Kitabı oku: «J. Poindexter, Colored»

Chapter I
Down Yonder

MY name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus Poindexter, Colored. But most always in general I has been known as Jeff, for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family which my folks worked for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I comes to write this is this way:

It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that one of my white gentleman friends he says to me I should take pen in hand and write them out just the way they happen and at the time they is happening, or right soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear in my brain; and then he'll see if he can't get them printed somewheres, which on top of the other things which I now is, will make me an author with money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well but someway I never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some of the spelling. But everything else is mine and I asks credit.

My coming to New York, in the first place, is sort of a sudden thing which starts here about a month before the present time. I has been working for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years and is expecting to go on working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the state begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking, he's a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go live somewheres else. But pretty soon after that the whole country goes dry and then he says to me there just naturally ain't no fitten place left for him to go to without he leaves the United States.

The old boss-man he broods a right smart over this going-dry business. Being a judge and all, he's always been a great hand for upholding the law. But this here is one law which he cannot uphold and yet go on taking of his sweetening drams steady the same as he's been used to doing all his life. And from the statements which he lets fall from time to time I gleans that he can't hardly make up his mind which one of the two of them – law or liquor – he's going to favor the most when the pinch comes and the supply in the dineroom cupboard begins running low. Every time he starts off for a little trip somewheres and has to tote a bottle along in his hip pocket instead of being able to walk into a grocery and refresh himself over the bar like he's been doing for mighty nigh sixty years, I hears him speaking mumbling¹ words to himself. I hears him saying it's come to a pretty pass when a Kentucky gentleman has either got to compromise with his conscience or play a low-down trick on his appetite. Off and on it certainly does pester him mightily.

But just about the middle of the present summer he gets a letter from his married niece, her which used to be Miss Sally Fanny Priest but is now married to a Yankee gentleman named Fairchild and living in Denver, Colorado. Miss Sally Fanny is the closest kin-folks the old judge has got left in the world; and she ups and writes to him and invites him to come on out there where she lives and stay a spell with them and then toward winter go along with her to a place called Bermuda which it seems like from what she says in the letter, Bermuda is one of these here localities where you can still keep on having a toddy when you feels like it without breaking the law.

So he studies about it awhile and then he says to me one night he believes he'll go, which he does along about four weeks ago, leaving me behind to sort of look out for the home place out on Clay Street. My wages goes on the same as if he was there, and I has but little to do, but the place seems mighty lonesome to me without the old boss-man pottering 'round doing this and that and the other thing. I certainly does miss seeing the sight of him. Every time I walks through the front part of the house, and it all empty and closed up and smelling kind of musted, and sees his old umbrella hanging on the front hall hat-rack where he forgot and left it there the day he went away, I gets a sort of a low feeling in my mind. It's like having the toothache in a place where there ain't no tooth to have it in.

And I keeps on thinking about the old days when he'd be setting out on the front porch as night-time come on, with some of them old-time friends of his dropping in on him, and me bringing them drinks from the sideboard, and them laughing and smoking and joking and carrying on; or else maybe talking about the Confederate War and the Battle of Shiloh and all. But most of them is now dead and gone and the old judge is away out yonder in Denver, Colorado, a-many and a-many a mile from me; and all I can hear as I comes up the walk from the front gate after dark is the katy-dids calling in the silver-leaf trees and all I can hear when I unlocks the door and goes inside is one of them old chimney swifts up the chimney, going: "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!" I've took notice before now that an empty house which it has always been empty ain't half so lonesome for you to be in it as one which has been lived in by people you knowed but they have now gone entirely away.

