrill for a dog like her to turn out a tender fool like me. She was a hell of a teacher all right, and what a performer. If Pepper had lived in the old Biblical city of Sodom the citizen’s would have stoned her to death.

She nibbled and sucked hundreds of tingling bruises on every square inch of my body. Fair exchange, as the old saw goes, is never robbery.

It took me a week to get the stench of her piss out of my hair. She sure had

been pimped on hard back East. She hated men, and she was taking her revenge on me.

She had taught me to snort girl, and almost always when I came to her pad, there would be thin sparkling rows of crystal cocaine on the glass top of the cocktail table.

We would snort it through alabaster horns and then in the mirrored bedroom we made circus love until our nerve ends shrieked.

Pepper and that pure cocaine would have made a freak out of a Priest. She had sure put me on a fast track.

I couldn’t know at the time that at the end of the line stood the grim State Penitentiary.

I was green all right and twice as soft and Pepper knew it. Here was a hardened ex-whore who knew all the crosses, all the answers, who handled lots of scratch and wasn’t laying a red penny on me.

The dazzling edge on our orgies was dulling for me, but I was flipping Pepper with the techniques she had taught me. I knew all the buttons to push for her, and she burned hotter than ever for her little puppy.

No wonder, I was freaking for free, those Eastern pimps had charged her a fortune.

I tried one night to get a C note from her for a suit. I knew I had really come on fine in the bed. She had almost climbed the walls in her passion.

“Sugar,” I said, “I saw a wild vine for a bill downtown. If you laid the scratch on me, I could cop tomorrow.”

She slitted her green eyes and laughed in my face, and said, “Now listen Lil’ Puppy, I don’t give men money. I take it from them, and besides, as sweet as you are to this pussy, you don’t need a suit. I like you as you are, with no clothes on at all.”

I was a rank greenhorn, sure, but her cold turn down of my plea for the C note was bitchy cute, and I was a salty sucker, so I reacted like any stupid would-be pimp who had been Georgied.

I had fouled up basic business. I had led with my dick instead of my mitt.

I reached down and slapped her hard against the side of her face. It sounded like a pistol shot. On impact a thrill shot through me. I should have slugged her with a baseball bat.

The bitch uncoiled from that bed like a striking yellow cobra, hooked her arms around my waist and sank her razor sharp teeth into my navel.

The shock paralyzed me. I fell on my back across the bed moaning in pain.

I could feel blood rolling from the wound down toward my crotch, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.

Pepper was sure a strange twisted broad. She was breathing hard now, but not in rage. The violence, the blood, had turned her on.

She was gently caressing me as she licked, with a feathery tongue, the oozing wound on my belly. She had never been so tenderly efficient as she took me on a beautiful “trip around the Universe.”

The funny thing was, that throbbing awful pain some how became a part of, melted into the joy of the feathery tongue, the thrill of the thing that Pepper was doing to me.

I guess Freud was right. If it thrills you to give pain, you can get your jollies taking it.

When I left Pepper, I was sapped. I felt like an old man. My mood was as bleak and cheerless as the gray dawn I cycled through.

When I got home and looked into the mirror, a death’s head stared back at me. That vampire bitch was sucking my life’s blood all right. I also knew that crystal cocaine wasn’t exactly a health tonic.

Pepper was too fast, too slick for me. I had to make her shit or get off the pot.

I made the skeleton in the mirror a solemn vow that before the week was out I would in some way get Weeping Shorty, a pimp about fifty-five who, while a gorilla pimp, was the best pimp in town to pull my coat to give me a plan for putting a ring in Pepper’s nose.

Before I got busted, I had seen him at Jimmy’s joint. He had looked horrible then, and now less than a year and a half later he looked like a breathing corpse.

Hoss was his Boss. He had chippied around and gotten hooked. It was Friday, almost midnight when I found him.

He looked at me and made that clacking sound against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. You know, that mischievous, weirdly joyful sound that a young kid makes the instant before he rams a hat pin into your ear drum.

Then he said, “Well kiss my dead mammy’s ass, if it ain’t Macking Youngblood. The whore’s pet and the pimp’s fret.”

The junkie bastard was jeffing on me, lashing me with contempt and scorn. Old pimps always know when a youngster with a yen for the pimp game is desperate for advice.

After all, they remember when they started and what a bitch it was just to learn the million questions. The answers would come slowly, from heart breaking trial and error, from the ass kissing of the few who had solved the riddle, who pimped by the book.

The cleverest pimp could give a thousand years and never come close to all the answers.

Weeping Shorty was an old man, and he had gotten past the questions and had worked out a few answers, but even so he knew a thousand times more than I did. So, I fought for control, I couldn’t show anger. If I did he would cut me loose.

We had been standing under the awning of a vacant storefront. He pulled me with a jerk of his head, I followed him to a big shabby Buick. It was parked at an intersection in a cheap-trick district.

When we got inside the Buick I understood why he had parked it there. He could watch and keep tabs on his stable of scrawny, junkie whores working the four corners of the intersection.

He sat under the wheel not saying anything. His eyes straight ahead. I had kissed his ass for a half hour and now he was freezing up. I thought of the tiny pile of cocaine wrapped in tinfoil under my instep that I had filched from Pepper. I fished it out and held it in my hand. Perhaps the cocaine would open him up.

I turned to him and said, “Weeping, do you want a light snort of girl?”

He stiffened like a butcher knife had been run into his back. He looked at the wad of tinfoil in my palm and snatched it and in the same motion hurled it through the window on his side.

His top was blown, he shouted, “Nigger, ain’t you got no sense? You trying to go back to the joint and blow my wheels?”

I said, “What did I do wrong? All I did was to offer the C just to be sociable. What’s wrong with that?”

He said, “Sucker, first booty butt, you don’t transport no hard in your stomp, keep it in your mitt so you can down it fast to the turf. Second, you’re on parole. You’re hot! You ain’t got no business sitting dirty in my short. There’s a law, Sucker, that can confiscate a short with stuff in it. You know if the heat had hit on you you would unload in my short. Keep stuff off you. When you stop somewhere down it in the street until you ready to split. It’s better to get beat for the stash than beat by the heat. Now what took your head outta Pepper’s ass long enough for you to look me up?”

Oh! How this junkie creep bugged me. I sat there beside him trying to think of questions that would bleed him so I could get out of his face fast. He looked exactly like a withered baboon. His breath stunk like he had just eaten a bowl of maggots.

I said, “Weeping, Pepper hasn’t got my nose open for her. She’s too jazzy and slick for me. I came to you because everybody knows that your game is mellow. I want you to pull my coat so I can pimp some scratch out of her.”

The baboon liked that banana I threw him. He was ready to talk the pimp game.

He said, “The suckers in Hell want ice water, but it’s late for them. They ain’t never going to get no ice water. The way you start with a bitch is the way you end with a bitch. You can start pimping hard on a bitch and then sucker out and blow her, but ain’t no way you can turn it around and pimp on Pepper after starting with her like a sucker. Forget her and get down on a fresh bitch.”

I said, “You mean there is no way to get any scratch out of her?”

He said, “Now you see I didn’t say that. I said you couldn’t pimp any scratch outta her. A foxy cold-blooded stud can always find an angle to cross a broad outta scratch.”

I said, “I’m not foxy, but I think I could be cold blooded enough to cross that slick bitch Pepper. Weeping, you are the fox. Lay some game on me and put me to the test. I’ll split any scratch I take off right down the middle with you.”

I hadn’t noticed it was raining. Now it was raining hard enough so that Weeping had turned to run up the window on his side. He had just raised it and was about to answer my proposition when there was a frantic rapping on his window. It was one of his whores.

Through the closed window of the locked door she said loudly, “Daddy, open the door! My feet are soaked. Nothing is happening out here tonight, and besides I am hot as Hell. The vice is watching me. It’s Costello. He told me to get off the street or he would bust me. Please open the door.”

Weeping was a cold gorilla all right. He sat there for a long moment. His monkey face was tight and hard. He casually opened the wind wing as the rain beat down on his whore. She stuck her nose through it.

Without moving toward the wing, sitting erect in the car seat he hollered, “You bullshit Bitch, make something happen. You a whore, you suppose to be hot. Let Costello bust you. He can’t make a beef stand up unless he

ketches you with a trick. You dumb chickenhearted bitch, whatta you think I got this ass pocket full of ‘fall’ scratch for? Now get out there and work. Don’t worry about the rain. Walk between the rain drops, Bitch.”

He slammed the wing shut.

Her face was wild and angry through the murky glass. Her doperotted teeth were ragged fangs in the dimness as she pressed her face close to the glass.

She screamed, “You just lost a girl. You had four, now you got three. I’m cutting you loose, Shorty.”

Weeping let his window down and stuck his head out into the rain as she walked away. He was all gorilla now.

He screamed, “Bitch, I give you odds you won’t split. As much of my dope you been shooting, I’m playing ketch up. You rank Bitch, you know if you split I’ll find you and stick my knife in your stinking ass and gut you to your breast bone.”

I wondered if he had lost her. He read my mind. He said, “She ain’t going nowhere, look at this.”

He turned his car engine on and started the windshield wiper so we could see the street. There she was back out there in the rain whistling and waving at the passing cars.

He switched the engine off.

He said, “That bitch knows I ain’t jiving. She’ll make me some scratch this morning. Now Youngblood, about Pepper. You don’t know anything about her. You ain’t long out of the joint. I like you, so my advice is the same I gave you at first. Forget her. Try in another spot.”

What he said about my not knowing her made me curious.

I said, “Look Weeping, I know you like me, and if you do, run Pepper down for me.”

“Did you know that peckerwood of Pepper’s is the bankroll behind the biggest policy wheel in town?”

I said, “No, but if the old man is flush isn’t that good. Why give Pepper up because she’s in shape. If you gave me an angle I could get some of that policy scratch.”

“Look Blood, brace yourself. Here is the rest of the rundown. Pepper is a rotten freak broad. You ain’t the only stud she freaks off with. I could name a half dozen who ride her. The dangerous one is Dalanski the detective. He is in a bad way over Pepper. If he ever found out you were freaking off with her, Blood, shame on your ass.”

I was shaken by the rundown. Like a sucker I believed that I was the whole show in her love life. I was thinking like the young punk I was.

I said, “Are you sure there are that many studs laying her?” He said, “Maybe more.”

I had a bellyache and a worse headache. I felt lousy.

I mumbled, “Thanks for the advice and the run down, ‘Weeping.’” I got out of the Buick and walked home in the rain. When I got there it was three thirty and Mama was angry, worried and raving. She was right of course. I was violating my parole to be out after eleven P.M.

I was coming out of the drug store to make a delivery when I bumped into him on the sidewalk. It was old “Party Time.”

While doing his year for our caper he had copped a lonely-hearts broad through the mails.

She went his train fare. He finished the bit and went to visit her and made a home.

She had died and the home went to relatives who threw him out. After five bits he was still full of crooked inspiration. I liked him, but not enough to join him again in a hustle. I had only been out four and a half months. I cooled it and avoided him in a smooth way.

I hadn’t touched Pepper in a week. She had called the drug store twice just before closing. She had made licking and sucking sounds to get me out to her place. I made excuses and put her off. I wondered at the time why I was so important when she was a douche bag for that mob that was laying it into her. The day before Weeping brought me a proposition, Dalanski, the roller,

came into the drug store for cigarettes and gave me a thoughtful look.

I was walking home. It was my day off. It was Saturday night around nine. I had been to see a prison movie. It was a grim drama. A young green punk tried a double cross. He was criss-crossed into the joint. He made deadly enemies while doing his long bit.

When he got out, a long black short pulled up and riddled him with a tommy gun.

A big black car was pulling to the curb toward me. There was something familiar about that small pinhead driver. It was Weeping.

He jerked his head and opened the car door. I went over and got in. He was

excited. At first I thought because his car was clean.

He told me, “Blood, put a smile on your face. Old Shorty’s got good news for you. How would you like a half a G in your slide?”

I said, “All right, give me the poison and take me to the baby.”

He said, “I ain’t shucking. It’s cream-puff work. In fact Tender Dick, it’s what you like to do best. Want the run down?”

“If you are going to tell me some broad is going to lay out fivehundred frog skins to get her rocks off, say it. I would lay a syphillis patient that died a week ago for that kind of scratch.”

Then he said, “Pepper is the broad. All you have to do is take her to bed and go through a full circus with her, that’s all. Are you game?”

“Yes, if I get a rake off from the bleacher seats, I said, “and you tell me who wants the show on.”

His eyebrows jitterbugged. He was a slick joker. I should have run from him.

He said, “No, I can’t tell you who. Don’t worry about the scratch, it’s guaranteed. Are you in?”

I said, “Yes, but I want to know more. Like why?”

The tale he told me went like this. A fast hustler from New York who specialized in pressure rackets saw a chance to trim Pepper’s old man out of a bundle.

The hustler knew that Pepper was a dog and a freak. He also knew that Pepper’s old man was hung up on her.

Even though he had met her in a whorehouse and squared her up, he was dangerously jealous of her and unpredictable if he caught her wrong.

The hustler felt that Pepper would be in a sweet state for pressure if solid evidence could be gotten showing Pepper as the dog she was.

The hustler was sure he could force her to help him in his scheme to trim the old man. He needed clear unfaked photographs.

His plan would be simple. Once he got the club over Pepper’s head, he would force her to sneak in phony “hit” slips against the policy wheel.

The hustler had discovered that for Pepper, from her inside position in the wheel, it would be very simple.

The hustler would pay me five bills after I had brought Pepper to a prearranged set up.

I was all for the scratch, and eager to give Pepper some grief for the way she had used me, and outslicked me.

Weeping told me the trap was set. I was to wait until Pepper itched enough to call me. I was not to call her.

Whenever she called I was to tell her to meet me in the bathroom of an old, but still elegant hotel on the fringe of the arcade and shooting gallery section of town.

I was then to call him. I was to make sure that at least two hours passed between her call and when I went to the desk and asked for the key to apartment two-fourteen. My name would be Barksdale. That name I’ll never forget if I live to get a hundred.

On the third day after I had gotten the rundown on the trap, Pepper called the store. It was eight fifty-five P.M., five minutes before closing. I answered the phone. She was burning blisters for one of our parties.

She invited me to her place as usual. I told her that I had to tidy up the store and also mail an important package at the downtown post office for my boss.

I asked her if she could get dressed and meet me by ten-thirty in the bar room of the hotel. It would be more convenient that way. She agreed.

I called Weeping. He told me to maneuver Pepper’s face toward the head of the bed as much as possible when we got into the act.

I went to the bar room and drank rum and coke until she got there.

I almost felt sorry for her when I saw her coming through the door. She looked so innocent and clean, not at all like the cruddy filly that humped up a funky lather beneath a mob of jockeys.

We took a booth so I could watch the clock. She was Jacqueline the Ripper with a fly, but she had a great gentle touch inside if you know what I mean.

She was a space buff all right. She was checking out my readiness for entry into inner space.

At eleven sharp Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale picked up the key to their pad. We walked onto the stage.

Wyatt Earp would have gone ape over the pad.

It was overstuffed horse-hair living room. Gleaming brass bed, giant cherubs on the wall, Gideon Bible on the marble top bedroom table. Midget, efficiency kitchen cubicle. So what, we hadn’t come to cook.

High on the wall over the bed were the two gold colored cherubs. Their eyes were holes, their mouths popped wide holding the light fixtures.

When we got into the brass bed we got the show on the road.

I was almost sure some steamed up joker in the adjoining room had his

gizmo focused on the carnival through a drilled hole peeking from a cherub’s empty eye socket.

Pepper let me out of her Hog at one-thirty in the A.M. just two blocks from Weeping’s whore stand. I felt good. I was going to collect five fat ones for my pleasant night’s work. It was like having a license to steal.

I spotted Weeping’s pin-head in his Buick. As I walked toward him, I couldn’t stop thinking about that Eastern blackmailer. I thought about that green rain that would fall when Pepper started rolling those phony hits in. I thought about how I could catch a few palms full.

Smooth as silk the pay-off came off. When Weeping handed me my scratch he gave me a funny look.

He said, “Take it easy Blood, take it easy.” The next day I went downtown and got clean.

It was the early years for the Nat “King” Cole Trio. They were playing for a two-buck dance that night at Liberty Hall. Party and I were in the balcony at a table overlooking the crowded dance floor. We were slaving like sand hogs trying to tunnel into the flashy high yellows on our laps. They were almost stoned. Ready for the killing floor.

Party saw him first coming in the front door of the auditorium. He knifed me in the side with his elbow.

Then con style, from the side of his mouth, he whispered, “Dalanski, the heat.”

The bastard’s head was on a swivel. He was looking everywhere at once. I felt mad butterflies with stingers ricocheting in my belly when his eyes spotted me and locked on me. I froze, his eyes were still riveted to me as he walked up the stairway straight for me.

I pretended to ignore him. He walked up behind me and stood there for a long moment. Then he dropped a hand like an anvil on my shoulder.

He said, “Get up! I want to talk to you.”

My legs were shuddery as I stood in a small alcove with him. He said, “Where were you around ten and after last night?” Relief and courage flooded me. That was easy; I hedged. “Why?”

He said, “Look punk, don’t get cute. Where were you? Don’t answer. I know where you were. You were out on Crystal Road in the nighttime burglarizing the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ibbetts. Night-time burglary is five to ten.”

My courage and relief swiftly drained out. Frank Ibbetts was Pepper’s old man. He was roughly frisking me now. He ran his hands into my side pockets. With one hand he brought out the three hundred dollars left from my pay-off, plus twenty clean dollars. The other came out with a strange brass door key.

He said, “Jeez, for a flunky in a drug store you got a helluva bankroll.

Where did you get it and where and what does this key fit?”

I said, “Officer, that’s crap-game money. I have never seen that key before.”

He grabbed me firmly like he had captured Sutton and walked me through the dancers out the door to his short.

He took me down and booked me on suspicion of Grand Theft burglary.

He also booked the scratch and key as evidence.

Mama came down bright and early the next morning. She was in a near fainting dither. She was clutching her chest over her heart.

She said, “Bobby, you are going to kill your mama. You haven’t been out six months and now you are back in trouble. What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? You need prayer. Get down on your knees and pray to the good Lord.”

I said, “I don’t need to pray. Mama, believe me there is nothing to worry about. I didn’t steal anything from Pepper’s house. I am not nuts. Pepper will tell them the truth. Mama, I was with her.”

I got my first nightmare inkling of the cork-screw criss-cross when Mama broke into tears. She rolled her eyes to heaven.

She blubbered, “Bobby, there’s no hope for you. You are going to spend your young life in prisons. Don’t you know Son, your mama loves you? You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I went out to see her early this morning,” she said. “She told me she hasn’t seen you in a week. Mr. Dalanski has brought Pepper’s spare key down here. That key in your pocket was one you stole when you made a delivery out there.”

Finally, she went down the corridor. Her shoulders were jerking in her sobbing.

It was an iron cross. My public defender went to that hotel to get corroboration for my alibi. The joint had been too crowded, too hectic. None of the employees remembered Pepper and me. At least they said they didn’t.

The desk man on that night had been a substitute and wasn’t now

available. My signature wasn’t on the register anyway.

I went into court again with the dirty end of the stick. I was a parolee arrested at one A.M. with a bottle of whiskey in front of me in a public place.

Pepper looked like a prospect for a convent. She had stripped herself of paint and gee-gaws. She testified that the key found in my slide was her’s, and that yes, it was possible that I had stolen it while making deliveries to her home. No, she had not seen me for a week before my arrest.

My defender had gotten a change of venue. I was afraid to go before the judge who had sent me to the reformatory.

I got two years in state prison for grand theft, the amount, fivehundred dollars. My parole was to run concurrently with the new sentence.

Pepper’s old man was with her in court. They bought the cross. I couldn’t figure who had sold it to them.

Was Dalanski the joker that Weeping worked for? Or had Dalanski heard that I had a wad, and without knowing anything about the hotel affair sold it to Pepper?

For what reason had the old man bought it? Had those hotel employees been bribed or threatened? If Dalanski was the brain, did he want me out of the way for a reason other than Pepper?

Maybe some day I’ll find out what really happened. I know if I had had lots of scratch Miss Justice would have smiled on me. She favors the bird with the scratch.

The Waupun State Prison was tough, but in a different way than the reformatory. Here the cons were older. Many of them were murderer’s serving life sentences.

These cons would never put up with the kind of petty tyranny that was practiced in the reformatory. Here the food was much better. There were industries here. A con could learn a trade if he wanted to.

He could go into the yard during recreation hours and learn other trades and skills. Here the desperate heist men congregated to plot new, more sensational robberies. The fruits and punks lay on the grass in the sun romancing each other.

This was a prison of cliques, of bloody vendettas. I found my level with the soft spoken smooth Midwestern pimps and stuff players.

Since I was one of the youngest cons in the joint I bunked in a dormitory. It was like a suite in the Waldorf compared to the bug infested tight cells in the reformatory with their odious crap buckets.

It was there in that dormitory that I got the insatiable desire to pimp. I was a member of a clique that talked about nothing except whores and pimping. I began to feel a new slickness and hardness.

I worked in the laundry. I kept my clothing fresh and neat. It was in the laundry that I met the first man from whom I got cunning to balance my hardness.

He was an old Drag man with his bit getting short. He was the first to attempt to teach me to control my emotions.

He would say, “Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings. I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you’re a dopey sucker, you’ll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen.”

He said. “Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.”

His rundown of his screen theory saved my sanity many years later. He was a twisted wise man and one day when he wasn’t looking, a movie flashed on the screen. The title was “Death For an Old Con.”

He died in his sleep behind the high gray walls. His fate was that which lives like a specter with all cons. The fear of dying in a cell.

I sure missed that convict philosopher. The wisdom he taught me took me successfully through my bit. I was released after twenty-one months. I got three months “good time” for good conduct.

With “good time” I was free, hard, slick and bitter. No more small towns for me. I was going to the city to get my degree in pimping.

The Pepper cross had answered a perplexing question for me. Why did Justice really always wear a blindfold? I knew now. It was because the cunning bitch had dollar signs for eyeballs.

4

A DEGREE IN PIMPING

When I got back to Milwaukee, Mama, and the street, my mind was straitjacketed into the pimp game. Back in the joint I had dreamed almost nightly. They were cruel playets.

They were fantastic. I would see myself gigantic and powerful like God Almighty. My clothes would glow. My underwear would be rainbow-hued silk petting my skin.

My suits were spun-gold shot through with precious stones. My shoes would be dazzling silver. The toes were as sharp as daggers. Beautiful whores with piteous eyes groveled at my feet.

Through the dream mist I would see huge shaped stakes. The whore’s painted faces would be wild in fear. They would wail and beg me not to murder them on those sharp steel stakes.

I would laugh madly. Springs of scarlet would spurt from their behinds as I joyfully booted them crotch first onto the sharp pikes. They would flop around like dying chickens. They would finally fall away in a welter of blood into two red halves.

When I awoke my ticker would be earthquaking inside me. The hot volley of the savage thrill lay sticky set between my trembling thighs.

I had other terrible dreams. I would be very tiny. A gargantuan Christ in a sea of light would be towering above me. In his anger his eyes would be blazing blue suns. His silky platinum hair would stand on end in his rage.

A shaft of purest white light would shoot from the tip of his index finger. He would point toward a woman. Her back would be turned to me. He would hand me a barbed leather whip.

Like a crash of summer thunder he would command, “Punish this evil woman. Destroy the devil inside her. The Lord so directs thee.”

Eagerly I would grab the heavy whip in both hands. I would bring it down with all my force on the woman’s back. She would just stand there. The scarlet would drain down from her slashed back. She would be standing to her knees in a river of blood.

She would turn her brown agonized face toward me. It would be Mama. I would be shaking and screaming in my sweat. It was horrible. I could never cut the dream off until its end. It had to run its fearful course. The dreams about Mama came until her death.

For a day or two following them, these dreams would recreate in day- dreams. Sudden dark arrows of depression and regret would stab into that open sore in my mind. I would get high. The narcotics seemed to ward off like armor the stealthy arrows.

After a week of rest and Mama’s soulfood, my color and strength came back. On a Saturday night I decked myself out in one of the vines and topcoat I had bought the day before Dalanski busted me.

I remembered the pimp rundowns at the joint. I had learned my first step had to be a fast cop. I needed a whore to hit the city scene. I had to get on that fast track to pimping.

I was only several months away from age twenty. My baby face was gone. I was six feet two. I was as thin as a greyhound on a crash diet. I went into an underworld bar, The 711 Club, crowded with pimps, whores, and thieves.

I stood at the far end of the bar stalling with a coke. I faced the front door. I turned and asked the slightly familiar elephant beside me about Weeping and Party.

He turned his head. His dime-sized eyes got stuck in my fly’s zipper as he looked me over head to toe. He remembered me.

He said, “About a month ago your boon coon Party caught sixty in the county. One of them tight pussys opened his nose wide enough to drive a freight train through. He caught a stud whamming it into her. The stud quit the scene. The broad had to go to a croaker to get Party’s shoe outta her ass.”

Then after pausing to thumbnail a ball of snot from his trunk, he said, “Old Weeping fell dead outside a shooting gallery in Saint Paul. Musta’ shot some pure, cause a lookout on the sidewalk heard him mumble before he croaked. Well kiss my dead mammy’s ass if this ain’t the best smack I ever shot.”

The elephant again raised his hoof toward his filthy trunk. The sissy barkeep sat a fresh bottle of coke on the log before me. I yanked my eyebrows into a question mark.

He lisped, “The runty black bitch in the middle of the bar sent you a taste.”

Without taking my eyes off his thin yellow face, I said, “Sugar, run her down to me. Is the bitch qualified? Is she a whore? Does she have a man?”

The corners of his mouth see-sawed. He slugged his soggy, dirty bar rag against my reflection on the bat top.

He almost whispered, “The bitch ain’t nothing but a young skunk from Saint Louis. She ain’t nothing but a jazzy jive whore. I’m more whore than she is. She ain’t got no man. She’s a come freak She’s Georgied three bullshit pimps since she got here a month ago. If your game is strong you could play a hog outta her ass. She ain’t but eighteen.”

I eased a bone from my pocket, put it on the bar for the fresh coke. I frantically remembered those pimp rundowns in the joint.

I said, “Tell the bitch no dice. I’ll take care of the little things, and if she is qualified maybe I’ll let her take care of the big things. Give the bitch a drink on me.”

On the juke box Ella Fitzgerald was crying about her “little yellow basket.” The bar keep twinkle-toed toward her with the wire and drink. Through the blue mirror I zeroed my eyes in on the target. My ass bone starched on stiff point. Her big peepers were two sexy dancers in the velvet midnight of her

cute Pekingese face.

Hot scratch fever streaked through me. I thought, if I could cop her and get a pimp’s terms she would be out of pocket poison to all white tricks that pinned her.

Those pimps back in the joint sure knew basic whorology. I was glad my ears had flapped to all those rundowns.

They had said, “Chase a whore, you get a chump’s weak cop. Stalk a whore, you get a pimp’s strong cop.”

My turn down of her measly first offer had her jumpy. It was a slick sharp hook twisting in the bitch’s mind. Her juicy tongue darted out like a red lizard past her ivory teeth. It slithered over the full lips. She wiggled toward me in an uneven race with the bar keep. He was sliding her green drink between me and the elephant.

I heard a low excited trumpeting in the trunk of the elephant. He had dug her flawless props and gourmet rear end. It was rolling inside her glove-tight white dress.

I painted a lukewarm indifferent grin on my face as she perched on the stool. I noticed a roll of scratch wedged deep between the black peaks.

She said, “Who the hell are you, and what is that ‘off the wall’ shit you cracked on the bartender?” My eyes were sub-zero spotlights on her face. I said, “Bitch, my name is Blood, and my wire wasn’t ‘off the wall.’ It was real, like me. Bitch, you sure got a filthy, sassy job. It could get your ass ruptured.”

The big vein at the temple in the tiny dog face quivered. Her rapper was shrill.

She bleated, “I ain’t no bitch. I’m a mother-fucking lady. The stud ain’t been pulled outta his mammy’s womb that kicks my ass. Goddamnit, call me Phyllis. Be a gentleman and respect me. I’m a lady.”

The icy blasts busted the thermostat in my spotlights.

I could feel my cool spit on my lips as I roared, “You stinking black Bitch, you’re a fake. There’s no such thing as a lady in our world. You either got to be a bitch or a faggot in drag. Now Bitch, which is it? Bitch, I’m not a gentleman, I’m a pimp. I’ll kick your funky ass. You gave me first lick. Bitch, you’re creaming to eat me up. I’m not a come freak, you are. I’m a freak to scratch.”

My blast had moved her. Those joint rundowns sure worked. I could see those sexy dancers were hot as hell there in the midnight. She was trying to conceal from me the freakish pain-loving bitch inside her.

She was comical like that fire-and-brimstone preacher. He was trying to hide his hard-on from the cute sister in the front pew flashing her cat for him.

The broad was speechless. I had called all the shots. I turned toward the crapper.

As I walked away I bombed her. I said, “Bitch, I’m splitting when I come out of that crapper. I know your pussy is jumping for me. I know you want me for your man. Some lucky bitch is going to steal me from you. You better toss that bullshit out of your mind. Get straight Bitch, and tell me like it is on my way out. You had your chance. After tonight you don’t have any.”

Inside the crapper I ripped a wad of paper from its holder. I wrapped the saw buck and the four singles around it. Whatever happened out there, I had to show a bankroll.

I stood there in the crapper. I was letting the heat seep deep into that bitch out there. Was I going to cop my first whore? My crotch was fluttery at the thought of it.

I walked out of the crapper. She was outside the door. I almost trampled her. I ignored her. I walked to the bar to pay my light tab. She was peering

over my shoulder. I peeled the saw buck off.

I told the barkeep, “Steal the change and cop a hog.”

His bedroom gray eyes sparkled. His delicate pinkie scooted the saw buck back to me across the log.

He said, “Sweetie, it’s on me. Come back at two and cop a real girl.”

She tugged at my sleeve as I turned from the bar. She looked up at me.

Those dancers had stripped.

I looked down at the hot runt and said, “Well Bitch, it’s your move. Do I cut you loose?”

She grabbed my shoulder. She pulled me down toward her. I could feel her hot breath on the side of my head. She popped that lizard tongue into my ear almost to my eardrum. It sent hot shivers through me. I stayed cool. I turned my head and knifed my teeth into the side of her neck. I don’t know why she didn’t bleed. She just moaned.

Then she whispered, “You cold-blooded sweet mother-fucker, I go for you.

Let’s go to my pad and rap.”

We walked to the slammer. I glanced back. The elephant was staring at us.

His tongue was frenching his chops. His trunk was twitching for a party.

On the sidewalk she handed me the key to her yellow thirty-six Ford. I was lucky. I had been taught to drive the laundry truck back in the joint. The Ford’s motor sang a fine tune. It wasn’t a pimp’s “wheels,” but it sure would make the trip to the city track.

I drove to her pad. On the way she played on me. She was setting me up for the Georgia. That lizard thought my ear was a speedway. It did a hundred laps inside it. I was still green. I shouldn’t have let her touch me.

Her pad was a trap for suckers all right. She had pasted luminous white stars on the hotel room’s blue ceiling. There was one blue light. It glowed sexily from behind a three-foot plaster copy of Rodin’s “The Kiss.”

There was a mirror over the bed. There were mirrors on the walls flanking the bed. There was a polar-bear rug gleaming whitely in front of a blue chaise lounge.

I sat on the lounge. She flipped on the portable record player. Ellington rippled out “Mood Indigo.”

She slipped into a cell-sized bathroom. Its door was half shut. The peke was digging a washcloth into her armpits and cat. She was nude. She sure was panting to swindle me out of my youth. I wondered if and where she had stashed that roll of scratch.

She came out belly dancing to the “Indigo” sex booster. She was a runt Watusi princess. Her curvy black body had the sheen of seal skin. I had one bitch of a time remembering the dialogue that covered this kind of a situation. What had the pimps in the joint said: “You gotta back up from them fabulous pussys. You gotta make like you don’t have a swipe. You gotta keep

your mind on the scratch.”

“Stay cold and brutal. Cop your scratch first. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll cut you loose like a trick after they’ve flim- flammed you. Your scratch cop is the only way to put a hook in their stinking asses.”

She danced toward the head of the bed. She stooped over and raised the edge of the red carpet. Her rear end swayed to the “Indigo.” It was grinning at me. It was theatre in the round for sure.

She danced toward me. She had two thin reefers in her hand. That box at the side of the bed had rejected and “Indigo” was encoring.

She stood between my legs. Even through the trouser cloth I could feel the hot dampness of her outer thighs. The inner surface of my kneecaps tingled under the heat.

She quivered and rolled her jet satin belly under my nose. Her humming of the “Indigo” was low and throaty. She sure qualified as the package the pimps had warned about. My twenty-one month cherry was aching to chunk out.

She took a lighter off the cocktail table. She ran the sticks in and out of her mouth to get an even burn. She lit them and handed me one.

She said, “Daddy, this is light green pot from chili gut country. It will make us mellow. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”

I took a deep pull on the stick of reefer. I looked up into the sultry dreamy eyes.

I parroted, “Bitch, don’t put shit in the game. Business always comes before pleasure in my book. I’ll take my clothes off when I know I’m taking them off with my whore. I don’t sucker for the Georgia. Jar loose from respectable scratch, Bitch.”

I had heard it verbatim in the joint. It worked like a lie detector. The motor in her belly threw a rod. Her eyes had a far away look.

She was busy tailoring the con for me. She collapsed to a yogi squat on the polar bear rug. Her moon was winking at me. Her voice was bullshit sweet.

She warbled, “Sweetheart Daddy, you already shot me down. I’m your

sweet bitch. I got a C note coming from a trick with his nose open for me. He’ll spring for it tomorrow night. It’s yours, but you got to wait. Now come on and put your freak baby to bed.”

My system had been clean. The reefer was powerful. She didn’t know how desperately I needed to pimp. She couldn’t know she was the first. I couldn’t let her escape.

I had to have a whore. That reefer was sending currents of anger and hatred through me in time with “Indigo.” My mortal enemy squatted on that white rug.

I thought, “I’m going to murder this runt black bitch if she don’t give me that scratch she had in her bosom.”

Like a brute cop giving a heist man a last chance to confess, I said, “Bitch, give me that scratch you had between your tiddies.”

Her peepers ballooned in surprise and anger.

She gritted, “You’re pimping too hard skinny ass nigger. I have changed my mind. Get your lid and benny and split.”

The “Indigo” was on a torrid upbeat. Like brown-skin lightning I leaped erect from the chaise. I flung my right leg back.

I could feel the tendons at my hip socket straining. My eyes sighted for a heart shot. My needle-toed eleven triple-A shoe rocketed toward her.

The lucky runt turned a fraction of a second in time. The leather bomb exploded into her left shoulder blade. It knocked her flat on her belly. She lay there groaning.

Then like in the dreams in the joint, I kicked her rear end until my leg cramped. Through it all she just moaned and sobbed. I was soaked in sweat. Panting, I lay on the bear-skin beside her. I thrust my mouth against her ear.

In an icy whisper I said, “Bitch, do I have to kill you to make you my whore? Get up and give me that scratch.”

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. There was no anger in them now, only fear and strange passion. Her tremulous mouth opened to speak. For a long moment nothing came out.

Then she whispered, “You got a whore Blood. Please don’t kick me any more. I’m your little dog. I’ll do anything you say. I love you, Pretty Daddy.”

Her talons stabbed into the back of my neck as she tried to suck my tongue from its roots. I could taste her salty tears.

She wobbled to the record player. She lifted a corner of it. She slid that wad of scratch from beneath it. She rejected “Indigo.” She put another platter

on the turntable.

“Lady Day” was singing a sad lament. “My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean. He’s the meanest man that I ever seen.”

I was standing on the bear skin. She came toward me with the scratch in her hand. She laid it in my palm. I riffled it in a fast count. It was respectable. It had to be over two bills. I was ready to let that cherry pop.

I scooped the ninty-pound runt up into my arms. I bit her hard on the tip of her chin. I carried her to the side of the bed. I hurled her onto it. She bounced and lay there on her back. She was breathing hard. Her legs were a wide pyramid.

I got out of my clothes fast. I snatched the top sheet off. I ripped it into four narrow strips. I tied her hands to the bed posts. I spread eagled her legs. With the longer strips, I tied her legs to the top of the springs at the sides of the bed.

She lay there a prisoner. I put her through the nerve shredding routines Pepper had taught me. She blacked out four times. She couldn’t pull back from the thrilling, awful torture.

Finally, I took a straight ride home. On the way I tried to smash the track. I reached my destination. The blast of hate was big enough to spawn a million embryo black pimps.

I untied her. We lay there in the dim blueness. The fake white stars glowed down on us. “Lady Day” still moaned her troubles.

I said, “Bitch, I want you to hump like Hell in these streets for a week. We’re going to the big track in the city. Oh yes, this week we got to get that title to the Ford changed. I don’t drive no bitch’s wheels. It’s got to be in my name, understand?”

She said, “Yes, Daddy, anything you say. Daddy, don’t get angry, but I was bullshitting about that C note trick.”

I said, “Bitch, I knew that. Don’t ever try to con me again.”

I got up and put my clothes on. I peeled a fin off the scratch and put it on the dresser.

I said, “I want you in the street at six tonight. Stay out of the bars. Work the area around Seventh and Apple.”

“I’ll come through sometime tonight. You be there when I show. If you get busted your name is Mary Jones. If you forget it I can’t raise you fast. Have some scratch whenever I show.”

I went down to the street. I got into my Ford. It roared to life. I drove

toward Mama’s. I felt good. I wasn’t doing bad for a black boy just out of the joint.

I shuddered when I thought, what if I hadn’t kept my ears flapping back there in the joint? I would be a boot black or porter for the rest of my life in the high walled white world. My black whore was a cinch to get piles of white scratch from that forbidden white world.

Mama was pressing a young customer’s hair. She saw me get out of the Ford in front of the shop. She called me inside with a waggle of the pressing comb.

She said, “I have been worried. Where have you been all night? Where did you get the pretty little car? Did you find a job?”

I said, “A friend of mine let me borrow it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me. I stayed with him all night. He’s got a hundred-and-three fever. I’ll try to find a job tomorrow.”

She said, “There’s a roast in the oven. Shut the gas off and eat. I hope, Son, you haven’t been with Pepper.”

I looked down at the nut brown, shapely girl getting her hair pressed.

I said, “Pepper? She’s too old for me. I like young pretty brownskin girls.

Pepper’s too yellow for me.”

The young broad flashed her eyes up at me. She smiled. I winked and ran my tongue over my lips. She dug it. She blushed. I put her on file.

I turned and walked to the sidewalk. I went upstairs and attacked the roast.

I took a long nap. At five-thirty P.M. I went down and got into the Ford. I drove to Seventh and Apple. I parked.

At five minutes to six I saw Phyllis coming toward me. She was a block away. I fired the engine and pulled away.

It sure looked like I had copped a whore. I went back at midnight. She looked mussed up and tired. She got into the car.

I said, “Well, how goes it Baby?”

She dug in her bosom and handed me a damp wad of bills. I counted it. It was a fin over half a C.

She said, “I’m tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. Can I stop now, Daddy? I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. You know how you kicked me last night”

I said, “Bitch, the track closes at two. I’ll take you to the sandwich and coffee. The bath will have to wait until the two o’clock breakdown. You needed your ass kicked.”

She sighed and said, “All right Daddy, anything you say.”

I drove her to an open-air kosher joint. She kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she finished the sandwich and coffee.

Then she said, “Daddy, please don’t misunderstand me. I like a little slapping around before my man does it to me. Please don’t be as cruel as you were last night. You might kill me.”

I said, “Baby, never horse around with my scratch or try to play con on me. You blew my stack last night. You don’t have to worry so long as you never violate my rules. I will never hurt you more than to turn you on.”

I drove her back to the track. She got out of the car. As soon as she hit the sidewalk, two white tricks almost had a wreck pulling to the curb for her. She was a black money-tree all right.

The next day I took her to a notary. In ten minutes we walked out. She gave me the three bills back that I had paid her for the Ford.

It was legal now. She wasn’t beefing. Her bruises were healing and she was ripe for another “prisoner of love” scene. She finished the week in great humping style. I had a seven-bill bankroll.

Sunday evening I packed the runt’s bearskin and other things into the trunk of the Ford.

I parked around the corner from Mama’s. I went up to get my things together. Mama caught me packing. Tears flooded her eyes. She grabbed me and held me tightly against her. Her sobbing was strangling her.

She sobbed, “Son, don’t you love your Mama anymore? Where are you going? Why do you want to leave the nice home I fixed for you? I just know if you leave I’ll never see you again. We don’t have anybody but each other. Please don’t leave me. Don’t break my heart, Son.”

I heard her words. I was too far gone for her grief to register. I kept thinking about that freak, black money-tree in the Ford. I was eager to get to that fast pimp track in the city.

I said, “Mama, you know I love you. I got a fine clerk’s job in a men’s store in the city. Everybody in this town knows I’m an excon. I have to leave. I love you for making a home for me. You have been an angel to stick by me through those prison bits. You’ll see me again. I’ll be back to visit you. Honest, Mama, I will.”

I had to wrestle out of her arms. I picked up my bags and hit the stairs. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the front window. Mama was

gnawing her knuckles and crying her heart out. My shirt front was wet with her tears.

5

THE JUNGLE FAUNA

The yellow Ford ran like an escaped con. We got to Chicago in two hours. We checked into a hotel in a slum neighborhood, around 29th and State Streets. We took our stuff out of the Ford’s trunk.

It was ten P.M. I threw some water on my face. I told the runt to cool it. I went out and cruised around to case the city.

I turned the wipers on. A late March snowfall was starting. About a mile from the hotel I saw whores working the streets.

I parked and went into a bar in the heart of the action. It stank like a son- of-a-bitch. It was a junkie joint. I sat sipping on a bottle of suds; I couldn’t trust the glasses.

A cannon with a tired horse face took the vacant stool in my right. His stall took the one on the left. The stall had a yellow fox face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pinning me. He snapped his fingers. I jerked my head toward him.

He said, “Brother, you are lucky as a shit-house rat. What size benny and vine you wear? I’m Dress ’em up Red. Stand up brother so I can dig your size. I got a pile of crazy vines dirt cheap.”

I stood up facing him. He ran his eyes up and down me. He unbuttoned my top coat. He pulled my vine’s lapels. He shoved me back toward Horseface. I stumbled, half turned to apologize to Horseface. There was a streaking blur behind me. It was so fast I couldn’t have sworn I had seen it. I found out later what it had been.

Horseface showed his choppers, got off the stool and trotted through the slammer. I faced the stall.

I said, “Jim, you got my size? Do you have any black mohairs?” The stall smiled crookedly at me. He straightened my tie.

He said, “Slim, I got blue and black mohair, I can fit you like Saville Row in London. You want the blue too? The bite is two for fifty slats.”

I said, “Man, let’s go. I am ready to cop.”

His brow telescoped like I was going to open a door and catch his mother crapping in my hat. He started oozing toward the slammer.

He said, “Brother, I don’t know you well enough to trust you. I got to protect my stash. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if you went with me and copped? What if you came back later and beat me?”

“No, Slim, cool it. I’ll be back in twenty minutes with the vines. Here’s a slat. Get a taste on Dress ’em up Red.”

I ordered another beer. I was trying to stall that twenty minutes out. I sure needed those vines.

After an hour I figured Dress ’em up Red got busted or something.

I asked the fat broad tending bar where the swank joints were. She named a few, and gave me directions. My bill was eighty cents. I left a twenty-cent tip and walked to the Ford.

The wind wing on the street side gaped open. It had been jimmied. The car door had been unlocked through it.

I got in. I remembered the runt’s costume jewelry had been locked in the glove compartment. I unlocked it. Some slick bastard had slit the cardboard bottom from underneath. There wasn’t even an earring left.

I started the motor and turned the lights on. The snow had stopped falling. My headlights beamed on a squatting junkie whore with a Dracula face peeing in the gutter. She grinned toothlessly into the glare like maybe she was a starlet taking bows at a movie premiere.

I thundered the motor. She stood up wide legged. Her cat was a mangy red slash. She was holding up the bottom front of her dress with her rusty elbows. Her long black fingers were pulling her snare wide open to stop me.

As I shot by her, she shouted, “Come back here Nigger! It ain’t but a buck.”

I drove through the snow-slushed streets. The streetlights were dim halos in the murk.

I thought, “I can’t put the runt down in a spot like back there. I have to find somebody to give me a rundown.”

I drove a hundred blocks. Suddenly a huge red neon sign glittered through the gloom. It read “Devil’s Roost.” It was one of the joints the fat broad at the hype bar had told me about.

Gaudy Hogs and Lincolns were bumper to bumper. They pigged the parking spaces on the Roost’s side of the street. I parked across the street. I got out of the Ford and crossed the street.

I started walking down the sidewalk toward the Roost. “The Bird,” Eckstein and Sarah sent a crazy medley of soul sounds from the rib and chicken joint’s loudspeakers. The street was as busy as a black anthill. Studs and broads in sharp clothes paraded the block.

The hickory-smoked chicken and rib odors watered my mouth. I was at the point of stepping into one for a fast feast. The sign said “Creole Fat’s Rib Heaven.” I didn’t make it.

A long, stooped shadow stood in my way. He was chanting at me like a voodoo doctor. He pointed toward a storefront. Its window was blacked out with blue paint.

He sang, “Shootin’ ’em up inside, heavy and good. Scratch piled up like cords of wood. Geez you look lucky, Jack. Seven, eleven point right back. That’s sure you, Jack. Go in fast. Come out quicker. Lady Luck is a bitch but you can stick her.”

His topcoat was a threadbare green-checked antique. The tops of his shabby black shoes had criss-cross holes snipped out. His bulging corns were humps pressing through the vents. He stank like a bootlegger’s garbage. There was something ghostly familiar in the banana yellow, Basset-Hound face.

I said, “Jim, I’m not in the mood to whale the craps. Say, don’t I know you?”

His transient eyes jerked their bags. They moved over my shoulder, searching down the sidewalk for a fresh prospect. His bald head glistened like a tiny yellow lake under the street lamp.

He said, “Jack, I can’t put a pistol on you. I can’t force you to go inside and collect your scratch. Kid, you too young to know me. You might a heard of me. I’m Pretty Preston. I gave the whores blues in the night when I was pimping at my peak. Who are you?”

His name triggered my clear memory of him. He had driven a gleaming black La Salle car. I had shined his shoes back in the pressing shop days.

Then he had been sleek and handsome like a yellow Valentino. I remembered his diamonds. They had winked and sparkled brightly on his fingers, in his shirt cuffs, even on his shirt front.

I thought, “Could this really be the same dandy? What had happened to

him?”

I said, “Preston, I know you. I’m the kid who used to shine your Stacy’s back on Main Street. Remember me? I’m pimping myself now. You sure pimped up a storm when I was a kid. What happened? Why are you steering for this craps joint?”

He had a dreamy, far-away look in his dull brown eyes. He was probably remembering his long ago flashy pimp days. He sighed and put his arms around my shoulders. I walked with him through the door of the craps trap.

The raw stink of gamblers’ sweat punched up into my nose. We sat on a battered sofa in the almost dark front of the joint. Through a partition I could hear the tinkle of silver coins. I heard the flat cackle of the bone dice laughing at the cursing shooters begging for a natural.

