Kitabı oku: «J. Poindexter, Colored», sayfa 4

Chapter V
Local Colored

IT seems like having dealings with designing persons of my own color must've made my mind act more keen. All at once I remembers that I seen the name of our apartment-house carved on a big square tombstone over the front door, and it comes to me that the same's name has got something to do with grist-mills and something to do with lawsuits. I studies and studies and then, like a flash, I gets it:

Wheatley Court.

With this much to work on, the rest is plenty easy. A man in a drugstore consults in a telephone book and gives me the full specifications for getting back to where I has strayed from, which it turns out it is fully three miles away from there in a southeast direction. But I buys an ice-cream soda and a pack of chewing-gum before I asks the drugstore man for his friendly aid. Already I has took note of the fact that most of the folks in New York acts like they hates to answer your questions without you has done 'em some kind of a favor first. So I places this man under obligations to me by trading with him and then he's willing to help me. That is, he's willing, but he ain't right crazy with joy over the idea of it. If I'd a-bought two ice-cream sodas I think probably he's a-moved more brisk-like. Still, he does it. So, inside of an hour more, what with riding part of the ways on street-cars and walking the rest, I is home again and glad to be there.

Even so, my being gone so long ain't put nobody out, because Mr. Dallas is yet in bed, but is now thinking seriously about getting up. He complains of feeling slightly better than what he did awhile back. Still, he ain't got so very much appetite. Orange juice and black coffee seems ample to satisfy his desires; he also continues to remain very partial to the ice-water. He says he must hurry up and dress and get outdoors because he's got an engagement to go with one of the ladies which he met the night before and look at a little car which she's thinking about buying it, but wants to get his expert opinion on it first. He don't specify her name, but I guesses it's the puny one of the two – this here Miss Bill-Lee DeWitt.

Whilst I is laying out his clothes for him to put on he calls out to me from the bathroom that I will doubtless be interested to know that we'll be staying on in New York permanent. I asks him how come, and he says he's passed his word to go in partners with this here Mr. H. C. Raynor selling oil-properties.

I says to him, I says:

"'Scuse me, Mr. Dallas, but it sho' does look lak to me we is movin' powerful fast. Only yistiddy we gits yere, an' today we is fixin' to bust into bus'ness. Tha's travelin'!"

He says you have to move fast in New York if you don't want to get run over and trompled on and I says that certainly is the Gospel truth. And he says when you meets up with an attractive proposition up here in this country you is just naturally obliged to grab holt of it quick or else somebody else 'll be beating you to it. I feels myself bound to agree with that, too; and then he goes on shaving himself and abusing of his skin for being so tender.

I ponders a spell and then I asks him, sort of casual and accidental-like, when was it that Mr. Raynor displayed this here desirable business notion to him and he give his promise for to enter into it?

"Oh," he says, "it was late last night – after we started back from the road-house. He's going to let me have a full half interest," he says.

I don't say nothing out loud to that. But I casts my rolling eyes up to the ceiling and I says in low tones to myself, I says: "Uh huh, uh huh!" just like that.

That's all I says. And I makes sure he ain't overhearing me, but all the time I'm doing considerable thinking. I'm thinking that, excusing one of 'em is white folks and the other is mulatto-complected and excusing that one has got decorated teeth and the other one just plain teeth, there's something mighty similar someway betwixt this here Mr. Raynor and that there colored imposer, which he called himself George Harris. I can't make up my mind whether it's their expressions or the way they looks at you out of their eyes, or the engaging way they both has of being so generous-like on short notice. But it pointedly must be something or other, because when I broods about one I can't keep from brooding about the other.

But, naturally, I keeps all that to myself. After Mr. Dallas has done gone out I fixes myself up something solid to eat and then, along about three o'clock I drifts downstairs and engages in friendly conversation with two of them West Indian boys. Before very long the subject of the educated bones gets introduced into the talk someway, and it so happens I has a set in my pocket and I gets 'em out and sort of cuddles 'em in my hand and rattles 'em gentle; and one of the two boys feels persuaded to suggest that, seeing as the work ain't pressing, us three might ramble on back into a little kind of a store-room back of the main hall downstairs and make a few passes just to keep the time from hanging heavy on our hands.

