“Well, this time you must ask the consul for some kind of paper so that the police will keep off you until you find a ship,” said Ray.
“I don’t know about getting anything moh out a them people,” said Lonesome. “I been up theah this morning and the shipping-master bawled me out and said he thought I was dead or gone away, and if I kain’t find a ship or stow away like any other no-count sailor, I must die, but he ain’t agwineta do nothing moh foh me. And he chased me outa there. Maybe ef you would go back up theah with me again that ’u’d hulp some.”
“I don’t know. I hardly think so,” said Ray. “I think I’ll try a letter this time.”
That was the best and last plan he could think of. In a talk, interrupted by questions and answers and perhaps extraneous matters, he might miss presenting the most important points that would help. He hadn’t the lawyer’s manner of presenting facts verbally. And in this case circumstance and condition did not permit him the lawyer’s privilege. In a letter he would review Lonesome’s case from his initial mistake of refusing to go home the first time he was sent, his subsequent getting into trouble and prison, and the many sentences he had served since, practically all for the same offence. He would say that the chief clerk was right to be angry, but he would show that the man was ill, he had suffered, he was sorry, and was begging for another chance to be sent back to the country of whose ways and language he had some understanding.
Ray thought the letter might have a little more influence if it wore the obvious respectability of this age, so he decided to typewrite it. He went to a typewriter agency and hired the use of a machine. Instead of giving his address in the Ditch he borrowed the decent one of his friend, the gentleman bum. The hotel clerk there knew him and would take care of any reply.
He got the letter done and gave it to Lonesome Blue, and he waited for the result at the African Café. In the late afternoon Lonesome came to the bar with twenty francs, a good pair of secondhand shoes, a serviceable old suit that had been given to him at the Consulate, plus a changed manner.
“I give that there letter a your’n to one a them consuls,” he told Ray. “I don’t know which one, causen I don’t know them differently. And he went up to that shipping-master’s office and gave him all that was coming to him, indeed he did. I was outside, but I was sure listening, and I heared the shipping-master said I hadn’t acted like a knowed I was a colored boy for quitting a ship after he done put me on it and when there is many skippers as don’t want no colored mens. And the consul said he didn’t care about that, I was American and had to be sent on back home.”
Ray told Lonesome that it wasn’t just because he was American that the consul had spoken like that. It was because his was a special case for there were many stranded Americans abroad, white ones, that consuls did not worry themselves about.
“Oh, I knows all about that,” Lonesome said. “It’s a new day now foh cullud folks. I been reading the cullud newspapers and there is a big organization foh cullud people called the Unia movement of Negroes. Ain’t you heared none of it? I thought you was keeping up with race progress, youse always so indiligence-talking. Theyse got to treat us better now all ovah the wul’. The Unia movement will makem, chappie.”
“Look here, Lonesome,” said Ray. “I always knew that you were the damnedest foolest nigger-head that ever was crazy. It is not because of any organization that the consul is going over the chief clerk’s head and giving you another chance. Let me tell you this, as you don’t seem to know it. The two go-getting things in this white man’s civilization are force and cunning. When you have force or power you make people do things. When you haven’t you use cunning.
“You’re the poorest kinky-head I ever did see. I put my nicest manner in a letter to get you out of this damned fix you’re in, you come shooting off your mouth full a bull about the Unia movement. Don’t think I like frigging round officials. I hate it. The movement you need is something in your block to move you away from here. You’re too damnation dumb for this Frenchman’s town, which is about the meanest place for any fool who’s got no more in his bean than in his block—”
“Oh, quit you’ lecturing and let’s drink up this twenty francs,” said Lonesome.
“No, damn you. I drink with fellows on the beach who are regular fellows, but not with anything like you. I’d drink up the last franc with Banjo, but not you. You’d better take that money and get you a room and report to the consul every day until you get a ship.”
Ray left the café with something of the mixed feelings of Banjo and the chief clerk at the consulate toward Lonesome. He felt that it was men like Lonesome, stupid, and utterly repulsive in their stupidity, who made petty officials the mean creatures of bureaucracy that they were.
He hated with all his soul the odor of bureaucratic places, and right then he felt intensely hostile toward Lonesome as the cause of his coming in contact with them. He was no welfare-worker and had rather wanted to do as Banjo had advised—leave Lonesome alone. But he was unable to rid himself of the insistent thought that, as he was qualified, it was the decent thing for him to do it. He pondered the fact that his