He said, “Sure, Kid, I remember you. Christ, you got tall. I gotta be getting old. What’s your name? Kid, I been getting funky breaks since I came to this raggedy city twelve years ago. I’m just steering for a pal who runs the joint.

“Hell he needs me more than I need him. I’m gonna catch a hot number, or a wild daily double. Old Preston’s name will ring again. How many girls you got?”

I said, “Slim Lancaster, but they call me Young Blood. Blood for short. I only got one now, but with all the whores here I’ll have bookoos in a month. I just got in town tonight. I want to put my girl to work. Give me a rundown on some streets after I dash next door for a slab of ribs. I haven’t dirtied a plate since noon. Anything I can get you?”

He said, “Blood, if you must do something, get me a half-pint of Old Taylor at the corner liquor store. I’ll rundown for you, but you ain’t going to like my tail-end rundown at all.”

It felt good to step out into the fresh, chilly air. I stopped in the rib joint and put my order in. I saw the front of the Roost on my way to the corner.

I tiptoed and peeked through the bottom of the window blind. The joint was jumping. Pimps, whores, and white men crowded the circular bar.

Some skinny joker with scald burns on his face was fronting a combo. He tried to ape the Birds phrasing and tone. His tan face had turned black. He was choking on his horn.

Mixed couples danced to “Stomping at the Savoy” on a carpetsized dance floor in the rear. Silk broads itching for forbidden fruit sat in booths lining the walls.

Their faces glowed starkly in the red dimness. Their long hair flopped

around their shoulders as they threw their heads back. They laughed drunkenly with their black lovers.

I took my peepers out of the slot. I walked toward the corner to cop the bottle for Preston. I made a skull note to pop into the Roost after Preston’s rundown.

I was fifty feet from the corner when I saw him. He was in the center of a small crowd. His high crown white hat was bobbing a foot above it. He was a nut brown giant.

As I drew closer I could see his snow white teeth. His heavy lips were drawn back in a snarl. His wide shoulders jiggled. He was stomping on something. It was like maybe he was a sharply togged fire dancer or maybe a dapper grape crusher from Sicily.

I squeezed through the crowd for a ringside view. He was grunting. His labor was yanking the sweat out of him. The crowd stood tittering and excited like a Salem mob watching the execution of a witch.

The witch was black. She had the slant eyes and doll features of a Geisha girl.

The chill breeze whipped back the bottom of his benny. The giant’s thigh muscles rippled inside the pants leg of his two-hundred-dollar vine.

Again and again he slammed his size-thirteen shoe down on the witch’s belly and chest. She was out cold. Her jaw hinge was awry and red frothy bubbles bunched at the corners of her crooked mouth.

At last he scooped her from the pavement. She looked like an infant in his arms. His eyes were strangely damp. He wedged through the crowd to a purple Hog at the curb. He looked down into her unconscious face.

He muttered, “Baby, why, why do you make me do you like this? Why don’t you hump and stop lushing and bullshitting with the tricks?”

Still holding her tenderly, he stooped and opened the front door of the Hog. He placed her on the front seat. He shut the door and walked around the Hog to the driver’s side. He got in and the Hog roared away into the night.

The crowd was scattering. I turned to a fellow about my age. His eyes were glazed. He was sucking a stick of gangster.

I said, “That stud would have gotten busted sure as Hell if the heat had made the scene.”

He stepped back and looked at me like I was fresh in town from a monastery in Tibet.

He said, “You must be that square, Rip Van Winkle, I heard about. He’s

heat. He’s vice heat. They call him Poison. He’s got nine whores. He’s a pimp. That broad is one of ’em. She got drunk with a trick.”

I went into the liquor store. It was five-after-twelve. I ordered the half pint. The clerk put it on the counter. I swung my topcoat away to get my hide in my hip pocket. I had two hundred in fives and tens in it. I had five C notes pinned to my shorts in a tobacco sack between my legs.

My fingers touched the bottom of the pocket. My right hip pocket was empty. I was sure my hide had been on that side. I dug my left hand into the left pocket. Empty!

Within seconds both my sweaty hands had darted in and explored all my pockets a half-dozen times. The clerk just stood there amused watching the show. His hairy paw slid the half pint back toward him away from foul territory.

He said, “Whatsa matter, Buddy, some broad ram it into you for your poke or did you leave it in your other Strides?”

My mind was ferreting. It back pedaled, tore apart the scenes and moves I had made. I was a confused, jazzy punk.

I said, “Jack, your score is zero. I’m not a vic. I just remembered I got my scratch on Mars. I’ll be back when I get back.”

He was shaking his head when I walked out. I crossed the street. I was headed toward the Ford. I wasn’t going there to look for my hide on the seat. I was going there to peel off one of those C notes next to my balls.

I had remembered the scene back in the hype joint. I saw that rattlesnake lightning again. For the first time I saw the thrill of the cop on the face of the horse. The Fox had sure held my balls in the fire for Horseface.

I thought, “As slick as those two bastards are they can’t miss making a million or getting croaked.”

From that day to this one almost thirty years later no scratch has ever been in my hide.

I copped the bottle. I was hurrying to pick up my rib order. Old Preston was back out there bird-dogging suckers. I saw him point a joker into the joint. He slapped the balking sucker on the rump. The vic went inside. He saw me and hobbled toward me. For the first time I saw his crippled walk. He grinned when I laid the bottle on him. He said, “Thanks Kid, want first suck?” I said, “Jack, it’s all yours. After I get my ribs I’ll duck back in the joint and rap with you.”

Preston had his bad dogs propped on a chair when I got back. I stumbled

over his make-shift sandals beside the sofa. I sat down. His feet stank like a terminal cancer victim. Even a budding pimp has to have a cast iron belly. I unwrapped and started to gobble the ribs.

He said, “I guess you saw pimping Poison hanging that whore on the corner. He’s number two mack man in town.”

Through the peppery grease I burbled, “Yeh, she looked dead to me. I guess he checked her into the morgue. How does he cut the double action? Who, as strong as he is, could top him?”

He tilted the bottle straight up and drained it. He said, “She ain’t croaked. She’ll be back out before daylight humping her ass off. He’s the top Nigger vice roller in town. His pimping don’t faze the white brass just so he don’t kick no white asses. Poison is a nice sweet stud compared to Sweet Jones. Sweet’s the top spade pimp in the country.”

I said, “Preston, I want to be great like Sweet. I want my name to ring like his. I want to be slick enough to handle a hundred whores. Can you pull my coat so I can cut into Sweet and get down right and really do the thing.”

In the half darkness I saw his yellow jaw pop loose. His hound face was twisting sideways in quizzical amazement. His face jig-sawed like maybe I had asked him to let me knock him up. He starched like a corpse on the sofa.

He said, “Kid, you bang a cap of smack or something? Sweet’s crazy as a flock of loons. Your bell ain’t never gonna clang that loud, unless you go crazy too. He’s killed four studs. He ain’t human. He’s got every Nigger in town scared shitless. His whores call him Mr. Jones.

“He hates young punks. I can’t cut you into him. Kid, I like you. You’re good looking. You conned me that you’re intelligent. I am going to give you some advice. Take it or leave it.

“I came to this town twelve years ago. I was so pretty just my ass would have made you a Sunday face. I brought five whores with me. I had been one hell of a pimp back in the sticks. I was only twentyeight when I got here.

“Just like you, I had to cut into Sweet. It was easy for me. I was yellow and pretty. I also had three beautiful white whores in my stable. I didn’t know Sweet hated yellow Niggers and white men.

“He grinned that gold-toothed smile for a year. He conned me that he loved me. He was a hype even then. He started to rib me, called me a square. I tried hard to be like him, so I got hooked on H.

“My habit screwed my mind up. All I wanted to do was bang H and coast. Like a real pal he kept my stable humping. At first his angle was Uncle Sweet

to my whores. In six weeks he was giving me and my whores orders. He tore my image down before my whores. He copped my stable.

“One morning, I was puking sick. Sweet was torturing me. He hadn’t brought me my stuff in twenty-four hours. I was cold as ice wrapped in a blanket, then red hot. I was naked, crawling on the floor, nailing my body bloody when he came in. He stood over me flashing that gold in his jib.

“Sweet said, ‘Easy now you pretty yellow bastard. There’s been a panic. Until this morning I couldn’t cop any stuff. I copped you a sixteenth in Spic town. You know I gotta love your stinking junkie ass to stick my neck out like that. Ain’t that a bitch. I just noticed when you sick you almost black as me.

“‘I wish that bastard white father of your’s could see you down there on your knees begging this black Nigger to stop your misery.’

“Sweet held the tiny cellophane pack out to me. I was too weak to take it. “I said, ‘Please Sweet, cook it for me and load my outfit. It’s inside the

candy-striped tie in the closet. Sweet if you don’t hurry, I’m sure to croak.’

“I was one big ache and cramp. He walked slowly to the closet. He fumbled past the striped tie on the rack. He was getting his kicks making the yellow Nigger suffer.

“I screamed, ‘Sweet you had your mitt on the right one. It’s there! Right there!’

“Sweet finally got the spike out of the tie lining. I was too weak to shoot the H when he got it cooked. I held my arm flat on the carpet. My eyes begged him to tie me up and bang me.

“He pulled my belt from my trousers on a chair. He tightened the belt around my arm above the elbow. My veins stood out like blue rope. He stabbed the needle into a vein in the hollow. The glass tube turned red. I lay there freezing to death waiting for the smack to slug the sickness and pain out of me.”

Preston stopped for breath. Bubbles of sweat had popped out on his bald head. While running down Sweet’s double cross, he had really relived it.

I licked the hot sauce off my hands. I crushed the greasy sack into a ball and sailed it into a paper box at my end of the sofa. I fished my handkerchief out and wiped my mouth and hands.

Those dice the house was using had a Ph.D. Every ten minutes a chump would shuffle from the rear with a tapped out look on his face.

I said, “Christ, Sweet’s slick and cold blooded. What happened after that?”

Preston said, “That shot took the fever and pain away. I wasn’t ready to go a fast fifteen with Joe Louis. I felt better. Sweet stood in the middle of the floor watching me. My legs were weak when I finally stood up. I stood there naked.

“I said, ‘Sweet, I know you have stolen my stable. I know I have been a prize sucker, I demand that you lay a grand or so on me. I got to kick this habit you conned me into. I won’t give you any headaches. You got to loan me that G.’

“Sweet just stood there like a black Buddha for a long moment. For a second I thought he was going to put his foot in my ass like I was a whore. He grinned. He pulled my robe from the foot of the bed. He draped it around my shoulders.

“Then he said, ‘Sweetheart, I ain’t stole no whores from you. Them whores would have blew to the wind if it don’t be for me. You got me. I’m just like your whore. Wouldn’t you rather I had them whores than some bastard you couldn’t cop a favor from? Course I’m going to give you the grand. I’m even going to give you back that buck-toothed yellow whore you had. I want you to straighten up. Sweetheart, I love you.’

“I said, Sweet when do I get the grand? I got to know it’s coming at a certain time.’

“Sweet said, ‘Look Sweetheart, you get it no later than tomorrow morning. I’ll bring the buck-toothed bitch with me. Today before noon I’ll send you a quarter piece. You got no reason to sweat. Sweet’s in your corner, Sweetheart.’

“He chucked me under the chin and walked out. The runner came with the quarter piece at eleven o’clock, I was beginning to think Sweet was only half rat.

“At noon two rollers broke the door down. I was coasting. I was draped in my P.J.’s. They found the H and booked me for possession. I got a fin. I kicked the habit cold turkey in city jail. I did three years, nine months in the state joint.

“I left my hair, teeth, and looks in the joint. A con ran a shiv into my plumbing. That’s why I limp and pee out of this tube in my side. I ain’t had a whore since.”

Preston had choked up.

He said, “Kid, you still want to try this track and cut into Sweet?”

I turned my face from him. He was mopping his tears away with his

sleeve. I was sure a lost, stupid punk. After a rundown like that, I was still itching to take my crack at the fast track.

The rundown had only boosted my desire to meet the slick, icy Sweet. If I had been smart I would have jumped in that Ford and rushed back to the sticks.

I thought, “Sweet hates yellow and white. I am black like him. The runt is black. Sweet won’t have a black whore. I have no reason to fear him. I have nothing that he wants. I have to find him and pick his brain. I got to take that short cut to become a great pimp.”

I said, “To hell with the Sweet cut-in. I’m not bats, but I got to try this track. Yeh, Preston, you sure got the hurt put to you. Man, I feel for you. When I start pimping a zillion, I’ll do something big for you. You are overdue for a break. Now tell me the best spot to down my package.”

He said, “You gotta get your head bumped, huh? What kind of package you got?”

I said, “Black, eighteen, cute, stacked, and three way.”

He said, “Blood, we are sitting on the best street in town for a package like that. Only drawback is this street is crawling with fast, whore-hungry pimps.

“You would also be playing your girl against a half-dozen strong, jasper whores on this stem. They pimping tough as studs.

“They got some fancy con to lay on a fine young whore. If your game ain’t tight, you’ll blow your girl fast. How long you had her? What kind of wheels you got?”

I said, “About a week, but I got her up tight. The Bitch loves me. Nobody can steal her. Temporarily I got a Ford.”

He threw his head back and started laughing. I thought he had flipped his cork. He died laughing for a full minute. The tears were rolling down his cheeks when he stopped.

He said, “Blood Lancaster, Slim Young, Dizzy Willie, or whatever your name is, don’t get down in this town if you ain’t hip that a pimp don’t never have a whore tight. Do you believe any whore can love a pimp?

“You ain’t no pimp. These slick Niggers will steal that young bitch as soon as you down her. The bartenders and bell hops on this fast track are better pimps than the best in the hinterlands.

“You ain’t got no front and flash. Some of these bootblacks got Hogs. You’ll get that young bitch dazzled out from under you. Get out of town and be a good pimp in a chump town. Go to the West Coast. Believe me, you

ain’t ready for this one.”

He stopped rapping. He sat there just looking at me like I should bolt out the door and head for suckerville. He sure thought he had spooked me. His ribbing had me hot as a Bull Run musket.

I thought, “What did this crippled flunky think I came here for? I knew I was slow. I sure didn’t intend to stay slow. I was determined to maybe get as fast and slick as Sweet Jones, the boss pimp. If I blew the runt it wouldn’t be the end of the world. This poor cry baby had let Sweets cross destroy him.”

I said, “Look Preston, I got lots of heart. I’m not a pussy. I been to the joint twice. I did tough bits, but I didn’t fall apart. I believe my whore loves me in her freak way. I believe I got her.

“If I’m wrong, and I blow her, so what. I won’t give up no matter what happens. If I go stone blind, I’m still going to pimp. If my props get cut off I’ll wheel myself on a wagon looking for a whore. I’m going to pimp or die.

“I’m not going to be a flunky in this white man’s world. You can’t convince me I can’t pimp here. I know I can get my share of pussys to peddle. I’m going to get hip to what I don’t know. I’m not afraid of Sweet. I’m going to cut into him and pick his brain like a buzzard.”

A heavy-set Greek with a carny face came in the door. I dummied up. He walked by us then went through the small door in the partition. Preston started to put his shoes on. He looked nervous.

I asked, “Who’s the big stud? Is he heat?”

He said, “Oh, he’s the owner of the joint come to check the bankroll and cut box.”

“Then you and your pal are flunkies for the Greek?”

Before he could answer the Greek came out. Preston was slipping into his topcoat. The Greek paused and glared at him.

He said, “I ain’t payin you a fin a night to sit on your keister. I can get a hundred boys to jump for that fin and the cot in the back. Your ass will grow icicles in the alleys if you don’t get on the ball. Get out on the midway and dump some suckers into the joint.”

Preston said, “Yes, Sir, Mr. Nick, but I wasn’t setting there but a minute before you showed. You know nobody can pull a mark better than me.”

I avoided Preston’s eyes when we got on the sidewalk. I knew what I’d see there. I felt sorry for him. I pulled a sawbuck from my pocket. I folded it and dropped it into his ragged coat pocket. He took it out and put it in his short pocket.

He said, “Thanks Blood, maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you got the guts for the fast track. You’ll need all you got. Good luck, Kid.”

I said, “Preston, thanks for the rundown. In six months you’ll have to anchor your eyeballs. I’m getting down right on this stem tomorrow night. You can’t stop a stepper. Don’t worry if the Greek boots you out, I’ll cop you a pad.”

I peeped into my skull file and saw that Roost note. My Mickey Mouse read one-thirty A.M. I headed toward the Roost. I had been in town only three- and-a-half hours. It had cost me only two-hundred and twelve slats to find out how little I knew. It’s easy for a half-wise punk to lock his mind. Just this was worth a fortune.

I thought, “I have to keep my mind like a sponge. I’ll use my eyes and ears like suction cups. I have to know everything about crosses and whores.

“Fast, I got to find out the secrets of pimping. I don’t want to be a half-ass gigolo lover like the white pimps. I really want to control the whole whore. I want to be the boss of her life, even her thoughts. I got to con them that Lincoln never freed the slaves.”

The Roost was still jumping. I copped the one open stool at the middle of the bar. A Mexican broad in a red satin cocktail dress brought me a pink Planters Punch.

The combo was speed riffing “Tea For Two.” Through the barlength mirror I could see a black ugly stud playing stink finger with an angel-faced white broad in a booth behind me. He was playing pocket pool with his other hand. The broad had her eyes closed. Her rhinestone tiara looked like a phony halo. She was biting her bottom lip like maybe she was taking a heavenly trip right there in the booth.

My ear cups started sucking. The dapper joker on my right was rapping to the stud on the other side of him.

He was saying, “I want my three bills back. That pretty bitch ain’t turned three tricks since you sold her to me. The bitch is dying. She’s falling apart. She can’t walk the street.”

The seller said, “Jack, I sold you the package as is. I ain’t responsible for divine acts.”

The buyer said, “Divine my ass. You knew that dog was rotten inside and needed a grand’s worth of carving. Give me a yard and a half and take the bitch back.”

The seller said, “You a stick up man? The bitch was whole when I sold

her. Maybe you trying to play con on me. Maybe you stomped on the package. Maybe you put the bitch in bad shape. I ain’t buying her back even if you only wanted a slat for her.”

The buyer said, “Ain’t this a bitch? I went for the okee doke. I’m out three bills for a black dog with a foot in the grave.”

The seller said, “I’m pimping for myself, Jack. I ain’t got no time to pimp for you. Just to get you off my ass, I’m going to rundown for you.

“There’s a whore house up state with all Spic trade. They don’t spend but a fin, but there’s a zillion of ’em. On weekends they line up on the sidewalk.

“All you gotta do is cop some pills. Patch the bitch up and take her up there. Up there, ain’t no walking. She can flat back and so long as she keeps breathing you can get some scratch. Jack, she may even last long enough so you can invest the scratch to overhaul her, and still show a profit.

“The bitch is black and pretty. She ain’t got much mileage on her. Them Spies are wild for black broads. Jim, I been running down the out for you. If you go for it call me at noon.

“In the meantime I’ll contact the joint. Me and the house broad are tight.

It’s a cinch you can place your grief tomorrow.”

The buyer said, “Jack, you know I deserve some cooperation. I’ll try anything to break even on that dog. I’ll call you at noon. I ain’t salty with you now. Let’s split and make the scene at the lair. I’ll pop for a coupla rounds.”

The buyer stood up. He knocked his knuckles against the log. The cute Mexican broad came toward him to check him out. She stood before him. She was smiling.

The seller drained his glass and stood. He leaned across the log staring into her bosom. I was digging the action from that trap door in the corner of my eye.

She said, “Both tabs come to twelve dollars. Yours is seven. Your friend’s is five.”

The buyer said, “I’ve got ’em both. Here’s a double saw. Keep the change Miss Bet I Get You. Say Girl, was that bum your father who brought you in when you started to work here last night? Ain’t you afraid I’ll salt and pepper you and eat you raw?”

She said, “No, not my father, my husband. He’s no bum. He had on his work clothes. People are not good to eat. It’s not nice to eat people. Thanks for the tip. Come back soon.”

The buyer hurled his beak toward the ceiling and laughed. Flakes of

grayish white dust clung to the hairs in his nostrils. He had snorted and loaded his skull with H.

Her mouth was still smiling. Her big black eyes had slitted in Latin fury. She turned away toward the register. She punched it. She came back. She stood staring at the buyer. She had a fin and three slats in her hand. She was crushing them into a missile. In the mirror I saw the seller shaking his head as he walked out the door.

The buyer was looking at her like the eight slats had made her his indentured slave. The four-carat stone on his left hand flashed like neon as he caressed his fly.

He said, “If that tramp was your man I’m stealing you. Shit, I should kidnap you right now. You ain’t got no business juggling suds. Bitch, you got a mint between your big hairy legs. I’m gonna show you how to make a grand a week. I ain’t never wanted nothing and didn’t get it. Bitch, I’m gonna get you. I’ll be back at four to pick you up.”

A massive black bulk with a face like a rabid bulldog had come on the scene. It had to be the joint bouncer. He was standing several feet behind the buyer, grinning like a starved croc. He was hunching his shoulders. The Mexican broad was shaking. She fired the missile. It struck the buyer on the tip of his beak. He threw his hands across his face.

She shouted, “You stupid ugly filth. You insane Nigger bastard. Do you think I’d let you touch me? I wouldn’t shit in your mouth to save your slimy life. If you ever look at me again I’ll cut your heart out!”

The bouncer streaked toward the buyer like a howitzer shell. His feet clickety-clacked like the wheels of an express train against the parquet floor. He vised the buyer’s rear end through the tail split in his topcoat.

He seized the scrawny neck with his other giant paw. The buyer was almost airborne. The tips of his shoes did a tap dance against the floor on his way to the door. The joint was silent. The buyer swiveled his head back toward the angry tamale.

Just before he skidded toward the sidewalk he screamed, “You square-ass greasy chili-gut bitch. I’m gonna triple-cross you.”

The joint got back on jump time. The combo started to riff “Mood Indigo.” I thought about the runt. The Mexican broad had her hands on her hips.

She was looking at me. She wanted me to say the buyer was a nogood bastard. She didn’t know I was up as a pledge in his club.

I put a deuce on the log and walked out. It was two-thirty in the A.M. I

walked to the corner. Preston had been right. Poison’s black whore was standing in front of the liquor store. She hit on me. That terrible beating she had taken sure hadn’t cured her bad habit.

She said, “Hi Slim, give me ten and sock it in. I won’t put the rush on you handsome. Cop a jug and let’s go freak off.”

I jerked my head away from the sight of her like she was Medusa. I put my dogs in high gear and crossed the street. I had a quick vision of Poison’s thirteens giving me a butt ache.

I got into the Ford and made a U-turn. I was going to the runt and some doss. I caught Preston in my headlights on the turn. He was still out there trying to make the Greek richer. He waved. I honked.

The mercury had fallen. The icy streets were like a ski run.

Less than a mile from the Roost, I saw a clean front of a hotel. The blue neon sparkled out “Blue Haven Hotel.” I went into the blue-and-red lobby. A broad was on the desk. She had a razor slash on her tan cheek. She had the build and rapper of a heavyweight wrestler.

She said, “You want something permanent or just for the night?”

I said, “How much are the permanent pads? I want the best you got.

Whatever it is, it’s got to be on the front with a view.”

She said, “The best single rooms are thirty-two-fifty a week. The best three-room apartments are a hundred a week.”

She got up and went to a red board behind her. She took several keys off and gave them to me.

The elevator operator was an old stud reading a wild Maggie and Jiggs comic book. He was whistling “When the Saints go Marching In.” His peepers were glued to it like maybe he had found the map to the “Lost Dutchman.” I got off on the third floor.

I looked at two single rooms. The carpets in them were stained and the furniture was battered. This was an underworld hotel all right. I could smell the odor of gangster grass in the hallways.

I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I looked into two apartments. I went for the second one. It was freshly decorated in gold and black paint. The furniture was blond and new.

It was spotless and flashy. The gold-draped front window gave a wide view of the stem. The pad was perfect for now. It would do until I hit the big time with a big stable.

I went to the elevator and pressed the down button. The floor indicator dial

was stuck between floor number two and three.

I took the stairs down. I figured the antics of Maggie and Jiggs had put a lot of pressure on the old joker. Some whore in the hotel was probably down there with the old coot. They were maybe using the comic book as a guide.

I went to the desk. I registered and paid a week’s rent in advance. I put the key in my pocket and went to the Ford. I drove toward the runt. I saw a black whore leading a white man into the front door of the Martin Hotel, a hundred yards from the Haven. The runt could take her good tricks there.

It was four A.M. when I got there. I parked and went up the hotel stairs. An elevated train shook the stairway as it passed. Its shadow leaped through the second floor window and plunged like a rattling, speeding ghost across the wall.

I turned left to number twenty. I twisted my key in the lock and stepped inside. The runt was wide-eyed. She leaped from the bed. She had on red baby-doll pajamas. She squeezed herself hard against me. She acted like I had been gone a year.

She said, “Oh Daddy, I am so glad you’re back. I was worried like hell. Where have you been? Do you love me as much as I love you? Did you miss me? I’d die if anything ever happens to you.”

A heart-aching montage tornadoed through my skull. I gritted my teeth. I felt my fingernails ice-picking into my palms. The runt’s love con had resurrected sad old scenes.

I saw poor black Henry. He was on his knees blubbering his love for Mama. I saw his pitiful eyes begging Mama not to break his heart. I saw Mama kicking herself free of his clutching arms. I saw that terrible look of scorn and triumph on Mama’s face. I thought about the worms that had devoured his flesh, in his lonely grave.

I shuddered and punched the runt with all my might against the left temple. On impact, needles of pain threaded to my elbow. She moaned and shot backward onto the bed. She bounced like she was on a trampoline. There was a crunching, pulpy thud on the second bounce. She’d crashed face first on the steel edge at the foot of the bed.

She just lay there breathing hard. I moved to the foot of the bed. I grabbed a fist full of hair. I turned her face toward me. Her eyes were closed and there was a bloody gash just above her right eyebrow.

I went to the face bowl and drew a pitcher of cold water. I doused her full in the face. Her eyes flickered open. She just lay looking up at me. A scarlet

trickle ran down her cheek across her chin.

She stroked the side of her face. She saw the blood. Her eyes fullmooned. Her mouth was open. I stood looking down at her. The guts in my scrotum were twisting. I could feel hot currents firing up that generator at the base of my weapon.

Then she said, “Why Daddy? What did I say to get my ass whipped? Are you high or what?”

I said, “Bitch, if I have you a hundred years don’t ever ask me where I been. Don’t ever try to play that bullshit love con on me. We’re not squares. I’m a pimp and you’re a whore. Now get up and keep a cold towel on that eyebrow.”

She got up and stood at the washbowl washing the blood off. Her big eyes were staring at me through the mirror. I didn’t know she had started to keep a revenge score in her skull. Seven years later she would tally up and happily cross me into prison.

She sat on the side of the bed pressing a towel against the wound. I got in the sack in the raw. In fifteen minutes the leak had stopped. It was now only a small puckered slash.

She crawled in beside me. She nibbled at my ear. That lizard did cross- country laps and then took the boss trek around the world. I lay there silently. I was trying to figure the real reason why I had slugged her. I couldn’t find the answer. My thoughts were ham strung by the razor-edge of conscience.

She whispered, “Daddy, do you feel like tying me down? Please. I want you to.”

I said, “Bitch, you got a one track mind. I’m gonna tie you down like a sow in a slaughter house. After you get your rocks off I’m gonna give you the rundown on that stem you’re working tonight. Get on your back. Stretch your legs out and put your arms above your head. That’s right you sweet freak bitch.”

6

DRILLING FOR OIL

That thunderbolt El train had trembled the room a half dozen times. Dawn had broken through a smeary sky. Fingers of pale gray light poked through the frayed window shades.

She was lying in my arms. I saw flakes of brown blood beneath her chin. Her heart against my side was sprinting like a wildcat’s facing the hounds. I could hear the clip-clop of an ice-huckster’s horse. The creaking wagon wheels were in rhythm to his pitch.

He sang, “Ice Man! Ice! A hundred for twenty, fifty for a dime. Keep your watermelon cold and your pork chops fine, ’vite Old Joe up to chitlins just any old time. Ice Man! Ice!”

I thought, “Even the ice man is starving down here. I gotta get down up- there on that stem. Off Preston’s run-down, that stem must be a sonuvabitch. I gotta down her there. It’s where the scratch is.”

“When I rundown to her I have to be cool and confident. I can’t falter and tip her I’m still going to school. I gotta really remember the get down rundown I hustled from those pimps in the joint.”

I said, “Phyllis, Daddy’s been out there casing those streets. It’s like walking in a river of tricky crap. If I had any other bitch but you I would say she couldn’t go out there and get me some scratch. Baby, I got a lot of confidence in you.

“I know no stud or con bitch can sell you a pig in a poke. In fact I would stand in the Halls of Congress and swear that you would be too busy getting scratch to even listen to bullshit. Am I right so far about you, or have I overrated you?”

She said, “Daddy, I’m a big girl now. No nickel-slick bastard can steal me from you. I ‘you-know-what’ you, and always will. Honey, I just want to be

your little dog and make you a million dollars.

“When we get rich maybe you won’t mind if Gay, my daughter, lives with us. She’s only two. She’s so cute and friendly. You’d be crazy about her. My aunt in Saint Louis takes care of her.”

I thought, “I was sure a sap making like a pimp. Here I’d had her a week and I was flat-footed. I hadn’t heard about a crumb crusher. Worse, I hadn’t given her a deep quiz. I really knew nothing about her. It had been the one rundown from the joint I’d goofed. I had been satisfied with the shallow rundown from that sissy barkeep.”

The pimp’s in the joint had said, “There ain’t nothing more important than what makes a new bitch tick and why. You gotta scrape her brain. Find out whether the first joker who layed her was her father or who. Make her tell you her life story.

“If she can remember back in her mammy’s ass, good! Fit all the pieces together. Maybe then you’ll know if she’s a two-day package or a two-year package. Don’t try to play ’em in the dark. Quiz ’em into a crack up if you have to. Wake ’em up from a dead sleep. Check the answers you got with what you get.”

I said, “Girl, your rap is right on the scratch. It’s you and me against the world. I’m gonna make a star out of you. We are going to get rich as cream. You gotta hump your ass off in those streets, Baby. As soon as we get a big bundle you go cop the kid. Now forget about her until we get in shape. I don’t want anything in your skull but those tricks out there.

“Now listen carefully. I want you to work nothing but the street. Stay out of the bars. Don’t drink, smoke gangster, or use anything while you’re working. Your skull has got to be sharp and clear out there. Otherwise you could lose your life, and almost as bad, my scratch.

“Believe me, I am not yeasting it. I want you to memorize everything that happens while you’re working. I want a rundown every night after you knock off. Maybe some stuff player will set you up like tonight and take you off tomorrow night.

“Keep those crack-wise Niggers out of your face. If I see you rapping to a jasper broad I’m gonna put my foot in your ass. Play for cruising white tricks. Spade tricks are trouble. They all want to make a home.

“You’re black and beautiful. They can’t resist you. They are the freaks and they got the scratch. Ask them for a hundred and take ten. You can go down on a price. You can’t go up. Don’t go to nobody’s pad. For a double saw or

over take ’em to the Martin down the street from where we are gonna move. Flip out of wheels as much as possible. Flip ’em fast and crack more scratch for over time.

“Your name is Mary Jones. I got enough B.R. to raise you fast. You’re not a thief. I don’t need a bondsman or a lip now. You don’t have a sheet. You see a young girl out there, square or whore, pull her. Be friendly to her. Build me up. You know, tell her how smart and sweet I am. Don’t let no bitch pull you. This family needs some whores. Don’t bring no junkie bitch to me. Now is there anything you don’t understand?”

She said, “No Daddy, I dig everything. You can wire me if something turns up I don’t dig. Daddy, I am so proud of you. You are so clever and strong. I feel so safe being your girl. I’m gonna be a star for you.”

I had told her all I knew. It was just pimp garbage. What the ninety percent know to tell a whore. What she really needed to protect herself in those terrible streets were daily rundowns for as long as she was my woman. How could I rundown the thousand crosses she’d face?

All I knew I’d gotten from the pimps in the joint. They were only fair pimps from small towns. None of them had the guts or savvy for this rapid track. The runt and me were a pure case of the blind leading the blind. I was bone tired. I had to be fresh for our debut.

I said, “Sugar, let’s cop some doss. We got a hectic night coming up. Oh! I forgot, some louse put the heist on your slum. Don’t worry, with what you got to offer, I’ll have enough scratch soon to score for the real thing. This is our last day in this flophouse. I copped us a jazzy little pad uptown. Sleep tight baby puppy.”

She said, “All right, Daddy. I’m going to sleep. I wonder how Gay is doing?”

When I woke up I thought the runt had scalded me with hot grease. I was in a flaming sweat. My ticker was smashing inside my chest like a wrecker’s demolition ball. That cunning joker playing God had conned me again. I had whipped my poor mama again. The runt’s frightened big eyes almost touched mine. That puckered gash looked like she had grown an extra cat.

She was saying, “Daddy, Daddy, you all right? It’s your baby, Phyllis. Damn, you had a bitch-kitty nightmare. Was the heat chasing you or something?”

I said, “No Baby, as a matter of fact, you were in trouble. You had done a stupid thing in the street. You let a Nigger pimp con you into his Hog. It

turned out he was a crazy gorilla. He was trying to cut your throat. I saved you before he croaked you. Dreams often carry warnings. So Bitch, stay out of those pimp’s Hogs.”

She said, “Daddy, I’m looking for white tricks in Hogs. That’s where the long scratch is. Ain’t no Nigger pimp going to put my ass in a sling. I’m too slick for that okee doke. You not going to get salty with me about a dream I hope. Daddy, I ain’t going to bullshit out there.”

It was five-twenty. By seven o’clock we had moved to the Blue Haven. The runt went for the pad. First thing, she lifted the phone off the hook to see if it worked.

I said, “Tell your tricks to call you here.”

She laid the bearskin and freaked the joint off with her lights and other crap. Except for the fake stars, it was a fair mock-up of her pad where I had copped her. She went to the street to get down at eight.

I had told her to work just the block where we padded for a week or so. I went to the front window. Ten minutes after she got down she broke luck. A white trick in a thirty-seven Buick picked her up. I timed her. She had racehorse speed. She was back on the track in nine and a half minutes.

A black pretty broad could sure scratch a white man’s itch fast. I watched her scratch three. I showered and got as pretty as I could. I made an urgent skull note to cop a hot vine connection. I also needed a gangster and cocaine contact. I got the elevator. I left the key at the desk. I had told the runt to check her scratch past forty slats into the toe of my tan Stetsons.

I got into the Ford. I waved to the runt on my way to the Roost. It sure was a thrill to have a young fine bitch humping for me.

I parked across the street from the Roost. I dabbed a sponge into the box of Sun Glow face powder in the glove compartment. I made my face up into an even, glowing tan. I got out and crossed the street toward the Roost.

It was ten-thirty. The sky was a fresh, bright bitch. This first April night had gone sucker and gifted her with a shimmering bracelet of diamond stars. The fat moon lurked like an evil yellow eye staring down at the pimps, hustlers, and whores hawk-eyeing for a mark, a cop.

I felt the raw tenderness of first April winds lashing at the hem of my white alligator. I felt the birth stirrings of that poisonous pimp’s rapture. I felt powerful and beautiful.

I thought, “I was still black in the white man’s world. My hope to be important and admired could be realized even behind this black stockade. It

was simple, just pimp my ass off and get a ton of scratch. Everybody in both worlds kissed your ass black and blue if you had flash and front.”

I was six storefronts away from the Roost. He stood in the center of the sidewalk. I looked down at him. He was a foot shorter than the runt. He looked like a black baby who had taken ugly pills. His head was the size of a giant pumpkin. His voice was a squeal like a clappy joker makes when the croaker rams a sound down his dingus.

He squealed, “Shine ’em up, Hot Shot. If I had your ‘hand’ I’d throw mine away. Get on bigtime. Shines ain’t but a dime. Shine ’em up.”

I looked down at my Stomps. They could stand a gloss all right. I followed the pointing, gnarled finger to the dwarf’s open-air stand. It sat at the mouth of a gangway between two buildings. The red fringes of its tattered canvas top rippled in the breeze.

I climbed into the chair. The dwarf was slapping polish on my Stetsons. A thin stud with at least a half a grand in threads on his back took the other chair. He was wearing silver nail polish. He was reeking with perfume.

A gleaming black custom Duesenberg eased into the curb in front of me.

The top was down. My peepers did a triple take.

A huge stud was sitting in the back seat. He had an ocelot in his lap dozing against his chest. The cat was wearing a stone-studded collar. A gold chain was strung to it.

He was sitting between two spectacular high-yellow whores. His diamonds were blazing under the streetlight. Three gorgeous white whores were in the front seat. He looked exactly like Boris Karloff in black-face.

He was rapping something. All five of those whores were turned toward him. They were listening and paying attention like he was God giving them a pass to Heaven. He could have been running down a safe place to hide because the world was coming to an end.

I said, “Who is that?”

The dwarf said, “You gotta be from outta town. That Sweet Jones. He’s the greatest Nigger pimp in the world.”

The thin joker said, “That spotted cat, Miss Peaches, is the only bitch he cares lives or croaks. Shit, them whores you pinning ain’t but half the stable. If they got Nigger pimps in outer space, he’s the best of them, too. He’s gonna take them whores into the Roost and pop some. He’s lugging twenty G’s in his raise. Ain’t no heist man crazy enough to stick him up though. He croaks Niggers for his recreation.”

I couldn’t believe what I saw. This was only nineteen-thirty-eight. Those Duesenbergs cost a fortune. He must have been the only black pimp in the country who owned one. My peepers jacked off just watching him and those high-powered whores. It was as exciting as maybe Christ making his encore.

The dwarf had shined my Stomps. I gave him a buck. I sat there and watched Sweet Jones and those whores get out of the Duesenberg and walk toward the Roost. The black-spotted cat slinked beside him.

I thought, “Tonight I got to cut into him. I got to be careful so I don’t blow him. The cut in has to be in the Roost. I’ll go in and cook up something in there.”

I got off the stand. I passed Poison’s problem whore. She was sitting beside a joker in a red Hog. She had a bottle of gin in her jib turned straight up. As I neared the Roost I saw old Preston trying to shoo two marks into the Greek’s joint. Just as I turned into the Roost he bucked his eyes and jerked his thumb at me. He was tipping me Sweet was in the Roost. I nodded my head and went in.

It was an off night for the combo. The jukebox was grinding out “Pennies From Heaven.” The joint hadn’t crowded yet. There were maybe a half dozen couples in the booths. Sweet Jones and his whores were the only people at the log. They were in the center. The cat was licking her paws beneath Sweet’s stool. I sat at the log near the front door facing him and the stable. The pretty Mexican broad was standing in front of him.

Sweet was buying the house a drink. She served his party. She glanced at me. She remembered my drink. She brought me a Planter’s Punch on Sweet. The floor waitress loaded a tray from the log and served the couples in the booths all on Sweet.

I sat there studying Sweet. He had to be six feet six. His face was like a black steel mask. Not a flicker of emotion played over it. He kept smashing the heels of his brute-sized hands together like he was crushing an invisible throat.

Even at a distance it made me edgy. I guess it kept his whores on the brink of peeing on themselves. If he had smiled maybe they would have dropped dead from shock. He sure proved pimping wasn’t a charm contest.

Those whores lit his cigarette. They took turns feeding him sips of his Coke. They fought to ram their noses up his ass.

I froze; one of the white broads was whispering in his ear. Those unearthly gray eyes of his in the ebony sockets were staring at me. I could hear the thud

of those meat sledges.

I thought, “Christ Almighty! Mama darling, I hope my double hasn’t put the muscle on this broad for some snatch or scratch. Please don’t let this broad bum-finger me!”

He slid his terrible pearl-gray peepers off me. I saw him pound the bottom of his glass against the log. The Mexican broad expressed to him. He was rapping to her. She was nodding her head and looking down the log at me.

My Stetsons on the stool rung were slamming together like the heels of a Flamenco Dancer. The jukebox was sobbing Lady Day’s beef about her mean but sweet man. I wondered if I’d see the runt again, and if not, how soon she’d get another ass kicker.

The couples in the booths were bug-eying the arena. It was maybe like the Circus Maximus. The doomed Christian, me, pitted against the king of beasts, him, plus the ocelot.

The Mexican broad came slowly toward me. Her face was tight and serious as she stood before me. She had pity in her peepers. She hated capital punishment.

She said, “Mr. Jones wants you to come to him pronto.”

She turned and walked away. I staggered to my feet. I started hoofing that thousand miles to Mr. Jones. On the way I dusted off the hundred-and- seventy-five I. Q. in my skull.

I got to him. The cat snarled under the stool. It pasted its yellow eyes on me. I jerked my eyes from the cat and kept them riveted to the floor. I was afraid to look into Sweet’s glowing peepers up close. I knew I’d crap in my pants.

He whirled around on his stool, his back to the log. I glued my peepers to the tapping tips of his needle-toed patent leather stomps. I flinched at each crash of his huge hooks.

He whispered, “Nigger, you know who I am? Look at me when I’m spieling to you.”

That teletype in my skull hammered out the escape hatch.

It read, “For this maniac you gotta be just like a Mississippi Nigger. You gotta pretend he’s a white lynch-mob leader. You gotta con him, but be careful, don’t get cute. Keep your nose square in his ass. Jeff it out all the way.”

I said, “Sure I know who you are Mr. Jones. You’re the black God of the sporting world. Ain’t a Nigger alive, unless he’s stupid and deaf, that ain’t

heard your fame and name ring. The reason I don’t look at you is because I remember what happened to that sucker in the Bible that snitched a peep.”

His whores broke out into gales of laughter. Miss Peaches wasn’t a lady. She broke wind and grinned. Those patent-leather toes stopped tapping. Could I be selling it?

He reached out and grabbed my chin. He held my head up and cupped it in his giant hook. I flexed my belly to take up the slack in my bowels. Those deadly gray slits almost slugged me into a dead faint. When he opened his Jib I saw spidery webs of spit for an instant bridge his fat lips.

He said, “Little Nigger, who are you and where you from? You kinda look like me. Maybe I layed your Mammy, huh?”

I neatly side-stepped his booby trap.

I said, “Mr. Jones, I’m nobody trying in your world to be somebody. I was born right here in your town. Could be my Mammy went for you. What bitch wouldn’t? If I was a bitch I’d give you some scratch to get some.”

He said, “Nigger, you like fine white pussy? This dog of mine wants you to lay her. I give my whores what they want. You going to lay her for a double saw?

My skull raced out the warning, “Fool! Watch your ass!”

I said, “Mr. Jones, I don’t want no kind of a pussy unless it hangs on my own whore. Mr. Jones, I’m a pimp, like you. I don’t want nothing but some pimp scratch. My principles won’t let me turn no reverse trick.

“Mr. Jones, I ain’t no party freak. I want to be great like you. I ain’t never going to amount to anything if I screw up the rules of the pimp game. You the greatest pimp on Earth. You got great pimping by the rules. Would you want a poor dumb pimp like me to chump out at the start?”

His freak white woman pouted at his side. She begged Nero to flip his thumbs down.

She said, “Mr. Jones, make this pretty punk freak off with your baby. You don’t let nobody say no to you. Since he’s dreaming he’s a pimp it will be wild kicks for me. Force him, Daddy, force him. Show him who’s boss. Sic Miss Peaches on him.”

He shoved her aside. The boa constrictor uncoiled from around my chest. I saw contempt paint over the skull and crossed bones in his peepers. I drew a deep breath.

He roared, “You little pissy, green-ass Nigger. You a pimp? You can’t spell pimp. You couldn’t make a pimple on a pimp’s ass. Nigger, I’ll blow

your head off through that ceiling. Don’t let the word pimp come outta your jib in my presence. Now get outta my face, Pussy. I oughta stick my swipe in your jib.”

The cat slithered from under the stool. She crouched on her belly and stared up at me.

I wasn’t David. Good thing I wasn’t. I was sure mad at the kooky bastard. I grinned and fished a fin out. I tossed it on the log and dragged tail out the door to the street. I was glad I hadn’t stacked that sling-shot switch blade in my pocket against that thirty-eight magnum stuck beneath Goliath’s belt.

The door smacked Preston a hard shot in the forehead. He had been peeping through a slat in the door blind. He rubbed his head. He looked scared.

He said, “Kid, I told you he’s nuts. You keep it up, a ground hog will be your mailman. To play it safe you better give me your Mama’s address. I gotta know where to ship your corpse. Where you going now?”

I said, “Look Preston, I didn’t cut into him. He cut into me. Hell, I ain’t no head-shrinker. I couldn’t handle the maniac. I’m splitting to the Ford to think.”

He was clucking his jib when I walked away from him. I collapsed onto the Ford’s seat. I was stinking from the fear-sweat in the bar. My pants were soggy.

I saw the white broad that was burning to freak off with me. She was holding the Roost door open. Sweet filed out. His whores strutted out behind him. They walked behind him to the Duesenberg.

A tall brown-skin joker with a gleaming head of processed hair got out of a red Hog. He was the gutty stud I saw pouring that gin down Poison’s girl.

Sweet’s stable had gotten into the Duesenberg. The shiny-topped joker and Sweet were rapping on the sidewalk. They pounded each other on the back. They looked like boon buddies. Miss Peaches stood lashing her tail at Sweet’s side.

I almost leaped out of my hide. It was Preston banging on the car window. I unlocked the door. He slid in. His peepers were ballooning, looking past me to Sweet on the other side of the street.

He was sucking air like a mackerel on the beach. He was shoving a rusty owl-head twenty-two pistol across the seat. He was trembling like the zero second had come to assassinate maybe F.D.R.

He said, “Kid, you sitting here hating him, ain’t you? You despise his guts.

I saw the way you was looking at him. A bastard like him ain’t got a right to live on God’s green Earth.

“Do yourself and the world a favor, Kid. Take this rod and walk sneaky like down that sidewalk while he’s rapping to Glass Top. Stick the barrel in his ear and pull the trigger. Then quick, blow the cat’s brains out. It’s easy, Kid. You can do it.

“Every Nigger in the country will love you. Kid, it’s your chance to get great. Go on, Kid, do it now. You ain’t never gonna get a choicer chance.”

I said, “Preston, I’m not hip to the murder game. I don’t want to get hip to it. I don’t want to blow his brains out on that sidewalk and waste them. I want his brains to work inside my skull. You getting old, Preston. You can’t even dent the mustard. He screwed you around a thousand times worse than me.

“You can’t lose for winning. Why don’t you be the hero and croak him. Look Preston, take that tommy gun and split. I like you, but give me a break, huh? I’ve had a funky night and my skull needs a change.”

He said, “Kid, you think I ain’t got the guts? He ruined me, Kid. He destroyed me. He’s just another Nigger. He ain’t no bear, and that cat ain’t no tiger. I’m going over there right now and cash them out.”

Old Preston sprang out of the car. I watched him all the way. That game leg had him tilting from side to side. He looked like one of those doughty “Spirit of Seventy-Six” jokers on the posters around the Fourth of July.

I wondered if he was tanked up with enough rot-gut moxie to really fold Sweet’s dukes for good across his chest. Preston was on the other side of the street only twenty feet from Sweet and Glass Top. His mitt was rammed into his benny pocket keeping the rod warm and ready. Preston’s shoulders and back were stiff and straight. Sweet’s back was toward me. He was facing the sidewalk.

