In that moment the pantryman made a lightning-bolt move; and shut down the little glass door between the pantry and the kitchen. . . .
The train was speeding its way west. The first call for dinner had been made and the dining-room was already full. Over half a dozen calls for eggs of different kinds had been bawled out before the chef discovered that the basket of eggs was missing. The chef asked the pantryman to call the steward. The pantryman, curiously preoccupied, forgot. Pandemonium was loose in the pantry and kitchen when the steward, radish-red, stuck his head in.
The chef’s lower lip had flopped low down, dripping, and the cigar had fallen somewhere. “Cut them aiggs off o’ the bill, Sah Farrel. O Lawd!” he moaned, “Ise sartain sure I brought them aiggs on the car mahself, and now I don’t know where they is.”
“What kind o’ blah is that?” cried the steward. “The eggs must be there in the kitchen. I saw them with the stock meself.”
“And I brought them here hugging them, Boss, ef I ain’t been made fool of by something.” The rhinoceros had changed into a meek black lamb. “O Lawd! and I ain’t been outa the kitchen sence. Ain’t no mortal hand could tuk them. Some evil hand. O Lawd! ——”
“Hell!” The steward dashed out of the pantry to cut all the egg dishes off the bill. The passengers were getting clamorous. The waiters were asking those who had ordered eggs to change to something else. . . .
The steward suggested searching the pantry. The pantry was ransacked. “Them ain’t there, cep’n’ they had feets to walk. O Lawd of Heaben!” the chef groaned. “It’s something deep and evil, I knows, for I ain’t been outa this heah kitchen.” His little flirtation with the yellow girl was completely wiped off his memory.
Only Jake was keeping his head in the kitchen. He was acting second cook, for the steward had not succeeded in getting one. The fourth cook he had gotten was new to the service and he was standing, conspicuously long-headed, with gaping mouth.
“Why’n the debbil’s name don’t you do some’n, nigger?” bellowed the chef, frothy at the corners of his mouth.
“The chef is up a tree, all right,” said Ray to the pantryman.
“And he’ll break his black hide getting down,” the pantryman replied, bitterly.
“Chef!” The yellow pantryman’s face carried a royal African grin. “What’s the matter with you and them aiggs?”
“I done gived them to you mammy.”
“And fohget you wife, ole timer? Ef you ain’t a chicken-roost nigger, as you boast, you surely loves the nest.”
Gash! The chef, at last losing control of himself, shied a huge ham bone at the pantryman. The pantryman sprang back as the ham bone flew through the aperture and smashed a bottle of milk in the pantry.
“What’s all this bloody business today?” cried the steward, who was just entering the pantry. . . . “What nonsense is this, chef? You’ve made a mess of things already and now you start fighting with the waiters. You can’t do like that. You losing your head?”
“Lookahere, Sah Farrel, I jes’ want ev’body to leave me ’lone.”
“But we must all team together on the dining-car. That’s the only way. You can’t start fighting the waiters because you’ve lost the eggs.”
“Sah Farrel, leave me alone, I say,” half roared, half moaned the chef, “or I’ll jump off right now and let you run you’ kitchen you’self.”
“What’s that?” The steward started.
“I say I’ll jump off, and I mean it as Gawd’s mah maker.”
The steward slipped out of the pantry without another word.
The steward obtained a supply of eggs in Harrisburg the next morning. The rest of the trip was made with the most dignified formalities between him and the chef. Between the pantry and the chef the atmosphere was tenser, but there were no more explosions.
The dining-car went out on its next trip with a new chef. And the old chef, after standing a little of the superintendent’s notoriously sharp tongue, was sent to another car as second cook.
“Hit those fellahs in the pocket-book is the only way,” the pantryman overheard the steward talking to one of his colleagues. “Imagine an old experienced chef threatening to jump off when I was short of a second cook.”
They were getting the stock for the next trip in the commissary. Jake turned to the pantryman: “But it was sure peculiar, though, how them aiggs just fly outa that kitchen lak that way.”
