Latnah smiled and said, “You’ve got enough of her, eh?”
The chauffeur attempted to caress her again, but Latnah’s hand shot threateningly to her bosom and he backed away from her.
“You’d better leave that woman alone,” said Banjo.
Right then the Arab girl marched into the café. She bent down with a funny gesture, brought a revolver up from under her skirt and emptied it into the chauffeur. He crumpled to the floor, and she fell upon him and began keening: “I didn’t mean to kill him. … I didn’t mean to kill him.”
XXV
Banjo’s Ace of Spades
A funeral was winding its way through the Ditch. It was not the chauffeur’s, but a policeman’s. He had been shot a day before the chauffeur by a Ditch-dweller just let out of prison. In the Ditch they said it was a story of revenge. It was a large funeral. All the big city officials were there or represented, black-bearded, gray-haired men, black-clothed, decorated, beribboned and medaled. The most important ones had orated valiantly over the corpse, praising the valor and virtues of the force.
Obseques solennelles.
A full turnout of the force. And dutiful comrades in service actively making the way clear for the mourning officials and the immense crowd. Wreath-covered hearse and carriages following, chockful of flowers. From the church on the hill above the quarter, slowly, pompously, and solemnly the mournful army went marching through the Ditch and all the girls along the way crossed themselves and all the touts uncovered.
Directly in the line of march, Ray was sitting on the terrace of the African Bar. Not wanting to salute, nor be conspicuous by not saluting, a show stinking with insincerity and more loathsome to see than the obscene body of a crocodile, he got up and went inside, turning his back on the lugubriously-comic procession.
When the noble company had passed far and away out of the Ditch, Ray started off for Joliette to find Banjo and Goosey and give them the farewell hand. But in the Bum Square he met Goosey, who had spent all the morning hunting for Banjo. He had the consular letter from the captain of Jake’s ship on which they were to go home. But Banjo was missing. He had not returned to the hotel after last night’s feasting and merrymaking. Goosey had gone by all the familiar box-holes of the place, but Banjo was not to be found in any.
“Only thing to do is go back to Joliette and wait for him at the hotel,” suggested Ray. “Then if he doesn’t show up in time, you’ll have to go alone.”
They went to the hotel in Joliette and waited on the terrace over a couple bottles of beer. And when the impatient Goosey was becoming unbearably fidgety as the time of the boat’s departure approached, Banjo came rocking leisurely up to them.
“Good God, man, get some American pep into you and don’t act so African,” cried Goosey. “Don’t you know we’ve got to move by the white folks’ schedule time now? You think the skipper’s going to wait on us?”
“Don’t excite you’se’f, yaller boy. Go you’ ways without me. I ain’t gwine no place.”
“Not going!” cried Goosey. “After the consul paid for your board and lodging and gave you a free passage back home? You sure joking. You remember Lonesome Blue?”
Lonesome Blue had finally disappeared from the scene. When a ship was found for him he had vanished. The police could not have picked him up again, for he had been furnished papers that gave him immunity. Nobody knew where he had gone.
“Remember you’self, you,” said Banjo. “I ain’t studying you nor Lonesome nor no consuls when I done finish make up mah mind. There is many moh Gawd’s own consuls than theah is in Marcelles and this heah Lincoln Agrippa, call him Banjo, has got moh tricks in his haid than a monkey.”
Goosey looked bewildered and scared of going alone. He was shocked by Banjo’s sudden desertion and felt cheated of his strong support. His lower lip hung down in a mournful way.
“Well, I guess I’ve got to go back alone,” he said. “I’ve been sick near death’s door and would have been in the boneyard like Bugsy if the consul hadn’t helped me out. I’m going home.”
“Sure gwine back this time, eh?” Banjo grinned aloud. “Won’t take no chances telling another skipper to chase himse’f. Yo’ gwine back home to what you call them United Snakes after you done sweahs offer them. You was so bellyaching about race I knowed you’d bust. Ise a guttersnipe as you said, all right, and mah pardner done bury his brains in the mud and we ain’t singing no Gawd’s own blues—”
“That hasn’t got a thing to do with my going back,” said Goosey. “I still hold to my opinion. I know what my race has got to buck up against in this white man’s world, if you don’t know and Ray with his talent don’t want to. I know what I was running away from and if I couldn’t make it over here—”
“Couldn’t make the point of mah righteous nose!” exclaimed Banjo. “Red-nigger, you kain’t make nothing at all but the stuff you was made foh. You done got carried ovah heah by accident. And a li’l’ French luck carried you along upstate. But you done flopped so soon as you got left on you’ own, ’causen you ain’t got no self-makings in you. Get me? You go right on back to them United Snakes that you belongs to with you li’l’ pot a French dirt.”
“And you’ll hear from me, too, some day,” said Goosey. “Some day you’ll hear about me orating for my race and telling them about the soil of liberty.”
With a kind of prayerful gesture Goosey held up his sacred souvenir.
“And you think we don’t care a damn about race, eh?” Banjo turned seriously on Goosey.