I thought, “The old Dingbat may do it. He sure had reasons. Sweet put the hurt to him all right. Will there be much gore? Will Sweet croak right away or flop around on the street like a chicken with its head wrung off? Will Miss Peaches leap up and cut Preston’s throat?

“If Preston croaks him I’ll have to cut into Poison. I’ll bleed his skull. He will be top pimp. Maybe a couple of those ten whores Sweet’s got will go for me. I’d be some kind of sonuvabitching young pimp in a Duesenberg.

Preston came abreast of Sweet. He had slowed to an amble. I could see his yellow mitt easing out of his pocket. He got maybe three feet past Sweet and stopped. He was going to do it! He was coming back for a fatal flank sneak.

At that instant Sweet turned his buffalo head and looked down at Preston. Miss Peaches stiffened. I saw a black cavern open in Preston’s toothless yellow face. The chicken-hearted bastard had been chilled by those awful gray orbs and the cat. He was grinning at Sweet. He scooted his empty hand out of his pocket.

Preston might have made it if Sweet hadn’t turned those lights on him. Old Preston bowed his bald head. He walked toward the Greek’s joint. His shoulders were sagging. His back was a stooped slouch. Old Preston had missed his choice chance at glory.

I just sat watching Sweet and trying to plot a way to cut into him. It looked hopeless. Finally, Sweet got in the rear seat of his Duesenberg. The cat leaped into his lap. One of the white broads roared it away. I saw Glass Top pat his greasy dome as he turned into the Roost.

I thought, “That glossy-top stud with a face like a pretty whore’s might be the tunnel to Sweet.”

I took my sponge out and freshened my makeup. I got out of the Ford and walked to the Roost. The joint was getting crowded. I was lucky. There was an empty stool in the middle of the log.

The beautiful joker was on a stool next to it. The memory of that four-slat tip out of the fin sent the tamale skidding to me. I sipped my Planter’s Punch. I drummed my Stetsons against the stool legs. Hamp’s “Flying Home” was rocking the joint.

A pack of white broads had a booth behind me. They looked like they had been to a P.T.A. meeting. Their perfume sent a medley of sexy odors through the joint. They were flirting their cans off. I guess they were writers. They were maybe doing urgent research on the “Sexual Habits of the Black Male.”

I wasted no time. I was afraid the pretty joker might split. I snatched my eyes from the excited pack in the mirror. I turned my head toward him and touched him lightly on the sleeve.

He was sure a wrong doer all right. He frogged at least three inches off his stool. It was like I’d stabbed him in the butt with a red-hot poker. He turned his shocked face toward mine. His silky long-lashed eyes were popped wide in alarm. He had panicked like maybe a cute nun caught naked in the Priest’s bedroom by the Mother Superior.

I said, “Jeez, excuse me, Jim. I didn’t know you were in deep thought, I’m sorry I hit on you like a square. My name is Young Blood. I’m a friend of Preston’s. You must be the fabulous Glass Top. It would be a boss honor to

buy you a taste.”

He patted his shiny mop and said, “Yeah, Man, I’m Glass Top. What’s your stupid story? You young studs sure ain’t got no finesse. It drags me to get hit on like that. When somebody touches me I like to be digging it and facing the stud, you know?

“I ain’t salty. I dig you ain’t nothing but a punk that needs his coat pulled to social polish and class. I ain’t no lush. You can spring for a Coke if you want. Tell her to sugar it heavy.”

The Mexican broad spooned sugar into a glass and brought his Coke. He stirred it with a straw. He raised the glass to drink. I noticed ugly black tracks tracing the veins on his light-brown mitt. He was a junkie for sure. He would know where to cop C, and probably gangster for the runt. He was also a pal of Sweet’s. Maybe I could make a two-bird killing here.

He said, “So, you know Preston? What’s your racket? You a till tapper or maybe a burglar, huh?”

I said, “I been knowing Preston since I was a kid. I used to buff his stomps when he was pimping. I’m no till tapper or burglar. I’m a pimp. You must be a pimp yourself. I saw you rapping to the best pimp there is.”

He said, “You a pimp? I ain’t never heard of you. Where you been pimping, in Siberia? Sweet ain’t the best pimp there is. I am. Pimps are just like cars. The best known ain’t no real yardstick to the best car. It’s like I’m a Duesenberg and Sweet’s a Ford. I got all the quality and beauty. He’s got all the advertising and all the luck.

“Sweet’s got ten whores, I got five. These whores in town ain’t hip to how great I am yet. When they wake up to me I’ll have to fight ’em off with a baseball bat. How many girls you got?”

I said, “I only got one girl now. I just got out of the joint, but I’m going to have ten in a year. This town will hear about me. I was thinking about cutting into some top pimp like Sweet. I’m not stupid enough to think I don’t need to learn a thousand times more about pimping than I know. I also need connections like for girl and gangster. I’m just a kid in darkness waiting for some brain to help light the way.”

He said, “Stay cool, Blood. I just remembered I left my kitty’s slammer open. I’ll be back after I lock it.”

I looked in the mirror and saw him go out. He turned left towards the Greek’s joint. I knew he was going to Preston to check me out. When he walked out that panting pack behind me turned as one. It was like Gary Grant

had walked out.

The jukebox was moaning gut-bucket blues. Some joker was singing “Going down slow; Don’t send no Doctor; Doctor sure can’t do no good; Please write my mother, tell her the shape I’m in; I’m going down slow.”

I remembered it had been my father’s favorite record. He had kept it spinning on the rich Victrola. I remembered his shocked face there in the doorway when he discovered it and everything else gone. I wondered if he were alive and still in town. If I ran into him I sure wouldn’t know what to say to him after all these years.

I saw the silk chicks crane their necks toward the door. I switched my eyes left in the mirror. I saw Glass Top coming in. Those chickens were clucking when he sat down.

I said, “Jack, aren’t you afraid those silk broads behind us will rape you?” He said, “Shit, if you stripped and searched all of ’em you wouldn’t find a

C note. They ain’t nothing but square housewives. They sick of that half-ass screwing at home. They laying to swindle chump Niggers outta their youth.

“They know enough on each other to keep all their jibs sealed. Ain’t a chance for their husbands to tumble to what’s going on. So what if some white joker who knows ’em made this scene and saw ’em? Everyone of ’em is just slumming out with the girls. Jack, what they got is a secret sex club.”

I said, “Top, I’m frayed. I sure wish I had a snort of girl. Can you score?”

He told me, “Blood, I believe you are a down young stud. I got news for you. You can score right with me. I got the best girl and boy in town. Even my reefer is dynamite. Blood, I love you. You got heart. How much stuff you want?”

I said, “What’s the bite for girl?”

“A fin a number-five cap. A sixteenth for a C. A piece for a grand. I got a cozy pad around the corner. There you can fly to the moon, Pimping Buddy.”

I said, “Top, let’s split to your pad. If your girl is mellow I’ll maybe go for a C note.”

I threw a fin on the log. The Mexican showed me her choppers like I was her dentist. Three square black studs were standing rapping to the purring pack in the booth.

We went out and got in Glass Top’s Hog. My foot struck a bottle. I looked down. It was the dead gin soldier Poison’s whore had sucked dry. The Hog shot from the curb like a red torpedo. Eckstein’s syrupy “Cottage For Sale” oozed from the Hog’s radio.

I thought, “I sure gotta hurry and get my ass into a Hog at least. I’ll cop a Duesenberg in maybe a year. Geez, it must be one-thirty. I shoulda checked on the runt. My luck is changing though. This glossy-top joker is my in to Sweet.”

He lived in a plush apartment building. It had all the jazz. Technicolored lights spotlighted the exterior. Fake rubber plants stood tall in the foyer.

We took a chrome-and-brass elevator to his second-floor pad. Thick red broadloom carpet wall to wall in the hall. Fresh black and gold paint sparkled the walls and ceilings.

A Polynesian-type dream took our bennys and my lid in a small silver- mirrored entrance hall. My feet sank into the soft lavender carpet. I could hear the deep-throated boom of a console phonograph. The Ink Spots’ lead tenor was parfaiting “Whispering Grass.”

I followed Top and the olive-tinted beauty into the womb-like living room. Double heavy lavender drapes covered the windows. Not a beam of street light or sunshine could violate this pimp’s lair.

Top and I sat on a long gray sofa. It had cost him a big buck to lower the ceiling with the silver lame fabric. The only light came from the glass-topped cocktail table. It gurgled and flashed a pale blue light.

A score of yellow, red, and orange tropical fish streaked inside the aquarium built six inches below the tabletop. Two gray rubber hoses at each end of the tank ran down into the lavender carpet. It was a slick drain off and fresh water gimmick.

The broad was almost naked. She stood wide legged in front of us like a bellhop waiting for orders. The table’s blue light behind her silhouetted her Coca Cola bottle curves inside the flame red shortie gown. I saw a four-inch cone of jet hair between her thighs. She had a rare cat with that extra dimension. I unglued my eyes and looked into her face. She had the dreamy eyes of a freakish “Mona Lisa.”

He said, “Bitch, bring a coupla outfits and some caps of girl and boy. Oh yeah, Blood, this is Radell.”

That awesome round butt of her’s jiggled as she wiggled past me. The big white phonograph in the corner was booming out a novelty tune. “When your pipes get dry then you know you’re high. Everything is dandy. You truck on down to the candy store but you don’t get no peppermint candy. Then you know your body’s sent, you don’t care if you don’t pay rent. Light a tea and let it be if you’re a viper.”

“This pretty gowster is sure pimping his ass off,” I thought. “He’s a crazy gowster if he thinks he’ll con me into banging any

1. I’m not even sure about shooting the girl. Of course, I can’t come off like a hayseed either.”

I said, “Jim, you sure ain’t jiving. Your layout is a sonuvabitch.”

He said, “I got five bedrooms here. These whores on this fast track dig front and flash. You can’t pimp here unless you got ’em. Jack, this C I got ain’t going to let you split for awhile. You may as well shed your threads and get in the groove.”

The broad brought the outfits, a spoon and a dozen white and brown caps. She put them on the cocktail table. She slid it closer to us. The water tidal- waved in the tank. The fish darted in a frenzy. She stooped and started unlacing Top’s shoes. I reached into my pocket for a C note. I had peeled it off from my crotch stash before leaving the Haven.

He said, “This flight is on me. It’s a sample. You can cop what you want later.”

We stripped our clothes off to our shorts. His were candy-striped silk. I felt like a bum in my white cotton jocks.

The broad draped our clothes on each arm of the gray overstuffed chair across the room. She didn’t have any of my scratch in her mit when she came away. She stood next to me. The phone on the end table beside him jangled. He uncradled it.

He said, “Castle of Joy, what’s your desire? Oh yeah, Angelo, she’s here.

Hell no she ain’t dossing. She’s on her way.”

He hung up and said, “Bitch, just slip your benny on and get downtown to that head bellboy at the Franklin Arms. Dimples and the other girls are getting more action than they can turn. Take the key to the kitty and get there fast.”

The broad zipped out of there in less than three minutes. She sure liked getting her man some money. Those tricks at the Franklin were going to give their swipes a treat all right.

I thought, “I gotta make the runt cultivate her cat like that broad’s.”

He said, “That’s a good young bitch I got there. I copped her in Hawaii a year ago. There are twenty-thousand white suckers in town for a convention. They got a double saw in one hand and their swipes in the other.

“Radell ain’t had no sleep in thirty-six hours. My other four whores been humping at the Franklin since early this morning. I can’t miss a five G score

for the three days even with Angelo’s thirty percent off the top. Ain’t but a C a day for a girl in oil for the heat.”

He got up and whistled our belts through the loops in our pants. He walked back and started to coil my belt around my arm just above the elbow hollow.

“Look Top, I’m not a square,” I said, “but I ain’t shooting no H. I’m game to bang some C. I’ve been curious to try it like that.”

He said, “Kid, I ain’t squeezing your balls to hip you that after Mink comes Sable. Ain’t nothing a greater blast than horse. It’s your privilege to wake up slow if you want. Horse is what puts the ice in a pimp’s game.”

He upended a cap of girl into the spoon and stuck an eyedropper into the fish tank. He pressed the bulb and drew the dropper full. He emptied it into the spoon. He held the yellow flame of a table lighter beneath the spoon and took a tiny wad of cotton from an ashtray. He tossed it into the bowl of the spoon and then wrapped a thin piece of cellophane around the tip of the dropper. He fitted the needle on it. He stuck the hollow end of the needle into the cotton and drew the dropper full.

I felt my blood smashing against the tight coils of the belt. I saw the veins balloon in the throbbing hollow. I smelled the sharp sicklysweet odor of the cocaine. My palms were dripping sweat. He had the spike in his right hand. He grabbed my forearm with his left hand. I turned my head and closed my eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip waiting for the stabbing plunge of the needle.

He said, “Damn! You got some beautiful lines.”

I shivered when it daggered in. I opened my eyes and looked. My blood had shot up into the dropper. He was pressing the bulb. I saw the blood- streaked liquid draining into me. It was like a ton of nitro exploded inside me. My ticker went berserk. I could feel it clawing up my throat. It was like I had a million swipes in every pore from head to toe. It was like they were all popping off together in a nerveshredding climax.

I was quivering like a joker in the hot seat at the first jolt. I tried to open my talc-dry mouth. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I could feel a hot ball of puke racing up from my careening guts. I saw the green, stinking puke rope arch into the black mouth of the wastebasket. I felt the cool metal against my chest. I saw Top’s manicured fingers pressing it close to me.

He was saying, “You’ll be all right in a minute, Kid. You thought I was bullshitting when I told you I had the best stuff in town.”

I still couldn’t say anything. I felt like the top of my skull had been crushed

1. It was like I had been blown apart and all that was left were my eyes. Then tiny prickly feet of ecstasy started dancing through me. I heard melodious bells tolling softly inside my skull.

I looked down at my hands and thighs. A thrill shot through me. Surely they were the most beautiful in the Universe. I felt a superman’s surge of power.

I thought, “It was a cinch that any stud as beautiful and clever as me would become the greatest pimp in history. What bitch could resist me? I turned and stared at the ugly stud beside me.”

He said, “Did you hear those chapel bells? Ain’t they a bitch, Kid?”

“Yeah man, I heard ’em loud and clear. Right now I’d like to see the bitch I couldn’t make. It’s sure wild to bang girl. The only time I’ll snort after this is when I’m in the street between bangs.”

He said, “Blood, you sure know what to say. Just don’t forget where to cop. The more you buy, the cheaper I’ll make it. I love you, Blood. We gonna be tight.”

He had a time trying to bang himself. He was only around thirtytwo, but most of his veins had folded. He finally hit pay clay in his inner right thigh. He kept the needle in, pumping the horse into the vein then drawing it out.

I said, “Jack, why the hell do you screw around like that?”

He said, “Man, you ain’t hip? That’s where the thrill is. When I jack this joint off the horse kicks my ass groovy.”

I lost tally of time while we sat on the sofa and banged stuff. After the second cap I started banging myself. After that first bang the thrill wasn’t as good and sharp. Top was coasting. There were three caps of H still on the tabletop. There was no girl. I had banged five caps of girl. I looked at my Mickey. It was five A.M. I went to my clothes and started to dress. My ticker was speeding inside my frosty chest.

I said, “Top, I gotta split I want a sixteenth of girl and a can of reefer.

Here’s a C note and twenty slats.”

He pulled up from the sofa. He took the scratch and went into a bedroom.

He came out and handed me a tobacco can sealed with rubber bands.

He said, “Kid, I put a coupla yellows in your bag so you can come down and get some doss. Where you padding? You don’t wanta walk through the street with that package of sizzle on you. I’ll call a cab.”

I said, “Thanks Top. I’m padding at the Blue Haven, but my wheels are just around the corner across from the Roost. I’ll hoof it there. The fresh air

will be a kick.”

I stood at the living room doorway to the entrance hall. He was uncapping a thing of horse.

I thought, “Now’s the time to crack on him to sew up the cut into Sweet. I gotta phrase it right. This joker envies Sweet.”

I said, “Top, I was thinking how much more common sense and cool you got than your pal Sweet.”

His hands froze. His eyes beat his mouth to the question. I knew Preston hadn’t told him about my clash with Sweet. I guess Preston’s chicken act had blocked Sweet out of his mind.

Top said, “You know Sweet personally?”

“I met him last night in the Roost. That tall blonde of his wanted me to freak-off with her. Sweet offered me a double saw to do the job. I stood on pimp principle and turned him down. He flipped his cork. He forced me to split. He told me he’d blow my head through the ceiling. I figured he might do it.

“I guess now I have blown my chance to get acquainted with him. I don’t suppose anybody in town is strong enough with him to square me and cut me into him. As foxy as you are Top, I wouldn’t be shocked if you couldn’t cut it. After all, the man is complicated. Come to think about it Top, I don’t have a real need to meet him since I met you.

“My main reason now is I don’t want a crazy enemy like that. So if you tell me it’s over your head, I’ll forget it, stay out of his way and take my chances. I love you Top, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you on my account.”

He gobbled it raw and whole. He flung his girlish head back and roiled off the sofa to the floor. He held his elbows against his belly and laughed like I’d told the funniest joke human ears had ever heard. He was gasping when he finally stopped. He patted his mop.

“Sweet ain’t dangerous, sucker,” he began. “He ain’t never croaked anything but yellow Niggers. He’s croaked four of them in the last twenty years. He ain’t croaked nobody in over two years. He’s ninety percent Bull scare. He don’t kill nobody unless they bad mouth him or muscle his whores. “But he sure hates white folks. He pimps awful tough on white whores.

When he puts his foot in their asses he’s really doing it to the white man. He says he’s paying ’em back for what they done and are doing to black people. His brain is rotted from hate.

“Shit, he probably wouldn’t know you if he saw you again. He wasn’t salty with you for turning down the freak-off. He was playing strong con on his white whore. He’s got his whores thinking he’s God. Even a square from Delaware should know God ain’t going to kiss your ass when you tell him no, you poor boob.

“I tell you what. I gotta take him some stuff this weekend. I’ll buzz your crib to let you know just when. I’ll stop on the way and pick you up. I’ll take you with me to his pad. He ain’t nothing but a big ugly Nigger with a filthy loud mouth.”

I said, “I pad in four-twenty under the name of Lancaster. Top, you gotta overlook my dumbness. I told you I was just a kid in darkness needing some brain to light the way. Top, I sure appreciate your coat-pulling. See you later, Pal.”

He said, “All right Kid, keep that sizzle in your mitt so you can down it in a hurry. Oh yeah, you can cop a spike at any drug store. You gotta crack for insulin with it.”

I walked into the entrance hall. I flicked my sponge across my greasy face in the silver mirror. I went out the door to the elevator. It opened on the ground floor. I flinched before the stark morning light.

Out on the sidewalk, I saw Glass Top’s red Hog pulling to the curb. It was his five whores back from the Franklin Arms salt mines.

I thought as I walked to the Ford, “How about it? Those five whores are probably checking in a coupla grand for a night’s work. Why couldn’t it be me up there in that crazy pad with my mitt out for all those frog skins?”

The night people had vanished from the street. Knots of squares on the way to work bunched at the street-car stops. I got in the Ford and U-turned toward the Haven.

I saw an all-night drug store and pulled into the parking lot. I copped a saw-buck pair of binoculars, and at the drug counter, I got the insulin and copped spikes and eyedroppers. Five minutes later I got to the Haven. I parked on the street.

I glanced up at our apartment window. I saw the drapes flutter. I got a flash of the runt’s dark face pulling back. I walked through the lobby to the elevator. The joint sure looked shabby after Top’s joint.

I thought as I got on the elevator, “If the runt is shitty and tries to third degree me this morning I’ll bury my foot in her ass.”

I got off on the fourth floor. I walked down the hall to four-twenty. I slid

the rubber bands off the top of the tobacco can. I opened the top and took my packet of girl out. It was wrapped in tin foil inside a penny balloon. I shoved it into my watch pocket. I took a yellow from the top of the loose reefer and dry-swallowed it.

I knocked on the door. I waited a full minute. I knocked again, harder. Finally the runt opened it. She was stretching and massaging her eyes with her fists, conning me she had been fast asleep. She jumped into bed. She turned her back and pulled the covers to her ears.

I put the can of reefer on the dresser. I saw a tiny pile of bills on it. I heeled them apart. It was only forty slats. I went to the closet and checked the toes of the tan Stetsons. Empty! I stashed the binoculars in a coat pocket with my C and bang outfit I saw smoke spiraling from a cigarette lying on the base of the plaster copy of “The Kiss” near the front window.

I said, “Bitch, what did you do, break your leg or knock off as soon as you saw me split? Is this tonight’s take? Turn over so I can see that black mug of yours.”

I was standing at the side of the bed. My right hand was resting on the closed plastic lid of the record player. The tips of my fingers were touching the back of it near the motor. It was warm. I raised the lid. Lady Day’s whimper about that “mean man” was on the turntable. The runt turned slowly. I looked down into her face. Her eyes were narrow. Her jib was puffed out. She and Lady Day had been dragging me through the mud all night. The whore was acting like an outraged housewife.

She said, “Ain’t I never going to be nothing but a bitch to you? Call me Phyllis the whore, or Runt the fool. You’d never believe it but I’m human. That scratch I made tonight ain’t bad. These streets are new to me. I gotta feel my way and get hip to the tricks.”

That cocaine was blowing a frosty blizzard through my skull.

I said, “Bitch, when your funky black ass is in the grave you’ll still be a bitch; Bitch, one of these nights you’re going to shoot your jib off, I’ll curtsy and call you Runt the corpse. You stinking bitch I’m hip you’re human. You’re a human black slop-bucket for those peckerwood swipes.

“You gutless idiot, I’m going to throw you out that window if you don’t get the kinks outta your ass an hustle some real scratch. Don’t get hip to the tricks, Bitch. Get hip to what I’m rapping. If you don’t stop your bullshit, I’m gonna kick your heart out and stomp on it. Now don’t crack your jib unless I rap to you, Bitch.”

I started to take my clothes off. She just lay there staring at me. Her eyes were gleaming like a crazy Voodoo Doctor’s. I got into bed. I turned my back to her. I could feel the freak inching toward me.

She stroked the back of my neck. I felt the hot tip of the lizard on the back of my neck. I felt the scab on her brow scrape the tip of my ear. I pulled away toward the edge of the bed.

She said, “Daddy, I’m sorry I bugged you. I love you. Please forgive me.”

The bed creaked when I rattlesnaked to strike. I hooked my right heel under the bed springs. I raised myself on my right elbow. I drew my “ved” left arm back so the back of my left fist touched my right cheek. I grunted for velocity and blackjacked my left elbow into her gut-button. She groaned and wrapped and unwrapped her legs. She chattered her teeth like she was freezing to death.

I could feel that yellow drawing a heavy black curtain inside my dome. Just before I went under I thought, “I wonder if the runt can lug a hundred and fifty pounds to that window.”

7

MELODY OFF KEY

The blast of the phone woke me. The pad was dark as hell. I flung my left hand out for the runt. She wasn’t there. I fumbled the receiver to my ear.

I said, “Hello, this is Mary’s brother.”

He said, “I wanta speak to Mary. Put her on, yeah?” I said, “She just went out. She’s taking a walk.”

He hung up. I cradled the phone on the bedside table. I switched the table lamp on. I checked Mickey. It was seven-thirty P.M. I wondered if I had blown the runt.

I got up and checked the closet. Her clothes were still there. I went to the dresser. I checked the forty slats. Two were missing. There was a note beside the scratch.

It read, “Daddy, I took a deuce for the street. I’m gonna hump my ass off.

Please try to be a little sweet to your little bitch dog, huh?”

I thought, “I’m stumbling upon some pimp answers. It looks like the tougher a stud is the more a whore goes for him. I’ll sure be glad when those four days pass and I go with Top to the Sweet cut in. I gotta watch that the runt don’t get hip I’m banging stuff. Gee, I’m starved. I gotta eat before I bang some girl.”

I went to the phone. The broad who should have been a wrestler picked up. I said, “Anybody down there to get me bacon and eggs?”

She said, “Wait a second, I’ll let you talk to Silas, the elevator man.” The old Maggie and Jiggs fan said, “Yeah, Big Timer, what is it?”

I said, “Silas, can I get bacon with eggs over light, and toast?”

He said, “Yeah, there’s a greasy spoon right across the street I’m going now.”

I hung up and went to the closet. I got the spy piece. I went to the window.

I saw the old jink hobble across the street toward the Busy Bee Cafe.

I made a sweep up and down the street to spot the runt. I didn’t see her. I zeroed the spy into the greasy joint. The runt was draining a cup of coffee at the counter. She came out. Her eyes flashed whitely up at our window.

She walked down the street twisting her rear end at the passing cars. I saw her round black ass hook a white trick in a black Hog. He skidded to the curb. She got in. I wondered if it was the same joker that called.

I ducked into the shower. I was toweling off when I heard a rap on the door. I saronged the towel. On the way to the door I scooped the can of gangster off the dresser and stuck it behind the mirror.

I heard Silas outside the door whistling “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I opened the door. He had a tray in his hands. I took it. A paper napkin fluttered to the floor. He stooped for it.

I looked into the big brown eyes of a pretty yellow broad coming out of the door across the hall. The scar-faced stud who tooted at the Roost had walked out in front of her. He had a saxophone case under his arm. She rolled her lustrous eyes at me. They rocketed to that lump on the sarong. Her sly hot smile made a flat statement, “Please, try it for size.”

I skull noted her. Silas finally tore his eyes from her rear end floating down the hall. He had squeezed the paper napkin into a damp ball.

He said, “That’s a buck.”

I put the tray on the dresser. I took three slats to the door and gave them to him.

I said, “Silas, that’s quite a package with Mr. Hyde. Give me a rundown, huh?”

He said, “Yeah, she’s stacked tough enough to make a preacher lay his Bible down. The horn blower ain’t had her but a coupla years. She’s done rammed her cat scent up his nose and got him hooked. She was a whore until he squared her up.

“He’s got it bad. He don’t allow her outta his sight. Any club he plays she hasta be right there stuck in his ass. If I was thirty years younger I’d steal her. “Thanks, Big Timer, for the deuce. Any time you want something, call old

Silas. Sit the tray outside your door when you finish.”

I sat on the side of the bed and wolfed down the bacon and eggs. I felt better. I wanted to feel wonderful. I put together everything for bang time. I held the end of a necktie in my teeth. I coiled it and tightened it around my arm. On first stab I hit a perfect bullseye. I did Top’s jackoff bit. I threw up. I

just made it to the john. The kick was greater than the one at Top’s.

I thought, “What if my black face like magic turned white. Shit, I could go out that hotel front door and sneak through the barbedwire stockade. I’d be like a wolf turned loose on a flock of sheep. That white world wouldn’t tumble that I’m a Nigger. I could pay ’em all back in spades, the Dummy, the White Bull, that bastard judge that crucified me on my first rap. Once I escape this black hell I’ll find a way all right. Well Nigger, you’re pretty, but a bleach cream will never be invented that will make you white. So, pimp your ass off and be somebody with what you got. It could be worse, you could be an ugly Nigger.”

I dressed and powdered my face. That sure was one pretty sonuvabitch in that mirror. I saw a roach scouting the tray’s rim. I shoved the tray out into the hall.

I thought, “I gotta start stalking that fine bitch across the hall. Maybe I’ll decoy the runt to get past that scarfaced watchdog. I guess I’ll take a walk. Maybe I can cop my second whore. I feel hard and lucky as a horseshoe.”

I put the can of reefer and the other sizzle into a paper bag. I locked the door and went down the hall toward the elevator. On the way, I stopped at the porter’s broom closet. It was unlocked. I tiptoed and shoved the bag of sizzle behind some junk on a shelf.

The cocaine had me froggy. I saw the floor indicator stop at floor number two. I took the stairway to the lobby. I dropped the key on the desk and glided to the street. The cocaine had fitted wings on my feet. I felt cool, breathless, and magnificent. It was a balmy eighty degrees. I was glad I’d left the benny.

I walked toward a rainbow bouquet of neon maybe ten blocks away. My senses screamed on the razor-edge of cocaine. It was like walking through a battlefield. The streaking headlights of the car arcing the night were giant tracer bullets. The rattling crashing street-cars were army tanks. The frightened, hopeless black faces of the passengers peered through the grimy windows. They were battleshocked soldiers doomed forever to the front trenches.

I passed beneath an El-train bridge. A terrified, glowing face loomed toward me in the tunnel’s gloom. It was an elderly white man trapped behind enemy lines. A train furled by overhead. It bombed and strafed the street. The shrapnel fell in gritty clouds.

I was too nervous for the combat zone. I whistled at a general in a yellow

staff car to halt. He whisked me to that oasis of neon. It turned out he was a mercenary. He shafted me a slat and a quarter for the evacuation.

I got out and mothed toward a Haggling flash. The “Fun House.” It was a bar. I opened the door and stepped inside. It almost busted the gaskets in my bowels. A phosphorescent green skeleton popped up out of the floor in front of me. It screeched a hollow howl and then dived back into the floor through a trap door.

I just stood there shaking. I couldn’t figure why those crazy jokers at the bar were yukking like pickaninnys. To stay with the program I mastered a King Fish grin. I went to the bar and sat between “Amos” and “Andy.”

I saw a tall stud with a Frankenstein mask on behind the log. He darted his hand in a sneaky way under the log. There was a wooshing noise like a tire going flat. My stool descended beneath me. I looked up at Amos. My nose was an inch from the log. Amos was grinning down at me.

Amos said, “You sho nuff ain’t been here befo, is you Slim? You frum de big-foot country?”

Andy said, “Wait til he ketch his win. He gonna buy us a pitchuh suds. We gonna lurn ole home boy bout dis big city rigamaro.”

Everybody at the crowded log yukked in a deep South accent. Frankenstein pushed his mercy button. I felt the stool stretching up. With the cocaine kangarooing me, and this booby-trapped nest of low-life suckers I stumbled into I had more than a frantic yearning for maybe four-twenty at the Haven.

He walked down the log to me.

He said, “It’s all in fun. Welcome to the ‘Fun House.’ What’ll it be?”

I ignored him. I got off the stool. I looked down at it. Its metal legs were tubular and anchored to the floor. It had to be a compressed air gizmo. I stepped back and looked at the two ex-cotton pickers. I twitched my nose. I looked down and around them, then the length of the log. I fingered the button on that sling shot in my raise.

I said, “King Fished, Holy mackul, boys. You smell dat? I’se wunder iffen some po stupid Nigger’s funky-ass, nappy-head Southern Mammy ain’t dose shit out anuther square-ass, ugly bastard turd?”

Amos and Andy dropped their jibs like plantation idiots. They shot an anguished look at the white joker behind the log. I walked out the door. They didn’t dig my humor. Maybe it was too “in.”

I slammed into a perfumed line-backer. In reflex, I threw my arms around her soft shoulders. She had the flawless face of Olivia de Haviland. She was

bigger and prettier. I felt the fabric of her tailored black suit petal stroke across my fingertips. She was the finest broad I’d seen since my last movie. I wondered if she was a whore. I decided to hit on her.

I said, “I’m sorry. Ain’t it a bitch, baby the first time we meet it had to be in a collision like two-square? Sugar, were you going into this tramp joint? Believe me there’s no action inside for a package like you. I just stopped in to make a call. My name is Blood. What’s yours?”

Her big curvy legs were wide tracked. I saw the fabulous shadow of her rear end on the sidewalk. Through the filmy orange blouse I saw a pink mole on her milk-white midriff. She brushed back a wayward lock of silky black hair from one of the big electric blue eyes. Her even choppers gleamed like rare china. Her crimson tongue doodled across the cupid bow lips. She was doing a bit that would have shook up a eunuch.

She said, “Blood! How quaint. Your idiom is fascinating. My name is Melody. I don’t drink in bars. Occasionally I go to a supper club. I am not looking for action. As a matter of fact my car is disabled. I was going inside to call for help when our heavenly bodies collided. Is it possible that you’re not oblivious to the esoteric aspects of car repair? Mine is there at the curb.”

My eyes followed her manicured finger to the sparkling new Lincoln sedan. Everything about her hollered class and affluence.

I thought, “This beautiful white bitch has class. She sounds like an egghead. With wheels like that she’s probably got a bundle in the darner! Maybe she’s got some rich sucker in her web. I’ll nut roll on her. I’ll stay outta the pimp role until I case her. I’ll go Sweet William on her. Maybe I can string her out and get all that scratch she’s got, then make a whore outta her. With her rear end, this bitch is sitting on a mint.”

I said, “Darling, I’m not a mechanic. I did learn a little about cars from a buddy in a prep school I just finished. You get in. I’ll raise the hood and have a look.”

She got in. I raised the hood. I spotted the trouble right away. A battery cable had jarred loose. I put it back on. I looked around the hood and signaled for the starter try. She did and smiled happily when the engine throbbed to life. She waved me to her. I stuck my head through the open window.

She said, “Are you driving? If not I should love to take you wherever you want to go.”

I said, “Honey, I’m not driving and it’s a long sad story. You don’t want to hear my troubles. If you drop me off at some nice bar, I promise not to bore

you with it.”

I got in. She pulled out into traffic. We cruised along. For two minutes we were silent. I was busy trying to think of the opener for that long sad story. I had read a cellhouse full of books. I knew I could rise to a smooth pitch. That old philosopher convict had told me I should forget the pimp game and be a con man.

I said, “Melody, doesn’t fate puppeteer humans in a weird way? There I was coming out of that joint, I had just called a garage a hundred miles away. The engine of my car burnt up on my way here from Saint Louis a week ago. I was depressed, lonely, and hopeless in a big, friendless city.

“The mechanic had just dropped the bad news. The charge to get the car is a hundred and fifty dollars. I have fifty. I was blind with worry when I came out that door.

“My elderly mother has to have a pancreas operation. I came here to work for a contractor in the suburbs. I’m a talented carpenter. I need my car to get to work. I’m committed to start work the first of next week. Mama’s going to die sure as the sun rises in the East unless I get that money for her operation.

“The strange wonderful thing is, Darling, with all these problems I feel so good. See those garbage cans glittering between the tenements? To me they are giant jewels. I want to climb up on those rooftops and cry out to the stars, I have met, I have found the beautiful Melody. Surely I’m the luckiest black man alive. Convince me you’re real. Don’t evaporate like a beautiful mirage. I’d die if you did.”

Out of the side scope in my eye I saw those awesome thighs quivering. She almost crashed the Lincoln into the rear end of the gray Studebaker ahead of us.

She cut in sharply and grated the Lincoln’s wheels against the curb. She shut the motor off and turned toward me. Her eyes were blue bonfires of passion. The pulse on the satin throat was maniacing. She slid close to me. She zippered her scarlet mouth to mine. That confection tongue flooded my mouth with sugar. Her nails dug into my thighs. She gazed at me.

She said, “Blood, you sweet black poetic panther. Does that prove I’m real. No, I know I don’t want to evaporate, ever. Please, let’s don’t go to a bar. You can’t solve your problems with alcohol. My parents are out of the city until tomorrow noon. Settle for coffee and conversation at my place. Will you Blood? Perhaps we can find solutions to your problems there. Besides, I’m expecting Mother to call me at home later this evening.”

I said, “Angel of mercy, I’m putting myself in your tender hands.”

She lived a long way from the black concentration camp. She drove for almost an hour. I could smell the pungent odors of early April plant life. This white world was like leaving Hell and riding through Heaven. The neat rows of plush houses shone in the moonlight. The streets were quiet as maybe the Cathedral in Rheims.

I thought, “Ain’t it a bitch? Ninety-eight percent of the black people back there in Hell will be born and die and never know the joys of this earthly Heaven. There ain’t but two passports the white folks honor. A white skin, or a bale of scratch. I sure got to pimp good and cop my scratch passport. Well, at least I get a Cinderella crack at Heaven. This is good. It’s hipping me to what I’m missing.”

We turned into her driveway. I saw the soft glow of a table lamp behind blue drapes in the front room. She parked the Lincoln in a pink stucco garage that matched the house. The garage was connected to the house. We went through the back door. We passed through the kitchen. Even in the dimness it sparkled. We moved like burglars through the half-darkened house. We walked on deep-pile carpet up a stairway. We got to the top. She stopped.

She whispered, “Blood, I was born in this house. Everybody in the block knows me. If some friend passed and knew someone was at home, we might get an unwelcome visitor. We’ll go to my bedroom in the rear.”

I followed to her bedroom. She flipped on a tiny blue light over a mirrored dressing table. The bedroom was done in pale blue and off-white. The queen- sized bed had a blue satin canopy over it. I sat down on a white silk chaise next to the dressing table. She switched on an ivory radio. Debussy’s “Clare de Lune” sweet-noted gently through the room.

She kicked off her tiny black calfskin shoes. She was even more beautiful here than she had been in the street. She stroked my ear lobes with her fingertips.

She said, “Mommy’s pretty black panther don’t run away now. I’m going downstairs and make coffee.”

She went down the stairs.

I thought, “I’m gonna crack on her for scratch. She should be good for a C note at least. A C note ain’t bad to break the ice with. If she springs for it, I’ll tie her to that bed and put my Pepper-specialty on her. It’s certain to flip a young broad like her who’s lived in Heaven all her life! Besides, I ain’t never sloughed around in a bed with a canopy. Especially one in Heaven.”

I heard the faint bounce of her tiny feet on the stairway. She came into the bedroom with a silver service. We were going to have coffee in style. She set the gleaming tray on the dressing-table top.

She said, “Blood, pour us a cup. I’m going to get out of these clothes. Then we can chat.”

I poured two and left them black. I sipped mine. She stepped into a walk-in closet. She stepped out a moment later. All she had on were black panties and the red top of a transparent shortie nightgown. Her small, but sculptured bosom straight-jutted against the red gauze. She sat on the foot of the bed facing me and crossed her legs. I handed her the cup of black.

She said, “So, you’re going to stay in town for a while?”

I said, “Baby, if I get strong enough encouragement I’ll stay all my life. Baby, it’s a pity I had to meet you when I’m in bad shape. I want to be good company, but that car problem and Mama won’t let my mind stay on a pleasant track.”

Her ringers snapped “eureka.”

She got off the bed and went to the dresser across the room. She opened the top drawer and took out a bankbook. She came back and sat on the bed. She tapped the red nail of her left index finger against her white teeth. She studied the book’s figures. I saw a frown hedgerow her brow. She got up and went to the dresser and threw the book into the open drawer and banged it shut.

I thought, “This broad has over-drawn. She’s gonna try the check con on me.”

She stooped and opened the bottom drawer. She brought out a foot-long, foot-tall metal pig. She walked to the dressing table and put the porker on the table beside me.

She said, “Blood, this is the best I can do to help you now. I don’t get my allowance for a week. I have less than a hundred dollars in my account. Cheer up, there must be at least a hundred dollars in quarters and halves in this bank. Believe me, I can vividly imagine what it’s like to be colored and faced with your problems. Let’s say it’s a loan.”

I hefted the poker for a moment to check its gross weight. It was heavy all right. It felt a C note heavy. I reached out and took her hand. I guided her to my side on the chaise. I put my arms around her. I kissed her and sucked at that sugary tongue like a suicidal diabetic. I leaned back from her. I looked into the heart of the blue fire.

I said, “Baby, it’s a wonderful secret that you’ve discovered. Not many people know it’s better to give than to receive. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I wish you weren’t so beautiful and generous, so perfect. I don’t see how you can miss capturing my foolish heart. You’re a cinch to make me yours forever. Baby, I’m just a poor black country boy. Please don’t hurt my heart.”

She sure had an appetite for the Jeff con. The blue fire softened. Her eyes were misty and serious. She held my head between her dove-soft palms.

She said, “Blood baby, I’m white, but I have been more unhappy than any black person all my life. My parents have never understood me. When my whole being cried out for love and understanding, they gave me shiny things to stop my tears.

“Non-whites are like dirt to them. They are narrow and cold. If they found out you had been here they would disown me before they dropped dead. There’s a sweet warmth that you have. I know that you can make me happy. I am so desperate for love and understanding. Please give it to me.”

I said, “Baby, you can dump all your money on the black horse to win. I’m gonna win ’em all for you, beautiful.”

She said, “Blood, you’re a black panther; I’m a white lamb. I know nothing can stop that panther from taking the lamb, soul and body. The lamb will bide her time to take the panther. The lamb needs and wants it that way. Now listen carefully and please catch the clue of my tragedy so nothing will shock you in my bed.

“Blood, perhaps you are aware of the structural flaws built into the columns of the world’s most famous building. It’s the Parthenon. The flaw is called entasis. This contrived flaw is necessary so that the fickle human eye sees only perfection. I am a lot like those columns. I am not old, but I am beautiful. My tragedy is that unlike the entasis that gives perfection to the columns, my entasis must be concealed to protect my perfection. Can you understand?”

I thought, “What the hell, so this broad’s got a prematurely-gray cat. Maybe it’s a little off-center. If it’s odd it will be a novelty kick for me. She’s so beautiful the tricks won’t notice a tiny irregularity after I’ve turned her out.”

I said, “Baby Melody, you haven’t opened the door to a square. As fine as you are I wish you had two heads. Now get on that bed on your back. I’m gonna make love to you black panther style. You got some long towels?”

She went to the hall linen closet. She gave me four long slender ones. She

slipped off the red top and panties. She lay on her back in bed. I saw her flaw. Was this her entasis? I saw no crotch hair. She looked completely bald downstairs. I tied both her legs to the posts at the foot of the bed. I tied her left arm to a post at the head. The phone jangled on a nightstand at her side. She picked up the receiver with her free right hand.

She said, “Hi Mother, I’m fine. Are you and Dad still having fun? Mother, I miss you both so terribly. Are you coming home tomorrow as planned? Oh good, I’ll be at the airport on time. I’ve gone to bed. I’ve gotten out that ‘Anthology of Africa.’ I’m going to have a wild time researching the Watusi Warrior. Good night, Mother. Oh, tell Dad to bring me some of that heavenly Miami beach wear. I’ll be a sensation here on the beach this summer.”

I had taken my clothes off when she hung up. I lashed her free arm to the fourth bedpost. I looked down at her. Her eyes were pleading.

She said, “Remember Blood darling, you are not an unsophisticated bumpkin. You are not prone to shock states. I know you are going to find my entasis as sweet and desirable as the rest of me.”

I wondered why she still worried about her entasis. She knew I saw she was hairless downstairs. I put my knee on the bed. I stroked her belly. I felt cloth. I took a close look. A custom flesh-colored jock belt bandied her crotch. I ripped the elastic top down over her round hips. I jumped back. My rear end bounced on the floor. I struggled to my feet.

I shouted, “You stinking sissy sonuvabitch!”

His real entasis had popped up pink and stiff. It was a foot long and as thick as the head of a cobra.

He was crying like I had put a lighted match to his entasis.

He sobbed, “You promised to understand. Please, Blood, keep your promise. You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s delicious you fool.”

I said, “Look man, I made my promises to a broad, not a stud. I’m a pimp, not a faggot. I’m getting the hell out of here. I’m charging you the porker for my time and your bullshit.”

He lay there blubbering. I speed dressed. I took the porker off the table and stuck it under my arm. I walked toward the stairway. I looked back. His beautiful face was ugly in anger and hate.

He screamed, “You dirty Nigger liar, thief! Untie me you Coon Bastard!

Oh, how I wish I had your black ass tied here on your belly!”

I said, “Man, as slick as you are you’ll untie yourself before long. Yeah, that entasis could murder me all right.”

I walked down the stairway. I went through the house to the back door. I walked down the driveway to the street. I walked for an hour before I got out of the residential sprawl. I was lucky to hail a Yellow Cab as soon as I got to a busy intersection.

When it got me to the Haven, the meter read fourteen-thirty. I gave the cabbie a fin and a saw buck. I looked up at my window. The runt was at it. It was two A.M. It had been like a nightmare Halloween all the way. All trick and no treat. I was icy sober.

Then it struck me riding up on the elevator. That white faggot could cross me. What if he couldn’t free himself by the time his folks got home? He was a cinch to cover himself. He’d say a Nigger burglar or holdup man had robbed him and trussed him up.

I was a two-time loser. Five to ten would stick to me like flypaper. Even if he untied himself right away he might be mad enough to frame me. I remembered the Dalanski-Pepper cross. I was sweating salt balls when I retrieved my stash in the broom closet.

I went to my watch pocket with the cocaine. I knocked on fourtwenty. The runt opened the door. She was grinning.

She said, “Hello, Daddy-angel. Your dog bitch bumped her black ass off tonight. Gotta piggy bank, huh?”

I said, “So whatta you want, bitch, a medal for doing your whore duty?”

I didn’t answer her question. I looked down to see if she’d sprouted an entasis. She was buck-naked. I stepped inside and bolted the door. There were seventy slats on the dresser. I turned and lowered my face. She kissed me. I put the porker on the base of the “Kiss” statue.

I gave her the can of grass. She sat on the bed. She shook some grass out of the can onto a newspaper in her lap. She started rolling a joint. I took my clothes off. I went into the bathroom to shower and scrub the sissy taste out of my jib. The piercing heavy odor of the gangster wafted to me.

Over the roar of the shower I shouted, “Girl, there’s a gap under that slammer. Chink it up with a rag or something. Torch a coupla sticks of incense.”

I came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside her. She handed me a joint. I lit it and sucked it into a roach. I squeezed tobacco from the tip of a cigarette. I stuck the butt of gangster into the empty tip. I twisted the end and lit it. It was a good reefer.

I could feel my skull go into a dreamy float. I got one brilliant thought

after another. The trouble was, each one I tried to hold long enough so I could put a saddle on it stampeded. It was maybe like the painful irritation a drunk wrangler suffers trying to corral a herd of greased mustangs.

Gangster was sure a whore’s high. That reefer confusion was no good for a pimp’s skull. That beautiful sissy had buried a hot seed in my guts. The wild flower blossomed. I dreamily drifted into the runt. I rolled sleepily out of the warm churning tunnel. I wouldn’t need a yellow tonight.

8

GRINNING SLIM

I opened my eyes. I saw glinting stars of dust whirling like a golden hurricane through a bright shaft of noon sun. I looked through the open bedroom door. I saw the runt sitting at the living room window. She was doing her nails. She lifted her eyes from her nails. She looked into the bedroom.

I said, “Good morning, li’l freak puppy. I’m gonna call Silas to run across the street for ham and eggs. Are you hungry?”

She said, “Yeah, I’m hungry, but the way he moves around it would take him a week to cop. I’ll slip on something and go myself.”

She went to the closet and slipped on her blue poplin rain-orshine coat. She took a fin off the dresser and held it up for my consent. I nodded my head. I heard the door shut when she went out.

I lit a cigarette. I thought, “I wonder if Melody has the heat looking for me. I’ve only got a day or so left before Glass Top takes me to Sweet Jones. I’m gonna cool it. I won’t go out at all. I’ll stay right here in the hotel until Top calls me.”

The phone rang just as the runt came through the bedroom door. She put the plates wrapped in wax paper on the dresser. She picked up the receiver. I got up, took my plate and started to eat with a plastic fork.

She said, “Hello. Oh, Chuck, how are you, sweetie? I was just thinking about you, lover. No, I can’t. I wish I could come out for a few drinks, but my brother won’t be home from work until six. Mama’s not well at all. I have to stay here during the day to take care of her. I could slip out around seven. Yeah, I could do that until eight for twenty. Bye, bye, sugar blue eyes.”

