Ray entered with a friend whom he introduced as James Grant. He was also a student working his way through college. But lacking funds to continue, he had left college to find a job. He was fourth waiter on Ray’s diner, succeeding the timid boy from Georgia. As both chairs were in use, Grant sat on the edge of the bed and Ray tipped up Jake’s suitcase. …
Conversation veered off to the railroad.
“I am getting sick of it,” Ray said. “It’s a crazy, clattering, nerve-shattering life. I think I’ll fall down for good.”
“Why, ef you quit, chappie, I’ll nevah go back on that there white man’s sweet chariot,” said Jake.
“Whasmat?” asked Billy Biasse. “Kain’t you git along on theah without him?”
“It’s a whole lot the matter you can’t understand, Billy. The white folks’ railroad ain’t like Lenox Avenue. You can tell on theah when a pal’s a real pal.”
“I got a pal, I got a gal,” chanted Billy, “heah in mah pocketbook.” He patted his breast pocket.
“Go long from here with you’ lonesome haht, you wolf,” cried Jake.
“Wolf is mah middle name, but … I ain’t bad as I hear, and ain’t you mah buddy, too?” Billy said to Jake. “Git you’self going quick and come on down to mah place, son. The bones am lonesome foh you.”
Billy and Yaller Prince left.
“Who is the swell strutter?” Ray’s friend asked.
“Hm! … I knowed him long time in Harlem,” said Jake. “He’s a good guy. Just brought me all them eats and cigarettes.”
“What does he work at?” asked Ray.
“Nothing menial. He’s a p.i.” …
“Low-down yaller swine,” said Ray’s friend, “Harlem is stinking with them.”
“Oh, Yaller is all right, though,” said Jake. “A real good-hearted scout.”
“Good-hearted!” Grant sneered. “A man’s heart is cold dead when he has women doing that for him. How can a man live that way and strut in public, instead of hiding himself underground like a worm?” He turned indignantly to Ray.
“Search me!” Ray laughed a little. “You might as well ask why all mulattoes have unpleasant voices.”
Grant was slightly embarrassed. He was yellow-skinned and his voice was hard and grainy. Jake he-hawed.
“Not all, chappie, I know some with sweet voice.”
“Mulattress, mon ami.” Ray lifted a finger. “That’s an exception. And now, James, let us forget Jake’s kind friend.”
“Oh, I don’t mind him talking,” said Jake. “I don’t approve of Yaller’s trade mahself, but ef he can do it, well—It’s because you don’t know how many womens am running after the fellahs jest begging them to do that. They been after me moh time I can remember. There’s lots o’ folks living easy and living sweet, but …”
“There are as many forms of parasitism as there are ways of earning a living,” said Ray.
“But to live the life of carrion,” sneered Grant, “fatten on rotting human flesh. It’s the last ditch, where dogs go to die. When you drop down in that you cease being human.”
“You done said it straight out, brother,” said Jake. “It’s a stinking life and I don’t like stinks.”
“Your feeling against that sort of thing is fine, James,” said Ray. “But that’s the most I could say for it. It’s all right to start out with nice theories from an advantageous point in life. But when you get a chance to learn life for yourself, it’s quite another thing. The things you call fine human traits don’t belong to any special class or nation or race of people. Nobody can pull that kind of talk now and get away with it, least of all a Negro.”
“Why not?” asked Grant. “Can’t a Negro have fine feelings about life?”
“Yes, but not the old false-fine feelings that used to be monopolized by educated and cultivated people. You should educate yourself away from that sort of thing.”
“But education is something to make you fine!”
“No, modern education is planned to make you a sharp, snouty, rooting hog. A Negro getting it is an anachronism. We ought to get something new, we Negroes. But we get our education like—like our houses. When the whites move out, we move in and take possession of the old dead stuff. Dead stuff that this age has no use for.”
“How’s that?”
“Can you ask? You and I were born in the midst of the illness of this age and have lived through its agony. … Keep your fine feelings, indeed, but don’t try to make a virtue of them. You’ll lose them, then. They’ll become all hollow inside, false and dry as civilization itself. And civilization is rotten. We are all rotten who are touched by it.”
“I am not rotten,” retorted Grant, “and I couldn’t bring myself and my ideas down to the level of such filthy parasites.”
“All men have the disease of pimps in their hearts,” said Ray. “We can’t be civilized and not. I have seen your high and mighty civilized people do things that some pimps would be ashamed of—”
“You said it, then, and most truly,” cried Jake, who, lying on the bed, was intently following the dialogue.
“Do it in the name of civilization,” continued Ray. “And I have been forced down to the level of pimps and found some of them more than human. One of them was so strange. … I never thought he could feel anything. Never thought he could do what he did. Something so strange and wonderful and awful, it just lifted me up out of my little straight thoughts into a big whirl where all of life seemed hopelessly tangled and colored without point or purpose.”
“Tell us about it,” said Grant.
“All right,” said Ray. “I’ll tell it.”
