“If I had some one like you at home
I wouldn’t wanta go out, I wouldn’t wanta go out. . . .
If I had some one like you at home,
I’d put a padlock on the door. . . .”
She hugged him to her.
“I love you. I ain’t got no man.”
“Gwan, tell that to the marines,” he panted.
“Honest to God. Lemme kiss you nice.”
It was now eating-time in Harlem. They were hungry. They washed and dressed.
“If you’ll be mah man always, you won’t have to work,” she said.
“Me?” responded Jake. “I’ve never been a sweetman yet. Never lived off no womens and never will. I always works.”
“I don’t care what you do whilst you is mah man. But hard work’s no good for a sweet-loving papa.”
ON THE JOB AGAIN
V
JAKE stayed on in Rose’s room. He could not feel about her as he did for his little lost maroon-brown of the Baltimore. He went frequently to the Baltimore, but he never saw her again. Then he grew to hate that cabaret and stopped going there.
The mulattress was charged with tireless activity and Jake was her big, good slave. But her spirit lacked the charm and verve, the infectious joy, of his little lost brown. He sometimes felt that she had no spirit at all—that strange, elusive something that he felt in himself, sometimes here, sometimes there, roaming away from him, going back to London, to Brest, Le Havre, wandering to some unknown new port, caught a moment by some romantic rhythm, color, face, passing through cabarets, saloons, speakeasies, and returning to him. . . . The little brown had something of that in her, too. That night he had felt a reaching out and marriage of spirits. . . . But the mulattress was all a wonderful tissue of throbbing flesh. He had never once felt in her any tenderness or timidity or aloofness. . . .
Jake was working longshore. Hooking barrels and boxes, wrestling with chains and cranes. He didn’t have a little-boss job this time. But that didn’t worry him. He was one blackamoor that nourished a perfect contempt for place. There were times when he divided his days between Rose and Uncle Doc’s saloon and Dixie Red’s pool-room.
He never took money from her. If he gambled away his own and was short, he borrowed from Nije Gridley, the longshoreman broker. Nije Gridley was a tall, thin, shiny black man. His long eyelashes gave his sharp eyes a sleepy appearance, but he was always wide awake. Before Jake was shipped to France, Nije had a rooming-house in Harlem’s Fifth Avenue, worked a little at longshoring himself, and lent money on the checks of the hard-gambling boys. Now he had three rooming-houses, one of which, free of mortgage, he owned. His lean belly bore a heavy gold chain and he strutted Fifth and Lenox in a ministerial crow-black suit. With the war boom of wages, the boys had gambled heavily and borrowed recklessly.
Ordinarily, Nije lent money at the rate of a dollar on four and two on eight per week. He complained bitterly of losses. Twenty-five dollars loaned on a check which, presented, brought only a day’s pay. There were tough fellows that played him that game sometimes. They went and never returned to borrow again. But Nije’s interest covered up such gaps. And sometimes he gave ten dollars on a forty-dollar check, drew the wages, and never saw his customer again, who had vanished entirely out of that phase of Harlem life.
One week when they were not working, Zeddy came to Jake with wonderful news. Men were wanted at a certain pier to unload pineapples at eight dollars a day. Eight dollars was exceptional wages, but the fruit was spoiling.
Jake went with Zeddy and worked the first day with a group of Negroes and a few white men. The white men were not regular dock workers. The only thing that seemed strange to Jake was that all the men ate inside and were not allowed outside the gates for lunch. But, on the second day, his primitive passion for going against regulation urged him to go out in the street after lunch.
Heaving casually along West Street, he was hailed by a white man. “Hello, fellow-worker!”
“Hello, there! What’s up?” Jake asked.
“You working in there?”
“Sure I is. Since yestidday.”
The man told Jake that there was a strike on and he was scabbing. Jake asked him why there were no pickets if there was a strike. The man replied that there were no pickets because the union leaders were against the strike, and had connived with the police to beat up and jail the pickets.
“Well, pardner,” Jake said, “I’ve done worked through a tur’ble assortaments o’ jobs in mah lifetime, but I ain’t nevah yet scabbed it on any man. I done work in this heah country, and I works good and hard over there in France. I works in London and I nevah was a blackleg, although I been the only black man in mah gang.”