She hung up the phone and her coat. She sat naked on the side of the bed eating.

I said, “Bitch, I got an idea for that cat of yours. You gotta take a stiff brush and brush the hair straight down every time you think about it. Put some hair grower on it until you got maybe a four-inch cone. Your tricks will pant to bury their beaks in it. It will make your cat unique with that extra dimension.”

She mumbled, “Where on Earth did you get a jazzy idea like that?”

I said, “Bitch, ain’t you hip yet? I’m a pimp with great imagination, that’s all.”

She finished her flapjacks. She got up and gathered up an armful of our soiled clothing. She went into the bathroom. I heard the water sloshing in the bowl. She was doing our laundry. I turned my back to the sunlight. I felt old Morpheus slugging his velvet hammer against my eyelids.

I woke up in darkness. I looked at the front-room window. The streetlights were on. I turned the nightstand lamp on. Mickey said seven-ten. The runt was gone. She was breaking her luck with Chuck.

I thought, “Jesus, I sure needed rest all right. That fast track I’ve been blundering on sure took the juice out of me.”

I got up and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had made several brush strokes when the phone rang. I picked it up. He rapped before I could open my mouth.

He said, “Kid, this is Glass Top. The plans have changed. I’m in a hurry.

Be outside your joint in fifteen minutes. You got that?” I said, “Yeah, but …”

He had hung up. I dressed even faster than I had at the sissy’s pad. I rushed down the hall. I stopped at the broom-closet stash. I hurled the sizzle into the corner on the shelf. I took the stairs three at a time to the lobby. I sailed the key to the desk top. I bolted out the door.

Top was parked in front of the joint in the red Hog. He had his hand over the horn when he saw me. I got in. The Hog squealed from the curb. Top was sure in a hurry. I could hear the harsh whisper of the Hog’s tires against the pavement. We passed that neon bouquet. I looked back and saw the “Fun House” sign flashing. I wondered if Melody was out here somewhere booby trapping with his entasis.

I said, “Jack, I didn’t expect your call for a coupla days. What happened?”

He said, “There’s a big boxing match tonight. All the biggest pimps and whores in the country are gonna be at Sweet’s after the fight. Kinda like a party. All of ’em use stuff. Even with Sweet as the middleman I should take

off a coupla grand for my end.”

“Sweet never goes to fights. He can’t stand big crowds, and besides they won’t let Miss Peaches into fights. Sweet’s gnawing his nails waiting for this stuff. He ain’t got none for himself and he’s anxious to cop some stuff for those birds coming from the fight.”

I said, “Have you cracked anything about me to him?”

He said, “Kid, you ain’t hip I’m a genius? He called and I rapped to him this morning. I played you off as my punk nephew from Kansas City. You got wild ideas you wanta be a pimp. I’ve tried to chill you back to K.C. to maybe hustle pool or even be a broom mechanic. You’re a stupid, stubborn punk. I’ve told you a thousand times you ain’t got it to pimp. You gotta pimp. “You would eat ten yards of Sweet’s crap. You think he’s God. You won’t believe your uncle is tight with God. I’m Glass Top. I gotta save face even for a snot-nosed punk. Maybe if you hang around the inside of the fast track for a hot minute you’ll get scared. You’ll wise up, get outta my ass and run your ass back to K.C. Now Kid, don’t shoot your jib off at his pad. If he don’t

remember you from the Roost, don’t wake him up.”

I said, “Don’t worry Top. I won’t rank us. I’ll never forget you, Pal, for the cut in. That was sure some beautiful stuff you played for Sweet.”

He caressed his patent-leather hair. He erected his wide shoulders inside his blue mohair jacket. His pretty, bitch face wore that terrible conceit and awful pride maybe of a cute mass murderer who never gets her victims’ blood on her. The full moon through the windshield shone flush on his face.

He said, “Kid, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Shit, I done drove three whores screaming crazy with this brain. They in the boob box upstate right now babbling about Pretty Glass Top. Even Sweet ain’t shipped but two up there. He’s been pimping almost twice as long as me.”

I said, “Christ, Top, I don’t get it. Why drive a whore nuts if she’s still humping out the scratch. A stud would have to be slick as grease to plant bats in the skull of a bitch that was sane. I can’t dig how a stud could do it. I ain’t hip to it.”

He said, “Sucker, what you don’t dig, and ain’t hip to would make a book bigger than this Hog. Now you take Sweet, the two he crossed were young white broads with small mileage. He’s sick in the head. He’s got an insane hate for the whole white race.

“He was a crumb crusher of seven down in Georgia when the white folks first poisoned his skull. His mammy was jet black and beautiful. The

peckerwoods for miles around were aching to lay her. The son of the wealthy plantation owner that Sweet’s old man sharecropped for way-laid her on the way to a spring. He punched her out, tore her clothes off and socked it into her. She was naked and crying when she got back to her shack.

“The peckerwood pig hid out in the woods. Sweet’s old man came in from the fields and found his wife clawed and bawling. He was close to seven feet and weighed three hundred. Sweet still remembers how his old man hollered and butted his head against the door of the shack. The hinges ripped loose.

“He knew the woods like a fox. He found the white boy. He left him for dead. He covered him with brush. He slipped back to his shack. Sweet remembers the white boy’s blood on his old man, even on his old man’s bare feet. He had stomped the white boy to a red pulp out there in the lonely woods. The old man figured he was safe. The white folks would never find the corpse in those thick woods. He cleaned himself, repaired the shack door, and waited.

“He hadn’t croaked the white boy. He had only maimed and paralyzed him. That night a white man out possum hunting with his dogs heard the kid bleating under the brush. He was out of his skull. It was midnight before the kid’s raving made sense to the white folks.

“Sweet heard the mob’s horses galloping toward the shack. He hid in the loft just as the crazy gang came through the shack slammer. Sweet peeped through a crack and watched them beat his old man’s head bloody. They dragged him outside. Sweet saw the whole mob rape his mother.

“Finally all was quiet except for his mother whimpering on the bed. He sneaked out of the loft. Through the open door he saw his old man swinging in the moonlight from a peach tree in front of the shack.

“His mammy went to the funny farm. Sweet was taken in by a share- cropper on the same plantation. He worked the fields until he got seventeen. He ran away and caught a freight train North. He was eighteen when he got his first whore. She was a white girl. He drove her to suicide before he got nineteen. Sweet’s gotta be sixty now.”

He paused. He steered the Hog with one hand. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He punched in the dashboard lighter.

I thought, “No wonder Sweet’s off his rocker. I wonder why Top really gave me that tight rundown on Sweet?”

The lighter popped. Top lit his cigarette. He sucked hard. He blew out a white cloud against the windshield that for an instant blotted out the moon.

He said, “I ain’t insane like Sweet. My skull is clear and cool. I ain’t no mixed-up Southern Nigger. I was born in the North I grew up with white kids. I don’t hate white people or any other people. I ain’t no black brute. I’m a pretty brown-skin lover. I love people.

“When I was a square, I was even engaged to marry a white girl. Her parents and friends put pressure on her and she chickened out. I guess I loved her. Right after we quit I went to a hospital for my nerves. I ain’t had nothing but whores since. It’s like I told you when I met you. Sweet’s a Ford and I’m a Duesenberg. He’s just an ugly lucky nut.”

I said, “But Top you cracked your booby-box score was higher than Sweet’s. Those three gibbering bitches upstate sure don’t show no love for whore people.”

He said, “There you go, fool. A young chump is just like a dumb bitch. He can’t figure nothing out himself. He’s gotta have a rundown on everything. Of course I drove those whores crazy, but for a sane reason, sucker.

“A pimp cops a whore. He cons her maybe if she stays in his corner humping his pockets fat, at the end of the rainbow she’s got a husband and a soft easy chair. To hold her beak to the grindstone, he pumps air castles into her skull.

“She takes all the stable grief. She humps her ass into a cramp to outshine the other whores in the family. At first, it’s easy for the bitch to star. As she gets older and uglier her competition gets younger and prettier.

“She don’t have to be no brain to wake up there ain’t no easy chair at the end. She gets hip there ain’t never even been a rainbow. She gets larceny in her heart. She bullshits herself that if she can drive all those young pretty whores away from the pimp that rainbow might come true after all. If it don’t, she’ll get her revenge anyway.

“It’s a violation of the pimp book to quit a whore. A bitch like that is a ticking bomb. Every day, her value to the pimp drops to the zero line. She’s old, tired, and dangerous. She can rattle a pimp into goofing his whole game. If the pimp is a sucker he’ll try to drive her away with his foot in her ass. She’s almost a cinch to croak him or cross him into the joint.

“I’m a genius. I’m hip that after a bitch has had maybe ten-thousand tricks drill her she ain’t too steady, skullwise. I don’t tip her I’m salty and disgusted. I talk like a sweet head-shrinker to her. Indeed of air castles, I pump her full of H.

“Her skull starts to jelly. I’ll be worried as hell about her. I’ll start sneaking

slugs of morphine or chloral hydrate into her shots. While she’s out, I’ll maybe douse her with chicken blood. She comes to, I’ll tell her I brought her in from the street. I tell her I hope you didn’t croak anybody while you were sleepwalking.

“I got a thousand ways to drive ’em goofy. That last broad I flipped, I hung her out a fifth floor window. I had given her a jolt of pure cocaine so she’d wake up outside that window. I was holding her by both wrists. Her feet were dangling in the air. She opened her eyes. When she looked down she screamed like a scared baby. She was screaming when they came to get her. You see, kid, I’m all business. I ain’t got an ounce of hate in me.”

He had been driving for at least an hour. I had lost track of time and space. I saw no black faces in the streets around us. I saw tall gleaming apartment houses. Some so tall they seemed welded to the night sky.

I said, “Yeah Top, you’re a cold clever stud all right. I’m sure glad you’re yanking my coat. Jesus, Sweet must live in a white neighborhood.”

He said, “Yeah, Kid, he lives just around that next corner, in a penthouse. Like I told you he’s lucky as a shit-house rat. It’s a million-dollar building. The old white broad that owns it is Sweet’s freak white dog.”

I said, “But don’t the white tenants blow the roof because Sweet lives there?”

He said, “Sweet’s old white broad owns the building, but Sweet runs it. At least he runs it through a old ex-pimp pal. Sweet stuck him into a pad on the ground floor. Patch Eye, the old stud, collects the rents and keeps the porters and other flunkys on their toes. All the tenants are white gamblers and hustlers. Sweet is got the old ex-pimp running book wide open. The action a day just from the tenants runs two or three grand. I’ll say it a thousand times, Sweet is a lucky old stud.”

He turned the corner. He eased the Hog into the curb in front of a snow- white apartment building. A moss-green canvas canopy ran from the edge of the curb twenty-five yards to the kleig-lighted fancy front of the building. A gaunt white stud in a green monkey suit was standing in stooped attention at the curb. We got out. Top walked around the Hog to the doorman.

The doorman said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

Top said, “Hello Jack, do me a favor. When you take my wheels to the back see that it’s parked close to an exit. When I come out I don’t wanna hassle outta there. Here’s a fin, Buster.”

The doorman said, “Thank you, Sir. I’ll relay your wish to Smitty.”

We walked into the green-painted, black-marbled foyer. I was trembling like maybe a hick virgin on a casting couch. We walked up the half-dozen marble steps to an almost invisible glass door.

A Boston Coffee-colored broad slid it open. We stepped into the green- and-pearl lobby. A tan broad as flashy as a Cotton Club pony sat behind a blond desk. We walked across the quicksand pearl carpet to the front of it. She flashed two perfect dozen of the thirty-two. Her voice was contralto silk.

She said, “Good evening, may I help you?”

Top said, “Stewart and Lancaster to see Mr. Jones.”

She turned to an elderly black broad sitting before a switchboard beside her.

She told her, “Penthouse, Misters Stewart and Lancaster.”

The old broad shifted her earphones from round her wrinkled neck to her horns. She plugged in and started batting her chops together. After a moment she nodded to the pony. We got the ivory flash again.

The pony said, “Thank you so much for waiting. Mr. Jones is at home and will see you.”

I followed Top to the elevators. A pretty brown-skin broad in a tight green uniform zipped us to the fifteenth floor. The brass door opened. We stepped out onto a gold-carpeted entrance hall. It was larger than Top’s living room.

A skinny Filipino in a gold lame outfit came toward us. He was grinning and bowing his head, his lank hair flopped across his skull like the wings of a wounded raven. The crystal chandelier overhead glittered his gold suit. He took my lid. He put it on the limb of a mock mother-of-pearl tree.

He said, “Good evening. Follow, please.”

We followed him to the brink of a sunken living room. It was like a Pasha’s passion pit. A green light inside the gurgling bowl of a huge fountain beamed on the vulgar face of a stone woman squatting over it. She was nude and big as a baby elephant. The red light inside her skull blazed, her eyes staring straight ahead. Her giant hands pressed the tips of her long breasts into each corner of her wide open mouth. She was peeing serenely and endlessly into the fountain bowl.

We stepped down to the champagne, oriental carpet. Sweet was sitting across the dim room on a white velour couch. He was wearing a white satin smoking jacket. He looked like a huge black fly in a bucket of milk. Miss Peaches was curled at his side. She was resting her black spotted head on a silk turquoise pillow. Sweet was stroking her back. She purred and locked her

yellow eyes on us. I got a whiff of her raw animal odor.

Sweet said, “Sit your black asses down. Sweetheart, you been dangling me. What happened? Did that raggedy nickel Hog break down? So this is your square country nephew?”

Top sat on a couch beside Miss Peaches. I sat in a blue velour chair several yards to the side of Top. Sweet’s gray eyes were flicking up and down me. I was nervous. I grinned at him.

I jerked my eyes away to a large picture on the wall over the couch. A naked white broad was on her hands and knees. A Great Dane with his red tongue lolling out was astraddle her back. He had his paws hooked under her breasts. Her blonde head was turned looking back at him. Her blue eyes were popped wide open.

Top said, “Man, that Hog ain’t no plane. I got here quick as I could. You know I don’t play no games on you, Honey.”

I said, “Thank you, Mr. Jones, for letting me come up with ‘unc.’”

My voice triggered the Roost memory. He stiffened and glared at me. He smashed his hooks together. It sounded like pistol shots. Peaches growled and sneered.

He said, “Ain’t you the little shit ball I chased outta the Roost?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m one and the same. I want to beg your pardon for making you salty that night. Maybe I coulda gotten a pass if I had told you I’m your pal’s nephew. I ain’t got no sense, Mr. Jones. I took after my idiot father.”

Sweet said, “Top, this punk ain’t hopeless. He’s silly as a bitch grinning all the time, but dig how he butters out the con to keep his balls outta the fire. He sure ain’t got no tender dick to turn down my pretty big-ass Mimi. Kid, I love black boys with the urge to pimp. Ain’t no surer way to amount to something. Your uncle ain’t but a good pimp. I’m the greatest in the world. He wired me he’s hoping you’ll fold on this track and split back to the sticks.

“You got one whore he tells me. You could have the makings. This joint is going to be crawling with fast whores in a coupla hours. I’m gonna be pinning you. I’m gonna watch how you handle yourself. Maybe I’m gonna make you my protege. You gotta be icy; understand, Kid, icy, icy? You gotta stop that grinning. Freeze your map and keep it that way. Maybe I’m gonna prove to your half-ass pimp uncle that I can train even a mule to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Top said, “Shit Honey, you didn’t have to tip him. I’m pulling for his split. I love the kid. I just don’t think he can cut the pimp game. The kid raps good.

I ain’t denying it. He should be maybe a Murphy player or even a mitt man. His ticker ain’t icy enough to pimp on this track.”

I thought, “Top’s pad is a pigsty compared to this layout. It looks like I’m in.”

Sweet said, “Sweetheart, let’s go in a bedroom and cap up and bag that stuff for those jokers. I’m gonna have old Patch Eye come up here and deal it off. I ain’t no dope peddler. I’m a pimp. Kid, you can cool it. Have the Filipino bring you a taste. If you want get it yourself from the bar over there.” They went around a hand-painted gold silk screen through a doorway.

Peaches padded behind them. I saw a bronze bell on a table beside the couch. I decided to get my own taste. I walked across the room to a turquoise bar. I went behind it. I took a tall crystal glass off the mirrored shelf on the wall. I mixed creme de menthe and bubbly water.

I took my green, cool drink and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass door. I slid it open and stepped up into the patio. I looked up; the April zephyrs were balleting the burnt-orange and pale-green Japanese lanterns. They danced on glowing jade cords strung high above the lime floor.

The ice-cream-yellow moon seemed close enough to lick. I walked to the pearl parapet. I looked out at a brilliant sea of emerald and ruby neon bursting pastel skyrockets toward the cobalt blue sky bejeweled with sapphire stars.

I thought, “Sweet sure has caught lightning in a thimble. He came out of the white man’s cotton fields. He’s pimped himself up to this. He’s living high in the sky like a black God in heaven with the white people. He ain’t no Nigger doctor. He ain’t no hot-sheet Nigger preacher, but he’s here.

“He pimped up his scratch passport. That barbed-wire stockade is a million miles away. I got more education, I’m better looking, and younger than he is. I know I can do it too.”

I remembered Henry and how religious he was. Look what happened to him. I remembered how I used to kneel every night by the side of the bed to pray. I really believed in God then. I knew he existed. Now I wasn’t so sure. I guess the first prison rap started to hack away at my belief in him.

I often wondered in the cell how, if he existed, he could let the Dummy destroy Oscar who loved him. I told myself at the time, maybe he’s got complicated long-range plans. Maybe even he’s got divine reasons for letting the white folks butcher black people down South.

Maybe some morning about dawn all the black folks will sing Hallelujah! God’s white board of directors will untie the red tape. God will roll up his

sleeves. He’ll smash down the invisible stockades. He’ll kill all the rats in the black ghettos. Fill all the black bellies and con all the white folks that Niggers are his children, too.

Now I couldn’t wait. If he were up there or not, I had to go with the odds. I stared into the sky. It was the first time I’d prayed since Steve, the tramp. I know now it was more a fearful alibi than anything else.

I said, “Lord, if you’re up there, you know I’m black and you know my thoughts. Lord, if the Bible is really your divine book then I know it’s a sin to pimp. If you’re up there and listening you know I’m not trying to con you.

“Lord, I’m not asking you to bless my pimping. I ain’t that stupid. Lord, I know you ain’t black. Surely you know, if you’re up there, what it’s like to be black down here. These white folks are doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy.

“I don’t wanta be a stickup man or a dope peddler. I sure as hell won’t be a porter or dishwasher. I just wanta pimp that’s all. It’s not too bad, because whores are rotten. Besides I ain’t going to croak them or drive them crazy. I’m just going to pimp some real whitetype living out of them.

“So Lord, if you’re up there listening, do one thing for me. Please don’t let me croak before I live some and get to be somebody down here in the white man’s world. I don’t care what happens after that.”

I looked down over the parapet. I wondered if the undertaker had been born yet who was slick enough to paste a sucker’s ass together after a Brodie fifteen-stories down. I heard “Tuxedo Junction” pulsing behind me. I had pitched my pipes dry. I upended my drink.

I turned and walked toward the glass door. I saw the Japanese lanterns splashing color on the polished alabaster-topped tables. The Filipino had sure been busy flopping his mop. I slid the door open to a chorus of profanity. The whore scent flared my nostrils. There must have been thirty yapping pimps and whores lounging around the spacious pit.

I stepped down and slid the door shut. An ebony satin-skinned pimp was sprawled in the blue velour chair. A tawny tan tigress was kneeling before him between his legs. She had her chin rammed into his crotch. She clutched him around the waist like a humping twodollar trick in an alley.

Her dreamy maroon eyes rolled toward the top of her long skull. She was staring at his fat blue lips. It was maybe she expected him to whistle the “Lost Chord.” The rock on his finger exploded blue-white, frozen fireworks.

He raised his glass to curse all square bitches. He was con-toasting all whores. The room got silent. Somebody had strangled the gold phonograph in the corner.

He toasted:

 

“Before I’d touch a square bitch’s slit,

I’d suck a thousand clappy pricks and swim through liquid shit.

They got green puke between their rotten toes and snot runs from their funky noses.

I hope all square bitches become syphilitic wrecks. I hope they fall through their own ass-holes and break their mother-fucking necks.”

 

It was the first time I’d heard it. It was the first time for the crowd, too. They roared and begged him to do it again. He looked toward the hand- painted Chinese screen.

All eyes turned to Top and Sweet coming into the room. An old black stud wearing a white silk patch over his right eye trailed behind them. Peaches followed him. He looked like a vulture decked out in a gray mohair vine. Peaches stood before the white velour couch and bared her fangs.

The three pimps sitting on it scattered off it like quail under a double- barreled shotgun. They thumped their rear ends to the carpet. Sweet, Top, and Peaches sat on the couch.

I sat on a satin pillow in the corner near the glass door. I watched the show. I saw Patch Eye go and sit behind the bar. Everybody was in a big half-circle around the couch. It was like the couch was a stage, and Sweet the star.

Sweet said, “Well how did you silly bastards like the fight? Did the Nigger murder that peckerwood or did his black ass turn shit yellow?”

A Southern white whore with a wide face and a sultry voice like Bankhead’s drawled, “Mistah Jones, Ahm happy to repoat thet the Niggah run the white stud back intu his mammy’s ass in thu fust round.”

Everybody laughed except Sweet. He was crashing together his mitts. I wondered what madness bubbled in his skull as he stared at her. A high-ass yellow broad flicked life back into the phonograph. “Gloomy Sunday,” the suicide’s favorite, dirged through the room. She stared at me as she came away.

Sweet said, “All right you freakish pigs. Patch Eye’s got outfits and bags

of poison. You got the go sign to croak yourselves.”

They started rising from the satin pillows and velour ottomans. They clustered around Patch Eye at the bar.

The high-ass yellow broad came to me. She stooped in front of me. I saw black tracks on her inner thighs. The inside of her gaping cat was beef-steak red. She had a shiv slash on the right side of her face. It was a livid gully from her cheekbone to the corner of her twisted mouth. Smallpox craters covered her face. I caught the glint of a pearl-handled switch-blade in her bosom. Her gray eyes were whirling in her skull. She was high.

I was careful. I grinned. Sweet was digging us. He was shaking his head in disgust. I wondered if he thought I oughta slug her in the jib and maybe take that shiv in the gut.

She said, “Let me see that pretty dick, handsome.”

I said, “I don’t show my swipe to strange bitches. I got a whore to pamper my swipe.”

She said, “Nigger, you ain’t heard of me? I’m Red Cora” from Detroit. That red is for blood. You ain’t hip I’m a thieving bitch that croaked two studs? Now I said show that dick. Call me Cora, little bullshit Nigger. Ain’t you a bitch with one whore? You gonna starve to death, Nigger, if she’s a chump flat-backer. Nigger, you better get hip and cop a thief.”

A big husky broad with a spike in one hand and pack of stuff in the other took me off the hook. She kneed Cora’s spine.

She said, “Bitch, I’m gonna shoot this dope. You want some? You can Georgia this skinny Nigger later.”

I watched Cora’s rear end twist away from me. She and the husky broad went to the bar and got a spoon and a glass of water. I looked at Sweet. He was giving me a cold stare.

I thought, “This track is too fast I can’t protect myself. With young soft bitches like the runt I’m a champ. These old, hard bitches, I gotta solve. I gotta be careful and not blow Sweet. If I sucker out anymore tonight he’ll freeze and boot me.”

I sat in the corner bug-eyed for two hours. My ears flapped to the super- slick dialogue. I was excited by the fast-paced, smooth byplay between these wizards of pimpdom.

Red Cora kept me edgy. She went to the patio several times. She was Hed out of her skull. Each time she passed she cracked on me. She was sure panting to view my swipe.

Several of Sweet’s whores came in. None of them had been at the Roost with him that first time I saw him. All of them were fine with low mileage. One of them was yellow and beautiful. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

There was a giant black pimp from the Apple. He had three of his whores with him. He had been boasting about how he had his swipe trained. He was one of the three at the party that didn’t bang stuff. I had watched him snort girl and down a few mixed drinks. He had a glass in his hand standing over Sweet and Top on the couch.

He said, “Sweet, ain’t a bitch living can pop me off unless I want her to. I don’t care if she’s got velvet suction cups in her cat. Her jib can have a college degree, she ain’t gonna make me pop against my will. I got the toughest swipe in the world. I got a C note to back my crack.”

Sweet said, “Sucker, I got a young bitch I turned out six months ago that could blow that tender sucker swipe of yours in five minutes. I ain’t going to teach you no lesson for a measly C note. If that C note ain’t all you got, put five bills in Top’s mitt and you got a bet.”

The big joker snatched a roll from his side pocket. He plunked five C notes into Top’s palm. Sweet eased a bale of C notes from the pocket of his smoking jacket. He covered the bet in Top’s hand.

Sweet snapped his fingers. The beautiful yellow broad kneeled before the standing giant. She started to perform before the cheering audience. Within less than three minutes she had won the bet for Sweet.

The big joker stood there for a long moment with his eyes closed. He had a goofy grin on his face. One of his whores snickered. He slapped her hard against the jaw. He went to the bar.

I thought, “She sure has a head for business. Pepper was great, but she couldn’t hold this broad’s douche bag.”

I got up and went behind the Chinese screen through the door. I went down a long hall. I passed three way-out bedrooms. I went into a mirrored john. It was as big as a bedroom. I pushed the door shut. I should have locked it.

I walked to the stool. I raised the lid. That tough bitch Red Cora darted in. She was licking out her red tongue. Her gray eyes were voodooing in her skull. She was hot as hell for my relative innocence and youth. She was a double murderess with a skull load of H and a hot jib.

I stood there before the deadly bitch. I searched the thin catalogue in my skull. I didn’t know the right crack for a situation like this. I mumbled a

plaintive pitch.

I said, “Now listen girl, you haven’t given me a nickel. I’m not your man.” It was like trying to stand off a starving leopard with a broom straw. She snaked that shiv out of her bosom and popped the gleaming blade open. She clawed my fly open with the other hand. I heard buttons bounce on the tile

floor. My ticker was doing a fox trot.

She said, “You jiving pretty sonuvabitch. You ain’t no pimp. I’m gonna eat your sweat ass up or chop off your dick.”

I backed up to the wall beside the stool. I could feel the wet throbbing tips of my fingers against the cool tile. She was grabbing inside when Sweet bulled in. He seized a fistful of her long hair. She squealed in pain. He jerked her away from me toward the door. He cussed her as he drove his needle-toed shoe into her wide caboose several times.

He said, “Bull-shit bitch, this chump is in my school. I ain’t gonna let you Georgia him. Now nix, bitch, nix.”

I heard her high heels staccato against the tile as she fled. He turned toward me. His black face was gray with fury. Maybe Sweet would forget I wasn’t yellow. I remembered what Top had told me about those four murders.

He thrust his flat black nose against mine. I could feel a spray of spit strike my lips as he cursed me. He twisted the collar of my vine like a garrote around my throat. He had snatched me six feet from the wall.

He shouted, “Listen you stupid little motherfucker. You know why that bitch screwed you around? You always grinning like a Cheshire Cat. What’s funny? Can’t I get the sucker outta you? I can’t make a pimp outta a pussy like you.

“I told you once, do I have to tell you a thousand times? Greenass Nigger, to be a good pimp, you gotta be icy, cold like the inside of a dead-whore’s pussy. Now if you a bitch, a sissy, or something let me know. I’ll put you in drag and you can whore for me. Stay outta my face Nigger, until you freeze up and stop that sucker grinning.”

I heard his ground grippers skid against the floor as he hurled me against the wall. The back of my skull torpedoed into it. Through a drowsy fog of pain I saw him float away.

My back snailed down the wall. I laughed at the funny way the shoe tips turned in as the long legs glided across the tile. I sat there on the cool floor gazing at the weird comical legs stretched out before me.

I saw a pair of blue mohair legs right angle the flat ones. I looked up. It

was Top. He bent over to help me up.

He said, “Kid, now you believe the ugly bastard is insane? Take this key to my Hog. Get it outta the lot in back. Park in the block and cool it. I’m getting outta here myself as soon as I cop my end of the smack scratch.”

I riveted my eyes to the champagne carpet. I zigzagged through the snickering whores and pimps. I made it across the pit to the elevator. The Filipino was standing beside it. He was pressing the down button.

He looked like a friendly brown snake sausaged in gold foil. He reached up and stroked my jacket collar down flat from around my ears. He took my lid off the pearl tree. He stuck it on my skull and snapped the brim. I felt the sweat band needle the aching boil. I adjusted my lid.

He said, “Good night, Sir. Sammee hopes you had fine time.”

I said, “Sammee pal, it’s been a wild night. I’ll never forget it.”

I got a whiff of crotch as the elevator plunged to the lobby. I wondered if the pretty brown-skin jockey whored a little bit as a sideline.

I stepped out of the gilded cage into the lobby. I saw a winking red- arrowed sign in the rear. I walked to the glass door below it. I went down the white stone steps to the parking lot.

I spotted Top’s red Hog in the ocean of cars. I went to it, unlocked it and got in. A big white Buick was parked in front of it. A grinning brown-skin joker in white overalls came toward the Buick.

I saw Smitty blue-stitched across his breast pocket. He pulled the Buick out. I keyed the Hog and scooted it out of the lot. I whipped around the corner and coasted to the curb fifty feet from the entrance of Sweet’s apartment building.

I shut the motor off. I lowered the driver’s side window. I put my lid on the seat. I threw my head back on the top of the seat. I closed my eyes. I dozed. Something was crushing my jaw. A blinding spotlight burned into my eyeballs. I heard a fog-horn voice.

It blasted, “Police officers! Nigger, what the hell you doing. What’s your name? Show us your identification.”

I couldn’t answer with my jaw crushed in a vise. I was dazed. I lowered my eyes below the inferno of light. I saw a white brutish wrist. Thick black hair bristled on it. I saw muscles cord and ripple across it as the vise tightened around my jawbone. I wondered if the copper was Satan and I had croaked in the Hog and was being checked into Hell. Hell or not, Satan wanted identification. I remembered the Fox and the Horse. I didn’t even

have a hide.

Satan swung the Hog door open. The door frame blackjacked the top of my skull as Satan yanked me from the Hog. He released my jaw and slammed me across the hood of the Hog. My wet palms skidded on the top of it.

Satan’s fellow demon was punch-frisking me from breast to shoe soles. He poked an index finger inside my shoe. I felt a tickle in the arch of my instep.

I said, “My name is Albert Thomas. Hell, I wasn’t doing anything officers.

I was just waiting for my uncle. I lost my wal—.”

I didn’t finish. A galaxy of shooting stars orbited my skull. It was like a flame-hot poker was imbedded in that sore bump at the back of my skull.

I heard the tinkle of glass against the hood. I puked and nosedived to the hood. I felt the warm stinking mess against my cheek as I lay across the hood gasping.

Glass splinters sparkled on the hood. Satan had slugged his flashlight against my skull. I saw the fellow demon’s shadow bobbing inside the hog. He was frisking it, too.

Satan said, “Nigger, you got a sheet downtown? Whatta you do for a living?”

I whispered, “I’ve never been in trouble. I’m an entertainer. I’m a dancer.”

He said, “You black, conning bastard. How in the fuck do you know what a sheet is? You been mugged, Nigger. Stand up straight. I’m gonna take you downtown. You can jig a few steps on the ‘show up’ stage.”

I struggled off the hood. I turned and faced him. I looked up into the red, puffy face. Top came around the back of the Hog and stood between us.

He said, “What’s the beef, officer? This is my nephew and my Cadillac. The kid was waiting for me. He’s clean. We been to a party at Sweet’s. You know who he is. We’re personal friends of his, you dig?”

Satan’s puffy face creased into a hyena grin. He rapped on the windshield. I saw the demon’s starch-white face peer over the rear seat. Satan waved him from the Hog. He clambered out and stood beside Satan.

Satan said, “Looks like we made a slight mistake, Johnnie. These gentlemen are pals of Mr. Jones. Mister, all your nephew had to do to beat the roust was mention a name.

“Christ, we have to do our job. There’s a cat burglar operating in this district. The lieutenant is riding our asses to nab him. Sorry about the whole thing gentlemen.”

The rollers walked across the street. They got into a black Chevrolet and

gunned it away. I took a handkerchief from my back pocket, and wiped my face.

I wiped the bits of loose glass and most of the puke off the hood. I threw the rag in the gutter. I got in the Hog. Top u-turned and headed back to Black Town. I touched the bump on my skull. I felt a spot of sticky ooze. My skull had only a tiny split. I wiped my fingers on the end of my lapel pocket handkerchief.

I thought, “If it gets any rougher on this track, I’ll be punchy before long.

Maybe I better take Preston’s advice and go back to the sticks.”

I said, “Jeez, Sweet Jones sure has got pull. It was like magic when you cracked his name.”

Top said, “Magic your black ass. The only magic is in that C note a week Sweet lays on ’em. Every copper in the district from Captain down greases his mitts in that lard bucket in Sweet’s pocket.

“Mary, mammy of Jesus, you stink. You musta shit in your pants. You sure getting funky breaks, Kid. Too bad you couldn’t handle Red Cora. She’s one of the fastest thieves in the country.”

I said, “Look Top, if that crazy, pocked-face bitch had a tunnel straight into Fort Knox, I wouldn’t fart in her jib. I hate old hard-leg whores.”

He said, “That’s a chump crack. After you get hip to the pimp game you’ll take scratch from a gold-toothed, three-legged bulldog with two heads. Say listen, Kid, don’t ever forget to keep that rundown on Sweet under your lid. I’m the only stud he told. He’d twist my skull off and play soccer with it.”

I said, “Now Top, that’s a helluva crack to make. Do I look like the kind of rat square that would cross a pal?”

I was glad when I saw the Haven’s blue sign. Top parked across the street from it. I got out. I had crossed to the middle of the street. Top blew the horn. I turned back to the side of the Hog. Top had my lid and a small square of paper in his hand. I took them.

He said, “Kid, here’s my phone number in case you wanta ring me for something. Take it easy now.”

I passed through the lobby. The indicator pointed out the elevator was at the fourth floor. I took the stairs and picked up the sizzle from the broom closet. The runt let me in after the first knock. I walked by her to the bedroom and stuck the sizzle in a coat pocket in the closet. I started taking my stinking clothes off. She was standing in the doorway. I tossed them in a pile in the corner.

She said, “Daddy, when you passed me you smelled like you’d been dunked in a garbage truck. What happened?”

I headed for the bathroom. I was standing over the stool. She followed me.

She stood in the bathroom doorway. I looked over my shoulder at her.

I said, “Bitch, some white rollers busted me tonight. They got the wire I’m in town to pimp. They took me down and beat the puke outta me. Baby, they wanted me to finger you. They wanted to know where you worked. Shit, I was too pure in heart to put a finger on you, baby. I’m not feeling worth a damn, so go on the dummy, okay?”

I flushed the toilet. I turned the shower on. I gave her a hard look and frowned. She turned and got into bed. I took Mickey off. It was four A.M. I showered and toweled off. I fell into bed without checking the scratch on the dresser. I went to sleep wondering what to do to solve the fast track.

9

THE BUTTERFLY

I woke up. The sun was noon bright. I heard a squad of rats or something in the direction of the closet. I turned and looked. It was the runt. She was on her knees in the closet scraping and pulling suitcases and shoes around. The back of my skull was sore and throbbing. I touched it, and felt a crusty cap over the bump.

I thought as I watched the runt’s rear end, “What the hell is she doing?”

I said, “Damn Bitch, can’t you put a damper on that racket? I gotta aching skull. I wake up, the first living thing I pin is the rusty black ass of a dizzy whore. She’s digging a ditch in the closet. Now there’s gotta be a prettier way to start a day.”

She snapped her head around and said, “I’m looking for the reefer. I feel low. Where did you stash it? I couldn’t find it last night when I came in.”

I got up and went to the closet. I ran my hand into the coat pocket stash. I separated my stuff from the reefer inside the pocket. I gave her the can. I saw two lonely saw bucks on the dresser. I went back and got into bed.

I said, “Bitch, I take an outside stash, where else?” I don’t wanta come home some night and greet a roller. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if he had that can of one to two in the penitentiary in his mitt?

“Christ, your scratch for last night is shitty. What happened? Some joker stick you up? That reefer ain’t making you lazy is it? A double-saw take for a young freak bitch is outrageous. Shit, you broke your luck for the double saw with the lover, Sugar Blue Eyes.

“You musta shot a blank the rest of the night. I’ll murder you, bitch, if I find out you freak off all night with your tricks for a double saw.”

She was licking at the sides of the joint she had rolled. She sat on the side of the bed next to me. She rolled her sassy eyes at me.

She said, “Daddy, I’m your girl. If I ever stop loving you, I’m gonna quit whoring for you. If you don’t croak me I’ll get another black man when we’re washed up. Right now I’m in your corner all the way.

“White tricks don’t move me. I want to vomit when they paw and slobber over me. I baby talk them, but I hate them. Daddy, I just want their scratch. I get a thrill with them all right. It knocks me out that here I am, a black Nigger bitch, taking their scratch.

“A lot of them are clean-cut high muckty mucks in the white world. Some of them show me pictures of beautiful wives and cute children. It makes me feel greater than those white bitches living in soft luxury. Those white broads got Nigger maids they laugh at. They think we ain’t good for nothing but clowning and cleaning. It would give them a stroke to see their trick husbands moaning and groaning and licking between a black whore’s thighs.

“I know I ain’t got no silky hair and white skin. I’m damn sure hip those white men ain’t leaving Heaven to come to Hell every night just for the drive. They coming because those cold-ass white broads in Heaven ain’t got what these black whores in Hell got between their legs. Black and low as I am, I got secrets with their white men those high-class white bitches ain’t hip to.

“Now Daddy, we rap so little I got earned away. I ain’t nobody’s fool but yours. I wanted to rundown to you this morning about last night. You put me on the dummy remember? After I turned Chuck at the Martin, I got a roust. Two white vice coppers picked me up. They rode me around and felt over me. One of them was a mean, nasty bastard. The other, blond nice one, was sorry for me.

“Nasty said, ‘I know this black bitch is a cinch ringer for those eight larceny from the person beefs. We oughta take her down and put her on a Show Up or two. What the hell Carl, we know she’s a whore.”

“Blondie said, ‘But Max, she ain’t no hard leg. She’s just a beautiful young sexy kid with a mother to support. You know how tough it is for Boots to get three squares and a roof in this town. Let’s give her a break and cut her loose. Jesus Max, this broad has got a pair of thighs on her. She’s soft as kitten fur.’

“Nasty said, ‘Carl, you sure got a weak spot for spades. This broad says she’s broke. That black ass of her’s ain’t enough to buy a pass from me. If she ain’t too shy to show what her Derby’s like, maybe, I say just maybe, I might give her a break.’

“I’m driving into this alley. Carl, you test her lid and snatch. If you ain’t raving how great it is upstairs and down when you finish, I’m gonna wheel

outta this alley and toss her black ass in jail … I’m gonna book her on those eight counts of larceny. If she’s lucky she’ll get a deuce.’

“Daddy, Blondie pushed my head down to his lap. Then I got on the back seat with him. That freak bastard, Max, turned around and kept his flashlight on us the whole time. I made Blondie holler.

“I finished with Blondie. Max got back there with me. For a half hour he called me filthy names. He punched and pinched me. I’m sure sore all over. Blondie begged him to stop. My ass feels like he split something back there. I had a rough time.

“Finally they let me out. Max told me to never let him see me again. I was scared so I came in. That’s why the scratch is short. Max will bust me if he sees me again. You gonna have to find me another street to work.”

I said, “You square-ass stupid bitch. You think you’re a brain because you’re hip that white men sneak through the stockade to lay black whores. Ain’t a Nigger sealed in here that don’t know that. It don’t make you great because those white sick fools leave that fine pussy in Heaven to find your stinking black ass in Hell.

“You chicken-hearted bitch. You got a roust. They conned you to believe they could slap a bum rap on you. You’re too dumb to know I’m gonna raise you. You rammed your funky finger in your sore ass. You took a powder from the track with a lousy double saw. You let those peckerwood coppers fuck you front rear, sideways, and across. You simple bitch, I’m gonna find you another street to work? Now you got like a license to hustle this one?

“You ain’t got to worry about Max and that other roller. Bitch, you can work it forever just so you don’t get cancer of the cat or lockjaw. Bitch, if you don’t get outta my face I’m going to the chair for slaughtering you. Get your clothes on. Get in the street and hump up some scratch. Bitch, don’t come to that door unless you call me first. I ain’t going nowhere.”

She had been taking sucks on the reefer while she was rapping. She was high when I gave her the rundown on how she had been conned by the rollers. She leaped off the bed and went to the closet. She dressed and jerked her head around the whole time.

She knew I was angry. She was maybe afraid after that slaughter crack that I might goose her in the butt with my knife. She got out fast. I had Silas bring me some food and take my shirts and things to the cleaners. I ate and snorted some Girl. Later I banged some. Except for the bump on my skull that still ached a little I felt all right.

I remembered Satan and the Demon wanting to see identification. I called Silas. He told me where to go. I could get a driver’s license without a test for a saw buck under the counter. I dressed and made the trip. Sure enough I copped. I was back home in an hour.

I pulled a chair to the front window. I had my spy glass. It was still daylight. I didn’t see the runt on the street. I spied into the greasy spoon across the street. The runt was sitting at the counter talking to a big black stud in overalls. He had trick engraved all over him. I saw them leave together and come across the street toward the Martin Hotel.

The scarfaced horn tooter who lived in four-twenty-two across the hall came out behind them alone. He got into a battered Ford and chugged away. It gave me an idea. After all, I could blow the runt. I picked up the phone and asked for connection to apartment four-twenty-two. The pretty yellow ex- whore “helloed.” I was glad old Silas had given me a rundown on her. I could tailor my pitch.

I said, “Now try to control yourself baby. I’m the tall stud with the dreamy bedroom eyes across the hall in four-twenty. I’m the guy with the pretty towel wrapped around his sexy hips. I got the same hips on now that you x- rayed. Remember that hump of sugar your peepers feasted on?”

She said, “Maybe, but you shouldn’t call me. I don’t want an incident.

What do you want? A lady doesn’t accept phone calls from strangers.”

I said, “A million dollars and a trip to the moon with a bored, trapped, beautiful bitch, you dig? I’m no stranger. I’ve been popping the elastic on your panties ever since you saw me in the hall.”

She giggled. I could hear the thrill in her voice. The horn blower had taken her off the track, but the whore was alive and thrashing inside her. She had class. She had done more than screw on the fire escape at high school.

She said, “I don’t drink and besides I don’t know you.”

I said, “You met me in your first hot dream, remember? You know that pretty joker in your little girl dreams that always faded when you woke up wet between the legs. You waited and wished.

“You lucky bitch, I’ve stepped out of your dreams. I’m alive and real across the hall from you. Get over here, I’m gonna turn you on. Don’t worry about the watch dog. I saw him split out of the greasy spoon ten minutes ago. Baby, I’m gonna have to make one of my whores bake you a cake with a saw in it.”

She said, “You’re not married to one of them? I don’t want my throat cut. I

don’t want to break an old habit, breathing.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m married. I’m married to the whore game. You’re still a member of the club yourself. You just ain’t paid any dues lately. Maybe if you ain’t full of shit I can put you back in good standing. Now get over here!”

She said, “I’m raw. I’ll have to slip on something. I’ll come over for a minute. You’re not a hype? I’m not hip to anything but grass.”

I said, “No, sugar, I’m a lover and a beggar. I got black gunion, baby. You hip?”

I hung up. I went to the dresser mirror and powdered my face. I brushed my hair with a damp brush. My mop was black, bright and curly. I went to the closet and slipped on a wild yellow lounging robe. I had bought it the day before Dalanski busted me at the dance.

I had peeped at her hole card that day in the hall. I knew she was a freak. I remembered her eyes chained to my crotch. Now I didn’t have on any towel. First chance I got I’d flash her into a boil, through the split in the front of the robe.

Maybe I could shoot some cocaine into that yellow virgin arm. That would open her up for sure. I might even steal her from scarface and put her back on the track tomorrow.

I thought, “This fine bitch is my speed. She’s not a hard-leg dog with a million miles on her. She’s no more than nineteen and sexy as the rear end of a peacock. I’ll play it cool and quiz her. Maybe some asskicker booted her off the track. Maybe that’s how scarface copped.

“I’ll stay in the pimp role, but I’ll sweeten it with a little highclass bullshit. Maybe I’ll rap some of that gigolo garbage I overheard the white pimps in the joint rapping.

“I better call Silas. I’m not ready for trouble with Scarface. I went to the door and unlocked it. I picked up the phone and got Silas.

I said, “Listen Jack, this is important. I’m gonna be rapping to the big-butt yellow broad who lives in four-twenty-two. I’m gonna give you and the broad on the desk a fin a piece. You gotta wire me here when Scarface shows. I’m not ready for him to wise up. Got me?”

Silas said, “You lucky young sonuvabitch. A faggot in a Y.M.C.A. shower room ain’t no luckier. You got salt and pepper, kid. We’ll wire you. I’ll stall the cage on the way up with him. Can I peep a little, kid, huh?”

I hung up. I felt a cool puff of draft on my ankles. I went into the living

room. She had slipped into almost nothing. She was crossed legged in the chair at the window. She turned her head from the street and looked up at me. She had on a thigh-long black negligee with pink butterflies sewn on. A pair of white silk panties gleamed through the black gauze. She curved inside it like a yellow Petty Girl. Her ebony hair was steepled on top of her skull like a black satin crown. I saw a frantic tic jerk at a corner of her melon-red mouth. If she turned out to have entasis, I swore I would give up whores and

get hip to the sissy game.

She said, “Hi. I ask myself why I’m here?”

I said, “Baby, don’t drag the party. Don’t ask yourself stupid questions. You can’t escape that freak, desperate spark. You know baby, that awful sweet electricity that makes a farm boy kiss a ewe. The same power that yowls a hot torn cat in the alley. You hip to it? Now just relax. I’m gonna roll you up a bomber. Baby, your luck has changed. You’ve hit the jackpot. You found me. Oh yea, my name is Blood.”

She said, “‘Blood’ it’s nice to meet you. I’m Christine. Chris I like better. I can’t stay long. I have to be careful. My old man is very jealous.”

I said, “Chris, you are gonna find out I’m a wild groove. You may stay a lifetime thinking it was only an hour. All we need is an understanding. All you need is a man.”

Over the top of Chris’s head I saw the runt flash her eyes up at the window. She was just getting into a white trick’s car. Twilight was sweeping away daylight with a deep purple broom. I went to the bedroom. I loaded an outfit and tilted it spike up in my pocket. I rolled two bombers. One with reefer, the other in cigarette tobacco. I snorted a thumb tip of cocaine. I got a towel and put it next to the gap under the front door. I lit some incense.

I gave Chris the bomber. I lit it and my dud. With a package like Chris, reefer might confuse me. I might wake up swindled. If she had been Garbo, I still wanted scratch before snatch.

I got another chair. We sat there facing each other in the twilight. I waited for the reefer to fill her skull. The bomber in her hand was now a roach. I cock-tailed it for her. Her eyes were dreamy.

She said, “Goddamnit sweetheart, I’m high. You know Blood you’re going to laugh when I tell you something. Guess what I was thinking when I saw you the first time in that towel?”

I said, “You thought, ‘Oh my itching cat! That pretty brown bastard looks like a pimp. I wish to hell I was still whoring. I sure would like to kiss “Mr.