So, after about two weeks of being alone, I gets so restless I feels like I can't stand it very much longer without breaking loose someway. So one Sunday about half past two o'clock in the evening, I'm going on past a young white gentleman by the name of Mr. Dallas Pulliam's house and he comes out on his front porch and calls over to me and tells me to come on in there 'cause he wants to talk to me about something. So I crosses over from the other side of the street and walks up to the porch steps and takes off my hat and asks him how he is getting along and he says he ain't got no complaint and he asks me how is I getting along my own self and I tells him just sort of toler'ble so-and-so, and then he says to me how would I like to take a trip to New York City? I thinks he must be funning. But I says to him, I says:

"How come New York City, Mr. Dallas?"

So he tells me that here lately he's been studying a right smart about going to New York and staying there a spell on a sort of a vacationlike, and if he likes it maybe he'll settle there and go into business. He says he's about made up his mind to take some likely black boy along with him for to be his body-servant and look after his clothes and things and everything and he's thinking that maybe I might be the one to fill the bill; and then he says to me:

"How about it, Jeff – want to go along and give the big town the once-over or not?"

I then sees he is not funning but is making me a straight business proposition. I thanks him and says to him that I has ever had the crave to travel far and wide and that I likewise has often heard New York spoke of as a very pleasant place to go to, by them which has done so, and also a place where something or other is going on most of the time. But I says to him I'm afraid I can't go on account I'm under obligations to Judge Priest by reasons of us having been together so long and him having left me in complete utter charge of our house. He says, though, he thinks maybe he can attend to that part of it all right; he says he'll write a letter to the Judge specifying about what's come up and he's pretty sure it can be fixed up so's I can go. He says if I don't like the job after I gets there, he'll pay my way back home again any time I wants to come, or when the old judge needs me, either one. He says he ain't adopting me, he's just borrowing me.

I always has liked Mr. Dallas Pulliam, him being one of the most freehanded young white gentlemen in town. Of course, off and on, I've heard the rest of the white folks hurrahing him behind his back about the way he's handled all that there money which was left to him here a few years back when his paw died. There was that time when he bought a sugar plantation down in Louisiana, sight onseen, and when he went down to see it, couldn't do so without he'd a-done a whole heap of bailing-out first, by reason of its being under three feet of standing water. Anyway, that's what I heard tell; thought I reckon it wasn't noways as bad as what some of the white folks let on. And there was that other time only a few months back when he decided to start up a buggy-factory. I overhears Judge Priest speaking about that one day to Dr. Lake.

"That young man, Dallas Pulliam, certainly is a sagacious and a farseein' person," he says. "Jest when automobiles has got so cheap that every hill-billy in the county kin afford to own at least one, he's fixin' to go into the buggy-factory business on an extensive scale. Next time I run into him I'm goin' to suggest to him that when the buggy trade seems to sort of slack up, ez possibly it may, that instid of layin' off his hands he might start in to turnin' out flint-lock muskets fur the U. S. Army."

I suspicions that Judge Priest or somebody else must have spoke to Mr. Dallas along those lines because he didn't go into the buggy business after all. For the past several months he ain't been doing much of anything, so far as I knows of, except pranking 'round and courting Miss Henrietta Farrell.

Well, white folks may poke their fun at him unbeknownst, but he's got manners suitable to make him popular with me. He's the kind of a white gentleman that's this here way: He'll wear a new necktie or a fancy vest about three or four times and then he'll get tired of it and pass it on to the first one which comes along. Moreover, him and me is mighty near the same size and I knows full well in advance, just from looking at him that Sunday evening standing there on his porch, that the very same suit of clothes which he's got on then will fit me without practically no alterations. It's a checked suit, too, and mighty catchy to the eye. So right off I tells him if Judge Priest gives his free will and consent I'll certainly be down at the depot when that there old engine whistle blows for to get aboard for New York City. Which he then asks me for Miss Sally Fanny's address and promises he'll write out there that very night to find out can I go.