Now, privately I has always contended that craps-dice is meant for home folks only. These here foreigners should not never toy with 'em if they expects to get ahead in the world. So the entertainment turns out just like I expected 'twould. When fifteen minutes, or maybe twenty, has gone by very pleasantly there is not no reason why I should linger with 'em, and I piroots back on upstairs taking along with me twenty-two dollars and fifty cents of strange money to get acquainted with the spare change in my pants pocket and leaving them two West Indian delegates holding a grand lodge of sorrow betwixt themselves.

So that is all of undue importance which happens on our second day.

Chapter VI
Gold Coast

TIME certainly does flitter by here in little old New York, as I has now taken to calling it. Here it has been nearly six weeks since last I done any authorizing, and a whole heap of things has come to pass since then; yet, when I looks back at it, it seems like 'twas only yesterday when last I held my pen in hand.

Also in that time I has learned much. When I reflects back on how sorghum-green I was when we landed here off the steam-cars, I actually feels right sorry for myself – not knowing what a road-house was, and figuring that when somebody mentioned sub-let apartments they was describing the name of a family, and getting lost in Harlem the first time I went forth rambling, and all them other fool things which I done and said at the outsetting of our experiences! No longer ago than last evening I was saying to some of the fellow-members up at the Pastime Colored Pleasure and Recreation Club, on One-Hundred and Thirty-fifth street, that it's a born wonder they didn't throw a loop over me and cart me off to the idiotic asylum for safety keeping till the newness had done wore off.

I must also say for Mr. Dallas that he's progressed very rapid, too. And likewise the new business must be paying him powerful well right from the go-off, because we certainly is rolled up in the lap-robes of luxury and living off the top skimmings of the cream.

Before we has been here a week I notices there's a change taking place in Mr. Dallas. He's beginning to get dissatisfied with things as they is and craving after things as they ain't. Near as I can figure it out, he's caught a kind of restlessness disease which it appears to afflict everybody up in these parts, one way or another. It seems like to me, though, he must a-taken it early and in a violent form.

The first symptoms is when he fetches in one of these here little slick-headed Japanee boys to do the cooking and et cetera, so's I can wait on him more exclusively. Anyway, that's the reason which he assigns to me, but all the same I retains my own personal views on the matter. We don't need no extra hands to help run our establishment no more'n we needs water in our shoes, and my onspoken opinion is that Mr. Dallas thinks maybe the place look more high-tonish by having an imported strange foreigner fussing round. Privately, I don't lose no time designating to this here Koga, which is the slick-headed boy's name, where he gets off so far as I is concerned. No sooner does he arrive in amongst our midst than I tolls him back into the far end of the butler's pantry and I says to him, I says:

"Yaller kid, lis'sen: I ain't 'sponsible fur yore comin' yere, but jest so shorely ez you starts messin' in my bus'ness I'm goin' be 'sponsible fur yore everlastin' departure. You 'tends to yore wu'k an' I 'tends to mine an' tharby we gits along harmonious. But one sign of meddlin' frum you an' I'll jest reach back yere to my flank pocket whar I totes me a hosstile razor an' 'en you better pick out w'ich one of these yere winders you perfurs to jump out of."

He just sort of grins at that and sucks some loose air in betwixt his front teeth.

"Tha's right," I says, "save up yore breathin', 'cause ef I teks after you you'll shore require to have plenty of it on hand fur pu'pposes of fast travelin'. Chile," I says, "you's had yore warnin' – so harken an' give heed or else you'll find yo'se'f carved up so fine they'll have to fune'lize you on the 'stallment plan. Mr. Dallas he may be the big boss," I says, "but you lakwise better pay a heap of 'tention to the fust assistant deputy sub-boss w'ich I'm," I says, "him."

Saying thus I gives him a savigrous look backward over my shoulder and walks away stepping kind of light on my feet like a cat fixing for to pounce. He ain't saying a word; he's just standing there reserving some more breath.

Of course I ain't really aiming to start no race war. Always it has been my constant aim to keep out of rough jams with one and all but, even so, I figures that it's just as well to get the jump on that there Japanee human-siphon and render him tame and docile from the beginning.

