“Strained his back, has he? Unhuh! An’ then comes writin’ ’bout till de judgment day!” Hager muttered when she heard it. “Always something wrong with that nigger! He’ll be back here now, layin’ round, doin’ nothin’ fo’ de rest o’ de summer, turnin’ ma house into a theatre with him an’ Harriett singin’ their ragtime, an’ that guitar o’ his’n wangin’ ever’ evenin’! ’Tween him an’ Harriett both it’s a wonder I ain’t plumb crazy. But Harriett do work fo’ her livin’. She ain’t no loafer. … Huh! … Annjee, you was sho a fool when you married that boy, an’ you still is! … I’s gwine next do’ to Sister Johnson’s!” Aunt Hager went out the back and across the yard, where, next door, Tom and Sarah Johnson, Willie-Mae’s grandparents, sat on a bench against the sidewall of an unpainted shanty. They were both quietly smoking their corncob pipes in the evening dusk.
Sandy, looking at the back of the letter that his mother held, stood at the kitchen-table rapidly devouring a large piece of fresh lemon pie, which she had brought from Mrs. J. J. Rice’s. Annjee had said to save the two cold fried lamb chops until tomorrow, or Sandy would have eaten those, too.
“Wish you’d brought home some more pie,” the boy declared, his lips white with meringue, but Annjee, who had just got in from work, paid no attention to her son’s appreciative remarks on her cookery.
Instead she said: “Ma certainly ain’t got no time for Jimboy, has she?” and then sat down with the open letter still in her hand—a single sheet of white paper pencilled in large awkward letters. She put it on the table, rested her dark face in her hands, and began to read it again. … She knew how it was, of course, that her husband hadn’t written before. That was all right now. Working all day in the hot sun with a gang of Greeks, a man was tired at night, besides living in a boxcar, where there was no place to write a letter anyway. He was a great big kid, that’s what Jimboy was, cut out for playing. But when he did work, he tried to outdo everybody else. Annjee could see him in her mind, tall and well-built, his legs apart, muscles bulging as he swung the big hammer above his head, driving steel. No wonder he hurt his back, trying to lay more ties a day than anybody else on the railroad. That was just like Jimboy. But she was kind of pleased he had hurt it, since it would bring him home.
“Ain’t you glad he’s comin’, Sandy?”
“Sure,” answered the child, swallowing his last mouthful of pie. “I hope he brings me that gun he promised to buy last Easter.” The boy wiped his sticky hands on the dishcloth and ran out into the backyard, calling: “Willie-Mae! Willie-Mae!”
“Stay right over yonder!” answered his grandmother through the dusk. “Willie-Mae’s in de bed, sir, an’ we old folks settin’ out here tryin’ to have a little peace.” From the tone of Hager’s voice he knew he wasn’t wanted in the Johnson’s yard, so he went back into the house, looked at his mother reading her letter again, and then lay down on the kitchen floor.
“Affectionately as ever and allways till the judgment day,” she read, “Jimboy Rodgers.”
He loved her, Annjee was sure of that, and it wasn’t another woman that made him go away so often. Eight years they’d been married. No, nine—because Sandy was nine, and he was ready to be born when they had had the wedding. And Jimboy left the week after they were married, to go to Omaha, where he worked all winter. When he came back, Sandy was in the world, sitting up sucking meat skins. It was springtime and they bought a piano for the house—but later the instalment man came and took it back to the store. All that summer her husband stayed home and worked a little, but mostly he fished, played pool, taught Harriett to buck-dance, and quarrelled with Aunt Hager. Then in the winter he went to Jefferson City and got a job at the Capitol.
Jimboy was always going, but Aunt Hager was wrong about his never working. It was just that he couldn’t stay in one place all the time. He’d been born running, he said, and had run ever since. Besides, what was there in Stanton anyhow for a young colored fellow to do except dig sewer ditches for a few cents an hour or maybe porter around a store for seven dollars a week. Colored men couldn’t get many jobs in Stanton, and foreigners were coming in, taking away what little work they did have. No wonder he didn’t stay home. Hadn’t Annjee’s father been in Stanton forty years and hadn’t he died with Aunt Hager still taking in washings to help keep up the house?
There was no well-paid work for Negro men, so Annjee didn’t blame Jimboy for going away looking for something better. She’d go with him if it wasn’t for her mother. If she went, though, Aunt Hager wouldn’t have anybody for company but Harriett, and Harriett was the youngest and wildest of the three children. With Pa Williams dead going on ten years, Hager washing every day, Tempy married, and Annjee herself out working, there had been nobody to take much care of the little sister as she grew up. Harriett had had no raising, even though she was smart and in high school. A female child needed care. But she could sing! Lawdy! And dance, too! That was another reason why Aunt Hager didn’t like Jimboy. The devil’s musicianer, she called him, straight from hell, teaching
