“Aw, pick it, boy,” yelled the old man. “Can’t nobody play like you.”
And Jimboy remembered when he was a lad in Memphis that W. C. Handy had said: “You ought to make your living out of that, son.” But he hadn’t followed it up—too many things to see, too many places to go, too many other jobs.
“What song do you like, Annjee?” he asked, remembering her presence again.
“O, I don’t care. Any ones you like. All of ’em are pretty.” She was pleased and petulant and a little startled that he had asked her.
“All right, then,” he said. “Listen to me:”
Here I is in de mean ole jail.
Ain’t got nobody to go ma bail.
Lonesome an’ sad an’ chain gang bound—
Ever’ friend I had’s done turned me down.
“That’s sho it!” shouted Tom Johnson in great sympathy. “Now, when I was in de Turner County Jail …”
“Shut up yo’ mouth!” squelched Sarah, jabbing her husband in the ribs.
The songs went on, blues, shouts, jingles, old hits: “Bon Bon Buddy, the Chocolate Drop”; “Wrap Me in Your Big Red Shawl”; “Under the Old Apple Tree”; “Turkey in the Straw”—Jimboy and Harriett breaking the silence of the small-town summer night until Aunt Hager interrupted:
“You-all better wind up, chillens, ’cause I wants to go to bed. I ain’t used to stayin’ ’wake so late, nohow. Play something kinder decent there, son, fo’ you stops.”
Jimboy, to tease the old woman, began to rock and moan like an elder in the Sanctified Church, patting both feet at the same time as he played a hymn-like, lugubrious tune with a dancing overtone:
Tell me, sister,
Tell me, brother,
Have you heard de latest news?
Then seriously as if he were about to announce the coming of the Judgment:
A woman down in Georgia
Got her two sweet-men confused.
How terrible! How sad! moaned the guitar.
One knocked on de front do’,
One knocked on de back—
Sad, sad … sad, sad! said the music.
Now that woman down in Georgia’s
Door-knob is hung with black.
O, play that funeral march, boy! while the guitar laughed a dirge.
An’ de hearse is comin’ easy
With two rubber-tired hacks!
Followed by a long-out, churchlike:
Amen … !
Then with rapid glides, groans, and shouts the instrument screamed of a sudden in profane frenzy, and Harriett began to ball-the-jack, her arms flopping like the wings of a headless pigeon, the guitar string whining in ecstasy, the player rocking gaily to the urgent music, his happy mouth crying: “Tack ’em on down, gal! Tack ’em on down, Harrie!”
But Annjee had risen.
“I wish you’d come in and eat the ham I brought you,” she said as she picked up her chair and started towards the house. “And you, Sandy! Get up from under that tree and go to bed.” She spoke roughly to the little fellow, whom the songs had set a-dreaming. Then to her husband: “Jimboy, I wish you’d come in.”
The man stopped playing, with a deep vibration of the strings that seemed to echo through the whole world. Then he leaned his guitar against the side of the house and lifted straight up in his hairy arms Annjee’s plump, brown-black little body while he kissed her as she wriggled like a stubborn child, her soft breasts rubbing his hard body through the coarse blue shirt.
“You don’t like my old songs, do you, baby? You don’t want to hear me sing ’em,” he said, laughing. “Well, that’s all right. I like you, anyhow, and I like your ham, and I like your kisses, and I like everything you bring me. Let’s go in and chow down.” And he carried her into the kitchen, where he sat with her on his knees as he ate the food she so faithfully had brought him from Mrs. J. J. Rice’s dinner-table.
Outside, Willie-Mae went running home through the dark. And Harriett pumped a cool drink of water for her mother, then helped her to rise from her low seat, Sandy aiding from behind, with both hands pushing firmly in Aunt Hager’s fleshy back. Then the three of them came into the house and glanced, as they passed through the kitchen, at Annjee sitting on Jimboy’s lap with both dark arms tight around his neck.
“Looks like you’re clinging to the Rock of Ages,” said Harriett to her sister. “Be sure you don’t slip, old evil gal!”
But at midnight, when the owl that nested in a tree near the corner began to hoot, they were all asleep—Annjee and Jimboy in one room, Harriett and Hager in another, with Sandy on the floor at the foot of his grandmother’s bed. Far away on the railroad line a whistle blew, lonesome and long.
VI
Work
The sunflowers in Willie-Mae’s backyard were taller than Tom Johnson’s head, and the hollyhocks in the fence corners were almost as high. The nasturtiums, blood-orange and gold, tumbled over themselves all around Madam de Carter’s house. Aunt Hager’s sweet-william, her pinks, and her tiger-lilies were abloom and the apples on her single tree would soon be ripe. The adjoining yards of the three neighbors were gay with flowers. “Watch out for them dogs!” his grandmother told Sandy hourly, for the days had come when the bright heat made gentle animals go mad. Bees were heavy with honey, great green flies hummed through the air, yellow-black butterflies suckled at the rambling roses … and watermelons were on the market.
The Royal African Knights and Ladies of King Solomon’s Scepter were preparing a drill for the September Emancipation celebration, a “Drill of All Nations,” in which Annjee was to represent Sweden. It was not to be given for a month or more, but the first rehearsal would take place tonight.
“Sandy,” his mother said, shaking him early in the morning as he lay on his pallet at the foot of Aunt Hager’s bed, “listen here! I want you to come out to Mis’ Rice’s this evening