“Fine, fellow-worker; that’s a real man’s talk,” said the white man. He took a little red book out of his pocket and asked Jake to let him sign him up in his union.
“It’s the only one in the country for a redblooded worker, no matter what race or nation he belongs to.”
“Nope, I won’t scab, but I ain’t a joiner kind of a fellah,” said Jake. “I ain’t no white folks’ nigger and I ain’t no poah white’s fool. When I longshored in Philly I was a good union man. But when I made New York I done finds out that they gived the colored mens the worser piers and holds the bes’n a’ them foh the Irishmen. No, pardner, keep you’ card. I take the best I k’n get as I goes mah way. But I tells you, things ain’t none at all lovely between white and black in this heah Gawd’s own country.”
“We take all men in our union regardless ——” But Jake was haunching along out of hearing down West Street. . . . Suddenly he heard sharp, deep, distressful grunts, and saw behind some barrels a black man down and being kicked perilously in the rear end by two white men. Jake drew his hook from his belt and, waving it in the air, he rushed them. The white men shot like rats to cover. The down man scrambled to his feet. One of Zeddy’s pals, Jake recognized him.
“What’s the matter, buddy, the peckawoods them was doing you in?”
“Becaz they said there was a strike in theah. And I said I didn’t give a doughnut, I was going to work foh mah money all the same. I got one o’ them bif! in the eye, though. . . .”
“Don’t go back, buddy. Let the boss-men stick them jobs up. They are a bunch of rotten aigs. Just using us to do their dirty work. Come on, let’s haul bottom away from here to Harlem.”
At Dixie Red’s pool-room that evening there were some fellows with bandaged arms and heads. One iron-heavy, blue-black lad (he was called Liver-lip behind his back, because of the plankiness of his lips) carried his arm in a sling, and told Jake how he happened to be like that.
“They done jumped on me soon as I turned mah black moon on that li’l saloon tha’s catering to us niggers. Heabenly God! But if the stars them didn’t twinkle way down in mah eyes. But easy, easy, old man, I got out mah shaving steel and draws it down the goosey flesh o’ one o’ them, and, buddy, you shoulda heah him squeal. . . . The pohlice?” His massive mouth molded the words to its own form. “They tooks me, yes, but tunned me loose by’n’by. They’s with us this time, boh, but, Lawdy! if they hadn’t did entervention I woulda gutted gizzard and kidney outa that white tripe.”
Jake was angry with Zeddy and asked him, when he came in, why he had not told him at first that the job was a scab job.
“I won’t scab on nobody, not even the orneriest crackers,” he said.
“Bull Durham!” cried Zeddy. “What was I going to let on about anything for? The boss-man done paid me to git him mens, and I got them. Ain’t I working there mahself? I’ll take any job in this heah Gawd’s country that the white boss make it worf mah while to work at.”
“But it ain’t decent to scab,” said Jake.
“Decent mah black moon!” shouted Zeddy. “I’ll scab through hell to make mah living. Scab job or open shop or union am all the same jobs to me. White mens don’t want niggers in them unions, nohow. Ain’t you a good carpenter? And ain’t I a good bl
acksmith? But kain we get a look-in on our trade heah in this white man’s city? Ain’t white mens done scabbed niggers outa all the jobs they useter hold down heah in this city? Waiter, bootblack, and barber shop?”
“With all a that scabbing is a low-down deal,” Jake maintained.
“Me eye! Seems lak youse gittin’ religion, boh. Youse talking death, tha’s what you sure is. One thing I know is niggers am made foh life. And I want to live, boh, and feel plenty o’ the juice o’ life in mah blood. I wanta live and I wanta love. And niggers am got to work hard foh that. Buddy, I’ll tell you this and I’ll tell it to the wo’l’—all the crackers, all them poah white trash, all the nigger-hitting and nigger-breaking white folks—I loves life and I got to live and I’ll scab through hell to live.”
Jake did not work again that week. By Saturday morning he didn’t have a nickel, so he went to Nije Gridley to borrow money. Nije asked him if he was going that evening to Billy Biasse’s railroad flat, the longshoremen gaming rendezvous. Jake said no, he was going with Zeddy to a buffet flat in One Hundred and Fortieth Street. The buffet flat was the rendezvous of a group of railroad porters and club waiters who gambled for big stakes. Jake did not go there often because he had to dress up as if he were going to a cabaret. Also, he was not a big-stake gambler. . . . He preferred Billy Biasse’s, where he could go whenever he liked with hook and overalls.
