A boy’s voice was speaking excitedly to Hager: “Hemorrhages … and papa can’t stop ’em … she’s coughin’ something terrible … says can’t you please come over and help him”—frightened and out of breath.
“Do, Jesus!” cried Hager. “I’ll be with you right away, chile. Don’t worry.” She rushed into the bedroom to change her apron. “You, Harriett, listen; Sister Lane’s taken awful sick an’ Jimmy says she’s bleedin’ from de mouth. If I ain’t back by nine o’clock, see that that chile Sandy’s in de bed. An’ you know you ain’t to leave this yard under no circumstances. … Po’ Mis’ Lane! She sho do have it hard.” In a whisper: “I ’spects she’s got de T.B., that what I ’spects!” And the old woman hustled out to join the waiting youngster. Jimmy was leaning against the door, looking at Sandy, and neither of the boys knew what to say. Jimmy Lane wore his mother’s cast-off shoes to school, and Sandy used to tease him, but tonight he didn’t tease his friend about his shoes.
“You go to bed ’fore it gets late,” said his grandmother, starting down the alley with Jimmy.
“Yes’m,” Sandy called after her. “So long, Jim!” He stood under the apple-tree and watched them disappear.
Aunt Hager had scarcely gotten out of sight when there was a loud knock at the front door, and Sandy ran around the house to see Harriett’s boyfriend, Mingo, standing in the dusk outside the screen-door, waiting to be let in.
Mingo was a patent-leather black boy with wide, alive nostrils and a mouth that split into a lighthouse smile on the least provocation. His body was heavy and muscular, resting on bowed legs that curved backward as though the better to brace his chunky torso; and his hands were hard from mixing concrete and digging ditches for the city’s new water-mains.
“I know it’s tonight, but I can’t go,” Sandy heard his aunt say at the door. They were speaking of Benbow’s dance. “And his band don’t come here often, neither. I’m heartsick having to stay home, dog-gone it all, especially this evening!”
“Aw, come on and go anyway,” pleaded Mingo. “After I been savin’ up my dough for two weeks to take you, and got my suit cleaned and pressed and all. Heck! If you couldn’t go and knew it yesterday, why didn’t you tell me? That’s a swell way to treat a fellow!”
“Because I wanted to go,” said Harriett; “and still want to go. … Don’t make so much difference about mama, because she’s mad anyhow … but what could we do with this kid? We can’t leave him by himself.” She looked at Sandy, who was standing behind Mingo listening to everything.
“You can take me,” the child offered anxiously, his eyes dancing at the delightful prospect. “I’ll behave, Harrie, if you take me, and I won’t tell on you either. … Please lemme go, Mingo. I ain’t never seen a big dance in my life. I wanta go.”
“Should we?” asked Harriett doubtfully, looking at her boyfriend standing firmly on his curved legs.
“Sure, if we got to have him … damn ’im!” Mingo replied. “Better the kid than no dance. Go git dressed.” So Harriett made a dash for the clothes-closet, while Sandy ran to get a clean waist from one of his mother’s dresser-drawers, and Mingo helped him put it on, cussing softly to himself all the while. “But it ain’t your fault, pal, is it?” he said to the little boy.
“Sure not,” Sandy replied. “I didn’t tell Aunt Hager to make Harrie stay home. I tried to ’suade grandma to let her go,” the child lied, because he liked Mingo. “I guess she won’t care about her goin’ to just one dance.” He wanted to make everything all right so the young man wouldn’t be worried. Besides, Sandy very much wanted to go himself.
“Let’s beat it,” Harriett shrilled excitedly before her dress was fastened, anxious to be gone lest her mother come home. She was powdering her face and neck in the next room, nervous, happy, and afraid all at once. The perfume, the voice, and the pat, pat, pat of the powder-puff came out to the waiting gentleman.
“Yo’ car’s here, madam,” mocked Mingo. “Step right this way and let’s be going!”
Wonder where ma easy rider’s gone—
He done left me, put ma new gold watch in pawn!
Like a blare from hell the second encore of “Easy Rider” filled every cubic inch of the little hall with hip-rocking notes. Benbow himself was leading and the crowd moved like jellyfish dancing on individual seashells, with Mingo and Harriett somewhere among the shakers. But they were not of them, since each couple shook in a world of its own, as, with a weary wail, the music abruptly ceased.
Then, after scarcely a breath of intermission, the band struck up again with a lazy one-step. A tall brown boy in a light tan suit walked his partner straight down the whole length of the floor and, when he reached the corner, turned leisurely in one spot, body riding his hips, eyes on the ceiling, and his girl shaking her full breasts against his pink silk shirt. Then they recrossed the width of the room, turned slowly, repeating themselves, and began again to walk rhythmically down the hall, while the music was like a lazy river flowing between mountains, carving a canyon coolly, calmly, and without insistence. The “Lazy River One-Step” they might have called what the band was playing as the large crowd moved with the greatest ease about the hall. To drumbeats barely audible, the tall boy in the tan suit walked his partner round and round time after time, revolving at
