“What’s the matter, honey, drunk?” She couldn’t answer. The music augmented by the general atmosphere of the room and the liquor she had drunk had presumably created another person in her stead. She felt like flying into an emotional frenzy—felt like flinging her arms and legs in insane unison. She had become very fluid, very elastic, and all the while she was giving in more and more to the music and to the liquor and to the physical madness of the moment.
When the music finally stopped, Alva led Emma Lou to a settee by the window which his crowd had appropriated. Everyone was exceedingly animated, but they all talked in hushed, almost reverential tones.
“Isn’t this marvelous?” Truman’s eyes were ablaze with interest and excitement. Even Tony Crews seemed unusually alert.
“It’s the greatest I’ve seen yet,” he exclaimed.
Alva seemed the most unemotional one in the crowd. Paul the most detached. “Look at ’em all watching Ray.”
“Remember, Bo,” Truman counselled him. “Tonight you’re ‘passing.’ Here’s a new wrinkle, white man ‘passes’ for Negro.”
“Why not? Enough of you pass for white.” They all laughed, then transferred their interest back to the party. Cora was speaking:
“Didya see that little girl in pink—the one with the scar on her face—dancing with that tall, lanky, one-armed man? Wasn’t she throwing it up to him?”
“Yeah,” Tony admitted, “but she didn’t have anything on that little Mexican-looking girl. She musta been born in Cairo.”
“Saay, but isn’t that one bad looking darkey over there, two chairs to the left; is he gonna smother that woman?” Truman asked excitedly.
“I’d say she kinda liked it,” Paul answered, then lit another cigarette.
“Do you know they have corn liquor in the kitchen? They serve it from a coffee pot.” Aaron seemed proud of his discovery.
“Yes,” said Alva, “and they got hoppin’-john out there too.”
“What the hell is hoppin’-john?”
“Ray, I’m ashamed of you. Here you are passing for colored and don’t know what hoppin’-john is!”
“Tell him, Cora, I don’t know either.”
“Another one of these foreigners.” Cora looked at Truman disdainfully. “Hoppin’-john is black-eyed peas and rice. Didn’t they ever have any out in Salt Lake City?”
“Have they any chitterlings?” Alta asked eagerly.
“No, Alta,” Alva replied, dryly. “This isn’t Kansas. They have got pig’s feet though.”
“Lead me to ’em,” Aaron and Alta shouted in unison, and led the way to the kitchen. Emma Lou clung to Alva’s arm and tried to remain behind. “Alva, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what? Come on, snap out of it! You need another drink.” He pulled her up from the settee and led her through the crowded room down the long narrow dark hallway to the more crowded kitchen.
When they returned to the room, the pianist was just preparing to play again. He was tall and slender, with extra long legs and arms, giving him the appearance of a scarecrow. His pants were tight in the waist and full in the legs. He wore no coat, and a blue silk shirt hung damply to his body. He acted as if he were king of the occasion, ruling all from his piano stool throne. He talked familiarly to everyone in the room, called women from other men’s arms, demanded drinks from any bottle he happened to see being passed around, laughed uproariously, and made many grotesque and ofttimes obscene gestures.
There were sounds of a scuffle in an adjoining room, and an excited voice exclaimed, “You goddam son-of-a-bitch, don’t you catch my dice no more.” The piano player banged on the keys and drowned out the reply, if there was one.
Emma Lou could not keep her eyes off the piano player. He was acting like a maniac, occasionally turning completely around on his stool, grimacing like a witch doctor, and letting his hands dawdle over the keyboard of the piano with an agonizing indolence, when compared to the extreme exertion to which he put the rest of his body. He was improvising. The melody of the piece he had started to play was merely a base for more bawdy variations. His left foot thumped on the floor in time with the music, while his right punished the piano’s loud-pedal. Beads of perspiration gathered grease from his slicked-down hair, and rolled oleagenously down his face and neck, spotting the already damp baby-blue shirt, and streaking his already greasy black face with more shiny lanes.
A sailor lad suddenly ceased his impassioned hip movement and strode out of the room, pulling his partner behind him, pushing people out of the way as he went. The spontaneous moans and slangy ejaculations of the piano player and of the more articulate dancers became more regular, more like a chanted obligato to the music. This lasted for a couple of hours interrupted only by hectic intermissions. Then the dancers grew less violent in their movements, and though the piano player seemed never to tire there were fewer couples on the floor, and those left seemed less loathe to move their legs.
Eventually, the music stopped for a long interval, and there was a more concerted drive on the kitchen’s corn liquor supply. Most of the private flasks and bottles were empty. There were more calls for food, too, and the crap game in the side room annexed more players and more kibitzers. Various men and women had disappeared altogether. Those who remained seemed worn and tired. There was much petty person to person badinage and many whispered consultations in corners. There was an argument in the hallway between the landlord and two couples, who wished to share one room without paying him more than the regulation three dollars required of one couple. Finally, Alva suggested that they leave. Emma Lou had drifted off into a state of semiconsciousness and was too near asleep or drunk to distinguish people or voices. All she
