Sandy sat against the wall in a hard wooden folding chair. There were other children scattered lonesomely about on chairs, too, watching the dancers, but he didn’t seem to know any of them. When the music stopped, all the chairs quickly filled with loud-talking women and girls in brightly colored dresses who fanned themselves with handkerchiefs and wiped their sweating brows. Sandy thought maybe he should give his seat to one of the women when he saw Maudel approaching.
“Here, honey,” she said. “Take this dime and buy yourself a bottle of something cold to drink. I know Harriett ain’t got you on her mind out there dancin’. This music is certainly righteous, chile!” She laughed as she handed Sandy a coin and closed her pocketbook. He liked Maudel, although he knew his grandmother didn’t. She was a large good-natured brown-skinned girl who walked hippishly and used too much rouge on her lips. But she always gave Sandy a dime, and she was always laughing.
He went through the crowd towards the soft-drink stand at the end of the hall. “Gimme a bottle o’ cream soda,” he said to the fat orange-colored man there, who had his sleeves rolled up and a white butcher’s apron covering his barrel-like belly. The man put his hairy arms down into a zinc tub full of ice and water and began pulling out bottles, looking at their caps, and then dropping them back into the cold liquid.
“Don’t seem like we got no cream, sonny. How’d a lemon do you?” he asked above the bedlam of talking voices.
“Naw,” said Sandy. “It’s too sour.”
On the improvised counter of boards the wares displayed consisted of crackerjacks, salted peanuts, a box of gum, and Sen Sens, while behind the counter was a lighted oil-stove holding a tin pan full of spareribs, sausage, and fish; and near it an ice-cream freezer covered with a brown sack. Some cases of soda were on the floor beside the zinc tub filled with bottles, in which the man was still searching.
“Nope, no cream,” said the fat man.
“Well, gimme a fish sandwich then,” Sandy replied, feeling very proud because some kids were standing near, looking at him as he made his purchase like a grown man.
“Buy me one, too,” suggested a biscuit-colored little girl in a frilly dirty-white dress.
“I only got a dime,” Sandy said. “But you can have half of mine.” And he gallantly broke in two parts the double square of thick bread, with its hunk of greasy fish between, and gravely handed a portion to the grinning little girl.
“Thanks,” she said, running away with the bread and fish in her hands.
“Shame on you!” teased a small boy, rubbing his forefingers at Sandy. “You got a girl! You got a girl!”
“Go chase yourself.” Sandy replied casually, as he picked out the bones and smacked his lips on the sweet fried fish. The orchestra was playing another one-step, with the dancers going like shuttles across the floor. Sandy saw his Aunt Harriett and a slender yellow boy named Billy Sanderlee doing a series of lazy, intricate steps as they wound through the crowd from one end of the hall to the other. Certain less accomplished couples were watching them with admiration.
Sandy, when he had finished eating, decided to look for the washroom, where he could rinse his hands, because they were greasy and smelled fishy. It was at the far corner of the hall. As he pushed open the door marked gents, a thick grey cloud of cigarette-smoke drifted out. The stench of urine and gin and a crowd of men talking, swearing, and drinking licker surrounded the little boy as he elbowed his way towards the washbowls. All the fellows were shouting loudly to one another and making fleshy remarks about the women they had danced with.
“Boy, you ought to try Velma,” a mahogany-brown boy yelled. “She sure can go.”
“Hell,” answered a whisky voice somewhere in the smoke. “That nappy-headed black woman? Gimme a high yaller for mine all de time. I can’t use no coal!”
“Well, de blacker de berry, de sweeter de juice,” protested a slick-haired ebony youth in the center of the place. … “Ain’t that right, sport?” he demanded of Sandy, grabbing him jokingly by the neck and picking him up.
“I guess it is,” said the child, scared, and the men laughed.
“Here, kid, buy yourself a drink,” the slick-headed boy said, slipping Sandy a nickel as he set him down gently at the door. “And be sure it’s pop—not gin.”
Outside, the youngster dried his wet hands on a handkerchief, blinked his smoky eyes, and immediately bought the soda, a red strawberry liquid in a long, thick bottle.
Suddenly and without warning the cornet blared at the other end of the hall in an earsplitting wail: Whaw! … Whaw! … Whaw! … Whaw! and the snare-drum rolled in answer. A pause … then the loud brassy notes were repeated and the banjo came in, Plinka, plink, plink, like timid drops of rain after a terrific crash of thunder. Then quite casually, as though nothing had happened, the piano lazied into a slow drag, with all the other instruments following. And with the utmost nonchalance the drummer struck into time.
“Ever’body shake!” cried Benbow, as a ribbon of laughter swirled round the hall.
Couples began to sway languidly, melting together like candy in the sun as hips rotated effortlessly to the music. Girls snuggled pomaded heads on men’s chests, or rested powdered chins on men’s shoulders, while wild young boys put both arms tightly around their partners’ waists and let their hands hang down carelessly over female haunches. Bodies moved ever so easily together—ever so easily, as Benbow turned towards his musicians and cried through cupped hands: “Aw, screech it, boys!”
A long, tall, gangling gal stepped back from her