“Maybe they all hatched and growed wings when ole black bull was playing with that sweet yaller piece,” the pantryman laughed.
“Honest, though, how do you think it happened?” persisted Jake. “Did you hoodoo them aiggs, or what did you do?”
“I wouldn’t know atall. Better ask them rats in the yards ef they sucked the shells dry. What you’ right hand does don’t tell it to the left, says I.”
“You done said a mou’ful, but how did you get away with it so quiet?”
“I ain’t said nothing discrimination and I ain’t nevah.”
“Don’t figure against me. Ise with you, buddy,” said Jake, “and now that wese good and rid of him, I hope all we niggers will pull together like civilization folks.”
“Sure we will. There ain’t another downhome nigger like him in this white man’s service. He was riding too high and fly, brother. I knew he would tumble and bust something nasty. But I ain’t said I knowed a thing about it, all the same.”
ONE NIGHT IN PHILLY
XIII
ONE night in Philadelphia Jake breezed into the waiters’ quarters in Market Street, looking for Ray. It was late. Ray was in bed. Jake pulled him up.
“Come on outa that, you slacker. Let’s go over to North Philly.”
“What for?”
“A li’l’ fun. I knows a swell outfit I wanta show you.”
“Anything new?”
“Don’t know about anything new, chappie, but I know there’s something good right there in Fifteenth Street.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I don’t want to go.”
“Come on. Don’t be so particular about you’ person. You gotta go with me.”
“I have a girl in New York.”
“Tha’s awright. This is Philly.”
“I tell you, Jake, there’s no fun in those kinds for me. They’ll bore me just like that night in Baltimore.”
“Oh, these here am different chippies, I tell you. Come on, le’s spend the night away from this damn dump. Wese laying ovah all day tomorrow.”
“And some of them will say such rotten things. Pretty enough, all right, but their mouths are loaded with filth, and that’s what gets me.”
“Them’s different ovah there, chappie. I’ll kiss the Bible on it. Come on, now. It’s no fun me going alone.”
They went to a house in Fifteenth Street. As they entered Jake was greeted by a mulatto woman in the full vigor of middle life.
“Why, you heart-breaker! It’s ages and ages since I saw you. You and me sure going to have a bust-up tonight.”
Jake grinned, prancing a little, as if he were going to do the old cake-walk.
“Here, Laura, this is mah friend,” he introduced Ray casually.
“Bring him over here and sit down,” Madame Laura commanded.
She was a big-boned woman, but very agile. A long, irregular, rich-brown face, roving black eyes, deep-set, and shiny black hair heaped upon her head. She wore black velvet, a square-cut blouse low down on her breasts, and a string of large coral beads. The young girls of that house envied her finely-preserved form and her carriage and wondered if they would be anything like that when they reached her age.
The interior of this house gave Ray a shock. It looked so much like a comfortable boarding-house where everybody was cheerful and nice coquettish girls in colorful frocks were doing the waiting. . . . There were a few flirting couples, two groups of men playing cards, and girls hovering around. An attractive black woman was serving sandwiches, gin and bottled beer. At the piano, a slim yellow youth w
as playing a “blues.” . . . A pleasant house party, similar to any other among colored people of that class in Baltimore, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, or even Washington, D. C. Different, naturally, from New York, which molds all peoples into a hectic rhythm of its own. Yet even New York, passing its strange thousands through its great metropolitan mill, cannot rob Negroes of their native color and laughter.
“Mah friend’s just keeping me company,” Jake said to the woman. “He ain’t regular—you get me? And I want him treated right.”
“He’ll be treated better here than he would in church.” She laughed and touched Ray’s calf with the point of her slipper.
“What kind o’ bust-up youse gwine to have with me?” demanded Jake.
“I’ll show you just what I’m going to do with you for forgetting me so long.”
She got up and went into an adjoining room. When she returned an attractively made-up brown girl followed her carrying a tray with glasses and a bottle of champagne. . . . The cork hit the ceiling, bang! And deftly the woman herself poured the foaming liquor without a wasted drop.
