Wim Dogberry was carrying hod then on a new moving-picture theatre that was being built. He rose early and came in late, face, hands, and overalls covered with mortar dust. He washed in a tin basin by the pump and went to bed, and about all he ever said to Aunt Hager and Sandy was “Good-mornin’ ” and “Good-evenin’,” and maybe a stumbling “How is you?” But on Sunday mornings Hager usually asked him to breakfast if he got up on time—for on Saturday nights Wim drank licker and came home mumbling to himself a little later than on weekday evenings, so sometimes he would sleep until noon Sundays.
One Saturday night he wet the bed, and when Hager went to make it up on the Sabbath morning, she found a damp yellow spot in the middle. Of this act Dogberry was so ashamed that he did not even say “Good-mornin’ ” for several days, and if, from the corner, he saw Aunt Hager and her grandson sitting on the porch in the twilight when he came towards home, he would pass his street and walk until he thought they had gone inside to bed. But he was a quiet roomer, he didn’t give anyone any trouble, and he paid regularly. And since Hager was in no position to despise two dollars and a half every week, she rather liked Dogberry.
Now Hager kept the growing Sandy close by her all the time to help her while she washed and ironed and to talk to her while she sat on the porch in the evenings. Of course, he played sometimes in his own yard whenever Willie-Mae or Buster or, on Sundays, Jimmy Lane came to the house. But Jimmy Lane was running wild since his mother died, and Hager didn’t like him to visit her grandson any more. He was bad.
When Sandy wanted to go to the vacant lot to play baseball with the neighbor boys, his grandmother would usually not allow him to leave her. “Stay here, sir, with Hager. I needs you to pump ma water fo’ me an’ fill up these tubs,” she would say. Or else she would yell: “Ain’t I told you you might get hurt down there with them old rough white boys? Stay here in yo’ own yard, where you can keep out o’ mischief.”
So he grew accustomed to remaining near his grandmother, and at night, when the other children would be playing duck-on-the-rock under the arc-light at the corner, he would be sitting on the front porch listening to Aunt Hager telling her tales of slavery and talking of her own far-off youth. When school opened in the fall, the old woman said: “I don’t know what I’s gwine do all day without you, Sandy. You sho been company to me, with all my own chillens gone.” But Sandy was glad to get back to a roomful of boys and girls again.
One Indian-summer afternoon when Aunt Hager was hanging up clothes in the backyard while the boy held the basket of clothespins, old man Logan drove past on his rickety trash-wagon and bowed elaborately to Hager. She went to the back fence to joke and gossip with him as usual, while his white mule switched off persistent flies with her tail.
Before the old beau drove away, he said: “Say, Hager, does you want that there young one o’ your’n to work? I knows a little job he can have if you does,” pointing to Sandy.
“What’ll he got to do?” demanded Hager.
“Well, Pete Scott say he need a boy down yonder at de barbershop on Saturdays to kinder clean up where de kinks fall, an’ shine shoes fo’ de customers. Ain’t nothin’ hard ’bout it, an’ I was thinkin’ it would just ’bout be Sandy’s size. He could make a few pennies ever’ week to kinder help things ’long.”
“True, he sho could,” said Hager. “I’ll have him go see Pete.”
So Sandy went to see Mr. Peter Scott at the colored barbershop on Pearl Street that evening and was given his first regular job. Every Saturday, which was the barbershop’s only busy day, when the workingmen got paid off, Sandy went on the job at noon and worked until eight or nine in the evening. His duties were to keep the place swept clean of the hair that the three barbers sheared and to shine the shoes of any customer who might ask for a shine. Only a few customers permitted themselves that last luxury, for many of them came to the shop in their working-shoes, covered with mud or lime, and most of them shined their own boots at home on Sunday mornings before church. But occasionally Cudge Windsor, who owned a pool hall, or some of the dressed-up bootleggers, might climb on the stand and permit their shoes to be cleaned by the brown youngster, who asked shyly: “Shine, mister?”
The barbershop was a new world to Sandy, who had lived thus far tied to Aunt Hager’s apron-strings. He was a dreamy-eyed boy who had grown to his present age largely under the dominant influence of women—Annjee, Harriett, his grandmother—because Jimboy had been so seldom home. But the barbershop then was a man’s world, and, on Saturdays, while a dozen or more big laborers awaited their turns, the place was filled with loud man-talk and smoke and laughter. Baseball, Jack Johnson, racehorses, white folks, Teddy Roosevelt, local gossip, Booker Washington, women, labor prospects in Topeka, Kansas City, Omaha, religion, politics, women, God—discussions and arguments all afternoon and far up into the night, while crisp kinks rolled to the floor, cigarette- and cigar-butts were thrown on the hearth of the monkey-stove, and Sandy called out: “Shine, mister?”
Sometimes the boy earned one or two dollars from shines, but on damp or snowy days he might not make anything
