When they stopped, the garlanded dancer said he would bet anybody a bottle of vin blanc supérieur that he could stand on his head on a table. A youngster in proletarian blue made a sign against his head and said of the old fellow, “Il est fada.” And the old man did indeed look a little mad in his strange costume and graying hair, and it seemed unlikely that his bones could support him in the feat that he proclaimed he could perform. But nobody took up the bet.
Somebody translated what was what to the new seaman, who said, carelessly, “May as well bet and have a little fun outa him.”
“Très bien,” said the old man. He made several attempts at getting headdown upon the table and failed funnily, like professional acrobats in their first trials on the stage, and the café resounded with peals of laughter and quickly filled up. Suddenly the old fellow cried: “Ça y est!” and spread his hands out, balancing himself straight up on his head on the table. In a moment he jumped down and, twisting his stick and executing some steps, went round with his hat and took up a collection before the crowd diminished. The beach boys threw in their share of sous and the seaman promptly paid for the bottle of white wine. The old man took it and left the café, followed by a woman.
Latnah, passing through the Bum Square and seeing Banjo playing, had entered the café just when the old man stopped dancing and asked who would take up his bet. The good collection he took up and the bottle of wine in addition awakened all her instincts of acquisitiveness and envious rivalry. She turned on Banjo.
“All that money man take and gone is you’ money. You play and he take money. You too proud to ask money and you no have nothing. You feel rich, maybe.”
“Leave me be, woman,” said Banjo.
“And you make friend pay wine for man. Man make nothing but bluff. You colored make the white fool you all time—”
“I didn’t tell him to bet nothing. But even then, what is a little lousy bet? Gawd bless mah soul! The money I done bet in my life and all foh big stakes on them race tracks in Montreal. What do you-all know about life and big stakes?” Banjo waved his hand in a tipsy sweep as if he saw the old world of racetrack bettors before him.
“This no Montreal; this Marseilles,” replied Latnah, “and you very fool to play for nothing. You need money, you bitch-commer—”
“Now quit you’ noise. Ise going with you, but I ain’t gwine let you ride me. Get me? No woman nevah ride me yet and you ain’t gwine to ride me, neither.”
He stood up, resting the banjo on a table.
“And it not me doing the riding, I’m sure,” said Latnah.
“Come on, fellahs; let’s get outa this. Let’s take our hump away from here,” said Banjo.
III
Malty Turned Down
Banjo had taken Latnah as she came, easily. It seemed the natural thing to him to fall on his feet, that Latnah should take the place of the other girl to help him now that he needed help. Whatever happened, happened. Life for him was just one different thing of a sort following the other.
Malty was more emotional and amorously gentle than Banjo. He was big, strong, and jolly-natured, and everybody pronounced him a good fellow. He had made it easy for the gang to accept Latnah, when she came to them different from the girls of the Ditch. But there was just the shadow of a change in the manner of the gang toward her since she had taken up steadily with Banjo.
“Some of us nevah know when wese got a good thing,” said Malty to Banjo as they sat up on the breakwater, waiting to be signaled to lunch on a ship. “I think youse the kind a man that don’t appreciate a fust-rate thing because he done got it too easy.”
“Ise a gone-fool nigger with any honey-sweet mamma,” replied Banjo, “but I ain’t gwina bury mah head under no woman’s skirt and let her cackle ovah me.”
“All that bellyaching about a skirt,” retorted Malty. “We was all made and bohn under it.”
Banjo laughed and said: “Easy come, easy go. Tha’s the life-living way. We got met up easy and she’s taking it easy, and Ise taking it easy, too.”
A black seaman came on deck and signaled them. They hurried down from the breakwater and up the gangway.
Latnah was the first woman that Malty and his pals had ever met actually on the beach. Malty first became aware of her one day on the deck of a ship from which he and Bugsy and Ginger had been driven by a Negro steward.
“G’way from here, you lazy no-’count bums,” the steward had said. “I wouldn’t even give you-all a bone to chew on. Instead a gwine along back to work, you lay down on the beach a bumming mens who am trying to make a raspactable living. You think if you-all lay down sweet and lazy in you’ skin while we others am wrastling with salt water, wese gwine to fatten you moh in you’ laziness? G’way from this heah white man’s broad nigger bums.”
The boys were very hungry. For some days they had been eating off a coal boat with a very friendly crew. But it had left the moorings and anchored out in the bay, and now they could not get to it. Irritated, but rather amused by the steward’s onslaught, they shuffled off from the ship a little down the quay. But Malty happened to look behind him and see Latnah waving. He went back with his pals and they found a mess of good food waiting for them. Latnah had spoken in their behalf, and one of the