It's curious how news does travel 'round in a place that's the right size for everybody in it to know everybody else's business. Before night it has done leaked out somehow that I is seriously considering accepting going to New York with young Mr. Dallas Pulliam; and by next morning, lo and behold, if it ain't all over town! Wherever I goes, pretty near everybody I meets, whites and blacks alike, asks me how about it and allows I'm powerful lucky to get such a chance. Mostly, in times gone by, when my race goes North they heads for Chicago, Illinois, or maybe Detroit, Michigan, or Indianapolis, Indiana. No sooner do they get there than they begins writing back saying that up North is the only fitten place for colored folks to be at; wages high, times easy, and white folks calling you "Mister" and everything pleasant like that. They writes that there is not no Jim Crow cars nor separate seats for colored at the moving-pictures nor nothing like that. But I has taken notice that after awhile most of 'em quits writing back and starts coming back. Some stays but more returns – and is verging on shouting-happy when they crosses the Ohio River coming in. From what I hears some of 'em say after they gets home and has got a full meal of vittles inside of them, and so is got more time to talk, I has made up my mind that so far as my own color is concerned, the main difference from the South is this: Up North they calls you "Mister" but they don't feed you!

Still, New York City ain't Chicago, Illinois, nor yet it ain't Detroit, Michigan; and besides, working for Mr. Dallas Pulliam, I won't have to be worrying about when does I eat next. Still, even so, I says to myself that it won't be no harm to inquire round now that the word is done leaked out anyhow, and learn something more than what little I knows about New York City. But it seems like, outside of some few white folks, there is not nobody I knows who's ever been there, excusing a few head of draft-boys which went there enduring of the early part of the war; and they wouldn't scarcely count neither on account of them just passing through and not staying over only just a short time whilst waiting for the boat to start. Howsomever, they tells me, one and all, that from what they did see of it they is willing to recommend it very highly.

One or two of the white gentlemen which I is well acquainted with, they tells me the same, too. Mr. Jere Fairleigh he takes me into his law office when I meets him on the street and speaks to him about it; and he gets a book all about New York down off of one of his shelves and he reads to me where the book says that in New York there is more of these here Germans than there is in any German city except one, and more Russians than there is in any Russia city except none, and more Italians than there is in any Italy city except one, and more Hungarians than there is in any Hungry city at all, and so on and so forth. I says to him, I says:

"Mr. Jere, it seems lak they is mo' of ever' nation in Noo Yawk 'en whut they is anywhars else. But they does not 'pear to be nothin' said 'bout 'Merikins. How come, suh?"

He says he reckons there's so few of them there that the man which wrote the book didn't figure it was worth while putting them in. Still, he says I'll probably run into somebody once in awhile which speaks the United States language.

"'Most every policeman does," he says, "I understand it's the law that they have to be able to speak it before they'll let 'em go on the force, so as they can understand the foreigners that come over from the mainland of North America to visit in New York."

The way he looks – so sort of serious – when he says that, I can't tell if he's in earnest or not. I judges, though, that he's just having his fumdiddles with me. And then he goes on and tells me that the biggest of everything and the tallest and the richest and the grandest is found there and if I don't believe it is, I can just ask any New Yorker after I gets there and he'll tell me the same.

So, taking one thing with another, I'm mighty much pleased when the word comes along in about a week from then that the old judge says I can go and sends me his best wishes and a twenty-dollar bill as a parting gift and friendship offering. He says in the letter, which Mr. Dallas reads to me, to tell me to be sort of careful about sampling the stock of liquor and cigars on the sideboard of any New York family when I'm in their house, and also not to start in wearing a strange Yankee gentleman's clothes without telling him about it first. He says people up there probably don't understand local customs as they have ever prevailed down our way, and if I ain't careful, first thing I know there'll be a skinny black nigger named Jeff locked up in the county jail hollowing for help and not no help handy.

But that's just the old boss-man's joke. He always is been the beatenest one for twitting me about little things around the house! Mr. Dallas he knows how to take what the Judge says and so does I and we has quite a laugh together over the letter.

And lessen twenty-four hours from that time we is both all packed up and on our way, New York bound, me wearing one of Mr. Dallas' suits of clothes which I figures he ain't had it on his back more than five or six times before altogether. It's a suit of a most pleasing pattern, too. And cut very stylish, with a belt in the back.

