Banjo

Banjo

By Claude McKay.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. Banjo
   1. First Part
      1. I: The Ditch
      2. II: The Breakwater
      3. III: Malty Turned Down
      4. IV: Hard Feeding
      5. V: “Jellyroll”
   2. Second Part
      1. VI: Meeting-Up
      2. VII: The Flute-Boy
      3. VIII: A Carved Carrot
      4. IX: Taloufa’s Shirttail
      5. X: Storytelling
      6. XI: Everybody Doing It
      7. XII: Bugsy’s Chinese Pie
      8. XIII: Bugsy Comes Back at Banjo
      9. XIV: Telling Jokes
      10. XV: White Terror
      11. XVI: The “Blue Cinema”
      12. XVII: Breaking-Up
   3. Third Part
      1. XVIII: Banjo’s Return
      2. XIX: Lonesome Blue Again
      3. XX: The Rock of Refuge
      4. XXI: Official Fists
      5. XXII: Reaction
      6. XXIII: Shake That Thing Again
      7. XXIV: The Chauffeur’s Lot
      8. XXV: Banjo’s Ace of Spades
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

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This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Crisis & Opportunity Books and on digital scans from the Internet Archive.

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For Ruthope

Banjo

A Story Without a Plot

First Part

I

The Ditch

Heaving along from side to side, like a sailor on the unsteady deck of a ship, Lincoln Agrippa Daily, familiarly known as Banjo, patrolled the magnificent length of the great breakwater of Marseilles, a banjo in his hand.

“It sure is some moh mahvelous job,” he noted mentally; “most wonderful bank in the ocean I evah did see.”

It was afternoon. Banjo had walked the long distance of the breakwater and was returning to the Joliette end. He wore a cheap pair of slippers, suitable to the climate, a kind much used by the very poor of Provence. They were an ugly drab-brown color, which, however, was mitigated by the crimson socks and the yellow scarf with its elaborate pattern of black, yellow, and red at both ends, that was knotted around his neck and hung down the front of his blue-jean shirt.

Suddenly he stood still in his tracks as out of the bottom of one of the many freight cars along the quay he saw black bodies dropping. Banjo knew box cars. He had hoboed in America. But never had he come across a box car with a hole in the bottom. Had those black boys made it? He went down on the quay to see.

The fellows were brushing the hay off their clothes. There were four of them.

“Hello, there!” said Banjo.

“Hello, money!” replied the tallest of the four, who was just Banjo’s build.

“Good night, money. What I want to know is ef you-all made that theah hole in the bottom a that box car? I nevah yet seen no hole in the bottom of a box car, and I’ve rode some rails back home in the States.”

“P’raps not. They’s things ovah heah diffarant from things ovah theah and they’s things ovah theah diffarant from things ovah heah. Now the way things am setting with me, this heah hole-in-the-bottom box car is just the thing for us.”

“You done deliver you’self of a mouthful that sure sounds perfect,” responded Banjo.

“I always does. Got to use mah judgment all the time with these fellahs heah. And you? What you making foh you’self down here on the breakwater?”

“Ain’t making a thing, but I know I’d sure love to make a meal.”

“A meal! You broke already?”

“Broke already? Yes I is, but what do you know about it?” asked Banjo, sharply.

“Nothing in particular, ole spoht, cep’n’ that I bummed you two times when you was strutting with that ofay broad and that Ise Malty Avis, the best drummer on the beach. Mah buddies heah bummed you, too, so if youse really broke and hungry as you say, which can be true, ’causen you’ lips am as pale as the belly of a fish, just you come right along and eat ovah theah.” He pointed to a ramshackle bistro-restaurant on the quay. “We got a little money between us. The bumming was good last night.”

“This is going some, indeed. I gived you a raise yestidday and youse feeding me today,” said Banjo as they all walked toward the bistro. “I don’t even remember none a you fellahs.”

“ ’Cause you was too swell dressed up and strutting fine with that broad to see anybody else,” said the smallest of the group.

They were all hungry. The boys had been sleeping, and woke up with an appetite. Before them the woman of the bistro set five plates of vegetable soup, a long loaf of bread, followed by braised beef and plenty of white beans. Malty called for five bottles of red wine.

Banjo got acquainted over the mess. The shining black big-boned lad who bore such a contented expression on his plump jolly face and announced himself as Malty Avis, was the leader and inspirer of the group. His full name was Buchanan Malt Avis. He was a West Indian. His mother