Jake stopped and said, “Howdy!”
“Howdy again!” the girl flashed a row of perfect teeth at him.
“Got a bite of anything good?”
“I should say so, Mister Ma‑an.”
She rolled her eyes and worked her hips into delightful free-and-easy motions. Jake went in. He was not hungry for food. He looked at a large dish half filled with tapioca pudding. He turned to the pie-case on the counter.
“The peach pie is the best,” said the girl, her bare elbow on the counter; “it’s fresh.” She looked straight in his eyes. “All right, I’ll try peach,” he said, and, magnetically, his long, shining fingers touched her hand. …
In the evening he found the Haitian waiter at the big Wiley Avenue poolroom. Quite different from the poolrooms in Harlem, it was a sort of social center for the railroad men and the more intelligent black workmen of the quarter. Tobacco, stationery, and odds and ends were sold in the front part of the store. There was a table where customers sat and wrote letters. And there were pretty chocolate dolls and pictures of Negroid types on sale. Curious, pathetic pictures; black Madonna and child; a kinky-haired mulatto angel with African lips and Nordic nose, soaring on a white cloud up to heaven; Jesus blessing a black child and a white one; a black shepherd carrying a white lamb—all queerly reminiscent of the crude prints of the great Christian paintings that are so common in poor religious homes.
“Here he is!” Jake greeted the waiter. “What’s the new?”
“Nothing new in Soot-hill; always the same.”
The railroad men hated the Pittsburgh run. They hated the town, they hated Wiley Avenue and their wretched free quarters that were in it. …
“What’re you going to do?”
“Ahm gwine to the colored show with a li’l brown piece,” said Jake.
“You find something already? My me! You’re a fast-working one.”
“Always the same whenever I hits a new town. Always in cocktail luck, chappie.”
“Which one? Manhattan or Bronx?”
“It’s Harlem-Pittsburgh thisanight,” Jake grinned. “Wachyu gwine make?”
“Don’t know. There’s nothing ever in Pittsburgh for me. I’m in no mood for the leg-show tonight, and the colored show is bum. Guess I’ll go sleep if I can.”
“Awright, I’ll see you li’l later, chappie.” Jake gripped his hand. “Say—whyn’t you tell a fellow you’ name? Youse sure more’n second waiter as Ise more’n third cook. Ev’body calls me Jake. And you?”
“Raymond, but everybody calls me Ray.”
Jake heaved off. Ray bought some weekly Negro newspapers: The Pittsburgh Courier, The Baltimore American, The Negro World, The Chicago Defender. Here he found a big assortment of all the Negro publications that he never could find in Harlem. In a next-door saloon he drank a glass of sherry and started off for the waiters’ and cooks’ quarters.
It was long after midnight when Jake returned to quarters. He had to pass through the Western men’s section to get to the Eastern crews. Nobody was asleep in the Western men’s section. No early-morning train was chalked up on their board. The men were grouped off in poker and dice games. Jake hesitated a little by one group, fascinated by a wiry little long-headed finger-snapping black, who with strenuous h’h, h’h, h’h, h’h, was zestfully throwing the bones. Jake almost joined the game but he admonished himself: “You winned five dollars thisaday and you made a nice li’l brown piece, Wha’more you want?” …
He found the beds assigned to the members of his crew. They were double beds, like Pullman berths. Three of the waiters had not come in yet. The second and the fourth cooks were snoring, each a deep frothy bass and a high tenor, and scratching themselves in their sleep. The chef sprawled like the carcass of a rhinoceros, half-naked, mouth wide open. Tormented by bedbugs, he had scratched and tossed in his sleep and hoofed the covers off the bed. Ray was sitting on a lower berth on his Negro newspapers spread out to form a sheet. He had thrown the sheets on the floor, they were so filthy from other men’s sleeping. By the thin flame of gaslight he was killing bugs.
“Where is I gwine to sleep?” asked Jake.
“Over me, if you can. I saved the bunk for you,” said Ray.
“Some music the niggers am making,” remarked Jake, nodding in the direction of the snoring cooks. “But whasmat, chappie, you ain’t sleeping?”
“Can’t you see?”
“Bugs. Bumbole! This is a hell of a dump for a man to sleep in.”
“The place is rocking crazy with them,” said Ray. “I hauled the cot away from the wall, but the mattress is just swarming.”
Hungry and bold, the bugs crept out of their chinks and hunted for food. They stopped dead-still when disturbed by the slightest shadow, and flattened their bellies against the wall.
“Le’s get outa this stinking dump and chase a drink, chappie.”
Ray jumped out of his berth, shoved himself into his clothes and went with Jake. The saloon near by the poolroom was still open. They went there. Ray asked for sherry.
“You had better sample some hard liquor if youse gwine back to wrastle with them bugs tonight,” Jake suggested.
Ray took his advice. A light-yellow fellow chummed up with the boys and invited them to drink with him. He was as tall as Jake and very thin. There was a vacant, wandering look in his kindly-weak eyes. He was a waiter on another dining-car of the New York-Pittsburg run. Ray mentioned that he had to quit his bed because he couldn’t sleep.
“This here town is the rottenest layover in the whole railroad field,” declared the light-yellow. “I don’t never sleep in the quarters here.”
“Where do you sleep, then?” asked Ray.
“Oh, I got a sweet baby way up yonder the other side of the hill.”
“Oh, ma-ma!” Jake licked his lips. “So youse all fixed up in this heah town?”
“Not going