Next thing is that Mr. Dallas begins faulting the clothes he brought along with him from home. He says to me they appeared all right when he was having 'em made to order for him by M. Marcus & Son, corner of Third and Kentucky Avenue, which that is our leading merchant-tailor, but he can see now that they ain't got the real New York snap to 'em. And the ensuing word is that one of them swell Fifth Avenue shops is making him a full new outfit. Well, I must admit that suits me from the ground up; it's a sign to me I'm about to inherit.

And the next thing is that he invests in several cases of fancy drinkings which a bootlegging white man fetches it up to us under cover of the darkness. I sees Mr. Dallas counting out the money for to pay him, and it certainly amounts to an important sum. I ain't questioning the wisdom of this step neither, seeking that the stock we fetched along with us from the South is vanishing very brisk, and the new supply ought to last me and him for no telling how long, if we both is careful.

The trouble with Mr. Dallas, though, is he ain't careful. Scarcely a day passes without some of his new-made Northern friends dropping in on him and sopping up highballs and cocktails and this and that. That there Mr. Bellows is one of our most earnest customers. He'll set down empty alongside a full bottle and stay right there till the emptiness and the fullness has done changed places. Also, when it comes to liberal consuming of somebody else's liquor, Mr. H. C. Raynor has his ondoubted merits. And when Mr. Dallas gives a party, which he does frequent and often, the wines and such just flows like manna from the rod of Jonah. Still, that ain't pestering me much. When white folks lives high in the front parlor niggers gets fat back in the kitchen.

Then on top of all this he buys himself an automobile and hires a white chauffeur for to run her. She's one of these here low-cut, high-powerful cars which when you wants to go somewheres in a hurry you just steps on her and —b-z-z-z– you is done arrived! But she's plenty costive to run. Every time she takes a deep breath there's another half-gallon of gasoline gone. If the truth must be known, Mr. Dallas has not only bought one car; he's bought two. But we don't see the second one, which is a dark blue runabout, only when Miss Bill-Lee comes round, because it seems Mr. Dallas has loaned it out to her for her own use, him paying the garage bills. Betwixt themselves they speaks of it as a loan, but I thinks to myself that this probably is predestinated to be one of the most permanent loans in the history of the entire loaning business.

So it goes. Every day, pretty near it, delivery boys comes knocking at the service door bringing this and that for Mr. Dallas. If it ain't half a dozen fresh pairs of shoes it's a sack-full of these here golf utensils or some new silk pyjamas; and if it ain't another motoring coat or an elaborous smoking jacket, it's a set of silver-topped brushes and combs and bottles and things for his toilet table, with his initials cut on 'em. It seems like he must stop in somewheres every morning on his way down-town to business and buy himself something. So I judges the money must be coming in mighty brisk at the bung-hole, because it certainly is pouring out mighty steady from the spigots.

It also must be a powerful handy and convenient business to be in, for not only does it appear to pay so well, but it practically almost runs itself. Often Mr. Dallas ain't starting down-town till the morning is 'most gone, and sometimes he gets back home as early as four o'clock in the evening. Come Saturday, he don't go near the headquarters at all. That astonishes me deeply, because down home on a Saturday the stores all stays open till late at night on account of the country people coming into town and the hands at the tobacco warehouses and the factories and all being paid off, and the niggers being out doing their trading. Especially the niggers. You take the average one of 'em, and if he can't spend all he's got on Saturday night, it practically spoils his Sunday for him. He ain't aiming to waste none of his money, saving it. So, with us, Saturday is the busiest day in the week. But seemingly not so in this locality.

In fact, so far as I observes to date, the folks up here has got a special separate system of their own for doing pretty near everything. More times than one enduring this past month I has said to myself that there certainly is a big difference betwixt Paducah and New York City. You don't notice it so much in Paducah, but, lawsy, how it does prone into you when you gets to New York!

Chapter VII
Country Side

FOR instances, now, take this here Saturday last past. Down home Mr. Dallas would a-been down to that there oil-office of his bright and early shaking hands with the paying customers and helping boss the clerks whilst they drawed off the oil, and all. But nothing like that don't happen here with us – no sir, not none whatsomever. He lays in bed until it's going on pretty near ten o'clock and then he gets up and I packs him, and along about dinner-time, which they calls it lunch-time round this town, we puts out in the car to the country for a week-end. Only, for the amount of baggage we totes with us you'd a-thought it was going to be a month-end. I'm tooken along to look after his clothes and to do general valetting for him.