“There! That’s our bust-up,” she said. “Me and you and your friend. Even if he’s a virgin he’s all right. I know you ain’t never going around with no sap-head.”
“Give me some, too,” a boy of dull-gold complexion materialized by the side of Madame Laura and demanded a drink. He was about eleven years old.
Affectionately she put her arm around him and poured out a small glass of champagne. The frailness of the boy was pathetic; his eyes were sleepy-sad. He resembled a reed fading in a morass.
“Who is he?” Ray asked.
“He’s my son,” responded Madame Laura. “Clever kid, too. He loves books.”
“Ray will like him, then,” said Jake. “Books is his middle name.”
Ray suddenly felt a violent dislike for the atmosphere. At first he had liked the general friendliness and warmth and naturalness of it. All so different from what he had expected. But something about the presence of the little boy there and his being the woman’s son disgusted him. He could not analyse his aversion. It was just an instinctive, intolerant feeling that the boy did not belong to that environment and should not be there.
He went from Madame Laura and Jake over to the piano and conversed with the pianist. When he glanced again at the table he had left, Madame Laura had her arm around Jake’s neck and his eyes were strangely shining.
Madame Laura had set the pace. There were four other couples making love. At one table a big-built, very black man was amusing himself with two attractive girls, one brown-skinned and the other yellow. The girls’ complexion was heightened by High-Brown Talc powder and rouge. A bottle of Muscatel stood on the table. The man was well dressed in nigger-brown and he wore an expensive diamond ring on his little finger.
The stags were still playing cards, with girls hovering over them. The happy-faced black woman was doing the managing, as Madame Laura was otherwise engaged. The pianist began banging another blues.
Ray felt alone and a little sorry for himself. Now that he was there, he would like to be touched by the spirit of that atmosphere and, like Jake, fall naturally into its rhythm. He also envied Jake. Just for this night only he would like to be like him. . . .
They were dancing. The little yellow girl, her legs kicked out at oblique angles, appeared as if she were going to fall through the big-built black man.
We’ll all be merry when you taste a cherry,
And we’ll twine and twine like a fruitful vine.
In the middle of the floor, a young railroad porter had his hand flattened straight down the slim, cérise-chiffoned back of a brown girl. Her head was thrown back and her eyes held his gleaming eyes. Her lips were parted with pleasure and they stood and rocked in an ecstasy. Their feet were not moving. Only their bodies rocked, rocked to the “blues.” . . .
Ray remarked that Jake was not in the room, nor was Madame Laura in evidence. A girl came to him. “Why is you so all by you’self, baby? Don’t you wanta dance some? That there is some more temptation ‘blues.’ ”
Tickling, enticing syncopation. Ray felt that he ought to dance to it. But some strange thing seemed to hold him back from taking the girl in his arms.
“Will you drink something, instead?” he found a way out.
“Awwww-right,” disappointed, she drawled.
She beckoned to the happy-faced woman.
“Virginia Dare.”
“I’ll have some, too,” Ray said.
Another brown girl joined them.
“Buy mah pal a drink, too?” the first girl asked.
“Why, certainly,” he answered.
The woman brought two glasses of Virginia Dare and Ray ordered a third.
Such a striking exotic appearance the rouge gave these brown girls. Rouge that is so cheap in its general use had here an uncommon quality. Rare as the red flower of the hibiscus would be in a florist’s window on Fifth Avenue. Rouge on brown, a warm, insidious chestnut color. But so much more subtle than chestnut. The round face of the first girl, the carnal sympathy of her full, tinted mouth, touched Ray. But something was between them. . . .
The piano-player had wandered off into some dim, far-away, ancestral source of music. Far, far away from music-hall syncopation and jazz, he was lost in some sensual dream of his own. No tortures, banal shrieks and agonies. Tum-turn . . . turn-turn . . . turn-tum . . . turn-turn. . . . The notes were naked acute alert. Like black youth burning naked in the bush. Love in the deep heart of the jungle. . . . The sharp spring of a leopard from a leafy limb, the snarl of a jackal, green lizards in amorous play, the flight of a plumed bird, and the sudden laughter of mischievous monkeys in their green homes. Tum-turn . . . turn-turn . . . tum-tum . . . turn-tum. . . . Simple-clear and quivering. Like a primitive dance of war or of love . . . the marshaling of spears or the sacred frenzy of a phallic celebration.