Thriller, the killer” under that towel.’ Am I right, sweet freak?”

She giggled and scooted her chair flush against my knees. She slid her back down in the leather chair. She put the heels of her pink shoes on the seat of my chair.

I was sandwiched between her big yellow legs. The street lamp came on, spotlighting her. She was still giggling. I fingered the ready jolt of cocaine in my robe pocket. I took it out and hid it against the side of my chair. I saw blue veins pulsing on her inner thighs.

The cocaine had me strung on an icy rack. I raised her right leg and rubbed my cheek against it. I crushed her knee-cap between my teeth. She moaned. I gazed deep into her eyes. She had laughed tiny pearls of tears that clung to her long, silky lashes. Under the street lamp her face was innocent and soft as a yellow fawn’s. I felt old as Methuselah.

She said, “Don’t look at me like that. I know you can read minds. You give me the creeps with that look. It’s like you’re Svengali or that crazy Russian Monk I read about”

I said, “Chris, you’re gonna be my whore. We gotta share things. That reefer was just an appetizer. Reefer is for low-class skunk broads. Heroin is for chumps bound for the graveyard. Cocaine is for brilliant, beautiful people. “Chris, banging cocaine will spin a magic web of music and bells inside your skull. Every pore in your body will feel like Daddy’s jugging his swipe in all over you. It will torch off a racy secret fire of life inside you. It’s a miracle, Chris. You get all that thrill and no habit. I know you ain’t chicken

shit. Are you game to try?”

She said, “If it won’t scar me or hurt me. If it hurts, promise you’ll stop.

Don’t give me a lot, Baby. Where you going to put it in?”

I took her left leg and put it on the arm of my chair. I saw a fat line high up on her thigh. I eased the spike into it. She flinched. The dropper flashed red. I pressed the bulb slowly. Her eyes widened. Her white teeth bit into her bottom lip.

I emptied the dropper. I pulled out the gun. She sat there stiffly. She took her leg off the chair arm. She rubbed the inside knobs of her ankles against my sides. I saw her Adam’s apple spasm.

I remembered how I puked the first time. I slid my chair back and raced to the bedroom to get the wastebasket. I just made it back. She dumped a load into it. I flushed the mess down the toilet and rinsed the basket out. When I got back to her she was smiling and stroking her legs.

She said, “I’m sorry I did that naughty thing, Daddy. Oh! Oh! But now I feel heavenly. Baby, I’m so glad I came over and got this feeling. Aren’t those bells something? Baby, you got a lot of this? I want to do this every day. Stay like this every minute. Let’s lie down. I want a formal introduction to Mr. Thriller.”

I said, “Bitch, when you come to me as my whore I’ll keep your skull mellow. Now you gotta be joking about Mr. Thriller. He won’t have anything to do with a broke bitch that claims a square horn blower as her man. Let’s go over there while he’s away and get your clothes. You’re not married to him are you?”

She said, “How many girls do you have? Maybe your stable is too big for comfort. I get salty standing in a long line for my loving.”

I said, “Whore, answer my question. What are you, a roller or something? When you are my whore you don’t worry about anything but your own ass and scratch. Now answer my question.”

She said, “Blood, I didn’t want to answer because I am married to him. Leroy, that’s my husband, saved my life really. He’s been wonderful to me. He used to be good looking. He didn’t get so insanely jealous until after his accident.

“We’ve been waiting over two years for a settlement. Blood, honestly, you are my kind of stud. My life is so screwed up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to tell you. Would you believe that you’re the first fellow I’ve talked to in over two years? Blood, I don’t love Leroy.”

That cocaine had her speed rapping. I couldn’t cop her tonight unless I croaked Scarface. My plans had to change. I had to unhook her from Leroy soon. She’d make bales of scratch. Maybe I could work an angle to get her and a slice of that settlement. Of course, I couldn’t wait forever. If I had to, I’d cop without a slice of the settlement.

I knew Leroy was going to blow her. He didn’t have a chance to hold much longer with that ugly face and that jealous bit. I had to find out if she would level with me all the way. Silas had told me she was an ex-whore.

I said, “Chris, give me a fast rundown of your life story. I’ll have all the answers for you when you finish.”

She said, “If you let me sit in your lap.”

I nodded and she climbed onto my lap. She hooked an arm around my neck. Her cheek was against my ear. The cocaine thudded her ticker against my breast. Out of the side of my eye I saw the runt go into the greasy spoon. I

was hoping she wouldn’t use the phone just inside the door and interrupt the rundown.

I felt her balloon bottom blasting heat to the throbbing cup of my lap. Too bad I worked so hard at the pimp game. Mr. Thriller was playing stiff con on me. He was just a fool at heart. The poor chump wanted to sucker out in that bed with this luscious doll. Good thing he had me to stand guard over him.

She said, “I remember nothing but good until I was twelve. Then my mother died. My father had been a kind, good man, until then. He always worked. He was a good carpenter. He changed quickly after Mama died.

“He took my bed down. He said he wanted me to sleep with him. He told me how lonely his bed was after all those years with Mama. Nothing happened at first. One night a month later I had a nightmare. A wild ferocious animal was sucking my breast. It was terrible. I woke up. It was Papa.

“I screamed. He slapped me hard. His face was all twisted and hateful. He looked like a crazy stranger. I blacked out. When I came to Papa was crying and begging me to forgive him.

“After a while I would just lie there, numb and let him use me. I hated his guts. In school I had the crazy feeling the students could see and feel my shame and filth. By the time I got fifteen I was a skeleton. By now he had me doing everything to him. I’m glad he’s dead in Hell.

“Papa, the beast, was killing me. I was so nervous I couldn’t wash dishes. I broke dozens. I wasn’t eating enough to keep a bird alive. I collapsed one day coming from the grocery. I woke up in a hospital. My system was shot and I was pregnant. I stayed in the hospital a month. I stayed at Papa’s a week after I got out. I took some money while he slept and left Wichita with the clothes on my back.

“I came here and got a waitress job. A young pimp named Dandy Louee started picking me up when I got off. I thought he was a millionaire. He dressed me up and turned me out. He was a cruel black bastard. He liked to beat me, and then screw me. He worked me in a house run by one of his whores. He kept his foot in my ass.

“Funny thing, I made money even when my belly was stuck way out. A lot of tricks who came there wanted a pregnant girl. I lost the baby while turning a trick. Dandy got five years on a white slave rap two months later.

“I got a bar-maid job and met Leroy. He was playing a gig in the spot. I was a sick girl. I fell out twice while serving the bar. The doctor said I needed rest. He said I couldn’t expect to live long unless I rested. Leroy nursed me

back to health.

“He was good to me. I needed someone who cared. I married him when I was just four months shy of seventeen. I went with Leroy on a string of one- nighters in the Midwest. The group broke up in Youngstown, Ohio. We were stranded. Leroy got a job in an industrial cleaning plant. The second week a boiler exploded and you’ve seen his face.

“His lawyer says we can expect a ten-thousand dollar settlement any time now. Leroy is driving roe crazy with his jealousy. I don’t mind hustling. I’d be your girl, “Blood. I go for you, Blood. Are things clearer now? What should I do?”

I said, “You’ve had nothing but heartache. I feel so sorry for you, baby. Now I know you’ve got to be my woman. I gotta protect you. I gotta give you affection and understanding. Don’t worry angel, with me life will be smooth as the snow at Sun Valley.

“You’ll be so happy you’ll be out of your mind half the time. With our color combination we could make a sonuvabitching baby together after we get rich. Tell me, does Leroy plan to work the Roost for a while?”

She said, “Oh! I forgot to tell you. Last night was his last night. They want him for another six weeks, but he’s going to drop the Combo. It’s too much headache to get them to show for work sober and on time.

“He’s out now with a booking agent. I think he might go with a big band on an East-Coast tour. I hope he gets it. Band leaders want band members’ wives to stay at home. Daddy, please figure things out fast. I want to be your girl as soon as possible.”

I was sucking her scented cheek. I flogged my skull for a quick plot to tear the yellow gold mine from Scarface. The phone rang. She got out of her nest. I rushed to the phone. It was the excited broad on the desk.

She said, “Forgive me for goofing. Four-twenty-two went up two minutes ago. I was having a hassle with a check out. I saw him come in. It didn’t register until the second that I called you. You better clean house fast.”

I ran into the living room. I snatched her from the chair. I pulled her to the door. I cracked it. We peeped down the hall. Scarface was twenty yards away coming down the hall. He had a big stack of papers, maybe sheet music under his arm. He shifted the bundle to his other arm.

A paper fluttered to the carpet. He stooped to get it. I saw her door ajar. I stepped aside. I slapped her on the rump. She blurred across through her doorway. Scarface was standing with his mouth open staring toward his now

locked door.

He was sure he’d seen her. His face was puzzled. I shut my door easy like. I stood with my ear against the door. A bomb of sound shocked my eardrum. Someone was punching his fist against my door. I ran into the bedroom and got my switch-blade. I came back to the door. I held the open blade behind me. I opened the door.

It was Scarface. He looked like Mr. Hyde all right. His orangebrown eyes were spinning counter clockwise. I saw the bundle of papers in a careless heap in front of his door. His right mitt was deep in his coat pocket. I saw the faint outline of maybe a skinny lead pipe, or a gun barrel. I gauged the moves for a heart stab to beat his mitt out of his pocket.

I said, “Yeah Jack, what is it? I’m on the phone with my bondsman. The court just raised my bond on a double-murder beef. I’m in a bad mood. I don’t want to buy anything.”

He just stood there like a scarfaced zombie staring at me. He looked down at the carpet in front of my door. I looked down. A pink butterfly lay there like a silent indictment.

He heaved his chest and took a deep breath. It was like his last one. He stooped and picked it up. The eerie bastard took his other hand out of his pocket. Tears rolled down from his unblinking orange eyes as he stared at me. His scarred cheeks were quivering as he shredded the butterfly into pink lint on the carpet.

He turned and walked away. I shut my door and got a beak load of cocaine. I took the lounging robe off. It was dripping sweat. I showered. I sat in Chris’s chair at the window. Her sweet odor was still rising from it. For an hour I heard a loud sobbing whine across the hall. It was Scarface chewing out Chris. Mickey said midnight. I hadn’t eaten since morning and I wasn’t hungry. Cocaine was a strong con for the belly.

I thought, “I hope that jealous chump doesn’t croak her. It would be like making a big bonfire out of hundred dollar bills. If she wasn’t his wife and I had a rod, I’d go over there and claim her.”

The phone rang. It was Silas.

He said, “What happened, kid? Was she a whiz in the sack? Did the joker catch her? I been busy. I ain’t had a chance to check with you until now. I was worried about you, kid. The broad told me she was late with the wire. I stalled him in the cage.”

I said, “It was very close, Silas. I’m a pimp, I didn’t stick her. I’ll take care

of you and the broad this weekend when I pay my rent. Silas, if you get any news on the broad or Scarface wire me fast.”

He said, “Yeah, Kid, you know me. I stay hip to what goes on around here.

I’ll keep you plugged in, Kid. Good night. I’m going home.”

I hung up and lay across the bed. I wondered if Max and Blondie had the runt hemmed up in an alley again. I smoked a reefer. I fell asleep. The phone woke me up. It was the runt.

She said, “Daddy, it’s your baby. It’s after two, can I come home?” I said, “Bitch, what kinda lines you got?”

She said, “I got thirty slats. I’m beat, Daddy. My tricks have been spades.

You know how cheap and hard they are to turn. Can I come in?”

I said, “Come on in. Take a bath. Watch your jib, bitch. Don’t irritate me.

I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

She’d been working more than twelve hours. She was beat all right. Within a half hour after her bath she was snoring beside me. I was dozing when the phone rang. I switched on the light. I picked up.

I said, “Hello.”

Chris whispered, “Daddy, I can’t talk long. Leroy’s asleep. He found a butterfly that fell off my negligee. He’s been raving like a crazy man. He knows I was over there. I got bad news for us. The band spot is out. He called and turned it down. He’s going to keep the combo and go through Ohio.

“His agent has a slew of one-nighters booked for him. He’s taking me with him. Daddy, I won’t forget us. I’ll keep in touch. Maybe he’ll go out before we leave tomorrow afternoon. I may get a chance to kiss you goodbye. I love you, Blood. I’m going to dream about Mr. Thriller until I—”

I heard the drowsy whine of Leroy’s voice calling her name the instant before she hung up. I turned and looked at the runt. Her big mouth was wide open. Frothy slobber ran down her chin. Her sour hair had started to kink at the edges. She needed to go to the beauty shop downstairs.

I thought, “What kinda breaks am I getting? I’m sinfully good looking. I’m lying here with a lather-mouth dog. The ugliest joker in the world is across the hall. He’s in the sack with a pretty bitch whose nose is wide open for me. Something’s gotta be done. Maybe after I cop Chris, I’ll have the brass ring in my mitt.”

I didn’t sleep at all after Chris called. The runt woke up at noon. She went across the street and got our lunch. At two in the afternoon she was in the street.

Silas called. He told me Chris was checking out. I saw Chris and Scarface put their stuff in the car and drive away.

The runt came in at two A.M. with only twenty slats. She was shying away from white tricks. She was leery of Max and Blondie. I couldn’t shake her out of it. She would rather turn spades for three or five dollars. She was afraid Max would catch her with a white trick.

10

THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

A week after Chris left I copped another bag of cocaine from Top. It was almost gone. The runt was only making expenses. I had one lonely C note and a double saw plus the porker silver. The weather was getting balmy. I needed fresh clothes. I was going to the bottom fast.

In the three weeks after Chris left I kicked the runt’s ass a halfdozen times. I only left the hotel twice in almost a month. I was expecting Chris to call me and say she was on her way to me. Things were getting worse.

It had been two weeks since I saw Top. I decided to call him. Maybe he could hip me to a new spot to work for runt. My bankroll was thin. At ten

A.M. I called Top. One of his broads said he was out of town. He wouldn’t be back for a week.

I got a sudden thought. I asked her if she knew Sweet’s phone number. She said she did, but she’d have to call and find out if Sweet wanted me to have it. She called back in ten minutes and gave it to me. I called him. He answered. He was in a good mood.

He said, “Well, whatta you know, if it ain’t grinning Slim. You still got that one whore or have you grinned yourself whoreless?”

I looked over at the runt. She was still asleep. She hadn’t been in the street for three days. Her period had run five days. She claimed she was too weak and sick to go out. I had given her a terrible whipping the night before. I needed advice badly.

I said, “Sweet, my bitch is falling apart. She’s playing dead. If you don’t pull my coat I’m gonna starve to death. You gotta help me Sweet.”

He said, “Nigger, you ain’t cracking to nick me for scratch are you? I don’t loan my scratch to suckers who got whores and can’t pimp on ’em. I ain’t gonna support you and that lazy bitch.”

I said, “No Sweet I don’t want scratch. I want you to run the game through my skull. I got a tiny bit of scratch. I gotta get my coat pulled before I tap out.”

He said, “You got wheels? You know how to get out here? Now remember you get a roust out here, crack my name. Don’t repeat your boner.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m driving. I think I can find you pad. When should I come out there?”

He said, “Quick as you can get here. You get here and grin in my face, I’m gonna throw you over the patio wall.

“Say kid, Peaches and me got a taste for some of that barbecued chicken down there in Hell. Bring one with you when you come.”

He hung up. My ticker was pounding like Chris had walked in the door naked with a million dollars. I shook the runt. She opened her eyes. I stood over her.

I said, “Bitch, you better be in the street when I get back.”

She said, “You can’t do anything but kill me. I’m ready to die. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sick.”

I said, “All right bitch, just hip me where you want your black stinking ass shipped.”

I got in the Ford. I realized I hadn’t put on a tie. I didn’t have a lid. I looked into the rear-view mirror. I sure looked scroungy. Maybe he’d be alone. Then I remembered the lobby. What the hell did it matter.

I drove for about fifteen minutes before I saw a clean open barbeque joint. A black stud in a tall white cap was stabbing chickens onto a turning spit in the window. I went in. I came out with two birds. Peaches might be really hungry for barbequed chicken. It made solid sense to brown-nose Miss Peaches.

After making several wrong turns I found Sweet’s building. I parked the Ford in almost the same spot at the curb where Satan had sapped me a month ago. A young white stud in a monkey suit was out in front. Crusader Sweet was doing his bit to reverse the social order.

I went to the desk in the lobby. I felt like a tramp as I waited for the pass. I got on the elevator. A different broad was at the controls. The spicy scent of the chicken wiggled her nose. She wasn’t as pretty as the ripe-smelling broad. She sure kept her crotch from advertising. Maybe it was just that she didn’t get heavy action.

I stepped from the cage. The friendly brown snake wasn’t at his station to

flop his mop for me. I figured it was his off day. The odds were a hundred to one he was in the sack somewhere with a six-foot blonde.

She was probably a little like the blonde coming up from the pit on her way to the cage. It was Mimi. She flicked her green eyes across my face. They were cold as a frozen French lake. She passed me. She looked like a fancy French pastry in her sable stole. I wondered how I got the stupid courage to turn down her freak off.

I walked to the doorway of the pit. The stone broad was still in her squirting squat. Sweet was sitting on the couch. Miss Peaches beside him saw me first. She bounded across the carpet. I felt her choppers graze my hand. She snatched the bag of chicken. She flung it on the alabaster topped cocktail table in front of Sweet.

Sweet looked at me. I tightened my face into a solemn grim mask. I stepped down and walked toward him. He was wearing only a pair of polka- dot shorts. In daylight I noticed a mole on the broad in the picture over the couch.

I said, “Hello Mr. Jones. I hope those birds are still warm.”

He said, “Kid, your map sure looks like that bullshit bitch you got is been shooting you through hot grease. I like that look you got today. Maybe you’re getting hip the pimp game ain’t for grinning jackasses.

“Get over here and sit on this couch. While baby and me eat our barbeque, rundown you and your whore. I wanta know where and how you copped her. Tell me everything you can remember about her and what’s happened since you copped her. Rundown your whole life as far back as you remember. It don’t matter which is first.”

I ran down my life for him. Then I ran down from the night I met the runt until the moment I left the Haven. It took maybe forty-five minutes. I even described the runt in detail.

Sweet and his greedy girl-friend had devoured both birds down to the bare bones. Sweet was wiping Miss Peaches’ whiskers with a paper napkin. She put her head in his lap. She was jammed against my thigh. Sweet leaned back on the couch. He put his bare feet on the top of the cocktail table.

He said, “Sweetheart, you’re black like me. I love you. You got the hate to pimp. You a lucky Nigger to get your coat pulled by me. You flap your horns and remember what I’m gonna spiel to you.

“There are thousands of Niggers in this country who think they’re pimps. The pussy-weak white pimps ain’t worth mentioning. Don’t none of them

pimp by the book. They ain’t even heard about it. If they was black, they’d starve stiff.

“There ain’t more than six of ’em who are hip to and pimp by the book. You won’t find it in the square-Nigger or white history books. The truth is that book was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn’t lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast.

“The conning bastard white man hadn’t freed the Niggers. The cities was like the plantations down South. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man’s hard and filthy work.

“Those slick Nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads.

“The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn’t hip to the scratch in their hot black asses.

“Those first Nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man’s scratch. The first Nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only Nigger big shots in the country.

“They wore fine threads and had blooded horses. Those pimps was black geniuses. They wrote that skull book on pimping. Even now if it wasn’t for that frantic army of white tricks, Nigger pimps would starve to death.

“Greenie, the white man has been pig-greedy for Nigger broads ever since his first whiff of black pussy. Black whores con themselves the only reason he sniffs his way to ’em is white broads ain’t got what it takes to please him.

“I’m hip he’s got two other secret sick reasons. White women ain’t hip to his secret reasons. The dumb white broads ain’t even hip to why he locks all Niggers inside tight stockades. He’d love it if the Nigger broads wasn’t locked in there. The white man is scared shitless. He don’t want them humping bucks coming out there in the white world rubbing their bellies against those soft white bellies.

“That’s the real reason for keeping all the Niggers locked up. To show you how sick in the head he is, he thinks black broads are dirt beneath his feet. His balls will bust if he don’t sneak through that stockade, to those half- savage, less than human, black broads.

“You know, Greenie, why he’s gotta come to ’em? The silly sick bastard is

like a whore that needs and loves punishment. He’s a joke with scratch in his mitt. As great as he thinks he is, he can’t keep his beak and swipe outta the stink of a black ass.

“He wallows and stains himself. The poor freak’s joy is in his suffering. The chump believes he’s done something dirty to himself. He slips back into his white world. He goes on conning himself he’s God and Niggers are wild filthy animals he has to keep in the stockades.

“The sad thing is, he don’t even know he’s sick in the skull. Greenie, I’m pulling your coat from the bottom to the top. That rundown on the first Nigger pimps will make you proud to be a pimp.

“Square-ass Niggers will try to put shame inside you. Ain’t one of ’em wouldn’t suck a mule’s ass to pimp. They can’t because a square ain’t nothing but a pussy. He lets a square bitch pimp on him. You gotta pimp by the rules of that pimp book those noble studs wrote a hundred years ago. When you look in a mirror you gotta know that cold-hearted bastard looking at you is real.

“Now that young bitch you got is gone lazy. She’s stuffing on you. That bitch ain’t sick. I ain’t never seen a bitch under twenty that could get sick. Your whore is bullshitting. A whore’s scratch ain’t never longer than a pimp’s cold game. You gotta have strict rules for a whore. She’s gotta respect you to hump her heart out in the street.

“One whore ain’t got but one pussy and one jib. You got to get what there is in her fast as you can. You gotta get sixteen hours a day outta her. There ain’t no guarantee you going to keep any bitch for long. The name of the pimp game is ‘Cop and Blow.’

“Now this young bitch you git is shitty all right. She knows you ain’t got no other whore. I want you to go back to that hotel. Make that bitch get outta that bed and get in the street. Put your foot in her ass hard. If that don’t work, take a wire coat hanger and twist it into a whip. Ain’t no bitch, freak or not, can stand up to that hanger.

“Maybe your foot and fist can’t move that young whore anymore. She’s a freak to them. Believe me, Greenie, that coat hanger will blow her or straighten her out. It’s better to have no whore than a piece of whore. Get some cotton and make her pack herself. The show can’t stop when a whore bleeds.

“I’m gonna lay some pills on you. Give her a couple when you get her outta that bed. Don’t give her anymore reefer. It makes some whores lazy.

Don’t worry, kid, if you do like I say and blow her, I’ll give you a whore. Kid, don’t hold that whore to one block. Tell that whore all the streets go. Turn her loose. It’s the only way to pimp. If she blows, whatta you lost. She stands up, you got a whore and some real scratch.

“You go back and put the coat-hanger pressure on her. If it don’t blow her and she stands up for a week, you ought to have half a grand in a week. Take that scratch and drive to one of the whore towns close around. Go to Western Union. Send that scratch back to yourself at your hotel. Use some broad’s name as the sender.

“That lazy bitch you got will think she’s got competition. Watch the sparks fly from her ass. She’ll try to top that bitch that doesn’t exist. Greenie, you listen to Sweet Jones. You’ll be a helluva pimp.

“Never get friendly and confide in your whores. You got twenty whores, don’t forget your thoughts are secret. A good pimp is always really alone. You gotta always be a puzzle, a mystery to them. That’s how you hold a whore. Don’t get sour. Tell them something new and confusing every day. You can hold ’em as long as you can do it.

“Sweet is hipping you to pimp by the book. I’m the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. Now Greenie, is your skull going to hold everything I told you?”

I said, “Thirty years from now I’ll still remember every word. Sweet you won’t be sorry you helped me. I’m gonna pimp my black ass off. I’ll make you proud of me. I’ll call you later and hip you to what the runt did under hanger pressure. Oh yeah, don’t forget to give me those pills.”

He got up. Miss Peaches stretched her legs. She jumped down and followed him. A sharp hooked nail in one of her rear claws snagged out an inch of cloth from my pants knee. I wouldn’t have cared if she had clawed me naked. I was in a thrilled daze. With Sweet Jones on ready tap to pull my coat I was going to set a record on the fast track.

Sweet came back. He gave me a tiny bottle of small white pills. He put his hands on my shoulders. He looked down at me. His subzero eyes warmed to maybe zero.

He said, “I love you, Sweetheart! You know kid, I don’t ever think I’m gonna grin in your face. I love you like a son. Any time I grin in a sucker’s face I’m gonna cross him or croak him. Call me any time you need a rundown. Good luck, Greenie.”

I walked across the pit. I stepped up to the doorway. I glanced back. Sweet

had Peaches in his arms. She was purring like a new bride. Sweet was squeezing her in a lover’s embrace. He was covering her laughing face with kisses.

I checked Mickey when I got in the Ford. It was four P.M. I drove toward the runt. I tromped hard on the gas pedal.

I thought, “No wonder Sweet is the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. He even knows the history of the black pimp.

“I ain’t going to spare the runt’s ass. I’m gonna go right in with the pressure. I hope she’s not in the street. Sweet promised me a whore if I blow the runt. Any whore of Sweet’s is already trained to a fine edge. Maybe he’ll give me Mimi.”

11

TO LOSE A WHORE

I pulled the Ford into the curb across the street from the Haven. I didn’t see the runt anywhere in the street. I peeped into the greasy spoon. She wasn’t at the counter. I looked up at our window. I crossed the street and went through the lobby. I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I made three stabs at the lock with the key before I made it. I stepped inside. I was excited. I chain-bolted the door. I walked to the bedroom.

The runt was propped up in bed smoking a stick of gangster. Lady Day was tar brushing that mean, sweet man again. I stood by the side of the bed, next to the record player. I saw the edge of a paper plate sticking out of the wastebasket. I took it out and put it on the bed.

Two navy beans were in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. A pile of sucked, cleaned neck bones were heaped in the center of it. The runt had gone out to the greasy spoon and copped a hearty meal. She sure had a healthy appetite for a sick bitch. Her eyes were wild and big, looking up at me.

She fingered gently at the hole in my pants knee. I shut the box off. I ripped the record off the turntable. I broke it in half and hurled the pieces into the wastebasket. She kept her eyes on the hole at my knee. She ignored the broken record. She played it cool.

She said, “You’ll have to get it rewoven, huh? Daddy, I’m feeling better. I felt good enough to go across the street for food. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel good enough to go in the street. Baby, I would’ve went out after I ate, but my legs were too weak.”

I said, “Bitch, I already passed the death sentence on you. It’s good you had your last meal. I’m gonna send your dead ass to your daughter, Gay. Take off that gown and lie on your belly, bitch.”

I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it. I wrapped a necktie around the handle end. I turned back to the bed. She was still propped in the bed. Her mouth was gaped open. She had both her hands clapped over her chest.

She was like a broad in a movie. She opens a door and there’s Dr. Jekyll just going into his frightful change. I saw her tongue tremble inside her jib. Her lips made a liquid plopping sound as they mutely pounded together. She rolled across the bed away from me. I raised my right arm up and back. I heard my shoulder socket creak.

Her gown was hiked up to her waist. Her naked rear end had scrambled to the far edge of the bed. I raced around the foot of the bed. She rolled to the middle. She was on her back. Her arms held her jack-knifed legs against her chest.

The whites of her eyes glowed like phosphorus. I brought the wire whip down. I heard it swish through the air. It struck her across the shin bones. She cried out like she was celebrating New Year’s Eve.

She screamed, “Ooh-whee! Ooh-whee!”

She jerked flat, rigid on the bed then smalled her fists against her temples. She sucked her bottom lip up into her jib. I slashed the air again. It sounded like maybe a dum-dum bullet striking across her gut button.

She moaned, “Whee-Lordy! Whee-Lordy!”

She turned over on her belly. I tore the gown from her back. She was naked. She flailed her arms like a holy-roller. The whip whistled a deadly lyric as I brought it down again and again across her back and butt. I saw the awful welts puffing the black velvet skin.

I stopped and turned her over. The pillow stuck to her face. I snatched it away. There was a ripping sound. I saw feathers sticking to her tear wet face. She had chewed a hole in the pillow. She was thrashing her legs and mumbling.

Her chest heaved in great sobs. She was staring at me and shaking her skull. Her eyes had that pitiful look of Christ’s on those paintings of the Crucifixion. Her lips were moving. I got on the bed. I stuck my ear near.

She whispered, “I don’t need any more whipping. I give, Daddy. You’re the boss. I was a dumb bitch. It looks like you got a whore now. Kiss me and help me up.”

I felt tears roll down my cheeks. Maybe I was crying in joy that I broke her spirit. I felt sorry for her. I wondered if I was falling in love like a sucker. I

kissed her hard. I carried her into the bathroom. I placed her tenderly in the tub.

I turned the water on. A stream burst from the shower nozzle overhead. She squealed. I pushed in the shower bypass on the tub faucet. The warm water started filling the tub. I dumped a bottle of rubbing alcohol into the tub. She looked up at me. I took the tiny bottle of pills out of my pocket. I shook out two into my palm. I took a glass off the face bowl. I handed her the pills. She put them in her mouth. She washed them down with the glass of

water I gave her.

I said, “Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy’s gonna kill his little bitch if she don’t straighten up and whore like the star she is.

“Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don’t have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in. I can raise you if you take a fall. They gotta let you make a phone call. If I go out I’ll check the desk here by phone every hour or so. Bitch, get down and star. You want your man, get him some real scratch.”

I went and sat on the bed. The sheet looked like a red zebra had lain down and his stripes had faded on it. I heard her sloshing the water in the tub. She was humming the record I’d smashed. Sweet’s pills sure weren’t hurting her.

Whores are strange people all right. She was silent while she combed her hair and fixed her face. She put on a red knit suit. She stood in front of me. She held her hand out. I saw dark stains on her stockings at the shins. Her eyes were bright.

She said, “Daddy, I don’t have a dime. Give me a coupla dollars, please.

Don’t worry, when I come in I’ll have nice scratch.”

I stood up. I gave her a fin. I walked to the door with her. She turned her face up. I leaned down. I sucked her bottom lip, then bit it hard. She squeezed my arm and gouged her teeth into my cheek. She went down the hall.

I shut the door and went to the front window. I rubbed my cheek to see if the skin was broken. I saw her cross the street at the corner. She was walking fast. That whipping and those pills had made her well. She looked like a child. She was so tiny and sexy in her red suit. I wondered as she disappeared whether she’d come back. It was seven P.M.

I thought, “I better stick here in the pad. Whipping a broad with a hanger is not a bit like a foot in the ass. Christ! I’d kill the bastard on the spot if he hit my bare ass with one. Sweet was right. She got outta that bed all right. I

wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip.

“No, even hangers hadn’t been invented then. I guess Sweet did. I’m gonna wait the runt out. If she tries to slip in here to steal her clothes, I’ll croak her. I wonder why Chris hasn’t gotten in touch? Maybe some fast pimp has already stolen that pretty bitch from Leroy. Maybe Leroy had one of his fits and croaked her.

“I wonder what the bitch will be like that I get from Sweet if the runt blows? This is a hell of a feeling I got. I don’t know if I got a whore or not. It would be a bitch if Sweet goes back on his word and leaves me whoreless on this fast track. I’m gonna get high. I’d better take the flight with gangster. Cocaine will only sharpen my grief.”

I took a shower. I stepped out of the tub. I got a towel from the wall rack. I saw splotches of red on the one beside it. I toweled off. I rolled a giant bomber. I put a fresh case on the pillow the runt had gnawed.

I propped myself against the head of the bed. I sucked the bomber down to a “roach.” The reefer and the sibilant murmuring of tires against the street lulled me into deep sleep.

I woke up. I was still half-propped against the pillows. It was broad daylight. The runt hadn’t come in. I had blown whoreless with that wire hanger. I lit a cigarette. It was seven A.M. I lay there staring at the entwined lovers on the “Kiss” Statue.

I thought, “The runt’s got a pair of tits like that broad. Jeez, she was sure a freak. Some pimp is going to have a sweet bitch when he straightens her out. I wonder if that little bitch will miss me? She damn sure can’t forget me.

“Hell, I can’t worry about the mule going blind. I’ll wait until noon or so. I’ll rip open that whore grab-bag Sweet promised me. Maybe I was hasty to shut the door on Melody and his entasis. At this point I can get hip to anything except work. No one could know I was freaking with a stud.

“Christ, I wish beautiful Chris would call. What a thrill if she’d tell me she was rushing to me. To get her tight I’d maybe eat everything but the tacks in her shoes. I’m hungry. I’m not going to let my troubles abuse my skull and my belly.”

I got Silas on the phone. I ordered home fries and sausage. I got up and brushed my teeth. I skull-noted to call Top when he got back in town. Maybe he could find out who booked Leroy. Maybe I’d trace Chris that way. I’d get Preston’s owl-head and take her from Leroy at gunpoint.

I was listening to “Mood Indigo” and thinking about the runt. I was

remembering that day when I left Mama crying at the window.

I couldn’t wait to get around the corner to the runt. Then I was sure I had a black gold mine sitting in the Ford waiting for me. In this tough pimp game you couldn’t count your scratch until you had it in your mitt. Holding whores was like trying to cinch-grip quicksilver.

I thought, “Poor Mama. I haven’t called her or anything. I’m gonna call her when things get straight.”

12

TO GAIN A STABLE

I heard Silas knock on the door. I went and opened it. Silas was a strange, beautiful sight. The slick sorcerer-bastard had my breakfast on a tray. He had turned himself into a cute black bitch in a red knit suit. It was the runt. I murdered the grin of relief in its jib womb. I twisted my face into a copy of Sweet’s when he bounced my skull off his John wall.

I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna croak you. Since three o’clock I been calling all the hospitals and jails in town. I even called the morgue. Speak up bitch, what’s your story?”

She looked up at me. She was smiling. She walked past me into the bedroom. I followed her. She sat the tray on the dresser. She ran her fingers deep into her bosom. She brought out a damp wad of bills. She gave it to me.

She said, “Daddy, my last trick was a fifty slat, all night trick. I caught him at two this morning. Baby, I gave you a hundred and twenty eight slats.

“Silas had your breakfast on the elevator on my way up. With the two slats I gave him, I made a hundred and thirty.

“Oh, Daddy, I’ve found some good streets to work a coupla miles from here. It’s in the neighborhood of a joint called the Roost. You were a sweet daddy to be worried about your baby. Oh! I almost forgot. Keep your fingers crossed. I may bring you a girl one of these mornings. She’s wild about me. Her old man ain’t nothing. He’s a burglar.”

I said, “Phyllis, there’s more than one note in a song. You gotta string together a thousand nights like last night. Now take a bath. I’m gonna treat those scratches. Remember I don’t want any junkie bitch. Make sure she’s clean before you cop.”

I forgot about my breakfast. I went out and got into the Ford. I drove to the drugstore and got ointments and salves.

I called Sweet and told him the runt stood up. He reminded me to send that scratch to myself as soon as possible. I went back to the Haven. I sent Silas for hot food. I dressed her wounds. They sure looked bad.

Those “go” pills she had taken died. She fell asleep while I was doctoring her back. I ate and took a nap. By the end of the week, I felt like a pimp. I had an eight-bill bankroll not counting the porker silver.

One night about nine I got into the Ford. I drove less than a hundred miles to Terre Haute a small whore-town. I sent five bills to myself at the Haven. I used Christine as the broad’s name.

Top was back in town so I stopped on the way home and copped cocaine, yellows, and bennies. The runt came in that morning around four. She had a hundred-and-five slats. She was on her way to stardom. We were in bed when I cracked on her.

I said, “Baby, I think our luck is changing all around. I’m pretty sure Daddy’s copped another whore. I met her in a bar about a week ago.

“It’s a small world all right. She said she just moved out of this joint not long ago. She went wild over me. She’s a fine young bitch. She begged me to go to Terre Haute with her. She’s working a fast house up there. I told her I’d run up there after she sent her first week’s scratch. She gave me her phone number up there. I gave her my address.

“Tonight I called up there. I asked her about my scratch. She told me five bills were on the way. Baby, if she’s jiving we ain’t hurt. If she sends it and it’s respectable scratch your daddy’s got a small stable.”

She said, “Is she a white bitch? What does the bitch look like?”

I said, “Bitch, don’t get shitty now. What’s wrong with a white broad helping two spades? She’s a boot. She looks like what she is. A scratch- getting fine bitch in love with your man at first sight.”

It was a little after noon when the messenger brought the scratch notice.

The runt went to the door and brought him into the bedroom.

I opened it. The office was a half-mile away. I asked the runt if she’d like some air. She was eager to go.

It was a good thing I had gotten that driver’s license. I had to go through a long routine. They even made me crack the amount I was expecting. I got the cash.

The runt was silent on the way home. Sweet sure knew the angles to put pressure on a whore’s skull. In the next month I made two more trips to Terre Haute. Twice I went across town and stayed in a hotel over night until around

noon. I was conning the runt I was visiting her stable mate.

The runt was really humping. She was averaging no less than a bill a night. Two months after the hanger whipping I took a furnished three-bedroom vacancy in Top’s building. It was a gold-andred dream after the Haven. The runt really freaked this pad off. I guess she felt at home at last. It was on the sixth floor.

I copped six two-hundred-dollar vines at sixty slats a piece. The booster lived on the second floor beneath me. The same week Top cut me into a stud who had a black LaSalle car in mint condition.

He was out on an appeal bond and his lip wired him he was joint bound. I gave the stud four bills in his mitt. I paid off the last two notes on the wheels.

I had two cars. I gave the runt her Ford back. She could cover and get down in a wider area.

I started hanging around out at Sweet’s pad, sucking up the pimp game. I got home from Sweet’s one morning around five. I heard the runt rapping to someone in one of the bedrooms. I pushed the door open. The runt was in bed with a tall, pretty brown-skin broad. She looked fifteen. They were naked. They stopped kissing and looked at me.

The runt said, “Daddy this is Ophelia. I told you about her in the Haven. Her old man got one-to-three in the joint for burglary. She wants to join our family. Can she?”

I said, “Ophelia, if you’re not full of shit and you obey my rules you’re welcome. Have you bitches been in the streets working tonight? I hope you just got in that bed to freak off. Phyllis, get outta that bed and get my double- action scratch.”

The runt went into the closet and brought me a roll of bills. She said, “A bill of this I made.”

I fast counted a yard and seventy-five slats. I took off my clothes and got between them. I spent an hour quizzing Ophelia and running down my rules. She was eighteen. The circus started. I was circus master. I had become too much pimp to freak off with a new package. They were the performers. She had put only six bits in my pocket. How cheaply did she get me if she blew tomorrow.

It was the night before my twentieth birthday in August. I had gone to the West Side to cop some dresses for Phyllis and Ophelia. I had left the booster’s pad. I was loading the dozen or so pieces in the trunk of the LaSalle. I slammed the trunk lid shut and locked it.

I heard screaming and smashing sounds coming from a cabaret just down the street. I saw a hatless, gray-haired man come staggering to the sidewalk. He was holding his head. The side of his head looked shiny. I walked down the sidewalk toward him.

He was bleeding from a deep cut in his head. He was moaning and trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A dark thin joker ran out behind the old man. I saw something gleam in his hand as he raised his arm again and again.

I moved closer. The thin joker was savagely pistol whipping the old stud. He was beaten to his knees. He looked like someone had painted his face red. The thin joker turned his face. The light coming from the open door of the cabaret shone on it. It was Chris’ Leroy beating the old man. Twenty customers had come out. They formed a circle around the massacre. I moved

to the outside of the circle.

Then I saw Chris standing on the other side of the circle. She was screaming and tugging at Leroy’s pistol arm. Leroy had gone insane.

I moved around the circle closer to Chris. I stood behind her. I saw greasy stains on the back of her dress collar. Her hair looked frowsy and dull. Scarface was sure taking her to the dogs. I heard the screech of brakes. I saw two huge white rollers muscle through the crowd. Leroy was astraddle the unconscious figure, still pounding his pistol against it.

They shoved Chris backward. One of them put an armlock on Leroy’s gun arm and took the pistol. The other vised his neck in a strangle hold. They dragged him to the prowl car and threw him into the back seat.

A short middle-aged white broad stepped to the side of the fallen figure. She was wringing her hands. She was wearing a bar apron. She stooped and stroked the figure’s brow.

One of them got on the front seat. He turned sideways guarding Leroy. He put a microphone to his lips. He was calling an ambulance, no doubt. The other roller came back and stopped beside the white woman.

He said, “Anybody you know?”

She sobbed. “Yes, he’s my father-in-law.” He said, “What happened?”

She said, “Everybody knows Papa Tony loves to kid around the girls. He’s got a heart as big as New York. Everybody loves and understands him. Papa Tony came in the bar. He started kissing the cheek of all the girls at the bar.

“He kissed that one behind you. That maniac man of hers stopped singing.

He leaped off the stage. He started to beat poor Papa Tony with his pistol. It’s the first night the maniac has worked for my husband. If my husband, Vince, had been here that jerk’s brains would splatter the sidewalk.”

The roller looked back at Chris. He started making notes in a small book. I knew he’d quiz her after he got the full picture. I touched Chris lightly on the shoulder. She turned and looked up at me. She got weak in the knees. She slumped against me. I took her arm and steered her down the sidewalk. I heard the distant whine of an ambulance siren.

I said, “Chris, you had better split. That’s a white man Leroy beat up. The white folks are going to cross you into it. After all you’re the reason he nipped.”

We got into the La Salle. I moved it down the street toward the prowl car. I put on the brakes. A couple came from in front of the prowl car. They crossed the street in front of me. I had stopped beside the prowl car. Chris could have reached out and touched it.

I turned my head and looked into the rear seat of the prowl car. Leroy was staring at Chris. His eyes shifted to me. He leaped toward the front seat. The roller backhanded him. I saw Leroy’s head dip out of sight as I pulled away.

I made from that frantic leap of his that he remembered me. The LaSalle moved quickly away from the West Side. Chris was crying. I stayed silent until I hit the fringe of the South Side.

Then I said, “All right, Chris, I got you away from the heat. Tell me where you live and I’ll take you home. Don’t cry. You can bail him out when they book him.”

She sobbed, “All right, you want to take me home? Turn around and take me to Leroy’s jalopy. It’s parked behind the bar where he blew his silly top.

“We got in town broke this afternoon. He didn’t get the settlement. Maybe he’ll never get it. I’m so disgusted. He was to get paid nightly for the gig. He does a blues singing bit now.”

I said, “Bitch, you look like a bum. You conned me you’d keep in touch. You were gonna be my whore, remember? I shoulda left you back there to go to jail with your sucker-man.”

I realized I had a solid chance to cop her now. All I had to do was stay strong and bluff her.

Leroy was a cinch to get a bit. He couldn’t make bail. Chris had no out but me. She sure looked like my third whore.

I coasted into the curb. I left the engine running. We were parked in front

of a fleabag hotel. I had maybe a twenty-five-hundred-slat roll in my pocket I flashed for her. I peeled off a saw buck. I held it toward her. She ignored it.

She said, “Blood, it wasn’t that I didn’t think about you. I wanted to call you. I wanted to keep my word. Leroy never let me out of his sight. He would even follow me to the toilet. You don’t know how much I hate him. I hope he gets life. Don’t cut me loose, Blood. I’ll keep my promises. I’m free now. I’m yours, baby. Tell me to jump in the river. I’ll do it.”

I said, “No Chris, I’m afraid of you. I think Leroy has made a tramp jive- bitch outta you. I’m pimping too good to bring a headache into the stable. I’ll always be your friend, Chris. My ticker is bleeding for you, baby. I gotta think of number one.

“My whores are humping sixteen hours a day in the street. They love it. I don’t figure you got the guts and heart for the street track.

“Chris, for the rest of my life I’ll be sad when I think of you. I’ll have a lump in my throat when I think of what might have been. Take this saw buck, baby, and the best of luck always. Goodbye, Chris. Please split before I get weak and let you be my whore.”

I reached across her and opened the car door. My skull was hitting on all hundred-and-seventy-five cylinders. I was cinching her.

I remembered her name, Christine, on those Terre Haute money orders I’d been sending myself. She was the runt’s ghost gadfly come to life.

She pulled the door shut. She hurled herself against me. She held on to me and wailed like maybe I was her dead mama on the way back to the grave after a brief visit.

She blubbered, “Blood, please don’t cut me loose. I’m not a lazy bitch. Give me a chance. I want to amount to something. Please take me with you. I won’t let you down. I can hold my own against any bitch.”

I pulled out. I was headed home. I was a fox with a rare, pretty hen in my jib. I knew the runt and Ophelia were in the street. In the trunk I had six dresses I’d copped for Ophelia. I was sure they’d fit Chris.

I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna gamble on you. I’m taking you to your new pad. You gotta understand one thing. You can’t bring in scratch under a bill a night. You do, I may light my cigarettes with it or use it to wipe my ass.

“You’re gonna meet and work in the street tonight with your sisters. I’m gonna give you a rundown. Flap your horns and remember it. It will bring you into the family with some stardust on your tail.

“Chris, you’re lucky. A whore of mine croaked in Terre Haute just a week

ago. Her heart stopped while she was turning a trick. She was a martyr. Her name was Christine. I went up there and blew a coupla grand on her funeral.

“I guess I felt guilty about blowing all that scratch on a broad I’d had for only a coupla months or so. I didn’t tell the stable about her death. Maybe I went all out on her funeral because she had your name.

“I just don’t know. Anyway, the stable never met her. They sure have a lot of respect for that long scratch she sent me every week from the whorehouse. “Chris, you’re that great humping bitch reborn. A week before she croaked she begged me to turn her loose here in the street. I turned her down because

I knew she had a screwy ticker.

“So, Chris, I know you’ll prove to the stable you are just as great in the street as you were in the house in Terre Haute. I’m taking you home to get pretty for the trick people, baby-bitch.”

13

THE ICEBERG

When she saw the pad she flipped. A pink silk dress from the trunk fitted her perfectly. After a bath and a shampoo she was again the gorgeous Chris I’d met at the Haven.

I gave her two “go” pills and took her to the street for the cut into Phyllis and Ophelia. It was midnight when I curbed in the block where they were working. They were walking together across the street. They looked over at the LaSalle.

I blinked my headlights. They crossed the street and came toward me. The runt stuck her head through the window on Chris’s side. Ophelia was stooping down, pinning Chris.

I said, “Both of you get in.”

They got into the back seat. In the rear-view mirror I saw them look at each other, then at the back of Chris’ head.

I said, “Phyllis, Ophelia, meet Christine. She’s gonna work the street with you. She’s tired of giving up fifty percent of her scratch.

“She wants Daddy to have all she makes. I pulled her outta the whorehouse. What the hell, the whole family should be together anyway.

“Phyllis, I’ve told Christine a hundred times how great you are in the street. She’s hip you know all the rollers and all the angles. I want you to take her under your wing out here for a week or so. I know there ain’t a bitch out here that could pull her coat like you can. Now get outta the car and starve these other joker’s whores to death.”

I watched them walk away chattering and laughing. It was like they were real sisters. I looked at my diamond-studded Longines. It was ten-after- twelve. How about it? I was twenty years old. I was living in a six-bill a month pad. I had three young fine mud kickers. I was a pimp at last.

I tilted down the rear-view mirror. I powdered my face. I sat there gazing at myself. Finally I pulled off. I was going to Sweet’s to report my progress. I didn’t get much of a chance to rap to him.

Two rollers from Sweet’s precinct were drinking and horsing around with two of Sweet’s yellow whores. Sweet told them I was his son.

