They had reached Joliette, where the Britisher said he must turn back.
“Come on, let’s have a look at the Dollar boat,” said Ray.
“No. I have an important engagement with my friend.”
XII
Bugsy’s Chinese Pie
“What’s his gag, pardner?” asked Banjo.
“He’s a regular guy. I just got a hundred francs outa him.”
“How come? Why didn’t you put me next, too? Is he rough-trade business?”
“Oh no! They’re bums just like us—he and his friend. You know I don’t pal around with rough-trade business, though I appreciate them.”
“Youse one nuts of a black beggar, pardner. But wha’d’y’u mean bums like we is? You ain’t telling me they ain’t sitting on an independent bank roll?”
“No, they ain’t. They’re dickey bums, just panhandling through life like us, without any ambition for a steady job. But they only bum the swells. The one that just left us pulls the gentleman stuff, and his partner hands them the raw colonial brass. It’s the gentleman stuff that does the best business, however.”
“Gawd-an-his-chilluns! What a wul’! But how they make it, all dressed up fine and dandy like that?”
“Why, Banjo, you stiff poker! That’s the best way to bum among swell people. The sprucer you are and the slicker your tongue, the surer your chances. Why, those fellows make a thousand francs when we can only make five. When one of those fellows bums a tourist, he’ll feel ashamed if he can’t hand him a fifty or a hundred franc note, the same way you and I feel ashamed when a bum singer does his stuff in a bistro and we haven’t got a copper to put in the hat. Well, it was a lucky thing I bumped into him and got this hundred francs. I was jim-clean. Went up to the agency expecting a little dough from the States, but I didn’t get a cent. I would have had to spend tomorrow in coal or grain.”
“No, you wouldn’t, either, pardner. I got me two hundred francs.”
“And your suit out, too! How’d you makem?”
“Ways a doing it, pardner. Even you’ bestest friend you can’t let in on ehvery thing you do. Whenevah time youse jim-clean, though, don’t go making you’self blacker than you is working in the white man’s coal. Jest tell you’ pardner how you is fixed. I guess I c’n handle that coal better’n you kain.”
“But you don’t have to, mah boy. You’ve got your banjo to work for you.”
“And youse got you’ pen. I want you to finish that theah story you was telling about and read it to me. I think you’ll make a good thing of it. Ise a nigger with a long haid on me. I ain’t dumb like that bumpitter Goosey. I seen many somethings in mah life. Little things getting there and biggity things not getting anywhere. I done seen the wul’ setting in all pohsitions, haidways, sideways, horseways, backways, all ways. Ef I had some real dough I’d put it on you so you could have time to make good on that theah writing business.”
They did not find the other boys in the Joliette Square. They looked for them in the cafés of the place and spied them at last in a side street before a hotel restaurant where stranded sailors were always housed by the American consulate. Malty, Bugsy, Ginger, Goosey, Dengel, and the little Irish fellow. They formed a semicircle around a woman of average size.
It was a Negro woman, Banjo and Ray found, when they got up to them. She was brown like oak, and was wearing a nigger-brown skirt and a black blouse with white cuffs and collar, to which was attached a broad white tongue, and in her hand she held a Bible. She had that week arrived directly from New York and she was telling the boys about it.
“I got a message fwom the Lawd. He dreamed me in a vision and said, ‘Take up you’ Bible and hymnbook and go. Go far and fureign to a place fohgot of Gawd whar theah’s many black folks and white folkses all homeward bound for hell.’ And I told that message to the sistahs and brotherin of mah chierch and we-all of us prayed ag’in, and that prayer was answered foh me to git ready and come along to this heah Marcelles, and heah I is.”
She showed Ray her American passport, in perfect order, visaed by the French consul in New York. “But did you know anything about Marseilles before?” he asked, feeling uneasy under her strange, holy-rolling eyes.
“Nosah, not a thing until the Lawd him dreamed me. And oh‑h‑h, how right it was! Oh‑h‑h, how right it was!” She clasped her hands and looked ecstatically to heaven. The boys glanced uncomfortably at one another and round about them. Was she going to throw that holy stuff right there?
“The Lawd dreamed me to come and warn yo’-all. I know why all you young niggers jest loves it so around heah without thinking a you’ souls’ salvation. I done seen it all the fust day I landed, mah chilluns. H‑m‑m‑m‑m! What a life! I ain’t blind, and ef I didn’t close mah eyes against sich a grand parade of sinfulness as I nevah seen befoh, it was because the Lawd done whisper to me: ‘Keep you’ eyes wide open, Sistah Geter, so you c’n see it all, and don’t miss anything that’ll make mah message the stronger.’ ”
No printed word could record the voluptuous sound of Sister Geter’s “H‑m‑m‑m‑m!” Banjo asked her how she had located Joliette and the Seamen’s Hotel, and she said the American consul had arranged it.
“The consul him send you heah foh preaching!”