“Oh, that’s whar Zeddy’s hanging out now,” Nije commented, casually.
For some time before Jake’s return from Europe Zeddy had stopped going to Billy Biasse’s. He told Jake he was fed up with it. Jake did not know that Zeddy owed Nije money and that he did not go to Billy Biasse’s because Nije often went there. . . .
Later in the evening Nije went to Billy Biasse’s and found a longshoreman who was known at the buffet flat, to take him there.
Gambling was a bigger game than sex at this buffet flat. The copper-hued lady who owned it was herself a very good poker-player. There were only two cocoa-brown girls there. Not young or attractive. They made a show of doing something, serving drinks and trying hard to make jokes. In dining- and sitting-room, five tables were occupied by card-players. Railroad porters, longshoremen, waiters; tight-faced, anxious-eyed. Zeddy sat at the same table with the lady of the flat. He had just eliminated two cards and asked for two when Nije and his escort were let into the flat. Zeddy smelled his man and knew it was Nije without looking up.
Nije swaggered past Zeddy and joined a group at another table. The gaming went on with intermittent calls for drinks. Nije sat where he could watch Zeddy’s face. Zeddy also, although apparently intent on the cards, kept a wary eye on Nije. Sometimes their eyes met. No one was aware of the challenge that was developing between the two men.
There was a little slackening in the games, a general call for drinks, and a shifting of chairs. Nije got nearer to Zeddy. . . . Half-smiling and careless-like, he planted his bootheel upon Zeddy’s toes.
“Git off mah feets,” Zeddy barked. The answer was a hard blow in the face. Zeddy tasted blood in his mouth. He threw his muscular gorilla body upon the tall Nije and hugged him down to the floor.
“You blasted black Jew, say you’ prayers!” cried Zeddy.
“Ain’t scared o’ none o’ you barefaced robber niggers.” Nije was breathing hard under Zeddy and trying to get the better of him by the help of the wall.
“Black man,” growled Zeddy, “I’se gwineta cut your throat just so sure as God is white.”
With his knee upon Nije’s chest and his left hand on his windpipe, Zeddy flashed the deadly-gleaming blade out of his back pocket. The proprietress let loose a blood-curdling scream, but before Zeddy’s hand could achieve its purpose, Jake aimed a swift kick at his elbow. The razor flew spinning upward and fell chopping through a glass of gin on the pianola.
The proprietress fell upon Zeddy and clawed at him. “Wha’s the matter all you bums trying to ruin mah place?” she cried. “Ain’t I been a good spoht with you all, making everything here nice and respectable?”
Jake took charge of Zeddy. Two men hustled Nije off away out of the flat.
“Who was it put the krimp on me?” asked Zeddy.
“You ought to praise the Lawd you was saved from Sing Sing and don’t ask no questions,” the woman replied.
Everybody was talking.
“How did that long, tall, blood-suckin’ nigger get in heah?”
“Soon as this heah kind a business stahts, the dicks will sartain sure git on to us.”
“It ain’t no moh than last week they done raided Madame Jerkin’s, the niftiest buffet flat in Harlem. O Lawdy!”
“That ole black cock,” growled Zeddy, “he wouldn’a’ crowed round Harlem no moh after I’d done made that theah fine blade talk in his throat.”
“Shut up you,” the proprietress said, “or I’ll throw you out.” And Zeddy, the ape, who was scared of no man in the place, became humble before the woman. She began setting the room to order, helped by the two cocoa-brown girls. A man shuffling a pack of cards called to Zeddy and Jake.
But the woman held up her hand. “No more card-playing tonight. I feel too nervous.”
“Let’s dance, then,” suggested the smaller cocoa-brown girl.
A “blues” came trotting out of the pianola. The proprietress bounced into Jake’s arms. The men sprang at the two girls. The unlucky ones paired off with each other.