It tickled them witless when Sweet told them what Satan and his Demon had done to me. They told me not to worry. They would remember me and would wire the other precinct rollers not to roust me.

The rollers finally got crocked. The whores took them around the Chinese screen into bedrooms.

Then I said, “Sweet, I copped a beautiful yellow bitch tonight. I got her humping on the track with my girls. Sweet, the bitch is crazy about me. I know I’ll hold her for years.”

He said, “Slim, a pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They’ll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast. Stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love. Prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.

“Slim, I hope you ain’t sexed that pretty bitch yet. Believe me, Slim, a pimp is really a whore who’s reversed the game on whores. Slim, be as sweet as the scratch. Don’t be no sweeter. Always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.

“Whores in a stable are like working chumps in the white man’s factory. They know in their sucker tickers they’re chumping. They both gotta have horns to blow their beefs into. They gotta have someone to listen while they bad mouth that Goddamn boss.

“A good pimp is like a slick white boss. He don’t ever pair two of a kind for long. He don’t ever pair two new bitches. He ain’t stuck ’em for no long scratch. A pair of new bitches got too much in common. They’ll beef to each other and pool their skull, plots, and split to the wind together.

“The real glue that holds any bitch to a pimp is the long scratch she’s hip she’s stuck for. A good pimp could cut his swipe off and still pimp his ass off. Pimping ain’t no sex game. It’s a skull game.

“A pimp with a shaky-bottom woman is like a sucker with a lit firecracker stuck in his ass. When his boss bitch turns sour and blows, all the other

bitches in the stable flee to the wind behind her.

“There ain’t more than three or four good bottom women promised a pimp in his lifetime. I don’t care if he cops three hundred whores before he croaks.

“A good pimp has gotta have like a farm system for bottom women. He’s gotta know what bitch in the family could be the bottom bitch when mama bitch goes sour.

“He’s gotta keep his game tighter on his bottom bitch than on any bitch in the stable. He’s gotta peep around her ass while she’s taking a crap. He’s gotta know if it’s got the same stink and color it had yesterday.

“Slim, you’re in trouble until you cop the fourth whore. A stable is sets of teams playing against each other to stuff the pimp’s pockets with scratch. You got a odd bitch. You ain’t got but a team and a hall.

“A young pimp like you is gotta learn not to cop blind. Your fourth bitch is gotta be right to pair with the third whore.

“She can’t be no ugly bitch unless she likes pussy. She can’t be smarter than the pretty bitch. She can be younger, even prettier, but she’s gotta be dumber.

“Slim, all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimp makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

“A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.

“The poor sonuvabitch has joined a hate club he can’t quit. He can’t do a turn around and be a whore himself in the white boss’s stable unless he was never a pimp in the first place.

“So, Kid, rest and dress and pimp till you croak. I ain’t had no rest in a coupla days. I think I’ll try to get some doss. Kid, these skull aches are getting bad. Good luck, Kid. Call me tomorrow, late.

“Oh yeah, happy birthday, Kid. That rundown was a birthday present.”

My skull was reeling from his rundown on the way home. It was five A.M. when I got there. The runt and Ophelia were asleep. They were locked together like Siamese twins.

I picked up my scratch off the dresser. It was two and a quarter bills.

I went and looked in on Chris. She was in bed reading a book. She looked up and put the book across her belly. She reached under the pillow. She gave me a roll of bills.

I checked it. There was six bits. It wasn’t bad for a new bitch who got to

the track late. She held out her arms. She was naked. I had to cop her some sleep wear. To avoid her arms I lit a cigarette.

She said, “Daddy, did I do all right?”

I said, “Chris, you made a start. It’s like the first buck of that million you’re gonna make. I oughta frame it like a sucker who’s opened a new hot- dog stand. I want you to put that book down. Get some doss. I want you to take a fin to Leroy tomorrow. Hip him I’m your man now.

“The family is gonna Cabaret tonight. It’s my birthday today. I’ll get a rundown of your first night when I wake up. I’m gonna cop you a partner for the street real soon, baby. Good night, Chris.”

When I woke up, it was one P.M. I turned on my side. Two big brown eyes were looking at me. It was Ophelia. She started kissing my eyelids.

She said, “Daddy, you’re so pretty. You got eyelashes just like a bitch’s. Phyllis took Chris to visit that sucker in the shit-house. Daddy, can I kiss my candy?”

I said, “Christ in Heaven, ain’t I got a whore in this family without a hot jib. Go on bitch. Then get your kit and trim my toenails and paint ’em. We’re all going to get pretty for my birthday party tonight.”

She said, “How old are you, Daddy? I bet you’re nineteen.”

I said, “Bitch, I’m a hundred-and-nineteen. I just got a pretty baby face.”

Chris and the runt got back from Leroy around three P.M. Chris had a serious look on her face.

I said, “Well how did he take the news? Did he hang himself from the bars before your eyes?”

She said, “Daddy, he fell apart. He would have killed me if he could have reached me. He cried like his heart was broken. He said he was going to kill you wherever he saw you. I feel bad, Daddy. He really upset me. I’m going to lie down.

I thought, “That square chump is sure a whingding. I’m gonna put the hurt to him fast if I run into him.”

We partied at a swank white joint near the Gold Coast. We got home at four A.M. I was sober. The whores were stoned. I went and got into my bed. I dozed.

An hour later I woke up. The three whores were crowded into bed with me.

They were stroking and kissing me all over.

Mr. Thriller sure ached to be a circus performer. I was having trouble convincing Mr. Thriller he had to take only one at a time. He was a pimp not

a freak.

The ring-master put the show on and stayed cool. It was eight o’clock before I got to sleep.

It was a month before I copped the fourth whore. She was a cute tiny seventeen-year-old broad, about Chris’ color. The stable had brought her home from a coffee joint at closing time. They took their breaks there.

The little broad was a waitress in the joint. She was curious about the whore game. She was wild to wear flashy clothes. She thought I was rich when she dug the pad. The excitement in her eyes hipped me I could make a fast cop.

I took her into the living room. I cracked her into saying she’d be my woman and stop slaving for thirty a week.

Then I gave her the pitch to tie the knot. She was sitting in a chair. I stood looking down at her. Her eyes never left my face. It was maybe like a rattlesnake charming a robin.

I said, “Jo Ann, I gotta congratulate you. You’re not only lucky, you’re smart. You knew when you saw me that I was going to be your man, I’m hip that you were just waiting to meet me.

“You have wanted since you were a little girl to live an exciting, glamorous life. Well, Sugar, you’re on Blood’s magic carpet. I’m gonna make your life with me out-shine your flashiest day dreams.

“I’m a pimp. You gotta be a whore. I don’t have squares. I’m gonna be your mother, your father, your brother, your friend, and your lover. The most important thing I’m gonna be to you is your man. The manager of the scratch you make in the street. Now, sweet bitch, have you followed me so far?”

She whispered, “Yes, Blood, I understand.”

I reached down and took her hand. I took her to the window overlooking the city. I held her against me.

I said, “Look out there, baby angel. Out there is where you work. Those streets are yours because you’re my woman. I’ve got five G’s in fall money. If you get busted for anything, even murder, I can free you. Baby Bitch, this family is like a small army. We got rules and regulations we never break.

“I am really two studs. One of them is sweet and kind to his whores when they don’t break the rules. The other one comes out insane and dangerous when the rules are broken. Little baby, I’m sure you’ll never meet him.

“Never forget this family is as one against the cold, cruel world. We are strong because we love each other. There’s no problem I can’t solve. There’s

no question I can’t answer about this game.

“Tomorrow I’m going to start filling your skull with everything about this game and street. I’m going to make a star outta you angel. Don’t ask any outsider anything. Come to Chris or me.

“My little baby, I’ll protect you with my last drop of blood. If any mother- fucker in those streets out there, stud or bitch, hurts you, or threatens you, come to me. He will have to cut my throat first, shoot me first. I take an oath to protect you for as long as you are my woman. Baby, I know that’s for always. Now repeat after Daddy, baby.”

She squeezed tightly against me. She was in a trance looking up at me.

She chanted along with me. “From this moment I belong to Blood. I am his whore. I will do everything he tells me. I won’t ever fuck with his scratch. I will hump my heart out every night. I’ve gotta make a bill a night.”

She slept with Chris that night. After the first week I knew she was the perfect partner for Chris.

Sweet was right. Chris and Jo Ann ran Phyllis and Ophelia into a panting lather in the street. I started wanting that fifth whore.

Leroy got a year for the beating he gave Papa Tony.

About six months later Top and I were at the Roost bar. A loudmouth joker beside me was arguing with a stud on his other side. I had my back to him, facing Top.

Top and I had been shooting stuff for several hours in his pad. I was so frosted with cocaine I felt embalmed. It was maybe like I was at the Roost and I really wasn’t. I had raised my glass of Coke to my jib. I was being fascinated by the tiny bubbles popping inside the glass.

I was trying to count them before they all popped away.

I heard an explosion behind me. My skull was numb. It was maybe like the noise behind me happened a year ago on an ice floe in the Arctic somewhere.

I saw a light gray lid that stirred a faint memory. It wobbled across the log and stopped in front of where Top had been.

I thought, “That’s a Knox forty. I had one once that color.”

That crazy joker Top was on the floor between the log and his stool. His eyes were wide in fear. He was looking up at me like he thought I had gone bats and was going to croak him. I laughed at him.

I heard running feet behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The joker who had been arguing with Loud Mouth was running through the door with a rod in his hand.

I looked behind me. Loud Mouth was on his back, out cold. He had a long, red gouge across his temple. Some of the frost melted away in my skull.

The bullet that grazed Loud Mouth had torn my lid off. The joint was still. Top was standing and dusting himself off. The joint had emptied. I reached over and picked my lid off the bar.

I took a casual look at the entrance, exit holes in the top of the crown. I stuck it on my head. Top was staring at me. I tilted my glass and drained it. I turned to Top. Loud Mouth was groaning and coming to on the floor.

I said, “Jack, let’s get outta here before the rollers come. I ain’t got time for a quiz. You know Top, if my skull had been pointed, I’da had a bad break.”

Top followed me out the door. We got into his Hog in front of the Roost.

Top was still staring at me. His jib was gaping.

He said, “Kid, I saw it but I don’t believe it. I’ve seen some cool studs in my time, but I ain’t never seen nothing to equal that.

“Kid, you were cold in there, icy; icy, like an iceberg. Kid, I got it. You’re getting to be a good young pimp. All good pimps got monikers. I’m gonna hang one on you.

“Kid you’ve outgrown ‘Young Blood’ as a moniker. How about ‘Iceberg Slim’? Kid, it’s a beautiful fit. ‘Iceberg Slim,’ how about it, and I thought it up. Cocaine sure chills you. I guess you picked the right high for you.”

14

THE MISTAKE

By the end of the year I had copped a new thirty-nine Hog. I had blown Jo Ann ninety days after I got her. She was too possessive and she didn’t really have the guts for a long stretch in the street.

I didn’t cry when she left. While I had her, Chris kept her humping. I was thousands ahead of her when she slipped away from Chris in the street.

A week later I copped a young whore that was a whiz in the street and was hip to boosting. She went ape over Chris. She’d go downtown and come home with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for herself and her sisters.

Later she hipped Chris to boosting. I let them go down together with a stud who drove for them. They filled my closet with beautiful vines.

Top got five years on a narcotics rap. The federal heat tricked him into a four-piece sale to an undercover agent. I sure missed him. I hung out at Sweet’s more than ever.

My name was ringing. The moniker Top hung on me stuck. Everybody was calling me Iceberg, even Sweet. Only I and the several peddlers I copped from knew that my icy front was really backed by the freezing cocaine I snorted and banged every day.

I pimped strictly by the book for the next three years. I traded in a Hog each year. I never had less than five girls in the family.

I moved out of Top’s building and let the family stay there. I took a suite in a swank midtown hotel. I had the privacy, the jewelry, and all the flash and glamour of a successful pimp.

I had managed to solve the fast track. I was fast becoming one of its legends.

Top had gotten out. He was in Seattle with relatives serving out his short

parole paper. Only one of his women stuck with him. The rest got in the wind when he fell.

The runt was still bottom woman. Ophelia was still hung up on her. Chris was proving every day she had the qualities for a bottom woman.

I noticed the runt was acting like she might be wearing thin fast. The other two whores I had had been stable mates. I copped them when their pimp shot an overdose of H.

I was at Sweet’s when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I had stayed all night. I was still in bed.

The friendly brown snake had brought my breakfast. I was just finishing when Sweet walked into the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed.

He said, “’Berg, Uncle Sam just got his throat cut. The Slant Eyes just put the torch to Pearl Harbor. Whores gonna make more scratch now than ever before. ’Berg I got a feeling this Second World War is gonna hurt the pimp game in the long run.”

I said, “Sweet, how do you figure that?”

He said, “You know a whore ain’t nothing but a ex-square. A good pimp wears out a lot of whores in his lifetime. If there ain’t no big pool of squares for the pimps to turn out, then stables gotta get smaller.

“The defense plants are gonna claim thousands of young potential whores. Those square bitches are gonna get those pay checks. They’ll get shitty independent. A pimp can’t turn them out.

“The older square broads are going into the plants too. Thousands of them got teenage daughters. They’ll have the scratch to fill the bellies of those young bitches. They’ll put nice clothes on their backs. Why the hell should they whore for a pimp. They can pimp on Mama.

“The worse thing is, those plants are inviting whores with strict pimps to split and square up. If the war lasts a long time, pimps will have to turn pussy to hold a whore.

“’Berg, ain’t but one real Heaven for a pimp. He’s in it when there’s a big pool of raggedy, hungry young bitches.”

The war was raging. The defense plants were grinding out war goods around the clock. Thousands of young and old broads were slaving in them.

As far as I was concerned, the pool was still full of fine fish. I had three original girls and three new cops.

It was December, nineteen-forty-four. Sweet was still pimping good for an old man. He was down to seven women, but this was great pimping for a stud

his age. Top had settled out West.

I had held Chris, Ophelia, and the runt a long time. Since thirty-eight I had copped and blown sixty to seventy whores and turnouts.

The turn-over in turnouts was big. Some of them would hump for a month and split. Some a week. Others a couple hours before they cut out. Sweet had been so right years ago. The pimp game was sure “cop and blow.”

I spent Christmas day with Mama. She was really happy to see me. She hadn’t seen me since thirty-eight. She cried as always when I left her.

The runt was getting tired and evil. Several of those turnouts she had run away from me. All new turn-outs I was giving to Chris to polish in the street.

I started sending the runt to small towns near army camps. Some of them were out of state. Sometimes Ophelia went with her. A week before I met Carmen, the runt and Ophelia had come back from a weekend in Wisconsin.

The runt and the other five girls were with me when I copped the seventh girl.

She was almost a perfect copy of the runt at eighteen. She had a prettier face than the runt had at eighteen. Her features were more regular. Time and street had bulldogged the once cute Peke face of the runt.

We were at a cabaret. Carmen was behind a twenty-six game table in the barroom. I left my table and went to the John. I passed Carmen on the way. She gave me a strong lick.

On the way back I stopped and tossed a quarter on her table and rolled the dice trying for a score of twenty-six. I hit twenty-six, so I bought us a drink with the score. I stood beside the table and quizzed her. She was from Peoria. She’d been in town a week.

We had old Party Time in common. She had met him up in Peoria where he was still living. He had a whore in a house up there. She had worked in the same house. She had run off from her pimp and she was wide open for a fast cop.

We rapped for fifteen or twenty minutes. I could tell she went for me. She looked at the clock. It was almost closing time. I invited her to have breakfast at the family’s pad.

We’d had breakfast. I was leaving with Carmen. I was going to my place to put her under contract. The runt followed me outside to the hallway. She called me.

I gave Carmen the key to the Hog. She went toward the elevator. I didn’t move toward the runt. I said, “Bitch, you wanna rap to me, come to me.” She

had a tight evil look on her face. She walked slowly up to me. Top was right. These bottom broads, when they started to rot, really funked up a stud’s skull.

She said, “You ain’t thinking about bringing that bullshit bitch into this family are you? That phony bitch ain’t shit.”

I said, “What the hell. You mean you’re gonna turn down a chance to Larceny a new bitch away. You stinking bitch, nobody tells me what bitch to have. You got the nerve to crack some bitch is phony. I had to almost croak you to make you real.”

I noticed two of the latest cops were in the open door. They were eyeballing down the hall at our show.

She shouted, “Nigger, you were a raggity nowhere scarecrow until you got me. You didn’t have no wheels. You muscled me for mine. Nigger, I’m the bitch that made you great. Without me, right now you’d go to the bottom fast as shit through a greasy funnel.”

I made a bad mistake. I shoulda maybe used Top’s jellied skull technique to get rid of her. Instead I left-hooked her hard as I could against the jaw. There was a pop like a firecracker going off. She fell to the carpet in a quiet heap. I kicked her big rear end a dozen times. I walked to the elevator. I looked down the hall. I saw Ophelia and Chris dragging her toward the apartment.

The runt got her broken jaw wired up. She split with Ophelia. Chris said she tried to take two of the newer girls with her too. I had made a pimp’s classic blunder. I had blown a tired bottom bitch in the rough.

Carmen was an easy cop. A pimp wants everybody who can hump his pockets fat. He’s in real clover when he cops a fine young whore who wants him. Carmen really wanted me. She was starting with Chris.

Six months later Sweet called me early in the morning. His voice was laced with excitement. I jerked erect in bed.

He said, “’Berg, I got a wire the F.B.I is nosing around some of the broad lock-ups. They’re quizzing whores. Your name has been cracked more than once. It looks like they already got a solid beef to go on. It’s my guess they’re trying to build a five or six count rap against you.”

I said, “Sweet, I bet it’s that stinking runt. Christ! Sweet, I’ve sent her and Ophelia across state lines a dozen times since the war started. They’re trying to ram a white-slave rap into me, Sweet. What would you do?”

He said, “I would give one of those nice sweet jokers on the West Side expense scratch and a ball-peen hammer. I’d tell him as soon as I read they

was found in an alley with their skulls caved in he could get a cinch two grand.

“It would be easy to trap ’em. They’re whores. He’d be just another freakish trick wanting to party with two whores.

“Tell you what, ’Berg get them whores outta that crib over there fast. Move outta your pad today. Go groundhog. Switch your whores to new stomping grounds. Stay outta the street after you move. Call me when you get outta there.”

He hung up. I thought, “I’m a sucker. I shoulda destroyed the runt Top’s way.”

I had moved the stable and myself to new pads by seven that night. Chris, my new bottom woman, was the only one in the family who knew the reason for the move.

I took the Hog and put it in a garage I rented from an old widower. The garage was behind his house in a respectable neighborhood.

I got a cab to one of my stuff connections. I was going underground. I had to have at least a piece of stuff. I had copped and was walking down the street looking for a cab.

I passed a barber shop. I got a glimpse of the white-spatted dogs of a joker in the barber’s chair, next to the window.

I thought, “Geez, that square joker is pitiful. He ain’t hip spats went out with high-button shoes.”

I was walking fast. I had the sizzle on me. I needed a cab in the worse way. I was almost a half block from the barber shop. I thought I heard some joker yelling, “Run! Run!”

I looked back over my shoulder. A tall skinny stud in a barber’s apron was on the sidewalk. His white spats flashed on his feet. He was screaming and flailing his arms like a minstrel clown singing “Mammy.”

He was loping down the sidewalk. The out-of-fashion bastard was yelping,” Son! Son!” He galloped by the neon lights toward me. His wrinkled brown-skin face changed colors like a chameleon.

He ran into me and clutched me like I was a winning sweepstakes ticket. He was panting and sweating like a whore on soldier’s payday. I could smell witch hazel and the stink of emotion sweat. I saw white specks of barber’s talc on the bald crown of his head. I couldn’t see his face. He had it buried in my chest.

He was blubbering, “Oh son, precious son. Sweet Jesus answered an old

man’s prayer. He’s let me see and hold my one and only son before I got to my heavenly rest.”

I had the damnedest thought while he made love to me. I wondered if my skull had chipped any paint off that wall he threw me against when I was six- months old.

I stiff-armed him away. I stared coldly into his face. I saw a weak blaze of anger light his dull brown eyes.

He said, “God don’t like ugly, son. You saw your father back there. You ignored me, didn’t you?”

I said, “Shit no I didn’t see you. I thought you had croaked. Look Jack, I’m happy to see you, but I’m in an awful hurry. See you around.”

He said, “I did my part to bring you into this world. You ain’t gonna treat me like a dog. Where do you live? You look prosperous. What’s your line? Are you with some big company? Are you married to some nice girl? Do I have any grandchildren, son?”

I said, “You haven’t heard about Iceberg Slim? He’s famous.” He said, “You don’t associate with black filth like that I hope.”

I said, “Look Jack, I am Iceberg. Ain’t you proud of me? I’m the greatest Nigger that ever came outta our family. I got five whores humping sparks outta their asses.”

I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The apron was quivering over his ticker. He was supporting himself against a lamp post. His face was gray in shock under the streetlight. I jerked my shirt and coat sleeves up past spike hollow. I stuck the needle-scarred arm under his nose. He drew back from it.

I said, “Goddamnit Jack, what’s the matter? Shit, I shoot more scratch into that arm a day than you make in a week. I’ve come a long way since you bounced my skull off that wall. Stick your chest out in pride, Jack. I been in two prisons already. Shit, Jack, I’m on my way to the third any day now. You ain’t hip I’m important? Maybe one of these days I’ll really make you a proud father. I’ll croak a whore and make the Chair.”

I walked away from him. I caught a cab at the corner. The cabbie u-turned. I looked at my old man. He was sitting on the curb beside the lamp post. His white spats gleamed starkly in the gutter. He had his head on his knees. I saw his back jerking up and down. The poor joker was bawling his ass off.

I got home. I called Sweet. I banged a load of cocaine. It was the best I’d copped since Glass Top went to the joint.

15

IN A SEWER

After I had called Sweet and banged the cocaine, I had chilling thoughts. “I’ve got five whores just like poor Preston had when Sweet crossed and

destroyed him. I wonder if Sweet will dream up a cross to steal my whores from me? He knows where I’m padding. It would be as easy as lifting a telephone receiver. Sweet swears he loves me like I’m his son.

“These seven years on this fast track have hipped me to one solid truth. To a pimp there’s nothing more important than copping whores. While I’m holed up, I’ll keep my stable headaches a secret, I won’t give him a cue to volunteer his help. It would be a bitch to have him handling my stable. I’m sure glad Chris is a boss bottom bitch.

“Oh! This pressure is really screwing my skull around. Sweet wouldn’t cross me. I gotta stop mistrusting the only friend I got. I mean more to Sweet as his friend than any whore.

“Maybe I should make a run for it and set up shop in some other city. Christ! Why do I have to be red hot with federal heat? Why couldn’t it be city or state heat? On this fast track I’ve only been busted and mugged once. A dozen other times I paid off on the street.

“That F.B.I. is a sonuvabitching genius. No, I’d better keep my hot ass in town right here in this cruddy pig sty.

“The runt’s a whore. Maybe her new pimp or a trick will croak her. Then I could walk into the F.B.I. office and stick my black ass out to be kissed. They’d have no case without the runt as a witness.”

“The runt took Ophelia on all those out-of-state trips. I gave the runt instructions and expense money. I ain’t never told Ophelia to cross a state line. The runt was screwing Ophelia. That was really the runt’s bitch.”

“It’s a good thing I holed up in this rat’s nest. The F.B.I. would never look

for a good pimp in a sewer.”

It was December, nineteen-forty-five. The war was over. The world was licking its bloody wounds. Drugs and the pimp game had hardened away my baby face. My hair was thinning. I was turning twenty-eight but I looked forty.

For seven years I had devoted myself to getting hip to that pimp’s book. I had labored with the zeal of a Catholic Brother agonizing for the Priesthood. I had thought and acted like a black God.

I was now trapped in my dingy one-room kitchenette. It was in a very old two-story building. I was on the first floor in the rear in number ten. Down the hall at night, rats would come scampering and squealing from the alley. They came under the back door which hung crookedly on its hinges.

I had a vague disturbing doubt in my skull. Was it possible I wasn’t even a poor imitation of a God? Maybe I was just a sucker black pimp on his way to a third bit in the joint.

Chris was the only one of the stable that visited me. We’d bang cocaine together. I wouldn’t let her know how worried I was. God couldn’t have skull aches.

I couldn’t let the others see me in a crummy setting. After all, how could a God live like a square chump? Chris knew all the reasons why. To her God’s farts still had the fragrant odor of roses. I worked out with Chris a smooth system. Even the best pimp has to keep some personal contact with his whores.

The system was simple and for a while effective. Chris and I would go out into the hall to the phone on the wall. She could call the stable at their pad. It would always be three or four o’clock in the morning.

One of the girls would pick up. Chris would pretend to be a long-distance operator. It was rare luck that Chris had a talent for mimicry. They didn’t get hip to it. It would always be a person-toperson call from me to one of them. Chris and I conned them the calls came from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

I would get on the line and talk to all four of them. There were extensions in all four bedrooms. I could con and tighten my game on all of them at the same time.

The first call we made was supposed to be from New York. It took maybe a minute for me to have all their horns to receivers.

I said, “Well girls, I know you’ve missed Daddy. You’ve all probably

wondered, when in the hell is Daddy coming back to town? Jesus Christ! Has he forgotten a whore needs to see her man some time? Sure we’re in his corner. We prove that when we hump our asses off in the street. We check our scratch into Chris to send to him.

“Goddamnit, what could be so important that he neglects his whores? Well girls, I’m gonna show the kinda confidence Daddy’s got in you. I’m gonna hip you to a million-dollar secret. I know all of you will keep your jibs buttoned.”

Chris cut in crisply and said, “Three minutes are up, Sir. Please signal when through.”

I continued, “You are the luckiest whores alive. Your man’s got a genius white engraver for his pal. He used to be an engraver for the government. We’ve got some plates he’s just finished. We’ve turned out three-hundred of the prettiest hundred-slat bills the human eye has ever seen. They’re perfect. Even the government couldn’t get hip to a difference from real scratch. There ain’t any.

“We got one problem we’re gonna solve if it takes a year. We’ve run outta the special paper the government prints its scratch on. My white genius pal even knows how to make the paper. We are playing it cool and traveling and copping inks and other stuff we need. It’s tough to cop some of it, but for millions who’s going to give up? As soon as we get the paper made up we’re gonna run off a couplamillion or so slats.

“I’m gonna breeze back into town the only millionaire pimp in the world. I’m gonna buy a beach and a mansion in Hawaii for my stable. If we run outta scratch, we’ll just run off another bale.

“So stay cool and keep humping. Oh yeah, Chris got a cab to the airport an hour ago. She should be getting home in a coupla hours or so. She’s bringing each of you a piece of that beautiful lettuce. Spend it on anything you want. Take it anywhere, even a bank. Believe me, it’s perfect.”

I hung up. I had electrified them with the story. I could hear the excited thrill in their voices when they chorused goodbye. I told Chris to crack the genius had a way to make all the serial numbers on the bills different. I already knew what my story would be whenever I got the heat off me.

I could stall them a lifetime. I could say the genius got busted on another beef. I had to wait until he got out. He wouldn’t tell me where the plates were hidden. He could even croak while doing his bit.

Chris called the next day. The whores were walking on air. They rapped all

night about that perfect “queer.” I was sure I had found the way to hold my stable. I felt like a genius myself.

Each time I talked to the stable after that, the genius and I had just copped another vital item we needed. It wouldn’t be long now I assured them. Sweet had dropped the word in the street that I was on the West Coast taking off long scratch from a rich square broad.

It was getting almost impossible to sleep. I would almost jump from my skin when a tenant would knock. I would think it was the heat. The tenant would be calling me to the phone in the hall. When I did fall off into fitful sleep I’d have nightmares. Those dreams about Mama would hog-tie me on a sweaty rack of misery. I had an awful fear of another jolt in the joint. The guilty daydreams on the heels of the nightmares were torturing my skull.

I stopped banging cocaine. It only magnified my terror and worry. I remembered how serene Top used to look after a bang of H. He’d sit and coast like he was in a beautiful peaceful dream. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe sable H came after mink cocaine.

Chris came on Christmas Eve. She stayed until Christmas Day afternoon. She brought me pajamas, cologne and robes from herself and the girls. She had given them scratch from me.

My one-room kitchenette hideout was crammed wall to wall with trunks and suitcases. I had all those fine threads and no place to go. I was a lonely pimp bastard!

Sweet came to see me at midnight in January, the tenth I think. He took off his velvet-collared Melton benny. He hung it in the tiny closet. It had been ten-below-zero or colder for a week.

It was a brand new year, nineteen-forty-six. The new Hogs were out for the first time in several years. The garage rent was paid for a year for my old Hog. Chris had gone out several times to run its engine for awhile.

I thought “Christ it would be a kick to trade off and flash through the fresh air in a new Hog.”

It was the first time Sweet had visited me. He was getting white around his temples. There was less fiery voltage in his gray eyes. That H and the fast track had him looking terrible. He was getting old all right. He sat down on a suitcase at the head of the bed. I was lying down. Miss Peaches was an old lady, but still gorgeous in her mink coat and fur bootees. He slipped off her coat and shoes. He put them on the dresser. She sat on the floor looking up at me.

He said, “’Berg got bad news for you. The street wire says city rollers are carrying a mug shot of you around. You’re really hot now. I gotta wire that pimping Poison is nosing around your girls in the street. If you ain’t got Chris tight, he’ll steal her. She’s gonna hip him where you’re hiding.

“Maybe you oughta get outta this joint tonight. Take another hide out. Don’t let Chris or any whore you got know where you are. I’m your bosom buddy, sweetheart, and I love you. I’ll keep the stable in line for you.

“In the meantime I could figure an angle to get your balls outta the hot sand. All you gotta do is call your girls. Tell ’em you want Uncle Sweet to look out for ’em for a coupla weeks. It’s easy, Pal.”

I just lay there for a long moment feeling myself tremble. If he had been lovable Henry, my stepfather, saying he hated me, I couldn’t have felt worse. True, I had conquered the fast track, but that sucker inside me I couldn’t kill was hurting the hell out of me. I looked at him. Somehow I kept my voice steady and the pain outta my eyes.

I said, “Jeez Sweet, I’d have a bitch of a time trying to cop another friend like you. I feel like bawling just to think about it. I ran down my life story to you. You know I love you like I loved Henry. Maybe I love you, Sweet, more than I love Mama.

“Don’t think I’m a chump square when I say it. Sweet, you taught me to be cold-hearted. You’re the only person on Earth who could hurt me. The jokers in the street call me Iceberg.

“They’d laugh their asses off if they knew I was weak for a stud I love like a father. Sweet please don’t hip them I got a sucker weakness. Don’t ever do anything to croak my love for you. Sweet, if you ever do, they’ll all get hip.

“I’ll maybe fall apart and run through the streets wailing like a crazy bitch. Sweet, I’ll wait and think for a day or so. Poison can’t steal Chris. I’ll kick things around in my skull. Maybe you should be looking out for the stable.

The whole time I was talking, he had run his index fingers along the sword edges of his pant’s creases. His gray eyes had found the suitcases and cluttered room fascinating works of art. He swallowed air and tented his bejeweled fingers under his first chin.

He said, “’Berg, this joint is wrecking your skull. Sweet would chop his right arm off before he’d cross you. You’re the only friend I got, sweetheart. Shit, Honey, you could have a hundred whores and I could be whoreless. I’d ask you to give me a bitch. I wouldn’t try to steal no whore from you, Darling. You need anything? I gotta split. I got two whores I gotta pick up

downtown.”

I said, “No Sweet, I don’t need anything. I’ll rap to you tomorrow. If you hear anything, wire me fast. I’m sure glad you dropped by.”

I heard his heavy feet pounding down the linoleum in the hall. They stopped. I heard them getting louder. He was coming back. I looked around the suitcase where he had been sitting. I didn’t see anything he had left. He thumped the door. I opened it. He had Miss Peaches in his arms. He was flashing the first gold-toothed grin I’d ever seen on his face.

He said, “’Berg I forgot to tell you. They found old Pretty Preston frozen stiff in the alley back of the Roost. The poor bastard had wrapped himself in newspapers. The Greek fired him a week ago for staying near the fire and not pulling marks on the sidewalk. The drunk half-white bastard thought the newspapers could stand off ten-below-zero.”

He turned and walked down the hall. I shut the door and fell across the bed. At three Chris called. I told her to stay away until my next phony long- distance call to the girls. I told her Poison might try to tail her, and maybe the F.B.I.

She told me they didn’t have a chance. She went in front doors of a half- dozen buildings then out the back doors before she came to me. When she got to my place she’d come in the back door and walk through the front door. She’d go through the alley then through the back door again before she came to my door.

Maybe they couldn’t keep a tail on her. I told her to stay away to play safe. I told her not to call from the pad. It would be a bitch if one of the girls picked up an extension.

Sweet called the next morning at one A.M. The broad next door answered the phone. She knocked on my door. I slipped on an overcoat and walked into the hall. It felt like zero out there.

He said, “’Berg, I just got the wire. Poison stole your young bitch, Fay. I hope she ain’t hip to anything that can cross you. ‘Berg,’ you gotta make some moves. I’ll keep my horns to the wire.”

He hung up. I was in trouble. I went and got back in bed.

I thought, “Poison’s gonna quiz that stinking bitch. She’s gonna spill that ‘queer scratch’ con I’ve been playing. To tighten his game on her he’s gonna wake her to the con. He’s gonna tell her I’m hiding out in the city.

“It’s a good thing Chris is in on the con. I could blow whoreless in an hour if she wasn’t. I need her to take the rest of the stable underground. Maybe I

shoulda split outta town when I first got hot. I gotta move the rest of the stable fast.

“Poison is a cinch to pull their coats to the con I played. It’s the ace to play for a fast cop of maybe the other three. They’ll be salty as hell with me if he gets a chance to wake ’em up. Hurry Chris and call!”

At three Chris called. I ran to the phone in my pajamas. I almost froze to death talking to her.

She said, “Daddy, I had to call you from home. Poison just left with Fay and her clothes. The black bastard has wised up the whole family to that game we played. Dot, Rose, and Penny are larcenied to the gills. They’re crying and packing their clothes. I can’t hold them. They hate me. Poison came into my bedroom before he split. He acted and rapped like I was already his whore. If I’d had a pistol I’d have croaked the strong bastard.

“He said, ‘Well Miss Bitch, your Nigger is finished. You’re the only whore he’s got left. I know a fast pretty bitch like you don’t want no pimp you gotta solo for. With my Fay cop, I got eight whores. I’m on the inside of this game. None of my whores take falls. I’m top pimp in town.

“‘You’re the best whore in town. There ain’t nobody but me you can take for your man. Bitch, come to me and you can be queen boss bitch of the eight-whore stable. Get your domes and get outta here with me and Fay. Iceberg is going to the federal joint.’”

She said, “Daddy, what happens now? Maybe Poison will come back and gorilla me. I’m so upset, I know any minute I’ll scream myself into a padded cell.”

The zero drafts blasting through the gap under the back door kept me from passing out. I felt cold sweat dripping down my shaking legs. My throat was having dry convulsions. My voice sounded like it came from an echo chamber.

I stammered, “Chris, don’t lose your cool. This is Iceberg remember? Like always I’ll put an angle together. Now listen carefully. Pack your things. Go down and get the building flunky. Pay him to take you to a hotel near the garage where the Hog is stashed.

“Check in and leave your things. Go to the Hog. Drive back and pick up your stuff. Go downtown and check into a hotel. Drive the Hog back and stash it back in the garage. Take an El train back to your hotel. Call me then.” I went back and washed my face in cold water. I looked in the mirror. I looked like I had on a Halloween fright mask. I sure didn’t look a bit like a

fresh-faced kid any more. The whites of my oncebright eyes were blood-shot and faded. The deep black circles looked like some tricky practical joker had conned me to ram inked spyglasses against the sockets.

I started looking for a yellow. I had to put a damper on my nerves. I had a little cocaine. I didn’t need racing. I needed some skull pacifying. I was out of yellows.

Somewhere in one of the suitcases I had a notebook. The phone number of a connection no farther than fifteen blocks away was in it. Maybe he had yellows. If not, what the hell, I’d cop a cap of H. One cap couldn’t hook me. Horse was a cinch to kick the jitters outta my skull.

It would be two hours at least before Chris would call back. I found his number. I called him. I told him, in code, I’d pick up six caps within the hour. I had a fat roll of scratch in a sock pinned inside the sleeve of a trench coat.

I started to take it with me. I stuck it in my benny pocket. It bulged like a grapefruit. I’d be back before long. I pinned it back inside the sleeve.

I had close to sixty-eight hundred slats stashed there. I fished out three saw bucks. I slipped pants and a shirt over my pajamas. I put on shoes and a heavy benny.

I was in a helluva hurry. I pulled the door shut. I heard the spring-latch lock. Less than five minutes after I had talked to the peddler, I was on the way. It was four A.M. when I left. The wintry winds almost snatched my lid off my skull. It felt good though. It was the first time I’d walked in the fresh air for months.

A bleak overcast blotting out the sky. Slipping and sliding on the icy sidewalks, I finally got to the connection. He lived on the second floor over an all-night chili joint. The joint was crowded. There was no one on the sidewalk. I went up the rickety stairs and copped five caps of H. He put the caps into the cellophane shell from a cigarette pack. He twisted the end and balled the package.

I took it and went down the stairs to the street. I had the sizzle in my hand. I started to walk by the chili spot on my way home. Two neatly dressed brown skin studs were standing on the sidewalk in front of the joint. Its bright lights floodlighted the sidewalk. It was like walking a show-up stage at a police station.

From the side vent in my eye I saw them pinning me. They stiffened. One of them reached toward his chest. I looked back. He was showing his buddy a small square of paper. I started walking fast away from them.

I remembered the sizzle. I downed it and walked faster. I knew they couldn’t see in the darkness that I had dropped it. I glanced over my shoulder. I saw a rod in the hand of the taller one as they ran toward me. I ran.

They were bellowing, “Halt! Police! Halt! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

I had reached the corner and was halfway around it. I saw a fourman squad of white detectives. They were cruising toward me in a police car. They threw a blinding spotlight on me. I froze. They all looked at me. I saw a shotgun muzzle ease out of a fast-lowering rear side window.

The two rollers chasing me skidded around the corner. In a way I was glad to see them. Those rollers in the cruiser probably hadn’t croaked anybody in a week. I really didn’t want them to break their luck on me.

The two held onto me like I was Sutton. The white rollers shut off the spotlight and moved slowly down the street past us. The shorter one had handcuffed my hands behind me. He showed his buddy the picture. They looked up at me.

The taller one said, “Yeah, it’s the bastard all right. Look at the eyes.”

They searched me head to toe. They saw the lone saw buck I had. They hustled me back around the corner. We passed a skinny black joker standing on the corner. He nodded at me. I recognized him. He was in my building. I had sent him for groceries and change for the phone a dozen times.

I got a fast glimpse of the picture as the roller slipped it back inside his coat pocket. It was me. I remembered the pearl-gray sharkskin suit and black shirt. Top and I had been together four years ago. The two white rollers who had hit on us hated Top because he had white whores. They wouldn’t take a pay off. They booked us on suspicion of homicide and mugged us. Top and I were out in less than two hours. It was the one and only time I had been taken in on the fast track.

They put me into the rear seat of an unmarked Chevy. They were in the front seat as the tall one drove away.

I said, “Gentlemen, it’s not gonna put any scratch in your mitts to take me in. Let me give you the price of a couple fine vines to cut me loose.”

Slim said, “Shit, you couldn’t cop one bullshit vine in a hock shop with the scratch you’re carrying.”

I said, “I got more scratch at my pad. Knowing I’m Iceberg you can believe that, can’t you? Just run me by there, I’ll get it, lay a coupla C’s apiece on you and fade away. How about it?”

Slim and Shorty looked at each other.

Shorty said, “You think we’re suckers? You got a federal warrant for white slavery outstanding. We didn’t hear a word you said about that chicken shit four C’s.”

I said, “All right, so we’re all like black brothers. The bad difference is the

F.B.I. wants to lynch your brother in court. You gonna throw me to the white folks for hanging? I’ll give you two grand apiece to beat the F.B.I. outta their pound of black meat.”

Slim said, “Where’s your pad?”

I thought fast. It had been a mistake to crack about my pad. If I told them they could take my whole stash and still bust me or croak me. I was a fugitive. They might even come back to the stash after they took me in. I had the key to the kitchenette in my pocket. I tested them.

I said, “You know Sweet Jones. He’s a friend of mine. I can get four G’s from him five minutes after we get to his place. I can’t take you to my pad. I got a close friend there. Suppose after we got there you’d change your minds about the deal. You’d have to book him for harboring me.”

Slim said, “We can’t cut you loose. We couldn’t do it if you gave us forty G’s. I just remembered you were in that spotlight back there. One of those downtown men could have made you. Sorry brother, but what the hell? Federal joints ain’t bad to pull a bit in. Thanks for popping up like you did. You make a great pinch for us.”

16

AWAY FROM THE TRACK

They locked me up in central jail. At dawn a jail trusty brought a basket of bologna sandwiches down the line of cells. A moment later another trusty brought a gigantic kettle of black stinking chicory. I passed up the delicacies.

The tiny cell was too small for two men. Eight of us were in it. I was lying on the concrete floor. I was using my rolled up benny as a pillow. My lid shielded my eyes from the bright bare bulb in the corridor.

My cellmates were bums and junkies. Two of them were getting sick. They were puking all over. The bums were stinking almost as bad as the junkies. A drunk lying beside me dug his fingernails into his scalp and crotch over and over. He scratched his back against the floor. He had to be lousy. It was rough going for a pimp all right.

I thought, “If someone had told me a year ago I’d be back in a shit-house I’d have thought he was nuts. Christ! I hope nothing happens to Chris. She’s the only link to the outside I can trust to get my clothes and scratch.

“I know after she calls and can’t get me at the pad she’ll check out all the shit-houses. It’s a good thing I’m not in the federal lockup at county jail. Here she can grease a mitt and see me. I hope she makes it before the U. S. Marshal shows to move me.”

At nine the turnkey came and called out my name. I went to the cell door. He looked hard at me through the bar. He twisted the cell-lock open. I stepped out into the corridor and followed him.

He took me to a break-proof glass window with a speaking hole in it. I saw Chris on the other side of it. She was crying. I couldn’t blame her. I felt like crying with her. I bent down and put my mouth to the hole. She stuck an ear against it on her side.

I said, “Baby, there’s nothing to cry about. You’re Daddy’s brave bitch,

remember? Now listen. I want you to give the copper at the property desk a double saw or so for the key to my pad.

“I want you to get my scratch outta the sleeve of my green trench coat. Rent a safe-deposit box. Then move my stuff to your hotel. The Fed’s are gonna take me back to Wisconsin. They call it the point of origin for the runt’s beef.

“They’ll set a bond for me there. I’ll get a slick lip in Wisconsin, Baby you keep checking. Get to Wisconsin a day before I do with the scratch. I’ll need it for the lip and bail, understand Sugar? Once I get bail, I’ll get our stable back and beat this rap.”

I took my jib from the hole and put my horn there.

She said, “Daddy, I’ll do everything the way you say. I understand. Daddy, I’ll go and get the key to your latest hideout. Where did you move? I thought you were going to wait for my call?”

It didn’t register. Maybe I was cracking up under all the strain and grief. Maybe I had moved before I got busted. I raised my head and looked at her. Her eyes were questioning. I pointed my index finger at the hole. I decided to risk my theory that I hadn’t moved.

I said, “Chris, goddamnit! I haven’t moved! All my stuff is still on West Ave. Now come on, girl, this is not the time for jokes from Daddy’s witty bitch. You knocked on the door, I wasn’t there. Naturally, I couldn’t be, I was down here.”

She said, “Daddy, I didn’t have to knock. The door was wide open. Both trunks and all the suitcases were gone. In fact the only thing left was your hair brush. I put it in my purse. Daddy, all this is too much for me. I must be losing my mind.”

I stood there glaring hate at her. Her eyes were wide, staring at me.

I thought, “Poison or Sweet has stolen this Judas-bitch from me. I’m in a cross. One of them has rehearsed this bitch. She’s a sonuvabitching actress. A sucker looking at that innocent look she’s got would have to buy the con. I hate this bitch worse than I do the runt. If I could just get my hands around her throat. I’d love to see her tongue turned black, flopping across her chin.

“Well, I can’t croak her through that glass wall. No matter what, I’ve gotta stay Iceberg, I can’t let her take back a chump emotional scene to report. She and her new man are not gonna get their kicks at my expense.”

I turned and walked away from her. I saw the turnkey at the far end of the corridor with his back to me. Good thing for me he hadn’t been close enough

to lock me back in the cell right away. I was twenty feet from her when it exploded in my skull.

I thought, “It’s the skinny flunky! It’s the skinny flunky! It’s the bastard that saw me get busted! He rushed back and sprang that spring latch. I gotta go back to Chris and really play some game. If she gets hip I don’t trust her she’ll blow for sure. She’s the only stick I got to fight with.”

I turned back toward her. She was still standing there. She was crying harder than before. I walked to the glass and spoke into the hole.

I said, “Chris, a joker in the building saw me get busted. He cleaned me out. Baby, we’ve been so close. I had a crazy thought that if you’d been there I wouldn’t have been robbed. What the hell, Sugar, I’m the bastard that kept you away. It wasn’t your fault at all.

“Christ! I’ll be glad when this is over. Give a lip here in town a half a yard or so. Have him come to county jail and bring me whatever papers are needed to sell the Hog. Get the slip on the Hog from the property desk. It’s in my wallet. We should get twenty-five hundred or so for it. Bring that scratch and all you can hump up onto Wisconsin.”

They moved me to Wisconsin. Chris came to county jail there and put three-thousand dollars in my jail account.

Mama came to see me. She was in pieces. She thought the government was going to give me fifty years.

At my hearing, bail was set at twenty-thousand. A bondsman put up the face amount. His fee was two G’s. I got the state’s best criminal lip. I gave him a G retainer.

Chris and I went back to the track. I stayed out on bail for four months. I had two turnouts and three seasoned whores during that time. None stayed longer than a month.

Everybody in the street knew about that rap over my head. I guess the whores didn’t want to fatten a frog for snakes. Sweet and I didn’t see much of each other. I didn’t feel close to him any more. I was a pimp on the skids. Poison was top pimp.

Every slat I got my hands on I wired to the lip. I had to. I was getting one continuance after another. Finally I went to trial. The runt and Ophelia were there. They were afraid to look at me. They gave the government a penitentiary case all right.

They grinned at each other when I got eighteen months. Mama fainted. Chris boo-hooed. I had a good lip though. With the counts against me I could

have gotten ten years. Chris went back to the track. She swore she’d stick until I got out.

Leavenworth was what the government called a class-A joint. It was big and escape proof. It was run by master psychologists. There was no screw brutality. It wasn’t necessary. The invisible mental shackles were subtle but harder than the steel bars. Alcatraz was the grim trump the officials held over our heads.

It was a joint of con cliques. The most dangerous clique was the Southern cons. They hated Negroes!

I had references as a cellhouse orderly from other joints. I got a spot in a cellhouse with mostly pimps, dope dealers and stick-up men.

I was out at night until ten exchanging newspapers and magazines for the cons. I’d been in the joint about six months. I stopped in front of a cell to rap to a pimp pal. He was excited and standing gripping the bars of his cell door. He was a yellow version of Top. They called him Doll Baby.