Chapter II
North Bound

NEXT morning after we gets across into Ohio, Mr. Dallas he fetches me into the Pullman car where he's riding. I finds myself more comfortable there than I has been riding up front in the colored compartment, but lesser easy in my mind. I enjoys the feel of them soft seats and yet I gets sort of uneasy setting amongst so many strange white folks. Still, there ain't nobody telling me to roust myself out from there and after a while I gets more used to being where I now is. Also I gets acquainted with two of the porters, the one on our car and the one on the car which is hitched on next to us. When they ain't busy, we all three gets out in the little porches betwixt the cars and confabs together. 'Course I don't let on to them, but all the time I studies them two boys. The one on our car, which his given name is Roscoe, is short and chunky and kind of fatted out; he's black as the pots and powerful nappy-headed besides. His head looks like somebody has done dipped it in a kettle of grease and then throwed a handful of buckshot at it and they all stuck. But he's smart; he knows what's service. I sees that plain.

With Roscoe it's this way: A lady gets on board the car. No sooner does she sit down and begin to fumble with the hat-pins than there's old Roscoe standing right alongside of her holding a big paper bag in his hands all opened out for her to put her hat in it and keep it out of the dust. A gentleman setting in the smoking-room reaches in his pocket and gets a cigar out. Before he rightly can bite the end of it off, here is this here same Roscoe at his elbow with a match ready. Roscoe he ain't hanging back waiting for folks to ask him for something and then have them getting all fretful whilst he's running to find whatever 'tis they wants. No sir, not him. He's there with the materials almost before they is made up their minds what it is they craves next. He just naturally beats 'em to it; which I'll tell the world that's service.

He's powerful crafty about his tips, too. When he does something for a passenger and the passenger reaches in his pocket to get a little piece of chicken-feed out to hand over to Roscoe, he smiles and holds up his hand.

"No, suh," he says to him, "keep yore funds whar they now is, please, suh. There ain't no hurry – we're goin' travel quite a piece together. W'en we gits to whar you gits off, ef you is puffec'ly satisfied wid all whut has been done in yore behalf then you kin slip me a lil' reward, ef you's a-mind to."

He tells me in confidences that working it that-a-way he gets dollars where he would a-got dimes. He calls it his deferred payment plan. He says some months his tips run three times what his wages is. I'll say that old tar-baby certainly is got something in his head besides sockets for his teeth to set in.

The other porter, the one which is on the car next behind, is as different from Roscoe as day is from night. He calls himself Harold. But I knows just from looking at him that he's too old for such a fancy entitlement as that. 'Cause Harold is a new-issue name amongst us colored, and this here boy must be rising of forty years old, if he's a day. This Harold is yellow-complected and yet he ain't the pure high yellow, neither; he's more the shade of a slice of scorched sponge cake. He's plenty uppidity. And I takes notice that the further North the train goes the more uppidity he gets. He quits saying "No, ma'am," and "Yas, suh," almost before we leaves Cincinnati. He quits saying "Thanky, suh," and he starts saying "I thank you," in such a way it sounds like he was actually doing you a favor to accept your two bits. He starts talking back to passengers which complains about something. He acts more and more begrudgeful until it looks like it must actually hurt him to step along and do something which somebody on the train wants done. Along about Pittsburgh he's got so brash that I keeps watching for some white man to rise up and knock that boy's mouth so far round from the middle of his face it'll look like his side-entrance. But nothing like that don't happen and I is most deeply surprised and marvels greatly. I says to myself, I says:

"Harold," I says, "I aims to git yore likeness well fixed in my mind 'cause I got a presentermint 'at you ain't goin' be 'round yere so very much longer an' I wants to be able to remember how you looked, after you is gone frum us. Some these times you is goin' git yore system mixed an' start bein' biggotty on yore way South an' 'en you is due to wake up at the end of yore run all organized to attend yore own fune'l. Yas, suh, man, w'en you comes to in Newerleans you'll a-been daid fully twelve hours. I kin jest shut my eyes right now an' see the cemetery sexton pattin' you in the face wid a spade."

