He asked Jake and Ray if they would like to go to a little open-all-night place. They were glad to hear of that.
“Any old thing, boh,” Jake said, “to get away from that theah Pennsy bug house.”
The little place was something of a barrelhouse speakeasy, crowded with black steelworkers in overalls and railroad men, and foggy with smoke. They were all drinking hard liquor and playing cards. The boss was a stocky, genial brown man. He knew the light-yellow waiter and shook hands with him and his friends. He moved away some boxes in a corner and squeezed a little table in it, specially for them. They sat down, jammed into the corner, and drank whisky.
“Better here than the Pennsy pigpen,” said the light-yellow.
He was slapped on the back by a short, compact young black.
“Hello, you! What you think youse doing theah?”
“Ain’t figuring,” retorted the light-yellow, “is you?”
“On the red moon gwine around mah haid, yes. How about a li’l good snow?”
“Now you got mah number down, Happy.”
The black lad vanished again through a mysterious back door.
The light-yellow said: “He’s the biggest hophead I ever seen. Nobody can sniff like him. Yet he’s always the same happy nigger, stout and strong like a bull.”
He took another whisky and went like a lean hound after Happy. Jake looked mischievously at the little brown door, remarking: “It’s a great life ef youse in on it.” …
The light-yellow came back with a cold gleam in his eyes, like arsenic shining in the dark. His features were accentuated by a rigid, disturbing tone and he resembled a smiling wax figure.
“Have a li’l stuff with the bunch?” he asked Jake.
“I ain’t got the habit, boh, but I’ll try anything once again.”
“And you?” The light-yellow turned to Ray.
“No, chief, thank you, but I don’t want to.”
The waiter went out again with Jake on his heels. Beyond the door, five fellows, kneeling in the sawdust, were rolling the square bones. Others sat together around two tables with a bottle of red liquor and thimble-like glasses before them.
“Oh, boy!” one said. “When I get home tonight it will be some more royal stuff. I ain’ta gwine to work none ’tall tomorrow.”
“Shucks!” Another spread away his big mouth. “This heah ain’t nothing foh a fellow to turn royal loose on. I remimber when I was gwine with a money gang that hed no use foh nothing but the pipe. That theah time was life, buddy.”
“Wha’ sorta pipe was that there?” asked Jake.
“The Chinese stuff, old boy.”
Instead of deliberately fisting his, like the others, Jake took it up carelessly between his thumb and forefinger and inhaled.
“Say what you wanta about Chinee or any other stuff,” said Happy, “but theah ain’t nothing can work wicked like snow and whisky. It’ll flip you up from hell into heaven befoh you knows it.”
Ray looked into the room.
“Who’s you li’l mascot?” Happy asked the light-yellow.
“Tha’s mah best pal,” Jake answered. “He’s got some moh stuff up here,” Jake tapped his head.
“Better let’s go on back to quarters,” said Ray.
“To them bugs?” demanded Jake.
“Yes, I think we’d better.”
“Awright, anything you say, chappie. I kain sleep through worser things.” Jake took a few of the little white packets from Happy and gave him some money. “Guess I might need them some day. You never know.”
Jake fell asleep as soon as his head touched the dirty pillow. Below him, Ray lay in his bunk, tormented by bugs and the snoring cooks. The low-burning gaslight flickered and flared upon the shadows. The young man lay under the untellable horror of a dead-tired man who wills to sleep and cannot.
In other sections of the big barn building the faint chink of coins touched his ears. Those men gambling the hopeless Pittsburg night away did not disturb him. They were so quiet. It would have been better, perhaps, if they were noisy. He closed his eyes and tried to hypnotize himself to sleep. Sleep … sleep … sleep … sleep … sleep. … He began counting slowly. His vigil might break and vanish somnolently upon some magic number. He counted a million. Perhaps love would appease this unwavering angel of wakefulness. Oh, but he could not pick up love easily on the street as Jake. …
He flung himself, across void and water, back home. Home thoughts, if you can make them soft and sweet and misty-beautiful enough, can sometimes snare sleep. There was the quiet, chalky-dusty street and, jutting out over it, the front of the house that he had lived in. The high staircase built on the outside, and pots of begonias and ferns on the landing. …
All the flowering things he loved, red and white and pink hibiscus, mimosas, rhododendrons, a thousand glowing creepers, climbing and spilling their vivid petals everywhere, and bright-buzzing hummingbirds and butterflies. All the tropic-warm lilies and roses. Giddy-high erect thatch palms, slender, tall, fur-fronded ferns, majestic cotton trees, stately bamboos creating a green grandeur in the heart of space. …
Sleep remained cold and distant. Intermittently the cooks broke their snoring with masticating noises of their fat lips, like animals eating. Ray fixed his eyes on the offensive bug-bitten bulk of the chef. These men claimed kinship with him. They were black like him. Man and nature had put them in the same race. He ought to love them and feel them (if they felt anything). He ought to if he had a shred of social morality in him. They were all chain-ganged together and he was counted as one link. Yet he loathed every soul in that great barrack-room, except Jake. Race. … Why should he have and love a race?
Races and nations were things like skunks, whose smells poisoned the air of life. Yet civilized mankind reposed its faith and future in their ancient, silted channels. Great races and big nations! There must be something mighty inspiriting in being the citizen of a great strong nation. To be the white citizen of a nation that can say
