O’BRIEN’S WAS UP ON COCKBARROW, a few blocks from the train station. The entrance was no wider than a doorway, and the sign could have been for a professional office rather than a bar. But once you got past the short hall you entered a large room built around the remnants of a large brick oven that had once been used to make bread for Martinson’s Bakery in the twenties.
The oven had been twelve feet in diameter. Hampton James, the bar’s owner, cut the bricks down to waist level and installed a circular mahogany bar around the inside. On busy days he had as many as four bartenders working back to back, serving the colored employees of the railroads.
O’Brien’s was the place that colored train professionals patronized. All porters, waiters, restroom attendants, and redcaps went there when the shift was finished or when a layover began. There were a dozen cots in a back room where, for three bucks, a porter could get a nap before heading off on the next outbound train.
There were no windows in the walls but the roof was one big skylight, and so the room was exceptionally sunny. Hampton used the exhaust fans left over from the bakery to keep the place at a reasonable temperature. And he had a red piano on a wide dais for one jazzman or another to keep the mood cool.
Hampton was the only bartender working at that time of morning. A solitary customer sat at the bar. That patron was dressed in a porter’s uniform, drinking coffee.
“Hampton,” I said as Fearless and I approached.
He winced, straining to find my name, and then said, “Paris, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What you boys drinkin’?”
“That coffee smells good.”
If it had been later Hampton would have told us to go to a diner. But he was just getting warmed up at eight- thirty. We could have ordered ice water and he wouldn’t have cared.
“Regular?” he asked.
Regular in California meant sugar and milk, so I said, “Black.”
“Nuthin’ for me,” Fearless added.
“You’re Fearless Jones, right?” Hampton James asked.
“Yes sir.”
Hampton was a nearly perfect specimen of manhood. He was five eleven with maple-brown skin. He was wide in the shoulder, with only ten pounds more than he needed on his frame. He had a small scar under his left eye and eyebrows that even a vain woman wouldn’t have touched up. His lips were generous and sculpted. And his oiled hair was combed back in perfect waves in the way that Hindu Indians draw hair on their deities.
“I saw you get in a fight one night down on Hooper,” Hampton said to Fearless. “Down at the Dawson’s Market.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you remember?” Hampton asked.
“Did I win it?”
“Oh yeah. Yes you did. It was a big dude named Stern but you put him down and they had to carry him off.”
“I don’t remember any fights but the ones I lost,” Fearless said in a rare show of pride.
“How many you remember?”
“None comes to mind.”
Hampton had a sharp laugh, like the chatter of a dozen angry wrens. I laid down two dimes for my twelve-cent coffee. He pocketed them, keeping the change for his tip.
“What you boys want?” Hampton asked. He was looking at me.
“Why you think we want anything other than coffee?” I asked him.
“No Negroes drop in here for coffee, brother. An’ even if they did, it’s cause they work for the trains. Any civilian knows about my door would come at night or on his way to someplace else.”
“We could be on the road somewhere,” I speculated.
Hampton looked at my clothes, which were only made for working, and shook his head.
“Dressed like that,” he said. “And with not even a valise between you. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “You right. The reason we’ve come is that Fearless here owes me twenty dollars.”
“So?”
“He don’t have it, but he told me that his friend Kit owed him for a week’s work he did out in Oxnard. Kit was supposed to pay him Wednesday last but he never showed up.”
Hampton’s only imperfect features were his eyes. They weren’t set deep into his head like most people’s. They were right out there competing with his nose for facial real estate. As a result even I could easily read the hesitation when it entered his gaze.
“What’s all that got to do with me?”