We takes Mr. Raynor and Mr. Bellows and the permanent-wavy lady, Mrs. Gaylord, along with us. Miss DeWitt and Miss O'Brien is also headed for the same place we is, but they comes in the blue runabout traveling close behind us. By now, I has done learned not to expect Mrs. Gaylord to bring a husband with her. It seems like she can get 'em, but she can't keep 'em. She's been married three times in all; but from what I can hear, her first husband hauled off and died on her and the second one kind of strayed off and never come back. I ain't heard 'em say what happened to the present incumbent but since he ain't never been produced, I judge he must've got mislaid someway, so now she's practically all out of husbands again. Still, she seems to be bearing up very serene at all times. If she misses 'em she don't let on.

Well, we loads up the car with the white folks, and with valises and golf-sacks and one thing and another and starts for the country. But I must say for it that it's totally unsimilar to any country like what I has been used to heretofore. The front yards which we passes all looks like the owners must take 'em in at nights and in the mornings brush 'em off good and put 'em back outdoors again; and most of the residences is a suitable size to make good high-school buildings or else feeble-mind institutes, and even the woodlots has a slicked-up appearance like as if they'd just come back that same day from the dry-cleaner's. In more'n an hour's steady travel I don't see a single rail fence nor a regulation weed-patch nor a lye kettle nor an ash-hopper nor a corn-crib nor a martin-box nor a hound-dog nor a smoke-house nor scarcely anything which would signify it to be sure-enough country. I thinks to myself that if a cotton-tail rabbit was aiming to camp out here he'd naturally be obliged to pack his bedding along with him.

When we arrives where we is headed for I is still further surprised because, beforehand, Mr. Dallas tells me we is going to stop at a country-place, but it looks to me more like a city-hall which has done strayed far off from its functions and took root in a big clump of trees alongside the river. Why, it's got more rooms in it than our new county infirmary's got and grounds around it all beautiful like a cemetery. It belongs to a very spry-acting lady named Mrs. Banister, which she is a friend of Mrs. Gaylord's. There's a Mr. Banister, too, but as far as I can judge, the lady is the sole proprietor and his job is just being Mrs. Banister's Mr. and helping with the drinks when the butler is busy doing something else. I hears the cook saying out in the kitchen that he can also mix a very tasty salad-dressing. Well, that's what he looks like to me, just a natural-born salad-dressing mixer.

But we don't arrive there until it's getting towards four o'clock by reason of us stopping for quite a sojourn at a tea-house along the road. Leastwise, they calls it a tea-house, but its principalest functions, so far as I can note, is to provide accommodations for folks to dance and to drink up the refreshments which they've fetched along with 'em in pocket flasks; and you might call that tea if you prefers to, but it's the kind of tea which now sells by the case for cash down and is delivered at your house after dark.

That's mainly what our outfit does there – dance and refresh themselves with what the gentlemen brought along on their hips. From where I'm setting in the car outside I can see 'em weaving in and out amongst the tables whilst a string-band plays jazzing tunes for 'em to dance by. But Mr. Dallas don't appear to be getting the hang of it so very well and the chauffeur, who's setting there with me, he allows probably the boss ain't caught on to these here new dances yet.

I says to him, I says:

"Huh! Does you call 'at a new dance?"

He says:

"Sure – the newest one of 'em all. That's the Reitzenburger Grapple – it's just hit town."

And I says:

"Then it shore must a-been a long time on the road, gittin' yere; 'cause niggers down my way," I says, "wuz dancin' 'at air dance fully ten yeahs ago – only they done so behind closed doors," I says, "bein' 'feared the police mout claim disawd'ly conduct an' stop 'em frum it."

He says:

"Did you ever dance it?"

I says to him:

"Who, me? Many's a time. But not lately," I says.

"What made you stop?" he says.

"I got religion," I says.

