“What’s all this bloody business today?” cried the steward, who was just entering the pantry. … “What nonsense is this, chef? You’ve made a mess of things already and now you start fighting with the waiters. You can’t do like that. You losing your head?”
“Lookahere, Sah Farrel, I jes’ want ev’body to leave me ’lone.”
“But we must all team together on the dining-car. That’s the only way. You can’t start fighting the waiters because you’ve lost the eggs.”
“Sah Farrel, leave me alone, I say,” half roared, half moaned the chef, “or I’ll jump off right now and let you run you’ kitchen you’self.”
“What’s that?” The steward started.
“I say I’ll jump off, and I mean it as Gawd’s mah maker.”
The steward slipped out of the pantry without another word.
The steward obtained a supply of eggs in Harrisburg the next morning. The rest of the trip was made with the most dignified formalities between him and the chef. Between the pantry and the chef the atmosphere was tenser, but there were no more explosions.
The dining-car went out on its next trip with a new chef. And the old chef, after standing a little of the superintendent’s notoriously sharp tongue, was sent to another car as second cook.
“Hit those fellahs in the pocketbook is the only way,” the pantryman overheard the steward talking to one of his colleagues. “Imagine an old experienced chef threatening to jump off when I was short of a second cook.”
They were getting the stock for the next trip in the commissary. Jake turned to the pantryman: “But it was sure peculiar, though, how them aiggs just fly outa that kitchen lak that way.”
“Maybe they all hatched and growed wings when ole black bull was playing with that sweet yaller piece,” the pantryman laughed.
“Honest, though, how do you think it happened?” persisted Jake. “Did you hoodoo them aiggs, or what did you do?”
“I wouldn’t know atall. Better ask them rats in the yards ef they sucked the shells dry. What you’ right hand does don’t tell it to the left, says I.”
“You done said a mou’ful, but how did you get away with it so quiet?”
“I ain’t said nothing discrimination and I ain’t nevah.”
“Don’t figure against me. Ise with you, buddy,” said Jake, “and now that wese good and rid of him, I hope all we niggers will pull together like civilization folks.”
“Sure we will. There ain’t another down-home nigger like him in this white man’s service. He was riding too high and fly, brother. I knew he would tumble and bust something nasty. But I ain’t said I knowed a thing about it, all the same.”
XIII
One Night in Philly
One night in Philadelphia Jake breezed into the waiters’ quarters in Market Street, looking for Ray. It was late. Ray was in bed. Jake pulled him up.
“Come on outa that, you slacker. Let’s go over to North Philly.”
“What for?”
“A li’l fun. I knows a swell outfit I wanta show you.”
“Anything new?”
“Don’t know about anything new, chappie, but I know there’s something good right there in Fifteenth Street.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I don’t want to go.”
“Come on. Don’t be so particular about you’ person. You gotta go with me.”
“I have a girl in New York.”
“Tha’s awright. This is Philly.”
“I tell you, Jake, there’s no fun in those kinds for me. They’ll bore me just like that night in Baltimore.”
“Oh, these here am different chippies, I tell you. Come on, le’s spend the night away from this damn dump. Wese laying ovah all day tomorrow.”
“And some of them will say such rotten things. Pretty enough, all right, but their mouths are loaded with filth, and that’s what gets me.”
“Them’s different ovah there, chappie. I’ll kiss the Bible on it. Come on, now. It’s no fun me going alone.”
They went to a house in Fifteenth Street. As they entered Jake was greeted by a mulatto woman in the full vigor of middle life.
“Why, you heartbreaker! It’s ages and ages since I saw you. You and me sure going to have a bust-up tonight.”
Jake grinned, prancing a little, as if he were going to do the old cakewalk.
“Here, Laura, this is mah friend,” he introduced Ray casually.
“Bring him over here and sit down,” Madame Laura commanded.
She was a big-boned woman, but very agile. A long, irregular, rich-brown face, roving black eyes, deep-set, and shiny black hair heaped upon her head. She wore black velvet, a square-cut blouse low down on her breasts, and a string of large coral beads. The young girls of that house envied her finely-preserved form and her carriage and wondered if they would be anything like that when they reached her age.
The interior of this house gave Ray a shock. It looked so much like a comfortable boardinghouse where everybody was cheerful and nice coquettish girls in colorful frocks were doing the waiting. … There were a few flirting couples, two groups of men playing cards, and girls hovering around. An attractive black woman was serving sandwiches, gin and bottled beer. At the piano, a slim yellow youth was playing a “blues.” … A pleasant house party, similar to any other among colored people of that class in Baltimore, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, or even Washington, DC. Different, naturally, from New York, which molds all peoples into a hectic rhythm of its own. Yet even New York, passing its strange thousands through its great metropolitan mill, cannot rob Negroes of their native color and laughter.
“Mah friend’s just keeping me company,” Jake said to the woman. “He ain’t regular—you get me? And I want him treated right.”
“He’ll be treated better here than he would in church.” She laughed and touched Ray’s calf with the point of her slipper.
“What kind o’ bust-up youse gwine to have with me?” demanded Jake.
“I’ll show you just what I’m going to do with you for forgetting me so long.”
She got up and went into an adjoining room. When she returned an attractively made-up brown girl