Oh, “blues,” “blues,” “blues.” Black-framed white grinning. Finger-snapping. Undertone singing. The three men with women teasing the stags. Zeddy’s gorilla feet dancing down the dark death lurking in his heart. Zeddy dancing with a pal. “Blues,” “blues,” “blues.” Red moods, black moods, golden moods. Curious, syncopated slipping-over into one mood, back-sliding back to the first mood. Humming in harmony, barbaric harmony, joy-drunk, chasing out the shadow of the moment before.
MYRTLE AVENUE
VI
ZEDDY was excited over Jake’s success in love. He thought how often he had tried to make up to Rose, without succeeding. He was crazy about finding a woman to love him for himself.
He had been married when he was quite a lad to a crust-yellow girl in Petersburg. Zeddy’s wife, after deceiving him with white men, had run away from him to live an easier life. That was before Zeddy came North. Since then he had had many other alliances. But none had been successful.
It was true that no Black Belt beauty would ever call Zeddy “mah han’some brown.” But there were sweetmen of the Belt more repulsive than he, that women would fight and murder each other for. Zeddy did not seem to possess any of that magic that charms and holds women for a long time. All his attempts at home-making had failed. The women left him when he could not furnish the cash to meet the bills. They never saw his wages. For it was gobbled up by his voracious passion for poker and crap games. Zeddy gambled in Harlem. He gambled with white men down by the piers. And he was always losing.
“If only I could get those kinda gals that falls foh Jake,” Zeddy mused. “And Jake is such a fool spade. Don’t know how to handle the womens.”
Zeddy’s chance came at last. One Saturday a yellow-skinned youth, whose days and nights were wholly spent between pool-rooms and Negro speakeasies, invited Zeddy to a sociable at a grass-widow’s who lived in Brooklyn and worked as a cook downtown in New York. She was called Gin-head Susy. She had a little apartment in Myrtle Avenue near Prince Street.
Susy was wonderfully created. She was of the complexion known among Negroes as spade or chocolate-to-the-bone. Her eyes shone like big white stars. Her chest was majestic and the general effect like a mountain. And that mountain was overgrand because Susy never wore any other but extremely French-heeled shoes. Even over the range she always stood poised in them and blazing in bright-hued clothes.
The burning passion of Susy’s life was the yellow youth of her race. Susy came from South Carolina. A yellow youngster married her when she was fifteen and left her before she was eighteen. Since then she had lived wit
h a yellow complex at the core of her heart.
Civilization had brought strikingly exotic types into Susy’s race. And like many, many Negroes, she was a victim to that. . . . Ancient black life rooted upon its base with all its fascinating new layers of brown, low-brown, high-brown, nut-brown, lemon, maroon, olive, mauve, gold. Yellow balancing between black and white. Black reaching out beyond yellow. Almost-white on the brink of a change. Sucked back down into the current of black by the terribly sweet rhythm of black blood. . . .
Susy’s life of yellow complexity was surcharged with gin. There were whisky and beer also at her sociable evenings, but gin was the drink of drinks. Except for herself, her parties were all-male. Like so many of her sex, she had a congenital contempt for women. All-male were her parties and as yellow as she could make them. A lemon-colored or paper-brown pool-room youngster from Harlem’s Fifth Avenue or from Prince Street. A bell-boy or railroad waiter or porter. Sometimes a chocolate who was a quick, non-discriminating lover and not remote of attitude like the pampered high-browns. But chocolates were always a rarity among Susy’s front-roomful of gin-lovers.
Yet for all of her wages drowned in gin, Susy carried a hive of discontents in her majestic breast. She desired a lover, something like her undutiful husband, but she desired in vain. Her guests consumed her gin and listened to the phonograph, exchanged rakish stories, and when they felt fruit-ripe to dropping, left her place in pursuit of pleasures elsewhere.
Sometimes Susy managed to lay hold of a yellow one for some time. Something all a piece of dirty rags and stench picked up in the street. Cleansed, clothed, and booted it. But so soon as he got his curly hair straightened by the process of Harlem’s Ambrozine Palace of Beauty, and started in strutting the pavement of Lenox Avenue, feeling smart as a moving-picture dandy, he would leave Susy.
Apart from Susy’s repellent person, no youthful sweetman attempting to love her could hold out under the ridicule of his pals. Over their games of pool and craps the boys had their cracks at Susy.
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