Ginger’s former pal was now again in Marseilles, for the third time since Ginger had fallen for the beach. And the beach boys were invited to his ship to lunch. The galley of that ship was Negro and it was one of the best of “good” ships.
Banjo went along with Malty and company. He was not a regular panhandler like the other boys. He could not make a happy business of it like them. Because sometimes they were savagely turned down and insulted and he was not the type to stand that. He would have gone to work on the docks, as he had intended at first when he went broke, if his personality and his banjo had not fixed him in a situation more favorable than that of his mates. There was always a pillow for his head at Latnah’s, and when he played in any of the bistros of the quarter and she was there, she always took up a collection. Indeed, she collected every time Banjo finished a set of tunes. That was the way the white itinerants did it, she said. They never played for fun as Banjo was prone to do. They played in a hard, unsmiling, funereal way and only for sous. Which was doubtless why their playing in general was so execrable. When Banjo turned himself loose and wild playing, he never remembered sous. Perhaps he could afford to forget, however, with Latnah looking out for him and always ready with a ten-franc note whenever his palm was itching for small change.
The ship of Ginger’s pal had such a beach-known reputation for handing out the eats that, besides Malty and company, other men of the beach, white and colored, had assembled down by it to feed. Some dozen of them.
When the officers and men had finished eating, Ginger’s old friend brought out what was left to the hungry group waiting on the deck. Good food and plenty of it in two pans. Thick, long slices of boiled beef, immense whole boiled potatoes, pork and beans, and lettuce.
All the men rushed the food like swine, each roughly elbowing and snapping at the other to get his hand in first. While they were stuffing themselves, smacking, grunting, and blowing with the disgusting noises of brutes, the food all over their faces, a mess boy brought out a large broad pan half filled with sweet porridge and set it down on the deck. Immediately the porridge was stormed. A huge blond Nordic, who looked like a polar bear that had been rolling in mud, was tripped up by an Armenian and fell sprawling, his lousy white head flopping in the pan of porridge. The blond picked himself up and, burying his greasy-black hand in the porridge, he brought up a palmful and dashed it in the face of the Armenian. That started a free fight in which the pan of porridge was kicked over, whole boiled potatoes went flying across the deck, and Bugsy seized the moment to slap in the face with a slice of beef a boy from Benin whom he hated.
“Goodoh Bugsy!” cried Malty. “Tha’s sho some moh feeding his face.”
Banjo was standing a little way off, watching the melee in anger and contempt. A lanky, prematurely-wrinkle-faced officer passed by with a sneering glance at the beach fellows and went to the galley. The cook, a well-fleshed broad-chested brown Negro, came out on the deck.
“You fellahs am sure a bum lot,” he said. “The victuals I done give you is too good foh you-all. The garbage even is too good. You ain’t no good foh nothing at all.”
But the boys were again eating, picking up potatoes and scraps of meat from the deck and scooping up what was left of the porridge.
Banjo had started for the gangway, and Bugsy called to him, “Hi, nigger, ain’t you gwine put away some a this heah stuff under you’ shirt?”
“The mess you jest fight and trample ovah?” retorted Banjo. “You c’n stuff you’ guts tell youse all winded, but my belly kain’t accommodate none a that theah stuff, for that is too hard feeding for mine.”
Having finished eating, the men came off the deck, all friendly vagabonds again. Squabbling and scuffling came natural to them, like eating and drinking, dancing and bawdying, and did not have any bad effect upon the general spirit of their comradeship.
Malty’s group picked up Banjo on the dock and separated from the others. Their next objective was to find some conveniently situated barrel of wine that they could bung out and guzzle without trouble.
“It’s all the same in the life of the beach,” Malty said to Banjo. “Once you get used to it, you kain’t feel you’self too good for anything!”
“Theah’s some things that this heah boy won’t evah get used to,” said Banjo. “I heah that officer call you all ‘a damned lot a disgusting niggers,’ and I don’t want no gitting used to that. You fellahs know what the white man think about niggers and you-all ought to do better than you done when he ’low you on his ship to eat that dawggone grub. I take life easy like you-all, but I ain’t nevah gwine to lay mahself wide open to any insulting cracker of a white man. For I’ll let a white man mobilize mah black moon for a whupping, ef he can, foh calling me a nigger.”
“Nix on the insults when a man is on the beach,” said Malty. “Gimme a bellyful a good grub and some wine to wash it down is all I ask for.”
“You ain’t got no self-respecting in you, then,” said Banjo. “Youse just a bum and no moh. I ain’t a big-headed nigger, but a white man has got to respect me, for when I address myself to him the vibration of brain magic that I turn loose on him is like an electric shock on the spring of his cranium.”
“Attaboy!” applauded Ginger, who loved big words with a philosophical