I talks to him about the way he acts. Course I does not come right out and ask him about it; but I leads him up to it gentle and roundabout. He tells me he don't aim to let nobody run over him. He tells me he considers himself just as good as they is, if not better. He says he lives in a place called Jersey City where the colored race gets their bounden rights and if they don't get 'em they up and contends for 'em until they do. I says to him, I says:

"Harold," I says, "I ain't never been about nowhars much till this present trip an' I ain't never seen much, so you must excuse of my ign'ence but the way it looks to me, I'd ruther be happy amongst niggers then miser'ble amongst w'ite folks."

He says to me ain't I got no respect for my color? I says to him I's got so much respect for it that I ain't aiming to jam myself into places where I ain't desired. He says that ain't the point; he says the point is that I is got to stand up for the entitled rights and privileges of the colored race. I says where I comes from I also has got to think about keeping from getting my head all peeled. He says to me I'll find out before I has been long up North that there is a sight of difference betwixt Kentucky and New Jersey. I says to him that most doubtless he is right. And then he says I should also be careful about speaking the word "nigger." He says the word ain't never used no more amongst colored folks which respects themselves. I says to him, I says:

"Huh!" I says. "Well, then, whut does you call a boy w'en you's blabbin' 'long wid him friendly-lak?"

He says it is different when I is strictly amongst my own color, but that I mustn't never speak the word "nigger" in front of white folks nor never allow no white man to call me that and get away with it.

I says:

"Not even ef you is wu'kin' fur him an' he don't call it to you to hurt yore feelin's nor to demean you but jest sez it sociable an' so-an'-so?"

He says:

"Not under no circumstances whutsomever."

I says:

"How is I goin' stop him?"

He says:

"Wid yore fists. Or half of a loose brick. Or somethin'."

I says to Harold:

"Harold," I says, "you shore wuz right jest now w'en you norrated 'at they wuz a diff'ience betwixt Kintucky an' up-North. Well, live an' learn," I says, "live an' learn. Only, ef I aims to learn frum you I has doubts whether I'll live so ver' much longer."

We talks some more about making money, too. It seems like the closer you gets to New York City the more you thinks about money. I noticed it then and I notices it since, frequent. He says to me that some of the boys in the sleeping-car portering business don't depend just on their wages and their tips alone. He says they has another way for to pick up loose change. He says he don't follow after it himself; he says he has got one or two other boys in mind which he has talked with 'em and knows how they does it.

I says to him, I says:

"Specify?"

He says:

"The way these yere boys gits they money is 'at they gits it late at night after ever'body has done went to baid. Most gin'elly a man 'at's travelin' he don't keep track of his loose change. Anyhow, he don't keep near ez close track of it ez he do w'en he's home. He's buyin' hisse'f a cigar yere an' a paper-back book there an' a apple in this place an' a sandwitch in 'at place, an' he jest stick the change in his pants pocket an' goes on 'bout his bus'ness. Well, come baid-time, he turns in. We'll say you is the porter on his car. You goes th'ough the car till you comes to his berth. You parts the curtains jest ez easy ez you kin an' you peeps in th'ough the crack an' see ef he's sleepin' good. Ef his pants is all folded up smooth you better ramble along an' leave 'at man be. Folded pants is most gine'lly a sign of a careful man w'ich the chances is he knows how much he's got to a cent. But ef his pants is kind of wadded-up in the lil' hammock or flung to one side sort of keerless-lak, you reaches in an' you lifts 'em out. But fust you wants to be shore he's sleepin' sound. Them w'ich sleeps on the back wid the mouth open is the safetest."

I says to him, I says:

"Yes, but s'posen' he do wake up an' ketch you fumblin' 'round insides of his berth. Whut then?"