Black lovers of life caught up in their own free native rhythm, threaded to a remote scarce-remembered past, celebrating the midnight hours in themselves, for themselves, of themselves, in a house in Fifteenth Street, Philadelphia. . . .
“Raided!” A voice screamed. Standing in the rear door, a policeman, white, in full uniform, smilingly contemplated the spectacle. There was a wild scramble for hats and wraps. The old-timers giggled, shrugged, and kept their seats. Madame Laura pushed aside the policeman.
“Keep you’ pants on, all of you and carry on with you’ fun. What’s matter? Scared of a uniform? Pat”—she turned to the policeman—“what you want to throw a scare in the company for? Come on here with you.”
The policeman, twirling his baton, marched to a table and sat down with Madame Laura.
“Geewizard!” Jake sat down, too. “Tell ’em next time not to ring the fire alarm so loud.”
“You said it, honey-stick. There are no cops in Philly going to mess with this girl. Ain’t it the truth, Pat?” Madame Laura twisted the policeman’s ear and bridled.
“I know it’s the Bible trute,” the happy-faced black lady chanted in a sugary voice, setting a bottle of champagne and glasses upon the table and seating herself familiarly beside the policeman.
The champagne foamed in the four glasses.
“Whar’s mah li’l’ chappie?” Jake asked.
“Gone, maybe. Don’t worry,” said Madame Laura. “Drink!”
Four brown hands and one white. Chink!
“Here’s to you, Pat,” cried Madame Laura. “There’s Irish in me from the male line.” She toasted:
“Flixy, flaxy, fleasy,
Make it good and easy,
Flix for start and flax for snappy,
Niggers and Irish will always be happy.”
The policeman swallowed his champagne at a gulp and got up. “Gotta go now. Time for duty.”
“You treat him nice. Is it for love or protection?” asked Jake.
“He’s loving her”—Madame Laura indicated the now coy lady who helped her manage—“b
ut he’s protecting me. It’s a long time since I ain’t got no loving inclination for any skin but chocolate. Get me?”
When Jake returned to the quarters he found Ray sleeping quietly. He did not disturb him. The next morning they walked together to the yards.
“Did the policeman scare you, too, last night?” asked Jake.
“What policeman?”
“Oh, didn’t you see him? There was a policeman theah and somebody hollered ‘Raid!’ scaring everybody. I thought you’d done tuk you’self away from there in quick time becasn a that.”
“No, I left before that, I guess. Didn’t even smell one walking all the way to the quarters in Market Street.”
“Why’d you beat it? One o’ the li’l’ chippies had a crush on you. Oh, boy! and she was some piece to look at.”
“I know it. She was kind of nice. But she had some nasty perfume on her that turned mah stomach.”
“Youse awful queer, chappie,” Jake commented.
“Why, don’t you ever feel those sensations that just turn you back in on yourself and make you isolated and helpless?”
“Wha’d y’u mean?”
“I mean if sometimes you don’t feel as I felt last night?”
“Lawdy no. Young and pretty is all I feel.”
They stopped in a saloon. Jake had a small whisky and Ray an egg-nogg.
“But Madame Laura isn’t young,” resumed Ray.
“Ain’t she?” Jake showed his teeth. “I’d back her against some of the youngest. She’s a wonder, chappie. Her blood’s like good liquor. She gave me a present, too. Looka here.” Jake took from his pocket a lovely slate-colored necktie sprinkled with red dots. Ray felt the fineness of it.
“Ef I had the sweetman disinclination I wouldn’t have to work, chappie,” Jake rocked proudly in his walk. “But tha’s the life of a pee-wee cutter, says I. Kain’t see it for mine.”
“She was certainly nice to you last night. And the girls were nice, too. It was just like a jolly parlor social.”
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