Malty’s working life began as a small sailor boy on fishing-boats in the Caribbean. When he became a big boy he was taken by a cargo boat on his first real voyage to New Orleans. From there he had started in as a real seaman and had never returned home.
Sitting on Malty’s right, the chestnut-skinned fellow with drab-brown curly hair was called Ginger, a tribute evidently, to the general impression of his makeup. Whether you thought of ginger as a tuber in reddish tropical soil, or as a preserved root, or as the Jamaica liquid, it reminded you oddly of him. Of all the English-speaking Negro boys, Ginger held the long-term record of existence on the beach. He had lost his seaman’s papers. He had been in prison for vagabondage and served with a writ of expulsion. But he had destroyed the writ and swiped the papers of another seaman.
Opposite Ginger was Dengel, also tall, but thin. He was a Senegalese who spoke a little English and preferred the company of Malty and his pals to that of his countrymen.
Beside Dengel was the small, wiry, dull-black boy who had sardonically reminded Banjo of his recent high-flying. He was always aggressive of attitude. The fellows said that he was bughouse and he delighted in the name of Bugsy that they gave him.
They were all on the beach, and there were many others besides them—white men, brown men, black men. Finns, Poles, Italians, Slavs, Maltese, Indians, Negroids, African Negroes, West Indian Negroes—deportees from America for violation of the United States immigration laws—afraid and ashamed to go back to their own lands, all dumped down in the great Provençal port, bumming a day’s work, a meal, a drink, existing from hand to mouth, anyhow any way, between box car, tramp ship, bistro, and bordel.
“But you ain’t broke, man,” Malty said, pointing to the banjo, “when you got that theah bit a business. Ain’t a one of us here that totes around anything that can bring a little money outa this burg a peddlers.”
Banjo caressed his instrument. “I nevah part with this, buddy. It is moh than a gal, moh than a pal; it’s mahself.”
“You don’t have to go hungry round here, either, ef you c’n play a li’l’ bit,” drawled Ginger. “You c’n pick up enough change foh you’self even as much to buy us all a li’l’ red wine to wet our whistle when the stuff is scarce down the docks—jest by playing around in them bars in Joliette and uptown around the Bum Square.”
“We’ll see what this burg can stand,” said Banjo. “It ain’t one or two times, but plenty, that mah steady here did make me a raise when I was right down and out. Oncet away back in Montreal, after I done lost every cent to mah name on the racetracks, I went into one swell spohting-place and cleaned up twenty-five dollars playing. But the best of all was the bird uvva time I had in San Francisco with three buddies who hed a guitar and a ukulele and a tambourine between them. My stars! I was living in clovah for six months.”
“You’ll make yours here, too,” said Malty. “Although this heah burg is lousy with pifformers, doing their stuff in the cafés, it ain’t often you come across one that can turn out a note to tickle a chord in you’ apparatus. Play us a piece. Let us hear how you sound.”
“Not now,” said Banjo. “Better tonight in some café. Maybe they won’t like it here.”
“Sure they will. You c’n do any ole thing at any ole time in this country.”
“That ain’t a damn sight true,” Bugsy jumped sharply in. “But you can play all the time,” he said to Banjo. “People will sure come and listen and the boss will get rid a some moh of his rotten wine.”
“This wine ain’t so bad—” Ginger began.
“It sure is,” insisted Bugsy, whose palate had never grown agreeable to vin rouge ordinaire. He drank with the boys, as drinking played a big part in their group life, but he preferred syrups to wine, and he was the soberest among them.
“The wine outa them barrels we bung out on the docks is much better,” he declared.
“Why, sure it’s better, you black blubberhead,” exclaimed Ginger. “Tha’s the real best stuff we make down there. Pure and strong, with no water in it. That’s why we get soft on it quicker than when we drink in a café. In all them little cafés the stuff is doctored. That’s the profit way.”
Banjo played “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.” He said it was one of the pieces that were going wild in the States. The boys began humming and swaying. What Bugsy predicted happened. Some dockers who were not working were drawn to the bistro. They seated themselves at a rough long table, across from the boys’ by the other side of the door, listened approvingly to the music, drank wine, and spat pools.
Malty ordered more wine. Ginger and Bugsy stood up to each other and performed a strenuous movement of the “Black Bottom,” as they had learned it from Negro seamen of the American Export Line. The patronne came and stood in the door, very pleased, and exhibited a little English, “Good piece you very well play. …”
Banjo played another piece, then suddenly stopped, stood up and stretched his arms.
“You finish’ already?” demanded Malty.
“Sure; it was just a little exhibition of my accomplishment foh your particular benefit.”
“Youse as good a musician as a real artist.”
“I is an artist.”
The workmen regarded Banjo admiringly, drained their glasses, and sauntered off.
“Imagine those cheap skates coming here jest to listen to mah playing and not even offering a man a drink,” Banjo sneered. “Why, ef I
