“But Harlem is the craziest place foh that, I bet you, boh,” Billy laughed richly. “The stuff it gives the niggers brain-fevah, so far as I see, and this heah wolf has got a big-long horeezon. Wese too thick together in Harlem. Wese all just lumped together without a chanst to choose and so we nacherally hate one another. It’s nothing to wonder that you’ buddy Ray done runned away from it. Why, jest the other night I witnessed a nasty stroke. You know that spade prof that’s always there on the Avenue handing out the big stuff about niggers and their rights and the wul’ and bolschism. … He was passing by the poolroom with a bunch o’ books when a bad nigger jest lunges out and socks him bif! in the jaw. The poah frightened prof started picking up his books without a word said, so I ups and asks the boxer what was the meaning o’ that pass. He laughed and asked me ef I really wanted to know, and before he could squint I landed him one in the eye and pulled mah gun on him. I chased him off that corner all right I tell you, boh, Harlem is lousy with crazy-bad niggers, as tough as Hell’s Kitchen, and I always travel with mah gun ready.”
“And ef all the niggers did as you does,” said Jake, “theah’d be a regular gun-toting army of us up here in the haht of the white man’s city. … Guess ef a man stahts gunning after you and means to git you he will someways—”
“But you might git him fierst, too, boh, ef youse in luck.”
“I mean ef you don’t know he’s gunning after you,” said Jake. “I don’t carry no weapons nonetall, but mah two long hands.”
“Youse a punk customer, then, I tell you,” declared Billy Biasse, “and no real buddy o’ mine. Ise got a A number one little barker I’ll give it to you. You kain’t lay you’self wide open lak thataways in this heah burg. No boh!”
Jake went home alone in a mood different from the lyrical feelings that had fevered his blood among the dandelions. “Niggers fixing to slice one another’s throats. Always fighting. Got to fight if youse a man. It ain’t because Yaller was a p.i. … It coulda been me or anybody else. Wese too close and thick in Harlem. Need some moh fresh air between us. … Hitting out at a edjucated nigger minding his own business and without a word said. … Guess Billy is right toting his silent dawg around with him. He’s gotta, though, when he’s running a gambling joint. All the same, I gambles mahself and you nevah know when niggers am gwineta git crazy-mad. Guess I’ll take the li’l dawg offn Billy, all right. It ain’t costing me nothing.” …
In the late afternoon he lingered along Seventh Avenue in a new nigger-brown suit. The fine gray English suit was no longer serviceable for parade. The American suit did not fit him so well. Jake saw and felt it. … The only thing he liked better about the American suit was the pantaloons made to wear with a belt. And the two hip pockets. If you have the American habit of carrying your face-cloth on the hip instead of sticking it up in your breast pocket like a funny decoration, and if, like Billy Biasse, you’re accustomed to toting some steely thing, what is handier than two hip pockets?
Except for that, Jake had learned to prefer the English cut of clothes. Such first-rate tweed stuff, and so cheap and durable compared with American clothes! Jake knew nothing of tariff laws and naively wondered why the English did not spread their fine cloth all over the American clothes market. … He worked up his shoulders in his nigger-brown coat. It didn’t feel right, didn’t hang so well. There was something a little too chic in American clothes. Not nearly as awful as French, though, Jake horse-laughed, vividly remembering the popular French styles. Broad-pleated, long-waisted, tight-bottomed pants and close-waisted coats whose breast pockets stick out their little comic signs of color. … Better color as a savage wears it, or none at all, instead of the Frenchman’s peeking bit. The French must consider the average bantam male killing handsome, and so they make clothes to emphasize all the angular elevated rounded and pendulated parts of the anatomy. …
The broad pavements of Seventh Avenue were colorful with promenaders. Brown babies in white carriages pushed by little black brothers wearing nice sailor suits. All the various and varying pigmentation of the human race were assembled there: dim brown, clear brown, rich brown, chestnut, copper, yellow, near-white, mahogany, and gleaming anthracite. Charming brown matrons, proud yellow matrons, dark nursemaids pulled a zigzag course by their restive little charges. …
And the elegant strutters in faultless spats; West Indians, carrying canes and wearing trousers of a different pattern from their coats and vests, drawing sharp comments from their Afro-Yank rivals.
Jake mentally noted: “A dickty gang sure as Harlem is black, but—”
The girls passed by in bright batches of color, according to station and calling. High class, menial class, and the big trading class, flaunting a front of chiffon-soft colors framed in light coats, seizing the fashion of the day to stage a lovely leg show and spilling along the Avenue the perfume of Djer-kiss, Fougere, and Brown Skin.
“These heah New York gals kain most sartainly wear some moh clothes,” thought Jake, “jest as nifty as them French gals.” …
Twilight was enveloping the Belt, merging its life into a soft blue-black symphony. … The animation subsided into a moment’s pause, a muffled, tremulous soul-stealing note … then electric lights flared everywhere, flooding the scene with dazzling gold.
Jake went to Aunt
