“That’s just it. That’s just it, suh; jus’ what Ah came heah fo’,” replied the Senator. “Naow sum o’ us was thinkin’ that maybe yo’all might be able to he’p us keep these damn hicks in line. Yo’all are intelligent gent’men; you know what Ah’m gettin’ at?”
“Well, that’s a pretty big order, Colonel,” said Givens.
“Yes,” Matthew added. “It’ll be a hard proposition. Conditions are no longer what they used to be.”
“An’,” said Givens, “we can’t do much with that nigger business, like we used to do when th’ old Klan was runnin’.”
“What about one o’ them theah Red scares,” asked the Senator, hopefully.
“Humph!” the clergyman snorted. “Better leave that there Red business alone. Times ain’t like they was, you know. Anyhow, them damn Reds’ll be down here soon enough ’thout us encouragin’ ’em none.”
“Guess that’s right, Gen’ral,” mused the statesman. Then brightening: “Lookaheah, Givens. This fellah Fisher’s gotta good head. Why not let him work out sumpin?”
“Yeah, he sure has,” agreed the Wizard, glad to escape any work except minding the treasury of his order. “If he can’t do it, ain’t nobody can. Him and Bunny here is as shrewd as some o’ them old time darkies. He! He! He!” He beamed patronizingly upon his brilliant son-in-law and his plump secretary.
“Well, theah’s money in it. We got plenty o’ cash; what we want now is votes,” the Senator explained. “C’ose yuh caint preach that white supremacy stuff ve’y effectively when they haint no niggahs.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll work out something,” said Matthew. Here was a chance to get more power, more money. Busy as he was, it would not do to let the opportunity slip by.
“Yuh caint lose no time,” warned the Senator.
“We won’t,” crowed Givens.
A few minutes later they took a final drink together, shook hands and the Senator, bobbing his white head to the young ladies in the outer office, departed.
Matthew and Bunny retired to the private office of the Grand Exalted Giraw.
“What you thinkin’ about pullin’?” asked Bunny.
“Plenty. We’ll try the old sure fire Negro problem stuff.”
“But that’s ancient history, Brother,” protested Bunny. “These ducks won’t fall for that any more.”
“Bunny, I’ve learned something on this job, and that is that hatred and prejudice always go over big. These people have been raised on the Negro problem, they’re used to it, they’re trained to react to it. Why should I rack my brain to hunt up something else when I can use a dodge that’s always delivered the goods?”
“It may go over at that.”
“I know it will. Just leave it to me,” said Matthew confidently. “That’s not worrying me at all. What’s got my goat is my wife being in the family way.” Matthew stopped bantering a moment, a sincere look of pain erasing his usual ironic expression.
“Congratulations!” burbled Bunny.
“Don’t rub it in,” Matthew replied. “You know how the kid will look.”
“That’s right,” agreed his pal. “You know, sometimes I forget who we are.”
“Well, I don’t. I know I’m a darky and I’m always on the alert.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know, Big Boy, I don’t know. I would ordinarily send her to one of those Lying-in Hospitals but she’d be suspicious. Yet, if the kid is born it’ll sure be black.”
“It won’t be white,” Bunny agreed. “Why not tell her the whole thing and since she’s so crazy about you, I don’t think she’d hesitate to go.”
“Man, you must be losing your mind, or else you’ve lost it!” Matthew exploded. “She’s a worse nigger-hater than her father. She’d holler for a divorce before you could say Jack Robinson.”
“You’ve got too much money for that.”
“You’re assuming that she has plenty of intelligence.”
“Hasn’t she?”
“Let’s not discuss a painful subject,” pleaded Matthew. “Suggest a remedy.”
“She don’t have to know that she’s going to one of Crookman’s places, does she?”
“No, but I can’t get her to leave home to have the baby.”
“Why?”
“Oh, a lot of damn sentiment about having her baby in the old home, and her damned old mother supports her. So what can I do?”
“Then, the dear old homestead is the only thing that’s holding up the play?”
“You’re a smart boy, Bunny.”
“Don’t stress the obvious. Seriously, though, I think everything can be fixed okeh.”
“How?” cried Matthew, eagerly.
“Is it worth five grand?” countered Bunny.
“Money’s no object, you know, but explain your proposition.”
“I will not. You get me fifty century notes and I’ll explain later.”
“It’s a deal, old friend.”
Bunny Brown was a man of action. That evening he entered the popular Niggerhead Café, rendezvous of the questionable classes, and sat down at a table. The place was crowded with drinkers downing their “white mule” and contorting to the strains issuing from a radio loudspeaker. A current popular dance piece, “The Black Man Blues,” was filling the room. The songwriters had been making a fortune recently writing sentimental songs about the passing of the Negro. The plaintive voice of a blues singer rushed out of the loudspeaker:
“I wonder where my big, black man has gone;
Oh, I wonder where my big, black man has gone.
Has he done got faded an’ left me all alone?”
When the music ceased and the dancers returned to their tables, Bunny began to look around. In a far corner he saw a waiter whose face seemed familiar. He waited until the fellow came close when he hailed him. As the waiter bent over to get his order, he studied him closely. He had seen this fellow somewhere before. Who could he be? Suddenly with a start he remembered. It was Dr. Joseph Bonds, former head of the Negro Data League in New York. What had brought him here and to this condition? The last time he had seen Bonds, the fellow was a power in the Negro world, with a country place in Westchester County and a swell apartment in town. It saddened Bunny to think that catastrophe had overtaken such a man. Even getting white, it seemed, hadn’t helped him much. He recalled that Bonds in his heyday had