He said, “’Berg, you told me I couldn’t steal the beautiful bitch. Well, the bitch sent me a kite this morning. She’s transferring to the shoe shop. I already got the spot picked out where I can sock it into her.

“I told you that square-ass peckerwood she’s got couldn’t out-play me. The bitch is got four bills on the books. She’s getting me a big order on commissary this week. Shit, on the street or in the joint it’s all the same to pimping Doll Baby.”

I had seen the beautiful bitch. He was a lanky white boy with watery blue eyes and bleached corn-silk hair. A fat red-faced Southern con was madly in love with him. The beautiful bitch would lie in the fat con’s arms in the yard and pick at the pimples on his face. The con was feared by everyone. He was the leader of a treacherous band of Southern cons.

I said, “Doll, you better cut that bitch loose. Her old man is from Mississippi. He’s a cinch to cut your heart out in that yard. He can’t let a Nigger steal his broad. Take my advice, pal. I like you. You’ve only a year to go.”

The next time on the yard I saw Doll and his bitch billing and cooing on the grass. They didn’t see any of the ball game. The game was over. The fat con and his band of Southern shiv men had been evil eyeing Doll’s show. I was fifty yards back of Doll when it happened.

Hundreds of cons were pressed together filing from the bleachers and playing field. I saw Doll throw up his hands and scream. He disappeared. The

gray tide moved on. Three screws were standing over him. He was on his back. Blood was gushing from his open mouth. Blood seeped from holes in his jacket.

He lived, but he had a bitch of a time making it. He stayed hitchless for the rest of his bit.

Chris stopped sending me scratch or anything. I got a wire she’d squared up and married a pullman porter. She even had a baby. I wondered if the sucker knew what a boss bitch he had.

I was filing out to sick call one morning. A group of cons on the other side of the road was filing to work. I saw a con marching behind a dark- complexioned con raise something that glinted in the sun. It was a shiv. He was chopping away at the con. Finally the con folded dead. Screws rushed up and took the hatchet man away.

I was two months from release. I had stopped to rap to an old con forger who knew Sweet. We were shooting the breeze about stick-up men and how they stacked up in the skull department with pimps and con men. We were rapping loud. I knew the night screw was at his desk four tiers down on the ground floor.

I said, “Pops, a stick-up man is gotta be nuts. The stupid bastard maybe passes a grocery store. He sees the owner checking his till. Right away a stupid idea flashes inside his crazy skull. ‘That’s my scratch.’

“The screwy heist man walks in. Maybe the grocer is a magician or an ex- acrobat with a degree in karate, worse an ex-marine. The silly sonuvabitch doesn’t realize the awful odds. He ain’t got enough in his dim skull to think about the trillion human elements. Any one of them can put him in his grave. The suicidal sonuvabitch maybe has his back to the street with his rod in his mitt. Pops, the stick-up man is champ lunatic in the underworld.”

Pops agreed and I walked away down the tier. I heard a hiss from the cell next to Pops’. A new transfer was standing at his cell door. He was skinny with a rat face. I stopped. He was sneering at me. His hands were trying to crush the rolled-steel bars.

He stuttered, “You you lousy pim-pim-pimp motherfucker. You you pu- pu-pussy-eating sonuvabitch. You-you ain’t going to live your bit out.”

I went fast to get a rundown on the nut from a stud on the tier below.

He said, “Ah, ’Berg, I hope you haven’t crossed that dizzy bastard. He croaked a stud in Lewisburg. They hung fifty on him. He’s a heist man. You better watch him close. He’s a cinch to make the Rock or loony bin.”

It was a week later just after the cellhouse filed out to the shops. The cellhouse screw had signaled “sick call.” I was standing in the back of the cellhouse on the flag. I was lighting a cigarette to smoke before I started mopping and waxing the flag.

Somewhere above me an excited voice shouted, “Look out, ’Berg.”

I looked up and chilled. A plummeting shadow flashed like black lightning in my eyes. I heard a whooshing whistle as it scraped gently against the cloth of my shirt at the tip of my shoulder. A dozen cymbals clashed as it grenaded against the flagstone at my side. I looked down. A steel mop wringer lay in three pieces. There was a Rorschach crater in the flagstone. Its outline was like a headshrinker’s blot.

I stared at it and idly wondered what the prison head-shrinker could make of it. He was a slick joker. Months ago he had told me, “Pimps have deep mother hatred and severe guilt feelings.”

I looked up. It wouldn’t take a head-shrinker to figure this one. The rat- faced heist man was grinning down at me. He was on his gallery on the fourth tier near the ceiling. He had stayed for “sick call” to bomb my skull off. The crater symbol was easy. Rat-face hated pimps without guilt feelings tied in. That night I took a pack of butts to the con who had screamed out the warning to me.

The nutty bomber went to solitary. Two weeks later he tried to gut a con with a shiv made from a file. They shipped him to the Rock. I was ecstatic to see him go.

During my bit I had read the second cellhouse full of books. I had read mountains of books on psychiatry, psychology, and the psychoneuroses. I couldn’t have done a smarter thing. I’d have to be my own head-shrinker when the white folks entombed me for a year in that steel casket in the future. I got all my good time. I was released in the early spring of nineteen-forty- seven. I stopped off at Mama’s for a week. Then I went back to the fast track. I had sixty slats and the joint vine on my back. The clothes I’d bought while on bail were with Chris. Maybe her pullman porter was my size.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to do a “Dick Tracy” for a few used vines.

Sweet was still in the penthouse. He had blown down to only three whores. Poison had made a bad pimping blunder. He had turned out a white square and put his foot in her ass. It was the last straw for the downtown brass. They bounced him off the force. He had one whore. He bird-dogged her. He took his scratch off after every trick like a Chili Pimp.

I rented a pad by the week. It was in the same slum district where the flunky had beat me for my roll and clothes. I had no flash and glamour, no pimp front. I was just another pimp down on his luck. I was starving for a whore.

In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch. The young fine whores are wild to hump for a pimp in the chips. A pimp in bad shape can’t get the time of day from them. A pimp’s wardrobe has to be spectacular. His wheels must be expensive and sparkling new. I had to get the gaudy tools to start pimping again.

17

TRYING A NEW GAME

I had three choices. I could cop a piece of stuff on consignment from a contact I had made in the joint. I could peddle it retail and get nine or ten grand in weeks. I could take a dog, a broken-down whore with trillions of mileage on her. Maybe I could keep my foot in her ass and grind up a bankroll.

I decided to take the third out. Do a slick fast hustle. I met a pimp named Red Eye in a junkie joint. He had just finished a state bit the week before. He was whoreless like me and itching to pimp again. We were crying on each other’s shoulder at the bar.

He said, “Ice, ain’t it a bitch? No matter how much pimp a stud is, these dizzy bitches demand he’s got a front. Now we ain’t hustlers, but I got an idea. Ice, you’re a helluva actor and you can rap good as a con man. I know a stud who’s hip to every smack peddler and fence on the West Side. I got a rod and a real copper’s shield.

“All we need is a Short and a third stud to drive. Neither one of us is well known over there. Besides, there’s a flock of youngsters dealing now who were squares when we left the track. I’m a rollertype stud. With the weight you put on in the joint you’d make a perfect copper.

“Ice, if we only knock over three of ’em, we split maybe ten to fifteen G’s between us. Our finger man is a junkie punk. We give him and the driver peanuts. Ice, those forty-seven Hogs are a pimp’s dream. I gotta have one. Whatta you say? Are you in?”

I said, “Red Eye, I’ll go for it. I sure as hell ain’t going to put a mop in my hand out here. I don’t have wheels, but I’ve got a little scratch. I’ll spring to rent a short. You know someone with one? How about a driver?”

He said, “Ice, lay a double saw on me to cop a short. I know a stud for the

driver. Meet me right here in this joint tomorrow night at nine. We can take off our first mark.”

I said, “Don’t crack my name to that driver. Call me Tom, Frank, anything.”

I didn’t get two-hours sleep that night. It worried me to be part of a hustle that required a rod.

I thought, “Maybe I’d better back out. I could maybe find a young hash- slinger in a greasy spoon. I could turn her out in a hurry. She’d be a long shot for stardom. At least she’d make enough scratch for chump expenses.

“You can’t start pimping with a turnout. It never works out. A pimp with no whore and no bankroll is a sucker to try the turnout on a mulish square broad. No, I guess the Red Eye deal is all I got.”

Red Eye got to the joint at ten-thirty. The driver was a huge stud with a rapper like a girl’s. I noticed his big meat-hooks shaking on the steering wheel on our way to the West Side. Red Eye ran down our first mark. His light-maroon eyes were whirling. He had a skull full of H.

He said, “Paul, our first mark is a bird’s nest on the ground. It’s a broad. The finger showed her to me last night. She and her old man got the best smack on the West Side. It’s so good studs from all over town are rushing to cop every night.

“He and the broad deal out of a bar three blocks from their pad. They deal mostly in eights and sixteenths. On a weekend night like this one they take off maybe five G’s. The stud is got a rep as a fast-rod joker. He ain’t got no direct syndicate connections as far as I know.

“We ain’t got to worry about him tonight. He’s in New York copping a supply. The broad will leave the bar around midnight loaded with scratch. She’ll have a few packs of smack on her too for the evidence to shake her. Her real name is Mavis Sims.

“She’s gonna go to her short parked behind the bar. She ain’t afraid of being heisted. Everybody is scared shitless of her old man. She’s got a small rod strapped to her thigh. She ain’t going to pull it on the police though. That’s us, strange rollers from downtown. We gotta move fast on her when she bits that lot behind the bar. She’s a slick bitch. We gotta be real rollers. We can’t wake her up we’re fakes. She’s a strong bitch, I’d have to blow a hole in her if she reached for her rod.

“There will be a pack of hard studs in the bar. They would love to croak us on that lot to please her old man. We gotta move her fast outta the

neighborhood to play her outta the scratch. We gotta be careful the rollers don’t join our party. Her old man is doing a lot of greasing in the district.

“Perry is gonna park our short in the street beside the lot. We arrest the broad and you play on her while Perry drives. I ain’t going to rap. Ice, after we cop her it’s up to you for the shake. You got to convince her.”

Perry was really nervous. He pulled into the curb next to the bar lot. His skull was jiggling on his bull neck like he had Parkinson shakes. I was silent.

Red Eye’s rundown had me wondering how it shaped up as a bird’s nest to him. It looked like maybe a bird’s nest for Dillinger. If the mark hadn’t been a broad I’d have split and got on an El train.

I wondered if she’d seen me before I went to the joint. What if she made me right away as Iceberg and plugged me in the skull. Her old man might have outfit friends. If he did we’d be found in an alley with our balls rammed down our throats. We were standing in the shadows ten feet from the broad’s short.

I said, “Red, I better take the rod. When we step out on her, shine the flashlight right in her eyes.”

She was walking fast when she came into the lot. Her light blue chiffon dress was billowing in the April breeze. She was walking wide-legged like a whore after a long night in a two-dollar house.

My legs were trembling like a stud dog’s hung up in a bitch. I looked down at the badge pinned to the wallet in my palm. It glittered like molten silver in the moonlight. The thirty-two pistol in my right hand weighed a sweaty ton.

She was twirling a key ring. In the utter silence the clinking sounded like the U.S. Marshal’s handcuffs. She had her hands on the door handle. I stepped out of the shadows. Red Eye was behind me. I wondered if she could hear my ticker hammering. Red Eye put the light in her face. Her yellow forehead wrinkled in surprise. Her sexy jib flapped open. I grabbed her wrist and tried to crush it.

I roared, “Police! What’s your name and why are you sneaking around back here?”

She stammered, “Gloria Jones, and I was coming to my car. I always park it here. Now get out of the way. I’m going home. The captain of this district is a personal friend of my husband’s.”

Red Eye had turned off the flashlight and moved behind her. She was looking down at the badge. She was trying to yank her wrist free.

I said in a low heavy voice, “You lying dope-peddling bitch. Your real

moniker is Mavis Sims. We’re from downtown. Your old man’s no pal of ours. We’re gonna bust you, bitch. I’ll lay odds we’ve caught you dirty. Come on bitch, before we get rough. Anything I hate it’s a stinking smack dealer.”

We hurled her into the back seat of our short. Red got in beside her. I was up front with Perry. I turned facing the rear seat. There was silence as Perry drove out of the district toward central headquarters. Miss Sims was squirming in the seat. Her right hand was out of sight behind her. She was getting very jerky. I remembered that rod she was carrying. I started the shake.

I said, “Al, this suspect is acting peculiarly. Perhaps you’d better pull over.

She might have concealed some evidence behind the seat.”

He pulled over. Red moved toward her. She slid to the window on the other side.

She said, “Officers, I’m clean. It’s worth fifty apiece to cut me loose. If you bust me, I’ll be out in an hour. Take me back to the bar. I can get the hundred and fifty from the bar owner.”

I said, “No dice, sister. We got specific orders to bring you in. Now don’t make him slap a broad around. He’s gonna frisk you. He don’t have to wait for a matron to do it downtown. It’s proper if he thinks you’re armed and we’re in danger.”

He patted the inside of her thighs. It was there, a twenty-two automatic jammed under the top of her stocking. He took it out and shoved it in his pocket, searched her bosom, purse, shoes, and hair. She was sure clean except for the rod.

I felt like a real chump. All this trouble for nothing. He was scratching his chin. The junkie punk had put a bum finger on the broad.

I was at the point of shoving her out. Then it struck me. Where did my street whores hide their scratch? In the cat! In the cat, where else? The clincher was this broad’s wide-legged walk. I had noticed it on the lot. She was leaning forward staring at Perry’s face.

I said, “Joe, it’s gotta be up her cat. Bitch, stretch out and put your legs across his lap.”

She said, “The hell I will. You phony Niggers ain’t rollers. That big one at the wheel used to bounce at Mario’s.”

She was wise. The double saw I gave Red Eye had tapped me out. We had to know if she had treasure up her cat.

I wondered how he’d handle it. I didn’t wonder long. He turned brute. He punched her hard in the nose. It was like he had cut her throat. Blood splattered over the front of her dress. I felt a light spray on my face.

She opened her mouth to scream. He smothered it with a terrible slam to the gut. She went limp. He pulled her across him. He darted his paw between her legs.

When he brought his mitt out it made a kissing sound. He had a long shiny plastic tube between his index and middle fingers. It stank like rotten fish.

The broad was moaning and holding both hands to her nose. He unwrapped the package. The pouch was bursting with scratch. In the center of the roll I saw the cellophane edges of packaged dope.

He got out and opened the door on the broad’s side. He dragged her out to the sidewalk. He got in the front seat. Perry gunned away. I kept a sharp eye on Red Eye as he counted the scratch in his lap.

Red Eye and I netted two grand apiece. Red Eye took the packages of H. The broad dealer had forty-four hundred in the pouch. Perry and the junkie finger man got two bills apiece.

It was a week before we tried for the second mark. We shouldn’t have. He was a reefer peddler and fence. We thought he had big scratch on him. We didn’t have a driver. We had the mark in the short. Red Eye was driving.

We were playing the peel off. The mark was in the back seat. I was in the front seat. I asked for his identification. He handed me his hide. I saw it had only a few slats in it.

We were pulling to the curb to search him. A two-man squad car passed. The mark saw them and started screaming. They stopped and dragged Red Eye and me out to the street. They kicked and beat hell out of us. They took us down.

The mark was slick. Right there on the street he cracked. We took a C note from him. If he’d known about our roll, he could have beefed for four G’s.

The rollers saw our rolls and tried to pin every stick-up on the books against us. We went on every show-up for a week. We didn’t get a finger. They booked us for armed robbery of the mark.

18

JAILBREAK

An agent for a fixer came to the lockup. He assured us we could avoid five to ten for armed robbery. We could get the charge reduced to a workhouse bit for a price.

We tapped out and got a year apiece in the workhouse. It was like a prison, only tougher. A joint is always rough when there’s graft and corruption. Only cons with scratch are treated and fed like human beings. The walls were just as high. Most of the inmates were serving short thirty and ninety-day bits.

The joint was filthy. The food was unbelievable. The officials had an unfunny habit of putting pimps on the coal pile. I did a week on it. I was ready to make a blind rush at the wall. Maybe I could claw up the thirty feet before I got shot. I was really desperate.

After the first week I came out of shock. I started thinking about a sensible way to escape. I just couldn’t get my skull in shape for another bit. It was too soon after the last one. By the middle of the second week I’d had a dozen ideas. None of them stood up under second thoughts.

I shared a tiny cell with a young con. He was only eighteen. He idolized me. He’d heard about me in the streets. I slept on the top of a double bunk. There were three counts. One in the morning, one after night lockup, the third at midnight.

One night I missed standing up for count at the cell door. I was so beat from heaving coal I’d collapsed on my bunk. I woke up an hour after the count. It gave me an idea. I kicked it around in my skull. Like all good ideas it kept growing, crying out for my attention.

I thought, “I wonder how much and what of me that screw saw when he counted me?” I tested him three nights in a row. I’d lie on the bunk when he came through to count. Each time I’d lie so he saw less of me. The last time

he counted me there was only my back, rear end, and legs visible to him.

I got excited. I knew it would be easy to get extra pants and a shirt. I could stuff them into a passable dummy. I knew my first problem was to find a way to get out of line when filing from the coal pile.

My second problem was I couldn’t leave a dummy in position in the cell during the day. Cellhouse cons and screws would pass on the gallery and discover it. I decided to solve my outside problem first.

At the end of the day a screw would line us up at the coal pile to be counted. We would then file two-hundred yards into the mess hall for supper. After supper we would file through hallways to the cell house for count.

There were several cellhouses. All of the cellhouses phoned in their tallies to the office. If all the tallies equaled that number of cons in the entire joint then the count was right. A loud whistle blew and the day screws could go home.

There was no cover between the coal pile and the mess hall. A screw with a scoped, high-powered rifle manned a wall that ran parallel to our line of march. It looked impossible. I lost hope. On my twenty-eighth day in the joint I noticed something.

I had been on an official pass-out of some kind. It was very near supper time. I passed the dress-in station and shower room. The front door was open. I glanced in. In the rear of it a screw was hooklocking a wooden door.

I stopped and pretended to tie my shoe. He then walked up two or three stairs and swung a steel door shut inside the shower room. He started lining up his cons for the march to the dining room.

I had noticed the shed before on the marches to the dining room. It was maybe thirty feet from the line of march. The door had always been shut. I had thought it stayed locked all the time. I couldn’t have checked it with that rifleman on the wall and a screw marching with me.

In the cell that night I was as excited as a crumb crusher at Christmas time. I thought, “Maybe that shower screw sometimes forgets to lock that shed door. Maybe he’s even later locking it than today. I couldn’t see what the hell was in the shed. I know there’s gotta be old clothing or something. I can hide under when he comes to hook that slammer. I gotta get outta this joint. I can’t

pull my bit here.

“If the kid will handle the dummy end, I’ll take a chance. I’m gonna talk to my cellmate about that dummy. If he’ll help me, I can escape like a shadow.” I looked down over the rim of my bunk at him. I had written several

bullshit letters for him to his girlfriend. So far they had kept her writing and sending him candy and cigarette money. He was a good kid. I didn’t think he’d rat.

I said, “Shorty, what if I told you I could beat this joint?”

He said, “Iceberg, you’re jiving. You can’t make it out of here. There are five steel gates between this cell and the streets. How’re you planning to do it?”

I said, “Kid, as beautiful as it is I can’t do it without your help. Now here it is.”

I ran it down to him. At first he was leery. I told him to take the dummy from the floor under his bunk. Put it on mine. As soon as the whistle blew, unstuff the shirt and pants. Put the blanket stuffing back on my bunk. Sometime during the night before the midnight count, throw the pants and shirt over the gallery to the flagstone.

When the midnight hell broke loose he’d be clean. No one could prove or even suspect he had dismantled the dummy. I asked him to give me the name of a relative for record. I told him I would send him a C note from the first whore scratch I got.

I got his promise to handle the cell end of the plan. An hour later I gave a cellhouse orderly two packs of butts for an extra blanket. I had the stuffing. I took off my shirt and pants and stuffed them for rehearsal. He sat at the cell door with a mirror watching the gallery both ways. In twenty minutes he had the position and the rest of it down pat.

I didn’t close my eyes all night. At midnight I saw the screw counting heads. He was due for a shock soon. I knew that if something went wrong they’d probably beat me to death out there on the yard. I had to go through with it. No con misses his freedom more than a pimp. His senses are addicted to silky living.

I took packs of butts to the coal pile the next day. A yard runner got me a shirt and pants. I put them on over the ones I wore. That night in the cell I made up the dummy. I put it under the kid’s bunk and gave him a pep talk until midnight. I even promised him I’d keep in touch and when he got out I’d teach him to pimp.

I thought the last day on the coal pile would never end. I would be sunk if there was a routine cellhouse shakedown. Finally we lined up. My throat was dry and my knees were wobbly. We were approaching that shed. The screw on the wall walked twenty paces away. Then about faced and walked back

facing the coal pile gang.

I’d have to break for the shed when he walked away. I’d have to be in there when he turned if it wasn’t locked. If he didn’t shoot me, the yard screws would beat me to a pulp. The coal-pile screw was ahead of me. He could turn and look back at any moment. No other moment in my life has been so tense, so wildly adventuresome. I didn’t even know if there wasn’t a fink in the line. I tell you it was something. If my ticker had been faulty I’d have passed out.

The screw on the wall was walking away. The shed seemed miles away. I slipped out of line and raced for it. I could hear an excited whispering from the cons behind me. I touched the shed doorhandle. For an instant I hesitated. I was afraid I’d find it locked. My sweat-hot hands pulled it toward me. It was open!

Just before I stepped inside I looked up at the wall. The screw was standing looking in the direction of the shed. I shut the door. Had he seen me? I looked around the shed. There was nothing to hide under or behind. I could hear the cons in the shower room. They were getting ready for supper.

The steel door was half open. That screw would be out at any second to hook the shed door. There was no place to hide. It had been all for nothing. I heard a voice and the scrape of feet at the steel door. The screw was coming out into the shed! I looked up at the shed ceiling. I looked over the steel door. There was a line of rusty bars a foot long over the door flush against a grimy window. I leaped up and grabbed two of them. I swung my feet and legs up just as the screw walked in to lock the door. I was jack-knifing my legs just six inches from the top of his blue uniform cap. I hung there like a bat. I held my breath. He passed beneath me. I saw flakes of rust fall from the bars onto the top of his cap. It seemed forever to my agonized aching arms

and legs.

I heard the steel door crash shut. I started breathing again. I hung up there for another long moment. He might come back for some reason. I swung my paralyzed legs down and released my grip on the bars. I sat on the stone steps fighting for breath. The shed was quiet as a tomb. I could hear my ticker staccato.

The worse wasn’t over. That “all is well” whistle had to blow. If it didn’t blow they’d come looking for me with fists, clubs, and guns. I peeped through a crack in the door. I put my ear to it. The yard was bare. I could hear the clatter of steel plates in the mess hall. Finally all was quiet. The count was going on.

I thought, “Even if the kid goes through with his end, this one night the count screw will poke that dummy to stand up to the cell door. That whistle ain’t gonna blow. It’s been too long already. Those cold-hearted bastards are on the way already. They’ll beat and stomp me crippled.”

The whistle blew! The beautiful sound of it was like a faucet. It flooded my eyes with tears. I did a dusty jig on the shed floor. It was dusk. It wasn’t over. The only way to get over the wall was to scale and climb to the top of a cellhouse in the far corner of the yard.

Lucky for me the cellhouse sat in a deep recess, otherwise its roof would have towered above the wall. It was the only building close to a section of wall. Other buildings stairs stepped almost to the roof of the cellhouse. Maybe I’d been too eager to escape. I’d not put together a rope or hook. I’d have to use hands and feet. It sat six feet away and twenty feet above the wall.

There was only one screw on the wall after the count cleared. He’d be in his cubicle reading the newspaper or a magazine. If he looked up he couldn’t miss seeing me in the glare of the yard lights.

My uniform was dark green, stained black with coal dust. Maybe on the street I’d look like any sooty steel mill or coal worker. I hadn’t done too badly so far with short-term planning.

I had until midnight to get over the wall and out of the city. I had no scratch. I’d passed out a small fortune in tips to hotel maids, bellhops, and bartenders. Now all of them were rich compared to me. I knew several I could go to and get a few dollars. They could be found at their places of work.

There had been all the show-ups the month before and after my conviction. My face would be remembered by the rollers in those neighborhoods. I thought about Sweet. I remembered his crack at the hideout to set me up for the cop of my stable. I threw him out of my skull.

I couldn’t trust any of the pimps I knew. I’d always been a threat to them. Iceberg was really on his own. I’d have to make it to one of Mama’s sisters, thirty miles away in Indiana.

It was now pitch black inside the shed. I raised the hook and pushed the door open. I looked out into the yard. I stepped through the door into the yard. All was quiet. I pushed the door shut. I heard a dull metallic noise. I pulled it toward me. The hook had fallen into its loop. The shed door had hooked from the inside.

I thought, “That freak accident would confound the investigators for sure.” I raced to the side of the mess hall. I’d have to get on its flat roof. I took hold of some window bars and pulled up to a standing position on the sill, I reached over and grabbed the drain pipe. I swung over and shinnied up to the

roof.

I looked to my left. I could see the silhouetted figure of the wall screw in his cubicle. I looked across and up at the cellhouse roof abutting the wall. It was a long way. I walked across the roof toward the next building. I was near the far edge of the roof. I looked back at the wall cubicle. The screw was out walking the wall. He had that deadly rifle cradled in his arms.

I flung myself flat on my back on the black roof. I hoped I was invisible to him. I lay there panting. I wondered what a screw’s manual said about an escaping con target. If he saw me would he scope for a skull, heart, or gut shot?

Finally he went back into the cubicle. Lucky for me the mess-hall roof was connected to the chapel building. The connection was a concrete ledge. It was less than a foot wide and about twelve feet long. My heavy prison brogans seemed as wide as the ledge. They slipped on the glazed ledge. The wild late April winds made the walk as secure as a stroll across a teeter-totter two stories above the ground.

I stood at the end of the ledge and looked up. I stretched my right arm up and stood on tip-toes. The chapel roof was two feet above my fingertips. I’d have to go back a few feet on that glassy ledge. I’d have to get up enough speed coming back to make a twofeet leap. I’d have to grab the outside rim of the roof’s drain gutter. I wondered if it could stand my weight.

I carefully backed up six feet. I stood there trembling looking up at the rim. I looked back. The screw wasn’t on the wall. I had to forget how narrow the ledge was. I threw a leg out. I whipped the other toward it. I pumped them over the gritty glaze. I heard the whispering hiss of the leather soles tromping the ledge. My arms were outstretched to the black sky. My eyes were riveted upward to the gutter rim.

I leaped upward. I felt my feet soar off the ledge. I taloned the rim. I hung from it dangling in space. My fingernails sent red-hot needles of pain through the tortured flesh at their roots. I chinned up and hurled a leg across the roof top. I rolled onto it. I lay there gasping as I watched the rifleman walk his beat. He went in.

I struggled up the steep sloping roof to the top. The edge of the cellhouse

roof was three feet away. I leaped straight ahead. I flopped on my belly. The tips of my brogans were in the drain gutter. The cellhouse roof was even steeper. It was coated with squares of slippery shale. I looked up toward the top. It seemed a city block away. I started bellying up it. I dug my brogan tips into the small cracks between the shale squares.

I finally inched to the top. My chest was flaming. I lay astraddle the six- inch top of a double precipice. The two sides of the roof formed a steep pyramid. I was on top of it. The six-inch top seemed as thin as a wire. Through a dizzy haze I saw the lights of the city winking in an ocean of blackness.

I got to my feet. I started walking the tight wire like a circus performer. The winds were savage up here. They kicked and punched me. I teetered and swayed on the wire. I looked down over the right precipice to the street far below. Through a fuzzy blur I saw auto headlights darting through the night like tiny fireflies. My skull almost blacked out. I jerked my skull away and glued my eyes to the wire.

It was like an age before I reached the end of the cellhouse. If the screw came out now I’d be in full view. Even from the inside he could spot me. I stood shivering. I looked down twenty feet to the top of the three-foot wide wall. I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t just stand there. It was a cinch I couldn’t expect to keep balance if I hit the wall feet first.

I dropped, legs opened wide. I heard my trousers rip. The inside concrete edge of the wall top gouged into my inner thigh. My rear end crashed against the concrete. My skull reeled in pain as I sat in the cold saddle. I swung my gouged left leg from the inner side of the wall. I scooted back on my belly to my fingertips.

I hung there for a moment. I felt blood running down my left leg into my shoe. I let go. I struck feet first. My butt and back took the rest of the shock. I lay there on my back in a drunken fog of exhaustion, pain and breathless joy.

It was at least ten minutes before I could stand. I limped away for a hundred yards. I turned and looked back at the joint.

I thought, “Those dirty white folks are gonna pace the floor. Their assholes are gonna twitch. They’re gonna call me a million black-Nigger bastards and sonuvabitches. One thing they can’t deny in their cruel secret hearts. I outsmarted them. It’s gonna hurt ’em to the rotten quick that a Nigger did a black Houdini outta here. No screws’ skulls busted and no bars sawed.

“They’re gonna foul their chances to catch me after the midnight count.

They’ll search the yard and joint for a week. Their asses will turn blue. Their skulls won’t let ’em believe a Nigger was clever enough to ghost outta here.”

I turned and hobbled toward the State of Indiana.

19

THE ICE PICK

I was lucky. I caught five rides to get to my Aunt. It was five minutes to midnight when she opened the door. At first she didn’t recognize me. She made me welcome.

In a week my leg had healed and I felt strong. Her husband was my size. He gave me an outfit and fifty dollars. I went to the whore section of town. A bunch of New Orleans pimps were in town. They had their thieving whores with them. Three days later I stole one.

Her name was No Thumbs Helen. She was at that time one of the slickest “from the person” thieves in the country. We got about in a forty-seven Hog. She was a magician. For almost a year she left a trail of empty wallets across five states.

We were in Iowa when Helen stung a rich sod-buster for seventy-two hundred. I was in bed when she threw it on the bed. Excited? Sure I was. My heart boomed like bombs going off. She didn’t know it. I was icy cool. I casually scooped it up and counted it. I had a poker face.

I said, “Now listen, bitch. Run this sting down. I gotta know how hot this scratch is. Did you get all the sucker had? I’ll be a salty sonuvabitch to read in the papers that you missed a bundle.”

Her rundown told me it was best to split. We got in the Hog and went to Minneapolis. The second day I copped a young whore. She wanted to be a thief. I took her to Helen at our hotel. Helen chilled when she saw the pretty bitch.

She blew her top. She drew her knife. The young whore fled. I disarmed Helen and punched her around. Helen went to work. I fell asleep. I woke up fast. Helen was jabbing her knife into me. I rolled away. She had stabbed me in the forearm and the side of an elbow. I took a golf club and knocked her

out.

I never tried to stable her after that. I didn’t feel like a real pimp with one whore. I decided to steal the technique of stealing from Helen. I could use it to train other whores when I cut her loose. Finally I picked her skull. The technique went as follows.

She would lurk in some shadowy doorway or alley entrance. When a trick came by she’d go into a con act. She’d stand wide-legged and bend her knees to an almost squatting stance. She’d whip up the front bottom of her dress. She’d expose the gaping, hairy magnet to the bugging eyes of the sucker. The pull was magnified by her stroking her cat.

She’d say to the sucker, “Please pretty sweetie, I am so hot this pussy is burning up. I ain’t had no dick in six months. Come here and do something to it.”

He’d step into the doorway already blind hot to sock it in for free. His instinctive weariness blackjacked to sleep by the raw event. She’d bombard the sucker with a flow of sweetly passionate sexy bullshit as she tightly embraced him.

She had located his wallet, usually in a rear trouser pocket, with the sensitive tips of her fingers. She’d dry grind her belly against his scrotum. She’d complain that his belt buckle was hurting her. She would be panting in phony passion as she unbuckled it. It would release the tension on his pants pockets. She’d caress the head of his swipe with her fingers.

She’d stroke the tip of his ear with her tongue. The very tips of the airy light index finger and thumb of the free hand flicked the buttoned pocket open. The index and middle fingers scissored on the wallet and slid it from the pocket. The trick would be excited and hot. He wouldn’t have felt the glowing end of a cigarette on his ass.

With both hands behind his neck, she’d remove the scratch from the hide. She’d up the sexy chatter and the strong grind against his scrotum. She’d roll the bills into a tight suppository shape. She’d slip the wallet back into the pocket. She wouldn’t forget to rebutton the pocket. She was ready to blow the sucker off, get rid of him. She’d crack that she had to pee. Stooping quickly, she’d ram the rolled bills up her cat. She’d sight a passing car. She’d fake alarm.

She would say, “Oh my God. There’s Riley, the vice cop. Listen honey, go to the Park Hotel up the street and register as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. I will be there in ten minutes, Pretty Daddy. I sure want some of your good dick.”

The sucker would pat the reassuring bump of his wallet. It was still there in the buttoned pocket. He’d amble off to the hotel. The thief would make it home. She’d completely change her appearance. She’d go back into the street to sting another sucker.

There was an accident. She got pregnant. I found a croaker who made her one again. The game went down as usual. The bubble burst in a small town in Ohio.

The sky-rocket came crashing down when I ran into an old pal. He was now called New York Joe. I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen. My mother had taken him in for a few weeks when his widowed-mother died. He got sick and had to go to a hospital. I’d take a bus to see him and bring him tid- bits. I’d sit with him and console him. I liked him. Our friendship was brief. He got out of the hospital and left town.

He was wholesaling cocaine and the sample he gave me was almost pure. I made an appointment to cop a piece. I didn’t know he had learned in New York to cross everybody, even old friends. I found out the stuff he gave me was phony. I rushed back to him figuring he had made a mistake and would square things with me. I said, “Joe, you’ve made a mistake, man.” He took me inside. He said, “What’s the trouble, Jim?”

I said, “Man, this is bullshit. This ain’t the same stuff that I sampled.”

He said, “Well listen, Ronald went out to the stash. That mother-fucker is crossing me.”

He drew his gun from a shoulder holster. At the time I didn’t know it was all con.

He said, “Should I go out there and kill that sonuvabitch? What do you want me to do?”

He started working his eyes. His eyes were bugging and going through all that crazy act.

I said, “No man, just give me my scratch back.” He said, “I’m so mad I should croak you both.”

I was relatively young. I had never run into this New York stuff before. I was spooked.

I said, “Forget about it.”

He was going through contortions. I was in his town. I had a thief with at least seven beefs on her. I was out the three grand. I might have gotten croaked. Later I knew it was stuff: New York stuff. In later years, I figured it out. He maybe had always hated me because I had more education than he

had.

A week later Helen got busted on seven counts. I signed the Hog over to a lip. She got five to ten. I should have wired a bomb to the starter before I turned it over to the lip.

A stud told me Joe had fingered Helen. He almost ruined me. He tapped me out, got my thief busted. He literally ran me out of town broke, and with no whore.

I heard whore-catching was good in Detroit. I took my last tendollar bill and caught a Greyhound. Detroit was the promised land for pimps all right. The town was teeming with young fast whores. The local pimps were soft competition.

I was walking, but I was sharp as a Harlem sissy. Anyway, these whores were a different breed than the ones back in the city. They were gullible, and a fellow didn’t have to play his heart out to cop them.

The first package I copped was a beautiful seventeen-year-old green-eyed version of Pepper. Her name was Rachel. I was to keep her thirteen years.

My next package was a huge, black, dangerous jasper named Serena. In addition to being a whore, she ran a fast sheet setup for a dozen whores. They tricked out of her joint. Within eight weeks after I hit Detroit I was cruising the streets in a sparkling new forty-eight Fleetwood. I had a fat bankroll.

Within ninety days after the Serena cop, I had copped two more young broads. A week later a small-time pimp came to town from Rhode Island. He had a beautiful young whore with him. He was jealous. He followed her in the street. I stalked her. He forgot to follow her. I stole her. I’d had her several months when the town got shaky. The rollers forced Serena out of her joint. I put her in the street.

Then I heard about a small town in Ohio—Lima—that was jumping with good tricks and wide open. I could possibly open up a couple of houses there. My luck was soaring. With my pad rent and a pad a piece for the girls, I needed a tighter setup to cut down my nut. My skull was whirling as I drove the Hog to pick up my stable in the street. They got in. I tossed their scratch

in the glove compartment.

Dawn was breaking as the big Hog scooted through the streets. My five whores were chattering like drunk magpies. I smelled that stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night. The inside of my nose was raw. It happens when you’re a pig for snorting cocaine.

My nose was on fire. The stink of those whores and the gangster they were

smoking seemed like invisible knives scraping to the root of my brain. I was in an evil, dangerous mood despite that pile of scratch crammed into the glove compartment.

“Goddamnit, has one of you bitches shit on herself or something?” I bellowed. I flipped the wing window toward me.

For a long moment there was silence. Then Rachel, my bottom whore, cracked in a pleasing-ass kissing voice, “Daddy Baby, that ain’t no shit you smell. We been turning all night. Ain’t no bathrooms in those tricks’ cars we been flipping out of. Daddy, we sure been humping for you. What you smell is our nasty whore asses.”

I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions. I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at Rachel’s shaky witticism. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

I coasted the Hog into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off. I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner-life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

As Kim got out I said, “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday. I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after. At twelve sharp I want you down, got it Baby?”

She didn’t answer. She did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.

Then in her crisp New England accent she said, “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, okay?”

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing. He gets his pay-off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly-fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low, deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in this family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some

shut-eye. Get in the street at noon like I told you.”

The bitch just stood there. Her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores. If I had been ten-years dumber I would have leaped out of the Hog, broken her jaw, and put my foot in her ass. The joint was too fresh in my mind.

I knew the bitch was trying to booby-trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on, kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I am sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Goddamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”

She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass off when she finished. I just sat there staring at her.

Then she went on, “I have turned more tricks in the three months I have been with you than in the whole two years with Paul. My pussy stays sore and swollen. Do I get my ass kicked before I split? If so, kick it now because I’m going back to Providence on the next thing smoking.”

She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef. She was laying back for a sucker response.

I disappointed her with my cold overlay. I could see her wilt as I said in an icy voice, “Listen square-ass bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some wormy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.”

The rollers cruised by in a squad car. I flashed a sucker smile on my face. I cooled it until they passed. Kim was rooted there wincing under the blizzard.

I went on ruthlessly, “Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes, Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.”

I rocketed away from the curb. In the rear-view mirror I saw Kim walk slowly into the hotel. Her shoulders were slumped. Until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon. I had tested out for them, solid ice.

I went back for Kim. She was packed and silent. On the way to the station, I riffled the pages in that pimp’s book in my head. I searched for an angle to hold her without kissing her ass.

I couldn’t find a line in it for an out like that. As it turned out the bitch was testing and bluffing right down the line.

We had pulled into the station parking lot when the bitch fell to pieces. Her eyes were misty when she yelped, “Daddy, are you really going to let me split? Daddy, I love you.”

I started the prat action to cinch her when I said, “Bitch, I don’t want a whore with rabbit in her. I want a bitch who wants me for life. You have got to go. After that bullshit earlier this morning, you are not that bitch.”

That prat butchered her. She collapsed into my lap crying and begging to stay. I had a theory about splitting whores. They seldom split without a bankroll.

So I cracked on her, “Give me that scratch you held out and maybe I’ll give you another chance.”

Sure enough she reached into her bosom. She drew out close to five bills and handed it to me. No pimp with a brain in his head cuts loose a young beautiful whore with lots of mileage left in her. I let her come back.

At long last I was driving toward my hotel. I remembered what Sweet Jones, the master pimp who turned me out, had said about whores like Kim.

“Slim,” he had said, “A pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it and leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast to stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love, so prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.”

My mind went back to Pepper. Then back even further and I remembered what he had said about the Georgia.

“Slim, a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores. So Slim, be as sweet as the scratch, no sweeter, and always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.”

I was on the elevator riding to my pad. I thought about the first bitch who had Georgiaed me when I was three. She had flim-flammed me out of my head. She would be old and gray now. If I could find her, I would sure get the bitch’s unpaid account off my conscience.

I snorted a couple of caps of cocaine. Two hours later I took a yellow. I fell asleep.

When I woke up at noon, I knew I had to make a move. Rachel’s parents

were trying to cross me. Kim might split back to the sucker. My whole stable, except Kim, were local girls. A pimp is asking for trouble when he doesn’t move his action away.

Control is easier and tighter away from the familiar setting. A girl in strange surroundings depends more on her man. She needs his advice and guidance more. Girls copped in smaller towns have to be moved fast.

That night I went to Ohio. I put down the foundation for the move. I rented two houses and furnished them beautifully. I made contact with a fellow who collected the oil for the heat. I got the okay to go at a C a week for each house. I moved my whole family there. I was just in time. A month later Detroit folded and the lid slammed down.

There was a good dope connection in the new town. I started capping H with my C. I’d mix them and shoot speedballs. When I went to bed I got sound sleep. I seldom had those bad dreams. I got hooked on H. It didn’t worry me. I was getting long scratch.

I was thirty years old. For the second time in my pimping career I could see solid success and lots of long green in my future. How could I know that elephant bitch, Serena, would get jealous? She brought the whole green-back house of cards crashing down around me. I missed a murder rap by a fraction of an inch. The fraction was in Serena’s chest.

Within the year that I had set up my houses, tricks from all over the county were beating a path to them. They were wild to sample those luscious young freaks. Pimping had never been better.

I was in a wonderful mood as I walked in the sunshine. I noticed Serena was coming up the street with a sack of groceries in her arm. She had croaked two people in New Orleans. She walked toward me smiling. When she got close to me she got the ice pick out of the sack. She jabbed it toward my chest. At the time I was quite quick, so I leaped back. The point of it slashed the edge of my pocket right over my ticker. She was trying to drive the point right through my ticker.

I was without a pistol at the time. I could buy a pistol from any hardware store. I bought a .32 and a box of fifty bullets. I took it up to her pad and loaded it at the kitchen table.

She said, “Daddy, what’s that for?”

I said, “That’s to croak any bitch that tries to hurt me.”

She said, “Oh Daddy, you know I was just upset. Forget about it.”

I said, “No, I’m not going to forget about it. I’d kill my own mother if I

thought she was going to hurt me.”

Later that evening about midnight the other girls and I were returning from a cabaret. I put the key in the door. I opened it and smelled the heavy odor of Tabu. The heavy scent that only Serena used. I hesitated. My eyes became accustomed to the gloom. I saw Serena standing over in the corner of the living room with an ice pick in her hand. She had slipped into Rachel’s house through an open basement window. I drew my gun.

I said, “Serena!”

She said, “Yes, mother-fucker, I’m killing you and them whores this morning.”

She started crying.

I said, “Serena, don’t come by that end table. If you do I’m going to kill you. You know I always keep my word.”

She said, “I wouldn’t give a mother-fuck.”

She lunged past the end table. I shot her. When I shot her the only thing that saved her life was the fact that she had a forty-six inch bust. The fatty tissue absorbed the bullet at almost point-blank range.

When I shot her, blood splattered. I struck her in an artery. It blew all over my face, all over her. Her dress had a ringlet of sparks. I set her on fire. She had elephant toughness. It didn’t even knock her down. The bitch grabbed at me. She had dropped the ice pick.

She grabbed her chest and said, “Daddy, don’t kill me!”

I was tempted. I really intended to kill her. I started to shoot her through the head. I didn’t. I don’t really know why except there were witnessess, those four whores. She staggered past us through the door and down the street. We all got into the Fleetwood and raced out of town leaving everything.

I sped toward Mama. I hadn’t seen her since that Christmas visit. Her hair was snow white. Jesus! Was she excited and happy to see me. I told her what had happened. She got a friend to drive her back there. She loaded all the clothing on a trailer. She visited Serena in the hospital.

Serena begged my mother to tell me to come back. She wouldn’t file charges. It was all her fault and she loved me. I knew that if I had gone back Serena would have driven a butcher knife through my heart in my sleep.

20

STABLE MOVES

It had been a sucker move to come to Mama. Fortunately she had moved from over the beauty shop. She now lived in an almost all-white neighborhood. Here I was with four idle whores in a closed town where I had fallen three times. It was the point of origin for the white slave rap that the copper-hearted runt had crossed me with. There were a couple of sneak ten- dollar houses in town.

I stayed inside the house at Mama’s. Every joker in town knew me. They all had diarrhea of the mouth. I couldn’t put my action in the street in this hot town. They’d had an easy go in Ohio. They were soft. I could put them down only in a town where I had a fix. I knew that none of them, if busted, could stand up under the clever grilling of the F.B.I.

I had a ten G bankroll. I was housing and feeding four whores in an expensive hotel. I was a pig for banging speedballs. No fresh scratch was coming in. With only a ten G stick I knew I would soon be in trouble. I had to make a move fast. It was bad for morale of the stable to keep them on their asses.

After a week of confinement at Mama’s house, I slipped out of town to cop H and C for myself, and gangster for the girls. While in the city I looked up Sweet. I was careful because all the heat in the neighborhood knew me.

Sweet insisted I give him all the details of my escape. He shook his skull in awe when he heard them. Miss Peaches had died of old age. His eyes were sad when he told me about it. Glass Top was still out West in Seattle. Patch Eye did a little bookie business for him. Sweet had lost his glory. He looked a hundred years old. His backbone was the old white broad who owned the building.

Sweet had just beat a murder rap. He had killed some pretty jerk from St.

Louis who had insulted him in the Roost. The poor chump had called Sweet an ugly, gray-ass bastard. Sweet had drawn his pistol on him. He prodded him into an alley. He made him kneel and then he pissed on him. This was too much to take, so the kid lost his temper. Sweet shot him through the top of the head.

Sweet was laughing, in a good mood as he told me about it. It had cost him five grand to beat it. He told me he got a wire that Red Eye got life for croaking a whore in Pittsburgh.

Sweet had a complete answer to my problem. He said that since Serena hadn’t beefed I should go back into Ohio. No state was better at the time for house or street. Before I left I went to his John. The door had a padlock on the outside.

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Pal, my crapper is out of order.”

I went downstairs to the John in the bookie joint. On the way out I asked Patch Eye why Sweet didn’t get his toilet fixed.

The old ex-pimp, without looking up answered, “Shit, ain’t nothing wrong with the crapper. That cold bastard has his two whores locked in there for fucking with his scratch. They been in there three days.”

I walked toward my car. I wondered how long Sweet would keep them there and how long the whores could live with just water.

I got back from the city. I stopped downtown at Rachel’s suite. I stayed for the night. I outlined the move. The next morning I was looking out the window down on the street. There was a stooped white-haired joker dumping barrels of hotel garbage into a huge truck. It was Steve. I’d know him in hell! A hot-flash shot through me. I don’t know what happened after that.

Rachel told me I snatched my thirty-two from my coat pocket in the closet. I ran to the service elevator in my pajamas. She followed me all the way to the street. I didn’t say a word. The truck had pulled away when we reached the sidewalk.

She got me back upstairs. It had been a sucker play for a fugitive. Lucky for me no rollers showed on the scene. I dressed and told Rachel I’d be back later and I wanted the rest of the stable in her joint.