"Oh," he says, "tha's all purvided fur in the ritual. You sez to him: ''Scuse me, mister, I med a mistake. I thought you wuz the gen'lman 'at lef' a early call fur to git off at Harrisburg.' But most in gine'l he don't wake up. So you gits his pants out into the aisle an' goes th'ough 'em. Ef he's got somewhars 'round five dollars in loose change in his pockets, you teks fifty cents, no mo' an' no less, an' 'en you slips his pants back whar you found 'em an' go 'long. Ef he's got somewhars 'round ten dollars in chicken-feed an' in ones an' twos, you assesses him dues of jest one dollar even. Ef you plays yore system right an' don't git greedy they ain't one chanc't in a thousand 'at he'll miss the money w'en he wakes up. But," he says, "they's one fatal exception to the rule. W'en you come to him, don't touch a cent of his money no matter how much he's carryin' on him. 'Cause ef you do he's shore to mek a hollow the very fust thing in the mornin' an' next thing you know you's in trouble an' they's beckonin' you up on the cyarpet."

I says to him, I says:

"Wait a minute," I says. "Lemme see ef I can't name you the exception my own se'f. The exception," I says, "is the w'ite man w'ich he carries all his small change in one of these yere lil' screwed-up leather purses. Ain't it?"

And he says yes, for a fact, that's so. But he says how come I is knowing so much when I ain't never done no portering my own self. And I says to him, a man don't need to be wearing railroading clothes to know that any white man which totes around one of them little tight patent purses knows at all times, sleeping or waking, just exactly how much money he's got.

Well, when we gets to New York City it's morning again. When we comes out of the depot onto the street I takes one look round and I allows to myself that these here New York folks certainly is got powerfully behind someway with their hauling. Excusing the time we had the cyclone down home, I ain't never in my whole life seen so much truck and stuff and things moving in all different directions at the same time. And people —who-ee! Every which-a-way I looks all I can see is a multitude of strangers. And I says to myself there certainly must be a big convention going on in this town for the streets to be so full of visiting delegates and it's a mighty good thing for us Mr. Dallas is done sent a telegram on ahead for rooms at the hotel, else we'd have to camp out with some private family same as they does down home in county-fair week or when the district Methodist conference meets.

The white gentleman that's going to fix up what I writes, he told me that I should set down my first impressions of New York before I begins to forget 'em. He says they'll make good local color, whatever that is. Which I will now do so:

The thing which impresses me first and foremost is a steamboat I sees on the river which runs alongside New York City on the side nearest to Paducah. She is not no side-wheeler nor yet she ain't no stern-wheeler, which all the steamboats I has ever seen before is naturally bound to be one or the other. As near as I can tell, she has not got no wheel at all, side- or stern-. It would seem that what runs her is a kind of a big hump-back timber which sticks up out of the middle of her hurricane deck and works up and down, and which Mr. Dallas tells me is known as a walking-beam. But it seems like to me that's certainly a most curiousome way to run a steamboat and I says to myself that wonders will never cease!

And the thing which impresses me next most is a snack-stand on a sidewalk where they is selling watermelons by the slice – and it the middle of August!

And next to that the most impressiveness is when I sees a gang of black fellows working on a levee down by this same river, only it's mighty flat-looking for a levee. These boys is working there roustabouting freight, and there ain't a single one of 'em which is singing as he goes back and forth. When a river-nigger down our way don't sing whilst he's loading, it's a sign something is wrong with him and next thing he knows he don't know nothing by reason of the mate having lammed him across the head with a hickory gad. But this here gang is going along just as dumb as if they was white. I wonders to myself if thereby they is hoping to fool somebody into believing they is white?

I will therefore state that these three things is the things which impresses me the most highly on my first arrival in New York. I also takes notice of the high buildings. They strikes me as being quite high; but of course when you starts in to build a high building, highness is naturally what you aims for, ain't it?