“If I get him one I’d sure see that he didn’t, though,” returned Banjo.
Goosey said that his friend Taloufa had a fine guitar.
“Oh, does he do? Jest lead me along to that darky. Where is he burying his head now?”
“He’s still on the ship,” Goosey replied, “going to be paid off tomorrow. He’ll fix me up so I don’t have to worry.”
“He’s a sucker, eh?” said Bugsy. “That’s why you done dumped all you hed in Boody Lane.”
“Lay off the kid, Bugsy,” said Banjo. “You got too much lip.”
“As much as a baboon,” added Goosey, laughing. “But where you get that ‘kid’ from?” he asked Banjo. “I don’t see my daddy in you.”
“Nevah mind, but youse a green kid, all the same,” replied Banjo. “Anyway, I think we c’n do some business together, you and the flute, you’ friend and the guitar—”
“He’s got a little horn, too,” said Goosey.
“Sure enough? That’s the ticket and me and mah banjo.”
“Banjo! That’s what you play?” exclaimed Goosey.
“Sure that’s what I play,” replied Banjo. “Don’t you like it?”
“No. Banjo is bondage. It’s the instrument of slavery. Banjo is Dixie. The Dixie of the land of cotton and massa and missus and black mammy. We colored folks have got to get away from all that in these enlightened progressive days. Let us play piano and violin, harp and flute. Let the white folks play the banjo if they want to keep on remembering all the Black Joes singing and the hell they made them live in.”
“That ain’t got nothing to do with me, nigger,” replied Banjo. “I play that theah instrument becaz I likes it. I don’t play no Black Joe hymns. I play lively tunes. All that you talking about slavery and bondage ain’t got nothing to do with our starting up a li’l’ orchestra.”
“It sure has, though, if you want me and my friend Taloufa in with you. We aren’t going to do any of that blackface coon stuff.”
“Nuts on that blackface. Tha’s time-past stuff. But wha’ you call coon stuff is the money stuff today. That saxophone-jazzing is sure coon stuff and the American darky sure knows how to makem wheedle-whine them ‘blues.’ He’s sure-enough the one go-getting musical fool today, yaller, and demanded all ovah the wul’.”
“Hm.” Goosey reflected a little. “I’m a race man and Taloufa is race crazy. Pity he isn’t more educated. It’s a new day for the colored race. Up the new race man and finish the good nigger. I as much as told that captain that when he tried to monkey with me. I told him I was in France and not in the United States.”
“You were very foolish,” said Ray. “That wasn’t helping your race any.”
“That’s what you think, but I know I was right. France isn’t like the United States nor Africa—”
“And what’s wrong with Africa?” demanded Dengel.
“Africa is benighted. My mother always advised me when I was a kid to get away as far as farthest from Africa. ‘Africa is jungleland,’ she used to say; ‘there’s nothing to learn from it but dark and dirty doings.’ That’s where I don’t go with my friend Taloufa. He’s gone Back-to-Africa. He thinks colored people scattered all over the world should come together and go Back-to-Africa. He bought a hundred dollars of Black Star Line shares.”
“He did!” exclaimed Banjo. “And what does he think now they got the fat block a that black swindler in the jailhouse?”
“Taloufa thinks better of him,” said Goosey. “Garvey is a bigger man among colored people since they jailed him. Taloufa was at Liberty Hall for the big manifestation. And all the speakers said that the British were back of Garvey catching jail. They were scared of him in Africa and wouldn’t let the Negro World through the mails. Taloufa can tell you all about it tomorrow. I don’t know much. I am no Back-to-Africa business. That’s a big-fool idea. But I’m a race man.”
“If you think about you’ race as much as you do about Boody Lane you’d be better off, maybe,” said Bugsy.
They all laughed heartily.
“Chuts! All that race talking,” continued Bugsy, “is jest a mess a nothing. That saloon-keeper is race talking all the time, and he is robbing his countrymen them, too, giving them more rotten stuff to drink than the white man. He’s wearing gold spectacles with a gold chain, and looking so like he can’t see natural; but mark me, when the white man done get through with him, he’ll sure enough find his own eyesight and be walking around here like any other nigger.”
More laughter, and Banjo asked: “Where do we go from here? The Ditch is getting ready to eat, and I feel like heavy loading. Whose the money guy tonight?”
“I got a little money today,” Ray said. “You can all come up to my dump.”
“Tha’s the ticket!” Banjo applauded. “There’s mah pardner for you, Goosey. Guess he could clean you up on that race stuff. Yet he ain’t nevah hunting down no coon nor bellyaching race on me.”
“But you’re interested in race—I mean race advancement, aren’t you?” Goosey asked Ray.
“Sure, but right now there’s nothing in the world so interesting to me as Banjo and his orchestra.”
VIII
A Carved Carrot
Banjo had the freedom of the Ditch and, as his pal, Ray shared some of it and was introduced to the real depths of the greater Ditch beyond his alley at the extreme end. Banjo had the right of way through Boody Lane and Ray could go through it now without his hat being snatched, as Banjo had a speaking acquaintance with all the occupants of the boxes.
One afternoon Banjo and Ray were playing checkers in a little café of the quarter, with a bottle of wine between them. A demi-crone of the hole came in with a ready-made gladness which seemed as if it might change at any moment into something poisonous. She asked Ray to pay for a drink, calling the