I stopped at a leather-goods shop and bought a small valise. It was about the size that a doctor carries. I stopped at several banks and cracked some of my big bills into enough singles to fill the bag. I went to Mama’s to prepare the flash. I filled it almost to the brim with singles. I put the remaining big bills on top. I was getting ready to ship my stable. With my plan I could ship

them without a strong fix. Even new whores think twice before leaving a rich pimp.

That afternoon they were all in Rachel’s plush suite. She was the boss bitch. They had twenty-five dollar a day, neat rooms on the same floor. I walked in. They were smoking gangster and eager for my speech.

They were anxious to get back on the track. I had loosened the catch on the bag. I casually hurled it onto the table before them. A bale of hundred-dollar bills jumped from the bag. Reefer enhances what you see. I saw on those whores’ faces that they were seeing every dollar of the mountain of greenbacks they had given me for the years I had been their man.

Confidence flooded their eyes. I finished my briefing and my instructions. I had built my shining castles in the air. Brother, I could have sent those whores to Siberia, in bikinis, in the wintertime. Keeping her wife-in-laws and my scratch straight up there in Toledo was the first acid test for Rachel as a bottom woman.

I stayed around Mama’s for a week. She was bugging me to embrace the Holy Ghost and the Fire. She begged me to square up and repent my sins. No, it was a little late for that. I moved onto Ohio again.

Cleveland was only a short hop to Toledo. I set up a mad apartment in the larger city. Cleveland was jumping. I was ready for the best pimping of my career. Kim ran off with a wealthy white trick but I didn’t miss her. Both towns were crawling with young fine whores. The name of the game was still “cop and blow.”

Within four mouths I had the three girls in Toledo and five in Cleveland. I was pimping good. I had a connection for staff. All was perfect except for one thing. Rachel’s name was ringing. Every pimp, con man and rich dope- peddler was shooting for her. They offered soft, irresistible propositions.

Her head was getting as big as a pumpkin. I didn’t want to lose her. I had another more serious reason for wanting to hold her. If I blew her, she might pull a runt on me and go to the F.B.I. I got it through the wire that a slick con-man out of New York was using his beautiful Jasper white girl as bait to cop Rachel. The same wire said that Rachel was getting weak for the broad.

I went to Toledo one early morning to Rachel’s. Sure enough there they were, the three of them in Rachel’s bed. Believe me they hadn’t gotten in there to recite bedtime stories. I was cool, icy as always. I let her con me that it was a party, all business of course. That wire had described that bastard con player and his freak woman.

I was in trouble. If it had been any other bitch in the stable except Rachel it wouldn’t have been worth a fleeting thought. I couldn’t lose Rachel, my bottom woman, in this shitty fashion to some ass-hole con player.

It could kill my career as a pimp. The news would flash in a dozen states. No, I couldn’t afford to lose her. I still had that expensive friend riding with me, that monkey on my back. Sweet would have had the solution to this tough problem right off the top of his head. Sweet, the week before, had shot himself in the temple. He left a bitter note, “Good-bye squares! Kiss my pimping ass!”

I felt nothing when I got the wire. I left her apartment and drove out into the country. I spun the wheels in my skull. I got the key to the riddle. It was cruel but perfect. If it worked I’d never have to worry that she’d blow or cross me with the F.B.I.

Rachel called me the next day. She told me she had just sent me three bills. She got them for the party I had crashed. When she cracked I knew I had to go through with the cross. The three bills she was sending had to be scratch she had been holding out. That con bastard was too pretty and slick to spend three fat-ones with a whore. I had to make an honest whore of her from now on.

I faked excitement when I told her about a sucker who was visiting Akron. It’s a small town, thirty miles from Cleveland. I told her I got a wire that the sucker had hit the numbers for twenty G’s. He had it all with him in his hotel room.

I sold her that she could take it off smooth and easy. She said she would be down the next day to get briefed in detail.

I had already driven to Akron and set the stage for her. I had rented a hotel room in a fair hotel. I contacted a dignified looking old ex-slum hustler down on his luck. He spruced up a wino friend of his for the play.

The whole arrangement: clothes, room, and a bill apiece for the actors, came to a half-grand. The slum hustler was to wait in a pool room nearby for my call.

Rachel got to my apartment at three P.M. We got to Akron around six. I told her one of the bellhops had told the sucker she would be there before seven. He was waiting for her.

I slipped a small vial of mineral oil into her palm. I told her it was Chloral Hydrate. Only two drops would knock the sucker out. I told her I would be waiting in the hotel bar for her.

She stopped at the desk. Sure enough he was expecting her. She went up. She came down within an hour nervous and jumpy. The sucker was out cold. She had searched the room. She couldn’t find the scratch. I went back to the room with her. I went through another search. The wino was lying there motionless. We gave up searching. We moved toward the door. I looked back at the wino.

I said, “Say Baby, he looks bad to me.”

I knelt beside him blocking her view with my back. I wiped my brow and turned my face toward her. My eyes were wide in alarm.

I said, “Baby, he’s dead I think.”

Most women, even whores, are terrified of dead bodies. She stood there paralyzed.

I said, “Don’t get panicky. Shut that door. I’ve got it! I know an underworld croaker here in town. Maybe he can bring him to. I know he will keep his mouth shut for a price, even if …”

She knew we couldn’t leave a murdered man here. She had stopped at the desk first before coming up. She was painfully aware of the big gap between theft and murder. I picked up the phone and got the pool room. I gave the fake doctor the hotel and room number. He came within five minutes carrying his empty bag.

She couldn’t see into it. I had told her to hide in the closet. Too many people had seen her already. He stooped down beside the wino. He fumbled with his pulse, his eyelids.

Finally he stood up and said, “He’s dead. I can’t help him. I’ll have to call the police.”

I could almost hear Rachel’s heart booming in the closet. We haggled for her benefit for ten minutes. Finally we had a deal. For five bills, he would keep his mouth shut. He would also contact a hoodlum who would get the body out of there and dispose of it. He left. Rachel and I got out of there fast.

Driving back to Cleveland, Rachel was in a trance. She squeezed tightly against me. I kept telling her she had nothing to worry about. After all we were together for life and her secret would always be safe with me. She found out about the hoax years later.

Rachel straightened up with that murder pressure on her. Toledo was on fire and in one month my three girls got nine cases between them. I pulled them out into Cleveland. Cleveland was lousy with pimps and whores and boosters from all over the country.

The mob of hustlers set the torch to Cleveland. By nineteen-fifty-three the streets were so hot a whore was lucky to stand up a week between falls. I was a fugitive. For almost a year I never left my apartment. I couldn’t risk arrest and a fingerprint check. I was down to four girls. That year in the apartment was cramping my style.

Mama had hit a romantic and financial jack-pot. She had moved to Los Angeles. She called me every week pleading with me to visit her. She wanted me to meet my new stepfather and stay for a while. I kept stalling her. I had heard that the smack in California was only six percent. The pimps out there were only half serious. This makes for bad pimping conditions.

Several Eastern pimps had gone to the coast in good shape. They had returned torn down. They said the Western whores were lazy and were satisfied with making chump change. The Western pimps had spoiled them.

I gave myself logical arguments against the move to California. Why should I expose my well-trained whores to that dangerous half-ass scene out West? What if I blew my family out there in the hinterlands?

I was thirty-four now. In any square profession I would have been in my prime. As a pimp I was getting elderly. I was stern and strict on my women.

Rachel wired me that a stud with a stable of boosters was in town with a load of wild Lilli Anne suits and Petrocelli vines at twenty percent of retail. She got me his number the next day.

I called him and got an appointment to look his stock over. I only left the apartment for important reasons. I decided I would cop a piece of stuff and a fresh outfit before seeing him.

He was staying at a crummy hotel on the East Side. He let me into a cracker-box three-room apartment. He sounded me down to make sure of my pedigree.

“So, you’re Iceberg, huh? I was in your town not long ago. Philly sure is hot.”

He knew me by reputation and that I was from Chicago. I said, “Yes, I’m Iceberg from the Windy.”

He said, “Say Jim, how ‘bout old Red Eye? I saw him in New York last month. He’s pimping a zillion. Surely you know him.”

I gave him that look, like I had caught him frenching a sissy.

I said, “Listen carefully, Jack. I don’t have time for bull-shit. I knew Red Eye. You saw him last month, Jack? You better see a head-shrinker. You’re flipping your top. Red Eye caught the big one in Pittsburgh five years ago.

He’s doing it all.”

He gave me a grin like he had swallowed a bottle of snot. He got the sizes from me. He said to cool it in his pad. He had to go to his stash across the street to get the merchandise.

I glanced into the tiny bedroom. There was a naked broad lying on the bed. I said to myself, “I wonder what kind of dog that is.”

I went to the bed and looked down at her. She was drunk, stoned. It looked like the runt. This broad was buxom, almost fat. I knew one way to be sure. I had lashed the blood out of her with that hanger whipping years ago. She would still have the scars. I flipped her over on her belly. They were there.

I stood there looking down at her. I remembered that tough bit in Leavenworth. Here at my mercy was that stinking bitch, Phyllis. Just the sight of her made me crazy.

I grabbed a cologne bottle off the dresser. I jerked the big top off. I got my bag out. I dumped enough of the twenty percent stuff into the top to croak a sick junkie. She was clean.

I spotted a bottle of mixer water on the floor. I filled the top and struck a match. I held it beneath the top. I rammed my gun into it. I drew up her reckoning.

I stabbed the outfit into a vein just back of her knees. Her red blood streaked up into the joint. I was just about to press the pacifier bulb. I looked out the window. I caught a glimpse of the joker darting across the street. He had a steamer trunk headed toward the front door of the hotel.

I froze, jerked the spike out of her. I thrust the loaded outfit inside my shoe underneath my instep. I pinned the bag to my shorts between my legs. I collapsed into the living-room chair just as he came through the door. I was sweating like hell. He was suspicious. He kept looking from the corner of his eye at his broad.

He thought I had been riding her in his absence. I wondered how long he’d had her. He was a wrong-doer. He’d cut her loose when he got hip to what he had. Sooner or later someone would pull his coat. He’d find out the runt had sent me to the joint. I was getting what I wanted from the merchandise. He slipped into the bedroom and checked her cat out.

I left with the dozen items I had bought. I knew I had bought going-to- California clothes. I had quizzed him about his plans. He was going to stay in Cleveland for weeks. I had to leave town. Now.

Phyllis was sure to get the wire from him that I was in town. I knew she

wouldn’t hesitate to drop a dime in the phone to the heat. She had to know about the escape. I drove away. I tried to picture the expression on her face when her man cracked to her that Iceberg had been up there alone with her while she was stoned.

I got a flight that night for L.A. It’s fabulous when a pimp’s bottom girl can be trusted to handle his scratch and his whores. She was welded to me by that murder cross. The stable would drive out later in the Hog.

Mama was radiantly happy out there and my stepfather was a wonderful square. They lived in a big house. L.A. was worse than the reports I had gotten. I got around in Mama’s Coupe de Ville. After the second night I went into the whore and pimp stomping grounds.

I stayed around Mama for another week then went up to Seattle. Glass Top’s name wasn’t ringing. In fact he was almost unknown. One stud told me Glass Top had croaked.

I copped a gorgeous hash-slinger up there. I turned her out that week. Lucky I did. I lost a girl back in Cleveland. Her appendix burst. I pulled the three left into Seattle.

After I had been in town six months, fate dealt me one off the top for a change. My bag was empty and the stuff in town was around six percent. I had to shoot three spoons to stay well. The girls were humping up a storm, I was getting no inside grief.

I was sitting in the Hog one day. An old withered stud walked past me. He came back and stooped down looking at me.

He shouted, “Ice, my old pimping buddy.”

I took a close look. It was Glass Top. He got in. He patted the scraggly processed hair on his nearly-bald head. He’d done a long bit in the state joint. He wasn’t pimping. An old square broad was feeding him. He was a drunk. Until I left town I bought him bottles and rapped with him. He croaked two days after I left town.

I ran into the croaker who aborted Helen. He had lost his license and done a short bit back East for an abortion. We started rapping a lot to each other. He knew most of the hustlers I knew so we had much in common. He kept telling me how bad I looked. He told me how handsome I’d been when I brought Helen to him.

He needled me. He expressed doubt that I had the guts to kick. He was game to help me kick if I was game to kick. I decided to let him help me. He warned me I would have to follow his every instruction. He had a house in

town. He still took a fast buck from his old hustle.

Rachel was the only girl in the family who knew I was hooked. None of the rest knew. I was going to stay at the Doc’s to kick. They thought I was out of town.

He used the system of reduction. We reached the tearing, puking, none-at- all stage. Let me tell you that beautiful croaker bastard was immune and rock- hard. I tried the raving, crying con on him. He would jab a needle into me to tranquilize me so he couldn’t hear my bleating. I tell you, if you have ever had the flu real bad, just multiply the misery, the aching torture by a thousand. That’s what it’s like to kick a habit.

It took two weeks. I was weak, but with an appetite like a horse. In another two weeks I was stronger than I’d been in years. The Doc will always be my man. If he hadn’t come to my rescue, and I had kept that habit until nineteen- sixty, I would have been a corpse within a week in that steel casket waiting for me.

21

THE STEEL CASKET

Seattle had played out. It was nineteen-fifty-eight. My stepfather died, leaving Mama all alone back in California. Her letters were full of her grief and loneliness. I had blown down to Rachel and the young hash-slinger I’d turned out.

I had put on fifty pounds since I kicked the habit. I weighed more than two-hundred pounds. Time had scissored away my hair in front. I didn’t look much like the mug shot of that sleek escapee.

I smoked a little gangster and snorted cocaine now and then. I actually copped a cap of H once with my C. I wanted to mix it in a speedball. It was hard to flush the H down the drain.

At almost forty I was ancient as a pimp. I looked like a black, fat seal in my expensive threads. For the first time in many years I had rediscovered my appetite for good food. I was slowing down. I spent most of my time reading in bed. The end of my pimping career wasn’t far in the future.

I made the decision to go back to the fast track. I stayed away from old haunts. I had put my two girls to work in the street near downtown. Most of their tricks were white. I stayed in a nice hotel nearby. They lived together in the same hotel. Three months after I got back, a fire changed my pimping setup. The change set up the chain of events that busted me for the escape.

I was taking a walk. I stopped to watch flames gut an apartment building. An old brown-skin stud was watching beside me. He was a sure-shot craps hustler. He also sold working togs to whores in houses in ten states. After the fire we went and had a drink together. We liked each other right away. For the next month we saw each other every day. I started going with him to the whorehouses to peddle his merchandise.

I’d always had contempt for whores who worked houses. They gave up

fifty percent of the scratch to a madam. I’d always believed a good whore went to the street to meet the trick. Even when I had the houses in Ohio my whores got their tricks in the street.

Lazy, half-ass whores worked houses and let the trick come to them. My friend, Bet ’Em Big, convinced me whorehouses were the thing for me. His points were that the wear and tear on a pimp was less. The houses were protected and the madams were responsible for falls. Also a girl didn’t need the complicated turn out for houses.

A pimp’s blows would be at least fifty percent less in the houses. He told me at my age I could grind up a bankroll in the houses. Then I could open a couple of my own and live to get a hundred years old. I wouldn’t live that long under the stress and strain of the street.

Two months later I had both my girls in houses. I got my scratch every Monday in money orders by registered mail. Just like he said, it was an easy way to pimp. The fifty percent off the top, I couldn’t miss. I never had it.

The girls would work maybe a month or two before coming in to visit me. I spent the time between with Bet ’Em Big. He was a real pal. He blew his top when I ignored his advice and tapped almost out for a new fifty-nine Hog. I loved him like a father. He knew all the percentages on craps and people.

His friendship and wisdom maybe helped me to stay away from H. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to jail I would have gone back to it. I was tempted a dozen times.

I moved Stacy, the younger whore, to a house in Montana. It was March. She was up there for the season. This meant every six weeks or so I’d have to go up there to service her and tighten my game. She was lonesome. She’d call and write to tell me how much she missed me.

She fell out with the madam and started working in a house run by a stud in the same town. I told Bet I was going up to visit her.

He said, “Ice, you can’t take good advice. You were a sucker to go broke on that new Hog. Now here is more good advice. Ice, not only should you not go up there, you better pull that fine bitch out of there. I know that stud. He’s a snake. Pull her out! I know a spot in Pennsylvania just as good. Inside of two days you can pull her and place her.”

I didn’t take his advice. I took a train up to visit her. I rented a room in a motel. I registered as Johnny Cato. It was on the outskirts of town. The only Negroes ever in town were whores in houses and pimps come to visit them.

She’d come to the motel in early morning after work. She confessed to me

that she woke up one day and found her boss in bed with her. In her alarm she struck him on the head with a heavy brass clock. It didn’t chill him. He wiped the blood away and gave her fifty slats to get his rocks. He begged her to quit me and be his woman. It was a bitch of a time to tell me.

It was the third and last day of my visit. It was Sunday night around nine. She didn’t work Sundays. We were playing around. I had my pajamas on. I had a cap of C in a pocket. I was just lighting a cigarette when a roller-type knock shook the door and me. I went to the door.

I said, “Yes, who is it?”

He said, “Police, open the door.”

I opened it. It was two red-faced Swede rollers. One was porcine, the other lanky. I put my shaking hands into the pajama pockets. My fingertips touched the scorching hot cap of cocaine. I hoped I was keeping the fear out of my face. I gave them a wide toothy smile. They came in and stood in the middle of the room. Their eyes were racing about the room. Stacy was open-mouthed in the bed.

I said, “Yes gentlemen, what can I do for you?” Lanky said, “We wanta see your ID.”

I went to the closet and got the phony John Cato Fredrickson ID. I put it in his palm. I felt cold sweat running down my back. They looked at it, then looked at each other.

Lanky said, “You are in violation of the law. You signed the motel register improperly. Why didn’t you sign your full name? What are you trying to hide? What are you doing here in town? It says here you’re a dancer. We don’t have a club in town that books entertainers.”

I said, “Officers, my professional name is Johnny Cato. I’ve got nothing to hide. My full name had always been too long for the marquees. I’ve fallen into the habit of using the shorter version.

“My legs went out last year. I don’t dance anymore. My wife and I decided to go into business. We are making a tour of this part of the country. We think that in your town we’ve found the ideal site for a Southern fried chicken shack. My wife has a secret recipe that should make us rich up here.” Porky said, “You’re a Goddamn black lying sonuvabitch. Every one of you Niggers come up here to open another cat house or suck your whore’s pussy. You and that bitch aren’t married. You’re a low life pimp and she’s your whore. I’ve seen her around. I’m telling you boy, get your Nigger ass out of

town. We don’t want you here.”

I said, “Yes Sir, I’ll forget about the restaurant like you say.”

They turned and walked out. I knew Stacy’s boss had put his finger on me. It was too late to catch the train back to the city. There was one a day at eight

P.M. I knew they’d be back. I was trapped. I’d heard radio bulletins warning that the highways were snowed under. I couldn’t even walk out of town. I snorted the sizzle and sat trying to figure a way out.

The chief of police came back at three the next afternoon. I let him in.

He said, “Boy, I’m not satisfied. I’m going to forget about the phony registration. Now there’s a more serious matter. If you and this young woman aren’t legally married you’ve broken a law I can’t overlook. When and where were you married?”

I thought fast. I tried to remember a courthouse fire from the newspapers. I couldn’t.

I said, “Sir, we were married three years ago in Waco, Texas. I just can’t understand why you doubt we’re married.”

He said, “I’m going to take you in. I’m going to check your story. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll let you go. If not, you’ll get a jail sentence.”

He took us down. We were mugged and fingerprinted. Afterwards we were taken to his office.

He said, “Boy, you lied to me. I called Waco. There’s no record of your marriage.”

They locked us up. An hour later we walked out on two-hundred dollar bonds each. We got a cab to the motel. I understood the bond delay. The joint had been searched. We got her stuff from the whorehouse and sat in the train station until eight P.M.

We got back to the city early that morning. I knew when my fingerprints got to Washington the F.B.I. would rush back the news I was a fugitive. I had to get out of town.

The police chief knew my destination when I left his town. “Bet ’Em Big” called Pennsylvania. Stacy was parked, ready to leave for the new spot the next day. The chief must have flown my fingerprints to Washington.

The city rollers, with a captain of guards from the joint busted Stacy and me. I was held for the escape. Stacy for harboring me. There was one angle I couldn’t figure. All the way to the lock-up it bothered me. How did the city police and that screw know just where in that big city to put their hands on me?

I had been transferred to county jail when I figured it out. I have made

many stupid mistakes in my life. None was more stupid than the one that put me back in the shit house. I had a letter in my bag from Stacy. The rollers that searched our room while we were in jail made a notation of my city address. I had played the hick coppers cheap and here I was with my balls in the fire.

Rachel rushed to me from the whorehouse. I fought the charge of escape. After all, they couldn’t prove it to the extent that they could tell in court how I had escaped. At my first hearing I told the judge I hadn’t escaped. I told him one night before midnight a screw unlocked the cell and took me to the front gate and released me. I had a friend who had supplied the scratch for the underground release.

It was a very thin story, but it was strong enough to forestall my return to the joint. I was sure bad things would happen to me back there. Bet visited me. He offered to do anything for me. I was lost. No one could help me.

Mama came from California to visit me. She was sick and old. In fact she was dying. She had heart trouble and diabetes. I don’t see how she made the trip. It was an old scene. I was in a barred cage. She was crying on the outside of it.

She sobbed, “Son, this is the last time we are going to see each other. Your Mama’s so tired. God gave me the strength to make the long trip to see my poor baby fore I go to sleep in Jesus’ arms. Son, it’s too bad you don’t love me as much as I love you.”

I was crying. I was squeezing her thin, pale hands in mine between the bars.

I said, “Now look Mama, you know we all got Indian blood in us. Mama you ain’t gonna die. Mama, I’ll live to get a hundred like Papa Joe, your father. Come on now Mama, stop it. Ain’t I got enough worry? Mama I love you. Honest Mama. Forgive me not writing regular and stuff like that. I love you Mama, I love you. Please don’t die. I couldn’t take it while I’m locked up. I’ll take care of you when I get out. I swear it Mama. Just don’t die. Please!”

The screw came up. The visit was over. His hard face softened in pity as he looked at her. He knew she was critically sick. I watched her move slowly away from me down the jail corridor. She got to the elevator. She turned and looked at me. She had a sad, pitiful look on her face. It reminded me of that stormy morning long ago she had stood in the rain and watched the van taking me to my first prison bit. I get a terrible lump in my throat even now when I relive that moment.

A week passed after Mama visited me and went back to California.

I went into court for the third and last time. The judge ordered me into the custody of the joint’s captain of screws. Stacy was released.

The captain and his aide were grimly silent. Their prison sedan sliced through the sparkling April day. I was on the rear seat. I gazed at the scurrying, lucky citizens on the street. I wondered what they’d use on me at the joint, rubber hoses or blackjacks? I felt so low. I wouldn’t have cared if I’d dropped dead right on the car seat.

We went through the big gate into the joint. The warm April sun shone down on the ancient grimy buildings.

The yard cons leaned on their brooms. They stared through the car window at me. The sedan came to a stop. We got out. They took off my handcuffs. I was taken into the same cell house from which I’d made the escape thirteen years before. I was locked in a cell on the flag.

In the early afternoon a screw marched me to the office of the chief of the joint’s security. He looked like a pure Aryan storm trooper sitting behind his desk. He didn’t have a blackjack or a rubber hose in his hand. He was grinning like maybe Herr Schickelgruber at that railroad coach in France. His voice was a lethal whisper.

He said, “Well, well, so you’re that slick blackbird who flew the coop. Cheer up, you only owe us eleven months. You’re lucky you escaped before the new law. There’s one on the books now. It penalizes escapees with up to an extra year.

“Ah, what a shame it isn’t retroactive. I am going to put you into a punishment cell for a few days. Nothing personal mind you. Hell, you didn’t hurt me with your escape. Tell me confidentially, how did you do it?”

I said, “Sir, I wish I knew. I am subject to states of fugue. I came to that night and I was walking down the highway a free man. Sir, I certainly wish I could tell you how I did it.” His pale cold eyes hardened into blue agates. His grin widened.

He said, “Oh, it’s all right my boy. Tell you what, you’re a cinch to get a clear memory of just how you did it before long. Put in a request to the cell- house officer to see me when you regain the memory. Well good luck my boy, ’til we meet again.”

A screw took me to the bathhouse. I took a shower and changed into a tattered con uniform. A croaker examined me, then back to the cell house. The screw took me to a row of tiny filthy cells on the flag. My first detention

cell was on the other side of the cell house. The screw stopped in front of a cell. He unlocked it. He prodded me into it. It was near the front of the cell house. I looked around my new home.

It was a tight box designed to crush and torture the human spirit. I raised my arms above me. My fingertips touched the cold steel ceiling. I stretched them out to the side. I touched the steel walls. I walked seven feet or so from the barred door to the rear of the cell. I passed a steel cot.

The mattress cover was stained and stinking from old puke and crap. The toilet and washbowls were encrusted with greenish-brown crud. It could be a steel casket for a weak skull after a week or two. I wondered how long they’d punish me in the box.

I turned and walked to the cell door. I stood grasping the bars, looking out at the blank cell-house wall in front of me.

I thought, “The Nazi figures after a week or so in this dungeon I’ll be crying and begging to tell him how I escaped. I’m not going to pussy-out. Hell, I got a strong skull. I could do a month in here.”

I heard a slapping noise against the steel space between the cells. I saw a thin white hand holding a square of paper. I stuck my arm through the bars of my cell door. I took the paper. It was a kite with two cigarettes and three matches folded inside.

It read, “Welcome to Happiness Lane. My name is Coppola. The vine said you’re Lancaster, the guy who took a powder thirteen years ago. I was clerking in an office up front. I took my powder a year and a half ago.

“They brought me back six months ago. I’ve started to cash in my chips a dozen times. You’ll find out what I mean. I’ve been right in this cell ever since. I got another year to go with the new time stacked on top for the escape. I got a detainer warrant from Maine for forgery up front.

“We’re in big trouble, buddy. The prick up front has cracked up four or five cons in these cells since I came back … There’s six of us on the row now. Only three are escapees. The rest are doing short punishment time like two days to a week. I’ll give you background on other things later, I know what screws will get anything you want for a price.”

I lit a cigarette and sat on the cot. I thought, Coppola is a helluva stud to keep his skull straight for six months on Happiness Lane. He doesn’t know I’m just here for a few days.”

That night we had a supper of sour Spanish rice. I heard the shuffling feet of cons filing into the cell house. They were going into their cells on the tiers

overhead. The blaring radio loudspeakers and the lights went off at nine. Over the flushing of toilets and epidemic farting, I heard my name mentioned. The speaker was on the tier just above my cell.

He said, “Jim, how about old Iceberg, the mack man? Jim, a deuce will get you a sawbuck the white folks will croak him down there. A pimp ain’t got the heart to do a slat down there.”

Jim said, “Jack, I hope the pimp bastard croaks tonight. One of them pimps put my baby sister on stuff.”

I dozed off. After midnight I woke up. Somebody was screaming. He was pleading with someone not to kill him. I heard thudding sounds. I got up and went to the cell door. I heard Coppola flush his john.

I stage whispered, “Coppola, what’s happening, man?”

He whispered, “Don’t let it bug you, Lancaster. It’s just the night screws having their nightly fun and exercise. They pull their punching bags from the cells on the other side. It’s where drunks and old men are held for court in the morning.

“Buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Don’t give them any lip if they ever come by and needle you. They’ll beat hell out of you. Then take all your clothes off and put you in a stripped cell. That’s one with nothing in it, just the cold concrete floor. Buddy, there are at least a dozen ways to die in here.” All the rest of the night I lay staring at the blank dirty wall in front of me. I wondered what Rachel and Stacy were doing. I had to make contact with a screw to mail some letters on the outside for me. The joint censors would never let whore instructions pass through. Every few minutes a screw would

pass and flash his light on me.

That morning I watched the cell-house cons file past my cell on the way to breakfast and then to their work. All new arrivals the day before were also in this line.

That afternoon I got letters from Stacy and Rachel. They had also sent money orders. They missed their strong right arm. They were working bars downtown. “Bet” was handling any falls they might take.

Coppola within the first week hipped me to the angles of survival. I had a screw who would take letters directly to the girls. He would get his pay-off from them. He would bring me cash from them.

I got a letter from Mama. I could hardly read the shaky writing. She sent me religious tracts inside it. I was really worried about her. The tight cell and the fear of a year in it was getting to me. The little sleep I got was crowded

with nightmares. I was eating good at high prices. I still lost weight.

The first month I lost thirty pounds. Then I got bad news twice within the fifth week. I got a letter from Stacy. Bet had been found dead on his toilet stool at home. It really shook me. He had been a real friend. I got a very short note from Rachel. She was in Cleveland.

It said, “I ran into an old doctor friend of yours the other night. He was looped. He bought me a drink. Lucky for me the bartender asked how you were doing. The doctor spilled his guts. He told me about a dead patient of his who came back to life. My worst wishes. P.S. Please drop dead. I’ll keep the Hog.”

The joint waived the balance of Coppola’s time to face the rap in Maine. The skull pressure was getting larger. The cell was getting tighter. With Coppola gone I was in real trouble the third month. It was like a deadly hex was at work to crack me up.

None of the screws would cop heavy drugs for me. I settled for whiskey. I stopped using the safety razor. I didn’t want to see the gaunt ugly stranger in my sliver of mirror. It wasn’t just the cell. It was the sights and sounds of the misery and torment on the row and in the nightmares.

Mama was bedridden. She was too sick to write. I got telegrams and letters from her friends. They were all praying that I’d get out before Mama passed. I got a pass to the visitors cage. A screw took me and stood behind me the whole time. It was Stacy. She was pregnant and living with an old hustler. Her eyes told me how bad I looked. Her letters dropped off to one a month with no scratch.

At the end of the fourth month my skull was shaking on my shoulders like I had palsy. A con on the row blew his top one night around midnight. He woke up the whole cell house. At first he was cursing God and his mother. The screws brought him past my cell.

In my state the sight of him almost took me into madness. He was buck naked and jabbering a weird madman’s language through a foamy jib. It was like the talking in tongues Holy Rollers do. He was jacking-off his stiff swipe with both hands. I gnawed into my pillow like the runt to keep from screaming.

The next day I put in a request to see the Nazi. Nothing happened. A week later I was sitting on the John with my head between my knees. I heard the morning line moving to breakfast. The line had stalled for a moment right outside my cell door.

I looked up into a pair of strange almost orange eyes sunk into an old horribly scarred face. It was Leroy. I had stolen Chris from him many years ago. He still remembered me. He stared at me and smiled crookedly as the line moved out.

I got my screw to check his rap sheet. The screw gave me the whole rundown. Since nineteen-forty Leroy had been arrested more than a hundred times for common drunk. He had also been committed to mental hospitals twice. I was forty-two. I was twenty when I stole Chris from him. I asked the screw to pull strings to send him to another cell house. I gave him a rundown on the Chris steal and how weak Leroy had been for her. The screw told me he couldn’t cut it.

Leroy was doing only five days for drunk. Leroy had to stay in the cell house. I wondered how Leroy would try for revenge. I had to be careful in the morning for the next five days. I had to keep my feet and legs away from the cell door. Leroy might score for a shiv and try to hack something off when he passed my cell. I worried all day about what he would do. Could he somehow get gasoline and torch me?

That night I heard the voice for the first time. The lights were out. The cell house was quiet. The voice seemed to be coming through a tiny grille at the head of the cot.

A light always burned in the breezeway behind the grille. The pipes for all the plumbing for the cells were there. I got down on my hands and knees and looked through the grille’s tiny holes. I couldn’t see anybody.

I got back on the cot. The voice was louder and clearer. It sounded friendly and sweet like a woman consoling a friend. I wondered if cons on one of the tiers above me were clowning with each other.

I heard my name in the flow of chatter. I got back down and listened at the grille. A light flooded the corner. It was the screw. I spun around on my knees facing him. The light was in my eyes. He said, “What the hell are you doing?”

I said, “Officer, I heard a voice. I thought someone was working back there.”

He said, “Oh, you poor bastard. You won’t pull this bit. You’re going nuts ‘Slim.’ Now stop that nonsense and get in that cot and stay there.”

The cellhouse lights woke me up. My first thought was Leroy. I got up and sat on the cot. Then I thought about the voice. I wasn’t sure now. Maybe it had been a dream.

I wondered whether I should ask the screw about it. One thing for sure, dream or not, I didn’t want to go nuts. My mind hooked on to what I’d heard the old con philosopher say about that screen in the skull. I remembered what the books at federal prison said about voices and even people that only existed inside a joker’s skull.

I thought, “After this when I get the first sign of a sneaky worry, thought or idea, I’ll fight it out of my skull.”

Maybe I wasn’t dreaming when I heard that voice. If I hear it again I’ll have some protection. I’ll keep a strong sane voice inside to fight off anything screwy from going on.

Every moment I’ll stand guard over my thoughts until I get out of here. I can do it. I just have to train that guard. He’s got to be slick enough not to let trouble by him. I’ll make him shout down the phony voices. He’ll know they’re not real right away.

I got up and went to the face bowl. I heard the rumbling feet of the cons coming off the tiers. I was washing my face. I heard a series of sliding bumps on the floor behind me. It was like several newsboys all throwing your paper on the porch in rotation. Then I smelled it. I turned toward the door. I squinted through the soap on my eyelids. I had been bombed with crap.

It was oozing off the wall. The solid stuff had rolled to my feet. Pieces of loosely rolled newspaper were the casings. Cons were passing my door snickering. I felt dizzy. A big lead balloon started inflating inside my chest. I remembered the inside guard. He was new and late on the job. I puked.

I shouted over and over, “Watch out now, it’s only crap, it’s only crap. It’s just crap. Watch out, it can’t hurt you. It’s only stinking crap.”

A screw stood at the cell door twitching his nose. He was screaming, “Shut Up!”

He opened the cell. I got a bucket of hot water and a scrub brush. I cleaned the cell. The screw asked me who fouled my nest. I told him I didn’t know.

My screw came to see me at noon. He told me how Leroy had enlisted the crap-bombers. Leroy told them I had put the finger on him years ago when he got the bit for the Papa Tony beating. My screw dropped the truth around the cell house. All the bombers were down on Leroy. They dared him to bother me again. I was safe from Leroy. I didn’t mourn when Leroy finished his five-day bit. It was the end of my sixth month. I beat down worry, voices, and countless thoughts of suicide with the skull-guard plan.

A friend of Mama’s sent me a telegram. Mama had been stricken. The

hospital doctors had given her up. Then she bounced back. She was very sick now, but still alive. The telegram gave my skull gimmick a tough test.

I had a very sad day around the middle of the seventh month. A booster from New York busted on his second day in town was on the tier above me. A con on my row several cells down called me one night to borrow a book. A moment later I heard my name called from up above. He came down next morning and rapped to me. His job was in the cell house.

The booster asked me if I were the Iceberg who was a friend of Party Time. I told him yes. He didn’t say anything for awhile. Finally he told me Party had often spoken of me as the kid he once hustled with who grew up to be Iceberg the pimp.

He told me Party had copped the beautiful girlfriend of a dope dealer when he got a bit. Party turned her out. The dope dealer did his bit. The broad tried to cut Party loose to go back to a life of ease.

Party went gorilla on her. He broke her arm. Two months later Party copped some H. He didn’t know his connection was a pal of the dealer who got the bit. It was H all right mixed with flakes of battery acid. I didn’t sleep that night.

I had come to a decision in that awful cell. I was through with pimping and drugs. I got insight that perhaps I could never have hoped to get outside. I couldn’t have awakened if I had been serving a normal bit. After I got the mental game down pat I could see the terrible pattern of my life.

Mama’s condition and my guilty conscience had a lot to do with my decision. Perhaps my age and loss of youth played their parts. I had found out that pimping is for young men, the stupid kind.

I had spent more than half a lifetime in a worthless, dangerous profession. If I had stayed in school, in eight years of study I could have been an M.D. or lawyer. Now here I was, slick but not smart, in a cell. I was past forty with counterfeit glory in my past, and no marketable training, no future. I had been a bigger sucker than a square mark. All he loses is scratch. I had joined a club that suckered me behind bars five times.

A good pimp has to use great pressure. It’s always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim. I was weary of clutching quicksilver whores and the joints.

I was at the end of the ninth month of the bit. I got a front office interview. I was contesting my discharge date. I was still down for an eleven month bit.

An agent of the joint had been in the arresting group. I spent thirty days in

county jail before the transfer to the joint to finish out the year. I knew little or nothing about law. I was told at the interview I had to do eleven months. I wasn’t afraid I’d crack up serving the extra month. By this time I had perfect control of my skull.

Mama might die in California at any time. I had to get to her before she died. I had to convince her I loved her, that I appreciated her as a mother. That she and not whore-catching was more important to me. I had to get there as much for myself as for her.

I lay in that cell for two weeks. I wrote a paper based on what I believed were the legal grounds for my release at the expiration of ten months. It had subtle muscle in it too. I memorized the paper. I rehearsed it in the cell. Finally I felt I had the necessary dramatic inflection and fluid delivery. It was two days before the end of the tenth month. I was called in two weeks after I had requested the second interview.

I must have looked like a scarecrow as I stood before him. I was bearded, filthy, and ragged. He was immaculate seated behind his gleaming desk. He had a contemptuous look on his face.

I said, “Sir, I realize that the urgent press of your duties has perhaps contributed to your neglect of my urgent request for an interview. I have come here today to discuss the vital issue of my legal discharge date.

“Wild rumors are circulating to the effect that you are not a fair man, that you are a bigot, who hates Negroes. I discounted them immediately when I heard them. I am almost dogmatic in my belief that a man of your civic stature and intellect could ill afford or embrace base prejudice.

“In the spirit of fair play, I’m going to be brutally frank. If I am not released the day after tomorrow, a certain agent of mine here in the city is going to set in motion a process that will not only free me, but will possibly in addition throw a revealing spotlight on certain not too legal, not too pleasant activities carried on daily behind these walls.

“I have been caged here like an animal for almost ten months. Like an animal, my sensitivity of seeing and hearing has been enhanced. I only want what is legally mine. My contention is that if your Captain of guards, who is legally your agent, had arrested me and confined me on such an unlikely place as the moon for thirty days, technically and legally I would be in the custody of this institution. Sir, the point is unassailable. Frankly I don’t doubt that my release will occur on legal schedule. Thank you, Sir, for the interview.”

The contempt had drained out of his face. I convinced him I wasn’t running a bluff. His eyes told me he couldn’t risk it. After all, surely he knew how easy it was to get contraband in and out of the rotten joint. Getting a kite to an agent would be child’s play. I didn’t sleep that night. The next day I got a discharge notice. I would be released on legal schedule.

22

DAWN

I had amazed cons and guards alike, I had survived it. I was getting out in twenty-four hours. I was almost forty-three sitting in a cell.

I thought, “I have been in a deadly trap. Have I really escaped it? Does fate have grimmer traps set? Can I learn to be proud of my black skin? Can I adjust to the stark reality that black people in my lifetime had little chance to escape the barbed-wire stockade in the white man’s world?”

Only time and the imponderables inside me would answer the questions.

I had no one except Mama. They dressed me out. My clothes flopped around on my skeletal frame. I still hadn’t told them how I had escaped. Cons cheered me as I shuffled toward freedom. They knew how I had suffered and what the awful odds had been that I wouldn’t have made it.

A friend of Mama’s had sent me my fare. As the plane flew over the sea of neon, I looked down at the city where I had come so many years ago in search of an empty lonesome dream.

I thought of Henry and the sound of that pressing machine. Of Mama when she was young and pretty. How wonderful it had been back there in Rockford. She would come into my room at bedtime, a tender ghost, and tuck me in warmly and kiss me goodnight. It seemed a long time before I finally got to her.

When I walked into her room, death was there in her tiny gray face. Her eyes brightened and flashed a mother’s deathless love. Her embrace was firm and sure. My coming to her had been like a miracle. It was the magic that gave her strength.

She clutched life for an added six months. I never left the house for those six months. We would lie side by side on twin beds and talk far into the night. She made me promise that I would use the rest of my life in a good

way. She told me I should get married and have children.

I tried hard to make up for all those years I had neglected her. It’s hard to square an emotional debt. That last sad day she looked up into my eyes from the hospital bed.

In a voice I could scarcely hear through her parched lips, she whispered, “Forgive me Son, forgive me. Mama didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

I stood there watching her last tears rolling down her dead cheeks from the blank eyes. I crushed her to me.

I tried to get my final plea past death’s grim shield, “Oh Mama, nothing has been your fault, believe me, nothing. If you are foolish enough to think so, then I forgive you.”

I staggered blindly from the hospital. I went to the parking lot. I fell across the car hood and cried my heart out. I stopped crying. I thought Mama had really gotten in the last word this time.

These stinking whores would have gotten a huge charge if they could have seen old Iceberg out there wailing like a sucker because his old lady was dead.

EPILOGUE

 

I am lying in the quiet dawn. I am writing this last chapter for the publisher.

I am thinking, “How did a character like me, who for most of his life had devoted himself to the vilest career, ever square up? By all the odds, I should have ended a broken, diseased shell, or died in a lonely prison cell.”

I guess three of the very important reasons are lying asleep in the bedroom across the hall. I can see their peaceful, happy faces. They don’t know how hard and often discouraging it is for me to earn a living for them in the square world.

This square world is a strange place for me. For the last five years I have tried hard, so hard, to solve its riddles, to fit in.

Catherine, my beautiful wife, is wonderful and courageous. She’s a perfect mother to our adorable two-year-old girl, and our sturdy, handsome three- year-old boy.

In this new world that isn’t really square at all, I have had many bitter experiences. I remember soon after my marriage how optimistic I was as I set out to apply for the sales jobs listed in the want ads.

I knew that I was a stellar salesman. After all, hadn’t I proved my gift for thirty years? The principles of selling are the same in both worlds. The white interviewers were impressed by my bearing and apparent facility with words. They sensed my knowledge of human nature.

But they couldn’t risk the possible effect that a Negro’s presence would have on the firm’s all white personnel. In disgust and anger, I would return home and sulk. Bitterly I would try to convince myself to go back into the rackets. Catherine always said the right things and gave me her love and understanding.

There was another indispensable source of help and courage during these hard times. She’s a charming, brilliant woman. She had been a friend to my mother. She functioned as a kind of psychotherapist. She explained and pointed out to me the mental phases I was passing through. She gave me insight to fight the battle. To her I shall always be grateful.

The story of my life indicates that my close friends were few. Shortly before I started this book I met a man I respected. I thought he was a true friend. I was bitterly disillusioned to discover he wasn’t. I’m glad in a way it turned out the way it did. I’ve always come back stronger after a good kick in the ass.

I have had many interesting and even humorous experiences in this new life. They will have to wait for now. I see my little family is awake. I’ll have to light the heater. I can’t let them get up in the early morning chill.

How about it, an Iceberg with a warm heart?

GLOSSARY

 

APPLE, New York City BANG, injection of narcotics BEEF, criminal complaint

BELL, notoriety connected to one’s name BILL, a hundred dollars

BIT, prison term BITE, price

BLACK GUNION, powerful, thick, dark, gummy marijuana BOO KOOS, plenty

BOOSTER, shoplifter BOOT, Negro

BOSS, very good, excellent

BOTTOM WOMAN, pimp’s main woman, his foundation BOY, heroin

BREAKING LUCK, a whore’s first trick of working day BRIGHT, morning

BULL SCARE, blustering bluff BUSTED, arrested and/or convicted C, cocaine

CANNON, pickpocket CAN, derriere

CAP, a small glycerin container for drugs CAT, female sexual organ

CHILI PIMP, small-time one-whore pimp CHIPPIED, light periodic use of heavy drugs

CHUMP CHANGE, just enough money for basic needs CIRCUS LOVE, to run the gamut of the sexual perversions COAST, somnolent nodding state of heroin addict

COCKTAILED, to put a marijuana butt into the end of a conventional cigarette for smoking

COME DOWN, return to normal state after drug use

COP AND BLOW, pimp theory, to get as many whores as leave him COPPED, get or capture

CRACK WISE, usually applied to an underworld neophyte who spouts hip terminology to gain status

CROAK, kill

CROSSES, to trick or trap

CUT LOOSE, to refuse to help, to disdain

DAMPER, a place holding savings, a bank, safe deposit box, etc.; to stop or quell

DERBY, head, refers to oral copulation DIRTY, in possession of incriminating evidence

DOG, older, hardened whore, or young sexual libertine DOSSING, sleeping

DOWN, a pimp’s pressure on a whore, or his adherence to the rules of the pimp game; when a whore starts to work

FIX, to bribe so an illegal operation can go with impunity; also an injection of narcotics

FLAT-BACKER, a whore who gets paid for straight sexual intercourse FREAK, sexual libertine

FRENCH, oral copulation G, one thousand dollars GANGSTER, marijuana

GEORGIAED, to be taken advantage of sexually without receiving money

GIRL, cocaine

GORILLA, to use physical force GORILLA PIMP, no brains, all muscle GRAND, one thousand dollars

H, heroin

HARD LEG, an older, street-hardened used-up whore HEAT, police, or adverse street conditions for hustlers HIDE, wallet

HOG, Cadillac HOOKS, hands HORNS, ears HYPE, addict

JASPER, lesbian JEFFING, low level con JIB, mouth

KEISTER, derriere KITE, note KITTY, Cadillac

LARCENY, to turn against by vocal condemnation LINES, money

LIP, lawyer MACKING, pimping MARK, victim; sucker

MITT MAN, a hustler who uses religion and prophecy to con his victims, usually the victims are women

MOP, hair

MUCKTY-MUCKS, a temptuous term applied to the rich and privileged by the poor and underprivileged

MURPHY, con game played on suckers looking for whores NUT ROLL, a pretense at stupidity or unawareness

OKEE DOKE, a con game

OIL, pay-off money to the police OUTFIT, hypodermic kit used by addicts

PACIFIER BULB, the rubber top of a baby’s pacifier used by addicts to draw up drugs through the eye dropper

PIECE, measurement of narcotics; usually an ounce PIECE OF STUFF, one ounce of narcotics PINNING, looking

POKE, wallet or bankroll REEFER, marijuana

ROLLER, policeman, usually plain clothes ROUST, stopped, harassed by police SHAKE, extort

SHEET, police record SHIELD, badge

SHIV, knife, usually made by convicts from various objects SHORT, car

SIZZLE, narcotics carried on the person

SLAT, one usually refers to money or length of prison term

SLUM HUSTLER, a phony jewelry salesman SMACK, heroin

SNATCH, female sexual organ SNORT, sniff or inhale SPADE, Negro

SPEED BALLS, a combination of heroin and cocaine injected SPIC, Mexican

SPIELING, talking, a term used by older hustlers and pimps SQUARE UP, get out of the life

STABLE, a group of whores belonging to one pimp STALL, an accomplice of a cannon

STAND UP, to endure or survive STASH, hiding place

STING, rob STRIDES, trousers

STUFF ON, to play on or con THREADS, clothes

THREE WAY, orally, rectally, vaginally TO PULL COAT, to inform and teach

TURNED OUT, introduced to the fast life or drugs UPTIGHT, in trouble, financial or otherwise

VIC, mark, victim VINE, suit

WHALE, throw, usually applied to throwing dice WIRE, information, message, etc.

YEASTING, to build up or exaggerate

YELLOW, a yellow capsule containing barbiturate powder PRAT, to pretend rejection to increase desire

PEEL OFF, removal of only a portion of money from a wallet or roll