There was also considerable careless dancing done at the Banister place that night and early the following morning. In fact, there was considerable of a good many things done there that Saturday and Sunday – tennis and golf and horseback-riding and billiards and pool and going in swimming in a private lake on the premises and playing a card game which they calls it auction-bridge, and eating and drinking and smoking. Everybody is so busy all day changing clothes for the next event they ain't got very much time for the thing that's on at the time being. But when the night-time comes the ladies strips down to full-dress and all hands just settles in for the three favorite sports, which is dancing and cards and drinks, both long and short. I has seen thirsty gentlemen before in my day but to the best of my recollection I ain't never encountered no ladies that seemed so parched-like as one or two of these here ladies was. I'm thinking in particular of Mrs. Gaylord. She certainly is suffering from a severe attack of the genuine parchments. But I'll say this much for her – she's doing her level best to get shut of it by taking the ordained treatment. That Saturday evening whilst I is upstairs in Mr. Dallas' room laying out his dress-clothes, the guests, about a dozen of 'em is out in the front yard setting round little tables where I can see 'em from the window, and every time I passes the window and looks out it seems like she's being served with a little bit more. She carries it just beautiful, though; she certainly has my deep personal admirations for her capacity. But next day when she comes down stairs she acts dauncy and low-spirited for awhile. She's got on a fresh complexion, to be sure, but even so she looks sort of weather-beaten 'round the eyes. You take 'em when they is either prematurely old or else permanently young and the morning is always the most tellingest time on 'em. Well, several of those present ain't feeling the best in the world, seemingly, that Sunday when they strolls forth for late breakfast 'long about half past eleven. It was after three o'clock before they dispersed and some of 'em ain't entirely got over it yet – they is still kind of dispersed-looking, if you gets my meaning.

Well, all day Sunday is just like Saturday evening was, only if anything, more so; and late Sunday night the party busts up and scatters and we starts back to town. Mr. Dallas he elects for to ride back in the runabout with Miss Bill-Lee so that throws Miss O'Brien, the one which they calls Pat for short, into the big car with the rest of our crowd. Starting off she quarrels right peart with Mrs. Gaylord. I gathers that they was partners at the bridging game part of the time and they can't get reconciled with one another over the way each one of 'em handled her cards. The more they scandalizes about it the more onreconciled they gets, too. It seems like each one thinks the other don't scarcely know how to deal, let alone play the hands after she gets 'em. Setting there listening to 'em carrying on I thinks to myself these here Northern white folks must hate to lose even a little bit of money. I knows these two ladies couldn't a-lost much neither – I heard Mr. Raynor saying beforehand they was going to play five cents a point. But to overhear 'em debating now, you'd a-thought it had been a real stiff game, like dollar-limit poker, say, or set-back at six bits a corner.

After awhile Miss Pat she quits argufying and drops off to sleep and Mr. Bellows he likewise drifts off into a doze and that leaves Mrs. Gaylord and Mr. Raynor talking together in the back seat kind of confidential. But the hood of the car being over 'em it seems like it throws their voices forward, and setting up with the chauffeur I can't keep from eavesdropping on part of what they is confabbing about.

Presently I hears Mr. Raynor saying:

"Well, you never can guess in advance what a sap will like, can you? You would have thought he'd fall for a kiddo with a good, strong up-to-date tomboy line, like little Patsy here. But no – not at all! He takes one look into those languishing eyes of our other friend and goes down and out for the count. Funny – eh, what? Well, it only goes to show that while the vamp stuff is getting a trifle old-fashioned it still pays dividends – if only you pick the right customer."

Then I hears Mrs. Gaylord saying:

"Her system may be a bit passé but you can't say she doesn't work fast once she gets under way. Clever, I call it."

"Clever?" he says, "you bet! She works fast and she works clean, tidying up as she goes along and burying her own dead. I always did say for her that when it came to being a gold-digger she had the original Forty-niners looking like inmates of the Bide-a-Wee Home. Fast? I'll say so!"

"She has need to be fast, working opposition to you, Herby, dear," says Mrs. Gaylord. "Speaking of expert blood-suckers, I shouldn't exactly call you a vegetarian."

"Hush, honey," he says, "let's not talk shop out of business hours. And anyhow," he says, "I don't mind a little healthy competition on the side. It stimulates trade under the main tent – if it's done in moderation."

"You should know, Herby," she says sort of laughing; "with your experience you should know if anybody does."

Then he laughs, too, a kind of a low and meaning chuckle, and they goes to talking about something else.

But I has done heard enough to set me to studying mighty earnest. Neither one of 'em ain't specifying who they means by "he" and "she" but I can guess. Once more I says to myself, I says:

"Uh huh, uh huh!"